“LES NEIGES D’ANTAN.”
“That quarter of roedeer Master Kuno the ranger was good enough to send
us in would just be in prime condition for supper to-night, little one,
yes?” asks Burgomaster Niklaus of his daughter.
“Yes, Väterle; but it could be kept still another day or two if you
wish. It is such a fine piece.”
“Good.”
“You may like to wait for it to be dressed, until we have some guest to
supper with us.”
“Quite right,” nods the Burgomaster, kindling a Gargantuan lantern he
has brought in with him, and stealing a glance over the top of it at
Sabina; “and a guest is coming to-night.”
“Very well, Väterle.”
“You don’t ask who it is,” says Niklaus, raising his voice, a shade
irritated as now and then he was, in spite of himself, at his
daughter’s impassivity and lack of interest in the daily trifling
occurrences which make up the staple of existence; and, above all, he
sorely missed the little proverbial feminine failing of which once
Sabina had quite her fair share. “I say you don’t ask me who it is.”
“I—did—not—who is it, Väterle?” she asks.
“Master Dasipodius,” curtly replies Niklaus.
“Master Christian Dasipodius?” she says, flushing a little as the name
passes her lips.
“No,” answers Niklaus, “not Master Christian this time; the
Professor—Conrad Dasipodius.” And again Niklaus’ eyes searchingly fix
themselves on his daughter’s face; but curiously little of it is to
be seen, bending so low over a troublesome tangle in the flax, which
somehow the trembling little fingers aggravate into one fearsome
Gordian knot.
“The Professor Conrad Dasipodius,” reiterates Niklaus; “and seeing
that he has been so long a stranger, we must kill the fatted calf,
hey? and give him a hearty welcome. Yes, little one?” and again the
Burgomaster’s accents touch a high note.
“Yes,” she answers with a slight start, “of course. Oh yes.”
“Good. And now I’m going into the cellar,” continues her father, “to
fetch up a bottle of Burgundy to drink his health, hey?”
“To be sure, Väterle.”
“Ay, to be sure. And let me see, let me see now; sturgeon stuffed with
parsley’s a dish for an emperor. First we’ll have sturgeon stuffed with
parsley, h’m?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, and you’ll stuff it yourself, dear child, eh? Somehow no fingers
ever do that job like these little ones,” coaxes Niklaus, leaving his
lantern, and coming beside her to lift the two hands caressingly in
his. “I recollect how Master Dasipodius, the very last time he ever set
foot in this house—thunder and lightning! what an age ago it is—we had
stuffed sturgeon, and it was you who dressed it; and he said—and he’s
the slowest fellow going to notice what sort of food’s set before him
is the Professor Dasipodius—he said that the gods never tasted anything
half so good. Dost remember his saying it, Sabina?”
“Yes, father.”
“Come now, look up then,” continued Niklaus, putting his forefinger
under her chin, and compelling her eyes to meet his own, “and let
bygones be bygones.”
“They are; they are,” and the miserable Sabina strove to writhe herself
free. “Quite.”
“Good, that is my own brave girl. And listen, you’ll put on the green
kirtle, you know; why, that kirtle becomes you like no other I ever saw
you in, and you’ll put it on?” asked the Burgomaster cheerily.
“Father, it is all one—it is of no consequence to Master Dasipodius
what I wear,” cried the poor child.
“Oh, hang it! neither it is. When will one have the sense to hammer
that into one’s dunderhead?” groaned Niklaus, clutching the frontal
bone of that member.
“Besides,” continued she hesitatingly, “I—of course I will see that all
is ready comfortably for you, and—the Professor Dasipodius; but——”
“Well?”
“I shall not be here, father.”
“Thunderweather! and where, pray, may you be going a gadding, mistress?”
“To Cousin Radegund’s.”
“Why! impossible! she was by—o’Monday morning it was—when Dasipodius
told me he intended looking in to-night about the enamels. When did she
invite you, child?”
“Monday afternoon.”
“That woman’ll be forgetting her own head next, handsome as it is,
one of these fine days! Never mind; I’ll look in on her presently and
explain, and beg off for you.”
“But—I want to go,” pleaded the unhappy girl.
“And I want you to stay here, mistress!” sternly cried Niklaus, with a
stamp of his foot. “Nay,” he went on in gentler tones, and drawing her
into his arms, “I understand all about it. Am I not your old father?
and don’t I know you’re a brave little girl, Sabina? There, there, I
grant you it won’t be pleasant, just for the first minute or two, you
sad, naughty, capricious little woman! She would, and she wouldn’t.
Oh, fie! fie! and why wouldn’t she? Well, she wouldn’t. But Master
Dasipodius is a man, and he’s forgotten all about it long ago, I’ll
warrant you. He bears you no malice; he’s had other fish to fry; and
hasn’t thrown away two thoughts on you, since you gave him the go-by.
And if he doesn’t object to meeting you, you vain, dear, cruel, little
pussy-cat, you, what the deuce should you be minding him for? Come,
you’ll never be letting these odd whimsies of yours shut the door on
the best gentleman in Strassburg.”
“N—no.”
“And your father’s old friend’s son, hey?”
“No, Väterle”; and the mobile lips fixed into resolute, almost stern
lines, and a strange light, like the steady glow in the eyes of some
martyr on the scaffold, shone in the soft eyes,—“no, no.”
“So, that’s my brave girl; that’s her father’s own child. And I shall
look in then, and tell Radegund you’re not coming?”
“Yes, and father——”
“Ay?”
“Tell Cousin Radegund that, if she pleases, I will come to-morrow
instead.”
“H’m—well, if she wants you, you can go of course; yes, I’ll say
so. And now,” and the Burgomaster took up his lantern, “now for the
Burgundy.”
Those were good times when love-lorn maids had little leisure for
sitting down to feed upon melancholy. If iron and steel did their part
then in tuning up shattered nerves, they did not figure as ruinous
items on paterfamilias reckoning day with the doctor; but fulfilled
their healing duties more effectually under the guise of gridiron and
stewpan. Women used to go into their kitchens and stillrooms then;
and over their roasts, and pasties, and electuaries, and the rest of
it, forgot their fancied woes, and soothed down their real ones, as
Sabina did now. Had not that quarter of venison to be taken out of
salt, and dried and floured ready for the spit? and there, on the
table of sacrifice, lay the sturgeon her father had just sent in from
the fishmarket, awaiting the inimitable parsley stuffing; and then
the half-dozen dainty sauces and condiments to be thought out and
concocted, before the contemplated little feast could be such as her
father loved, and—fit for the guest he found his pleasure in honouring.
That liking Niklaus had conceived for Conrad Dasipodius was Sabina’s
one grand consolation for all she had to endure. Time had been that
her father, although indeed he had always respected and liked the son
of his old friend very well, cared for him far less than he did now.
Von Steinbach’s own sturdy sense had come to admire in no small degree
the man who could fight under such fearful odds against fortune; and
whose powerful intellect had won him, besides, tangible reward in good
round florins, and such things are not to be sneezed at mind you,—such
high distinctions. The generous-hearted old Strassburger was able
to estimate at something of its real value the stuff which made up
Dasipodius’ nature.
Sabina did not, however, stay hypercritically to analyse the causes of
her father’s appreciation for the man she loved; it sufficed for her
that he had come to know Dasipodius in some measure as he deserved to
be known; and she was content silently to add, and as cheerfully as her
sad heart might, any grievous misconstruction touching herself, to all
that other burden of griefs which had fallen to her lot.
Her love for Dasipodius had come to be of that self-immolating sort
which gives all, hoping for nothing. It was her secret glory that he
had bestowed on her one fleeting thought of love, or as Radegund had
put it, of admiration; and that, though he should become the husband of
a king’s daughter—though he were in his grave—(alas! that sometimes to
her it seemed as though that would have been best!)—that remembrance
could never be stolen from her, and she would not have bartered it for
another man’s life-long devotion. The little woman, incapable indeed
of entering by so much as half a step into the region of thought which
was the mathematician’s kingdom, had still the gift of appreciation and
sympathy, and though she might not enter, she could kneel afar off and
adore.
“It were all one,
That I should love a bright particular star,
And think to wed it.”
She would have felt those lines met her case excellently well.
Appraising that sixteenth century Horologe by the intensified
scientific light of these days, one might feel tempted perhaps to cavil
at Strassburg’s glorification of Dasipodius, arguing that the thing by
which the chief memory of him remains, is a mere clumsy, not to say
ridiculous, piece of mechanism; but this would be as unfair an estimate
as if one—provided only the old world lasts so long and Nidhögg the
dragon has not gnawed the world’s roots through three hundred years
hence—should sneer at one Benjamin Franklin with his pins and needles
and bits of wire; or at that awkward fellow Stephenson, whose wits
could devise no better arrangement for carrying people about the world,
than a puffing Juggernaut monster.
Moreover, a reputation attached to the mathematician’s name, quite
independent of the Horologe, in his wondrous aptitude for imparting
to others the principles of the science of which he was so perfect a
master; and as mathematical head professor of Strassburg University,
he in his time helped in linking together that girdle of civilisation
which Archimedes, and Galileo, and Newton, and men of their mould, have
helped to put round the earth.
Truly he had his persecutions, and the thousand irritating midge-bites
which ignorance and envy love to inflict; but that is to say no more
than that he shared the common lot of intellects above the ruck.
“And,” solemnly demanded that Quidnunc of the great railway engineer,
after he had enunciated his propositions, and with infinite care and
patience striven to explain his plans to the assembled conclave—“and if
now a cow should happen to get on the line?”
“It would be bad for the coo,” answered the man of science.
And returning to Dasipodius and his own day, he had but borne
opposition and disappointment in the spirit of his mighty Florentine
contemporary who endured imprisonment and countless humiliations, and
met the outcry of bigots with the placid truth which has now become a
truism, “_e pur si muove_”.