from the body, which falls like a weary, worn-out garment to the ground. But when we behold the exteriors of these Gothic cathedrals, these enormous buildings which are wrought so aerially, so finely, delicately, transparently, cut as it were into such open work that one might take them for Brabant lace in marble, then we feel truly the power of that age which could so master stone itself that it seems spectrally transfused with spiritual life, and thus even the hardest material declares Christian spirituality.
But arts are only the mirror of life, and, as Catholicism died away, so its sounds grew fainter and its lights dimmer in art. During the Reformation Catholic song gradually disappeared in Europe, and in its place we see the long-slumbering poetry of Greece re-awakening to life. But it was only an artificial spring, a work of the gardener, not of the sun, and the trees and flowers were in close pots, and a glass canopy protected them from cold and northern winds.
In the world’s history no event is the direct result of another; all events rather exert a mutual influence. It was by no means due only to the Greek scholars who emigrated to Europe after the fall of Byzantium that a love for Grecian culture and the desire to imitate it became so general among us; a similar Protestantism prevailed then in art as well as in life. Leo X., that splendid Medici, was as zealous a Protestant as Luther, and as there was a Latin prose protest in Wittenberg, so they protested poetically in Rome in stone, color, and _ottaverime_. And do not the mighty marble images of Michelangelo, the laughing nymphs of Giulio Romano, and the joyous intoxication of life in the verses of Ludovico Ariosto form a protesting opposition to the old, gloomy, worn-out Catholicism? The painters of Italy waged a polemic against priestdom which was perhaps more effective than that of the Saxon theologian. The blooming rosy flesh in the pictures of Titian is all Protestantism. The limbs of his Venus are more thorough _theses_ than those which the German monk pasted on the church door of Wittenberg. Then it was that men felt as if suddenly freed from the force and pressure of a thousand years; the artists, most of all, again breathed freely as the nightmare of Christianity seemed to spin whirling from their breasts, and they threw themselves with enthusiasm into the sea of Greek joyousness from whose foam rose to them goddesses of beauty. Painters once more limned the ambrosial joys of Olympus; sculptors carved, with the joy of yore, old heroes from the marble; poets again sang the house of Atreus and Laius; and so the age of new classic poetry began.
As modern life was most perfectly developed in France under Louis XIV., so the new classic poetry received there its most finished perfection, and, in a measure, an independent originality. Through the political influence of that great king this poetry spread over Europe; in Italy, its home, it assumed a French color, and thence the heroes of French tragedy went with the Anjous to Spain; it passed with Henrietta Maria to England, and we Germans, as a matter of course, built our clumsy temples to the powdered Olympus of Versailles. The most famous high-priest of this religion was Gottsched, that wonderful long wig whom our dear Goethe has so admirably described in his memoirs.
Lessing was the literary Arminius who delivered our theatre from this foreign rule. He showed us the nothingness, the laughableness, the flat and faded folly of those imitations of the French theatre, which were in turn imitated from the Greek. But he became the founder of modern German literature, not only by his criticism, but by his own works of art. This man pursued with enthusiasm and sincerity art, theology, antiquity, and archaeology, the art of poetry, history–all with the same zeal and to the same purpose. There lives and breathes in all his works the same great social idea, the same progressive humanity, the same religion of reason, whose John he was, and whose Messiah we await. This religion he always preached, but, alas! too often alone and in the desert. And there was one art only of which he knew nothing–that of changing stones into bread, for he consumed the greatest part of his life in poverty and under hard pressure–a curse which clings to nearly all great German geniuses, and will last, it may be, till ended by political freedom. Lessing was more inspired by political feelings than men supposed, a peculiarity which we do not find among his contemporaries, and we can now see for the first time what he meant in sketching the duo-despotism in _Emilia Galotti_. He was regarded then as a champion of freedom of thought and against clerical intolerance; for his theological writings were better understood. The fragments _On the Education of the Human Race_, which Eugene Rodrigue has translated into French, may give an idea of the vast comprehensiveness of Lessing’s mind. The two critical works which exercised the most influence on art are his _Hamburg Dramatic Art (Hamburgische Dramaturgie)_, and his _Laokoon, or the Limits of Painting and Poetry_. His most remarkable theatrical pieces are _Emilia Galotti, Minna von Barnhelm,_ and _Nathan the Wise_.
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing was born at Camenz in Lausitz, January 22, 1729, and died in Brunswick, February 15, 1781. He was a thorough-going man who, when he destroyed something old in a battle, at the same time always created something new and better. “He was,” says a German author, “like those pious Jews, who, during the second building of the Temple, were often troubled by attacks of the enemy, and so fought with one hand while with the other they worked at the house of God.” This is not the place where I can say more of Lessing, but I cannot refrain from remarking that he is, of all who are recorded in the whole history of literature, the writer whom I love best.
I will here mention another author who worked in the same spirit, with the same object, as Lessing, and who may be regarded as his successor. It is true that his eulogy is here also out of place, since he occupies an altogether peculiar position in literature, and a unique relation to his time and to his contemporaries. It is Johann Gottfried Herder, born in 1744 at Mohrungen, in East Prussia, and who died at Weimar in the year 1803.
Literary history is the great “Morgue” where every one seeks his dead, those whom he loves or to whom he is related. When I see there, among so many dead who were of little interest, a Lessing or a Herder, with their noble, manly countenances, my heart throbs; I cannot pass them by without hastily kissing their dead lips.
Yet if Lessing did so much to destroy the habit of imitating French second-hand Greekdom, he still, by calling attention to the true works of art of Greek antiquity, gave an impulse to a new kind of ridiculous imitations. By his battling with religious superstition he advanced the sober search for clearer views which spread widely in Berlin, which had in the late blessed Nicolai its chief organ, and in the General German Library its arsenal. The most deplorable mediocrity began to show itself more repulsively than ever, and flatness and insipidity blew themselves up like the frog in the fable.
It is a great mistake to suppose that Goethe, who had already come before the world, was at once universally recognized as a writer of commanding genius. His _Goetz von Berlichingen_ and his _Werther_ were received with a degree of enthusiasm, to be sure; but so, too, were the works of common bunglers, and Goethe had but a small niche in the temple of literature. As I have said, _Goetz_ and _Werther_ had a spirited reception, but more on account of the subject-matter than their artistic merits, which very few appreciated in these masterworks. _Goetz_ was a dramatized romance of chivalry, and such writings were then the rage. In _Werther_ the world saw the reproduction of a true story, that of young Jerusalem, who shot himself dead for love, and thereby, in those dead-calm days, made a great noise. People read with tears his touching letters; some shrewdly observed that the manner in which Werther had been banished from aristocratic society had increased his weariness of life. The discussion of suicide caused the book to be still more discussed; it occurred to several fools on this occasion to make away with themselves, and the book, owing to its subject, went off like a shot. The novels of August Lafontaine were just as much read, and, as this author wrote incessantly, he was more famous than Wolfgang von Goethe. Wieland was the great poet then, with whom perhaps might be classed the ode-maker, Rambler of Berlin. Wieland was honored idolatrously, far more at that time than Goethe. Iffland ruled the theatre with his dreary _bourgeois_ dramas, and Kotzebue with his flat and frivolously witty jests.
It was in opposition to this literature that there sprang up in Germany, at the end of the last century, a school which we call the Romantic, and of which August Wilhelm and Friedrich Schlegel have presented themselves as managing agents. Jena, where these and many other souls in like accord found themselves “off and on,” was the centre from which the new esthetic doctrine spread. I say doctrine, for this school began with judgments of the art-works of the past and recipes for art-works of the future, and in both directions the Schlegel school rendered great service to esthetic criticism. By judging of such works of art as already existed, either their faults and failures were indicated, or their merits and beauties brought to light. In controversy and in indicating artistic shortcomings, the Schlegels were entirely imitators of old Lessing; they obtained possession of his great battle-blade, but the arm of August William Schlegel was too tenderly weak and the eyes of his brother Friedrich too mystically clouded for the former to strike so strongly and the latter so keenly and accurately as Lessing. True, in descriptive criticism, where the beauties of a work of art are to be set forth–where it came to a delicate detection of its characteristics and bringing them home to our intelligence–then, compared to the Schlegels, old Lessing was nowhere. But what shall I say as to their recipes for preparing works of art? There we find in the Schlegels a weakness which we think may also be detected in Lessing; for the latter is as weak in affirming as he is strong in denying. He rarely succeeds in laying down a fundamental principle, still more seldom a correct one. He wants the firm basis of a philosophy or of a philosophical system. And this is still more sadly the case with the brothers Schlegel.
Much is fabled as to the influence of Fichtean Idealism and Schelling’s Philosophy of Nature on the Romantic school, which is even declared to have sprung from it. But I see here, at the most, only the influence of certain fragments of thoughts from Fichte and Schelling, and not at all that of a philosophy. This may be explained on the simple ground that Fichte’s philosophy had lost its hold, and Fichte himself had made it lose its interest by a mingling of tenets and ideas from Schelling; and because, on the other hand, Schelling had never set forth a philosophy, but only a vague philosophizing, an unsteady, vacillating improvisation of poetical philosophemes. It may be that it was from the Fichtean Idealism–that deeply ironical system, where the I is opposed to the not–I and annihilates it–that the Romantic school took the doctrine of irony which the late Solger especially developed, and which the Schlegels at first regarded as the soul of art, but which they subsequently found to be fruitless and exchanged for the more positive axioms of the Theory of Identity of Schelling. Schelling, who then taught in Jena, had indeed a great personal influence on the Romantic school; he is, what is not generally known in France, also a bit of a poet; and it is said that he was in doubt whether he should not deliver all his philosophical doctrines in a poetic or even metrical form. This doubt characterizes the man.
THE RABBI OF BACHARACH[59] (1840)
With kindly greeting, the Legend of the Rabbi of Bacharach is dedicated to his friend HENRY LAUBE by the AUTHOR
A FRAGMENT
TRANSLATED BY CHARLES GODFREY LELAND
TRANSLATION REVISED BY PAUL BERNARD THOMAS
CHAPTER I
On the Lower Rhine, where its banks begin to lose their smiling aspect, where the hills and cliffs with their romantic ruined castles rise more defiantly, and a wilder, sterner majesty prevails, there lies, like a strange and fearful tale of olden times, the gloomy and ancient town of Bacharach. But these walls, with their toothless battlements and blind turrets, in whose nooks and niches the winds whistle and the sparrows build their nests, were not always so decayed and fallen, and in these poverty-stricken, repulsive muddy lanes which one sees through the ruined gate, there did not always reign that dreary silence which only now and then is broken by the crying of children, the scolding of women, and the lowing of cows. These walls were once proud and strong, and these lanes were alive with fresh, free life, power and pomp, joy and sorrow, much love and much hate. For Bacharach once belonged to those municipalities which were founded by the Romans during their rule on the Rhine; and its inhabitants, though the times which came after were very stormy, and though they had to submit first to the Hohenstaufen, and then to the Wittelsbach authority, managed, following the example of the other cities on the Rhine, to maintain a tolerably free commonwealth. This consisted of an alliance of separate social elements, in which the patrician elders and those of the guilds, who were subdivided according to their different trades, both strove for power; so that while they were bound in union to resist and guard against outside robber-nobles, they were, nevertheless, constantly having domestic dissensions over disputed interests. Consequently there was but little social intercourse, much mistrust, and not infrequently actual outbursts of passion. The ruling governor sat in his lofty castle of Sareck, and swooped down like his falcon, whenever he was called, and often when not called. The clergy ruled in darkness by darkening the souls of others. One of the most forsaken and helpless of the social elements, which had been gradually bound down by local laws, was the little Jewish community. This had first settled in Bacharach in the days of the Romans, and during the later persecution of the Jews it had taken in many a flock of fugitive co-religionists.
The great oppression of the Jews began with the crusades, and raged most furiously about the middle of the fourteenth century, at the end of the great pestilence, which, like all other great public disasters, was attributed to the Jews, because people declared they had drawn down the wrath of God, and, with the help of the lepers, had poisoned the wells. The enraged populace, especially the hordes of Flagellants, or half-naked men and women, who, lashing themselves for penance and singing a mad hymn to the Virgin, swept over South Germany and the Rhenish provinces, murdered in those days many thousand Jews, tortured others, or baptized them by force. There was another accusation which in earlier times and all through the Middle Ages, even to the beginning of the last century, cost much blood and suffering. This was the ridiculous story, recurring with disgusting frequency in chronicle and legend, that the Jews stole the consecrated wafer, and pierced it with knives till blood ran from it; and to this it was added that at the feast of the Passover the Jews slew Christian children to use their blood in the night sacrifice.
[Illustration: BACHARACH ON THE RHINE]
Consequently on the day of this festival the Jews, hated for their wealth, their religion, and the debts due to them, were entirely in the hands of their enemies, who could easily bring about their destruction by spreading the report of such a child-murder, and perhaps even secretly putting a bloody infant’s corpse in the house of a Jew thus accused. Then at night they would attack the Jews at their prayers, and murder, plunder, and baptize them; and great miracles would be wrought by the dead child aforesaid, whom the Church would eventually canonize. Saint Werner is one of these holy beings, and in his honor the magnificent abbey of Oberwesel was founded. The latter is now one of the most beautiful ruins on the Rhine, and with the Gothic grandeur of its long ogival windows, proud and lofty pillars, and marvelous stone-carving, it strangely enchants us when we wander by it on some bright, green summer’s day, and do not know the story of its origin. In honor of this saint there were also three great churches built on the Rhine, and innumerable Jews murdered and maltreated. All this happened in the year 1287; and in Bacharach, where one of these Saint Werner’s churches stood, the Jews suffered much misery and persecution. However, they remained there for two centuries after, protected from such outbreaks of popular rage, though they were continually subject to spite and threats.
Yet the more they were oppressed by hate from without, the more earnestly and tenderly did the Jews of Bacharach cherish their domestic life within, and the deeper was the growth among them of piety and the fear of God. An ideal example of a life given to God was seen in their Rabbi Abraham, who, though still a young man, was famed far and wide for his learning. He was born in Bacharach, and his father, who had been the rabbi there before him, had charged him in his last will to devote his life to that office and never to leave the place unless for fear of life. This command, except for a cabinet full of rare books, was all that his parent, who had lived in poverty and learning, left him. Rabbi Abraham, however, was a very rich man, for he had married the only daughter of his father’s brother, who had been a prosperous dealer in jewelry, and whose possessions he had inherited. A few gossips in the community hinted now and then that the Rabbi had married for money. But the women all denied this, declaring that the Rabbi, long ere he went to Spain, had been in love with “Beautiful Sara,” and recalling how she had awaited his return for seven years, while, as a matter of fact, he had already wedded her against the will of her father, and even without her own consent, by the betrothal-ring. For every Jew can make a Jewish girl his lawful wife, if he can succeed in putting a ring on her finger, and say at the same time: “I take thee for my wife, according to the law of Moses and Israel.” And when Spain was mentioned, the same gossips were wont to smile in the same significant manner, all because of a vague rumor that Rabbi Abraham, though he had studied the holy law industriously enough at the theological school in Toledo, had nevertheless followed Christian customs and become imbued with habits of free thinking, like many of the Spanish Jews who at that time had attained a very remarkable degree of culture.
And yet in the bottom of their hearts these gossips put no faith in such reports; for ever since his return from Spain the daily life of the Rabbi had been pure, pious, and earnest in every way. He performed every detail of all religious customs and ceremonies with painstaking conscientiousness; he fasted every Monday and Thursday–only on Sabbaths and feast days did he indulge in meat or wine; his time was passed in prayer and study; by day he taught the Law to students, whom his fame had drawn to Bacharach; and by night he gazed on the stars in heaven, or into the eyes of Beautiful Sara. His married life was childless, yet there was no lack of life or gaiety in his home. The great hall in his house, which stood near the synagogue, was open to the whole community, so that people went in and out without ceremony, some to offer short prayers, others to gather news, or to hold a consultation when in trouble. Here the children played on Sabbath mornings while the weekly “section” was being read; here people met for wedding and funeral processions, and quarreled or were reconciled; here, too, those who were cold found a warm stove, and those who were hungry, a well-spread table. And, moreover, the Rabbi, as well as his wife, had a multitude of relatives, brothers and sisters, with their wives and children, and an endless array of uncles and cousins, all of whom looked up to the Rabbi as the head of the family, and so made themselves at home in his house, never failing to dine with him on all great festivals.
Special among these grand gatherings in the Rabbi’s house was the annual celebration of the Passover, a very ancient and remarkable feast which the Jews all over the world still hold every year in the month Nissen, in eternal remembrance of their deliverance from Egyptian servitude. This takes place as follows:
As soon as it is dark the matron of the family lights the lamps, spreads the table-cloth, places in its midst three flat loaves of unleavened bread, covers them with a napkin, and places on them six little dishes containing symbolical food, that is, an egg, lettuce, horse-radish, the bone of a lamb, and a brown mixture of raisins, cinnamon, and nuts. At this table the father of the family sits with all his relatives and friends, and reads to them from a very curious book called the _Agade_, whose contents are a strange mixture of legends of their forefathers, wondrous tales of Egypt, disputed questions of theology, prayers, and festival songs. During this feast there is a grand supper, and even during the reading there is at specified times tasting of the symbolical food and nibbling of Passover bread, while four cups of red wine are drunk. Mournfully merry, seriously gay, and mysteriously secret as some old dark legend, is the character of this nocturnal festival, and the traditional singing intonation with which the _Agade_ is read by the father, and now and then reechoed in chorus by the hearers, first thrills the inmost soul as with a shudder, then calms it as mother’s lullaby, and again startles it so suddenly into waking that even those Jews who have long fallen away from the faith of their fathers and run after strange joys and honors, are moved to their very hearts, when by chance the old, well-known tones of the Passover songs ring in their ears.
And so Rabbi Abraham once sat in his great hall surrounded by relatives, disciples, and many other guests, to celebrate the great feast of the Passover. Everything was unusually brilliant; over the table hung the gaily embroidered silk canopy, whose gold fringes touched the floor; the plates of symbolic food shone invitingly, as did the tall wine goblets, adorned with embossed pictures of scenes in holy legends. The men sat in their black cloaks and black low hats, and white collars, the women, in wonderful glittering garments of Lombard stuffs, wore on their heads and necks ornaments of gold and pearls, while the silver Sabbath lamp cast its festive light on the cheerful, devout faces of parents and children. On the purple velvet cushions of a chair, higher than the others, reclined, as custom requires, Rabbi Abraham, who read and sang the _Agade_, while the gay assembly joined in, or answered in the appointed places. The Rabbi also wore the prescribed black festival garment, his nobly-formed, but somewhat severe features had a milder expression than usual, his lips smiled through his dark-brown beard as if they would fain say something kind, while in his eyes one could see happy remembrances combined with some strange foreboding. Beautiful Sara, who sat on the high velvet cushion with her husband, as hostess, had on none of her jewelry–nothing but white linen enveloped her slender form and innocent face. This face was touchingly beautiful, even as all Jewish beauty is of a peculiarly moving kind; for the consciousness of the deep wretchedness, the bitter ignominy, and the evil dangers amid which their kindred and friends dwell, imparts to their lovely features an expression of soulful sadness and watchful, loving anxiety, which particularly charms our hearts. So on this evening Beautiful Sara sat looking into the eyes of her husband, yet glancing ever and anon at the beautiful parchment book of the _Agade_ which lay before her, bound in gold and velvet.
[Illustration: HOUSE IN BACHARACH]
It was an old heirloom, with ancient wine stains on it, and had come down from the days of her grandfather; and in it there were many boldly and brightly-colored pictures, which as a little girl she had often looked at so eagerly on Passover evenings. They represented all kinds of Bible incidents–Abraham breaking with a hammer the idols of his father and the angels appearing to him; Moses slaying Mizri; Pharaoh sitting in state on his throne, and the frogs giving him no peace even at the table; his death by drowning–the Lord be praised!–the children of Israel cautiously crossing the Red Sea, and then standing open-mouthed, with their sheep, cows, and oxen, before Mount Sinai; pious King David playing the harp; and, finally, Jerusalem, with its towers and battlements, shining in the splendor of the setting sun.
The second wine-cup had been served, the faces and voices of the guests were growing merrier, and the Rabbi, as he took a loaf of unleavened bread and raised it with a cheerful smile, read these words from the _Agade_: “Behold! This is the food which our fathers ate in Egypt! Let every one who is hungry come and enjoy it! Let every one who is sorrowful come and share the joy of our Passover! This year we celebrate it here, but in years to come in the land of Israel. This year we celebrate it as servants, but in the years to come as sons of freedom!”
Then the hall door opened, and two tall, pale men, wrapped in very loose cloaks, entered and said:
“Peace be with you. We are men of your faith on a journey, and wish to share the Passover-feast with you!” And the Rabbi replied promptly and kindly:
“Peace be with you! Sit ye down near me!” The two strangers immediately sat down at the table, and the Rabbi read on. Several times while the others were repeating a sentence after him, he said an endearing word to his wife; once, alluding to the old humorous saying that on this evening a Hebrew father of a family regards himself as a king, he said to her, “Rejoice, oh my Queen!” But she replied with a sad smile, “The Prince is wanting,” meaning by that a son, who, as a passage in the _Agade_ requires, has to ask his father, with a certain formula of words, what the meaning of the festival is? The Rabbi said nothing, but pointed with his finger to an opened page of the _Agade_, on which was a pretty picture, showing how the three angels came to Abraham, announcing that he would have a son by his wife Sara, who, meanwhile, urged by feminine curiosity, is slyly listening to it all behind the tent-door. This little sign caused a threefold blush to color the cheeks of Beautiful Sara, who first looked down, and then glanced pleasantly at her husband, who went on chanting the wonderful story how Rabbi Jesua, Rabbi Eliezer, Rabbi Asaria, Rabbi Akiba, and Rabbi Tarphen sat reclining in Bona-Brak, and conversed all night long of the Exodus from Egypt, till their disciples came to tell them that it was daylight, and that the great morning prayer was being read in the synagogue.
While Beautiful Sara sat devoutly listening to and looking at her husband, she saw his face suddenly assume an expression of agony or horror, his cheeks and lips become deathly pale, and his eyes harden like two balls of ice; but almost immediately he regained his previous composure and cheerfulness, his cheeks and lips grew ruddy, and he looked about him gaily–nay, it seemed as if a strange, wild humor, such as was foreign to his nature, had seized him. Beautiful Sara was frightened as she had never been before in all her life, and a cold shudder went through her–due less to the momentary manifestation of dumb horror which she had seen in her husband’s face, than to the cheerfulness which followed it, and which was now gradually developing into jubilant hilarity. The Rabbi cocked his cap comically, first on one ear, then on the other, pulled and twisted his beard ludicrously, and sang the _Agade_ texts as if they were tavern-songs; and in the enumeration of the Egyptian plagues, where it is usual to dip the forefinger in the full wine-cup and flip off the drops that adhere, he sprinkled the young girls near him with the red wine, so that there was great wailing over spoiled collars, combined with loud laughter. Every moment Beautiful Sara was becoming more amazed by this convulsive merriment of her husband, and she was oppressed with nameless fears as she gazed on the buzzing swarm of gaily glittering guests who were comfortably enjoying themselves here and there, nibbling the thin Passover cakes, drinking wine, gossiping, or joyfully singing aloud.
Then came the time for supper. All rose to wash, and Beautiful Sara brought the large silver basin, richly adorned with embossed gold figures, which was held before all the guests in turn, while water was poured over their hands. As she was doing this for the Rabbi, he gave her a significant glance, and quietly slipped out of the door. When Beautiful Sara walked out after him, he grasped her hand, and in the greatest haste hurried her through the dark lanes of Bacharach, out of the city gate to the highway which leads along the Rhine to Bingen.
It was one of those spring nights which, to be sure, are mild and starry enough, yet which inspire the soul with strange, uncanny feelings. There was something funereal in the odor of the flowers, the birds chirped spitefully and at the same time apprehensively, the moon cast malicious yellow stripes of light over the dark murmuring stream, the lofty banks of the Rhine looked like vague, threatening giants’ heads. The watchman on the tower of Castle Strahleck blew a melancholy blast, and with it rang in jarring discord the funeral bell of Saint Werner’s.
Beautiful Sara still had the silver basin in her right hand, while the Rabbi held her left, and she felt that his fingers were ice-cold, and that his arm was trembling; but still she went on with him in silence, perhaps because she had become accustomed to obey her husband blindly and unquestioningly–perhaps, too, because her lips were mute with fear and anxiety.
Below Castle Sonneck, opposite Lorch, about the place where the hamlet of Nieder Rheinbach now lies, there rises a cliff which arches out over the Rhine bank. The Rabbi ascended this with his wife, looked around on every side, and gazed on the stars. Trembling and shivering, as with the pain of death, Beautiful Sara looked at his pale face, which seemed ghastly in the moonlight, and seemed to express by turns pain, terror, piety, and rage. But when the Rabbi suddenly snatched from her hands the silver basin and threw it far out into the Rhine, she could no longer endure the agony of uncertainty, and crying out “_Schadai_, be merciful!” threw herself at his feet and conjured him to explain the dark mystery.
At first unable to speak, the Rabbi moved his lips without uttering a sound; but finally he cried, “Dost thou see the Angel of Death? There below he sweeps over Bacharach. But we have escaped his sword. God be praised!” Then, in a voice still trembling with excitement, he told her that, while he was happily and comfortably singing the _Agade_, he happened to glance under the table, and saw at his feet the bloody corpse of a little child. “Then I knew,” continued the Rabbi, “that our two guests were not of the community of Israel, but of the army of the godless, who had plotted to bring that corpse into the house by stealth so as to accuse us of child-murder, and stir up the people to plunder and murder us. Had I given a sign that I saw through that work of darkness I should have brought destruction on the instant down upon me and mine, and only by craft did I save our lives. Praised be God! Grieve not, Beautiful Sara. Our relatives and friends shall also be saved; it was only my blood which the wretches wanted. I have escaped them, and they will be satisfied with my silver and gold. Come with me, Beautiful Sara, to another land. We will leave misfortune behind us, and so that it may not follow us I have thrown to it the silver ewer, the last of my possessions, as an offering. The God of our fathers will not forsake us. Come down, thou art weary. There is Dumb William standing by his boat; he will row us up the Rhine.”
Speechless, and as if every limb were broken, Beautiful Sara sank into the arms of the Rabbi, who slowly bore her to the bank. There stood William, a deaf and dumb but very handsome youth, who, to support his old foster-mother, a neighbor of the Rabbi, caught and sold fish, and kept his boat in this place. It seemed as if he had divined the intention of Abraham, and was waiting for him, for on his silent lips there was an expression of tender sympathy, and his large blue eyes rested as with deep meaning on Beautiful Sara, as he lifted her carefully into the boat.
The glance of the silent youth roused Beautiful Sara from her lethargy, and she realized at once that all which her husband had told her was not a mere dream. A stream of bitter tears poured over her cheeks, which were as white as her garment. Thus she sat in the boat, a weeping image of white marble, and beside her sat her husband and Dumb William, who was busily rowing.
Whether it is due to the measured beat of the oars, or to the rocking of the boat, or to the fresh perfume from those steep banks whereon joy grows, it ever happens that even the most sorrowful heart is marvelously relieved when on a night in spring it is lightly borne along in a small boat on the dear, limpid waters of the Rhine. For, in truth, kind-hearted, old Father Rhine cannot bear to see his children weep, and so, drying their tears, he rocks them on his trusty arm, and tells them his most beautiful stories, and promises them his most golden treasures, perhaps even the old, old, long-sunk Nibelungen hoard. Gradually the tears of Beautiful Sara ceased to flow; her extreme sorrow seemed to be washed away by the whispering waves, while the hills about her home bade her the tenderest farewell. But especially cordial seemed the farewell greeting of Kedrich, her favorite mountain; and far up on its summit, in the strange moonlight, she imagined she saw a lady with outstretched. arms, while active little dwarfs swarmed out of their caverns in the rocks, and a rider came rushing down the side in full gallop. Beautiful Sara felt as if she were a child again, and were sitting once more in the lap of her aunt from Lorch, who was telling her brave tales of the bold knight who freed the stolen damsel from the dwarfs, and many other true stories of the wonderful Wisperthal over there, where the birds talk as sensibly as men, and of Gingerbread Land, where good, obedient children go, and of enchanted princesses, singing trees, crystal castles, golden bridges, laughing water-fairies…. But suddenly in the midst of these pleasant tales, which began to send forth notes of music and to gleam with lovely light, Beautiful Sara heard the voice of her father, scolding the poor aunt for putting such nonsense into the child’s head. Then it seemed to her as if they set her on the little stool before her father’s velvet-covered chair, and that he with a soft hand smoothed her long hair, smiling as if well pleased, while he rocked himself comfortably in his loose, Sabbath dressing-gown of blue silk. Yes, it must be the Sabbath, for the flowered cover was spread on the table, all the utensils in the room were polished like looking-glasses, the white-bearded usher sat beside her father, eating raisins and talking in Hebrew; even little Abraham came in with a very large book, and modestly begged leave of his uncle to expound a portion of the Holy Scripture, that he might prove that he had learned much during the past week, and therefore deserved much praise–and a corresponding quantity of cakes…. Then the lad laid the book on the broad arm of the chair, and set forth the history of Jacob and Rachel–how Jacob raised his voice and wept when he first saw his cousin Rachel, how he talked so confidingly with her by the well, how he had to serve seven years for her, and how quickly the time passed, and how he at last married and loved her for ever and ever…. Then all at once Beautiful Sara remembered how her father cried with merry voice, “Wilt thou not also marry thy cousin Sara like that?” To which little Abraham gravely replied, “That I will, and she shall wait seven years too.” These memories stole like twilight shadows through the soul of the young wife, and she recalled how she and her little cousin–now so great a man and her husband–played together as children in the leafy tabernacle; how delighted they were with the gay carpets, flowers, mirrors, and gilded apples; how little Abraham caressed her more and more tenderly, till little by little he began to grow larger and more self-interested, and at last became a man and scarcely noticed her at all…. And now she sits in her room alone on a Saturday evening; the moon shines in brightly. Suddenly the door flies open, and cousin Abraham, in traveling garb, and as pale as death, enters, grasps her hand, puts a gold ring on her finger, and says, solemnly, “I hereby take thee to be my wife, according to the laws of God and of Israel.” “But now,” he adds, with a trembling voice, “now I must go to Spain. Farewell! For seven years thou must wait for me.” With that he hurried away, and Sara, weeping, told the tale to her father, who roared and raged, “Cut off thy hair, for thou art now a married woman.” Then he wanted to ride after Abraham to compel him to write a letter of divorce; but Abraham was over the hills and far away, and the father silently returned to his house. And when Beautiful Sara was helping him to draw off his boots, and trying to soothe him, saying that Abraham would return in seven years, he cursed, and cried, “Seven years shalt thou be a beggar,” and shortly after he died.
And so old memories swept through her soul like a hurried play of shadows, the images intermixing and blending strangely, while between them came and went half-familiar, half-strange bearded faces, and large flowers with marvelously spreading foliage. Then the Rhine seemed to murmur the melodies of the _Agade_, and from its waters the pictures, as large as life, but wild and distorted, came forth one by one. There was Father Abraham anxiously breaking the idols into pieces which immediately flew together again; Mizri defending himself fiercely against the maddened Moses; Mount Sinai flashing and flaming; King Pharaoh swimming in the Red Sea, holding his pointed gold crown tightly in his teeth, while frogs with human faces swam along behind, in the foaming, roaring waves, and a dark giant-hand rose up threatening from below.
Yonder was the Mouse Tower of Bishop Hatto, and the boat was just shooting through the Bingen Eddy. By this time Beautiful Sara had somewhat awakened from her dreams, and she gazed at the hills on the shore, on the summits of which lights of castles were gleaming, and at the foot of which the mist, shimmering in the moonlight, was beginning to rise. Suddenly she seemed to see her friends and relatives, as they, with corpse-like faces and flowing shrouds, passed in awful procession along the Rhine…. The world grew dark before her eyes, an icy current ran through her soul, and, as if in sleep, she only heard the Rabbi repeating the night-prayer slowly and painfully, as if at a deathbed. Dreamily she stammered the words, “Ten thousand to the right, ten thousand to the left, to protect the king from the terrors of the night.”
Then all at once the oppressive gloom and terror passed away, the dark curtain was torn from heaven, and far above there appeared the holy city Jerusalem, with its towers and gates; the Temple gleamed in golden splendor, and in its fore-court Sara saw her father in his yellow Sabbath dressing-gown, smiling as if well pleased. All her friends and relatives were looking out from the round windows of the Temple, cordially greeting her; in the Holy of Holies knelt pious King David, with his purple mantle and golden crown; sweetly rang his song and the tones of his harp, and smiling happily, Beautiful Sara awoke.
CHAPTER II
As Beautiful Sara opened her eyes they were almost dazzled by the rays of the sun. The high towers of a great city rose before her, and Dumb William, with his oar upright, was standing in the boat, pushing and guiding it through the lively confusion of many vessels, gay with their pennons and streamers, whose crews were either gazing idly at passers-by, or else were busily loading with chests, bales, and casks the lighters which were to bear them to the shore. And with it all was a deafening noise, the constant halloh cry of steersmen, the calling of traders from the shore, and the scolding of the custom-house officials who, in their red coats and with their white maces and white faces, jumped from boat to boat.
“Yes, Beautiful Sara,” said the Rabbi, cheerfully smiling to his wife, “this is the famous, free, imperial, and commercial city of Frankfort-on-the-Main, and we are now passing along the river Main. Do you see those pleasant-looking houses up there, surrounded by green hills? That is Sachsenhausen, from which our lame Gumpert brings us the fine myrrh for the Feast of the Tabernacles. Here you see the strong Main Bridge with its thirteen arches, over which many men, wagons, and horses can safely pass. In the middle of it stands the little house where Aunty Taeubchen says there lives a baptized Jew, who pays six farthings, on account of the Jewish community, to every man who brings him a dead rat; for the Jews are obliged to deliver annually to the State council five thousand rats’ tails for tribute.”
At the thought of this war, which the Frankfort Jews were obliged to wage with the rats, Beautiful Sara burst out laughing. The bright sunlight, and the new gay world now before her, had driven all the terrors and horrors of the past night from her soul, and as she was helped ashore from the boat by Dumb William and her husband, she felt inspired as with a sense of joyful safety. Dumb William for a long time fixed his beautiful, deep-blue eyes on hers, half sadly, half cheerfully, and then, casting a significant glance at the Rabbi, sprang back into his boat and was soon out of sight.
“Dumb William much resembles my brother who died,” said Beautiful Sara. “All the angels are alike,” answered the Rabbi; and, taking his wife by the hand, led her through the dense crowd on the shore, where, as it was the time of the Easter Fair, a great number of wooden booths had been erected by traders. Then passing through the gloomy Main Gate, they found themselves in quite as noisy a crowd. Here, in a narrow street, the shops stood close beside one another, every house, as was usual in Frankfort, being specially adapted to trade. There were no windows on the ground floor, but broad, open arches, so that the passer-by, looking in, could see at a glance all there was for sale. And how astonished Beautiful Sara was at the mass of magnificent wares, and at the splendor, such as she had never seen before! Here stood Venetians, who offered cheaply all the luxuries of the Orient and Italy, and Beautiful Sara was enchanted by the sight of the ornaments and jewels, the gay caps and bodices, the gold bangles and necklaces, and the whole display of finery which women so admire and love to wear. The richly embroidered stuffs of velvet and silk seemed fairly to speak to Beautiful Sara, and to flash and sparkle strange wonders back into her memory, and she really felt as if she were a little girl again, and as if Aunty Taeubchen had kept her promise and taken her to the Frankfort Fair, and as if she were now at last standing before the beautiful garments of which she had heard so much. With a secret joy she reflected what she should take back with her to Bacharach, and which of her two little cousins, Posy and Birdy, would prefer that blue silk girdle, and whether the green stockings would suit little Gottschalk. But all at once it flashed on her, “Ah, Lord! they are all grown up now, and yesterday they were slain!” She shuddered, and the pictures of the previous night filled her soul with all their horror again. But the gold-embroidered cloths glittered once more with a thousand roguish eyes, and drove the gloomy thoughts from her mind, and when she looked into her husband’s face she saw that it was free from clouds, and bore its habitual, serious gentleness. “Shut your eyes, Sara!” said the Rabbi, and he led his wife on through the crowd.
What a gay, active throng! Most prominent were the tradesmen, who were loudly vying one another in offering bargains, or talking together and summing on their fingers, or, following heavily loaded porters, who at a dog-trot were leading the way to their lodgings. By the faces of others one could see that they came from curiosity. The stout councilman was recognizable by his scarlet cloak and golden chain; a black, expensive-looking, swelling waistcoat betrayed the honorable and proud citizen. An iron spike-helmet, a yellow leather jerkin, and rattling spurs, weighing a pound, indicated the heavy cavalry-man. Under little black velvet caps, which came together in a point over the brow, there was many a rosy girl-face, and the young fellows who ran along after them, like hunting-dogs on the scent, showed that they were finished dandies by their saucily feathered caps, their squeaking peaked shoes, and their colored silk garments, some of which were green on one side and red on the other, or else striped like a rainbow on the right and checkered with harlequin squares of many colors on the left, so that the mad youths looked as if they were divided in the middle.
Carried along by the crowd, the Rabbi and his wife arrived at the Roemer. This is the great market-place of the city, surrounded by houses with high gables, and takes its name from an immense building, “the Roemer,” which was bought by the magistracy and dedicated as the town-hall. In it the German Emperor was elected, and before it tournaments were often held. King Maximilian, who was passionately fond of this sport, was then in Frankfort, and in his honor the day before there had been great tilting in the Roemer. Many idle men still stood on or about the scaffolding, which was being removed by carpenters, telling how the Duke of Brunswick and the Margrave of Brandenburg had charged one another amid the sound of drums and of trumpets, and how Lord Walter the Vagabond had knocked the Knight of the Bear out of his saddle so violently that the splinters of the lances flew high into the air, while the tall, fair-haired King Max, standing among his courtiers upon the balcony, rubbed his hands for joy. The golden banners were still to be seen on the balconies and in the Gothic windows of the town-hall. The other houses of the market-place were still likewise festively bedecked and adorned with shields, especially the Limburg house, on whose banner was painted a maiden with a sparrow-hawk in her hand, and a monkey holding out to her a mirror. Many knights and ladies standing on the balcony were engaged in animated conversation, or looking at the crowd below, which, in wild groups and processions, surged back and forth. What a multitude of idlers of all ages and ranks were crowded together here to gratify their curiosity! There was laughing, grumbling, stealing, rib-poking, hurrahing, while every now and then blared the trumpet of the mountebank, who, in a red cloak and with his clown and monkey, stood on a high stand loudly boasting of his own skill, and sounding the praises of his marvelous tinctures and salves, ere he solemnly examined the glass of urine brought by some old woman, or applied himself to pull a poor peasant’s tooth. Two fencing-masters, dancing about in gay ribbons and brandishing their rapiers, met as if by accident and began to cut and pass with great apparent anger; but after a long bout each declared that the other was invincible, and took up a collection. Then the newly-organized guild of archers marched by with drummers and pipers, and these were followed by the constable, who was carrying a red flag at the head of a flock of traveling strumpets, hailing from the brothel known as “The Ass,” in Wuerzburg, and bound for Rosendale, where the highly honorable authorities had assigned them quarters during the fair. “Shut your eyes, Sara,” said the Rabbi. For indeed these fantastic, and altogether too scantily clad women, among whom were a few really beautiful girls, behaved in a most immodest manner, baring their bold, white breasts, chaffing those who went by with shameless words, and swinging their long walking sticks; and using the latter as hobby-horses, they rode down toward the gate of St. Katherine, singing in shrill tones the witch-song–
“Where is the goat? the hellish beast; Where is the goat? Oh bring him quick! And if there is no goat, at least
We’ll ride upon the stick.”
This wild sing-song, which rang afar, was finally drowned out by the long-drawn, sacred tones of a church procession. It was a solemn train of bare-headed and bare-footed monks, who carried burning wax tapers, banners with pictures of the saints, and large silver crucifixes. Before it ran boys clad in red and white gowns, bearing censers of smoking frankincense. In the middle of the procession, under a beautiful canopy, marched priests in white robes adorned with costly lace, or in bright-colored, silk stoles; one of them held in his hand a sun-like, golden vessel, which, on arriving at a shrine by the market-corner, he raised on high, while he half-sang, half-spoke in Latin–when all at once a little bell rang, and all the people around, becoming silent, fell to their knees and made the sign of the cross. “Shut your eyes, Sara!” cried the Rabbi again, and he hastily drew her away through a labyrinth of narrow, crooked streets, and at last over the desolate, empty place which separated the new Jewish quarter from the rest of the city.
Before that time the Jews dwelt between the Cathedral and the bank of the Main, that is, from the bridge down as far as the Lumpenbrunnen, and from the Mehlwage as far as Saint Bartholomew’s. But the Catholic priests obtained a Papal bull forbidding the Jews to live so near the high church, for which reason the magistrates assigned them a place on the Wollgraben, where they built their present quarter. This was surrounded by high walls, the gate of which was held by iron chains to keep out the rabble. For here, too, the Jews lived in misery and anxiety, and with far more vivid memories of previous suffering than they have at present. In 1240 the unrestrained populace had caused awful bloodshed among them, which people called the first Jewish massacre. In 1349, when the Flagellants, in passing through the town, set fire to it, and accused the Jews of the deed, the latter were nearly all murdered or burned alive in their own houses; this was called the second Jewish massacre. After this the Jews were often threatened with similar slaughter, and during the internal dissensions of Frankfort, especially during a dispute between the council and the guilds, the mob was often on the point of breaking into the Jewish quarter, which, as has been said, was surrounded by a wall. The latter had two gates in it, which on Catholic holidays were closed from without and on Jewish holidays from within, and before each gate was a watch-house with city soldiers.
When the Rabbi with his wife came to the entrance to the Jewish quarter, the soldiers, as one could see through the open windows, lay on the wooden bench inside the watch-house, while out before the door in the sunshine sat the drummer beating capriciously on his large drum. He was a heavy, fat fellow, wearing a jerkin and hose of fiery yellow, greatly puffed out at his arms and thighs, and profusely dotted with small red tufts, sewed on, which looked as if innumerable tongues were protruding from him. His breast and back were padded with cushions of black cloth, against which hung his drum. He had on his head a flat, round black cap, which in roundness and flatness was equaled by his face, and the latter was also in keeping with his dress, being an orange-yellow, spotted with red pimples, and distorted into a gaping grin. So the fellow sat and drummed to the melody of a song which the Flagellants had sung at the Jewish massacre, while he gurgled, in a coarse, beery voice–
“Our dear Lady true
Walked in the morning dew,
Kyrie eleison!”
“Hans, that is a terrible tune,” cried a voice from behind the closed gate of the Jewish quarter. “Yes, Hans, and a bad song too-doesn’t suit the drum; doesn’t suit it at all–by my soul–not the day of the fair and on Easter morning–bad song–dangerous song–Jack, Jacky, little drum–Jacky boy–I’m a lone man–and if thou lovest me, the Star, the tall Star, the tall Nose Star–then stop it!”
These words were uttered by the unseen speaker, now in hasty anxiety, now in a sighing drawl, with a tone which alternated between mild softness and harsh hoarseness, such as one hears in consumptive people. The drummer was not moved, and went on drumming and singing–
“There came a little youth,
His beard had run away, in truth, Halleluja!”
“Jack,” again cried the voice of the invisible speaker, “Jack, I’m a lone man, and that is a dangerous song, and I don’t like it; I have my reasons for it, and if you love me, sing something else, and tomorrow we will drink together.”
At the word “drink” Jack ceased his drumming and singing, and said in friendly tone, “The devil take the Jews! But thou, dear Nose Star, art my friend, I protect thee; and if we drink together often enough I shall have thee converted. Yea, I shall be thy godfather, and when thou art baptized thou shalt be eternally happy; and if thou hast genius and wilt study industriously under me, thou mayest even become a drummer. Yes, Nose Star, thou mayest yet become something great. I will drum the whole catechism into thee when we drink together tomorrow. But now open the gate, for here are two strangers who wish to enter.”
“Open the gate?” cried Nose Star, and his voice almost deserted him. “That can’t be done in such a hurry, my dear Jack; one can’t tell–one can never tell, you know–and I’m a lone man. Veitel Oxhead has the key, and he is now standing in the corner mumbling his eighteen-prayer, and he must not be interrupted. And Jaekel the Fool is here too, but he is making water; I’m a lone man.”
“The devil take the Jews!” cried the drummer, and, laughing loudly at this, his one and only joke, he trudged off to the guard-room and lay down on the bench.
While the Rabbi stood with his wife before the locked gate, there rose from behind it a snarling, nasal, somewhat mocking voice. “Starry–don’t groan so much. Take the keys from Oxheady’s coat pockets, or else go stick your nose in the keyhole, and so unlock the gate. The people have been standing and waiting a long time.” “People!” cried the anxious voice of the man called Nose Star, “I thought there was only one! I beg you, Fool–dear Jaekel Fool–look out and see who is there.”
A small, well-grated window in the gate opened, and there appeared in it a yellow cap with two horns, and the funny, wrinkled, and twisted jest-maker’s face of Jaekel the Fool. The window was immediately shut again, and he cried angrily, “Open the gate–it is only a man and a woman.”
“A man and a woman!” groaned Nose Star. “Yes, but when the gate’s opened the woman will take her skirt off, and become a man; and then there’ll be two men, and there are only three of us!”
“Don’t be a hare,” replied Jaekel the Fool. “Be a man and show courage!”
“Courage!” cried Nose Star, laughing with bitter vexation. “Hare! Hare is a bad comparison. The hare is an unclean animal. Courage! I was not put here to be courageous, but cautious. When too many come I am to give the alarm. But I alone cannot keep them back. My arm is weak, I have a seton, and I’m a lone man. If one were to shoot at me, I should be a dead man. Then that rich man, Mendel Reiss, would sit on the Sabbath at his table, and wipe the raisin-sauce from his mouth, and rub his belly, and perhaps say, ‘Tall Nose Star was a brave fellow after all; if it had not been for him, perhaps they would have burst open the gate. He let himself be shot for us. He was a brave fellow; too bad that he’s dead!'”
Here the voice became tender and tearful, but all at once it rose to a hasty and almost angry tone. “Courage! and so that the rich Mendel Reiss may wipe away the raisin-sauce from his mouth, and rub his belly, and call me a brave fellow, I’m to let myself be shot! Courage! Be a man! Little Strauss was a man, and yesterday went to the Roemer to see the tilting, thinking they would not know him because he wore a frock of violet velvet–three florins a yard-covered with fox-tails and embroidered with gold–quite magnificent; and they dusted his violet frock for him till it lost its color, and his own back became violet and did not look human. Courage, indeed! The crippled Leser was courageous, and called our scoundrel of a magistrate a blackguard, and they hung him up by the feet between two dogs, while Jack drummed. Courage! Don’t be a hare! Among many dogs the hare is helpless. I’m a lone man, and I am really afraid.”
“That I’ll swear to,” cried Jaekel.
“Yes; I _have_ fear,” replied Nose Star, sighing. “I know that it runs in my blood, and I got it from my dear mother”–
“Yes, yes,” interrupted Jaekel, “and your mother got it from her father, and he from his, and so all thy ancestors one from the other, back to the forefather who marched under King Saul against the Philistines, and was the first to take to his heels. But look! Oxheady is all ready–he has bowed his head for the fourth time; now he is jumping like a flea at the Holy, Holy, Holy, and feeling cautiously in his pocket.”
In fact the keys rattled, the gate grated and creaked and opened, and the Rabbi led his wife into the empty Jews’ Street. The man who opened it was a little fellow with a good-naturedly sour face, who nodded dreamily, like one who did not like to be disturbed in his thoughts, and after he had carefully closed the gate again, without saying a word he sank into a corner, constantly mumbling his prayers. Less taciturn was Jaekel the Fool, a short, somewhat bow-legged fellow, with a large, red, laughing face, and an enormous leg-of-mutton hand, which he now stretched out of the wide sleeve of his gaily-chequered jacket in welcome. Behind him a tall, lean figure showed, or rather, hid itself–the slender neck feathered with a fine white cambric ruff, and the thin, pale face strangely adorned with an incredibly long nose, which peered with anxious curiosity in every direction.
“God’s welcome to a pleasant feast-day!” cried Jaekel the Fool. “Do not be astonished that our street is so empty and quiet just now. All our people are in the synagogue, and you have come just in time to hear the history of the sacrifice of Isaac read. I know it–’tis an interesting story, and if I had not already heard it thirty-three times, I would willingly listen to it again this year. And it is an important history, too, for if Abraham had really killed Isaac and not the goat, then there would be more goats in the world now–and fewer Jews.” And then with mad, merry grimaces, Jaekel began to sing the following song from the _Agade_:[60]
“A kid, a kid, which my father bought for two pieces of money. A kid! A kid!
There came a cat which ate the kid, which my father bought for two pieces of money. A kid!
There came a dog, who bit the cat, who ate the kid, which my father bought for two pieces of money. A kid!
There came a stick, which beat the dog, who bit the cat, who ate the kid, which my father bought for two pieces of money. A kid! A kid!
There came a fire, which burnt the stick, which beat the dog, who bit the cat, who ate the kid, which my father bought for two pieces of money. A kid! A kid!
There came the water, which quenched the fire, which burnt the stick, which beat the dog, who bit the cat, who ate the kid, which my father bought for two pieces of money. A kid! A kid!
There came an ox, who drank the water, which quenched the fire, which burnt the stick, which beat the dog, who bit the cat, who ate the kid, which my father bought for two pieces of money. A kid! A kid!
There came the butcher, who slew the ox, who drank the water, which quenched the fire, which burnt the stick, which beat the dog, who bit the cat, that ate the kid, which my father bought for two pieces of money. A kid! A kid!
“Then came the Angel of Death, who slew the butcher, who killed the ox, who drank the water, which quenched the fire, which burnt the stick, which beat the dog, who bit the cat, who ate the kid, which my father bought for two pieces of money. A kid! A kid!”[61]
“Yes, beautiful lady,” added the singer, “and the day will come when the Angel of Death will slay the slayer, and all our blood come over Edom, for God is a God of vengeance.”
But all at once, casting aside with a violent effort the seriousness into which he had involuntarily fallen, Jaekel plunged again into his mad buffoonery, and went on in his harsh jester tones, “Don’t be afraid, beautiful lady, Nose Star will not harm you. He is only dangerous to old Schnapper-Elle. She has fallen in love with his nose–which, faith! deserves it. Yea, for it is as beautiful as the tower which looketh forth toward Damascus, and as lofty as a cedar of Lebanon. Outwardly it gleameth like gold loaf and syrup, and inwardly it is all music and loveliness. It bloometh in summer and in winter it is frozen up–but in summer and winter it is petted and pulled by the white hands of Schnapper-Elle. Yes, she is madly in love with him. She nurses him, and feeds him, and for her age she is young enough. When he is fat enough, she means to marry him; and whoever comes to Frankfort, three hundred years hence, will not be able to see the heavens for Nose Stars.”
“Ah, you are Jaekel the Fool,” exclaimed the Rabbi, laughing. “I mark it by your words. I have often heard of you.”
“Yes–yes,” replied Jaekel, with comical modesty. “Yes, that is what reputation does. A man is often known far and wide as a bigger fool than he himself has any idea of. However, I take great pains to be a fool, and jump and shake myself to make the bells ring; others have an easier time. But tell me, Rabbi, why do you journey on a holiday?”
“My justification,” replied the Rabbi, “is in the Talmud, where it says, ‘Danger drives away the Sabbath.'”
“Danger!” screamed the tall Nose Star, in mortal terror. “Danger! danger! Drummer Jack!–drum, drum. Danger! danger! Drummer Jack!” From without resounded the deep, beery voice of Drummer Jack, “Death and destruction! The devil take the Jews. That’s the third time today that you’ve roused me out of a sound sleep, Nose Star! Don’t make me mad! For when I am mad I’m the very devil himself; and then as sure as I’m a Christian, I’ll up with my gun and shoot through the grated window in your gate–and then fellow, let everybody look out for his nose!”
“Don’t shoot! don’t shoot! I’m a lonely man,” wailed Nose Star piteously, pressing his face against the wall, and trembling and murmuring prayers in this position.
“But say, what has happened?” cried Jaekel the Fool, with all the impatient curiosity which was even then characteristic of the Frankfort Jews.
But the Rabbi impatiently broke loose from them, and went his way along the Jews’ Street. “See, Sara!” he exclaimed, “how badly guarded is our Israel. False friends guard its gates without, and within its watchers are Folly and Fear.”
They wandered slowly through the long empty street, where only here and there the head of some young girl showed itself in a window, against the polished panes of which the sun was brilliantly reflected. At that time the houses in the Jewish quarter were still neat and new, and much lower than they now are, since it was only later on that the Jews, as their number greatly increased, while they could not enlarge their quarter, built one story over another, squeezed themselves together like sardines, and were thus stunted both in body and soul. That part of the Jewish quarter which remained standing after the great fire, and which is called the Old Lane, those high blackened houses, where a grinning, sweaty race of people bargains and chaffers, is a horrible relic of the Middle Ages. The older synagogue exists no more; it was less capacious than the present one, which was built later, after the Nuremberg exiles were taken into the community, and lay more to the north.
The Rabbi had no need to ask where it was. He recognized it from afar by the buzz of many loud voices. In the court of the House of God he parted from his wife, and after washing his hands at the fountain there, he entered the lower part of the synagogue where the men pray, while Sara ascended a flight of stairs and entered the place reserved for women. The latter was a kind of gallery with three rows of seats painted a reddish brown, whose backs were fitted with a hanging board, which held the prayer-books, and which could be raised and lowered. Here the women either sat gossiping or stood up in deep prayer. They often went and peered with curiosity through the large grating on the eastern side, through the thin, green lattice of which one could look down on the lower floor of the synagogue. There, behind high praying-desks, stood the men in their black cloaks, their pointed beards shooting out over white ruffs, and their skull-capped heads more or less concealed by a four-cornered scarf of white wool or silk, furnished with the prescribed tassels, and in some instances also adorned with gold lace. The walls of the synagogue were uniformly white-washed, and no ornament was to be seen other than the gilded iron grating around the square stage, where extracts from the Law were read, and the holy ark, a costly embossed chest, apparently supported by marble columns with gorgeous capitals, whose flower-and leaf-work shot up in beautiful profusion, and covered with a curtain of purple velvet, on which a pious inscription was worked in gold spangles, pearls, and many colored gems. Here hung the silver memorial-lamp, and there also rose a trellised dais, on whose crossed iron bars were all kinds of sacred utensils, among them the seven-branched candlestick. Before the latter, his countenance toward the ark, stood the choir-leader, whose song was accompanied, as if instrumentally, by the voices of his two assistants, the bass and the treble. The Jews have banished all instrumental music from their church, maintaining that hymns in praise of God are more edifying when they rise from the warm breast of man, than from the cold pipes of an organ.
Beautiful Sara felt a childish delight when the choir-leader, an admirable tenor, raised his voice and sounded forth the ancient, solemn melodies, which she knew so well, in a fresher loveliness than she had ever dreamed of, while the bass sang in harmony the deep, dark notes, and, in the pauses, the treble’s voice trilled sweetly and daintily. Such singing Beautiful Sara had never heard in the synagogue of Bacharach, where the presiding elder, David Levi, was the leader; for when this elderly, trembling man, with his broken, bleating voice, tried to trill like a young girl, and in his forced effort to do so, shook his limp and drooping arm feverishly, it inspired laughter rather than devotion.
A sense of pious satisfaction, not unmingled with feminine curiosity, drew Beautiful Sara to the grating, where she could look down on the lower floor, or the so-called men’s division. She had never before seen so many of her faith together, and it cheered her heart to be in such a multitude of those so closely allied by race, thought, and sufferings. And her soul was still more deeply moved when three old men reverentially approached the sacred ark, drew aside the glittering curtain, raised the lid, and very carefully brought forth the Book which God wrote with His own hand, and for the maintenance of which Jews have suffered so much–so much misery and hate, disgrace and death–a thousand years’ martyrdom. This Book–a great roll of parchment–was wrapped like a princely child in a gaily embroidered scarlet cloak of velvet; above, on both wooden rollers, were two little silver shrines, in which many pomegranates and small bells jingled and rang prettily, while before, on a silver chain, hung gold shields with many colored gems. The choir-leader took the Book, and, as if it really were a child–a child for whom one has greatly suffered, and whom one loves all the more on that account–he rocked it in his arms, skipped about with it here and there, pressed it to his breast, and, thrilled by its holy touch, broke forth into such a devout hymn of praise and thanksgiving, that it seemed to Beautiful Sara as if the pillars under the holy ark began to bloom; and the strange and lovely flowers and leaves on the capitals shot ever higher, the tones of the treble were converted into the notes of the nightingale, the vaulted ceiling of the synagogue resounded with the tremendous tones of the bass singer, while the glory of God shone down from the blue heavens. Yes, it was a beautiful psalm. The congregation sang in chorus the concluding verse, and then the choir-leader walked slowly to the raised platform in the middle of the synagogue bearing the holy Book, while men and boys crowded about him, eager to kiss its velvet covering, or even to touch it. On the platform, the velvet cover, as well as the wrappings covered with illuminated letters, were removed, and the choir-leader, in the peculiar intonation which in the Passover service is still more peculiarly modulated, read the edifying narrative of the temptation of Abraham.
Beautiful Sara had modestly withdrawn from the grating, and a stout, much ornamented woman of middle age, with a forward, but benevolent manner, had with a nod invited her to share her prayer-book. This lady was evidently no great scholar, for as she mumbled to herself the prayers as the women do, not being allowed to take part in the singing, Sara observed that she made the best she could of many words, and skipped several good lines altogether. But after a while the watery blue eyes of the good woman were languidly raised, an insipid smile spread over her red and white porcelain face, and in a voice which she strove to make as genteel as possible, she said to Beautiful Sara, “He sings very well. But I have heard far better singing in Holland. You are a stranger, and perhaps do not know that the choir-leader is from Worms, and that they will keep him here if he will be content with four hundred florins a year. He is a charming man, and his hands are as white as alabaster. I admire beautiful hands; they make one altogether beautiful.” Having said this, the good lady laid her own hand, which was really a fine one, on the shelf before her, and with a polite nod which intimated that she did not like to be interrupted while speaking, she added, “The little singer is a mere child, and looks very much worn out. The basso is too ugly for anything; our Star once made the witty remark: ‘The bass singer is a bigger fool than even a basso is expected to be!’ All three eat in my restaurant–perhaps you don’t know that I’m Elle Schnapper?”
Beautiful Sara expressed thanks for this information, whereupon Schnapper-Elle proceeded to narrate in detail how she had once been in Amsterdam, how she had been subjected to the advances of men on account of her beauty, how she had come to Frankfort three days before Whit-suntide and married Schnapper, how he had died, and what touching things he had finally said on his deathbed, and how hard it was to carry on the restaurant business and keep one’s hands nice. Several times she glanced aside with a contemptuous air, apparently at some giggling girls, who seemed to be eyeing her clothes. And the latter were indeed remarkable enough–a very loose skirt of white satin, on which all the animals of Noah’s Ark were embroidered in gaudy colors; a jacket of gold cloth, like a cuirass, with sleeves of red velvet, yellow slashed; a very high cap on her head, with a mighty ruff of stiff white linen around her neck, which also had around it a silver chain hung with all kinds of coins, cameos, and curiosities, among them a large picture of the city of Amsterdam, which rested on her bosom.
But the dresses of the other women were no less remarkable. They consisted of a variety of fashions of different ages, and many a woman there was so covered with gold and diamonds as to look like a wandering jeweler’s shop. It is true that there was at that time a fashion of dress prescribed by law to the Frankfort Jews, and to distinguish them from Christians the men had to wear yellow rings on their cloaks, and the women very stiff, blue-striped veils on their caps. However, in the Jewish quarter the law was little observed, and there, in the synagogue, especially on festival days, the women put on as much magnificent apparel as they could–partly to arouse envy of others, and partly to advertise the wealth and credit of their husbands.
While passages from the Books of Moses are being read on the lower floor of the synagogue, the devotion is usually somewhat lulled. Many make themselves comfortable and sit down, whispering perhaps business affairs with a friend, or go out into the court to get a little fresh air. Small boys take the liberty of visiting their mothers in the women’s balcony; and here worship is still more loosely observed, as there is gossiping, chattering, and laughing, while, as always happens, the young quizz the old, and the latter censure the light-headedness of the girls and the general degeneracy of the age.
And just as there was a choir-leader on the floor below, so was there a gossip-leader in the balcony above. This was Puppy Reiss, a vulgar, greenish woman, who found out about everybody’s troubles, and always had a scandal on her tongue. The usual butt of her pointed sayings was poor Schnapper-Elle, and she could mock right well the affected genteel airs and languishing manner with which the latter accepted the insincere compliments of young men.
“Do you know,” cried Puppy Reiss, “Schnapper-Elle said yesterday, ‘If I were not beautiful and clever, and beloved, I had rather not be alive.'”
Then there was loud tittering, and Schnapper-Elle, who was not far distant, noting that this was all at her expense, lifted her nose in scorn, and sailed away, like a proud galley, to some remote corner. Then Birdie Ochs, a plump and somewhat awkward lady, remarked compassionately that Schnapper-Elle might be a little vain and small of mind, but that she was an honest, generous soul, and did much good to many folk in need.
“Particularly to Nose Star,” snapped Puppy Reiss. And all who knew of this tender relation laughed all the louder.
“Don’t you know,” added Puppy spitefully, “that Nose Star now sleeps in Schnapper-Elle’s house! But just look at Susy Floersheim down there, wearing the necklace which Daniel Flaesch pawned to her husband! Flaesch’s wife is vexed about it–_that_ is plain. And now she is talking to Mrs. Floersheim. _How_ amiably they shake hands!–and hate each other like Midian and Moab! How sweetly they smile on each other! Oh, you dear souls, _don’t_ eat each other up out of pure love! I’ll just steal up and listen to them!”
And so, like a sneaking wildcat, Puppy Reiss crept up and listened to the two women bewailing to each other how they had worked all the past week to clean up the house and scour the kitchen things, and complaining about all they had to do before Passover, so that not a crumb of leavened bread should stick to anything. And such troubles as they had baking the unleavened bread! Mrs. Flaesch had special cause for complaint–for she had had no end of trouble over it in the public bakery, where, according to the ticket she drew, she could not bake till the afternoon of the very last day, just before Passover Eve; and then old Hannah had kneaded the dough badly, and the maids had rolled it too thin, and half of it was scorched in baking, and worst of all, rain came pouring through the bake-house roof; and so, wet and weary, they had had to work till late in the night.
“And, my dear Mrs. Floersheim,” said Mrs. Flaesch, with gracious friendliness most insincere, “you were a little to blame for that, because you did not send your people to help me in baking.”
“Ah! pardon,” replied the other. “My servants were so busy–the goods for the fair had to be packed–my husband”–
“Yes, I know,” interrupted Mrs. Flaesch, with cutting irony in her speech. “I know that you have much to do–many pledges and a good business, and necklaces”–
And a bitter word was just about to slip from the lips of the speaker, and Dame Floersheim had turned as red as a lobster, when Puppy Reiss cried out loudly, “For God’s sake!–the strange lady lies dying–water! water!”
Beautiful Sara lay in a faint, as pale as death, while a swarm of excited women crowded around her, one holding her head, another her arm, while some old women sprinkled her with the glasses of water which hung behind their prayer desks for washing the hands in case they should by accident touch their own bodies. Others held under her nose an old lemon full of spices, which was left over from the last feast-day, when it had served for smelling and strengthening the nerves. Exhausted and sighing deeply, Beautiful Sara at last opened her eyes, and with mute glances thanked them for their kind care. But now the eighteen-prayer, which no one dared neglect, was being solemnly chanted below, and the busy women hurried back to their places and offered the prayer as the rite ordains, that is, standing up with their faces turned toward the east, which is that part of the heavens where Jerusalem lies. Birdie Ochs, Schnapper-Elle, and Puppy Reiss stayed to the last with Beautiful Sara–the first two to aid her as much as possible, the other two to find out why she had fainted so suddenly.
Beautiful Sara had swooned from a singular cause. It is a custom in the synagogue that any one who has escaped a great danger shall, after the reading of the extracts from the Law, appear in public and return thanks for his divine deliverance. As Rabbi Abraham rose to his feet to make his prayer, and Beautiful Sara recognized her husband’s voice, she noticed that his voice gradually subsided into the mournful murmur of a prayer for the dead. She heard the names of her dear kinsfolk, accompanied by the words which convey the blessing on the departed; and the last hope vanished from her soul, for it was torn by the certainty that those dear ones had really been slain, that her little niece was dead, that her little cousins Posy and Birdy were dead, that little Gottschalk too was dead–all murdered and dead! And she, too, would have succumbed to the agony of this realization, had not a kind swoon poured forgetfulness over her senses.
CHAPTER III
When Beautiful Sara, after divine service was ended, went down into the courtyard of the synagogue, the Rabbi stood there waiting for her. He nodded to her with a cheerful expression, and accompanied her out into the street, where there was no longer silence but a noisy multitude. It was like a swarm of ants–bearded men in black coats, women gleaming and fluttering like gold-chafers, boys in new clothes carrying prayer-books after their parents, young girls who, because they could not enter the synagogue, now came bounding to their parents, bowing their curly heads to receive their blessing–all gay and merry, and walking up and down the street in the happy anticipation of a good dinner, the savory odor of which–causing their mouths to water–rose from many black pots, marked with chalk, and carried by smiling girls from the large community kitchens.
In this multitude particularly conspicuous was the form of a Spanish cavalier, whose youthful features bore that fascinating pallor which ladies generally attribute to an unfortunate–and men, on the contrary, to a very fortunate–love affair. His gait, although naturally carefree, had in it, however, a somewhat affected daintiness. The feathers in his cap were agitated more by the aristocratic motion of his head than by the wind; and his golden spurs, and the jeweled hilt of his sword, which he bore on his arm, rattled rather more than was necessary. A white cavalier’s cloak enveloped his slender limbs in an apparently careless manner, but, in reality, betrayed the most careful arrangement of the folds. Passing and repassing, partly with curiosity, partly with an air of a connoisseur, he approached the women walking by, looked calmly at them, paused when he thought a face was worth the trouble, gave to many a pretty girl a passing compliment, and went his way heedless as to its effect. He had met Beautiful Sara more than once, but every time had seemed to be repelled by her commanding look, or else by the enigmatical smile of her husband. Finally, however, proudly conquering all diffidence, he boldly faced both, and with foppish confidence made, in a tenderly gallant tone, the following speech: “Senora!–list to me!–I swear–by the roses of both the kingdoms of Castile, by the Aragonese hyacinths and the pomegranate blossoms of Andalusia! by the sun which illumines all Spain, with its flowers, onions, pea-soups, forests, mountains, mules, he-goats, and Old Christians! by the canopy of heaven, on which this sun is merely a golden tassel! and by the God who abides in heaven and meditates day and night over the creation of new forms of lovely women!–I swear that you, Senora, are the fairest dame whom I have seen in all the German realm, and if you please to accept my service, then I pray of you the favor, grace, and leave to call myself your knight and bear your colors henceforth in jest or earnest!”
A flush of pain rose in the face of Beautiful Sara, and with one of those glances which cut the deeper when they come from gentle eyes, and with a tone such as is bitterest coming from a beautiful voice, the lady answered, as one deeply hurt:
“My noble lord, if you will be my knight you must fight whole races, and in the battle there will be little thanks to win and less honor; and if you will wear my colors, then you must sew yellow rings on your cloak, or bind yourself with a blue-striped scarf, for such are my colors–the colors of my house, the House of Israel, which is wretched indeed, one mocked in the streets by the sons of fortune.”
A sudden purple red shot into the cheeks of the Spaniard; an inexpressible confusion seemed to have seized him as he stammered–
“Senora, you misunderstood me–an innocent jest–but, by God, no mockery, no scorn of Israel. I myself am sprung from that house; my grandfather was a Jew, perhaps even my father.”
“And it is very certain, Senor, that your uncle is one,” suddenly exclaimed the Rabbi, who had calmly witnessed this scene; and with a merry, quizzical glance, he added, “And I myself will vouch that Don Isaac Abarbanel, nephew of the great Rabbi, is sprung from the best blood of Israel, if not from the royal race of David!”
The chain of the sword rattled under the Spaniard’s cloak, his cheeks became deadly white, his upper lip twitched as with scorn in which there was pain, and angry death grinned in his eyes, as in an utterly changed, ice-cold, keen voice he said:
“Senor Rabbi, you know me. Well, then, you know also who I am. And if the fox knows that I belong to the blood of the lion, let him beware and not bring his fox-beard into danger of death, nor provoke my anger. Only he who feels like the lion can understand his weakness.”
“Oh, I understand it well,” answered the Rabbi, and a melancholy seriousness came over his brow. “I understand it well, how the proud lion, out of pride, casts aside his princely coat and goes about disguised in the scaly armor of the crocodile, because it is the fashion to be a grinning, cunning, greedy crocodile! What can you expect the lesser beasts to be when the lion denies his nature? But beware, Don Isaac, _thou_ wert not made for the element of the crocodile. For water–thou knowest well what I mean–is thy evil fortune, and thou shalt drown. Water is not thy element; the weakest trout can live in it better than the king of the forest. Hast thou forgotten how the current of the Tagus was about to draw thee under–?”
Bursting into loud laughter, Don Isaac suddenly threw his arms round the Rabbi’s neck, covered his mouth with kisses, leapt with jingling spurs high into the air, so that the passing Jews shrank back in alarm, and in his own natural hearty and joyous voice cried–
“Truly thou art Abraham of Bacharach! And it was a good joke, and more than that, a friendly act, when thou, in Toledo, didst leap from the Alcantara bridge into the water, and grasp by the hair thy friend, who could drink better than he could swim, and drew him to dry land. I came very near making a really deep investigation as to whether there is actually gold in the bed of the Tagus, and whether the Romans were right in calling it the golden river. I assure you that I shiver even now at the mere thought of that water-party.”
Saying this the Spaniard made a gesture as if he were shaking water from his garments. The countenance of the Rabbi expressed great joy as he again and again pressed his friend’s hand, saying every time–
“I am indeed glad.”
“And so, indeed, am I,” answered the other. “It is seven years now since we met, and when we parted I was as yet a mere greenhorn, and thou–thou wert already a staid and serious man. But whatever became of the beautiful Dona who in those days cost thee so many sighs, which thou didst accompany with the lute?”
“Hush, hush! the Dona hears us–she is my wife, and thou thyself hast given her today proof of thy taste and poetic skill.”
It was not without some trace of his former embarrassment that the Spaniard greeted the beautiful lady, who amiably regretted that she, by expressing herself so plainly, had pained a friend of her husband.
“Ah, Senora,” replied Don Isaac, “he who grasps too clumsily at a rose must not complain if the thorns scratch. When the star of evening reflects its golden light in the azure flood”–
“I beg of you!” interrupted the Rabbi, “to cease! If we wait till the star of evening reflects its golden light in the azure flood, my wife will starve, for she has eaten nothing since yesterday, and suffered much in the mean-while.”
“Well, then, I will take you to the best restaurant of Israel,” said Don Isaac, “to the house of my friend Schnapper-Elle, which is not far away. I already smell the savory odors from the kitchen! Oh, didst thou but know, O Abraham, how this odor appeals to me. This it is which, since I have dwelt in this city, has so often lured me to the tents of Jacob. Intercourse with God’s people is not a hobby of mine, and truly it is not to pray, but to eat, that I visit the Jews’ Street.”
“Thou hast never loved us, Don Isaac.”
“Well,” continued the Spaniard, “I like your food much better than your creed–which wants the right sauce. I never could rightly digest you. Even in your best days, under the rule of my ancestor David, who was king over Judah and Israel, I never could have held out, and certainly I should some fine morning have run away from Mount Zion and emigrated to Phoenicia or Babylon, where the joys of life foamed in the temple of the gods.”
“Thou blasphemest, Isaac, blasphemest the one God,” murmured the Rabbi grimly. “Thou art much worse than a Christian–thou art a heathen, a servant of idols.”
“Yes, I am a heathen, and the melancholy, self-tormenting Nazarenes are quite as little to my taste as the dry and joyless Hebrews. May our dear Lady of Sidon, holy Astarte, forgive me, that I kneel before the many sorrowed Mother of the Crucified and pray. Only my knee and my tongue worship death–my heart remains true to life. But do not look so sourly,” continued the Spaniard, as he saw what little gratification his words seemed to give the Rabbi. “Do not look at me with disdain. My nose is not a renegade. When once by chance I came into this street at dinner time, and the well-known savory odors of the Jewish kitchen rose to my nose, I was seized with the same yearning which our fathers felt for the fleshpots of Egypt–pleasant tasting memories of youth came back to me. In imagination I saw again the carp with brown raisin sauce which my aunt prepared so sustainingly for Friday eve; I saw once more the steamed mutton with garlic and horseradish, which might have raised the dead, and the soup with dreamily swimming dumplings in it–and my soul melted like the notes of an enamored nightingale–and since then I have been eating in the restaurant of my friend Dona Schnapper-Elle.”
Meanwhile they had arrived at this highly lauded place, where Schnapper-Elle stood at the door cordially greeting the strangers who had come to the fair, and who, led by hunger, were now streaming in. Behind her, sticking his head out over her shoulder, was the tall Nose Star, anxiously and inquisitively observing them. Don Isaac with an exaggerated air of dignity approached the landlady, who returned his satirical reverence with endless curtsies. Thereupon he drew the glove from his right hand, wrapped it, the hand, in the fold of his cloak, and grasping Schnapper-Elle’s hand, slowly drew it over his moustache, saying:
“Senora! your eyes rival the brilliancy of the sun! But as eggs, the longer they are boiled the harder they become, so _vice versa_ my heart grows softer the longer it is cooked in the flaming flashes of your eyes. From the yolk of my heart flies up the winged god Amor and seeks a confiding nest in your bosom. And oh, Senora, wherewith shall I compare that bosom? For in all the world there is no flower, no fruit, which is like to it! It is the one thing of its kind! Though the wind tears away the leaves from the tenderest rose, your bosom is still a winter rose which defies all storms. Though the sour lemon, the older it grows the yellower and more wrinkled it becomes, your bosom rivals in color and softness the sweetest pineapple. Oh, Senora, if the city of Amsterdam be as beautiful as you told me yesterday, and the day before, and every day, the ground on which it rests is far lovelier still.”
The cavalier spoke these last words with affected earnestness, and squinted longingly at the large medallion which hung from Schnapper-Elle’s neck. Nose Star looked down with inquisitive eyes, and the much-bepraised bosom heaved so that the whole city of Amsterdam rocked from side to side.
“Ah!” sighed Schnapper-Elle, “virtue is worth more than beauty. What use is my beauty to me? My youth is passing away, and since Schnapper is gone–anyhow, he had handsome hands–what avails beauty?”
With that she sighed again, and like an echo, all but inaudible, Nose Star sighed behind her. “Of what avail is your beauty?” cried Don Isaac. “Oh, Dona Schnapper-Elle, do not sin against the goodness of creative Nature! Do not scorn her most charming gifts, or she will reap most terrible revenge. Those blessed, blessing eyes will become glassy balls, those winsome lips grow flat and unattractive, that chaste and charming form be changed into an unwieldy barrel of tallow, and the city of Amsterdam at last rest on a spongy bog.” Thus he sketched piece by piece the appearance of Schnapper-Elle, so that the poor woman was bewildered, and sought to escape the uncanny compliments of the cavalier. She was delighted to see Beautiful Sara appear at this instant, as it gave her an opportunity to inquire whether she had quite recovered from her swoon. Thereupon she plunged into lively chatter, in which she fully developed her sham gentility, mingled with real kindness of heart, and related with more prolixity than discretion the awful story of how she herself had almost fainted with horror when she, as innocent and inexperienced as could be, arrived in a canal boat at Amsterdam, and the rascally porter, who carried her trunk, led her–not to a respectable hotel, but oh, horrors!–to an infamous brothel! She could tell what it was the moment she entered, by the brandy-drinking, and by the immoral sights! And she would, as she said, really have swooned, if it had not been that during the six weeks she stayed in the disorderly house she only once ventured to close her eyes.
“I dared not,” she added, “on account of my virtue. And all that was owing to my beauty! But virtue will stay–when good looks pass away.”
Don Isaac was on the point of throwing some critical light on the details of this story when, fortunately, Squinting Aaron Hirschkuh from Homburg-on-the-Lahn came with a white napkin on his arm, and bitterly bewailed that the soup was already served, and that the boarders were seated at table, but that the landlady was missing.
(The conclusion and the chapters which follow are lost, not from any fault of the author.)
THE LIFE OF FRANZ GRILLPARZER
BY WILLIAM GUILD HOWARD, A.M.
Assistant Professor of German, Harvard University
Franz Grillparzer is the greatest poet and dramatist among the Austrians. Corresponding to the Goethe Society at Weimar, the Grillparzer Society at Vienna holds its meetings and issues its annual; and the edition of Goethe’s works instituted by the Grand Duchess Sophie of Weimar is paralleled by an edition of Grillparzer’s works now in process of publication by the city of Vienna. Not without a sense of local pride and jealousy do the Viennese extol their fellow-countryman and hold him up to their kinsmen of the north as worthy to stand beside Goethe and Schiller. They would be ungrateful if they did not cherish the memory of a man who during his life-time was wont to prefer them, with all their imperfections upon their heads, to the keener and more enterprising North Germans, and who on many occasions sang the praises of their sociability, their wholesome naturalness, and their sound instinct. But even from the point of view of the critical North German or of the non-German foreigner, Grillparzer abundantly deserves his local fame–and more than local fame; for a dozen dramas of the first class, two eminently characteristic short stories, numerous lyrical poems, and innumerable studies and autobiographical papers are a man’s work entitling their author to a high place in European, not merely German, literature.
It is, however, as an Austrian that Grillparzer is primarily to be judged. Again and again he insisted upon his national quality as a man and as a poet, upon the Viennese atmosphere of his plays and his poems. He was never happy when away from his native city, and though his pieces are now acceptably performed wherever German is spoken, they are most successful in Vienna, and some of them are to be seen only on the Viennese stage.
What are, then, the distinguishing features of the Austrians, and of Grillparzer as one of them? Grillparzer said these features are an open heart and a single mind, good sense and reliable intuition, frankness, naivete, generosity, modest contentment with being while others are up and doing. The Austrians are of mixed blood, and partake of South European characteristics less prominent among the purer blooded Teutons of the north. They have life on easier terms, are less intellectual, are more sensuous, emotional, more fanciful, fonder of artistic enjoyment, more sensitive to color and to those effects called “color,” by contrast to form, in other arts than that of painting. The art of music is most germane to the Austrian spirit; and we have a ready key to the peculiarities of the Austrian disposition in the difference between Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, and Johann Strauss, on the one hand, and Haendel, Beethoven, Schumann, and Wagner on the other. Moreover, the Austrians are in all respects conservative, in literary taste no less than in politics and religion. The pseudo-classicism of Gottsched maintained its authority in Austria not merely after the time of Lessing, but also after the time of Schiller. Wieland was a favorite long before Goethe began to be appreciated; and as to the romantic movement, only the gentle tendencies of such a congenial spirit as Eichendorff found a sympathetic echo on the shores of the Danube. Romance influences, however, more particularly Spanish, were manifest there even before the time when they became strong upon Grillparzer.
Franz Grillparzer was born in Vienna on the fifteenth of January, 1791. His father, Wenzel Grillparzer, a self-made man, was a lawyer of the strictest probity, who occupied a respectable position in his profession; but, too scrupulous to seize the opportunities for profit that lawyers easily come upon, he lived a comparatively poor man and in 1809 died in straitened circumstances. At home he was stern and repressive.
[Illustration: FRANZ GRILLPARZER]
Both his legal habit of mind and also his true discipleship of the age of enlightenment in which he grew up disposed him to intellectual tyranny over everything that looked like sentimentality or foolish fantasy in wife or children. His own hobbies, however, such as long walks in the country and the cultivation of flowers or–strangely enough–the reading of highly romantic novels, he indulged in as matters of course. It is with some surprise that we find him married to a woman of abnormal nervousness, who was given to mysticism and was feverishly devoted to music. Marianne Grillparzer, born Sonnleithner, belonged to a substantial middle-class family. Her father was a friend of Haydn and Mozart and was himself a composer of music; her brothers became men of note in the history of the Viennese operatic stage; and she herself shared in the artistic temperament of the family, but with ominously pathological over-development in one direction. She took her own life in 1819 and transmitted to her sons a tendency to moodiness and melancholy which led to the suicide of one and the haunting fear of insanity in that other who is the subject of this sketch.
That Franz Grillparzer was destined to no happy childhood is obvious, and it is equally clear that he needed a strong will to overcome not merely material obstacles to progress but also inherited dispositions of such antithetical sort. The father and the mother were at war in his breast. Like the mother in sensitiveness and imaginativeness, he was the son of his father in a stern censoriousness that was quick to ridicule what appeared to be nonsense in others and in himself; but he was the son of his father also in clearness of understanding and devotion to duty as he saw it.
Grillparzer once said that his works were detached fragments of his life; and though many of their themes seem remote from him in time and place, character and incident in them are unmistakably enriched by being often conceived in the light of personal experience. Outwardly, however, his life was comparatively uneventful. After irregular studies with private tutors and at school, Grillparzer studied law from 1807 to 1811 at the University of Vienna, gave instruction from 1810 to 1813 to the sons of various noblemen, and in 1813 began in the Austrian civil service the humdrum career which, full of disappointments and undeserved setbacks, culminated in his appointment in 1832 to the directorship of the _Hofkammerarchiv,_ and lasted until his honorable retirement in 1856. He was a conscientious official; but throughout this time he was regarded, and regarded himself, primarily as Grillparzer the poet; and in spite of loyalty to the monarchy, he was entirely out of sympathy with the antediluvian administration of Metternich and his successors. Little things, magnified by pusillanimous apprehension, stood in his way. In 1819 he expressed in a poem _The Ruins of Campo Vaccino_ esthetic abhorrence of the cross most inappropriately placed over the portal of the Coliseum in Rome, and was thereafter never free of the suspicion of heresy. In 1825 membership in a social club raided by the police subjected him to the absurd suspicion of plotting treason. Only once do we find him, during the first half of the century, _persona gratissima_ with the powers that be. Grillparzer firmly disapproved the disintegrating tendencies of the revolution of 1848, and uttered his sense of the duty of loyal cooeperation under the Habsburgs in a spirited poem, _To Field-Marshal Count Radetzky_. For the moment he became a national hero, especially in the army. His latter years were indeed years of honor; but the honor came too late. He was given the cross of the order of Leopold in 1849, was made _Hofrat_ and a member of the House of Lords in 1856, and received the grand cross of the order of Franz Josef upon the celebration of his eightieth birthday in 1871. He died on the twenty-first of January, 1872.
Grillparzer led for the most part a solitary life–for the last third of his life he was almost a hermit–and he was rather an observer than an actor in the affairs of men; but nevertheless he saw more of the world than a mere dreamer would have cared to see, and the circle of his friends was not inconsiderable. Besides making the trip to Italy, already alluded to, in 1819, he journeyed in 1826 to North Germany, seeing Goethe in Weimar, in 1836 to Paris, in 1837 to London, in 1843 down the Danube to Athens, and in 1847 again to Berlin and to Hamburg. No one of these trips gave him any particular poetic impetus, except perhaps the first, on which he found in the classical atmosphere of Rome a refreshing antidote to the romantic miasma which he hated. Nor did he derive much profit from the men of letters whom he visited in various places, such as Fouque, Chamisso, and Heine. He dined with Goethe, but was too bashful to accept an indirect invitation to spend an evening with Goethe alone. He paid his respects to Uhland, whom he esteemed as the greatest German poet of that time (1837); but Uhland was then no longer productive and was never a magnetic personality. Indeed, there was hardly more than one man, even in Vienna, who exerted a strong personal influence upon Grillparzer, and this was Josef Schreyvogel, journalist, critic, playwright, from 1814 to 1831 secretary of the _Burgtheater_. A happy chance gained for Grillparzer in 1816 the friendship of this practical theatre manager, and under Schreyvogel’s auspices he prepared his first drama for the stage.
On another side, Grillparzer’s character is illumined for us by the strange story of his relations with four Viennese women. He was not a handsome man, but tall, with an abundance of blond hair, and bewitching blue eyes that made him very attractive to the other sex. He, too, was exceedingly sensitive to sexual attraction and in early youth suffered torments from the pangs of unsatisfied longing. From the days when he knew that he was in love, but did not yet know with whom, to the time of final renunciation we find him irresolute, ardent, but apparently selfish in the inability to hazard the discovery that the real might prove inferior to his ideal. Thus his critical disposition invaded even the realm of his affections and embroiled him not merely with the object of them, but also with himself. Charlotte von Paumgarten, the wife of a cousin of Grillparzer’s, Marie Daeffinger, the wife of a painter, loved him not wisely, but too well; and a young Prussian girl, Marie Piquot, confessed in her last will and testament to such a devotion to him as she was sure no other woman could ever attain, wherefore she commended “her Tasso” to the fostering care of her mother. Grillparzer had experienced only a fleeting interest in Marie Piquot; so much the more lasting was the attachment which bound him to her successful rival, Katharina Froehlich. Katharina, one of four daughters of a Viennese manufacturer who had seen better days, and, like her sisters, endowed with great artistic talent and practical energy, might have proved the salvation of Grillparzer’s existence as a man if he had been more capable of manly resolution, and she had been less like him in impetuosity and stubbornness. They became engaged, they made preparations for a marriage which was never consummated and for years was never definitely abandoned; mutual devotion is ever and anon interrupted by serious or trivial quarrels, and the imperfect relation drags on to the vexation of both, until Grillparzer as an old man of sixty takes lodgings with the Froehlich sisters and, finally, makes Katharina his sole heir.
Grillparzer’s development as a poet and dramatist follows the bent of his Austrian genius. One of the first books that he ever read was the text to Mozart’s _Magic Flute_. Music, opera, operetta, and fairy drama gave the earliest impulse to his juvenile imagination. Even as a boy he began the voluminous reading which, continued throughout his life, made him one of the best informed men of his time in European literature. History, natural history, and books of travel are followed by the plays of Shakespeare, Lessing, Goethe, and Schiller, while Gesner’s idyls charm him, and he absorbs the stories and romances of Wieland. In 1808 he reads the early works of Schiller and admires the ideal enthusiasm of _Don Carlos_.
[Illustration: FRANZ GRILLPARZER AND KAETHI FROeHLICH IN 1823]
In 1810 he revolts from Schiller and swears allegiance to Goethe. In the ensuing years he learns English, Greek, and Spanish; Shakespeare supplants Goethe in his esteem, and he is attracted first to Calderon and then to Lope de Vega in whom, ere long, he discovers the dramatic spirit most closely akin to his.
We read of Grillparzer, as of Goethe, that as a child he was fond of improvising dramatic performances with his playmates. Occasionally he was privileged to attend an operetta or a spectacular play at one of the minor theatres. When he reached adolescence he experimented with a large number of historical and fantastic subjects, and he left plans and fragments that, unoriginal as most of them are, give earnest of a talent for scenic manipulation and for the representation of character. These juvenile pieces are full of reminiscences of Schiller and Shakespeare. Grillparzer’s first completed drama of any magnitude, _Blanca of Castile_ (1807-09), is almost to be called Schiller’s _Don Carlos_ over again, both as to the plot and as to the literary style–though of course the young man’s imitation seems like a caricature. The fragments _Spartacus_ (1810) and _Alfred the Great_ (1812), inspired by patriotic grief for Austria humiliated by Napoleon, are Shakespearean in many scenes, but are in their general disposition strongly influenced by Schiller’s _Robbers and Maid of Orleans_. In all three of these pieces, the constant reference to inscrutable fate proves that Grillparzer is a disciple of Schiller and a son of his time.
There is, therefore, a double significance in the earliest play of Grillparzer’s to be performed on the stage, _The Ancestress_ (1816)–first, in that, continuing in the direction foreshadowed by its predecessors, it takes its place beside the popular dramas of fate written by Werner and Muellner; and secondly, because at the same time the poet, now yielding more to the congenial impulse of Spanish influences, establishes his independence even in the treatment of a more or less conventional theme. Furthermore, _The Ancestress_ marks the beginning of Grillparzer’s friendship with Schreyvogel. Grillparzer had translated some scenes of Calderon’s _Life is a Dream_ which, published in 1816 by an enemy of Schreyvogel’s who wished to discredit the adaptation which Schreyvogel had made for the _Burgtheater,_ served only to bring the two men together; for Schreyvogel was generous and Grillparzer innocent of any hostile intention. As early as 1813 Grillparzer had thought of _The Ancestress_. Schreyvogel encouraged him to complete the play, and his interest once again aroused and soon mounting to enthusiasm, he wrote in less than a month the torrent of Spanish short trochaic verses which sweeps through the four acts of this romantic drama. Schreyvogel was delighted; but he criticized the dramatic structure; and in a revised version in five acts Grillparzer so far adopted his suggestions as to knit up the plot more closely and thus to give greater prominence to the idea of fate and retribution. The play was performed on the thirty-first of January, 1817, and scored a tremendous success.
Critics, to be sure, were not slow to point out that the effectiveness of _The Ancestress_ was due less to poetical qualities than to theatrical–unjustly; for even though we regard the play as but the scenic representation of the incidents of a night, the representation is of absorbing interest and is entirely free from the crudities which make Muellner’s dramas more gruesome than dramatic. But Grillparzer nevertheless resolved that his next play should dispense with all adventitious aids and should take as simple a form and style as he could give it. A friend chanced to suggest to him that the story of Sappho would furnish a text for an opera. Grillparzer replied that the subject would perhaps yield a tragedy. The idea took hold of him; without delay or pause for investigation he made his plan; and in three weeks his second play was ready for the stage. Written in July, 1817, _Sappho_ was produced at the _Hofburgtheater_ on April 21, 1818. Grillparzer said that in creating _Sappho_ he had plowed pretty much with Goethe’s steer. In form his play resembles _Iphigenia_ and in substance it is not unlike _Tasso;_ but upon closer examination _Sappho_ appears to be neither a classical play of the serene, typical quality of _Iphigenia_ nor a _Kuenstlerdrama_ in the sense in which _Tasso_ is one. Grillparzer was not inspired by the meagre tradition of the Lesbian poetess, nor yet by anything more than the example of Goethe; he took only the outline of the story of Sappho and Phaon; his play is almost to be called a romantic love story, and the influence strongest upon him in the writing of it was that of Wieland. The situation out of which the tragedy of Sappho develops is that of a young man who deceives himself into believing that admiration for a superior woman is love, and who is undeceived when a _naive_ maiden awakens in him sentiments that really are those of love. This situation occurs again and again in the voluminous works of Wieland–most obviously perhaps in the novelette _Menander and Glycerion_ (1803), but also in the novel _Agathon_ (1766-1767), and in the epistolary novel _Aristippus_ (1800-1802). Moreover, it is the essential situation in Mme. de Stael’s _Corinne_ (1807). In the third place, this situation was Grillparzer’s own, and it is so constantly found in his dramas that it may be called the characteristic situation for the dramatist as well as for the man. In this drama, finally, we have a demonstration of Grillparzer’s profound conviction that the artistic temperament is ill suited to the demands of practical life, and in the solitary sphere to which it is doomed must fail to find that contentment which only life can afford. Sappho is not assailed by life on all sides as Tasso is; but she makes an egregious mistake in her search for the satisfactions of womanhood, thereby unfitting herself for the priesthood of poetry as well as forfeiting her life.
_Sappho_ was as successful on the stage as _The Ancestress_ had been, and the dramatist became the lion of the hour. He was received in audience by Prince Metternich, was lauded in high social circles in Vienna, and was granted an annual pension of 1000 florins for five years, on condition that the _Hofburgtheater_ should have the right to first production of his forthcoming plays. It was, therefore, with great enthusiasm and confidence that he set to work upon his next subject, _The Golden Fleece._ The story of Jason and Medea had long been familiar to him, not only in the tragedies of Euripides and Seneca, but also in German dramas and operas of the eighteenth century which during his youth were frequently produced in Vienna. The immediate impulse to treat this story came to him when, in the summer of 1818, he chanced upon the article _Medea_ in a mythological lexicon. His plan was soon formed and was made to embrace the whole history of the relations of Jason and Medea. For so comprehensive a matter Grillparzer, like Schiller in _Wallenstein,_ found the limits of a single drama too narrow; and as Schiller said of _Wallenstein–_
“His camp alone explains his fault and crime,”
so Grillparzer rightly perceived that the explanation to modern minds of so incredible a crime as Medea’s must be sought and presented in the untoward circumstances under which her relations with Jason began. Accordingly, he showed in _The Guest Friend_ how Phryxus, obedient to what he believed to be the will of the gods, bore the Golden Fleece to Colchis, only to meet death at the hands of AEetes, the king of that land, who coveted the precious token. Medea, the king’s daughter, vainly tries to prevent the crime, but sees herself included in the dying man’s curse; for she shares her father’s desire for the treasure and is appalled only by the sense of outraged hospitality, even to a haughty intruder. When, in _The Argonauts,_ Jason comes to recover the Fleece, Medea, still an Amazon and an enchantress, is determined with all her arts to aid her father in repulsing the invaders. But the sight of the handsome stranger soon touches her with an unwonted feeling. Against her will she saves the life and furthers the enterprise of Jason; they become partners in the theft of the Fleece; whereupon Jason, fascinated by the dark-eyed barbarian and gratified with the sense of subjugating an Amazon, assures her of his love and takes her and the Fleece in triumph away from Colchis.
[Illustration: GRILLPARZER’S HOUSE IN THE SPIEGELGASSE]
Four years elapse before the action of _Medea_ commences. Medea has borne two sons to Jason; as a husband and father he returns to Greece with the object of his quest. But he is now received rather as the husband of a sorceress than as the winner of the Fleece. Ostracism and banishment accentuate the humiliation of marriage to a barbarian. Medea has sacrificed all to serve him; without her aid his expedition would have been fruitless, but with her he cannot live in the civilized community where she has no place. She frantically endeavors to become a Greek, but to no purpose. Jason strives to overcome a growing repugnance and loyally makes common cause with her; but he cannot follow her in banishment from Corinth, nor appreciate the feelings of the wife who sees him about to marry Creusa, and of the mother who sees her children prefer Creusa to herself. Then the barbarian in Medea reasserts herself and the passion of a just revenge, stifling all other feeling, moves her to the destruction of all her enemies and a final divorce from her heartless husband. To Jason she can give no other words of comfort than that he may be stronger in suffering than he has been in acting.
Such an eminently personal tragedy Grillparzer constructed on the basis of a mythological story. The Fleece, like the hoard of the Nibelungen, is the occasion, but the curse attached to it is not the cause, of crimes; this cause is the cupidity of human nature and the helplessness of the individual who allows the forces of evil to gain sway over him. Jason, in overweening self-indulgence, attaches himself to a woman to whom he cannot be true. Medea, in too confident self-sufficiency, is not proof against the blandishments of an unscrupulous adventurer and progresses from crime to crime, doing from beginning to end what it is not her will to do. An unnatural and unholy bond cannot be severed even to make way for a natural and holy one. And the paths of glory lead not to the grave but to a living death in the consciousness of guilt and the remorse for misdeeds.
Grillparzer never again wrote with such tumultuous passion as swayed him at the time of his work on the first half of _The Golden Fleece._ His illicit love of Charlotte Paumgarten gave him many a tone which thrills in the narrative of Jason and Medea; the death of his mother brought home to him the tragedy of violence and interrupted his work in the midst of _The Argonauts;_ his visit to Rome enabled him to regain composure and increase his sense of the local color of ancient civilization; so that when he completed _Medea,_ in the fall and early winter of 1819-20, he wrote with the mastery of one who had ventured, suffered, observed, and recovered. In his own person he had experienced the dangers of the _vita activa_ against which _The Golden Fleece_ is a warning.
Mention has already been made of Grillparzer’s pride in the history of Austria. In 1809 he wrote in his diary, “I am going to write an historical drama on Frederick the Warlike, Duke of Austria.” A few stanzas of a ballad on this hero were written, probably at this time; dramatic fragments have survived from 1818 and 1821. In the first two decades of the nineteenth century vigorous efforts were made, especially by Baron von Hormayr and his collaborators, to stir up Austrian poets to emulate their North-German colleagues in the treatment of Austrian subjects. With these efforts Grillparzer was in hearty sympathy. The Hanoverian A.W. Schlegel declared in a lecture delivered at Vienna in 1808 that the worthiest form of the romantic drama was the historical; and made special mention of the house of Habsburg. In 1817 Matthaeus von Collin’s play _Frederick the Warlike_ was published, as one of three (_Leopold the Glorious, Frederick the Warlike_, and _Ottocar_) planned as a cycle on the house of Babenberg. Collin’s _Frederick_ interested Grillparzer; Ottocar, who married Frederick’s sister and whose fate closely resembled Frederick’s, appealed to him as a promising character for dramatic treatment; a performance of Kleist’s _Prince Frederick of Homburg,_ which Grillparzer witnessed in 1821, may well have stimulated him to do for the first of the Habsburgs, Ottocar’s successful rival, what Kleist had done for the greatest of the early Hohenzollerns; and particularly the likeness of Ottocar’s career to that of Napoleon gave him the point of view for _King Ottocar’s Fortune and Fall,_ composed in 1823.
_Ottocar_ is remarkable for the amount of matter included in the space of a single drama, and it gives an impressive picture of the dawn of the Habsburg monarchy; but only in the first two acts can it be said to be dramatic. The middle and end, though spectacular, are rather epic than dramatic, and our interest centres more in Rudolf the triumphant than in Ottocar the defeated and penitent. The play is essentially the tragedy of a personality. Ottocar is a _parvenu,_ a strong man whom success makes too sure of the adequacy of his individual strength, ruthless when he should be politic, indulgent when stern measures are requisite, an egotist even when he acts for the public weal. Grillparzer treated his case with great fulness of sensuous detail, but without superabundance of antiquarian minutiae, in spite of careful study of historical sources of information. “Pride goeth before destruction,” is the theme, but Grillparzer was far from wishing either to demonstrate or illustrate that truth. _Ottocar_ is the tragedy of an individual unequal to superhuman tasks; it does not represent an idea, but a man.
After having been retained by the censors for two years, lest Bohemian sensibilities should be offended, _Ottocar_ was finally freed by order of the emperor himself, and was performed amid great enthusiasm on February nineteenth, 1825. In September of that year the empress was to be crowned as queen of Hungary, and the imperial court suggested to Grillparzer that he write a play on a Hungarian subject in celebration of this event. He did not immediately find a suitable subject; but his attention was attracted to the story of the palatin Bancbanus, a