True it is that the class I learnt in at the convent was under the
strictest rule, and that my teacher was a Carthusian nun; and yet I take
pleasure in calling to mind the years when my spirit enjoyed the benefit
of schooling with friendly companions and by the side of my best friend.
Nay, even in the midst of the silent dwelling of the speechless Sisters,
right merry laughter might be heard during the hours of rest, and in
spite of the thick walls of the class-room it reached the nuns’ ears.
Albeit at first I was stricken with awe, and shy in their presence, I
soon became familiar with their strange manner of life, and there was
many an one whom I learnt truly to love: with some, too, we could talk
and jest right merrily, for they, to be sure, had good ears, and we,
were not slow in learning the language of their eyes and fingers.
As concerning the rule of silence no one, to my knowledge, ever broke it
in the presence of us little ones, save only Sister Renata, and she was
dismissed from the convent; yet, as I waxed older, I could see that the
nuns were as fain to hear any tidings of the outer life that might find
a way into the cloister as though there was nothing they held more dear
than the world which they had withdrawn from by their own free choice.
For my part, I have ever been, and remain to the end, one of those least
fitted for the Carthusian habit, notwithstanding that Sister Margaret
would paint the beatitudes and the purifying power of her Order in fair
and tempting colors. In the hours given up to sacred teaching, when she
would shed out upon us the overflowing wealth and abundant grace of her
loving spirit--insomuch that she won not less than four souls of our
small number to the sisterhood--she was wont and glad to speak of this
matter, and would say that there was a heavenly spirit living and moving
in every human breast. That it told us, with the clear and holy voice
of angels, what was divine and true, but that the noise of the world and
our own vain imaginings sounded louder and would not suffer us to hear.
But that they who took upon them the Carthusian rule and hearkened to
it speechless, in a silent home, lending no ear to distant outer voices,
but only to those within, would ere long learn to mark the heavenly
voice with the inward ear and know its warning. That voice would declare
to them the glory and the will of the Most High God, and reveal the
things that are hidden in such wise as that even here below he should
take part in the joys of paradise.
But, for all that I never was a Carthusian nun, and that my tongue was
ever apt to run too freely, I conceive that I have found the Heavenly
Spirit in the depths of my own soul and heard its voice; but in truth
this has befallen me most clearly, and with most joy, when my heart has
been most filled with that worldly love which the Carthusian Sisters
shut out with a hundred doors. And again, when I have been moved by that
love towards my neighbor which is called Charity, and wearied myself
out for him, sparing nothing that was my own, I have felt those divine
emotions plainly enough in my breast.
The Sister bid us to question her at all times without fear, and I
was ever the foremost of us all to plague her with communings. Of a
certainty she could not at all times satisfy my soul, which thirsted for
knowledge, though she never failed to calm it; for I stood firm in the
faith, and all she could tell me of God’s revelation to man I accepted
gladly, without doubt or cavil. She had taught us that faith and
knowledge are things apart, and I felt that there could be no more peace
for my soul if I suffered knowledge to meddle with faith.
Led by her, I saw the Saviour as love incarnate; and that the love which
He brought into the world was still and ever a living thing working
after His will, I strove to confess with my thinking mind. But I beheld
even the Archbishops and Bishops go forth to battle, and shed the
blood of their fellow men with vengeful rage; I saw Pope excommunicate
Pope--for the great Schism only came to an end while I was yet at
school; peaceful cities in their sore need bound themselves by treaties,
under our eyes, for defence against Christian knights and lords. The
robber bands of the great nobles plundered merchants on the Emperor’s
highway, though they were of the same creed, while the citizens strove
to seize the strongholds of the knights. We heard of many more letters
of defiance than of peacemaking and friendship. Even the burgesses
of our good Christian town--could not the love taught by the Redeemer
prevail even among them? And as with the great so with the simple; for
was it love alone that reigned among us maidens in a Christian school?
Nay, verily; for never shall I forget how that Ursula Tetzel, and in
fellowship with her a good half of the others, pursued my sweet, sage
Ann, the most diligent and best of us all, to drive her out of our
midst; but in vain, thanks to Sister Margaret’s upright justice. Nay,
the shrewish plotters were fain at last to see the scrivener’s daughter
uplifted to be our head, and this compelled them to bend their pride
before her.
All this and much more I would say to the good Sister; nay, and I made
so bold as to ask her whether Christ’s behest that we should love our
enemy were not too high for attainment by the spirit of man. This made
her grave and thoughtful; yet she found no lack of comforting words,
and said that the Lord had only showed the way and the end. That men had
turned sadly from both; but that many a stream wandered through divers
windings from the path to its goal, the sea, before it reached it; and
that mankind was wondrous like the stream, for, albeit they even now
rend each other in bloody fights, the day will come when foe shall offer
to foe the palm of peace, and when there shall be but one fold on earth
and one Shepherd.
But my anxious questioning, albeit I was but a child, had without doubt
troubled her pure and truthful spirit. It was in Passion week, of the
fifth year of my school-life--and ever through those years she had
become more bent and her voice had sunk lower, so that many a time we
found it hard to hear her--that it fell that she could no longer quit
her cell; and she sent me a bidding to go to her bedside, and with me
only two of us all: to wit my Ann, and Elsa Ebner, a right good child
and a diligent bee in her work.
And it befell that as Sister Margaret on her deathbed bid us farewell
for ever, with many a God speed and much good council for the rest
likewise, her heart waxed soft and she went on to speak of the love each
Christian soul oweth to his neighbor and eke to his enemy. She fixed her
eye in especial on me, and confessed with her pale lips that she herself
had ofttimes found it hard to love evil-minded adversaries and those
whose ways had been contrary to hers, as the law of the Saviour bid her.
To those young ones among us who had made their minds up to take the
veil she had, ere this, more especially shown what was needful; for
their way lay plain before them, to walk as followers of Christ how
bitter soever it might be to their human nature; but we were bound to
live in the world, and she could but counsel us to flee from hate as the
soul’s worst foe and the most cunning of all the devils. But an if it
should befall that our heart could not be subdued after a brave struggle
to love such or such an one, then ought we to strive at least to respect
all that was good and praiseworthy in him, inasmuch as we should ever
find something worthy of honor even in the most froward and least
pleasing to ourselves. And these words I have ever kept in mind, and
many times have they given me pause, when the hot blood of the Schoppers
has bid me stoop and pick up a stone to fling at my neighbor.
No longer than three days after she had thus bidden us to her side,
Sister Margaret entered into her rest; she had been our strait but
gentle teacher, and her learning was as far above that of most women of
her time as the heavens are high; and as her mortal body lay, no longer
bent, but at full length in the coffin, the saintly lady, who before she
took the vows had been a Countess of Lupfen, belonged, meseemed, to a
race taller than ours by a head. A calm, queenlike dignity was on her
noble thin face; and, this corpse being the first, as it fell, that I
had ever looked on, it so worked on my mind that death, of which I had
heretofore been in terror, took the image in my young soul of a great
Master to whom we must indeed bow, but who is not our foe.
I never could earn such praise as Ann, who was by good right at our
head; notwithstanding I ever stood high. And the vouchers I carried
home were enough to content Cousin Maud, for her great wish that her
foster-children should out-do others was amply fulfilled by Herdegen,
the eldest. He was indeed filled with sleeping learning, as it were,
and I often conceived that he needed only fitting instruction and a fair
start to wake it up. For even he did not attain his learning without
pains, and they who deem that it flew into his mouth agape are sorely
mistaken. Many a time have I sat by his side while he pored over his
books, and I could see how he set to work in right earnest when once he
had cast away sports and pastime. Thus with three mighty blows he would
smite the nail home, which a weaker hand could not do with twenty.
For whole weeks he might be idle and about divers matters which had no
concern with schooling; and then, of a sudden, set to work; and it would
so wholly possess his soul that he would not have seen a stone drop
close at his feet.
My second brother, Kunz, was not at all on this wise. Not that he was
soft-witted; far from it. His head was as clear as ever another’s for
all matters of daily life; but he found it hard to learn scholarship,
and what Herdegen could master in one hour, it took him a whole livelong
day to get. Notwithstanding he was not one of the dunces, for he strove
hard with all diligence, and rather would he have lost a night’s sleep
than have left what he deemed a duty only half done. Thus there were
sore half-hours for him in school-time; but he was not therefor to be
pitied, for he had a right merry soul and was easily content, and loved
many things. Good temper and a high spirit looked out of his great blue
eyes; aye, and when he had played some prank which was like to bring him
into trouble he had a look in his eyes--a look that might have melted a
stone to pity, much more good Cousin Maud.
But this did not altogether profit him, for after that Herdegen had
discovered one day how easily Kunz got off chastisement he would pray
him to take upon himself many a misdeed which the elder had done; and
Kunz, who was soft-hearted, was fain rather to suffer the penalty than
to see it laid on his well-beloved brother. Add to this that Kunz was
a well-favored, slender youth; but as compared with Herdegen’s splendid
looks and stalwart frame he looked no more than common. For this
cause he had no ill-wishers while our eldest’s uncommon beauty in all
respects, and his hasty temper, ever ready to boil over for good or
evil, brought upon him much ill-will and misliking.
When Cousin Maud beheld how little good Kunz got out of his learning, in
spite of his zeal, she was minded to get him a private governor to teach
him; and this she did by the advice of a learned doctor of Church-law,
Albrecht Fleischmann, the vicar and provost of Saint Sebald’s and member
of the Imperial council, because we Schoppers were of the parish of
Saint Sebald’s, to which church Albrecht and Friedrich Schopper, God
rest their souls, had attached a rich prebendary endowment.
His Reverence the prebendary Fleischmann, having attended the Council at
Costnitz, whither he was sent by the town elders with divers errands to
the Emperor Sigismund, who was engaged in a disputation with John Huss
the Bohemian schismatic, brought to my cousin’s knowledge a governor
whose name was Peter Pihringer, a native of Nuremberg. He it was who
brought the Greek tongue, which was not yet taught in the Latin schools
of our city, not in our house alone, but likewise into others; he
was not indeed at all like the high-souled men and heroes of whom his
Plutarch wrote; nay, he was a right pitiable little man, who had learnt
nothing of life, though all the more out of books. He had journeyed long
in Italy, from one great humanistic doctor to another, and while he had
sat at their feet, feeding his soul with learning, his money had melted
away in his hands--all that he had inherited from his father, a worthy
tavern-keeper and master baker. Much of his substance he had lent to
false friends never to see it more, and it would scarce be believed how
many times knavish rogues had beguiled this learned man of his goods. At
length he came home to Nuremberg, a needy traveller, entering the city
by the same gate as that by which Huss had that same day departed,
having tarried in Nuremberg on his way to Costnitz and won over divers
of our learned scholars to his doctrine. Now, after Magister Peter had
written a very learned homily against the said Hans Huss, full of much
Greek--of which, indeed, it was reported that it had brought a smile
to the dauntless Bohemian’s lips in the midst of his sorrow--he found a
patron in Doctor Fleischmann, who was well pleased with this tractate,
and he thenceforth made a living by teaching divers matters. But he sped
but ill, dwelling alone, inasmuch as he would forget to eat and drink
and mislay or lose his hardly won wage. Once the town watch had to
see him home because, instead of a book, he was carrying a ham which
a gossip had given him; and another day he was seen speeding down the
streets with his nightcap on, to the great mirth of the lads and lasses.
Notwithstanding he showed himself no whit unworthy of the high praise
wherewith his Reverence the Prebendary had commended him, inasmuch as he
was not only a right learned, but likewise a faithful and longsuffering
teacher. But his wisdom profited Herdegen and Ann and me rather than
Kunz, though it was for his sake that he had come to us; and as,
touching this strange man’s person, my cousin told me later that when
she saw him for the first time she took such a horror of his wretched
looks that she was ready to bid him depart and desire the Reverend
doctor to send us another governor. But out of pity she would
nevertheless give him a trial, and considering that I should ere long
be fully grown, and that a young maid’s heart is a strange thing, she
deemed that a younger teacher might lead it into peril.
At the time when Master Pihringer came to dwell with us, Herdegen was
already high enough to pass into the upper school, for he was first in
his ‘ordo’; but our guardian, the old knight Hans Im Hoff, of whom I
shall have much to tell, held that he was yet too young for the risks of
a free scholar’s life in a high school away from home, and he kept him
two years more in Nuremberg at the school of the Brethren of the Holy
Ghost, albeit the teaching there was not of the best. At any rate Master
Pihringer avowed that in all matters of learning we were out of all
measure behind the Italians; and how rough and barbarous was the Latin
spoken by the reverend Fathers and taught by them in the schools, I
myself had later the means of judging.
Their way of imparting that tongue was in truth a strange thing; for to
fix the quantity of the syllables in the learners’ mind, they were
made to sing verses in chorus, while one of them, on whose head Father
Hieronymus would set a paper cap to mark his office, beat the measure
with a wooden sword; but what pranks of mischief the unruly rout would
be playing all the time Kunz could describe better than I can.
The great and famous works of the Roman chroniclers and poets, which
our Master had come to know well in Italy--having besides fine copies of
them--were never heard of in the Fathers’ school, by reason, that those
writers had all been mere blind heathen; but, verily, the common school
catechisms which were given to the lads for their instruction, contained
such foolish and ill-conceived matters, that any sage heathen would have
been ashamed of them. The highest exercise consisted of disputations on
all manner of subtle and captious questions, and the Latin verses which
the scholars hammered out under the rule of Father Jodocus were so vile
as to rouse Magister Peter to great and righteous wrath. Each morning,
before the day’s tasks began, the fine old hymn Salve Regina was
chanted, and this was much better done in the Brothers’ school than in
ever another, for those Monks gave especial heed to the practice of good
music. My Herdegen profited much thereby, and he was the foremost of all
the singing scholars. He likewise gladly and of his own free will took
part in the exercises of the Alumni, of whom twelve, called the Pueri,
had to sing at holy mass, and at burials and festivals, as well as
in the streets before the houses of the great city families and other
worthy citizens. The money they thus earned served to help maintain
the poorer scholars, and to be sure, my brother was ready to forego
his share; nay, and a great part of his own pocket-money went to those
twelve, for among them were comrades he truly loved.
There was something lordly in my elder brother, and his fellows were
ever subject to his will. Even at the shooting matches in sport he
was ever chosen captain, and the singing pueri soon would do his every
behest. Cousin Maud would give them free commons on many a Sunday and
holy-day, and when they had well filled their hungry young crops at our
table for the coming week of lean fare, they went out with us into the
garden, and it presently rang with mirthful songs, Herdegen beating the
measure, while we young maids joined in with a will.
For the most part we three: Ann, Elsa Ebner, and I--were the only maids
with the lads, but Ursula Tetzel was sometimes with us, for she was
ever fain to be where Herdegen was. And he had been diligent enough
in waiting upon her ere ever I went to school. There was a giving and
taking of flowers and nosegays, for he had chosen her for his Lady, and
she called him her knight; and if I saw him with a red knot on his cap
I knew right well it was to wear her color; and I liked all this
child’s-play myself right well, inasmuch as I likewise had my chosen
color: green, as pertaining to my cousin in the forest.
But when I went to the convent-school all this was at an end, and I had
no choice but to forego my childish love matters, not only for my tasks’
sake, but forasmuch as I discerned that Gotz had a graver love matter on
hand, and that such an one as moved his parents to great sorrow.
The wench to whom he plighted his love was the daughter of a common
craftsman, Pernhart the coppersmith, and when this came to my ears it
angered me greatly; nay, and cost me bitter tears, as I told it to Ann.
But ere long we were playing with our dollies again right happily.
I took this matter to heart nevertheless, more than many another of my
years might have done; and when we went again to the Forest Lodge and
I missed Gotz from his place, and once, as it fell, heard my aunt
lamenting to Cousin Maud bitterly indeed of the sorrows brought upon her
by her only son--for he was fully bent on taking the working wench to
wife in holy wedlock--in my heart I took my aunt’s part. And I deemed it
a shameful and grievous thing that so fine a young gentleman could abase
himself to bring heaviness on the best of parents for the sake of a
lowborn maid.
After this, one Sunday, it fell by chance that I went to mass with
Ann to the church of St. Laurence, instead of St. Sebald’s to which we
belonged. Having said my prayer, looking about me I beheld Gotz, and
saw how, as he leaned against a pillar, he held his gaze fixed on one
certain spot. My eyes followed his, and at once I saw whither they were
drawn, for I saw a young maid of the citizen class in goodly, nay--in
rich array, and she was herself of such rare and wonderful beauty that
I myself could not take my eyes off her. And I remembered that I had
met the wench erewhile on the feast-day of St. John, and that uncle
Christian Pfinzing, my worshipful godfather, had pointed her out to
Cousin Maud, and had said that she was the fairest maid in Nuremberg
whom they called, and rightly, Fair Gertrude.
Now the longer I gazed at her the fairer I deemed her, and when Ann
discovered to me, what I had at once divined, that this sweet maid was
the daughter of Pernhart the coppersmith, my child’s heart was glad, for
if my cousin was without dispute the finest figure of a man in the whole
assembly Fair Gertrude was the sweetest maid, I thought, in the whole
wide world.
If it had been possible that she could be of yet greater beauty it would
but have added to my joy. And henceforth I would go as often as I might
to St. Laurence’s, and past the coppersmith’s house to behold Fair
Gertrude; and my heart beat high with gladness when she one day saw me
pass and graciously bowed to my silent greeting, and looked in my face
with friendly inquiry.
After this when Gotz came to our house I welcomed him gladly as
heretofore; and one day, when I made bold to whisper in his ear that
I had seen his fair Gertrude, and for certain no saint in heaven could
have a sweeter face than hers, he thanked me with a bright look and it
was from the bottom of his soul that he said: “If you could but know her
faithful heart of gold!”
For all this Gotz was dearer to me than of old, and it uplifted me in my
own conceit that he should put such trust in a foolish young thing as
I was. But in later days it made me sad to see his frank and noble face
grow ever more sorrowful, nay, and full of gloom; and I knew full well
what pained him, for a child can often see much more than its elders
deem. Matters had come to a sharp quarrel betwixt the son and the
parents, and I knew my cousin well, and his iron will which was a
by-word with us. And my aunt in the Forest was of the same temper;
albeit her body was sickly, she was one of those women who will not bear
to be withstood, and my heart hung heavy with fear when I conceived of
the outcome of this matter.
Hence it was a boon indeed to me that I had my Ann for a friend, and
could pour out to her all that filled my young soul with fears. How our
cheeks would burn when many a time we spoke of the love which was the
bond between Gotz and his fair Gertrude. To us, indeed, it was as yet a
mystery, but that it was sweet and full of joy we deemed a certainty.
We would have been fain to cry out to the Emperor and the world to take
arms against the ruthless parents who were minded to tread so holy a
blossom in the dust; but since this was not in our power we had dreams
of essaying to touch the heart of my forest aunt, for she had but
that one son and no daughter to make her glad, and I had ever been her
favorite.
Thus passed many weeks, and one morning, when I came forth from school,
I found Gotz with Cousin Maud who had been speaking with him, and her
eyes were wet with tears; and I heard him cry out:
“It is in my mother’s power to drive me to misery and ruin; but no power
in heaven or on earth can drive me to break the oath and forswear the
faith I have sworn!”
And his cheeks were red, and I had never seen him look so great and
tall.
Then, when he saw me, he held out both hands to me in his frank, loving
way, and I took them with all my heart. At this he looked into my eyes
which were full of tears, and he drew me hastily to him and kissed me
on my brow for the first time in all his life, with strange passion; and
without another word he ran out of the house-door into the street. My
cousin gazed after him, shaking her head sadly and wiping her eyes;
but when I asked her what was wrong with my cousin she would give me no
tidings of the matter.
The next day we should have gone out to the forest, but we remained at
home; Aunt Jacoba would see no one. Her son had turned his back on his
parents’ dwelling, and had gone out as a stranger among strangers. And
this was the first sore grief sent by Heaven on my young heart.