THE STAR AND THE SPARK
THE year 1531 has begun, and Schloss Adlerstein remains in its strength
on the mountain side, but with a look of cultivation on its environs such
as would have amazed Kunigunde. Vines run up trellises against the
rocks; pot-herbs and flowers nestle in the nooks; outbuildings cluster
round it; and even the grim old keep has a range of buildings connected
with it, as if the household had entirely outgrown the capacities of the
square tower.
Yet the old hall is still the chief place of assembly, and now that it
has been wainscoted, with a screen of carved wood to shut off the
draughty passages, and a stove of bright tiles to increase the warmth, it
is far more cheerful. Moreover, a window has been opened showing the
rich green meadow below, with the bridge over the Braunwasser, and the
little church, with a spire of pierced lace-work, and white cottages
peeping out of the retreating forest.
That is the window which the Lady Baroness loves. See her there, the
lovely old lady of seventy-five—yes, lovelier than ever, for her sweet
brown eyes have the same pensive, clear beauty, enhanced by the snowy
whiteness of her hair, of which a soft braid shows over the pure pale
brow beneath the white band, and sweeping black veil, that she has worn
by right for twenty years. But the slight form is active and brisk, and
there are ready smiles and looks of interest for the pretty fair-haired
maidens, three in number, who run in and out from their household
avocations to appeal to the “dear grandmother,” mischievously to tell of
the direful yawns proceeding from brothers Ebbo and Gottfried over their
studies with their tutor, or to gaze from the window and wonder if the
father, with the two brothers, Friedel Max and Kasimir, will return from
Ulm in time for the “mid-day eating.”
Ah! there they are. Quick-eyed Vittoria has seen the cavalcade first,
and dances off to tell Ermentrude and Stine time enough to prepare their
last batch of fritters for the new-comers; Ebbo and Götz rush headlong
down the hillside; and the Lady Baroness lays down her distaff, and gazes
with eyes of satisfied content at the small party of horsemen climbing up
the footpath. Then, when they have wound out of sight round a rock, she
moves out towards the hall-door, with a light, quick step, for never yet
has she resigned her great enjoyment, that of greeting her son on the
steps of the porch—those steps where she once met such fearful news, but
where that memory has been effaced by many a cheerful welcome.
There, then, she stands, amid the bright throng of grandchildren, while
the Baron and his sons spring from their horses and come up to her. The
Baron doffs his Spanish hat, bends the knee, kisses her hand, and
receives her kiss on his brow, with the fervour of a life-devotion,
before he turns to accept the salutation of his daughters, and then takes
her hand, with pretty affectionate ceremony, to hand her back to her
seat. A few words pass between them. “No, motherling,” he says, “I
signed it not; I will tell you all by and by.”
And then the mid-day meal is served for the whole household, as of old,
with the salt-cellar in the middle, but with a far larger company above
it than when first we saw it. The seven young folks preserve a decorous
silence, save when Fraulein Ermentrude’s cookeries are good-naturedly
complimented by her father, or when Baron Friedmund Maximilianus breaks
out with some wonderful fact about new armour seen at Ulm. He is a
handsome, fair, flaxen-haired young man—like the old Adlersteins, say the
elder people—and full of honest gaiety and good nature, the special pride
of his sisters; and no sooner is the meal over, than, with a formal
entreaty for dismissal, all the seven, and all the dogs, move off
together, to that favourite gathering-place round the stove, where all
their merry tongues are let loose together.
To them, the Herr Vater and the Frau Grossmutter seem nearly of the same
age, and of the same generation; and verily the eighteen years between
the mother and son have dwindled into a very small difference even in
appearance, and a lesser one in feeling. She is a youthful, beautiful
old lady; he a grave, spare, worn, elderly man, in his full strength, but
with many a trace of care and thought, and far more of silver than of
brown in his thin hair and pointed beard, and with a melancholy
thoughtfulness in his clear brown eyes—all well corresponding with the
gravity of the dress in which he has been meeting the burghers of Ulm; a
black velvet suit—only relieved by his small white lace ruff, and the
ribbon and jewel of the Golden Fleece, the only other approach to
ornament that he wears being that ring long ago twisted off the Emperor
Maximilian’s chain. But now, as he has bowed off the chaplain to his
study, and excused himself from aiding his two gentlemen-squires in
consuming their krug of beer, and hands his mother to her favourite nook
in the sunny window, taking his seat by her side, his features assume an
expression of repose and relaxation as if here indeed were his true home.
He has chosen his seat in full view of a picture that hangs on the
wainscoted wall, near his mother—a picture whose pure ethereal tinting,
of colour limpid as the rainbow, yet rich as the most glowing
flower-beds; and its soft lovely _pose_, and rounded outlines, prove it
to be no produce even of one of the great German artists of the time, but
to have been wrought, under an Italian sky, by such a hand as left us the
marvellous smile of Mona Lisa. It represents two figures, one
unmistakably himself when in the prime of life, his brow and cheeks
unfurrowed, and his hair still thick, shining brown, but with the same
grave earnestness of the dark eye that came with the early sense of
responsibility, and with the first sorrow of his youth. The other
figure, one on which the painter evidently loved to dwell, is of a lady,
so young that she might almost pass for his daughter, except for the
peculiar, tender sweetness that could only become the wife and mother.
Fair she is as snow, with scarce a deepening of the rose on cheek, or
even lip, fragile and transparent as a spiritual form, and with a light
in the blue eyes, and a grace in the soft fugitive smile, that scarce
seems to belong to earth; a beauty not exactly of feature, but rather the
pathetic loveliness of calm fading away—as if she were already melting
into the clear blue sky with the horizon of golden light, that the
wondrous power of art has made to harmonize with, but not efface, her
blue dress, golden hair, white coif, and fair skin. It is as if she
belonged to that sky, and only tarried as unable to detach herself from
the clasp of the strong hand round and in which both her hands are
twined; and though the light in her face may be from heaven, yet the
whole countenance is fixed in one absorbed, almost worshipping gaze of
her husband, with a wistful simplicity and innocence on devotion, like
the absorption of a loving animal, to whom its master’s presence is bliss
and sunshine. It is a picture to make light in a dark place, and that
sweet face receives a loving glance, nay, an absolutely reverent bend of
the knightly head, as the Baron seats himself.
“So it was as we feared, and this Schmalkaldic League did not suit thy
sense of loyalty, my son?” she asks, reading his features anxiously.
“No, mother. I ever feared that further pressure would drive our friends
beyond the line where begin schism and rebellion; and it seems to me that
the moment is come when I must hold me still, or transgress mine own
sense of duty. I must endure the displeasure of many I love and
respect.”
“Surely, my son, they have known you too long and too well not to respect
your motives, and know that conscience is first with you.”
“Scarce may such confidence be looked for, mother, from the most part,
who esteem every man a traitor to the cause if he defend it not precisely
in the fashion of their own party. But I hear that the King of France
has offered himself as an ally, and that Dr. Luther, together with others
of our best divines, have thereby been startled into doubts of the
lawfulness of the League.”
“And what think you of doing, my son?”
“I shall endeavour to wait until such time as the much-needed General
Council may proclaim the ancient truth, and enable us to avouch it
without disunion. Into schism I _will_ not be drawn. I have held truth
all my life in the Church, nor will I part from her now. If intrigues
again should prevail, then, Heaven help us! Meantime, mother, the best
we can, as has ever been your war-cry.”
“And much has been won for us. Here are the little maidens, who, save
Vittoria, would never have been scholars, reading the Holy Word daily in
their own tongue.”
“Ach, I had not told you, mother! I have the Court Secretary’s answer
this day about that command in the Kaisar’s guards that my dear old
master had promised to his godson.”
“Another put-off with Flemish courtesy, I see by thy face, Ebbo.”
“Not quite that, mother. The command is ready for the Baron Friedmund
Maximilianus von Adlerstein Wildschloss, and all the rest of it, on the
understanding that he has been bred up free from all taint of the new
doctrine.”
“New? Nay, it is the oldest of all doctrine.”
“Even so. As I ever said, Dr. Luther hath been setting forth in greater
clearness and fulness what our blessed Friedel and I learnt at your knee,
and my young ones have learnt from babyhood of the true Catholic
doctrine. Yet I may not call my son’s faith such as the Kaisar’s Spanish
conscience-keepers would have it, and so the boy must e’en tarry at home
till there be work for his stout arm to do.”
“He seems little disappointed. His laugh comes ringing the loudest of
all.”
“The Junker is more of a boy at two-and-twenty than I ever recollect
myself! He lacks not sense nor wit, but a fray or a feast, a chase or a
dance, seem to suffice him at an age when I had long been dwelling on
matters of moment.”
“Thou wast left to be thine own pilot; he is but one of thy gay crew, and
thus even these stirring times touch him not so deeply as thou wert
affected by thine own choice in life between disorderly freedom and
honourable restraint.”
“I thought of that choice to-day, mother, as I crossed the bridge and
looked at the church; and more than ever thankful did I feel that our
blessed Friedel, having aided me over that one decisive pass, was laid to
rest, his tender spirit unvexed by the shocks and divisions that have
wrenched me hither and thither.”
“Nay; not hither and thither. Ever hadst thou a resolute purpose and
aim.”
“Ever failed in by my own error or that of others—What, thou nestling
here, my little Vittoria, away from all yonder prattle?”
“Dear father, if I may, I love far best to hear you and the grandmother
talk.”
“Hear the child! She alone hath your face, mother, or Friedel’s eyes!
Is it that thou wouldst be like thy noble Roman godmother, the Marchesa
di Pescara, that makes thee seek our grave company, little one?”
“I always long to hear you talk of her, and of the Italian days, dear
father, and how you won this noble jewel of yours.”
“Ah, child, that was before those times! It was the gift of good Kaisar
Max at his godson’s christening, when he filled your sweet mother with
pretty spite by persuading her that it was a little golden bear-skin.”
“Tell her how you had gained it, my son.”
“By vapouring, child; and by the dull pride of my neighbours. Heard’st
thou never of the siege of Padua, when we had Bayard, the best knight in
Europe, and 500 Frenchmen for our allies? Our artillery had made a
breach, and the Kaisar requested the French knights to lead the storm,
whereto they answered, Well and good, but our German nobles must share
the assault, and not leave them to fight with no better backers than the
hired lanzknechts. All in reason, quoth I, and more shame for us not to
have been foremost in our Kaisar’s own cause; but what said the rest of
our misproud chivalry? They would never condescend to climb a wall on
foot in company with lanzknechts! On horseback must their worships
fight, or not at all; and when to shame them I called myself a
mountaineer, more used to climb than to ride, and vowed that I should
esteem it an honour to follow such a knight as Bayard, were it on all
fours, then cast they my burgher blood in my teeth. Never saw I the
Kaisar so enraged; he swore that all the common sense in the empire was
in the burgher blood, and that he would make me a knight of the noblest
order in Europe to show how he esteemed it. And next morning he was
gone! So ashamed was he of his own army that he rode off in the night,
and sent orders to break up the siege. I could have torn my hair, for I
had just lashed up a few of our nobles to a better sense of honour, and
we would yet have redeemed our name! And after all, the Chapter of proud
Flemings would never have admitted me had not the heralds hunted up that
the Sorels were gentlemen of blood and coat armour long ago at Liège. I
am glad my father lived to see that proved, mother. He could not honour
thee more than he did, but he would have been sorely grieved had I been
rejected. He often thought me a mechanical burgher, as it was.”
“Not quite so, my son. He never failed to be proud of thy deeds, even
when he did not understand them; but this, and the grandson’s birth, were
the crowning joys of his life.”
“Yes, those were glad triumphant years, take them all in all, ere the
Emperor sent me to act ambassador in Rome, and we left you the two elder
little girls and the boy to take care of. My dear little Thekla! She
had a foreboding that she might never see those children more, yet would
she have pined her heart away more surely had I left her at home! I
never was absent a week but I found her wasted with watching for me.”
“It was those weary seven years of Italy that changed thee most, my son.”
“Apart from you, mother, and knowing you now indeed to be widowed, and
with on the one hand such contradictory commands from the Emperor as made
me sorely ashamed of myself, of my nation, and of the man whom I loved
and esteemed personally the most on earth, yet bound there by his express
command, while I saw my tender wife’s health wasting in the climate day
by day! Yet still, while most she gasped for a breath of Swabian hills,
she ever declared it would kill her outright to send her from me. And
thus it went on till I laid her in the stately church of her own
patroness. Then how it would have fared with me and the helpless little
ones I know not, but for thy noble godmother, my Vittoria, the wise and
ready helper of all in trouble, the only friend thy mother had made at
Rome, and who had been able, from all her heights of learning and
accomplishment, to value my Thekla’s golden soul in its simplicity. Even
then, when too late, came one of the Kaisar’s kindest letters, recalling
me,—a letter whose every word I would have paid for with a drop of my own
blood six weeks before! and which he had only failed to send because his
head was running on the plan of that gorgeous tomb where he is not
buried! Well, at least it brought us home to you again once more,
mother, and, where you are, comfort never has been utterly absent from
me. And then, coming from the wilful gloom of Pope Leo’s court into our
Germany, streamed over by the rays of Luther’s light, it was as if a new
world of hope were dawning, as if truth would no longer be muffled, and
the young would grow up to a world far better and purer than the old had
ever seen. What trumpet-calls those were, and how welcome was the voice
of the true Catholic faith no longer stifled! And my dear old Kaisar,
with his clear eyes, his unfettered mind—he felt the power and truth of
those theses. He bade the Elector of Saxony well to guard the monk
Luther as a treasure. Ah! had he been a younger man, or had he been more
firm and resolute, able to act as well as think for himself, things might
have gone otherwise with the Church. He could think, but could not act;
and now we have a man who acts, but _will_ not think. It may have been a
good day for our German reputation among foreign princes when Charles V.
put on the crown; but only two days in my life have been as mournful to
me as that when I stood by Kaisar Max’s death-bed at Wells, and knew that
generous, loving, fitful spirit was passing away from the earth! Never
owned I friend I loved so well as Kaisar Max! Nor has any Emperor done
so much for this our dear land.”
“The young Emperor never loved thee.”
“He might have treated me as one who could be useful, but he never
forgave me for shaking hands with Luther at the Diet of Worms. I knew it
was all over with my court favour after I had joined in escorting the
Doctor out of the city. And the next thing was that Georg of Freundsberg
and his friends proclaimed me a bigoted Papist because I did my utmost to
keep my troop out of the devil’s holiday at the sack of Rome! It has
ever been my lot to be in disgrace with one side or the other! Here is
my daughter’s marriage hindered on the one hand, my son’s promotion
checked on the other, because I have a conscience of my own, and not of
other people’s! Heaven knows the right is no easy matter to find; but,
when one thinks one sees it, there is nothing to be done but to guide
oneself by it, even if the rest of the world will not view it in the same
light.”
“Nothing else! I doubt me whether it be ever easy to see the veritably
right course while still struggling in the midst. That is for after
ages, which behold things afar off; but each man must needs follow his
own principle in an honest and good heart, and assuredly God will guide
him to work out some good end, or hinder some evil one.”
“Ay, mother. Each party may guard one side or other of the truth in all
honesty and faithfulness; he who cannot with his whole heart cast in his
lot with either,—he is apt to serve no purpose, and to be scorned.”
“Nay, Ebbo, may he not be a witness to the higher and more perfect truth
than either party have conceived? Nor is inaction always needful. That
which is right towards either side still reveals itself at the due
moment, whether it be to act or to hold still. And verily, Ebbo, what
thou didst say even now has set me on a strange thought of mine own
dream, that which heralded the birth of thyself and thy brother. As thou
knowest, it seemed to me that I was watching two sparkles from the
extinguished Needfire wheel. One rose aloft and shone as a star!”
“My guiding-star!”
“The other fulfilled those words of the Wise Man. It shone and ran to
and fro in the grass. And surely, my Ebbo, thy mother may feel that, in
all these dark days of perplexity and trial, the spark of light hath ever
shone and drawn its trail of brightness in the gloom, even though the way
was long, and seemed uncertain.”
“The mother who ever fondled me _will_ think so, it may be! But, ah! she
had better pray that the light be clearer, and that I may not fall
utterly short of the star!”
* * * * *
Travellers in Wurtemburg may perhaps turn aside from glorious old Ulm,
and the memories of the battlefields around it, to the romantic country
round the Swabian mountains, through which descend the tributaries of the
Danube. Here they may think themselves fortunate if they come upon a
green valley, with a bright mountain torrent dashing through it, fresh
from the lofty mountain, with terraced sides that rise sheer above. An
old bridge, a mill, and a neat German village lie clustered in the
valley; a seignorial mansion peeps out of the forest glades; and a lovely
church, of rather late Gothic, but beautifully designed, attracts the eye
so soon as it can be persuaded to quit the romantic outline of the ruined
baronial castle high up on one of the mountain ledges. Report declares
that there are tombs in the church well worth inspection. You seek out
an old venerable blue-coated peasant who has charge of the church.
“What is yonder castle?”
“It is the castle of Adlerstein.”
“Are the family still extant?”
“Yea, yea; they built yonder house when the Schloss became ruinous. They
have always been here.”
The church is very beautiful in its details, the carved work of the east
end and pulpit especially so, but nothing is so attractive as the altar
tomb in the chantry chapel. It is a double one, holding not, as usual,
the recumbent effigies of a husband and wife, but of two knights in
armour.
“Who are these, good friend?”
“They are the good Barons Ebbo and Friedel.”
Father and son they appear to be, killed at the same time in some fatal
battle, for the white marble face of one is round with youth, no hair on
lip nor chin, and with a lovely peaceful solemnity, almost cheerfulness,
in the expression. The other, a bearded man, has the glory of old age in
his worn features, beautiful and restful, but it is as if one had gone to
sleep in the light of dawn, the other in the last glow of sunset. Their
armour and their crests are alike, but the young one bears the eagle
shield alone, while the elder has the same bearing repeated upon an
escutcheon of pretence; the young man’s hands are clasped over a harp,
those of the other over a Bible, and the elder wears the insignia of the
order of the Golden Fleece. They are surely father and son, a maiden
knight and tried warrior who fell together?
“No,” the guide shakes his head; “they are twin brothers, the good Barons
Ebbo and Friedel, who were born when their father had been taken captive
by the Saracens while on a crusade. Baron Friedel was slain by the Turks
at the bridge foot, and his brother built the church in his memory. He
first planted vines upon the mountains, and freed the peasants from the
lord’s dues on their flax. And it is true that the two brothers may
still be seen hovering on the mountain-side in the mist at sunset,
sometimes one, sometimes both.”
You turn with a smile to the inscription, sure that those windows, those
porches, that armour, never were of crusading date, and ready to refute
the old peasant. You spell out the upright Gothic letters around the
cornice of the tomb, and you read, in mediæval Latin,—
“Orate pro Anima Friedmundis Equitis Baronis Adlersteini. A. D.
mccccxciii”
Then turn to the other side and read—
“Hic jacet Eberardus Eques Baro Adlersteini. A.D. mdxliii. Demum”
Yes, the guide is right. They are brothers, with well-nigh a lifetime
between their deaths. Is that the meaning of that strange _Demum_?
Few of the other tombs are worth attention, each lapsing further into the
bad taste of later ages; yet there is one still deserving admiration,
placed close to the head of that of the two Barons. It is the effigy of
a lady, aged and serene, with a delicately-carved face beneath her stiff
head-gear. Surely this monument was erected somewhat later, for the
inscription is in German. Stiff, contracted, hard to read, but this is
the rendering of it:—
“Here lies Christina Sorel, wife of Eberhard, xxth Baron von
Adlerstein, and mother of the Barons Eberhard and Friedmund. She
fell asleep two days before her son, on the feast of St. John,
mdxliii.
“Her children shall rise up and call her blessed.
“Erected with full hearts by her grandson, Baron Friedmund
Maximilianus, and his brothers and sisters. Farewell.”
* * * * *
THE END.
* * * * *
* * * * *
_Richard Clay & Sons_, _Limited_, _London & Bungay_