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A Word, Only a Word — Complete

by Georg Ebers · English · Gutenberg #5577 · 563,154 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: A Word, Only a Word — Complete

Author: Georg Ebers

Translator: Mary J. Safford


        
Release date: November 15, 2004 [eBook #5577]
                Most recently updated: December 28, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5577

Credits: Produced by David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A WORD, ONLY A WORD — COMPLETE ***



Produced by David Widger





A WORD, ONLY A WORD, Complete

By Georg Ebers


Translated from the German by Mary J. Safford




CHAPTER I.

“A word, only a word!” cried a fresh, boyish voice, then two hands
were loudly clapped and a gay laugh echoed through the forest. Hitherto
silence had reigned under the boughs of the pines and tops of the
beeches, but now a wood-pigeon joined in the lad’s laugh, and a jay,
startled by the clapping of hands, spread its brown wings, delicately
flecked with blue, and soared from one pine to another.

Spring had entered the Black Forest a few weeks before. May was just
over, yet the weather was as sultry as in midsummer and clouds were
gathering in denser and denser masses. The sun was still some distance
above the horizon, but the valley was so narrow that the day star had
disappeared, before making its majestic entry into the portals of night.

When it set in a clear sky, it only gilded the border of pine trees on
the crest of the lofty western heights; to-day it was invisible, and the
occasional, quickly interrupted twittering of the birds seemed more in
harmony with the threatening clouds and sultry atmosphere than the lad’s
gay laughter.

Every living creature seemed to be holding its breath in anxious
suspense, but Ulrich once more laughed joyously, then bracing his bare
knee against a bundle of faggots, cried:

“Give me that stick, Ruth, that I may tie it up. How dry the stuff is,
and how it snaps! A word! To sit over books all day long for one stupid
word--that’s just nonsense!”

“But all words are not alike,” replied the girl.

“Piff is paff, and paff is puff!” laughed Ulrich. “When I snap the
twigs, you always hear them say ‘knack, knack,’ and ‘knack’ is a word
too. The juggler Caspar’s magpie, can say twenty.”

“But father said so,” replied Ruth, arranging the dry sticks. “He toils
hard, but not for gold and gain, to find the right words. You are always
wanting to know what he is looking for in his big books, so I plucked up
courage to ask him, and now I know. I suppose he saw I was astonished,
for he smiled just as he does when you have asked some foolish question
at lessons, and added that a word was no trifling thing and should not
be despised, for God had made the world out of one single word.”

Ulrich shook his head, and after pondering a few minutes, replied.

“Do you believe that?”

“Father said so,” was the little girl’s only answer. Her words expressed
the firm, immovable security of childish confidence, and the same
feeling sparkled in her eyes. She was probably about nine years old,
and in every respect a perfect contrast to her companion, her senior by
several summers, for the latter was strongly built, and from beneath
his beautiful fair locks a pair of big blue eyes flashed defiance at the
world, while Ruth was a delicate little creature, with slender limbs,
pale cheeks, and coal-black hair.

The little girl wore a fashionably-made, though shabby dress, shoes and
stockings--the boy was barefoot, and his grey doublet looked scarcely
less worn than the short leather breeches, which hardly reached his
knees; yet he must have had some regard for his outer man, for a red
knot of real silk was fastened on his shoulder. He could scarcely be the
child of a peasant or woodland laborer--the brow was too high, the nose
and red lips were too delicately moulded, the bearing was too proud and
free.

Ruth’s last words had given him food for thought, but he left them
unanswered until the last bundle of sticks was tied up. Then he said
hesitatingly:

“My mother--you know.... I dare not speak of her before father, he goes
into such a rage; my mother is said to be very wicked--but she never was
so to me, and I long for her day after day, very, very much, as I long
for nothing else. When I was so high, my mother told me a great many
things, such queer things! About a man, who wanted treasures, and before
whom mountains opened at a word he knew. Of course it’s for such a word
your father is seeking.”

“I don’t know,” replied the little girl. “But the word out of which God
made the whole earth and sky and all the stars must have been a very
great one.”

Ulrich nodded, then raising his eyes boldly, exclaimed:

“Ah, if he should find it, and would not keep it to himself, but let you
tell me! I should know what I wanted.”

Ruth looked at him enquiringly, but he cried laughingly: “I shan’t tell.
But what would you ask?”

“I? I should ask to have my mother able to speak again like other
people. But you would wish....”

“You can’t know what I would wish.”

“Yes, yes. You would bring your mother back home again.”

“No, I wasn’t thinking of that,” replied Ulrich, flushing scarlet and
fixing his eyes on the ground.

“What, then? Tell me; I won’t repeat it.”

“I should like to be one of the count’s squires, and always ride with
him when he goes hunting.”

“Oh!” cried Ruth. “That would be the very thing, if I were a boy like
you. A squire! But if the word can do everything, it will make you lord
of the castle and a powerful count. You can have real velvet clothes,
with gay slashes, and a silk bed.”

“And I’ll ride the black stallion, and the forest, with all its stags
and deer, will belong to me; as to the people down in the village, I’ll
show them!”

Raising his clenched fist and his eyes in menace as he uttered the
words, he saw that heavy rain-drops were beginning to fall, and a
thunder-shower was rising.

Hastily and skilfully loading himself with several bundles of faggots,
he laid some on the little girl’s shoulders, and went down with her
towards the valley, paying no heed to the pouring rain, thunder or
lightning; but Ruth trembled in every limb.

At the edge of the narrow pass leading to the city they stood still.
The moisture was trickling down its steep sides and had gathered into a
reddish torrent on the rocky bottom.

“Come!” cried Ulrich, stepping on to the edge of the ravine, where
stones and sand, loosened by the wet, were now rattling down.

“I’m afraid,” answered the little girl trembling. “There’s another flash
of lightning! Oh! dear, oh, dear! how it blazes!--oh! oh! that clap of
thunder!”

She stooped as if the lightning had struck her, covered her face with
her little hands, and fell on her knees, the bundle of faggots slipping
to the ground. Filled with terror, she murmured as if she could command
the mighty word: “Oh, Word, Word, get me home!”

Ulrich stamped impatiently, glanced at her with mingled anger and
contempt, and muttering reproaches, threw her bundle and his own into
the ravine, then roughly seized her hand and dragged her to the edge of
the cliff.

Half-walking, half-slipping, with many an unkind word, though he was
always careful to support her, the boy scrambled down the steep slope
with his companion, and when they were at last standing in the water
at the bottom of the gully, picked up the dripping fagots and walked
silently on, carrying her burden as well as his own.

After a short walk through the running water and mass of earth and
stones, slowly sliding towards the valley, several shingled roofs
appeared, and the little girl uttered a sigh of relief; for in the row
of shabby houses, each standing by itself, that extended from the forest
to the level end of the ravine, was her own home and the forge belonging
to her companion’s father.

It was still raining, but the thunder-storm had passed as quickly as it
rose, and twilight was already gathering over the mist-veiled houses and
spires of the little city, from which the street ran to the ravine. The
stillness of the evening was only interrupted by a few scattered notes
of bells, the finale of the mighty peal by which the warder had just
been trying to disperse the storm.

The safety of the town in the narrow forest-valley was well secured, a
wall and ditch enclosed it; only the houses on the edge of the ravine
were unprotected. True, the mouth of the pass was covered by the field
pieces on the city wall, and the strong tower beside the gate, but it
was not incumbent on the citizens to provide for the safety of the row
of houses up there. It was called the Richtberg and nobody lived there
except the rabble, executioners, and poor folk who were not granted the
rights of citizenship. Adam, the smith, had forfeited his, and Ruth’s
father, Doctor Costa, was a Jew, who ought to be thankful that he was
tolerated in the old forester’s house.

The street was perfectly still. A few children were jumping over the
mud-puddles, and an old washerwoman was putting a wooden vessel under
the gutter, to collect the rain-water.

Ruth breathed more freely when once again in the street and among human
beings, and soon, clinging to the hand of her father, who had come to
meet her, she entered the house with him and Ulrich.




CHAPTER II.

While the boy flung the damp bundles of brushwood on the floor beside
the hearth in the doctor’s kitchen, a servant from the monastery was
leading three horses under the rude shed in front of the smith Adam’s
work-shop The stately grey-haired monk, who had ridden the strong
cream-colored steed, was already standing beside the embers of the fire,
pressing his hands upon the warm chimney.

The forge stood open, but spite of knocking and shouting, neither the
master of the place, nor any other living soul appeared. Adam had gone
out, but could not be far away, for the door leading from the shop into
the sitting-room, was also unlocked.

The time was growing long to Father Benedict, so for occupation he tried
to lift the heavy hammer. It was a difficult task, though he was no
weakling, yet it was not hard for Adam’s arm to swing and guide the
burden. If only the man had understood how to govern his life as well as
he managed his ponderous tool!

He did not belong to Richtberg. What would his father have said, had he
lived to see his son dwell here?

The monk had known the old smith well, and he also knew many things
about the son and his destiny, yet no more than rumor entrusts to one
person concerning another’s life. Even this was enough to explain why
Adam had become so reserved, misanthropic and silent a man, though even
in his youth he certainly had not been what is termed a gay fellow.

The forge where he grew up, was still standing in the market-place
of the little city below; it had belonged to his grandfather and
great-grandfather. There had never been any lack of custom, to the
annoyance of the wise magistrates, whose discussions were disturbed by
the hammering that rang across the ill-paved square to the windows
of the council-chamber; but, on the other hand, the idle hours of the
watchmen under the arches of the ground-floor of the town-hall were
sweetened by the bustle before the smithy.

How Adam had come from the market-place to the Richtberg, is a story
speedily told.

He was the only child of his dead parents, and early learned his
father’s trade. When his mother died, the old man gave his son and
partner his blessing, and some florins to pay his expenses, and sent him
away. He went directly to Nuremberg, which the old man praised as the
high-school of the smith’s art, and there remained twelve years. When,
at the end of that time, news came to Adam that his father was dead, and
he had inherited the forge on the market-place, he wondered to find that
he was thirty years old, and had gone no farther than Nuremberg. True,
everything that the rest of the world could do in the art of forging
might be learned there.

He was a large, heavy man, and from childhood had moved slowly and
reluctantly from the place where he chanced to be.

If work was pressing, he could not be induced to leave the anvil, even
when evening had closed in; if it was pleasant to sit over the beer, he
remained till after the last man had gone. While working, he was as mute
as the dead to everything that was passing around him; in the tavern
he rarely spoke, and then said only a few words, yet the young artists,
sculptors, workers in gold and students liked to see the stout drinker
and good listener at the table, and the members of his guild only
marvelled how the sensible fellow, who joined in no foolish pranks, and
worked in such good earnest, held aloof from them to keep company with
these hairbrained folk, and remained a Papist.

He might have taken possession of the shop on the market-place directly
after his father’s death, but could not arrange his departure so
quickly, and it was fully eight months before he left Nuremberg.

On the high-road before Schwabach a wagon, occupied by some strolling
performers, overtook the traveller. They belonged to the better class,
for they appeared before counts and princes, and were seven in number.
The father and four sons played the violin, viola and reboc, and the two
daughters sang to the lute and harp. The old man invited Adam to take
the eighth place in the vehicle, so he counted his pennies, and room
was made for him opposite Flora, called by her family Florette. The
musicians were going to the fair at Nordlingen, and the smith enjoyed
himself so well with them, that he remained several days after reaching
the goal of the journey. When he at last went away Florette wept, but
he walked straight on until noon, without looking back. Then he lay down
under a blossoming apple-tree, to rest and eat some lunch, but the lunch
did not taste well; and when he shut his eyes he could not sleep, for
he thought constantly of Florette. Of course! He had parted from her far
too soon, and an eager longing seized upon him for the young girl, with
her red lips and luxuriant hair. This hair was a perfect golden-yellow;
he knew it well, for she had often combed and braided it in the
tavern-room beside the straw where they all slept.

He yearned to hear her laugh too, and would have liked to see her weep
again.

Then he remembered the desolate smithy in the narrow market-place and
the dreary home, recollected that he was thirty years old, and still had
no wife.

A little wife of his own! A wife like Florette! Seventeen years old,
a complexion like milk and blood, a creature full of gayety and joyous
life! True, he was no light-hearted lad, but, lying under the apple-tree
in the month of May, he saw himself in imagination living happily and
merrily in the smithy by the market-place, with the fair-haired girl who
had already shed tears for him. At last he started up, and because he
had determined to go still farther on this day, did so, though for no
other reason than to carry out the plan formed the day before. The next
morning, before sunrise, he was again marching along the highway, this
time not forward towards the Black Forest, but back to Nordlingen.

That very evening Florette became his betrothed bride, and the following
Tuesday his wife.

The wedding was celebrated in the midst of the turmoil of the fair.
Strolling players, jugglers and buffoons were the witnesses, and there
was no lack of music and tinsel.

A quieter ceremony would have been more agreeable to the plain citizen
and sensible blacksmith, but this purgatory had to be passed to reach
Paradise.

On Wednesday he went off in a fair wagon with his young wife, and
in Stuttgart bought with a portion of his savings many articles of
household furniture, less to stop the gossips’ tongues, of which he took
no heed, than to do her honor in his own eyes. These things, piled high
in a wagon of his own, he had sent into his native town as Florette’s
dowry, for her whole outfit consisted of one pink and one grass-green
gown, a lute and a little white dog.

A delightful life now began in the smithy for Adam. The gossips avoided
his wife, but they stared at her in church, and among them she seemed to
him, not unjustly, like a rose amid vegetables. The marriage he had made
was an abomination to respectable citizens, but Adam did not heed them,
and Flora appeared to feel equally happy with him. When, before the
close of the first twelvemonth after their wedding, Ulrich was born,
the smith reached the summit of happiness and remained there for a whole
year.

When, during that time, he stood in the bow-window amid the fresh
balsam, auricular and yellow wallflowers holding his boy on his
shoulder, while his wife leaned on his arm, and the pungent odor of
scorched hoofs reached his nostrils, and he saw his journeyman and
apprentice shoeing a horse below, he often thought how pleasant it had
been pursuing the finer branches of his craft in Nuremberg, and that he
should like to forge a flower again; but the blacksmith’s trade was not
to be despised either, and surely life with one’s wife and child was
best.

In the evening he drank his beer at the Lamb, and once, when the surgeon
Siedler called life a miserable vale of tears, he laughed in his face
and answered: “To him who knows how to take it right, it is a delightful
garden.”

Florette was kind to her husband, and devoted herself to her child,
so long as he was an infant, with the most self-sacrificing love. Adam
often spoke of a little daughter, who must look exactly like its mother;
but it did not come.

When little Ulrich at last began to run about in the street, the
mother’s nomadic blood stirred, and she was constantly dinning it into
her husband’s ears that he ought to leave this miserable place and go to
Augsburg or Cologne, where it would be pleasant; but he remained firm,
and though her power over him was great, she could not move his resolute
will.

Often she would not cease her entreaties and representations, and when
she even complained that she was dying of solitude and weariness, his
veins swelled with wrath, and then she was frightened, fled to her room
and wept. If she happened to have a bold day, she threatened to go away
and seek her own relatives. This displeased him, and he made her feel
it bitterly, for he was steadfast in everything, even anger, and when he
bore ill-will it was not for hours, but months, nor at such times could
he be conciliated by coaxing or tears.

By degrees Florette learned to meet his discontent with a shrug of
her shoulders, and to arrange her life in her own way. Ulrich was her
comfort, pride and plaything, but sporting with him did not satisfy her.

While Adam was standing behind the anvil, she sat among the flowers in
the bow-window, and the watchmen now looked higher up than the forge,
the worthy magistrates no longer cast unfriendly glances at the smith’s
house, for Florette grew more and more beautiful in the quiet life she
now enjoyed, and many a neighboring noble brought his horse to Adam to
be shod, merely to look into the eyes of the artisan’s beautiful wife.

Count von Frohlingen came most frequently of all, and Florette soon
learned to distinguish the hoof-beats of his horse from those of the
other steeds, and when he entered the shop, willingly found some pretext
for going there too. In the afternoons she often went with her child
outside the gate, and then always chose the road leading to the count’s
castle. There was no lack of careful friends, who warned Adam, but he
answered them angrily, so they learned to be silent.

Florette had now grown gay again, and sometimes sang like a joyous bird.

Seven years elapsed, and during the summer of the eighth a scattered
troop of soldiers came to the city and obtained admission. They were
quartered under the arches of the town-hall, but many also lay in the
smithy, for their helmets, breast-plates and other pieces of armor
required plenty of mending. The ensign, a handsome, proud young fellow,
with a dainty moustache, was Adam’s most constant customer, and played
very kindly with Ulrich, when Florette appeared with him. At last the
young soldier departed, and the very same day Adam was summoned to the
monastery, to mend something in the grating before the treasury.

When he returned, Florette had vanished; “run after the ensign,” people
said, and they were right. Adam did not attempt to wrest her from the
seducer; but a great love cannot be torn from the heart like a staff
that is thrust into the ground; it is intertwined with a thousand
fibres, and to destroy it utterly is to destroy the heart in which it
has taken root, and with it life itself. When he secretly cursed her
and called her a viper, he doubtless remembered how innocent, dear and
joyous she had been, and then the roots of the destroyed affection put
forth new shoots, and he saw before his mental vision ensnaring images,
of which he felt ashamed as soon as they had vanished.

Lightning and hail had entered the “delightful garden” of Adam’s life
also, and he had been thrust forth from the little circle of the happy
into the great army of the wretched.

Purifying powers dwell in undeserved suffering, but no one is made
better by unmerited disgrace, least of all a man like Adam. He had done
what seemed to him his duty, without looking to the right or the left,
but now the stainless man felt himself dishonored, and with morbid
sensitiveness referred everything he saw and heard to his own disgrace,
while the inhabitants of the little town made him feel that he had been
ill-advised, when he ventured to make a fiddler’s daughter a citizen.

When he went out, it seemed to him--and usually unjustly--as if people
were nudging each other; hands, pointing out-stretched fingers at
him, appeared to grow from every eye. At home he found nothing but
desolation, vacuity, sorrow, and a child, who constantly tore open the
burning, gnawing wounds in his heart. Ulrich must forget “the viper,”
 and he sternly forbade him to speak of his mother; but not a day passed
on which he would not fain have done so himself.

The smith did not stay long in the house on the market-place. He wished
to go to Freiburg or Ulm, any place where he had not been with her. A
purchaser for the dwelling, with its lucrative business, was speedily
found, the furniture was packed, and the new owner was to move in on
Wednesday, when on Monday Bolz, the jockey, came to Adam’s workshop
from Richtberg. The man had been a good customer for years, and bought
hundreds of shoes, which he put on the horses at his own forge, for he
knew something about the trade. He came to say farewell; he had his own
nest to feather, and could do a more profitable business in the lowlands
than up here in the forest. Finally he offered Adam his property at a
very low price.

The smith had smiled at the jockey’s proposal, still he went to
the Richtberg the very next day to see the place. There stood the
executioner’s house, from which the whole street was probably named.
One wretched hovel succeeded another. Yonder before a door, Wilhelm the
idiot, on whom the city boys played their pranks, smiled into vacancy
just as foolishly as he had done twenty years ago, here lodged Kathrin,
with the big goitre, who swept the gutters; in the three grey huts, from
which hung numerous articles of ragged clothing, lived two families of
charcoal-burners, and Caspar, the juggler, a strange man, whom as a boy
he had seen in the pillory, with his deformed daughters, who in winter
washed laces and in summer went with him to the fairs.

In the hovels, before which numerous children were playing, lived
honest, but poor foresters. It was the home of want and misery. Only
the jockey’s house and one other would have been allowed to exist in the
city. The latter was occupied by the Jew, Costa, who ten years before
had come from a distant country to the city with his aged father and a
dumb wife, and remained there, for a little daughter was born and the
old man was afterwards seized with a fatal illness. But the inhabitants
would tolerate no Jews among them, so the stranger moved into the
forester’s house on the Richtberg which had stood empty because a better
one had been built deeper in the woods. The city treasury could use the
rent and tax exacted from Jews and demanded of the stranger. The Jew
consented to the magistrate’s requirement, but as it soon became known
that he pored over huge volumes all day long and pursued no business,
yet paid for everything in good money, he was believed to be an
alchemist and sorcerer.

All who lived here were miserable or despised, and when Adam had left
the Richtberg he told himself that he no longer belonged among the proud
and unblemished and since he felt dishonored and took disgrace in the
same dogged earnest, that he did everything else, he believed the people
in the Richtberg were just the right neighbors for him. All knew what
it is to be wretched, and many had still heavier disgrace to bear. And
then! If want drove his miserable wife back to him, this was the right
place for her and those of her stamp.

So he bought the jockey’s house and well-supplied forge. There would be
customers enough for all he could do there in obscurity.

He had no cause to repent his bargain.

The old nurse remained with him and took care of Ulrich, who throve
admirably. His own heart too grew lighter while engaged in designing or
executing many an artistic piece of work. He sometimes went to the
city to buy iron or coals, but usually avoided any intercourse with the
citizens, who shrugged their shoulders or pointed to their foreheads,
when they spoke of him.

About a year after his removal he had occasion to speak to the
file-cutter, and sought him at the Lamb, where a number of Count
Frolinger’s retainers were sitting. Adam took no notice of them,
but they began to jeer and mock at him. For a time he succeeded in
controlling himself, but when red-haired Valentine went too far, a
sudden fit of rage overpowered him and he felled him to the floor. The
others now attacked him and dragged him to their master’s castle, where
he lay imprisoned for six months. At last he was brought before the
count, who restored him to liberty “for the sake of Florette’s beautiful
eyes.”

Years had passed since then, during which Adam had lived a quiet,
industrious life in the Richtberg with his son. He associated with
no one, except Doctor Costa, in whom he found the first and only real
friend fate had ever bestowed upon him.




CHAPTER III.

Father Benedict had last seen the smith soon after his return from
imprisonment, in the confessional of the monastery. As the monk in his
youth had served in a troop of the imperial cavalry, he now, spite
of his ecclesiastical dignity, managed the stables of the wealthy
monastery, and had formerly come to the smithy in the market-place with
many a horse, but since the monks had become involved in a quarrel with
the city, Benedict ordered the animals to be shod elsewhere.

A difficult case reminded him of the skilful, half-forgotten artisan;
and when the latter came out of the shed with a sack of coal, Benedict
greeted him with sincere warmth. Adam, too, showed that he was glad to
see the unexpected visitor, and placed his skill at the disposal of the
monastery.

“It has grown late, Adam,” said the monk, loosening the belt he was
accustomed to wear when riding, which had become damp. “The storm
overtook us on the way. The rolling and flashing overhead made the
sorrel horse almost tear Gotz’s hands off the wrists. Three steps
sideways and one forward--so it has grown late, and you can’t shoe the
rascal in the dark.”

“Do you mean the sorrel horse?” asked Adam, in a deep, musical voice,
thrusting a blazing pine torch into the iron ring on the forge.

“Yes, Master Adam. He won’t bear shoeing, yet he’s very valuable. We
have nothing to equal him. None of us can control him, but you formerly
zounds!... you haven’t grown younger in the last few years either, Adam!
Put on your cap; you’ve lost your hair. Your forehead reaches down to
your neck, but your vigor has remained. Do you remember how you cleft
the anvil at Rodebach?”

“Let that pass,” replied Adam--not angrily, but firmly. “I’ll shoe the
horse early to-morrow; it’s too late to-day.”

“I thought so!” cried the other, clasping his hands excitedly. “You
know how we stand towards the citizens on account of the tolls on the
bridges. I’d rather lie on thorns than enter the miserable hole. The
stable down below is large enough! Haven’t you a heap of straw for a
poor brother in Christ? I need nothing more; I’ve brought food with me.”

The smith lowered his eyes in embarrassment. He was not hospitable. No
stranger had rested under his roof, and everything that disturbed his
seclusion was repugnant to him. Yet he could not refuse; so he answered
coldly: “I live alone here with my boy, but if you wish, room can be
made.”

The monk accepted as eagerly, as if he had been cordially invited; and
after the horses and groom were supplied with shelter, followed his host
into the sitting-room next the shop, and placed his saddle-bags on the
table.

“This is all right,” he said, laughing, as he produced a roast fowl and
some white bread. “But how about the wine? I need something warm inside
after my wet ride. Haven’t you a drop in the cellar?”

“No, Father!” replied the smith. But directly after a second thought
occurred to him, and he added: “Yes, I can serve you.”

So saying, he opened the cupboard, and when, a short time after, the
monk emptied the first goblet, he uttered a long drawn “Ah!” following
the course of the fiery potion with his hand, till it rested content
near his stomach. His lips quivered a little in the enjoyment of the
flavor; then he looked benignantly with his unusually round eyes at
Adam, saying cunningly:

“If such grapes grow on your pine-trees, I wish the good Lord had given
Father Noah a pine-tree instead of a vine. By the saints! The archbishop
has no better wine in his cellar! Give me one little sip more, and tell
me from whom you received the noble gift?”

“Costa gave me the wine.”

“The sorcerer---the Jew?” asked the monk, pushing the goblet away. “But,
of course,” he continued, in a half-earnest, half-jesting tone, “when
one considers--the wine at the first holy communion, and at the marriage
of Cana, and the juice of the grapes King David enjoyed, once lay in
Jewish cellars!”

Benedict had doubtless expected a smile or approving word from his host,
but the smith’s bearded face remained motionless, as if he were dead.

The monk looked less cheerful, as he began again “You ought not to
grudge yourself a goblet either. Wine moderately enjoyed makes the heart
glad; and you don’t look like a contented man. Everything in life has
not gone according to your wishes, but each has his own cross to bear;
and as for you, your name is Adam, and your trials also come from Eve!”

At these words the smith moved his hand from his beard, and began to
push the round leather cap to and fro on his bald head. A harsh answer
was already on his lips, when he saw Ulrich, who had paused on the
threshold in bewilderment. The boy had never beheld any guest at his
father’s table except the doctor, but hastily collecting his thoughts
he kissed the monk’s hand. The priest took the handsome lad by the chin,
bent his head back, looked Adam also in the face, and exclaimed:

“His mouth, nose and eyes he has inherited from your wife, but the shape
of the brow and head is exactly like yours.”

A faint flush suffused Adam’s cheeks, and turning quickly to the boy as
if he had heard enough, he cried:

“You are late. Where have you been so long?”

“In the forest with Ruth. We were gathering faggots for Dr. Costa.”

“Until now?”

“Rahel had baked some dumplings, so the doctor told me to stay.”

“Then go to bed now. But first take some food to the groom in the
stable, and put fresh linen on my bed. Be in the workshop early
to-morrow morning, there is a horse to be shod.”

The boy looked up thoughtfully and replied: “Yes, but the doctor has
changed the hours; to-morrow the lesson will begin just after sunrise,
father.”

“Very well, we’ll do without you. Good-night then.”

The monk followed this conversation with interest and increasing
disapproval, his face assuming a totally different expression, for the
muscles between his nose and mouth drew farther back, forming with the
underlip an angle turning inward. Thus he gazed with mute reproach at
the smith for some time, then pushed the goblet far away, exclaiming
with sincere indignation:

“What doings are these, friend Adam? I’ll let the Jew’s wine pass, and
the dumplings too for aught I care, though it doesn’t make a Christian
child more pleasing in the sight of God, to eat from the same dish
with those on whom the Saviour’s innocent blood rests. But that you,
a believing Christian, should permit an accursed Jew to lead a foolish
lad. ...”

“Let that pass,” said the smith, interrupting the excited monk; but the
latter would not be restrained, and only continued still more loudly and
firmly: “I won’t be stopped. Was such a thing ever heard of? A
baptized Christian, who sends his own son to be taught by the infidel
soul-destroyer!”

“Hear me, Father!”

“No indeed. It’s for you to hear--you! What was I saying? For you, you
who seek for your poor child a soul-destroying infidel as teacher. Do
you know what that is? A sin against the Holy Ghost--the worst of all
crimes. Such an abomination! You will have a heavy penance imposed upon
you in the confessional.”

“It’s no sin--no abomination!” replied the smith defiantly.

The angry blood mounted into the monk’s cheeks, and he cried:
threateningly: “Oho! The chapter will teach you better to your sorrow.
Keep the boy away from the Jew, or...”

“Or?” repeated the smith, looking Father Benedict steadily in the face.

The latter’s lips curled still more deeply, as after a pause, he
replied: “Or excommunication and a fitting punishment will fall upon you
and the vagabond doctor. Tit for tat. We have grown tender-hearted, and
it is long since a Jew has been burned for an example to many.”

These words did not fail to produce an effect, for though Adam was a
brave man, the monk threatened him with things, against which he felt
as powerless as when confronted with the might of the tempest and the
lightning flashing from the clouds. His features now expressed deep
mental anguish, and stretching out his hands repellently towards his
guest, he cried anxiously “No, no! Nothing more can happen to me. No
excommunication, no punishment, can make my present suffering harder to
bear, but if you harm the doctor, I shall curse the hour I invited you
to cross my threshold.”

The monk looked at the other in surprise and answered in a more gentle
tone: “You have always walked in your own way, Adam; but whither are you
going now? Has the Jew bewitched you, or what binds you to him, that you
look, on his account, as if a thunderbolt had struck you? No one shall
have cause to curse the hour he invited Benedict to be his guest. See
your way clearly once more, and when you have come to your senses--why,
we monks have two eyes, that we may be able to close one when occasion
requires. Have you any special cause for gratitude to Costa?”

“Many, Father, many!” cried the smith, his voice still trembling with
only too well founded anxiety for his friend. “Listen, and when you know
what he has done for me, and are disposed to judge leniently, do not
carry what reaches your ears here before the chapter no, Father--I
beseech you--do not. For if it should be I, by whom the doctor came
to ruin, I--I....” The man’s voice failed, and his chest heaved so
violently with his gasping breath, that his stout leathern apron rose
and fell.

“Be calm, Adam, be calm,” said the monk, soothingly answering his
companion’s broken words. “All shall be well, all shall be well. Sit
down, man, and trust me. What is the terrible debt of gratitude you owe
the doctor?”

Spite of the other’s invitation, the smith remained standing and with
downcast eyes, began:

“I am not good at talking. You know how I was thrown into a dungeon on
Valentine’s account, but no one can understand my feelings during that
time. Ulrich was left alone here among this miserable rabble with nobody
to care for him, for our old maid-servant was seventy. I had buried my
money in a safe place and there was nothing in the house except a loaf
of bread and a few small coins, barely enough to last three days. The
child was always before my eyes; I saw him ragged, begging, starving.
But my anxiety tortured me most, after they had released me and I was
going back to my house from the castle. It was a walk of two hours, but
each one seemed as long as St. John’s day. Should I find Ulrich or not?
What had become of him? It was already dark, when I at last stood before
the house. Everything was as silent as the grave, and the door was
locked. Yet I must get in, so I rapped with my fingers, and then
pounded with my fist on the door and shutters, but all in vain. Finally
Spittellorle--[A nickname; literally: “Hospital Loura.”]--came out
of the red house next mine, and I heard all. The old woman had become
idiotic, and was in the stocks. Ulrich was at the point of death, and
Doctor Costa had taken him home. When I heard this, I felt the same as
you did just now; anger seized upon me, and I was as much ashamed as
if I were standing in the pillory. My child with the Jew! There was not
much time for reflection, and I set off at full speed for the doctor’s
house. A light was shining through the window. It was high above the
street, but as it stood open and I am tall, I could look in and see over
the whole room. At the right side, next the wall, was a bed, where amid
the white pillows lay my boy. The doctor sat by his side, holding the
child’s hand in his. Little Ruth nestled to him, asking: ‘Well, father?’
The man smiled. Do you know him, Pater? He is about thirty years old,
and has a pale, calm face. He smiled and said so gratefully, so-so
joyously, as if Ulrich were his own son: ‘Thank God, he will be spared
to us!’ The little girl ran to her dumb mother, who was sitting by the
stove, winding yarn, exclaiming: ‘Mother, he’ll get well again. I have
prayed for him every day.’ The Jew bent over my child and pressed his
lips upon the boy’s brow--and I, I--I no longer clenched my fist, and
was so overwhelmed with emotion, that I could not help weeping, as if I
were still a child myself, and since then, Pater Benedictus, since....”
 He paused; the monk rose, laid his hand on the smith’s shoulder, and
said:

“It has grown late, Adam. Show me to my couch. Another day will come
early to-morrow morning, and we should sleep over important matters. But
one thing is settled, and must remain so-under all circumstances: the
boy is no longer to be taught by the Jew. He must help you shoe the
horses to-morrow. You will be reasonable!”

The smith made no reply, but lighted the monk to the room where he and
his son usually slept. His own couch was covered with fresh linen for
the guest--Ulrich already lay in his bed, apparently asleep.

“We have no other room to give you,” said Adam, pointing to the boy; but
the monk was content with his sleeping companions, and after his host
had left him, gazed earnestly at Ulrich’s fresh, handsome face.

The smith’s story had moved him, and he did not go to rest at once, but
paced thoughtfully up and down the room, stepping lightly, that he might
not disturb the child’s slumber.

Adam had reason to be grateful to the man, and why should there not be
good Jews?

He thought of the patriarchs, Moses, Solomon, and the prophets, and had
not the Saviour himself, and John and Paul, whom he loved above all the
apostles, been the children of Jewish mothers, and grown up among Jews?
And Adam! the poor fellow had had more than his share of trouble, and he
who believes himself deserted by God, easily turns to the devil. He was
warned now, and the mischief to his son must be stopped once for all.
What might not the child hear from the Jew, in these times, when heresy
wandered about like a roaring lion, and sat by all the roads like a
siren. Only by a miracle had this secluded valley been spared the evil
teachings, but the peasants had already shown that they grudged the
nobles the power, the cities the rich gains, and the priesthood the
authority and earthly possessions, bestowed on them by God. He was
disposed to let mildness rule, and spare the Jew this time--but only on
one condition.

When he took off his cowl, he looked for a hook on which to hang it, and
while so doing, perceived on the shelf a row of boards. Taking one down,
he found a sketch of an artistic design for the enclosure of a fountain,
done by the smith’s hand, and directly opposite his bed a linden-wood
panel, on which a portrait was drawn with charcoal. This roused his
curiosity, and, throwing the light of the torch upon it, he started
back, for it was a rudely executed, but wonderfully life-like head of
Costa, the Jew. He remembered him perfectly, for he had met him more
than once.

The monk shook his head angrily, but lifted the picture from the shelf
and examined more closely the doctor’s delicately-cut nose, and the
noble arch of the brow. While so doing, he muttered unintelligible
words, and when at last, with little show of care, he restored the
modest work of art to its old place, Ulrich awoke, and, with a touch of
pride, exclaimed:

“I drew that myself, Father!”

“Indeed!” replied the monk. “I know of better models for a pious lad.
You must go to sleep now, and to-morrow get up early and help your
father. Do you understand?”

So saying, with no gentle hand he turned the boy’s head towards the
wall. The mildness awakened by Adam’s story had all vanished to the
winds.

Adam allowed his son to practise idolatry with the Jew, and make
pictures of him. This was too much. He threw himself angrily on his
couch, and began to consider what was to be done in this difficult
matter, but sleep soon brought his reflections to an end.

Ulrich rose very early, and when Benedict saw him again in the light of
the young day, and once more looked at the Jew’s portrait, drawn by
the handsome boy, a thought came to him as if inspired by the saints
themselves--the thought of persuading the smith to give his son to the
monastery.




CHAPTER IV.

This morning Pater Benedictus was a totally different person from the
man, who had sat over the wine the night before. Coldly and formally he
evaded the smith’s questions, until the latter had sent his son away.

Ulrich, without making any objection, had helped his father shoe the
sorrel horse, and in a few minutes, by means of a little stroking over
the eyes and nose, slight caresses, and soothing words, rendered the
refractory stallion as docile as a lamb. No horse had ever resisted the
lad, from the time he was a little child, the smith said, though for
what reason he did not know. These words pleased the monk, for he
was only too familiar with two fillies, that were perfect fiends for
refractoriness, and the fair-haired boy could show his gratitude for the
schooling he received, by making himself useful in the stable.

Ulrich must go to the monastery, so Benedictus curtly declared with the
utmost positiveness, after the smith had finished his work. At midsummer
a place would be vacant in the school, and this should be reserved
for the boy. A great favor! What a prospect--to be reared there with
aristocratic companions, and instructed in the art of painting. Whether
he should become a priest, or follow some worldly pursuit, could be
determined later. In a few years the boy could choose without restraint.

This plan would settle everything in the best possible way. The Jew need
not be injured, and the smith’s imperiled son would be saved. The monk
would hear no objections. Either the accusation against the doctor
should be laid before the chapter, or Ulrich must go to the school.

In four weeks, on St. John’s Day, so Benedictus declared, the smith and
his son might announce their names to the porter. Adam must have saved
many florins, and there would be time enough to get the lad shoes and
clothes, that he might hold his own in dress with the other scholars.

During this whole transaction the smith felt like a wild animal in the
hunter’s toils, and could say neither “yes” nor “no.” The monk did not
insist upon a promise, but, as he rode away, flattered himself that he
had snatched a soul from the claws of Satan, and gained a prize for
the monastery-school and his stable--a reflection that made him very
cheerful.

Adam retrained alone beside the fire. Often, when his heart was heavy,
he had seized his huge hammer and deadened his sorrow by hard work; but
to-day he let the tool lie, for the consciousness of weakness and lack
of will paralyzed his lusty vigor, and he stood with drooping head, as
if utterly crushed. The thoughts that moved him could not be exactly
expressed in words, but doubtless a vision of the desolate forge, where
he would stand alone by the fire without Ulrich, rose before his mind.
Once the idea of closing his house, taking the boy by the hand, and
wandering out into the world with him, flitted through his brain. But
then, what would become of the Jew, and how could he leave this place?
Where would his miserable wife, the accursed, lovely sinner, find him,
when she sought him again? Ulrich had run out of doors long ago. Had
he gone to study his lessons with the Jew? He started in terror at the
thought. Passing his hands over his eyes, like a dreamer roused from
sleep, he went into his chamber, threw off his apron, cleansed his face
and hands from the soot of the forge, put on his burgher dress, which he
only wore when he went to church or visited the doctor, and entered the
street.

The thunder-storm had cleared the air, and the sun shone pleasantly on
the shingled roofs of the miserable houses of the Richtberg. Its rays
were reflected from the little round window-panes, and flickered over
the tree-tops on the edge of the ravine.

The light-green hue of the fresh young foliage on the beeches glittered
as brightly against the dark pines, as if Spring had made them a token
of her mastery over the grave companions of Winter; yet even the pines
were not passed by, and where her finger had touched the tips of the
branches in benediction, appeared tender young shoots, fresh as the
grass by the brook, and green as chrysophase and emerald.

The stillness of morning reigned within the forest, yet it was full of
life, rich in singing, chirping and twittering. Light streamed from the
blue sky through the tree-tops, and the golden sunbeams shimmered
and danced over the branches, trunks and ground, as if they had been
prisoned in the woods and could never find their way out. The shadows
of the tall trunks lay in transparent bars on the underbrush, luxuriant
moss, and ferns, and the dew clung to the weeds and grass.

Nature had celebrated her festival of resurrection at Easter, and the
day after the morrow joyous Whitsuntide would begin. Fresh green life
was springing from the stump of every dead tree; even the rocks afforded
sustenance to a hundred roots, a mossy covering and network of thorny
tendrils clung closely to them. The wild vine twined boldly up many a
trunk, fruit was already forming on the bilberry bushes, though it
still glimmered with a faint pink hue amid the green of May. A thousand
blossoms, white, red, blue and yellow, swayed on their slender stalks,
opened their calixes to the bees, unfolded their stars to deck the
woodland carpet, or proudly stretched themselves up as straight as
candles. Grey fungi had shot up after the refreshing rain, and gathered
round the red-capped giants among the mushrooms. Under, over and around
all this luxuriant vegetation hopped, crawled, flew, fluttered, buzzed
and chirped millions of tiny, short-lived creatures. But who heeds them
on a sunny Spring morning in the forest, when the birds are singing,
twittering, trilling, pecking, cooing and calling so joyously? Murmuring
and plashing, the forest stream dashed down its steep bed over rocks and
amid moss-covered stones and smooth pebbles to the valley. The hurrying
water lived, and in it dwelt its gay inhabitants, fresh plants grew
along the banks from source to mouth, while over and around it a third
species of living creatures sunned themselves, fluttered, buzzed and
spun delicate silk threads.

In the midst of a circular clearing, surrounded by dense woods, smoked a
charcoal kiln. It was less easy to breathe here, than down in the forest
below. Where Nature herself rules, she knows how to guard beauty and
purity, but where man touches her, the former is impaired and the latter
sullied.

It seemed as if the morning sunlight strove to check the smoke from the
smouldering wood, in order to mount freely into the blue sky. Little
clouds floated over the damp, grassy earth, rotting tree-trunks, piles
of wood and heaps of twigs that surrounded the kiln. A moss-grown but
stood at the edge of the forest, and before it sat Ulrich, talking with
the coal-burner. People called this man “Hangemarx,” and in truth he
looked in his black rags, like one of those for whom it is a pity that
Nature should deck herself in her Spring garb. He had a broad, peasant
face, his mouth was awry, and his thick yellowish-red hair, which in
many places looked washed out or faded, hung so low over his narrow
forehead, that it wholly concealed it, and touched his bushy, snow-white
brows. The eyes under them needed to be taken on trust, they were so
well concealed, but when they peered through the narrow chink between
the rows of lashes, not even a mote escaped them. Ulrich was shaping an
arrow, and meantime asking the coal-burner numerous questions, and when
the latter prepared to answer, the boy laughed heartily, for before
Hangemarx could speak, he was obliged to straighten his crooked mouth by
three jerking motions, in which his nose and cheeks shared.

An important matter was being discussed between the two strangely
dissimilar companions.

After it grew dark, Ulrich was to come to the charcoal-burner again.
Marx knew where a fine buck couched, and was to drive it towards the
boy, that he might shoot it. The host of the Lamb down in the town
needed game, for his Gretel was to be married on Tuesday. True, Marx
could kill the animal himself, but Ulrich had learned to shoot too,
and if the place whence the game came should be noised abroad, the
charcoal-burner, without any scruples of conscience, could swear that he
did not shoot the buck, but found it with the arrow in its heart.

People called the charcoal-burner a poacher, and he owed his ill-name
of “Hangemarx” to the circumstance that once, though long ago, he had
adorned a gallows. Yet he was not a dishonest man, only he remembered
too faithfully the bold motto, which, when a boy, one peasant
wood-cutter or charcoal-burner whispered to another:

“Forest, stream and meadow are free.”

His dead father had joined the Bundschuh,--[A peasants’ league
which derived its name from the shoe, of peculiar shape, worn by its
members.]--adopted this motto, and clung fast to it and with it, to the
belief that every living thing in the forest belonged to him, as much
as to the city, the nobles, or the monastery. For this faith he had
undergone much suffering, and owed to it his crooked mouth and ill name,
for just as his beard was beginning to grow, the father of the reigning
count came upon him, just after he had killed a fawn in the “free”
 forest. The legs of the heavy animal were tied together with ropes, and
Marx was obliged to take the ends of the knot between his teeth like a
bridle, and drag the carcass to the castle. While so doing his cheeks
were torn open, and the evil deed neither pleased him nor specially
strengthened his love for the count. When, a short time after, the
rebellion broke out in Stuhlingen, and he heard that everywhere the
peasants were rising against the monks and nobles, he, too, followed
the black, red and yellow banner, first serving with Hans Muller of
Bulgenbach, then with Jacklein Rohrbach of Bockingen, and participating
with the multitude in the overthrow of the city and castle of
Neuenstein. At Weinsberg he saw Count Helfenstein rush upon the spears,
and when the noble countess was driven past him to Heilbronn in the
dung-cart, he tossed his cap in the air with the rest.

The peasant was to be lord now; the yoke of centuries was to be broken;
unjust imposts, taxes, tithes and villenage would be forever abolished,
while the fourth of the twelve articles he had heard read aloud more
than once, remained firmly fixed in his memory “Game, birds and fish
every one is free to catch.” Moreover, many a verse from the Gospel,
unfavorable to the rich, but promising the kingdom of heaven to the
poor, and that the last shall be first, had reached his ears. Doubtless
many of the leaders glowed with lofty enthusiasm for the liberation of
the poor people from unendurable serfdom and oppression; but when Marx,
and men like him, left wife and children and risked their lives, they
remembered only the past, and the injustice they had suffered, and were
full of a fierce yearning to trample the dainty, torturing demons under
their heavy peasant feet.

The charcoal-burner had never lighted such bright fires, never tasted
such delicious meat and spicy wine, as during that period of his life,
while vengeance had a still sweeter savor than all the rest. When the
castle fell, and its noble mistress begged for mercy, he enjoyed a
foretaste of the promised paradise. Satan has also his Eden of fiery
roses, but they do not last long, and when they wither, put forth sharp
thorns. The peasants felt them soon enough, for at Sindelfingen they
found their master in Captain Georg Truchsess of Waldberg.

Marx fell into his troopers’ hands and was hung on the gallows, but only
in mockery and as a warning to others; for before he and his companions
perished, the men took them down, cut their oath-fingers from their
hands, and drove them back into their old servitude. When he at last
returned home, his house had been taken from his family, whom he found
in extreme poverty. The father of Adam, the smith, to whom he had
formerly sold charcoal, redeemed the house, gave him work, and once,
when a band of horsemen came to the city searching for rebellious
peasants, the old man did not forbid him to hide three whole days in his
barn.

Since that time everything had been quiet in Swabia, and neither in
forest, stream nor meadow had any freedom existed.

Marx had only himself to provide for; his wife was dead, and his sons
were raftsmen, who took pine logs to Mayence and Cologne, sometimes even
as far as Holland. He owed gratitude to no one but Adam, and showed in
his way that he was conscious of it, for he taught Ulrich all sorts of
things which were of no advantage to a boy, except to give him pleasure,
though even in so doing he did not forget his own profit. Ulrich was now
fifteen, and could manage a cross-bow and hit the mark like a skilful
hunter, and as the lad did not lack a love for the chase, Marx afforded
him the pleasure. All he had heard about the equal rights of men he
engrafted into the boy’s soul, and when to-day, for the hundredth time,
Ulrich expressed a doubt whether it was not stealing to kill game that
belonged to the count, the charcoal-burner straightened his mouth, and
said:

“Forest, stream and meadow are free. Surely you know that.”

The boy gazed thoughtfully at the ground for a time, and then asked:

“The fields too?”

“The fields?” repeated Marx, in surprise. “The fields? The fields are a
different matter.” He glanced as he spoke, at the field of oats he had
sown in the autumn, and which now bore blades a finger long. “The fields
are man’s work and belong to him who tills them, but the forest, stream
and meadow were made by God. Do you understand? What God created for
Adam and Eve is everybody’s property.”

As the sun rose higher, and the cuckoo began to raise its voice,
Ulrich’s name was shouted loudly several times in rapid succession
through the forest. The arrow he had been shaping flew into a corner,
and with a hasty “When it grows dusk, Marxle!” Ulrich dashed into the
woods, and soon joined his playmate Ruth.

The pair strolled slowly through the forest by the side of the stream,
enjoying the glorious morning, and gathering flowers to carry a bouquet
to the little girl’s mother. Ruth culled the blossoms daintily with the
tips of her fingers; Ulrich wanted to help, and tore the slender stalks
in tufts from the roots by the handful. Meantime their tongues were
not idle. Ulrich boastfully told her that Pater Benedictus had seen his
picture of her father, recognized it instantly, and muttered something
over it. His mother’s blood was strong in him; his imaginary world was a
very different one from that of the narrow-minded boys of the Richtberg.

His father had told him much, and the doctor still more, about the wide,
wide world-kings, artists and great heroes. From Hangemarx he learned,
that he possessed the same rights and dignity as all other men, and
Ruth’s wonderful power of imagination peopled his fancy with the
strangest shapes and figures. She made royal crowns of wreaths,
transformed the little hut, the lad had built of boughs, behind the
doctor’s house, into a glittering imperial palace, converted round
pebbles into ducats and golden zechins--bread and apples into princely
banquets; and when she had placed two stools before the wooden bench on
which she sat with Ulrich her fancy instantly transformed them into a
silver coronation coach with milk-white steeds. When she was a fairy,
Ulrich was obliged to be a magician; if she was the queen, he was king.

When, to give vent to his animal spirits, Ulrich played with the
Richtberg boys, he always led them, but allowed himself to be guided by
little Ruth. He knew that the doctor was a despised Jew, that she was
a Jewish child; but his father honored the Hebrew, and the foreign
atmosphere, the aristocratic, secluded repose that pervaded the solitary
scholar’s house, exerted a strange influence over him.

When he entered it, a thrill ran through his frame; it seemed as if he
were penetrating into some forbidden sanctuary. He was the only one of
all his playfellows, who was permitted to cross this threshold, and he
felt it as a distinction, for, in spite of his youth, he realized that
the quiet doctor, who knew everything that existed in heaven and on
earth, and yet was as mild and gentle as a child, stood far, far
above the miserable drudges, who struggled with sinewy hands for mere
existence on the Richtberg. He expected everything from him, and Ruth
also seemed a very unusual creature, a delicate work of art, with whom
he, and he only, was allowed to play.

It might have happened, that when irritated he would upbraid her with
being a wretched Jewess, but it would scarcely have surprised him, if
she had suddenly stood before his eyes as a princess or a phoenix.

When the Richtberg lay close beneath them, Ruth sat down on a stone,
placing her flowers in her lap. Ulrich threw his in too, and, as the
bouquet grew, she held it towards him, and he thought it very pretty;
but she said, sighing:

“I wish roses grew in the forest; not common hedge-roses, but like those
in Portugal--full, red, and with the real perfume. There is nothing that
smells sweeter.”

So it always was with the pair. Ruth far outstripped Ulrich in her
desires and wants, thus luring him to follow her.

“A rose!” repeated Ulrich. “How astonished you look!”

Her wish reminded him of the magic word she had mentioned the day
before, and they talked about it all the way home, Ulrich saying that
he had waked three times in the night on account of it. Ruth eagerly
interrupted him, exclaiming:

“I thought of it again too, and if any one would tell the what it was,
I should know what to wish now. I would not have a single human being in
the world except you and me, and my father and mother.”

“And my little mother!” added Ulrich, earnestly.

“And your father, too!”

“Why, of course, he, too!” said the boy, as if to make hasty atonement
for his neglect.




CHAPTER V.

The sun was shining brightly on the little windows of the Israelite’s
sitting-room, which were half open to admit the Spring air, though
lightly shaded with green curtains, for Costa liked a subdued light, and
was always careful to protect his apartment from the eyes of passers-by.

There was nothing remarkable to be seen, for the walls were whitewashed,
and their only ornament was a garland of lavender leaves, whose perfume
Ruth’s mother liked to inhale. The whole furniture consisted of a chest,
several stools, a bench covered with cushions, a table, and two plain
wooden arm-chairs.

One of the latter had long been the scene of Adam’s happiest hours, for
he used to sit in it when he played chess with Costa.

He had sometimes looked on at the noble game while in Nuremberg; but
the doctor understood it thoroughly, and had initiated him into all its
rules.

For the first two years Costa had remained far in advance of his pupil,
then he was compelled to defend himself in good earnest, and now it not
unfrequently happened that the smith vanquished the scholar. True, the
latter was much quicker than the former, who if the situation became
critical, pondered over it an unconscionably long time.

Two hands more unlike had rarely met over a chess-board; one suggested
a strong, dark plough-ox, the other a light, slender-limbed palfrey. The
Israelite’s figure looked small in contrast with the smith’s gigantic
frame. How coarse-grained, how heavy with thought the German’s big, fair
head appeared, how delicately moulded and intellectual the Portuguese
Jew’s.

To-day the two men had again sat down to the game, but instead of
playing, had been talking very, very earnestly. In the course of the
conversation the doctor had left his place and was pacing restlessly to
and fro. Adam retained his seat.

His friend’s arguments had convinced him. Ulrich was to be sent to
the monastery-school. Costa had also been informed of the danger that
threatened his own person, and was deeply agitated. The peril was great,
very great, yet it was hard, cruelly hard, to quit this peaceful nook.
The smith understood what was passing in his mind, and said:

“It is hard for you to go. What binds you here to the Richtberg?”

“Peace, peace!” cried the other. “And then,” he added more calmly, “I
have gained land here.”

“You?”

“The large and small graves behind the executioner’s house, they are my
estates.”

“It is hard, hard to leave them,” said the smith, with drooping head.
“All this comes upon you on account of the kindness you have shown my
boy; you have had a poor reward from us.”

“Reward?” asked the other, a subtle smile hovering around his lips. “I
expect none, neither from you nor fate. I belong to a poor sect, that
does not consider whether its deeds will be repaid or not. We love
goodness, set a high value on it, and practise it, so far as our power
extends, because it is so beautiful. What have men called good? Only
that which keeps the soul calm. And what is evil? That which fills it
with disquiet. I tell you, that the hearts of those who pursue virtue,
though they are driven from their homes, hunted and tortured like
noxious beasts, are more tranquil than those of their powerful
persecutors, who practise evil. He who seeks any other reward for
virtue, than virtue itself, will not lack disappointment. It is neither
you nor Ulrich, who drives me hence, but the mysterious ancient curse,
that pursues my people when they seek to rest; it is, it is... Another
time, to-morrow. This is enough for to-day.”

When the doctor was alone, he pressed his hand to his brow and groaned
aloud. His whole life passed before his mind, and he found in it,
besides terrible suffering, great and noble joys, and not an hour in
which his desire for virtue was weakened. He had spent happy years here
in the peace of his simple home, and now must again set forth and wander
on and on, with nothing before his eyes save an uncertain goal, at the
end of a long, toilsome road. What had hitherto been his happiness,
increased his misery in this hour. It was hard, unspeakably hard, to
drag his wife and child through want and sorrow, and could Elizabeth,
his wife, bear it again?

He found her in the tiny garden behind the horse, kneeling before
a flower-bed to weed it. As he greeted her pleasantly, she rose and
beckoned to him.

“Let us sit down,” he said, leading her to the bench before the hedge,
that separated the garden from the forest. There he meant to tell her,
that they must again shake the dust from their feet.

She had lost the power of speech on the rack in Portugal, and could only
falter a few unintelligible words, when greatly excited, but her hearing
had remained, and her husband understood how to read the expression of
her eyes. A great sorrow had drawn a deep line in the high, pure brow,
and this also was eloquent; for when she felt happy and at peace it was
scarcely perceptible, but if an anxious or sorrowful mood existed,
the furrow contracted and deepened. To-day it seemed to have entirely
disappeared. Her fair hair was drawn plainly and smoothly, over her
temples, and the slender, slightly stooping figure, resembled a young
tree, which the storm has bowed and deprived of strength and will to
raise itself.

“Beautiful!” she exclaimed in a smothered tone, with much effort, but
her bright glance clearly expressed the joy that filled her soul, as
she pointed to the green foliage around her and the blue sky over their
heads.

“Delicious-delicious!” he answered, cordially. “The June day is
reflected in your dear face. You have learned to be contented here?”

Elizabeth nodded eagerly, pressing both hands upon her heart, while
her eloquent glance told him how well, how grateful and happy, she felt
here; and when in reply to his timid question, whether it would be hard
for her to leave this place and seek another, a safer home, she gazed at
first in surprise, then anxiously into his face, and then, with an eager
gesture of refusal, gasped “Not go--not go!” He answered, soothingly:

“No, no; we are still safe here to-day!”

Elizabeth knew her husband, and had keen eyes; a presentiment of
approaching danger seized upon her. Her features assumed an expression
of terrified expectation and deep grief. The furrow in her brow
deepened, and questioning glances and gestures united with the
“What?--what?” trembling on her lips.

“Do not fear!” he replied, tenderly. “We must not spoil the present,
because the future might bring something that is not agreeable to us.”

As he uttered the words, she pressed closely to him, clutching his
arm with both hands, but he felt the rapid throbbing of her heart, and
perceived by the violent agitation expressed in every feature, what
deep, unconquerable horror was inspired by the thought of being
compelled to go out into the world again, hunted from country to
country, from town to town. All that she had suffered for his sake,
came back to his memory, and he clasped her trembling hands in his with
passionate fervor. It seemed as if it would be very, very easy, to die
with her, but wholly impossible to thrust her forth again into a foreign
land and to an uncertain fate; so, kissing her on her eyes, which were
dilated with horrible fear, he exclaimed, as if no peril, but merely a
foolish wish had suggested the desire to roam:

“Yes, child, it is best here. Let us be content with what we have. We
will stay!--yes, we will stay!” Elizabeth drew a long breath, as if
relieved from an incubus, her brow became smooth, and it seemed as if
the dumb mouth joined the large upraised eyes in uttering an “Amen,”
 that came from the inmost depths of the heart.

Costa’s soul was saddened and sorely troubled, when he returned to the
house and his writing-table. The old maid-servant, who had accompanied
him from Portugal, entered at the same time, and watched his
preparations, shaking her head. She was a small, crippled Jewess, a
grey-haired woman, with youthful, bright, dark eyes, and restless hands,
that fluttered about her face with rapid, convulsive gestures, while she
talked.

She had grown old in Portugal, and contracted rheumatism in the unusual
cold of the North, so even in Spring she wrapped her head in all the gay
kerchiefs she owned. She kept the house scrupulously neat, understood
how to prepare tempting dishes from very simple materials, and bought
everything she needed for the kitchen. This was no trifling matter
for her, since, though she had lived more than nine years in the black
Forest, she had learned few German words. Even these the neighbors
mistook for Portuguese, though they thought the language bore some
distant resemblance to German. Her gestures they understood perfectly.

She had voluntarily followed the doctor’s father, yet she could not
forgive the dead man, for having brought her out of the warm South into
this horrible country. Having been her present master’s nurse, she took
many liberties with him, insisting upon knowing everything that went on
in the household, of which she felt herself the oldest, and therefore
the most distinguished member; and it was strange how quickly she could
hear when she chose, spite of her muffled ears!

To-day she had been listening again, and as her master was preparing
to take his seat at the table and sharpen his goose-quill, she glanced
around to see that they were entirely alone; then approached, saying in
Portuguese:

“Don’t begin that, Lopez. You must listen to me first.”

“Must I?” he asked, kindly.

“If you don’t choose to do it, I can go!” she answered, angrily. “To be
sure, sitting still is more comfortable than running.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Do you suppose yonder books are the walls of Zion? Do you feel inclined
to make the monks’ acquaintance once more?”

“Fie, fie, Rahel, listening again? Go into the kitchen!”

“Directly! Directly! But I will speak first. You pretend, that you are
only staying here to please your wife, but it’s no such thing. It’s
yonder writing that keeps you. I know life, but you and your wife are
just like two children. Evil is forgotten in the twinkling of an eye,
and blessing is to come straight from Heaven, like quails and manna.
What sort of a creature have your books made you, since you came with
the doctor’s hat from Coimbra? Then everybody said: ‘Lopez, Senor Lopez.
Heavenly Father, what a shining light he’ll be!’ And now! The Lord have
mercy on us! You work, work, and what does it bring you? Not an egg; not
a rush! Go to your uncle in the Netherlands. He’ll forget the curse, if
you submit! How many of the zechins, your father saved, are still left?”

Here the doctor interrupted the old woman’s torrent of speech with
a stern “enough!” but she would not allow herself to be checked, and
continued with increasing volubility.

“Enough, you say? I fret over perversity enough in silence. May my
tongue wither, if I remain mute to-day. Good God! child, are you out of
your senses? Everything has been crammed into your poor head, but to
be sure it isn’t written in the books, that when people find out what
happened in Porto, and that you married a baptized child, a Gentile, a
Christian girl....”

At these words the doctor rose, laid his hands on the servant’s
shoulder, and said with grave, quiet earnestness.

“Whoever speaks of that, may betray it; may betray it. Do you understand
me, Rahel? I know your good intentions, and therefore tell you: my
wife is content here, and danger is still far away. We shall stay. And
besides: since Elizabeth became mine, the Jews avoid me as an accursed,
the Christians as a condemned man. The former close the doors,
the latter would fain open them; the gates of a prison, I mean. No
Portuguese will come here, but in the Netherlands there is more than one
monk and one Jew from Porto, and if any of them recognize me and find
Elizabeth with me, it will involve no less trifle than her life and
mine. I shall stay here; you now know why, and can go to your kitchen.”

Old Rahel reluctantly obeyed, yet the doctor did not resume his seat at
the writing-table, but for a long time paced up and down among his books
more rapidly than usual.




CHAPTER VI.

St. John’s day was close at hand. Ulrich was to go to the monastery the
following morning. Hitherto Father Benedict had been satisfied, and no
one molested the doctor. Yet the tranquillity, which formerly exerted
so beneficial an effect, had departed, and the measures of precaution he
now felt compelled to adopt, like everything else that brought him into
connection with the world, interrupted the progress of his work.

The smith was obliged to provide Ulrich with clothing, and for this
purpose went with the lad and a well-filled purse, not to his native
place, but to the nearest large city.

There many a handsome suit of garments hung in the draper’s windows, and
the barefooted boy blushed crimson with delight, when he stood before
this splendid show. As he was left free to choose, he instantly selected
the clothes a nobleman had ordered for his son, and which, from head
to foot, were blue on one side and yellow on the other. But Adam pushed
them angrily aside. Ulrich’s pleasure in the gay stuff reminded him of
his wife’s outfit, the pink and green gowns.

So he bought two dark suits, which fitted the lad’s erect figure as
if moulded upon him, and when the latter stood before him in the inn,
neatly dressed, with shoes on his feet, and a student’s cap on his head,
Adam could not help gazing at him almost idolatrously.

The tavern-keeper whispered to the smith, that it was long since he had
seen so handsome a young fellow, and the hostess, after bringing the
beer, stroked the boy’s curls with her wet hand.

On reaching home, Adam permitted his son to go to the doctor’s in his
new clothes; Ruth screamed with joy when she saw him, walked round and
round him, and curiously felt the woollen stuff of the doublet and its
blue slashes, ever and anon clapping her hands in delight.

Her parents had expected that the parting would excite her most
painfully, but she smiled joyously into her playmate’s face, when he
bade her farewell, for she took the matter in her usual way, not as it
really was, but as she imagined it to be. Instead of the awkward Ulrich
of the present, the fairy-prince he was now to become stood before her;
he was to return without fail at Christmas, and then how delightful it
would be to play with him again. Of late they had been together even
more than usual, continually seeking for the word, and planning a
thousand delightful things he was to conjure up for her, and she for him
and others.

It was the Sabbath, and on this day old Rahel always dressed the child
in a little yellow silk frock, while on Sunday her mother did the same.
The gown particularly pleased Ulrich’s eye, and when she wore it, he
always became more yielding and obeyed her every wish. So Ruth rejoiced
that it chanced to be the Sabbath, and while she passed her hand over
his doublet, he stroked her silk dress.

They had not much to say to each other, for their tongues always
faltered in the presence of others. The doctor gave Ulrich many an
admonitory word, his wife kissed him, and as a parting remembrance hung
a small gold ring, with a glittering stone, about his neck, and old
Rahel gave him a kerchief full of freshly-baked cakes to eat on his way.

At noon on St. John’s day, Ulrich and his father stood before the gate
of the monastery. Servants and mettled steeds were waiting there, and
the porter, pointing to them, said: “Count Frohlinger is within.”

Adam turned pale, pressed his son so convulsively to his breast that he
groaned with pain, sent a laybrother to call Father Benedict, confided
his child to him, and walked towards home with drooping head.

Hitherto Ulrich had not known whether to enjoy or dread the thought
of going to the monastery-school. The preparations had been pleasant
enough, and the prospect of sharing the same bench with the sons of
noblemen and aristocratic citizens, flattered his unity; but when he
saw his father depart, his heart melted and his eyes grew wet. The monk;
noticing this, drew him towards him, patted his shoulder, and said:
“Keep up your courage! You will see that it is far pleasanter with us,
than down in the Richtberg.”

This gave Ulrich food for thought, and he did not glance around as the
Father led him up the steep stairs to the landing-place, and past the
refectory into the court-yard.

Monks were pacing silently up and down the corridors that surrounded it,
and one after another raised his shaven head higher over his white cowl,
to cast a look at the new pupil.

Behind the court-yard stood the stately, gable-roofed building
containing the guest-rooms, and between it and the church lay the
school-garden, a meadow planted with fruit trees, separated from the
highway by a wall.

Benedictus opened the wooden gate, and pushed Ulrich into the
playground.

The noise there had been loud enough, but at his entrance the game
stopped, and his future companions nudged each other, scanning him with
scrutinizing glances.

The monk beckoned to several of the pupils, and made them acquainted
with the smith’s son, then stroking Ulrich’s curls again, left him alone
with the others.

On St. John’s day the boys were given their liberty and allowed to play
to their hearts’ content.

They took no special notice of Ulrich, and after having stared
sufficiently and exchanged a few words with him, continued their
interrupted game of trying to throw stones over the church roof.

Meantime Ulrich looked at his comrades.

There were large and small, fair and dark lads among them, but not one
with whom he could not have coped. To this point his scrutiny was first
directed.

At last he turned his attention to the game. Many of the stones, that
had been thrown, struck the slates on the roof; not one had passed over
the church. The longer the unsuccessful efforts lasted, the more
evident became the superior smile on Ulrich’s lips, the faster his heart
throbbed. His eyes searched the grass, and when he had discovered a
flat, sharp-edged stone, he hurriedly stooped, pressed silently into the
ranks of the players, and bending the upper part of his body far back,
summoned all his strength, and hurled the stone in a beautiful curve
high into the air.

Forty sparkling eyes followed it, and a loud shout of joy rang out as it
vanished behind the church roof. One alone, a tall, thin, black-haired
lad, remained silent, and while the others were begging Ulrich to throw
again, searched for a stone, exerted all his power to equal the 11
“greenhorn,” and almost succeeded. Ulrich now sent a second stone
after the first, and, again the cast was successful. Dark-browed Xaver
instantly seized a new missile, and the contest that now followed so
engrossed the attention of all, that they saw and heard nothing until a
deep voice, in a firm, though not unkind tone, called: “Stop, boys! No
games must be played with the church.”

At these words the younger boys hastily dropped the stones they had
gathered, for the man who had shouted, was no less a personage than the
Lord Abbot himself.

Soon the lads approached to kiss the ecclesiastic’s hand or sleeve, and
the stately priest, who understood how to guide those subject to him
by a glance of his dark eyes, graciously and kindly accepted the
salutation.

“Grave in office, and gay in sport” was his device. Count von
Frohlinger, who had entered the garden with him, looked like one whose
motto runs: “Never grave and always gay.”

The nobleman had not grown younger since Ulrich’s mother fled into the
world, but his eyes still sparkled joyously and the brick-red hue that
tinged his handsome face between his thick white moustache and his eyes,
announced that he was no less friendly to wine than to fair women. How
well his satin clothes and velvet cloak became him, how beautifully
the white puffs were relieved against the deep blue of his dress!
How proudly the white and yellow plumes arched over his cap, and how
delicate were the laces on his collar and cuffs! His son, the very image
of the handsome father, stood beside him, and the count had laid his
hand familiarly on his shoulder, as if he were not his child, but a
friend and comrade.

“A devil of a fellow!” whispered the count to the abbot. “Did you see
the fair-haired lad’s throw? From what house does the young noble come?”

The prelate shrugged his shoulders, and answered smiling:

“From the smithy at Richtberg.”

“Does he belong to Adam?” laughed the other. “Zounds! I had a bitter
hour in the confessional on his mother’s account. He has inherited the
beautiful Florette’s hair and eyes; otherwise he looks like his father.
With your permission, my Lord Abbot, I’ll call the boy.”

“Afterwards, afterwards,” replied the superior of the monastery in a
tone of friendly denial, which permitted no contradiction. “First tell
the boys, what we have decided?”

Count Frohlinger bowed respectfully, then drew his son closer to his
side, and waited for the boys, to whom the abbot beckoned.

As soon as they had gathered in a group before him, the nobleman
exclaimed:

“You have just bid this good-for-nothing farewell. What should you say,
if I left him among you till Christmas? The Lord Abbot will keep him,
and you, you....”

But he had no time to finish the sentence. The pupils rushed upon him,
shouting:

“Stay here, Philipp! Count Lips must stay!”

One little flaxen-headed fellow nestled closely to his regained
protector, another kissed the count’s hand, and two larger boys seized
Philipp by the arm and tried to drag him away from his father, back into
their circle.

The abbot looked on at the tumult kindly, and bright tear-drops ran down
into the old count’s beard, for his heart was easily touched. When he
recovered his composure, he exclaimed:

“Lips shall stay, you rogues; he shall stay! And the Lord Abbot has
given you permission, to come with me to-day to my hunting-box and light
a St. John’s fire. There shall be no lack of cakes and wine.”

“Hurrah! hurrah! Long live the count!” shouted the pupils, and all
who had caps tossed them into the air. Ulrich was carried away by the
enthusiasm of the others; and all the evil words his father had so
lavishly heaped on the handsome, merry gentleman--all Hangemarx’s abuse
of knights and nobles were forgotten.

The abbot and his companion withdrew, but as soon as the boys knew that
they were unobserved, Count Lips cried:

“You fellow yonder, you greenhorn, threw the stone over the roof. I saw
it. Come here. Over the roof? That should be my right. Whoever breaks
the first window in the steeple, shall be victor.”

The smith’s son felt embarrassed, for he shrank from the mischief and
feared his father and the abbot. But when the young count held out his
closed hands, saying: “If you choose the red stone, you shall throw
first,” he pointed to his companion’s right hand, and, as it concealed
the red pebble, began the contest. He threw the stone, and struck the
window. Amid loud shouts of exultation from the boys, more than one
round pane of glass, loosened from the leaden casing, rattled in broken
fragments on the church roof, and from thence fell silently on the
grass. Count Lips laughed aloud in his delight, and was preparing to
follow Ulrich’s example, but the wooden gate was pushed violently open,
and Brother Hieronymus, the most severe of all the monks, appeared in
the playground. The zealous priest’s cheeks glowed with anger, terrible
were the threats he uttered, and declaring that the festival of St.
John should not be celebrated, unless the shameless wretch, who had
blasphemously shattered the steeple window, confessed his fault, he
scanned the pupils with rolling eyes.

Young Count Lips stepped boldly forward, saying beseechingly:

“I did it, Father--unintentionally! Forgive me!”

“You?” asked the monk, his voice growing lower and more gentle, as
he continued: “Folly and wantonness without end! When will you learn
discretion, Count Philipp? But as you did it unintentionally, I will let
it pass for to-day.”

With these words, the monk left the court-yard; and as soon as the gate
had closed behind him, Ulrich approached his generous companion, and
said in a tone that only he could hear, yet grateful to the inmost
depths of his heart:

“I will repay you some day.”

“Nonsense!” laughed the young count, throwing his arm over the shoulder
of the artisan’s son. “If the glass wouldn’t rattle, I would throw now;
but there’s another day coming to-morrow.”




CHAPTER VII.

Autumn had come. The yellow leaves were fluttering about the school
play-ground, the starlings were gathering in flocks on the church roof
to take their departure, and Ulrich would fain have gone with them, no
matter where. He could not feel at home in the monastery and among
his companions. Always first in Richtberg, he was rarely so here, most
seldom of all in school, for his father had forbidden the doctor to
teach him Latin, so in that study he was last of all.

Often, when every one was asleep, the poor lad sat studying by the
ever-burning lamp in the lobby, but in vain. He could not come up with
the others, and the unpleasant feeling of remaining behind, in spite of
the most honest effort, spoiled his life and made him irritable.

His comrades did not spare him, and when they called him “horse-boy,”
 because he was often obliged to help Pater Benedictus in bringing
refractory horses to reason, he flew into a rage and used his superior
strength.

He stood on the worst terms of all with black-haired Xaver, to whom he
owed the nickname.

This boy’s father was the chief magistrate of the little city, and was
allowed to take his son home with him at Michaelmas.

When the black-haired lad returned, he had many things to tell, gathered
from half-understood rumor, about Ulrich’s parents. Words were now
uttered, that brought the blood to Ulrich’s cheeks, yet he intentionally
pretended not to hear them, because he dared not contradict tales that
might be true. He well knew who had brought all these stories to the
others, and answered Xaver’s malicious spite with open enmity.

Count Lips did not trouble himself about any of these things, but
remained Ulrich’s most intimate friend, and was fond of going with him
to see the horses. His vivacious intellect joyously sympathized with the
smith’s son, when he told him about Ruth’s imaginary visions, and often
in the play-ground he went apart with Ulrich from their companions; but
this very circumstance was a thing that many, who had formerly been
on more intimate terms with the aristocratic boy, were not disposed to
forgive the new-comer.

Xaver had never been friendly to the count’s son, and succeeded in
irritating many against their former favorite, because he fancied
himself better than they, and still more against Ulrich, who was half a
servant, yet presumed to play the master and offer them violence.

The monks employed in the school soon noticed the ill terms, on which
the new pupil stood with his companions, and did not lack reasons for
shaking their heads over him.

Benedictus had not been able to conceal, who had been Ulrich’s teacher
in Richtberg; and the seeds the Jew had planted in the boy, seemed to be
bearing strange and vexatious fruit.

Father Hieronymus, who instructed the pupils in religion, fairly
raged, when he spoke of the destructive doctrines, that haunted the new
scholar’s head.

When, soon after Ulrich’s reception into the school, he had spoken of
Christ’s work of redemption, and asked the boy: “From what is the world
to be delivered by the Saviour’s suffering?” the answer was: “From the
arrogance of the rich and great.” Hieronymus had spoken of the holy
sacraments, and put the question: “By what means can the Christian
surely obtain mercy, unless he bolts the door against it--that is,
commits a mortal sin?” and Ulrich’s answer was: “By doing unto others,
what you would have others do unto you.”

Such strange words might be heard by dozens from the boy’s lips. Some
were repeated from Hangemarx’s sayings, others from the doctor’s; and
when asked where he obtained them, he quoted only the latter, for the
monks were not to be allowed to know anything about his intercourse with
the poacher.

Sharp reproofs and severe penances were now bestowed, for many a word
that he had thought beautiful and pleasing in the sight of God; and the
poor, tortured young soul often knew no help in its need.

He could not turn to the dear God and the Saviour, whom he was said to
have blasphemed, for he feared them; but when he could no longer bear
his grief, discouragement, and yearning, he prayed to the Madonna for
help.

The image of the unhappy woman, about whom he had heard nothing but ill
words, who had deserted him, and whose faithlessness gave the other boys
a right to jeer at him, floated before his eyes, with that of the pure,
holy Virgin in the church, brought by Father Lukas from Italy.

In spite of all the complaints about him, which were carried to the
abbot, the latter thought him a misguided, but good and promising boy,
an opinion strengthened by the music-teacher and the artist Lukas, whose
best pupil Ulrich was; but they also were enraged against the Jew, who
had lured this nobly-gifted child along the road of destruction; and
often urged the abbot, who was anything but a zealot, to subject him to
an examination by torture.

In November, the chief magistrate was summoned, and informed of the
heresies with which the Hebrew had imperiled the soul of a Christian
child.

The wise abbot wished to avoid anything, that would cause excitement,
during this time of rebellion against the power of the Church, but the
magistrate claimed the right to commence proceedings against the
doctor. Of course, he said, sufficient proof must be brought against
the accused. Father Hieronymus might note down the blasphemous tenets he
heard from the boy’s lips before witnesses, and at the Advent season the
smith and his son would be examined.

The abbot, who liked to linger over his books, was glad to know that
the matter was in the hands of the civil authorities, and enjoined
Hieronymus to pay strict attention.

On the third Sunday in Advent, the magistrate again came to the
monastery. His horses had worked their way with the sleigh through the
deep snow in the ravine with much difficulty, and, half-frozen, he went
directly to the refectory and there asked for his son.

The latter was lying with a bandaged eye in the cold dormitory, and when
his father sought him, he heard that Ulrich had wounded him.

It would not have needed Xaver’s bitter complaints, to rouse his father
to furious rage against the boy who had committed this violence, and
he was by no means satisfied, when he learned that the culprit had been
excluded for three weeks from the others’ sports, and placed on a very
frugal diet. He went furiously to the abbot.

The day before (Saturday), Ulrich had gone at noon, without the young
count, who was in confinement for some offence, to the snow-covered
play-ground, where he was attacked by Xaver and a dozen of his comrades,
pushed into a snow-bank, and almost suffocated. The conspirators had
stuffed icicles and snow under his clothes next his skin, taken off
his shoes and filled them with snow, and meantime Xaver jumped upon his
back, pressing his face into the snow till Ulrich lost his breath, and
believed his last hour had come.

Exerting the last remnant of his strength, he had succeeded in throwing
off and seizing his tormentor. While the others fled, he wreaked his
rage on the magistrate’s son to his heart’s content, first with his
fists, and then with the heavy shoe that lay beside him. Meantime,
snowballs had rained upon his body and head from all directions,
increasing his fury; and as soon as Xaver no longer struggled he started
up, exclaiming with glowing cheeks and upraised fists:

“Wait, wait, you wicked fellows! The doctor in Richtberg knows a word,
by which he shall turn you all into toads and rats, you miserable
rascals!”

Xaver had remembered this speech, which he repeated to his father,
cleverly enlarged with many a false word. The abbot listened to the
magistrate’s complaint very quietly.

The angry father was no sufficient witness for him, yet the matter
seemed important enough to send for and question Ulrich, though the
meal-time had already begun. The Jew had really spoken to his daughter
about the magic word, and the pupil of the monastery had threatened his
companions with it. So the investigation might begin.

Ulrich was led back to the prison-chamber, where some thin soup and
bread awaited him, but he touched neither. Food and drink disgusted him,
and he could neither work nor sit still.

The little bell, which, summoned all the occupants of the monastery, was
heard at an unusual hour, and about vespers the sound of sleigh-bells
attracted him to the window. The abbot and Father Hieronymus were
talking in undertones to the magistrate, who was just preparing to enter
his sleigh.

They were speaking of him and the doctor, and the pupils had just been
summoned to bear witness against him. No one had told him so, but he
knew it, and was seized with such anxiety about the doctor, that drops
of perspiration stood on his brow.

He was clearly aware that he had mingled his teacher’s words with the
poacher’s blasphemous sayings, and also that he had put the latter into
the mouth of Ruth’s father.

He was a traitor, a liar, a miserable scoundrel!

He wished to go to the abbot and confess all, yet dared not, and so the
hours stole away until the time for the evening mass.

While in church he strove to pray, not only for himself but for the
doctor, but in vain, he could think of nothing but the trial, and while
kneeling with his hands over his eyes, saw the Jew in fetters before
him, and he himself at the trial in the town-hall.

At last the mass ended.

Ulrich rose. Just before him hung the large crucifix, and the Saviour on
the cross, who with his head bowed on one side, usually gazed so gently
and mournfully upon the ground, to-day seemed to look at him with
mingled reproach and accusation.

In the dormitory, his companions avoided him as if he had the plague,
but he scarcely noticed it.

The moonlight and the reflection from the snow shone brightly through
the little window, but Ulrich longed for darkness, and buried his face
in the pillows. The clock in the steeple struck ten.

He raised himself and listened to the deep breathing of the sleepers on
his right and left, and the gnawing of a mouse under the bed.

His heart throbbed faster and more anxiously, but suddenly seemed to
stand still, for a low voice had called his name.

“Ulrich!” it whispered again, and the young count, who lay beside him,
rose in bed and bent towards him. Ulrich had told him about the word,
and often indulged in wishes with him, as he had formerly done with
Ruth. Philipp now whispered:

“They are going to attack the doctor. The abbot and magistrate
questioned us, as if it were a matter of life and death. I kept what
I know about the word to myself, for I’m sorry for the Jew, but Xaver,
spiteful fellow, made it appear as if you really possessed the spell,
and just now he came to me and said his father would seize the Jew early
to-morrow morning, and then he would be tortured. Whether they will hang
or burn him is the question. His life is forfeited, his father said--and
the black-visaged rascal rejoiced over it.”

“Sileutium, turbatores!” cried the sleepy voice of the monk in charge,
and the boys hastily drew back into the feathers and were silent.

The young count soon fell asleep again, but Ulrich buried his head still
deeper among the pillows; it seemed as if he saw the mild, thoughtful
face of the man, from whom he had received so much affection, gazing
reproachfully at him; then the dumb wife appeared before his mind, and
he fancied her soft hand was lovingly stroking his cheeks as usual.
Ruth also appeared, not in the yellow silk dress, but clad in rags of a
beggar, and she wept, hiding her face in her mother’s lap.

He groaned aloud. The clock struck eleven. He rose and listened. Nothing
stirred, and slipping on his clothes, he took his shoes in his hand
and tried to open the window at the head of his bed. It had stood open
during the day, but the frost fastened it firmly to the frame. Ulrich
braced his foot against the wall and pulled with all his strength, but
it resisted one jerk after another; at last it suddenly yielded and flew
open, making a slight creaking and rattling, but the monk on guard did
not wake, only murmured softly in his sleep.

The boy stood motionless for a time, holding his breath, then swung
himself upon the parapet and looked out. The dormitory was in the second
story of the monastery, above the rampart, but a huge bank of snow rose
beside the wall, and this strengthened his courage.

With hurrying fingers he made the sign of the cross, a low: “Mary, pray
for me,” rose from his lips, then he shut his eyes and risked the leap.

There was a buzzing, roaring sound in his ears, his mother’s image
blended in strange distortion with the Jew’s, then an icy sea swallowed
him, and it seemed as if body and soul were frozen. But this sensation
overpowered him only a few minutes, then working his way out of the mass
of snow, he drew on his shoes, and dashed as if pursued by a pack of
wolves, down the mountain, through the ravine, across the heights, and
finally along the river to the city and the Richtberg.




CHAPTER VIII.

The magistrate’s horses did not reach the city gate, from the monastery,
more quickly than Ulrich.

As soon as the smith was roused from sleep by the boy’s knock and
recognized his voice, he knew what was coming, and silently listened to
the lad’s confessions, while he himself hurriedly yet carefully took out
his hidden hoard, filled a bag with the most necessary articles, thrust
his lightest hammer into his belt, and poured water on the glimmering
coals. Then, locking the door, he sent Ulrich to Hangemarx, with whom
he had already settled many things; for Caspar, the juggler, who learned
more through his daughters than any other man, had come to him the day
before, to tell him that something was being plotted against the Jew.

Adam found the latter still awake and at work. He was prepared for the
danger that threatened him, and ready to fly. No word of complaint, not
even a hasty gesture betrayed the mental anguish of the persecuted man,
and the smith’s heart melted, as he heard the doctor rouse his wife and
child from their sleep.

The terrified moans of the startled wife, and Ruth’s loud weeping and
curious questions, were soon drowned by the lamentations of old
Rahel, who wrapped in even more kerchiefs than usual, rushed into the
sitting-room, and while lamenting and scolding in a foreign tongue,
gathered together everything that lay at hand. She had dragged a large
chest after her, and now threw in candlesticks, jugs, and even the
chessmen and Ruth’s old doll with a broken head.

When the third hour after midnight came, the doctor was ready for
departure.

Marx’s charcoal sledge, with its little horse, stopped before the door.

This was a strange animal, no larger than a calf, as thin as a goat, and
in some places woolly, in others as bare as a scraped poodle.

The smith helped the dumb woman into the sleigh, the doctor put Ruth
in her lap, Ulrich consoled the child, who asked him all sorts of
questions, but the old woman would not part from the chest, and could
scarcely be induced to enter the vehicle.

“You know, across the mountains into the Rhine valley--no matter where,”
 Costa whispered to the poacher.

Hangemarx urged on his little horse, and answered, not turning to the
Israelite, who had addressed him, but to Adam, who he thought would
understand him better than the bookworm: “It won’t do to go up the
ravine, without making any circuit. The count’s hounds will track us, if
they follow. We’ll go first up the high road by the Lautenhof. To-morrow
will be a fair-day. People will come early from the villages and tread
down the snow, so the dogs will lose the scent. If it would only snow.”

Before the smithy, the doctor held out his hand to Adam, saying: “We
part here, friend.”

“We’ll go with you, if agreeable to you.”

“Consider,” the other began warningly, but Adam interrupted him, saying:

“I have considered everything; lost is lost. Ulrich, take the doctor’s
sack from his shoulder.”

For a long time nothing more was said.

The night was clear and cold; the men’s footsteps fell noiselessly on
the soft snow, nothing was heard except the creaking of the sledge,
and ever and anon Elizabeth’s low moaning, or a louder word in the old
woman’s soliloquy. Ruth had fallen asleep on her mother’s lap, and was
breathing heavily.

At Lautenhof a narrow path led through the mountains deep into the
forest.

As it grew steeper, the snow became knee-deep, and the men helped the
little horse, which often coughed, tossing its thick head up and down,
as if working a churn. Once, when the poor creature met with a very
heavy fall, Marx pointed to the green woollen scarf on the animal’s
neck, and whispered to the smith “Twenty years old, and has the glanders
besides.”

The little beast nodded slowly and mournfully, as if to say: “Life is
hard; this will probably be the last time I draw a sleigh.”

The broad, heavy-laden pine-boughs drooped wearily by the roadside, the
gleaming surface of the snow stretched in a monotonous sheet of white
between the trunks of the trees, the tops of the dark rocks beside the
way bore smooth white caps of loose snow, the forest stream was frozen
along the edges, only in the centre did the water trickle through
snow-crystals and sharp icicles to the valley.

So long as the moon shone, flickering rays danced and sparkled on the
ice and snow, but afterwards only the tedious glimmer of the universal
snow-pall lighted the traveller’s way.

“If it would only snow!” repeated the charcoal-burner.

The higher they went, the deeper grew the snow, the more wearisome the
wading and climbing.

Often, on the doctor’s account, the smith called in a low voice, “Halt!”
 and then Costa approached the sleigh and asked: “How do you feel?” or
said: “We are getting on bravely.”

Rahel screamed whenever a fox barked in the distance, a wolf howled, or
an owl flew through the treetops, brushing the snow from the branches
with its wings; but the others also started. Marx alone walked quietly
and undisturbed beside his little horse’s thick head; he was familiar
with all the voices of the forest.

It grew colder towards morning. Ruth woke and cried, and her father,
panting for breath, asked: “When shall we rest?”

“Behind the height; ten arrow-shots farther,” replied the
charcoal-burner.

“Courage,” whispered the smith. “Get on the sledge, doctor; we’ll push.”

But Costa shook his head, pointed to the panting horse, and dragged
himself onward.

The poacher must have sent his arrows in a strange curve, for one
quarter of an hour after another slipped by, and the top was not yet
gained. Meantime it grew lighter and lighter, and the charcoal-burner,
with increasing anxiety, ever and anon raised his head, and glanced
aside. The sky was covered with clouds-the light overhead grey, dim,
and blended with mist. The snow was still dazzling, though it no longer
sparkled and glittered, but covered every object with the dull whiteness
of chalk.

Ulrich kept beside the sledge to push it. When Ruth heard him groan,
she stroked the hand that grasped the edges, this pleased him; and he
smiled.

When they again stopped, this time on the crest of the ridge, Ulrich
noticed that the charcoal-burner was sniffing the air like a hound, and
asked:

“What is it, Marxle?”

The poacher grinned, as he answered: “It’s going to snow; I smell it.”

The road now led down towards the valley, and, after a short walk, the
charcoal-burner said:

“We shall find shelter below with Jorg, and a warm fire too, you poor
women.”

These were cheering words, and came just at the right time, for large
snow-flakes began to fill the air, and a light breeze drove them into
the travellers’ faces. “There!” cried Ulrich, pointing to the snow
covered roof of a wooden hut, that stood close before them in a clearing
on the edge of the forest.

Every face brightened, but Marx shook his head doubtfully, muttering:

“No smoke, no barking; the place is empty. Jorg has gone. At
Whitsuntide--how many years ago is it?--the boys left to act as
raftsmen, but then he stayed here.”

Reckoning time was not the charcoal-burner’s strong point; and the empty
hut, the dreary open window-casements in the mouldering wooden walls,
the holes in the roof, through which a quantity of snow had drifted into
the only room in the deserted house, indicated that no human being had
sought shelter here for many a winter.

Old Rahel uttered a fresh wail of grief, when she saw this shelter; but
after the men had removed the snow as well as they could, and covered
the holes in the roof with pine-branches; when Adam had lighted a fire,
and the sacks and coverlets were brought in from the sledge, and laid on
a dry spot to furnish seats for the women, fresh courage entered their
hearts, and Rahel, unasked, dragged herself to the hearth, and set the
snow-filled pot on the fire.

“The nag must have two hours’ rest,” Marx said, “then they could push on
and reach the miller in the ravine before night. There they would find
kind friends, for Jacklein had been with him among the ‘peasants.’”
 The snow-water boiled, the doctor and his wife rested, Ulrich and
Ruth brought wood, which the smith had split, to the fire to dry, when
suddenly a terrible cry of grief rang outside of the hut.

Costa hastily rose, the children followed, and old Rahel, whimpering,
drew the upper kerchief on her head over her face.

The little horse, its tiny legs stretched far apart, was lying in the
snow by the sledge. Beside it knelt Marx, holding the clumsy head on his
knee, and blowing with his crooked mouth into the animal’s nostrils. The
creature showed its yellow teeth, and put out its bluish tongue as if
it wanted to lick him; then the heavy head fell, the dying animal’s eyes
started from their sockets, its legs grew perfectly stiff, and this time
the horse was really dead, while the shafts of the sledge vainly thrust
themselves into the air, like the gaping mouth of a deserted bird.

No farther progress was possible. The women sat trembling in the hut,
roasting before the fire, and shivering when a draught touched them....
Ruth wept for the poor little horse, and Marx sat as if utterly crushed
beside his old friend’s stiffening body, heeding nothing, least of all
the snow, which was making him whiter than the miller, with whom he had
expected to rest that evening. The doctor gazed in mute despair at his
dumb wife, who, with clasped hands, was praying fervently; the smith
pressed his hand upon his brow, vainly pondering over what was to be
done now, until his head ached; while, from the distance, echoed the
howl of a hungry wolf, and a pair of ravens alighted on a white bough
beside the little horse, gazing greedily at the corpse lying in the
snow.

Meantime, the abbot was sitting in his pleasantly-warmed study, which
was pervaded by a faint, agreeable perfume, gazing now at the
logs burning in the beautiful marble mantel-piece, and then at the
magistrate, who had brought him strange tidings.

The prelate’s white woollen morning-robe clung closely around his
stately figure. Beside him lay, side by side, for comparison, two
manuscript copies of his favorite book, the idyls of Theocritus, which,
for his amusement, and to excel the translation of Coban Hesse, he was
turning into Latin verse, as the duties of his office gave him leisure.

The magistrate was standing by the fire-side. He was a thick-set man
of middle height, with a large head, and clever but coarse features, as
rudely moulded as if they had been carved from wood. He was one of the
best informed lawyers in the country, and his words flowed as smoothly
and clearly from his strong lips, as if every thought in his keen brain
was born fully matured and beautifully finished.

In the farthest corner of the room, awaiting a sign from his master,
stood the magistrate’s clerk, a little man with a round head, and legs
like the sickle of the waxing or waning moon. He carried under his short
arms two portfolios, filled with important papers.

“He comes from Portugal, and has lived under an assumed name?” So the
abbot repeated, what he had just heard.

“His name is Lopez, not Costa,” replied the other; “these papers prove
it. Give me the portfolio, man! The diploma is in the brown one.”

He handed a parchment to the prelate, who, after reading it, said
firmly:

“This Jew is a more important person than we supposed. They are not
lavish with such praise in Coimbra. Are you taking good care of the
doctor’s books Herr Conrad? I will look at them to-morrow.”

“They are at your disposal. These papers....”

“Leave them, leave them.”

“There will be more than enough for the complaint without them,” said
the magistrate. “Our town-clerk, who though no student is, as you
know, a man of much experience, shares my opinion.” Then he continued
pathetically: “Only he who has cause to fear the law hides his name,
only he, who feels guilty, flees the judge.”

A subtle smile, that was not wholly free from bitterness, hovered
around the abbot’s lips, for he thought of the painful trial and the
torture-chamber in the town hall, and no longer saw in the doctor merely
the Jew, but the humanist and companion in study.

His glance again fell on the diploma, and while the other continued his
representations, the prelate stretched himself more comfortably in his
arm-chair and gazed thoughtfully at the ground. Then, as if an idea had
suddenly occurred to him, he touched his high forehead with the tips of
his fingers, and suddenly interrupting the eager speaker, said:

“Father Anselm came to us from Porto five years ago, and when there knew
every one who understood Greek. Go, Gutbub, and tell the librarian to
come.” The monk soon appeared.

Tidings of Ulrich’s disappearance and the Jew’s flight had spread
rapidly through the monastery; the news was discussed in the choir,
the school, the stable and the kitchen; Father Anselm alone had heard
nothing of the matter, though he had been busy in the library before
daybreak, and the vexatious incident had been eagerly talked of there.

It was evident, that the elderly man cared little for anything that
happened in the world, outside of his manuscripts and printing. His
long, narrow head rested on a thin neck, which did not stand erect, but
grew out between the shoulders like a branch from the stem. His face was
grey and lined with wrinkles, like pumice-stone, but large bright eyes
lent meaning and attraction to the withered countenance.

At first he listened indifferently to the abbot’s story, but as soon as
the Jew’s name was mentioned, and he had read the diploma, as swiftly as
if he possessed the gift of gathering the whole contents of ten lines at
a single comprehensive glance, he said eagerly:

“Lopez, Doctor Lopez was here! And we did not know it, and have not
consulted with him! Where is he? What are people planning against him?”

After he had learned that the Jew had fled, and the abbot requested
him to tell all he knew about the doctor, he collected his thoughts and
sorrowfully began:

“To be sure, to be sure; the man committed a great offence. He is a
great sinner in God’s eyes. You know his guilt?”

“We know everything,” cried the magistrate, with a meaning glance at the
prelate. Then, as if he sincerely pitied the criminal, he continued with
well-feigned sympathy: “How did the learned man commit such a misdeed?”

The abbot understood the stratagem, but Anselm’s words could not be
recalled, and as he himself desired to learn more of the doctor’s
history, he asked the monk to tell what he knew.

The librarian, in his curt, dry manner, yet with a warmth unusual to
him, described the doctor’s great learning and brilliant intellect,
saying that his father, though a Jew, had been in his way an
aristocratic man, allied with many a noble family, for until the reign
of King Emanuel, who persecuted the Hebrews, they had enjoyed great
distinction in Portugal. In those days it had been hard to distinguish
Jews from Christians. At the time of the expulsion a few favored
Israelites had been allowed to stay, among them the worthy Rodrigo, the
doctor’s father, who had been the king’s physician and was held in high
esteem by the sovereign. Lopez obtained the highest honors at Coimbra,
but instead of following medicine, like his father, devoted himself to
the humanities.

“There was no need to earn his living--to earn his living,” continued
the monk, speaking slowly and carefully, and repeating the conclusion
of his sentence, as if he were in the act of collating two manuscripts,
“for Rodrigo was one of the wealthiest men in Portugal. His son Lopez
was rich, very rich in friends, and among them were numbered all to whom
knowledge was dear. Even among the Christians he had many friends. Among
us--I mean in our library--he also obtained great respect. I owe
him many a hint, much aid; I mean in referring me to rare books, and
explaining obscure passages. When he no longer visited us, I missed him
sorely. I am not curious; or do you think I am? I am not curious, but
I could not help inquiring about him, and then I heard very bad things.
Women are to blame for everything; of course it was a woman again. A
merchant from Flanders--a Christian--had settled in Porto. The doctor’s
father visited his house; but you probably know all this?”

“Of course! of course!” cried the magistrate. “But go on with your
story.”

“Old Doctor Rodrigo was the Netherlander’s physician, and closed his
eyes on the death-bed. An orphan was left, a girl, who had not a single
relative in Porto. They said--I mean the young doctors and students who
had seen her--that she was pleasing, very pleasing to the eye. But it
was not on that account, but because she was orphaned and desolate, that
the physician took the child--I mean the girl.”

“And reared her as a Jewess?” interrupted the magistrate, with a
questioning glance.

“As a Jewess?” replied the monk, excitedly. “Who says so? He did
nothing of the sort. A Christian widow educated her in the physician’s
country-house, not in the city. When the young doctor returned from
Coimbra, he saw her there more than once--more than once; certainly,
more often than was good for him. The devil had a finger in the matter.
I know, too, how they were married. Before one Jew and two Christian
witnesses, they plighted their troth to each other, and exchanged
rings--rings as if it were a Christian ceremony, though he remained a
Jew and she a Christian. He intended to go to the Netherlands with
her, but one of the witnesses betrayed them--denounced them to the Holy
Inquisition. This soon interposed of course, for there it interferes
with everything, and in this case it was necessary; nay more--a
Christian duty. The young wife was seized in the street with her
attendant and thrown into prison; on the rack she entirely lost the
power of speech. The old physician and the doctor were warned in time,
and kept closely concealed. Through Chamberlain de Sa, her uncle--or was
it only her cousin?--through de Sa the wife regained her liberty, and
then I believe all three fled to France--the father, son and wife. But
no, they must have come here....”

“There you have it!” cried the magistrate, interrupting the monk, and
glancing triumphantly at the prelate. “An old practitioner scents crime,
as a tree frog smells rain. Now, for the first time, I can say with
certainty: We have him, and the worst punishment is too little for his
deserts. There shall be an unparalleled execution, something wonderful,
magnificent, grand! You have given me important information, and I thank
you, Father.”

“Then you knew nothing?” faltered the librarian; and, raising his neck
higher than usual, the vein in the centre of his forehead swelled with
wrath.

“No, Anselme!” said the abbot. “But it was your duty to speak, as,
unfortunately, it was mine to listen. Come to me again, by and bye; I
have something to say to you.”

The librarian bowed silently, coldly and proudly, and without
vouchsafing the magistrate a single glance, went back, not to his books,
but to his cell, where he paced up and down a long time, sorrowfully
murmuring Lopez’s name, striking himself on the mouth, pressing his
clenched hand to his brow, and at last throwing himself on his knees to
pray for the Jew, before the image of the crucified Redeemer.

As soon as the monk had left the room, the magistrate exclaimed:

“What unexpected aid! What series of sins lie before us! First the
small ones. He had never worn the Jews’ badge, and allowed himself to be
served by Christians, for Caspar’s daughters were often at the House
to help in sewing. A sword was found in his dwelling, and the Jew, who
carries weapons, renounces, since he uses self-protection, the aid of
the authorities. Finally, we know that Lopez used an assumed name. Now
we come to the great offences. They are divided into four parts. He has
practised magic spells; he has sought to corrupt a Christian’s son by
heresies; he has led a Christian woman into a marriage; and he has--I
close with the worst--he has reared the daughter of a Christian woman, I
mean his wife, a Jewess!”

“Reared his child a Jewess? Do you know that positively?” asked the
abbot.

“She bears the Jewish name of Ruth. What I have taken the liberty to
make prominent are well chosen, clearly-proved crimes, worthy of death.
Your learning is great, Reverend Abbot, but I know the old writers,
too. The Emperor Constantius made marriages between Jews and Christians
punishable with death. I can show you the passage.”

The abbot felt that the crime of which the Jew was accused was a heavy
and unpardonable one, but he regarded only the sin, and it vexed him to
see how the magistrate’s zeal was exclusively turned against the unhappy
criminal. So he rose, saying with cold hauteur:

“Then do your duty.”

“Rely upon it. We shall capture him and his family to-morrow. The
town-clerk is full of zeal too. We shall not be able to harm the child,
but it must be taken from the Jew and receive a Christian education. It
would be our right to do this, even if both parents were Hebrews. You
know the Freiburg case. No less a personage than the great Ulrich
Zasius has decided, that Jewish children might be baptized without their
father’s knowledge. I beg you to send Father Anselm to the town-hall on
Saturday as a witness.”

“Very well,” replied the prelate, but he spoke with so little eagerness,
that it justly surprised the magistrate. “Well then, catch the Jew;
but take him alive. And one thing more! I wish to see and speak to the
doctor, before you torture him.”

“I will bring him to you day after to-morrow.”

“The Nurembergers! the Nurembergers!...” replied the abbot, shrugging
his shoulders.

“What do you mean?”

“They don’t hang any one till they catch him.” The magistrate regarded
these words as a challenge to put forth every effort for the Jew’s
capture, so he answered eagerly: “We shall have him, Your Reverence, we
shall surely have him. They are trapped in the snow. The sergeants are
searching the roads; I shall summon your foresters and mine, and put
them under Count Frohlinger’s command. It is his duty to aid us. What
they cannot find with their attendants, squires, beaters and hounds, is
not hidden in the forest. Your blessing, Holy Father, there is no time
to lose.”

The abbot was alone.

He gazed thoughtfully at the coals in the fireplace, recalling
everything he had just seen and heard, while his vivid power of
imagination showed him the learned, unassuming man, who had spent long
years in quiet seclusion, industriously devoting himself to the pursuit
of knowledge. A slight feeling of envy stole into his heart; how
rarely he himself was permitted to pursue undisturbed, and without
interruption, the scientific subjects, in which alone he found pleasure.

He was vexed with himself, that he could feel so little anger against a
criminal, whose guilt was deserving of death, and reproached himself for
lukewarmness. Then he remembered that the Jew had sinned for love, and
that to him who has loved much, much should be forgiven. Finally,
it seemed a great boon, that he was soon to be permitted to make the
acquaintance of the worthy doctor from Coimbra. Never had the zealous
magistrate appeared so repulsive as to-day, and when he remembered how
the crafty man had outwitted poor Father Anselm in his presence, he felt
as if he had himself committed an unworthy deed. And yet, yet--the Jew
could not be saved, and had deserved what threatened him.

A monk summoned him, but the abbot did not wish to be disturbed, and
ordered that he should be left an hour alone.

He now took in his hand a volume he called the mirror of his soul, and
in which he noted many things “for the confession,” that he desired to
determine to his own satisfaction. To-day he wrote:

“It would be a duty to hate a Jew and criminal, zealously to persecute
what Holy Church has condemned. Yet I cannot do so. Who is the
magistrate, and what are Father Anselm and this learned doctor! The one
narrow-minded, only familiar with the little world he knows and in which
he lives, the others divinely-gifted, full of knowledge, rulers in the
wide domain of thought. And the former outwits the latter, who show
themselves children in comparison with him. How Anselm stood before
him! The deceived child was great, the clever man small. What men call
cleverness is only small-minded persons’ skill in life; simplicity is
peculiar to the truly great man, because petty affairs are too small for
him, and his eye does not count the grains of dust, but looks upward,
and has a share in the infinitude stretching before us. Jesus Christ
was gentle as a child and loved children, he was the Son of God, yet
voluntarily yielded himself into the hands of men. The greatest of great
men did not belong to the ranks of the clever. Blessed are the meek, He
said. I understand those words. He is meek, whose soul is open, clear
and pure as a mirror, and the greatest philosophers, the noblest minds I
have met in life and history were also meek. The brute is clever; wisdom
is the cleverness of the noble-minded. We must all follow the Saviour,
and he among us, who unites wisdom to meekness, will come nearest to the
Redeemer.”




CHAPTER IX.

Marx had gone out to reconnoitre in a more cheerful mood, for the doctor
had made good the loss sustained in the death of his old nag, and he
returned at noon with good news.

A wood-carrier, whom he met on the high-road, had told him where Jorg,
the charcoal-burner, lived.

The fugitives could reach his hut before night, and in so doing approach
nearer the Rhine valley. Everything was ready for departure, but old
Rahel objected to travelling further. She was sitting on a stone before
the hut, for the smoke in the narrow room oppressed her breathing, and
it seemed as if terror had robbed her of her senses. Gazing into vacancy
with wild eyes and chattering teeth, she tried to make cakes and mould
dumplings out of the snow, which she probably took for flour. She
neither heard the doctor’s call nor saw his wife beckon, and when the
former grasped her to compel her to rise, uttered a loud shriek. At last
the smith succeeded in persuading her to sit down on the sledge, and the
party moved forward.

Adam had harnessed himself to the front of the vehicle. Marx went to and
fro, pushing when necessary. The dumb woman waded through the snow by
her husband’s side. “Poor wife!” he said once; but she pressed his arm
closer, looking up into his eyes as if she wished to say: “Surely I
shall lack nothing, if only you are spared to me!”

She enjoyed his presence as if it were a favor granted by destiny, but
only at chance moments, for she could not banish her fear for him, and
of the pursuers--her dread of uncertainty and wandering.

If snow rattled from a pine-tree, if she noticed Lopez turn his head, or
if old Rahel uttered a moan, she shuddered; and this was not unperceived
by her husband, who told himself that she had every reason to look
forward to the next few hours with grave anxiety. Each moment might
bring imprisonment to him and all, and if they discovered--if it were
disclosed who he, who Elizabeth was....

Ulrich and Ruth brought up the rear, saying little to each other.

At first the path ascended again, then led down to the valley. It had
stopped snowing long before, and the farther they went the lighter the
drifts became.

They had journeyed in this way for two hours, when Ruth’s strength
failed, and she stood still with tearful, imploring eyes. The
charcoal-burner saw it, and growled:

“Come here, little girl; I’ll carry you to the sleigh.”

“No, let me,” Ulrich eagerly interposed. And Ruth exclaimed:

“Yes, you, you shall carry me.”

Marx grasped her around the waist, lifted her high into the air, and
placed her in the boy’s arms. She clasped her hands around his neck, and
as he walked on pressed her fresh, cool cheek to his. It pleased him,
and the thought entered his mind that he had been parted from her a long
time, and it was delightful to have her again.

His heart swelled more and more; he felt that he would rather have
Ruth than everything else in the world, and he drew her towards him as
closely as if an invisible hand were already out-stretched to take her
from him.

To-day her dear, delicate little face was not pale, but glowed crimson
after the long walk through the frosty, winter air. She was glad to
have Ulrich clasp her so firmly, so she pressed her cheek closer to his,
loosened her fingers from his neck, caressingly stroked his face with
her cold hand, and murmured:

“You are kind, Ulrich, and I love you!”

It sounded so tender and loving, that Ulrich’s heart melted, for no one
had spoken to him so since his mother went away.

He felt strong and joyous, Ruth did not seem at all heavy, and when
she again clasped her hands around his neck, he said: “I should like to
carry you so always.”

Ruth only nodded, as if the wish pleased her, but he continued:

“In the monastery I had no one, who was very kind to me, for even Lips,
well, he was a count--everybody is kind to you. You don’t know what it
is, to be all alone, and have to struggle against every one. When I was
in the monastery, I often wished that I was lying under the earth; now
I don’t want to die, and we will stay with you--father told me so--and
everything will be just as it was, and I shall learn no more Latin,
but become a painter, or smith-artificer, or anything else, for aught I
care, if I’m only not obliged to leave you again.”

He felt Ruth raise her little head, and press her soft lips on his
forehead just over his eyes; then he lowered the arms in which she
rested, kissed her mouth, and said: “Now it seems as if I had my mother
back again!”

“Does it?” she asked, with sparkling eyes. “Now put me down. I am well
again, and want to run.”

So saying, she slipped to the ground, and he did not detain her.

Ruth now walked stoutly on beside the lad, and made him tell her about
the bad boys in the monastery, Count Lips, the pictures, the monks, and
his own flight, until, just as it grew dark, they reached the goal of
their walk.

Jorg, the charcoal-burner, received them, and opened his hut, but only
to go away himself, for though willing to give the fugitives shelter
and act against the authorities, he did not wish to be present, if the
refugees should be caught. Caught with them, hung with them! He knew the
proverb, and went down to the village, with the florins Adam gave him.

There was a hearth for cooking in the hut, and two rooms, one large and
one small, for in summer the charcoal-burners’ wives and children live
with them. The travellers needed rest and refreshment, and might have
found both here, had not fear embittered the food and driven sleep from
their weary eyes.

Jorg was to return early the next morning with a team of horses. This
was a great consolation. Old Rahel, too, had regained her self-control,
and was sound asleep.

The children followed her example, and at midnight Elizabeth slept too.

Marx lay beside the hearth, and from his crooked mouth came a strange,
snoring noise, that sounded like the last note of an organ-pipe, from
which the air is expiring.

Hours after all the others were asleep, Adam and the doctor still sat on
a sack of straw, engaged in earnest conversation.

Lopez had told his friend the story of his happiness and sorrow, closing
with the words:

“So you know who we are, and why we left our home. You are giving me
your future, together with many other things; no gift can repay you; but
first of all, it was due you that you should know my past.”

Then, holding out his hand to the smith, he asked: “You are a Christian;
will you still cleave to me, after what you have heard?”

Adam silently pressed the Jew’s right hand, and after remaining lost in
thought for a time, said in a hollow tone:

“If they catch you, and--Holy Virgin--if they discover... Ruth.... She
is not really a Jew’s child... have you reared her as a Jewess?”

“No; only as a good human child.”

“Is she baptized?”

Lopez answered this question also in the negative. The smith shook his
head disapprovingly, but the doctor said: “She knows more about Jesus,
than many a Christian child of her age. When she is grown up, she will
be free to follow either her mother or her father.”

“Why have you not become a Christian yourself? Forgive the question.
Surely you are one at heart.”

“That, that... you see, there are things.... Suppose that every male
scion of your family, from generation to generation, for many hundred
years, had been a smith, and now a boy should grow up, who said: I--I
despise your trade?’”

“If Ulrich should say: ‘I-I wish to be an artist;’ it would be agreeable
to me.”

“Even if smiths were persecuted like us Jews, and he ran from your guild
to another out of fear?”

“No--that would be base, and can scarcely be compared with your case;
for see--you are acquainted with everything, even what is called
Christianity; nay, the Saviour is dear to you; you have already told me
so. Well then! Suppose you were a foundling and were shown our faith and
yours, and asked for which you would decide, which would you choose?”

“We pray for life and peace, and where peace exists, love cannot be
lacking, and yet! Perhaps I might decide for yours.”

“There you have it.”

“No, no! We have not done with this question so speedily. See, I do
not grudge you your faith, nor do I wish to disturb it. The child must
believe, that all its parents do and require of him is right, but the
stranger sees with different, keener eyes, than the son and daughter.
You occupy a filial relation towards your Church--I do not. I know the
doctrine of Jesus Christ, and if I had lived in Palestine in his time,
should have been one of the first to follow the Master, but since, from
those days to the present, much human work has mingled with his
sublime teachings. This too must be dear to you, for it belongs to your
parents--but it repels me. I have lived, labored and watched all night
for the truth, and were I now to come before the baptismal font and say
‘yes’ to everything the priests ask, I should be a liar.”

“They have caused you bitter suffering; tortured your wife, driven you
and your family from your home....”

“I have borne all that patiently,” cried the doctor, deeply moved. “But
there are many other sins now committed against me and mine, for which
there is no forgiveness. I know the great Pagans and their works. Their
need of love extends only to the nation, to which they belong, not to
humanity. Unselfish justice, is to them the last thing man owes his
fellow-man. Christ extended love to all nations, His heart was large
enough to love all mankind. Human love, the purest and fairest of
virtues, is the sublime gift, the noble heritage, he left behind to his
brothers in sorrow. My heart, the poor heart under this black doublet,
this heart was created for human love, this soul thirsted, with all its
powers, to help its neighbors and lighten their sorrows. To exercise
human love is to be good, but they no longer know it, and what is worse,
a thousand times worse, they constantly destroy in me and mine the
desire to be good, good in the sense of their own Master. Worldly wealth
is trash--to be rich the poorest happiness. Yet the Jew is not forbidden
to strive for this, they take scarcely half his gains;--nor can
they deny him the pursuit of the pleasures of the intellect--pure
knowledge--for our minds are not feebler or more idle, and soar no less
boldly than theirs. The prophets came from the East! But the happiness
of the soul--the right to exercise charity is denied to us. It is a part
of charity for each man to regard his neighbor as himself--to feel for
him, as it were, with his own heart--to lighten his burdens, minister
unto him in his sorrows, and to gladden his happiness. This the
Christian denies the Jew. Your love ceases when you meet me and mine,
and if I sought to put myself on an equality with the Christian, from
the pure desire to satisfy his Master’s most beautiful lesson, what
would be my fate? The Jew is not permitted to be good. Not to be good!
Whoever imposes that upon his brother, commits a sin for which I know no
forgiveness. And if Jesus Christ should return to earth and see the pack
that hunts us, surely He, who was human love incarnate, would open His
arms wide, wide to us, and ask: ‘Who are these apostles of hate? I know
them not!’”

The doctor paused, for the door had opened, and he rose with flushed
face to look into the adjoining room; but the smith held him back,
saying:

“Stay, stay! Marx went out into the open air. Ah, Sir! no doubt your
words are true, but were they Jews who crucified the Saviour?”

“And this crime is daily avenged,” replied Lopez. “How many wicked, how
many low souls, who basely squander divine gifts to obtain worthless
pelf, there are among my people! More than half of them are stripped of
honor and dignity on your altar of vengeance, and thrust into the arms
of repulsive avarice. And this, all this.... But enough of these things!
They rouse my inmost soul to wrath, and I have other matters to discuss
with you.”

The scholar now began to speak to the smith, like a dying man, about
the future of his family, told him where he had concealed his small
property, and did not hide the fact, that his marriage had not only
drawn upon him the persecution of the Christians, but the curse of his
co-religionists. He took it upon himself to provide for Ulrich, as if
he were his own child, should any misfortune befall the smith; and Adam
promised, if he remained alive and at liberty, to do the same for the
doctor’s wife and daughter.

Meantime, a conversation of a very different nature was held before the
hut.

The poacher was sitting by the fire, when the door opened, and his name
was called. He turned in alarm, but soon regained his composure, for it
was Jorg who beckoned, and then drew him into the forest.

Marx expected no good news, yet he started when his companion said:

“I know now, who the man is you have brought. He’s a Jew. Don’t try to
humbug me. The constable from the city has come to the village. The man,
who captures the Israelite, will get fifteen florins. Fifteen florins,
good money. The magistrate will count it, all on one board, and the
vicar says....”

“I don’t care much for your priests,” replied Marx. “I am from
Weinsberg, and have found the Jew a worthy man. No one shall touch him.”

“A Jew, and a good man!” cried Jurg, laughing. “If you won’t help, so
much the worse for you. You’ll risk your neck, and the fifteen florins.
... Will you go shares? Yes or no?”

“Heaven’s thunder!” murmured the poacher, his crooked mouth watering.
“How much is half of fifteen florins?”

“About seven, I should say.”

“A calf and a pig.”

“A swine for the Jew, that will suit. You’ll keep him here in the trap.”

“I can’t, Jorg; by my soul, I can’t! Let me alone!”

“Very well, for aught I care; but the legal gentlemen. The gallows has
waited for you long enough!”

“I can’t; I can’t. I’ve been an honest man all my life, and the smith
Adam and his dead father have shown me many a kindness.”

“Who means the smith any harm?”

“The receiver is as bad as the thief. If they catch him....”

“He’ll be put in the stocks for a week. That’s the worst that can befall
him.”

“No, no. Let me alone,--or I’ll tell Adam what you’re plotting....”

“Then I’ll denounce you first, you gallows’ fruit, you rogue, you
poacher. They’ve suspected you a long time! Will you change your mind
now, you blockhead?”

“Yes, yes; but Ulrich is here too, and the boy is as dear to me as my
own child.”

“I’ll come here later, say that no vehicle can be had, and take him away
with me. When it’s all over, I’ll let him go.”

“Then I’ll keep him. He already helps me as much, as if he were a grown
man. Oh, dear, dear! The Jew, the gentle man, and the poor women, and
the little girl, Ruth....”

“Big Jews and little Jews, nothing more. You’ve told me yourself, how
the Hebrews were persecuted in your dead father’s day. So we’ll go
shares. There’s a light in the room still. You’ll detain them. Count
Frohlinger has been at his hunting-box since last evening.... If they
insist on moving forward, guide them to the village.”

“And I’ve been an honest man all my life,” whined the poacher, and then
continued, threateningly: “If you harm a hair on Ulrich’s head....”

“Fool that you are! I’ll willingly leave the big feeder to you. Go in
now, then I’ll come and fetch the boy. There’s money at stake--fifteen
florins!” Fifteen minutes after, Jorg entered the hut.

The smith and the doctor believed the charcoal-burner, when he told them
that all the vehicles in the village were in use, but he would find
one elsewhere. They must let the boy go with him, to enquire at the
farm-houses in another village. Somebody would doubtless be found to
risk his horses. The lad looked like a young nobleman, and the peasants
would take earnest-money from him. If he, Jorg, should show them
florins, it would get him into a fine scrape. The people knew he was as
poor as a beggar.

The smith asked the poacher’s opinion, and the latter growled:

“That will, doubtless, be a good plan.”

He said no more, and when Adam held out his hand to the boy, and kissed
him on the forehead, and the doctor bade him an affectionate farewell,
Marx called himself a Judas, and would gladly have flung the tempting
florins to the four winds, but it was too late.

The smith and Lopez heard him call anxiously to Jorg: “Take good care of
the boy!” And when Adam patted him on the shoulder, saying: “You are a
faithful fellow, Marx!” he could have howled like a mastiff and revealed
all; but it seemed as if he again felt the rope around his neck, so he
kept silence.




CHAPTER X.

The grey dawn was already glimmering, yet neither the expected vehicle
nor Jorg had come. Old Rahel, usually an early riser, was sleeping as
soundly as if she had to make up the lost slumber of ten nights; but the
smith’s anxiety would no longer allow him to remain in the close room.
Ruth followed him into the open air, and when she timidly touched
him--for there had always been something unapproachable to her in the
silent man’s gigantic figure--he looked at her from head to foot, with
strange, questioning sympathy, and then asked suddenly, with a haste
unusual to him.

“Has your father told you about Jesus Christ?”

“Often!” replied Ruth.

“And do you love Him?”

“Dearly. Father says He loved all children, and called them to Him.”

“Of course, of course!” replied the smith, blushing with shame for his
own distrust.

The doctor did not follow the others, and as soon as his wife saw that
they were alone, she beckoned to him.

Lopez sat down on the couch beside her, and took her hand. The slender
fingers trembled in his clasp, and when, with loving anxiety, he drew
her towards him, he felt the tremor of her delicate limbs, while her
eyes expressed bitter suffering and terrible dread.

“Are you afraid?” he asked, tenderly.

Elizabeth shuddered, threw her arms passionately around his neck, and
nodded assent.

“The wagon will convey us to the Rhine Valley, please God, this very
day, and there we shall be safe,” he continued, soothingly. But she
shook her head, her features assuming an expression of indifference and
contempt. Lopez understood how to read their meaning, and asked: “So it
is not the bailiffs you fear; something else is troubling you?”

She nodded again, this time still more eagerly, drew out the crucifix,
which she had hitherto kept concealed under her coverlid, showed it to
him, then pointed upward towards heaven, lastly to herself and him, and
shrugged her shoulders with an air of deep, mournful renunciation.

“You are thinking of the other world,” said Lopez; then, fixing his eyes
on the ground, he continued, in a lower tone: “I know you are tortured
by the fear of not meeting me there.”

“Yes,” she gasped, with a great effort, pressing her forehead against
his shoulder.

A hot tear fell on the doctor’s hand, and he felt as if his own heart
was weeping with his beloved, anxious wife.

He knew that this thought had often poisoned her life and, full of
tender sympathy, turned her beautiful face towards him and pressed a
long kiss on her closed eyes, then said, tenderly:

“You are mine, I am yours, and if there is a life beyond the grave,
and an eternal justice, the dumb will speak as they desire, and sing
wondrous songs with the angels; the sorrowful will again be happy there.
We will hope, we will both hope! Do you remember how I read Dante aloud
to you, and tried to explain his divine creation, as we sat on the bench
by the fig-tree. The sea roared below us, and our hearts swelled higher
than its storm-lashed waves. How soft was the air, how bright the
sunshine! This earth seemed doubly beautiful to you and me as, led by
the hand of the divine seer and singer, we descended shuddering to the
nether world. There the good and noble men of ancient times walked in a
flowery meadow, and among them the poet beheld in solitary grandeur--do
you still remember how the passage runs? ‘E solo in parte vidi ‘l
Saladino.’ Among them he also saw the Moslem Saladin, the conqueror of
the Christians. If any one possessed the key of the mysteries of the
other world, Elizabeth, it was Dante. He assigned a lofty place to the
pagan, who was a true man--a man with a pure mind, a zeal for goodness
and right, and I think I shall have a place there too. Courage,
Elizabeth, courage!”

A beautiful smile had illumined the wife’s features, while she was
reminded of the happiest hours of her life, but when he paused, gazed
into her eyes, and clasped her right hand in his, she was seized with
an intense longing to pray once, only once, with him to the Saviour so,
drawing her fingers from his, she pressed the image of the Crucified
One to her breast with her left hand, pleading with mute motions of her
lips, ineligible to him alone, and with ardent entreaty in her large,
tearful eyes: “Pray, pray with me, pray to the saviour.”

Lopez was greatly agitated; his heart beat faster, and a strong impulse
urged him to start up, cry “no,” and not allow himself to be moved, by
an affectionate meakness, into bowing his manly soul before one, who, to
him, was no more than human.

The noble figure of the crucified Saviour, carved by an artist’s hand in
ivory, hung from an ebony cross, and he thrust the image back, intending
to turn proudly way, he gazed at the face and found there only pain,
quiet endurance, and touching sorrow. Ah, his own heart had often bled,
as the pure brow of this poor, persecuted, tortured saint bled beneath
its crown of thorns. To defy this silent companion in suffering, was
no manly deed--to pay homage, out of love, to Him, who had brought
love into the world, seemed to possess a sweet, ensnaring charm--so he
clasped his slender hands closely round his dumb wife’s fingers, pressed
his dark curls against Elizabeth’s fair hair, and both, for the first
and last time, repeated together a mute, fervent prayer.

Before the hut, and surrounded by the forest, was a large clearing,
where two roads crossed.

Adam, Marx and Ruth had gazed first down one and then the other, to look
for the wagon, but nothing was to be seen or heard. As, with increasing
anxiety, they turned back to the first path, the poacher grew restless.
His crooked mouth twisted to and fro in strange contortions, not a
muscle of his coarse face was till, and this looked so odd and yet so
horrible, that Ruth could not help laughing, and the smith asked what
ailed him.

Marx made no reply; his ear had caught the distant bay of a dog, and he
knew what the sound meant. Work at the anvil impairs the hearing, and
the smith did not notice the approaching peril, and repeated: “What ails
you, man?”

“I am freezing,” replied the charcoal-burner, cowering, with a piteous
expression.

Ruth heard no more of the conversation, she had stopped and put her
hand to her ear, listening with head bent forward, to the noises in the
distance.

Suddenly she uttered a low cry, exclaiming: “There’s a dog barking,
Meister Adam, I hear it.”

The smith turned pale and shook his head, but she cried earnestly:
“Believe me; I hear it. Now it’s barking again.”

Adam too, now heard a strange noise in the forest. With lightning speed
he loosened the hammer in his belt, took Ruth by the hand, and ran up
the clearing with her.

Meantime, Lopez had compelled old Rahel to rise.

Everything must be ready, when Ulrich returned. In his impatience he had
gone to the door, and when he saw Adam hurrying up the glade with the
child, ran anxiously to meet them, thinking that some accident had
happened to Ulrich.

“Back, back!” shouted the smith, and Ruth, releasing her hand from his,
also motioned and shrieked “Back, back!”

The doctor obeyed the warning, and stopped; but he had scarcely turned,
when several dogs appeared at the mouth of the ravine through which the
party had come the day before, and directly after Count Frohlinger, on
horseback, burst from the thicket.

The nobleman sat throned on his spirited charger, like the sun-god
Siegfried. His fair locks floated dishevelled around his head, the steam
rising from the dripping steed hovered about him in the fresh winter air
like a light cloud. He had opened and raised his arms, and holding
the reins in his left hand, swung his hunting spear with the right. On
perceiving Lopez, a clear, joyous, exultant “Hallo, Halali!” rang from
his bearded lips.

To-day Count Frohlinger was not hunting the stag, but special game, a
Jew.

The chase led to the right cover, and how well the hounds had done, how
stoutly Emir, his swift hunter, had followed.

This was a morning’s work indeed!

“Hallo, Halali!” he shouted exultingly again, and ere the fugitives had
escaped from the clearing, reached the doctor’s side, exclaiming:

“Here is my game; to your knees, Jew!”

The count had far outstripped his attendants, and was entirely alone.

As Lopez stood still with folded arms, paying no heed to his command, he
turned the spear, to strike him with the handle.

Then, for the first time in many years, the old fury awoke in Adam’s
heart; and rushing upon the count like a tiger, he threw his powerful
arms around his waist, and ere he was aware of the attack, hurled him
from his horse, set his knee on his breast, snatched the hammer from his
belt, and with a mighty blow struck the dog that attacked him, to the
earth. Then he again swung the iron, to crush the head of his hated foe.
But Lopez would not accept deliverance at such a price, and cried in a
tone of passionate entreaty:

“Let him go, Adam, spare him.”

As he spoke, he clung to the smith’s arm, and when the latter tried to
release himself from his grasp, said earnestly:

“We will not follow their example!”

Again the hammer whizzed high in the air, and again the Jew clung to the
smith’s arm, this time exclaiming imperiously:

“Spare him, if you are my friend!”

What was his strength in comparison with Adam’s? Yet as the hammer
rose for the third time, he again strove to prevent the terrible deed,
seizing the infuriated man’s wrist, and gasping, as in the struggle he
fell on his knees beside the count: “Think of Ulrich! This man’s son was
the only one, the only one in the whole monastery, who stood by Ulrich,
your child--in the monastery--he was--his friend--among so many. Spare
him--Ulrich! For Ulrich’s sake, spare him!”

During this struggle the smith had held the count down with his left
hand, and defended himself against Lopez with the right.

One jerk, and the hand upraised for murder was free again--but he did
not use it. His friend’s last words had paralyzed him.

“Take it,” he said in a hollow tone, giving the hammer to the doctor.

The latter seized it, and rising joyously, laid his hand on the shoulder
of the smith, who was still kneeling on the count’s breast, and said
beseechingly: “Let that suffice. The man is only....”

He went no farther--a gurgling, piercing cry of pain escaped his lips,
and pressing one hand to his breast, and the other to his brow, he sank
on the snow beside the stump of a giant pine.

A squire dashed from the forest--the archer, to whom this noble quarry
had fallen a victim, appeared in the clearing, holding aloft the
cross-bow from which he had sent the bolt. His arrow was fixed in the
doctor’s breast; alas, the man had only sent the shaft, to save his
fallen master from the hammer in the Jew’s hand.

Count Frohlinger rose, struggling for breath; his hand sought his
hunting-knife, but in the fall it had slipped from its sheath and was
lying in the snow.

Adam supported his dying friend in his arms, Ruth ran weeping to the
hut, and before the nobleman had fully collected his thoughts, the
squire reached his side, and young Count Lips, riding a swift bay-horse,
dashed from the forest, closely followed by three mounted huntsmen.

When the attendants saw their master on foot, they too sprang from their
saddles, Lips did the same, and an eager interchange of question and
answer began among them.

The nobleman scarcely noticed his son, but greeted with angry words the
man who had shot the Jew. Then, deeply excited, he hoarsely ordered his
attendants to bind the smith, who made no resistance, but submitted to
everything like a patient child.

Lopez no longer needed his arms.

The dumb wife sat on the stump, with her dying husband resting on her
lap. She had thrown her arms around the bleeding form, and the feet hung
limply down, touching the snow.

Ruth, sobbing bitterly, crouched on the ground by her mother’s side, and
old Rahel, who had entirely regained her self-control, pressed a cloth,
wet with wine, on his forehead.

The young count approached the dying Jew. His father slowly followed,
drew the boy to his side, and said in a low, sad tone:

“I am sorry for the man; he saved my life.”

The wounded man opened his eyes, saw Count Frohlinger, his son and the
fettered smith, felt his wife’s tears on his brow, and heard Ruth’s
agonized weeping. A gentle smile hovered around his pale lips, and when
he tried to raise his head Elizabeth helped him, pressing it gently to
her breast.

The feeble lips moved and Lopez raised his eyes to her face, as if
to thank her, saying in a low voice: “The arrow--don’t touch it....
Elizabeth--Ruth, we have clung together faithfully, but now--I shall
leave you alone, I must leave you.” He paused, a shadow clouded his
eyes, and the lids slowly fell. But he soon raised them again, and
fixing his glance steadily on the count, said:

“Hear me, my Lord; a dying man should be heard, even if he is a Jew.
See! This is my wife, and this my child. They are Christians. They will
soon be alone in the world, deserted, orphaned. The smith is their only
friend. Set him free; they--they, they will need a protector. My wife
is dumb, dumb... alone in the world. She can neither beseech nor demand.
Set Adam free, for the sake of your Saviour, your son, free--yes, free.
A wide, wide space must be between you; he must go away with them, far
away. Set him free! I held his arm with the hammer.... You know--with
the hammer. Set him free. My death--death atones for everything.”

Again his voice failed, and the count, deeply moved, looked irresolutely
now at him, now at the smith. Lips’s eyes filled with tears; and as
he saw his father delay in fulfilling the dying man’s last wish, and a
glance from the dim eyes met his, he pressed closer to the noble, who
stood struggling with many contending emotions, and whispered, weeping:

“My Lord and Father, my Lord and Father, tomorrow will be Christmas.
For Christ’s sake, for love of me, grant his request: release Ulrich’s
father, set him free! Do so, my noble Father; I want no other Christmas
gift.”

Count Frohlinger’s heart also overflowed, and when, raising his
tear-dimmed eyes, he saw Elizabeth’s deep grief stamped on her gentle
features, and beheld reclining on her breast, the mild, beautiful face
of the dying man, it seemed as if he saw before him the sorrowful Mother
of God--and to-morrow would be Christmas. Wounded pride was silent, he
forgot the insult he had sustained, and cried in a voice as loud, as if
he wished every word to reach the ear now growing dull in death:

“I thank you for your aid, man. Adam is free, and may go with your wife
and child wherever he lists. My word upon it; you can close your eyes in
peace!”

Lopez smiled again, raised his hand as if in gratitude, then let it fall
upon his child’s head, gazed lovingly at Ruth for the last time, and
murmured in a low tone “Lift my head a little higher, Elizabeth.” When
she had obeyed his wish, he gazed earnestly into her face, whispered
softly: “A dreamless sleep--reanimated to new forms in the endless
circle. No!--Do you see, do you hear.... Solo in parte’... with
you... with you.... Oh, oh!--the arrow--draw the arrow from the wound.
Elizabeth, Elizabeth--it aches. Well--well--how miserable we were, and
yet, yet.... You--you--I--we--we know, what happiness is. You--I ...
Forgive me! I forgive, forgive....”

The dying man’s hand fell from his child’s head, his eyes closed, but
the pleasant smile with which he had perished, hovered around his lips,
even in death.




CHAPTER XI.

Count Frohlinger added a low “amen” to the last words of the dying man,
then approached the widow, and in the kindly, cordial manner natural to
him, strove to comfort her.

Finally he ordered his men, to loose the smith’s bonds, and instantly
guide him to the frontier with the woman and child. He also spoke to
Adam, but said only a few words, not cheery ones as usual, but grave and
harsh in purport.

They were a command to leave the country without delay, and never return
to his home again.

The Jew’s corpse was laid on a bier formed of pine, branches, and the
bearers lifted it on their shoulders. Ruth clung closely to her mother,
both trembling like leaves in the wind, while he who was dearest to them
on earth was borne away, but only the child could weep.

The men, whom Count Frohlinger had left behind as a guard, waited
patiently with the smith for his son’s return until noon, then they
urged departure, and the party moved forward.

Not a word was spoken, till the travellers stopped before the
charcoal-burner’s house.

Jorg was in the city, but his wife said that the boy had been there, and
had gone back to the forest an hour before. The tavern could accommodate
a great many people, she added, and they could wait for him there.

The fugitives followed this advice, and after Adam had seen the women
provided with shelter, he again sought the scene of the misfortune, and
waited there for the boy until night.

Beside the stump on which his friend had died, he prayed long and
earnestly, vowing to his dead preserver to live henceforth solely for
his family. Unbroken stillness surrounded him, it seemed as if he were
in church, and every tree in the forest was a witness of the oath he
swore.

The next morning the smith again sought the charcoal-burner, and this
time found him. Jorg laid the blame to Ulrich’s impatience, but promised
to go to Marx in search of him and bring him to the smith. The men
composing the escort urged haste, so Adam went on without Ulrich towards
the north-west, to the valley of the Rhine.

The charcoal-burner had lost the reward offered the informer, and could
not even earn the money due a messenger.

He had lured Ulrich to the attic and locked him in there, but during his
absence the boy escaped. He was a nimble fellow, for he had risked the
leap from the window, and then swung himself over the fence into the
road.

Jorg’s conjecture did not deceive him, for as soon as Ulrich perceived
that he had been betrayed into a trap, he had leaped into the open air.

He must warn his friends, and anxiety for them winged his feet.

Once and again he lost his way, but at last found the right path, though
he had wasted many hours, first in the village, then behind the locked
door, and finally in searching for the right road.

The sun had already passed the meridian, when he at last reached the
clearing.

The but was deserted; no one answered his loud, anxious shouts.

Where had they gone?

He searched the wide, snow-covered expanse for traces, and found only
too many. Here horses’ hoofs, there large and small feet had pressed
the snow, yonder hounds had run, and--Great Heaven!--here, by the
tree-stump, red blood stained the glimmering white ground.

His breath failed, but he did not cease to search, look, examine.

Yonder, where for the length of a man the snow had vanished and grass
and brown earth appeared, people had fought together, and there--Holy
Virgin! What was this!--there lay his father’s hammer. He knew it only
too well; it was the smaller one, which to distinguish it from the two
larger tools, Goliath and Samson, he called David-the boy had swung it a
hundred times himself.

His heart stood still, and when he found some freshly-hewn pine-boughs,
and a fir-trunk that had been rejected by one of the men, he said to
himself: “The bier was made here,” and his vivid imagination showed
him his father fighting, struck down, and then a mournful funeral
procession. Exulting bailiffs bore a tall strong-limbed corpse, and a
slender, black-robed body, his father and his teacher. Then came the
quiet, beautiful wife and Ruth in bonds, and behind them Marx and Rahel.
He distinctly saw all this; it even seemed as if he heard the sobs of
the women, and wailing bitterly, he thrust his hands in his floating
locks and ran to and fro. Suddenly he thought that the troopers would
return to seize him also. Away, away! anywhere--away! a voice roared and
buzzed in his ears, and he set out on a run towards the south, always
towards the south.

The boy had not eaten a mouthful, since the oatmeal porridge obtained
at the charcoal-burner’s, in the morning, but felt neither hunger nor
thirst, and dashed on and on without heeding the way.

Long after his father had left the clearing for the second time, he
still ran on--but gasping for breath while his steps grew slower and
shorter. The moon rose, one star after another revealed its light, yet
he still struggled forward.

The forest lay behind him; he had reached a broad road, which he
followed southward, always southward, till his strength utterly failed.
His head and hands were burning like fire, yet it was very, very cold;
but little snow lay here in the valley, and in many places the moonlight
showed patches of bare, dark turf.

Grief was forgotten. Fatigue, anxiety and hunger completely engrossed
the boy’s mind. He felt tempted to throw himself down in the road
and sleep, but remembered the frozen people of whom he had heard, and
dragged himself on to the nearest village. The lights had long been
extinguished; as he approached, dogs barked in the yards, and the
melancholy lowing of a cow echoed from many a stable. He was again among
human beings; the thought exerted a soothing influence; he regained his
self-control, and sought a shelter for the night.

At the end of the village stood a barn, and Ulrich noticed by the
moonlight an open hatchway in the wall. If he could climb up to it! The
framework offered some support for fingers and toes, so he resolved to
try it.

Several times, when Half-way up, he slipped to the ground, but at last
reached the top, and found a bed in the soft hay under a sheltering
roof. Surrounded by the fragrance of the dried grasses, he soon fell
asleep, and in a dream saw amidst various confused and repulsive shapes,
first his father with a bleeding wound in his broad chest, and then the
doctor, dancing with old Rahel. Last of all Ruth appeared; she led him
into the forest to a juniper-bush, and showed him a nest full of young
birds. But the half-naked creatures vexed him, and he trampled them
under foot, over which the little girl lamented so loudly and bitterly,
that he awoke.

Morning was already dawning, his head ached, and he was very cold and
hungry, but he had no desire nor thought except to proceed; so he again
went out into the open air, brushed off the hay that still clung to his
hair and clothes, and walked on towards the south.

It had grown warmer and was beginning to snow heavily.

Walking became more and more difficult; his headache grew unendurable,
yet his feet still moved, though it seemed as if he wore heavy leaden
shoes.

Several freight-wagons with armed escorts, and a few peasants, with
rosaries in their hands, who were on their way to church, met the lad,
but no one had overtaken him.

On the hinge of noon he heard behind him the tramp of horses’ hoofs and
the rattle of wheels, approaching nearer and nearer with ominous haste.

If it should be the troopers!

Ulrich’s heart stood still, and turning to look back, he saw several
horsemen, who were trotting past a spur of the hill around which the
road wound.

Through the falling flakes the boy perceived glittering weapons, gay
doublets and scarfs, and now--now--all hope was over, they wore Count
Frohlinger’s colors!

Unless the earth should open before him, there was no escape. The road
belonged to the horsemen; on the right lay a wide, snow-covered plain,
on the left rose a cliff, kept from falling on the side towards the
highway by a rude wall. It needed this support less on account of the
road, than for the sake of a graveyard, for which the citizens of the
neighboring borough used the gentle slope of the mountain.

The graves, the bare elder-bushes and bushy cypresses in the cemetery
were covered with snow, and the brighter the white covering that rested
on every surrounding object, the stronger was the relief in which the
black crosses stood forth against it.

A small chapel in the rear of the graveyard caught Ulrich’s eye. If it
was possible to climb the wall, he might hide behind it. The horsemen
were already close at his heels, when he summoned all his remaining
strength, rushed to a stone projecting from the wall, and began to
clamber up.

The day before it would have been a small matter for him to reach the
cemetery; but now the exhausted boy only dragged himself upward, to
slip on the smooth stones and lose the hold, that the dry, snow-covered
plants growing in the wide crevices treacherously offered him.

The horsemen had noticed him, and a young man-at-arms exclaimed: “A
runaway! See how the young vagabond acts. I’ll seize him.”

He set spurs to his horse as he spoke, and just as the boy succeeded
in reaching his goal, grasped his foot; but Ulrich clung fast to a
gravestone, so the shoe was left in the trooper’s hand and his comrades
burst into a loud laugh. It sounded merry, but it echoed in the ears
of the tortured lad like a shriek from hell, and urged him onward. He
leaped over two, five, ten graves--then he stumbled over a head-stone
concealed by the snow.

With a great effort he rose again, but ere he reached the chapel fell
once more, and now his will was paralyzed. In mortal terror he clung to
a cross, and as his senses failed, thought of “the word.” It seemed
as if some one had called the right one, and from pure Weakness and
fatigue, he could not remember it.

The young soldier was not willing to encounter the jeers of his
comrades, by letting the vagabond escape. With a curt: “Stop, you
rascal,” he threw the shoe into the graveyard, gave his bridle to the
next man in the line; and a few minutes after was kneeling by Ulrich’s
side. He shook and jerked him, but in vain; then growing anxious, called
to the others that the boy was probably dead.

“People never die so quickly!” cried the greyhaired leader of the band:
“Give him a blow.”

The youth raised his arm, but did not strike the lad. He had looked into
Ulrich’s face, and found something there that touched his heart. “No,
no,” he shouted, “come up here, Peter; a handsome boy; but it’s all over
with him, I say.”

During this delay, the traveller whom the men were escorting, and his
old servant, approached the cemetery at a rapid trot. The former, a
gentleman of middle age, protected from the cold by costly furs, saw
with a single hasty glance the cause of the detention.

Instantly dismounting, he followed the leader of the troop to the end of
the wall, where there was a flight of rude steps.

Ulrich’s head now lay in the soldier’s arms, and the traveller gazed
at him with a look of deep sympathy. The steadfast glance of his bright
eyes rested on the boy’s features as if spellbound, then he raised his
hand, beckoned to the elder soldier, and exclaimed: “Lift him; we’ll
take him with us; a corner can be found in the wagon.”

The vehicle, of which the traveller spoke, was slow in coming. It was a
long four-wheeled equipage, over which, as a protection against wind and
storm, arched a round, sail-cloth cover. The driver crouched among the
straw in a basket behind the horses, like a brooding hen.

Under the sheltering canopy, among the luggage of the fur-clad
gentleman, sat and reclined four travellers, whom the owner of the
vehicle had gradually picked up, and who formed a motley company.

The two Dominican friars, Magisters Sutor and Stubenrauch, had entered
at Cologne, for the wagon came straight from Holland, and belonged
to the artist Antonio Moor of Utrecht, who was going to King Philip’s
court. The beautiful fur border on the black cap and velvet cloak showed
that he had no occasion to practise economy; he preferred the back of a
good horse to a seat in a jolting vehicle.

The ecclesiastics had taken possession of the best places in the back
of the wagon. They were inseparable brothers, and formed as it were one
person, for they behaved like two bodies with one soul. In this
double life, fat Magister Sutor represented the will, lean Stubenrauch
reflection and execution. If the former proposed to be down or sit, eat
or drink, sleep or talk, the latter instantly carried the suggestion
into execution, rarely neglecting to establish, by wise words, for what
reason the act in question should be performed precisely at that time.

Farther towards the front, with his back resting against a chest, lay a
fine-looking young Lansquenet. He was undoubtedly a gay, active fellow,
but now sat mute and melancholy, supporting with his right hand his
wounded left arm, as if it were some brittle vessel.

Opposite to him rose a heap of loose straw, beneath which something
stirred from time to time, and from which at short intervals a slight
cough was heard.

As soon as the door in the back of the vehicle opened, and the cold
snowy air entered the dark, damp space under the tilt, Magister Sutor’s
lips parted in a long-drawn “Ugh!” to which his lean companion instantly
added a torrent of reproachful words about the delay, the draught, the
danger of taking cold.

When the artist’s head appeared in the opening, the priest paused, for
Moor paid the travelling expenses; but when his companion Sutor drew
his cloak around him with every token of discomfort and annoyance, he
followed his example in a still more conspicuous way.

The artist paid no heed to these gestures, but quietly requested his
guests to make room for the boy.

A muffled head was suddenly thrust out from under the straw, a voice
cried: “A hospital on wheels!” then the head vanished again like that of
a fish, which has risen to take a breath of air.

“Very true,” replied the artist. “You need not draw up your limbs so
far, my worthy Lansquenet, but I must request these reverend gentlemen
to move a little farther apart, or closer together, and make room for
the sick lad on the leather sack.”

While these words were uttered, one of the escort laid the still
senseless boy under the tilt.

Magister Sutor noticed the snow that clung to Ulrich’s hair and
clothing, and while struggling to rise, uttered a repellent “no,” while
Stubenrauch hastily added reproachfully: “There will be a perfect pool
here, when that melts; you gave us these places, Meister Moor, but we
hardly expected to receive also dripping limbs and rheumatic pains....”

Before he finished the sentence, the bandaged head again appeared from
the straw, and the high, shrill voice of the man concealed under it,
asked? “Was the blood of the wounded wayfarer, the good Samaritan picked
up by the roadside, dry or wet?”

An encouraging glance from Sutor requested Stubenrauch to make an
appropriate answer, and the latter in an unctuous tone, hastily replied:
“It was the Lord, who caused the Samaritan to find the wounded man by
the roadside--this did not happen in our case, for the wet boy is forced
upon us, and though we are Samaritans....”

“You are not yet merciful,” cried the voice from the straw.

The artist laughed, but the soldier, slapping his thigh with his sound
hand, cried:

“In with the boy, you fellows outside; here, put him on my right--move
farther apart, you gentlemen down below; the water will do us no harm,
if you’ll only give us some of the wine in your basket yonder.”

The priests, willy-nilly, now permitted Ulrich to be laid on the
leathern sack between them, and while first Sutor, and then Stubenrauch,
shrunk away to mutter prayers over a rosary for the senseless lad’s
restoration to consciousness, and to avoid coming in contact with
his wet clothes, the artist entered the vehicle, and without asking
permission, took the wine from the priests’ basket. The soldier helped
him, and soon their united exertions, with the fiery liquor, revived the
fainting boy.

Moor rode forward, and the wagon jolted on until the day’s journey ended
at Emmendingen. Count von Hochburg’s retainers, who were to serve as
escort from this point, would not ride on Christmas day. The artist made
no objection, but when they also declared that no horse should leave
the stable on the morrow, which was a second holiday, he shrugged
his shoulders and answered, without any show of anger, but in a firm,
haughty tone, that he should then probably be obliged--if necessary with
their master’s assistance,--to conduct them to Freiburg to-morrow.

The inns at Emmendingen were among the largest and best in the
neighborhood of Freiburg, and on account of the changes of escort,
which frequently took place here, there was no lack of accommodation for
numerous horses and guests.

As soon as Ulrich was taken into the warm hostelry he fainted a second
time, and the artist now cared for him as kindly as if he were the lad’s
own father.

Magister Sutor ordered the roast meats, and his companion Stubenrauch
all the other requisites for a substantial meal, in which they had made
considerable progress, while the artist was still engaged in ministering
to the sick lad, in which kindly office the little man, who had been
hidden under the straw in the wagon, stoutly assisted.

He had been a buffoon, and his dress still bore many tokens of his
former profession. His big head swayed upon his thin neck; his droll,
though emaciated features constantly changed their expression, and even
when he was not coughing, his mouth was continually in motion.

As soon as Ulrich breathed calmly and regularly, he searched his
clothing to find some clue to his residence, but everything he
discovered in the lad’s pockets only led to more and more amusing and
startling conjectures, for nothing can contain a greater variety of
objects than a school-boy’s pockets, if we except a school-girl’s.

There was a scrap of paper with a Latin exercise bristling with errors,
a smooth stone, a shabby, notched knife, a bit of chalk for drawing, an
iron arrow-head, a broken hobnail, and a falconer’s glove, which Count
Lips had given his comrade. The ring the doctor’s wife had bestowed as a
farewell token, was also discovered around his neck.

All these things led Pellicanus--so the jester was named--to make many a
conjecture, and he left none untried.

As a mosaic picture is formed from stones, he by a hundred signs,
conjured up a vision of the lad’s character, home, and the school from
which he had run away.

He called him the son of a noble of moderate property. In this he was
of course mistaken, but in other respects perceived, with wonderful
acuteness, how Ulrich had hitherto been circumstanced, nay even declared
that he was a motherless child, a fact proved by many things he lacked.
The boy had been sent to school too late--Pellicanus was a good Latin
scholar--and perhaps had been too early initiated into the mysteries of
riding, hunting, and woodcraft.

The artist, merely by the boy’s appearance, gained a more accurate
knowledge of his real nature, than the jester gathered from his
investigations and inferences.

Ulrich pleased him, and when he saw the pen-and-ink sketch on the
back of the exercise, which Pellicanus showed him, he smiled and felt
strengthened in the resolve to interest himself still more in the
handsome boy, whom fate had thrown in his way. He now only needed to
discover who the lad’s parents were, and what had driven him from the
school.

The surgeon of the little town had bled Ulrich, and soon after he fell
into a sound sleep, and breathed quietly. The artist and jester now
dined together, for the monks had finished their meal long before, and
were taking a noonday nap. Moor ordered roast meat and wine for the
Lansquenet, who sat modestly in one corner of the large public room,
gazing sadly at his wounded arm.

“Poor fellow!” said the jester, pointing to the handsome young man. “We
are brothers in calamity; one just like the other; a cart with a broken
wheel.”

“His arm will soon heal,” replied the artist, “but your tool”--here he
pointed to his own lips--“is stirring briskly enough now. The monks and
I have both made its acquaintance within the past few days.”

“Well, well,” replied Pellicanus, smiling bitterly, “yet they toss me
into the rubbish heap.”

“That would be....”

“Ah, you think the wise would then be fools with the fools,” interrupted
Pellicanus. “Not at all. Do you know what our masters expect of us?”

“You are to shorten the time for them with wit and jest.”

“But when must we be real fools, my Lord? Have you considered? Least
of all in happy hours. Then we are expected to play the wise man, warn
against excess, point out shadows. In sorrow, in times of trouble, then,
fool, be a fool! The madder pranks you play, the better. Make every
effort, and if you understand your trade well, and know your master,
you must compel him to laugh till he cries, when he would fain wail for
grief, like a little girl. You know princes too, sir, but I know them
better. They are gods on earth, and won’t submit to the universal lot of
mortals, to endure pain and anguish. When people are ill, the physician
is summoned, and in trouble we are at hand. Things are as we take
them--the gravest face may have a wart, upon which a jest can be made.
When you have once laughed at a misfortune, its sting loses its point.
We deaden it--we light up the darkness--even though it be with a will
‘o the wisp--and if we understand our business, manage to hack the lumpy
dough of heavy sorrow into little pieces, which even a princely stomach
can digest.”

“A coughing fool can do that too, so long as there is nothing wanting in
his upper story.”

“You are mistaken, indeed you are. Great lords only wish to see the
velvet side of life--of death’s doings, nothing at all. A man like
me--do you hear--a cougher, whose marrow is being consumed--incarnate
misery on two tottering legs--a piteous figure, whom one can no more
imagine outside the grave, than a sportsman without a terrier, or
hound--such a person calls into the ears of the ostrich, that shuts its
eyes: ‘Death is pointing at you! Affliction is coming!’ It is my duty
to draw a curtain between my lord and sorrow; instead of that, my own
person brings incarnate suffering before his eyes. The elector was as
wise as if he were his own fool, when he turned me out of the house.”

“He graciously gave you leave of absence.”

“And Gugelkopf is already installed in the palace as my successor! My
gracious master knows that he won’t have to pay the pension long. He
would willingly have supported me up yonder till I died; but my wish to
go to Genoa suited him exactly. The more distance there is between his
healthy highness and the miserable invalid, the better.”

“Why didn’t you wait till spring, before taking your departure?”

“Because Genoa is a hot-house, that the poor consumptive does not need
in summer. It is pleasant to be there in winter. I learned that three
years ago, when we visited the duke. Even in January the sun in Liguria
warms your back, and makes it easier to breathe. I’m going by way of
Marseilles. Will you give me the corner in your carriage as far as
Avignon?”

“With pleasure! Your health, Pellicanus! A good wish on Christmas day is
apt to be fulfilled.”

The artist’s deep voice sounded full and cordial, as he uttered the
words. The young soldier heard them, and as Moor and the jester touched
glasses, he raised his own goblet, drained it to the dregs, and asked
modestly: “Will you listen to a few lines of mine, kind sir?”

“Say them, say them!” cried the artist, filling his glass again, while
the lansquenet, approaching the table, fixed his eyes steadily on the
beaker, and in an embarrassed manner, repeated:

       “On Christmas-day, when Jesus Christ,
        To save us sinners came,
        A poor, sore-wounded soldier dared
        To call upon his name.
        ‘Oh! hear,’ he said, ‘my earnest prayer,
        For the kind, generous man,
        Who gave the wounded soldier aid,
        And bore him through the land.
        So, in Thy shining chariot,
        I pray, dear Jesus mine,
        Thou’lt bear him through a happy life
        To Paradise divine.’”

“Capital, capital!” cried the artist, pledging the lansquenet and
insisting that he should sit down between him and the jester.

Pellicanus now gazed thoughtfully into vacancy, for what the wounded man
could do, he too might surely accomplish. It was not only ambition, and
the habit of answering every good saying he heard with a better one, but
kindly feeling, that urged him to honor the generous benefactor with a
speech.

After a few minutes, which Moor spent in talking with the soldier,
Pellicanus raised his glass, coughed again, and said, first calmly, then
in an agitated voice, whose sharp tones grew more and more subdued:

       “A rogue a fool must be, ‘t is true,
        Rog’ry sans folly will not do;
        Where folly joins with roguery,
        There’s little harm, it seems to me.
        The pope, the king, the youthful squire,
        Each one the fool’s cap doth attire;
        He who the bauble will not wear,
        The worst of fools doth soon appear.
        Thee may the motley still adorn,
        When, an old man, the laurel crown
        Thy head doth deck, while gifts less vain,
        Thine age to bless will still remain.
        When fair grandchildren thee delight,
        Mayst then recall this Christmas night.
        When added years bring whitening hair,
        The draught of wisdom then wilt share,
        But it will lack the flavor due,
        Without a drop of folly too.
        And if the drop is not at hand,
        Remember poor old Pellican,
        Who, half a rogue and half a fool,
        Yet has a faithful heart and whole.”

“Thanks, thanks!” cried the artist, shaking the jester’s hand. “Such
a Christmas ought to be lauded! Wisdom, art, and courage at one table!
Haven’t I fared like the man, who picked up stones by the way side, and
to-they were changed to pure gold in his knapsack.”

“The stone was crumbling,” replied the jester; “but as for the gold, it
will stand the test with me, if you seek it in the heart, and not in the
pocket. Holy Blasius! Would that my grave might lack filling, as long as
my little strong-box here; I’d willingly allow it.”

“And so would I!” laughed the soldier:

“Then travelling will be easy for you,” said the artist. “There was a
time, when my pouch was no fuller than yours. I know by the experience
of those days how a poor man feels, and never wish to forget it. I still
owe you my after-dinner speech, but you must let me off, for I can’t
speak your language fluently. In brief, I wish you the recovery of
your health, Pellican, and you a joyous life of happiness and honor, my
worthy comrade. What is your name?”

“Hans Eitelfritz von der Lucke, from Colln on the Spree,” replied the
soldier. “And, no offence, Herr Moor, God will care for the monks, but
there were three poor invalid fellows in your cart. One goblet more to
the pretty sick boy in there.”




CHAPTER XII.

After dinner the artist went with his old servant, who had attended to
the horses and then enjoyed a delicious Christmas roast, to Count von
Hochburg, to obtain an escort for the next day.

Pellicanus had undertaken to watch Ulrich, who was still sleeping
quietly.

The jester would gladly have gone to bed himself, for he felt cold and
tired, but, though the room could not be heated, he remained faithfully
at his post for hours. With benumbed hands and feet, he watched by the
light of the night-lamp every breath the boy drew, often gazing at him
as anxiously and sympathizingly, as if he were his own child.

When Ulrich at last awoke, he timidly asked when he was, and when the
jester had soothed him, begged for a bit of bread, he was so hungry.

How famished he felt, the contents of the dish that were speedily placed
before him, soon discovered Pellicanus wanted to feed him like a baby,
but the boy took the spoon out of his hand, and the former smilingly
watched the sturdy eater, without disturbing, him, until he was
perfectly satisfied; then he began to perplex the lad with questions,
that seemed to him neither very intelligible, nor calculated to inspire
confidence.

“Well, my little bird!” the jester began, joyously anticipating a
confirmation of the clever inferences he had drawn, “I suppose it was
a long flight to the churchyard, where we found you. On the grave is a
better place than in it, and a bed at Emmendingen, with plenty of grits
and veal, is preferable to being in the snow on the highway, with a
grumbling stomach Speak freely, my lad! Where does your nest of robbers
hang?”

“Nest of robbers?” repeated Ulrich in amazement.

“Well, castle or the like, for aught I care,” continued Pellicanus
inquiringly. “Everybody is at home somewhere, except Mr. Nobody; but as
you are somebody, Nobody cannot possibly be your father. Tell me about
the old fellow!”

“My father is dead,” replied the boy, and as the events of the preceding
day rushed back upon his memory, he drew the coverlet over his face and
wept.

“Poor fellow!” murmured the jester, hastily drawing his sleeve across
his eyes, and leaving the lad in peace, till he showed his face again.
Then he continued: “But I suppose you have a mother at home?”

Ulrich shook his head mournfully, and Pellicanus, to conceal his own
emotion, looked at him with a comical grimace, and then said very
kindly, though not without a feeling of satisfaction at his own
penetration:

“So you are an orphan! Yes, yes! So long as the mother’s wings cover it,
the young bird doesn’t fly so thoughtlessly out of the warm nest into
the wide world. I suppose the Latin school grew too narrow for the young
nobleman?”

Ulrich raised himself, exclaiming in an eager, defiant tone:

“I won’t go back to the monastery; that I will not.”

“So that’s the way the hare jumps!” cried the fool laughing. “You’ve
been a bad Latin scholar, and the timber in the forest is dearer to you,
than the wood in the school-room benches. To be sure, they send out no
green shoots. Dear Lord, how his face is burning!” So saying, Pellicanus
laid his hand on the boy’s forehead and when he felt that it was hot,
deemed it better to stop his examination for the day, and only asked his
patient his name.

“Ulrich,” was the reply.

“And what else?”

“Let me alone!” pleaded the boy, drawing the coverlet over his head
again.

The jester obeyed his wish, and opened the door leading into the
tap-room, for some one had knocked. The artist’s servant entered, to
fetch his master’s portmanteau. Old Count von Hochburg had invited Moor
to be his guest, and the painter intended to spend the night at the
castle. Pellicanus was to take care of the boy, and if necessary send
for the surgeon again. An hour after, the sick jester lay shivering in
his bed, coughing before sleeping and between naps. Ulrich too could
obtain no slumber.

At first he wept softly, for he now clearly realized, for the first
time, that he had lost his father and should never see Ruth, the doctor,
nor the doctor’s dumb wife Elizabeth again. Then he wondered how he had
come to Einmendingen, what sort of a place it was, and who the queer
little man could be, who had taken him for a young noble--the quaint
little man with the cough, and a big head, whose eyes sparkled
so through his tears. The jester’s mistake made him laugh, and he
remembered that Ruth had once advised him to command the “word,” to
transform him into a count.

Suppose he should say to-morrow, that his father had been a knight?

But the wicked thought only glided through his mind; even before he had
reflected upon it, he felt ashamed of himself, for he was no liar.

Deny his father! That was very wrong, and when he stretched himself
out to sleep, the image of the valiant smith stood with tangible
distinctness before his soul. Gravely and sternly he floated upon
clouds, and looked exactly like the pictures Ulrich had seen of God the
Father, only he wore the smith’s cap on his grey hair. Even in Paradise,
the glorified spirit had not relinquished it.

Ulrich raised his hands as if praying, but hastily let them fall again,
for there was a great stir outside of the inn. The tramp of steeds,
the loud voices of men, the sound of drums and fifes were audible, then
there was rattling, marching and shouting in the court-yard.

“A room for the clerk of the muster-roll and paymaster!” cried a voice.

“Gently, gently, children!” said the deep tones of the provost, who was
the leader, counsellor and friend of the Lansquenets. “A devout servant
must not bluster at the holy Christmas-tide; he’s permitted to drink a
glass, Heaven be praised. Your house is to be greatly honored, Landlord!
The recruiting for our most gracious commander, Count von Oberstein,
is--to be done here. Do you hear, man! Everything to be paid for in
cash, and not a chicken will be lost; but the wine must be good! Do
you understand? So this evening broach a cask of your best. Pardon me,
children--the very best, I meant to say.”

Ulrich now heard the door of the tap-room open, and fancied he could
see the Lansquenets in gay costumes, each one different from the other,
crowd into the apartment.

The jester coughed loudly, scolding and muttering to himself; but
Ulrich listened with sparkling eyes to the sounds that came through the
ill-fitting door, by which he could hear what was passing in the next
room.

With the clerk of the muster-rolls, the paymaster and provost had
appeared the drummers and fifers, who the day after to-morrow were to
sound the license for recruiting, and besides these, twelve Lansquenets,
who were evidently no novices.

Many an exclamation of surprise and pleasure was heard directly after
their entrance into the tap-room, and amid the confusion of voices, the
name of Hans Eitelfritz fell more than once upon Ulrich’s ear.

The provost’s voice sounded unusually cordial, as he greeted the brave
fellow with the wounded hand--an honor of great value to the latter, for
he had served five years in the same company with the provost, “Father
Kanold,” who read the very depths of his soldiers’ hearts, and knew them
all as if they were his own sons.

Ulrich could not understand much amid the medley of voices in the
adjoining room, but when Hans Eitelfritz, from Colln on the Spree, asked
to be the first one put down on the muster-roll, he distinctly heard the
provost oppose the clerk’s scruples, saying warmly “write, write; I’d
rather have him with one hand, than ten peevish fellows with two. He has
fun and life in him. Advance him some money too, he probably lacks many
a piece of armor.”

Meantime the wine-cask must have been opened, for the clink of glasses,
and soon after loud singing was audible.

Just as the second song began, the boy fell asleep, but woke again two
hours after, roused by the stillness that had suddenly succeeded the
uproar.

Hans Eitelfritz had declared himself ready to give a new song in his
best vein, and the provost commanded silence.

The singing now began; during its continuance Ulrich raised himself
higher and higher in bed, not a word escaped him, either of the song
itself, or the chorus, which was repeated by the whole party, with
exuberant gayety, amid the loud clinking of goblets. Never before had
the lad heard such bold, joyous voices; even at the second verse his
heart bounded and it seemed as if he must join in the tune, which he had
quickly caught. The song ran as follows:

        Who, who will venture to hold me back?
        Drums beat, fifes are playing a merry tune!
        Down hammer, down pen, what more need I, alack
        I go to seek fortune, good fortune!

        Oh father, mother, dear sister mine,
        Blue-eyed maid at the bridge-house, my fair one.
        Weep not, ye must not at parting repine,
        I go to seek fortune, good fortune!

        The cannon roar loud, the sword flashes bright,
        Who’ll dare meet the stroke of my falchion?
        Close-ranked, horse and foot in battle unite,
        In war, war, dwells fortune, good fortune!

        The city is taken, the booty mine;
        With red gold, I’ll deck--I know whom;
        Pair maids’ cheeks burn red, red too glows the wine,
        Fortune, Paradise of good fortune!

        Deep, scarlet wounds, brave breasts adorn,
        Impoverished, crippled age I shun
        A death of honor, ‘mid glory won,
        This too is good fortune, good fortune!

        A soldier-lad composed this ditty
        Hans Eitelfritz he, fair Colln’s son,
        His kindred dwell in the goodly city,
        But he himself in fortune, good fortune!

“He himself in fortune, good fortune,” sang Ulrich also, and while, amid
loud shouts of joy, the glasses again clinked against each other, he
repeated the glad “fortune, good fortune.” Suddenly, it flashed upon him
like a revelation, “Fortune,” that might be the word!

Such exultant joy, such lark-like trilling, such inspiring promises
of happiness had never echoed in any word, as they now did from the
“fortune,” the young lansquenet so gaily and exultantly uttered.

“Fortune, Fortune!” he exclaimed aloud, and the jester, who was lying
sleepless in his bed and could not help smiling at the lad’s singing,
raised himself, saying:

“Do you like the word? Whoever understands how to seize it when it flits
by, will always float on top of everything, like fat on the soup. Rods
are cut from birches, willows, and knotted hazel-sticks-ho! ho! you know
that, already;--but, for him who has good fortune, larded cakes, rolls
and sausages grow. One bold turn of Fortune’s wheel will bring him,
who has stood at the bottom, up to the top with the speed of lightning.
Brother Queer-fellow says: ‘Up and down, like an avalanche.’ But now
turn over and go to sleep. To-morrow will also be a Christmas-day, which
will perhaps bring you Fortune as a Christmas gift.”

It seemed as if Ulrich had not called upon Fortune in vain, for as soon
as he closed his eyes, a pleasant dream bore him with gentle hands to
the forge on the market-place, and his mother stood beside the lighted
Christmas-tree, pointing to the new sky-blue suit she had made him, and
the apples, nuts, hobby-horse, and jumping jack, with a head as round
as a ball, huge ears, and tiny flat legs. He felt far too old for such
childish toys, and yet took a certain pleasure in them. Then the vision
changed, and he again saw his mother; but this time she was walking
among the angels in Paradise. A royal crown adorned her golden hair, and
she told him she was permitted to wear it there, because she had been so
reviled, and endured so much disgrace on earth.

When the artist returned from Count von Hochburg’s the next morning,
he was not a little surprised to see Ulrich standing before the
recruiting-table bright and well.

The lad’s cheeks were glowing with shame and anger, for the clerk of the
muster-rolls and paymaster had laughed in his face, when he expressed
his desire to become a Lansquenet.

The artist soon learned what was going on, and bade his protege
accompany him out of doors. Kindly, and without either mockery or
reproof, he represented to him that he was still far too young for
military service, and after Ulrich had confirmed everything the
painter had already heard from the jester, Moor asked who had given him
instruction in drawing.

“My father, and afterwards Father Lukas in the monastery,” replied the
boy. “But don’t question me as the little man did last night.”

“No, no,” said his protector. “But there are one or two more things I
wish to know. Was your father an artist?”

“No,” murmured the lad, blushing and hesitating. But when he met the
stranger’s clear gaze, he quickly regained his composure, and said:

“He only knew how to draw, because he understood how to forge beautiful,
artistic things.”

“And in what city did you live?”

“In no city. Outside in the woods.”

“Oho!” said the artist, smiling significantly, for he knew that many
knights practised a trade. “Answer only two questions more; then you
shall be left in peace until you voluntarily open your heart to me. What
is your name?”

“Ulrich.”

“I know that; but your father’s?”

“Adam.”

“And what else?”

Ulrich gazed silently at the ground, for the smith had borne no other
name.

“Well then,” said Moor, “we will call you Ulrich for the present; that
will suffice. But have you no relatives? Is no one waiting for you at
home?”

“We have led such a solitary life--no one.”

Moor looked fixedly into the boy’s face, then nodded, and with a
well-satisfied expression, laid his hand on Ulrich’s curls, and said:

“Look at me. I am an artist, and if you have any love for my profession,
I will teach you.”

“Oh!” cried the boy, clasping his hands in glad surprise.

“Well then,” Moor continued, “you can’t learn much on the way, but we
can work hard in Madrid. We are going now to King Philip of Spain.”

“Spain, Portugal!” murmured Ulrich with sparkling eyes; all he had heard
in the doctor’s house about these countries returned to his mind.

“Fortune, good fortune!” cried an exultant voice in his heart. This was
the “word,” it must be, it was already exerting its spell, and the spell
was to prove its inherent power in the near future.

That very day the party were to go to Count von Rappoltstein in the
village of Rappolts, and this time Ulrich was not to plod along on
foot, or he in a close baggage-wagon; no, he was to be allowed to ride
a spirited horse. The escort would not consist of hired servants, but of
picked men, and the count was going to join the train in person at the
hill crowned by the castle, for Moor had promised to paint a portrait of
the nobleman’s daughter, who had married Count von Rappoltstein. It was
to be a costly Christmas gift, which the old gentleman intended to make
himself and his faithful wife.

The wagon was also made ready for the journey; but no one rode inside;
the jester, closely muffled in wraps, had taken his seat beside the
driver, and the monks were obliged to go on by way of Freiburg, and
therefore could use the vehicle no longer.

They scolded and complained about it, as if they had been greatly
wronged, and when Sutor refused to shake hands with the artist,
Stubenrauch angrily turned his back upon the kind-hearted man.

The offended pair sullenly retired, but the Christmas sun shone none
the less brightly from the clear sky, the party of travellers had a gay,
spick and span, holiday aspect, and the world into which they now fared
stoutly forth, was so wide and beautiful, that Ulrich forgot his grief,
and joyously waved his new cap in answer to the Lansquenet’s farewell
gesture.

It was a merry ride, for on the way they met numerous travellers, who
were going through the hamlet of Rappolts to the “three castles on the
mountain” and saluted the old nobleman with lively songs. The Counts von
Rappoltstein were the “piper-kings,” the patrons of the brotherhood of
musicians and singers on the Upper Rhine. Usually these joyous birds met
at the castle of their “king” on the 8th of September, to pay him their
little tax and be generously entertained in return; but this year, on
account of the plague in the autumn, the festival had been deferred
until the third day after Christmas, but Ulrich believed ‘Fortune’ had
arranged it so for him.

There was plenty of singing, and the violins and rebecs, flutes, and
reed-pipes were never silent. One serenade followed another, and even at
the table a new song rang out at each new course.

The fiery wine, game and sweet cakes at the castle board undoubtedly
pleased the palate of the artisan’s son, but he enjoyed feasting his
ears still more. He felt as if he were in Heaven, and thought less and
less of the grief he had endured.

Day by day Fortune shook her horn of plenty, and flung new gifts down
upon him.

He had told the stable-keepers of his power over refractory horses, and
after proving what he could do, was permitted to tame wil

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