The Lost Manuscript: A Novel

The Proprietor, however, maintained an obstinate silence regarding the manuscript. If the Doctor threw out any hint upon the subject, the host made a wry grimace and immediately changed the conversation. It was necessary to put an end to this. The Doctor now determined to insist upon a decision before his departure. When, therefore, they were sitting together in the garden in the evening, and the Proprietor was looking cheerfully and calmly on his fruit trees, the Doctor began the attack:

"I cannot leave this place, my hospitable friend, without reminding you of our contract."

"Of what contract?" inquired their host, like one who did not remember it.

"Regarding the manuscript," continued the Doctor, with emphasis, "which lies concealed in this place."

"Indeed! why you yourself said that every place sounds hollow. So we would have to tear down the house from roof to cellar. I should think we might wait till next spring. When you come to us again; for we should be obliged, under these circumstances, to live in the barns, which now are full."

"The house may, for the present, remain standing," said the Doctor; "but if you still think that the monks took away their monastic property, there is one circumstance which goes against your view. We have discovered at Rossau that the worthy friar, who had concealed the things here in April, died of the pestilence as early as May, according to the church register; here is a 'copy of the entry.'"

The Proprietor looked at the Doctor's memorandum book, closed it and said: "Then his brother monks have taken away the property."

"That is scarcely possible," replied the Doctor, "for he was the last of his order in the monastery."

"Then some of the city people have taken it."

"But the inhabitants of the town abandoned it then, and the place lay for years desolate, in ruins and uninhabited."

"Humph!" began the Proprietor, in good humor; "the learned gentlemen are strict creditors and know how to insists upon their rights. Tell me straightforwardly what you want of me. You must, first of all, point out to me some place that appears suspicious, not only to you, but also to the judgment of others; and that you cannot do with any certainty."

"I know of such a place," answered the Doctor, boldly, "and I wish to suggest to you that the treasure lies there."

The Professor and the Proprietor looked on him with astonishment.

"Follow me into the cellar," cried the Doctor.

A candle was lighted; the Doctor led the way to the place where the wine lay.

"What gives you such victorious confidence?" inquired the Professor, on the way, in a low voice.

"I suspect that you have your secrets," replied the Doctor; "permit me to have mine."

He quickly removed the bottles from the corner, threw the light on the stone, and knocked on the wall with a large key.

"The place is hollow and the stone has a peculiar mark."

"It is true," said the Proprietor; "there is an empty space behind it; it is certainly not small. But the stone is one of the foundation stones of the house, and has not the appearance of ever having been removed from its place."

"After so long a time, it would be difficult to determine that," rejoined the Doctor.

The Proprietor examined the wall himself.

"A large slab lies over it. It would, perhaps, be possible to raise the marked stone from its place." He considered for a moment, and then continued: "I see I must let you have your own way. I will thus make compensation for the first hour of our acquaintance, which has always lain heavy on my conscience. As we three are here in the cellar like conspirators, we will enter into an agreement. I will at once do what I consider to be very useless. In return, whenever you speak or write upon the subject, you must not refuse to bear testimony that I have given in to every reasonable wish."

"We shall see what can be done," replied the Doctor.

"Very well. In the stone quarry at the extremity of my property I have some extra hands at work; they shall remove the stone and then restore it to its place. Thus, I hope, the affair will be forever settled. Ilse, early in the morning let the shelving be removed from the wine-cellar."

The following day the stone-masons came, and the three gentlemen and Ilse descended into the cellar, and looked on curiously while the men exerted their power with pickaxe and crowbar on the square stone. It was placed upon the rock, and great exertions were necessary to loosen it. But the people themselves declared that there was a great cavity behind, and worked with a zeal that was increased by the repute of the haunted house. At last the stone was moved and a dark opening became visible. The spectators approached-both the scholars in anxious suspense; their host and his daughter also full of expectation. One of the stone-masons hastily seized the light and held it before the opening. A slight vapor came out; the man drew back alarmed.

"There is something white in there," he cried, full of fear and hope.

Ilse looked at the Professor, who with difficulty controlled the excitement that worked in his face. He grasped the light, but she kept it from him, and cried out, anxiously: "Not you." She hastened to the opening and thrust her hand into the hollow space. She laid hold of something tangible. A rattling was heard; she quickly withdrew her hand; but, terrified threw what she had laid hold of on the ground. It was a bone.

All gazed in horror at the object on the ground.

"This is a serious answer to your question," exclaimed the Proprietor. "We pay a dear price for our sport."

He took the light and himself searched the opening; a heap of bones lay there. The others stood around in uncomfortable silence. At last the Proprietor threw a skull out into the cellar, and cried out cheerfully, as a man who is relieved from painful feeling:

"They are the bones of a dog!"

"It was a small dog," assented the stone-mason, striking the bone with his pick. The rotten bone broke in pieces.

"A dog!" cried the Doctor, delighted, forgetting for a moment his blighted hope. "That is instructive. The foundation wall of this house must be very old."

"I am rejoiced that you are contented with this discovery," replied the Proprietor, ironically.

But the Doctor would not be disconcerted, and related how, in the early middle ages, there had been a superstitious custom of enclosing something living in the foundation-wall of solid buildings. The custom descended from the ancient heathen times. The cases were rare where such things were found in old buildings, and the skeleton now found was an indisputable confirmation of the custom.

"If it confirms your views," said the Proprietor, "it confirms mine also. Hasten, men, to replace the stone."

Then the stone-mason lighted up and felt again in the opening and declared that there was nothing more there. The workmen restored the stone to its place, the wine was replaced and the matter settled. The Doctor bore the jeering remarks, of which the Proprietor was not sparing, with great tranquillity, and said to him:

"What we have discovered is certainly not much; but we know now with certainty that the manuscript is not to be found in this part of your house, but in some other. I take with me a careful record of all the hollow places in your house, and we do not give up out claims in regard to this discovery; but we consider you from now on as a man who has borrowed the manuscript for his own private use for an indefinite time, and I assure you that our wishes and desires will incessantly hover about this building."

"Pray allow the persons who dwell there to participate in your good wishes," replied the Proprietor, smiling, "and do not forget that in your researches after the manuscript you have in reality found the dog. For the rest, I hope that this discovery will free my house from the ill-repute of containing treasures, and for the sake of this gain I will be quite content with the useless work."

"That is the greatest error of your life," replied the Doctor, with grave consideration; "just the reverse will take place. All people who have an inclination for hidden treasure will take the discovery in this light, that you are deficient in faith and have not employed the necessary solemnities, therefore the treasure is removed from your eyes and the dog placed there as a punishment. I know better than you what your neighbors will record for posterity. Tarry in peace for your awakening, Tacitus! Your most steadfast friend departs, and he whom I leave behind begins to make undue concessions to this household."

He looked earnestly at the Professor and called Hans to accompany him on a visit to the village, in order to take a grateful leave of his old crones, and to obtain one of the beautiful songs of the people, of which he had discovered traces, to take home with him.

He was gone a long time; for after the song there came to light unexpectedly a wonderful story of a certain Sir Dietrich and his horse, which breathed fire.

When, toward evening, the Professor was looking out for him, he met Ilse who, with her straw hat in her hand, was prepared for a walk.

"If you like," she said, "we will go to meet your friend."

They walked along a meadow between stubble-fields, in which here and there grass was to be seen peeping up amongst the stubble.

"The autumn approaches," remarked the Professor; "that is the first sign."

"Winter-time is tedious to some people," answered Ilse, "but it puts us, like Till Eulenspiegel, in good spirits, for we enjoy its repose, and think of the approaching spring; and when the stormy winds rage round us, and the snow drifts to a man's height in the valleys, we sit at home in warmth and comfort."

"With us in the city the winter passes away almost unheeded. The short days and the white roofs alone remind us of it, for our work goes on independently of changing seasons. Yet the fall of the leaf has from my childhood been depressing to me, and in the spring I always desire to throw aside my books and ramble through the country like a traveling journeyman."

They were standing by a bundle of sheaves. Ilse arranged some of them as a seat, and looked over the fields to the distant hills.

"How different it is with us here," she began after a pause. "We are like the birds which year after year joyously flap their wings and live in contentment. But you think and care about other times and other men that existed long before us. You are as familiar with the past as we are with the rising of the sun and the forms of the stars. If the end of summer is sorrowful to you, it is equally as sorrowful to me to hear and read of past times. Books of history make me very sad. There is so much unhappiness on earth, and it is always the good that come to a sorrowful end. I then become presumptuous, and ask why God has thus ordered it? It is really very foolish to feel thus. But for that reason I do not like to read history."

"I well understand that frame of mind," answered the Professor. "For wherever men seek to enforce their will in opposition to their time and nation, invariably they meet the fate that befalls the weak. Even that which the strongest accomplish has no permanent lastingness. And as men and their works disappear, so do peoples. But we should not irrevocably attach our hearts to the fate of a single man or a single nation, we should rather strive to understand why they have grown great, and why they have perished, and what was the abiding gain that through their life the human race has eternally won. The account of their fortunes will then become but a veil, behind which we discover the operation of other forces and powers of life. We learn that in the men that succumb in this great struggle and in the nations that decline, a still higher hidden life dominates, which lives on creating and destroying in rigid accordance with eternal laws. To discover the laws of this higher life and to feel, to experience the blessing that this creating and destruction has brought into our existence, that is the duty and the ambition of the historian. From this point of view dissolution and death are transformation into new life. And they who have learned thus to look upon and observe the past-for them its study increases their security and ennobles their heart."

Ilse shook her head and cast down her eyes.

"And the Roman whose lost book brought you to us, and of which you have been talking to-day-is he interesting to you because he looked upon the world in the cheerful light that you do?"

"No," answered the Professor, "it is just the reverse that impresses one in his work. His serious mind was never borne aloft by joyful confidence. The fate of his nation, the future of men, lay like a dark impenetrable riddle heavily upon his soul. In the past he saw a better time, freer government, stronger men, purer morals. In his own people and his own state he saw decadence and dissolution, which even good rulers no longer could retard. It is affecting to see how that high-minded, thoughtful man struggled in doubt. For he doubted whether the horrible fate of millions was the punishment of the Deity or the consequence that no God cared for the lot of mortals. Forebodingly and ironically he contemplates the history of individuals. To him the course of wisdom seems to be to bear the inevitable silently and patiently. When, even for a moment, a brief smile curls his lips, one perceives that he is looking into a hopeless desert; one can imagine fear visible in his eyes, and the rigid expression which remains on one who has been shaken to the innermost core by deadly horrors."

"That is sad," exclaimed Ilse.

"Yes, it is fearful. And it is difficult to understand how any one could endure life, burdened by such despair. The joyful satisfaction of belonging to a nation of growing vigor was not then the lot of either heathen or Christian. It is the highest and most indestructible happiness of man to have confidence in that which exists, and to look with hope to the future. And such is our life now. Much that is weak, corrupt, and perishable surrounds us. But with it all there is growing up an endless abundance of youthful vigor. The root and the trunk of our popular life are sound. Everywhere do we find sincerity in family-life, respect for morals and law, sturdy and solid labor, everywhere energetic activity. In many thousands we find the consciousness that they are increasing the national strength, and in millions that are still far behind them the feeling that they also are laboring to contribute to our civilization. This is our pleasure and glory in modern times, and helps to make us valiant and proud. We well know, indeed, that the joyful feeling of this possession may also be saddened; for temporary disturbances come to every nation in the course of its development. But its progress and prosperity of thriving cannot be thwarted, nor its career hindered, so long as these securities of power and soundness exist. It is this that gives happiness to him whose vocation it is to investigate the past, for he looks down from the salubrious air of the heights into the darkness beneath him."

Ilse gazed on him with wonder and admiration, but he bent over the sheaves which were between them and continued with enthusiasm:

"Each one of us derives the judgment and habit of mind with which he regards the great relations of the world, from the sphere of his own personal experience. Look about you. Here at the laughing summer landscape, yonder at the busy workingmen, and then at that which lies nearest your heart-at your own home and the circle in which you have grown to womanhood. How gentle the light, how warm the hearts, how wise and good and true the minds that surround you! And think what an inestimable gain it is for me, to see this, and to enjoy it-enjoy it by your side. And when, poring over my books, I hereafter shall vividly feel how valiant and noble, how sturdy and true is the life of my countrymen about me, I shall evermore in my inmost heart pay, for that, a tribute of thankfulness to you."

He stretched out his hand across the sheaves; Ilse seized it, and clasped it between hers. A warm tear fell upon it. She looked at him with her moistened eyes, while a world of happiness lay in her countenance. Gradually a bright glow suffused her cheeks, she rose, and a look full of devoted tenderness fell upon him; then she walked hastily away from him adown the meadow.

The Professor remained leaning against the sheaves. The meadow-larks on the tips of the ears of grain over his head warbled joyfully. He pressed his cheek against the stack which half concealed him; thus, in happy forgetfulness, he watched the girl descending toward the distant laborers.

When he raised his eyes his friend was standing by him; he beheld a countenance which quivered with inward sympathy, and heard the gentle question:

"What will come of it?"

"Husband and wife," said the Professor decidedly; he pressed his friend's hands, and strode across the fields to the songs of the larks which greeted him from every sheaf.

Fritz was alone. The word had been spoken. A new and awful fate overshadowed the life of his friend. So this was to be the end of it? Thusnelda, instead of Tacitus! Fritz felt alas! that the social custom of marriage might be a very venerable institution. It was inevitable that most men pass through the uprooting struggle which is the consequence of a change in the mutual relations of life. He could not think of his friend amid his books, with his colleagues, and this woman. He felt painfully that his relation to the Professor must be changed by it. But he did not think long of himself, but anxiously worried about his rash friend; and not less about her who had so dangerously impressed the soul of the other. The faithful rash friend looked angrily upon the surrounding stubble and straw, and he clenched his fists against the deceased Bachhuber; against the valley of Rossau; nay, even against the immediate cause of this mischievous confusion-against the manuscript of Tacitus.

CHAPTER IX.

ILSE

Since the death of her mother Ilse had lived an unvaried home life. Though then scarcely grown up, she had taken charge of the household. Spring and autumn came and went. One year rolled over her head like another. Her father and sisters, the estate, the laborers, and the poor of the valley-these formed her life. More than once a suitor, a sturdy, worthy proprietor of the neighborhood, had asked her hand in marriage. But she felt contented with her home, and she knew that her father wished her to remain with him. In the evening, when the active man rested on the sofa, and the children were sent to bed she sat silently by him with her embroidery, or talked over the small occurrences of the day-the illness of a laborer, the damage done by a hail storm or the name of the new milch cow. It was a lonely country. Much of it was woodland. Most of the estates were small. There were no rich neighbors. And the father, who had worked his way by his energy until he became an opulent man, had no inclination for society life, nor had his daughter. On Sunday the Pastor came to dinner, and then the father's farm-inspectors remained and related the little gossip of the neighborhood over their coffee; the children, who, during the week, were under the charge of a tutor, amused themselves in the garden and fields. When Ilse had a leisure hour she seated herself in her own little sitting-room with a book out of her father's small library-a novel by Walter Scott, a tale by Hauff, or a volume of Schiller.

But now a profusion of thoughts, images, and feeling had been awakened in her mind by this stranger. Much that she had hitherto looked upon with indifference in the outer world now became interesting to her. Like fire-works which unexpectedly shoot up, illuminating particular spots in the landscape with their colored light, his conversation threw a fascinating light, now here and now there, on a life that was strange to her. When he spoke, when his words, copious and choice, flowed from his innermost heart-she bent her head as in a dream, then fixed her eyes on his face. She felt a respect commingled with fear for a human mind that soared so loftily and firmly above the earth. He spoke of the past as intimately as of the present; he knew how to explain the secret thoughts of men who had lived a thousand years ago. Ah! she felt the glory and greatness of human learning to be the merit and greatness of the man who sat opposite to her. The intellectual labor of the centuries appeared to her as a supernatural being which proclaimed from a human mouth things unheard of in her home.

But it was not learning alone. When she looked up at him, she saw beaming eyes, a kindly expression about the eloquent lips, and she felt herself irresistibly attracted by the warmth of the man's nature. Then she sat opposite to him as a quiet listener. But when she entered her room, she knelt down and covered her face with her hands. In this solitude she saw him before her and offered him homage.

Thus she awoke to a new life. It was a state of pure enthusiasm, of unselfish rapture, such as a man knows not and only a woman can experience, – which comes only to a pure, innocent heart when the greatest crisis of earthly existence visits a sensitive soul in the bloom of life.

She saw also that her father was partially under the same magical influence. At dinner, which used to be so silent, conversation now flowed as from a living spring; in the evening, when formerly he used to sit wearily over the newspaper, many things were now discussed, and there were frequent disputes which lasted late into the night. Her father, when he took his bedroom candle from the table, was always in cheerful humor; and more than once he repeated to himself, pacing up and down, sentences that had been uttered by his guest. "He is, in his way, a fine man," he said; "in all things stable and sound; one always knows how to take him."

Occasionally she was alarmed at the Professor's opinions. The two friends, indeed, avoided what might wound the deep faith of their gentle hearer, but in the conversation of the Professor there sometimes seemed to lie hidden a different conception of venerated doctrines and of human duties; and yet, what he maintained was so noble and good that she could not guard herself against it by her own reasoning.

He was often vehement in his expressions; when he condemned a thing he did it in forcible language, and sometimes became so vehement that the Doctor and even her father withdrew from the contest. She thought then that he was different from almost all men-prouder, nobler, and more decided. When he expected much of others, as is natural to one who has lived in closer intercourse with the ideal world than with real life, it alarmed her to think in what light she must appear to him. But, on the other hand, this same man was ready to acknowledge everything that was good, and he rejoiced like a child when he learned that any one had shown himself brave and energetic.

He was a serious man, and yet he had become a favorite with the children, even more than the Doctor. They confided their little secrets to him, he visited them in their nursery, and gave them advice according to his youthful recollections, as to how they should make a large paper kite; he himself painted the eyes and the mustache, and cut the tassels for the tail. It was a joyful day when the kite rose from the stubble-field for the first time. Then, when evening came, he sat down, surrounded by the children, like the partridge amongst her young. Franz climbed up the arm-chair and played with his hair; one of the bigger ones sat on each knee. Then riddles were propounded and stories told. And when Ilse heard how he repeated and taught small rhymes to the children, her heart swelled with joy that such a mind should hold such intimate intercourse with simple children. And she watched his countenance and saw a child-like expression light up the features of the man, laughing and happy; and she imagined him as a little boy, sitting on his mother's lap. Happy mother!

Then came the hour among the sheaves, the learned discourse which began with Tacitus and ended with a silent acknowledgment of love. The blessed cheerfulness of his countenance, the trembling sound of his voice, had torn away the veil that concealed her own agitated feelings. She now knew that she loved him deeply and eternally, and she had a conviction that he felt just as she did. He, who was so greatly her superior, had condescended to her; she had felt his warm breath and the quick pressure of his hand. As she passed through the field, a glow suffused her cheeks; the earth and heaven, fields and sun-lit wood, floated before her like luminous clouds. With winged feet she hastened down into the woody plain, where the foliage enveloped her. Now she felt herself alone. She unconsciously grasped a slender birch tree, which shook beneath her convulsive grasp, until its leaves fell in a shower around her. She raised her hands to the golden light of the heavens and threw herself down on the mossy ground. Her bosom heaved and panted violently and she trembled with inward excitement. Love had descended from heaven upon the young woman, taking possession of her body and soul with its irresistible power.