Berlin and Sans-Souci | Page 5

want of it."
"We? whom do you mean by we?" asked Fredersdorf, with a contemptuous shrug of the shoulders.
"I, in my own person, above all others, need gold. You can well understand, my brother, that a student as I am has no superfluous gold, even to pay his tailor's bills, much less to buy black rams. Captain Kleist, in whose house the assembly meets to-night, has already offered up far more valuable things than a score of black rams; he has sacrificed his health, his rest, and his domestic peace. His beautiful wife finds it strange, indeed, that he should seek the devil every night everywhere else than in her lovely presence."
"Yes, I understand that! The bewitching Madame Kleist must ever remain the vain-glorious and coquettish Louise von Schwerin; marriage has infused no water in her veins."
"No! but it has poured a river of wine in the blood of her husband, and in this turbid stream their love and happiness is drowned. Kleist is but a corpse, whom we must soon bury from our sight. The king has made separation and divorce easy; yes, easier than marriage. Is it not so, my brother? Ah, you blush; you find that your light-hearted brother has more observant eyes than you thought, and sees that which you intended to conceal. Yes, yes! I have indeed seen that you have been wounded by Cupid's arrow, and that your heart bleeds while our noble king refuses his consent to your marriage."
"Ah, let me once discover this holy mystery--once learn how to make gold, and I will have no favor to ask of any earthly monarch; I shall acknowledge no other sovereign than my own will."
"And to become the possessor of this secret, and your own master, you require nothing but a black ram. Create for us, then, my powerful and wealthy brother, a black ram, and the work is done!"
"Alas! to think," cried Fredersdorf, "that I cannot absent myself; that I must fold my hands and wait silently and quietly! What slavery is this! but you, you are not in bondage as I am. The whole world is before you; you can seek throughout the universe for this blood-offering demanded by the devil."
"Give us gold, brother, and we will seek; without gold, no black ram; without the black ram, no devil!"
Fredersdorf disappeared a moment and returned with a well-filled purse, which he handed to his brother. "There, take the gold; send your messengers in every quarter; go yourself and search. You must either find or create him. I swear to you, if you do not succeed, I will withdraw my protection from you; you will be only a poor student, and must maintain yourself by your studies."
"That would be a sad support, indeed," said the young man, smiling. "I am more than willing to choose another path in life. I would, indeed, prefer being an artist to being a philosopher."
"An artist!" cried Fredersdorf, contemptuously; "have you discovered in yourself an artist's vein?"
"Yes; or rather, Eckhof has awakened my sleeping talent."
"Eckhof--who is Eckhof?"
"How? you ask who is Eckhof? You know not, then, this great, this exalted artist, who arrived here some weeks since, and has entranced every one who has a German heart in his bosom, by his glorious acting? I saw him a few days since in Golsched's Cato. Ah! my brother, on that evening it was clear to me that I also was born for something greater than to sit in a lonely study, and seek in musty books for useless scraps of knowledge. No! I will not make the world still darker and mistier for myself with the dust of ancient books; I will illuminate my world by the noblest of all arts--I will become an actor!"
"Fantastic fool!" said his brother. "A GERMAN ACTOR! that is to say, a beggar and a vagabond! who wanders from city to city, and from village to village, with his stage finery, who is laughed at everywhere, even as the monkeys are laughed at when they make their somersets over the camels' backs; it might answer to be a dancer, or, at least, a French actor."
"It is true that the German stage is a castaway--a Cinderella-- thrust aside, and clothed with sackcloth and ashes, while the spoiled and petted step-child is clothed in gold-embroidered robes. Alas! alas! it is a bitter thing that the French actors are summoned by the king to perform in the royal castle, while Schonemein, the director of the German theatre, must rent the Council-house for a large sum of money, and must pay a heavy tax for the permission to give to the German public a German stage. Wait patiently, brother, all this shall be changed, when the mystery of mysteries is discovered, when we have found the black ram! I bless the