you all about it. At first I never wrote to you what a hard time I had
of it; but now, with God's help, that's all passed and gone. I always
thought, 'What's the use of making poor mammy fret about it? she
couldn't do any good, anyhow;' so I swallowed it all down, and worked
hard and tried to whistle."
Ivo paused a moment. He seemed to be drawing a lesson for his own
guidance from what he was reading. He continued:--
"Now things are all put to rights; and it isn't a trifle, either, to
build yourself a house, and clear all your fields and turn them over
for the first time, and no help or counsel nowhere from a living soul:
but now it looks nicer here than at Buchmaier's. Our arms and legs get
stiff now and then; but we're all in good health, and that's the best
of it. Many of our countrymen are here, and worse off than at home, and
have to work at the canals and railroads. There's lots of swindlers
here, that tell you all sorts of stories when you first come into the
country, until you've spent the last cent in your pocket, and then
they're nowhere. There are great hypocrites here as well as there: the
voyage cleans, out their stomachs, but their souls are as dirty as
ever. But the steamboat-man in Mayence gave us a good introduction to a
society of fine men,--all Germans,--who tell you where it's best to go
and what's best to be done: so none of us were ruined. I want you to
tell all those that talk of coming over not to trust anybody but that
man and that introduction. At first, when I used to go away from my
guide a little, and run about in New York, while we were waiting for
Mat to come on, I used to feel just as if I'd got among a herd of
cattle,--God forgive me!--they were men just as much as I am; but they
jabbered together just like that French simpleton, Joe, in Frog Alley:
he talks a sort of hotchpotchcomambulation too. But it's English what
they talk to each other. I can speak it a little too by this time: it's
just like German sometimes, only you must handle your mouth as if you'd
got your teeth twisted round a green apple. We were a large company at
first; but one's gone here and another there. That's all wrong: we
Germans ought to stick together. I always used to think only the
Wurtembergers were my countrymen; but here they call us all Dutchmen;
and when I see one from Saxony I feel just as if he were from the Lower
Neckar Valley. I guess I'm writing all sorts of things you don't want
to read; but this sort of thoughts go about in my head so much that
they pop out before I know what's what.
[Illustration: I've put up a post with 'Nordstetten' marked on it.]
"Now, I must tell you something else. Did you notice that I wrote
'Nordstetten' at the top of my letter? Yes; so it is, and so it shall
be. I've put up a post not far from my house, with a board and with
'Nordstetten' marked on it in large letters. It won't be long before
other people 'll come and settle here, and then they'll keep the name.
Then we're going to build a church, just like the church at home: I've
picked out the hill for it already, right opposite my barn: we call it
the Church Hill now. Then we'll send for a parson from Germany. And my
fields have just the same names they used to have at home. I and my
Mechtilde often talk about it nights how it'll all come some time or
other. If we don't live to see it, why, our children will; and then
it'll all be my doing, after all. If one of the Nordstetten students
would only come here and be our parson, he'd have a nice place of it;
but he'd have to work in the fields some. We choose our own parsons
here: we take those we like best, and none of your consistories has any
thing to say to us. So the parsons are not the lords over us, neither:
here all are equal; they're no better than we are, only that they've
got learning and been ordained. Three hours' walk from here we have
one: he was born in Rangendingen. The swallows have built nests around
my house already. Last year I wrote on a bit of paper, 'God bless you
all over there,' and my name under it, and tied it to one of their
necks. I thought, in my foolishness, they'd fly to Nordstetten with it
some day; but--lo and behold!--she came back again, and she had another
bit of paper, with [Greek: chaire] on it. Nobody can tell me what that
means: it looks just like kaibe;[10] and that would be a shame,
wouldn't it?"
"Do you know what it means, Ivo?" asked Maria.
"Yes, Chaire: it is Greek, and means 'Hail.'"
The women lifted up their hands in amazement at Ivo's learning.
"But where did the swallow winter?" asked Maria, again.
"Among the Firelanders, I suppose," answered Ivo; and after a pause he
read on:--
"I never knew till I got away from home how finely the larks sing. Only
think! there are no larks here at all, and no nightingales either: but
a great many other fine birds there are, and splendid pine and oak
trees, and the tallest sort of timber.
"Dear mother, I wrote all this a week ago, and when I look over it I
think I'm writing stuff and nonsense; but just now I feel as if I was
sitting with you before Jacob the blacksmith's house at the well, and
people passing by and saying, 'Ha' ye good counsel?' and my heart is so
full that I don't know what I ought to say first and what last. We are
all in very good health, thank God: we like what we eat and drink, and
it feeds us well. We've had to widen all the clothes we brought with us
from Germany. It's a good thing Mechtilde has learned to sew.
"Whenever I eat a good dinner I think how nice it would be if my poor
mother was here: I could just lay out the best bits for her, and say,
'There, mother: that's for you to help yourself; there's a choice
morsel;' and I know you would like living in our house.
"Our Bat is getting on finely: he never had any thing to ail him yet.
Oh, if that dear little Maria was living yet! She would have been a
year old next Michaelmas. She was a sweet little angel; she was only
three weeks old, but when you called her by name she would look at you
so cunning, and grab at your eyes. On All-Souls' day we are going to
put an iron cross on her grave. Oh, my! oh, my! the dear child is in
heaven now, and heaven is the real America, after all!
"I must write more about my household-matters. I oughtn't to think of
the child so much; it works me too hard. I say, as the parson said,
'The Lord hath given, the Lord hath taken away: the name of the Lord be
praised.'
"If the Lord will only keep us all in good health now! The Lord has
always been very gracious to me: as far as the cattle go, I haven't
lost one of them yet. There's nothing I like to think of more than that
the cattle always have plenty to eat here. To the last day of my life I
shall never forget what a misery it was when feed was so scarce, just
the day before I went to Stuttgard, when there wasn't hardly a blade of
grass on the ground. Do you remember what it used to be to get up in
the morning and not give the poor beasts a quarter of a good breakfast,
and then to see the flesh falling off their ribs? I often felt so unked
I could have run away. Here the cows run about pasturing all the year
round, and never know what it is to want; and yet I never had to kill
one of them for having overeaten itself. Over there they stand in
the stable all the year round, and then, when they do get into a
clover-field, they eat till they burst. And just as it is with the
cattle, so it is with men. Over there they have to stand in a stable,
tied down by squires and clerks and office-holders, until their talons
get so long that they can't walk any more, and the minute you let 'em
out they go capering about like mad. This is what somebody was saying
very finely in a public meeting the other day. Mother, it's a fine
thing, a public meeting: it's just as if you were to go to church. And
yet it isn't just so, neither; for everybody may speak there that can
and likes: all are equal there. I want to tell you how they do it, and
yet I believe I can't, exactly: only I must tell you that our Matthew
is one of the principal speakers: they've put him on the committee two
or three times, and the name of Matthew Schorer is one for which the
people have respect. I have spoken in public once or twice too. I don't
know how it is; at first my heart thumped a little, but then I just
felt as if I was speaking to you, just free 'from the liver,' as we
used to say in Germany. What they were disputing about was, a German, a
Wurtemberger, or, as we say over here, a Swobe,[11] came here, and he'd
been an officer, and the king had pardoned him; he'd got up a
conspiracy among the military, and afterward he betrayed all his
comrades: here he gave himself out for a friend of freedom; but a
letter came from over there to say that he was too bad for the gallows,
and the devil had kicked him out of his cart. So they disputed about it
for a long time whether he could be an officer here or not, and at last
I said, 'I can find a handle to fit that hoe. Let him show a letter
from his comrades to say that he did the fair thing by them: I can't
believe that any Wurtemberger could be so mean as to betray his king
first and his comrades afterward.' And they agreed to do just what I
told them; but, when I looked at the fellow's face again, I thought,
'Well, that trouble's for nothing: he looks as if he'd stolen the horns
off the goat's head.'
"I'm an officer in the militia,--a lieutenant: they chose me because I
was in the military over there and understand the business. We
choose our own officers here, for here every thing is free. The
squire in Nordstetten was only a corporal, after all. If I was to come
home---- No; come to think of it, I wouldn't dress like an officer,
neither. I'm a free citizen, and that's better than to be an officer or
a general. I wouldn't swop with a king. Mother, it's a great country is
America. You've got to work right hard, that's a fact; but then you
know what you're working for: the tithes and taxes don't take the cream
off your earnings. I live here on my farm, and no king and no emperor
has any thing to say to me; and as for a presser, they don't know what
that is hereabouts, at all. Good gracious! When I think how he used to
travel through the village with the beadle, with a long list in his
hand, while the people in the houses were weeping and wailing and
slamming their doors; and then he would bring a pewter plate, a copper
kettle, a pan, or a lamp, from a poor Jew's house to the squire! It is
a shame there's so much suffering with us: it seems to me it might
easily be done-away with. And yet I wouldn't coax anybody to come over.
It's no trifle to be so far away from home, even if you're ever so well
off. Every now and then something makes me feel so soft that, when I
think of it, I am ashamed of myself; and then I want to bundle up
right-away and go to Germany. I must see it once more while I have an
eye open to look at it. I can't tell you how I feel: sometimes I almost
go to pieces, and feel like howling as if I was a dog. I know that that
would never do for a man, but then I can't help feeling so, and I
needn't conceal any thing from you, you know. I think, after all, maybe
it only comes of longing to see you so much. More than a thousand times
I've said to myself, 'If only my mammy was here too,--my dear, good
mammy; if she'd only once sit on that bench there!' How glad you'd be
to see the big milk-pans! and, oh, to think of your seeing little Bat,
and the one that's coming soon! If I have ever done you any harm,
forgive me; for you may be sure there's not a living soul on earth that
loves you more than I do.
"I have been resting a little, and now I'm going on. What a fine thing
it is that we've learned to read and write properly! I'm always
grateful to you for having made me learn it. But you mustn't think I'm
out of spirits. To-be-sure, I'm not so full of fun as I sometimes was,
years ago, but then I've grown older, and had a good deal of
experience; but still, sometimes I am so glad, and feel so kindly for
every thing in the world, that I begin to whistle and dance and sing.
Sometimes I feel a little pang when I call something to mind; but then
I say, 'Whoa!' and shake myself like a horse, and away with it. I and
Mechtilde live as happy as two children, and our Bat has bones in him
as strong as a young calf, and muscles like the kernel of a nut.
"On Sunday, when we go to church, we take salt with us, and what we
need besides; and Mechtilde once said we get heavenly salt for it in
the mass and the sermon, and salt our souls with it. Mechtilde often
makes fine riddles and jokes. We've bought a story-book, too, about
Rinaldo Rinaldini: it's a shuddersome story of knights and robbers, and
we've read it move than ten times and the other day, when I overslept
myself, she sang a song out of it and waked me. Talking of songs, I
want to ask a favor of you, but you mustn't laugh at me.
"You see, when a fellow gets out alone into the world and wants to sing
by himself, he finds out, all of a sudden, that of ever so many songs
he only knows the beginning, and that the rest of it he has only just
sung after somebody else; and then I want to pull my head off because
it won't come into my mind; but it won't come in, nohow. There's a good
many things just so you think you know them until somebody says, 'Now,
old fellow, do it alone, will ye?'
"Now, I'd like to ask you--but you mustn't laugh at me--to please get
the old schoolmaster to write down all the Nordstetten songs. I'll pay
him for it well. You won't forget, will you? And then send it to me, or
bring it when you come.
"I must tell you something else, too. Only think, mother! last Tuesday
three weeks, as I was sitting at my wagon and mending the tongue,--you
can't run to the wagoner's here every five minutes: you must do such
things yourself,--what should I hear but somebody say to me, 'Hard at
it, Aloys?' and, as I looked up, who should stand there but Long
Heartz's Jake, who was in the Guards? We didn't use to be the best of
friends; but I forgot all about it, and fell on his neck and almost
hugged him to death. I do believe if George himself was to come I'd
shake hands with him just to think he came from Nordstetten. I called
the whole house together and cut the throat of a turkey. Jake ate his
dinner with me just as anybody else would. The laws about eating with
Jews, and so on, are for the Old World, and not for the New.
"Jake stayed a week and helped me work in the field: he can do it just
as well as a Christian. I was so glad to see he's come to understand
that, for a soldier who has honor in him, it isn't the thing to run
about peddling. He's going to buy land somewhere hereabouts. I'm
helping him do it. I must have my dear Nordstetten Jews here too, for
it wouldn't be Nordstetten without them. After that, he's going to join
the militia. He'll be an officer before long, most likely. In the
evening we used to sit together, I and my Mechtilde, my brothers-in-law
and my sisters-in-law, and their boys and girls, and Jake, and we'd
sing the songs we used to sing at home; and then I felt just as I did
that time Mary Ann got her new distaff. But you mustn't suppose I think
very often of Mary Ann. I love my Mechtilde very much, and she loves me
too. I wish every couple loved each other as much as we do, and lived
as happily together.
"Now, about your coming here. I don't want to beg you too hard: Mat'll
write all about it. But, if it's possible---- No, no, I won't beg you.
Jake tells me that our Xavier goes to see Valentine's Mag: well, she
won't be afraid of the sea I guess, and he can bring her over too. It's
all one now, Nordstetten here or Nordstetten there.
"Write me an answer right soon. Only send the letter to Mat, as you did
before: he goes to town oftener than I do.
"Now, good-bye to you, and I hope this will find you very well indeed.
Think of me sometimes. My Mechtilde and my Bat and my parents-in-law
send you their best loves. My sister-in-law has taught little Bat to
say, when they ask him, 'Where's your grandmother?' 'Over there in the
Black Forest.' I am your loving son.
"ALOYS SCHORER.
[Illustration: Bat's hand.]
"See how I reach my little hand
Far over to your distant land.
"That's my Bat's hand: I drew it, dear mother, just as he laid it on
the paper, because there was room enough."
Ivo was asked to read Mat's letter also; but he promised to do so
another time, and took his leave, the grateful mother, who was wiping
the tears from her eyes, having accompanied him to the door. Outside of
the village he saw his sister Mag walking in the meadow with Xavier. He
now understood what it was that often made her so disputatious and
discontented: her father would not tolerate her acquaintance with "the
American," as he called Xavier.
With a skip and a bound, Ivo shook off the oppressive dignity of his
station. He danced and sung as he had formerly done, always clearing
the heaps of broken stones at the roadside at a bound. The letter of
Aloys had made a great impression upon him. He saw in it the picture of
a truly honest living,--a life rendered happy by hard work and
independence. For the first time he perceived how all the corporal
powers of a student lie fallow, and learned to see that it was this
which often so greatly "unsettles" the minds of those most favored by
natural endowments among the youth of a country. He thought of going to
America to be parson and farmer at one and the same time, to go
visiting his sister, to travel from farm to farm, instructing the
children, and fostering the effort to look upward among all with whom
he conversed.
Absorbed with such reflections, he reached Horb. The town did not look
near so fine, nor the houses so large, as before: he had seen larger
ones. The chaplain was delighted with his former pupil, and Mrs.
Hankler, who was ill in bed, said that it made her well only to see
him. The Judge's sons were no longer there; for, as it may be
remembered, their father had been transferred to another district.
It was night when Ivo returned home. In the village he found
Constantine leading Peter by the hand, and walking the street with the
half-grown boys, singing. He taught them new songs, and made them laugh
uproariously by recounting all sorts of tricks which he had played upon
his teacher at the convent. Ivo walked with them quietly till they
reached his father's house, when he said, "Good-night," and went in.
Throughout the holidays he was left much to himself. He would either
take solitary walks in the fields, or practise at home on a bugle which
he had borrowed from Conrad the baker. His mother always urged him to
go out and not mope about the house. Sometimes he would walk out with
the new schoolmaster. Constantine he never associated with, except when
it was not to be avoided.
A deep sorrow stole into his heart when he became aware of the
half-concealed dissensions existing between his parents. Before leaving
home he had been so habituated to all the incidents of the household
that it did not occur to him to speculate about them. At the convent
his imagination had pictured home-life as a paradise embosomed in
endless peace: all harsh and uninviting associations had disappeared
from his memory. Thus, he returned to contrast with a highly-wrought
ideal the sober realities of every-day existence; and much that he saw
could not fail to shock him, and perhaps to appear even worse than it
really was. He came fresh from a household where all things moved
according to external laws fixed by unvarying regulations,--where
discussion or contradiction was out of the question as much as in the
interior of a piece of mechanism; and, though depressed by the rigor of
these ordinances, he did not understand that in the free constitution
of a family, where each one acts for the whole according to his
individual judgment, much difference of opinion and many an altercation
is almost inevitable. Even the loud tone of voice in which everybody
spoke was not pleasant; and his father's manner, in particular, was
such as to cause him frequently to shake his head. When his mother
listened in silence to Valentine's expositions of his plans of building
houses "for sale" and without previous orders, he would cry out, "There
it is, you see: you never care a button for what I say: whether a dog
barks, or whether I talk, it's all one to you." If she made objections,
he said, "It's the old story: whatever I want to do never suits you."
If Christina treated him gently and kindly, like one who needed
indulgence, he would perceive it at once, and curse and swear. If, on
the contrary, she was firm and decided, and stood her ground, he said,
"All the world knows you don't live for me, but for your children:
wouldn't you be glad if I was to die?" And then he would sit down,
refusing to eat, or drink, or speak: he would go to the inn, but
without getting any thing to eat there,--as he feared it would make
people talk and grieve his wife,--so that he generally went to bed
without his supper.
When such things happened, Christina would look at Ivo with
indescribable pain. She saw all the anguish which her troubles wrote
upon his face, and redoubled her efforts to conceal all things and
smooth them over. The other children were accustomed to such scenes and
no longer distressed by witnessing them.
Seeing the necessity of an explanation with her youngest son, she sat
down one evening by his bedside and said,--
[Illustration: She sat down one evening by his bedside.]
"Do you see? your father is the best and most upright man in the world;
but he has an unlucky disposition, and is not well pleased with
himself, because he sometimes neglects things and spoils a job, and
things won't go as he likes; and then he wants other people to be all
the better pleased with him. When he sees that that isn't so, and it
can't be so, his spirit rises up in him still more: and yet I owe it to
my children not to let things go backward. As for myself, I'm willing
to eat dry bread all my life; but, for the sake of my children, I can't
sit by and see us beggared in five years and my children jostled about
among strangers. I know he loves me better than anybody else in the
world. He would shed his last drop of blood for me, and I for him; but
he wants to mortgage the house and the fields, and to go to work with
Koch, the other carpenter, to build houses for sale; and that's what I
won't do, and no ten horses shall drag me into it. It's my children's
property, and I must be a good mother to them. We're not rich people
any more, and the poor mustn't suffer by our losses, either: they must
have their gifts just as before, if I must squeeze it out of my own
eating. Yes, my dear Ivo, take your mother's advice, and don't forget
the poor. The corn grows on the lea, though you give away some of it;
and our Lord blesses the bread in the cupboard, so that it nourishes
better. You love your father dearly too, don't you, dear Ivo? He is the
best man in the world. You honor him, don't you? You are his pride,
though he don't tell you so, for it's not in him to say it. When he
comes home from the Eagle, where they're always praising you so much
because Christian the tailor's son Gregory writes so well of you, you
could twist him round your little finger. Just make up your mind not to
be distressed by any thing, and don't be sad. What one firmly resolves
to do, one can do, believe me."
Ivo nodded and kissed his mother's hand; but a deep sadness stole over
him. The paradise of his parental home had sunk in ruins, over which
the figure of his mother alone hovered like an angel of light; and once
he said to himself, very softly, "Her name is not Christina in vain:
she is just like the Savior. She bears the heaviest cross with a smile,
and thinks not of herself, but of others."
Thus it came to pass that he looked forward to the end of the holidays
with far less regret than he would have supposed when he first returned
home.
9.
THE FRIENDS.
In the first few days of his renewed convent-life the old home-sickness
returned. He reproached himself with not having enjoyed his holidays to
the full, with having suffered himself to be put out by things which
were not so bad as they seemed; but he had made up his mind to profit
by the example of Aloys, and not add to his mother's troubles by
writing her sorrowful letters.
During his former stay at the convent his thoughts had been so much at
home that he had not identified himself with the peculiar circumstances
and associations of this abode. All this was now otherwise. "My mother
says we can do any thing we really want to do," he said to himself,
"and that shall henceforth be my motto."
Ivo and Clement had welcomed each other warmly in the presence of the
other boys. Everybody had a great deal to tell. At noon, when the class
were taking their usual ramble, Ivo and Clement, as if by a tacit
understanding, lagged behind; and, under a blooming hawthorn, where no
one could see them, they fell upon each other's necks and kissed each
other fervently. The larks roystered in mid-air, and the hawthorn waved
to a gentle breeze. With faces radiant with joy, their arms flung
around each other's necks, they went back to the road and rejoined
their comrades. Ivo made a long imaginary speech, of which he only
pronounced aloud the words "still and holy," and looked into the
shining depths of Clement's eye, and they grasped each other's hands.
Then Clement struck Ivo and ran away to the others. Ivo well understood
this as a hint to conceal their league and covenant from general
observation. They mingled with the others; but, soon finding themselves
side by side again, they struck, chased, and dodged each other, until
they were again separated from the crowd; then they began a sham
wrestle, which soon turned to a warm embrace, and each murmured, "Dear
Ivo," "Dear Clement." So inventive was this young friendship in its
early bud.
Both of the boys now entered upon a new and happy life. Ivo had never
had a brother's heart of his own age; Clement, in the frequent
migrations of his father's family, had never attached himself to any
one but an elder sister. Now Ivo, when he awoke in the morning, looked
up joyfully and said, "Good-morning, Clement," although Clement slept
in another apartment. Though away from home, he was a stranger no
longer. The convent had ceased to be a place of coercion and unpitying
law: he did all things willingly, because his Clement was with him. It
cost him no further resolution to write cheerful letters home. All his
life was a life of pleasure; and his mother often shook her head when
she read his sounding periods. Clement, who had read innumerable
fairy-tales and books of knight-errantry, introduced his friend to a
world of wonders and strange delights. He made two banished princes of
Ivo and himself, and a giant Goggolo of the director; and for a time
they always addressed each other by the names of their imaginary
characters.
The world of wonders and fairy-tales, which strive to outdo the riddle
of existence by still more puzzling combinations and thus in a manner
to expound the world of every day, this self-oblivious dream of a
toying, childish fancy, had not hitherto met the mental gaze of Ivo.
What Nat had told him was too much intertwined with the rude and simple
experiences of field and forest life, and knew nothing of subterranean
castles of gold and precious stones. He was entirely unprepared for the
gorgeous trappings of these magic gardens and these cities at the
bottom of the sea.
The hawthorn was venerated by both as the trysting-tree of their
friendship, and they never passed it without looking at it and at each
other. Ivo, whom we already know as well versed in the Bible, once
said, "We have just had the same luck as Moses. Jehovah appeared to him
in the bush, and it was burning, but yet was not consumed. Do you know
what Jehovah means? I am he who shall be: it is the future of Hava. We
shall be friends in future too, as we are now, sha'n't we?"
"I'll tell you a story," replied Clement. "Once there was a princess on
an island: her name wasn't Leah, like the old lady in the Bible, but
Hawa. She hadn't red eyes, either, but beautiful dark-blue ones. But
she couldn't abide thorns: the least little thorn was a thorn in her
eye, and the moment she saw one she always cried out, 'Oh dear! it is
in me; I feel it in my fine dark-blue eyes.' So to please her they had
to cut off every thing on the island which bore thorns, and to grub up
every bit of the roots; and when the princess died they buried her;
and, to punish her for hating thorns, a thorn grew out of each of her
two eyes, and they bear beautiful blue eyes to this day, just like
those the princess had, and they call them hawthorns."
Thus Clement ended his story with a triumphant smile. Ivo regarded him
with a bright, merry face. Whatever Clement told was so delightful! His
words clung to each other like the pearls of a beautiful necklace: all
Clement did or said was far beyond compare with any thing else in the
wide, wide world.
At Ivo's suggestion they had vowed to each other to be great men, and
they now encouraged each other to the most unremitting industry. Every
thing was easily done, as each did it for the other's sake. Ivo even
kept the head-place in the class for a whole year. Clement was not so
lucky, because his imagination always ran away with him. Whatever he
saw excited him, and he forgot the subject on which he should have been
engaged: when the teacher addressed questions to him he awoke as from a
dream and answered awry.
The secret league, however, could not long remain concealed from their
companions; for, as lovers often think themselves unperceived while
giving the most unmistakable signs of affection, so fared our friends.
Nevertheless, Ivo's high position soon put a period to the bantering
which was at first attempted, and it was not long before others
endeavored to thrust themselves into the league of friendship. But the
gates were closed against them: Clement was particularly vigilant, and
the advances ceased. Only when Bart persisted, with great
submissiveness, in frequenting their company, did Ivo make an
exception. He was favored to walk by their side after dinner, and to be
near them when they were playing in the yard. When Bart had eaten his
fill he was quite a bright lad and anxious to learn. He was ready to do
any thing which could bring him near the head of the class, too. Fond
as he was of Ivo and Clement, therefore, their high position in the
class was one of the causes of his attachment; nor, by a special
stipulation of Clement's, was he ever admitted into the inmost
sanctuary of their friendship.
Leaving fairy-tales behind them, our friends entered upon another
field, somewhat nearer the domain of reality: they began to look for
historic examples to strive after for ideals. Once, on a long walk in
the direction of Blaubeuren, they found themselves on a lofty hill on
the edge of a rooky precipice, with the lovely valley of the Blau
before them, and the cathedral of Ulm and the Danube visible in the
distance. This spot Clement had specially ordained as the one where
they were to disclose their aspirations to each other.
"Who is your ideal, Ivo?" asked Clement.
"Sixtus. My mother always says any thing can be achieved if you really
will it. Sixtus showed that in his own example."
"So you want to be a pope?"
"If it should come about, why not? No harm trying."
"I have a much less saintly personage: my ideal is Alexander the
Great." He did not explain in what respect he desired to emulate him;
for Bart fell in, in a whimpering tone,--
"And whom shall I take for my ideal?"
"Ask the principal," said Clement, solemnly, tipping the wink to Ivo.
The moment they returned home, Bart knocked at the principal's
door; and, on being invited to come in, he said, trembling and
stammering,--
"I beg your pardon, sir; but I wished to ask you,--I wished to choose
an ideal, and I don't know whom to take."
The principal stood still a while, and then said, with uplifted finger,
"God."
"I am very much obliged to you, sir," said Bart, bowing and scraping
himself out. He ran to his friends and told them, joyfully, "I've got
one: I've got an ideal now."
"Whom?"
"God," said Bart, holding up his finger.
"Who told you so?" asked Clement, pulling Ivo by the sleeve.
"The principal."
Ivo, disregarding the stolen hints of his friend, explained to Bart
that God could never be an ideal to any man except in a figurative
sense, because it is impossible for any man to become almighty or
omniscient: God must be the highest and final goal, of course; but the
saints were to be found on the way to him, and were nearer to us and
more accessible to our prayers, and perhaps we might come in some
degree to resemble them.
"Saintly Ivo, I'll have nothing to do with you," said Clement, angrily,
turning away. He was vexed to have his good jokes spoiled in this way,
and did not speak a word to Ivo all that night and the next morning.
In many other respects Bart was the occasion of disagreements between
his friends. Clement had taken it into his head that the interloper
deprived him of a part of the friendship of his Ivo. He now seized
various opportunities of feeding this jealousy. Once he did not
exchange a word with Ivo for a whole week; while his eyes followed him
everywhere as with a passion bordering on insanity. On the last evening
he threw a bit of paper on the book Ivo was reading, on which he had
written, "Come to the top of the church-steeple at the stroke of twelve
to-night, or we part forever."
Ivo tossed about his bed in an agony of fear lest he should oversleep
the time. When the first stroke of twelve was heard, he stole from his
chamber; Clement came out of the one in which he slept at the same
instant. They went up the turret-stairs in silence, and, when the last
stroke had sounded and died away, Clement began:--
"Give me your hand and promise me to have nothing more to do with Bart,
or I'll throw myself down this instant."
Ivo took his friend's hand, shuddering.
"Not a word! Yes or no!" muttered Clement.
"Yes, yes. But I pity the poor fellow. You've grown very strange this
last week."
Clement embraced and kissed him, descended the steps in silence, and
returned to his chamber.
Next day Clement was, as he had always been, cheerful and warm. He
never permitted Ivo to speak by daylight of their nightly meeting.
Bart's grief at his dismissal was not of long duration.
While Clement's restless spirit thus flitted about in search of
adventure, Ivo experienced a different sort of disquietude. His body
had grown with almost greater rapidity than his mind, and he was tall
and broad-shouldered; but, when he sat at the desk with his books, the
blood seemed to foam through his veins in torrents, often obliging him
to get up and restore his internal balance by violent motions. He would
fain have carried a heavy load suspended in his arms; but nothing
offered resistance to his powers except sometimes a knotty construction
in a classic author. Gymnastic exercises were not very assiduously
cultivated, nor did Ivo take much interest in them: he longed to
accomplish some real task with a definite object. In walking with his
friend he would often complain that he was not allowed to plough or to
reap. Inured from his childhood to bodily activity, during his visit to
the grammar-school the long daily walk had compensated for the inaction
of his arms: now he felt like a giant whose club has been taken from
him and a sewing-needle thrust into his fingers.
Once he said to Clement, "Do you know I am so much troubled at having a
scruple in regard to the Bible? it says that the great chastisement for
original sin is that in the sweat of his brow shall man earn his bread:
now, to my mind hard work, instead of a punishment, is the greatest
delight."
"Oh," said Clement, "that's in the Old Testament. It's meant for the
Jews, and it just suits them; for hard work is their favorite
aversion."
Thus early did he stumble on the familiar device of the theologians
when hard pushed in regard to some passage in the Old Testament.
Clement did not suffer the matter to rest here, however. He confessed
his own longing to incur dangers and to wander through distant
countries. They even talked frequently of a flight from the convent.
They pictured to themselves the romance of arriving on a distant
island, struggling with wild beasts and subjugating the virgin soil. Of
course the project was never executed. The laws of the convent and the
ties of home were too strong for them.
The warmth of their friendship increased from day to day and bridged
over all the chasms which the difference of their dispositions might
have caused. Ivo forfeited his place at the head of the class without
regret, and allowed even Bart to rise above him. This external
abasement almost pleased him, for it marked his distaste for his
studies. The consciousness of being better than he seemed was grateful
to him and gave him a certain independence of the outward world. He
formed a secret league with the wood-cutters, the lowest servants of
the convent. He swung the axe with a vigor as if he would have cleft
the globe. At length one of the professors detected these
irregularities; and Ivo atoned for them in the lock-up of the
establishment.
Thus, from having been one of the best and most diligent of the pupils,
Ivo had sunk to be the lowest in the class and the most obstreperous.
At the arrival of the holidays the friends would part with almost
feverish sorrow, consoling themselves with the hope of meeting again,
and yet wishing never to return to the convent. On the way home, the
world without had lost its lustre in Ivo's eyes, and the people he met
no longer appeared so good and kind: the world within him had altered.
At home he was not so shy of Constantine as formerly, and the state of
things in his father's house had ceased to weigh upon his spirits:
having learned that no man on earth is entirely happy within himself,
he had no more reason to wonder at the marks of unhappiness which
characterized the social relations of life and of men.
The gorgeous fabric of the ideal had sunk into ashes before him.
Occasionally a fervent prayer would lift him above the jars and
discords of earthly being; but even into these heavenly arcana would
the misgiving of an insufficiency pursue him: he was very unhappy.
People took his disordered air for a mark of over-application. It stung
him to the soul when his mother begged him not to study too hard: he
could not explain to her what troubled him; it was not even clear to
himself. Thus, in the fulness of youth and health, he felt tired of
life and weary of the earth: he had not mastered the riddle of
existence, and fancied that death was the only solution.
In his last vacation before going to Tuebingen, he experienced a heavy
loss: he no longer found Nat in the house. Mag, having overcome the
opposition of her father, had married Xavier and gone with him to
America. There was thus a lack of female help about the house, and
Valentine's sons were old enough to do the field-work themselves. Nat
was discharged: no one knew whither he had gone: the pigeon-cote was
empty, and the beasts in the stable seemed to share Ivo's sorrow for
his departed friend.
[Illustration: Emmerence had grown up to be a strong, hearty girl.]
On the other hand, Emmerence now lived in the house as
maid-of-all-work. She had grown up to be a strong, hearty girl, a
little short and square in figure,--what is usually called "buxom:" she
would have been classed with the comelier half of the village girls. It
was long since Ivo had bestowed any attention upon her, so entirely had
Clement occupied his heart. Whole vacations had passed without his even
exchanging a word with her. Now he sometimes eyed her askance, but
always turned away the moment she detected him. Once only, when he
found her so cheerfully engaged in the stable, he said, "That's right
in you, Emmerence, to take good care of the cattle: only don't forget
the dun and the cow."
"I know they're your favorites," she replied; "I'm so glad you haven't
given up liking them." And, as if to wake a reminiscence of his
childhood, she sang, while filling the cow's manger,--
"Far up on the hill is a white, white horse,
A horse as white as snow;
He'll take the little boys that are good little boys
To where they want to go.
"The little boys and the good little boys
Sha'n't go too far away;
The little girls that are good little girls
Must go as far as they."
Ivo went silently to the field in which he had once spent a whole day
ploughing with Nat: it seemed as if some clue to his whereabouts must
be hidden among the stones. He envied his brothers who were at work
here, who shared their joys and sorrows at a common board, who had no
one to obey but their natural superiors.
On his return to the convent he attached himself still more closely to
Clement, as if to indemnify himself for the loss of his earlier friend.
The last summer spent in Ehingen was a little less monotonous than the
others. Clement, whose home was in a largely Protestant town, had
acquaintances among the pupils of the neighboring Protestant convent,
(for by that name the classical school was still called,) of
Blaubeuren, who were a little less rigidly restrained than those of
Ehingen. They sometimes came to Ehingen and went to the principal, one
of them saying that he was a "fellow-countryman" of Clement's, and the
other that he sustained the same mysterious relation to Ivo, and so on:
the principal allowed the "countrymen" to make a half-holiday of it:
they would saunter to the next village, and there, with festive
songs and over the social glass, Ivo exchanged many a pledge of
good-fellowship with the Protestant conventuaries. Neither they nor he
were free,--although the Blaubeuren men had one or two immunities more
than the others.
The time of student-life stood before the eyes of all these youths much
like a taper-girt Christmas-tree before the visions of a German baby:
they stretched out their hands impatiently to grasp the gilded nuts
suspended from the boughs; and, though their clerical vocation was
destined to cut down much of the liberties to which they looked
forward, yet even what remained was far too slow in coming.
At last autumn set in. On the eve of their departure, Ivo and Clement
went to the hawthorn where their friendship took its rise, and each of
them broke off a twig and set it in his cap: then, taking each other's
hand, they renewed their vow of eternal devotion. Ivo also promised to
pay Clement a visit at Crailsheim during the holidays.
To quit a place of long abode, whether we have been happy or unhappy in
living there, is always attended with regret: the mantle of the past
drops away, and we know that we shall never return to the spot the same
as we leave it: these houses, these gardens, and these streets are the
birthplaces of a lot in life. Here the friends had first met, here
their minds had risen to heights unthought of before, and here they
separated with heartfelt sorrow. They vowed that in old age they would
travel hither again and seek out the silent playgrounds of their
youthful thoughts.
10.
A MEETING.
Having rested but a few days at Nordstetten, Ivo set out to visit his
friend, whose home was at the other end of Wurtemberg, on the borders
of Franconia. This brought him for the first time to the hill-top which
had occupied his thoughts on the evening before Gregory's first mass,
when he had thought that from there he might climb into heaven at once.
Now he knew that there is no place on earth whence the entrance into
heaven is open: alas! the goal itself now eluded his sight, and he
asked, hopelessly, "Whither?" He looked for heaven upon earth, and knew
not how to grasp it.
In silent thought he wandered through the towns and villages, watching
the busy doings of men with curious eyes: the riddle of existence
became more and more inexplicable. The vintagers were out in the
fields, singing songs, firing off salutes of triumph; but Ivo only
asked, "Are you making the wine which shall turn into blood?"
On the evening of the third day he was wandering toward the good town
of Schwaebisch-Hall, in a bright sunset, just as that had been which he
had seen in the field with Nat. He stood still, and thought sadly of
the humble friend he had lost forever. His eyes fell upon a shepherd
who stood with his back to the road, leaning upon his staff and looking
into the fire of the sky. He sang,--
"Up yonder, up yonder,
At the heavenly gate,
A poor soul is standing
In sorrowful strait."
Something like a thrill of premonition passed through Ivo's veins: he
ran into the field to ask the shepherd how far it was to Hall. The dog
barked at him, and the shepherd turned round, saying, "Be quiet,
Bless." With a cry of "Is it you?" Ivo lay in the arms of Nat.
There was no end of questions and answers. Late in the evening Ivo
said, "Oh, I must go already; I must see to get a night's lodging
somewhere."
"Why?" asked Nat, pointing to his red van: "don't you like the Red Cart
Hotel? Stay with me; I'll huddle into one corner, and you shall sleep
well enough; or, if you'd rather, I'll stay up all night: there's a
beautiful star going to rise at two o'clock."
[Illustration: Is it you?]
Ivo was quite ready to sleep with Nat.
"Are you hungry?" inquired Nat, again. "There's a cellar to my house."
He brought bread and milk and made a little fire to warm the milk for
Ivo. Then, taking away the prop by which the rear end of the van was
held above ground during the day, he said, "There! now we can sleep
soundly: the face must be turned toward sunrise."
It often happens that we begin to talk of the most indifferent things
precisely when our minds are full of the most important matters. Ivo
asked, "What do those queer characters mean, formed by the brass studs
in this leather strap?"
"Those are the three great heavenly signs, and they protect the cattle
against evil spirits. That's all I know about them."
As formerly in the days of childhood, Ivo sat at the field-side with
Nat and partook of his frugal fare: but it was night; they were far
from home, and many things had occurred in the mean time.
"How is Emmerence doing?" asked Nat.
"She is my mother's maid now."
"If you weren't going to be a parson, by George, you ought to have
married her."
"So I would have done," said Ivo, with a firm voice, the darkness
concealing the blush which overspread his features.
In answer to Ivo's inquiries in regard to Nat's fortunes, the latter
answered, at length:--
"You're old enough now to be told all about it. Who knows whether I
shall ever see you again? and I want you to hear it all from my own
lips; for you're my heart's brother. I wasn't born in your parts, but
on the other side of the Black Forest, toward the Rhine. As you come
out of Freiburg, and go through the 'Kingdom of Heaven' and the 'Valley
of Hell,' just as you get to the top of the 'Hell-Scramble' you see on
your right a valley in which runs the Treisam, turning the wheels of
ever so many foundries, saw-mills, and gristmills; and, if you go up
the hill on the other side,--they call it the 'Wind-Corner,'--you see a
great farm-house, the Beste farmer's house,--and he was my father. You
may think it's a pretty fine sort of farm: it has sixty or seventy
cows, and no need of buying a handful of hay.
"They don't live in villages there, as you do and as they do hereabout.
Each farmer lives by himself in the midst of his own lands. The house
is all made of wood: only the foundation is of stone. The windows are
close to each other on the east side: a porch runs all round the house,
and the roof hangs far over. It is a straw roof, which has grown gray
with age, and makes the house warmer than the finest castle. If you
ever can, you must go there some day, just to see where your Nat was
raised. Our fields reach far up the hill and away down to the Treisam,
and we had two hundred acres of woodland,--enough to cut ten thousand
florins' worth of wood every year. It was glorious. Wherever you look,
it's all your own, and all in apple-pie order. We were three children.
I was the oldest, and I had a brother and a sister. In those parts,
when the father dies or gives up farming, the farm isn't divided, but
the eldest son takes it all, and the father makes an estimate how much
money he ought to pay his brothers and sisters. If one of the children
is dissatisfied and goes to law, the Government divides the farm. But
such a thing was never done except once or twice, and never turned out
well. Four hundred yards from our house, on a little patch of field, a
widow had a lonely cabin, and lived there with her only daughter. They
were the third generation of the descendants of younger children, and
poor, very poor, but good as angels,--or, at least, I thought so. The
mother was one of those lean, lank women that can always be pleasant
and agreeable: as for Lizzie,--no, there wasn't a false vein about her;
I will say that to my dying day. They supported themselves by making
straw hats; for over there, on the other side of the mountain, in the
Glotter Valley, the women-folks wear round, yellow straw hats, just as
the gentlemen do in the cities, and the men wear black straw hats. A
hat made by Lizzie of the Wind-Corner always sold for three groats more
than another; and if a girl was ever so ugly and put one of her hats on
it made her pretty. Lizzie had hands as delicate and smooth as a
saint's; and yet she could work hard enough in the fields, too. When
she sat at the window sewing, I often used to stand outside and watch
her, and if she stuck her finger it seemed to go through all my bones.
My father soon saw how matters stood between me and Lizzie, and would
not hear of it; but I would sooner have died than live without Lizzie:
so my father sent me away to the saw-mill. The saw-mill doesn't belong
to our inheritance, but my father bought it. There I stayed; and
through the week I never cast eyes on a living creature except the
child that carried me my dinner and the workmen bringing down the logs
and hauling off the boards. At night I used to run for miles, just to
have one word with Lizzie. Then, all of a sudden, my father died, and
left the whole property to my brother; and I was to have ten thousand
florins, and my sister the same. You can't see ten thousand florins:
it's hardly as much as you can cut timber for in a year. My sister
married a watchmaker in Naustadt. I was wild with rage, and said I
wouldn't go out of the house: I would go to law. One night I went over
to Lizzie, and, when I looked into the window, who do you think was
sitting in there, with his arm round Lizzie's waist, kissing her? My
brother! And the old witch was standing beside them, smirking till her
face was as long again as usual. I up and into the house, out with my
knife, and my brother lay on the floor with a cut in his side,--all
done before I knew where I was."
Nat sighed deeply, and was silent a long time. At last he
continued:--"My brother never moved: Lizzie fell on her mother's neck,
and cried, 'Oh, mother, this is your doing! Go away, Nat: I can't see
you any more.'
"I ran away as if the devil was dragging me in chains, and every now
and then I stopped and wished to hang myself on a tree. I met George
the blacksmith, and went home with him, and hid myself in his house
till the next day. A thousand times I prayed to God to take my life and
save me from the guilt of my brother's death. I laid my hand on my
heart, and swore from that time forth to lead a penitent life; and the
Lord heard me. Next morning, very early, George the blacksmith came to
the shed where I was lying buried in the hay, and said, 'Your brother
is living yet, and may get well.'
"I went off over hill and dale, left every thing to my brother, and
hired myself to Buchmaier as a shepherd. I did not like to be among men
any more, but wanted to live alone in the fields. Singout, my dog, was
my only friend. I used to tell you about him, you remember? I lost him
shamefully."
Here Nat stopped again: his new dog crept to his side and looked sadly
into his face, as if to show his regret that he could not compensate
him for his loss.
"As I lived alone in the fields," Nat went on, "I used to study the
herbs, and to gather them and make drinks of them: once in winter one
of the hands at Buchmaier's had the ague so badly that it almost shook
him out of his bed; and I helped him. From that time on the people in
the neighborhood used to come to me whenever one of them was sick, and
made me give them a drink. Do you remember the time you came home sick
from the fields? Then I helped you too, and that was the first time
afterward that I gave any thing to anybody. The doctor heard of it that
time and complained of me at court. Then I received a notice to do no
more quackery, on pain of great punishment. After that I never listened
to anybody's begging or crying.
"Something happened about that time: you can't remember it; you were
too little. Dick, who lives out in one of the houses off the main
street of the village, had two sons. One was like a count: he was with
the Guard in Stuttgard, and was home on furlough. His best friend was
his younger brother,--a wild, half-grown boy whom they called Joachim.
The guardsman went to see pretty Walpurgia the seamstress: you know
her, I guess, she has such a white, delicate face, and always runs
about in slippers: but she had another lover besides, from Betra.
Dick's boys, the two brothers, once lay in wait for this chap to give
him a good drubbing; but the Betra boy held his own: so little Joachim
takes out his knife, makes a stab at him, and stabs his brother through
the body.
"I was lying in my shepherd's van, and suddenly I heard people crying
and calling. I got up, and there was a crowd of men, and Joachim among
them, all begging me to do something for the wounded man. All this made
me think of that awful night at home: Walpurgia even looked a little
like Lizzie; and, in short, I let little Jake mind the sheep, and went
with them. As I saw the guardsman lying at the point of death, my heart
seemed to turn within me. I cried like a child, and people praised my
good heart: they didn't know what was the matter with me, and I
couldn't tell them. I gave the guardsman a drink to keep off
mortification; but afterward the doctors got at him, and he died after
all. In short, they locked me up and put me in the penitentiary for a
year. Joachim got into the penitentiary too. He was bad, and tried for
a long time to put all the blame on the Betra man; but at last it was
proved that it was nobody but him. Brother-heart," said Nat, taking
Ivo's hand, "what I suffered in the penitentiary is more than can be
told; you couldn't find worse company in hell itself. But I bore it all
willingly, and thought it was a chastisement for my past life.
[Illustration: She took a lantern and went to pray on John's grave.]
"Once I made shrift to the parson, and told him all about it. He said
that I had done the greatest wrong in not getting all the property into
the hands of the Church. I would rather be torn to pieces than go to a
confessional again after that. When I got out of prison, my first
thought was to find Singout again: Dick had taken charge of him. They
told me that after I was gone the dog had gone mad, and they had
knocked him on the head. Dick's people would have liked to keep me, but
their household was all out of gear: the mother didn't gee daylight for
a year, and only at night she took a lantern and went to pray on John's
grave. She wore black all her life, as you may remember. As I was going
out of the village again alone, and without even my dog, your mother
met me. She know I wasn't bad, though I had been in the workhouse: and
in this way I came to work in your father's house. I would not be a
shepherd any more. I wanted to live among men. What happened afterward
you know. I have a good place again now, on the Deurer farm here; but
yet I always feel as if I ought to go back to my brother, and as if my
penitence wasn't of the right kind until I took service in his house."
Nat paused, and pressed his hands to his eyes. Ivo said, "You ought to
go into a monastery and be a monk; that would be the real thing for
you."
"A priest!" said Nat, with more severity than was usual to him. "I'd
rather have my hand cut off. To live on piety is poor fare. Don't take
offence at my silly talk: I am a stupid fellow. You are going to be a
parson, and you are right: your heart is pure. But come," he said,
looking up to the stars, "it is near eleven o'clock: let's go to
sleep."
With much agitation of mind, Ivo took his place beside Nat in the van.
"Do tell me," said Nat, "you've got learning: how is it that love
brings all the trouble on men that they have? Wouldn't it be better if
there were no such thing?"
Ivo was puzzled: it was a subject on which he had never reflected. In a
sleepy tone he answered, "It comes from the fall,--from original sin. I
will think about it, though. Good-night."
Ivo's weary soul and jaded body fell an easy prey to the advances of
sleep. When he awoke next morning all yesterday had turned into a
dream. Nat was gone from his side; and, when he looked out of the van,
the shepherd stood whistling by his sheep.
After a simple morning relish the two friends separated, and Nat cried
after Ivo, "If you ever go to Freiburg, come to the Beste farmer's:
there you'll find me."
Ivo spent some happy days with Clement. Once only he shook his head at
his young friend. He had told him of his meeting with Nat, when Clement
exclaimed, "Thunder and Doria! what a magnificent adventure! You are a
child of fortune, and I envy you. It is a fine piece of the terrible,
that story of the serving-man: a ghost or a spook is all that is
wanting."
Ivo could not understand how the hard realities of human fortune could
be abused as footballs for the diversion of overheated imaginations.
11.
THE COLLEGE.
Without the escort of any of his family, Ivo went to his new place of
abode. He had outgrown the ties of family, and went his way independent
of them. The good city of Tuebingen seemed to smile upon him. He
dreamed of the delights which awaited him there, although he well knew
that a cloister-life, with only some partial alleviations, was all he
had to hope.
The life of free science was now within his reach. He attended various
philosophical lectures; but, in the recesses of his mind, all he heard
assumed a theological, or, more strictly speaking, a Catholic
signification. The drowsy lucubrations of the old professors, who
seemed to be planting definitions like dry posts, idly imagining that
they would bear fruits and flowers, were not calculated to raise his
mind to the heights of science whence the structures of theology are
seen in their circumscribed and confined positions.
He attached himself more closely than ever to Clement, with whom he was
now privileged to take a daily walk without supervision. Other
acquaintances turned up also: among the rest, the sons of the
President-Judge. They were condescending. Their father had become
Government-Councillor, and had received the order of merit: he was "Von
Rellings." Although this did not ennoble the sons, they courted the
society of the nobility, and were especially devoted to the son of a
mediatized prince then studying at Tuebingen. Ivo met them one day as
they were riding out with their noble companion. He ran up to them and
held out his hand; but, as they had the whip and reins to hold, they
could only give him one of their fingers. With an encouraging nod the
elder said,--
"Ah! you've come here too, have you? Glad to see it."
And, putting spurs to their horses, they rode away. Ivo remembered the
day on which he had walked with them through the village, and regarded
the treatment he now received as a well-deserved punishment for his
then vain-glory. Just as he had then superciliously acknowledged the
salutations of the passing peasants, so the Rellingses now gave him the
go-by to devote themselves to their illustrious acquaintance. Thus Ivo
met with the rare mischance of finding the differences of station to
intrude themselves even into the charmed circle of his university life;
for in general this is the very point where alone these subdivisions
are forgotten, and where young minds mingle untrammelled by any thing
unconnected with their natural gifts and tendencies.
Another old acquaintance who greatly affected Ivo's companionship was
Constantine. He knew every thing but what he ought to have studied: how
to skulk the recitation and gain an hour for the tavern; how to get a
free evening and join a gay carouse: all his efforts were for a time
directed to the noble task of converting the new "freshmen" into
well-seasoned sophomores. With Ivo he succeeded but indifferently; but
Clement was doubly tractable: his adventurous spirit found in such
pranks its most acceptable field of action. To let himself down from a
window by a rope of handkerchiefs tied together, to sing and yowl in
the taverns, then to go roystering through the streets, and finally to
return to the cloister with double risk of detection, was the dearest
joy of his heart. He knew not whether most to enjoy the pleasure of
giving vent to all the wild fancies that were in him, or the
satisfaction of setting the laws at defiance.
Though Ivo frequently admonished Clement to think more of the future,
yet once he was persuaded to join in one of these nightly excursions
himself. They were, as Constantine phrased it, "hard as bricks," wore
many-colored caps, and Ivo was the noisiest of them all. But just this
time they were caught in returning, and Ivo had to expiate his sins for
several days in the "carcer."
Constantine was delighted to find that his friend had so thoroughly
"seen the ropes." He often said, "You'll never see me a parson: the
shears are not sharpened that will shave my head; only I must wait for
something first." At another time he cried, "If you were the right sort
of fellows we'd all make an agreement to leave the cloister, every one
of us, and let the Lord see how to get through with his vineyard by
himself. I don't see why that shouldn't do as well, anyhow."
"What do you mean to be?" asked Ivo, who was blushing up to the eyes at
this ungodly speech.
"Just a Nordstetten farmer, and nothing more."
"To say the truth, I should like that best myself; but it is not to
be."
"I'm going to make it be if you'll just wait a little," said
Constantine.
Many of the college-men received visits from their parents, who were
generally peasants and came in their ordinary costume, sometimes but
meanly clad. It pained Ivo to see that the students were generally
ashamed of their parents and disliked going out with them. When his
mother came, he walked hand in hand with her through the town and never
left her all day.
One February morning Constantine came to Ivo's room, which still wore
the appellation of "Zion" conferred upon it in more religious times.
Taking from his pocket a bunch of artificial flowers tied with red
ribbons, he said, "This is what Hannah of the Hauffer has sent me. I am
a recruit: I should have come out this year, but have drawn a clear
ticket. And now, hurrah! I'm going out of the convent."
"How so?"
"Why, you lambkin pure as snow once followed to the pasture, I'll tell
you how so; but, on your drinking-oath, you must swear to let nobody
know it. If I were to leave of my own accord, I should have to pay my
board and lodging and be a soldier: now I am free from the latter, and,
if I manage to get myself expelled from this Wallachian hostelry, I
shall have nothing to pay; as for the principal, I've an extra plum or
two for him."
He stuck the red-ribbon bunch into his hat and walked swaggeringly
across the convent-yard. He did not return all day, but occupied
himself with the other students who had been drawn as recruits that
year in walking arm in arm across the market-place with them, and
singing, drinking, and shouting everywhere. Late at night he came home,
and was immediately summoned into the awful presence of the principal.
That august personage was alone. Constantine remained near the door,
holding the latch behind him with both his hands. The principal stepped
toward him with a volley of denunciations. Constantine laughed,
stumbled forward, and trod so heavily on the principal's toes that he
screamed with pain and intensified his epithets; but Constantine
continued to advance upon him, and backed him round the room without
mercy. The poor principal seized the only chair in the room and
attempted to make a shield of it; but Constantine only pressed him the
harder, and drove him from side to side, crying, "Ya, hupp!" like the
ring-master of a circus. At last the victim succeeded in reaching the
bell-rope: the "famulus" came, and Constantine was thrown into the
darkest "carcer."
For four weeks he had to languish here. When Ivo went to see him, he
confessed that it was sinful to wreak his ill-will against the law upon
its innocent administrator. Ivo said, justly, "It is doubly sinful.
These old folks are the jailers who watch us; but they are in the
prison themselves and worse off than we: the key to let them out is
lost."
"Yes," said Constantine, laughing. "You know the old rhyme says,--
'England is lock'd,
And the key-hole is block'd;'--
and so I've gone to work and staved in one of the walls."
Constantine was expelled from the convent in disgrace.
When Ivo came home at Easter, Constantine gave him a hand in which
three fingers were tied up. He had greatly distinguished himself in a
row between the Nordstetters and Baisingers, which dated from the feud
of the manor-house farmer, and a bottle had been shivered in his hand.
The "college chap," as he was called, had already taken rank as the
wildest scapegrace in the village. He had assumed the peasant-garb, and
took a pleasure in divesting himself of every lingering trace of higher
cultivation. With his two comrades--George's son Peter, and Florian,
the son of a broken-down butcher--he played the wildest pranks: the
three were always in league, and never admitted a fourth to fellowship
with them. The behavior of Constantine toward Peter was particularly
interesting. A mother's eye does not watch with more solicitude over
the welfare of an ailing child--a gentle wife is not more submissive to
a petulant husband--than Constantine was to Peter: he even suppressed
his liking for George the saddler's Magdalene because he found Peter in
love with her, and did every thing in his power to aid him. When
Constantine was furious and apparently beyond all pacifying, Peter had
but to say, "Please me, Constantine, and be quiet," and he was as tame
and docile as a lamb.
Ivo had some difficulty in getting rid of Constantine; but at last he
succeeded. He was quiet and serious: Constantine's wildest sallies
failed to win a smile from him, and at last he gave himself no more
trouble about the "psalm-singer."
On his return to the convent he found that a great change had gone on
in Clement. He had been attached, while at home, to the daughter of the
judge at whose court his father was employed, and his whole being was
now in a glow of devotion. He would leave the convent and study law: he
bitterly despised the ministry, and made it the object of the most
vindictive sarcasms: he cursed himself and his poverty, which seemed to
chain him to a hated calling: with all the irregular impetuosity of his
character, he rattled unceasingly, and yet idly, at the chains which
bound him. He saw nothing but slavery on every side: he walked from
place to place abstractedly, pale as death, and often with gnashing
teeth. With all the power of his love, Ivo strove to rescue his friend;
but, soon convinced that a higher agency was at work, he contented
himself with grieving for his heart's brother, whose tortures and whose
frenzy he could but half appreciate. In the lectures, Clement sat
staring into vacancy: while the others, with the conscienscious
eagerness of German students, strove to record every word that fell
from the teacher's lips, he occasionally wrote the name of Cornelia,
and then crossed and recrossed it till it became illegible.
The spark of discontent which had slumbered in Ivo's heart threatened
to burst into flame; but as yet the firm walls of obedience, and the
habit of resignation to the dictates of fate, kept it half smothered
beneath the ashes. But even here the fundamental difference in the
character of the two friends displayed itself on all occasions.
Clement sought amusement and noisy distractions, as means of
_self-forgetfulness_; while Ivo became more and more retired and
meditative, as if he knew that _knowledge of self_ was the only escape
from his dilemmas. Yet, although he kept the road, he travelled but
slowly. His soul was hung in sables: he was less fond of life than
formerly, and often declared that he should like to die and sleep the
sleep that knows not waking.
"After all," he remarked one night to Clement, who lay beside him, "the
best thing in the world is a bed. A bird in a cage is to be pitied, for
he doesn't rest well even when he sleeps. He sits on his perch and must
hold on with his claws; so that he still has something to do, and is
never perfectly at rest. So, too, man does not rest well when he sits;
for he must always exert some of his muscles to keep himself upright:
it is only when he lies down that all exertion is dissolved and every
muscle relieved of its strain. That is the reason birds are so fond of
their nests and men of their beds.
"Plato calls man a featherless biped: never mind; he decks himself with
borrowed feathers.
"Nat once told me that if you cage a bird of prey in a mill, where he
cannot sleep, you can make him as tame as a sucking dove: that is just
like the tyrant we used to read about at Ehingen, who had his prisoners
waked out of sleep every hour of their lives. How ingenious men are in
devising tortures! When it comes to giving pleasure, their wits are far
less ready. The greatest miracles, in my eyes, were the saints of the
pillars, who never sat down. That is the quintessence of self-denial.
Just think of standing all one's life, until one's feet gather fur on
them! 'Thank the Lord for a soft nest, a good rest, and a quick zest,'
is what they taught us to say at home."
Clement listened to this dissertation in silence, only murmuring
"Cornelia" from time to time. Ivo fell soundly asleep.
The world-spirit looks down at night upon convents and weeps with
averted face.
At the last stroke of eleven Clement glided into the convent-yard. It
was a balmy night in summer: a thunderstorm had rent the clouds, and
their shattered masses still lingered in mid-air, now veiling, now
releasing, the beams of the full moon. Clement knelt and cried,
trembling and wringing his hands, "Devil! Beelzebub! Ruler of Hell!
Appear and bestow thy treasures upon me, and my soul is thine! Appear!
Appear!"
He listened with bated breath, but all was silent: nothing stirred, and
nothing was audible but the distant baying of a watch-dog. Clement long
remained cowering on the ground: at length, seeing and hearing nothing,
he returned shivering to his bed.
Next day he sat at his desk pale and haggard. The black characters in
his open book seemed to crawl around each other like snakes before his
jaundiced eye. A letter was brought him. He had hardly read it when he
sank fainting from his chair. An engagement-card slipped from his hand,
on which was engraved "Cornelia Mueller and Herman Adam, betrothed." He
was carried to his bed, where Ivo waited, trembling and in tears, until
his friend drew breath again. A fever now ensued, in which Clement's
teeth chattered and his frame writhed with convulsive starts. For three
days he was delirious. He spoke of the devil, and barked like a dog:
once only he said, gently closing his eyes, "Good-night, Cornelia." Ivo
read the letter, as the footing upon which he and Clement stood fully
justified him in doing; and here, at last, he found a slight clue to
the jumble of occurrences which bewildered him. A wealthy uncle of
Clement's mother had died, leaving her all his property: the brightest
prospects opened to the future of the family. Ivo rarely left his
friend's bedside, and, when compelled to do so, Bart usually took his
place.
It was a painful duty. Clement generally brooded in a half-doze, with
his eyes open, but apparently seeing nothing. He would ask Ivo to lay
his hand upon his burning forehead, and then, closing his eyes, he
said, "Ah!" as if the touch had expelled torturing spirits from the
narrow tenement of his brain. At times he started up and furiously
denounced the world and its heartlessness. If Ivo undertook to pacify
him, he only turned his wrath against the comforter, struck at him with
trembling hands, and cried, "You heartless loon, you can torture me,
eh?"
Ivo bore all this calmly, though with tears. Sometimes he even
experienced a sort of inward satisfaction at the thought that he was
favored to suffer in the cause of friendship.
When Clement awoke on the fourth day, it seemed as if, somewhere in the
infinity of space, and yet very, very near to him, a niche had opened
filled with light: something around him, and something from within him,
cried, "Clement!" He was restored to himself. For years after he was
wont to tell how at that moment God seemed to shine upon him with all
the rays of His glory, and to bring him back to Him and to himself.
When he had recovered his composure, he said, lifting up his hands, "I
hunger after the Lord's table." Calling for the confessor, he told him
all,--how he had conjured the devil to aid him, how the devil had heard
his prayer and then struck him to the earth. In deep contrition, he
begged for a heavy chastisement and for absolution. The confessor
imposed a slight penance, and urgently exhorted him to look upon what
had taken place as a warning to flee from all worldly wishes and devote
himself to the service of God alone.
Could any one have observed the face of Clement as he lay with his eyes
closed in faith, while the confessor spoke the benediction over him and
made the sign of the cross over his body in token of the forgiveness of
his sins,--could any one have watched the tension of his muscles and
the pulsation of his checks,--he would have felt with Clement the happy
change which was going on within him. It seemed really and truly as if
the ethereal hand of God were upon him, gently luring out the burden
which oppressed him, and inspiring him with a new life and a better
courage.
The new Clement was a different being from the old one. He moved about
noiselessly, often looking around as if in dread of something. Then
again he would suddenly stand still. Ivo could not encourage him; for
not even to him had Clement dared to disclose the whole enormity of his
wickedness.
After the next holidays, Clement was changed again. He looked fresh and
blooming as before; but fires of a mysterious import darted from his
eyes. One day, as they walked in the little wood called the "Burgholz,"
he drew his friend to his breast, and said, "Ivo, thank God with me,
for the Lord has given me grace. It is our fault if the Lord does not
do miracles in us, because we do not purify ourselves to be the vessels
of his inscrutable will. I have made a vow to be a missionary and to
announce to the heathen the salvation of the world. I have seen her
again who stole my soul from the Lord; but in the midst of my gazes the
world vanished from my eyes, the All-Merciful laid his hand upon me and
gave me peace. I was drawn up into a mountain. There I sat until the
sun went down and the night came on. All around was still and dead.
Suddenly, afar off in the woods. I heard the voice of a boy singing,
but not in earthly tones,--
"'Where Afric's sunny fountains
Roll down their golden sand.'
"I knelt down, and the Lord heard my vow. My heart was no longer in my
flesh: I held it in my hand. Kissing the rock beneath and the tree
beside me, I inhaled the Spirit of God from them: I heard the leaves
rustle and the clefts wail in whispered sorrow, weeping and yearning
for the day when the cross shall be erected as the tree of life,
standing aloft between earth and heaven, when the Lord shall appear and
the world be saved,--when the rocks shall bound, and the trees sing
songs of joy."
Falling on his knees, Clement continued:--"Lord, Lord, be gracious unto
me! lay thy words upon my tongue, make me worthy to feel the love of
the seraphs; pour out thy goodness richly over the brother of my heart;
crush him; let him feel the swords which have pierced thy breast, and
which rend the heart of the world. I thank thee, O Lord, that thou hast
wedded me unto holy poverty: yea, I will devote myself wholly to the
bliss of the folly that is in thee, and will suffer men to revile and
persecute me until the tenement of my body shall be taken away, until I
shall have outlived the corruption of this life. Lord, thou had made me
rich that I may be as one of the poor. Blessed are the poor! Blessed
are the sick!"
Kissing the feet of his friend, he remained prostrate for a long time,
with his head pressed upon the earth: then he rose, and both went home
in silence.
A nameless fear agitated the mind of Ivo: he felt the fulness of the
self-sacrifice to which Clement had given himself; but he saw also its
dreadful aberration: a sword pierced his heart.
He willingly followed his friend into the nocturnal regions of man's
feeling and thought: it seemed a duty to keep him company and be at
hand to aid him.
The lives of the saints were the first object of their studies. Once
Ivo said, "I am rejoiced to see that revelation is still upon its march
through the haunts of men; saints arise wherever the Lord has revealed
himself and thereby imparted his wonder-working power, and whoso truly
sanctifies himself may hope to be favored in like kind. Nowadays every
town has once more its true patron saint, as of old, among the Greeks,
its false tutelary deity. God is personally near us everywhere."
Clement, without answering, kissed Ivo's forehead. Presently, however,
he spoke warmly of the heroes who with empty hand had conquered the
world.
The life of St. Francis of Assisi enlisted their special interest: the
story of his conversion from the stormy life of the world, and the
manner in which he first cured a leper with a kiss, was particularly
attractive to Clement. Ivo was pleased by the childlike harmony of the
holy man with nature, and by his miraculous power over it; how he
preached to the birds, and called upon them to sing the glory of God;
how they listened devoutly until he had made the sign of the cross over
them and blessed them, and how then they broke into a sounding chorus;
how he contended in song with a nightingale for the honor of God until
midnight, and how at last, when he was silent from fatigue, the bird
flew upon his hand to receive his blessing. Whenever he read of the
lamb rescued by the saint from slaughter, which always kneeled down
during the singing of the choir, Ivo thought fondly of his Brindle.
On reading that the saint was so highly favored as miraculously to
experience in his own body the wounds of Christ, the pierced hands and
feet, and the thrust of the lance in his side, Clement wept aloud. He
repeated his vow to become a Franciscan monk, and called upon Ivo to do
the same, so that, according to the rules of the Order, they might walk
about the world together, courting tortures and troubles and living
upon alms.
With insatiable thirst Clement drank of the streams of mysticism and
hurried his friend along with him.
12.
THE COLLEGE CHAP.
In the holidays Ivo was again powerfully attracted to the realities of
life. It was not so easy then to exclude the doings of the outer world,
and wrap oneself up into self-suggested thoughts and feelings. Such
exaltations are, in fact, only feasible outside of the family circle,
and therefore outside of the sphere of real life. Scarcely had he
returned to the village, when the family ties once more asserted their
claims, and the manifold and interlaced fates and fortunes of the
villagers forced themselves upon his interest and sympathy. He knew
what lived and moved behind all their walls. He awoke to his former
life as from a dream.
One evening he met Constantine standing before his house, chewing a
straw and looking sullen.
"What's the matter?" asked Ivo.
"Pshaw! Nothing you can do any good to."
"Well, you'd better tell me."
"You've no taste for the world, and can't understand it. Whitsuntide is
almost come, and then there's the bel-wether dance, and I haven't a
sweetheart. I might have had one, but I was too saucy; and yet I don't
want any other, and I'd be unconscionably mad if she were to take up
with some one else. Such a bel-wether dance as this will be I would'nt
give a copper for."
"Who is the proud beauty?"
"You know her well enough: Emmerence?"