_Es ist eine alte Geschichte_, _Doch bleibt sie immer neu_.--HEINE.

II. Helene von Donniges

Helene von Donniges has told us the story in fullest detail--the story of that tragic love which was to send La.s.salle to his too early death. She was the daughter of a Bavarian diplomatist who had held appointments in Italy, and later in Switzerland. She was betrothed as a child of twelve to an Italian of forty years of age. At a time when, as she says, her thoughts should have been concentrated upon her studies, they were distracted by speculations on marriage and the marriage tie. A young Wallachian student named Yanko Racowitza crossed her path. His loneliness--he was far from home and friends--kindled her sympathy. Dark and ugly, she compared him to Oth.e.l.lo, and called him her "Moor." In spite of some parental opposition she insisted upon plighting her troth to him, and the Italian lover was scornfully dismissed. Then comes the opening scene of the present story. It was in Berlin, whither Helen--we will adopt the English spelling of the name--had travelled with her grandmother in 1862, that she was asked at a ball the momentous question, "Do you know La.s.salle?" She had never heard his name. Her questioner was Baron Korff, a son-in-law of Meyerbeer, who, charmed by her originality, remarked that she and La.s.salle were made for one another.

Two weeks later her curiosity was further excited, when Dr. Karl Oldenberg let fall some similar remark as to her intellectual kinship with the mysterious La.s.salle. She asked her grandmother about him, and was told that he was a "shameless demagogue." Then she turned to her lover, who promised to inquire. Racowitza brought her information about the Countess, the casket, and other "sensations"--only to excite her curiosity the more. Finally a friend, Frau Hirs.e.m.e.nzel, undertook to introduce her to the notorious Socialist. The introduction took place at a party, and if her account is to be trusted, no romance could be more dramatic than the actuality. They loved one another at first sight, conversed with freedom, and he called her by an endearing name as he offered her his arm to escort her home.

"Somehow it did not seem at all remarkable," she says, "that a stranger should thus call me 'Du' on first acquaintance. We seemed to fit to one another so perfectly."

She was in her nineteenth year, La.s.salle in his thirty-ninth. The pair did not see one another again for some months, not in fact until Helen visited Berlin as the guest of a certain lawyer Holthoff. Here she met La.s.salle at a concert, and the friendly lawyer connived at their being more than once together. At a ball, on one occasion, La.s.salle asked her what she would do if he were sentenced to death, and she beheld him ascending the scaffold.

"I should wait till your head was severed," was her answer, "in order that you might look upon your beloved to the last, and then--I should take poison."

He was pleased with her reply, but declared that there was no fear--his star was in the ascendant! And so it seemed; for although young Racowitza even then accosted him in the ballroom, the friendly Holthoff soon arranged an informal betrothal; and La.s.salle was on the eve of a great public triumph which seemed more likely to take him to the throne than to the scaffold.

To many this will seem an exaggeration. Yet hear Prince Bismarck in the Reichstag seventeen years after La.s.salle's death:--

He was one of the most intellectual and gifted men with whom I have ever had intercourse, a man who was ambitious in high style, but who was by no means Republican: he had very decided national and monarchical sympathies, and the idea which he strove to realize was the German Empire, and therein we had a point of contact. La.s.salle was extremely ambitious, and it was perhaps a matter of doubt to him whether the German Empire would close with the Hohenzollern dynasty or the La.s.salle dynasty; but he was monarchical through and through.

La.s.salle was an energetic and very intellectual man, to talk with whom was very instructive. Our conversations lasted for hours, and I was always sorry when they came to an end. {198}

The year 1864, which was to close so tragically, opened indeed with extraordinary promise. La.s.salle left Berlin in May--Helen had gone back to Geneva two or three months earlier--travelling by Leipzig and Cologne through the Rhenish provinces, and holding a "glorious review" the while.

"I have never seen anything like it," he writes to the Countess von Hatzfeldt. "The entire population indulged in indescribable jubilation. The impression made upon me was that such scenes must have attended the founding of new religions."

And it appeared possible that Heine's description of La.s.salle as the Messiah of the nineteenth century was to be realized. The Bishop of Mayence was on his side, and the King of Prussia sympathetic. As he pa.s.sed from town to town the whole population turned out to do him honour. Countless thousands met him at the stations: the routes were ornamented with triumphal arches, the houses decorated with wreaths, and flowers were thrown upon him as he pa.s.sed. As the cavalcade approached the town of Ronsdorf, for example, it was easy to see that the people were on tip-toe with expectation. At the entrance an arch bore the inscription:--

Willkommen dem Dr. Ferdinand La.s.salle Viel tausendmal im Ronsdorfer Thal!

Under arches and garlands, smothered with flowers thrown by young work- girls, whose fathers, husbands, brothers, cheered again and again, La.s.salle and his friends entered the town, while a vast mult.i.tude followed in procession. It was at Ronsdorf that La.s.salle made the speech which had in it something of fateful presentiment:--

"I have not grasped this banner," he said, "without knowing quite clearly that I myself may fall. The feelings which fill me at the thought that I may be removed cannot be better expressed than in the words of the Roman poet:

'_Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor_!'

or in German, '_Moge_, _wenn ich beseitigt werde_, _irgend ein Racher und Nachfolger aus meinen Gebeinen auferstehen_!' May this great and national movement of civilization not fall with my person, but may the conflagration which I have kindled spread farther and farther, so long as one of you still breathes. Promise me that, and in token raise your right hands."

All hands were raised in silence, and the impressive scene closed with a storm of acclamation.

But La.s.salle was worn out, and he fled for a time from the storm and conflict to Switzerland. Helen at Geneva heard of his sojourn at Righi- Kaltbad, and she made an excursion thither with two or three friends, and thus on July 25 (1864) the lovers met again. An account of their romantic interview comes to us in Helen's own diary and in the letter which La.s.salle wrote to the Countess Hatzfeldt two days later. Helen tells how they climbed the Kulm together, discussing by the way the question of their marriage and the possibility of opposition.

"What have your parents against me?" asked La.s.salle; and was told that only once had she mentioned his name before them, and that their horror of the Jew agitator had ever since closed her mouth. So the conversation sped. The next morning their hope of "a sunrise" was destroyed by a fog.

"How often," says Helen, "when in later years I have stood upon the summit of the Righi and seen the day break in all its splendour, have I recalled this foggy, damp morning, and La.s.salle's disappointment!"

As he looked upon her, so pale and trembling, he abused the climate, and promised that he would give up politics, devote himself to science and literature, and take her to Egypt or India. He talked to her of the Countess, "who will think only of my happiness," and he talked of religion. Was his Jewish faith against him in her eyes? Mahommedanism and Judaism, it was all one to her, was the answer, but paganism by preference! They parted, to correspond immediately, and La.s.salle to write to the astonished, and in this affair, unsympathetic Countess, of the meeting with his beloved. With the utmost friendliness, however, he endeavoured to keep the elder lady at a distance for a time.

On July 20 Helen writes to him, repeating her promise to become his wife.

You said to me yesterday: "Say but a sensible and decided 'Yes'--_et je me charge du reste_." Good; I say "Yes"--_chargez-vous donc du reste_. I only require that we first do all in our power to win my parents to a friendly att.i.tude. To me belongs, however, a painful task. I must slay in cold blood the true heart of Yanko von Racowitza, who has given me the purest love, the n.o.blest devotion.

With heartless egotism I must destroy the day-dream of a n.o.ble youth.

But for your sake I will even do what is wrong.

Meanwhile La.s.salle's unhappy attempts to conciliate the Countess continue. He writes of Helen's sympathy and dwells upon her entire freedom from jealousy. He tells Frau von Hatzfeldt how much Helen is longing to see his old friend. In conclusion, as though not to show himself too blind a lover, he remarks that Helen's one failing is a total lack of will. "When, however, we are man and wife," he adds, "then shall I have 'will' enough for both, and she will be as clay in the hands of the potter." The Countess continues obdurate, and in a further letter (Aug. 2) La.s.salle says:--

It is really a piece of extraordinary good fortune that, at the age of thirty-nine and a half, I should be able to find a wife so beautiful, so sympathetic, who loves me so much, and who--an indispensable requirement--is so entirely absorbed in my personality.

At La.s.salle's request, Helen herself wrote thus to the Baroness von Hatzfeldt:--

DEAR AND BELOVED COUNTESS,--

Armed with an introduction from my lord and master, I, his affianced wife, come to you--unhappily only in writing--_le coeur et la main ouverte_, and beg of you a little of that friendship which you have given to him so abundantly. How deeply do I regret that your illness separates us, that I cannot tell you face to face how much I love and honour him, how ardently I long for your help and advice as to how I can best make my beautiful and n.o.ble eagle happy. This my first letter must necessarily seem somewhat constrained to you; for I am an insignificant, unimportant being, who can do nothing but love and honour him, and strive to make him happy. I would fain dance and sing like a child, and drive away all care from him. My one desire is to understand his great and n.o.ble nature, and in good fortune and in bad to stand faithful and true by his side.

Then followed a further appeal for the love and help of this friend of La.s.salle's early years. It was all in vain. Instead of a letter, Helen received from the Countess what she called "a scrawl," and La.s.salle a long homily on his lack of judgment and foresight. La.s.salle defended himself, and so the not too pleasing correspondence went on.

Yet these days in Berne were the happiest in the lives of La.s.salle and his betrothed. Helen was staying with a Madame Aarson, and was constantly visited by her lover. It was agreed between them that La.s.salle should follow her to Geneva, and see her parents. But no sooner had he entered his room at the Pension Leovet, in the neighbourhood of the house of Herr von Donniges, than a servant handed him a letter from Helen. It told how on her arrival she had found the whole house excited by the betrothal of her sister Margaret to Count von Keyserling. Her mother's delight in the engagement had tempted her (contrary to La.s.salle's express wish) to confidences, and she had told of her love for the arch-agitator. Her mother had turned upon her with loathing, execrated La.s.salle without stint, spoken scornfully of the Countess, the casket robbery, and kindred matters. "It is quite impossible," urged the frantic woman, "that Count Keyserling will unite himself to a family with a connexion of this kind." The father joined in the upbraiding, the disowning of an undutiful daughter. One has but to remember the vulgar, tradesman instinct, which then, as now, guides the marriage ideals of a certain cla.s.s, to take in the whole situation at a glance.

La.s.salle had hardly begun to read the letter when Helen appeared before him, and begged him to take her away immediately--to France--anywhere!

Her father's violence, her mother's abuse, had driven her to despair.

La.s.salle was indignant with her. Why had she not obeyed him? He would speak to her father. All would yet be well. But--she was compromised there--at his hotel. Had she a friend in the neighbourhood?

At this moment her maid came in to say that there was a carriage ready to take them to the station. A train would start for Paris in a quarter of an hour. Helen renewed her entreaty, but La.s.salle remained resolute. He would only receive her from her father. To what friend could he take her? Helen named Madame Caroline Rognon, who beheld them with astonishment.

A few minutes later Frau von Donniges and her daughter Margaret entered the house. Then followed a disagreeable scene between La.s.salle and the mother, ending, after many scornful words thrown at the ever self-restrained lover, in Helen being carried off before his eyes--indeed, by his wish. La.s.salle had shown dignity and self-restraint, but he had killed the girl's love--until it was too late.

Duhring speaks of La.s.salle's "inconceivable stupidity," and there is a great temptation at this date, with all the circ.u.mstances before us, to look at the matter with Duhring's eyes. But to one whom Heine had called a Messiah, whom Humboldt had termed a "Wunderkind," and Bismarck had greeted as among the greatest men of the age, it may well have seemed flatly inconceivable that this insignificant little Swiss diplomatist could long refuse the alliance he proposed. Yet stronger and more potent may have been the feeling--although of this there is no positive evidence extant--that the social movement which he had so much at heart could not well endure a further scandal. The Hatzfeldt story had been used against him frequently enough. An elopement--so sweetly romantic under some circ.u.mstances--would have been the ruin of his great political reputation.

La.s.salle speedily regretted his course of action--what man in love would not have done so?--but his first impulse was consistent with the life of strenuous effort for the cause he had embraced. To a romantic girl, however, his conduct could but seem brutal and treacherous. Helen had done more than enough. She had compromised herself irretrievably, and an immediate marriage was imperatively demanded by the conventionalities.

She was, however, seized by a brutal father and confined to her room, until she understood that La.s.salle had left Geneva. Then the entreaties of her family, the representation that her sister's marriage, even her father's position, were in jeopardy, caused her to declare that she would abandon La.s.salle.

At this point the story is conflicting. Helen herself says that she never saw La.s.salle again after he had handed her over to her mother, and that after a long period of ill-usage and petty persecution, she was hurried one night across the lake. Becker, however, declares that as La.s.salle and his friend Rustow were walking in Geneva a carriage pa.s.sed them on the way to the station containing Helen and another lady, and that Helen acknowledged their salute. Anyway, it is clear that Helen went to Bex on August 9, and that La.s.salle left Geneva on the 13th.

Letter after letter was sent by La.s.salle to Helen--one from Karlsruhe on the 15th, and one from Munich on the 19th, but no answer. In Karlsruhe, according to von Hofstetten, La.s.salle wept like a child. His correspondence with the Countess and with Colonel Rustow becomes forcible in its demands for a.s.sistance. Writing to Rustow, he tells of a two hours' conversation with the Bavarian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Baron von Schrenk, who a.s.sures him of his sympathy, says that he cannot understand the objections of von Donniges, and that in similar circ.u.mstances he would be proud of the alliance, although he deprecated the political views of La.s.salle. Finally this accommodating Minister of State--here, at least, the tragi-comedy is but too apparent--engages to send a lawyer, Dr. Haenle, as an official commissioner to negotiate with the obdurate father and refractory amba.s.sador.

Richard Wagner, the great composer, the Bishop of Mayence, and n.o.blemen, generals, and scholars without number were also pressed into the service, but in vain. The treachery of intimate friends more than counterbalanced all that could be achieved by well-meaning strangers. If Helen is to be believed--and the charge is not denied--La.s.salle's friend Holthoff, sent to negotiate in his favour, entreated her to abandon La.s.salle, and to comply with her parents' wishes. La.s.salle, he declared, was not in any way a suitable husband, and her father had decided wisely. The poor girl lived in a constant atmosphere of petty persecution. Her father, she was told, might lose his post in the Bavarian service if she married this Socialist, her brother would have absolutely no career open to him, her sisters could not marry in their own rank of life; in fact, the whole family were alleged to be entirely unhappy and miserable through her stubbornness. The following letter--obviously dictated--was the not unnatural outcome:--

TO HERR La.s.sALLE.

SIR,--

I have again become reconciled to my betrothed bridegroom, Herr Yanko von Racowitza, whose love I have regained, and I deeply repent my earlier action. I have given notice of this to your legal representative, Herr Holthoff, and I now declare to you of my own free will and firm conviction, that there never can be any further question of a marriage between us, and that I hold myself in all respects to be released from such an engagement. I am now firmly resolved to devote to my aforesaid betrothed bridegroom my eternal love and fidelity.

HELENE VON DONNIGES.

This letter came through Rustow, and La.s.salle addressed the following reply to Helen, which, however, she never received--it came in fact into the possession of the Countess--a sufficient commentary on the duplicity and the false friendship not only of Holthoff, but of Colonel Rustow and the Countess Hatzfeldt in this sad affair.

MUNICH, _Aug._ 20, 1864.

HELEN,--