The Queen’s commission imposed upon Wolf a long series of inspections,
inquiries, orders, and preparations, the most important of which
detained him a long time at the Golden Cross.
After he had done what was necessary there, he hastily took a lunch, and
then went to the house of the Golden Stag. The steward of the Schiltl
family, to whom the house belonged, but who were now in the country, had
given the boy choir shelter there, and Wolf was obliged to inform
the leader of his arrangements. Appenzelder had intended to practise
exercises with his young pupils in the chapel belonging to this old
house, familiar to all the inhabitants of Ratisbon, but Wolf found it
empty. On the other hand, young, clear voices echoed from a room in the
lower story.
The door stood half open, and, before he crossed the threshold, he had
heard with surprise the members of the boy choir, lads ranging from
twelve to fifteen, discussing how they should spend the leisure time
awaiting them.
The ringleader, Giacomo Bianchi, from Bologna, was asserting that “the
old bear”--he meant Appenzelder--“would never permit the incomplete
choir to sing before the Emperor and his royal sister.”
“So we shall have the afternoon,” he exclaimed. “The grooms will give me
a horse, and after dinner I, and whoever cares to go with me, will ride
back to the village where we last stopped. What do I want there? I’ll
get the kiss which the tavernkeeper’s charming little daughter owes
me. Her sweet mouth and fair braids with the bows of blue ribbon--I saw
nothing prettier anywhere!”
“Yes, these blondes!” cried Angelo Negri, a Neapolitan boy of thirteen,
rolling his black eyes upward enthusiastically, and kissing, for lack of
warm lips, the empty air.
“Sweet, sweet, sweet,” sighed Giacoma Bianchi.
“Sweet enough,” remarked little thick-set Cornelius Groen from Breda,
in broken Italian. “Yet you surely are not thinking of that silly girl,
with her flaxen braids, but of the nice honey and the light white pastry
she brought us. If we can get that again, I’ll ride there with you.”
“I won’t,” protested Wilhelm Haldema, from Leuwarden in Friesland. “I
shall go down to the river with my pole. It’s swarming with fish.”
Wolf had remained concealed until this moment. Now he entered the huge
apartment.
The boys rushed toward him with joyous ease, and, as they crowded around
him, asking all sorts of questions, it was evident that he possessed
their affection and confidence.
He kindly motioned to them to keep silence, and asked what induced them
to expect leisure time on that day, when, by the exertion of all their
powers, they were to display their skill in the presence of their
mistress and the Emperor.
The answer was not delayed--nay, it sprang from many young lips at the
same time. Unfortunately, its character was such that Wolf scarcely
ventured to hope for the full success of the surprise.
Johann of Cologne and Benevenuto Bosco of Catania, in Sicily, the two
leaders and ornaments of the choir, were so very ill that their recovery
could scarcely be expected even within the next few days. The native
of Cologne had been attacked on the way by a hoarseness which made the
fifteenyear-old lad uneasy, because signs of the approaching change of
voice had already appeared.
The break meant to the extremely musical youth, who had been
distinguished by the bell-like purity of his tones, the loss of his
well-paid position in the boy choir, which, for his poor mother’s sake,
he must retain as long as possible. So, with mingled grief and hope,
he dipped deeply into his slender purse when, at Neumarkt, where the
travelling musicians spent the night just at the time the annual fair
was held, he met a quack who promised to help him.
This extremely talkative old man, who styled himself “Body physician to
many distinguished princes and courts,” boasted of possessing a secret
remedy of the famous Bartliolomaus Anglicus, which, besides other
merits, also had the power of bestowing upon a harsh voice the melody of
David’s harp.
Still, the young native of Cologne delayed some time before using the
nostrum. Not until the hoarseness increased alarmingly did he in his
need take the leech’s prescription, and Benevenuto Bosco, whom he had
admitted to his confidence, and who also felt a certain rawness in his
throat, since beyond Nuremberg one shower of rain after another had
drenched the travellers, asked him to let him use the medicine also.
At first both thought that they felt a beneficial result; but soon their
condition changed for the worse, and their illness constantly increased.
On reaching Ratisbon they were obliged to go to bed, and a terrible
night was followed by an equally bad morning.
When Appenzelder returned from the audience at the Golden Cross, he
found his two best singers in so pitiable a condition that he was
obliged to summon the Emperor’s leech, Dr. Mathys, to the sufferers.
The famous physician was really under obligations to remain near the
sovereign at this time of day. Yet he had gone at once to the Stag, and
pronounced the patients there to be the victims of severe poisoning.
A Ratisbon colleague, whom he found with the sufferers, was to
superintend the treatment which he prescribed.
He had left the house a short time before. Master Appenzelder, Wolf
heard from the choir boys, was now with the invalids, and the knight set
off to inquire about them at once.
He had forbidden the idle young singers who wanted to go with him to
follow, but one had secretly slipped after, and, in one of the dark
corridors of the big house, full of nooks and corners, he suddenly heard
a voice call his name. Ere he was aware of it, little Hannibal Melas,
a young Maltese in the boy choir, whose silent, reserved nature had
obtained for him from the others the nickname Tartaruga, the tortoise,
seized his right hand in both his own.
It was done with evident excitement, and his voice sounded eagerly
urgent as he exclaimed:
“I fix my last hope on you, Sir Knight, for you see there is scarcely
one of the others who would not have an intercessor. But I! Who would
trouble himself about me? Yet, if you would only put in a good word, my
time would surely come now.”
“Your time?” asked Wolf in astonishment; but the little fellow eagerly
continued:
“Yes, indeed! What Johann of Cologne or at least what Benevenuto can do,
I can trust myself to do too. The master need only try it with me, and,
now that both are ill, put me in place of one or the other.”
Wolf, who knew what each individual chorister could do, shook his head,
and began to tell the boy from Malta for what good reason the master
preferred the two sick youths; but little Hannibal interrupted by
exclaiming, in tones of passionate lamentation:
“So you are the same? The master having begun it, all misjudge and crush
me! Instead of giving me an opportunity to show what I can do in a solo
part, I am forced back into the crowd. My best work disappears in the
chorus. And yet, Sir Wolf, in spite of all, I heard the master’s own
lips say in Brussels--I wasn’t listening--that he had never heard what
lends a woman’s voice its greatest charm come so softly and tenderly
from the throat of a boy. Those are his own words. He will not deny
them, for at least he is honest. What is to become of the singing
without Johann and Benevenuto? But if they would try me, and at least
trust a part of Bosco’s music to me--”
Here he stopped, for Master Appenzelder was just coming from the door
of the sick-room into the corridor; but Wolf, with a playful gesture,
thrust his fingers through the lad’s bushy coal-black hair, turned him
in the direction from which he came, and called after him, “Your cause
is in good hands, you little fellow with the big name.”
Then, laying his hand on the arm of the deeply troubled musician, and
pointing to the boy who was trotting, full of hope, down the corridor,
he said: “‘Hannibal ante portas!’ A cry of distress that is full of
terror; but the Maltese Hannibal who is vanishing yonder gave me an idea
which will put an end to your trouble, my dear Maestro. The sooner the
two poisoned lads recover the better, of course; yet the Benedictio
Mensae need not remain unsung on account of their heedlessness, for
little Hannibal showed me the best substitute.”
This promise flowed from Wolf’s lips with such joyous confidence that
the grave musician’s sombre face brightened; but it swiftly darkened
again, and he exclaimed, “We don’t give such hasty work!” When the
knight tried to tell him what he had in mind, the other brusquely
interrupted with the request that he would first aid him in a more
important matter. Wolf was acquainted with the city, and perhaps would
spare him a walk by informing him where the sick lads would find the
best shelter. The Stag was overcrowded, and he was reluctant to leave
the poor fellows in the little sleeping room which they shared with
their companions. The Ratisbon physician had ordered them to be sent to
the hospital; but the boy from Cologne opposed it so impetuously that
he, Appenzelder, thought it his duty to seek another shelter for the
sufferers.
When Wolf with the older man entered the low, close chamber, he found
the lad, a handsome, vigorous boy, with his fair, curling hair tossed in
disorder around his fevered face, standing erect in his bed. While the
doctor was trying to compel him to obey and enter the litter which stood
waiting for him, he beat him back with his strong young fists. He would
rather jump into the open grave or into the rushing river, he shrieked
to the corpulent leech, than be dragged into the hospital, which was the
plague, death, hell.
He emphasized his resistance with heavy blows, while his Italian
companion in suffering, livid, ashen-gray, with bowed head and closed
lids, permitted himself to be placed in the litter without moving.
At Wolf’s entrance the German youth, like a drowning man who sees a
friend on the shore, shrieked an entreaty to save him from the murderers
who wanted to drag him to death. The young knight gazed compassionately
at the lad’s flushed face, and, after a brief pause of reflection,
proposed committing the sufferers to the care of the Knights
Hospitallers.
This removed the burden from the young Rhinelander’s tortured soul, yet
he insisted, with passionate impetuosity, upon having his master and the
nobleman accompany him, that the physician whom, in his fevered fancy,
he regarded as his mortal foe, should not drag him to the pest-house
after all.
Both musicians yielded to his wish. On the way Appenzelder held
the lad’s burning hand in his own, and never wearied of talking
affectionately to him. Not until after he had seen his charges, with the
physician’s assistance, comfortably lodged, and had left the house of
the Hospitallers, did he permit himself to test the almost incredible
news which Sir Wolf Hartschwert had brought him.
With what fiery zeal Wolf persuaded him, how convincing was his
assurance that a substitute for Johann of Cologne, and a most admirable
one, was actually to be found here in Ratisbon!
He had no need to seek for fitting words in the description of Barbara
Blomberg, the melody of her voice, and her admirable training. The fact
that she was a woman, he protested, need not be considered, nay, it
might be kept secret. The Church, it is true, prohibited the assistance
of women, but the matter here was simply the execution of songs in a
private house.
At first Appenzelder listened grumbling, and shaking his head in
dissent, but soon the proposal seemed worth heeding; nay, when he heard
that the singer, whose talent and skill the quiet, intelligent German
praised so highly, owed her training to his countryman, Damian Feys,
whom he knew, he began to ask questions with, increasing interest.
But, ere Wolf had answered the first queries, some one else made his
appearance on the Haid, and the very person who was best fitted to give
information about Barbara--her teacher, Feys, who had sought Gombert,
his famous Brussels companion in art, and was just taking him to a
rehearsal of the Convivium musicum. At this meeting the leader of the
boy choir, in spite of his pleasure at seeing his valued countryman and
companion in art, showed far less patience than before, for, after
the first greeting, he at once asked Feys what he thought of his pupil
Barbara. The answer was so favourable that Appenzelder eagerly accepted
the invitation to attend the rehearsal also. So the four fellow-artists
crossed the Haidplatz together, and Maestro Gombert was obliged to
remind his colleague of the boy choir that people who occupied the
conductor’s desk forgot to run on a wager.
Wolf’s legs were by no means so long as those of the tall, broad
musician, yet, in his joyous excitement, it was an easy matter to keep
pace with him. In the happy consciousness of meriting the gratitude
of the woman whom he loved, he gazed toward the New Scales, the large
building beneath whose roof she whose image filled his heart and mind
must already have found shelter.
Did she see him coming? Did she suspect who his companions were, and
what awaited her through them?
Yet, sharply as he watched for her, he could discover no sign of her
fair head behind any of the windows.
Yet Barbara, from the little room where the singers laid aside their
cloaks and wraps, had seen Wolf, with her singing master Feys and two
other gentlemen, coming toward the New Scales, and correctly guessed the
names of the slender, shorter stranger in the sable-trimmed mantle and
the big, broad-shouldered, bearded one who accompanied her friend. Wolf
had described them both, and a presentiment told her that something
great awaited her through them.
Gombert was the composer of the bird-song, and, as she remembered how
the refrain of this composition had affected Wolf the day before, she
heard the door close behind the group.
Then the desire to please, which had never left her since she earned the
first applause, seized upon her more fiercely than ever.
Of what consequence were the listeners before whom she had hitherto
sung compared with those whose footsteps were now echoing on the lowest
stairs? And, half animated by an overpowering secret impulse, she sang
the refrain “Car la saison est bonne” aloud while passing the stairs on
her way into the dancing hall, where the rehearsal was to take place.
What an artless delight in the fairest, most pleasing thing in Nature
to a sensitive young human soul this simple sentence voiced to the
Netherland musicians! It seemed to them as if the song filled the dim,
cold corridor with warmth and sunlight. Thus Gombert had heard within
his mind the praise of spring when he set it to music, but had never
before had it thus understood by any singer, reproduced by any human
voice.
The excitable man stood as if spellbound; only a curt “My God! my
God!” gave expression to his emotion. The blunter Appenzelder, on the
contrary, when the singer suddenly paused and a door closed behind her,
exclaimed: “The deuce, that’s fine!--If that were your helper in need,
Sir Wolf, all would be well!”
“It is,” replied Wolf proudly, with sparkling eyes; but the honest old
fellow rushed after Barbara, held out both hands to her in his frank,
cordial way, and cried:
“Thanks, heartfelt thanks, my dear, beautiful young lady! But if you
imagine that this drop of nectar will suffice, you are mistaken. You
have awakened thirst! Now see--and Gombert will thank you too--that it
is quenched with a fuller gift of this drink of the gods.”
The Netherlanders found the table spread, and this rehearsal of the
Convivium musicum brought Barbara Blomberg the happiest hours which life
had ever bestowed.
She saw with a throbbing heart that her singing not only pleased, but
deeply stirred the heart of the greatest composer of his time, whose
name had filled her with timid reverence, and that, while listening
to her voice, the eyes of the sturdy Appenzelder, who looked as if his
broad breast was steeled against every soft emotion, glittered with
tears.
This had happened during the execution of Josquin de Pres’s “Ecce tu
pulchra es’.”
Barbara’s voice had lent a special charm to this magnificent motet,
and, when she concluded the “Quia amore langueo”--“Because I yearn for
love”--to which she had long given the preference when she felt impelled
to relieve her heart from unsatisfied yearning, she had seen Gombert
look at the choir leader, and understood the “inimitable” which was not
intended for her, but for his fellow-artist.
Hitherto she had done little without pursuing a fixed purpose, but
this time Art, and the lofty desire to serve her well, filled her
whole being. In the presence of the most famous judges she imposed the
severest demands upon herself. Doubtless she was also glad to show Wolf
what she could do, yet his absence would not have diminished an iota of
what she gave the Netherlanders. She felt proud and grateful that she
belonged to the chosen few who are permitted to express, by means of a
noble art, the loftiest and deepest feelings in the human breast. Had
not Appenzelder been compelled to interrupt the rehearsal, she would
gladly have sung on and on to exhaustion.
She did not yet suspect what awaited her when, in well-chosen yet
cordial words, Gombert expressed his appreciation.
She neither saw nor heard the fellow-singers who surrounded her; nay,
when Dr. Hiltner, the syndic’s, daughter, seventeen years old, who had
long looked up to her with girlish enthusiasm, pressed forward to her
side, and her charming mother, sincerely pleased, followed more quietly,
when others imitated their example and expressed genuine gratification
or made pretty speeches, Barbara scarcely distinguished the one from the
other, honest good will from bitter envy.
She did not fully recover her composure until Appenzelder came up to her
and held out his large hand.
Clasping it with a smile, she permitted the old musician to hold her
little right hand, while in a low tone, pointing to Wolf, who had
followed him, he said firmly:
“May I believe the knight? Would you be induced to bestow your
magnificent art upon an ardent old admirer like myself, though to-day
only as leader of the voices in the boy choir--”
Here Wolf, who had noticed an expression of refusal upon Barbara’s lips,
interrupted him by completing the sentence with the words, addressed
to her, “In order to let his Majesty the Emperor enjoy what delights us
here?”
The blood receded from Barbara’s cheeks, and, as she clung to the
window-sill for support, it seemed as though some magic spell had
conveyed her to the summit of the highest steeple. Below her yawned the
dizzy gulf of space, and the air was filled with a rain of sceptres,
crowns, and golden chains of honour falling upon ermine and purple robes
on the ground below.
But after a few seconds this illusion vanished, and, ere Wolf could
spring to the assistance of the pallid girl, she was already passing her
kerchief across her brow.
Then, drawing a long breath, she gave the companion of her childhood a
grateful glance, and said to Appenzelder:
“Dispose of my powers as you deem best,” adding, after a brief pause,
“Of course, with my father’s consent.”
Appenzelder, as if rescued, shook her hand again, this time with so
strong a pressure that it hurt her. Yet her blue eyes sparkled as
brightly as if her soul no longer had room for pain or sorrow. After
Barbara had made various arrangements with the choir leader, it seemed
to her as though the sunny, blissful spring, which her song had just
celebrated so exquisitely, had also made its joyous entry into the
narrow domain of her life.
On the way home she thanked the friend who accompanied her with the
affectionate warmth of the days of her childhood, nay, even more eagerly
and tenderly; and when, on reaching the second story of the cantor
house, he took leave of her, she kissed his cheek, unasked, calling down
the stairs as she ran up:
“There is your reward! But, in return, you will accompany me first to
the rehearsal with the singing boys, and then--if you had not arranged
it yourself you would never believe it--go to the Golden Cross, to the
Emperor Charles.”