discover his proximity and address him. Even heroic women like to talk.
Soon an intimacy sprang up between these two comrades in distress
who had never seen each other. At first Jörg often interrupted his
neighbour’s kind words with many a scornful and dogged remark, but she
always answered him so mildly, and at the same time with so much quiet
superiority, that Jörg’s insolence was soon tamed.
In the course of a few days Jörg knew the history of his neighbour by
heart, but he obstinately kept silence about his own.
The old woman was the well-to-do, childless widow of an innkeeper. In
her sixtieth year she had the misfortune to be accused of witchcraft.
A wealthy witch is a rarity. But it so happened that during the last
five years all ugly poor women had been burned up in Nördlingen, and as
every witch was called upon to name accomplices, and as the zeal of the
judges increased with each execution, at last it came to be the turn
of young, handsome, and rich women as well. There were enough of these
unfortunate women, but none was so unfortunate, and at the same time so
heroic, as Maria Hollin. She had been in the rack fifty-eight times,
and had confessed nothing. She was indeed, as Jörg had rightly judged
from her prayer, able to hold her own against ten men. The judges were
in despair; it was out of the question to acquit a person who had
been tortured fifty-eight times, and it was equally so to condemn her
without a confession.
Moreover, the rumour of her firmness had gone among the populace,
and there was much sympathy with her, and a threatening murmur of
displeasure against the much-feared judges. Up to now everything had
gone smoothly and comfortably. Thirty-two women had been accused,
put on the rack, convicted, and burned; not one of them had made any
trouble. At the worst, the one or the other had to be left hanging
with weights on her feet until the judges had had some refreshments.
But when they came back from lunch the fullest confession had always
rewarded them. And now, through the obstinacy of this woman, the smooth
course of events had been most aggravatingly interrupted.
And then, too, there was that provoking affair with Muckenhuber.
The one would not confess her guilt, while they were hankering to
condemn her; the other they would have been only too happy to let
go, but even the rack was powerless to extract the confession of his
innocence. The town-scribent thought if Jörg Muckenhuber were only
a woman, then by a bold strategy he might be burned, as it were by
mistake, instead of Maria Hollin, and she might be dismissed in his
stead, so that each should have his heart’s desire, and the court
should preserve its authority.
But the worst of all for the senate was the prospect of a diplomatic
storm that was brewing at the horizon in the direction of Regensburg.
Maria Hollin had well-to-do relatives at Ulm, and the magistrate of
that town, convinced of her innocence, had applied for her release. But
that did her little good. The town-scribent thought it would endanger
the reputation of a court to put a person on the rack for fifty-eight
times and then not even to have the satisfaction of singeing her a
little, not to speak of burning. But the burghers of Ulm would not be
silenced. At Regensburg there was an important Reichstag that year, and
the Emperor, Rudolph II., was present in person. The ambassador from
Ulm received orders from his town to intercede for the accused, and
as he was not given a hearing he threatened to set the Emperor and the
Reich against the law-court of Nördlingen.
The history of Maria Hollin made a deep impression upon Jörg
Muckenhuber. Until now he had looked upon himself as a hero before his
judges, but by the side of this true heroine he appeared to himself to
be playing the part of a bad boy. Out of stubbornness and pride he had
kept silent about his true history before his judges; before this woman
he kept silent for shame. But finally he could not resist the firm,
sympathetic voice of his invisible companion.
So he was tame at last, and began to confess his tale to the old woman.
At first he asked her if she had ever seen a pair of fighting dogs that
had locked teeth, and so held each other as in a vice, for all the
cuffs they got to make them let go. He and his judge, he said, were
like such dogs. From a child he had led a bold vagabond life; he had
enjoyed all the pleasures of a restless, adventurous rover, and had
suffered all the deprivations and distress and shame of such. He had
never murdered or robbed, only taken along what he needed. He was tired
of the whole business. Life was a burden to him, but to take his own
life, and be found later in the water or in the woods like a beast, was
not to his taste.
He had often heard death on the gallows lauded as the best, and when
his companions spoke of their “heroes,” it was always of such persons
as had reached the highest point of their career on the upper round of
the ladder leading to the gallows.
To put a showy end to life, which had lost its attraction for him,
Jörg went to Nördlingen, a town which was then notorious for its hasty
justice.
Dame Hollin thereupon gave Jörg a most terrific lecture. To judge by
the tone of her voice, he thought of her as standing in her dark cell
like the angel with the flaming sword. For all that her sermon did
not touch him specially. He was much more deeply contrite when in
the silent night he compared her heroic courage and disdain of death
with his own sorry tale, making his invincible obstinacy look like
the caricature of her bravery. He admitted the justice of everything
she said when with a firm hand she shook his conscience; but he did
not admit the justice of what the others said. And when Dame Hollin
condemned him it frightened him as much as damnation at the last
judgment might; but before that day came he was determined to play his
joke upon the senate of Nördlingen, and hang on their gallows.
Months passed. The two neighbours grew to be more and more to each
other. The hardened witch succeeded in implanting a little bit of
Christianity upon him, at least as much as could be crowded through the
narrow-barred window. Jörg accepted her dogmas willingly enough, but
would not let go of his own dogma, that he must be hanged on Nördlingen
ground.
Jörg had locked teeth with the senate, but the senators had also locked
teeth with each other because of this same Jörg.
Two parties formed and quarrelled so heartily that they quite forgot
the object of their quarrel. One side, as before mentioned, wished to
hang him because he had committed murder; the other, because he had
not committed murder. Only the town-scribent constituted, in silence
and all by himself, a third party of mediation. He wanted to let Jörg
get away. For, he said to himself, if he had been put on the rack the
first day, the truth would most likely have come to light; now it is
too late. If we wait until both parties agree as to which offence
Muckenhuber shall be hanged for, he may meanwhile die of old age in
the tower. This would be a clear loss to the town, which supplies the
vagabond with food and lodging all for nothing. The town-scribent
further concluding with subtle psychological insight that Jörg would
probably by this time be mellow and tired of the poor fare of prison,
it seemed to him to be the best plan to leave the door open by
accident, so that the fellow could run away.
So he gave orders to have the door of his cell left unbolted from time
to time. Jörg noticed it, but did not stir; he was determined to be
hanged on Nördlingen ground.
But when he told his neighbour of the growing carelessness of his
gaoler, things took a new turn. With the knowledge of the open door,
though it was not that of her cell, the mighty love of freedom awoke
in Dame Hollin. “If I could get out!” she cried, “it would not be to
escape; I should but go to come back--go to tell my friends at Ulm
of the disgrace I have suffered, and come back with witnesses and
testimonials of my innocence. I do not want freedom; I want my honour
and reputation----!” She did not finish what she wanted to say, but
Jörg understood her.
For some time he had been at work breaking through the thin partition
between the two cells. His only tool was a small piece of iron, and the
work progressed but slowly. After these words of Dame Hollin he worked
day and night with the utmost exertion of his strength, and in the
third night he could manage to crawl through the small hole.
There was no time to be lost. This same night Jörg’s door was left
unbolted again, so there were a few hasty words of farewell spoken.
Dame Hollin crept through into her neighbour’s cell. Thus Jörg,
trembling from head to foot, threw his arms about the old woman’s
knees, and, as if he wanted to throw the fulness of his obedience and
gratitude into one word, he cried, “Mother!” and she passed her hands
gently over his face, feeling his features in the darkness, and crying,
“My poor, unhappy son!”
Dame Hollin hid in the house of a faithful friend, to escape to Ulm the
next day. Jörg slipped over into the deserted cell, and when his gaoler
came to the door in the morning to push in a dish of humble fare, he
crouched down in a corner, wrapped in the cloak of the old woman, and
when the man passed on to his cell, he slipped nimbly through the hole
in the wall, and in the garb of Jörg Muckenhuber received his own
ration. He kept this up for about a week with much skill and secret
delight, if sorrow for the loss of his faithful comrade had not choked
his pleasure.
But one day the door was opened wide enough to admit the town-scribent,
together with the gaoler, the former ordering Dame Hollin to follow him
to the court-room. Jörg played his _rôle_ as long as he could, crouched
down in terror in the darkest corners, and repelled his tormentors with
silent gestures. But when the town-scribent cried reassuringly, “Woman,
come boldly forth; I lead thee not to the rack, but to freedom,” then
Muckenhuber forgot his mask, threw his cloak from his shoulders in
impotent rage, started up indignantly and cried, with his clenched
hands in his side, “You will do no such thing; I want to be hanged, and
I won’t let you off!”
The town-scribent tore his hair in despair and rage when he perceived
that the witch was gone and the vagabond was left. He had intended to
conduct Dame Hollin to freedom, but it was to have been freedom under
weighty conditions; and now she had disappeared without any conditions
whatsoever. Jörg, however, who was to have disappeared and no questions
asked, sat once more firmly upon the neck of the senate. “Fellow,
there’s no putting an end to you!” cried the town-scribent, foaming at
the mouth. But Muckenhuber replied coldly, “It is this I complain of,
that you won’t even try!”
The senators poured bitter reproaches upon each other, at first in
a low tone, then louder, until the storm grew, and there was a wild
confusion of voices. Then the town-scribent silenced them all with
his deep bass, and united the disputants with a word. He cried, “The
cause of all this trouble is only Jörg Muckenhuber. Hang him at once
if he does not recant his old confessions!” Jörg replied, “I do _not_
recant!” and when the town-scribent asked him for the second time,
“Now, I certainly shan’t recant,” and the third time ...
There stood old Dame Hollin as if she had grown out of the ground,
conducted by two of the most respectable burghers of Nördlingen and
Ulm. She looked sharply at Muckenhuber, and said in a firm tone, “Jörg,
you will recant your false confession!” The voice struck the insolent
fellow like a peal of thunder. He was silent and lowered his eyes.
There was no sound, one could hear the laboured breathings; then he
spoke, “No other power on earth could have made me recant, but I cannot
lie in the face of this woman;--I recant!”
Meanwhile the tumult of the populace without was increasing. The air
was filled with wild threats, and with demands for the immediate
release of Dame Hollin. The gentlemen saw that there was danger in
delay. After a short, whispered debate the town-scribent read aloud the
writ the old woman was to swear to. But Dame Hollin replied that she
did not want mercy but demanded her right. The gentlemen of the senate
made very wry faces and began to try persuasion, but they had learned
ere this that there was little to be gained in that way with Dame
Hollin.
After a moment’s thought, she said to her judges, “You have tried to
make a bargain with me. Having done so, you are no longer my judges,
and cannot give me my right. Well then, I too am ready to offer you a
bargain. Release that wicked lad yonder, I will adopt him in child’s
stead, and take him to Ulm with me, and see if I can do better by him
than you have done. My property has lain dead while you kept me in the
tower. You should refund the usury I have lost; instead of that give me
this wicked lad. On this condition will I sign your writ.”
Already the populace clamoured outside the door. The senate would have
had no choice, even though she had demanded much more than this.
As she signed the writ, she found a bill appendixed for her fare during
the time of her custody. She returned the leaf with a courteous smile
to the town-scribent, and as the rabble was knocking at the door he
plucked the interesting supplement into bits as fast as possible, and
strewed the pieces under the table.
Meanwhile the chains had been removed from Jörg; he looked about him as
in a dream. Dame Hollin took his hand, and went to the door with him,
where both were received by the gratified shouts of the shuffling crowd.
* * * * *
The old woman kept her word. In her house Jörg became an honest,
valiant man, who in the Thirty Years’ War did great service to Ulm, the
town of his adoption, and his name was never spoken but in honour and
gratitude. But the witch’s counsel was forced to resign office, and
after those five years of terror followed a better decade, during which
law and justice reigned once more in the old Reichstadt.
_W. H. Riehl._
_ELECTIVE AFFINITIES._
I.
HIGHLY-ESTEEMED MADAM,--I venture to write these lines to you in the
firm belief that you, like all women of mental distinction, love
the unusual, and hate to the utmost the commonplaces of ordinary
conventionality....
Having left the company, and wending my lonely way through the streets
of Berlin, I felt myself to be in a state of lively excitement. The
events of the evening passed once more before me, and ere long I was in
that incomprehensible mystical mood, which comes so suddenly we know
not how or whence. I was quite capable of calling to the spirits that
seemed to float about me: “Answer me, if ye hear me!” when the sound
of a passing carriage called me back to reality, and my gaze turned
from the stars of heaven to a pair of star-like earthly orbs whose mild
light shone for a passing moment with full radiance into my soul.
These starry eyes belonged to a young lady who was seated by your side
in the carriage. At that moment I was seized with the purpose I am now
carrying out.
I herewith enclose an unsealed letter to the lovely possessor of those
gleaming stars, and I leave it to your never-erring tact to decide,
after having read the letter, whether you will hand it to the young
lady, who is doubtless one of your intimate circle of acquaintances, or
consign it to the atoning flames of your grate.--Yours most sincerely,
VON SCH.
II.
HIGHLY-ESTEEMED MISS,--If Frau von B. should decide to give these lines
into your hands, I shall consider it as a mark of confidence in me
which encourages me in a measure to express to you a very singular
request, as I am about to do. Perhaps you would have the goodness to
look upon this mark of confidence on the part of so admirable a lady
as a sort of pledge of my character, on the strength of which you will
kindly permit me to conceal my name and social functions. At the same
time I shall endeavour, dear Fraulein, to remain in complete ignorance
so far as you are concerned.
After these preliminaries touching the scenic arrangement, permit me to
come to the point.
I am sure you, as well as most persons possessing a lively imagination,
have had occasion in life to observe the following occurrence. We
stroll through the crowd of a large town thinking of nothing in
particular, and indifferently passing a thousand faces that meet ours
with the same indifference....
And in the midst of this placid, colourless mood we are suddenly
surprised and fascinated by a pair of eyes that unexpectedly emerge out
of the senseless crowd to meet ours for a second and then to disappear
again. But what a wealth of experience lies in that passing moment! We
know for certain that never in our past life has that face crossed our
path, but the sight has touched us with an electric thrill. And as our
soul rises into our eyes to greet that other soul, a hundred questions
and answers fly back and forth with the rapidity of lightning.
“Who art thou? I have so much to say to thee. Secrets I scarce dare
whisper to myself, I would entrust to thee. I feel that there is an
invisible band between us.”
“Ah, I feel it too! It would bind us closer than all other human bands.”
And then comes the fear of making oneself ridiculous, and all the tame
considerations that hamper every pure and fresh impulse. And all this,
dear Fraulein, you and I have experienced. Our souls have met and
recognised each other. This is a mighty fact, which you felt as well as
I three days ago as your carriage crossed the Kurfürsten Bridge. If we
were to meet now in society, the ordinary conventional preliminaries of
getting acquainted would take away our naïve impression, we should be
bereft of that elemental undeviating conviction which constituted the
mysterious charm of our meeting. Let us then remain strangers to each
other outwardly, trusting only to these first glowing intuitions.
Let us exchange a few letters, freely and without a thought to
conventionality. Their contents shall bind us to nothing in real life,
and should we meet by some strange accident, they shall be but a memory.
Do not, I beg of you, listen to the faint-hearted criticism of reason,
but follow the first hearty impulse of your soul. It will lead you
aright.
With warm sympathy,
THE UNKNOWN OF THE KURFÜRSTEN BRIDGE.
III.
DEAR SIR,--I have decided to answer your interesting letter. Frau
von B. is to read all letters that pass between us, so that I can
enter upon this correspondence with a happy sense of freedom from
responsibility.
I am weary of the dryness of ordinary intercourse, and there is nothing
I should like better than to talk to a man for once without reserve. I
drop my worsted-work as the prisoner drops his chains, and dip my pen
into the ink with the thrilling rapture of dawning freedom.
Do you know what it is to do worsted-work? Have you ever thought about
this last reminiscence of mediæval times, this glaring anachronism in a
time of steam and electricity and enlightenment?...
Liberty flows and surges about us, and life brings forth thousands of
rich blossoms, and we sit imprisoned and--do worsted-work, or drum on
the piano, murdering Chopin, or if we are very clever, sing Schumann’s
songs with the pathos of dilettantism.
When I met you on the Kurfürsten Bridge, Frau von B. and I were just
coming home from a ladies’ party, to which all the guests had brought
their worsted-work. I had really suffered under the unendurable
weight of conversation on topics of the utmost indifference, under a
hypocritical interest in things which cannot possibly interest anybody.
My heart was full of bitterness, and on the way home I was considering
the question whether such a life was worth living, whether it would not
be wiser to run away, to adopt the garb of a man, and try one’s powers
boldly in the stream of life.
At that moment I saw you, and I felt all that you speak of in your
letter. In that short second in which our eyes met, pictures clearly
defined and wondrously bright arose before me.
Dressed as a youth, I seemed to descend from my carriage and seize your
hand, and you knew all. Silently we walked through the streets, hand in
hand, until we reached your house. There, I told you everything about
my lonely childhood, my joyless youth, and the world of dreams and
ideals within me. You spoke earnest words of duty and work, called me
your friend, and said we would go along part of the way side by side....
After a winter of severe work came bright, sunny days of spring, and
I felt at last that in the arms of nature, at her pure altar, I had
received a “purer life, and the glad courage of hopeful youth.”
I hope you will return my frankness in full. When we end our
correspondence, and return after this bold aside into the track of
everyday life, perhaps we shall bring back some new, fresh courage,
and the graceful memory of having been for once in our lives as foolish
as we pleased.
Kind greetings from your
UNKNOWN.
IV.
HIGHLY-ESTEEMED UNKNOWN FRIEND,--Your amiable letter made me supremely
happy. Now I know without a doubt that the mysterious quality of
reading the soul of a being akin in spirit is no empty illusion. In
that deeply mystical moment I recognised your charming self just as you
describe it with winning simplicity. What you write me in many pages I
have read word for word out of your eyes. And now that I know how near
you are to me in sympathy and in intuitive understanding, now I have so
much to say to you, so much to receive from you, that it were a crime
not to tear down the paper barriers between us and to replace the dead
letter by the living word.
I only await your permission. I promise myself a great deal from this
meeting, perhaps a friendship for life, and I warmly beg you to look
upon the unusual beginning as an earnest of a happy end.
Hoping impatiently for a gracious reply, I am, your truly devoted,
UNKNOWN.
V.
DEAR FRIEND,--Allow me to tell you that, in spite of your somewhat too
lively imagination, I have always looked upon you as a person of much
sense, and that there is nothing that moves me more to pity than to see
a sensible man attacked by a fashionable craze like spiritualism. I am
always seized by the desire to heal the patient, which seems the more
difficult the absurder--forgive the word, but I know no better--the
cause of the attack.
[Illustration: “THE UNUTTERABLE EXPRESSION IT PRODUCED UPON MY VISAGE.”]
I hope you will laugh heartily over the following story, and have a
healthful feeling of convalescence when you have bravely conquered the
first bitter taste of the medicine.
A young widow, living in great seclusion, allows an old friend of
her husband’s to persuade her to make a concession to him and to the
carnival, and visit a masked ball at his house, in company of her
brother, a comely school-boy.
The latter, dressed as a young lady looks charming, makes countless
conquests at the ball, and rides home at night in an open carriage with
his sister, wrapped in a charming evening-cloak of hers, flushed with
champagne, and with the triumphs of the evening.
And lo and behold, upon the Kurfürsten Bridge the glowing eyes of the
lad make, as it seems, a deep and lasting impression!
A few days later the widow receives a very remarkable letter from a
friend, which tempts her irresistibly to give him a lesson, which I am
sure he will have the kindness to take in good part.
She put herself as far as possible in the mood of her ecstatic friend,
rummaged among her youthful reminiscences, and composed an answer which
puts her friend quite beside himself, and convinces him that there is
such a thing as mysterious sympathy of soul, electric glances, mystic
bands, spirit kisses, etc., etc.
And now--what do you say?
In a gay carnival-humour, your old friend,
ALEXANDRA VON B.
VI.
DISPATCH.
_Frau Alexandra von B----, H---- St._
Had a photograph taken immediately upon receipt of your letter, to
preserve the unutterable expression it produced upon my visage.
Shall take the liberty of presenting you with a specimen ere long.
Acceptance to be looked upon as an act of penal justice. In abject
humility at having made an everlasting fool of himself, your friend,
VON SCH.
_Franz von Schönthan._
_HOT PUNCH._