“One moment, young man,” said the Count, slipping on his clothes. “Sit down, and let us have breakfast before we duel. . . . Would you deny me this one request?”
“As you wish, Count,” Herman replied, “but I trust that afterward you will consent to give me the satisfaction I demand. . . .”
The Count rang, breakfast was served, and the Senator, having given strict orders to be left alone with Herman, asked him, after their initial cup of coffee, whether all this had been undertaken with the knowledge and consent of Ernestine.
“Most certainly not, Senator! She is completely unaware that I am here; and, what is more, she did her best to convince me you were interested in being of service to me.”
“If this be true, can you explain to me what made you act in such a rash manner?”
“The fear of being deceived, the certainty that once one has loved Ernestine ’tis impossible to conceive of giving her up. In short, the desire to have it out with you, to reach some sort of understanding with you.”
“You soon will, Herman, and though I owe you naught but reproaches for the immoderation of your methods . . . though this ill-considered scheme might well have caused me to change my plans with what regards helping the Colonel’s daughter, I shall none the less keep my word. . . . Yes, Herman, you shall marry Ernestine; ’tis a promise I have made, and one I shall keep. I am yielding nothing to you, young man; I am not the kind of man who need yield anything to you. ’Tis Ernestine and she alone who wins from me whatever she will, and ’tis for her happiness that I sacrifice my own!”
“Oh, noble and generous man!”
“You owe me nothing, I tell you. I have done it for Ernestine, and ’tis from her alone I would expect any show of gratitude.”
“Allow me to share that gratitude, Senator, and permit me at the same time to offer a thousand excuses for my hastiness and outburst. . . . But, Monsieur, can I count upon your keeping your word, and if indeed you intend to keep it, would you refuse me the favor of putting your agreement into writing?”
“I shall indeed; I shall write whatever you like, but ’tis pointless, and these ill-founded suspicions only add to the folly you have just committed.”
“’Tis in order to reassure Ernestine.”
“She is less distrustful than you; she believes me. No matter; I have no objection to writing what you ask, but upon condition it be addressed to her. To do otherwise would be in bad taste, I cannot both serve you and abase myself before you. . . .”
And taking a writing desk, the Senator penned the following lines:
Count Oxtiern hereby promises Ernestine Sanders to allow her to make her own free choice, and to take the most opportune measures necessary to enable her to enjoy forthwith the pleasures of hymen, no matter what the cost may be to him who adores her, whose sacrifice will soon be as certain as ’twill be horrible.
Poor Herman, who failed completely to understand the cruel ambiguity the note contained, took it from the Count, kissed it passionately, reiterated his excuses for the rashness whereof he had been guilty, and flew to Ernestine, bearing her the sad trophies of his victory.
Mademoiselle Sanders reprimanded Herman sharply and accused him of having no confidence in her. She added that, after what she had told him, Herman should never have resorted to such extreme measures with a man whose station was so far above him in life, that it was now to be feared that the Count, perhaps having yielded to Herman’s demands only out of concern for his own safety, would upon reflection be subsequently impelled to take extreme measures of his own which might be fatal for them both and which, in any event, would doubtless prove most harmful to her father.
Herman hastened to reassure his mistress, reminded her of the promises contained in the Count’s note . . . which she had also read without perceiving the ambiguity contained therein. They revealed all that had taken place to the Colonel, who disapproved of Herman’s conduct even more keenly than had his daughter. None the less, they finally reconciled their differences, and our three friends, full confident that the Count would keep his word, separated feeling considerably reassured.
Meanwhile, immediately after his scene with Herman, Oxtiern had gone downstairs to Madame Scholtz’s chambers, and there recounted to her everything that had happened. That wicked woman, ever more convinced by the young man’s intemperate act that ’twas becoming impossible to hope that she might one day seduce him, cast her lot more completely with the Count’s cause, and promised him that she would serve him until poor Herman had been completely crushed or destroyed.
“I have sure means of causing his downfall,” this cruel wench declared. “I have a set of duplicate keys to his strongbox, though he is unaware of it. I must shortly redeem the sum of a hundred thousand ducats for bills of exchange due and payable to some Hamburg merchants. I can easily arrange to find him in error; at which time he will have the choice either of marrying me or of being utterly ruined.”
“Were he to choose the latter,” said the Count, “you shall inform me forthwith; you may be certain I shall take all necessary steps which our mutual desire for revenge requires.”
Then the two villains, all too cruelly united by common interests, laid their final plans to give their perfidious schemes the full stability and baseness they desired.
Once these arrangements had been made, Oxtiern came to take his leave of the Colonel and his daughter. In her presence he restrained himself, and rather than reveal to her his love and true intentions, gave evidence of all the nobility and disinterestedness that his hypocrisy enabled him to summon forth. He repeated his generous offers to Sanders to be of service to him, and they agreed that the Colonel would keep to his plan concerning a visit to Stockholm. The Count urged that Sanders and his daughter consent to stay with him during their sojourn in the capital, but the Colonel replied that he would prefer to stay with his relative, Madame Plorman, whose fortune he was expecting his daughter to inherit. He pointed out that this token of friendship would give Ernestine an opportunity to deal tactfully with this woman, who was in a position to augment considerably her fortune. Oxtiern approved of the plan; they agreed that the voyage should be made by carriage, because Ernestine was afraid of the sea, and they took leave of one another with the most touching declarations of friendship and mutual esteem, without Herman’s rash venture ever once having been mentioned in the course of their conversation.
Madame Scholtz continued her hypocritic ways with Herman. Feeling the need to conceal her true sentiments until the plot she was preparing was fully hatched, she made no mention to him of her feelings and, in contrast with the way she had previously acted, she now evinced naught but solicitous concern for and interest in him. She concealed from him the fact that she had learned of the blunder he had made in visiting the Count, and our worthy young man continued under the mistaken impression that, as the Count had not emerged from the confrontation in a very good light, he had taken pains to keep it a secret.
None the less, Herman was not unaware of the fact that the Colonel and his daughter were planning to leave Norrköping. But, full confident that his mistress’ heart was wholly his, that the Colonel’s friendship was steadfast, and that the Count’s word was as good as gold, he had not the slightest doubt but that the first use to which Ernestine would put her influence with the Senator upon arriving in Stockholm would be to make him arrange for their immediate marriage. Sanders’ daughter had constantly assured him that such was her intention, and indeed she sincerely believed her own words.
Thus several weeks went by, when one day the people of Norrköping saw a superb carriage arrive, attended by several valets, who brought with them a letter from Count Oxtiern to Colonel Sanders, and instructions to await that officer’s orders relative to the voyage he was to make to Stockholm together with his daughter, for which the carriage they were accompanying was intended.
The letter announced to Sanders that, through the Senator’s good offices, the widow Plorman was expecting her two relatives an
d had indeed prepared for them the best chambers in her house; it went on to say that she would expect them any time they might care to come, and that the Count would await that moment in order to discover to his friend Sanders the results of the initial efforts he had made in his behalf. With what regarded Herman, the Senator added, he deemed it best that he be left behind to conclude without distraction the affairs that he had yet to settle with Madame Scholtz. Once they were concluded, and with his fortune in order, he would be in a much better position to come and offer his hand to the beautiful Ernestine. He further added that everyone would benefit from this arrangement, for during this same time the Colonel, honored with a pension and perhaps with a commission, would be even better situated to help his daughter.
This clause displeased Ernestine; it aroused some suspicions in her, which she lost no time in communicating to her father. The Colonel pretended that he had never conceived of Oxtiern’s plans in other terms than those outlined in his letter.
“And furthermore,” Sanders continued, “how could you expect Herman to leave Norrköping before he has settled his financial affairs with Madame Scholtz?”
Ernestine shed a few tears and, still caught between her desire not to harm her father and her love for Herman, she did not dare to dwell upon her extreme inclination not to take advantage of the Senator’s offers until such time as her beloved Herman was free to join them.
They had therefore to make up their minds to leave. The Colonel invited Herman to come and dine with them the evening of their departure, in order to bid one another a fond farewell. He came to dinner, and their leave-taking, that painful moment of departure, did not take place without the keenest display of emotion.
“O my beloved Ernestine,” said Herman, his face bathed in tears, “I take my leave; I cannot say whether I shall ever see you again. You are leaving me behind with a cruel enemy . . . with a woman who disguises her true sentiments, which, I fear, are yet far from being annihilated within her heart. To whom shall I turn for help when this wench overwhelms me with the countless troubles whereof she is full capable? . . . when she sees me more than ever determined to follow you, and when I have declared to her that my heart can never be given to anyone but you? And what about you? Where, Great God, are you both going? To a place where you will be dependent upon a man who has loved you, who loves you still . . . and whose sacrifice is scarce worthy of belief. He will seduce you, Ernestine, he will dazzle you and blind you; and poor Herman, abandoned to his fate, will have naught to comfort him but his own tears.”
“Herman will always have Ernestine’s heart,” said Mademoiselle Sanders, clasping her lover’s hands in hers. “Can he ever fear that this heart, which is his alone, could ever betray him?”
“Ah! may I never lose it,” said Herman, casting himself at the feet of his beautiful mistress. “May Ernestine, never yielding to the solicitations to which she is sure to be subjected, remain convinced that ’tis impossible for there ever to be on the face of the earth a man who loves her as deeply as do I!”
And the hapless young man dared to ask Ernestine to allow that he cull from her rosy-colored lips a precious kiss which might serve him as a pledge for the promises he had asked of her. The wise and worthy young daughter of Colonel Sanders, who had never before granted him so much as he was now asking, none the less deemed the circumstances were such as to allow it, and buried herself in Herman’s arms. Herman, who was burning with love and desire, and succumbing to that plethora of somber joy whose sole expression is the shedding of tears, sealed his declarations of love upon the most beautiful mouth in the world, and from these selfsame lips, still planted upon his, received the most delightful expressions of both love and constancy.
Yet the baleful hour of departure at last arrived. For two hearts truly in love, what difference is there between this hour and the hour of death? It seems as though, upon leaving the object one loves, one’s heart literally breaks; ’tis as though our organs, as it were enchained to the cherished object whom we are leaving, wither away and die at this cruel moment. One wishes to fly away, one retraces one’s steps, embraces once again, bids one last farewell, finds it impossible to make up one’s mind to do so; finally compelled to leave, ’tis as though we had lost possession of our very faculties, as though the vital force which motivates our life had abandoned us, and what remains is dull and senseless, that the full meaning of existence lies but in the person from whom we are taking our leave.
The Colonel had decided that they would leave directly they had finished dinner. Ernestine cast a last look at her lover, whose face was bathed in tears; her heart literally broke within her. . . .
“O Father,” she cried out, breaking into tears herself, “see the sacrifice I am making for you.” And, again throwing herself into Herman’s arms: “You whom I have never ceased to love,” she said to him, “you whom I shall love to the very edge of the grave, receive here in the presence of my father the solemn oath which I hereby make never to belong to anyone but you. Write to me, let your thoughts be of me, never listen to anything save what I am now saying, and consider me the most vile of creatures if ever another save yourself receives either my hand or my heart.”
Herman was in a state of extreme agitation. He bent to the ground and kissed the feet of her whom he worshiped. It was as though, by means of these ardent kisses, his soul which impressed them, his entire soul, was, with these fiery kisses, striving to subdue and enthrall Ernestine. . . .
“I shall never see you again . . . I shall never see you again,” he murmured above the sobs wherewith he was enveloped. . . . “Father, let me follow you directly; suffer not that they take Ernestine from me or, if this is the fate to which I am condemned, alas! then plunge your sword into my heart!”
The Colonel reassured and calmed his friend, he gave him his word of honor never to stand in the way of his daughter’s desires; but that love which feareth the worst can never be soothed. Seldom have two lovers taken leave of each other under such cruel circumstances; Herman sensed it only too well, and despite himself his heart was broken. But at last they had to leave. . . . Ernestine, overwhelmed with sorrow, her eyes filled with tears, climbed up beside her father into a carriage which bore her from the presence of him she loved. At that moment Herman had a vision wherein he thought he saw Death envelop with its dark wings the funereal carriage which was spiriting away from him his sweetest possession. His mournful cries rang out after her, calling Ernestine, his distraught soul sped after her, but she was gone, he could no longer see any trace of them. . . . All was gone . . . all was lost in the deep shadows of the night, and the wretched young man returned to Madame Scholtz’s in such a violent state that he managed to increase even further the jealousy of this dangerous monster.
The Colonel and his daughter reached Stockholm the following day, and upon their arrival found awaiting them, at Madame Plorman’s door, Senator Oxtiern, who presented his hand to Ernestine. Although it had been several years since the Colonel had seen his relative, he was none the less very warmly received. But it was easy to see that the Senator’s influence had had a prodigious effect upon the welcome they had received. Ernestine was much admired and flattered. Her aunt asserted that her beautiful niece would eclipse all the beauties of the capital, and that very day arrangements were made to procure her every possible pleasure, in order to make her head swim, to make her drunk with joy, and cause her to forget her lover.
Madame Plorman’s house was naturally a solitary one. This woman, already well along in years and by nature avaricious, entertained but seldom. And ’twas perhaps for this very reason that the Count, who knew her ways, was in no wise upset at the choice of dwelling the Colonel had settled upon.
Madame Plorman had living with her a young officer of the Regimental Guards, who was a degree closer to her in relationship than was Ernestine; he, consequently, had a greater claim to her inheritance. Sindersen by name, he was a decent fellow, a gallant young man, but one who quite naturally looked som
ewhat askance at relatives who, less closely related to Madame Plorman than he, none the less seemed to have formulated the same designs upon her fortune. This knowledge created a slight coolness between him and the Sanderses. None the less, he was all civility and urbanity with Ernestine, and knew how to disguise beneath this worldly gloss we call politeness the slightly less affectionate sentiments which held sway in his heart.
But let us leave the Colonel to get settled in his new dwelling and return to Norrköping, while Oxtiern bends his every effort to make a dazzling impression upon Ernestine, to keep her father amused, and in short to bring to a successful conclusion his treacherous schemes.
A week and a day following Ernestine’s departure, the merchants from Hamburg arrived to claim the hundred thousand ducats owed them by Madame Scholtz. That sum was presumed to be safely locked in Herman’s safe. But the duplicity was already done and, thanks to her duplicate set of keys, the funds were no longer there.
Madame Scholtz, who had invited the merchants to remain for dinner, straightway sent word to Herman to prepare their money, given that her guests wished to leave by boat that same evening for Stockholm. It had been some time since Herman had inspected that safe, but certain that the money was there, he confidently opened it, and almost fainted dead away when he realized that it had been robbed. He recovered his senses and ran to inform his protectress. . . .
The 120 Days of Sodom and Other Writings Page 80
