Jezebel's Daughter

by Wilkie Collins

was all in the German newspapers--you know what I mean."

  This seemed to me to be passing all bounds of moderation. "And _you_

  know, madam," I answered sharply, "that there was no evidence against

  her--nothing whatever to associate her with the robbery of the medicine

  chest."

  "Not even suspicion, Mr. David?"

  "Not even suspicion."

  I rose from my chair as I spoke. Minna was still in my thoughts; I was

  not merely unwilling, I was almost afraid to hear more.

  "One minute," said Frau Meyer. "Which of the two hotels here are you

  staying at? I want to send you something to read to-night, after you have

  left us."

  I told her the name of the hotel; and we joined our friends at the other

  end of the room. Not long afterwards I took my leave. My spirits were

  depressed; a dark cloud of uncertainty seemed to hang over the future.

  Even the prospect of returning to Frankfort, the next day, became

  repellent to me. I was almost inclined to hope that my aunt might (as Mr.

  Keller had predicted) recall me to London.

  CHAPTER XV

  From these reflections I was roused by the appearance of a waiter, with a

  letter for me. The envelope contained a slip cut from a German newspaper,

  and these lines of writing, signed by Frau Meyer:--

  "You are either a very just, or a very obstinate young man. In either

  case, it will do you no harm to read what I enclose. I am not such a

  scandal-mongering old woman as you seem to think. The concealment of the

  names will not puzzle you. Please return the slip. It belongs to our

  excellent host, and forms part of his collection of literary

  curiosities."

  Such was the introduction to my reading. I translate it from the German

  newspaper into English as literally as I can.

  The Editor's few prefatory words were at the top of the column, bearing

  the date of September 1828.

  "We have received, in strictest confidence, extracts from letters written

  by a lady to a once--beloved female friend. The extracts are dated and

  numbered, and are literally presented in this column--excepting the

  obviously necessary precaution of suppressing names, places, and days of

  the month. Taken in connection with a certain inquiry which is just now

  occupying the public mind, these fragments may throw some faint glimmer

  of light on events which are at present involved in darkness."

  _Number I._ 1809.--"Yes, dearest Julie, I have run the grand risk. Only

  yesterday, I was married to Doctor ----. The people at the church were

  our only witnesses.

  "My father declares that I have degraded his noble blood by marrying a

  medical man. He forbade my mother to attend the ceremony. Poor simple

  soul! She asked me if I loved my young doctor, and was quite satisfied

  when I said Yes. As for my father's objections, my husband is a man of

  high promise in his profession. In his country--I think I told you in my

  last letter that he was a Frenchman--a famous physician is ennobled by

  the State. I shall leave no stone unturned, my dear, to push my husband

  forward. And when he is made a Baron, we shall see what my father will

  say to us then."

  _Number II._ 1810.--"We have removed, my Julie, to this detestably dull

  old German town, for no earthly reason but that the University is famous

  as a medical school.

  "My husband informs me, in his sweetest manner, that he will hesitate at

  no sacrifice of our ordinary comforts to increase his professional

  knowledge. If you could see how the ladies dress in this lost hole of a

  place, if you could hear the twaddle they talk, you would pity me. I have

  but one consolation--a lovely baby, Julie, a girl: I had almost said an

  angel. Were you as fond of your first child, I wonder, as I am of mine?

  And did you utterly forget your husband, when the little darling was

  first put into your arms? Write and tell me."

  _Number III._ 1811.--"I have hardly patience to take up my pen But I

  shall do something desperate, if I don't relieve my overburdened mind in

  some way.

  "After I wrote to you last year, I succeeded in getting my husband away

  from the detestable University. But he persisted in hanging about

  Germany, and conferring with moldy old doctors (whom he calls "Princes of

  Science"!) instead of returning to Paris, taking a handsome house, and

  making his way to the top of the tree with my help. I am the very woman

  to give brilliant parties, and to push my husband's interests with

  powerful people of all degrees. No; I really must not dwell on it. When I

  think of what has happened since, it will drive me mad.

  "Six weeks ago, a sort of medical congress was announced to be at the

  University. Something in the proposed discussion was to be made the

  subject of a prize-essay. The doctor's professional interest in this

  matter decided him on trying for the prize--and the result is our return

  to the hateful old town and its society.

  "Of course, my husband resumes his professional studies; of course, I am

  thrown once more among the dowdy gossiping women. But that is far from

  being the worst of it. Among the people in the School of Chemistry here,

  there is a new man, who entered the University shortly after we left it

  last year. This devil--it is the only right word for him--has bewitched

  my weak husband; and, for all I can see to the contrary, has ruined our

  prospects in life.

  "He is a Hungarian. Small, dirty, lean as a skeleton, with hands like

  claws, eyes like a wild beast's, and the most hideously false smile you

  ever saw in a human face. What his history is, nobody knows. The people

  at the medical school call him the most extraordinary experimental

  chemist living. His ideas astonish the Professors themselves. The

  students have named him 'The new Paracelsus.'

  "I ventured to ask him, one day, if he believed he could make gold. He

  looked at me with his frightful grin, and said, "Yes, and diamonds too,

  with time and money to help me." He not only believes in The

  Philosopher's Stone; he says he is on the trace of some explosive

  compound so terrifically destructive in its effect, that it will make war

  impossible. He declares that he will annihilate time and space by means

  of electricity; and that he will develop steam as a motive power, until

  travelers can rush over the whole habitable globe at the rate of a mile

  in a minute.

  "Why do I trouble you with these ravings? My dear, this boastful

  adventurer has made himself master of my husband, has talked him out of

  his senses, has reduced my influence over him to nothing. Do you think I

  am exaggerating? Hear how it has ended. My husband absolutely refuses to

  leave this place. He cares no longer even to try for the prize. The idea

  of medical practice has become distasteful to him, and he has decided on

  devoting his life to discovery in chemical science.

  "And this is the man whom I married with the sincerest belief in the

  brilliant social career that was before him! For this contemptible

  creature I have sacrificed my position in the world, and alienated my

  father from me for ever. I may lo
ok forward to being the wife of a poor

  Professor, who shows experiments to stupid lads in a school. And the

  friends in Paris, who, to my certain knowledge, are now waiting to give

  him introductions to the Imperial Court itself, may transfer their

  services to some other man.

  "No words can tell you what I feel at this complete collapse of all my

  hopes and plans. The one consideration of my child is all that restrains

  me from leaving my husband, never to see him again. As it is, I must live

  a life of deceit, and feign respect and regard for a man whom I despise

  with my whole heart.

  "Power--oh, if I had the power to make the fury that consumes me felt!

  The curse of our sex is its helplessness. Every day, Julie, the

  conviction grows on me that I shall end badly. Who among us knows the

  capacity for wickedness that lies dormant in our natures, until the fatal

  event comes and calls it forth?

  "No! I am letting you see too much of my tortured soul. Let me close my

  letter, and play with my child."

  _Number IV._ 1812.--"My heartfelt congratulations, dearest, on your

  return to Germany, after your pleasant visit to the United States. And

  more congratulations yet on the large addition to your income, due to

  your husband's intelligence and spirit of enterprise on American ground.

  Ah, you have married a Man! Happy woman! I am married to a Machine.

  "Why have I left your kind letters from America without reply? My Julie,

  I have constantly thought of you; but the life I lead is slowly crushing

  my energies. Over and over again, I have taken up my pen; and over and

  over again, I have laid it aside, recoiling from the thought of myself

  and my existence; too miserable (perhaps too proud) to tell you what a

  wretched creature I am, and what thoughts come to me sometimes in the

  wakeful hours of the night.

  "After this confession, you wonder, perhaps, why I write to you now.

  "I really believe it is because I have been threatened with legal

  proceedings by my creditors, and have just come victoriously out of a

  hard struggle to appease them for the time. This little fight has roused

  me from my apathy; it has rallied my spirits, and made me feel like my

  old self again. I am no longer content with silently loving my dearest

  friend; I open my heart and write to her.

  " 'Oh, dear, how sad that she should be in debt!' I can hear you say

  this, and sigh to yourself--you who have never known what it was to be in

  want of money since you were born. Shall I tell you what my husband earns

  at the University? No: I feel the blood rushing into my face at the bare

  idea of revealing it.

  "Let me do the Professor justice. My Animated Mummy has reached the

  height of his ambition at last--he is Professor of Chemistry, and is

  perfectly happy for the rest of his life. My dear, he is as lean, and

  almost as dirty, as the wretch who first perverted him. Do you remember

  my once writing to you about a mysterious Hungarian, whom we found in the

  University? A few years since, this man died by suicide, as mysteriously

  as he had lived. They found him in the laboratory, with a strange

  inscription traced in chalk on the wall by which he lay dead. These were

  the words:-- 'After giving it a fair trial, I find that life is not worth

  living for. I have decided to destroy myself with a poison of my own

  discovery. My chemical papers and preparations are hereby bequeathed to

  my friend Doctor ----, and my body is presented as a free gift to the

  anatomy school. Let a committee of surgeons and analysts examine my

  remains. I defy them to discover a trace of the drug that has killed me.'

  And they did try, Julie--and discovered nothing. I wonder whether the

  suicide has left the receipt for that poison, among his other precious

  legacies, to his 'friend Doctor ----.'

  "Why do I trouble you with these nauseous details? Because they are in no

  small degree answerable for my debts. My husband devotes all his leisure

  hours to continuing the detestable experiments begun by the Hungarian;

  and my yearly dress-money for myself and my child has been reduced one

  half, to pay the chemical expenses.

  "Ought I, in this hard case, to have diminished my expenditure to the

  level of my reduced income?

  "If you say Yes, I answer that human endurance has its limits. I can

  support the martyrdom of my life; the loss of my dearest illusions and

  hopes; the mean enmity of our neighbors; the foul-mouthed jealousy of the

  women; and, more than all, the exasperating patience of a husband who

  never resents the hardest things I can say to him, and who persists in

  loving and admiring me as if we were only married last week. But I cannot

  see my child in a stuff frock, on promenade days in the Palace Gardens,

  when other people's children are wearing silk. And plain as my own dress

  may be, I must and will have the best material that is made. When the

  wife of the military commandant (a woman sprung from the people) goes out

  in an Indian shawl with Brussels lace in her bonnet, am I to meet her and

  return her bow, in a camelot cloak and a beaver hat? No! When I lose my

  self-respect let me lose my life too. My husband may sink as low as he

  pleases. I always have stood above him, and I always will!

  "And so I am in debt, and my creditors threaten me. What does it matter?

  I have pacified them, for the time, with some small installments of

  money, and a large expenditure of smiles.

  "I wish you could see my darling little Minna; she is the loveliest and

  sweetest child in the world--my pride at all times, and my salvation in

  my desperate moods. There are moments when I feel inclined to set fire to

  the hateful University, and destroy all the moldy old creatures who

  inhabit it. I take Minna out and buy her a little present, and see her

  eyes sparkle and her color rise, and feel her innocent kisses, and

  become, for awhile, quite a good woman again. Yesterday, her father--no,

  I shall work myself up into a fury if I tell you about it. Let me only

  say that Minna saved me as usual. I took her to the jeweler's and bought

  her a pair of pearl earrings. If you could have heard her, if you could

  have seen her, when the little angel first looked at herself in the

  glass! I wonder when I shall pay for the earrings?

  "Ah, Julie, if I only had such an income as yours, I would make my power

  felt in this place. The insolent women should fawn on me and fear me. I

  would have my own house and establishment in the country, to purify me

  after the atmosphere of the Professor's drugs. I would--well! well! never

  mind what else I would have.

  "Talking of power, have you read the account of the execution last year

  of that wonderful criminal, Anna Maria Zwanziger? Wherever she went, the

  path of this terrific woman is strewed with the dead whom she has

  poisoned. She appears to have lived to destroy her fellow-creatures, and

  to have met her doom with the most undaunted courage. What a career! and

  what an end! (1)

  "The foolish people in Wurzburg are at a loss to find motives for some of

  the murders she committed, and t
ry to get out of the difficulty by

  declaring that she must have been a homicidal maniac. That is not _my_

  explanation. I can understand the murderess becoming morally intoxicated

  with the sense of her own tremendous power. A mere human creature--only a

  woman, Julie!--armed with the means of secretly dealing death with her,

  wherever she goes--meeting with strangers who displease her, looking at

  them quietly, and saying to herself, "I doom you to die, before you are a

  day older"--is there no explanation, here, of some of Zwanziger's

  poisonings which are incomprehensible to commonplace minds?

  "I put this view, in talking of the trial, to the military commandant a

  few days since. His vulgar wife answered me before he could speak.

  'Madame Fontaine,' said this spitfire, 'my husband and I don't feel

  _your_ sympathy with poisoners!' Take that as a specimen of the ladies of

  Wurzburg--and let me close this unmercifully long letter. I think you

  will acknowledge, my dear, that, when I do write, I place a flattering

  trust in my friend's patient remembrance of me."

  There the newspaper extracts came to an end.

  As a picture of a perverted mind, struggling between good and evil, and

  slowly losing ground under the stealthy influence of temptation, the

  letters certainly possessed a melancholy interest for any thoughtful

  reader. But (not being a spiteful woman) I failed to see, in these

  extracts, the connection which Frau Meyer had attempted to establish

  between the wickedness of Madame Fontaine and the disappearance of her

  husband's medicine chest.

  At the same time, I must acknowledge that a vague impression of distrust

  _was_ left on my mind by what I had read. I felt a certain sense of

  embarrassment at the prospect of renewing my relations with the widow, on

  my return to Frankfort; and I was also conscious of a decided increase of

  anxiety to hear what had been Mr. Keller's reception of Madame Fontaine's

  letter. Add to this, that my brotherly interest in Minna was sensibly

  strengthened--and the effect on me of the extracts in the newspaper is

  truly stated, so far as I can remember it at this distant time.

  On the evening of the next day, I was back again at Frankfort.

  (1) The terrible career of Anna Maria Zwanziger, sentenced to death at

  Bamberg in the year 1811, will be found related in Lady Duff-Gordon's

  translation of Feuerbach's "Criminal Trials."

  CHAPTER XVI

  Mr. Keller and Mr. Engelman were both waiting to receive me. They looked

  over my written report of my inquiries at Hanau, and expressed the

  warmest approval of it. So far, all was well.

  But, when we afterwards sat down to our supper, I noticed a change in the

  two partners, which it was impossible to see without regret. On the

  surface they were as friendly towards each other as ever. But a certain

  constraint of look and manner, a palpable effort, on either side, to

  speak with the old unsought ease and gaiety, showed that the disastrous

  discovery of Madame Fontaine in the hall had left its evil results behind

  it. Mr. Keller retired, when the meal was over, to examine my report

  minutely in all its details.

  When we were alone, Mr. Engelman lit his pipe. He spoke to me once more

  with the friendly familiarity of past days--before he met the

  too-fascinating widow on the bridge.

  "My dear boy, tell me frankly, do you notice any change in Keller?"

  "I see a change in both of you," I answered: "you are not such pleasant

  companions as you used to be."

  Mr. Engelman blew out a mouthful of smoke, and followed it by a heavy

  sigh.

  "Keller has become so bitter," he said. "His hasty temper I never

  complained of, as you know. But in these later days he is hard--hard as