young fellow who knew how to take care of himself and whose size and
physical strength alone would have forbidden harsh bodily mistreatment.
He saw, of course, how his parents were sliding down-hill more and
more, and he seemed to remember a time when things had been otherwise.
He even carried in his memory the picture of his father as that of an
upstanding, determined, serious and energetic peasant, while now he saw
before him all the while a man who was a gray-headed dolt, a
quarrelsome fool, who with all his fits of impotent rage and all his
brag and bluster was every hour more and more crawling backwards like a
crawfish. But when these things displeased him and filled him with
shame and sorrow, although he could not very well understand how it all
had come about, the influence of his mother came to deaden this feeling
and to fill him with an unjustified hope of improvement. She would
flatter her son in the same extravagant and wholly unreasonable manner
which had become her second nature in dealing with the new troubles
that were gradually overcoming the whole family. For in order to lead
her life of self-indulgence the more easily and to have one critical
observer the less, and to make her son her partisan, but also as a vent
for her love of display, she contrived to let her son have everything
he had a desire for. She saw to it that he was always dressed with
care, and entirely too expensively for the means of the family, and
indulged him in his pleasures. He on his part accepted all that without
much thought or gratitude, since he noticed at the same time how his
mother was juggling with and tricking his father, and how she was
continually telling untruths and vainly boasting. And while thus
allowing his mother to spoil him without paying much attention to the
process itself, no great harm was yet done in his case, since he had so
far not been much tainted by the vices and sins of mother or father.
Indeed, in his youthful pride he had the strong wish to become, if
possible, a man such as he recalled his own father once to have been, a
man of substance and of rational and successful conduct of his life.
Sali was really very much as his father knew himself to have been at
his own age, and a queer remnant of respectability urged the father to
treat his son well. In honoring him he seemed to honor his old self.
Confused reminiscences at such times drifted through his beclouded
soul, and they afforded him a species of subconscious delight. But
although in this manner Sali escaped some of the natural consequences
of the process of domestic decay which was going on around him, he was
not able to genuinely enjoy his life and to make rational plans for an
assured future. He felt well enough that he was resting on quicksand,
that he was neither doing anything much to bring himself into a
position of independence nor to look for any secured future; nor was he
learning much towards that end in the broken-down household and on the
neglected farm of his father. The work done there was done haphazard
style, and no systematic and orderly effort was made to get things done
in season. His best consolation, therefore, was to preserve his good
reputation, to work with a will on the farm when he could, and to turn
his eyes away from a threatening future.
The sole orders laid upon him by his father were to avoid any sort of
intercourse with all that bore the name of Marti. All he knew about the
matter personally was that Marti had done wrong to his father, and that
in Marti's house precisely the same bitter enmity was felt towards the
Manz family. Of the details involved in this state of affairs, of the
manner in which the old-time good-neighborliness and friendship
existing for so many years between the two families had been turned
into hatred and scorn Sali knew nothing, these things having shaped
themselves at a period of his life when his boyish brain had been
unable to grasp their true meaning. He had perforce been content with
the verdict of his father, obeying the latter's prohibition to further
consort with the Marti people without attempting to ascertain the
underlying causes of the quarrel. So far he had not found it difficult
to do as his father told him, and he did not meddle in the least with
the whole business. He made no effort to either see or avoid Marti and
his daughter Vreni, and while he assumed that his father must be in the
right of it, he was no active enemy of the Martis. Vreni, on her part,
was differently constituted from the lad. Having to suffer much more
than Sali at home and feeling more deeply than he, woman-fashion, her
almost total isolation, she was not so ready to let a sentiment of
declared enmity enter her young and untried heart. In fact, she rather
believed herself scorned and despised by the much better clad and
apparently also much more fortunate former playmate. It was, therefore,
only from a feeling of embarrassment that she hid from him, and
whenever he came near enough to perceive her, she fled from him. He
indeed never troubled to glance at her. So it happened that Sali had
not seen the girl near enough for a couple of years to know what she
was like. He had no notion that she was now almost grown-up, and that
she was distinctly beautiful. And yet, once in a while he would
remember her as his little playmate, as the merry companion of his
carefree boyhood, and when at his home the Martis were mentioned he
instinctively wondered what had become of her and how she would look
now. He certainly did not hate her. In his memory she lived in a
shadowy sort of way as a rather attractive girl.
It was his father, Manz, now who first had to go under. He was no
longer able to stave off his creditors and had to leave farm and house
behind. That he, though somewhat of better means originally than his
neighbor and foe, was first to collapse was owing to his wife, who had
lived in quite an extravagant style, and then he, too, had a son who,
after all, cost him something. Marti, as we know, had but a little
daughter who was scarcely any expense to him. Manz did not know what
else to do but to follow the advice of some Seldwyla patrons and move
to town, there to turn mine host of an inn or low tavern. It is always
a sad sight to see a former peasant of some substance, a man who has
been leading for many years a life of unremitting toil, it is true, but
also one of independence and usefulness, after growing old among his
acres, seek refuge from ill-fortune in town, taking the small remnants
of his belongings with him and open a poor, shabby resort, in order to
play, as the last safety anchor, the amiable and seductive host, all
the while feeling by no means in a holiday mood himself. When the Manz
family then left their farm to take this desperate step, it was first
apparent how poor they had already grown. For all the household goods
that were loaded on a cart were in a deplorable state, defective and
not repaired for many years. Nevertheless the wife put on her best
finery, when seating herself on top of the crazy old vehicle, and made
a face of such pride as though she already looked down upon her
neighbors as would a city lady of taste and refinement, while all the
while the villagers peeped from behind their hedges full of pity at the
sorry show made by the exodus. For Mother Manz had settled it in her
foolish noddle to turn the heads of all Seldwyla by her fine manners
and her wheedling tongue, thinking that if her boorish husband did not
understand how to handle and cajole the town folks, it was vastly
different with herself who would soon show these Seldwyla people what
an alluring hostess she would make at the head of a tavern or inn doing
a rushing business.
Great was her disenchantment, however, when she actually set eyes on
this inn vaunted so much in advance by her addled spirits. For it was
located in a small side-street of a rather disreputable quarter of
Seldwyla, and the inn itself was one in which the predecessor, one of
several that had gone the same way, had just been forcibly ousted
because of being unable to pay his debts. His Seldwyla patrons had, in
fact, rented this mean public house for a few hundred dollars a year to
Manz in consideration of the fact that the latter still had some small
sums outstanding in town, and because they could find nobody else to
take the place at a venture. They also sold him a few barrels of
inferior wine as well as the fixtures which consisted in the main of a
couple of dozen glasses and bottles, and of some rude and hacked pine
tables and benches that had once been painted a hue of deadly scarlet
and were now reduced to a dingy brownish tint. Before the entrance door
an iron hoop was clattering in the wind, and inside the hoop a tin hand
was pouring out forever claret into a small shoppen vessel. Besides all
these luxuries there was a sun-dried bunch of datura fastened above the
door, all of which Manz had noted down in his lease. Knowing all this
Manz was by no means so full of hopes and smiling humor as his spouse,
but on the contrary whipped up his bony old horses, lent him by the new
owner of his farm, with considerable foreboding. The last shabby helper
he had had on his farm had left him several weeks before, and when he
left the village on this his present errand he had not failed to note
Marti who, full of grim joy and scorn, had busied himself with some
trifling task along the road where his fallen foe had to pass. Manz saw
it, cursed Marti, and held him to be the sole cause of his downfall.
But Sali, as soon as the cart was fairly on the way, got down, speeded
up his steps and reached the town along by-paths.
"Well, here we are," said Manz, when the cart had reached its
destination. His wife was crestfallen when she noticed the dreary and
unpropitious aspect of the place. The people of the neighborhood
stepped in front of their housedoors to have a look at the new
innkeeper, and when they saw the rustic appearance of the outfit and
the miserable trappings, they put on their Seldwyla smile of
superiority. Wrathfully Mother Manz climbed down from her high seat,
and tears of anger were in her eyes as she quickly fled into the house,
her limber tongue for once forsaking her. On that day at least she was
no more seen below. For she herself was well aware of the sorry show
made by her, and all the more as the tattered condition of her
furniture could not be concealed from prying eyes when the various
articles were now being unloaded. Her musty and torn beds,
particularly, she felt ashamed of. Sali, too, shared her feelings, but
he was obliged to help his father in unloading, and the two made quite
a stir in the neighborhood with their rustic manners and speech,
furnishing the curious children with food for laughter. These little
folks, indeed, amused themselves abundantly that day at the expense of
the "ragged peasant bankrupts." Inside the house, though, things looked
still more desolate; the place, in fact, had more the looks of a
robbers' roost than of an inn. The walls were of badly calsomined
brick, damp with moisture, and beside the dark and poorly furnished
guest room downstairs there were but a couple of bare and uninviting
bedrooms, and everywhere their predecessor had left behind nothing but
spider's webs, filth and dust.
That was the beginning of it, and thus it continued to the end. During
the first few weeks indeed there came, especially in the evenings, a
number of people anxious to see, out of sheer curiosity, "the peasant
landlord," hoping there would be "some fun." But out of the landlord
himself they could not get much of that, for Manz was stiff,
unfriendly, and melancholy, and did not in the least know how to treat
his guests, nor did he want to know. Slowly and awkwardly he would pour
out the wine demanded, put it before the customer with a morose air,
and then make an unsuccessful attempt to enter into some sort of
conversation, but brought forth only some stammered commonplaces,
whereupon he gave it up. All the more desperately did his wife endeavor
to entertain her guests, and by her ludicrous and absurd behavior
really managed, for a few days at least, to amuse people. But she did
this in quite a different way from that intended by her. Mother Manz
was rather corpulent, and she had from her own inventive brain composed
a costume in which to wait on her guests and in which she believed
herself to be simply irresistible. With a stout linen skirt she wore an
old waist of green silk, a long cotton apron and a ridiculous broad
collar around the neck. Out of her hair, no longer abundant, she had
twisted corkscrew curls ornamenting her forehead, and in the back she
had stuck a tall comb into her thin braids. Thus made up she mincingly
danced on the tips of her toes before the particular guest to be
entranced, pointed her mouth in a laughable manner, which she thought
was "sweet," hopped about the table with forced elasticity, and serving
the wine or the salted cheese she would exclaim smilingly: "Well, well,
so alone? Lively, lively, you gentlemen!" And some more of such
nonsense she would whisper in a stilted way, for the trouble was that
although usually she could talk glibly about almost anything with her
cronies from the village, she felt somewhat embarrassed with these city
people, not being acquainted with the subjects of conversation they
liked to touch on. The Seldwyla people of the roughest type who had
dropped in for something to laugh at, put their hands before their
mouths to prevent bursting out in her face, nearly suffocated with
suppressed merriment, trod upon each other's feet under the table, and
afterwards, in relating the matter, would say: "Zounds, that is a woman
among a thousand, a paragon!" Another one said: "A heavenly creature,
by the gods. It is worth while coming here just to watch her antics.
Such a funny one we haven't had here for a long while."
Her husband noticed these goings on, with a mien of thunder, and he
would perhaps punch her in the ribs and say: "You old cow, what is the
matter with you?"
But then she gave him a superior glance, and would murmur: "Don't
disturb me! You stupid old fool, don't you see how hard I am trying to
please people? Those over there, of course, are only low fellows from
among your own acquaintance, but if you don't interfere with me I shall
soon have much more fashionable guests here, as you'll see."
These illusions of hers were illuminated in a room with but two tallow
dips, but Sali, her son, went out into the dark kitchen, sat down at
the hearth and wept about father and mother.
However, these first guests had soon their fill of this kind of sport,
and began to stay away, and then went back to their old haunts where
they got better drink and more rational conversation, and there they
would laughingly comment on the queer peasant innkeepers. Only once in
a while now a single guest of this type would drop in, usually to
verify previous reports heard by him, and such a one found as a rule
nothing more exciting to do than to yawn and gaze at the wall. Or
perhaps a band of roystering blades, having heard the place spoken of
by others, would wind up a jolly evening by a brief visit, and then
there would be noise enough, but not much else, and the old couple
could often not even thus be roused from their melancholy. For by that
time both wife and husband had grown heartily sick of their bargain.
The new style of living felt to him almost as lonesome and cold as the
grave. For he who as a lifelong farmer had been used to see the sun
rise, to hear and feel the wind blow, to breathe the pure air of the
country from morning till night, and to have the sunshine come and go,
was now cooped up within these dingy, hopeless walls, had to draw in
his lungs with every breath the contaminated atmosphere of this
miserable neighborhood, and when he thus dreamed day-dreams of the wide
expanse of the fields he once owned and tilled, a dull sort of despair
settled down on him like a pall. For hours and hours every day he would
stare in a dark humor at the smoke-begrimed ceiling of his inn, having
mostly little else to do, and dull visions of a future unrelieved by a
single ray of hope would float across his saturnine mind. Insupportable
his present life seemed to him then. Then a purposeless restlessness
would come over him, when he would get up from his seat a dozen times
an hour, run to the housedoor and peer out, then run back and resume
his watch. The neighbors had already given him a nickname. The "wicked
landlord," they dubbed him, because his glance was troubled and fierce.
Not long and they were totally impoverished, had not even enough ready
money left to put in the little in drink and provisions needed for
chance customers, so that the sausages and bread, the wine and liquor
that were ordered by guests had to be got on trust. Often they even
lacked the wherewithal to make a meal of, and had to go hungry for a
while. It was a curious tavern they were keeping. When somebody
strolled in by accident and demanded refreshment they were forced to
send to the nearest competitor, around the corner, and obtain a measure
of wine and some food, paying for it an hour or so later when they
themselves had been paid. And with all that, they were expected to play
the cheerful host and to talk pleasantly when their own stomachs were
empty. They were almost glad when nobody came; then each of them would
cower in a dark corner by the chimney, too lethargic to stir.
When Mother Manz underwent these sad experiences she once more took off
her green silk waist, and another metamorphosis was noticed. As
formerly she had shown a number of feminine vices, so now she exhibited
some feminine virtues, and these grew with the evil times. She began to
practice patience and sought to cheer up her morose husband and to
encourage her young son in trying for remunerative work. She sacrificed
her own comfort and convenience even, went about like a happy busybody,
and chattered incessantly merrily, all in an attempt to put some heart
into the two men. In short, she exerted in her own queer way an
undoubted beneficial influence on them, and while this did not lead to
anything tangible it helped at least to make things bearable for the
time being and was far better than the reverse would have been. She
would rack her poor brains, and give this advice or that how to mend
things, and if it miscarried she would have something fresh to propose.
Mostly she proved in the wrong with her counsel, but now and then, in
one of the many trivial ways that her petty mind was dwelling on she
was successful. When the contrary resulted, she gaily took the blame,
remained cheerful under discouragement, and, in short, did everything
which, if she had only done it before things were past repair, might
have really cured the desperate situation.
In order to have at least some food in the house and to pass the dull
time, father and son now began to devote their leisure time to the
sport of fishing, that is, with the angle, as far as it is permissible
to everybody in Switzerland. This, be it said, was also one of the
favorite pastimes of those decrepit Seldwylians who had come to grief
in the world, most of them having failed in business. When the weather
was favorable, namely, and when the fish took the bait most readily,
one might see dozens of these gentry wander off provided with rod and
pail, and on a walk along the shores of the river you might see one of
them, every little distance, angling, the one in a long brown coat once
of fashionable make, but with his bare feet in the water, the next
attired in a tattered blue frock, astride an old willow tree, his
ragged felt hat shoved over his left ear. Farther down even you might
perceive a third whose meagre limbs were wrapped in a shabby old
dressing gown, since that was the only article of clothing he had left,
his long tobacco pipe in one hand, and an equally long fishing rod in
the other. And in turning a bend of the river one was apt to encounter
another queer customer who stood, quite nude, with his bald head and
his fat paunch, on top of a flat rock in the river. This one had,
though almost living in the water during the warm season, feet black as
coal, so that it looked from a distance as if he had kept his boots on.
Each of these worthies had a pot or a small box at his side, in which
were swarming angle worms, and to obtain these they were industriously
digging at all hours of the day not actually employed in fishing.
Whenever the sky began to cloud up and the air became close and sultry,
threatening rain, these quaint figures could be seen most numerously
along the softly rolling stream, immovable like a congregation of
ancient saints on their pillars. Without ever deigning to cast a glance
in their direction, rustics from farm and forest used to pass them by,
and the boatmen on the river did not even look their way, whereas these
lone fishermen themselves used to curse in a forlorn way at these
disturbers of their prey.
If Manz had been told twelve years before when he was still plowing
with a fine team of horses across the hillock above the shore, that he,
too, one day would join this strange brotherhood of the rod, he would
probably have treated such a prophet rather roughly. But even to-day
Manz hastened past those fishermen that were rather crowding one
another, until he stood, upstream and alone, like a wrathful shadow of
Hades, by himself, just as if he preferred even in the abode of the
damned a spot of his own choosing. But to stand thus with a rod, for
hours and hours, neither he nor his son Sali had the patience, and they
remembered the manner in which peasants in their own neighborhood used
to catch fish, especially to grasp them with their hands in the purling
brooks. Therefore, they had their rods with them only as a ruse, and
they walked upstream further and further, following the tortuous
windings of the water, where they knew from of old that trout, dainty
and expensive trout, were to be had.
Meanwhile Marti, though he had still nominal possession of his farm,
had likewise been drifting from bad to worse, without any gleam of
hope.
And since all toil on his land could no more avert the final
catastrophe, and time hung heavy on his hands, he also had taken to
this sport of fishing. Instead of laboring in his neglected fields he
often would fish for days and days at a time. Vreni at such times was
not permitted to leave him, but had to follow him with pail and nets,
through wet meadows and along brooks and waterholes, whether there was
rain or shine, while neglecting her household labors at home. For at
home not a soul had remained, neither was there any need, since Marti
little by little had already lost nearly all his land, and now owned
but a few more acres of it, and these he tilled either not at all or
else, together with his daughter, in the slovenliest way.
Thus it came to pass that he, too, one early evening was walking along
the borders of a rapid and deep brook, one in which trout were leaping
plentifully, since the sky was overhung with dark and threatening
clouds, when without any warning he encountered his enemy, Manz, who
was coming along on the other side of it. As soon as he made him out a
fearful anger began to gnaw at his very vitals. They had not been so
near each other for years, except when in court facing the judge, and
then they had not been permitted to vent their hatred and spite, and
now Marti shouted full of venom: "What are you doing here, you dog?
Can't you stay in your den in town? Oh, you Seldwylian loafer!"
"Don't talk as if you were something better, you scoundrel," growled
Manz, "for I see you also catching fish, and thus it proves you have
nothing better to do yourself!"
"Shut your evil mouth, you fiend," shrieked Marti, since to make
himself heard above the rush of waters he had to strain his voice. "You
it is who have driven me into misery and poverty."
And since the willows lining the brook now also were shaken by the
gathering storm, Manz was forced to shout even louder: "If that is
true, then I should feel glad, you woodenhead!"