University of Virginia Library

5. CHAPTER V.
CARLSBAD.

Let me not dwell upon details. I am anxious to hurry
over these darkest passages of my life. Suffice that in
a very short time Minna became mine, utterly and entirely
mine.

Of course, our intercourse was a profound secret from

the world. We met in society as the most ordinary acquaintance,
and such was our precaution, that not even
a breath of scandal had attached itself to her reputation.

I look back upon this whole affair with feelings sometimes
nearly allied to madness. Throughout that whole
amour, I feel that I was heartless, selfish, criminal. I
was loved to the uttermost of a woman's passionate
heart. I was loved by a being who had recklessly surrendered
her whole existence to me; and yet I loved her
not.

Guilty we were; for I have no intention of palliating
the conduct of either. Guilty we were; but, alas! I
was by far the most criminal.

Her conduct was at least excused by her love; it was
at least purified, as far as might be, by the fire of passion.
But I—I was heartless and cold; and it was only
by an effort of the imagination that I was enabled to
persuade myself that I returned her passion.

Of course these reflections came later. At the time
my vanity was excited, and I realized the charm that
so many have delighted in, of being loved.

But even my vanity was of temporary duration.
When I looked around and saw what men had been
loved by what women;—when I saw the apes who had
been hallowed by woman's blind and Egyptian adoration;—I
shrunk from the category, and felt inclined to
base my vanity on any other foundation than on this.

For the present, however, it was natural that I should
behave like a lover. Any deficiency of warmth was set
down by myself to a change in my natural character;
and if perceived by her at all, did not at first occasion
any uneasiness.

I remember that I have often, in the midst of our

most passionate interviews, recollected something in relation
to my scientific employments, which I was unwilling
to forget, and have coolly taken out my note-book
and made a memorandum, as if I had been alone, or in
the most indifferent company.

Such incidents as these could not of course fail to
make her uneasy, but she trusted still; and who does
not know how boundless, how unfathomable, is a
woman's faith.

The opera season was now over; we remained of
course in Prague. Minna had resisted several invitations
to the country. Baron Kinski had gone to Carlsbad,
and Madame von Walldorff was entertaining Pappenheim
and his wife with several others at her
château, which was in the vicinity of that celebrated
watering-place.

Finding it impossible to resist a pressing invitation to
join the party, and really wishing to pay my respects to
the couple who have figured in another part of these memoirs,
I resolved to make my escape for a few days.

Knowing that I should never be able to tear myself
away from Minna if I apprised her of my intentions in
person, I merely wrote a letter to be delivered to her after
my departure, and leaving Praise-God and the skeletons
in possession of my apartment, I decamped for a few
days.

The day after my arrival, I received a letter from
Minna; she acknowledged the justness of my argument,
reproached me less than I deserved for my precipitate
flight, consoled herself with my promise to return within
the week, and concluded as follows:—

“Indeed, dearest, you must soon return. Recollect
that I have no existence now, but in yours. My whole

being is bounded in my love as in a circle. It seems that
it never had a beginning, and, ah! I am sure it cannot
have an end.

“Alas! Morton, you must return. You have taken
me from myself. I have no repose now but in forgetfulness,
and I have no forgetfulness except in your arms.
It is only when I am alone that I realize how I am fallen.
It is only when I am alone that I see that I am
guilty. But, alas! there are moments when I descend
into the very bottom of my heart; when the inmost recesses
of my whole nature are revealed to me, and then
I shudder as I gaze. And yet there is blessed light which
shines from the deepest caverns of my heart, and in
whose blessed influence I feel I am not yet utterly wretched.
It is the light of your love, dearest Morton.

“Indeed, you must return; I am too forlorn without
you. It seems to me that as soon as you leave me I am
delivered over to the power of something unholy; I seem
to pass into a demon's arms. I try to pray every night,
but I cannot. I cannot pray—Morton, I cannot pray
as once I did—I cannot believe as I once did.

“I was till lately one of those fortunate mortals who
believe, as children believe, because, and what, they are
told.

“At any rate, I made belief the foundation of whatever
feeble reasoning I was capable of, for I was not
strong enough, and had no inclination to make an approved
reasoning the foundation of my belief. Ah, they
are happy!—are they not, dearest?—those mortals who
are still as children; and how does the remembrance of
the early prayer of my childhood, profferred without a
doubt that it would be heard, before the knowledge of
good and evil, of the world and of men, had led my soul

astray—come over my spirit now. I stand alone and
dismayed on a dreary and a barren waste; I feel alike
unable to reach the far distant paradise of truth, or to
return to the green spot of innocence and security, whence
I have too far wandered. And lo! in the midst of this
arid desert, the remembrance of that early prayer descends
upon me, like the cooling and blessed dew of
Heaven; soothing the scorching breeze, and moistening
the dreary sands.

“But alas! I cannot renew that prayer, although its
memory is sweet. Come back to me, dearest, for you
are now my heaven and my god!”

Will it be believed, that in spite of this and one or two
more equally urgent letters, I far overstayed the appointed
time. I was in pleasant society. We made each
other gay in recalling past adventures; and I, selfish
wretch that I was, knew that a fond heart was breaking
in my absence; and I even looked forward with apprehension
to a return to the alternate calms and whirlwinds
of her stormy love.

I had, however, set out so far on my return, that I
had left Walldorff and returned to Carlsbad; I passed a
day or two there, in the society of Kinski, and intended
to return the next day.

I was walking up and down the magnificent promenade
on the same afternoon, and musing over the events
of my past life, when I perceived a slight but elegant
young man approaching me; I was about to pass him
with a hasty glance, when he stopped me and seized me
suddenly by the arm. His eyes flashed upon me with
indignation, and I was about resenting the impertinence,
when a deep low voice stole to my heart.

“Have you forgotten me so soon?” said the stranger.

It was Minna!

She was very angry with me. I found some means
of pacifying her for the moment at least, and we returned
to my lodgings.

I discovered, however, that she was by means satisfied
with the excuses I had given her for my prolonged absence,
and there seemed to be something still hanging
on her mind.

By degrees, I drew from her that she had, in the latter
part of my absence, become the victim of an anonymous
letter-writer; one of the serpent-hearted scoundrels
(whether male or female) who are not assassins only because
they are even too cowardly for that profession.

She had been induced to believe that my absence
from Prague was protracted by an amour in Carlsbad;
the name of the lady in question was mentioned, and it
happened that I had never seen or heard of her.

The most absurd part of the whole affair was, that
Minna, immediately on her arrival, had discovered the
address of this person and despatched a letter to her. Little
by little, I drew from her the contents of this letter.
It was nothing more nor less than a challenge. She had
dared her supposed rival to mortal combat, assigned the
place, and engaged to provide the weapons, and I have
no doubt would have carried the affair through, for she
had the spirit of a tigress.

Whether her antagonist would have accepted her polite
invitation or not, is at least problematical. Luckily
my meeting with Minna prevented the ridiculous catastrophe.

The next day we returned to Prague.