Tales of the Caravan, Inn, and Palace Part 14

"Stupid stuff!" returned the Count of Zollern, as he rode off moodily, towards his castle.

"That is the Legend of the Hirsch-Gulden," concluded the compa.s.s-maker, "and said to be a true one. The landlord at Duerrw.a.n.gen, which is situated near the three castles, related it to one of my best friends, who often acted as guide through the Suabian Alps, and always put up at Duerrw.a.n.gen."

The guests applauded the compa.s.s-maker's story. "What curious things one hears in the world!" exclaimed the wagoner. "Really, I feel glad now that we did not spoil the time with cards; this is much better, and so interested was I in the story, that I can tell it to-morrow to my comrades without missing a single word of it."

"While you were telling your story, something came into my mind," said the student.

"Oh, tell it, tell it!" pleaded the compa.s.s-maker and Felix.

"Very well," replied he, "it makes no difference whether my turn comes now or later. Still, what I tell you must be considered in confidence, for the incidents are reported to have really occurred."

He changed his position to a more comfortable one, and was just about to begin his story, when the landlady put away her distaff and went up to her guests at the table. "It is time now, gentlemen, to go to bed,"

said she. "It has struck nine, and to-morrow will be another day."

"Well, go to bed then," said the student. "Set another bottle of wine on the table for us, and we won't keep you up any longer."

"By no means," returned she, fretfully; "so long as guests remain in the public-room, it is not possible for the landlady and servants to retire. And once for all, gentlemen, I must request you to go to your rooms; the time hangs heavy on me, and there shall be no carousing in my house after nine o'clock."

"What's the matter with you, landlady?" said the compa.s.s-maker in surprise. "What harm can it do you if we sit here even after you have gone to sleep? We are honest people, and won't run off with any thing, nor leave without paying. I won't be ordered around in this way in any tavern."

The woman's eyes flashed angrily. "Do you suppose I will change the rules of my house to suit every ragam.u.f.fin of a journeyman and every vagrant who pays me only twelve kreuzers? I tell you for the last time that I won't submit to this nuisance."

The compa.s.s-maker was about to make a retort, when the student gave him a significant look, winked at the others, and said: "Very well, if the landlady will have it so, then let us go up to our rooms. But we should like some candles to find our way."

"I cannot accommodate you in that," responded the landlady, sullenly; "the others can find their way in the dark, and this stump of a candle will suffice for your needs; it's all I have in the house."

The young gentleman got up and took the light without replying. The others followed him, the journeymen taking their bundles up with them to keep them near their side.

When they got up to the head of the stairs, the student cautioned them to step very lightly, opened his door, and beckoned them to come in.

"There can now be no doubt," said he, "that she means to betray us. Did you not notice how anxious she was to have us go to bed, and the means she took to prevent our remaining awake and together? She probably thinks that we will go to bed now, and thus play into her hands."

"But do you think that escape is impossible?" asked Felix. "In the forest one might more reasonably hope for rescue than in this room."

"These windows are also grated," said the student, vainly trying to wrench out one of the iron bars. "There is but one way by which we can get out, if we wish to escape, and that is by way of the front door; but I do not believe that they would let us out."

"We might make the attempt," said the wagoner; "I will see whether I can get into the yard. If it is possible then I will return for you."

The others a.s.sented to this proposal, so the wagoner took off his shoes and stole on tiptoe to the stair-case, while his companions listened anxiously from their room. He had got half-way down, safely and unnoticed, when suddenly a bull-dog rose up before him, placed its paws on his shoulders, and displayed a gleaming set of teeth right before his face. He did not dare to step either forward or backward, for at the least movement the dog would have seized him by the throat. At the same time the dog began to growl and bark, until the landlady and hostler appeared with lights.

"Where were you going? What do you want? cried the woman.

"I wanted to fetch something from my cart," answered the wagoner trembling in every limb; for as the door opened he had caught a glimpse of several dark suspicious faces of armed men in the room.

"You might have done that before you went upstairs," replied the woman crossly. "Come here, Fa.s.san! Jacob, lock the yard-gate and light the man out to his wagon."

The dog drew back his muzzle from the wagoner's face, removed his paws from the man's shoulders, and lay down once more across the stair-way.

In the meantime the hostler had secured the yard-gate, and now lighted the wagoner to his cart. An escape was not to be thought of. But when he came to consider what he should take from his wagon, he recollected that he had a pound of wax candles that were to be delivered in the next town. "That short piece of candle won't last more than fifteen minutes longer," said he to himself, "and yet we must have light!" He therefore took two wax candles from the wagon, concealed them in his sleeve, and also took his cloak as an excuse for his errand, telling the hostler that he needed it for a blanket.

Without further incident he got back to the room upstairs. He told his companions about the big dog that guarded the stair-case, of the glimpse he had caught of the armed men, and of all the precautions that had been taken to prevent their escape; and concluded with a groan: "We shall not survive the night."

"I don't think that," said the student. "I cannot believe that these people would be so foolish as to take the lives of four men for the sake of the few little things we have with us. But we had better not try to defend ourselves. For my part I shall lose the most; my horse is already in their hands, and it cost me fifty ducats only four weeks ago; my purse and my clothes I will give up willingly, for after all my life is dearer to me than all these."

"You talk sensibly," responded the wagoner. "Such things as you have can be easily replaced; but I am the messenger from Aschaffenburg, and have all kinds of goods in my wagon, and in the stable two fine horses, all I possess in the world."

"I can hardly believe that they would harm you," said the goldsmith; "the robbery of a messenger would cause an alarm to be given all through the country. But then I agree with what the young gentleman said: sooner would I give up every thing I possess, and bind myself with an oath never to speak of this matter and never to make complaint against them, than to attempt to defend my little property against people who have rifles and pistols."

During these words, the wagoner had taken out his wax candles. He stuck them on the table and lighted them. "Here let us await, in the name of G.o.d, whatever may happen to us," said he; "let us sit down together again, and banish sleep with stories."

"We will do that," answered the student; "and as the turn came to me down-stairs, I will now begin."

THE MARBLE HEART.

FIRST PART.

Whoever travels through Suabia should not neglect to take a peep into the Black Forest; not on account of the trees, although one does not find every-where such a countless number of magnificent pines, but because of the inhabitants, between whom and their outlying neighbors there exists a marked difference. They are taller than ordinary people, broad-shouldered and strong-limbed. It seems as though the balmy fragrance exhaled by the pines had given them a freer respiration, a clearer eye, and a more resolute if somewhat ruder spirit than that possessed by the inhabitants of the valleys and plains. And not only in their bearing and size do they differ from other people, but in their customs and pursuits as well. In that part of the Black Forest included within the Grand Duchy of Baden, are to be seen the most strikingly dressed inhabitants of the whole forest. The men let nature have her own way with their beards; while their black jackets, close-fitting knee breeches, red stockings, and peaked hats bound with a broad sheaf, give them a picturesque, yet serious and commanding appearance. Here the people generally are occupied in the manufacture of gla.s.s; they also make watches and sell them to half the world.

On the other side of the forest formerly dwelt a branch of this same race; but their employment had given them other customs and manners.

They felled and trimmed their pine trees, rafted the logs down the Nagold into the Neckar, and from the Upper-Neckar to the Rhine, and thence far down into Holland, and even at the sea coast these raftsmen of the Black Forest were known. They stopped on their way down the rivers at each city that lined the banks, and proudly awaited purchasers for their logs and boards, but kept their largest and longest logs to dispose of for a larger sum, to the Mynheers for s.h.i.+pbuilding purposes. These raftsmen were accustomed to a rough, wandering life. Their joy was experienced in floating down the streams on their rafts; their sorrow in the long walk back on the banks. Thus from the nature of their occupation they required a costume entirely different from that worn by the gla.s.s-makers on the other side of the Black Forest. They wore jackets of dark linen, over which green suspenders of a hand-breadth's width crossed over their broad b.r.e.a.s.t.s; black leather knee breeches, from the pockets of which projected bra.s.s foot-rules like badges of honor; but their joy and pride lay in their boots, the largest perhaps that ever came into vogue in any part of the world, as they could be drawn up two spans of the hand above the knee, so that the raftsmen could wade around in a yard of water without wetting their feet.

Up to quite a recent period, the inhabitants of this forest believed in spirits of the wood. But it is somewhat singular that the spirits who, as the legend ran, dwelt in the Black Forest, took sides in these prevailing fas.h.i.+ons. Thus, it was averred that the Little Gla.s.s-Man, a good little spirit, only three-and-a-half feet high, never appeared otherwise than in a peaked hat with a wide brim, as well as a jacket and knee breeches and red stockings; whereas, Dutch-Michel, who haunted the other part of the forest, was a giant-sized broad-shouldered fellow in the dress of a raftsman, and several people who had seen him, a.s.serted that they would not care to pay for the hides that would be used to make him a pair of boots. "And so tall," said they, "that an ordinary man would not reach to his neck."

With these spirits of the forest, a young man of this region is reported to have had a strange experience, which I will relate:

There lived in the Black Forest a widow by the name of Frau Barbara Munkin; her husband had been a charcoal-burner, and after his death she brought up her son to the same business. Young Peter Munk, a cunning fellow of sixteen, was much pleased to sit all the week round on his smoking piles of wood, just as he had seen his father do; or, all black and sooty as he was, and a scarecrow to the people, he would go down to the towns to sell his charcoal. But a charcoal-burner has plenty of time to think about himself and others; and when Peter Munk sat on his half-burned piles of wood, the dark trees about him and the deep stillness of the forest disposed him to tears and filled his heart with nameless longings. Something troubled him, and he could not well make out what it was. Finally he discovered what it was that had so put him out of sorts; it was his occupation. "A lonely black charcoal-burner,"

reflected he. "It is a miserable life. How respectable are the gla.s.smakers, the watchmakers, and even the musicians of a Sunday evening! And when Peter Munk, cleanly-washed and brushed, appears dressed in his father's best jacket with silver b.u.t.tons and with bran-new red stockings, and when one walks behind me and thinks, Who is that stylish-looking fellow? and inwardly praises my stockings and my stately walk--when he pa.s.ses by me and turns around to look, he is sure to say to himself: 'Oh, it's only Charcoal Pete!'"

The raftsmen on the other side of the forest also aroused his envy.

When these giants came over among the gla.s.s-makers, dressed in their elegant clothes, wearing at least fifty pounds of silver in b.u.t.tons, buckles, and chains, when they looked on at a dance, with legs spread wide apart, swore in Dutch, and smoked pipes from Cologne three feet long in the stem, just like any distinguished Mynheer--then was Peter convinced that such a raftsman was the very picture of a lucky man. And when these fortunate beings put their hands into their pockets and drew out whole handfuls of thalers and shook for half a-dozen at a throw--five guldens here, ten there--then he would nearly lose his senses, and would steal home to his hut in a very melancholy mood. On many holiday nights he had seen one or another of these timber merchants lose more at play than his poor father had ever been able to earn in a year.

Distinguished above all others were three of these men and Peter was uncertain which one of them was most wonderful. One was a large heavy man, with a red face, who pa.s.sed for the richest man of them all. He was called Stout Ezekiel. He went down to Amsterdam twice a year with timber, and always had the good fortune to sell it at so much higher a price than others could sell theirs, that he could afford to ride back home in good style, while the others had to return on foot. The second man of the trio was the lankest and leanest person in the whole forest, and was called Slim Schlurker. Peter envied him for his audacity; he contradicted the most respectable people, occupied more room when the inn was crowded than four of the stoutest, either by spreading his elbows out on the table, or by stretching his legs out on the bench, and yet no one dared to interfere with him, for he had an enormous amount of money. But the third was a handsome young man, who was the best dancer far and wide, and had, therefore, received the t.i.tle of King of the Ball. He had been a poor boy, and had been a servant to one of the lumber dealers, when he suddenly became very rich. Some said that he had found a pot of gold under an old pine tree, others a.s.serted that he had fished up a packet of gold pieces near Bingen on the Rhine, with the pole with which the raftsmen sometimes speared for fish; and that the packet was part of the great Nibelungen treasure that lies buried there. In short, he had suddenly become a rich man, and was looked upon by young and old with the respect due a prince. Charcoal Pete often thought of these three men, as he sat so lonely in the forest of pines. It is true that all three had a common failing that made them hated by the people; this was their inhuman avarice--their utter lack of sympathy for the poor and unfortunate; for the inhabitants of the Black Forest are a kind-hearted people. But you know how it goes in the world; if they were hated on account of their avarice, they yet commanded deference by virtue of their money; for who but they could throw away thalers as if one had only to shake them down from the pines?

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"I won't stand this much longer," said Peter, dejectedly, to himself one day; for the day before had been a holiday, and all the people had been down to the inn. "If I don't make a strike pretty soon, I shall make away with myself. Oh, if I were only as rich and respectable as the Stout Ezekiel, or so bold and mighty as the Slim Schlurker, or as famous and as well able to throw thalers to the fiddlers as the King of the Ball! Where can the fellow get his money?" He thought over all the ways by which one could make money, but none of them suited him.

Finally there occurred to him the traditions of people who had become rich through the aid of Dutch Michel and the Little Gla.s.s-Man. During his father's life-time, other poor people often came to visit them, and Peter had heard them talk by the hour of rich people and of the way their riches were acquired. The name of the Little Gla.s.s-Man was often mentioned in these conversations, as one who had helped these rich men to their wealth; and Peter could almost remember the verse that had to be spoken at the Tannenbuehl in the centre of the forest in order to summon him. It ran thus:

"Schatzhauser im grunen Tannenwald, Bis schon viel' hundert Jahre alt, Dir gehort all' Land wo Tannen stehn--"

But strain his memory as he would, he could not recall another line. He often debated within himself whether he should not ask this or that old man what the rest of the rhyme was, but was held back by a certain dread of betraying his thoughts--and then, too, the tradition of the Gla.s.s-Man could not be very widely known, and the rhyme must be known to but very few, for there were not many rich people in the forest; and, strangest of all, why had not his father and the other poor people tried their luck? He finally led his mother into speaking about the Little Gla.s.s-Man; but she only told him what he knew before, and knew only the first line of the rhyme, although she did add afterwards that the spirit only showed himself to people who were born on a Sunday between eleven and two o'clock. In that respect, she told him, he would fill the requirements, if he could only remember the verse; as he was born on a Sunday noon.

When Charcoal Pete heard this, he was almost beside himself with joy at the thought of undertaking this adventure. It appeared to him sufficient that he knew a part of the verse, and that he was born on a Sunday; so he thought that the Gla.s.s-Man would appear to him.

Therefore, after he had sold his charcoal one day, he did not kindle any more fires, but put on his father's best jacket, his new red stockings and his Sunday hat, grasped his black-thorn cane, and bade good-bye to his mother, saying: "I must go to town on business; we shall soon have to draw lots again to see who shall serve in the army, and I will once more call the justice's attention to the fact that I am the only son of a widow."