To dine at twelve o'clock and sleep till two, The scene was every day the same again. LVI. Our Giants' memoirs still remain on hand, Besides Besides this present copy must be sold; I promised Murray t'other day, To let him have it by the tenth of May.- Canto IV. REYTAG, GUSTAV, a German novelist, dram atist, and journalist; born at Kreuzburg, Silesia, July 13, 1816; died at Wiesbaden, April 30, 1895. He was educated at Oels, Breslau, and Berlin, and received his degree of Doctor of Philosophy in 1838. In 1845 he published a volume. of poems entitled In Breslau, and an historical comedy, The Espousal of Kuntz von Rosen. He went in 1847 to Leipsic and, in conjunction with Julian. Schmidt, became editor of Grenzboten (The Messenger of the Frontier ). In this and the following year he published the dramas Valentine and Count Waldemar; in 1854, a comedy, Die Journalisten, and in 1859 a classical drama Die Fabier. Others of his dramatic works are Der Gelehrte, a tragedy, and Eine arme Schneiderseele, a comedy. His novel, Soll und Haben VOL. X.-20 (1855), at once gave him a high place among German writers of fiction. It was translated into English under the title of Debit and Credit. Bilder aus der Deutschen Vergangenheit was followed in 1862 by Neue Bilder aus dem Leben des Deutschen Volkes. Another novel, Die Verlorne Handschrift, appeared in 1864, and a series of tales collected under the title of Die Ahnen (Ancestors) in 1876. In 1870 Freytag resigned from the Grenzboten, and took charge of Im neuen Reich, a weekly journal at Leipsic. His later novels were Ancestors (1893), and Charlemagne (1894). THE BURDEN OF A CRIME. The murderer stood for a few moments motionless in the darkness, leaning against the staircase railings. Then he slowly went up the steps. While doing so he felt his trousers to see how high they were wet. He thought to himself that he must dry them at the stove this very night, and saw in fancy the fire in the stove, and himself sitting before it in his dressing-gown, as he was accustomed to do when thinking over his business. If he had ever in his life known comfortable repose, it had been when, weary of the cares of the day, he sat before his stove-fire and watched it till his heavy eyelids drooped. He realized how tired he was now, and what good it would do him to go to sleep before a warm fire. Lost in the thought, he stood for a moment like one overcome with drowsiness, when suddenly he felt a strange pressure within him something that made it difficult to breathe, and bound his breast as with iron bars. Then he thought of the bundle that he had just thrown into the river; he saw it cleave the flood: he heard the rush of water, and remembered that the hat which he had forced over the man's face had been the last thing visible on the surface - a round, strange-looking thing. He saw the hat quite plainly before him- battered, the rim half off, and -- two grease spots on the crown. It had been a very shabby hat. Thinking of it, it occurred to him that he could smile now if he chose. But he did not smile. Meanwhile he had got up the steps. As he opened the staircase door, he glanced along the dark gallery through which two had passed a few minutes before, and only one returned. He looked down at the gray surface of the stream, and again he was sensible of that singular pressure. He rapidly crept through the large room and down the steps, and on the ground floor ran up against one of the lodgers in the caravansary. Both hastened away in different directions without exchanging a word. This meeting turned his thoughts in another direction. Was he safe? The fog still lay thick on the street. No one had seen him go in with Hippas, no one had recognized him as he went out. The investigation would only begin when they found the old man in the river. Would he be safe then? These thoughts passed through the murderer's mind as calmly as though he was reading them in a book. Mingled with them came doubts as to whether he had his cigar-case with him, and as to why he did not smoke a cigar. He cogitated long about it, and at length found himself returned to his dwelling. He opened the door. The last time he had opened the door a loud noise had been heard in the inner room; he listened for it now; he would give anything to hear it. A few minutes ago it had been to be heard. Oh, if those few minutes had never been! Again he felt that hollow pressure, but more strongly, even more strongly than before. He entered the room. The lamp still burned, the fragments of the rum-bottle lay about the sofa, the bits of broken mirror shone like silver dollars on the floor. Veitel sat down exhausted. Then it occurred to him that his mother had often told him a childish story in which silver dollars fell upon a poor man's floor. He could see the old Jewess sitting at the hearth, and he, a small boy, standing near her. He could see himself looking anxiously down on the dark earthen floor, wondering whether the white dollars would fall down for him. Now he knew his room looked just as if there had been a rain of white dollars. He felt something of the restless delight which that tale of his mother had always awaked, when again came suddenly that same hollow pressure. Heavily he rose, stooped, and collected the broken glass. He put all the pieces into the corner of the cupboard, detached the frame from the wall, and put it wrong-side-out in a corner. Then he took the lamp, and the glass which he used to fill with water for the night; but as he touched it a shudder came over him, and he put it down. He who was no more had drunk out of that glass. He took the lamp to his bedside, and undressed. He hid his trousers in the cupboard, and brought out another pair, which he rubbed against his boots till they were dirty at the bottom. Then he put out the lamp, and as it flickered before it went quite out, the thought struck him that human life and a flame had something in common. He had extinguished a flame. And again that pain in the breast, but less clearly felt, for his strength was exhausted, his nervous energy spent. The murderer slept. But when he wakes! Then the cunning will be over and gone with which his distracted mind has tried, as if in delirium, to snatch at all manner of trivial things and thoughts in order to avoid the one feeling whch ever weighs him down. When he wakes! Henceforth, while still half asleep, he will feel the gradual entrance of terror and misery into his soul. Even in his dreams he will have a sense of the sweetness of unconsciousness and the horrors of thought, and will strive against waking; while, in spite of his strivings, his anguish grows stronger and stronger, till, in despair, his eyelids start open, and he gazes into the hideous present, the hideous future. And again his mind will seek to cover over the fact with a web of sophistry; he will reflect how old the dead man was, how wicked, how wretched; he will try to convince himself that it was only an accident that occasioned his death- a push given by him in sudden anger how unlucky that the old man's foot should have slipped as it did! Then will recur the doubt as to his safety; a hot flush will suffuse his pale face, the step of his servant will fill him with dread, the sound of an ironshod stick on the pavement will be taken for the tramp of the armed band whom justice sends to apprehend him. Again he will retrace every step taken yesterday, every gesture, every word, and will seek to convince himself that discovery is impossible. No one had seen him, no one had heard; the wretched old man, half crazy as he was, had drawn his own hat over his eyes and drowned himself. And yet, through all this sophistry, he is conscious of that fearful weight, till, exhausted by the inner conflict, he flies from his house to his business, amid the crowd anxiously desiring to find something that shall force him to forget. If any one on the street looks at him, he trembles; if he meet a policeman, he must rush home to hide his terror from those discerning eyes. Wherever he finds familiar faces, he will press into the thick of the assembly, he will take an interest in anything, will laugh and talk more than heretofore; but his eyes will roam recklessly around, and he will be in constant dread of hearing something said of the murdered man, something said about his sudden end. . And when, late of an evening, he at length returns home, tired to death and worn out by his fearful struggle, he feels lighter hearted, for he has succeeeded in obscuring the truth, he is conscious of a melancholy pleasuse in his weariness, and awaits sleep as the only good thing earth has still to offer him. And again he will fall asleep, and when he awakes the next morning he will have to begin his fearful task anew. So will it be this day, next day, always, so long as he lives. His life is no longer like that of another man; his life is henceforth a horrible battle with a corpse, a battle unseen by all, yet constantly going on. All his intercourse with living men, whether in business or in society, is but a mockery, a lie. Whether he laughs and shakes hands with one, or lends money and takes fifty per cent. from another, it is all mere illusion on their part. He knows that he is severed from human companionship, and that all he does is but empty seeming; there is only one who |