The Children of the World. Paul HeyseЧитать онлайн книгу.

CHAPTER X.

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      The new comer was a singular-looking person of middle height, clad in coarse but neat clothes, who looked like a workman just returning from his labor. The insignificant form was surmounted by a compact head, adorned with thick shining black hair and beard, which seemed to harmonize with the body as little as the large hands and feet. Yet the homely pale face was rendered attractive by its expression of innocent, almost childlike simplicity, and if the melancholy man, which seldom happened, opened his thick red lips in a smile, fine white teeth glittered through the coal-black whiskers, and the eyes under the heavy brows could beam with a glance at once so soft and so fiery that it might well win a maiden's heart.

      Such was the expression with which, when he met Balder and when no cloud darkened his honest mind, he used to gaze at the youth, for whom he cherished a really enthusiastic, almost sentimental tenderness. He never expressed it in words, of which he was usually very sparing, but even to the most superficial observer it was touching to see what power the youth's warm, sunny nature exerted over his rough, bushy-haired companion, so many years his senior. It was a real "secret love," which year by year had increased in strength and enthusiastic ardor, and which would have found no test too severe. All the grace and harmonious charms of life that had been denied to himself, he loved in this beautiful, noble young friend, and in so doing had almost become a little faithless to the other brother, who possessed older claims to his friendship.

      As Edwin was carrying his portfolio to school for the first time, a slender timid little fellow, who was going the same way and belonged to the same class, joined him. He was the seventh son of a surgeon, Franzelius by name, who lived in the neighborhood; he could with difficulty support his family, and yet his principal ambition was to send them all to college. By means of free instruction, gratuitous board and stipends, this was at last accomplished, and toward it Edwin's parents had done their part, by supplying Reinhold, the youngest, their son's daily companion, with his dinner. But even Edwin's patient efforts to thaw his shy schoolmate, were not entirely successful. The wretched life which was lived in his parent's home seemed to oppress his heart more and more, when he returned from the table of kind people in easy circumstances, to a house where it was necessary to count the outgoing of every penny. At a very early age he began to reflect upon the difference in the division of worldly goods, though without bitterness, for he neither conceived nor cherished any unattainable desires. It was rather his parents' anxious fears that constantly made him ponder over the mystery; how had these great discrepancies arisen, how they might perhaps be remedied, until good-natured and unselfish as he was, he would, even as a boy, fly into the most violent passion at the bare mention of his fixed idea. When, in studying Roman history, he came upon the Agrarian laws and the times of the Gracchi, he composed an essay, in which with boyish impetuosity he defended the most revolutionary opinions, gaining for himself the nickname of "Franzelius Gracchus," which clung to him as long as he remained at school.

      Then the fate that befell the brothers dissolved the school friendship, until many years after, Edwin met this half-forgotten comrade in Berlin. In outward appearance he had changed very much. The thin, shy boy, had become a sturdy, black-bearded, defiant youth, a person whom all well-bred and well-dressed people would avoid in the street, especially in winter, when a coarse red shawl, which he wore twisted around his neck, contributed not a little to the oddity of his appearance. In mind and disposition he had remained exactly the same; awkward, silent, and gentle, but as soon as his fixed idea was touched, would burst into a flood of stormy eloquence that swept all before it. Edwin had also had occasion, in student circles, to perceive how the same man, who in a small company could scarcely finish his sentences properly, and in individual debate was easily confused and silenced, would fearlessly address a crowd. He had a vehemently dogmatic mind, together with the nature of a true agitator, and he liked to utter the few cardinal principles of his belief in full, ringing tones, but he required for his encouragement, the echo of listening multitudes. Then the deeper water, in which he felt at ease, supported and bore him on, while, when out of the channel, he instantly became uncertain, and from diffidence, especially in the presence of Edwin's intellect and knowledge, he easily yielded, and ceased firing his heavy rhetorical artillery.

      But it was not only Edwin's superiority that attracted him. He had become warmly attached to his old friend for a very different reason. That he should now find the latter--whom as the petted child of parents in comfortable circumstances, he had always beheld on the farther side of a wide social gulf--dependent on his own exertions, and living almost as plainly as he himself lived, secretly afforded him pleasure, much as he wished him all possible prosperity. It threw down the barriers between them and placed him on the same footing as his former schoolfellow, but he was completely melted when Balder, whom he had known and petted as a little boy, joined his brother, and with his turning-lathe took up likewise the character of a "workman" in the true sense of the word. According to his father's desire he himself had studied law and had passed his first examination very creditably. But as soon as old Franzelius closed his eyes, Reinhold with his Gracchus-like scorn, became faithless to his career, apprenticed himself to a printer, and regularly served his time. Now for the first time his heart burst its bonds. He felt himself, in affliction, the equal of his brothers "the workmen," and resolved to devote all his energies to the improvement of their lot.

      While at the university he had devoted himself to the study of political economy and various similar subjects, albeit in his somewhat cursory way; so now, for the furtherance of his object, he embodied in small pamphlets or sometimes even in single sheets brief discussions on what he considered the vital questions of the proletarian. These impetuous essays, written sometimes in a very dilettante style, he composed and printed himself in his leisure hours and distributed gratuitously among the working population, over which by degrees he obtained great influence. He brought the brothers also these little "fire brands," as he called them, with which he endangered the fields of the Philistines, and was delighted when Balder, in