FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105  
106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   >>   >|  
ned to her lover, who promised to inquire. Racowitza brought her information about the Countess, the casket, and other "sensations"--only to excite her curiosity the more. Finally a friend, Frau Hirsemenzel, undertook to introduce her to the notorious Socialist. The introduction took place at a party, and if her account is to be trusted, no romance could be more dramatic than the actuality. They loved one another at first sight, conversed with freedom, and he called her by an endearing name as he offered her his arm to escort her home. "Somehow it did not seem at all remarkable," she says, "that a stranger should thus call me 'Du' on first acquaintance. We seemed to fit to one another so perfectly." She was in her nineteenth year, Lassalle in his thirty-ninth. The pair did not see one another again for some months, not in fact until Helen visited Berlin as the guest of a certain lawyer Holthoff. Here she met Lassalle at a concert, and the friendly lawyer connived at their being more than once together. At a ball, on one occasion, Lassalle asked her what she would do if he were sentenced to death, and she beheld him ascending the scaffold. "I should wait till your head was severed," was her answer, "in order that you might look upon your beloved to the last, and then--I should take poison." He was pleased with her reply, but declared that there was no fear--his star was in the ascendant! And so it seemed; for although young Racowitza even then accosted him in the ballroom, the friendly Holthoff soon arranged an informal betrothal; and Lassalle was on the eve of a great public triumph which seemed more likely to take him to the throne than to the scaffold. To many this will seem an exaggeration. Yet hear Prince Bismarck in the Reichstag seventeen years after Lassalle's death:-- He was one of the most intellectual and gifted men with whom I have ever had intercourse, a man who was ambitious in high style, but who was by no means Republican: he had very decided national and monarchical sympathies, and the idea which he strove to realize was the German Empire, and therein we had a point of contact. Lassalle was extremely ambitious, and it was perhaps a matter of doubt to him whether the German Empire would close with the Hohenzollern dynasty or the Lassalle dynasty; but he was monarchical through and through. Lassalle was an energetic and very intellectual man, to talk with
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105  
106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
Lassalle
 

Holthoff

 

ambitious

 
intellectual
 
lawyer
 
Racowitza
 

dynasty

 

German

 

Empire

 

monarchical


friendly
 
scaffold
 

answer

 

arranged

 

ballroom

 

severed

 

public

 

betrothal

 

informal

 

poison


pleased
 

ascendant

 

beloved

 
declared
 

accosted

 
Reichstag
 
strove
 

realize

 

sympathies

 

Republican


decided

 

national

 
contact
 
Hohenzollern
 

energetic

 
extremely
 

matter

 

exaggeration

 

Prince

 

throne


Bismarck

 

seventeen

 
intercourse
 

gifted

 
triumph
 
dramatic
 

actuality

 

romance

 
trusted
 

account