“And that gave you pain, my good, gentle husband.”
“Such pain often that I cried out, Martha. And yet too little to express properly my power of sympathy. … One might think that if, at the sight of a single suffering, a man is seized with pity, a suffering multiplied a thousandfold would therefore excite a thousand times stronger pity. But the contrary occurs; the magnitude stupefies one. One cannot be so tenderly grieved for an individual when one sees, all round him, 999 others just as miserable. But even if one has not the capacity to feel beyond a certain level of compassion, yet one may be capable of thinking and computing that one has an inconceivable quantity of woe before one.”
“You, and one or two others may be capable, but the majority of men neither think nor compute.”
I succeeded in moving Frederick to the resolve of quitting the service. The circumstance that he had, after his marriage, served now more than a year, and taken a distinguished part in a campaign, would defend him from the suspicion which had occurred to my father during our engagement, that the whole marriage had for its object only to enable him to give up his career. Now, when peace should once be made, the preliminaries of which were in train, and when to all probability there were long years of peace in prospect, retirement from the army would now not involve anything dishonourable. It was, indeed, still, to some extent, repugnant to Frederick’s pride to give up his rank and income, and, as he said, “to do nothing, to be nothing, and to have nothing,” but his love for me was with him an even more powerful feeling than his pride, and he could not resist my entreaties. I declared that I could not go through a second time the anguish of mind which his last parting caused me; and he himself might well shrink from again calling down on us both such pain. The feeling of delicacy, which, before his marriage with me, made him shrink from the idea of living on the fortune of a rich woman, no longer came into play, for we had become so completely one that there was no longer any perceptible difference between “mine” and “yours,” and we understood each other so well that no misjudgment of his character on my part was any longer to be feared. The last campaign had besides so greatly increased his aversion to the murderous duties of war, and his unqualified expression of that aversion had so rooted it in him, that his retirement got to appear not like a concession made to our domestic happiness so much as the putting into action of his own intention, as a tribute to his convictions, and so he promised me in the coming autumn, if the negotiations for peace were then concluded, to take his discharge.
We planned buying an estate with my fortune, which was then in the hands of Schmidt & Sons, the bankers, and Frederick was to find employment in managing it. In this way the first part of his trouble, “doing nothing, being nothing, and having nothing,” would be removed. As to “being” and “having,” we could also find a remedy.
“To be a retired colonel in the imperial and royal service, and a happy man, is not that enough?” I asked. “And to have? You have us—me and Rudi—and those who are coming. Is not that enough, too?”
He smiled, and took me in his arms.
We did not choose just at first to communicate anything of our plans to my father and the rest. They would certainly raise objections, give pieces of advice, express disapprobation, and all that was quite superfluous as yet. Later on we should know how to put ourselves above all that, for, when two people are all in all to each other, all foreign opinion falls off them without making any impression. The certainty for the future thus obtained increased still more the enjoyment of the present, which, even without that, was so heightened and enlarged by the delirium of the bitter past which we had gone through. I can only repeat it was a happy time. My son Rudolf, now a little fellow of seven, was beginning at this time to learn reading and writing, and his instructress was myself. I had never given my bonne the delight—which, besides, would, I daresay, have been none for her—of seeing this little soul slowly expand, and of bringing to it the first surprises of knowledge. The boy was often the companion of our walks, and we were never tired of answering the questions which his growing appetite for knowledge made him address to us. To answer, that is, as well and as far as we could. We never permitted ourselves to tell a falsehood. We never avoided answering such questions as we could not decide—such as no man can decide—with a plain “that no one knows, Rudi.” At first it would happen that Rudolf, not satisfied with such an answer, took his question sometimes to Aunt Mary, or to his grandfather, or to the nurse, and then he always got unhesitating solutions. Then he would come back to us in triumph: “You don’t know how old the moon is? I know now. It’s six thousand years—you remember.” Frederick and I exchanged a silent glance. A whole volume full of
