A Twofold Life.
by Wilhelmine von Hillern.
I.
MENTAL STRIFE.
In an elegant apartment which luxury and wealth had adorned with everything that the fantastic industry of our times affords, two stately figures were pacing rapidly up and down: a lady no longer young but still magnificently beautiful, a true Parisienne and _lionne_ of society, and a young man with an aristocratic, though somewhat stern, bearing, dark hair, and strongly marked features. At times they eagerly approached each other with flashing eyes, then turned away to resume their restless pacing to and fro.
"It is useless, we must part!" cried the youth, after a pause. "My pa.s.sion for you is destroying my whole life: my studies are neglected, nothing has any charm for me unless connected with you; my fancy is unceasingly busied with your image. I can no longer work, no longer think, no longer create anything, and unless I can break loose from this conflict I shall become a dishonored wretch, or consume my strength in endless torture and go to destruction! We must part forever!"
There was no answer. The lady had thrown herself upon a causeuse which stood just under a niche overgrown with ivy and lighted with lamps that gleamed through crimson shades, and was gazing steadily into the soft gloom, while a tear rolled slowly down her cheek. Our hero turned, after vainly waiting for a reply, and looked ardently at the beautiful picture.
The deepest silence pervaded the elegant apartment, only interrupted by the low plashing of a tiny fountain which fell into a marble basin filled with goldfish. Countless hyacinths exhaled their fragrance amid tall exotic plants, and between the heavy silken curtains and portieres gleamed marble statues, which in the dim purple light seemed instinct with life. Everything breathed love and secret bliss. Allured by some magnetic attraction our hero knelt before the silent figure, and kissing the hand that hung by her side, whispered: "Great Heaven, if you weep how shall I find strength to conquer this moment? Oh, do not condemn me to suffer all the torments which only a fiend can devise for feeble human beings! If you have a heart that can weep, in mercy soften this farewell. If you really loved me, you would not by every alluring art seek to place me in a relation where your better self must renounce and despise me."
"What do I desire?" was the reply. "I wish to keep you, you who are the sole happiness of my life. I will not, cannot, see you leave me so coldly, cannot loose you from these arms, which in your person hold my very life. What will my husband lose if through you he receives what he does not know how to win himself: a happy wife? what will he lose if the smile I _feign_ for him becomes _real_? What has he made me? A doll to amuse society, a puppet to minister to his empty vanity. What does he lose if the doll receives life? He has never asked for my heart,--do I rob him if I give that which he neither knows nor prizes to another who longs for it, and whom it can make happy?" She paused and pressed a light kiss on the listening ear of her friend. Bewildered by her musical whisper and warm breath, he leaned his burning cheek upon her breast and could find no reply.
She clasped him in a closer embrace and continued, in a tone of reproachful tenderness, "Now that our relation must be decided, you are so stern, so coldly conscientious, and yet--who woke this love in my frozen heart? Who implored me to prolong my stay in Germany? Who increased my pa.s.sion by a thousand sweet nothings? Was it not you, who now reject me?"
"Alas! my wretched frivolity, it punishes me heavily," he murmured, with a deep sigh; "but as it has brought me to this pa.s.s, it shall at least lead me no further."
He tried to rise, but she still clung to him. "Do you no longer love me?" she cried, bursting into tears.
"Yes, my heart is glowing with love for you!" he exclaimed, clasping her in his arms. "But shall I become unprincipled because I have been thoughtless? Because I have taken peace from your heart, shall I rob you of a quiet conscience? Because ennui and ign.o.ble desires have led me to form an unworthy friendship with D"Anneaud, your mindless, heartless husband, shall I now become traitor to his honor and my own?"
"Go, then," murmured the beautiful woman, removing her arms,--"go, if you have the strength to do so."
"You give me the power yourself, for you do not understand me. The more firmly you cling to me, the more surely my n.o.bler being finds the strength to escape you. I am aware that I have two natures within me: one longs for you, but the other turns resolutely away, and at this moment solemnizes its greatest, most agonizing victory, since it compels me to resign you. Yes, its most _agonizing_ victory," he repeated, clasping the angry woman to his heart with pa.s.sionate love.
"You weep, but my very heart is bleeding, beautiful, lovely woman; no tongue can express what I suffer."
For a moment they stood with their lips clinging together; at last with a violent effort he tore himself from her embrace and rushed out of the room without another word.
"Henri!" she cried, faintly.
In vain: Henri ran down the staircase, sprang into his carriage, and shouted to the coachman, "To Ottmarsfeld!"
Ottmarsfeld, Heinrich von Ottmar"s family estate, where he lived alone with his servants, was a two hours" drive from the capital. While within the limits of the city Heinrich looked incessantly back towards the tempting house, but when the carriage rolled through the gate he wrapped himself in his cloak and sank into a profound reverie.
The keen night air blew sharply upon him, and he shrank back into one corner of the carriage with a shiver. The trees along the highway towered stiff and bare in the darkness. Now and then one of the horses shied at the sight of some strange shadow. A muttered oath and the crack of the whip followed, then all was silent again except the regular beat of the hoofs as the horses trotted forward. _Heinrich"s_ heated fancy compared this cold, ghostly drive with the hour he had spent in the elegant perfumed boudoir, by the side of the fair, frivolous Parisienne. He closed his eyes to shut out the surrounding gloom, and conjured up the statues, flowers, and the moment when the graceful, weeping woman reclined before him on the silken causeuse.
"I am a fool," he said to himself; "to what phantom am I sacrificing myself? What object, what reward, can I hope for in return for my superhuman self-denial? None, save curses from the lips which offered me blissful happiness, and tears of sorrow in my own eyes. Yes, she was right. Who will lose anything if we are happy? Shall the fairest hours of my youth pa.s.s away in consuming, unsatisfied longing?--shall I allow my studies to suffer from this secret struggle, and draw upon myself the disgrace of failing in the examination? Are all these things outweighed by the imaginary duty imposed upon me by the t.i.tle of friend, with which I have honored her fool of a husband, and whose violation he will notice as little as the most conscientious fulfillment of it? Will they be outweighed by the preservation of one"s self-respect, and is not this, after all, a matter of opinion?--is it not a sort of coquetting with one"s self? What will all my self-esteem avail, if the world calls me a simpleton because, under the ban of my pa.s.sion, I neglected my studies and social interests? If I am pointed at as an incapable man, shall I not sink in my own eyes?" His blood grew more and more fevered as his reason coldly a.n.a.lyzed what a short time before had seemed to him an inviolable duty. The moral stand which he had taken in his conversation with Madame d"Anneaud was not sufficiently powerful to protect, him from the relapse which had now come. "I shall never rest," he thought, "until the beautiful woman is _mine_, then only I shall be myself again! My father always said that we could find no better way of defending ourselves against the power a woman obtains over our hearts than by degrading her. How the cold, shrewd man of the world would laugh if he were alive, and could see how I am toiling to keep this woman in a position from which she herself wishes to descend!--if he could see how my love hallows one who does not desire to be held sacred! And her husband! Well, if he discovers it I would give him satisfaction by a few ounces of blood, and none of my acquaintances would despise me for the scandal half as much as I might perhaps despise myself."
He drew out his watch: he would turn back if there was still time. It was too late: it was already past the hour when he could see Madame d"Anneaud alone. He clinched his teeth and hid his face in his cloak, as if shivering from a feverish chill. The carriage entered a thick wood, and at last stopped before a large iron gate.
"You are ill, Herr Baron," said the old valet de chambre as Heinrich entered the castle, trembling violently.
"Yes, yes, I feel very ill," he replied, pa.s.sing an to his sleeping-room to wait with burning impatience for the following day, which would afford him an opportunity to atone for his previous reserve in the arms of the beautiful Madame d"Anneaud. But the next morning brought a farewell letter from the lovely Parisienne, who informed him that she should return at once to her home in France. It was written with all the pride and anger of a woman who has experienced the deepest possible humiliation; who, having offered more than was desired or accepted, now wishes to make amends for her too great willingness to yield by a double measure of coldness and harshness. The youth of twenty was still too great a novice in a woman"s words to perceive that this cold reserve had as little real foundation as the pride from which it sprung, and which with such ladies too often supplies the place of true honor. Heinrich was hopelessly crushed, and as everything that is denied us doubly excites our desires, the indignant woman who had cast him off was far more charming in his eyes than when she had pleaded for his love. Remorse and pa.s.sion strove in his heart with all the fury of the hot blood of twenty. It was the first connection of such a nature that Heinrich had ever formed, the first great feeling of his life.
Such periods, with their secret resolutions, are those in which the elements of the inner life are a.n.a.lyzed, separated from each other, or harmoniously blended. They are the standard for the guidance of the whole life.
Heinrich von Ottmar had been educated entirely without love. His mother died before he reached his fifth year; his father, a heartless aristocrat, was Grand Steward of the Court of the Princ.i.p.ality of H----, where Heinrich was now to commence his career, and all the efforts of the haughty, ambitious n.o.ble were directed solely to the one object of inoculating his son with the ideas which, as he believed, had made him great, and might prepare a similar destiny for Heinrich. He was one of those tyrannical persons who make even those they wish to benefit unhappy, because they take no account of individuality, and compel the victim of their anxiety to be happy, not in _his own_, but _their_ way. He brought only discord into _Heinrich"s_ young soul, which was already sympathetically attracted by the development of the times, for while he succeeded on one hand in rousing and directing it entirely towards one object,--that of obtaining power and position on the loftiest heights of society,--he could not suppress his leaning towards the struggles for freedom peculiar to the times, which were an abomination to the man whose inclinations tended towards ultramontanism. Here also, influenced by the illusion that everything could be done by force, there were many violent scenes, in which he threatened the young defenseless boy with expulsion from his home, a father"s curse, and disinheritance. But no opinions are changed, no convictions uprooted, by menaces and blows; they are at most forced to conceal themselves where it is impossible to struggle with them.
Heinrich accustomed himself _to be silent_ and to _dissimulate_ at an age when he was incapable of understanding the moral wrong and evil of these qualities. Thus, under this father"s tyrannical sway, every budding germ of manly truth was suffocated, and shot forth unavailingly. There are two results from such a course of training.
When the parental authority a.s.serts itself also in the petty details and interests of life, a most independent and rugged character is often developed, firmly determined to exchange a hated, tyrannical present for a free future, however dark it may be. This was not the case with Heinrich von Ottmar; on the contrary, his worldly-wise father allowed him full liberty in all the trifles on which youth sets so high a value,--greater liberty than a more conscientious man would have done.
He knew how to make his home-life pleasant enough to him, induce him to fear expulsion from it as the greatest misfortune; thus he always retained his influence, and the youth, spoiled by the glitter and pleasures of life, bore the intellectual tyranny of his father because it allowed the most unlimited personal freedom, and learned to yield and submit. He was naturally generous and warmhearted, capable of enthusiasm for everything good and beautiful; but under these circ.u.mstances only his intellectual, not his moral, powers could develop, and his affections were forced to pine for the lack of food.
But his hot blood a.s.serted its rights, and as it found in his soul no lofty ideal against which its strong, youthful waves might dash, it lost itself in the broad, shallow stream of sensuality. His father held the opinion that there could be nothing more disadvantageous, more injurious to the thinker, as well as to the man of the world, than a deep feeling; and as he desired to make his son both, if possible, he wished to save him from the evil. He also knew that there is no better protection from it than the habit of frivolous, careless intercourse with insignificant natures, and therefore cheerfully endured this phase of _Heinrich"s_ character. He had no esteem for women himself, and it seemed to him a matter of indifference if the impulsive youth turned where favors were granted most speedily, and where he unconsciously lost his reverence for the s.e.x. Thus the blinded father, with his inexorable sternness on the one side, converted a n.o.ble, many-sided nature into an ambiguous, varying character, and, by his unprincipled indulgence on the other hand, transformed a heart-craving love into a disposition of unbridled license; and when, in _Heinrich"s_ nineteenth year, he closed his eyes, he left his son entangled in a confusion of inextricable contradictions, with an incomprehensible impulse towards goodness and beauty in his breast, and without any compa.s.s to enable him to obtain them, _desiring_ the right with the yet undestroyed power of a n.o.ble nature, but defrauded of the power of _doing_ it; in spite of his father"s influence a philanthropist, and through it an egotist.
Thus he was a mystery to himself, whose solution he expected to find in life, not suspecting with what sacrifice he should be compelled to purchase it. Tortured by this secret conflict, he sought refuge and support in science, and devoted himself to the study of political law.
He was too deeply imbued with the spirit of the times to find satisfaction for his ambition solely in the prerogatives of the n.o.bility and a mere court office. True, he desired a position near the throne, but it must be one which should have some political importance, and deal not only with the organization of the court, but of the state.
This was the highest aim which appeared before him, and he labored with honest zeal to reach it. Then he made the acquaintance of Madame d"Anneaud, who was visiting a married relative in H----. She was the first highly cultured woman he had ever known, and the impression made by her beauty, united to the polished manners and dainty coquetry of an aristocratic Parisienne, exerted an intoxicating influence over the mind and imagination of the young man. Her sudden departure inflamed his pa.s.sion to the highest pitch; but in order to approach the beautiful woman he had formed a friendship with her husband, and the very bond which had brought the lovers together now formed a wall of separation between them. To mislead the wife of a confiding, unsuspicious friend was an act of dishonor from which his skeptical reason recoiled. In this conflict month after month elapsed in idleness. It was the year in which he was preparing for his examination; he felt that he should fail if he did not conquer his inertness and return to his studies. He had been too long accustomed to receive all the favors of love to be able to endure a hopeless wish and longing for any length of time. He must either possess Madame d"Anneaud or avoid her. He had chosen the latter ere he knew how difficult it would be to deny himself anything he ardently desired. He wished to do right; but when he felt the bitterness of such self-denial his strength to carry out the impulse failed, for he was already far too great an egotist to make any sacrifice, and without sacrifice there is no virtue.
Thus his first victory over himself was transformed into a defeat when Madame d"Anneaud"s implacable letter robbed him of the ground on which he expected to enjoy with her the fruits of a shameful peace. Now, as he fancied, he had lost all, committed a wrong both against his beloved and himself, for which he must strive to atone with all the energy of pa.s.sion. He drove into the city to see Madame d"Anneaud, but she refused to admit him. He wrote a despairing note and sent it to her by a confidential waiting-maid, but it was returned with the seal unbroken.
He spent three days in the most terrible excitement. The blood coursed madly through his veins; his brain burned and whirled with plans to regain the lost one and prevent her return to Paris. On the third Monsieur d"Anneaud called to bid him farewell, complaining bitterly of the caprices of his wife, who had suddenly dismissed her whole household, would see no one, and wished to set off at once for Paris.
Everything around him grew dim as he heard these words; his heart throbbed as if it would burst, and when his friend had taken leave he turned deadly pale and sank exhausted upon the sofa. Now for the first time he felt what, in the suspense of the last few days, he had not heeded, that he was ill; but he dared not yield to it. Madame d"Anneaud was to set out that very evening. The thought drove him back to the city, that he might at least watch her window and witness her departure. She saw him, and as she entered her carriage cast a long and, as it appeared to him, sorrowful glance at him.
He returned to the castle wild with despair. What was he to do now, follow her, perhaps to be again repulsed? sacrifice his scientific studies at the decisive time of the examination to rush around Paris imploring love, perchance in vain? It seemed too useless and degrading for him to resolve upon it without further reflection. He strove with superhuman exertion to busy himself in his work; in vain, his thoughts refused to obey his will. Day and night he sat over his books, gazing with burning eyes and bewildered brain at the letters, to him so unmeaning and disconnected, while the maddest longing raged in his panting breast. In this torturing, mental struggle his bodily health failed more and more; the illness which he had felt ever since his first great emotion made itself the more apparent the less he spared himself. At last he yielded, and became the prey of a most violent feverish attack. The physician who was summoned shrugged his shoulders thoughtfully, for the young man"s condition afforded every symptom that nervous fever was to be apprehended.
II.
DUAL APPARITIONS.
The fever increased day by day. Heinrich became very delirious and required incessant watching. On one of his worst nights the nurse, overpowered by fatigue, fell asleep. The patient seemed to become more quiet for a few minutes, and gazed with half-closed eyes at the dull glimmer of the night-lamp. For a time in his stupefaction followed a fixed train of ideas,--it was the conflict between duty and inclination which had made him so ill. His imagination incessantly painted pictures which his conscience destroyed. He lamented that he did not possess that thoughtless frivolity which receives every enjoyment as a gift from the loving Father, without doubt, struggle, or conflict with what we term conscience, duty, honor. "Oh, G.o.d! Thou who hast given me life," he murmured, "what didst thou bestow in putting me under the dominion of a power which feeds upon the blood of my murdered joys, and absorbs the sweetest marrow of this existence! The only happy natures are those which can so divide intellect and feeling that they can no longer bias each other. Oh, would that I might also!"
Amid such thoughts be fell into that feverish, half slumber in which dreams and reality are often so strangely blended. We know that we are in bed, know that we are dreaming, and yet cannot prevent the creations of our fancy from appearing before us, surrounding us like substantial forms, and arbitrarily forcing their existence upon us. Such was the case with Heinrich. His mind was busily weaving the torn threads of his thoughts into fairy-like figures, at first quaint like arabesques, but by degrees revealing a strange secret connection. The faces became more and more distinct as his consciousness of the outside world grew dim.
He still felt vaguely that egotism and ideality were waging a fierce battle in his heart, and by degrees the ideal he could no longer think of in the abstract a.s.sumed a bodily form. There seemed to be something in the room which terrified him,--something that crawled and glided over the floor. "Do not fear," it whispered hypocritically. "I do not come to destroy but to aid. I am the impulse of self-preservation, and when in aristocratic society I cultivate my mind and call myself Egotism." The shape writhed and glided nearer, while over _Heinrich"s_ head sounded a melodious yet powerful rustling of wings, and a voice from above rang like the low notes of an organ, "Fear not, I am the Genius of the Ideal, and will save you."
Heinrich gasped for breath, he feared the whispering, ghostly apparitions that surrounded him, his breast and neck seemed bound with heavy cords, he strove to cry out but his voice refused to obey him, he tried to open his eyes but in vain; he only felt the overmastering presence of the two original elements of humanity, and his ear thrilled at their words. "See what cowardly monsters you men are!" laughed the fiend on the floor. "You carry hideous forms within you and think you imperiously rule them, but recoil in horror when you have conjured them from the secret depths of your hearts. I was nearer to you when in your own breast than I am now, yet you fostered and cherished me; now that I appear before you, you fear me."
The voice above murmured: "Compose yourself, we are only the powers you have felt struggling within your soul, but now we have united in the common object of gratifying your wishes, for your folly will never be satisfied until you perceive the vanity of your desires. Your wishes shall be fulfilled, that you may learn to perceive in what the end of life and true happiness consist."
"Oh, mighty beings!" groaned Heinrich, "we are so proud of what we accomplish by your aid, and yet it is we who serve you while you do everything. What sustains us, that in our weakness we do not fall helpless victims to one or the other of you?"
"The Hand which rules over all things and appoints to each its bounds,"
answered the Genius of the Ideal. "It has so wisely apportioned the powers of evil that we exert an equal influence over the human race. As the law of attraction holds worlds in their courses, our opposing strength maintains the right balance in your minds if all the elements are properly blended; but sometimes that is not the case, then your lives take their direction from the strongest, for spirit strives towards spiritual things, outweighs the earthly nature, releases itself from the world, and follows my guidance above."
"But the earthly nature tends towards the earth," grinned Egotism, "and more frequently you sink down."
"Thus," said both, "you human beings preserve the equilibrium between mind and matter,--therefore you can neither withdraw from the world,"
cried Egotism,--"nor be dragged down by it," said the Genius of the Ideal.
"Oh, you are right!" murmured Heinrich; "but I have lost this equilibrium."
"You have not lost it," replied the Genius of the Ideal, "the divine and earthly natures are striving in you with equal power: that you may not arbitrarily crush either, we wish to _separate_. You shall lead a twofold life. Pa.s.sion shall not disturb intellect, and intellect shall not destroy pleasure."
"Yes, yes," cried Heinrich, eagerly, "has the dear G.o.d sent you to me to bestow the whole precious substance of life? How has such favor fallen to my lot?"