"You'll hear in good time. Come along, now, or you'll be sorry for it."
Mat looked about him as if he did not exactly know what to do, or as if
he was waiting for assistance from some quarter. The May-cabin marched
straight up to the beadle and struck his face. The boy probably took it
for granted that, as May-man, his person was sacred and secure; but the
beadle knew no sacred personage except himself, and pulled the boy's
hut to pieces at a blow. Christian, Mat's younger brother, sprang out
of it; and there was an end of the Maying.
Meantime Eva had come out of the house and took Mat by the arm, as if
to save him. But he shook her off almost as roughly as he had done the
beadle; while the latter said to Eva, "You may as well wait till I come
for you."
[Illustration: Holding her apron to her face, she went back quickly to
the house.]
"Come on," said Mat, casting a look of much meaning on Eva; but she,
poor thing, saw nothing now, for the tears were in her eyes. Holding
her apron to her face, she went back quickly to the house.
The farmers went to their work, and Mat followed the officers to the
squire's, the children bringing up the rear. When nearly out of
hearing, some of the boldest cried, "Soges! Soges!" This was the
beadle's nickname, and always made him furious. He had administered his
office while the Black Forest yet formed a part of the possessions of
the house of Austria. His devotion to his august master was such that
he thought it necessary even to affect the dialect of Vienna; and,
instead of pronouncing the German for "I say it," "I sag's" or "I han's
g'sa't,"--as a plain Black Forester would have done,--he said, "I
sog'es." Soges thereby became his title.
The mysterious brown door of the squire's house removed Mat, Soges, and
the ranger from the sight of the multitude. The squire welcomed the
prisoner with a round rating for the crime of which he stood accused.
Mat remained calm, only beating with one foot the time of a tune he
sang in imagination. At last he said, "'You 'most done, squire? All
that's nothing to me, for I haven't set any May-pole: go on talking,
though, for I've plenty of time to listen."
The squire waxed very wroth, and would have assaulted Mat bodily had
not Soges whispered some more sagacious counsels in his ear. He sank
his clenched fist, and ordered Soges to take the criminal to the
lock-up for twenty-four hours for a flagrant denial.
"I belong to the village; I am to be found at any time, and I'm not
likely to run away about such a trumpery as this: you can't lock me
up," said Mat, rightly.
"Can't?" cried the squire, reddening with anger: "we'll see if we
can't, you----"
"Save your blackguarding," said Mat: "I'm going; but it's an outrage to
treat the son of a citizen this way. If my cousin Buchmaier was at home
it couldn't be done."
On the way to the lock-up they met Eva; but Mat did not even make an
attempt to speak to her. Eva could not understand how this happened.
She followed Mat with her eyes until he was no longer in sight, and
then, bent with shame and trouble, she entered the squire's dwelling.
His wife was Eva's godmother, and Eva would not go until Mat had
been released. But her intercession was of no use this time: the
president-judge of the district was shortly expected on his tour of
visitation, and the squire wished to conciliate him by a specimen of
unrelenting severity.
In conjunction with his faithful prime minister Soges, a report was
prepared and Mat transported to Horb early next morning. It was well
that Eva's house lay at the other end of the village, so that she could
not see the wretched plight to which a night's imprisonment had reduced
the fine, active fellow who generally appeared so neatly clad. In his
anger he tore a bough from every hedge he passed, gnawed it between his
teeth, and threw it away again. In the fir-wood he broke a twig and
kept it in his mouth. He never spoke a word: the fir-sprig seemed to be
the symbol of his silence in regard to the May-pole,--a charm with
which he intended to tie his tongue. Arrived at the court-house door,
he hastily took it out of his mouth and unconsciously thrust it in his
pocket.
No one who has not been in the hands of a German court of justice can
form any idea of the misery attending such a perfect loss of the power
of self-control: it is as if one's mind had been forcibly deprived of
its body. Pushed from hand to hand, the feet move with apparent freedom
of will, and yet do only another's bidding. Mat felt all this keenly;
for he had never been in trouble like this. He felt as if he was a
great criminal, and had killed somebody at the very least: his knees
seemed to sink under him as he was taken up the long flights of steps
which lead to the top of the hill. He was locked up in the old tower
which stands so uncomfortably on the hill, like a great stone finger
pointing upward as if to say, "Beware!"
Every minute appeared to last an age. As long as he could remember, he
had never been left alone for an hour without work: what could he do
now? For a while he peered through the doubly-barred and grated window
in the wall, which was six feet thick, but saw only a patch of sky.
Lying on the bench, he played with the fir-sprig which he found in his
pocket,--the only keepsake he had of the green world without. Sticking
it into a crack of the floor, he amused himself with supposing it to be
the great May-pole before Eva's window,--which he seemed not to have
seen for a hundred years. Sighing, he started up, looked around wildly,
whistled, and began to count the needles of the fir-sprig. In the midst
of this occupation he stopped and regarded it more closely: he had
never before seen the beauty of one of Nature's fabrics. At the stem
the needles were dark-green and hard; but they grew gradually lighter
and softer, and at the ends they were like the plumage of an unfledged
bird. At the tip, the germ, with its neatly-folded scales, gave promise
of a fir-nut. A smell sweeter than that of lavender or of rosemary
oozed out of its pores. Mat passed it gently over his face and closed
eyes, until he fell asleep. He dreamed of being spellbound to a swaying
fir-tree, without being able to stir: he heard Eva's voice begging the
spirit who held him in chains for leave to come up to him and set him
free. He awoke, and really heard Eva's voice and that of his brother
Christian. They had brought him his dinner, and begged the jailer to
let them speak to Mat in his presence; but in vain.
It was late in the day when Mat was brought up for a hearing. The
president-judge received him roughly, and scolded him in high German,
just as the squire had done in the dialect of the country. Wherever
judicial transactions are withheld from the public eye, as they have
been in Germany for three or four centuries, any man accused of an
offence will always be at the mercy of the officiating functionary.
Though it will not do to torture or to beat him, there are means of ill
treatment which the law cannot reach.
The judge walked up and down the room with rattling spurs, and twirled
a bit of paper nervously between his fingers, as he put his questions.
"Where did you steal the tree?"
"I don't know any thing about it, your honor."
"You lie, you beggarly rascal!" cried the judge, stepping up to Mat and
seizing him by the lapel of his coat.
Mat started backward, and clenched his fist involuntarily.
"I'm not a rascal," said he, at last, "and you must write what you have
said in the minutes: I'd like to see what sort of a rascal I am. My
cousin Buchmaier will come home after a while."
The judge turned away, biting his lips. If Mat's case had been a better
one, the judge might have had reason to rue his words; but he wisely
abstained from inserting what he had said in the minutes. He rang the
bell, and sent for Soges.
"What proof have you that it was this fellow that put up the May-pole?"
"Every child in the village, the tiles on the roofs, know that Mat goes
to see Eva: no offence, your honor, but I should think it would be the
quickest way to send for Eva, and then he won't deny it: he can't
qualify that it isn't so."
Mat opened his eyes wide, and his lips quivered; but he said nothing.
The judge hesitated a long time, for he perfectly understood the
impropriety of such a mode of proof; but the desire to set an example
prevailed.
The hearing ended by drawing up the minutes, and requiring Mat, as well
as Soges and the customary two "assessors," or, as they are vulgarly
called, "by-sleepers," to sign them. Mat had not the courage to repeat
his demand about the abusive words of the judge, but suffered himself
to be led back quietly to prison.
When it grew dusk, Eva might have been seen sitting on the stile at the
end of the village and looking over toward the tower, thinking that Mat
must surely come before long. She sat behind a hedge, to avoid being
seen and questioned by the passers-by. There she saw Soges coming up
the hillside. As she walked toward the road, Soges beckoned to her;
and, hoping to hear news from Mat, she ran to him in all haste.
"Not too fast, Eva," cried Soges; "I only wished to tell you that you
must come to court to-morrow: you've saved me a walk."
Eva turned ashy pale, and looked almost beside herself; then she ran
down the hill, and did not stop till she had come to the Neckar. She
looked around in amazement, for it had seemed to her that she was to be
locked up at once with no hope of escape but by running away. She went
home, weeping silently.
Eva hardly closed her eyes all night for thinking of the chambers hung
in black, and the skull and bones with which her imagination garnished
the thought of courts and judges. If her playmate Agatha, the tailor's
daughter, had not come to sleep with her, she would have died of fear.
At the first dawn of morning she went to the press and took out her
Sunday gear. Agatha had to dress her, for she trembled so much that she
could not tie a string. She looked at herself sadly in her broken
glass. It seemed as if she were forced to go to a funeral in holiday
garb.
Michael the wagoner accompanied his daughter, for it would not do to
let the child go alone. In the court-house he took off his hat, stroked
his short hair, and drew his face into an expression of smiling
humility as he stood, scraping the floor with his feet, before the
unopened door. He rested his hawthorn stick against the wall, took off
his three-cornered hat, pressed it to his breast with his left hand,
bent his head humbly, and knocked at the door. It opened. "What do you
want?" inquired a gruff voice.
"I am Michael the wagoner, and this is my daughter Eva, and she is very
much afraid; so I thought I would ask whether I might come in to court
with her."
"No," was the rude answer; and the door was slammed in his face so
heavily that he staggered some steps backward. He had no opportunity of
advancing his other argument,--that in strictness he ought to appear
before court and not Eva, as the house before which the May-pole was
belonged to him.
With both hands folded upon his hawthorn stick, and his chin resting
upon his hands, Michael the wagoner sat beside his daughter in the
entry, and looked at the stone floor, which seemed almost as void of
sympathy as the face of the official. "If Buchmaier was at home," he
muttered, "they would strike up another tune." Eva could not speak a
word: she only coughed once or twice into her neatly-ironed
handkerchief.
Summoned at last, she rose quickly. Neither spoke, but, after a mute,
parting look, Eva disappeared behind the door. At the door she stood
still: the judge was not there, but the clerk sat playing with his pen,
while the two "assessors" whispered softly to each other. Eva shook and
trembled in every limb: the silence lasted ten minutes, which, to the
poor girl, seemed half an eternity. At last the clink of spurs
announced the judge's arrival. Eva seemed to find favor in his eyes,
for he tucked her chin, stroked her burning cheeks, and said, "Sit
down." Eva obeyed, just seating herself on the very edge of the stool.
After going through the customary catechism of name, station, age, and
so on, the judge asked,--
"Well, who put up your May-polo?"
"How can I know, your honor?"
"Didn't you drop the rope out of the dormer-window to tie it with?"
"No, your honor."
"And don't you know who is your sweetheart?"
Eva began to weep aloud. It was dreadful to deny; and yet she could not
confess it. In America such a question would have had no other result
than a reprimand from the bench to the counsel putting it. But so
defenceless is the condition of parties and witnesses where justice
hides in corners, that the judge even went further, and said,--
"It's no use to deny it: Mat is your sweetheart, and you're going to
get married very soon."
Eva remembered that four weeks later they intended to ask that same
court for permission to get married,--an indispensable formula under
the code of that happy country. If she denied it now, she thought they
would refuse to give her the "papers" and the "acceptance," and,
besides, it was against her conscience to say "No." Her heart beat
quickly; a certain feeling of pride arose within her; a consciousness
of superiority to all the ills that flesh is heir to pervaded her
being: she forgot the papers and the judge, and only thought of Mat.
The last tear dropped from her lids; her eyes brightened; she arose
quickly, looked around as if in triumph, and said, "Yes: I'll never
have any one but him."
"So Mat put up your May-pole?"
"It may be, but of course I couldn't be by, and that night I was----"
Here the tears choked her utterance again. It was well for the poor
girl that she held her hands before her eyes, and could not see the
smiles of the men of justice.
"Confess, now, he put up your May-pole, and nobody else."
"How can I know?"
By all sorts of cross-questions, and the oily assurance that the
punishment would be but slight, the judge at last wormed the confession
from her. The minutes were now read to her in fine book-German and in
connected periods: of her tears and sufferings not a word was written.
Eva was astonished to find that she had said so much and such fine
things; but she signed the minutes unhesitatingly, only too glad to get
away at any price. As the door closed behind her and the latch fell
into the socket, she stood still, with folded hands, as if chained to
the ground; a heavy sigh escaped her, and she almost feared the earth
would open under her feet, for she now reflected, for the first time,
how much harm she might have done to her beloved. Clinging to the
balusters, she came slowly down the stone steps, and looked for her
father, who was keeping up his spirits with a stoup of wine at the Lamb
Tavern: she took her seat by his side, but said nothing, nor brought a
drop to her lips.
Mat was now called up again, and Eva's confession read to him. He
stamped his foot and gnashed his teeth. These gestures were immediately
recorded as the basis of a confession, and, after sufficient baiting,
Mat found himself completely caught: like game in a net, his desperate
efforts to disengage himself only entangled him still further.
Being asked where he had got the tree, Mat first said that he had
taken it out of the Dettensee wood,--which was in the duchy of
Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, and therefore under another sovereignty and
jurisdiction. But, when another investigation and a report to the court
at Haigerloch was talked of, he at last confessed that he had taken it
out _of his own wood_,--"by the Pond,"--and that it was a tree which
would have been marked for felling in two or three days by the
forester.
In consideration of these extenuating circumstances, Mat was fined ten
rix-dollars for having taken a tree out of his own wood before it was
marked.
Up at the stile where Mat had torn off a sprig the day before, he met
Eva and her father, who were coming up the hill-slope. He would have
passed on without a greeting; but Eva ran up to him and cried, huskily,
"Don't sulk, Mat: I'll give you my cross and my garnets if they make
you pay a fine. Thank the Lord, you're not locked up any more."
After some altercation, Mat gave in: hand in hand with Eva he walked
through the village, and received kind congratulations from all he met.
This is the story of the May-pole before Michael the wagoner's house:
on the wedding-day it was decked with red ribbons. The heavens and the
earth seemed to like it better than the good government or the vigilant
police, for it unaccountably took root and sent forth new branches. To
this day it graces the house of the happy couple as a living emblem of
their constant love.
2.
This story is connected with another, of more general interest. The
prevalence at this time of the wicked custom of putting up May-poles,
as well as other offences against the peace and dignity of the forests,
induced the judge to issue an ordinance which had long hovered at the
nib of his pen. From immemorial times it has been the custom of the
peasantry of the Black Forest to carry a little axe in their left hand
whenever they go abroad. Only the "men"--that is, the married men--do
so; and it is a badge which distinguishes them from the "boys," or
unmarried young fellows. It is said to be a remnant of the ancient time
when every one bore arms.
On Whitsunday the following ordinance was found on the blackboard
nailed in front of the town-house of every village in the presidency:--
"It having been found that many offences against the forest are
occasioned by the improper practice of carrying axes, the public are
hereby notified,--
"That from this day forth every person found upon the road or in the
woods with an axe shall be held to give the gamekeeper or ranger
accurate information of the purpose for which he has the axe with him;
and, if he fails to do so, he shall be punished by a fine of one
rix-dollar: upon a repetition of the offence he shall be fined three
rix-dollars: and, upon a further repetition, with imprisonment for not
less than one and not more than four weeks.
"RELLINGS,
_President-Judge_."
A crowd of farmers flocked around the town-house at the close of the
afternoon service. Mat, who was now one of the "men" also, read the
ordinance aloud. All shook their heads and muttered curses: the old
squire said, audibly, "Such a thing wouldn't have been done in old
times: these are our privileges."
Buchmaier was now seen coming down from the upper village with the axe
in his hands. Every eye was turned toward him as he walked along. He
was a stout, strong man, in the prime of life,--not large, but
broad-shouldered and thick-set. The short leathern breeches had allowed
his shirt to bag a little round his waist; the open red vest showed the
broad band which connected his suspenders, and which was woven in
various colors and resembled a pistol-belt in the distance; the
three-cornered hat was fixed upon a head disproportionately small; the
features were mild and almost feminine, particularly about the mouth
and chin, but the large, bright blue eyes and the dark, protruding
brows spoke clearness of apprehension and manly boldness.
Mat ran to meet the new-comer, told him of the ordinance, and said,
"Cousin, you are not good councilmen, any of you, if you knuckle under
to this."
[Illustration: He struck the axe into the middle of the ordinance.]
Buchmaier continued his regular pace without hastening his steps in the
least: he walked straight up to the board, everybody stepping aside to
let him pass. He raised his hat a little, and there was an expectant
silence. He read the ordinance from beginning to end, struck the flat
of his hand upon the crown of his head,--a sign that something decisive
was coming,--took the axe into his right hand, and with a "Whew!" he
struck it into the board in the middle of the ordinance. Then, turning
to the by-standers, he said, "We are citizens and councilmen: without a
meeting, without the consent of the councils, such ordinances cannot be
passed. If the clerks and receivers are our lords and masters, and we
are nobody, we may as well know it; and, if we must go before the king
himself, we can't put up with this. Whoever agrees with me, let him
take my axe out and strike it into the board again."
Mat was the first who stepped forward; but Buchmaier held him by the
arm and said, "Let the older men come first."
This movement turned the scale in the minds of those who had halted
between two opinions, not knowing whether to imitate Buchmaier's course
or to condemn it. The old squire made his essay first, with a trembling
hand; after him, no one kept aloof, and the name of the judge in
particular was hacked into a hundred pieces. By degrees, all the
village assembled, and every one contributed his stroke amid shouts and
laughter.
The acting squire, informed of what had happened, thought of calling
the military from Horb. But his sapient minister dissuaded him from
such a requisition, as it would be of no use; "and, besides," thought
he, "let them make as much rebellion as they can; there will be a fine
crop of summonses, and every summons is a creutzer to me. Hack away,
boys: you are hacking into your own flesh, and that flesh is my
copper." With a joyous mien he counted his coming gains as he drank his
stoup of wine in the Adler.
Thus it happened that not one in the village remained innocent of the
offence except Soges and the squire.
Next Tuesday, at the suggestion of the old squire, the councilmen went
to court of their own accord and gave information of what they had
done. The judge stormed. His name--Rellings--is a word used in the
Black Forest to designate a tom-cat; and he might then really be
compared to a shorn puss, with spectacles on its nose and spurs at its
feet. He talked of locking up all the offenders at once; but Buchmaier
stepped forward with great decision and said, "Is that all you are good
for? Locking up? You won't do that yet a while. We are here to stand by
what we have done: we avow it freely, and there can be no such thing as
imprisonment before trial. I am not a vagrant. You know where I live. I
am Buchmaier, this here's Beck, that there's John the Blacksmith, and
that's Michael's son Bat, and we're all to be found on our own
freeholds. You can't lock us up without a sentence, and after that the
way is still open to Reutlingen and to Stuttgard, if need be."
The judge changed his tone, and summoned the men to appear before him
at nine o'clock of the following day. This was well at least, so far as
Soges thereby lost his creutzers. Thus do great lords and little lords
frequently err in their calculations.
Next day an array of more than a hundred farmers, with axes in their
hands, marched through the village. They often stopped before the door
of a house and called for the belated master, who rushed out in great
haste, pulling on his coat as he walked along the road. Jokes and
witticisms were passed about, but died away whenever the speaker's eye
fell upon Buchmaier, who walked on silently with contracted brows. Not
a drop had been tasted before going to court. Business first, pleasure
afterward, was the motto of the farmers.
The judge was lounging at the window in his dressing-gown, with his
long pipe in his mouth. On seeing the approach of the armed force, he
closed the window in all haste, and ran to ring the bell; but, as his
boots were always spurred, he stumbled over the window-curtain and fell
at full length upon the floor. His long pipe lay beside him like a
weapon of offence. He rose quickly, however, rang for the tipstaff,
sent him to the commandant and to the captain of the gens-d'armes, and
ordered them all to come up with arms heavily loaded. Unfortunately,
there happened to be but four men in the town. He now ordered them to
remain in the porter's room and hold themselves in readiness to act at
a moment's warning. He then gave directions that but one farmer should
be admitted at a time, and the door always closed upon him.
Buchmaier, being first called in, said, holding the door in his hand,
"Good-morning, your honor;" and then, turning to the others, "Come in,
men: we have a common grievance I'm not going to speak for myself
alone."
[Illustration: Write down word for word what I say.]
Before the judge could interfere, the room was filled with farmers,
each carrying an axe on his left arm. Buchmaier stepped up to the
clerk, and said, stretching out his hand, "Write down word for word
what I say; I want them to read it at the Provincial Government." Then,
after passing his hand twice through his shirt-collar, he rested his
hand upon the green baize of the table, and continued:--
"All respect and honor to you, judge: the king has sent you, and we
must obey you, as the law requires. The king is a good and a true man,
and we know it isn't his will to have the farmers knocked about like
dumb cattle or boxed on the ears like children. But the little lords
and gentlemen that hang by one another from the top to the bottom are
mighty fond of commanding and giving orders: one of these days they
will set it down in notes how the hens must cackle over their eggs. I'm
going to lift the lid off the pan and just give you a bit of my mind. I
know it won't do any particular good just now; but, once for all, it
must be said: it has been tickling my throat too long, and I'm going to
get it out of me. The commune is to be put on the shelf altogether, and
all things to be done in the rooms of you office-holders. Then why
don't you sow and reap in the rooms too? Such a little whippersnapper
of a clerk twists a whole town-housefull of farmers on his fingers, and
before you know it you find clerk after clerk saddled upon us for a
squire: then it is all fixed to the liking of you pen-and-ink fellows.
What is true is true, and there must be law and order in the land; but
the first thing is to see whether we can't get along better without
tape-fellows than with them; and then we don't carry our heads under
our elbows, either, and we can mind our own business, if we can't talk
law-Latin. There must be studied men and scholars to overlook matters;
but, first, the citizens must arrange their own affairs themselves."
"Come to the point," said the judge, impatiently.
"It's all to the point. You've ordered and commanded so much that
there's nothing left to be ordered or commanded, and now you begin to
prevent and precaution: you'll end by putting a policeman under every
tree to keep it from quarrelling with the wind and drinking too much
when it rains. If you go on this way a body might as well ride away on
the cow's back. You want to take every thing from us: now, there
happens to be one thing our minds are made up to hold on to." Raising
his axe and gnashing his teeth, he continued:--"And if I must split
every door between me and the king with this very axe, I will not give
it out of my hand. From time immemorial it is our right to carry axes;
and if they are to be taken from us the assembly of the hundred must do
it, or the estates of the realm; and before them we shall have a
hearing also. But why do you want to take them from us? To protect the
forests? You have woodrangers, and laws and penalties, for that, and
they fall alike on the noble and the beggar. How many teeth must a poor
farmer have to eat potatoes with? Pluck out the rest, so that he may
not be tempted to steal meat. How do you come to let the dogs run about
with their fangs? When a boy is eight or nine years old he has his
knife in his pocket, and if he cuts his finger it's his own fault, and
there's an end; if he hurts anybody else he gets his fingers chowsed.
Who told you that we are worse than little children, and you our
teachers and guardians? You gentlemen seem to think that if it wasn't
for you I'd jump out of the window this minute and dash my brains out.
In all the main matters of life everybody must care for himself, and
every commune for itself, and not you lords and gentlemen. Lords, did I
say? Our servants you are, and we are the lords. You always think we
are here on your account, so that you may have something to give orders
about: we pay you that there may be order in the land, and not for the
purpose of being bothered by you. You are the servants of the State,
and we, the citizens, are the State itself. If we must look for our
rights, we don't mean to go to the spout, but to the well; and I will
sooner lay my head on the block and let the hangman chop it off with my
axe than give up my axe to an office-holder against my will. There!
I've done."
There was a general silence; the spectators looked on each other with
twitching eyes, which seemed to say, "There! he's got his pipe stuffed:
now let him smoke it."
Bat whispered to Beck, "He knows how to ask for a piece of bread and
butter when he wants it." "Yes," said Beck; "he doesn't carry his
tongue in his pocket."
The judge did not suffer the impression made by this speech to remain
long undisturbed. Twirling a bit of paper in his fingers, he began
calmly to dilate on the enormity of the offence which had been
committed. Many a side-thrust was levelled at Buchmaier, who only shook
his head slightly, as if he were driving flies away. At length the
judge came to speak of barrators and unquiet spirits, of conceited
gentlemen-farmers who had once drunk a stoup of wine with a lawyer, who
heard a bell ring without knowing where it was. Returning from this
digression, he entered once more on the case in hand; he spoke of some
of those present by name, and praised them as good, orderly citizens,
utterly incapable of such an action. He expressed his firm conviction
that they had been misled by Buchmaier's bad example: he conjured them,
by their conscience, by their loyalty to their king and country, by the
love of their wives and children, not to load this heavy guilt upon
themselves, but frankly to confess the seduction, and their punishment
would be lenient.
Again there was silence: some looked at each other and then cast their
eyes on the ground. Buchmaier's mien was bold and confident: he looked
them all in the face, his breast heaved, and his breath remained
suspended with expectation. Mat had already opened his mouth to speak,
but John, the blacksmith, stopped his mouth; for at this moment the old
squire, who alone of all present had occupied a chair, was seen to
rise. With heavy steps, hardly lifting his feet, he came up to the
green table and spoke. At first he panted a little, and often stopped
for breath, but soon his speech became quite fluent:--"Many thanks to
your honor," said he, "for the good opinion your honor has of me and of
some others; but what Buchmaier has said I say, to the last I dot. If
there was any more proof wanted that the gentlemenfolks look at us as
if we were under age, or little children, your honor has given it just
now. No, your honor: I am seventy-six years old, and have been squire
for twenty years; we are not children, and we don't do things because
we have been misled into doing them by naughty boys. My axe sha'n't go
out of my hand until I am laid between six boards myself. If there are
any children here, let them say so. I am a man, and know what I am
about; and, if there's punishing to be done, I am ready to be punished
as well as another."
"So are we!" said all the farmers with one voice. Mat could be heard
above the rest.
Buchmaier's face was as if bathed in light: he pressed his axe closer
to his bosom.
The necessary formalities were soon concluded and the minutes signed.
After Buchmaier had requested a copy of the latter, the farmers quietly
left the court-house.
Several other communes also remonstrated against the ordinance, and the
matter was carried up to the Provincial Government. Those communes who
had protested so violently with the axes themselves were mulcted in a
heavy fine. Judge Rellings, however, was removed after a time, and the
ordinance became obsolete. The men carried their axes on their left
arms, as they had done before.