face was not visible—only her dark hair. Garments were strewn around. And nowhere was there anyone else.
This picture had made the strongest impression on me, I know not whether because the painter knew how to render in it emotion with an especial vividness, or because I saw it on a day when I myself had experienced a great sorrow—but never was I able to recall this work without my heart contracting painfully, and bitter grief rising in my throat. And when I saw Renata, seated in the same pose, dropping her head and weeping with the selfsame inconsolability—the two images, the one revealed to me in life and the other created by the painter, rose one upon the other before me, merged, and live till this day inseparable in my soul. Even then, the moment I pictured to myself Renata, once more lonely, abandoned, before the gates thus mercilessly closed upon her—inexhaustible sorrow flooded into my heart and, kneeling again, I tenderly moved Renata’s hands from her face and said to her, with a catch in my voice, but solemnly:
“Forgive me, noble lady. In truth the Demon possessed me and blinded my feelings. I swear to you by the salvation of my soul that nothing like this will ever happen again! Accept me once more as your true and humble servant, or as your elder and willing brother.”
Renata lifted her head and looked at me, at first like some small hunted beast when the hunter gives it its freedom, then trustingly and childlike, and she took my face affectionately between the palms of her hands and replied:
“Rupprecht, dearest Rupprecht! You must not be angry with me and ask of me what I cannot give. I gave all to my friend from Heaven, and for men I have left neither kisses nor words of passion. I am an emptied basket from which another has taken all the flowers and the fruit, but even empty you must carry it, for fate has bound us together and our fellowship was long ago inscribed in the Book of the All-knowing.”
Again I swore never to leave her, as one swears before an altar in the hour of betrothal, and my oath was honest, though later it once seemed to me as though I should break it.
Rising then from my knees, I said that I would take my leave, and would go into the other room we had engaged, so that Renata might rest alone freely. But she stopped me, saying:
“Rupprecht, without you I should be in fear; they would fall upon me again and torment me the whole night through. You must remain with me.”
Not ashamed, as children are not ashamed, Renata quickly took off her dress, then her footwear, and, nearly naked, she laid herself into bed, under the blue canopy, calling me to her, and I did not know how to refuse her. So, this second night of our acquaintance we passed under one coverlet, but remaining as strange to each other as though separated by iron bars. And when it happened that an understandable excitement again overcame my will, and, forgetting my oaths, I strove again for tenderness, Renata quietened me with sad and cold words, so passionless and thereby so cruel, that all the blood became numbed in me, and I fell on my face impotent, like a corpse.
Chapter the Third
How we came to live in the City of Köln and how we were deceived by Mysterious Knockings
A LWAYS whenever possible I kept to the wise saying of the French:
Lever a six, diner a dix,
Souper a six, coucher a dix,
Fait vivre l’ homme dix fois dix.
So the next day I woke much earlier than Renata and, again slipping carefully from her sleeping embrace, I went into the adjoining room. There by the window, through which young and handsome Düsseldorf sparkled in the morning sun, I considered my position. I felt already that I lacked the strength to leave Renata, that I either had been charmed to her by some magic power, or borne naturally into gentle bondage by the Mother of Love—the Cyprian.
Boldly reviewing my position, like a warrior who finds himself fallen into danger, I now addressed myself thus: “Very well,
This picture had made the strongest impression on me, I know not whether because the painter knew how to render in it emotion with an especial vividness, or because I saw it on a day when I myself had experienced a great sorrow—but never was I able to recall this work without my heart contracting painfully, and bitter grief rising in my throat. And when I saw Renata, seated in the same pose, dropping her head and weeping with the selfsame inconsolability—the two images, the one revealed to me in life and the other created by the painter, rose one upon the other before me, merged, and live till this day inseparable in my soul. Even then, the moment I pictured to myself Renata, once more lonely, abandoned, before the gates thus mercilessly closed upon her—inexhaustible sorrow flooded into my heart and, kneeling again, I tenderly moved Renata’s hands from her face and said to her, with a catch in my voice, but solemnly:
“Forgive me, noble lady. In truth the Demon possessed me and blinded my feelings. I swear to you by the salvation of my soul that nothing like this will ever happen again! Accept me once more as your true and humble servant, or as your elder and willing brother.”
Renata lifted her head and looked at me, at first like some small hunted beast when the hunter gives it its freedom, then trustingly and childlike, and she took my face affectionately between the palms of her hands and replied:
“Rupprecht, dearest Rupprecht! You must not be angry with me and ask of me what I cannot give. I gave all to my friend from Heaven, and for men I have left neither kisses nor words of passion. I am an emptied basket from which another has taken all the flowers and the fruit, but even empty you must carry it, for fate has bound us together and our fellowship was long ago inscribed in the Book of the All-knowing.”
Again I swore never to leave her, as one swears before an altar in the hour of betrothal, and my oath was honest, though later it once seemed to me as though I should break it.
Rising then from my knees, I said that I would take my leave, and would go into the other room we had engaged, so that Renata might rest alone freely. But she stopped me, saying:
“Rupprecht, without you I should be in fear; they would fall upon me again and torment me the whole night through. You must remain with me.”
Not ashamed, as children are not ashamed, Renata quickly took off her dress, then her footwear, and, nearly naked, she laid herself into bed, under the blue canopy, calling me to her, and I did not know how to refuse her. So, this second night of our acquaintance we passed under one coverlet, but remaining as strange to each other as though separated by iron bars. And when it happened that an understandable excitement again overcame my will, and, forgetting my oaths, I strove again for tenderness, Renata quietened me with sad and cold words, so passionless and thereby so cruel, that all the blood became numbed in me, and I fell on my face impotent, like a corpse.
Chapter the Third
How we came to live in the City of Köln and how we were deceived by Mysterious Knockings
A LWAYS whenever possible I kept to the wise saying of the French:
Lever a six, diner a dix,
Souper a six, coucher a dix,
Fait vivre l’ homme dix fois dix.
So the next day I woke much earlier than Renata and, again slipping carefully from her sleeping embrace, I went into the adjoining room. There by the window, through which young and handsome Düsseldorf sparkled in the morning sun, I considered my position. I felt already that I lacked the strength to leave Renata, that I either had been charmed to her by some magic power, or borne naturally into gentle bondage by the Mother of Love—the Cyprian.
Boldly reviewing my position, like a warrior who finds himself fallen into danger, I now addressed myself thus: “Very well,
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