SYNDIC HACKERNAGEL RETIRES FROM PUBLIC LIFE.
Burgomaster von Steinbach’s one fearsome terror dispelled, his next
greatest consolation lay in the reflection that Tobias Hackernagel was
safe in the city prison; there, with no chance of ever getting his
liberty again. For Niklaus, the man, ever since he had borne official
capacity, had been a more or less sharp thorn in the flesh. The
Syndic’s harsh polemics and acid nature had always made him a dangerous
creature to be about in the city, torn as it was by political and
religious dissension,—a pestilent brand to all yearning for a lull in
the strife of tongues.
But now an extinguisher had fallen upon his machinations, and death
itself was not more silent than that once busy wagging tongue.
There only remained now the problem of how to dispose of him for the
rest of his natural life, and the mode of turning him to the one
advantageous purpose he could serve, of an ensample to evil-doers
generally. That the question reached to any consideration of his
natural life at all, Tobias possibly owed to those he had most deeply
sinned against. Those were not days when the crime of murder was the
only one punishable with death; and the general conviction prevailed
that Tobias Hackernagel would leave the judgment-hall, whither he
was quickly to be summoned on trial, a man whose life was forfeited.
There was, moreover, a general incitement to summary treatment of
Hackernagel, fortunately enough doubtless from the criminal’s own
point of view, for death and life still hovered disputing over Sabina
von Steinbach’s pillow, when his trial morning dawned; and though her
body lay too fragile and weak to lift a finger, her sense was active
with a preternatural keenness. Instinctively she guessed at what must
be taking place in regard to the miserable man; and all the well
intentioned endeavours to keep the course of events from her only
aggravated the feverous state her brain was reaching, until it grew
obvious that truth, and nothing but truth, must be told her. Then her
anguish at the awful doom of the man grew into semi-madness, as she
looked at the mute, despairing shame of Gretchen; and Dasipodius,
agonised by her agony, made his way into the presence of the dread
assembly, and pleaded for the would-be murderer’s miserable breath to
be spared him; and, for the sake of the pure innocent life hanging by a
hair, Justice laid aside her heaviest claim.
Their positions were strangely reversed now; and when the terrified
wretch’s scared eyes turned on the form of the blind man, advancing
up the hall, his ashen face grew sickly green. How could this man he
had pursued with his petty malignities, till they had culminated in
a passion for his blood itself, come there but as a damning witness
against him? And he uttered a loud screech of joy when it dawned upon
him that Dasipodius’ mission was a merciful one. Technically regarded,
never was such a curiously illogical mass of eloquent special pleading
as the professor’s intercession; nevertheless the judges, looking
through their tear-dimmed eyes at his sightless ones, accepted it
for consideration, deferring their verdict till next morning; and
Dasipodius, knowing this meant a reprieve from the law’s extremest
penalty, carried the news to his poor girl, who sobbed out a shower of
blessed refreshing tears upon his breast, and fell into a calm slumber,
which brought with it more healing than all the anodynes of Dr. Bruno’s
pharmacopœia.
And so the headsman sharpened his axe to no purpose. The Damocles’
sword demanding “blood for blood” did not fall. Tobias, as his legal
defender pleaded, had not absolutely consummated the death of his
victim; neither had he possessed himself of the weapon found upon him
with intent to murder. By his own confession, wrung from him by one or
two dexterously driven strokes of the wedge his executioners fitted on
to his leg, he had forced his way into the Cathedral, with the sole end
and aim of destroying the Horologe. “That’s all—good friends!” shrieked
he, as the hammer was lifted for one more frightful stroke. “On my
honour—only that.”
“And what of that oath?” sternly demanded one of his inquisitors.
“Oath? what oath?” broke forth the tortured, half-senseless wretch,
opening his eyes.
“WHAT oath? The one the witness Otto von Steinbach declares you to have
sworn upon his crucifix, that you would not injure the Horologe.”
“Oath! You call that an oath!”
“Ay, miserable, perjured man! Oath indeed! Sworn upon——”
“Upon a damnable dross idol!”
“Great Heaven!” ejaculated the surgeon, standing by to certify to how
much more pain the writhing creature could bear. “You counted it for
nothing?”
“For less than nothing!” and a leer of malicious triumph broke upon the
white contorted lips.
“Cursed be he who perjureth his word,” murmured a solemn voice out of
the dungeon’s gloom.
“And,” furiously hissed forth the Anabaptist, “thrice blessed, thou
foul-mouthed priest of Baal!—thrice blessed he who maketh a mock and a
byword of idols, and setteth them at naught, as I did then! For that
one poor testimony of mine”—and a gleam of fierce triumph glittered in
the fanatic’s livid features—“you and all your tribe shall one day see
me, from lowermost pitch, where you lie howling, sitting white-robed
among the Saints. And if I have sinned—for verily Satan toileth to
deceive the very Elect—for that witness of mine unto the Truth, I—I——”
A yell of agony, forced from him by the hammer’s valedictory stroke,
cut short the last flow of rhetoric which ever fell from the lips of
Tobias Hackernagel; and the unconscious wretch was borne back to the
cell whence he had been brought. Only, however, until his bruised limbs
were sufficiently recovered, to allow of his removal to the prison
of Freiburg, where it was recommended that the rest of his sentence
should be carried out, instead of at Strassburg; since the first of
that series of appearances he was doomed to make there in the pillory,
was greeted with such a storm of execration and savagery, that even his
flinty-hearted jailors took upon themselves to curtail the length of
time it had been arranged for him to remain at public disposal.
In the gloomiest corner of gloomy Freiburg prison, Tobias Hackernagel
spent the remainder of his days, beguiling their tedium by inditing,
for the edification of his sympathisers and admirers, a voluminous
outpouring of abuse upon a curious body of persons, calling themselves
Christians, which had recently sprung up, advocating the monstrous
creed that the Divine Suffering had been borne for all men, but that
only those who merited it by repentance and good works could be saved.
All circumstances—not forgetting the pillory conditions, which were
fulfilled otherwhere with somewhat modified demonstration—considered,
the Anabaptist gained by his translation to Freiburg; and he was not
slow to acknowledge, through his turnkey, his recognition to the
authorities of their consideration for his health and comfort which the
change implied.
It seems doubtful how far this view of his case actually weighed
with those in power; but it is certain that their chief motive for
dispensing with Hackernagel’s hidden presence in Strassburg arose out
of certain arguments propounded by the Professor Conrad Dasipodius.
To him it appeared an inexpressibly painful idea that the culprit’s
innocent daughters should be bowed to the ground with a degrading
sense of his ever-abiding neighbourhood. If this feeling could be
lightened, though ever so little, by his removal, Dasipodius felt it
should be done; and he confided his speculations on the matter to
Burgomaster von Steinbach, who promptly brought it before the Council.
Not a dissentient voice was raised. “I expect,” cheerfully commented
Councillor Job Klausewitz at the close of that day’s proceedings, “that
there’s not a draughtier hole in all Germany than Freiburg Castle on
a winter’s night. I happened to be coming under the keep there one
day last February, and the wind was enough to blow your head off. By
Jove, Burgomaster, it gave me the worst cold I ever had in all my life,
excepting that one I caught at Master Dasipodius’ little enquiry.”
If Hackernagel’s extinction was a general relief, nobody felt it so
entirely consoling as Otto von Steinbach. A trial almost, and yet not
quite too sharp for his constancy to Gretchen, these recent events had
proved. Once nerved by Sabina to maintain his honour at the sticking
point, he had striven with a perseverance astonishing his best friends,
most of all himself, to be true to her through all the evil report and
shame which inevitably fell upon his sweetheart and her sisters.
“She’ll make a good wife, Otto, dear,” Radegund said one day,
thoughtfully letting her wasted fingers stray among his curly locks;
“and you must not wince if there is a little prejudice about.”
“Prejudice be hanged, and favour too,” stoutly returned Otto. “I’m
going to stick to my bargain, Radegund; never you fear, and directly
you’re well again— Now don’t sigh like that, Radegund. It’s awfully
worrying to the nerves; especially when they’ve been so confoundedly
upset, as mine have lately. As soon as ever you’re well again, I say,
we’re going to be married. And I say, Radegund, here’s a bit of news
for you, my dear: Bishop John’s going to do us himself.”
“Do you?”
“Marry us. He’s promised. I asked him.”
“You should have done no such thing then,” said Radegund vexedly.
“He’ll never hear the last of it from the chapter for giving into such
a whim.”
“Whim! whim! Oh, come! I like that! Whim, indeed! Call marrying——”
“A heretic, my dear; a double-dyed one too; an Anabaptist.”
“She’s nothing of the sort. She’s as orthodox as—as you are.”
“So!” said Radegund, with a languid smile.
“At least,” amended he, “she’s going to be; and that’s just as good.
She’s grown sick and tired of the Christianity she was brought up in.”
“Really!”
“And she’s going to be a proper Christian, as soon as ever Prudentius
can stand upon his legs again.”
A multiplicity of trifles of the sort depended on Prudentius’
legs. Everything had gone cross, since they had lain disabled and
aching rheumatically, with the practical ordering of the Cathedral
arrangements. To the fact that he was indispensable about the place,
the little sacristan, in all probability, mainly owed the lightness of
the penance he paid for that egregious falling away of his down at the
Three Ravens. His absence proved his value; and the consideration of
his twenty years’ honest and faithful service, recommended him to more
mercy than he had dared to hope for. To the end of his days Prudentius
did penance for his dereliction, in coarsest mental sackcloth and
gritsomest of imaginary ashes, but practically he was let off with mild
punishment.
So obviously, it was represented in his behalf, had he been the
Syndic’s tool and catspaw, that not the sternest of his judges felt
disposed to do more than administer a severe rebuke, and hand him
over to the mildest form of chastisement ordained for a brother found
drunk and incapable. The corporeal conditions of his degradation the
little man endured stoically, counting it all as small beside that one
which deprived him of his keys and other prerogatives of office; but
these were but formally taken from him to be restored after a brief
term, during which chaos and dust reigned in the Cathedral; and my
lord, finding his sacristan’s punishment recoiling cruelly on his own
head, was fain to curtail the interdict; and a veil being drawn over
the past, Prudentius lived happy ever after; but the bare mention of
Niersteiner—much more the scantiest drain of it—never passed his lips,
for Niersteiner had come to be an abomination unto him.