the table with his head in his hands in tearless sobbing. After a time Beate goes to him. "Dear Michael,” she says, "Richard and I fought our way out of this" (haben uns durchgekämpft) "many years ago. That is why you see us so calm. What happened before those years we will each of us expiate." He springs up. The reckoning between him and Richard will be simple enough, he tells her; but how could she reconcile it to God and her conscience to deal thus with him for half a lifetime? Why did she not come to him and say, "Set me free"? "That is what he wished," she replies. "He was the honorable one; and up to to-day he does not know why I refused. I cared too much for him and his life to hang upon him as the survival of a scandal. I wanted to be his preserver. And therefore have I taken upon myself this lifelong lie, therefore" But Michael interrupts her. "And I had no existence at all in your calculations?" She replies that her lie has procured for him fifteen happy years. Let him blame her if he will, but let him not forget that. Her calmness confounds him. "Had you in your sin no presentiment of God's punishment? no remorse? no consciousness of guilt-nothing?" he inquires amazed. And she answers, "You have asked me a question, Michael; I ask you one in return. Must all which we derive from the very depths of our nature be ground down, as in a mortar, to guilt and ruth? Sin? I know of no sin when I did the best that by my very nature I was capable of doing. I did not let myself be broken in pieces by your moral law! That was my right of selfpreservation. Very likely it was also self-murder. Anyhow, my existencethat has for years been a great chain of suffering. I have had to purchase it from hour to hour in the apothecary's shop. But this poor bit of life that I love so much, so much, I prize a thou

sand times too highly to disavow it before you or any one. So do I love it, and so do I love all that was about me -even you Michael, laugh if you will, even you! and if I" But here her strength fails her, she gasps for breath and supports herself against a chair. Then she asks, "Which of you two will help me to the door?" Richard makes an involuntary movement towards her, but is withheld by Michael. "Beate," he says, "for the future you must go your way alone." She makes a great effort of will and leaves the room.

"And now," Michael inquires of Richard, "What now"? "What you please," the other replies; "revile me; shoot me; I shall not try to hinder you." One of them must go out of the world: that is clear to Michael. As clear is it that a duel is impossible: that would bring a scandal on the party, and this he has pledged himself to avoid. Then the voice of Norbert is heard without. Michael has a sudden inspiration and calls the lad in. He bethinks him of a conversation the day previously-we have had it in a former scene-in which, as though coming events had cast their shadows before, points of honor had been discussed, and the ingenuous youth had expressed himself in a noble and striking way pleasing to the elder man. Norbert enters. Michael, controlling himself, refers to the talk which is in his mind, and in his puzzle-headed way vainly tries to recall the young man's words which had so impressed him. Richard comes to his assistance. "This is what you said, my boy: 'If a man of honor acknowledges his guilt (erkennt seine Schuld) and expiation is demanded of him, he is his own most fitting judge." "Yes," Norbert replies, smiling with astonishment that his words have made such an impression: "Yes, I remember saying that." "Well," observes Michael, "those are not precisely the words of yours that I wanted

to remember; but they will do. Suppose that to such a man the one whom he has wronged says, ‘One of us two is one too many in the world,' what then?" The youth is surprised at the gravity of the question. His father interposes: "Suppose the wrong is the worst that can come between two men, suppose that the one has taken the other's wife, has the deceived husband the right, when the reckoning comes, to demand the other's life?" "I think he has," the youth responds; "it is self-evident: and if the deceiver of whom you speak is really a man of honor-although I do not quite see how the two things hold together-then will he, I opine, rather seek death than let himself be enforced to it."

Thus is sentence of death passed upon Richard by his own son. He acquiesces in it, and tells Michael he will carry it out within twenty-four hours. But Beate divines his purpose, and intends to thwart it. He goes off to the Reichstag and delivers there amid tumult of acclaim, the speech which he had prepared in defence of the sanctity of marriage. Then Meixner procures an interview with him and returns the compromising letters, which Richard had thought destroyed. It is too late. Next Beate seeks him. She has read his speech, she has divined the secret application of portions of it to himself. She knows that it is his farewell to the world. She feels that death is hanging over them. He swears to her that he has never had greater love for life, that never has his whole being clung closer to the world, than since he delivered that speech, and realized again his own power. "And yet you must die!" she says. "Truly," he replies, seeking to put her off by an affected jocosity, "but as late as may be." "Are we greeting death with a laugh?" she asks. Perhaps she may be dead tomorrow, who knows? Last night her heart so troubled her that she doubted

whether she should see the next day. But he must wait: he dare not follow her, for scandal would arise, and would be the bane of their children so recently betrothed. And then she tells him that early next morning he will receive a letter from Michael bidding him come to luncheon to meet some political friends: he must come; it is a means of preventing scandal, of annihilating rumor. Unwillingly he promises to come. I leave the rest of this singularly powerful and pathetic scene to be read by those who can and will. To translate it is impossible within my present limits. To abridge it would be sacrilege.

So Richard goes next day to the luncheon which is given in his honor. And he and Beate, and even poor honest Michael, strain every nerve to act well their festive parts, and to conceal all trace of the ghastly tragedy in which they are involved. The Secretary of State, Prince Usingen and Baron von Brachtmann are the other guests, and the conversation, as is natural, turns on Richard's great speech. A phrase which the Secretary of State uses about the soundness, the ethical equilibrium of society, makes Beate laugh. She is more than usually sparkling and daring, and when the minister remarks on her laughter, she explains: "Ah, my dear Excellency, how often have I heard that old song about ethics and equilibrium and soundness and society; I am convinced that people sang the same melody in the days when virgins were sacrificed to Astarte. It is to this Astare ideal that all our souls are now sacrificed: yes, individuals must perish by millions for that sweet 'soundness' of society!" Michael is almost moved from his self-possession by her audacity, and Richard adroitly changes the conversation. He will venture to say a word for the soundness of one society, and that is the society of the house of Kelling

hausen; he speaks of his many obligations to Michael, the latest being in the matter of the election, and proposes the health of their host, which is drunk with enthusiasm. Michael responding, in a characteristically rambling speech, proposes the health of the conquering hero, Baron Richard: Er lebe! Beate, who begins to show signs of much physical suffering, catches at the words "Er lebe," and repeats them, and then makes her little speech. "Er lebe": but who really lives? Who dares to live? Sometimes something blooms, something shines over us, and then we tremble together secretly, secretly, like transgressors. That is all we get from life. Do you think that they live, that she does? her existence has become a long struggle with death for body and soul: she sleeps hardly at all: every breath she draws is as a godsend to her: and yet she has never unlearnt laughter, yet she is full of gratitude and happiness, yet does she lift her glass and call from the fulness of her soul, "Es lebe das Leben." But her glass sinks, and she looks wildly around. The excitement has been too much for her. She had better leave the room. Secretary of State offers her his arm. No, she will go alone. She will rejoin them presently.

The

She does not rejoin them. In a few minutes there is a sound as of a heavy fall in the neighboring room. Then a piercing shriek is heard from Ellen. Beate has dropped down dead. A physician, summoned in all haste, pronounces her death due to a sudden failure of the long-affected heart.

Before the feast she had given her husband a letter, making him promise not to open it till the guests had departed. They are all gone except Richard. Michael reads the letter ana hands it to him; it is for him too. No, he cannot read it. Michael reads it to him. She tells them that she feels a victim must fall. Better she than

Richard. He has his work before him. She has lived out her life. She has taken poison at a festive gathering, the better to conceal her purpose. Should the real cause of her death be discovered, it will be imputed to an accident. "I die as I have lived," so her letter ends, "a seeker after happiness, for his happiness, for thine, for our children's. Forgive the sorrow I must cause thee, and take my thanks for all." "Our compact is at an end," Michael says to Richard; "I give you back your word." "Yes," Richard replies: "live I must, not that I wish to: live, because I am dead."

I trust this brief sketch of Sudermann's new play may serve to indicate, however faintly, its great dramatic power. But I must add a tribute to the perfection of the workmanship. Although his ethos is essentially German -Germanissimum we may say so that an adequate translation is really impossible, his touch is everywhere light and dexterous, rare merit in a German writer. And everywhere there is the unmistakable note of a proper and spontaneous form. Every character stands before us in artistic completeness. Michael von Kellinghausen, the highminded, simple-hearted, quite unintellectual gentleman; Richard, noblygifted, keenly susceptible, his honor rooted in dishonor, his faith unfaithful, and his truth false; his bright, impetuous son Norbert; the cautious official Ludwig von Völkerlingk; the practical politician Baron von Brachtmann, Prince Usingen, the "enfant terrible" of the party, as Brachtmann calls him, who sees the nudity and the crudity of things with a distressing clearness, and says what he sees with a distressing plainness; and Herr von Berkelwitz, the matter-of-fact country squire, "ein schlichter Mann vom Lande," as he describes himself-all are living figures, not mere puppets of the playwright's show. But it is in his women that

Sudermann's rare psychological power is most fully displayed. Leonie, Richard's wife, comes upon the stage only once, in that most effective scene with Beate, and we hear of her less than half-a-dozen times. But, somehow, the soul of the woman is revealed to us; a devotee of fashion, a worshipper of society, her life a round of routs and visits, and church-going-but even her church-going a kind of visit! as her son Norbert remarks. In striking contrast to her, and an admirable foil, is Ellen, the simple, ingenuous loving maiden whom Norbert loves and is to marry. I know not where to look for a more charming picture of a young German girl.

But it is, of course, round Beate that the supreme interest of the play centres: Beate, the type of the new German woman. Of the old, it might be said, as of the Roman matron, "Domi mansit, lanam fecit." Far other are the occupations of the new. She reads everything, she discusses everything, she thinks everything, and—as a ruleshe knows nothing. She has drifted, so to speak, from her time-honored moorings-whither? She makes one think of the Ancient Mariner

Alone on a wide, wide sea;
So lonely 'twas that God Himself
Scarce seemed there to be.

In place of the old theological and ethical traditions which ruled and fenced in her existence, she has picked up some philosophy, or shreds of philosophies, apt to prove in practice a not very effective substitute. For bright, impetuous, daring Beate, charming even at forty, with her fading hair and failing health, "E's lebe das Leben," sums the whole matter up; to live out one's life, to follow one's impulsesand, to care for nothing further. It is an old doctrine enough, and, as I remember, was clearly formulated by Philodemus, an Epicurean philosopher,

known to us only fragmentarily, through the Herculanean papyri. "Since man, by the enjoyment of life, has attained to the chief good, he is not to concern himself with what may afterwards befall."

It is really a melancholy doctrine, though it wears a contrary appearance. It demands of life more than life can give. We may say of Sudermann as was said of another, "Il est allé au fond de tout, c'est à dire jusqu'à la peine." He knows the subtle and complex springs of "that dread machinery of sin and sorrow," human existence. This is the secret of his power. Is he a decadent, as is sometimes said? Well, I suppose we are all decadents, more or less; we breathe, whether we will or no, the air of this decadent age. But Sudermann's work is informed by a very different motive from that which we find in most contemporary playwrights. Nearly all of them exhibit a certain materialism of imagination, which issues in crudity, in license, when it does not manifest itself as simple vulgarity. Sudermann's inspiration is essentially spiritual, like that of Nature herself. I do not know whether he is versed in the tragedians of ancient Hellas. But I do know that he has far more in common with Euripides than any dramatist of our time with whom I am acquainted. His subjects, indeed, are not gods or heroes; he takes them from every-day life: but he invests them with a charm which quells the commonplace. And through his work is that deep underlying thought of the Greek drama that in the moral world law rules: law fenced about, as all law is, by penalties; law which we must obey, or incur the retribution which, by the nature of things, attends its violation. This is the deep verity which informs his pages, as he exhibits the action of the great elemental passions of humanity, always full of strife and suffering. He is too true

an artist to write merely to point a moral. But those verses of Schiller might well serve as the epigraph of this drama:

Dies eine fühl' ich und erkenn' es klar,

Das Leben ist der Güter hochstes nicht,

The Fortnightly Review.

Der Ubel grosstes aber ist die Schuld.'

I take leave of this last work of his, feeling that it is "vital and spermatic, not leaving the reader where it found him: he shuts the book a richer man." W. S. Lilly.

VI. ON THE FIELD OF HONOR.

My military passion found free vent among this band of ragamuffins who let me be their general. I armed them with cudgels; I trained them in the military exercise and I led them on the march with a tin trumpet and a paper flag. I was forever telling them of an imaginary enemy, with whom some day or other we must measure our strength, and against whom their generous wrath daily gained in vigor. So easy is it to inflame the imagination of the multitude by tales of glory and honor, even against an enemy which does not exist! I honestly lived in the continual expectation of some great test to come, whence or how I did not know. There was in another quarter of the city another little Bonaparte, who was later my school-mate at Modena, and who is now a colonel of bersaglieri, who was also, at that time, drilling a little army against an imaginary foe. For each of us to learn of the existence of the other, to recognize him as an enemy and to realize that a conflict of the two hosts was inevitable was one and the same thing. It is true that on both sides we were

1 This, this I know: this, this to me is clear, That life is not man's chief, man's highest good, That of all human evils, guilt is worst.

Italians and inhabitants of the same city while our common country was involved in a war against Russia. But we belonged to different parishes and nothing more was needed to open an abyss between us. We used to say in disgust, "Those Sant' Ambrogio boys!" They, in equal scorn, "Those Santa Maria fellows!" Grown men and also nations, do much the same thing. We observed in our intercourse all the proper forms of diplomacy. There was a formal declaration of war presented in writing by two ragged emissaries. The two armies, each composed of some twenty scalawags, started one fine morning at the appointed hour from their respective encampments and approached by the appointed line of march.

I had donned a blue and white striped scarf made from an old window curtain and I brandished a wooden dagger covered with silver paper, which one of my brothers had made me. I was formidable in my own eyes. But when at the end of the street there appeared at the head of his troops the hostile general, I was forced, with bitter humiliation, to admit that he was much more finely armed than I; for he

• Translated for The Living Age.