IX
The Indefinite Approximation of Two Loving Hearts—A Serious Illness—Progress of Conrad’s Suit to My Sister—Aunt Mary’s Letter—First Rumours of War with Prussia—Sequel of the Schleswig-Holstein War—The Pourparlers and Negotiations Leading to the Austro-Prussian War—Arguments with My Father and Aunt About War—New-Year’s Day, 1866—Conrad and Lilly Engaged—My Father’s Toast—War Visibly Approaching—Hopes and Fears—Recriminations and Reciprocal Provocations—Prussia Occupies Holstein—The Army of the Bund Mobilised—War Declared—Manifestoes of the Sovereigns and Generals.
“Brought nearer—ever nearer! I have found out that this capacity of approximation of loving hearts belongs to the class of things of which divisibility is an example—things which have no limits. One might have believed that a particle might have become so small already that nothing smaller could be conceived, and yet it is susceptible of division into two halves; and so one might think that two hearts might be already so fused together that a more intimate union could not be possible, and yet some external influence acts, and the atoms—the two hearts—embrace and interpenetrate each other still more firmly, and closer—ever closer.”
This was the effect of Lori’s sufficiently tasteless April fooling; and such was the effect of another external event which happened soon after; viz., a violent nervous fever which attacked me and laid me on a sick bed for six weeks. It was indeed a sad event, and yet how fruitful it was in happy recollections for me, and how powerful in its influence on the process sketched above—I mean the “bringing nearer and nearer” of two so closely attached hearts; whether it was the fear of losing me which made me still dearer to my husband, or whether it was that his love had merely become more noticeable to me by his behaviour as sick nurse—in short, during this nervous fever and after it I still more and still more surely felt that I was beloved, than before.
I was also truly afraid of dying—first, because it would have given me horrible pain to lose a life which seemed to me so rich in beauty and happiness, and to leave my dear ones: Frederick with whom I wished so much to grow to old age, Rudolf whom I wished so much to train up to manhood; and secondly, too, not in respect to myself but with regard to Frederick, the thought of death was horrible to me because I knew as well as one can know anything that the pain of laying me in the grave would be to the bereaved one well-nigh intolerable. No! No! People who are happy, and people who are beloved by those they hold dear, cannot feel any contempt for Death. The chief ingredient in the latter is contempt for life. On my sick bed, where sickness buzzed around me with its deadly power, as the warrior on the battlefield hears the buzz of the bullets around him, I was able to enter perfectly into the feelings of those soldiers who love their lives and who know that their death will plunge hearts they love into despair.
“There is but one thing,” said Frederick in reply to me when I communicated this thought to him, “in which the soldier has the advantage of the fever-patient—the consciousness of duty fulfilled. Still I agree with you in this: to die with indifference, to die with joy, as we are on all hands told to do, is what no happy man can do—only those could who were exposed in former times to all the ills of life, or those who have nothing left to lose in a peaceful existence, or such as can only free their brethren from shame and an intolerable yoke by their own death!”
When the danger was over how I enjoyed my recovery—my new birth! That was a feast for both of us, like the happiness of our reunion after the Schleswig-Holstein war, but still different. Then the joy came with a single stroke, and here little by little, and, besides, since that time we were closer to each other—ever closer.
My father had visited me daily during my illness, and shown much concern; but for all that I knew that he would not have taken my death to heart overwhelmingly. He was much more attached to his two younger daughters than to me, and the dearest of all to him was Otto. I had become to some extent estranged from him by my two marriages, and particularly by the second, and perhaps also by my totally different way of thinking. When I was completely recovered, which was in the middle of June, he removed to Grumitz, and gave me a warm invitation to come to him there with my little Rudolf. But I preferred, since Frederick was prevented from leaving the city by his duties, to take my country holiday quite close to Vienna, where my husband could visit me daily, and so I hired a summer lodging at Hietzing.
My sisters, still under Aunt Mary’s protection, travelled to Marienbad. In her last letter from Prague, Lilly wrote to me as follows, amongst other matters: “I must confess to you that Cousin Conrad begins to be by no means displeasing to me. During several cotillons I was in the humour to have said ‘Yes’ if he had put the important question. But he omitted to take the decisive step at the right moment. When it was settled that we were to leave the city he did, it is true, make me an offer again, but then I had again an impulse to refuse. I have become so used to do this to poor Conrad that when he used the accustomed form to me: ‘Will you not now become my wife, Lilly?’ my tongue replied quite automatically: ‘I have no idea of doing so.’ But this time I added: ‘Ask me again in six months.’ That means that I am going to examine my heart during the summer. If I long after him in his absence, if
