When it is needed, when one of the great questions of humanity is discussed, then Lafayette ever rises, eager for strife as a youth. Only the body is weak and tottering, broken by age and the battles of his time, like a hacked and dented old iron armor, and it is touching when he totters under it to the tribune and has reached his old post, to see how he draws a deep breath and smiles. This smile, his delivery, and the whole being of the man while speaking on the tribune, are indescribable. There is in it all so much that is winsome and yet so much delicate irony, that one is enchained as by a marvelous curiosity, a sweet, strange enigma. We know not if these are the refined manners of a French marquis or the straightforward simplicity of an American citizen. All that is best in the ancien regime, the chivalresque courtesy and tact, are here wondrously fused with what is best in the modern bourgeoisie, love of equality, simplicity, and honesty. Nothing is more interesting than when mention is made, in the Chamber, of the first days of the Revolution, and some one in doctrinaire fashion tears some historical fact from its true connection and turns it to his own account in speech. Then Lafayette destroys with a few words the erroneous deduction by illustrating or correcting the true sense of such an event by citing the circumstances relating to it. Even Thiers must in such a case strike sail, and the great historiographer of the Revolution bows before the outburst of its great and living monument, General Lafayette.

There sits in the Chamber, just before the tribune a very old man, with long silvery hair falling over his black clothing. His body is girted with a very broad tricolored scarf; he is the old messenger who has always filled that office in the Chamber since the beginning of the Revolution, and who in this post has witnessed the momentous events of the world's history from the days of the first National Assembly till the juste milieu. I am told that he often speaks of Robespierre, whom he calls le bon Monsieur Robespierre. During the Restoration the old man suffered from colic, but since he has wound the tricolored scarf round his waist he finds himself well again. His only trouble now, in the dull and lazy times of the juste milieu, is drowsiness. I once even saw him fall asleep while Mauguin was speaking. Indeed, the man has, doubtless, in his time heard better than Mauguin, who is, however, one of the best orators of the Opposition, though he is not found to be very startling or effective by one qui a beaucoup connu ce bon Monsieur de Robespierre. But when Lafayette speaks, then the old messenger awakes from his twilight drowsiness, he seems to be aroused like an old war-horse of hussars when he hears the sound of a trumpet—there rise within him sweet memories of youth, and he nods delightedly with his silver-white head.

* * * * *



THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL[58] (1833-35)

BY HEINRICH HEINE

TRANSLATED BY CHARLES GODFREY LELAND

But what was the Romantic School in Germany? It was nothing else but the reawakening of the poetry of the Middle Ages, as it had shown itself in its songs, images, and architecture, in art and in life. But this poetry had risen from Christianity; it was a passion-flower which had sprung from the blood of Christ. I do not know whether the melancholy passion-flower of Germany is known by that name in France, or whether popular legend attributes to it the same mystical origin. It is a strange, unpleasantly colored blossom, in whose calyx we see set forth the implements which were used in the crucifixion of Christ, such as the hammer, pincers, and nails—a flower which is not so much ugly as ghostly, and even whose sight awakens in our soul a shuddering pleasure, like the convulsively agreeable sensations which come from pain itself. From this view the flower was indeed the fittest symbol for Christianity itself, whose most thrilling chain was the luxury of pain.

Though in France only Roman Catholicism is understood by the word Christianity, I must specially preface that I speak only of the latter. I speak of that religion in whose first dogmas there is a damnation of all flesh, and which not only allows to the spirit power over the flesh, but will also kill this to glorify the spirit. I speak of that religion by whose unnatural requisitions sin and hypocrisy really came into the world, in that by the condemnation of the flesh the most innocent sensuous pleasures became sins, and because the impossibility of a man's becoming altogether spiritual naturally created hypocrisy. I speak of that religion which, by teaching the doctrine of the casting away of all earthly goods and of cultivating a dog-like, abject humility and angelic patience, became the most approved support of despotism. Men have found out the real life and meaning (Wesen) of this religion, and do not now content themselves with promises of supping in Paradise; they know that matter has also its merits, and is not all the devil's, and they now defend the delights of this world, this beautiful garden of God, our inalienable inheritance. And therefore, because we have grasped so entirely all the consequences of that absolute spiritualism, we may believe that the Christian Catholic view of the world has reached its end. Every age is a sphinx, which casts itself into the abyss when man has guessed its riddle.

Yet we do in no wise deny the good results which this Christian Catholic view of the world established in Europe. It was necessary as a wholesome reaction against the cruelly colossal materialism which had developed itself in the Roman realm and threatened to destroy all spiritual human power. As the lascivious memoirs of the last century form the pieces justificatives of the French Revolution, as the terrorism of a comite du salut public seems to be necessary physic when we read the confessions of the aristocratic world of France, so we recognize the wholesomeness of ascetic spiritualism when we read Petronius or Apuleius, which are to be regarded as the pieces justificatives of Christianity. The flesh had become so arrogant in this Roman world that it required Christian discipline to chasten it. After the banquet of a Trimalchion, such a hunger-cure as Christianity was a necessity.

Or was it that as lascivious old men seek by being whipped to excite new power of enjoyment, so old Rome endured monkish chastisement to find more exquisite delight in torture and voluptuous rapture in pain? Evil excess of stimulant! it took from the body of the state of Rome its last strength. It was not by division into two realms that Rome perished. On the Bosphorus, as by the Tiber, Rome was devoured by the same Jewish spiritualism, and here, as there, Roman history was that of a long dying agony which lasted for centuries. Did murdered Judea, in leaving to Rome its spiritualism, wish to revenge itself on the victorious foe, as did the dying centaur who craftily left to the son of Hercules the deadly garment steeped in his own blood? Truly Rome, the Hercules among races, was so thoroughly devoured by Jewish poison that helm and harness fell from its withered limbs, and its imperial war-voice died away into the wailing cadences of monkish prayer and the soft trilling of castrated boys.

But what weakens old age strengthens youth. That spiritualism had a healthy action on the too sound and strong races of the North; the too full-blooded barbarous bodies were spiritualized by Christianity, and European civilization began. The Catholic Church has in this respect the strongest claims on our regard and admiration, for it succeeded by subduing with its great genial institutions the bestiality of Northern barbarians and by mastering brutal matter.

The Art-work of the Middle Ages manifests this mastery of mere material by mind, and it is very often its only mission. The epic poems of this period may be easily classed according to the degree of this subjection or influence. There can be no discussion here of lyrical and dramatic poems, for the latter did not exist, and the former are as like in every age as are the songs of nightingales in spring.

Although the epic poetry of the Middle Ages was divided into sacred and profane, both were altogether Christian according to their kind; for if sacred poesy sang of the Jewish race and its history, the only race which was regarded as holy, or of the heroes and legends of the Old and New Testaments, and, in brief, the Church—still all the life of the time was reflected in profane poetry with its Christian views and action. The flower of the religious poetic art in the German Middle Ages is perhaps Barlaam and Josaphat, in which the doctrine of abnegation, of abstinence, and the denial and contempt of all worldly glory, is set forth most consistently. Next to this I would class the The Eulogium of St. Hanno (Lobgesang auf den heiligen Anno) as the best of the religious kind; but this is of a far more secular character, differing from the first as the portrait of a Byzantine saint differs from an old German one. As in those Byzantine pictures, so we see in Barlaam and Josaphat the utmost simplicity; there is no perspective side-work, and the long, lean, statue-like forms and the idealistic serious faces come out strongly drawn, as if from a mellow gold ground. On the other hand, in the song of praise of St. Hanno, the side-work or accessories are almost the subject, and, notwithstanding the grandeur of the plan, the details are treated in the minutest manner, so that we know not whether to admire in it the conception of a giant or the patience of a dwarf. But the evangel-poem of Ottfried, which is generally praised as the masterpiece of sacred poetry, is far less admirable than the two which I have mentioned.

In profane poetry we find, as I have already signified, first the cycle of sagas of the Nibelungen and the Heldenbuch, or Book of Heroes. In them prevails all the pre-Christian manner of thought and of feeling; in them rude strength has not as yet been softened by chivalry. There the stern Kempe-warriors of the North stand like stone images, and the gentle gleam and the more refined breath of Christianity have not as yet penetrated their iron armor. But little by little a light dawns in the old Teutonic forest; the ancient idolatrous oak-trees are felled, and we see a brighter field of battle where Christ wars with the heathen. This appears in the saga-cycle of Charlemagne, in which what we really see is the Crusades reflecting themselves with their religious influences. And now from the spiritualizing power of Christianity, chivalry, the most characteristic feature of the Middle Ages, unfolds itself, and is at last sublimed into a spiritual knighthood. This secular knighthood appears most attractively glorified in the sagacycle of King Arthur, in which the sweetest gallantry, the most refined courtesy, and the most adventurous passion for combat prevail. Among the charmingly eccentric arabesques and fantastic flower-pictures of this poem we are greeted by the admirable Iwain, the all-surpassing Lancelot du Lac, and the bold, gallant, and true, but somewhat tiresome, Wigalois. Nearly allied and interwoven with this cyclus of sagas is that of the Holy Grail, in which the spiritual knighthood is glorified; and in this epoch we meet three of the grandest poems of the Middle Ages, the Titurel, the Parsifal, and the Lohengrin. Here indeed we find ourselves face to face with Romantic Poetry. We look deeply into her great sorrowing eyes; she twines around us, unsuspectingly, her fine scholastic nets, and draws us down into the bewildering, deluding depths of medieval mysticism.

At last, however, we come to poems of that age which are not unconditionally devoted to Christian spiritualism; nay, it is often indirectly reflected on, where the poet disentangles himself from the bonds of abstract Christian virtues and plunges delighted into the world of pleasure and of glorified sensuousness; and it is not the worst poet, by any means, who has left us the principal work thus inspired. This is Tristan and Isolde; and I must declare that Gottfried von Strassburg, the composer of this most beautiful poem of the Middle Ages, is perhaps also its greatest poet, towering far above all the splendor of Wolfram von Eschenbach, whom we so admire in Parsifal and the fragments of Titurel. We are at last permitted to praise Gottfried unconditionally, though in his own time his book was certainly regarded as godless, and similar works, among them the Lancelot, were considered as dangerous. And some very serious results did indeed ensue. The fair Francesca da Polenta and her handsome friend had to pay dearly for the pleasure of reading on a summer day in such a book; but the trouble came not from the reading, but from their suddenly ceasing to read.

There is in all these poems of the Middle Ages a marked character which distinguishes them from those of Greece and Rome. We characterize this difference by calling the first Romantic and the other Classic. Yet these appellations are only uncertain rubrics, and have led hitherto to the most discouraging, wearisome entanglements, which become worse since we give to antique poetry the designation of "Plastic," instead of "Classic." From this arose much misunderstanding; for, justly, all poets should work their material plastically, be it Christian or heathen; they should set it forth in clear outlines; in short, plastic form should be the main desideratum in modern Romantic art, quite as much as in the ancient. And are not the figures in the Divina Commedia of Dante or in the pictures of Raphael as plastic as those in Virgil? The difference lies in this, that the plastic forms in ancient art are absolutely identical with the subject or the idea which the artist would set forth, as, for example, that the wanderings of Ulysses mean nothing else than the journeyings of a man named Odysseus, who was son of Laertes and husband of Penelope; and further, that the Bacchus which we see in the Louvre is nothing else than the graceful, winsome son of Semele, with audacious melancholy in his eyes and sacred voluptuousness on his soft and arching lips. It is quite otherwise in Romantic art, in which the wild wanderings of a knight have ever an esoteric meaning, symbolizing perhaps the erring course of life. The dragon whom he overcomes is sin; the almond which from afar casts comforting perfume to the traveler is the Trinity, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, which are three in one, as shell, fibre, and kernel make one nut. When Homer describes the armor of a hero, it is a good piece of work, worth such and such a number of oxen; but when a monk of the Middle Ages describes in his poems the garments of the Mother of God, one may be sure that by this garb he means as many virtues, and a peculiar significance lies hidden under this holy covering of the immaculate virginity of Maria, who, as her son is the almond-kernel, is naturally sung as the almond-flower. That is the character of the medieval poetry which we call Romantic.

Classic art had only to represent the finite or determined, and its forms could be one and the same with the idea of the artist. Romantic art had to set forth, or rather signify, the infinite and purely spiritual, and it took refuge in a system of traditional, or rather of parabolistic symbols, as Christ himself had sought to render clear his spiritualistic ideas by all kinds of beautiful parables. Hence the mystical, problematic, marvelous, and transcendental in the artwork of the Middle Ages, in which fantasy makes her most desperate efforts to depict the purely spiritual by means of sensible images, and invents colossal follies, piling Pelion on Ossa and Parsifal on Titurel to attain to heaven.

Among other races where poetry attempted to display the infinite, and where monstrous fancies appeared, as, for instance, among the Scandinavians and Indians, we find poems which, being romantic, are given that classification.

We cannot say much as to the music of the Middle Ages, for original documents, which might have served for our guidance, are wanting. It was not till late in the sixteenth century that the masterpieces of Catholic church music, which cannot be too highly praised, appeared. These express in the most exquisite manner pure Christian spirituality. The recitative arts, which are spiritual from their very nature, could indeed flourish fairly in Christianity, yet it was less favorable to those of design, for as these had to represent the victory of mind over matter, and yet must use matter as the means wherewith to work, they had to solve a problem against Nature. Hence we find in sculpture and painting those revolting subjects—martyrdoms, crucifixions, dying saints, and the flesh crushed in every form. Such themes were martyrdom for sculpture; and when I contemplate those distorted images in which Christian asceticism and renunciation of the senses are expressed by distorted, pious heads, long thin arms, starveling legs, and awkwardly fitting garments, I feel an indescribable compassion for the artists of that time. The painters were indeed more favored, for the material for their work, because of its susceptivity to varied play of color, did not antagonize spirituality so obstinately as the material of the sculptors, and yet they were obliged to load the sighing canvas with the most repulsive forms of suffering. In truth, when we regard many galleries which contain nothing but scenes of bloodshed, scourging, and beheading, one might suppose that the old masters had painted for the collection of an executioner.

But human genius can transform and glorify even the unnatural; many painters solved this problem of making what was revolting beautiful and elevating—the Italians, especially, succeeding in paying tribute to beauty at the expense of spirituality, and in rising to that ideality which attained perfection in so many pictures of the Madonna. As regards this subject the Catholic clergy always made some concession to the physical. This image of immaculate beauty which is glorified by maternal love and suffering had the privilege of being made famous by poets and painters, and adorned with all charms of the sense, for it was a magnet which could attract the multitude to the lap of Christianity. Madonna Maria was the beautiful dame du comptoir of the Catholic Church, who, with her beautiful eyes, attracted and held fast its customers, especially the barbarians of the North.

Architecture had in the Middle Ages the same character as the other arts, as indeed all the manifestations of life then harmonized so marvelously with one another. The tendency to parable shows itself here, as in poetry. When we now enter a Gothic cathedral, we hardly suspect the esoteric sense of its stone symbolism; only a general impression pierces our soul; we realize an elevation of feeling and mortification of the flesh. The interior is a hollow cross, and we wander among the instruments of martyrdom itself; the variegated windows cast on us red and green light, like blood and corruption; funeral songs wail about us; under our feet are mortuary tablets and decay; and the soul soars with the colossal columns to a giddy height, tearing itself with pain from the body, which falls like a weary, worn-out garment to the ground. But when we behold the exteriors of these Gothic cathedrals, these enormous buildings which are wrought so aerially, so finely, delicately, transparently, cut as it were into such open work that one might take them for Brabant lace in marble, then we feel truly the power of that age which could so master stone itself that it seems spectrally transfused with spiritual life, and thus even the hardest material declares Christian spirituality.

But arts are only the mirror of life, and, as Catholicism died away, so its sounds grew fainter and its lights dimmer in art. During the Reformation Catholic song gradually disappeared in Europe, and in its place we see the long-slumbering poetry of Greece re-awakening to life. But it was only an artificial spring, a work of the gardener, not of the sun, and the trees and flowers were in close pots, and a glass canopy protected them from cold and northern winds.

In the world's history no event is the direct result of another; all events rather exert a mutual influence. It was by no means due only to the Greek scholars who emigrated to Europe after the fall of Byzantium that a love for Grecian culture and the desire to imitate it became so general among us; a similar Protestantism prevailed then in art as well as in life. Leo X., that splendid Medici, was as zealous a Protestant as Luther, and as there was a Latin prose protest in Wittenberg, so they protested poetically in Rome in stone, color, and ottaverime. And do not the mighty marble images of Michelangelo, the laughing nymphs of Giulio Romano, and the joyous intoxication of life in the verses of Ludovico Ariosto form a protesting opposition to the old, gloomy, worn-out Catholicism? The painters of Italy waged a polemic against priestdom which was perhaps more effective than that of the Saxon theologian. The blooming rosy flesh in the pictures of Titian is all Protestantism. The limbs of his Venus are more thorough theses than those which the German monk pasted on the church door of Wittenberg. Then it was that men felt as if suddenly freed from the force and pressure of a thousand years; the artists, most of all, again breathed freely as the nightmare of Christianity seemed to spin whirling from their breasts, and they threw themselves with enthusiasm into the sea of Greek joyousness from whose foam rose to them goddesses of beauty. Painters once more limned the ambrosial joys of Olympus; sculptors carved, with the joy of yore, old heroes from the marble; poets again sang the house of Atreus and Laius; and so the age of new classic poetry began.

As modern life was most perfectly developed in France under Louis XIV., so the new classic poetry received there its most finished perfection, and, in a measure, an independent originality. Through the political influence of that great king this poetry spread over Europe; in Italy, its home, it assumed a French color, and thence the heroes of French tragedy went with the Anjous to Spain; it passed with Henrietta Maria to England, and we Germans, as a matter of course, built our clumsy temples to the powdered Olympus of Versailles. The most famous high-priest of this religion was Gottsched, that wonderful long wig whom our dear Goethe has so admirably described in his memoirs.

Lessing was the literary Arminius who delivered our theatre from this foreign rule. He showed us the nothingness, the laughableness, the flat and faded folly of those imitations of the French theatre, which were in turn imitated from the Greek. But he became the founder of modern German literature, not only by his criticism, but by his own works of art. This man pursued with enthusiasm and sincerity art, theology, antiquity, and archaeology, the art of poetry, history—all with the same zeal and to the same purpose. There lives and breathes in all his works the same great social idea, the same progressive humanity, the same religion of reason, whose John he was, and whose Messiah we await. This religion he always preached, but, alas! too often alone and in the desert. And there was one art only of which he knew nothing—that of changing stones into bread, for he consumed the greatest part of his life in poverty and under hard pressure—a curse which clings to nearly all great German geniuses, and will last, it may be, till ended by political freedom. Lessing was more inspired by political feelings than men supposed, a peculiarity which we do not find among his contemporaries, and we can now see for the first time what he meant in sketching the duo-despotism in Emilia Galotti. He was regarded then as a champion of freedom of thought and against clerical intolerance; for his theological writings were better understood. The fragments On the Education of the Human Race, which Eugene Rodrigue has translated into French, may give an idea of the vast comprehensiveness of Lessing's mind. The two critical works which exercised the most influence on art are his Hamburg Dramatic Art (Hamburgische Dramaturgie), and his Laokoon, or the Limits of Painting and Poetry. His most remarkable theatrical pieces are Emilia Galotti, Minna von Barnhelm, and Nathan the Wise.

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing was born at Camenz in Lausitz, January 22, 1729, and died in Brunswick, February 15, 1781. He was a thorough-going man who, when he destroyed something old in a battle, at the same time always created something new and better. "He was," says a German author, "like those pious Jews, who, during the second building of the Temple, were often troubled by attacks of the enemy, and so fought with one hand while with the other they worked at the house of God." This is not the place where I can say more of Lessing, but I cannot refrain from remarking that he is, of all who are recorded in the whole history of literature, the writer whom I love best.

I will here mention another author who worked in the same spirit, with the same object, as Lessing, and who may be regarded as his successor. It is true that his eulogy is here also out of place, since he occupies an altogether peculiar position in literature, and a unique relation to his time and to his contemporaries. It is Johann Gottfried Herder, born in 1744 at Mohrungen, in East Prussia, and who died at Weimar in the year 1803.

Literary history is the great "Morgue" where every one seeks his dead, those whom he loves or to whom he is related. When I see there, among so many dead who were of little interest, a Lessing or a Herder, with their noble, manly countenances, my heart throbs; I cannot pass them by without hastily kissing their dead lips.

Yet if Lessing did so much to destroy the habit of imitating French second-hand Greekdom, he still, by calling attention to the true works of art of Greek antiquity, gave an impulse to a new kind of ridiculous imitations. By his battling with religious superstition he advanced the sober search for clearer views which spread widely in Berlin, which had in the late blessed Nicolai its chief organ, and in the General German Library its arsenal. The most deplorable mediocrity began to show itself more repulsively than ever, and flatness and insipidity blew themselves up like the frog in the fable.

It is a great mistake to suppose that Goethe, who had already come before the world, was at once universally recognized as a writer of commanding genius. His Goetz von Berlichingen and his Werther were received with a degree of enthusiasm, to be sure; but so, too, were the works of common bunglers, and Goethe had but a small niche in the temple of literature. As I have said, Goetz and Werther had a spirited reception, but more on account of the subject-matter than their artistic merits, which very few appreciated in these masterworks. Goetz was a dramatized romance of chivalry, and such writings were then the rage. In Werther the world saw the reproduction of a true story, that of young Jerusalem, who shot himself dead for love, and thereby, in those dead-calm days, made a great noise. People read with tears his touching letters; some shrewdly observed that the manner in which Werther had been banished from aristocratic society had increased his weariness of life. The discussion of suicide caused the book to be still more discussed; it occurred to several fools on this occasion to make away with themselves, and the book, owing to its subject, went off like a shot. The novels of August Lafontaine were just as much read, and, as this author wrote incessantly, he was more famous than Wolfgang von Goethe. Wieland was the great poet then, with whom perhaps might be classed the ode-maker, Rambler of Berlin. Wieland was honored idolatrously, far more at that time than Goethe. Iffland ruled the theatre with his dreary bourgeois dramas, and Kotzebue with his flat and frivolously witty jests.

It was in opposition to this literature that there sprang up in Germany, at the end of the last century, a school which we call the Romantic, and of which August Wilhelm and Friedrich Schlegel have presented themselves as managing agents. Jena, where these and many other souls in like accord found themselves "off and on," was the centre from which the new esthetic doctrine spread. I say doctrine, for this school began with judgments of the art-works of the past and recipes for art-works of the future, and in both directions the Schlegel school rendered great service to esthetic criticism. By judging of such works of art as already existed, either their faults and failures were indicated, or their merits and beauties brought to light. In controversy and in indicating artistic shortcomings, the Schlegels were entirely imitators of old Lessing; they obtained possession of his great battle-blade, but the arm of August William Schlegel was too tenderly weak and the eyes of his brother Friedrich too mystically clouded for the former to strike so strongly and the latter so keenly and accurately as Lessing. True, in descriptive criticism, where the beauties of a work of art are to be set forth—where it came to a delicate detection of its characteristics and bringing them home to our intelligence—then, compared to the Schlegels, old Lessing was nowhere. But what shall I say as to their recipes for preparing works of art? There we find in the Schlegels a weakness which we think may also be detected in Lessing; for the latter is as weak in affirming as he is strong in denying. He rarely succeeds in laying down a fundamental principle, still more seldom a correct one. He wants the firm basis of a philosophy or of a philosophical system. And this is still more sadly the case with the brothers Schlegel.

Much is fabled as to the influence of Fichtean Idealism and Schelling's Philosophy of Nature on the Romantic school, which is even declared to have sprung from it. But I see here, at the most, only the influence of certain fragments of thoughts from Fichte and Schelling, and not at all that of a philosophy. This may be explained on the simple ground that Fichte's philosophy had lost its hold, and Fichte himself had made it lose its interest by a mingling of tenets and ideas from Schelling; and because, on the other hand, Schelling had never set forth a philosophy, but only a vague philosophizing, an unsteady, vacillating improvisation of poetical philosophemes. It may be that it was from the Fichtean Idealism—that deeply ironical system, where the I is opposed to the not—I and annihilates it—that the Romantic school took the doctrine of irony which the late Solger especially developed, and which the Schlegels at first regarded as the soul of art, but which they subsequently found to be fruitless and exchanged for the more positive axioms of the Theory of Identity of Schelling. Schelling, who then taught in Jena, had indeed a great personal influence on the Romantic school; he is, what is not generally known in France, also a bit of a poet; and it is said that he was in doubt whether he should not deliver all his philosophical doctrines in a poetic or even metrical form. This doubt characterizes the man.



THE RABBI OF BACHARACH[59] (1840)

With kindly greeting, the Legend of the Rabbi of Bacharach is dedicated to his friend HENRY LAUBE by the AUTHOR

A FRAGMENT

TRANSLATED BY CHARLES GODFREY LELAND

TRANSLATION REVISED BY PAUL BERNARD THOMAS

CHAPTER I

On the Lower Rhine, where its banks begin to lose their smiling aspect, where the hills and cliffs with their romantic ruined castles rise more defiantly, and a wilder, sterner majesty prevails, there lies, like a strange and fearful tale of olden times, the gloomy and ancient town of Bacharach. But these walls, with their toothless battlements and blind turrets, in whose nooks and niches the winds whistle and the sparrows build their nests, were not always so decayed and fallen, and in these poverty-stricken, repulsive muddy lanes which one sees through the ruined gate, there did not always reign that dreary silence which only now and then is broken by the crying of children, the scolding of women, and the lowing of cows. These walls were once proud and strong, and these lanes were alive with fresh, free life, power and pomp, joy and sorrow, much love and much hate. For Bacharach once belonged to those municipalities which were founded by the Romans during their rule on the Rhine; and its inhabitants, though the times which came after were very stormy, and though they had to submit first to the Hohenstaufen, and then to the Wittelsbach authority, managed, following the example of the other cities on the Rhine, to maintain a tolerably free commonwealth. This consisted of an alliance of separate social elements, in which the patrician elders and those of the guilds, who were subdivided according to their different trades, both strove for power; so that while they were bound in union to resist and guard against outside robber-nobles, they were, nevertheless, constantly having domestic dissensions over disputed interests. Consequently there was but little social intercourse, much mistrust, and not infrequently actual outbursts of passion. The ruling governor sat in his lofty castle of Sareck, and swooped down like his falcon, whenever he was called, and often when not called. The clergy ruled in darkness by darkening the souls of others. One of the most forsaken and helpless of the social elements, which had been gradually bound down by local laws, was the little Jewish community. This had first settled in Bacharach in the days of the Romans, and during the later persecution of the Jews it had taken in many a flock of fugitive co-religionists.

The great oppression of the Jews began with the crusades, and raged most furiously about the middle of the fourteenth century, at the end of the great pestilence, which, like all other great public disasters, was attributed to the Jews, because people declared they had drawn down the wrath of God, and, with the help of the lepers, had poisoned the wells. The enraged populace, especially the hordes of Flagellants, or half-naked men and women, who, lashing themselves for penance and singing a mad hymn to the Virgin, swept over South Germany and the Rhenish provinces, murdered in those days many thousand Jews, tortured others, or baptized them by force. There was another accusation which in earlier times and all through the Middle Ages, even to the beginning of the last century, cost much blood and suffering. This was the ridiculous story, recurring with disgusting frequency in chronicle and legend, that the Jews stole the consecrated wafer, and pierced it with knives till blood ran from it; and to this it was added that at the feast of the Passover the Jews slew Christian children to use their blood in the night sacrifice.



Consequently on the day of this festival the Jews, hated for their wealth, their religion, and the debts due to them, were entirely in the hands of their enemies, who could easily bring about their destruction by spreading the report of such a child-murder, and perhaps even secretly putting a bloody infant's corpse in the house of a Jew thus accused. Then at night they would attack the Jews at their prayers, and murder, plunder, and baptize them; and great miracles would be wrought by the dead child aforesaid, whom the Church would eventually canonize. Saint Werner is one of these holy beings, and in his honor the magnificent abbey of Oberwesel was founded. The latter is now one of the most beautiful ruins on the Rhine, and with the Gothic grandeur of its long ogival windows, proud and lofty pillars, and marvelous stone-carving, it strangely enchants us when we wander by it on some bright, green summer's day, and do not know the story of its origin. In honor of this saint there were also three great churches built on the Rhine, and innumerable Jews murdered and maltreated. All this happened in the year 1287; and in Bacharach, where one of these Saint Werner's churches stood, the Jews suffered much misery and persecution. However, they remained there for two centuries after, protected from such outbreaks of popular rage, though they were continually subject to spite and threats.

Yet the more they were oppressed by hate from without, the more earnestly and tenderly did the Jews of Bacharach cherish their domestic life within, and the deeper was the growth among them of piety and the fear of God. An ideal example of a life given to God was seen in their Rabbi Abraham, who, though still a young man, was famed far and wide for his learning. He was born in Bacharach, and his father, who had been the rabbi there before him, had charged him in his last will to devote his life to that office and never to leave the place unless for fear of life. This command, except for a cabinet full of rare books, was all that his parent, who had lived in poverty and learning, left him. Rabbi Abraham, however, was a very rich man, for he had married the only daughter of his father's brother, who had been a prosperous dealer in jewelry, and whose possessions he had inherited. A few gossips in the community hinted now and then that the Rabbi had married for money. But the women all denied this, declaring that the Rabbi, long ere he went to Spain, had been in love with "Beautiful Sara," and recalling how she had awaited his return for seven years, while, as a matter of fact, he had already wedded her against the will of her father, and even without her own consent, by the betrothal-ring. For every Jew can make a Jewish girl his lawful wife, if he can succeed in putting a ring on her finger, and say at the same time: "I take thee for my wife, according to the law of Moses and Israel." And when Spain was mentioned, the same gossips were wont to smile in the same significant manner, all because of a vague rumor that Rabbi Abraham, though he had studied the holy law industriously enough at the theological school in Toledo, had nevertheless followed Christian customs and become imbued with habits of free thinking, like many of the Spanish Jews who at that time had attained a very remarkable degree of culture.

And yet in the bottom of their hearts these gossips put no faith in such reports; for ever since his return from Spain the daily life of the Rabbi had been pure, pious, and earnest in every way. He performed every detail of all religious customs and ceremonies with painstaking conscientiousness; he fasted every Monday and Thursday—only on Sabbaths and feast days did he indulge in meat or wine; his time was passed in prayer and study; by day he taught the Law to students, whom his fame had drawn to Bacharach; and by night he gazed on the stars in heaven, or into the eyes of Beautiful Sara. His married life was childless, yet there was no lack of life or gaiety in his home. The great hall in his house, which stood near the synagogue, was open to the whole community, so that people went in and out without ceremony, some to offer short prayers, others to gather news, or to hold a consultation when in trouble. Here the children played on Sabbath mornings while the weekly "section" was being read; here people met for wedding and funeral processions, and quarreled or were reconciled; here, too, those who were cold found a warm stove, and those who were hungry, a well-spread table. And, moreover, the Rabbi, as well as his wife, had a multitude of relatives, brothers and sisters, with their wives and children, and an endless array of uncles and cousins, all of whom looked up to the Rabbi as the head of the family, and so made themselves at home in his house, never failing to dine with him on all great festivals.

Special among these grand gatherings in the Rabbi's house was the annual celebration of the Passover, a very ancient and remarkable feast which the Jews all over the world still hold every year in the month Nissen, in eternal remembrance of their deliverance from Egyptian servitude. This takes place as follows:

As soon as it is dark the matron of the family lights the lamps, spreads the table-cloth, places in its midst three flat loaves of unleavened bread, covers them with a napkin, and places on them six little dishes containing symbolical food, that is, an egg, lettuce, horse-radish, the bone of a lamb, and a brown mixture of raisins, cinnamon, and nuts. At this table the father of the family sits with all his relatives and friends, and reads to them from a very curious book called the Agade, whose contents are a strange mixture of legends of their forefathers, wondrous tales of Egypt, disputed questions of theology, prayers, and festival songs. During this feast there is a grand supper, and even during the reading there is at specified times tasting of the symbolical food and nibbling of Passover bread, while four cups of red wine are drunk. Mournfully merry, seriously gay, and mysteriously secret as some old dark legend, is the character of this nocturnal festival, and the traditional singing intonation with which the Agade is read by the father, and now and then reechoed in chorus by the hearers, first thrills the inmost soul as with a shudder, then calms it as mother's lullaby, and again startles it so suddenly into waking that even those Jews who have long fallen away from the faith of their fathers and run after strange joys and honors, are moved to their very hearts, when by chance the old, well-known tones of the Passover songs ring in their ears.

And so Rabbi Abraham once sat in his great hall surrounded by relatives, disciples, and many other guests, to celebrate the great feast of the Passover. Everything was unusually brilliant; over the table hung the gaily embroidered silk canopy, whose gold fringes touched the floor; the plates of symbolic food shone invitingly, as did the tall wine goblets, adorned with embossed pictures of scenes in holy legends. The men sat in their black cloaks and black low hats, and white collars, the women, in wonderful glittering garments of Lombard stuffs, wore on their heads and necks ornaments of gold and pearls, while the silver Sabbath lamp cast its festive light on the cheerful, devout faces of parents and children. On the purple velvet cushions of a chair, higher than the others, reclined, as custom requires, Rabbi Abraham, who read and sang the Agade, while the gay assembly joined in, or answered in the appointed places. The Rabbi also wore the prescribed black festival garment, his nobly-formed, but somewhat severe features had a milder expression than usual, his lips smiled through his dark-brown beard as if they would fain say something kind, while in his eyes one could see happy remembrances combined with some strange foreboding. Beautiful Sara, who sat on the high velvet cushion with her husband, as hostess, had on none of her jewelry—nothing but white linen enveloped her slender form and innocent face. This face was touchingly beautiful, even as all Jewish beauty is of a peculiarly moving kind; for the consciousness of the deep wretchedness, the bitter ignominy, and the evil dangers amid which their kindred and friends dwell, imparts to their lovely features an expression of soulful sadness and watchful, loving anxiety, which particularly charms our hearts. So on this evening Beautiful Sara sat looking into the eyes of her husband, yet glancing ever and anon at the beautiful parchment book of the Agade which lay before her, bound in gold and velvet.



It was an old heirloom, with ancient wine stains on it, and had come down from the days of her grandfather; and in it there were many boldly and brightly-colored pictures, which as a little girl she had often looked at so eagerly on Passover evenings. They represented all kinds of Bible incidents—Abraham breaking with a hammer the idols of his father and the angels appearing to him; Moses slaying Mizri; Pharaoh sitting in state on his throne, and the frogs giving him no peace even at the table; his death by drowning—the Lord be praised!—the children of Israel cautiously crossing the Red Sea, and then standing open-mouthed, with their sheep, cows, and oxen, before Mount Sinai; pious King David playing the harp; and, finally, Jerusalem, with its towers and battlements, shining in the splendor of the setting sun.

The second wine-cup had been served, the faces and voices of the guests were growing merrier, and the Rabbi, as he took a loaf of unleavened bread and raised it with a cheerful smile, read these words from the Agade: "Behold! This is the food which our fathers ate in Egypt! Let every one who is hungry come and enjoy it! Let every one who is sorrowful come and share the joy of our Passover! This year we celebrate it here, but in years to come in the land of Israel. This year we celebrate it as servants, but in the years to come as sons of freedom!"

Then the hall door opened, and two tall, pale men, wrapped in very loose cloaks, entered and said:

"Peace be with you. We are men of your faith on a journey, and wish to share the Passover-feast with you!" And the Rabbi replied promptly and kindly:

"Peace be with you! Sit ye down near me!" The two strangers immediately sat down at the table, and the Rabbi read on. Several times while the others were repeating a sentence after him, he said an endearing word to his wife; once, alluding to the old humorous saying that on this evening a Hebrew father of a family regards himself as a king, he said to her, "Rejoice, oh my Queen!" But she replied with a sad smile, "The Prince is wanting," meaning by that a son, who, as a passage in the Agade requires, has to ask his father, with a certain formula of words, what the meaning of the festival is? The Rabbi said nothing, but pointed with his finger to an opened page of the Agade, on which was a pretty picture, showing how the three angels came to Abraham, announcing that he would have a son by his wife Sara, who, meanwhile, urged by feminine curiosity, is slyly listening to it all behind the tent-door. This little sign caused a threefold blush to color the cheeks of Beautiful Sara, who first looked down, and then glanced pleasantly at her husband, who went on chanting the wonderful story how Rabbi Jesua, Rabbi Eliezer, Rabbi Asaria, Rabbi Akiba, and Rabbi Tarphen sat reclining in Bona-Brak, and conversed all night long of the Exodus from Egypt, till their disciples came to tell them that it was daylight, and that the great morning prayer was being read in the synagogue.

While Beautiful Sara sat devoutly listening to and looking at her husband, she saw his face suddenly assume an expression of agony or horror, his cheeks and lips become deathly pale, and his eyes harden like two balls of ice; but almost immediately he regained his previous composure and cheerfulness, his cheeks and lips grew ruddy, and he looked about him gaily—nay, it seemed as if a strange, wild humor, such as was foreign to his nature, had seized him. Beautiful Sara was frightened as she had never been before in all her life, and a cold shudder went through her—due less to the momentary manifestation of dumb horror which she had seen in her husband's face, than to the cheerfulness which followed it, and which was now gradually developing into jubilant hilarity. The Rabbi cocked his cap comically, first on one ear, then on the other, pulled and twisted his beard ludicrously, and sang the Agade texts as if they were tavern-songs; and in the enumeration of the Egyptian plagues, where it is usual to dip the forefinger in the full wine-cup and flip off the drops that adhere, he sprinkled the young girls near him with the red wine, so that there was great wailing over spoiled collars, combined with loud laughter. Every moment Beautiful Sara was becoming more amazed by this convulsive merriment of her husband, and she was oppressed with nameless fears as she gazed on the buzzing swarm of gaily glittering guests who were comfortably enjoying themselves here and there, nibbling the thin Passover cakes, drinking wine, gossiping, or joyfully singing aloud.

Then came the time for supper. All rose to wash, and Beautiful Sara brought the large silver basin, richly adorned with embossed gold figures, which was held before all the guests in turn, while water was poured over their hands. As she was doing this for the Rabbi, he gave her a significant glance, and quietly slipped out of the door. When Beautiful Sara walked out after him, he grasped her hand, and in the greatest haste hurried her through the dark lanes of Bacharach, out of the city gate to the highway which leads along the Rhine to Bingen.

It was one of those spring nights which, to be sure, are mild and starry enough, yet which inspire the soul with strange, uncanny feelings. There was something funereal in the odor of the flowers, the birds chirped spitefully and at the same time apprehensively, the moon cast malicious yellow stripes of light over the dark murmuring stream, the lofty banks of the Rhine looked like vague, threatening giants' heads. The watchman on the tower of Castle Strahleck blew a melancholy blast, and with it rang in jarring discord the funeral bell of Saint Werner's.

Beautiful Sara still had the silver basin in her right hand, while the Rabbi held her left, and she felt that his fingers were ice-cold, and that his arm was trembling; but still she went on with him in silence, perhaps because she had become accustomed to obey her husband blindly and unquestioningly—perhaps, too, because her lips were mute with fear and anxiety.

Below Castle Sonneck, opposite Lorch, about the place where the hamlet of Nieder Rheinbach now lies, there rises a cliff which arches out over the Rhine bank. The Rabbi ascended this with his wife, looked around on every side, and gazed on the stars. Trembling and shivering, as with the pain of death, Beautiful Sara looked at his pale face, which seemed ghastly in the moonlight, and seemed to express by turns pain, terror, piety, and rage. But when the Rabbi suddenly snatched from her hands the silver basin and threw it far out into the Rhine, she could no longer endure the agony of uncertainty, and crying out "Schadai, be merciful!" threw herself at his feet and conjured him to explain the dark mystery.

At first unable to speak, the Rabbi moved his lips without uttering a sound; but finally he cried, "Dost thou see the Angel of Death? There below he sweeps over Bacharach. But we have escaped his sword. God be praised!" Then, in a voice still trembling with excitement, he told her that, while he was happily and comfortably singing the Agade, he happened to glance under the table, and saw at his feet the bloody corpse of a little child. "Then I knew," continued the Rabbi, "that our two guests were not of the community of Israel, but of the army of the godless, who had plotted to bring that corpse into the house by stealth so as to accuse us of child-murder, and stir up the people to plunder and murder us. Had I given a sign that I saw through that work of darkness I should have brought destruction on the instant down upon me and mine, and only by craft did I save our lives. Praised be God! Grieve not, Beautiful Sara. Our relatives and friends shall also be saved; it was only my blood which the wretches wanted. I have escaped them, and they will be satisfied with my silver and gold. Come with me, Beautiful Sara, to another land. We will leave misfortune behind us, and so that it may not follow us I have thrown to it the silver ewer, the last of my possessions, as an offering. The God of our fathers will not forsake us. Come down, thou art weary. There is Dumb William standing by his boat; he will row us up the Rhine."

Speechless, and as if every limb were broken, Beautiful Sara sank into the arms of the Rabbi, who slowly bore her to the bank. There stood William, a deaf and dumb but very handsome youth, who, to support his old foster-mother, a neighbor of the Rabbi, caught and sold fish, and kept his boat in this place. It seemed as if he had divined the intention of Abraham, and was waiting for him, for on his silent lips there was an expression of tender sympathy, and his large blue eyes rested as with deep meaning on Beautiful Sara, as he lifted her carefully into the boat.

The glance of the silent youth roused Beautiful Sara from her lethargy, and she realized at once that all which her husband had told her was not a mere dream. A stream of bitter tears poured over her cheeks, which were as white as her garment. Thus she sat in the boat, a weeping image of white marble, and beside her sat her husband and Dumb William, who was busily rowing.

Whether it is due to the measured beat of the oars, or to the rocking of the boat, or to the fresh perfume from those steep banks whereon joy grows, it ever happens that even the most sorrowful heart is marvelously relieved when on a night in spring it is lightly borne along in a small boat on the dear, limpid waters of the Rhine. For, in truth, kind-hearted, old Father Rhine cannot bear to see his children weep, and so, drying their tears, he rocks them on his trusty arm, and tells them his most beautiful stories, and promises them his most golden treasures, perhaps even the old, old, long-sunk Nibelungen hoard. Gradually the tears of Beautiful Sara ceased to flow; her extreme sorrow seemed to be washed away by the whispering waves, while the hills about her home bade her the tenderest farewell. But especially cordial seemed the farewell greeting of Kedrich, her favorite mountain; and far up on its summit, in the strange moonlight, she imagined she saw a lady with outstretched. arms, while active little dwarfs swarmed out of their caverns in the rocks, and a rider came rushing down the side in full gallop. Beautiful Sara felt as if she were a child again, and were sitting once more in the lap of her aunt from Lorch, who was telling her brave tales of the bold knight who freed the stolen damsel from the dwarfs, and many other true stories of the wonderful Wisperthal over there, where the birds talk as sensibly as men, and of Gingerbread Land, where good, obedient children go, and of enchanted princesses, singing trees, crystal castles, golden bridges, laughing water-fairies.... But suddenly in the midst of these pleasant tales, which began to send forth notes of music and to gleam with lovely light, Beautiful Sara heard the voice of her father, scolding the poor aunt for putting such nonsense into the child's head. Then it seemed to her as if they set her on the little stool before her father's velvet-covered chair, and that he with a soft hand smoothed her long hair, smiling as if well pleased, while he rocked himself comfortably in his loose, Sabbath dressing-gown of blue silk. Yes, it must be the Sabbath, for the flowered cover was spread on the table, all the utensils in the room were polished like looking-glasses, the white-bearded usher sat beside her father, eating raisins and talking in Hebrew; even little Abraham came in with a very large book, and modestly begged leave of his uncle to expound a portion of the Holy Scripture, that he might prove that he had learned much during the past week, and therefore deserved much praise—and a corresponding quantity of cakes.... Then the lad laid the book on the broad arm of the chair, and set forth the history of Jacob and Rachel—how Jacob raised his voice and wept when he first saw his cousin Rachel, how he talked so confidingly with her by the well, how he had to serve seven years for her, and how quickly the time passed, and how he at last married and loved her for ever and ever.... Then all at once Beautiful Sara remembered how her father cried with merry voice, "Wilt thou not also marry thy cousin Sara like that?" To which little Abraham gravely replied, "That I will, and she shall wait seven years too." These memories stole like twilight shadows through the soul of the young wife, and she recalled how she and her little cousin—now so great a man and her husband—played together as children in the leafy tabernacle; how delighted they were with the gay carpets, flowers, mirrors, and gilded apples; how little Abraham caressed her more and more tenderly, till little by little he began to grow larger and more self-interested, and at last became a man and scarcely noticed her at all.... And now she sits in her room alone on a Saturday evening; the moon shines in brightly. Suddenly the door flies open, and cousin Abraham, in traveling garb, and as pale as death, enters, grasps her hand, puts a gold ring on her finger, and says, solemnly, "I hereby take thee to be my wife, according to the laws of God and of Israel." "But now," he adds, with a trembling voice, "now I must go to Spain. Farewell! For seven years thou must wait for me." With that he hurried away, and Sara, weeping, told the tale to her father, who roared and raged, "Cut off thy hair, for thou art now a married woman." Then he wanted to ride after Abraham to compel him to write a letter of divorce; but Abraham was over the hills and far away, and the father silently returned to his house. And when Beautiful Sara was helping him to draw off his boots, and trying to soothe him, saying that Abraham would return in seven years, he cursed, and cried, "Seven years shalt thou be a beggar," and shortly after he died.

And so old memories swept through her soul like a hurried play of shadows, the images intermixing and blending strangely, while between them came and went half-familiar, half-strange bearded faces, and large flowers with marvelously spreading foliage. Then the Rhine seemed to murmur the melodies of the Agade, and from its waters the pictures, as large as life, but wild and distorted, came forth one by one. There was Father Abraham anxiously breaking the idols into pieces which immediately flew together again; Mizri defending himself fiercely against the maddened Moses; Mount Sinai flashing and flaming; King Pharaoh swimming in the Red Sea, holding his pointed gold crown tightly in his teeth, while frogs with human faces swam along behind, in the foaming, roaring waves, and a dark giant-hand rose up threatening from below.

Yonder was the Mouse Tower of Bishop Hatto, and the boat was just shooting through the Bingen Eddy. By this time Beautiful Sara had somewhat awakened from her dreams, and she gazed at the hills on the shore, on the summits of which lights of castles were gleaming, and at the foot of which the mist, shimmering in the moonlight, was beginning to rise. Suddenly she seemed to see her friends and relatives, as they, with corpse-like faces and flowing shrouds, passed in awful procession along the Rhine.... The world grew dark before her eyes, an icy current ran through her soul, and, as if in sleep, she only heard the Rabbi repeating the night-prayer slowly and painfully, as if at a deathbed. Dreamily she stammered the words, "Ten thousand to the right, ten thousand to the left, to protect the king from the terrors of the night."

Then all at once the oppressive gloom and terror passed away, the dark curtain was torn from heaven, and far above there appeared the holy city Jerusalem, with its towers and gates; the Temple gleamed in golden splendor, and in its fore-court Sara saw her father in his yellow Sabbath dressing-gown, smiling as if well pleased. All her friends and relatives were looking out from the round windows of the Temple, cordially greeting her; in the Holy of Holies knelt pious King David, with his purple mantle and golden crown; sweetly rang his song and the tones of his harp, and smiling happily, Beautiful Sara awoke.

CHAPTER II

As Beautiful Sara opened her eyes they were almost dazzled by the rays of the sun. The high towers of a great city rose before her, and Dumb William, with his oar upright, was standing in the boat, pushing and guiding it through the lively confusion of many vessels, gay with their pennons and streamers, whose crews were either gazing idly at passers-by, or else were busily loading with chests, bales, and casks the lighters which were to bear them to the shore. And with it all was a deafening noise, the constant halloh cry of steersmen, the calling of traders from the shore, and the scolding of the custom-house officials who, in their red coats and with their white maces and white faces, jumped from boat to boat.

"Yes, Beautiful Sara," said the Rabbi, cheerfully smiling to his wife, "this is the famous, free, imperial, and commercial city of Frankfort-on-the-Main, and we are now passing along the river Main. Do you see those pleasant-looking houses up there, surrounded by green hills? That is Sachsenhausen, from which our lame Gumpert brings us the fine myrrh for the Feast of the Tabernacles. Here you see the strong Main Bridge with its thirteen arches, over which many men, wagons, and horses can safely pass. In the middle of it stands the little house where Aunty Taeubchen says there lives a baptized Jew, who pays six farthings, on account of the Jewish community, to every man who brings him a dead rat; for the Jews are obliged to deliver annually to the State council five thousand rats' tails for tribute."

At the thought of this war, which the Frankfort Jews were obliged to wage with the rats, Beautiful Sara burst out laughing. The bright sunlight, and the new gay world now before her, had driven all the terrors and horrors of the past night from her soul, and as she was helped ashore from the boat by Dumb William and her husband, she felt inspired as with a sense of joyful safety. Dumb William for a long time fixed his beautiful, deep-blue eyes on hers, half sadly, half cheerfully, and then, casting a significant glance at the Rabbi, sprang back into his boat and was soon out of sight.

"Dumb William much resembles my brother who died," said Beautiful Sara. "All the angels are alike," answered the Rabbi; and, taking his wife by the hand, led her through the dense crowd on the shore, where, as it was the time of the Easter Fair, a great number of wooden booths had been erected by traders. Then passing through the gloomy Main Gate, they found themselves in quite as noisy a crowd. Here, in a narrow street, the shops stood close beside one another, every house, as was usual in Frankfort, being specially adapted to trade. There were no windows on the ground floor, but broad, open arches, so that the passer-by, looking in, could see at a glance all there was for sale. And how astonished Beautiful Sara was at the mass of magnificent wares, and at the splendor, such as she had never seen before! Here stood Venetians, who offered cheaply all the luxuries of the Orient and Italy, and Beautiful Sara was enchanted by the sight of the ornaments and jewels, the gay caps and bodices, the gold bangles and necklaces, and the whole display of finery which women so admire and love to wear. The richly embroidered stuffs of velvet and silk seemed fairly to speak to Beautiful Sara, and to flash and sparkle strange wonders back into her memory, and she really felt as if she were a little girl again, and as if Aunty Taeubchen had kept her promise and taken her to the Frankfort Fair, and as if she were now at last standing before the beautiful garments of which she had heard so much. With a secret joy she reflected what she should take back with her to Bacharach, and which of her two little cousins, Posy and Birdy, would prefer that blue silk girdle, and whether the green stockings would suit little Gottschalk. But all at once it flashed on her, "Ah, Lord! they are all grown up now, and yesterday they were slain!" She shuddered, and the pictures of the previous night filled her soul with all their horror again. But the gold-embroidered cloths glittered once more with a thousand roguish eyes, and drove the gloomy thoughts from her mind, and when she looked into her husband's face she saw that it was free from clouds, and bore its habitual, serious gentleness. "Shut your eyes, Sara!" said the Rabbi, and he led his wife on through the crowd.

What a gay, active throng! Most prominent were the tradesmen, who were loudly vying one another in offering bargains, or talking together and summing on their fingers, or, following heavily loaded porters, who at a dog-trot were leading the way to their lodgings. By the faces of others one could see that they came from curiosity. The stout councilman was recognizable by his scarlet cloak and golden chain; a black, expensive-looking, swelling waistcoat betrayed the honorable and proud citizen. An iron spike-helmet, a yellow leather jerkin, and rattling spurs, weighing a pound, indicated the heavy cavalry-man. Under little black velvet caps, which came together in a point over the brow, there was many a rosy girl-face, and the young fellows who ran along after them, like hunting-dogs on the scent, showed that they were finished dandies by their saucily feathered caps, their squeaking peaked shoes, and their colored silk garments, some of which were green on one side and red on the other, or else striped like a rainbow on the right and checkered with harlequin squares of many colors on the left, so that the mad youths looked as if they were divided in the middle.

Carried along by the crowd, the Rabbi and his wife arrived at the Roemer. This is the great market-place of the city, surrounded by houses with high gables, and takes its name from an immense building, "the Roemer," which was bought by the magistracy and dedicated as the town-hall. In it the German Emperor was elected, and before it tournaments were often held. King Maximilian, who was passionately fond of this sport, was then in Frankfort, and in his honor the day before there had been great tilting in the Roemer. Many idle men still stood on or about the scaffolding, which was being removed by carpenters, telling how the Duke of Brunswick and the Margrave of Brandenburg had charged one another amid the sound of drums and of trumpets, and how Lord Walter the Vagabond had knocked the Knight of the Bear out of his saddle so violently that the splinters of the lances flew high into the air, while the tall, fair-haired King Max, standing among his courtiers upon the balcony, rubbed his hands for joy. The golden banners were still to be seen on the balconies and in the Gothic windows of the town-hall. The other houses of the market-place were still likewise festively bedecked and adorned with shields, especially the Limburg house, on whose banner was painted a maiden with a sparrow-hawk in her hand, and a monkey holding out to her a mirror. Many knights and ladies standing on the balcony were engaged in animated conversation, or looking at the crowd below, which, in wild groups and processions, surged back and forth. What a multitude of idlers of all ages and ranks were crowded together here to gratify their curiosity! There was laughing, grumbling, stealing, rib-poking, hurrahing, while every now and then blared the trumpet of the mountebank, who, in a red cloak and with his clown and monkey, stood on a high stand loudly boasting of his own skill, and sounding the praises of his marvelous tinctures and salves, ere he solemnly examined the glass of urine brought by some old woman, or applied himself to pull a poor peasant's tooth. Two fencing-masters, dancing about in gay ribbons and brandishing their rapiers, met as if by accident and began to cut and pass with great apparent anger; but after a long bout each declared that the other was invincible, and took up a collection. Then the newly-organized guild of archers marched by with drummers and pipers, and these were followed by the constable, who was carrying a red flag at the head of a flock of traveling strumpets, hailing from the brothel known as "The Ass," in Wuerzburg, and bound for Rosendale, where the highly honorable authorities had assigned them quarters during the fair. "Shut your eyes, Sara," said the Rabbi. For indeed these fantastic, and altogether too scantily clad women, among whom were a few really beautiful girls, behaved in a most immodest manner, baring their bold, white breasts, chaffing those who went by with shameless words, and swinging their long walking sticks; and using the latter as hobby-horses, they rode down toward the gate of St. Katherine, singing in shrill tones the witch-song—

"Where is the goat? the hellish beast; Where is the goat? Oh bring him quick! And if there is no goat, at least We'll ride upon the stick."

This wild sing-song, which rang afar, was finally drowned out by the long-drawn, sacred tones of a church procession. It was a solemn train of bare-headed and bare-footed monks, who carried burning wax tapers, banners with pictures of the saints, and large silver crucifixes. Before it ran boys clad in red and white gowns, bearing censers of smoking frankincense. In the middle of the procession, under a beautiful canopy, marched priests in white robes adorned with costly lace, or in bright-colored, silk stoles; one of them held in his hand a sun-like, golden vessel, which, on arriving at a shrine by the market-corner, he raised on high, while he half-sang, half-spoke in Latin—when all at once a little bell rang, and all the people around, becoming silent, fell to their knees and made the sign of the cross. "Shut your eyes, Sara!" cried the Rabbi again, and he hastily drew her away through a labyrinth of narrow, crooked streets, and at last over the desolate, empty place which separated the new Jewish quarter from the rest of the city.

Before that time the Jews dwelt between the Cathedral and the bank of the Main, that is, from the bridge down as far as the Lumpenbrunnen, and from the Mehlwage as far as Saint Bartholomew's. But the Catholic priests obtained a Papal bull forbidding the Jews to live so near the high church, for which reason the magistrates assigned them a place on the Wollgraben, where they built their present quarter. This was surrounded by high walls, the gate of which was held by iron chains to keep out the rabble. For here, too, the Jews lived in misery and anxiety, and with far more vivid memories of previous suffering than they have at present. In 1240 the unrestrained populace had caused awful bloodshed among them, which people called the first Jewish massacre. In 1349, when the Flagellants, in passing through the town, set fire to it, and accused the Jews of the deed, the latter were nearly all murdered or burned alive in their own houses; this was called the second Jewish massacre. After this the Jews were often threatened with similar slaughter, and during the internal dissensions of Frankfort, especially during a dispute between the council and the guilds, the mob was often on the point of breaking into the Jewish quarter, which, as has been said, was surrounded by a wall. The latter had two gates in it, which on Catholic holidays were closed from without and on Jewish holidays from within, and before each gate was a watch-house with city soldiers.

When the Rabbi with his wife came to the entrance to the Jewish quarter, the soldiers, as one could see through the open windows, lay on the wooden bench inside the watch-house, while out before the door in the sunshine sat the drummer beating capriciously on his large drum. He was a heavy, fat fellow, wearing a jerkin and hose of fiery yellow, greatly puffed out at his arms and thighs, and profusely dotted with small red tufts, sewed on, which looked as if innumerable tongues were protruding from him. His breast and back were padded with cushions of black cloth, against which hung his drum. He had on his head a flat, round black cap, which in roundness and flatness was equaled by his face, and the latter was also in keeping with his dress, being an orange-yellow, spotted with red pimples, and distorted into a gaping grin. So the fellow sat and drummed to the melody of a song which the Flagellants had sung at the Jewish massacre, while he gurgled, in a coarse, beery voice—

"Our dear Lady true Walked in the morning dew, Kyrie eleison!"

"Hans, that is a terrible tune," cried a voice from behind the closed gate of the Jewish quarter. "Yes, Hans, and a bad song too-doesn't suit the drum; doesn't suit it at all—by my soul—not the day of the fair and on Easter morning—bad song—dangerous song—Jack, Jacky, little drum—Jacky boy—I'm a lone man—and if thou lovest me, the Star, the tall Star, the tall Nose Star—then stop it!"

These words were uttered by the unseen speaker, now in hasty anxiety, now in a sighing drawl, with a tone which alternated between mild softness and harsh hoarseness, such as one hears in consumptive people. The drummer was not moved, and went on drumming and singing—

"There came a little youth, His beard had run away, in truth, Halleluja!"

"Jack," again cried the voice of the invisible speaker, "Jack, I'm a lone man, and that is a dangerous song, and I don't like it; I have my reasons for it, and if you love me, sing something else, and tomorrow we will drink together."

At the word "drink" Jack ceased his drumming and singing, and said in friendly tone, "The devil take the Jews! But thou, dear Nose Star, art my friend, I protect thee; and if we drink together often enough I shall have thee converted. Yea, I shall be thy godfather, and when thou art baptized thou shalt be eternally happy; and if thou hast genius and wilt study industriously under me, thou mayest even become a drummer. Yes, Nose Star, thou mayest yet become something great. I will drum the whole catechism into thee when we drink together tomorrow. But now open the gate, for here are two strangers who wish to enter."

"Open the gate?" cried Nose Star, and his voice almost deserted him. "That can't be done in such a hurry, my dear Jack; one can't tell—one can never tell, you know—and I'm a lone man. Veitel Oxhead has the key, and he is now standing in the corner mumbling his eighteen-prayer, and he must not be interrupted. And Jaekel the Fool is here too, but he is making water; I'm a lone man."

"The devil take the Jews!" cried the drummer, and, laughing loudly at this, his one and only joke, he trudged off to the guard-room and lay down on the bench.

While the Rabbi stood with his wife before the locked gate, there rose from behind it a snarling, nasal, somewhat mocking voice. "Starry—don't groan so much. Take the keys from Oxheady's coat pockets, or else go stick your nose in the keyhole, and so unlock the gate. The people have been standing and waiting a long time." "People!" cried the anxious voice of the man called Nose Star, "I thought there was only one! I beg you, Fool—dear Jaekel Fool—look out and see who is there."

A small, well-grated window in the gate opened, and there appeared in it a yellow cap with two horns, and the funny, wrinkled, and twisted jest-maker's face of Jaekel the Fool. The window was immediately shut again, and he cried angrily, "Open the gate—it is only a man and a woman."

"A man and a woman!" groaned Nose Star. "Yes, but when the gate's opened the woman will take her skirt off, and become a man; and then there'll be two men, and there are only three of us!"

"Don't be a hare," replied Jaekel the Fool. "Be a man and show courage!"

"Courage!" cried Nose Star, laughing with bitter vexation. "Hare! Hare is a bad comparison. The hare is an unclean animal. Courage! I was not put here to be courageous, but cautious. When too many come I am to give the alarm. But I alone cannot keep them back. My arm is weak, I have a seton, and I'm a lone man. If one were to shoot at me, I should be a dead man. Then that rich man, Mendel Reiss, would sit on the Sabbath at his table, and wipe the raisin-sauce from his mouth, and rub his belly, and perhaps say, 'Tall Nose Star was a brave fellow after all; if it had not been for him, perhaps they would have burst open the gate. He let himself be shot for us. He was a brave fellow; too bad that he's dead!'"

Here the voice became tender and tearful, but all at once it rose to a hasty and almost angry tone. "Courage! and so that the rich Mendel Reiss may wipe away the raisin-sauce from his mouth, and rub his belly, and call me a brave fellow, I'm to let myself be shot! Courage! Be a man! Little Strauss was a man, and yesterday went to the Roemer to see the tilting, thinking they would not know him because he wore a frock of violet velvet—three florins a yard-covered with fox-tails and embroidered with gold—quite magnificent; and they dusted his violet frock for him till it lost its color, and his own back became violet and did not look human. Courage, indeed! The crippled Leser was courageous, and called our scoundrel of a magistrate a blackguard, and they hung him up by the feet between two dogs, while Jack drummed. Courage! Don't be a hare! Among many dogs the hare is helpless. I'm a lone man, and I am really afraid."

"That I'll swear to," cried Jaekel.

"Yes; I have fear," replied Nose Star, sighing. "I know that it runs in my blood, and I got it from my dear mother"—

"Yes, yes," interrupted Jaekel, "and your mother got it from her father, and he from his, and so all thy ancestors one from the other, back to the forefather who marched under King Saul against the Philistines, and was the first to take to his heels. But look! Oxheady is all ready—he has bowed his head for the fourth time; now he is jumping like a flea at the Holy, Holy, Holy, and feeling cautiously in his pocket."

In fact the keys rattled, the gate grated and creaked and opened, and the Rabbi led his wife into the empty Jews' Street. The man who opened it was a little fellow with a good-naturedly sour face, who nodded dreamily, like one who did not like to be disturbed in his thoughts, and after he had carefully closed the gate again, without saying a word he sank into a corner, constantly mumbling his prayers. Less taciturn was Jaekel the Fool, a short, somewhat bow-legged fellow, with a large, red, laughing face, and an enormous leg-of-mutton hand, which he now stretched out of the wide sleeve of his gaily-chequered jacket in welcome. Behind him a tall, lean figure showed, or rather, hid itself—the slender neck feathered with a fine white cambric ruff, and the thin, pale face strangely adorned with an incredibly long nose, which peered with anxious curiosity in every direction.

"God's welcome to a pleasant feast-day!" cried Jaekel the Fool. "Do not be astonished that our street is so empty and quiet just now. All our people are in the synagogue, and you have come just in time to hear the history of the sacrifice of Isaac read. I know it—'tis an interesting story, and if I had not already heard it thirty-three times, I would willingly listen to it again this year. And it is an important history, too, for if Abraham had really killed Isaac and not the goat, then there would be more goats in the world now—and fewer Jews." And then with mad, merry grimaces, Jaekel began to sing the following song from the Agade:[60]

"A kid, a kid, which my father bought for two pieces of money. A kid! A kid!

There came a cat which ate the kid, which my father bought for two pieces of money. A kid!

There came a dog, who bit the cat, who ate the kid, which my father bought for two pieces of money. A kid!

There came a stick, which beat the dog, who bit the cat, who ate the kid, which my father bought for two pieces of money. A kid! A kid!

There came a fire, which burnt the stick, which beat the dog, who bit the cat, who ate the kid, which my father bought for two pieces of money. A kid! A kid!

There came the water, which quenched the fire, which burnt the stick, which beat the dog, who bit the cat, who ate the kid, which my father bought for two pieces of money. A kid! A kid!

There came an ox, who drank the water, which quenched the fire, which burnt the stick, which beat the dog, who bit the cat, who ate the kid, which my father bought for two pieces of money. A kid! A kid!

There came the butcher, who slew the ox, who drank the water, which quenched the fire, which burnt the stick, which beat the dog, who bit the cat, that ate the kid, which my father bought for two pieces of money. A kid! A kid!

"Then came the Angel of Death, who slew the butcher, who killed the ox, who drank the water, which quenched the fire, which burnt the stick, which beat the dog, who bit the cat, who ate the kid, which my father bought for two pieces of money. A kid! A kid!"[61]

"Yes, beautiful lady," added the singer, "and the day will come when the Angel of Death will slay the slayer, and all our blood come over Edom, for God is a God of vengeance."

But all at once, casting aside with a violent effort the seriousness into which he had involuntarily fallen, Jaekel plunged again into his mad buffoonery, and went on in his harsh jester tones, "Don't be afraid, beautiful lady, Nose Star will not harm you. He is only dangerous to old Schnapper-Elle. She has fallen in love with his nose—which, faith! deserves it. Yea, for it is as beautiful as the tower which looketh forth toward Damascus, and as lofty as a cedar of Lebanon. Outwardly it gleameth like gold loaf and syrup, and inwardly it is all music and loveliness. It bloometh in summer and in winter it is frozen up—but in summer and winter it is petted and pulled by the white hands of Schnapper-Elle. Yes, she is madly in love with him. She nurses him, and feeds him, and for her age she is young enough. When he is fat enough, she means to marry him; and whoever comes to Frankfort, three hundred years hence, will not be able to see the heavens for Nose Stars."

"Ah, you are Jaekel the Fool," exclaimed the Rabbi, laughing. "I mark it by your words. I have often heard of you."

"Yes—yes," replied Jaekel, with comical modesty. "Yes, that is what reputation does. A man is often known far and wide as a bigger fool than he himself has any idea of. However, I take great pains to be a fool, and jump and shake myself to make the bells ring; others have an easier time. But tell me, Rabbi, why do you journey on a holiday?"

"My justification," replied the Rabbi, "is in the Talmud, where it says, 'Danger drives away the Sabbath.'"

"Danger!" screamed the tall Nose Star, in mortal terror. "Danger! danger! Drummer Jack!—drum, drum. Danger! danger! Drummer Jack!" From without resounded the deep, beery voice of Drummer Jack, "Death and destruction! The devil take the Jews. That's the third time today that you've roused me out of a sound sleep, Nose Star! Don't make me mad! For when I am mad I'm the very devil himself; and then as sure as I'm a Christian, I'll up with my gun and shoot through the grated window in your gate—and then fellow, let everybody look out for his nose!"