The Lost Manuscript Part 83

"It only remains to you how to excite the ill-will of the strangers against your father."

"Your Highness knows that such conduct would not become me."

The Sovereign waved his hand, and his son departed with a silent bow.

Immediately upon quitting the apartment of the father, the Prince ordered his carriage, and then hastened to his sister. The Princess looked anxiously into his disturbed countenance.

"You are going away?" she exclaimed.

"Farewell!" he said, holding out his hand to her. "I am going into the country to build a new castle for us in case we should wish to change the scene of action."

"When do you return, Benno?"

The Hereditary Prince shrugged his shoulders.

"When the Sovereign commands. My task is now to become something of an architect and farmer; this is a useful occupation. Farewell, Sidonie.

If chance should bring you together with Mrs. Werner, I would be greatly indebted to you if you would not attend to the gossip of the Court, but remember that she is a worthy lady, and that I owe her a great debt of grat.i.tude."

"Are you dissatisfied with me, my brother?" asked the Princess, anxiously.

"Make reparation for it, Siddy, as best you can. Farewell!"

Prince Victor accompanied him to the carriage. The Hereditary Prince clasped his hand, and looked significantly towards the Pavilion. Victor nodded. "That's my opinion too," he said. "Before I go back to my garrison I will visit you in the land of cat-tails. I expect to find you as a brother hermit, with a long beard and a cap made of tree-bark.

Farewell, Knight Toggenburg, and learn there that the best philosophy on earth is to consider every day as lost on which one cannot do some foolish trick. If one does not do this business one's self, others will take the trouble off one's hands. It is always more pleasant to be the hammer than the anvil."

The Sovereign was gloomy and silent at dinner; only short remarks fell from his lips, and sometimes a bitter jest, from which one remarked that he was striving for composure; the Court understood that this unpleasant mood was connected with the departure of the Hereditary Prince, and every one took care not to irritate him. The Professor alone was able to draw a smile from him, when he good-humoredly told about the enchanted castle, Solitude. After dinner the Sovereign conversed with one of his aides-de-camp as well as the Professor. The latter turned to the High Steward; and although he usually avoided the reserved politeness of the man, he on this occasion asked him some indifferent questions. The High Steward answered civilly that the Marshal, who was close by, could give him the best information, and he changed his place. Immediately afterwards the Sovereign walked straight through the company to the High Steward, and drew him into the recess of the window, and began:

"You accompanied me on my first journey to Italy, and, if I am not mistaken, partook a little of my fondness for antiquities. Our collection is being newly arranged and a catalogue fully prepared."

The High Steward expressed his acknowledgment of this princely liberality.

"Professor Werner is very active," continued the Sovereign; "it is delightful to see how well he understands to arrange the specimens."

The High Steward remained silent.

"Your Excellency will remember how when in Italy we were much amused at the enthusiasm of collectors who, luring strangers into their cabinets, wildly gesticulated and rhapsodized over some illegible inscription.

Like most other men, our guest is also afflicted with a hobby. He suspected that an old ma.n.u.script lay concealed in a house in our princ.i.p.ality; therefore he married the daughter of the proprietor; and as, in spite of that, he did not find the treasure, he is now secretly seeking this phantasm in the old garrets of the palace. Has he never spoken to you of it?"

"I have as yet had no occasion to seek his confidence," replied the High Steward.

"Then you have missed something," continued the Sovereign; "in his way he speaks well and readily about it; it will amuse you to examine more closely this species of folly. Come presently with him into my study."

The High Steward bowed; and on the breaking up of the party, informed the Professor that the Sovereign wished to speak to him.

The gentlemen entered the Sovereign's apartment, in order to afford him an hour of entertainment.

"I have told his Excellency," the Sovereign began, "that you have a special object of interest which you pursue like a sportsman. How about the ma.n.u.script?"

The Professor related his new discovery of the two chests.

"The next hunting-ground which I hope to try will be the garrets and rooms in the summer castle of the Princess; if these yield me no booty, I would hardly know of any place that has not been searched."

"I shall be delighted if you soon attain your object," said the Sovereign, looking at the High Steward. "I a.s.sume that the discovery of this ma.n.u.script will be of great importance for your own professional career. Of course you will consent to publish the same."

"It would be the n.o.blest task that could fall to my lot," replied the Professor, "always supposing that your Highness would graciously entrust the work to me."

"You shall undertake the work, and no other," replied the Sovereign, laughing, "so far as I have the right to decide it. So the invisible book will be really of great importance to learning?"

"The greatest importance. The contents of it will be of the highest value to every scholar. I think it would also interest your Highness,"

said the Professor, innocently, "for the Roman Tacitus is in a certain sense a Court historian; the main point of his narrative is the characters of the Emperors who, in the first century of our era, decided the fate of the old world. It is indeed, on the whole, a sorrowful picture."

"Did he belong to the hostile party?" inquired the Sovereign.

"He is the great narrator of the peculiar deformity of character found in the sovereigns of the ancient world; we have to thank him for a series of psychological studies of a malady that then developed itself on the throne."

"That is new to me," replied the Sovereign, fidgeting on his chair.

"Your Highness will, I am convinced, view the various forms of this mental malady with the greatest sympathy, and will find in other periods of the past--nay, even in the earlier civilization of our own people--many remarkable parallel cases."

"Do you speak of a special malady that only befalls rulers?" asked the Sovereign; "physicians will be grateful to you for this discovery."

"In fact," answered the Professor, eagerly, "the fearful importance of this phenomenon is far too little estimated; no other has exercised such an immeasurable influence on the fate of nations. The destruction by pestilence and war is small in comparison with the fatal devastation of nations which has been occasioned by this special misfortune of the rulers. For this malady, which raged long after Tacitus among the Roman emperors, is not an ailing that is confined to ancient Rome--it is undoubtedly as old as the despotisms of the human race; even later it has been the lot of numerous rulers in Christian states; it has produced deformed and grotesque characters in every period; it has been for thousands of years the worm enclosed in the brain, consuming the marrow of the head, destroying the judgment and corroding the moral feelings, until at last nothing remained but the hollow glitter of life. Sometimes it became madness which could be proved by medical men, but in numerous other cases the capacity for practical life did not cease and the secret mischief was carefully concealed. There were periods when only occasional firmly-established minds preserved their full healthy vigor; and again other centuries when the heads that wore a diadem inhaled a fresh atmosphere from the people. I am convinced that he whose vocation it is to investigate accurately the conditions of later times will, in the course of his studies, discover the same malady under a milder form. My life lies far from these observations, but the Roman state undoubtedly shows the strangest forms of the malady; for there were the widest relations, and such a powerful development of human nature both in virtue and vice as has seldom since been found in history."

"It seems to be a particular pleasure to the learned gentlemen to bring to light these sufferings of former rulers," said the Sovereign.

"They are certainly instructive for all times," continued the Professor, confidently, "for by fearful example they impress upon one the truth that the higher a man's position is, the greater is the necessity of barriers to restrain the arbitrariness of his nature. Your Highness's independent judgment and rich experience will enable you to discern, more distinctly than any one in my sphere of life, that the phenomena of this malady always show themselves where the ruling powers have less to fear and to honor than other mortals. What preserves a man in ordinary situations is that he feels himself at every moment of his life under strict and incessant control; his friends, the law, and the interest of others surround him on all sides, they demand imperiously that he should conform his thoughts and will by rules which secure the welfare of others. At all times the power of these fetters is less effective on the ruler; he can easily cast off what confines him, an ungracious movement of the hand frightens the monitor forever from his side. From morning to evening he is surrounded by persons who accommodate themselves to him; no friend reminds him of his duty, no law punishes him. Hundreds of examples teach us that former rulers, even amidst great outward success, suffered from inward ravages, where they were not guarded by a strong public opinion, or incessantly constrained by the powerful partic.i.p.ation of the people in the state.

We cannot but think of the gigantic power of a general and conqueror whose successes and victories brought devastation and excessive sin into his own life; he became a fearful sham, a liar to himself and a liar to the world before he was overthrown, and long before he died. To investigate similar cases is, as I said, not my vocation."

"No," said the Sovereign, in a faint voice.

"The distant time," began the High Steward, "of which you speak, was a sad epoch for the people as well as the rulers. If I am not mistaken a feeling of decay was general, and the admired writers were of little value; at least it appears to me that Apuleius and Lucan were frivolous and deplorably vulgar men."

The Professor looked surprised at the courtier.

"In my youth such authors were much read," he continued. "I do not blame the better ones of that period, when they turned away with disgust at such doings, and withdrew into the most retired private life, or into the Theban wilderness. Therefore when you speak of a malady of the Roman emperors, I might retort that it was only the result of the monstrous malady of the people; although I see quite well that during this corruption individuals accomplished a great advance in the human race, the freeing the people from the exclusiveness of nationality to the unity of culture, and the new ideal which was brought upon earth by Christianity."

"Undoubtedly the form of the state, and the style of culture which each individual emperor found, were decisive for his life. Every one is, in this sense, the child of his own time, and when it is a question of judging the measure of his guilt, it is fitting to weigh cautiously such considerations. But what I had the honor of pointing out to his Highness as the special merit of Tacitus, is only the masterly way with which he describes the peculiar symptoms and course of the Caesarean insanity."

"They were all mad," interrupted the Sovereign, with a hoa.r.s.e voice.

"Pardon, gracious Sir," rejoined the Professor, innocently. "Augustus became a better man on the throne, and almost a century after the time of Tacitus there were good and moderate rulers. But something of the curse which unlimited power exercises on the soul may be discovered in most of the Roman emperors. In the better ones it was like a malady which seldom showed itself, but was restrained by good sense or a good disposition. Many of them indeed were utterly corrupted, and in them the malady developed in definite gradation, the law of which one can easily understand."

"Then you also know how these people were at heart!" said the Sovereign, looking shyly at the Professor.