Max Simon Nordau

“ What, is it possible to lie so in a court of justice, in the presence of the black crucifix, the judges, the listeners? And the prosecutor does not interrupt him in his infamous speech? The earth which holds the murdered man, now slandered in his very grave, does not open and swallow the shameless liar?
The gardener, who perceived what was passing in her mind, laid his hand upon her arm and whispered into her ear: "For heaven's sake, Panna, keep quiet, control yourself, or if you cannot, go out of the room." ”

“ They went down to the Main and back again to the park fence, facing Marktbreit. Just as they reached it the clock struck one, and the night watchman blew his horn, and again solemnly intoned his old-fashioned melody:
"One thing, Lord God of truth, we want;
A happy death to us all grant."
The full magic of the moment held them both in its thrall. Bergmann passionately clasped Ada's head between his hands, and pressed a long, ardent kiss on her golden hair and her white brow. Drawing a long breath, she submitted, not shrinking back until his burning lips sought hers. ”

“ But how speedily one is forgotten in Paris. How soon the ocean of the world's capital swallows up, not only a human being, but his family, all his friends and acquaintances, and even his memory! A chill ran down Rudolf's spine as he pondered over the melancholy thought of living and dying in Paris as a stranger.
As he drifted aimlessly on with the flowing human stream, he suddenly found himself in a narrow side-path before a monument surrounded by a specially dense throng. ”

“ But when New Year came, and still Pista did not bestir himself, the strong, noble girl, after violent conflicts in her artless mind, formed a great resolution, went to Pista herself, and said without circumlocution, excitement, or hesitation:
"I understand your pride and, if I were a man, would behave as you do. But I beg you to have pity on me. If you don't have an aversion to me, or love another, marry me. I shall not do you a favour, you will do me one. Unless I become your wife, I shall never be happy and contented so long as I live, but always miserable whenever I think of you. ”

“ One who has never had such conversations will not understand them, and one who has experienced them, only needs to be reminded of them. They are always the same. Memories of childhood, rapture and extravagance, words of enthusiastic love, words which create the slight tremor of the skin like a cool breeze or the caress of toying fingers. So they walked a long, long time in the dark park, without heeding the flight of time, far from the world and unutterably happy.
"I am tired, Karl," Ada said at last, and leaned her head on his shoulder. ”

“ See, Rudolf, that is the wreath I laid there for you. And," she added in a very low tone, after a brief pause, "when I suddenly saw you before me, I thought you had risen from this grave to see me once more."
She again remained silent a short time, during which her glances timorously caressed him. "And do you know what instantly convinced me that I beheld no ghost? Because you no longer look as you did at the time when you would have been laid here, if you had really died. The dead do not change. But you, my poor Rudolf, have certainly altered." ”

“ Robert had listened silently and looked out of the window. Here he interrupted her. "To shape one's own life harmoniously is also an art, perhaps the greatest. Whoever makes his life a work of art needs to create nothing else, and has rightly used his talents."
"But that is exactly what I do not see," cried Else, "the art-production of your life. Where is the climax, where the harmonious close? Is it aesthetic, is it dignified to pay court to frivolous actresses and ballet-dancers, and treat the cheap triumph, before and after, as though it were something important? ”

“ Punishment ought to follow crime as the thunder follows the lightning-flash. The murdered man's death-glazed eyes ought to be still open, when the murderer is dangling on the gallows. This was the demand of Panna's passionate heart, but also of her peasant-logic, which could comprehend the causal relation between sin and expiation clearly and palpably, only when both were united in a single melodramatic effect. ”

“ Linden rose and went to the window. Thiel followed, laid his hand on his shoulder, looked him directly in the eye, and said very earnestly:
"Believe me, dear Baron Linden, that is the secret of perpetual youth—there is no other. A man in the forties is not old—unless he cannot resolve to give up the conceits of a page."
"Always the same song!" Linden impatiently exclaimed. "Must I renounce love?"
"Yes," replied Thiel firmly.
"I must voluntarily renounce happiness?"
"In your case love is not always synonymous with happiness," said Thiel with a significant smile. ”

“ The young lieutenant—a count—who sat at her left hand, was probably whispering something of the sort into her little ear, for her face assumed a repellently cold, bored expression, and her eyes were fixed dreamily on vacancy,—many times farther away than the earth from the sun,—from her gallant neighbor, the table, and the hall. But Bergmann's gaze must have followed her all this distance, for it suddenly met hers, and the tall, grave fellow flushed under her pensive glance. The hostess looked at him just at this moment, and saw the blood mount into his cheeks. ”

“ Meanwhile they had gone down into the courtyard; at the gardener's words Panna suddenly stood still, stared fixedly at him, and said in a hollow tone:
"You know how I am, and what I feel, why do you jest so unpleasantly with me?"
"What I tell you is the most bitter earnest."
"Man! Six months! You are drivelling! That is impossible! A man who has murdered another can be acquitted, it may be said that he did not kill him, that the guilt was not proved, I understand that; but when it is admitted that he is guilty, he surely cannot be sentenced to six months' imprisonment! ”

“ Beside these mounds, where the work of a loving hand was apparent, and whose dead were evidently united by filaments of love to a tender human being still breathing in the sunshine, forsaken and neglected ones often appeared, on which only a few rain-soaked, decaying leaves of paper wreaths were mouldering, where moss and weeds grew rankly, and in which lay dead for whom no one grieved, and who were now remembered by none in the world of the living. ”

“ I'll be judge and executioner in one person, and the trial won't last long, that I swear by all the fiends."
Panna hastily interrupted him: "For Heaven's sake, Father, hush. If any one should hear it might be bad for you. What induces you to say such imprudent things? Do you want to be imprisoned for making dangerous threats? You know that they wouldn't use as much ceremony with you as with the nobleman. Only keep perfectly cool, we are not obliged to make ourselves the judge, there is still one person higher than the court, and he will decide our cause." ”

“ The fact is that I see Helene in a golden light of youth and careless happiness, and cannot think of her without tears."
"Do you know, friend Wolf, that you perhaps did wrong to leave her?"
"There are hours when I believe it. When we have found a creature whom we love, and who loves us in return, we ought on no account to give her up. We never know whether it will be possible to replace. And, after all, love is the only thing which makes life worth living."
"What would you have, Sigmund? That is the wisdom of mature years. At four and twenty we have not yet reached that knowledge. ”

“ Yet, after all, they are inferior forms of life, and man is higher, though he does not exhale fragrance and usually possesses no velvet wings."
"Is it so absolutely certain that man is superior? For my part I envy the butterfly and the flower, which perish in the full glory of youth, beauty, and love. That is the way I have always imagined an existence worth living. A dazzling display of fireworks. A sudden flashing, flaming, crackling, and detonating amid the darkness. A triumphant ascent of glittering balls and serpents, before whose splendid hues the stars of heaven pale. ”

“ Panna could bear no more. Seizing the money furiously, she threw it violently on the floor and, with rolling eyes and quivering lips, shrieked:
"I want justice, not alms. He must hang—I must see him dead like my
Pista, before I am at peace."
The priest now lost his evangelical mildness also, and rose angrily, exclaiming:
"Fie! fie! you are a pagan, a pagan, and belong to all the fiends in hell." With these pious words he went away. The bank-bill, crushed into a ball, flew out of the room after him, then the door banged violently. ”

“ After all, six months' imprisonment is not so small a matter as you suppose. You need only ask me, I know something about it. Oh, it is hard to spend a winter in a fireless cell, busy all day in dirty, disagreeable work, shivering at night on the thin straw bed till your heart seems to turn to ice in your body, and your teeth chatter so that you can't even swear, to say nothing of the horrible vermin, the loathsome food, the tyrannical jailers—a grave in summer is almost better than the prison in winter."
Panna made no reply, and the conversation stopped ”

“ Prince Louis looked at his watch—it was half-past six o'clock. As, at the head of the first squadron, he rode a short distance behind the colonel, the aides of the regiment, and the trumpeters, a strange mood which he had never before experienced came over him. The painful excitement and quivering impatience, which, during the last half-hour, had made his veins throb to his finger-tips, merged into a joyous consciousness of purposeful activity, which restored his calmness. ”

“ Had he been the most remarkable human being on earth, a Newton, a Goethe, nay, the Saviour Himself, he would now have weighed no more in the balance than the nameless Brandenberg farm-hand by his side, he would now have had in the mechanism of the world only the value of a dozen screws or rivets. And, strangely enough, this merging of his individuality into a whole, as a crystal of sugar dissolves in water, awakened neither discomfort nor regret. On the contrary, it was an unknown delight, which pervaded his whole frame and sent a little shiver of pleasure down his spine. ”

“ The temptation was irresistible.
"Let us go down," said Ada, and a few minutes later, with a light mantilla over her shoulders, she was walking by his side over the creaking gravel of the avenue and then over the noiseless side paths.
How blissful is the wandering of a handsome young couple, with glowing hearts in their breasts, through a moonlit, fragrant summer night! Their feet do not feel the earth on which they tread, but seem to be floating on clouds. ”

“ Thirty-three years old, at the zenith of his success, living actually in the midst of a flickering blaze of ardent love, he had the feeling that it was a very comical idea for a woman who was his elder, with whom for a decade and a half he had lived on terms of wholly unobjectionable friendship, and whom he had often unhesitatingly made the confidante of his love-affairs, suddenly to wish him to marry her. ”

“ Pista's first movement was to throw himself against the door to burst it open with his shoulder, but he paused instinctively as he heard Abonyi's voice, shouting loudly outside.
"János," called the latter to the coachman, who stood washing the horses' harnesses beside the coach-house door, "go up to my chamber and bring me down the revolver, the one on the table by the bed, not the other which hangs on the wall!"
János went, and stillness reigned in the courtyard. Now the prisoner's rage burst forth. "Open! open!" he roared, drumming furiously on the oak-door. ”

“ It was not yet five o'clock, and dense darkness obscured the village and the neighbourhood. But Panna already stood at her door, and was seated in the carriage almost before it had stopped. She wore a black dress, a dark shawl covered her shoulders, at her throat was her old silver crucifix, which had again come into her possession after her mother-in-law's death, and on her head was a black silk kerchief, which set off her beautiful face so marvellously that one might have supposed she had studied the effect, had not this grave, strong woman been so wholly incapable of any act of coquetry. ”

“ A great crowd of people, among them many women, and even little children, flocked into the building in a very short time, thronged about the bier, the black table, and Panna, who was leaning against it, carrying on a low, eager hum of conversation till it seemed as though countless swarms of bumble-bees were buzzing through the air. ”

“ Ada gazed fixedly into vacancy, saying, as if lost in thought:
"No, no. That is not so. There are injuries which are incurable. The mother of two children is old at twenty-three. Since she can no longer offer a man the full happiness of love, she has no right to expect it from him."
He was about to answer, but with a hasty movement she placed her slender finger on her lip, saying:
"Hush! Not another word on this subject. Look"—and her hand pointed, down to the park.
From a bow window in the castle a powerful apparatus was sending a broad stream of electric light into the darkness. ”

“ The peasant cautiously named the price of the ride, which Panna, without a word of objection, instantly placed in his hand, after which he at last went to draw out the waggon and harness the horses. A few minutes later the vehicle was rolling over the dusty high-road.
Panna, wrapped in her shawl, sat on a bundle of straw which the peasant had put in to furnish a seat for his passenger, staring with dilated eyes at the landscape, illumined by a soft radiance. It was a marvellously beautiful night in May. ”