Louisa of Prussia and Her Times Part 57

There was no reply; not a word was heard from the unhappy baroness.

"You see, your highness," whispered the baron, turning to the veiled lady, "it is as I told you. All prayers are in vain; she does not leave her room; she will die of grief."

"No, she will not die," said the lady, "she is young, and youth survives all grief. Let me try if I cannot induce her to admit us."

And she knocked at the door with bold fingers, and exclaimed: "Pray, f.a.n.n.y, open the door, and let me come in. It is I, Princess Eibenberg; it is I, your friend, Marianne Meier; I want to see my dear f.a.n.n.y Itzig."

Every thing remained silent; nothing stirred behind that locked door.

Marianne removed her veil, and showed her proud, pale countenance to the baron.

"Baron," she said, gravely, "at this hour I forgive you the insult and contempt you hurled at me five years ago on your wedding-day. Fate has avenged me and punished you cruelly, for I see that you have suffered a great deal during the last three days. My heart does not bear you any ill-will now, and I will try to restore your beautiful and unhappy wife to you, and to console her. But I must request you to leave this room. I know a charm, by which I shall decoy f.a.n.n.y from that room; but in order to do so I must be alone, and n.o.body, save herself, must be able to hear me."

"Very well, I will go," said the baron, mournfully. "But permit me first to ask you to do me a favor. My request will prove to you the confidence I repose in you. Please do not tell f.a.n.n.y that you saw me sad and deeply moved; do not intimate any thing to her about my own grief."

"She will perceive herself, from your pale face and hollow cheeks, poor baron!" exclaimed Marianne.

"No, she is not accustomed to look at me attentively; it will escape her," said the baron, sadly, "and I would not have it appear as though I were suffering by her grief, which I deem but natural and just. I beg you, therefore, to say nothing about me."

"I shall fulfil your wish," said Marianne. "f.a.n.n.y will, perhaps, thank you one day for the delicacy with which you are now behaving toward her.

But go now, so that I may call her."

The baron left the room, and Marianne returned to the door. "f.a.n.n.y,"

she said, "come to me, or open the door and let me walk in. I have to deliver to you a message and a letter from Prince Charles von Lichtenstein."

Now a low cry from the cabinet was heard; the bolt was drawn back, the door opened, and Baroness Arnstein appeared on the threshold. Her face was as pale as marble; her eyes, reddened by weeping, lay deeply in their orbits; her black, dishevelled hair fell down on her back like a long mourning veil. She was still beautiful and lovely, but hers was now the beauty of a Magdalen.

"You bring me a message from him?" she asked, in a low, tremulous voice, and with tearful eyes.

"Yes, f.a.n.n.y," said Marianne, scarcely able to overcome her own emotion, "I bring you his last love-greetings. He believed that he would fall, and on that fatal morning, before repairing to the duelling-grounds, he paid me a visit. We had long been acquainted and intimate; both of us had a great, common goal in view; both of us were pursuing the same paths; this was the origin of our acquaintance. He knew, too, that I had been a friend of yours from your childhood, and he therefore intrusted to me his last message to you. Here, f.a.n.n.y, this small box contains all the little souvenirs and love-tokens which he has received from you, and which he deemed much too precious to destroy or to take into his grave; hence he requests you to preserve them. They consist of withered flowers which you once gave him, of a ribbon which you lost, of a few notes which you wrote to him, and from which the malicious and slanderous world might perceive the harmless and innocent character of your intercourse, and, last, of your miniature, painted by the prince himself, from memory. This casket the prince requests you to accept as his legacy. It is a set of pearls, an heirloom of his family, which his dying mother once gave to him in order to adorn with it his bride on his wedding-day. The prince sends it to you and implores you to wear it as a souvenir from him, because you were the bride of his heart. And here, f.a.n.n.y, here is a letter from him, the last lines he ever wrote, and they are addressed to you."

The baroness uttered a cry of joy; seizing the paper with pa.s.sionate violence, she pressed it to her lips, and knelt down with it.

"I thank Thee, my G.o.d, I thank Thee!" she murmured, in a low voice.

"Thou hast sent me this consolation! Thou dost not want me to die of despair!"

And now, still remaining on her knees, she slowly unfolded the paper and read this last glowing farewell, this last tender protestation of his love, with which the prince took leave of her.

Marianne stood, with folded arms, in a bay window, watching her friend with grave, sympathetic eyes, and beheld the pallor and blushes which appeared in quick succession on her cheeks, the impetuous heaving of her bosom, the tremor of her whole frame, and the tears pouring down like rivers from f.a.n.n.y's eyes on the paper, with a mingled feeling of pity and astonishment.

"It must be beautiful to be able to love in such a manner," she thought.

"Beautiful, too, to be able to suffer thus. Enviable the women living with their hearts and deriving from them alone their happiness and grief. Such a lot has not fallen to MY share, and I am almost afraid that I do not love any thing but myself. My life is concentrated in my head, and my blood only rushes from the latter to my heart. Who is more to be pitied, f.a.n.n.y with the grief of her love, or I, who will never know such a grief? But she has wept now, and her tears might finally cause me to weep, too, and to awaken my love. That must not be, however.

One who has to pursue great plans, like myself, must keep a cool head and a cold heart."

And she approached with quick steps the baroness, who was yet on her knees, reading and re-reading the farewell letter of the prince.

"Rise from your knees, f.a.n.n.y," she said, almost imperiously. "You have paid the tribute of your tears to the departed friend, you have wept for him for three days; now bury the past in your heart and think of your future, my poor girl."

"My future?" said f.a.n.n.y, permitting her friend to raise her gently. "My future is broken and darkened forever, and there is a cloud on my name, which will never leave it. Oh, why is there no convent for the Jewess, no lonely cell whither she might take refuge, with her unhappiness and disgrace?"

"Do as I have done," said Marianne; "let the whole world be your convent, and your reception-room the cell in which you do penance, by compelling men to kneel before you and adore you, instead of kneeling yourself, and mortifying your flesh. Lay your unhappiness and your disgrace like a halo around your head, and boldly meet the world with open eyes and a proud mien. If you were poor and nameless I should seriously advise you to become a Catholic, and to take refuge in a convent. But you are rich; you bear a distinguished, aristocratic name; your husband is able to give sumptuous dinner-parties; consequently people will pardon his wife for having become the heroine of an unfortunate romance, and they will take good care not to turn their backs on nor to point their fingers at you; and whenever you pa.s.s them in the street, not to laugh scornfully and tell your history in an audible voice. I, my child, formerly had to bear such contumely and humiliation, and I took a solemn oath at that time that I would revenge myself upon this world, which believed it had a right to despise me--that I would revenge myself by becoming its equal. And I have fulfilled my oath; I am now a princess and a highness. The proud world that once scorned me now bows to me; the most virtuous and aristocratic ladies do not deem it derogatory to their dignity to appear in my reception-room; the most distinguished princes and cavaliers court the friends.h.i.+p and favor of the Princess von Eibenberg, nee Marianne Meier.

Follow my example, therefore, f.a.n.n.y; brave the world, appear in your reception-room with serene calmness and ease; give even more sumptuous dinner-parties than heretofore, and the small cloud now darkening your name will pa.s.s by unnoticed. People will come at first from motives of curiosity, in order to see how you bear your affliction and how you behave under the eclat produced by the deplorable occurrence; next they will come because your dinners are so very excellent, and because this and that princess or countess, this and that prince, minister, or general, do not disdain to appear in your reception-room, and thus the whole affair will gradually be forgotten."

"But my heart will not forget it," said the baroness, mournfully; "my heart will never cease to weep for him, and when my heart is weeping, my eyes will not laugh. You have had the courage to conceal your tears under a smile, and not to suffer your head to be weighed down by the disgrace and contumely which they tried to heap on it. I shall have the courage not to conceal my tears, and to walk about, bending my head under the disgrace and contumely which have undeservedly fallen to my share. If I were guiltier, I should be able, perhaps, to brave the world; but having to mourn, not over a guilty action, but only over a misfortune, I shall weep! Let the world condemn me for it; I shall not hear its judgment, for I shall retire into solitude."

"Oh, you foolish woman!" exclaimed Marianne, fervently.

"Yes, foolish, because you believe already at the beginning of your life that you are done with it. My child, the human heart is much too weak to be able to bear such a grief for many years. It gradually grows tired of it and finally drops it, and perceives then all at once that it is quite empty. Tedium, with its long spider-legs, will then creep over you and draw its dusty network around and no one will tear away this network, because n.o.body will be there to do this salutary service, for you will have driven people away from your side and preferred loneliness to their society. Beware of solitude, or rather learn to be alone in the midst of the world, but not in the privacy of your deserted boudoir. You have to fulfil a beautiful and grand mission here in Vienna. You have to emanc.i.p.ate the Jews--in a manner, however, different from the course I have pursued. I have proved to the foolish world that a Jewess may very well be a princess and worthily represent her exalted rank, notwithstanding her oriental blood and curved nose; but in order to be able to prove it to the world, I had to give up my religion and to desert my people. It is your mission to finish the work I have commenced, and to secure to the Jews a distinguished and undisputed place in society. You shall be the mediator between the aristocracy of blood and of pedigree and the aristocracy of money--the mediator between the Christians and the Jews. You shall give to the Jews here in Vienna a position such as they are justly ent.i.tled to: free, respected, and emanc.i.p.ated from the degrading yoke of prejudices. Such is your mission.

Go and fulfil it!"

"You are right, Marianne," replied f.a.n.n.y, with glowing enthusiasm. "I will fulfil the mission, for it is a grand and sacred one, and it will comfort and strengthen my heart. The happiness of my life is gone forever; but I may, perhaps, be happy in my unhappiness, and I will now try to become so by consoling the unhappy, by a.s.sisting the suffering, and by giving an asylum to the disowned and proscribed. To dry tears, to distribute alms, and to scatter joy and happiness around me--that shall be the balm with which I will heal the wounds of my heart. You are right; I will not retire from the world, but I will compel it to respect me; I will not flee with my grief into solitude, but I will remain with it in the midst of society, a comfort to all sufferers, a refuge to all needing my a.s.sistance!" [Footnote: f.a.n.n.y von Arnstein kept her word. Her house became the centre of the most distinguished intellectual life; her hands were always open and ready to scatter charities and to spread blessings. She did not, however, give merely with her hands, but also with her heart, and only thereby she became a true benefactress; for she added to her gifts that pity and sagacity which know how to appreciate the true sort of relief. To many people she secured lasting happiness; to many she opened the road to wealth, and to some she gave sums which, in themselves, were equivalent to an independent fortune. Her hospitality equalled her benevolence, and she exercised it with rare amiability and to a remarkable extent. Every day numerous guests were received in her house in the city as well as in her villa, where they enjoyed the advantages of the most attractive, enlightened, and distinguished society.]

"That is right! I like to hear you talk thus," exclaimed Marianne, embracing her friend, and tenderly pressing her to her heart. "Now my fears for you are gone, and I may bid you farewell with a rea.s.sured and comforted heart. My travelling-coach is waiting for me, and I shall set out in the course of the present hour."

"And where are you going?" asked f.a.n.n.y, sympathetically.

"That is a secret--a profound political secret," said Marianne, smiling; "but I will confide it to you as a proof of my love. I go to Paris for the purpose of delivering to the first consul a letter from the poor Count de Provence, whom the royalists, and consequently myself, also call King Louis the Eighteenth of France. That, f.a.n.n.y, is the legacy Prince Charles von Lichtenstein has bequeathed to ME. Through him I became acquainted with some of those n.o.ble emigres who preferred to give up their country and their possessions, and to wander about foreign lands without a home, instead of proving faithless to their king, and of obeying that despotic republic and the tyrant who now lays his iron hand upon France. It was the Prince von Lichtenstein who, two weeks ago, brought the Duke d'Enghien to me, and initiated me into the great plans of the unfortunate Bourbons."

"The Duke d'Enghien was here in Vienna?" asked f.a.n.n.y, in surprise.

"Yes, he was here; he kept himself concealed in the palace of your friend Lichtenstein, and only his devoted adherents knew where he was.

The prince belonged to his most enthusiastic followers and friends. Oh, what plans those two fiery young men conceived in the safe asylum of my reception-room! what great things did they expect from the future for the cause of the Bourbons and for France! You ought to have see Prince Charles von Lichtenstein in such hours, f.a.n.n.y; then you would have really understood and boundlessly loved him. His cheeks, then, were glowing with n.o.ble impetuosity; his eyes flashed fire, and sublime words of soul-stirring eloquence dropped from his lips. Never has an enemy been hated more ardently than he hated Bonaparte, the first consul; never has a cause been more pa.s.sionately adhered to than the cause of his unhappy fatherland and that of the exiled Bourbons. If the Count de Provence could boast of a hundred such defenders as was the Prince von Lichtenstein, he would have reconstructed the throne of the fleur-de-lis within a week in Paris. Dry your tears, f.a.n.n.y, for you are not most to be pitied. You only lost a lover, but the Bourbons lost a champion and Germany a true and valorous son; these two are more to be pitied than you. You may find a hundred other lovers, if such should be your desire, but the Bourbons have but few champions, and the number of the true and n.o.ble sons of Germany is constantly on the decrease."

"And he said nothing to me about his plans and hopes?" exclaimed f.a.n.n.y, reproachfully. "He never made me suspect that--"

"That he had not only a heart for love, but also for politics and for the cause of the fatherland!" interrupted Marianne, smiling. "My child, he loved with his heart; hence, so long as he was with you, all the schemes of his head were silent. Still he knew that the beloved of his heart was able and worthy, too, to be the friend of his head; and when he took leave of me, he instructed me to initiate you into all his plans, and to let you partic.i.p.ate in his hopes. f.a.n.n.y, your friend greets you through my mouth; he wishes to transfer his love and his hatred, now that he has left us forever to yourself. As he was a faithful son of his German fatherland, you shall be its faithful daughter and guardian, and watch over the welfare of your country, and devote yourself to its service with your whole strength. As he was an inexorable enemy of that new, blood-stained France and of her dictator, you shall forswear all connection with that country, which soon will pour its torrents of blood and fire over our own unhappy fatherland. You shall do whatever will serve and be useful to the fatherland, and you shall abhor, persecute, and combat every menace to subjugate Germany.

Your house shall be open to all German patriots; it shall be closed against all enemies of Germany, no matter whether they are Germans or French, or to whatever nation they may belong. Such, f.a.n.n.y, is the legacy which Prince Charles von Lichtenstein, the n.o.ble German patriot, has bequeathed to you with his love, and which is to comfort and strengthen you in your grief."

"I accept this legacy," exclaimed f.a.n.n.y, radiant with enthusiasm. "Yes, I accept this legacy and will fulfil it faithfully! To Germany I will transfer the love which I once devoted to him; I will love and honor him in each of our German brethren. Like him, I will hate the enemies of Germany, and never shall my house be opened to them--never shall they cross its threshold as welcome guests! As I cannot be a happy wife, I will try to be a faithful daughter of my country, to love its friends faithfully, and to hate its enemies bitterly!"

"That is right," said Marianne, joyfully. "Now you have received your best consolation, and the grief of your love will be transformed into deeds of love. The blessing of your departed friend will be with you, and the love of your fatherland will reward you for what you will do for it. And you shall a.s.sist our despised and down-trodden Jews, too, by proving to those who scorn us and contemptuously treat us as aliens, that we feel like natives and children of the country in which we were born, and that we do not seek for our Jerusalem in the distant Orient, but in the fatherland we share with all other Germans. Let us prove to these Christians that we also are good patriots, and that we love our fatherland like them, and are ready to make any sacrifice which it may require from us."

"Yes, I will prove that I am a good patriot as he was a good patriot,"

said f.a.n.n.y, enthusiastically. "I will hate whatever he hated; I will love whatever he loved!"

"Amen!" exclaimed Marianne, solemnly. "And now, farewell, f.a.n.n.y. I go to fulfil the legacy which Prince von Lichtenstein has bequeathed to me.

He had taken it upon himself to deliver this letter to Bonaparte, and to see what the Bourbons have to expect from him, and whether Bonaparte is a Monk or a Cromwell. I fear the latter. The Bourbons and Lichtenstein hoped for the former. They believed he would be the Monk of the restoration, and he had only placed himself so near the throne in order to restore the latter to Louis XVIII., as Monk had done in relation to Charles II. Well, we shall see! I will go now and deliver the letter which Prince Lichtenstein has intrusted to me. Farewell, f.a.n.n.y, and remember your legacy!"

"I shall remember it as long as I live," said f.a.n.n.y, fervently. "And as I never shall forget my love, I shall never forget my fatherland either.

Both shall live indissolubly united in my heart!" [Footnote: The history of Baroness Arnstein and the tragic end of Prince Charles von Lichtenstein do not belong to romance, but to reality, and created a great sensation at that time. Every one in Vienna knew that love for Baroness Arnstein had been the cause of the duel and of the death of the Prince von Lichtenstein, but every one knew also that f.a.n.n.y von Arnstein was not to blame for this event; hence the sympathy and compa.s.sion felt for the unhappy lady were universal. The imperial court and the city took pains to do homage to her and to manifest their respect for her.

But Baroness Arnstein was not to be consoled by such proofs of public sympathy; the affliction which had befallen her was too terrible, and she did not endeavor to conceal her grief. She caused the cabinet in which he had seen her on the day preceding his death to be hung in black like a death-room; all the souvenirs and every thing reminding her of him were preserved in this room. She spent there every anniversary of his death in deep mourning, and at other times she frequently retired thither to pray for him. Except herself no one was ever permitted to enter this cabinet, consecrated as an altar for the religion of her reminiscences.--Vide Varnhagen von Ense's Miscellanies, vol. i., p.

112.]

CHAPTER XL.

THE FIRST CONSUL.