Hoffmann's Strange Stories/Chapter 3
ANTONIA'S SONG.
I.
That evening, the brothers of the joyous Serapion Club had met early at Theodore's house. The winter wind whistled in long gusts, that whipped with snow the glasses, shaken in their leaden sashes; but a large grate shone under the cloak of the old chimney-piece; its warm light caressed with a thousand capricious reflections the brown-tinted benches which contrasted by their aged look, with the mad gaiety of the inhabitants of the room. Soon pipes begin to smoke, seats are taken, in accustomed order around a stand on which flames a flowing bowl of friendly punch. The assembly is complete; no one is missing at the call of the chairman; the Bohemian cup is filled and is circulated; the talk becomes general; the time passes, but the punch and the stories are renewed; the imaginations become gradually exalted, eccentricity reaches its utmost limit.—"Now, then, dear Theodore," suddenly exclaimed one of the joyous livers, "the conversation will end if you refuse to gratify us with one of those stories that make you go to sleep standing, that you relate so well; but we must have something strange and moving, fantastic and anti-narcotic."
"Let us drink," said Theodore; "I have just what you want. I will, if you please, tell you a very droll anecdote of the life of the counsellor Krespel. This worthy personage, who existed in flesh and blood, was indeed the most singular man that I ever met. When I came to the university of H, to follow a course in philosophy, the whole city conversed about counsellor Krespel, and they related of him certain peculiarities of the most surprising character. Figure to yourself that Krespel enjoyed, from this time, the most distinguished reputation as a wise lawyer and practised diplomatist. A little prince of Germany, whose vanity excelled his domain, had requested Krespel's presence to entrust him with the drawing up of a memorial designed to justify his rights, touching territory, adjoining his principality, which he counted on claiming before the imperial court. The result of this affair was so satisfactory, that, in the excess of his joy, the prince swore to grant to his favorite, as a reward for the famous memorial, the most exorbitant wish that he could form. The honest Krespel, who had complained all his lifetime that he could not find a house to his mind, imagined that he would construct one according to his own fancy, for which the prince would pay the expense. The gracious sovereign even proposed to buy the land which the counsellor should choose; but Krespel was contented with a little garden that he possessed near his residence, and in one of the most picturesque sites imaginable. He occupied himself at first with getting together and having transported there all the materials for his future edifice; from that time they saw him every day, accoutred in a strange costume that he had fabricated himself, slackening the lime, sifting the sand, and piling up the stones in heaps.
All these preparations were finished without his having called in any architect, or appearing to have followed any plan. One fine morning, our man came to the city of H, to seek for a skilful master mason, and request him to go the following clay to his garden with a sufficient number of workmen to build his walls. The master mason, who naturally wished to discuss the price of his labor and the enterprise, was very much astonished when Krespel gravely assured him that such a precaution was entirely useless, and that all would arrange itself, without dispute or embarrassment. At dawn on the following day, when the master-mason arrived at the place indicated with his workmen, he found a trench traced in a regular square, and Krespel said to him:—"It is here that the foundations of my house are to be dug; then you will raise the four enclosing walls until I judge that they are high enough."
"Without windows or doors, and without partition walls? Do you dream?" exclaimed the master-mason, looking at Krespel as a madman.
"Have the kindness to do what I tell you, my good man," coldly replied the counsellor, "everything shall have its turn."
The certainty of being generously paid could alone determine the master to undertake this construction, which seemed absurd to him; the workmen went gaily to work, laughing inwardly at the expense of the proprietor; they worked day and night, drinking and eating well at the cost of the counsellor, who seldom left them. The four walls arose, constantly, until one morning Krespel cried out:—"That is enough!" The workmen stopped immediately like true automatons, and, leaving their scaffolding, came and ranged themselves in a circle around Krespel, and by their joking looks each one seemed to say to him: "Master, what are we to do?"
"Room there! room," exclaimed the counsellor, after several moments' reflection; and, running to the other end of the garden, he came back again counting his steps, towards his square of walls; then shaking his head discontentedly, he renewed this pantomime on each face of the enclosure, until at last, as if struck with a sudden idea, he rushed with his head down towards a point in the wall, crying out as loud as he could:—"Here, here, my boys, take the pickaxe and dig me a door!" He sketched at the same time on the wall the exact dimension of the issue that he wanted. It was the affair of a moment. Then he entered the house, and smiled like a man charmed with his master-piece, when the master-mason observed to him that the four walls were just the height of a two story house. Krespel walked around in the interior space, followed by the masons, carrying their pickaxes and hammers; he measured, calculated, and ordered by turns:—"Here a window, six feet high, and four broad; there a less opening, three feet high, and two broad." And the work followed his word.
Now then, my friends, it was at the time of this singular work, concerning which everybody was talking, that I arrived at H, and nothing, indeed, was more amusing than to see certain boobies, with their noses stuck through the gratings of Krespel's garden, and uttering shouts every time that a stone was detached under the pick, every time that a new window was dug in the wall here and there, as if by enchantment. All the other labors on this house were executed in a like manner, without a reasonable plan in advance, and according to the inspirations entirely spontaneous in the brain of master Krespel. The piquant singularity of this enterprise, the acquired belief that it would definitely succeed beyond all hope, and more than anything else, the generosity of counsellor Krespel, animated the zeal of the workmen; thus, thanks to their activity, the house was very soon finished; it offered from the outside an appearance of the strangest singularity; for not one window was like the other, and every detail was in great disparity; but examined on the interior, it was indeed the most commodious habitation that it was possible to imagine; and I readily agreed to it myself when, after several days of more intimate acquaintance, master Krespel did the honors of it for me. He crowned his work by a ceremonious feast, to which the masons alone were admitted, and the journeymen and apprentices who had executed his plans. This splendid festival must have offered the most original sight. The most elegant dishes were there devoured by mouths little fitted to appreciate such delicacies; after the feast, the wives and daughters of these good people got up a ball, at which Krespel was not too dignified to dance in person; then, when his legs, a little intractable, refused him their service, he armed himself with a violin, and made his guests dance until daylight, like real puppets.
The Tuesday following, I met master Krespel at the house of Professor M. Nothing could have been stranger than the figure that he made that evening. Each one of his movements was stamped with so abrupt an awkwardness, that I trembled every moment with the expectation of seeing him the cause of some accident; but they were undoubtedly accustomed to his crochets, for the mistress of the house was not frightend in the least to see him now dance near a large tray of china porcelain, now throw his legs about before a mirror on a level with the floor, or draw his long cuffs amongst the crystal glasses that he hustled about one after another by the light of the wax candles. At supper the scene changed. From curious as he was, Krespel became talkative; he jumped unceasingly from one idea to another, and talked about everything with great volubility, in a voice by turns shrill or soft, quick or drawling. They spoke of music and of a fashionable composer. Krespel smiled and said lispingly:—"I wish that a hundred million devils would carry these scratch notes to the bottom of hell!" Then he suddenly cried in a voice of thunder:—"He is a seraphim for harmony! He is the genius of song!" And saying this his eyes became moistened with tears. It was necessary, in order not to think him mad or absent, to remember that one hour before he had spoken with enthusiasm of a celebrated singer. A hare having made its appearance on the table, Krespel put aside the bones, and called for the paws, that the professor's daughter, a charming little girl of five years, joyfully brought him. The children of the house seemed to have a great affection for the counsellor, and I was not long in discovering the cause, when, after supper, I saw Krespel draw from his pocket a box containing a steel turning lathe, with which he commenced turning, of the bones of the hare, a crowd of lilliputian toys that his little friends, arranged in a circle about him, shared amongst themselves with cries of pleasure. Suddenly the professor's niece, M, took a notion to say:—"What has become, dear master Krespel, of our good Antonia?"
The counsellor made a grimace like an epicure who bites a sour orange; his countenance darkened, and his look became very disagreeable, when he answered through his teeth,
"Our own dear Antonia?"
The professor, who perceived the effect that this unlucky question produced, cast a reproachful look on his niece, and as if to divest the ill humor of Krespel:—"How go the violins?" exclaimed he, pressing the hand of his guest in a friendly manner. Krespel's countenance changed in an instant.
"They go very well, my dear professor. I have begun to take to pieces Amati's celebrated violin, that a lucky chance has lately made me possessor of; I hope that Antonia has done the rest."
"Antonia is an amiable girl," continued the professor.
"Yes, certainly, she is an angel!" exclaimed Krespel, sobbing; and, suddenly taking his hat and cane, he precipitately went away, like a man beside himself. Struck with this singularity, I questioned the professor concerning the history of the counsellor,
"Ah!" said he to me, "he is a very singular man, who makes violins as skilfully as he draws up memorials; as soon as he has finished one of these instruments, he tries it for an hour or two, and it is a delicious music to hear; then he hangs it upon the wall with others, and never touches it again. If he succeeds in procuring the violin of a celebrated master, he buys it, plays on it once, takes it to pieces, and throws the pieces in a chest which is already nearly filled."
"But who is Antonia?" asked I impatiently.
"That is a mystery," gravely replied the professor.
The counsellor lived several years ago, in an isolated house, with an old housekeeper. The singularity of his manners excited the curiosity of the neighborhood. To withdraw himself from it, he formed some acquaintances and showed himself in several drawing rooms. He made himself agreeable; he was liked; he was thought to be a bachelor; he never spoke of his family. At the end of a certain time he was absent for several months. The evening of the day that he came back here, it was remarked that his apartment was illuminated; then a ravishing woman's voice accorded with a harpsichord, accompanied by a violin, powerfully animated under the bow. The passers-by stopped in the street, and the neighbors listened at their windows in a charmed silence. Towards midnight the singing stopped; the counsellor's voice was raised in a hard and threatening manner; another man's voice seemed to reproach him, and, from time to time, the complaints of a young girl interrupted the dispute. Suddenly, a piercing cry, uttered by the young girl, ended the crisis; then a singular noise, like that of people struggling together, is heard in the stairway. A young man comes out of the house weeping, throws himself into a travelling carriage that was waiting for him a few steps off, and all becomes mournfully silent again. Each one asked himself the secret of this drama. On the morrow, Krespel appeared as calm and serene as usual, and no one dared to question him. But the old housekeeper could not resist the temptation of whispering, to whoever would listen to her, that the counsellor had brought with him a beautiful young girl whom he called Antonia; that a young man, madly in love with Antonia, had followed them, and nothing but the anger of the counsellor would have driven him from the house. As to the relation that existed between the counsellor and Antonia, it was a secret to which the old housekeeper had not the solution. She only said that master Krespel odiously confined her, hardly ever taking his eyes from her, and not even allowing her to sing, to amuse herself, whilst playing the harpsichord. Thus Antonia's song, which had only once been heard, became the marvellous legend of neighborhood; and no singer could succeed in gaining applause in the city: "There is no one," said they, "but Antonia who knows how to sing." All that the professor had told me made so strong an impression on my mind, that I dreamed of it every night. I became madly in love, and I only thought of the means of introducing myself, at whatever cost, into Krespel's house, to see the mysterious Antonia, swear an eternal love for her, and rescue her from her tyrant. Unfortunately for my romance, things came about in a very peaceable manner; and hardly had I met the counsellor two or three times, and flattered his mania by talking of violins, than he asked me himself, and in the simplest manner, to come and see him at his house. God only knows what I then felt; I thought that the sky was opening. Master Krespel made me examine all of his violins very carefully, without omitting one, and truly there were more than thirty of them! One of them, of very ancient construction, was suspended higher than the others, and ornamented with a crown of flowers. Krespel told me that it was the masterpiece of an unknown master, and that the sounds drawn from it exercised an irresistible magnetism on the senses, the influence of which forced the somnambulist to reveal his secret thoughts.
"I have never had the courage," said he, "to take this instrument to pieces for the purpose of studying its construction. It seems to me that that there is life in it, and that I should become a murderer; I very seldom play upon it, and only for my Antonia, who experiences, whilst listening to it, the sweetest sensations."
At the name Antonia, I trembled.
"My good counsellor," said I to him, in an accent of caressing insinuation, "would you not do me the favor to play on it for a moment for me?" Krespel in an ironical manner, and in a nasal tone, answered me, emphasizing every syllable:—"No, my good master student."
This fashion disconcerted me. I did not reply, and Krespel finished, showing me his cabinet of curiosities.
Before separating, he drew from a casket a folded paper, which he gave me, saying, very gravely:—"Young man, you love the arts: accept this, then, as a precious remembrance." Then, without waiting for an answer, he gently pushed me towards the door, which he shut in my face. I opened the paper; it contained a little piece of a violin string, an eighth of an inch long, to which was appended this inscription: "Fragment of a string with which the divine Stamitz strung his violin when he played at his last concert." In spite of the strange dismission which the counsellor had given me, I could not resist the desire of visiting him again; and it was fortunate that I did so, for, at this second visit, I found Antonia with him, busied in arranging the pieces of a violin that he was examining. She was an extremely pale young girl, that a breath had animated, and who had afterwards become white and cold as alabaster. I was astonished to find in Krespel, that day, an ease and cordiality which contrasted strongly with the tyrannic jealousy of which the professor had spoken. I talked freely before him with Antonia, without his appearing to be annoyed; my visits were renewed, and I was welcomed; a sweet and free intimacy grew up between us, unknown to the gossips, who would not have failed to characterize it as scandalous.
The singularities of Krespel often amazed me; but I confess that Antonia alone was the magnet that attracted me to his house, and made me tolerate his extreme capriciousness of character. Every time that I led the conversation to the subject of music, he became as irritable as a tormented cat, and, with good or ill grace, I was obliged to give way and suddenly take my leave.
One evening, I found him in a gay humor; he had taken to pieces an old Cremona violin, and discovered an important secret in art. Profiting by his satisfaction, I succeeded this time in making him talk about music; we criticised the pretensions of several virtuosos admired by the world. Krespel laughed at my sallies; Antonia fixed her great eyes upon me. "You do not," said I to her, "in singing, and accompaniment, follow the example of any of our pretended conquerors of difficulties?" The pale cheeks of the young girl became tinged with a sweet blush; and, as if some electric spark had pervaded her whole being, she sprang towards the harpsichord,—opened her lips,—she was about to sing, when Krespel drawing her back, and pushing me away, cried out in the voice of a stentor:—"Young man! young man! young man!"
Then suddenly resuming his former ceremonious manners, he added:
"I am truly too polite, my dear master student, to beg the devil to strangle you; but it is pretty late, as you see, and it is dark enough for you to break your neck without troubling me to throw you down stairs. So then, oblige me by going home, and keep in good remembrance your old friend, if—do you understand?—if by chance you should no longer find him at home."
At these words, he embraced me as at our first meeting, and led me out without giving me an opportunity to throw a last sad look at Antonia. Professor M was not backward in rallying me, and told me that I was forever scratched from the counsellor's books. I left H with a wounded soul; but, by degrees, absence and distance softened this violent grief; the image of Antonia, the remembrance of that heavenly song that I had been permitted to hear, became effaced, were veiled insensibly by a mysterious slumbering in my thoughts.
Two years later, I was travelling in the south of Germany. The city of H was again in my path; as I approached it, an agonized sensation weighed upon me; it was in the evening; the church spires appeared on the horizon in the blue mist which precedes the darkness of night; I could hardly breathe, I had to leave the carriage and continue the journey on foot. By degrees this sensation took a stranger character; I imagined that I heard in the air modulations of a sweet and fantastic song; then I distinguished voices that were singing a chant.
"What is that? what is that?" exclaimed I, in a frightened tone which surprised a passer.
"Do you not see," said this man, the cemetery on your left? It is an interment that is taking place!" At this moment the descending road commanded a view of the cemetery, and I saw in effect, that they were filling up the grave. My heart felt a pang; it seemed to me that they were shutting up in this grave a whole life of hope and happiness. At a few steps from the city, I met professor M, leaning on the arm of his niece; they were both returning from this lugubrious ceremony. They passed near me, without being aware of it. The young girl was weeping.
I could not restrain the impatience which was consuming me. Instead of entering the city, I sent my servant with my baggage to a hotel that I knew, then I ran breathlessly towards Krespel's little house. On opening the garden gate, I saw in the linden walk the counsellor, conducted by two persons dressed in mourning, between whom he was struggling desperately. He wore his old gray coat, which he had cut himself and fashioned in so strange a manner; his person was not in the least changed, except that he wore a long piece of crape hanging from his little three-cornered hat. He had buckled around him a black belt, in which he wore a violin-bow instead of a sword. I shuddered at the sight of this. "He is mad!" said I to myself. The men who accompanied him stopped at the door of the house. There Krespel embraced them, laughing in a guttural voice; they retired, and his eyes then fell upon me.
"You are welcome, master student; you will understand me;" and, taking me by the hand, he led me into the closet where his violins were arranged. A broad black crape covered them; but the unknown master's violin was no longer there; a wreath of cypress marked its place. I understood all. "Antonia! Antonia!" exclaimed I, madly. But Krespel stood by me, with his arms folded, staring fixedly.
"When she expired," said he to me in a voice which he endeavored in vain to restrain, "the soul of that violin departed, bursting with a mournful sound, and the sounding board splitting in pieces. That old instrument which she loved, could not survive her; I have shut it up near her in her coffin."
On finishing this speech, the counsellor's physiognomy became suddenly changed; he commenced singing, in a cracked and grating voice, a comic song; and it was frightful to see him jumping on one foot around the room, whilst the floating crape on his hat, brushing over all the violins, also brushed against my face. I could not restrain a piercing cry; he stopped short:—"My little man, my little man, why dost thou scream so? hast thou seen the angel of death? he always precedes the ceremony."
Then he came into the middle of the room, and, raising the bow which he carried by his side, in both hands above his head, he violently broke it and threw the pieces far away from him.
"Ah!" exclaimed he, now I am free, free, free! I will make no more violins! no! no more violins!"
The unfortunate Krespel howled these words in infernal cadence, and continued his course, hopping around the room. Frozen with fear, I started to fly; he stopped me with his nervous arm.
"Stop, master student, do not take my convulsions for madness; all this is inflicted upon me, because, several days ago, I had a dressing gown cut, in which I wished to look like Destiny or God!"
The unfortunate man told me a thousand extravagancies, until, exhausted by his exaltation, he fell almost insensible. His old housekeeper ran on hearing my call. I left him in her arms. When I saw professor M again, I told him that I thought counsellor Krespel mad.
"I hope that it is not so," answered he. "The fermentation of thought, which would destroy the brain of any other man, is dissipated by action in the case of our poor friend. His disordered agitation exhausting his nervous excitement, will save him. The sudden death of Antonia crushed him. But let a day or two pass, and I engage that he will resume, of his own accord, his habits of every day life."
The prediction was realized. On the morrow, Krespel was very calm; he only repeated that he would make no more violins, and that he would never touch one again during his life.
All this had not enlightened me as to the mystery which enveloped the connection of Antonia with counsellor Krespel. The more I thought of it, the more some instinct unceasingly told me that there had existed between these two beings something odious to become acquainted with. Antonia always appeared to me in my dreams like a victim. I would not leave H without provoking an explanation which must, perhaps, lead to the revelation of a crime. I became excited hourly. I was about to burst, like a thunder clap, into the counsellor's closet. I found him as calm and smiling as an innocent man; seated near a little table, he was turning children's toys.
"Execrable man," exclaimed I, "how canst thou taste a moment's peace, whilst thy conscience must gnaw thy heart like a serpent's tooth?"
The counsellor fixed on me an astonished look, and, laying his chisel down by his side:—"What is the meaning of this, my very dear sir? Take the trouble to be seated."
So much coolness irritated me more; and I accused him loudly with the murder of Antonia, swearing that in my quality of advocate I would, by all the means in my power, provoke a judicial inquiry into the cause of this misfortune. My exaltation became gradually exhausted in words. When I had ended, the counsellor had not ceased to look at me very tranquilly.
"Inconsiderate youth," he then said to me, in a voice whose solemn gravity confounded me; "young man, by what right dost thou wish to penetrate the secrets of a life that was always unknown to thee? Antonia is no more! What matters the rest to thee!"
There was at this time, in the calmness of this man, something peculiarly sad. I felt that I had acted indiscreetly; I asked his pardon, supplicating him to relate to me some particulars of the life of the angel that I mourned. He then took me by the hand, led me to the balcony, and with his eyes bent upon the garden, he confided to me a story, of which my memory has only retained that which related to Antonia. Counsellor Krespel had, in his youth, the passion of collecting at any price violins formerly belonging to the great masters. His researches led him to Italy, to Venice, where he heard, at the Theatre San Benedetto, the famous singer Angela. Her ravishing beauty made no less impression than her talents on the heart of the counsellor. A secret marriage united them; but the beautiful songstress, angel at the theatre, was a devil at home; Krespel, after a thousand and one stormy scenes, made up his mind to take refuge in the country, where he consoled himself as well as he could with an excellent Cremona violin. But the lady, jealous, like a pure-blooded Italian, came to arouse him in his retreat. One day, she entered the summer-house where Krespel was improvising a whole musical world. She placed her pretty head upon her husband's shoulder, and looked at him with an eye filled with love. The counsellor, lost in the regions of the ideal, handled his bow with so much ardor, that he scratched, without intending it, the satin neck of Angela. She sprang up furiously:—"German beast!" exclaimed she; and, angrily seizing the Cremona violin, she broke it into a thousand pieces on the marble table. The counsellor was at first petrified; then one of those nervous movements which cannot be analyzed, contracted his limbs; he threw the beautiful songstress out of the window of his own house, and fled to Germany. But, on the road, when he thought of the strangeness of the event, and although he had not acted with premeditation, he felt the most painful regret; for he remembered that the lady had flattered him incessantly with the sweet hope of making him a father. Imagine then his surprise when, eight months afterward, he received in a remote part of Germany, one of the most tender letters, in which his dear wife, without recalling in any manner the accident at the country seat, announced to him the birth of a daughter, and entreated him to come back to Venice. Krespel, suspecting some trick, made inquiries: he learned, in effect, that the beautiful Italian had fallen on some flower beds that had softened her fall, and that the only result of the flight that this nightingale had taken out of the window, was a fortunate change of character. The lady was no longer capricious, or choleric; the conjugal remedy had performed a miracle. The good counsellor was so touched by this news, that he immediately ordered the horses to be put to his carriage. But hardly had he got in, than he reflected.
"Devil!" said he to himself, "if the lady should not turn out to be radically cured, would it be necessary to throw her out of the window again?" This question was difficult to solve.
Krespel went back to his house, wrote a long letter to his dear wife, in which he congratulated her on his daughter's having, like himself, a little mark behind the ear: then, he remained in Germany. New letters passed between them. Protestations of love, projects for the future, complaints and soft prayers flew like doves, from Venice to H. One fine day Angela came to Germany, and attracted attention to her singing in the theatre at F. Although she was not extremely young, she inspired passions, made some happy, and an infinity of victims.
Meanwhile, Krespel's little daughter had grown up; she was called Antonia, and her mother found in her a singer of nearly her own force. Krespel, knowing that his wife was so near him, was dying with a desire to embrace his child; but the fear of the follies of the lady restrained him, and he remained at home, amongst his violins, that never contradicted him.
At that time a young musician, of great promise, fell in love with Antonia; Krespel, consulted, was pleased to have his daughter marry an artist who had no rival on the violin; and he expected to hear from day to day the news of the marriage, when a letter sealed with black, and directed in an unknown hand, came to announce to him that Angela had just died of pleurisy, the night before the wedding of Antonia was to take place; the last prayer of the songstress was to Krespel to come and take charge of the orphan: he set off without losing a minute.
The young bridegroom, who had not left Antonia in this hour of tribulation, was present on the arrival of the father.
One evening when they were together, and Krespel was thinking of the departed, Antonia placed herself at the harpsichord, and sang a mournful air; it would have been said, on hearing her, that the soul of her mother trembled in her voice. Krespel could not bear it; sobs stifled his voice; he arose, clasped the young girl in his arms, and pressed her closely.
"Oh! no," exclaimed he, "if thou lovest me, sing no more! It breaks my heart to hear thee! Never sing more."
Antonia threw upon her father a long gaze; and in this look there were tears for a dream of happiness just ready to vanish. Her black hair fell in ebony folds, on her snowy shoulders:—her form bowed like a broken stalk:—Krespel wept at seeing her so beautiful: for a fatal instinct had revealed the future to him. Antonia became paler, and in her face the counsellor had discovered a sign of death. He contemplated with fear, this germ, which every hour would develope.
"No, no, my friend," said the counsellor afterwards to doctor R, a famous physician, "no, those brilliant red spots which color, when she sings, her cheeks, do not proceed from animation! No, that is what I fear."
"Well, then," replied the doctor, "I shall not be under the necessity of dissimulating with you my own uneasiness, either that this young girl has made premature efforts to sing, or that nature has left in so fine a work an organic defect. I believe that the sonorous sound of her voice, which exceeds the power of her age, is an indication of danger, and I do not give her six months to live, if you allow her to sing."
The counsellor trembled at this threat: it seemed to him that he saw a fine bush covered with its first blossoms, and that a pitiless hand was about cutting from the root. His resolution was rapidly taken; he opened before Antonia the two future courses; one, passing through marriage and the seductions of an artist's life, would, perhaps, in a short time lead to the tomb; the other would preserve to an old father a cherished child, his only joy and his final happiness. Antonia understood the sacrifice that her father implored. She threw herself into his arms without a word in answer. Krespel dismissed the bridegroom, and, two days afterwards, he arrived at H, with his daughter, his treasure. But the young man could not thus renounce the felicity which he had promised himself. He followed Krespel, and met him at his door. The counsellor rudely repulsed him.
"Oh!" exclaimed poor Antonia, "to see him, to hear him once more, and then die!"
"To die, to die!" repeated the counsellor, wildly: "to see thee die, oh my child! thou, the only being that binds me to the world! Well then, let it be as thou wishest: and if thou diest, do not curse thy unfortunate father."
The sacrifice was decided upon. The musician was to take his place at the harpsichord. Antonia sang; Krespel took his violin and played without ceasing, and with his eyes fixed upon his daughter, until he saw the purple spots appear on her pale cheeks. Then he violently interrupted the singing, and made a sign to the musician to go. Antonia, seeing him about to leave, uttered a piercing cry and fell fainting.
"I thought for a moment," said Krespel to me, on finishing the relation of this sad story, "that my poor child was dead. I seized the accursed bridegroom by the shoulders.
"'Go,' cried I to him, 'go quickly! for my daughter is so pale, that I do not know what restrains me from plunging a knife into your heart, to warm her and color her cheeks with your blood!'
"I had, undoubtedly, in saying these words, so terrible an aspect, that the miserable man rushed down stairs like a madman, and, I have never seen him since."
When the counsellor raised his daughter, she opened her eyes and closed them again immediately. The physician, whom they ran hastily to seek, said that the accident, though serious, would probably have no serious consequences. A few days after, she seemed nearly recovered. Her filial love offered a touching picture; she had devoted herself, with the most amiable resignation, to his mania and his caprices; she assisted him with angelic patience to take to pieces the old violins that he bought, and in making new ones.
"No, dear father," said she to him often with a melancholy smile, "I will sing no more, since it afflicts thee; I will no longer live or breath but for thee!" And Krespel, whilst listening, felt happy.
When he had bought the famous violin that he had placed in Antonia's coffin, the young girl, seeing that he was about to take this one to pieces also, looked at him sadly.
"What! that one also?" said she. Krespel at the same time, felt within himself a voice that urged him to spare, even to try this instrument. Hardly had he preluded, than his daughter exclaimed, clapping her hands,
"Ah! but that is my voice, that is my voice! I still sing!"
And it was true. The pure notes of the marvellous violin seemed to fall from the sky. Krespel was moved: the bow under his hand created prodigies. Sometimes Antonia said to him with a sweet smile,
"Father, I should like to sing." And Krespel took the violin, and always drew from it delicious variations.
A short time before my second journey to H, the counsellor thought that he heard, during a still night, the harpsichord resound in the neighboring room; he thought that he heard the fingers of Antonia's bridegroom run rapidly over the ivory keys. He tried to arise; but an iron hand seemed to restrain him. Then it seemed to him that his daughter's voice murmured feebly, as in a distance: gradually the modulations came nearer, it was a fantastic crescendo, each vibration of which pierced his heart like an arrow. Suddenly a brilliant halo chased darkness from the room; he saw Antonia in the arms of her lover, who supported her. Their lips touched, and yet the heavenly song continued. Struck with supernatural fear, counsellor Krespel remained thus, until daylight, in an indescribable state of anguish. A leaden stupor paralyzed his thoughts. When the first ray of the rising sun cast its rosy tints under the curtains of his bed, he arose as if from a painful dream, and hastened to Antonia's chamber. She was extended on the sofa, her eyes shut, her hands joined; a sweet, but fixed smile, lingered upon her pale lips.
She resembled the angel of virginity asleep.—Her soul had returned to God!