Problematic Characters Part 8

"Ah! I surely have the pleasure and the honor to see before me Doctor Stein? How kind in you to come and see me! To tell the truth, I have expected you for several days. When I was last at Grenwitz, to pay my respects to the baroness, I learned, to my regret, that you were out on a walk with your two pupils; otherwise I should not have denied myself the pleasure of calling on you at your room. My wife will be delighted to welcome you at our humble home. Pray, this way! Pray come without ceremony!"

"No escaping this," thought Oswald, and for the sake of politeness, that ape of humanity, he allowed himself to be forced to accept a hospitality which he had determined, only a minute ago, to decline under all circ.u.mstances!

"Gustava! Gusty! Gusty!" called the minister, as he entered. The desired lady was, however, not willing to give up the vantage-ground of her position behind the curtained window in the kitchen-door, from which she reconnoitred in security the appearance of the stranger and the purpose of his visit. The minister, therefore, showed the way into his study, where he begged Oswald to allow him to take off his gown, and then to inform his Gustava of the honor that his house was receiving.

The reverend gentleman's study was a large room with two windows; a few book-shelves, some pictures of saints on the wall, a hard sofa covered with black horse-hair, a round centre-table littered with books, and a desk with a chair, which turned on a screw, near the window, formed the simple furniture; the atmosphere was heavy with tobacco-smoke. Oswald was so oppressed by this perfume that he had to open a window, and in doing this he felt a strong temptation to jump from the low cas.e.m.e.nt upon the street and to make his escape.

The attempt to seek safety in flight was, however, defeated by the return of his host. The reverend gentleman appeared now in a summer costume of black s.h.i.+ning material. He begged Oswald to remain a few minutes in his "cell," since "Gustava was ruling still in the kitchen."

Oswald, who had abandoned all hope of escape, had not even the heart to decline an invitation to dinner.

"You will find, it is true, nothing but the _paternum mensa tenui salinum_, the ancestral furniture on the simple table," said the minister, desirous to show his guest that he had not forgotten his Latin; "but you know: _vivitur parvo bene_: we can live well upon a little. May I offer you a cigar till dinner is ready?"

Oswald declined, as he did not smoke.

"Oh! an excellent habit! a cla.s.sic habit!" said the minister, laughing at his own wit; "the ancients did not smoke, and Goethe, whom a frivolous but witty author calls 'the great pagan,' was a bitter enemy to pipes and cigars. You permit me to remain faithful to my habit of smoking a light cigar after my sermon?"

"I pray you will do so."

"Don't you find"--puff! puff!--"that smoking"--puff! puff!--"is a thoroughly Germanic, I might almost say, a thoroughly Christo-Germanic element?" said the minister, who was determined to show his cleverness.

"You would certainly furnish a new weapon to the scoffers at our religion, if you really thought so," said Oswald, dryly.

"How so, my dear sir?"

"Said scoffers might reply that to show them only smoke, and no fire, was essentially a Germanic, a Christo-Germanic characteristic."

The minister cast at Oswald a quick, watchful glance over his gla.s.ses, as if he would have liked to see how far he might safely trust his guest. But as he considered it unsuitable for a man of cla.s.sic tastes not to enter at once into a joke, even when it bordered very closely upon a frivolity, he replied with a bitter-sweet smile: "Not so bad!

not so bad! But who is safe against scoffers? To be sure we might reply: _Ex fumo lucem! ex fumo lucem!_ light out of smoke! But let us sit down, dear friend, let us sit down! How is our dear good baron, and how is the excellent baroness? Ah! you are a happy man, my dear sir, to live in such a house, with such admirable people, who unite to native n.o.bility the n.o.bility of the soul--especially the baroness, a pious and high-bred lady who wants to know everything _ex fundamento_. She is now reading Schleiermacher's discourses on religion." ...

"Do you think she really understands them?" observed Oswald.

The minister looked again at Oswald with that peculiar glance over his gla.s.ses, as if he must take a close look at the man who had the courage so openly to utter a view which he entertained himself, but only in greatest secrecy. He contented himself, however, with a gesture, he drew down the corners of his mouth, he shrugged his shoulders and raised his eyebrows--a gesture which might mean either "All vanity, dear friend!" or "The capacities of that good lady are beyond all measure!"

"You will, of course, miss Grunwald; especially your intimacy with a man of such vast erudition as Professor Berger. But I am in the same sad condition. I also can say: _Barbarus hic ego sum, quia nulli intelligor._ I pa.s.s here for an original, because no one understands me. Our great landowners are certainly excellent, worthy men, who fear G.o.d and serve the king; but, between us be it said, culture they have not; I mean, of course, scientific culture. Ah, if these gentlemen could have enjoyed in their youth the advantages of a genuine rational education, like young Malte ..."

"You are too kind, sir, although only the smallest part of that compliment would belong to me. I only wished the _ratio_ would show itself for once in Master Malte, for until now he appears to me a most irrational small quant.i.ty."

"Is it possible you are disappointed in the young baron?" said the minister, in a tone as if he heard something entirely incredible and unexpected. "Ah! I understand, I understand. Certainly nature has endowed Bruno in many respects far more richly, although he is not very accessible to the great truths of our religion, as I have noticed when I was honored with the duty to prepare the two young gentlemen for their confirmation. But _non omnia possumus omnes--omnes_," repeated the minister, not knowing exactly how to continue. "Yes, as I said, but then Malte is heir to a magnificent estate."

"All the more desirable, it seems to me, that he should be a man in the full sense of the word. But is the Grenwitz estate really so magnificent?"

"Why, my dear friend," exclaimed the minister, in a tone of gentle reproach that Oswald should display such deplorable ignorance in such all-important matters, "is it magnificent? There are in this neighborhood alone five, no--with Stantow and Baerwalde, which to be sure are not entailed, there are seven large estates belonging to it.

And in other parts of the island--let me see--there are one, two, three more. That is a capital of at least a million and a half. A million and a half!" he repeated, as if his mind could not part easily with such a lofty conception.

"And the estate is entailed?"

"Why, certainly. With the exception, of course, of two of the finest estates, which the last baron, the cousin of the present baron, inherited from his mother, and which he tied up in a very peculiar manner. Just imagine, my dear friend: the late baron, who, between us be it said, was a prodigiously wild and dissipated man, left these two estates to the son of one of his mistresses?"

"But did you not just now count the two estates as part of the family fortune?"

"Well, between us we can do so, I think," said the minister, in a low voice, coming up closely to Oswald. "n.o.body knows, you see, where the boy is, nay, whether he is at all alive, nay, they do not even know if it is a boy or a girl."

"Why, that is a curious story," said Oswald, laughing.

"A very curious story," said the reverend gentleman, "a ridiculous story, you might say. Just think: Baron Harald,--they have all of them odd names in the family--that wild fellow, who ought to have lived somewhere in the middle ages, fell in love with a poor girl, the daughter of a mechanic, a case which no doubt was of frequent occurrence in his life, but never had such disastrous consequences. He carried her off, almost by force, and brought her here to his chateau.

Half a year later she escapes in the middle of the night. No one knows to this day whether she ran away to live in obscurity, or to hide her shame in one of our dark moors. The baron was furious, beside himself.

He searched through the whole island. Then, in order to drown his grief and his remorse, he drank and gambled and led a life even worse than before, so that he died in delirium a few weeks later. When they open his testament, they find that he has left the income derived from those two superb estates to the mother, and the estates themselves to the child of his lady-love, whether it be a girl or a boy, provided only it be born within a given period. He had evidently had a fit of penitence before dying, or, it may be, it was a mere caprice. What do you say to that?"

"The story certainly is rather tragic than comic," said Oswald; "and have they never found any trace of the mother or her child?"

"Never! and yet they publish every year--it is a terrible disgrace, and I pity the poor baroness with all my heart--an advertis.e.m.e.nt in all the papers of the province, inviting the lost one to come forward and claim her rights."

"How long has that being going on?"

"Some twenty years or more."

"Then it is hardly probable that the poor woman is still alive?"

"Certainly not; and n.o.body thinks of it," laughed the minister. "They would make a pretty face at Grenwitz, if all of a sudden a young vagabond should present himself there, claiming to be the most obedient nephew of the baron, and demand the two farms, with the interest for twenty years! It would not suit the baroness, I can tell you; for she has not a farthing of her own, and, as the whole estate is entailed, she and her daughter would, after the baron's death, be as poor as she was before she married."

"You seem to be a great advocate of entails?"

"Certainly, I am. I consider it fortunate that such large estates cannot be parcelled away by subdivision, and that thus an aristocracy of wealthy landowners is formed, which serves as a kind of ballast for the s.h.i.+p of state in times of peril--which G.o.d, I pray, may long avert from our beloved land."

"Well," said Oswald, "there are two sides to that question, as to most questions."

"Of course, I know," said the obliging minister. "But I, for my part, I have too long enjoyed the honor and the happiness of being intimate with wealthy families, n.o.ble in the true sense of the word, not to be a warm adherent of the aristocracy of the land. Besides which, I have had too many sad experiences of the fatal effect which large property often has upon the minds of plebeians, to use the historic expression; I mean the vanity, pride, and worldliness which it begets."

"I am sorry to hear such things of my friends."

"Of your friends?" asked the minister in astonishment.

"Yes, of my friends. For, without any purpose of mine, and often without, exactly knowing why, I have always found myself on the plebeian side, whenever in history the conflict between patricians and plebeians has become marked. I was a sworn adherent of the Gracchi and other Roman demagogues; I fought with the Independents against the Cavaliers, and I confess that even in the terrible peasants' wars I felt more sympathy for the poor oppressed serfs, whom brutal treatment had brutalized, than for the high-mighty, all-powerful barons and counts, who were not a whit less brutal for all their splendor and power."

The minister listened to these words with a smile of incredulity, as if he were listening to the rhodomontades of goslings who a.s.sume the air of accomplished roues.

"Very good! very good!" he said "You clever people are fond of paradoxes. You bring that home with you from the aesthetic teas in the great city, and you wish not to get out of practice, although n.o.body may listen to you but a poor country parson."

"I a.s.sure you, sir----"

"Never mind, never mind. But when you have lived five years among the rustics-- Do you believe it, I have never been able to induce these people even to buy a bell for the church, although they are bound by law to provide for the house of G.o.d? But when they are called upon to provide for a merry-making, or to carry out some worldly purpose, they have always an abundance of money."

"Well," said Oswald, "the n.o.bles of this neighborhood are not exactly famous for their repugnance to merry-making, as you call it."

"The n.o.bles? My dear sir, that is a very different thing. Their device is and must be: Live and let live! But, you know, the same thing does not suit all."

"And many things are not suitable for anybody," added Oswald.