Tales from the German, Comprising specimens from the most celebrated authors

"The beaming symbol of the prophet perpetually changes," said Peribanu, "bringing joy and sorrow according to the law of eternal fate. On you it has now bestowed happiness. The life of Ali and Gulhyndi will be like a fine spring morning, and the old age of Ibrahim and Hussain a glorious September day."

When she had said this, she conducted the bridal pair to their parents, who embraced them with delight, and gave them the paternal blessing. "Your joy will no more be troubled by the snares of malice," she said, "for it is caught in its own trap." She again waved her sceptre, the rock burst, and they saw the young king with a crown of rubies on his head, in a purple mantle, stretched out, pale as death, on a couch, while the lamp of death was burning over his head. The expression of cunning and malice was in his countenance even in his death-slumber. "Sleep on for ever," cried the fairy. "Levity will some day again release me," he said in a hollow voice, and the vault closed. "For this cycle, at least, nothing is to be feared," replied Peribanu.

Hereupon the good fairy celebrated the nuptials of the young couple, and beautiful Nature, with all her creatures, shared the festival. They lived long and happily in the bosom of nature, like our first parents in the beginning of creation, and gave to posterity lovely children, who became the ancestors of a powerful race in the mountains. Hussain and Ibrahim died at a great age, and their grandchildren mourned over them. The good fairy never left Ali and Gulhyndi.

C. A. F.

ALAMONTADE

A TALE OF THE TIMES OF LOUIS XIV., BY HEINRICH ZSCHOKKE

A small village in Languedoc was my home and birth-place. I lost my mother very early. My father, a poor farmer, could spend but little for my education, although he was very saving; and yet he was far from being the poorest in the village. He was obliged to give for taxes, besides the tithe on his vineyards, olive plantations, and corn lands, a fourth of what he earned with great trouble. Our daily food was porridge, with black bread and turnips.

My father sank under his troubles. This grieved him very sorely. "Colas," said he frequently to me, with troubled voice, laying his hand upon my head, "hope forsakes me. I shall not, in spite of the sweat on my brow, lay my head down in the coffin without leaving debts behind. How shall I keep the promise which I made to your mother, with the last kiss, on her death-bed? I solemnly promised her to send you to school and make a clergyman of you. You will become a labourer and a servant to strangers."

In such moments I comforted the good old man as well as I could. But childish consolation only made him still more dejected. He became worse, and felt the approach of his last days. He often looked at me with concern and care for my future life; and the bitter tear of hopelessness moistened his eyes. When I saw this I abandoned my sports; I jumped up to him, for I could not bear to see him weeping; I clung to his neck, kissed away the tears from his eyelashes, and exclaimed, sobbing, "Oh! my father, pray do not weep!"

What a happy people might inhabit that country where the fertile soil yields two harvests yearly to the agriculturist, and olives and grapes ripen in abundance by the warm rays of the sun! But an oppressed race of men creeps over this blooming earth. They give the fruits of their necessity and labour to the gormandising bishops, who promise them, for the sufferings in this world, the everlasting joys of a future life; they give their gain to the nobles and princes, who, in return, profess themselves willing to govern the country with wisdom and goodness. One banquet at court devours the annual produce of a whole province, wrung from the lap of the earth with millions of groans, and millions of drops of sweat.

I had attained my eighteenth year when my father died. It was a serene evening, and the sun near its setting. My father was sitting before our cot in the shade of a chesnut tree, he wished once more to enjoy the sight of a world that had become dear to him amidst all his sorrows. When I returned home from the fields, I went up to him, and found him already faint; he clasped me in his arms, and said, "Oh, my son! I now feel happy. Mine eve is approaching; and I shall go to rest. But I shall not forget thee. I shall stand before the Almighty with thy mother; above yonder stars we will pray for thee. Think of us, and be faithful to virtue even to death! We will pray for thee. Thou art under the care of the Almighty, therefore weep not. For when once thou shalt have ended thy day's work thy evening hour will also strike. Then thou wilt find us yonder, me and thy mother. Oh, Colas, with what longing we shall await thee there! What a delight it will be when the three blessed hearts of the parents and the child will again palpitate against each other before the throne of God!"

The last ray of the sun grew pale on the distant mountain tops; the world was plunged in a gray twilight. The spirit of my father had freed itself from the frail frame of its beloved body, which now lay in my arms.

Our faithful servant – whose name has escaped my memory – being directed, by the last wish of my father, to take me to my uncle, on my mother's side, Etienne, held me by the hand when we were pacing through the dark and narrow streets of the city of Nismes. I trembled. An involuntary shudder seized upon my mind. "You are trembling, Colas," said the servant; "you look pale and anxious; are you not well?"

"Alas!" exclaimed I, "do not bring me to this dark, stony labyrinth. I am as terrified as if I were going to die here. Let me be a common labourer in my verdant native village. Look only at these walls, they stand here like those of a dungeon; and those men look as confused and troubled as though they were criminals."

"Your uncle, the miller," replied he, "does not live in this city; his house stands outside the Carmelite-gate in the open green fields."

Men are apt to believe that the soul possesses a secret faculty for anticipating its future fate. When I became a fellow-sufferer in that horrible misfortune, the history of which has filled with shuddering every sensible heart of the civilised world, I remembered the first apprehensive anxiety which I felt in the streets of the gloomy Nismes, on entering the city, and which I then took for an omen. Even the most enlightened man cannot entirely divest himself of a superstitious fear when his despairing hope gropes about in vain for help in darkness.

The impression that Nismes had made upon me remained permanent within me. This was natural. Accustomed to live in and with nature, solitary and simple, the stirring crowd of the busy town had a terrifying effect upon me. My mother had rocked me under the branches of the olive trees, and my childhood I had dreamed away in the green, cheerful shade of chesnut groves. How could I bear living within the narrow, damp, walls, where only the thirst for money brings men together? In solitude the passions die away, and the heart assumes the tranquillity of rural nature. The first sight, therefore, of so many faces, in which anger and care, pride and avarice, debauchery and envy, had left behind their traces, and which were no more perceived by him who saw them daily, made me tremble.

Outside the Carmelite-gate was the house of my uncle, and by the side of it his mill. The servant pointed with his hand to the fine building, and said, "M. Etienne is a wealthy man, but alas – "

"And what then – alas?"

"A Calvinist, as people say."

I did not understand him. We entered the beautiful building, and my anxiety vanished. A tranquil, kind spirit spoke to me, as it were, from every thing I beheld, and I felt as happy as if I were in my native place.

In a neat room, marked by simplicity and order, the mother was sitting at the table, surrounded by three blooming daughters, busy with domestic work. A boy of two years' old sat playing in his mother's lap. Kindness and tranquillity were on every countenance. All were silent, and directed their looks to me. My uncle stood at the window and was reading. His locks were already gray, but a youthful serenity beamed from his looks. His air was that of piety. The servant said to him, "This is your nephew, Colas, M. Etienne. His father, your brother-in-law, died in poverty. He ordered me, therefore, to bring his son to you, that you might be a father to him."

"My welcome and blessing to you, Colas!" said M. Etienne, laying his hand upon my head; "I will be your father."

Then arose Mdme. Etienne, who offered me her hand, and said, "I will be your mother."

My heart was much moved by this kindness. I wept, and kissed the hands of my new parents, without being able to utter a word. Now their three daughters surrounded me, and said, "Do not weep, Colas, we will be your sisters." From this hour I was as much accustomed to my new home as if I had never been a stranger to it. I fancied myself living in a family of quiet angels, of whom my father had often told me. I became as pious as they all were, and yet I never could surpass them in piety.

I was sent to school. After the lapse of half-a-year, M. Etienne told me one day, with a very kind look, "Colas, you are poor, but God has blessed you with superior talents; your masters praise your industry, and say how wonderfully you surpass all your fellow-scholars in learning. I therefore have come to the resolution that you shall devote yourself to study. When you have completed your term at Nismes, I will send you to the academy of Montpellier. You shall study the law, which will enable you to become a defender of our oppressed church. I behold in you an instrument of God for our salvation, and for the protection of the Protestant faith against the cruelty and violence of the Papists."

M. Etienne was secretly a Protestant, as also were several thousands in Nismes, and in the places surrounding it. He initiated me into the doctrines of his faith. The Protestants were laborious, quiet, and benevolent citizens; but the hatred of the people and the fury of the priests persecuted these unfortunate individuals even to the interior of their homes. They lived in continual fear; yet this kept up the ardour of piety more alive in the hearts of all. By compulsion, and for the sake of appearance, we frequented the churches of the Catholics, celebrated their holy days, and kept the images of their saints in our rooms. But neither this compliance, nor the practical piety of the persecuted, could appease the hatred of the persecutors.

Wavering between two different persuasions, to one of which I belonged publicly, to the other secretly, a daily witness of the bitter quarrels of both parties; and how much more pride, hatred, and selfishness, than conviction and piety, flocked to the standards of the belligerent churches, I became, without knowing it, a hypocrite and a disbeliever to both. The grounds upon which each attacked the contested doctrinal points of the other, were better weighed, more subtle and effective than those upon which, the value of that, which was thus attacked, was defended. This raised within me a distrust against all tenets; only those that never had been attacked retained a lasting sway in my eyes. Yet I concealed my inward thoughts from all, that I might not be an abomination to all.

Thus my mind isolated itself early. God and His creation were, in my leisure hours, the objects of my contemplation. I had a horror for the frensy of men, with which they persecuted one another on account of a changing opinion, a tract of country, or a title of princes. Early I felt the hardness of my fate in living among beings who, in every thing, judged differently from myself. I saw myself surrounded by barbarians or half-savages, not yet much more humanised than those, at whose sacrifices of men we are struck with horror. If the ancient Celts, or the Brahmins, or the savages of the wilds of America butcher human beings at the altars of their gods, were they in this more monstrous than the modern Europeans, who, at the altars of their gods (since opinions are the gods of mortals) butcher, in their pious zeal, thousands of their brethren? I lamented over the atrocities of the age I lived in, and saw no means that could remove the general ferocity of nations. The animal nature of man is everywhere the prevailing one. Food, concupiscence, and greediness for power are, as in every species of animals, the most powerful provocatives to activity; they are the sources of harmony as well as of discord, of the rise and fall of nations. Disinterested virtue, eternal right, and incontrovertible truth, are more felt than recognised and encouraged. Their names are proclaimed in the schools, while their essence does not, at all times, pervade the teachers themselves. And whoever should, with a pious zeal, profess them, would soon become the laughing-stock of those surrounding him, and the victim of the general frensy.

The present time was too gloomy for me, I longed for things nobler and more perfect. In the period of a blooming imagination, I could not but create a more beautiful world, in which virtue, justice, and truth, embraced each other, and where the senses diffused the tenderest feelings. I turned poet, and lamented the fall of Rome and Greece, which gave hopes of a more delightful existence of mankind, and bitterly disappointed their expectations.

The ruins of the vast amphitheatre at Nismes, that ancient splendid monument of Roman greatness, became my favourite haunt. When walking through the lofty arcades between the gray pillasters, or looking down over the magnificent ruins from the Attica, I felt as if the spirit of that majestic antiquity embraced me, and, lamenting, pressed me to its breast.

Here I lingered with pleasure, but never without a feeling of sadness. The remains of long-departed human generations became to me books of history. The hands of several nations have been patching up this work of Roman magnificence. The two half-decayed towers of the Attica, solitary masses of stone piled up without taste and sense of art, were reared by the Goths, the conquerors of the Romans. And the huts of wood in the arena beneath, are the dwellings of poor labourers and workmen of modern days. What a change of times, and of the men that lived in them!

The shriek of a female under the vaults startled me one evening out of my dreams. Darkness had already crept into the halls. I hastened down the steps from the second story, and perceived a well-dressed woman in the power of a common man. The sound of my steps frightened the villain, and he disappeared among the columns. A young girl with dishevelled hair sat on a block of marble, trembling, and almost beside herself with fright.

"Have you sustained any harm?" I asked her.

She raised her hand to her head, and said: "It was a robber, sir, who had torn off my head-dress, consisting of some pins of value; – nothing further. I entreat you to afford me your protection, as I am a stranger in this place. It was from curiosity I left my mother and sister who are waiting without. This man was to guide me back from this extensive labyrinth, and he led me to this remote spot."

I offered her my arm; we stepped out to the daylight. Oh! my Clementine! …

She was sixteen years of age, delicately and beautifully formed. She floats at my side, like an aërial being; I did not perceive her steps. The sweetness, freshness, and intellectual expression of her countenance were angelic, and her look, full of innocence and love, penetrated my inmost soul.

I sank into a pleasant confusion. I had never before known such a sensation of confidence and admiration, of inexpressible affection and profound respect. I had grown up to the age of twenty-one, I knew love only from the pictures of the ancient poets, and I called it a passionate friendship, unworthy a man. Alas! it was, indeed, something very different. Love is the poetry of human nature. The sensation we experience in contemplating beauty, ennobles rude sensuality, and elevates it to a point of contact with the spiritual, so that the virtuous, independent spirit unites itself, under the magic influence of grace, with the earthly. Thus it is true that love deifies the mortal clay, and draws down upon earth what is heavenly.

Thus I went on, and I had lost all my recollection, till we arrived at the Carmelite-gate, where, suddenly, I came to myself again.

"You are a stranger?" I asked, in a faltering voice.

"Yes," she replied; "but it is in vain that we seek my mother and sister. Do you know the house of M. Albertas? It is there we live."

"I will bring you to it."

We turned round towards the street where M. Albertas resided. What a change! The narrow dark streets seemed no longer to me like damp dungeon walls, but like splendid clouds through which men were passing like shadows.

We did not speak. We came to the house. The door was joyfully opened. The whole family pressed forward to welcome the beloved lost child, for whom servants had been sent out, who were still in search of her. It was then that I heard, amidst a thousand caresses towards her, the name, "Clementine." She thanked me in a few words, not without blushing. All the rest did the same; but I was unable to reply. They asked my name; I told it them, bowed, and left the company.

I was often afterwards in the amphitheatre, and my way led me frequently through the street in which M. Albertas lived. Her I did not see again; but her image was constantly hovering before me, in my waking hours as well as in my dreams. The hope of beholding the beautiful vision again forsook me; but not so my longing after her.

Now, for the first time, I felt that I stood alone in the world, and that I could not cling to a being akin to myself. I was without a mother and father, without a sister or brother. Beloved by the family of my uncle, I still looked upon myself amidst them, only as a fortunate orphan; and upon all who loaded me with their kindness, I looked as upon beings elevated above myself.

The time approached when I was to be sent to the academy of Montpellier. M. Etienne repeated to me his wishes, and conjured me not to disappoint his expectations. In the excess of his confidence in my youthful faculties, he saw in me the future protecting angel of the Protestant church in France. He gave me his blessing, whilst the whole family stood weeping round me as I took my farewell. I promised to come to Nismes in all my vacations, and went away overpowered with grief.

The distance from Montpellier to Nismes is full eight leagues. I walked in the shade of mulberry-trees, between the golden fields of corn, and along the vineyards on the chain of hills, overtopped by the gray Sevennes. But the air was glowing, and the ground beneath my feet burning. After three hours' walk, I sank fatigued on the banks of the Vidourle, in the shade of a neat villa and its chesnut trees.

I reflected on my past and future life. I computed the time I had lived, and the space of time still remaining, according to the general measure, for my sphere of action. I found I had still forty years, and, for the first time, I shuddered at the shortness of our life. The oak on the mountains wants one century for its development, and stands for another in its full vigour, while man's existence is so transitory! And wherefore is it thus? How shall he employ his faculties? Not a long life, but a life of variety, is given to mortal man by nature. This thought quiets me. Well, then, I said to myself, forty years more, and I shall stand perfected where my father is.

Pursuing these thoughts, I gradually fell into a slumber. In my dream I imagined myself an old man; my limbs were heavy, my hair gray; the thousand fine pores of the skin, by which the body imperceptibly imbibes vitality, and is nourished by the elements, were dried up. With the decreasing influx of life, the power of the muscles relaxed, the delicate parts, which we call organs, gradually hardened and closed. I heard no more of the world, and the light of my eyes was also extinguished. While the senses, by which the spirit is rooted to the earth were thus dying away, the feelings became weaker, the ideas fainter, and all that was formerly communicated to the mind by the active senses was lost. I was no longer master of my body, and had forgotten the names of things and their use. Men fed me, dressed and undressed me, and treated me as a child. I was still able to speak, but often wanted words, and sometimes uttered phrases which no one understood; thoughts still presented themselves, and I felt, though without regret, that I no more belonged to the earth. Soon, however, I was not able to give utterance to my thoughts; but had only an unvarying, torpid consciousness of existence, such as we feel while sleeping, when not even dreams present themselves. This state, always the same, without any external change, was unaccompanied by pleasure or pain; there was no variety of thought, therefore no succession or notion of time. In short, I had been dead for a long period, and my body had been buried and mouldering for centuries. Only on earth, during the existence of the senses, where we count the change of things, we can speak of ages, and the succession of events suggests to us the notion of time. Abstracting from all idea of change, time no longer exists.

A pleasing, indefinable sensation produced a change in me; my mind, before isolated, was connected with new organs which opened to me a larger sphere of action in the universe.

I began to feel more and more conscious, I heard a gentle rustling around me, which invigorated me with its delightful freshness. Before me floated dazzling golden rays, whilst silvery clouds sportively passed along. I cast my wandering gaze on the bright transparent verdure of the surrounding boughs, which waved in the crystal ether like aërial forms, and between the boughs and the clouds shone Clementine, motionless, in ineffable beauty, a wreath of fresh flowers entwining her dark hair.

She smiled on me with an expression of innocent love; took the wreath from her hair, waved it with her delicate hand, and it dropped on my breast.

"Oh! heavenly dream never depart from me," I said, while gazing with inexpressible rapture on the beautiful vision.

While I was in this state a carriage rolled past. Clementine's countenance darkened on hearing her name called.

"Farewell, Alamontade," said she, and disappeared amidst the trembling boughs.

At that moment I was going to fall at her feet but found myself on the ground. I was no longer in a dream, for I perceived the Vidourle and the château in the shade of the lofty chesnut trees.

I rose and heard a carriage rattling over the bridge, and as I hastened along, an old servant approached, and asked whether I wished any refreshment. On my evincing astonishment, he asked, "Are you not M. Alamontade?" I answered in the affirmative. Then he said, "Mademoiselle de Sonnes and her mother have left me orders to that effect!" I went back, took up the wreath and followed the servant. Clementine was Mademoiselle de Sonnes.

That day was the happiest and most memorable of my life.

A garret in the back part of the house of M. Bertollon, one of the richest and most fortunate citizens of Montpellier was my dwelling. Some roofs, black walls, and two windows, with the balconies of a house in the opposite street were my only prospect; still I was happy. Surrounded by books, I lived only to study, and Clementine's wreath hung over my table. The millions of spring blossoms lost their splendour before the magic of these withered flowers, and the jewels of kings were valueless to me in comparison with the smallest leaf of the clover.

Clementine was my saint, and I loved her with a pious veneration, such as we feel for angelic beings. Her wreath was a relic, which an angel had let fall on me from heaven. In my dreams I saw her surrounded by glory, and she was the subject of my poetic effusions. I looked most anxiously for the vacations of the college to see my uncle and Nismes, and perhaps, by some happy chance, my adored saint.

One day the door of my solitary room opened, and a handsome young man entered. It was M. Bertollon. "You have a gloomy prospect," he said, as he stepped to the window, "still it extends to part of the house of M. de Sonnes, one of the most tasteful in the town," he added, smiling.

At that name I became agitated. M. Bertollon stood thoughtfully at the window and appeared melancholy. We resumed the conversation, and he asked my name and the nature of my studies. Having mentioned my fondness for the harp, he said: "Do you play the harp and love it passionately without possessing one?"