Chapter VII: What Befell at Schloss Blankenburg

Two days later young Lord Moritz rode over from Blankenburg, and with blunt civility invited me to join in the hunt; and I ran down a red deer that afternoon in his company, enjoying a notable chase. His sister rode with us. She mounted a tall Pomeranian bay, taking the hedges and ravines like a Turkish trooper. She wore a bewitching green habit, with a green silk cap set with a long red feather; and was in at the death, aiding us in flogging off the dogs. “A proper novitiate for a destined nun,” I meditated, as I watched her spring unaided from the saddle, her golden hair flying, her eyes dancing, her cheeks all red and bloom with fair excitement.

Artlessly as the brook she chattered, and I found the same delight in her company one would take with a merry child. Our chase led us far over the Harz, beside the rocky windings of the stream by the Ilsenburg, and while we halted to watch the slim trout shooting in the pools, my companion told me the story of the Princess Ilsa--her namesake of legend--the king’s daughter who dwelt on the crags above the stream, and all that befell her. As for Ritter Moritz, I found him a sober young cavalier, courteous after a blunt way, and very anxious to show civility. I could guess that his position at Blankenburg was a hard one, and resolved to return his friendship. The next day my precious books arrived at the Regenstein and I was happy for the next two weeks. Then came an invitation to spend the evening with the Graf von Blankenburg, and since I was beginning to grow tired even of Homer, Sophocles, and Politiano, I was not sorry to signify my acceptance.

* * * * *

I rode over to Schloss Blankenburg in what state I could affect. My neighbor’s castle was much like my own, only in general more dingy, though not without some display of tawdry magnificence. There was a swarm of lousy grooms and hangers-on in the dirty court. My troop was saluted with much blowing of horns and burning of powder. In the entrance to the great hall Graf Eckbert came to meet me, and his person did not belie the character Dame Hedwig gave him. He had a girth nigh equal his moderate stature; sandy, frowsy hair and beard, with small bluish eyes peering out of as seared and sensual face as ever there was betwixt Kiel and Basel. Two missing teeth gave his jaw a most uncanny grin. A great staff of a sabre clattered at his thigh. His green velvet jacket boasted much gold lace, but was slovenly with wine stains. In short, his person was such that it took all my self-control to greet this noble lord courteously, as my equal and my neighbor.

But Moritz was there, gravely and properly arrayed; and leaning on his shoulder was Gräfin Ilsa, bedecked even as St. Dorothea, a rose branch in her hand, a rose wreath on her hair, and a great bunch of roses and cherries tied to her silver girdle. She wore a blue sweeping gown of Antwerp taffeta, and some very good pearls at her throat. I wondered a little at this display of taste and wealth, knowing the condition of the Blankenburg estate, but it later appeared that the jewels and dress were the gifts of her uncle, the Castellan of Wittenberg.

Graf Eckbert, whatever his sins, was not taciturn. My flesh crept as he kissed me on both cheeks. He poured a volley of maudlin compliments in my ear, asked fifty questions without awaiting an answer, introduced me to half a dozen oafish creatures, whom I discovered were local petty nobles, or discharged lanz-knecht subalterns,--for which “full-brothers” he evidently kept continually a roaring open house,--and so led me into the great hall to the seat at his right on the upper dais. The rest of the company scrambled for places near by. One petty officer thrust himself into a seat more exalted than his deserts, and was pushed out with tumult. Soon the feast was in full progress. The hall shone all black and red under the smoking pine torches. The greasy old server brought us vast lumps of boars’ meat on dingy pewter platters. In the long hall under the dais, a score of dirty retainers chattered, gorged, and quarrelled over the brawn and beer at the table below. All of which time I, the honored guest, thought gloomily on how in that whole castle there was not one soul save myself who so much as knew the names of Homer and Dante, and I tried to picture the delightful little supper the Cardinale di Palaestrina was surely serving that night on the Aventine,--and the wit, the learning and the elegance of the ladies.

But just as the feast started there was a trifling hush, while with a great rustle into the hall swept my lady abbess of Quedlinburg and took her seat at my other hand. She might well have become a sculptured saint. It needed only to turn her black robes, the white frill of her cap, the pale pink of her face, into hard porphyry,--then the image would have been complete. In her youth Lady Theckla could not have been uncomely. The lines of her mouth were refined, but ungentle. She spoke to me in a clear monotone, opening her lips very little. The only lively thing about her seemed her steel-blue eyes. I did not love this close sight of the abbess. I told myself one might argue half eternity with that fine strong face, and win only denial; and as for pity or charity, you could more wisely beseech the stone saint, for then your prayers were at least heard up in heaven.

Grievous to tell, her coming did not impose the least check upon the conversation of her brother and his boon companions, which was at all times unspeakably foul,--so foul that I winced as I looked across the table at Gräfin Ilsa, who sat silent and a little pale, while the great hall buzzed around her,--a very different person from the merry creature in the woodland and at the hunt.

Graf Eckbert was so anxious to air his views that he graciously spared me the trouble of much speaking. He dominated the entire discussion, his other guests and his children giving respectful attention to his loudly delivered wisdom. That the world was awry, and Germany in particular, he informed me long before the platters of boars’ flesh had been replaced by those of venison. He cursed the Emperor Maximilian, whom he described as a shuffling dotard who starved Germany to feed his Austrian lands; he damned the last Imperial Diet as a gathering of fools; particularly he devoted to the pit the authors of the recent decree forbidding private warfare to the nobility.

“As if we, Walter” (he appropriated my first name at the outset), “if _we_ fell into any merry little debate, could not settle it with our own good pikes and cross-bows, and not have to call in a snivelling, black-gowned clerk with a pen behind his ear, to draw up parchments, patter in Latin to a court, and then cheat us out of fair justice for a beggaring fee.”

“Your Lordship does not believe in courts, then?” I ventured to ask.

“Ay, by St. Laurenz, but not of that kind. Courts are for peasants. I hold court myself every Monday. Two fellows were triced up on the gallows the other day for cutting firewood in my forest! Zounds--they ought to have been drawn and quartered, but I am too tenderhearted!” A tear trickled down his nose at recollection of his signal mercy.

“Your Lordship,” I said, “does exceeding well to avoid lawyers. There is an old Florentine proverb ‘may sorrow, evil, and lawyers be far from thee.’”

“Well said, Walter,--well said.” His vast hand clapped me on the back outrageously. “Here, rascal. Bring the noble Graf a deeper flagon. Put good warm Rhenish in it. We will teach him how deep a true Harzlander can go. ’Tis under the table for all of us before morning. Ten gulden, Walter, that you go there before me!”

I could see the face of Lady Ilsa growing whiter than ever. Her father had evidently begun his challenges to deep potations very early. I saw her sign to her aunt, and the abbess leaning towards us tried to turn her brother’s conversation.

“It is not time for the wine yet, Eckbert. Our guest is not yet thirsty. Do I understand that your Lordship has spent several years in Rome?”

“I have had the honor, Reverend Abbess,” I replied.

“I am glad, for now you can contradict my impious nephew here. Moritz was as quiet and God-fearing a lad as ever said his prayers until he went to Italy; on his return he vows he is almost a Turkish unbeliever, so great was the luxury and frivolity which he dares to assert were displayed by many churchmen, dwellers at His Holiness’s actual court, and even by certain most sacred cardinals.”

Moritz looked up from his trencher at me, and his sober eyes winked slyly.

“Surely,” spoke Ilsa, hanging on my answer, “Moritz is a wicked boy. He repeats these dreadful lies just to dismay us all, because we, forsooth, have never been to Italy and Rome.”

“Lies! Lies!” vociferated her father, not waiting for me. “I vow they are. Almost heresy--and never shall heretic dwell in Schloss Blankenburg, not even my own child.”

“Your Lordship will soon learn,” observed Moritz quietly, with a sidling glance at his aunt, “that my father, though liberal in other matters, is a valiant defender of Holy Church and all things touching her.”

“Well, then,” roared the Graf, “speak it out, Walter. Has not Moritz lied outrageously concerning Rome and the Holy Pope’s court? Don’t spare him if he _is_ my son.”

Alas for my courtesy! A man cannot sit through a feast like that and not give place to the devil. I had one eye in my head when I answered,

“No foreigner can visit Rome and the Holy Father’s court and not see many things he is liable to misunderstand. I do not doubt that my noble friend Moritz _did_ hear of one or two cardinals whose lives were a bit worldly. You see the Lord Pope, with the best of intentions, is sometimes surrounded by a few self-seeking men.”

“Only a ‘few’--do you hear, Moritz?” cried his father, putting down a prodigious goblet, which he had drained at a draught. “And the rest, of course--” a long hiccough finished the remark.

“No doubt His Holiness,” interposed the abbess, “will soon reduce these unworthy cardinals to pious regularity. I am told the Pope delivers daily most eloquent and edifying sermons in the new church of St. Peter.”

Moritz’s lip curled.

“I never heard of the Pope’s preaching any sermons,” he sneered. “There is only one preacher in all Christendom _I_ ever cared for.”

“And who is he, graceless boy?” asked his aunt.

“Dr. Martin Luther, the Augustinian friar of Wittenberg. If all parsons were like him, I’d be a holier man and a better listener at church.”

“He is a pious young monk, I’ve heard,” said his aunt coldly, “but naturally not comparable to His Holiness. Of course you, my Lord Graf, have often heard the present Pope turn multitudes from their sins by his burning eloquence.”

“I have certainly seen him appear in great state at St. John Lateran,” I replied, with twitching lips, “on Corpus Christi day, when thousands of people knelt to adore him in a place so holy that the former Pope Benedict VIII--of blessed memory--said that if the folk only knew how great indulgence was afforded by a mere visit to that church they would sin yet more.”

“And his sermon?”

“I regret, my Lady Abbess, on that day His Holiness was suffering from a cold. He could only hold up his fingers to bestow the benediction. I merely mention the occasion as witness to the veneration in which the Romans hold the most sacred Pontiff.”

Moritz looked at me reproachfully. He had evidently expected a more active defence of his heterodoxy. Perhaps the heady wine--which I was being forced very reluctantly to imbibe by my importunate host--was making me reckless; I resolved not to disappoint Moritz.

“But on thousands of other occasions,” spoke Ilsa, evidently deeply interested, “the Lord Pope has preached to the multitude, to the vast saving of their souls. A wandering Dominican, very dirty and very holy, told me as much yesterday.”

“Then,” I replied dryly and rashly, “your gracious Ladyship was very ill-informed, for I grieve to tell you his present Holiness, though a very learned and urbane prince, is better at playing cards than saying masses, and a better huntsman than preacher.”

It must have been the wine that made me throw this out bluntly. I saw the abbess nigh swooning back in her chair, muttering “blasphemy!” Poor Ilsa turned deathly pale, Moritz grinned in manifest glee, but his father almost jumped from his seat, his face growing livid.

“God’s death! Take back your words--”

“Father! Father! Our guest,” cried Ilsa in dismay, while Moritz caught his sleeve, at the same time asserting that “He has only said what I have always said.”

Unwilling to brawl then and there, I turned on my angry host very coolly.

“My gracious Lord,” I said, “I do not mean to slander the Sacred Pontiff. I was about to add that the Pope suffers from an ulcer which prevents him from executing the various sacred offices, and that his physicians recommend to him divers innocent diversions.”

“Ah! Very well,” quoth the Graf, mollified for the moment, and settling back in his great chair. But the abbess and Ilsa still stared at me ominously, accepting my last words at true value.

The feast proceeded. It was impossible for me, without giving dire offence, to avoid drinking large quantities of the fiery Rudesheimer. I boasted a strong head, but I felt I was gradually losing complete self-mastery. With a kind of dread I found the conversation drifting again toward religious topics. Graf Eckbert had been airing more of his grievances.

“The times are evil. Wholly out of joint! The peasants, insolent hounds, think themselves as good as their masters. They drink wine in place of beer, and are actually enraged if you flog them. All from lack of piety! True religion is dying out. How can the clod-hoppers hope to obey God if they do not first obey their masters? To hell they’ll go, all of them.”

“Their masters, of course,” I added viciously, “setting an example of all Christian graces.”

“Graces? What d’ye say?” the Graf’s mind leaped from one thing to another. “What need have _we_, the ritters, of graces? Can’t we drink, swear, indulge, carouse, kill as we like, and square with the saints at the end? The saints are very good-natured, I tell you. We do as we please, and at the end, a good indulgence from some vendor, a few acres given the abbey, the merits that come of owning some saints’ relics--ei!--we slip through Master Satan’s fingers like a greased pig, and up we go to heaven!”

“So your pious Lordship owns some saints’ relics?” I asked, fingering my goblet.

“Relics! By my father’s soul; haven’t I squandered half my fortune on them! Suffering in this world to lay up treasure in heaven, as says Father Augustin.” Tear-drops were again on his nose at thought of his piety. “Three hairs of St. Laurenz, plucked by a soldier just ere he was toasted on the gridiron; a finger nail of St. John the Less; a toe of St. Agatha, and the whole right thigh bone of St. Anthony. Here, Dietrich--bring me the reliquary.”

“You need not hasten,” spoke up Moritz, whom the wine had rendered wholly irresponsible; “that thigh bone is from a pig, as any but a fool can recognize. At Pisa there are _both_ thigh bones of the selfsame saint. My father was easily hoodwinked by the glozing friar who sold it him.” He glanced at me for confirmation.

“Certainly,” I nodded recklessly, though imagining a storm. “I have seen them there myself; only, there is still another pair at Mantua. I fear the worthy saint--”

But this time I had roused the demon. Mine host bounded out of his chair, and seized me furiously by the shoulder.

“Holy Wounds! Will you say I was cheated, and that to my very face? Men have died for less than that!”

“Very possibly,” I replied, with drunken abandon, loosening his clutch. “But I shall not. And now, Graf von Blankenburg, since you would lay hands on a guest, and insult me before your family and servants, hear at length the truth. All the country-side proclaims you the most profligate, cruel, dastardly lord in the Harzland. You prate of the saints, when you care as little for saintliness as a dog for Lent.”

He brandished his fists in my face, but for the instant I held him back by the lightnings in my eyes.

“You make your daughter to be pitied by every old woman and every clown. You think to smuggle yourself into heaven, when hell--if hell there be--yawns to receive you. You are one of those Germans who make the German name hateful in Italy, as the name for false piety, oafishness, swinishness, and pure devilishness.”

But here, with a great beast-like roar, he had broken away from Moritz, trying to hold him, and clutched a heavy boar’s spear from the rack behind the table. I paused in my torrent of words just enough to see the weapon glittering over his head, and whing!--it had shot across my shoulder, just grazing the skin, and dug into the table below the dais. A scream from Ilsa, the abbess rising with every sign of horror, shouts, runnings to and fro, some of my own Regensteiners hurrying me from the hall, a rending volley of curses from the Graf, who was struggling with his son and trusted retainers,--it all passed like a hideous dream.

I was outside the castle and standing under the black night while they brought up the horses. The cool wind was lessening the effects of the wine. I looked upward. Above me was the selfsame canopy of stars that had been when Marianna and I had gazed upon them together, sitting still and close in the Vatican gardens. Marianna! At the moment I was ready to retract every word spoken publicly or privately in praise of Germany; to denounce it as the most man-accursed and God-forsaken land on the wide earth, from the savage Indes to roaring Muscovy.

“By Zeus and the Styx,” I swore in true classic style, “let me but live out one year in this crow’s nest of mine, and then back to Italy--and to _her_!”

In this mood I fared home to Regenstein. The next morning, sober, and with a headache, I sent Adolf with my cartel, telling the Graf von Blankenburg I must needs desire to meet him on the field of honor, the insult which he proffered me affording but one atonement.

* * * * *

However, in the cool of the day, as I walked moody and alone in the little pine grove at the foot of the Regenstein, lo! out of the trees, as in the manner of an apparition, glided Gräfin Ilsa. She was white as new paper; her eyes were red: her hair flew uncombed over her shoulders; her dress was sombre and mean. Much embarrassed at her coming, I stood stock still, while she, moving up to me, paused as if to take courage, then without more ado knelt at my very feet. Next her words came, mingled in a torrent of sobbing.

“Oh, you are generous! You are noble and forgiving. _Liebe Gott_, do not, do not--”

“Do not what, gracious Lady?” I asked, still sorely confused myself.

“Do not press this duel on my father. You know he was in his cups. He has treated you--his own guest--most foully. He sought your life. But Moritz egged you both on. Be merciful, be generous--spare him, spare!”

All her womanly dignity was gone. I seemed dealing with a very young girl.

“Noble Gräfin,” I said, drawing myself up, “arise. Let us talk calmly. You know what men of my rank mean by ‘honor.’ And has not mine been basely stained? How can I suffer this insult to pass?”

“Yes, yes,” she moaned, still at my knees. “I understand. It is ‘honor’ when you, a master swordsman, meet my father. He is old; his hand unsteady. Ten passes and he is dead. And then”--She pressed her hands to her face.

“Dear Lady,” I replied, I thought not unkindly, striving to raise her; “then you and yours will be rid of one who has made your life wretched; who has wearied heaven with his deeds.”

But now she caught my girdle, and seemed like some wild bird struggling in defence of its young and nest.

“Ah! you have said it. Sinful he is, vile, godless. I begged of Aunt Theckla, ‘will his saints’ relics save him? Will he ever join my blessed mother up in heaven?’ And she only looked at me in her unmoved way, and said, ‘It will take vast indulgence and good works, and then I cannot tell.’ She dared not say the devils were waiting for his soul, but I know it. Oh, blessed Christ, but I am so miserable! Hear now, Lord Graf; if kill you must, kill me! I can bear it. I can die, wicked as I am. Even the dreadful quenchless fire will not feel so terrible, when I think ‘I endure this to ransom the soul of my father.’”

She had seized the skirt of my cloak, and clung piteously. And I, being neither iron nor adamant, could not hear unmoved.

“Dear Lady,” I said very gently now, “if any man in Rome had ever told me I would overlook an insult like that of last night, and not make the doer walk up my rapier, the sayer himself would have eaten his words or died for it; but you fight me with weapons I cannot parry. If any saint can open the gate of heaven for the Graf von Blankenburg, I swear it will be his noble daughter. Go to your brother. He is a man of honor and sense. Tell him I withdraw the challenge; only he must send me some kind of an apology in behalf of his father which I can show to my Regensteiners. And now, gracious Gräfin, this dialogue has been overlong; you would do well to be setting homeward, the more as I cannot wisely escort you far.”

She would have kissed my feet had I only suffered it.

“I will pray St. Anna, St. Elizabeth, and all the rest to bless you to-night. You are the noblest, most chivalrous ritter in the world. I knew you would be merciful. But this is a dreadful earth we dwell in; Aunt Theckla is right--there is no peace save in the convent, where one can try to please God all day long.”

And with these very ill-connected sentences she was gone down into the trees, almost as suddenly as she had come. I stood shrugging my shoulders. I had been mortally insulted, and had suddenly forgiven the insult as meekly as a St. Francis,--and all for the tears of a superstitious, crying, pleading girl, as bereft of true wit and elegance as the pine stumps.

“Bah!” I cried, and spat vehemently. “A few more months in this place and I shall be bewitched and befooled every hour. Well--at Rome they are wise to depend on ‘The Sins of the Germans’ to fill the Pope’s coffers. What a fearful and wonderful thing is this fear of hell fire!”