O. T., A Danish Romance Part 14

"The German Heinrich!" repeated Otto, and his hand really trembled.

Had Heinrich, then, when he was here three years ago, told her and the fishermen that which no human being must know,--that which had destroyed the gayety of his youth? "What have I to do with the German Heinrich?"

"Nothing more than a pious Christian has to do with the devil!" replied she, and made the sign of the cross. "But Heinrich has whispered an evil word in your ear; he has banished your joyous humor, as one banishes a serpent."

"Has he told you this?" exclaimed Otto, and breathed more quickly. "Tell me all that he has said!"

"You will not make me suffer for it!" said she. "I am innocent, and yet I have cooperated in it: it was only a word but a very unseemly word, and for it one must account at the day of judgment!"

"I do not understand you!" said Otto, and his eyes glanced around to see whether any one heard. They were quite alone. In the far distance the boat with the fishermen showed itself like a dark speck.

"Do you remember how wild you were as a boy? How you fastened bladders to the cat's legs and tail, and flung her out of the loft-window that she might fly? I do not say this in anger, for I thought a deal of you; but when you became too insolent one might wall say, 'Can no one, then, curb this lad?' See, these words I said!--that is my whole fault, but since then have lain heavy on my heart. Three years ago came the German Heinrich, and stayed two nights in our house; G.o.d forgive it us! Tricks he could play, and he understood more than the Lord's Prayer--more than is useful to a man. With one trick you were to a.s.sist him, but when he gave you the goblet you played your own tricks, and he could make nothing succeed. You would also be clever. Then he cast an evil eye upon you, although he was still so friendly and submissive, because you were a gentleman's child. Do you remember--no, you will certainly have forgotten--how you once took the baits of the hooks off and hung my wooden shoes on instead? Then I said in anger, and the anger of man is never good, 'Can no one, then, tame this boy for me? He was making downright fun of you to your own face,' said I to the player. 'Do you not know some art by which you can tame this wild-cat?' Then he laughed maliciously, but I thought no more of the matter. The following day, however, he said, 'Now I have curbed the lad! You should only see how tame he is become; and should he ever again turn unruly, only ask him what word the German Heinrich whispered in his ear, and you shall. Then see how quiet he will become. He shall not mock this trick!' My heart was filled with horror, but I thought afterward it really meant nothing. Ei! ei! from the hour he was here you are no longer the same as formerly; that springs from the magical word he whispered in your ear.

You cannot p.r.o.nounce the word, he told me; but by it you have been enchanted: this, and not book-learning, has worked the change. But you shall be delivered! If you have faith, and that you must have, you shall again become gay, and I, spite of the evil words which I spoke, be able to sleep peacefully in my grave. If you will only lay this upon your heart, now that the moon is in its wane, the trouble will vanish out of your heart as the disk of the moon decreases!" And saying this she drew out of her pocket a little leather purse, opened it and took out a piece of folded paper. "In this is a bit of the wood out of which our Saviour's cross was made. This will draw forth the sorrow from your heart, and bear it, as it bore Him who took upon Himself the sorrow of the whole world!" She kissed it with pious devotion, and then handed it to Otto.

The whole became clear to him. He recollected how in his boyish wantonness he had caused Heinrich's tricks to miscarry, which occasioned much pleasure to the spectators, but in Heinrich displeasure: they soon again became friends, and Otto recognized in him the merry weaver of the manufactory, as he called his former abode. They were alone, Otto asked whether he did not remember his name: Heinrich shook his head. Then Otto uncovered his shoulder, bade him read the branded letters, and heard the unhappy interpretation which gave the death-blow to his gayety. Heinrich must have seen what an impression his words made upon the boy: he gained through them an opportunity of avenging himself, and at the same time of bringing himself again into repute: as a sorcerer. He had tamed him, whispered he to the old woman,--he had tamed the boy with a single word.

At any future wantonness of Otto's, gravity and terror would immediately return should any one ask him, What word did the German Heinrich whisper into thy ear? "Only ask him," had Heinrich said.

In a perfectly natural manner there lay, truly, enchantment in Heinrich's words, even although it were not that enchantment which the superst.i.tion of the old woman would have signified. A revelation of the connection of affairs would have removed her doubts, but here an explanation was impossible to Otto. He pressed her hand, besought her to be calm; no sorrow lay heavy on his heart, except the loss of his dear grandfather.

"Every evening have I named your name it my prayers," said the old grandmother. "Each time when the harbingers of bad weather showed themselves, and my sons were on the sea, so that we hung out flags or lighted beacons as signals, did I think of the words which had escaped my lips, and which the wicked Heinrich had caught up; I feared lest our Lord might cause my children to suffer for my injustice."

"Be calm, my dear old woman!" said Otto. "Keep for yourself the holy cross, on the virtue of which you rely; may it remove each sorrow from your own heart!"

"No, I am guilty of my own sorrow! yours has a stranger laid upon your heart! Only the sorrow of the guiltless will the cross bear."

The beautiful sentiment which, unconsciously to her, lay in these words, affected Otto. He accepted the present, preserved it, sought to calm the old woman, and once more at parting glanced toward the splendid sea expanse which formed its own boundary.

It was almost evening before he reached the house where Rosalie awaited him. His last scene with the blind fisher-woman had again thrown him into his gloomy mood. "After all, she really knows nothing!" said he to himself. "This Heinrich is my evil angel! might he only die soon!" It was in Otto's soul as if he could shoot a ball through Heinrich's heart.

"Did he only lie buried under the heather, and with him my secret! I will have blood! yes, there is something devilish in man! Were Heinrich only dead! But others live who know my birth,--my sister! my poor, neglected sister, she who had the same right to intellectual development as myself! How I fear this meeting! it will be bitter! I must away. I will hence--here will my life-germ be stifled! I have indeed fortune--I will travel! This animated France will drive away these whims, and--I am away, far removed from my home. In the coming spring I shall be a stranger among strangers!" And his thoughts melted into a quiet melancholy. In this manner he reached the hall.

CHAPTER XVIII

"L'Angleterre jalouse et la Grece homerique, Toute l'Europe admire, et la jeune Amerique Se leve et bat des mains du bord des oceans.

Trois jours vous ont suffi pour briser vos entraves.

Vous etes les aines d'une race de braves, Vous etes les fits des geans!"

V. HUGO, Chants du Crepuscule.

"Politiken, mine Herrer!"

MORTONS' Lystspil: den Hjemkomne Nabob

"In France there is revolution!" was the first piece of information which Otto related. "Charles X. has flown with his family. This, they say, is in the German papers."

"Revolution?" repeated Rosalie, and folded her hands. "Unhappy France!

Blood has flowed there, and it again flows. There I lost my father and my brother. I became a refugee--must seek for myself a new father-land."

She wiped away a tear from her cheek, and sunk into deep meditation.

She knew the horrors of a revolution, and only saw in this new one a repet.i.tion of those scenes of terror which she had experienced, and which had driven her out into the world, up into the north, where she struggled on, until at length she found a home with Otto's grandfather--a resting abode.

Everything great and beautiful powerfully affected Otto's soul; only in one direction had he shown no interest--in the political direction, and it was precisely politics which had most occupied the grandfather in his seclusion. But Otto's soul was too vivacious, too easily moved, too easily carried away by what lay nearest him. "One must first thoroughly enter into life, before the affairs of the world can seize upon us!"

said he. "With the greater number of those who in their early youth occupy themselves with politics, it is merely affectation. It is with them like the boy who forces himself to smoke tobacco so as to appear older than he really is." Beyond his own country, France was the only land which really interested Otto. Here Napoleon had ruled, and Napoleon's name had reached his heart--he had grown up whilst this name pa.s.sed from mouth to mouth; the name and the deeds of the hero sounded to him, yet a boy, like a great world adventure. How often had he heard his grandfather, shaking his head, say, "Yes, now newspaper writers have little to tell since Napoleon is quiet." And then he had related to him of the hero at Arcole and among the Pyramids, of the great campaign against Europe, of the conflagration at Moscow, and the return from Elba.

Who has not written a play in his childhood? Otto's sole subject was Napoleon; the whole history of the hero, from the snow-batteries at Brienne to the rocky island in the ocean. True, this poem was a wild shoot; but it had sprung from an enthusiastic heart. At that time he preserved it as a treasure. A little incident which is connected with it, and is characteristic of Otto's wild outbreaks of temper when a boy, we will here introduce.

A child of one of the domestics, a little merry boy with whom Otto a.s.sociated a good deal, was playing with him in his garret. Otto was then writing his play. The boy bantered him, pulling the paper at the same time. Otto forbade him with the threat,--"If thou dost that again I will throw thee out of the window!" The boy again immediately pulled at the paper. In a moment Otto seized him by the waist, swung him toward the open window, and would certainly have thrown him out, had not Rosalie fortunately entered the room, and, with an exclamation of horror, seized Otto's arm, who now stood pale as death and trembling in every limb.

In this manner had Napoleon awoke Otto's interest for France. Rosalie also spoke, next to her Switzerland, with most pleasure of this country.

The Revolution had livingly affected her, and therefore her discourse regarding it was living. It even seemed to the old preacher as though the Revolution were an event which he had witnessed. The Revolution and Napoleon had often fed his thoughts and his discourse toward this land.

Otto had thus, without troubling himself the least about politics, grown up with a kind of interest about France. The mere intelligence of this struggle of the July days was therefore not indifferent to him. He still only knew what the horse-dealer had related; nothing of the congregation, or of Polignac's ministry: but France was to him the mighty world-crater, which glowed with its splendid eruptions, and which he admired from a distance.

The old preacher shook his head when Otto imparted this political intelligence to him. A king, so long as he lived, was in his eyes holy, let him be whatever sort of a man he might. The actions of a king, according to his opinion, resembled the words of the Bible, which man ought not to weigh; they should be taken as they were. "All authority is from G.o.d!" said he. "The anointed one is holy; G.o.d gives to him wisdom; he is a light to whom we must all look up!"

"He is a man like ourselves!" answered Otto. "He is the first magistrate of the land, and as such we owe him the highest reverence and obedience.

Birth, and not worth, gives him the high post which he fills. He ought only to will that which is good; to exercise justice. His duties are equally great with those of his subjects."

"But more difficult, my son!" said the old man. "It is nothing, as a flower, to adorn the garland; more difficult is it to be the hand which weaves the garland. The ribbon must be tight as well as gently tied; it must not cut into the stems, and yet it must not be too loose. Yes, you young men talk according to your wisdom! Yes, you are wise! quite as wise as the woman who kept a roasted chicken for supper. She placed it upon a pewter plate upon the glowing coals, and went out to attend to her affairs. When she returned the plate was melted, and the chicken lay among the ashes. 'What a wise cat I have!' said she; 'she has eaten I the plate and left the chicken!' See, you talk just so, and regard things from the same foolish point of view. Do not speak like the rest of them in the city! 'Fear G.o.d, and honor the king!' We have nothing to argue with these two; they transact their business between them! The French resemble young students; when these have made their examen artium they imagine they are equal to the whole world: they grow restive, and give student-feasts! The French must have a Napoleon, who can give their something to do! If they be left to themselves they will play mad pranks!"

"Let us first see what the papers really say," replied Otto.

The following day a large letter arrived; it was from Wilhelm:--

"My excellent Otto,--We have all drunk to Otto Thostrup's health. I raised the gla.s.s, and drank the health. The friends.h.i.+p's dissonance YOU has dissolved itself into a harmonious THOU, and thou thyself hast given the accord. All at home speak of thee; even the Kammerjunker's Mamsell chose lately thee, and not her work-box, as a subject of conversation.

The evening as thou drovest over the Jutland heaths I seated myself at the piano, and played thy whole journey to my sisters. The journey over the heath I gave them in a monotonous piece, composed of three tones, quite dissimilar to that composed by Rousseau. My sisters were near despair; but I told them it was not more uninteresting than the heath.

Sometimes I made a little flight, a quaver; that was the heath-larks which flew up into the air. The introduction to the gypsy-chorus in 'Preciosa' signified the German gypsy-flock. Then came the thema out of 'Jeannot and Collin'--'O, joyous days of childhood!'--and then thou wast at home. I thundered powerfully down in the ba.s.s; that was the North Sea, the chorus in thy present grand' opera. Thou canst well imagine that it was quite original.

"For the rest, everything at home remains in its old state. I have been in Svendborg, and have set to music that sweet poem, 'The Wishes,' by Carl Bagger. His verses seem to me a little rough; but something will certainly come out of the fellow! Thy own wishes are they which he has expressed. Besides this, the astonis.h.i.+ng tidings out of France have given us, and all good people here, an electrical shock. Yes, thou in thy solitude hast certainly heard nothing of the brilliant July days.

The Parisians have deposed Charles X. If the former Revolution was a blood-fruit, this one is a true pa.s.sionflower, suddenly sprung up, exciting astonishment through its beauty, and as soon as the work is ended rolling together its leaves. My cousin Joachim, who as thou knowest is just now at Paris, has lived through these extraordinary days. The day before yesterday we received a long, interesting letter from him, which gave us--of the particulars as well as of the whole--a more complete idea than the papers can give us. People a.s.semble in groups round the post-houses to receive the papers as they arrive. I have extracted from my cousin's letter what has struck me most, and send thee these extracts in a supplement. Thou canst thus in thy retirement still live in the world. A thousand greetings from all here. Thou hast a place in mamma's heart, but not less so in mine.

"Thy friend and brother,

"WILHELM.

"P. S.--It is true! My sister Sophie begs thee to bring her a stone from the North Sea. Perhaps thou wilt bring for me a bucket of water; but it must not incommode thee!"

This hearty letter transported Otto into the midst of the friendly circle in Funen. The corner of the paper where Wilhelm's name stood he pressed to his lips. His heart was full of n.o.ble friends.h.i.+p.

The extract which Wilhelm had made from his cousin's letter was short and descriptive. It might be compared with a beautiful poem translated into good prose.

In the theatre we interest ourselves for struggling innocence; but we are still more affected when the destiny of a whole nation is to be decided. It is on this account that "Wilhelm Tell" possesses so much interest. Not of the single individual is here the question, but of all.

Here is flesh of our flesh, and bone of our bone. Greater than the play created by the poet was the effect which this description of the July days produced upon Otto. This was the reality itself in which he lived.

His heart was filled with admiration for France, who fought for Liberty the holy fight, and who, with the language of the sword, had p.r.o.nounced the anathema of the age on the enemies of enlightenment and improvement.

The old preacher folded his hands as he heard it; his eyes sparkled: but soon he shook his head. "May men so judge the anointed ones of G.o.d? 'He who taketh the sword shall perish by the sword!'"

"The king is for the people," said Otto; "not the people for the king!"

"Louis XVIth's unhappy daughter!" sighed Rosalie; "for the third time is she driven from her father-land. Her parents and brothers killed! her husband dishonored! She herself has a mind and heart. 'She is the only man among the Bourbons,'" said Napoleon.

The preacher, with his old-fas.h.i.+oned honesty, and a royalist from his whole heart, regarded the affair with wavering opinion, and with fear for the future. Rosalie thought most of those who were made unhappy of the royal ladies and the poor children. Each followed the impulse of their own nature, and the instinctive feeling of their age; thus did Otto also, and therefore was his soul filled with enthusiasm. Enthusiasm belongs to youth. His thoughts were busied with dreams of Paris; thither flew his wishes. "Yes, I will travel!" exclaimed he; "that will give my whole character a more decided bias: I will and must," added he in thought. "My sorrow will be extinguished, the recollections of my childhood be forgotten. Abroad, no terrific figures, as here, will present themselves to me. My father is dead, foreign earth lies upon his coffin!"