 Burgonev part one of the Lock and Key Library. This is a Libervox recording. All Libervox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libervox.org. Recording by Margaret Espiat. The Lock and Key Library, edited by Julian Hoffhorn. Burgonev by Anonymous. Part one. At a table dot. At the close of February eighteen forty-eight I was in Nuremberg. My original intention had been to pass a couple of days there on my way to Munich. That being I thought, as much time as could reasonably be spared for so small a city, beckoned as my footsteps were to the Bavarian Athens of whose glories of ancient art and German renaissance I had formed expectations the most exaggerated, expectations fatal to any perfect enjoyment, and certain to be disappointed, however great the actual merit of Munich might be. But after two days at Nuremberg I was so deeply interested in its antique sequestered life, the charms of which had not been deadened by previous anticipations, that I resolved to remain there until I had mastered every detail and knew the place by heart. I have a story to tell which will move amidst tragic circumstances of too engrossing a nature to be disturbed by archaeological interests, and shall not therefore minutely describe here what I observed in Nuremberg, although no adequate description of that wonderful city has yet fallen in my way. To readers unacquainted with this antique place it will be enough to say that in it the old German life seems still to a great extent rescued from the all-devouring, all equalizing tendencies of European civilization. The houses are either of the 15th and 16th centuries or are constructed after those ancient models. The citizens have preserved much of the simple manners and customs of their ancestors. The hurrying feet of commerce and curiosity pass rapidly by, leaving it sequestered from the agitations and the term oils of metropolitan existence. It is as quiet as a village. During my stay there rose in its quiet streets the startled echoes of horror at a crime unparalleled in its annals, which, gathering increased horror from the very peacefulness and serenity of the scene, arrested the attention and the sympathy in a degree seldom experienced. Before narrating that it will be necessary to go back a little that my own connection with it may be intelligible, especially in the fanciful weaving together of remote conjectures which strangely involved me in the story. The Tabledote at the Bayerische Hof had about thirty visitors, all with one exception of that local commonplace which escapes remark. Indeed this may almost always be said of Tabledote, though there is a current belief which I cannot share of a Tabledote being very delightful of one being certain to meet pleasant people there. It may be so. For many years I believed it was so. The general verdict received my assent. I had never met those delightful people, but was always expecting to meet them. Hitherto they had been conspicuous by their absence. According to my experience in Spain, France, and Germany such dinners had been dreary or noisy and vapid. If the guests were English they were chillingly silent or surly monosyllabic. To their neighbors they were frigid. Amongst each other they spoke in low undertones. And if the guests were foreigners they were noisy, clattering and chattering, foolish for the most part, and vivaciously commonplace. I don't know which made me feel most dreary. The predominance of my countrymen gave the dinner the gaiety of a funeral. The predominance of the masu gave it the fatigue of god-up enthusiasm, of trivial expansiveness. To hear strangers imparting the scraps of very addition and connoisseurship which they had that morning gathered from their valleys to plus and guidebooks, or describing the sights they had just seen to you, who either saw them yesterday or would see them tomorrow, could not be permanently attractive. My mind refuses to pasture on such food with gusto. I cannot be made to care what the herbarons' sentiments about Albrecht Dürer or Lukas Kranach may be. I can digest my rin-flash without the aid of the commis voyageurs' criticisms on Gothic architecture. This may be my misfortune. In spite of the Italian blood which I inherit, I am a shy man, shy as the purest Briton. But like other shy men I make up in obstinacy what may be deficient in expansiveness. I can be frightened into silence, but I won't be dictated to. You might as well attempt the persuasive effect of your eloquence upon a snail who has withdrawn into his shell at your approach and will not emerge till his confidence is restored. To be told that I must see this and ought to go there, because my casual neighbor was charmed, has never presented itself to me as an adequate motive. From this you readily gather that I am severely taciturn at a tabledot. I refrain from joining in the delightful conversation which flies across the table and know that my reticence is attributed to insular pride. It is really and truly nothing but impatience of commonplace. I thoroughly enjoy good talk, but ask yourself what are the probabilities of hearing that rare thing in the casual assemblage of forty or fifty people not brought together by any natural affinities or interests, but thrown together by the accident of being in the same district and in the same hotel? They are not forty feeding like one, but like forty. They have no community except the community of commonplace. No, tabledot are not delightful and do not gather interesting people together. Such has been my extensive experience. But this at Nürnberg is a conspicuous exception. At that table there was one guest who, on various grounds, personal and incidental, remains the most memorable man I ever met. From the first he riveted my attention in an unusual degree. He had not as yet induced me to emerge from my habitual reserve, for in truth, although he riveted my attention, he inspired me with a strange feeling of repulsion. I could scarcely keep my eyes from him, yet, except the formal bow on sitting down and rising from the table, I had interchanged no sign of fellowship with him. He was a young Russian named Bergonev, as I had once learned, rather handsome and peculiarly arresting to the eye. Partly from an air of settled melancholy, especially in his smile, the amiability of which seemed breaking from under clouds of grief, and still more so from the mute appeal to sympathy in the empty sleeve of his right arm, which was looped to the breast-button of his coat. His eyes were large and soft. He had no beard or whisker, and only delicate mustaches. The sorrow, quiet but profound, the amiable smile and the lost arm were appealing details which at once arrested attention and excited sympathy. But to me this sympathy was mingled with a vague repulsion occasioned by a certain falseness in the amiable smile and a furtiveness in the eyes which I saw, or fancied, and which, with an inexplicable reserve forming as it were, the impregnable citadel in the center of his outwardly polite and engaging manner, gave me something of that vague impression which we express by the words instinctive antipathy. It was, when calmly considered, eminently absurd, to see one so young, and by his conversation so highly cultured and intelligent, condemned to early helplessness, his food cut up for him by a servant as if he were a child, naturally engaged pity, and on the first day I cuddled my brains during the greater part of dinner in the effort to account for his lost arm. He was obviously not a military man. The unmistakable look and stoop of a student told that plainly enough. Nor was the loss one dating from early life. He used his left arm too awkwardly for the event not to have had a recent date. Had it anything to do with his melancholy? Here was a topic for my vagabond imagination, and endless were the romances woven by it during my silent dinner. For the reader must be told of one peculiarity in me, because to it much of the strange complications of my story are due, complications into which a mind less active in weaving imaginary hypotheses to interpret casual and trifling facts would never have been drawn. From my childhood I have been the victim of my constructive imagination, which has led me into many mistakes and some scrapes, because instead of contending myself with plain obvious evidence, I have allowed myself to frame hypothetical interpretations which to acts simple in themselves and explicable on ordinary motives render the simple-seeming acts portentous. With bitter pangs of self- reproach I have at times discovered that a long and plausible history constructed by me relating to personal friends has crumpled into a ruin of absurdity by the disclosure of the primary misconception on which the whole history was based. I have gone, let us say, on the supposition that two people were secretly lovers. On this supposition my imagination has constructed a whole scheme to explain certain acts, and one fine day I have discovered indubitably that the supposed lovers were not lovers, but confidence of their passions in other directions, and of course all my conjectures have been utterly false. The secret flush of shame at failure has not, however, prevented my falling into similar mistakes immediately after. When, therefore, I hereafter speak of my constructive imagination the reader will know to what I am alluding. It was already busy with Bergenaff. To it must be added that vague repulsion previously mentioned. This feeling abated on the second day, but, although lessened, it remained powerful enough to prevent my speaking to him. Whether it would have continued to abate until it disappeared, as such antipathies often disappear, under the familiarities of prolonged intercourse without any immediate appeal to my amor prop, I know not. But every reflective mind conscious of being accessible to antipathies will remember that one certain method of stifling them is for the object to make some appeal to our interest or our vanity. In the engagement of these more powerful feelings the antipathy is quickly strangled. At any rate it is so in my case and was so now. On the third day the conversation at table happening to turn as it often turned upon Saint Sebaldus Church, a young Frenchman who was criticizing its architecture with fluent dogmatism, drew Bergenaff into the discussion, and thereby elicited such a display of accurate and extensive knowledge, no less than delicacy of appreciation, that we were all listening spellbound. In the midst of this triumphant exposition the irritated vanity of the Frenchman could do nothing to regain his position, but oppose a flat denial to a historical statement made by Bergenaff, backing his denial by the confident assertion that all the competent authorities held with him. At this point Bergenaff appealed to me, and in that tone of deference so exquisitely flattering from one we already know to be superior he requested my decision, observing that from the manner in which he had seen me examine the details of the architecture he could not be mistaken in his confidence that I was a connoisseur. All eyes were turned upon me. As a shy man this made me blush. As a vain man the blush was accompanied with delight. It might easily have happened that such an appeal, acting at once upon shyness and ignorance, would have inflamed my wrath. But the appeal happening to be directed on a point which I had recently investigated and thoroughly mastered, I was flattered at the opportunity of a victorious display. The pleasure of my triumph diffused itself over my feelings towards him who had been the occasion of it. The Frenchman was silenced, the general verdict of the company was too obviously on our side. From this time the conversation continued between Bergenaff and myself, and he not only succeeded in entirely dissipating my absurd antipathy, which I now saw to have been founded on purely imaginary grounds, for neither the falseness nor the furtiveness could now be detected, but he succeeded in captivating all my sympathy. Long after dinner was over and the zaal empty we sat smoking our cigars and discussing politics, literature, and art in that suggestive desultory manner which often gives charm to casual acquaintances. It was a stirring epic that of February 1848, the revolution at first so hopeful and soon to manifest itself in failure so disastrous, was hurrying on to an outburst. France had been for many months agitated by cries of electoral reform and by indignation at the corruption and scandals in high places. The prozland murder and the dishonor of most your test terminated by suicide had been interpreted as signs of the coming destruction. The political banquets given in various important cities had been occasions for inflaming the public mind and to the far scene these banquets were interpreted as the sounds of the toxin. Louis-Philippe had become odious to France and contemptible to Europe. Gizot and Duchotel, the ministers of that day, although backed by a parliamentary majority on which they blindly relied, were unpopular and were regarded as infatuated even by their admirers in Europe. The Spanish marriages had all but led to a war with England. The opposition, headed by Thier and Audion Barot, was strengthened by United Action with the Republican Party, headed by Lédu-Royen, Marat, Flocon, and Louis Blanc. Bourgonnaif was an ardent Republican. So was I, but my color was of a different shade from his. He belonged to the Reds. My own dominant tendencies being artistic and literary, my dream was of a Republic in which intelligence would be the archon or ruler. And, of course, in such a Republic art and literature as the highest manifestation of mind would have the supreme direction. Do you smile, reader? I smile now, but it was serious earnest with me then. It is unnecessary to say more on this point. I have said so much to render intelligible the stray link of communion which riveted the charm of my new acquaintances' conversation. There was both agreement enough and difference enough in our views to render our society mutually fascinating. On retiring to my room that afternoon I could not help laughing at my absurd antipathy against Bourgonnaif. All his remarks had disclosed a generous, ardent, and refined nature. While my antipathy had specially fastened upon a certain falseness in his smile, a falseness the more poignantly hideous if it were falseness, because hidden amidst the wreaths of amiability my delight in this conversation had specially justified itself by the truthfulness of his mode of looking at things. He seemed to be sincerity itself. There was indeed a certain central reserve, but that might only be an integrity of pride, or it might be connected with painful circumstances in his history of which the melancholy in his face was the outward sign. That very evening my constructive imagination was furnished with a detail on which it was soon to be actively set to work. I had been rambling about the old fortifications and was returning at nightfall through the old archway near Albert Durer's house when a man passed by me. We looked at each other in that automatic way in which men look when they meet in narrow places, and I felt so to speak a start of recognition in the eyes of the man who passed. Nothing else in features or gestures betrayed recognition or surprise. But although there was only that, it flashed from his eyes to mine like an electric shock. He passed. I looked back. He continued his way without turning. The face was certainly known to me, but it floated in a mist of confused memories. I walked on slowly, pestering my memory with fruitless calls upon it, hopelessly trying to recover the place where I could have seen the stranger before. In vain memory traveled over Europe in concert rooms, theatres, shops, and railway carriages. I could not recall the occasion on which those eyes had previously met mine. That they had met them I had no doubt. I went to bed with the riddle undiscovered. CHAPTER II The Echoes of Murder Next morning Nirenberg was agitated with a horror such as can seldom have disturbed its quiet. A young and lovely girl had been murdered. Her corpse was discovered at daybreak under the archway leading to the old fortifications. She had been stabbed to the heart. No other signs of violence were visible. No robbery had been attempted. In great cities, necessarily great centers of crime, we daily hear of murders. Their frequency and remoteness leave us undisturbed. Our sympathies can only be deeply moved either by some scenic peculiarities investing the crime with unusual romance or unusual atrocity, or else by the more immediate appeal of direct neighborly interest. The murder, which is read of in the times as having occurred in Westminster, has seldom any special horror to the inhabitants of Islington or Oxford Street, but to the inhabitants of Westminster, and especially to the inhabitants of the particular street in which it was perpetrated, the crime assumes heart-shaking proportions. Every detail is asked for, and every surmise listened to, with feverish eagerness, is repeated and diffused through the crowd with growing interest. The family of the victim, the antecedents of the assassin, if he is known, or the conjectures pointing to the unknown assassin, are eagerly discussed. All the trivial details of household care or domestic fortunes, all the items of personal gossip become invested with a solemn and affecting interest. Pity for the victim and survivors mingle and alternate with fierce cries for vengeance on the guilty. The whole street becomes one family, commingled by an energetic sympathy, united by one common feeling of compassion and wrath. In villages, and in cities so small as Nuremberg, the same community of feeling is manifested. The town became as one street. The horror spread like a conflagration. The sympathy surged and swelled like a tide. Everyone felt a personal interest in the event as if the murder had been committed at his own door. Never shall I forget that wail of passionate pity and that cry for the vengeance of justice which arose from all sides of the startled city. Never shall I forget the hurry, the agitation, the feverish restlessness, the universal communicativeness, the volunteered services, the eager suggestion surging round the house of the unhappy parents. Herr Lefeldt, the father of the unhappy girl, was a respected burger known to almost everyone. His Mercer's shop was the leading one of the city. A worthy, pious man, somewhat strict, but of irreproachable character, his virtues, no less than those of his wife and of his only daughter, Lyschen, now alas, forever snatched from their yearning eyes, were canvassed everywhere, and served to intensify the general grief. That such a calamity should have fallen on a household so estimable seemed to add fuel to the people's wrath. Poor Lyschen, her pretty, playful ways, her opening prospects as the only daughter of parents so well-to-do and so kind, her youth and abounding life, these were detailed with impassioned fervor by friends and repeated by strangers who caught the tone of friends as if they too had known and loved her. But amidst the surging uproar of this sea of many voices, no one clear voice of direction could be heard, no clue given to the clamorous bloodhounds to run down the assassin. Cries had been heard in the streets that night at various parts of the town, which, although then interpreted as the quarrels of drunk and brawlers, and the conflicts of cats, were now confidently asserted to have proceeded from the unhappy girl in her death struggle. But none of these cries had been heard in the immediate neighborhood of the archway. All the inhabitants of that part of the town agreed that in their waking hours the streets had been perfectly still, nor were there any traces visible of a struggle having taken place. Lyschen might have been murdered elsewhere and her corpse quietly deposited where it was found as far as any evidence went. Old and vague were the conjectures. All were baffled in the attempt to give them a definite direction. The crime was apparently prompted by revenge, certainly not by lust or desire of money. But she was not known to stand in any one's way. In this utter blank as to the assignable motive, I, perhaps alone among the furious crowd, had a distinct suspicion of the assassin. No sooner had the news reached me than with the specification of the theatre of the crime there at once flashed upon me the intellectual vision of the criminal. The stranger, with a dark beard and startled eyes, stood confessed before me. I held my breath for a few moments, and then there came a tide of objections rushing over my mind, revealing the inadequacy of the grounds on which rested my suspicions. What were the grounds? I had seen a man in a particular spot, not an unfrequented spot, on the evening of the night when the crime had been committed there. That man had seemed to recognize me and wished to avoid being recognized. Obviously these grounds were too slender to bear any weight of construction such as I had based on them. Mere presence on the spot could no more inculpate him than it could inculpate me, if I had met him there equally he had met me there. Nor even if my suspicion were correct that he knew me and refused to recognize me, could that be any argument tending to criminate him in an affair wholly disconnected with me? Besides he was walking peaceably, openly, and he looked like a gentleman. All these objections pressed themselves upon me and kept me silent. But in spite of their force I could not prevent the suspicion from continually arising. Ashamed to mention it, because it may have sounded too absurd, I could not prevent my constructive imagination indulging in its vagaries, and with this secret conviction I resolved to await events, and in case suspicion from other quarters should ever designate the probable assassin, I might then come forward with my bit of corroborative evidence, should the suspected assassin be the stranger of the archway. By twelve o'clock a new direction was given to rumour. Hitherto the stories, when carefully sifted of all exaggerations of flying conjecture, had settled themselves into something like this. The Leifelts had retired to rest at a quarter before ten, as was their custom. They had seen Lyschen go into her bedroom for the night, and had themselves gone to sleep with unclouded minds. From this peaceful security they were startled early in the morning by the appalling news of the calamity which had fallen on them. Incredulous at first, as well they might be, and incapable of believing in a ruin so unexpected and so overwhelming, they imagined some mistake, asserting that Lyschen was in her own room. Into that room they rushed, and there the undisturbed bed and the open window, but a few feet from the garden, silently and pathetically disclosed the fatal truth. The bereaved parents turned a revealing look upon each other's whitened faces, and then slowly retired from the room, followed in effecting silence by the others. Back into their own room they went. The father knelt beside the bed, and sobbing, prayed. The mother sat staring with a stupefied stare, her lips faintly moving. In a short while the flood of grief awakened to a thorough consciousness burst from their laboring hearts. When the first paroxysms were over they questioned others, and gave incoherent replies to the questions addressed to them. From all which it resulted that Lyschen's absence, though obviously voluntary, was wholly inexplicable to them, and no clue whatever could be given as to the motives of the crime. When these details became known, conjecture naturally interpreted Lyschen's absence at night as an asignation. But with whom? She was not known to have a lover. Her father on being questioned passionately affirmed that she had none, she loved no one but her parents' poor child. Her mother on being questioned told the same story, adding, however, that about seventeen months before she had fancied that Lyschen was a little disposed to favour Franz Kerkel, their shopman, but on being spoken to on the subject with some seriousness, and warned of the distance between them, she had laughed heartily at the idea, and since then had treated Franz with so much indifference that only a week ago she had drawn from her mother a reproof on the subject. I told her Franz was a good lad, though not good enough for her, and that she ought to treat him kindly. But she said my lecture had given her an alarm lest Franz should have got the same maggot into his head. This was the story now passing through the curious crowds in every street. After hearing it I had turned into a tobacconist's in the Adlergasse to restock my cigar case, and found there as everywhere a group discussing the one topic of the hour. Herr Fischer, the tobacconist, with a long porcelain pipe pendant from his screwed-up lips, was solemnly listening to the particulars volubly communicated by a stout Bavarian priest, while behind the counter in a corner, swiftly knitting, sat his wife, her black bead-like eyes also fixed on the orator. Of course I was dragged into the conversation. Instead of attending to commercial interests they looked upon me as the possible bearer of fresh news. Nor was it without a secret satisfaction that I found I could gratify them in that respect. They had not heard of Franz Kerkl in the matter. No sooner had I told what I had heard than the knitting needles of the vivacious little woman were at once suspended. Ah, ye she exclaimed. I see it all. He's the wretch. Who, we all simultaneously inquired. Who, why Kerkl, of course, if she changed and treated him with indifference, it was because she loved him, and he has murdered the poor thing. How you run on wife remonstrated Fischer, while the priest shook a dubious head. I tell you it is so. I'm positive. If she loved him, she did, I tell you, trust a woman foreseen through such things. Well, say she did, continued Fischer, and I won't deny that it may be so. But then that makes against the idea of his having done her any harm. Don't tell me, retorted the convinced woman. She loved him. She went out to meet him in secret, and he murdered her. The villain did. I'm as sure of it as if these eyes had seen him do it. The husband winked at us as much as to say, You hear these women. And the priest and I endeavored to reason her out of her illogical position. But she was immovable. Kerkl had murdered her, she knew it, she couldn't tell why, but she knew it. Perhaps he was jealous, who knows. At any rate, he ought to be arrested. By twelve o'clock, as I said, a new rumour ran through the crowd, which seemed to confirm the little woman in her rash logic. Kerkl had been arrested, and a waistcoat, stained with blood, had been found in his room. By half-past twelve, the rumour ran that he had confessed the crime. This, however, proved on inquiry to be the hasty anticipation of public indignation. He had been arrested, the waistcoat had been found, so much was authentic, and the suspicions gathered ominously over him. When first Frau Fischer had started the suggestion it flew like wildfire. Then people suddenly noticed, as very surprising, that Kerkl had not that day made his appearance at the shop. His absence had not been noticed in the tumult of grief and inquiry. But it became suddenly invested with a dreadful significance, now that it was rumoured that he had been Lysian's lover. Of all men he would be the most affected by the tragic news. Of all men he would have been the first to tender sympathy and aid to the afflicted parents, and the most clamorous in the search for the undiscovered culprit. Yet while all Nirenberg was crowding round the house of sorrow, which was also his house of business, he alone remained away. This naturally pointed suspicion at him. When the messengers had gone to seek him his mother refused them admission, declaring in incoherent phrases betraying great agitation that her son was gone distracted with grief and could see no one. On this it was determined to order his arrest. The police went, the house was searched, and the waistcoat found. The testimony of the girl who lived as a servant in Kerkl's house was also criminatory. She deposed that on the night in question she awoke about half past eleven with a violent toothache. She was certain as to the hour, because she heard the clock afterwards at strike twelve. She felt some alarm at hearing voices in rooms at an hour when her mistress and young master must long ago have gone to bed. But as the voices were seemingly in quiet conversation, her alarm subsided, and she concluded that instead of having gone to bed her mistress was still up. In her pain she heard the door gently open, and then she heard footsteps in the garden. This surprised her very much. She couldn't think what the young master could want going out at that hour. She became terrified without knowing exactly at what. Fear quite drove away the toothache which had not since returned. After lying there quaking for some time, again she heard footsteps in the garden. The door opened and closed gently. Voices were heard, and she at last distinctly heard her mistress say, Be a man, France. Good night. Sleep well. Upon which France replied in a tone of great agony, there is no chance of sleep for me. Then all was silent. Next morning her mistress seemed very queer. Her young master went out very early, but soon came back again, and there were dreadful scenes going on in his room as she heard, but she didn't know what it was all about. She heard of the murder from a neighbor, but never thought of its having any particular interest for Mr. France, though, of course, he would be very sorry for the Leiffelts. The facts testified to by the servant, especially the going out at that late hour, and the dreadful scenes of the morning seemed to bear but one interpretation. Moreover, she identified the waistcoat as the one worn by France on the day preceding the fatal night. Chapter 3 The Accused Now at last the pent-up wrath found event. From the distracting condition of wandering uncertain suspicion it had been recalled into the glad security of individual hate. Although up to this time Kerkle had borne an exemplary reputation, it was now remembered that he had always been of a morose and violent temper, a hypocrite in religion, a selfish sensualist. Several sagacious critics had long seen through him. Others had never liked him. Others had wondered how it was he kept his place so long in Leiffelts' shop. Poor fellow, his life and actions like those of everyone else when illuminated by a light thrown back upon them seemed so conspicuously despicable, although when illuminated by their own light they had seemed innocent enough. His mother's frantic protestations of her son's innocence, her assertions that France loved Lysian more than his own soul, only served to envelop her in the silent accusation of being an accomplice, or at least of being an accessory after the fact. I cannot say why it was, but I did not share the universal belief. The logic seemed to me forced, the evidence trivial. On first hearing of Kerkle's arrest, I eagerly questioned my informant respecting his personal appearance and on hearing that he was fair with blue eyes and flaxen hair. My conviction of his innocence was fixed. Looking back on these days, I am often amused at this characteristic of my constructive imagination. While rejecting the disjointed logic of the mob which interpreted his guilt, I was myself deluded by a logic infinitely less rational. Had Kerkle been dark, with dark eyes and beard, I should probably have sworn to his guilt simply because the idea of that stranger had firmly fixed itself in my mind. All that afternoon, and all the next day, the busy hum of voices was raised by the one topic of commanding interest. Kerkle had been examined. He at once admitted that a secret patrol had for some time existed between him and Lysian. They had been led to take this improper step by fear of her parents, who, had the attachment been discovered, would it was thought have separated them forever. Herr Leiffelt's sternness, no less than his superior position, seemed an invincible obstacle, and the good mother, although doting upon her only daughter, was led by the very intensity of her affection to form ambitious hopes of her daughter's future. It was barely possible that some turn in events might one day yield an opening for their consent, but meanwhile prudence dictated secrecy in order to avert the most pressing danger, that of separation. Also the pretty Lysian, with feminine instinctive ruse, had affected to treat her lover with indifference, and to compensate him and herself for this restraint, she had been in the habit of escaping from home once or twice a week, and spending a delicious hour or two at night in the company of her lover and his mother. Kerkle and his mother lived in a cottage a little way outside of the town. Leiffelt's shop stood not many yards from the archway. Now, as in Nuremberg, no one was abroad after ten o'clock, except a few loungers at the cafes and beer houses, and these were only to be met inside the town, not outside it, Lysian ran extremely little risk of being observed in her rapid transit from her father's to her lover's house. Nor, indeed, had she ever met anyone in the course of these visits. On the fatal night Lysian was expected at the cottage. Mother and son waited at first, hopefully, then anxiously, at last with some vague uneasiness at her non-appearance. It was now a quarter-past eleven, nearly an hour later than her usual time. They occasionally went to the door to look for her. Then they walked a few yards down the road as if to catch an earlier glimpse of her advancing steps. But in vain. The half-hour struck. They came back into the cottage, discussing the various probabilities of delay. Three-quarters struck. Perhaps she had been detected. Perhaps she was ill. Perhaps. But this was his mother's suggestion, and took little hold of him. There had been visitors who had stayed later than usual, and Lysian, finding the night so advanced, had postponed her visit to the morrow. France, who interpreted Lysian's feelings by his own, was assured that no postponement of a voluntary kind was credible of her. Twelve o'clock struck. Again France went out into the road, and walked nearly up to the archway. He returned with a heavy sadness and foreboding at his heart, reluctantly admitting that now all hope of seeing her that night was over. That night? Poor, sorrowing heart, the night was to be eternal. The anguish of the desolate nevermore was awaiting him. There is something intensely pathetic in being thus, as it were, spectators of a tragic drama which is being acted on two separate stages at once. The dreadful link of connection, which is unseen to the separate actors, being only too vividly seen by the spectators. It was with some interest that I, who believed in Kerkl's innocence, heard this story, and in imagination followed its unfolding stage. He went to bed, not as may be expected to sleep, tossing restlessly in feverish agitation, conjuring up many imaginary terrors, but all of them trifles compared with the dread reality which he was so soon to face. He pictured her weeping, and she was lying dead on the cold pavement of the dark archway. He saw her in agitated eloquence pleading with offended parents, and she was removed for ever from all agitations with the peace of death upon her young face. At an early hour he started that he might put an end to his suspense. He had not yet reached the archway before the shattering news burst upon him. From that moment he remembered nothing, but his mother described his ghastly agitation as throwing himself upon her neck he told her through dreadful sobs the calamity which had fallen. She did her best to comfort him, but he grew wilder and wilder, and rolled upon the ground in the agony of an immeasurable despair. She trembled for his reason and his life, and when the messengers came to seek him she spoke but the simple truth in saying that he was like one distracted. No sooner had a glimpse of light dawned on him that some vague suspicion rested on him in reference to the murder, than he started up, flung away his agitation, and with a calmness which was awful, answered every question, and seemed nerved for every trial. From that moment not a sob escaped him until, in the narrative of the night's events, he came to that part which told of the sudden disclosure of his bereavement, and the simple straightforward manner in which he told his tale with a face entirely bloodless and eyes that seemed to have withdrawn all their light inwards, made a great impression on the audience, which was heightened into sympathy when the final sob, breaking through the forced calmness, told of the agony which was eating its fiery way through the heart. The story was not only plausible in itself, but accurately tallied with what before had seemed like the criminating evidence of the maid, tallied moreover precisely as to time, which would hardly have been the case had the story been an invention. As to the waistcoat which had figured so conspicuously in all the rumours, it appeared that suspicion had monstrously exaggerated the facts. Instead of a waistcoat plashed with blood, as popular imagination pictured it, it was a gray waistcoat with one spot and a slight smear of blood which admitted of a very simple explanation. Three days before Franz had cut his left hand in cutting some bread, and to this the maid testified because she was present when the accident occurred. He had not noticed that his waistcoat was marked by it until the next day, and had forgotten to wash out the stains. People outside shook skeptical heads at this story of the cut hand. The bloody waistcoat was not to be disposed of in that easy way. It had fixed itself too strongly in their imagination. Indeed, my belief is that even could they have seen the waistcoat its insignificant marks would have appeared murderous patches to their eyes. I had seen it, and my report was listened to with ill-concealed disbelief when not with open protestation. And when Caracol was discharged as free from all suspicion there was a low growl of disappointed wrath heard from numerous groups. This may sympathetically be understood by whom soever remembers the painful uneasiness of the mind under a great stress of excitement with no definite issue. The lust for a vengeance demanded by the aroused sensibilities of compassion makes men credulous in their impatience. They easily believe anyone is guilty because they feel an imperious need for fastening the guilt upon some definite head. Few verdicts of not guilty are well received, unless another victim is at hand upon whom the verdict of guilty is likely to fall. It was demonstrable to all judicial minds that Caracol was wholly, pathetically innocent. In a few days this gradually became clear to the majority. But at first it was resisted as an attempt to balk justice. And to the last there were some obstinate doubters who shook their heads mysteriously and said, with certain incisiveness, Somebody must have done it. I should very much like to know who. Suspicion once more was drifting aimlessly. None had pointed in any new direction. No mention of any one whom I could identify with a stranger had yet been made. But although silent on the subject, I kept firm in my conviction. And I sometimes laughed at the pertinacity with which I scrutinized the face of every man I met, if he happened to have a black beard. And as black beards are excessively common, my curiosity, though never gratified, was never allowed repose. Meanwhile, Listien's funeral had been emphatically a public mourning. Nay, so great was the emotion that it almost deadened the interest which otherwise would have been so powerful in the news now daily reaching us from Paris. Blood had flowed upon her streets in consequence of that pistol shot, which either by accident or criminal intent had converted the demonstration before the hotel of the Minister of Foreign Affairs into an insurrection. Paris had risen, barricades were erected, the troops were under arms, this was agitating news. Such is the solidarity of all European nations. And so quick are all to vibrate in unison with the vibrations of each that events like those transacted in Paris necessarily stirred every city, no matter how remote nor politically how secure. And it says much for the intense interest excited by the Leiffelt tragedy that Nuremberg was capable of sustaining that interest even amid the tremendous pressure of the February Revolution. It is true that Nuremberg is at all times somewhat sequestered from the great movements of the day, following slowly in the rear of great waves. It is true moreover that some politicians showed remarkable eagerness in canvassing the characters and hopes of Louis-Philippe and Gizot. But although such events would, at another period, have formed the universal interest, the impenetrable mystery hanging over Lysian's death through the revolution into the background of their thoughts. If when a storm is raging over the dreary moorland, a human cry of suffering is heard at the door at once the thunders and the tumult sink into insignificance and are not even heard by the ear which is pierced with the feeble human voice. The grandeurs of storm and tempest, the uproar of surging seas, the clamorous wail of seabirds amid the volleying artillery of heaven, in vain assail the ear that has once caught even the distant cry of a human agony or serve only as cynical accompaniments to the tragedy which is foreshadowed by that cry. And so it was amid the uproar of 1848. A kingdom was in convulsions, but here at our door a young girl had been murdered and two hearths made desolate. Rumors continued to fly about. The assassin was always about to be discovered, but he remained shrouded in impenetrable darkness. A remark made by Burgenev struck me much. Our host, Zumbairyshenhof, one day announced with great satisfaction that he himself heard from the syndic that the police were on the traces of the assassin. I'm sorry to hear it, said Burgenev. The guests paused from eating and looked at him with astonishment. It is a proof, he added, that even the police now give it up as hopeless. I always notice that whenever the police are said to be on the traces the malefactor is never tracked. When they are on his traces they wisely say nothing about it. They allow it to be believed that they are baffled in order to lull their victim into a dangerous security. When they know themselves to be baffled there is no danger in quieting the public mind and saving their own credit by announcing that they are about to be successful. End of Burgenev. Part 1. Burgenev's remark had been but too sagacious. The police were hopelessly baffled. In all such cases possible success depends upon the initial suggestion either of a motive which leads to a suspicion of the person or of some person which leads to a suspicion of the motive. Once set suspicion on the right track and evidence is suddenly a light in all quarters. But unhappily in the present case there was no assignable motive no shadow darkening any person. An episode now came to our knowledge in which Burgenev manifested an unusual depth of interest. I was led to notice this interest because it had seemed to me that in the crime itself and the discussions which arose out of it he shared but little of the universal excitement. I do not mean that he was indifferent by no means. But the horror of the crime did not seem to fascinate his imagination as it fascinated ours. He could talk quite as readily of other things and far more readily of the French affairs. But on the contrary in this new episode he showed peculiar interest. It appeared that Leiffelt moved perhaps partly by a sense of the injustice which had been done to Caracal in even suspecting him of the crime and in submitting him to an examination more poignantly affecting to him under such circumstances than a public trial would have been under others, and moved partly by the sense that Leistian's love had practically drawn Caracal within the family, for her choice of him as a husband had made him morally if not legally a son-in-law, and moved partly by the sense of loneliness which had now settled on their childless home, Leiffelt had in the most pathetic and considerate terms begged Caracal to take the place of his adopted son and become joint partner with him in the business. This, however, Caracal had gently yet firmly declined. He averred that he felt no injury, though great pain had been inflicted on him by the examination. He himself in such a case would not have shrunk from demanding that his own brother should be tried under suspicions of similar urgency. It was simple justice that all who were suspected should be examined, justice also to them that they might forever clear themselves of doubtful appearances. But for the rest, while he felt his old affectionate respect for his master, he could recognize no claim to be removed from his present position. Had she lived, said the heartbroken youth, he would gladly have consented to accept any fortune which her love might bestow, because he felt that his own love and the devotion of a life might repay it. But there was nothing now that he could give an exchange. For his services he was amply paid. His feelings towards Lysian's parents must continue what they had ever been. In vain Leiffelt pleaded. In vain many friends argued. France remained respectfully firm in his refusal. This, as I said, interested Bourgonnais immensely. He seemed to enter completely into the minds of the sorrowing, pleading parents and the sorrowing, denying lover. He appreciated and expounded their motives with a subtlety and delicacy of perception which surprised and delighted me. It showed the refinement of his moral nature. But at the same time it rendered his minor degree of interest in the other aspects of the story, those which had a more direct and overpowering appeal to the heart, a greater paradox. Human nature is troubled in the presence of all mystery which has not by long familiarity lost its power of soliciting attention. And for my own part I have always been uneasy in the presence of moral problems. Puzzled by the contradictions which I noticed in Bourgonnais, I tried to discover whether he had any general repugnance to stories of crimes or any special repugnance to murders or, finally, any strange repugnance to this particular case now everywhere discussed. And is it not a little remarkable that during three separate interviews in the course of which I severly, and as I thought artfully, introduced these topics, making them seem to arise naturally out of the suggestion of our talk, I totally failed to arrive at any distinct conclusion. I was afraid to put the direct question. Do you not share the common feeling of interest in criminal stories? This question would doubtless have elicited a categorical reply. But somehow the consciousness of an area pensée made me shrink from putting such a question. Reflecting on this indifference on a special point, and on the numerous manifestations I had noticed of his sensibility, I came at last to the conclusion that he must be a man of tender heart whose delicate sensibilities easily shrank from the horrible under every form, and no more permitted him to dwell unnecessarily upon painful facts than they permit imaginative minds to dwell on the details of an operation. I had not long settled this in my mind before an accident suddenly threw a lurid light upon many details noticed previously, and painfully revived that inexplicable repulsion with which I had at first regarded him. A new suspicion filled my mind, or rather let me say, a distinct shape was impressed upon many fluctuating suspicions. It scarcely admitted of argument, and at times seemed preposterous, nevertheless it persisted. The mind which in broad daylight assents to all that can be alleged against the absurdities of the belief in apparitions will often acknowledge the dim terrors of darkness and loneliness, terrors at possibilities of supernatural visitations. In like manner, in the clear daylight of reason I could see the absurdity of my suspicion, but the vague stirrings of feeling remained unsilenced. I was haunted by the dim whores of a possibility. Thus it arose. We were both going to Munich and Burgeneuve had shortened his contemplated stay at Nuremberg that he might have the pleasure of accompanying me, adding also that he too should be glad to reach Munich, not only for its art, but for its greater command of papers and intelligence respecting what was then going on in France. On the night preceding the morning of our departure I was seated in his room, smoking and discussing his usual, while Ivan, his servant, packed up his things in two large portmanteaus. Ivan was a serf who spoke no word of any language but his own. Although of a brutal, almost idiotic type, he was loudly eulogized by his master as the model of fidelity and usefulness. Burgeneuve treated him with gentleness, though with a certain imperiousness, much as one might treat a savage mastiff which it was necessary to dominate without exasperating. He more than once spoke of Ivan as a living satire on physiognomists and phrenologists, and as I am a phrenologist I listened with some incredulity. Look at him, he would say. Observe the low retreating brow, the flat face, the surly mouth, the broad base of the head, and the huge bull-like neck. Would not anyone say Ivan was as destructive as a panther, as tenacious as a bulldog, as brutal as a bull? Yet he is the gentlest of sluggish creatures and as tender-hearted as a girl. That thick-set muscular frame shrouds a hare's heart. He is so faithful and so attached that I believe for me he would risk his life, but on no account could you get him to place himself in danger on his own account. Part of his love for me is gratitude for having rescued him from the conscription. The danger's incident to a military life had no charm for him. Now, although Burgenev, who was not a phrenologist, might be convinced of the absence of ferocious instincts in Ivan, to me as a phrenologist the statement was eminently incredible. All the appearances of his manner were such as to confirm his master's opinion. He was quiet even tender in his attentions, but the tyrannous influence of ideas and physical impressions cannot be set aside, and no evidence would permanently have kept down my distrust of this man. When women shriek at the sight of a gun, it is vain that you solemnly assure them that the gun is not loaded. I don't know, they reply, at any rate I don't like it. It was much in this attitude with regard to Ivan. He might be harmless. I didn't know that. What I did know was that I didn't like his looks. On this night he was moving noiselessly about the room employed in packing. Burgenev's talk rambled over the old themes, and I thought I had never before met with one of my own age whose society was so perfectly delightful. He was not so conspicuously my superior on all points that I felt the restraints inevitably imposed by superiority. Yet he was, in many respects, sufficiently above me in knowledge and power, to make me eager to have his assent to my views where we differed, and to have him enlighten me where I knew myself to be weak. In the very moment of my most cordial admiration came a shock. Ivan, on passing from one part of the room to the other, caught his foot in the strap of the portmanteau and fell. The small wooden box, something of a glove box which he held in his hand at the time, fell on the floor and falling over discharged its contents close to Burgenev's feet. The objects which caught my eyes were several pairs of gloves, a rouge-pot, and hare's foot, and a black beard. By what caprice of imagination was it that the sight of this false beard lying at Burgenev's feet thrilled me with horror? In one lightning-flash I beheld the archway, the stranger with the startled eyes, this stranger no longer unknown to me, but too fatally recognized as Burgenev, and at his feet the murdered girl. Moved by what subtle springs of suggestion I know not, there before me stood that dreadful vision seen in a lurid light, but seen as clearly as if the actual presence of the objects were obtruding itself upon my eyes. In the inexpressible horror of this vision my heart seemed clutched with an icy hand. Fortunately Burgenev's attention was called away from me. He spoke angrily some short sentence, which of course was in Russian and therefore unintelligible to me. He then stooped and, picking up the rouge-pot, held it towards me with his melancholy smile. He was very red in the face, but that may be either of anger or the effect of sudden stooping. I see you are surprised at these masquerading follies, he said, in a tone which, though low, was perfectly calm. You must not suppose that I beautify my sallow cheeks on ordinary occasions. He then quietly handed the pot to Ivan, who replaced it with the gloves and the beard in the box, and after making an inquiry which sounded like a growl, to which Burgenev answered negatively, he continued his packing. Burgenev resumed his cigar and his argument as if nothing had happened. The vision had disappeared, but a confused mass of moving figures took its place. My heart throbbed so violently that it seemed to me as if its tumult must be heard by others. Yet my face must have been tolerably calm since Burgenev made no comment on it. I answered his remarks in vague fragments, for, in truth, my thoughts were flying from conjecture to conjecture. I remembered that the stranger had a floored complexion. Was this rouge? It is true that I fancied the stranger carried a walking stick in his right hand. If so, this was enough to crush all suspicions of his identity with Burgenev. But then I was rather hazy on this point, and probably did not observe a walking stick. After a while my inattention struck him, and looking at me with some concern, he inquired if there was anything the matter. I pleaded a colic which I attributed to the imprudence of having indulged in sauerkraut at dinner. He advised me to take a little brandy, but, affecting a fresh access of pain, I bade him good night. He hoped I should be all right on the moral. If not, he added, we can postpone our journey till the day after. Once in my own room I bolted the door, and sat down on the edge of the bed in a tumult of excitement. Fluctuations. Alone with my thoughts and capable of pursuing conjectures and conclusions without external interruption, I quickly exhausted all the hypothetical possibilities of the case, and, from having started with the idea that Burgenev was the assassin, I came at last to the more sensible conclusion that I was a construct of blockhead. My suspicions were simply outrageous in their defective evidence, and could never for one moment have seemed otherwise to any imagination less riotously active than mine. I bathed my heated head, undressed myself, and got into bed, considering what I should say to the police when I went next morning to communicate my suspicions. And it is worthy of remark, as well as somewhat ludicrously self-betraying, that no sooner did I mentally see myself in the presence of the police, and was thus forced to confront my suspicions with some appearance of evidence than the whole fabric of my vision rattled to the ground. What had I to say to the police? Simply that, on the evening of the night when Lixin was murdered, I had passed in a public thoroughfare a man whom I could not identify, but who as I could not help fancying seemed to recognize me. This man I had persuaded myself was the murderer, for which persuasion I was unable to adduce a tittle of evidence. It was uncolored by the remotest possibility. It was truly, and simply, the suggestion of my vagrant fancy which had mysteriously settled itself into a conviction, and having thus capriciously identified the stranger with Lixin's murderer, I now, upon evidence quite as preposterous, identified Burgenev with the stranger. The folly became apparent even to myself. If Burgenev had in his possession a rouge-pot and false beard, I could not but acknowledge that he made no attempt to conceal them, nor had he manifested any confusion on their appearance. He had quietly characterized them as masquerading follies. Moreover, I now began to remember distinctly that the stranger did carry a walking stick in his right hand, and as Burgenev had lost his right arm, that settled the point. Into such complications would the tricks of imagination lead me? I blushed mentally and resolved to let it serve as a lesson in future. It is needless, however, to say that the lesson was lost, such as lessons always are lost. A strong tendency in any direction soon disregards all the teachings of experience. I am still not the less the victim of my constructive imagination because I have frequently had to be ashamed of its vagaries. The next morning I awoke with a lighter breast, rejoicing in the caution which had delayed me from any rash manifestation of suspicions now seem to be absurd. I smiled as the thought arose, what if this suspected stranger should also be pestered by an act of imagination and should entertain similar suspicions of me? He must have seen in my eyes the look of recognition which I saw in his. On hearing of the murder our meeting may also have recurred to him, and his suspicions would have this color wanting to mine, that I happen to inherit with my Italian blood a somewhat truculent appearance which has gained for me among my friends the playful sobriquet of the brigand. Anxious to atone at once for my folly, and to remove from my mind any misgiving, if it existed, at my quitting him so soon after the disclosures of the masquerading details, I went to Burgunov as soon as I was dressed and proposed a ramble till the diligence started from Munich. He was sympathetic in his inquiries about my colic which I assured him had quite passed away, and out we went. The sharp morning air of March made us walk briskly, and gave a pleasant animation to our thoughts. As he discussed the acts of the provisional government, so wise, temperate, and energetic, the fervor and generosity of his sentiments stood out in such striking contrast with the deed I had last night recklessly imputed to him that I felt deeply ashamed, and was nearly carried away by mingled admiration and self-reproach to confess the absurd vagrancy of my thoughts and humbly ask his pardon. But you can understand the reluctance at a confession so insulting to him, so degrading to me. It is, at all times, difficult to tell a man, face to face, eye to eye, the evil you have thought of him, unless the recklessness of anger seizes on it as a weapon with which to strike. And I had now so completely unsaid to myself all that I once had thought of evil that, to put it in words, seemed a gratuitous injury to me and insult to him. A day or two after our arrival in Munich a reaction began steadily to set in. Ashamed as I was of my suspicions I could not altogether banish from my mind the incident which had awakened them. The image of that false beard would mingle with my thoughts. I was vaguely uncomfortable at the idea of Burgunov's caring about with him obvious materials of disguise. In itself this would have had little significance, but coupled with the fact that his devoted servant was, in spite of all Burgunov's eulogies, repulsively ferocious in aspect, capable as I could not help believing of any brutality. The suggestion was unpleasant. You will understand that, having emphatically acquitted Burgunov in my mind, I did not again distinctly charge him with any complicity in the mysterious murder. On the contrary, I should indignantly have repelled such a thought. But the uneasy sense of some mystery about him, coupled with the accessories of disguise and the aspect of the servant, gave rise to dim shadowy forebodings which ever and anon passed across my mind. Did it ever occur to you, reader, to reflect on the depths of deceit which lie still and dark even in the honestest minds? Society reposes on a thin crust of convention, underneath which lie fathomless possibilities of crime and consequently suspicions of crime. Friendship, however close and dear, is not free from its reserves, unspoken beliefs, more or less suppressed opinions. The man whom you would indignantly defend against any accusation brought by another, so confident are you in his unshakable integrity, you may yourself momentarily suspect of crimes far exceeding those which you repudiate. Indeed, I have known sagacious men hold that perfect frankness in expressing the thoughts is a sure sign of imperfect friendship. Something is always suppressed, and it is not he who loves you that tells you candidly what he thinks of your person, your pretensions, your children, or your poems. Direct candor is dictated by envy, or some other unfriendly feeling, making friendship a stocking-horse under cover of which it shoots the arrow which will rankle. Friendship is candid only when the candor is urgent, meant to avert impending danger, or to rectify an error. The candor which is in impertence never springs from friendship. Love is sympathetic. I do not, of course, intimate that my feeling for Burgeneuve was of that deep kind which justifies the name of friendship. I only want to say that in our social relations we are constantly hiding from each other under the smiles and courtesies of friendly interest, thoughts which, if expressed, would destroy all possible communion, and that nevertheless we are not insincere in our smiles and courtesies, and therefore there is nothing paradoxical in my having felt great admiration for Burgeneuve, and great pleasure in his society, while all the time there was deep down in the recesses of my thoughts an uneasy sense of dark mystery which possibly connected him with a dreadful crime. This feeling was roused into greater activity by an incident which now occurred. One morning I went to Burgeneuve's room, which was at some distance from mine on the same floor, intending to propose a visit to the sculpture at the Glyptotec. To my surprise I found Yvon the Serf standing before the closed door. He looked at me like a mastiff about to spring, and intimated by significant gestures that I was not allowed to enter the room. Concluding that his master was occupied in some way, and desired not to be disturbed, I merely signified by a nod that my visit was of no consequence and went out. On returning about an hour afterwards I saw Yvon putting three pink letters into the letter box of the hotel. I attached no significance to this very ordinary fact at the time, but went up to my room and began writing my letters, one of which was to my lawyer sending him an important receipt. The dinner bell sounded before I had half finished this letter, but I wrote on, determined to have done with it at once in case the afternoon should offer any expedition with Burgeneuve. At dinner he quietly intimated that Yvon had informed him of my visit and apologized for not having been able to see me. I, of course, assured him that no apology was necessary, and that we had plenty of time to visit sculpture together without intruding on his private hours. He informed me that he was that afternoon going to pay a visit to Gjvantala, the sculptor, and if I desired it he would ask permission on another occasion to take me with him. I jumped at the proposal as may be supposed. Dinner over I strolled into the English agaton, and had my coffee and cigar there. On my return I was vexed to find that in the hurry of finishing my letters I had sealed the one to my lawyer and had not enclosed the receipt which had been the object of writing. Fortunately it was not too late. Descending to the bureau of the hotel I explained my mistake to the head waiter who unlocked the letter box to search for my letter. It was found at once, for there were only seven or eight in the box. Among these my eye naturally caught the three pink letters which I had that morning seen Yvon drop into the box, but although they were seen by me they were not noticed at the time, my mind being solely occupied with rectifying the stupid blunder I had made. Once more in my own room a sudden revelation startled me. Everyone knows what it is to have details come under the eye which the mind first interprets long after the eye ceases to rest upon them. The impressions are received passively, but they are registered and can be calmly read whenever the mind is in activity. It was so now. I suddenly, as if now for the first time, saw that the addresses on Bourgonev's letters were written in a fluent, masterly hand, bold in character, and with a certain sweep which might have come from a painter. The thrill which this vision gave me will be intelligible when you remember that Bourgonev had lost or pretended to have lost his right arm and was, as I before intimated, far from dexterous with his left, that no man recently thrown upon the use of a left hand could have written those addresses was too evident. What then was the alternative? The empty sleeve was an imposture. At once the old horrible suspicion returned, and this time with tenfold violence and with damnatory confirmation. Pressing my temples between my hands I tried to be calm and to survey the evidence without precipitation, but for some time the conflict of thoughts was too violent. Whatever might be the explanation, clear it was that Bourgonev, for some purposes, was practicing a deception and had, as I knew, other means of disguising his appearance. This, on the most favourable interpretation, branded him with suspicion. This excluded him from the circle of honest men. But did it connect him with the murder of Lyschen Lefeld? In my thought it did so indubitably, but I was aware of the difficulty of making this clear to anyone else. CHAPTER VI. FIRST LOVE If the reader feels that my suspicions were not wholly unwarranted were indeed inevitable, he will not laugh at me on learning that once more these suspicions were set aside, and the fact, the damnatory fact as I regarded it, discovered by me so accidentally and I thought providentially, was robbed of all its significance by Bourgonev himself casually and carelessly avowing it in conversation, just as one may avow a secret infirmity with some bitterness, but without any implication of deceit in its concealment. I was the more prepared for this revulsion of feeling by the difficulty I felt in maintaining my suspicions in the presence of one so gentle and so refined. He had come into my room that evening to tell me of his visit to Schwandhaler and of the sculptor's flattering desire to make my personal acquaintance. He spoke of Schwandhaler and his earnest efforts in art with so much enthusiasm and was altogether so charming that I felt abashed before him, incapable of ridding myself of the dreadful suspicions yet incapable of firmly believing him to be what I thought. But more than this there came the new interest awakened in me by his story, and when in the course of his story he accidentally disclosed the fact that he had not lost his arm all my suspicions vanished at once. We had got as usual upon politics and were differing more than usual because he gave greater prominence to his sympathy with the Red Republicans. He accused me of not being thoroughgoing, which I admitted. This he attributed to the fact of my giving a divided heart to politics, a condition natural enough at my age and with my hopes. Well, I said laughing, you don't mean to take a lofty stand upon your few years' seniority. If my age renders it natural, does yours profoundly alter such a conviction? My age, no, but you have the hopes of youth. I have none. I am banished forever from the joys and sorrows of domestic life, and therefore to live at all must consecrate my soul to great abstractions and public affairs. But why banished unless self-banished? Woman's love is impossible. You look incredulous. I do not allude to this, he said, taking up the empty sleeve and by so doing sending a shiver through me. The loss of your arm, I said, and my voice trembled slightly, for I felt that a crisis was at hand, although a misfortune to you would really be an advantage in gaining a woman's affections. Women are so romantic that their imaginations are so easily touched. Yes, he replied bitterly, but the trouble is that I have not lost my arm. I started. He spoke bitterly, yet calmly. I awaited his explanation in great suspense. To have lost my arm in battle or even by an accident would perhaps have lent me a charm in woman's eyes. But, as I said, my arm hangs by my side, withered, unpresentable. I breathed again. He continued in the same tone and without noticing my looks. But it is not this which banishes me. Woman's love might be hoped for had I far worse infirmities. The cause lies deeper. It lies in my history. A wall of granite has grown up between me and the sex. But, my dear fellow, do you wounded, as I presumed to guess by some unworthy woman, extend the fault of one to the whole sex? Do you despair of finding another true because a first was false? They are all false, he exclaimed with energy. Not perhaps all false from inherent viciousness, though many are that, but false because their inherent weakness renders them incapable of truth. Oh, I know the catalogue of their good qualities. They are often pitiful, self-devoting, generous. But they are so by fits and starts, just as they are cruel, remorseless, exacting by fits and starts. They have no constancy. They are too weak to be constant, even in evil. Their minds are all impressions, their actions are all the issue of immediate promptings. Swayed by the fleeting impulses of the hour, they have only one persistent, calculable motive on which reliance can always be placed. That motive is vanity. You are always sure of them there. It is from vanity they are good. From vanity they are evil. Their devotion and their desertion equally vanity. I know them. To me they have disclosed the shallows of their natures. God, how I have suffered from them! A deep, low exclamation, half sob, half curse, closed his tirade. He remained silent for a few minutes, looking on the floor. Then suddenly turning his eyes upon me said, Were you ever in Heidelberg? Never. I thought all your countrymen went there. Then you will never have heard anything of my story. Shall I tell you how my youth was blighted? Will you care to listen? It would interest me much. I had reached the age of seven and twenty he began, without having once known even the vague stirrings of the passion of love. I admired many women, and courted the admiration of them all. But I was as yet not only heart whole, but to use your Shakespeare's phrase, Cupid had not tapped me on the shoulder. This detail is not unimportant in my story. You may possibly have observed that in those passionate natures which reserve their force, and do not fritter away their feelings in scattered flirtations or trivial love affairs, there is a velocity and momentum when the movement of passion is once excited, greatly transcending all that is ever felt by expansive and expressive natures. Slow to be moved when they do move, it is with the whole mass of the heart. So it was with me. I purchased my immunity from earlier entanglements by the price of my whole life. I am not what I was. Between my past and present self there is a gulf. That gulf is dark, stormy and profound. On the far side stands a youth of hope, energy, ambition, and unclouded happiness, with great capacities for loving. On this side, a blighted manhood, with no prospects but suffering and storm. He paused, with an effort he seemed to master the suggestions which crowded upon his memory, and continued his narrative in an equable tone. I had been for several weeks at Heidelberg. One of my intimate companions was Kestner, the architect, and one day he proposed to introduce me to his sister-in-law, Ottilly, of whom he had repeatedly spoken to me in terms of great affection and esteem. We went, and were most cordially received. Ottilly justified Kestner's praises. Pretty, but not strikingly so. Clever, but not obtrusively so. Her soft dark eyes were frank and winning. Her manner was gentle and retiring. With that dash of sentimentalism which seems native to all German girls, but without any of the ridiculous extravagance too often seen in them. I liked her all the more because I was perfectly at my ease with her, and this was rarely the case in my relations to young women. I don't enjoy their society. You leap at once to the conclusion that we fell in love. Your conclusion is precipitate. Seeing her continually, I grew to admire and respect her. But the significant smiles, winks, and hints of friends pointing unmistakably at a supposed understanding existing between us only made me more seriously examine the state of my feelings, and assured me that I was not in love. It is true that I felt a serene pleasure in her society, and that, one away from her, she occupied much of my thoughts. It is true that I often thought of her as a wife, and in these meditations she appeared as one eminently calculated to make a happy home. But it is no less true that, during a temporary absence of hers, of a few weeks, I felt no sort of uneasiness, no yearning for her presence, no vacancy in my life. I knew, therefore, that it was not love which I felt. So much for my feelings. What of hers? They seemed very like my own. That she admired me, and was pleased to be with me was certain. That she had a particle of fiery love for me I did not, could not believe. And it was probably this very sense of her calmness which kept my feelings quiet. For love is a flame which often can be kindled only by contact with flame. Certainly this is so in proud, reserved natures which are chilled by any contact with temperature not higher than their own. On her return, however, from that absence I have mentioned, I was not a little fluttered by an obvious change in her manner, an impression which subsequent meetings only served to confirm. Although still very quiet, her manner had become more tender, and it had that delicious shyness which is the most exquisite of flatteries, as it is one of the most enchanting of graces. I saw her tremble slightly beneath my voice, and blush beneath my gaze. There was no mistaking these signs. It was clear that she loved me, and it was no less clear that I, taking fire at this discovery, was myself rapidly falling in love. I will not keep you from my story by idle reflections. Take another cigar. He rose and paced up and down the room in silence.