The church of the Alpine village of Ratten contains a nearly life-size
equestrian statue, standing to the left of the high altar. The horseman
is a splendid warrior; he wears a crested helmet and moustaches black
as ebony. He has drawn his broad and gleaming sword and is using it to
cut his cloak in half. At the foot of the prancing steed cowers the
figure of a ragged beggar-man.
My mother used to take me to this church when I was still a little
whipper-snapper, hardly up to the height of an ordinary person's
trousers. Near the church stands a lady-chapel, famed for its many
graces; and here my mother loved to pray. Often, when there was not
another soul remaining in the chapel and twelve o'clock struck and the
steeple sent the midday Angelus clanging out across the summer Sunday,
mother would still be kneeling on one of the chairs and sending up her
plaint to Mary. The Blessed Virgin sat on the altar, with her hand in
her lap, and moved not head, nor eyes, nor hands; and so, little by
little, my mother was able to say what she wanted.
I preferred to stop in the church and gaze at the fine rider on his
horse.
And once, when we were on our way home and mother leading me by the
hand (and I had always to take three steps for every one of hers), I
raised my little head to her kind face and asked:
"Why does the man on horseback keep on standing against the wall up
there? Why does he not ride out through the window into the street?"
Then mother answered:
"Because you put such childish questions and because it is only a
statue, the statue of St. Martin, who was a soldier and a very
charitable and pious man and is now in Heaven."
"And is the horse in Heaven too?" I asked.
"I will tell you all about St. Martin," said mother, "when we come to a
nice place where we can sit down and rest."
And she led me on and I skipped along beside her. But I was very
anxious for the resting-place and constantly cried out:
"Mother, here's a nice place!"
But she was not content until we came to the shady wood, where a flat,
mossy stone stood; and then we sat down. Mother fastened her kerchief
tighter round her head and was silent, as though she had forgotten her
promise. I stared and stared at her lips and then peeped through the
trees; and once or twice it appeared to me as though I had seen the
grand horseman riding through the wood.
"Yes, true enough, laddie," mother began, suddenly, "we must always
help the poor, for the love of God. But you won't find many fine
gentlemen like St. Martin nowadays, trotting about on their tall
horses. You know how the icy blast rushes over our sheep-walk, when
winter is nigh--your own little paws were nearly frozen there last
year! Well, it was just such a stretch of heath that St. Martin came
riding over one evening late in autumn. The earth is frozen hard as
stone; and it makes a fine noise each time the horse puts hoof to
ground. The snowflakes dance all round about; not one of them melts
away. Night is just beginning to fall; and the horse clatters over the
heath and the rider draws his white cloak round him as close as ever he
can. Well, as he rides on like that, suddenly he sees a little
beggar-man squatting on a stone, with nothing to cover him but a torn
jacket; and he shivering with cold and lifting his sad eyes to the tall
horse. Whoa! When the horseman sees that, he pulls up his steed and
bends over and says to the beggar, 'Oh, my dear, poor man, what alms
can I give you? Gold and silver I have none; and my sword you could
never use. How can I help you?' Then the beggar lets his white head
fall on his half-naked breast and heaves a sigh. But the horseman draws
his sword, takes his cloak from his shoulders and cuts it across the
middle. One half of the garment he hands down to the poor shivering
grey-beard: 'Take this, my needy brother!' he says. The other half of
the cloak he flings round his own body, as best he can, and rides
away."
This was the story my mother told me; and, with those cold autumn
evenings of hers, she made that lovely midsummer day feel so chilly
that I shivered.
"But it's not quite finished yet, my child," mother continued. "You
know now what the horseman with the beggar in the church means; but you
have not heard what happened afterwards. When the rider, later on at
night, lies sleeping peacefully on his hard bolster at home, the same
beggar whom he met on the heath comes to his bedside, smiles and shows
him the half cloak, shows him the marks of the nails in His hands and
shows him His face, which is no longer old and sorrowful, but radiant
as the sun. This same beggar from the heath was Our Lord
Himself.--There, laddie, and now we must be getting on."
Then we stood up and climbed into the woods on the mountain-side.
On the way home, we met two beggar-men; I peered very closely into
their faces; for I thought:
"Our Lord may be concealed behind one of them."
On the evening of the same day, I was told to take off my Sunday
suit--for father was a thrifty man--and was playing and skipping about
in my shabby workaday breeches, with only the brand-new grey jacket,
which I did not want to take off and had begged to be allowed to wear
for the rest of the day. Mother was attending to her household duties
and I ran out to the sheep-walk, for it was my business to bring the
sheep home to the fold, including a little white lamb that was my own
property.
As I hopped along, throwing stones into the air and trying to hit the
golden evening clouds, suddenly I saw an old, white-headed and very
poorly dressed man squatting on a rock a little way off. I stopped,
greatly startled; dared not take another step; and thought to myself:
"Now this is most certainly Our Lord."