The Serapion Brethren Volume Ii Part 23

"'You are out of your senses!' cried the Chevalier, who had, however, now regained his composure a good deal, and began to observe that the Colonel was losing at every deal.

"'Twenty thousand ducats, or Angela!' the Colonel said almost in a whisper, as he paused for a moment during the shuffling of the cards.

The Chevalier said not a word. The Colonel played again, and nearly all the cards were in favour of the players--against him.

"'Done!' the Chevalier whispered in the Colonel's ear when the next deal began; and he threw the Queen on the table.

"The Queen lost.

"The Chevalier drew back, grinding his teeth, and leaned at the window with despair and death in his white face.

"The game ended, and, with a jeering 'Well! what next?' the Colonel came up to the Chevalier.

"'Oh, G.o.d!' cried the Chevalier, quite beside himself. 'You have made me a beggar, but you must be a madman if you think you have won my wife! Are we in the West Indies? Is my wife a slave--a chattel in her husband's power, so that he can sell her, or gamble her away at faro?

It is true, of course, that you would have had to pay me twenty thousand ducats if the Queen had won, so that I have lost the right to make any objection if my wife chooses to leave me and go away with you.

Come home with me, and despair when my wife repulses with horror the man whom she would have to follow as a dishonoured mistress.'

"'Despair yourself, Chevalier!' said the Colonel with a scornful laugh, 'when Angela turns from you with horror---from you, the miserable wretch who has brought her to beggary--and throws herself into my arms with eager rapture; despair yourself, when you find that the Church's benediction unites us--that fate crowns our most eager desires. You say I must be mad!--Ha, ha! All I wanted was to gain power of veto. I knew of a certainty that your wife belonged to me. Ho, ho, Chevalier! Let me tell you that your wife loves me--me--unutterably, to my certain knowledge. Let me tell you that I am that Duvernet, the neighbour's son, brought up with Angela, united to her in the warmest affection, which you, with your devilish artifices, dispelled. Alas! it was not till I had to depart on field service that Angela knew what I was to her. I know the whole matter. It was too late then. But the dark spirit told me that I should succeed in ruining you at play--that was why I devoted myself to it and followed you to Genoa. And I have done it!--come now to your wife!'

"The Chevalier stood like one annihilated, stricken by a thousand burning lightnings. The mystery so long sealed to him was explained.

Now, for the first time, he saw the full extent of the misfortunes which he had brought upon poor Angela.

"'My wife shall make her decision,' he said in a hollow tone, and followed the Colonel, who stormed away.

"When they came to the house, and the Colonel seized the handle of Angela's door, the Chevalier thrust him back, saying, 'My wife is in a sweet sleep; would you awaken her?'

"'Ha!' said the Colonel. 'Has Angela ever been in a sweet sleep since you brought nameless misery upon her?'

"He was about to enter the room, but the Chevalier prostrated himself at his feet, and cried, in utter despair, 'Have some mercy! You have made me a beggar! Leave me my wife!'

"'So lay old Vertua at _your_ feet, unfeeling monster that you were, and could not move your stony heart. Therefore, may the vengeance of Heaven be upon you!'

"So saying, the Colonel again turned towards Angela's room.

"The Chevalier sprang to the door, burst it open, dashed up to the bed where his wife was lying, drew the curtains aside, cried 'Angela!

Angela!'--bent over her--took her hand--shuddered like one convulsed in the death agony, and cried out in a terrible voice--

"'See here! What you have won from me is my wife's corpse!'

"The Colonel hurried to the bedside in terror. There was no trace of life. Angela was dead.

"The Colonel raised his clenched hands to heaven, and rushed away with a hollow cry. He was no more seen."

It was thus that the stranger finished his narrative, and having done so, he went quickly away, before the Baron, much moved by it, was able to utter any word.

A day or two afterwards the stranger was found insensible in his room, stricken by apoplexy. He was speechless till his death, which happened in a few hours. His papers showed that, though he was known by the name of Bauda.s.son, he really was none other than the unfortunate Chevalier Menars.

The Baron recognized the warning of Heaven which had brought the Chevalier Menars to him just when he was nearing the abyss, and he took a solemn vow that he would resist all the temptations of the deceptive Gambler's Fortune. Hitherto he has kept his vow.

"Would one not suppose," said Lothair, when Theodore had ended, "that you were a man who knew all about gambling, and were great at all those games yourself, though perhaps your conscience might now and then give you a slap in the face? and yet I know very well that you never touch a card."

"That is quite the case," said Theodore. "And yet I derived much a.s.sistance, in my story, from a strange experience which I had myself once."

"It would be the best _finale_ to your tale," said Ottmar, "to tell us this said experience of yours."

"You know," said Theodore, "that when I was finishing my education I lived for some time with an old uncle of mine in G----. There was a certain friend of this uncle's who, though our ages were very different, took a great pleasure in my society, chiefly, perhaps, because at that time I was always filled with a brilliant vein of humour, sometimes amounting to the mischievous. This gentleman was, I can a.s.sure you, one of the most extraordinary characters I ever came across. Mean in all the relationships of life, ill-tempered, grumbling, sulky, with a great tendency to miserliness, he had the utmost appreciation for everything in the shape of fun and amus.e.m.e.nt. To use a French expression, he was in the highest degree _amusable_, but not in the least _amusant_. At the same time he was excessively vain, and one form of his vanity was that he was always dressed in the utmost extremity of the prevailing fashion, almost to a ludicrous extent.

And there was a similar absurdity about his manner of hunting after every species of enjoyment in the very sweat of his brow, so to speak--striving, with a comic eagerness, to gulp down as much of it as he possibly could grasp. I remember so well three particular instances of this vanity and struggle for enjoyment of his that I must tell them to you. Picture to yourselves this man, being at a place among the hills, and invited by some people (ladies being among them), to go on a walking expedition to see some waterfalls in the neighbourhood, dressing himself for the occasion in a bran new silk coat, never worn before, with beautiful shining steel b.u.t.tons, and white silk stockings, shoes with steel buckles, and his finest rings on his fingers. In the thickest part of the pine forest which had to be pa.s.sed through, a tremendous thunderstorm came on; the rain fell in torrents, the brooks, swollen by the rain, came rushing over the paths. You can well imagine the state my poor friend found himself in very soon.

"It chanced that the tower of the Dominican Church at G---- was one night struck by lightning. My friend was in raptures with the grand fire-pillar which arose in the darkness, magically illuminating all the country round; but he soon came to the conclusion that to get the real picturesque effect of it in all its perfection, it would be the right thing to go and look at it from a certain rising ground just outside the town. So he set off as quickly as his carefulness in such matters would permit him, not forgetting to put a packet of macaroons and a flask of wine into certain of his pockets, or to carry a beautiful bouquet of flowers in his hand, and a camp stool under his arm. Thus equipped, he paced calmly out of the city gate and up on to the eminence, where he sat himself down to enjoy the spectacle, smelling at his bouquet, munching a macaroon, washing that down with a mouthful of wine, in the most complete, beatific, quiescent state of enjoyment.

Really this fellow was--taking him all round----"

"Stop! stop!" cried Lothair, "you were going to tell us the adventure of your own which helped you in writing your 'Gamester's Fortune,' and you cannot get away from a fellow who seems to have been as ludicrous as repulsive to every ordinarily const.i.tuted person's feelings."

"You must not blame me," said Theodore, "for lingering over this personage who was so intimately brought into connection with my life.

But, to business!--this man whom I have been describing to you invited me to make a trip with him to a certain watering place, and, although I saw quite clearly that I was to play the _role_ of soother, calmer, tranquilizer, and _maitre-de-plaisirs_ to him, I was quite satisfied to make this charming excursion amongst the mountains at his expense. At the watering-place there was some high play going on--a bank of several thousand thalers. My companion eyed the heaps of gold with greedy simpers, paced up and down the room, circled nearer and nearer to the play table, dived into his pockets, brought out a Friedrich-d'or between his finger and thumb, dropped it back again--in a word, l.u.s.ted for money. Only too glad would he have been to pocket a little haul from that heaped-up treasure, but he had no belief in his star. At last he put an end to this droll contest between his longings and his fears, which brought the perspiration in drops on to his forehead, by begging me to stake for him, to which end he put five or six Friedrichs-d'or into my hand. However, I would have nothing to do with the arrangement until he a.s.sured me that he had not the least belief that he would have any luck whatever, but looked upon the sum which he staked as so much lost cash. What happened was what I did not in the least degree expect.

To me, the unpractised, inexperienced player, fortune was propitious.

I won for my friend in a very short time something like thirty Friedrichs-d'or, which he put in his pocket with much glee. Next evening he wanted me to play for him again, but to this hour I cannot explain how the idea came into my head that I should then play on my own account. I had not had the slightest intention of playing any more, nay, rather, I was on the very point of going away, out of the room, to take a walk outside, when my friend came up to me with his request.

When I had plainly told him in set terms that I meant to play on my own account (but not till then), I walked calmly up to the table and pulled out of my little waistcoat pocket two Friedrichs-d'or, the only two which I possessed. If fortune had been propitious to me the night before, this time it seemed as if some Spirit of Might, at whose command luck stood, was in covenant with me. Whatever I did, whatever I staked upon, everything turned up in my favour---in fact, just as I said in my story, what happened at first to Baron Siegfried happened to me. My brain reeled! When a fresh haul of money was handed over to me I often felt as if I were in a dream, and should be sure to wake up just as I was pocketing my winnings. When the clock struck two the game came to an end as usual.

"Just as I was leaving the room, an old officer took me by the shoulder, and said, transfixing me with a grave, powerful eye:

"'Young man, if you had known what you were about, you would have broken the banque. But if ever you do know about it, no doubt you will go to the devil, like all the rest.' He left me, without waiting for my answer.

"The day was breaking when I got to my room, and emptied the money out of all my pockets on to the table. Picture to yourselves the feelings of a mere boy, entirely dependent on his relatives, restricted to a miserable mite of an allowance of weekly pocket-money, who suddenly, as if at the wave of a magic wand, finds himself in possession of a sum which is, at all events, considerable enough to appear, in his eyes, a fortune! But, as I gazed at the heaps of coin, all my mind was suddenly filled with an anxiety, a strange, alarmed uneasiness, which put me into a cold perspiration. The words of the old officer came back to me, as they had not struck me before, in the most terrible significance. I felt as though the coin which was blinking at me there on the table was the earnest money of a bargain whereby I had sold my soul to the powers of darkness, so that there was no escape more for it possible, and it was destroyed for evermore. The blossoms of my life seemed to be gnawed upon by a hidden worm, and I sank into inconsolable despair. The morning dawn was flaming up behind the eastern hills. I lay down in the window-seat. I gazed, with the most intense longing, for the rising of the sun which should drive away the darksome spirits of night; and when the woods and plains shone forth in his golden glory, it was day in my soul once more, and there came to me the most inspiriting sense of a power to resist all temptation, and shield my life from that demoniacal impulse, which was full of the power of--somehow and somewhere--impelling it to utter destruction. I made then a most sacred vow that I would never touch a card again, and that vow I have kept most strictly. And the first use I made of my money was to part from my friend, to his immense surprise, and set out on that excursion to Dresden, Prague, and Vienna, of which I have told you."

"I can well imagine," said Sylvester, "the impression which your unexpected, equivocal, most questionable luck must have made upon you.

It was greatly to your credit that you resisted the temptation, and that you recognized how it was that the threatening danger lay in the very luck itself. But, allow me to say, your own tale, the manner in which you have, with such accuracy, characterized the real gambler in it, must make it plain to yourself that you never had within you the true love of gambling, and that, if you had, the courage which you displayed would have been very difficult, perhaps impossible. Vincent, who, I believe, knows a great deal more about such matters than the rest of us, will agree with me here, I think."

"As for me," said Vincent, "I was scarcely attending to Theodore's account of his luck at the faro-table, because my mind was so full of that delicious fellow who walked about the hills in silk stockings, and admired burning buildings as if they were so many pictures, enjoying his wine, his macaroons, and his bouquets all the time. In fact, it was a pleasure and satisfaction to me to see one entertaining character at last emerging out of the dark, dreadful background of the stories of this evening, and I should have liked to have seen him as the hero of some comic drama."

"Ought not the mere suggestion of him to have been enough for us?"

said Lothair. "We Serapion Brethren ought always to remember that it is our duty to set up, for each other's entertainment and refreshment, unique characters which we may have come across in life, as a means of refreshing us after the tales which may have strained our attention."

"A good idea," said Vincent, "and I thoroughly agree with it. Rough sketches of that description ought to serve as studies for more finished pictures, which whoever chooses may elaborate after his liking. Also, they may be considered as being charitable contributions to the general fund of Serapionish fantasy. And to show that I am in earnest, I shall at once proceed to describe to you a very great 'Curio' of a man whom I came across in the south of Germany. One day, in B----, I chanced to be walking in a wood near the town, when I came upon a number of countrymen hard at work in cutting down a quant.i.ty of thick underwood, and snipping off the branches from the trees on either side of it. I do not know what made me inquire of them if they were making a new road, or what. They laughed, and told me that, if I went on my way, I should find, outside the trees, upon a little rising ground, a little gentleman who would answer my questions, and, accordingly, I came there upon a little elderly gentleman, of pale complexion, in a great-coat, and with a travelling-cap on his head and a game-bag at his back, who was gazing fixedly through a telescope in the direction of the men who were cutting down the trees. When he saw me he shut up his telescope in a hurry, and said, eagerly, 'You have come through the wood, sir? Have you observed how the work is getting on?' I told him what I had seen. 'That's right, that's right,' he said; 'I've been here ever since three in the morning, and I was beginning to be afraid that those a.s.ses (and I pay them well, too) were leaving me in the lurch. But I have some hopes, now, that the view will come into sight at the expected time.' He drew out his telescope again, and gazed through it towards the wood. After a few minutes, some large branches came rustling down, and, as at the stroke of a magic wand, there opened up a prospect of distant mountains, a beautiful prospect, with the ruins of an old castle glowing in the beams of the setting sun. The gentleman gave expression to his extreme delight and gratification in one or two detached broken phrases; but when he had enjoyed the prospect for a good quarter of an hour, he put away his telescope and set off as fast as he could, without bidding me goodbye or taking the slightest notice of me. I afterwards heard that he was the Baron von B----, one of the most extraordinary fellows in existence, who, like the well-known Baron Grotthus, has been on a continual walking tour for several years, and has a mania for hunting after beautiful views. When he arrives at a place where, to get at a view, he thinks it is necessary to have trees cut down, or openings made in woodlands, he spares no cost to arrange matters with the proprietors, or to employ labourers. In fact, it is said that he once tried his utmost to have a set of farm buildings burned down, because he thought they interfered with the beauty of a prospect, and interrupted the view of the distance. He did not succeed in this particular undertaking. But whenever he did attain his object, he would gaze at his newly-arranged view for half an hour or so, at the outside, and then set off at such a pace that nothing could stop him, never coming back to the place again."

The friends were of one mind in the opinion that there is no possibility of imagining anything more marvellous or out of the common than that which comes before us in actual life, of its own accord.

"I am wonderfully delighted," said Cyprian, "that it chances to be in my power to add to your two oddities a third character, of whom I was told a short time ago by a well-known violinist, whom we all of us know very well. This third character of mine is none other than the Baron von B----, a man who lived in Berlin about the years 1789 and 1790, and was acknowledged to be one of the most extraordinary phenomenons ever met with in the world of music. For the sake of greater vividness, I will tell you the tale in the first person, as if I were the violinist concerned in it, and I hope my worthy Serapion brother Theodore won't take it amiss that I encroach, on this occasion, into his peculiar province.

"At the time when the Baron was living in Berlin," the violinist said, "I was a very young fellow, scarcely sixteen, and absorbed in the most zealous study of my instrument, to which I was devoted with all the powers and faculties of my body and soul. My worthy master, Concert-Meister Haak, who was excessively strict with me, was much content with my progress. He lauded the finish of my bowing, the correctness of my intonation, and he allowed me to play in the orchestra of the opera, and even in the King's chamber-concerts. On those occasions I often heard Haak talking with young Duport, with Ritter, and other great artists belonging to the orchestra, about the musical evenings which Baron von B---- was in the habit of having in his house. Such was the research and the taste connected with those evenings that the King himself often deigned to take part in them.

Mention was made of magnificent works of the old, nearly forgotten masters, which were nowhere else to be heard than at the Baron's, who, as regarded music for stringed instruments, possessed, probably, the most complete collection from the most ancient times down to the present day, in existence. Then they spoke of the marvellous hospitality which the Baron extended to artists, and they were all unanimous in concluding that he was the most bright and shining star which had ever risen in the musical horizon of Berlin.

"All this excited my curiosity, and made my teeth water; and all the more that, during these conversations, the artists drew their heads nearer together, and I gathered, from mysterious whispers and detached words and phrases, that there was talk of tuition in music, of giving of lessons. I fancied that, on Duport's face especially, there appeared a sarcastic smile, and that they all attacked Concert-Meister Haak with some piece of chaff, and that he, for his part, only feebly defending himself, could scarcely suppress a smile, until at last, turning quickly away, and taking up his violin to tune, he cried out, 'All the same, he is a first-rate fellow!'

"All this was more than I could withstand, and although I was told, in a pretty decided manner, to mind my own business, I begged Haak to allow me, if in any manner possible, to go with him to the Baron's and play in his concerts.

"Haak surveyed me with great eyes, and I feared that a little thunderstorm was going to burst out upon me. But his seriousness melted into a strange smile, and he said: