On the Cross: A Romance of the Passion Play at Oberammergau
Ludwig Gross smiled bitterly. "I expected that question, it comes from
all sides. The Passion Play does not enrich individuals, for the few
hundred marks, more or less, which each of the six hundred actors
receives, do not cover the deficit of all the work which the people
must neglect. The revenue is partly consumed by the expenses, partly
used for the common benefit, for schools and teachers. The principal
sums are swallowed by the Leine and the Ammer! The ravages of these
malicious mountain streams require means which our community could
never raise, save for the receipts of the Passion Play, and even these
are barely sufficient for the most needful outlay."
"Is it possible? Those little streams!" cried the countess.
"Would flood all Ammergau," Gross answered, "if we did not constantly
labor to prevent it. We should be a poor, stunted people, worn down by
fever, our whole mountain valley would be a desolate swamp. The Passion
Play alone saves us from destruction--the Christ who once ruled the
waves actually holds back from us the destroying element which would
gradually devour land and people. But, for that very reason, the
individual has learned here, as perhaps nowhere else in the world, to
live and sacrifice himself for the community! The community is
comprised to us in the idea of the Passion Play. We know that our
existence depends upon it, even our intellectual life, for it protects
us from the savagery into which a people continually struggling with
want and need so easily lapses. It raises us above the common herd,
gives even the poorest man an innate dignity and self-respect, which
never suffer him to sink to base excesses."
"I understand that," the countess answered.
"Then can you wonder that not one of us hesitates to devote property,
life, and every power of his soul to this work of saving our home, our
poor, oppressed home, ever forced to straggle for its very existence?"
"What a man!" the countess involuntarily exclaimed aloud. Ludwig Gross
had folded his arms across his breast, as if to restrain the pulsations
of his throbbing heart. His whole being thrilled with the deepest,
noblest emotions. He rose and took his hat, like a person whose
principle it is to shut every emotion within his own bosom, and when a
mighty one overpowers him, to hide himself that he may also hide the
feeling.
"No," cried the countess, "you must not leave me so, you rare,
noble-hearted man. You have just done me the greatest service which can
be rendered. You have made my heart leap with joy at the discovery of a
_genuine_ human being. Ah! it is a cordial in this world of
conventional masks! Give me your hand! I am beginning to understand why
Providence sent me here. That must indeed be a great cause which rears
such men and binds such powers in its service."
Ludwig Gross once more stood calm and quiet before her. "I thank you,
Countess, in the name of the cause for which I live and die."
"And, in the name of that cause, which I do not understand, yet dimly
apprehend, I beg you, let us be friends. Will you? Clasp hands upon
it."
A kindly expression flitted over the grave man's iron countenance, and
he warmly grasped the little hand.
"With all my heart, Countess."
She held the small, slender artist-hand in a close clasp, mournfully
reading in the calm features of the stern, noble face the story of
bitter suffering and sacrifice graven upon it.
CHAPTER IV.
EXPELLED FROM THE PLAY.
The storm had spent its fury, the winds sung themselves softly to
sleep, a friendly face looked down between the dispersing clouds and
cast its mild light upon the water, now gradually flowing away. The
swollen brooks rolled like molten silver--cold, glittering veins of the
giant mountain body, whose crown of snow bestowed by the tempest
glimmered with argent lustre in the pallid moonbeams. A breeze, chill
and strengthening as the icy breath of eternity, sweeping from the
white glaciers, entered the little window against which the countess
was dreamily leaning.
Higher and higher rose the moon, more and more transfigured and
transparent became the mountains, as if they were no longer compact
masses, only the spiritual image of themselves as it may have hovered
before the divine creative mind, ere He gave them material form.
The village lay silent before her, and silence pervaded all nature. Yet
to the countess it seemed as if it were the stillness which precedes a
great, decisive word.
"What hast Thou to say to me, Viewless One? Sacred stillness, what dost
thou promise? Will the moment come when I shall understand Thy
language, infinite Spirit? Or wilt Thou only half do Thy work in
me--only awake the feeling that Thou art near me, speaking to me,
merely to let me die of longing for the word I have failed to
comprehend.
"Woe betide me, if it is so! And yet--wherefore hast Thou implanted in
my heart this longing, this inexplicable yearning, which _nothing_
stills, no earthly advantage, neither the splendor and grandeur Thou
hast given me, nor the art and science which Thou didst endow me with
capacity to appreciate. On, on, strives my thirsting soul toward the
germ of all existence, toward _Thee_. Fain would I behold Thy face,
though the fiery vision should consume me!
"Source of wisdom, no knowledge gives Thee to me; source of love, no
love can supply Thy place. I have sought Thee in the temples of beauty,
but found Thee not; in the shining spheres of thought, but in vain; in
the love of human beings, but no matter how many hearts opened to me, I
flung them aside as worthless rubbish, for Thou wert not in them! When
will the moment come that Thou wilt appear before me in some noble form
suited to Thy Majesty, and tell the sinner that her dim longing, into
whatever errors it may have led her, yet obtained for her the boon of
beholding Thy face?"
Burning tears glittered in the moonlight in the countess' large,
beseeching eyes and, mastered by an inexplicable feeling, she sank on
her knees at the little window, stretching her clasped hands fervently
towards the shining orb, floating in her mild beauty and effulgence
above the conquered, flying clouds. The mountain opposite towered like
a spectral form in the moonlit atmosphere, the peak over which she had
driven that day, where she had seen that wondrous apparition, that man
with the grief of the universe in his gaze! What manner of man must he
have been whose glance, in a single moment, awed the person upon whom
it fell as if some higher power had given a look of admiration? Why had
it rested upon her with such strange reproach, as if saying: "You, too,
are a child of the world, like many who come here, unworthy of
salvation." Or was he angry with her because she had disturbed him in
his reveries? Yet why did he fix his eyes so intently upon hers, that
neither could avert them from the other? And all this happened in a
single moment--but a moment worthy of being held in remembrance
throughout an eternity. Who could he be? Would she see him again? Yes,
for in that meeting there was something far beyond mere accident.
An incomprehensible restlessness seized upon her, a longing to solve
the enigma, once more behold that face, that wonderful face whose like
she had never seen before!
The horse was stamping in its stall, but she did not heed it, the thin
candles had burned down and gone out long ago, the worm was gnawing the
ancient wainscoting, the clock in the church-steeple struck twelve. A
dog howled in the distance, one of the children in the workshop was
disturbed by the nightmare, it cried out in its sleep. Usually such
nocturnal sounds would have greatly irritated the countess' nerves. Now
she had no ears for them, before her lay the whole grand expanse of
mountain scenery, bathed in the moonlight, naked as a beautiful body
just risen from a glittering flood! And she was seized with an eager
longing to throw herself upon the bosom of this noble body, that she,
too, might be irradiated with light, steeped in its moist glow and cool
in the pure, icy atmosphere emanating from it, her fevered blood, the
vague yearning which thrilled her pulses. She hurriedly seized her hat
and cloak and stepped noiselessly into the workshop. What a picture of
poverty! The sisters and the little girl were lying on the floor upon
sacks of straw, the boy was asleep on the "couch," and the old man
dozed sitting erect in an antique arm-chair, with his feet on a stool.
"How relative everything is," thought the countess. "To these people
even so poor a bed as mine in yonder room is a forbidden luxury, which
it would be sinful extravagance to desire. And we, amid our rustling
curtains, on our silken cushions, resting on soft down, in rooms
illuminated with the magical glow of lamps which pour a flood of
roseate light on limbs stretched in comfortable repose, while the
bronze angels which support the mirror seem to laugh gaily at each
other, and from the toilet table intoxicating perfumes send forth their
sweet poison, to conjure up a tropical world of blossom before the
drowsy senses! While these sleeping-places here! On the bare floor and
straw, lighted by the cold glimmer of the moon, shining through
uncurtained windows and making the slumberers' lids quiver restlessly.
Not even undressed, cramped by their coarse, tight garments, their
weary limbs move uneasily on the hard beds! And this atmosphere! Five
human beings in the low room and the soot from the lamp which has been
smoking all the evening still filling the air. What lives! What
contrasts! Yet these people are content and do not complain of their
hard fate! Nay, they even disdain a favorable opportunity of improving
it by legitimate gains. Not one desires more than is customary and
usual. What pride, what grandeur of self-sacrifice this requires! _What
gives them this power?_"
Old Andreas woke and gazed with an almost terrified expression at the
beautiful figure of the countess, standing thoughtfully among the
sleepers. Starting up, he asked what she desired.
"Will you go to walk with me, Herr Gross?"
The old man rubbed his eyes to convince himself that he had slept so
long that the sun was shining into his room. But no. "It is the moon
which is so bright," he said to the countess.
"Why, of course, that is why I want to go out!" she repeated. The old
man quickly seized his hat from the chamois horn and stood ready to
attend her. "Are you not tired?" she said hesitatingly. "You have not
been in bed."
"Oh, that is of no consequence!" was his ready answer. "During the
Passion it is always so."
The countess shook her head; she knew that the people here said simply
"the Passion," but she could not understand why, during "the Passion,"
they should neither expect a bed nor the most trivial comfort or why,
for the sake of "the Passion," they should endure without a murmur, and
without succumbing, every exertion and deprivation. She saw in the
broad light which filled the room the old man's bright, keen eyes. "No,
these Ammergau people know no fatigue, their task supports them!"
The countess left the room with him. "Ah!" an involuntary exclamation
of delight escaped her lips as she emerged into the splendor of the
brilliant moonlight, and eagerly inhaled the air which blew cold and
strong, yet closed softly around her, strengthening and supporting her
like the waves of the sea. And, amid these shimmering, floating mists,
this "phosphorescence" of the earth, these waves of melting outlines,
softly dissolving shapes--the Kofel towered solitary in sharp relief,
like a vast reef of rocks, and on its summit glittered the metal-bound
cross, the symbol of Ammergau, sending its beams far and wide in the