The Lost Manuscript: A Novel

"He hopes in vain," exclaimed the Princess, excitedly. "Never will I allow myself to be degraded by an unworthy passion; it has not been without effect that I have been the child of your cares."

"What is unworthy of a princess?" asked the High Steward, reflectively. "That your Highness would keep yourself free from the little passions which are excited in the quadrille of a masked ball there can be no doubt. But intellectual pastime with subjects of great interest might also disturb the life of a woman. Easily does the most refined intellectual enjoyment pass into extravagance. More than once has the greatest danger of a woman been when under powerful external excitement, she has felt herself to be higher, freer, nobler than her wont. It is difficult to listen to entrancing music and to preserve oneself from a warm interest in the artist who has produced it for us."

The Princess looked down.

"Supposing the case," continued the High Steward, "in which a diseased man, in bitter humor, should meditate and work for such an object, the sound person should guard himself from doing his will."

"But they should also not allow themselves to be disturbed in what they consider for the honor and advantage of their life?" cried the Princess, looking up at the old man.

"Certainly not," replied the latter, "if such benefits are in fact to be gained by the playful devotion of a woman to art or learning. It would be difficult for a princess to find satisfaction in this way. No one blames a woman of the people when she makes a great talent the vocation of her life; she may satisfy herself as singer or painter and please others, and the whole world will smile upon her. But if my gracious Princess should employ her rich musical talent in giving a public concert, why would men shrug their shoulders at it? Not because your Highness's talent is less than that of another artist, but because one expects other objects in your life; the nation forms very distinct ideal demands of its princes. If, unfortunately, the ruling princes of our time do not find it easy to answer to this ideal, yet to the ladies of these illustrious families the serious tendency of the present day makes this more possible than in my youth. A princess of our people ought to be the noble model of a good housewife, – nothing more and nothing else: true and right-minded, firmly attached to her husband, careful in her daily duties, warm hearted to the needy, kind and sympathizing to all who have the privilege of approaching her. If she has intellect, she must beware of wishing to shine; if she has a talent for business, she must guard herself from becoming an intrigante. Even the great social talent of virtuosoship she must exercise with the greatest discretion. A well-weighed balance of female excellence is the best ornament of a princess; her highest honor, that she is better and more lovable than others, without parading it, with goodness and capacity in everything, and with no pretensions of any kind. For she stands too high to seek conquest and acquisition for herself."

The Princess sat near the speaker, her head supported on her arm, looking sorrowfully before her.

"My beloved Princess does not hear me speak in this way for the first time," continued the Lord High Steward. "I have often felt anxious about the dangers which a high-flown spirit and active fancy prepare for you, the cradle gift of an envious fairy, who has made your Highness too brilliant and attractive. It is owing to these brilliant gifts that you have not the same aristocratic nature as your illustrious brother, the Hereditary Prince. There is too lively a desire in you to make yourself appreciated, and to influence others. One can leave your brother with full confidence to his own good nature. Every attempt to persuade the soul of the much-tormented child has come to naught. But you, that delicate artistic work of nature which now gazes at me with those open eyes, I have endeavored constantly to guard from an over-refined coquetry of sentiment. I am now the severe admonisher to high duties, because I anticipate the dangers which this love of conquest in your soul will bring upon yourself and others."

"I hear a severe reproof in loving words," replied the Princess, with composure. "I should marry again in order to become distinguished."

"My dear Highness, I wish that you may obtain this great aim as the wife of a husband who is not unworthy of your devotion. Only in this way can a princess expect true happiness. Even this happiness cannot be gained without self-denial, I know it; it is difficult to every one to control themselves. To those who are born in the purple this virtue is ten times more difficult than to others. Forgive me," he continued, "I have become talkative, as often happens to us old people at Court."

"You have not said too much, my friend, nor too little," said the Princess, much moved. "I have always cherished the hope to live on quietly for myself, surrounded by men who would teach me the highest things that it is possible for a woman to acquire. On this path also I find tender duties, noble bonds which unite me with the best, and such a life also would not be unworthy of a princess; more than one have, in former times, chosen this lot, and posterity respects them."

"Your Highness does not mean Queen Christina of Sweden," replied the High Steward. "But to others also this lot has seldom been a blessing. Your Highness must remember that when a princess surrounds herself with wise men, she means always one man who is to her the wisest."

The Princess was silent, and looked down.

"We have now long discussed the possible position of a princess," began the old gentleman; "let us now consider the fate of the men who would be united by tender bonds to the life of an illustrious lady. Granted that she should succeed in finding a friend, who, without unseemly pretensions, would attach himself with self-denial and real devotion to the active and varied life of a princess. He must sacrifice much and forego much; the right of the husband is that the wife should devote herself to him, but in this case a man must fetter the powers, – nay, even the passions of his nature, – for a woman who would not belong to him, whom he could only cautiously approach at certain hours as a friend unto friend; who would consider him at first, to a certain extent, as a valuable possession and a beautiful ornament, but finally, under the best circumstances, as a useful bit of furniture. The greatest sufferer in such a position would be the artist or scholar. I have always felt compassion for the walking dictionaries of a princely household. Even men of great talent then resemble the philosophers of ancient Rome, who, with the long beard and the mantle of their schools, pass through the streets in the train of some distinguished lady."

The Princess rose, and turned away.

"Better, undoubtedly, is the situation of the man," concluded the High Steward, "whose personality allows him to guide, by silent work, the life-current of his high-born friend. Yet even he must not only himself lose much of what is most delightful in life, but, even with the purest intentions, he will not always be able to give pleasure to his princess. He who would be more than a faithful servant diminishes the security of his princely mistress. Should such chivalrous devotion be offered, a noble woman should hesitate to accept it, but to endeavor to attract it does not become a princess."

Tears rushed to the eyes of the Princess, and she turned quickly to the old man.

"I know such a life," she exclaimed; "one that has been passed in unceasing self-denial-a blessing to three ladies of our family. O my father, I know well what you have been to us; have patience with your poor ward. I struggle against your words; it is a hard task for me to listen to you, and yet I know that you are the only secure support that I have ever had in this life. Your admonitions alone have preserved me from destruction."

Again she seized his hand, and her head sank on his shoulder.

"I loved your grandmother," replied the old man, with trembling voice; "it was at a time when such things were lightly thought of. It was a pure connection; I lived for her; I made daily self-sacrifice for her. She was unhappy, for she was the wife of another, and her holiest duties were made difficult to her by my life. I guarded your mother like an anxious servant, but I could not prevent her from being unhappy and dying with the feeling of her misery. And now I hold the third generation to my heart, and before I am called away I would like to impress my life and the sufferings of your mother as a lesson on you. I have never been so anxious about you as I am now. If my dear child has ever felt the heart of a fatherly friend in my words, she should not lightly esteem my counsel now, whatever brilliant dreams it may dispel."

"I will think of your words," exclaimed the Princess. "I will endeavor to resign my wishes; but, father, my kind father, it will be very hard for me."

The old gentleman collected himself, and interrupted her.

"It is enough," he said, with the composure that befitted his office; "your Highness has shown me great consideration to-day. There are others who also desire their share of your Highness's favor."

There was a knock at the door. The waiting-woman entered.

"The servant announces that Lady Gotlinde and the gentlemen are waiting in the tea-room."

"I have still some business with his Excellency," answered the Princess, gently. "I must beg Gotlinde to take my place in entertaining our guest."

Evening had descended upon the castle-tower, the bats flew from their hiding-places in the vacant room; they whirled about in circles, astonished that they had awoke in an empty habitation. The owls flew into the crevices of the tower, and searched with their round eyes after the old arm-chairs, on which they had formerly waited for the stupid mice; and the death-watch, which the scholar had carried down from the lonely room, gnawed and ticked on the staircase and in the rooms of the castle among living men. The rain beat against the walls, and the stormy wind howled round the tower. The wife of the scholar was driving through the night, flying like a hunted hare; but he was pacing up and down his room, dreamily forming from the discovered leaves the whole lost manuscript. And again he wondered within himself that it looked quite different from what he had imagined it for years.

The wind also howled about the princely castle at the capital, and large drops of rain beat against the window; there, also, the powers of nature raged and demanded entrance into the firm fortress of man. The darkness of the night seemed to pervade the halls and the decorated rooms like gloomy smoke; only the lamps in the pleasure-grounds threw their pale light through the window, and made the desolate look of the room still more dreary. The melancholy tones of the castle clock sounded through the house, announcing that the first hour of the new day was come. Then again silence, desolate silence, everywhere; only a pale glimmer from the distance on the covers of the chandeliers and the golden ornaments of the walls. Sometimes there was a crackling in the parquet of the floor, and a draught of wind blew through an open pane upon the curtains, which hung black round the window like funeral drapery. Here and there fell a scanty ray of light on the wall, where hung the portraits of the ancestors of the princely house in the dress of their time. Many generations had dwelt in these rooms; stately men and beautiful women had danced here. Wine had been poured out in golden goblets; gracious words, festive speeches, and the soft murmur of love, had been heard here; the splendor of every former age had been outdone by the richer adornment of later ones. Now everything had vanished and withered; the darkness of night and of death hung over the bright colors. All those who had once moved about and rejoiced in the brilliant throng, had passed away into the depths. Nothing now remained of these hours but a dreary void and dismal stillness, and one single figure which glided about on the smooth floor, noiseless like a ghost. It was the lord of this castle. His head bent forward as in a dream, he passed along by the pictures of his ancestors.

"The timid doe has escaped," he whispered; "the panther made too short a spring: in rage and shame he now creeps back to his den. The powerful beast could not conceal his claws. The chase is over; it is time to set at rest the beatings of this breast. It was only a woman-a small, unknown human life. But the jade Fancy had bound my senses to her body; to her alone belonged whatever remained in me of warmth and devotion to human kind."

He stopped before a picture, on which fell the gloomy light of an expiring lamp.

"You, my steel-clad ancestor, know what the feeling is of him who flies from home and court, and has to give up to his enemy what is dear to him. When you fled from the castle of your fathers, a homeless fugitive, pursued by a pack of foreign mercenaries, there was misery in your heart, and you cast back a wild curse behind you. Still poorer does your descendant feel, who now glides fleeting through the inheritance that you have left him. To you remained hope in your hard heart; but I to-day have lost all that is worth the effort of life. She has escaped my guards. Where to? To her father's house on the rock! Cursed be the hour when I, deceived by her words, sent the boy among those mountains."

He dragged himself onward.

"The third station on the road to the end," he meditated, "is idle and empty play, and puerile tricks. So said the learned pedant. It coincides; I am transformed into a childish caricature of my nature. Miserable was the texture of the net which I drew around her; a firm will could have broken it in a moment. He was right; the game was childish: by a stroke of a quill I wished to hold him fast, and, before the art of the Magister had accomplished its purpose, I disturbed the success of the scheme by the trembling haste of my passion. When the news comes to him that his wife has fled, he also will pack up his books, and mock me at a safe distance. Bad player, who approached the gaming-table with a good method, to put piece after piece on the green cloth, and who in his madness flung down his purse and lost all in one throw. Curses upon him and me! He must not escape from me; he must not see her. Yet, what use is there in keeping him, unless I encase his limbs in iron, or conceal his body below, where we shall all be concealed when others obtain the power of doing what they will with us? You lie. Professor, when you compare me to your old Emperors. I am alarmed at the thought of things which they did laughing, and my brain refuses to think of what was once commanded by a short gesture of the hand. A ball and dice for two," he continued; "that is a merry game, invented by men of my sort; as it turns up, one falls and the other escapes. We will throw the dice. Professor, to see which of us shall do his opponent the last service; and I will greet you, dreamer, if I am the fortunate one that is carried to rest. Does thy wit, philosopher, extend far enough to see thy fate, as happened to that old astrologer, of whom thy Tiberius inquired about his own future? Let us try how wise you are."

He again stood still, and looked restlessly on the dark pictures.

"You shake your heads, you silent figures; many of you have done injury to others; but you are all honorably interred, with mourning marshals and funeral horses. Songs have been sung in your honor, and learned men have framed Latin elegies, and sighed that the golden shower has ceased that fell upon them from your hands. There stands one of you," he exclaimed, gazing with fixed eyes on a corner; "there hovers the spirit of woe, the dark shadow that passes through this house when misfortune approaches it-guilt and atonement It passes along bodiless to frighten fools, an apparition of my diseased mind. I see it raise its hand-it scares me. I am terrified at the images of my own brain. Away!" he called out, aloud, "away! I am the lord of this house."

He ran through the room and stumbled; the black shadow hastened behind him. The Sovereign fell upon the floor. He cried aloud for help through the desolate space. A valet hastened from the anteroom. He found his master lying on the ground.

"I heard a shrill cry," said the Sovereign, raising himself up; "who was it that screamed above my head?"

The servant replied, trembling:

"I know not who it was. I heard the cry, and hastened hither."

"It was myself, I suppose," the master returned, in a faltering tone; "my weakness overcame me."

In the early morning the Professor called to the Castellan, and rushed up the staircase of the tower. He went about the room, pushing boards and planks in all directions; he found many forgotten chests, but not that which he sought. He made the Castellan open each of the adjoining rooms; went through garrets and cellars; he examined the forester, who lived in a house near by, but the latter could give him no information. When the Scholar again entered his room, he laid his head on his hands; prolonged disappointment and the consciousness of his impotence overmastered him. But he chid and restrained himself.

"I have lost too much of the cool circumspection which Fritz said was the highest virtue of a collector. I must accustom myself to the thought of self-resignation, and calmly examine the hopes which still remain. I must not be ungrateful also for the little I have gained."

He could not sit quietly by the discovered leaves, but paced thoughtfully up and down. He heard voices in the court-yard; hasty running in the passages; and at last a lackey announced the arrival of the Sovereign, and that he wished to see the Professor at breakfast.

The table was spread among blooming bushes on the side of the tower that faced the rising sun. When the Professor entered under the roof which protected the place from rain and the rays of the sun, he found there, besides the household and Marshal, the forest officials and the Lord High Steward, who thought, with more anxiety than the Professor, of the sudden arrival of the Sovereign. The old lord approached the Scholar, and spoke on indifferent subjects.

"How long do you think of remaining here?" he asked, politely.

"I shall request permission to return to the city in an hour; I have accomplished what I had to do."

It was a long time before the princely party appeared. When the Sovereign approached them, all present were struck by his ill appearance: his movements were hurried, his features disturbed, and his looks passed unsteadily over the company. He turned first to the forester, who was in attendance, and asked him, harshly:

"How can you tolerate the disagreeable screaming of the daws on the tower? It was your business to remove them."

"Her Highness the Princess last summer requested that the birds be left."

"The noise is insupportable to me," said the Sovereign; "bring out the weapons, and prepare yourself to shoot among them."

As the practice of shooting was one of the regular country pleasures of the Court, and the Sovereign had, even in the neighborhood of the castle, frequently used his gun on birds of prey or other unusual objects, the Court thought less seriously of this commission than did the Scholar.

The Sovereign turned to the Lord High Steward.

"I am surprised to find your Excellency here," he said; "I did not know that you too had taken leave of absence for this quiet life."

"My gracious master would have been surprised if I had not done my duty. It was my intention to have reported to your Highness to-day at the palace concerning the health of the Princess."

"So it was for that," said the Sovereign. "I had forgotten that my Lord High Steward is never weary of his office of guardian."

"An office that one has exercised almost half a century in the service of the illustrious family becomes in fact a habit," replied the High Steward. "Your Highness has heretofore judged with kind consideration the zeal of a servant who is anxious to make himself useful."

The Sovereign turned to the Marshal, and asked, in a suppressed voice:

"Will he remain?"

The Marshal replied, distressed:

"I could obtain no promise, nor even a wish from him."

"I knew it already," replied the Sovereign, hoarsely. He turned to the Professor, and violently forced himself to assume a friendly demeanor, as he said: "I have heard from my daughter of your campaign against broken chairs. I wish to have some talk with you alone about it."

They sat down to table. The Sovereign gazed vacantly before him, and drank several glasses of wine; the Princess also sat silent, the conversation flagged, the High Steward alone became talkative. He asked about a bust of Winkelmann, and spoke of the lively interest which the nation took in the fate of their intellectual leaders.

"It must be an agreeable feeling," he said, politely, to the Professor, "to be in a certain measure under the protection of the whole civilized world. In the majority of cases the private life of our great men of learning passes away uneventfully, but our people delight in occupying themselves with the course of life of those who have departed. If happy accident brings a person into contact with gentlemen of your standing, he must take care that he does not suffer for all eternity under the hands of later biographers. I confess," he continued, laughing, "that a fear on this point has robbed me of many interesting acquaintances."

The Professor answered, quietly:

"The people are conscious that they have by the labor of scholars first been raised from misery; but with greater experience in political life, their interest in the promoters of our present culture will assume more moderate proportions."

"I have told the Sovereign that you have found something here," remarked the Princess, across the table.

"There has been a remarkable discovery made in an ancient sepulchre," interrupted the High Steward; and he gave a diffuse account of a funeral urn.

But now the Sovereign himself turned to the Scholar.

"Surely you may hope to find the rest?"

"Unfortunately, I do not know where to search further," replied the Professor.

"What you have found, then," continued the Sovereign, with self-control, "is unimportant."

It did not please the Professor that the conversation should again turn upon the manuscript; he felt annoyed at having to talk about his Romans.

"It is a few chapters from the sixth book of the Annals," he replied, with reserve.

"When your Highness was at Pompeii," interposed the High Steward, "the inscriptions on the walls attracted your attention. In those days a beautiful treatise upon the subject came into my hands; it is fascinating to observe the lively people of lower Italy in the unrestrained expression of their love and their hatred. One feels oneself transplanted as vividly into the old time by the naïve utterances of the common people, as if one took a newspaper in one's hand that had been written centuries ago. If any one had told the citizens of Pompeii that at the end of eighteen centuries it would be known who they, in accidental ill-humor, had treated with hostility, they would hardly have believed it. We indeed are more cautious."

"That was the hatred of insignificant people," replied the Sovereign, absently. "Tacitus knew nothing of that, he only concerned himself about the scandal of the court. Probably he also held office."

The Princess looked uneasily at the Sovereign.

"Is there anything in the contents of the parchment leaves which would be interesting to us ladies?" she said, endeavoring to turn the conversation.

"Nothing new," replied the Scholar. "As I had the honor of telling your Highness, the same passage was already known to us from an Italian manuscript: it is about small events in the Roman senate."

"Quarrels of the assembled fathers," interposed the Sovereign, carelessly. "They were miserable slaves. Is that all?"

"At the end, there is another anecdote of the last years of Tiberius. The disturbed mind of the prince clung to astrology: he called astrologers to him to Capri, and caused those to be cast into the sea whom he suspected of deceit. Even the prudent Trasyllus was taken to him over the fatal rock path, and he announced the concealed secret of the Imperial life. Then the Emperor furtively asked of him whether he knew what would happen to himself that day? The philosopher inquired of the stars, and called out, trembling: 'My situation is critical; I see myself in danger of death.' At this passage our fragment breaks off. The incident may have been repeated-the same anecdote attaches to more than one princely life."