Kitabı oku: «Complete Short Works of George Meredith»
FARINA
By George Meredith
THE WHITE ROSE CLUB
In those lusty ages when the Kaisers lifted high the golden goblet of Aachen, and drank, elbow upward, the green-eyed wine of old romance, there lived, a bow-shot from the bones of the Eleven Thousand Virgins and the Three Holy Kings, a prosperous Rhinelander, by name Gottlieb Groschen, or, as it was sometimes ennobled, Gottlieb von Groschen; than whom no wealthier merchant bartered for the glory of his ancient mother-city, nor more honoured burgess swallowed impartially red juice and white under the shadow of his own fig-tree.
Vine-hills, among the hottest sun-bibbers of the Rheingau, glistened in the roll of Gottlieb’s possessions; corn-acres below Cologne; basalt-quarries about Linz; mineral-springs in Nassau, a legacy of the Romans to the genius and enterprise of the first of German traders. He could have bought up every hawking crag, owner and all, from Hatto’s Tower to Rheineck. Lore-ley, combing her yellow locks against the night-cloud, beheld old Gottlieb’s rafts endlessly stealing on the moonlight through the iron pass she peoples above St. Goar. A wailful host were the wives of his raftsmen widowed there by her watery music!
This worthy citizen of Cologne held vasty manuscript letters of the Kaiser addressed to him:
‘Dear Well-born son and Subject of mine, Gottlieb!’ and he was easy with the proudest princes of the Holy German Realm. For Gottlieb was a money-lender and an honest man in one body. He laid out for the plenteous harvests of usury, not pressing the seasons with too much rigour. ‘I sow my seed in winter,’ said he, ‘and hope to reap good profit in autumn; but if the crop be scanty, better let it lie and fatten the soil.’
‘Old earth’s the wisest creditor,’ he would add; ‘she never squeezes the sun, but just takes what he can give her year by year, and so makes sure of good annual interest.’
Therefore when people asked Gottlieb how he had risen to such a pinnacle of fortune, the old merchant screwed his eye into its wisest corner, and answered slyly, ‘Because I ‘ve always been a student of the heavenly bodies’; a communication which failed not to make the orbs and systems objects of ardent popular worship in Cologne, where the science was long since considered alchymic, and still may be.
Seldom could the Kaiser go to war on Welschland without first taking earnest counsel of his Well-born son and Subject Gottlieb, and lightening his chests. Indeed the imperial pastime must have ceased, and the Kaiser had languished but for him. Cologne counted its illustrious citizen something more than man. The burghers doffed when he passed; and scampish leather-draggled urchins gazed after him with praeternatural respect on their hanging chins, as if a gold-mine of great girth had walked through the awe-struck game.
But, for the young men of Cologne he had a higher claim to reverence as father of the fair Margarita, the White Rose of Germany; a noble maiden, peerless, and a jewel for princes.
The devotion of these youths should give them a name in chivalry. In her honour, daily and nightly, they earned among themselves black bruises and paraded discoloured countenances, with the humble hope to find it pleasing in her sight. The tender fanatics went in bands up and down Rhineland, challenging wayfarers and the peasantry with staff and beaker to acknowledge the supremacy of their mistress. Whoso of them journeyed into foreign parts, wrote home boasting how many times his head had been broken on behalf of the fair Margarita; and if this happened very often, a spirit of envy was created, which compelled him, when he returned, to verify his prowess on no less than a score of his rivals. Not to possess a beauty-scar, as the wounds received in these endless combats were called, became the sign of inferiority, so that much voluntary maiming was conjectured to be going on; and to obviate this piece of treachery, minutes of fights were taken and attested, setting forth that a certain glorious cut or crack was honourably won in fair field; on what occasion; and from whom; every member of the White Rose Club keeping his particular scroll, and, on days of festival and holiday, wearing it haughtily in his helm. Strangers entering Cologne were astonished at the hideous appearance of the striplings, and thought they never had observed so ugly a race; but they were forced to admit the fine influence of beauty on commerce, seeing that the consumption of beer increased almost hourly. All Bavaria could not equal Cologne for quantity made away with.
The chief members of the White Rose Club were Berthold Schmidt, the rich goldsmith’s son; Dietrich Schill, son of the imperial saddler; Heinrich Abt, Franz Endermann, and Ernst Geller, sons of chief burghers, each of whom carried a yard-long scroll in his cap, and was too disfigured in person for men to require an inspection of the document. They were dangerous youths to meet, for the oaths, ceremonies, and recantations they demanded from every wayfarer, under the rank of baron, were what few might satisfactorily perform, if lovers of woman other than the fair Margarita, or loyal husbands; and what none save trained heads and stomachs could withstand, however naturally manful. The captain of the Club was he who could drink most beer without intermediate sighing, and whose face reckoned the proudest number of slices and mixture of colours. The captaincy was most in dispute between Dietrich Schill and Berthold Schmidt, who, in the heat and constancy of contention, were gradually losing likeness to man. ‘Good coin,’ they gloried to reflect, ‘needs no stamp.’
One youth in Cologne held out against the standing tyranny, and chose to do beauty homage in his own fashion, and at his leisure. It was Farina, and oaths were registered against him over empty beer-barrels. An axiom of the White Rose Club laid it down that everybody must be enamoured of Margarita, and the conscience of the Club made them trebly suspicious of those who were not members. They had the consolation of knowing that Farina was poor, but then he was affirmed a student of Black Arts, and from such a one the worst might reasonably be feared. He might bewitch Margarita!
Dietrich Schill was deputed by the Club to sound the White Rose herself on the subject of Farina, and one afternoon in the vintage season, when she sat under the hot vine-poles among maiden friends, eating ripe grapes, up sauntered Dietrich, smirking, cap in hand, with his scroll trailed behind him.
‘Wilt thou?’ said Margarita, offering him a bunch.
‘Unhappy villain that I am!’ replied Dietrich, gesticulating fox-like refusal; ‘if I but accept a favour, I break faith with the Club.’
‘Break it to pleasure me,’ said Margarita, smiling wickedly.
Dietrich gasped. He stood on tiptoe to see if any of the Club were by, and half-stretched out his hand. A mocking laugh caused him to draw it back as if stung. The grapes fell. Farina was at Margarita’s feet offering them in return.
‘Wilt thou?’ said Margarita, with softer stress, and slight excess of bloom in her cheeks.
Farina put the purple cluster to his breast, and clutched them hard on his heart, still kneeling.
Margarita’s brow and bosom seemed to be reflections of the streaming crimson there. She shook her face to the sky, and affected laughter at the symbol. Her companions clapped hands. Farina’s eyes yearned to her once, and then he rose and joined in the pleasantry.
Fury helped Dietrich to forget his awkwardness. He touched Farina on the shoulder with two fingers, and muttered huskily: ‘The Club never allow that.’
Farina bowed, as to thank him deeply for the rules of the Club. ‘I am not a member, you know,’ said he, and strolled to a seat close by Margarita.
Dietrich glared after him. As head of a Club he understood the use of symbols. He had lost a splendid opportunity, and Farina had seized it. Farina had robbed him.
‘May I speak with Mistress Margarita?’ inquired the White Rose chief, in a ragged voice.
‘Surely, Dietrich! do speak,’ said Margarita.
‘Alone?’ he continued.
‘Is that allowed by the Club?’ said one of the young girls, with a saucy glance.
Dietrich deigned no reply, but awaited Margarita’s decision. She hesitated a second; then stood up her full height before him; faced him steadily, and beckoned him some steps up the vine-path. Dietrich bowed, and passing Farina, informed him that the Club would wring satisfaction out of him for the insult.
Farina laughed, but answered, ‘Look, you of the Club! beer-swilling has improved your manners as much as fighting has beautified your faces. Go on; drink and fight! but remember that the Kaiser’s coming, and fellows with him who will not be bullied.’
‘What mean you?’ cried Dietrich, lurching round on his enemy.
‘Not so loud, friend,’ returned Farina. ‘Or do you wish to frighten the maidens? I mean this, that the Club had better give as little offence as possible, and keep their eyes as wide as they can, if they want to be of service to Mistress Margarita.’
Dietrich turned off with a grunt.
‘Now!’ said Margarita.
She was tapping her foot. Dietrich grew unfaithful to the Club, and looked at her longer than his mission warranted. She was bright as the sunset gardens of the Golden Apples. The braids of her yellow hair were bound in wreaths, and on one side of her head a saffron crocus was stuck with the bell downward. Sweetness, song, and wit hung like dews of morning on her grape-stained lips. She wore a scarlet corset with bands of black velvet across her shoulders. The girlish gown was thin blue stuff, and fell short over her firm-set feet, neatly cased in white leather with buckles. There was witness in her limbs and the way she carried her neck of an amiable, but capable, dragon, ready, when aroused, to bristle up and guard the Golden Apples against all save the rightful claimant. Yet her nether lip and little white chin-ball had a dreamy droop; her frank blue eyes went straight into the speaker: the dragon slept. It was a dangerous charm. ‘For,’ says the minnesinger, ‘what ornament more enchants us on a young beauty than the soft slumber of a strength never yet called forth, and that herself knows not of! It sings double things to the heart of knighthood; lures, and warns us; woos, and threatens. ‘Tis as nature, shining peace, yet the mother of storm.’
‘There is no man,’ rapturously exclaims Heinrich von der Jungferweide, ‘can resist the desire to win a sweet treasure before which lies a dragon sleeping. The very danger prattles promise.’
But the dragon must really sleep, as with Margarita.
‘A sham dragon, shamming sleep, has destroyed more virgins than all the heathen emperors,’ says old Hans Aepfelmann of Duesseldorf.
Margarita’s foot was tapping quicker.
‘Speak, Dietrich!’ she said.
Dietrich declared to the Club that at this point he muttered, ‘We love you.’ Margarita was glad to believe he had not spoken of himself. He then informed her of the fears entertained by the Club, sworn to watch over and protect her, regarding Farina’s arts.
‘And what fear you?’ said Margarita.
‘We fear, sweet mistress, he may be in league with Sathanas,’ replied Dietrich.
‘Truly, then,’ said Margarita, ‘of all the youths in Cologne he is the least like his confederate.’
Dietrich gulped and winked, like a patient recovering wry-faced from an abhorred potion.
‘We have warned you, Fraulein Groschen!’ he exclaimed. ‘It now becomes our duty to see that you are not snared.’
Margarita reddened, and returned: ‘You are kind. But I am a Christian maiden and not a Pagan soldan, and I do not require a body of tawny guards at my heels.’
Thereat she flung back to her companions, and began staining her pretty mouth with grapes anew.
THE TAPESTRY WORD
Fair maids will have their hero in history. Siegfried was Margarita’s chosen. She sang of Siegfried all over the house. ‘O the old days of Germany, when such a hero walked!’ she sang.
‘And who wins Margarita,’ mused Farina, ‘happier than Siegfried, has in his arms Brunhild and Chrimhild together!’
Crowning the young girl’s breast was a cameo, and the skill of some cunning artist out of Welschland had wrought on it the story of the Drachenfels. Her bosom heaved the battle up and down.
This cameo was a north star to German manhood, but caused many chaste expressions of abhorrence from Aunt Lisbeth, Gottlieb’s unmarried sister, who seemed instinctively to take part with the Dragon. She was a frail-fashioned little lady, with a face betokening the perpetual smack of lemon, and who reigned in her brother’s household when the good wife was gone. Margarita’s robustness was beginning to alarm and shock Aunt Lisbeth’s sealed stock of virtue.
‘She must be watched, such a madl as that,’ said Aunt Lisbeth. ‘Ursula! what limbs she has!’
Margarita was watched; but the spy being neither foe nor friend, nothing was discovered against her. This did not satisfy Aunt Lisbeth, whose own suspicion was her best witness. She allowed that Margarita dissembled well.
‘But,’ said she to her niece, ‘though it is good in a girl not to flaunt these naughtinesses in effrontery, I care for you too much not to say—Be what you seem, my little one!’
‘And that am I!’ exclaimed Margarita, starting up and towering.
‘Right good, my niece,’ Lisbeth squealed; ‘but now Frau Groschen lies in God’s acre, you owe your duty to me, mind! Did you confess last week?’
‘From beginning to end,’ replied Margarita.
Aunt Lisbeth fixed pious reproach on Margarita’s cameo.
‘And still you wear that thing?’
‘Why not?’ said Margarita.
‘Girl! who would bid you set it in such a place save Satan? Oh, thou poor lost child! that the eyes of the idle youths may be drawn there! and thou become his snare to others, Margarita! What was that Welsh wandering juggler but the foul fiend himself, mayhap, thou maiden of sin! They say he has been seen in Cologne lately. He was swarthy as Satan and limped of one leg. Good Master in heaven, protect us! it was Satan himself I could swear!’
Aunt Lisbeth crossed brow and breast.
Margarita had commenced fingering the cameo, as if to tear it away; but Aunt Lisbeth’s finish made her laugh outright.
‘Where I see no harm, aunty, I shall think the good God is,’ she answered; ‘and where I see there’s harm, I shall think Satan lurks.’
A simper of sour despair passed over Aunt Lisbeth. She sighed, and was silent, being one of those very weak reeds who are easily vanquished and never overcome.
‘Let us go on with the Tapestry, child,’ said she.
Now, Margarita was ambitious of completing a certain Tapestry for presentation to Kaiser Heinrich on his entry into Cologne after his last campaign on the turbaned Danube. The subject was again her beloved Siegfried slaying the Dragon on Drachenfels. Whenever Aunt Lisbeth indulged in any bitter virginity, and was overmatched by Margarita’s frank maidenhood, she hung out this tapestry as a flag of truce. They were working it in bits, not having contrivances to do it in a piece. Margarita took Siegfried and Aunt Lisbeth the Dragon. They shared the crag between them. A roguish gleam of the Rhine toward Nonnenwerth could be already made out, Roland’s Corner hanging like a sentinel across the chanting island, as one top-heavy with long watch.
Aunt Lisbeth was a great proficient in the art, and had taught Margarita. The little lady learnt it, with many other gruesome matters, in the Palatine of Bohemia’s family. She usually talked of the spectres of Hollenbogenblitz Castle in the passing of the threads. Those were dismal spectres in Bohemia, smelling of murder and the charnel-breath of midnight. They uttered noises that wintered the blood, and revealed sights that stiffened hair three feet long; ay, and kept it stiff!
Margarita placed herself on a settle by the low-arched window, and Aunt Lisbeth sat facing her. An evening sun blazoned the buttresses of the Cathedral, and shadowed the workframes of the peaceful couple to a temperate light. Margarita unrolled a sampler sheathed with twists of divers coloured threads, and was soon busy silver-threading Siegfried’s helm and horns.
‘I told you of the steward, poor Kraut, did I not, child?’ inquired Aunt Lisbeth, quietly clearing her throat.
‘Many times!’ said Margarita, and went on humming over her knee
‘Her love was a Baron,
A Baron so bold;
She loved him for love,
He loved her for gold.’
‘He must see for himself, and be satisfied,’ continued Aunt Lisbeth; ‘and Holy Thomas to warn him for an example! Poor Kraut!’
‘Poor Kraut!’ echoed Margarita.
‘The King loved wine, and the Knight loved wine,
And they loved the summer weather:
They might have loved each other well,
But for one they loved together.’
‘You may say, poor Kraut, child!’ said Aunt Lisbeth. ‘Well! his face was before that as red as this dragon’s jaw, and ever after he went about as white as a pullet’s egg. That was something wonderful!’ ‘That was it!’ chimed Margarita.
‘O the King he loved his lawful wife,
The Knight a lawless lady:
And ten on one-made ringing strife,
Beneath the forest shady.’
‘Fifty to one, child!’ said Aunt Lisbeth: ‘You forget the story. They made Kraut sit with them at the jabbering feast, the only mortal there. The walls were full of eye-sockets without eyes, but phosphorus instead, burning blue and damp.’
‘Not to-night, aunty dear! It frightens me so,’ pleaded Margarita, for she saw the dolor coming.
‘Night! when it’s broad mid-day, thou timid one! Good heaven take pity on such as thou! The dish was seven feet in length by four broad. Kraut measured it with his eye, and never forgot it. Not he! When the dish-cover was lifted, there he saw himself lying, boiled!
“‘I did not feel uncomfortable then,” Kraut told us. “It seemed natural.”
‘His face, as it lay there, he says, was quite calm, only a little wrinkled, and piggish-looking-like. There was the mole on his chin, and the pucker under his left eyelid. Well! the Baron carved. All the guests were greedy for a piece of him. Some cried out for breast; some for toes. It was shuddering cold to sit and hear that! The Baroness said, “Cheek!”’
‘Ah!’ shrieked Margarita, ‘that can I not bear! I will not hear it, aunt; I will not!’
‘Cheek!’ Aunt Lisbeth reiterated, nodding to the floor.
Margarita put her fingers to her ears.
‘Still, Kraut says, even then he felt nothing odd. Of course he was horrified to be sitting with spectres as you and I should be; but the first tremble of it was over. He had plunged into the bath of horrors, and there he was. I ‘ve heard that you must pronounce the names of the Virgin and Trinity, sprinkling water round you all the while for three minutes; and if you do this without interruption, everything shall disappear. So they say. “Oh! dear heaven of mercy!” says Kraut, “what I felt when the Baron laid his long hunting-knife across my left cheek!”’
Here Aunt Lisbeth lifted her eyes to dote upon Margarita’s fright. She was very displeased to find her niece, with elbows on the window-sill and hands round her head, quietly gazing into the street.
She said severely, ‘Where did you learn that song you were last singing, Margarita? Speak, thou girl!’
Margarita laughed.
‘The thrush, and the lark, and the blackbird,
They taught me how to sing:
And O that the hawk would lend his eye,
And the eagle lend his wing.’
‘I will not hear these shameless songs,’ exclaimed Aunt Lisbeth.
‘For I would view the lands they view,
And be where they have been:
It is not enough to be singing
For ever in dells unseen!’
A voice was heard applauding her. ‘Good! right good! Carol again, Gretelchen! my birdie!’
Margarita turned, and beheld her father in the doorway. She tripped toward him, and heartily gave him their kiss of meeting. Gottlieb glanced at the helm of Siegfried.
‘Guessed the work was going well; you sing so lightsomely to-day, Grete! Very pretty! And that’s Drachenfels? Bones of the Virgins! what a bold fellow was Siegfried, and a lucky, to have the neatest lass in Deutschland in love with him. Well, we must marry her to Siegfried after all, I believe! Aha? or somebody as good as Siegfried. So chirrup on, my darling!’
‘Aunt Lisbeth does not approve of my songs,’ replied Margarita, untwisting some silver threads.
‘Do thy father’s command, girl!’ said Aunt Lisbeth.
‘And doing his command,
Should I do a thing of ill,
I’d rather die to his lovely face,
Than wanton at his will.’
‘There—there,’ said Aunt Lisbeth, straining out her fingers; ‘you see, Gottlieb, what over-indulgence brings her to. Not another girl in blessed Rhineland, and Bohemia to boot, dared say such words!—than—I can’t repeat them!—don’t ask me!—She’s becoming a Frankish girl!’
‘What ballad’s that?’ said Gottlieb, smiling.
‘The Ballad of Holy Ottilia; and her lover was sold to darkness. And she loved him—loved him–’
‘As you love Siegfried, you little one?’
‘More, my father; for she saw Winkried, and I never saw Siegfried. Ah! if I had seen Siegfried! Never mind. She loved him; but she loved Virtue more. And Virtue is the child of God, and the good God forgave her for loving Winkried, the Devil’s son, because she loved Virtue more, and He rescued her as she was being dragged down—down—down, and was half fainting with the smell of brimstone—rescued her and had her carried into His Glory, head and feet, on the wings of angels, before all men, as a hope to little maidens.
‘And when I thought that I was lost
I found that I was saved,
And I was borne through blessed clouds,
Where the banners of bliss were waved.’
‘And so you think you, too, may fall in, love with Devils’ sons, girl?’ was Aunt Lisbeth’s comment.
‘Do look at Lisbeth’s Dragon, little Heart! it’s so like!’ said Margarita to her father.
Old Gottlieb twitted his hose, and chuckled.
‘She’s my girl! that may be seen,’ said he, patting her, and wheezed up from his chair to waddle across to the Dragon. But Aunt Lisbeth tartly turned the Dragon to the wall.
‘It is not yet finished, Gottlieb, and must not be looked at,’ she interposed. ‘I will call for wood, and see to a fire: these evenings of Spring wax cold’: and away whimpered Aunt Lisbeth.
Margarita sang:
‘I with my playmates,
In riot and disorder,
Were gathering herb and blossom
Along the forest border.’
‘Thy mother’s song, child of my heart!’ said Gottlieb; ‘but vex not good Lisbeth: she loves thee!’
‘And do you think she loves me?
And will you say ‘tis true?
O, and will she have me,
When I come up to woo?’
‘Thou leaping doe! thou chattering pie!’ said Gottlieb.
‘She shall have ribbons and trinkets,
And shine like a morn of May,
When we are off to the little hill-church,
Our flowery bridal way.’
‘That she shall; and something more!’ cried Gottlieb. ‘But, hark thee, Gretelchen; the Kaiser will be here in three days. Thou dear one! had I not stored and hoarded all for thee, I should now have my feet on a hearthstone where even he might warm his boot. So get thy best dresses and jewels in order, and look thyself; proud as any in the land. A simple burgher’s daughter now, Grete; but so shalt thou not end, my butterfly, or there’s neither worth nor wit in Gottlieb Groschen!’
‘Three days!’ Margarita exclaimed; ‘and the helm not finished, and the tapestry-pieces not sewed and joined, and the water not shaded off.—Oh! I must work night and day.’
‘Child! I’ll have no working at night! Your rosy cheeks will soon be sucked out by oil-light, and you look no better than poor tallow Court beauties—to say nothing of the danger. This old house saw Charles the Great embracing the chief magistrate of his liege city yonder. Some swear he slept in it. He did not sneeze at smaller chambers than our Kaisers abide. No gold ceilings with cornice carvings, but plain wooden beams.’
‘Know that the men of great renown,
Were men of simple needs:
Bare to the Lord they laid them down,
And slept on mighty deeds.’
‘God wot, there’s no emptying thy store of ballads, Grete: so much shall be said of thee. Yes; times are changeing: We’re growing degenerate. Look at the men of Linz now to what they were! Would they have let the lads of Andernach float down cabbage-stalks to them without a shy back? And why? All because they funk that brigand-beast Werner, who gets redemption from Laach, hard by his hold, whenever he commits a crime worth paying for. As for me, my timber and stuffs must come down stream, and are too good for the nixen under Rhine, or think you I would acknowledge him with a toll, the hell-dog? Thunder and lightning! if old scores could be rubbed out on his hide!’
Gottlieb whirled a thong-lashing arm in air, and groaned of law and justice. What were they coming to!
Margarita softened the theme with a verse:
‘And tho’ to sting his enemy,
Is sweetness to the angry bee,
The angry bee must busy be,
Ere sweet of sweetness hiveth he.
The arch thrill of his daughter’s voice tickled Gottlieb. ‘That’s it, birdie! You and the proverb are right. I don’t know which is best,
‘Better hive
And keep alive
Than vengeance wake
With that you take.’
A clatter in the cathedral square brought Gottlieb on his legs to the window. It was a company of horsemen sparkling in harness. One trumpeter rode at the side of the troop, and in front a standard-bearer, matted down the chest with ochre beard, displayed aloft to the good citizens of Cologne, three brown hawks, with birds in their beaks, on an azure stardotted field.
‘Holy Cross!’ exclaimed Gottlieb, low in his throat; ‘the arms of Werner! Where got he money to mount his men? Why, this is daring all Cologne in our very teeth! ‘Fend that he visit me now! Ruin smokes in that ruffian’s track. I ‘ve felt hot and cold by turns all day.’
The horsemen came jingling carelessly along the street in scattered twos and threes, laughing together, and singling out the maidens at the gable-shadowed windows with hawking eyes. The good citizens of Cologne did not look on them favourably. Some showed their backs and gruffly banged their doors: others scowled and pocketed their fists: not a few slunk into the side alleys like well-licked curs, and scurried off with forebent knees. They were in truth ferocious-looking fellows these trusty servants of the robber Baron Werner, of Werner’s Eck, behind Andernach. Leather, steel, and dust, clad them from head to foot; big and black as bears; wolf-eyed, fox-nosed. They glistened bravely in the falling beams of the sun, and Margarita thrust her fair braided yellow head a little forward over her father’s shoulder to catch the whole length of the grim cavalcade. One of the troop was not long in discerning the young beauty. He pointed her boldly out to a comrade, who approved his appetite, and referred her to a third. The rest followed lead, and Margarita was as one spell-struck when she became aware that all those hungry eyes were preying on hers. Old Gottlieb was too full of his own fears to think for her, and when he drew in his head rather suddenly, it was with a dismal foreboding that Werner’s destination in Cologne was direct to the house of Gottlieb Groschen, for purposes only too well to be divined.
‘Devil’s breeches!’ muttered Gottlieb; ‘look again, Grete, and see if that hell-troop stop the way outside.’
Margarita’s cheeks were overflowing with the offended rose.
‘I will not look at them again, father.’
Gottlieb stared, and then patted her.
‘I would I were a man, father!’
Gottlieb smiled, and stroked his beard.
‘Oh! how I burn!’
And the girl shivered visibly.
‘Grete! mind to be as much of a woman as you can, and soon such raff as this you may sweep away, like cobwebs, and no harm done.’
He was startled by a violent thumping at the streetdoor, and as brazen a blast as if the dead were being summoned. Aunt Lisbeth entered, and flitted duskily round the room, crying:
‘We are lost: they are upon us! better death with a bodkin! Never shall it be said of me; never! the monsters!’
Then admonishing them to lock, bar, bolt, and block up every room in the house, Aunt Lisbeth perched herself on the edge of a chair, and reversed the habits of the screech-owl, by being silent when stationary.
‘There’s nothing to fear for you, Lisbeth,’ said Gottlieb, with discourteous emphasis.
‘Gottlieb! do you remember what happened at the siege of Mainz? and poor Marthe Herbstblum, who had hoped to die as she was; and Dame Altknopfchen, and Frau Kaltblut, and the old baker, Hans Topf’s sister, all of them as holy as abbesses, and that did not save them! and nothing will from such godless devourers.’
Gottlieb was gone, having often before heard mention of the calamity experienced by these fated women.
‘Comfort thee, good heart, on my breast,’ said Margarita, taking Lisbeth to that sweet nest of peace and fortitude.
‘Margarita! ‘tis your doing! have I not said—lure them not, for they swarm too early upon us! And here they are! and, perhaps, in five minutes all will be over!
Herr Je!—What, you are laughing! Heavens of goodness, the girl is delighted!’
Here a mocking ha-ha! accompanied by a thundering snack at the door, shook the whole house, and again the trumpet burst the ears with fury.
This summons, which seemed to Aunt Lisbeth final, wrought a strange composure in her countenance. She was very pale, but spread her dress decently, as if fear had departed, and clasped her hands on her knees.
‘The will of the Lord above must be done,’ said she; ‘it is impious to complain when we are given into the hand of the Philistines. Others have been martyred, and were yet acceptable.’
To this heroic speech she added, with cold energy: ‘Let them come!’
