Produced by David Widger
THE COMPLETE SHORT WORKS OF GEORG EBERS
By Georg Ebers
CONTENTS:
In The Blue Pike
A Question
The Elixir
The Greylock
The Nuts
IN THE BLUE PIKE, Complete
By Georg Ebers
Translated from the German by Mary J. Safford
CHAPTER I.
"May a thunderbolt strike you!" The imprecation suited the rough fellow
who uttered it. He had pointed out of doors as he spoke, and scarcely
lowered the strange tones of his voice, yet of all the rabble who
surrounded him only two persons understood his meaning--a fading, sickly
girl, and the red-haired woman, only a few years her senior, who led the
swearing man by a chain, like a tame bear.
The Nuremberg magistrates had had Cyriax's tongue cropped for gross
blasphemy, and listeners could scarcely comprehend the words he mangled
in his gasping speech.
The red-haired woman dropped the knife with which she was slicing bread
and onions into a pot, and looked at her companion with an anxious,
questioning glance.
"Nuremberg Honourables," he stammered as fast as he could, snatched his
wife's shawl from her shoulders, and drew it over his unkempt head.
The woman beckoned to their travelling companions--a lame fellow of
middle age who, propped on crutches, leaned against the wall, an older
pock-marked man with a bloated face, and the sickly girl--calling
to them in the harsh, metallic voice peculiar to hawkers and elderly
singers at fairs.
"Help Cyriax hide. You first, Jungel! They needn't recognise him as
soon as they get in. Nuremberg magistrates are coming. Aristocratic
blood-suckers of the Council. Who knows what may still be on the tally
for us?"
Kuni, the pale-faced girl, wrapped her bright-coloured garment tighter
around her mutilated left leg, and obeyed. Lame Jungel, too, prepared to
fulfil red-haired Gitta's wish.
But Raban had glanced out, and hastily drew the cloth jerkin, patched
with green and blue linen, closer through his belt, ejaculating
anxiously:
"Young Groland of the Council. I know him."
This exclamation induced the other vagabonds to glide along the wall to
the nearest door, intending to slip out.
"A Groland?" asked Gitta, Cyriax's wife, cowering as if threatened with
a blow from an invisible hand. "It was he--"
"He?" laughed the chain-bearer, while he crouched beside her, drawing
himself into the smallest space possible. "No, Redhead! The devil
dragged the man who did that down to the lower regions long ago, on
account of my tongue. It's his son. The younger, the sharper. This
stripling made Casper Rubling,--[Dice, in gambler's slang]--poor wretch,
pay for his loaded dice with his eyesight."
He thrust his hand hurriedly into his jerkin as he spoke, and gave Gitta
something which he had concealed there. It was a set of dice, but, with
ready presence of mind, she pressed them so hard into the crumb of the
loaf of bread which she had just cut that it entirely concealed them.
All this had passed wholly unnoticed in the corner of the long, wide
room, for all the numerous travellers whom it sheltered were entirely
occupied with their own affairs. Nothing was understood except what was
said between neighbour and neighbour, for a loud uproar pervaded the
tavern of The Blue Pike.
It was one of the most crowded inns, being situated on the main ferry at
Miltenberg, where those journeying from Nuremberg, Augsburg, and other
South German cities, on their way to Frankfort and the Lower Rhine,
rested and exchanged the saddle for the ship. Just at the present
time many persons of high and low degree were on their way to Cologne,
whither the Emperor Maximilian, having been unable to come in April to
Trier on the Moselle, had summoned the Reichstag.
The opening would take place in a few days, and attracted not only
princes, counts, and knights, exalted leaders and more modest servants
of the Church, ambassadors from the cities, and other aristocrats, but
also honest tradesfolk, thriving money-lenders with the citizen's
cloak and the yellow cap of the Jew, vagrants and strollers of every
description, who hoped to practise their various feats to the best
advantage, or to fill their pockets by cheating and robbery.
This evening many had gathered in the spacious taproom of The Blue Pike.
Now those already present were to be joined by the late arrivals whom
Cyriax had seen ride up.
It was a stately band. Four aristocratic gentlemen at the head of the
troop were followed by an escort of twenty-five Nuremberg mercenaries,
a gay company whose crimson coats, with white slashes on the puffed
sleeves, presented a showy spectacle. Their helmets and armour glittered
in the bright light of the setting sun of the last day of July, as they
turned their horses in front of the wide gateway of The Blue Pike to
ride into Miltenberg and ask lodgings of the citizens.
The trampling of hoofs, the shouts of command, and the voices of the
gentlemen and their attendants outside attracted many guests to the
doors and windows of the long, whitewashed building.
The strollers, however, kept the place at theirs without difficulty; no
one desired to come near them.
The girl with the bandaged foot had now also turned her face toward the
street. As her gaze rested on the youngest of the Nuremberg dignitaries,
her pale cheeks flushed, and, as if unconsciously, the exclamation: "It
is he!" fell from her lips.
"Who?" asked red-haired Gitta, and was quickly answered in a low tone
"I mean Lienhard, Herr Groland."
"The young one," stuttered Cyriax.
Then, raising the shawl, he continued inquisitively:
"Do you know him? For good or for evil?"
The girl, whose face, spite of its sunken cheeks and the dark rings
under the deep-set blue eyes, still bore distinct traces of former
beauty, started and answered sharply, though not very loudly, for speech
was difficult:
"Good is what you call evil, and evil is what you call good. My
acquaintance with Lienhard, Herr Groland, is my own affair, and, you
may be sure, will remain mine." She glanced contemptuously away from the
others out of doors, but Cyriax, spite of his mutilated tongue, retorted
quickly and harshly:
"I always said so. She'll die a saint yet." Then grasping Kuni's arm
roughly, he dragged her down to him, and whispered jeeringly:
"Ratz has a full purse and sticks to his offer for the cart. If you put
on airs long, he'll get it and the donkey, too, and you'll be left here.
What was it about Groland? You can try how you'll manage on your stump
without us, if we're too bad for you."
"We are not under eternal obligations to you on the child's account,"
added red-haired Gitta in a gentler tone. "Don't vex my husband, or
he'll keep his word about the cart, and who else will be bothered with a
useless creature like you?"
The girl lowered her eyes and looked at her crippled limb.
How would she get on without the cart, which received her when the pain
grew too sharp and the road was too hard and long?
So she turned to the others again, saying soothingly:
"It all happened in the time before I fell." Then she looked out of
doors once more, but she did not find what she sought. The Nuremberg
travellers had ridden through the broad gateway into the large square
courtyard, surrounded by stables on three sides. When Cyriax and his
wife again called to her, desiring to know what had passed between her
and Groland, she clasped her hands around her knees, fixed her eyes on
the gaystuffs wound around the stump where her foot had been amputated,
and in a low, reluctant tone, continued:
"You want to learn what I have to do with Herr Groland? It was about six
years ago, in front of St. Sebald's church, in Nuremberg. A wedding was
to take place. The bridegroom was one of the Council--Lienhard Groland.
The marriage was to be a very quiet one--the bridegroom's father lay
seriously ill. Yet there could have been no greater throng at the
Emperor's nuptials. I stood in the midst of the crowd. A rosary dropped
from the belt of the fat wife of a master workman--she was decked out
like a peacock--and fell just in front of me. It was a costly ornament,
pure gold and Bohemian garnets. I did not let it lie there."
"A miracle!" chuckled Cyriax, but the girl was obliged to conquer a
severe attack of coughing before she could go on with her story.
"The chaplet fairly burned my hand. I would gladly have given it back,
but the woman was no longer before me. Perhaps I might have returned it,
but I won't say so positively. However, there was no time to do it; the
wedding party was coming, and on that account But what is the use of
talking? While I was still gazing, the owner discovered her loss. An
officer seized me, and so I was taken to prison and the next day was
brought before the magistrates. Herr Groland was one of them, and, since
it wasn't certain that I would not have restored the property I found,
he interceded in my behalf. When the others still wished to punish me,
he besought my release because it was my first offence. So we met, and
when I admit that I am grateful to him for it, you know all."
"H'm," replied Cyriax, giggling, as he nudged his wife in the side
and made remarks concerning what he had just heard which induced even
red-haired Gitta to declare that the loss of his tongue was scarcely a
misfortune.
Kuni indignantly turned her back upon the slanderer and gazed out of
the window again. The Nuremberg Honourables had disappeared, but several
grooms were unbuckling the knapsacks from the horses and carrying them
into the house. The aristocratic travellers were probably cleansing
themselves from the dust of the road before they entered the taproom.
Kuni thought so, and gazed sometimes into vacancy, sometimes into her
own lap. Her eyes had a dreamy light, for the incident which she had
just related rose before her mind with perfect clearness.
It seemed as though she were gazing a second time at the wedding
procession which was approaching St. Sebald's, and the couple who led
it.
Never had she beheld anything fairer than the bride with the myrtle
wreath on her beautifully formed head, whence a delicate lace veil
floated over her long, thick, golden hair. She could not help gazing at
her as if spellbound. When she moved forward, holding her bridegroom's
hand, she appeared to float over the rice and flowers strewn in her path
to the church--it was in February. As Kuni saw the bride raise her
large blue eyes to her lover's so tenderly and yet so modestly, and the
bridegroom thank her with a long joyous look of love, she wondered what
must be the feelings of a maiden who, so pure, so full of ardent love,
and so fervently beloved in return, was permitted to approach the house
of God, accompanied by a thousand pious wishes, with the first and only
man whom she loved, and to whom she wished to devote herself for her
whole life. Again, as at that time, a burning thrill ran through her
limbs. Then a bitter smile hovered around her lips.
She had asked herself whether the heart of one who experienced such
joys, to whom such a fate was allotted, would not burst from sheer joy.
Now the wish, the hope, and every new resolve for good or ill were
alike over. At that hour, before the door of St. Sebald's, she had
been capable of all, all, perhaps even the best things, if any one had
cherished her in his heart as Lienhard Groland loved the beautiful woman
at his side.
She could not help remembering the spell with which the sight of those
two had forced her to watch their every movement, to gaze at them, and
them only, as if the world contained nothing else. How often she had
repeated to herself that in that hour she was bewitched, whether by him
or by her she could not decide. As the throng surged forward, she had
been crowded against the woman who lost the rosary. She had not had the
faintest thought of it when the bailiff suddenly snatched her from her
rapturous gazing to stern reality, seizing with a rude grip the hand
that held the jewel. Then, pursued by the reviling and hissing of the
populace, she had been taken to prison.
Now she again saw herself amid the vile rabble assembled there, again
felt how eagerly she inhaled the air as she was led across the courtyard
of the townhall into the presence of the magistrates. Oh, if she could
but take such a long, deep breath of God's pure air as she did then! But
that time was past. Her poor, sunken chest would no longer permit it.
Then she fancied that she was again standing before the judges, who were
called The Five.
Four magistrates sat with the Pfander--[Chief of police]--at the table
covered with a green cloth, but one, who surpassed all the others both
in stature and in manly beauty, was the selfsame Lienhard Groland,
who yesterday had led to the altar the wonderfully lovely girl who had
bewitched her. She felt how the blood had mounted into her cheeks when
she again saw him who could know nothing of her except that she was a
jade, who had stolen another person's property. Yet her glance soon met
his, and he must have been blind had he not read in the radiant lustre
of her blue eyes, which had early learned to woo applause and promise
love, what he was to her, and how gratefully her heart throbbed for him.
After the other gentlemen had treated her harshly, and threatened to
put her in the stocks, he interceded for her, and entreated his brother
magistrates to let mercy, in this instance, take the place of justice,
because she was so young, and perhaps had intended to return the rosary
later. Finally he bent smiling toward his companions and said something
to them in a subdued tone. The voice was so low that his intention to
keep her in ignorance of it was evident. But Kuni's hearing had been
as keen as a bird's, and not a word escaped her. He could not help
regarding it as an evil omen for him and his young wife if a girl,
hitherto unpunished, should be plunged into disgrace and perhaps made
miserable throughout the rest of a long life on account of his wedding
procession.
How high her heart had throbbed at this request, and when it was
granted, the discussion closed, and she herself informed that she would
be set free, she hurried after her preserver, who had left the Council
chamber with the other magistrates, to thank him. He permitted her to
detain him, and when she found herself alone in his presence, at first,
with streaming eyes, she was unable to utter a word. He laid his hand
kindly on her shoulder to soothe her, and then listened to her assurance
that, though she was a strolling rope-dancer, she had never taken other
people's property.
Now she closed her eyes to have a clearer vision of the picture evoked
by memory, which rose so vividly before her. Again she saw herself seize
his hand to kiss it humbly, yet with fervent devotion; again she met the
patronizing but friendly smile with which he withdrew it, and a thrill
of happiness ran through every nerve, for she imagined she once more
felt his slender white hand soothingly stroke her black hair and burning
cheeks, as if she were a sick child who needed help. Later years had
never granted her aught more blissful than that moment.
As had often happened before, the memory of it overmastered her with
such power that she could not escape it, but recalled his every look and
movement. Meanwhile, she imagined that she heard his voice, whose deep,
pure tones had pleased her ear, alive to harmony, more than any to which
she had ever listened, counselling her to give up her vagrant life, and
again received his assurance that he pitied her, and it would grieve him
if she, who seemed worthy of a better fate, should be ruined, body and
soul, so young. Thus absorbed, she neither saw nor listened to anything
that was occurring near her or in the large room of the tavern, but
stood gazing into vacancy as if rapt away from earth.
True, Cyriax and the others had lowered their voices, for they were
talking about her and the aristocratic couple on whose wedding day Kuni
had stolen the rosary.
Raban, a tall, lank vagabond with red-rimmed eyes, whose ugly face
bristled with a half-grown black beard, had a few more particulars to
give concerning the bride and bridegroom. He wandered about the world
and, whenever he stretched out his hand to beg, gave the pretext that he
was collecting the price of blood required for a man whom he had killed
in self-defence, that his own head might not fall under the axe of the
executioner. His dead father had heated the furnaces in the smelting
works at Eschenbach, near Nuremberg, and the bride was Katharina, the
eldest of the three daughters of the owner, old Harsdorffer of the
Council. He had been a man of steel and iron, and opposed Lienhard
Groland's father at every point, not excepting even their official
business. When he discovered that the young man was carrying on a love
affair with his daughter, he had summoned him before a court of justice
for a breach of the law which forbade minors to betroth themselves
without parental consent. The magistrates sentenced Lienhard to five
years' exile from the city but, through the Emperor's mediation, he was
spared the punishment. Old Harsdorffer afterward succeeded in keeping
the suitor away from his daughter a long time, but finally relinquished
his opposition.
"The devil came soon enough and broke his stiff neck," added Cyriax, on
whom the vagabond's story had had the same effect as a red rag upon a
bull. Spite of the old slanderer's mutilated tongue, invectives flowed
fast enough from his lips when he thought of young Frau Groland's
father. If the Groland outside resembled his father-in-law, he would
like to drink him a pledge that should burn like the plague and ruin.
He snatched a flask from his pocket as he spoke, and after a long pull
and a still longer "A-ah!" he stammered:
"I've been obliged to bid farewell to my tongue, yet it feels as if
it were sticking in my throat like the dry sole of a shoe. That's what
comes from talking in this dog-day heat."
He looked into the empty bottle and was about to send Kuni out to fill
it again. In turning to do so he saw her pale face, wan with suffering,
but which now glowed with a happy light that lent it a strange beauty.
How large her blue eyes were! When he had picked her up in Spain she was
already a cripple and in sore distress. But Groland probably knew what
he was about when he released her. She must have been a pretty creature
enough at that time, and he knew that before her fall she was considered
one of the most skilful rope-dancers.
An elderly woman with a boy, whose blindness helped her to arouse
compassion, was crouching by Raban's side, and had just been greeted
by Kuni as an old acquaintance. They had journeyed from land to land
in Loni's famous troupe, and as Raban handed Cyriax his own bottle, he
turned from the dreaming girl, whose services he no longer needed, and
whispered to the blind boy's mother--who among the people of her own
calling still went by the name of Dancing Gundel--the question whether
yonder ailing cripple had once had any good looks, and what position she
had held among rope-dancers.
The little gray-haired woman looked up with sparkling eyes. Under the
name of "Phyllis" she had earned, ere her limbs were stiffened by age,
great applause by her dainty egg-dance and all sorts of feats with
the balancing pole. The manager of the band had finally given her the
position of crier to support herself and her blind boy. This had made
her voice so hollow and hoarse that it was difficult to understand her
as, with fervid eloquence, vainly striving to be heard by absent-minded
Kuni, she began: "She surpassed even Maravella the Spaniard. And her
feats at Augsburg during the Reichstag--I tell you, Cyriax, when she
ascended the rope to the belfry, with the pole and without--"
"I've just heard of that from another quarter," he interrupted. "What I
want to know is whether she pleased the eyes of men."
"What's that to you?" interposed red-haired Gitta jealously, trying to
draw him away from Gundel by the chain.
Raban laughed heartily, and lame Jungel, chuckling, rapped on the floor
with his right crutch, exclaiming:
"Good for you!"
Kuni was accustomed to such outbursts of merriment. They were almost
always awakened by some trifle, and this time she did not even hear
the laughing. But Cyriax struck his wife so rudely on the hand that she
jerked furiously at the chain and, with a muttered oath, blew on
the bruised spot. Meanwhile Gundel was telling the group how many
distinguished gentlemen had formerly paid court to Kuni. She was as
agile as a squirrel. Her pretty little face, with its sparkling blue
eyes, attracted the men as bacon draws mice. Then, pleased to have
listeners, she related how the girl had lured florins and zecchins from
the purse of many a wealthy ecclesiastic. She might have been as rich as
the Fuggers if she hadn't met with the accident and had understood how
to keep what she earned. But she could not hold on to her gold. She had
flung it away like useless rubbish. So long as she possessed anything
there had been no want in Loni's company. She, Gundel, had caught her
arm more than once when she was going to fling Hungarian ducats, instead
of coppers, to good-for-nothing beggars. She had often urged her, too,
to think of old age, but Kuni--never cared for any one longer than a
few weeks, though there were some whom she might easily have induced to
offer her the wedding ring.
She glanced at Kuni again, but, perceiving that the girl did not yet
vouchsafe her even a single look, she was vexed, and, moving nearer to
Cyriax, she added in a still lower tone:
"A more inconstant, faithless, colder heart than hers I never met, even
among the most disorderly of Loni's band; for, blindly as the infatuated
lovers obeyed every one of her crazy whims, she laughed at the best and
truest. 'I hate them all,' she would say. 'I wouldn't let one of them
even touch me with the tip of his finger if I could not use their
zecchins. 'With these,' she said, 'she would help the rich to restore
to the poor what they had stolen from them.' She really treated many a
worthy gentleman like a dog, nay, a great deal worse; for she was tender
enough to all the animals that travelled with the company; the poodles
and the ponies, nay, even the parrots and the doves. She would play with
the children, too, even the smallest ones--isn't that so, Peperle?--like
their own silly mothers." She smoothed the blind boy's golden hair as
she spoke, then added, sighing:
"But the little fellow was too young to remember it. The rattle which
she gave him at Augsburg--it was just before the accident--because she
was so fond of him--Saint Kunigunde, how could we keep such worthless
jewels in our sore need?--was made of pure silver. True, the simpletons
who were so madly in love with her, and with whom she played so cruelly,
would have believed her capable of anything sooner than such kindness.
There was a Swabian knight, a young fellow----"
Here she stopped, for Cyriax and the other vagabonds, even the girl of
whom she was speaking, had started up and were gazing at the door.
Kuni opened her eyes as wide as if a miracle had happened, and the
crimson spots on her sunken cheeks betrayed how deeply she was agitated.
But she had never experienced anything of this kind; for while thinking
of the time when, through Lienhard Groland's intercession, she had
entered the house of the wealthy old Frau Schurstab, in order to become
estranged from a vagabond life, and recalling how once, when he saw her
sorrowful there, he had spoken kindly to her, it seemed as if she had
actually heard his own voice. As it still appeared to echo in her ears,
she suddenly became aware that the words really did proceed from his
lips. What she had heard in her dream and what now came from his own
mouth, as he stood at the door, blended into one. She would never have
believed that the power of imagination could reproduce anything so
faithfully.
Listening intently, she said to herself that, during the many thousand
times when she had talked with him in fancy, it had also seemed as if
she heard him speak. And the same experience had befallen her eyes; for
whenever memory reverted to those distant days, she had beheld him just
as he now looked standing on the threshold, where he was detained by
the landlady of The Pike. Only his face had become still more manly, his
bearing more dignified. The pleasant, winning expression of the bearded
lips remained unchanged, and more than once she had seen his eyes
sparkle with a far warmer light than now, while he was thanking the
portly woman for her cordial welcome.
While Kuni's gaze still rested upon him as if spellbound, Cyriax nudged
her, stammering hurriedly:
"They will have to pass us. Move forward, women, in front of me. Spread
out your skirt, you Redhead! It might be my death if yonder Nuremberg
fine gentleman should see me here and recollect one thing and another."
As he spoke he dragged Kuni roughly from the window, flung the sack
which he had brought in from the cart down before him, and made them
sit on it, while he stretched himself on the floor face downward, and
pretended to be asleep behind the women.
This suited Kuni. If Lienhard Groland passed her now he could not help
seeing her, and she had no greater desire than to meet his glance
once more before her life ended. Yet she dreaded this meeting with an
intensity plainly revealed by the passionate throbbing of her heart
and the panting of her weakened lungs. There was a rushing noise in
her ears, and her eyes grew dim. Yet she was obliged to keep them wide
open--what might not the next moment bring?
For the first time since her entrance she gazed around the large, long
apartment, which would have deserved the name of hall had it not been
too low.
The heated room, filled with buzzing flies, was crowded with travellers.
The wife and daughter of a feather-curler, who were on their way with
the husband and father to the Reichstag, where many an aristocratic
gentleman would need plumes for his own head and his wife's, had just
dropped the comb with which they were arranging each other's hair. The
shoemaker and his dame from Nuremberg paused in the sensible lecture
they were alternately addressing to their apprentices. The Frankfort
messenger put down the needle with which he was mending the badgerskin
in his knapsack. The travelling musicians who, to save a few pennies,
had begun to eat bread, cheese, and radishes, instead of the warm
meals provided for the others, let their knives drop and set down the
wine-jugs. The traders, who were hotly arguing over Italian politics and
the future war with Turkey, were silent. The four monks, who had leaned
their heads against the cornice of the wide, closed fireplace and, in
spite of the flies which buzzed around them, had fallen asleep, awoke.
The vender of indulgences in the black cowl interrupted the impressive
speech which he was delivering to the people who surrounded his coffer.
This group also--soldiers, travelling artisans, peasants, and tradesfolk
with their wives, who, like most of those present, were waiting for the
vessel which was to sail down the Main early the next morning--gazed
toward the door. Only the students and Bacchantes,--[Travelling
scholars]--who were fairly hanging on the lips of a short, slender
scholar, with keen, intellectual features, noticed neither the draught
of air caused by the entrance of the distinguished arrivals and their
followers, nor the general stir aroused by their appearance, until Dr.
Eberbach, the insignificant, vivacious speaker, recognised in one of the
group the famous Nuremberg humanist, Wilibald Pirckheimer.