A Twofold Life Part 36

This was too hard a blow for the newly-excited hopes of the nation.

Ottmar himself, by his previous conduct, had unconsciously increased its expectations to such an extent that they could only be crushed by a terrible rebuff, but not subside peacefully.

A nation which has long pleaded and had its most reasonable demands rejected, its highest expectations disappointed, is a terrible power when, with its last hope, its last fear is cast aside. Scarcely had the news of Ottmar's withdrawal from the ministry spread abroad, when all the machines stood still, all the looms stopped. A strange bustle began to make itself heard in the streets. Workmen ran busily to and fro, groups formed and separated. Crowds of men, engaged in earnest conversation, surged up and down. Towards evening the strange mysterious rabble, the vermin which always crawl forth when the soil of popular order is disturbed, began to mingle with the throng. The questions and interference of the police were answered with contempt or a slap in the face. At last, with the gathering darkness, the aimless tumult a.s.sumed purpose and direction; Ottmar's house was the point towards which the pulsing life of the whole City streamed. A cheer was raised for the discharged minister, the fallen representative of the people. A few hasty charges from the patrol dispersed the scarcely organized, defenceless crowd; but the result was that the following day it a.s.sembled again, and the scene was repeated; this time with a cheer for Ottmar and a hiss for the government. The advancing soldiers found a part of the crowd armed, and a struggle ensued. When the first wounded man fell a furious yell burst forth, and the resistance became desperate, until a second detachment of mounted gendarmes dashed upon the combatants with drawn sabres and forced them asunder.

The first blow dealt upon such occasions opens the artery of a whole nation, and the wild blood streams forth until strength is utterly exhausted, and the arm yields feebly to the bandage which often only conceals a new fetter.

On the third day the City looked as if some public festival were being celebrated. An inexplicable concourse of strangers thronged the streets; the trains arrived crowded with the inhabitants of the provinces; new bands constantly flocked to the City; the soldiers were consigned to the barracks, the places of business closed.

Still the demon of insurrection, imprisoned in every throbbing heart, waited until the scattered ma.s.ses obtained a definite form, and then burst forth with all his long-repressed power; one mind in a many-limbed, gigantic body. Roaring and shouting he rushed forward with the wings of the storm, ever swelling and increasing, destroying all peaceful life as he dashed along. The breezes fled before and around him, the earth shook and whirled its stones upward to the glittering palaces; while shattering and cras.h.i.+ng, groaning and roaring, was the accompanying harmony to the terrible, howling, and shouting song of fury of the unchained revolution.

Pale terror stared hollow-eyed at the pa.s.sing desolation, while the Nemesis of the insulted law dashed after on snorting steeds. But the ghost of fratricide rested with paralyzing power upon the pursuers, and unreached, unchecked, a part of the mighty crowd rushed on to the a.r.s.enal. The guard stationed for its defense fell at the first tremendous a.s.sault; the huge doors yielded, and with an exultant roar of "Arms!" the combatants rushed in over the treasured emblems of battle-traditions centuries old, to prepare for the most important conflict--the victory of the new over the old time.

Vengeance hastened after with lightning and thunder; and the infuriated forces, cras.h.i.+ng and shrieking, rushed upon each other and struggled in the most terrible of all conflicts--the narrow, crowded battle of the streets. Repeated volleys of artillery and new bands of soldiers at last forced a way through the throng before the a.r.s.enal was plundered.

But, as a wave which the tempest lashes asunder always rushes together with redoubled violence, the crowd divided and grew denser here and there before the regular weapons of the troops. Hotter and more deadly grew the struggle. Darkness was gradually added to the thick smoke of the powder, which enveloped the noisy city and absorbed every ray of light. Barricades, those terrible fortifications of the populace, had risen, and around them the conflict raged, so that the walls of the houses groaned and trembled, and with the last gleam of day the last appearance of definite purpose vanished, darkness shrouded the heated brains, and both within and without all outline of form and plan vanished. Murder was no longer committed for the sake of a certain object, but became the object itself. Nature a.s.serted her rights, not in a peaceful, normal manner, but with horrible degeneracy,--stupefaction in the place of sleep, the delirium of fury instead of dreams. The animal developed itself in forms of hideous distortion, and the most dangerous madness took possession of the soul: joy in cruelty, pleasure in destruction. Hour after hour elapsed in a wild tumult of excesses and crimes; anarchy writhed and twisted horribly beneath the superior force of fresh bodies of troops, clung giddily to her bulwarks, and defended them with convulsive energy as her last support. The struggle now became monotonous. Signals, volleys of artillery, and fierce howls, like those of wild beasts, alternated at regular intervals, while above them rose the notes of the alarm-bells, and only the crash of falling barricades, the glare of burning houses, interrupted the terrible rhythm with which the yielding revolution was uttering its last sighs. Limb after limb began to die, street after street became quiet.

At last, towards morning, the over-taxed strength was exhausted, the thirst for blood slaked. Death was gleaning in the houses where battle had cast its mangled victims, and trembling hands were busied in binding up wounds, while compa.s.sion and horror struggled for the mastery. The last shot died away, the insurrection was quelled. Silence spread over the scene the la.s.situde of death. Slowly the ever-patient heavens flushed with the rosy hues of dawn, and the still reeking city lay purple in its blood.

Ottmar stood at the window gazing silently, now at the glowing sky and now at the blood-stained earth. Horror had stupefied him. In the angles of the streets soldiers, who had fallen asleep while standing in the ranks, leaned against each other, shoulder to shoulder. Now and then a body covered with straw was borne past; pallid women stepped noiselessly over the barricades, urged on by the courage of despair, and crept along the streets to seek their husbands and sons; invisible angels of death floated through the air, guided them into the right path, and hovered around them when, in some lifeless body, they were forced to recognize a relative.

_Heinrich_ gazed motionless at these changing scenes of misery; but his inmost heart was strangely stirred. The spirit of murdered freedom celebrated in him its resurrection, built a temple in his soul, raised its arches heavenward, and led him away from this sorrowful scene of his former unhallowed labors to his own home, where the lists stood open to the missionaries of national happiness, where he could obey the call which had appealed to his conscience in the death-cry of an ill-used country. All the frivolity and brilliancy that had formerly charmed him was swallowed up in the streams of blood he had seen flow,--all striving and struggling to a.s.sert his own merits vanished in the newly-awakened consciousness of the duties devolving upon every talented man for the development and culture of the ma.s.ses. The solemnity of the moment had seized upon him and stripped off all that was false and superficial. He could not answer with sophisms the great question propounded by the times; he must at last be himself again, must acknowledge the truth, and from amidst all the horrors of vengeance, the rus.h.i.+ng streams of blood, once more arose in its pure beauty the thought of the eternal rights of man he had so grievously profaned.

XXII.

LIGHT AND SHADOW.

A radiant morning sky arched over a green island which lay in the midst of a broad, ruffled lake. Blue mountain-peaks, veiled in mist, bounded the almost-immeasurable surface of water. Who can describe all the changeful lights upon the tide when the young rays of the morning sun play upon the dancing wavelets--the rising and falling, the sparkling and flas.h.i.+ng, the confused blending of the reflections? A fresh breeze swept over the lake to the island and rustled the leaves of the lofty trees; with that exception, a deep silence, a sabbath-like peace, brooded over the scene.

A girlish figure stood upon the sh.o.r.e, gazing, in a trance of delight, at the starry s.h.i.+mmer of the waves, and inhaling with parted lips the cool breath of the water; dewy leaves and blossoms kissed her floating robes, and dragon-flies sported upon the tide at her feet. Her eyes followed with a longing look a bird of prey which soared in a majestic flight towards the pure, vaulted firmament. Just then the sound of the matin-bell rang out upon the silence, and at the same moment a tall man, in long, dark robe, appeared in the doorway of a peasant's house near by, and, standing motionless, gazed at the slender figure, whose marvelous proportions were sharply outlined against the sparkling lake!

"Cornelia!" he called at last.

She turned and hurried towards him. "My dear Severinus! Oh, how happy I am! Here the free German air blows once more; here I again hear the rustling of German oaks and pines. Home surrounds me in this fresh, simple nature, speaks in the familiar language, looks from the kindly blue eyes. I live once more,--I am awake,--and what surrounds me is charming, bright reality."

"Have you only been dreaming while in our glorious Italy?" asked Severinus, gravely.

"Yes, Severinus; a beautiful, wonderful dream, but a dream after all. I was torn from my native soil; my heart could not take root anywhere; no dear relations with my past existed; no new ones were formed with the present. What I saw and experienced only enriched my intellect, not my heart; it afforded me pleasure without making me happy; occupied my mind without obtaining any hold upon my nature. I gazed, admired, learned, and reveled in a wealth of beauty; but I was not myself,--my individual life had no connection with my surroundings. What is this except a dream into which we bring nothing, and from which we take only a memory?"

"I had hoped you would not return so empty from a country of the loftiest revelations. I expected your great soul would there find its only true home, and the sorrow of finding myself mistaken shall be the last the world can prepare for me."

"Oh, do not talk so, Severinus, dear, pious father! Do not Look at me so sadly; do not be so stern and bitter, but enjoy with me the blessing of this peaceful morning. Let holy nature be the church in which our souls can unite in adoration of our common G.o.d. See, my friend, clearness of vision is as unavoidable a necessity to me as light and air; in clearness of vision G.o.d shows himself to me, while you only perceive him in mysteries. In order to see him I open my spiritual eyes; you close yours. I receive his manifestations with sharpened, you with artificially deadened, senses. I see him in each of these light clouds floating over the sunny sky; you darken your churches, and shroud yourselves in clouds of incense, that in the mysterious, rich-hued twilight you may paint a vague, fanciful picture. His natural and moral laws everywhere announce themselves to me in s.h.i.+ning characters, and I serve him by cheerful obedience to them; you collect from the ambiguous writings of the Bible a book of church regulations, to which you slavishly submit, and exhaust your hearts and minds the superhuman effort of satisfying all your self-created duties."

"I hope this is not the only result of your observation of our sublime wors.h.i.+p. It must be the short residence on this dull German soil which has loosened the strings that resounded so clearly in Rome."

"Do not cherish such a fancy, Severinus," said Cornelia, as she walked up and down the sh.o.r.e with him. "The forms of your wors.h.i.+p, as I saw them in Rome, delighted me; nay, their grandeur and poesy aroused a wild enthusiasm. But it was the revelation of art, not that of the Deity, at which I gazed. All your miracles, all your lofty precepts, proved nothing except the grandeur of the human intellect, and in this the existence and influence of a G.o.d, which I never doubted, and which had been just as clearly revealed to me in every creation of genius. My G.o.d, to whom I pray in childish adoration, has remained the same; he has come from Rome with me the same as he went. You neither strengthened nor shook my belief; I cherish the deepest reverence for your wors.h.i.+p of G.o.d; it is more beautiful, more sublime, than ours; my heart has opened to much that revealed a character of sincere piety, but I still see in it only a transitory _form_, liable to alter with the changes of centuries; while I bear within me the imperishable essence, ever the same through the lapse of ages."

"Oh, Cornelia, how I pity you!" said Severinus, as he leaned against an oak, covering his dark eyes with his hand, while his breast rose and fell as if he were struggling for breath. "Cornelia," he suddenly exclaimed, encircling her forehead with both hands, "free your mind, your G.o.dlike mind, from the clutches of this prejudice; cast aside the arrogance of independent judgment; bend your haughty brow in obedience to our church. Oh, if I could give you the blessing to be found in unconditional submission,--blind faith,--I would willingly sacrifice my life to save for the church this soul, which has no peer in human form!

Cornelia, a fiend has taken possession of you; that of pride, doubt, indifference. He has concealed himself under the false l.u.s.tre of an abstract reverence for G.o.d, to lull your conscience to sleep, in order that you may the more surely fall into unbelief and destruction." He suddenly threw himself at her feet, and gazed despairingly into her eyes. "Here I lie before you in the dust, and I plead in infinite anguish for the precious imperiled property of Christ. The next moment of time may perhaps decide your fate, and part us forever. Cornelia, join our church; believe me, she alone can save you."

"Oh, G.o.d, how hardly you try me! You wrong me, Severinus. No evil spirit, no prejudice, guides me. Have you ever seen me arrogant? If I were, should I not go over to you? for you have opened the most tempting prospects to my pride; you would halt my conversion with joy, and receive me with every kind of pomp and distinction. My self-love would be so greatly flattered that it would far, far outweigh the self-denial of an outward subordination to the church, while in my own congregation no one asks about Cornelia Erwing. But I cannot thus belie myself. Do not sadden my heart with entreaties and lamentations: convince me, Severinus; for so long as you do not succeed in that I can do nothing but weep, because I must grieve my best friend so deeply."

"Convince you!" cried Severinus, starting up. "If the whole gigantic structure of our religion, whose foundations certainly do not rest upon air, the marvels of our wors.h.i.+p, the words of the fathers of the church, the historical proofs of our traditions which reach beck to the time of the establishment of Catholicism by Peter himself, could not convince you, there is nothing left for me to say."

"All that, my friend, even granting that they were proofs, could not make me forget the causes of the Reformation. The Reformation is the mother of my faith."

"Ah, do not utter these words in the same breath! What had your Reformation in common with faith? Were your dry, philosophical Melanchthon, your rough, sensual Luther, your chiding, physically and morally starving Hutten, representatives of a religious transformation?"

"They were men who had the courage to appear before the hypocrisy of your degenerate priesthood as they really were; who did not seek the halo of sanct.i.ty in the denial of human nature, but honored G.o.d and his wisdom in his laws. Besides, we too do not lack sainted martyrs, and the flames that consumed a Huss branded an eternal stigma upon your church."

"I cannot argue with you about the means the church was permitted to use against such apostates. I will only tell you, my child, that the Reformation of the sixteenth century was nothing more than a secular insurrection against abuses in the church, which unfortunately cannot be denied. But a secular revolution can never create a religion, and therefore Protestantism lacks the positive character the human heart needs, and where it strives to appropriate it, becomes a monster, for it is and remains nothing more than a--protest against Catholicism."

"Our Reformation was not to create a religion; its purpose was merely to free one already existing from abuse and error. Its task was to restore Christianity to its original purity, and if it did not wholly succeed, if in Protestantism it has only produced a transitory, imperfect form, we still thank it for the highest blessings of civilization, and most precious of all, that freedom of conscience which permits the dissatisfied mind to choose its own religion."

"And this much-praised 'freedom of conscience' leads directly to want of principle, and becomes the destruction of all virtue, all religion!"

cried Severinus, indignantly. "The human race cannot dispense with a positive church discipline without falling into anarchy. And in you, Cornelia, unhappily, I have already had an opportunity to learn the effects of this emanc.i.p.ation."

"You have learned, Severinus," interrupted Cornelia, with n.o.ble pride, "that I resisted evil with the same power with which I now repel the flattering allurements of a church adorned with all the magic of fancy and attraction of rites, because it is at variance with my own convictions. Is this a want of moral discipline?"

Severinus walked on beside Cornelia in silence. The sun had risen higher in the heavens, and the bell for ma.s.s rang from the neighboring convent. Severinus paused and gazed long and earnestly into Cornelia's eyes. "Girl, does not that innocent voice fall upon your ear in tones of touching warning, like the pleading of a mother calling to her lost child?"

"Do not be such a bigoted Catholic to-day, Severinus," said Cornelia, gazing at him beseechingly. "All the joy of this earthly life is stirring in my heart, and must I constantly argue with you about the best means of reaching heaven? Oh, let me enjoy with a thankful soul the rich abundance of happiness my Creator has poured out for me! Do not cast the black shadow of your religious harshness over the sunny picture of this day. Severinus, my dear, gloomy friend, be mild and gentle. Look at me as kindly as you used to do. See, see, there is the glimmer of a smile upon your face! Ah, it has already vanished again!

What a pity! Ever since the news of Ottmar's going over to the liberal party brought me back to Germany, and filled me with the blissful certainty of being reunited to him, you have become a different person.

When I lost him, I gained you; and now that I am to gain him once more, I lose you. When I felt miserable and lonely, you were as loving and patient as a father; but since I have been animated with new hope, you have retired coldly into yourself, and you have hidden yourself behind the walls of your work of conversion."

"My task, Cornelia, is only to aid the afflicted; the happy do not need me." Severinus looked silently up towards heaven. His eyes were bloodshot; his wasted face, bronzed by the Italian sun, glowed with fervor.

Cornelia laid her clasped hands compa.s.sionately and beseechingly upon his breast. "Severinus, you are suffering; I see it."

For a moment he pressed her hands closely to his throbbing heart, then hurled them away, with an expression of horror, and hurried off.

Cornelia looked after him in astonishment, but did not try to follow, for she felt that the emotion which moved him was a secret she ought not to fathom. She turned towards the rural inn where she lodged, and now observed for the first time that one of the artists who came to the island to sketch was seated an a little hillock not far from the spot where she had been pacing with Severinus, and recognized him as the very person to whose talent she owed her first picture of Ottmar. She approached, and he hastily concealed in his portfolio the paper upon which he had been working.

"You only arrived yesterday evening, and are already sketching the scenery, Herr A----. Is it not a little hasty?"

"I have already made myself familiar with all its details," said A----, with evident embarra.s.sment. "I am very much hurried, because I would like to finish the picture in time for the exhibition at H----."

"Then I will not detain you, but wish you all possible success. Au revoir, Herr A----."

"I will do myself the honor of waiting upon you at a later hour, Fraulein Erwing," said A----, bowing respectfully; and, as Cornelia turned away, he drew out his sketch, and eagerly continued his work.

Cornelia entered the public room, to ask if the newspapers had arrived.

It was full of active life. Some twenty young artists were standing together consulting about a trip they were to take; most of them handsome young fellows, with large beards, boldly-curved Calabrian hats, open s.h.i.+rt-collars, and the general adventurous negligence of apparel with which the young representatives of the laws of beauty seek to remove the pedantic stiffness of modern costume.

A general "ah!" echoed through the room at Cornelia's entrance, and a movement took place which made the dense clouds of tobacco-smoke that filled the low apartment whirl as if driven by the wind. The hats were removed; the beer-gla.s.ses noiselessly set aside. All crowded around Cornelia.

"Fraulein Erwing!" cried one, to whom a waving red mane and widely-dilated nostrils gave the appearance of a lion, "we have at last caught you without your black guardian! You must yield to superior force, and let us steal your face. We are a terrible band of robbers, and a person for whom we once lay snares does not escape us so easily."