The gardener now relinquished any further opposition, and declared himself ready to compose the document.

They were together two days to accomplish the great work with their united powers. Evil tongues in the village sharpened themselves eagerly on the remarkable fact, and the rumors about the pair were endless. Some thought that the beautiful Panna had forgotten ugly Pista very quickly, others thought that the gardener was by no means amiss, though no longer very young; many said still more scandalous things. The young widow did not trouble herself about this chatter in the least; she had more important matters in her head and heart, and therefore could not hear the malicious whispers of the gossips.

The petition was begun three times, and as often torn in pieces. Panna wanted it to be very energetic, very vehement. The gardener softened the passionate expressions and suppressed the violent appeals. Of course he was not a practised writer, and he had serious difficulty in putting his thoughts into the correct form. But at last the composition was accomplished, and Panna read it ten times in succession till she knew every letter by heart. Her influence had been more dominant than the gardener's, and the petition was still very forcible. In awkward, but simple, impressive language, it accused the judge of partiality, described Abonyi and his crime in the darkest colors, quoted the cases of the shooting of Marczi and the hanging of Bandi, and finally demanded for Molnar's death the death of his murderer.

With this document Panna again went to Ofen, and this time she really obtained the audience. The whole scene affected her soul like some strange, wonderful face beheld in a dream. First she waited in the ante-room, among hundreds of other persons, most of whom were dressed in splendid uniforms, and covered with the stars of orders. She had no eyes for her surroundings, but thought only of her business and what she wanted to say to the king; suddenly her number, called loudly, broke in upon her reverie; Panna did not know how it happened, but the next moment she found herself in a room, which seemed to her fabulously magnificent, before her stood a figure in the uniform of a general, which she could not see distinctly because everything swam before her eyes; she faltered a few words about justice, and fell upon her knees; the figure bent over her, raised her, said a few gentle, pleasant words, and took the petition from her trembling hand; then she was once more in the ante-room, with a hundred confused voices buzzing in her ears like the roar of distant surf. When the gardener and her father afterwards asked her for details, she was compelled to answer that she knew nothing, remembered nothing, had seen and heard nothing clearly; she only knew that the king had been very kind and took the petition from her.

From this time Panna was remarkably quiet and composed. She went about her usual work, attended to her household duties with her usual care, and seemed to think of the past no longer; at least she did not mention the painful incidents of which we are cognizant, either to her father or the gardener, who sometimes visited her, and when the latter once turned the conversation to them, she replied:

"Let us drop that; the matter is now in the right hands; another head is considering it, and we need no longer rack our brains about it."

The gardener understood what she meant, and her father only half heard these mysterious words without pondering over their thoroughly enigmatical meaning.

Thus six weeks passed away and the end of January was approaching when, one Sunday afternoon, the pastor unexpectedly entered Panna's hut. Without giving the astonished woman time for a remark, he sat down on the bench near the stove by her side, and said:

"Do not wonder, my child, that I have come again, after you so deeply offended and insulted me. I must not bear malice. It is my office to forgive wrong, and I would fain have you follow my example."

Panna gazed silently into her lap, but the priest continued in a voice which grew more and more gentle and insinuating.

"You see, you are still indulging your savage, pagan vengeance, and committing all sorts of follies which will yet ruin you. What is the use of it? Let the dead rest, and think of the living, of yourself, your future. What is the meaning of your going to the king and giving him a crazy petition——"

"What, do you know that, too?" cried Panna turning pale; she felt as if every drop of blood had gone back to her heart. "So the gardener tattled? Oh, fie! fie!"

"Nonsense, the gardener! We don't need the gardener for that. The petition has come from the king's cabinet to the office of the Home Secretary, which sent it through the county to the parish, that we might give a report of your mental condition. From your petition, you are believed to be insane, and that is fortunate, or you would be punished for contempt of court."

Panna clenched her teeth till the grinding sound could be heard, and obstinately persisted in her silence.

"Of course I know that your head is clear, only your heart is hardened, and I will pray to God that He may soften it. Herr von Abonyi is a very different Christian. You need not look at me so angrily, what I say is true. You know that he has great and powerful friends; it would cost them only a word, and he would be pardoned. They wished to appeal to the king in his behalf, but he would not permit them to take a step for him. He repents his deed, he has received a just punishment, and he wished to endure this sentence to the final moment. Through me, he entreats your forgiveness, he does not wish you and your father to remain his enemies, when he has penitently borne the punishment. You will probably owe it to him, if you have no unpleasant consequences to bear on account of your petition. You see how a man of principle and generosity behaves! And then, remember what I told you before: Herr von Abonyi is ready to provide for you all your life, as no one in your family was ever supported. Well, do you say nothing to all this? Have I nothing to tell the nobleman from you?" The pastor rose, laid his hand upon her shoulder, and looked her in the face.

Panna shrunk from the touch of his fat fingers, brushed them off, and said:

"Tell him it is all very well and we will see."

"Nothing else?"

"Nothing else."

The priest departed with an unctuous farewell, and left Panna alone. She remained motionless in the same position, with bent head, her hands resting nervelessly in her lap, her eyes staring into vacancy. So her father found her when, half an hour after, he returned from the parish tavern. When she saw him, she started from her stupor, rushed to him, and exclaimed amid a violent flood of tears:

"Father, it was all in vain, there is no justice on earth."

In reply to the astonished old man's anxious questions, she told him, for the first time, the story she had hitherto kept secret of her petition to the king, and the pitiful result of this final step.

Her father listened, shaking his head, and said:

"You see if, instead of acting on your own account, you had first asked my advice, you would have saved yourself this fresh sorrow. I could have told you that you would have accomplished nothing with the king."

Now, for the first time in many weeks, the old man again began to speak of the matter which had never ceased to occupy Panna's whole mind. He was choleric, and capable of a hasty deed of violence when excited, but he was not resentful; he was not the man to cherish anger long, and had already gained sufficient calmness to view Abonyi's crime more quietly and soberly. He represented to his daughter that it would be folly to demand the nobleman's life from the king in exchange for Pista's.

Panna answered sullenly that she did not perceive the folly; did her father think that a peasant's life was less valuable than a gentleman's?

"That isn't the point now. You must consider that the master did not kill your Pista intentionally."

"Stop, Father, don't tell me that. He did kill him intentionally. I don't care whether the purpose existed days or minutes before, but it was there; else he would not have sent for the revolver, he would not have aimed the weapon, touched the trigger, or discharged it."

"Even admitting that you are right, he has been punished for it."

Panna laughed bitterly. "Six months! Is that a punishment?"

"For a gentlemen like him, it's a heavy one. And he will provide for you."

"Do you, too, talk as the priest does, father? You ought to know me better. Do you really believe that I would bargain over Pista's life for beggerly alms? I should be ashamed ever to pass the churchyard where the poor fellow lies."

"You are obstinate, Panna. I see very plainly where you are aiming. You always say you want justice, but it seems to me that what you want is vengeance."

Panna had never made this distinction, because she was not in the habit of analyzing her feelings. But when her father uttered the word, she reflected a moment, and then said: "Perhaps so."

Yet she felt that it really was not vengeance which she desired, and she instantly added:

"No, Father, you are not exactly right, it is not revenge. I should no longer be enraged against Herr von Abonyi if I could believe that the law, which punished what he has done with six months' imprisonment, would for instance have punished you also with six months, if you had committed the same crime. But it cannot be the law, or they would not have shot Marczi for his little offence, you would not have been imprisoned three months for a few innocent blows. It is easy to tell me that the case is different. Or is there perhaps a different law for peasants and for gentlemen? If that is so, then the law is wicked and unjust, and the peasants must make their own."

The old man did not notice the errors and lack of logic in Panna's words, but he was probably startled by her gloomy energy.

"Child, child," he said, "put these thoughts out of your head. I have done so too. If I could have laid hands on the murderer at first—may God forgive me—I believe that Pista would not have been buried alone. But now that is over, and we must submit. After all, six months' imprisonment is not so small a matter as you suppose. You need only ask me, I know something about it. Oh, it is hard to spend a winter in a fireless cell, busy all day in dirty, disagreeable work, shivering at night on the thin straw bed till your heart seems to turn to ice in your body, and your teeth chatter so that you can't even swear, to say nothing of the horrible vermin, the loathsome food, the tyrannical jailers—a grave in summer is almost better than the prison in winter."

Panna made no reply, and the conversation stopped; but her father's last words had not failed to make a deep impression upon her imagination. She clung to the pictures he had conjured before her mind; she found pleasure in them, painted them in still more vivid hues, experienced a degree of consolation in them. While she was working in the house, her thoughts were with Abonyi in his prison; she saw him in the degrading convict-dress, with chains on his feet, as she had so often found her father when she visited him in jail; there he sat in a little dusky cell on a projecting part of the wall, eating from a wooden bowl filled with a thin broth, repulsive in appearance and smell and biting pieces of earth-colored bread as hard as a brick; the cell was impregnated with horrible odours; the bare stone flags of the floor were icy cold; a ragged, dirty sack of straw, and a thin, tattered coverlet swarming with vermin covered the bench in the corner; in the morning the prisoner, like the others, was obliged to clean his cell and work at things whose contact sickened him; at noon he walked up and down the prisonyard, amid thieves and robbers, who jeered at and insulted the great gentleman; the jailers assailed him with rough words, perhaps even blows—yes, perhaps, her father was right, possibly Abonyi might have been better off lying in the grave than enduring the disgrace and hardships of the prison.

She gave herself up to these ideas, which almost amounted to hallucinations, with actual delight; she even spoke of them, told the neighbours about them as if they were facts which she had witnessed, and when, early in February, a peasant who had been sentenced to a year's imprisonment in the county jail for horse-stealing, was released and returned to Kisfalu, Panna was one of the first who visited him and asked if he had seen Abonyi in the county prison.

"Why, of course," replied the ex-convict, grinning.

Panna's eyes sparkled.

"You went to walk in the yard with him? They probably put him in chains?"

"You are talking nonsense, neighbour," said the peasant. "He wore no chains, and did not go into the yard with us. If I saw him, it's because I waited on him."

"Waited? You waited on him?"

"Certainly. Surely you don't suppose that he is treated like one of us! He lives in a pretty room, has his meals sent from the hotel, goes in and out freely during the day, and is only locked up at night for form's sake; he wears his own clothing and is served by the other prisoners; we all tried to get the place, for he pays like a lord. Hitherto, he hasn't found it very tiresome, for people came to see him every day and, when there were no visitors, he played cards with the steward. They say that, on New Year's Eve, he lost 140 florins to him; it gave us something to talk about for a week."

During this story Panna remained rigid and speechless, listening with her mouth wide open, without interrupting, and when the peasant paused she sat still a short time, as if her thoughts were far away, and then went out like a sleep-walker, leaving the man staring after her in astonishment at her strange behaviour.

From this hour she was a different person. She was no longer seen to smile, she scarcely spoke, did not open her lips all day, and avoided meeting people's eyes, even her own father's. When the gardener came to visit her, she evaded him if possible, and if she could not do that, sat by his side and let him talk while she gazed into vacancy. When, one Sunday afternoon, the priest again appeared in the hut, probably to renew his attempt at reconciliation, she darted out of the door like a will-o'-the-wisp the instant she saw him, leaving the amazed and disconcerted pastor alone in the room.

Panna went daily to the churchyard and busied herself for hours about her husband's grave. She ordered a stone cross from the city with the inscription: "To her cruelly murdered husband by his unforgetting widow." But when she wanted to have the monument set up, the priest interfered with great vehemence and declared he would never permit this cross to be placed in "his" churchyard. Panna did not make the least attempt to rebel against this command, but quietly told the workmen to carry the stone to her house; there it was leaned against the wall opposite to her bed, and daily, when she rose and went to rest, she sat a long time on the edge of her pallet, gazing thoughtfully at the cross and inscription.

Once she interrupted her father in the midst of an ordinary conversation with the abrupt inquiry, whether, in dismissing a prisoner, the time fixed in the sentence was rigidly kept, and if, for instance, any one was condemned to six months' imprisonment, this six months would run from the end of the trial or from the following morning.

The old man thought the question strange and did not know how to answer it. He, too, was secretly beginning frequently to share the opinion now tolerably current in the village, that Panna was not altogether right in her mind.

Meanwhile Spring had come, Panna worked industriously in the fields and in the vineyard, nothing betrayed what thoughts were occupying the mind of the silent, reserved woman. Not until the latter part of May did she begin to grow restless and excited, then she repeatedly entreated her father and the gardener, though it evidently cost her a great effort to control herself, to ask at the castle whether the day of the master's release was known. Her father flatly refused to comply with her crazy wishes, and very earnestly exhorted her to trouble herself no farther about the castle and its owner. As for the gardener, he had cautiously intimated repeatedly that it would be unnatural for so young, robust, and beautiful a woman to remain a widow long, especially when there was some one who would consider himself only too happy to put an end to her widowhood, and he now added his entreaties to the old man's that she would at last banish from her mind the memory of the evil past.

Accident rendered Panna the service she had vainly asked of the two men. One evening, when she was returning from the fields, she passed the housekeeper at the castle who, with her back to the road, stood leaning against the low half-door of a peasant's hut, and called to her friend who was working in the yard: "Well, the master wrote to-day; he wants Janos to bring the carriage at six o'clock to-morrow morning to take him from the prison."

At this moment the peasant woman saw Panna passing, and made the housekeeper a sign which silenced her at once. But Panna had heard enough. She quickened her pace to reach home quickly, put down her hoe, and ascertained that her father was already in the house. Her voice betrayed no trace of excitement as she asked if he was going out again, which he answered in the negative. Then she went to her room, put on a warm woollen shawl, slipped the few florins she still possessed into her pocket, and went away, telling her father to go to sleep, she would be back again.

Hastening to a peasant who lived at the other end of the village, she begged him to drive her to the city at once; she would pay whatever he asked. The man replied that his horses were tired out, he had driven them to the pasture, and could not bring them home now, etc. Panna went to the second house beyond and repeated her request. This peasant was more curious than his neighbour and asked what she wanted in the city in such a hurry.

"My father has suddenly been taken very ill, and I must get a doctor."

"Why don't you go to the village surgeon if the case is so urgent?"

"I have been there," was the quick, glib answer which fell from Panna's tongue, "he isn't at home, and won't come before morning. He has been called to a farm two miles off."

"H'm! And you are leaving the sick man all alone?"

"He isn't alone, a neighbour is with him."

"Wouldn't it be better for you to ask the neighbour to go to the city, and stay with your father yourself?"

"To cut the matter short, neighbour," Panna, who had grown terribly impatient, now burst forth, "will you take me or not? I'll answer your foolish questions on the way."

The peasant cautiously named the price of the ride, which Panna, without a word of objection, instantly placed in his hand, after which he at last went to draw out the waggon and harness the horses. A few minutes later the vehicle was rolling over the dusty high-road.

Panna, wrapped in her shawl, sat on a bundle of straw which the peasant had put in to furnish a seat for his passenger, staring with dilated eyes at the landscape, illumined by a soft radiance. It was a marvellously beautiful night in May. The full moon was shining in a cloudless sky, the ripening grain waved mysteriously to and fro in the white light, over the darker meadows a light mist was rising which, stirred by the faint breeze, gathered into strange shapes, then dispersed again, now rose a little, now sank, so that the straggling bushes scattered here and there alternately appeared above the floating vapour and were submerged in it; the fragrance of the wild flowers mingled with the fresh exhalations from the damp earth and gave the warm air a stimulating aroma. Now and then, where the bushes grew more thickly along the edge of the road, the rapturous songs of the nightingales were heard, the only sound, except the distant barking of a dog, or the buzzing of a huge night-beetle flitting past the waggon, which, at times, interrupted the silence of the night.

But Panna's senses were closed to all this varied beauty. Her whole existence, all her thoughts and feelings were now centred upon a single point, the purpose which brought her to the city. With a torturing effort, which drove the blood to her brain, she again reviewed the events of the past month, of her whole life. She strove to examine them on all sides, judge them impartially, consider them from various standpoints.

Was it right that Abonyi should now be at liberty to move about as the great lord he had always been, after being permitted to make himself comfortable for six months in a prison, which was no jail to him? Was it not her duty to execute the justice which neither the laws nor men would practise? Had she not a perfect right to do so, since she, and those who belonged to her, had hitherto always atoned fully and completely, rigidly and more than rigidly, for every sin?

In her early childhood her soul had been ravaged by a terrible grief, which had never been overcome; the law had killed her brother; in her girlhood, she had been tortured by only too frequent repetitions of the sight of her father, whom the law had loaded with chains and punished with severe imprisonment; her sorely wounded heart had found consolation only in a single thought which, amid her sufferings and afflictions, had gradually become established as firmly as a rock within her soul, that every sin found a harsh punishment, that this was an immovable, inexorable law of the universe, which could not be escaped, that it would be easier to pluck the stars from the sky than to do wrong without atoning for it. When, by a sudden act of violence, she injured Pista for life, it was instantly apparent to her that she owed expiation for it, and she had not hesitated or delayed an instant in punishing herself more severely than any judge would have done, by voluntarily sacrificing the happiness of her whole existence. This had cost her no self-conquest, it was a matter of course; the eternal law of the universe of sin and atonement required it, and to this demand there could be no resistance.

This law was her religion, she believed it and could not help believing; if she did not, if there was no august law of the universe, beyond all doubt, that sin exacted pitiless requital, it surely would not have been necessary to shoot her brother, to deliver her father so often to the hardships of prison-life, to bind her own youth to a hideous being whom she did not love when she married him, whom only the consciousness of duty voluntarily and proudly fulfilled afterwards rendered dear to her. If this was not a necessity, surely God, fate, mankind—use whatever name you choose—had basely, atrociously, robbed her brother, her father, and herself of life and happiness, and their destiny was enough to cause frenzy, despair, madness!

No, no, that could not be. Fate could not deal so rapaciously with a whole group of human beings; such unprecedented, inconceivable injustice could not have been done them. They had only experienced the great law of the universe and ought not to complain, because it is the course of the world.

But now this law had been violated in the most unparalleled manner; Abonyi had committed a heavy sin and had not atoned for it; this was a phenomenon which shook the foundations of her being, robbed her of all support, abruptly reawakened all her slumbering doubts concerning the necessity of her bitter fate, and unchained the terrible tempests in her soul, which hitherto only intense faith in the stern, but morally necessary omnipotence of the law of sin and atonement, had succeeded in soothing. Her sense of morality showed her a means of escape from this mental torture, and she did not hesitate to take it. The law of the universe must not be belied, it must prove itself in this case, as it always had; since those appointed to the office had shamefully omitted to use it, it became her right and her duty to execute it herself.

Amid these thoughts, which did not enter her mind dimly and vaguely, but with perfect clearness and distinctness, the hours passed with magical swiftness and, ere she was aware of it, the springless waggon rolled over the uneven pavement of a street in the suburbs. The noisy rattle of the wheels, which followed their former comparatively noiseless movement, and the jolts which the vehicle received in the numerous holes of the roadway quickly roused Panna from her deep reverie and brought her to a consciousness of external things.

It was about two o'clock in the morning. She asked the peasant to drive to the corner of a certain street, where the doctor whom she wanted, lived; when she reached the desired place she got out, gave her driver another florin, and said:

"Neighbour, go into a tavern and let your horses rest. You can ride home whenever you choose; I will ask the doctor to drive out in his own carriage and to take me with him; we shall get there several hours earlier with his fresh horses, than with your tired nags, which could not turn back at once."

"You're right there," replied the peasant, somewhat drowsily, bade her good-night, and drove off at a walk. In a few minutes the waggon was out of sight and hearing.

Panna now moved with rapid steps through several streets, which were alternately flooded with bright moonlight and shrouded in darkness, until she stood before the county jail. This is a barrack-like structure, whose plain front has for its sole architectural ornament two pairs of columns, which flank the main entrance on both sides. Panna entered the narrow space between the two columns at the left, and sat down with her back resting against the fluted shaft at the stone base of the pillar, whose shadow completely concealed her.

She was very weary and exhausted; the tempest of thoughts in her brain were followed by fatigue and a dull stupor; the silence, the darkness, the warmth of the shawl wrapped closely around her, the motionless position which her narrow hiding-place required, exerted a drowsy influence, and she soon sank into a torpor which imperceptibly passed into an uneasy, agitated half slumber, visited by terrible dreams. Panna saw horrible shapes dancing around her, which grasped her with their icy hands and dragged her away; sometimes it seemed as if her brother was brought out and a bullet fired into his head; while she was trying anxiously to find the wound, it was not her brother, but Pista, who lay there with the hole in his forehead; she wailed aloud and the dead man rose, seized a brick, and dashed it on her head so that she fell bleeding; then again it seemed as though it was not she who lay on the ground in a pool of blood, but Abonyi, who still held the smoking revolver in his rigid hand; so the frightful dream faces blended in terrible, spectral changes, one horrible visage drove out another, till Panna, with a low cry of fear, suddenly started from her troubled sleep. A heavy hand had grasped her by the shoulder, and a harsh voice shouted unintelligible words into her ear.

When she opened her eyes, she saw a policeman standing before her, shaking her and asking what she was doing here. Panna was terribly startled for a moment, but she quickly regained her presence of mind, and said:

"My husband is in the jail and will be released early in the morning; so I came here to wait for him."

"Why, my dear woman, you can't stay here," replied the policeman; "find a night's lodging, and in the morning you can be here in ample time to meet your husband."

"Oh, do let me stay here, I don't know anybody in the city, where am I to go now in the night, it will surely be morning in two or three hours," pleaded Panna, at the same time drawing from her pocket a florin, one of the last she had left, which she slipped into the hand of the guardian of order. After this argument the latter evidently discovered that it would be no very serious crime if a beautiful young woman waited in front of the jail, on a warm, moon-lit night in May, for her husband's release, for, with an incomprehensible mutter, he pursued his round, on which, during the next two hours, he repeatedly passed Panna without troubling himself any farther about her.

All fatigue had now left the watcher and, after this disturbance, she did not close her eyes a second time. She was once more calm and strong, and constantly repeated in her mind that she was about to do a good, needful work, pleasing to God. The moon had set, it was growing noticeably cool, day was dawning in the east; she shivered, a slight tremor ran through her whole frame, yet she remained motionless on her stone seat. Gradually the light grew brighter and brighter, the great city gave the first signs of awakening, a few sleepy-looking people began to pass with echoing footsteps through the street, now and then a carriage drove by, the matin bells pealed from the church steeples, and the first rays of the rising sun flooded the roofs of the surrounding houses with ruddy gold. Just at that moment a carriage rolled around the corner, drove in a sharp curve to the door of the jail, and stopped. Panna pressed farther back into her niche and hid her face in her shawl. She had recognized Janos and an open carriage owned by Abonyi.

The driver, who had not noticed the dark figure between the pillars, sprang from his box, blanketed the steaming horses, and gave them some bags of oats. Meanwhile the door of the jail had opened, for it was five o'clock; a heiduck came out, yawning and stretching, and asked Janos:

"For whom are you waiting so early, Brother?"'

"For my master, Herr von Abonyi, who will come presently."

"Yes, yes, you are to fetch his lordship; well, if you wish, I'll go in and tell the gentleman that you're here."

"Do, we'll get away sooner."

The man vanished inside the building and Janos busied himself industriously with his horses, while whistling a little song. It was not ten minutes before steps and voices were heard in the doorway. Janos raised his cap, called: "At your service," and sprang on the box. Two men appeared on the threshold, both looking as though they had been up all night—Abonyi and the steward.

"Cordial thanks and farewell till you see me in Kisfalu!" cried Abonyi, shaking hands with his companion.

"Good-bye until then! And in Kisfalu I'll give you revenge for the trifle you lost to-night."

"If my coachman hadn't come so early, I would have won it all back again."

"Why," said the steward, "if you feel inclined, you can come back and play on comfortably."

"Thank you, I've had quite enough of your hospitality for the present," replied Abonyi, and both laughed heartily, after which they again shook hands with each other.

The steward, who was shivering, turned back, and Abonyi prepared to get into the carriage. At the moment when he had one foot on the step and was half swinging in the air, without any firm hold, Panna sprang out, threw her whole weight upon Abonyi, dragged him to the ground with her, and, almost while falling, with the speed of lightning struck him repeatedly in the breast with a long, sharp, kitchen knife, which she had had in her bosom.

All this had been the work of a few instants. Abonyi had scarcely had time to utter a cry. Janos sat mute with bewilderment on the box, staring with dilated eyes at the two figures on the ground; the steward turned at the shriek and stood as though spell-bound by the spectacle which presented itself. Abonyi lay gasping, with his blood pouring from several wounds; Panna had straightened herself and, throwing down the bloody knife, stood quietly beside her victim. Instantly a great outcry arose, Janos sprang from the carriage and went to the assistance of his unconscious and evidently dying master, the steward rushed up to Panna and grasped her by the arm, which she permitted without resistance, a number of heiducks appeared, Panna was dragged into the doorway, and a flood of curses and threats was poured upon her. While Abonyi was carried into the guard-room under the entrance and laid on a wooden-table, where he drew his last breath before a physician could be summoned, a multitude of violent hands dragged Panna, amid fierce abuse, into the courtyard, while the steward shouted loudly:

"Lads! Bring chains for this monster! Chains I say, put irons on her hands and feet."

Then Panna who, hitherto, had not opened her lips, cried in a resonant voice, while a strange smile hovered about her quivering lips:

"Why, my dear sir, how long have you used chains? Wouldn't you rather play a game of cards with me?"

The steward's face flushed scarlet, he shrieked a few orders to his men in a shrill tone, and rushed back into the guard-room to Abonyi.

Panna was shoved rather than led down the steps of a flight of cellar stairs and thrust into a dark, stifling cell, where handcuffs were put on. During this proceeding, she made many sneering speeches:

"Give me a handsomely furnished room, too, like the one the nobleman had! And who will wait on me here?"

"Silence, witch!" cried the heiduck who was chaining her. "The executioner will wait on you when he makes you a head shorter."

"The executioner? Fool, what nonsense you are talking! No executioner will touch me. At the utmost I shall get three months imprisonment. If six months is the sentence given for the murder of an innocent man, surely one can't get more than three for killing a murderer."

At last Panna was left alone and the iron doors of her cell closed with an echoing sound. The crime naturally created the utmost excitement in the county jail; officials and employees talked of nothing else, and after learning from Janos who the criminal was, the opinion was generally expressed that she must be crazy. Before the examining magistrate, who was informed of the bloody deed in the course of the forenoon, gave Panna an examination, he sent a physician to see her and give an opinion of her mental condition.

The doctor found the young widow lying on the bench, deadly pale and utterly exhausted. She had spent all the power of her soul in the horrible resolve and its execution, and was now as gentle and tearful as a frightened child. She entreated the physician to have the irons taken off; she could not bear them, she would be perfectly quiet; and when he promised this she also besought him to write to her father, whose address she gave, in her place. She begged the latter's forgiveness for what she had done; she could not help it, there must be justice for gentlemen as well as for peasants. If there was no justice the world could not exist, everything would be topsy-turvy, and people would kill one another in the public streets just as the wild beasts did in the woods. She, too, would atone for the sin she had committed that day, and that would be perfectly just. She also sent a message to the gardener, thanking him for all the kindness and love which he had shown her, and hoping that he might have a happier life than Fate had allotted to her.

The physician talked with her some time longer, and received quiet, rational, somewhat timid replies. At last he went away shaking his head, evidently not knowing what to think of this singular woman, but he succeeded in having the handcuffs removed, and faithfully wrote the letter, as he had promised to do.

Panna was to be brought before the examining magistrate for the first time on the following morning. When the jailer opened the door of the cellar cell, he started back in horror. From the grating in the little window, high up in the stone wall, dangled a rigid human form. Panna had hung herself in the night by tying the strings of her skirt together.



PRINCE AND PEASANT.

The first regiment of dragoon-guards had been waiting idly behind a screen of low bushes in a shallow hollow for more than an hour, to receive the order to advance.

It was an interesting point in the spacious battle-field of Metz, and an important period in that day of August 16th, 1870, which paved the way for the ultimate prevention of Bazaine's breaking through to Verdun. By rising in the stirrups, or ascending one of the numerous shallow ridges which intersected the meadow, a charming view appeared.

A few hundred paces in the rear lay the little village of Vionville with its slender church-steeple, from whose top floated the flag of the red cross. Several roads bordered with poplars diverged from the hamlet, crossing in straight lines the broad, undulating meadow. In the foreground was a tolerably steep declivity, which at this moment formed the boundary of the German lines. Northward and southward, as far as the eye could reach, extended a ravine several hundred feet wide, at whose bottom a little stream had worn a narrow, winding channel. The western slope was tolerably gentle, the opposite one, on the contrary, was somewhat steep. Beyond stretched a bare plain, with a few church steeples and white buildings, in the distant background. Here the French were apparently drawn up in considerable force.

On the crest of the German hill several batteries were mounted, which maintained a rapid fire with bombs. Small bodies of infantry lay on the ground a short distance in the rear of the artillery. Still farther back was the regiment of dragoons, each man with his horse's bridle wound around his arm, waiting with weary, somewhat stolid faces, for orders. The battle had evidently been at this point some time. Nearly all the enemy's shells fell into the ravine, few reached the level ground on the German side, and they, too, thus far, had effected no special injury. Only a broken gun-carriage and two or three holes in the earth which, surrounded by a loose wall of yellow clay, looked like new-made graves, lent the plain something of the character and local colouring of a battle-field. The ear had a larger share in the mighty work of the day than the eye. From the sides, the front, the rear, everywhere, cannon thundered, at a short distance on the right echoed the rattle of a sharp fire of musketry, while the terrible, ceaseless roar which filled the air alternately swelled and sank, like the rising and falling flood of melody of a vast orchestra, during the storm of the pastoral symphony.

A number of officers had assembled on a little mound in front of the regiment of dragoons, whence they were attentively watching the French. Among them a major stood smoking a cigarette and gazing dreamily into vacancy. He was a man a little under thirty, with a slender figure, somewhat above middle height, and a pale, narrow face, to which cold grey eyes, and a scornful expression resting upon the colourless lips shaded by a blond mustache inclining to red, lent a stern, by no means winning expression. In this environment of human beings, amid these excited young men with their healthful, sunburnt faces, he, with his impassive, reserved expression and somewhat listless bearing, looked strangely weary and worn. A woman's eye gazing at the group of officers would scarcely have regarded him with favour; a man's would have singled him out as the most intellectual of them all.

Removing his helmet and wiping the perspiration from his forehead with his handkerchief, he displayed a head on which the hair was already growing thin and, at the same time, a well-kept, aristocratic hand, with long, thin, bloodless fingers. His whole appearance, even in the levelling uniform, revealed a man of exalted rank. And, in fact, this officer was Prince Louis of Hochstein-Falkenburg-Gerau, the head of a non-reigning line of a German princely race.

Orphaned at an early age, he found himself at eighteen when, by the rules of his House, he attained his majority, in the unrestricted possession of a yearly income of several millions. From his mother, a very fine musician, he inherited artistic tastes and a keen appreciation of the beautiful; from his haughty and somewhat eccentric father a rugged, independent nature, which found every external constraint intolerable and wished to obey only the law of its own will.

It requires little power of imagination to picture how the world looks to the eyes of a young, immensely wealthy scion of royalty. The court treated Prince Louis with marked distinction, the ladies petted him, gentlemen showed him the most flattering attention.

Precocious, as people become in the hot-house atmosphere of aristocratic society, reflective and shy, as only children, who are reared among grown people, without intercourse with companions of their own age, almost always are, endowed, moreover, with a critical mind, which always confronted appearances sceptically and anxiously went to the bottom of everything, Prince Louis, unlike so many of his equals in rank, did not accept the tokens of consideration offered him on all sides as a matter of course, but constantly asked himself their cause. He was honest with himself and admitted that he owed his sovereign's clasp of the hand, the wooing smiles of the ladies, the cordial advances of men of rank and distinction, not to his own personality, but to his title and his wealth.

"What do they all know about me?" he often said to himself, when he returned from an entertainment at court to his splendid palace, tenanted only by servants. "Nothing! They give me no chance to open my mouth, and if everything I said to-night had been written down and laid before a man who was capable of judging, that he might give an opinion of the person who made these remarks, he could not truthfully say anything except: 'The fellow is perhaps not actually a simpleton, but does not surpass mediocrity.' Yet I am received as if I were some one of consequence. Yes, that's just it: it is not I, Louis, who am treated so, for no one would trouble himself about me, but Prince Etc." He became really jealous of "Prince Etc.," whom he regarded almost as an enemy, who supplanted and cast into the shade his own individuality, and the noble ambition entered his mind to win esteem by his personality, not by the external advantages which chance had bestowed.

But this was no easy matter. "Prince Etc." everywhere stood intrusively in his way and would allow poor "Louis" no opportunity. He went to a university, less in order to study than to steep himself for a few terms in the poetry of student life. The members of his extremely aristocratic club formed in two ranks before him when he went to their tavern, and old professors whom, hitherto, he had admired for their works, blushed with joyous emotion when he introduced himself to them, and in the class-room appeared to address him alone. He soon had enough of this, and entered the army. The colonel thanked him for the compliment which he paid the regiment by choosing it, his superior officers showed him endless marks of consideration, and if some of them affected to make no distinction between him and other young officers, he detected in it an intention which also irritated him. As, moreover, he found no special pleasure in the conversations of his comrades, nor in the parades, watchwords, and other details of garrison life, he forthwith quitted active service, not without having been promoted, in rapid succession, to first-lieutenant, captain, and major in his regiment.

Of course meanwhile woman had entered his existence. But in what a manner! Light relations with actresses, which merely occupied his senses and left no trace in his life except some considerable sums in the account book which his faithful family steward kept with great accuracy; fleeting flirtations with society ladies, which soon became intolerable because he merely found incomparably greater demands, but otherwise nothing more than with his actresses, toward whom he need use no ceremony. This was all. A great, deep love would have given his life happiness and purpose; but it did not dawn for him. Was it because he did not meet the right woman? Was it because he did not come out of himself sufficiently? was he, as it were, too much walled in by his indifference to discover, behind the reserve of maidenly timidity, faint emotions by which his own feelings might have been kindled? Enough, he passed woman by, without seeing in her aught save a toy. By accident, or to be more accurate, through the jealousy of another interest which believed itself threatened, he discovered a cleverly woven intrigue to lure him into a marriage with a princess who, though neither especially beautiful nor wealthy, was yet very pretty, and this so roused his distrust that henceforth he saw in the favour of matrons and in the smiles of young ladies only speculations upon his revenue of two millions and his title of prince, and acquired a positive abhorrence of the circles in which people marry.

Once he had a meeting which narrowly escaped making a deeper impression. On a journey from the Black Forest to Norderney the prince, who cared nothing for aristocratic isolation, occupied the same compartment with a young girl from Mayence, who was going to the same place. She was remarkably beautiful, charming, gay, and brilliant, and exerted a powerful attraction over the prince. He was extremely attentive to her during the trip, while she remained pleasantly indifferent and appeared to care nothing for him.

Perhaps this very indifference stimulated him, and he continued his attentions at the North Sea watering place, where he maintained the incognito of Herr von Gerau, the beautiful girl, who was at once surrounded by other young gentlemen, only learning from him that he was a land-owner. She accepted his daily gifts of flowers, it is true, but otherwise showed no more favour to him than to the rest of her suitors. Indeed, she paid even less consideration to the prince than to the others, which greatly depressed him. Then it happened that a very exalted personage who was a friend of Prince Louis came to Norderney. The latter was obliged to pay him a ceremonious visit on which he wore his uniform, and now could no longer conceal his rank and name. The Mayence beauty saw him in his handsome blue uniform coat, and learned that very day the identity of her admirer. Her manner to him altered as if by magic. She had eyes for him alone, distinguished him by a cordiality which justified the boldest hopes and, by her tender looks and smiles, seemed to be imploring forgiveness for not having perceived his value sooner. Prince Louis noticed this sudden change and felt the deepest shame.

For two days good and evil fought a hard battle in his soul. His innate nobility of character urged him not to profit by his advantage, to withdraw from a person whom he had discovered to be so superficial. His bitter contempt for women whispered to carry the relation which had assumed a frivolous turn, to the doubtful end. Baseness triumphed over nobility, and let any man of twenty-four who feels that he is guiltless cast the first stone at the prince. But his evil genius farther instigated him to do something very odious. After a poetic hour, in which the Mayence beauty, amid fervid kisses, had asked whether he, her beloved one, would now be hers forever, he sent her a package which contained—his uniform, and a costly pin in the shape of a crown, accompanied by a little note stating that he gave, for her perpetual possession, all that she had loved in him.

The remembrance of this unpardonably unchivalrous act often tortured him afterwards, but his repentance by no means took the form of greater respect for women. On the contrary, he became more and more a convert to Don Juan's love—philosophy, and allowed only the millionaire and Prince Etc. to sue for favour, while the sceptical Louis grew wholly averse to the fair sex.

From early youth, he had secretly written lyric poetry, and his productions, which, it is true, were imitative rather than original, were pleasant to read and correct in form. He sent some under his own name to great weekly periodicals, and they not only appeared at once but he obtained the most flattering requests for more contributions. This afforded him much gratification, but again only for a brief time. Under the influence of his suspicious spirit of investigation, he sent several poems, with an unpretending assumed signature, to other papers. He either received no reply or curt rejections in the editors' letter-box. So he was done with that too.

He tried the "naive" life of pleasure, as he called it. With small success. Gaming soon ceased to attract him, for at the roulette table in Monaco he loathed the companionship of old professional gamblers with their gallows-bird faces, and of bedizened Paris courtesans, and at his club in Berlin or Baden, where he played only with respectable people, the stakes were never high enough to permit even the largest possible gain or loss to excite him. The pleasures of the epicure afforded him more satisfaction, and his table was famous among his peers. He soon wearied of wine; the discomfort caused by intoxication seemed to him too large a price to pay for the enjoyment of drinking. This caused his guests to banter him about his moderation, and allude to the historic drinking-horn of gigantic size, which, as the chronicles of the House attested, his ancestors used to drain at their banquets, though in those days the Burgundy was far from its present perfection, and Canary had not yet been invented. His companions' enthusiasm for drinking at last disgusted him with entertaining, and he gradually lost his taste for choice dinners also.

Once, while living on his Silesian estates, whose extent was equal to a small kingdom, he became ill, and was obliged to send for the district physician. This man, who afterwards obtained a world-wide reputation, was then young, unknown, and apparently an ordinary country doctor. The prince, however, soon perceived that he was far superior to his circumstances and position, and placed himself upon a very confidential footing with him. One day he complained of the desolation and monotony of his life and asked, in a tone between jest and earnest, what he should do with himself.

"Give your life a purpose, Prince," replied Dr. Backer, "strive for something."

Prince Louis smiled scornfully.

"For what shall I strive? Everything to which the rest of you aspire, which you are struggling with your best powers to attain, I already possess! Money? I cannot spend half my income unless I light my cigars with hundred-thaler notes, or wish to bore a hole through the earth. Women's favour? My visiting cards will obtain more than is desirable for me. Honours? At six and twenty years old, I have the grand cross of the highest orders, and have the precedence of every one except a few princes of the blood. Power? Listen, my dear Doctor: I really believe that if it suited my pleasure I could shoot a slater off the roof, and the affair would have no unpleasant results. Fame and immortality? My name is perhaps somewhat better known than Goethe's. Wherever I desire to appear, I am far more of a lion than the greatest poet and scholar, and every Prince Hochstein is sure of two lines in the encyclopaedia and larger historical works, even if he has done nothing except to be born and to die at a reasonable age. So, for what should I strive?"

"For satisfaction with yourself," replied Dr. Backer, "and that you will find only when you earn what you inherited from your ancestors, in order to possess it, as Father Goethe says."

Satisfaction with himself—certainly! But to attain it is the greatest art of life. The prince might gain it if he devoted himself earnestly, not merely in a half-absent dilettante fashion, to some art, science, or useful avocation. Only it required a self-discipline of which, unfortunately, he was incapable. In all pursuits requiring dexterity, all sciences, the first steps are laborious, wearisome, and apparently thankless, and the Canaan which they promise is reached only after weary wandering through the desert. Prince Louis did not possess the self-denial requisite for it. So he continued his life devoted to purely external things and meanwhile was as much bored as Jonah in the whale. He undertook long journeys and disappeared for six months, during which he hunted tigers in India and hippopotami in the Blue Nile. When he returned home and was questioned at the club about his experiences and whether he had been entertained, he answered with a shrug of the shoulders.

"Entertained? As if one could be in this vale of tears! There really is nothing remarkable about a tiger-hunt. The danger and excitement concern the poor devils of Hindoos, who rouse the game. I sat in my howdah on a very quiet elephant and fired as if I were shooting at a target. Buy some big cats from Asia or Africa, put them into a cage in your park, and shoot till you kill them. It is about the same thing. True, the scenic effects are less glaring, there are fewer supernumeraries, and there is not so much shrieking and struggling on the stage. But that seems to me rather an advantage, and one doesn't have the heat and the snakes."

His hearers laughed, and an old gentleman remarked:

"You have mental colour-blindness, my dear Prince, and I should not like to have you guide the engine of my life-train."

He had hit the mark. Prince Louis saw life uniformly grey. How infinitely true are Schiller's words:

"Each mortal heart some wish, some hope, some fear, Linked with the morrow's dawn, must cherish here To bear the troubles with which earth is rife, The dull montony [Transcriber's note: monotony?] of daily life."

But Prince Louis wished, hoped, feared nothing, and when he thought of the future he beheld it in the form of a drowsy monster, yawning noisily. He longed like a languishing lover for some excitement, pursued it to the end of the world, but did not succeed in finding it.

He was just on the eve of going to Norway to hunt reindeer, when the war of 1870 broke out. In 1866 he had been in Africa and did not hear of the events of the summer until everything was over. This time he asked permission to join his regiment, the first dragoon-guards, which of course was granted. To tell the truth, he was influenced less by patriotism and enthusiasm than, in addition to propriety, the hope that military life would afford him new sensations.

Had he deceived himself this time also? It almost seemed so; for, during the fortnight which he had spent in the enemy's country, he had as yet experienced nothing unusual. When a person is attended by two capable servants, and has an unlimited amount of money at his disposal, he need suffer no discomfort even in the field, especially during a victorious advance, and as yet there had been no opportunity for individual deeds of heroism, or perilous adventures.

Thus he had again relapsed into a half-listless mood, while, as we have just seen him, he stood among his comrades in front of his regiment smoking his cigarette. Now, however, the French appeared to be advancing from the other side of the ravine. Their batteries came nearer, their shells began to fly across the gorge and strike behind the German cannon. One burst amid the division of infantry, killing and wounding several soldiers. Another demolished a gun and made havoc among those who served it. The short sharp whistle of bullets even began to mingle with the peculiar shrill wailing sound of the sugarloaf shot, and on the plateau beyond, slender lines of infantry, diverging very far apart, could be seen moving swiftly onward. They ran forward, flung themselves down, there was a succession of sudden flashes, little clouds of white smoke rose, a confusing medley of sharp, rattling reports followed, contrasting disagreeably with the deep, rolling thunder of the artillery; then the men were on their feet again, rushing on, no longer in a perfectly straight line, some in advance, others a little behind, with their faces turned towards the sun, beneath whose rays the red breeches flamed in a vivid, bloody hue, and buttons, bayonets, all polished bits of metal alternately flashed and vanished.

The force of artillery was too weak to risk an advance. The colonel who commanded the batteries ordered some shrapnels to be thrown among the advancing lines of French infantry, and was about to move his cannon a little farther back, when an aide dashed up from the right and reported that he had ridden on in advance of the 38th brigade of infantry, one regiment was close behind him, the other was marching as rapidly as possible, and would soon arrive. "Hurrah! Hurrah!" shouted artillerymen, infantry, and dragoons at the top of their voices. "Hurrah! Hurrah!" came back from the distance, and a regiment of infantry, headed by a colonel and a general, advanced at a rapid march in broad, deep columns from the poplar-bordered road across the pathless meadow. The group of officers exchanged greetings with the new arrivals, the general received reports, quickly made himself acquainted with the situation of affairs, and issued orders, signals echoed, in an instant the masses of infantry separated, lines of riflemen darted forward and hurried to the edge of the ravine, down whose slope they were seen running a few minutes later. A second and third rank followed at a short distance, and, almost ere one was aware of it, the whole regiment had poured down into the hollow.

This was the Third Westphalian regiment. It had passed so near the group of dragoon officers that Prince Louis could have distinguished every figure, every face. The poor fellows had been on their feet fourteen hours, marching steadily under the scorching August sun. A thick gray crust of dust, which perspiration had converted into an ugly mask, covered their fresh young faces. The uniforms bore marks of the clay in the various camping grounds where they had halted for a short rest. But nothing now revealed the mortal weariness of the band of heroes. Their eyes, reddened by the heat, blazed with the enthusiasm for battle, their parched throats once more gained power to shout "Hurrah!" with the full strength of their voices; their feet, which but a few minutes ago had dragged along the dusty highway with painful effort, now moved lightly and elastically, it seemed as though the whole regiment had been invigorated by some stimulating drink as it inarched into the line of fire.

The batteries roared above their heads at the French with twofold zeal, "Hurrah, Hurrah!" rose from a thousand throats in the bottom of the ravine, one could hear the roll of the drums sounding the march, and loud shouts and cries. Prince Louis watched the assailants, whose foremost ranks were already climbing the hill on the opposite side.

"Poor fellows!" he thought, "there they go to death as joyously as if it were a kirmess dance. They will shout hurrah till they are hoarse or a bullet silences them. Of what are they thinking? Probably of nothing. A blind impulse to conquer urges them on. And what does victory mean to each individual? What advantage will it be to him? How will it benefit his earthly fate, if he escapes death on the battlefield? The renown of the German name? For me perhaps it has a value. Yet it is not absolutely certain. My uniform will possibly derive a prouder lustre; but I wear it so seldom! If I go to Japan next year, perhaps the Mikado will receive me with more distinction than if I belonged to a conquered nation. Yet whether we mow down the French or they us, I think I shall always receive the same treatment at the Paris Jockey Club and the Nice Cercle de la Mediterranee. So much for me. But these obscure people below—what do they care about military fame and the power of a victorious native land? They will notice nothing of it in their villages. The tax-collector and the gendarme will be just what they were before, and that is all they see of their native country, yet they are filled with enthusiasm. The fact exists. It is as clear as noonday. We owe this to the writers who have given such beautiful pictures of our native land and military renown, and to the schoolmasters, who have instilled their words into the souls of the people. Marvellous power of language, which can incite a prosaic peasant lad to sacrifice life joyfully for an abstract idea, a fancy."

These were his thoughts,—it can neither be denied nor palliated. But while they darted clearly and swiftly through his brain, he felt a mental agitation which surprised and bewildered him. It was a strange perplexity; he felt ashamed and embarrassed; it seemed as though he had uttered his thoughts aloud, and a group of people with grave, noble faces had listened, and were now gazing at him in silence, but with mingled compassion and contempt. From inaccessible depths of his soul, into which his sober, critical, mocking reason did not shine, a mysterious voice appeared to rise, imperiously commanding his scepticism to be silent. "I am right!" reason ventured to murmur. "You are wrong!" thundered the voice from the depths. "I will not consciously permit myself to be made giddy by the dizziness of romantic self-deception!" answered reason—but now Prince Louis felt as though some stranger, from whom he must turn indignantly, was uttering the words.

The Third Westphalian covered the opposite ascent. The foremost ranks were already at the top and paused a moment, for a murderous fire greeted the first heads which appeared, and several men, mortally wounded, rolled down again. But the rest pressed on, using both hands and feet to climb the hill, whose ascent would have been mere sport for fresh youths, skilled in gymnastic exercises, but which must have seemed terribly steep to harassed, exhausted troops. As they worked their way upward with the utmost zeal, evidently striving to excel one another, Prince Louis thought of some stanzas in the Winter Tale of his favorite author, Heine:

"That lovable, worthy Westphalian race, I ever have loved it extremely, A nation so firm, so faithful, so true, Ne'er given to boasting unseemly. How proudly they stood with their lionlike hearts In the noble science of fencing"—[1]

And with their "lion-like hearts" they reached the crest of the hill and, summoning all their remaining breath, dashed forward. But the French, comparatively unwearied and, roused to the highest pitch of combativeness by the appearance of the enemy directly in their front, threw themselves upon them in greatly superior numbers, and after a close fight, which by the front ranks of both forces was actually conducted in certain places with steel weapons, forced them back to the ravine. It was impossible to make a stand there, the poor Westphalians were obliged to wheel, and tumbled heels over head down the slope again, not without leaving a number of killed and wounded. The French were close behind and reached the bottom of the gorge almost at the same time. The Westphalians attempted to climb up the opposite side again, and then those who were left behind witnessed a heart-rending spectacle. The German soldiers were so utterly exhausted that their limbs could not carry them up the ascent, gentle as it was. They sank down in throngs as though paralysed, the muskets dropped from their nerveless hands, which no longer obeyed their will, and the French could seize hundreds of them and lead them away as prisoners, while many fell on the way and were left lying on the ground by the foe.

Meanwhile a great bustle rose. The Eighth Westphalian regiment had just come up and, while the batteries moved rapidly back toward the village in the rear, the former, led by the general in person, dashed down into the ravine to the aid of their sorely imperilled companions. The French recoiled before the shock and a large number of the prisoners were recaptured. Yet the first assault did not succeed in dislodging the foe; the French obstinately maintained their position at the foot of the opposite height, and when attacked there, amid great loss, with the bayonet, retired step by step up the scarf and again made a stand at its top. A double flank movement of the Westphalians, however, compelled them to retire somewhat quickly, and the latter, stimulated by the sight, pressed after them cheering.

But this favourable turn did not last long. During the struggle for the possession of the valley, the foe had not remained inactive. New masses of infantry were brought up, and in the distance cavalry appeared, moving slowly forward.

Prince Louis had watched the course of the battle with increasing excitement, feeling his heart alternately beat joyously with twofold rapidity and then contract in pain till it seemed to stop. The situation now seemed to him critical and, glancing around, he found the same feeling expressed in the looks and faces of the other officers. But the colonel had already beckoned to his orderly and sprung into the saddle. The trumpets sounded the first signal, a sudden movement ran through the ranks of the dragoons, in an instant all were in the saddle, sabre-sheaths clanked against stirrups, the chains and bars of the bits rattled as the horses tossed their heads, then there was a second blare of trumpets, a shrill neighing, a loud snorting, the pawing and stamping of hoofs, swords flew from their sheaths, and the troop of horsemen was in motion.

Prince Louis looked at his watch—it was half-past six o'clock. As, at the head of the first squadron, he rode a short distance behind the colonel, the aides of the regiment, and the trumpeters, a strange mood which he had never before experienced came over him. The painful excitement and quivering impatience, which, during the last half-hour, had made his veins throb to his finger-tips, merged into a joyous consciousness of purposeful activity, which restored his calmness. Now he no longer reflected and criticised. It seemed as if the doubting spirit had been driven out of him and he was obeying eagerly, confidently, and devoutly as a child a command which filled his whole being with an overwhelming desire to press forward. This man, so proud of his personality, who had always sought his happiness in the unrestricted exercise of his individuality, now felt his ego shrivel until it was imperceptible. He was only a tiny stone in a piece of mosaic, which formed a noble masterpiece only as a whole. A mighty power, call it a law of nature or the will, whose manifestation is the history of the world, had entered into and taken complete possession of him. It was not he who now directed his fate, it was decided by some unknown being outside of him. Had he been the most remarkable human being on earth, a Newton, a Goethe, nay, the Saviour Himself, he would now have weighed no more in the balance than the nameless Brandenberg farm-hand by his side, he would now have had in the mechanism of the world only the value of a dozen screws or rivets. And, strangely enough, this merging of his individuality into a whole, as a crystal of sugar dissolves in water, awakened neither discomfort nor regret. On the contrary, it was an unknown delight, which pervaded his whole frame and sent a little shiver of pleasure down his spine. He felt himself a very small personage, and yet, at the same time, a very great one, who had far outstripped the bounds of his individuality. It seemed as though he was borne helplessly on by a mighty power, and the thought entered his mind that Ganymede must have had similar sensations when he flew heavenward between the rustling pinions of the eagle. He was now experiencing the deep and mighty emotion for which he had always longed, and he had obtained it by emerging from his selfish seclusion and finding a point of connection with all mankind.

The regiment went down the slope at a walk, describing a wide curve, partly to make the descent more easily, partly to avoid the dead and wounded lying in heaps upon the ground at the bottom of the declivity. Now the horses climbed the other side in a slanting line and reached the meadow beyond. At a signal from the trumpets, the regiment formed in two divisions which trotted forward, offering a wide front, still keeping obliquely to the left for a time, past the cheering Westphalians, and finally rushing straight upon the foe.

The thunder of the artillery in front ceased and echoed only from the distance at the right. From the opposite direction a regiment of cuirassiers came to meet the dragoons. A few hundred yards separated the front ranks of the two, and the trumpets of both regiments could be heard at the same time. The order to attack was given, and with frantic haste, the lines dashed over the resonant clay soil, which was absolutely free from dust.

It was like a scene from the legends of the Norse gods. The cuirassiers, riding straight toward the westering sun, glittered and flashed with fairy-like radiance, their shining sword-blades looked like tongues of fire, their cuirasses and helmets blazed as if they were at a white heat, their whole van was steeped in dazzling light, as though surrounded by a halo. The German dragoons had the sun directly on their backs. The long black shadows of the horses and riders dashed over the ground before them, as if the cruel shadows of death were preceding the living against the proud cuirassiers. Now the ranks met with a terrible crash. The supernaturally majestic scene was transformed in an instant into a horrible, formless chaos. Overthrown by the force of the shock, horses and riders rolled upon the earth. Masterless steeds dashed wildly in every direction, revolvers snapped, sword-blades clashed, the horses uttered short, harsh screams, the Frenchmen fought amid oaths and exclamations, the Germans, with clinched teeth, dealt blows around them, swords were buried in the bodies of enemies, without their owners clearly seeing what they were doing, single pairs of foes, hacking furiously at each other, were suddenly separated by a movement of their horses and brought in front of new antagonists, only to find themselves the next moment again in a dense throng, thigh pressing against thigh, arms firmly pinioned, panting into each other's faces, while the rearing horses tried to bite one another. This frenzied medley lasted perhaps two, perhaps three, minutes. In spite of the irregular swaying to and fro of the mass, the dragoons had constantly advanced, and now the cuirassiers suddenly wheeled their horses and, bending low in their saddles, dashed off in a stretching gallop. An exultant "Hurrah!" burst like a peal of thunder from the breasts of the terribly excited dragoons, and their steeds, with the blood dripping from their torn flanks, their chests covered with flakes of foam, continued their victorious race, while on the field behind lay hundreds of French and Germans, dead and wounded.

Signals, shouts, and the waving of sabres gradually slackened the onward rush of the conquerors and brought them to a halt on the brink of a narrow stream. It seemed to Prince Louis like waking from a dream, as he patted the neck of his gallant horse and, panting for breath, gazed around him. On the opposite side batteries were seen moving rapidly away, the remnants of the cuirassier regiment were following the artillery, and in the distance, on both sides, columns of infantry were hurrying back, not without pouring upon the dragoons, during the retreat, an irregular and ineffective fire.

"Strange," said a very young lieutenant beside the prince, showing him his sword, "half the blade is covered with blood, and cannot have received the stain except in a Frenchman's body. Yet I cannot recall how it happened."

Prince Louis was about to answer, when he suddenly received a tremendous thrust in the breast, as if dealt by the hand of an invisible giant or the tip of a bull's horn, and, with a low cry, he pressed his hand upon the painful spot. He withdrew it stained with blood, and could just grasp the thought that a bullet had pierced him ere his senses failed.

When he regained his consciousness, he found himself lying on the trampled turf with his head resting on a saddle. His coat was unbuttoned and a number of his comrades were busying themselves about him. He felt no pain, only an inexpressible weariness and a strange, almost indescribable feeling, something like an internal trickling, which appeared to be rising into his throat and forced him to struggle for breath like a drowning man.

"How do you feel, Prince?" asked the lieutenant-colonel, bending anxiously over him.

"I feel," he answered softly, "as if I ought to shout: Long live the king! Long live our native land!" Then, after a brief pause, he added almost inaudibly, while a barely perceptible smile flickered over his white lips: "But I certainly am not at a public meeting."

These were his last words.



[1] English translation.



THE ART OF GROWING OLD.

Baron Robert von Linden was standing between the panels of his triple mirror. The sunlight of a bright May morning was streaming upon him through the lofty window so brilliantly that it made the places which it illumined almost transparent. He put his face very close to the crystal surface, so that it nearly touched and he was obliged to hold his breath in order not to dim it, examining his reflected image a long time, with a scrutiny which at once seeks and fears discoveries, looked at himself in front, then from the side, changed the light, sometimes bringing his face under the full radiance of the sunshine, sometimes receiving it at different angles or shading himself slightly with his hand. At last, sighing heavily, he stepped back, laid the tortoise-shell comb and ivory brush on the marble washstand, sank into the arm-chair standing in the corner, and bowed his head on his breast, while his arms hung at full length as if nerveless.

Alas! the hour when he made his morning toilet was no longer a happy one for Baron Robert. He dreaded the inexorable mirror, and yet self-torturing curiosity impelled him to inspect his face with the keen observation of a Holbein. Not even the least deterioration in his appearance escaped his search and scrutiny. He perceived and examined all the ravages which life had made in his exterior: the lines crossing the brow, the little wrinkles extending from the corners of the eyes toward the temples, the deep ones, as well as those which seemed, as it were, lightly sketched with a faint stroke to be more strongly marked later, and which were now visible only in a side-light, the creased appearance of the lower eyelids and the space between the inner corners of the eyes and the bridge of the nose, the granulated condition of the smoothly shaven cheeks, which resembled the peel of ripe oranges or fine Morocco leather; the flabbiness of the narrow strip of skin between the edge of the beard and the ears, which looked as if it had been lightly powdered with greyish-yellow dust; the pallor near the cheek-bone, which was as colourless and withered as a dead tea-rose leaf. He counted the white hairs already visible on the temples—he pulled out the ones in the moustache—let the sunbeams play over his hair and, turning and bending his head, saw that it was growing thinner and, from the brow to the crown, showed the smooth scalp shining through. The investigation lasted a long while, he performed it with cruel thoroughness, locking himself into his room meanwhile, since he would not allow even his valet to be a witness of the painful discoveries of which he believed that he alone was aware.

Perhaps he was not mistaken in this comforting supposition. His appearance as a whole was still handsome and stately. Time had not marred the lines of his slender figure, no increase of flesh enlarged his girth, no weakness made his shoulders droop and rounded his back, and when dressed with exquisite taste, and carrying his head proudly erect, he walked with a light, elastic step through the streets or across the carpet of a drawing-room, he would have been taken at a distance, or if one was a little near-sighted, not only for a handsome man, but even for one still young.

He said this to himself when, after a few minutes of discouragement, he rose from the arm-chair, hastily completed his toilet, and again looked at the whole effect in the mirror, this time not close at hand, but from a distance of several paces.

Some one knocked at the door. "The doctor," said the servant's voice.

"I'm coming," replied Baron Robert, hastening to open the door and enter the adjoining drawing-room, where Dr. Thiel was awaiting him. He came regularly one morning every week to see the baron before the latter went out; for Baron Robert was a little anxious about his health, and liked to be told by the physician, who was also his friend, that certain trifling symptoms—great thirst on a hot day, slight fatigue after a ball, a little heaviness in his limbs after a long walk, were of no importance.

"Well, how are you to-day?" cried Dr. Thiel, rising to meet him.

"Fairly well," replied Linden, clasping both his hands.

"Yet, surely you look rather downcast?" asked the physician.

"For good reasons," answered Linden sighing.

"What is the matter now? Have you no appetite after eating? Do you feel more tired at midnight than in the morning?"

"Don't ridicule me. You don't know what day this is."

Thiel looked at him inquiringly.

"My birthday," said Linden mournfully.

"Why, to be sure," cried Thiel, "let me see, what one is it?"

"No number," interrupted Linden quickly, covering his friend's mouth with his hand.

"You're worse than a coquette," remarked Thiel, pushing his hand away. He had had "an old coquette" on the tip of his tongue, but suppressed the adjective. "A man can speak of his age without regret, when he is only in the mid-forties."

"Not yet the middle, I beg of you," Linden eagerly protested, "I am forty-four years old to-day."

Thiel smiled. "Well, I wish you many happy——"

Linden did not let him finish. "Happiness! Happiness! Is there any happiness after youth is over?"

"Everything depends upon what is meant by happiness."

Linden did not seem to hear what Thiel was saying, but pursued his own train of thought. "How futile your science is! You find a bacillus here, a ptomain there. What use is that to me? None! Teach me how to keep young forever, then I shall have some respect for your staring into your beloved microscope. The ancients alone were right in that, as in everything else. To die young. In undiminished vigour. The gods can bestow no greater happiness. What is there to seek in life when youth has fled?"

"Nothing, of course, if, like a drone, we have but a single task in existence: to live. A drone must die, when it has performed its mission. I am not at all blind to the beauty of the butterfly, which lets its magnificent velvet wings glisten in the sunshine throughout a long summer day, and has no organs for receiving nourishment, but does nothing except hover around flowers and the females of his species, wooing and loving, and dies in the evening without ever waking from his ecstasy of delight. It is the same thing with the flower. It blooms, exhales its fragrance, displays beautiful forms and colours merely for the purpose of propagation, withering quickly when that purpose is attained. The butterfly and the flower are both beautiful. Yet, after all, they are inferior forms of life, and man is higher, though he does not exhale fragrance and usually possesses no velvet wings."

"Is it so absolutely certain that man is superior? For my part I envy the butterfly and the flower, which perish in the full glory of youth, beauty, and love. That is the way I have always imagined an existence worth living. A dazzling display of fireworks. A sudden flashing, flaming, crackling, and detonating amid the darkness. A triumphant ascent of glittering balls and serpents, before whose splendid hues the stars of heaven pale. At every rain of fire and explosion, a rapturous, ah! and a thunder of applause from the gaping Philistines, who are in a tumult of ecstasy at the sight, and thus, without cessation, have flash follow flash, and report report, in a continual increase of magnificence, until the closing piece on whose marvellous splendour darkness must fall with no transition. That is life. That is happiness. But the rockets must always be fully charged. Otherwise they will not fly upward amid universal admiration to the stars, but fizz a little, hop up with ridiculous effort, fall plump, and go out pitifully in a malodorous smoke. A dismal end."

Robert was silent a moment, evidently pursuing his picture in his mind. Then, as if it were the final result of his train of thought, he added:

"Yes, Doctor, if you could only put a fresh charge into a half-exploded rocket."

The doctor smiled.

"To remain always young, we need only do at every age what harmonises with it."

Linden looked disappointed. But Thiel, without allowing himself to be disturbed by it, continued:

"Are you not young at twenty? Well, play with a humming-top in the streets at that age, and every one who passes will exclaim: 'What an old clown! Aren't you ashamed of yourself?' At fifty you consider yourself old. If, at fifty, you are a commander-in-chief or a chancellor, everybody will say: 'So young a general; a minister so young!'"

Linden rose and went to the window. Thiel followed, laid his hand on his shoulder, looked him directly in the eye, and said very earnestly:

"Believe me, dear Baron Linden, that is the secret of perpetual youth—there is no other. A man in the forties is not old—unless he cannot resolve to give up the conceits of a page."

"Always the same song!" Linden impatiently exclaimed. "Must I renounce love?"

"Yes," replied Thiel firmly.

"I must voluntarily renounce happiness?"

"In your case love is not always synonymous with happiness," said Thiel with a significant smile.

"You are particularly agreeable to-day," remarked Linden sullenly.

"I owe you the truth. It is a professional and, at the same time, a friendly duty," said Thiel, rising to go. Linden parted from him with a silent clasp of the hand.

"Renounce love! No. That he really could not do. Love was the sole purpose of his life which, without it, would seem as cold and gloomy as a grave."

He was a chosen vessel of pleasure, and apparently destined by nature to be borne through life in women's arms, handsome, captivating, a flash of passion in his tender eyes, his lips yearning for kisses, regarded by the men with wrath and envy, by the women with glowing cheeks and bewildered hearts. When barely a youth, a page of the Grand Duchess, his attractive person and winning grace turned the heads of all the ladies of the court, and it was rumoured that a princess had been his first teacher in the arts of love and, even after decades had passed, still grieved over their memory. As the Hereditary Grand Duke's adjutant, he had scarcely anything to do except to continue to compose his long love-poem, and add verse after verse. At thirty he resigned from active service, which had never been active for him, and became manager of the court stage. His brief love-conflicts and easy victories now had another scene for display. After the society of the court the dramatic arts: dancing, singing, acting without choice, or rather with the choice indued by the desire for beauty, and—change. The years elapsed like a series of pictures from the fairy-tale of Prince Charming. They formed a frieze of bewitching groups in all the attitudes which express wooing and granting, languishing and triumphing. Each year was a Decameron, each month a sensuous Florentine tale, with a woman's name for title and contents. What a retrospect! His past life resembled a dream whose details blended indistinctly with one another, leaving only a confused recollection of sighs, kisses, and tears, melting eyes, half-parted lips, and loosened tresses, a memory as deliciously soft as a warm, perfumed bath, in whose caressing waters, in a chamber lit by a rose-hued lamp, one almost dissolves, and yields with thoughts half merging into slumber.

But the dream seemed to be drawing to a close. Of late a cold hand had touched Baron Robert, at first considerately, then more and more imperiously, to rouse him. He could no longer shut his eyes and ears to the signs and warnings: for they daily became plainer and more frequent, not merely in his mirror, but also in the unintentionally cruel words of the world, that other still more inconsiderate mirror. The pretty ingenue of his theatre, one of his last conquests, had recently after a private supper, while sitting on his knee and stroking his face, said to him with overflowing tenderness:

"What a wonderfully handsome man you must have been!"

He had thrust her from him like a viper with so hasty a movement that the poor girl hardly knew what had happened. She did not suspect that she had thrust a dagger into the heart of the man she loved. At balls, young girls now, after a rapid waltz, whispered, blushing: "I am afraid you are tired," and in the German other partners, who were neither so handsome nor so elegant as he, but young and lively, attracted more attention from the ladies and obtained more favours. And had not a young attache a short time ago, in reply to the remark that he preferred a sensible conversation with experienced men to any other social pleasure, said with thoughtless impertinence; "Of course, at your age—" He would have boxed his ears, if any lady had been within hearing.

Such frank expressions, which even sensitive people did not avoid, because they did not yet deem him in need of forbearance, caused a degree of depression which, on some days, became actual melancholy. Then he sought a consoling self-deception in memory, and lost himself in dreams of the past, as a proud, brave nation, which has suffered defeat, takes refuge in the history of its former victories, to sustain itself. Shut into his study for hours he again lived over his triumphs, surrounded by their testimonials. He placed before him pictures of himself, taken at different ages. This bewitching page with his smooth, merry face, clad in dainty knee-breeches with bows and a silk doublet, this handsome lieutenant with the downy moustache and the bold, laughing glance, were images of him; he had looked thus, perhaps even better; for he remembered that the likeness, when taken, did not satisfy him, and that everybody thought he was really far handsomer. He opened secret drawers, which exhaled an ungodly perfume, very faint, almost imperceptible, like a faded, ghostly odour, yet which excited the nerves in a peculiar way, and somewhat quickened the pulsation of the heart. These were the archives of the history of his own heart. There lay in piles packages of letters, methodically tied with coloured ribbons, withered flowers, whose leaves fell from the corona if touched ever so lightly, faded bows, torn laces, which still seemed to palpitate under the rude grasp of a hand rummaging among them, paper German favours, from which the gloss and gilding had peeled, other shapeless, disconnected bits of tinsel which were incomprehensible unless one knew the memory associated with them, and among the strange, motley chaos, the most personal mementoes: women's hair smooth, curled, braided, long, and short, arranged by a true eye, with scandalously cool composure, upon a pale lilac varnished board, in a wonderful scale of colours, from the highest pitch, the fair locks of the Englishwoman, resembling a delicate halo, through almost imperceptible gradations to the deep, shining blue-black of the Sicilian, and portraits in every form which fashion has devised during the last twenty-five years, and from which the eternal feminine looked, lured, and smiled in a hundred charming embodiments. A circle of spectres rose from these drawers and whirled around him, stretching white arms toward him and fixing upon him tearful or glowing eyes. All these cheeks had flushed beneath his kisses, all these bosoms had been pressed to his own, all these tresses his trembling fingers had smoothed, surely he might call himself happier than most mortals, since so much of love's bliss had filled all the hours of his existence.

Doubtless he did say this to himself after such revelling in the past, but in his inmost heart he did not believe it. Don Juan does not peruse the list of the thousand and three himself. He leaves it to Leporello while he, without a glance at the older names, increases the succession. The day when the cavalier begins to study his list, his wisest course would be to burn it, for then it will no longer be a triumph, but a humiliation.

Robert von Linden felt this, but he would not admit it. On the contrary, he intentionally endeavoured to deceive himself. He who had been a Grand Seigneur of love, became a snob of love. He sank to the level of the irresistible travelling salesman who tells the tale of his successes in foreign taverns. He had always left drawing-room gossip to spread his reputation with its thousand tongues and, by the mere mention of his name, fill maids and matrons with an exciting mixture of timid fear and eager yearning, indignant pride and tender pity. Now a torturing anxiety beset him lest his great deeds might be forgotten, and he humbled himself to the character of bard of his own epic poem. He told his last conquests who, naturally, with self-torturing curiosity inquired about it, chapter after chapter of the romance of his heart, half-opened his famous drawers and permitted them to catch a glimpse of letters, likenesses, and locks of hair; he strove to soothe his self-esteem by showing what passions he had inspired, at the risk of having his fair listener, with a secret smile, imagine exaggeration where, in reality, he was merely boasting.

Such was his mental condition at this time. He had toilsomely erected a sort of sham paradise of stage scenery, in which he continued to play the character of the youthful lover, which he was scarcely entitled to continue in life, and now this luckless doctor, with a careless movement, had thrown down all the painted canvasses with their artificial scenes.

Thiel's brutal remark: "You must renounce love," was still echoing painfully in his soul when he entered the home of Frau von der Lehde, with whom according to old habit, he dined once a week.

Else von der Lehde was a year or two older than he. She had been maid of honor to the princess, when Robert was a page. She had loved him deeply, fervently, and received a little responsive affection in return. But that was already so far back in the past. It was a distant memory, suffused with the rosy light of dawn, associated with all the new, fresh feelings of her life, youth, the awakening of her heart, first love, jealousy, and torment. The little idyl, in its day, was noticed by every one, but people were disposed to regard it as harmless, and Else herself afterward strove to see it in the same light, though she was well aware of its real condition. Still, a beardless boy of eighteen could not seriously compromise a young lady of twenty, who had been in society three winters. He was so far from doing so, that the whispers and smiles of this society did not prevent her becoming the wife of President von der Lehde who, after fifteen years of wedded life, left her a childless widow in the most pleasant circumstances. Else had never ceased to be completely enthralled by Robert. During her husband's life-time, she had imagined that it was friendship, sisterly, almost maternal friendship. When Herr von der Lehde died, she no longer had any motive for playing a farce with her own conscience, and she told Robert plainly that she expected him now to marry her. He was very much surprised and even slightly amused. Thirty-three years old, at the zenith of his success, living actually in the midst of a flickering blaze of ardent love, he had the feeling that it was a very comical idea for a woman who was his elder, with whom for a decade and a half he had lived on terms of wholly unobjectionable friendship, and whom he had often unhesitatingly made the confidante of his love-affairs, suddenly to wish him to marry her. To return after the lapse of fifteen years to a dish which he had once tasted with the eagerness of a greedy boy! This was not to be expected. Love permits no Rip van Winkle adventures. It cannot be taken up where it was interrupted a generation before. Its drama, whether it is to close as comedy or tragedy, must be played without long intermissions in a continuous performance to the end, in order not to become intolerably tiresome and foolish.