Translations from the German Part 8

Nevertheless, these alarming symptoms, which the medical gentleman considered as so many heralds announcing the approach of a malignant distemper, appeared to be nothing more than the consequences of a bad night's-rest; for the patient having taken her _siesta_ about noon, found herself, to the Israelite's astonishment, out of danger in the evening; needed no more drugs, and by the orders of her aesculapius was required merely to keep quiet for a day or two. This s.p.a.ce she employed in maturely deliberating her intrigue, and devising ways and means for fulfilling the demands of the _Mus.h.i.+rumi_. She was diligently occupied, inventing, proving, choosing and rejecting. One hour fancy smoothed away the most impa.s.sable mountains; and the next, she saw nothing but clefts and abysses, from the brink of which she shuddered back, and over which the boldest imagination could not build a bridge. Yet on all these rocks of offence she grounded the firm resolution to obey the feelings of her heart, come what come might; a piece of heroism, not unusual with Mother Eve's daughters; which in the mean time they often pay for with the happiness and contentment of their lives.

The bolted gate of the Seraglio at last went up, and the fair Melechsala again pa.s.sed through it into the garden, like the gay Sun through the portals of the East. The Count observed her entrance from behind a grove of ivy; and there began a knocking in his heart as in a mill; a thumping and hammering as if he had just run a race. Was it joy, was it fear, or anxious expecting of what this visit would announce to him--forgiveness or disfavour? Who can unfold so accurately the heart of man, as to trace the origin and cause of every start and throb in this irritable muscle?

In short, Count Ernst did feel considerable palpitations of the heart, so soon as he descried the Princess from afar; but of their Whence or Why, he could give his own mind no account. She very soon dismissed her suite; and from all the circ.u.mstances it was clear that poetical anthology was not her business in the present case. She bent her course to the grove; and as the Count was not playing hide-and-seek with much adroitness or zeal, she found him with great ease. While she was still at some distance, he fell upon his knees with mute eloquence before her, not venturing to raise his eyes, and looked as ruefully as a delinquent when the judge is ready to pa.s.s sentence on him. The Princess, however, with a soft voice and friendly gesture, said to him: "Bostangi, rise and follow me into this grove." Bostangi obeyed in silence; and she having taken her seat, spoke thus: "The will of the Prophet be done! I have called on him three days and three nights long, to direct me by a sign if my conduct were wavering between error and folly. He is silent; and approves the purpose of the Ringdove to free the captive Linnet from the chain with which he toilsomely draws water, and to nestle by his side.

The Daughter of the Sultan has not disdained the _Mus.h.i.+rumi_ from thy fettered hand. My lot is cast! Loiter not in seeking the Iman, that he lead thee to the Mosque, and confer on thee the Seal of the Faithful.

Then will my Father, at my request, cause thee to grow as the Nile-stream, when it oversteps its narrow banks, and pours itself into the valley. And when thou art governing a Province as its Bey, thou mayest confidently raise thy eyes to the throne: the Sultan will not reject the son-in-law whom the Prophet has appointed for his daughter."

Like the conjuration of some potent Fairy, this address again transformed the Count into the image of a stone statue; he gazed at the Princess without life or motion; his cheeks grew pale, and his tongue was chained. On the whole, he had caught the meaning of the speech: but how he was to reach the unexpected honour of becoming the Sultan of Egypt's son-in-law was an unfathomable mystery. In this predicament, he certainly, for an accepted wooer, did not make the most imposing figure in the world; but awakening love, like the rising sun, coats everything with gold. The Princess took his dumb astonishment for excess of rapture, and attributed his visible perplexity of spirit to the overwhelming feeling of his unexpected success. Yet in her heart there arose some virgin scruples lest she might have gone too fast to work with the ultimatum of the courts.h.i.+p, and outrun the expectations of her lover; therefore she again addressed him, and said: "Thou art silent, Bostangi? Let it not surprise thee that the perfume of thy _Mus.h.i.+rumi_ breathes back on thee the odour of my feelings; in the curtain of deceit my heart has never been shrouded. Ought I by wavering hope to increase the toil of the steep path, which thy foot must climb before the bridal chamber can be opened to thee?"

During this speech the Count had found time to recover his senses; he roused himself, like a warrior from sleep when the alarm is sounded in the camp. "Resplendent Flower of the East," said he, "how shall the tiny herb that grows among the thorns presume to blossom under thy shadow?

Would not the watchful hand of the gardener pluck it out as an unseemly weed, and cast it forth, to be trodden under foot on the highway, or withered in the scorching sun? If a breath of air stir up the dust, that it soil thy royal diadem, are not a hundred hands in instant employment wiping it away? How should a slave desire the precious fruit, which ripens in the garden of the Sultan for the palate of Princes? At thy command I sought a pleasant flower for thee, and found the _Mus.h.i.+rumi_, the name of which was as unknown to me, as its secret import still is.

Think not that I meant aught with it but to obey thee."

This response distorted the fair plan of the Princess very considerably.

She had not expected that it could be possible for a European not to combine with the _Mus.h.i.+rumi_, when presented to a lady, the same thought which the two other quarters of the world unite with it. The error was now clear as day; but love, which had once for all taken root in her heart, now dextrously winded and turned the matter; as a seamstress does a piece of work which she has cut wrong, till at last she makes ends meet notwithstanding. The Princess concealed her embarra.s.sment by the playing of her fair hands with the hem of her veil; and, after a few moments' silence, she said, with gentle gracefulness: "Thy modesty resembles the night-violet, which covets not the glitter of the sun, yet is loved for its aromatic odour. A happy chance has been the interpreter of thy heart, and elicited the feelings of mine. They are no longer hid from thee. Follow the doctrine of the Prophet, and thou art on the way to gain thy wish."

The Count now began to perceive the connection of the matter more and more distinctly; the darkness vanished from his mind by degrees, as the shades of night before the dawn. Here, then, the Tempter, whom, in the durance of the Grated Tower, he had expected under the mask of a horned satyr, or a black shrivelled gnome, appeared to him in the figure of winged Cupid, and was employing all his treacherous arts, persuading him to deny his faith, to forsake his tender spouse, and forget the pledges of her chaste love. "It stands in thy power," said he, "to change thy iron fetters with the kind ties of love. The first beauty in the world is smiling on thee, and with her the enjoyment of all earthly happiness!

A flame, pure as the fire of Vesta, burns for thee in her bosom, and would waste her life, should folly and caprice overcloud thy soul to the refusing her favour. Conceal thy faith a little while under the turban; Father Gregory has water enough in his absolution-cistern to wash thee clean from such a sin. Who knows but thou mayest earn the merit of saving the pure maiden's soul, and leading it to the Heaven for which it was intended?" To this deceitful oration the Count would willingly have listened longer, had not his good Angel twitched him by the ear, and warned him to give no farther heed to the voice of temptation. So he thought that he must not speak with flesh and blood any longer, but by one bold effort gain the victory over himself. The word died away more than once in his mouth; but at last he took heart, and said: "The longing of the wanderer, astray in the Libyan wilderness, to cool his parched lips in the fountains of the Nile, but aggravates the torments of his thirsty heart, when he must still languish in the torrid waste.

Therefore think not, O best and gentlest of thy s.e.x, that such a wish has awakened within me, which, like a gnawing worm, would consume my heart, since I could not nourish it with hope. Know that, in my home, I am already joined by the indissoluble tie of marriage to a virtuous wife, and her three tender children lisp their father's name. How could a heart, torn asunder by sadness and longing, aspire to the Pearl of Beauty, and offer her a divided love?"

This explanation was distinct; and the Count believed that, as it were by one stroke, and in the spirit of true knighthood, he had ended this strife of love. He conceived that the Princess would now see her over-hasty error, and renounce her plan. But here he was exceedingly mistaken. The Princess could not bring herself to think that the Count, a young blooming man, could be without eyes for her; she knew that she was lovely; and this frank exposition of the state of his heart made no impression on her whatever. According to the fas.h.i.+on of her country, she had no thought of appropriating to herself the sole possession of it; for, in the parabolic sport of the Seraglio, she had often heard, that man's love is like a thread of silk, which may be split and parted, so that every filament shall still remain a whole. In truth, a sensible similitude; which the wit of our Occidental ladies has never yet lighted on! Her father's Harem, had also, from her earliest years, set before her numerous instances of sociality in love; the favourites of the Sultan lived there with one another in the kindest unity.

"Thou namest me the Flower of the World," replied the Princess; "but behold, in this garden there are many flowers blossoming beside me, to delight eye and heart by their variety of loveliness; nor do I forbid thee to partake in this enjoyment along with me. Should I require of thee, in thy own garden, to plant but a single flower, with the constant sight of which thy eye would grow weary? Thy wife shall be sharer of the happiness I am providing for thee; thou shalt bring her into thy Harem; to me she shall be welcome; for thy sake she shall become my dearest companion, and for thy sake she will love me in return. Her little children also shall be mine; I will give them shade, that they bud pleasantly, and take root in this foreign soil."

The doctrine of Toleration in Love has, in our enlightened century, made far slower progress than that of Toleration in Religion; otherwise this declaration of the Princess could not seem to my fair readers so repulsive, as in all probability it will. But Melechsala was an Oriental; and under that mild sky, Megaera Jealousy has far less influence on the lovelier half of the species than on the stronger; whom, in return, she does indeed rule with an iron sceptre.

Count Ernst was affected by this meek way of thinking; and who knows what he might have resolved on, could he have depended on an equal liberality of sentiment from his Ottilia at home, and contrived in any way to overleap the other stone of stumbling which fronted him,--the renunciation of his creed? He by no means hid this latter difficulty from the G.o.ddess who was courting him so frankly; and, easy as it had been for her to remove all previous obstacles, the present was beyond her skill. The confidential session was adjourned, without any settlement of this contested point. When the conference broke up, the proposals stood as in a frontier conference between two neighbouring states, where neither party will relinquish his rights, and the adjustment of the matter is postponed to another term, while the commissioners in the interim again live in peace with each other, and enjoy good cheer together.

In the secret conclave of the Count, the mettled Kurt, as we know, had a seat and vote; his master opened to him in the evening the whole progress of his adventure, for he was much disquieted; and it is very possible that some spark of love may have sputtered over from the heart of the Princess into his, too keen for the ashes of his lawful fire to quench. An absence of seven years, the relinquished hope of ever being re-united with the first beloved, and the offered opportunity of occupying the heart as it desires, are three critical circ.u.mstances, which, in so active a substance as love, may easily produce a fermentation that shall quite change its nature. The sagacious Squire p.r.i.c.ked up his ears at hearing of these interesting events; and, as if the narrow pa.s.sage of the auditory nerves had not been sufficient to convey the tidings fast enough into his brain, he likewise opened the wide doorway of his mouth, and both heard and tasted the unexpected news with great avidity. After maturely weighing everything, his vote ran thus: To lay hold of the seeming hope of release with both hands, and realise the Princess's plan; meanwhile, to do nothing either for it or against it, and leave the issue to Heaven. "You are blotted out from the book of the living," said he, "in your native land; from the abyss of slavery there is no deliverance, if you do not hitch yourself up by the rope of love. Your spouse, good lady, will never return to your embraces. If, in seven years, sorrow for your loss has not overpowered her and cut her off, Time has overpowered her sorrow, and she is happy by the side of another. But, to renounce your religion! That is a hard nut, in good sooth; too hard for you to crack. Yet there are means for this, too. In no country on Earth is it the custom for the wife to teach the husband what road to take for Heaven; no, she follows his steps, and is led and guided by him as the cloud by the wind; looks neither to the right hand nor to the left, nor behind her, like Lot's wife, who was changed into a pillar of salt: for where the husband arrives, there is her abode. I have a wife at home, too; but think you, if I were stuck in Purgatory, she would hesitate to follow me, and waft fresh air upon my poor soul with her fan? So, depend on it, the Princess will renounce her false Prophet. If she love you truly, she will, to a certainty, be glad to change her Paradise for ours."

The mettled Kurt added much farther speaking to persuade his master that he ought not to resist this royal pa.s.sion, but to forget all other ties, and free himself from his captivity. It did not strike him, that by his confidence in the affection of his wife, he had recalled to his master's memory the affection of his own amiable spouse; a remembrance which it was his object to abolish. The heart of the Count felt crushed as in a press; he rolled to this side and that on his bed; and his thoughts and purposes ran athwart each other in the strangest perplexity, till, towards morning, wearied out by this internal tumult, he fell into a dead sleep. He dreamed that his fairest front-tooth had dropped, out, at which he felt great grief and heaviness of heart; but on looking at the gap in the mirror, to see whether it deformed him much, a fresh tooth had grown forth in its place, fair and white as the rest, and the loss could not be observed. So soon as he awoke, he felt a wish to have his dream interpreted. The mettled Kurt soon hunted out a prophetic Gipsy, who by trade read fortunes from the hand and brow, and also had the talent of explaining dreams. The Count related his to her in all its circ.u.mstances; and the dingy wrinkled Pythoness, after meditating long upon it, opened her puckered mouth, and said: "What was dearest to thee death has taken away, but fate will soon supply thy loss."

Now, then, it was plain that the sage Squire's suppositions had been no idle fancies, but that the good Ottilia, from sorrow at the loss of her beloved husband, had gone down to the grave. The afflicted widower, who as little doubted of this tragic circ.u.mstance as if it had been notified to him on black-edged paper with seal and signature, felt all that a man who values the integrity of his jaw must feel when he loses a tooth, which bountiful Nature is about to replace by another; and comforted himself under this dispensation with the well-known balm of widowers: "It is the will of G.o.d; I must submit to it!" And now, holding himself free and disengaged, he bent all his sails, hoisted his flags and streamers, and steered directly for the haven of happy love. At the next interview, he thought the Princess lovelier than ever; his looks languished towards her, and her slender form enchanted his eye, and her light soft gait was like the gait of a G.o.ddess, though she actually moved the one foot past the other, in mortal wise, and did not, in the style of G.o.ddesses, come hovering along the variegated sand-walk with unbent limbs. "Bostangi," said she, with melodious voice, "hast thou spoken to the Iman?" The Count was silent for a moment; he cast down his beaming eyes, laid his hand submissively on his breast, and sank on his knee before her. In this humble att.i.tude, he answered resolutely: "Exalted daughter of the Sultan! my life is at thy nod, but not my faith. The former I will joyfully offer up to thee; but leave me the latter, which is so interwoven with my soul, that only death can part them." From this, it was apparent to the Princess that her fine enterprise was verging towards s.h.i.+pwreck; wherefore she adopted a heroical expedient, undoubtedly of far more certain effect than our animal magnetism, with all its renowned virtues: she unveiled her face.

There stood she, in the full radiance of beauty, like the Sun when he first raised his head from Chaos to hurl his rays over the gloomy Earth.

Soft blushes overspread her cheeks, and higher purple glowed upon her lips; two beautifully-curved arches, on which love was sporting like the many-coloured Iris on the rainbow, shaded her spirit-speaking eyes; and two golden tresses kissed each other on her lily breast. The Count was astonished and speechless; the Princess addressed him, and said:

"See, Bostangi, whether this form pleases thy eyes, and whether it deserves the sacrifice which I require of thee."

"It is the form of an Angel," answered he, with looks of the highest rapture, "and deserves to s.h.i.+ne, encircled with a glory, in the courts of the Christian Heaven, compared with which, the delights of the Prophet's Paradise are empty shadows."

These words, spoken with warmth and visible conviction, found free entrance into the open heart of the Princess: especially, the glory, it appeared to her, must be a sort of head-dress that would sit not ill upon the face. Her quick fancy fastened on this idea, which she asked to have explained; and the Count with all eagerness embraced this opportunity of painting the Christian Heaven to her as charming as he possibly could; he chose the loveliest images his mind would suggest; and spoke with as much confidence as if he had descended directly from the place on a mission to the Princess. Now, as it has pleased the Prophet to endow the fair s.e.x with very scanty expectations in the other world, our apostolic preacher failed the less in his intentions; though it cannot be a.s.serted that he was preeminently qualified for the missionary duty. But whether it were that Heaven itself favoured the work of conversion, or that the foreign tastes of the Princess extended to the spiritual conceptions of the Western nations, or that the person of this Preacher to the Heathen mixed in the effect, certain it is she was all ear, and would have listened to her pedagogue with pleasure for many hours longer, had not the approach of night cut short their lesson.

For the present, she hastily dropped her veil, and retired to the Seraglio.

It is a well-known fact, that the children of princes are always very docile, and make giant steps in every branch of profitable knowledge, as our Journals often plainly enough testify; while the other citizens of this world must content themselves with dwarf steps. It was not surprising, therefore, that the Sultan of Egypt's daughter had in a short s.p.a.ce mastered the whole synopsis of Church doctrine as completely as her teacher could impart it, bating a few heresies, which, in his inacquaintance with the delicate shades of faith, he had undesignedly mingled with it. Nor did this acquisition remain a dead letter with her; it awakened the most zealous wish for proselytising. Accordingly, the plan of the Princess had now in so far altered, that she no longer insisted on converting the Count, but rather felt inclined to let herself be converted by him; and this not only in regard to unity in faith, but also to the purposed unity in love. The whole question now was, by what means this intention could be realised. She took counsel with Bostangi, he with the mettled Kurt, in their nocturnal deliberations on this weighty matter; and the latter voted distinctly to strike the iron while it was hot; to inform the fair proselyte of the Count's rank and birth; propose to her to run away with him; instantly to cross the water for the European sh.o.r.e; and live together in Thuringia as Christian man and wife.

The Count clapped loud applause to this well-grounded scheme of his wise Squire; it was as if the mettled Kurt had read it in his master's eyes.

Whether the fulfilment of it might be clogged with difficulties or not, was a point not taken into view in the first fire of the romantic project: Love removes all mountains, overleaps walls and trenches, bounds across abyss and chasm, and steps the barrier of a city as lightly as it does a straw. At the next lecture, the Count disclosed the plan to his beloved catechumena.

"Thou reflection of the Holy Virgin," said he, "chosen of Heaven from an outcast people, to gain the victory over prejudice and error, and acquire a lot and inheritance in the Abodes of Felicity, hast thou the courage to forsake thy native country, then prepare for speedy flight. I will guide thee to Rome, where dwells the Porter of Heaven, St. Peter's deputy, to whom are committed the keys of Heaven's gate; that he may receive thee into the bosom of the Church, and bless the covenant of our love. Fear not that thy father's potent arm may reach us; every cloud above our heads will be a s.h.i.+p manned with angelic hosts, with diamond s.h.i.+elds and flaming swords; invisible indeed to mortal eye, but armed with heavenly might, and appointed to watch and guard thee. Nor will I conceal any longer, that I am, by birth and fortune, all that the Sultan's favour could make me; a Count, that is a Bey born, who rules over land and people. The limits of my lords.h.i.+p include towns and villages, palaces also and strongholds. Knights and squires obey me; horses and carriages stand ready for my service. In my native land, thou thyself, enclosed by no walls of a seraglio, shalt live and rule in freedom as a queen."

This oration of the Count the Princess thought a message from above; she entertained no doubts of his truth; and it seemed to please her that the Ringdove was to nestle, not beside a Linnet, but beside a bird of the family of the Eagle. Her warm fancy was filled with such sweet antic.i.p.ations, that she consented, with all the alacrity of the Children of Israel, to forsake the land of Egypt, as if a new Canaan, in another quarter of the world, had been waiting her beyond the sea. Confident in the protection of the unseen life-guard promised to her, she would have followed her conductor from the precincts of the Palace forthwith, had he not instructed her that many preparations were required, before the great enterprise could be engaged in with any hope of a happy issue.

Among all privateering transactions by sea or land, there is none more ticklish, or combined with greater difficulties, than that of kidnapping the Grand Signior's favourite from his arms. Such a masterstroke could only be imagined by the teeming fancy of a W*z*l,[25] nor could any but a Kakerlak achieve it. Yet the undertaking of Count Ernst of Gleichen to carry off the Sultan of Egypt's daughter, was environed with no fewer difficulties; and as these two heroes come, to a certain extent, into compet.i.tion in this matter, we must say, that the adventure of the Count was infinitely bolder, seeing everything proceeded merely by the course of Nature, and no serviceable Fairy put a finger in the pie: nevertheless, the result of both these corresponding enterprises, in the one as well as in the other, came about entirely to the wish of parties.

The Princess filled her jewel-box sufficiently with precious stones; changed her royal garment with a Kaftan; and one evening, under the safe-conduct of her beloved, his trusty Squire and the phlegmatic Water-drawer, glided forth from the Palace into the Garden, un.o.bserved, to enter on her far journey to the West. Her absence could not long remain concealed; her women sought her, as the proverb runs, like a lost pin; and as she did not come to light, the alarm in the Seraglio became boundless. Hints here and there had already been dropped, and surmises made, about the private audiences of the Bostangi; supposition and fact were strung together; and the whole produced, in sooth, no row of pearls, but the horrible discovery of the real nature of the case. The Divan of Dames had nothing for it but to send advice of the occurrence to the higher powers. Father Sultan, whom the virtuous Melechsala, everything considered, might have spared this pang, and avoided flying her country to make purchase of a glory, demeaned himself at this intelligence like an infuriated lion, who shakes his brown mane with dreadful bellowing, when by the uproar of the hunt, and the baying of the hounds, he is frightened from his den. He swore by the Prophet's beard that he would utterly destroy every living soul in the Seraglio, if at sunrise the Princess were not again in her father's power. The Mameluke guard had to mount, and gallop towards the four winds, in chase of the fugitives, by every road from Cairo; and a thousand oars were las.h.i.+ng the broad back of the Nile, in case she might have taken a pa.s.sage by water.

[25] J. K. Wetzel, author of some plays and novels; among the latter, of _Kakerlak_.--ED.

Under such efforts, to elude the far-stretching arm of the Sultan was impossible, unless the Count possessed the secret of rendering himself and his travelling party invisible; or the miraculous gift of smiting all Egypt with blindness. But of these talents neither had been lent him. Only the mettled Kurt had taken certain measures, which, in regard to their effect, might supply the place of miracles. He had rendered his flying caravan invisible, by the darkness of an unlighted cellar in the house of Adullam the sudorific Hebrew. This Jewish Hermes did not satisfy himself with practising the healing art to good advantage, but drew profit likewise from the gift which he had received by inheritance from his fathers; and thus honoured Mercury in all his three qualities, of Patron to Doctors, to Merchants, and to Thieves. He drove a great trade in spiceries and herbs with the Venetians, from which he had acquired much wealth; and he disdained no branch of business whereby anything was to be made. This worthy Israelite, who for money and money's worth, stood ready, without investigating moral tendencies, for any sort of deed, the trusty Squire had prevailed on, by a jewel from the casket of the Princess, to undertake the transport of the Count, whose rank and intention were not concealed from him, with three servants, to a Venetian s.h.i.+p that was loading at Alexandria; but it had prudently been hidden from him, that in the course of this contraband transaction, he must smuggle out his master's daughter. On first inspecting his cargo, the figure of the fair youth struck him somewhat; but he thought no ill of it, and took him for a page of the Count's. Ere long the report of the Princess Melechsala's disappearance sounded over all the city: then Adullam's eyes were opened; deadly terror took possession of his heart, so that his gray beard began to stir, and he wished with all his soul that his hands had been free of this perilous concern. But now it was too late; his own safety required him to summon all his cunning, and conduct this breakneck business to a happy end. In the first place, he laid his subterranean lodgers under rigorous quarantine; and then, after the sharpest of the search was over, the hope of finding the Princess considerably faded, and the zeal in seeking for her cooled, he packed the whole caravan neatly up in four bales of herbs, put them on board a Nile-boat, and sent them with a proper invoice, under G.o.d's guidance, safe and sound to Alexandria; where so soon as the Venetian had gained the open sea, they were liberated, all and sundry, from their strait confinement in the herb-sacks.[26]

[26] The invention of travelling in a sack was several times employed during the Crusades. Dietrich the Hard-bested, Markgraf of Meissen (Misnia), returned from Palestine to his hereditary possessions, under this incognito, and so escaped the snares of the Emperor Henry VI., who had an eye to the productive mines of Freyberg.--M.

Whether the celestial body-guard, with diamond s.h.i.+elds and flaming swords, posted on a gorgeous train of clouds, did follow the swift s.h.i.+p, could not now, as they were invisible, be properly substantiated in a court of justice; yet there are not wanting symptoms in the matter which might lead to some such conjecture. All the four winds of Heaven seem to have combined to make the voyage prosperous; the adverse held their breath; and the favourable blew so gaily in the sails, that the vessel ploughed the soft-playing billows with the speed of an arrow. The friendly moon was stretching her horns from the clouds for the second time, when the Venetian, glad in heart, ran into moorings in the harbour of his native town.

Countess Ottilia's watchful spy was still at Venice; undismayed by the fruitless toil of vain inquiries, from continuing his diets of examination, and diligently questioning all pa.s.sengers from the Levant.

He was at his post when the Count, with the fair Melechsala, came on land. His master's physiognomy was so stamped upon his memory, that he would have undertaken to discover it among a thousand unknown faces.

Nevertheless the foreign garb, and the finger of Time, which in seven years produces many changes, made him for some moments doubtful. To be certain of his object, he approached the stranger's suite, made up to the trusty Squire, and asked him: "Comrade, whence come you?"

The mettled Kurt rejoiced to meet a countryman, and hear the sound of his mother-tongue; but saw no profit in submitting his concerns to the questioning of a stranger, and answered briefly: "From sea."

"Who is the gentleman thou followest?"

"My master."

"From what country come you?"

"From the East."

"Whither are you going?"

"To the West."

"To what province?"

"To our home."

"Where is it?"

"Miles of road from this."

"What is thy name?"

"Start-the-game, that is my name. Strike-for-a-word, people call my sword. Sorrow-of-life, so hight my wife. Rise, Lig-a-bed, she cries to her maid. Still-at-a-stand, that is my man. Hobbletehoy, I christened my boy. Lank-i'-the-bag, I scold my nag. Shamble-and-stalk, we call his walk. Trot-i'-the-bog, I whistle my dog. Saw-ye-that, so jumps my cat.

Snug-in-the-rug, he is my bug. Now thou knowest me, with wife and child, and all my household."

"Thou seemest to me to be a queer fellow."

"I am no fellow at all, for I follow no handicraft."

"Answer me one question."