The porters began their toilsome journey, and moved off from the
village pier. He could see nothing, for the brass door was over
his head, and all that gleamed through it was the clear gray sky.
He had been tilted on to his back, and if he had not been a
little mountaineer, used to hanging head-downwards over
crevasses, and, moreover, seasoned to rough treatment by the
hunters and guides of the hills and the salt-workers in the town,
he would have been made ill and sick by the bruising and shaking
and many changes of position to which he had been subjected.
The way the men took was a mile and a half in length, but the
road was heavy with snow, and the burden they bore was heavier
still. The dealers cheered them on, swore at them and praised
them in one breath; besought them and reiterated their splendid
promises, for a clock was striking eleven, and they had been
ordered to reach their destination at that hour, and, though the
air was so cold, the heat-drops rolled off their foreheads as
they walked, they were so frightened at being late. But the
porters would not budge a foot quicker than they chose, and as
they were not poor four-footed carriers their employers dared not
thrash them, though most willingly would they have done so.
The road seemed terribly long to the anxious tradesmen, to the
plodding porters, to the poor little man inside the stove, as he
kept sinking and rising, sinking and rising, with each of their
steps.
Where they were going he had no idea, only after a very long time
he lost the sense of the fresh icy wind blowing on his face
through the brass-work above, and felt by their movements beneath
him that they were mounting steps or stairs. Then he heard a
great many different voices, but he could not understand what was
being said. He felt that his bearers paused some time, then moved
on and on again. Their feet went so softly he thought they must
be moving on carpet, and as he felt a warm air come to him he
concluded that he was in some heated chambers, for he was a
clever little fellow, and could put two and two together, though
he was so hungry and so thirsty and his empty stomach felt so
strangely. They must have gone, he thought, through some very
great number of rooms, for they walked so long on and on, on and
on. At last the stove was set down again, and, happily for him,
set so that his feet were downward.
What he fancied was that he was in some museum, like that which
he had seen in the city of Innspruck.
The voices he heard were very hushed, and the steps seemed to go
away, far away, leaving him alone with Hirschvogel. He dared not
look out, but he peeped through the brass work, and all he could
see was a big carved lion's head in ivory, with a gold crown
atop. It belonged to a velvet fauteuil, but he could not see the
chair, only the ivory lion.
There was a delicious fragrance in the air,--a fragrance as of
flowers. "Only how can it be flowers?" thought August. "It is
December!"
From afar off, as it seemed, there came a dreamy, exquisite
music, as sweet as the spinet's had been, but so much fuller, so
much richer, seeming as though a chorus of angels were singing
all together. August ceased to think of the museum: he thought of
heaven. "Are we gone to the Master?" he thought, remembering the
words of Hirschvogel.
All was so still around him; there was no sound anywhere except
the sound of the far-off choral music.
He did not know it, but he was in the royal castle of Berg, and
the music he heard was the music of Wagner, who was playing in a
distant room some of the motives of "Parsival."
Presently he heard a fresh step near him, and he heard a low
voice say, close behind him, "So!" An exclamation no doubt, he
thought, of admiration and wonder at the beauty of Hirschvogel.
Then the same voice said, after a long pause, during which no
doubt, as August thought, this new-comer was examining all the
details of the wondrous fire-tower, "It was well bought; it is
exceedingly beautiful! It is most undoubtedly the work of
Augustin Hirschvogel."
Then the hand of the speaker turned the round handle of the brass
door, and the fainting soul of the poor little prisoner within
grew sick with fear.
The handle turned, the door was slowly drawn open, some one bent
down and looked in, and the same voice that he had heard in
praise of its beauty called aloud, in surprise, "What is this in
it? A live child!"
Then August, terrified beyond all self-control, and dominated by
one master-passion, sprang out of the body of the stove and fell
at the feet of the speaker.
"Oh, let me stay! Pray, meinherr, let me stay!" he sobbed. "I
have come all the way with Hirschvogel!"
Some gentlemen's hands seized him, not gently by any means, and
their lips angrily muttered in his ear, "Little knave, peace! be
quiet! hold your tongue! It is the king!"
They were about to drag him out of the august atmosphere as if he
had been some venomous, dangerous beast come there to slay, but
the voice he had heard speak of the stove said, in kind accents,
"Poor little child! he is very young. Let him go: let him speak
to me."
The word of a king is law to his courtiers: so, sorely against
their wish, the angry and astonished chamberlains let August
slide out of their grasp, and he stood there in his little rough
sheepskin coat and his thick, mud-covered boots, with his curling
hair all in a tangle, in the midst of the most beautiful chamber
he had ever dreamed of, and in the presence of a young man with a
beautiful dark face, and eyes full of dreams and fire; and the
young man said to him,--
"My child, how came you here, hidden in this stove? Be not
afraid: tell me the truth. I am the king."
August in an instinct of homage cast his great battered black
hat with the tarnished gold tassels down on the floor of the
room, and folded his little brown hands in supplication. He was
too intensely in earnest to be in any way abashed; he was too
lifted out of himself by his love for Hirschvogel to be conscious
of any awe before any earthly majesty. He was only so glad--so
glad it was the king. Kings were always kind; so the Tyrolese
think, who love their lords.
"Oh, dear king!" he said, with trembling entreaty in his faint
little voice, "Hirschvogel was ours, and we have loved it all our
lives; and father sold it. And when I saw that it did really go
from us, then I said to myself I would go with it; and I have
come all the way inside it. And last night it spoke and said
beautiful things. And I do pray you to let me live with it, and I
will go out every morning and cut wood for it and you, if only
you will let me stay beside it. No one ever has fed it with fuel
but me since I grew big enough, and it loves me;--it does indeed;
it said so last night; and it said that it had been happier with
us than if it were in any palace----"
And then his breath failed him, and, as he lifted his little,
eager, pale face to the young king's, great tears were falling
down his cheeks.
Now, the king likes all poetic and uncommon things, and there was
that in the child's face which pleased and touched him. He
motioned to his gentlemen to leave the little boy alone.
"What is your name?" he asked him.
"I am August Strehla. My father is Karl Strehla. We live in Hall,
in the Innthal; and Hirschvogel has been ours so long,--so long!"
His lips quivered with a broken sob.
"And have you truly travelled inside this stove all the way from
Tyrol?"
"Yes," said August; "no one thought to look inside till you did."
The king laughed; then another view of the matter occurred to
him.
"Who bought the stove of your father?" he inquired.
"Traders of Munich," said August, who did not know that he ought
not to have spoken to the king as to a simple citizen, and whose
little brain was whirling and spinning dizzily round its one
central idea.
"What sum did they pay your father, do you know?" asked the
sovereign.
"Two hundred florins," said August, with a great sigh of shame.
"It was so much money, and he is so poor, and there are so many
of us."
The king turned to his gentlemen-in-waiting. "Did these dealers
of Munich come with the stove?"
He was answered in the affirmative. He desired them to be sought
for and brought before him. As one of his chamberlains hastened
on the errand, the monarch looked at August with compassion.
"You are very pale, little fellow: when did you eat last?"
"I had some bread and sausage with me; yesterday afternoon I
finished it."
"You would like to eat now?"
"If I might have a little water I would be glad; my throat is
very dry."
The king had water and wine brought for him, and cake also; but
August, though he drank eagerly, could not swallow anything. His
mind was in too great a tumult.
"May I stay with Hirschvogel?--may I stay?" he said, with
feverish agitation.
"Wait a little," said the king, and asked, abruptly; "What do you
wish to be when you are a man?"
"A painter. I wish to be what Hirschvogel was,--I mean the master
that made _my_ Hirschvogel."
"I understand," said the king.
Then the two dealers were brought into their sovereign's
presence. They were so terribly alarmed, not being either so
innocent or so ignorant as August was, that they were trembling
as though they were being led to the slaughter, and they were so
utterly astonished too at a child having come all the way from
Tyrol in the stove, as a gentleman of the court had just told
them this child had done, that they could not tell what to say or
where to look, and presented a very foolish aspect indeed.
"Did you buy this Nürnberg stove of this little boy's father for
two hundred florins?" the king asked them; and his voice was no
longer soft and kind as it had been when addressing the child,
but very stern.
"Yes, your majesty," murmured the trembling traders.
"And how much did the gentleman who purchased it for me give to
you?"
"Two thousand ducats, your majesty," muttered the dealers,
frightened out of their wits, and telling the truth in their
fright.
The gentleman was not present: he was a trusted counsellor in art
matters of the king's, and often made purchases for him.
The king smiled a little, and said nothing. The gentleman had
made out the price to him as eleven thousand ducats.
"You will give at once to this boy's father the two thousand gold
ducats that you received, less the two hundred Austrian florins
that you paid him," said the king to his humiliated and abject
subjects. "You are great rogues. Be thankful you are not more
greatly punished."
He dismissed them by a sign to his courtiers, and to one of these
gave the mission of making the dealers of the Marienplatz
disgorge their ill-gotten gains.
August heard, and felt dazzled yet miserable. Two thousand gold
Bavarian ducats for his father! Why, his father would never need
to go any more to the salt-baking! And yet, whether for ducats or
for florins, Hirschvogel was sold just the same, and would the
king let him stay with it?--would he?
"Oh, do! oh, please do!" he murmured, joining his little brown
weather-stained hands, and kneeling down before the young
monarch, who himself stood absorbed in painful thought, for the
deception so basely practised for the greedy sake of gain on him
by a trusted counsellor was bitter to him.
He looked down on the child, and as he did so smiled once more.
"Rise up, my little man," he said, in a kind voice; "kneel only
to your God. Will I let you stay with your Hirschvogel? Yes, I
will; you shall stay at my court, and you shall be taught to be a
painter,--in oils or on porcelain as you will, and you must grow
up worthily, and win all the laurels at our Schools of Art, and
if when you are twenty-one years old you have done well and
bravely, then I will give you your Nürnberg stove, or, if I am no
more living, then those who reign after me shall do so. And now
go away with this gentleman, and be not afraid, and you shall
light a fire every morning in Hirschvogel, but you will not need
to go out and cut the wood."
Then he smiled and stretched out his hand; the courtiers tried to
make August understand that he ought to bow and touch it with his
lips, but August could not understand that anyhow; he was too
happy. He threw his two arms about the king's knees, and kissed
his feet passionately; then he lost all sense of where he was,
and fainted away from hunger, and tire, and emotion, and wondrous
joy.
As the darkness of his swoon closed in on him, he heard in his
fancy the voice from Hirschvogel saying,--
"Let us be worthy our maker!"
* * * * *
He is only a scholar yet, but he is a happy scholar, and promises
to be a great man. Sometimes he goes back for a few days to Hall,
where the gold ducats have made his father prosperous. In the old
house-room there is a large white porcelain stove of Munich, the
king's gift to Dorothea and 'Gilda.
And August never goes home without going into the great church
and saying his thanks to God, who blessed his strange winter's
journey in the Nürnberg stove. As for his dream in the dealers'
room that night, he will never admit that he did dream it; he
still declares that he saw it all, and heard the voice of
Hirschvogel. And who shall say that he did not? for what is the
gift of the poet and the artist except to see the sights which
others cannot see and to hear the sounds that others cannot hear?