Selected Prose of Heinrich Von Kleist by Heinrich von Kleist Read Free Book Online Page B

revealed, that she, Toni, would go forthwith to the stranger and reveal to him what a den of cutthroats was this house in which he had thought to find safe refuge. “Toni!” said the mother, putting her hands to her hips andlooking into her daughter’s eyes. “I mean it!” the daughter replied. “What ill deed did this young man, not even a Frenchman by birth, but a Swiss, as he said, ever do to us that we should want to fall upon him like thieves, kill him and rob him? Do the accusations made against the planters here also hold true for those on the side of the island he comes from? Does not everything about him rather show that he is the noblest and finest of men, and surely does not share responsibility for the injustices for which the blacks blame his race?” Taking in the strange expression on the girl’s face, the old woman simply remarked with quivering lips: “I can’t believe my ears!” Then she asked: “What guilt did the young Portuguese gentleman bear who was recently clubbed to death in the doorway? What did the two Dutchmen do to deserve to be shot down in the yard by the Negroes three weeks ago? What blame do the three Frenchmen and all the other white-skinned fugitives bear who were mowed down in this house with flintlock, lance and sword, since the outbreak of the uprising?” “By the light of the sun,” said the daughter, leaping up wildly, “you do me wrong to remind me of all these atrocities! The inhumanities you compelled me to take part in have long since disgusted me in my heart of hearts; and to expiate my sins for all that happened in the eyes of God, I swear to you that I would rather die a tenfold death than permit you to harm even a hair on the head of that young man as long as he is in this house.” “Very well,” said the old woman, with a sudden look of compliance, “let the stranger travel in peace. But when Congo Hoango gets back,” she added, getting up to leave the room, “and finds out that a white man spent the night in this house, you can beg him to show you the same mercy that moved you to disobey his express orders.”
    Stunned by this outburst, in which, despite a feigned tone of benevolence, the old woman had given vent to her fury, the girl lingered in her room. She was all too familiar with her mother’s hatred of the whites to think that Babekan might let slip such an occasion to satisfy it. The fear that the old woman would presently send word to the neighboring plantations and call upon the Negroes to fall upon the stranger impelled her to throw on her clothes and follow her mother down to the dining room below. And just as her mother returned, distracted, from the pantry, where she appeared to have had some pressing matter to attend to, and sat herself down on a bale of flax, the daughter stood at the door, onto which a mandate had been tacked forbidding all blacks, at the risk of their life, from aiding and abetting the whites; and pretending, as though gripped with terror, to grasp the error of her ways, she suddenly turned to her mother, who, she knew, had been watching from behind, and flung herself at her feet. Clasping her knees, the daughter begged her to forgive the wild words she had spoken in defense of the stranger; she lay the blame on the half-dreaming, half-waking state from which she was suddenly roused by her mother’s plans to trick him; and assured the old woman that she would do everything in her power to deliver him for judgment, which, based on the present law of the land, demanded his execution. Looking the girl squarely in the eyes, the old woman said after a while: “In Heaven’s name, child, your declaration just saved his life for today! Seeing as you’d threatened to take him under your wing, that pot was already spiked with the poison that would at least have delivered him up dead to Congo Hoango, true to his command.” Whereupon she got