The Complete Short Works of Georg Ebers Part 29

The unlooked-for and dignified reserve of her injured husband, together with his ghastly paleness disturbed her, and her inquietude grew to painful anxiety as he maintained silence. At length he said "I have learned to love you truly and pa.s.sionately, my wife, and now you show me how you have returned the affection which my heart bestowed upon you.

You are right when you accuse me of having laid too much stress upon vain trifles. For that very fault I have been most severely punished, for had I wooed you in woollen, instead of in velvet, I should never have had the misfortune to be bound to a woman like you. Nor was it love that led me to you, but the miserable ambition to bring a n.o.bleman's daughter into my burgher home. So we both deceived each other, and now if you wish to return whence I took you--you may leave my home unhindered."

The young wife buried her face in her hands and answered: "No, no, life is too miserable and poverty-stricken at home and I have suffered too much in the long struggle to keep up appearances. And then what would people say? No, no,--I will do everything that I can to please you."

"Very well, you may stay," he replied gloomily.

Frau Schimmel, who had been in the room for some time, turned to the notary and said: "The Court apothecary used to say that I was stupid, but thirty years ago I foretold what has happened here today."

She then implored Zeno to throw the elixir into the Pleisse, but for the first time he exhibited a will of his own. He put the phial and the doc.u.ment in his father's writing into his breast pocket, and tucking the gray-haired notary under his arm, he left the room.

Frau Schimmel followed his example. Having reached the ground-floor she stopped and, shaking her gray head, murmured: "Doctor Melchior was such a wise man, I wonder he did not order that each of his successors should make the girl of his choice inhale the elixir before he proposed to her.

The life I led with Vorkel, and with my second husband Schimmel, who lies beside the first in the churchyard, was hardly perfect, but Zeno's existence will be h.e.l.l upon earth."

But this time Frau Schimmel was a little wide of the mark in her prophesy. The two young people, for a time, treated each other distantly and coldly, but Fran Rosalie learned to regard her husband with a timid respect that sat well upon her. As for him he was transformed into a stern man since he had inhaled the elixir, and his severe dress seemed but an outward sign of his earnestness. Before the year was out a boy was given to them, and when Rosalie saw him take the little one in his arms and kiss it, she called him to her bedside and whispered: "Forgive me."

He made a sign of pardon, and stooping, kissed her white face, that was still the dearest in the world to him. Then he went to his own room and inhaled the elixir whose properties and effect he had long before learned from Frau Schimmel. He called aloud, as if speaking to another person: "If she be good to the child, I will no longer make her feel how she hurt me, though I can never forget it."

But it was not granted to him to show by his actions that he had forgiven her, for during the night fever supervened, and before morning she died.

Her hot hand had lain in his, just before her heart ceased to beat, and had pressed it, as if in farewell.

Frau Schimmel followed her darling's unfortunate wife shortly afterwards. Her death was a peaceful and happy one, for Zeno held her withered hand, and talked to her of the days when she had dressed him in his beautiful light-blue frocks. He closed her eyes himself, and followed her coffin to the churchyard.

Only Herr Winckler remained to the widower, who lived alone with his son in The Three Kings, and like a father, more than a friend, aided him in his researches concerning the elixir.

They discovered that it produced its effect only on those who were connected with the Ueberh.e.l.l family. This was a great disappointment to Zeno, for he set a high value upon truth, and had heard from his father's friend what great blessings for mankind the dead man had antic.i.p.ated from his discovery. All his hopes of using it in his profession to make hardened sinners confess their misdeeds, were therefore, vain. For this purpose it was certainly useless and Zeno and Herr Winckler concluded that the reason why its effect was so limited was because it owed its power to the blood of a child of the Ueberh.e.l.l race.

That its potency extended to those who married into the Ueberh.e.l.l house was proved by its effect upon Frau Rosalie. As it had also once vanquished Frau Schimmel, they argued that the Court apothecary must have used other blood beside his own, for he certainly had never been connected with his housekeeper by marriage. What had been intended to benefit the whole world, exercised its influence only in one direction, and on the members of one small family; this grieved the old notary when he recalled the happy and triumphant death-bed of his friend.

The elixir had undoubtedly changed Melchior's son to an incredible extent; from an easily-led, pleasure-loving youth, Zeno became a self-contained man--almost a recluse--and he won for himself the reputation of being one of the severest judges on the Leipsic bench.

High and low doffed their hats to him with respect, but he was not popular.

After he had worked at the Rathhaus long after hours, he would go home alone, and no one sought him out to pa.s.s an hour in his company, for everyone feared the rough and brutal frankness of his speech. The gregarious and friendly notary used to wince when he heard his adopted son spoken of as "the hard Ueberh.e.l.l," or "the sinner's scourge," and he tried his best to make him more human, and to draw him within his circle of friends.

When death overtook Herr Winckler, from whose mouth Zeno used to hear many bitter tirades against the elixir, and Melchior's son found himself entirely alone, and making always more enemies by his irrepressible instinct to speak out what he thought to be the truth, he would sometimes ask himself if it were not better to destroy the elixir, which had brought him nothing but misery, and thus to spare his son and succeeding generations.

But the stern upholder of the law did not feel that he had the right to disobey the instructions of his father. And so the elixir descended to his son, and was given to him on his twenty-fifth birthday by his guardian, for Zeno died before his only child reached that age.

What happened to this second Melchior Ueberh.e.l.l whose unfortunate history.... Here the story broke off. The son of one of my friends had found it in an old chest, when he was playing in the attic of The Three Kings. It was written in a discoloured blank-book, which had escaped the devastations of the mice and insects, because it had lain under a pile of aromatic herbs and drugs that had probably belonged to the shop of the Court apothecary.

Between the last page and the cover of the blank-book, which was confided to me, I found a continuation by a later Ueberh.e.l.l.

This appendix could hardly have been written earlier than towards the end of the last century, to judge by the paper, the stiff, old-fashioned handwriting and, more surely still, by the fact that the writer mentions vaccination as a new discovery. Inoculation was first tried in 1796, and three years later an inst.i.tution was opened in London where a Leipsic professor of medicine gave lectures.

This communication is signed: "Doctor Ernst Ueberh.e.l.l, Professor of Medicine." And runs as follows:

Several centuries have pa.s.sed since the time of the ancestor to whom we owe the wonderful history of the elixir as written in this book, and preserved from generation to generation in our family.

Many Ueberh.e.l.ls have closed their eyes forever, since then, and even the graves of Dr. Melchior and his beautiful wife Bianca have disappeared, owing to the removal of the burying-ground.

On the other hand the portrait in red crayon of Frau Bianca and the little Zeno is still carefully preserved as a most precious heirloom, and was the picture that inspired my sainted father with the desire to become an artist.

Our forebear Dr. Melchior devoted the best of his energies to the benefit, as he thought, of his race, perhaps indeed of all mankind, and yet his efforts were unavailing, for to my sorrow must I acknowledge that much of the enmity felt towards our family, and the disrepute into which our good old name fell, was caused by the elixir. The majority of Ueberh.e.l.ls were accused of presumption and arrogance, of opiniativeness and pugnacity. Many had made themselves disagreeable to their neighbours by their caustic criticisms and ill-natured complaints, at the same time bringing misfortune upon themselves by a most curious exhibition of their own faults.

The whole race degenerated so rapidly through their unbridled license and lack of consideration for others, that they ceased to be received by the members of the better circles, and there came to be an offensive saying that in Leipsic there were men, women, and Ueberh.e.l.ls.

This dislike and animosity were visited upon one generation after another until finally it affected the worldly prosperity of the family.

Even The Three Kings in the Katharinenstra.s.se which, by the way, had long ceased to be known by that name, was lost to us, and so remained for many years until my sainted father recovered it again, and that the Ueberh.e.l.ls did not fall into even greater distress was due largely to the timidity, nay absolute terror, with which they inspired many people.

From several of my relatives--and they without exception made use of the elixir when they received it on their twenty fifth birthday--I have heard many particulars concerning the experience, but there was only one who ever said that he had been happier and more contented because of it, and that was my sainted father, the painter, Johannes Ueberh.e.l.l.

He lost his father very early, and was brought up and educated in poverty and distress by his good mother who remained a widow. It was she who sold the last of the jewels and plate that had come down to her from earlier and more prosperous days, in order to make it possible for Johannes to go to Dresden and study under a good master.

He was a virtuous youth, with a simple heart, and a disposition so gay that the unfortunate forgot their sorrow whenever he appeared.

Even as a child--so I have heard my grandmother say--he was so cheerful and contented despite their bitter poverty, that he made up a little prayer for himself in which he used to thank G.o.d for having created him.

This man, then, grew up to be truehearted and sincere without the elixir, but he made use of it, none the less, when it came into his possession, and it proved a great blessing to him. As a light-hearted and modest youth--so diffident that he was timid in his intercourse with older persons--he wandered over the Alps, with only fifty thalers in his pocket and a small knapsack on his back, to Rome where he was received into the studio of one of the most distinguished painters, as apprentice. This latter very soon became jealous of the great talent exhibited by my father and a compet.i.tion occurring, exerted all his influence to keep the prizes from the German compet.i.tors and have them awarded to Italian artists of much less merit.

My father, unable to overcome his fatal shyness by any effort of will, had not the courage to withstand this unfairness until he was called home by his mother for his twenty-fifth birthday, and made use of the elixir.

This not only gave him the resolution, but forced him to proclaim the truth aloud, and to call injustice by its right name.

Owing to his accusations there was a thorough investigation of the affair, a new judge was appointed who awarded the first prize at once to Johannes Ueberh.e.l.l, the said prize consisting of a magnificent commission. Having thus achieved an opportunity of proving his worth, he rose quickly to eminence in his profession, and came to be a famous master while he was still a young man.

In later life also he owed nothing but good to the elixir, for his soul was as pure as crystal, and his thoughts of others were so kindly that he could safely speak out everything that was in his mind.

His eyes perceived only the beautiful in the universe; and the beautiful and the true were one with him; so that he made others see and hear nothing save what was lovely and enn.o.bling. Whenever any debasing or evil influence approached him he would trample upon it with all the fierceness of a true Ueberh.e.l.l; but such conflicts seldom occurred, for his nature was so exalted that it carried him unconscious through the depravity and pollution of this world.

Yes, my father was a happy man, and I cannot deny that the elixir had much to do with his good fortune, for it forced him to reveal his innermost thoughts and to show people frankly what was pa.s.sing in his mind, thus opening up to them a sunny, pure, and beautiful world which their dull eyes would never have discovered for themselves.

Therefore the best sought him out and made friends with him, and the more he prospered the wiser and better he grew.

One would imagine that the man to whom the elixir had been so beneficial would set a greater value upon it than others, and would be more careful to preserve it for his children and grandchildren. Not so.

After I had finished my studies at the High School and matriculated at the medical schools of the Leipsic University, my father sent for me to come during my vacation to Rome, where he still lived, and a few weeks before my twenty-fifth birthday I rode through the Porta del Popolo.

The evening before that anniversary my father took out the phial, showed it to me, and asked me what I thought of the verses that he had written on a label and attached to the bottle.

I read them, and they ran as follows:

In hearts alone where modesty resides Is found the priceless treasure of Pure Truth.

If pride within you secretly abides That, forced by the elixir's charm, The Sooth You needs must speak--be wholly pure in thought, Despising not the teachings wise, of old; When Truth with equal earnestness was sought If speech be silver, silence then is gold!

The scales seemed to fall from my eyes, and I realised why the Ueberh.e.l.ls had borne such an evil and dreaded name among their fellow-citizens.

The day after I, too, was to use the elixir and I asked my father: "What shall I do if the power of the essence forces me to speak out everything that is true, simply because it is true, even when it is against my wish and will tend to my own annoyance and distress, as well as to that of others?"