VADE SATANA.
“And now, Master Hackernagel, if you don’t mind, we’ll go,” said
Prudentius, ignoring Hackernagel’s last remark. “You won’t see any
more if you stand staring at it till midnight,” said the sacristan,
lifting as he spoke the great bunch of keys hanging at his girdle,
and selecting one smaller and more richly wrought than the rest, he
inserted it in the lock of the chapel postern and threw the door open,
motioning the Syndic to precede him.
Safe outside, he turned and carefully locked the door behind him,
letting the keys fall with a clatter at his side again.
“You hold the power of the keys, friend,” said Hackernagel, lifting
them into his hands, and looking at them with an air of languid
interest.
“Ay. As I have done any time these twenty years past, Syndic
Hackernagel,” said the sacristan proudly.
“An onerous trust.”
“Very much so,” acquiesced Prudentius.
“Sole and absolute power, if I mistake not?”
“You do not, Master Syndic. That is,” amended Prudentius, “with the
exception of this one.”
“Which you have just used?”
“Which I have just used,” and he fingered it tenderly. “It is the key
of the Saint Thomas Chapel as you saw. My lord likes to enter the
cathedral this way; and had a duplicate made for his own private use;
but this is the original.”
“And a charming specimen of metallic work it appears to be,” said
Hackernagel, examining it, as if he cared for such vanities.
“You’re right there, Syndic. You wouldn’t find a handsomer if you were
to hunt the empire through. It’s Master Wenzel Jamitzer of Nuremberg’s
own designing and casting. See, here’s his token, W. J., graven in the
midst of a shield, with the scutcheon of the Coppersmith’s guild above.
Plain enough, eh?”
“Oh, perfectly so,” said Tobias, bringing it well up to the tip of his
nose, and scrutinizing it through his squeezed-up eyelids, “perfectly
so; I should know it—it would, as you observe, be recognizable at half
a glance among all the others.”
“Seventeen in all,” said Prudentius, lifting the whole cluster and
looking at them with proud affection, as he let them slip one by one
through his fingers. “And a precious weight they are to be having
dangling about you day and night.”
“Day and night? Dear me! dear me! How excessively interesting. Then you
sleep with them about you?”
“I should rather think I did! ‘Safe bind, safe find,’ you know, Syndic;
that’s my motto.”
“And a most wise one,” conceded Hackernagel. “The Bishop chose well
when he elected you for a janitor.”
“I flatter myself he did, Syndic Hackernagel.”
“But I can well imagine your post is no sinecure. Your time,”
elucidated Hackernagel, “is well occupied.”
“Occupied’s no word for it. As I told you before, Syndic, it’s just
scrub, sweep, dust, from morning till night. Lock, unlock, take out,
put away, cover up, uncover. And then the candles and lamps. There—I
don’t complain, Master Hackernagel, but the mess and grease after
there’s been a grand function on, is enough to send you into your
grave. Takes it out of a man, till he’s as dry as any rotten stick. I
don’t know that ever a cup of good wine comes amiss to an honest man,
Master Tobias, but the morning after a red-letter day——”
“You drink wine?” queried Tobias, attentively considering the flesh
tints of the sacristan’s nose.
“Give me my chance,” laughed Prudentius, “and I’ll soon answer you that
question.”
“You’re a merry fellow,” smiled Hackernagel responsively. “And differ
as we may,” he continued with an air of tolerance, which fitted him
about as well as a lion’s skin would fit a hyena, “differ doctrinally
as we may, far be it from me to assert that Scripture forbids
imbibation of the juice of the grape.”
“Forbids!” cried Prudentius, holding up his two hands. “Odds, my life,
man! It commands it! ‘Take a little wine for thy stomach’s sake.’ Ho!
ha! Twist, and turn it how you may, you can’t make any other rhyme or
reason out of that.”
“My friend,” returned the Syndic mildly, “do I wish to try? It is the
abuse of such lawful pleasures I condemn; not their use.”
“And I have heard say,” returned Prudentius, “that there are some folks
of your way of thinking, who carry that pretty far.”
“A mere invention of the enemy,” answered Tobias, waving away the
imputation.
“I’m not so sure,” answered Prudentius, blinking meditatively through
his half-closed eyelids; “I’ve got a cousin now, who has been for years
in the service of Sauersuss and Sons, the famous vine-growers out by
Treves, there, and they do business with that fellow Ezra Schlau, the
landlord of the ‘Three Ravens,’ down by the Fisherman’s Gate, and times
out of counting, I’ve heard Cousin Wendel say he’s their best customer;
for all he’s such a close-fisted dog. Their best customer both for
quantity and quality. None of your wish-wash for him. And Ezra’s a
heretic of just your very cut and colour, Master Hackernagel, if I’m
not out.”
“The Three Ravens is certainly a reformed house,” concluded the Syndic.
“Ah!” grinned Prudentius, “time it was, if some tales are true.”
“A most excellently conducted establishment,” hurried on Hackernagel;
“I speak from personal knowledge.”
“Of its liquor?” said Prudentius.
“Of its landlord,” returned Tobias; “and I can only say that I have
ever found him a shining example; a most precious saint among saints,
seeking unwearingly for whatsoever things are best.”
“Just that,” said Prudentius. “Just what Cousin Wendel says; and if it
wasn’t as much as my place is worth, to be seen within half-a-mile of
his reformed ramshackle rat-hole, I don’t say but what I shouldn’t have
more than half a mind to be finding my way down there, and letting him
have my opinion of his wares one of these fine days.”
“Or nights,” said the Syndic.
“Eh?” said Prudentius, jerking his shaven head attently on one side,
like a listening bird.
“I say, my good fellow, that if the narrowness of your creed shackles
your liberty by daylight, you’re not such an idiot, I suppose, as to
allow it to fetter you down after dark.”
“Oh well, you know,” returned Prudentius, “we’re under rule here.”
“Psha! you individually are not; your official duties exempt you from
the mill-wheel ways of the rest.”
“That’s true. Yes. My lord, in consideration of the weakness of the
flesh, has given me a dispensation from attending Compline after a hard
day of it.”
“Exactly.”
“But we are all of us locked up as tight as maggots in a cheese,
including my lord himself, by nine of the clock; and in half-an-hour
after, every man-jack of us is snug and snoring till Lauds.”
“Nearly five hours.”
“And bolted and barred——”
“And Brother Prudentius has the keys. Ha! ha! ha!” laughed the Syndic.
“Ha! ha! ha!” chimed in Prudentius. “By the mass,” he went on,
cogitatively smoothing his chin, “it wouldn’t be a mortal sin, I
suppose.”
“Sin, my good friend! Heaven forbid that I should lay a stumbling block
in your path. You have your dispensation. Can it concern my lord how
you choose to turn it to account? In swinish sleep, or in contemplating
calm moonlit nature?”
“That’s all fine enough talking,” said the sacristan, “but you don’t
know our chapter. If so much as a mouse hereabouts should come to know
that I’d been within a mile of that place, it would be better I hanged
myself at once.”
“Who is to know?”
“Conscience, Master Tobias. Conscience must, anyhow.”
“Pooh! give it liberty—for once,” sneered Hackernagel.
“Oh! that’s well enough for the like of you; but we’ve got to keep ours
straight and clear. We’ve got to make a clean breast of everything,
don’t you see.”
Tobias grew pale. “You’d never confess——”
“Needs must,” shrugged Prudentius, “when the devil drives.”
“But confess that, man! Like one of your sins?”
“Eh!” returned Prudentius, opening his round eyes to their widest, “and
Father Ottfried wouldn’t reckon my making a night of it down at your
Three Ravens, one of the smallest of the lot, I fancy.”
“Then,” said Tobias cheerfully, “don’t tell him about it. That’s all
you’ve got to do.”
“Is it?” said Prudentius, “and tumble out of the frying-pan into the
fire! No thanks, Syndic Hackernagel. Drink of that sort’s good stuff,
I grant you; but I don’t exactly feel inclined to lay perjury on my
conscience for the sake of it.”
“You’d find it worth the risk,” said Tobias in tones of mocking
contempt. “Ezra Schlau’s Niersteiner doesn’t find its match in all
Elsass. But what is it to me? do as you like.”
The sacristan’s full rosy lips fell moistly apart, but he continued to
shake his head resolutely.
“But tell me—seriously, my good friend. Let us put it, for the sake of
argument, that you were to confide this little frolic to your priestly
confessor, what do you imagine——”
“There’s no imagination about it,” ruefully interposed Prudentius,
“it’s as certain as that nose is on your face, that he’d set me down to
dry barley bread and cold water for the next six months.”
“Psha! That’s not what I mean. Would he dare to reveal your confession?”
“Ho! don’t you know better than that?” said Prudentius, compassionately
measuring the Anabaptist’s length and breadth. “No, not exactly; if he
cared to keep his skin whole on his body.”
“Bless me,” gaily cried the Syndic, “I’d no conception now, that
flaying alive was the penalty for betraying the secrets of the
confessional. Are you quite certain of this?”
“Well,” said the sacristan, “it’s something of the kind, more or less.”
“But nothing so very far short?” briskly pursued Tobias.
“Oh! it’s sharp enough anyhow. You’ll find it all set down in the canon
law, if you want to know. It may be hanging, drawing, and quartering
for all I can say. And he’d have his spiritual flaying alive in any
case.”
“Spiritual?”
“Ay, yes; he’d be unfrocked.”
“Bless me; how curious now.”
“It would be curious if he wasn’t,” irefully cried Prudentius. “Would
he be worthy of his cloth, after he’d broke his oath?”
“Not if he believed in—in the terms he swore by,” said Tobias, evading
his gossip’s eyes and glancing round the Platz.
“No honest man would swear by them, if he didn’t believe in them,” said
Prudentius, turning away in the direction of the neglected, but far
from forgotten broil.
“One instant, friend,” said Hackernagel, laying his hand on the
sacristan’s ample sleeve. “Do I understand you that the ecclesiastical
law is so startlingly severe?”
“Not severer I fancy than your civil law is on a man who is false
to his oath, eh! Syndic?” somewhat hotly rejoined Prudentius. “What
may be the punishment now over yonder,” and he pointed towards the
chancellery, “for perjury?”
“For per—per—” stammered the Syndic.
“Ay, for perjury. What may it be? You’ve got that at your finger ends,
I make no doubt.”
“I—upon my honour—I—you are—common law is not my province; and,” added
Hackernagel, breaking into a forced uneasy laugh, “what in the world
all this has to do with Ezra Schlau, I—I fail to see.”
“I haven’t the least doubt you know what’s what, Syndic,” said
Prudentius, shaking his head, “as well as the best of us; but it won’t
do. You see I’m a——”
“Fool! craven! chicken-livered papist!”
“No such thing,” said Prudentius, squaring sharply round. “Say that
again if you dare.”
“I do! I do!” hissed Tobias, jerking out his peaked little chin at
him. “Are these swaddling clothes,” and he contemptuously tweaked the
sacristan’s skirts, “that you may never drink a cup of wine without
asking your priests’ permission.”
“No such thing——”
“Do you call yourself a man——”
“No such thing.”
“Then prove it,” snarled back Tobias.
“I will,” hysterically said Prudentius.
“And when?”
“To-morrow—to-night. Just whenever you please. Just whenever you
please.”
“Softly! softly! my friend,” smiled Tobias. “Are you forgetting that
I’m to stand treat? and I—my engagements, you understand, do not leave
me free this next day or two. What do you say, for the sake of being
definite, to this day week?”
“Won’t do at all,” said Prudentius, shaking his head; “it’s the eve of
Saint Laurence.”
“And what then? If you wait till its neither fast nor feast with you,”
growled Tobias, “you may wait till doomsday.”
“But the eve of Saint Laurence, surely you forget, Master Tobias, and
next day the Horologe day.”
“And what that has to do with preventing you from drinking a cup of
wine is past my comprehension. Certainly, I know as well as you do that
Tuesday is what Saint worshippers are pleased to call Saint Laurence’s
day; when this clock, which it appears to me is turning the heads of
everybody——”
“Well,” interrupted the sacristan, “and think of all the preparations.
Think of the chairs, and flowers, and trumpets, and flags, and candles,
and crowds and crowds there’s room to be made for. Why, already I’m off
my head nearly.”
“If not quite,” soothed Tobias, patting the little man’s shoulder, “if
not quite. It really is painful,” he added sighingly, “to see such zeal
and talented energy as yours thrown away on the serving of idols and
gew-gaw trumperies. But, my worthy friend, I know as well as you do,
that every detail is to be complete by the stroke of midday on Monday,
by order of the Municipal Council. Did not I myself, in my official
capacity, sign the order?”
“They may order as much as they please,” grumbled Prudentius, “we shall
never be ready.”
“And what,” continued Tobias, “can be more refreshing after such hard
physical toil, than a cup of good wine?”
“And ready or not ready,” went on Prudentius, “every door of the place
is to be closed by dusk on Monday evening.”
“Precisely.”
“And not a soul, not my lord himself, is to be let come inside after.
Unless, of course, Master Dasipodius may please to ‘look in,’ as he
always calls it, poor gentleman!”
“When?—at what hour?” sharply demanded Tobias.
“Oh! betimes in the morning, before the doors are open. Just to make
sure the last pin’s stuck in straight.”
“The last pin?”
“Why, that it’s all ready, don’t I mean.”
“He would do it before about eight of course.”
“I wouldn’t swear to that. Our Professor is in general as regular about
his comings and goings as his own foot-rule; but o’Monday night, I
shouldn’t feel myself safe from him, so to speak, after daylight; and
I was thinking of asking my lord’s permission to stay all night in the
Cathedral, in case of accidents.”
“Accidents?”
“Ah! I mean, just for the sake of being ready.”
“Oh! just so,” said Tobias.
“It isn’t everybody of course would care to offer such a thing in the
dead hours, when you can’t hear so much as a mouse stirring outside.
It’s trying to the nerves; most trying.”
“And what braces them better than the juice of the grape? So come,
friend sacristan,” and Tobias slapped the custodian’s broad back with
engaging familiarity. “I’m none so unreasonable after all. Eh?—ha, ha,
ha!”
“Ha, ha, ha! you’re a sly one, you are,” laughed Prudentius, bestowing
an appreciative dig into the Anabaptist’s lean ribs; “and hang me if I
don’t take a look in at your Three Ravens o’Monday night as you say——”
“Hush! Hold your peace!” snapped Hackernagel, in sharp, savage
undertones, which effectually scared the sacristan’s hilarity,
while the Syndic’s jaws fell with an audible chap into their normal
longitude, as Gretchen Hackernagel, basket on arm, stood at his elbow.
“Gretchen, my good girl!” he asked turning on her, “what do you do
here?”
“Do?” mechanically echoed the girl, in whose eyes, as she turned them
on Prudentius, and then on her father’s face, was a strange bewildered
expression, “I was—only—on my—way to market.”
“And is this the—way to market?” mimicked Tobias, joining his arms into
hers, and roughly dragging her from the spot. “What were you doing
there?” he demanded, in curiously less honeyed accents, when they were
well out of the sacristan’s hearing. “Skulking about?”
“Father, I had but just crossed over, out of the hot sun.”
“By my soul!” he growled, letting his hand slip to her wrist, and
tightening his grip till she cried out with the pain, “if it were hot
as——”
“Father!”
“Let me catch you again within a street’s length of these popish walls,
and—What did you hear me say? What was I saying? Eh? eh?”
“Nothing, father,” faltered the trembling girl.
“Sure?”
“Quite sure.”
“Did you hear me—smile?”
“I—I—fancied——”
“It was with pity then; of deepest, tenderest, heavenliest compassion
for—for that poor lost sheep Prudentius. Do you understand? Hey, do you
understand? Speak.”
“Yes, father,” answered Gretchen, casting down her eyes.
“Good. Now go,” said Tobias, releasing her and sending her on her ways
with a rough push. “And if you’re going to buy capons, see you give the
fellow half what he asks, and not a heller more. And hark you here, no
dead flesh mind; pick them out alive, and see them pinned through the
neck yourself.”