Is the world really the same? Was there really ever a spring like this,
when the tide of life seems overflowing and bubbling up in leaf-buds,
flowers, and song, and streams?
It cannot be _only_ that God has given me the great blessing of Bertrand
de Crequi's love, and that life opens in such bright fields of hope and
work before us two; or that this is the first spring I ever spent in the
country. It seems to me that God is really pouring a tide of fresh life
throughout the world.
Fritz has escaped from the prison at Maintz, and he writes as if he felt
this an Easter-tide for all men. In all places, he says, the hearts of
men are opening to the glad tidings of the redeeming love of God.
Can it be, however, that every May is such a festival among the woods,
and that this solemn old forest holds such fairy holiday every year,
garlanding its bare branches and strewing every brown nook which a
sunbeam can reach, with showers of flowers, such as we strew on a
bride's path? And then, who could have imagined that those grave old
firs and stately birches could become the cradles of all these
delicate-tufted blossoms and tenderly-folded leaflets, bursting on all
sides from their gummy casings? And--joy of all joys!--it is not
unconscious vegetable life only which thus expands around us. It is God
touching every branch and hidden root, and waking them to beauty! It is
not sunshine merely, and soft breezes; it is our Father smiling on his
works, and making the world fresh and fair for his children,--it is the
healing touch and the gracious Voice we have learned to know. "We are in
the world, and the world was made by Thee;" "_Te Deum laudamus_: we
acknowledge thee, O Saviour, to be the Lord."
Our Chriemhild certainly has a beautiful home. Bertrand's home, also, is
a castle in the country, in Flanders. But he says their country is not
like this forest-land. It has long been cleared by industrious hands.
There are long stately avenues leading to his father's chateau; but all
around, the land is level, and waving with grass and green or golden
corn-fields. That, also, must be beautiful. But probably the home he has
gone to prepare for me may not be there. Some of his family are very
bitter against what they call his Lutheran heresy, and although he is
the heir, it is very possible that the branch of the family which
adheres to the old religion may wrest the inheritance from him. That, we
think, matters little. God will find the right place for us, and lead us
to it, if we ask him. And if it be in the town, after all, the tide of
life in human hearts is nobler than that in trees and flowers. In a few
months we shall know. Perhaps he may return here, and become a professor
at Wittemberg, whither Dr. Luther's name brought him a year since to
study.
_June_, 1521.
A rumour has reached us, that Dr. Luther has disappeared on his way back
from Worms.
This spring, in the world as well as in the forest, will doubtless have
its storms. Last night, the thunder echoed from hill to hill, and the
wind wailed wildly among the pines. Looking out of my narrow window in
the tower on the edge of the rock, where I sleep, it was awful to see
the foaming torrent below gleaming in the lightning-flashes, which
opened out sudden glimpses into the depths of the forest, leaving it
doubly mysterious.
I thought of Fritz's lonely night, when he lost himself in the forest;
and thanked God that I had learned to know the thunder as His voice, and
His voice as speaking peace and pardon. Only, at such times I should
like to gather all dear to me around me; and those dearest to me are
scattered far and wide.
The old knight Ulrich is rather impetuous and hot-tempered; and his
sister, Ulrich's aunt, Dame Hermentrud, is grave and stately.
Fortunately, they both look on Chriemhild as a wonder of beauty and
goodness; but I have to be rather careful. Dame Hermentrud is apt to
attribute any over-vehemence of mine in debate to the burgher
Cotta-blood; and although they both listen with interest to Ulrich or
Chriemhild's version of Dr. Luther's doctrines, Dame Hermentrud
frequently warns me against unfeminine exaggeration or eagerness in
these matters, and reminds me that the ancestors of the Gersdorf family
were devout and excellent people long before a son was born to Hans
Luther the miner.
The state of the peasants distresses Chriemhild and me extremely. She
and Ulrich were full of plans for their good when they came here to
live; but she is at present almost exclusively occupied with the
education of a little knightly creature, who came into the world two
months since, and is believed to concentrate in his single little person
all the ancestral virtues of all the Gersdorfs, to say nothing of the
Schoenbergs. He has not, Dame Hermantrud asserts, the slightest feature
of resemblance to the Cottas. I cannot, certainly, deny that he bears
unmistakable traces of that aristocratic temper and that lofty taste for
ruling which at times distinguished my grandmother, and, doubtless, all
the Gersdorfs from the days of Adam downward, or at least from the time
of Babel. Beyond that, I believe, few pedigrees are traced, except in a
general way to the sons of Noah. But it is a great honour for me to be
connected, even in the humblest manner, with such a distinguished little
being. In time, I am not without hopes that it will introduce a little
reflex nobility even into my burgher nature: and meantime Chriemhild and
I secretly trace remarkable resemblances in the dear baby features to
our grandmother, and even to our beloved, sanguine, blind father. It is
certainly a great consolation that our father chose our names from the
poems and the stars and the calendar of aristocratic saints, instead of
from the lowly Cotta pedigree.
Ulrich has not indeed by any means abandoned his scheme of usefulness
among the peasantry who live on his uncle's estates. But he finds more
opposition than he expected. The old knight, although ready enough to
listen to any denunciations of the self-indulgent priests and lazy monks
(especially those of the abbey whose hunting-grounds adjoin his own), is
very averse to making the smallest change in anything. He says the boors
are difficult enough to keep in order as it is; that if they are taught
to think for themselves, there will be no safety for the game, or for
anything else. They will be quoting the Bible in all kinds of wrong
senses against their rightful lords, and will perhaps even take to
debating the justice of the hereditary feuds, and refuse to follow their
knight's banner to the field.
As to religion, he is quite sure that the Ave and the Pater are as much
as will be expected of them; whilst Dame Hermentrud has most serious
doubts of this new plan of writing books and reading prayers in the
language of the common people. They will be thinking themselves as wise
as the priests, and perhaps wiser than their masters.
But Ulrich's chief disappointment is with the peasants themselves. They
seem as little anxious for improvement as the lords are for them, and
are certainly suspicious to a most irritating degree of any schemes for
their welfare issuing from the castle. As to their children being taught
to read, they consider it an invasion of their rights, and murmur that
if they follow the nobles in hunt and foray, and till their fields, and
go to mass on Sunday, the rest of their time is their own, and it is an
usurpation in priest or knight to demand more.
It will, I fear, be long before the dry, barren crust of their dull hard
life is broken; and yet the words of life are for them as much as for
us! And one great difficulty seems to me, that if they were taught to
read, there are so few German religious books. Except a few tracts of
Dr. Luther's, what is there that they could understand? If some one
would only translate the record of the words and acts of our Lord and
his apostles, it would be worth while then teaching every one to read.
And if we could only get them to confide in us! There must be thought,
and we know there is affection underneath all this reserve. It is a
heavy heritage for the long ancestry of the Gersdorfs to have bequeathed
to this generation, these recollections of tyranny and this mutual
distrust. Yet Ulrich says it is too common throughout the land. Many of
the old privileges of the nobles were so terribly oppressive in hard or
careless hands.
The most promising field at present seems to be among the household
retainers. Among these there is strong personal attachment; and the
memory of Ulrich's pious mother seems to have left behind it that faith
in goodness which is one of the most precious legacies of holy lives.
Even the peasants in the village speak lovingly of her; of the medicine
she used to distil from the forest-herbs, and distribute with her own
hands to the sick. There is a tradition also in the castle of a bright
maiden called Beatrice who used to visit the cottage homes, and bring
sunshine whenever she came. But she disappeared years ago, they say; and
the old family nurse shakes her head as she tells me how the Lady
Beatrice's heart was broken, when she was separated by family feuds from
her betrothed, and after that she went to the convent at Nimptschen, and
has been dead to the world ever since.
Nimptschen! that is the living grave where our precious Eva is buried.
And yet where she is I am sure it can be no grave of death. She will
bring life and blessings with her. I will write to her, especially about
this poor blighted Beatrice.
Altogether the peasants seem much less suspicious of the women of the
Gersdorf family than of the men. They will often listen attentively even
to me. And when Chriemhild can go among them a little more, I hope
better days will dawn.
_August_, 1521.
This morning we had a strange encounter. Some days since we received a
mysterious intimation from Wittemberg, that Dr. Luther is alive and in
friendly keeping, not far from us. To-day Ulrich and I were riding
through the forest to visit an outlying farm of the Gersdorfs in the
direction of Eisenach, when we heard across a valley the huntsman's
horn, with the cry of the dogs in full chase. In a few moments an
opening among the trees brought us in sight of the hunt sweeping towards
us up the opposite slopes of the valley. Apart from the hunt, and nearer
us, at a narrow part of the valley, we observed a figure in the cap and
plumes of a knight, apparently watching the chase as we were. As we were
looking at him, a poor bewildered leveret flew towards him, and cowered
close to his feet. He stooped, and gently taking it up, folded it in the
long sleeve of his tunic, and stepped quickly aside. In another minute,
however, the hunt swept up towards him, and the dogs scenting the
leveret, seized on it in its refuge, dragged it down, and killed it.
This unusual little incident, this human being putting himself on the
side of the pursued, instead of among the pursuers, excited our
attention. There was also something is the firm figure and sturdy gait
that perplexingly reminded us of some one we knew. Our road lay across
the valley, and Ulrich rode aside to greet the strange knight. In a
moment he returned to me, and whispered,--
"It is Martin Luther!"
We could not resist the impulse to look once more on the kind honest
face, and riding close to him we bowed to him.
He gave us a smile of recognition, and laying his hand on Ulrich's
saddle said, softly, "The chase is a mystery of higher things. See how,
as these ferocious dogs seized my poor leveret from its refuge, Satan
rages against souls, and seeks to tear from their hiding-place even
those already saved. But the Arm which holds them is stronger than mine.
I have had enough of this kind of chase," he added; "sweeter to me the
chase of the bears, wolves, boars, and foxes which lay waste the Church,
than that of these harmless creatures. And of such rapacious beasts
there are enough in the world."
My heart was full of the poor peasants I had been seeing lately. I never
could feel afraid of Dr. Luther, and this opportunity was too precious
to be thrown away. It always seemed the most natural thing in the world
to open one's heart to him. He understood so quickly and so fully. As he
was wishing us good-bye, therefore, I said (I am afraid, in that abrupt
blundering way of mine),--
"Dear Dr. Luther, the poor peasants here are so ignorant! and I have
scarcely anything to read to them which they can understand. Tell some
one, I entreat you, to translate the Gospels into German for them; such
German as your 'Discourse on the Magnificat,' or 'The Lord's Prayer,'
for they all understand that."