Sperver had gone, bearing the body of poor Lieverlé in his cloak. I had
declined to follow; my sense of duty kept me by this unhappy woman, and I
could not leave her without violence to my own feelings.
Besides, I must confess I was curious to see a little more closely
this strange mysterious being, and therefore as soon as Sperver had
disappeared in the darkness of the glen I began to climb up to reach the
cavern.
There I beheld a strange sight.
Extended upon a large cloak of white fur lay the aged woman in a long and
ragged robe of purple, her fingers clutching her breast, a golden arrow
through her grey hair.
Never shall I forget the figure of this strange woman; her vulture-like
features distorted with the last agonies of death, her eyes set, her
gasping mouth, were fearful to look upon. Such might have been the
terrible Queen Frédégonde.
The baron, on his knees at her side, was trying to restore her to
animation; but I saw at a glance that the wretched creature was dying,
and it was not without a profound sense of pity that I took her by the
arm.
"Leave madame alone--don't touch her," cried the young man with
irritation.
"I am a surgeon, monseigneur."
He looked in silence at me for a moment, then rising, said--
"Pardon me, sir; pray forgive my hasty language."
He trembled with excitement, scarcely yet subdued, and presently he went
on--
"What is your opinion, sir?"
"It is over--she is dead!"
Then, without speaking another word, he sat upon a large stone, with his
forehead resting upon his hand and his elbow on his knee, his eyes
motionless, as still as a statue.
I sat near the fire, watching the flames rising to the vaulted roof of
the cave, and casting lurid reflections upon the rigid features of the
corpse.
We had sat there an hour as motionless as statues, each deep in thought,
when, suddenly lifting his head, the baron said--
"Sir, all this utterly confounds me. Here is my mother--for twenty-six
years I thought I knew her--and now an abyss of horrible mysteries opens
before me. You are a doctor; tell me, did you ever know anything so
dreadful?"
"Monseigneur," I replied, "the Count of Nideck is afflicted with a
complaint strikingly similar to that from which your mother appears to
have suffered. If you feel enough confidence in me to communicate to me
the facts which you have yourself observed, I will gladly tell you what I
know myself; for perhaps this exchange of our experiences might supply me
with the means to save my patient."
"Willingly, sir," he replied, and without any further prelude he informed
me that the Baroness de Bluderich, a member of one of the noblest
families in Saxony, took, every year towards autumn, a journey into
Italy, with no attendant besides an old man-servant, who possessed her
entire confidence; that that man, being at the point of death, had
desired a private interview with the son of his old master, and that at
that last hour, prompted, no doubt, by the pangs of remorse, he had told
the young man that his mother's visit to Italy was only a pretence to
enable her to make, you observed, a certain excursion into the Black
Forest, the object of which was unknown to himself, but which must have
had something fearful in its character, since the baroness returned
always in a state of physical prostration, ragged, half dead, and that
weeks of rest alone could restore her after the hideous labours of those
few days.
This was the purport of the old servant's disclosures to the young baron,
who believed that in so doing he was only fulfilling his duty.
The son, anxious at any sacrifice to know the truth of this account, had,
that very year, ascertained it, first by following his mother to Baden,
and then by penetrating on her track into the gorges of the Black Forest.
The footsteps which Sébalt had tracked in the woods were his.
When the baron had thus imparted his knowledge to me, I thought I ought
not to conceal from him the mysterious influence which the appearance of
the old woman in the neighbourhood of the castle exercised over the
count, nor the other circumstances of this unaccountable series of
events.
We were both amazed at the extraordinary coincidence between the facts
narrated, the mysterious attraction which these beings unconsciously
exercised the one over the other, the tragic drama which they performed
in union, the familiarity which the old woman had shown with the castle,
and its most secret passages, without any previous examination of them;
the costume which she had discovered in which to carry out this secret
act, and which could only have been rummaged out of some mysterious
retreat revealed to her by the strange instinct of insanity. Finally,
we were agreed that there are unknown, unfathomed depths in our being,
and that the mystery of death is not the only secret which God has veiled
from our eyes, although it may seem to us the most important.
But the darkness of night was beginning to yield to the pale tints of
early dawn. A bat was sounding the departure of the hours of darkness
with a singular note resembling the gurgling of liquid from a narrow
bottle-neck. A neighing of horses was heard far up the defile; then, with
the first rays of dawn, we distinguished a sledge driven by the baron's
servant; its bottom was littered with straw; on this the body was laid.
I mounted my horse, who seemed not sorry to use his limbs again, which
had been numbed by standing upon ice and snow the whole night through. I
rode after the sledge to the exit from the defile, when, after a grave
salutation--the usual token of courtesy between the nobility and the
people--they drove off in the direction of Hirschland and I rode towards
the towers of Nideck.
At nine I was in the presence of Mademoiselle Odile, to whom I gave a
faithful narrative of all that had taken place.
Then repairing to the count's apartments, I found him in a very
satisfactory state of improvement. He felt very weak, as was to be
expected after the terrible shocks of such crises as he had gone through,
but had returned to the full possession of his clear faculties, and
the fever had left him the evening before. There was, therefore, every
prospect of a speedy cure.
A few days later, seeing the old lord in a state of convalescence, I
expressed a desire to return to Fribourg, but he entreated me so
earnestly to stay altogether at Nideck, and offered me terms so
honourable and advantageous, that I felt myself unable to refuse
compliance with his wishes.
I shall long remember the first boar-hunt in which I had the honour to
join with the count, and especially the magnificent return home in a
torchlight procession after having sat in the saddle for twelve hours
together.
I had just had supper, and was going up into Hugh Lupus's tower
completely knocked up, when, passing Sperver's room, whose door was half
open, shouts and cries of joy reached my ears. I stopped, when the most
jovial spectacle burst upon me. Around the massive oaken table beamed
twenty square rosy faces, bright and ruddy with health and fun.
The hob and nobbing of the glasses gave out an incessant tinkling and
clattering. There was sitting Sperver with his bossy forehead, his
moustaches bedewed with Rhenish wine, his eyes sparkling, and his grey
hair rather disordered; at his right was Marie Lagoutte, on his left
Knapwurst. He was raising aloft the ancient silver-gilt and chased goblet
dimmed with age, and on his manly chest glittered the silver plate of
his shoulder-belt, for, according to his custom on a hunting day, he was
still wearing the uniform of his office.
The colour of Marie Lagoutte's cheeks, rather redder even than usual,
told of an evening of jollity, and her broad cap-frills seemed as if they
were wanting to fly all abroad; she sat laughing, now with one, then with
another.
Knapwurst, squatting in his arm-chair, with his head on a level with
Sperver's elbow, looked like a big pumpkin. Then came Tobias Offenloch,
so red that you would have thought he had bathed his face in the red
wine, leaning back with his wig upon the chair-back and his wooden leg
extended under the table. Farther on loomed the melancholy long face of
Sébalt, who was peeping with a sickly smile into the bottom of his
wine-glass.
Besides these worthies there were present the waiting-people, men and
women servants, comprising all that little community which springs up
around the board of the great people of the land and belongs to them as
the ivy, and the moss, and the wild convolvulus belong to the monarch of
the forests.
Upon the groaning board lay a vast ham, displaying its concentric circles
of pink and white. Then among the gaily-patterned plates and dishes came
the long-necked bottles containing the produce of the vineyards that
border the broad and flowing Rhine--long German pipes with little silver
chains, and long shining blades of steel.
The light of the lamp shed over the whole scene its amber-coloured hue
and left in the shade the old grey and time-stained walls, where hung in
ample numbers the brazen convolutions of the hunting-horns and bugles.
What an original picture! The vaulted roof was ringing with the joyous
shouts of laughter.
Sperver, as I have already told, was lifting high the full bumper and
singing the song of Black Hatto, the Burgrave,
"I am king on these mountains of mine,"
while the rosy dew of Affénthal hung trembling from his long moustaches.
As soon as he caught sight of me he stopped, and holding out his hand--
"Fritz," said he, "we only wanted you. It is a long time since I felt so
comfortable as I do to-night. You are welcome, old boy!"
As I gazed upon him with surprise--for since the death of Lieverlé I had
never seen him smile--he added more seriously--
"We are celebrating the return of monseigneur to his health, and
Knapwurst is telling us stories."
All the guests turned my way, and I was saluted with kindly welcomes on
all sides.
I was dragged in by Sébalt, seated near Marie Lagoutte, and found a large
glass of Bohemian wine in my hand before I could quite understand the
meaning of it all.
The old hall was echoing with merry peals of laughter, and Sperver,
throwing his arm round my neck, holding his cup high, and with an attempt
at gravity which showed plainly that the wine was up in his head, he
shouted--
"Here is my son! He and I--I and he--until death! Here's the health of
Doctor Fritz!"
Knapwurst, standing as high as he was able upon the seat of his arm-chair,
not unlike a turnip half divided in two, leaned towards me and held me
out his glass. Marie Lagoutte shook out the long streamers of her cap,
and Sébalt, upright before his chair, as gaunt and lean as the shade of
the wild jäger amongst the heather, repeated, "Your health, Doctor
Fritz!" whilst the flakes of silvery foam ran down his cup and floated
gently down upon the stone-flagged floor.
Then there was a moment's silence. Every guest drank. Then, with a single
clash, every glass was set vigorously down upon the table.
"Bravo!" cried Sperver.
Then turning to me--
"Fritz, we have already drunk to the health of the count and of
Mademoiselle Odile; you will do the same."
Twice had I to drain the cup before the vigilant eyes of the whole table.
Then I too began to look grave. Could it have been drunken gravity? A
luminous radiance seemed shed on every object; faces stood out brightly
from the darkness, and looked more nearly upon me; in truth, there were
youthful faces and aged, pretty and ugly, but all alike beamed upon me
kindly, and lovingly, and tenderly; but it was the youngest, at the other
end of the table, whose bright eyes attracted me, and we exchanged long
and wistful glances, full of affection and sympathy!
Sperver kept on humming and laughing. Suddenly putting his hand upon the
dwarf's misshapen back, he cried--
"Silence! Here is Knapwurst, our historian and chronicler! He is
preparing to speak. This hump holds all the history of the house of
Nideck from the beginning of time!"
The little hunchback, not at all indignant at so ambiguous a compliment,
directed his benevolent eyes upon the face of the huntsman, and replied--
"You, Sperver, you are one of the _reiters_ whose story I have been
telling you. You have the arm, and the courage, and the whiskers of a
_reiter_ of old! If that window opened wide, and a _reiter_ was to hold
out his hand at the end of his long arm to you, what would you say to
him?"
"I would say, 'You are welcome, comrade; sit down and drink. You will
find the wine just as good and the girls just as pretty as they were in
the days of old Hugh Lupus.' Look!"
And he pointed with his glass at the jolly young faces that brightened
the farther end of the table.
Certainly the damsels of Nideck were lovely. Some were blushing with
pleasure to hear their own praises; others half-veiled their rosy cheeks
with their long drooping eyelashes, while one or two seemed rather to
prefer to display their, sweet blue eyes by raising them to the smoky
ceiling. I wondered at my own insensibility that I had never before
noticed these fair roses blooming in the towers of the ancient manor.
"Silence!" cried Sperver for the second time. "Our friend Knapwurst is
going to tell us again the legend he related to us just now."
"Won't you have another instead?" asked the hunchback.
"No. I like this best."
"I know better ones than that."
"Knapwurst," insisted the huntsman, raising his finger impressively, "I
have reasons for wishing to hear the same again and no other. Cut it
shorter if you like. There is a great deal in it. Now, Fritz, listen!"
The dwarf, rather under the influence of the sparkling wine he had taken,
rested his elbows on the table, and with his cheeks clutched in his bony
fingers, and his eyes starting from his head with his concentrated
efforts to speak with becoming seriousness, he cried as if he were
publishing a proclamation--
"Bernard Hertzog relates that the burgrave Hugh, surnamed Lupus, or the
Wolf, when he was old, used to wear a cowl, which was a kind of knitted
cap that covered in the crest of the knight's helmet when engaged in
fighting. When the helmet tired him he would take it off and put on the
knitted cowl, and its long cape fell around his shoulders.
"Up to his eighty-second year Hugh still wore his armour, though he could
hardly breathe in it.
"Then he sent for Otto of Burlach, his chaplain, his eldest son Hugh, his
second son Berthold, and his daughter the red-haired Bertha, wife of a
Saxon chief named Bluderich, and said to them--
"'Your mother the she-wolf has bequeathed you her claws; her blood flows,
mingled with mine, in your veins. In you the wolf's blood will flow from
generation to generation; it shall weep and howl among the snows of the
Black Forest. Some will say, "Hark! The wind howls!" others, "No, it is
the owl hooting!" But not so; it is your blood, mine and the blood of the
she-wolf who drove me to murder Hedwige, my wife before God and the
Church. She died under my bloody hands! Cursed be the she-wolf! for it is
written, "I will visit the sins of the fathers upon the children." The
crime of the father shall be visited upon the children until justice
shall have been satisfied!'
"Then old Hugh the Wolf died.
"From that dreary day the north wind has howled across the wilds, and the
owl has hooted in the dark, and travellers by night know not that it is
the blood of the she-wolf weeping for the day of vengeance that will
come, whose blood will be renewed from generation to generation--so says
Hertzog--until the day when the first wife of Hugh, Hedwige the Fair,
shall reappear at Nideck under the form of an angel to comfort and to
forgive!"
Then Sperver, rising from his seat, took a lamp and demanded of Knapwurst
the keys of the library, and beckoned to me to follow him.
We rapidly traversed the long dark gallery, then the armoury, and soon
the archive-chamber appeared at the end of the great corridor.
All noises had died away in the distance. The place seemed quite
deserted.
Once or twice I turned round, and could then see with a creeping feeling
of dread our two long fantastic shadows in ghostly fashion writhing in
strange distortions upon the high tapestry.
Sperver quickly opened the old oak door, and with torch uplifted, his
hair all bristling in disorder, and excited features, walked in the
first. Standing before the portrait of Hedwige, whose likeness to the
young countess had struck me at our first visit to the library, he
addressed me in these solemn words:--
"Here is she who was to return to comfort and pity me! She has returned!
At this moment she is downstairs with the old count. Look well, Fritz; do
you recognise her? Is it not Odile?"
Then turning to the picture of Hugh's second wife--
"There," he said, "is Huldine, the she-wolf. For a thousand years she has
wept in the deep gorges amongst the pine forests of the Schwartzwald; she
was the cause of the death of poor Lieverlé; but henceforward the lords
of Nideck may rest securely, for justice is done, and the good angel of
this lordly house has returned!"
MYRTLE.
CHAPTER I.
Just at the end of the village of Dosenheim, in Alsace, about fifty
yards from the gravelly road that leads into the wood, is a pretty
cottage surrounded with an orchard, the flat roof loaded with
boulder-stones, the gable-end looking down the valley.
Flights of pigeons wheel around it, hens are scratching and picking up
what they can under the fences, the cock takes his stand majestically on
the low garden wall, and sounds the _réveillée_, or the retreat, for the
echoes of Falberg to repeat; an outside staircase, with its wooden
banisters, the linen of the little household hanging over it, leads to
the first story, and a vine climbs up the front, and spreads its leafy
branches from side to side.
If you will only go up these steps you will see at the end of the narrow
entry the kitchen, with its dresser and its pewter plates and dishes, its
soup-tureens puffing out like balloons; open the door to the right and
you are in the parlour with its dark oak furniture, a ceiling crossed by
brown smoke-stained rafters, and its old Nuremberg clock click-clacking
monotonously.
Here sits a woman of five-and-thirty, spinning and dreaming, her waist
encircled with a long black taffety bodice, and her head covered with a
velvet headdress, with long ribbons.
A man in broad-skirted velveteen coat, with breeches of the same, and
with a fine open brow, looking calm and thoughtful, is dandling on his
knee a fine stout boy, whistling the call to "boot and saddle."
There lies the quiet village at the end of the valley, framed, as you
sit, in the little cottage window; the river is leaping over the mill-dam
and crossing the winding street; the old houses, with their deep and
gloomy eaves, their barns, their gabled windows, their nets drying in the
sun; the young girls, kneeling by the river-side on the stones, washing
linen; the cattle lazily lounging down to drink, and gravely lowing
amidst the willows; the young herdsmen cracking their whips; the mountain
summit, jagged like a saw by the pointed fir-tree tops--all these rural
objects lie reflected in the flowing blue stream, only broken by the
fleets of ducks sailing down or the occasional passage of an old tree
rooted up on the mountain-side.
Looking quietly on these things, you are impressed with a sense of the
ease and comfort of which they speak, and you are moved with gratitude to
the Giver of all good.
Well, my dear friends and neighbours, such was the cottage of the Brémers
in 1820, such were Brémer himself, his wife Catherine, and their son,
little Fritz.
To my own mind they come back exactly as I have described them to you.
Christian Brémer had served in the chasseurs of the Imperial Guard. After
1815 he had married Catherine, his old sweetheart, grown a little older,
but quite fresh and fair, and full of grace. With his own little
property, his house, and his four or five acres of vineyard, and
Catherine's added to it, Brémer had become one of the most substantial
bourgeois of Dosenheim; he might have been mayor, or adjoint, or
municipal councillor, but these honours had no attractions for him; and
what pleased him best was, after work was over, to take down his old gun,
whistle for Friedland, and take him a turn in the woods.
Now it fell out one day that this worthy man, coming home after a day's
shooting, brought in his bag a little gipsy girl two or three years old,
as lively as a squirrel, and as brown as a hazel-nut. He had found her in
the bundle of an unhappy gipsy woman who had died of fatigue or hunger,
or both, at the foot of a tree.
You may well imagine what an outcry Catherine raised against this new
uninvited member of her family. But as Brémer was master in his own
house, he simply announced to his wife that the child should be
christened by the name of Susanna Frederica Myrtle, and that she should
be brought up with little Fritz.
As a matter of course, all the women in the place, old and young, came
to pass their observations upon the little gipsy, whose serious and
thoughtful expression of countenance surprised them.
"This is not a child like others," said they; "she is a heathen--quite a
heathen! You may see by her eyes that she understands every word! She is
listening now! Mind what I say, Maître Christian! Gipsies have claws at
the ends of their fingers. If you will rear young ferrets and weasels you
must not expect your poultry to be safe. They will have the run of all
the farm-yard!"
"Go and mind your own business!" shouted Brémer. "I have seen Russians
and Spaniards, I have seen Italians, and Germans, and Jews; some were
brown, and some were black, some white, and others red; some had long
noses, and others had turned-down noses, but I found good fellows amongst
them all."
"Very likely," said the ladies, "but those people lived in houses, and
gipsies live in the open air."
He vouchsafed no reply to this argument, but with all possible politeness
he put them out by the shoulders.
"Go away," he cried; "I don't want your advice. It is time to air the
rooms, and then I have to go and attend to the stables."
But, after all, the rejected counsels were not so bad, as the event
unhappily showed a dozen or fourteen years afterwards.
Fritz was always delighted to feed the cattle, and take the horses to the
pond, and follow his father and learn to plough and sow, to reap and mow,
to tie up the sheaves and bring them home. But Myrtle had no wish to milk
the cows, churn the butter, shell peas, or peel potatoes.
When the maidens of Dosenheim, going out to wash clothes in the morning
at the river, called her the _heathen_, she mirrored herself complacently
in the fountain, and when she had admired her own long dark tresses, her
violet lips, her white teeth, her necklace of red berries, she would
smile and murmur to herself--
"Ah! they only call me a heathen because I am prettier than they are,"
and she would dip the tip of her little foot in the fountain and laugh.
But Catherine could not approve of such conduct, and said--
"Myrtle is not the least good to us. She won't do a single thing that is
useful. It is no use for me to preach, and advise, and scold, she does
everything the wrong way. The other day, when we were stowing away apples
in the closet, she took bites out of the best to see if they were ripe!
She has no pleasure but in gobbling up the best of everything."
Brémer himself could not help admitting that there was a very heathenish
spirit in her when he heard his wife crying from morning till night,
"Myrtle, Myrtle! where are you now? Ah, naughty, bad girl! she has run
away into the woods again to gather blackberries." But still he laughed
to himself, and pitied poor Catherine, whom he compared to a hen with a
brood of ducklings.
Every year after harvest-time Fritz and Myrtle spent whole days far away
from the farm, pasturing the cattle, singing, and whistling, and baking
potatoes under the ashes, and coming down the rocky hill in the evening
blowing the shepherd's horn.
These were some of Myrtle's happiest days. Seated before the burning
hemp-stalks, with her pretty brown face between her hands, she lost
herself in endless reveries.
The long strings of wild ducks and geese which traverse, about the end of
autumn, the boundless heavens spread from the mountains on the east to
the western hills, seemed to have a depressing effect upon her mind. She
used to follow them with longing eyes, straining them as if to overtake
the wild birds in the immeasurable distance; and suddenly she would rise,
spread out her arms, and cry--
"I must go! I must go! I can't stay!"
Then she would weep with her head bowed down, and Fritz, seeing her in
tears, would cry too, asking--
"Why do you cry, Myrtle? Has anybody hurt you? Is it any of the boys in
the village?--Kasper, Wilhelm, Heinrich? Only tell me, and I will knock
him down at once! Do tell!"
"No; it is not that."
"Well, why are you crying?"
"I don't know."
"Do you want to run as far as the Falberg?"
"No; that is not far enough."
"Where do you want to go?"
"Down there! down there! ever so far! where the birds are going."
This made Fritz open his eyes and his mouth very wide.
One day in September, when they were idling along by the woods, about
noon, the heat was so great and the air so still that the smoke of their
little fire, instead of rising straight into the air, fell like water and
crept among the briars. The grasshopper had ceased its dull monotonous
chirp, not the buzzing of a fly was to be heard, nor the warbling of a
bird. The oxen and the cows, with sleepy eyes half-closed, their knees
bent under them, were resting together under a spreading oak in the
meadow, now and then lowing in a slow, protracted way as if in idle
protest against such hot weather.
Fritz had begun by plaiting the strands of his whip, but he soon lay down
in the long grass with his hat over his eyes, and Friedland came to lie
near him, gaping from ear to ear.
Myrtle alone suffered no inconvenience from the overwhelming heat;
sitting on the ground near the fire, with her arms wreathed around her
knees, full in the sun, her large dark eyes slowly surveyed the dark
arches formed by the branches of the forest.
Time passed on slowly. The distant village clock had struck twelve, then
one, and two, and the young gipsy never stirred. In the woods and jagged
mountain-tops, the crags, the forests, descending into the valleys, she
heard some mysterious call. They spoke to her in a language not unknown
to her.
"Yes," she said to herself, "yes; I have seen all that before--long
ago--a long time ago."
Then with a quick, sharp glance at Fritz, who was in a deep sleep, she
rose to her feet and began to fly. Her light footsteps scarcely bent the
grass beneath her; she ran on and on, up the hill; Friedland turned his
head round with a careless glance, then stretched out once more his
languid limbs, and composed himself to sleep.
Myrtle disappeared in the midst of the brambles which border the common
wood. At one bound she cleared the muddy ditch where a single frog was
croaking amongst the rushes, and twenty minutes after she reached the top
of the Roche Creuse, whence you may have a wide prospect of Alsace and
the blue summits of the Vosges.
Then she turned to see if anybody was following her. She could still
distinguish Fritz asleep in the green meadow with his hat over his eyes,
and Friedland and the sleeping cattle under their tree.
Farther on she could see the village, the river, the roof of the
farm-house, with its flights of pigeons eddying round; the long, crooked
street and red-petticoated women walking leisurely up and down; the
little ivy-covered church where the good _curé_ Niclausse had baptised
her into the Christian faith and afterwards confirmed her.
And when she had sufficiently contemplated these objects, turning her
face the other way towards the mountain, she was filled with delight to
mark how the densely-crowded firs covered the hill-sides, up to their
highest ridge, close as the grass of the fields.
At the sight of all this grandeur the young gipsy felt her heart beating
and expanding with unknown delight, and again running on she darted
through a rift between the rocks, lined with mosses and ferns, to reach
the beaten track through the woods.
Her whole soul--that wild, untrained soul of hers--was rushing with her
and impelling her onwards, kindling her countenance with a new ardour.
With her hands she clung to the ivy, with her naked feet she clung to the
projections and the crevices to push on her way.
Soon she was on the other slope, running, tripping, leaping, sometimes
stopping short to gaze upon surrounding objects--a large tree, a ravine,
a lonely sheet of water, or a pond full of flowers and sweet-smelling
water-plants.
Although she could not remember ever having seen those copses, those
clearings, those heaths, at every turn in the path she would say to
herself, "There, I knew it was so! I knew that tree would be there! I
was sure of that rock! And there's the waterfall just below!" Although
a thousand strange remembrances passed with momentary flashes, like
sudden visions, through her mind, she could not understand it all and
could explain nothing. She had not yet been able to say to herself, "What
Fritz and the rest of them want to make them happy is the village, and
the meadow, and the farm-house, and the fruit-trees, and the orchard, and
the milk-cows, and the laying hens; plenty in the cellar, plenty in the
granary, and a nice warm fire on the hearth in winter. But what have I to
do with all these things? Wasn't I born a heathen, quite a heathen? I was
born in the woods, just as the squirrel was born in an oak, just as a
hawk was hatched on the crag and the thrush in the fir-tree!"
It is true she had never thought of these things, but she was guided by
instinct; and this mysterious force drew her unconsciously about sunset
to the bare heaths of the Kohle Platz, where the gangs of gipsies that
wander between Alsace and Lorraine are accustomed to stay the night, and
hang up their kettles among the dry heath.
Here Myrtle sat down at the foot of an old oak-tree, tired, footsore, and
ragged; and here she long sat motionless, gazing into vacant space,
listening to the rustling of the wind amongst the tall fir-trees, happy,
and feeling herself quite alone in the wide solitude.
Night came. The stars broke out by thousands in the purple depths of the
autumn sky. The moon rose and silvered with soft light the white stems of
the birch-trees, which hung in graceful groups along the mountain sides.
The young gipsy was beginning to yield to sleep when cries in the
distance roused her into an impulse to fly.
Hark! She knows the voices! They are those of Brémer, Fritz, and all the
people of the farm searching for her!
Then, without a moment's hesitation, Myrtle flew, light as a roe, farther
into the forest, stopping only at long intervals to listen attentively
and anxiously.
The cries died away in the distance, and soon the only sound she could
hear was the loud beating of her own heart, and she went on her way at a
less rapid pace.
Very late, when the moon's rays became less brilliant, unable to stand
out against her fatigue any longer, she sank down on the heath and fell
fast asleep.
She was four leagues from Dosenheim, near the source of the Zinzel.
Brémer was not likely to come so far to look for her.
CHAPTER II.
It was broad daylight when Myrtle awoke amidst the deep solitudes of the
Schlossberg, beneath an old fir-tree overgrown with moss and lichen. A
thrush was whistling overhead; another was answering in the distance far
down the valley. The morning breeze was fanning the rustling foliage; but
the air, already warm, was loaded with the sweet perfumes of the
ground-ivy, the honeysuckle, the woodruff, and the sweetbriars.
The young gipsy opened her eyes with astonishment remembering, with
surprise and delight, that the voice of Catherine would no more trouble
her, calling, "Myrtle! Myrtle! where are you, you idle child?" she
smiled, and listened to what gave her pleasure, the note of the thrush
singing among the trees.
Near at hand a spring was bubbling out of a cleft; the girl had but to
look round to see the living stream running, sparkling and clear, amidst
the long grass. From the rock high overhead hung an arbutus loaded with
its gorgeous freight of scarlet berries.
Though Myrtle was thirsty she felt too idle to move amongst all this
beauty and all this harmony, and she dropped her pretty brown face,
smiling and admiring the daylight through her long dark lashes.
"This is how I am always going to be," she said. "How can I help it? I am
an idle girl. I was made so."
Dreaming in this lazy way, the picture rose up in her mind of the
farm-yard with the proud cock strutting among his hens, and then she
remembered the eggs, how they used to find them in the straw in some
corner of the barn.
"If I had a couple of hard-boiled eggs," she thought, "just like those
Fritz had yesterday in his bag, with a crust of bread and a little salt,
I should like it very well. But what signifies? When you can't get eggs
you have blackberries and whinberries."
A scent of whinberries made her little nostrils dilate with expectation.
"There are some here," she said; "I can smell them."
She was right. The wood was full of them.
In another minute, not hearing the thrush, she raised herself on her
elbow and noticed the bird picking at the arbutus-berries.
Then she went to the brook and took a little clear water in her hollow
hand, and observed that there was plenty of watercress.
Then she remembered what she had never taken the trouble to think of
before, some words of the _curé_, Niclausse about the birds of the air
that God provided for, and the lilies of the field that were more
beautiful than the glory of Solomon, and she remembered the lesson about
not being anxious for food and clothing, and thought that that would just
suit her, for she did not think of any of the teaching of the same great
Teacher about industry, and frugality, and living honestly, and so she
came to the satisfying conclusion that the true heathens were Catherine
and all her people, who were so foolish and wicked as to plough, and sow,
and reap, while she was the good Christian, because she was as idle as
the day was long.
She was still dwelling on these satisfactory deductions when there was a
sudden rustling among the dead leaves and a noise of footsteps.
She was going to run away when a gipsy lad of eighteen or twenty appeared
before her--a tall, lithe, dark fellow with thick woolly hair, shining
black eyes, and thick parted lips.
His eyes glittered as he cried--
"Almâni!"
"Almâni!" replied Myrtle, moved with much interest.
"Ha, ha!" cried the lad, "what gang do you go with?"
"I don't know--I am looking for it."
And without any concealment she told him how Brémer had found her and
brought her up, and how she had escaped yesterday from his house.
The young gipsy grinned, and showed a long double row of white teeth.
"I am going to Hazlach," he cried. "To-morrow there's a _fête_ there; our
band will all be there--Pfiffer Karl, Melchior, Blue-Titmouse, Fritz the
clarionet, Coucou-Peter, and Magpie. The women are going fortune-telling,
and we play the music. If you like, you may go with me."
"I will," said Myrtle, looking down.
Then he kissed her, laid his bag upon her back, and grasping his stick in
both his hands, he cried--
"Now you are my wife! You will carry the bag for me, and I will keep you.
Forward!"
And now Myrtle, lazy as she had always been at the farm, started off with
all possible willingness.
He followed her, singing, and tumbling over on his hands and feet to
express his joy!
From that day Myrtle has never been heard of.
Fritz almost died of grief when he found that she did not return; but a
few years later he found comfort in marrying Gredel Dich, the miller's
daughter, a fine, stout, active girl, who made him an excellent wife; and
Catherine, his mother, was quite pleased, for Gredel Dich was quite an
heiress!
Only Brémer could not be comforted; he was as fond of Myrtle as if she
had been his own child, and he drooped visibly from day to day.
One winter's day when he had got up, and was looking out of the window,
he saw a ragged but pretty gipsy girl passing through the village covered
with snow, and with a heavy bag upon her shoulders, and sat down again
with a deep sigh.
"What is the matter, Brémer?" asked his wife.
There was no answer. She came close. His eyes were closing. There he lay
dead.
UNCLE CHRISTIAN'S INHERITANCE
When my excellent uncle Christian Hâas, burgomaster of Lauterbach, died,
I had a good situation as maître de chapelle, or precentor, under the
Grand Duke Yeri Peter, with a salary of fifteen hundred florins,
notwithstanding which I was a poor man still.
Uncle Christian knew exactly how I was situated, and yet had never sent
me a kreutzer. So when I learned that he had left me owner of two hundred
acres of rich land in orchards and vineyards, a good bit of woodland, and
his large house at Lauterbach, I could not help shedding tears of
gratitude.
"My dear uncle," I cried, "now I can appreciate the depth of your wisdom,
and I thank you most sincerely for your judicious illiberality. Where
would now the money be, supposing you had sent me anything? In the hands
of the Philistines, no doubt; whereas by your prudent delays you have
saved the country, like another Fabius Cunctator--
"'Qui cunctando restituit rem--'
I honour your memory, Uncle Christian! I do indeed!"
Having delivered myself of these deep feelings, and many more which I
cannot enter into now, I got on horseback and rode off to Lauterbach.
Strange, is it not, how the Spirit of Avarice, hitherto quite a stranger
to me, came to make my acquaintance?
"Caspar!" he whispered, "now you are a rich man! Hitherto vain shadows
have filled your mind. A man must be a fool to follow glory. There is
nothing solid but acres, and buildings, and crown-pieces, put out in
safe mortgages. Fling aside all your vain delusions! Enlarge your
boundaries, round off your estate, heap up money, and then you will be
honoured and respected! You will be a burgomaster as your uncle was
before you, and the country folks, when they see you coming a mile off,
will pull off their hats, and say--'Here is Monsieur Caspar Hâas, the
richest man and the biggest _herr_ in the country.'"
These notions kept passing and repassing in my mind like the figures in a
magic-lantern, with grave and measured step. The whole thing seemed to me
perfectly reasonable.
It was the middle of July. The lark was warbling in the sky. The crops
were waving in the plain, the gentle breezes carried on them the soft cry
of the quail and the partridge amongst the standing wheat; the foliage
was glancing in the sunshine, and the Lauter ran its course beneath the
willows; but what was all that to me, the great burgomaster? I puffed up
my cheeks and rounded off my figure in anticipation of the portly
appearance I was to present, and repeated to myself those delightful
observations--
"This is Monsieur Caspar Hâas; he is a very rich man! He is the first
_herr_ in the country! Get on, Blitz!"
And the nag trotted forward.
I was anxious to try on my uncle's three-cornered hat and scarlet
waistcoat. "If they fit me," I said, "what is the use of buying?"
About four in the afternoon the village of Lauterbach appeared at the end
of the valley, and very proud I felt as I surveyed the tall and handsome
house of the late Christian Hâas, my future abode, the centre of my
property, real and speculative. I admired its situation by the long dusty
road, its vast roof of grey shingle, the sheds and barns covering with
their broad expanse the wagons, the carts, and the crops; behind, the
poultry-yard, then the little garden, the orchard, the vineyards up the
hill, the green meadows farther off.
I chuckled with delight over all these comforts and luxuries.
As I went down the principal street the old women with nose and chin
nearly meeting at the extremity, the bare-pated children with ragged
hair, the men in their otter-skin caps, and silver-chained pipes in their
mouths, all gaze upon me, and respectfully salute me--
"Good day, Monsieur Caspar! How do you do, Monsieur Hâas?"
And all the small windows were filled with wondering faces. I am at home
now; I seem as if I had always been a great landowner at Lauterbach, and
a notable. My kapellmeister's life seems a dream, a thing of the past, my
enthusiastic fondness for music a youthful folly! How money does modify
men's views of things!
And now I draw bridle before the house of the village notary, Monsieur
Becker. He has my title-deeds under his care, and is to hand them over to
me. I fasten my horse to the ring at the door, I run up the steps, and
the ancient scribe, with his bald head very respectfully uncovered, and
his long spare figure clad in a green dressing-gown with full skirts,
advances alone to receive me.
"Monsieur Caspar Hâas, I have the honour to salute you."
"Your servant, Monsieur Becker."
"Pray walk in, Monsieur Hâas."
"After you, sir, after you."
We cross the vestibule, and I find at the end of a small, neat, and
well-aired room a table nicely and comfortably laid, and sitting by it
a young maiden rosy and fresh-coloured, the very picture of modesty and
propriety.
The venerable notary announced me--
"Monsieur Caspar Hâas!"
I bowed.
"My daughter Lothe!" added the good man.
And whilst I felt in myself a reviving taste for the beautiful, and was
admiring Mademoiselle Lothe's pretty little chubby nose, the rosy lips,
and the large blue eyes, her dainty little figure, and her dimpled hands,
Maître Becker invited me to sit down at the table, informing me that he
had been expecting me, and that before entering on matters of business it
would be well to take a little refreshment, a glass of Bordeaux, etc., an
invitation of which I fully recognised the propriety, and which I
accepted very willingly.
And so we sit down. We talk first of the beautiful country. And I form
opinions about the old gentleman, and wonder what a notary is likely to
make at Lauterbach!
"Mademoiselle, will you take a wing?"
"Monsieur, you are very kind; thank you, I will."
Lothe looks down bashfully. I fill her glass, in which she dips her rosy
lips. Papa is in good spirits; he tells me about hunting and fishing.
"Of course Monsieur Hâas will live as we do in the country. We have
excellent rabbit-warrens. The rivers abound in trout. The shooting in the
forests is let out. People mostly spend their evenings at the inn.
Monsieur the inspector of woods and forests is a delightful young man.
The _juge-de-paìx_ is a capital whist-player," and so on, and so on.
I listen, and think all this quiet life must be delightful. Mademoiselle
Lothe pleases me a good deal. She does not talk much, but she smiles and
looks so agreeable! How loving and amiable she must be!
At last the coffee came, then the kirschwasser. Mademoiselle Lothe
retires, and the old lawyer gradually passes to business. He explains to
me the nature of my uncle's property, and I listen attentively. There was
no part of the will in dispute; there were no legacies, no mortgages.
Everything is clear and straightforward. Happy Caspar! Happy man!
Then we went into the office to look over the deeds. The close air of
this place of dry, hard business, those long rows of boxes, the files of
bills--all these together put weak notions of love out of my head. I sat
down in an arm-chair while Monsieur Becker, collecting his thoughts, puts
his horn spectacles in their place upon his long, sharp nose.
"These deeds relate to your meadow-land at Eichmatt. There, Monsieur
Hâas, you have a hundred acres of excellent land, the finest and
best-watered in the commune; two and even three crops a year are got off
that land. It brings in four thousand francs a year. Here are the deeds
belonging to your vine-growing land at Sonnenthâl, thirty-five acres in
all. One year with another you may get from this two hundred hectolitres
(4,400 gals.) of light wine, sold on the ground at twelve or fifteen
francs the hectolitre. Good years make up for the bad. This, Monsieur
Hâas, is your title to the forest of Romelstein, containing fifty or
sixty hectares (a hectare is 2-1/2 acres) of excellent timber. This is
your property at Hacmatt; this your pasture-land at Tiefenthal. This is
your farm at Grüneswald, and here is the deed belonging to your house at
Lauterbach; it is the largest house in the place, and was built in the
sixteenth century."
"Indeed, Monsieur Becker! but is that saying much in its favour?"
"Certainly, certainly. It was built by Jean Burckhardt, Count of Barth,
for a hunting-box. Many generations have lived in it since then, but it
has never been neglected, and it is now in excellent repair."
I thanked Monsieur Becker for the information he had given me, and having
secured all my title-deeds in a large portfolio which he was good enough
to lend me, I took my leave, more full than ever of my vast importance!
Arriving before my house, I enjoyed introducing the key into the lock of
the door, and bringing down my foot firmly and proudly on the first step.
"This is all mine!" I cried enthusiastically.
I enter the hall--"Mine!" I open the wardrobes--"Mine!" Mine--all that
linen piled up to the top! I pace majestically up the broad staircase,
repeating like a fool, "This is mine, and that is mine! Here I am, owner
of all this! No more uneasiness about the future! Not an anxious thought
for the morrow! Now I am going to make a figure in the world!--not on the
weak ground of merit--not for anything that fashion can alter. I am a
great man because I hold really and effectually that which the world
covets.
"Ye poets and artists! what are you in comparison with the rich
proprietor who has everything he wants, and who feeds your inspiration
with the crumbs that fall from his table? What are you but ornamental
portions of his feasts and banquets, just to fill up a weary interval?
You are no more than the sparrow that warbles in his hedges, or the
statue that figures in his garden-walk. It is by him and for him that you
exist. What need has he to envy you the incense of pride and vanity--he
who possesses the only solid good this world has to offer?"
At that moment of inflated conceit if the poor Kapellmeister Hâas had
appeared before me I might very likely have turned and looked at him over
my shoulder and asked, "What fool is that? What business has he with me?"
I threw a window open; evening was closing in. The setting sun gilded my
orchards and my vines as far as I could see. On the declivity of the hill
a few white patches indicated the cemetery.
I turned round. A great Gothic hall, with rich mouldings decorating the
ceiling, pleased my taste exceedingly. This was the Seigneur Burckhardt's
hunting-saloon.
An old spinet stood between two windows; I ran my fingers absently over
the keys, and the loose strings jingled with the disagreeable squeaking
of a toothless old woman trying to sing like a young damsel.
At the end of this long apartment was an arched alcove closed in by deep
red curtains, and containing a lofty four-post bedstead with a kind of
grand baldacchino covering it in. The sight of this reminded me that I
had been six hours on horseback, and undressing with a self-satisfied
smirk on my face all the time--
"It is the first time," I said, "that I shall sleep in a bed of my own."
And laying myself comfortably down, with my eyes dreamily wandering over
the distant plains on which the shadows of evening were settling down, I
felt my eyelids gently yielding to the sweet influence of sleep. Not a
leaf was stirring; the village noises ceased one by one, the last golden
rays of the sun had disappeared, and I dropped into the unconsciousness
of welcome sleep.
Dark night fell on the face of the earth, and then the moon was rising in
all her splendour, when I awoke, I cannot tell why. The wandering scents
of summer air reached me through the open window, fragrant with the sweet
perfume of the new-mown hay. I gazed with surprise, then I made an effort
to rise and open the window, but some obstacle prevented me. To my
astonishment, though my head was perfectly free to move in any direction,
my body was buried in a deep sleep like a lump of lead. Not a single
muscle obeyed my repeated efforts to raise my body; I was conscious of my
arms lying extended near me, and my legs being stretched out straight and
immovable; but my head was swaying helplessly to and fro. My breathing,
deep and regular--the breathing of my body went on all the same, and
frightened me dreadfully. My head, exhausted with its vain efforts to
obtain obedience from the limbs, fell back in despair, and I said, "What!
Is it paralysis?"
My eyes closed. I was reflecting with a feeling of horror upon this
strange phenomenon, and my ears were listening intently to the agitated
beating of my heart, over whose hurried flow of blood the mind had no
power.
"What, what is this?" I thought presently. "Do my own body and limbs
refuse to obey my will? Cannot Caspar Hâas, the undisputed lord of so
many rich vineyards and fat pastures, move this wretched clod of earth
which most certainly belongs to him? Oh, what does it all mean?"
As I was thus wondering and meditating I heard a slight noise. The door
of my alcove opened, and a man clothed in some stiff material resembling
felt, such as is worn by the monks in the chapel of St. Werburgh at
Mayence, with a broad-brimmed hat and feather pushed off from the left
ear, his hands buried up to the elbows in gauntlets of strong untanned
leather, entered the room. This gentleman's huge jack-boots came over the
knees, and were folded down again. A heavy chain of gold, with
decorations suspended to it, hung from his shoulders. His tanned and
angular countenance, his sallow complexion, his hollow eyes, bore an
expression of bitterness and melancholy.
This dismal personage traversed the hall with a hard and sounding step as
measured as the ticking of a clock, and placing his skinny hand upon the
hilt of an immense long rapier, and stamping with his heel on the floor,
he uttered in a horribly disagreeable creaking voice resembling the
grating of an engine these words, which dropped in a dry mechanical
fashion from his ashy lips:--
"This is mine--mine--Hans Burckhardt, Count of Barth!"
I felt a creeping sensation coming all over me.
At the same instant the door opposite flew open wide, and the Count of
Barth disappeared in the next apartment; and I could hear his hard, dry
automatic tread upon the stairs descending the steps, one by one, for
a long time; there seemed no end to it, until at last the awful sounds
died in the remote distance as if they had descended into the bowels of
the earth.
But as I was still listening, and hearing nothing further, all in a
moment the vast hall filled as if by magic with a numerous company; the
spinet began to jingle; there was music and singing of love, and
pleasure, and wine.
I gazed and saw by the bluish-grey moonlight ladies in the bloom of youth
negligently floating over the floor, and chiefly about the old spinet;
elegant cavaliers attired, as in the olden time, in innumerable dangling
ribbons, and the very perfection of lace collars and ruffles, seated
cross-legged upon gold-fringed stools, affectedly inclining sidelong,
shaking their perfumed locks, making little bows, studying all kinds of
graceful attitudes, and paying their court to the ladies, all so
elegantly, and with such an air of gallantry, that it reminded me of the
old mezzotint engravings of the graceful school of Lorraine in the
sixteenth century.
And the stiff little fingers of an ancient dowager, with a parrot bill,
were rattling the keys of the old spinet; bursts of thin laughter set
discordant echoes flying, and ended in little squeaks with such a sharp
discordant rattle of constrained laughter as made my hair stand on end.
All this silly little world--all this quintessence of fashion and
elegance, long out of date, all exhaled the acrid odour of rose-water and
essence of mignonette turned into vinegar.
I made new and superhuman exertions to get rid of this disagreeable
nightmare, but it was all in vain. But at that instant a lady of the
highest fashion cried aloud--
"Lords, you are at home here in all this domain--"
But she was cut short in her compliments; a silence like death fell on
the whole assembly. They faded away. I looked, and the whole picture had
vanished from my sight.
Then the sound of a trumpet fell on my listening ears. Horses were pawing
the ground outside, dogs were barking, while the moon, calm, clear,
inviting to meditation, still poured her soft light into my alcove.
The door opened as if by a blast of wind, and fifty huntsmen, followed by
a company of young ladies attired as they were two centuries ago, in long
trains, defiled with majestic pace out of one chamber into the other.
Four serving-men passed amongst them, bearing on their brawny shoulders
on a stout litter of oak boughs the bloody carcass of a monstrous wild
boar, with dim and faded eye, and with the foam yet lying white on his
formidable tusks and grisly jaws.
Then I heard the flourishes of the brazen trumpets redoubled in loudness
and energy; but silence fell, and the pomp and dignity, passed away with
a sigh like the last moans of a storm in the woods; then--nothing at
all--nothing to hear--nothing to see!
As I lay dreaming over this strange vision, and my eyes wandering vaguely
over the empty space in the silent darkness, I observed with astonishment
the blank space becoming silently occupied by one of the old Protestant
families of former days, calm, solemn, and dignified in their bearing and
conversation.
There sat the white-haired patriarch with the big Bible upon his knees;
the aged mother, tall and pale, spinning the flax grown by themselves,
sitting as straight and immovable as her own distaff, her ruff up to her
ears, her long waist compressed in a stiff black bodice; then there sat
the fat and rosy children, with serious countenances and thoughtful blue
eyes, leaning in silence with their elbows on the table; the dog lay
stretched by the great hearth apparently listening to the reading; the
old clock stood in the corner ticking seconds; farther on in the shadow
were girls' faces and young men, talking seriously to them about Jacob
and Rachel by way of love-making.
And this good family seemed penetrated with the truth of the sacred
story; the old man in broken accents was reading aloud the edifying
history of the settlement of the children of Israel in the Land of
Canaan--
"This is the Land of Promise--the land promised to Abraham and Isaac and
Jacob your fathers--that you may be multiplied in it as the stars of
heaven for multitude, and as the sand which is upon the seashore. And
none shall disturb you, for ye are the chosen people."
The moon, which had veiled her light for a few minutes, reappeared, and
hearing no more sounds of voices, I looked round, and her clear cold rays
fell in the great empty hall. Not a figure, not a shade, was left. The
moonlight poured its silver flood upon the floor, and in the distance the
forms of a few trees stood out against the dark purple sky.
But now suddenly the high walls appeared lined with books, the old spinet
gave way to the _secrétaire_ of some man of learning, whose full-bottomed
wig was peering above the back of a red-leather arm-chair. I could hear
the quill coursing over the paper. The learned man, buried in thought,
never moved; the silence was oppressive.
But fancy my astonishment when, slowly turning, the great scholar faced
me, and I recognised the portrait of the famous lawyer Gregorius, marked
No. 253 in the portrait-gallery at Darmstadt.
How on earth had this personage walked out of his grave?
I was asking myself this question when, in a hollow sepulchral voice, he
pronounced these words:--
"_Dominorum, ex jurè Quintio, est jus utendi et abutendi quatenus
naturalis ratio patitur_."
As this sapient precept dropped oracularly from his lips, a word at a
time, his figure faded and turned pale. With the last word he had passed
out of existence.
What more shall I tell you, my dear friends? For hours, twenty
generations came defiling past me in Hans Burckhardt's ancient
mansion--Christians and Jews, nobles and commoners, fools and wise men
of high art, and men of mere prose. Every one proclaimed his indefeasible
right to the property; every one firmly believed himself sole lord and
master of all he surveyed. Alas! Death breathed upon one after another,
and they were all carried out, each as his turn came!
I was beginning to be familiar with this strange phantasmagoria. Each
time that any of these honest folks turned round and declared to me,
"This is mine!" I laughed and said, "Wait a bit, my fine fellow!--you
will melt away just like the rest!"
At last I began to feel tired of it, when far away--very far--the cock
crowed, announcing the dawn of day. His piercing call began to rouse the
sleeper. The leaves rustled with the morning air; a slight shiver shook
my frame; I felt my limbs gradually regaining their freedom, and, resting
upon my elbow, I gazed with rapture upon the silent wide-spread land. But
what I saw presently did not tend to exalt my spirits.
Along the little winding path to the cemetery were moving, in solemn
procession, all the ghosts that had visited me in the night. Step by step
they approached the decaying moss-grown door of the sacred inclosure;
that silent, mournful march of spectres under the dim grey light of early
morning was a gaunt and fearful sight.
And as I lay, more dead than alive, with gaping mouth and my face wet
with cold perspiration, the head of the dismal line melted and
disappeared among the weeping willows.
There were not many spectres, left, and I was beginning to feel a little
more composed, when the very last, my uncle Christian himself, turned
round to me under the mossy gate and beckoned me to follow! A distant
faint ironical voice said--
"Caspar! Caspar! come! Six feet of this ground belong to you!"
Then he too disappeared.
A streak of crimson and purple stretched across the eastern sky announced
the coming day.
I need not tell you that I did not accept my uncle Christian's
invitation, though I am quite aware that a similar call will one day
arrive from One who must be obeyed. The remembrance of my brief abode at
Burckhardt's fort has wonderfully brought down the great opinion I had
once formed of my own importance, for the vision of that night taught me
that though orchards and meadows may not pass away their owners do, and
this fact compels to serious reflection upon the nature of our duties and
responsibilities.
I therefore wisely resolved not to risk the loss of manly energy and of
the best prizes of life by tarrying at that Capua, but to betake myself,
without further loss of time, to the pursuit of music as a science, and
I hope to produce next year, at the Royal Theatre of Berlin, an opera
which, I hope, will disarm all criticism at once.
I have come to the final conclusion that glory and renown, which
speculative people speak of as if they were mere smoke, is, after all,
the most enduring good. Life and a noble reputation do not depart
together; on the contrary, death confirms well-deserved glory and adds
to it a brighter lustre.
Suppose, for instance, that Homer returned to life, no one would dispute
with him his claim to be the author of the _Iliad_, and each would vie
with the rest to do honour to the father of epic poetry. But if
peradventure some rich landowner of that day came back to assert a claim
to the fields, the woods, the pastures of which he used to be so proud,
ten to one he would be received like a thief and perhaps die a miserable
death.
THE BEAR-BAITING.
"If any one thing distresses my dear aunt," said Caspar, "more than my
fondness for Sébaldus Dick's tavern, it is that there is an artist in the
family!
"Dame Catherine would have been glad to see me an advocate, a priest, or
a councillor. If I had become a councillor, like Monsieur Andreas Van
Berghem; if I had snuffled out long and weary sentences, caressing my
lace bands with dainty finger-tips, with what esteem and veneration would
not that worthy woman have regarded monsieur her nephew! She would have
greeted Monsieur le Conseiller Caspar with profound respect; she would
have set before me her best preserves, she would have poured out for me,
in the midst of her circle of gossips, just a drop of Muscadel of the
year XI. with--
"Pray take this, monsieur le conseiller; I have but two bottles left!"
Anything that monsieur my nephew Caspar, conseiller at the court of
justice, could do would certainly have been perfectly right and suitable,
and quite perfect in its way.
Alas for the vanity of human wishes! the poor woman's ambition was never
to be gratified. Her nephew is plain Caspar--Caspar Diderich; he has no
title, no wand of office, no big wig--he is just an artist! and Dame
Catherine has running in her head the old proverb, "Beggarly as an
artist," which distresses her more than she can tell.
At first I used to try to make her understand that a true artist is
worthy of great respect, that his works sometimes endure for ages, and
are admired by many successive generations, and that, in point of fact,
a good artist is quite as good as a councillor. Unhappily, I failed to
convince her; she merely shrugged her shoulders, clasped her hands in
despair, and vouchsafed no answer.
I would have done anything to convert my aunt Catherine to my
views--anything; but I would rather die than sacrifice art and an
artist's life, music, painting, and Sébaldus's tavern!
Sébaldus's tavern is delightful. It is the corner house between the
narrow Rue des Hallebardes and the little square De la Cigogne. As soon
as you are through the archway you find within a spacious square court,
with old carved wooden galleries all round it, and a wooden staircase to
reach it; everywhere are scattered in disorder small windows of last
century with leaden sashes, skylights, and air-holes; old wooden posts
are nearly yielding under the weight of a roof that threatens to sink in.
The barn, the rows of casks piled up in a corner, the cellar door at the
left, a pigeon-cote forming the point of the gable end; then, again,
beneath the galleries, other darkened windows in the same style, where
you can see swillers and topers in three-cornered hats, distinguished by
noses red, purple, or crimson; little women of Hundsruck, in velvet caps
with long fluttering ribbons, some grave, some laughing, others queer and
grotesque-looking; the hay-loft high up under the roof; stables,
pigsties, cowsheds, all in picturesque confusion attract and confound
your attention. It is a strange sight!
For fifty years not a hammer has been lifted against this venerable ruin.
You would think it was left for the special accommodation of rats! And
when the glowing autumn sun, red as fire, showers golden rain upon the
decaying walls and timbers; when, as daylight fades into evening, the
angular projections stand out more boldly, and the shadows deepen; when
all the tavern rings with songs, and shouts, and roars of laughter; when
fat Sébaldus, in leathern apron, runs to and from the cellar with the big
jug in his hand; when his wife Gredel throws up the kitchen window, and
with her long knife, well hacked along the edge, cleans the fish, or cuts
the necks of hens, ducks, or geese which struggle and gurgle in their own
blood; when pretty Fridoline, with her rosy little mouth and her long
fair hair, leans out of her window to tend the honeysuckle, and over her
head the neighbour's tabby cat is gently swaying her tail and watching,
with her cunning green eyes, the swallow circling in the deepening
purple--I do assure you that a man must be utterly devoid of taste for
the picturesque not to stop and contemplate in ecstasy and listen to the
murmuring sounds, or the louder din, or the falling whispers, and observe
with an artist's eye the trembling lights, the flying shadows, and
whisper to himself, "Is not this beautiful?"
But you should see Maître Sébaldus's tavern on a great occasion, when all
the jovial folks of Bergzabern crowd into the immense public room--some
day when a cock-fight is going on, or a dog-fight, or a magic-lantern.
Last autumn, on a Saturday--and it was Michaelmas Day--we were all
sitting round the oaken table, between one and two o'clock in the
afternoon; old Doctor Melchior, Eisenloffel the blacksmith, and his old
wife, old Berbel Rasimus, Johannes the capuchin monk, Borves Fritz the
clarionet-player at the Pied de Boeuf, and half a hundred more, laughing,
singing, drinking, playing at _youker_, draining jugs and glasses, eating
puddings and _andouilles_.
Mother Gredel was coming and going; the pretty maid-servants, Heinrichen
and Lotté, were flying up and down the kitchen stairs like squirrels, and
outside, under the broad archway, was the booming, and banging, and
jingling of the big drum and the cymbals, while the exciting proclamation
was being made: "Ho! ho! hi! Great battle to come off! The Asturian bear,
Beppo, and Baptist, the Savoyard bear, against all dogs that may come.
Boom! boom! Walk in, ladies! Walk in, gentlemen! Here's the buffalo from
Calabria, and the onagra of the desert! Walk in, walk in! Don't be
frightened! All walk in!"
And they did come in, in crowds.
Sébaldus, barring the passage with his burly form, as Horatius guarded
the bridge in the brave days of old, shouted to all--
"Your five kreutzers, friends and neighbours! Five kreutzers for
admittance! Pay, or I'll throttle you!"
It was an awful confusion; people climbed over each other's backs to get
in faster, until Bridget Kéra lost a stocking and Anna Seiler half her
petticoat.
About two, the bear-leader, a tall, rough-looking fellow, with red ragged
hair and beard, and mounting a high sugar-loafed hat, pushed the door
ajar, and cried, looking in--
"Just going to begin the fight!"
In an instant all the tables were emptied, many an untasted glass being
left upon it. I ran to the hay-loft, climbed up the ladder four steps at a
time, and drew it up after me. There, seated all alone upon a bundle of
hay, just inside the little skylight, I had a capital view.
What a throng! The old galleries were bending under their weight, the
roofs were visibly swaying. I shuddered to think of what might happen.
It seemed inevitable that they would all come down together like grapes
in the wine-press, heaped up in a sea of heads.
They were hanging in clusters on the wooden pillars; yet higher in the
gutters along the roof; yet higher about the pigeon-cote; higher still
over the skylights in the roof of the _mairie_; yet higher in the spire
of St. Christopher's; and all this multitude were howling and shouting--
"The bears! the bears!"
When I had sufficiently admired and wondered at the immense crowd,
looking down I saw in the middle of the court a poor, wretched,
depressed-looking donkey, lean and ragged, his sleepy eyes half-closed,
his ears hanging down. This dreadful object was to open the sports.
"What fools some people are!" I thought.
Minutes were passing away, the tumult increased, impatience was waxing
into anger, when the great red scoundrel, with his immense sugar-loaf
hat, advanced carelessly into the middle of the open space, and cried
solemnly, with his fist upon his hips--
"The onagra of the desert against any dog in the town!"
There was a silence of astonishment. Daniel, the butcher, with staring
eyes and gaping mouth, asks--
"Where is the onagra?"
"There she stands!"
"That! why, it's an ass!"
"It's an onagra."
"Well, let us see what it is," cried the butcher, laughing.
He whistled his dog to come, and, pointing to the ass, cried--
"Foux, catch him!"
But, strange to say, as soon as the ass saw the dog running to the
attack, he turned nimbly round, and launched out with the whole length
of his leg--so well aimed a kick that the dog fell back as if struck by
lightning, with his jaw fractured!
Loud laughter rang all round, while the poor dog fled with a piteous yell
of pain.
The bear-leader smiled at the butcher, and asked--
"Well, what's your opinion? Is my onagra an ass?"
"No," said Daniel, rather ashamed, "it is an onagra."
"All right! all right! any more dogs coming to fight my desert-born,
desert-bred onagra? Come on, the onagra is ready!"
But no one came forward; and the bear-leader shouted in vain in his
shrill tones--
"Gentlemen! ladies! are you all afraid? afraid of the onagra? The dogs of
your town ought to be ashamed of themselves. Come on! courage, gentlemen!
courage, ladies!"
But no one was inclined to risk his dog's life or limbs against so
dangerous an animal, and the cries for the bears were beginning again.
"The bears! the bears! bring out the bears!"
After waiting a quarter of an hour the fellow saw that his onagra was not
likely to get any more customers, so, putting the beast up in the stable,
he approached the pigsty, opened it, and drew out by his chain Baptiste,
the Savoy bear, an old brute with a brown mangy-looking coat, as sulky
and ashamed as a sweep coming down a chimney. For all he was not handsome
the shouts of applause rang out, and the fighting dogs themselves, shut
into the tavern porch, smelling a wild beast, set up a tragic howl that
made your hair stand on end. The miserable bear was led quietly enough to
a stake firmly driven in the ground, to which he was chained, all the
time slowly surveying the excited crowd with a melancholy eye.
"Poor old traveller!" I cried to myself, "would anybody have told you ten
years ago, when grave, terrible, and solitary you were traversing from
side to side the high glaciers in Switzerland, in the gloomy glens of the
Unterwald, and your deep growls made the old oaks tremble in every
leaf--who could have told you that the day would come when, sad and
resigned, with an iron collar round your throat, you would be tied to a
post and devoured by dogs to amuse a mob at Bergzabern? Alas! _Sic
transit gloria mundi_!"
As these meditations were occupying my thoughts, noticing that everybody
was bending forward to see, I did like the rest, and I soon saw the
possibility of warm work.
A pair of boar-hounds, belonging to old Heinrich, were being led to
the other end of the court. Struggling in the chain, these ferocious
creatures were foaming with rage. One was of the large Danish breed,
white, with large black spots, supple of limb, with muscles like steel
springs, jaws opening wide like an alligator's; the other a huge hound
from the Tannewald, never disabled in one leg according to law, ribs
barely covered, the backbone hard and knotted like a bamboo cane. They
did not bark, but they were straining against the chain with all their
might, and there stood old Heinrich with his grey broad head flung back,
his ruddy moustache bristling, his thin razorbacked nose hooked over his
lips, and his long leather-gaitered legs firmly planted against the
stones in his strenuous efforts to restrain with both hands the eager
appetite of his dogs for the fight, while he opposed to their attempts to
bound forward the whole weight of his body.
"Back! back!" he shouted to the bear-leader, and the ruffian ran back to
the shelter of a faggot-stack.
Then every face bending over the galleries grew red and hot with the
excitement of the horrid fray, and starting eyes glanced from every nook
and corner.
The bear sat on his haunches gathered together ready for action, his huge
paws uplifted. I could see how he quivered in his rough skin, and his
muzzle seemed to annoy him terribly. All at once the chain was slipped;
at a single leap the hounds cleared the intervening space, and their
sharp fangs were in a moment fixed in both poor Baptiste's ears, whose
heavy paws and long sharp claws hugged each bitter enemy around the neck,
slowly digging into their straining bodies till the blood spurted out in
streams. But he, too, was bleeding, for his ears were suffering cruel
lacerations; the dogs held on, and his tawny eyes were raised to the sky
with a pitiable look of appeal. Not a cry, not a sigh or a groan escaped
from a single combatant; the three animals formed a group as motionless
as if they had been carved in wood.
I could feel the perspiration running down my face.
This went on for five minutes.
At length the Tannenthaler seemed to be relaxing slightly; the bear
weighed more heavily on him with his heavy paw, his eye kindling with a
gleam of hope; then there was another brief pause. There was a horrid
groan, a cracking; the hound's backbone was broken, and he fell back upon
the stones, his jaws reeking with blood.
Then Baptiste, with a tremor of delight, threw both paws round the Dane,
who had not yet let go his hold, but his teeth were slipping from the
torn and bloody ear. Suddenly he shook himself and sprang backward; the
bear made a rush at his flying foe, but the chain held him back. The dog
fled, red with blood, and only stopped when he had got safe behind his
master, who gave him a favourable reception, while casting a glance at
his other dog, which lay motionless.
And here Baptiste placed his mighty paw upon the victim of his fury and
his valour; carrying his head high, he snuffed the carnage with distended
nostrils and panting sides; the veteran warrior was himself again.
Frantic applause rose from the galleries to the church spire. The bear
seemed to understand. I have never seen a more proud and resolute
bearing.
After this fight all the spectators were taking breath; the capuchin
friar Johannes, seated upon the banister facing the field of battle,
shook his stick, smiling with satisfaction in his long brown beard.
People wanted a little relief; pinches of snuff were offered and
accepted, and the voice of Doctor Melchior, discussing and explaining the
different phases of the conflict, was heard over the noise of many
talkers. But he had no time to finish his speech, for in a moment the
barn-door flew open, and more than five-and-twenty dogs, great and small,
the very vagrants and scum of the town, offered up as a sacrifice to do
honour to the occasion, wallowed in a heap into the yard, howling and
yelling, barking, snapping, and snarling; then, as if second thoughts had
rather modified their ideas about valour, they all retreated into a safe
corner of the yard, the farthest from the bear, where they contented
themselves with angry protests, making short runs at the enemy and quick
retreats, making a very sorry pretence of war.
"Oh, those cowardly curs! the miserable little brutes!" cried the
valorous occupants in the gallery.
And the much wiser and discreeter dogs looked up in answer, and seemed to
say--
"Go yourselves!"
Still the bear was standing well on the defensive when, to the general
astonishment, Heinrich reappeared, holding his Danish hound by the chain.
I have since been informed that he had wagered fifty florins with Joseph
Kilian, the gamekeeper, that the boar-hound would renew the attack. He
advanced slowly, patting the dog with his hand, and saying persuasively--
"Good dog, Blitz! good dog!"
And the noble animal, in spite of his bleeding wounds, rushed in; then
the whole pack of mongrels, curs, puppies, lurchers, and turnspits ran in
too in a long string, till poor Baptiste was covered with the vile rabble
rout; he did what he could, he rolled over and over as far as his chain
would let him, growling and grunting, crushing one, sending another away
with a bite, struggling furiously. The brave Dane still showed the
greatest intrepidity; he had caught the bear between the ears, and rolled
over with him, his fore-legs in the air, whilst the rest were biting,
some his legs, and some his torn and bleeding ears. There seemed no end
to this plague of dogs.
"Enough! enough!" was the cry in every direction.
Yet still some were not satisfied, and kept crying on the dogs.
Heinrich at that moment darted across the yard like a flash of lightning;
he seized his clog by the ear, and pulling it away with all his strength,
cried--
"Blitz, Blitz, let go!"
But this was of no use. At last the man succeeded in making him loose his
hold by a tremendous cut with his whip across his body, and, dragging the
animal away, they both disappeared under the archway.
The mongrels had not waited for this event to give up the battle; four or
five only still hung upon Bruin's side; the rest, scared, limping,
yelping, were trying to find a way out. Suddenly one of those heroes, a
cur belonging to Rasimus, caught sight of the kitchen window, and, fired
by a noble enthusiasm for his safety, he crashed through glass and all.
All the rest of the yelling crew, struck by the ingenuity of this plan,
followed in the same road without a moment's hesitation. Plates and
dishes, glasses and bottles, saucepans and kettles were all heard making
a fearful clatter, while Mother Gredel rent the air with her piercing
cries of "Help, help!"
This was the best joke of the day. Roars of laughter hailed the
propitious escape of the dogs, even at the cost of so much good crockery.
They laughed till the tears came into their eyes, and rolled down their
red faces, and they panted for breath.