The Lost Manuscript: A Novel

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 noble. 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 assistance of others, in every index of words that you have drawn up for a classical 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, assiduous 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 mass 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 assiduous assistant, and at the same time a deceiver, bold and mocking like a devil."

"I was a tortured man," began Knips. "He who has lived otherwise does not know how difficult it is, in the service of science, to be ever following in the foot-steps of others. You have never worked for others who knew less than yourself. You do not understand the feeling that possesses one when others use haughtily, without acknowledgement and without thanks, what one has given them from one's own knowledge. I am not insensible to friendship. The Professor was the first who, in the last lines of the introduction of his maiden work, mentioned my name because I had been of use to him. And yet I have done less for you than any other of my old patrons. The copy which you then gave me I have put in the place of honor among my books. Whenever I have felt tired from my night's work I have read those lines; I have seldom experienced the like kindliness. But I have felt the torment of having more knowledge than I had credit for, and I have had no opportunity to work my way out of my narrow sphere. That has been the cause of all."

The Magister suddenly stopped.

"It was pride," said the Professor, sorrowfully, "it was envy, that burst forth from an oppressed life against more fortunate ones, who, perhaps, did not know more; it was the craving for superiority over others."

"It was that," continued Knips, plaintively. "First came the idea of mocking those who employed and despised me. I thought, if I chose, I had you in my power, my learned colleagues. Then it became a purpose and took fast hold on me. I have sat many nights working at it before I went so far, and frequently have I thrown away what I have done, Professor, and hid it under my books. But I was allured to go on, it became my pride to master the art. When at last I had done so, it was a pleasure to me to make use of it. It was less for the gain than for the superiority it gave me."

"It is easy," replied the Professor, "to deceive men of our sort where they are accustomed to place firm confidence. Where the acuteness that we acquire in our work is not brought into play, many of us are like children, and he who is colder and wishes to deceive may easily for a time play with us. It is a weak glory to exercise the art of Satan against the innocent."

"I knew that it was a devil with whom I was dealing; I knew it from the first day, Professor, but I could not guard myself from him. Thus it was," concluded Knips, seating himself exhausted on the chest.

"Thus it was, Magister," exclaimed Werner, raising himself up; "but thus it cannot remain. You were one of us, you can no longer be so. You have done an injury to the highest good which is granted to the race of man-the honor of learning. You yourself knew that he who endangers this honor is a mortal enemy to our souls. In our realm, where error daily threatens the limited powers of individuals, the determination to be true is a preliminary which none can be wanting in, without involving others in his own destruction."

"I was only an assistant," sighed Knips, "and few cared about me. If others had esteemed me as a scholar it would not have happened."

"You considered yourself so, and you had a right to do so," rejoined the Professor. "You felt the pride of your learning, and you well knew your high vocation. You well knew that you also, the humble Magister, had your share in the priestly office and in the princely office of our realm. No purple is nobler, no rule is more sovereign than ours. We lead the souls of our nation from one century to another; and ours is the duty of watching over its learning and over its thoughts. We are its champions against the lies and spirits of a past time which wander amongst us clothed with the semblance of life. What we consecrate, lives; and what we condemn, passes away. The old virtues of the Apostles are required of us-to esteem little what is earthly, and to proclaim the truth. You were in this sense consecrated, like every one of us; your life was pledged to God. On you, as on all of us, lay the responsibility for the souls of our nation. You have proved yourself unworthy of this office, and I grieve, I grieve, wretched man, that I must separate you from it."

The Magister jumped up, and looked imploringly at the Scholar.

The Professor spoke impressively:

"It is my duty both towards you and others to speak out. What you have done to my fellow professors, and what you have prepared for similar attempts, cannot remain secret. Honorable men must be warned against the art which you have been led by a demon to exercise. But in this last hour in which you stand before me, I feel that I have done too little to help you against temptation. Without intending to be unkind, I have perhaps sometimes undervalued you, in comparison with others, and have forgotten how hard was your daily life. If you have ever felt depressed and embittered by my severity, I now atone for it. For when I, short-sighted, erring man, advised you to accept a position which was to raise you out of external need, I participated in your guilt, by exposing you to new temptation here. That gives me bitter pain, Magister, and I feel the anguish of this hour."

Magister Knips sat exhausted and cowering on the chest: the Scholar stood over him, and his words sank like blows on the Magister's head.

"I cannot conceal the fact, Magister, that you are a forger; you can never again move in our circle; your career is closed by your transgression, you are lost to learning, lost to all who took an interest in your work. You have vanished from the place which you held amongst us; nothing remains but a black shadow. Human powers laboriously trained, a spirit of uncommon acuteness and fullness, are lost and dead to us; and I mourn over you as over a dead man."

The Scholar wept, and Knips covered his face with his hands. Werner hastened to his writing-table.

"If you require means to maintain your ruined life in some other neighborhood, here it is. Take what you require."

He threw some money on the table.

"Try to conceal yourself where no member of our community will meet you. May all the good become your portion, which is still possible for you to have on earth. But fly, Magister; avoid those places where one shall think of you with the sorrow and repugnance that the faithful workman feels towards one who is untrue."

Knips rose; his face was paler than usual, and he looked distractedly about him.

"I need no money," he said, with faint voice; "I have enough for my journey. I beg of the Professor to care for my mother."

The Scholar turned away, the strong man sobbed. Magister Knips went to the door; there he stopped.

"I have the Homer of 1488; tell my mother to give you the book. Though the thought of me be painful, yet keep the book. It was a treasure to me."

The Magister closed the door and went slowly out of the house. The wind drove through the streets; it blew against the back of the Magister, and hastened his steps.

"It drives," murmured Knips again; "it drives me onward."

At the open square he remained standing in the wind; looking towards the clouds, which were passing in hasty flight beneath the moon. Distorted figures hovered in the grey vapor and glided over his head. He thought of the last proof-sheets which he had read in his native town, and spoke some Greek words; they were verses from the Eumenides of Æschylus: -

"Rush on! rush on! rush on! ye messengers of vengeance!"

He went up to the castle, and remained standing before the lighted windows; the four black steeds which brought the Sovereign back from the tower castle to the city dashed past him, and he clenched his bony fist at the carriage. He then ran round the castle to the park side. There, against a tree, beneath the windows of the Sovereign's apartment, he cowered; looked up to the castle, and again raised his fist against the lord of it, and sighed. He looked up at the dark boughs that towered over him, gazed at the sky and the grey flitting shadows which coursed along under the moon, and desperate thoughts passed through his mind:

"When the moon vanishes that will be a token to me also."

He looked long at the moon. Amidst his wild thoughts a Latin sentence entered his confused brain: "'The moon and the earth are but as little points in the universe;' that is beautifully said by Ammianus Marcellinus. I have compared the manuscripts of this Roman; I have made conjectures on all sides with respect to his mutilated text; I have pored for years over him. If I do here, in order to vex this ignorant lord, what was done to Haman, all this preparation for my Roman would be lost."

He rushed from under the trees and ran to his dwelling. There he collected all his possessions, put his small copy of Ammianus into his pocket, and hastened with his bundle to the gate.

They say he went to the same country to which his brother had gone before him-far off in the West.

He passed away, he hid his head-an unfaithful servant, and at the same time a victim of science. All his life long he had pondered over written words; now the living words, which penetrated from another soul into his, drove him from his home. Day and night he had been surrounded with the letters of books and learned writings which had flowed from the pen on to the white sheets; but the blessing of living words which pass from the mouth to the ear, and echo from heart to heart, had failed him at the right time; for what is in common use with us is also our highest boon. Its power is as mysterious to us to-day as it was to our ancestors; the generation of our literary period, accustomed to contemplate tones in their imaginations, and to estimate the powers of nature by measure and weight, seldom think how powerfully the echoing word from the human heart rules within us; it is mistress and servant, it elevates and annihilates us, it produces disease and health. Happy the living being in whose ear it sounds full and pure, who incessantly receives the soft sound of love and the hearty call of friendship. He who is deprived of the blessing of the conversation which flows from warm hearts, wanders among others as a living being in whom the spirit is separated from the body, or like a book that one opens, makes use of, and puts away at pleasure. The Magister had sinned by the written word; a cry of agony uttered by a human voice had frightened him into the misty and silent distance.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

BEFORE THE CRISIS

The cattle lowed and the sheep-bells tinkled, and the springing blades of wheat waved in the wind. The eldest daughter of the family was again walking in the garden, surrounded by her brothers and sisters. What has become of the glad brightness of your eye and the hearty child's laugh, Lady Ilse? Your countenance has become serious and your demeanor subdued; your looks scan critically the men about you and the paths that you tread, and calm commands sound from your lips. Your home has not made your heart light, nor given you back again what you lost among strangers.

But it zealously exercises its right to be loved by you and to show you love; it recalls familiar images to your soul, and old recollections awake at every step; the people whom you fostered faithfully in your heart, the animals that you cared for, and the trees that you planted, greet you, and labor busily to cover with bright colors what lies gloomily within you.

The first evening was painful. When Ilse, accompanied by her neighbor, entered her home a fugitive, striving to conceal what tormented her, amidst the terror of her father and the inquisitive questions of her brothers and sisters, anger and dismay once more threw their black shadows over her. But on the breast of her father, under the roof of a secure house, together with the feeling of safety, her old energy revived, and she was able to conceal from the eyes of her loved ones that which was not her secret alone.

Another painful hour came. Ilse was sitting late in the evening, as years before, on her chair opposite her father. After her story was told, the strong man looked down anxiously, used hard words concerning her husband, and cursed the other. When he told her that even in her father's house danger threatened her, when he desired her to be cautious at every step, and when he told her that in her childhood there had been a dark rumor that a maiden from the house on the rock, a child of a former possessor, had been the victim of a distinguished prince, she raised her hands to heaven. Her father seized them and drew her towards him.

"We are wrong to forget in an uncertain future how mercifully Providence has guarded you. I hold you by the hand and you stand on the soil of your home. We must do what the day requires, and trust everything else to a higher Being. As for the talk of strangers we care not; they are weather-cocks. Be calm and have confidence."

The younger children chattered innocently; they asked about the charming life at the capital, they wished to know accurately what their sister had gone through, and above all how the Sovereign of the country had treated Ilse, he whom they thought of as a holy Christ, as the unwearied dispenser of joy and happiness. But the elder ones were more cautious in their language without exactly knowing why, with that kind of natural tact which children show towards those whom they love. Ilse accompanied her sister Clara through the upper floor, they arranged the room for the guests who were expected, and placed an immense bunch of flowers in the room which Mr. Hummel was to occupy. Her brothers took her through the kitchen-garden into the narrow valley, and showed her the new wooden bridge over the water to the grotto, which their father had built as a surprise for Ilse. Ilse passed by the swollen brook, the water rushed yellow and muddy over the rocks, it had overflowed the small strip of meadow by its banks and flowed in a strong stream down the valley to the town. Ilse sought the place where she once, under the foliage and wild plants, lay concealed, when she read in the eyes of her Felix the acknowledgement of his love. This cosy nook was also flooded; the stream ran muddily over it, the flowers were broken down and washed away, the alder bushes covered to their upper branches, and reeds and discolored foam hung round them: only the white stem of a birch rose out of the devastation, and the flood whirled round its lowest branches.

"The flood is passing away," said Ilse, sadly; "in a few days the ground will again be visible, and where the verdure has been injured the mild rays of the sun will soon restore it. But how will it be with me? There is no light so long as he is not with me, and when I see him again how he will be changed? How will he, so serious and zealous, bear the cold wind of adversity that has passed through his life and mine?"

Her father watched her carefully; he talked to her more frequently than formerly. Whenever he returned from the field he told her of the work that was doing on the farm; he was always taking care not to touch on thoughts that might give her pain, and the daughter felt how tender and loving was the attention of the busy man. Now he beckoned to her from a distance, and near him was walking a thick-set figure, with a large head and comfortable aspect.

"Mr. Hummel!" exclaimed Ilse, joyfully, and hastened with winged footsteps towards him. "When will he come?" she called out, with eager expectation.

"As soon as he is free," replied Hummel.

"Who detains him there?" said the wife, looking sorrowful.

Mr. Hummel explained. At his report the wrinkles on Ilse's forehead disappeared, and she led her guest into the old house. Mr. Hummel looked astonished at the tall race that had grown up on the rock: he looked with admiration on the girls and respectfully at the heads of the boys. Ilse did not to-day forget what becomes a good housewife in welcoming a guest. Mr. Hummel was happy among the country people, and delighted with the flowers in his room; he took the sprightly lad Franz upon his knee, and made him drink almost too much out of his glass. Then he went through the farm with the proprietor and Ilse; he was clever in his judgment, and he and his host recognized in each other sound common sense. At last Ilse asked him frankly how he was pleased with her home.

"Everything is magnificent," said Hummel; "the development of the family, their curly heads, the flowers, the cattle, and the domestic arrangements. Compared to the business of H. Hummel, it is like a gourd to a cucumber. Everything capacious and abundant, only to my taste there is too much straw."

Ilse was called aside by her father. "The Prince is preparing to depart. He has expressed a wish to speak to you first. Will you see him?"

"Not to-day. To-day belongs to you and our guest, but to-morrow," said Ilse.

On the morning of the day following, Professor Raschke entered his friend's room prepared for the journey.

"Has the Magister disappeared?" he asked, anxiously.

"He has done what he was obliged to do," replied Werner, gloomily. "Whatever his future life and fortune may be, we have done with him."

Raschke looked anxiously on the furrowed countenance of his colleague.

"I should like to see you on the road to your wife, and better still, with her on the road back to us."

"Have no doubt, friend, that I shall seek both roads as soon as I have a right to do so."

"Ilse counts the hours till your return," said Raschke, in still greater anxiety; "she will not be at rest till she has fast hold of her loved one."

"My wife has long been deprived of rest while she was with me," said the Scholar, "I have not understood how to defend her. I have exposed her to the claws of wild beasts. She has found from strangers the protection that her own husband refused her. The indifference of her husband has wounded her in that point which it is most difficult for a woman to forgive. I have become a mere, impotent dreamer," he exclaimed, "unworthy of the devotion of this pure soul, and I feel what a man never should feel-ashamed to meet my excellent wife again." He turned his face away.

"This feeling is too high-strained, and the reproaches that you angrily make yourself are too severe. You have been deceived by the cunning prevarication of a worldly wise man. You yourself have expressed that it is ingloriously easy to deceive us in things in which we are not cleverer than children. Werner, once more I entreat of you to depart with me immediately, even though by another road."

"No," replied the Scholar, decidedly; "I have all my life long been clear in my relations with other men. I cannot do things by halves. If I feel a liking, the pressure of my hand and the confidence that I give does not leave a moment's doubt of the state of my heart. If I must give up my relation to any one, I must have the reckoning fully closed. I cannot leave this place as a fugitive."

"Who demands that?" asked Raschke. "You only go like a man who turns his eyes away from a hateful worm that crawls before him on the ground."

"If the worm has injured the man, it is his duty to guard others from the danger of like injury, and if he cannot guard others, he ought to clear his own path.

"But if he incurs new danger in the attempt?

"Yet he must do what he can to satisfy himself," exclaimed Werner. "I will not allow myself to be robbed of the rights that I have against another. I am called upon by the insult to my wife; I am called upon by the ruined life of a scholar, whom we both lament. Say no more to me. Friend, my self-respect has been severely wounded, and with reason. I feel my weakness with a bitterness that is the just punishment for the pride with which I have looked upon the life of others. I have written to Struvelius, and begged his pardon for having so arrogantly treated him in the uncertainty that once disturbed his life. Here is my letter to our colleague. I beg you to give it to him, and to tell him that when we meet again I wish to have no words upon the past, only he must know how bitterly I have atoned for having been severe with him. But, however much patience and consideration I may require from others, I should lose the last thing that gives me courage to live, if I went from here without coming to a reckoning with the lord of that castle. I am no man of the world who has learnt to conceal his anger beneath courtly words."

"He who seeks to call a man to account," exclaimed Raschke, "should have the means of getting firm hold of his opponent, otherwise what should be satisfaction may become a new humiliation."

"To have sought this satisfaction to the utmost," replied Werner, "is in itself a satisfaction."

"Werner," said his colleague, "I hope that your anger and indignation will not draw you into the thoughtless vindictiveness of the weak fools who call a brutal playing with one's own life and that of others satisfaction."

"He is a prince," said the Professor, with a gloomy smile; "I wear no spurs, and the last use I made of my bullet mould was to crack nuts with it. How can you so mistake me? But there are things which must be expressed. There is a healing power in words; if not for him who listens to them, yet for him who speaks. I must tell him what I demand of him. He shall feel how my words are forced down into his joyless heart. My speaking out will make me free."

"He will refuse to hear you," exclaimed Raschke.

"I will do my best to speak to him."

"He has many means of preventing you."

"Let him use them at his peril, for he will thereby deprive himself of the advantage of hearing me without witnesses."

"He will set all the machinery that his high position affords him in motion against you; he will use his power recklessly to restrain you."

"I am no bawling soothsayer who will attack Cæsar in the open street, to warn him of the Ides of March. My knowledge of what will humble him before himself and his contemporaries, is my weapon. I assure you he will give me opportunity to use it as I will."

"He is going away," said Raschke, anxiously.

"Where can he go to that I cannot follow him?"

"The apprehension that you will excite in him will drive him to some dark deed."

"Let him do his worst; I must do what will give me peace."

"Werner!" cried Raschke, raising his hands, "I ought not to leave you in this position, and yet you make your friend feel how powerless his honest counsel is against your stubborn will."

The Professor went up to him and embraced him. "Farewell, Raschke. As high as any man can stand in the esteem of another, you stand in mine. Do not be angry if, in this case, I follow more the impulse of my own nature than the mild wisdom of yours. Give my greeting to your wife and children."