The Marquise of O and Other Stories (30 page)
Read The Marquise of O and Other Stories Online
Authors: Heinrich von Kleist
Only the previous day Piachi had buried the unhappy Elvira, who as a result of the recent episode had fallen into a burning fever and died. Maddened by this double blow he went into the house with the injunction in his pocket, and with rage lending him strength he felled Nicolo, who was of weaker build, to the floor, and crushed out his brains against the wall. No one else in the house noticed his presence until the deed was already done; by the time they found him he was holding Nicolo between his knees and stuffing the injunction into his mouth. Having done so he stood up,
surrendered all his weapons, and was then imprisoned, tried, and condemned to death by hanging.
In the Papal State there is a law by which no criminal may be led to his death before he has received absolution. This Piachi, when his life had been declared forfeit, stubbornly refused to do. After all the arguments of religion had been vainly adduced to convince him of the heinousness of his behaviour, he was led out to the gallows in the hope that the sight of the death that awaited him might frighten him into penitence. On one side stood a priest who in a voice like the last trump described to him all the terrors of hell into which his soul was about to be plunged; opposite stood another, holding in his hand the Body of Christ, the sacred means of redemption, and spoke to him of the glorious abodes of eternal peace. âWill you accept the blessed gift of salvation?' they both asked him. âWill you receive the sacrament?' âNo,' replied Piachi. âWhy not?' âI do not want to be saved, I want to go down into the deepest pit of hell, I want to find Nicolo again â for he will not be in heaven â and continue my vengeance on him which I could not finish here to my full satisfaction.' And so saying he ascended the ladder and called upon the hangman to perform his duty. In the end the execution had to be stayed and the wretched man taken back to prison, for the law protected him. On three successive days similar attempts were made and every time without avail. On the third day, forced once more to come down from the ladder unhanged, he raised his fists in a gesture of bitter rage and cursed the inhuman law that forbade him to go to hell. He called upon the whole legion of devils to come and fetch him, swore he had no other wish but to be doomed and damned, and vowed he would throttle the first priest who came to hand if by so doing he might get to hell and lay hold of Nicolo again! When this was reported to the Pope, he ordered that Piachi should be executed without absolution; and unaccompanied by any priest, he was strung up very quietly in the Piazza del Popolo.
T
OWARDS
the end of the fourteenth century, just as the night of St Remigius was falling, Duke Wilhelm of Breysach, who ever since his clandestine marriage to Countess Katharina von Heersbruck, a lady of the family of Alt-Hüningen and regarded as his inferior in rank, had lived in a state of of feud with his half-brother Count Jakob Rotbart,
*
was returning home from a meeting with the German Emperor at Worms. In consideration of the death of all his legitimate children he had succeeded in obtaining from the Emperor a decree legitimizing his natural son Count Philipp von Hüningen, to whom his wife had given birth before their marriage. Looking forward to the future more hopefully than at any time since his succession to the dukedom, he had already reached the park behind his castle when suddenly, from among the bushes, an arrow sped out of the darkness and transfixed his body just below the breast bone. His chamberlain Herr Friedrich von Trota, amazed and appalled by this event, managed with the help of some other knights to carry him into the castle, where his distraught wife, having hastily summoned a council of the vassals of the realm, held him in her arms as with his last remaining strength he read aloud the imperial deed of legitimation; and when, despite some lively opposition, for by law the crown should have passed to his half-brother Count Rotbart, the vassals had complied with his last express wish and, subject to the Emperor's approval, had recognized Count Philipp as successor to the throne under the guardianship and regency of his mother in view of his minority, the Duke lay back and died.
The Duchess now ascended the throne without further
formality, merely dispatching a deputation to her brother-in-law Count Jakob Rotbart to notify him of the fact; and the consequence of this was, or at least outwardly seemed to be, exactly what had been predicted by a number of gentlemen at the court who claimed to know the Count's secretive temperament: Jakob Rotbart, shrewdly judging how matters now stood, accepted with a good grace the injustice his brother had done him; at all events he made no attempt whatsoever to set aside the dispositions of the late Duke, and heartily congratulated his young nephew on his accession. In the most friendly and affable way he invited the envoys to dine with him, and described to them the free and independent life he had led in his castle since the death of his wife, who had left him a princely fortune; he told them how much he enjoyed the society of the wives of his noble neighbours, the wine from his own estates, and hunting with boon companions. He added that a crusade to the Holy Land, to expiate the sins of his impetuous youth, which he ruefully confessed were growing yet more grievous with age, was the sole enterprise he still had in mind for his declining years. His two sons, who had been brought up in definite hopes of succeeding to the ducal throne, bitterly but vainly protested against the heartless indifference with which he thus so surprisingly acquiesced in the irrevocable invalidation of their claims. He curtly and contemptuously ordered them to hold their tongues, beardless youths as they were; on the day of the former Duke's solemn funeral he made them follow him to the town and there duly assist him in laying their uncle to rest; and after paying homage to his nephew the young prince in the throne-room of the ducal palace, with the rest of the court nobility and in the presence of the Regent, he declined all her offers of positions and dignities and returned to his castle accompanied by the blessings of the people, whose admiration he earned in double measure by such magnanimity and restraint.
The Duchess, after this unexpectedly happy solution to her first problem, now turned her attention to her second duty as Regent, namely the search for her husband's assassins, a whole band of whom was reported to have been seen in the park; and to this end she and her Chancellor, Herr Godwin von Herrthal, examined the arrow that had killed him. It yielded, however, no clue to the identity of its owner, except perhaps for the remarkable fact of its very fine and rich workmanship. Strong, crisp, gleaming feathers had been set in a slender and powerful shaft of dark walnut, finely turned; the head was coated with shining brass and only the very tip, sharp as a fish-bone, was of steel. The arrow must have been intended for the armoury of some rich nobleman who either had many enemies or was devoted to the chase; and since a date engraved on the upper end of it indicated that it had been manufactured not long ago, the Chancellor advised the Duchess to have it sent round, under her crown seal, to every workshop in Germany, in the hope of discovering the master craftsman who had made it and from him, if he could be traced, the name of the client who had ordered it.
Five months later the Chancellor, Herr Godwin, to whom the Duchess had entrusted the whole inquiry, received an affidavit from an arrowsmith in Strassburg, declaring that he had, three years ago, made some three score of such arrows, and a quiver to match, for Count Jakob Rotbart. The Chancellor, dumbfounded by this statement, kept it secretly locked away for several weeks, partly because, despite the Count's wild and dissolute life, he knew or believed him to be too noble-minded ever to be capable of so foul a deed as the murder of his brother; partly also because, despite the Regent's many other excellent qualities, he did not sufficiently trust her sense of justice in a matter concerning the life of her bitterest enemy, and he therefore felt bound to proceed with the utmost caution. In the meantime he followed up this strange clue with further discreet investigations,
and when by chance it came to light, on evidence from the town prefecture, that the Count, who normally never or very seldom left his castle, had been absent from it on the night of the Duke's assassination, he considered it his duty to disclose his findings; and accordingly at one of the next meetings of the Council of State, he acquainted the Duchess in detail with the extraordinary and disturbing suspicion which, on these two counts, fell upon Jakob Rotbart, her brother-in-law.
The Duchess, however, had of late been congratulating herself on her friendly relations with the Count and was particularly anxious not to give offence to him by any ill-considered action; consequently, to the Chancellor's dismay, she showed no pleasure at all on receiving this dubious information. On the contrary, after twice reading the papers through attentively she expressed considerable annoyance that so uncertain and delicate a matter should have been publicly raised at the Council of State; she was of the opinion that the allegation must be based on some error or calumny, and absolutely forbade it to be taken to the courts. Indeed, in view of the extraordinary popular esteem, amounting almost to adoration, which the Count for understandable reasons had enjoyed since his exclusion from the throne, she thought even this mere mention of the matter in the Council of State extremely dangerous; and foreseeing that there would be rumours about it in the town which would reach his ears she had the two points of indictment, together with the alleged evidence, delivered to him at his castle with a most magnanimous covering letter in which she declared that it must all be the result of some strange misunderstanding, assured him that she was convinced in advance of his innocence, and earnestly requested him not to embarrass her by troubling to refute them.
The Count, who was at table with a party of friends when the knight bearing the Duchess's message arrived, rose courteously to his feet and took the letter over to a window
embrasure to read it while his friends stared at the ceremonious messenger, who had declined to be seated; but no sooner had their host finished reading than he changed colour and handed them the papers, saying: âLook at this, my friends! A shameful charge has been trumped up against me â I am accused of murdering my brother!' As they crowded round him in alarm he took the arrow from the knight with an angry glare and added, concealing his profound consternation, that the missile did indeed belong to him, and that it was also true that on the night of St Remigius he had been absent from his castle. His friends denounced this malicious and contemptible imposture, cast the suspicion of the murder back upon the shameless accusers themselves, and were about to heap insults on the Duchess's envoy as he began to speak in defence of his mistress, when the Count, after re-reading the documents, suddenly interposed himself, exclaiming: âCalm yourselves, my friends!' Thereupon he took his sword from where it was standing in a corner of the room, and handed it over to the knight with the words: âI am your prisoner!' When the latter asked in amazement whether he had heard him aright, and whether he in fact acknowledged the two charges drawn up by the Chancellor, the Count answered: âYes! yes! yes!', adding however that he hoped he would not be expected to offer any proof of his innocence except at the bar of a court formally convened by the Duchess. His own knights, highly dissatisfied with this announcement, tried vainly to convince him that he was not in this case accountable to anyone but the Emperor; the Count, persisting in his strange change of attitude and his reliance on the Regent's justice, declared his determination to appear before the High Court of the Duchy. Wrenching himself free from them, he was already calling out of the window for his horses, saying that he was willing to leave at once with the messenger and submit himself to the confinement befitting his rank, when his companions forcibly intervened
and offered a proposal which they finally prevailed upon him to accept. A letter signed by all of them was written to the Duchess, demanding a safe conduct for the Count, as was the right of every nobleman in such circumstances, and offering, as surety that he would appear before the court of her appointment and accept whatever verdict it might pass on him, the sum of twenty thousand marks in silver.
The Duchess, to whom this communication was as inexplicable as it was unexpected, and who knew that very unpleasant rumours about why the charges had been brought were already popularly current, thought it advisable to withdraw herself completely from the proceedings and to submit the whole dispute to the Emperor. On the Chancellor's advice she sent him all the documents in the case and asked him, in his capacity as supreme overlord, to relieve her of the investigation of a matter in which she was herself an interested party. The Emperor, who happened to be in Basle at that time, negotiating with the Swiss Confederation, agreed to this request; he set up then and there a tribunal consisting of three counts, twelve knights, and two assistant judges; and after granting Count Jakob Rotbart, against a bail of twenty thousand silver marks, the safe conduct for which his friends had applied, he called upon him to appear before the aforesaid tribunal and give answer on the two points, namely: how the arrow which he confessed was his property had come to be in the murderer's hands, and secondly, where he had been on the night of St Remigius.
On the Monday after Trinity, Count Jakob Rotbart, with a splendid escort of knights, presented himself in Basle at the bar of the court before which he had been summoned, and after passing over the first question, which he declared to be a complete mystery to him, he came to the second, which was decisive for the judgement of the case, and made the following statement, resting his hands on the railing as he spoke and gazing at the assembly with his little eyes
glinting under their red lashes: âMy lords and gentlemen!' he said, âyou accuse me, despite my amply demonstrated indifference to the acquisition of a crown and sceptre, of having committed the vilest conceivable deed, the murder of my brother, who was, it is true, not very well disposed towards me, but no less dear to me for that; and as part of the evidence for your indictment, you adduce the fact that on the night of St Remigius when the crime was committed I was, contrary to the custom I have observed for many years, absent from my castle. Now I very well know the obligations of a gentleman with regard to any ladies whose favour he privily enjoys and I assure you that if it had not pleased heaven to visit me, like a bolt from the blue, with this strange and fateful conjunction of circumstances, the secret which I carry silently in my heart would have died with me and perished in dust, not to rise again until the angel should sound the last trump which will burst open our graves and call me to stand before God. But His Majesty the Emperor, speaking through you, puts to my conscience a question which, as you will yourselves realize, must override all such considerations and scruples; therefore, since you wish to know why it is neither probable nor even possible that I was involved in the murder of my brother either personally or indirectly, I must tell you that on the night of St Remigius, that is at the time when the deed was perpetrated, I was secretly visiting the beautiful daughter of the Lord Sheriff Winfried von Breda, the widowed lady Littegarde von Auerstein, whose love I had won.'
Now the reader should know that the widowed Littegarde von Auerstein was not only the most beautiful lady in the country but had also, until the utterance of this scandalous slur, enjoyed the purest and most blameless of reputations. Since the loss of her husband, the Commandant von Auerstein, who had died of an infectious fever a few months after their marriage, she had lived a quiet and withdrawn life in her father's castle; and it was only at the latter's
request, for in his old age he would have been glad to see her married again, that she consented to appear now and then at the hunts and banquets organized by the gentlemen of the surrounding neighbourhood, particularly by Herr Jakob Rotbart. On these occasions many lords from the richest and noblest families of the land pressed their attentions upon her, and among them the dearest to her heart was the Chamberlain Herr Friedrich von Trota, who had once during a hunt gallantly saved her life from a charging wounded boar; but fearing to displease her two brothers, who counted on inheriting her fortune, she had been unable, despite all her father's exhortations, to make up her mind to accept his hand in marriage. And indeed, when her elder brother Rudolf married a rich young lady from that part of the country, and when, after remaining childless for three years, they had to the family's great joy been blessed with a male heir, so much pressure was put upon her by plain speech and insinuation that she formally bade farewell, in a letter which cost her many tears, to her friend Herr Friedrich, and to preserve unity within the family she accepted her brother's suggestion that she should become the Abbess of a convent on the Rhine not far from her ancestral home.
It was just at the time when this plan, upon representations made to the Archbishop of Strassburg, was about to be put into execution, that the Lord Sheriff Winfried von Breda received from the court appointed by the Emperor the scandalous notification concerning his daughter Littegarde, together with an order to bring her to Basle to answer the charge raised against her by Count Jakob. The letter indicated the exact time and place at which the Count, in his evidence, claimed to have paid his secret visit to the lady Littegarde, and the court even sent with it a ring which had belonged to her dead husband and which he declared he had received from her hands, on his departure, as a souvenir of the night they had spent together. Now it happened
that Herr Winfried, on the day this letter arrived, was suffering from a serious and painful ailment of old age; supported by his daughter, he was tottering round the room in a state of extreme agitation, already contemplating the mortality to which all that lives is subject; and so it was that upon reading the court's terrible communication he was immediately seized by apoplexy, and dropping the letter, collapsed on the floor, paralysed in every limb. The horrified brothers, who were present, lifted him and summoned a doctor, who lived within the precincts of the castle in order to be near at hand to attend him; but all efforts to restore him to life were vain. He expired as the lady Littegarde still lay senseless in the arms of her waiting-women, and when she came to herself she lacked even the bittersweet consolation of having been able to speak, in defence of her honour, a single word that he might take with him into eternity. The consternation of the two brothers at this appalling event was beyond description, as was their fury at its cause, the imputed shameful misconduct of their sister, which unfortunately seemed only too credible. For they knew all too well that Count Jakob Rotbait had persistently paid court to her throughout the whole previous summer; he had held a number of tournaments and banquets solely in her honour, and had on each of these occasions distinguished her from all the other ladies of the company by attentions which had seemed highly improper even then. Indeed, they remembered that Littegarde, at just about the time of the St Remigius' Day in question, had claimed to have lost during a walk this very ring, a present from her husband, which had now turned up so strangely in the hands of Count Jakob; and so they did not doubt for one moment the truth of the statement which the Count had made against her in court. In vain, as their father's corpse was carried off amid the lamentations of the household, she clung to the knees of her brothers and begged them to hear her for only one moment. Rudolf,
aflame with indignation, turned on her and demanded to know whether she could produce a witness to disprove the accusation; but she tremblingly replied that she could invoke no testimony save that of her irreproachable way of life, since it happened that her chambermaid had been absent on a visit to her parents, and therefore not in attendance on her in her bedroom, on the night in question; whereupon Rudolf spurned her with his foot, snatched a sword from the wall and unsheathed it, shouted in a passion of hideous anger for the dogs and servants, and ordered her to leave the house and castle forthwith. Littegarde stood up, pale as death, and silently evading the blows he aimed at her, asked him at least, since he insisted on her leaving, to give her time to make the necessary preparations; but in reply Rudolf, foaming with rage, merely shouted at her to get out of the house; and since he even ignored the pleas of his own wife, who intervened to urge upon him more forbearance and humanity, furiously thrusting her aside and striking her with his sword-hilt so that it drew blood, the unfortunate Littegarde, more dead than alive, had no choice but to leave the room. She staggered across the courtyard, where the common people stood round staring at her, to the gate of the castle; here Rudolf had a bundle of linen handed to her, into which he had put some money, and he himself shut and locked the gate behind her with curses and execrations.
