XVI
THE ZENITH OF HAPPINESS
Arrival in Paris · Alfred Nobel’s personality · Unendurable agony of separation · Two dispatches · A plan of action · Arrival at Vienna · Blissful meeting · At last and forever united
I reached Paris early in the morning. Mr. Nobel came to meet me at the station and took me to the Grand Hôtel on the Boulevard des Capucins, where rooms had been engaged for me. He left me at the door and said he would call a few hours later after I was rested. I could not as yet take up my quarters in his little palais in the Rue Malakoff, because the suite that I was to occupy was just being carpeted and furnished for me; so for the time I should have to stay on at the hotel.
Alfred Nobel made a very pleasing impression. He was not indeed an “elderly gentleman,” as the advertisement gave us to understand and as we all imagined him, gray-haired and feeble—not at all. Born in 1833, he was then forty-three years old, rather below the medium height, with dark, full beard, with features neither ugly nor handsome; his expression rather gloomy, softened only by kindly blue eyes; in his voice there was a melancholy alternating with a satirical tone. Sad and sarcastic, such was his nature. Was that the reason Byron was his favorite poet?
After a few hours, then, when I had rested and refreshed myself and sent a dispatch to Harmannsdorf, he came to see me. The letters that we had written to each other caused us to meet on a different footing from that of entire strangers, and the conversation was immediately put on an animated and stimulating basis. After déjeuner, which we took in the dining-room downstairs, we got into his carriage and drove through the Champs-Élysées. Then he showed me his house, and the rooms that were reserved for me.
But those rooms I never occupied. Before they were ready I had left Paris again. This is the way it came about. I was unhappy—ever so unhappy. Homesickness, the bitterness of longing, the agony of separation, made me suffer as I had not thought that any one could suffer. Dispatches from Artur and letters from him and his sisters came speeding to me every day. The sisters wrote that no one would know Artur, that he never spoke, that he seemed to be suffering from melancholia. When I was alone all I could do was to weep or write home or groan with heartache.
When I was with Alfred Nobel I was for the moment diverted, for he could chat and tell stories and philosophize so entertainingly that his conversation quite captivated the mind. To talk with him about the world and humanity, about art and life, about the problems of time and eternity, was an intense intellectual enjoyment. He kept aloof from social life: certain forms of shallowness, of falsity, of frivolity, filled him with wrath and disgust. He was full of faith in the abstract ideal of a coming loftier humanity,—“when once people come into the world with better-developed brains,”—but full of distrust of the majority of the men of his day, for he had had to make the acquaintance of so many low, selfish, insincere characters. He was distrustful also of himself, and bashful even to the point of timidity. He regarded himself as repulsive; believed that he was incapable of inspiring sympathetic feelings; was always afraid that people were merely flattering him because of his enormous wealth. That was doubtless the reason why he had never married. His studies, his books, his experiments,—those were what filled his life. He was also a writer and poet, but never published any of his poetical works. A philosophical poem a hundred pages long, written in the English language, he gave me to read in manuscript; I found it simply splendid.
He must soon have discovered that I was burdened with a secret sorrow.
“Are you fancy-free?” he asked me one day.
“No,” I answered honestly.
He pressed me further, and I told the whole story of my love and my renunciation.
“You have acted bravely; but be completely courageous, break off the correspondence also—then let a little time pass ... a new life, new impressions—and you will both forget—he perhaps even sooner than you!”
Break off the correspondence? I could not; it was my consolation. What was I to do in my lonely hours if I did not write to my dear one—tell him everything minutely, all my experiences and all my feelings?
Alfred Nobel could give me only one or two hours a day, for he was tied to his work. He had another new invention in mind.
“I wish I could produce a substance or a machine,” he said to me, “of such frightful efficacy for wholesale devastation that wars should thereby become altogether impossible.”
About a week after my arrival Mr. Nobel was obliged to go for a short time to Sweden, where a dynamite factory was being established; the king himself had summoned him.
I was now quite alone. The yearning for the man of my heart grew beyond endurance. Then I received two dispatches. One was from Stockholm,—“Arrived safely, shall be back in Paris in a week”; and the other from Vienna,—“I cannot live without thee.”
And my soul gave a cry, “Nor I without thee!” and I had to act accordingly. Another sleepless night, during which a plan of action was matured, and on the next day I wrote to Stockholm that it was impossible under the circumstances for me to take the position in the Rue Malakoff. I thanked him for all the confidence and friendliness which had been shown me, but I must return to Vienna.
I owned a valuable diamond cross, an inheritance from my guardian Fürstenberg; I went out to dispose of this, and the price which I received for it was sufficient to cover the hotel charges, to buy a ticket for the next express train for Vienna, and to leave me some ready money. I acted as if I were in a dream, as if under irresistible compulsion. I did have flashes of consciousness that this was folly, that perhaps I was running away from a good fortune and into the arms of a misfortune; but I could not, could not do otherwise, and the bliss which I expected to feel in the instant of meeting again outweighed everything else that might come, even were it death.
I had not announced my coming—I wanted to take him by surprise. I drove from the station to a hotel, and sent to the Canovagasse a note in a disguised hand, begging Herr Baron Artur to come to the Hotel Metropole, Room No. 20, where a lady from Paris had a message from Countess Bertha to give him.
He could be there in half an hour. With throbbing heart I listened to every step in the corridor. I had not long to listen till I recognized the beloved footfall; there was a knock at the door; I tried to say “Come in,” but my voice failed me. Nevertheless the door opened and—it was he!
I flew to him with a cry of joy.
Du, du selber!—“It is your own self!” he cried, and we were once again sobbing in each other’s arms, just as on that evening when we parted, only this time not with feelings of pain but rather of unbounded happiness.
“I have thee, I have thee again—I will never let thee go.”
“No, never again!”
We sat down on the sofa, nestling close, and we began our story. What he had suffered, what I had suffered ... how he had already begun to think of suicide.... “No, no, we belong together, nothing shall ever part us again....”
But what now?—what was to be done?
“Leave planning till later,” I besought. I felt so completely satiated with bliss by this festal meeting that I could not attend to questions and doubts and the making of projects. Of all tender speeches such as are used by lovers and poets, “Thou art an angel,” “Thou art my all,” and the like, the loveliest and most significant is Du bist die Ruh!
But he awakened me from “Rest.”
“We must talk about the future,” he said. “One thing is clear,—it must never happen again that we let ourselves be parted, or that we actually separate of our own accord for wretched considerations of worldly wisdom. We will be married,—that is settled.”
Yes, that was settled. We had honestly tried to separate, and had seen that it was impossible, simply impossible. To have each other forever was unspeakable happiness; to renounce each other forever was synonymous with dying. With this choice set before us, there could be no further hesitation. To live, to live and be happy!
And so we did begin planning. We would be married—secretly—and then out into the world! We could surely make our way: we would work, put our talents to profitable use, find a situation.... To the Caucasus!—was my proposal. There I had powerful friends. The Dedopali had years and years before made me promise to come and make her a visit with my husband. Thither, then, should be our wedding journey. Through their relations with the emperor of Russia it would be possible to secure a position in the Russian court or state service....
The plan was carried out. No one was allowed to know of my return from Paris; I went into hiding for a few weeks with a family in Lundenburg—very dear people. In the meantime My Own—I never called him Artur, but My Own, so I shall do the same here in these recollections—provided for the publishing of the banns, secured trusty witnesses who would hold their tongues, made everything ready that was necessary, documents, traveling money, luggage, etc. Fortune favored us; the family got no wind of the banns published in a remote suburban church, and one fine morning—it was June 12, 1876—I drove in my traveling dress and hat to Gumpoldskirchner parish church; my betrothed was waiting for me there with his witnesses and mine, and in a side chapel a priest of venerable years united us. We were man and wife.