RETRIBUTION.
Some days after this, I was hastening from the Frankendör towards the
residence of Ernestine, when, at a corner of the Bourse, where the
merchants were wont to meet, but where the rank grass grew between
the untrodden stones, I observed a provision shop, or victualler's,
the last in the street, which as yet maintained the aspect of having
any thing like business, which all its less fortunate neighbours had
long since hopelessly abandoned.
Upon the front wall of the house, there were cut and gilded the date
1600, with one of those verses, then so common in Stralsund,
recording, in barbarous Latin, that Jaromar prince of Rügen had
fortified the city, after it had been burned by the Danes and
Pomeranians. Half concealing this, a gaudy sign-board was nailed
over it, bearing the name and occupation of the retailer, the aspect
of whose stock made me remember (what I seldom forgot) the larder of
Ernestine's establishment; and, being without money, I twisted a few
golden links from the chain her father had given me in more
prosperous times, and desiring a soldier to follow me, entered the
shop, the entire goods of which consisted of three somewhat
shrivelled hams, a side of suspicious-like bacon, and a few strings
of freshly made, but still more suspicions sausages, the material of
which, at such a time, when the marshal and burgomaster had been
living for months on horse-flesh or little better, made me resolve to
have nothing to do with them. But then every thing was scrupulously
neat and clean; the Mernel floor and counters were scrubbed to the
whiteness of snow; the tin and brass work shone like silver and gold.
An elderly man, with wiry grey mustaches, and wearing a nightcap and
long apron of spotless white cotton, was busy with a chopping-knife
preparing more sausages, which he seasoned profusely with garlic,
salt, and pepper.
He appeared considerably disconcerted on my entrance, and, despite
the deference usually paid by his class and all cits to a long
mustache and long sword, he doggedly continued his occupation; but
his wife, a smart little woman, with lively black eyes, and a face
that was wofully ravaged by the small-pox, tripped forward to ask me
what I would have.
The question had scarcely left her lips, when she grew paler than her
white coif, trembled, and cast down her eyes. Her voice and her
_tout ensemble_ were familiar to me. I felt myself change colour in
turn, and mingled emotions of pleasure, anger, and surprise ran
through me.
"What a change is here!" said I; "is it possible that I find the
Señora Prudentia--the sylph-like dancer, whose actions were so full
of grace and beauty--the songstress who warbled like a fairy bird in
summer--transformed into a little vender of sausages and ham!"
Perhaps there was something spiteful in this remark; but I had a
lively recollection of the doubloons and the ring, bought from an
honest jeweller of the Hebrew race in the Burgerplatz at Glückstadt.
"Herr Captain," she replied modestly and timidly, and with an air
that well became her then, with her plain white linen coif, her large
neckerchief, and short bunchy petticoats of scarlet cloth (for every
way she had fairly become the little burgher's wife), "adversity has
taught me a good lesson; I was vain, I was beautiful and wicked, and
God has punished me. He sent a severe illness which robbed me of my
beauty, and my vanity went with it. I should always have remembered
that beauty fades like the summer, but, unlike the summer, returns no
more. I shall never be beautiful again--never! (this was said with
some bitterness.) I shall never sing more; for the same envious
illness robbed me of my fine voice; but it matters not--I am at least
content; yet _ay de mi Espana_! I shall never see Spain more. My
husband----"
"What---you are then married at last!"
"My husband is an honest man, and I am become an industrious little
housewife. We should make quite a fortune but for this unhappy
siege; and shall we not yet, Herr Spürrledter?--look up, and speak
for yourself."
"Spürrledter--how--is your spouse my old acquaintance, the corporal
of Imperial horse?" said I with new astonishment, as that personage,
on being thus compelled to show his face, doffed his white nightcap,
and stood soldierly erect before me.
"I am sorry to see you here, corporal," said I; "for if Stralsund is
taken, the Imperialists will hang you as surely as the sun is
shining."
Had I been less of a soldier, I am certain that the recollection of
the desperate love I had once made to Prudentia would have
embarrassed me; but there was something as comical in the
transformation of the wiry and ferocious old corporal of Reitres into
a maker of sausages, as there was something melancholy in the change
of the beautiful dancer into a plain-looking citizen's wife, with an
enormous white coif, red skirt, and bunch of keys.
"And now, Herr Captain," said she with a business-like air, to cut
short an unpleasant pause; "in what can we serve you?"
"By placing your best ham in the hands of this soldier," said I,
hesitatingly.
She gave me a glance of mingled archness and sadness, and lifted down
the ham, while I, who once would not have allowed her to pluck a
flower unaided, stood stoically by.
"We have been so shamefully plundered, Mein Herr!" said old
Spürrledter; "'tis only a day since Major Fritz, that tall cavalier
with the short beard, and two yellow feathers in his hat, marched off
with all our best and last Bologna sausages."
"And to-day," added Prudentia with something of her old air, "another
insolent biped without feathers carried away our only fowl."
"For Heaven's sake, do not be alarmed, Fraü Spürrledter!" I replied
hastily; "I am not foraging, as your corporal has no doubt done many
a day. I require the provant; and must have it; but having no money,
beg to leave these six links of pure gold, which are more than enough
to pay for thrice my purchase. And now," I added, as the soldier
marched off with it; "I trust, Fraü, you have not, as at Glückstadt,
any acquaintances beyond the walls; for I am not now the fool I was
in those days."
"Fool!--oh, how can you use a term so harsh? and I am not the pretty
knave I was in those days either--oh no!" she added sadly and archly.
"I beseech you not to think so, and not to discover to the marshal
all I have done in other times--nor to say I am the sister of--of him
you know. Ah! your eyes sparkle; and I believe with reason. If you
can extend protection to my husband and myself, it will be a
favour--yea, it will be a mercy, which we shall do our best to merit;
for in a city surrounded by ferocious besiegers, and defended by
desperate and starving soldiers of fortune, the situation of the poor
citizens is not very enviable."
I felt somewhat moved by the severe and complete retribution that had
fallen on this once proud and artful coquette, and I promised to
yield all the protection in my power. She declined to receive the
golden links; but I insisted upon her doing so, and remembering, with
something of awkwardness, the different relation in which we now
stood to each other, and all the flowery love-speeches and
magniloquent nonsense I had said to her in other times, I was in some
haste to be gone, and bade her adieu.
As I issued into the Bourse, accompanied by the Highlander who bore
my unsentimental purchase, which the hollow-cheeked passers beheld
with eager and wolfish eyes, old Spürrledter hurried after me, and
raising a hand to his white nightcap in the old style of his military
salute--
"Herr Captain," said he, "I believe you know what a devil of a
brother-in-law I have. Well: though an old soldier who has smelt
powder at Prague and Fleura, I have a mortal terror of such a
relation, and despite all your guards and gates he has been twice
(the Lord alone knows how) in Stralsund here, and has robbed us each
time of every thaler we possessed."
"What--within Stralsund?"
"Ay, here--in Stralsund."
"This rascal must be cunning as a lynx."
"Cunning as Lucifer, Herr Captain, and more wicked withal. I have
the honour to point out to you, that this reputable relation of mine
is hovering like a jackal about the Imperial camp, and, as I believe
you have some dark scores to settle with him, he might be lured
within reach of a party, and consigned to the care of the
provost-marshal."
At these words, a glow of vengeance swelled up in my breast. I
thanked the ex-corporal of Reitres, and promised to call again; but
other events frustrated his kind intention of sending his troublesome
brother-in-law in search of another world. With a light heart I
hastened to the residence of Ernestine, yet remembering with
something of shame--a shame that made my love for her the more pure
and noble--my transient folly at Glückstadt.
After that day I never again saw Prudentia; for though I was three
months longer in Stralsund, I avoided the shop at the corner of the
Bourse; for I had no wish that Ian, or any of our officers or
friends--especially Major Fritz--should discover in the plump little
victualler, the Prudentia of my early days of soldiering--my
"mysterious countess," as Karl called her in jest; moreover, the
progress and incidents of that disastrous siege soon gave me other
and graver things to think of.