On the Cross Part 10

"Yes," said Wengenrode, "and the Roman procurator, Pilate, who is a porter or a messenger and so drags various loads about, carried up my luggage to-day and dropped my dressing case containing a number of breakable jars and boxes. 'Stupid blockhead!' I exclaimed, angrily. He straightened himself and looked at me with an expression which actually embarra.s.sed me. 'My name is _Thomas Rendner_, sir! I beg your pardon for my awkwardness, and am ready to make your loss good, so far as my means shall allow.'"

"Now tell me, isn't that sheer hallucination of grandeur?"

Some of the gentlemen laughed, but Prince Emil and Hohenheim were silent.

"Where shall we go to-morrow evening in Munich to recompense ourselves for this boredom?" asked Cossigny.

"To the Casino, I think!" said the prince.

"Well, then we'll all meet there, shall we?"

The party a.s.sented.

"Provided that the countess has no commands for us," observed St.

Genois.

"She will not have any," said the prince, "for either the Play will produce an absurd impression which is not to be expected, and then she will feel ashamed and unwilling to grant us our triumph because we predicted it, or her sentimental mood will draw from this farce a sweet poison of emotion, and in that case we shall be too frivolous for her!

This must first be allowed to exhale."

"Very true," Hohenheim a.s.sented. "You are just the man to cope with this capricious beauty, Prince Emil. Adieu! May you prosper!"

The gentlemen raised their hats.

"Farewell!" said Cossigny, "by the way, I'll make a suggestion. We shall best impress the countess while in this mood, by our generosity; let us heap coals of fire on her head by sending a telegram to the court-gardener to convert the whole palace into a floral temple to welcome her return. It will touch a mysterious chord of sympathy if she meets only these mute messengers of our adoration. When on entering she finds this surprise and remembers how basely she treated us this morning, her heart will be touched and she will invite us to dine the day after to-morrow."

"A capital plan," cried Wengenrode and St. Genois, gaily. "Do your Highnesses agree?"

"Certainly," replied Hohenheim, with formal courtesy, "when the point in question is a matter of gallantry, a Hohenheim is never backward."

"I beg to be allowed to contribute also, but _incognito_. She would regard such an attention from me as a piece of sentimentality, and it would produce just the contrary effect," Prince Emil answered.

"As you please."

"Let us go to the telegraph office!" cried Wengenrode, eagerly.

"Farewell, gentlemen."

"_Au revoir_, Prince Emil! Are you going to return to the lionesses'

den?"

"Can you ask?" questioned Hohenheim with a significant smile.

"Then early to-morrow morning at the Play, and at night the Casino, don't forget!" Cossigny called back.

The gentlemen, laughing and chatting, strolled down the street to their lodgings. The prince watched them a moment, turned, and went back to the countess.

"I cannot really be vexed with her, if these a.s.sociates do not satisfy her," he thought.

"Should I desire her to become my wife, if they did? Certainly not. Yet if women only would not rush from one extreme to another? Hohenheim is perfectly right, she ought not to stay here too long, she must go to-morrow."

He had reached the house and entered the neglected old garden where huge gnarled fruit trees, bearing small, stunted fruit, interlaced their branches above a crooked bench. There, in the midst of the rank gra.s.s and weeds, sat the countess, her beautiful head resting against the mouldy bark of the old trunk, gazing thoughtfully at the luminous mountains gleaming in the distance through the tangled boughs and shrubbery.

From the adjoining garden of the sculptor Zwink, whose site was somewhat higher, a Diana carved in white stone gazed curiously across, seeming as if she wished to say to the pensive lady who at that moment herself resembled a statue: "Art will create G.o.ds for you _everywhere_!" But the temptation had no effect, the countess seemed to have had no luck with these G.o.ds, she no longer believed in them!

"Well, Countess Madeleine, did the light and air lure you out of doors?" asked the prince, joyfully approaching her.

"Oh, I could not bear to stay there any longer. Herr Gross' daughters are finis.h.i.+ng the dress. We will dine here, Prince; the meal can be served on a table near the house, under a wild-grape vine arbor. We can wait on ourselves for one day."

"For _one_ day!" repeated the prince with great relief; "oh yes, it can be managed for one day." Thank Heaven, she had no intention of staying here.

"Oh, Prince, see how beautiful, how glorious it is!"

"Beautiful, glorious? Pardon me, but I see nothing to call forth words you so rarely use! You must have narrowed your demands if, after the view of the wondrous garden of the Isola Bella and all the Italian villas, you suddenly take delight in cabbage-stalks, wild-pears, broom, and colt's foot."

"Now see how you talk again!" replied the countess, unpleasantly affected by his words. "Does not Spinoza say: 'Everything is beautiful, and as I lose myself in the observation of its beauty, my pleasure in life is increased.'"

"That has not been your motto hitherto. You have usually found something to criticise in every object. It seems to me that you have wearied of the beautiful and now, by way of a change, find even _ugliness_ fair."

"Very true, my friend. I am satisfied, nothing charms me, nothing satisfies me, not even the loveliest scene, because I always apply to everything the standard of perfection, and nothing attains it." She shook herself suddenly as if throwing off a burden. "This must not continue, the aesthetic intolerance which poisoned every pleasure must end, I will cast aside the whole load of critical a.n.a.lysis and academic ideas of beauty, and snap my fingers at the ghosts of Winckelmann and Lessing. Here in the kitchen-garden, among cabbage-stalks and colt's foot, wild-pear and plum-trees, fanned by the fresh, crystal-clear air of the lofty mountains, whose glaciers s.h.i.+mmer with a bluish light through the branches, in the silence and solitude, I suddenly find it beautiful; beautiful because I am happy, because I am only a human being, free from every restraint, thinking nothing, feeling nothing save the peace of nature, the delight of this repose."

She rested her feet comfortably on the bench and, with her head thrown back, gazed with a joyous expression into the blue air which, after the rain, arched above the earth like a crystal bell.

This mood did not quite please the prince. He was exclusively a man of the world. His thoughts were ruled by the laws of the most rigid logic, whatever was not logically attainable had no existence for him; his enthusiasm reached the highest pitch only in the enjoyment of the n.o.blest products of art and science. He did not comprehend how any one could weary of them, even for a moment, on the one side because his calm temperament did not, like the countess' pa.s.sionate one, exhaust everything by following it to its inmost core, and he was thus guarded from satiety; on the other because he wholly lacked appreciation of nature and her unconscious grandeur. He was the trained va.s.sal of custom in the conventional, as well as in every other province. The countess, however, possessed some touch of that doctrine of divine right which is ready, at any moment, to cast off the bonds of tradition and artificial models and obey the impulse of kins.h.i.+p with sovereign nature. This was the boundary across which he could not follow her, and he was perfectly aware of it, for he had one of those proud characters which disdain to deceive themselves concerning their own powers. Yet it filled him with grave anxiety.

"What are you thinking of now, Prince?" asked his companion, noticing his gloomy mood.

"That I have not seen you so contented for months, and yet I am unable to understand the cause of this satisfaction. Especially when I remember what it usually requires to bring a smile of pleasure to your lips."

"Dear me, must everything be understood?" cried the beautiful woman, laughing; "there is the pedant again! Must we be perpetually under the curb of self-control and give ourselves an account whether what we feel in a moment of happiness is sensible and authorized?

Must we continually see ourselves reflected in the mirror of our self-consciousness, and never draw a veil over our souls and permit G.o.d to have one undiscovered secret in them?"

The prince silently kissed her hand. His eyes now expressed deep, earnest feeling, and stirred by emotion, she laid her other hand upon his head:

"You are a n.o.ble-hearted man, Prince; though some unspoken, uncomprehended idea stands between us, I know your feelings."

Again the rose and the thorn! It was always so! At the very moment her soft, sweet hand touched him caressingly, she thrust a dagger into his heart. Aye, that was the continual "misunderstanding" which existed between them, the thorn in the every rose she proffered.

Women like these are only tolerable when they really love; when a powerful feeling makes them surrender themselves completely. Where this is not the case, they are, unconsciously and involuntarily, malicious, dangerous creatures, caressing and slaying at the same moment.

First, woe betide the man whom _they believe_ they love. For how often such beings are mistaken in their feelings!

Such delusions do not destroy the woman, she often experiences them, but the man who has shared them with her! Alas for him who has not kept a cool head.

The prince was standing with his back turned to the street, gazing thoughtfully at the beautiful woman with the fathomless, sparkling eyes. Suddenly he saw her start and flush. Turning with the speed of lightning, he followed the direction of her glance, but saw nothing except the figure of a man of unusual height, with long black hair, pa.s.s swiftly around the corner and disappear.

"Do you know that gentleman?"

"No," replied the countess frankly, "he is the person whom I saw yesterday as we drove up the mountain."