Josepha sat in the countess' room at work on her new dress. She was calm and quiet; the delight in finery which never abandons a woman to her latest hour--the poorest peasant, if still conscious, asks for a nicer cap when the priest comes to bring the last sacrament--had asserted its power in her. The countess noticed it with pleasure.
"Shall you finish it soon, Josepha?"
"In an hour, Your Highness!"
"Very well, I shall return about that time, and then we'll try the dress on."
"Oh, your ladyship, it's a sin for me to put on such a handsome gown, nobody will see me."
"Not here, if you don't wish them to do so, but to-morrow evening we shall go to Munich, where you will begin a new life, with no brand upon your brow."
Josepha kissed the countess' hand; a few large tears rolled down on the dress which was to clothe a new creature. Then she helped her mistress to put on a walking toilette, performing her task skillfully and quickly. The latter fixed a long, thoughtful look upon her. "You are somewhat like your cousin, the Christ, are you not?"
"So people say!"
"I suppose he sees a great many ladies?"
"They all run after him, the high as well as the low. And it isn't the strangers only, the village girls are crazy over him, too. He might have any one he wanted, it seems as if he fairly bewitched the women."
"I heard that the reason for his secluded life was that he had a love affair with some noble lady."
"Indeed?" said Josepha carelessly, "I don't know anything about it. I don't believe it, though he would not tell me, even if it were true. Oh, people talk about him so much, that's one reason for the envy. But his secluded life isn't on account of any noble lady! He has had nothing to say to anybody here since they refused to let me take part in the Play and gossiped so much about me. Though he doesn't speak of it, it cuts him to the heart. Alas, I am to blame, and no one else."
Countess Wildenau, obeying a sudden impulse, kissed the girl on the forehead: "Farewell, keep up courage, don't weep, rejoice in your new life; I will soon return."
As she passed out, she spoke to the Gross sisters commending Josepha to their special care.
"The gentlemen are delighted, and send you their most grateful homage," called the prince.
"Then they are all coming?" said Countess Wildenau, taking his arm.
"All, there was no hesitation!" he answered, again noticing in his companion's manner the restlessness which had formerly awakened his anxiety. As they passed down the street together, her eyes were wandering everywhere.
"She is seeking some one," thought the prince.
"Let me tell you that I am charmed with this Ammergau Christ," cried the duchess, as they approached the blacksmith's house. She was sitting in the garden, which contained a tolerably large manure heap, a "Saletl," the name given to an open summer-house, and three fruit-trees, amid which the clothes lines were stretched. On the house was a rudely painted Madonna, life-size, with the usual bunch of flowers, gazing with a peculiar expression at the homage offered to her son, or at least, so it seemed to the countess.
"Have you seen him, Duchess? I am beginning to be jealous!" said the countess with a laugh intended to be natural, but which sounded a little forced.
The visitors entered the arbor; after an exchange of greeting, the duchess told her guests that she had been with the ladies to the drawing-school, where they had met Freyer. The head-master (the son of Countess von Wildenau's host) had presented him to the ladies, and he had been obliged to exchange a few words with them, then he made his escape. They were "fairly wild." His bearing, his dignity, the blended courtesy and reserve of his manner, so modest and yet so proud, and those eyes!
The prince was on coals of fire.
The blacksmith was hammering outside, shoeing a horse whose hoof was so crooked that the iron would not fit. The man's face was dripping with sooty perspiration, yet when he turned it toward the ladies, they saw a classic profile and soft, dreamy eyes.
"Beautiful hair and eyes appear to be a specialty among the Ammergau peasants," said the prince somewhat abruptly, interrupting the duchess. "Look at yonder smith, wash off the soot and we shall have a superb head of Antinous."
"Yes, isn't that true? He is a splendid fellow, too," replied the duchess. "Let us call him here."
The smith was summoned and, wiping the grime from his face with his shirt sleeves, modestly approached. The prince watched with honest admiration the man's gait and bearing, clear-cut, intelligent features, and slender, lithe figure, which betrayed no sign of his hard labor save in the tense sinews and muscles of the arms.
"I must apologize," he said in excellent German--the Ammergau people use dialect only when speaking to one another--"I am in my working clothes and scarcely fit to be seen."
"You have a charming voice. Do you sing baritone?"
"Yes, Your Highness, but I rarely sing at all. My voice unfortunately is much injured by my hard toil, and my fingers are growing too stiff to play on the piano, so I cannot accompany myself."
"Do you play on the piano?"
"Certainly, Your Highness."
"Good Heavens, where did you learn?"
"Here in the village, Your Highness. Each one of us learns to use some instrument, else where should we obtain an orchestra for the Passion?"
"Think of it!" said the duchess in French, "A blacksmith who plays on the piano; peasants who form an orchestra!" Then addressing her host in German, she added, "I suppose you have a church choir!"
"Certainly, Your Highness."
"And what masses do you perform?"
"Oh, nearly all the beautiful ones, some dating from the ancient Cecilian Church music, others from the later masters, Handel, Bach, down to the most modern times. A short time ago I sung Gounod's Ave Maria in the church, and this winter we shall give a Gethsemane by Kempter."
"Is it possible!" said the duchess, "c'est unique! Then you are really all artists and ought not to follow such hard trades."
"Yes, Duchess, but we must live. Our wives and children must be supported. All cannot be wood-carvers, smiths are needed, too. If the artisan is not rough, the trade is no disgrace."
"But have you time, with your business, for such artistic work?"
"Oh, yes, we do it in the evenings, after supper. We meet at half past seven and often practise our music till twelve or even one o'clock."
"Oh, how tired you must be to study far into the night after the labor of the day."
"Oh, that doesn't harm us, it is our recreation and pleasure. Art is the only thing which lifts men above their daily cares! I would not wish to live, if I did not possess it, and we all have the same feeling."
The ladies exchanged glances.
"But, when do you sleep? You must be obliged to rise early in the morning."
"Oh, we Ammergau people are excitable, we need little sleep. To bed at one and up at five gives us rest enough."
"Well, then, you must live well, or you could not bear it."
"Yes, we live very well, we have meat every Sunday," said the smith with much satisfaction.
"C'est touchant!" cried the duchess. "Meat once a week? And the rest of the time?"
"Oh, we eat something made of flour. My wife is an excellent cook, she was the cook in Count P.'s household!" he added with great pride, casting an affectionate glance at the plump little woman, holding a child in her arms, standing at the door of the house. He would gladly have presented this admirable wife to the strangers, but the ladies seemed less interested in her.
"What do you eat in the evening?"
"We have coffee at six o'clock, and drink a few glasses of beer when we meet at the tavern."
"And do all the Ammergau people live so?"
"All. No one wants anything different."
"Even your Christ?"
"Oh, he fares worse than we, he is unmarried and has no one to care for him."
"What a life, dear Countess, what a life!" the duchess, murmured in French.
"But you have a piano in your house. If you are able to get such an instrument, you ought to afford better food," said Her Excellency.
The blacksmith smiled, "If we had had better food, we should not have been able to buy the piano. We saved it from our stomachs."
"That is the true Ammergau spirit," said the countess earnestly. "They will starve to secure a piano. Every endeavor is toward the ideal and the intellectual, for which they are willing to make any personal sacrifice. I have never seen such people."
"Nor have I. It seems as if the Passion Play gave them all a special consecration," answered the duchess.
Countess von Wildenau rose. Her thoughts were so far away that she was about to take leave without remembering her invitation. But Prince Emil said impressively:
"Countess, surely you are forgetting that you intended to invite the ladies--."
"Yes, yes," she interrupted, "it had almost escaped my mind." The smith modestly went back to his work, for the horse was growing restless, and the odor of burnt horn and hair soon pervaded the atmosphere.
Meanwhile the countess delivered her invitation, which was accepted with great enthusiasm.
A stately, athletic man in a blouse, carrying a chest on his shoulder, passed the ladies. The burden was terribly heavy, for even his powerful, well-knit frame staggered under it, and his handsome kingly head was bowed almost to the earth.
"Look, Countess, that is Thomas Rendner the Roman procurator. We shall soon make the acquaintance of the whole company. We sit here in the summer-house like a spider in its web, not a fly can pass unseen."
"Good Heavens, that Pilate!" exclaimed the countess, watching him with sympathizing eyes, "Poor man, to-day panting under an oppressive burden, to-morrow robed in purple and crowned with a diadem, only to exchange them again on the third day, for the porter's dusty blouse, and take the yoke upon himself once more. What a contrast, and yet he loses neither his balance nor his temper! Indeed I think that we can learn as much here outside of the Passion Play, as from the spectacle itself."
"Yes, if we watch with your deep, thoughtful eyes, my dear Countess!" said the duchess, kissing the speaker's brow. "We will discuss this subject farther when we drive with you the day after to-morrow."
The ladies parted. Madeleine von Wildenau, leaning on the prince's arm, walked silently through the crowd which now, on the eve of the play, thronged the narrow streets. The din and tumult were enough to deprive one of sight and hearing. Dazed by the confusion, she clung closely to her companion's arm.
"Good Heavens, is it possible that Christianity still possesses such a power of attraction!" she murmured, involuntarily, while struggling through the throng.
The ground in the Ettal road trembled under the roll of carriage wheels. The last evening train had arrived, and a flood of people and vehicles poured into the village already almost crushed beneath the tide of human beings. Horses half driven to death, dragging at a gallop heavy landaus crowded with six or eight persons. Lumbering wagons containing twenty or thirty travellers just as they had climbed in, sometimes half clinging to the steps or the boxes of the wheels, swayed to and fro; intoxicated, excited by the mad rush and the fear of being left behind--raging and shrieking like a horde of unchained fiends come to disturb the sacred drama rather than pious pilgrims who wished to witness it, the frantic mob poured in. "Sauve qui peut" was the motto, the prince lifted the countess on a small post by the roadside. Just at that moment the fire-brigade marched by to watch the theatre. It was said that several of the neighboring parishes, envious of Ammergau, had threatened to ruin the Play by setting the theatre on fire. Fire engines and strangers' carriages passed pell-mell. The people of Ammergau themselves, alarmed and enraged by the cruel threat, were completely disconcerted; passionate discussions, vehement commands, and urgent entreaties were heard on all sides. Prompt and energetic action was requisite, the fate of all Ammergau was at stake.
The bells now began to ring and at the same moment the first of the twenty-five cannon shots which were to consecrate the morrow's festival was discharged, and the musicians passed through the streets.
The air fairly quivered with the deafening uproar of all these mingling waves of sound. Darkness was gathering, the countess grew giddy, she felt as if she were stifling in the tumult. A pair of horses fell just below them, causing a break in the line of carriages, which the prince used to get his companion across, and she at last reached home, almost fainting. Her soul was stirred to its inmost depths. What was the power which produced such effects?
Was this the calm, petty doctrine, which had been inculcated so theoretically and coldly at the school-room desk and from the pulpit, and with which, when a child, she has been disgusted by an incomprehensible school-catechism? Was this the doctrine which, from earliest childhood, had been nothing more than a wearisome dead letter, to which, as it had become the religion of the state, an official visit to church was due from time to time, just as, on certain days, cards were left on ambassadors and government officials?
The wind still bore from the village the noise of the throngs of people, the ringing of the bells, and the thunder of the cannon, blended with occasional bursts of music. The countess had had similar experiences when tidings of great victories had been received during the last war, but those were facts. For the first time in her life she asked herself if Christianity was a fact? And if not, if it was only an idea, what inherent power, after the lapse of nearly two thousand years, produced such an effect?
Why did all these people come--why did she herself? The human race is homesick, it no longer knows for what; it is only a vague impulse, but one which instinctively draws it in the direction where it perceives a sign, a vestige of what it has lost and forever seeks. Such, she knows it now, such is the feeling of all the throngs that have flocked hither to-day, she realized that at this moment she was a microcosm of weary, wandering mankind seeking for salvation.
And as when, deceived and disappointed in everything, we seek the picture of some dead friend, long since forgotten, and press it weeping to our lips, she clung to the image of the Redeemer. Now that everything had deluded her, no system which had boastfully promised a victory over calamity and death had stood the test, after one makeshift had supplanted another without supplying what was lacking, after all the vaunted remedies of philosophy and materialism proved mere palliatives which make the evil endurable for the moment but do not heal it, suffering, cheated humanity was suddenly seeking the image of the lost friend so long forgotten. But a dead friend cannot come forth from a picture, a painted heart can no longer beat. Could Christ rise again in His image? Could His word live once more on the lips of a stranger? And would the drops of artificial blood, trickling from the brow of the personified Messiah, possess redeeming power?
That was the miracle which attracted the throngs from far and near, that must be the marvel, and tomorrow it would be revealed.
"Of what are you dreaming, Countess Madeleine?" asked the prince after a pause which she had spent in the wild-grape arbor near the house gazing into vacancy, with her head resting on her hand. She looked up, glancing at him as if she had entirely forgotten his presence. "I don't know what is the cause of my emotion, the tumult in the village has stirred me deeply! I feel that only potent things could send such a storm before them, and it seems as if it was the portent of some wonderful event!"
"Good Heavens! What extravagant fancies, my dear Countess! I believe you add to all your rich gifts the dangerous one of poesy! I admire and honor you for it--but I can perceive in this storm nothing save a proof that curiosity is the greatest and most universal trait in human character, and that these throngs desire nothing more than the satisfaction of their curiosity. The affair is fashionable just now, and that explains the whole."
"Prince, I pity you for what you have just said," replied the countess, rising. Her face wore the same cold, lifeless expression as on the day of her arrival.
"But, my dearest friend, for Heavens's sake tell me, did you and I come from any other motive than curiosity?"
"You, no! I, yes!"
"Don't say that, chere amie. You, the scholar, superior to us all in learning; you, the disciple of Schopenhauer, the proud philosopher, the believer in Nirvana."
"Yes, I, Prince!" cried the countess, "The philosopher who was not happy for an hour, not content for a moment. What is this Nirvana? A stone idol, which the fruitless speculation of our times has conjured from the rubbish of archaeological excavations, and which stares at us with its vacant eyes until we fall into an intellectual hypnotism which we mistake for peace." An expression of bitter sarcasm rested on her lips. "I came here to bring pessimism and Christianity face to face. I thought it would be very novel to see the stone idol Nirvana, with his hands on his lap and the silence of eternal death on his lips, watch the martyr, dripping with sweat and blood, bear His own cross to the place of execution and cheerfully take up the work where Buddha faltered; on the boundary of non-existence. I wanted to see how the two would treat each other, if for nothing more than a comparative study of religion."
"You are irresistible in your charming mockery, dearest Countess, yet logically I cannot confess myself conquered!" replied the prince. The countess smiled: "Of course, when did a man ever acknowledge that to a woman, where intellectual matters were concerned? A sunny curl, the seductive arch of an upper lip, a pair of blue eyes sparkling with tears will make you lords of creation the dupes of the most ordinary coquette or even the yielding toy of the dullest ignorance. We women all know it! But, if we assail your dry logic, you are as unconquerable as Antaeus so long as he stood upon the earth! You, too, could only be vanquished by whoever had the power to lift you from the ground where you stand."
"You might have that power, Countess. Not by your arguments, but by your eyes. You know that one loving glance would not only lift me from the earth but into heaven, and then you could do with me what you would."
"You have forfeited the loving glance! Perhaps it might have rewarded your assent, but it would never purchase it, I scorn bribed judges, for I am sure of my cause!"
"Countess, pardon my frankness: it is a pity that you have so much intellect."
"Why?"
"Because it leads you into sophistical by-ways; your tendency to mysticism gives an apparently logical foundation and thereby strengthens you the more in this dangerous course. A more simple, temperate judgment would guard you from it."
"Well, Prince--" she looked at him pityingly, contemptuously--"may Heaven preserve me from such a judgment as well as from all who may seek to supply its place to me. Excuse me for this evening. I should like to devote an hour to these worthy people and soothe my nerves--I have been too much excited by the scenes we have witnessed. Goodnight, Prince!"
Prince Emil turned pale. "Good-night, Countess. Perhaps to-morrow you will be somewhat more humane in this cat and mouse game; to-day I am sent home with a bleeding wound." With lips firmly compressed, he bowed his farewell and left the garden. Madeleine looked after him: "He is angry. I cannot help him, he deserved it. Oh, foolish man, who deemed yourself so clever! Do you suppose this glowing heart desires no other revelations than those of pure reason? Do you imagine that the arguments of all the philosophical systems of humanity could offer it that for which it longs? Shall I find it? Heaven knows! But one thing is certain, I shall no longer seek it in you."
The sound of moans and low sobs came from the chamber above the countess' room. It was Josepha. Countess Wildenau passed through the little trap-door and entered it. The girl was kneeling beside the bed, with her face buried in the pillows, to shut out the thunder of the cannon and the sound of the bells, which summoned the actors in the sacred Play from which she alone, the sinner, the outcast, was shut out.
Mary Magdalene, too, had sinned and erred, yet she had been suffered to remain near the Lord. She was permitted to touch His divine body and to wipe His feet with her hair! But she was not allowed to render this service to His image! She grasped the mass of wonderful silken locks which fell in loosened masses over her shoulders. What did she care for this beautiful hair now? She would fain cut it off and throw it into the Ammer or, better still, bury it in the earth, the earth on which the Passion Theatre stood. With a hasty movement, she snatched a pair of shears which lay beside the bed, and just as the countess' foot touched the threshold, a sharp, cutting sound was heard and the most beautiful red hair that ever adorned a girl's head fell like a dying flame at her feet. "Josepha, what are you doing?" cried the countess, "Oh, what a pity to lose that magnificent hair!"
"What do I care for it?" sobbed Josepha, "It can never be seen in the Play! When the performance is over, I will slip into the theatre before we leave and bury it under the stage, where the cross stands. There I will leave it, there it shall stay, since I am no longer able to make it serve Him." She threw herself into the countess' arms and hid her tear-stained face upon her bosom. Alas, she was not even allowed to appear among the populace, she alone was banished from the cross, yet she knew that the real Saviour would have suffered her to be at His feet as well as Mary Magdalene.
"Console yourself, Josepha, your belief does not deceive you. The real Christ would not have punished you so cruelly. Men are always more severe than God. Whence should they obtain divine magnanimity, they are so petty. They are like a servant who is arrogant and avaricious for his master because he does not understand his wishes and turns from the door the poor whom his master would gladly have welcomed and refreshed." She kissed the young girl's brow. "Be calm, Josepha, gather up your hair, you shall bury it to-morrow in the earth which is so dear to you. I promise that I will think of you when the other Magdalene appears; your shadow shall stand between her and me, so that I shall see you alone! Will this be a slight consolation to you?"
Josepha, for the first time, looked up into the countess' eyes with a smile. "Yes, it is a comfort. Ah, you are so kind, you take pity on me while all reproach and condemn me."
"Oh, Josepha! If people judged thus, which of us would be warranted in casting the first stone at you?" The countess uttered the words with deep earnestness, and thoughtfully left the room.
