The Fiery Angel (20 page)

After this ambiguous speech, there was nothing else for me to do but, rising, once more ask to be forgiven for the trouble I had caused and take my leave. I threw a last glance in the direction of Agrippa, and of his pupils, crowding round his chair with every demonstration of admiration—and left the room, thinking that I was taking leave of this circle for ever, and not suspecting that I was yet once again to meet the great sorcerer, nor in what strange circumstances!

On the landing of the staircase, Hans and Aurelius caught me up, desiring probably to make up for the unpleasant impression created by the audience, for they tried by all manner of means to explain away the sternness of Agrippa, saying that he had been very much upset by the letter of Hetorpius. In the short conversation that here took place between us, Aurelius said:

“I didn’t suspect, not I, that the teacher still secretly believed in magic.”

And Hans, with the arrogance of youth, added:

“He is a great man and a scientist, but not of our generation.”

Both Hans and Aurelius convincingly begged me to remain in Bonn for one day more, assuring me that the teacher would treat me more benevolently on the morrow, but I firmly refused to trouble Agrippa again, especially as I had lost all hope of his assistance in my undertaking. I did, however, thank the two youths for the help they had given me, and Hans amicably escorted me to the door of the house, where, in parting, we gave each other promises to exchange letters.

On the next day I rode back, heading north. Snow had fallen in the fields and it was rather cold, but the road had improved considerably and riding was far easier than it had been three days before. The horse stepped briskly out over the soft white carpet that covered the hard, frozen earth.

When, on a later occasion, I carefully thought over all my visit to Agrippa, and attentively considered all his words, I came to the conclusion that not all of them should be given credence. During those short minutes that I stood before Agrippa, an unknown traveller, he had no reasons for opening his soul, for expressing frankly his hidden thoughts on a matter so responsible as magic. It seemed as if he used not even to express them before his pupils, so that their sceptical speeches were perhaps a reflection not of the final opinion of the philosopher, but only of that solitude to which great men, forced to hide themselves even from those nearest them, are ever doomed! And now, after my second meeting with Agrippa, I do not so much as doubt that he believed in magic far more than he ever desired to show, and that maybe it was to this very goety that the hours of his solitary studies were dedicated.

But all these considerations had not as yet come into my head at the time of my return journey from Bonn. On the contrary, I felt as if the stern words of Agrippa and the sober speculations of Hans had chased away like a fresh wind the fog of the mysterious and miraculous in which I had wandered during the last three months. With genuine astonishment I asked myself how it was that, for a whole quarter year, I had been unable to step out of a circle of demons and devils—I, who was accustomed to the clear and well-defined world of ship’s rigging and military marches. With the same astonishment I sought an answer to the question how it happened that I, who not once heretofore had failed successfully to cure the heart wounds and scratches of the arrows of the little winged god, now found myself bound with such strong shackles to the waist of a woman who rewarded me only with contempt or condescending coldness. Reviewing, not without the colour mounting to my cheeks, my life with Renata, I now found my behaviour absurd and foolish, and was indignant with myself for so slavishly having submitted to the whims of a lady, of whom I did not even know whether she had any right to attention. To justify myself in a measure, I was ready, with considerable inconsequence, to think once more that Renata was maintaining me by her side by means of some magic philtre or spell.

At last there came into my mind the oath I had given myself at Düsseldorf, and that had not once occurred to me during the last few weeks: not to stay with Renata for longer than three months, and, in any case, not for longer than the time during which I should spend a third of the money I had saved. Three months since that morning had elapsed six days before, and the limited amount had already been almost spent. Under the influence of such meditations, the thought flickered through my mind not to return to Köln at all, but to abandon Renata to her own lonely fate and, turning my horse, to ride south of Bonn in the direction of my parental Losheim. However, I had not the courage to do this, principally because I was tormented by my longing for Renata, but also because honour did not permit me such treachery.

Then I said to myself: when I return home, I shall speak to Renata frankly and honestly, I shall point out to her that her search for Count Heinrich is sheer madness, remind her that I have come to love her passionately and with all my heart, and offer her to become my wife. If she can, before God and man, give me an oath to be a faithful and a loyal wife, we shall repair together to Losheim and, having obtained the benediction of my parents, go to live beyond the Ocean, to New Spain, where Renata’s past will be forgotten like a before-morning dream.

Lulled by these dreams of peaceful happiness, I felt easy and free, and sang beneath my breath a gay Spanish song: “
A Mingo Revulgo, Mingo
,” and unceasingly urged on my horse, so that it was while it was yet daylight that the city walls of Köln rose before me, dark above the white snow.

H
AVING reached our house, tired but cheerful, I knocked at the door to summon Martha, handed over to her the reins of my horse, and asked:

“Where is Mistress Renata?”

To my surprise, Martha answered me thus:

“She appears to have got better, Master Rupprecht. When you were gone she spent whole days walking in the town, and yesterday she only returned home very late.”

Of course a sharp barb lay hidden in Martha’s words, for already, for some time, she had felt unfriendly towards Renata, and her thrust did not strike amiss. “How is it,” I said to myself, “that Renata, who, when I am home, pretends that she is like one paralysed and cannot rise from her bed, Renata, who refuses for whole weeks to cross the threshold of her room, as if she were bound by some vow—the moment she is left alone, walks along wintry streets until the darkness of the night! This might even enable one to credit the suggestions of Hans Weier, that all her illness is only imagination, all her sufferings—only play-acting!”

Indignant and almost in a rage, I ran up the stair to the upper storey, where, on the landing, leaning against the balusters, Renata already awaited me; her face was pale and betrayed extreme emotion. Seeing me, she stretched out her hands to me, took me by the shoulders and, without allowing me to say a word or herself pronouncing any greeting, said:

“Rupprecht, he is here.”

I replied with the question:

“Who is here?”

She explained:

“Heinrich is here! I have seen him. I have spoken with him.”

As yet not quite believing Renata’s words, I began to question her:

“Could you not have been mistaken? Perhaps it merely seemed so to you? It may have been someone else. Did he himself admit to you that he was—Count Heinrich?”

And Renata drew me into her room, forced me to sit down, and, nearly straining against me, bending her face close, so close, began in gasps to relate to me what had happened to her in Köln during the two days I had been absent.

According to her account, on Saturday, at the hour of the evening mass, while, as was her custom, she was wasting herself at the window in cold weariness, she suddenly heard a voice, soft but clear, as if that of an angel, which repeated thrice: “He is here, near the Cathedral. He is here, near the Cathedral. He is here, near the Cathedral.” After that Renata could neither reason nor tarry, but, rising and throwing on her cape, she hastened at once to the Cathedral, on the Square, at that time crowded with people. Five minutes had not passed when she distinguished in the crowd Count Heinrich, who was walking with another young man, their arms round each other’s waists. From excitement at this apparition, of which she had too long dreamed, Renata almost fell unconscious, but some force, as if from within, supported her, and she followed them, walking, across the whole town, until they entered a house belonging to Eduard Stein, the friend of the humanists.

The following day, a Sunday, Renata stood on guard near that house from early dawn, firmly resolved to wait for the appearance of Heinrich. She had to wait a long time, the whole day long, but she paid no attention to the surprised glances of the passers-by or the suspicious looks of the reiters, and only the thought that Heinrich might have left the city during the night made her tremble. Suddenly, when it was already near twilight, the door opened and Heinrich appeared, in company with the same youth as yesterday, conversing with animation. Renata walked after them, keeping in the shelter of the walls, and she followed close upon all their route as far as the Rhine, where the friends took leave of each other: the stranger turned towards the shipping, and Heinrich made as if to return. Then Renata came out from the shadow and called him by his name.

According to Renata’s words Heinrich recognised her at once, but she would have been happy had it not been so, for, scarcely had he realised who was before him, when his face became distorted with indignation and hate. Renata caught hold of his hand, he freed himself with a shiver of disgust and, thrusting away the fingers that stretched towards him, tried to walk on. Then Renata fell upon her knees before him on the filthy quay, kissed the hem of his cape and said to him all those words she had so often said to me; how she had waited for him, how she had searched for him, how she loved him and entreated him to kill her there and then, for of his thrust she would die blissfully, like a saint. But Heinrich said that he neither wished to speak to her, nor see her, that he even had no right to forgive her; at last, tearing himself free from her hands, he disappeared, almost running, leaving her alone in darkness and isolation.

Renata delivered the whole of this narrative at one breath, speaking in a very firm voice, and selecting accurate and picturesque expressions, but, on reaching the end, she suddenly lost at one and the same time both strength and will, and burst into tears: as though the wind that had driven the ship of her soul had died suddenly down, and the sails begun pitifully to droop against the rigging. And at once she sank heavily to the floor, for despair always dragged her to the ground, and, drooping with face averted, she began to weep and sway herself about, repeating helplessly the selfsame words, heeding not my tender consolations, nor my searching questions.

I confess that Renata’s narrative, though that day I had been, it is true, further from her in thought than ever before, made a staggering impression upon me: my heart throbbed convulsively and my soul as if filled with the black smoke of an explosion. The thought that someone had dared to treat proudly and contemptuously a woman before whom I was accustomed to kneel was unbearable to me. However, I did not allow myself to be overcome by anger and jealousy, but sought clearly to unravel that which had transpired, though it assailed me as a disorderly and impetuous hurricane. And as soon as Renata had regained at least a degree of ability to speak coherently, I demanded that she should repeat the words of Heinrich to me more exactly:

Still swallowing her tears, she exclaimed:

“How he insulted me! How he insulted me! He told me that I was the evil genius of his life. That I had ruined his whole fate. That I took him away from Heaven. That I—am from the Devil. He told me that he despised me. That the memory of our love was revolting to him. That our love was filth and sin into which I had enticed him by shameful deceit. That he, that he—spat upon our love!”

Then I asked how could Heinrich have said that Renata took him away from Heaven? Was it not he himself, of his own free will, who carried her to his castle to live with him as his wife and one nearest to him? And since at that hour all the customary dams in Renata’s soul were shattered by the impetuous flood of her sorrow, without even attempting to defend herself, she fell with her face upon my knees and exclaimed with a final sincerity so unusual to her:

“Rupprecht! Rupprecht! I hid from you the most important point of all! Heinrich never sought human love! He should never in his life have touched a woman! It was I, it was I, who forced him to betray his oath. Yes, I took him away from Heaven, I deprived him of his exalted dreams, and for that he now despises me and hates me!”

Continuing to stalk the truth carefully, as an animal stalks its prey, I discovered from Renata, question by question, all that she had concealed from me about Heinrich in her first story, and of which she had never let hint drop during the three months of our life together. I learned that Heinrich was member of a Secret society that required on entry a vow of chastity. This society was to have bound together the entire Christian universe with a hoop tighter than the Church, and to have stood at the head of the entire earth with more power than the Emperor and the Most Holy Father. Heinrich dreamed that he would be elected Grand Master of the order, and lead the vessel of humanity out of the deep abysms of evil into the road-steads of truth and light. He had called Renata to join him only for the purpose of assisting him with his experiments in a new, godly magic, for he required that special power that is latent in some persons. But Renata, thinking Heinrich the incarnation of her Madiël, had approached him with but one aim—to possess herself of him, and, despising no means, she achieved the triumph of her purpose. Heinrich, however, after a short time during which his reason had been blinded by love, had felt horrified at what had been committed, and, in bitter remorse, fled his home castle, like a country infested with the plague.

Such an explanation of events seemed to me to have much more the appearance of truth than that which Renata had given me before, and, at last joining into one whole the separate threads of her story, I asked her: