and in the last there were some of the largest beams. But what then?
The evening before starting, the tall Michel brought eight beams to the
water, thicker and longer than had ever been seen, and he carried every
one of them as easily upon his shoulder as if it had been a rowing
pole, so that all were amazed. Where he had felled them, no one knows
to this day. The heart of the timber-merchant was leaping with joy
when he saw this, calculating what these beams would fetch; but Michel
said, ‘Well, these are for my travelling on, with those chips I should
not be able to get on at all.’ His master was going to make him a
present of a pair of boots, but throwing them aside, Michel brought out
a pair the largest that had ever been seen, and my grandfather assured
me they weighed a hundred pounds and were five feet long.
“The float started; and if Michel had before astonished the
wood-cutters, he perfectly astonished the raftsmen; for his raft,
instead of drifting slowly down the river as they thought it would, by
reason of the immense beams, darted on like an arrow, as soon as they
came into the Neckar. If the river took a turn, or if they came to any
part where they had a difficulty in keeping the middle stream or were
in danger of running aground, Michel always jumped into the water,
pushing his float either to the right or to the left, so that he glided
past without danger. If they came to a part where the river ran
straight, Michel often sprang to the foremost raft, and making all put
up their poles, fixed his own enormous pole in the sand, and by one
push made the float dart along, so that it seemed as if the land,
trees, and villages were flying by them. Thus they came in half the
time they generally occupied to Cologne on the Rhine, where they
formerly used to sell their timber. Here Michel said, ‘You are but
sorry merchants and know nothing of your advantage. Think you these
Colognese want all the timber from the Schwarzwald for themselves? I
tell you no, they buy it of you for half its value, and sell it dear to
Holland. Let us sell our small beams here, and go to Holland with the
large ones; what we get above the ordinary price is our own profit.’
“Thus spoke the subtle Michel, and the others consented; some because
they liked to go and see Holland, some for the sake of the money. Only
one man was honest, and endeavoured to dissuade them from putting the
property of their master in jeopardy or cheating him out of the higher
price. However they did not listen to him and forgot his words, while
Michel forgot them not. So they went down the Rhine with the timber,
and Michel, guiding the float soon brought them to Rotterdam. Here
they were offered four times as much as at Cologne, and particularly
the large beams of Michel fetched a very high sum. When the
Schwarzwälders beheld the money, they were almost beside themselves
with joy. Michel divided the money, putting aside one-fourth for their
master, and distributing the other three among the men. And now they
went into the public houses with sailors and other rabble, squandering
their money in drinking and gambling; while the honest fellow who had
dissuaded them was sold by Michel to a slave-trader and has never been
heard of since. From that time forward Holland was a paradise to the
fellows from the Schwarzwald, and the Dutchman Michel their king. For
a long time the timber merchants were ignorant of this proceeding, and
before people were aware, money, swearing, corrupt manners, drunkenness
and gambling were imported from Holland.
“When the thing became known, Michel was nowhere to be found, but he
was not dead; for a hundred years he has been haunting the forest, and
is said to have helped many in becoming rich at the cost of their souls
of course: more I will not say. This much, however, is certain, that
to the present day, in boisterous nights, he finds out the finest pines
in the Tannenbühl where people are not to fell wood; and my father has
seen him break off one of four feet diameter, as he would break a reed.
Such trees he gives to those who turn from the right path and go to
him; at midnight they bring their rafts to the water and he goes to
Holland with them. If I were lord and king in Holland, I would have
him shot with grape, for all the ships that have but a single beam of
Michel’s, must go to the bottom. Hence it is that we hear of so many
shipwrecks; and if it were not so, how could a beautiful, strong ship
as large as a church, be sunk. But as often as Michel fells a pine in
the forest during a boisterous night, one of his old ones starts from
its joints, the water enters, and the ship is lost, men and all. So
far goes the legend of the Dutchman Michel; and true it is that all the
evil in the Schwarzwald dates from him. Oh! he can make one rich,”
added the old man mysteriously; “but I would have nothing from him; I
would at no price be in the shoes of fat Hesekiel and the long
Schlurker. The king of the ballroom, too, is said to have made himself
over to him.”
The storm had abated during the narrative of the old man; the girls
timidly lighted their lamps and retired, while the men put a sackful of
leaves upon the bench by the stove as a pillow for Peter Munk, and
wished him good night.
Never in his life had Peter such heavy dreams as during this night;
sometimes he fancied the dark gigantic Michel was tearing the window
open and reaching in with his monstrous long arm a purse full of gold
pieces, which jingled clearly and loudly as he shook them; at another
time he saw the little friendly glass-mannikin riding upon a huge green
bottle about the room, and thought he heard again the same hoarse
laughter as in the Tannenbühl; again something hummed into his left ear
the following verse:
“In Holland I wot,
There’s gold to be got,
Small price for a lot,
Who would have it not?”
Again he heard in his right ear the song of the Schatzhauser in the
green forest, and a soft voice whispered to him, “Stupid Coal-Peter,
stupid Peter Munk you cannot find a rhyme with ‘place,’ and yet are
born on a Sunday at twelve o’clock precisely. Rhyme, dull Peter,
rhyme!”
He groaned, he wearied himself to find a rhyme, but never having made
one in his life, his trouble in his dream was fruitless. When he awoke
the next morning with the first dawn, his dream seemed strange to him;
he sat down at the table with his arms crossed, and meditated upon the
whisperings that were still ringing in his ears. He said to himself,
“Rhyme, stupid Peter, rhyme,” knocking his forehead with his finger,
but no rhyme would come. While still sitting in this mood, looking
gloomily down before him and thinking of a rhyme with “place,” he heard
three men passing outside and going into the forest, one of whom was
singing,
“I stood upon the brightest place,
I gazed upon the plain,
And then--oh then--I saw that face,
I never saw again.”
These words flashed like lightning through Peter’s ear and hastily
starting up, he rushed out of the house, thinking he was mistaken in
what he had heard, ran after the three fellows and seized, suddenly and
rudely, the singer by the arm, crying at the same time, “Stop, friend,
what was it you rhymed with ‘place?’ Do me the favour to tell me what
you were singing.”
“What possesses you, fellow?” replied the Schwarzwälder. “I may sing
what I like; let go my arm, or----”
“No, you shall tell me what you were singing,” shouted Peter, almost
beside himself, clutching him more tightly at the same time. When the
other two saw this, they were not long in falling foul upon poor Peter
with their large fists, and belabouring him till the pain made him
release the third, and he sank exhausted upon his knees. “Now you have
your due,” said they, laughing, “and mark you, madcap, never again stop
people like us upon the highway.”
“Woe is me!” replied Peter with a sigh, “I shall certainly recollect
it. But now that I have had the blows, you will oblige me by telling
me plainly what he was singing.” To this they laughed again and mocked
him; but the one who had sung repeated the song to him, after which
they went away laughing and singing.
“Face,” then said the poor belaboured Peter as he got up slowly; “will
rhyme with ‘place,’ now glass-mannikin, I will have another word with
you.” He went into the hut, took his hat and long stick, bid farewell
to the inmates, and commenced his way back to the Tannenbühl. Being
under the necessity of inventing a verse, he proceeded slowly and
thoughtfully on his way; at length, when he was already within the
precincts of the Tannenbühl, and the trees became higher and closer, he
found his verse, and for joy cut a caper in the air. All at once he
saw coming from behind the trees a gigantic man dressed like a
raftsman, who held in his hand a pole as large as the mast of a ship.
Peter Munk’s knees almost gave way under him, when he saw him slowly
striding by his side, thinking he was no other than the Dutchman
Michel. Still the terrible figure kept silence, and Peter cast a side
glance at him from time to time. He was full a head taller than the
biggest man Peter had even seen; his face expressed neither youth nor
old age, but was full of furrows and wrinkles; he wore a jacket of
linen, and the enormous boots being drawn above his leather breeches,
were well known to Peter from hearsay.
“What are you doing in the Tannenbühl, Peter Munk?” asked the wood king
at length, in a deep, roaring voice.
“Good morning, countryman,” replied Peter, wishing to show himself
undaunted, but trembling violently all the while.
“Peter Munk,” replied Michel, casting a piercing, terrible glance at
him, “your way does not lie through this grove.”
“True, it does not exactly,” said Peter; “but being a hot day, I
thought it would be cooler here.”
“Do not lie, Peter,” cried Michel, in a thundering voice, “or I strike
you to the ground with this pole; think you I have not seen you begging
of the little one?” he added mildly. “Come, come, confess it was a
silly trick, and it is well you did not know the verse; for the little
fellow is a skinflint, giving but little; and he to whom he gives is
never again cheerful in his life. Peter, you are but a poor fool and I
pity you in my soul; you, such a brisk handsome fellow, surely could do
something better in the world, than make charcoal. While others lavish
big thalers and ducats, you can scarcely spend a few pence; ’tis a
wretched life.”
“You are right, it is truly a wretched life.”
“Well,” continued Michel, “I will not stand upon trifles, you would not
be the first honest good fellow whom I have assisted at a pinch. Tell
me, how many hundred thalers do you want for the present?” shaking the
money in his huge pocket, as he said this, so that it jingled just as
Peter had heard it in his dream. But Peter’s heart felt a kind of
painful convulsion at these words, and he was cold and hot alternately;
for Michel did not look as if he would give away money out of charity,
without asking any thing in return. The old man’s mysterious words
about rich people occurred to him, and urged by an inexplicable anxiety
and fear, he cried “Much obliged to you, sir, but I will have nothing
to do with you and know you well,” and at the same time he began to run
as fast as he could. The wood spirit, however, strode by his side with
immense steps, murmuring and threatening “You will yet repent it,
Peter, it is written on your forehead and to be read in your eyes that
you will not escape me. Do not run so fast, listen only to a single
rational word; there is my boundary already.” But Peter, hearing this
and seeing at a little distance before him a small ditch, hastened the
more to pass this boundary, so that Michel was obliged at length to run
faster, cursing and threatening while pursuing him. With a desperate
leap Peter cleared the ditch, for he saw that the Wood-spirit was
raising his pole to dash it upon him; having fortunately reached the
other side, he heard the pole shatter to pieces in the air as if
against an invisible wall, and a long piece fell down at his feet.
He picked it up in triumph to throw it at the rude Michel; but in an
instant he felt the piece of wood move in his hand, and, to his horror,
perceived that he held an enormous serpent, which was raising itself up
towards his face with its venomous tongue and glistening eyes. He let
go his hold, but it had already twisted itself tight round his arm and
came still closer to his face with its vibrating head; at this instant,
however, an immense black cock rushed down, seized the head of the
serpent with its beak, and carried it up in the air. Michel, who had
observed all this from the other side of the ditch, howled, cried, and
raved when he saw the serpent carried away by one more powerful than
himself.
Exhausted and trembling, Peter continued his way; the path became
steeper, the country wilder, and soon he found himself before the large
pine. He again made a bow to the invisible glass-mannikin, as he had
done the day before, and said,
“Keeper of wealth in the forest of pine,
Hundreds of years are surely thine,
Thine is the tall pine’s dwelling place,
Those born on Sunday see thy face.”
“You have not quite hit it,” said a delicate fine voice near him, “but
as it is you, Peter, I will not be particular.” Astonished he looked
round, and lo! under a beautiful pine there sat a little old man in a
black jacket, red stockings, and a large hat on his head. He had a
tiny affable face and a little beard as fine as a spider’s web; and
strange to see, he was smoking a pipe of blue glass. Nay, Peter
observed to his astonishment, on coming nearer, that the clothes,
shoes, and hat of the little man were also of coloured glass, which was
as flexible as if it were still hot, bending like cloth to every motion
of the little man.
“You have met the lubber Michel, the Dutchman?” asked the little man,
laughing strangely between each word. “He wished to frighten you
terribly; but I have got his magic cudgel, which he shall never have
again.”
“Yes, Mr. Schatzhauser,” replied Peter, with a profound bow, “I was
terribly frightened. But I suppose the black cock was yourself, and I
am much obliged to you for killing the serpent. The object of my visit
to you, however, is to ask your advice; I am in very poor
circumstances, for charcoal-burning is not a profitable trade; and
being still young I should think I might be made something better,
seeing so often as I do how other people have thriven in a short time;
I need only mention Hezekiel, and the king of the ball-room, who have
money like dirt.”
“Peter,” said the little man, gravely, blowing the smoke of his pipe a
long way off, “don’t talk to me of these men. What good have they from
being apparently happy for a few years here, and the more unhappy for
it afterwards? You must not despise your trade; your father and
grandfather were honest people, Peter Munk, and they carried on the
same trade. Let me not suppose it is love of idleness that brings you
to me.”
Peter was startled at the gravity of the little man, and blushed. “No,
Mr. Schatzhauser,” said he; “idleness is the root of every vice, but
you cannot blame me, if another condition pleases me better than my
own. A charcoal-burner is, in truth, a very mean personage in this
world; the glass manufacturer, the raftsmen, and clock-makers, are
people much more looked upon.”
“Pride will have a fall,” answered the little man of the pine wood,
rather more kindly. “What a singular race you are, you men! It
is but rarely that one is contented with the condition in which
he was born and bred, and I would lay a wager that if you were a
glass-manufacturer, you would wish to be a timber-merchant, and if you
were a timber-merchant you would take a fancy to the ranger’s place, or
the residence of the bailiff. But no matter for that; if you promise
to work hard, I will get you something better to do. It is my practice
to grant three wishes to those born on a Sunday, who know how to find
me out. The first two are quite free from any condition, the third I
may refuse, should it be a foolish one. Now, therefore, Peter, say your
wishes; but mind you wish something good and useful.”
“Hurrah!” shouted Peter; “you are a capital glass-mannikin, and justly
do people call you the treasure-keeper, for treasures seem to be
plentiful with you. Well then, since I may wish what my heart desires,
my first wish is that I may be able to dance better than the king of
the ball-room, and to have always as much money in my pocket as fat
Hezekiel.”
“You fool!” replied the little man, angrily, “what a paltry wish is
this, to be able to dance well and to have money for gambling. Are you
not ashamed of this silly wish, you blockish Peter? Would you cheat
yourself out of good fortune? What good will you and your poor mother
reap from your dancing well? What use will money be to you, which
according to your wish is only for the public-house, thereto be spent
like that of the wretched king of the ball-room? And then you will
have nothing for the whole week and starve. Another wish is now left
free to you; but have a care to desire something more rational.”
Peter scratched himself behind his ears, and said, after some
hesitation, “Now I wish the finest and richest glass-factory in the
Schwarzwald, with every thing appertaining to it, and money to carry it
on.”
“Is that all?” asked the little man, with a look of anxiety; “is there
nothing else, Peter?”
“Why you might add a horse and chaise.”
“Oh, you stupid Peter!” cried the little man, while he flung his glass
pipe against a thick pine so that it broke in a hundred pieces.
“Horses? a carriage? Sense, I tell you, sense--common sense and
judgment you ought to have wished, but not a horse and chaise. Come,
come, don’t be so sad, we will do all we can to make it turn out for
the best, even as it is, for the second wish is on the whole not
altogether foolish. A good glass-factory will support its man; but you
ought to have wished judgment and sense in addition; a horse and chaise
would come as a matter of course.”
“But, Mr. Schatzhauser,” replied Peter, “I have another wish left, and
might very well wish sense, if I am so much in need of it, as you seem
to think.”
“Say no more about it. You will get involved in many an embarrassment
yet, when you will be glad of being at liberty to obtain your third
wish. And now proceed on your way home.” Drawing a small bag from his
pocket, he said: “There are two thousand florins; let that be enough,
and don’t come again asking for money, for, if you do, I must hang you
up to the highest pine. That is the way I have always acted, ever
since I have lived in the forest. Three days ago old Winkfritz died,
who had a large glass-factory in the Unterwald. Go there to-morrow
morning, and make a fair offer for it. Look well to yourself. Be
prudent and be industrious; I will come to see you from time to time,
and assist you with word and deed, since you have not wished for common
sense. But I must repeat it seriously; your first wish was evil.
Guard against frequenting the public-house, Peter, no one who did so,
ever prospered long.” The little man, while thus talking to him, had
taken a new pipe, of the most beautiful glass, from his pocket, charged
it with dry fir-apples, and stuck it into his little toothless mouth.
Then drawing out a large burning-glass, he stepped into the sun and
lighted it. When he had done this, he kindly offered his hand to
Peter, added a few more words of salutary advice which he might carry
on his way, puffed and blew still faster, and finally disappeared in a
cloud of smoke, which smelled of genuine Dutch canaster, and, slowly
curling upwards, vanished amidst the tops of the pines.
On his arrival home, Peter found his mother in great anxiety about him,
for the good dame thought in reality her son had been drawn among the
recruits. He, however, was in great glee and full of hope, and related
to her how he had met with a good friend in the forest, who had
advanced him money to begin another trade. Although his mother had
been living for thirty years in a charcoal-burner’s hut, and was as
much accustomed to the sight of sooty people, as any miller’s wife is
to the floury face of her husband; yet, as soon as her Peter showed her
a more splendid lot, she was vain enough to despise her former
condition, and said: “In truth, as the mother of a man who possesses a
glass-manufactory, I shall indeed be something different from neighbour
Kate and Betsy, and shall in future sit more consequentially at church
among the people of quality.” Her son soon came to terms with the heir
of the glass manufactory. He kept the workmen he found, and made them
work day and night at manufacturing glass. At first he was well enough
pleased with his new trade; he was in the habit of walking leisurely
into the factory, striding up and down with an air of consequence and
with his hands in his pockets, looking now in one corner, now in
another, and talking about various things at which his workmen often
used to laugh heartily. His chief delight, however, was to see the
glass blown, when he would often set to work himself, and form the
strangest figures of the soft mass. But he soon took a dislike to the
work; first came only for an hour in the day, then only every other
day, and finally only once a week, so that his workmen did just what
they liked. All this proceeded from his frequenting the public-house.
The Sunday after he had come back from the Tannenbühl he went to the
public-house, and who should be jumping there already but the king of
the ball-room; fat Hezekiel also was already sitting by a quart pot,
playing at dice for crown-pieces. Now Peter quickly put his hand into
his pocket to feel whether the glass-mannikin had been true to his
word, and lo! his pockets were stuffed full of silver and gold. He
also felt an itching and twitching in his legs, as if they wished to
dance and caper. When the first dance was over, he took his place with
his partner at the top next to the “king of the ball-room;” and if the
latter jumped three feet high, Peter jumped four; if he made fantastic
and graceful steps, Peter twined and twisted his legs in such a manner
that all the spectators were utterly amazed with delight and
admiration. But when it was rumoured in the dancing-room that Peter
had bought a glass manufactory, and when people saw that Peter, as
often as he passed the musicians, threw a six-batzner piece to them,
there was no end of astonishment. Some thought he had found a treasure
in the forest, others were of opinion that he had succeeded to some
fortune, but all respected him now, and considered him a made man,
simply because he had plenty of money. Indeed that very evening he
lost twenty florins at play, and yet his pockets jingled and tingled as
if there were a hundred thalers in them.
When Peter saw how much respected he was, he could no longer contain
himself with joy and pride. He threw away handfuls of money and
distributed it profusely among the poor, knowing full well as he did
how poverty had formerly pinched him. The feats of the king of the
ball-room were completely eclipsed by those of the new dancer, and
Peter was surnamed the “emperor of the ball-room.” The most daring
gamblers did not stake so much as he did on a Sunday, neither did they,
however, lose so much; but then, the more he lost, the more he won.
This was exactly what he had demanded from the glass-mannikin; for he
had wished he might always have as much money in his pocket as fat
Hezekiel, and it was to this very man he lost his money. If he lost
twenty or thirty florins at a stroke, they were immediately replaced in
his own pocket, as soon as Hezekiel pocketed them. By degrees he
carried his revelling and gambling further than the worst fellows in
the Schwarzwald, and he was oftener called “gambling Peter” than
“emperor of the ball-room,” since he now gambled almost all the week
days. In consequence of his imprudence, his glass manufactory
gradually fell off. He had manufactured as much as ever could be made,
but he had failed to purchase, together with the factory, the secret of
disposing of it most profitably. At length it accumulated to such a
degree that he did not know what to do with it, and sold it for
half-price to itinerant dealers in order to pay his workmen.
Walking homewards one evening from the public house, he could not, in
spite of the quantity of wine he had drunk to make himself merry, help
thinking with terror and grief of the decline of his fortune. While
engaged in these reflections, he all at once perceived some one walking
by his side. He looked round, and behold it was the glass-mannikin.
At the sight of him he fell into a violent passion, protested solemnly,
and swore that the little man was the cause of all his misfortune.
“What am I now to do with the horse and chaise?” he cried; “of what use
is the manufactory and all the glass to me? Even when I was merely a
wretched charcoal-burner, I lived more happily, and had no cares. Now
I know not when the bailiff may come to value my goods and chattels,
and seize all for debt.”