THE EYRIE
CHRISTINA SOREL awoke to a scene most unlike that which had been wont to
meet her eyes in her own little wainscoted chamber high in the gabled
front of her uncle’s house. It was a time when the imperial free towns
of Germany had advanced nearly as far as those of Italy in civilization,
and had reached a point whence they retrograded grievously during the
Thirty Years’ War, even to an extent that they have never entirely
recovered. The country immediately around them shared the benefits of
their civilization, and the free peasant-proprietors lived in great ease
and prosperity, in beautiful and picturesque farmsteads, enjoying a
careless abundance, and keeping numerous rural or religious feasts, where
old Teutonic mythological observances had received a Christian colouring
and adaptation.
In the mountains, or around the castles, it was usually very different.
The elective constitution of the empire, the frequent change of dynasty,
the many disputed successions, had combined to render the sovereign
authority uncertain and feeble, and it was seldom really felt save in the
hereditary dominions of the Kaiser for the time being. Thus, while the
cities advanced in the power of self-government, and the education it
conveyed, the nobles, especially those whose abodes were not easily
accessible, were often practically under no government at all, and felt
themselves accountable to no man. The old wild freedom of the Suevi, and
other Teutonic tribes, still technically, and in many cases practically,
existed. The Heretogen, Heerzogen, or, as we call them, Dukes, had
indeed accepted employment from the Kaiser as his generals, and had
received rewards from him; the Gerefen, or Graffen, of all kinds were his
judges, the titles of both being proofs of their holding commissions
from, and being thus dependent on, the court. But the Freiherren, a word
very inadequately represented by our French term of baron, were
absolutely free, “never in bondage to any man,” holding their own, and
owing no duty, no office; poorer, because unendowed by the royal
authority, but holding themselves infinitely higher, than the pensioners
of the court. Left behind, however, by their neighbours, who did their
part by society, and advanced with it, the Freiherren had been for the
most part obliged to give up their independence and fall into the system,
but so far in the rear, that they ranked, like the barons of France and
England, as the last order of nobility.
Still, however, in the wilder and more mountainous parts of the country,
some of the old families of unreduced, truly free Freiherren lingered,
their hand against every man, every man’s hand against them, and ever
becoming more savage, both positively and still more proportionately, as
their isolation and the general progress around them became greater. The
House of Austria, by gradually absorbing hereditary states into its own
possessions, was, however, in the fifteenth century, acquiring a
preponderance that rendered its possession of the imperial throne almost
a matter of inheritance, and moreover rendered the supreme power far more
effective than it had ever previously been. Freidrich III. a man still
in full vigour, and with an able and enterprising son already elected to
the succession, was making his rule felt, and it was fast becoming
apparent that the days of the independent baronies were numbered, and
that the only choice that would soon be left them would be between making
terms and being forcibly reduced. Von Adlerstein was one of the oldest
of these free families. If the lords of the Eagle’s Stone had ever
followed the great Konrads and Freidrichs of Swabia in their imperial
days, their descendants had taken care to forget the weakness, and
believed themselves absolutely free from all allegiance.
And the wildness of their territory was what might be expected from their
hostility to all outward influences. The hostel, if it deserved the
name, was little more than a charcoal-burner’s hut, hidden in the woods
at the foot of the mountain, serving as a halting-place for the
Freiherren’s retainers ere they attempted the ascent. The inhabitants
were allowed to ply their trade of charring wood in the forest on
condition of supplying the castle with charcoal, and of affording a
lodging to the followers on occasions like the present.
Grimy, half-clad, and brawny, with the whites of his eyes gleaming out of
his black face, Jobst the Kohler startled Christina terribly when she
came into the outer room, and met him returning from his night’s work,
with his long stoking-pole in his hand. Her father shouted with laughter
at her alarm.
“Thou thinkest thyself in the land of the kobolds and dwarfs, my girl!
Never mind, thou wilt see worse than honest Jobst before thou hast done.
Now, eat a morsel and be ready—mountain air will make thee hungry ere
thou art at the castle. And, hark thee, Jobst, thou must give
stable-room to yon sumpter-mule for the present, and let some of my
daughter’s gear lie in the shed.”
“O father!” exclaimed Christina, in dismay.
“We’ll bring it up, child, by piecemeal,” he said in a low voice, “as we
can; but if such a freight came to the castle at once, my lady would have
her claws on it, and little more wouldst thou ever see thereof.
Moreover, I shall have enough to do to look after thee up the ascent,
without another of these city-bred beasts.”
“I hope the poor mule will be well cared for. I can pay for—” began
Christina; but her father squeezed her arm, and drowned her soft voice in
his loud tones.
“Jobst will take care of the beast, as belonging to me. Woe betide him,
if I find it the worse!”—and his added imprecations seemed unnecessary,
so earnest were the asseverations of both the man and his wife that the
animal should be well cared for.
“Look you, Christina,” said Hugh Sorel, as soon as he had placed her on
her mule, and led her out of hearing, “if thou hast any gold about thee,
let it be the last thing thou ownest to any living creature up there.”
Then, as she was about to speak—“Do not even tell me. I _will_ not
know.” The caution did not add much to Christina’s comfort; but she
presently asked, “Where is thy steed, father?”
“I sent him up to the castle with the Schneiderlein and Yellow Lorentz,”
answered the father. “I shall have ado enough on foot with thee before
we are up the Ladder.”
The father and daughter were meantime proceeding along a dark path
through oak and birch woods, constantly ascending, until the oak grew
stunted and disappeared, and the opening glades showed steep, stony,
torrent-furrowed ramparts of hillside above them, looking to Christina’s
eyes as if she were set to climb up the cathedral side like a snail or a
fly. She quite gasped for breath at the very sight, and was told in
return to wait and see what she would yet say to the Adlerstreppe, or
Eagle’s Ladder. Poor child! she had no raptures for romantic scenery;
she knew that jagged peaks made very pretty backgrounds in illuminations,
but she had much rather have been in the smooth meadows of the environs
of Ulm. The Danube looked much more agreeable to her, silver-winding
between its green banks, than did the same waters leaping down with noisy
voices in their stony, worn beds to feed the river that she only knew in
his grave breadth and majesty. Yet, alarmed as she was, there was
something in the exhilaration and elasticity of the mountain air that
gave her an entirely new sensation of enjoyment and life, and seemed to
brace her limbs and spirits for whatever might be before her; and,
willing to show herself ready to be gratified, she observed on the
freshness and sweetness of the air.
“Thou find’st it out, child? Ay, ’tis worth all the feather-beds and
pouncet-boxes in Ulm; is it not? That accursed Italian fever never left
me till I came up here. A man can scarce draw breath in your foggy
meadows below there. Now then, here is the view open. What think you of
the Eagle’s Nest?”
For, having passed beyond the region of wood they had come forth upon the
mountain-side. A not immoderately steep slope of boggy, mossy-looking
ground covered with bilberries, cranberries, &c. and with bare rocks here
and there rising, went away above out of her ken; but the path she was
upon turned round the shoulder of the mountain, and to the left, on a
ledge of rock cut off apparently on their side by a deep ravine, and with
a sheer precipice above and below it, stood a red stone pile, with one
turret far above the rest.
“And this is Schloss Adlerstein?” she exclaimed.
“That is Schloss Adlerstein; and there shalt thou be in two hours’ time,
unless the devil be more than usually busy, or thou mak’st a fool of
thyself. If so, not Satan himself could save thee.”
It was well that Christina had resolution to prevent her making a fool of
herself on the spot, for the thought of the pathway turned her so dizzy
that she could only shut her eyes, trusting that her father did not see
her terror. Soon the turn round to the side of the mountain was made,
and the road became a mere track worn out on the turf on the hillside,
with an abyss beneath, close to the edge of which the mule, of course,
walked.
When she ventured to look again, she perceived that the ravine was like
an enormous crack open on the mountain-side, and that the stream that
formed the Debateable Ford flowed down the bottom of it. The ravine
itself went probably all the way up the mountain, growing shallower as it
ascended higher; but here, where Christina beheld it, it was extremely
deep, and savagely desolate and bare. She now saw that the Eagle’s
Ladder was a succession of bare gigantic terraces of rock, of which the
opposite side of the ravine was composed, and on one of which stood the
castle. It was no small mystery to her how it had ever been built, or
how she was ever to get there. She saw in the opening of the ravine the
green meadows and woods far below; and, when her father pointed out to
her the Debateable Ford, apparently much nearer to the castle than they
themselves were at present, she asked why they had so far overpassed the
castle, and come by this circuitous course.
“Because,” said Hugh, “we are not eagles outright. Seest thou not, just
beyond the castle court, this whole crag of ours breaks off short, falls
like the town wall straight down into the plain? Even this cleft that we
are crossing by, the only road a horse can pass, breaks off short and
sudden too, so that the river is obliged to take leaps which nought else
but a chamois could compass. A footpath there is, and Freiherr Eberhard
takes it at all times, being born to it; but even I am too stiff for the
like. Ha! ha! Thy uncle may talk of the Kaiser and his League, but he
would change his note if we had him here.”
“Yet castles have been taken by hunger,” said Christina.
“What, knowest thou so much?—True! But look you,” pointing to a white
foamy thread that descended the opposite steeps, “yonder beck dashes
through the castle court, and it never dries; and see you the ledge the
castle stands on? It winds on out of your sight, and forms a path which
leads to the village of Adlerstein, out on the other slope of the
mountains; and ill were it for the serfs if they victualled not the
castle well.”
The fearful steepness of the ground absorbed all Christina’s attention.
The road, or rather stairs, came down to the stream at the bottom of the
fissure, and then went again on the other side up still more tremendous
steeps, which Hugh climbed with a staff, sometimes with his hand on the
bridle, but more often only keeping a watchful eye on the sure-footed
mule, and an arm to steady his daughter in the saddle when she grew
absolutely faint with giddiness at the abyss around her. She was too
much in awe of him to utter cry or complaint, and, when he saw her effort
to subdue her mortal terror, he was far from unkind, and let her feel his
protecting strength.
Presently a voice was heard above—“What, Sorel, hast brought her!
Trudchen is wearying for her.”
The words were in the most boorish dialect and pronunciation, the
stranger to Christina’s ears, because intercourse with foreign merchants,
and a growing affectation of Latinism, had much refined the city language
to which she was accustomed; and she was surprised to perceive by her
father’s gesture and address that the speaker must be one of the lords of
the castle. She looked up, and saw on the pathway above her a tall,
large-framed young man, his skin dyed red with sun and wind, in odd
contrast with his pale shaggy hair, moustache, and beard, as though the
weather had tanned the one and bleached the other. His dress was a still
shabbier buff suit than her father had worn, but with a
richly-embroidered belt sustaining a hunting-horn with finely-chased
ornaments of tarnished silver, and an eagle’s plume was fastened into his
cap with a large gold Italian coin. He stared hard at the maiden, but
vouchsafed her no token of greeting—only distressed her considerably by
distracting her father’s attention from her mule by his questions about
the journey, all in the same rude, coarse tone and phraseology. Some
amount of illusion was dispelled. Christina was quite prepared to find
the mountain lords dangerous ruffians, but she had expected the graces of
courtesy and high birth; but, though there was certainly an air of
command and freedom of bearing about the present specimen, his manners
and speech were more uncouth than those of any newly-caught apprentice of
her uncle, and she could not help thinking that her good aunt Johanna
need not have troubled herself about the danger of her taking a liking to
any such young Freiherr as she here beheld.
By this time a last effort of the mule had climbed to the level of the
castle. As her father had shown her, there was precipice on two sides of
the building; on the third, a sheer wall of rock going up to a huge
height before it reached another of the Eagle’s Steps; and on the fourth,
where the gateway was, the little beck had been made to flow in a deep
channel that had been hollowed out to serve as a moat, before it bounded
down to swell the larger water-course in the ravine. A temporary bridge
had been laid across; the drawbridge was out of order, and part of Hugh’s
business had been to procure materials for mending its apparatus.
Christina was told to dismount and cross on foot. The unrailed board, so
close to the abyss, and with the wild water foaming above and below, was
dreadful to her; and, though she durst not speak, she hung back with an
involuntary shudder, as her father, occupied with the mule, did not think
of giving her a hand. The young baron burst out into an unrestrained
laugh—a still greater shock to her feelings; but at the same time he
roughly took her hand, and almost dragged her across, saying, “City
bred—ho, ho!” “Thanks, sir,” she strove to say, but she was very near
weeping with the terror and strangeness of all around.
The low-browed gateway, barely high enough to admit a man on horseback,
opened before her, almost to her feelings like the gate of the grave, and
she could not help crossing herself, with a silent prayer for protection,
as she stepped under it, and came into the castle court—not such a court
as gave its name to fair courtesy, but, if truth must be told, far more
resembling an ill-kept, ill-savoured stable-yard, with the piggeries
opening into it. In unpleasantly close quarters, the Schneiderlein, or
little tailor, _i.e._ the biggest and fiercest of all the knappen, was
grooming Nibelung; three long-backed, long-legged, frightful swine were
grubbing in a heap of refuse; four or five gaunt ferocious-looking dogs
came bounding up to greet their comrade Festhold; and a great old
long-bearded goat stood on the top of the mixen, looking much disposed to
butt at any newcomer. The Sorel family had brought cleanliness from
Flanders, and Hausfrau Johanna was scrupulously dainty in all her
appointments. Christina scarcely knew how she conveyed herself and her
blue kirtle across the bemired stones to the next and still darker
portal, under which a wide but rough ill-hewn stair ascended. The
stables, in fact, occupied the lower floor of the main building, and not
till these stairs had ascended above them did they lead out into the
castle hall. Here were voices—voices rude and harsh, like those
Christina had shrunk from in passing drinking booths. There was a long
table, with rough men-at-arms lounging about, and staring rudely at her;
and at the upper end, by a great open chimney, sat, half-dozing, an
elderly man, more rugged in feature than his son; and yet, when he roused
himself and spoke to Hugh, there was a shade more of breeding, and less
of clownishness in his voice and deportment, as if he had been less
entirely devoid of training. A tall darkly-robed woman stood beside
him—it was her harsh tone of reproof and command that had so startled
Christina as she entered—and her huge towering cap made her look gigantic
in the dim light of the smoky hall. Her features had been handsome, but
had become hardened into a grim wooden aspect; and with sinking spirits
Christina paused at the step of the daïs, and made her reverence, wishing
she could sink beneath the stones of the pavement out of sight of these
terrible personages.
“So that’s the wench you have taken all this trouble for,” was
Freiherrinn Kunigunde’s greeting. “She looks like another sick baby to
nurse; but I’ll have no trouble about her;—that is all. Take her up to
Ermentrude; and thou, girl, have a care thou dost her will, and puttest
none of thy city fancies into her head.”
“And hark thee, girl,” added the old Freiherr, sitting up. “So thou
canst nurse her well, thou shalt have a new gown and a stout husband.”
“That way,” pointed the lady towards one of the four corner towers; and
Christina moved doubtfully towards it, reluctant to quit her father, her
only protector, and afraid to introduce herself. The younger Freiherr,
however, stepped before her, went striding two or three steps at a time
up the turret stair, and, before Christina had wound her way up, she
heard a thin, impatient voice say, “Thou saidst she was come, Ebbo.”
“Yes, even so,” she heard Freiherr Eberhard return; “but she is slow and
town-bred. She was afraid of crossing the moat.” And then both laughed,
so that Christina’s cheeks tingled as she emerged from the turret into
another vaulted room. “Here she is,” quoth the brother; “now will she
make thee quite well.”
It was a very bare and desolate room, with no hangings to the rough stone
walls, and scarcely any furniture, except a great carved bedstead, one
wooden chair, a table, and some stools. On the bare floor, in front of
the fire, her arm under her head, and a profusion of long hair falling
round her like flax from a distaff, lay wearily a little figure, beside
whom Sir Eberhard was kneeling on one knee.
“Here is my sisterling,” said he, looking up to the newcomer. “They say
you burgher women have ways of healing the sick. Look at her. Think you
you can heal her?”
In an excess of dumb shyness Ermentrude half rose, and effectually
hindered any observations on her looks by hiding her face away upon her
brother’s knee. It was the gesture of a child of five years old, but
Ermentrude’s length of limb forbade Christina to suppose her less than
fourteen or fifteen. “What, wilt not look at her?” he said, trying to
raise her head; and then, holding out one of her wasted, feverish hands
to Christina, he again asked, with a wistfulness that had a strange
effect from the large, tall man, almost ten years her elder, “Canst thou
cure her, maiden?”
“I am no doctor, sir,” replied Christina; “but I could, at least, make
her more comfortable. The stone is too hard for her.”
“I will not go away; I want the fire,” murmured the sick girl, holding
out her hands towards it, and shivering.
Christina quickly took off her own thick cloth mantle, well lined with
dressed lambskins, laid it on the floor, rolled the collar of it over a
small log of wood—the only substitute she could see for a pillow—and
showed an inviting couch in an instant. Ermentrude let her brother lay
her down, and then was covered with the ample fold. She smiled as she
turned up her thin, wasted face, faded into the same whitey-brown tint as
her hair. “That is good,” she said, but without thanks; and, feeling the
soft lambswool: “Is that what you burgher-women wear? Father is to give
me a furred mantle, if only some court dame would pass the Debateable
Ford. But the Schlangenwaldern got the last before ever we could get
down. Jobst was so stupid. He did not give us warning in time; but he
is to be hanged next time if he does not.”
Christina’s blood curdled as she heard this speech in a weak little
complaining tone, that otherwise put her sadly in mind of Barbara
Schmidt’s little sister, who had pined and wasted to death. “Never mind,
Trudchen,” answered the brother kindly; “meantime I have kept all the
wild catskins for thee, and may be this—this—_she_ could sew them up into
a mantle for thee.”
“O let me see,” cried the young lady eagerly; and Sir Eberhard, walking
off, presently returned with an armful of the beautiful brindled furs of
the mountain cat, reminding Christina of her aunt’s gentle domestic
favourite. Ermentrude sat up, and regarded the placing out of them with
great interest; and thus her brother left her employed, and so much
delighted that she had not flagged, when a great bell proclaimed that it
was the time for the noontide meal, for which Christina, in spite of all
her fears of the company below stairs, had been constrained by mountain
air to look forward with satisfaction.
Ermentrude, she found, meant to go down, but with no notion of the
personal arrangements that Christina had been wont to think a needful
preliminary. With all her hair streaming, down she went, and was so
gladly welcomed by her father that it was plain that her presence was
regarded as an unusual advance towards recovery, and Christina feared
lest he might already be looking out for the stout husband. She had much
to tell him about the catskin cloak, and then she was seized with eager
curiosity at the sight of Christina’s bundles, and especially at her
lute, which she must hear at once.
“Not now,” said her mother, “there will be jangling and jingling enough
by and by—meat now.”
The whole establishment were taking their places—or rather tumbling into
them. A battered, shapeless metal vessel seemed to represent the
salt-cellar, and next to it Hugh Sorel seated himself, and kept a place
for her beside him. Otherwise she would hardly have had seat or food.’
She was now able to survey the inmates of the castle. Besides the family
themselves, there were about a dozen men, all ruffianly-looking, and of
much lower grade than her father, and three women. One, old Ursel, the
wife of Hatto the forester, was a bent, worn, but not ill-looking woman,
with a motherly face; the younger ones were hard, bold creatures, from
whom Christina felt a shrinking recoil. The meal was dressed by Ursel
and her kitchen boy. From a great cauldron, goat’s flesh and broth
together were ladled out into wooden bowls. That every one provided
their own spoon and knife—no fork—was only what Christina was used to in
the most refined society, and she had the implements in a pouch hanging
to her girdle; but she was not prepared for the unwashed condition of the
bowls, nor for being obliged to share that of her father—far less for the
absence of all blessing on the meal, and the coarse boisterousness of
manners prevailing thereat. Hungry as she was, she did not find it easy
to take food under these circumstances, and she was relieved when
Ermentrude, overcome by the turmoil, grew giddy, and was carried upstairs
by her father, who laid her down upon her great bed, and left her to the
attendance of Christina. Ursel had followed, but was petulantly repulsed
by her young lady in favour of the newcomer, and went away grumbling.
Nestled on her bed, Ermentrude insisted on hearing the lute, and
Christina had to creep down to fetch it, with some other of her goods, in
trembling haste, and redoubled disgust at the aspect of the meal, which
looked even more repulsive in this later stage, and to one who was no
longer partaking of it.
Low and softly, with a voice whence she could scarcely banish tears, and
in dread of attracting attention, Christina sung to the sick girl, who
listened with a sort of rude wonder, and finally was lulled to sleep.
Christina ventured to lay down her instrument and move towards the
window, heavily mullioned with stone, barred with iron, and glazed with
thick glass; being in fact the only glazed window in the castle. To her
great satisfaction it did not look out over the loathsome court, but over
the opening of the ravine. The apartment occupied the whole floor of the
keep; it was stone-paved, but the roof was boarded, and there was a round
turret at each angle. One contained the staircase, and was that which
ran up above the keep, served as a watch-tower, and supported the Eagle
banner. The other three were empty, and one of these, which had a strong
door, and a long loophole window looking out over the open country,
Christina hoped that she might appropriate. The turret was immediately
over the perpendicular cliff that descended into the plain. A stone
thrown from the window would have gone straight down, she knew not where.
Close to her ears rushed the descending waterfall in its leap over the
rock side, and her eyes could rest themselves on the green meadow land
below, and the smooth water of the Debateable Ford; nay—far, far away
beyond retreating ridges of wood and field—she thought she could track a
silver line and, guided by it, a something that might be a city. Her
heart leapt towards it, but she was recalled by Ermentrude’s fretfully
imperious voice.
“I was only looking forth from the window, lady,” she said, returning.
“Ah! thou saw’st no travellers at the Ford?” cried Ermentrude, starting
up with lively interest.
“No, lady; I was gazing at the far distance. Know you if it be indeed
Ulm that we see from these windows?”
“Ulm? That is where thou comest from?” said Ermentrude languidly.
“My happy home, with my dear uncle and aunt! O, if I can but see it
hence, it will be joy!”
“I do not know. Let me see,” said Ermentrude, rising; but at the window
her pale blue eyes gazed vacantly as if she did not know what she was
looking at or for.
“Ah! if the steeple of the Dome Kirk were but finished, I could not
mistake it,” said Christina. “How beauteous the white spire will look
from hence!”
“Dome Kirk?” repeated Ermentrude; “what is that?”
Such an entire blank as the poor child’s mind seemed to be was
inconceivable to the maiden, who had been bred up in the busy hum of men,
where the constant resort of strange merchants, the daily interests of a
self-governing municipality, and the numerous festivals, both secular and
religious, were an unconscious education, even without that which had
been bestowed upon her by teachers, as well as by her companionship with
her uncle, and participation in his studies, taste and arts.
Ermentrude von Adlerstein had, on the contrary, not only never gone
beyond the Kohler’s hut on the one side, and the mountain village on the
other, but she never seen more of life than the festival at the wake the
hermitage chapel there on Midsummer-day. The only strangers who ever
came to the castle were disbanded lanzknechts who took service with her
father, or now and then a captive whom he put to ransom. She knew
absolutely nothing of the world, except for a general belief that
Freiherren lived there to do what they chose with other people, and that
the House of Adlerstein was the freest and noblest in existence. Also
there was a very positive hatred to the house of Schlangenwald, and no
less to that of Adlerstein Wildschloss, for no reason that Christina
could discover save that, being a younger branch of the family, they had
submitted to the Emperor. To destroy either the Graf von Schlangenwald,
or her Wildschloss cousin, was evidently the highest gratification
Ermentrude could conceive; and, for the rest, that her father and brother
should make successful captures at the Debateable Ford was the more
abiding, because more practicable hope. She had no further ideas, except
perhaps to elude her mother’s severity, and to desire her brother’s
success in chamois-hunting. The only mental culture she had ever
received was that old Ursel had taught her the Credo, Pater Noster, and
Ave, as correctly as might be expected from a long course of traditionary
repetitions of an incomprehensible language. And she knew besides a few
German rhymes and jingles, half Christian, half heathen, with a legend or
two which, if the names were Christian, ran grossly wild from all
Christian meaning or morality. As to the amenities, nay, almost the
proprieties, of life, they were less known in that baronial castle than
in any artisan’s house at Ulm. So little had the sick girl figured them
to herself, that she did not even desire any greater means of ease than
she possessed. She moaned and fretted indeed, with aching limbs and
blank weariness, but without the slightest formed desire for anything to
remove her discomfort, except the few ameliorations she knew, such as
sitting on her brother’s knee, with her head on his shoulder, or tasting
the mountain berries that he gathered for her. Any other desire she
exerted herself to frame was for finery to be gained from the spoils of
travellers.
And this was Christina’s charge, whom she must look upon as the least
alien spirit in this dreadful castle of banishment! The young and old
lords seemed to her savage bandits, who frightened her only less than did
the proud sinister expression of the old lady, for she had not even the
merit of showing any tenderness towards the sickly girl, of whom she was
ashamed, and evidently regarded the town-bred attendant as a contemptible
interloper.
Long, long did the maiden weep and pray that night after Ermentrude had
sunk to sleep. She strained her eyes with home-sick longings to detect
lights where she thought Ulm might be; and, as she thought of her uncle
and aunt, the poodle and the cat round the stove, the maids spinning and
the prentices knitting as her uncle read aloud some grave good book, most
probably the legend of the saint of the day, and contrasted it with the
rude gruff sounds of revelry that found their way up the turret stairs,
she could hardly restrain her sobs from awakening the young lady whose
bed she was to share. She thought almost with envy of her own patroness,
who was cast into the lake of Bolsena with a millstone about her neck—a
better fate, thought she, than to live on in such an abode of
loathsomeness and peril.
But then had not St. Christina floated up alive, bearing up her millstone
with her? And had not she been put into a dungeon full of venomous
reptiles who, when they approached her, had all been changed to harmless
doves? Christina had once asked Father Balthazar how this could be; and
had he not replied that the Church did not teach these miracles as
matters of faith, but that she might there discern in figure how meek
Christian holiness rose above all crushing burthens, and transformed the
rudest natures. This poor maiden-dying, perhaps; and oh! how unfit to
live or die!—might it be her part to do some good work by her, and infuse
some Christian hope, some godly fear? Could it be for this that the
saints had led her hither?