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CHAPTER XIII.
THE LAST BLUE FLOWER

Eric, meanwhile, had entered the sick-chamber.

"Are you here at last?" cried Clodwig. His voice was faint; and the small childlike hand which the sick man extended toward him appeared more delicate than ever.

"Sit down," said he; "don't be so broken down: you are young and strong, and have a good conscience. Let me take your hand. It is a happiness to die in the full possession of my senses: I have often desired to die a sudden death. Better as it is. Tell me, how is your mother? Are you really betrothed to the daughter of that terrible man."

Eric could not yet utter a word: he only nodded without speaking, and Clodwig continued, —

"That is fine, an instance of the grand truth of compensation in the world. Once, you were to become my son – my son! It is better as it is. I am to have no son. But tell me, how is Roland? Did he not want to come with you? I see him, the splendid youth! he is present all the time. You have done well, Eric, entirely well. You will stay with the young man. If we could only know what will become of the father!"

Before Eric could answer, the invalid lay back upon the pillow. He seemed to have fallen asleep. Nothing was heard but the ticking of the clock; and now a carriage drove into the court-yard, the wheels cutting into the gravel.

Clodwig awoke.

"That is the Doctor," he said aloud. He requested the attendant to say to the physician that he would like to be left with Eric alone for a time. The nurse gave the commission to the servant, and remained in the anteroom. Sitting upright, Clodwig said, —

"Shut the door: I want to speak to you in private."

Eric sat by the bedside, and Clodwig began, —

"This Sonnenkamp, so audacious, and yet – hypocrisy, it is everywhere; a jumble of grimaces, of masks who do not know one another. A sentence upon Sonnenkamp? I have let him off entirely. His path is zigzag, his goal horrible. Who shall judge? I say it here to you, my brain received a fatal lesion when the fearful thought entered into it. When I look over my own life, what is it? I have filled out a uniform: we are walking, empty sentry-boxes, painted with the national color. If a discharge comes, we think it something very mysterious; we whisper – all a farce. The life of most persons is hypocrisy, and so is mine, so long, so honorable! We have no courage, we do not confess what we are. We are encumbered with forms, compliances, courtesies, conformities; and all is false inside. We never tell each other what we are as we acknowledge it to ourselves. Don't be afraid. I have no crime, no transgression, now, to acknowledge and to feel remorse for. I have been all my life pure as thousands, as millions, by my side; but I have not been the person that I really am. Do you know that grand word which God spake when he revealed himself in the desert to the holy Shepherd? It is this. This is God. 'I am that I am.' This is the truth, truthfulness, the divine in every man; and men deny it. Who can say I am that I am? I never could, and millions by my side could not. We are all glossed over outside, all and everywhere over-refined – no, not all, but most of us: were all so, the sun would never again rise upon the earth. But the time will come, and you are one of those awaiting its coming, you will share in its life, – the time will come, when men shall dissemble no more, shall lie no more, shall pass themselves off for no more than they are, and shall be what they profess to be. Do you comprehend me?"

"Perfectly, perfectly."

"Know, then, I tell you that I have not done what I ought to have done. I have not gone from hour to hour into the presence of those in power, and said, 'Thus am I, and thus must you be.' I have lulled myself with a false philosophy; I have persuaded myself that all would be spontaneously unfolded of itself; that we are in the direct line of the developing tendencies, and we have nothing to do in furtherance thereof. Ha, ha! unfold of itself! Yes, death comes of itself, death comes, and takes away the life that was no real life, no candid revealment, no genuine self. I once knew a great actor. To an actor, death will always be the hardest, not only because he has so often counterfeited death, but because he knows that he leaves behind him his parts, his masks, his paints, his wilted wreaths, his rounds of applause, and he can never be called out again. My son, we diplomatists, we die the death of the actor. I have led an unprofitable life. I had no fatherland to give me other than diplomatic farces to perform. My life has been a busy inactivity: I have spent the greatest part of my life in the livery and the defence of a cause which I did not respect, scarcely had any regard for. Here is this slave-trader. Fie! the whole world calls out in horror: and yet, in circles held in high estimation, there are far worse than slave-traders. Others, again, are not in the house of correction, because they were under no necessity of stealing, and because they were bought off by money from being positively immoral. There, give me now, I beg, a cooling draught, my mouth is parched."

Eric gave Clodwig a draught; but they were both so awkward, that it was almost all spilled.

"No matter, no matter," said Clodwig, smiling, "that's the way in this world: only the smaller part is really drunk, the larger part gets spilled, wasted. There, now go, and let the Doctor come, but come back again afterwards."

Eric went and called the physician. Bella asked what Clodwig had been talking about. He could only answer in general terms, and begged to be allowed to go into the open air for refreshment.

Eric went into the garden. The November wind was raging, and the rain driving fiercely. Eric wrapped himself in his cloak, and went into the wood: it did him good to walk in the midst of the uproar of the elements. He went through the park and the wood, by the game path which he had followed on the morning after telling the story of his life to his newly-won friend Clodwig. Now he could not stride on in exultant mood, as if borne onward by an external force; now he must battle with the storm which roared over him through the tree-tops. Now, as then, he stood under the covered pavilion; but in the wide landscape he could see nothing but clouds of driving rain. Close to the wall of the building there was still one beautiful blue-bell: unconsciously he broke it off, and, as he returned to the house, it occurred to him to carry the flower to the invalid. He entered the sick-chamber, and Clodwig cried, —

"Ah, the blue flower! You gather it and bring it to me. We have dreamed of them often in my youth. Youth, youth!" repeated the sick man often.

He seized the flower, then leaned far out of bed, and smelled of Eric's clothes, saying, —

"Ah I my son, why do the Bible pictures come up before me now? The patriarch Isaac said to his son as he came to his sickbed, 'The smell of my son is as the smell of a field which the Lord hath blessed.' Yes, Eric, you bring all the free air of the fields into my sick-room. When I am no more, remember that you have done me good."

Eric wept.

"Yes, weep, it is well, it will do you no harm that I make your heart heavy. You will be happy and active on the earth whose clods will soon rest on me. Only, I pray you, stay by me when I die; and when I am dead, and they prepare me for the grave, take something from my heart which must stay there till it has stopped beating. Stay with me, Eric, I will not think of petty, individual interests. I will not leave the world in hatred and anger – no, not in hatred and anger against any man. Help me to attain to the universal, the grand: in those I will live and die."

He lay back on his pillows; and, as Eric leaned over him, his breath came quietly, and on his face was a gentle smile. What thoughts might now be stirring this soul?

Eric wanted to send a messenger to Villa Eden, to say that he must remain where he was. Lootz, who had been sent by Herr Sonnenkamp to inquire for the Count, carried the message back.

CHAPTER XIV.
MEMORIES OF CHILDHOOD OF A DYING SEER

Clodwig slept several hours, while Eric sat with the Banker, and drew refreshment from his self-forgetting sympathy. The Banker failed in many of the ordinary forms of society; but he possessed a nature full of tact, and, in the midst of his deep emotion, Eric thought that only unselfishness has genuine tact. Want of tact is at bottom selfishness; for the man who is without it thinks and acts only for himself.

Eric now saw the Banker in a new light. In Carlsbad he had made rather an effort to display his intelligence; but now his gentle and sensible character showed itself naturally. Eric remembered the Banker's once having said to him at Carlsbad, "The Jews are the children of compassion: they understand how to bear and to relieve sorrow much better than to create joy; the remembrance of past oppression gives them sympathy with all suffering."

The Banker was ready to lend help at any moment, but allowed himself to be put in the background again immediately.

Bella treated him with manifest neglect, but he took it good-humoredly, showing without words that he was not offended. She acted like her mother's own child; and moreover, he thought, she was not his friend. Clodwig was his friend, and he regarded it as a duty to bear something for his sake. He sat in the library, ready to answer any call, and retiring again as soon as he believed himself in the way. Towards midnight, Eric was suddenly summoned; Clodwig had waked, and asked for him.

"Ah! I have slept so well," said Clodwig; "and it's strange, I constantly dream now of my cousin Hatty, whom I am to marry. I like her, and she likes me; but she has learned, and will learn nothing at all, and she has such a shrill laugh, and says, 'Come, Clodwig, you're so sad, come, marry me, we'll be merry.' And then I say, 'Child, I'm so old already! see, I've no teeth left, and what will Bella say to it?' 'Ah, what' she says, 'nonsensical things! Come, we'll dance.' And then we dance down to the chapel; and there stands the priest beckoning to us, and we dance on, past the priest; and she's a splendid child with beautiful eyes, and loves me dearly; and so we dance on and on, and I can keep it up very well till I wake, without being tired."

"Is your cousin Hatty still living?"

"Oh, no! she died long ago. A few weeks since a grandson of hers was here with me. But isn't it strange that my first youthful love – I was hardly ten years old – should have awakened in me? And she had an apple in her hand, and bit into it, and then said, 'Take a bite too;' but, when I wanted to take the apple, she wouldn't let me, and said, 'Don't bite too much.' And, when I awoke, the taste of the apple seemed still in my mouth. Now it just comes back to me that we were once painted together. The painter declared that it would please us very much some time or other. He did it secretly, and, of course, the picture was bought of him; I believe it is still in existence; but I don't know where. Don't you like her name of Hatty? She is a half-grown girl in a pink calico dress and white apron, and that's the way she was always dressed, and she had a broad Florence straw hat, whose brim drooped down upon her shoulders." So Clodwig went on, and said with a repressed sigh, "Bella has never cared to hear about my youth;" but then, as if not wishing to speak of her, he quickly added in a trembling voice, stretching out both hands, "Now attend, and I can tell you my story. I have had a very different life from that Herr Sonnenkamp. My father was Prime-Minister, and I was born in the ministerial residence, the son of a late marriage, an only son, like Herr Sonnenkamp; but my life was different. My father became representative of the Confederacy to the German Diet, and then I often lived here in summer on our estate. The society of the representatives of the Confederacy, – who knows whether it is not passing away without any one's having pictured it truly, – I might have done it; even when I was still a student, it was plain to me that it was a society which exists only to stand in the way of every improvement. Come a little nearer and I will tell you what the German Diet is, – it is the evil conscience of the Princes. I thought so very early, and I was soon sure of it, and yet I stayed in the midst of it; and the farther I advanced, the more plainly I saw that it was true. All progress has built itself up apart from the Diet; and there is something like it in the Church. Progress is made without her, aside from her; she has not done away with capital punishment, nor torture, nor the confinement of prisoners in irons: none of these has she abolished. And now are coming the two great works of emancipation, – the emancipation of the slaves and of the serfs, and what is bringing them about? Humanity alone in its freedom of action. You see, this Herr Sonnenkamp lived in quite another world than mine, and yet my life, – Ah, wait a minute, wait, I cannot say more now."

After a while, Clodwig began again, —

"This Sonnenkamp is another proof to me, our civilization has the same defects as religion; it also gives no definite moral laws; it is not a complete, not the true civilization."

He sat up in bed, saying, —

"Come, I want to say my last word to you. Two things I see looming up in the future; the one is imperialism, which is trying to establish itself in America; and the other, yet more terrible, is called a war for religion. One party gathers around Rome; the other, around no man, no idea, but around freedom. Two great standards are raised, and around these standards gather two armies. Invisibly on the one banner is inscribed, 'We cannot!' on the other, 'We will!'

"Hear yet more. A new faith, a new knowledge is to come, which will re-create the world. We wander continually in a grave-yard, our life is dead. Only a renewal through a great idea, through a new religion. Ah" —

He broke off abruptly as Bella entered the room.

She expressed her satisfaction at Clodwig's animation, and Clodwig still preserved a courtly politeness towards his wife. She wanted to hand him some medicine, and he said, —

"Oh, yes! give it to me, but do not say any thing against Doctor Richard; please do not."

Bella sat quietly by the bed for a while; then Clodwig begged her to go to rest, and she complied. When he was again alone with Eric, he said, —

"In many painless hours by day and night, I have fancied to myself how the human race of to-day will gather in countless hosts, and press, shoulder to shoulder, up some lofty height, to plant the banner under which they assemble. What watch-word can they inscribe upon it which shall unite them one and all? Then I saw you; you were carrying the banner, and on it was your motto, your words which you have spoken, the only motto, Free labor! That is it. Happy are you that you have said it, and I that I have heard and seen."

A glorious light rested on Clodwig's countenance, and beamed from his eyes, as he gazed into the empty air; then he laid back his head, and closed his eyes, but he felt for Eric's hand, and clasped it tight. After a while he raised himself again, saying, —

"Go into the room that you had when you first came here; take Robert with you, and bring the bust of the Victoria here to me."

Eric went with the servant to the balcony chamber, and had the head of the Victoria taken down; that of the Medusa lay upon the floor in fragments. He asked Robert who had broken it, but Robert knew nothing about it. He hesitated to ask Bella or Clodwig about the matter, but he learned that Clodwig had not been in this room since his return.

When Eric had placed the bust opposite the sick man's bed, and arranged the lights properly, Clodwig said, —

"Yes, it looks like her, your mother knew her too."

He said nothing more. After he had gazed at the bust for a long time in silence, he asked Eric to call the Banker, and, when he came, he said to him with a child-like smile, —

"It belongs to you too. There's a story about a little child, very young, I can see him now, dressed only in a little shirt, sitting on a cushion on the table, and my mother is holding me, and telling me – I think I can feel the warm breath of her words, as it comes against my breast, she had laid her head on my breast, and she said, 'There was once a child who went into the woods to look for flowers, and he found beautiful red flowers, and picked them; and then he found beautiful blue flowers, and he threw the pretty red flowers away, and gathered the blue ones; and then he found beautiful yellow ones, and threw away the beautiful blue flowers to gather those; and next he found beautiful white ones; and he threw the pretty yellow ones away, and picked the white; and then he came out of the wood, and there was a brook; and he threw the lovely white flowers into the brook, and had nothing left in his hands.' That is my story, and that is the other one. I understand it now. The nations all came upon the earth, and they held the revelations in their hands, – the red, the blue, the yellow, and the white flowers – and at last they stood with nothing but their empty hands. And then they said, 'It is well.' The empty hands speak, and say, 'Unforced labor shaft thou perform.' Isn't it true, Eric, that I understand what you said when you first came here? I see you now as you stood under the blossoming apple-tree, and your words came to me like my mother's warm breath on my little breast. And now may you sleep well. Good-night."

Eric sat by Clodwig's bed, with his hand clasped in his, till at last the grasp relaxed, and the sick man slept. Bella came again, and Pranken with her; he prayed with the Sister of Mercy for the dangerously sick man, doing it without shyness or display, with unembarrassed air.

Eric made a sign to Bella to be very quiet. She sat silent for a time, and then withdrew with Pranken.

Eric struggled with sleep and weariness. The morning dawned, and flooded the chamber with its ruddy light. Eric went to the Sister of Mercy, and told her that the long sleep of their patient made him uneasy: he had leaned over him, and could hear no breathing; but perhaps it was on account of his own exhaustion.

They went to Clodwig's bed-side, and bent over him – death had come to him in his sleep.

CHAPTER XV.
A GOOD CONCLUSION TO A BAD RESULT

Eric had Pranken called, and charged him with the duty of informing his sister; but Pranken insisted that they should let Bella sleep as long as she would, as she needed the strength. So the dawning day grew brighter and brighter, and the Sister of Mercy sat praying by the bedside of him who had fallen asleep.

Eric went down into the garden, where he met the Banker: he silently gave him his hand, and they walked on together without speaking. Eric was called in to Bella, who was upon the sofa, weeping. The Sister of Mercy had broken the news to her when she woke. Bella had been with the corpse, and now was mourning loud and immoderately. Eric consoled her, requesting that she would excuse his absence for a few hours, as he must see how they all were at the Villa, and would return by evening.

He rode homewards.

At the foot of the mountain, Claus met him with his son, the Cooper; and the field-guard cried, —

"Good luck, Herr Captain! good luck for you; and you are good luck for us too. We've just bought the Carp Inn for Ferdinand. Could there be any thing better? I'm father of an inn."

Eric hushed him, but could not get in a word; for Claus exclaimed, —

"Do you know that now Sevenpiper's going to let his daughter marry Ferdinand? and it's all owing to you."

"Me?"

"Yes, indeed. If the rich Sonnenkamp can let his daughter marry a teacher, Sevenpiper can give his daughter to the Cooper. Isn't that so? O Herr Captain! You are a good luck for us all. And here, Herr Captain, here's my hand: I'll drink not a drop more after to-day, except when I'm thirsty: mayn't I quench my thirst? Thank heaven, I've got a very good thirst. But at the wedding I'll have a time of it; for nobody can go it like the Screamer. Come along with me, Herr Captain, put up your horse, we've a good stable, it's a first-rate inn."

Eric could not reconcile the contradiction: he comes from a death-bed into the very midst of jollity. He told Claus nothing of Clodwig's decease, and only begged to be allowed to ride on, and so left them.

He reached Villa Eden.

"Has Bella any female friend with her," the Professorin asked, as soon as she learned of Clodwig's death.

Eric said that she had not. It was painful to the Professorin that she could not render any assistance and consolation to Bella. Bella had triumphed in the fact, that, self-contained, she had been more feared than loved by women; and now, in her time of affliction, she had no one whose right and dutiful privilege it was to come to her, that she might lay her head, weighed down with sorrow and tears, upon a friendly bosom. But Aunt Claudine said to Eric, —

"When you drive to Wolfsgarten again, take me with you."

Manna begged Eric to rest; but Eric saw that there was no rest for him, for he received very soon a note from Bella by a messenger, in which were these words, written in great haste, —

"You must come immediately to bear witness for me. I am ruined and disgraced."

Eric drove to Wolfsgarten. Aunt Claudine accompanied him, and Professor Einsiedel had offered his services also; but the Mother and Manna urged him to remain with them. The Professor was a consolation and a quiet support for them at the Villa. Eric promised to return that night. What can have happened at Wolfsgarten in these few hours since Clodwig's death?

They came to Wolfsgarten. The servants stood around, and looked shyly at Eric; one of them saying, – Eric heard it very distinctly, —

"Who knows whether he has not helped do it?"

The Sister of Mercy came to meet Eric, and said to him hurriedly, —

"A horrible thing has happened. The layer-out of the corpse, in removing the clothes, found a wound upon the Count's neck, and has called the coroner: now it is said that Count Clodwig was strangled. You were present until the very last breath, you are involved in the most horrible suspicion. Inconceivable, incomprehensible! If the Doctor would only come! We have despatched messengers everywhere for him; but he is not to be found."

Bella had heard of Eric's arrival, and pulled incessantly at the bell: she desired that he would come to her. Eric requested Aunt Claudine to remain in the lower room, where the Banker was still sitting quietly, and went with the Sister of Mercy to Bella.

"Leave us alone together for a moment," begged Bella. "No, that would excite suspicion. Remain." – "Foh! suspicion!" shrieked Bella. "You men are all hypocrites. Let the world say what it will, leave us alone. Every thing is a lie, and he was a liar too."

Eric was alone with Bella who said, —

"I have received a punishment more horrible than the most cunning Devil could ever have contrived. Herr Dournay, it is said that I, Bella Pranken, have strangled my husband, – I have sacrificed my life to be now suspected of this! Here I stand: whatever I have done, whatever I have thought, now is it a thousand-fold atoned for. And I curse it that I have been faithful. He wore the picture of another woman on his heart until his heart ceased to beat."

"The Doctor is here," was suddenly called outside.

The Doctor and Pranken entered; and the Doctor said, —

"I know the whole. This blockhead of a coroner! Every ignorant person knows that a wound on a corpse is a very different thing from one on a living body. There is only a trifling mark, a little abrasion of the skin on the Count's neck. Can't you tell me what made this?"

Bella now narrated that Robert had come to ask her whether they should leave the picture, which the Count wore on his heart, to be buried with him. She asked what sort of a picture it was, and was told that it was that of a lady. Hurrying there in her excitement, which she now lamented, she had snatched from the corpse the picture which was hung by a small cord about the neck.

"It was the miniature of his deceased wife: here it is," said she. She pointed to a gentle face, on a thin plate of gold.

The Doctor and Eric looked at the picture, and then at Bella. Eric thought to himself, "This was why he had the bust of the Victoria brought to his bedside. Wonderful likeness!"

The Doctor said that they must not make known publicly this passionate act of the Countess as the occasion of the coroner's mistake. He begged them to fall in with his explanation, that some of the caustic medicine which the invalid had taken had dropped down about the string, and caused this abrasion.

To his horror, Eric now recollected that Clodwig had exhorted him to take something from his bosom after he was dead. He told of this now; and the Doctor and Bella shook their heads.

The Doctor requested Bella, Eric, Pranken, the Banker, and the Sister of Mercy to go with him into the chamber of death. He had all the servants called, and rebuked the coroner sharply, pointing out to him that only the outer skin had been reddened by a caustic medicine.

Eric cast one more look at the dead body of his friend. Even the statue of the Victoria, that stood opposite, seemed to look in sorrow upon it.

The gentlemen led Bella back into her chamber. Aunt Claudine entered. Bella extended her left hand to her, while with the right she held a handkerchief pressed to her face. The gentlemen went down to receive the King's private physician, whose carriage was just driving into the court. Doctor Richard stated in few words the cause of Clodwig's death, which was the result of a cold, together with great mental excitement. They then all repaired to the room looking on the garden, whither Doctor Richard ordered wine to be brought, and insisted on Eric's drinking with them, as he would need to use every means to keep up his strength.

"Drink," he said, "you cannot do without it. Great demands are making upon you now, and the machine must be fed with wine."

Eric drank, but he drank a tear with the wine; for tears fell from his eyes into the glass. He left the room for a moment, and returned with a little box in which, he said, were Clodwig's orders, which his friend had commissioned him to return to the Prince. As his presence was necessary now at the Villa, he requested the court-physician to undertake the commission for him; to which he readily assented, adding, that in Clodwig a nobleman had been taken away, whose memory was a source of strength to them all: the moderation and perfect balance of his nature, his repose and gentleness, were characteristics which belonged to a generation that was passing away.

Doctor Richard, who was sitting in an arm-chair, with his legs crossed one over the other, exclaimed, —

"All that is true: the expression, 'He was too noble for this world,' might be used with truth of him. He had the advantage, or the disadvantage, of viewing every individual thing in its connection with humanity; and, as to the thing itself, it was a matter of perfect indifference to him, whether it was done to-day or to-morrow, by you or anybody else. He might have accomplished great things, have exerted a wide-spread influence; but the task seemed to him too hard, and he excused himself from it. Every event, every experience, was made subservient to the development of his beautiful character. Good, beautiful, lofty, but a childless, barren existence is that, whose mother is a philosophy which accepts all things, comprehends all things, only to reduce them afterwards to a system. I have often reproached him with that while he lived; and I venture to do the same now that he is dead."

"He repeated to me once an expression of yours, Captain Dournay," said the Banker. "You once said to him, 'Man has to do railway duty on the earth;' and the words made a great impression on him. So it is, we all have to act more or less as guards on the swiftly-rolling train of our generation; but it is not every one who is fitted for the post."

There was much that Eric wanted to say, and he might have explained many points; for what had Clodwig not discussed with him? But he had no chance to speak; for the doctor cried, —

"I do not believe that I am inclined to find fault with this man. Of all in the wide world who will hear of his death, and mourn for him, not one respected him more than I."

Some reference was made to the horrible suspicion which had fallen upon Bella; but the Doctor repeated emphatically that this was a monstrous mistake, and heartily regretted that nothing could be done to efface all remembrance of it; for men would always hold fast to such a calumny, at least, they would not wholly forget it.

Pranken entered with a clergyman of the neighborhood, who finally consented, after much persuasion on the part of Pranken and the royal physician, to pronounce a benediction over the body.

The Doctor presently drove off with the Court-physician: and, soon afterward, Eric also departed, with the Banker and Aunt Claudine; for Bella had requested to be left alone.

They looked back sorrowfully at the mansion, from whose summit a black flag was now waving.

For two days, Clodwig's body lay upon satin cushions in the great drawing-room, exposed to the public gaze. His countenance was peaceful. He was surrounded by palms and flowers, and candles burned at the side of the coffin.

People from the whole country round flocked to take a last look at Clodwig; some from respect, and some from curiosity. Bella could hear them say as they left the house, "He shows no signs of having been strangled."

On the third day, Eric, the Justice, the Banker, the Major, the chief men of the city, besides an ambassador from the King, and several high officers of state, followed Clodwig's body to the tomb of the Wolfsgartens.

The bells rang from mountain and valley: it was the funeral of the last of the Wolfsgartens.