Cardillac nieder auf die Knie — küßte der Scuderi den Rock — die Hände — stöhnte — seufzte — weinte — schluchzte — sprang auf — rannte wie unsinnig, Sessel — Tische umstürzend, daß Porzellain, Gläser zusammenklirrten, in toller Hast von dannen. —” (804) Nevertheless, Scuderi is, at this point in the novella, not yet able to connect her suspicions with anything concrete. Her conflictedness persists into the following evening: although she makes light of the incident in poetic form for the amusement of the court, the text describes her state of mind while doing so as:
“alle Schauer unheimlicher Ahnung besiegend” (806). Otherwise, however, there are no further immediate consequences, since the narrative jumps ahead several months to the next relevant occurrence.
la Regnie as a reason for her belief in Brußon’s innocence: “Madelons tugendhaftes Herz, das gleiche Tugend in dem unglücklichen Brußon erkannte!” (848)
The hierarchization of ideas also plays a role in Scuderi’s consideration of whether to trust in Madelon or not. Scuderi not only listens to Madelon’s account of the events on the night of Cardillac’s death, but also makes inquiries of the servants and the neighbors. With all of this information at her disposal, she seeks to form an idea of the relationships between the three people involved in the incident. As a result, she contemplates two ideas: on the one hand, the possibility that Brußon might possess a violent temper, and on the other hand, the image of domestic harmony presented by Madelon: “Doch je begeisterter Madelon von dem ruhigen häuslichen Glück sprach, in dem die drei Menschen in innigster Liebe verbunden lebten, desto mehr verschwand jeder Schatten des Verdachts wider den auf den Tod angeklagten Olivier.” (812) This passage describes how Scuderi’s thought process is ultimately swayed in the direction of believing Madelon. It is necessary to use a word like ‘sway’ rather than something more decisive such as ‘convince’ because Scuderi’s mental landscape includes inclinations both trustful and mistrustful. To ‘convince’ suggests that one idea displaces another, thus leaving no room for the coexistence of multiple, conflicting ideas. Here, the first possibility — that Brußon might have struck Cardillac down in a moment of anger — is a stock idea based on generalizations about what people sometimes do. It is only salient insofar as it might provide a motive for a vicious deed; however, this depends on that interpretation being valid, and there turns out to be nothing to corroborate it in any of the testimonies which Scuderi collects. Since it receives no sustenance or confirmation through actual facts, it fades into the background. Based on these initial
interactions with Madelon, Scuderi decides to try to intervene on Brußon’s behalf, but her view of the case faces further challenges.
During her audience with la Regnie, in which she pleads Brußon’s case and asks to speak with him, Scuderi must also acknowledge that the legal — that is, predominantly reason-based and linear as opposed to intuitive and composite — view of the case has a certain compelling quality:
In der Tat konnte sich die Scuderi von der Schuld des jungen Menschen nicht überzeugen. Alles sprach wider ihn, ja kein Richter in der Welt hätte anders gehandelt, wie la Regnie, bei solch entscheidenden Tatsachen. Aber das Bild häuslichen Glücks, wie es Madelon mit den lebendigsten Zügen der Scuderi vor Augen gestellt, überstrahlte jeden bösen Verdacht, und so mochte sie lieber ein unerklärliches Geheimnis annehmen, als daran glauben, wogegen ihr ganzes Inneres sich empörte. (817)
Once again, Scuderi’s inner evaluation of events conflicts with an alternative conclusion — here, one which lays claim to a higher degree of legitimacy on the grounds that conclusions reached according to the methods of legal discourse are based on linear reason, that it is therefore clear what their terms are, and that they are therefore transparent. The legal viewpoint does not have the messiness of intuition. It purports to create order out of untidy facts. In this case, however, the facts available to the legal mode of evaluation are not exhaustive — as becomes clear by the end of the novella.19 The composite evaluation formed by Scuderi’s interior may well be persistent in her mind — “outshining” every suspicion — because, in comparison to the ‘factual’ evaluation, it has room to accommodate more data: impressions of Madelon, statements of neighbors, etc.
But her intuitions are severely shaken upon recognizing Brußon as the mysterious person who had given her the letter in her carriage, and thus also identical with the mysterious visitor who had delivered the jewels. This connection appears to her as a nearly certain proof that he must be a member of the band of murderous thieves. This causes an inversion of her perspective: instead of relying on intuitions generated by personal interviews with Madelon to assure herself of
19 The contrast between Scuderi, whose investigative method relies heavily on intuition, and the Chambre ardente, which claims to have ‘reason’ wholly on its side, is explored in Thiemo Jeck, Die Anfänge der Kriminalpsychologie: zur Verbindung der schönen Literatur und der Kriminologie in der Romantik und dem Sturm und Drang (Berlin: Köster, 2010), esp. 73.
Brußon’s innocence, Scuderi now believes based on her contact with Brußon that he must be guilty, which would mean that she was mistaken about Madelon:
Sie gab Raum dem entsetzlichen Verdacht, daß Madelon mit verschworen sein und Teil haben könne an der gräßlichen Blutschuld. Wie es denn geschieht, daß der menschliche Geist, ist ihm ein Bild aufgegangen, emsig Farben sucht und findet, es greller und greller auszumalen, so fand auch die Scuderi, jeden Umstand der Tat, Madelons Betragen in den kleinsten Zügen erwägend, gar Vieles, jenen Verdacht zu nähren. (818)
This and the following passage describe how Scuderi reinterprets the data she had previously gathered as hypocrisy, shifting the meaning of each detail that had contributed to her evaluation of Madelon’s character in order to make them all fit the opposite evaluation of Brußon as guilty.
Yet the composite image that emerges does not have enough persuasive power to settle her mind, even though the seeming proof of Brußon’s guilt continues to present a significant obstacle to alternative views:
Ganz zerrissen im Innern, entzweit mit allem Irdischen, wünschte die Scuderi, nicht mehr in einer Welt voll höllischen Truges zu leben. Sie klagte das
Verhängnis an, das in bitterm Hohn ihr so viele Jahre vergönnt, ihren Glauben an Tugend und Treue zu stärken, und nun in ihrem Alter das schöne Bild vernichte, welches ihr im Leben geleuchtet. (818f.)
The belief that she has been mistaken about Madelon sets off an internal crisis for Scuderi because she believes her intuitions about people to be consistently accurate: “So bitter noch nie vom innern Gefühl getäuscht […] verzweifelte die Scuderi an aller Wahrheit” (817f.) — so certain is she of her own abilities. Although some people are not so skilled at judging the character of others, Scuderi has empirical experience, gathered over many decades, that her intuitions are reliable. However, her evaluation changes again as she hears Madelon’s exclamations of despair:
“Die Töne drangen der Scuderi ins Herz, und aufs neue regte sich aus dem tiefsten Innern heraus die Ahnung eines Geheimnisses, der Glaube an Oliviers Unschuld.” The consequence of Scuderi’s stirrings of intuition is that she agrees to Brußon’s (and the Chambre ardent’s) request for a private interview. The audience with Brußon ultimately allows Scuderi to refine her intuitive
evaluation of his character, thus providing her with more concrete data than a second-hand trust based on Madelon’s assurances.
In the case of Madelon as opposed to that of Cardillac, both Scuderi and the ‘eye of society’
or ‘general opinion’ come up with what, in the end, proves to be an accurate evaluation: Madelon is an innocent. Only the authorities are suspicious of her; however, this view is not shared by the populace, and merely reflects poorly on the Chambre ardente. Comments by the police officer Desgrais show a tendency, not lost on Scuderi, to care more about producing results in his police work than about serving justice: “‘Nun weint und heult sie, und schreit einmal übers andere, daß Olivier unschuldig sei, ganz unschuldig. Am Ende weiß sie von der Tat und ich muß sie auch nach der Conciergerie bringen lassen.’ Desgrais warf, als er dies sprach, einen tückischen, schadenfrohen Blick auf das Mädchen, vor dem die Scuderi erbebte.” (809) La Regnie, while not as overtly bloodthirsty as Desgrais, remains, in his own restrained way, just as unmoved by Scuderi’s methods of inquiry: “Gewiß, sprach er, gewiß wollt Ihr nun, mein würdiges Fräulein, Euerm Gefühl, der innern Stimme mehr vertrauend als dem, was vor unsern Augen geschehen, selbst Oliviers Schuld oder Unschuld prüfen.” (816f.) La Regnie implies here that he would sooner trust what he sees, and there is just a hint of condescension in his statement, because even
though he uses the formula “mein würdiges Fräulein” to indicate that his respect for Scuderi’s reputation predisposes him to acquiesce to her request, the fact that he points out her gender suggests that it is partly to humor her, and that he buys into the dichotomy according to which men reason and women feel. But the eyes can be deceptive. The eyes merely see, but the inner
‘feeling’ evaluates information from all sources. What is relevant is not merely what is happening before one’s face — for this is a kind of superficiality — but the way in which present events fit into larger contexts and patterns of behavior. La Regnie’s attempt to discount Scuderi’s efforts is a bit absurd: she is using all of her faculties to analyze the case, and the text immediately preceding
this scene contains a page-long description of the detective-like steps she took to interview people and gather evidence.
Madelon is somewhat troubling as a character because she appears to be little more than a concentration of nineteenth-century (and older) stereotypes about young women.20 However, there is reason to think that her character is not — or at least has the potential not to be — quite as flat and straightforward as it at first appears. Although Desgrais’s suspicion of Madelon seems to be motivated by his own schadenfreude, the somewhat less hasty la Regnie does have a point:
“Was ist ihr an dem Vater gelegen, nur dem Mordbuben gelten ihre Tränen.” (816) Indeed, she does seem more upset about Brußon’s imprisonment than about her father’s death. Her single- minded focus on her lover was noted by her father as well, who explained it to Brußon thus:
Gleich als du fort warst, fiel sie mir zu Füßen, umschlang meine Knie und und gestand unter tausend Tränen, daß sie ohne dich nicht leben könne. Ich dachte, sie bilde sich das nur ein, wie es denn bei jungen verliebten Dingern zu geschehen pflegt, daß sie gleich sterben wollen, wenn das erste Milchgesicht sie freundlich angeblickt. Aber in der Tat, meine Madelon wurde siech und krank, und wie ich ihr denn das tolle Zeug ausreden wollte, rief sie hundertmal deinen Namen. Was konnt’ ich endlich tun, wollt’ ich sie nicht verzweifeln lassen. Gestern Abend sagt’
ich ihr, ich willige in Alles und werde dich heute holen. Da ist sie über Nacht aufgeblüht wie eine Rose, und harrt nun auf dich ganz außer sich vor
Liebessehnsucht. (829)
Interestingly, Cardillac’s comment about infatuated young people demonstrates that this novella does not take place in a completely unskeptical universe, totally taken in by the notion of ‘the first love.’ The fact that Madelon actually does pine for Brußon — against her father’s expectation — suggests that there is something out of the ordinary about her attachment. Since the Cardillac arc of the plot is concerned with issues of hereditary transmission, it is therefore incumbent to
20 Helmut Müller notes the “klischeehafte Idealität” of the character Madelon in Untersuchungen zum Problem der Formelhaftigkeit bei E.T.A. Hoffmann (Bern: P. Haupt, 1964), 88.
wonder whether Madelon may not have inherited something of her father’s obsessiveness, just as he inherited it from his mother.21
The family trait — or curse, or “böser Stern” (832) — is essentially a tendency to form a fixation. On the surface, the fixation seems to apply only to objects, specifically jewels. However, on closer inspection, there is a narrative element involved. It cannot be a coincidence that the jewel to which Cardillac’s mother finds herself drawn is hanging around the neck of a man with whom she has a history: “Derselbe Cavalier hatte vor mehreren Jahren, als meine Mutter noch nicht verheiratet, ihrer Tugend nachgestellt, war aber mit Abscheu zurückgewiesen worden.”
(832) Now, Cardillac’s mother suddenly sees the cavalier as “ein Wesen höherer Art, den Inbegriff aller Schönheit” (832), supposedly due to the visual effects of the jewel. The implausibility of such a dramatic transformation, however, is an invitation to read the scene as desire displaced onto the jewel.22 Her “Abscheu” was perhaps as much an abhorrence of her own desire for someone willing to take advantage of her without regard for the societal consequences as it was a disgust for the man himself.
In Das Fräulein von Scuderi, the repressed desires of one generation are transferred to the next, becoming even more twisted and warped in the process.23 Cardillac narrates his history as if his obsession were simply inborn, citing a piece of wisdom about transference from pregnant women to their progeny; while that seems to have been a contributing factor (according to the
21 Jürgens (Das Theater der Bilder, 36f.) offers one perspective on the transferral from mother to son. Dennis Lemmler points out the similar process of “inheritance” that had occurred among the poisoners who occasioned the creation of the Chambre ardente (Verdrängte Künstler, Blut-Brüder, Serapiontische Erzieher:
die Familie im Werk E.T.A. Hoffmanns (Bielefeld: Aisthesis, 2001), 334).
22 Jewels in this text function as highly effective symbolic repositories; see, for example, the way in which Scuderi comes to view Cardillac’s gift as stained with the blood of the murder victims (805). See James M.
McGlathery for a discussion of the transferral of desire to the jewels in the story about Cardillac’s mother (Mysticism and sexuality, E.T.A. Hoffmann (Las Vegas: Lang, 1981), 121). Stefan Bergström points out that
“stone and metal” likewise serve symbolic functions in Hoffmann’s tale Die Bergwerke zu Falun, which he wrote around the same time as Das Fräulein von Scuderi (Between real and unreal: a thematic study of E.T.A.
Hoffmann’s “Die Serapionsbrüder” (New York: P. Lang, 1999), 83).
23 A discussion of historical understandings of prenatal influence that may have informed Hoffmann’s novella can be found in Dohm, “Das unwahrscheinliche Wahrscheinliche,” 300–311.
logic of this novella, anyway), he has also left something out: his mother, or someone else, evidently told him the story of the encounter with the cavalier during her pregnancy. In other words, there is an environmental influence at work on Cardillac as well, since he has knowledge of this narrative.24 The power of suggestion may thus also have contributed to the direction which his obsessive tendency ultimately took.25 It is therefore not unreasonable to fear that if Madelon were to learn the narrative of her father’s obsession, it might awaken in her a similar twisting and warping of her own passionate nature.26 But if, on the other hand, she can be kept from this knowledge, then her obsession can be lived out in a more or less innocuous way by possessing its object: Brußon — that is, if his life can be saved. Brußon’s rigid determination that Madelon should never learn her of her father’s misdeeds, even at the cost of his own life, might seem excessive. One might think: surely she would get over it eventually; or, surely the loss of her lover would be a comparable emotional blow. However, the logic of the narrative suggests that Brußon might be justified. This represents an exploratory moment in which the narrative puts forth a hypothesis about how the mind functions, thus making the hypothesis available for consideration of its plausibility. The concerns of those closest to Madelon crisscross: Cardillac was convinced that she would die without Brußon, while Brußon is convinced that she would die if she learned the truth about Cardillac. And perhaps they are both correct. If this is the case, then there is an urgency to Brußon’s concern that she be kept ignorant.27 Supposing that she does carry in her the
24 Lothar Pikulik (“Das Verbrechen aus Obsession: E.T.A. Hoffmann, ‘Das Fräulein von Scuderi’ (1819),” in Deutsche Novellen. Von der Klassik bis zur Gegenwart, ed. Winfried Freund (Munich: Fink, 1993), 49) and Kremer (Erzählungen und Romane, 149f.) also note the narrative basis for Cardillac’s obsession. Bergengruen argues that hereditary transferrence in the novella functions according to a narrative rather than a
biological logic (“Das monströse Erbe,” 235–237).
25 See page 88 for further discussion of the mechanics of suggestion.
26 As Röder argues, Cardillac also seems concerned that Madelon could inherit the family curse, and for this reason instructs Brußon to destroy the jewels upon his death (Study of the Major Novellas, 46).
27 Compare Lemmler, who sees more potential danger for Madelon in being kept ignorant (Verdrängte Künstler, 339).
potential for obsession that ruined her father and grandmother, then Brußon’s worries would not be out of proportion.