Problematic Characters Part 28

"Ah, nonsense! Baron, you are at least five years older than I am."

"That did not prevent the young ladies from treating us both like dogs."

"That little Emily is a prodigiously pretty little girl."

"_Si, signore_, and what eyes she made the doctor! Great, big, gray eyes, full of love! At sixteen that is doing well."

"Wretched doll-baby."

"Who? Miss Emily?"

"Ah! that man, the doctor."

"Ah, indeed! Did I not tell you so? The girls are crazy about him. And how the man shoots! Cloten! I should not like to stand at ten feet distance from him, with the seconds behind us?"

"Ah! Thank you! Don't fight with a man of low birth. Too unfair. Don't you think so, baron?"

"Perhaps the man owes his life to a visit of the sons of heaven to the daughters of earth?"

"What does that mean?"

"Don't you know that was the way before Abraham to speak of the children of n.o.bles who had married beneath their rank?"

"No, never heard of it before! Sons of heaven? famous! Generally, Holy Writ too severe for me. Just imagine, baron--that idea--all men from a single pair! n.o.bles and not n.o.bles!--Nonsense, impossible, ridiculous!

Always thought Holy Writ must have been translated by men of low birth.

Always annoyed when old tutor explained it otherwise."

"Cloten," said Oldenburg, standing still and placing his hand on his companion's shoulder. "Cloten! You are a great man. That thought is worthy of the deepest thinker of all ages!"

"Ah, pshaw!--are you in earnest, baron, or are you trying to chaff me again?"

"My dear Cloten," said Oldenburg, pa.s.sing his arm again under the arm of his companion and continuing on his way; "let me tell you once for all, I am invariably and terribly in earnest in all I say, and the subject of which we were speaking is really of such immense importance that it won't bear joking. Hear then--but you must not make any improper use of what I am going to say--Cloten."

"Certainly not--_parole d'honneur!_"

"Hear then, that the same question which your genius has answered in an instant with unfailing tact, has occupied my mind for years. I also said to myself: The distinction between n.o.bles and not n.o.bles is not a mere distinction of name, of caste--it is a distinction of blood, of mind, of soul--_enfin_, of our whole nature. How can men so entirely different from each other, descend from the same original pair? Where would be the difference, if that were so? It overwhelms the mind to think of the consequences!"

"Why, baron, at last you talk like----"

"Like a baron. I know. Hear again! This question occupied me so persistently that I at last determined to solve it, cost what it might.

You all make fun of my solitary life, my studies, and so on. Do you know, Cloten, what I was studying while you were amusing yourselves with hunting and gambling?"

"No--'pon honor."

"Aramaeic, Chaldaic, Syriac, Mesopotamic, Hindoostanee, Gangobramaputric, Sanscrit----"

"For Heaven's sake! Why, that is horrible! What for?"

"Because I was firmly convinced that there must be, somewhere in the convents of Armenia, in the catacombs of Egypt, or elsewhere in the East, a Ma.n.u.script which explains the matter. When I had learnt to speak all these languages as fluently as French and German, I began three years ago my great journey to the East. In pa.s.sing through Italy I searched all the libraries there. In Rome I met the Barnewitz party.

This meeting was very disagreeable to me, to tell the truth. I had to accompany them to Sicily, as a matter of politeness. But in Palermo I escaped as soon as I could."

"Ah, that explains your sudden disappearance--the 'Interrupted Sacrifice,' great opera, and so forth."

"'Interrupted Sacrifice?' You never recollected that expression, Cloten?"

"No--'pon honor--an invention of Hortense's; I mean of the Baroness Barnewitz," the young man corrected himself. "She insists upon it--_entre nous_, baron--that your meeting in Rome was not quite so accidental on your part, and the whole journey from Rome to Palermo--is not that the name of the place--was a perfect triumph for the Berkow; Sacrifice--'Interrupted Sacrifice.' Ha, ha, ha!"

"But I do not understand you, Cloten?"

"Well, _entre nous_, Hortense has a good deal to say about that journey. For instance, a scene during the pa.s.sage from Ciproda----"

"Procida, you mean," said Oldenburg.

"Procida, I don't care which. I can't remember all those absurd names.

Well, from Procida to Naples."

"Well?"

"But, really, baron, you put the thumb-screws on too tightly. You had a little fisher-boat, and there came a real storm--the waves were as high as houses, and you were expecting the boat to capsize every moment.

Then you said in Italian----"

"The Barnewitz does not understand a word of Italian, as far as I know," said Oldenburg.

"Not Hortense, but the boatmen, who told her afterwards."

"Then," growled Oldenburg, "she examined them. Well!"

"Then you said to the Berkow: Dear soul, to be drowned with you is worth more than to live a hundred years with your cousin, or any other woman!"

"Indeed! Does Hortense tell her friends such pretty stories? Well, Cloten, I'll give you a piece of advice: Believe in every kiss that you have had from Hortense's lips, or that you are going to have----"

"Ah, nonsense, baron!" said the dandy, with that smile which is meant to be modest, and which is so horribly impudent.

"But do not believe a single word she utters. Can you really think that I should have had nothing better to do than to court Melitta von Berkow, when such grave, yes, such almost holy things filled my soul?

Let me tell you: I went from Sicily to Egypt, then up the Nile to Aboo Simbul, back to Cairo, from there to Palestine, Persia, India--examined every temple, every ruin, every crevice in the rocks. I did not find what I looked for. At last--I was almost desperate--in the library of the great monastery on Mount Athos----"

"Where is that, Baron?"

"Between the Indus and Oregon--there in the old library I discovered at last the long-looked for Ma.n.u.script. There I found the whole story."

"What was it?"

"There it was stated in purest High-Bramaputric, that--translate all that into our modern notions and expressions----"

"Yes, for Heaven's sake do so, or I won't understand a word."

"That there were, from the beginning, two pairs of human beings created; as it could not well be otherwise: the one n.o.ble and the other not n.o.ble. The name of this first n.o.ble race is not recorded in the Ma.n.u.script. At the very place where it once stood, there is now a big blot. So much is certain, it was not Oldenburg; it began with a C, and somewhere in the middle there was a t."