The Collected Stories of Stefan Zweig Read Free Page A

bring.
    Now the stranger’s quick footsteps are coming up the steps, and he enters the room.
    At the same time a sharp gust of biting wind blows into the warm room through the open door. Icy cold streams in with the snow-scented air, chilling everyone. The draught puts out the flickering candles on the candlestick; only one of them still wavers unsteadily as it dies down. Suddenly the room is full of a heavy, oppressive twilight, as if cold night might suddenly fall within these walls. Allat once the peace and comfort are gone. Everyone feels that the extinguishing of the sacred candles is a bad omen, and superstition makes them shiver again. But no one dares to say a word.
    A tall, black-bearded man, who can hardly be more than thirty years old, stands at the door. He quickly divests himself of the scarves and coats in which he had been muffled up against the cold, and as soon as his face is revealed in the faint light of that last little flickering candle flame, Lea runs to him and embraces him.
    This is Josua, her fiancé from the neighbouring town.
    The others also crowd eagerly around him, greeting him happily, only to fall silent next moment, for he frees himself from his fiancée’s arms with a grave, sad expression, and the weight of his terrible knowledge has dug deep furrows on his brow. All eyes are anxiously turned on him, and he cannot defend himself and what he has to say from the raging torrent of his own emotions. He takes the girl’s hands as she stands beside him, and quietly forces himself to utter the fateful news.
    “The Flagellants are here.”
    The eyes that had been turned questioningly to him stare, fixed on his face, and he feels the pulse of the hands he is holding falter suddenly. The prayer leader clutches the edge of the heavy table, his fingers trembling, so that the crystal glasses begin to sing softly, sending quavering notes through the air. Fear digs its claws into desperate hearts again, draining the last drops of blood from the frightened, devastated faces staring at the bearer of the news.
    The last candle flickers once more and goes out.
    Only the lamp hanging from the ceiling now casts a faint light on the dismayed, distraught people; the news has struck them like a thunderbolt.
    One voice softly murmurs the resigned phrase with which Fate has made them familiar. “It is God’s will.”
    But the others still cannot grasp it.
    However, the newcomer is continuing, his words brusque and disconnected, as if he could hardly bear to hear them himself.
    “They’re coming—many of them—hundreds. And crowds of people with them—blood on their hands—they’ve murdered thousands—all our people in the East. They’ve been in my town already…”
    He is interrupted by a woman’s dreadful scream. Her floods of tears cannot soften its force. Still young, only recently married, she falls to the floor in front of him.
    “They’re there? Oh, my parents, my brothers and sisters! Has any harm come to them?”
    He bends down to her, and there is grief in his voice as he tells her quietly, making it sound like a consolation, “They can feel no human harm any more.”
    And once again all is still, perfectly still. The awesome spectre of the fear of death is in the room with them, making them tremble. There is no one present here who did not have a loved one in that town, someone who is now dead.
    At this the prayer leader, tears running into his silver beard and unable to control his shaking voice, begins to chant, disjointedly, the ancient, solemn prayer for the dead. They all join in. They are not even aware that they are singing, their minds are not on the words and melody that they utter mechanically; each is thinking only of his dear ones. And the chant grows ever stronger, they breathe more and more deeply, it is increasingly difficult for them to suppress their rising feelings. The words become confused until at last they are all sobbing in wild, uncomprehending sorrow. Infinite