Chapter XXIX: Act V (4)

"Holy Sixtus and Calixtus! Constanze, here!" he called up to the window where, with the others, she sat looking out. "The coach is mine. You will ride hereafter in your own carriage."

He embraced the smiling donor, and examined his new possession on all sides; finally he threw open the door and jumped in, exclaiming: "I feel as rich and happy as Ritter Gluck. What eyes they will make in Vienna!"

"I hope," said the Countess, "when you return from Prague, to see your carriage again, all hung with wreaths."

Soon after this last happy scene the much-praised carriage moved away with the departing guests, and rolled rapidly toward the road to Prague. At Wittingau the Count's horses were to be exchanged for post-horses, with which they would continue their journey.

When such excellent people have enlivened our houses by their presence, have given us new impulses through their fresh spirits, and have made us feel the blessings of dispensing hospitality, their departure leaves an uncomfortable sense of vacancy and interruption, at least for the rest of the day, and especially if we are left to ourselves. The latter case, at least, was not true with our friends in the palace. Franziska's parents and aunt soon followed the Mozarts. Franziska herself, the Baron, and Max of course, remained. Eugenie, with whom we are especially concerned, because she appreciated more deeply than the others the priceless experience she had had--she, one would think, could not feel in the least unhappy or troubled. Her pure happiness in the truly beloved man to whom she was now formally betrothed would drown all other considerations; rather, the most noble and lovely things which could move her heart must be mingled with that other happiness. So would it have been, perhaps, if she could have lived only in the present, or in joyful retrospect. But she had been moved by anxiety while Frau Mozart was telling her story, and the apprehension increased all the while that Mozart was playing, in spite of the ineffable charm beneath the mysterious horror of the music, and was brought to a climax by his own story of his night work. She felt sure that this man's energy would speedily and inevitably destroy him; that he could be but a fleeting apparition in this world, which was unable to appreciate the profusion of his gifts.

This thought, mingled with many others and with echoes of Don Juan, had surged through her troubled brain the night before, and it was almost daylight when she fell asleep. Now, the three women had seated themselves in the garden with their work; the men bore them company, and when the conversation, as was natural, turned upon Mozart, Eugenie did not conceal her apprehensions. No one shared them in the least, although the Baron understood her fully. She tried to rid herself of the feeling, and her friends, particularly her uncle, brought to her mind the most positive and cheering proofs that she was wrong. How gladly she heard them! She was almost ready to believe that she had been foolishly alarmed.

Some moments afterward, as she passed through the large hall which had just been swept and put in order, where the half-drawn green damask curtains made a soft twilight, she stopped sadly before the piano. It was like a dream, to think who had sat there but a few hours before. She looked long and thoughtfully at the keys which _he_ had touched last; then she softly closed the lid and took away the key, in jealous care lest some other hand should open it too soon. As she went away, she happened to return to its place a book of songs; an old leaf fell out, the copy of a Bohemian folk-song, which Franziska, and she too, had sung long ago. She took it up, not without emotion, for in her present mood the most natural occurrence might easily seem an oracle. And the simple verses, as she read them through again, brought the hot tears to her eyes:

"A pine-tree stands in a forest--who knows where?
A rose-tree in some garden fair doth grow;
Remember they are waiting there, my soul,
Till o'er thy grave they bend to whisper and to blow.

"Far in the pasture two black colts are feeding.
Toward home they canter when the master calls;
They shall go slowly with thee to thy grave,
Perchance ere from their hoofs the gleaming iron falls."

* * * * *

ANNETTE ELIZABETH VON DROSTE-HÜLSHOFF

PENTECOST[34] (1839)

The day was still, the sun's bright glare
Fell sheer upon the Temple's beauteous wall
Withered by tropic heat, the air
Let, like a bird, its listless pinions fall.
Behold a group, young men and gray,
And women, kneeling; silence holds them all;
They mutely pray!

Where is the faithful Comforter
Whom, parting, Thou didst promise to Thine own?
They trust Thy word which cannot err,
But sad and full of fear the time has grown.
The hour draws nigh; for forty days
And forty wakeful nights toward Thee we've thrown
Our weeping gaze.

Where is He? Hour on hour doth steal,
And minute after minute swells the doubt.
Where doth He bide? And though a seal
Be on the mouth, the soul must yet speak out.
Hot winds blow, in the sandy lake
The panting tiger moans and rolls about,
Parched is the snake.

But hark! a murmur rises now,
Swelling and swelling like a storm's advance,
Yet standing grass-blades do not bow,
And the still palm-tree listens in a trance.
Why seem these men to quake with fear
While each on other casts a wondering glance?
Behold! 'Tis here!

'Tis here, 'tis here! the quivering light
Rests on each head; what floods of ecstasy
Throng in our veins with wondrous might!
The future dawns; the flood-gates open free;
Resistless pours the mighty Word;
Now as a herald's call, now whisperingly,
Its tone is heard.

Oh Light, oh Comforter, but there
Alas! and but to them art Thou revealed
And not to us, not everywhere
Where drooping souls for comfort have appealed!
I yearn for day that never breaks;
Oh shine, before this eye is wholly sealed,
Which weeps and wakes.

* * * * *

THE HOUSE IN THE HEATH[35] (1841)

Beneath yon fir trees in the west,
The sunset round it glowing,
A cottage lies like bird on nest,
With thatch roof hardly showing.

And there across the window-sill
Leans out a white-starred heifer;
She snorts and stamps; then breathes her fill
Of evening's balmy zephyr.

Near-by reposes, hedged with thorn,
A garden neatly tended;
The sunflower looks about with scorn;
The bell-flower's head is bended.

And in the garden kneels a child,
She weeds or merely dallies,
A lily plucks with gesture mild
And wanders down the alleys.

A shepherd group in distance dim
Lie stretched upon the heather,
And with a simple evening hymn
Wake the still breeze together.

And from the roomy threshing hall
The hammer strokes ring cheery,
The plane gives forth a crunching drawl,
The rasping saw sounds weary.

The evening star now greets the scene
And smoothly soars above it,
And o'er the cottage stands serene;
He seems in truth to love it.

A vision with such beauty crowned,
Had pious monks observed it,
They straight upon a golden ground
Had painted and preserved it.

The carpenter, the herdsmen there
A pious choral sounding;
The maiden with the lily fair,
And peace the whole surrounding;

The wondrous star that beams on all
From out the fields of heaven--
May it not be that in the stall
The Christ is born this even?

* * * * *

THE BOY ON THE MOOR[36] (1841)

'Tis an eerie thing o'er the moor to fare
When the eddies of peat-smoke justle,
When the wraiths of mist whirl here and there
And wind-blown tendrils tussle,
When every step starts a hidden spring
And the trodden moss-tufts hiss and sing
'Tis an eerie thing o'er the moor to fare
When the tangled reed-beds rustle.

The child with his primer sets out alone
And speeds as if he were hunted,
The wind goes by with a hollow moan--
There's a noise in the hedge-row stunted.
'Tis the turf-digger's ghost, near-by he dwells,
And for drink his master's turf he sells.
"Whoo! whoo!" comes a sound like a stray cow's groan;
The poor boy's courage is daunted.

Then stumps loom up beside the ditch,
Uncannily nod the bushes,
The boy running on, each nerve a twitch,
Through a jungle of spear-grass pushes.
And where it trickles and crackles apace
Is the Spinner's unholy hiding-place,
The home of the cursèd Spinning-witch
Who turns her wheel 'mid the rushes.

On, ever on, goes the fearsome rout,
In pursuit through that region fenny,
At each wild stride the bubbles burst out,
And the sounds from beneath are many.
Until at length from the midst of the din
Comes the squeak of a spectral violin,
That must be the rascally fiddler lout
Who ran off with the bridal penny!

The turf splits open, and from the hole
Bursts forth an unhappy sighing,
"Alas, alas, for my wretched soul!"
'Tis poor damned Margaret crying!
The lad he leaps like a wounded deer,
And were not his guardian angel near
Some digger might find in a marshy knoll
Where his little bleached bones were lying.

But the ground grows firmer beneath his feet,
And there from over the meadow
A lamp is flickering homely-sweet;
The boy at the edge of the shadow
Looks back as he pauses to take his breath,
And in his glance is the fear of death.
'Twas eerie there 'mid the sedge and peat,
Ah, that was a place to dread, O!

* * * * *

ON THE TOWER[37] (1842)

I stand aloft on the balcony,
The starlings around me crying,
And let like maenad my hair stream free
To the storm o'er the ramparts flying.
Oh headlong wind, on this narrow ledge
I would I could try thy muscle
And, breast to breast, two steps from the edge,
Fight it out in a deadly tussle.

Beneath me I see, like hounds at play,
How billow on billow dashes;
Yea, tossing aloft the glittering spray,
The fierce throng hisses and clashes.
Oh, might I leap into the raging flood
And urge on the pack to harry

The hidden glades of the coral wood,
For the walrus, a worthy quarry!
From yonder mast a flag streams out
As bold as a royal pennant;
I can watch the good ship lunge about
From this tower of which I am tenant;
But oh, might I be in the battling ship,
Might I seize the rudder and steer her,
How gay o'er the foaming reef we'd slip
Like the sea-gulls circling near her!

Were I a hunter wandering free,
Or a soldier in some sort of fashion,
Or if I at least a man might be,
The heav'ns would grant me my passion.

But now I must sit as fine and still
As a child in its best of dresses,
And only in secret may have my will
And give to the wind my tresses.

* * * * *

THE DESOLATE HOUSE[38] (1842)

Deep in a dell a woodsman's house
Has sunk in wild dilapidation;
There buried under vines and boughs
I often sit in contemplation.
So dense the tangle that the day
Through heavy lashes can but glimmer;
The rocky cleft is rendered dimmer
By overshadowing tree-trunks gray.

Within that dell I love to hear
The flies with their tumultuous humming,
And solitary beetles near
Amid the bushes softly drumming.

And when the trickling cliffs of slate
The color from the sunset borrow,
Methinks an eye all red with sorrow
Looks down on me disconsolate.

The arbor peak with jagged edge
Wears many a vine-shoot long and meagre
And from the moss beneath the hedge
Creep forth carnations, nowise eager.
There from the moist cliff overhead
The muddy drippings oft bedew them,
Then creep in lazy streamlets through them
To sink within a fennel-bed.

Along the roof o'ergrown with moss
Has many a tuft of thatch projected,
A spider-web is built across
The window-jamb, else unprotected;
The wing of a gleaming dragon-fly
Hangs in it like some petal tender,
The body armed in golden splendor
Lies headless on the sill near-by.

A butterfly sometimes may chance
In heedless play to flutter hither
And stop in momentary trance
Where the narcissus blossoms wither;
A dove that through the grove has flown
Above this dell no more will utter
Her coo, one can but hear her flutter
And see her shadow on the stone.

And in the fireplace where the snow
Each winter down the chimney dashes
A mass of bell-capped toad-stools grow
On viscid heaps of moldering ashes.
High on a peg above the rest
A hank of rope-yarn limply dangles
Like rotted hair, and in the tangles
The swallow built her last year's nest.

An old dog-collar set with bells
Swings from a hook by clasp and tether,
With rude embroidery that spells
"Diana" worked upon the leather.
A flute too, when the woodsman died,
The men who dug his grave forgot here;
The dog, his only friend, they shot here
And laid her by her master's side.

But while I sit in reverie,
A field-mouse near me shrilly crying,
The squirrel barking from his tree,
And from the marsh the frogs replying--
Then eerie shudders o'er me shoot,
As if I caught from out the dingle
Diana's bells once more a-jingle
And echoes of the dead man's flute.

* * * * *

THE JEW'S BEECH-TREE (1841)

BY ANNETTE ELIZABETH VON DROSTE-HÜLSHOFF

TRANSLATED BY LILLIE WINTER, A.B.

Frederick Mergel, born in 1738, was the son of a so-called _Halbmeier_ or property holder of low station in the village of B., which, however badly built and smoky it may be, still engrosses the eye of every traveler by the extremely picturesque beauty of its situation in a green woody ravine of an important and historically noteworthy mountain chain. The little country to which it belonged was, at that time, one of those secluded corners of the earth, without trade or manufacturing, without highways, where a strange face still excited interest and a journey of thirty miles made even one of the more important inhabitants the Ulysses of his vicinage--in short, a spot, as so many more that once could be found in Germany, with all the failings and the virtues, all the originality and the narrowness that can flourish only under such conditions.

Under very simple and often inadequate laws the inhabitants' ideas of right and wrong had, in some measure, become confused, or, rather, a second law had grown up beside the official, a law of public opinion, of custom, and of long uncontested privilege. The property holders, who sat as judges in the lower courts, meted out punishments or rewards in accordance with their own notions, which were, in most cases, honest. The common people did what seemed to them practicable and compatible with a somewhat lax conscience, and it was only the loser to whom it sometimes occurred to look up dusty old documents. It is hard to view that period without prejudice; since it has passed away it has been either haughtily criticised or foolishly praised; for those who lived through it are blinded by too many precious recollections, and the newer generation does not understand it. This much, however, one may assert, that the shell was weaker, the kernel stronger, crime more frequent, want of principle rarer. For he who acts according to his convictions, be they ever so faulty, can never be entirely debased; whereas nothing kills the soul more surely than appealing to the written law when it is at variance with one's own sense of what is right.

The inhabitants of the little country of which we speak, being more restless and enterprising than their neighbors, certain features of life came out more sharply here than would have been the case elsewhere under like conditions. Wood stealing and poaching were every-day occurrences, and in the numerous fights which ensued each one had to seek his own consolation if his head was bruised. Since great and productive forests constituted the chief wealth of the country, these forests were of course vigilantly watched over, less, however, by legal means than by continually renewed efforts to defeat violence and trickery with like weapons.

The village of B. was reputed to be the most arrogant, most cunning, and most daring community in the entire principality. Perhaps its situation in the midst of the deep and proud solitude of the forest had early strengthened the innate obstinacy of its inhabitants. The proximity of a river which flowed into the sea and bore covered vessels large enough to transport shipbuilding timber conveniently and safely to foreign ports, helped much in encouraging the natural boldness of the wood-thieves; and the fact that the entire neighborhood swarmed with foresters served only to aggravate matters, since in the oft-recurring skirmishes the peasants usually had the advantage. Thirty or forty wagons would start off together on beautiful moonlight nights with about twice as many men of every age, from the half-grown boy to the seventy-year-old village magistrate, who, as an experienced bell-wether, led the procession as proudly and self-consciously as when he took his seat in the court-room. Those who were left behind listened unconcernedly to the grinding and pounding of the wheels dying away in the narrow passes, and slept calmly on. Now and then an occasional shot, a faint scream, startled perhaps a young wife or an engaged girl; no one else paid any attention to it. At the first gray light of dawn the procession returned just as silently--every face bronzed, and here and there a bandaged head, which did not matter. A few hours later the neighborhood would be alive with talk about the misfortune of one or more foresters, who were being carried out of the woods, beaten, blinded with snuff, and rendered unable to attend to their business for some time.

In this community Frederick Mergel was born, in a house which attested the pretensions of its builder by the proud addition of a chimney and somewhat less diminutive window panes, but at the same time bespoke the miserable circumstances of its owner by its present state of dilapidation. What had once been a hedge around the yard and the garden had given way to a neglected fence; the roof was damaged; other people's cattle grazed in the pastures; other people's corn grew in the field adjoining the yard; and the garden contained, with the exception of a few woody rose bushes of a better time, more weeds than useful plants. Strokes of misfortune had, it is true, brought on much of this, but disorder and mismanagement had played their part. Frederick's father, old Herman Mergel, was, in his bachelor days, a so-called orderly drinker--that is, one who lay in the gutter on Sundays and holidays, but during the week was as well behaved as any one, and so he had had no difficulty in wooing and winning a right pretty and wealthy girl. There was great merrymaking at the wedding. Mergel did not get so very drunk, and the bride's parents went home in the evening satisfied; but the next Sunday the young wife, screaming and bloody, was seen running through the village to her family, leaving behind all her good clothes and new household furniture. Of course that meant great scandal and vexation for Mergel, who naturally needed consolation; by afternoon therefore there was not an unbroken pane of glass in his house and he was seen late at night still lying on his threshold, raising, from time to time, the neck of a broken bottle to his mouth and pitifully lacerating his face and hands. The young wife remained with her parents, where she soon pined away and died. Whether it was remorse or shame that tormented Mergel, no matter; he seemed to grow more and more in need of "spiritual" bolstering up, and soon began to be counted among the completely demoralized good-for-nothings.

The household went to pieces, hired girls caused disgrace and damage; so year after year passed. Mergel was and remained a distressed and finally rather pitiable widower, until all of a sudden he again appeared as a bridegroom. If the event itself was unexpected, the personality of the bride added still more to the general astonishment. Margaret Semmler was a good, respectable person, in her forties, a village belle in her youth, still respected for her good sense and thrift, and at the same time not without some money. What had induced her to take this step was consequently incomprehensible to every one. We think the reason is to be found in her very consciousness of perfection. On the evening before the wedding she is reported to have said: "A woman who is badly treated by her husband is either stupid or good-for-nothing; if I am unhappy, put it down as my fault." The result proved, unfortunately, that she had overestimated her strength. At first she impressed her husband; if he had taken too much, he would not come home, or would creep into the barn. But the yoke was too oppressive to be borne long, and soon they saw him quite often staggering across the street right into his house, heard his wild shouting within, and saw Margaret hastily closing doors and windows. On one such day--it was no longer a Sunday now--they saw her rush out of the house in the evening, without hood or Shawl, with her hair flying wildly about her head. They saw her throw herself down in the garden beside a vegetable bed and dig up the earth with her hands, then, anxiously looking about her, quickly pick off some vegetables and slowly return with them in the direction of the house, but, instead of entering it, go into the barn. It was said that this was the first time that Mergel had struck her, although she never let such an admission pass her lips. The second year of this unhappy marriage was marked by the coming of a son--one cannot say gladdened, for Margaret is reported to have wept bitterly when the child was handed to her. Nevertheless, although born beneath a heart full of grief, Frederick was a healthy, pretty child who grew strong in the fresh air. His father loved him dearly, never came home without bringing him a roll or something of that sort, and it was even thought he had become more temperate since the birth of the boy; at least the noise in the house decreased.

Frederick was in his ninth year. It was about the Feast of the Three Kings, a raw and stormy winter night. Herman had gone to a wedding, and had started out early because the bride's house was three miles away. Although he had promised to return in the evening, Mistress Mergel hardly counted on it because a heavy snowfall had set in after sunset. About ten o'clock she banked the fire and made ready to go to bed. Frederick stood beside her, already half undressed, and listened, to the howling of the wind and the rattling of the garret windows.

"Mother, isn't father coming home tonight?" he asked.

"No, child; tomorrow."

"But why not, mother? He promised to."

"Oh, God, if he only kept every promise he makes!--Hurry now, hurry and get ready."

They had hardly gone to bed when a gale started to rage as though it would carry the house along with it. The bed-stead quivered, and the chimney-stack rattled as if there were goblins in it.

"Mother, some one's knocking outside!"

"Quiet, Fritzy; that's the loose board on the gable being shaken by the wind."

"No; mother, it's at the door."

"It does not lock; the latch is broken. Heavens, go to sleep! Don't deprive me of my bit of rest at night!"

"But what if father should come now!"

His mother turned angrily in her bed. "The devil holds him tight enough!"

"Where is the devil, mother?

"Wait, you restless boy! He's standing at the door, ready to get you if you don't keep quiet!"

Frederick became quiet. A little while longer he listened, and then fell asleep. A few hours later he awoke. The wind had changed, and hissed like a snake through the cracks in the window near his ear. His shoulder was stiff; he crept clear under his quilt and lay still and trembling with fear. After a while he noticed that his mother was not asleep either. He heard her weep and moan between sobs: "Hail, Mary!" and "Pray for us poor sinners!" The beads of the rosary slid by his face. An involuntary sigh escaped him. "Frederick, are you awake?

"Yes, mother."

"Child, pray a little--you know half of the Paternoster already, don't you?-that God protect us from flood and fire."

Frederick thought of the devil, and wondered how he looked, anyway. The confused noise and rumbling in the house seemed strange to him. He thought there must be something alive within and without. "Listen, mother! I am sure I hear people knocking."

"Oh, no, child; but there's not an old board in the house that isn't rattling."

"Hark! Don't you hear? Someone's calling! Listen!"

His mother sat up; the raging of the storm subsided a moment. Knocking on the shutters, was distinctly audible, and several voices called: "Margaret!. Mistress Margaret! Hey there! Open the door!" Margaret ejaculated violently, "There, they're again bringing the swine home to me!"

The rosary flew clattering down on the wooden chair; hastily she snatched her clothes; she rushed to the hearth, and soon Frederick heard her walk across the hall with defiant steps. Margaret did not return; but in the kitchen there was a loud murmuring of strange voices. Twice a strange man came into the bedroom and seemed to be nervously searching for something. Suddenly a lamp was brought in; two men were supporting his mother. She was white as chalk and her eyes were closed; Frederick thought she was dead. He emitted a fearful scream, whereupon some one boxed his ear. That silenced him; and now he gradually gleaned from the remarks of the bystanders that his father had been found dead in the woods by his Uncle Franz Semmler and by Huelsmeyer, and was now lying in the kitchen.

As soon as Margaret regained consciousness she tried to get rid of the strangers. Her brother remained with her, and Frederick, who was threatened with severe punishment if he got out of bed, heard the fire crackling in the kitchen all night and a noise like stroking something back and forth, and brushing it. There was little spoken and that quietly, but now and then sobs broke out that went through and through the child, young as he was. Once he understood his uncle to say, "Margaret, don't take it so badly; we will all have three masses read, and at Eastertide we'll make together a pilgrimage to the Holy Virgin of Werl."

When the body was carried away two days later, Margaret sat on the hearth and covered her face with her apron. After a few minutes, when everything had become quiet, she mumbled, "Ten years, ten crosses! But we carried them together, after all, and now I am alone!" Then louder, "Fritzy, come here!"

Frederick approached her timidly; his mother had become quite uncanny to him with her black ribbons and her haggard, troubled face. "Fritzy," she said, "will you now really be good and make me happy, or will you be naughty and lie, or drink and steal?"

"Mother, Huelsmeyer steals."

"Huelsmeyer? God forbid! Must I spank you? Who tells you such wicked things?"

"The other day he beat Aaron and took six groschen from him."

"If he took money from Aaron, no doubt the accursed Jew had first cheated him out of it. Huelsmeyer is a respectable householder, and the Jews are all rascals!"

"But, mother, Brandes also says that he steals wood and deer."

"Child, Brandes is a forester."

"Mother, do foresters tell lies?"

Margaret was silent a moment, and then said, "Listen, Fritz! Our Lord makes the wood grow free and the wild game moves from one landowner's property into another's. They can belong to no one. But you do not understand that yet. Now go into the shed and get me some fagots."

Frederick had seen his father lying on the straw, where he was said to have looked blue and fearful; but the boy never spoke of it and seemed indisposed to think of it. On the whole, the recollection of his father had left behind a feeling of tenderness mingled with horror, for nothing so engrosses one as love and devotion on the part of a person who seems hardened against everything else; and in Frederick's case this sentiment grew with the years, through the experience of many slights on the part of others. As a child he was very sensitive about having any one mention his deceased father in a tone not altogether flattering to him--a cause for grief that the none too delicate neighbors did not spare him. There is a tradition in those parts which denies rest in the grave to a person killed by accident. Old Mergel had thus become the ghost of the forest of Brede; as a will o' the wisp he led a drunken man into the pond by a hair; the shepherd boys, when they crouched by their fires at night and the owls screeched in the hollows, sometimes heard quite clearly in broken accents his "Just listen, sweet Lizzie;" and an unprivileged woodman who had fallen asleep under the broad oak and been overtaken by nightfall, had, upon awakening, seen his swollen blue face peeping through the branches. Frederick was obliged to hear much of this from other boys; then he would howl and strike any one who was near; once he even cut some one with his little knife and was, on this occasion, pitilessly thrashed. After that he drove his mother's cows alone to the other end of the valley, where one could often see him lie in the grass for hours in the same position, pulling up the thyme.

He was twelve years old when his mother received a visit from her younger brother who lived in Brede and had not crossed his sister's threshold since her foolish marriage.

Simon Semmler was a short, restless, lean man with bulging fishlike eyes and a face altogether like a pike--an uncanny fellow, in whom exaggerated reserve often alternated with affability no less affected--who would have liked to pass for a shrewd intellect but was considered disagreeable instead. He was a quarrelsome chap, and everybody grew more anxious to avoid him the farther he advanced toward that age when persons of limited intellect are apt to make up in pretensions for what they lose in usefulness. Nevertheless poor Margaret was glad to see him, as she had no other relatives living.

"Simon, is that you?" she asked, trembling so that she had to steady herself on a chair. "You want to see how I am getting along with my dirty boy?"

Simon looked at her earnestly and clasped her hand. "You have grown old, Margaret."

Margaret sighed. "I've had much sorrow and all kinds of bad luck since I saw you."

"Yes, girl, marry at leisure, repent in haste! Now you are old and the child is small. Everything has its time. But when an old house is burning nothing will quench the fire." A flame, red as blood, flashed across Margaret's care-worn face.

"But I hear your son is cunning and smart," Simon continued.

"Well, rather, but good withal," replied Margaret.

"H'm, some one once stole a cow; he was called 'good' too. But he is quiet and thoughtful, isn't he? He doesn't run around with the other boys?"

"He is a peculiar child," said Margaret, as though to herself; "it's not a good thing."

Simon laughed aloud. "Your boy is timid because the others have given him a few good thrashings. Don't worry, the lad will repay them! Huelsmeyer came to see me lately; said the boy was like a deer."

What mother's heart does not rejoice when she hears her child praised? Poor Margaret seldom had this pleasure; every one called her boy malicious and close-mouthed. Tears started to her eyes. "Yes, thank God, his limbs are straight!"

"What does he look like?" continued Simon.

"He's a good deal like you, Simon, a good deal." Simon laughed. "Indeed, he must be a rare fellow; I'm getting better-looking every day. Of course he shouldn't be wasting his time at school. You let him pasture the cows? Just as well; what the teacher says isn't half true anyway. But where does he pasture? In the Telgen glen? In the Roder woods? In the Teutoburg forest? At night and early in the morning, too?"

"All through the night; but what do you mean?"

Simon seemed not to hear this. He craned his neck toward the door. "Look, there comes the youngster! His father's son! He swings his arms like your departed husband. And just see! The lad actually has my light hair!"

A proud smile spread secretly over the mother's face; her Frederick's blond curls and Simon's reddish bristles! Without answering she broke a branch from the hedge near-by and went to meet her son, apparently to hurry on a lazy cow, in reality, however, to whisper a few hasty, half threatening words into his ear; for she knew his obstinate disposition, and Simon's manner today had seemed to her more intimidating than ever. But everything ran smoothly beyond expectation; Frederick showed himself neither obdurate nor insolent-rather, somewhat embarrassed and anxious to please his uncle. And so matters progressed until, after half an hour's discussion, Simon proposed a kind of adoption of the boy, by virtue of which he was not to take him entirely away from his mother but was, nevertheless, to command the greater part of his time. And for this the boy was eventually to inherit the old bachelor's fortune, which, to be sure, couldn't have escaped him anyway. Margaret patiently allowed her brother to explain how great the advantages of the arrangement would be to her, how slight the loss. She knew best what a sickly widow misses in the help of a twelve-year-old boy whom she has trained practically to replace a daughter. But she kept silent and yielded to everything. She only begged her brother to be firm, but not harsh, with the boy.

"He is good," she said, "but I am a lonely woman; my son is not like one who has been ruled by a father's hand."

Simon nodded slyly. "Leave it to me; we'll get along all right; and, do you know what?--let me have the boy right now; I have two bags to fetch from the mill; the smallest is just right for him and that's how he'll learn to help me. Come, Fritzy, put your wooden shoes on!" And presently Margaret was watching them both as they walked away, Simon ahead with his face set forward and the tails of his red coat flying out behind him like flames, looking a good deal like a man of fire doing penance beneath the sack he has stolen. Frederick followed him, tall and slender for his age, with delicate, almost noble, features and long blond curls that were better cared for than the rest of his exterior appearance would have led one to expect; for the rest, ragged, sunburnt, with a look of neglect and a certain hard melancholy in his countenance. Nevertheless a strong family resemblance between the two could not be mistaken, and as Frederick slowly followed his leader, with his eyes riveted on the man who attracted him by the very strangeness of his appearance, involuntarily he reminded one of a person who with anxious interest gazes on the picture of his future in a magic mirror.

They were now approaching the place in the Teutoburg Forest where the Forest of Brede extends down the slope of the mountain and fills a very dark ravine. Until now they had spoken little. Simon seemed pensive, the boy absent-minded, and both were panting under their sacks. Suddenly Simon asked, "Do you like whiskey?" The boy did not answer. "I say, do you like whiskey? Does your mother give you some once in a while?"

"Mother hasn't any herself," answered Frederick.

"Well, well, so much the better! Do you know the woods before us?"

"It is the Forest of Brede."

"Do you know what happened here?" Frederick remained silent. Meanwhile they came nearer and nearer to the gloomy ravine.

"Does your mother still pray much?" Simon began again.

"Yes, she tells her beads twice every evening."

"Really? And you pray with her?"

Somewhat ill at ease, the boy looked aside slyly and laughed. "At twilight before supper she tells her beads once--then I have not yet returned with the cows; and again in bed--then I usually fall asleep."

"Well, well, my boy!" These last words were spoken under the sheltering branches of a broad beech-tree which arched the entrance to the glen. It was now quite dark and the new, moon shone in the sky, but its weak rays served only to lend a strange appearance to the objects they occasionally touched through an aperture between the branches. Frederick followed close behind his uncle; his breath came fast and, if one could have distinguished his features, one would have noticed in them an expression of tremendous agitation caused by imagination rather than terror. Thus both trudged ahead sturdily, Simon with the firm step of the hardened wanderer, Frederick unsteadily and as if in a dream. It seemed to him that everything was in motion, and that the trees swayed in the lonely rays of the moon now towards one another, now away. Roots of trees and slippery places where water had gathered made his steps uncertain; several times he came near falling. Now some distance ahead the darkness seemed to break, and presently both entered a rather large clearing. The moon shone down brightly and showed that only a short while ago the axe had raged here mercilessly. Everywhere stumps of trees jutted up, some many feet above the ground, just as it had been most convenient to cut through them in haste; the forbidden work must have been interrupted unexpectedly, for directly across the path lay a beech-tree with its branches rising high above it, and its leaves, still fresh, trembling in the evening breeze. Simon stopped a moment and surveyed the fallen tree-trunk with interest. In the centre of the open space stood an old oak, broad in proportion to its height. A pale ray of light that fell on its trunk through the branches showed that it was hollow, a fact that had probably saved it from the general destruction.

Here Simon suddenly clutched the boy's arm. "Frederick, do you know that tree? That is the broad oak." Frederick started, and with his cold hands clung to his uncle. "See," Simon continued, "here Uncle Franz and Huelsmeyer found your father, when without confession and extreme unction he had gone to the Devil in his drunkenness."

"Uncle, uncle!" gasped Frederick.

"What's coming over you? I should hope you are not afraid? Devil of a boy, you're pinching my arm! Let go, let go!" He tried to shake the boy off. "On the whole your father was a good soul; God won't be too strict with him. I loved him as well as my own brother." Frederick let go his uncle's arm; both walked the rest of the way through the forest in silence, and soon the village of Brede lay before them with its mud houses and its few better brick houses, one of which belonged to Simon.

The next evening Margaret sat at the door with her flax for fully an hour, awaiting her boy. It had been the first night she had passed without hearing her child's breathing beside her, and still Frederick did not come. She was vexed and anxious, and yet knew that there was no reason for being so. The clock in the tower struck seven; the cattle returned home; still he was not there, and she had to get up to look after the cows.

When she reëntered the dark kitchen, Frederick was standing on the hearth; he was bending forward and warming his hands over the coal fire. The light played on his features and gave him an unpleasant look of leanness and nervous twitching. Margaret stopped at the door; the child seemed to her so strangely changed.

"Frederick, how's your uncle?" The boy muttered a few unintelligible words and leaned close against the chimney.

"Frederick, have you forgotten how to talk? Boy, open your mouth! Don't you know I do not hear well with my right ear?" The child raised his voice and began to stammer so that Margaret failed to understand anything.

"What are you saying? Greeting from Master Semmler? Away again? Where? The cows are at home already. You bad boy, I can't understand you. Wait, I'll have to see if you have no tongue in your mouth!" She made a few angry steps forward. The child looked up to her with the pitiful expression of a poor, half-grown dog that is learning to sit up on his hind legs. In his fear he began to stamp his feet and rub his back against the chimney.

Margaret stood still; her glances became anxious. The boy looked as though he had shrunk together. His clothes were not the same either; no, that was not her child! And. yet--"Frederick, Frederick!" she cried.

A closet door in the bedroom slammed and the real Frederick came out, with a so-called clog-violin in one hand, that is, a wooden shoe strung with three or four resined strings, and in his other hand a bow, quite befitting the instrument. Then he went right up to his sorry double, with an attitude of conscious dignity and independence on his part, which at that moment revealed distinctly the difference between the two boys who otherwise resembled each other so remarkably.

"Here, John!" he said, and handed him the work of art with a patronizing air; "here is the violin that I promised you. My play-days are over; now I must earn money."

John cast another timid glance at Margaret, slowly stretched out his hand until he had tightly grasped the present, and then hid it stealthily under the flaps of his shabby coat.

Margaret stood perfectly still and let the children do as they liked. Her thoughts had taken another, very serious, turn, and she looked restlessly from one to the other. The strange boy had again bent over the coals with an expression of momentary comfort which bordered on simple-mindedness, while Frederick's features showed the alternating play of a sympathy evidently more selfish than good-humored, and his eyes, in almost glassy clearness, for the first time distinctly showed the expression of that unrestrained ambition and tendency to swagger which afterwards revealed itself as so strong a motive in most of his actions.

His mother's call aroused him from his thoughts which were as new as they were pleasant to him; again she was sitting at her spinning-wheel. "Frederick," she said, hesitating, "tell me--" and then stopped. Frederick looked up and, hearing nothing more, again turned to his charge. "No, listen!" And then, more softly: "Who is that boy I What is his name?"

Frederick answered, just as softly: "That is Uncle Simon's swineherd; he has a message for Huelsmeyer. Uncle gave me a pair of shoes and a huckaback vest which the boy carried for me; in return I promised him my violin; you see, he's a poor child. His name is John."

"Well?" said Margaret.

"What do you want, mother?"

"What's his other name?"

"Well--he has none, but, wait--yes, Nobody, John Nobody is his name. He has no father," he added under his breath.

Margaret arose and went into the bedroom. After a while she came out with a harsh, gloomy expression on her countenance. "Well, Frederick," she said, "let the boy go, so that he may attend to his errand. Boy, why do you lie there in the ashes? Have you nothing to do at home?" With the air of one who is persecuted the boy roused himself so hastily that all his limbs got in his way, and the clog-violin almost fell into the fire.

"Wait, John," said Frederick proudly, "I'll give you half of my bread and butter; it's too much for me anyhow. Mother always gives me a whole slice."

"Never mind," said Margaret, "he is going home."

"Yes, but he won't get anything to eat now. Uncle Simon eats at seven o'clock."

Margaret turned to the boy. "Won't they save anything for you? Tell me! Who takes care of you?"

"Nobody," stuttered the child.

"Nobody?" she repeated; "then take it, take it!" she added nervously; "your name is Nobody and nobody takes care of you. May God have pity on you! And now see that you get away! Frederick, do not go with him, do you hear? Do not go through the village together."

"Why, I only want to get wood out of the shed," answered Frederick. When both boys had gone Margaret sank down in a chair and clasped her hands with an expression of the deepest grief. Her face was as white as a sheet. "A false oath, a false oath!" she groaned. "Simon, Simon, how will you acquit yourself before God!"

Thus she sat for a while, motionless, with her lips shut tight, as if completely unconscious. Frederick stood before her and had already spoken to her twice.

"What's the matter? What do you want?" she cried, starting up.

"I have some money for you," he said, more astonished than frightened.

"Money? Where?" She moved and the little coin fell jingling to the floor. Frederick picked it up.

"Money from Uncle Simon, because I helped him work. Now I can earn something for myself."

"Money from Simon! Throw it away, away!--No, give it to the poor. But no, keep it!" she whispered, scarcely audibly. "We are poor ourselves; who knows whether we won't be reduced to begging!"

"I am to go back to Uncle Monday and help him with the sowing."

"You go back to him? No, no, never!" She embraced her child wildly. "Yet," she added, and a stream of tears suddenly rushed down her sunken cheeks, "go; he is the only brother I have, and slander is great! But keep God before your eyes, and do not forget your daily prayers!" Margaret pressed her face against the wall and wept aloud. She had borne many a heavy burden--her husband's harsh treatment, and, worse than that, his death; and it was a bitter moment when the widow was compelled top give over to a creditor the usufruct of her last piece of arable land, and her own plow stood useless in front of her house. But as badly as this she had never felt before; nevertheless, after she had wept through an evening and lain awake a whole night, she made herself believe that her brother Simon could not be so godless, that the boy certainly did not belong to him; for resemblances can prove nothing. Why, had she not herself lost a little sister forty years ago who looked exactly like the strange peddler! One is willing to believe almost anything when one has so little, and is liable to lose that little by unbelief!

From this time on Frederick was seldom at home. Simon seemed to have lavished on his nephew all the more tender sentiments of which he was capable; at least he missed him greatly and never ceased sending messages if some business at home kept him at his mother's house for any length of time. The boy was as if transformed since that time; his dreamy nature had left him entirely; he walked firmly, began to care for his external appearance, and soon to have the reputation of being a handsome, clever youth. His uncle, who could not be happy without schemes, sometimes undertook important public works--for example, road building, at which Frederick was everywhere considered one of his best workmen and his right-hand man; for although the boy's physical strength had not yet attained its fullest development, scarcely any one could equal him in endurance. Heretofore Margaret had only loved her son; now she began to be proud of him and even feel a kind of respect for him, seeing the young fellow develop so entirely without her aid, even without her advice, which she, like most people, considered invaluable; for that reason she could not think highly enough of the boy's capabilities which could dispense with such a precious means of furtherance.

In his eighteenth year Frederick had already secured for himself an important reputation among the village youth by the successful execution of a wager that he could carry a wild boar for a distance of more than two miles without resting. Meanwhile participation in his glory was about the only advantage that Margaret derived from these favorable circumstances, since Frederick spent more and more on his external appearance and gradually began, to take it to heart if want of money compelled him to be second to any one in that respect. Moreover, all his powers were directed toward making his living outside; quite in contrast to his reputation all steady work around the house seemed irksome to him now, and he preferred to submit to a hard but short exertion which soon permitted him to follow his former occupation of herding the cattle, although it was beginning to be unsuitable for his age and at times drew upon him ridicule. That he silenced, however, by a few blunt reprimands with his fist. So people grew accustomed to seeing him, now dressed up and jolly as a recognized village beau and leader of the young folks, and again as a ragged boy slinking along, lonely and dreamily, behind his cows, or lying in a forest clearing, apparently thoughtless, scratching the moss from the trees.

About this time, however, the slumbering laws were roused somewhat by a band of forest thieves which, under the name of the "Blue Smocks," surpassed all its predecessors in cunning and boldness to such an extent that even the most indulgent would have lost patience. Absolutely contrary to the usual state of affairs, when the leading bucks of the herd could always be pointed out, it had thus far been impossible, in spite of all watchfulness, to specify even one member of this company of thieves. Their name they derived from their uniform clothing which made recognition more difficult if a forester happened by chance to see a few stragglers disappear in the thicket. Like caterpillars they destroyed everything; whole tracts of forest-land would be cut down in a single night and immediately made away with, leaving nothing to be found next morning but chips and disordered heaps of brushwood. The fact that there were never any wagon tracks leading towards a village, but always to and from the river, proved that the work was carried on under the protection, perhaps with the coöperation, of the shipowners. There must have been some very skilful spies in the band, for the foresters could watch in vain for weeks at a time; nevertheless, the first night they failed, from sheer fatigue, to watch, the devastation began again, whether it was a stormy night or moonlight. It was strange that the country folk in the vicinity seemed just as ignorant and excited as the foresters themselves.

Of several villages it could be asserted with certainty that they did not belong to the "Blue Smocks," while no strong suspicion could be attached to a single one, since the most suspected of all, the village of B., had to be acquitted. An accident had brought this about--a wedding, at which almost every resident of this village had notoriously passed the night, while during this very time the "Blue Smocks" had carried out one of their most successful expeditions.

The damage to the forest, in the meanwhile, was so enormous that preventive measures were made more stringent than ever before; the forest was patrolled day and night; head-servants and domestics were provided with firearms and sent to help the forest officers. Nevertheless, their success was but slight, for the guards had often scarcely left one end of the forest when the "Blue Smocks" were already entering the other. This lasted more than a whole year; guards and "Blue Smocks," "Blue Smocks" and guards, like sun and moon, ever alternating in the possession of the land and never meeting each other.