Part 7

"The bye-standers, though accustomed to scenes of death, were constrained to sob aloud at the unbounded outbreak of my childish emotion and my vain entreaty seemed not to be ineffectual. Miriam Suess suddenly raised herself in the bed, as if lifted by a spring, her beautiful face, already touched by the breath of death, was a blue-white, her eyes protruded far out of their sockets ... _but she did not bless me_!... she folded her hands and began in a tremulous but perfectly intelligible voice: 'Lord of the World!... Thou hast sent thy messenger to me, and I must pass into the shadowy realms of death.... I tremble before Thee, O Lord and Judge! for I have sore sinned, gone sore astray!... Forgive me, O God, Thou that art gracious to all, and pardoneth iniquity and sins; I have bitterly repented, made large atonement.... and that all men may know, that my repentance is perfect and sincere, I will now in the last moment of my life, openly and loudly confess before thee my husband and these worthy men the whole enormity of my inexpiable guilt.... _I broke my marriage vows to thee_.... _and my son Gabriel is not thy son_....' Blume! what I felt at that moment, poor human speech is incapable of expressing.... Grief, passion, woe, torment--put together in one conception all the notions that these words embrace; multiply them by thousands,--and you will still have no idea of that which coursed quivering through my broken heart,--With one blow, with one single, mighty, well-aimed blow, an infinite filial love was driven out of my breast, and the blackest hate filled me, a hate, well founded and inextinguishable. Had I lived a thousand lives and every moment of my life committed a deadly sin, yet _if there is a divine justice_.... all the iniquity of my life would have been atoned for by this too woeful moment. At the very time when I was supplicating with hot tears a blessing from my dying mother--_she betrayed me_, cast me out of the Paradise of my life into never ending torment.... at a time when for her I would have breathed out my life with a smile and in silence under the cruellest tortures, when I would have with joy delivered my soul for her salvation to the everlasting torments of the damned, at _that time my mother betrayed me_!!! 'Mad liar! recall the words! say that an evil spirit has spoken by thy mouth!' I cried in a furious voice, shaking violently her almost inanimate body. 'I cannot, Gabriel, I cannot,' she shrieked, 'pray for me!... Lord of the world! forgive me! be gracious unto me! have pity on me! I have sore sinned.... Oh God! accept my confession and death as atonement! Hear Israel ...' she could say no more, her eyes grew dim--she fell back--a light death sigh heaved her breast--she had ceased to exist.... 'No, dead mother, No,' I cried, 'God will not have compassion upon thee, since thou knewest no compassion for me--I curse thee and thy memory: ...' I uttered the most fearful maledictions, the most horrible curses--they tore me from my mother's lifeless corpse....

"Joseph Suess Lad sunk speechless at the confession of his guilty wife. When he came to himself he foamed with rage. His guilty wife was dead and the poor deceived man turned the whole weight of his irreconcilable wrath upon my innocent head.--The bond that should have united us to one another was loosed, I was not his son, I was a stranger--oh! far less than a stranger.... He took no time for reflection, and an hour later I stood alone, forsaken, an outcast from the house, that I had hitherto called my home! Thus had one moment, one word, robbed me of father, mother, love, memory, past and future.

"I wandered all the night about the town, I could not wait till morning dawned, and when it came I wished that the darkness of night had endured for ever. Early on new year's day every one went to the synagogue, I, I alone shunned the face of men.... I would not remain in the street, and in the despair of my heart turned my steps towards the dwelling of my early teacher, a sick, bed-ridden old man, obliged even on highest feast-days to perform his devout exercises at home. I found him already sitting up in bed and reading by the light of a lamp. The report of my humiliation had already reached even him, at sight of his once loved scholar he uttered a cry and the bible fell from his trembling hands. Was it chance, was it perhaps that my old teacher, revolving my unhappy situation, had opened at the passage in scripture that applied to it, I know not; but as I bent to pick up the book, my glance fell upon it, the words danced in varied iridescence before my burning eyes, I read the words: 'A bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord.' I felt anew a wild spasm at my heart. Together with the fearful unutterable excitement that had seized me at the shameless confession of that woman, who had carried me in her womb, with the crushing pain of seeing myself so humiliated before the eyes of men; there had also sprung up the melancholy self-tormenting feeling that I owed my existence to a sin, that I had been launched into the world against the will of the Most High, whom I at that time worshipped with boundless reverence: ... But as I once more read those clear and significant words, the words of that scripture which I had hitherto looked upon as binding and sacred--as I read the sentence of the Lord, whom I, bowed to the dust in fulness of faith, had called all-merciful, all-good, all-just--as I read the judgment, that made me, me guiltless of the transgression, miserable--that brought me to naught; T tore out of my lacerated and bleeding heart that blind faith, that could never restore me to bliss, never make me happy, that faith which might never more seem true and sacred to me.... I tore myself free from religion, sweet comfortress, that offered consolation to all but me...."

"It was mid-day. The walls of the city were too confined for me. I went out, and while my former brethren in the faith were praying in God's house, I sat alone in the deep forest, weeping hot bitter tears, tears more agonizing than man had ever wept before! It was a lovely fresh autumnal day, the rays of the sun pierced with deadened heat through the tops of the trees tinted with the yellow hues of autumn, the birds chirped cheerful songs, a soft mild wind breathed through the withering arbour, the deepest peace had dominion around: in me seethed the bitterest deadliest hatred.--I may have sat there for hours plunged in the most melancholy brooding, when I suddenly started up: It flashed across me, like bright lightning in a clear night, that I was not yet lost. Thy loved image, Blume! appeared all at once in liveliest colours before my soul. I still had thee! only thee in the wide world: but still I had thee: what more could I want?" The sentence of Scripture had branded me, my mother had betrayed me, my brethren had rejected me,--but still I had thee, thee, Blume! thou who couldest make up to me for all that, all of it, all. To thee I now transferred the whole wealth of my undivided love! a nameless ardent longing after thee burnt like wild fire in my soul; my love to thee had reached the height of madness. Remembrance of thee had effaced the horrible warning of the immediate past, had averted my gaze from the dark future--to live with thee, Blume! in some remote corner of the world, so sweet a child, my child!... "Blume," said Gabriel, suddenly breaking off with an accent of the most passionate grief.---"Thou mightest have been my guardian angel.... By thee, Blume, I might have been converted again.... Thou hast dealt injuriously with me, thou hast not acted justly.--Blume, if there is a God--hearest thou! I will not believe it, I dare not believe it, but if there is, Blume! at thy hands will my soul be required!... I hurried to Worms--how thy father rejected me with contumely, how I learnt, that as soon as they had received the quickly circulated news, they had instantly betrothed thee to thy father's nephew, thy cousin Aaron,--all that you know.--What I suffered, that you did not know, no! for the honour of humanity I will believe that you did not know it--I insisted on speaking to you alone; I trusted that your father had lied, that you would behave differently to the others, would have compassion upon me, would love me! I waited wistfully for the feast of atonement: I knew, that while the rest were praying in God's temple, you would remain at home with your blind mother. On the afternoon of the festival I crept into your house. Breathless I hurried through the well-known passages and opened the door that led into your mother's room. She was asleep, you were sitting by her bed and praying. I stood on the threshold trembling like an aspen. I thought that with a cry of joy you would throw yourself into my arms, kiss the tears from my eyelids, dry the cold drops of anguish that fell from my forehead. 'Blume,' I cried, 'wilt fly with me? Wilt be my wife?' you were silent. 'You too Blume!' I cried in inexpressible sorrow, and fell at your feet.... your bosom panted, your lips moved, as though you would speak, but you did not speak, your look fixed itself ghostlike upon me, as if I, innocent and unfortunate, had escaped from hell! I wished to break the dull silence, I sought for words, to move you, to melt the hard marble of thy heart; but I suddenly felt myself seized from behind, your father, your betrothed had returned home to enquire after your mother's health. A wild fury disfigured their faces.... you heard how they insulted and laughed me to scorn, you saw how they cast me forth, mercilessly, pitylessly, as a mangy hound is expelled with kicks; yes you saw it, but said nothing, you did not fall into their arms, ... you did not stand trembling and wringing your hands.... 'Blume,' yelled Gabriel shaking her fiercely by the arm, and a mad fury flashed from his eyes, 'why did you allow that horror to be perpetrated, tell me, woman! why? Why did you give your hand to the man, who so fearfully and undeservedly insulted me, an innocent man,--tell me, why? speak!'"

Blume sobbed violently, she folded her beautiful white hands, her lips moved silently in fervent prayer.

"Blume!" said Gabriel, after a moment's pause, in a dull unsteady voice. "If my deadly enemy, who bears an everlasting hatred to me, who strives with hot desire to drink my heart's blood--if my deadly enemy were to lay at my feet as I on that evening kneeled before thee, I who am steadfast in hate, I who know no pity, should weep hot tears of compassion--and I was not your enemy, I had loved you with a love as infelt and holy as is permitted to a human soul, I would have given the last drop of my heart's blood for one tear from your eyes,--and you, a weak, mild, pitiful woman, would not weep that tear.... You stood there dismayed, but did not keep off those furious one's.... What had I done to you? What was my transgression? Had not I been, to my mother's last breath, devout, noble, self-sacrificing?--Why did you solemnly inter the guilty mother as a contrite penitent, and cast out the innocent son? When I was cast forth from your house, Blume! when the last cable of my hope snapped there:--then I swore in my soul, a fearful undying vengeance: ... I love not men, I hate you Jews, but the most burning hate that man, or perhaps hell is capable of, I bear against thy mother, thy husband, and far beyond all in my heart against thee."

"Then slay me," cried Blume hastily, "and leave my husband, my mother, leave all in peace! let the whole weight of your anger fall on my head, slay me, Gabriel, but spare the others...."

The tiny sleeper on her arms awoke again and stretched its hands smiling towards its mother. Blume shuddered and broke into loud sobbing: "No, Gabriel, slay me not, let me live, see me at thy feet,"--she cast herself upon her knees--"let me live, I supplicate not for myself, by the Almighty God, not for my own sake;--but look at this innocent babe, its father is far away, it has only its mother, could you be responsible for depriving it of its mother? You do not know what a mother feels for her child."

"Hush, Blume, and stand up!" cried Gabriel, pulling the kneeling woman up from the ground, and the veins in his forehead swelled high: "are you mad? Do you think I shall murder a defenceless woman? be composed, I shall not slay thee.... That is not the revenge I shall take."

Both were silent. Blume opened the window, she looked whether a light was still burning in the lecture-room, a faint glimmer shot from the windows of the distant edifice, she felt relieved by the knowledge that men were still awake there! A cold wind blew through the room, neither Gabriel or Blume observed it, only the child shivered in its mother's arms.

"You have suffered much," so Blume broke the long painful silence.

"You have fallen off from the faith of your fathers? You are ..., you were...."

Blume knew not what she said, but this silence of the grave was mortal to her, she was constrained to speak, and almost involuntarily emitted these words from her lips.

"From the faith of my fathers!" re-echoed Gabriel; "you choose your words well, each is a poisoned arrow and barbed--have I then forsaken the faith of my fathers? Do I forsooth know my father? For ten years have I sought him, and thee," he continued thoughtfully, "thee have I found,--shall I ever discover him, whom perhaps--and supposing I did find him," said Gabriel after a long silence, inwardly communing, and rather as addressing himself, "would the voice of nature, as silly men declare, conquer? Full of infinite love should I fling myself into my father's arms, or should I be possessed with an unspeakable hatred against the faithless traitor, who was perhaps wantoning in luxury, when his child, loaded with insult and scorn, was cast out from the threshold of that house that he had for twenty years called home! If he proves such a man, if he has forgotten me, if he has never been mindful of the unhappy one whom to his everlasting misery he tossed out into the wide desolate world; if he proves like the mother, who even on her death-bed betrayed her child, if he should prove such, and I do find him, Blume: I shall gloriously conclude my wretched existence with a parricide."

Blume shuddered. Gabriel threw himself into a chair and hid his face with both hands.

"But if it is not so, supposing it otherwise," he began again after a long pause, in the course of which the foaming billows of his wrath had sunk, "if the apparition in my youth was a truth and no deception, if his tears did indeed once bedew the face of his child, if my father has been pining in infinite sorrow for his long lost son, if his heart has been sighing after me with the same strange emotion as sometimes in hours of quiet rises convulsively in the depths of my soul, if racked by repentance and the stings of conscience he has been seeking me mad with grief.... if I should find him thus, though he were the meanest on earth, the wretchedest beggar to whom one flings a morsel of bread--and stood before me in that condition--Blume! I have often declared, and now repeat, by my troth, and knightly honour! I should fold him lovingly in my arms.... and though it were the last moment of my life, my last breath--my last, yea dying breath should be a loud Hallelujah."

Gabriel stopped suddenly, Blume too had for some time been listening. Out of the bushes in a distant corner of the graveyard, on the gusts of a favouring wind, sounds of lamentation came born to the ears of both of them. Each for a time had accepted what was heard as a deception to be accounted for by the fearful excitement of the moment; but the sounds, at first dying away with a hollow echo, came nearer:

"My Son, my Son;" it rung now clearer and clearer in their ears, "my much loved only child--where art thou? Come to me, thou dear one.... thou wert born in sin, but I love thee in spite of all! for in truth you are my only son! Where can I find thee? could I find thee in heaven, I would seek thee there; could I find thee far over the sea, I would seek thee there.--Where art thou, thou that wert conceived in sin, thou that art so near to my heart? approach me and let us crave mercy at my father's grave, perhaps God will have compassion on me, will pardon me!... Oh! if my son but lives and I may see him again: then, then would I die!..."

The clock on a neighbouring tower tolled midnight, a wind sprung up, and sighed over the wide desolate space of the graveyard.... the clang of the clock, the rustling of the wind drowned the words which again died away in the distance. Gabriel had become deadly pale. He stepped to the window, and gazed for a long while down: but saw nothing. "It was an illusion," he said softly, quickly recovering himself by a wonderful mental effort--"my sharp glance detects nothing in the wide, and snow-covered space--and the dead have no voice."

Blume shivered, she did not dare announce that she too had heard the ghostly cry from the graveyard. Gabriel stared fixedly before him, sunk in gloomy brooding. Blume tried to read his soul. She had never seen him since that fateful day of the feast of atonement. He, who had once loved her, who had once clung with the perfect fresh strength of youth to his faith, to humanity, to his people, to justice, had become a changed man. Branded by holy scripture, which human wisdom can never quite interpret, betrayed by his mother whom he idolized, driven from her presence, cast forth from the society of his brethren--his soul was filled with hate. But even his hate she was unable to fathom. When he had entered, she feared that he would rob her of her child, that he would slay herself--that he would not do so, was now clear--but she dared not yet be tranquil, for he had declared that he hated her, that he would be revenged upon her. In pitiful sorrow she gazed motionless at his lips, at every movement of which her blood again ran cold: though his silence seemed to her yet more horrible. Once more one of those long and oft-recurring pauses had intervened, that seemed to Blume to last an eternity. Her unspeakable oppression was intensified by the profound impression caused by the singular incident that had just occurred, by astonishment at Gabriel who seemed by force of will to have soon banished it from his soul.

"Gabriel," implored Blume, "I pray thee, speak, break this weird silence, it is awful! say what thou wilt, go on with your story."

"Dost thou consider Blume! thy silence was once awful to me too.... once thou hadest no word of pity, no look of compassion for a poor innocent martyr, and I languished for a word of love.--Had my grandfather then still continued to live at Cologne perhaps.... I do not know, but perhaps he, he alone, would have taken me to his arms. But the fearful tidings, that branded his daughter, his grandson, gave his name a prey to the scornful, and blighted his dearest hopes, threw the old man on a bed of death. I arrived two days after his funeral at Cologne. Every one shunned me, my misfortune was known to all my brethren in the faith.

"I took possession, as heir, of my grandfather's immense property. I was no longer attached by any tie to this life, all that I had loved, I was constrained to hate, that which had once been true and holy to me, now seemed to me lying and false, I was the unhappiest man on earth! I broke with my whole past life, I would have none of it live on within me, except the remembrance of my unmerited humiliation, that fanned the hot flame of my revenge with undiminished fury.... I sought by some overt act to prove that I had become a changed man. In the cathedral at Aix-la-chapelle I abjured the old faith, and swore enmity in my heart against all those that clave to it.... As I came out of the church a crowd of people had assembled to gape at the new convert. I did not lift my eyes; but felt that the odious looks of all were fixed upon me. I hurried through the press, and sought to gain a side street that led to my dwelling. The crowd that accompanied me fell off one by one, and at last I heard the step of but one solitary person behind me, who followed me obstinately to the door of my house. I did not look round, but as I was about to step into the house, I felt myself seized by the cloak. 'What do you want?' I asked of the importunate fellow, a beggar in the dress of a poor Jew. 'Nothing,' replied he, with the wandering gaze of madness, 'nothing, except to tell you, that you have done wrong.... Thou hast forsaken thy Father in heaven.... and a good child seeks his father, even though he has prepared sorrow for him.... There is no greater grief than when father and son seek and cannot find one another!...' The maniac ran quickly away: but his words, burnt into my soul like kindled sparks.--I did not know my father! my mother had died without naming his name.--The high reputation for virtue which she had enjoyed during her lifetime, had not permitted the faintest doubt to rest upon her, and even if I had ventured to induce my brethren to make any revelations, my inquiries would have been vain. I had as yet been too stunned to think of my unknown father; but now, with the wild thirst for vengeance on you all, was associated a feeling, so singular, so wonderful, that I can never describe it. At one moment I was inflamed with unutterable hate against the unknown author of my days, at another I felt myself more mildly disposed, and a profound longing took possession of my torn heart. At one moment I believed myself convinced that he had forgotten me, and revelled with undisturbed and cheerful mind in earthly happiness, while his son succumbed before a woeful affliction; at another I hoped that he, who had never betrayed me, who had never for years enforced his paternal authority, had omitted to do so by reason of his inextinguishable love for me. A tormenting, frequently rapid succession of emotions took powerful hold on my heart; but from that moment a desire was born within me to find my father, were it to demand fearful reckoning of him, or were it to fall reconciled into his fatherly arms!

"Three days later I received intelligence that they had wedded you to your betrothed. You were in a great hurry, and your grandfather's death could not deter you from your hasty resolution. Thou, my ardently beloved adored bride, gavest thy hand to him who had disgracefully mis-used me as I lay on my knees in supplication before thee!... The marriage was solemnized at Worms, while I in Aix was languishing in maddest grief!--My determination to be avenged remained firm and immovable, but I was as yet too weak, too powerless to carry it into effect!"

Gabriel ceased, pressed both hands to his burning forehead and went on, after a long pause, passionlessly almost calmly.