Chapter I

Winter, hard and merciless as a tax collector, stalked threateningly before the dilapidated doors of Vienna's poor.

Back of the white Tanneries, not far from the magnificently built Franz Josef's bridge, where misery and dire poverty had made their dreary home for many decades, winter seemed harder and colder than elsewhere; for with the poor wretched creatures who dwell near these Tanneries, there is--as everybody knows--but little sympathy.

A sweet-looking girl, hardly fourteen years of age, came shivering with bent head, out of one of the poorest and dirtiest homesteads of the poverty-stricken district.

Her thin, threadbare gingham dress, torn in many places, exposed here and there the trembling little form beneath. Over it she wore an old, shabby-looking plaid shawl--apparently her mother's--which blown back now and again by the unceremonious wind, exposed to view an old violin. She held it as tight as if it were the only earthly treasure she possessed. A ribbon, that had once been blue, held up her knotted hair, and gave her the appearance of a gipsy. And as for her shoes, it would seem that only the upper part had preserved a right to the name; for her stiff-frozen little toes were almost on the ground.

She walked on and on, greatly oppressed, giving no heed to the cruel wind that played havoc with her fluttering curls. Her large black eyes, which held a singular fascination in their sparkling depths, were now filled with burning tears.

She was barely on the threshold of girlhood, but life in its unfathomable savagery, had already thrown its challenging gauntlet in her frightened, childish face. She felt instinctively that poor little outcast as she was, she must not shrink from battle, but struggle on as best she could either with cruel wind and weather or with bitter cold and want.

She had struggled bravely, never minding how fruitless her little efforts seemed. But the one thing to which she had never accustomed herself, and which made a storm of tears rain down her pale face, was the frightful apparition of the hollow-eyed skeleton, hunger--that hunger which now held sway over her sick mother's house.

A heavy, shuddering sigh broke from her lips. The utter need and helplessness of her mother and four smaller sisters, for days deprived of all necessaries of life, even of bread to satisfy their hunger, had driven her from the house, their cries and lamentations still ringing in her ears.

"Poor and friendless, with no one to care for us, and poor, dear mother lying ill," she moaned in a suffocating voice, wiping tears of agony from her white face. "It wrings my heart to see her and the little ones so hungry," she said to herself, sobbing aloud.

Near the Franz Josef's bridge she saw a little tavern. She timidly opened the door and entered, quickly producing the old violin. The instrument was the only bequest of her dear father, who had been a musician, and who had instructed her in this art, detecting at an early age her ardent love of study and thirst for a musical education.

Standing near the open door, she first played an obligato which she executed in masterly fashion, and then commenced to sing an old German song, so touchingly--knowing what was at stake--that the people in the tavern, and many passers-by who stopped in amazement at the door, gazed with wondering eyes at the ragged little dark-eyed girl hardly grown out of her baby shoes; and many of them, moved by deep pity, though poor themselves, tossed one, and some of them two coins into her apron. More they could not afford to give, lest their liberality might eventually expose them to the same plight.

Christine beamed with happiness. When her song was finished, she quickly took out of her apron her gathered treasure, counting it with shining eyes. Twenty kreutzers--she counted them again and again. Her stiff little fingers could not hold all at once, but her eyes, wet with happy emotion, were fastened on each of them, and her heart leaped within her at the sight. So many she had never before earned.

She folded her hands as if in fervent prayer, and lifted her dark eyes to Heaven in gratitude, thinking of the joy she would bring to her mother and half-starved sisters when she returned home with an apron-full of fresh baked rolls.

"Say,--Miss--won't ye let me carry yer--fiddle?"

The whisper sank into her ear. She turned hastily around, and saw a poorly-dressed shoemaker's apprentice standing near, gazing at her with his large blue eyes. In his hands he held an old pair of shoes.

He stood, quite silent, with enthusiasm for Christine's exquisite singing beaming from every feature. Presently, with a timid grin, he held out the pair of shoes.

"Here, Miss. I ain't got no money, but I'd like badly ter give you them shoes--er--ter show you that I like good singing. Yes, I do, an' ye sing mighty well," he said, looking admiringly at her and getting as red in the face as an over-ripe apple. "I'll surely get a good cuff or two from master for giving them away, but a shoemaker's boy is used to that, and doesn't care a rap if once in a while he takes a good piff, paff, pouff!" With this exclamation of Meyerbeerian bravado, he demonstrated the operatic knowledge of an up-to-date Viennese apprentice.

Christine looked at him with shining eyes. She understood only one thing--that he wanted to give her a pair of shoes, which, in her estimation seemed almost new. She beamed at him so gratefully with her large, dark eyes, that the embarrassed apprentice, who was about two years older than she, felt a hot wave running down his spine. Never had a lovelier face or sweeter eyes smiled so kindly at the bewildered boy.

"They're yourn, an'--ye'd better try 'em on--an' see if they'll fit," he stammered bashfully. This strange, heavenly shyness was a new sensation for the rough apprentice lad. Until this moment he had never known that there existed such an organ as a palpitating heart within his body.

And before Christine knew how, the new shoes were on her feet. Shoes without holes! Goodness! how could it have happened? And without holes!

"I hope I am not dreaming," she murmured to herself, her face aglow.

"Will ye let me go with ye?" asked the simple-hearted boy, his eyes downcast.

"No--not now; but--on Sunday you can come."

"To yer house? My name is Peter," he replied, greatly bewildered, as he could not think--to save his soul--of anything more important than his name.

"Yes, to my house; and then you can go with me and carry the violin," Christine answered with a sweet smile. But suddenly, ashamed of her boldness, she stopped and counted her kreutzers again.

Peter, however, looked at her with such admiration in his big blue eyes, that something like an electric spark shot through her. Such a happy sensation she had never felt; for no one had ever spoken such kind, encouraging words to her. A tinge of red leaped into her pale cheeks; there was a trembling pant in her voice, when, with averted face, she told him the street and number. Tucking her violin under her arm, she ran quickly up the street.

At the nearest bakery she stopped in order to buy the coveted rolls. But Peter, still under the charm of her large, expressive eyes, stood as if rooted to the ground, gazing after her and listening to the receding tap-tap of the little shoes on her feet, which he now realized belonged to some one else. He began to dread the expected punishment, which he knew would be meted out, not so much in curtain lectures as in striking actions, and for some time he stood stock still, racking his brain for an excuse to make their singular disappearance plausible. But his natural light-heartedness soon got the better of him. Shrugging his shoulders, and singing "Piff, paff, pouff, brennet sie," he rushed away, ready to meet his inexorable fate.