Chapter VIII: Part ONE (2)

When we arrived, our mothers were totally used up; we two schoolgirls felt nothing but sheer bliss. First a day of rest in the hotel, then house-hunting; then moving to a villa on the street that runs along the Kurort to the Dietenmühle; from our balcony one could hear the tones of the music at the Kur. Visit to the Kursaal. Entrance by a vestibule; then through a great ballroom with marble pillars, then to the right into the suite of gaming-rooms. Children were not admitted there; but we two, Elvira with her fourteen years, I with my thirteen and tall of my age, were regarded as young girls, and the liveried porters made no objections. All four of us wandered through the two roulette parlors, the two trente-et-quarante parlors, and the adjoining reception-rooms. All this was not at that time so gorgeously furnished as are now the gaming-rooms of the Casino at Monte Carlo, but was more like the interior of a castle. After we had seen the halls we went back through the ballroom and out on the other side of the building, to the terrace and the park. In the middle of the park lies a large pond, out of which rises a fountain, and on which dazzlingly white swans float. The music—an Austrian military band from Mainz—is playing on the terrace; and below the terrace stand chairs and tables, and there one sees a numerous and elegant assemblage sitting, standing, walking up and down. Many uniforms among them. The Prussian and Austrian garrisons from the fort, and also the Nassau army, are numerously represented there. Our mothers had a few last year’s acquaintances here; among others, a Nassau court dignitary with his wife; and by chance these were present on that first day, so social life was immediately started. That did not at all suit our mothers though: they had come for a far too serious piece of work to give themselves up to sociality. But in the forenoons they would be free, for the patrons of the place did not assemble till the time of the afternoon music; and perhaps it was even better to take the mind off now and then from the harassing exertion of the efforts to foresee.

A very tall youth in cadet uniform came up to our group. He was a nephew of the Court Marshal of Nassau, and begged to be introduced; Baron Friedrich von Hadeln. The young man saluted respectfully first the older ladies, then, with equal respect, us two. We thanked him graciously: we really were, then, already veritable young ladies.

Friedrich von Hadeln—he may have been eighteen years old—had strikingly noble features, a sort of Roman head. He talked very vivaciously, addressing especially us two. Elvira could not overcome her bashfulness, and remained reticent. I reaped the benefit of the conversational practice in our games of puff, and engaged in a lively dialogue.

The main action of the plot began at once on the next day. Aunt Lotti betook herself to the roulette table and won. While she was in the gaming-room we two girls stayed out on the terrace under my mother’s protection. And when my mother then went about her serious task—likewise winning on the first days—Aunt Lotti took up the business of watching over us. My youth fell in a time when a girl of good family must not stay a quarter of an hour unwatched. Ten steps across the street alone—that must not happen; by that one would have been, if not lost, yet irremediably compromised. The chaperon system, from which the young womanhood of to-day has made its escape by the bicycle, by the tennis-racket, and by the total change of standpoint in general, was then in its fullest vogue.

The thriving business of the millions (each had already doubled her working capital) was carried on only in the forenoon; the afternoon was filled out at the Kur music, or in walks to the Dietenmühle or the Greek chapel, and very frequently young Hadeln joined us. In the villa next door to us there lived an English family, Sir and Lady Tancred, with a seventeen-year-old daughter named Lucy. My cousin became violently infatuated with Lucy, but the little Englishwoman preferred me. I remember a call that the Tancred family made upon us, when the mother (who, be it said, was expecting very soon to be again a mother) sat down to the piano and sang an English ballad. The lady, who may have been thirty-four to thirty-five, seemed to us inordinately old, and the recollection of her performance remained in our memory for years as a fearfully comical episode. To be sure, she also sang without any voice, and with that English exaggeration of accented syllables which in itself is so unmusical. To choke down our laughter cost us an unspeakable effort at the time, and for years it continued to be a favorite comic performance in our circle when I sat down to the piano and sang as Lady Tancred “Oh—remembrance will come and remembrance will go—oh!”

Every Wednesday there was a ball in the great ballroom of the Kurhaus, but it was a very mixed company that attended. Every Saturday, on the other hand, there was held in the small halls a “_réunion dansante_” to which one had to procure cards of invitation, and in which there came together only the élite of the outsiders and the leaders of local society. Lady Tancred meant to take her daughter to one of these. Our mothers were urged to come too, and to bring us. “Ridiculous!” said they; “such children at a grown people’s ball! It’s out of the question.” But the Tancreds kept soliciting them, and we plied them with the most urgent entreaties, till the scruples gave way. Why, were we being treated as children here at all? Were we not taken to the Kursaal, to the music in the park? did not all the people, especially the young gentlemen, behave toward us as if we were grown up? Oh well, then, so be it; these little _réunions_ are not formal balls anyhow, and if it gives the children such very great pleasure....

Meanwhile the great undertaking had fallen off somewhat. The winnings were gone again. Some blunder had been made, against which they would be on their guard in the future—you see it is different here from what it is at home—one gets carried away and plays without regard to the system; such a thing must not happen again. The thing to do now was, first rest a few days, and then begin at the beginning again and adhere strictly to the rules.

The preparations for the _réunion_ were made. We were to wear misty white dresses, and for ornaments—the idea originated with us children—a wreath of cornflowers in our hair, a garland of cornflowers outlining the top of the corsage, and the overskirt caught up with little bunches of cornflowers. In the villa next door lived a florist; the order was given to him. I can still remember how I felt in the greenhouse where the florist took our order: how damp and warm it smelt there, how the red and white and yellow blossoms flamed round about—but loveliest among all the gay flower-mosaic the blue of a mass of cornflowers. Would we not look like elves of the field, so fresh and unassuming and poetic?—And that in the brightly lighted ballroom! We should make a sensation, and we were blissful—blissful as ever silly girls can be before their first ball, which they really have not yet any proper right to attend. But were we not exceptional creatures altogether, born to exceptional fates? If the million-factory did go wrong, what of it? The cornflowers would be a more original adornment than diamonds, and happiness did not lie in the external world and its treasures; it lay in us, in our buoyant sense of youth, in our—let me say it—immeasurable conceit. The one the greatest female dramatist of the future; the other, if nothing else, at any rate a beauty thronged with adorers—Oh, the silly, silly girls!

The great day came on. The florist punctually delivered his garlands: they were fastened to our clothes and into our hair; it really did look pretty, even if not so celestial as in our eyes. There was still daylight—for the month was June and the hour for the assembly was eight—when we, each with her mamma, got into two carriages (in one our toilets would have been crumpled up too much) and arrived at the Kursaal with beating hearts. On entering the brilliantly lighted parlors we saw our image in the ceiling-high mirrors, and observed the fact that the cornflowers appeared no longer blue but lilac. However, this did not impair the originality of the floral ornaments.

We met many acquaintances, and new ones had themselves introduced. Friedrich von Hadeln asked me for the first quadrille. I thought I noticed that a shade of annoyance flew over Elvira’s face. My vis-à-vis in this first quadrille of my life was Hadeln’s older sister Franziska. When her brother told me Franziska was twenty-three years old, I was amazed that so elderly a young lady still cared to dance, and I felt pity for her.

Among the Nassau officers who had themselves introduced to my mother and me there was a Prince Philipp Wittgenstein, who, as far as I can remember, paid noticeable attentions to me. Was a living game of puff to begin on this very first evening? Nay, for the young lieutenant did not especially please me, and I did have sense enough to see that I was still rather too young to marry. But it is a fact that a week later, on occasion of the second _réunion_, Prince Philipp Wittgenstein formally asked my mother for my hand.

My mother laughed: “The child is thirteen years old—under these circumstances you will not take offense at my declining your offer.” Thereupon the suitor withdrew. The affair was to me a pleasant little triumph, but I did not take it to heart.

Our stay in Wiesbaden was prolonged into the autumn, and ended with recognition of the fact that it is not so easy to break the bank—easier to break one’s self. After alternations of good and bad luck the capital that we brought with us was expended, a supplementary remittance was likewise lost, and the castle of Eisgrub at Brünn and the pink diamonds went up in smoke.

The two ladies did not on that account doubt their miraculous endowments; they only conceded that the excitement of real gambling paralyzes this gift—that one may be clairvoyant enough at home, but at the green table, where real gold is paid out or is drawn in by the pitiless rake, this magnetic force ceases to work. It was painful to renounce the beautiful dream, but against the fact of the fiasco nothing could be said, so the affair was given up; we went back to our home somewhat poorer in money, richer in experience. The two mothers were very much cast down, but the daughters were enraptured with the journey and with their taste of the pastimes of watering-place life. These memories would be something to live on for a long time.

Now we moved from Brünn to Vienna. Social life was over. We were relegated to the schoolroom again, as befitted our age. I devoted myself with redoubled industry to my studies in languages and the piano, and made excerpts from Brockhaus’s _Konversationslexikon_. The games of puff grew somewhat rare, for Elvira lived in a distant quarter of the city with her mother, and we came together only once or twice a week. She continued writing poetry. “Delascar,” which had been interrupted by the journey to Wiesbaden, was now polished and finished. Then came a comedy, _Der Briefträger_ (“The Letter-Carrier”), and a sequence of ballads whose collective title I do not now remember.

The young poetess wanted to get the verdict of experts, and sent her manuscripts to Joseph von Weilen, whose dramas were at that time having much success in the Burgtheater, and to Feldmann, the writer of comedies. And she ventured higher yet: she addressed herself to Grillparzer, who was at the height of his renown, and to Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, whose star was then beginning to rise.

These two came to call on Elvira, and it was at our apartments. I can still see in my mind the old and somewhat morose Grillparzer as he came into our room, fatigued with stair-climbing. He had a lively conversation with Elvira, and urged her to keep on writing diligently—she might come to produce notable work. And young Marie Ebner—she was twenty-eight at the time—came likewise to return Elvira’s visit and give her verdict. This too, I believe, was favorable. Unhappily I cannot recall the details of these interesting visits. I have retained merely the impression that on that occasion Frau Ebner was especially pleased with _me_, though I was only a secondary person there. Later too, when she corresponded with Elvira or met her, she always inquired with interest for the beautiful (she said “beautiful,” I cannot help it, and after nearly half a century it is permissible to claim the long-lost epithet) Countess Kinsky.

Shall I here interpolate a personal description and tell how I looked at fifteen? Why not? Well, then,—an incredible abundance of hair, dazzling white little teeth,—Enough, I would rather stop. This self-flattery, even if it does date back to gray antiquity, has too silly a sound for me.

One day—it was in the beginning of the year 1858—my guardian came in looking quite pale.

“Do you know the news?”

“What has happened?” cried my mother. “Why, you are all upset!”

“Radetzky is dead!”

I remember that the news made on me the impression that one of the world’s darkest catastrophes had come upon it—the great Field Marshal no more! I knew what adoration Fritzerl felt for him and how painfully this loss must affect him. To be sure, Radetzky was already ninety-two; but for that very reason it seemed as if he were not to die at all, or at least as if he were predestined to come to be a hundred. At any rate the world, particularly Austria, was the poorer by a treasure. Such a hero! Such a demigod! My admiration for soldierly fame was devotional. There was nothing more piously loyal to the military than I. If any one had at that time had the idea of writing a book with such a nefarious title as _Die Waffen nieder_ I should have deeply despised the author. Elvira was just the same. Radetzky’s death put her muse in a painful commotion at once. That same day a long poem was produced: a poetic wreath of all plants and flowers to lay on the grave of the victor of Custozza—roses, immortelles, pansies, but chiefly laurel, a stanza for each species.

With pride and emotion she gave us the hearing of this poem. She wept; I wept; Aunt Lotti decided, “To-morrow you must send that to your godfather Huyn and ask his judgment.”

Next day the manuscript went off to Galicia, where General Huyn was in garrison at the time. The answer arrived after a while,—in verse too. The yellowed sheet is in my possession, and I will copy it here; not that it has intrinsic literary value, but it offers an illustration of the pious spirit that so strikingly characterized the writer.

Stanislau, February 18, 1858

TO KAROLINE

A host of lines thou sendest me,
For critic aid applying!
In prose I’ve shown proficiency,
But not in versifying.

Yet to myself I did confess,
If I am fit to greet her,
I must my little poetess
Address likewise in meter.

Once more, as in the days gone by,
Because the task compels me,
On Pegasus I’ll boldly fly,
And give thee what sense tells me.

The blossoms full of Love’s bright glow
Express their feelings fairly;
And yet their pretty praises go
With that old man’s life barely.

One thing, besides, has been left out
(An error hard to pardon)
That grows most freely all about,
Ev’n in our hero’s garden.

The thorns it is, that interlace
With all through which we wander,
At every time, in every place—
My Karolin’, O ponder!

The Lord has set them in our life
In every shape of sorrow,
That we might from this painful strife
Look gladly to a morrow.

The thorn flower thus upraised its voice:
“Thou fortunate old hero,
In thee let all the world rejoice,
At last _I_ give thee zero!

“This warrior, as he reached his goal,
Finds me with ready warning
To men who fame and glory’s scroll
Crave too much for adorning.

“To all I fain a song would raise,
As from this tomb they sever,
That outward pomp and human praise
Can make men happy never.”

· · · · ·

The world of men goes blindly on,
Deceived by seeming merely;
The higher Judge ascends the throne;
He, He alone sees clearly.

Before the mighty judgment seat,
To hear the final sentence,
Proud kings and poorest serfs will meet,
Relying on repentance.

The dead will heed no song of praise,
No vain encomium paid them.
What will avail thy tuneful lays?
Thy prayers alone will aid them!

My child, up to this lofty height
A God man’s soul hath lifted:
“That we on earth may still unite
With those who’ve from us drifted.”

They who i’ the Faith have found release,
And passed away before ye,
Cry, “Seek within your heart for peace,
Not in this world’s false glory.”

Believe me, ’tis a solemn fact,
When Christians find interment
There’s nothing that will more detract
Than Eulogy’s preferment.

So in thy song of praise make known
How, ’spite of banners flying,
Within the tomb, unrobed, alone,
A hapless wretch is lying;

And he, a sinful mortal, now
His honors seeming hateful,
Will, trembling in God’s presence, bow,
And for thy prayers be grateful.

Then to thy beauteous wreath of fame,
Of laurel and everlasting,
Which to the splendor of his name
On the marshal’s tomb thou ’rt casting,

Choose one more blossom, meek and still,
To soothe earth’s grief its dower,
Which may our hearts with comfort fill—
That is the passion flower,

The symbol of the Cross. When dyes
Of dawn the world astonish,
And the laurel cries, “Here a hero lies!”
This shall to prayer admonish.
J. K. H.

Thus wrote the general about the Field Marshal. Aspergillum and saber!

Elvira was not edified; she had hoped for more appreciation of her martial hymn.

The summer of the same year we spent at the castle of Teikowitz, the Moravian estate of Landgrave Fürstenberg. He himself was not there, he had only put the castle hospitably at our disposal. Aunt Lotti and Elvira were invited too. There were no other guests, and calls were not exchanged with neighbors; so we four women spent this summer in real rural isolation and quiet. The beautiful park full of flowers, and the near forest, offered us blithe enjoyment of nature. Elvira wrote poetry more assiduously than ever, I kept up a great deal of reading and piano-playing. We two drew closer and closer in friendship—exchanged oaths to be constant in our friendship till our life’s end. Our mothers found it a little tedious, it would seem, for as a pastime they took up their experiments again to see if the faculty of presentiment still worked. Once more numbers were drawn and trente-et-quarante cards dealt, “but only for fun,” they said. For it was proved that the atmosphere of the gaming-room suspended the capacity for guessing, even when it had stood the tests ever so well at home; so we would not allow the great plans and projects to take another start. But it really would be interesting to ascertain whether that capacity had been altogether annihilated by the time spent at the real bank, or whether in the quiet of merely fictitious play it would reappear.

And lo, it did reappear. Not quite so brilliantly as before, but yet sufficiently to achieve great imaginary winnings. Should we perhaps risk it once more after all? Perhaps a second time they would be hardened against the “agitation” there? But no, that would be temerity. Besides, gaming is a detestable thing, it really afforded no pleasure at all—so no thoughts of going to the German watering-places again! But here in Teikowitz it was just as innocent as it was interesting to test that occult power.... Elvira, who officiated as drawer of the numbers, often urged that we should take another trip to Wiesbaden by all means; if not this year, next year anyhow. That was all the dream of her life, to see Wiesbaden again—it had been so divinely beautiful there.

Before me lies an old album which belonged to my cousin, and which I received after her death. On the first leaves there are entries in which is mirrored a chapter of romance that was enacted between us girls.

On the first page a small painted portrait shows my mother, the giver of the album: “Your loving Aunt Sophie, May 2, 1857.” Then come a few dried flowers and album-verses from various friends and acquaintances, witty inscriptions after the style of “S. N. D. our friendship never,”—

And now begins the romance:

For dear heaven’s sake!
Bertha Kinsky
Past!
8th July:

Remember that day. The 3rd friendship was sworn, the 8th you have
proved it.

And on the next leaf,

Thank you!!

[Dried spray of birch]

Not past any more! These leaves are the witnesses of its ceasing to be past.

Taikowitz, the 19th July 1858.[3]

Here follows the elucidation of these enigmatical inscriptions:

One day I went into Elvira’s room, and, as was very often the case, found her sitting at her writing-desk. I came up to her and saw her hastily cover up the blank-book in which she had been writing.

“What did you hide the book for?”

“I?” and she was suffused with fiery red.

“Show it to me.”

“No, no—”

“Have you secrets from me? Do you call that friendship?”

“You would laugh at me, mock at me!”

“Mock at you, I? You think thus of _my_ friendship?”

“The book has love-songs in it.”

“Well, every poet writes those; there’s nothing to laugh at in that. On the contrary, I always feel that you write too many ballads, nothing that sounds personal. Read me one of those love-songs, do.”

She drew out the book:

“All right, you shall hear the first—there are ten of them in all.”

She read. They were glowing stanzas. I do not mean such as many of our up-to-date young girls print, volcanic outbursts of eroticism; but, within the range of the permissible, the respectably permissible, they were enthusiastic outpourings of heartfelt devotion. I thought them marvelous.

“You must send that to Grillparzer.”

“No, there must never a stranger see these poems—my love is my secret.”

“Your love? Why, surely that is only poetry; we don’t see anybody but the old schoolmaster and the minister; your verses are addressed to an ideal—”

“My ideal is alive; look here!”

She pushed the book over to me and pointed to the final poem. The next to the last line ended with the word _adeln_ (unhappily I have forgotten the rest of the line), and the last ran

_Weil ich dich liebe, Friedrich zu Hadeln._
(Because I love thee, Friedrich of Hadeln.)

“For dear heaven’s sake!” I exclaimed. It had given me a turn. There before me was the miracle. A real living love for a real living object. Elvira seemed to me transformed, and now the remembered figure of the Nassau ensign too came before my soul bathed in magical light. Yes, he was in truth handsome, and assuredly there was in his nature the power to _adeln_, “ennoble,” those who had learned to understand and to love him, the adorable Friedrich von Hadeln.

To make a long story short, in a few days I too was “in love.” I let Elvira pour out to me her enthusiasm and her accounts of what had so greatly pleased her about him, and what she had felt all this time with this hidden passion in her heart; I called back to my memory the features of him who was so glowingly admired; and soon I could not understand how it was that I had not also fallen in love on the spot—now, now, the fire began to burn in my heart too. I remember exactly how at a certain time it came over me clearly, the consciousness that I was equally in love with the irresistible Friedrich. In the night I had dreamed vividly of Wiesbaden. Again I danced the quadrille with the ensign, his elder sister vis-à-vis,—I felt the pressure of his hand in the _chaîne anglaise_ and heard the tone of his voice. In the morning, on waking, I had the feeling that something new, rich, warm, gladsome, was inundating my soul. What could this be? For a few seconds I had no answer to this question, but then, with the recollection of the dream, I knew what it was: love.

I relate this because this sensation remained so distinctly stamped on my memory that I have derived from it a piece of knowledge which perhaps not every one has discovered, or not every one preserved in memory,—to wit, that in youth being in love comes upon one like something elemental, like a newly existing sort of material so to speak, and is then carried around with one as a possession, as a treasure. If it be even a hapless love, by this very misfortune one feels himself enriched, elevated, transformed. It may be a suffering, but it is a suffering which is unspeakably sweeter than all hitherto-known joys. That my love was a hapless, nay, a tragic love, was a thing of which I was conscious not without pride. The humorous side of the whole thing did not become clear to me till long afterward. At the time I saw only the frightful situation—I loved the same man for whom the friend of my bosom was burning, therefore I loved hopelessly.

Was I to confide in her, or lock my terrible secret in the depths of my soul? I decided for the former. I had reproached her too bitterly for having so long kept silence toward me—and we had then exchanged the promise that henceforth we would impart to each other everything, everything. I owed her a confession, therefore, and I made it in the way of inscribing on the page of her album the lamentable word “Past!” in English.

But now Elvira showed herself in her whole greatness. She said, “My friendship shall not only be sworn, it shall be proved too.—I step back, I renounce—be Friedrich von Hadeln yours.” And I could set down in the album, “On the 8th of July you have proved your friendship.” For a while I hesitated to accept the self-sacrificing present, but in a short time I seem to have given in, since so soon as July 13th I could set down that it was no longer past. “You are beautiful, you are brilliant,—by the gift of your hand he will become a thousand times happier than by insignificant me—therefore I renounce, not only for your sake but for his.” These reasons she adduced, and such as these; and I took possession of the sweetheart so nobly resigned to me, took possession so thoroughly that henceforth our games of puff assumed a new form. I remained the heroine, but the hero no longer played different parts; he was always Friedrich von Hadeln again and again, only in different situations.

But the drollest thing about this schoolgirl romance is that next summer we really made the journey to Wiesbaden again, that we met Him there, and that he paid neither of us the least attention. This reality speedily sobered us. We did not laugh at each other as we deserved, for we had too much respect for the conflicts of soul that we had undergone; but we were cured. And in later years we laughed, too, over the story.

III
AN AUTOGRAPH ALBUM
Anastasius Grün · Friedrich Halm · Grillparzer · Wagner · Lenau’s
sister · Military autographs · King Ludwig of Bavaria · Schiller’s
daughter · Liebig · Schücking · Mädler · Körner · Anderssen ·
Meyerbeer · Rückert · Hebbel · Gregorovius · Lamartine · Victor Hugo ·
Manzoni · Dickens

I will still linger over that album. There sounds forth from the book, as it were, a whole chime of tones from the past; a whole procession of spirits—right illustrious spirits among them—goes by. Ah, that is the fine thing about youth, that it operates with as many hopes as old age does with memories; to it the joyous “will be” beckons from every quarter—to age the gloomy “has been” shows itself at all points.

So let us turn the leaves. Here is a letter from Anastasius Grün[4] to Elvira, in its envelope. The poet writes:

Esteemed young Lady:

Your letter addressed to my dear wife bespeaks so unaffected a frame
of mind, so noble an aspiration, and at the same time so tender and
womanly a disposition, that it would in any case come very hard for me
to decline the request addressed—properly speaking, to me—in so
earnest a tone, even were it one less easy of fulfillment. Busied as I
am at this moment, I must to-day limit myself to these few lines, that
I may not again, as I lately did by inadvertency, miss a date set by
you. I hope the opposite leaf [it is not in the album] may meet with a
friendly reception from you.

With deep respect, esteemed young lady, your most humble servant

A. Auersperg

Graz, March 26, 1861.

Now a few more pages:

_Es liebt Vortreffliches sich zu verstecken_

That which is choicest loves to lie concealed,
And many a woman’s heart even to this day
Still hides within it an America
Which could by a Columbus be revealed.

Friedrich Halm

Vienna, July 17, 1861.

_Der Dichter liegt seit lang begraben_

The poet has lain buried long;
The man is living, for even now
The memory of thy sweet gifts of song
Doth me again with my lost youth endow.

Franz Grillparzer[5]

Vienna, April 8, 1861.

_Dem österreichischen Mädchen_

[Music]

Richard Wagner

Vienna, May 14, 1861.

A dry flower, and with it the inscription:

From my unfortunate brother’s grave.

Th. Schurz, sister of Lenau.

I can still remember the acquisition of this leaf of the album. Aunt Lotti, Elvira, and I had one afternoon gone on a pilgrimage to the hamlet where rest the ashes of Nikolaus Lenau,[6] for whose melancholy poems Elvira cherished an enthusiasm. On this occasion we visited the poet’s sister, who was living in a little country-house not far from the graveyard. Frau Schurz told us much about the unhappy man’s last years, spent in incurable insanity, and showed us many relics, silhouettes of himself and of Sophie Löwenthal, the woman whom he had loved so passionately with a love not unreturned but unaccepted; and she herself took us to the graveyard to pick there the twig that I have now before my eyes.

Is it accident, or did Elvira know that Nikolaus Niembsch once meant to tear himself away from Sophie Löwenthal and to marry another who was also one of the great and famous figures of the time? At all events, on the following page of the album stands the following autograph:

_Ich will, das Wort ist mächtig_

“I will,” the word is mighty;
When spoken staunch and still,
It tears the stars from heaven,
The single word “I will!”

Karoline Sabatier-Ungher

Karlsbad, May, 1861

Yet it seems she did not speak it _ernst und still_ enough, the beautiful singer, when it came to holding fast the greatly loved and already affianced Niembsch von Strehlenau; for he let her go and returned to Sophie.

Now comes a very strongly military leaf. It bears the signatures Schwarzenberg, Benedek, FML., Fürstenberg, G. d. C., v. Wrangel, Field Marshal.[7] Alongside Wrangel’s name somebody (the insertion is not in Elvira’s hand) has inscribed the following brief dialogue reproducing the famous general’s wooing. It is well known that in spite of all his victories he never succeeded in conquering the dative and the accusative, and when he wanted to apply to the father of his intended for her hand the conversation in all probability developed itself thus:

“Will you call me your son-in-law?”

“I’m sorry, but I have none.”

“Beg pardon—I meant to say, may I call you my father-in-law?”

“Oh, you are married? I did not know that.”[8]

There is furthermore inserted upon that military album-leaf a document which, as the knot that fastens it informs us, was given to my cousin by her “dear godfather Huyn.” It is a large folio page of official paper, with the following not uninteresting contents:

K. K. Landesgeneralkommando in
Verona. II. Sektion Nr. 1064

No. 24

To his Excellency, Royal and Imperial
Chamberlain, Colonel, and Sub-Chief of
Quartermaster General’s Staff, &c., &c.,

Johann Count Huyn

The nature of the remodeling required for the defective
embrasures in the Molinary and Hlavaty works must be determined
by commission.

As chairman of this commission is appointed Lieutenant Field
Marshal Baron Stwrtnik, Director of Field Artillery of the 2d
Army; and as members of it Your Excellency, Lieutenant Colonel
von Swiatkiewicz of the General Staff, and Major Khünel of the
7th Regiment of Artillery.

The time and place for the meeting of the commission are to be
fixed by its chairman.

Radetzky

Verona, October 27, 1856

No. 34

Received at the Royal and Imperial
Quartermaster General’s Staff Division
of the 2d Army
Verona, October 29, 1856
Benedek, FML.

Despite remodeled cannon, despite the installation of the _k. k. Generalquartiermeisterstabsabteilung der 2. Armee_ in Verona, three years later this same Verona was to be Austrian no longer, and what befell this same Benedek ten years later on Bohemian battlefields we know. Confidence in the necessity and utility of remodeling cannon—just now it is howitzers—remains unshaken in military circles.

Elvira and I, of course, felt the due reverential respect for these signatures of generals, and for the complicated technical expressions and complicated arrangements which meant our country’s fame and safety.

The following page too filled us with respect—the loyal deference which is paid to the wearers of crowns. Be it known that Elvira, when she was writing to all the European poets she could think of (I believe she was one of the first specimens of that species which has since then so greatly increased, the youthful autograph hyena), had among the rest sent a letter in verse to King Ludwig I of Bavaria, asking him for a line. By return mail came the answer, which is fastened into the album with pink ribbon:

_Ihr, welche Worte wünscht von meinen Händen_

To her who wishes from my hand a word,
The poetess, although unknown to me,
Right gladly now these lines I will accord;
Inhabitants of the same land are we.[9]

Though we each other’s living voice ne’er heard,
Poet in poet must a cousin see.
To those who to the spheres have learned to soar
The earth gives satisfaction nevermore.
Ludwig

Next follows a leaf with a relic of a genuine king of Poetryland. It is a bit of lilac silk accompanied with the following statement from Schiller’s daughter:

Greifenstein ob Bonnland, June 20, 1861

Here, my dear young lassie, in accordance with your own wish, comes
something that once belonged to Schiller—lilac was his favorite color,
and this is a bit of silk from his _last_ waistcoat. May it be a sweet
remembrance for you! Your Schiller memorial of November 10, 1859,[10]
in the form of a poem, unfortunately did not come to hand; perhaps you
will send me another copy, and will also mention to me the receipt of
this piece of lilac, that I may be set at ease by knowing that it is
in your hands—by seeing your wishes fulfilled.

I always rejoice with all my heart at knowing that Schiller’s spirit
finds a home in young hearts; remain attached to him through all
stages of life, my dear young lady, and kindly accept this little
memento from me.

Respectfully and sincerely yours
Emilie von Gleichen-Russwurm
born von Schiller

Elvira was as enthusiastic for science as for poetry, so it is only natural that in her treasury of handwritings she wanted to see represented also him who was at that time the most celebrated of chemists. He gladdened her with the following letter:

Your lines of July 8 fill me equally with esteem for the writer and
with joy, for they show me a young lady making earnest efforts to
enrich her mind with the incomparable treasures of science; and it
causes me the more pleasure that my writings are among those which
have attracted your interest and attention. I only wish that my
writings may find many such readers of your sex. Accept the assurance
of high esteem with which I sign myself

Justus Liebig

Munich, July 13, 1861

From Levin Schücking Elvira received three lines dated from Rome:

The Lord give thee a time of stillness, warm air, and a quiet heart.

The next leaf bears inscriptions from three Vienna authors:

_Wenn du dem toten Buchstaben trauest_

If you trust in the lifeless letter,
Then, dear girl, most wrong are you.
In the eye is the sole true language,
In the heart the key thereto.
Dr. I. F. Castelli

_Um zweierlei bin ich bemüht_

Two things have been worth effort in my eyes—
God often sends them both in my life’s span:
That he who knows me not my song should prize,
And he who knows me should esteem the man.
Joseph Weilen

_Sei Dichterin in der Welt der Poesie_

Be poetess in the world of poesy,
But never poetess in life’s practice be.
’Tis fine when thy rich mind the world bewitches,
Yet finer when thy heart a heart enriches.
Leopold Feldmann

Now a bit of starry sky, sent by the world-renowned director of the observatory at Dorpat:

1925
Feb. 15.
True orbit of the
double star
S Virginis,
calculated by J. H. Mädler.
Principal star
1836
April 11.
Dorpat, in January 1862

All that is great, and all
that is beautiful, is truly great and
beautiful only by being felt
in perceptive hearts.
J. H. Mädler

Once more a letter from Schiller’s daughter:

Greifenstein ob Bonnland, November 27, 1861

Here, honored young lady, is a page of _Theodor Körner’s_ manuscript,
which I have been endeavoring to get for you and which I succeeded in
obtaining for you day before yesterday. A goodly ornament for your
album, and I hasten to dispatch it to you, to afford you this pleasure
while it is still _November_. I would gladly have sent it to you on
the tenth,[11] but on that dear and sacred day it was not yet in my
hands.

Begging that you too, as hitherto, will hold me in a friendly
remembrance which shall bring us warmly together on every Schiller
Day, I am with the deepest regard

Yours sincerely
Emilie von Gleichen-Russwurm
born von Schiller

Beside it, with the note “Original manuscript of Theodor Körner. Unpublished poem!” a much-yellowed sheet of coarse deckle-edged paper on which stand several stanzas with deletions and corrections:

_Begeist’rung fasset mich mit heil’gem Glühn_

A holy ardor seizes me and fills me
As the soft harmony of thy accent thrills me;
A ravishment that all my soul entrances
Is in thy glances.

Upon thy breast would I, the world forgetting,
My happy fortunes with the gods’ be setting.
The goal of all my eagerness, love-drunken,
In thee is sunken.

Love brings Leander to a sweet undoing;
It plunges [_illegible_[12]] into ruin.
The fairest lot that heart has ever treasured
To me is measured.

With the hot turmoil of love’s rapturous madness
Life’s sun ascends for me in cloudless gladness;
The Horae’s endless light, the radiant morn,
To me was born.

For boldly in thy glances I might sun me;
Thy image pours all ecstasies upon me;
Grandest and most divine of women, thee,
Thee I might see.

Enamored youth! The poem did not receive its final polish nor its last stanzas, and was left unprinted; apparently it did not seem to him good enough to print. It was just dashed off in an hour of intoxicating happiness. He saw life ascending as a cloudless sun, in the radiance of youth, in the light of the Horae—and how soon an enemy’s bullet was to destroy this life! Can it be calculated how much of the beautiful and valuable that stupid bullet shot away from posterity?

I turn more pages. There follows, from A. Anderssen, the great chess-player, a twenty-two-move game of chess; from G. Meyerbeer, the beginning of the overture to the tragedy _Struensee_.

Then once more a verse with an illustrious signature:

_Reines Herz gibt reinen Sinn_

Clean heart gives the man clean sight;
In the pure eye clear and bright
Mirrored lies the world.
Clouded heart gives clouded eye,
World and life and destiny
All in darkness curled.
Friedrich Rückert

And another great poet writes for the album,

_Und musst du denn, trotz Kraft und Mut_

If, spite of strength and courage good,
The thorns your skin will tear,
See to it only that your blood
Does not the rose besmear.
Friedrich Hebbel

A historian too has his say:

Priests place themselves between men and the Deity only as shadows: as
when the eye takes to its help a smoked glass, to see the sun through
this dull medium.

Ferdinand Gregorovius

Rome, February, 1865

Two French letters:

Mademoiselle, vous êtes la poésie même, la poésie vivante et aimante.

A. de Lamartine

Il y a dans votre lettre, Mademoiselle, toute une âme charmante et
c’est avec bonheur que je dépose à vos pieds le nom que vous demandez
pour votre Album.

Victor Hugo

Waterloo, 14 juillet 1861

From the author of _I Promessi Sposi_:

[13]E troppo ricompenso per dei poveri lavori la simpatia d’un animo
gentile e elevato come quello che si manifesta nella lettera ch’ Ella
m’ha fatto l’onore di scrivermi. In un tale animo è cosa naturale che
abbia luogo anche l’indulgenza; e se, in questo caso, essa eccede, è
una ragione di più per eccitare in me una viva riconoscenza. Del
rimanente, l’eccesso dei buoni sentimenti è un inconveniente dei meno
pericolosi in questo mondo. Dio mantenga e ricompensi le nobili
inclinazioni di cui le ha fatto dono.

Voglia gradire la rispettosa espressione della mia riconoscenza e
l’attestato dell’ alta stima con cui ho l’onore di rassegnarmele.

Umil^{mo}, devot^{mo} servitore
Alessandro Manzoni

Under the date “Gads Hill Place Higham by Rochester Kent, Monday twenty-seventh January 1862,” and on mourning paper, Charles Dickens sent the transcript of some lines from “David Copperfield.”

The book further contains all sorts of dried plants picked at famous places, pictures, bits of flags, even a scrap “from the shirt worn with his wedding suit by Louis I of Anjou,” a little stone from “the ruins of the palace of Catherine Cornaro, Queen of Cyprus,” another from “Torquato Tasso’s prison door”—a whole panorama of historical shadow-pictures. All, all, who are gathered on these pages, are dead—all but the one who inserted the word “Past.” And this word is the real leitmotif of the whole book: Past, past—and so I close it with a sigh.

IV
MORE EPISODES OF YOUTH
The War of 1859 · A prank · Elvira’s marriage

So the year 1859 saw us in Wiesbaden again, and there we experienced the episode, so mortifying after our sacrifices made and accepted and after all my puff romances of the past year, of the incomparable Friedrich von Hadeln not wasting on us a word, not a look, beyond the most ceremonial politeness. So far as I now remember, we did not greatly take this mortification to heart: Elvira was perhaps glad that she did not have to witness a rival’s triumph, and I was perhaps relieved at not inflicting such deep suffering on my luckless friend and at the same time making such a bad match into the bargain. Nor did the real Hadeln continue to inspire in me those sensations which his image in memory had inspired. In short, we spent a very enjoyable summer in Wiesbaden.

And yet it was the summer of 1859, i.e. the battles of Magenta and Solferino were being fought. Austria, our country, was suffering defeats. Great bloody fights were heard of. But I know perfectly that at that time the event was as indifferent to me, as little existent, as it would to-day be indifferent to me to learn that a volcano had broken out in a West Indian island whose name I had never heard. An elemental event at a great distance, that is what the war in Italy was to me. I did not read the newspapers much either; to be sure we often went into the reading-room where the papers lay open, but there it was not the political but the literary papers that attracted us; all the more as Elvira had written some novelettes which were accepted by family magazines, and I had in mind the idea of _also_ writing one.—For in the preceding summer, in the white heat of emotion, I had put into rhyme three stanzas to the object of my affections. But in my case the next to the last line did not rhyme with Hadeln (one really must not be so utter an ape), but with Friedrich.

In the illustrated papers pictures of “the theater of the war” did strike my eye from time to time, but I did not pause over them: soldiers and horses lying about, broken cannon, or confused scrimmages, such as I have seen a great many of in history textbooks, do not make pretty pictures. I turned over the leaf quickly.

We did not have in the war anybody nearly connected with us, for whom we might have trembled. My brother, who in the year 1854 had been commissioned as lieutenant, had left the service a year before the war, because he had spit blood and because the service in general was in the highest degree repugnant to him. He was living with us. Mother was jubilant over her only son’s not being still in the army when the war broke out.

So I did not concern myself in the least about events in Italy. There did not arise in me any feeling of horror at the atrocities and misery that were connected with them (why should one be horrified at inevitable deaths that do not concern one?), and of all things there did not arise any feeling of revolt at the waging of war—I was too thoroughly penetrated with the respect and admiration which are generally accorded to this form of historical eventuation. I was not disturbed by any inkling of the shadow of a possibility that one could think of war’s not being in the world at all. As well might one think of leaves not being on the trees, or waves on the sea. Why, war is the form in which human history accomplishes itself: the founding of empires, the settlement of controversies, are seen to by war. Perhaps I did not even reflect on the matter so much as that; I only accepted it as something existent and irreversible, as one accepts the existence of the sun. Many may share this standpoint even to-day; at that time almost all did still share it. Not even Dunant had yet written his little book “Solferino” and thereby given the impulse for the founding of the Red Cross. No one was yet thinking of the possibility of internationalizing the care of the wounded in war; who (except a few men like the Abbé de St. Pierre and Immanuel Kant) would have dared think of endeavoring to obtain an international agreement not to make any such wounded at all?—In the year 1849, to be sure, a Peace Congress had already been held with Victor Hugo in the chair; but who, beside the participants, knew anything about it? Every time, like every man, has for its own a certain field of thought, beyond which nothing is perceived.

When we returned to Austria the war was over. Austria had lost Milan—and our two mothers also had losses to record. All systems, methods, gifts of presentiment and of conjecture, had shown themselves fallacious, and it was solemnly vowed that henceforth and forever the green table was done with. The fee for the lesson had had to be paid, but at least they were now free from the delusion, and at heart glad to be free from it; for gaming is not only reprehensible, it is really also disagreeable, repulsive. Now, thank God, there was no longer any need of tormenting one’s self with the trying duty of utilizing the gift of second sight; for it had been proved once more, and this time definitively, that the faculty of presentiment failed to work at green tables.

The fee for the lesson had not been small. Economy was the word now. My mother gave up her residence in Vienna and rented a little country place near the city, in Klosterneuburg. Here two years were to be spent in the utmost seclusion and frugality. After this period I should be eighteen years old, and a sufficient sum would have been laid by to replace that “fee” and to come back to the world, into which I was then to be introduced. Meanwhile this lonely life in Klosterneuburg was not at all without charms. Aunt Lotti and Elvira were with us, and we two girls again diligently took up our studies and other occupations. Elvira wrote new dramas, corresponded, and industriously wrote letters to all kinds of famous people.[14] I did a good deal of piano-playing and studied languages. For our recreation there was more puff-playing too: Friedrich von Hadeln had nothing more to _adeln_ now; once more the most varied figures were introduced as the heroes of our romances, from American cowboys to European attachés of legation and on again to Indian Maharajahs. Once every week came my dear guardian Fritzerl driving out from Vienna, played his game of tarteln with mother, and told all the happenings at court and in society. There was also an elderly clergyman from the Klosterneuburg convent who was often at our house—a _bel esprit_, philosopher, and jovial associate. We took long walks in the Danube meadows in Aunt Lotti’s company; my mother was not a good pedestrian and contented herself with taking the air in our little garden. It was quite a wild garden, with a brook running through it. I still remember happy hours spent in dreaming on the banks of that brook; the water dancing over pebbles, the growth of bushes all along the bank, among them a few willows with low-hanging branches, all afforded me a quite peculiar enjoyment that I have never found again in any landscape in the world.

The winter then, to be sure, was rather monotonous in our country nest. So once, for diversion’s sake, I played a prank in all quietness. Without telling anybody anything, I composed an advertisement and sent it to the Vienna _Presse_, where it appeared; it made a sensation in our circle.

“I’m going to write to those people!” cried Elvira.

The words of the advertisement were:

“From pure caprice on the one hand, and from the mind’s demand for an exchange of ideas on the other, a brother and sister of gentle birth, living in a lonely castle, desire to enter into correspondence with persons who feel warmly and think deeply. The correspondence will be supervised by a stern papa who means to show the young enthusiasts how unpractical they are with their idea of an exchange of souls. Address _Cela n’engage à rien_, office of this paper.”

“Yes, I’ll write to those people,” repeated Elvira.

“I forbid it,” said Aunt Lotti; “who would answer an advertisement?”

“Oh, let her, aunt,” I pleaded.

My mother fired up: “Perhaps you mean to write too? You’ll do no such thing!”

“Oh, no, I shouldn’t at all care to,—the stuff is too crazy.”

There was a good deal more of talk back and forth about the unconventional advertisement, but I did not betray by the change of a feature that I was the criminal.

In sending in the advertisement I had at the same time written to the editor of the _Presse_ to collect the answers that came in, and, after the lapse of some days, to dispatch them to Klosterneuburg, _poste restante_, under a certain cipher.

Five days later we were going by the post office on our usual walk.

“Please, aunt,” said I, “let us go in; I want to buy stamps.”

We went in. But at the window, instead of asking for stamps, I inquired, “Is there anything for A—R 25?”

The clerk looked, and handed me a bulky package. My heart leaped into my throat with joy.

“What does that mean?” cried the others.

“You’ll find out at home.”

When we reached home I tore open the envelope and let about sixty or seventy letters fall on the table, all bearing the address _Cela n’engage à rien_.

“Look, these are the answers to my advertisement—I’m the brother and sister!”