“I cannot think, Martha, what has come to you,” said Aunt Mary to me one morning. “For some time you have been so out of humour, so distraite, so—I don’t know what to call it. You are very wrong not to lend an ear to any of your suitors. This solitary existence, as I have said from the very first, is not good for you. The consequence of it is these low spirits which distinguish you just now. Have you quite forgotten your Easter devotions? They would help to do you good.”
“I think that both things—I mean both marrying and going to confession—should be done for love of the thing itself, not as a remedy for low spirits. None of my suitors please me; and as for confession—”
“Well, it is high time for that; tomorrow is Maundy Thursday. Have you tickets for the foot-washing?”
“Yes, papa has sent me some, but I really do not know whether I shall go.”
“Oh! but you must. There is nothing more beautiful and more elevating than this ceremony. The triumph of Christian humility. The emperor and empress prostrating themselves to the earth to wash the feet of poor men and women in their service. Does not that symbolise well how small and insignificant is earthly majesty before the heavenly?”
“In order to represent humility symbolically by kneeling down one must feel oneself to be really a very exalted personage. It means—‘What God’s Son was in comparison with the apostles, I, the emperor, am in comparison with these poor folks.’ This fundamental motive of the ceremony does not strike me as peculiarly humble.”
“What curious notions you have, Martha. In these three years that you have passed in solitude in the country, and in the perusal of wicked books, your ideas have become so perverted.”
“Wicked books?”
“Yes, wicked. I maintain that the word is correct. The other day when in my innocence I spoke to the archbishop about a book I had seen on your table, and which from its title I took for a religious work, The Life of Jesus, by one Strauss, why, he smote his hands together above his head, and cried out: ‘Merciful Heaven, how came you by such a profligate work?’ I turned as red as fire, and assured him that I had not read the book myself, but had only seen it at a relation’s. ‘Then demand of your relation, as she values her salvation, to throw this book into the fire.’ And that I do now Martha. Will you burn the book?”
“If we were two or three centuries earlier we might have watched, not the book, but the author, going to the flames. That would have been more effectual—more effectual for the time, though not for long.”
“You give me no answer. Will you burn this book?”
“No.”
“What! nothing but no?”
“Why should we have any long talk about it? We do not yet understand each other in these matters, dear auntie. Let me rather tell you what little Rudolf yesterday—”
And thus the conversation was happily led off to another and a fruitful subject, in which no difference of opinion came in between us; for we were both agreed on this matter, that Rudolf Dotzky was the dearest, the most original, and, for his age, the most advanced child in the world.
Next day I resolved nevertheless to attend the foot-washing. A little after ten, in black clothes, as beseems Passion week, my sister Rosa and I presented ourselves in the great hall of state in the Burg. On a scaffold there places were reserved for members of the aristocracy and of the diplomatic corps. Thus one was again in one’s own set, and greetings were exchanged left and right. The gallery too was closely packed, also with persons selected, and who had got cards of admission, but still a little “mixed,” not belonging only to the crème, as we were on our scaffold. In short, the old caste separations and privileges, to correspond with this fête of symbolical humility. I do not know whether the others were in a mood of religious devotion, but I awaited what was coming with just the same feeling with which one looks forward in the theatre to a promised “spectacle.” Just as there, after exchanging salutations from box to box, one looks with excitement for the rise of the curtain, so I was looking in the direction in which the chorus and soloists in the show before me were to appear. The whole scene was already set, especially the long table at which the twelve old men and twelve old women had to seat themselves.
Still I was glad I had come, for I felt excited, and this is always a pleasant feeling, and one which delivers one from troublous thoughts for the moment. My trouble was constantly “Why does not Tilling show himself?” Just now this fixed idea had left me. What I was expecting and wishing to see was the imperial and the humble actors in the fête before me. And exactly at that moment, when I was not thinking of him, my eyes fell on Tilling.
The mass was just over, the dignitaries of the Court had just entered the hall, followed by the general staff and the corps of officers, and I was letting my gaze wander unconcernedly over all these persons in uniform, who were not the chief actors, but only intended to fill the stage—when suddenly I recognised Tilling, who had taken his position just opposite our seat. It ran through me like an electric shock. He was not looking our way. His look showed traces of the suffering he had gone through during the last few weeks—an expression of deep sorrow rested on his
