A German Pompadour Part 39

Of all this the prisoner at Hohen-Urach knew nothing. She succeeded in persuading the governor to forward a letter from her to her brother, Friedrich Gravenitz, in which she implored him to visit her; but she received no answer from that estimable personage. In point of fact, he was in an awkward predicament himself. True, he had sided against his sister openly, but the Duke, not relishing a too glaring reminder of the past, had commanded him to retire to Welzheim. At Eberhard Ludwig's death Gravenitz waited upon Karl Alexander, who, honest gentleman, disapproved of a brother showing open hostility and ingrat.i.tude to a sister, and begged the pet.i.tioner to return to his country-seat.

Now Gravenitz, to his horror, found that he was implicated in his sister's misdemeanours. Had he not shared in the benefits of her peculations? In vain he protested, denouncing his sister and benefactress in pompous self-righteous words and writings. But the legal authorities paid no heed, and intimated briefly that Welzheim did not belong to him, although he held it in his possession; nine points of the law certainly, but not conferring ownership. He was directed to relinquish Welzheim to the new Duke's representatives. This he declined with many high-flown expressions, which, however, the legal gentlemen considered beside the point at issue; and Count Friedrich Gravenitz was lodged in his own palace in Stuttgart, under arrest and well guarded. He was tried for peculation, but the prosecution ceased when Friedrich Gravenitz consented to deliver up Welzheim to his Highness the Duke, and to pay a fine of fifty-six thousand gulden. He was liberated and permitted to leave the country, which he did, repairing to Vienna where he appealed to the imperial tribunal for justice.

When he received his sister's letter he was under arrest, and later his own affairs absorbed him. So the Gravenitz's appeal remained unanswered.

The appointed day came for her trial, and the village notary spoke his dreamed-of oration. The tribunal listened, or appeared to listen, but the sentence was a foregone conclusion. Wilhelmine von Gravenitz, Countess of Wurben, late Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg, was condemned to death.

Yet it was written in her book of Destiny, that Vienna should interfere in all the important events of her life. The Emperor intimated that, as Countess of the Empire, she could not be put to death without his consent, and this he withheld. Suss Oppenheimer[2], Wirtemberg's Minister of Finance, had appealed on her behalf. The sentence was commuted to perpetual imprisonment and forfeiture of all lands, monies, and jewels.

This information was imparted to her by the prison governor. She received it calmly, merely remarking: 'Death would have been much shorter.' She had sunk into an apathy since the news of his Highness's decease.

The winter pa.s.sed without event. Spring found the Gravenitz grown white-haired, and she had fallen into the habit of patient, indifferent acquiescence in all things. Maria wished her to walk upon the ramparts for an hour's fresh air? Very well, she would go.

'Your Excellency must eat, must sleep, must rest.'

'Certainly; it does not matter. I will do as you say, Maria.'

It was as though she gave her body into the peasant woman's command; her soul was elsewhere, in that mysterious land into which her eyes seemed to be for ever gazing with painful, straining effort, seeking--seeking and imploring.

Towards the end of May, an official doc.u.ment was brought to the governor of Hohen-Urach. It contained the pardon of Wilhelmine von Gravenitz, provided she undertook to leave Wirtemberg for ever, and to abandon any future claims upon land or property of all sorts in the Dukedom. The governor was directed to accompany the lady to the frontier, with an escort of two hundred horse. Further, he was to place in her hand, at the moment of her pa.s.sing out of Wirtemberg territory, a sum of a hundred thousand gulden, 'in fair compensation for any loss incurred,' it was set forth in the pardon. With this surprising doc.u.ment was a sealed letter addressed to the Gravenitz, which was to be delivered immediately.

The governor repaired to the prisoner's apartment, but found it deserted.

The Gravenitz was taking the air upon the ramparts. He found her leaning over the stone parapet, gazing, as usual, into the distance with those terrible, haunted, unseeing eyes. In vain the valley was radiant with Spring's tender treasury; she gazed unseeing at the wealth of blossom, the feathery green of the beech-trees, and at the rounded hills so rich in sombre firs enhancing the wondrous youth of the beech leaves; at the little hill-town, red-roofed and sheltered, cl.u.s.tering round the old castle. All this peaceful beauty of Nature's renascence was nothing to her. As she had said, death would have been much shorter; this long-drawn agony, this numb pain, was death in life.

'I have the happiness to announce to your Excellency that his Highness the Duke has granted you pardon. When it suits you to travel, I am to accompany you to the frontier under escort,' the governor said coldly.

She turned her eyes upon him, but she gave no sign of comprehension; once only she started and winced, when he said his Highness the Duke, otherwise she remained unmoved and unresponding as one deaf. He waited a moment for her to speak, then slowly repeated his announcement.

'Where am I to go to?' she said at last in a low, uncertain voice.

'Where it pleases your Excellency. Anywhere out of Wirtemberg.'

She turned to Maria who stood behind her. 'Have I a house anywhere? I have forgotten,' she said.

'Surely, surely, Excellency; your castle at Schaffhausen,' replied the peasant woman.

'Very well; we will start to-morrow for Schaffhausen,' the Gravenitz answered in her new, broken, docile voice.

'There is a letter for you, Madame,' the governor told her.

'A letter? Who should write to me? The dead do not write.'

'O Madame! Madame! read it; there may be good news,' cried Maria.

'Good news? Good news for me? There can be none. Do you not know that there can be none?' she said tonelessly.

Even the governor's eyes were wet as he handed her the letter. She broke the seal listlessly.

'I send you the best terms I can make for you, in remembrance of the Judenga.s.se of Stuttgart, and in grat.i.tude for your kindness to my race.--JOSEPH SuSS OPPENHEIMER.'

Fastened in one corner of this short missive glittered a little jewel.

The Gravenitz looked long at it, not comprehending. Then a scene of her past came back to her--she was in a darkened room, which smelt of strange, sweet essences, and a Jewish boy sang a Hebrew love-song.

Joseph Suss Oppenheimer, the Jew, had proved himself, in this instance, to be truly what Eberhard Ludwig had called him in pleasantry many years ago--'un preux chevalier.' One who could render homage and service to a fallen favourite.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] Joseph Suss Oppenheimer was the son of Michaele, a famous Jewish beauty, daughter of Rabbi Salomon of Frankfort, a musician of talent.

Michaele was not only possessed of wonderful beauty, but G.o.d had blessed her with a glorious voice. She married Rabbi Isaschar Susskind Oppenheimer, also a singer and musician, and together the couple wandered from city to city, and from palace to castle, discoursing sweet melodies.

The lady's morals suffered from this vagrant life, and the Jewish community of Frankfort stood aghast at her amours. Jewish women are usually remarkably virtuous, and Michaele's evil reputation was easily achieved.

There was an ugly story concerning the birth of Joseph Suss. In brief, he was reported to be a love-child; but the dates do not tally, and it is certain that Rabbi Isaschar accepted the infant as his own. From his mother Joseph Suss inherited marvellous personal beauty, and from both his parents his musical gift. From the mother too, if we are to believe all the tales, he received a nature of abnormal, pa.s.sionate sensuality.

At an early age Suss was sent to his relatives in Vienna, the famous bankers Oppenheimer. Here the boy was reared in splendour and refinement, and instructed in the intricacies of banking, usury--in short, in finance. He repaired occasionally to his family in Frankfort, halting on the road to visit an aged relation in Stuttgart, Frau Widow Hazzim, at whose house in the Judenga.s.se he made the acquaintance of Wilhelmine von Gravenitz.

Suss matured early, and became, not a musician as he had boasted in his childhood, but a very capable financier. He fell in with Duke Karl Alexander of Wirtemberg during a sojourn at Wildbad. His Highness sought a secretary and treasurer, and he was immediately captivated by the young Jew's personal beauty, his fascination, his vivid intelligence, and knowledge of business. The d.u.c.h.ess was interested, attracted, and delighted in Suss's music and the haunting charm of those ancient Hebrew melodies which his father, Rabbi Isaschar, had taught him. Suss was taken into his Highness's service, and when Karl Alexander succeeded his cousin Eberhard Ludwig in the Dukedom of Wirtemberg, the Jew accompanied his patron to Ludwigsburg and Stuttgart. He was made Minister of Finance and became, in reality, ruler of the court, for the Duke gave over everything to his trusted favourite. The treasury was exhausted by the Gravenitz's magnificence, and Suss set to work to replenish the empty chests.

It would be too long to recount here the endless money-raising schemes which were put in motion by Suss; suffice it to say, that never had Wirtemberg been so squeezed even in the time of Eberhard Ludwig. But if Suss procured vast sums, he spent them as readily. The festivities at Ludwigsburg were more opulently splendid and more numerous than ever, and the Duke had six mistresses and a favourite to enrich instead of one Land-despoiler! Suss lived like a prince--and a very lavish prince at that--and the money, of course, came from the Duke's treasury. Now Michaele's heritage became noticeable; if the Duke had six mistresses Suss had sixty. No woman could resist him; they said he was so gloriously handsome, so witty, so 'differing from the rest of mankind,'--not an original statement from amorous dames!

Thus Suss inherited his mother's nature, and together with his unbridled pa.s.sion for love came the illimited desire for, and need of, gold.

By the first, he incurred the hatred of those men--husbands, brothers, fathers of the women he took for his pleasure; by the second, the undying animosity of the oppressed taxpayers. The end came swiftly. Four years of debauch and lavish expenditure, and death fell suddenly upon Karl Alexander of Wirtemberg. He died at nine of the clock one evening, and the next dawn saw Joseph Suss a hunted fugitive. He was caught between Ludwigsburg and Stuttgart, and immediately thrown into prison. Here he languished, a prey to terrible anxiety and remorse; his only visitants were pastors of the Christian religion who tortured him with argument.

'You are a Jew, but you do not even adhere to the d.a.m.nable tenets of your vile cult,' they said.

'I am a man and no coward, and I will not abjure the faith of my fathers,' he responded. They held out spurious hopes of pardon would he swear to the pure faith of the Crucified, but Suss remained n.o.bly obdurate. Then the Church--she to whom Christ bequeathed His sweet message of pardon, of tenderness, and of leniency--deserted the faithful Jew, and the law of human cruelty and punishment took hold of him. He was accorded no trial. His sins were as scarlet indeed; besides, he of the despised race had dared to rule. The name Jew was a stigma in itself, and this word the people howled round the tumbril which bore the erstwhile gorgeous favourite to a death of ignominy. A few women in the crowd sighed and shed a tear when they saw the G.o.dlike beauty of the man, broken to pathetic ruin by adversity, white-haired, vilified, aged by his degradation; but chiefly the crowd howled and reviled, and the men spat in the Jew's face and covered him with a load of horse-dung and foul ordure. They hung him finally after unspeakable tortures. Then his body was left to rot in Stuttgart's market-place in the sight of all. A hideous carrion dangling in a silver cage, which his judges had caused to be constructed as a terrible warning to those who would profit by the favour of princes.

Tragic enough in itself, this story of the downfall of a superb ruler and courtier, the more appalling, when we consider that it was chiefly a cruel triumph of race hatred. No unbaptized Jew in German history has risen to such official eminence as Joseph Suss Oppenheimer, and there is little doubt that, had he not been of the race of Israel, even though he had committed the same crimes, he would not have suffered this fearsome death.

CHAPTER XXII

REST

'Memories that make the heart a tomb.'

THERE is solace to the mourner in the sound of rushing waters; most of all can the stricken soul find a short oblivion in the ceaseless chant of the ocean's mighty surging; and by the tumult of a great river human unrest is soothed ineffably.

At Schaffhausen the Rhine falls in giant cascades, roaring and dashing against those rocks which, legend says, Wotan flung into the river in his mighty rage against a poor husbandman who had drowned himself and his lowly wife because her mortal beauty had excited the desire of the amorous wanderer.

White, whirling foam, and above a thin, glistening, veil-like mist made of the myriad drops flung up from the water's impact; but here too the eternal poet, Legend, has wrought a delicate phantasy: this mist he calls the breath from the lips of the Rhine-maidens who sing for ever beneath the foam.

An enchanted place this Schaffhausen, guarded by the great white Alps whose pure crests rise in awful majesty to high Heaven. And here it was that the Gravenitz dwelt after she left Wirtemberg, and here Time the consoler healed her bruised heart and her crushed pride. She dwelt in the small castle which Zollern had given her and where her marriage with Wurben had been solemnised. Her soul rested from pain, but there were torturing ghosts of the past around her: Eberhard Ludwig, Madame de Ruth, Zollern, her unkind brother, even the fraudulent attorney Schutz, and the ridiculous figure of her name-husband, Nepomuk Wurben. Yes, all her life's denizens had vanished. Death or absence had swallowed them; only she, the central figure, remained.

She was memory-haunted, who herself was but a memory.

Her great healthfulness endured, but sometimes she suffered from strange swoons. 'It is from the heart,' said the apothecary whom Maria called in.