When the province of Prussia was forced, in the Seven Years' War, to do homage to Empress Elizabeth, and remained for several years incorporated in the Russian Empire, the officers of the district found means nevertheless to raise money and grain for their King in secret, and in spite of a foreign army and government. Great skill was used to accomplish the transportation. There were many in the secret, but not a traitor among them. In disguise they stole through the Russian lines at the risk of their lives, although they knew that they would reap small thanks from the King, who did not care for his East Prussians at all. He spoke contemptuously of them, and showed them unwillingly the favors which he bestowed on the other provinces. His face turned to stone whenever he learned that one of his young officers was born between the Memel and the Vistula, and after the war he never trod on East Prussian soil. But this conduct did not disturb the East Prussians in their admiration. They clung with faithful love to their ungracious lord, and his best and most enthusiastic eulogist was Emanuel Kant.

Life in the King's service was serious, often hard—work and deprivation without end. It was difficult even for the best to satisfy the strict master; and the greatest devotion received but curt thanks. If a man was worn out he was likely to be coldly cast aside. There was work without end everywhere: something new, something beginning, some scaffolding of an unfinished structure. To a foreign visitor this life did not seem at all graceful; it was austere, monotonous, and rude, with little beauty or carefree cheerfulness. And as the King's bachelor household, his taciturn servants, and the submissive intimates under the trees of the quiet garden, gave a foreign guest the impression of a monastery, so in all Prussian institutions he found something of the renunciation and the discipline of a great busy monastic brotherhood.

For something of this spirit had been transmitted even to the people themselves. Today we honor in this an undying merit of Frederick II., for this spirit of abnegation is still the secret of the greatness of the Prussian State, and the final and best guarantee of its permanence. The artfully constructed machine which the great King had set up with so much intelligence and effectiveness was not to last forever; twenty years after his death it broke down; but in the fact that the State did not perish with it, that the intelligence and patriotism of the citizens were able of their own accord to establish under his successors a new life on a new basis, we see the secret of Frederick's greatness.

Nine years after the close of the last war which was fought for the possession of Silesia, Frederick increased his domain by a new acquisition, not much less in area, but thinly populated—the Polish districts which have since become German territory under the name of West Prussia.

If the King's claims to Silesia had been doubtful, all the acumen of his officials was now needed to make a show of some uncertain right to portions of the new acquisition. About this the King himself was little concerned. He had defended before the world with almost superhuman heroism the occupation of Silesia. This province was united to Prussia by streams of blood. In the case of West Prussia the craft of the politician did the work almost alone, and for a long time the conqueror lacked in public opinion that justification for his action which, as it seems, is given by the horrors of war and the capricious fortune of the battlefield. But this last acquisition of the King's, though wanting in the thunder of guns and the trumpets of victory, was yet, of all the great gifts which the German people owe to Frederick II., the greatest and most abounding in fortunate consequences. Through several hundred years the Germans had been divided and hemmed in and encroached upon by neighbors greedy for conquest; the great King was the first conqueror who again pushed the German boundaries toward the east. A hundred years after his great ancestor had in vain defended the fortresses of the Rhine against Louis XIV., Frederick gave the Germans again the explicit admonition that it was their duty to carry law, education, liberty, culture, and industry into the east of Europe. His whole territory, with the exception of a few Old Saxon districts, had been originally German, then Slavic, then again won from the Slavs by fierce wars or colonization; never since the migrations of the Middle Ages had the struggle ceased for the broad plains east of the Oder; never since the conquest of Brandenburg had this house forgotten that it was the warden of the German border. Whenever wars ceased the politicians were busy. The Elector Frederick William had freed Prussia, the territory of the Teutonic Knights, from feudal allegiance to Poland. Frederick I. had boldly raised this isolated colony to a kingdom. But the possession of East Prussia was insecure. It was not the corrupt republic of Poland which threatened danger, but the rising power of Russia. Frederick had learned to respect the Russians as enemies; he knew the soaring ambition of Empress Catherine, and as a prudent prince seized the right moment. The new territory—Pomerelia, the voivodeship (administrative province) of Kulm and Marienburg, the bishopric of Ermeland, the city of Elbing, a portion of Cujavia, a portion of Posen—united East Prussia with Pomerania and Brandenburg. It had always been a border land. Since the early times people of different races had crowded into the coasts of the Baltic: Germans, Slavs, Lithuanians, and Finns. From the thirteenth century the Germans had made their way into this Vistula country as founders of cities and agriculturists: Teutonic Knights, merchants, pious monks, German noblemen and peasants. On both sides of the Vistula arose the towers and boundary stones of German colonies—supreme among them the magnificent city of Danzig, the Venice of the Baltic, the great seaport of the Slavic countries, with its rich St. Mary's Church and the palaces of its merchant princes; and beyond it on another arm of the Vistula, its modest rival, Elbing: farther up, the stately towers and broad avenues of Marienburg; near it the great princely castle of the Teutonic order, the most beautiful architectural monument of Northern Germany; and in the Vistula valley, on a rich alluvial soil, the old prosperous colonial estates: one of the most productive countries of the world, protected against the devastations of the Slavic stream by massive dikes dating back to the days of the Knights. Still farther up were Marienwerder, Graudenz, Kulm, and in the low lands of the Netze, Bromberg, the centre of the German border colonies among a Polish population. Smaller German towns and village communities were scattered through the whole territory, and the rich Cistercian monasteries of Oliva and Peplin had been zealous colonizers. But in the fifteenth century the tyrannical severity of the Teutonic order had driven the German cities and landowners of West Prussia to an alliance with Poland.

The Reformation of the sixteenth century won the submission not only of the German colonists but of three-quarters of the nobility in the great republic of Poland; and toward 1590 about seventy out of a hundred parishes in the Slavic district of Pomerelia were Protestant. It seemed for a short time as if a new commonwealth and a new culture were about to develop in the Slavic East—a great Polish State with German elements in the cities. But the introduction of the Jesuits brought an unsalutary change. The Polish nobility returned to the Catholic Church: in the Jesuit schools their sons were trained to proselytizing fanaticism, and from that time on the Polish State declined, conditions becoming worse and worse.

The attitude of the Germans in West Prussia was not uniform toward the proselytizing Jesuits and Slavic tyranny. A large proportion of the immigrant German nobles became Catholic and Polish; the townsmen and peasants remained for the most part obstinately Protestant. So there was added to the conflict in language conflict in religious creed, and to race hatred a religious frenzy. In this century of enlightenment the persecution of Germans in these districts became fanatical. One church after another was torn down, the wooden ones set on fire, and after the church was burned the village had lost its right to a parish: German preachers and school teachers were driven out and disgracefully maltreated. "Vexa Lutheranum dabit thalerum" ("harry a Lutheran and he will give up a thaler") was the usual motto of the Poles against the Germans. One of the greatest landowners in the country, a certain Unruh of the Birnbaum family, the starost of Gnesen, was sentenced to die, after having his tongue pulled out and his hands chopped off, because he had copied from German books into a notebook sarcastic remarks about the Jesuits. There was no more justice, no more safety. The national party of the Polish nobility, in alliance with fanatic priests, persecuted most passionately those whom they hated as Germans and Protestants. All sorts of plunder-loving rabble collected on the side of the "patriots" or "confederates." They collected into bands, overran the country in search of plunder, and fell upon the smaller towns and German villages, not only from religious zeal, but still more from the greed of booty. The Polish nobleman Roskowsky wore boots of different colors, a red one to indicate fire, and a black one for death. Thus he rode, levying blackmail, from one place to another, and in Jastrow he had the hands, the feet, and finally the head of the Protestant preacher Willich cut off and thrown into a swamp. This happened in 1768.

Such was the condition of the country just before the Prussian occupation. It was a state of things that might perhaps be found now in Bosnia, but would be unheard of in the most wretched corner of Christian Europe.

While still only a boy of twelve in the palace in Berlin, Frederick the Great had been reminded by his father's anger and sorrow that the kings of Prussia had a duty as protectors toward the German colonies on the Vistula. For in 1724 a loud call from that quarter for help had rung through Germany, and the bloody tragedy at Thorn became an important subject of public interest and of diplomacy. During a procession which the Jesuits were conducting through the city, some Polish nobles of the Jesuit college had insulted some citizens and schoolboys, and the angered populace had broken into the Jesuit school and college and inflicted damage. This petty street-riot had been brought up in the Polish parliament, sitting as a trial court, and the parliament, after a passionate speech by the leader of the Jesuits, had condemned to death the two burgomasters of the city and sixteen citizens; whereupon the Jesuit party hastened to put to death the head burgomaster, Roessner, and nine citizens, in some cases with barbarous cruelty. The church of St. Mary was taken from the Protestants, the clergymen driven out, and the school closed. King Frederick William had tried in vain at the time to help the unfortunate city. He had prevailed upon all the neighboring powers to send stern notes, and had felt himself bitterly grieved and humiliated when all his representations were disregarded; now after fifty years his son came to put an end to this barbarous disorder, and to unite again with Prussia this land which before the Polish sovereignty had belonged to the Teutonic order.



Danzig, to be sure, indispensable to the Poles, maintained itself through these decades of disorder in aristocratic seclusion. It remained a free city under Slavic protection, for a long time suspicious of the great King and not well disposed toward him. Thorn also had to wait twenty years longer in oppression, separated from the other German colonies, as a Polish border city. But the energetic assistance of the King saved the country and most of the German towns from destruction. The Prussian officials who were sent into the country were astonished at the desolation of the unheard-of situation which existed but a few days' journey from their capital. Only certain larger towns, in which the German life had been protected by strong walls and the old market traffic, and some sheltered country districts, inhabited exclusively by Germans (such as the lowlands near Danzig, the villages under the mild rule of the Cistercians of Oliva, and the prosperous German places of the Catholic Ermeland), were left in tolerable condition. Other towns lay in ruins, as did most of the farmsteads of the open country. The Prussians found Bromberg, a German colonial city, in ruins; and it is even yet impossible to determine exactly how the city came into that condition. In fact, the vicissitudes which the whole Netze district had undergone in the last nine years before the Prussian occupation are completely unknown. No historian, no document, no chronicle, gives reports of the destruction and the slaughter which must have raged there. Evidently the Polish factions fought between themselves, and crop failures and pestilence may have done the rest. Kulm had preserved from an earlier time its well-built walls and stately churches, but in the streets the foundation walls of the cellars stood out of the decaying wood and broken tiles of the crumbled buildings. There were whole streets of nothing but such cellar rooms in which wretched people lived. Of the forty houses of the main market-place twenty-eight had no doors, no roofs, no windows, and no owners. Other cities were in a similar condition.

The majority of the country people also lived in circumstances which seemed pitiable to the King's officers, especially on the borders of Pomerania, where the Wendish Cassubians dwelt. Whoever approached a village there saw gray huts with ragged thatch on a bare plain without a tree, without a garden—only the wild cherry-trees were indigenous. The houses were built of poles daubed with clay. The entrance door opened into a room with a great fireplace and no chimney; heating stoves were unknown. Seldom was a candle lighted, only pineknots brightened the darkness of the long winter evenings. The chief article of the wretched furniture was a crucifix with a holy water basin below. The filthy and uncouth people lived on rye porridge, often on herbs which they cooked like cabbage in a soup, on herrings, and on brandy, to which women as well as men were addicted. Bread was baked only by the richest. Many had never in their lives tasted such a delicacy; few villages had an oven. If the people ever kept bees they sold the honey to the city dwellers, they also trafficked in carved spoons and stolen bark; in exchange for these they got at the fairs their coarse blue cloth coats, black fur caps, and bright red kerchiefs for the women. Looms were rare and spinning-wheels were unknown. The Prussians heard there no popular songs, no dances, no music—pleasures which even the most wretched Pole does not give up; stupid and clumsy, the people drank their wretched brandy, fought, and fell into the corners. And the country nobility were hardly different from the peasants; they drove their own primitive plows and clattered about in wooden shoes on the earthen floors of their cottages. It was difficult even for the King of Prussia to help these people. Only the potato spread quickly; but for a long time the fruit-trees which had been planted by order were destroyed by the people, and all other attempts at promoting agriculture met with opposition.

Just as poverty-stricken and ruined were the border districts with a Polish population. But the Polish peasant in all his poverty and disorder at least kept the greater vivacity of his race. Even on the estates of the higher nobility, of the starosts, and of the crown, all the farm buildings were dilapidated and useless. Any one who wished to send a letter must employ a special messenger, for there was no post in the country. To be sure, no need was felt of one in the villages, for most of the nobility knew no more of reading and writing than the peasants. If any one fell ill, he found no help but the secret remedies of some old village crone, for there was not an apothecary in the whole country. If any one needed a coat he could do no better than take needle in hand himself—for many miles there was no tailor, unless one of the trade made a trip through the country on the chances of finding work. If any one wished to build a house he must provide for artisans from the West as best he could. The country people were still living in a hopeless struggle with the packs of wolves, and there were few villages in which every winter men and animals were not decimated. If the smallpox broke out, or any other contagious disease came upon the country, the people saw the white image of pestilence flying through the air and alighting upon their cottages; they knew what such an apparition meant: it was the desolation of their homes, the wiping out of whole communities; and with gloomy resignation they awaited their fate. There was hardly anything like justice in the country. Only the larger cities maintained powerless courts. The noblemen and the starosts inflicted their punishments with unrestrained caprice. They habitually beat and threw into horrible dungeons not only the peasants but the citizens of the country towns who were ruled by them or fell into their hands. In the quarrels which they had with one another, they fought by bribery in the few courts which had jurisdiction over them. In later years that too had almost ceased. They sought vengeance with their own resources, by sudden onslaughts and bloody sword-play.

It was in reality an abandoned country without discipline, without law, without masters. It was a desert; on about 13,000 square miles 500,000 people lived, less than forty to a square mile. And the Prussian King treated his acquisition like an uninhabited prairie. He located boundary stones almost at his pleasure, then moved them some miles farther again. Up to the present time the tradition remains in Ermeland, the district around Heilberg and Braunsberg, with twelve towns and a hundred villages, that two Prussian drummers with twelve men conquered all Ermeland with four drumsticks. And then the King in his magnificent manner began to build up the country. He was attracted by precisely these run-down conditions, and West Prussia henceforth became, as Silesia had been before, his favorite child, which with infinite care, like a dutiful mother, he washed and brushed, provided with new clothes, forced into school and good behavior, and never let out of his sight. The diplomatic negotiations about the conquest were still going on when he sent a troop of his best officials into the wilderness. The territory was subdivided into small districts, in the shortest possible time the whole land area was appraised and equitably taxed, each district provided with a provincial magistrate, with a court, and with post-offices and sanitary police. New parishes were called into life as if by magic, a company of 187 school teachers was brought into the country—the worthy Semler had chosen and drilled part of them—and squads of German artisans were got together, from the machinist down to the brickmaker. Everywhere was heard the bustle of digging, hammering, building. The cities were filled with colonists, street after street rose from the ruins, the estates of the starosts were changed into crown estates, new villages of colonists were laid out, new agricultural enterprises ordered. In the first year after the occupation the great canal was dug, which in a course of a dozen miles or so unites the Vistula by way of the Netze with the Oder and the Elbe. A year after the King issued the order for the canal he saw with his own eyes laden Oder barges 120 feet long enter the Vistula, bound east. Through the new waterway broad stretches of land were drained and immediately filled with German colonists. Incessantly the King urged on, praised, and censured. However great the zeal of his officials was, it was seldom able to satisfy him. In this way, in a few years, the wild Slavic weeds which had sprung up here and there even over the German fields were brought under control, and the Polish districts, too, got used to the orderliness of the new life; and West Prussia showed itself, in the wars after 1806, almost as stoutly Prussian as the old provinces.

While the gray-haired King planned and created, year after year passed over his thoughtful head. His surroundings became stiller and more solitary; the circle of men whom he took into his confidence became smaller. He had laid aside his flute, and the new French literature appeared to him shallow and tedious. Sometimes it seemed to him as if a new life were budding under him in Germany, but he was a stranger to it. He worked untiringly for his army and for the prosperity of his people; the instruments he used were of less and less importance to him, while his feeling for the great duties of his crown became ever loftier and more passionate.

But just as his seven years' struggle in war may be called superhuman, so now there was in his work something tremendous, which appeared to his contemporaries sometimes more than earthly and sometimes inhuman. It was great, but it was also terrible, that for him the prosperity of the whole was at any moment the highest thing, and the comfort of the individual so utterly nothing. When he drove out of the service with bitter censure, in the presence of his men, a colonel whose regiment had made a vexatious mistake on review; when in the swamp land of the Netze he counted more the strokes of the 10,000 spades than the sufferings of the workmen who lay ill with malarial fever in the hospitals he had erected for them; when he anticipated with his restless demands the most rapid execution, there was, though united with the deepest respect and devotion, a feeling of awe among his people, as before one whose being is moved by some unearthly power. He appeared to the Prussians as the fate of the State, unaccountable, inexorable, omniscient, comprehending the greatest as well as the smallest. And when they told each other that he had also tried to overcome Nature, and that yet his orange trees had perished in the last frosts of spring, then they quietly rejoiced that there was a limit for their King after all, but still more that he had submitted to it with such good-humor and had taken off his hat to the cold days of May.

With touching sympathy the people collected all the incidents of the King's life which showed human feeling, and thus gave an intimate picture of him. Lonesome as his house and garden were, the imagination of his Prussians hovered incessantly around the consecrated place. If any one on a warm moonlight night succeeded in getting into the vicinity of the palace, he found the doors open, perhaps without a guard, and he could see the great King sleeping in his room on a camp bed. The fragrance of the flowers, the song of the night birds, the quiet moonlight, were the only guards, almost the only courtiers of the lonely man. Fourteen times the oranges bloomed at Sans Souci after the acquisition of West Prussia—then Nature asserted her rights over the great King. He died alone, with but his servants about him.

He had set out in his prime with an ambitious spirit and had wrested from fate all the great and magnificent prizes of life. A prince of poets and philosophers, a historian and general, no triumph which he had won had satisfied him. All earthly glory had become to him fortuitous, uncertain and worthless, and he had kept only his iron sense of duty incessantly active. His soul had grown up and out of the dangerous habit of alternating between warm enthusiasm and sober keenness of perception. Once he had idealized with poetic caprice some individuals, and despised the masses that surrounded him. But in the struggles of his life he lost all selfishness, he lost almost everything which was personally dear to him; and at last came to set little value upon the individual, while the need of living for the whole grew stronger and stronger in him. With the most refined selfishness he had desired the greatest things for himself, and unselfishly at last he gave himself for the common good and the happiness of the humble people. He had entered upon life as an idealist, and even the most terrible experiences had not destroyed these ideals but ennobled and purified them. He had sacrificed many men for his State, but no one so completely as himself.

Such a phenomenon appeared unusual and great to his contemporaries; it seems still greater to us who can trace even today in the character of our people, in our political life, and in our art and literature, the influence of his activities.

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THE LIFE OF THEODOR FONTANE

By WILLIAM A. COOPER, A.M.

Associate Professor of German, Leland Stanford Jr. University

Theodor Fontane was by both his parents a descendant of French Huguenots. His grandfather Fontane, while teaching the princes of Prussia the art of drawing, won the friendship of Queen Luise, who later appointed him her private secretary. Our poet's father, Louis Fontane, served his apprenticeship as an apothecary in Berlin. In 1818 the stately Gascon married Emilie Labry, whose ancestors had come from the Cevennes, not far from the region whence the Fontanes had emigrated to Germany. The young couple moved to Neu-Ruppin, where they bought an apothecary's shop. Here Theodor was born on the thirtieth of December, 1819.

Louis Fontane was irresponsible and fantastic, full of bonhomie, and an engaging story teller. He possessed a "stupendous" fund of anecdotes of Napoleon and his marshals, and told them with such charm that his son acquired an unusual fondness for anecdotes, which he indulges extensively in some of his writings, particularly the autobiographical works and books of travel. The problem of making both ends meet seems to have occupied the father less than the gratification of his "noble passions," chief among which was card playing. He gambled away so much money that in eight years he was forced to sell his business and move to other parts. He purposely continued the search for a new business as long as possible, but finally bought an apothecary's shop in Swinemuende.

His young wife was passionate and independent, energetic and practical, but unselfish. To her husband's democratic tendency she opposed a strong aristocratic leaning. Their ill fortune in Neu-Ruppin affected her nerves so seriously that she went to Berlin for treatment while the family was moving.

In Swinemuende the father put the children in the public school, but when the aristocratic mother arrived from Berlin she took them out, and for a time the little ones were taught at home. The unindustrious father was prevailed upon to divide with the mother the burden of teaching them and undertook the task with a mild protest, employing what he humorously designated the "Socratic method." He taught geography and history together, chiefly by means of anecdotes, with little regard for accuracy or thoroughness. Though his method was far from Socratic, it interested young Theodor and left an impression on him for life. His mother confined her efforts mainly to the cultivation of a good appearance and gentle manners, for, as one might perhaps expect of the daughter of a French silk merchant, she valued outward graces above inward culture, and she avowedly had little respect for the authority of scholars and books.

After a while an arrangement was made whereby Theodor shared for two years the private lessons given by a Dr. Lau to the children of a neighbor, and "whatever backbone his knowledge possessed" he owed to this instruction. A similar arrangement was made with the private tutor who succeeded Dr. Lau. He had the children learn the most of Schiller's ballads by heart. Fontane always remained grateful for this, probably because it was as a writer of ballads that he first won recognition. If we look upon the ballad as a poetically heightened form of anecdote we discover an element of unity in his early education, and that will help us to understand why the technique of his novels shows such a marked influence of the ballad.

"How were we children trained?" asks Fontane in My Childhood Years. "Not at all, and excellently," is his answer, referring to the lack of strict parental discipline in the home and to the quiet influence of his mother's example.



Among the notable events of the five years Theodor spent in Swinemuende, were the liberation of Greece, the war between Russia and Turkey, the conquest of Algiers, the revolution in France, the separation of Belgium from Holland, and the Polish insurrection. Little wonder that the lad watched eagerly for the arrival of the newspapers and quickly devoured their contents.

In Swinemuende the family again lived beyond their means. The father's extravagance and his passion for gambling showed no signs of abatement. The mother was very generous in the giving of presents, for she said that what money they had would be spent anyhow and it might as well go for some useful purpose. The city being a popular summer resort, they had a great many guests from Berlin during the season, and in the winter they frequently entertained Swinemuende friends.

Theodor left home at the age of twelve to begin his preparation for life. The first year he spent at the gymnasium in Neu-Ruppin. The following year (1833) he was sent to an industrial school in Berlin. There he lived with his uncle August, whose character and financial management remind one of our poet's father. Theodor was irregular in his attendance at school and showed more interest in the newspapers and magazines than in his studies. At the age of sixteen he became the apprentice of a Berlin apothecary with the expectation of eventually succeeding his father in business. After serving his apprenticeship he was employed as assistant dispenser by apothecaries in Berlin, Burg, Leipzig, and Dresden. When he reached the age of thirty he became a full-fledged dispenser and was in a position to manage the business of his father, but the latter had long ago retired and moved to the village of Letschin. The Fontane home was later broken up by the mutual agreement of the parents to dissolve their unhappy union. The father went first to Eberswalde and then to Schiffmuehle, where he died in 1867; the mother returned to Neu-Ruppin and died there in 1869.

The beginning of Theodor's first published story appeared in the Berliner Figaro a few days before he was twenty years of age. The same organ had previously contained some of his lyrics and ballads. The budding poet had belonged to a Lenau Club and the fondness he had there acquired for Lenau's poetry remained unchanged throughout his long life, which is more than can be said of many literary products that won his admiration in youth. He also joined a Platen Club, which afforded him less literary stimulus, but far more social pleasure. During his year in Leipzig he brought himself to the notice of literary circles by the publication, in the Tageblatt, of a satirical poem entitled Shakespeare's Stocking. As a result he was made a member of the Herwegh Club, where he met, among others, the celebrated Max Mueller, who remained his life-long friend. After a year in Dresden Fontane returned to Leipzig, hoping to be able to support himself there by his writings. He made the venture too soon. When he ran short of funds he visited his parents for a while and then went to Berlin to serve his year in the army (1844). He was granted a furlough of two weeks for a trip to London at the expense of a friend. In Berlin he joined a Sunday Club, humorously called the "Tunnel over the Spree," at the meetings of which original literary productions were read and frankly criticised. During the middle of the nineteenth century almost all the poetic lights of Berlin were members of the "Tunnel." Heyse, Storm, and Dahn were on the roll, and Fontane came into touch with them; he and Storm remained friends in spite of the fact that Storm once called him "frivolous." Fontane later evened the score by classing Storm among the "sacred kiss monopolists." The most productive members of the Club during this period (1844-54) were Fontane, Scherenberg, Hesekiel, and Heinrich Smidt. Smidt, sometimes called the Marryat of Germany, was a prolific spinner of yarns, which were interesting, though of a low quality. He employed, however, many of the same motives that Fontane later put to better use. Hesekiel was a voluminous writer of light fiction. From him Fontane learned to discard high-sounding phrases and to cultivate the true-to-life tone of spoken speech. Scherenberg, enthusiastically heralded as the founder of a new epic style, confined himself largely to poetic descriptions of battles.

When Fontane joined the "Tunnel" the particular genre of poetry in vogue at the meetings was the ballad, due to Strachwitz's clever imitations of Scottish models. Fontane's lyrics were too much like Herwegh's to win applause, but his ballads were enthusiastically received. One, in celebration of Derfflinger, established his standing in the Club, and one in honor of Zieten brought him permanently into favor with a wider public; these poems were composed in 1846. Two years later he read two books that for a long time determined his literary trend—Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry and Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. He began to write ballads on English subjects and one of them, Archibald Douglas, created a great sensation at the "Tunnel" meeting and has ever since maintained its place among the best German poems. Its popularity is partly due to the fact that it was so appropriately set to music by Carl Loewe. When Fontane returned to Berlin in 1852, after a summer's absence in England, he felt estranged from the "Tunnel" and ceased attending the meetings. Two noblemen members, von Lepel and von Merckel, who had become his friends, introduced him to the country nobility of the Mark of Brandenburg, which enabled him to make valuable additions to his portfolio of studies later drawn upon for his novels, among others, Effi Briest.

In 1847 Fontane passed the apothecary's examination by a "hair's breadth" and soon found employment in Berlin. In the March Revolution (1848) he played a comical role, but was subsequently elected a delegate to the first convention to choose a representative. For a year and a quarter he taught two deaconesses pharmacy at an institution called "Bethany." When that employment came to an end he decided that the hoped-for time had finally arrived to give up the dispensing of medicines and earn his living by his pen. Some of his new ballads were accepted by the Morgenblatt, and a volume of verses, dedicated to his fiancee, found a publisher. When news arrived of the victory of Denmark over Schleswig-Holstein at Idstedt (1850) he set out for Kiel to enlist in the army. In Altona he received a letter offering him a position in the press department of the Prussian Ministry of the Interior. He accepted immediately and at the same time wrote to Emilie Kummer, to whom he had been engaged for five years, proposing that they should be married in October. She hastened to secure an apartment in Berlin and furnish it, and the wedding was celebrated on the sixteenth of October. Fontane thought he had entered the harbor of success, but he lost his ministerial position in six weeks and was again at sea. He had, however, a companion ready to share his trials and triumphs, and their union proved to be very happy.

In the summer of 1852 he was sent by the Prussian Ministry to London to study English conditions and write reports for the government journals, Preussische Zeitung and Die Zeit. In 1855 he was again sent to England, and this time his journalistic engagement lasted for four years. Accounts of his experiences are contained in A Summer in London (1854) and Beyond the Tweed (1860). From 1860 to 1870 he was on the staff of the Kreuzzeitung and during this time served as a war correspondent in the campaigns of 1864, 1866, and 1870-71. While accompanying the army in France he was seized with a desire to visit the home of Joan of Arc at Domremy, and was captured, taken for a spy, and imprisoned for a time on the island of Oleron in the Atlantic Ocean. An interesting account of his experiences is given in Prisoner of War (1871). During his years in England he had taken advantage of the opportunity to visit Scotland and familiarize himself with its picturesque beauties and its wealth of historical and literary associations. In the midst of these travels the thought had occurred to him that his own Mark of Brandenburg had its beauties, too, and its wealth of associations. On returning to Berlin he began his long series of journeyings through his native province, making a thorough study of both country and people, particularly the Junkers, for which his trained powers of observation, combined with warm patriotism and true love of historical research, eminently fitted him. His published records of these travels, Rambles through the Mark of Brandenburg (1862-81) and Five Castles (1889), won for him the title of the interpreter of the Mark. His right to this distinction was further established by the novels in which he later employed the fruits of these studies.

Fontane is equally celebrated as an interpreter of Berlin, where he lived for over fifty years, being the one prominent German writer to identify himself with a great city. His two autobiographical works, From Twenty to Thirty and C.F. Scherenberg, tell of his early experiences in the Prussian capital. From 1870 to 1889 he was dramatic critic for the Vossische Zeitung, for which he reviewed the performances at the Royal Theatre. In one of his last criticisms he hailed Hauptmann as a dramatist of promise. In 1876 he was elected secretary of the Berlin Academy of Arts, but served only a brief time. In 1891 the Emperor made him a present of three thousand marks for his services to German literature. In 1894 the University of Berlin bestowed upon him the honorary title of doctor of philosophy. He died on the twentieth day of September, 1898.

Fontane's lyric poetry in the narrower sense is not of a high order; in fact almost none of his writings show the true lyric quality. There is also a striking lack of the dramatic element in his works, and he seems to have felt this limitation of his genius, for he studiously avoided the portrayal of scenes that might prove intensely dramatic. As a writer of ballads he excelled and ranks among the foremost of Germany. The British subjects he treated were impressed upon him during his travels in England and his study of English history. His German themes were taken largely from Prussian history, particularly the period of Frederick the Great. His permanent place in the history of German literature is due, however, not so much to his verse as to his prose writings. He is best known as a novelist, and in the field of the modern novel he is one of the most conspicuous figures.

German novels of the older school were usually too long for a single volume. Fontane's first important work of fiction, Before the Storm, filled four volumes; but he had so much trouble in finding a publisher for it that he began to write one-volume novels, introducing a practice which has since become the common tradition. He employed in them a typical feature of the technique of the ballad, which leaps from one situation to another, leaving gaps to be filled by the fancy of the reader. He says himself, in Before the Storm: "I have always observed that the leaping action of the ballad is one of the chief characteristics and beauties of this branch of poetry. All that is necessary is that fancy be given the right kind of a stimulus. When that end is attained, one may boldly assert, the less told the better."

At the beginning of Fontane's career the Berlin novelists were disciples of Scott, but the only one to survive was Alexis, who adapted Scott's method to the Mark of Brandenburg. Fontane imitated him in Before the Storm (1878), which deals with conditions in the Mark before the wars of liberation. Schach von Wuthenow (1883), a sort of prelude to Before the Storm, was far superior as a novel and helped to establish Fontane's supremacy among his contemporaries, for he had become the leader of the younger generation after the publication of two stories of crimes, Grete Minde (1880) and Ellernklipp (1881), and the creation of the modern Berlin novel, in L'Adultera (1882). L'Adultera unfolds the history of a marriage of reason between a young wife and a considerably older husband, a situation which Fontane later treated, with important variations and ever increasing skill, in Count Petoefi (1884), Cecile (1887), and Effi Briest (1895). With his inexhaustible fund of observation to draw upon he could make the action of his novels a minor consideration and concentrate his rare psychological powers upon realistic conversations in which characters reveal themselves and incidentally acquaint us intimately with others. We see and hear what the world ordinarily sees and hears. A past master in the art of suggestion, which he acquired in his ballad period, Fontane omits many scenes that others would elaborate with minute detail, such as love scenes and passionate crises, and contents himself with bringing vividly before us his true-to-life figures in their historical and social environments. As a conservative Prussian he believed in the supremacy of the law and the punishment of transgression, and his works reflect this belief.

Trials and Tribulations (1887) and Stine (1890) were the first German novels absolutely to avoid the introduction of exciting scenes merely for effect. These histories of mismated couples from different social strata are recounted with hearty simplicity, deep understanding of life, and frank recognition of human weakness, but without condemnation, tears, or pointing a moral. They made Fontane famous. Frau Jenny Treibel (1892), an exquisitely humorous picture of the Berlin bourgeoisie, and Effi Briest "the most profound miracle of Fontane's youthful art," added considerably to the fame of the gray-haired "modern," while The Poggenpuhls (1896) and Stechlin (1898) won him further laurels at a time when most writers would long ago have been resting on those they had already achieved. If a line were drawn to represent graphically his productivity from his sixtieth year on, it would take the form of a gradually rising curve.

His career as a novelist began so late in life that when he once discovered his particular field he cultivated it with persistent diligence and would not allow himself to be drawn away by enthusiasts into other fields. Strength of character was not, however, a new phenomenon in his life, for as long ago as the days when he was an active member of the "Tunnel" he had come in close contact with the Kugler coterie in Berlin, where the so-called Munich school originated, and yet he did not follow his friends in that eclectic movement. So when the naturalistic school of writers began to win enthusiastic support, even though he found himself in the main in sympathy with their announced creed, he did not join them in practice. He felt that what the literature of the Fatherland needed was "originality," and he sought to attain it in his own way, apart from storm and stress. As his mind matured through accumulated knowledge of the world, and his heart mellowed through years of experience and observation, he rose to a point of view above sentiment and prejudice, where the fogs of passion melt away and the light of kindly wisdom shines.



* * * * *

THEODOR FONTANE

* * * * *



EFFI BRIEST (1895)

TRANSLATED AND ABRIDGED BY WILLIAM A. COOPER, A.M.

Associate Professor of German, Leland Stanford Jr. University

CHAPTER I

In front of the old manor house occupied by the von Briest family since the days of Elector George William, the bright sunshine was pouring down upon the village road, at the quiet hour of noon. The wing of the mansion looking toward the garden and park cast its broad shadow over a white and green checkered tile walk and extended out over a large round bed, with a sundial in its centre and a border of Indian shot and rhubarb. Some twenty paces further, and parallel to the wing of the house, there ran a churchyard wall, entirely covered with a small-leaved ivy, except at the place where an opening had been made for a little white iron gate. Behind this arose the shingled tower of Hohen-Cremmen, whose weather vane glistened in the sunshine, having only recently been regilded. The front of the house, the wing, and the churchyard wall formed, so to speak, a horseshoe, inclosing a small ornamental garden, at the open side of which was seen a pond, with a small footbridge and a tied-up boat. Close by was a swing, with its crossboard hanging from two ropes at either end, and its frame posts beginning to lean to one side. Between the pond and the circular bed stood a clump of giant plane trees, half hiding the swing.

The terrace in front of the manor house, with its tubbed aloe plants and a few garden chairs, was an agreeable place to sit on cloudy days, besides affording a variety of things to attract the attention. But, on days when the hot sun beat down there, the side of the house toward the garden was given a decided preference, especially by the mother and the daughter of the house. On this account they were today sitting on the tile walk in the shade, with their backs to the open windows, which were all overgrown with wild grape-vines, and by the side of a little projecting stairway, whose four stone steps led from the garden to the ground floor of the wing of the mansion. Both mother and daughter were busy at work, making an altar cloth out of separate squares, which they were piecing together. Skeins of woolen yarn of various colors, and an equal variety of silk thread lay in confusion upon a large round table, upon which were still standing the luncheon dessert plates and a majolica dish filled with fine large gooseberries.

Swiftly and deftly the wool-threaded needles were drawn back and forth, and the mother seemed never to let her eyes wander from the work. But the daughter, who bore the Christian name of Effi, laid aside her needle from time to time and arose from her seat to practice a course of healthy home gymnastics, with every variety of bending and stretching. It was apparent that she took particular delight in these exercises, to which she gave a somewhat comical turn, and whenever she stood there thus engaged, slowly raising her arms and bringing the palms of her hands together high above her head, her mother would occasionally glance up from her needlework, though always but for a moment and that, too, furtively, because she did not wish to show how fascinating she considered her own child, although in this feeling of motherly pride she was fully justified. Effi wore a blue and white striped linen dress, a sort of smock-frock, which would have shown no waist line at all but for the bronze-colored leather belt which she drew up tight. Her neck was bare and a broad sailor collar fell over her shoulders and back. In everything she did there was a union of haughtiness and gracefulness, and her laughing brown eyes betrayed great natural cleverness and abundant enjoyment of life and goodness of heart. She was called the "little girl," which she had to suffer only because her beautiful slender mother was a full hand's breadth taller than she.

Effi had just stood up again to perform her calisthenic exercises when her mother, who at the moment chanced to be looking up from her embroidery, called to her: "Effi, you really ought to have been an equestrienne, I'm thinking. Always on the trapeze, always a daughter of the air. I almost believe you would like something of the sort."

"Perhaps, mama. But if it were so, whose fault would it be? From whom do I get it? Why, from no one but you. Or do you think, from papa? There, it makes you laugh yourself. And then, why do you always dress me in this rig, this boy's smock? Sometimes I fancy I shall be put back in short clothes yet. Once I have them on again I shall courtesy like a girl in her early teens, and when our friends in Rathenow come over I shall sit in Colonel Goetze's lap and ride a trot horse. Why not? He is three-fourths an uncle and only one-fourth a suitor. You are to blame. Why don't I have any party clothes? Why don't you make a lady of me?"

"Should you like me to?"

"No." With that she ran to her mother, embraced her effusively and kissed her.

"Not so savagely, Effi, not so passionately. I am always disturbed when I see you thus."

At this point three young girls stepped into the garden through the little iron gate in the churchyard wall and started along the gravel walk toward the round bed and the sundial. They all waved their umbrellas at Effi and then ran up to Mrs. von Briest and kissed her hand. She hurriedly asked a few questions and then invited the girls to stay and visit with them, or at least with Effi, for half an hour. "Besides, I have something else that I must do and young folks like best to be left to themselves. Fare ye well." With these words she went up the stone steps into the house.

Two of the young girls, plump little creatures, whose freckles and good nature well matched their curly red hair, were daughters of Precentor Jahnke, who swore by the Hanseatic League, Scandinavia, and Fritz Reuter, and following the example of his favorite writer and fellow countryman, had named his twin daughters Bertha and Hertha, in imitation of Mining and Lining. The third young lady was Hulda Niemeyer, Pastor Niemeyer's only child. She was more ladylike than the other two, but, on the other hand, tedious and conceited, a lymphatic blonde, with slightly protruding dim eyes, which, nevertheless, seemed always to be seeking something, for which reason the Hussar Klitzing once said: "Doesn't she look as though she were every moment expecting the angel Gabriel?" Effi felt that the rather captious Klitzing was only too right in his criticism, yet she avoided making any distinction between the three girl friends. Nothing could have been farther from her mind at this moment. Resting her arms on the table, she exclaimed: "Oh, this tedious embroidery! Thank heaven, you are here."

"But we have driven your mama away," said Hulda.

"Oh no. She would have gone anyhow. She is expecting a visitor, an old friend of her girlhood days. I must tell you a story about him later, a love story with a real hero and a real heroine, and ending with resignation. It will make you open your eyes wide with amazement. Moreover, I saw mama's old friend over in Schwantikow. He is a district councillor, a fine figure, and very manly."

"Manly? That's a most important consideration," said Hertha.

"Certainly, it's the chief consideration. 'Women womanly, men manly,' is, you know, one of papa's favorite maxims. And now help me put the table in order, or there will be another scolding."

It took but a moment to put the things in the basket and, when the girls sat down again, Hulda said: "Now, Effi, now we are ready, now for the love story with resignation. Or isn't it so bad?"

"A story with resignation is never bad. But I can't begin till Hertha has taken some gooseberries; she keeps her eyes glued on them. Please take as many as you like, we can pick some more afterward. But be sure to throw the hulls far enough away, or, better still, lay them here on this newspaper supplement, then we can wrap them up in a bundle and dispose of everything at once. Mama can't bear to see hulls lying about everywhere. She always says that some one might slip on them and break a leg."

"I don't believe it," said Hertha, applying herself closely to the berries.

"Nor I either," replied Effi, confirming the opinion. "Just think of it, I fall at least two or three times every day and have never broken any bones yet. The right kind of leg doesn't break so easily; certainly mine doesn't, neither does yours, Hertha. What do you think, Hulda?"

"One ought not to tempt fate. Pride will have a fall."

"Always the governess. You are just a born old maid."

"And yet I still have hopes of finding a husband, perhaps even before you do."

"For aught I care. Do you think I shall wait for that? The idea! Furthermore one has already been picked out for me and perhaps I shall soon have him. Oh, I am not worrying about that. Not long ago little Ventivegni from over the way said to me: 'Miss Effi, what will you bet we shall not have a charivari and a wedding here this year yet?'"

"And what did you say to that?"

"Quite possible, I said, quite possible; Hulda is the oldest; she may be married any day. But he refused to listen to that and said: 'No, I mean at the home of another young lady who is just as decided a brunette as Miss Hulda is a blonde.' As he said this he looked at me quite seriously—But I am wandering and am forgetting the story."

"Yes, you keep dropping it all the while; may be you don't want to tell it, after all?"

"Oh, I want to, but I have interrupted the story a good many times, chiefly because it is a little bit strange, indeed, almost romantic."

"Why, you said he was a district councillor."

"Certainly, a district councillor, and his name is Geert von Innstetten, Baron von Innstetten."

All three laughed.

"Why do you laugh?" said Effi, nettled. "What does this mean?"

"Ah, Effi, we don't mean to offend you, nor the Baron either. Innstetten did you say? And Geert? Why, there is nobody by that name about here. And then you know the names of noblemen are often a bit comical."

"Yes, my dear, they are. But people do not belong to the nobility for nothing. They can endure such things, and the farther back their nobility goes, I mean in point of time, the better they are able to endure them. But you don't know anything about this and you must not take offense at me for saying so. We shall continue to be good friends just the same. So it is Geert von Innstetten and he is a Baron. He is just as old as mama, to the day."

"And how old, pray, is your mama?"

"Thirty-eight."

"A fine age."

"Indeed it is, especially when one still looks as well as mama. I consider her truly a beautiful woman, don't you, too? And how accomplished she is in everything, always so sure and at the same time so ladylike, and never unconventional, like papa. If I were a young lieutenant I should fall in love with mama."

"Oh, Effi, how can you ever say such a thing?" said Hulda. "Why, that is contrary to the fourth commandment."

"Nonsense. How can it be? I think it would please mama if she knew I said such a thing."

"That may be," interrupted Hertha. "But are you ever going to tell the story?"

"Yes, compose yourself and I'll begin. We were speaking of Baron von Innstetten. Before he had reached the age of twenty he was living over in Rathenow, but spent much of his time on the seignioral estates of this region, and liked best of all to visit in Schwantikow, at my grandfather Belling's. Of course, it was not on account of my grandfather that he was so often there, and when mama tells about it one can easily see on whose account it really was. I think it was mutual, too."

"And what came of it?"

"The thing that was bound to come and always does come. He was still much too young and when my papa appeared on the scene, who had already attained the title of baronial councillor and the proprietorship of Hohen-Cremmen, there was no need of further time for consideration. She accepted him and became Mrs. von Briest."

"What did Innstetten do?" said Bertha, "what became of him? He didn't commit suicide, otherwise you could not be expecting him today."

"No, he didn't commit suicide, but it was something of that nature."

"Did he make an unsuccessful attempt?"

"No, not that. But he didn't care to remain here in the neighborhood any longer, and he must have lost all taste for the soldier's career, generally speaking. Besides, it was an era of peace, you know. In short, he asked for his discharge and took up the study of the law, as papa would say, with a 'true beer zeal.' But when the war of seventy broke out he returned to the army, with the Perleberg troops, instead of his old regiment, and he now wears the cross. Naturally, for he is a smart fellow. Right after the war he returned to his documents, and it is said that Bismarck thinks very highly of him, and so does the Emperor. Thus it came about that he was made district councillor in the district of Kessin."

"What is Kessin? I don't know of any Kessin here."

"No, it is not situated here in our region; it is a long distance away from here, in Pomerania, in Farther Pomerania, in fact, which signifies nothing, however, for it is a watering place (every place about there is a summer resort), and the vacation journey that Baron Innstetten is now enjoying is in reality a tour of his cousins, or something of the sort. He wishes to visit his old friends and relatives here."

"Has he relatives here?"

"Yes and no, depending on how you look at it. There are no Innstettens here, there are none anywhere any more, I believe. But he has here distant cousins on his mother's side, and he doubtless wished above all to see Schwantikow once more and the Belling house, to which he was attached by so many memories. So he was over there the day before yesterday and today he plans to be here in Hohen-Cremmen."

"And what does your father say about it?"

"Nothing at all. It is not his way. Besides, he knows mama, you see. He only teases her."

At this moment the clock struck twelve and before it had ceased striking, Wilke, the old factotum of the Briest family, came on the scene to give a message to Miss Effi: "Your Ladyship's mother sends the request that your Ladyship make her toilet in good season; the Baron will presumably drive up immediately after one o'clock." While Wilke was still delivering this message he began to put the ladies' work-table in order and reached first for the sheet of newspaper, on which the gooseberry hulls lay.

"No, Wilke, don't bother with that. It is our affair to dispose of the hulls—Hertha, you must now wrap up the bundle and put a stone in it, so that it will sink better. Then we will march out in a long funeral procession and bury the bundle at sea."

Wilke smiled with satisfaction. "Oh, Miss Effi, she's a trump," was about what he was thinking. But Effi laid the paper bundle in the centre of the quickly gathered up tablecloth and said: "Now let all four of us take hold, each by a corner, and sing something sorrowful."

"Yes, Effi, that is easy enough to say, but what, pray, shall we sing?"

"Just anything. It is quite immaterial, only it must have a rime in 'oo;' 'oo' is always a sad vowel. Let us sing, say:

'Flood, flood, Make it all good.'"

While Effi was solemnly intoning this litany, all four marched out upon the landing pier, stepped into the boat tied there, and from the further end of it slowly lowered into the pond the pebble-weighted paper bundle.

"Hertha, now your guilt is sunk out of sight," said Effi, "in which connection it occurs to me, by the way, that in former times poor unfortunate women are said to have been thrown overboard thus from a boat, of course for unfaithfulness."

"But not here, certainly."

"No, not here," laughed Effi, "such things do not take place here. But they do in Constantinople and it just occurs to me that you must know about it, for you were present in the geography class when the teacher told about it."

"Yes," said Hulda, "he was always telling us about such things. But one naturally forgets them in the course of time."

"Not I, I remember things like that."



CHAPTER II

The conversation ran on thus for some time, the girls recalling with mingled disgust and delight the school lessons they had had in common, and a great many of the teacher's uncalled-for remarks. Suddenly Hulda said: "But you must make haste, Effi; why, you look—why, what shall I say—why, you look as though you had just come from a cherry picking, all rumpled and crumpled. Linen always gets so badly creased, and that large white turned down collar—oh, yes, I have it now; you look like a cabin boy."

"Midshipman, if you please. I must derive some advantage from my nobility. But midshipman or cabin boy, only recently papa again promised me a mast, here close by the swing, with yards and a rope ladder. Most assuredly I should like one and I should not allow anybody to interfere with my fastening the pennant at the top. And you, Hulda, would climb up then on the other side and high in the air we would shout: 'Hurrah!' and give each other a kiss. By Jingo, that would be a sweet one."

"'By Jingo.' Now just listen to that. You really talk like a midshipman. However, I shall take care not to climb up after you, I am not such a dare-devil. Jahnke is quite right when he says, as he always does, that you have too much Billing in you, from your mother. I am only a preacher's daughter."

"Ah, go along. Still waters run deep—But come, let us swing, two on a side; I don't believe it will break. Or if you don't care to, for you are drawing long faces again, then we will play hide-and-seek. I still have a quarter of an hour. I don't want to go in, yet, and anyhow it is merely to say: 'How do you do?' to a district councillor, and a district councillor from Further Pomerania to boot. He is elderly, too. Why he might almost be my father; and if he actually lives in a seaport, for, you know, that is what Kessin is said to be, I really ought to make the best impression upon him in this sailor costume, and he ought almost to consider it a delicate attention. When princes receive anybody, I know from what papa has told me, they always put on the uniform of the country of their guest. So don't worry—Quick, quick, I am going to hide and here by the bench is the base."

Hulda was about to fix a few boundaries, but Effi had already run up the first gravel walk, turning to the left, then to the right, and suddenly vanishing from sight. "Effi, that does not count; where are you? We are not playing run away; we are playing hide-and-seek." With these and similar reproaches the girls ran to search for her, far beyond the circular bed and the two plane trees standing by the side of the path. She first let them get much farther than she was from the base and then, rushing suddenly from her hiding place, reached the bench, without any special exertion, before there was time to say: "one, two, three."

"Where were you?"

"Behind the rhubarb plants; they have such large leaves, larger even than a fig leaf."

"Shame on you."

"No, shame on you, because you didn't catch me. Hulda, with her big eyes, again failed to see anything. She is always slow." Hereupon Effi again flew away across the circle toward the pond, probably because she planned to hide at first behind a dense-growing hazelnut hedge over there, and then from that point to take a long roundabout way past the churchyard and the front house and thence back to the wing and the base. Everything was well calculated, but before she was half way round the pond she heard some one at the house calling her name and, as she turned around, saw her mother waving a handkerchief from the stone steps. In a moment Effi was standing by her.

"Now you see that I knew what I was talking about. You still have that smock-frock on and the caller has arrived. You are never on time."

"I shall be on time, easily, but the caller has not kept his appointment. It is not yet one o'clock, not by a good deal," she said, and turning to the twins, who had been lagging behind, called to them: "Just go on playing; I shall be back right away."

The next moment Effi and her mama entered the spacious drawing-room, which occupied almost the whole ground floor of the side wing.

"Mama, you daren't scold me. It is really only half past. Why does he come so early? Cavaliers never arrive too late, much less too early."

Mrs. von Briest was evidently embarrassed. But Effi cuddled up to her fondly and said: "Forgive me, I will hurry now. You know I can be quick, too, and in five minutes Cinderella will be transformed into a princess. Meanwhile he can wait or chat with papa."

Bowing to her mother, she was about to trip lightly up the little iron stairway leading from the drawing-room to the story above. But Mrs. von Briest, who could be unconventional on occasion, if she took a notion to, suddenly held Effi back, cast a glance at the charming young creature, still all in a heat from the excitement of the game, a perfect picture of youthful freshness, and said in an almost confidential tone: "After all, the best thing for you to do is to remain as you are. Yes, don't change. You look very well indeed. And even if you didn't, you look so unprepared, you show absolutely no signs of being dressed for the occasion, and that is the most important consideration at this moment. For I must tell you, my sweet Effi—" and she clasped her daughter's hands—"for I must tell you—"

"Why, mama, what in the world is the matter with you? You frighten me terribly."

"I must tell you, Effi, that Baron Innstetten has just asked me for your hand."

"Asked for my hand? In earnest?"

"That is not a matter to make a jest of. You saw him the day before yesterday and I think you liked him. To be sure, he is older than you, which, all things considered, is a fortunate circumstance. Besides, he is a man of character, position, and good breeding, and if you do not say 'no,' which I could hardly expect of my shrewd Effi, you will be standing at the age of twenty where others stand at forty. You will surpass your mama by far."

Effi remained silent, seeking a suitable answer. Before she could find one she heard her father's voice in the adjoining room. The next moment Councillor von Briest, a well preserved man in the fifties, and of pronounced bonhomie, entered the drawing-room, and with him Baron Innstetten, a man of slender figure, dark complexion, and military bearing.

When Effi caught sight of him she fell into a nervous tremble, but only for an instant, as almost at the very moment when he was approaching her with a friendly bow there appeared at one of the wide open vine-covered windows the sandy heads of the Jahnke twins, and Hertha, the more hoidenish, called into the room: "Come, Effi." Then she ducked from sight and the two sprang from the back of the bench, upon which they had been standing, down into the garden and nothing more was heard from them except their giggling and laughing.



CHAPTER III

Later in the day Baron Innstetten was betrothed to Effi von Briest. At the dinner which followed, her jovial father found it no easy matter to adjust himself to the solemn role that had fallen to him. He proposed a toast to the health of the young couple, which was not without its touching effect upon Mrs. von Briest, for she obviously recalled the experiences of scarcely eighteen years ago. However, the feeling did not last long. What it had been impossible for her to be, her daughter now was, in her stead. All things considered, it was just as well, perhaps even better. For one could live with von Briest, in spite of the fact that he was a bit prosaic and now and then showed a slight streak of frivolity. Toward the end of the meal—the ice was being served—the elderly baronial councillor once more arose to his feet to propose in a second speech that from now on they should all address each other by the familiar pronoun "Du." Thereupon he embraced Innstetten and gave him a kiss on the left cheek. But this was not the end of the matter for him. On the contrary, he went on to recommend, in addition to the "Du," a set of more intimate names and titles for use in the home, seeking to establish a sort of basis for hearty intercourse, at the same time preserving certain well-earned, and hence justified, distinctions. For his wife he suggested, as the best solution of the problem, the continuation of "Mama," for there are young mamas, as well as old; whereas for himself, he was willing to forego the honorable title of "Papa," and could not help feeling a decided preference for the simple name of Briest, if for no other reason, because it was so beautifully short. "And then as for the children," he said—at which word he had to give himself a jerk as he exchanged gazes with Innstetten, who was only about a dozen years his junior—"well, let Effi just remain Effi, and Geert, Geert. Geert, if I am not mistaken, signifies a tall and slender trunk, and so Effi may be the ivy destined to twine about it." At these words the betrothed couple looked at each other somewhat embarrassed, Effi's face showing at the same time an expression of childlike mirth, but Mrs. von Briest said: "Say what you like, Briest, and formulate your toasts to suit your own taste, but if you will allow me one request, avoid poetic imagery; it is beyond your sphere." These silencing words were received by von Briest with more assent than dissent. "It is possible that you are right, Luise."

Immediately after rising from the table, Effi took leave to pay a visit over at the pastor's. On the way she said to herself: "I think Hulda will be vexed. I have got ahead of her after all. She always was too vain and conceited."

But Effi was not quite right in all that she expected. Hulda behaved very well, preserving her composure absolutely and leaving the indication of anger and vexation to her mother, the pastor's wife, who, indeed, made some very strange remarks. "Yes, yes, that's the way it goes. Of course. Since it couldn't be the mother, it has to be the daughter. That's nothing new. Old families always hold together, and where there is a beginning there will be an increase." The elder Niemeyer, painfully embarrassed by these and similar pointed remarks, which showed a lack of culture and refinement, lamented once more the fact that he had married a mere housekeeper.



After visiting the pastor's family Effi naturally went next to the home of the precentor Jahnke. The twins had been watching for her and received her in the front yard.

"Well, Effi," said Hertha, as all three walked up and down between the two rows of amaranths, "well, Effi, how do you really feel?"

"How do I feel? O, quite well. We already say 'Du' to each other and call each other by our first names. His name is Geert, but it just occurs to me that I have already told you that."

"Yes, you have. But in spite of myself I feel so uneasy about it. Is he really the right man?"

"Certainly he is the right man. You don't know anything about such matters, Hertha. Any man is the right one. Of course he must be a nobleman, have a position, and be handsome."

"Goodness, Effi, how you do talk! You used to talk quite differently."

"Yes, I used to."

"And are you quite happy already?"

"When one has been two hours betrothed, one is always quite happy. At least, that is my idea about it."

"And don't you feel at all—oh, what shall I say?—a bit awkward?"

"Yes, I do feel a bit awkward, but not very. And I fancy I shall get over it."

After these visits at the parsonage and the home of the precentor, which together had not consumed half an hour, Effi returned to the garden veranda, where coffee was about to be served. Father-in-law and son-in-law were walking up and down along the gravel path by the plane trees. Von Briest was talking about the difficulties of a district councillor's position, saying that he had been offered one at various times, but had always declined. "The ability to have my own way in all matters has always been the thing that was most to my liking, at least more—I beg your pardon, Innstetten—than always having to look up to some one else. For in the latter case one is always obliged to bear in mind and pay heed to exalted and most exalted superiors. That is no life for me. Here I live along in such liberty and rejoice at every green leaf and the wild grape-vine that grows over those windows yonder."

He spoke further in this vein, indulging in all sorts of anti-bureaucratic remarks, and excusing himself from time to time with a blunt "I beg your pardon, Innstetten," which he interjected in a variety of ways. The Baron mechanically nodded assent, but in reality paid little attention to what was said. He turned his gaze again and again, as though spellbound, to the wild grape-vine twining about the window, of which Briest had just spoken, and as his thoughts were thus engaged, it seemed to him as though he saw again the girls' sandy heads among the vines and heard the saucy call, "Come, Effi."

He did not believe in omens and the like; on the contrary, he was far from entertaining superstitious ideas. Nevertheless he could not rid his mind of the two words, and while Briest's peroration rambled on and on he had the constant feeling that the little incident was something more than mere chance.

Innstetten, who had taken only a short vacation, departed the following morning, after promising to write every day. "Yes, you must do that," Effi had said, and these words came from her heart. She had for years known nothing more delightful than, for example, to receive a large number of birthday letters. Everybody had to write her a letter for that day. Such expressions as "Gertrude and Clara join me in sending you heartiest congratulations," were tabooed. Gertrude and Clara, if they wished to be considered friends, had to see to it that they sent individual letters with separate postage stamps, and, if possible, foreign ones, from Switzerland or Carlsbad, for her birthday came in the traveling season.

Innstetten actually wrote every day, as he had promised. The thing that made the receipt of his letters particularly pleasurable was the circumstance that he expected in return only one very short letter every week. This he received regularly and it was always full of charming trifles, which never failed to delight him. Mrs. von Briest undertook to carry on the correspondence with her future son-in-law whenever there was any serious matter to be discussed, as, for example, the settling of the details of the wedding, and questions of the dowry and the furnishing of the new home. Innstetten was now nearly three years in office, and his house in Kessin, while not splendidly furnished, was nevertheless very well suited to his station, and it seemed advisable to gain from correspondence with him some idea of what he already had, in order not to buy anything superfluous. When Mrs. von Briest was finally well enough informed concerning all these details it was decided that the mother and daughter should go to Berlin, in order, as Briest expressed himself, to buy up the trousseau for Princess Effi.

Effi looked forward to the sojourn in Berlin with great pleasure, the more so because her father had consented that they should take lodgings in the Hotel du Nord. "Whatever it costs can be deducted from the dowry, you know, for Innstetten already has everything." Mrs. von Briest forbade such "mesquineries" in the future, once for all, but Effi, on the other hand, joyously assented to her father's plan, without so much as stopping to think whether he had meant it as a jest or in earnest, for her thoughts were occupied far, far more with the impression she and her mother should make by their appearance at the table d'hote, than with Spinn and Mencke, Goschenhofer, and other such firms, whose names had been provisionally entered in her memorandum book. And her demeanor was entirely in keeping with these frivolous fancies, when the great Berlin week had actually come.

Cousin von Briest of the Alexander regiment, an uncommonly jolly young lieutenant, who took the Fliegende Blatter and kept a record of the best jokes, placed himself at the disposal of the ladies for every hour he should be off duty, and so they would sit with him at the corner window of Kranzler's, or perhaps in the Cafe Bauer, when permissible, or would drive out in the afternoon to the Zoological Garden, to see the giraffes, of which Cousin von Briest, whose name, by the way, was Dagobert, was fond of saying: "They look like old maids of noble birth." Every day passed according to program, and on the third or fourth day they went, as directed, to the National Gallery, because Dagobert wished to show his cousin the "Isle of the Blessed." "To be sure, Cousin Effi is on the point of marrying, and yet it may perhaps be well to have made the acquaintance of the 'Isle of the Blessed' beforehand." His aunt gave him a slap with her fan, but accompanied the blow with such a gracious look that he saw no occasion to change the tone.

These were heavenly days for all three, no less for Cousin Dagobert than for the ladies, for he was a past master in the art of escorting and always knew how quickly to compromise little differences. Of the differences of opinion to be expected between mother and daughter there was never any lack during the whole time, but fortunately they never came out in connection with the purchases to be made. Whether they bought a half dozen or three dozen of a particular thing, Effi was uniformly satisfied, and when they talked, on the way home, about the prices of the articles bought, she regularly confounded the figures. Mrs. von Briest, ordinarily so critical, even toward her own beloved child, not only took this apparent lack of interest lightly, she even recognized in it an advantage. "All these things," said she to herself, "do not mean much to Effi. Effi is unpretentious; she lives in her own ideas and dreams, and when one of the Hohenzollern princesses drives by and bows a friendly greeting from her carriage that means more to Effi than a whole chest full of linen."

That was all correct enough, and yet only half the truth. Effi cared but little for the possession of more or less commonplace things, but when she walked up and down Unter den Linden with her mother, and, after inspecting the most beautiful show-windows, went into Demuth's to buy a number of things for the honeymoon tour of Italy, her true, character showed itself. Only the most elegant articles found favor in her sight, and, if she could not have the best, she forewent the second-best, because this second meant nothing to her. Beyond question, she was able to forego,—in that her mother was right,—and in this ability to forego there was a certain amount of unpretentiousness. But when, by way of exception, it became a question of really possessing a thing, it always had to be something out of the ordinary. In this regard she was pretentious.



CHAPTER IV

Cousin Dagobert was at the station when the ladies took the train for Hohen-Cremmen. The Berlin sojourn had been a succession of happy days, chiefly because there had been no suffering from disagreeable and, one might almost say, inferior relatives. Immediately after their arrival Effi had said: "This time we must remain incognito, so far as Aunt Therese is concerned. It will not do for her to come to see us here in the hotel. Either Hotel du Nord or Aunt Therese; the two would not go together at all." The mother had finally agreed to this, had, in fact, sealed the agreement with a kiss on her daughter's forehead.

With Cousin Dagobert, of course, it was an entirely different matter. Not only did he have the social grace of the Guards, but also, what is more, the peculiarly good humor now almost a tradition with the officers of the Alexander regiment, and this enabled him from the outset to draw out both the mother and the daughter and keep them in good spirits to the end of their stay. "Dagobert," said Effi at the moment of parting, "remember that you are to come to my nuptial-eve celebration; that you are to bring a cortege goes without saying. But don't you bring any porter or mousetrap seller. For after the theatrical performances there will be a ball, and you must take into consideration that my first grand ball will probably be also my last. Fewer than six companions—superb dancers, that goes without saying—will not be approved. And you can return by the early morning train." Her cousin promised everything she asked and so they bade each other farewell.

Toward noon the two women arrived at their Havelland station in the middle of the marsh and after a drive of half an hour were at Hohen-Cremmen. Von Briest was very happy to have his wife and daughter at home again, and asked questions upon questions, but in most cases did not wait for the answers. Instead of that he launched out into a long account of what he had experienced in the meantime. "A while ago you were telling me about the National Gallery and the 'Isle of the Blessed.' Well, while you were away, there was something going on here, too. It was our overseer Pink and the gardener's wife. Of course, I had to dismiss Pink, but it went against the grain to do it. It is very unfortunate that such affairs almost always occur in the harvest season. And Pink was otherwise an uncommonly efficient man, though here, I regret to say, in the wrong place. But enough of that; Wilke is showing signs of restlessness too."

At dinner von Briest listened better. The friendly intercourse with Cousin Dagobert, of whom he heard a good deal, met with his approval, less so the conduct toward Aunt Therese. But one could see plainly that, at the same time that he was declaring his disapproval, he was rejoicing; for a little mischievous trick just suited his taste, and Aunt Therese was unquestionably a ridiculous figure. He raised his glass and invited his wife and daughter to join him in a toast. After dinner, when some of the handsomest purchases were unpacked and laid before him for his judgment, he betrayed a great deal of interest, which still remained alive, or, at least did not die out entirely, even after he had glanced over the bills. "A little bit dear, or let us say, rather, very dear; however, it makes no difference. Everything has so much style about it, I might almost say, so much inspiration, that I feel in my bones, if you give me a trunk like that and a traveling rug like this for Christmas, I shall be ready to take our wedding journey after a delay of eighteen years, and we, too, shall be in Rome for Easter. What do you think, Luise? Shall we make up what we are behind? Better late than never."

Mrs. von Briest made a motion with her hand, as if to say: "Incorrigible," and then left him to his own humiliation, which, however, was not very deep.

* * * * *

The end of August had come, the wedding day (October the 3d) was drawing nearer, and in the manor house, as well as at the parsonage and the schoolhouse, all hands were incessantly occupied with the preparations for the pre-nuptial eve. Jahnke, faithful to his passion for Fritz Reuter, had fancied it would be particularly "ingenious" to have Bertha and Hertha appear as Lining and Mining, speaking Low German, of course, whereas Hulda was to present the elder-tree scene of Kaethchen von Heilbronn, with Lieutenant Engelbrecht of the Hussars as Wetter vom Strahl. Niemeyer, who by rights was the father of the idea, had felt no hesitation to compose additional lines containing a modest application to Innstetten and Effi. He himself was satisfied with his effort and at the end of the first rehearsal heard only very favorable criticisms of it, with one exception, to be sure, viz., that of his patron lord, and old friend, Briest, who, when he had heard the admixture of Kleist and Niemeyer, protested vigorously, though not on literary grounds. "High Lord, and over and over, High Lord—what does that mean? That is misleading and it distorts the whole situation. Innstetten is unquestionably a fine specimen of the race, a man of character and energy, but, when it comes to that, the Briests are not of base parentage either. We are indisputably a historic family—let me add: 'Thank God'—and the Innstettens are not. The Innstettens are merely old, belong to the oldest nobility, if you like; but what does oldest nobility mean? I will not permit that a von Briest, or even a figure in the wedding-eve performance, whom everybody must recognize as the counterpart of our Effi—I will not permit, I say, that a Briest either in person or through a representative speak incessantly of 'High Lord.' Certainly not, unless Innstetten were at least a disguised Hohenzollern; there are some, you know. But he is not one and hence I can only repeat that it distorts the whole situation."

For a long time von Briest really held fast to this view with remarkable tenacity. But after the second rehearsal, at which Kaethchen was half in costume, wearing a tight-fitting velvet bodice, he was so carried away as to remark: "Kaethchen lies there beautifully," which turn was pretty much the equivalent of a surrender, or at least prepared the way for one. That all these things were kept secret from Effi goes without saying. With more curiosity on her part, however, it would have been wholly impossible. But she had so little desire to find out about the preparations made and the surprises planned that she declared to her mother with all emphasis: "I can wait and see," and, when Mrs. von Briest still doubted her, Effi closed the conversation with repeated assurances that it was really true and her mother might just as well believe it. And why not? It was all just a theatrical performance, and prettier and more poetical than Cinderella, which she had seen on the last evening in Berlin—no, on second thought, it couldn't be prettier and more poetical. In this play she herself would have been glad to take a part, even if only for the purpose of making a chalk mark on the back of the ridiculous boarding-school teacher. "And how charming in the last act is 'Cinderella's awakening as a princess,' or at least as a countess! Really, it was just like a fairy tale." She often spoke in this way, was for the most part more exuberant than before, and was vexed only at the constant whisperings and mysterious conduct of her girl friends. "I wish they felt less important and paid more attention to me. When the time comes they will only forget their lines and I shall have to be in suspense on their account and be ashamed that they are my friends."

Thus ran Effi's scoffing remarks and there was no mistaking the fact that she was not troubling herself any too much about the pre-nuptial exercises and the wedding day. Mrs. von Briest had her own ideas on the subject, but did not permit herself to worry about it, as Effi's mind was, to a considerable extent, occupied with the future, which after all was a good sign. Furthermore Effi, by virtue of her wealth of imagination, often launched out into descriptions of her future life in Kessin for a quarter of an hour at a time,—descriptions which, incidentally, and much to the amusement of her mother, revealed a remarkable conception of Further Pomerania, or, perhaps it would be more correct to say, they embodied this conception, with clever calculation and definite purpose. For Effi delighted to think of Kessin as a half-Siberian locality, where the ice and snow never fully melted.

"Today Goschenhofer has sent the last thing," said Mrs. von Briest, sitting, as was her custom, out in front of the wing of the mansion with Effi at the work-table, upon which the supplies of linen and underclothing kept increasing, whereas the newspapers, which merely took up space, were constantly decreasing. "I hope you have everything now, Effi. But if you still cherish little wishes you must speak them out, if possible, this very hour. Papa has sold the rape crop at a good price and is in an unusually good humor."

"Unusually? He is always in a good humor."

"In an unusually good humor," repeated the mother. "And it must be taken advantage of. So speak. Several times during our stay in Berlin I had the feeling that you had a very special desire for something or other more."

"Well, dear mama, what can I say? As a matter of fact I have everything that one needs, I mean that one needs here. But as it is once for all decided that I am to go so far north—let me say in passing that I have no objections; on the contrary I look forward with pleasure to it, to the northern lights and the brighter splendor of the stars—as this has been definitely decided, I should like to have a set of furs."