And falls into confusion over his new plan
Until he begins to despair of everything
[Dante]9
In order to understand Aunty Celestine’s mad ravings, which exploded the instant she laid eyes on the small man, we must go back to the time of her girlhood.
The noble proprietor von Nesebeck was known in Magdeburg as one of the richest of cavaliers. He normally passed the winters in town with his family, and he lived otherwise only on his property near Huxburg Castle. The Huxburg is well known to tourists, since a church with a convent lies near it on the heights, surrounded by thick forest. There is a splendid inn nearby, which was frequented by students from Jena and Leipzig, particularly during vacation seasons. Concerts and balls alternated with drinking sessions and pranks, and many a young nun must have suffered heart-pangs when she looked over the convent walls to see the sons of the muses singing fraternity songs, lustily brandishing rapiers in the air, or practicing a new dance step. Herr von Nesebeck, who was a man of the world and a practiced drinker who owed the finest years of his life to passionate fraternity days, often came from his estate to the Huxburg in the company of his two daughters. It was his habit to take his daughters to the esteemed abbess, who showered the sisters with little packets filled with the finest Nonnenfürzchen.10 (The Nonnenfürzchen of the nuns on the Huxburg had originally been made for Count Görz’s truffle-hounds, who developed a sure instinct for that mystery of the soil after eating these delicacies. Whoever has eaten truffles at Count Görz’s table knows how to tell the difference between these and those found elsewhere.) Herr von Nesebeck would only retrieve his daughters from the cloister after he had become soused and caroused sufficiently with the peasants and the fraternity boys. Whenever he brought a new hunting cap with him to the Huxburg, it was soon so ill-used that it would be a shame not to buy a new one.
But Herr von Nesebeck had so much money that his purse would not be emptied even if he had to buy a new hunting cap every second.
Of course a hunting cap does not cost as much as a real Panama straw hat, and a Prussian thaler is a measly thing when compared with a dollar bearing the motto e pluribus unum.
Herr von Nesebeck had been married three times, and yet he seemed like anything but a married man. Whoever encountered him, in his short hunting habit with its white embroidered collar, loosely draped with a green silk scarf, whoever noted the care with which he trimmed and trained his moustache, whoever found him in the company of women, whoever saw him drinking at the student drinking contests, would never have believed that he had ever entered the constraints of a marriage bed. Rather, he would be seen as a confirmed bachelor who prefers to run through his fortune by himself rather than be forced to take a wife in order to share the joys and sorrows of his peculiar life on this earth.
There are men who seem literally to be selected by fate to marry several times. Once restricted by the bonds of matrimony, they long for the status of widower. Yet when they are freed once more by the death of their better half, they take the plunge a third time and make another acquaintance with Hymen. Such men might have the misfortune to lose their wives twenty times, and they would still marry a twenty-first time.
The relationship of such men to women was entirely different from the husbands who are said to be “true till death.”
While the latter sort have to court the woman of their heart, the former are beset by women courting them. In one case the lady falls in love with the man and seduces him, in the other case the man loves and seduces the woman.
We find the same to be true with some species of carnations.
Herr von Nesebeck was thirty-five when he took his third wife. She was the youngest child of a count in the Arco Valley, a true angel for lovability and goodness of heart. He brought a little daughter into the marriage, a souvenir from his first wife, who had also been from a rich and propertied family. The daughter was called Celestine, a name she had exchanged for her original name of Henrietta. There could have been no more proper name for the child, as it happened. One could hardly believe that Celestine belonged to this vale of tears at all. She seemed to be a true child of heaven, a star fallen to earth. So light, so sunny, so pure, so heavenly, no child around could compare, far and wide.
Herr von Nesebeck always called her the treasure of his heart, and when he gave parties there was no end to the admiration and flattery. When the father drew friends and acquaintances to the table, he placed Celestine at the center and let the cavaliers shower his little daughter with incense.
Whoever received a thrown kiss from Celestine on such occasions boasted as if he had received grace from a goddess.
Such were the days of Celestine as a child.
His third wife gave him another daughter, who was given the name of his mother, Melanie. On the day Melanie was born, Celestine celebrated her tenth birthday.
The next day, the mother died, and for a while this darkened the joy over the birth of a new member of the von Nesebeck house.
A year after the death of his third wife, Herr von Nesebeck tired of being a widower. But this time he did not look for his bride in the districts of Prussia or Old Bavaria. Rather, he turned to the land of the Nibelungen and sought the hand of the daughter of a Hungarian magnate from the famed and once mighty house of the Counts Esterhazy von Galantha.
While this tireless vagabond had lived happily with all his earlier wives, this marriage was a hell of torments and sorrows.
The result was that the tormented husband undertook ever madder extravaganzas, and he found compensation for the troubles he endured at home only in the bars with his old friends—none of whom had ever left him, since he was in gold up to his ears.
The Junker could still not forget his lusty student days,11 so he was most often seen among the young men given over to hunting and fraternity life. He bore the colors of one group, then another, and the old boy loved them all.
His extremely noble way with money led many hopeful young students to go over the limit and take on habits that their slim budget did not allow.
The honeymoon was barely over by the time Herr von Nesebeck began entertaining thoughts of becoming a widower as soon as possible.
But this time his wish was not heard, and, still not a widower after the passage of thirteen years, he gave up all hope of ever becoming one again.
From then on he dedicated all his attention to his two daughters. Celestine had already reached her twenty-fourth birthday without deciding to follow her father’s wishes and make an advantageous alliance.
Celestine was one of those enviable girls who only begin to show their true beauty at the moment when others start to wilt, becoming more beautiful with every passing year.
The education she had received since her sixteenth year made her even more irresistible.
“A person could go mad, Herr von Nesebeck, when he views your daughter without the slightest expectation of ever receiving even the smallest favor from her. From this day forward I shall not set foot in your house if you do not clearly grant me the expectation of not being treated by her in the future with such deadly indifference,” said the Prussian government minister von Sch*, one of her many suitors.
“Your excellency assumes too much of me if he thinks I am in the position to dispose of my daughter’s heart,” the father of the beautiful Celestine responded.
The Prussian minister made his peace.
He kept his word and never again set foot in the house of Herr von Nesebeck.
He would soon learn how the minister would revenge himself against his daughter.
At this time a Creole was residing in Magdeburg who was making a sensation due to his fluency in all the romance languages as well as his general learning. Abbé Dubreuil—for that was the Creole’s name—was the lion of the hour in all circles, watched by all the ladies with no small interest, despite his diminutive stature. He had just come from Louisiana, and he was on a papal mission. Since certain responsibilities bestowed on him by the Ho
ly See bound him to Magdeburg for a period of years, he had received approval from the archdiocesan court for his request to act as father confessor of the nuns on the Huxburg.
One day the abbé received the following letter:
Your Grace,
M. Dominique Dubreuil!
Several extraordinary messages reaching me concerning your splendid personality have led me to dare approach you to make an offer that easily would bring you a large sum of money, one that would make the salary for your papal mission look like small change. As soon as I am assured that you are carrying out the demands I give you, I will see that you receive the sum of ten thousand thalers, half of what has been set aside for you. You will receive the balance when your efforts have been crowned with success. Have no fear of compromising yourself in any way by accepting my assignment, for the means for carrying out my plan will prove to you that any mistrust is out of place. You will not be shocked or in any way distressed when I tell you that I hold you to be a man ready to do anything for money. My openness should move you to trust me utterly. If you hold me to be a scoundrel or rascal for having said this, it would not concern me. I would even prefer this response, so we would have nothing to fear from each other in the future. But to business: You know the beautiful Fräulein Celestine von Nesebeck, and you have certainly seen her often among the canonesses on the Huxburg, since you serve as father confessor there. Celestine von Nesebeck is a good Catholic and, as such, a splendid prospective victim for the acquisitiveness of a priest of the Sole Salvific Church. I put that in only to make you aware of the correct means, since I well know that such a practiced servant of St. Ignatius of Loyola will need no training from a layman; I just wanted to indicate what you should try first. I have learned from dependable sources that Fräulein von Nesebeck has granted her heart, free until now, to a young student from Jena, and she is probably trying even now to convince her father to aid the association by moving the family council to support it. This alliance must either be delayed by years or, even better, destroyed at once. If the alliance described meets with the stubborn opposition of the family council—which is likely, since the happy suitor is of bourgeois origins—you should not be prevented from separating the lovers in such a way that they can never come back together.
I shall await your response with impatience, under the code name A. Sch., Berlin, poste restante.12
p.s. You may fear my influence should you dare to set further conditions for me.
It was an easy matter for the decadent priest to come into possession of the promised sum, since he had never shrunk back from such a problem before. The first thing he did was make a detailed investigation of the familial relations of Herr von Nesebeck. He had himself introduced to the noble proprietor and his family by a person of high status and respect. In a short time be had made himself so beloved and irreplaceable that the old Herr von Nesebeck entrusted him with exclusive religious guidance over both his daughters. The abbé gave them instruction in foreign languages and the dogmas of the Catholic Church, and soon he had won so much trust from Fräulein Celestine that she sought the privilege of having him as her father confessor.
At about the same time, there was a horrifying murder of a young noble student who had been traveling on horseback back to university with a fat wallet. Despite all efforts on the part of the authorities, the culprit could not be found. Then the rumor suddenly surfaced that the student marked as the Fräulein von Nesebeck’s future bridegroom had been party to the deed. Yes, some witnesses even appeared to verify this, so the young man was arrested. After he had been locked up for several weeks, he was condemned to life imprisonment at hard labor in irons. Who had harbored such hostility against the life of this active young man? It was a priest of the very Church that continually has the slogan “love thy neighbor” in its mouth yet in fact falls like a predator on its own children, robbing them of repose and peace.
That was not enough for the Creole.
Not satisfied with the payment that he’d received, as promised, he sought also to exploit the passions of the unhappy Celestine, who was now permanently separated from the object of her love. He did this in a way not even Satan would not have dared conceive.
The Abbé Dominique Dubreuil had won some influence over the heart of despairing Celestine through false sympathy with her sorrows, but to no avail. Now he resorted to a method that he hoped would achieve his shameful goal with greater certainty. He offered the release of her lover from the hands of justice if she would grant him certain favors.
Poor Celestine, would that death had called you away from life before you had to experience your locks being crowned with the belladonna of violation instead of the fragrant myrtle of marriage!
• • •
That dreadful night of madness descended on the senses of the unhappy girl as soon as she awoke from the priest’s embrace. The radiant beauty of her spirit became the silent demon of Holy Scripture.
Poor Celestine passed a full fifteen years in the private asylum of Doctor Blanche on the Montmartre. Her madness spread ever wider, so that her spirit was soon entirely in the grip of dark confusion. Her father, now well along in years, applied almost his entire fortune to healing his daughter, whose madness remained a riddle until his death. Celestine was also sent to be treated by several other physicians of the famed asylum of Bicêtre, but none could bring about her recovery. After another fifteen years had passed, it appeared at last that the famous Dr. Falret had succeeded in freeing Celestine, now fifty-five years old, from the dark night of madness. An unexpected accident suddenly brought her illness to an end. Dr. Falret happened to send her back to some malicious madmen whose happiness consisted of tormenting her. One of these creatures gave her the idea that she had been sent there to be killed and that whoever remained there would be robbed of life at the first opportunity. This statement put the unhappy woman into the greatest possible anxiety of death, so that she begged her overseer to get her out.
Melanie was now her only living relative. The last years of Herr von Nesebeck had been an unbroken chain of sorrows and troubles of all kinds. Other than the fact that the dreadful situation of his beloved Celestine had poisoned all his joys of life, his wife’s extravagant conduct often brought him to despair. He lost her two years before his own death; she died of a fall from a horse during a steeplechase at Pückler-Muskau’s.13 The prince had her buried in his own plot, with a monument of a Carrara marble swan, ridden by Cupid.
Old Nesebeck could hardly endure it when, after her death, he learned of the vast burden of debts his wife had heaped upon his shoulders.
He died separated from his children and abandoned by his old drinking companions.
Melanie, who married the Bavarian count of *, already had five children, of which the oldest two, Emil and Ernst, had emigrated to America, Emil with a wife and her sister.
At this time Melanie’s half-sister, the unhappy Celestine, came into the count’s family.
It was true that episodes of madness occasionally appeared, and she was often paralyzed by benign ecstasies. Frequently she still had the fixed idea that she was married and had killed her husband. She fantasized about Magdeburg and the Elbe, she dreamed of a prisoner who wanted to do something bad to her, and, since the family had arrived in America, she often took the role of a prophetess of misfortune.
They had brought her across the ocean with them.
That was Aunty Celestine.
Chapter 6
CORYBANTIC FITS
O lovely childhood in the old Fatherland! O marvelous life and weft of your maidens, O Germany! In the woodland and on the meadow—in the thicket and in the bower, in the barn and behind the oven, in the church and on the dancing floor, in the cheese-hut and in the valley, on the arm and in the lap, milking cows and gathering straw—O maiden, how magical and enchanting you were in your Germany! Maidens, you were beyond the years when one might call you children, and yet you still had fun with wood shavings, tying them around your head like
curls. You still placed a couple cherries behind your ear and convinced yourself that you could fool a hummingbird. How your heart beat, you German maidens, when you cracked an egg and found two yolks! Where did all this sparkling and shaking, that blooming and loving, that weeping and longing come from? It came because you had heard nothing of the Almighty Dollar and you would allow no one to pour molasses on your salad. Because you did not yet know the phrase How much? and it never occurred to you to discover whether your neighbor had a “vacant” or an “improved” lot. Because you cared more for your flowers than your fashionable dress. Because you would rather have sewn stockings than woven ones. Because people called you deutsch rather than Dutch. In short, because you still did not know that the golden apple of Hesperides had a rotten core. You maidens and women all, why did you ever leave Germany? And you maidens whose slender, tender bodies were clothed in the splendid mantle of aristocracy in the old homeland? Well, you will either become Messalinas, or—what is worse—you will burn your feelings at the stake of your heart.
The prince of Württemberg rose in shock from his seat when Aunty Celestine began to howl with obsessive terror at the entrance of the slight little man. Gertrude reached for his hand and pressed her blonde head on the prince’s right thigh. He had acknowledged the greeting of the arrival with obvious decorum, nodding slightly, and he was trying to present the man to the count’s family when Celestine’s conduct became so dreadful that the entire family rose at once and pulled together into a tight knot.
The little man, who looked quickly back and forth between the prince and Aunty Celestine, stood as if nailed to the spot.
Melanie, who noted this, called to him in an anxious tone that demonstrated all too clearly her suffering: “Do not blame us on account of this unexpected encounter, sir—it will soon pass …”
The Mysteries of New Orleans (The Longfellow Series of American Languages and Literatures) Page 32
