THE LOVE OF ADAM LUX.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume V, Issue 46, 15 November 1890, Page 8

THE LOVE OF ADAM LUX.

.-V -i'ifT’SJ' spring twilight, in the year 1793, a man young yJriKnh an " handsome sat writing in the chamlier of a f secluded house, not far from the old Electoral • I ’alaee of Mayence. . Suddenly he dropped his pen with a startled ,>CX cry. The face of a woman, dim and yet periectly distinct, hau ap|>eared betwixt him and '‘is work. He looked tip. It hung, Hower-like, in the air above him. He rushed towards the open window it wasthere, smiling sadly in the fading light. Adam Lux stretched out his arms passionately to the vision*Ah, you come to me again!’ he said, ‘who are you ? Why do yon pursue me ' Beautiful shadow, whither shall Igo to find your substance'! Do yon exist in the Hesh, or are you only a spirit —delusive as maddening?’ ‘Adam—Cousin Adam,’ a girl’s voice called from the court below : ' leave your stupid writing and come down to me. It is I Margarethe ?' Adam Lux passed his hands across his eyes. The voice of Margarethe dissolver! the spell which held him. His dream-maiden vanished. He descended a cork screw stair to a court full of shallows, where a girl dressed a- for a fete, stood dabbling her plump hands in the fountain. ‘ You have forgotten my birthday, cousin,’ she pouted. ‘Of late, you think of nothing but liberty, fraternity, equality, like those mad folks in Paris, who have cut oft' the head of their king.’ ‘ Pardon me, I <//*/ forget ! I am but a sorry lover, Margarethe.' She sighed deeply. ‘ You are no lover of mine, Adam—ours is a betrothal of hands, not of hearts. You eare nothing for love.’ He took a turn across the court. He had a tine face, with dark brows arching over violet eyes and Haxen hair, slightly powdered. A strange smile appeared on his lips. ‘ I love not flesh ami blood, Margarethe. but a phantom, a shadow,' he answered, with his eyes full of dreams. ‘ Listen ! It came to me one night as I was walking in the gardens of the Electoral Palace : a woman’s face white as marble, white as one of the garden lilies just blown : in the chin a deep dimple ; about the perfect mouth an expression of sadness and gravity ; a face with great eyes of unfathomable darkness, fringed with lashes as black as night, and hair dark also and lustrous, the full rich curls, tipped with auburn, falling against a neck like a column of pear).' ‘< Hi !’ cried Margarethe, in dismay, ' how very beautiful slit must lie ! Surely there is no woman like that in all Mayence !' ‘ True,’ he answered, ‘ nor in the world, I fear. It is the ghost of some Greek goddess that has entered my brain, and will not be dislodged. To-night, she came to me again in the chamber above-stairs. It was your voice that frightened her away.' Tears stood in Margarethe's eyes. She was jealous and perplexed. ‘ It was wrong of me to tell you these things,' he continued. ‘ You are e mere child, Margarethe, with the heart of a child. Come, let ns talk of other matters. A great honour has been conferred upon me by the people of Mayence. I have been chosen a Deputy to go to Paris and request the annexation of this city to France.’ ‘Paris!' sobbed Margarethe. ‘That is a long way off! When will you go ‘To-morrow by diligence.' ‘ You will never, never come back, Adam !’ ‘ Heaven only knows,' he answered quietly. Lux was an ardent Republican. The mission to Paris suited him well. His handsome head was full of other and more dangerous phantoms than dream-maidens. On the following day he kissed poor, weeping Margarethe good bye in the old court, and started for the French capital, where Jean Paul Marat was then at the height of his terrible power. Lux took lodgings in the Rue St. Honore, and hurried to the Convention to solicit, in the name of German Republicans, the annexation of his native city to France. The Chamber on that day was full of tumult. Marat hideous, loud-mouthed—preaching massacre and anarchy, was the leader of La Montagne. As he ranted in the Tribune. Adam Lux looked at him in disgust. His head was too large for his body ; his lean, sickly face was unspeakably repulsive. He wore a patched and dirty waistcoat, cotton-velvet trousers, stained with ink, shoes full of nails and tied with pack-thread, a ragged shirt, and greasy hair confined with a leathern thong. <>n his deeply cleft mouth a sardonic grin appeared continually. His look was full of insolence and power. ‘ A monster in body and in soul !’ thought Adam Lux, who found the external aspects of liberty in Paris far from pleasant. July came. One hot and breathless night Lux left the Convention in a dejected frame of mind. He felt mocked, deluded, discouraged. A score of high and haughty heads had fallen since morning in the sack of sawdust at the foot of the guillotine. He stopped on the Point Neuf to look at the sunset behind the trees of the Champs Elysees. That, too. seemed a vast streak of blood. With a shudder he turned and walked away to the gardens of the Palais Royal. There the young Deputy began pacing aimlessly about, absorbed in unhappy thought. Presently he heard a light step. A woman was advancing towards him under the galleries. Adam Lux saw a face, young and of amazing beauty, the skin like alabaster, the splendid unfathomably daik, a mass of chestnut curls, with auburn tips, clustering against a dazzling neck. It was his dream maiden in the Hesh, the substance of that mysterious shadow which had twice appeared to him in his own city of Mayence. With an absorbed air sheglided by. Her white dress brushed him gently. His heart gave a furious Ismnd. He turned and followed her.

She entered the shop of a cutler: the young Deputy entered also. She advanced to the counter, ami said something to the man l>ehind it. Lux failed to catch the words.

In the lurid drama of the French Revolution no fact is better authenticated than the self-sacrifice of Adam Lux. Such wasthc highly-wrought condition of people's minds that death lost its terrors in the heat of political strife, and men and women dared *ll sort- of dangers on la-half of those- they loved or admired.

but the rich, cultivated voice was that of a born gentle woman.

The cutler produced a tray of knives. In the shadow of the shop-door Adam Lux saw her select one—a poniard knife, with an ebony haft. ‘ The price ?’ she asked. ' Three francs, eitoyenne,' answered the cutlet. She put the money on the counter, concealed the knife under her silk kerchief, anti returned to the garden. As she seated herself on one of the stone benches abutting on the arcades, Adam Lux paused at her side. ‘ For pity’s sake,’ he entreated, ‘tell me who you aie? I have known you for a long time, but your name—-what is your name?'

She started and looked up. ‘You have known me for a long time, ?’ she echoed, gravely. ‘I do not understand you.’ ‘ I am the deputy from Mayence,’ he said, trying to speak calmly. ‘lt was at Mayence that you twice appeared to me. For days and weeks my sleeping anil waking dreams have been full of you. I recognised you the instant that I saw you in this garden ; it was just "before you entered the cutler's shop.’ A slight alarm dawned in her eyes. Her hand went up to her silk Helm, under which she had hidden the knife. Did she think him a n.adman ? ‘ One should not dream in these perilous days, i-ift,yen,' she said sternly, ‘there is little profit in dreams. He who loves liberty must act.’ ‘ I perceive that you are an aristocrat : you belong to the nobles, but your name —your name ?' he insisted. She smiled sadly. ‘ Pardon, I cannot tell it now, eituyen, but before many hours it will be in every mouth.' She arose from the bench. He put out a hand to detain her. ‘ Stay ! Stay !' he entreated. ‘Do not leave me—l love you ardently. Strange, incomprehensible as this passion may seem to you, it will either save or destroy me. I claim you ! Whoever you are, know that you belong to me ; or why were you revealed to me in the spirit before my eyes could look on your living, breathing beauty ? If- you go like this, leaving me no clue to your whereabouts, I may never see you again. ’ Gravely, coldly, she answered, • Do not talk to me of love, ritoyen ; I cannot comprehend you—l belong only to France ! Before the Revolution I was a Republican. You will surely see me again, and then.’ with a strange and solemn expression, ‘ yon will undeistand everything. Now, citvyen, adieu.’ ‘ Promise,’ he urged, wildly, ‘ that it shall be so—that I shall see you again.’ ‘ I promise,’ she answered, and moved rapidly away. Another day dawned anil dwindled. It was the 13th of July, the anniversary eve of the fall of the Bastille. The heat was intense, and the streets of Paris swartped with people. Adam Lux left the Convention at twilight. Marat the horrible was ill; he had not appeared in the chamber that day. Engrossed with his mysterious love, rather than the affairs of the Republic, Adam Lux dined at a cafe with other deputies. In the midst of their meal Harriot, the commandant of the National Guards, appeared in the door of the cafe. ‘ Look to yourselves, deputies !' he shouted, ‘ Marat is dead ! He has just been assassinated, and by the hand of a young girl.’ The Deputies with one accord rushed into the street. A terrified mob was surging by, filling-the air with cries and imprecations. Lux found himself swept away with it to the Rue des Cordeliers, where Marat lived. It was a small dilapidated house, and about its door that raging roaring multitude surged like a sea. Yes, the leader of La Montagne bad been stabbed to death by the hand of a woman. Adam Lux pressing up to the threshold, looked and saw the murderess coming down the stair, her arms piniored, bayonets surrounding her, the Hambeaux of the gendarmes glaring upon a face which had in it the sublimity of supreme sacrifice. It was his dream-maiden. ‘ It is the face of an angel,'said a woman near Adam Lux. ‘ Who is she ?’ Another voice answered, ‘An aristocrat, who has journeyed from Caen to do this deed—her name is Charlotte < 'orday.’ A squad of fusiliers rushed up and cleared a passage for the prisoner. ‘ Poor people !’ murmured Charlotte <'orday, looking with pitying eyes upon the howling mob, ‘ you wish my death, when you owe me an altar for delivering you" from a monster.’ It was eight o'clock of a July morning, when up the dark steep stair in the basement wall of the Palais de Justice the gendarmes conducted Charlotte Corday to her trial before the Revolutionary tribunal. As she took her place on the bench of the prisoners, the maledictions of the people died away in murmurs of admiration. Never before had murder worn such an aspect. Her beauty was marvellous; her firmness and intrepidity amazed even her judges. ‘ Details are needless,’she said, calmly; ‘it was I who killed Marat !’ ‘ What did you think to effect by it?’ ‘ Restore peace to my country. I took his life to save Fi ance. ’ ‘ Why did you hate him ?’ ‘ For Ins crimes.’ ‘ Do you, then, think that you have assassinated all the Marats ?’ ‘Since he is dead, others will tremble.’ Adam Lux was seated near the prisoner. His eyes never left her face. When the President of the Tribunal passed sentence of death, the Mayence Deputy leaped from his chair, and extended his arms in passionate protest. • No, no !' he cried, wildly ; ‘ tor the love of lieaven, no !’ It was the only voice raised against her fate, and she recognised the man who hail conceived for her such a strange and mystic passion ; he was faithful in this terrible hour—he dared to speak in the face of her judges. She turned and thanked him with an eloquent look. As though a sword had pierced his heart, Adam Lux reeled, and went down in a swoon to the floor of the Tribunal.

The gendarmes conducted Charlotte Corday back to the prison. With peifect composure she made readv for the scaffold. As Sanson, the executioner, entered to prepare her for death, she took from his hand the scissors, cut a long curl of her chestnut hair, and gave it to Madame the wife of the gaoler. ‘ Send this with my fervent thanks,' she said, ‘to the Deputy from Mayence.’

Sanson imayeddier in the red robe of a murderes*, cut her magnificent hair, and then liound her slender wrists. ‘ This," she said, ‘ is the toilet of death, arranged by rude hands, but it leads to immortality.’ As the death-cart left the prison, a terrific storm burst over Paris; but the countless swarms of people in the squares and streets remained undiminished. The furious fishwives shrieked around the tumbril. Charlotte Corday did not seem to hear them, much less to resent their insults. Her face wore an unearthly beauty and serenity ; there was no shadow of fear upon it. At the entrance of the Rue St. Honore, a man awaited the death-eart. He carried his hat in his hand—the rain pelted on his fair hair. It was Adam Lux, haggard, pale as ashes.. He bowed deeply to the prisoner. She started slightly, and a smile of pensive sweetness appeared for an instant on her lips. He Stepped behind the tumbril, and, with uncovered head, followed it to the foot of the scaffold. Attended by this mysterious love, Charlotte Corday went to the guillotine. As she mounted the scaffold, her eyes fell upon Adam Lux, who stood at its foot. Shesmiled, and looked quickly up to the summer sky. where the clouds were now breaking. It was a farewell, and also a promise of future meeting. The next moment she had placed herself under the knife. The next day a man entered the < onvention, so haggard, so changed, that he was hardly recognised as the handsome young deputy fiom Mayence. With the recklessness of one who had no more to hope or to fear, he ascended the tribune, and began to impeach and attack Marat's associates. In. vain his friends warned him to desist. Hotly, fiercely, he vindicated the young Norman lady who had sacrificed her own life to rid France of a wholesale assassin. He published the ‘ Apology of Charlotte Corday,’ and was immediately arrested and sent to the Abbaye Prison. As he enteied its sinister door, he Hung up his hat and cried joyfully, ‘I shall die, then, for her !’ He was brought before the Revolutinarv Tribunal. When the act of accusation was read to him, lie said, with a scornful, curling lip : ‘ I am a stranger to your laws as well as to your crimes. If I have deserved punishment, it is not among Frenchmen that I should suffer.' From his prison he wrote a farewell letter to little Margarethe, tar away in the secluded house at Mayence. ‘ I die for the woman 1 love,' he said. ‘ tin the scaffold her spirit awaits mine. Death will unite us. I go with a glad heart, for I no longer desire life.’ He dressed himself foi the scaffold like a bridegroom for the presence of his bride. His lilac coat was embroidered with gold thread. His powdered hair, his knee-breeches, and waistcoat of white satin, and frills of finest lace, wave him the air of a courtier. ‘At last I shall see her again,' he said, pressin*' to his lips the chestnut curl the gaoler’s wife had given to’him. He mounted the guillotine with a smile on his lips, and a rapt, uplifted look in his eyes. ‘At la«t !’ he repeated, and stretched himself on the weigh-plank. So ended one of the strangest attachments the world ever