On his return, Julius gave Christiane a glowing description of the river excursion in the morning and the music in the evening. He told her of the hunting expedition arranged for the next day and insinuated that she ought to be of the party. She could follow in a carriage if she wished, and keep as much out of the way as she thought fit; she would see without being seen.

  Christiane, who looked grave and rather sad, flatly refused.

  They parted displeased with one another; she vexed with her husband for being happy, he vexed with his wife for being sad.

  CHAPTER L.

  TRICHTER AND FRESSWANST REACH THE CLIMAX OF EPIC ACHIEVEMENT.

  BAYING of hounds, shouts of students, discussions with Julius’ whippers-in, neighing of horses, flourish of horns, loading of guns, exchange of ammunition, all these preparations for hunting, more enjoyable than the hunt itself, animated with expectation and pleasure the dawn of the third day.

  The “studentes” equipped themselves as best they could. An alarming rise had been declared on the market value of all guns in the environs. The greater number had been hired at double their cost.

  A few female-students, curious like women, and courageous like men, were on horseback with a loaded gun in their hands, and imparted a less severe character to this Vander-Meulen picture.

  Julius found Samuel giving orders for the hunt like a commander-in-chief.

  “I had forgotten to tell you, Julius,” Samuel said jokingly, “that I have also gone in for a little hunting. Moreover you have splendid whippers-in. They have beaten the wood in masterly fashion, and discovered for us the trail of a stag and of a wild boar. With the pack, which is royal, my boy, we should have splendid sport.”

  The signal was no sooner given than students and hounds bounded away helter skelter, all at the same time, baying and shouting. For, despite of efforts on Samuel’s part, this was not a steady, orthodox hunt, it was a wild, impetuous run, which had also its charm. The flourish of horns, the startled or joyous laughter of the women, the shouts of the men, the yelping of the hounds, the random shots of ignorant or impatient hunters, all these sounds mingled and swept through the forest like a living hurricane.

  The fine strategical arrangements of Samuel and the whippers-in triumphed, however, over all this indiscipline. The stag was run down first, then came the wild boar’s turn.

  A tremendous flourish was merrily sounded by the horns, and drowned the death-rattle of the wild beast; then the wild boar and the horns were silent.

  At this moment a sound of dance music was heard approaching.

  The animated scraping of two violins formed an accompaniment to these happy voices. At intervals could be heard outbursts of ringing laughter.

  Two minutes later, there appeared in sight, at the end of the path where the huntsmen were still assembled, about twenty couples dressed all in their best and with happy faces.

  It was the wedding party of Gottlob and Rose, who had been married that very morning.

  On perceiving the students, the wedding party seemed about to turn to the left, as if startled.

  But Samuel went up to Rose.

  “Madame Bride,” said he gallantly, “permit us to offer you for your wedding supper two dishes of game: a wild boar and a stag. If you will be kind enough to invite us, we will all sup together and dance until morning. Will you do me the honour of granting me the first quadrille?”

  Rose looked at Gottlob, who made her a sign to accept.

  The union of the hunt and the wedding was sealed by a horn and violin duet, and the parties separated to meet again in the evening.

  “Now for a lesson in history!” said the indefatigable Samuel, “and I am going to make a Rabelaisian dissertation on the institution of marriage, from Adam to the present day.”

  “Bravo! that is the right kind of knowledge!” shouted the audience, delighted in anticipation.

  Was it the result of this open-air life? was it the example of this indomitable Samuel, always ready, never tired! Certain it is that in the last three days the students’ abilities seemed to have increased tenfold; material activity and moral activity were multiplied the one by the other, and the body found rest in the working of the mind.

  The wedding supper in the evening was magnificent. The burgomaster Pfafferdorf made himself splendidly tipsy. When there was nothing left of the game but bones, and nothing of the wine but bottles, a ritornello struck up and the ball began, Samuel took Rose’s hand, and Lolotte accepted Pfaffendorf as her partner.

  The students engaged the prettiest girls in the place, and the “grisettes “shared the millers and farmers between them. And until morning the wildest, maddest dancing was kept up to confirm the fusion of Heidelberg with Landeck.

  Trichter and Fresswanst did not dance; they drank.

  At midnight Samuel Gelb, that courteous tyrant who, in matter of excess and abuse, neither feared nor proscribed either, except those of pleasure, ruthlessly gave the signal to retire.

  “Here comes the hardest time of all!” sighed Trichter. “I must go and lead Lolotte back to Landeck — oh! to her very door.”

  “Well! I will accompany you,” said Fresswanst with emotion.

  “Thanks, noble heart!” said Trichter, grasping his hand.

  So the twin-drinkers, silent and grave, together accompanied lively, talkative Lolotte as far as the village. When they had virtuously reinstated her in her domicile, Trichter said to Fresswanst:

  “I am thirsty.”

  “I thought so,” was Fresswanst’s rejoinder. With an eloquent gesture and a happy smile, Trichter pointed out to his friend a doorway, over which the uncertain brightness of this fine clear night enabled him to distinguish a crown of vine leaves.

  Without another word Trichter knocked at the door. No one answered and nothing stirred. Trichter knocked a second time more loudly.

  For only answer a dog barked.

  “Hallo! hey!” cried Trichter and Fresswanst, kicking at the door with their feet.

  The dog began to yelp furiously.

  “We three together,” said Trichter, “we shall probably succeed in rousing someone. Ah! there’s a window opening.”

  “What do you want?” asked a voice.

  “Brandy,” Trichter answered. “We are two poor travellers who have had nothing to drink for the last five minutes.”

  “The fact is my husband is not here,” went on the voice.

  “We don’t want your husband, we want brandy.”

  “Wait a moment.”

  Two minutes later an old woman opened the door to them. She was half asleep, and her eyes blinked even more than the candle which she held in her hand. She put the candle on a table, placed two glasses beside it, and still half asleep, groped about in a cupboard.

  “Dear me! there is not another drop of spirits here,” she said. “My husband has just gone to Neckarsteinach to get a fresh supply. Ah! after all, here is a little remnant of brandy.”

  She placed a bottle two-thirds empty on the table.

  “Barely four small glasses!” said Trichter, making a horrible grimace. “A drop of water in the desert! However, we may as well refresh ourselves with this mere nothing.”

  They tossed it off at one gulp, paid the old woman, and went away grumbling and swearing.

  The old woman, before going back to bed, set to arranging some plates and dishes, and was still up when a quarter of an hour later her husband returned.

  “How comes it you are awake at this hour, old girl?” said he.

  “Oh, along of two students who made me get up to give them brandy!”

  “Brandy? There was none left,” said the man, relieving himself of his parcels.

  “But there was!” rejoined the innkeeper’s wife. “I found there was a little remaining in the bottom of this bottle.”

  The husband looked intently at the empty bottle.

  “They have drunk that?” said he, trembling all over.

  “Why, yes,” replied the wife.

  “Unhappy woman!” he exclaimed, tearing his hair.

  “Whatever is the matter with you?”

  “Do you know what you have given to those two poor young fellows?”

  “Brandy?”

  “Brandy! No, aqua fortis, I tell you, dilute aqua fortis!”

  We have left the universe uneasy as to the fate of Trichter and Fresswanst. These two were really very great drinkers.

  The imprudent wife of the taverner was put to infinitely more torture yet, which was but fair.

  On hearing her husband utter the words, aqua fortis, she turned positively green.

  “Oh God!” she stammered out. “I was half asleep.... it was dark.... I served them without seeing very clearly....”

  “Ah well! we are in a fine pickle!” rejoined the man. “By this time, these young people are dead or in their death-agony on the road. And as for us, we shall be arrested as poisoners.”

  The woman burst into tears and wanted to throw herself pathetically into the arms of her husband, but he pushed her from him roughly.

  “Yes, cry, do! a lot of good that will do us. Why could you not pay more attention! What are we going to do? Escape? We should be caught again! Ah! my uncle was quite right in advising me not to marry you, forty-one years ago!”

  We will draw a veil over the night of anguish and tears which this Philemon and Baucis spent in upbraiding each other.

  At daybreak, Baucis was on her doorstep, awaiting her fate. Suddenly she uttered a cry: she had just caught sight of two men, no! two ghosts, without doubt! — walking along the road and making straight for her house.

  “What is it?” asked her husband, shaking from head to foot.

  “It’s them!” said the woman.

  “Them! who, them?”

  “The two young men.”

  “Ah! ‘‘the husband stammered, sinking on to a chair.

  Trichter and Fresswanst entered as quietly and simply as if nothing had happened and sat at the table.

  “Let us have some brandy!” said Trichter.

  “The same,” he added.

  “Yes, the same, it had a splendid flavour,” said Fresswanst.

  CHAPTER LI.

  A DISPLAY OF FIREWORKS.

  THUS passed three or four days for the emigrant-students, in the midst of ever-fresh delights which the strange and powerful genius of Samuel knew how to extract from everything within his reach; from the forest and from the river, from the village and from the castle, from knowledge and from pleasure, from dreams and from reality.

  Meanwhile the news received from Heidelberg heightened, by contrast, the merriment at Landeck. A fox who, much against his will, had been detained at the excommunicated town through rather serious indisposition, had rejoined his comrades as soon as he was able to move. He gave a gloomy account of Heidelberg.

  The streets were deserted, the shops empty. A silence as of death hovered over the doomed town. Not a sound by day, not a light by night! The shopkeepers shut themselves up sadly tête-à-tête with their wares and their wives. The professors, having no pupils to teach, quarrelled amongst themselves. All this learning of the professors, all these materials of the drapers, all these wines of the innkeepers, intended to circulate in brains, on shoulders, and down throats, accumulated and stagnated dismally in the shops and in the deserted lecture-rooms like slime on a fetid marsh.

  Professors and shopkeepers were now at loggerheads, the one throwing the responsibility of the emigration on the other.

  “Why had the merchants offended Trichter? Why had the professors condemned Samuel? “The time was approaching when a civil war would break out between the academy and the counter.

  This news only had the effect of increasing the animation of the encampment, and, on that very evening, Samuel celebrated it by a splendid display of fireworks which he had been preparing for the last three days.

  He had arranged for the fireworks to be sent off on the opposite bank of the Neckar. Nothing more strange or more lovely than the sight of the bombs and rockets reflected in the river, and the fires flashing in mid-air repeated in the reddened waters beneath. The effect was that of two distinct displays of fireworks, one in the sky, one in the waves.

  The entire population of Landeck was on the river bank, with the exception of Christiane and Gretchen. But Samuel had selected his place accordingly, and knew perfectly well that the refractory ones would have to be spectators of the fire-scene, whether they would or no, and that the great red flames would search them out, the one in her hut, the other in her castle.

  Gretchen, in point of fact, saw them; she turned pale and murmured, “The devil is playing with fire, it is quite natural! “She rushed away, half scared, and shut herself into her hut, hiding her face in her hands to shut out the fiery flashes that dyed her windows and her walls. Everything that reminded her of Samuel horrified her now.

  Everything that reminded Christiane of Samuel as yet only made her feel afraid. Attracted to her balcony by the glow in the sky, she remained there, pondering over the inexplicable reserve of Samuel, and the involuntary neglect of Julius.

  She was indeed compelled to acknowledge the truth of what Samuel had told her, as to her husband’s weak, wavering disposition. There was still much of the child in this young man, who, no doubt, at this very moment, was loudly applauding Samuel’s firework display.

  Christiane felt that she was fast losing her hold upon Julius. What could she do to keep him? Was she acting wisely in holding herself aloof from his amusements? By refusing to go with him, by accustoming him to do without her, would she not accustom him to think of his wife as apart from his pleasures? Would it not be best that the two should be connected in his mind? Would she not be acting more prudently in identifying herself so entirely with the amusements and the happiness of her husband, that he would be unable to dissociate them from her? Poor gentle Christiane asked herself what objection there could be, after all, to her taking part a little in all these pleasures necessary to Julius. Of course she would only take part in them at a distance, and up to the limits of decorum. What could result from her action? Samuel would perhaps exult over it and think that he had made her yield. Well! after all, Samuel was one of those natures whose mind is set upon obstacles, and the more she held aloof, the more did she irritate him. Samuel, in short, had so far kept strictly to his promise that he would not attempt to see her again. After all, had she been wise in writing to Baron von Hermelinfeld? Supposing she changed her tactics? By accompanying her husband she gained a double advantage; she re-awakened the love of Julius, and she extinguished the hatred of Samuel.

  So that evening she watched for Julius’ return, went brightly to meet him, and herself asked for an account of how they had spent the day. He did not require pressing.

  “So you have thoroughly enjoyed yourself?” she said.

  “I acknowledge that I have. That fellow Samuel does know how to live.”

  “Is it not to-morrow evening that they are to act the Robbers?”

  “Yes, to-morrow evening,” Julius replied. “Oh! if you would only consent to come with me!”

  “Well! I feel strongly tempted to do so. As you know, Schiller is my favourite poet.”

  “That’s right, then!” exclaimed Julius delighted. “So that’s settled. No more difficulties; I shall come for you tomorrow evening.”

  And he kissed Christiane effusively.

  “It is pretty nearly a week since he has given me so loving a kiss!” thought Christiane sadly.

  CHAPTER LII.

  A DRESS REHEARSAL.

  THE day on which the Robbers was to be played, each of the students, apart from the two hours for study, was at liberty to spend the time as he chose, and to devote it either to his “liaisons” or to his own particular branch of study.

  Samuel Gelb, that great stage manager, knew to how great an extent pleasure is stimulated by expectation and desire, and that all light is only appreciated by comparison with darkness. Samuel Gelb, that politician, considered that in every society, were it only a society for amusement and pleasure, a large portion should be left to the liberty and the caprice of the individual. In a word, Samuel, that great practical man, knew that he himself needed the entire day to complete his preparation for the performance in the evening.

  The scene of the Robbers is laid almost entirely in the forest, therefore, as with the ancients, the decoration happened to be ready-made naturally. Instead of canvas and cardboard as at Mannheim, there was, as at Athens, real foliage and a real wood. For the scenes of interiors, large canvases boldly painted, were placed between the trees to represent rooms. Samuel had had no difficulty in improvising his theatre; wings and exits had not been wanting.

  He took much more pains over the dress rehearsal. But his actors were so docile, so enthusiastic, and such scholars, that with them he entertained no doubt of the success of Schiller’s masterpiece.

  The rehearsal was at the scene when the monk comes to offer a full and entire pardon to the brigands on condition that they deliver up their chief, Karl Moor, when word was brought to Samuel that a deputation from the academic council of Heidelberg had come to make proposals to the students.

  “Bring them here,” said Samuel. “They arrive at an opportune moment.”

  Three professors entered. One acted as spokesman. The council of Heidelberg offered, if the students agreed to return to their duty, free pardon to all; with the exception of Samuel, who would be expelled from the University.

  “My most worthy envoys,” said Samuel, “this scene bears a devilish strong resemblance to the very one we are rehearsing at the present moment.”

  And turning towards the students:

  “Listen now, all of you, what the law commands I should make known to you. Will you handcuff and deliver up at once this condemned malefactor to the constituted authorities? The punishment of your crimes will be remitted; the sacred ‘University’ will receive you with renewed affection into her maternal bosom like sheep that have gone astray, and each one of you will be given a fresh start in life.”

 

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