The Short Stories

Frederick Schiller: The Short Stories

Foreword

The following Schiller short stories drag us into the intricacies of human destinies as the main characters and events of these novels were all gleaned from real life.

Lost honour: This short story made his fame as a sensitive and humanist writer. It tells about the progressive descent to hell of a landlord’s unfortunate son, his enrolment into a secret group and finally, his emancipation from a life of crimes.

In A walk under the lime trees, two young men who have recently known their destinies are discussing about some truths they have been made aware of about the world. The first one has fully accepted his destiny and sees the future brightly, the other is still full of thoughts about the whole process.

The mind reader relates the tentative of some officers to extirpate one of their fellows from the mental imbroglio woven around him, during a stay in Venice, to incorporate him into a secret society. Intrigues, deceit, crimes are unravelled in this long and original writing which is the only mystery novel written by F. Schiller.

In A remarkable feminine revenge, a middle aged woman is abandoned by her younger lover and sets up a subtle and devastating plot to avenge her humiliation.

"The whims of destiny is a dark and implacable story of revenge among court members. A good deed" is a surprising love triangle involving two brothers, a short story also based upon real events.

Self redemption, sense of duty, jealousy, friendship, but also treason and revenge. All the seasons of the human heart are displayed in these short stories in remarkable and intense scenes which reveal the author as a fine connoisseur of human motives and feelings.

In these stories as well as in his essays, Schiller positions himself as the writer of destinies: he combines the beautiful with the tragic and makes of each of his narration an incredibly moving assembly of actions and feelings to our most intimate delight.

Lost honour

A true story

In the whole human history, there is not a more informative chapter for the heart and the spirit than the annals of one’s own mistakes. For in every great crime, a proportionately great force was set into movement by its perpetrator.

If the secret game of covetousness remains hidden under the weaker light of common affects; hence, it will become more expressive, more colossal, louder, under the condition of violent passion; the finer human researcher who knows how much may be specifically expected from the human drives for freedom, and how widely one can derive the same conclusion based upon the same principles, will recall many experiences from this field in his mental education, and will use them in his own moral reflections.

The human heart is something so uniform and yet, has so many various aspects. The one and same skill or desire can be displayed in thousand forms and directions, it can act upon thousand contradicting phenomena, it can appear differently in thousand characters and actions, and yet it can again be traced back from the same inclination, especially if the human being about whom we are now discussing, presumes nothing of such a relatedness.

Then appeared a Linnaeus who classified also the human kind in the same way as the other species of Nature, according to its impulses and inclinations: how much one would then be astonished to find, together in the same classification as the monstrous Borgia, so many people whose vice must be contained, for now, in the new sphere of citizenry and in the narrow limitation of laws!

Considered in that aspect, a lot can be said against the use of a story, and here, I suppose, lies also the difficulty which prevent the study of the same story to be yet fruitful for the life of the citizens. Between the fervent mental agitation of the active human being who is the hero, and the calm disposition of the reader to whom these acts will be presented, such an incongruous contrast dominates, such a broad gap exists, that it is difficult, indeed, almost impossible for the reader to presume only of a relatedness with him and the hero.

Between the subject of a story and the reader, there remains a vacuum which removes the reader from any possibility of comparing the subject with himself, or with any application in his life; and instead of arousing this salutary fright which is a sign of a proud vitality, the subject arouses only confusion in him.

We consider the unfortunate person as a creature of a different kind than ourselves who, precisely in the hour when he committed the criminal act, as much as in the one when he repented for the same act, was a human being like us, but whose blood runs differently than ours, whose willpower follows other rules than ours; his destiny moves us lesser, for our emotion toward him grounds itself, indeed, only on a shadowy awareness of a similar danger in ourselves and of which we are far from only guessing the existence.

The lesson is wasted because of the reader's remoteness from the subject; and the story, instead of being a school of education, must content itself with performing a miserable service to our inclination. Should it represent more to us and reach its great, final goal; hence, it must choose necessarily one of these two methods: either the reader must become as inspired as the hero, or the hero must become as uninspired as the reader.

I know that from the best storytellers of recent times and from Antiquity, many have kept themselves to the first method and have fascinated the heart through pleasant talk. However, this manner of proceeding is an usurpation on the writer’s side and damages the republican freedom of the person who reads, who happens to be, in this instance, the judge; it is, at the same time, an offence to the rule of delimitation, for this method belongs exclusively and specifically to the orator and the poet. The storyteller only has the second method left.

The hero must become as uninspired as the reader, or, equally said, in this instance, we must acquaint ourselves with him before he acts; we must not only see him completing his action, but rather also see him wanting the same action. In his thoughts lies, for us, infinitely more than in his acts, and still much more lies in the sources of his thoughts than in the consequences of each of his act.

If people have searched the soil around the Vesuvius to explain its eruption; why should people offer less attention to a moral appearance than to a physical one? Why do people care not, in equal degree, to examine the condition and place which surrounded a man, until the gathered material ignited passion in his inner being?

The dreamer who loves anything wonderful, is precisely attracted by the strangeness and the adventurous side of the appearance; the friend of Truth seeks a mother for these lost children. He seeks her in the unchanged structure of the human soul and in the unchanged circumstances which determined them from outside, and in these two, he finds her certainly. It does not surprise him, now, any more, in the namely parcels where everywhere salutary herbs would grow, to see also the poisonous hemlock thriving, to find together in the same cradle wisdom and foolishness, vice and virtue.

Even if I do not invoke, here, any specifc advantage which psychology possesses when used in weaving a story; hence, psychology alone already retains the preference, just because it annihilates the horrible derision and the proud security with which, usually, the untested, righteous virtue looks down upon the persons who have failed; because it spreads throughout the story the soft spirit of tolerance, spirit of tolerance without which any fugitive may not wish to return back to his homeland any more; without which any reconciliation of law with its offenders cannot happen; without which any infected member of society will not be saved from the whole gangrene.

Would the criminal from whom I will speak about now, still have a right to call for this spirit of tolerance? Was he really lost without any possibility of rescue for the State? Alas, I will not focus the reader's attention on that concern any more. Our gentleness is not of any use to him any more, for he has died by the hand of the executioner; however, the autopsy of his misdeeds may still teach something to Humanity, and yes, it is possible, to Justice.

Christian Wolf was the son of a landlord in a small town (which name must be kept secret on grounds which later on, will be evident), and when his father died, he helped his mother to care for the family affairs until he reached his twentieth year. The family trade was not going very well, and Wolf had quite some idle time for himself. Already in school, he was known for being a dispersed young man.

The young ladies often complained about his brazenness while the young men of his small town, paid homage to his inventiveness. Nature has neglected his body. A small, inconspicuous face with curly hair of an unpleasant blackness, a flat nose and a swollen upper lip which was caused by a horse kick, gave to his appearance a disturbance which repulsed all the women from him, and offered many causes for raillery to his comrades.

He would aim at things that were refused to him; because he looked unpleasant, he wanted to please people. He was sensible and would usually confess what he loved. The young lady whom he chose as his sweetheart, mistreated him; he had cause to fear his rivals who had more fortune, even if the young lady of his choice was poor. He thought that a heart which remained insensitive to all his promises, maybe, would be more sensitive to his gifts; but neediness pressed upon him; and the vain research to make his outside appearance more affable, disposed of the little earnings which he acquired by doing dubious trades.

Too uninterested and too ignorant to help out his ruined household through speculation, too proud, also too weak to transform the lord whom he once was into a farmer, and to separate himself from his revered freedom; he saw only a way out, a way which has given thousands before and after him a better luck: to steal honestly.

His hometown bordered a large forest, so he decided he would become a robber, and the product of his robbery would go, faithfully, into the hands of his beloved sweetheart.

Among Anna's lovers was Robert, a fellow hunter of the foresters. Early on, Robert has noticed the advantage which the generosity of his rival has achieved over him, and he searched cunningly for the source of this change in munificence. He appeared diligently at the Sun – this was the name of Wolf's trading place – and his scrutinizing eye, sharpened by jealousy and envy, discovered very soon, from where the money was coming.

Not long before, a strict edict against the protection of wilderness had been renewed; this would condemn any trespasser to a jail term. Robert was undeterred in outsmarting the secret maneuvers of his enemy; finally, he succeeded to catch the imprudent in the act. Wolf had been trapped, and only at the cost of his whole small savings would he painstakingly succeed to avert the endorsed punishment into a fine.

Robert triumphed. His rival was evicted from the competition, and Anna’s favour for the delinquent was lost. Wolf knew his enemy, and this enemy was now the fortunate possessor of his Anna. The pressing feeling of need culminated into an offended pride; necessity and jealousy stormed into unison in his sentiments; hunger propelled him outside into the wider world; anger and passion kept him determined. He will, for the second time, become a robber; however, Robert’s increased vigilance outwitted him for the second time. Now, he is experiencing the whole severity of law, as he had no more money to give; hence, a few weeks later, he would be given a residence in jail.

The one-year jail term was over, his passion grew with distance, and his defiance grew even more under the weight of misfortune. As soon as he has recovered his freedom, he rushed to his place of birth to appear before his Anna. As he appeared in the small town, people would flee before him. In the meantime, the pressing necessity has finally bent his arrogance and overcome his weakness: he would settle to work for the town rich people and will earn a daily wage.

However, a farmer would only shake his shoulder in indifference towards the weak soul's request for work; the coarser stature of his solid competitors would cut him out from a work with another insensitive employer. Despite all this, he dared still a last attempt. A position was still vacant, the ultimate, remaining position for an honest man: he would apply to become the shepherd of his little town; alas, not a single farmer would even entrust his pigs to a good-for-nothing. Deceived in all his endeavours, turned down from all places, he will, for the third time, turn himself into a robber, and for the third time, he would encounter the misfortune of falling into the hands of his watchful enemy.

The double relapse has worsened the accusation against him. The judge looked into the appropriate legal code; however, not any one disposition fit the state of mind of the accused. As the directive against robbery needed a solemn and exemplary condemnation, Wolf was condemned to work three years in the fortress and the pending sentence on the gallows was forfeited.

Here begins a new era in his life; people even heard him as he made confessions afterwards before the tribunal and for his spiritual defence, avowing the following: I went into incarceration said he, "as an offender and left it as a villain.

Before my imprisonment, I still had something in the world that was dear to me, and my pride still bent under the burden of shame. When I was brought into prison, people locked me up with twenty one other prisoners, among whom two murderers and the others were all notorious thieves and vagabonds.

People mocked me when I spoke of God, and pressed me to say shameful calumnies against the Saviour.

People sang before me dirty songs which I, a boy of good judgement, heard not without disgust and shock; however, what I saw being practised regularly in this fortress, did not outrage my decency any more.

Not a day passed without the recurrence of some shameful act, the perpetration of some serious aggression. In the beginning, I fled these people and kept myself away from their company, as much as it was possible; however, I needed human presence, for the barbarism of my guards had also refused me the company of my dog.

The work was hard and afflicting, my body was ever aching; I needed assistance, and if I can express it correctly, I needed to repent, and this repentance, I must redeem by giving up whatever I had left as conscience. Hence, I was used, finally, to the most horrible things, and during the last trimester of my imprisonment, I have surpassed my masters in the knowledge and practice of such horrible things.

From then on, I longed for the day of my freedom, as I longed for revenge. Every human being has offended me; for everyone was better and more fortunate than me.

I considered myself the martyr of natural rule and a victim of laws. I used to scrape fiercely my chains when the sun came up from behind the fortress: a sunrise is a vision of double hell for a prisoner.

The free wind which whistled through the apertures of my tower, and the swallow which settled on the metal bar of my lattice, seemed to defy me with their freedom and made me feel even more atrociously my state of imprisonment. In these days, I avowed an irreconcilable, glowing hatred for anything that resembles the human being, and what I avowed, I have kept uprightly.

My first thoughts, as soon as I was freed, were about returning to my hometown.

Very little was to be hoped there for my future livelihood; yet, so much was promised there for my desire for revenge. My heart bat even faster as the church tower appeared to me from afar in the woods. It did not feel any more the sincere contentment which I have felt in my first hometown pilgrimage.

The memory of all the misfortune, of all the persecution which I have endured there, stirred up, at once, into a terrible exhaustion, all the wounds bled again, all the scars reopened.

I quickened my steps, they drove me into horrifying my enemies just with my unexpected apparition, and I was looking, now, to face a new humiliation from my enemies as much as I, before, have resented it.

The bells were calling for the vespers as I stood in the middle of the marketplace. The parishioners were rushing to church. People recognized me immediately, everyone who complained about me before, fled in horror.

I have always been fond of children, and even now, this feeling invaded me unintentionally as I offered a coin to a young boy who scurried around me.

The young boy stared at me and threw the coin at my face. Were my blood only been calmer; hence, I would have remembered that the beard that I grew in prison has deformed my facial features into disgracefulness; however, the sad condition of my heart has hindered my reason. Tears, as I have never wept, ran on my cheeks.

The young boy did not know who I was, or from where I came said I to myself softly, and hence, he avoided me like a shameful animal. I am, indeed, nowhere on my forehead marked, or have I ceased to look like a human, because I feel I cannot love anyone any more?

The despise of this young boy was more painful to me than three years of forced labor, because I meant to do him good, and could not accuse him of any personal blame.

I sat on a stall across the church; what I wanted particularly at this moment, I did not know;

I knew only, as I stood up with bitterness, that of all the people I knew formerly, none has granted me a welcome, not a single person.

Unwillingly, I left the place and went to look for some accommodation; as I was at the corner of a street, I ran into my Anna: The Boss! shouted she loudly, and made a movement to embrace me. You are here again, dear Boss! Thank God! You are back here!

Hunger and misery were visible in her way of dressing, the trace of a shameful disease could be seen on her face, and her look betrayed the most repulsive creature into which she was lowered.

I figured rapidly what has been happening here; some dragons of the Prince, who precisely were passing by, allowed me to guess that there was now a garrison in the small town. A woman for soldiers! I shouted and turned my back laughing. It did me good that a creature was still lower than me among the livings. I just realized I have never loved her anyway.

My mother was dead. My creditors have reimbursed themselves with my small house. I have no one and nothing any more. The entire world fled me as if I was a poison; however, I have finally learned to be ashamed. Before, I retracted from the view of the human beings, because despise was unbearable to me. Now, I compelled myself into scaring the world and deride myself for such behaviour.

It did me some good, because I have nothing more to lose and have nothing more to save. I needed not to have any good quality any more, because people expected none from me any more.

The whole world stood open for me, I would have, maybe, been an honest man in a foreign province; but, anyway, I have lost the courage only to appear so at home. Despair and shamefulness compelled me, finally, into this way of thinking.

It was the last illusion which was left to me: I thought I still had my honour after having paid my debt to society, but now I know I will also have to learn to do without honour, because I might not make pretence to any, any more. Would my vanity and my pride have still survived all the humiliation; hence, I would have had to get rid of them myself.

What I should, now, particularly be deciding, was unknown even to me. I would carry out wrongdoings, I still repeated to myself gloomily. I would be serving my destiny. The laws, I told myself, were good deeds for the world; hence, I conceived a plan to violate them; previously, I had sinned from necessity and carelessness; now, I will do it, voluntarily, for my own enjoyment.

The first of my misdeeds was to continue hunting wild animals. Hunting, anyway, has progressively become a passion to me, and I wanted to earn a living from it. However, it was not the only reason; it delighted me to deride the Prince's edict and to damage my landlords with all my forces. To be caught was not any more a concern to me, for I have prepared, now, a bullet for the person who would catch me, and I knew that my shot would not miss its target.

I shot at anything wild that I came cross with;