"Madame my princess, could you tell me kindly why some of the
figures and furniture dance and speak, and some lie up in a
corner like lumber? It does make me curious. Is it rude to ask?"
For it greatly puzzled him why, when some of the _bric-à-brac_
was all full of life and motion, some was quite still and had not
a single thrill in it.
"My dear child," said the powdered lady, "is it possible that you
do not know the reason? Why, those silent, dull things are
_imitation_!"
This she said with so much decision that she evidently considered
it a condensed but complete answer.
"Imitation?" repeated August, timidly, not understanding.
"Of course! Lies, falsehoods, fabrications!" said the princess in
pink shoes, very vivaciously. "They only _pretend_ to be what we
_are_! They never wake up: how can they? No imitation ever had
any soul in it yet."
"Oh!" said August, humbly, not even sure that he understood
entirely yet. He looked at Hirschvogel: surely it had a royal
soul within it: would it not wake up and speak? Oh dear! how he
longed to hear the voice of his fire-king! And he began to forget
that he stood by a lady who sat upon a pedestal of gold-and-white
china, with the year 1746 cut on it, and the Meissen mark.
"What will you be when you are a man?" said the little lady,
sharply, for her black eyes were quick though her red lips were
smiling. "Will you work for the _Königliche Porcellan-Manufactur_,
like my great dead Kandler?"
"I have never thought," said August, stammering; "at least--that
is--I do wish--I do hope to be a painter, as was Master Augustin
Hirschvogel at Nürnberg."
"Bravo!" said all the real _bric-à-brac_ in one breath, and the
two Italian rapiers left off fighting to cry, "_Benone!_" For
there is not a bit of true _bric-à-brac_ in all Europe that does
not know the names of the mighty masters.
August felt quite pleased to have won so much applause, and grew
as red as the lady's shoes with bashful contentment.
"I knew all the Hirschvögel, from old Veit downwards," said a fat
_grès de Flandre_ beer-jug: "I myself was made at Nürnberg." And
he bowed to the great stove very politely, taking off his own
silver hat--I mean lid--with a courtly sweep that he could
scarcely have learned from burgomasters. The stove, however, was
silent, and a sickening suspicion (for what is such heart-break
as a suspicion of what we love?) came through the mind of August:
_Was Hirschvogel only imitation_?
"No, no, no, no!" he said to himself, stoutly: though Hirschvogel
never stirred, never spoke, yet would he keep all faith in it!
After all their happy years together, after all the nights of
warmth and joy he owed it, should he doubt his own friend and
hero, whose gilt lion's feet he had kissed in his babyhood? "No,
no, no, no!" he said, again, with so much emphasis that the Lady
of Meissen looked sharply again at him.
"No," she said, with pretty disdain; "no, believe me, they may
'pretend' forever. They can never look like us! They imitate even
our marks, but never can they look like the real thing, never can
they _chassent de race_."
"How should they?" said a bronze statuette of Vischer's. "They
daub themselves green with verdigris, or sit out in the rain to
get rusted; but green and rust are not _patina_; only the ages
can give that!"
"And _my_ imitations are all in primary colors, staring colors,
hot as the colors of a hostelry's sign-board!" said the Lady of
Meissen, with a shiver.
"Well, there is a _grès de Flandre_ over there, who pretends to
be a Hans Kraut, as I am," said the jug with the silver hat,
pointing with his handle to a jug that lay prone on its side in a
corner. "He has copied me as exactly as it is given to moderns to
copy us. Almost he might be mistaken for me. But yet what a
difference there is! How crude are his blues! how evidently done
over the glaze are his black letters! He has tried to give
himself my very twist; but what a lamentable exaggeration of that
playful deviation in my lines which in his becomes actual
deformity!"
"And look at that," said the gilt Cordovan leather, with a
contemptuous glance at a broad piece of gilded leather spread out
on a table. "They will sell him cheek by jowl with me, and give
him my name; but look! _I_ am overlaid with pure gold beaten thin
as a film and laid on me in absolute honesty by worthy Diego de
las Gorgias, worker in leather of lovely Cordova in the blessed
reign of Ferdinand the Most Christian. _His_ gilding is one part
gold to eleven other parts of brass and rubbish, and it has been
laid on him with a brush--_a brush!_--pah! of course he will be
as black as a crock in a few years' time, whilst I am as bright
as when I first was made, and, unless I am burnt as my Cordova
burnt its heretics, I shall shine on forever."
"They carve pear-wood because it is so soft, and dye it brown,
and call it _me_!" said an old oak cabinet, with a chuckle.
"That is not so painful; it does not vulgarize you so much as the
cups they paint to-day and christen after _me_!" said a Carl
Theodor cup subdued in hue, yet gorgeous as a jewel.
"Nothing can be so annoying as to see common gimcracks aping
_me_!" interposed the princess in the pink shoes.
"They even steal my motto, though it is Scripture," said a
_Trauerkrug_ of Regensburg in black-and-white.
"And my own dots they put on plain English china creatures!"
sighed the little white maid of Nymphenburg.
"And they sell hundreds and thousands of common china plates,
calling them after me, and baking my saints and my legends in a
muffle of to-day; it is blasphemy!" said a stout plate of Gubbio,
which in its year of birth had seen the face of Maestro Giorgio.
"That is what is so terrible in these _bric-à-brac_ places," said
the princess of Meissen. "It brings one in contact with such low,
imitative creatures; one really is safe nowhere nowadays unless
under glass at the Louvre or South Kensington."
"And they get even there," sighed the _grès de Flandre_. "A
terrible thing happened to a dear friend of mine, a _terre cuite_
of Blasius (you know the _terres cuites_ of Blasius date from
1560). Well, he was put under glass in a museum that shall be
nameless, and he found himself set next to his own imitation born
and baked yesterday at Frankfort, and what think you the
miserable creature said to him, with a grin? 'Old Pipe-clay,'--that
is what he called my friend,--'the fellow that bought _me_ got
just as much commission on me as the fellow that bought _you_,
and that was all that _he_ thought about. You know it is only the
public money that goes!' And the horrid creature grinned again
till he actually cracked himself. There is a Providence above all
things, even museums."
"Providence might have interfered before, and saved the public
money," said the little Meissen lady with the pink shoes.
"After all, does it matter?" said a Dutch jar of Haarlem. "All
the shamming in the world will not _make_ them us!"
"One does not like to be vulgarized," said the Lady of Meissen,
angrily.
"My maker, the Krabbetje,[A] did not trouble his head about
that," said the Haarlem jar, proudly. "The Krabbetje made me for
the kitchen, the bright, clean, snow-white Dutch kitchen,
wellnigh three centuries ago, and now I am thought worthy the
palace; yet I wish I were at home; yes, I wish I could see the
good Dutch vrouw, and the shining canals, and the great green
meadows dotted with the kine."
[Footnote A: Jan Asselyn, called Krabbetje, the Little Crab, born
1610, master-potter of Delft and Haarlem.]
"Ah! if we could all go back to our makers!" sighed the Gubbio
plate, thinking of Giorgio Andreoli and the glad and gracious
days of the Renaissance: and somehow the words touched the
frolicsome souls of the dancing jars, the spinning teapots, the
chairs that were playing cards; and the violin stopped its merry
music with a sob, and the spinet sighed,--thinking of dead hands.
Even the little Saxe poodle howled for a master forever lost; and
only the swords went on quarrelling, and made such a clattering
noise that the Japanese bonze rode at them on his monster and
knocked them both right over, and they lay straight and still,
looking foolish, and the little Nymphenburg maid, though she was
crying, smiled and almost laughed.
Then from where the great stove stood there came a solemn voice.
All eyes turned upon Hirschvogel, and the heart of its little
human comrade gave a great jump of joy.
"My friends," said that clear voice from the turret of Nürnberg
faïence, "I have listened to all you have said. There is too much
talking among the Mortalities whom one of themselves has called
the Windbags. Let not us be like them. I hear among men so much
vain speech, so much precious breath and precious time wasted in
empty boasts, foolish anger, useless reiteration, blatant
argument, ignoble mouthings, that I have learned to deem speech a
curse, laid on man to weaken and envenom all his undertakings.
For over two hundred years I have never spoken myself: you, I
hear, are not so reticent. I only speak now because one of you
said a beautiful thing that touched me. If we all might but go
back to our makers! Ah, yes! if we might! We were made in days
when even men were true creatures, and so we, the work of their
hands, were true too. We, the begotten of ancient days, derive
all the value in us from the fact that our makers wrought at us
with zeal, with piety, with integrity, with faith,--not to win
fortunes or to glut a market, but to do nobly an honest thing and
create for the honor of the Arts and God. I see amidst you a
little human thing who loves me, and in his own ignorant childish
way loves Art. Now, I want him forever to remember this night
and these words; to remember that we are what we are, and
precious in the eyes of the world, because centuries ago those
who were of single mind and of pure hand so created us, scorning
sham and haste and counterfeit. Well do I recollect my master,
Augustin Hirschvogel. He led a wise and blameless life, and
wrought in loyalty and love, and made his time beautiful thereby,
like one of his own rich, many-colored church casements, that
told holy tales as the sun streamed through them. Ah, yes, my
friends, to go back to our masters!--that would be the best that
could befall us. But they are gone, and even the perishable
labors of their lives outlive them. For many, many years I, once
honored of emperors, dwelt in a humble house and warmed in
successive winters three generations of little, cold, hungry
children. When I warmed them they forgot that they were hungry;
they laughed and told tales, and slept at last about my feet.
Then I knew that humble as had become my lot it was one that my
master would have wished for me, and I was content. Sometimes a
tired woman would creep up to me, and smile because she was near
me, and point out my golden crown or my ruddy fruit to a baby in
her arms. That was better than to stand in a great hall of a
great city, cold and empty, even though wise men came to gaze and
throngs of fools gaped, passing with flattering words. Where I go
now I know not; but since I go from that humble house where they
loved me, I shall be sad and alone. They pass so soon,--those
fleeting mortal lives! Only we endure,--we, the things that the
human brain creates. We can but bless them a little as they glide
by: if we have done that, we have done what our masters wished.
So in us our masters, being dead, yet may speak and live."
Then the voice sank away in silence, and a strange golden light
that had shone on the great stove faded away; so also the light
died down in the silver candelabra. A soft, pathetic melody stole
gently through the room. It came from the old, old spinet that
was covered with the faded roses.
Then that sad, sighing music of a bygone day died too; the clocks
of the city struck six of the morning; day was rising over the
Bayerischenwald. August awoke with a great start, and found
himself lying on the bare bricks of the floor of the chamber, and
all the _bric-à-brac_ was lying quite still all around. The
pretty Lady of Meissen was motionless on her porcelain bracket,
and the little Saxe poodle was quiet at her side.
He rose slowly to his feet. He was very cold, but he was not
sensible of it or of the hunger that was gnawing his little empty
entrails. He was absorbed in the wondrous sight, in the wondrous
sounds, that he had seen and heard.
X
All was dark around him. Was it still midnight or had morning
come? Morning, surely; for against the barred shutters he heard
the tiny song of the robin.
Tramp, tramp, too, came a heavy step up the stair. He had but a
moment in which to scramble back into the interior of the great
stove, when the door opened and the two dealers entered, bringing
burning candles with them to see their way.
August was scarcely conscious of danger more than he was of cold
or hunger. A marvellous sense of courage, of security, of
happiness, was about him, like strong and gentle arms enfolding
him and lifting him upwards--upwards--upwards! Hirschvogel would
defend him.
The dealers undid the shutters, scaring the red-breast away, and
then tramped about in their heavy boots and chattered in
contented voices, and began to wrap up the stove once more in all
its straw and hay and cordage.
It never once occurred to them to glance inside. Why should they
look inside a stove that they had bought and were about to sell
again for all its glorious beauty of exterior?
The child still did not feel afraid. A great exaltation had come
to him: he was like one lifted up by his angels.
Presently the two traders called up their porters, and the stove,
heedfully swathed and wrapped and tended as though it were some
sick prince going on a journey, was borne on the shoulders of six
stout Bavarians down the stairs and out of the door into the
Marienplatz. Even behind all those wrappings August felt the icy
bite of the intense cold of the outer air at dawn of a winter's
day in Munich. The men moved the stove with exceeding gentleness
and care, so that he had often been far more roughly shaken in
his big brothers' arms than he was in his journey now; and though
both hunger and thirst made themselves felt, being foes that will
take no denial, he was still in that state of nervous exaltation
which deadens all physical suffering and is at once a cordial and
an opiate. He had heard Hirschvogel speak; that was enough.
The stout carriers tramped through the city, six of them, with
the Nürnberg fire-castle on their brawny shoulders, and went
right across Munich to the railway-station, and August in the
dark recognized all the ugly, jangling, pounding, roaring,
hissing railway-noises, and thought, despite his courage and
excitement, "Will it be a _very_ long journey?" For his stomach
had at times an odd sinking sensation, and his head sadly often
felt light and swimming. If it was a very, very long journey he
felt half afraid that he would be dead or something bad before
the end, and Hirschvogel would be so lonely: that was what he
thought most about; not much about himself, and not much about
Dorothea and the house at home. He was "high strung to high
emprise," and could not look behind him.
Whether for a long or a short journey, whether for weal or woe,
the stove with August still within it was once more hoisted up
into a great van; but this time it was not all alone, and the two
dealers as well as the six porters were all with it.
He in his darkness knew that; for he heard their voices. The
train glided away over the Bavarian plain southward; and he heard
the men say something of Berg and the Wurm-See, but their German
was strange to him, and he could not make out what these names
meant.
The train rolled on, with all its fume and fuss, and roar of
steam, and stench of oil and burning coal. It had to go quietly
and slowly on account of the snow which was falling, and which
had fallen all night.
"He might have waited till he came to the city," grumbled one man
to another. "What weather to stay on at Berg!"
But who he was that stayed on at Berg, August could not make out
at all.
Though the men grumbled about the state of the roads and the
season, they were hilarious and well content, for they laughed
often, and, when they swore, did so good-humoredly, and promised
their porters fine presents at New-Year; and August, like a
shrewd little boy as he was, who even in the secluded Innthal had
learned that money is the chief mover of men's mirth, thought to
himself, with a terrible pang,--
"They have sold Hirschvogel for some great sum. They have sold
him already!"
Then his heart grew faint and sick within him, for he knew very
well that he must soon die, shut up without food and water thus;
and what new owner of the great fire-palace would ever permit him
to dwell in it?
"Never mind; I _will_ die," thought he; "and Hirschvogel will
know it."
Perhaps you think him a very foolish little fellow; but I do
not.
It is always good to be loyal and ready to endure to the end.
It is but an hour and a quarter that the train usually takes to
pass from Munich to the Wurm-See or Lake of Starnberg; but this
morning the journey was much slower, because the way was
encumbered by snow. When it did reach Possenhofen and stop, and
the Nürnberg stove was lifted out once more, August could see
through the fret-work of the brass door, as the stove stood
upright facing the lake, that this Wurm-See was a calm and noble
piece of water, of great width, with low wooded banks and distant
mountains, a peaceful, serene place, full of rest.
It was now near ten o'clock. The sun had come forth; there was a
clear gray sky hereabouts; the snow was not falling, though it
lay white and smooth everywhere, down to the edge of the water,
which before long would itself be ice.
Before he had time to get more than a glimpse of the green
gliding surface, the stove was again lifted up and placed on a
large boat that was in waiting,--one of those very long and huge
boats which the women in these parts use as laundries, and the
men as timber-rafts. The stove, with much labor and much
expenditure of time and care, was hoisted into this, and August
would have grown sick and giddy with the heaving and falling if
his big brothers had not long used him to such tossing about, so
that he was as much at ease head, as feet, downward. The stove
once in it safely with its guardians, the big boat moved across
the lake to Leoni. How a little hamlet on a Bavarian lake got
that Tuscan-sounding name I cannot tell; but Leoni it is. The big
boat was a long time crossing: the lake here is about three miles
broad, and these heavy barges are unwieldy and heavy to move,
even though they are towed and tugged at from the shore.
"If we should be too late!" the two dealers muttered to each
other, in agitation and alarm. "He said eleven o'clock."
"Who was he?" thought August; "the buyer, of course, of
Hirschvogel." The slow passage across the Wurm-See was
accomplished at length: the lake was placid; there was a sweet
calm in the air and on the water; there was a great deal of snow
in the sky, though the sun was shining and gave a solemn hush to
the atmosphere. Boats and one little steamer were going up and
down; in the clear frosty light the distant mountains of
Zillerthal and the Algau Alps were visible; market-people,
cloaked and furred, went by on the water or on the banks; the
deep woods of the shores were black and gray and brown. Poor
August could see nothing of a scene that would have delighted
him; as the stove was now set, he could only see the old
worm-eaten wood of the huge barge.
Presently they touched the pier at Leoni.
"Now, men, for a stout mile and half! You shall drink your reward
at Christmas-time," said one of the dealers to his porters, who,
stout, strong men as they were, showed a disposition to grumble
at their task. Encouraged by large promises, they shouldered
sullenly the Nürnberg stove, grumbling again at its preposterous
weight, but little dreaming that they carried within it a small,
panting, trembling boy; for August began to tremble now that he
was about to see the future owner of Hirschvogel.
"If he look a good, kind man," he thought, "I will beg him to let
me stay with it."