Karl Emil Franzos

“ You are young but you have experienced enough of life, you have suffered enough, to know how far this justice will bring us. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth--shall this pitiless web of guilt and expiation continue to spin itself everlastingly from generation to generation? Can't you understand that this life would be unendurable if a high-minded deed, a noble victory over self, did not at times rend the web? ”

“ I was utterly broken, yet not with impotent rage, nor yet with my just resentment against those miserable weaklings that should have righted us--but only with an utter pity for myself. For at the very moment when that hunchback creature of a clerk made known to us their decision, the conviction darted through me: 'Poor Taras! if right and justice are not to be trampled under foot, you will have to become a law-breaker in the sight of men!'--I, the happy husband and father, the good, peace-loving judge--a law-breaker! ”

“ I say it openly, Agenor, I believe it would be a blessing to you and to me if I died a natural death."
"Judith!"
"Forgive me. I ought not to have said it, but it came from my heart, as it were, and forced its way through my lips. And it is perfectly true. Here life is hard enough; what will it be at home? But voluntary death would be a dreadful misfortune for you. Your conscience would never know peace. It is a frightful feeling that the death of a beloved one is on your soul. You, Agenor, shall never experience that. ”

“ Her face remained unmoved. "What shall I say?" she exclaimed gloomily. "If he really suffers, the punishment is only just. What did my mother not suffer on his account! And I!"
"But can we ascribe all the blame to him?" he cried. "All, Victorine?"
"Perhaps," she answered. "But if not all, then the most, so much that I will certainly believe you in one thing; if he is a human being at all, then he should now be suffering all the tortures of remorse. Still, as great as my sorrow, his cannot be! And is my guilt greater than his? And has he, too, to expiate it with honour and life?" ”

“ First love knows nothing of the past, and does not look forward to the future. The German poet was right when he wrote, 'First love does not know that it must die, as a child does not know what death is, although it may often hear of it.' My love was so great that I did not guess that your love might change when you learned that a Jewish mother had borne me, and that I had been a poor Talmudist. It was not because you were the Gräfin Jadwiga Bortynska that I loved you, but because you were you—a noble high-minded woman, whose heart beat in response to mine. ”

“ That path up the pine wood has brought you into the heart of the Carpathians, and their strange beauty, weird and wild and unspeakably mysterious, is upon you suddenly.
Yet monotony is even here; the world seems a sea of swaying pines, and the eye has nothing to rest it from the gloomy green save the sky, vast and blue. The heart grows lonely and wistful, but scarcely attuned to tender thoughts as amid the voices of the plain. The spell of the forest wilds is upon it, bracing it up to its own sterner kind. ”

“ And if duty at times seemed too hard, my father's bitter fate rose before me like a terrifying spectre, and his white face of suffering was there as a pathetic admonition--both spurring me onward. But the same instinct too preserved me from all exultation now that praise and honour were flowing in upon me; it might be a merit for ordinary men to distinguish themselves, with a Sendlingen it was a duty! ”

“ The exclusion of Jews from the society and communion of mankind petrified into marble-like hardness all those existing traditions which guided the Jew's methods of life. Forbidden by every conceivable form of oppression and disability from accompanying the rest of mankind on their march toward a higher civilization, every advance, mental or physical, denied them, it was as if a hot iron had been seared over the bloody wound which had lopped them off from the family of nations. It is a wonder that all future growth was not arrested. ”

“ But the voice of his conscience kept repeating, through the stillness of the night, "Her murderer! if your weakness is not overcome."
Could he give her up? It seemed impossible; more impossible than ever, now when every nerve of his body tingled with feverish, almost painful desire. Could he make her his wife? "Rather die!" he said to himself; and, as he sat there brooding over it, there seemed but one thing equal to the disgrace of placing Judith Trachtenberg's name in the line of his pedigree, and that was the committing a base action. ”

“ It is my duty to protect Justice without respect of persons; I confirmed the sentence of death not because I knew nothing of her father, and supposed him a man of poor origin, but because she was guilty, by her own confession and the Judges' verdict. Shall I pardon her now because she is the daughter of an influential man of rank, because she is your daughter? Is her guilt any the less for this, will this bring her child to life again? Can you expect this of me, you, who are yourself a Judge, bound by oath to judge both high and low with the same measure? ”

“ The whole aspect of the room seemed to deny that it was inhabited by a man of low pursuits. And so did the baron's own appearance. Taras looked at him surprised, for the man he had come to judge was bowed with age, and of a venerable countenance. But for a moment only he hesitated, his inflexible sternness returning. He knew that appearances were deceptive: did not that monster at Kossowince gaze at him like an angel of light?
"I have come to judge you," said Taras, austerely. "You have wronged your peasants with unheard-of oppression." ”

“ The heath takes on a vivid crimson blush, the woods a darker tinge; the deep blue of the sky is intensified by the greater purity of the atmosphere; and even the stubble-field becomes a thing of beauty, with the transparent spider-webs floating over it like a bridal veil.
The soothing calm of the autumnal day had its influence upon Count Agenor, as he rode slowly homeward over the steppe, the air vibrating with the music of the noonday bells. ”

“ Sendlingen had hardly finished dressing, when the sound of music and the shouts of the crowd, announced the approach of the procession. He was obliged to yield to his friend's pressure and go out on the balcony. There was a red glimmer from the direction of the river, and like a giant fire-serpent, the procession wound its way through the crowd. It stopped before the hotel, the torch-bearers formed themselves in line in the broad street. Unceasingly, endlessly, like the roar of wild waves, resounded the cheers.
Berger's eyes sparkled. "This is a moment which few men live to see," he said. ”

“ Darkness and ignorance alike lay a bandage over the eyes and prevent the feet from straying beyond the threshold of the known; knowledge and light open the eyes of man and enable him to advance boldly on the path that lies before him; while half knowledge and twilight only remove part of the bandage and leave him to grope about blindly, perhaps even cause him to fall! Poor child! she was snatched away from the pure stream, and her thirst was so great that she strove to slake it in any puddles she passed on the way. ”

“ The ways of God sometimes are dark."
Taras shook his head. "I don't believe that," he said, curtly.
"Not believe in God?" cried the honest pope, aghast.
"I do believe in Him," said Taras, solemnly, "and I believe that He is all just, but that He brought me into this village, and that all this bitter grief has come upon me by His will, I do not believe. For if He guided every step and action of ours, if our fate were all His doing, no wrong could be done on earth. Nor does He, and we are not mere puppets in His hand!" ”

“ You are no longer a child, Judith, and can you not see the rôle you play among those people? You are a Jewess, and they think no more of you than I do of our house-dog. Were you as beautiful as the Shunamite, as wise as the Queen of Sheba, and as good as an angel of the Lord, still you are a Jewess, and consequently not a being like themselves. Do you not feel that? My God, girl, are you insensible to this shame? ”

“ To-day all are equal; all are the happy trustful sons of the same Almighty Father. The feeble light of the tallow-candle in its rude candlestick, and the soft light of the wax-candle in the silver candelabra, illumine the same picture. The daughters of the house and the little boys sit silently watching their mother, as she, in obedience to the beautiful old custom handed down from generation to generation, blesses the candles. The father then takes the large prayer-book down from the book-shelf and gives it to his eldest son to carry to the synagogue for him. ”