Dreamers of the Ghetto Part 45

"What you say may not be altogether untrue, but why should _you_ be a martyr,--you, our hope, our stay? Spare us. One human being can change nothing in the order of the world. Let those fight who have no parents' hearts to break."

"Yes, but if every one talked like that--! Why offer myself as a martyr? Because G.o.d has put in my breast a voice which calls me to the struggle, has given me the strength that makes fighters. Because I can fight and suffer for a n.o.ble cause. Because I will not disappoint the confidence of G.o.d, who has given me this strength for His definite purpose. In short, because I cannot do otherwise."

Yes, looking back, he saw he could not have done otherwise, though for that old voice of G.o.d in his heart he now subst.i.tuted mentally the Hegelian concept of the Idea trying to realize itself through him, Shakespeare's "prophetic soul of the wide world dreaming on things to come." The Will of G.o.d was the Will of the Time-spirit, and what was True for the age was whatever its greatest spirits could demonstrate to it by reason and history. The world had had enough of merely dithyrambic prophets, it was for the Modern Prophet to heat with his fire the cannon-b.a.l.l.s of logic and science; he must be a thinker among prophets and a prophet among thinkers. Those he could not inspire through emotion must be led through reason. There must be not one weak link in his close-meshed chain of propositions. And who could doubt that what the Time-spirit was working towards among the Germans--the Chosen People in the eternal plan of the universe for this new step in human evolution--was the foundation of a true Kingdom of right, a Kingdom of freedom and equality, a State which should stand for justice on earth, and material and spiritual blessedness for all? But his father had complained not unjustly. Why should _he_ have been chosen for the Man--the Martyr--through whom the Idea sought self-realization? It was a terrible fate to be Moses, to be Prometheus. No doubt that image of himself he read in the faces of his friends, and in the loving eyes of the Countess Hatzfeldt--that glorious wonder-youth gifted equally with genius and beauty--must seem enviable enough, yet to his own heart how chill was this lonely greatness. And youth itself was pa.s.sing--was almost gone.

IV

But he shook off this rare sombre mood, and awoke to the full consciousness that Friedland was fled. Well, better so. The stupid fool would come back soon enough, and to-day, with Prince Puckler-Muskau, Baron Korff, General de Pfuel, and von Bulow the pianist, coming to lunch, and perhaps Wagner, if he could finish his rehearsal of "Lohengrin" in time, he was not sorry to see his table relieved of the dull pomposity and brilliant watch-chain of the pillar of Prague society. How mean to hide one's Judaism! What a burden to belong to such a race, degenerate sons of a great but long-vanished past, unable to slough the slave traits engendered by centuries of slavery! How he had yearned as a boy to shake off the yoke of the nations, even as he himself had shaken off the yoke of the Law of Moses. Yes, the scaffold itself would have been welcome, could he but have made the Jews a respected people. How the persecution of the Jews of Damascus had kindled the lad of fifteen! A people that bore such things was hideous. Let them suffer or take vengeance. Even the Christians marvelled at their sluggish blood, that they did not prefer swift death on the battle-field to the long torture. Was the oppression against which the Swiss had rebelled one whit greater?

Cowardly people! It merited no better lot. And he recalled how, when the ridiculous story that the Jews make use of Christian blood cropped up again at Rhodes and Lemnos, he had written in his diary that the universal accusation was a proof that the time was nigh when the Jews in very sooth _would_ help themselves with Christian blood. _Aide-toi, le ciel t'aidera._ And ever in his boyish imagination he had seen himself at the head of an armed nation, delivering it from bondage, and reigning over a free people. But these dreams had pa.s.sed with childhood. He had found a greater, grander cause, that of the oppressed German people, ground down by capitalists and the Iron Law of Wages, and all that his Judaism had brought him was a prejudice the more against him, a cheap cry of Jew-demagogue, to hamper his larger fight for humanity. And yet was it not strange?--they were all Jews, his friends and inspirers; Heine and Borne in his youth, and now in his manhood, Karl Marx. Was it perhaps their sense of the great Ghetto tragedy that had quickened their indignation against all wrong?

Well, human injustice was approaching its term at last. The Kingdom of Heaven on earth was beginning to announce itself by signs and portents. The religion of the future was dawning--the Church of the People. "O father, father!" he cried, "if you could have lived to see my triumph!"

V

There was a knock at the door.

His man appeared, but, instead of announcing the Countess Hatzfeldt, as La.s.salle's face expected, he tendered a letter.

La.s.salle's face changed yet again, and the thought of the Countess died out of it as he caught sight of the graceful writing of Sophie de Solutzew. What memories it brought back of the first real pa.s.sion of his life, when, whirled off his feet by an unsuspected current, enchanted yet astonished to be no longer the easy conqueror throwing crumbs of love to poor fluttering woman, he had asked the Russian girl to share his strife and triumphs. That he should want to marry her had been as amazing to him as her refusal. What talks they had had in this very room, when she pa.s.sed through Berlin with her ailing father! How he had suffered from the delay of her decision, foreseen, yet none the less paralyzing when it came. And yet no, not paralyzing; he could not but recognize that the shock had in reality been a stimulation. It was in the reaction against his misery, in the subtle pleasure of a temptation escaped despite himself, and of regained freedom to work for his great ideals, that he had leapt for the first time into political agitation. The episode had made him reconsider, like a great sickness or a bereavement. It had shown him that life was slipping, that afternoon was coming, that in a few more years he would be forty, that the "Wonder-Child," as Humboldt had styled him, was grown to mature man, and that all the vent he had as yet found for his great gifts was a series of scandalous law-suits and an esoteric volume of the philosophy of Herac.l.i.tus the Dark. And now, coming to him in the midst of his great spurt, this letter from the quieter world of three years ago--though he himself had provoked it--seemed almost of dreamland. Its unexpected warmth kindled in him something of the old glow. Brussels! She was in western Europe again, then. Yes, she still possessed the Heine letter he required; only it was in her father's possession, and she had written to him to Russia to send it on. Her silence had been due to pique at the condition La.s.salle had attached to acceptance of the mere friends.h.i.+p she offered him, to wit, that, like all his friends, she must write him two letters to his one.

"Inconsiderate little creature!" he thought, smiling but half resentful. But, though she had now only that interest for him which the woman who has refused one never quite loses, she stirred again his sense of the foolish emptiness of loveless life. His brilliant reputation as scholar and orator and potential leader of men; his personal fascination, woven of beauty, wit, elegance, and a halo of conquest, that made him the lion of every social gathering, and his little suppers to celebrities the talk of Berlin--what a hollow farce it all was! And his thoughts flew not to Sophie but to the new radiance that had flitted across his life. He called up the fading image of the brilliant Helene von Donniges whom he had met a year before at the Hirs.e.m.e.nzels. He lived again through that wonderful evening, that almost Southern episode of mutual love at first sight.

He saw himself holding the salon rapt with his wonderful conversation.

A silvery voice says suddenly, "No, I don't agree with you." He turns his head in astonishment. O the _piquante_, golden-haired beauty, adorably white and subtle, the dazzling shoulders, the coquettish play of the _lorgnette_, the wit, the daring, the _diablerie_. "So it's a no, a contradiction, the first word I hear of yours. So this is you.

Yes, yes, it is even thus I pictured you." She is rising to beg the hostess to introduce them, but he places his hand gently on her arm.

"Why? We know each other. You know who I am, and you are Brunehild, Adrienne Cardoville of the _Wandering Jew_, the gold chestnut hair that Captain Korff has told me of, in a word--Helene!" The whole salon regards them, but what are the others but the due audience to this splendid couple taking the centre of the stage by the right divine of a love too great for drawing-room conventions, calling almost for orchestral accompaniment by friend Wagner! He talks no more save to her, he sups at her side, he is in boyish ecstasies over her taste in wines. And when, at four in the morning, he throws her mantle over her shoulders and carries her down the three flights of stairs to her carriage, even her prudish cousinly chaperon seems to accept this as but the natural manner in which the hero takes possession of his heaven-born bride.

So rousing to his sleeping pa.s.sion was his sudden abandonment to this old memory, that he now went to a drawer and rummaged for her photograph. After the Baron, her father, that ultra-respectable Bavarian diplomatist, had refused to hear her speak of the Jew-demagogue, La.s.salle had asked her to send him her portrait, as he wished to build a house adorned with frescoes, and the artist was to seek in her the inspiration of his Brunehild. In the rush of his life, project and photograph had been alike neglected. He had let her go without much effort--in a way he still considered her his, since the opposition had not come from her. But had he been wise to allow this drifting apart? Great political events might be indeed maturing, but oh, how slowly, and there was always that standing danger of her "Moorish Prince"--the young Wallachian student, Janko von Racowitza, the "dragon who guards my treasure," as he had once called him, and who, though betrothed to her, was the slave of her caprices, ready to sacrifice himself if she loved another better, a gentle, pliant creature La.s.salle could scarcely understand, especially considering his princely blood.

When he at last came upon the photograph, he remembered with a thrill that her birthday was at hand. She would be of age in a day or two, no longer the puppet of her father's will.

VI

When a little later the Countess Hatzfeldt was announced, he had forgotten he was expecting her. He slipped the photograph back among the papers, and moved forward hurriedly to greet her.

Her face was the face of the beautiful portrait on the wall, grown twice as old, but with the lines of beauty still clear under the unnecessary touches of rouge, so that sometimes, despite her frosted hair, one could imagine her life at its spring-tide. This was especially so when the suns.h.i.+ne leapt into her eyes. But, at her oldest, there remained to her the dignity of the Princess born, the charm of the woman of virile intellect and vast social experience.

"Something is troubling you," she said.

He smiled rea.s.suringly. "My brother-in-law popped in from Prague. He read me a sermon."

"That would not trouble you, Ferdinand."

La.s.salle was silent.

"You have heard again from that Sophie de Solutzew!"

"Divinatrix! After three years! You are wonderful as ever, Countess."

The compliment did not lighten her features. They looked haggard, almost their real age.

"It is not the moment for petticoats--with the chance of your life before you and months of imprisonment hanging over your head."

"Oh, I am certain my appeal will get me off with a fine at most. You must remember, Countess, that only once in my life, despite incessant snares, have the fowlers really caged me. And even then I was let out every time I had to plead in one of your cases. It was quite illegal,"

and he laughed at the recollection of the many miracles his eloquence, now insinuating, now menacing, had achieved.

"Yes, you are marvellous."

"I marvel at myself."

"Let me see your new 'Open Sesame.' Is it ready?"

"No, no, Sophie," he said banteringly. "You know you mean you want to see your namesake's letter."

"That is not my concern."

"O Countess!" He tendered the letter.

"Hum," she said, casting a rapid eye over it. "Then you wrote her first."

"Only because the letter was wanted for the new edition of Heine, and I had no copy of it.".

"But I have a copy."

"You? Where?"

"In my heart, _mon cher enfant_. Why should I not remember the great poet's words? 'Dearest brother-in-arms--Never have I found in any other but you so much pa.s.sion united with so much clairvoyance in action. You have truly the divine right of autocracy. I only feel a humble fly....'" She paused and smiled at him. "You see."

"Perfect," cried La.s.salle, who had been listening complacently. "But it's not that letter. The letter of introduction he gave me to Varnhagen von Ense when I was a boy of twenty--in the year we met."

"How should I not remember that? Was it not the first you showed me?"

A sigh escaped her. In that year when he had won her love, she had been just twice as old as he. Now, despite arithmetic, she felt three times his age.

"I will dictate it to you," she went on; "and you can send it to the publisher and be done with it."

"My rare Countess, my more than mother," he said, touched, "that you should have carried all that in your dear, wise head."

"'My friend, Herr La.s.salle, the bearer of this letter, is a young man of extraordinary talent. To the most profound erudition and the greatest insight and the richest gifts of expression, he unites--'"

"Doesn't it also say, 'that I have ever met?'"

"Yes, yes; my head is leaving me. Put it in after 'insight.' 'He unites an energy of will and an att.i.tude for action which plunge me into astonishment.'"

"You see," interrupted La.s.salle, looking up; "Heine saw at once the difference between me and Karl Marx. Marx is, when all is said and done, a student, and his present address is practically the British Museum. In mere knowledge I do not pretend to superiority. What language, what art, what science, is unknown to him? But he has run almost entirely to brain. He works out his thoughts best in mathematics--the Spinoza of socialism. But fancy Spinoza leading a people; and even Spinoza had more glow. When I went to see him in London in the winter to ask him to head the movement with me, he objected to my phraseology, dissected my battle-cries in cold blood. I preach socialism as a religion, the Church of the People--he won't even shout 'Truth and Justice!' He will only prove you scientifically that the illusion of the ma.s.ses that Right is not done them will goad them to express their Might. And his speeches! Treatises, not trumpets! Once after one of his speeches in the prisoner's box, a juror shook hands with him, and thanked him for his instructive lecture. Ha! ha! ha! Take my _System of Acquired Rights_, now."--La.s.salle was now launched on one of his favorite monologues, and the Countess at least never desired to interrupt him.--"There you have learning and logic that has forced the most dry-as-dust to hail it as a masterpiece of Jurisprudence. But it is enrooted in life, and drew its sustenance from my actual practice in fighting my dear Countess's battles. As Heine goes on to say, _savoir_ and _pouvoir_ are rarely united. Luther was a man of action, but his thought was not the widest. Lessing was a man of thought, but he died broken on the wheel of fortune. It was a combination of the two I tried to paint in my Ulrich von Hutten--the Humanist who transcended Luther and who was the morning star of the true Reformation. You remember his Frankfort student who, having mistakenly capped a Jew, could not decide whether the sin was mortal or venial. But though I put my own self into him, I shall not be beaten like him." He jumped to his feet and threw down his pen so that it stood quivering in the table. "For surely it was of me that Heine was thinking when he wrote: 'Yes, a third man will come'"--and La.s.salle's accent became dramatically sonorous--"'and he will conclude what Luther began, what Lessing continued, a man of whom the Fatherland stands in such need, The Third Liberator.'"

"The Third Liberator," pa.s.sionately echoed the Countess.