The World's Greatest Books - Volume 7 Part 24

The next day Chamberlain Le Baut gave a garden party in honour of the son of the great English minister.

"Take good care!" said the chaplain's wife as Victor set off; "she is very beautiful."

Victor had no need to ask who "she" was.

"I shall take care not to take care," he replied, with a smile.

Victor was too much of a man of the world to fall in love at first sight. But when he entered the garden, and a sweet, tall, and lovely figure came forward to greet him from behind the foliage, he felt as if all his blood had been driven in his face. It was Clotilda. She spoke to him, but he listened to the melody of her voice, instead of to her words, so that he did not understand what she was saying. Her quiet, reserved eyes, however, brought him to his senses; but still he could not help feeling glad that, as Flamin's friend, he had some claim upon her attention and her society. It seemed to him as if everything that she did was done by her for the first time in life; and he would no doubt have shown a strange embarra.s.sment in her company if the Lord Chamberlain and his wife and a throng of guests had not come into the garden and surrounded him and distracted him by their compliments.

Recovering his self-possession, he concealed his real feelings by giving full play to his faculty for malicious and witty sayings. But though he succeeded in amusing the company, he displeased Clotilda; for the talk fell on the topic of women.

"The thing which a girl most easily forgets," said the Lord Chamberlain, "is how she looks; that is why she is always gazing into a mirror."

"Perhaps that is also the reason," said Victor, "why no woman regards another as more beautiful than she is. The most that a woman will admit is that her rival is younger than herself."

Nothing fell upon Clotilda--and this is always found in the best of her s.e.x--more keenly than satire upon womankind, and though she concealed the fact that she both endured and despised this sort of wit, she began to distrust the lips and the heart of the young Englishman, and treated him during this time with such cold civility, that he had to exaggerate his wild gaiety in order to conceal the grief that he felt.

But as she was walking at evening in the garden, a loose leaf blew out of a book that she was holding, and Victor picked it up and read: "On this earth man has only two and a half minutes--one to smile, one to sigh, and a half a one to love; for in the midst of it he dies."

"Dah.o.r.e! This is a saying of Dah.o.r.e!" exclaimed Victor. "Clotilda, do you know my beloved master Dah.o.r.e?" Clotilda turned towards him, her face transfigured with a lovely radiance. Their two n.o.ble souls discovered at last their affinity in their common love for the wise and gracious spirit who had nourished their young souls. For some strange reason Lord Horion, as they found out as soon as they began to converse together in a sweet and sincere intimacy, had had them brought up by the same master; and Dah.o.r.e, an eccentric, lovable man with a profound wisdom, had made them, in both mind and soul, comrades to each other, though he educated one in London and the other at St. Luna.

"He taught Flamin and me at the same time," said Victor, looking to see what effect the name of his friend had on Clotilda. She smiled sweetly, but mysteriously, when he went on to speak of his loving friends.h.i.+p for the son of Chaplain Eymann.

The next day he knew why her smile was so mysterious. Lord Horion arrived from Flachsenfingen with some extraordinary news. Flamin had been appointed a counsellor to Prince January. Never had Victor in his wildest dreams of his friend's advancement, imagined that he would obtain at a leap so high an important position as this. The young Englishman himself had been sent to study at Gottingen in order that he might be qualified to act as the prince's physician; but Flamin, without any labour, had suddenly obtained a place of authority almost equal to that occupied by Lord Horion.

Late that evening, however, Lord Horion revealed to his son a strange secret, in the light of which everything was explained. The Prince of Flachsenfingen was a man of a rather weak and evil character, over whom Horion ruled by sheer force of will. Prince January had had two children, a boy and a girl, and the English lord had had them brought up far away from the malicious influences of the court. In order that January might not interfere in the education of the heir, Horion had told him that the boy had perished in infancy in London. As a matter of fact, the child had been brought up with Victor.

"So Flamin is the heir to the throne of Flachsenfingen!" exclaimed Victor.

"Yes," said Horion, "and I have trained you to guide and direct him in the same way as I guide and direct his father. For the present, however, I must have complete control of the matter. Swear that you will not divulge the secret of Flamin's birth to him or to any one else, before I give you permission."

For a moment Victor hesitated. He remembered the promise that Flamin had wrung from him on the watch-tower, and this, he was beginning to see, might involve him in a perilous misunderstanding.

"Does Clotilda know?" he said.

"I revealed the secret to her when she came to St. Luna," said Horion, "under the same conditions that I am now revealing it to you. She swore to reveal it under no circ.u.mstances whatever, and you must do the same before you leave this spot."

So Victor took the oath with a strange mixture of misgiving and joy. As he walked back, slowly and thoughtfully, to the chaplain's house, he at last admitted to himself that he was deeply in love with Clotilda.

Instead of returning to England and leaving Flamin in possession of the field, as he had resolved on doing, he was now at liberty to try and win the beautiful, n.o.ble girl. On the other hand, Flamin would misunderstand his actions, and this would bring both of them into great danger.

The next day Victor received his appointment as physician to the Prince of Flachsenfingen, and he was summoned to the court, together with Clotilda. He now divined what his father's intentions were in regard to him and the lovely young girl. Instead, however, of going with her to Flachsenfingen, he dressed himself in poor attire and set out on an aimless journey through Europe, without telling anyone where he was going.

_III.--Enmity_

Victor had a profound aversion from the wild and yet vacant kind of life that men pursued at the court of the Prince of Flachsenfingen. He was comforted in his separation by the thought that so long as it lasted he was spared from disturbing the delusions of her jealous brother. But when he at last came to Flachsenfingen, he was grieved to find that his beautiful lady had grown pale and sorrowful. Like a sweet flower taken from the clear fresh air of the forest and placed in a hot, closed room, she was pining in the close, heavy atmosphere of the court, which was so crowded and yet so lonely. At the sight of her distress, Victor forgot his promise to Flamin. Meeting her at evening in the forest near the palace, he sank on his knees before her in the dewy gra.s.s, and told her all his love for her, and of the promise he had made to Flamin. Clotilda stooped and clasped his hand, and drew him up, and he folded her to his breast.

"We must part, dearest," he said, "until my father sees fit to reveal to your brother the secret of his birth."

A nightingale broke out into a pa.s.sion of song as Victor gathered up his courage to bid her farewell. The call of the nightingale was suddenly answered by another nightingale. It kept flying as it sang, and, with its voice m.u.f.fled by the thick blossoms on the trees, it sent a languis.h.i.+ng melody flowing out of a dim, flowering dell a hundred paces away. The two lovers, who dreaded and delayed to part, wandered confusedly after the receding nightingale into the hollow of the forest; they knew not that they were alone, for in their hearts was G.o.d. At last Clotilda recovered herself, and as the nightingale ceased, she turned round to say good-bye. But Victor lingered, and took both of her hands, though for very grief he could not bear to look upon her. With tears in his eyes he murmured, "Good-bye, my dearest. My heart is too heavy. I can say no more. Do not sorrow, darling. Nothing can part us now--neither life nor death."

Like a transfigured spirit bending down to an angel, he stooped and touched her sweet mouth. In a gentle kiss, in which their hovering souls only glided tremorously from afar to meet each other with fluttering wings, he took from her yielding lips the seal of her pure love. As he did so, there came a cras.h.i.+ng sound from the dark trees around them.

"You scoundrel!" cried Flamin, rus.h.i.+ng down into the hollow, his eyes gleaming in the moonlight, and his face white with anger. "Take it, take it! I will have your blood for this!"

He had two pistols in his hand, and he thrust one fiercely towards Victor. The Englishman drew Clotilda aside, and then went up to his friend, saying, "I have not wronged you. Believe me, Flamin, I remember the oath I gave you, and I swear that I have been faithful to you. Only wait until I see my father, and everything will be explained."

"I want no explanation, you faithless scoundrel," shouted Flamin, "Take it, or I will kill you where you stand."

In his blind fury he was pointing the muzzle of the pistol at the trembling form of Clotilda, and Victor s.n.a.t.c.hed the weapon from him in order to save her.

"I will have blood for this--blood, blood!" Flamin kept saying, reeling about the floor of the dell like a drunken man.

"You are my brother, my brother!" cried Clotilda. "Don't you hear? You are my brother!"

She ran up to Flamin to take the pistol from him, but reeled and fell to the ground in a swoon. Victor looked at her wildly, and thinking that she was dead, turned upon Flamin.

"If you want blood," he said sternly, "take mine."

"You fire first," exclaimed Flamin.

Victor lifted his pistol up into the air and shot at the top of a tree; then he stood calm and silent waiting for Flamin to fire. His old friend pointed the pistol straight at his heart, but hesitated; and Clotilda recovered her senses and staggered to her feet, and threw herself before her lover. Flamin looked at them in gloomy wonder without lowering his pistol. He would have liked to kill them both with one shot, but the instinct of a life-long friends.h.i.+p unnerved him. He hurled his pistol away, saying, "It isn't worth troubling to kill a scoundrel like you,"

and then turned and strode fiercely through the forest.

Some weeks afterwards Victor was standing on the watch-tower at St. Luna alone, with a letter from Lord Horion in his hand. He looked down from the height, and he was tempted to throw himself over. He had regained the friends.h.i.+p of Flamin, but it seemed to him that he had now lost all hope of winning Clotilda. For Lord Horion had explained the whole of the strange, tortuous policy which he had used in regard to Prince January.

He informed Victor that he had introduced Flamin to the prince, and had proved to him that the young man was his heir. "They asked me, my dear Victor," Horion went on to say in his letter, "a question which I was surprised at your not asking. If Flamin is the son of the prince, where is the son of Chaplain Eymann whom I took to London to be educated with him? My dear boy, I have no son, and you really are the child of Eymann and his good wife. This secret I felt bound to reveal to the prince at the same time that I was forced to reveal the secret of Flamin's birth.

It was because I wished to postpone the revelations until you were established in the prince's good graces that I made you take the oath that you took so unwillingly."

Victor felt that what the heir to a great English n.o.bleman might aspire to, the son of a poor country clergyman could never hope to attain. By a strange vicissitude of fortune he now found himself in the same position as that in which Flamin had been when they met on the watch-tower after their long separation. His mournful meditations were suddenly interrupted by two figures who had silently crept up the stairs of the tower. They were Flamin and Clotilda, and each of them put an arm around Victor and led him to the parsonage. On the way he learnt that Clotilda had known all along that he was the son of Chaplain Eymann.

t.i.tan

The climax of Jean Paul Richter's inspiration, and of his obscurity, was reached in "t.i.tan," published during 1801-3. He meant it to be his greatest romance, and posterity has confirmed his judgement. Of all his works, it is the most characteristic of its author. It has all the peculiarities of his style, peculiarities that are reflected in the prose of Thomas Carlyle, his most eminent British admirer and interpreter. The book itself took ten years to write, and according to his correspondence, Richter intended to call it "Anti-t.i.tan," having in view his attacks on the material selfishness of the age which, to gain its own ends, would move mountains. The motive--a comparison between a man of moral grandeur and one of grandiose immorality--came to Richter while he was engaged on "Hesperus," a fact that explains why certain characters from the earlier romance reappear in "t.i.tan."

_I.--Liana_

For many years Albano, the young Spanish Count Cesara, had lived within sight of the capital city of the state of Hohenfliess; yet he had never entered it--his mother, so his father told him, had shut it against him, desiring that he should be reared in the Carthusian monastery of rural life, not sullied in his youth by mingling with courtiers and men of the world.

And now the gates of Pest.i.tz were open to him. Contemplate the heated face of my hero, who at last is riding into the streets, built up in his fancy of temples of the sun, where who knows but that at every long window, on every balcony, his beloved Liana may be standing?