Famous Affinities of History Part 28

Continental Europe was a mystery to English-speaking people. Those who traveled abroad took their own servants with them, spoke only English, and went through the whole European maze with absolute indifference. To them the socialist, who had scarcely received a name, was an imaginary being. If he existed, he was only a sort of offspring of the Napoleonic wars-a creature who had not yet fitted into the ordinary course of things. He was an anomaly, a person who howled in beer-houses, and who would presently be regulated, either by the statesmen or by the police.

When our old friend, Mark Tapley, was making with his master a homeward voyage to Britain, what did he know or even care about the politics of France, or Germany, or Austria, or Russia? Not the slightest, you may be sure. Mark and his master represented the complete indifference of the Englishman or American-not necessarily a well-bred indifference, but an indifference that was insular on the one hand and republican on the other. If either of them had heard of a gentleman who pillaged an unmarried lady's luggage in order to secure a valuable paper for another lady, who was married, they would both have looked severely at this abnormal person, and the American would doubtless have added a remark which had something to do with the matchless purity of Columbia's daughters.

If, again, they had been told that Ferdinand La.s.salle had joined in the great movement initiated by Karl Marx, it is absolutely certain that neither the Englishman nor the American could have given you the slightest notion as to who these individuals were. Thrones might be tottering all over Europe; the red flag might wave in a score of cities-what would all this signify, so long as Britannia ruled the waves, while Columbia's feathered emblem shrieked defiance three thousand miles away?

And yet few more momentous events have happened in a century than the union which led one man to give his eloquence to the social cause, and the other to suffer for that cause until his death. Marx had the higher thought, but his disciple La.s.salle had the more attractive way of presenting it. It is odd that Marx, today, should lie in a squalid cemetery, while the whole western world echoes with his praises, and that La.s.salle-brilliant, clear-sighted, and remarkable for his penetrating genius-should have lived in luxury, but should now know nothing but oblivion, even among those who shouted at his eloquence and ran beside him in the glory of his triumph.

Ferdinand La.s.salle was a native of Breslau, the son of a wealthy Jewish silk-merchant. Heymann La.s.sal-for thus the father spelled his name-stroked his hands at young Ferdinand's cleverness, but he meant it to be a commercial cleverness. He gave the boy a thorough education at the University of Breslau, and later at Berlin. He was an affectionate parent, and at the same time tyrannical to a degree.

It was the old story where the father wishes to direct every step that his son takes, and where the son, bursting out into youthful manhood, feels that he has the right to freedom. The father thinks how he has toiled for the son; the son thinks that if this toil were given for love, it should not be turned into a fetter and restraint. Young La.s.salle, instead of becoming a clever silk-merchant, insisted on a university career, where he studied earnestly, and was admitted to the most cultured circles.

Though his birth was Jewish, he encountered little prejudice against his race. Napoleon had changed the old anti-Semitic feeling of fifty years before to a liberalism that was just beginning to be strongly felt in Germany, as it had already been in France. This was true in general, but especially true of La.s.salle, whose features were not of a Semitic type, who made friends with every one, and who was a favorite in many salons. His portraits make him seem a high-bred and high-spirited Prussian, with an intellectual and clean-cut forehead; a face that has a sense of humor, and yet one capable of swift and cogent thought.

No man of ordinary talents could have won the admiration of so many compeers. It is not likely that such a keen and cynical observer as Heinrich Heine would have written as he did concerning La.s.salle, had not the latter been a brilliant and magnetic youth. Heine wrote to Varnhagen von Ense, the German historian:

My friend, Herr La.s.salle, who brings you this letter, is a young man of remarkable intellectual gifts. With the most thorough erudition, with the widest learning, with the greatest penetration that I have ever known, and with the richest gift of exposition, he combines an energy of will and a capacity for action which astonish me. In no one have I found united so much enthusiasm and practical intelligence.

No better proof of La.s.salle's enthusiasm can be found than a few lines from his own writings:

I love Heine. He is my second self. What audacity! What overpowering eloquence! He knows how to whisper like a zephyr when it kisses rose-blooms, how to breathe like fire when it rages and destroys; he calls forth all that is tenderest and softest, and then all that is fiercest and most daring. He has the sweep of the whole lyre!

La.s.salle's sympathy with Heine was like his sympathy with every one whom he knew. This was often misunderstood. It was misunderstood in his relations with women, and especially in the celebrated affair of the Countess von Hatzfeldt, which began in the year 1846-that is to say, in the twenty-first year of La.s.salle's age.

In truth, there was no real scandal in the matter, for the countess was twice the age of La.s.salle. It was precisely because he was so young that he let his eagerness to defend a woman in distress make him forget the ordinary usage of society, and expose himself to mean and unworthy criticism which lasted all his life. It began by his introduction to the Countess von Hatzfeldt, a lady who was grossly ill-treated by her husband. She had suffered insult and imprisonment in the family castles; the count had deprived her of medicine when she was ill, and had forcibly taken away her children. Besides this, he was infatuated with another woman, a baroness, and wasted his substance upon her even contrary to the law which protected his children's rights.

The countess had a son named Paul, of whom La.s.salle was extremely fond. There came to the boy a letter from the Count von Hatzfeldt ordering him to leave his mother. The countess at once sent for La.s.salle, who brought with him two wealthy and influential friends-one of them a judge of a high Prussian court-and together they read the letter which Paul had just received. They were deeply moved by the despair of the countess, and by the cruelty of her dissolute husband in seeking to separate the mother from her son.

In his chivalrous ardor La.s.salle swore to help the countess, and promised that he would carry on the struggle with her husband to the bitter end. He took his two friends with him to Berlin, and then to Dusseldorf, for they discovered that the Count von Hatzfeldt was not far away. He was, in fact, at Aix-la-Chapelle with the baroness.

La.s.salle, who had the scent of a greyhound, pried about until he discovered that the count had given his mistress a legal doc.u.ment, a.s.signing to her a valuable piece of property which, in the ordinary course of law, should be entailed on the boy, Paul. The countess at once hastened to the place, broke into her husband's room, and secured a promise that the deed would be destroyed.

No sooner, however, had she left him than he returned to the baroness, and presently it was learned that the woman had set out for Cologne.

La.s.salle and his two friends followed, to ascertain whether the doc.u.ment had really been destroyed. The three reached a hotel at Cologne, where the baroness had just arrived. Her luggage, in fact, was being carried upstairs. One of La.s.salle's friends opened a trunk, and, finding a casket there, slipped it out to his companion, the judge.

Unfortunately, the latter had no means of hiding it, and when the baroness's servant shouted for help, the casket was found in the possession of the judge, who could give no plausible account of it. He was, therefore, arrested, as were the other two. There was no evidence against La.s.salle; but his friends fared badly at the trial, one of them being imprisoned for a year and the other for five years.

From this time La.s.salle, with an almost quixotic devotion, gave himself up to fighting the Countess von Hatzfeldt's battle against her husband in the law-courts. The ablest advocates were pitted against him. The most eloquent legal orators thundered at him and at his client, but he met them all with a skill, an audacity, and a brilliant wit that won for him verdict after verdict. The case went from the lower to the higher tribunals, until, after nine years, it reached the last court of appeal, where La.s.salle wrested from his opponents a magnificently conclusive victory-one that made the children of the countess absolutely safe. It was a battle fought with the determination of a soldier, with the gallantry of a knight errant, and the intellectual ac.u.men of a learned lawyer.

It is not surprising that many refuse to believe that La.s.salle's feeling toward the Countess von Hatzfeldt was a disinterested one. A scandalous pamphlet, which was published in French, German, and Russian, and written by one who styled herself "Sophie Solutzeff," did much to spread the evil report concerning La.s.salle. But the very openness and frankness of the service which he did for the countess ought to make it clear that his was the devotion of a youth drawn by an impulse into a strife where there was nothing for him to gain, but everything to lose. He denounced the brutality of her husband, but her letters to him always addressed him as "my dear child." In writing to her he confides small love-secrets and ephemeral flirtations-which he would scarcely have done, had the countess viewed him with the eye of pa.s.sion.

La.s.salle was undoubtedly a man of impressionable heart, and had many affairs such as Heine had; but they were not deep or lasting. That he should have made a favorable impression on the women whom he met is not surprising, because of his social standing, his chivalry, his fine manners, and his handsome face. Mr. Clement Shorter has quoted an official doc.u.ment which describes him as he was in his earlier years:

Ferdinand La.s.salle, aged twenty-three, a civilian born at Breslau and dwelling recently at Berlin. He stands five feet six inches in height, has brown, curly hair, open forehead, brown eyebrows, dark blue eyes, well proportioned nose and mouth, and rounded chin.

We ought not to be surprised, then, if he was a favorite in drawing-rooms; if both men and women admired him; if Alexander von Humboldt cried out with enthusiasm that he was a wunderkind, and if there were more than Sophie Solutzeff to be jealous. But the rather ungrateful remark of the Countess von Hatzfeldt certainly does not represent him as he really was.

"You are without reason and judgment where women are concerned," she snarled at him; but the sneer only shows that the woman who uttered it was neither in love with him nor grateful to him.

In this paper we are not discussing La.s.salle as a public agitator or as a Socialist, but simply in his relations with the two women who most seriously affected his life. The first was the Countess von Hatzfeldt, who, as we have seen, occupied-or rather wasted-nine of the best years of his life. Then came that profound and thrilling pa.s.sion which ended the career of a man who at thirty-nine had only just begun to be famous.

La.s.salle had joined his intellectual forces with those of Heine and Marx. He had obtained so great an influence over the ma.s.ses of the people as to alarm many a monarch, and at the same time to attract many a statesman. Prince Bismarck, for example, cared nothing for La.s.salle's championship of popular rights, but sought his aid on finding that he was an earnest advocate of German unity.

Furthermore, he was very far from resembling what in those early days was regarded as the typical picture of a Socialist. There was nothing frowzy about him; in his appearance he was elegance itself; his manners were those of a prince, and his clothing was of the best. Seeing him in a drawing-room, no one would mistake him for anything but a gentleman and a man of parts. Hence it is not surprising that his second love was one of the n.o.bility, although her own people hated La.s.salle as a bearer of the red flag.

This girl was Helene von Donniges, the daughter of a Bavarian diplomat. As a child she had traveled much, especially in Italy and in Switzerland. She was very precocious, and lived her own life without asking the direction of any one. At twelve years of age she had been betrothed to an Italian of forty; but this dark and pedantic person always displeased her, and soon afterward, when she met a young Wallachian n.o.bleman, one Yanko Racowitza, she was ready at once to dismiss her Italian lover. Racowitza-young, a student, far from home, and lacking friends-appealed at once to the girl's sympathy.

At that very time, in Berlin, where Helene was visiting her grandmother, she was asked by a Prussian baron:

"Do you know Ferdinand La.s.salle?"

The question came to her with a peculiar shock. She had never heard the name, and yet the sound of it gave her a strange emotion. Baron Korff, who perhaps took liberties because she was so young, went on to say:

"My dear lady, have you really never seen La.s.salle? Why, you and he were meant for each other!"

She felt ashamed to ask about him, but shortly after a gentleman who knew her said:

"It is evident that you have a surprising degree of intellectual kinship with Ferdinand La.s.salle."

This so excited her curiosity that she asked her grandmother:

"Who is this person of whom they talk so much-this Ferdinand La.s.salle?"

"Do not speak of him," replied her grandmother. "He is a shameless demagogue!"

A little questioning brought to Helene all sorts of stories about La.s.salle-the Countess von Hatzfeldt, the stolen casket, the mysterious pamphlet, the long battle in the courts-all of which excited her still more. A friend offered to introduce her to the "shameless demagogue." This introduction happened at a party, and it must have been an extraordinary meeting. Seldom, it seemed, was there a better instance of love at first sight, or of the true affinity of which Baron Korff had spoken. In the midst of the public gathering they almost rushed into each other's arms; they talked the free talk of acknowledged lovers; and when she left, he called her love-names as he offered her his arm.

"Somehow it did not appear at all remarkable," she afterward declared. "We seemed to be perfectly fitted to each other."

Nevertheless, nine months pa.s.sed before they met again at a soiree. At this time La.s.saller gazing upon her, said:

"What would you do if I were sentenced to death?"

"I should wait until your head was severed," was her answer, "in order that you might look upon your beloved to the last, and then-I should take poison!"

Her answer delighted him, but he said that there was no danger. He was greeted on every hand with great consideration; and it seemed not unlikely that, in recognition of his influence with the people, he might rise to some high position. The King of Prussia sympathized with him. Heine called him the Messiah of the nineteenth century. When he pa.s.sed from city to city, the whole population turned out to do him honor. Houses were wreathed; flowers were thrown in ma.s.ses upon him, while the streets were spanned with triumphal arches.

Worn out with the work and excitement attending the birth of the Deutscher Arbeiterverein, or workmen's union, which he founded in 1863, La.s.salle fled for a time to Switzerland for rest. Helene heard of his whereabouts, and hurried to him, with several friends. They met again on July 25,1864, and discussed long and intensely the possibilities of their marriage and the opposition of her parents, who would never permit her to marry a man who was at once a Socialist and a Jew.

Then comes a pitiful story of the strife between La.s.salle and the Donniges family. Helene's father and mother indulged in vulgar words; they spoke of La.s.salle with contempt; they recalled all the scandals that had been current ten years before, and forbade Helene ever to mention the man's name again.

The next scene in the drama took place in Geneva, where the family of Herr von Donniges had arrived, and where Helene's sister had been betrothed to Count von Keyserling-a match which filled her mother with intense joy. Her momentary friendliness tempted Helene to speak of her unalterable love for La.s.salle. Scarcely had the words been spoken when her father and mother burst into abuse and denounced La.s.salle as well as herself.

She sent word of this to La.s.salle, who was in a hotel near by. Scarcely had he received her letter, when Helene herself appeared upon the scene, and with all the intensity of which she was possessed, she begged him to take her wherever he chose. She would go with him to France, to Italy-to the ends of the earth!

What a situation, and yet how simple a one for a man of spirit! It is strange to have to record that to La.s.salle it seemed most difficult. He felt that he or she, or both of them, had been compromised. Had she a lady with her? Did she know any one in the neighborhood?

What an extraordinary answer! If she were compromised, all the more ought he to have taken her in his arms and married her at once, instead of quibbling and showing himself a prig.