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Translations from the German (Vol 3 of 3): Tales by Musæus, Tieck, Richter

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Title: Translations from the German (Vol 3 of 3): Tales by Musæus, Tieck, Richter

Author: Thomas Carlyle
        Jean Paul
        Johann Karl August Musäus
        Ludwig Tieck


        
Release date: February 6, 2012 [eBook #38779]
                Most recently updated: January 6, 2014

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/38779

Credits: Produced by Thierry Alberto, Henry Craig, Leonard Johnson
        and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
        http://www.pgdp.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TRANSLATIONS FROM THE GERMAN (VOL 3 OF 3): TALES BY MUSÆUS, TIECK, RICHTER ***




Produced by Thierry Alberto, Henry Craig, Leonard Johnson
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net












TRANSLATIONS FROM THE GERMAN

BY

THOMAS CARLYLE.



UNIFORM WITH HIS COLLECTED WORKS.



IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL. III.

MUSAEUS, TIECK, RICHTER.



  LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL (LIMITED),
  11 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN.




TALES

BY

MUSAEUS, TIECK, RICHTER.



TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN

BY

THOMAS CARLYLE.



[1827.]



  LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL (LIMITED),
  11 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN.




CONTENTS


  MUSAEUS:
                                          PAGE
  DUMB LOVE                                  3
  LIBUSSA                                   58
  MELECHSALA                                98


  TIECK:

  THE FAIR-HAIRED ECKBERT                  159
  THE TRUSTY ECKART                        175
  THE RUNENBERG                            200
  THE ELVES                                220
  THE GOBLET                               238


  RICHTER:

  SCHMELZLE'S JOURNEY TO FLAETZ             257
  LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN                  305




MUSAEUS.




DUMB LOVE.[1]


There was once a wealthy merchant, Melchior of Bremen by name, who used
to stroke his beard with a contemptuous grin, when he heard the Rich Man
in the Gospel preached of, whom, in comparison, he reckoned little
better than a petty shopkeeper. Melchior had money in such plenty, that
he floored his dining-room all over with a coat of solid dollars. In
those frugal times, as in our own, a certain luxury prevailed among the
rich; only then it had a more substantial shape than now. But though
this pomp of Melchior's was sharply censured by his fellow-citizens and
consorts, it was, in truth, directed more to trading speculation than to
mere vain-glory. The cunning Bremer easily observed, that those who
grudged and blamed this seeming vanity, would but diffuse the reputation
of his wealth, and so increase his credit. He gained his purpose to the
full; the sleeping capital of old dollars, so judiciously set up to
public inspection in the parlour, brought interest a hundredfold, by the
silent surety which it offered for his bargains in every market; yet, at
last, it became a rock on which the welfare of his family made
shipwreck.

     [1] Prefatory Introduction to Musaeus, _supra_, at p. 316, Vol. VI.
     of _Works_ (Vol. I. of _Miscellanies_).

Melchior of Bremen died of a surfeit at a city-feast, without having
time to set his house in order; and left all his goods and chattels to
an only son, in the bloom of life, and just arrived at the years when
the laws allowed him to take possession of his inheritance. Franz
Melcherson was a brilliant youth, endued by nature with the best
capacities. His exterior was gracefully formed, yet firm and sinewy
withal; his temper was cheery and jovial, as if hung-beef and old French
wine had joined to influence his formation. On his cheeks bloomed
health; and from his brown eyes looked mirthfulness and love of joy. He
was like a marrowy plant, which needs but water and the poorest ground
to make it grow to strength; but which, in too fat a soil, will shoot
into luxuriant overgrowth, without fruit or usefulness. The father's
heritage, as often happens, proved the ruin of the son. Scarce had he
felt the joy of being sole possessor and disposer of a large fortune,
when he set about endeavouring to get rid of it as of a galling burden;
began to play the Rich Man in the Gospel to the very letter; went
clothed in fine apparel, and fared sumptuously every day. No feast at
the bishop's court could be compared for pomp and superfluity with his;
and never while the town of Bremen shall endure, will such another
public dinner be consumed, as it yearly got from him; for to every
burgher of the place he gave a Krusel-soup and a jug of Spanish wine.
For this, all people cried: Long life to him! and Franz became the hero
of the day.

In this unceasing whirl of joviality, no thought was cast upon the
Balancing of Entries, which, in those days, was the merchant's
vade-mecum, though in our times it is going out of fashion, and for want
of it the tongue of the commercial beam too frequently declines with a
magnetic virtue from the vertical position. Some years passed on without
the joyful Franz's noticing a diminution in his incomes; for at his
father's death every chest and coffer had been full. The voracious host
of table-friends, the airy company of jesters, gamesters, parasites, and
all who had their living by the prodigal son, took special care to keep
reflection at a distance from him; they hurried him from one enjoyment
to another; kept him constantly in play, lest in some sober moment
Reason might awake, and snatch him from their plundering claws.

But at last their well of happiness went suddenly dry; old Melchior's
casks of gold were now run off even to the lees. One day, Franz ordered
payment of a large account; his cash-keeper was not in a state to
execute the precept, and returned it with a protest. This
counter-incident flashed keenly through the soul of Franz; yet he felt
nothing else but anger and vexation at his servant, to whose
unaccountable perversity, by no means to his own ill husbandry, he
charged the present disorder in his finances. Nor did he give himself
the trouble to investigate the real condition of the business; but after
flying to the common Fool's-litany, and thundering out some scores of
curses, he transmitted to his shoulder-shrugging steward the laconic
order: Find means.

Bill-brokers, usurers and money-changers now came into play. For high
interest, fresh sums were poured into the empty coffers; the silver
flooring of the dining-room was then more potent in the eyes of
creditors, than in these times of ours the promissory obligation of the
Congress of America, with the whole thirteen United States to back it.
This palliative succeeded for a season; but, underhand, the rumour
spread about the town, that the silver flooring had been privily
removed, and a stone one substituted in its stead. The matter was
immediately, by application of the lenders, legally inquired into, and
discovered to be actually so. Now, it could not be denied, that a
marble-floor, worked into nice Mosaic, looked much better in a parlour,
than a sheet of dirty, tarnished dollars: the creditors, however, paid
so little reverence to the proprietor's refinement of taste, that on the
spot they, one and all, demanded payment of their several moneys; and as
this was not complied with, they proceeded to procure an act of
bankruptcy; and Melchior's house, with its appurtenances, offices,
gardens, parks and furniture, were sold by public auction, and their
late owner, who in this extremity had screened himself from jail by some
chicanery of law, judicially ejected.

It was now too late to moralise on his absurdities, since philosophical
reflections could not alter what was done, and the most wholesome
resolutions would not bring him back his money. According to the
principles of this our cultivated century, the hero at this juncture
ought to have retired with dignity from the stage, or in some way
terminated his existence; to have entered on his travels into foreign
parts, or opened his carotid artery; since in his native town he could
live no longer as a man of honour. Franz neither did the one nor the
other. The _qu'en-dira-t-on_, which French morality employs as bit and
curb for thoughtlessness and folly, had never once occurred to the
unbridled squanderer in the days of his profusion, and his sensibility
was still too dull to feel so keenly the disgrace of his capricious
wastefulness. He was like a toper, who has been in drink, and on
awakening out of his carousal, cannot rightly understand how matters are
or have been with him. He lived according to the manner of unprospering
spendthrifts; repented not, lamented not. By good fortune, he had picked
some relics from the wreck; a few small heir-looms of the family; and
these secured him for a time from absolute starvation.

He engaged a lodging in a remote alley, into which the sun never shone
throughout the year, except for a few days about the solstice, when it
peeped for a short while over the high roofs. Here he found the little
that his now much-contracted wants required. The frugal kitchen of his
landlord screened him from hunger, the stove from cold, the roof from
rain, the four walls from wind; only from the pains of tedium he could
devise no refuge or resource. The light rabble of parasites had fled
away with his prosperity; and of his former friends there was now no one
that knew him. Reading had not yet become a necessary of life; people
did not yet understand the art of killing time by means of those amusing
shapes of fancy which are wont to lodge in empty heads. There were yet
no sentimental, pedagogic, psychologic, popular, simple, comic, or moral
tales; no novels of domestic life, no cloister-stories, no romances of
the middle ages; and of the innumerable generation of our Henrys, and
Adelaides, and Cliffords, and Emmas, no one had as yet lifted up its
mantua-maker voice, to weary out the patience of a lazy and discerning
public. In those days, knights were still diligently pricking round the
tilt-yard; Dietrich of Bern, Hildebrand, Seyfried with the Horns,
Rennewart the Strong, were following their snake and dragon hunt, and
killing giants and dwarfs of twelve men's strength. The venerable epos,
_Theuerdank_, was the loftiest ideal of German art and skill, the latest
product of our native wit, but only for the cultivated minds, the poets
and thinkers of the age. Franz belonged to none of those classes, and
had therefore nothing to employ himself upon, except that he tuned his
lute, and sometimes twanged a little on it; then, by way of variation,
took to looking from the window, and instituted observations on the
weather; out of which, indeed, there came no inference a whit more
edifying than from all the labours of the most rheumatic meteorologist
of this present age. Meanwhile his turn for observation ere long found
another sort of nourishment, by which the vacant space in his head and
heart was at once filled.

In the narrow lane right opposite his window dwelt an honest matron,
who, in hope of better times, was earning a painful living by the long
threads, which, assisted by a marvellously fair daughter, she winded
daily from her spindle. Day after day the couple spun a length of yarn,
with which the whole town of Bremen, with its walls and trenches, and
all its suburbs, might have been begirt. These two spinners had not been
born for the wheel; they were of good descent, and had lived of old in
pleasant affluence. The fair Meta's father had once had a ship of his
own on the sea, and, freighting it himself, had yearly sailed to
Antwerp; but a heavy storm had sunk the vessel, "with man and mouse,"
and a rich cargo, into the abysses of the ocean, before Meta had passed
the years of her childhood. The mother, a staid and reasonable woman,
bore the loss of her husband and all her fortune with a wise composure;
in her need she refused, out of noble pride, all help from the
charitable sympathy of her relations and friends; considering it as
shameful alms, so long as she believed, that in her own activity she
might find a living by the labour of her hands. She gave up her large
house, and all her costly furniture, to the rigorous creditors of her
ill-fated husband, hired a little dwelling in the lane, and span from
early morning till late night, though the trade went sore against her,
and she often wetted the thread with her tears. Yet by this diligence
she reached her object, of depending upon no one, and owing no mortal
any obligation. By and by she trained her growing daughter to the same
employment; and lived so thriftily, that she laid-by a trifle of her
gainings, and turned it to account by carrying on a little trade in
flax.

She, however, nowise purposed to conclude her life in these poor
circumstances; on the contrary, the honest dame kept up her heart with
happy prospects into the future, and hoped that she should once more
attain a prosperous situation, and in the autumn of her life enjoy her
woman's-summer. Nor were these hopes grounded altogether upon empty
dreams of fancy, but upon a rational and calculated expectation. She saw
her daughter budding up like a spring rose, no less virtuous and modest
than she was fair; and with such endowments of art and spirit, that the
mother felt delight and comfort in her, and spared the morsel from her
own lips, that nothing might be wanting in an education suitable to her
capacities. For she thought, that if a maiden could come up to the
sketch which Solomon, the wise friend of woman, has left of the ideal of
a perfect wife, it could not fail that a pearl of such price would be
sought after, and bidden for, to ornament some good man's house; for
beauty combined with virtue, in the days of Mother Brigitta, were as
important in the eyes of wooers, as, in our days, birth combined with
fortune. Besides, the number of suitors was in those times greater; it
was then believed that the wife was the most essential, not, as in our
refined economical theory, the most superfluous item in the household.
The fair Meta, it is true, bloomed only like a precious rare flower in
the greenhouse, not under the gay, free sky; she lived in maternal
oversight and keeping, sequestered and still; was seen in no walk, in no
company; and scarcely once in the year passed through the gate of her
native town; all which seemed utterly to contradict her mother's
principle. The old Lady E * * of Memel understood it otherwise, in her
time. She sent the itinerant Sophia, it is clear as day, from Memel into
Saxony, simply on a marriage speculation, and attained her purpose
fully. How many hearts did the wandering nymph set on fire, how many
suitors courted her! Had she stayed at home, as a domestic modest
maiden, she might have bloomed away in the remoteness of her virgin
cell, without even making a conquest of Kubbuz the schoolmaster. Other
times, other manners. Daughters with us are a sleeping capital, which
must be put in circulation if it is to yield any interest; of old, they
were kept like thrifty savings, under lock and key; yet the bankers
still knew where the treasure lay concealed, and how it might be come
at. Mother Brigitta steered towards some prosperous son-in-law, who
might lead her back from the Babylonian captivity of the narrow lane
into the land of superfluity, flowing with milk and honey; and trusted
firmly, that in the urn of Fate, her daughter's lot would not be coupled
with a blank.

One day, while neighbour Franz was looking from the window, making
observations on the weather, he perceived the charming Meta coming with
her mother from church, whither she went daily, to attend mass. In the
times of his abundance, the unstable voluptuary had been blind to the
fairer half of the species; the finer feelings were still slumbering in
his breast; and all his senses had been overclouded by the ceaseless
tumult of debauchery. But now the stormy waves of extravagance had
subsided; and in this deep calm, the smallest breath of air sufficed to
curl the mirror surface of his soul. He was enchanted by the aspect of
this, the loveliest female figure that had ever flitted past him. He
abandoned from that hour the barren study of the winds and clouds, and
now instituted quite another set of Observations for the furtherance of
Moral Science, and one which afforded to himself much finer occupation.
He soon extracted from his landlord intelligence of this fair neighbour,
and learned most part of what we know already.

Now rose on him the first repentant thought for his heedless
squandering; there awoke a secret good-will in his heart to this new
acquaintance; and for her sake he wished that his paternal inheritance
were his own again, that the lovely Meta might be fitly dowered with it.
His garret in the narrow lane was now so dear to him, that he would not
have exchanged it with the Schudding itself.[2] Throughout the day he
stirred not from the window, watching for an opportunity of glancing at
the dear maiden; and when she chanced to show herself, he felt more
rapture in his soul than did Horrox in his Liverpool Observatory, when
he saw, for the first time, Venus passing over the disk of the Sun.

     [2] One of the largest buildings in Bremen, where the meetings of
     the merchants are usually held.

Unhappily the watchful mother instituted counter-observations, and ere
long discovered what the lounger on the other side was driving at; and
as Franz, in the capacity of spendthrift, already stood in very bad
esteem with her, this daily gazing angered her so much, that she
shrouded her lattice as with a cloud, and drew the curtains close
together. Meta had the strictest orders not again to appear at the
window; and when her mother went with her to mass, she drew a rain-cap
over her face, disguised her like a favourite of the Grand Signior, and
hurried till she turned the corner with her, and escaped the eyes of the
lier-in-wait.

Of Franz, it was not held that penetration was his master faculty; but
Love awakens all the talents of the mind. He observed, that by his
imprudent spying, he had betrayed himself; and he thenceforth retired
from the window, with the resolution not again to look out at it, though
the _Venerabile_ itself were carried by. On the other hand, he meditated
some invention for proceeding with his observations in a private manner;
and without great labour, his combining spirit mastered it.

He hired the largest looking-glass that he could find, and hung it up in
his room, with such an elevation and direction, that he could distinctly
see whatever passed in the dwelling of his neighbours. Here, as for
several days the watcher did not come to light, the screens by degrees
went asunder; and the broad mirror now and then could catch the form of
the noble maid, and, to the great refreshment of the virtuoso, cast it
truly back. The more deeply love took root in his heart,[3] the more
widely did his wishes extend. It now struck him that he ought to lay his
passion open to the fair Meta, and investigate the corresponding state
of her opinions. The commonest and readiest way which lovers, under such
a constellation of their wishes, strike into, was in his position
inaccessible. In those modest ages, it was always difficult for Paladins
in love to introduce themselves to daughters of the family; toilette
calls were not in fashion; trustful interviews tete-a-tete were punished
by the loss of reputation to the female sharer; promenades, esplanades,
masquerades, pic-nics, goutes, soupes, and other inventions of modern
wit for forwarding sweet courtship, had not then been hit upon; yet,
notwithstanding, all things went their course, much as they do with us.
Gossipings, weddings, lykewakes, were, especially in our Imperial
Cities, privileged vehicles for carrying on soft secrets, and expediting
marriage contracts; hence the old proverb, _One wedding makes a score._
But a poor runagate no man desired to number among his baptismal
relatives; to no nuptial dinner, to no wakesupper, was he bidden. The
by-way of negotiating, with the woman, with the young maid, or any other
serviceable spirit of a go-between, was here locked up. Mother Brigitta
had neither maid nor woman; the flax and yarn trade passed through no
hands but her own; and she abode by her daughter as closely as her
shadow.

     [3] [Greek: Apo tou horan erchetai to eran.]

In these circumstances, it was clearly impossible for neighbour Franz to
disclose his heart to the fair Meta, either verbally or in writing. Ere
long, however, he invented an idiom, which appeared expressly calculated
for the utterance of the passions. It is true, the honour of the first
invention is not his. Many ages ago, the sentimental Celadons of Italy
and Spain had taught melting harmonies, in serenades beneath the
balconies of their dames, to speak the language of the heart; and it is
said that this melodious pathos had especial virtue in love-matters;
and, by the confession of the ladies, was more heart-affecting and
subduing, than of yore the oratory of the reverend Chrysostom, or the
pleadings of Demosthenes and Tully. But of all this the simple Bremer
had not heard a syllable; and consequently the invention of expressing
his emotions in symphonious notes, and trilling them to his beloved
Meta, was entirely his own.

In an hour of sentiment, he took his lute: he did not now tune it merely
to accompany his voice, but drew harmonious melodies from its strings;
and Love, in less than a month, had changed the musical scraper to a new
Amphion. His first efforts did not seem to have been noticed; but soon
the population of the lane were all ear, every time the dilettante
struck a note. Mothers hushed their children, fathers drove the noisy
urchins from the doors, and the performer had the satisfaction to
observe that Meta herself, with her alabaster hand, would sometimes open
the window as he began to prelude. If he succeeded in enticing her to
lend an ear, his voluntaries whirled along in gay _allegro_, or skipped
away in mirthful jigs; but if the turning of the spindle, or her thrifty
mother, kept her back, a heavy-laden _andante_ rolled over the bridge of
the sighing lute, and expressed, in languishing modulations, the feeling
of sadness which love-pain poured over his soul.

Meta was no dull scholar; she soon learned to interpret this expressive
speech. She made various experiments to try whether she had rightly
understood it, and found that she could govern at her will the
dilettante humours of the unseen lute-twanger; for your silent modest
maidens, it is well known, have a much sharper eye than those giddy
flighty girls, who hurry with the levity of butterflies from one object
to another, and take proper heed of none. She felt her female vanity a
little flattered; and it pleased her that she had it in her power, by a
secret magic, to direct the neighbouring lute, and tune it now to the
note of joy, now to the whimpering moan of grief. Mother Brigitta, on
the other hand, had her head so constantly employed with her traffic on
the small scale, that she minded none of these things; and the sly
little daughter took especial care to keep her in the dark respecting
the discovery; and, instigated either by some touch of kindness for her
cooing neighbour, or perhaps by vanity, that she might show her
hermeneutic penetration, meditated on the means of making some
symbolical response to these harmonious apostrophes to her heart. She
expressed a wish to have flower-pots on the outside of the window; and
to grant her this innocent amusement was a light thing for the mother,
who no longer feared the coney-catching neighbour, now that she no
longer saw him with her eyes.

Henceforth Meta had a frequent call to tend her flowers, to water them,
to bind them up, and guard them from approaching storms, and watch their
growth and flourishing. With inexpressible delight the happy Franz
explained this hieroglyphic altogether in his favour; and the speaking
lute did not fail to modulate his glad emotions, through the alley, into
the heedful ear of the fair friend of flowers. This, in her tender
virgin heart, worked wonders. She began to be secretly vexed, when
Mother Brigitta, in her wise table-talk, in which at times she spent an
hour chatting with her daughter, brought their melodious neighbour to
her bar, and called him a losel and a sluggard, or compared him with the
Prodigal in the Gospel. She always took his part; threw the blame of his
ruin on the sorrowful temptations he had met with; and accused him of
nothing worse than not having fitly weighed the golden proverb, _A penny
saved is a penny got_. Yet she defended him with cunning prudence; so
that it rather seemed as if she wished to help the conversation, than
took any interest in the thing itself.

While Mother Brigitta within her four walls was inveighing against the
luckless spendthrift, he on his side entertained the kindest feelings
towards her; and was considering diligently how he might, according to
his means, improve her straitened circumstances, and divide with her the
little that remained to him, and so that she might never notice that a
portion of his property had passed over into hers. This pious outlay, in
good truth, was specially intended not for the mother, but the daughter.
Underhand he had come to know, that the fair Meta had a hankering for a
new gown, which her mother had excused herself from buying, under
pretext of hard times. Yet he judged quite accurately, that a present of
a piece of stuff, from an unknown hand, would scarcely be received, or
cut into a dress for Meta; and that he should spoil all, if he stept
forth and avowed himself the author of the benefaction. Chance afforded
him an opportunity to realise this purpose in the way he wished.

Mother Brigitta was complaining to a neighbour, that flax was very dull;
that it cost her more to purchase than the buyers of it would repay; and
that hence this branch of industry was nothing better, for the present,
than a withered bough. Eaves-dropper Franz did not need a second
telling; he ran directly to the goldsmith, sold his mother's ear-rings,
bought some stones of flax, and, by means of a negotiatress, whom he
gained, had it offered to the mother for a cheap price. The bargain was
concluded; and it yielded so richly, that on All-Saints' day the fair
Meta sparkled in a fine new gown. In this decoration, she had such a
splendour in her watchful neighbour's eyes, that he would have
overlooked the Eleven Thousand Virgins, all and sundry, had it been
permitted him to choose a heart's-mate from among them, and fixed upon
the charming Meta.

But just as he was triumphing in the result of his innocent deceit, the
secret was betrayed. Mother Brigitta had resolved to do the
flax-retailer, who had brought her that rich gain, a kindness in her
turn; and was treating her with a well-sugared rice-pap, and a
quarter-stoop of Spanish sack. This dainty set in motion not only the
toothless jaw, but also the garrulous tongue of the crone: she engaged
to continue the flax-brokerage, should her consigner feel inclined, as
from good grounds she guessed he would. One word produced another;
Mother Eve's two daughters searched, with the curiosity peculiar to
their sex, till at length the brittle seal of female secrecy gave way.
Meta grew pale with affright at the discovery, which would have charmed
her, had her mother not partaken of it. But she knew her strict ideas of
morals and decorum; and these gave her doubts about the preservation of
her gown. The serious dame herself was no less struck at the tidings,
and wished, on her side too, that she alone had got intelligence of the
specific nature of her flax-trade; for she dreaded that this neighbourly
munificence might make an impression on her daughter's heart, which
would derange her whole calculations. She resolved, therefore, to root
out the still tender germ of this weed, in the very act, from the maiden
heart. The gown, in spite of all the tears and prayers of its lovely
owner, was first hypothecated, and next day transmitted to the
huckster's shop; the money raised from it, with the other profits of the
flax speculation, accurately reckoned up, were packed together, and
under the name of an old debt, returned to "Mr. Franz Melcherson, in
Bremen," by help of the Hamburg post. The receiver, nothing doubting,
took the little lot of money as an unexpected blessing; wished that all
his father's debtors would clear off their old scores as conscientiously
as this honest unknown person; and had not the smallest notion of the
real position of affairs. The talking brokeress, of course, was far from
giving him a true disclosure of her blabbing; she merely told him that
Mother Brigitta had given up her flax-trade.

Meanwhile, the mirror taught him, that the aspects over the way had
altered greatly in a single night. The flower-pots were entirely
vanished; and the cloudy veil again obscured the friendly horizon of the
opposite window. Meta was seldom visible; and if for a moment, like the
silver moon, from among her clouds in a stormy night, she did appear,
her countenance was troubled, the fire of her eyes was extinguished, and
it seemed to him, that, at times, with her finger, she pressed away a
pearly tear. This seized him sharply by the heart; and his lute
resounded melancholy sympathy in soft Lydian mood. He grieved, and
meditated to discover why his love was sad; but all his thinking and
imagining were vain. After some days were past, he noticed, to his
consternation, that his dearest piece of furniture, the large mirror,
had become entirely useless. He set himself one bright morning in his
usual nook, and observed that the clouds over the way had, like natural
fog, entirely dispersed; a sign which he at first imputed to a general
washing; but ere long he saw that, in the chamber, all was waste and
empty; his pleasing neighbours had in silence withdrawn the night
before, and broken up their quarters.

He might now, once more, with the greatest leisure and convenience,
enjoy the free prospect from his window, without fear of being
troublesome to any; but for him it was a dead loss to miss the kind
countenance of his Platonic love. Mute and stupefied, he stood, as of
old his fellow-craftsman, the harmonious Orpheus, when the dear shadow
of his Eurydice again vanished down to Orcus; and if the bedlam humour
of those "noble minds," who raved among us through the bygone lustre,
but have now like drones disappeared with the earliest frost, had then
been ripened to existence, this calm of his would certainly have passed
into a sudden hurricane. The least he could have done, would have been
to pull his hair, to trundle himself about upon the ground, or run his
head against the wall, and break his stove and window. All this he
omitted; from the very simple cause, that true love never makes men
fools, but rather is the universal remedy for healing sick minds of
their foolishness, for laying gentle fetters on extravagance, and
guiding youthful giddiness from the broad way of ruin to the narrow path
of reason; for the rake whom love will not recover is lost
irrecoverably.

When once his spirit had assembled its scattered powers, he set on foot
a number of instructive meditations on the unexpected phenomenon, but
too visible in the adjacent horizon. He readily conceived that he was
the lever which had effected the removal of the wandering colony: his
money-letter, the abrupt conclusion of the flax-trade, and the
emigration which had followed thereupon, were like reciprocal exponents
to each other, and explained the whole to him. He perceived that Mother
Brigitta had got round his secrets, and saw from every circumstance that
he was not her hero; a discovery which yielded him but little
satisfaction. The symbolic responses of the fair Meta, with her
flower-pots, to his musical proposals of love; her trouble, and the tear
which he had noticed in her bright eyes shortly before her departure
from the lane, again animated his hopes, and kept him in good heart. His
first employment was to go in quest, and try to learn where Mother
Brigitta had pitched her residence, in order to maintain, by some means
or other, his secret understanding with the daughter. It cost him little
toil to find her abode; yet he was too modest to shift his own lodging
to her neighbourhood; but satisfied himself with spying out the church
where she now attended mass, that he might treat himself once each day
with a glance of his beloved. He never failed to meet her as she
returned, now here, now there, in some shop or door which she was
passing, and salute her kindly; an equivalent for a _billet-doux_, and
productive of the same effect.

Had not Meta been brought up in a style too nunlike, and guarded by her
rigid mother as a treasure, from the eyes of thieves, there is little
doubt that neighbour Franz, with his secret wooing, would have made no
great impression on her heart. But she was at the critical age, when
Mother Nature and Mother Brigitta, with their wise nurture, were
perpetually coming into collision. The former taught her, by a secret
instinct, the existence of emotions, for which she had no name, and
eulogised them as the panacea of life; the latter warned her to beware
of the surprisals of a passion, which she would not designate by its
true title, but which, as she maintained, was more pernicious and
destructive to young maidens than the small-pox itself. The former, in
the spring of life, as beseemed the season, enlivened her heart with a
genial warmth; the latter wished that it should always be as cold and
frosty as an ice-house. These conflicting pedagogic systems of the two
good mothers gave the tractable heart of the daughter the direction of a
ship which is steered against the wind, and follows neither the wind nor
the helm, but a course between the two. She maintained the modesty and
virtue which her education, from her youth upwards, had impressed upon
her; but her heart continued open to all tender feelings. And as
neighbour Franz was the first youth who had awakened these slumbering
emotions, she took a certain pleasure in him, which she scarcely owned
to herself, but which any less unexperienced maiden would have
recognised as love. It was for this that her departure from the narrow
lane had gone so near her heart; for this that the little tear had
trickled from her beautiful eyes; for this that, when the watchful
Franz saluted her as she came from church, she thanked him so kindly,
and grew scarlet to the ears. The lovers had in truth never spoken any
word to one another; but he understood her, and she him, so perfectly,
that in the most secret interview they could not have explained
themselves more clearly; and both contracting parties swore in their
silent hearts, each for himself, under the seal of secrecy, the oath of
faithfulness to the other.

In the quarter, where Mother Brigitta had now settled, there were
likewise neighbours, and among these likewise girl-spiers, whom the
beauty of the charming Meta had not escaped. Right opposite their
dwelling lived a wealthy Brewer, whom the wags of the part, as he was
strong in means, had named the Hop-King. He was a young stout widower,
whose mourning year was just concluding, so that now he was entitled,
without offending the precepts of decorum, to look about him elsewhere
for a new helpmate to his household. Shortly after the departure of his
whilom wife, he had in secret entered into an engagement with his Patron
Saint, St. Christopher, to offer him a wax-taper as long as a hop-pole,
and as thick as a mashing-beam, if he would vouchsafe in this second
choice to prosper the desire of his heart. Scarcely had he seen the
dainty Meta, when he dreamed that St. Christopher looked in upon him,
through the window of his bedroom in the second story,[4] and demanded
payment of his debt. To the quick widower this seemed a heavenly call to
cast out the net without delay. Early in the morning he sent for the
brokers of the town, and commissioned them to buy bleached wax; then
decked himself like a Syndic, and set forth to expedite his marriage
speculation. He had no musical talents, and in the secret symbolic
language of love he was no better than a blockhead; but he had a rich
brewery, a solid mortgage on the city-revenues, a ship on the Weser, and
a farm without the gates. With such recommendations he might have
reckoned on a prosperous issue to his courtship, independently of all
assistance from St. Kit, especially as his bride was without dowry.

     [4] St. Christopher never appears to his favourites, like the other
     Saints, in a solitary room, encircled with a glory: there is no
     room high enough to admit him; thus the celestial Son of Anak is
     obliged to transact all business with his wards outside the window.

According to old use and wont, he went directly to the master hand, and
disclosed to the mother, in a kind neighbourly way, his christian
intentions towards her virtuous and honourable daughter. No angel's
visit could have charmed the good lady more than these glad tidings. She
now saw ripening before her the fruit of her prudent scheme, and the
fulfilment of her hope again to emerge from her present poverty into her
former abundance; she blessed the good thought of moving from the
crooked alley, and in the first ebullition of her joy, as a thousand gay
ideas were ranking themselves up within her soul, she also thought of
neighbour Franz, who had given occasion to it. Though Franz was not
exactly her bosom-youth, she silently resolved to gladden him, as the
accidental instrument of her rising star, with some secret gift or
other, and by this means likewise recompense his well-intended
flax-dealing.

In the maternal heart the marriage-articles were as good as signed; but
decorum did not permit these rash proceedings in a matter of such
moment. She therefore let the motion lie _ad referendum_, to be
considered by her daughter and herself; and appointed a term of eight
days, after which "she hoped she should have it in her power to give the
much-respected suitor a reply that would satisfy him;" all which, as the
common manner of proceeding, he took in good part, and with his usual
civilities withdrew. No sooner had he turned his back, than
spinning-wheel and reel, swingling-stake and hatchel, without regard
being paid to their faithful services, and without accusation being
lodged against them, were consigned, like some luckless Parliament of
Paris, to disgrace, and dismissed as useless implements into the
lumber-room. On returning from mass, Meta was astonished at the sudden
catastrophe which had occurred in the apartment; it was all decked out
as on one of the three high Festivals of the year. She could not
understand how her thrifty mother, on a work-day, had so neglectfully
put her active hand in her bosom; but before she had time to question
the kindly-smiling dame concerning this reform in household affairs, she
was favoured by the latter with an explanation of the riddle. Persuasion
rested on Brigitta's tongue; and there flowed from her lips a stream of
female eloquence, depicting the offered happiness in the liveliest hues
which her imagination could lay on. She expected from the chaste Meta
the blush of soft virgin bashfulness, which announces the novitiate in
love; and then a full resignation of herself to the maternal will. For
of old, in proposals of marriage, daughters were situated as our
princesses are still; they were not asked about their inclination, and
had no voice in the selection of their legal helpmate, save the Yes
before the altar.

But Mother Brigitta was in this point widely mistaken; the fair Meta did
not at the unexpected announcement grow red as a rose, but pale as
ashes. An hysterical giddiness swam over her brain, and she sank
fainting in her mother's arms. When her senses were recalled by the
sprinkling of cold water, and she had in some degree recovered strength,
her eyes overflowed with tears, as if a heavy misfortune had befallen
her. From all these symptoms, the sagacious mother easily perceived that
the marriage-trade was not to her taste; at which she wondered not a
little, sparing neither prayers nor admonitions to her daughter to
secure her happiness by this good match, not flout it from her by
caprice and contradiction. But Meta could not be persuaded that her
happiness depended on a match, to which her heart gave no assent. The
debates between the mother and the daughter lasted several days, from
early morning to late night; the term for decision was approaching; the
sacred taper for St. Christopher, which Og King of Bashan need not have
disdained had it been lit for him as a marriage-torch at his espousals,
stood in readiness, all beautifully painted with living flowers like a
many-coloured light, though the Saint had all the while been so inactive
in his client's cause, that the fair Meta's heart was still bolted and
barred against him fast as ever.

Meanwhile she had bleared her eyes with weeping, and the maternal
rhetoric had worked so powerfully, that, like a flower in the sultry
heat, she was drooping together, and visibly fading away. Hidden grief
was gnawing at her heart; she had prescribed herself a rigorous fast,
and for three days no morsel had she eaten, and with no drop of water
moistened her parched lips. By night sleep never visited her eyes; and
with all this she grew sick to death, and began to talk about extreme
unction. As the tender mother saw the pillar of her hope wavering, and
bethought herself that she might lose both capital and interest at once,
she found, on accurate consideration, that it would be more advisable to
let the latter vanish, than to miss them both; and with kindly
indulgence plied into the daughter's will. It cost her much constraint,
indeed, and many hard battles, to turn away so advantageous an offer;
yet at last, according to established order in household governments,
she yielded unconditionally to the inclination of her child, and
remonstrated no more with her beloved patient on the subject. As the
stout widower announced himself on the appointed day, in the full trust
that his heavenly deputy had arranged it all according to his wish, he
received, quite unexpectedly, a negative answer, which, however, was
sweetened with such a deal of blandishment, that he swallowed it like
wine-of-wormwood mixed with sugar. For the rest, he easily accommodated
himself to his destiny; and discomposed himself no more about it, than
if some bargain for a ton of malt had chanced to come to nothing. Nor,
on the whole, had he any cause to sorrow without hope. His native town
has never wanted amiable daughters, who come up to the Solomonic sketch,
and are ready to make perfect spouses; besides, notwithstanding this
unprospered courtship, he depended with firm confidence upon his Patron
Saint; who in fact did him such substantial service elsewhere, that ere
a month elapsed, he had planted with much pomp his devoted taper at the
friendly shrine.

Mother Brigitta was now fain to recall the exiled spinning-tackle from
its lumber-room, and again set it in action. All once more went its
usual course. Meta soon bloomed out anew, was active in business, and
diligently went to mass; but the mother could not hide her secret
grudging at the failure of her hopes, and the annihilation of her
darling plan; she was splenetic, peevish and dejected. Her ill-humour
had especially the upper hand that day when neighbour Hop-King held his
nuptials. As the wedding company proceeded to the church, with the
town-band bedrumming and becymballing them in the van, she whimpered and
sobbed as in the evil hour when the Job's-news reached her, that the
wild sea had devoured her husband, with ship and fortune. Meta looked at
the bridal pomp with great equanimity; even the royal ornaments, the
jewels in the myrtle-crown, and the nine strings of true pearls about
the neck of the bride, made no impression on her peace of mind; a
circumstance in some degree surprising, since a new Paris cap, or any
other meteor in the gallery of Mode, will so frequently derange the
contentment and domestic peace of an entire parish. Nothing but the
heart-consuming sorrow of her mother discomposed her, and overclouded
the gay look of her eyes; she strove by a thousand caresses and little
attentions to work herself into favour; and she so far succeeded that
the good lady grew a little more communicative.

In the evening, when the wedding-dance began, she said, "Ah, child! this
merry dance it might have been thy part to lead off. What a pleasure,
hadst thou recompensed thy mother's care and toil with this joy! But
thou hast mocked thy happiness, and now I shall never see the day when I
am to attend thee to the altar."--"Dear mother," answered Meta, "I
confide in Heaven; and if it is written above that I am to be led to the
altar, you will surely deck my garland: for when the right wooer comes,
my heart will soon say Yes."--"Child, for girls without dowry there is
no press of wooers; they are heavy ware to trade with. Nowadays the
bachelors are mighty stingy; they court to be happy, not to make happy.
Besides, thy planet bodes thee no good; thou wert born in April. Let us
see how it is written in the Calendar: 'A damsel born in this month is
comely of countenance, slender of shape, but of changeful humour, has a
liking to men. Should have an eye upon her maiden garland, and so a
laughing wooer come, not miss her fortune.' Alas, it answers to a hair!
The wooer has been here, comes not again: thou hast missed him."--"Ah,
mother! let the planet say its pleasure, never mind it; my heart says to
me that I should love and honour the man who asks me to be his wife: and
if I do not find that man, or he do not seek me, I will live in good
courage by the labour of my hands, and stand by you, and nurse you in
your old age, as beseems a good daughter. But if the man of my heart do
come, then bless my choice, that it may be well with your daughter on
the Earth; and ask not whether he is noble, rich, or famous, but whether
he is good and honest, whether he loves and is loved."--"Ah, daughter!
Love keeps a sorry kitchen, and feeds one poorly, along with bread and
salt."--"But yet Unity and Contentment delight to dwell with him, and
these season bread and salt with the cheerful enjoyment of our days."

The pregnant subject of bread and salt continued to be sifted till the
night was far spent, and the last fiddle in the wedding-dance was
resting from its labours. The moderation of the prudent Meta, who, with
youth and beauty on her side, pretended only to an altogether bounded
happiness, after having turned away an advantageous offer, led the
mother to conjecture that the plan of some such salt-trade might already
have been sketched in the heart of the virgin. Nor did she fail to guess
the trading-partner in the lane, of whom she never had believed that he
would be the tree for rooting in the lovely Meta's heart. She had looked
upon him only as a wild tendril, that stretches out towards every
neighbouring twig, to clamber up by means of it. This discovery
procured her little joy; but she gave no hint that she had made it.
Only, in the spirit of her rigorous morality, she compared a maiden who
lets love, before the priestly benediction, nestle in her heart, to a
worm-eaten apple, which is good for the eye, but no longer for the
palate, and is laid upon a shelf and no more heeded, for the pernicious
worm is eating its internal marrow, and cannot be dislodged. She now
despaired of ever holding up her head again in Bremen; submitted to her
fate, and bore in silence what she thought was now not to be altered.

Meanwhile the rumour of the proud Meta's having given the rich Hop-King
the basket, spread over the town, and sounded even into Franz's garret
in the alley. Franz was transported with joy to hear this tale
confirmed; and the secret anxiety lest some wealthy rival might expel
him from the dear maiden's heart tormented him no more. He was now
certain of his object; and the riddle, which for every one continued an
insoluble problem, had no mystery for him. Love had already changed a
spendthrift into a dilettante; but this for a bride-seeker was the very
smallest of recommendations, a gift which in those rude times was
rewarded neither with such praise nor with such pudding, as it is in our
luxurious century. The fine arts were not then children of superfluity,
but of want and necessity. No travelling professors were at that time
known, save the Prague students, whose squeaking symphonies solicited a
charitable coin at the doors of the rich. The beloved maiden's sacrifice
was too great to be repaid by a serenade. And now the feeling of his
youthful dissipation became a thorn in the soul of Franz. Many a
touching monodrama did he begin with an O and an Ah, besighing his past
madness: "Ah, Meta," said he to himself, "why did I not know thee
sooner! Thou hadst been my guardian angel, thou hadst saved me from
destruction. Could I live my lost years over again, and be what I was,
the world were now Elysium for me, and for thee I would make it an Eden!
Noble maiden, thou sacrificest thyself to a wretch, to a beggar, who has
nothing in the world but a heart full of love, and despair that he can
offer thee no happiness such as thou deservest." Innumerable times, in
the paroxysms of these pathetic humours, he struck his brow in fury,
with the repentant exclamation: "O fool! O madman! thou art wise too
late."

Love, however, did not leave its working incomplete. It had already
brought about a wholesome fermentation in his spirit, a desire to put
in use his powers and activity, to try if he might struggle up from his
present nothingness: it now incited him to the attempt of executing
these good purposes. Among many speculations he had entertained for the
recruiting of his wrecked finances, the most rational and promising was
this: To run over his father's ledgers, and there note down any small
escheats which had been marked as lost, with a view of going through the
land, and gleaning, if so were that a lock of wheat might still be
gathered from these neglected ears. With the produce of this enterprise,
he would then commence some little traffic, which his fancy soon
extended over all the quarters of the world. Already, in his mind's eye,
he had vessels on the sea, which were freighted with his property. He
proceeded rapidly to execute his purpose; changed the last golden
fragment of his heritage, his father's hour-egg,[5] into money, and
bought with it a riding nag, which was to bear him as a Bremen merchant
out into the wide world.

     [5] The oldest watches, from the shape they had, were named
     hour-eggs.

Yet the parting with his fair Meta went sore against his heart. "What
will she think," said he to himself, "of this sudden disappearance, when
thou shalt no more meet her in the church-way? Will she not regard thee
as faithless, and banish thee from her heart?" This thought afflicted
him exceedingly; and for a great while he could think of no expedient
for explaining to her his intention. But at last inventive Love
suggested the idea of signifying to her from the pulpit itself his
absence and its purpose. With this view, in the church, which had
already favoured the secret understanding of the lovers, he bought a
Prayer "for a young Traveller, and the happy arrangement of his
affairs;" which was to last, till he should come again and pay his
groschen for the Thanksgiving.

At the last meeting, he had dressed himself as for the road; he passed
quite near his sweetheart; saluted her expressively, and with less
reserve than before; so that she blushed deeply; and Mother Brigitta
found opportunity for various marginal notes, which indicated her
displeasure at the boldness of this ill-bred fop, in attempting to get
speech of her daughter, and with which she entertained the latter not in
the most pleasant style the livelong day. From that morning Franz was no
more seen in Bremen, and the finest pair of eyes within its circuit
sought for him in vain. Meta often heard the Prayer read, but she did
not heed it, for her heart was troubled because her lover had become
invisible. This disappearance was inexplicable to her; she knew not what
to think of it. After the lapse of some months, when time had a little
softened her secret care, and she was suffering his absence with a
calmer mind, it happened once, as the last appearance of her love was
hovering upon her fancy, that this same Prayer struck her as a strange
matter. She coupled one thing with another, she guessed the true
connexion of the business, and the meaning of that notice. And although
church litanies and special prayers have not the reputation of extreme
potency, and for the worthy souls that lean on them are but a supple
staff, inasmuch as the fire of devotion in the Christian flock is wont
to die out at the end of the sermon; yet in the pious Meta's case, the
reading of the last Prayer was the very thing which fanned that fire
into a flame; and she never neglected, with her whole heart, to
recommend the young traveller to his guardian angel.

Under this invisible guidance, Franz was journeying towards Brabant, to
call in some considerable sums that were due him at Antwerp. A journey
from Bremen to Antwerp, in the time when road-blockades were still in
fashion, and every landlord thought himself entitled to plunder any
traveller who had purchased no safe-conduct, and to leave him pining in
the ward-room of his tower, was an undertaking of more peril and
difficulty, than in our days would attend a journey from Bremen to
Kamtschatka: for the _Land-fried_ (or Act for suppressing Private Wars),
which the Emperor Maximilian had proclaimed, was in force through the
Empire, rather as a law than an observance. Nevertheless our solitary
traveller succeeded in arriving at the goal of his pilgrimage, without
encountering more than a single adventure.

Far in the wastes of Westphalia, he rode one sultry day till nightfall,
without reaching any inn. Towards evening stormy clouds towered up at
the horizon, and a heavy rain wetted him to the skin. To the fondling,
who from his youth had been accustomed to all possible conveniences,
this was a heavy matter, and he felt himself in great embarrassment how
in this condition he should pass the night. To his comfort, when the
tempest had moved away, he saw a light in the distance; and soon after,
reached a mean peasant hovel, which afforded him but little consolation.
The house was more like a cattle-stall than a human habitation; and the
unfriendly landlord refused him fire and water, as if he had been an
outlaw. For the man was just about to stretch himself upon the straw
among his steers; and too tired to relight the fire on his hearth, for
the sake of a stranger. Franz in his despondency uplifted a mournful
_miserere_, and cursed the Westphalian steppes with strong maledictions:
but the peasant took it all in good part; and blew out his light with
great composure, troubling himself no farther about the stranger; for in
the laws of hospitality he was altogether uninstructed. But as the
wayfarer, standing at the door, would not cease to annoy him with his
lamentations, he endeavoured in a civil way to get rid of him, consented
to answer, and said: "Master, if you want good entertainment, and would
treat yourself handsomely, you could not find what you are seeking here.
But ride there to the left hand, through the bushes; a little way
behind, lies the Castle of the valiant Eberhard Bronkhorst, a knight who
lodges every traveller, as a Hospitaller does the pilgrims from the Holy
Sepulchre. He has just one maggot in his head, which sometimes twitches
and vexes him; he lets no traveller depart from him unbasted. If you do
not lose your way, though he may dust your jacket, you will like your
cheer prodigiously."

To buy a mess of pottage, and a stoup of wine, by surrendering one's
ribs to the bastinado, is in truth no job for every man, though your
spungers and plate-lickers let themselves be tweaked and snubbed, and
from rich artists willingly endure all kinds of tar-and-feathering, so
their palates be but tickled for the service. Franz considered for a
while, and was undetermined what to do; at last he resolved on fronting
the adventure. "What is it to me," said he, "whether my back be broken
here on miserable straw, or by the Ritter Bronkhorst? The friction will
expel the fever which is coming on, and shake me tightly if I cannot dry
my clothes." He put spurs to his nag, and soon arrived before a
castle-gate of old Gothic architecture; knocked pretty plainly on the
iron door, and an equally distinct "Who's there?" resounded from within.
To the freezing passenger, the long entrance ceremonial of this
door-keeper precognition was as inconvenient, as are similar delays to
travellers who, at barriers and gates of towns, bewail or execrate the
despotism of guards and tollmen. Nevertheless he must submit to use and
wont, and patiently wait to see whether the philanthropist in the Castle
was disposed that night for cudgelling a guest, or would choose rather
to assign him a couch under the open canopy.

The possessor of this ancient tower had served, in his youth, as a stout
soldier in the Emperor's army, under the bold Georg von Fronsberg, and
led a troop of foot against the Venetians; had afterwards retired to
repose, and was now living on his property; where, to expiate the sins
of his campaigns, he employed himself in doing good works; in feeding
the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, lodging pilgrims, and
cudgelling his lodgers out of doors. For he was a rude wild son of war;
and could not lay aside his martial tone, though he had lived for many
years in silent peace. The traveller, who had now determined for good
quarters to submit to the custom of the house, had not waited long till
the bolts and locks began rattling within, and the creaking gate-leaves
moved asunder, moaning in doleful notes, as if to warn or to deplore the
entering stranger. Franz felt one cold shudder after the other running
down his back, as he passed in; nevertheless he was handsomely received;
some servants hastened to assist him in dismounting; speedily unbuckled
his luggage, took his steed to the stable, and its rider to a large
well-lighted chamber, where their master was in waiting.

The warlike aspect of this athletic gentleman,--who advanced to meet his
guest, and shook him by the hand so heartily, that he was like to shout
with pain, and bade him welcome with a Stentor's voice, as if the
stranger had been deaf, and seemed withal to be a person still in the
vigour of life, full of fire and strength,--put the timorous wanderer
into such a terror, that he could not hide his apprehensions, and began
to tremble over all his body.

"What ails you, my young master," asked the Ritter, with a voice of
thunder, "that you quiver like an aspen-leaf, and look as pale as if
Death had you by the throat?"

Franz plucked up a spirit; and considering that his shoulders had at all
events the score to pay, his poltroonery passed into a species of
audacity.

"Sir," replied he, "you perceive that the rain has soaked me, as if I
had swum across the Weser. Let me have my clothes dried or changed; and
get me, by way of luncheon, a well-spiced aleberry, to drive away the
ague-fit that is quaking through my nerves; then I shall come to heart,
in some degree."

"Good!" replied the Knight; "demand what you want; you are at home
here."

Franz made himself be served like a bashaw; and having nothing else but
currying to expect, he determined to deserve it; he bantered and
bullied, in his most imperious style, the servants that were waiting on
him; it comes all to one, thought he, in the long-run. "This waistcoat,"
said he, "would go round a tun; bring me one that fits a little better:
this slipper burns like a coal against my corns; pitch it over the
lists: this ruff is stiff as a plank, and throttles me like a halter;
bring one that is easier, and is not plastered with starch."

At this Bremish frankness, the landlord, far from showing any anger,
kept inciting his servants to go briskly through with their commands,
and calling them a pack of blockheads, who were fit to serve no
stranger. The table being furnished, the Ritter and his guest sat down
to it, and both heartily enjoyed their aleberry. The Ritter asked:
"Would you have aught farther, by way of supper?"

"Bring us what you have," said Franz, "that I may see how your kitchen
is provided."

Immediately appeared the Cook, and placed upon the table a repast with
which a duke might have been satisfied. Franz diligently fell to,
without waiting to be pressed. When he had satisfied himself: "Your
kitchen," said he, "is not ill-furnished, I perceive; if your cellar
corresponds to it, I shall almost praise your housekeeping."

Bronkhorst nodded to his Butler, who directly filled the cup of welcome
with common table wine, tasted, and presented it to his master, and the
latter cleared it at a draught to the health of his guest. Franz pledged
him honestly, and Bronkhorst asked: "Now, fair sir, what say you to the
wine?"

"I say," answered Franz, "that it is bad, if it is the best sort in your
catacombs; and good, if it is your meanest number."

"You are a judge," replied the Ritter: "Here, Butler, bring us of the
mother-cask."

The Butler put a stoup upon the table, as a sample, and Franz having
tasted it, said, "Ay, this is genuine last year's growth; we will stick
by this."

The Ritter made a vast pitcher of it be brought in; soon drank himself
into hilarity and glee beside his guest; began to talk of his campaigns,
how he had been encamped against the Venetians, had broken through their
barricado, and butchered the Italian squadrons, like a flock of sheep.
In this narrative he rose into such a warlike enthusiasm, that he hewed
down bottles and glasses, brandishing the carving-knife like a lance,
and in the fire of action came so near his messmate with it, that the
latter was in fright for his nose and ears.

It grew late, but no sleep came into the eyes of the Ritter; he seemed
to be in his proper element, when he got to speak of his Venetian
campaigns. The vivacity of his narration increased with every cup he
emptied; and Franz was afraid that this would prove the prologue to the
melodrama, in which he himself was to play the most interesting part. To
learn whether it was meant that he should lodge within the Castle, or
without, he demanded a bumper by way of good-night. Now, he thought, his
host would first force him to drink more wine, and if he refused, would,
under pretext of a drinking quarrel, send him forth, according to the
custom of the house, with the usual _viaticum_. Contrary to his
expectation, the request was granted without remonstrance; the Ritter
instantly cut asunder the thread of his narrative, and said: "Time will
wait on no one; more of it tomorrow!"

"Pardon me, Herr Ritter," answered Franz, "tomorrow by sunrise I must
over hill and dale; I am travelling a far journey to Brabant, and must
not linger here. So let me take leave of you tonight, that my departure
may not disturb you in the morning."

"Do your pleasure," said the Ritter; "but depart from this you shall
not, till I am out of the feathers, to refresh you with a bit of bread,
and a toothful of Dantzig, then attend you to the door, and dismiss you
according to the fashion of the house."

Franz needed no interpretation of these words. Willingly as he would
have excused his host this last civility, attendance to the door, the
latter seemed determined to abate no whit of the established ritual. He
ordered his servants to undress the stranger, and put him in the
guest's-bed; where Franz, once settled on elastic swan's down, felt
himself extremely snug, and enjoyed delicious rest; so that ere he fell
asleep, he owned to himself that, for such royal treatment, a moderate
bastinado was not too dear a price. Soon pleasant dreams came hovering
round his fancy. He found his charming Meta in a rosy grove, where she
was walking with her mother, plucking flowers. Instantly he hid himself
behind a thick-leaved hedge, that the rigorous duenna might not see him.
Again his imagination placed him in the alley, and by his looking-glass
he saw the snow-white hand of the maiden busied with her flowers; soon
he was sitting with her on the grass, and longing to declare his
heartfelt love to her, and the bashful shepherd found no words to do it
in. He would have dreamed till broad mid-day, had he not been roused by
the sonorous voice and clanking spurs of the Ritter, who, with the
earliest dawn, was holding a review of kitchen and cellar, ordering a
sufficient breakfast to be readied, and placing every servant at his
post, to be at hand when the guest should awake, to dress him, and wait
upon him.

It cost the happy dreamer no small struggling to forsake his safe and
hospitable bed. He rolled to this side and to that; but the pealing
voice of the worshipful Knight came heavy on his heart; and dally as he
might, the sour apple must at last be bit. So he rose from his down; and
immediately a dozen hands were busy dressing him. The Ritter led him
into the parlour, where a small well-furnished table waited them; but
now, when the hour of reckoning had arrived, the traveller's appetite
was gone. The host endeavoured to encourage him. "Why do you not get to?
Come, take somewhat for the raw foggy morning."

"Herr Ritter," answered Franz, "my stomach is still too full of your
supper; but my pockets are empty; these I may fill for the hunger that
is to come."

With this he began stoutly cramming, and stowed himself with the
daintiest and best that was transportable, till all his pockets were
bursting. Then, observing that his horse, well curried and equipt, was
led past, he took a dram of Dantzig for good-b'ye, in the thought that
this would be the watch-word for his host to catch him by the neck, and
exercise his household privileges.

But, to his astonishment, the Ritter shook him kindly by the hand, as at
his first entrance, wished him luck by the way, and the bolted door was
thrown open. He loitered not in putting spurs to his nag; and, tip! tap!
he was without the gate, and no hair of him harmed.

A heavy stone was lifted from his heart as he found himself in safety,
and saw that he had got away with a whole skin. He could not understand
how the landlord had trusted him the shot, which, as he imagined, must
have run pretty high on the chalk; and he embraced with warm love the
hospitable man, whose club-law arm he had so much dreaded; and he felt a
strong desire to search out, at the fountain-head, the reason or
unreason of the ill report which had affrighted him. Accordingly he
turned his horse, and cantered back. The Knight was still standing in
the gate, and descanting with his servants, for the forwarding of the
science of horse-flesh, on the breed, shape and character of the nag,
and his hard pace: he supposed the stranger must have missed something
in his travelling gear, and he already looked askance at his servants
for such negligence.

"What is it, young master," cried he, "that makes you turn again, when
you were for proceeding?"

"Ah! yet a word, valiant Knight," cried the traveller. "An ill report
has gone abroad, that injures your name and breeding. It is said that
you treat every stranger that calls upon you with your best; and then,
when he leaves you, let him feel the weight of your strong fists. This
story I have credited, and spared nothing to deserve my due from you. I
thought within myself, His worship will abate me nothing; I will abate
him as little. But now you let me go, without strife or peril; and that
is what surprises me. Pray tell me, is there any shadow of foundation
for the thing; or shall I call the foolish chatter lies next time I hear
it?"

The Ritter answered: "Report has nowise told you lies; there is no
saying that circulates among the people but contains in it some grain of
truth. Let me tell you accurately how the matter stands. I lodge every
stranger that comes beneath my roof, and divide my morsel with him, for
the love of God. But I am a plain German man, of the old cut and
fashion; speak as it lies about my heart, and require that my guest also
should be hearty and confiding; should enjoy with me what I have, and
tell frankly what he wants. Now, there is a sort of people that vex me
with all manner of grimaces; that banter me with smirkings, and bows,
and crouchings; put all their words to the torture; make a deal of talk
without sense or salt; think they will cozen me with smooth speeches;
behave at dinner as women at a christening. If I say, Help yourself! out
of reverence, they pick you a fraction from the plate which I would not
offer to my dog: if I say, Your health! they scarcely wet their lips
from the full cup, as if they set God's gifts at naught. Now, when the
sorry rabble carry things too far with me, and I cannot, for the soul of
me, know what they would be at, I get into a rage at last, and use my
household privilege; catch the noodle by the spall, thrash him
sufficiently, and pack him out of doors. This is the use and wont with
me, and I do so with every guest that plagues me with these freaks. But
a man of your stamp is always welcome: you told me plump out in plain
German what you thought, as is the fashion with the Bremers. Call on me
boldly again, if your road lead you hither. And so, God be with you."

Franz now moved on, with a joyful humour, towards Antwerp; and he wished
that he might everywhere find such a reception as he had met with from
the Ritter Eberhard Bronkhorst. On approaching the ancient queen of the
Flemish cities, the sail of his hope was swelled by a propitious breeze.
Riches and superfluity met him in every street; and it seemed as if
scarcity and want had been exiled from the busy town. In all
probability, thought he, there must be many of my father's debtors who
have risen again, and will gladly make me full payment whenever I
substantiate my claims. After resting for a while from his fatigues, he
set about obtaining, in the inn where he was quartered, some preliminary
knowledge of the situation of his debtors.

"How stands it with Peter Martens?" inquired he one day of his
companions at table; "is he still living, and doing much business?"

"Peter Martens is a warm man," answered one of the party; "has a brisk
commission trade, and draws good profit from it."

"Is Fabian van Plurs still in good circumstances?"

"O! there is no end to Fabian's wealth. He is a Councillor; his woollen
manufactories are thriving incredibly."

"Has Jonathan Frischkier good custom in his trade?"

"Ah! Jonathan were now a brisk fellow, had not Kaiser Max let the French
chouse him out of his Princess.[6] Jonathan had got the furnishing of
the lace for the bride's dress; but the Kaiser has left poor Frischkier
in the lurch, as the bride has left himself. If you have a fair one,
whom you would remember with a bit of lace, he will give it you at
half-price."

     [6] Anne of Brittany.

"Is the firm Op de Buetekant still standing, or has it sunk?"

"There was a crack in the beams there some years ago; but the Spanish
caravelles have put a new prop to it, and it now holds fast."

Franz inquired about several other merchants who were on his list; found
that most of them, though in his father's time they had "failed," were
now standing firmly on their legs; and inferred from this, that a
judicious bankruptcy has, from of old, been the mine of future gains.
This intelligence refreshed him mightily: he hastened to put his
documents in order, and submit them to the proper parties. But with the
Antwerpers, he fared as his itinerating countrymen do with shopkeepers
in the German towns: they find everywhere a friendly welcome at their
first appearance, but are looked upon with cheerfulness nowhere when
they come collecting debts. Some would have nothing to do with these
former sins; and were of opinion, that by the tender of the legal
five-per-cent composition they had been entirely abolished: it was the
creditor's fault if he had not accepted payment in time. Others could
not recollect any Melchior of Bremen; opened their Infallible Books;
found no debtor-entry marked for this unknown name. Others, again,
brought out a strong counter-reckoning; and three days had not passed
till Franz was sitting in the Debtors' Ward, to answer for his father's
credit, not to depart till he had paid the uttermost farthing.

These were not the best prospects for the young man, who lad set his
hope and trust upon the Antwerp patrons of his fortune, and now saw the
fair soap-bubble vanish quite away. In his strait confinement, he felt
himself in the condition of a soul in Purgatory, now that his skiff had
run ashore and gone to pieces, in the middle of the haven where he
thought to find security. Every thought of Meta was as a thorn in his
heart; there was now no shadow of a possibility, that from the whirlpool
which had sunk him, he could ever rise, and stretch out his hand to her;
nor, suppose he should get his head above water, was it in poor Meta's
power to pull him on dry land. He fell into a sullen desperation; had no
wish but to die speedily, and give his woes the slip at once; and, in
fact, he did attempt to kill himself by starvation. But this is a sort
of death which is not at the beck of every one, so ready as the shrunk
Pomponius Atticus found it, when his digestive apparatus had already
struck work. A sound peptic stomach does not yield so tamely to the
precepts of the head or heart. After the moribund debtor had abstained
two days from food, a ravenous hunger suddenly usurped the government of
his will, and performed, of its own authority, all the operations which,
in other cases, are directed by the mind. It ordered his hand to seize
the spoon, his mouth to receive the victual, his inferior maxillary jaw
to get in motion, and itself accomplished the usual functions of
digestion, unordered. Thus did this last resolve make shipwreck, on a
hard bread-crust; for, in the seven-and-twentieth year of life, it has
a heroism connected with it, which in the seven-and-seventieth is
entirely gone.

At bottom, it was not the object of the barbarous Antwerpers to squeeze
money from the pretended debtor, but only to pay him none, as his
demands were not admitted to be liquid. Whether it were, then, that the
public Prayer in Bremen had in truth a little virtue, or that the
supposed creditors were not desirous of supporting a superfluous boarder
for life, true it is, that after the lapse of three months Franz was
delivered from his imprisonment, under the condition of leaving the city
within four-and-twenty hours, and never again setting foot on the soil
and territory of Antwerp. At the same time, he received five crowns for
travelling expenses from the faithful hands of Justice, which had taken
charge of his horse and luggage, and conscientiously balanced the
produce of the same against judicial and curatory expenses.

With heavy-laden heart, in the humblest mood, with his staff in his
hand, he left the rich city, into which he had ridden some time ago with
high-soaring hopes. Broken down, and undetermined what to do, or rather
altogether without thought, he plodded through the streets to the
nearest gate, not minding whither the road into which chance conducted
him might lead. He saluted no traveller, he asked for no inn, except
when fatigue or hunger forced him to lift up his eyes, and look around
for some church-spire, or sign of human habitation, when he needed human
aid. Many days he had wandered on, as if unconsciously; and a secret
instinct had still, by means of his uncrazed feet, led him right forward
on the way to home; when, all at once, he awoke as from an oppressive
dream, and perceived on what road he was travelling.

He halted instantly, to consider whether he should proceed or turn back.
Shame and confusion took possession of his soul, when he thought of
skulking about in his native town as a beggar, branded with the mark of
contempt, and claiming the charitable help of his townsmen, whom of old
he had eclipsed by his wealth and magnificence. And how in this form
could he present himself before his fair Meta, without disgracing the
choice of her heart? He did not leave his fancy time to finish this
doleful picture; but wheeled about to take the other road, as hastily as
if he had been standing even then at the gate of Bremen, and the ragged
apprentices had been assembling to accompany him with jibes and mockery
through the streets. His purpose was formed: he would make for the
nearest seaport in the Netherlands; engage as sailor in a Spanish ship,
to work his passage to the new world; and not return to his country,
till in the Peruvian land of gold he should have regained the wealth,
which he had squandered so heedlessly, before he knew the worth of
money. In the shaping of this new plan, it is true, the fair Meta fell
so far into the background, that even to the sharpest prophetic eye she
could only hover as a faint shadow in the distance; yet the wandering
projector pleased himself with thinking that she was again interwoven
with the scheme of his life; and he took large steps, as if by this
rapidity he meant to reach her so much the sooner.

Already he was on the Flemish soil once more; and found himself at
sunset not far from Rheinberg, in a little hamlet, Rummelsburg by name,
which has since, in the Thirty-Years War, been utterly destroyed. A
caravan of carriers from Lyke had already filled the inn, so that Mine
Host had no room left, and referred him to the next town; the rather
that he did not draw too flattering a presage from his present vagabond
physiognomy, and held him to be a thieves' purveyor, who had views upon
the Lyke carriers. He was forced, notwithstanding his excessive
weariness, to gird himself for march, and again to take his bundle on
his back.

As in retiring, he was muttering between his teeth some bitter
complaints and curses of the Landlord's hardness of heart, the latter
seemed to take some pity on the forlorn wayfarer, and called after him,
from the door: "Stay, neighbour, let me speak to you: if you wish to
rest here, I can accommodate you after all. In that Castle there are
empty rooms enow, if they be not too lonely; it is not inhabited, and I
have got the keys." Franz accepted the proposal with joy, praised it as
a deed of mercy, and requested only shelter and a supper, were it in a
castle or a cottage. Mine Host, however, was privily a rogue, whom it
had galled to hear the stranger drop some half-audible contumelies
against him, and meant to be avenged on him, by a Hobgoblin that
inhabited the old fortress, and had many long years before expelled the
owners.

The Castle lay hard by the hamlet, on a steep rock, right opposite the
inn, from which it was divided merely by the highway, and a little
gurgling brook. The situation being so agreeable, the edifice was still
kept in repair, and well provided with all sorts of house-gear; for it
served the owner as a hunting-lodge, where he frequently caroused all
day; and so soon as the stars began to twinkle in the sky, retired with
his whole retinue, to escape the mischief of the Ghost, who rioted about
in it the whole night over, but by day gave no disturbance. Unpleasant
as the owner felt this spoiling of his mansion by a bugbear, the
nocturnal sprite was not without advantages, for the great security it
gave from thieves. The Count could have appointed no trustier or more
watchful keeper over the Castle, than this same Spectre, for the rashest
troop of robbers never ventured to approach its station. Accordingly he
knew of no safer place for laying up his valuables, than this old tower,
in the hamlet of Rummelsburg, near Rheinberg.

The sunshine had sunk, the dark night was coming heavily on, when Franz,
with a lantern in his hand, proceeded to the castle-gate, under the
guidance of Mine Host, who carried in his hand a basket of victuals,
with a flask of wine, which he said should not be marked against him. He
had also taken along with him a pair of candlesticks, and two
wax-lights; for in the whole Castle there was neither lamp nor taper, as
no one ever stayed in it after twilight. In the way, Franz noticed the
creaking heavy-laden basket, and the wax-lights, which he thought he
should not need, and yet must pay for. Therefore he said: "What is this
superfluity and waste, as at a banquet? The light in the lantern is
enough to see with, till I go to bed; and when I awake, the sun will be
high enough, for I am tired completely, and shall sleep with both eyes."

"I will not hide from you," replied the Landlord, "that a story runs of
there being mischief in the Castle, and a Goblin that frequents it. You,
however, need not let the thing disturb you; we are near enough, you
see, for you to call us, should you meet with aught unnatural; I and my
folks will be at your hand in a twinkling, to assist you. Down in the
house there we keep astir all night through, some one is always moving.
I have lived here these thirty years; yet I cannot say that I have ever
seen aught. If there be now and then a little hurly-burlying at nights,
it is nothing but cats and martins rummaging about the granary. As a
precaution, I have provided you with candles: the night is no friend of
man; and the tapers are consecrated, so that sprites, if there be such
in the Castle, will avoid their shine."

It was no lying in Mine Host to say that he had never seen anything of
spectres in the Castle; for by night he had taken special care not once
to set foot in it; and by day the Goblin did not come to sight. In the
present case, too, the traitor would not risk himself across the border.
After opening the door, he handed Franz the basket, directed him what
way to go, and wished him good-night. Franz entered the lobby without
anxiety or fear; believing the ghost-story to be empty tattle, or a
distorted tradition of some real occurrence in the place, which idle
fancy had shaped into an unnatural adventure. He remembered the stout
Ritter Eberhard Bronkhorst, from whose heavy arm he had apprehended such
maltreatment, and with whom, notwithstanding, he had found so hospitable
a reception. On this ground he had laid it down as a rule deduced from
his travelling experiences, when he heard any common rumour, to believe
exactly the reverse, and left the grain of truth, which, in the opinion
of the wise Knight, always lies in such reports, entirely out of sight.

Pursuant to Mine Host's direction, he ascended the winding stone stair;
and reached a bolted door, which he opened with his key. A long dark
gallery, where his footsteps resounded, led him into a large hall, and
from this, a side-door, into a suite of apartments, richly provided with
all furniture for decoration or convenience. Out of these he chose the
room which had the friendliest aspect, where he found a well-pillowed
bed; and from the window could look right down upon the inn, and catch
every loud word that was spoken there. He lit his wax-tapers, furnished
his table, and feasted with the commodiousness and relish of an
Otaheitean noble. The big-bellied flask was an antidote to thirst. So
long as his teeth were in full occupation, he had no time to think of
the reported devilry in the Castle. If aught now and then made a stir in
the distance, and Fear called to him, "Hark! hark! there comes the
Goblin;" Courage answered: "Stuff! it is cats and martins bickering and
caterwauling." But in the digestive half-hour after meat, when the sixth
sense, that of hunger and thirst, no longer occupied the soul, she
directed her attention from the other five exclusively upon the sense of
hearing; and already Fear was whispering three timid thoughts into the
listener's ear, before Courage had time to answer once.

As the first resource, he locked the door, and bolted it; made his
retreat to the walled seat in the vault of the window. He opened this,
and to dissipate his thoughts a little, looked out on the spangled sky,
gazed at the corroded moon, and counted how often the stars snuffed
themselves. On the road beneath him all was void; and in spite of the
pretended nightly bustle in the inn, the doors were shut, the lights
out, and everything as still as in a sepulchre. On the other hand, the
watchman blew his horn, making his "List, gentlemen!" sound over all the
hamlet; and for the composure of the timorous astronomer, who still kept
feasting his eyes on the splendour of the stars, uplifted a rusty
evening-hymn right under his window; so that Franz might easily have
carried on a conversation with him, which, for the sake of company, he
would willingly have done, had he in the least expected that the
watchman would make answer to him.

In a populous city, in the middle of a numerous household, where there
is a hubbub equal to that of a bee-hive, it may form a pleasant
entertainment for the thinker to philosophise on Solitude, to decorate
her as the loveliest playmate of the human spirit, to view her under all
her advantageous aspects, and long for her enjoyment as for hidden
treasure. But in scenes where she is no exotic, in the isle of Juan
Fernandez, where a solitary eremite, escaped from shipwreck, lives with
her through long years; or in the dreary night-time, in a deep wood, or
in an old uninhabited castle, where empty walls and vaults awaken
horror, and nothing breathes of life, but the moping owl in the ruinous
turret; there, in good sooth, she is not the most agreeable companion
for the timid anchorite that has to pass his time in her abode,
especially if he is every moment looking for the entrance of a spectre
to augment the party. In such a case it may easily chance that a window
conversation with the watchman shall afford a richer entertainment for
the spirit and the heart, than a reading of the most attractive eulogy
on solitude. If Ritter Zimmermann had been in Franz's place, in the
castle of Rummelsburg, on the Westphalian marches, he would doubtless in
this position have struck out the fundamental topics of as interesting a
treatise on _Society_, as, inspired to all appearance by the irksomeness
of some ceremonious assembly, he has poured out from the fulness of his
heart in praise of _Solitude_.

Midnight is the hour at which the world of spirits acquires activity and
life, when hebetated animal nature lies entombed in deep slumber. Franz
inclined getting through this critical hour in sleep rather than awake;
so he closed his window, went the rounds of his room once more, spying
every nook and crevice, to see whether all was safe and earthly; snuffed
the lights to make them burn clearer; and without undressing or
delaying, threw himself upon his bed, with which his wearied person felt
unusual satisfaction. Yet he could not get asleep so fast as he wished.
A slight palpitation at the heart, which he ascribed to a tumult in the
blood, arising from the sultriness of the day, kept him waking for a
while; and he failed not to employ this respite in offering up such a
pithy evening prayer as he had not prayed for many years. This produced
the usual effect, that he softly fell asleep while saying it.

After about an hour, as he supposed, he started up with a sudden terror;
a thing not at all surprising when there is tumult in the blood. He was
broad awake: he listened whether all was quiet, and heard nothing but
the clock strike twelve; a piece of news which the watchman forthwith
communicated to the hamlet in doleful recitative. Franz listened for a
while, turned on the other side, and was again about to sleep, when he
caught, as it were, the sound of a door grating in the distance, and
immediately it shut with a stifled bang. "Alake! alake!" bawled Fright
into his ear; "this is the Ghost in very deed!"--"'Tis nothing but the
wind," said Courage manfully. But quickly it came nearer, nearer, like
the sound of heavy footsteps. Clink here, clink there, as if a criminal
were rattling his irons, or as if the porter were walking about the
Castle with his bunch of keys. Alas, here was no wind business! Courage
held his peace; and quaking Fear drove all the blood to the heart, and
made it thump like a smith's fore-hammer.

The thing was now beyond jesting. If Fear would still have let Courage
get a word, the latter would have put the terror-struck watcher in mind
of his subsidiary treaty with Mine Host, and incited him to claim the
stipulated assistance loudly from the window; but for this there was a
want of proper resolution. The quaking Franz had recourse to the
bed-clothes, the last fortress of the timorous, and drew them close over
his ears, as Bird Ostrich sticks his head in the grass, when he can no
longer escape the huntsman. Outside it came along, door up, door to,
with hideous uproar; and at last it reached the bed-room. It jerked
sharply at the lock, tried several keys till it found the right one; yet
the bar still held the door, till a bounce like a thunder-clap made bolt
and rivet start, and threw it wide open. Now stalked in a long lean man,
with a black beard, in ancient garb, and with a gloomy countenance, his
eyebrows hanging down in deep earnestness from his brow. Over his right
shoulder he had a scarlet cloak; and on his head he wore a peaked hat.
With a heavy step he walked thrice in silence up and down the chamber;
looked at the consecrated tapers, and snuffed them that they might burn
brighter. Then he threw aside his cloak, girded on a scissor-pouch which
he had under it, produced a set of shaving-tackle, and immediately began
to whet a sharp razor on the broad strap which he wore at his girdle.

Franz perspired in mortal agony under his coverlet; recommended himself
to the keeping of the Virgin; and anxiously speculated on the object of
this manoeuvre, not knowing whether it was meant for his throat or his
beard. To his comfort, the Goblin poured some water from a silver flask
into a basin of silver, and with his skinny hand lathered the soap into
light foam; then set a chair, and beckoned with a solemn look to the
quaking looker-on to come forth from his recess.

Against so pertinent a sign, remonstrance was as bootless as it is
against the rigorous commands of the Grand Turk, when he transmits an
exiled vizier to the Angel of Death, the Capichi Bashi with the Silken
Cord, to take delivery of his head. The most rational procedure that can
be adopted in this critical case, is to comply with necessity, put a
good face on a bad business, and with stoical composure let one's throat
be noosed. Franz honoured the Spectre's order; the coverlet began to
move, he sprang sharply from his couch, and took the place pointed out
to him on the seat. However strange this quick transition from the
uttermost terror to the boldest resolution may appear, I doubt not but
Moritz in his _Psychological Journal_ could explain the matter till it
seemed quite natural.

Immediately the Goblin Barber tied the towel about his shivering
customer; seized the comb and scissors, and clipped off his hair and
beard. Then he soaped him scientifically, first the beard, next the
eyebrows, at last the temples and the hind-head; and shaved him from
throat to nape as smooth and bald as a Death's-head. This operation
finished, he washed his head, dried it clean, made his bow, and
buttoned-up his scissor-pouch; wrapped himself in his scarlet mantle,
and made for departing. The consecrated tapers had burnt with an
exquisite brightness through the whole transaction; and Franz, by the
light of them, perceived in the mirror that the shaver had changed him
into a Chinese pagoda. In secret he heartily deplored the loss of his
fair brown locks; yet now took fresh breath, as he observed that with
this sacrifice the account was settled, and the Ghost had no more power
over him.

So it was in fact; Redcloak went towards the door, silently as he had
entered, without salutation or good-b'ye; and seemed entirely the
contrast of his talkative guild-brethren. But scarcely was he gone three
steps, when he paused, looked round with a mournful expression at his
well-served customer, and stroked the flat of his hand over his black
bushy beard. He did the same a second time; and again, just as he was in
the act of stepping out at the door. A thought struck Franz that the
Spectre wanted something; and a rapid combination of ideas suggested,
that perhaps he was expecting the very service he himself had just
performed.

As the Ghost, notwithstanding his rueful look, seemed more disposed for
banter than for seriousness, and had played his guest a scurvy trick,
not done him any real injury, the panic of the latter had now almost
subsided. So he ventured the experiment, and beckoned to the Ghost to
take the seat from which he had himself just risen. The Goblin instantly
obeyed, threw off his cloak, laid his barber tackle on the table, and
placed himself in the chair, in the posture of a man that wishes to be
shaved. Franz carefully observed the same procedure which the Spectre
had observed to him, clipped his beard with the scissors, cropt away his
hair, lathered his whole scalp, and the Ghost all the while sat steady
as a wig-block. The awkward journeyman came ill at handling the razor:
he had never had another in his hand; and he shore the beard right
against the hair; whereat the Goblin made as strange grimaces as
Erasmus's Ape, when imitating its master's shaving. Nor was the
unpractised bungler himself well at ease, and he thought more than once
of the sage aphorism, _What is not thy trade make not thy business_; yet
he struggled through the task, the best way he could, and scraped the
Ghost as bald as he himself was.

Hitherto the scene between the Spectre and the traveller had been played
pantomimically; the action now became dramatic. "Stranger," said the
Ghost, "accept my thanks for the service thou hast done me. By thee I am
delivered from the long imprisonment, which has chained me for three
hundred years within these walls; to which my departed soul was doomed,
till a mortal hand should consent to retaliate on me what I practised on
others in my lifetime.

"Know that of old a reckless scorner dwelt within this tower, who took
his sport on priests as well as laics. Count Hardman, such his name, was
no philanthropist, acknowledged no superior and no law, but practised
vain caprice and waggery, regarding not the sacredness of hospitable
rights: the wanderer who came beneath his roof, the needy man who asked
a charitable alms of him, he never sent away unvisited by wicked joke. I
was his Castle Barber, still a willing instrument, and did whatever
pleased him. Many a pious pilgrim, journeying past us, I allured with
friendly speeches to the hall; prepared the bath for him, and when he
thought to take good comfort, shaved him smooth and bald, and packed him
out of doors. Then would Count Hardman, looking from the window, see
with pleasure how the foxes' whelps of children gathered from the hamlet
to assail the outcast, and to cry as once their fellows to Elisha:
'Baldhead! Baldhead!' In this the scoffer took his pleasure, laughing
with a devilish joy, till he would hold his pot-paunch, and his eyes ran
down with water.

"Once came a saintly man, from foreign lands; he carried, like a
penitent, a heavy cross upon his shoulder, and had stamped five
nail-marks on his hands, and feet, and side; upon his head there was a
ring of hair like to the Crown of Thorns. He called upon us here,
requesting water for his feet, and a small crust of bread. Immediately I
took him to the bath, to serve him in my common way; respected not the
sacred ring, but shore it clean from off him. Then the pious pilgrim
spoke a heavy malison upon me: 'Know, accursed man, that when thou
diest, Heaven, and Hell, and Purgatory's iron gate, are shut against thy
soul. As goblin it shall rage within these walls, till unrequired,
unbid, a traveller come and exercise retaliation on thee.'

"That hour I sickened, and the marrow in my bones dried up; I faded like
a shadow. My spirit left the wasted carcass, and was exiled to this
Castle, as the saint had doomed it. In vain I struggled for deliverance
from the torturing bonds that fettered me to Earth; for thou must know,
that when the soul forsakes her clay, she panteth for her place of rest,
and this sick longing spins her years to aeons, while in foreign element
she languishes for home. Now self-tormenting, I pursued the mournful
occupation I had followed in my lifetime. Alas! my uproar soon made
desolate this house! But seldom came a pilgrim here to lodge. And though
I treated all like thee, no one would understand me, and perform, as
thou, the service which has freed my soul from bondage. Henceforth shall
no hobgoblin wander in this Castle; I return to my long-wished-for rest.
And now, young stranger, once again my thanks, that thou hast loosed me!
Were I keeper of deep-hidden treasures, they were thine; but wealth in
life was not my lot, nor in this Castle lies there any cash entombed.
Yet mark my counsel. Tarry here till beard and locks again shall cover
chin and scalp; then turn thee homewards to thy native town; and on the
Weser-bridge of Bremen, at the time when day and night in Autumn are
alike, wait for a Friend, who there will meet thee, who will tell thee
what to do, that it be well with thee on Earth. If from the golden horn
of plenty, blessing and abundance flow to thee, then think of me; and
ever as the day thou freedst me from the curse comes round, cause for my
soul's repose three masses to be said. Now fare thee well. I go, no more
returning."[7]

     [7] I know not whether the reader has observed that our Author
     makes the Spectre speak in _iambics_; a whim which here and there
     comes over him in other tales also.--WIELAND.

With these words the Ghost, having by his copiousness of talk
satisfactorily attested his former existence as court-barber in the
Castle of Rummelsburg, vanished into air, and left his deliverer full of
wonder at the strange adventure. He stood for a long while motionless;
in doubt whether the whole matter had actually happened, or an unquiet
dream had deluded his senses; but his bald head convinced him that here
had been a real occurrence. He returned to bed, and slept, after the
fright he had undergone, till the hour of noon. The treacherous Landlord
had been watching since morning, when the traveller with the scalp was
to come forth, that he might receive him with jibing speeches under
pretext of astonishment at his nocturnal adventure. But as the stranger
loitered too long, and mid-day was approaching, the affair became
serious; and Mine Host began to dread that the Goblin might have treated
his guest a little harshly, have beaten him to a jelly perhaps, or so
frightened him that he had died of terror; and to carry his wanton
revenge to such a length as this had not been his intention. He
therefore rang his people together, hastened out with man and maid to
the tower, and reached the door of the apartment where he had observed
the light on the previous evening. He found an unknown key in the lock;
but the door was barred within; for after the disappearance of the
Goblin, Franz had again secured it. He knocked with a perturbed
violence, till the Seven Sleepers themselves would have awoke at the
din. Franz started up, and thought in his first confusion that the Ghost
was again standing at the door, to favour him with another call. But
hearing Mine Host's voice, who required nothing more but that his guest
would give some sign of life, he gathered himself up and opened the
room.

With seeming horror at the sight of him, Mine Host, striking his hands
together, exclaimed: "By Heaven and all the saints! Redcloak" (by this
name the Ghost was known among them) "_has_ been here, and has shaved
you bald as a block! Now, it is clear as day that the old story is no
fable. But tell me how looked the Goblin: what did he say to you? what
did he do?"

Franz, who had now seen through the questioner, made answer: "The Goblin
looked like a man in a red cloak; what he did is not hidden from you,
and what he said I well remember: 'Stranger,' said he, 'trust no
innkeeper who is a Turk in grain. What would befall thee here he knew.
Be wise and happy. I withdraw from this my ancient dwelling, for my time
is run. Henceforth no goblin riots here; I now become a silent Incubus,
to plague the Landlord; nip him, tweak him, harass him, unless the Turk
do expiate his sin; do freely give thee prog and lodging till brown
locks again shall cluster round thy head.'"[8]

     [8] Here too, on the Spectre's score, Franz makes extempore
     _iambics_.--WIELAND.

The Landlord shuddered at these words, cut a large cross in the air
before him, vowed by the Holy Virgin to give the traveller free board so
long as he liked to continue, led him over to his house, and treated him
with the best. By this adventure, Franz had well-nigh got the reputation
of a conjuror, as the spirit thenceforth never once showed face. He
often passed the night in the tower; and a desperado of the village once
kept him company, without having beard or scalp disturbed. The owner of
the place, having learned that Redcloak no longer walked in Rummelsburg,
was, of course, delighted at the news, and ordered that the stranger,
who, as he supposed, had laid him, should be well taken care of.

By the time when the clusters were beginning to be coloured on the vine,
and the advancing autumn reddened the apples, Franz's brown locks were
again curling over his temples, and he girded up his knapsack; for all
his thoughts and meditations were turned upon the Weser-bridge, to seek
the Friend, who, at the behest of the Goblin Barber, was to direct him
how to make his fortune. When about taking leave of Mine Host, that
charitable person led from his stable a horse well saddled and equipt,
which the owner of the Castle had presented to the stranger, for having
made his house again habitable; nor had the Count forgot to send a
sufficient purse along with it, to bear its travelling charges; and so
Franz came riding back into his native city, brisk and light of heart,
as he had ridden out of it twelve months ago. He sought out his old
quarters in the alley, but kept himself quite still and retired; only
inquiring underhand how matters stood with the fair Meta, whether she
was still alive and unwedded. To this inquiry he received a satisfactory
answer, and contented himself with it in the mean while; for, till his
fate were decided, he would not risk appearing in her sight, or making
known to her his arrival in Bremen.

With unspeakable longing, he waited the equinox; his impatience made
every intervening day a year. At last the long-wished-for term appeared.
The night before, he could not close an eye, for thinking of the wonders
that were coming. The blood was whirling and beating in his arteries, as
it had done at the Castle of Rummelsburg, when he lay in expectation of
his spectre visitant. To be sure of not missing his expected Friend, he
rose by daybreak, and proceeded with the earliest dawn to the
Weser-bridge, which as yet stood empty and untrod by passengers. He
walked along it several times in solitude, with that presentiment of
coming gladness, which includes in it the real enjoyment of all
terrestrial felicity; for it is not the attainment of our wishes, but
the undoubted hope of attaining them, which offers to the human soul the
full measure of highest and most heartfelt satisfaction. He formed many
projects as to how he should present himself to his beloved Meta, when
his looked-for happiness should have arrived; whether it would be better
to appear before her in full splendour, or to mount from his former
darkness with the first gleam of morning radiance, and discover to her
by degrees the change in his condition. Curiosity, moreover, put a
thousand questions to Reason in regard to the adventure. Who can the
Friend be that is to meet me on the Weser-bridge? Will it be one of my
old acquaintances, by whom, since my ruin, I have been entirely
forgotten? How will he pave the way to me for happiness? And will this
way be short or long, easy or toilsome? To the whole of which Reason,
in spite of all her thinking and speculating, answered not a word.

In about an hour, the Bridge began to get awake; there was riding,
driving, walking to and fro on it; and much commercial ware passing this
way and that. The usual day-guard of beggars and importunate persons
also by degrees took up this post, so favourable for their trade, to
levy contributions on the public benevolence; for of poor-houses and
work-houses, the wisdom of the legislature had as yet formed no scheme.
The first of the tattered cohort that applied for alms to the jovial
promenader, from whose eyes gay hope laughed forth, was a discharged
soldier, provided with the military badge of a timber leg, which had
been lent him, seeing he had fought so stoutly in former days for his
native country, as the recompense of his valour, with the privilege of
begging where he pleased; and who now, in the capacity of physiognomist,
pursued the study of man upon the Weser-bridge, with such success, that
he very seldom failed in his attempts for charity. Nor did his
exploratory glance in anywise mislead him in the present instance; for
Franz, in the joy of his heart, threw a white engel-groschen into the
cripple's hat.

During the morning hours, when none but the laborious artisan is busy,
and the more exalted townsman still lies in sluggish rest, he scarcely
looked for his promised Friend; he expected him in the higher classes,
and took little notice of the present passengers. About the
council-hour, however, when the Proceres of Bremen were driving past to
the hall, in their gorgeous robes of office, and about exchange-time, he
was all eye and ear; he spied the passengers from afar; and when a right
man came along the bridge, his blood began to flutter, and he thought
here was the creator of his fortune. Meanwhile hour after hour passed
on; the sun rose high; ere long the noontide brought a pause in
business; the rushing crowd faded away; and still the expected Friend
appeared not. Franz now walked up and down the Bridge quite alone; had
no society in view but the beggars, who were serving out their cold
collations, without moving from the place. He made no scruple to do the
same; and, not being furnished with provisions, he purchased some fruit,
and took his dinner _inter ambulandum_.

The whole club that was dining on the Bridge had remarked the young man,
watching here from early morning till noon, without addressing any one,
or doing any sort of business. They held him to be a lounger; and
though all of them had tasted his bounty, he did not escape their
critical remarks. In jest, they had named him the Bridge-bailiff. The
physiognomist with the timber-toe, however, noticed that his countenance
was not now so gay as in the morning; he appeared to be reflecting
earnestly on something; he had drawn his hat close over his face; his
movement was slow and thoughtful; he had nibbled at an apple-rind for
some time, without seeming to be conscious that he was doing so. From
this appearance of affairs, the man-spier thought he might extract some
profit; therefore he put his wooden and his living leg in motion, and
stilted off to the other end of the Bridge, and lay in wait for the
thinker, that he might assail him, under the appearance of a new
arrival, for a fresh alms. This invention prospered to the full: the
musing philosopher gave no heed to the mendicant, put his hand into his
pocket mechanically, and threw a six-groat piece into the fellow's hat,
to be rid of him.

In the afternoon, a thousand new faces once more came abroad. The
watcher was now tired of his unknown Friend's delaying, yet hope still
kept his attention on the stretch. He stept into the view of every
passenger, hoped that one of them would clasp him in his arms; but all
proceeded coldly on their way; the most did not observe him at all, and
few returned his salute with a slight nod. The sun was already verging
to decline, the shadows were becoming longer, the crowd upon the Bridge
diminished; and the beggar-piquet by degrees drew back into their
barracks in the Mattenburg. A deep sadness sank upon the hopeless Franz,
when he saw his expectation mocked, and the lordly prospect which had
lain before him in the morning vanish from his eyes at evening. He fell
into a sort of sulky desperation; was on the point of springing over the
parapet, and dashing himself down from the Bridge into the river. But
the thought of Meta kept him back, and induced him to postpone his
purpose till he had seen her yet once more. He resolved to watch next
day when she should go to church, for the last time to drink delight
from her looks, and then forthwith to still his warm love forever in the
cold stream of the Weser.

While about to leave the Bridge, he was met by the invalided pikeman
with the wooden leg, who, for pastime, had been making many speculations
as to what could be the young man's object, that had made him watch upon
the Bridge from dawn to darkness. He himself had lingered beyond his
usual time, that he might wait him out; but as the matter hung too long
upon the pegs, curiosity incited him to turn to the youth himself, and
question him respecting it.

"No offence, young gentleman," said he: "allow me to ask you a
question."

Franz, who was not in a very talking humour, and was now meeting, from
the mouth of a cripple, the address which he had looked for with such
longing from a friend, answered rather testily: "Well, then, what is it?
Speak, old graybeard!"

"We two," said the other, "were the first upon the Bridge today, and
now, you see, we are the last. As to me and others of my kidney, it is
our vocation brings us hither, our trade of alms-gathering; but for you,
in sooth you are not of our guild; yet you have watched here the whole
blessed day. Now I pray you, tell me, if it is not a secret, what it is
that brings you hither; or what stone is lying on your heart, that you
wished to roll away."

"What good were it to thee, old blade," said Franz bitterly, "to know
where the shoe pinches me, or what concern is lying on my heart? It will
give thee small care."

"Sir, I have a kind wish towards you, because you opened your hand to
me, and twice gave me alms, for which God reward you; but your
countenance at night was not so cheerful as in the morning, and that
grieves my heart."

The kindly sympathy of this old warrior pleased the misanthrope, so that
he willingly pursued the conversation.

"Why, then," answered he, "if thou wouldst know what has made me battle
here all day with tedium, thou must understand that I was waiting for a
Friend, who appointed me hither, and now leaves me to expect in vain."

"Under favour," answered Timbertoe, "if I might speak my mind, this
Friend of yours, be who he like, is little better than a rogue, to lead
you such a dance. If he treated _me_ so, by my faith, his crown should
get acquainted with my crutch next time we met. If he could not keep his
word, he should have let you know, and not bamboozled you as if you were
a child."

"Yet I cannot altogether blame this Friend," said Franz, "for being
absent; he did not promise; it was but a dream that told me I should
meet him here."

The goblin-tale was too long for him to tell, so he veiled it under
cover of a dream.

"Ah! that is another story," said the beggar; "if you build on dreams,
it is little wonder that your hope deceives you. I myself have dreamed
much foolish stuff in my time; but I was never such a madman as to heed
it. Had I all the treasures that have been allotted to me in dreams, I
might buy the city of Bremen, were it sold by auction. But I never
credited a jot of them, or stirred hand or foot to prove their worth or
worthlessness: I knew well it would be lost. Ha! I must really laugh in
your face, to think that on the order of an empty dream, you have
squandered a fair day of your life, which you might have spent better at
a merry banquet."

"The issue shows that thou art right, old man, and that dreams many
times deceive. But," continued Franz, defensively, "I dreamed so vividly
and circumstantially, above three months ago, that on this very day, in
this very place, I should meet a Friend, who would tell me things of the
deepest importance, that it was well worth while to go and see if it
would come to pass."

"O, as for vividness," said Timbertoe, "no man can dream more vividly
than I. There is one dream I had, which I shall never in my life forget.
I dreamed, who knows how many years ago, that my Guardian Angel stood
before my bed in the figure of a youth, with golden hair, and two silver
wings on his back, and said to me: 'Berthold, listen to the words of my
mouth, that none of them be lost from thy heart. There is a treasure
appointed thee, which thou shalt dig, to comfort thy heart withal for
the remaining days of thy life. Tomorrow, about evening, when the sun is
going down, take spade and shovel on thy shoulder; go forth from the
Mattenburg on the right, across the Tieber, by the Balkenbruecke, past
the Cloister of St. John's, and on to the Great Roland.[9] Then take thy
way over the Court of the Cathedral, through the Schusselkorb, till thou
arrive without the city at a garden, which has this mark, that a stair
of three stone steps leads down from the highway to its gate. Wait by a
side, in secret, till the sickle of the moon shall shine on thee, then
push with the strength of a man against the weak-barred gate, which will
resist thee little. Enter boldly into the garden, and turn thee to the
vine-trellises which overhang the covered-walk; behind this, on the
left, a tall apple-tree overtops the lowly shrubs. Go to the trunk of
this tree, thy face turned right against the moon: look three ells
before thee on the ground, thou shalt see two cinnamon-rose bushes;
there strike in, and dig three spans deep, till thou find a stone plate;
under this lies the treasure, buried in an iron chest, full of money and
money's worth. Though the chest be heavy and clumsy, avoid not the
labour of lifting it from its bed; it will reward thy trouble well, if
thou seek the key which lies hid beneath it.'"

     [9] The rude figure of a man in armour, usually erected in the
     public square or market-place of old German towns, is called the
     _Rolandsaule_, or _Rutlandsaule_, from its supposed reference to
     Roland the famous peer of Charlemagne. The proper and ancient name,
     it seems, is _Ruegelandsaule_, or Pillar of Judgment; and the stone
     indicated, of old, that the town possessed an independent
     jurisdiction.--ED.

In astonishment at what he heard, Franz stared and gazed upon the
dreamer, and could not have concealed his amazement, had not the dusk of
night been on his side. By every mark in the description, he had
recognised his own garden, left him by his father. It had been the good
man's hobby in his life; but on this account had little pleased his son;
according to the rule that son and father seldom sympathise in their
favourite pursuit, unless indeed it be a vice, in which case, as the
adage runs, the apple often falls at no great distance from the trunk.
Father Melchior had himself laid out this garden, altogether to his own
taste, in a style as wonderful and varied as that of his
great-great-grandson, who has immortalised his paradise by an original
description in _Hirschfeld's Garden-Calendar_. He had not, it is true,
set up in it any painted menagerie for the deception of the eye; but he
kept a very large one, notwithstanding, of springing-horses,
winged-lions, eagles, griffins, unicorns and other wondrous beasts, all
stamped on pure gold, which he carefully concealed from _every_ eye, and
had hid in their iron case beneath the ground. This paternal Tempe the
wasteful son, in the days of his extravagance, had sold for an old song.

To Franz the pikeman had at once become extremely interesting, as he
perceived that this was the very Friend, to whom the Goblin in the
Castle of Rummelsburg had consigned him. Gladly could he have embraced
the veteran, and in the first rapture called him friend and father: but
he restrained himself, and found it more advisable to keep his thoughts
about this piece of news to himself. So he said: "Well, this is what I
call a circumstantial dream. But what didst thou do, old master, in the
morning, on awakening? Didst thou not follow whither thy Guardian Angel
beckoned thee?"

"Pooh," said the dreamer, "why should I toil, and have my labour for my
pains? It was nothing, after all, but a mere dream. If my Guardian
Angel had a fancy for appearing to me, I have had enow of sleepless
nights in my time, when he might have found me waking. But he takes
little charge of me, I think, else I should not, to his shame, be going
hitching here on a wooden leg."

Franz took out the last piece of silver he had on him: "There," said he,
"old Father, take this other gift from me, to get thee a pint of wine
for evening-cup: thy talk has scared away my ill humour. Neglect not
diligently to frequent this Bridge; we shall see each other here, I
hope, again."

The lame old man had not gathered so rich a stock of alms for many a
day, as he was now possessed of; he blessed his benefactor for his
kindness, hopped away into a drinking-shop, to do himself a good turn;
while Franz, enlivened with new hope, hastened off to his lodging in the
alley.

Next day he got in readiness everything that is required for
treasure-digging. The unessential equipments, conjurations, magic
formulas, magic girdles, hieroglyphic characters, and suchlike, were
entirely wanting: but these are not indispensable, provided there be no
failure in the three main requisites: shovel, spade, and, before all, a
treasure underground. The necessary implements he carried to the place a
little before sunset, and hid them for the mean while in a hedge; and as
to the treasure itself, he had the firm conviction that the Goblin in
the Castle, and the Friend on the Bridge, would prove no liars to him.
With longing impatience he expected the rising of the moon; and no
sooner did she stretch her silver horns over the bushes, than he briskly
set to work; observing exactly everything the Invalid had taught him;
and happily accomplished the raising of the treasure, without meeting
any adventure in the process; without any black dog having frightened
him, or any bluish flame having lighted him to the spot.

Father Melchior, in providently burying this penny for a rainy day, had
nowise meant that his son should be deprived of so considerable a part
of his inheritance. The mistake lay in this, that Death had escorted the
testator out of the world in another way than said testator had
expected. He had been completely convinced, that he should take his
journey, old and full of days, after regulating his temporal concerns
with all the formalities of an ordinary sick-bed; for so it had been
prophesied to him in his youth. In consequence he purposed, when,
according to the usage of the Church, extreme unction should have been
dispensed to him, to call his beloved son to his bed-side, having
previously dismissed all bystanders; there to give him the paternal
blessing, and by way of farewell memorial direct him to this treasure
buried in the garden. All this, too, would have happened in just order,
if the light of the good old man had departed, like that of a wick whose
oil is done; but as Death had privily snuffed him out at a feast, he
undesignedly took along with him his Mammon secret to the grave; and
almost as many fortunate concurrences were required before the secreted
patrimony could arrive at the proper heir, as if it had been forwarded
to its address by the hand of Justice itself.

With immeasurable joy the treasure-digger took possession of the
shapeless Spanish pieces, which, with a vast multitude of other finer
coins, the iron chest had faithfully preserved. When the first
intoxication of delight had in some degree evaporated, he bethought him
how the treasure was to be transported, safe and unobserved, into the
narrow alley. The burden was too heavy to be carried without help; thus,
with the possession of riches, all the cares attendant on them were
awakened. The new Croesus found no better plan, than to intrust his
capital to the hollow trunk of a tree that stood behind the garden, in a
meadow: the empty chest he again buried under the rose-bush, and
smoothed the place as well as possible. In the space of three days, the
treasure had been faithfully transmitted by instalments from the hollow
tree into the narrow alley; and now the owner of it thought he might
with honour lay aside his strict incognito. He dressed himself with the
finest; had his Prayer displaced from the church; and required, instead
of it, "a Christian Thanksgiving for a Traveller, on returning to his
native town, after happily arranging his affairs." He hid himself in a
corner of the church, where he could observe the fair Meta, without
himself being seen; he turned not his eye from the maiden, and drank
from her looks the actual rapture, which in foretaste had restrained him
from the break-neck somerset on the Bridge of the Weser. When the
Thanksgiving came in hand, a glad sympathy shone forth from all her
features, and the cheeks of the virgin glowed with joy. The customary
greeting on the way homewards was so full of emphasis, that even to the
third party who had noticed them, it would have been intelligible.

Franz now appeared once more on the Exchange; began a branch of trade
which in a few weeks extended to the great scale; and as his wealth
became daily more apparent, Neighbour Grudge, the scandal-chewer, was
obliged to conclude, that in the cashing of his old debts, he must have
had more luck than sense. He hired a large house, fronting the Roland,
in the Market-place; engaged clerks and warehousemen, and carried on his
trade unweariedly. Now the sorrowful populace of parasites again
diligently handled the knocker of his door; appeared in crowds, and
suffocated him with assurances of friendship, and joy-wishings on his
fresh prosperity; imagined they should once more catch him in their
robber claws. But experience had taught him wisdom; he paid them in
their own coin, feasted their false friendship on smooth words, and
dismissed them with fasting stomachs; which sovereign means for scaring
off the cumbersome brood of pickthanks and toadeaters produced the
intended effect, that they betook them elsewhither.

In Bremen, the remounting Melcherson had become the story of the day;
the fortune which in some inexplicable manner he had realised, as was
supposed, in foreign parts, was the subject-matter of all conversations
at formal dinners, in the Courts of Justice and at the Exchange. But in
proportion as the fame of his fortune and affluence increased, the
contentedness and peace of mind of the fair Meta diminished. The friend
_in petto_ was now, in her opinion, well qualified to speak a plain
word. Yet still his Love continued Dumb; and except the greeting on the
way from church, he gave no tidings of himself. Even this sort of visit
was becoming rarer, and such aspects were the sign not of warm, but of
cold weather in the atmosphere of Love. Jealousy,[10] the baleful Harpy,
fluttered round her little room by night, and when sleep was closing her
blue eyes, croaked many a dolorous presage into the ear of the
re-awakened Meta. "Forego the flattering hope of binding an inconstant
heart, which, like a feather, is the sport of every wind. He loved thee,
and was faithful to thee, while his lot was as thy own: like only draws
to like. Now a propitious destiny exalts the Changeful far above thee.
Ah! now he scorns the truest thoughts in mean apparel, now that pomp,
and wealth, and splendour dazzle him once more; and courts who knows
what haughty fair one that disdained him when he lay among the pots, and
now with siren call allures him back to her. Perhaps her cozening voice
has turned him from thee, speaking with false words: 'For thee, God's
garden blossoms in thy native town: friend, thou hast now thy choice of
all our maidens; choose with prudence, not by the eye alone. Of girls
are many, and of fathers many, who in secret lie in wait for thee; none
will withhold his darling daughter. Take happiness and honour with the
fairest; likewise birth and fortune. The councillor dignity awaits thee,
where vote of friends is potent in the city.'"

     [10] Jealousy too (at bottom a very sad spectre, but not here
     introduced as one) now _croaks_ in iambics, as the Goblin Barber
     lately spoke in them.--WIELAND.

These suggestions of Jealousy disturbed and tormented her heart without
ceasing: she reviewed her fair contemporaries in Bremen, estimated the
ratio of so many splendid matches to herself and her circumstances; and
the result was far from favourable. The first tidings of her lover's
change of situation had in secret charmed her; not in the selfish view
of becoming participatress in a large fortune; but for her mother's
sake, who had abdicated all hopes of earthly happiness, ever since the
marriage project with neighbour Hop-King had made shipwreck. But now
poor Meta wished that Heaven had not heard the Prayer of the Church, or
granted to the traveller any such abundance of success; but rather kept
him by the bread and salt, which he would willingly have shared with
her.

The fair half of the species are by no means calculated to conceal an
inward care: Mother Brigitta soon observed the trouble of her daughter;
and without the use of any great penetration, likewise guessed its
cause. The talk about the re-ascending star of her former
flax-negotiator, who was now celebrated as the pattern of an orderly,
judicious, active tradesman, had not escaped her, any more than the
feeling of the good Meta towards him; and it was her opinion, that if he
loved in earnest, it was needless to hang off so long, without
explaining what he meant. Yet out of tenderness to her daughter, she let
no hint of this discovery escape her; till at length poor Meta's heart
became so full, that of her own accord she made her mother the
confidante of her sorrow, and disclosed to her its true origin. The
shrewd old lady learned little more by this disclosure than she knew
already. But it afforded opportunity to mother and daughter for a full,
fair and free discussion of this delicate affair. Brigitta made her no
reproaches on the subject; she believed that what was done could not be
undone; and directed all her eloquence to strengthen and encourage the
dejected Meta to bear the failure of her hopes with a steadfast mind.

With this view, she spelt out to her the extremely reasonable moral,
_a_, _b_, _ab_; discoursing thus: "My child, thou hast already said _a_,
thou must now say _b_ too; thou hast scorned thy fortune when it sought
thee, now thou must submit when it will meet thee no longer. Experience
has taught me, that the most confident Hope is the first to deceive us.
Therefore, follow my example; abandon the fair cozener utterly, and thy
peace of mind will no longer be disturbed by her. Count not on any
improvement of thy fate; and thou wilt grow contented with thy present
situation. Honour the spinning-wheel, which supports thee: what are
fortune and riches to thee, when thou canst do without them?"

Close on this stout oration followed a loud humming symphony of
snap-reel and spinning-wheel, to make up for the time lost in speaking.
Mother Brigitta was in truth philosophising from the heart. After her
scheme for the restoration of her former affluence had gone to ruin, she
had so simplified the plan of her life, that Fate could not perplex it
any more. But Meta was still far from this philosophical centre of
indifference; and hence this doctrine, consolation and encouragement
affected her quite otherwise than had been intended: the conscientious
daughter now looked upon herself as the destroyer of her mother's fair
hopes, and suffered from her own mind a thousand reproaches for this
fault. Though she had never adopted the maternal scheme of marriage, and
had reckoned only upon bread and salt in her future wedlock; yet, on
hearing of her lover's riches and spreading commerce, her diet-project
had directly mounted to six plates; and it delighted her to think, that
by her choice she should still realise her good mother's wish, and see
her once more planted in her previous abundance.

This fair dream now vanished by degrees, as Franz continued silent. To
make matters worse, there spread a rumour over all the city, that he was
furnishing his house in the most splendid fashion for his marriage with
a rich Antwerp lady, who was already on her way to Bremen. This
Job's-news drove the lovely maiden from her last defence: she passed on
the apostate sentence of banishment from her heart; and vowed from that
hour never more to think of him; and as she did so, wetted the twining
thread with her tears.

In a heavy hour she was breaking this vow, and thinking, against her
will, of the faithless lover: for she had just spun off a rock of flax;
and there was an old rhyme which had been taught her by her mother for
encouragement to diligence:

     'Spin, daughterkin, spin;
     Thy sweetheart's within!'

which she always recollected when her rock was done; and along with it
the memory of the Deceitful necessarily occurred to her. In this heavy
hour, a finger rapped with a most dainty patter at the door. Mother
Brigitta looked forth: the sweetheart was without. And who could it be?
Who else but neighbour Franz, from the alley? He had decked himself with
a gallant wooing-suit; and his well-dressed, thick brown locks shook
forth perfume. This stately decoration boded, at all events, something
else than flax-dealing. Mother Brigitta started in alarm; she tried to
speak, but words failed her. Meta rose in trepidation from her seat,
blushed like a purple rose, and was silent. Franz, however, had the
power of utterance; to the soft _adagio_ which he had in former days
trilled forth to her, he now appended a suitable text, and explained his
dumb love in clear words. Thereupon he made solemn application for her
to the mother; justifying his proposal by the statement, that the
preparations in his house had been meant for the reception of a bride,
and that this bride was the charming Meta.

The pointed old lady, having brought her feelings once more into
equilibrium, was for protracting the affair to the customary term of
eight days for deliberation; though joyful tears were running down her
cheeks, presaging no impediment on her side, but rather answer of
approval. Franz, however, was so pressing in his suit, that she fell
upon a middle path between the wooer's ardour and maternal use and wont,
and empowered the gentle Meta to decide in the affair according to her
own good judgment. In the virgin heart there had occurred, since Franz's
entrance, an important revolution. His presence here was the most
speaking proof of his innocence; and as, in the course of conversation,
it distinctly came to light, that his apparent coldness had been nothing
else than zeal and diligence in putting his commercial affairs in order,
and preparing what was necessary for the coming nuptials, it followed
that the secret reconciliation would proceed forthwith without any stone
of stumbling in its way. She acted with the outlaw, as Mother Brigitta
with her disposted spinning gear, or the First-born Son of the Church
with an exiled Parliament; recalled him with honour to her high-beating
heart, and reinstated him in all his former rights and privileges there.
The decisive three-lettered little word, that ratifies the happiness of
love, came gliding with such unspeakable grace from her soft lips, that
the answered lover could not help receiving it with a warm melting kiss.

The tender pair had now time and opportunity for deciphering all the
hieroglyphics of their mysterious love; which afforded the most pleasant
conversation that ever two lovers carried on. They found, what our
commentators ought to pray for, that they had always understood and
interpreted the text aright, without once missing the true sense of
their reciprocal proceedings. It cost the delighted bridegroom almost as
great an effort to part from his charming bride, as on the day when he
set out on his crusade to Antwerp. However, he had an important walk to
take; so at last it became time to withdraw.

This walk was directed to the Weser-bridge, to find Timbertoe, whom he
had not forgotten, though he had long delayed to keep his word to him.
Sharply as the physiognomist, ever since his interview with the
open-handed Bridge-bailiff, had been on the outlook, he could never
catch a glimpse of him among the passengers, although a second visit had
been faithfully promised. Yet the figure of his benefactor had not
vanished from his memory. The moment he perceived the fair-apparelled
youth from a distance, he stilted towards him, and gave him kindly
welcome. Franz answered his salutation, and said: "Friend, canst thou
take a walk with me into the Neustadt, to transact a small affair? Thy
trouble shall not be unpaid."

"Ah! why not?" replied the old blade; "though I have a wooden leg, I can
step you with it as stoutly as the lame dwarf that crept round the
city-common;[11] for the wooden leg, you must know, has this good
property, it never tires. But excuse me a little while till Graycloak is
come: he never misses to pass along the Bridge between day and night."

     [11] There is an old tradition, that a neighbouring Countess
     promised in jest to give the Bremers as much land as a cripple, who
     was just asking her for alms, would creep round in a day. They took
     her at her word; and the cripple crawled so well, that the town
     obtained this large common by means of him.

"What of Graycloak?" inquired Franz: "let me know about him."

"Graycloak brings me daily about nightfall a silver groschen, I know not
from whom. It is of no use prying into things, so I never mind.
Sometimes it occurs to me Graycloak must be the devil, and means to buy
my soul with the money. But devil or no devil, what care I? I did not
strike him on the bargain, so it cannot hold."

"I should not wonder," answered Franz, with a smile, "if Graycloak were
a piece of a knave. But do thou follow me: the silver groschen shall not
fail thee."

Timbertoe set forth, hitched on briskly after his guide, who conducted
him up one street and down another, to a distant quarter of the city,
near the wall; then halted before a neat little new-built house, and
knocked at the door. When it was opened: "Friend," said he, "thou madest
one evening of my life cheerful; it is just that I should make the
evening of thy life cheerful also. This house, with its appurtenances,
and the garden where it stands, are thine; kitchen and cellar are full;
an attendant is appointed to wait upon thee; and the silver groschen,
over and above, thou wilt find every noon lying under thy plate. Nor
will I hide from thee that Graycloak was my servant, whom I sent to give
thee daily an honourable alms, till I had got this house made ready for
thee. If thou like, thou mayest reckon me thy proper Guardian Angel,
since the other has not acted to thy satisfaction."

He then led the old man into his dwelling, where the table was standing
covered, and everything arranged for his convenience and comfortable
living. The grayhead was so astonished at his fortune, that he could not
understand or even believe it. That a rich man should take such pity on
a poor one, was incomprehensible: he felt disposed to take the whole
affair for magic or jugglery, till Franz removed his doubts. A stream of
thankful tears flowed down the old man's cheeks; and his benefactor,
satisfied with this, did not wait till he should recover from his
amazement and thank him in words, but, after doing this angel-message,
vanished from the old man's eyes, as angels are wont; and left him to
piece together the affair as he best could.

Next morning, in the habitation of the lovely Meta, all was as a fair.
Franz dispatched to her a crowd of merchants, jewellers, milliners,
lace-dealers, tailors, sutors and sempstresses, in part to offer her all
sorts of wares, in part their own good services. She passed the whole
day in choosing stuffs, laces and other requisites for the condition of
a bride, or being measured for her various new apparel. The dimensions
of her dainty foot, her beautifully-formed arm, and her slim waist, were
as often and as carefully meted, as if some skilful statuary had been
taking from her the model for a Goddess of Love. Meanwhile the
bridegroom went to appoint the bans; and before three weeks were past,
he led his bride to the altar, with a solemnity by which even the
gorgeous wedding-pomp of the Hop-King was eclipsed. Mother Brigitta had
the happiness of twisting the bridal-garland for her virtuous Meta; she
completely attained her wish of spending her woman's-summer in
propitious affluence; and deserved this satisfaction, as a recompense
for one praiseworthy quality which she possessed: She was the most
tolerable mother-in-law that has ever been discovered.




LIBUSSA.[12]


Deep in the Bohemian forest, which has now dwindled to a few scattered
woodlands, there abode, in the primeval times, while it stretched its
umbrage far and wide, a spiritual race of beings, airy and avoiding
light, incorporeal also, more delicately fashioned than the clay-formed
sons of men; to the coarser sense of feeling imperceptible, but to the
finer, half-visible by moonlight; and well known to poets by the name of
Dryads, and to ancient bards by that of Elves. From immemorial ages,
they had dwelt here undisturbed; till all at once the forest sounded
with the din of warriors, for Duke Czech of Hungary, with his Sclavonic
hordes, had broken over the mountains, to seek in these wild tracts a
new habitation. The fair tenants of the aged oaks, of the rocks, clefts
and grottos, and of the flags in the tarns and morasses, fled before the
clang of arms and the neighing of chargers: the stout Erl-King himself
was annoyed by the uproar, and transferred his court to more sequestered
wildernesses. One solitary Elf could not resolve to leave her darling
oak; and as the wood began here and there to be felled for the purposes
of cultivation, she alone undertook to defend her tree against the
violence of the strangers, and chose the towering summit of it for her
residence.

     [12] From _Jo. Dubravii Historia Bohemica_, and _AEneae Sylvii
     Cardinalis de Bohemarum Origine ac Gestis Historia_.

Among the retinue of the Duke was a young Squire, Krokus by name, full
of spirit and impetuosity; stout and handsome, and of noble mien, to
whom the keeping of his master's stud had been entrusted, which at times
he drove far into the forest for their pasture. Frequently he rested
beneath the oak which the Elf inhabited: she observed him with
satisfaction; and at night, when he was sleeping at the root, she would
whisper pleasant dreams into his ear, and announce to him in expressive
images the events of the coming day. When any horse had strayed into the
desert, and the keeper had lost its tract, and gone to sleep with
anxious thoughts, he failed not to see in vision the marks of the hidden
path, which led him to the spot where his lost steed was grazing.

The farther the new colonists extended, the nearer came they to the
dwelling of the Elf; and as by her gift of divination, she perceived how
soon her life-tree would be threatened by the axe, she determined to
unfold this sorrow to her guest. One moonshiny summer evening, Krokus
had folded his herd somewhat later than usual, and was hastening to his
bed under the lofty oak. His path led him round a little fishy lake, on
whose silver face the moon was imaging herself like a gleaming ball of
gold; and across this glittering portion of the water, on the farther
side, he perceived a female form, apparently engaged in walking by the
cool shore. This sight surprised the young warrior: What brings the
maiden hither, thought he, by herself, in this wilderness, at the season
of the nightly dusk? Yet the adventure was of such a sort, that, to a
young man, the more strict investigation of it seemed alluring rather
than alarming. He redoubled his steps, keeping firmly in view the form
which had arrested his attention; and soon reached the place where he
had first noticed it, beneath the oak. But now it looked to him as if
the thing he saw were a shadow rather than a body; he stood wondering
and motionless, a cold shudder crept over him; and he heard a sweet soft
voice address to him these words: "Come hither, beloved stranger, and
fear not; I am no phantasm, no deceitful shadow: I am the Elf of this
grove, the tenant of the oak, under whose leafy boughs thou hast often
rested. I rocked thee in sweet delighting dreams, and prefigured to thee
thy adventures; and when a brood-mare or a foal had chanced to wander
from the herd, I told thee of the place where thou wouldst find it.
Repay this favour by a service which I now require of thee; be the
Protector of this tree, which has so often screened thee from the shower
and the scorching heat; and guard the murderous axes of thy brethren,
which lay waste the forest, that they harm not this venerable trunk."

The young warrior, restored to self-possession by this soft still voice,
made answer: "Goddess or mortal, whoever thou mayest be, require of me
what thou pleasest; if I can, I will perform it. But I am a man of no
account among my people, the servant of the Duke my lord. If he tell me
today or tomorrow, Feed here, feed there, how shall I protect thy tree
in this distant forest? Yet if thou commandest me, I will renounce the
service of princes, and dwell under the shadow of thy oak, and guard it
while I live."

"Do so," said the Elf: "thou shalt not repent it."

Hereupon she vanished; and there was a rustling in the branches above,
as if some breath of an evening breeze had been entangled in them, and
had stirred the leaves. Krokus, for a while, stood enraptured at the
heavenly form which had appeared to him. So soft a female, of such
slender shape and royal bearing, he had never seen among the short squat
damsels of his own Sclavonic race. At last he stretched himself upon the
moss, but no sleep descended on his eyes; the dawn overtook him in a
whirl of sweet emotions, which were as strange and new to him as the
first beam of light to the opened eye of one born blind. With the
earliest morning he hastened to the Court of the Duke, required his
discharge, packed up his war-accoutrements, and, with rapid steps, his
burden on his shoulders, and his head full of glowing enthusiasm, hied
him back to his enchanted forest-hermitage.

Meanwhile, in his absence, a craftsman among the people, a miller by
trade, had selected for himself the round straight trunk of the oak to
be an axle, and was proceeding with his mill-men to fell it. The
affrighted Elf sobbed bitterly, as the greedy saw began with iron tooth
to devour the foundations of her dwelling. She looked wildly round, from
the highest summit, for her faithful guardian, but her glance could find
him nowhere; and the gift of prophecy, peculiar to her race, was in the
present case so ineffectual, that she could as little read the fate that
stood before her, as the sons of AEsculapius, with their vaunted
prognosis, can discover ways and means for themselves when Death is
knocking at their own door.

Krokus, however, was approaching, and so near the scene of this
catastrophe, that the screeching of the busy saw did not escape his ear.
Such a sound in the forest boded no good: he quickened his steps, and
beheld before his eyes the horror of the devastation that was visiting
the tree which he had taken under his protection. Like a fury he rushed
upon the wood-cutters, with pike and sword, and scared them from their
work; for they concluded he must be a forest-demon, and fled in great
precipitation. By good fortune, the wound of the tree was still curable;
and the scar of it disappeared in a few summers.

In the solemn hour of evening, when the stranger had fixed upon the spot
for his future habitation; had meted out the space for hedging round as
a garden, and was weighing in his mind the whole scheme of his future
hermitage; where, in retirement from the society of men, he purposed to
pass his days in the service of a shadowy companion, possessed
apparently of little more reality than a Saint of the Calendar, whom a
pious friar chooses for his spiritual paramour,--the Elf appeared before
him at the brink of the lake, and with gentle looks thus spoke:

"Thanks to thee, beloved stranger, that thou hast turned away the
wasteful arms of thy brethren from ruining this tree, with which my life
is united. For thou shalt know that Mother Nature, who has granted to my
race such varied powers and influences, has combined the fortune of our
life with the growth and duration of the oak. By us the sovereign of the
forest raises his venerable head above the populace of other trees and
shrubs; we further the circulation of the sap through his trunk and
boughs, that he may gain strength to battle with the tempest, and for
long centuries to defy destructive Time. On the other hand, our life is
bound to his: when the oak, which the lot of Destiny has appointed for
the partner of our existence, fades by years, we fade along with him;
and when he dies, we die, and sleep, like mortals, as it were a sort of
death-sleep, till, by the everlasting cycle of things, Chance, or some
hidden provision of Nature, again weds our being to a new germ; which,
unfolded by our enlivening virtue, after the lapse of long years,
springs up to be a mighty tree, and affords us the enjoyment of
existence anew. From this thou mayest perceive what a service thou hast
done me by thy help, and what gratitude I owe thee. Ask of me the
recompense of thy noble deed; disclose to me the wish of thy heart, and
this hour it shall be granted thee."

Krokus continued silent. The sight of the enchanting Elf had made more
impression on him than her speech, of which, indeed, he understood but
little. She noticed his embarrassment; and, to extricate him from it,
plucked a withered reed from the margin of the lake, broke it into three
pieces, and said: "Choose one of these three stalks, or take one without
a choice. In the first, lie Honour and Renown; in the second, Riches
and the wise enjoyment of them; in the third is happiness in Love laid
up for thee."

The young man cast his eyes upon the ground, and answered: "Daughter of
Heaven, if thou wouldst deign to grant the desire of my heart, know that
it lies not in these three stalks which thou offerest me; the recompense
I aim at is higher. What is Honour but the fuel of Pride? what are
Riches but the root of Avarice? and what is Love but the trap-door of
Passion, to ensnare the noble freedom of the heart? Grant me my wish, to
rest under the shadow of thy oak-tree from the toils of warfare, and to
hear from thy sweet mouth the lessons of wisdom, that I may understand
by them the secrets of the future."

"Thy request," replied the Elf, "is great; but thy deserving toward me
is not less so: be it then as thou hast asked. Nor, with the fruit,
shall the shell be wanting to thee; for the wise man is also honoured;
he alone is rich, for he desires nothing more than he needs, and he
tastes the pure nectar of Love without poisoning it by polluted lips."

So saying, she again presented him the three reed-stalks, and vanished
from his sight.

The young Eremite prepared his bed of moss, beneath the oak, exceedingly
content with the reception which the Elf had given him. Sleep came upon
him like a strong man; gay morning dreams danced round his head, and
solaced his fancy with the breath of happy forebodings. On awakening, he
joyfully began his day's work; ere long he had built himself a pleasant
hermit's-cottage; had dug his garden, and planted in it roses and
lilies, with other odoriferous flowers and herbs; not forgetting pulse
and cole, and a sufficiency of fruit-trees. The Elf never failed to
visit him at twilight; she rejoiced in the prospering of his labours;
walked with him, hand in hand, by the sedgy border of the lake; and the
wavering reeds, as the wind passed through them, whispered a melodious
evening salutation to the trustful pair. She instructed her attentive
disciple in the secrets of Nature; showed him the origin and causes of
things; taught him their common and their magic properties and effects;
and formed the rude soldier into a thinker and philosopher.

In proportion as the feelings and senses of the young man grew refined
by this fair spiritual intercourse, it seemed as if the tender form of
the Elf were condensing, and acquiring more consistency; her bosom
caught warmth and life; her brown eyes sparkled with the fire of love;
and with the shape, she appeared to have adopted the feelings of a young
blooming maiden. The sentimental hour of dusk, which is as if expressly
calculated to awaken slumbering feelings, had its usual effect; and
after a few moons from their first acquaintance, the sighing Krokus
found himself possessed of the happiness in Love, which the Third
Reed-stalk had appointed him; and did not repent that by the trap-door
of Passion the freedom of his heart had been ensnared. Though the
marriage of the tender pair took place without witnesses, it was
celebrated with as much enjoyment as the most tumultuous espousal; nor
were speaking proofs of love's recompense long wanting. The Elf gave her
husband three daughters at a birth; and the father, rejoicing in the
bounty of his better half, named, at the first embrace, the eldest
infant, Bela; the next born, Therba; and the youngest, Libussa. They
were all like the Genies in beauty of form; and though not moulded of
such light materials as the mother, their corporeal structure was finer
than the dull earthy clay of the father. They were also free from all
the infirmities of childhood; their swathings did not gall them; they
teethed without epileptic fits, needed no calomel taken inwardly, got no
rickets; had no small-pox, and, of course, no scars, no scum-eyes, or
puckered faces: nor did they require any leading-strings; for after the
first nine days, they ran like little partridges; and as they grew up,
they manifested all the talents of the mother for discovering hidden
things, and predicting what was future.

Krokus himself, by the aid of time, grew skilful in these mysteries
also. When the wolf had scattered the flocks through the forest, and the
herdsmen were seeking for their sheep and horses; when the woodman
missed an axe or bill, they took counsel from the wise Krokus, who
showed them where to find what they had lost. When a wicked prowler had
abstracted aught from the common stock; had by night broken into the
pinfold, or the dwelling of his neighbour, and robbed or slain him, and
none could guess the malefactor, the wise Krokus was consulted. He led
the people to a green; made them form a ring; then stept into the midst
of them, set the faithful sieve a-running, and so failed not to discover
the misdoer. By such acts his fame spread over all the country of
Bohemia; and whoever had a weighty care, or an important undertaking,
took counsel from the wise Krokus about its issue. The lame and the
sick, too, required from him help and recovery; even the unsound cattle
of the fold were driven to him; and his gift of curing sick kine by his
shadow, was not less than that of the renowned St. Martin of Schierbach.
By these means the concourse of the people to him grew more frequent,
day by day, no otherwise than if the Tripod of the Delphic Apollo had
been transferred to the Bohemian forest: and though Krokus answered all
inquiries, and cured the sick and afflicted, without fee or reward, yet
the treasure of his secret wisdom paid him richly, and brought him in
abundant profit; the people crowded to him with gifts and presents, and
almost oppressed him with testimonies of their good-will. It was he that
first disclosed the mystery of washing gold from the sands of the Elbe;
and for his recompense he had a tenth of all the produce. By these means
his wealth and store increased; he built strongholds and palaces; had
vast herds of cattle; possessed fertile pasturages, fields and woods;
and thus found himself imperceptibly possessed of all the Riches which
the beneficently foreboding Elf had enclosed for him in the Second Reed.

One fine summer evening, when Krokus with his train was returning from
an excursion, having by special request been settling the disputed
marches of two townships, he perceived his spouse on the margin of the
sedgy lake, where she had first appeared to him. She waved him with her
hand; so he dismissed his servants, and hastened to clasp her in his
arms. She received him, as usual, with tender love; but her heart was
sad and oppressed; from her eyes trickled down ethereal tears, so fine
and fugitive, that as they fell they were greedily inhaled by the air,
and not allowed to reach the ground. Krokus was alarmed at this
appearance; he had never seen his wife's fair eyes otherwise than
cheerful, and sparkling with youthful gaiety. "What ails thee, beloved
of my heart?" said he; "black forebodings overcast my soul. Speak, say
what mean those tears."

The Elf sobbed, leaned her head sorrowfully on his shoulder, and said:
"Beloved husband, in thy absence I have looked into the Book of Destiny;
a doleful chance overhangs my life-tree; I must part from thee forever.
Follow me into the Castle, till I bless my children; for from this day
you will never see me more."

"Dearest wife," said Krokus, "chase away these mournful thoughts. What
misfortune is it that can harm thy tree? Behold its sound boughs, how
they stretch forth loaded with fruit and leaves, and how it raises its
top to the clouds. While this arm can move, it shall defend thy tree
from any miscreant that presumes to wound its stem."

"Impotent defence," replied she, "which a mortal arm can yield! Ants can
but secure themselves from ants, flies from flies, and the worms of
Earth from other earthly worms. But what can the mightiest among you do
against the workings of Nature, or the unalterable decisions of Fate?
The kings of the Earth can heap up little hillocks, which they name
fortresses and castles; but the weakest breath of air defies their
authority, blows where it lists, and mocks at their command. This
oak-tree thou hast guarded from the violence of men; canst thou likewise
forbid the tempest that it rise not to disleaf its branches; or if a
hidden worm is gnawing in its marrow, canst thou draw it out, and tread
it under foot?"

Amid such conversation they arrived at the Castle. The slender maidens,
as they were wont at the evening visit of their mother, came bounding
forth to meet them; gave account of their day's employments, produced
their needlework, and their embroideries, to prove their diligence: but
now the hour of household happiness was joyless. They soon observed that
the traces of deep suffering were imprinted on the countenance of their
father; and they looked with sympathising sorrow at their mother's
tears, without venturing to inquire their cause. The mother gave them
many wise instructions and wholesome admonitions; but her speech was
like the singing of a swan, as if she wished to give the world her
farewell. She lingered with her husband, till the morning-star went up
in the sky; then she embraced him and her children with mournful
tenderness; and at dawn of day retired, as was her custom, through the
secret door, to her oak-tree, and left her friends to their own sad
forebodings.

Nature stood in listening stillness at the rising sun; but heavy black
clouds soon veiled his beaming head. The day grew sultry and oppressive;
the whole atmosphere was electric. Distant thunder came rolling over the
forest; and the hundred-voiced Echo repeated, in the winding valleys,
its baleful sound. At the noontide, a forked thunderbolt struck
quivering down upon the oak; and in a moment shivered with resistless
force the trunk and boughs, and the wreck lay scattered far around it in
the forest. When Father Krokus was informed of this, he rent his
garments, went forth with his daughters to deplore the life-tree of his
spouse, and to collect the fragments of it, and preserve them as
invaluable relics. But the Elf from that day was not seen any more.

In some few years, the tender girls had waxed in stature; their maiden
forms blossomed forth, as the rose pushing up from the bud; and the fame
of their beauty spread abroad over all the land. The noblest youths of
the people crowded round, with cases to submit to Father Krokus for his
counsel; but at bottom, these their specious pretexts were directed to
the fair maidens, whom they wished to get a glimpse of; as is the mode
with young men, who delight to have some business with the master of the
household, when his daughters are beautiful. The three sisters lived in
great simplicity and unity together; as yet but little conscious of
their talents. The gift of prophecy had been communicated to them in an
equal degree; and all their words were oracles, although they knew it
not. Yet soon their vanity awoke at the voice of flattery; word-catchers
eagerly laid hold of every sound proceeding from their lips; Celadons
noted down every look, spied out the faintest smile, explored the aspect
of their eyes, and drew from it more or less favourable prognostics,
conceiving that their own destiny was to be read by means of it; and
from this time, it has become the mode with lovers to deduce from the
horoscope of the eyes the rising or declining of their star in
courtship. Scarcely had Vanity obtained a footing in the virgin heart,
till Pride, her dear confidante, with her wicked rabble of a train,
Self-love, Self-praise, Self-will, Self-interest, were standing at the
door; and all of them in time sneaked in. The elder sisters struggled to
outdo the younger in their arts; and envied her in secret her
superiority in personal attractions. For though they all were very
beautiful, the youngest was the most so. Fraeulein Bela turned her chief
attention to the science of plants; as Fraeulein Medea did in earlier
times. She knew their hidden virtues, could extract from them poisons
and antidotes; and farther, understood the art of making from them sweet
or nauseous odours for the unseen Powers. When her censer steamed, she
allured to her Spirits out of the immeasurable depth of aether, from
beyond the Moon, and they became her subjects, that with their fine
organs they might be allowed to snuff these delicious vapours: and when
she scattered villanous perfumes upon the coals, she could have smoked
away with it the very Zihim and the Ohim from the Wilderness.

Fraeulein Therba was inventive as Circe in devising magic formulas,
which could command the elements, could raise tempests and whirlwinds,
also hail and thunder; could shake the bowels of the Earth, or lift
itself from the sockets of its axle. She employed these arts to terrify
the people, and be feared and honoured by them as a goddess; and she
could, in fact, arrange the weather more according to the wish and taste
of men than wise old Nature does. Two brothers quarrelled on this
subject, for their wishes never were the same. The one was a husbandman,
and still desired rain for the growth and strengthening of his crops.
The other was a potter, and desired constant sunshine to dry his dishes,
which the rain destroyed. And as Heaven never could content them in
disposing of this matter, they repaired one day with rich presents to
the Castle of the wise Krokus; and submitted their petitions to Therba.
The daughter of the Elf gave a smile over their unquiet grumbling at the
wise economy of Nature; and contented the demands of each: she made rain
fall on the seed-lands of the cultivator; and the sun shone on the
potter-field close by. By these enchantments both the sisters gained
much fame and riches, for they never used their gifts without a fee.
With their treasures they built castles and country-houses; laid out
royal pleasure-gardens; to their festivals and divertisements there was
no end. The gallants, who solicited their love, they gulled and laughed
at.

Fraeulein Libussa was no sharer in the vain proud disposition of her
sisters. Though she had the same capacities for penetrating the secrets
of Nature, and employing its hidden powers in her service, she remained
contented with the gifts she had derived from her maternal inheritance,
without attempting to increase them, or turn them to a source of gain.
Her vanity extended not beyond the consciousness that she was beautiful;
she cared not for riches; and neither longed to be feared nor to be
honoured like her sisters. Whilst these were gadding up and down among
their country-houses, hastening from one tumultuous pleasure to another,
with the flower of the Bohemian chivalry fettered to their
chariot-wheels, she abode in her father's house, conducting the economy,
giving counsel to those who begged it, friendly help to the afflicted
and oppressed; and all from good-will, without remuneration.[13] Her
temper was soft and modest, and her conduct virtuous and discreet, as
beseems a noble virgin. She might secretly rejoice in the victories
which her beauty gained over the hearts of men, and accept the sighing
and cooing of her languishing adorers as a just tribute to her charms;
but none dared speak a word of love to her, or venture on aspiring to
her heart. Yet Amor, the roguish urchin, takes a pleasure in exerting
his privileges on the coy; and often hurls his burning torch upon the
lowly straw-roof, when he means to set on fire a lofty palace.

     [13] _Nulla Crocco virilis sexus proles fuit, sed moriturus tres a
     morte sua filias superstites reliquit, omnes ut ipse erat
     fatidicas, vel magas potius, qualis Medea et Circe fuerant. Nam
     Bela natu filiarum maxima herbis incantandis Medeam imitabatur,
     Tetcha (Therba) natu minor carminibus magicis Circem reddebat. Ad
     utramque frequens multitudinis concursus; dum alii amores sibi
     conciliare, alii cum bona valetudine in gratiam redire, alii res
     amissas recuperare cupiunt. Illa arcem Belinam, haec altera arcem
     Thetin ex mercenaria pecunia, nihil enim gratuito faciebant,
     aedificandam curavit. Liberalior in hac re Lybussa natu minima
     apparuit, ut quae a nemine quidquam extorquebat, et potius fata
     publica omnibus, quam privata singulis, praecinebat: qua
     liberalitate, et quia non gratuita solum sed etiam minus fallace
     praedictione utebatur, assecuta est ut in locum patris Crocci
     subrogaretur_.--DUBRAVIUS.

Far in the bosom of the forest lived an ancient Knight, who had come
into the land with the host of Czech. In this seclusion he had fixed his
settlement; reduced the desert under cultivation, and formed for himself
a small estate, where he thought to pass the remainder of his days in
peace, and live upon the produce of his husbandry. A strong-handed
neighbour took forcible possession of the land, and expelled the owner,
whom a hospitable peasant sheltered in his dwelling. The distressed old
Knight had a son, who now formed the sole consolation and support of his
age; a bold active youth, but possessed of nothing save a hunting-spear
and a practised arm, for the sustenance of his gray-haired father. The
injustice of their neighbour stimulated him to revenge, and he had been
prepared for resisting force by force; but the command of the anxious
father, unwilling to expose his son to danger, had disarmed him. Yet ere
long he resumed his former purpose. Then the father called him to his
presence, and said:

"Pass over, my son, to the wise Krokus, or to the cunning virgins his
daughters, and ask counsel whether the gods approve thy undertaking, and
will grant it a prosperous issue. If so, gird on thy sword, and take the
spear in thy hand, and go forth to fight for thy inheritance. If not,
stay here till thou hast closed my eyes and laid me in the earth; then
do what shall seem good to thee."

The youth set forth, and first reached Bela's palace, a building like a
temple for the habitation of a goddess. He knocked at the door, and
desired to be admitted; but the porter observing that he came
empty-handed, dismissed him as a beggar, and shut the door in his face.
He went forward in sadness, and reached the house of sister Therba,
where he knocked and requested an audience. The porter looked upon him
through his window, and said: "If thou bringest gold in thy bag, which
thou canst weigh out to my mistress, she will teach thee one of her good
saws to read thy fortune withal. If not, then go and gather of it in the
sands of the Elbe as many grains as the tree hath leaves, the sheaf
ears, and the bird feathers, then will I open thee this gate." The
mocked young man glided off entirely dejected; and the more so, as he
learned that Seer Krokus was in Poland, arbitrating the disputes of some
contending Grandees. He anticipated from the third sister no more
flattering reception; and as he descried her father's castle from a hill
in the distance, he could not venture to approach it, but hid himself in
a thicket to pursue his bitter thoughts. Ere long he was roused by an
approaching noise; he listened, and heard a sound of horses' hoofs. A
flying roe dashed through the bushes, followed by a lovely huntress and
her maids on stately steeds. She hurled a javelin from her hand; it flew
whizzing through the air, but did not hit the game. Instantly the
watchful young man seized his bow, and launched from the twanging cord a
bolt, which smote the deer through the heart, and stretched it lifeless
on the spot. The lady, in astonishment at this phenomenon, looked round
to find her unknown hunting partner: and the archer, on observing this,
stept forward from his bush, and bent himself humbly before her to the
ground. Fraeulein Libussa thought she had never seen a finer man. At the
first glance, his figure made so deep an impression on her, that she
could not but award him that involuntary feeling of goodwill, which a
beautiful appearance claims as its prerogative. "Tell me, fair
stranger," said she to him, "who art thou, and what chance is it that
leads thee to these groves?" The youth guessed rightly that his lucky
star had brought him what he was in search of; he disclosed his case to
her in modest words; not hiding how disgracefully her sisters had
dismissed him, or how the treatment had afflicted him. She cheered his
heart with friendly words. "Follow me to my abode," said she; "I will
consult the Book of Fate for thee, and answer thy demand tomorrow by the
rising of the sun."

The young man did as he was ordered. No churlish porter here barred for
him the entrance of the palace; the fair lady exercised the rights of
hospitality with generous attention. He was charmed by this benignant
reception, but still more by the beauty of his gentle hostess. Her
enchanting figure hovered all night before his eyes; he carefully
defended himself from sleep, that he might not for a moment lose from
his thoughts the delightful events of the day. Fraeulein Libussa, on the
contrary, enjoyed soft slumber: for seclusion from the influences of the
external senses, which disturb the finer presentiments of the future, is
an indispensable condition for the gift of prophecy. The glowing fancy
of the maiden blended the form of this young stranger with all the
dreaming images which hovered through her mind that night. She found him
where she had not looked for him, in connexion with affairs in which she
could not understand how this unknown youth had come to be involved.

On her early awakening, at the hour when the fair prophetess was wont to
separate and interpret the visions of the night, she felt inclined to
cast away these phantasms from her mind, as errors which had sprung from
a disturbance in the operation of her prophetic faculty, and were
entitled to no heed from her. Yet a dim feeling signified that this
creation of her fancy was not idle dreaming; but had a significant
allusion to certain events which the future would unravel; and that last
night this presaging Fantasy had spied out the decrees of Fate, and
blabbed them to her, more successfully than ever. By help of it, she
found that her guest was inflamed with warm love to her; and with equal
honesty her heart confessed the same thing in regard to him. But she
instantly impressed the seal of silence on the news; as the modest youth
had, on his side, set a guard upon his lips and his eyes, that he might
not expose himself to a contemptuous refusal; for the chasm which
Fortune had interposed between him and the daughter of the wise Krokus
seemed impassable.

Although the fair Libussa well knew what she had to say in answer to the
young man's question, yet it went against her heart to let him go from
her so soon. At sunrise she called him to her in her garden, and said:
"The curtain of darkness yet hangs before my eyes; abide with me till
sunset;" and at night she said: "Stay till sunrise;" and next morning:
"Wait another day;" and the third day: "Have patience till tomorrow." On
the fourth day she at last dismissed him; finding no more pretexts for
detaining him, with safety to her secret. At parting, she gave him his
response in friendly words: "The gods will not that thou shouldst
contend with a man of violence in the land; to bear and suffer is the
lot of the weaker. Return to thy father; be the comfort of his old age;
and support him by the labour of thy diligent hand. Take two white
Steers as a present from my herd; and this Staff to drive them; and when
it blossoms and bears fruit, the spirit of prophecy will descend on
thee."

The young man felt himself unworthy of the gentle virgin's gift; and
blushed that he should receive it and make no return. With ineloquent
lips, but with looks so much the more eloquent, he took mournful leave
of her; and at the gate below found two white Steers awaiting him, as
sleek and glittering as of old the godlike Bull, on whose smooth back
the virgin Europa swam across the blue sea waves. Joyfully he loosed
them from the post, and drove them softly on before him. The distance
home seemed but a few ells, so much was his spirit busied with the fair
Libussa: and he vowed, that as he never could obtain her love, he would
love no other all his days. The old Knight rejoiced in the return of his
son; and still more in learning that the oracle of the fair heiress
agreed so completely with his own wishes. As husbandry had been
appointed by the gods for the young man's trade, he lingered not in
harnessing his white Steers, and yoking them to the plough. The first
trial prospered to his wish: the bullocks had such strength and alacrity
that they turned over in a single day more land than twelve yoke of oxen
commonly can master: for they were fiery and impetuous, as the Bull is
painted in the Almanac, where he rushes from the clouds in the sign of
April; not sluggish and heavy like the Ox, who plods on with his holy
consorts, in our Gospel-Book, phlegmatically, as a Dutch skipper in a
calm.

Duke Czech, who had led the first colony of his people into Bohemia, was
now long ago committed to his final rest, yet his descendants had not
been promoted to succeed him in his princely dignity. The Magnates had
in truth, at his decease, assembled for a new election; but their wild
stormy tempers would admit of no reasonable resolution. Self-interest
and self-sufficiency transformed the first Bohemian Convention of
Estates into a Polish Diet: as too many hands laid hold of the princely
mantle, they tore it in pieces, and no one of them obtained it. The
government had dwindled to a sort of Anarchy; every one did what was
right in his own eyes; the strong oppressed the weak, the rich the
poor, the great the little. There was now no public security in the
land; yet the frank spirits of the time thought their new republic very
well arranged: "All is in order," said they, "every thing goes on its
way with us as well as elsewhere; the wolf eats the lamb, the kite the
dove, the fox the cock." This artless constitution could not last: when
the first debauch of fancied freedom had gone off, and the people were
again grown sober, reason asserted its rights; the patriots, the honest
citizens, whoever in the nation loved his country, joined together to
destroy the idol Hydra, and unite the people once more under a single
head. "Let us choose a Prince," said they, "to rule over us, after the
manner of our fathers, to tame the froward, and exercise right and
justice in the midst of us. Not the strongest, the boldest, or the
richest; the wisest be our Duke!" The people, wearied out with the
oppressions of their petty tyrants, had on this occasion but one voice,
and loudly applauded the proposal. A meeting of Estates was convoked;
and the choice unanimously fell upon the wise Krokus. An embassy of
honour was appointed, inviting him to take possession of the princely
dignity. Though he had never longed for lofty titles, he hesitated not
about complying with the people's wish. Invested with the purple, he
proceeded, with great pomp, to Vizegrad, the residence of the Dukes;
where the people met him with triumphant shouting, and did reverence to
him as their Regent. Whereby he perceived, that now the third Reed-stalk
of the bountiful Elf was likewise sending forth its gift upon him.

His love of justice, and his wise legislation, soon spread his fame over
all the surrounding countries. The Sarmatic Princes, incessantly at feud
with one another, brought their contention from afar before his
judgment-seat. He weighed it with the undeceitful weights of natural
Justice, in the scales of Law; and when he opened his mouth, it was as
if the venerable Solon, or the wise Solomon from between the Twelve
Lions of his throne, had been pronouncing sentence. Some seditious
instigators having leagued against the peace of their country, and
kindled war among the Poles, he advanced at the head of his army into
Poland; put an end to the civil strife; and a large portion of the
people, grateful for the peace which he had given them, chose him for
their Duke also. He there built the city Cracow, which is called by his
name, and has the privilege of crowning the Polish Kings, even to the
present time. Krokus ruled with great glory to the end of his days.
Observing that he was now near their limit, and must soon set out, he
caused a coffin to be made from the fragments of the oak which his
spouse the Elf had inhabited; and then departed in peace, bewept by the
Princesses his three daughters, who deposited the Ducal remains in the
coffin, and consigned him to the Earth as he had commanded; and the
whole land mourned for him.

When the obsequies were finished, the Estates assembled to deliberate
who should now possess the vacant throne. The people were unanimous for
one of Krokus's daughters; but which of the three they had not yet
determined. Fraeulein Bela had, on the whole, the fewest adherents; for
her heart was not good; and her magic-lantern was too frequently
employed in doing sheer mischief. But she had raised such a terror of
herself among the people, that no one liked to take exception at her,
lest he might draw down her vengeance on him. When the vote was called,
therefore, the Electors all continued dumb; there was no voice for her,
but also none against her. At sunset the representatives of the people
separated, adjourning their election to another day. Then Fraeulein
Therba was proposed: but confidence in her incantations had made
Fraeulein Therba's head giddy; she was proud and overbearing; required to
be honoured as a goddess; and if incense did not always smoke for her,
she grew peevish, cross, capricious; displaying all the properties by
which the fair sex, when they please, can cease to be fair. She was less
feared than her elder sister, but not on that account more loved. For
these reasons, the election-field continued silent as a lykewake; and
the vote was never called for. On the third day came Libussa's turn. No
sooner was this name pronounced, than a confidential hum was heard
throughout the electing circle; the solemn visages unwrinkled and
brightened up, and each of the Electors had some good to whisper of the
Fraeulein to his neighbour. One praised her virtue, another praised her
modesty, a third her prudence, a fourth her infallibility in prophecy, a
fifth her disinterestedness in giving counsel, a tenth her chastity,
other ninety her beauty, and the last her gifts as a housewife. When a
lover draws out such a catalogue of the perfections of his mistress, it
remains still doubtful whether she is really the possessor of a single
one among them; but the public seldom errs on the favourable side,
however often on the other, in the judgments it pronounces on good fame.
With so many universally acknowledged praiseworthy qualities, Fraeulein
Libussa was undoubtedly the favoured candidate, at least _in petto_, of
the sage Electors: but the preference of the younger sister to the elder
has so frequently, in the affair of marriage, as experience testifies,
destroyed the peace of the house, that reasonable fear might be
entertained lest in affairs of still greater moment it might disturb the
peace of the country. This consideration put the sapient guardians of
the people into such embarrassment, that they could come to no
conclusion whatever. There was wanting a speaker, to hang the
clock-weight of his eloquence upon the wheel of the Electors' favourable
will, before the business could get into motion, and the good
disposition of their minds become active and efficient; and this speaker
now appeared, as if appointed for the business.

Wladomir, one of the Bohemian Magnates, the highest after the Duke, had
long sighed for the enchanting Libussa, and wooed her during Father
Krokus's lifetime. The youth being one of his most faithful vassals, and
beloved by him as a son, the worthy Krokus could have wished well that
love would unite this pair; but the coyness of the maiden was
insuperable, and he would in nowise force her inclination. Prince
Wladomir, however, would not be deterred by these doubtful aspects; but
still hoped, by fidelity and constancy, to tire out the hard heart of
the Fraeulein, and by his tender attentions make it soft and pliant. He
continued in the Duke's retinue to the end, without appearing by this
means to have advanced a hair's-breadth towards the goal of his desires.
But now, he thought, an opportunity was offered him for opening her
closed heart by a meritorious deed, and earning from her noble-minded
gratitude what love did not seem inclined to grant him voluntarily. He
determined on braving the hatred and vengeance of the two dreaded
sisters, and raising his beloved to her paternal throne. Observing the
indecision of the wavering assembly, he addressed them, and said:

"If ye will hear me, ye courageous Knights and Nobles from among the
people, I will lay before you a similitude, by which you shall perceive
how this coming choice may be accomplished, to the weal and profit of
the land."

Silence being ordered, he proceeded thus:

"The Bees had lost their Queen, and the whole hive sat sad and moping;
they flew seldom and sluggishly out, had small heart or activity in
honey-making, and their trade and sustenance fell into decay. Therefore
they resolved upon a new sovereign, to rule over their community, that
discipline and order might not be lost from among them. Then came the
Wasp flying towards them, and said: 'Choose me for your Queen, I am
mighty and terrible; the strong horse is afraid of my sting; with it I
can even defy the lion, your hereditary foe, and prick him in the snout
when he approaches your store: I will watch you and defend you.' This
speech was pleasant to the Bees; but after deeply considering it, the
wisest among them answered: 'Thou art stout and dreadful, but even the
sting which is to guard us we fear: thou canst not be our Queen.' Then
the Humble-bee came buzzing towards them, and said: 'Choose me for your
Queen; hear ye not that the sounding of my wings announces loftiness and
dignity? Nor is a sting wanting to me, wherewith to protect you.' The
Bees answered: 'We are a peaceable and quiet people; the proud sounding
of thy wings would annoy us, and disturb the continuance of our
diligence: thou canst not be our Queen.' Then the Royal-bee requested
audience: 'Though I am larger and stronger than you,' said she, 'my
strength cannot hurt or damage you; for, lo, the dangerous sting is
altogether wanting. I am soft of temper, a friend of order and thrift,
can guide your honey-making, and further your labour.' 'Then,' said the
Bees, 'thou art worthy to rule over us: we obey thee; be our Queen.'"

Wladomir was silent. The whole assembly guessed the meaning of his
speech, and the minds of all were in a favourable tone for Fraeulein
Libussa. But at the moment when the vote was to be put, a croaking raven
flew over their heads: this evil omen interrupted all deliberations, and
the meeting was adjourned till the morrow. It was Fraeulein Bela who had
sent this bird of black augury to stop their operations, for she well
knew how the minds of the Electors were inclining; and Prince Wladomir
had raised her bitterest spleen against him. She held a secret
consultation with her sister Therba; when it was determined to take
vengeance on their common slanderer, and to dispatch a heavy Incubus to
suffocate the soul from his body. The stout Knight, dreaming nothing of
this danger, went, as he was wont, to wait upon his mistress, and was
favoured by her with the first friendly look; from which he failed not
to presage for himself a heaven of delight; and if anything could still
have increased his rapture, it must have been the gift of a rose, which
was blooming on the Fraeulein's breast, and which she reached him, with
an injunction to let it wither on his heart. He interpreted these words
quite otherwise than they were meant; for of all the sciences, there is
none so deceitful as the science of expounding in matters of love: here
errors, as it were, have their home. The enamoured Knight was anxious to
preserve his rose as long as possible in freshness and bloom; he put it
in a flower-pot among water, and fell asleep with the most flattering
hopes.

At gloomy midnight, the destroying angel sent by Fraeulein Bela glided
towards him; with panting breath blew off the bolts and locks of his
apartment; lighted like a mountain of lead upon the slumbering Knight,
and so squeezed him together, that he felt on awakening as if a
millstone had been hung about his neck. In this agonising suffocation,
thinking that the last moment of his life was at hand, he happily
remembered the rose, which was standing by his bed in a flower-pot, and
pressed it to his breast, saying: "Wither with me, fair rose, and die on
my chilled bosom, as a proof that my last thought was directed to thy
gentle mistress." In an instant all was light about his heart; the heavy
Incubus could not withstand the magic force of the flower; his crushing
weight would not now have balanced a feather; his antipathy to the
perfume soon scared him from the chamber; and the narcotic virtue of
this rose-odour again lulled the Knight into refreshing sleep. He rose
with the sun next morning, fresh and alert, and rode to the field, to
see what impression his similitude had made on the Electors, and to
watch what course the business was about to take; determined at all
hazards, should a contrary wind spring up, and threaten with shipwreck
the vessel of his hopes, to lay his hand upon the rudder, and steer it
into port.

For the present this was not required. The electing Senate had
considered Wladomir's parable, and so sedulously ruminated and digested
it overnight, that it had passed into their hearts and spirits. A stout
Knight, who espied this favourable crisis, and who sympathised in the
concerns of his heart with the enamoured Wladomir, was endeavouring to
snatch away, or at least to share with him, the honour of exalting
Fraeulein Libussa to the throne. He stept forth, and drew his sword, and
with a loud voice proclaimed Libussa Duchess of Bohemia, calling upon
all who thought as he did, to draw their swords and justify the choice.
In a moment hundreds of swords were gleaming through the field; a loud
huzza announced the new Regent, and on all sides arose the joyful shout:
"Libussa be our Duchess!" A commission was appointed, with Wladomir and
the stout sword-drawer at its head, to acquaint the Fraeulein with her
exaltation to the princely rank. With that modest blush, which gives the
highest grace to female charms, she accepted the sovereignty over the
people; and the magic of her enrapturing look made all hearts subject to
her. The nation celebrated the event with vast rejoicings: and although
her two sisters envied her, and employed their secret arts to obtain
revenge on her and their country for the slight which had been put upon
them, and endeavoured by the leaven of criticism, by censuring all the
measures and transactions of their sister, to produce a hurtful
fermentation in the state, yet Libussa was enabled wisely to encounter
this unsisterly procedure, and to ruin all the hostile projects, magical
or other, of these ungentle persons; till at last, weary of assailing
her in vain, they ceased to employ their ineffectual arts against her.

The sighing Wladomir awaited, in the mean time, with wistful longing,
the unfolding of his fate. More than once he had tried to read the final
issue of it in the fair eyes of his Princess; but Libussa had enjoined
them strict silence respecting the feelings of her heart; and for a
lover, without prior treaty with the eyes and their significant glances,
to demand an oral explanation, is at all times an unhappy undertaking.
The only favourable sign, which still sustained his hopes, was the
unfaded rose; for after a year had passed away, it still bloomed as
fresh as on the night when he received it from her fair hand. A flower
from a lady's hand, a nosegay, a ribbon, or a lock of hair, is certainly
in all cases better than an empty nut; yet all these pretty things are
but ambiguous pledges of love, if they have not borrowed meaning from
some more trustworthy revelation. Wladomir had nothing for it but to
play in silence the part of a sighing shepherd, and to watch what Time
and Chance might in the long-run do to help him. The unquiet Mizisla
pursued his courtship with far more vivacity: he pressed forward on
every occasion where he could obtain her notice. At the coronation, he
had been the first that took the oath of fealty to the Princess; he
followed her inseparably, as the Moon does the Earth, to express by
unbidden offices of zeal his devotion to her person; and on public
solemnities and processions, he flourished his sword before her, to keep
its good services in her remembrance.

Yet Libussa seemed, like other people in the world, to have very
speedily forgotten the promoters of her fortune; for when an obelisk is
once standing perpendicular, one heeds not the levers and implements
which raised it; so at least the claimants of her heart explained the
Fraeulein's coldness. Meanwhile both of them were wrong in their opinion:
the Fraeulein was neither insensible nor ungrateful; but her heart was no
longer a free piece of property, which she could give or sell according
to her pleasure. The decree of Love had already passed in favour of the
trim Forester with the sure cross-bow. The first impression, which the
sight of him had made upon her heart, was still so strong, that no
second could efface it. In a period of three years, the colours of
imagination, in which that Divinity had painted the image of the
graceful youth, had no whit abated in their brightness; and love
therefore continued altogether unimpaired. For the passion of the fair
sex is of this nature, that if it can endure three moons, it will then
last three times three years, or longer if required. In proof of this,
see the instances occurring daily before our eyes. When the heroes of
Germany sailed over distant seas, to fight out the quarrel of a
self-willed daughter of Britain with her motherland, they tore
themselves from the arms of their dames with mutual oaths of truth and
constancy; yet before the last Buoy of the Weser had got astern of them,
the heroic navigators were for most part forgotten of their Chloes. The
fickle among these maidens, out of grief to find their hearts
unoccupied, hastily supplied the vacuum by the surrogate of new
intrigues; but the faithful and true, who had constancy enough to stand
the Weser-proof, and had still refrained from infidelity when the
conquerors of their hearts had got beyond the Black Buoy, these, it is
said, preserved their vow unbroken till the return of the heroic host
into their German native country; and are still expecting from the hand
of Love the recompense of their unwearied perseverance.

It is therefore less surprising that the fair Libussa, under these
circumstances, could withstand the courting of the brilliant chivalry
who struggled for her love, than that Penelope of Ithaca could let a
whole cohort of wooers sigh for her in vain, when her heart had nothing
in reserve but the gray-headed Ulysses. Rank and birth, however, had
established such a difference in the situations of the Fraeulein and of
her beloved youth, that any closer union than Platonic love, a shadowy
business which can neither warm nor nourish, was not readily to be
expected. Though in those distant times, the pairing of the sexes was as
little estimated by parchments and genealogical trees, as the chaffers
were arranged by their antennae and shell-wings, or the flowers by their
pistils, stamina, calix and honey-produce; it was understood that with
the lofty elm the precious vine should mate itself, and not the rough
tangleweed which creeps along the hedges. A misassortment of marriage
from a difference of rank an inch in breadth excited, it is true, less
uproar than in these our classic times; yet a difference of an ell in
breadth, especially when rivals occupied the interstice, and made the
distance of the two extremities more visible, was even then a thing
which men could notice. All this, and much more, did the Fraeulein
accurately ponder in her prudent heart; therefore she granted Passion,
the treacherous babbler, no audience, loudly as it spoke in favour of
the youth whom Love had honoured. Like a chaste vestal, she made an
irrevocable vow to persist through life in her virgin closeness of
heart; and to answer no inquiry of a wooer, either with her eyes, or her
gestures, or her lips; yet reserving to herself, as a just
indemnification, the right of platonising to any length she liked. This
nunlike system suited the aspirants' way of thought so ill, that they
could not in the least comprehend the killing coldness of their
mistress; Jealousy, the confidant of Love, whispered torturing suspicion
in their ears; each thought the other was the happy rival, and their
penetration spied about unweariedly to make discoveries, which both of
them recoiled from. Yet Fraeulein Libussa weighed out her scanty graces
to the two valiant Ritters with such prudence and acuteness, on so fair
a balance, that the scale of neither rose above the other.

Weary of this fruitless waiting, both of them retired from the Court of
their Princess, and settled, with secret discontent, upon the
affeoffments which Duke Krokus had conferred on them. They brought so
much ill-humour home with them, that Wladomir was an oppression to all
his vassals and his neighbours; and Ritter Mizisla, on the other hand,
became a hunter, followed deer and foxes over the seed-fields and fences
of his subjects, and often with his train, to catch one hare, would ride
ten acres of corn to nothing. In consequence, arose much sobbing and
bewailing in the land; yet no righteous judge stepped forth to stay the
mischief; for who would willingly give judgment against the stronger?
And so the sufferings of the people never reached the throne of the
Duchess. By the virtue of her second-sight, however, no injustice done
within the wide limits of her sway could escape her observation; and the
disposition of her mind being soft, like the sweet features of her
face, she sorrowed inwardly at the misdeeds of her vassals, and the
violence of the powerful. She took counsel with herself how the evil
might be remedied, and her wisdom suggested an imitation of the gods,
who, in their judicial procedure, do not fall upon the criminal, and cut
him off as it were with the red hand; though vengeance, following with
slow steps, sooner or later overtakes him. The young Princess appointed
a general Convention of her Chivalry and States, and made proclamation,
that whoever had a grievance or a wrong to be righted, should come
forward free and fearless, under her safe-conduct. Thereupon, from every
end and corner of her dominions, the maltreated and oppressed crowded
towards her; the wranglers also, and litigious persons, and whoever had
a legal cause against his neighbour. Libussa sat upon her throne, like
the goddess Themis, and passed sentence, without respect of persons,
with unerring judgment; for the labyrinthic mazes of chicane could not
lead her astray, as they do the thick heads of city magistrates; and all
men were astonished at the wisdom with which she unravelled the
perplexed hanks of processes for _meum_ and _tuum_, and at her unwearied
patience in picking out the threads of justice, never once catching a
false end, but passing them from side to side of their embroilments, and
winding them off to the uttermost thrum.

When the tumult of the parties at her bar had by degrees diminished, and
the sittings were about to be concluded, on the last day of these
assizes audience was demanded by a free neighbour of the potent
Wladomir, and by deputies from the subjects of the hunter Mizisla. They
were admitted, and the Freeholder first addressing her, began: "An
industrious planter," said he, "fenced-in a little circuit, on the bank
of a broad river, whose waters glided down with soft rushing through the
green valley; for, he thought, The fair stream will be a guard to me on
this side, that no hungry wild-beast eat my crops, and it will moisten
the roots of my fruit-trees, that they flourish speedily and bring me
fruit. But when the earnings of his toil were about to ripen, the
deceitful stream grew troubled; its still waters began to swell and
roar, it overflowed its banks, and carried one piece after another of
the fruitful soil along with it; and dug itself a bed through the middle
of the cultivated land; to the sorrow of the poor planter, who had to
give up his little property to the malicious wasting of his strong
neighbour, the raging of whose waves he himself escaped with difficulty.
Puissant daughter of the wise Krokus, the poor planter entreats of thee
to command the haughty river no longer to roll its proud billows over
the field of the toilsome husbandman, or wash away the fruit of his
weary arms, his hope of glad harvest; but to flow peacefully along
within the limits of its own channel."

During this speech, the cheerful brow of the fair Libussa became
overclouded; manly rigour gleamed from her eyes, and all around was ear
to catch her sentence, which ran thus: "Thy cause is plain and straight;
no force shall disturb thy rightful privileges. A dike, which it shall
not overpass, shall set bounds to the tumultuous river; and from its
fishes thou shalt be repaid sevenfold the plunder of its wasteful
billows." Then she beckoned to the eldest of the Deputies, and he bowed
his face to the earth, and said: "Wise daughter of the far-famed Krokus,
Whose is the grain upon the field, the sower's, who has hidden the
seed-corn in the ground that it spring up and bear fruit; or the
tempest's, which breaks it and scatters it away?" She answered: "The
sower's."--"Then command the tempest," said the spokesman, "that it
choose not our corn-fields for the scene of its caprices, to uproot our
crops and shake the fruit from our trees."--"So be it," said the
Duchess; "I will tame the tempest, and banish it from your fields; it
shall battle with the clouds, and disperse them, where they are rising
from the south, and threatening the land with hail and heavy weather."

Prince Wladomir and Ritter Mizisla were both assessors in the general
tribunal. On hearing the complaint, and the rigorous sentence passed
regarding it, they waxed pale, and looked down upon the ground with
suppressed indignation; not daring to discover how sharply it stung them
to be condemned by a decree from female lips. For although, out of
tenderness to their honour, the complainants had modestly overhung the
charge with an allegorical veil, which the righteous sentence of the
fair President had also prudently respected, yet the texture of this
covering was so fine and transparent, that whoever had an eye might see
what stood behind it. But as they dared not venture to appeal from the
judgment-seat of the Princess to the people, since the sentence passed
upon them had excited universal joy, they submitted to it, though with
great reluctance. Wladomir indemnified his freeholding neighbour
sevenfold for the mischief done him; and Nimrod Mizisla engaged, on the
honour of a knight, no more to select the corn-fields of his subjects as
a chase for hare-catching. Libussa, at the same time, pointed out to
them a more respectable employment, for occupying their activity, and
restoring to their fame, which now, like a cracked pot when struck,
emitted nothing but discords, the sound ring of knightly virtues. She
placed them at the head of an army, which she was dispatching to
encounter Zornebock, the Prince of the Sorbi, a giant, and a powerful
magician withal, who was then meditating war against Bohemia. This
commission she accompanied with the penance, that they were not to
appear again at Court, till the one could offer her the plume, the other
the golden spurs, of the monster, as tokens of their victory.

The unfading rose, during this campaign, displayed its magic virtues
once more. By means of it, Prince Wladomir was as invulnerable to mortal
weapons, as Achilles the Hero; and as nimble, quick and dextrous, as
Achilles the Light-of-foot. The armies met upon the southern boundaries
of the Kingdom, and joined in fierce battle. The Bohemian heroes flew
through the squadrons, like storm and whirlwind; and cut down the thick
spear-crop, as 

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