THE OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAIN.

The name of Herr Balthasar was well known throughout the whole

hill-country: not a child but had heard of his vast riches, and had

some story to tell of him. Everybody too loved and honoured him; for

his bounty was as great as his wealth: but at the same time he was

viewed with fear; for he harast both himself and others by a number of

strange whims which no one could understand; and his moodiness, his

silent reserve, were especially irksome to those who were nearest

about him. No person had seen him smile for many years; he scarcely

ever came out of his large house on the hill above the little

mountain-town, nearly the whole of which belonged to him: its

inhabitants too were almost all his dependents, whom he had drawn

thither to work in his manufactories, his mines, and his alum pits.

Thus through his means this small spot was very thickly peopled, and

enlivened by the greatest activity. Waggons and horses were

continually moving to and fro; and the clatter of the working

machinery was mixt up with the roar of waters, and with the various

noises from the pounding and smelting-houses. The smoke of the coals

however, the steam from the pits, and the black heaps of dross and

slag piled up on high all around, gave the gloomy sequestered valley a

still more dismal appearance; so that no one who travelled for the

sake of seeking out and enjoying the beauties of nature, would have

any mind to linger there.

Among the multitude of persons who in consequence of his large

undertakings and the variety of his concerns were employed by old Herr

Balthasar, none seemed to enjoy his confidence in so high a degree as

Edward, the head overseer of his mines and manufactories, and the

manager of his accounts. He was about thirty years old, tall and of a

fine figure, had always something sprightly and good-humoured on his

lips, and thus formed a striking contrast to his morose monosyllabic

master, who had grown old before his time, and whose withered,

wrinkled features, with the faint sad look from his hollow eyes, were

no less repulsive to all, than Edward's cheerful frankness was

attractive of confidence and affection.

It was still very early on a summer morning when Edward was looking

thoughtfully down into the smoking valley: the sun lay behind a thick

mass of clouds; and the mists that were travelling along the bottom,

and mingled with the black vapours from the steaming pits, checkt his

view, and wrapt the landscape in a kind of grey veil. He mused over

his youth, over the plans he had once formed, and then thought how,

contrary to them all, he had become fixt in this melancholy solitude,

which, as he was already verging on the maturity of manhood, he

probably would never quit again. While he was thus losing himself in

his meditations, young William hurried by him, fully equipt as it

seemed for a journey, without even bidding him goodbye. The young man

started as in passing he observed Edward standing there, and he looked

very loth to meet his questions.

"How now?" said Edward; "are you already leaving us again, young man,

after all the entreaties and persuasions it cost us both but three

weeks ago to prevail on our master to take you into his house, and

after he has just forgiven you your sudden departure the other day?"

"I must begone!" cried the young man: "do not stop me! I must submit

to appear ungrateful; but I cannot help it."

"Without speaking to our master?" replied Edward; "without leave of

absence? What are we to think of you? Besides Herr Balthasar will want

you; for there is no one here just now to take your post of

secretary."

"My dearest sir," exclaimed the young man uneasily, "if you knew my

situation, you would not blame or think ill of me."

"Has our master offended you? have you any ground of complaint?"

"No, no! quite the contrary!" cried the young man impetuously; "the

old gentleman is kindness itself; I appear to be base and

good-for-nothing; but I have no other choice. Make the best excuse for

me that your good nature and your conscience will let you."

"Be a man!" said Edward, giving him his hand and holding him fast:

"you may earn a maintenance here, and may lay the foundations of your

fortune hereafter: do not a second time thus wantonly trifle away your

master's confidence and mine. We took you in, when you came to us

without a character, without any recommendation, almost without a

name: Herr Balthasar departed for your sake from all his rules, which

till then had always been inviolable; I have in a manner pledged

myself for you: are you resolved to reward our confidence in this way,

and to run thus rashly into suspicion? And can you hope that a month

hence or later you will be received among us again?"

The young man was much distrest, but tore himself forcibly away, and

cried: "I know it too well, that I am closing this home, in which

everything has gone so well with me, in which I have felt so happy,

for ever against me. Misery and want await me, and the bitterest

punishments for the thoughtlessness of my youth. But who can avoid his

destiny? When a chariot is rushing headlong down a precipice, no human

strength can arrest it."

"But if you have any sense of honour," answered Edward, "if you would

not leave us all at a loss what to make of you, you ought to stay now

at all events; for I am quite unable to conceive what power can be

driving you away from us thus suddenly. You know, the most expensive

and valuable cloths in our magazine have been purloined day after day;

and though this has been going on so long we have not been able to get

any trace of the offender."

"I must put up even this suspicion," said William with a quick blush.

"There is no saving me now, and I have nothing more to lose: nor do I

deserve the good opinion of any honest man, be he even the meanest of

my brethren."

After these mysterious words the young man hurried away, without even

looking round again. Edward followed him with his eyes, and observed

how he bent his steps hastily toward the little town, ran almost at

full speed through the streets, and turned into a footpath on the

other side, to climb up a steep rock. He there lost sight of him in

the mountain solitude.

The mist meanwhile had somewhat broken, and the little dells with

their trees and bushes were seen rising out of it, like green ilands,

illumined by the morning sun, with ever and anon a house or hut half

hidden by leaves leaning against the side of the hill.

An old miner, who worked a good way off in the pits belonging to the

prince, came up now very much out of humour to Edward. "Another run

over here to no purpose!" he cried peevishly: "I wanted to speak to

the young shatter-brained jackanapes; and now I hear from the

smelting-lads down in the town, that he has just been scampering

through it, and not a soul can tell where he is gone."

"What business have you with him, friend Conrad?" asked Edward.

"What business should one have with young chaps such as he!" replied

the cross old man. "There have I had to buy him a wonderful book about

mines over yonder, of the white-headed master miner who is as old as

the hills, and who has been blind these three years: the marvellous

grey-beard copied the book ages ago, when he was young and had a

younker's itching for knowing more than his neighbours, from the

manuscript of a travelling Tyrolese, and took the trouble of

scratching likenesses of all the foolish pictures in it. Now however

that he is blind, he can't see to read it; so I have bought it for

young master Lorenz, our William here; and lo! the coxcomb is clean

over the mountains."

"What does the little book contain?" said Edward.

"Only look into it yourself," continued the other: "all sorts of

stories about ghosts and spectres; clews for finding out the places

over there in the high mountains, where one meets with gold and

diamonds at the bottom of caves and sand pits in spots which mortal

man has seldom set foot in. There are a number of marks, they say,

which in ages of yore were carved on the hard rocks or written on the

banks of the brooks: certain knowing Italians notcht and scored the

places some two or three hundred years ago, and stuck in pieces of tin

and pebbles which they laid after a fashion of their own: now however,

the old man tells me, they are hard to find; for the mountain-spirits

and goblins, who hate being disturbed, have shoved away many of the

stones that might have served for signposts, and have utterly deranged

their order."

Edward laught as he turned over the leaves of the strange book.

"None of your scoffing, young gentleman!" cried the old man: "so you

too are one of their super-clever new-fangled wiseacres. But if you

were once to see what I have seen, when all alone far down

underground, cut off from the heavens and the whole world, with no

light but my lamp, and no sound but my own hammer within hearing, and

the terrible tall spirit of the mountain came to me; I'd wager you

would twist your face into some other look, and would not laugh as you

do here where the merry morning sun is shining on you. Everybody can

grin; but seeing is the lot of few; and still fewer can behave like

men, when their eyes are thrown open."

"I will pay you for the book, my good old man," replied Edward kindly,

"and keep it for our William till he comes back again."

"Ha ha!" cried the miner, laughing heartily and putting up the money;

"and read it too, and pore over it by yourself, and go on Sundays and

holidays to look out for the marks and the secret passages. Only don't

let them befool you, young man, or cajole, or frighten you; and when

you have found anything, keep a fast hold. Look you, the lord of these

hills, or the old man of the mountain, as many choose to call him,

knows all about the matter: he has thrust his hands into the pockets

of all the richest ghosts and elves and goblins; and they have been

forced to empty them out for him."

"Whom do you mean?" asked Edward a good deal surprised; and at the

same time he wanted to give the besmeared book back again to the old

man, saying with some irritation: "since you cannot trust me, or

rather hold me to be such a fool, keep the treasure-casket yourself

for our friend, and only give the master miner his money."

"No," exclaimed the old man; "what has once been made over and paid

for, must stay in the hands of the buyer: that is a sacred law, and if

we break it, the maste rminer and I shall be under a ban. But whom do

I mean, ask you, by the old man of the mountain, or by the lord of

these hills? Are you ignorant of that? and have already been here a

round dozen of years and more. Why, this is the name all the world

gives to your high and mighty manufacturer, mine-holder, merchant,

gold-maker, ghost-seer, your all-powerful man of millions, your

Balthasar. And perhaps you would make believe into the bargain that

you don't know how he comes by all his unnatural riches. Ay, ay,

friend, the pale old sour-faced growler has them all in

leading-strings, the whole posse of spirits: he is often absent for

weeks, and tarrying with them in their secret chambers: then they pay

away to him; then they break their old crowns in bits, and pour out

the diamonds into his skinny hands; then they strike with their

magical rods against the stone walls, and the water-damsels must needs

swim up from the bottom of the brooks, and bring him gifts, corals,

and pearls, and turkisses. As for gold he scarce heeds it now: he has

a tribe of little elves that wash it out of the sand for him, and

gather it up, like bees, into balls and grains, and then carry it like

honey, and stuff his cane with it. Ay, ay, my worthy smooth-faced

pedlar of all wisdom's small wares! this is why the old man is for

ever moping so, and never dares laugh; this is why he loses his wits

if he chances to hear music, which gladdens the heart of every godly

man; this is why he never goes into company, and is always fretful and

cross-grained: for he knows full well what end he must come to, and

that all his earthly grandeur cannot buy him off; because he has

forsaken his God, and no human being ever saw him in a church."

"This is the hateful part of superstition," exclaimed Edward

indignantly, "which otherwise would only deserve our contempt, and

which, if it did not thus deprave the understanding and the heart,

might delight us by its poetical features, and furnish the imagination

with much fantastical amusement. Are you not ashamed, old man, to

think and prate in this way of the most virtuous, the most beneficent

of men? How many human beings are fed and supplied with comforts by

his extensive transactions? is he not always giving the needy a share

in the blessings with which heaven rewards his industry? He spends his

life in thought, in watching, in care, in writing, in toil, for the

sake of nourishing thousands, who but for him would perish without

employment; and as whatever he undertakes with so much judgement is

favoured by fortune, fools are audacious enough to slander his

understanding which they cannot comprehend, and his virtues which they

are unable to appreciate, with their stupid impertinent

extravagances."

"Fortune!" laught the miner: "you talk of fortune, and fancy that in

using the silliest word in the world you have said something: why, it

is the very same thing that I mean and believe; only that you don't

understand what you say, nor can anybody make any sense of it. My

jewel, the earth, the water, the air, mountains, forests, and vallies,

are no dead lifeless dogs, as you mayhap think them. All sorts of

things dwell and bustle about in them, things that you call powers and

the like: these can't endure to have their old quiet abodes turned

topsy-turvy in this manner, and dug away and blown up with gunpowder

under their very feet. The whole country for miles and miles round is

smoking and steaming, and clattering, and hammering; people are

shovelling and poking, and digging, and blasting, and laying waste

with fire and water even into the entrails of the earth; not a forest

finds mercy; there are glass-houses, and alum works, and copper mines,

and bleaching-grounds, and spinning-jennies: look you, this must bring

mishap or goodhap to the man who sets such a sight of things a-going;

it can't all end in nothing. Where there are no human beings, there

dwell the silent spirits of the mountains and woods: but if they are

too much squeezed,--for when not prest for room and left in peace they

will live on good terms with man and beast,--but when one elbows them

too close, and into their very ribs, they grow pettish and

mischievous: then come deaths, earthquakes, floods, conflagrations,

landslips, and all the other things they bring to pass; or else you

must put a stiff yoke on them, and then they will serve you indeed,

but against the grain, and the more toll they have to pay to anybody,

the worse friends are they to him at the last. Now this, young master,

is what you are pleased to call fortune."

The dispute would probably have lasted some time longer, unless an

elderly man had now approacht them, whom Edward, whenever he was able,

was glad to avoid. On this occasion however Eleazar came too quickly

upon him, and besides had so much business to talk over, that the head

overseer was compelled to stay and hear what the manager of the looms

had to say. Eleazar was a little sickly man, self-willed and sullen,

even more so than his master, the old man of the mountain, as Conrad,

after the custom of the neighbourhood, had called him.

"I heard yesterday," said Eleazar, "of a carriage that was to stop the

night in the next town; as I went by I told William of it; and now the

fellow, who seemed aghast at the tidings, is up and off. My master

will as usual have to endure loss and vexation from these vagabond

knaves, whom he is so fond of trusting before his old tried friends."

His eyes fell on the curious book, he looked into it, and seemed

delighted. "If you like the nonsensical stuff," said Edward, "I will

make you a present of it, in case William, for whom I have bought it,

does not return."

"Thank you, thank you, from my heart!" cried Eleazar, sniggering, as

he lifted his sharp little eyes, and a strange smirking grin made his

yellow crampt face still uglier than before.

"So you really meant what you said!" exclaimed the old miner: "well!

the revelations of the spirit of the earth are in better keeping under

the guard of that sickly gentleman, than with such a merry

care-for-nought." He then turned down the hill on the side opposite to

that which led toward the town, to betake himself to his mine; while

Eleazar seemed buried in thought as he read with great eagerness in

his newly acquired treasure.

Meanwhile Edward was watching a carriage that was toiling up the hill

from the valley, and had just come through the wood. "Are we to have a

visit?" he exclaimed with some surprise.

"Heyday! what!" returned Eleazar: "it is our old master's carriage to

be sure, which he has again been lending to the folks over yonder for

a wedding; and his other coach has been sent off to a christening in

the village at the further end of the mountains. Two such equipages!

and he never uses either himself, since he never stirs out of the

house; and coachmen and lacquies always on their legs to wait on some

beggarly strangers, who don't even thank him when his carriages and

horses go to wreck, and new ones are to be bought at the end of every

four years."

"Can you really find fault with this bountiful kindness?" replied

Edward: but Eleazar relieved him from the trouble of prolonging the

dispute, by carrying off his book in great haste, without once looking

at him. Edward breathed more freely when delivered from the presence

of this odious misanthrope, who took every opportunity of loading his

benefactor with the bitterest abuse.

The coach meanwhile was labouring up the second hill; and from the

slow and unsteady footing of the horses it was evident they must have

come out of the plain. The carriage too, Edward now saw clearly, was a

strange one, and must probably be bringing some unexpected visitant.

With much panting and straining at length the horses dragged the coach

up the last slope; and an elderly lady got out at the door of the

great house, and sent her maid and servant with the carriage to the

inn in the town.

Edward was surprised; for the lady, whose face still betrayed that she

had once been handsome, was entirely unknown to him. "You will allow

me," she said with a sweet-toned voice, "to rest here under the

portico for a moment; after which I should wish to speak to Herr

Balthasar."

Edward felt at a loss what to do, and led the lady with evident

uneasiness to a chair in the entrance hall. "If you will give me

leave," he then said, "I will attend you into the parlour, and order

you some breakfast."

"Thank you for all your kindness," she cried: "the only thing I wish

for, is an interview with the master of the house. Is he up yet? In

what room shall I find him?"

"That none of us knows," answered Edward: "until he himself opens his

door, nobody ventures to go to him; and it is still shut. His wont

however is to rise early, and he says he sleeps but little. Whether he

employs these early solitary hours in reading, or in prayer and

devotion, no one can tell; so great is his reserve toward everybody.

But as to announcing you--even by and by--I know not: for we all have

the strictest orders, never to let in any stranger to him: he speaks

to no one, except his managers and servants on business at stated

hours; and from this rule during the twelve years that I have known

him he has not once departed. Strangers who have anything to request

of him must declare their wishes to me or to master Eleazar; and we

either settle the matter directly ourselves, or, if it does not lie

immediately in our power, we make a report to him on the subject,

without his ever setting eyes on the person. These whimsical rules, if

you choose so to call them, render his solitude unapproachable; and

that is the very thing he wishes."

"O God!" cried the lady with a tone of anguish: "and must this journey

then, this hard effort of mine, be all utterly in vain? For how could

I ever find words to express my wishes and requests to a perfect

stranger? O dear good Sir, your eye bespeaks and reveals the kindness

of your heart: for my sake, for the sake of a miserable, deeply

afflicted woman, make an exception this once to the strict custom of

the house, and tell your master that I am here."

At this moment they heard the sound of a large bell. "That is the

sign," said Edward, "that we may go and speak to him, and that his

room is open. I will say everything for you that you wish; but I know

beforehand it is to no purpose, and I shall bring down his anger on my

own head, without doing you any service."

He went dejectedly down the long passage: for it pained him that he

could not assist the lady whose noble form moved and interested him.

Old Balthasar was sitting in deep thought, his head leaning on his

arm, at his writing-table: he looked up cheerfully and kindly at

Edward's greeting, and held out his hand. When the young man, after

making a long preface to excuse himself and conciliate his master,

mentioned the wife of a privy-counsellor, whose maiden name was

Fernich, the old man started up suddenly from his desk as if struck by

lightning, with a frightful cry.

"Fernich! Elizabeth!" he then exclaimed, with fearful vehemence; "she,

she here? in my house! O God, O heaven, quickly, quickly let her come

in! O do make haste, my dear friend;" he cried out again, and his

voice failed him.

Edward was almost terrified, and went back to bring the stranger to

Balthasar. In the mean time she had been joined by the young lady of

the house, an adopted child, but whom the old man loved with the same

tenderness and treated just as if she had been his own. The stranger

trembled, and when she reacht the old man's apartment was near

fainting: Balthasar dried his tears, and was unable to find words, as

he led the pale lady to a chair: he made a sign, and Edward left the

room, in great anxiety about his old friend, whom he had never seen so

strongly moved, and with whom owing to this singular scene he stood on

an entirely new footing.

"It was very good of you, Rose," he said to the young blooming girl,

"to entertain the stranger lady while she was waiting."

"It was all to very little purpose," answered she, blushing: "for she

was so faint and exhausted that, whatever I could say, she did nothing

but weep. She must surely be sick, or have some heavy load on her

heart. It has made me quite sorrowful, and I too have been crying.

These eyes in our head are certainly very funny creatures, just like

little children. They run about, and stare, and gaze at every thing

new, shining and twinkling with joy; and then they grow so serious and

sad, and when the pain at one's heart is very sore, they bubble with

tears and overflow, and anon they become bright and glad again. There

must be a vast number of sorrows in the world, my dear Edward."

"May heaven preserve you from any very melancholy trials!" replied he:

"hitherto your young life has glided along as peacefully as a swan

over a silent pool."

"You fancy," cried she laughing, "that such a thing as I cannot have

had any sorrows of its own, much less very bitter and painful ones.

You are mightily mistaken."

"Well?" asked Edward earnestly.

"One can't remember all in a moment what one's sorrows are," said the

good-natured girl: "wait a little. When I think of sundry great

misfortunes in the world, about which I have heard people talking at

times, then indeed there does not seem to be very much in what I have

had to go through: yet for little things like me a little misfortune

is quite big enough. Now is not it a real grievance that I must never

hear music? that I don't know how people look, or how they feel, when

they are dancing? Ah, dearest Edward, the other day, when we were

taking a drive, we passed by the little inn over yonder on the other

side of the town, where the country folks were having a dance: their

jumping about, the sound of the fiddles, the strange glee in the airs

made such an odd impression on me, I cannot tell whether I felt glad,

or sad to the very bottom of my heart. Here in our neighbourhood we

must never have any music, either in the inn or anywhere else. Then

when I hear of plays and operas, I cannot quite persuade myself that

such wonderful things are really and truly to be found in the world.

The lights, the numbers of finely drest people, and then a real stage,

and a whole story acted upon it, which I am to believe to be true: can

there be anything more curious? And is not it then a grievous

affliction, that I am to grow old here, without ever in my whole life

catching a single short glimpse of all these grand doings? Tell me,

dear Edward, you too are a good man, is this wish of mine, are those

sights themselves very sinful? Herr Eleazar indeed says they are, and

my dear fatherly uncle thinks the same of them, and hates everything

of the sort: but the king and the magistrates allow them, and learned

people approve them, and write and compose the things that are to be

acted: can all this then be so very wicked?"

"My dear child," said Edward with the utmost friendliness, "how sorry

I am that I cannot procure you even this innocent pleasure! But you

know yourself how strict Herr Balthasar is in all these matters."

"O yes," she replied: "why the miners in our town here must never even

hum a tune; we must never drive more than just two miles from the

gate; and no amusing book, no poem, no novel is ever let come into the

house. And added to all this we are perpetually frightened with being

told that such a number of thoughts and fancies, and all that one is

fond of dreaming about in many a lonesome hour, are impious sins. At

such times I muse over all sorts of little stories about the loveliest

spirits, and beautiful vallies, and how the miller finds his love in

the mill-stream, who by and by turns out to be a princess and makes

him a king, or how the fisherman jumps into the river, and at the

bottom finds the most glittering and gorgeous wonders. Or a little

shepherdess is playing with her lambs on the meadow, and a handsome

prince, sitting upon a great horse, rides by and falls in love with

her. And then, if the evening bells chance to peal through the dusk,

and the wind brings the noise of the hammering and knocking from yon

black mountain, or I hear the sledge-hammer from afar, I could cry,

and yet in fact am glad at my very heart. But our surly gloomy

Eleazar, one day that I was telling him of this, abused me bitterly,

and said that busying oneself with such thoughts is the very pitch of

sin and wickedness. And yet I can't help it; for it all comes into my

head just of its own accord."

"Dear innocent creature!" said Edward, and seized the blooming girl's

hand.

"To you," she went on, "one may talk of all this, and you understand

everything in the right way: but other people immediately begin

scolding me, because they put a wrong meaning into everything. It was

just the same with my old nurse, who is now dead. You had been a long

time in the house before I ever thought I could tell you anything or

trust you; I was so very little then and used to play with my doll.

Dear Heaven, it is now full ten years since the last time I dandled my

Clary, as we called her. To my old Bridget, and my father, and

Eleazar, and the cook, I thought I might say everything, because they

were so grave: you were always laughing; and this made me fancy that

you did not rightly belong to us. Now when prayer time came, they would

not let me look at Clary, or carry her with me; but she was shut up in

the cupboard. This made me very sorry; for I fancied she must be

crying after me. So I found out a way, and took her along with me hid

under my pinafore, and held her close to my heart to keep her warm;

and when we came into the prayer-room I began by praying in private to

God that he would forgive me if I was too fond of my Clary, that he

would pardon me too, great and mighty as he was, for having brought

her in secret into his high presence, and that he would not think I

meant to deceive him or to treat him with disrespect, for he knew it

was not so. After this preface I fancied I had made my peace, and

repeated my usual prayers very devoutly. Thus all went on well for a

week: then Bridget found me out. O gracious! then there was a great to

do: even my good father said, this shewed how the human heart from its

very infancy is so corrupt and wicked as to give itself up to the

idolatry of worthless and contemptible things. I cannot understand

even now what he meant by these words. Whenever one loves anything, is

it not very beautiful and perfectly right that one does not pry into

it and finger it too closely? What is a rose, when I pull it to

pieces? It is so perishable, and therefore so dear. Was it my poor

Clary's fault, that she was only a leather doll? Last week I was

looking at her again one day, and could not make out myself how I came

to be so fond of her formerly; and yet I could almost have cried to

think that none of the feelings of those days will ever come back to

me again. But surely this cannot be fickleness in me now, any more

than my love ten years ago was idolatry and wickedness."

"Dear angel," said Edward tenderly, "our heart is trained by the love

of visible perishable objects for the love of the invisible and

eternal. When I see a child playing thus fondly and innocently with

puppets of its own making, and crying for love and delight over the

lifeless toy, I could fancy that at such hours angels gather about the

little creature and sport lovingly around it."

"Ah," exclaimed Rose, "that is a beautiful notion!"

"When however," continued Edward, "heart truly bends to heart, when

two souls meet and give up themselves to each other in love, this

faith and feeling of theirs invests the invisible with a palpable

reality, and brings it for all eternity before them."

"That again I don't understand," said the maiden pondering; "but if

you mean that sort of love which is necessary for a wedding, and to

make a truly happy marriage, I think very differently on that score."

"How so?" asked the young man.

"That is a hard matter to explain," answered the girl, putting on a

look of deep thought.

"Supposing now," said Edward, forcing himself to laugh, that he might

hide his emotion, "you had to marry tomorrow, whom would you choose?

Which of all the men you have hitherto met with, do you like the best?

Have you enough confidence in me to answer me this question honestly?"

"Why should not I?" she replied: "for I need not even spend a moment

in considering the point."

"And ... and the man you have already chosen?"

"Is of course our Eleazar."

Edward started back in utter amazement. "A moment ago you did not

understand me, he said after a pause; and now you have told me a

riddle that terrifies me."

"And yet," she answered with perfect simplicity, "it is the most

natural thing in the world. My father too, I fancy, has already made

up his mind, that our honest Eleazar is to be my future husband. Were

I to love and choose you, there would be nothing remarkable in it; for

I like you, and so does every body else; no one can help feeling

confidence in you; and at the same time you are very handsome, and

always friendly and good-humoured, so that, when one has once become

acquainted with you, one hardly knows how to live without you. Such

persons as our William would find a thousand girls to grow fond of

them; and it is a pity that he has already run away from us again.

Even old Conrad, and my father himself, must have been good-looking

when they were younger: but only look at poor Eleazar, who is not so

very old yet, and whom not a creature in the house, nay in the whole

world can endure;--what is to become of him, if I do not marry him."

"How!" said Edward interrupting her; "is your fair life to fall a

victim to this fantastical delusion? Can the perplexity in which dark

spirits involve themselves, entangle the purity of innocence in its

snares? and must love itself devise a robe to deck out the most

frantic extravagance as an act of noble self-sacrifice and reasonable

resignation?"

"We are quite at cross purposes today," she continued calmly. "It is

not that I really love him: I have not even a notion yet what this

love they talk of is, or what it means. Let me tell you again about

the sorrows of my youth, with which we began. In the days when I was

still very fond of my Clary, I had also a cat in the house here, that

was no less dear to my childish heart. I even fancied to myself that

the doll and the little white playful creature must be very jealous of

each other on my account. Now Herr Eleazar detested and persecuted

everything that even looked like a cat; for he says they are

malicious. This seems to be a general superstition. Wherever the sleek

animals shew their faces, everybody, even the best-natured people,

will begin shouting, _puss! puss!_ and will worry and hunt them, as if,

in pursuing the harmless things, they were driving away Antichrist

himself. And this it is that makes them, as no doubt they are, so

mistrustful and wary. My cat had kittens, which were just nine days

old, and opening their little blue eyes. What fun and pleasure it is

for children, to see the mother with her young ones, and the droll

sports of the kittens, and their skipping and tumbling and jumping

about, nobody who is grown up can understand. On the very same day

master Eleazar had just got a new airgun, which he wanted to try.

Complaints had for some time been made to my father, that my cat used

to hunt the singing birds and eat them. It was taking the air behind

the house, in the garden, and amusing itself by running up and down

the big orange-tree. On the sudden Eleazar shot at it and it fell

dead; and now the kittens too were to be drowned. Never before had I

thought him so brown and nasty, so unlike a human being. In the night

I prayed that God would let him too die; but the very next morning,

though I was still such a mere child, it struck me to the heart, how

very, very unhappy he must be, that there was no creature he could

love, and neither man nor beast could love him; and so I think still.

Such an odious creature as he is, he will never find a heart on earth,

if I were to blot him out of mine."

"Dear little Rose," said Edward, somewhat calmer, "you must not be too

hasty, and assuredly you will change your mind on this point by and

by."

"My fate," she again began, while the tears mounted into her bright

eyes, "has in fact been just like that of the poor little kittens;

only that God Almighty did not let me be drowned in the same wretched

manner. But I too never knew my mother; she had never the happiness of

bringing me up; she died shortly after my birth. My foster-father here

is very kind to me; still it must be quite a different feeling to have

a real father; but he too is in his grave. Now, reckoning up all this,

methinks we have here made out quite unhappiness enough for so young a

thing."

"Dearest Rose," said Edward after a pause, "would it give you any

pain, if you knew that I too was very unhappy? or if I too were gone?"

"Alas! my dear good friend," she exclaimed, "don't make me cry. I tell

you, I never liked anybody so well as you. But happy and gay as you

are, with all the world so fond of you, you can do very well without

my love. But I cannot do without yours."

A servant now came and called Edward away to the old man. The

conversation must have been of deep interest; for Balthasar as well as

the stranger seemed dissolved in tears, though both were trying hard

to collect themselves.

"My dear friend," said the old man with a broken voice, "my good

gentle Edward, will you conduct the stranger lady to the inn; but at

the same time take along with you four thousand dollars in gold and

bills out of my strong-box. No human being however, I trust and charge

you, must know of this affair, least of all Eleazar. Only conceive,

the savage has left three letters of the highest importance from this

poor woman to me without an answer. His not shewing them to me I can

forgive, since on that point he has full powers from me."

His wishes were executed, and the stranger set off again in the

afternoon in better spirits, without paying her old friend another

visit.

* * * * *

The next day Balthasar sent Edward a summons to his room. When he had

lockt the door he began: "You are the only person entrusted with a

circumstance and a connexion, which agitated me so deeply yesterday

that I was unable to tell you anything about it. As however I look

upon you quite in the light of my son, I feel myself bound to disclose

something more of myself and my story to you, than any mortal man has

ever yet heard."

They sat down: the old man gave his young friend his hand, which the

latter prest cordially, and then said: "You cannot doubt my affection

and friendship; and what you confide to me will in my hands be as

secret as in the silent grave."

"I have watcht you this long time," said the old man, "and know you

well. Hitherto we have had but little talk together; I am now forced

to change and break through my usage with regard to you, and I am

anxious besides that there should be a being who knows and understands

me."

Edward's curiosity was roused; and the old man went on with a

tremulous voice: "I am still so much moved, my whole frame is still so

much disordered by yesterday's shock, that you must have patience with

my weakness. That my life is a cheerless one, that I have long

renounced all those recreations and enjoyments, which are in fact the

only things most men live for, you must long ago have remarkt. From my

youth up I have got out of the way of pleasure, with a feeling which I

might almost call dread. Educated by a rigid father, who lived in the

greatest penury, my childhood and youth were merely suffering and

sorrow. When I grew bigger, my ripening understanding only enabled me

more distinctly to perceive the misery of my parents and the

wretchedness of the whole earth. Often for many nights together no

sleep visited my eyes, which were flowing with tears. Thus my

imagination accustomed itself to view the whole world as nothing but a

place of punishment, where sorrow and need were the lot of all, and

such as were raised above the sordid wants of life were but in a yet

sadder state of silly delusion, in which they neither recognized their

own calling nor the destiny of mankind, but giving themselves up to

vapid pleasures and pitiful comforts reeled along toward the grave.

One single star shed its light through this dark gloom,--but it was as

far beyond my reach as if it had stood in the heavens,--my relation

Elizabeth, whom you saw: she was rich, highborn, and bred to a life of

splendour and luxury. A cousin of mine, Helbach, who was still richer

and haughtier, was designed for her husband: our family scarcely ever

saw these proud relations of theirs; and my stern father had a special

hatred for them, and never spake but with rancour of their

extravagance. This hatred he also transferred to me, when he

discovered my secret and strong affection. He gave me his curse, if I

ever dared to think of that lovely and beloved being. Nor was it long

before she was married to her overbearing kinsman; one stream of

wealth flowed into the other, and produced such a splendid way of

living that the whole town felt envy at it. My mother's brother, who

gave his son this large fortune, was so much ashamed of our poverty,

that he did not even invite my parents to the wedding; which so

greatly increast the vexation and annoyance of my father, already a

prey to bitter mortification, that the after-throes of this insult

brought him to the grave. My poor mother soon followed him. Of myself

I will say nothing. If life had hitherto worn a dark aspect in my

eyes, it now changed into a spectre, whose ghastly, distorted features

and looks at first struck me with horrour, and afterward, when use

made me cold and indifferent, taught me to despise everything, above

all myself. Elizabeth had known of my passion. Rarely as we saw each

other, she had taken no pains to conceal the affection with which she

answered mine. Though she was not like me utterly dead to all joy, yet

a shade was cast over her whole existence, and heavy clouds covered

it. She has suffered enough since. Her husband was a profligate

spendthrift; he squandered thousands from vanity, and for paltry,

contemptible purposes. It would look as if a number of ill-starred

men bore a kind of malice and hatred against money, so that they have

recourse to the strangest devices to drive it away from them on every

side, while the miser hugs and cherishes it with a blind devotion, and

lets himself be crusht by his idol. Elizabeth was weak enough to give

up her property to him unconditionally, and, when his credit had

already fallen, to declare herself bound by his debts; and thus the

very house into which all the gods of Olympus had seemed to enter,

bringing eternal joy as their gift, became a scene of misery,

confusion, hatred, and strife. The wretched husband, counsellor

Helbach, has sold his last shilling for an annuity, without a thought

about his wife and son. This son of his is as it were possest by the

furies, unruly, headstrong, and without feeling: he ran into debt,

then took to swindling, and finally, two years ago, when his weeping

mother was trying to admonish him, abused and even struck her in his

brutal rage. After this grand feat he set off into the wide world. His

father meanwhile revels and laughs, devouring his income, which must

still be large, at well-stored tables. This made her come to me,

subduing her pride and her feelings, in order that I might relieve her

from a debt, which would have brought her to shame and to a prison.

These twenty years past she has been longing to die, but still lives,

an object of horrour to herself, and of pleasure to nobody.--Send her

a thousand dollars every quarter: she has promist me that her

abandoned husband shall know nothing of this assistance either now or

hereafter."

Edward saw the old man's deep anguish, and was long silent: at last he

began: "But how could Eleazar be so cruel as not to tell you of those

letters?"

"I was in the wrong," replied the old man, "to find fault with him for

it yesterday. He acts in my name, and knows well that I am weak and

soft-hearted: the particulars he was not aware of, and so only did his

duty. Indeed I know not myself after all whether I have done rightly

in following my torn and deeply agitated heart: for perhaps still she

may have too little firmness to keep the wretch in ignorance of what

has happened; in spite of everything he is her husband, and of all her

ties his are the closest. You no doubt, because you love me, but are

of a tender disposition so that distress affects you, would have acted

otherwise, and better; and yet probably were I to put myself entirely

in your hands, you would spoil me and ruin me: for no quality a man

can have is so dangerous as vanity, which draws food from everything."

"What do you mean by vanity?" asked Edward.

"All our feelings," answered the old man, "the best and honestest, the

gentlest and blissfullest, are rooted in this poisonous soil. But more

of this another time. I only wanted to tell you briefly, how I

acquired my fortune, how my character took that cast under which you

have learnt to know me. After my parents death I fulfilled my father's

last wish by uniting myself to a girl who was also a distant relation

of our family. She was poor, unprovided, unprotected, had grown up

amid straits without any kind of education; at the same time she was

hideously ugly, and her temper was so morose and quarrelsome, that I

never spent a pleasant hour with her, and had very few peaceful ones

so long as she lived. My situation was horrible."

"But how came you to marry her?" said Edward.

"Because I had given my word to my father," continued Balthasar; "and

because it is a principle of mine, that man must never gratify his

passions, least of all that of love. My conviction is, that our life

is a state of torment and woe; and the more we try to escape from

these feelings, the more awful vengeance do our terrours afterward

take upon us. As to why this is so, who can fathom that question?"

"This belief," answered Edward, "is extremely strange, and at variance

with all our wishes, nay with everyday experience."

"O how scanty then must your experience have been hitherto!" replied

the old man. "Everything lives and moves, only to die and to rot:

everything feels, only to feel pangs. Our inward agony spurs us on to

what we call joy; and all wherewith spring and hope and love and

pleasure beguile mankind, is only the inverted sting of pain. Life is

woe, hope sadness, thought and reflexion despair."

"And supposing all to be so," said Edward somewhat timidly, "do we not

find comfort and help in religion?"

The old man lifted up his eyes and gazed fixedly in his young

companion's face: his dark look grew brighter, not however with

pleasure or any soft emotion; but so strange a smile ran across his

pale furrowed features, that it lookt very much like scorn; and Edward

involuntarily thought of the miner's words.

"Let us turn aside from this theme for today," said the old man with

his usual gloomy air; "we shall probably find time hereafter to speak

of it. Thus I lived on in my state of damnation, and the thought of

Elizabeth shone with a friendly but heart-piercing light into the hell

around me. Still the frenzy of life had laid fast hold on me, and made

me too take my place in the vast bedlam, and go through my part under

the great task-master. People tell you that death cures all; others

again look forward to being transported from one workhouse to another,

where they shall keep on playing the fool through all eternity and

evaporating in an endless succession of illusions. With a little

money--it would be ridiculous were I to mention the sum; many take so

much merely to fill their bellies--I engaged in a small line of

business. It succeeded. I made a petty mercantile speculation. It

turned out well. I entered into partnership with a man of considerable

property. It seemed as if I had a talent of always guessing and

foreboding where gain and profit were lying hid in distant countries,

in uninviting, or hazardous undertakings; something like what is said

of the divining rod, that it will hit upon metals and upon water. As

many gardeners have a lucky hand, so in trade I prospered in every,

even the most unpromising speculation. It was neither strength of

understanding nor extent of knowledge, but mere luck. One becomes a

man of understanding however, so soon as one has luck. My partner was

astonisht; and, as he had a small estate here, we removed into this

country, where till the time of his death we went on enlarging the

number of our houses of business and manufactories. When he died, and

I had settled my accounts with his heir, I might already have been

accounted a rich man. But a feeling of awe came upon me along with

this property as they call it. For how great is the responsibility for

managing it rightly! And why were so many honest men unfortunate,

while with me everything throve so unaccountably? After a number of

painful years my wife also died: without children, without friends, I

was again alone. How singularly that blind being, that men call

fortune, pampered me, you may see from the following story. I always

felt an aversion to play at cards or any other game for money. For

what does a gambler do, but declare that he will exalt the wretched

stuff, to which even as money he attaches such an inordinate value,

into an oracle and a promulgation of the divine will? And then he

stakes his heart and soul on this delusion: the freaks of chance,

things utterly without meaning, are to calculate and make out for him

by certain fantastical combinations, what he is worth, how he is

favoured: his dark passions start up when he supposes that this chance

neglects him; he triumphs when he fancies it sides with him; his blood

flows more rapidly, his head is in an uprore, his heart throbs

tumultuously, and he is more wretched than the madman that is lying in

chains, when every card, down to the very last, turns up against him.

Look you, this is the king of the creation in his patcht beggar's

garb, which he takes to be a royal robe."

The old man almost laught, and Edward replied: "Such is the case with

all life; it runs along on a narrow line between truth and fancy,

between reality and delusion."

"Be it so!" cried Balthasar. "But no more of this. I was only going to

tell you how I let myself be persuaded by my partner in the last year

of his life to put for once into the neighbouring lottery. I did so

against my own feelings; because these institutions appear to me

deserving of the severest punishment. By them the state sanctions

highway-robbery and murder. Even without such things ill-fated man is

immoderately inflamed by the lust of gain. I had already forgotten the

paltry concern, when I heard I had gained the great prize: after

receiving the payment it never let me rest. What the vulgar fable of

evil spirits, had come into my house along with these money-bags. This

unblest sum supplied the funds for the hospital for sick old women in

the valley a couple of leagues off, the building of which has been

made such a merit of by senseless newspaper-scribes. What had I

contributed toward it? Not even a stroke of the pen. Now you will

understand how my perpetual gains, and the sums that flowed in to me

from every venture, compelled me to plunge into fresh speculations,

and how this has been going on year after year upon an ever-widening

scale. And thus there is neither rest nor pause, until death will at

length put the last full stop to the matter for this bout. Then some

one else will of course begin to rave on just where I left off, and

the same invisible power will perhaps meet his folly under the shape

of misfortune."

Edward knew not what to say. "You are not yet used," the old man

continued, "to my words and expressions, because we have never yet

talked upon these matters; you do not yet know my way of thinking; and

as these feelings, these views of life are still new to you, you are

surprised. Believe me, my good fellow, the only thing that keeps one

from going mad, is swimming silently along with the stream, letting

five always pass for even, and fitting oneself to that which cannot be

changed. At the same time there is also another remedy that may serve

to keep one afloat. One may lay down certain fixt unshakable

principles, a line of conduct from which one never swerves. Money,

wealth, gain, the circulation and the flowing of property and of the

precious metals toward every quarter, through every relation of life,

and every region of the earth, are one of the very strangest devices

the world ever hit upon. It is a creature of necessity like every

thing else; and as there is nothing on which passion has seized with

such force, it has bred it up to be a monster more chimerical and wild

than anything the fever of a heated fancy ever dreamt of. This monster

is incessantly devouring and preying on all that comes within its

reach; nothing satiates it; it gnaws and crunches the bones of the

destitute, and laps up their tears. That in London and Paris before a

palace, where a single banquet costs a thousand pieces of gold, a poor

man should die of starvation, when the hundredth part of a piece of

gold might save him,--that families should perish in frantic

despair,--that there should be madness and suicide in the very room

where a couple of paces off gamblers are rioting in gold,--all this

seems so natural to us, such a matter of course, that we no longer

feel any surprise at it; and everybody takes for granted with

cold-blooded apathy, that it all must be so, and cannot be otherwise.

How every state pampers this money-monster!--indeed it cannot help

doing so--and trains it up to be more ferocious! In many countries

wealth can no longer increase except among the rich, whereby the poor

will be still more impoverisht, until at length Time will cast up the

dismal sum, and then draw a bloody pen across the appalling amount.

When I found myself thus rich, I held it to be my duty to keep this

wealth in controul, so far as man can, and to tame the wild beast.

Unquestionably the creation has been doomed to woe; else war, disease,

famine, pain, and passion would not run riot and lay waste so.

Existence and torment are one and the same word: nevertheless every

one who does not mean wantonly to play the fiend, is bound to

alleviate misery wherever he can. There is no property in the sense

which most people put on the word; there ought not to be any, and the

attempt to keep hold of it is godless. Still worse is it to spread

calamity by the influence of wealth. Thus then I administer mine, so

as to help my neighbours, to find work for the poor, care and remedies

for the sick; and by an ever-increasing activity I strive to bring

things into such a state, that as many as possible shall eat their

bread without tears and anguish, shall gather pleasure from their

children and their occupations, and that, so far as my eye and arm can

reach, the creation may not be the object of as many curses here, as

in other villages and towns."

"The blessings you diffuse," Edward threw in, "must make you also

happy."

"Blessings!" repeated the old man and shook his head. "It is all a

mere drop in the ocean. How short is the time within which even the

child that is now sucking at the breast must needs die! This time,

these hundreds and thousands of years, how they mock at our frail

edifices! how Oblivion triumphs in every part of the earth, with ruins

crumbling beneath her feet! and Destruction, while with unfeeling

malignity she tramples every form of life in the dust! I have just

been comforting my good Elizabeth today. But can I really comfort her?

She is for ever haunted by the thought of her destiny, of her life, of

her lost youth, of her having flung herself away on a worthless being,

of her having brought a tiger as her son into the world. In her dreams

she is visited by the feeling, whether asleep or waking it pursues

her, and thrills through every fibre, that she once loved me, perhaps

loves me still; and so her heart has to bear my wretchedness along

with her own. True she may now and then relish a morsel somewhat

better; she may now and then forget herself, perhaps over some silly

book, delighting in the good fortune of others, and feeling interest

in afflictions which are merely faint shadows of her own; and this

sentimental folly may help her over half a dozen minutes a little more

at her ease. Verily it is a grand achievement that I have been able to

do this for her. The consciousness however, that neither her husband

nor her son, the offspring of her own blood and body, and surely of

her soul too, is to know anything of my bounty, as it would be called,

or else her sufferings will increase--do you not perceive how pitiful

this, and the whole of life is? But let us break off, and tell me

instead what news you have heard."

Edward informed him that William had again gone off suddenly and

without assigning any cause. "I am glad of it," answered the old man;

"I always took him for our thief, and winkt hard in looking at him,

that I might not ruin him utterly: this indulgence however must have

come to an end. I was exceedingly fond of him, and for that very

reason only hated him the more."

"How do you mean?" asked the young man.

"Why," replied the other, "foolishly enough I felt charmed by his

countenance, by the soft sound of his voice, by his whole look and

air: this perverse sympathy will keep following us everywhere. I took

a liking to him: and catching my heart in this piece of folly, I

punisht myself by conceiving a downright aversion to the fellow, as we

should and must do to everything we are greatly delighted with."

Edward wanted to ask further questions, but the striking of the clock

called him to his business, and being dismist by the old man he went

away, with a multitude of thoughts concerning this singular

conversation, to meditate further upon it at leisure.

* * * * *

Whenever Edward's thoughts now recurred, as they often did, to the

nature of his situation, that and every thing connected with it, the

appointment which had fixt him in this secluded spot, the business he

was engaged in, as well as the persons with whom he had to hold

intercourse, appeared to him in a light totally different from before.

He was loth to acknowledge to himself how forcibly and singularly his

imagination had been wrought upon by his late discourse with Rose.

Hitherto he had only lookt on her as a pleasing child; but now the

lovely girl became an object to which expectations and silent hopes

attacht themselves: he watcht her more attentively; he talked oftener

to her and more at length; and the budding of her youthful soul, the

frank artlessness of her thoughts, interested his heart more and more.

And then, when he recollected the hideous, sallow-faced Eleazar, with

his surly morose temper, and thought that this tender flower had

already in secret devoted herself as a sacrifice to so odious a

creature, his anger was moved by this absurd project, which at other

times again he could not help smiling at. Eleazar had been absent for

some days past. He had not taken much pains to conceal that he was

going into the lonely, remote parts of the mountains in search of

those marks which he had read of in the master miner's book. This

absurdity sorted well with his strange dreamy character; for he was

perpetually poring over books of magic and alchemical treatises, had a

laboratory in his room, and would often boast in pretty intelligible

hints that he had found the philosopher's stone. When Edward bethought

himself of his singular conversation with his old master, and of the

sentiments he had given vent to during that confidential hour, he no

longer regarded it as improbable that Balthasar should have been led

by his wild moody whims to design his blooming foster-daughter for the

wife of the gloomy Eleazar. A shudder came over him to think with what

dark and perplext spirits he was so closely linkt; his head went round

with the giddiness of all about him, and he seemed almost to lose his

hold on himself. This made him still more regret the loss of young

William: at the same time his annoyances were increast by the

robberies of the warehouse, which instead of ceasing were carried on

with more audacity than ever. He himself had entertained a slight

suspicion of William, and was quite unable to make out how the crime

was perpetrated.

In this mood it was with no very friendly welcome that he met Eleazar

on his return from his wild-goose chace. Eleazar too grew highly

indignant, when he heard that the robberies had been continued during

his absence with the greatest impudence; and as he could not justly

charge Edward with any negligence or supineness, this first

conversation between them, little as they had ever been disposed to

agree, took a tone of still more bitterness than usual. As soon as his

hateful companion was gone, Edward determined to do what he now could

not help regarding as his indispensable duty, by speaking more

seriously than ever to Herr Balthasar on this subject.

These depredations, which were prosecuted with so much security,

excited the wonder of the whole neighbourhood; and at the public-house

in the town there was often much talk about them. Old Conrad was

sitting in the wooden arm-chair beside the stove, and was just telling

the fat thriving landlord the details of the last robbery, when a

stranger came in, who immediately gave himself out to be a travelling

miner. The stranger was much younger than Conrad, and therefore at

first modestly said but little, and merely asked a few questions,

insinuating however that there might probably be means of soon

bringing the matter to light, if his advice were but to be followed.

By these hints the curiosity of some peasants who happened to be

present, having come with corn from the plain several miles off to

this town high up among the mountains, was vehemently aroused. Conrad,

who lookt upon himself as the wisest person in the company, became

grave and monosyllabic, waiting to hear what this new device or scheme

for detecting the thief, would end in.

"You must lay a charm," said the stranger, "which the thief, when he

has once set foot within it, will not be able to escape from; and so,

as soon as the sun rises, you are sure to find him."

"And what is such a charm to be made of?" asked Andrew, who was the

forwardest of the peasants.

Conrad laught aloud and scornfully, while he said: "Clownish dolts,

don't thrust in your tongues, when people are debating about matters

of art and science; stick to your straw and your chaff; they are

things you are better skilled in handling. Proceed, knowing sir," he

added, looking with suspicious graciousness toward the stranger; "how

do you mean that such a charm or spell is to be prepared, so as to be

certain of its effect?"

The stranger, whose pale face formed a singular contrast with the

stout dusky-hued Conrad, the fat host, and the puffy cheeks of the

peasants, said with a somewhat stifled voice: "Yew twigs cut and

peeled beneath the new moon, and then boiled at the first quarter in a

decoction of wolf's milk and hemlock, which itself must have been

previously made on the selfsame night, are to be stuck in the earth,

while some words that I know are repeated, at certain distances round

the spot where the robbery is committed; and the thief, be he ever so

daring, and ever so learned in laying spells and breaking them, will

be unable to step out of this circle, and will stand in fear and

trembling, till the persons who set the magical trap pounce upon him

in the morning. I have often seen this practist in Hungary and

Transylvania, and it has always succeeded."

Conrad was about to answer, but the pert Andrew was beforehand with

him and cried: "My grandfather, the smith, had a spell with

abracadabra, which was to be repeated backward and forward, along with

certain verses of the Bible; and when he had said these words, every

thief, whether he was in the wood, on the high road, or in the field,

was forced to halt on the sudden in the middle of his running,--or, if

he was riding on horseback, it was just the same--and to wait in

terrour and affright, so that even children if they chose might seize

hold of him."

Conrad gave the peasant a look of inexpressible contempt, and then

turning with ambiguous courtesy to the strange miner, said: "You are a

man of experience and knowledge, as it seems; nevertheless your

well-meant advice will hardly meet with acceptance here. For first the

old man of the mountain will never have anything to do with sorcery

and witchcraft, because he hates every kind of superstition, even that

which is pious and unavoidable, much more then one of this sort, which

he must needs hold to be utterly accurst. Besides you don't even know

in what way the thief goes to work, so as to take proper measures

against him."

"What do you mean?" asked the stranger, somewhat abasht, but whose

curiosity was stirred.

"Have you never heard," continued Conrad, "or read of those wonderful

persons, or, as you have been such a great traveller, have you

yourself never stumbled upon such, whose eyes can pierce through a

board, through wainscot and wall, nay down into the depths of the

earth and into the heart of a mountain?"

"In Spain," replied the stranger, "there are said to be men, who

without the help of a divining-rod can find out treasures and metals

with their bodily eyes, even though they should be lying ever so deep

under rocks or forests."

"Just so," proceeded Conrad; "Zahori, or Zahuri is the name borne, as

I have heard tell, by the people who have carried their power and

knowledge to this pitch. Only nobody knows whether one man can learn

this of another, or whether it is a natural gift, or proceeds from a

league with the evil one."

"From the devil certainly!" cried Andrew interrupting him, having been

gradually poking in his face nearer and nearer.

"I am not talking to you, lowland lubber," said Conrad; "you would do

better to seat yourself behind the stove; that is your right place

when people are canvassing grave questions of science."

Andrew muttered, and angrily drew back his chair a little; whereupon

Conrad went on; "Look you man, this art in many countries is not the

only one, nor even the highest, profitable as it may be for

discovering veins of metal, or even gold and silver. Of much greater

weight however, and far more formidable are those who have a power in

their eyes to do one an injury, and with a single glance can infect

one with a disease, a fever, a jaundice, a fit of madness, or even

look one dead. The better and godlier part of these persons hence

always of their own accord wear a bandage before one of their

eyes--for this power will often exist only on one side--so that they

may walk about and deal with their neighbours, without harming them."

"Of these I have never heard," replied the stranger.

"That is matter of surprise to me," continued the old miner with the

most perfect gravity: "for since you come from Hungary, and probably

were born there, where you have such a sight of vampires, or

blood-sucking corpses, such swarms of goblins and manikins of the

mountains, dwarfs and subterraneous creatures, that will often come

across you even by broad daylight, I fancied everything belonging to

witchcraft must be in high vogue there and generally notorious."

"No," answered the traveller, "I never up to this present instant

heard anything of these prodigies, much as I have seen and myself

experienced that by such as have not been so far from home may be

deemed remarkable enough."

"Now then," said Conrad taking up his word again, "when the Zahori, as

they call him, has once got so far that with his naked eye, instead of

quietly seeing the treasures beneath his feet, he can give anyone a

fit of sickness or put him to death, he has only one step further to

become perfect and a master in his art. Look you, my good stranger,

when he has thus reacht the highest degree, he will set himself down

before a dish of baked meat, while it is still standing in the oven

covered up and shut down, and without anybody being able to observe

him will with his mere eyes devour you a goose, or a hare, or whatever

it may be, swallowing it up so clean and neat, that, if he chooses,

not a bone will be left. Place some nuts before him or melons, he will

eat up all the kernel or pulp out of them, without making even a

single scratch on the shell or rind, but leaving them undamaged just

as if everything was still within. He has had a good meal; nobody can

prove, or even suspect what he has done; and others have nothing left

them but a fruitless search."

"The devil again!" cried Andrew; "that's the trick I should like, if I

could learn the art."

"An artist of this sort," continued the old miner, "may however ascend

a great deal higher; for such things after all would be merely a jest.

If he has a spite against any one, he can pluck his heart out of his

body with a look, just as easily as his money out of his pocket. The

enemy he sets eye on will waste away and die miserably, or will sink

into beggary, while he himself becomes as rich as ever he pleases."

"It makes ones mouth water!" cried Andrew unconsciously, so completely

was he carried away by the visions presented to him.

Conrad turned his back upon him, drew his chair nearer to the miner,

and then said: "If we had not this rabble so close at our side, I

could explain the matter to you with greater tranquillity of mind. The

truth is this. When the Zahuri has been promoted from being an

apprentice or pounding-lad, to be a brother, and then a master or

mine-surveyor, he will seat himself on his chair in his room, here

overhead in this inn, or wherever it may be, will think of the

warehouse of our old man of the mountain, or of the London docks, or

of some place down in Spain where he knows that some banker, jeweller,

or ship-master has valuable goods in his hands, and so soon as ever he

thinks of them with his eyes, he has them before him, and nobody knows

of it or can hinder it. In like manner by merely willing it he can

also send them forthwith from the place whence he takes them, to

Russia, or Calcutta, or anywhere else, and bring back the money he

asks for them. Now should there be a man of this class living here, in

the neighbourhood, or even in America, and he took a fancy to rob the

warehouse, you will easily understand, with your unassisted reason,

that then your peeled and boiled twigs would be of just as much avail,

as a basin of well-made water gruel to cure an earthquake."

The stranger had wit enough to perceive that Conrad was making a fool

of him; but the peasants, though there were some things that puzzled

them, swallowed all these nonsensical stories. Conrad exulted in his

superiority, and went on: "Look you man, if there were no conjurers of

this kind, how would all the contraband goods get in, which we find in

every part of the world? and this is the reason why the preventive

service can do so little, however strict and vigilant they may be. The

learning the art indeed must probably cost some trouble; and this no

doubt is why so very few seem to reach any mastery in it."

"All that you have been telling me," answered the traveller, is mighty

strange; "and perhaps the neatest way of winding up our dialogue would

be, if I were to affirm that I am one of the masters in this art.

However you would immediately require some specimen of my skill; and

at that indeed I might boggle a little. Nevertheless be it in earnest

or in jest that you have been talking all this while, there is most

unquestionably, as no rational being will dispute, a number of

incomprehensible and marvellous things in the world."

Conrad, who in the mean time had been regaling himself with some

strong beer, and fancied he had gained a complete victory over his

unknown antagonist, was irritated by this rejoinder, and the more so

because the peasants, who had heard the conversation, were not capable

of undertaking the part of arbitrators.

"Heyday!" he now exclaimed; "you seem to me to be one of those people

who have hardly a notion as to what is marvellous or what natural.

Have you ever seen spirits with your own eyes, as I have? Have you

ever held conversations with goblins, with the little creatures that

go into and come out of the mountain-lord's great house there? Have

you ever seen metals and precious stones a-growing? or gold and silver

trees waving and tossing about, all alive and vegetating?"

"Do you believe then," asked the stranger, "that stones grow and

decay, that metals shoot up and propagate their species? Do you fancy

that the beds under the earth sprout up just like a potatoe-field?"

"I know nothing about potatoes and all such vermin!" cried Conrad in a

passion,--it being something new to him to have an unknown, and, as it

seemed, an insignificant person lord it over him: "But that metals and

rocks have life and motion in them every body is aware, that they grow

up and die away, and that, as there is sunshine and moonshine here

above, rain and mist, frost and heat, so there are vapours and blasts

there below, which burst in and rush out, and boil invisibly in the

dark there, and mould themselves into shape. One of these blasts will

curdle into a mist, and then it trickles down, and intermarries with

the essences of the hills and of the regions under the earth; and

according to the course and form the steam takes then, it begets

metals or stones, it quickens into silver or gold, or runs along as

iron and copper branching out or cleft asunder in veins that strike

far and near."

"What then, are you so far behind all the rest of the world here!"

asked the stranger with every mark of astonishment. "O my good friend,

with your leave, ever since the creation, or at all events ever since

the deluge, the mountains, and stones, and rocks, and metals, and

gems, have been lockt up in their houses and never gadded abroad. We

dig and delve in here at top, and hardly get even at deepest below the

upper skin of the warts, as the mountains are in comparison to the

whole earth, much such a part as a nail-paring is of a man. Wherever

we can set foot, we grub up these primeval stores, so far as we need

them; and nothing ever shoots forth again, neither coal nor diamond,

neither copper nor lead; and your notion of the matter is a mere

superstition. In Africa, they tell us a story, people used from time

to time to find little grains of gold in a sandpit, which they had to

deliver up to the poor black king as his property. With the help of

these he would then buy all sorts of things from foreiners. One day

going a little deeper they fell in with two good-sized lumps of massy

solid gold. The slaves in great delight carried the fruit of their

labours to their black master, it being more than they had found for

ten years past, and they thought how overjoyed the poor man would be

at becoming rich thus all at once. But they were mistaken. The wise

old king said: 'Look ye, my friends, these pieces are the father and

mother of that little brood of gold grains which we have constantly

been finding for ages: carry them back immediately and set them in the

very same place, that they may be able to go on producing fresh ones.

Unless you do so, we should get a vast gain for the moment, but should

lose a lasting source of profit for ever hereafter.' The moor was a

goosecap, was not he?"

"Very far from it," cried Conrad, growing more and more enraged; "he

was quite right not to meddle with that which goes on in secret;

although we, as miners, cannot see the matter exactly in the same

light as he did. Solid masses have grown like the rest of us; and who

can say whether they may not enliven and further the shooting and

coalescing of the metallic particles round about them?"

"I tell you however," replied the stranger, "that sprouting and

growing, and spreading out into the regions of the air, or in the form

of roots underground, are the properties of plants only. Stones rest

in themselves; vegetables feed on light and warmth and moisture, and

transform the particles of the earth they stand on into means of

growth and enlargement. Then animals start off and break loose from

the elements; but they move within them, and carry their roots about

with them in their entrails."

"No! no!" screamed Conrad, still more violently: "In this way the

whole world, and above all my glorious mountains, with their

glittering subterraneous chambers, will be hocus-pocust into mere

store-houses, wretcheder ones than if they were made of wood, into

miserable wareshops and stalls. What then would the dwarfish sprites,

and the mighty mountain-spirit, and all the goblins and elvish imps,

and the swarm of gnomes there below have to do? and yet they are

always, some of them cleverly, some of them clumsily, putting their

hands to the wheel. And the waters! and the vapours! O thou blind and

deaf generation, that wilt not see and understand, what is yet much

more easily comprehensible than your dead, lifeless world! If life and

growth, and the workings by which life is propagated and multiplied,

can ever come to a standstill, then in your own realm too, in the

places where you fancy you see life, it is a sheer illusion and cheat.

The solid earth is alive, but in a different manner; and when it

happens to draw in its breath, when the old giant yawns and stretches

his tired limbs, and tries to arrange them more comfortably, you are

all aghast, and set up a howl about earthquakes, while your walled

hovels are running after you for variety's sake, and your towers are

tumbling into your pockets and slippers."

"You are a strange man," said the other, "and much too hot-headed to

listen to reason. Surely we ought to love truth above our puerile

prejudices. We do not make nature, but she is already such as she is,

spread out before us, for us to watch her ways and learn from her

teaching."

"Nature!" exclaimed the old miner; "that is just another of their

stupid words! My mountain has nothing to do with nature; it is my

mountain. About that I know everything; of your nature I know nothing

at all. Just as if a tailor, who had a coat to make, were to keep on

prating about nothing but wool, and merino sheep! To such a pitch have

people already brought matters, that they can't look at anything as

what it is, but search out some great big generality to which they may

tie it and slay it and embowel it. What say you to this? I once talked

to a man out of Hungary, a fellow-countryman of yours, but he had his

wits more about him; and he told me of a vine, I believe not far from

Tokay, which must have stood upon a vein of gold, and in which a

stream of gold brancht out and ran through all the wood. He shewed me

a bit of this vine, and I could clearly see and distinguish the

gleaming of the gold that had grown up with it. He gave me his word

that in some of the biggest and juiciest grapes seeds had been found

at times which were of pure gold."

"Now only look!" rejoined the stranger; "Can one wish for more than

this? Gold not only grows as a mineral, but even as a plant. However I

know a still better story. Once upon a time, when the weather was very

damp, a man dropt some ducats in the rocky ground at a short distance

from Cremnitz. In spite of every search they were not to be found.

They must have fallen down among the stones, and have been buried in

the rubbish. What came of it? Some years after, when no human being,

not even the owner himself, thought any more of the loss, a strange

sort of shrub was seen, which not a soul in the country had over met

with. It flowered with wonderful beauty, and then formed a number of

little pods. The pods soon after split like the fruit of the

winter-cherry; and, when people went to look at it closelier, every

skin contained a bright new Cremnitz ducat. Some fifty came to

perfection; a good many, that had been nipt by the frost, were mere

thin gold leaf. The oddest thing of all was that the ducats were

always markt--for they took good care not to root up the beautiful

weed--with the date of the year in which they ripened. Of late a wish

has been entertained, if it were but possible, to graft a branch of a

tree which peradventure might bear doubloons, on this lucrative bush,

with a view of ennobling the fruit."

The very peasants laught at this; for they fancied they saw the jest:

Conrad, however, though he perceived it, misunderstood it so far that

he did not answer a single word, but drunk with beer and rage only

lifted up his fist, and thrust it so violently into the storyteller's

face, that he instantly tumbled from his stool to the ground, and a

stream of blood gusht out from his mouth and nostrils. On getting up

again the stranger, though evidently the weaker, wanted to take his

revenge; but the peasants rusht in between, and brought about a peace

at least for the moment. This was the easier, as some travelling

musicians were just come with their instruments into the inn, where

Conrad in his drunkenness immediately took them into his pay.

Notwithstanding the remonstrances of the host and hostess, he made

them first play some songs, then some dances, and gave no ear to those

who admonisht and reminded him that the music might be heard up in the

great house.

"Why should I trouble myself," he cried, "about the old man of the

mountain? He may for once let his evil conscience be sung to sleep a

little."

He now began dancing, first alone, then with the hostess; and as the

noise soon got abroad, several men and girls walkt in, who were glad

to take part in this unexpected public ball. When the younger peasants

however also stood up, Conrad rusht suddenly upon them, shoved them

violently back, and imperiously commanded the musicians to be silent.

"When clod-hoppers and such scum mingle with their betters," he bawled

out, "one of us must retire from the foul contamination. But this I

tell you, the first of you that budges, or even growls, I'll break

every bone in his skin."

The peasants, whether alarmed by his drunken fury, or perhaps only

unwilling to incense him still more, drew back to their table. Conrad

seated himself, after all the victories he had achieved, majestically

in his armchair again, and rolled his eyes round with a look of

defiance. As nobody uttered a word, he said with a loud voice: "Look

ye, fellow miners, I am one of the oldest men about the works here

above; see here, comrades, and ye ragamuffins there, host and peasants

I mean, these dollars my prince and lord has gained from our pit."

He threw a handful of silver on the table.

"And old as I am, fellows, I was born and bred here in the mountains,

and I never yet crawled down into the vallies and the plain. I can

boast (and very few can say as much) I never yet saw any grain in the

field, never yet saw corn growing or ripe atop of its pitiful straw.

We work in gold and silver, are expert in mysteries and deep lore, hew

blocks, amalgamate metals, fuse ores,--and the miserable louts there

have to go about, as people have told me, hand and glove with rank

dung, and to carry the stinking stuff into the fields and spread it

out; and therefore I have a right to look upon their foul frocks as

scandalous and vile; at all events no miner should ever shake hands

with 'em, or drink out of the same mug. I am determined too to die a

man of honour, as I have grown old, without ever setting foot under

their thatch roofs, or on their threshing-floors; I have preserved

myself four and fifty years from this disgrace, and heaven will

continue to guard me from it while I live."

Thus he went on prating, till at length he was so stupefied and

exhausted that he fell asleep. The peasants, who now felt still

sorelier affronted than before, had more than once cast significant

looks on their cudgels. With these feelings they listened the more

readily to the advice of the stranger, who had been washing himself in

the meanwhile, to lift their insolent enemy, as he was fast asleep and

seemed quite senseless, upon the top of one of their waggons, and to

lay him, when they got to the bottom, in a corn field, that he might

find himself there when he awoke from his fit. There was no difficulty

in doing this, as the musicians had been paid and were gone, and the

landlord was busied in the kitchen.

* * * * *

In the depths of the forest, where the iron forges were at work, and

where in the midst of dark rocks by the side of a waterfall the shouts

and the hammering of the workmen resounded far and wide in rivalry

with the roar of the torrent, Edward the next evening met the

inspector of the mines, to talk over some business of importance with

him, and to give him some instructions from Herr Balthasar. The fire

in the vast furnace glared wildly through the dusk: the brighter glow

of the half-molten iron, the myriads of dazzling sparks that spurted

up from the anvil beneath the sledges of the sturdy smiths, the dark

forms moving through the large boarded shed, into which the trunk of a

tree in full leaf had forced its way, overshadowing the bellows in the

corner with its branches--this singular night piece attracted all

Edward's attention, when loud talking and laughter arose among the

workmen. Some one had just been telling them how Conrad, when he was

drunk, had been treated by the peasants the day before, and how to his

extreme annoyance he had awaked that morning in the midst of a corn

field. The story seemed to interest everybody so much, that their work

was suffered to stand still for a while.

"It serves him right," cried one of the broad-shouldered journeymen,

"the vapouring coxcomb! He is the most insufferable and rudest miner

in the whole country for miles round; and fancies he knows everything

better than his neighbours, and is the cleverest fellow in the world."

"They say he is running about like a madman, and as if the fiend had

got hold of him," continued the narrator; "for now the very thing of

which he has bragged from morning to night, is at an end: he has not

only been forced to see corn growing in the field, he has lain in the

midst of it."

Edward turned to the speaker and askt: "Michael, are you quite well

again already, that you come out thus into the open air?"

"Yes, Sir," answered the smith; "thanks to you and our old master. My

eye is gone of course; but how many of us have to work with but one!

The spark of iron that burnt it out might have been still bigger. It

was great pain, to be sure: that could not be otherwise; but with

God's help I am become quite stout again after all. Herr Balthasar

indeed has also done much toward helping me, and I owe a world of

thanks to his care, his kindness, and his charity. And so we do all,

everybody that belongs to him."

Another man with one eye chimed in with these praises, and added: "It

will fall out now and then that one or other of us gets maimed in this

way; for fire is not a thing to be jested with: but God has blest us

in giving us our old master; for even if a fellow were to become stark

blind, he would never let him starve or want."

The workmen were gone back to the anvil, and Edward then first

observed that Eleazar had come into the hut, and was talking to a

stranger. This was the travelling miner, the planner of the disgrace

inflicted upon old Conrad, which of all mortifications he could have

endured was the bitterest. Eleazar was scolding vehemently, and said

it was quite impious to drive an old man by such tricks into a

passion, nay to the brink of despair; for he had heard that Conrad was

running franticly about the mountains, utterly deaf to all advice and

consolation.

The stranger excused and defended himself as well as he could; and as

the sledges had now begun hammering again, while the roar of the

bellows mingled with that of the waters, the quarrel was lost sound

of, and only grew somewhat more audible, when Conrad himself in a fury

rusht howling with swollen face and red starting eyes up to the

disputants.

"My honour!" he screamed, "my honour as a noble miner! my glory and

my pride! all are gone, irrevocably and for ever! And by a pack of

base boors, by a puny, cream-faced, chicken-breasted, outlandish

starveling, have I been robbed of it. Amid all the mountains round,

and doubtless in many others likewise, there was not a miner nor a

mine-surveyor who could boast that he had never in his life been down

in the beggarly plain. I awoke in the straw, in the corn, such was the

rascals plot to ruin me. The ears were sticking in my nose and eyes

when I came to myself, the sorry, brittle, bristly stuff, that I had

never yet seen except in the pallet of my bed. Scandal and shame!

Murder and house-breaking are not so detestable! and no law against

it, no remedy, no mortal skill in the whole wide world."

The others had enough to do to tear the strong old man away from the

weakly stranger, on whom he wanted to take personal vengeance.

As Conrad could not get satisfaction in this way, he sat down on the

ground in a corner of the hut; and it being a holiday evening, the

journeymen lay down round about him, some trying to comfort him,

others jeering him. "Be pacified," said the man with one eye, "the

whole affair is mere child's play. Had the fire burnt out your eye,

had you had to endure unspeakable torments in your brain, and to toss

through sleepless feverish nights, then indeed you would have

something to complain of. But as it is, the whole matter is a sheer

trifle, and all fancy."

"That is your notion!" cried Conrad: "there never was a fool that

could not talk and chatter like one. Your having lost your eye in your

vocation is an honour to you, and you may be proud of it, and glory in

it. But their sticking me down in the middle of their dung, where I

was forced to lie like a tumble-down sheaf, or a truss of hay,--it has

knockt half a dozen nails into my coffin. 'Conrad! Conrad! ninnyhammer!

sack of straw!' so it seemed that everything was shouting in my ears.

I have now seen the miserable, dirty ploughed land, in which the

scurvy clowns have to breed up their bread. It's so flat down there,

you can see nothing, far as eye can reach; and one hears no

sledgehammers, no rush of waters, not even a boy pounding. It looks

just like the end of the world; and I could never have fancied that

the corn country and the plains, where more than half the world have

to live, were so utterly mean and despicable."

Thus they went on talking and squabbling, till some one for the sake

of starting another subject began telling about the robberies, which

their master, the old man of the mountain, was so incomprehensibly

allowing to go on, doing next to nothing to find out the offender,

although his losses, rich as he might be, must have amounted to very

large sums. The stranger miner again spoke of his contrivances for

making sure of catching the thief; and Conrad, who recollected the

former conversation, shook his fist at him in silence.

Eleazar seemed to enter into these strange schemes, and exulted with

vulgar glee at the thought of thus at length getting hold of the

rascal. As Edward eyed him in the dusky glare of the hut, and saw his

face with its brown and yellow features unsteadily lit by the

flickering flames, he thought that this disgusting and to him hateful

monster had never lookt so hideous before: a secret shudder crept over

him when he thought of Rose, and that this was the confident and

bosom friend of a man whom he could not but honour, although his

weaknesses and caprices formed so strong a contrast with his virtues.

The smiths listened to the conversation with great earnestness: they

believed the stranger; yet every one of them brought forward some

superstitious device of his own, in which the speaker himself always

put still greater reliance. Edward, in spite of the disgust this

gossiping excited in him, was almost unconsciously held fast within

the circle. Ghost stories were told; the wild huntsman was talkt of,

and several said they had seen him; others had met with mountain

sprites and goblins; then they got to forebodings and omens; and the

conversation kept on growing livelier, the storytellers more eager,

and the hearers more attentive.

"Goblins," said Michael, "there are assuredly: for I myself ten years

ago was well acquainted with one; and he was a very passable fellow to

have to do with. The urchin foretold too in those days that I should

lose my right eye about this very time."

"What sort of a chap was that?" cried one of his comrades; "and why

have you never told us this story before?"

"When I had got through my apprenticeship," said Michael, "at the

mountain-town twenty miles from here, and was now come to work at old

master Berenger's forge, I used to be plagued at first and quizzed by

the other journeymen, as every younker is when he is fresh. When I

grew tired of laughing and grumbled, we came to blows; I gave and got

my share, as in such cases always must happen. Among the rest there

was a grizzly-bearded journeyman who worried and annoyed me most of

all, a giant of a fellow, and all along with it so cunning, with such

a sharp sting in his tongue, that one could not possibly help being

vext, however stedfastly one might have made up ones mind and

determined with oneself at morning prayers, not to allow the gall to

mount into ones throat. In my distress I often cried with anger; for

in the town I had fancied myself a clever fellow, and my unruly tongue

had made many a one tremble. One night when I was thoroughly harast

and woebegone, I was lying over there on the jutting crag all alone in

a little bit of a room--the only other person in the house was a woman

as old as the mountains--on the sudden I heard something stirring and

scraping near me. I opened the window shutter at my head a little, and

as the half moon peept into the room, I saw a tiny creature brushing

away at my shoes. 'Who are you?' I askt the mite; for he lookt much

like a boy of eleven years old.--'Hush!' said the little thing, and

brusht away busily. 'I am Silly, the good comrade.'--'Silly?' askt I;

'he's one whom I know nothing of.'--'Dame knows him, Ursul knows him,'

said the little one, and put my shoes on the floor.--'Leave my things

alone,' cried I.--'Make 'em clean, dust 'em, brush 'em neat,' answered

the creature, and set to work at my Sunday hat.--'Is this farce never

to end?' I called out to him; 'brush your own nose.'--He laught, and

seemed to have no notion that I had any right to give orders in my own

room. 'Art afraid, he then giggled out, of big Ulric? Need not be

afraid. Ask him to morrow, when he sets at you again, where he got the

brown fire scar atop of his head over the right eyebrow; he'll soon be

meek as a lamb.' The creature was gone. I listened; there was nothing.

I closed the window shutter again and fell asleep. In the morning it

seemed to me as if the whole had been merely a dream. My shoes however

were clean, my hat brusht. At length I askt old Ursul about the

unknown boy. She was very deaf; and it was long before I could make

her understand what I meant. 'Ah! she at last cried, has the little

boy been with thee? Well, well, good betide thee, my tall lad. The

tiny thing harms nobody, and brings luck to everyone he takes notice

of. I have known him now well-nigh these forty years. He goes round to

the houses where he likes the folks, and helps them in their

housekeeping, now in one thing, now in another. Cleaning everything is

his darling employment. He can't bear dust; dirty sooty pots and other

kitchenware are his aversion; and he will often scrub at 'em with all

his might. Bright brass vessels, shining copper pans, are things he is

quite bewitcht with; pewter plates too he likes very well. Many a time

has he brought me a groschen, bright and new, as if it had come from

the mint.'--'But where does the imp live?' I cried.--'Where does the

child live?' she said: 'people choose to call it goblin, or manikin;

he himself signs himself Silly; that is his christen-name. But he is a

kind good-natured sprite; and so thou must do nothing to hurt him,

that he may not fall out with thee.' I had heard of such fellows, but

before this could never believe in them. In the smithy the baiting

began as usual; old Ulric put me quite in a fury; for they had remarkt

my soreness, and this made them think it the better sport to badger

me. I was just going to dash a redhot iron at the grizzly-bearded

lubber's snow-white head, when Silly came across my thoughts. 'And the

brown fire scar up there!' I said; 'you know, Ulric!' Thus I cried,

without thinking there was anything in it, when on the sudden the old

giant became so quiet, timid, and meek, that it made me stare my eyes

out. From that moment forward the fierce fellow became my friend. Nay

he was so humble in his behaviour to me, that I rose mightily in

everybody's opinion, and thenceforth stood near the top of the board.

When we grew better acquainted, he told me in confidence that in his

youth he had once let himself be misled into engaging in an attempt to

steal with the help of a servant maid. He had already crept into the

room, supposing that everybody was asleep; but the smith being still

awake had rusht against him with a fire brand snatcht up from the

hearth; and thus his head and hair had been singed. He fancied that no

mortal creature knew the story, of which he was heartily ashamed; and

therefore he entreated me by all my hopes of heaven never to tell any

one of it; indeed he was unable to make out how I could have learnt

the affair. On this point however he was mistaken; for without his own

confession I had never known a word of it. After this my life flowed

along very peaceably, and the little creature came every now and then,

and helpt me in what I had to do. Before long however we quarrelled.

He often came upon me so suddenly, so unexpectedly, and many a time

when nothing was further from my thoughts, that I was frightened to

the very core. Whenever I said a word to him about this, he grew very

pettish, and told me, I was an ungrateful fellow, not to acknowledge

his manifold services. Now I had heard a little before from an English

traveller, that the name of my goblin in his language meant _foolish_,

and that in England such a creature was called Puck, or Robin

Goodfellow; and when in the openness of my heart I told all this to my

little guest, and at the same time, because he had just frightened me

again, wanted to hang a bell about his neck, that I might always hear

him when he was coming, the urchin became angry and furious beyond all

measure, prophesied that I should lose my eye about this time, and

vanisht with a great rumbling. Nor have I ever seen the brat again

since."

"Thou prince of all babbling braggarts!" cried Conrad, when the story

was ended: "Can't you open your mouth, man, without lying? and yet you

are already come to years. Folks that hold traffic for any time with

spirits, grow shar-pwitted. The dealings of these creatures are with

supernatural out-of-the-way things; and when they pay us a visit, the

very terrour they arouse, till one grows used to them a bit, gives one

something impressive and dignified."

"More especially," cried Michael somewhat angered, "when one has been

sleeping a night in a potato field."

"That night," answered Conrad, "and that abominable mischance, that

foul scandalous deed of a vagabond, will be the death of me; I know it

as well as you. I shall not hold out much longer."

"May be so," said the pale stranger; "yet you can't tell all this

while whether I too may not be one of these goblins, who has been

trying to cure you of your follies. To be good friends with you, my

rough-spoken, overbearing sir, it was verily requisite that you should

have treated me with a little more civility. Wisdom, experience,

strength of mind, may often be learnt from those in whom one is the

slowest to look for them. If however, my good companions, you would

like to know which of you all will die first, I have a way of telling

you that in a moment."

They all seated themselves in a circle on benches and stools. The

stranger pulled a plated box out of his pocket, while he continued:

"When this little chip which I am going to light is burning, you must

pass it quickly from hand to hand, and the person in whose hold it

goes out will be the first of us to see the next world."

All lookt at the stranger in anxious expectation. He thrust a little

bit of wood down into the box, while he muttered some sounds, and then

he drew it out again burning and flickering. Eleazar, who sat next to

him, received it, gave it to his neighbour, and thus the match went on

spitting sparks from one hand to another. It had finisht the round,

and come back to Eleazar, who was very loth to take it, and was

hastily passing it on, when on the sudden it flared brightly and then

went out between his fingers. "Stupid stuff!" he cried sulkily, as he

threw the bit of wood on the ground and jumpt up in a passion;

"Nothing but empty superstition! And we are so good-natured as to let

ourselves be made the tools of such nonsense."

He lookt sharply at the stranger with his glaring eyes, then slapt him

on the shoulder, and withdrew with him. Meanwhile the moon had arisen,

and was pouring its bright light over the forests and rocks: the party

went each his own way, and Edward too bent his steps homeward. As he

was walking up the narrow footpath, he heard a warm discussion; it

sounded like a quarrel; and when he drew nearer he fancied he

distinguisht Eleazar and the stranger. He struck off therefore into

another path, partly for the sake of avoiding them and not being

forced to return in their company, partly too that he might not have

the air of wishing to overhear what they were disputing about; for

Eleazar was of a very suspicious temper, and mistrusted everybody,

though he took it extremely ill if any one did not place an unlimited

confidence in him.

In the house everything was quiet: except that Rose was singing a

simple air with a supprest voice, scarce audibly in her remote

chamber. Edward was moved by it, and so strongly, that he could not

help being surprised at his extreme susceptibility. Before he fell

asleep, his melancholy had so increast, that he could hardly refrain

from shedding tears.

* * * * *

A few days after this Edward observed the stranger coming out of Herr

Balthasar's apartment. He wondered what such a person could have had

to do there; and, when he entered the old man's room, he found him

violently disturbed and enraged.

"Always the same wild irrational feelings, the same superstitious

foolery, ruling over mankind!" he cried, as Edward came in: "That

miserable fellow there whom you met flatters himself he shall gain a

large sum of money from me, if he can detect our thief by means of

some senseless artifice. He won't come back again, the blockhead! for

I have at length given vent for once to my feelings. There is nothing

in the world so insufferable to me, as when people try, by means of

certain phrases fabricated at random, or of certain traditional

ceremonies, most of them a misgrowth out of historical blunders, or

out of ancient usages which formerly had a very different meaning, to

put themselves in connexion with what they call the invisible world,

nay fancy, though they deem it an object of terrour, that they can

master it thereby. In fact the greater part of mankind are crazed,

without choosing to confess it: nay, the very wisdom of thousands is

arrant madness."

It seemed as if the worthy old man himself felt ashamed of his

passionate vehemence; for he immediately began talking on other

subjects. He made Edward sit down by him, and had some breakfast

brought, which was quite against his usual custom. "Thus we shall be

able," he then continued, "to settle a number of matters this morning,

which on other days we may perhaps hardly find leisure for."