PART THREE

A CYNIC IN THE MAKING

A HAPPY EXILE.

I.

A heavy load was lifted, the air seemed lighter, one could breathe freely. The uprising in Paris was but short-lived, the bloody skirmish had lasted two days and Louis Phillipe was once more safe on his throne, reinforced by a new cabinet. The citizen-king—_le roi citoyen_—once more made the people believe that he was the same Louis Phillipe who had been in the habit of carrying an umbrella like any plain citizen, with a modest round felt hat on his uncrowned head no different from one worn by the masses. Peace was again restored. The red flag was again replaced by the one of three colors; the shouts of “Long live the Republic” and “Down with Louis Phillipe” had once more been hushed; the vicinity of the Cloister St. Merry, where the zealous One Hundred Republicans had fought and fallen, was quiet and deserted. The French capital always lived from day to day and forgot the past. Barricades and booming cannon one day, gay laughter and resplendent parades the next.

The genial sun of early summer was in the sky and all Paris seemed to have turned out into the streets, into the public gardens, into the parks; God, feeling bored in his celestial abode, “opened the window of heaven and looked down on the Boulevards.” And the Boulevards were amusing enough. The deathly clash of a few days ago was forgotten. There was merriment in every face; smiling eyes beamed above the marble-topped tables along the sidewalks in front of the busy cafés; from side streets came the tremulous gurgling of hurdy-gurdies, the emotional tones of chanting beggars, singing the latest, _La Parisienne_. Suddenly a frantic, joyous shout rent the air; handkerchiefs waved, canes were brandished—the variegated colors of a crowd in motion. An old man in a phaeton passed. His white hair was covered with a brown wig; his kindly eyes sparkled with youth in spite of his seventy-four years; he raised his hat and bowed with military dignity and yet with the humility of the very great.

“Vive le général LaFayette!”

The appearance of the hero of two hemispheres on the Boulevards always had a soothing effect upon the masses. They felt that with this champion of liberty still among them the rights of the people were preserved.

Amidst the jovial pedestrians that thronged the Grand Boulevards Albert Zorn strolled pensively, his hands in his pockets, his dreamy, though keen, eyes, narrowed inquisitively, his head thrown back, a smile of triumph and joy on his smooth-shaven oval face. He was well dressed, in light colored coat and trousers and a waistcoat of many bright hues, yet his clothes hung on him as if he gave no care to his outward appearance. Though well-built, with a body of medium height and a head proudly set upon a solidly formed neck, he gave one the impression of shortness. It was his legs rather than his body that were short. He walked with the aimlessness of a student, of a dreamer who always seeks life in the street rather than in the drawingroom. There was a touch of melancholy in his eyes even when he smiled and a peculiar light shone from between his narrowed eyelids—a shaft of sunlight emerging from a crevice. At times he whistled as he walked and mumbled rhythmic words to himself. There was the gait of conscious freedom in his step, the freedom regained by a convict after long imprisonment. The gayety of the people about him filled him with secret joy, the saluting ejaculations were music in his ears. He was seeing history in the making and was alive to the events of the day.

He rambled wistfully, as if carried along by the human tide, and not infrequently was jostled by the people about him. He was tempted to get into people’s way and hear the exclamations of apology and see the sunny smiles on their faces. He loved the gleam of those velvety French eyes and the melody of their light-hearted laughter. Though of a bluntly frank nature himself he found the polite urbanity of the Parisians as refreshing as the wafting fragrance from a greenhouse. He was keenly conscious of the foreign atmosphere and fascinated by the people’s manners. Some one had just touched his arm and apologized courteously, and he lapsed into a revery of comparison between the people in his native land and the people here. In his native land people dug each other in the ribs without a suggestion of craving one’s pardon. Many cycles of thought began to revolve in his brain. One led to another. Then came straggling, disjointed fragments of thought—like loose threads—that became snarled and were formed into a knotted coil. . . .

II.

Since the Revolution in Paris the whole tenor in Albert’s life had changed. He had hung up his lyre and gripped the sword. The Revolution had made him forget his resolution to devote the rest of his life to his art. He had thrown himself into the maelstrom of political activities and fought mercilessly. He had decided upon a mission in life. To write sweet songs was not enough, he had determined. He must do his share in the struggle for the liberation of man, mental as well as physical liberation. He was fighting the _Junkers_ and the priests—the _Adel und Pfaffenherrschaft_—with telling effect. The articles he had written since he fled from Germany stirred the people at home even more than while he was amongst them. Yes, he must fight for the liberation of man!

Instead of the Bible and Homer he was hugging to his breast Jean Jacques Rousseau’s work. He realized that France was at present the cradle of Liberty as Judea of old was the cradle of Faith.

How could he really sing with the rattling of prisoners’ chains in his ears? The course of one’s life is fixed at one’s very birth, and strive as one might the given course must be followed. Albert felt as if an invisible hand was directing his course, a forceful, dominating hand. Free will? There was no free will. He often thought of the allegory of Jonah fleeing to Tarsish. Poor Jonah believed in free will but the whale taught him a different lesson. “Arise, go unto Ninevah, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee.” Everyone must preach the preaching that is bidden him.

However, at times he turned to the Prophets and drank from the ever fresh waters of their deep wells. And the Jesuits in Munich and the _Junkers_ in Berlin were pointing to his blasphemy! So did the ancient priests and the nobles of old Judea call their prophets scoffers and blasphemers. It is ever thus, Albert Zorn mused with sublime contempt in his heart, one must be crucified in order to save the world.

Would he ever be understood? He did not preach any definite doctrine to attract adherents. He was no Börne, with set rules and formulas for the emancipation of mankind; no self-centered Goethe to inspire romantic cults. He was carrying on guerilla warfare, shooting at whosoever was hostile to human progress. He understood the course of human progress better than that fanatical Börne who dreamt of bringing about a millennium with one leap. Human progress is gained by taking a leap forward, then half a step backward, then forward again, until the goal is reached. Reaction is as much a part of human progress as revolution. Revolution is only a link in the chain of evolution. He dreaded Communism, he despised Absolutism, he detested the mediocrity of Republicanism, even more than Philistinism. He was concerned with the freedom of the spirit even more than with the freedom of the body. Must he go on being misunderstood? He did not care for the opinion of his enemies—it did not matter to him that they charged him with want of character—but it grieved him to learn that even his friends and admirers failed to understand him. Only a few days before he had bared his heart in a letter to a friend. Would any one ever understand his inner struggles and strife? “We do not expect our friends to agree with us but we expect them to understand the motives of our actions,” he pleaded.

He could not deny that he had sipped from the sweetness of life since his arrival in Paris. A new world was opened to him. At last he had found himself free, breathing freely, moving about without restraint, without the conscious restraint that Prussian tyranny had imposed upon him. Not only the tangible shackles but even the invisible fetters—those that make one’s inner consciousness cower—had fallen away.

From the first day he stepped upon French soil no one reminded him, by look or gesture or remotest insinuations, of the virtues, or vices, of his forefathers. Having brought with him only a few letters of introduction, and as yet wholly unknown to the reading public in France, his poems and ready wit had quickly won him a large circle of friends and admirers. He had already met Victor Hugo, George Sand, Adolph Thiers, General LaFayette, and formed friendships with Balzac and Gautier and Alexandre Dumas; and, as in Berlin, he had found here an admirer who wished to be his patroness. She was a princess, who, while she did not possess the brilliancy and depth of Frau Varnhagen, was a woman of culture and had an innate appreciation of poetry. At her _soirées_ one met not only the literary and artistic celebrities of the day but also renowned statesmen and diplomats.

He was as famous here as in his native land. The _Revue des Deux Mondes_ was running a translation of his works, laudatory articles were written about him, his correspondence from Paris had made a stir in Germany and Austria, and his publishers were issuing new editions of his books. Though he was spending freely, sufficient money was coming in to meet his obligations. Indeed, fortune smiled upon him.

“_Vive le général LaFayette_!” the throngs around him roared again.

He had reached the Madaleine, which was then still under construction, and crossing the street he walked back along the Grands Boulevards. Only the day before he had talked with Balzac about the charm of wandering through the crowded streets of Paris, watching the people and listening to their talk. Albert found that he could think best as he wandered along the crowded sidewalks.

He soon found himself again thinking of his Fatherland. He was always thinking of his Fatherland. The soil of Germany was sacred to him, her language was music to his ears. He loved Paris, loved the French, but his heart beat for the land of the Rhine. He recalled a recent attack on him in a German newspaper. He was attacked on all sides. The radicals called him a traitor, the _Junkers_ called him a revolutionist. But he did not mind. He was a little David with more than one smooth stone in his pouch. He would yet slay the blustering Goliath. He would fight for Young Germany in his own way!

However, the knowledge that he was being attacked by the radicals and the _Junkers_ stirred his blood. At last the poor _Michel_ had stopped snoring. He was stretching his clumsy arms. No more sweet lullabies for the drowsy _Michel_, no more love songs, no dream ballads, no subtle epigrams. He must speak to him more directly, in language he could not misunderstand. He had scarcely more than unsheathed his sword. They shall see!

MARGUERITE.

I.

Albert found time passing pleasantly and swiftly. Two more years had passed and he was still living the life of a literary journalist—visiting cafés, art galleries, places of amusement; dining at the homes of the elite, visiting notables, frequenting fashionable circles. He was trying to persuade himself that his was a happy existence—fame in Germany and even greater renown in Paris, his health fairly good save for an occasional headache, and his earnings considerable—but he could not shut his ears to the small voice calling from the very depth of his heart. It was a rebuking, reproachful voice, which he could silence neither with a witty epigram nor with convincing preachment. It was the voice of mocking Satan, with whom the more one expostulates the more it mocks. He was already in his thirty-sixth year and none of his great literary plans had come to fruition. He had been bartering his talents for ducats. Had his fire gone out? He trembled. He had hardly written a poem worthy of the name in the past two years. True, he had not been idle and had fought for the liberation of his compatriots, and studied and worked very industriously on criticism of literature, religion, philosophy; but that, he said to himself, was not his life work. Yes, even love was dead in his heart. Was he growing old? Fear seized him. Goethe at thirty-six had only begun to love, and only begun to live. His heart was beating with the rapidity of fear. When one ceases to feel the lure of love one is nearing his grave, he mused. And one morning he awakened to find two fingers of his left hand benumbed. Alarmed he ran to a physician, a friend of his. The diagnosis was terrifying. The two fingers were paralyzed. But he only emitted a bitter laugh. “What a beneficent deity we have! God is reducing the strength of my left hand that I may strike the harder with my right.”

He jested about his deformity but it struck terror at his heart. It was not the fear of death but the fear of dying. He had seen death in all its grimness, when the cholera raged in Paris the year before. No, it was not death he feared but the approach of death. Indeed, he was getting old and dying. Perspiration burst over him. He recalled that the _Weltschmerz_ which had gripped him so mercilessly in his youth had relaxed its hold on him since his arrival in Paris. And the _Weltschmerz_ is the elixir of youth. Want of restlessness is want of life-force.

He wanted no sympathy. He had promised Princess Pampini to call on her that morning but he could not force himself to go to her. It was not vanity because his fingers were crippled but he would not listen to condolence.

As he thought of the princess a smile passed over his face. People were gossiping about his being in love with her. He could no more be in love with her than he could have been in love with Rahel. No, he could not be in love with anybody any more . . . He sighed disconsolately. No wonder the heights of Parnassus had been denied him in the past two years. Love and song were no longer for him. . .

In despair he wandered through the streets, frequently touching and fondling the numb fingers of his left hand with those of his right. He sought to dissipate his sorrow in motion. Pretty women walked past him but he glanced at them with trepidation. He saw their beauty but could feel no inner thrill. Yes, the glow of life was fast ebbing away from him. Youth and love and song were all dead in his heart.

He had reached the Porte St. Martin and turned into a side street. He wished to be alone, in a street less frequented by the young and gay. The sight of the young and gay around him was too tantalizing. He was brooding. Such was the irony of life. No sooner had he begun to enjoy life than life began to flee. Was not that the allegory of Moses on Mount Nebo?

Like another Faust—nay, like another _Koheleth_, the Preacher—Albert mused on the vanities and uselessness of life. It is only he whose eyes penetrate behind the scenes of life that can scoff and cry _Havel havolim_, vanity of vanities; and one’s eyes scarcely ever penetrate the mystery of life until one is about ready to relinquish it. In the heart of a forest one does not see the forest. “I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.”

Ah, indeed, every man must write his own Faust as he must brood over his own Ecclesiastes! Albert had often said this to himself and friends, and he now understood the full import of his saying. Like all true humorists, he passed quickly from mirth to sadness. There was nothing in life for him any longer, and it did not matter if he could only go to his lodging, fall asleep, and never wake again.

He was making his way blindly through the quiet street, oblivious to everything about him, when his ears caught the humming of a street song, the snatch of a song which was then popular in Paris and played by every hurdy-gurdy. He raised his eyes and beheld a young girl, perhaps seventeen or eighteen years old, standing in the doorway of a little shop, her hands stuck in the pockets of a white apron over her black skirt. There was the gleam of a cheerful smile on her comely countenance, and as he raised his eyes she stopped humming the song and looked at him with the candor and shyness of a child.

He was about to continue his walk when he remembered that he needed a pair of shoes, which were less costly on the side streets than on the Boulevards. He halted, hesitated, took a step back, and entered the shoe shop; the girl turned on her heel and followed him in.

Suddenly all his sadness fled, all his brooding thoughts vanished. He was conscious of a thrill in his heart and of the sweetness of living. The face before him was one mirroring youth and the ignorance of youth, eyes that sparkled, seeing only the surface of life. And in every line of her figure, in every movement of hers, was immaturity.

While he was examining a pair of shoes a heavy-set woman, with purple cheeks, stuck her head through a door in the rear, and said something about showing the gentleman the new style of footwear they had received the day before. What was there in the girl’s voice that made something within him vibrate?

He began to take off his left shoe.

“Not the left but the right, _monsieur_;” and she emitted a little laugh with the unrestraint of a child.

He did as he was bidden, and felt a peculiar intimacy as the girl bent down to help him slip on the new shoe. As she bent forward his eyes rested on her lustrous black hair—wavy without being curly—combed back from her low forehead.

He was thinking of Miriam, the girl of Gnesen. There was a striking resemblance between the two, except that the girl before him had somnolent black eyes while the iris in Miriam’s eyes were of a deep dark-blue. There was the same lack of artifice in her speech, the same touch of tenderness in her voice. Likewise was her face a book with blank pages.

He lingered in the little shop even after he had made his purchase. Was the woman who had spoken through the doorway her mother? No, she was an aunt, for whom she was working. Her mother lived in the country, in a little village near Nantes, and her mother had sent her to Paris to earn her living. Was her mother poor? Yes, very, very poor.

“Where do you come from?” she presently questioned him with equal candor, and looked up into his face without the least embarrassment.

“Where do you think?”

The deep corners of his large mouth drooped and there was a faint smile on his oval face.

She straightened up, her hands now behind her, her eyes resting on his light-brown hair, on his thoughtful face.

“From—from Normandy—all the men in Normandy are blond and have bluish eyes——”

He laughed with frank amusement, the amusement a child’s talk provokes, and told her his eyes only seemed blue but they were greenish.

“But a thing is only what it seems,” she said, with naive protest.

“I grant you it is good philosophy but not all philosophy is truth.”

There was a comical expression on his face as he uttered the last, and she looked puzzled. A bit of shyness came over her.

“So you can’t guess where I come from,” he said, looking tenderly at her. Then he added, as if speaking to himself, “I come from a country where they wish I had come from another country, and if I had come from another country they would have wished the same.”

He threw his head back and laughed but not without a touch of bitterness in his tone.

She did not understand him. There was perplexity in the girl’s face. No one had ever looked at her in this manner. There was something beseeching in his half-closed eyes, something eloquently covetous, and he gazed at her as if she were an inanimate thing, a picture or statue of the masters in the Louvre.

His next question sounded still more puzzling. Was she always in the shop? What a question! She was either in the shop or in the rear helping with the housework. Her employer was not boarding her and paying her mother ten francs a month for nothing!

As he was leaving he suddenly turned around and asked her name. “Marguerite,” she told him. He said he would like to be her Faust.

She looked at him incomprehensively and said, “_Vous êtes drôle_.”

“You are not the only one who thinks me funny,” he replied.

She laughed.

He walked away with drooping head and lagging step.

II.

He was soon on Boulevard Strassbourg, a mere drop of spray in the human tide. People were coming and going, chatting and laughing, the zest of life everywhere. He, too, now felt the zest of life. He was no longer feeling that the marrow of his life had dried up. There was spring in his heart, the sap of renewed life was flowing through his veins; no, he was not dying. He was humming to himself a few verses of an old song of his, which had been set to music by an admirer.

Yes, sadness was creeping into his heart and enveloping his whole being, but it was not the sadness that possessed him earlier in the day. It was the sadness of longing, of woeful longing, the sadness of music in a minor key, which thrilled him even as it kept tugging at his heartstrings. Suddenly, oblivious of the people that were passing, he paused, and, clenching his fists with joy vibrating through the whole being, his face beaming with a strange light, he uttered, almost loud enough to be heard by passersby, “I am myself again—love has returned!”

And love had returned. He was his old self again. Youth had come back. His features had almost changed. There came a new softness in his eyes, languor in his face, the dreaminess of his student days. He had not been in love since Miriam had gone back to marry the drover’s son. He had known friendship but not love.

He was not trying to argue himself out of his sudden passion for the girl in the shoe shop; he was only explaining himself to himself. What did it matter so long as love had again entered his heart, so long as he was restless with the yearnings and longings of his student days, so long as he felt the ache of blossoming youth! Indeed, what else mattered!

He went to his room and wrote a poem. He had not been in the mood for writing verse since his arrival in Paris, but now melody flowed from his soul. He could think of nothing, of nobody, but Marguerite. And he lost himself in reverie about her sweetly pouting lips, her well-formed nose, her glistening white teeth, the faint dimples in her cheeks. There was child-like beauty and sweetness in her face and speech, and it was that child-like quality in her that had captivated his imagination and passion.

He was too impetuous to lay plans. He could not lay siege to his citadel. He would either win it by storm or go down to defeat in the assault.

The next day he was again at the shoe shop without even the subtle subterfuge of the lover. He offered no excuses, invented no pretences to account for his call. He sat down and gazed at her rapturously and called her Marguerite, and repeated the name again and again, lisping it, murmuring it, echoing it as if it were a melodious term.

Marguerite at first laughed and told him he was foolish but by and by new tints came into the pink of her cheeks and she smiled confusedly—with the confusion of a child who does not know why it is confused—and there came a shimmering heat in the lustrous pupils of her eyes. Her heart beat tumultuously when he looked at her, and his words seemed so caressing. Sometimes he gazed at her as if he did not see her at all and then he would say, “How beautiful your voice sounds!” and when he caught hold of an edge of her apron he fondled it as if he had passed his hand over her bare skin.

One day he took hold of her fingers and kissed the tips of every one of them. She never forgot that day. She thought she ought not to let him kiss her fingers but she liked the sensation and yielded.

And when a few days later she found herself in his arms she feigned no resistance. She craved the touch of his lips and of his tender embraces and the endearing names he called her and had no objections to being his Marguerite.

III.

At last the longing of his youth—the longing which he had dissipated in dreams and song—were gratified. Marguerite was his. In her he saw the fulfillment of the promises of Hedwiga, of Hilda, of Eugenie, of Miriam. His soul was steeped in dreams, in imaginary romances, and he would not part with his dreams even when love had become a reality. He had brought to Marguerite all the pent-up passion that lay slumbering in his soul, all which he would have lavished on Hedwiga, on Hilda, on Eugenie, on Miriam. Realities are dreams to the poet as dreams are realities to him. What was wanting in the guileless country girl his romantic imagination supplied. What he had found especially fascinating about his beloved was her want of sophistication. When he proposed that she come and live with him in his two-room apartment she readily consented despite the protests of her relatives.

Nor was he disillusioned after she had gone to live with him. He had no illusions about her save her physical charms. He was sick at heart of the artifice of the chatter of the women of the drawingroom, and enjoyed the sweet naturalness of this woman child. And she obeyed his mandates. She sat for hours knitting or eating bonbons without uttering a syllable while he was absorbed in his writing. She did not know what he was writing about, nor did she have sufficient curiosity to find out, and he loved her for her silence. He thought the price of a woman who could keep still for hours “far above rubies and precious ointment.”

His life would have been perfect could he have impressed the wisdom of silence on Marguerite’s pet parrot, but he was soon reconciled to his chatter since that was the parrot’s business. At least the parrot prattled the only things he knew. Albert wished some of the savants of his day would emulate the parrot’s example.

The love of Albert and Marguerite did not run smoothly, however. They quarreled, and quarreled frequently, but then Albert knew he had an uncontrollable temper and that she was sometimes unreasonable. And she did not like those queer countrymen of his to intrude upon him so often. But after each tilt he became more tender, more solicitous, and called her a thousand more endearing names, and she nestled closer to him and loved her Albert more than ever.

In the early stages of their love they had two serious ruptures. Each time they parted she went back to her relatives and he went to the seashore to mend his shattered nerves, but no sooner had he returned to Paris than he went to the Philistines and demanded his wife, and, unlike the people of Timnath, Marguerite’s aunt at once complied with his demand and nothing disastrous happened. Lover and beloved went back to their two room apartment, he to write and she to knit and eat bonbons and to quarrel as of yore.

IV.

He was supremely happy—_Wie ein Fisch im Wasser_—in spite of his slight deformity. He was industrious, had finished another volume of poems and was making mental notes for a dramatic poem.

He was not fond of the German refugees in Paris. Now and then there came a refugee of real worth—but most of them were without talent, without any well defined idea of what they wanted, and only plumed themselves with the title of revolutionaries. Paris in those days was a hotbed of revolutionists; Mazzini with his carbonari, plotters from Portugal, insurgents from Poland, assassins from Spain. Prussian spies were abundant and very active, and the French government was secretly lending a helping hand to rid Paris of these stirring elements. Louis Phillipe had enough to contend with without foreign intriguers.

Albert was living quietly in a district inhabited by the genteel poor—clerks, journalists, small shop-keepers, artists—and kept aloof from his compatriots. But the news he was receiving from “home”—for he never ceased thinking of Germany as his home—was disquieting. The news came to him from various sources, but chiefly from pilgrims who were coming to worship at his shrine. Every aspiring poet, every young writer with an idea in his head, every agitator, came either to pay homage to his genius or to see the poet in exile in order to give first-hand information to their friends at home. Albert had the misfortune of having had woven around him myths and legends that reflected upon his morality. To the Germans he was a Don Juan. His flippant speech (often only the flash of the moment), his witty epigrams (at times uttered for the sheer love of wit), his blasphemy (rarely intended), gave credence to all the shocking things his enemies told about him. Furthermore, his imaginary love affairs narrated, and hinted at, in his poems were taken too literally. His countrymen failed to realize that one actually given to licentiousness rarely writes about it, never glorifies it in song and rhapsodies; that one who yields to dissipation rarely indulges in sweet day dreams about it. The Germans have always been too stolid, too ponderous, too matter of fact to comprehend the subtlety of fine humor. While an elephant can easily lift a log with his trunk he is quite helpless with a feather.

V.

One day he was at work in his room, Marguerite and the parrot in the other room, the door between them shut. Marguerite had found a way of keeping the parrot quiet when Albert was at work. A family with small children had recently moved in on the floor below and their noises were irritating Albert beyond endurance, so Marguerite was taking pains to keep the parrot quiet. She was feeding him bonbons and carrying on a deaf-and-dumb conversation with the hook-nosed chatterer.

“You mustn’t make a sound,” she whispered in a soft lisp, as if talking to a babe, and waved an admonishing finger. “Not the least bit of sound, for we don’t want Albert to be angry, do we?”

The parrot buried his beak in the down under his left wing and muffled his suppressed laughter.

“There goes the postman! That fool, he rings the doorbell as if the house were on fire! Albert has told him a thousand times not to do it in the morning as it disturbs his thoughts——”

The door soon opened with an abrupt jerk and Albert, in a long _Schlafrock_ (lounging robe) appeared in the doorway. His hair dishevelled, a look of unendurable annoyance on his face, his eyes contracted and intense, he clenched his fists and almost shouted—“Can’t you tell that fool to stop ringing? I can hear every bell in the neighborhood when that imbecile makes his rounds. I was in the midst of a sentence and, bah!—that fool comes along with his clamor and I forget what I was going to say—my whole drift of thought is lost—just when my writing was coming along so easily he comes along and kills my morning’s work—that idiot!”

“I told him a number of times not to ring so loud,” Marguerite struck in.

“You told him! You don’t think he is doing it to spite me! That postman and the parrot are a pair!”

“The parrot! He never opened his month. He was as quiet as a mouse all morning. You blame him for everything.—” Marguerite’s voice was becoming lachrymose. “You hate him because I love him so. Poor dear!” She nestled close to the parrot’s cage. “It is about time that both you and I go—Albert loves neither of us any longer——”

Marguerite’s chin began to quiver, the dimples in her cheeks appeared and disappeared, and presently the deluge. She dropped into a chair and the tears soon flowed through her fingers, with which she covered her eyes.

He rushed up to her with a gesture of helplessness.

“What are you crying about? It’s I who ought to cry—a fine morning’s work gone because that stupid postman rings the doorbell as if he were a Prussian officer. Am I blaming you?”

“If—you—loved—me—you—wouldn’t—talk—that—way—” Her words came between sobs.

He strode across the room and waved his arms in despair. He gnashed his teeth but said nothing.

“You see, you wouldn’t even deny it—you know you don’t love me any longer. I know, I know, yesterday at the_ Café des Ambassadeurs_ with those funny Germans of yours you sat at the table and talked of nothing but the Princess Pompani. You think because I don’t understand German you can talk of your other loves with impunity—but I understand what _Prinzessin_ means—every minute it was _Prinzessin_ this and _Prinzessin_ that—”

She lapsed into convulsive sobbing.

Suddenly he burst out laughing.

“Yes, you laugh because you have no heart and because you make me suffer——”

The next moment he walked up to her, gently passed his hand over her hair and tried to embrace her but she pushed him away——

“Don’t touch me—I know when you touch me you are thinking you are passing your hands over the Princess—”

Albert was still laughing softly and trying to remove her hands from her face.

“Don’t you come near me—don’t——”

He had succeeded in pulling her hands away from her face and in giving her a grazing kiss on her lips.

“Aren’t you silly, my sweet little Nonette (one of his endearing nicknames)”. “Look at me!” He was holding her face between his hands, trying to make her look at him, but she tightened her eyelids and pulled away from him.

“No, I won’t look at you until you stop loving that Princess——”

He laughed indulgently.

“What a child you are. You know I don’t love anybody but my sweet little kitten with those dear little dimples”—he kissed her on both cheeks, and catching her unawares, pressed a kiss on her mouth.

“Aren’t you silly?” he continued as he wiped her gathered tears. “Here I am working so hard to get a little more money so that we may be able to move away from this clattering neighborhood to a cozy little apartment on Rue St. Honoré and you blame me for getting angry at that stupid postman!”

“I told the _concierge_ only yesterday that unless she made the children behave we would have to move.” Her voice sounded half reconciled but her eyes were still averted from him.

“You sweet little monkey!”

He embraced her affectionately and she rested on his arms without resistance.

“Ha—ha! Ha—ha!—Ha—ha!”

“Shut up, you fool!” she turned angrily upon the laughing parrot.

“No one is a fool who can laugh,” Albert said wistfully, with a sad smile on his face. “Come on, let’s all laugh—Ha—ha! Ha—ha!” he mimicked the parrot, and Marguerite presently joined in the laughter.

“I am nearly through with my book” he presently consoled her, “and I think I can make that miserly publisher in Berlin advance me five thousand francs on my royalties, and I have my eye on a beautiful apartment on Rue St. Honoré overlooking a garden. I think I’ll be able to buy you the earrings you saw in the display window the other day and——”

There was a knock on the door and they both jumped up, Albert went to the door.

The _concierge_ was standing with a packet of letters and newspapers.

Albert thanked the _concierge_ profusely, tipped her liberally, and scanned the envelopes.

“Here is a letter from the publisher,” he exclaimed jubilantly. “I’ll bet the rascal offers me only three thousand francs as an advance for my next volume. He always likes to bargain. If I had asked for three thousand he would have offered me one——”

“Why didn’t you ask him for ten, he might have then offered you five,” she counselled.

“I didn’t want him to get apoplexy—” he laughed.

He tore the envelope and while removing the contents continued talking half to himself, half to Marguerite.

“What a long letter—I know—he is telling me, I suppose, how much he has lost on my other books. That rogue! He has grown rich on my sweat and blood and is always whining how little there is in the publishing business and throws me a pittance! Huh! What’s that!” His eyelids came close together as he continued turning the pages and there was a deep dent between his eyes. “The dogs!——”

“What’s the matter, my dear?” she looked up anxiously at Albert’s agitated countenance.

For a moment he did not answer her. Then, with the loose sheets of the letter in one hand, the large square envelope in the other, he paced up and down the room, frowning, uncontrollable rage in his eyes.

“Those vultures are trying to wrest the very bread from my mouth, but they shall see, I won’t sit idle either.” He still talked half to himself, half to the puzzled Marguerite.

He suddenly remained standing stock still in the middle of the room, his eyes barely open. Then, without saying a word, he rushed to the adjoining room, put the sheets of manuscript in order and stowed them safely into a drawer, exchanged his _Schlafrock_ for a more fitting coat for the street, and was presently ready to leave, Marguerite following him attentively, almost mutely, and helping him with his toilet. She knew that something was irritating her Albert but he had often told her she could not understand his inner disturbances so she did not press him with further questions. But presently he volunteered enlightenment.

“They have forbidden my books in Prussia, and not only those I have published but even those I might publish. The publisher says he can’t send me a _sou_ under the circumstances, and that he, too, will be ruined.”

The want of money was quite intelligible to Marguerite. She knew that without money they could not move to the cozy little apartment on Rue St. Honoré and she wouldn’t be able to get those coveted earrings.

“What’s the difference?” she soon consoled him, “you can write for the French papers. The Germans are queer anyhow.”

For a bare second Marguerite’s stupidity and simplicity irritated him but before his anger had gathered he glanced at her child-like face, her doting eyes, clasped her in his arms and dashed out of the house.

“Yes, I’ll be back in time for dinner. We’ll go to the _Ambassadeurs_ tonight,” he comforted her as he closed the door.

VI.

The information that the German _Diet_ had prohibited the publication of his books had so upset him that he could not think clearly. It seemed to him that some sinister fate was always interfering with his work. At first it was the parrot, who chattered volubly, and when he had trained him to keep still in the morning, a whole brood of children moved in on the floor below and insisted on doing all their crying during the hours he had set aside for writing; and when by chance everyone was quiet it usually happened that just then he was not in the mood for writing. He thought it strange that all noises came when he was in the best of moods. Yes, it must be the fates who were always pursuing him. This morning everything had moved so smoothly. He had felt as if he had been on wings, his thoughts came flying, and the expressions he wanted were coming so spontaneously that he could scarcely write fast enough when that idiot of a postman began his clamorous ringing! Well, the bad news could have waited until his morning’s work was done! Ah! fate, cruel fate, had been tormenting him from his very cradle!

He was walking down the street rather rapidly, his inner agitation gaining momentum. It was early in December and the air was cold and refreshing. He could not understand why the _Diet_ should have decreed against his writings, especially now when he was preaching moderation. Goethe’s and Lessing’s works had never been forbidden! Goethe had always been anti-Christian, quite pagan, and Lessing was a veritable iconoclast, and yet the government had never taken measures against them! An unpleasant thought was intruding upon him. He tried to force this unpleasant thought away. In the past six years he had banished this unpleasant thought by sheer force whenever it sought admission into his brain. His life in Paris would not permit him to dwell upon this unpleasant thought. But now it took hold of him in spite of himself. The Prussians would not forgive his Jewish blood! The mark of Cain was on his brow! Genius or no genius, it did not matter. Ah, those narrow minded tyrants! They shall see—the whole pack of them—he would smite those Philistines hip and thigh!

As he proceeded on his walk he was mentally wording a reply to the Prussian _Diet_. He felt himself a Luther standing before the King. Indeed, like the man of Worms, he would not recant. He was smiting the Philistines. He was not sparing them. His words were molten lead. He would pour it red hot upon their stupid heads. He would avenge himself on all of them—on the Aristocrats and the Democrats. They had both combined to annihilate him but he would pull the temple down upon them.

Under the heat of composition his face brightened, his eyes were aglow, his step became more elastic and rapid He was almost glad that this had happened. His fire was kindled with greater fury.

But he soon remembered that his funds were exhausted. His uncle Leopold’s quarter-annual stipend was two months away, the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ had already advanced him for his next contribution, his publisher would certainly not send him a _sou_ at present, and the four hundred _Thaler_ he had borrowed from a friend were nearly gone. His gait slackened, his countenance fell, the light was out of his eyes. Yes, he must seek counsel. He must not act too rashly. His left hand was troubling him and he was afraid the paralysis of his two fingers was spreading. He must seek counsel.

He thought of a few influential friends, who were then in Paris. They were admirers of his and, he was sure, would be glad to intercede for him. But, no, he would ask no assistance from a Prussian. He would—the thought of Princess Pampini came to him like a ray of light. She could give him the right advice. If influence was needed she could use it. She had powerful friends in Paris, men close to King Louis Philippe. Thiers and Guizot were frequent callers at her home. And he soon remembered that he had received a note from her, reproaching him for his absence from her _soirées_. The thought of the princess cheered him. He directed his steps toward Rue de Courcelles, her present dwelling.

VII.

On his way home from the visit with the Princess a flitting thought disturbed him. Yes, the fates did combine against him. Why was he always falling in love with stupid women? If only he had a life-companion like the Princess! He needed some one to counsel him, to guide him.

Presently he was passing the jewelry shop where Marguerite had seen those coveted earrings. He visualized her with those earrings. He could see a hundred eyes gazing at her as she entered the _Café des Ambassadeurs_ on his arm, with her beautiful flushed cheeks, vivacious black eyes, and her exquisite little figure. She was beautiful—that child! The next moment he was in the shop, before the jewelry counter, holding the earrings on the palm of his hand, turning them this way and that. Would the gentleman behind the counter lay them aside for a week? He was sure he would have the money by that time. Yes, the gentleman behind the counter was very affable and accommodating. “You see, _monsieur_, I am putting them aside and will hold them for you until a week from tomorrow—thank you, _monsieur_.”

Albert sped home exultantly. He was optimistic. He did not see clearly how such a miracle could happen, how the money for the earrings would come to him—_a thousand francs_!—but he had hopes. He was glad he had talked with Princess Pampini. He would follow her advice and instead of protesting just request the German government to reconsider the decree against him; and then his publisher would advance him the five thousand francs—three thousand, at least.

He ran up the three flights of stairs to his apartment with boyish glee and, embracing Marguerite, whispered in her sweet little ear that he had a great surprise in store for her. No; he could not tell her what it was, but she must wait patiently a week, and tonight they would dine at the _Café des Ambassadeurs_. He would order the same _menu_ they had been served a week ago.

“Wasn’t that a fine meal, hein? A feast to be eaten on one’s knees!” Albert’s eyes glowed with ecstasy as he recalled that dinner.

“You are the most wonderful lover in the world, my Albert,” Marguerite threw her round warm arms around his neck and pressed him to her breast.

Presently he was seated at his desk writing his address to the _High Diet_. He was checking his propensity to be bitter, cynical, satirical. He repeated the words under his breath as he put them on paper, thinking of Princess Pampini’s counsel.

When he had finished his long letter he felt as if a great burden had been lifted. He read, and translated it, to Marguerite, who, with arms folded and eyes staring blankly in front of her, listened attentively but without hearing a word of it. She was wondering what surprise Albert had in store for her next week.

VIII.

The miracle had happened. A week later Albert had the thousand francs with which to purchase the earrings so much desired by his dimple-cheeked Nonette. Though very rational in his beliefs, and having scoffed so frequently at Biblical miracles, he experienced a secret sense of awe and wonderment as he thought of the unexpected source of this bounty. And it had come to him in the mysterious manner that invariably ushers in miraculous events.

Six days after he had last visited the Princess Pampini a document, bearing the government seal of the reign of King Louis Philippe, was delivered to him in person. Albert’s heart was quivering with fright when the official-looking paper was handed him. He had an innate dread of official papers. He unfolded the contents of the sealed envelope with trembling hands and to his amazement found an endorsed order for twelve hundred francs. A brief note, signed by the Minister of Public Instruction, accompanied the money order. The Minister expressed his personal friendship and admiration for the poet.

“Marguerite! Marguerite! A letter from the king!” he cried jubilantly, as he rushed to Marguerite who was trimming a hat.

She looked up incredulously. Albert was such a jester; one never knew when to take him seriously.

He showed her the money order, pointing to the numerals, 1200.

“The king has sent this to me from his own treasury,” he added. “He read my writings and likes them. And every three months he will send me an additional twelve hundred francs.”

He threw his arms around her and kissed her.

“Now we’ll be able to move to Rue St. Honoré,” she reminded him.

“No, not yet. We must wait a little while. We must wait until I get the remittance from my publisher. His heart will soften as soon as the _Diet_ cancels its decree.”

“What will you do with the twelve hundred?”

“Don’t worry—I’ll know what to do with it——”

“I know, you’ll put it in the bank, you miser——”

Her countenance fell. Albert had been complaining of late of his extravagances and regretting that he had saved nothing from his large earnings during the past five years. He had told her that from now on he would be very economical and lay something aside for a rainy day.

He was wistful. He was thinking of the earrings and wished to guard his surprise.

“Will you put away all of it?”

Anger was gathering in her pretty face. Since the king had become his friend she could not see why Albert should want to save any money after this. She had hoped he would at least take her that evening to one of the cafés.

“No, no, I won’t put it all away,” he said joyfully, fondling her.

“You are becoming stingy,” she said sullenly, and tried to disengage herself from his embrace.

“You don’t call a man who tries to lay aside a few francs for a rainy day, stingy—do you?”

Presently he was fully dressed and he dashed out of the house, the happiest of mortals. He ran down the three flights of steps like a little boy speeding to join his waiting playmates. And he kept running thru the streets, seeing no one until he reached the jewelry shop.

He was soon back, with flushed face and panting, a nice little box in his breast pocket. Marguerite was addressing the parrot when Albert opened the door. She was telling the parrot that Albert was a great _poète allemand_ and the sweetest lover in the world, even though he was stingy at times. And the parrot laughed—“Ha—ha! Ha—ha! Ha—ha!”

“Close your eyes, my sweet monkey,” Albert commanded.

“You did not spend any money on a present for me, you extravagant boy!”

“Close your eyes and keep them closed until I count three!”

He kissed her and closed her eyes with the tips of his fingers.

“One—two—three!”

She opened her eyes upon a pair of sparkling earrings.

“Albert! You spendthrift!”

At seven-thirty the following evening the people seated against the mirrored walls of the _Café des Ambassadeurs_ cast glances of unconcealed admiration at the pretty woman on the arm of the renowned _poète allemand_. There was pride in his keen eyes as he caught the admiring glances and nodded almost triumphantly to his acquaintances. He was quite exultant and carefree, with all the melody of the Song of Songs in his heart.

IX.

Albert Zorn now found himself attacking, and attacked by, the reactionaries in the Fatherland and the extreme radicals in Paris. At last the _Junkers_ and the _Jacobines_ joined hands to down him, their common foe. The pension granted by the king was the peg on which they hung their calumnies. And helped by the Prussian _High Diet_ he was even denied the right to defend himself against this fabricated charge of disloyalty. However, this did not muzzle the valiant fighter. Screened by a pseudonym he returned blow for blow. Before the censor had become aware of his identity, his devastating irony was again felt in Germany.

And in spite of the growing paralysis of his left hand he worked indefatigably. He penned poems, critical essays, satires, political tracts, with the same spirit running through them all; the emancipation of the enslaved Prussian mind from the influence of the _Junkers_.

One day a compatriot challenged him to a duel. His compatriot had taken exception to an insinuation against a close friend of his in one of Albert Zorn’s recent books. True, Albert did not believe in the barbaric custom of duelling but he would not have any one charge him with cowardice, moral or physical. Indeed, he was ready to meet his adversary with any weapons he might choose.

The only thing that distressed him was Marguerite’s condition, should the duel prove fatal to him.

“Marguerite!—Marguerite!——”

Albert was calling her from the adjoining room. It was twilight, the dim twilight of a summer day. His voice sounded softer, more kindly than ever.

Albert was in the living-room. It was a small room, with a white marble mantle over the fireplace and a large mirror above it. The open windows opposite were reflected in the mirror. He was seated, an elbow on the arm of his chair, his cheek against the palm of his left hand, his legs outstretched, wistfully thinking, a strange melancholy in his half-closed eyes. His usual impatience was lacking.

Presently Marguerite appeared. She seemed unusually pretty. Her plump figure had never looked so comely and her eyes never sparkled with more vivacity. She paused for a moment coquettishly, inviting inspection. Should she make a light? No, he did not care for a light. He could see how beautiful she was even in the dim light of the setting sun.

He languidly stretched out his right hand and she came closer to him and placed her hand in his. Ah! she knew how to humor her Albert when he was in a melancholy mood, and her Albert was never more amiable and kind than when in this mood. Though jocular he could not hide his melancholy the past few days, and though he might think her a fool, and without much brains, she understood every passing mood of his. No, indeed, all his friends were telling her what a great man Albert was, and how subtle and profound he was, but she knew better than any of them. She knew he was as simple minded as a child. Albert often called her his child—a lot he knew! It was he who needed mothering from his Marguerite.

The next moment she was on his knees, her lips against his forehead, a hand through his soft hair. He responded quickly to tenderness and pressed his lips against her fingers. There was mist in his eyes. He had been thinking very much of her the past few days; in fact, all his thoughts were of her. He had just come from a notary and made his will, leaving everything he possessed to her.

They were seated in silence for a short space, the clock on the mantle ticking strange melodies. Albert often heard this French clock tick German folk songs. He often wondered why Marguerite could not hear these songs—the only one she could make out was _La Parisienne_, and even this one only when Albert hummed it and used his hand as a baton.

“We are going to get married, Marguerite,” he suddenly announced.

Her hand gripped his involuntarily and for a few seconds she made no sound. Her brain could not quite comprehend his statement. She had never asked him to marry her legally and he had never spoken of it.

“Are you ill—What is troubling you?” she was almost breathless with anxiety.

“No, my kitten,” he made an effort to talk in a light tone and encircled her waist with his arm. “It has just occurred to me that in case anything should happen to me—in case I die—you understand——”

“But what put dying into your head all of a sudden?” There was terror in her voice.

“Nothing—nothing particularly—” he was forcing an indifferent tone—“the thought occurred to me today as I was passing the Boulevard. A horse slipped and fell and hurt a pedestrian. One thought brought another—don’t you see, I was thinking an accident might happen to me—what would become of you?”

Her eyes quickly filled with tears and there were tears in her voice. She did not want her Albert to die and if he died she might as well die, too. Marriage or no marriage, it made no difference to her. Many men had flirted with her and tried to win her away from him—yes, even a few of his friends—yes, all men were alike. Whenever they saw a pretty young woman, they wanted to appropriate her, be she a friend’s wife or mistress. No, indeed, it made no difference to her. She had gone to live with him because she loved him and would never leave him, marriage or no marriage.

“_Apprends donc_,” she was saying, “_que jamais je ne te quitterai, que tu m’aimes on non, que tu m’epouses ou non, que tu me maltraites ou non, jamais je ne te quitterai. Entends-tu bien? Jamais! jamais!_”

No, indeed, it made no difference to her, marriage or no marriage, whether or not he loved her, whether or not he’d ever ill-treat her, she’d never leave him—never! never! never! If he was proposing marriage to her because perchance he was jealous for a moment and thought some one might wean her away from him he need have no fear on that score.

He kissed her fingers in silence; there was ecstasy in his soul. He remembered the speech of Ruth when Naomi counselled her return to her people.

Presently Marguerite was sobbing on his breast. Her Albert was speaking and acting strangely. Had he been to see a physician, who had told him he could not live long? What did physicians know—indeed, what did they know? Her Albert would outlive them all. And she would take care of her Albert better than all the nurses in Paris and she would always be faithful to him. Oh, her poor Albert! What had put such foolish thoughts into his brain?

He cleared his throat, wiped the tears out of the corners of his eyes, and spoke light-heartedly. No, he had seen no physician and his health was good and he did not expect to die. He wanted to marry her for her own sake; he wanted no one ever to cast reflections upon her relationship with him. How would she be married—would she like to have a religious marriage? Yes, indeed, he would marry her in any manner it pleased her.

Since Albert insisted upon a legal bond, she wondered if he would mind going with her to the priest at the church of St. Sulpice. She had been “confessing” to him since she came to Paris.

“No, indeed, my kitten!” Albert’s voice was almost jubilant. “By all means let us be married by a Catholic priest. When the Church of Rome binds no one can tear asunder,” he added with a mysterious twinkle in his eyes.

* * * * *

Eight days later Albert was brought home slightly wounded. The duel had taken place in the Valley of St. Germain.

During his convalescence a friend dropped in.

“You have made thousands and thousands of friends,” the visitor was saying enthusiastically.

“Ah, yes, I understand,” jested Albert, “Drawing blood—especially an enemy’s blood—always relieves one’s pain. If I had been killed the kind Jesuits would have named the day of the duel a Saint’s Day.”

Marguerite, who sat by his bedside, begged him to stop laughing, as the physician had told her his constant laughing and joking irritated his wound.

“The doctor is mistaken,” Albert retorted. “My joking and laughing irritates the wounds of my enemies.”

THE JEST OF THE GODS.

I.

Youth lives in the future, middle age in the present, old age in the past, but Albert Zorn, though still in his early middle life, and in the greatest vigor of his mentality, found himself nursing memories of the past. Instead of dwelling upon the present or the future he was now constantly brooding over the blunders in the days gone by, living over again the moments of ecstasy, and of passion, long vanished, musing upon experiences that could never enter his life again. Never a man of action—his battles were only strifes of ideas—he reached the stage when no one would take up his challenges. For it was in the middle of the nineteenth century when there came a lull in the struggle of ideas. After every sharp world conflict there comes a momentary pause, a lethargical rest, while man gathers strength for the next combat. Recently there had been so many clashes of ideas, irreconcilable ideas, that for the moment no one cared what the other thought.

In spite of his growing fame Albert was living in a modest quarter in Paris, just he and his Marguerite, as simply as the humblest of workmen, and worked indefatigably. He wrote poems, the finest fruits of his pen, he discussed on philosophical themes, with keener insight than the obtuse pedants who passed for philosophers; he made political observations, with clearer vision than those whom the world called statesmen. But his enemies—and all his antagonists were his enemies—clamored loud enough to drown his voice. Being a radical among the conservatives and a conservative among radicals his enemies had no difficulty in confusing the masses as to the meaning of his words. The enemies of clear thinking and right living have always seen to it that the masses should fail to understand those that come to their aid. Ah, the masses, he murmured under his breath, the masses have always unwittingly stoned those who came to redeem them!

Spring came again, spring in Paris. The sky was clear and blue; blossoms dazzled in the morning sunshine; delicious fragrance wafted from the distant fields. Spring always brought melancholy thoughts to Albert’s mind, and his thoughts this spring were even more melancholy. For paralysis had spread from his left hand to the whole left side and he could hardly move without acute pain. However, the more he suffered the harder he worked because the intensity of creative word deadened his pain, but when the effort was spent the reaction was all the greater.

One late afternoon he settled at an open window, with his eyes almost closed, dreams of old songs in his brain. He was tired and, leaning in an arm-chair, he rested, feeling as if an iron hoop was around his head and through its tight embrace all his thoughts and ideas had been put to sleep. Gradually all the sweet memories of the past—and even his past great sorrows were now sweet memories to him—came back to him. He let his mind wander . . .

A bird twittered under his window; a sparrow came hopping on his little feet. He sighed and drew his breath painfully. He could not even hop like the sparrow. It was years since he had walked the Boulevards, since he had heard Paris laugh. Oh, Paris! he sighed and nodded his head woefully. France was to him like a garden where all the beautiful flowers of the world had been plucked to make one fine nosegay—Paris was the nosegay. It seemed to him ages since the perfume of this nosegay had reached his nostrils . . .

His thoughts drifted. He began to feel the ennui of his isolation. His visitors had grown fewer and fewer and fewer. He realized that no one cared to see one in misery. Presently his mind dwelt upon his last glimpse of Parisian life. It seemed to him ages ago. Leaning back in his cab he had watched the smiling grisettes in the doorways of the shops, the coquettes on the pavement . . .

He again heaved a sigh and abruptly dismissed that pleasant memory. There was rancor in his heart. People had called him a libertine, a Don Juan . . . A bitter smile appeared on his bloodless lips. He a Don Juan! He who had sung of romance and love! He frowned upon the injustice of the world’s opinion. He could count on the fingers of one hand the number of women he had ever loved . . .

He tossed his head, contempt on his face. He did not care what the people were saying about him.

The next moment his wife’s laughter reached his ears. In the adjoining room she was munching bonbons and reading a novel by Paul de Kock. He shuddered. Ah, he should have married a woman who could understand him . . .

He suddenly raised himself from his arm-chair, picked up his cane, limped across the room, and was soon in the street. An overwhelming desire to see the Boulevards again came upon him. He hailed a cab and leaning back in the conveyance feasted his eyes upon the surging crowds in the thoroughfares. Reaching the Madeleine he ordered the driver to turn into Rue Royal, and then along the Tuillerie Gardens up to the Louvre, when he ordered the coachman to halt and alighted. Half paralyzed, half blind, leaning heavily upon his cane and dragging his withered limbs, he proceeded to the palace of art.

It was late in the afternoon, the galleries were deserted, the glow of the setting sun cast melancholy shadows over the plastic statues of stone and granite wrought by the hands of the ancient Egyptians and long forgotten Greeks. There was even vaster melancholy in his heart. The gods and goddesses he worshipped in his youth seemed to be mocking him—Bacchus and Apollo, Orpheus and the bearded, horny Pan—they all seemed to jeer at him. He could not withhold a groan. He fathomed the despair of Moses, the son of Amram, as he stood on the top of the Pisgah and yearningly gazed at the land of Canaan—the land for which he had fought that others might enter but he could not enter. That was the irony of life, the jest of the gods. He, too, like Moses of old, had dragged himself to the top of Pisgah to have his last glance at his promised land!

A thousand sad thoughts flitted through his brain. He limped along the vast halls and paused before Venus de Milo. A hectic flush came into his face. He looked up at the armless goddess with the covetousness of a virgin youth beholding a maiden of rare beauty. Settling down on the cold stone bench in front of the statue, both of his hands resting on the head of his cane, his half-blind eyes blurred with tears, he gazed yearningly at the parted lips of her exquisite mouth. Was she just smiling, or was she, too, smiling at him? His eyes closed for a moment, with unbearable pain in his heart. Ah, if he could only die at this very moment! he reflected. That would be a poetical, pagan, fitting death for him. His whole life passed before him like a vision. All his life he had worshipped beauty—the divine figure before him was the symbol of beauty—her seductive, tantalizing, heavenly smile, her sweet sensuous lips set his blood boiling. Tears rolled down his wan cheeks, his enfeebled frame shook with grief and mortification. He must live perforce and look on as the great, avenging, mocking God was finishing his diabolic jest . . . .

He struggled to his feet and staggered through the vast corridors, without turning his eyes in the direction of the artistic masterpieces of all ages . . .

After that visit at the Louvre Albert was unable to leave his room. His forebodings were prophetic. That palace of art—the Salle de la Venus de Milo—was his Mount of Nebo, from which he had caught the last glimpse of his promised land.

II.

One day Marguerite entered his room with the announcement that some one wished to see him.

At first he made no reply. He lay stretched on a low couch with the immobility of a corpse and his upper eyelids met the lower in two fine pencilled lines like the eyes of the dead. His hair and beard, framing skin of deathly pallor, were also lifeless. His beautifully shaped right hand, thin almost to the point of transparency, rested limply on his coverlet.

Marguerite repeated: “Albert, there is some one who wants to see you.”

His figure suddenly stirred as if convulsed.

“I suppose another countryman to view my remains and then go back to Germany and lie about me!” A bitter smile appeared on his bloodless lips as he uttered these words with an irritable sneer. “I am sick of all visitors. They come here out of curiosity. The swine! What stories they have fabricated about me. I want friends, not visitors. And friends come only when one has something to give them!” He emitted a sigh. “Why should they come?” he soon added more bitterly. “Who wants to see misery!”

“This is a woman, Albert. She says she comes from Vienna——”

“From Vienna—she is perhaps bringing me word that the director of the Royal theatre is to present one of my tragedies—he has promised me. Send her in.”

The next instant the corner of his mouth twitched, the crease between his eyes flattened, and digging his right elbow into the downy pillow underneath him, he raised his right side to a half-sitting posture and leaned against the prop of pillows at his head. A panting sigh betrayed the great effort of raising himself.

Presently a girl of about twenty-two stepped in, and as she caught sight of the half-blind, half-paralyzed figure her breathing almost stopped. For a bare second she halted as if she meant to retreat, but her blue eyes filled with tears and she whispered. “_Bon jour._”

“_Guten Morgen_,” he replied in German and extended his withered right hand. “So you have come from Vienna,” he added without releasing her hand. “Do you know my friend Loeb?”

The young woman stood speechless, leaning over the couch, realizing for the first time that unless he lifted the paralyzed lid of his right eye he saw nothing. Tears overflowed her eyes.

“I have not come direct from Vienna,” she faltered—“I haven’t been there for some time, but—but I wanted some excuse to cross your threshold—I lisped your songs before I could lisp my prayers—they were my breviary—you have taught me the meaning of the beauty of life——”

Albert nodded his head as she uttered the last flattering words, a smile of great satisfaction appeared on his face. The speaker’s girlish voice attracted him; it was like a voice from his young life, the days of love-making in Gunsdorf, Bonn and Goettingen. And the voice was such a relief to him! He was tired of all the voices around him—of the jabbering speech of his nurses, and of his wife—good souls all, but God! what voices! It was years since he had heard a pleasing voice.

“Never mind why you came here,” he struck in, smiling, “I am happy that you are here. Sit down and tell me who you are.”

She moved a chair nearer the couch and sat down.

“I can hardly tell you who I am—” she was nervously plucking at the edges of the roll of music in her hands, her eyes filled with tears, rested pitifully on the face that spoke of a thousand sufferings. To her it was the face of the Christ—the suffering face of the Man of Sorrows; the beard and the superfine, bloodless lips and the nose and the closed eyes and the strange smile—there was something of the expression of _Eli, Eli, lamah Zabachtani_ in that face.

“Come nearer, let me see what you look like.”

She moved her chair closer to the couch, and raising the right eyelid with the tips of his fingers, he held it for a moment and looked at the visitor, who hesitated to tell her name. He scented romance. The sweet tantalization of youth was again in his blood. He was eager, pursuing, impatient. The glimpse of her made him still more eager. He took in at a glance her roguish blue eyes, so appealing yet so shrewd, her light-brown hair, her slender figure—the slenderness, without the suggestion of meagerness that always attracted him.

He pressed her for information about herself. She fenced cleverly. She did not mean to tell him her history—she had never told her history to any one.

“I’ll tell you the truth,” she was saying, trying to divert his mind from her person. “I learned that your secretary had gone and since French and German are almost equally my mother tongue, I thought I might be of service to you.”

“No, no,” he shook his head, laughing, “one can no more have two mother tongues than one can have two mothers. You are a Swabian—you can’t hide it from me. I can tell a Swabian accent—I can never forget Hegel’s accent and manner of pronouncing certain words—and a sweet Swabian woman’s face.—Now, since I have paid you a compliment we are friends, so you must tell me who you are.”

There was a moment’s silence. The visitor’s blue eyes shifted from side to side, her inner indecision was betrayed in her mobile features.

“I once spent a whole day talking about you with a perfect stranger, a man who happened to be a friend and admirer of yours—he thought I had fallen in love with him.” She gave a roguish little laugh.

“Who was he?” There was boyish inquisitiveness in his voice.

“Heinrich Metzger.”

“So you are the Butterfly!” Albert exclaimed.

“Yes, I am the Butterfly,” she returned, laughing. “What did Herr Metzger tell you about me?” She halted and a blush spread over her cheeks. “I know; he told you he had met me on a train going from Paris to Havre, and that I had fallen in love with him at first sight. Herr Metzger thinks he is quite irresistible.”

Albert laughed cheerfully. No man is displeased at hearing a pretty woman ridicule another man, even when the other happens to be a friend. However, he protested.

“Metzger is a handsome fellow—a very fine chap—quite a lady-killer.”

“What else did he tell you?”

“Let me see. He was quite impressed with the mystery of your flitting existence. You wouldn’t give him your name but you gave him your ring on which there was a seal with the emblem of a butterfly—and you did fly away. The next time he met you on the Strand in London, but you wouldn’t recognize him. And then he found you in Paris. He thought you were a mysterious person. He wished he were a novelist instead of a poet. He could have written an interesting story about you.”

The girl laughed.

“In order to write the novel he would have to know the mystery,” she said, her smiling face quickly changing to that of sadness, “and he still knows nothing about me. He doesn’t even know my first name. O, yes, he thinks my name is Margot.” Again she emitted a light-hearted laugh. “He evidently doesn’t know the meaning of _Margot_ in French. I had talked so much and so recklessly that day that I thought _Margot_ a fitting name for myself. I was a regular _margot_—a real chatterbox—that day—and all because we talked about you and he said he had just visited you——”

Albert extended his hand. She let her hand rest in his and gazed intensely at his face, which was now flushed and full of animation.

“I never hoped, I never dreamed, I’d come so close to you, the poet of my dreams,” she murmured without withdrawing her hand from his.

“Do tell me who you are,” he begged.

“For the present call me Butterfly,” she said, rising. “I’ll call again—if you’ll let me.”

He was clinging to her hand.

“You must come again!” he addressed her _du_ (thou) familiarly. “You must!” he pressed her hand affectionately. “You shall be the last ray of sunshine in my dark life. Ah, why didn’t you come before? My life of late has been so dreary!”

There were tears in his voice. Tears gathered in her eyes, too. Then a moment of silence. From the next room came the jarring laughter of his wife. The parrot was repeating _au revoir_ again and again. From outside, through the open door over the balcony, came the noise of the street, the rattle of carriages, the jangling of a hurdy-gurdy——

“_Au revoir_,” she whispered.

He was still clinging to her hand, speechlessly. Bending over him she kissed his forehead and rushed out of the house.

III.

He dropped on his pillows, a hectic flush on his bloodless cheeks. His eyelids sealed, his right arm limply on the coverlet, he lay musing, half dreaming. In this somnolent manner he often spent hours, conjuring up sweet recollections, pleasing fantasies, and more often composed lyrics.

Presently Marguerite stood before him. Her approaching steps irritated him. Only the other day he had jested about the blessing of his growing blindness—it spared him the sight of Marguerite getting fat! Fat women had always offended his sense of beauty and even now he could not bear the thought that his Marguerite—the slim pretty girl he had first known—was tipping the scale at two hundred pounds. No wonder, that spendthrift had of late thought of nothing but rich food and gaudy clothes. And now while her Albert, nothwithstanding his paralysis, was laboring all day with his pen to provide her wants, she was only thinking of many course dinners and pretty dresses. He had pretended not to notice this. He wished to banish unhappy broodings—his life was unhappy enough without tormenting thoughts.

“Who was that girl?” she asked.

“Oh, some friend sent her here,” he replied perfunctorily. “In the absence of my secretary she might be of some service to me. She is quite proficient in both French and German.”

“She is quite chic—that girl——”

For a bare second he made no rejoinder. He seemed to hold his breath. Then he said, with evident constraint, “Rather amiable—and bright.”

The next moment he heard her making her toilette preparatory to going out. She was always going out, he was saying to himself with increased irritability. In the past few years this thought frequently crossed his mind, only to be brushed away by a counterthought of sympathy for his poor wife, chained to a corpse. He pitied her, his martyr.

Presently as he heard her splashing in the next room, talking loudly to the nurse, and laughing lustily, his irritation grew. He was vexed and angry. He wondered whom she was going to meet. She usually stayed away hours—sometimes almost the whole day—and when he pressed her for an explanation she would burst in tears and say that after she had walked blocks and blocks in order to save cabfare he ill-treated her; and then he would call himself a brute and would reprimand her for her niggardliness. No, he did not want his devoted wife to wear her legs off for the sake of a couple of francs; for even though he was paralyzed he was working and earning as much as many an able-bodied man, he added boastfully.

This moment he was sure that she had always lied to him. She was having secret rendezvous. No, no, he was not jealous. A paralyzed man, with a wasted body, could hardly compete with half a million able-bodied men in Paris! he would say to himself cynically. Ah! he did not care whom she was going to meet if she only did not laugh so boisterously. He could not bear that booming, loud laughter of hers coming now from the adjoining room.

He was annoyed beyond words. No wonder the young visitor who had just left had mistaken Marguerite for a servant.

The young Swabian girl had made a _faux pas_. She had referred to Marguerite as his servant and when he had enlightened her she blundered still worse. The woman who had opened the door for her looked so ordinary, she had said, that she could not imagine her idol would have chosen such a fat woman for his mate. No, he did not blame this young girl for her blundering speech. Marguerite was an ordinary fat woman, not the fit companion of a poet, who had always worshipped feminine beauty.

He was glad Marguerite was going out, and would leave him in peace. Between the parrot’s screeching and Marguerite’s laughter he did not know which to choose, but when both were exercising their lungs life was unbearable. He felt quite relieved when his wife, in swishing silk, presently bade him _au revoir_ and slammed the door, leaving an odor of cosmetics behind her.

He was again calm, frolicsome thoughts playing in the attic of his brain. He was thinking of his mysterious visitor, the Butterfly. She was charming. Her voice came back to him like a sweet chime. A delectable sensation was rising within him. The voice of the sweetest romance was calling to him. His chest heaved. She had been kind to Metzger and had given him her ring as a souvenir because he was the friend of her poet, and the deluded soul thought she was in love with him! A happy smile was on his face. He was very fond of Metzger. Had he not said in print he, Albert Zorn, aside from being the greatest living poet in the world, had the kindest heart, the noblest soul? And Metzger was handsome. Even in his days of bloom, Albert could not boast of such manly beauty as his friend, Albert owned to himself. And this mysterious Swabian damsel had always been in love, with him ever since she was a child, she had said! All his pains disappeared. The romanticism of his youth was returning. Indeed, his body was wasted but his spirit, his heart, was as young as of yore! Real poets die young! Youth remains in their hearts even if they reach the age of Methuselah! Yes, he was young again. The lure of love was in his blood once more. The dying candle sent forth a leaping flame.

He was soon feverish with anxiety, as feverish as when he waited for Miriam under the willows near Gnesen. His fancy lent color to his vision of this mysterious stranger. He had only a glimpse of her but the impression of her face was indelible. With his eyes closed the picture of her was most vivid.

He stirred and reached for the portfolio that contained his paper and pencil—which always lay by his side. He rose higher on his pillows and, gripping his long pencil, began to scrawl. He had always had a beautiful handwriting but now he could only scratch long irregular letters. He was glad that she had left him her address. Why had she left him her address? Honey flowed in his veins. Did she hope he would write to her? She was but womanly; wanted to be wooed by her lover . . .

“Lovable and charming Person:—” he scribbled hastily,

“I regret most keenly having seen so little of you on your first visit. You left a most agreeable impression upon me, and I have the greatest desire to see you again. Don’t stand on ceremony but come as soon as possible—tomorrow if you can. I am ready to receive you at any time. I should prefer that you come at four and stay until—as late as you please. I am writing to you with my own hand, in spite of my poor eyesight, because, as you know, I have no secretary whom I can trust. The deafening noises around me cause me incessant pain, and your sympathy has meant so much to me. Superstitious as I am, I imagine that a good fairy has visited me in my hour of affliction. My hours of affliction? No, if you are a good fairy this is an hour of bliss. Or will you be a bad fairy? I must know this at once.

Your Albert Zorn.”

IV.

He forwarded the letter as soon as he had finished it and indulged in speculations, sweet speculations. Would she come tomorrow at four? No, she might not. Women were never as impulsive as men but more subtle. Women possessed greater self-control; at least, they were not as demonstrative as men; they knew how to hide their feelings. Indeed, he had known the whims and caprices of women since he was sixteen! Women loved to make men beg on their knees for that which they would eagerly give without asking. Is it possible that this pretty young Swabian was in love with him?—with him who was no longer a man but a spirit? He was not even an aged Faust rejuvenated by love. What comedy life was playing with him!

His dual vision—of experiencing sensations and contemplating them at the same time—had never left him, since his impressionable youth. Feverish youth was in his blood again. He recalled the touch of her hand—how clinging her hand was, when he clasped it in his!—he had experienced the same feeling as when he first touched the hand of—of Hedwiga, of Hilda, or Eugenie, of Miriam, of—no, he could not think of Marguerite now.

The next moment he grew self-analytical and serious. He was always analyzing himself. Love did not change, he said to himself. The fire that burned in his veins when he first met Marguerite was out. Yes, that fire was now dead. As far as Marguerite was concerned there was winter in his heart; white flakes had fallen on the sweet blossoms of yesterday and blighted them. In their place new flowers had sprung, new perfumes, the beginning of a new spring. Ah, he must seize his lyre and serenade his awakened joys and sorrows! Indeed, joys and sorrows always went together, like the rose and the thorn, like the sun and the clouds. His harpstrings quivered with sweet, sad tones. The moonbeams again played with the flower petals of verdant spring; the departed nightingales had come floating from afar and were singing as sweetly as ever. Love was dead, long live love!

Ah, he was young again! Songs flowed from his heart. He must not philosophize. Love was eternal.

He would not think of his shrunken body, he would not dwell on his wasted strength, new blood flowed in his veins.

V.

His good fairy came punctually at four. She tripped in like a fairy, indeed, and leaned over him and kissed him on his forehead, while her little hand rested in his. She, too seemed unconscious of the presence of Marguerite in the adjoining room. She removed her wrap with a gesture of determination—as if warding off an intruder—and settled down by his couch, as if she meant to stay with him forever.

“Let me look at your sweet Swabian face,” he whispered and raised the lifeless eyelid of his right eye. “You have a face of a Swabian _Gelb-Vögelein_,” he breathed in her ear.

He was glad Marguerite had never learned German. He could now speak freely with his Butterfly. And this was only the second time she had been near him! He felt that he had always known her; everything about her seemed strangely familiar to him; he felt as if he had met her in a previous existence and now met her again after a lapse of many years; and while his memory failed him as to her name and the place he had met her, his feelings toward her were those of an old friend.

“You haven’t told me yet your right name,” he murmured, seeking her hand, which she readily placed in his. “You elusive Butterfly!” He emitted a soft laugh, “I never stopped thinking of you for a moment since you left. I wondered if you were but a fairy of dreamland and feared that I might wake at any moment and find you had vanished. What is your name, fairy mine?”

“Call me Butterfly——”

“My Butterfly you shall always be, but what is your real name—who are you? It seems to me I have known you for ages—I am beginning to believe in the transmigration of souls—I feel that I met you before in a different sphere——”

Her hand still resting in his she looked at his bloodless face wistfully; she seemed absent minded, as if she had not heard his words, and yet knew what he said.

“You are right, I know I met you before.” She was speaking in a hushed voice, an expression on her pensive face as if she were under a hypnotic influence; there was a strange glitter in her blue eyes. “When I was a little girl—when I first read your poems—your words seemed familiar to me as if I had heard them before. When I read your verses, I heard you recite them to me—the voice I now hear was the voice I always heard. When I told my mother about this she only laughed and patted me and said I was an imaginative child. The older I grew the more convinced I was that souls did migrate—that your soul and mine had loved each other before and had been parted and that we were destined to meet again. I always knew I’d meet you. When my mother brought me to Paris—I was little then—I heard some one speak of you. I can recall the trembling of my heart at the mention of your presence in Paris. But I was only a child then. I felt like a young girl, as yet unfamiliar with her own passions, suddenly awakened to the consciousness of male attraction. I trembled every time I heard your name mentioned and yet never dared learn of your whereabouts in this great Babel and see you in the flesh. Sometimes I heard people speak of you in uncomplimentary terms—they said you were immoral—and I felt mortified but I did not believe anything evil of you. I could not believe it. I have always known you—always! When I met Herr Metzger on the train he made some remark to me in French, but I could see that he was German so I addressed him in his language. He was piqued at first. People speaking a foreign language are always piqued when you make them feel their adopted tongue is not quite their own. We are all vain about it—even the great Albert Zorn!”

She gave a roguish little laugh and he pressed her hand tenderly without venturing a retort. He had listened to her so attentively that he did not wish to interrupt her speech.

“He thought I was flirting with him,” she continued with a gentle toss of her well-poised head. “Herr Metzger is very vain about his physique. Of course, he is good looking but he knows nothing about women—nothing! I was alone in the compartment—just he and I—and the train was speeding. During travel intimacies are quickly formed. Before long he told me the history of his life—he told me everything about himself, even of his love affairs, his conquests.” She chuckled. “He thought he made me jealous when I teased him about his frankness. Mind you, I was then only seventeen and he was a man already—years and years older than I—and within half an hour he revealed himself to me completely while I had told him nothing about myself—literally nothing! When he began to probe he found all avenues closed. Then he began to boast—all men begin to boast when they fear they have not made sufficient impression upon a woman; they don’t realize that their boasting, like a frost in late spring, nips the first buds. He was telling me what a great poet he was and what the critics said of him, incidentally mentioning what you had said of him. He must have noticed my sudden interest in him. He misunderstood the reason. He boasted of friendship with you and I showed still greater interest in him. He felt flattered. I wished to meet him again when he returned here—I wanted to renew my acquaintance with such a close friend of yours. I hoped to meet you through him. Was that mean of me?”

Albert sighed and only pressed her small hand with his thin fingers.

Marguerite passed through the room, and the girl quickly withdrew her hand. Marguerite paused to ask him if he minded her going to the theatre that evening. She had not yet seen Scribe’s latest play. Albert said he did not mind it at all. In fact, he wished she would go and get a little fresh air. Would he mind if she took the nurse along and got dinner at one of the restaurants? No, he did not mind this either. He had not felt as well in years as at the present. Marguerite wabbled away, humming a bar of the latest popular song.

“Go on. And then?” he turned to the girl by his couch.

“Then something dreadful happened to me.” She crossed her legs and gripped her knee between her clasped hands. “My mother urged me to get married. She was at the end of her string, she confided to me, with tears in her eyes. She did not want me to repeat her blunder. She thought I was too impetuous—she said she herself had been too impetuous and ruined her whole life. I, too, might prove indiscreet if I fell in love. She believed in the orthodox fashion of French marriages, a husband chosen by the parents. She wished she had listened to her mother when she was seventeen. Instead—instead she had a daughter on her hands without a father to look after her. Men were all alike, she preached to me, unless they were tied by legal fetters they flew away to warmer climates when the air at home grew cold. This was a shocking revelation to me. I had never known my father but my mother had never mentioned his name so I thought he had died, I asked no further questions. I now understood my mother’s tragedy—and mine. A few days later she introduced me to a middle-aged Frenchman and told me he wished to marry me. He was rich, she added, and would provide well for me. I made no protests. I married him.”

She paused. There were tears in her eyes, there were tears in her voice. The poet lay still, his bloodless lips compressed, his paralyzed eyelids sealed. The clock on the mantel seemed to tick louder than ever. Through the open glass door over the balcony came noises from the street; rolling vehicles, snapping whips, floating laughter. The parrot was calling “_Bon jour_” and then joined in the laughter outside.

“I thought I was quite worldly then,” she soon preceded; “at least, quite sophisticated for a girl of seventeen. I had always mingled with people older than myself and assimilated their maturity. I had traveled considerably and my close association with my mother—who is a very intellectual and cultured woman and was governess in her younger days in one of the most influential aristocratic families in Germany—should have given me an understanding of life. Yes, I thought I did understand life much more than most girls of my age but I had soon learned that seventeen is but seventeen; my knowledge of the world was too superficial—it was like most conversations between pseudo-cultured people—meaningless phrases that sound well and vapid platitudes that pass for cleverness but contain not a grain of real sense. Stranger still, while I was a precocious child, impetuous, passionate, with a strong sex sense, I did not have the least intimation of the relationship between the sexes. It doesn’t found credible, but it was so. My inquisitiveness had never led me to probe the relationship of the sexes. I found myself married to a native of Paris, a man twenty-six years older than myself, a man to whom sex was an open book, one to whom sex had only one meaning. No, I can’t quite make clear to you my feelings when he first kissed me, when he ravished my body. Oh, it was revolting!” She shuddered visibly. “I had had visions of sweetness, of tenderness, of transporting passion, of ecstasy, and found—oh, I can’t describe it—it is too horrible to dwell upon it.”

She paused, a sob in her throat. Albert’s hand was caressing hers sympathetically, silently.

“I wonder if any man understands the difference between the passion of a woman and that of a man!” She heaved a sigh, and there was agony in her voice. She felt the tender grip of his hand and added smilingly, “Poets sometimes do understand the difference, but then poets are feminine in their instincts. A man may prefer one woman to another—just as he may prefer champagne to claret—but when he can’t have his preference the inferior is quite as agreeable. A woman is a woman. I am told even a man as wise as Benjamin Franklin felt this about women. Of course, Franklin was no poet. To a woman only her preference exists—the other are _abscheulich_! The fact that many women submit to men they don’t love proves nothing. In a society in which more than half of life is artificial, forced, and the woman the weaker, she can’t help but submit. But, oh! if man could but read the innermost secrets of woman’s heart! Thousands of years of self-suppression have made women incapable of even revealing themselves to themselves.

“Well, I found myself legally tied to a man whom I abhorred. His mere presence was loathsome to me. When he touched me I was filled with revulsion. Instead of a vivacious, highly sensitive girl that I had been I had become a depressed, morbid woman. I could not even read your songs—all beauty had become ugliness to me. I thought seriously of ending my life. Many a time I carried carbolic acid to my lips and put it away from me by sheer force. At times I raved like a maniac. My husband showered gifts upon me—he gave me jewels and fine clothes—men are always so stupid and imagine trinkets win affection—but that made me hate him the more. He told me I ought to consult a physician but I knew opiates could not cure me. How could a sordid business man, to whom the acquisition of wealth was all that life offered, understand what ailed me? One day he suggested travel. I welcomed it. I hoped new scenes might take me away from myself. But it proved the reverse. It only made me realize that there were fragrant woods and that I was confined in a narrow little cage in a dingy attic. My husband was beside himself. When we got to London he decided that I was insane. Perhaps I was. At least, I acted like a lunatic. The excitement of the English metropolis had a strange effect upon me. I had suddenly grown hilarious, pulled my husband from music hall to music hall, from one jewelry shop to another—and made him squander his hard-earned money as if I were his mistress. It was then—on the Strand—that Metzger met me and spoke to me but, to his amazement, I denied his acquaintance. I could not think of the time when I read you poetry and was in love with the beauty of life. But a few days later the reaction set in. I flung my jewels away, I tore up my finery, I shrank from my distracted husband and wept.

“Days passed. He implored me, he beseeched me to be rational, but I was hysterical. One day on the pretext of taking a drive to get fresh air, he finally coaxed me to leave my room. The next thing I remember is that he escorted me to a luxurious villa, where I was met by a fine looking elderly gentleman, who talked to me as if I were a little child. That amused me and I couldn’t help bursting into laughter. He patted my shoulder and said I would be all right in time, and his strange actions amused me still more although his French was enough to send one into convulsions. Before I realized what was happening, I was locked in a room, alone. The next day I discovered that my husband had placed me in a private sanitorium. But, thank God, I was rid of my husband, I said to myself; I was alone and free from his loathsome attentions. After a few days’ rest I had a talk with the head physician—a very sane individual—who was very sympathetic and kind. It did not take him long to understand my case. He gave me the five hundred pounds my husband had left with him for my care for three months and bade me God-speed. ‘Yes, I understand—I understand,’ he kept murmuring sadly. ‘God help you,’ he added in a prayerful tone.

“At last I was free. Instead of going back to my mother I went to Vienna, where I had relatives. I was afraid my mother might try to bring about a reconciliation with my husband. Before long I was myself again. Besides the money left me by my husband I earned a good deal by giving French lessons, and I lived economically. One day I made the acquaintance of a musician, a composer—a dreamy sort of chap—who seemed to be falling in love with me.

“He always carried a volume of your poems in his pocket or under his arm. And how he recited your songs! The poor young man was lovelorn. He thought he was in love with me but I knew he was intoxicated with love. He was a poet. And he set some of your songs to music most charmingly. I presume I encouraged his attentions and his visits—the poor young man was so helpless, so child-like, and I was so eager to hear him hum your songs—but when he began to make violent love to me I realized I had gone too far with him. I told him I could not love him—I could not love anybody—and that, besides, I was married. But I could not get rid of him. He was the most helpless creature I have ever known and the most sentimental. It was pitiful. I pitied him from the bottom of my heart and gave him some financial assistance. He took it, but he was not a parasite. He was just helpless. I then decided to return to Paris. I had exacted a promise from my mother that she would not mention my husband’s name. And I have been living with her ever since. I have never discussed the source of her income but I know she has always received a monthly stipend from a well known noble family in Germany—it may be from my father—and her allowance is quite liberal.”

“_Armes Kind_,” Albert murmured affectionately.

She paused. Marguerite, overdressed and overperfumed—large hipped and full-breasted, with rouged fleshy cheeks—came to bid Albert goodbye. She leaned over him and kissed his forehead but he made no attempt to raise his eyelid. He only murmured _au revoir_, and as he turned his face to one side a deep sadness flitted across his cadaverous cheeks. As Marguerite turned to leave, she turned around and gave the young girl a quizzical look.

When the outside door closed the invalid stretched out his hand toward his visitor and she replaced her hand into his.

“_Du letzte Blume meines larmoyanten Herbstes_,” he murmured, caressing her hand.

A moment later he added, “You won’t leave me now, since you have at last appeared, my last ray of sunshine. All my friends have left me—all—” There was a checked sob in his breast.

“Never, never, never!—” There were tears in her voice.

“Don’t cry, _holdes Herz_, life is a comedy, and death its final scene. Last night I dreamt I was dead and hugely enjoyed the ceremony of my burial.”

He gave a soft laugh and his bloodless lips puckered like those of a pouting child.

“They laid me in a gorgeous mausoleum of costly marble, and the walls were bas reliefs of grotesque scenes, sacred and profane—all the utterances of my whole life seemed illustrated on those walls. When they lowered my coffin I began to laugh and could not stop laughing even when they screwed on the lid. Then all of a sudden, as if by magic, I noticed a dark-blue flower spring from the ground at the foot of my tomb. It looked like a passion flower from which were suspended all the instruments of torture used during the Inquisition in Spain. All at once the passion flower assumed human form; it was a living being; it had the sweet face of a charming young woman; a sweet, sad face, full of tenderness and love, was leaning over my dead body. I stared in amazement. It was your sweet countenance, _liebstes Kind_, and hot burning tears were dripping from your eyes and falling upon my dead face. Ah, these dreams! Since the earliest recollections of my childhood I have always been dreaming—my days and nights were veritably different existences. So, you see, I have really lived longer than most men. You must multiply my age by two. I have long passed the century mark. Yes, indeed, I am a centenarian.”

She leaned over him and kissed his emaciated hand in silence.

The next moment sadness appeared on his face. He turned his head and muttered, “_Ach, das ist schrecklich! Ein Toter, lechzend nach den lebendigsten Lebensgenüssen._ All my life I wished to write a Faust—a Faust different from all the Fausts ever written, different also from Goethe’s—but I never fully understood my Faust until now. The conception of my Faust is a devout monk who had piously practiced self-denial and the mortification of his body to such an extent that his flesh shrivelled. Then Mephistopheles comes to tantalize him and brings him a maiden of matchless beauty. The saintly monk falls from grace, flings his life-long belief aside, and woos the fair Marguerite, who returns his love, but the poor monk can play his tune on only one string. Of all his earthly senses desire is the only one left him; a thirst unquenchable. Like old Job, he curses the day on which he was born even as he scraped himself with a potsherd to soothe his pain, but, unlike the Man of Uz, Faust dies with a curse of God upon his lips, without realizing that the great beauty-loving God has punished him for his failure to listen to His Voice earlier in life. The wasted monk is then taken to the region of the Styx, where other fools like himself are baptised in waters of spouting flame and anointed with boiling oil and sulphur, and after a period of purification is sent back to earth, fully rejuvenated. In the second volume of my Faust I would sing of Paradise Regained.”

Albert chuckled. The Butterfly now understood why the critics spoke of him as the German Voltaire. No one could be at once so reverent and blasphemous as Albert.

The sun was setting, the afternoon glow was gone, invisible shades of darkness were descending upon the sick room; silence was round them. Even the parrot was hushed.

“Ah, the first volume of my Faust I have already lived,” he sighed, “but there won’t be a second volume.” Then, with a light laugh, “who can tell, perhaps the life of Paradise Regained may yet be granted me, too. I rather like the Buddhistic doctrine of Reincarnation. I may return to earth as the crowned Sultan of Turkey.”

She caught the spirit of his levity and remarked, “From all reports you have already lived the life of a Sultan—only uncrowned!”

“_Unsinn!_” There was scorn in his voice. All levity immediately fled from him. “The world has taken me too literally. Alas! When I was in earnest they thought I was jesting and when I jested they failed to grasp my humor—the French are the only people who understand me. When I meant to be a Socrates they mistook me for an Aristophanes and when I played Aristophanes they charged me with trying to be a Socrates. I a profligate! He who has lived the life of a profligate often writes virtuous tracts. It is your priest, your morality-preaching Philistine, your man wrapped in the pure white robe of piety, who is often the real profligate. My life has been given to devotion—I have been a Carmelite, locked in the cell of my dreams. I was a little Ishmael in the wilderness of Beer Sheba dying of thirst. Ah! that consuming thirst, the thirst of beauty that sears one’s soul—thirsting, thirsting—thirsting to the end! I have always loved honorably, earnestly, with all the senses God meant for love. Ah, love! There is nothing else in life worth striving after. What else is there in life? Fame, riches, achievements?—they are only coal burnt to clinkers. If I only had a child on whom to lavish my love in my dying days!——”

A sigh, almost a groan, escaped his parted lips.

“Let me take the place of a child,” she pleaded in a whisper, tears filling her eyes.

“Indeed you are my _allersüsstes Kind_.”

He was fondling her fingers tenderly. “The fates have been kind to me after all to send you to me now, my good fairy.”

Dusk came, the invisible shades of twilight were thickening. With his eyes sealed he felt the approach of night.

“Will you come tomorrow, my child?”

“I’ll come every tomorrow.”

“Until there will be no tomorrow—” He caught his breath as he completed her thought.

VI.

The candle was burning fast; the wick was charred; the wax was all but melted; the dying flame leaping upward from the depth of the overheated sconce. Darkness, and yet again the candle flame shot up.

No one knew better than Albert that his life was spent, that the fire within him was licking the last vestige of life-grease, that he was emitting the last flicker. He did not wish to crepitate and flutter at the end. Let a tongue of red flame be the last memory of the extinguished light.

Save for the Butterfly and his faithful physician, Albert was quite forsaken in his last days. But rarely did visitors drop in and now and then a distant admirer—usually a woman of high rank—from Germany, from England, from Russia, came to pay homage to his genius. His sister had come and gone, but his good mother was obliged to stay away. The poor woman was too old to make the journey. Besides, she was wondering why her son, being the younger, did not make the trip to Hamburg. For he had succeeded in keeping up the pious deception that he was only troubled with his eyes and could therefore not write to her with his own hand.

The Butterfly came daily (except when he bade her stay away, because of his excessive suffering) read to him, and attended to his correspondence. She took the place of his secretary. In order not to fatigue her he frequently paused and chatted. He loved to ramble, to skip from subject to subject, to rake up the dead leaves of the past. His mind constantly reverted to his youth, to reminiscences of Gunsdorf, of Bonn, of Goettingen, to the days when love was in his blood instead of in his brain. He knew he was deluding himself, yet found consolation in the delusion. He persuaded himself that he was in love with the mysterious stranger by his bedside—and what love is not a self-persuading delusion?—and clothed her with all the charms of his rich fantasy, permitted himself to be convinced that the love fever of youth was in his veins.

Indeed, he babbled deliriously the sweet syllables of feverish youth: “My sweetest kitten,” “Soul of my life,” “My maddening love”—red flares from the dying candle! He was again under the warm skies of Italy, his beloved Italy—Ah, Italy! he had hoped in vain to see it again—he was living over again the Florentine Nights with their thousand charms; he met again those black-eyed maidens of his fancy, those ethereal creatures of his dreams—the dreams he invented.

In the young woman by his bedside all the beauties of his dreams were blended. With his eyes sealed, his hand fondling her slender fingers, he was playing the youth again—the make-believe youth. And when she failed to come one day he was feverish with anguish and scrawled love notes to her.

“My Good, All Gracious, Sweet Butterfly,” he wrote entreatingly, “come and flutter your beautiful wings! I know one of Mendelsohn’s songs with the refrain ‘Come Soon!’ This song is running continuously through my head. ‘Come soon.’”

“I kiss both your dear little hands, not both at once, but one after the other.”

And before there was time to hear from her he dispatched another note:

“My dear Girl:

“I am very ill and do not wish to see you today. But I hope that you’ll be able to come tomorrow. Drop me a line if you can’t come before the day after tomorrow.”

An hour later he scribbled another love note, his amorous fever increasing, the restlessness of adolescence in his brain.

“My Dear, Gracious Kitten:

“No, I don’t want to see you tomorrow. I must see you today. Can’t you come today—at once—upon receipt of this note? I am afraid I won’t be able to see you tomorrow because I feel my headache is coming on. I must see you this afternoon and feel the tender caress of your sweet hand, the impress of your lips, the touch of your _Schwabengesicht_, and listen to the sound of your voice. Ah! if I could press my precious flower to my breast! But, alas! I am only a ghost, a spirit.

“But do come at once, my dear, sweet child, and let me kiss your dear little hands and let my lips graze the strands of your fragrant hair.

Madly yours, A. Z.”

He forwarded the last note as if it were of momentous import, and became restive. Marguerite did not understand the cause of his restlessness and irritated him by her constant inquiries. She detested the Butterfly. The wife was suspicious of the intruder, and kept telling Albert that the stranger must be a spy and he ought not to let her read and talk to him and attend to his correspondence.

Yes, Marguerite was positive this Mademoiselle was a German spy and she had roguish eyes and a coquettish look and was “as thin as a rail.” No, no, she was not jealous of her—indeed, not! Marguerite’s fat chin trembled as she emitted a little forced laugh She jealous of the insignificant, plain German girl! It was laughable! While she, Marguerite, may not be as pretty as she had been, but could still hold her own——

“You remember, Albert, what you called me in those days? ‘My sweetest little kitten,’ ‘My translucent sunbeam,’ ‘My fragrant wild flower;’ (Albert tossed his head with evident annoyance)—she emitted another forced little laugh—“Indeed, even if I am not as pretty as I used to be, a flat-chested little hussy like that German vixen could not make me jealous, but I have warned you, and I am warning you again, that she is a dangerous person. She is——”

“I have a terrible headache,” he pleaded, with a grimace on his face.

“You always get a terrible headache when I make mention of this little German intriguer——”

“Can’t you get some other subject to talk about?” he groaned helplessly.

“Some other subject!—and that intriguing woman trying to steal your love right under my nose! This is what I get for my years of devotion! Go ahead and change your will—leave everything—to—this—German—spy——”

She was sobbing, the parrot was calling “_au revoir_,” Mimi, the little poodle, was barking in a falsetto voice, and Albert was beside himself.

At first he begged her to cease torturing him, then grew angry and commanded her to stop, and finally was seized with a fit of convulsive coughing which choked his breathing. Then the nurse appeared on the scene and, with an angry look at Marguerite, took Albert in her arms—his body was so wasted that it weighed no more than that of a child—and laid him on the sofa, which was usually reserved for visitors. The nurse’s arms seemed to have a strange soothing effect upon the invalid. Covered with a white sheet he rested on the sofa until he was himself again.

Marguerite, her arms folded, sat in a chair and wept silently. No, she did not mean to irritate him; she loved her Albert as the apple of her eye; she loved him as much as she did when he used to take her to the opera and to the finest restaurants in Paris . . .

“Marguerite—Marguerite——”

She wept more quietly, her fat reel cheeks tear-stained.

“Marguerite, dearest!” His voice grew tender. “Come and sit by me.”

He drew his right hand from under the white sheet and extended it toward her.

“My sweetest kitten—my fragrant wildflower—my poor faithful wife—” His voice was husky now, tears of tenderness in his throat. “I have always loved you as I loved no other—Come, my guardian angel——”

Presently Marguerite was beside him on the sofa, kissing his broad, cadaverous forehead, pressing her lips against his lips that felt not, and murmuring the endearing terms of years gone by . . .

VII.

Months had passed. It was winter, Parisian winter, the snowless, penetrating winter of mid-February; and it was night, pitch dark, and the hazy fog, like thick smoke, dimmed the street lamps on the Avenue, even the stronger lights around the corner of the adjacent Champs Elysées spread only a glow without illumination. There was the stillness of a winter night everywhere, the stillness of a belated hour, long past midnight, the stillness of a great city asleep.

In a room on the fifth story of a drab looking building, Albert was struggling for breath. He had coughed so much that he had no more strength to cough aloud, only his chest was heaving and the expression on his emaciated face, resembling a grim grin, betrayed acute suffering, the suffering beyond expression. He was propped up with pillows in a reclining posture to ease his breathing, and from time to time he hoisted his right shoulder as if to help his breathing. A candle light on a nearby table cast a shadow in the room, and beyond the shadow sat the woman attendant, dozing.

The clock on the white marble mantle struck the hour. Semi-consciously the invalid counted the strokes—“One, two, three, four!”

The nurse jumped up, picked up a little bottle and spoon from the table, and crossed the chamber toward the bed.

The invalid stirred and shook his head.

“But Monsieur Zorn, the Doctor will scold me if I don’t give you the medicine punctually,” the nurse said.

“Be at ease! I’ll tell the doctor myself that I did not want to drink it. Medicine does me no more good.”

She did not understand him, for the past two days he had been addressing her in German, which was unknown to her beyond “_Ja_” and “_Nein_.” However, she divined his meaning and put the medicine away with a kindly smile.

He turned his head away and promptly forgot the attendant and the medicine. The strokes of the clock were still dinning in his ears; they sounded to him like church bells, like the strange sounds of psalters and harps, like—his mind wandered—the bells of St. Lombard’s Church were ringing and he was watching Christian Lutz jerk his forefingers in and out of his ears. Christian said angels floated around the belfry when the bells rang. Albert laughed. Angels never flew that low, he insisted, but hovered around God’s throne; only pigeons flew around the belfry. And that pug-nosed Fritz with his fishing rod screeched “Al—ber!” . . .

Would that clock ever stop striking the hour? It was positively deafening. He was glad Marguerite slept in a room at the furthest end of the apartment, so she could not hear him cough at night, and now she wouldn’t be disturbed by that crazy clock that was striking endlessly. He wished to call the nurse to make her stop the clock but some one was choking him—some one was gagging him—he could not make a sound! . . .

Presently he was lying on his back perfectly still . . . stretched at full length on a mossy rock on the bank of the Rhine, watching the fleecy clouds shaped like the ruins of a castle against patches of deep blue . . . What bird was that singing so melodiously? No, it was not a bird—it was the string instruments at the Swiss Pavilion on the _Jungfernstieg_—the leader of the orchestra had a funny nose that looked like a suckling pig’s snout, and it wiggled like one . . . And Miriam was standing on a pedestal in front of the palace at Sans Souci. Miriam had no arms and there was a strange smile on her lovely lips . . . He was glad that he was all alone in the Louvre—not a soul around . . . . He rose on his tip-toes and kissed those beautiful cool lips, the moonlight shining over his left shoulder . . . His mother said he must not kiss marble statues . . . His mother—poor mother—the old house in Hamburg must be very cold in the winter . . . She was in tears because her pearls were gone . . . He, too, was in tears and . . . his sister was playing the piano . . . . Was the door bell ringing? Somebody was coming to visit him. He began to count the mounting footsteps—“forty-one, forty-two, forty-three, forty-four”—The footsteps stopped. Someone must have called on the floor below . . . Yes, people called on everybody but no one called on him . . . no one . . . not even curiosity seekers . . .

Suddenly all melancholy thoughts left him and he breathed easier. He felt no pain at all. Strange that all at once he was well again and he was promenading indolently, dreamily along the Rhine. He was strolling, swinging his cane and humming a song . . . No, he was flying . . . He had never realized that one needed no wings to fly . . . He was flying over the Hartz Mountains, over the dark firs of the Black Forest, over the slender silver birches silhouetted in the moonlight, in his ears the babbling of brooks, the laughter of girls, the song of the nightingale . . . and he was sailing . . . sailing . . . sailing through the purest air . . . .

_The End._

TRANSCRIBER NOTES

Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple spellings occur, majority use has been employed.

Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors occur.