The Lost Manuscript Part 105

"Hold," cried Raschke, again, "no further; this also is only suspicion."

"It is only suspicion," repeated the Professor; "therefore I seek for certainty. When I wished to go to the country castle I was detained from day to day under trivial pretexts; the Magister was absent not long ago for a day from the work which was entrusted to him; he excused himself on the score of illness, and as he was profuse in his excuses I was struck by a shyness in his manner. There was a wish to keep me here for reasons which you, in your sphere of feelings, can scarcely understand. It was hoped to attain this object by exciting the fanatical zeal with which I was afflicted, without entirely contenting it. Such is my suspicion, friend; and I feel myself miserable, more miserable than I have ever been in my life."

He threw himself on the sofa, and again concealed his face.

Raschke approached him, and said, softly:

"Does it distress you so much, Werner, that you have been deceived?"

"I have confided, and deceived confidence gives pain; but in my sorrow I feel not only for myself, but for the destruction of another who belongs to us."

Raschke nodded his head. He again paced vehemently about the room, and looked angrily at the chest. Werner rose and rang the bell.

"I wish to speak to Magister Knips," he said, to Gabriel, who entered.

"I must beg him to take the trouble of coming here as soon as possible."

"How will you speak to him?" asked Raschke, stepping anxiously before his friend.

"I need so much consideration myself," replied Werner, "that you need not fear my violence. I also have been laboring under a disease, and I know that I have to speak to one who is more diseased than I."

"You are not diseased," exclaimed Raschke, "only shocked, as I am. You will say what is necessary to him, for the rest you will leave him to his own conscience."

"I will only say what is necessary," repeated the Professor, mechanically.

Gabriel returned, and reported that the Magister would call when he left the Museum in the evening.

"How did the Magister take the message?" asked Raschke.

"He appeared alarmed when I told him that the Professor was stopping at the inn."

The Professor had ensconced himself in a corner, but the philosopher left him no rest; he kept talking to him about the occurrences at the University, and compelled him to take part by frequent questions. At last he expressed a wish to take a walk, to which the Professor unwillingly consented.

Werner led him through the gate of the city; as they walked along he briefly answered the lively talk of his friend. When they came to the inn from which Ilse had got into the carriage of the Crown Inspector, the Scholar began, with hoa.r.s.e voice:

"This is the road along which my wife escaped from the city. I came early this morning along this same road, and at every step I felt what is the deepest humiliation to man."

"Before her was light, and behind her darkness," exclaimed Raschke.

He talked of Ilse, and now thought of the commission which his children had given to their aunt.

Thus the afternoon pa.s.sed. Werner again sat brooding in his room, when Gabriel announced the arrival of the Magister. Before Raschke hastened into the next room, he once more pressed the hand of the other, and, looking imploringly at him, said:

"Be calm, friend."

"I am calm," replied he.

Magister Knips had profited by the refining influence of the Court. His black suit had been made by a tailor who had the princely coat of arms above his workshop; his hair was free from feathers, and his vocabulary had been replenished with new expressions of respect. He now looked furtively and defiantly around him.

Werner measured the man as he entered with a steady look; if, before, he had had a doubt of the guilt of the Magister, he now recognized it.

He turned away for a moment in order to struggle with his aversion.

"Examine this," he said, pointing with his finger to the parchment leaves.

Knips took a leaf in his hand, and the parchment trembled as he cast a shy glance upon it.

"It is another forgery," said the Professor; "the reading of the first Florentine ma.n.u.script, and even the peculiarities of its orthography, are copied with a careful accuracy which would have been impossible to any old transcriber. The writing, too, betrays itself to be recent."

The Magister laid the sheet down, and answered, with hesitation:

"It appears undoubtedly to be an imitation of an old script, as the Professor has already discovered."

"I found this work," continued the Scholar, "in the tower of the castle in the country, inserted in that torn missal, laid in that chest, and concealed among old furniture. And you, Magister, have prepared this leaf, and you have concealed it in this place. That is not all. Long before, in order to put me on a false track, you placed the register of a chest in the old records; you invented the figures 1 and 2 for the chests, and further, you yourself wrote the register in order to deceive me."

The Magister stood with lowered head, seeking for an answer. He did not know on what confession of others these deliberate a.s.sertions were grounded. Had the Castellan betrayed him? Had the Sovereign himself exposed him? Terror came over him, but he replied, doggedly:

"I did not do it."

"In vain do you seek to deceive me anew," continued the Scholar. "If I had not already sufficient ground to say to your face that you did this, your demeanor in the presence of this sheet would be ample evidence. No sound of astonishment, no word of horror at such an attempt at forgery escaped you. What true scholar would look upon such a thing and remain silent, if his own conscience did not close his mouth? What have I done to you, Magister, that you should inflict upon me this bitter anguish? Give me some excuse for your action. Have I ever injured you? Have I ever aroused in you secret ill-will against me? Any reason that will make this abomination comprehensible will be welcome to me; for I look with dismay on this depravation of a human soul."

"The Professor has never given me any ground for complaint," replied Knips, submissively.

"Nevertheless," said the Professor, "in cold blood, with indifference, with malicious levity, you have done your worst to me: it was wrong, very wrong, Magister."

"Perhaps it was only a jest," sighed the Magister; "perhaps it was only put in that way to him who prepared the writing. He only perhaps acted by the command of another, not by free choice, and not of his own will."

"What power on earth could command you to practice towards another so deliberate a piece of knavery?" asked the Professor, sorrowfully. "You yourself know right well what consequences this deception may have for myself and others."

Magister Knips was silent.

"I have done with you," continued the Scholar. "I shall say nothing of the plan which this falsehood was to serve nor make any further reproaches concerning the injury that you have practiced towards a man who trusted in your honor."

He threw the parchment under the table. Knips seized his hat silently to leave the room.

"Stop!" exclaimed the Professor; "do not move from the spot. I must be silent as to what you have endeavored to do personally against me. It is not so much on account of this ma.n.u.script that I have sent for you.

But the man whom I see before me, on whom I look with an abhorrence that I have never yet felt, is something more than an unscrupulous tool in the service of a stranger; he is an unfaithful philologist, a traitor to learning, a forger, and deceiver in that in which only honorable men have a right to live, a cursed man, for whom there is no repentance and no mercy."

The Magister's hat fell to the ground.

"You wrote the parchment strip of Struvelius; the trader has informed against you in your native city. Your writings are confiscated and are in the hands of the police."

The Magister still remained silent. He fumbled for his pocket-handkerchief and wiped the cold sweat from his brow.

"Now, at least, speak out," cried Werner. "Give me an explanation of the fearful riddle, how any one who belonged to us could willfully destroy all that made his life n.o.ble. How could a man of your attainments become untrue to science in so despicable a way?"

"I was poor and my life full of trouble," replied Knips, in a low voice.

"Yes, you were poor. From your earliest youth you have worked from morning to night; even as a child you have denied yourself much that others thoughtlessly enjoy. You have in this way the secret consciousness of having obtained for yourself inward freedom, and a humble friendship with the great spirit of our life. Yes, you have grown up to be a man amidst countless sacrifices and self-denials which others fear. You have thus learnt and taught what is the highest possession of man. In every proof-sheet that you have read for the a.s.sistance of others, in every index of words that you have drawn up for a cla.s.sical work, in every word that you have corrected, in every number that you have written, you have been obliged to be truthful.

Your daily work was an unceasing, a.s.siduous struggle against what was false and wrong. Yet more, and worse than that, you have been no thoughtless day-laborer; you have fully and entirely belonged to us; you were, in fact, a scholar, from whose learning many with higher pretensions have frequently taken counsel. You not only treasured in your mind a ma.s.s of rare knowledge, but you well comprehend the thoughts to which such knowledge gives rise. You were all this--and yet a forger. With true devotion and self-denial, you united malicious willfulness; you were a confidential and a.s.siduous a.s.sistant, and at the same time a deceiver, bold and mocking like a devil."