Ossip Schubin

“ In the papal chapel Zinka is kneeling with Truyn and Gabrielle, her eyes fixed on her hands which are convulsively clasped, and praying with the passion of a youthful nature whose yearning has found no foothold on earth and seeks a home in heaven. On both sides sit the prelates and dignitaries of the church in their carved stalls, inquisitive and prayerless foreigners crowd at their feet. The tragedy of the passion is being recited in a monotonous, inconclusive chant that dies away in the dim corners of the chapel. ”

“ He was long past the age at which a man commits some matrimonial folly believing that he can reclaim the morals of some disrespectable second-rate actress, or that his highest happiness is to devote his life to his sister's governess who is a dozen years older than himself; when he contemplated the possibility of his marrying Zinka Sterzl after all, it was with the certainty that his feeling for her was not a mere transient madness, but that it had its roots in the depths of his nature. ”

“ Truyn was perfectly furious with Sempaly. All that he was to Zinka during these weeks can only be divined by those who have passed through such a time of grief and humiliation, with the consciousness of having a high-souled and tender friend in the back-ground. He was the only person who never aggravated her wound. He had the gentle touch, the delicate skill, which the best man or woman can only acquire through the ordeal of an aching heart. He came every afternoon with his little girl to take Zinka for a walk, for he knew that the regular drive on the Corso could only bring her added pain ”

“ When once their eyes are opened your life will cease to be secure. If I had been a bricklayer I should certainly have been a socialist," and he crossed his arms and looked defiantly at his audience.
"A socialist!" cried Ilsenbergh indignantly. "You!--never. No, you could not have been a socialist; your religious feelings would have preserved you from such wickedness!"
"Hm!" replied Sempaly suspiciously, and Truyn said with a twist of his lips:
"As a bricklayer Sempaly might not have been so religious; he might have found some difficulty in worshipping a God who had treated him so scurvily." ”

“ He scorned all extravagance and raptures as cant and affectation. Still he was merciful to his sister, and when she turned from a Francia with tears in her eyes, or turned pale as she quoted Shelley, or spoke of Leonardo's Medusa in Florence, he did no more than shrug his shoulders and say: "Zinka, you are crazy," or gently pull her by the ear. Everything in Zinka was right, even her want of sound common sense.
The baroness had at last found a lodging, almost to her mind: a small palazzo in a side street, off the Corso, "furnished in atrocious taste, but otherwise very nice." ”

“ The Italian society of Rome did not of course trouble itself about all these trumpery subtleties, and behaved to Zinka with the same superficial politeness as before.
She, for her part, took no more note of their amenities than she did of the pin-pricks from the other side. If her feelings had not been so deeply engaged by Sempaly she would no doubt have taken all these petty social humiliations very hardly; but her anguish of soul had dulled her shallower feelings. There is a form of suffering which deadens the senses and which mockery cannot touch. ”

“ Sempaly was not regular in his visits to the palazetto; sometimes for two or three days he failed to appear, then he would call very early--at noon perhaps, join the family unceremoniously at their breakfast, go out driving with the ladies, accept an invitation to stay to dinner, and if Zinka was looking pale or out of spirits, he would pay her fifty kind little attentions to conjure a smile to her lips. Occasionally he would fall into the melancholy vein and talk of his loveless youth, and let her pity him for it. ”

“ His weary soul found no rest but in unbounded benevolence, and Sempaly's nature--experimental, groping his way through life--had seemed to him to-day more odious than ever.
"How can a man be at once so tender and such a coward?" he asked himself, "He is the most completely selfish being I ever met with--a thorough epicurean in sentiment, and has only just heart enough for his own pleasure and enjoyment."
The bet outstanding between Zinka and Sempaly was not decided that afternoon. Sempaly did not go to the Palatine, but excused himself at the last moment in a little note to Zinka. ”

“ Sempaly rose rather earlier than usual next morning, his nerves still conscious of the remembrance of this unsatisfactory scene and of the sleepless night that had been the consequence. Vexed with himself; at once surprised and touched by his brother's lofty indignation; ashamed to think of the calumny to which his irresolution and his absence must have exposed Zinka--he was in that state of sensitive irritability in which a man holds all the world in some degree responsible for his own shortcomings, and is ready to revenge himself on the first man he meets for the misery he is enduring. ”

“ He had one peculiarity, very rare in men who take life so seriously as he did: He never quibbled. The embassy at Rome at that time swarmed to such an extent with handsome, fashionable idlers that the Palazzo di Venezia was like a superior school for fine ladies with moustaches--as Sempaly aptly said. Sterzl looked on at their feeble doings with indulgent good humor; it was impossible to hope for any definite views or action from these young gentlemen; it would have been as wise to try to make butterflies do the work of ants. ”

“ To a man like Sempaly there is nothing in the world so difficult as a decision; fate decides for him--he for himself! Never.
His encounter with the preposterous baroness might silence the avowal he was on the verge of uttering, but it was not so powerful as to banish Zinka's image once and for all from his mind. The silly old woman's chatter he had by this time forgotten; the Stornelli that Zinka had been singing still rang in his ears. For two days he had had the resolution to avoid the Palazetto, but he had seen Zinka for a moment, by accident, yesterday on the Corso. ”

“ Tulpin rattled and thumped on; suddenly he stopped--the Jatinskys had come in, and their advent was such a godsend that even the genius abandoned the piano in their honor. They all three were smiling in the most friendly--it might almost be said the most reassuring manner; for Countess Ilsenbergh had not failed to impress upon them the very mixed character of Roman society, and, feeling their own superiority, they were able to cover their self-consciousness with the most engaging amiability. ”

“ Passion-week in Rome, and in all the glory and glow of an Italian spring. The glinting radiance brightens even the mystical gloom of St. Peter's, sparkles for an instant on the holy-water in the basins, wanders from the heads of the gigantic cherubs and the colossal statues down to the inlaid pavement, with the cold sheen of sunlight on polished marble. The hours glide on--the long solemn hours of Holy-Thursday in Rome; the last gleam of daylight has faded away, the vast cathedral is filled with almost palpable twilight and its magnificence seems shrouded in a transparent veil of crape. ”

“ A few days after the evening when Sempaly had given such brilliant proof of his talent as a caricaturist, General von Klinger was sitting in his studio on a divan covered with a picturesque Persian rug and endeavoring--having for the moment nothing better to do--to teach his parrot to sing the Austrian anthem--a loyal task which the bird, perched on the top of its cage, persistently refused to learn. ”

“ The slowly-moving landau excites attention, the gapers crowd into knots, and stare and whisper. At last they reach the palazetto, turn into the court-yard and get out. The porter comes out of his den, his dog at his heels barking loudly.
"Hush, silence!" says the general--the servants come rushing down, the women begin to sob and cry, and again the general says:
"Hush, hush!" as if it were worth while to keep Zinka in ignorance for a minute more or less.
With some difficulty the heavy man is lifted out and carried up-stairs--the heavy shuffling steps sound loud in the silence. ”

“ Under cover of that smile he could say the most audacious things, and whether the glance of those eyes were a lightning flash or a sunbeam no one had ever been quite certain. He gallantly kissed the tips of the countess's fingers, nodded to the men with a sort of brusque heartiness, and then seated himself on a cushion at the lady's feet.
"Well, it is a mercy to be allowed to see you at last; you really do not come often enough, Nicki; and in society I hardly ever meet you," complained the countess in a tone of kindly reproof. "Why do you so seldom appear in the respectable world?" ”

“ And Zinka!--gazing up to heaven with ecstatic pathos, her whole attitude expressive of sacred resignation and childlike awe, she was the very embodiment of the hapless and innocent being before whom the executioner lowers his gaze. A string quartet played the allegretto from Beethoven's seventh symphony and the melancholy music heightened the effect of the poetical tableau, thrilling the audience like a lullaby sung by angels to soothe the struggling, suffering human soul. ”

“ A carriage was heard to draw up in the street.
"That may be Truyn, he arrived yesterday," observed the countess, and Count Truyn was in fact announced.
Erich Truyn was at that time a man of rather more than thirty with hair prematurely gray and a glance of frosty indifference. People said he had been iced, for he always looked as though he had been frozen to the marrow in sublime superiority; his frigid exterior had won him a reputation for excessive pride, and totally belied the man. ”

“ Zinka, with her gliding grace, her small head held a little high, and her softened glance, was still pretty to watch as she danced, and attracted general attention. The music, the splendor of the entertainment, the consciousness of looking well put her into unwonted spirits. She sent a searching glance round the room--no, he was not there. Sterzl stood talking with the general, delighted with her little triumph and charming appearance; then he was congratulated by several men of distinction on his recent promotion. ”

“ His knowledge of art was but shallow, but his feeling for it, like all his instincts, was amazingly keen. His information on all subjects was miscellaneous and slender, not an article of his intellectual wardrobe--as Charles Lamb has it--was whole; but he draped himself in the rags with audacious grace and made no attempt to hide the holes.
Truyn and his little daughter often joined them in these expeditions, and sometimes Cecil, but only when his mother did not choose to go out, and his demeanor on these occasions--'peripatetic æsthetics' he called their walks--was highly characteristic. ”

“ It is creative of glorious conceptions and of hideous deeds. One feels inclined to fancy that on the day when Caesar fell under the dagger of Brutus Scirocco and Tramontane fought their last fight for the mastery of Rome--and Scirocco won the day.
A dense grey cloud hung over the city and veiled the sinking moon. A cascade that tumbled from basin to basin, down the terraced slope of the Quirinal, plashed weirdly in the deep twilight of the earliest dawn, which was just beginning shyly to vie with the dying moon. Light and shade had ceased to exist ”

“ Are you still always ready to break a lance for the emancipation of our sex?"
"No," replied Madame Wolnitzka, "no, my dear Clotilde, I have given that up. Since I learnt by experience that every woman is ready to set aside the idea of emancipation as soon as she has a chance of marrying I have lost my sympathy with the cause."
"The emancipation of women of course can only be interesting to those who cannot marry," observed Sterzl, who had not long since read an article on this much ventilated question. ”

“ Our first sorrow over the dead is always mixed with a certain rebellion against fate--it is a paroxysm in which we forget everything--even the cause of our passionate tears. It is not till we have dried our eyes and our heart has raged itself into weariness--not till we have at last said to ourselves: "submit," that we can measure the awful gap that death has torn in our life, or know how empty and cold and silent the world has become. ”

“ Then the walls disappeared and bushy green hedge-rows, covered with creepers, bordered the road, and presently the Campagna lay before them, an endless, rolling, green carpet, with its attractive melancholy, and the poisonous beauty of orchids and asphodels with which each returning spring decks its waste monotony, like a wilderness in a fevered dream.
Sterzl sat in silence on the back seat, facing his two friends. He did not even pretend to be cheerful. A brave man may sometimes face death with indifference, but hardly with a light heart. Death is a great king to whom we must need do homage. ”

“ Being a well-bred man, accustomed all his life to the graces of politeness, he could not become absolutely ill-mannered--but as ill-mannered as he could be he certainly was: assertive, irritable, always on the defensive, he was constantly involved in some argument or dispute.
Even at home he was not the same; his pride was deeply nettled by Zinka's total inability to hide her suffering, while he felt it humiliating to be able to do nothing to comfort her. ”