Black Forest Village Stories

by Berthold Auerbach

2.

THE TEACHER.

The schoolmaster of the village was a clear-headed man, but of a violent temper. His fancy and his strong point was music. He had but little influence on Ivo,--which is not surprising, as he had a hundred and twenty boys to attend to. The boy's best teacher--though you would not have thought it--was Nat, who could not write, and hardly read.

Even in towns the servants of a household may be called the "lesser Fates" of the family. In a village this is doubly the case, for the whole house is there a community of labor and repose. When in such close contact with their employers, bad servants become insupportable and are not long retained: one, therefore, who is good enough to be a servant of the family is generally good enough to be intrusted with the company and unconscious education of the children. Nat, at all events, was safe enough. In the crib and on the hay-loft he would erect his professional chair, answer the eager questions of his pupil or tell him wonderful stories.

Nat liked to be with the animals on which he waited; yet, though he could speak to them, and though the dun horse at least was as sensible as a man, they could not give a satisfactory answer to what was told them. Ivo, on the contrary, was always able and willing to clap his hands and say, "Oh, my!" So Nat was never tired of Ivo's company. As a colt runs by the side of the horse, bounding and frisking, so did Ivo skip around Nat wherever he went.

Sometimes they would sit quietly together on the straw, Nat telling the story of Firnut Pete, of the juniper-king, or of the charmed lady of Isenberg; while the muffled noise of the feeding horses and cows accompanied the story with a mysterious undertone. Firnut Pete--who wantonly pulled the crests from the young firs while they were still bleeding--is doomed, as a restless ghost, to haunt the heath of Eglesthal; and the juniper-king has one gray and one black eye, which exchange their colors every year. These stories Nat had to tell again and again; for children are not so spoiled as to be always craving for something new.

But these repetitions gave Nat some trouble; for as often as he had forgotten a little of the story, or wished to tell it in a different way, Ivo would say, "Why, that isn't the way it was." Nat would take him on his lap, saying, "You're right: I didn't exactly remember. There's a good many other things in my head, you see." Then Ivo would tell the rest of the story with great interest, so that Nat was delighted at the aptness of his pupil.

Often, also, they would speak of the fortunes of life, and things of which children brought up in towns have little idea or knowledge until they grow older,--of poverty and wealth, honesty and knavery, trade and barter, and so on; for the life of a village is a life in public: the inmost recesses of every house are known to all the inmates of every other.

One day, as Ivo was going home with his father from the place where the latter had been at work, "Father," he asked, "why didn't our Savior make the trees grow square and save all the trouble of chopping?"

"Why? You stupid boy, there wouldn't be any work for carpenters then, and no chips."

Ivo said nothing; and his father reflected that, after all, the boy had a good head, and that it was not right to speak so harshly to him. So he said, after some time, "Ivo, you must ask your teacher in school, or his reverence the parson, about such things: remember that."

This was well done in Valentine. Few parents are sufficiently shrewd and conscienscious to hit upon this only means of escape from their own ignorance.

But Ivo, instead of going to the schoolmaster or the parson, asked Nat, and received for answer, "Because trees are wanted for a great many things besides building."

Ivo was astonished: that, he thought, was an answer worth giving.

A consequence of his intimacy with Nat was that Ivo had no companion of his own age. But then Nat regarded him as his confidant, and would call him, caressingly, a "good old soul." In particularly-favored moments he would tell him of his dog Singout, who had been with him when he had watched the sheep, and who "had more wit than ten doctors." "I tell you," Nat asseverated, "Singout used to understand my secret thoughts: if he only looked at me he knew what I wanted immediately. Did you ever look at a dog right sharp? They often have a face on which grief is poured out, just as if they meant to say, 'I could cry because I can't talk with you.' When I looked at Singout then, he would bark and howl till my heart ached. If I said a single cross word to him, he wouldn't eat a morsel for a whole day. The dumb beast was too good for this world."

"Do dogs go to heaven?" asked Ivo.

"I don't know: there's nothing written about it."

What pleased Nat most of all was Ivo's love for animals; for both old people and children, who do not know exactly what to love, make animals the objects of their affections. These pets make no pretensions, exact no duties; and never contradict us, which is particularly distasteful to young and old children.

"What a poor beast piggy is!" said Ivo at one time: "she isn't in the world for any thing but to be killed: other beasts are of some use while they're alive." Nat nodded complacently. After a while he said, "Perhaps that's the reason a pig squeals worse than any other beast when they kill it."

His merry questions, remarks, and odd speeches gained for Ivo throughout the village the reputation of a "smart, quick-witted boy." Nobody surmised to whom this early activity of his mind was to be ascribed. The schoolmaster was displeased with him because he never went home from school quietly, as the rules prescribed, but always screamed and whooped like an Indian. Poor children! For hours they are compressed into themselves: when released at last, how can they be blamed for shaking themselves and greeting the free air to which they return? That is the reason that eleven o'clock in a village often seems to be the hour for the Wild Huntsman to make his round.

No one doubted that Ivo would be a good parson in time, he was so orderly and well-behaved. Valentine once boasted at the Eagle that his Ivo would go far ahead of George's Peter and John's Constantine.

We shall see.

3.

CHILD'S LOVE.

Next door to Valentine lived Mike Shackerle, a poor man, whose sole wealth was in his children, the youngest of whom was called Emmerence: the carpenter's wife was her godmother, and Emmerence spent almost all her time at. Valentine's house, ate and drank there, and only slept at home. She was of Ivo's age exactly, and the two children were inseparable. Although his ungallant schoolfellows called him "girl-runner," he stuck to Emmerence. They had a partnership in a lot of fruit they had buried in the hay-loft. Over this treasure they would often sit with quiet joy. Ivo showed himself as a man in being able to count up to a hundred. Emmerence listened devoutly and spoke the numbers after him. The damaged and the odd pieces were consumed in equal portions. Disputes were not wanting; when the partnership-goods were divided at once. But the separation never lasted longer than a day; for, if they did not "go joints," how could they talk to each other of their fortune?

Great changes took place, however. Ivo received from Nat the present of a whip, and Emmerence learned to knit. In towns children are presented with drums or with toy-shops, to play soldier and trader until life begins in earnest: in the village they begin to play farmer with a whip. Ivo would stand before the empty wagon, smack his whip at the bare pole, and cry, "Whoa! Gee! Get up!" The moment he came home from school, his slate and ruler were laid upon the footstool behind the stove, his whip cracked, and the geese and chickens routed up and down the road. While thus roystering about one day, he saw Emmerence sitting under the walnut-tree with her knitting. Her little kitten lay near her, purring and puffing in the sun. The plump little yellow-haired girl was taking up her stitches with a zeal which kept her eyes riveted to her work; her lips were pressed together with an air of determination, as if she was bound to make a woollen jacket for old Winter himself.

Ivo stood quietly looking at her for a while, and then asked, "Are you knitting stockings for your puss?"

Emmerence took no time to answer, but went on knitting. The spirit of mischief tickled Ivo, and he pulled the needle out of her fingers.

Emmerence got up to throw a stone after him as he ran away; but, girl-like, she never lifted it over her shoulder, but let it fall immediately at her own feet. Having gathered up her needles, she went home crying.

In the afternoon Ivo soon obtained forgiveness for his cruelty by presenting Emmerence with a piece of a broken blue-glass bottle. They looked at the sun through it by turns, exclaiming, "Oh, my! how pretty!" Ivo wrapped the gem in a piece of paper and left it with Emmerence.

From time to time the village was visited by a man who, like the bold Ratcatcher sung by Goethe, always had the children at his heels. It was the "saint-man," who would sell pictures of the saints to the children for broken glass. Ivo always ransacked the house until the glittering coin was found, and then brought Emmerence the prize.

Not in the sunshine alone, but also in the storm, we find the children together.

Old Valentine looked out of the window with a pleased expression in his face,--for it is easy to look pleased during a fine summer shower, even when there is not much to think about: body and soul are played upon as with a gentle dew, and the drops fall from the eaves of the opposite houses like the ripples of a stream: all around us--even the flood of the silent air itself--has acquired a voice and a meaning.

Ivo and Emmerence had taken refuge in the open barn: little Jake, the squire's son, who was but three years old, was there also. The chickens had betaken themselves to the same asylum: they stood beside the children, with drooping tails, often shaking themselves. The black kitten also crept along under the eaves of the house so softly that its coming into the barn was not perceived until the chickens cackled: it dived down into the stable immediately.

At first it dripped so slightly that you could only see the rain by looking at the dark windows opposite; but soon the drops swelled and pattered, and Ivo said, "Ah, this is first-rate for my pinks in the garden." "Pinks in t' garden," repeated little Jake. Again Ivo said, "Ah, that'll be a big puddle." "Big puddle," re-echoed little Jake. Ivo looked at him grimly.

Farmers drove by with empty sacks on their heads, crying out and trying to escape the storm: the children laughed at them and cried out, "Whew!" Emmerence stood with her head a little on one side, and her hands under her apron: just when it rained hardest, Ivo pushed her out under the eaves. Little Jake sprang out of his own accord, as if to challenge the rain, but still he shut his eyes and held down his head, so as not to get the very worst of it. With her apron over her head, Emmerence now did her best to get under cover again; but Ivo was on the look-out, and never let her in till she began to cry.

The rain at last stopped: the sun came forth brightly, and the children rushed out with unspeakable joy. The human plants seemed to derive as much benefit from the freshened air as any others. Yellow torrents poured down along the road: the children launched chips upon them, and waded about in the water, looking for bits of iron. Ivo, who always had extended projects, wished to build a mill; but long before the mill was ready the water had run off. How often do we build up machines to be moved by the stream of our lives, and ere the machinery is half constructed the water-course is empty and dry!

Much as Ivo loved to tease Emmerence, he never permitted anybody else to harm her.

Once he was returning home from school, armed, as usual, with his buckler the slate, and his sword the ruler, when he saw Emmerence pursued by two evil spirits in the shape of old gray geese. Crying and screaming, the poor girl fled, with her eyes turned upon her foes. Already had one of them seized her gown and was tugging at it, when Ivo rushed upon them, and a hard-fought battle ensued, out of which Ivo at last came forth victorious. With the consciousness of heroism, he helped Emmerence up from where she had fallen, and walked triumphantly by her side, armed as he was. Nat had told him stories of knights rescuing poor, helpless damsels from giants and dragons: he now felt as if he was something like one of these knights himself.

4.

BRINDLE AND THE GOSLINGS.

The purchase of a horse or a cow is an event of absorbing interest in the family of every farmer; but, when it is remembered that in the Black Forest the dwelling-house, the stable, and the barn, are all parts of one and the same building, it is clear that the importance of such an occurrence is doubly great, for it makes a change, if not in the family itself, at least in the household.

An event of this kind took place one day when Valentine came home from the fair in the upper village with a fine heifer. Before it was taken into the house it was examined and praised by all the neighbors and passers-by. Ivo and his mother, and Nat, received the stranger at the door. A wooden horse fell to Ivo's share as his "fairing," and Valentine placed the end of the tether into Nat's hands, looked round with an air of triumph, and then dismissed the "cattle" into the stable with a good-humored stroke on the hocks. It was indeed a fine beast, just what farmers like to call a smart, strutty sort of cow.

Ivo, with his wooden horse on his bosom, hastened to help Nat prepare the stranger's supper. "Short feed" was heaped in the trough; but she would not open her mouth except to growl gloomily. Ivo passed his hand gently over her sleek hide: she turned her head and looked fixedly at the boy for a long time.

Ivo then played with his wooden horse, which showed no reluctance to make his acquaintance, but seemed at home everywhere and always carried its head high.

At night Ivo was waked out of his sleep by a wailing note which shook his soul. The poor heifer seemed to pour out her very bowels with lamentation.

Ivo lay awake a long time listening to the sounds which went forth so mournfully into the stillness. Whenever they ceased he held his breath, hoping that they would come no more; but the poor cow always began again.

At last Ivo waked his father.

"What's the matter?"

"The new heifer's crying."

"Let her cry, and go to sleep, you foolish boy: the heifer's homesick, and it can't be helped."

Ivo shut his ears with the pillows and fell asleep again.

For nearly three days the heifer refused to eat a morsel; but at last she grew accustomed to the other cattle in the stable, and ate quietly like the rest. But a new trouble arose when the claws of her fore-feet came off. She was only used to walk on soft pasture, but not to travel so much on hard roads as was necessary in passing between the stable and the fields.

Ivo often helped Nat to bind up the heifer's hoofs, and gave the greatest proofs of sympathy and tenderness; nor did she fail to return his kindness as far as she could, and Nat, who knew all about cows and their ways, used to say, "The herdsboy that minded her before must have looked like you, Ivo; be sure of that."

While the cow gave him so much pleasure, the wooden horse became a source of grief. It had become quite soiled. So, one morning, without saying a word about it to anybody, he ran down to the pond and gave it a good scouring, but returned home with loud wailing, for he found that all the color came out of it. Thus early did he discover how little artificial favorites are to be trusted.

But fate soon gave him ample compensation for his loss. Once more, late in the night, the whole house was astir on account of the heifer: she was calving. Ivo was not allowed to go into the stable: he only heard a low, distant wail,--for the curse is on animals also, and they must "bring forth with pain."

At dawn of day Ivo hurried into the stable. A fine brindled calf was lying at the dam's feet, and she kissed and licked it with her tongue. No one could go near it without setting the cow into a storm of rage; only when Ivo stepped up and timidly touched the calf she was quiet. Her first-born was a son, and Ivo never ceased to beseech his father to raise the calf until he consented.

From this time on Ivo was always in the kitchen when warm food or drink was being prepared for the mother, and no one but he had leave to hold the pail for her to drink.

But Ivo was destined to find that no pleasure is to be enjoyed without interruption. One day, coming home from school, he saw a large dog on the threshold. Passing him carefully, he went on to the stable. There he found a man in a blue smock and red and yellow checked neckcloth, which hung in a loose knot to his neck. In his hand he held a hawthorn stick with a handle of brass thread.

Ivo saw at once that he was a butcher. His father, who stood by him, was just saying, "For eight florins you may have it; but it's a pity to kill it with such fine hoofs."

"I'll give seven."

His father shook his head.

"Well, split the difference and say done."

Ivo saw what it all meant in an instant. Leaving his slate and books against the wall, he rushed into the stable, fell upon the calf's neck and cried, embracing it tenderly, "No, no, Brindle! they sha'n't stab your poor neck." He cried aloud, and could hardly pronounce the words, "Why, father, father, you promised me!"

The calf bleated with all its might, as if it knew what was about to happen, and the cow turned her head and growled without opening her mouth.

Valentine was puzzled. He took off his cap, looked into it, and put it on again. Smiling on Ivo, he said at last, "Well, let it be so; I don't want to fret the child. Ivo, you may raise it, but you must find the food for it."

The butcher walked away, his dog barking as he ran before him, as if to give vent to his master's vexation. He made a rush at Valentine's geese and chickens, and scattered them in all directions: it is the way with underlings to expend their ill will on the dependants of their master's foes.

The thought that he had saved the calf's life made Ivo very happy; yet he could not but feel sore at the idea that, but for an accident, his father would have broken the promise he had made him. He forgot all this, however, when the time came for him to lead his pet out into the grass and watch it while grazing.

One afternoon Ivo stood holding Brindle by the tether while it browsed. With a clear voice he sang a song which Nat had taught him. The tones seemed to tremble with half-suppressed yearnings. It was as follows:--

"Up yonder, up yonder,

At the heavenly gate,

A poor soul is standing

In sorrowful strait.

"Poor soul of mine, poor soul of mine,

Come hither to me,

And thy garments shall be white

As wool to-see.

"As white and as pure

As the new-driven snow,

And, hand in hand, together

Into heaven we'll go.

"Into heaven, into heaven,

Upon the heavenly hill,

Where God Father, and God Son,

And God the Spirit dwell."

Hardly was the song ended when he saw Emmerence coming toward him from the brick-yard.

With a dry fir-twig she was driving some young ducklings before her. On coming up to Ivo she stopped and began to talk.

"Oh, you can't think," said she, "what trouble I had getting my four ducklings out of the puddle in the brickyard. Four gray ones and two white, you see. They're just a week old now. Only think, my mother made a hen sit on the eggs, and now the hen won't take care of 'em: they run about, and nobody looks after 'em at all."

"They're orphans," said Ivo, "and you must be their mother."

"Yes, and you don't know how pitifully they can look at you one-sided,'--this way." She laid her head on one side, and looked up at Ivo prettily enough.

"Look at them," said he: "they can't be quiet a minute, they keep splashing and floundering about all the time. It 'ould make me giddy to go on that way."

"I can't see," said Emmerence, looking very thoughtful, "how these ducklings found out that they can swim. If a duck had hatched 'em out, she might show 'em; but the hen never looked at 'em; and, for all that, as fast as they could waddle they toddled on till they got into the water."

Here the thoughts of two infant souls stood at the mysterious portal of nature. There was silence a little while, and then Ivo said,--

"The ducklings all keep together and never part. My mother said we must do so too; and brothers and sisters belong together; and, when the cluck culls, all the chickens run up."

"Oh, the nasty chickens! The great big things eat up all I bring my poor ducklings. If it would only rain right hard once more and make my ducklings grow! At night I always put 'em in a basket,--they're too soft to take in your hand,--and then they crowd up to each other, just as I crowd up to my grandmother; and my grandmother says when they grow up she'll pull out the feathers and make me a pillow."

Thus chatted Emmerence. Ivo suddenly began to sing,--

"Far up on the hill is a white, white horse,

A horse as white as snow;

He'll take the little boys that are good little boys

To where they want to go."

Emmerence fell in,--

"The little boys and the good little boys

Sha'n't go too far away;

The little girls that are good little girls

Must go as far as they."

Ivo went on:--

"Far up on the hill is a black, black man,

A man as black as a coal;

He open'd his mouth and he grit his teeth,

And he wanted to swallow me whole."

Then they sang on, sometimes one beginning a verse, and sometimes the other.

"Sweetheart, see, see!

There comes the big flea:

He has a little boy on his back,

And a little girl in his ear.

"Don't you hear the bird sing?

Don't you hear it say,

In the wood, out of the wood,

Sweetheart, where dost thou stay?

"Don't you run over my meadow,

And don't you run over my corn,

Or I'll give you the awfullest waling,

As sure as you were born."

Many such little rhymes did the children sing, as if each tried to outdo the other in the number of songs they knew. At length Ivo said, "Now you drive your duckies home; I'm coming soon too." He was a little ashamed of going home with Emmerence, though conscious of nothing but the fear that his silly comrades would tease him. After she had been gone for some time he followed with his calf.

It gave Ivo pain to see that, as soon as the calf was weaned, the heifer, its dam, seemed to care no more about it. He did not know that the beasts of the field cling to their young only so long as they actually depend on and are in bodily connection with them. It is only while young birds are unable to fly and get their own food, only while the young quadruped sucks its dam's milk, that any thing like childlike or parental love subsists. This connection once severed, the old ones forget their young. Man alone has a more than bodily relationship to his child, and in him alone, therefore, the love of offspring continues through life.

5.

LIFE IN THE FIELDS.

Ivo's life was rich in suggestions, not only at home, among men and beasts, but also with the silently-growing corn and in the rustling orchard. All the world, with its glories and its noiseless joys, entered the open portals of his youthful soul. If we could continue to grow as we do in childhood, our lot would be replete with all the blessings of Heaven; but a time comes when the sum of all things breaks upon us in a mass, and then the remnants of our lives are occupied in the dreary labor of dissecting, puzzling, and explaining.

During the summer holidays, in haying and harvest time, Ivo was almost constantly afield with Nat. There his real life seemed to begin; and, when he looked upward, the blue of his eyes was like a drop fallen from the sky which sprang its broad arch so serenely over the busy haunts of men; and it seemed as if this bit of heaven, straying upon earth,

"but long'd to flee

Back to its native mansion."

Something of this kind glimmered through Nat's thoughts one day when he took Ivo by the chin and kissed him fervently on the eyelids. The next moment he was ashamed of this tenderness, and teased Ivo and playfully struck him.

When the cows were hooked up, Ivo was always at hand, and took pains to lay the cushion firmly on the horns of the heifer: he was glad that the wooden yoke was not made to lie immediately on the poor beast's forehead. In the field he would stand near the cows and chase the flies away with a bough. Nat always encouraged him in this attention to the poor defenceless slaves.

Often Ivo and Emmerence would stand and dance on the wagon long before the cows or the dun were hooked up: then they would ride to the field, gather the hay into heaps, and push each other into it.

Whenever Nat went afield, Ivo stood by him in the wagon. Sometimes he would sit up there alone, with his hands in his lap, and as his body was jolted by the motion of the wagon his heart would leap within him. He looked over the meads with a dreamy air. Who can tell the silent life beating in a child's breast at such a moment?

Nor did Ivo fail to practise charity in his early youth. Emmerence, being a child of poor parents, had to glean after the harvest. Ivo asked his mother to make him a little sack, which he hung around his neck and went about gleaning for Emmerence. When his mother gave him the sack, she warned him not to let his father see it, as he would scold; for it is not proper for a child whose parents are not poor to go gleaning. Ivo looked wonderingly at his mother, and a deep sorrow shone out of his eye; but it did not long remain. With a joy till then unknown to him, he walked barefoot through the prickly stubble and gleaned a fine bagful of barley for Emmerence. He was by when Emmerence took a part of it to feed her duckies with, and mimicked them as they waddled here and there, grabbing at the grains.

One day Ivo and Nat were in the field. The dun--a fine stout horse, with hollow back, and a white mane which reached nearly down to his breast--was drawing the harrow. As they passed the manor-house farmer's, a whirlwind raised a pillar of dust.

"My mother says," Ivo began, "that evil spirits fight in a whirlwind, and if you get in between them they throttle you."

"We're going to have a gust to-day," said Nat: "you'd better stay at home."

"No, no; let me go with you," said Ivo, taking Nat's rough hand.

Nat had prophesied aright. Before they had been in the field an hour, a terrible hailstorm was upon them. In a moment the horse was unhooked from the harrow, Nat mounted on his back with Ivo before him, and they galloped homeward, Ivo nestled timidly in Nat's bosom. "The evil spirits in the whirlwind have brought this storm, haven't they?" he asked.

"There are no evil spirits," said Nat, "only wicked men."

Strange! Ivo began to laugh aloud for fear, so that Nat became very uncomfortable. Fright and pleasure are so nearly related that Ivo had almost an agreeable tingle in the trembling of his soul.

Pale as death, and with his teeth chattering, Ivo came home. His mother put him to bed, partly to conceal him from his father, who disliked to see the delicate child that was to be a parson going into the fields. He had not been in bed many minutes before Nat came with a phial and gave him a few drops, which threw him into a gentle sleep; and in an hour he awoke as sound as ever.

Never, perhaps, was Ivo happier than on one memorable day which he was permitted to spend entirely in the field without coming home to dinner. At early morning, long before matins, he went out with Nat and the dun, the latter dragging the plough to Valentine's largest and farthest field, which is far away toward Isenbrug, in the Worm Valley. It was the opening of a beautiful day in August; a little rain had fallen over-night, and a fresh breath of life passed over the trees and grasses. The red clover was winking at the coming sun, which could not be seen, though it was broad daylight: he had risen behind the hills of Hohenzollern.

The plough grasped well: a refreshing steam arose from the brown, dewy soil. The dun seemed to make little exertion, and Nat guided the plough as easily as if it had been the tiller of a floating skiff. Every thing around was bright and clear, and men and beasts might be seen here and there, working cheerily for their daily bread.

When the matin bell rang at Horb, Ivo stopped. The horse stood still; the plough rested in the furrow; Ivo and Nat folded their hands: the dun seemed to be praying too,--at least he flung his head up and down more than once. They then drew the furrow to the end, sat down on the fallow, and eat some bread.

"If we were to find a treasure to-day," said Ivo, "like that farmer, you know, that Emmerence's mother told of, that found a heap of ducats right under his foot when he was ploughing, I'd buy Emmerence a new gown and pay her father's debt on his house. What would you do?"

"Nothing," said Nat: "I don't want money."

He went to work again, and found it so easy that he began to sing,--not of ploughing or sowing, though, nor of any thing connected with work in the fields:--

"Oh, we are sisters three,--

Kitty and Lizzie, and she,

The youngest, she let the boy come in.

"She hid him behind the door

Till her father and mother were gone to sleep;

Then she brought him out once more.

"She carried him up the stairs,

And into her chamber she let him in,

And she threw him into the street.

"She threw him against a stone,

And his heart in his body he broke in two,

And also his shoulder-bone.

"He pick'd himself up to go home;

'Oh, mother, I fell and I broke my arm

Against such a hard, hard stone.'

"'My son, and it serves you right,

For not coming home with the other boys,

But running about at night.'

"So he went up-stairs to bed.

At the stroke of twelve he was full of fright,

At the stroke of one he was dead."

Here Nat jerked the rein, fixed his hat more firmly on his head, and sang, perhaps in remembrance of the past:--

"You good-for-nothing boy,

Your drink is all your joy;

Dancing's what you're made for,

And your coat has never been paid for.

"If I'm a little short,

What need you care for't?

When I've emptied my glass

They'll fill it, I guess.

"If I can't pay the score

They'll mark it on the door,

So every one can read

That I'm running to seed.

"So seedy I've grown,

Not a thing is my own:

The world's here and there,

But I haven't a share."

Nat suddenly broke off, and cried, "Hee, oh!" to the horse. It was hard to tell whether it occurred to him that Ivo was by, or whether he had forgotten him entirely. So much is certain, however, that this sort of songs is by no means so injurious to the children of a village as is generally supposed. From his very cradle, Ivo had heard all sorts of things spoken of by their most natural designations and without the least reserve, which to those who grow up in towns are first left unmentioned entirely, so that ignorance stimulates curiosity, and are then discussed in ambiguous terms, which aggravate the temptation to evil by the additional zest of the mysterious. Thus, instead of festering in his mind, they glided through it without leaving a trace behind them. Nat was full of reminiscences to-day; and, after a pause, he sang again, in a muffled voice,--

"I'm forty years to-day;

My hair is turning gray:

If none of the girls will marry me,

I'll set my house on fire;

If none of the girls will marry me,

I'll drown myself in the mire."

Immediately after, he sang again,--

"Sweetheart, sweetheart,

How is't with thee,

That thou wilt not speak to me?

"Hast thou another lover,

To make the time pass over,

Whom thou likest more than me?

"If thou likest him more than me,

I'll travel away from thee,

I'll travel away from thee.

"I travel far over distant lands,

Leave my love in another's hands,

And write her many a line;

You must know

Where I go,--

A horseman bold am I.

"I travel far over distant lands,

Leave my love in another's hands;

Oh, that is hard to do

When my love is fair and true!

"Oh, that is easily done

When love is past and gone!

To sleep without a sorrow

From the even to the morrow;

Oh, that is easily done

When love is past and gone!

"Fine cities too there are

Where I have wander'd far,--

In the Spanish Netherlands,

And in Holland and in France;

But over all this ground

My love nowhere I found.

"Who made the song and who sang it first?

He made it and he sang it first,--

A fine young fellow,--

When his love was at the worst."

The long-drawn notes swept over the lea as if borne on the wings of old yet unforgotten wishes. But they died away, in all probability, long before reaching the ear for which they were intended.

Could the old ploughman still carry in his heart the roots of so deep-seated a passion?

At eleven o'clock there was another halt and another prayer; the horse was unhitched and received a bundle of clover for his dinner. Ivo and Nat sat down at the edge of the field, in what would have been a fence-corner if there were fences in that part of Germany, and waited for Mag, who soon appeared with their dinner. They ate out of one bowl, with a good appetite, for they had worked hard. The bowl was so entirely empty that Mag said,--

"There'll be fine weather to-morrow: you make the platter clean."

"Yes," said Nat, turning the bowl upside down; "you couldn't drown a wasp there."

After dinner they took a little siesta. Ivo, stretched out at full length, was listening to the many-voiced chirpings among the clover; and, closing his eyes, he said,--

"It is just as if the whole field were alive, and as if all the flowers were singing,--and the larks up there,--and the crickets----" He never finished the sentence, for he had fallen asleep. Nat looked at him for some time with an expression of delight; then he brought a few sticks, fixed them carefully into the ground, and hung the cloth in which the clover had been tied over them, so that the boy slept in the shade. This done, he got up softly, hitched the horse to the plough, and went on noiselessly with his work.

It would be hard to tell whether he kept down the songs which mounted to his lips, or whether solemn thoughts made him so quiet. The dun was very true to the rein, and a slight jerk was enough, without a word, to keep the furrow straight.

The sun was sinking when Ivo awoke. He tore away the tent which was stretched over him, and looked about him in wonder, not knowing, for a while, where he was. On seeing Nat he bounded toward him with a shout of joy. He helped Nat to finish the job, and was almost sorry to find that Nat had managed to plough without him; for he would fain have thought himself indispensable to the progress of the work.

At nightfall they quitted the field, leaving the plough behind them. Nat lifted Ivo on the horse, and walked by his side up the hill; but, suddenly remembering that he had left his knife where the plough was, he ran back hastily, and thus found himself again in the valley. Looking up, he saw the sun set magnificently behind two mountains draped in pine woods. Like the choir of a church built all of light and gold were earth and sky; the treasures of eternity seemed to blink into time; long streamers of all shades of red and purple floated about; the little cloudlets were like, angels' heads; while in the midst was a large, solemn mass of vapor like a vast altar of blue pedestal covered with a cloth of flame. The sight provoked a wish to rise upward and melt in rapture, and again an expectation to behold the bursting of the cloud and the coming forth of the Lord in his glory to proclaim the millennial reign of peace.

On the crown of the hill was Ivo. The horse, bound to the earth and tearing up its bosom all day, seemed now to stride in mid-air and to travel gently upward; his hoofs were seen to rise, but not to stand on ground. Ivo was stretching out his arms as if an angel beckoned to him. Two pigeons above his head winged their flight homeward: they rose high and far,--what is high and what is far?--their pinions moved not: they seemed to be drawn upward from above, and vanished into the fiery floods.

Who can tell the pride and gladness of the heart when, glowing with the spirit of the universe, it overpeers every limit and looks into the vast realms of infinity?

Thus Nat stood gazing upward, free from earth's sighs and sorrows. A beam of the inexhaustible glory of God had fallen into the heart of the simple-hearted working-man, and he stood above all principalities and powers: the majesty of heaven had descended upon him.

The memory of this day never faded from the hearts of Nat and of Ivo.

6.

THE GRAMMAR-SCHOOL.

An unavoidable change soon separated Ivo from the friend of his childhood. The time had come for taking the first step which led to his future calling. The change was external as well as internal,--the short jacket worn till now being replaced by a long blue coat, which, in anticipation of his growing, had been made too large in every direction.

As he walked toward Horb, with his mother, in this new garb, he dragged his heavy boots along with some difficulty, and often lifted up his hands to prevent the unruly flaps of his coat from flying away behind him. Valentine took but little further trouble about the future of his child. He had tasted the idea of having a parson for his son to the dregs, and would almost have been content had Ivo become a farmer after all. Indeed, the older he grew the less willing was he to take any trouble which carried him out of the beaten track of his daily toil. Mother Christina, however, was a pious and resolute woman, who had no mind to give up the idea which had once entered her head.

The chaplain lived next to the church. Mother and son went into the church first, knelt down before the altar, and fervently spoke the Lord's Prayer three times over. The soul of Mother Christina was full of such feelings as may have visited the soul of Hannah when she brought her son Samuel to the high-priest of the Temple at Jerusalem. She had never read the Old Testament, and knew nothing of the story; but the same thoughts came up in her mind by their own force and virtue. Pressing her hands upon her bosom, she looked steadfastly at her son as she left the church.

In the parsonage she set down her basket in the kitchen, and made the cook a present of some eggs and butter. Then, being announced to the chaplain, she advanced with short steps, dropping a shower of curtsies, into the open parlor. He was a good-natured man, and regaled all his visitors with sanctified speeches and gestures, during which he constantly rolled his fat little hands in and out of each other. Mother Christina listened attentively as if he had been preaching a sermon; and when Ivo was admonished to be diligent and studious, the poor little fellow wept aloud, he knew not why. The good man comforted and caressed him, and the two went on their way composed, if not rejoicing.

Their next visit was to an old widow who lived near the "Staffelbaeck." On the way, Ivo was treated to a "pretzel," which he devoured while sitting behind Mrs. Hankler's stove and listening to the negotiations between her and his mother. The good lady was a dealer in eggs and butter, and an old business acquaintance of Mother Christina's. It was agreed that Ivo should get his dinner at her house, and that Mrs. Hankler was to receive therefor a certain quantity of butter, eggs, and flour.

The moment Ivo had reached home, he threw off his coat, kicked the boots from his feet, and hastened to Nat in the stable. The latter passed his hand over his eyes when he heard that Ivo was now a student.

Next morning our young friend was sad when the time came for his first visit to the grammar-school. He was waked early, and obliged to dress in his best clothes. To make the parting less bitter, his mother went with him to the top of the hill. There she gave him a little roast meat wrapped up in paper, and two creutzers as a precaution against unforeseen emergencies.

Our readers have gone to Horb with us often enough to know the way. But, besides the winding road of only two or three miles which ascends the steep hill, there is a footpath which turns off to the left at the hill-top, and where you cannot walk, but only scamper straight to the Horb brick-yard. Ivo took this path: his heart beat high, and his tears flowed freely, for he felt that he was entering upon a new and a different life.

At the brick-yard he wiped his eyes and looked at the roast meat. It had a delicious odor. He unfolded the paper, and the meat smiled at him as if it wished to be kissed. He tried the least bit, then a little more, and in a short time he had tried every thing but the paper. Yet, had he been ninety years old, he could not have done more wisely: the lunch restored his spirits and his courage, and he walked on with a smiling face and steady eye.

The boys at the school inspected the appearance of the new-comer with the minuteness of custom-house officers. The size of his clothes amused them particularly.

"What's your name?" asked one.

"Ivo Bock."

"Oh, this is Ivo Book,
Dress'd in the family frock!"

said a boy with a fine embroidered collar. The muscles of Ivo's face twitched as is usual when a crying-spell is setting in. But, when the boys gathered around him to follow up their words with practical pleasantry, he struck at them with his fists hard and fiercely. The rhymester with the collar now came up and said, "Never mind. Nobody shall hurt you: I'll help you."

"Are you in earnest, or do you only want to fool me more?" asked Ivo, with a trembling voice, still clenching his fists.

"In earnest, 'pon honor. There's my hand."

"Well and good," said Ivo, taking his proffered hand. Perhaps the boy's original intention had been to hit upon a new way of teasing Ivo, or to oppress him with the grandeur of his protection; but Ivo's firmness turned the scales.

The arrival of the chaplain brought them all to order. The instruction given was that usually awarded as the first lesson in Latin grammar. In this country the problem is to decline "penna:" in Germany "mensa" is the word. When it was over, the boy with the embroidered collar, and his younger brother, accompanied Ivo to Mrs. Hankler's door. It was at the hands of the sons of the President-Judge that he received this distinction. Henceforward we may look with composure on his fortunes in the good town of Horb.

Mrs. Hankler's door was locked.

Ivo sat down on the step to wait for her. Sorrowful thoughts rose in his mind, though at first of every-day origin. He was hungry. He thought of them all at home,--how they were gathering round the table, while he alone was left outside and hungry in the world, with nobody to care for him. People ran by in a hurry, without even becoming aware of his existence. They were all going to the steaming bowls which awaited them: only he sat there as if he had fallen from the sky and had never had a home. "Every horse and every ox," said he, "has his food given him when it is time; but nobody thinks of me. I have two creutzers in my pocket; but then it would never do to break the money already."[⁸]

At last his home-sickness was too much for him: he jumped up and bounded homeward with long strides. As he turned the corner he met Mrs. Hankler, running over with apologies about having forgotten all about it and having been detained. "Come with me," was the peroration, "and I'll cook you some nice turnips, and put some pork in them for your mother's sake: your mother is a dear, good woman. And when you're a minister and I am dead, you must read a mass for me: won't you?"

Ivo was happy the moment he heard somebody talk to him about his mother. He felt as if he had travelled a thousand miles and had left home ten years ago. The Latin, the wide coat, the quarrels, the roast meat, the new comrade, the flight: he seemed to have had more adventures in half a day than formerly in half a year. He ate heartily: still, he was not quite at his ease with the strange old lady; something told him, indistinctly, that he had been removed from the basis of his prior existence, his father's house. A young forest-tree lifted out of its native soil and carried away on rattling wheels to adorn some distant hill might express, if it could speak, what was pressing so heavily on the heart of poor Ivo.

The afternoon studies were easier, being in German, and so conducted that Ivo could put in a word or two of his own now and then. In going home he joined the two other boys from his village,--Johnny's Constantine and Hansgeorge's Peter. Constantine said that it was the rule for the youngest student always to carry the books for the others; and Ivo took the double burden on himself without a murmur.

At the top of the hill they saw Mother Christina, who had come to meet her son. He was relieved of the books immediately. Ivo joyfully ran to meet his mother, but, suddenly checked himself, for he was ashamed to kiss her in the presence of the big boys, and even winced a little at her caresses.

With their caps on one side, and their books under their arms, the two elder students paraded the village.

Ivo had as much to tell at home as if he had crossed the sea. He also felt his own importance when he found that they had cooked and set the table expressly for him. Even Mag, who seldom had a kind word for him, was now in a better humor than usual: he came from abroad.

Thus did Ivo go to and from the grammar-school from day to day.

A great change had taken place with Brindle about this time: he no longer spent all his time in the stable, for he had been yoked. Ivo thought the poor beast suffered from his absence, and was often out of spirits about it.

But in the grammar-school all things went on as well as well could be. Ivo speedily filled up his new coat and his new position, to the admiration of everybody.

His intercourse with Nat could not remain the same, however. Even the detailed reports of Ivo's doings gradually ceased, as there was not often much to be told; and Ivo generally sat down quietly to his books as soon as he got home. With Mrs. Hankler, on the other hand, he was soon on the best of terms. She always said that "Ivo was as good to talk with as the oldest." She told him a great deal about her deceased husband; and Ivo advised her financially whenever a quarter's rent came to be paid.

With the sons of the President-Judge he kept up a friendship for which everybody envied him. And Emmerence,--she was now nine years old, went to school, and minded the schoolmaster's children in recess. At an age when children rarely have any thing more than dolls to play with, she had an exacting living baby to attend to; but she seemed to look upon it all as rare sport. When Valentine was away she was welcome to visit at the house with the child; not otherwise. The carpenter could not bear the child's crying. He was growing more and more querulous and discontented from day to day. Ivo saw Emmerence now and then, but the two children had a certain dread of each other. Ivo, particularly, reflected that it was not proper for a future clergyman to be so intimate with a girl. He often passed Emmerence in the street without speaking to her.

In other respects, also, he was gradually warped away from his favorite associations. When he went into the stable, according to custom, to help Nat feed the steer, the cow, and the dun, his father would often drive him out, saying, "Go away! you have no business in the stable. Go to your books and learn something: you're to be a gentleman. Do you think a man is going to spend all that money for nothing? Hurry up!"

With a heavy heart, Ivo would see the other boys ride the horses to water or sit proudly on the saddle-horse of a hay-wagon. Many a sigh escaped his breast while translating the exploits of Miltiades: he would rather have been on the field by the target-place, raking the new-mown grass, than on the battle-field of Marathon. He would jump up from his seat and beat the empty air, just to give vent to his thirst for action.

He was also enstranged from his home by the occupation of his mind with matters of which no one around him had ever heard. He could not talk about them with anybody,--not even with Nat. Thus he was a stranger in his own home: his thoughts were not their thoughts.

Nat beat his brains to gladden the heart of the poor boy whom he so often saw out of spirits. Ivo had told him with delight of the pretty dovecote which the judge's sons had at home: so Nat repaired the old dovecote, which was in ruins, and bought five pairs of pigeons with his own money, and peas to feed them with. Ivo fell upon his neck when, one morning, without saying a word, he took him up into the garret and made him a present of it all.

Of a Sunday morning Ivo might have been seen standing under the walnut-tree, in his shirt-sleeves, with his arms folded, watching his little treasures on the roof, as they cooed and bowed and strutted and at last flew into the field. From possessions which he could hold in his hand, which walked the earth with him, he had now advanced to such as could only be followed with a loving look. It was only in thought he owned them: caress them he could not. They flew freely in the air, and nothing bound them but their confidence in his goodness. Is not this a symbol of the turn which the course of his life had taken?

When he whistled, the pigeons would come down from the roof, dance at his feet, and pick up the food he threw them. But he could not touch them to express his pleasure: he had to content himself with cherishing them in his soul, if he would not scare them suddenly away.

When Ivo entered the church, his soul was so full of love and childlike confidence that he almost always said, "Good-morning, God." With a happy home feeling, he then went into the vestry, put on his chorister's dress, and performed his functions during mass.

A deep-seated fear of God, sustained by a glowing love for the mother of God, and, above all, for the dear child Jesus, dwelt in the soul of Ivo. With especial joy he used to call to mind that the Savior too had been the son of a carpenter. Of all the festival-days he liked Palm-Sunday most: it made almost a deeper impression upon him than Good Friday. Huge nosegays as high as a man, made particularly odorous with wild sallow and torch-weed, were carried into the church. The nosegays were sprinkled with holy water, and after the ceremony they were hung up in the stables to protect the cattle from all harm. At home, all parties were solemn and serious; no one spoke above his voice,--not even Valentine; everyone was kind and gentle to everybody else, and this made Ivo happy.

But, with all this, a thoughtful spirit soon showed itself in him, even in religious matters. One day the chaplain was explaining that St. Peter carried the keys because he opened the gates of heaven for the redeemed.

"How so?" asked Ivo. "Where does he stay?"

"At the gate of heaven."

"Why, then, he never gets into heaven himself, if he is kept sitting outside all the time opening the door for other people."

The chaplain stared at Ivo, and was silent for some time; at last he said, with a complacent smile, "It is his celestial happiness to open to others the gates of eternal bliss. It is the first of virtues to rejoice in and to strive for the good fortune of others: such is the high calling of the Holy Father at Rome, who has the keys of Peter on earth as well as the keys of all those consecrated by him and by his bishops."

Ivo was satisfied, but not quite convinced; and he pitied in his heart the good Peter who is kept standing at the gate.

A load rested on Ivo's bosom from the day the chaplain told the children that it was their duty to ask themselves every evening what they had learned or what good they had done that day. He tried to act up to the letter of this behest, and was very unhappy whenever he found nothing satisfactory to report to himself. He would then toss about in his bed distractedly. Yet he was mistaken. The mind grows much as the body does: like an animal or a plant, it thrives without our being able, strictly speaking, to see the process. We see what has grown, but not the growth itself.

Another institution of the chaplain was wiser. He made the boys sit, not in the order of their talents, but in that of their diligence and punctuality. "For," said he, "industry and good order are higher virtues, for they can be acquired, than skill and talent, which are born with a man, and so he deserves no credit for them." Thus he constrained the talented to labor, and inspired those of lesser gifts with confidence. Ivo, who to very good natural parts added great consciensciousness was soon near the head of the class, and the President-Judge was pleased to see his sons bring him into his house.

We made the acquaintance of Judge Rellings in the story of "Good Government." Ivo, having heard many anecdotes of his harshness, was not a little astonished to find him a pleasant, good-natured man, fond of playing with his children and of doing little things to give them pleasure. Such is the world. Hundreds of men will be found who, when talking generalities, are liberal to a degree, asseverating that all men were born free and equal, &c., while the members of their household, and sometimes of their family, experience nothing but the most grinding tyranny at their hands. Others, again,--particularly office-holders,--treat all who are not in office like slaves and vagrants, and yet are the meekest of lambs in the four walls of their own dwellings.

Though not ill pleased with life in the town, yet Ivo never heard the curfew-bell of a Sunday evening without a little pang. It reminded him that to-morrow would be Monday, when he must again leave his home, his mother, Nat, and the pigeons. His daily walk gradually became invested with cheerful associations. He always went alone, dreading the society of Constantine, who teased him in many ways.

In summer he sang as he walked. In autumn there were some pleasant days when his mother and sister ground corn in Staffelbaeck's mill: at that season he did not dine with Mrs. Hankler, but met them in the trembling, thundering mill, and dined with them at the mill table. Winter was the most pleasant season of all. Nat, who was something of a Jack-of-all-trades, had shod Ivo's little sledge with an old iron barrel-hoop. At the hill-top he would sit down on his little conveyance and sweep down the road to the Neckar bridge swift as an arrow. With chattering teeth, he often said his rule of syntax or his Latin quotation for next day as he rode. True, in the evening he had to pull his sledge up the hill again by a rope; but that he liked to do. Sometimes a wagon would pass, and then, if the teamster was not very ill-natured, he would take the sledge in tow.

Ivo acted as a sort of penny postman for half the village: for one, he would carry yarn to be dyed; for another, a letter to the mail; and for another, he would inquire whether there was a letter for him. In coming home, his satchel sometimes contained a few skeins of silk, some herb tea, leeches in a phial, patent medicine, or some other purchase he had been commissioned to make. All this made him very popular in the village, while Peter and Constantine always scorned such uncongenial service.

One Sunday afternoon there was great excitement in the village when the President-Judge's two sons came in their red caps to visit Ivo. Mother Christina was looking out of the window when she heard them ask Blind Conrad the way to Ivo's house; and, although the room had been put into good order, she was in great trepidation. In her embarrassment she laid the stool on the bed, and took a pair of boots from the corner in which they had been stowed, putting them under the table in the middle of the room. Hearing the visitors come up the steps, she opened the door with great bashfulness, but yet with not a little pleasure, and welcomed them. Then she called out of the window to Emmerence, telling her to look for Ivo and for his father, and to send them in quickly to receive company.

Wiping off the two chairs, for the fortieth time, with her white Sunday apron, she pressed the boys to be seated. She apologized that things looked so disorderly. "It is the way with farmers' folk," said she, looking bashfully at the floor, which was scrubbed so clean that it was an easy matter to trace the joists by the nail-sockets.

Blind Conrad came and opened the door a little, to see what was the matter, and with an eye to the prospects of a good cup of coffee, or such other treat as might be looked for; but Mother Christina pushed him out without much ceremony, bidding him "come some other time."

Poor woman! At other times so strong in her religious force, and now so humble and abashed before the whelps of the mighty ones of the earth! But then she had grown old in the fear of the Lord and greater fear of the lordlings!

The elder of the two boys had, meantime, surveyed the room with great confidence. Pointing to the door of the room, he now inquired, "What is that horseshoe nailed there for?"

Folding her hands solemnly and bending her head, the mother answered, "Don't you know that? Why, that is because if you find a horseshoe between eleven and twelve o'clock in the day, and make no cry about it, and nail it to your door, no evil spirit and no devil and no witch can come in."

The boys stared with astonishment.

Ivo came, and soon after him his father. The latter took off his cap and welcomed the "young gentlemen;" then, rubbing his hands, he said, "What, wife! haven't you any thing in the house? Can't you get something to offer the young gentlemen?"

The mother had only waited to be relieved in entertaining the company. She hastened to find the very best the house afforded. Emmerence had had the good sense to drop into the kitchen, thinking that perhaps she might be wanted, for Mag had gone to take a walk with her beau. Perhaps she may have been curious also to see Ivo's great friends, for she shared the joy of the whole family at his exalted position.

Many of the neighbors' wives also found their way into the kitchen. Ivo's mother left them with complacent apologies, and took a big bowl of red-cheeked "Breitlinger" apples with her into the parlor. Emmerence brought two glasses of kirschwasser on a bright pewter plate. The boys ate heartily, and even drank a little of the fiery liquor, and Ivo's mother stuffed their pockets with fruit besides. At last she gave the youngest a particularly fine apple, with "her compliments to his lady mother, and she was to put it on the bureau."

After a long conversation, the boys took their leave. Valentine nodded pleasantly when they asked his permission to take Ivo with them: his mother arranged his collar, and brushed every mote of dust from his blue coat. Ivo was pleased to hear that he was to have a new one shortly.

Accompanied by the women, who had lingered behind the half-open door of the kitchen, Christina now walked into the street and looked after the three as they walked toward Horb, escorted by Valentine as far as the Eagle. The squire's wife was looking out of her window, and Christina said to her, "Those are the President-Judge's boys. They are going to take my Ivo out to their father in the Dipper. He likes to see them make friends with him: Ivo is quite smart, and they are quite fond of him."

Nor is it to be denied that Ivo felt some pride as he walked through the village hand in hand with his town acquaintances. He was pleased to see the people look out of the windows, and bid them all "Good-day" with great self-complacency. Who will think ill of him for this in a country where the very child in its cradle babbles of the omnipotence of the functionaries, where their existence and their activity is shrouded in awe-inspiring darkness, where all ages and all conditions unite in humble salutations to clerk and constable, knowing that there is no escape from their ill-will the moment the door of the secret tribunal is closed upon the unhappy mortal against whom an accusation, or a mere suspicion, has been uttered?

Mine host of the Dipper saluted Ivo very kindly, rubbing his hands the while, according to an old habit, as if he were cold. Ivo was now admitted to the "gentlemen's room," and to the table, where, screened from the vulgar gaze, the Auditor-General and the President-Judge sat in undisturbed admiration of each other's respectability.

Two merchants of Horb stood at the entrance of this chamber of peers, in some little embarrassment. After considerable hesitation, one said to the other, "Well, Mr. Councilman, what shall we drink'!"

"What you please, Mr. Councilman," answered the other.

The two had just been elected to their present exalted station, and this was their first appearance at the gentlemen's table. They sat down with many profound bows, to which the President-Judge returned a sneer and exchanged a supercilious look with his colleague.

Ivo's satisfaction at being admitted into such great society was destined to be cruelly dashed. The boys told what they had heard from Ivo's mother about the efficiency of the horseshoe. The judge, who liked to play the freethinker in matters of religion, because it was a liberty not expressly removed by legislation, and because he thought it a mark of culture, interrupted the story with "Stuff! What do you talk of such brainless superstition for? Don't let every silly old peasant cram your heads with her nonsense. I have told you ever so often that there are no devils and no saints. The saints may pass, but not the devils, nor the witches."

Ivo trembled. It stung him to the soul to hear his mother spoken of in that manner and with such irreverence. He wished he had never dreamed of this great company. He hated the judge cordially, and eyed him with looks of fury. Of course the great man had no perception of the disgrace into which he had fallen. He waxed exceedingly condescending to the new councilmen, who were so charmed with his goodness that their organs of speech seemed to have lost every check-spring.

To Ivo's relief, the "gentlemen" at last departed, leaving him to comfort himself with the reflection that he had not bid the judge "Good-night."

7.

THE CONVENT.

Years glided by almost imperceptibly. Constantine and Peter had passed their examination in autumn, and were now destined to enter the convent at Rottweil. An event, however, which formed the theme of conversation for a long time to come, detained Peter at the village.

The second crop of grass had been mowed in the garden of the manor-house; the daisy--called here the wanton-flower because it presents itself so shamelessly without any drapery of leaves--stood solitary on the frost-covered sward; the cows browsed untethered; and the children gambolled here and there and assailed with sticks and stones the few scattered apples and pears which had been forgotten on the trees.

Peter sat on the butter-pear tree by the wall of the manor-house, near the corner turret. A bright golden pear was the goal of his ambition. Constantine, the marplot, wished to snatch the prize out of his grasp, and threw a stone at it. Suddenly Peter cried, "My eye! my eye!" and fell from the tree with the limb on which he had been sitting. The blood gushed from his eye, while Constantine stood beside him, crying and calling aloud for help.

Maurice the cowherd came running up. He saw the bleeding boy, took him on his shoulder, and carried him home. Constantine followed, and all the children brought up the rear. The train increased until they reached Hansgeorge's house: the latter was engaged in mending a wagon. At sight of his child bleeding and in a swoon he wrung his hands. Peter opened one eye; but the other only bled the faster.

"Who did this?" asked Hansgeorge, with clenched fists, looking from his wailing boy to the trembling Constantine.

"I fell from the tree," said Peter, closing the sound eye also. "Oh, God! Oh, God! my eye is running out."

Without waiting to hear more, Constantine ran off to Horb for young Erath, who now held the post of his late father. Finding that the doctor had gone out, he ran up and down before the house in unspeakable agony: he kept one hand pressed upon one of his eyes, as if to keep the misfortune of Peter vividly before his mind; he bit his lips till they bled; he wished to fly into the wide, wide world as a criminal; and again he wished to stay, to save what could be saved. He borrowed a saddle-horse, and hardly had the expected one come home when he hurried him on the horse and away; but he travelled faster on foot than the surgeon did on horseback. The eye was declared irretrievably lost. Constantine closed both his eyes: night and darkness seemed to fall upon him. Hansgeorge, with the tears streaming from his eyes, sat absorbed in bitter thoughts, and held the stump of his forefinger convulsively in the gripe of his other hand. He regarded the maiming of his child as a chastisement from God for having wantonly mutilated himself. He expended all the gentleness of which his nature was capable on poor unoffending Peter, who was doomed to expiate his father's sin. But Peter's mother--our old friend Kitty--was less humble, and said openly that she was sure that accursed Constantine was the fault of it all. She drove him out of the house, and swore she would break his collar-bone if he ever crossed the threshold again.

Peter persisted in his account of the matter, and Constantine suffered cruelly. He would run about in the field as if an evil spirit were at his heels, and when he saw a stone his heart would tremble. "Cain! Cain!" he often cried. He would fain have fled to the desert like him too, but always came home again.

It was three days before he ventured to see his companion. He prepared himself for a merciless beating; but the wrath of the mother had gone down, and no harm befell him.

He found Ivo sitting by the patient's bedside, holding his hand. Pushing Ivo aside, he took Peter's hands in silence, his breath trembling. At last he said,--

"Go away, Ivo; I'll stay here: Peter and I want to talk together."

"No: stay here, Ivo," said the sufferer: "he may know all."

"Peter," said Constantine, "in the lowest hell you couldn't suffer more than I have suffered. I have prayed to God often and often to take my eye away and let you keep yours: I have kept one of my eyes shut when I was alone, just to see no more than you. Oh, dear Peter, do please, please forgive me!"

Constantine wept bitterly, and the patient begged him to be quiet, lest his parents should find out about it. Ivo tried to comfort him too; but the ruling passion soon appeared again:--

"I wish somebody would tear one of my eyes out, so that I shouldn't have to be a parson, and sit behind a parcel of books and make a long face while other people are enjoying themselves. Be glad you have only one eye and needn't be a parson. But the last cock hasn't crowed yet, neither."

Ivo looked sorrowfully at the scapegrace.

Peter was, indeed, henceforth unfit for the ministry. For in Leviticus iii. 1 it is written, "If his oblation be a sacrifice of peace-offering, he shall offer it without blemish before the Lord." A clergyman must be without bodily imperfection.

Even when Constantine came to take leave of Peter, before getting into the carriage which was to take him to the convent, he said, "I wish the carriage would upset and break my leg. Good-bye, Peter: don't grieve too much for your eye."

These words of Constantine, which betrayed the abhorrence of his inmost soul to the clerical function, had made a deep impression on Ivo. Often, in his solitary walk to school, he would whisper to himself, "Be glad you have only one eye: you needn't be a parson;" and then he would close each of his eyes alternately, to make sure that it was not his case. Constantine was a riddle to him; but he prayed for him in church for some time.

Meanwhile the time had come for Ivo in his turn to set out for the convent of Ehingen. His father's house was filled with the bustle of preparation, as if he were on the point of being married. At first the sight of his new clothes was a source of pleasure; but soon the thought of parting outweighed all others, and an inexpressible feeling of dread overcame him. It was a comfort to think that his mother and Nat, with the dun, were to accompany him. Having taken leave of the chaplain, of his companions at Horb, and of Mrs. Hankler, he devoted three days to going the rounds of the village. All gave him their best wishes,--for all thought well of him and envied the parents of so fine and good a lad. Here and there he received a little present,--a handkerchief, a pair of suspenders, a purse, and even some money: the last he hesitated to accept,--for, as his parents were well off, it seemed humiliating. But he reflected that clergymen must accept presents, and rejoiced over the six-creutzer pieces with childish glee. Having finished his parting calls, he avoided being seen before the houses he had visited; for there is something disagreeable in meeting casually with persons of whom you have just taken a final and long farewell: a deep feeling seems to be rudely wiped away and a debt to remain uncancelled. Ivo thus became almost a prisoner for some days, restricted to the society of his pigeons and the little localities which had become endeared to him in his father's curtilage.

On the eve of his departure he went to the house where Emmerence lived, to say "Good-bye." She brought him something wrapped up in paper, and said, "There, take it: it is one of my ducklings!" Although Ivo did not object, she pressed him, saying, "Oh, you must take it! Do you remember how I drove them in from the hollow? They were little weeny things then, and you used to help me get food for them. Take it: you can eat it for lunch to-morrow."

Holding the roast duck in one hand, he gave the other to Emmerence and to her parents. With a heavy heart, he returned home. Here all was in a bustle. They were to start at one o'clock in the night, so as to be in Ehingen betimes. On the bench by the stove sat an orphan-boy from Ahldorf, who was also to enter the convent, with a blue bundle of goods and chattels beside him. Ivo forgot his own sorrows in his pity for the orphan, whom nobody accompanied, and who was forced to rely upon the kindness of strangers. Seeing no other comfort at hand, he held the roast duck under his nose, and said, "That's what we're going to have for lunch tomorrow. You like a good drum-stick or a bit of the breast, don't you?" He looked almost happy; and, to assure the stranger of his share, he told him to put the duck into his bundle; but his mother interfered to prevent this, as it would stain the clothes.

They all went to bed early. The orphan, whose name was Bart, slept in Nat's bed, who stayed up to feed the horse and wake the others. When Ivo was already in bed, His mother stole softly into the room once more. She shaded the oil-lamp which she carried with her hand, in order not to disturb him if he slept; but Ivo was awake, and, as her hand smoothed the cover under his chin and then rested on his head, she said, "Pray, Ivo dear, and you'll sleep well. Good-night!"

He wept bitterly when she had gone. A vision of light seemed to have passed away, leaving him in total darkness. He felt as if a strange and distant roof covered him already. To-morrow he knew his mother would not come to him thus, and he sobbed into the pillows. He thought of Emmerence, and of the other people in the village: they were all so dear to him, and he could not imagine how they would do when he was gone, and whether things would really go on without him just as they always had done. He thought they ought to miss him as much as he longed to be with them: he wept for himself and for them, and his tears seemed to have no end. At last he nerved himself, folded his hands, prayed aloud with a fervor as if he strained God and all the saints to his bosom, and fell gently asleep.

With his eyes half shut, Ivo struck about him when Nat came with the light: he thought it absurd to get up when he had hardly begun his first nap. But Nat said, sorrowfully, "No help for it: up with you. You must learn to get up now when other people bid you."

He staggered about the room as if he were tipsy. A good cup of coffee brought him to his senses.

The house was all astir; and Ivo took a weeping farewell of his brothers and sisters. Bart was already seated by Nat's side on the board, which had the bag of oats for a cushion: his mother was getting into the wagon, and Joe, his eldest brother, held the dun's head. Valentine lifted up his son and kissed him: it was the first time in his life that he gave him this token of love. Ivo threw his arms around his neck and wept aloud. Valentine was visibly touched; but, summoning up all his manhood, he lifted the boy into the wagon, shook his hand, and said, in a husky tone, "God bless you, Ivo! be a good boy."

His mother threw his father's cloak around them both; the dun started, and they were on their way through the dark and silent village. Here and there a taper was burning by the bedside of sickness, while the unsteady shadows of the watchers flitted across the window. The friends who lived in all these silent walls bade him no farewell: only the watchman, whom they met at the brick-yard, stopped in the midst of his cry and said, "Pleasant trip to you."

For nearly an hour nothing was heard but the horse's tread and the rattling of the wheels. Ivo lay on his mother's bosom with his arms around her. Once he made his way out of the warm covering and asked, "Bart, have you a cloak?"

"Yes: Nat gave me the horse-cloth."

Ivo again sank upon his mother's bosom, and, overpowered by sorrow and fatigue, he fell asleep. Blest lot of childhood, that the breath of slumber is sufficient to wipe all its bitterness away!

The road led almost wholly through forests. They passed through Muehringen, traversed the lovely valley of the Eiach, and left the bathing-place of Imnau behind, before ever it occurred to Ivo to look about him. Not until they came down the steep that leads into Haigerloch did he fairly awake; and he was almost frightened to see the town far down in the ravine encircled by the frowning hills. As day broke they felt the cold more keenly; for it is as if Night, when she arises to quit the earth, gathered all her strength about her to leave the traces of her presence as deep as possible.

They stopped at Hechingen, at the Little Horse, where a young girl was standing under the door. Perhaps this reminded Ivo of Emmerence; for he said, "Mother, shall we eat the duck now?"

"No: we'll have it for dinner at Gamertingen, and get them to make us a nice soup besides."

The bright sunshine in the Killer Valley, the constant change of scene, and the novel details of rural life which he saw in the "Rauh Alb" Mountains, cheered Ivo a little; and when he saw a large herd of cattle grazing he said to Nat, "Mind you take good care of my Brindle."

"There's an end of my care of him: your father has sold him to Buchmaier, and he is coming to fetch him to-day and break him in."

Ivo was too well acquainted with the stages of a domestic animal's life to be much grieved at this news: he only said, "Well, Buchmaier is a good man, and deals well by man and beast; so I guess he won't work him too hard. And, besides, he don't yoke two oxen into one yoke, but gives each his own, so they're not worried quite so much."

The sun was near setting when they reached the valley of the Danube. Nat became quite lively. With his head bent back, he told all sorts of stories of the neighboring town of Munderkingen, of which much the same jokes are told as are sometimes expended upon the Schildburgers; for these towns are to the Wurtembergers or Suabians what the Suabians are to the Germans outside of themselves, and something like what the Irish are to the English and Americans,--a tribe upon which every cobbler of wit patches a shred of his facetiousness in the cheap and durable form of a "bull." Ivo laughed heartily, and said, "I wish you and I could travel about together for a whole year."

But this was soon to cease; for they were at the gates of Ehingen. Ivo started and grasped his mother's hand. They put up at the Vineyard, not far from the convent. Hardly had they seated themselves, however, before the vesper-bell rang: Ivo's mother rose without speaking, took the two boys by the hand, and went to church.

There is a peculiar power in the universal visibility of the Catholic religion: wherever you go or stand, temples open wide their portals to receive your faith, your hope, your charity; worshippers are everywhere looking up to the same objects of veneration, uttering the same words, and making the same gestures; you are surrounded by brothers, children of the great visible holy father at Rome. Halls are always open to receive you into the presence of the Lord, and you are never out of your spiritual inheritance.

Thus Christina and the two boys knelt devoutly at the altar. They forgot that their home was far away; for the hand of the Lord had erected a dwelling around and over them.

With an invigorated confidence, the mother once more took the boys by the hand and sought the convent-gate. There was much stir here, and men and boys might be seen walking and running to and fro in all directions, dressed in all the various costumes of the Catholic portions of the country. The famulus at the entrance, having examined their passports, brought them to the director. This was an old man of rather querulous mien, who answered every remark and every question of Christina with "Yes, yes: right enough." He had been catechized so much that day that his taciturnity was not to be wondered at. Feeling Ivo pulling at her skirt, she took courage to request that his reverence would permit Ivo to sleep at the hotel for the coming night.

After some hesitation he said, "Well, yes. But he must be here before church in the morning."

Bart took leave of Christina with a specimen of that verbiage of gratitude which he had learned by heart from frequent practice. This duty performed, he cheerfully followed the famulus to his room.

Ivo danced with joy at being allowed to stay with his mother. He continued chatting with her till late at night.

The next morning a beautiful clear Sunday was shining. An hour before church began, Ivo went to the convent with his mother, followed by Nat with the baggage and a bundle for Bart. She helped him to arrange his chattels in the press, counting over every piece, and often looking about sorrowfully to find that twelve boys were forced to live here in one room. At the sound of the convent-bell, mother and son separated, and the latter went to join his comrades.

After church his mother introduced herself to the stewardess, on whom as a woman she hoped to exercise some little influence. She begged her to give the boy a little something to eat between meals occasionally,--for he would certainly forget to ask for it,--and she would pay for it all honestly.

Ivo was permitted to join his mother again a little before dinner-time. She even tried to make interest with the hostess of the Vineyard, and implored her to give Ivo any thing he might ask for, and keep an account of it, and it would be punctually paid. The busy hostess attended to every thing, though she well knew that she could do nothing.

Ivo ate with a good appetite: he knew that his mother was with him. But after dinner he walked sadly to the Vineyard; for now the inevitable leave-taking was to come.

"Well, Nat," said he, "you'll always be my friend, won't you?"

"You may swear to that as if it was gospel," replied he, pushing the collar over the horse's head: he did not turn around, wishing to conceal his emotion.

"And you'll give my love to all the people that ask about me?"

"Yes, yes; indeed I will: only don't grieve so much about being far away from home. Why, it's pleasant to take leave when you know that there are people at home who love you dearly, and when you haven't done any harm." Nat's voice gave out; his throat was parched up, and his neck swelled. Ivo saw nothing of this, but inquired,--

"And you'll mind the pigeons till I come back again, won't you?"

"Sha'n't lose a feather. There now: go to your mother, for we must be off, or to-morrow will be lost too. Keep up your spirits, and don't let it worry you too much: Ehingen isn't out of the world, either. Hoof, dun!"

He led the horse up to the car, and Ivo went to his mother. Seeing her weep so bitterly, he suppressed his own tears, and said, "Mustn't be so sad: Ehingen isn't out of the world, either, and I'm coming home at Easter, and then we shall be so glad: sha'n't we?"

His mother bit her lips, bent over Ivo, embraced and kissed him. "Be pious and good" were the last words she sobbed out. She got on the car; the dun started, after looking around at Ivo, as if to take leave also; Nat nodded once more, and they were gone.

Ivo stood with his hands folded and his head sunk upon his breast. When he raised his tearful eyes and saw nothing of the loved ones, he ran out into the street to get one more look at the car: from the town-gate he saw it speeding on the dusty road. He stopped and turned to go back. Everybody around seemed so cheerful, and he alone was sad and a stranger! In the car his mother took her rosary and prayed,--

"Dear, holy Mother of God! Thou knowest what a mother's love is: thou hast felt it in sorrow and in joy. Preserve my child; he is the jewel of my heart. And, if I do a sin in loving him so much, let me atone for it, not him."

When Ivo reached the convent it was time for the afternoon service; but he found no devotion this time: his heart trembled too much with weariness. For the first time in his life he found himself in church without knowing it: he sang and listened unthinkingly.

This one circumstance was a feature of the life on which he was about to enter: the actions of his own will fell into the background; directions and precepts dictated his steps. His existence now became legally and strictly monotonous. The story of one day is the story of all.

The boys slept in large halls under the supervision of an usher. At half-past five in the morning a bell rang, which brought in the famulus, who lighted the lantern hanging from the roof and summoned them all to prayers. Then there was breakfast at the common table, succeeded by hours of private study which lasted till eight o'clock. The schools now began, and continued until dinner-time, after which there was an hour of "recreation,"--that is, of a walk taken under the eye of a functionary. After some more hours of instruction the boys were permitted to play in the yard, but never without being watched by a person in authority. The constraint indicated by the enclosed space was never relaxed even during "free time;" nowhere was there room for a spontaneous pleasure to spring forth, nowhere a moment of unreconnoitred solitude.

At home Ivo had been the pet of the family: when he sat at his books, his mother made it her especial care to see that no noise was made near him; scarcely was any one permitted to enter the room, and an impression was made as if a saint was engaged in working miracles there. Here, on the contrary, when the studies were resumed after supper, whispers would be heard here and there, which distracted his attention and took away the edge of his industry. Those who know the inscrutable power that often animates the soul which mirrors itself in its own thoughts or drinks in the thoughts of others, who are acquainted with that mute intellectual commerce which extends its organs and spreads its fragrance like a budding flower, will appreciate the regret of Ivo at never being left to himself. He was no longer his own property: a society moved him as if he had been one of their fingers or teeth.

At nine o'clock there were prayers once more, after which every one was compelled to go to bed. Here, at last, Ivo returned to himself, and his thoughts travelled homeward, until sleep spread its mantle over him.

Thus it happened that for some days Ivo felt as if he had been sold into slavery. Nowhere was there a trace of free will; every word and every thought was hedged in by injunctions and commandments; the inflexibility of the law raised a cold high wall before him wherever he turned. It is a consistent deduction from the essence of every Church which has reached the development of a fixed and unchanging form of ritual and tenet, to begin in early youth with the task of tapping the fountain-head of individual self-regulation in the hearts and minds of its pupils, and of clapping them into the iron harness of its unbending forms. But the highest effort of education should be to draw out this self-regulating principle, and not to repress it; to educe the laws of right and wrong from the workings of the young mind, and not to nail a foreign growth upon the stock after having deadened the source from which alone a healthy fruitage could spring.

Ivo was so low-spirited that a single harsh word sufficed to bring tears to his eyes. Some of the naughtiest of his companions discovered this, and teased him in all sorts of ways. Many of these boys were of the coarsest stamp,--had left the most humble abodes behind them, and found every thing their hearts desired in the good food and the care taken of all externals. They noticed that Ivo was easily disgusted, and often amused themselves by getting up a conversation at the table which made it impossible for the poor boy to taste a morsel. At such times his mother's arrangement with the stewardess was of the greatest service to him.

Over-government always leads to circumventions of the law which the supervisors are forced to wink at: some of these tricks are handed down by a sort of secret tradition; others are invented with the occasion. Ivo never took part in these irregularities, nor in the practical jokes sometimes attempted to be played on the teachers and overseers. He was quiet and retiring.

His letter to his parents gives a vivid picture of his state of mind. It was as follows:--

"Dear Parents, Brothers, and Sister:--I did not wish to write before I had learned to feel at home here. Oh, I have lived through so much in these three weeks that I thought I should die! Indeed, if I had not been ashamed I would have run away and come back to you. I often thought that I was just like the cow that father bought: she could not eat any thing either until she had become accustomed to the rest of the cattle. We have very good eating here,--meat every day except Friday, and wine on Sunday. The stewardess is very kind to me. I cannot go to see the landlady at the Vineyard, as we are not allowed to go to taverns. We are kept strictly in all things:--we are not even permitted to take half an hour's walk by ourselves after dinner. If I only had wings, to come and fly over to you! What I like best is to walk in the road by which we came here: then I think of the future,--when I shall travel this road again in the holidays. It is very cold here, too. Would you please send me a flannel jacket, dear mother, slashed with green in front? I feel the cold much more here than when I used to go to Horb: there I could do as I liked; here I don't seem to belong to myself at all. Oh, my head is often so heavy with crying that I feel as if I were going to be sick! But don't grieve about it, dear mother: all will go on very well soon, and I am really in good health now: only I must pour out my heart before you. I will study very hard, and then God will make all things go rightly: I depend on Him, on our Savior, on the holy mother of God, and on all the saints: others have gone through with it all before me, and why should not I? Be happy among yourselves, and love each other dearly; for, when one is away, one feels how much those should love each other who are privileged to be together: I would certainly never be quarrelsome or discontented now, and dear Mag would not need to scold me. Good-bye. Give my love to all good friends, and believe me your loving son,

"Ivo Bock.

"P.S.--Dear mother, a new usher has just come,--Christian the tailor's son Gregory; but his sister does not keep house for him now, it seems: there is somebody else with him. Please get Christian the tailor to write to him to be a little kind to me.

"Dear Nat, my best love to you, and I think of you very often. The cattle here are almost all black; and whenever I see a farmer at work in the fields I can hardly help running up to him to help him. The steward has pigeons too, but he kills them all in winter.

"Bart lives in a different room from mine. He is very happy: he has never been so well cared for in his life. Poor fellow! he hasn't such a dear good mother and father as I have. If I only had one companion to my liking here--

"In the evenings we are allowed to visit in families: many of the boys do so, but I know nobody to go to. Oh, if I were only in Nordstetten----

"Pardon my scrawling. If I were only with you! I have many things on my heart still, but will close now: the night-bell is ringing. Think of me often."

This letter made a great impression at home. His mother carried it in her pocket, and read it again and again, till it fell to pieces. The High-German dialect in which it was written came so strangely from her child that she could hardly realize the fact: but then he was a "scholar," and the minister preached in the same way in church. The numerous dashes tried her patience sorely. What could the boy have been thinking of when he made them?

Nat at once offered to walk all night to Ehingen,

to bring Ivo the things he had asked for and news from home. Walpurgia, the pretty seamstress, was taken into the house and set to work. Christina treated her to the best of fare, for it seemed as if she were feeding the jacket. Often she said, "Don't save any thing: it is for my Ivo." As it was near Christmas, some "hutzelbrod" was baked, being kneaded with kirschwasser and filled with dried apples, pears, and nut-kernels. This, with a great quantity of fruit, some money, and other knickknacks, was packed into a bag and laid upon the shoulders of the devoted Nat, who trudged out of the village late in the evening.

Ivo could hardly believe his eyes when, as the class were taking their afternoon stroll, he saw Nat coming up the road. He ran to meet him, and fell upon his neck. Many of the boys gathered round wondering.

"Bock," asked one, "is that your brother?"

Ivo nodded, unwilling to say that Nat was only a servant.

"What an old buck your father must be!" said another boy. The rest laughed,--all except Clement Bauer, a boy from the principality of Hohenlohe, who said, "For shame, you jealous daws! Why, a'n't you glad his brother's come to see him?" He ran to the usher in command and obtained permission for Ivo to go home with Nat alone. Ivo was delighted beyond measure to meet with such a fine boy. The thought awoke in his mind that perhaps Nat had helped him to a friend.

Hand in hand they turned toward the convent, Ivo talking and rejoicing incessantly. When the things came to be unpacked, he shouted with delight. He immediately laid up a reserve for the good Clement; but when the other room-mates returned he shared his treasure with them all. Nat had also brought a letter for Gregory, the tailor's son, which Ivo immediately carried to him, and received an invitation to come to him often and call upon him for aid and counsel.

In the evening he was allowed to go to the inn with Nat, where there was no end of their chatting. When the bell rang for prayer, Nat escorted him back to the convent. Ivo ascended the stairs as lightly as if an unseen hand supported him. He was quite at home here now, since all Nordstetten, in the person of its most acceptable envoy, had come to see him. Besides, he now had both a friend and a patron, all owing to dear good old Nat.

From this time forth Ivo's life was sustained by industry, cheerfulness, and friendship. His mother hardly suffered a bird to pass without charging it with something kind for her son. His chest was never without some little delicacy, nor his heart without some secret pleasure. A brighter light fell on all things around him, much of which was owing to the encouraging influence of Clement. Still, the two did not become intimate so quickly as might have been expected: an extraordinary occurrence was necessary to bring this about. The other boys, seeing that Ivo was in favor with Mr. Haible,--such was Gregory's surname,--left him unmolested, and even sought his good-will.

The study of music afforded Ivo particular pleasure. An orchestra was organized to perform at the church-festivals. Ivo chose the bugle as his instrument, and soon acquired considerable skill.

The principal once conceived the idea of giving the boys, who were condemned to such a dismal barrack-life, a taste of family comfort. So, after catechism, he invited twelve of the most advanced--Ivo among them--to come to his room in the evening. This invitation was understood as a command, and the boys marched in at the appointed hour, in the order of their seats at school, bowing and scraping.

The principal, who lived with his old maiden sister, had tea ready for them, to which they were helped, and of which they bashfully partook. The good old gentleman had unfortunately forgotten all about family comfort and domestic enjoyment himself; so, instead of asking questions about home, he conversed about books and studies. Once only, when he told a magnificent joke of the perplexity into which he was thrown in early childhood by finding two leaves of his Bible sticking together, a suppressed giggle passed around the room. He immediately went on to argue, however, that whenever we find it hard to understand any thing in the Bible we might be sure there was a leaf pasted down somewhere.

At nine o'clock he said, "Now let us pray." They prayed, and then he said "Good-night," and the boys went their way. They were not much the better for their taste of family comfort.

Thus the winter passed by. Sometimes it made Ivo sad to see the town-boys sledging or throwing snow-balls. When the snow thawed, however, and nature began again to thrive, his heart reverberated to the pulses which beat all round him. He yearned for his free sunny home.

8.

THE HOLIDAYS.

For several weeks before the holidays none of the boys had their minds fixed upon their studies; all skipped and danced with joy at the thought of going home. Ivo and Clement often walked hand in hand, telling each other stories of home. Clement was the son of a scrivener or actuary,--the lowest grade of those officials who form the great political and legal hierarchy of the continental states of Europe. He had had no settled home in his childhood, as his father had been transferred from town to town three or four times during his life.

On the last evening all the boys were packing their trunks, as if on the eve of a march or a retreat. In the morning there was divine service, and, though the singing was loud, it is to be feared that more thoughts were directed to earthly homes than to the heavenly one.

After taking an affectionate leave of Clement, Ivo set out, taking short steps at first, according to the rule among pedestrians, all impatient as he was. Bart kept him company: he was going to an aunt. He was an unpleasant companion, for he wanted to stop at every tavern-sign which showed itself. Ivo never assented until they had reached the valley of the Lower March, where their roads parted. Fortunately he here found some Jewish horse-jockeys from Nordstetten. They were very glad to see him, and he them. They took him in their car and gave him a lift of many miles. He heard of all the births, marriages, and deaths. Ivo thought that these were the three fates between which vibrates the life of the children of men; and, without halting at the redundant spondee, he quoted to himself

"Clotho colum retinet, et Lachesis net, et Atropos occat."[⁹]

When the road was up hill the travelling traders took their prayer-straps out of their pouches, fastened them to their foreheads and arms and offered up their long devotions. Ivo compared the breath which rose from their moving lips in whiffs of fume, to the incense of the Bible: he honored every creed, and particularly the Jewish one, as the oldest of all. He even glanced into the open prayer-book of his neighbor, and pleased him by showing that he was able to read Hebrew. Ivo admired the ease with which these horse-jockeys read the language: even the principal could not have kept pace with them.

On setting him down again, where they travelled in a direction different from his home, they made him promise not to go all the way to Nordstetten that day, so that he might not injure his health. Walking on silently, Ivo praised his beloved native village, in which every one, Christian and Jew, appeared to be equally good.

Although his thoughts all tended homeward, he was very observant of things around him, and even found time for some general reflections. More than once, when a distant village-spire hove in sight, he said to himself, "How well it is that the church-steeple is always the first thing to be seen as you approach a village! It shows that Christians live there, and that they dedicate their best and finest house to God."

At another time he thought, "These fruit-trees around every village are the best friends of man. Man comes first, cattle next, and then the orchard-trees,--for they also need the special care of man to prune and graft them and remove the caterpillars. How strange it is! All around is grass and puny herbage, and suddenly a great stem rears itself aloft and its crest is all white with blossoms.

"God's earth is full of wondrous beauty,

A lovely place to dwell upon;

Then to rejoice shall be my duty

Till in the earth I make my wonne."

Though so well entertained by communing with himself, he entered into conversation with more than one of the travellers he overtook, or who overtook him. They all were pleased with his open, kindly talk; and he quite rejoiced to find the world full of such good-humored people.

It was dark when he reached Hechingen. Though it was but five hours' walk to his home, and he felt no fatigue, he kept his promise to his friends. He wished, moreover, to come home in the daytime. "It was dark when I went away," he said to himself as he sat at the inn, "and it must be light when I return." He was even vain enough to wish that his father's house was at the other end of the village, so that his green knapsack and student's dress might attract universal attention.

The sun shone brightly when Ivo awoke. It was a happier waking than that on which the lantern of the convent used to look down. It was a beautiful day,--a day of jubilee for the birds in the air and the buds on the trees.

He longed for wings; and, in default of them, he flung his cap high in the air as he walked briskly along. He suddenly stopped, sat down on the wayside, and, repeating the words of Exodus iii. 5,--"Put off thy shoes from off thy feet; for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground,"--he obeyed the precept. Like an unshod colt, he 'bounded along for a time; but soon he found that the life of the convent had unfitted him for such exercise. Compressing his lips with pain, and resuming his shoes, he again thought of the beautiful Psalm,--"He shall give his angels charge over thee, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone." Psalm xci. 11, 12.

At Haigerloch he bought two "pretzels,"--one for his mother and the other for Emmerence. "Didn't she give me the duck when I went away?" he argued to himself, to quiet his ecclesiastical conscience. He avoided the short turns which the footpaths offered, and followed the highroad, fearing to miss his way: besides, he had more of the village to pass through on this route than in going by the way of Muehringen. The nearer home he came, the more his heart bounded within him. Sometimes it all seemed too good to be true, and he dreaded some unforeseen disaster, or even that the weight of his exultation would drag him down: at such times he would sit down to recover his strength.

People were wrong in saying that it was but two hours' walk from Haigerloch to Nordstetten. "The fox must have measured this road and thrown in his tail," said Ivo, repeating the old German proverb: "it is eight hours' walk at least."

Near the beech farm he saw his Brindle pulling a plough. Running up to the ploughman, he asked how Brindle worked, and rejoiced to hear him praised. The brute had forgotten him, however, and let his head droop earthward under the yoke. Ivo was tempted to give him one of the pretzels to eat, but was ashamed of showing his weakness to the workman, and went on.

At the brick-yard he met Hansgeorge's Peter, the one-eyed, who shook his hand sadly, and said, "Constantine came last night."

Welcomed on every side, Ivo passed on. Every thing warmed his heart,--the things which moved, and those which moved not: every hedge, every stack of wood, looked like a friend, and seemed to be telling a good old story: when his father's house stood before him it trembled in his eyes, for the tears were running down his cheeks.

Emmerence sat under the walnut-tree with the school master's child on her lap.

Instead of coming to meet him, she ran into the house, crying, "Ivo's come! Ivo's come!"

His mother left the wash-tub, rushed down the stairs, and, with her hands but half dried on her apron, embraced her darling. His father, Mag, and his brothers also came up in high glee; and his mother, with her arms still round his neck, almost carried him into the house.

Emmerence now came up also, saying, "I knew you were coming to-day. Constantine came yesterday. I saw him first, though,--didn't I, aunty?" she added, turning to his mother.

Nat now made his appearance, and, with a hearty "God bless you," he helped Ivo off with his shoes and brought him a pair of slippers.

After the vaulted chambers of the convent, the rooms of the farmhouse seemed no larger and no higher than the nests of a pigeon's cote: he stretched himself to reach the ceiling; but, much as he had grown, this was still out of the question. His mother hastened to make a soup for him and a "parson's roast," as a pancake is called in those parts, because it is the dish generally got up for sudden and unexpected visitors at a parsonage.

Having given his mother one of the "pretzels," Ivo went to the stable to talk to Nat. The beasts seemed to recognise him: the cow particularly was pleased to turn her head toward him and let him tickle her forehead.

"Haven't you brought me any thing?" asked Nat, smiling. Ivo found the remaining pretzel in his pocket and handed it to him in silence. He was thus relieved of the scruple which troubled him, that it might be wrong for him to make Emmerence a present: on returning to the kitchen, however, he heard Emmerence say,--

"Well, aunty, what are you going to give me for bringing you the good news?"

"Take the pretzel he brought for me: Ivo knows I am as thankful as if I had eaten it, but my teeth are giving out."

Ivo was but too well pleased to know that Emmerence had something from him, and highly indignant that the squalling baby forthwith laid her under contribution for half the prize. The baby found but little favor in his eyes at any time: it was so large that when Emmerence carried it--as it always insisted on her doing--she seemed in constant danger of losing her balance and falling. So he said, with some solemnity,--

"You do a sin against yourself and against the baby, Emmerence, if you drag it about all the time: it has strong feet, and ought to learn to walk; and you will drag yourself crooked if you go on so."

She set the child down instantly, and did not take it up again in spite of its crying. Wasn't Ivo a young parson now? and hadn't he said it was a sin?

This little reprimand was almost the only interest Ivo manifested in her to the end of the holidays. So much, he thought, his conscience could not possibly disapprove; but he would not go further. The eyes of the girl were often fixed on him, as if to inquire the cause of his studied indifference. Once only, in a favored moment, he asked, "What has become of your puss?"

"Why, only think, that tinker Caspar, 'the Dog Caspar,' stole it and took its pretty black hide off, and ate poor pussy."

In the afternoon Ivo enjoyed the full honor of being welcomed by all the villagers. He loved to stop at every door; it did his heart good to see people walk up to him as to one who had been in foreign parts, take him by the hand and admire his healthy appearance. Nor was it mere vanity that afforded him this gratification: he felt that he had a nook in the hearts of the eager welcomers, he was more or less beloved; and thus the prevailing desire of his nature was gratified.

At night the most delicious home feeling always overcame him when his mother visited his bedside and saw that he was well covered.

"Christmas white, Easter bright," had come true this year. The day after he came home was Easter Sunday. Every thing was doubly fresh and green. Once more Ivo stood under the walnut-tree, the leaves of which were just peeping out of their buds; once more he was wrapt in contemplation of his pigeons: he could not sing this time, for that would have been unbecoming his station.

When the afternoon service was over, Ivo set out on a walk to Horb. At the "Scheubuss," at Paul's Garden, he found several women seated on the little bridge by the weeping willow which droops its green arches over the runnel. They all rose reverentially at Ivo's greeting: one of them, however, stepped up to him, and, after rubbing her hand very hard on her apron, took that of Ivo. We have not forgotten her, though she has grown quite old: it was the gawk's mother, Maria.

"God bless you, Ivo!" she said. "How you have grown! I won't call you Mr. Bock until you are at the seminary in Rottenburg."

"You must always call me Ivo, aunty."

"No, no: that would never do."

The other women approached, and regarded the young "gentleman" with great attention; but not one ventured to open her mouth.

"How are Matthew and Aloys coming on in America?" asked Ivo.

"Now, how nice that is in you to think of them! I've just had a letter from Aloys. You know he's been married this long time to Mechtilde, the daughter of Matthew of the Hill: they have two children. Oh, if I could only have just one blessed look at them! It's like being half dead to be so uncommon far apart. I must see Mat's children, and Aloys'; and Matthew's wife, the American, I don't know at all. My boys are all the time writing to come and come: if it only wasn't so shocking far to that America! They say they will meet me at New York; and, if it's God's will, I think I shall go off after Whitsunday with some emigrants from Rexingen. If our Lord God wishes to take me away He will always know where to find me. Isn't it so?"

Ivo nodded; and Maria, taking from her pocket a paper which was very carefully wrapped up, went on:--"See, here's the last letter: how kind it would be of you to come in and read it to me once more! The schoolmaster is tired of it, and the Jew schoolmaster has read it three or four times too. There's a word in it that neither of 'em can make out: you can, though, I'm sure; for you've got learning."

Ivo went into the house with her, the other women following, first with hesitation and then with an air of great firmness and resolution. All sat down, prepared to listen attentively. Many of the gawk's old friends will be pleased to hear his letter also:--

"Nordstetten on the Ohio, America,
October 18, 18**.

"Dear Mother:--As you don't know how I'm getting along, I will write you all about it. At first I never wrote to you what a hard time I had of it; but now, with God's help, that's all passed and gone. I always thought, 'What's the use of making poor mammy fret about it? she couldn't do any good, anyhow;' so I swallowed it all down, and worked hard and tried to whistle."

Ivo paused a moment. He seemed to be drawing a lesson for his own guidance from what he was reading. He continued:--

"Now things are all put to rights; and it isn't a trifle, either, to build yourself a house, and clear all your fields and turn them over for the first time, and no help or counsel nowhere from a living soul: but now it looks nicer here than at Buchmaier's. Our arms and legs get stiff now and then; but we're all in good health, and that's the best of it. Many of our countrymen are here, and worse off than at home, and have to work at the canals and railroads. There's lots of swindlers here, that tell you all sorts of stories when you first come into the country, until you've spent the last cent in your pocket, and then they're nowhere. There are great hypocrites here as well as there: the voyage cleans, out their stomachs, but their souls are as dirty as ever. But the steamboat-man in Mayence gave us a good introduction to a society of fine men,--all Germans,--who tell you where it's best to go and what's best to be done: so none of us were ruined. I want you to tell all those that talk of coming over not to trust anybody but that man and that introduction. At first, when I used to go away from my guide a little, and run about in New York, while we were waiting for Mat to come on, I used to feel just as if I'd got among a herd of cattle,--God forgive me!--they were men just as much as I am; but they jabbered together just like that French simpleton, Joe, in Frog Alley: he talks a sort of hotchpotchcomambulation too. But it's English what they talk to each other. I can speak it a little too by this time: it's just like German sometimes, only you must handle your mouth as if you'd got your teeth twisted round a green apple. We were a large company at first; but one's gone here and another there. That's all wrong: we Germans ought to stick together. I always used to think only the Wurtembergers were my countrymen; but here they call us all Dutchmen; and when I see one from Saxony I feel just as if he were from the Lower Neckar Valley. I guess I'm writing all sorts of things you don't want to read; but this sort of thoughts go about in my head so much that they pop out before I know what's what.

"Now, I must tell you something else.

Did you notice that I wrote 'Nordstetten' at the top of my letter? Yes; so it is, and so it shall be. I've put up a post not far from my house, with a board and with 'Nordstetten' marked on it in large letters. It won't be long before other people 'll come and settle here, and then they'll keep the name. Then we're going to build a church, just like the church at home: I've picked out the hill for it already, right opposite my barn: we call it the Church Hill now. Then we'll send for a parson from Germany. And my fields have just the same names they used to have at home. I and my Mechtilde often talk about it nights how it'll all come some time or other. If we don't live to see it, why, our children will; and then it'll all be my doing, after all. If one of the Nordstetten students would only come here and be our parson, he'd have a nice place of it; but he'd have to work in the fields some. We choose our own parsons here: we take those we like best, and none of your consistories has any thing to say to us. So the parsons are not the lords over us, neither: here all are equal; they're no better than we are, only that they've got learning and been ordained. Three hours' walk from here we have one: he was born in Rangendingen. The swallows have built nests around my house already. Last year I wrote on a bit of paper, 'God bless you all over there,' and my name under it, and tied it to one of their necks. I thought, in my foolishness, they'd fly to Nordstetten with it some day; but--lo and behold!--she came back again, and she had another bit of paper, with χαιρε [Greek: chaire] on it. Nobody can tell me what that means: it looks just like kaibe;[¹⁰] and that would be a shame, wouldn't it?"

"Do you know what it means, Ivo?" asked Maria.

"Yes, Chaire: it is Greek, and means 'Hail.'"

The women lifted up their hands in amazement at Ivo's learning.

"But where did the swallow winter?" asked Maria, again.

"Among the Firelanders, I suppose," answered Ivo; and after a pause he read on:--

"I never knew till I got away from home how finely the larks sing. Only think! there are no larks here at all, and no nightingales either: but a great many other fine birds there are, and splendid pine and oak trees, and the tallest sort of timber.

"Dear mother, I wrote all this a week ago, and when I look over it I think I'm writing stuff and nonsense; but just now I feel as if I was sitting with you before Jacob the blacksmith's house at the well, and people passing by and saying, 'Ha' ye good counsel?' and my heart is so full that I don't know what I ought to say first and what last. We are all in very good health, thank God: we like what we eat and drink, and it feeds us well. We've had to widen all the clothes we brought with us from Germany. It's a good thing Mechtilde has learned to sew.

"Whenever I eat a good dinner I think how nice it would be if my poor mother was here: I could just lay out the best bits for her, and say, 'There, mother: that's for you to help yourself; there's a choice morsel;' and I know you would like living in our house.

"Our Bat is getting on finely: he never had any thing to ail him yet. Oh, if that dear little Maria was living yet! She would have been a year old next Michaelmas. She was a sweet little angel; she was only three weeks old, but when you called her by name she would look at you so cunning, and grab at your eyes. On All-Souls' day we are going to put an iron cross on her grave. Oh, my! oh, my! the dear child is in heaven now, and heaven is the real America, after all!

"I must write more about my household-matters. I oughtn't to think of the child so much; it works me too hard. I say, as the parson said, 'The Lord hath given, the Lord hath taken away: the name of the Lord be praised.'

"If the Lord will only keep us all in good health now! The Lord has always been very gracious to me: as far as the cattle go, I haven't lost one of them yet. There's nothing I like to think of more than that the cattle always have plenty to eat here. To the last day of my life I shall never forget what a misery it was when feed was so scarce, just the day before I went to Stuttgard, when there wasn't hardly a blade of grass on the ground. Do you remember what it used to be to get up in the morning and not give the poor beasts a quarter of a good breakfast, and then to see the flesh falling off their ribs? I often felt so unked I could have run away. Here the cows run about pasturing all the year round, and never know what it is to want; and yet I never had to kill one of them for having overeaten itself. Over there they stand in the stable all the year round, and then, when they do get into a clover-field, they eat till they burst. And just as it is with the cattle, so it is with men. Over there they have to stand in a stable, tied down by squires and clerks and office-holders, until their talons get so long that they can't walk any more, and the minute you let 'em out they go capering about like mad. This is what somebody was saying very finely in a public meeting the other day. Mother, it's a fine thing, a public meeting: it's just as if you were to go to church. And yet it isn't just so, neither; for everybody may speak there that can and likes: all are equal there. I want to tell you how they do it, and yet I believe I can't, exactly: only I must tell you that our Matthew is one of the principal speakers: they've put him on the committee two or three times, and the name of Matthew Schorer is one for which the people have respect. I have spoken in public once or twice too. I don't know how it is; at first my heart thumped a little, but then I just felt as if I was speaking to you, just free 'from the liver,' as we used to say in Germany. What they were disputing about was, a German, a Wurtemberger, or, as we say over here, a Swobe,[¹¹] came here, and he'd been an officer, and the king had pardoned him; he'd got up a conspiracy among the military, and afterward he betrayed all his comrades: here he gave himself out for a friend of freedom; but a letter came from over there to say that he was too bad for the gallows, and the devil had kicked him out of his cart. So they disputed about it for a long time whether he could be an officer here or not, and at last I said, 'I can find a handle to fit that hoe. Let him show a letter from his comrades to say that he did the fair thing by them: I can't believe that any Wurtemberger could be so mean as to betray his king first and his comrades afterward.' And they agreed to do just what I told them; but, when I looked at the fellow's face again, I thought, 'Well, that trouble's for nothing: he looks as if he'd stolen the horns off the goat's head.'

"I'm an officer in the militia,--a lieutenant: they chose me because I was in the military over there and understand the business. We choose our own officers here, for here every thing is free. The squire in Nordstetten was only a corporal, after all. If I was to come home---- No; come to think of it, I wouldn't dress like an officer, neither. I'm a free citizen, and that's better than to be an officer or a general. I wouldn't swop with a king. Mother, it's a great country is America. You've got to work right hard, that's a fact; but then you know what you're working for: the tithes and taxes don't take the cream off your earnings. I live here on my farm, and no king and no emperor has any thing to say to me; and as for a presser, they don't know what that is hereabouts, at all. Good gracious! When I think how he used to travel through the village with the beadle, with a long list in his hand, while the people in the houses were weeping and wailing and slamming their doors; and then he would bring a pewter plate, a copper kettle, a pan, or a lamp, from a poor Jew's house to the squire! It is a shame there's so much suffering with us: it seems to me it might easily be done-away with. And yet I wouldn't coax anybody to come over. It's no trifle to be so far away from home, even if you're ever so well off. Every now and then something makes me feel so soft that, when I think of it, I am ashamed of myself; and then I want to bundle up right-away and go to Germany. I must see it once more while I have an eye open to look at it. I can't tell you how I feel: sometimes I almost go to pieces, and feel like howling as if I was a dog. I know that that would never do for a man, but then I can't help feeling so, and I needn't conceal any thing from you, you know. I think, after all, maybe it only comes of longing to see you so much. More than a thousand times I've said to myself, 'If only my mammy was here too,--my dear, good mammy; if she'd only once sit on that bench there!' How glad you'd be to see the big milk-pans! and, oh, to think of your seeing little Bat, and the one that's coming soon! If I have ever done you any harm, forgive me; for you may be sure there's not a living soul on earth that loves you more than I do.

"I have been resting a little, and now I'm going on. What a fine thing it is that we've learned to read and write properly! I'm always grateful to you for having made me learn it. But you mustn't think I'm out of spirits. To-be-sure, I'm not so full of fun as I sometimes was, years ago, but then I've grown older, and had a good deal of experience; but still, sometimes I am so glad, and feel so kindly for every thing in the world, that I begin to whistle and dance and sing. Sometimes I feel a little pang when I call something to mind; but then I say, 'Whoa!' and shake myself like a horse, and away with it. I and Mechtilde live as happy as two children, and our Bat has bones in him as strong as a young calf, and muscles like the kernel of a nut.

"On Sunday, when we go to church, we take salt with us, and what we need besides; and Mechtilde once said we get heavenly salt for it in the mass and the sermon, and salt our souls with it. Mechtilde often makes fine riddles and jokes. We've bought a story-book, too, about Rinaldo Rinaldini: it's a shuddersome story of knights and robbers, and we've read it move than ten times and the other day, when I overslept myself, she sang a song out of it and waked me. Talking of songs, I want to ask a favor of you, but you mustn't laugh at me.

"You see, when a fellow gets out alone into the world and wants to sing by himself, he finds out, all of a sudden, that of ever so many songs he only knows the beginning, and that the rest of it he has only just sung after somebody else; and then I want to pull my head off because it won't come into my mind; but it won't come in, nohow. There's a good many things just so you think you know them until somebody says, 'Now, old fellow, do it alone, will ye?'

"Now, I'd like to ask you--but you mustn't laugh at me--to please get the old schoolmaster to write down all the Nordstetten songs. I'll pay him for it well. You won't forget, will you? And then send it to me, or bring it when you come.

"I must tell you something else, too. Only think, mother! last Tuesday three weeks, as I was sitting at my wagon and mending the tongue,--you can't run to the wagoner's here every five minutes: you must do such things yourself,--what should I hear but somebody say to me, 'Hard at it, Aloys?' and, as I looked up, who should stand there but Long Heartz's Jake, who was in the Guards? We didn't use to be the best of friends; but I forgot all about it, and fell on his neck and almost hugged him to death. I do believe if George himself was to come I'd shake hands with him just to think he came from Nordstetten. I called the whole house together and cut the throat of a turkey. Jake ate his dinner with me just as anybody else would. The laws about eating with Jews, and so on, are for the Old World, and not for the New.

"Jake stayed a week and helped me work in the field: he can do it just as well as a Christian. I was so glad to see he's come to understand that, for a soldier who has honor in him, it isn't the thing to run about peddling. He's going to buy land somewhere hereabouts. I'm helping him do it. I must have my dear Nordstetten Jews here too, for it wouldn't be Nordstetten without them. After that, he's going to join the militia. He'll be an officer before long, most likely. In the evening we used to sit together, I and my Mechtilde, my brothers-in-law and my sisters-in-law, and their boys and girls, and Jake, and we'd sing the songs we used to sing at home; and then I felt just as I did that time Mary Ann got her new distaff. But you mustn't suppose I think very often of Mary Ann. I love my Mechtilde very much, and she loves me too. I wish every couple loved each other as much as we do, and lived as happily together.

"Now, about your coming here. I don't want to beg you too hard: Mat'll write all about it. But, if it's possible---- No, no, I won't beg you. Jake tells me that our Xavier goes to see Valentine's Mag: well, she won't be afraid of the sea I guess, and he can bring her over too. It's all one now, Nordstetten here or Nordstetten there.

"Write me an answer right soon. Only send the letter to Mat, as you did before: he goes to town oftener than I do.

"Now, good-bye to you, and I hope this will find you very well indeed. Think of me sometimes. My Mechtilde and my Bat and my parents-in-law send you their best loves. My sister-in-law has taught little Bat to say, when they ask him, 'Where's your grandmother?' 'Over there in the Black Forest.' I am your loving son.

"Aloys Schorer.

"See how I reach my little hand Far over to your distant land.

"That's my Bat's hand: I drew it, dear mother, just as he laid it on the paper, because there was room enough."

Ivo was asked to read Mat's letter also; but he promised to do so another time, and took his leave, the grateful mother, who was wiping the tears from her eyes, having accompanied him to the door. Outside of the village he saw his sister Mag walking in the meadow with Xavier. He now understood what it was that often made her so disputatious and discontented: her father would not tolerate her acquaintance with "the American," as he called Xavier.

With a skip and a bound, Ivo shook off the oppressive dignity of his station. He danced and sung as he had formerly done, always clearing the heaps of broken stones at the roadside at a bound. The letter of Aloys had made a great impression upon him. He saw in it the picture of a truly honest living,--a life rendered happy by hard work and independence. For the first time he perceived how all the corporal powers of a student lie fallow, and learned to see that it was this which often so greatly "unsettles" the minds of those most favored by natural endowments among the youth of a country. He thought of going to America to be parson and farmer at one and the same time, to go visiting his sister, to travel from farm to farm, instructing the children, and fostering the effort to look upward among all with whom he conversed.

Absorbed with such reflections, he reached Horb. The town did not look near so fine, nor the houses so large, as before: he had seen larger ones. The chaplain was delighted with his former pupil, and Mrs. Hankler, who was ill in bed, said that it made her well only to see him. The Judge's sons were no longer there; for, as it may be remembered, their father had been transferred to another district.

It was night when Ivo returned home. In the village he found Constantine leading Peter by the hand, and walking the street with the half-grown boys, singing. He taught them new songs, and made them laugh uproariously by recounting all sorts of tricks which he had played upon his teacher at the convent. Ivo walked with them quietly till they reached his father's house, when he said, "Good-night," and went in.

Throughout the holidays he was left much to himself. He would either take solitary walks in the fields, or practise at home on a bugle which he had borrowed from Conrad the baker. His mother always urged him to go out and not mope about the house. Sometimes he would walk out with the new schoolmaster. Constantine he never associated with, except when it was not to be avoided.

A deep sorrow stole into his heart when he became aware of the half-concealed dissensions existing between his parents. Before leaving home he had been so habituated to all the incidents of the household that it did not occur to him to speculate about them. At the convent his imagination had pictured home-life as a paradise embosomed in endless peace: all harsh and uninviting associations had disappeared from his memory. Thus, he returned to contrast with a highly-wrought ideal the sober realities of every-day existence; and much that he saw could not fail to shock him, and perhaps to appear even worse than it really was. He came fresh from a household where all things moved according to external laws fixed by unvarying regulations,--where discussion or contradiction was out of the question as much as in the interior of a piece of mechanism; and, though depressed by the rigor of these ordinances, he did not understand that in the free constitution of a family, where each one acts for the whole according to his individual judgment, much difference of opinion and many an altercation is almost inevitable. Even the loud tone of voice in which everybody spoke was not pleasant; and his father's manner, in particular, was such as to cause him frequently to shake his head. When his mother listened in silence to Valentine's expositions of his plans of building houses "for sale" and without previous orders, he would cry out, "There it is, you see: you never care a button for what I say: whether a dog barks, or whether I talk, it's all one to you." If she made objections, he said, "It's the old story: whatever I want to do never suits you." If Christina treated him gently and kindly, like one who needed indulgence, he would perceive it at once, and curse and swear. If, on the contrary, she was firm and decided, and stood her ground, he said, "All the world knows you don't live for me, but for your children: wouldn't you be glad if I was to die?" And then he would sit down, refusing to eat, or drink, or speak: he would go to the inn, but without getting any thing to eat there,--as he feared it would make people talk and grieve his wife,--so that he generally went to bed without his supper.

When such things happened, Christina would look at Ivo with indescribable pain. She saw all the anguish which her troubles wrote upon his face, and redoubled her efforts to conceal all things and smooth them over. The other children were accustomed to such scenes and no longer distressed by witnessing them.

Seeing the necessity of an explanation with her youngest son, she sat down one evening by his bedside and said,--

"Do you see? your father is the best and most upright man in the world; but he has an unlucky disposition, and is not well pleased with himself, because he sometimes neglects things and spoils a job, and things won't go as he likes; and then he wants other people to be all the better pleased with him.

When he sees that that isn't so, and it can't be so, his spirit rises up in him still more: and yet I owe it to my children not to let things go backward. As for myself, I'm willing to eat dry bread all my life; but, for the sake of my children, I can't sit by and see us beggared in five years and my children jostled about among strangers. I know he loves me better than anybody else in the world. He would shed his last drop of blood for me, and I for him; but he wants to mortgage the house and the fields, and to go to work with Koch, the other carpenter, to build houses for sale; and that's what I won't do, and no ten horses shall drag me into it. It's my children's property, and I must be a good mother to them. We're not rich people any more, and the poor mustn't suffer by our losses, either: they must have their gifts just as before, if I must squeeze it out of my own eating. Yes, my dear Ivo, take your mother's advice, and don't forget the poor. The corn grows on the lea, though you give away some of it; and our Lord blesses the bread in the cupboard, so that it nourishes better. You love your father dearly too, don't you, dear Ivo? He is the best man in the world. You honor him, don't you? You are his pride, though he don't tell you so, for it's not in him to say it. When he comes home from the Eagle, where they're always praising you so much because Christian the tailor's son Gregory writes so well of you, you could twist him round your little finger. Just make up your mind not to be distressed by any thing, and don't be sad. What one firmly resolves to do, one can do, believe me."

Ivo nodded and kissed his mother's hand; but a deep sadness stole over him. The paradise of his parental home had sunk in ruins, over which the figure of his mother alone hovered like an angel of light; and once he said to himself, very softly, "Her name is not Christina in vain: she is just like the Savior. She bears the heaviest cross with a smile, and thinks not of herself, but of others."

Thus it came to pass that he looked forward to the end of the holidays with far less regret than he would have supposed when he first returned home.

9.

THE FRIENDS.

In the first few days of his renewed convent-life the old home-sickness returned. He reproached himself with not having enjoyed his holidays to the full, with having suffered himself to be put out by things which were not so bad as they seemed; but he had made up his mind to profit by the example of Aloys, and not add to his mother's troubles by writing her sorrowful letters.

During his former stay at the convent his thoughts had been so much at home that he had not identified himself with the peculiar circumstances and associations of this abode. All this was now otherwise. "My mother says we can do any thing we really want to do," he said to himself, "and that shall henceforth be my motto."

Ivo and Clement had welcomed each other warmly in the presence of the other boys. Everybody had a great deal to tell. At noon, when the class were taking their usual ramble, Ivo and Clement, as if by a tacit understanding, lagged behind; and, under a blooming hawthorn, where no one could see them, they fell upon each other's necks and kissed each other fervently. The larks roystered in mid-air, and the hawthorn waved to a gentle breeze. With faces radiant with joy, their arms flung around each other's necks, they went back to the road and rejoined their comrades. Ivo made a long imaginary speech, of which he only pronounced aloud the words "still and holy," and looked into the shining depths of Clement's eye, and they grasped each other's hands. Then Clement struck Ivo and ran away to the others. Ivo well understood this as a hint to conceal their league and covenant from general observation. They mingled with the others; but, soon finding themselves side by side again, they struck, chased, and dodged each other, until they were again separated from the crowd; then they began a sham wrestle, which soon turned to a warm embrace, and each murmured, "Dear Ivo," "Dear Clement." So inventive was this young friendship in its early bud.

Both of the boys now entered upon a new and happy life. Ivo had never had a brother's heart of his own age; Clement, in the frequent migrations of his father's family, had never attached himself to any one but an elder sister. Now Ivo, when he awoke in the morning, looked up joyfully and said, "Good-morning, Clement," although Clement slept in another apartment. Though away from home, he was a stranger no longer. The convent had ceased to be a place of coercion and unpitying law: he did all things willingly, because his Clement was with him. It cost him no further resolution to write cheerful letters home. All his life was a life of pleasure; and his mother often shook her head when she read his sounding periods. Clement, who had read innumerable fairy-tales and books of knight-errantry, introduced his friend to a world of wonders and strange delights. He made two banished princes of Ivo and himself, and a giant Goggolo of the director; and for a time they always addressed each other by the names of their imaginary characters.

The world of wonders and fairy-tales, which strive to outdo the riddle of existence by still more puzzling combinations and thus in a manner to expound the world of every day, this self-oblivious dream of a toying, childish fancy, had not hitherto met the mental gaze of Ivo. What Nat had told him was too much intertwined with the rude and simple experiences of field and forest life, and knew nothing of subterranean castles of gold and precious stones. He was entirely unprepared for the gorgeous trappings of these magic gardens and these cities at the bottom of the sea.

The hawthorn was venerated by both as the trysting-tree of their friendship, and they never passed it without looking at it and at each other. Ivo, whom we already know as well versed in the Bible, once said, "We have just had the same luck as Moses. Jehovah appeared to him in the bush, and it was burning, but yet was not consumed. Do you know what Jehovah means? I am he who shall be: it is the future of Hava. We shall be friends in future too, as we are now, sha'n't we?"

"I'll tell you a story," replied Clement. "Once there was a princess on an island: her name wasn't Leah, like the old lady in the Bible, but Hawa. She hadn't red eyes, either, but beautiful dark-blue ones. But she couldn't abide thorns: the least little thorn was a thorn in her eye, and the moment she saw one she always cried out, 'Oh dear! it is in me; I feel it in my fine dark-blue eyes.' So to please her they had to cut off every thing on the island which bore thorns, and to grub up every bit of the roots; and when the princess died they buried her; and, to punish her for hating thorns, a thorn grew out of each of her two eyes, and they bear beautiful blue eyes to this day, just like those the princess had, and they call them hawthorns."

Thus Clement ended his story with a triumphant smile. Ivo regarded him with a bright, merry face. Whatever Clement told was so delightful! His words clung to each other like the pearls of a beautiful necklace: all Clement did or said was far beyond compare with any thing else in the wide, wide world.

At Ivo's suggestion they had vowed to each other to be great men, and they now encouraged each other to the most unremitting industry. Every thing was easily done, as each did it for the other's sake. Ivo even kept the head-place in the class for a whole year. Clement was not so lucky, because his imagination always ran away with him. Whatever he saw excited him, and he forgot the subject on which he should have been engaged: when the teacher addressed questions to him he awoke as from a dream and answered awry.

The secret league, however, could not long remain concealed from their companions; for, as lovers often think themselves unperceived while giving the most unmistakable signs of affection, so fared our friends. Nevertheless, Ivo's high position soon put a period to the bantering which was at first attempted, and it was not long before others endeavored to thrust themselves into the league of friendship. But the gates were closed against them: Clement was particularly vigilant, and the advances ceased. Only when Bart persisted, with great submissiveness, in frequenting their company, did Ivo make an exception. He was favored to walk by their side after dinner, and to be near them when they were playing in the yard. When Bart had eaten his fill he was quite a bright lad and anxious to learn. He was ready to do any thing which could bring him near the head of the class, too. Fond as he was of Ivo and Clement, therefore, their high position in the class was one of the causes of his attachment; nor, by a special stipulation of Clement's, was he ever admitted into the inmost sanctuary of their friendship.

Leaving fairy-tales behind them, our friends entered upon another field, somewhat nearer the domain of reality: they began to look for historic examples to strive after for ideals. Once, on a long walk in the direction of Blaubeuren, they found themselves on a lofty hill on the edge of a rooky precipice, with the lovely valley of the Blau before them, and the cathedral of Ulm and the Danube visible in the distance. This spot Clement had specially ordained as the one where they were to disclose their aspirations to each other.

"Who is your ideal, Ivo?" asked Clement.

"Sixtus. My mother always says any thing can be achieved if you really will it. Sixtus showed that in his own example."

"So you want to be a pope?"

"If it should come about, why not? No harm trying."

"I have a much less saintly personage: my ideal is Alexander the Great." He did not explain in what respect he desired to emulate him; for Bart fell in, in a whimpering tone,--

"And whom shall I take for my ideal?"

"Ask the principal," said Clement, solemnly, tipping the wink to Ivo.

The moment they returned home, Bart knocked at the principal's door; and, on being invited to come in, he said, trembling and stammering,--

"I beg your pardon, sir; but I wished to ask you,--I wished to choose an ideal, and I don't know whom to take."

The principal stood still a while, and then said, with uplifted finger, "God."

"I am very much obliged to you, sir," said Bart, bowing and scraping himself out. He ran to his friends and told them, joyfully, "I've got one: I've got an ideal now."

"Whom?"

"God," said Bart, holding up his finger.

"Who told you so?" asked Clement, pulling Ivo by the sleeve.

"The principal."

Ivo, disregarding the stolen hints of his friend, explained to Bart that God could never be an ideal to any man except in a figurative sense, because it is impossible for any man to become almighty or omniscient: God must be the highest and final goal, of course; but the saints were to be found on the way to him, and were nearer to us and more accessible to our prayers, and perhaps we might come in some degree to resemble them.

"Saintly Ivo, I'll have nothing to do with you," said Clement, angrily, turning away. He was vexed to have his good jokes spoiled in this way, and did not speak a word to Ivo all that night and the next morning.

In many other respects Bart was the occasion of disagreements between his friends. Clement had taken it into his head that the interloper deprived him of a part of the friendship of his Ivo. He now seized various opportunities of feeding this jealousy. Once he did not exchange a word with Ivo for a whole week; while his eyes followed him everywhere as with a passion bordering on insanity. On the last evening he threw a bit of paper on the book Ivo was reading, on which he had written, "Come to the top of the church-steeple at the stroke of twelve to-night, or we part forever."

Ivo tossed about his bed in an agony of fear lest he should oversleep the time. When the first stroke of twelve was heard, he stole from his chamber; Clement came out of the one in which he slept at the same instant. They went up the turret-stairs in silence, and, when the last stroke had sounded and died away, Clement began:--

"Give me your hand and promise me to have nothing more to do with Bart, or I'll throw myself down this instant."

Ivo took his friend's hand, shuddering.

"Not a word! Yes or no!" muttered Clement.

"Yes, yes. But I pity the poor fellow. You've grown very strange this last week."

Clement embraced and kissed him, descended the steps in silence, and returned to his chamber.

Next day Clement was, as he had always been, cheerful and warm. He never permitted Ivo to speak by daylight of their nightly meeting. Bart's grief at his dismissal was not of long duration.

While Clement's restless spirit thus flitted about in search of adventure, Ivo experienced a different sort of disquietude. His body had grown with almost greater rapidity than his mind, and he was tall and broad-shouldered; but, when he sat at the desk with his books, the blood seemed to foam through his veins in torrents, often obliging him to get up and restore his internal balance by violent motions. He would fain have carried a heavy load suspended in his arms; but nothing offered resistance to his powers except sometimes a knotty construction in a classic author. Gymnastic exercises were not very assiduously cultivated, nor did Ivo take much interest in them: he longed to accomplish some real task with a definite object. In walking with his friend he would often complain that he was not allowed to plough or to reap. Inured from his childhood to bodily activity, during his visit to the grammar-school the long daily walk had compensated for the inaction of his arms: now he felt like a giant whose club has been taken from him and a sewing-needle thrust into his fingers.

Once he said to Clement, "Do you know I am so much troubled at having a scruple in regard to the Bible? it says that the great chastisement for original sin is that in the sweat of his brow shall man earn his bread: now, to my mind hard work, instead of a punishment, is the greatest delight."

"Oh," said Clement, "that's in the Old Testament. It's meant for the Jews, and it just suits them; for hard work is their favorite aversion."

Thus early did he stumble on the familiar device of the theologians when hard pushed in regard to some passage in the Old Testament. Clement did not suffer the matter to rest here, however. He confessed his own longing to incur dangers and to wander through distant countries. They even talked frequently of a flight from the convent. They pictured to themselves the romance of arriving on a distant island, struggling with wild beasts and subjugating the virgin soil. Of course the project was never executed. The laws of the convent and the ties of home were too strong for them.

The warmth of their friendship increased from day to day and bridged over all the chasms which the difference of their dispositions might have caused. Ivo forfeited his place at the head of the class without regret, and allowed even Bart to rise above him. This external abasement almost pleased him, for it marked his distaste for his studies. The consciousness of being better than he seemed was grateful to him and gave him a certain independence of the outward world. He formed a secret league with the wood-cutters, the lowest servants of the convent. He swung the axe with a vigor as if he would have cleft the globe. At length one of the professors detected these irregularities; and Ivo atoned for them in the lock-up of the establishment.

Thus, from having been one of the best and most diligent of the pupils, Ivo had sunk to be the lowest in the class and the most obstreperous.

At the arrival of the holidays the friends would part with almost feverish sorrow, consoling themselves with the hope of meeting again, and yet wishing never to return to the convent. On the way home, the world without had lost its lustre in Ivo's eyes, and the people he met no longer appeared so good and kind: the world within him had altered. At home he was not so shy of Constantine as formerly, and the state of things in his father's house had ceased to weigh upon his spirits: having learned that no man on earth is entirely happy within himself, he had no more reason to wonder at the marks of unhappiness which characterized the social relations of life and of men.

The gorgeous fabric of the ideal had sunk into ashes before him. Occasionally a fervent prayer would lift him above the jars and discords of earthly being; but even into these heavenly arcana would the misgiving of an insufficiency pursue him: he was very unhappy. People took his disordered air for a mark of over-application. It stung him to the soul when his mother begged him not to study too hard: he could not explain to her what troubled him; it was not even clear to himself. Thus, in the fulness of youth and health, he felt tired of life and weary of the earth: he had not mastered the riddle of existence, and fancied that death was the only solution.

In his last vacation before going to Tuebingen, he experienced a heavy loss: he no longer found Nat in the house. Mag, having overcome the opposition of her father, had married Xavier and gone with him to America. There was thus a lack of female help about the house, and Valentine's sons were old enough to do the field-work themselves. Nat was discharged: no one knew whither he had gone: the pigeon-cote was empty, and the beasts in the stable seemed to share Ivo's sorrow for his departed friend.

On the other hand, Emmerence now lived in the house as maid-of-all-work. She had grown up to be a strong, hearty girl, a little short and square in figure,--what is usually called "buxom:" she would have been classed with the comelier half of the village girls. It was long since Ivo had bestowed any attention upon her, so entirely had Clement occupied his heart. Whole vacations had passed without his even exchanging a word with her. Now he sometimes eyed her askance, but always turned away the moment she detected him. Once only, when he found her so cheerfully engaged in the stable, he said, "That's right in you, Emmerence, to take good care of the cattle: only don't forget the dun and the cow."

"I know they're your favorites," she replied; "I'm so glad you haven't given up liking them." And, as if to wake a reminiscence of his childhood, she sang, while filling the cow's manger,--

"Far up on the hill is a white, white horse,

A horse as white as snow;

He'll take the little boys that are good little boys

To where they want to go.

"The little boys and the good little boys

Sha'n't go too far away;

The little girls that are good little girls

Must go as far as they."

Ivo went silently to the field in which he had once spent a whole day ploughing with Nat: it seemed as if some clue to his whereabouts must be hidden among the stones. He envied his brothers who were at work here, who shared their joys and sorrows at a common board, who had no one to obey but their natural superiors.

On his return to the convent he attached himself still more closely to Clement, as if to indemnify himself for the loss of his earlier friend.

The last summer spent in Ehingen was a little less monotonous than the others. Clement, whose home was in a largely Protestant town, had acquaintances among the pupils of the neighboring Protestant convent, (for by that name the classical school was still called,) of Blaubeuren, who were a little less rigidly restrained than those of Ehingen. They sometimes came to Ehingen and went to the principal, one of them saying that he was a "fellow-countryman" of Clement's, and the other that he sustained the same mysterious relation to Ivo, and so on: the principal allowed the "countrymen" to make a half-holiday of it: they would saunter to the next village, and there, with festive songs and over the social glass, Ivo exchanged many a pledge of good-fellowship with the Protestant conventuaries. Neither they nor he were free,--although the Blaubeuren men had one or two immunities more than the others.

The time of student-life stood before the eyes of all these youths much like a taper-girt Christmas-tree before the visions of a German baby: they stretched out their hands impatiently to grasp the gilded nuts suspended from the boughs; and, though their clerical vocation was destined to cut down much of the liberties to which they looked forward, yet even what remained was far too slow in coming.

At last autumn set in. On the eve of their departure, Ivo and Clement went to the hawthorn where their friendship took its rise, and each of them broke off a twig and set it in his cap: then, taking each other's hand, they renewed their vow of eternal devotion. Ivo also promised to pay Clement a visit at Crailsheim during the holidays.

To quit a place of long abode, whether we have been happy or unhappy in living there, is always attended with regret: the mantle of the past drops away, and we know that we shall never return to the spot the same as we leave it: these houses, these gardens, and these streets are the birthplaces of a lot in life. Here the friends had first met, here their minds had risen to heights unthought of before, and here they separated with heartfelt sorrow. They vowed that in old age they would travel hither again and seek out the silent playgrounds of their youthful thoughts.

10.

A MEETING.

Having rested but a few days at Nordstetten, Ivo set out to visit his friend, whose home was at the other end of Wurtemberg, on the borders of Franconia. This brought him for the first time to the hill-top which had occupied his thoughts on the evening before Gregory's first mass, when he had thought that from there he might climb into heaven at once. Now he knew that there is no place on earth whence the entrance into heaven is open: alas! the goal itself now eluded his sight, and he asked, hopelessly, "Whither?" He looked for heaven upon earth, and knew not how to grasp it.

In silent thought he wandered through the towns and villages, watching the busy doings of men with curious eyes: the riddle of existence became more and more inexplicable. The vintagers were out in the fields, singing songs, firing off salutes of triumph; but Ivo only asked, "Are you making the wine which shall turn into blood?"

On the evening of the third day he was wandering toward the good town of Schwaebisch-Hall, in a bright sunset, just as that had been which he had seen in the field with Nat. He stood still, and thought sadly of the humble friend he had lost forever. His eyes fell upon a shepherd who stood with his back to the road, leaning upon his staff and looking into the fire of the sky. He sang,--

"Up yonder, up yonder,

At the heavenly gate,

A poor soul is standing

In sorrowful strait."

Something like a thrill of premonition passed through Ivo's veins: he ran into the field to ask the shepherd how far it was to Hall. The dog barked at him, and the shepherd turned round, saying, "Be quiet, Bless." With a cry of "Is it you?" Ivo lay in the arms of Nat.

There was no end of questions and answers. Late in the evening Ivo said, "Oh, I must go already; I must see to get a night's lodging somewhere."

"Why?" asked Nat, pointing to his red van: "don't you like the Red Cart Hotel? Stay with me; I'll huddle into one corner, and you shall sleep well enough; or, if you'd rather, I'll stay up all night: there's a beautiful star going to rise at two o'clock."

Ivo was quite ready to sleep with Nat.

"Are you hungry?" inquired Nat, again. "There's a cellar to my house."

He brought bread and milk and made a little fire to warm the milk for Ivo. Then, taking away the prop by which the rear end of the van was held above ground during the day, he said, "There! now we can sleep soundly: the face must be turned toward sunrise."

It often happens that we begin to talk of the most indifferent things precisely when our minds are full of the most important matters. Ivo asked, "What do those queer characters mean, formed by the brass studs in this leather strap?"

"Those are the three great heavenly signs, and they protect the cattle against evil spirits. That's all I know about them."

As formerly in the days of childhood, Ivo sat at the field-side with Nat and partook of his frugal fare: but it was night; they were far from home, and many things had occurred in the mean time.

"How is Emmerence doing?" asked Nat.

"She is my mother's maid now."

"If you weren't going to be a parson, by George, you ought to have married her."

"So I would have done," said Ivo, with a firm voice, the darkness concealing the blush which overspread his features.

In answer to Ivo's inquiries in regard to Nat's fortunes, the latter answered, at length:--

"You're old enough now to be told all about it. Who knows whether I shall ever see you again? and I want you to hear it all from my own lips; for you're my heart's brother. I wasn't born in your parts, but on the other side of the Black Forest, toward the Rhine. As you come out of Freiburg, and go through the 'Kingdom of Heaven' and the 'Valley of Hell,' just as you get to the top of the 'Hell-Scramble' you see on your right a valley in which runs the Treisam, turning the wheels of ever so many foundries, saw-mills, and gristmills; and, if you go up the hill on the other side,--they call it the 'Wind-Corner,'--you see a great farm-house, the Beste farmer's house,--and he was my father. You may think it's a pretty fine sort of farm: it has sixty or seventy cows, and no need of buying a handful of hay.

"They don't live in villages there, as you do and as they do hereabout. Each farmer lives by himself in the midst of his own lands. The house is all made of wood: only the foundation is of stone. The windows are close to each other on the east side: a porch runs all round the house, and the roof hangs far over. It is a straw roof, which has grown gray with age, and makes the house warmer than the finest castle. If you ever can, you must go there some day, just to see where your Nat was raised. Our fields reach far up the hill and away down to the Treisam, and we had two hundred acres of woodland,--enough to cut ten thousand florins' worth of wood every year. It was glorious. Wherever you look, it's all your own, and all in apple-pie order. We were three children. I was the oldest, and I had a brother and a sister. In those parts, when the father dies or gives up farming, the farm isn't divided, but the eldest son takes it all, and the father makes an estimate how much money he ought to pay his brothers and sisters. If one of the children is dissatisfied and goes to law, the Government divides the farm. But such a thing was never done except once or twice, and never turned out well. Four hundred yards from our house, on a little patch of field, a widow had a lonely cabin, and lived there with her only daughter. They were the third generation of the descendants of younger children, and poor, very poor, but good as angels,--or, at least, I thought so. The mother was one of those lean, lank women that can always be pleasant and agreeable: as for Lizzie,--no, there wasn't a false vein about her; I will say that to my dying day. They supported themselves by making straw hats; for over there, on the other side of the mountain, in the Glotter Valley, the women-folks wear round, yellow straw hats, just as the gentlemen do in the cities, and the men wear black straw hats. A hat made by Lizzie of the Wind-Corner always sold for three groats more than another; and if a girl was ever so ugly and put one of her hats on it made her pretty. Lizzie had hands as delicate and smooth as a saint's; and yet she could work hard enough in the fields, too. When she sat at the window sewing, I often used to stand outside and watch her, and if she stuck her finger it seemed to go through all my bones. My father soon saw how matters stood between me and Lizzie, and would not hear of it; but I would sooner have died than live without Lizzie: so my father sent me away to the saw-mill. The saw-mill doesn't belong to our inheritance, but my father bought it. There I stayed; and through the week I never cast eyes on a living creature except the child that carried me my dinner and the workmen bringing down the logs and hauling off the boards. At night I used to run for miles, just to have one word with Lizzie. Then, all of a sudden, my father died, and left the whole property to my brother; and I was to have ten thousand florins, and my sister the same. You can't see ten thousand florins: it's hardly as much as you can cut timber for in a year. My sister married a watchmaker in Naustadt. I was wild with rage, and said I wouldn't go out of the house: I would go to law. One night I went over to Lizzie, and, when I looked into the window, who do you think was sitting in there, with his arm round Lizzie's waist, kissing her? My brother! And the old witch was standing beside them, smirking till her face was as long again as usual. I up and into the house, out with my knife, and my brother lay on the floor with a cut in his side,--all done before I knew where I was."

Nat sighed deeply, and was silent a long time. At last he continued:--"My brother never moved: Lizzie fell on her mother's neck, and cried, 'Oh, mother, this is your doing! Go away, Nat: I can't see you any more.'

"I ran away as if the devil was dragging me in chains, and every now and then I stopped and wished to hang myself on a tree. I met George the blacksmith, and went home with him, and hid myself in his house till the next day. A thousand times I prayed to God to take my life and save me from the guilt of my brother's death. I laid my hand on my heart, and swore from that time forth to lead a penitent life; and the Lord heard me. Next morning, very early, George the blacksmith came to the shed where I was lying buried in the hay, and said, 'Your brother is living yet, and may get well.'

"I went off over hill and dale, left every thing to my brother, and hired myself to Buchmaier as a shepherd. I did not like to be among men any more, but wanted to live alone in the fields. Singout, my dog, was my only friend. I used to tell you about him, you remember? I lost him shamefully."

Here Nat stopped again: his new dog crept to his side and looked sadly into his face, as if to show his regret that he could not compensate him for his loss.

"As I lived alone in the fields," Nat went on, "I used to study the herbs, and to gather them and make drinks of them: once in winter one of the hands at Buchmaier's had the ague so badly that it almost shook him out of his bed; and I helped him. From that time on the people in the neighborhood used to come to me whenever one of them was sick, and made me give them a drink. Do you remember the time you came home sick from the fields? Then I helped you too, and that was the first time afterward that I gave any thing to anybody. The doctor heard of it that time and complained of me at court. Then I received a notice to do no more quackery, on pain of great punishment. After that I never listened to anybody's begging or crying.

"Something happened about that time: you can't remember it; you were too little. Dick, who lives out in one of the houses off the main street of the village, had two sons. One was like a count: he was with the Guard in Stuttgard, and was home on furlough. His best friend was his younger brother,--a wild, half-grown boy whom they called Joachim. The guardsman went to see pretty Walpurgia the seamstress: you know her, I guess, she has such a white, delicate face, and always runs about in slippers: but she had another lover besides, from Betra. Dick's boys, the two brothers, once lay in wait for this chap to give him a good drubbing; but the Betra boy held his own: so little Joachim takes out his knife, makes a stab at him, and stabs his brother through the body.

"I was lying in my shepherd's van, and suddenly I heard people crying and calling. I got up, and there was a crowd of men, and Joachim among them, all begging me to do something for the wounded man. All this made me think of that awful night at home: Walpurgia even looked a little like Lizzie; and, in short, I let little Jake mind the sheep, and went with them. As I saw the guardsman lying at the point of death, my heart seemed to turn within me. I cried like a child, and people praised my good heart: they didn't know what was the matter with me, and I couldn't tell them. I gave the guardsman a drink to keep off mortification; but afterward the doctors got at him, and he died after all. In short, they locked me up and put me in the penitentiary for a year. Joachim got into the penitentiary too. He was bad, and tried for a long time to put all the blame on the Betra man; but at last it was proved that it was nobody but him. Brother-heart," said Nat, taking Ivo's hand, "what I suffered in the penitentiary is more than can be told; you couldn't find worse company in hell itself. But I bore it all willingly, and thought it was a chastisement for my past life.

"Once I made shrift to the parson, and told him all about it. He said that I had done the greatest wrong in not getting all the property into the hands of the Church. I would rather be torn to pieces than go to a confessional again after that. When I got out of prison, my first thought was to find Singout again:

Dick had taken charge of him. They told me that after I was gone the dog had gone mad, and they had knocked him on the head. Dick's people would have liked to keep me, but their household was all out of gear: the mother didn't gee daylight for a year, and only at night she took a lantern and went to pray on John's grave. She wore black all her life, as you may remember. As I was going out of the village again alone, and without even my dog, your mother met me. She know I wasn't bad, though I had been in the workhouse: and in this way I came to work in your father's house. I would not be a shepherd any more. I wanted to live among men. What happened afterward you know. I have a good place again now, on the Deurer farm here; but yet I always feel as if I ought to go back to my brother, and as if my penitence wasn't of the right kind until I took service in his house."

Nat paused, and pressed his hands to his eyes. Ivo said, "You ought to go into a monastery and be a monk; that would be the real thing for you."

"A priest!" said Nat, with more severity than was usual to him. "I'd rather have my hand cut off. To live on piety is poor fare. Don't take offence at my silly talk: I am a stupid fellow. You are going to be a parson, and you are right: your heart is pure. But come," he said, looking up to the stars, "it is near eleven o'clock: let's go to sleep."

With much agitation of mind, Ivo took his place beside Nat in the van.

"Do tell me," said Nat, "you've got learning: how is it that love brings all the trouble on men that they have? Wouldn't it be better if there were no such thing?"

Ivo was puzzled: it was a subject on which he had never reflected. In a sleepy tone he answered, "It comes from the fall,--from original sin. I will think about it, though. Good-night."

Ivo's weary soul and jaded body fell an easy prey to the advances of sleep. When he awoke next morning all yesterday had turned into a dream. Nat was gone from his side; and, when he looked out of the van, the shepherd stood whistling by his sheep.

After a simple morning relish the two friends separated, and Nat cried after Ivo, "If you ever go to Freiburg, come to the Beste farmer's: there you'll find me."

Ivo spent some happy days with Clement. Once only he shook his head at his young friend. He had told him of his meeting with Nat, when Clement exclaimed, "Thunder and Doria! what a magnificent adventure! You are a child of fortune, and I envy you. It is a fine piece of the terrible, that story of the serving-man: a ghost or a spook is all that is wanting."

Ivo could not understand how the hard realities of human fortune could be abused as footballs for the diversion of overheated imaginations.

11.

THE COLLEGE.

Without the escort of any of his family, Ivo went to his new place of abode. He had outgrown the ties of family, and went his way independent of them. The good city of Tuebingen seemed to smile upon him. He dreamed of the delights which awaited him there, although he well knew that a cloister-life, with only some partial alleviations, was all he had to hope.

The life of free science was now within his reach. He attended various philosophical lectures; but, in the recesses of his mind, all he heard assumed a theological, or, more strictly speaking, a Catholic signification. The drowsy lucubrations of the old professors, who seemed to be planting definitions like dry posts, idly imagining that they would bear fruits and flowers, were not calculated to raise his mind to the heights of science whence the structures of theology are seen in their circumscribed and confined positions.

He attached himself more closely than ever to Clement, with whom he was now privileged to take a daily walk without supervision. Other acquaintances turned up also: among the rest, the sons of the President-Judge. They were condescending. Their father had become Government-Councillor, and had received the order of merit: he was "Von Rellings." Although this did not ennoble the sons, they courted the society of the nobility, and were especially devoted to the son of a mediatized prince then studying at Tuebingen. Ivo met them one day as they were riding out with their noble companion. He ran up to them and held out his hand; but, as they had the whip and reins to hold, they could only give him one of their fingers. With an encouraging nod the elder said,--

"Ah! you've come here too, have you? Glad to see it."

And, putting spurs to their horses, they rode away. Ivo remembered the day on which he had walked with them through the village, and regarded the treatment he now received as a well-deserved punishment for his then vain-glory. Just as he had then superciliously acknowledged the salutations of the passing peasants, so the Rellingses now gave him the go-by to devote themselves to their illustrious acquaintance. Thus Ivo met with the rare mischance of finding the differences of station to intrude themselves even into the charmed circle of his university life; for in general this is the very point where alone these subdivisions are forgotten, and where young minds mingle untrammelled by any thing unconnected with their natural gifts and tendencies.

Another old acquaintance who greatly affected Ivo's companionship was Constantine. He knew every thing but what he ought to have studied: how to skulk the recitation and gain an hour for the tavern; how to get a free evening and join a gay carouse: all his efforts were for a time directed to the noble task of converting the new "freshmen" into well-seasoned sophomores. With Ivo he succeeded but indifferently; but Clement was doubly tractable: his adventurous spirit found in such pranks its most acceptable field of action. To let himself down from a window by a rope of handkerchiefs tied together, to sing and yowl in the taverns, then to go roystering through the streets, and finally to return to the cloister with double risk of detection, was the dearest joy of his heart. He knew not whether most to enjoy the pleasure of giving vent to all the wild fancies that were in him, or the satisfaction of setting the laws at defiance.

Though Ivo frequently admonished Clement to think more of the future, yet once he was persuaded to join in one of these nightly excursions himself. They were, as Constantine phrased it, "hard as bricks," wore many-colored caps, and Ivo was the noisiest of them all. But just this time they were caught in returning, and Ivo had to expiate his sins for several days in the "carcer."

Constantine was delighted to find that his friend had so thoroughly "seen the ropes." He often said, "You'll never see me a parson: the shears are not sharpened that will shave my head; only I must wait for something first." At another time he cried, "If you were the right sort of fellows we'd all make an agreement to leave the cloister, every one of us, and let the Lord see how to get through with his vineyard by himself. I don't see why that shouldn't do as well, anyhow."

"What do you mean to be?" asked Ivo, who was blushing up to the eyes at this ungodly speech.

"Just a Nordstetten farmer, and nothing more."

"To say the truth, I should like that best myself; but it is not to be."

"I'm going to make it be if you'll just wait a little," said Constantine.

Many of the college-men received visits from their parents, who were generally peasants and came in their ordinary costume, sometimes but meanly clad. It pained Ivo to see that the students were generally ashamed of their parents and disliked going out with them. When his mother came, he walked hand in hand with her through the town and never left her all day.

One February morning Constantine came to Ivo's room, which still wore the appellation of "Zion" conferred upon it in more religious times. Taking from his pocket a bunch of artificial flowers tied with red ribbons, he said, "This is what Hannah of the Hauffer has sent me. I am a recruit: I should have come out this year, but have drawn a clear ticket. And now, hurrah! I'm going out of the convent."

"How so?"

"Why, you lambkin pure as snow once followed to the pasture, I'll tell you how so; but, on your drinking-oath, you must swear to let nobody know it. If I were to leave of my own accord, I should have to pay my board and lodging and be a soldier: now I am free from the latter, and, if I manage to get myself expelled from this Wallachian hostelry, I shall have nothing to pay; as for the principal, I've an extra plum or two for him."

He stuck the red-ribbon bunch into his hat and walked swaggeringly across the convent-yard. He did not return all day, but occupied himself with the other students who had been drawn as recruits that year in walking arm in arm across the market-place with them, and singing, drinking, and shouting everywhere. Late at night he came home, and was immediately summoned into the awful presence of the principal.

That august personage was alone. Constantine remained near the door, holding the latch behind him with both his hands. The principal stepped toward him with a volley of denunciations. Constantine laughed, stumbled forward, and trod so heavily on the principal's toes that he screamed with pain and intensified his epithets; but Constantine continued to advance upon him, and backed him round the room without mercy. The poor principal seized the only chair in the room and attempted to make a shield of it; but Constantine only pressed him the harder, and drove him from side to side, crying, "Ya, hupp!" like the ring-master of a circus. At last the victim succeeded in reaching the bell-rope: the "famulus" came, and Constantine was thrown into the darkest "carcer."

For four weeks he had to languish here. When Ivo went to see him, he confessed that it was sinful to wreak his ill-will against the law upon its innocent administrator. Ivo said, justly, "It is doubly sinful. These old folks are the jailers who watch us; but they are in the prison themselves and worse off than we: the key to let them out is lost."

"Yes," said Constantine, laughing. "You know the old rhyme says,--

'England is lock'd,
And the key-hole is block'd;'--

and so I've gone to work and staved in one of the walls."

Constantine was expelled from the convent in disgrace.

When Ivo came home at Easter, Constantine gave him a hand in which three fingers were tied up. He had greatly distinguished himself in a row between the Nordstetters and Baisingers, which dated from the feud of the manor-house farmer, and a bottle had been shivered in his hand. The "college chap," as he was called, had already taken rank as the wildest scapegrace in the village. He had assumed the peasant-garb, and took a pleasure in divesting himself of every lingering trace of higher cultivation. With his two comrades--George's son Peter, and Florian, the son of a broken-down butcher--he played the wildest pranks: the three were always in league, and never admitted a fourth to fellowship with them. The behavior of Constantine toward Peter was particularly interesting. A mother's eye does not watch with more solicitude over the welfare of an ailing child--a gentle wife is not more submissive to a petulant husband--than Constantine was to Peter: he even suppressed his liking for George the saddler's Magdalene because he found Peter in love with her, and did every thing in his power to aid him. When Constantine was furious and apparently beyond all pacifying, Peter had but to say, "Please me, Constantine, and be quiet," and he was as tame and docile as a lamb.

Ivo had some difficulty in getting rid of Constantine; but at last he succeeded. He was quiet and serious: Constantine's wildest sallies failed to win a smile from him, and at last he gave himself no more trouble about the "psalm-singer."

On his return to the convent he found that a great change had gone on in Clement. He had been attached, while at home, to the daughter of the judge at whose court his father was employed, and his whole being was now in a glow of devotion. He would leave the convent and study law: he bitterly despised the ministry, and made it the object of the most vindictive sarcasms: he cursed himself and his poverty, which seemed to chain him to a hated calling: with all the irregular impetuosity of his character, he rattled unceasingly, and yet idly, at the chains which bound him. He saw nothing but slavery on every side: he walked from place to place abstractedly, pale as death, and often with gnashing teeth. With all the power of his love, Ivo strove to rescue his friend; but, soon convinced that a higher agency was at work, he contented himself with grieving for his heart's brother, whose tortures and whose frenzy he could but half appreciate. In the lectures, Clement sat staring into vacancy: while the others, with the conscienscious eagerness of German students, strove to record every word that fell from the teacher's lips, he occasionally wrote the name of Cornelia, and then crossed and recrossed it till it became illegible.

The spark of discontent which had slumbered in Ivo's heart threatened to burst into flame; but as yet the firm walls of obedience, and the habit of resignation to the dictates of fate, kept it half smothered beneath the ashes. But even here the fundamental difference in the character of the two friends displayed itself on all occasions. Clement sought amusement and noisy distractions, as means of self-forgetfulness; while Ivo became more and more retired and meditative, as if he knew that knowledge of self was the only escape from his dilemmas. Yet, although he kept the road, he travelled but slowly. His soul was hung in sables: he was less fond of life than formerly, and often declared that he should like to die and sleep the sleep that knows not waking.

"After all," he remarked one night to Clement, who lay beside him, "the best thing in the world is a bed. A bird in a cage is to be pitied, for he doesn't rest well even when he sleeps. He sits on his perch and must hold on with his claws; so that he still has something to do, and is never perfectly at rest. So, too, man does not rest well when he sits; for he must always exert some of his muscles to keep himself upright: it is only when he lies down that all exertion is dissolved and every muscle relieved of its strain. That is the reason birds are so fond of their nests and men of their beds.

"Plato calls man a featherless biped: never mind; he decks himself with borrowed feathers.

"Nat once told me that if you cage a bird of prey in a mill, where he cannot sleep, you can make him as tame as a sucking dove: that is just like the tyrant we used to read about at Ehingen, who had his prisoners waked out of sleep every hour of their lives. How ingenious men are in devising tortures! When it comes to giving pleasure, their wits are far less ready. The greatest miracles, in my eyes, were the saints of the pillars, who never sat down. That is the quintessence of self-denial. Just think of standing all one's life, until one's feet gather fur on them! 'Thank the Lord for a soft nest, a good rest, and a quick zest,' is what they taught us to say at home."

Clement listened to this dissertation in silence, only murmuring "Cornelia" from time to time. Ivo fell soundly asleep.

The world-spirit looks down at night upon convents and weeps with averted face.

At the last stroke of eleven Clement glided into the convent-yard. It was a balmy night in summer: a thunderstorm had rent the clouds, and their shattered masses still lingered in mid-air, now veiling, now releasing, the beams of the full moon. Clement knelt and cried, trembling and wringing his hands, "Devil! Beelzebub! Ruler of Hell! Appear and bestow thy treasures upon me, and my soul is thine! Appear! Appear!"

He listened with bated breath, but all was silent: nothing stirred, and nothing was audible but the distant baying of a watch-dog. Clement long remained cowering on the ground: at length, seeing and hearing nothing, he returned shivering to his bed.

Next day he sat at his desk pale and haggard. The black characters in his open book seemed to crawl around each other like snakes before his jaundiced eye. A letter was brought him. He had hardly read it when he sank fainting from his chair. An engagement-card slipped from his hand, on which was engraved "Cornelia Mueller and Herman Adam, betrothed." He was carried to his bed, where Ivo waited, trembling and in tears, until his friend drew breath again. A fever now ensued, in which Clement's teeth chattered and his frame writhed with convulsive starts. For three days he was delirious. He spoke of the devil, and barked like a dog: once only he said, gently closing his eyes, "Good-night, Cornelia." Ivo read the letter, as the footing upon which he and Clement stood fully justified him in doing; and here, at last, he found a slight clue to the jumble of occurrences which bewildered him. A wealthy uncle of Clement's mother had died, leaving her all his property: the brightest prospects opened to the future of the family. Ivo rarely left his friend's bedside, and, when compelled to do so, Bart usually took his place.

It was a painful duty. Clement generally brooded in a half-doze, with his eyes open, but apparently seeing nothing. He would ask Ivo to lay his hand upon his burning forehead, and then, closing his eyes, he said, "Ah!" as if the touch had expelled torturing spirits from the narrow tenement of his brain. At times he started up and furiously denounced the world and its heartlessness. If Ivo undertook to pacify him, he only turned his wrath against the comforter, struck at him with trembling hands, and cried, "You heartless loon, you can torture me, eh?"

Ivo bore all this calmly, though with tears. Sometimes he even experienced a sort of inward satisfaction at the thought that he was favored to suffer in the cause of friendship.

When Clement awoke on the fourth day, it seemed as if, somewhere in the infinity of space, and yet very, very near to him, a niche had opened filled with light: something around him, and something from within him, cried, "Clement!" He was restored to himself. For years after he was wont to tell how at that moment God seemed to shine upon him with all the rays of His glory, and to bring him back to Him and to himself. When he had recovered his composure, he said, lifting up his hands, "I hunger after the Lord's table." Calling for the confessor, he told him all,--how he had conjured the devil to aid him, how the devil had heard his prayer and then struck him to the earth. In deep contrition, he begged for a heavy chastisement and for absolution. The confessor imposed a slight penance, and urgently exhorted him to look upon what had taken place as a warning to flee from all worldly wishes and devote himself to the service of God alone.

Could any one have observed the face of Clement as he lay with his eyes closed in faith, while the confessor spoke the benediction over him and made the sign of the cross over his body in token of the forgiveness of his sins,--could any one have watched the tension of his muscles and the pulsation of his checks,--he would have felt with Clement the happy change which was going on within him. It seemed really and truly as if the ethereal hand of God were upon him, gently luring out the burden which oppressed him, and inspiring him with a new life and a better courage.

The new Clement was a different being from the old one. He moved about noiselessly, often looking around as if in dread of something. Then again he would suddenly stand still. Ivo could not encourage him; for not even to him had Clement dared to disclose the whole enormity of his wickedness.

After the next holidays, Clement was changed again. He looked fresh and blooming as before; but fires of a mysterious import darted from his eyes. One day, as they walked in the little wood called the "Burgholz," he drew his friend to his breast, and said, "Ivo, thank God with me, for the Lord has given me grace. It is our fault if the Lord does not do miracles in us, because we do not purify ourselves to be the vessels of his inscrutable will. I have made a vow to be a missionary and to announce to the heathen the salvation of the world. I have seen her again who stole my soul from the Lord; but in the midst of my gazes the world vanished from my eyes, the All-Merciful laid his hand upon me and gave me peace. I was drawn up into a mountain. There I sat until the sun went down and the night came on. All around was still and dead. Suddenly, afar off in the woods. I heard the voice of a boy singing, but not in earthly tones,--

"'Where Afric's sunny fountains

Roll down their golden sand.'

"I knelt down, and the Lord heard my vow. My heart was no longer in my flesh: I held it in my hand. Kissing the rock beneath and the tree beside me, I inhaled the Spirit of God from them: I heard the leaves rustle and the clefts wail in whispered sorrow, weeping and yearning for the day when the cross shall be erected as the tree of life, standing aloft between earth and heaven, when the Lord shall appear and the world be saved,--when the rocks shall bound, and the trees sing songs of joy."

Falling on his knees, Clement continued:--"Lord, Lord, be gracious unto me! lay thy words upon my tongue, make me worthy to feel the love of the seraphs; pour out thy goodness richly over the brother of my heart; crush him; let him feel the swords which have pierced thy breast, and which rend the heart of the world. I thank thee, O Lord, that thou hast wedded me unto holy poverty: yea, I will devote myself wholly to the bliss of the folly that is in thee, and will suffer men to revile and persecute me until the tenement of my body shall be taken away, until I shall have outlived the corruption of this life. Lord, thou had made me rich that I may be as one of the poor. Blessed are the poor! Blessed are the sick!"

Kissing the feet of his friend, he remained prostrate for a long time, with his head pressed upon the earth: then he rose, and both went home in silence.

A nameless fear agitated the mind of Ivo: he felt the fulness of the self-sacrifice to which Clement had given himself; but he saw also its dreadful aberration: a sword pierced his heart.

He willingly followed his friend into the nocturnal regions of man's feeling and thought: it seemed a duty to keep him company and be at hand to aid him.

The lives of the saints were the first object of their studies. Once Ivo said, "I am rejoiced to see that revelation is still upon its march through the haunts of men; saints arise wherever the Lord has revealed himself and thereby imparted his wonder-working power, and whoso truly sanctifies himself may hope to be favored in like kind. Nowadays every town has once more its true patron saint, as of old, among the Greeks, its false tutelary deity. God is personally near us everywhere."

Clement, without answering, kissed Ivo's forehead. Presently, however, he spoke warmly of the heroes who with empty hand had conquered the world.

The life of St. Francis of Assisi enlisted their special interest: the story of his conversion from the stormy life of the world, and the manner in which he first cured a leper with a kiss, was particularly attractive to Clement. Ivo was pleased by the childlike harmony of the holy man with nature, and by his miraculous power over it; how he preached to the birds, and called upon them to sing the glory of God; how they listened devoutly until he had made the sign of the cross over them and blessed them, and how then they broke into a sounding chorus; how he contended in song with a nightingale for the honor of God until midnight, and how at last, when he was silent from fatigue, the bird flew upon his hand to receive his blessing. Whenever he read of the lamb rescued by the saint from slaughter, which always kneeled down during the singing of the choir, Ivo thought fondly of his Brindle.

On reading that the saint was so highly favored as miraculously to experience in his own body the wounds of Christ, the pierced hands and feet, and the thrust of the lance in his side, Clement wept aloud. He repeated his vow to become a Franciscan monk, and called upon Ivo to do the same, so that, according to the rules of the Order, they might walk about the world together, courting tortures and troubles and living upon alms.

With insatiable thirst Clement drank of the streams of mysticism and hurried his friend along with him.

12.

THE COLLEGE CHAP.

In the holidays Ivo was again powerfully attracted to the realities of life. It was not so easy then to exclude the doings of the outer world, and wrap oneself up into self-suggested thoughts and feelings. Such exaltations are, in fact, only feasible outside of the family circle, and therefore outside of the sphere of real life. Scarcely had he returned to the village, when the family ties once more asserted their claims, and the manifold and interlaced fates and fortunes of the villagers forced themselves upon his interest and sympathy. He knew what lived and moved behind all their walls. He awoke to his former life as from a dream.

One evening he met Constantine standing before his house, chewing a straw and looking sullen.

"What's the matter?" asked Ivo.

"Pshaw! Nothing you can do any good to."

"Well, you'd better tell me."

"You've no taste for the world, and can't understand it. Whitsuntide is almost come, and then there's the bel-wether dance, and I haven't a sweetheart. I might have had one, but I was too saucy; and yet I don't want any other, and I'd be unconscionably mad if she were to take up with some one else. Such a bel-wether dance as this will be I would'nt give a copper for."

"Who is the proud beauty?"

"You know her well enough: Emmerence?"

Ivo barely repressed a start. He asked, quickly,--

"Have you gone with her long?"

"Why, that's what I'm telling you. She won't look at me. She's just as prudish and coy as a Diana."

"Do you mean to act fairly by her, and marry her?"

"What? Fairly? Of course. But I can't talk about marrying yet. Don't you know the old student-song?--

"I will love thee, I will love thee;
But to marry, but to marry,
Is far, far, far, far above me."

"Then I must agree with Emmerence."

"Fiddle! No offence, but you don't know any thing about it. These girls must be content just to get sweethearts like me. The squire's Babbett would stretch out her ten fingers to get hold of me: but she couldn't represent the Church any more, as at Gregory's first mass, and I don't want her."

During this colloquy Peter and Florian had come up to where they were standing.

"Ah!" said the latter, "does the doctor give us the light of his countenance? I thought the like of us weren't worth his while to waste words in talking to."

"Yes," added Peter; "all the boys in the village say that the like of you was never seen, Ivo. You behave as if you were born in Stuttgard and not in Nordstetten."

"My goodness!" said poor Ivo, thus beset on all sides, "I never thought of such a thing as being proud. Come; let's go get a drink."

"That's the way to talk," said Florian. "It's my blowout, for I am going off to-morrow."

The villagers opened their eyes at seeing Ivo passing through the street in company with the trio. It was an extraordinary quartette.

"Have we so much honor?" said the hostess of the Eagle, as Ivo entered with the others. "I'll put a candle into the back-room right-away. What'll you have? A stoup from the other side the Rhine?"

"We'll stick to Wurtemberg for the present," said Constantine, "and Ivo is going to drink with us. He's a Nordstetten boy, like ourselves."

"Not like you for good luck," replied the hostess.

"I'll give you a riddle, you chatter-box: why are women like geese?" retorted Constantine.

"Because such gooseheads as you want to rule 'em," answered the hostess.

"Babbett, just you be glad stupidity isn't heavy to carry, or you'd 'a' been laid up this many a year. I'll tell you why they're like. Geese and women are first-rate, all except their bills. Go get us a quart of sixen."

"You're not good for a creutzer," said the hostess, laughing, as she went to execute the order. We have perhaps already recognised her as the Babbett who played a part in the story of the gamekeeper of Muehringen. Caspar had bought the Eagle; and Babbett was an excellent hostess. She could entertain all the guests, and had an answer ready for every question and a retort for every sally. The "gentlemen" no longer confined their custom to the Dipper, but now honored the Eagle with their visits likewise.

When all had "wetted their whistle," Florian began the song--

"A child of freshest clay

Doth at our table stay:

Hey! Hey!"--

with which students usually welcome a new arrival. This was followed by

"Ça, Ça! be merry,"

in which the words

"Edite, bibite"

had been paraphrased into "eating it, beating it." This introduction of university civilization into the retreats of village life was the work of Constantine. The boys were very proud of their new songs. Ivo joined in, lest he should appear "stuck up."

The three comrades were well drilled. Peter sang the air; and, though he had a fine voice, he spoiled it by bawling,--for peasants when they sing, and parsons when they preach, are equally apt to suppose that an overstrained voice is more beautiful and impressive than a natural one. Constantine always moved up and down as he sang, clenching his fists and buffeting the air. Florian rested his elbows on the table and sang with closed eyes, to exclude all outside distraction.

The first pint having been despatched in short order, the college chap cried, "Babbett, one more of them: it takes two legs to walk on," and then sang,--

"Wine, ho! Wine, ho!

Or I'll stagger to and fro.

I won't stagger, and I can't stand,

And I won't be a Lutherand.

Wine, ho! Wine, ho!

Or I'll stagger so."

Then, without a pause, he sang again:--

"She I don't want to see,

She's every day with me;

And she I love so dear,

She's far away from here.

"Can't get a pretty one,

Won't take a homely one;

Must have some sort o' one:

What shall I do?"

"Why, Constantine, are you so smart at Polish begging?" asked Babbett. "Is it true that Emmerence sent you next door with a 'God help you'?"

"I'll bet you three pints of the best that she'll go to the bel-wether dance with me, and with nobody else."

Florian sang,--

"Fret for a pretty girl?

That would be a shame:

Turn to the next one,

And ask for her name."

Peter fell in:--

"If I have no sweetheart,

I live without distress;

There's morning every day,

And evening no less."

Constantine sang,--

"When it snows the snow is white,

And when it freezes the frost is bright;

What noodles do with fear and fright

I do with all my might."

Florian began:--

"It's just a week to-day, to-day,

My sweetheart told me to go away:

She cried, and she sobb'd,

But I was gay."

And

"Three weeks before Easter

The snow will be flush,

My girl will be married,

And I in the slush."

"That's not the way," said Constantine: "turn round the handle:"--

"Three weeks before Easter,

There'll be slush in the snow:

The jade will be married

And I'll courting go."

Laughter and applause from all sides of the room were the reward of this poetic effort. Peter then struck up:--

"Sweetheart, you thief,

You're all my grief;

And while I live,

No comfort you'll give."

And

"If I but knew

Where my sweetheart has gone,

My heart wouldn't be

Half so weary and lone."

Florian sang again:--

"If you would live like a little bird,

And have no cares to shend ye;

Just marry, till the summer's round,

Whome'er the spring may send ye."

Constantine sang again:--

"I come to see you;

It pleased me to come;

But I won't come any longer:

It's too far from home.

"It wouldn't be too far,

And it wouldn't be too rough,

But, just understand,

You're not near good enough."

Ivo sat at the table, absorbed in unpleasant reflections. He called to mind how at this hour he was usually to be found at his solitary lamp, struggling to penetrate the mysteries of creation and redemption,--how far he was then removed from all the doings of men, from all the wishes and aims of individuals; and he contrasted all this with what he now saw of the life led by his natural comrades in age and station. The nucleus of all their thoughts and actions was love, whether they made it the subject of wanton jibes or of strains of tender longing. Once more existence lay before him, severed, as by a sharp steel, into two irreconcilable halves,--the secular and the ecclesiastical. Babbett, who had watched him closely, had not failed to perceive the irksome twitches of the muscles of his face: she now approached the singers, saying,--

"Why, a'n't you ashamed of yourselves? Can't you sing a single decent song?"

Constantine replied,--

"Well, if you don't like it,

I like it the more;

And, if you can do better,

Just put in your oar."

"Yes," said Florian: "we'll sing a good song if you'll join in."

"Oh, yes, I'll join in."

"What shall it be?" asked Peter.

"'Honest and true.'"

"'Is my wealth and my store'? no, I don't like that," said Constantine.

"Well, then, 'Ere the morning dew was wasted.'"

"Yes." Babbett sang lustily, and the others fell in:--

"Ere the morning dew was wasted,

Ere the night-blown grass was shrunk,

Ere another's eye had tasted,

On my love mine eyes were sunk.

"Shoot the fox and rabbit early,

Ere they travel in the wood;

Love the girls ere they grow surly,

Or forget how to be wooed.

"Till with vines the millstone teemeth,

And the mill-race runs with wine,

While life's current in us streameth,

Thou art mine and I am thine."

Ivo thanked Babbett warmly for the pretty song; but Constantine immediately followed it up with

"I'm as poor as a mouse:

There's no door to my house,

There's no lock to my door,

And I've no sweetheart more.

"It's all up with me

Over land and sea:

When the Danube dries up

Our wedding shall be.

"And it will not dry up,

And is wet to this day;

To find another sweetheart

I must up and away."

"Now let's have 'A boy he would a walking go,'" said Babbett.

"Keep your boy at home," replied Constantine.

"Oh, you! If you'd been kept at home, they wouldn't have turned you out like a dog in the wrong kennel."

"Strike up," said Florian; and they sang:--

"Blithe let me be,

If 'tis but well with thee,

Although my youth and freshness

Must wither hopelessly.

"No streamlet on the hill-side

But finds its course to run;

But not a hand to open

My pathway to the sun.

"The sun, the moon, the stars,

And all the firmament,

Shall hang in mourning for me

Till my long night be spent."

Ivo fidgeted in his chair: this song was the expression of his own fate.

"Don't go," said Constantine, perceiving his uneasiness.

"Babbett, you don't do like the host at Cana: you give the good wine first and the bad afterward. You've brought Lutheran and Catholic wine together: that'll be a mixed marriage."

"'When the mice have had enough, the flour is bitter,'" answered the hostess.

"'Tell you what," cried Constantine; "we'll drink hot wine now."

"You've had enough for to-day," said Barbara.

"What we can't drink we can pour into our shoes. Let's make a night of it. Are you for it?--and you? and you?"

Every one nodded, and sang,--

"Brothers, let's go it

And drink while we're young;

Age will come quickly

And dry up the tongue.

For the gentle wine

Was made for good fellows:

Brothers, be mellow,

And drink the good wine."

The "warm wine" which was brought would have provoked a smile from any American or English boon companion. It bore about the same relation to mulled wine which water-gruel has to pepper-pot. The heat it had received from the fire was counterbalanced by the infusion of water until a child might have fattened upon it unharmed. But Germans can sing more drinking-songs over a cup of vinegar than would be heard in an American bar-room where brandy enough has been swallowed to account for a dozen murders.

Constantine welcomed the arrival of the beverage with a song, which he accompanied with his fists on the table:--

"I and my old wife,

We go the whole figure;

She carries the beggar's pouch,

And I sing the jigger.

Bring some Bavarian beer;

Let's be Bavarians here;

Bavarians, Bavarians let us be here.

"She's gone to town to beg,

I wait and snicker;

What she'll bring back with her

I'll spend for liquor.

Bring some Bavarian beer," &c.

It grew late. A boy had brought Ivo the key to his father's house. The beadle had come to announce the hour for silence, but Constantine quieted him with a glass of wine: the same deep artifice succeeded with the watchman, who came an hour later. Constantine began to mimic the professors and boast of his student's pranks. Ivo rose to go. The others tried to hold him, but Constantine made room for him: in Ivo's absence there was nothing to interfere with his making himself the hero of the adventures of other students. He called after him, however, to "take the room-door into bed with him;" but Ivo did not hear it, for he was already in the open air.

The soft light of the summer moon was poured over the land, and seemed to strew the earth with calm and quiet. Ivo frequently stood still, laid his hand on his beating breast, and took off his cap to permit the gentle gales to fan him. When, at home, he undertook to undress himself, he felt doubly how his quick pulses were chasing each other: he left the house once more, therefore, to find refreshment in the peaceful silence of night. He walked along the highroad and across the fields: he was happy, he knew not why; he could have walked on forever: with his heart beating joyfully, the love of life was revived in him, and carried him aloft over the lovely, peaceful earth. Having returned home at last, he saw that the door of the first-floor chamber was open. Almost unconsciously, he entered, and stood spell-bound; for there lay Emmerence. The moon shone on her face: her head lay under her right arm, and her left hand rested on the frame. Ivo's breast heaved: he trembled from head to foot; he knew not what befell him; but he bent over Emmerence and kissed her cheek, almost as gently as the moonbeam itself. Emmerence seemed to feel it, for, turning upon her side, she murmured, "A cat, cat, cat." He waited a while to see if she would wake. But she slept on, and the august stillness recalled him to himself. Striking his forehead, he left the room. Arrived at his own bedside, he threw himself upon the floor, and, torturing his inmost soul, he cried, "God forgive me! let me die! I have sinned! I am a castaway, a villain! Lord God, stretch out thy right hand and crush me!"

Shivering with cold, he awoke, and found it broad day. He crept into his bed. His mother brought him coffee, found him looking very ill, and urged him not to get up; but he would not be dissuaded, for he had made up his mind to go to church that morning.

In passing the stable he heard Emmerence singing within:--

"No house to live,

No farm to tend,

No gauds to give,

No money to lend,

And such a lassie

As I am

Will never find a friend."

"What makes you so down-hearted?" Ivo could not refrain from asking. "Didn't you sleep well?"

"I don't know any thing about sleeping well or ill. I am tired when I go to bed, and my eyes shut. I just happened to think of the song, and so I sang it."

"You needn't deny it: you would like to have Constantine for your sweetheart, wouldn't you?"

"Him! I'd rather take the French simpleton, or Blind Conrad: I've no mind to make up the balance of his half-dozen. I don't want any sweetheart: I am going to remain single."

"That's what all the girls say."

"You shall see whether I am in earnest about it or not."

"But if you can get a good husband you oughtn't to be too dainty."

"What could I get? Some old widower who has furnished the gravedigger with two or three wives already. No! whenever I can't stay in your house any more, my mind's made up: I promised Mag when she went away to go to America. But I'm so glad to see you care about what's to become of me: sure, if you are going to be a clergyman, that's no reason why you should never look after your old friends."

"I should like nothing better than to do something for your comfort and happiness in the world."

Emmerence looked at him with beaming eyes. "That's what I always said," cried she: "I knew you were good, and I never would believe you were proud. Ask your mother: we talk of you often and often. Don't your ears ever tingle?"

Thus they chatted for some time. Emmerence told him that she read his letters to his mother, and that she almost knew them by heart. Ivo thought it his duty to say that he too had not forgotten her, and that he hoped she would always be good and pious. He said this with a great effort of self-command, for the girl's warm-hearted candor had made a great impression upon him.

The church-bell rang, and some old women who passed with their prayer-books under their arms made Ivo aware that he was too late for matins.

"Where are you going to work to-day?" he asked, before leaving.

"Out by the pond."

He went into the fields, but in the opposite direction: a violent yearning drew him toward the spot where he knew Emmerence to be; but he only walked the faster, to suppress the cry of his heart. At length he returned home and took up a book; but he could not rivet his thoughts to the subject. He began a letter to Clement, intending to pour out his heart to his friend; but he soon tore it up, and consoled himself with the reflection that he would soon see Clement again.

Contrary to all his former habits, Ivo was now rarely at home. He frequently spent half a day at a time in Jacob's smithy. Smithies in Germany, as here, are the resorts of various drones, old men, and idlers: wagoners from a distance, and from the village, come and go, to have their horses shod or their tools or vehicles repaired. As the bellows fan the fire, so the arrivals and departures keep up the stream of conversation. Ivo often asked himself how things would have been if the wish of his early childhood had been fulfilled and he had become a blacksmith. He resolved, when in the ministry, to frequent these places and endeavor at times to edge in a wholesome word of counsel or encouragement. Sometimes the thought struck him that possibly it would not be his lot to take orders, after all. "So be it, then," he would say: "only let me never be like the 'college chap.'"

13.

DISCORD.

On his return to the convent, Ivo suffered several days to pass before informing his now pale and wasted-looking friend Clement of the emotions which had gone on within him: he had a natural dread of this disclosure.

As they walked in the Burgholz together, Clement grasped Ivo's hand and said, "I saw in a dream how Satan laid his snares to entrap you."

Ivo confessed his love for Emmerence.

"Alas!" cried Clement, "alas! you too are pursued by the tempter. If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out. You must trample this spark of hell-fire out of existence, though life itself should follow."

Ivo went to confession. He never disclosed the penance imposed upon him; but he agreed readily to Clement's proposal to sleep on the ground in future and to subject themselves to various deprivations. Clement always slept upon the ground in a sitting posture and with his arms spread out to represent the form of the cross.

With the whole force of his will, Ivo disengaged his thoughts from the affairs of this world, and succeeded in confining them once more to subjects of ecclesiastical learning. But a new demon soon dogged him even into the sacred precincts. He never dared to tell Clement of this last machination of the evil one; for Clement would have raised a fresh hue and cry. This made a rupture of their intimacy inevitable, and accident soon brought it about. Clement was speaking of the Godhead of Christ as manifested in his having assumed the bitterness of death upon his cross, and said that this was needed to complete the revelation of him as God and as the Savior of the world.

"I see nothing so superhuman in death upon the cross," said Ivo, very calmly. "It is holy and grand, but it is not superhuman, to die innocently in the promotion of a great cause. I should have esteemed him equally if there had been no occasion for a martyrdom to prove the truth of his divine mission, and if the blind Jews had acknowledged him without it, and had suffered him to live. Not the crucified, but the living Christ, His divine life and divine doctrines, are my salvation and my faith."

Clement stood trembling from head to foot: his lips swelled, and his eyes rolled wildly. With clenched fist he struck Ivo's face, making sparks of fire start from his eyes and causing his cheek to tingle. Ivo stood unmoved, or motionless; but Clement fell to the ground before him, seized his hand, and cried,--

"Down into the dust, forsaken one! Verily, the heaviest chastisement which could befall thy blasphemy has the Lord visited upon thee by my hand: it was not my will, but the Lord's, which hurled my arm against thee. Thou art the brother of my heart, and by me thou must be smitten; for thou must feel two-edged swords piercing thy flesh.

"If thou thrust me away, the Lord's wrath is thereby visited upon thee still more: thou shalt lose the best friend thou hast. Do what thy spirit will, put me away, and thou shalt be doubly wretched. The Lord must plunge thee into the depths of darkness, that thine eye may be opened to receive the light. He must give thee sadness to drink and gall to feed upon, until the spirit of lies shall depart and the slime of sin fall away from thee. Lord, let this offering be pleasing in thy sight: I offer thee half of my heart,--my friend. Thou art my friend, O Lord! Forgive me that my soul still clings to one who is the food of worms. Be gracious unto me, O Lord! give me the full cup of sorrow, and lead me in the thorny path to thee, thee!"

Ivo stood sadly regarding his friend, whose rashness grieved but did not surprise him. He offered to raise him up; but Clement refused, and Ivo soon saw the entire meaning of this fit of ecstasy. With a sensation of indescribable pain, he thought he saw the corpse of his friend in the place of his living body; and then again his own disembodied spirit seemed to stand before his own lifeless frame and look upon its last convulsive movements. He was giddy. He offered again to assist Clement in rising; but the latter sprang to his feet, and demanded, peremptorily,--

"Will you do penance? Will you wash the rust from your soul with tears of repentance?"

"No."

"To hell with you, then!" cried Clement, again seizing him by the throat. Ivo, however, defended himself stoutly, and the savage said, imploringly, "Smite me; tread me under foot: I will undergo all things willingly: but I must save you, for the Lord wills it."

Ivo turned on his heel without another word, and quitted his friend in silence.

For days Ivo walked about in thoughtful silence. The string of his heart which had the fullest tone was cruelly snapped asunder: he had buried the bright promise of youthful friendship. Besides, the excess of religious frenzy which he had witnessed had given fresh vitality to many half-slumbering doubts and scruples. He was "doubly wretched," as Clement had foretold; but he knew not how to help himself.

The chaplain of Horb had come to Tuebingen as a professor: he had never lost his preference for Ivo, who now sought his friendship and acquainted him with his troubles.

Strange to say, it was the Virgin Mary who had provoked his doubts especially. He first inquired "whether, as a saint, she was also omnipresent?" as he thought she ought to be, seeing that prayers were everywhere offered up to her.

The professor looked at him with some astonishment, and said, "The notion of omnipresence is a purely human one, deduced from bodily things, and, in strictness, applicable to them alone. In coupling 'omnis' (all) with 'present' we merely seek to comprehend the totality of existence: we do not really add to the number of our ideas, though we may seem to do so. Nothing which is not earthly can become, as such, the subject of our conceptions: for the same reason, we cannot legitimately undertake to subject a spirit to the measure of what is, in fact, a merely physical standard,--that of 'presence.' We must renounce, once for all, the idea of comprehending supernatural things logically: faith is the proper organ of their function, and no other."

Ivo was entirely satisfied with this answer, and only ventured timidly to ask how the Virgin Mary could be spoken of, when the Bible makes mention of brothers of Christ.

The professor answered, "The Greek word αδελφος [Greek: adelphos][¹²] is not to be taken literally: it is an Oriental expression, taken from the Hebrew, and signifies as much as 'kinsman,' or 'friend.'"

"Then I suppose the expression υἱος θεου[Greek: huios theou][¹³] is not to be taken literally either, but is also an Oriental expression?"

"By no means! Such an idea is at once repelled by the Messianic passages of the Old Testament, the Gospels, and the tenets of the Church. And, besides," added he, watching Ivo's features narrowly, "the incarnation of God has no other purpose than to give a hold to our human faculties, because, as I said before, we can form no conception of that which is not earthly: its essence is and must remain a mystery, which we can do nothing but believe in, and faith will be given you, if you take pains to keep your soul pure, childlike, and innocent."

"But that is not so easy," said Ivo, with some timidity.

"I will give you some advice which is founded on experience," answered the professor, laying his hand upon Ivo's shoulder: "as often as a thought arises within you which threatens to drift you away from the moorings of faith, banish it immediately by prayer and study, and do not suffer it to abide in your heart. We stand with our God much as we do with our friends: once estranged from them, it is not an easy matter to revive the old affection."

The advice and the illustration made a great impression on Ivo; but they came too late.

It must not be supposed, however, that inquiries of this kind carried Ivo out of the pale of the Church, and to the furthermost bounds of thought. He remained a believing spirit: he was firmly convinced of the reality of the miraculous: and only the soul which holds fast to this conviction is really within the pale prescribed for the genuine Churchman: faith is the surrender of the mind to the inexplicable, to a miracle.

His distaste to a clerical life was caused, in a far greater degree, by other considerations, which now pressed upon him with increasing vividness: he longed for a life of active energy. An early chain of reflections which had first manifested itself to his consciousness at Ehingen once more appeared on the surface of his thoughts. "Not the hard drudgery of hands," said he to himself, "is the punishment of sin; but, because mankind have once tasted of the tree of knowledge, they are now condemned everlastingly to seek it, without ever enjoying it to repletion. In the sweat of their brows they seek food for their minds: the dry rustling leaves of books are the foliage under which the fruit of knowledge is supposed to be concealed. Happy he to whom the Christmas-tree, with its tapers lighted by unseen hands, has proved this better tree of knowledge. Labor, Labor! Only the beast lives without labor: it goes forth to seek its food without preparing it: man, on the contrary, mingles his powers with the generative forces of mother earth, lends his aid to the activity of the universe, and thus the blessings of labor, rest, and peace of soul, fall to his share. Blind Roman, how vapid was your motto, that life is warfare! how tawdry the triumphs you held over subjugated brethren! Life is labor. True, even that is a strife with the silent forces of nature; but it is a strife of freedom, of love, which renovates the world. The stone's obduracy yields to the chisel's industry, and helps to form the shelter of the homestead. And more than all let me praise thee, tiller of the soil! Into the furrowed wounds of the earth thou strewest sevenfold life. The heart glows, the spirit moves, in thee. And as we subjugate the earth and make it serve us, so also we learn to govern and guide the earthly portion of our own natures; and as we wait for rain and sunshine from above to make our work take root and flourish, so it is thy will, O God, to pour out thy grace over us, to make the seed sown in our spirits to thrive and sanctify our bodies. Give me, O Lord, a little speck of earth, and I will plough it seven times over, so that its hidden juices may sprout forth in blades which bow their heads before the breath of thy mouth: I will raise the warts of my hands aloft to praise thee, until thou shalt draw me up into thy kingdom."

"I should like well enough," he once said to himself, "to be a parson on Sunday; but to spend a whole week occupied with nothing but the Lord and the nothing we know about him,--to be as much at home in the church as in one's bedroom,--why, that is to have no church and no Sunday at all. Oh, heavens! how happy was I when I used to go to church of a Sunday and say, 'Good-morning, God!' The sun shone more brightly, the houses looked better, and all the world was different from what it was on working-days." Perhaps he thought of Emmerence, for he continued,--"A Lutheran parson's life wouldn't suit me, either. To support a wife and a houseful of children on preaching? No, no!" Then his theological scruples returned, and he said, "Theology is the bane of religion: what need of so much subtlety? Love God: love thy neighbor. What more?"

Thus his whole being was racked and tossed. The thought of Emmerence would drive the fever-heat to his face, and then icy coldness returned when he thought of his own future. He was at a loss how to inform his parents of his irrevocable determination to leave the convent: it was hard to explain to them that he could not look upon a clerical life as his vocation, and that he did not find the faith within him strong enough to justify such a step.

This train of thought was interrupted by a letter from the squire of Nordstetten to the principal, requesting permission for Ivo to come home, as his mother had to undergo a severe surgical operation, which she wished to be performed in his presence.

Harrowed by anxiety, Ivo hastened home with the messenger who had brought the letter. He learned that his mother had broken her arm some time previously by falling down-stairs; that she had disregarded the injury, and that now she could only be saved by another artificial fracture and resetting of the limb; that she would have preferred death had she not thought it her duty to reserve herself for her children. Ivo was stung to the soul to find that the messenger always spoke of his mother as if she were already dead or, at least, beyond all hopes of recovery. "You couldn't find a better woman wherever cooking is done," was the curious proverbial expression which formed the burden of his answers.

The meeting between mother and son was heart-rending. "So, now! I can bear it all better," said she, "because you are here."

The surgeon came next day. He offered to blindfold the patient; but she said, "No: put the bed into the middle of the room, where I can see the Savior, and you will see that I won't budge nor murmur."

After much reluctance, her wish was complied with. In one hand--the hand of the injured arm--she grasped the rosary, while the other clasped that of her son. Her eyes rested on the crucifix, and she said, "Dear Savior, Thou hast borne the most cruel pain with a heavenly smile: dear Savior, give me Thy power, hold me when I would tremble; and, when the sharp swords pierce my soul, I will think of thee, O Mother of God, and suffer in silence. Pray with me, dear Ivo."

Without uttering another word, she suffered the operation to be performed; and when the bone cracked under the terrible pressure, when all around sobbed and wept, when Valentine was led half fainting into the adjoining room, and his suppressed sobs became louder as the door closed upon him, Christina was silent and motionless: only her lips quivered, her eyes were directed steadfastly upon the cross, and a holy brightness seemed to issue from them.

When all was over, and even the surgeon broke out into praise of the patient's fortitude, she sank upon her pillow, and her eyes closed; but a brilliant glory still rested upon her face. All the bystanders were dumb with admiration. Valentine had returned. He bent over his wife till he felt her breath, and then looked up with a heavy sigh and a cry of "God be praised!" Ivo kneeled at the bedside, looked up to his mother, and worshipped her. All folded their hands: not a breath was heard, and it seemed as if the living Spirit of God were passing through every heart.

When Christina awoke with the cry of "Valentine," the latter hastened to her side, pressed her hand upon his heart, and wept. "You forgive me, don't you, Christina?" he said, at length. "You shall never, never hear an unkind word from me again. I am not worthy of you: I see that now better than ever; and if the Lord had taken you away I should have gone mad."

"Be calm, Valentine. I have nothing to forgive you: I know how good you are, though you are not always yourself. Don't grieve now, Valentine: it's all right again. Our Lord only wished to try us."

She recovered with wonderful rapidity. Valentine kept his word most faithfully. He watched over his wife as over a higher being: the slightest motion of her eye was his command. He could scarcely be induced to allow himself the rest he needed.

Emmerence and Ivo took turns in sitting up with his mother; and she once said, "You are dear, good children: the Lord will certainly make you happy."

Often also, when his mother slept, and the one came to relieve the other, they had long conversations. Ivo confessed to her the longing of his mind for active employment; and she said, "Yes, I can understand that; I couldn't live if I hadn't plenty of work to do: I don't want to praise myself, but I can work just as hard as any in the village."

"And if you only had a house of your own you'd work harder still, wouldn't you?"

"Yes," said Emmerence, pushing up her short sleeves, and stiffening her powerful arms, as if to set about it at once: "yes, then; but even so I can do just as much work as turns up."

"Well," said Ivo, "do you think of any thing while you work?"

"Yes, of course."

"What, for instance?"

"Whatever happens to come into my head: I never thought of remembering it afterward."

"Well, give me an instance."

Usually so confident, the girl was in a perfect flurry of embarrassment.

"Are you ashamed to tell me?"

"Not a bit; but I don't know any thing to tell."

"What did you think this morning when you were cutting the rye? What sort of thoughts went through your head?"

"Well, I must think; but you mustn't laugh at me."

"No."

"At first, I guess, I thought of nothing at all. You might break me on the wheel, and I couldn't remember any thing. Then I came upon a nest of young quails,--dear little bits of things. I put them on one side, out of the way of the boys. Then I was wishing to see how surprised the old ones would be when they came to find their house in another spot. Then I thought of Nat's song, which you can sing too, about the poor soul. Then I thought, 'Where may Nat have gone to?' Then,--then I thought, 'I'm glad it's only half an hour till dinner-time,' for I was getting mighty hungry. There! that's all: it isn't much, is it?" She tugged bashfully at her sleeves, and could not raise her eyes to his face. Ivo asked again,--

"Don't you sometimes think how wonderful it is that God causes the seed which man throws out to bear sevenfold, and that the young crop sleeps under the snow until the sun wakes it in spring? How many millions of men have already lived upon the juices of the earth, and yet have not exhausted them!"

"Oh, yes, I often think that, but it wouldn't have occurred to me of my own accord: the parson says it often in sermons and in the catechism. You see, when you have to work at all these things yourself you don't find time for such reflections, but only think, 'Will it be ripe soon?' and 'Will it bear much?' The parsons, who don't work in the field, don't carry out the dung, and don't do any threshing, have more time for such thinking."

"But you must seek such thoughts a little, and then you will find them oftener. Won't you, Emmerence?"

"Yes, indeed I will: you are right: it is always well to admonish me. If you ask me often, you'll soon find I shall have more to tell you. I'm not so very stupid."

"You're a dear girl," said Ivo. He was on the point of taking her hand, but restrained himself with an effort, though he could not prevent himself from being more and more absorbed in admiration of her frank and sterling ways.

With a heavy heart Ivo returned to the convent. He admired the heroic endurance of his mother, and vowed to imitate it. But another subject occupied him. Through suffering and pain the paradise of his parental home had uprisen from its ashes, and he saw what an inexhaustible source of happiness is found in the attachment of two loving hearts which cling together the more closely the more rudely they are tossed by life's storms and changes. The undying sorrow of his heart broke forth again. He thought of Emmerence; and, sitting in the dark valley of pines, he wept. Down in the dingle was heard the harsh clang of a saw-mill; and Ivo wished that the boards being sawed there might be nailed into his coffin.

In the next holidays he was again almost constantly at home. Life was happy and peaceful there now. Valentine was regenerated, and a petulant word was never heard. Each member of the household behaved with tender consideration to all the others, and the Palm Sundays of early childhood seemed to have returned. But this very calm was to Ivo a source of unrest; in this very peace grew for him a tree of discord. He saw, with unmantled clearness, the solitary gloom of his own future, and knew that the happiness he witnessed was never to be his.

Two important events enhanced the interest of this vacation. Johnnie, Constantine's father, had had a house built for his son. Valentine and his sons had erected it; and Joseph, who became master-builder about this time, spoke the customary poem or oration.

The whole village had assembled before the building: the master and the journeymen were on the summit, engaged in fastening the crown of a young fir, hung with ribbons of all colors, to the peak of the gable. All were on the alert for Joseph's first performance. After a simple salutation, he began:--

"Here you see I have climb'd up unbidden:

If I had had a horse I would have ridden;

But, as I never had a horse,

I may as well talk about something else, of course.

The highest power in the State,

The Kaiser,--God keep him, early and late,--

And all the lords and princes round about,

The carpenters' trade could never do without.

A journeyman-carpenter here I stand,

And I travel through every prince's land.

I look about me with care,

Whether I can make a living there.

If I had every lassie's good-will,

And every master's craft and skill,

And all the wit of my friend the beadle,

I could build a house on the point of a needle;

But, as I can do nothing of the kind,

I must first have my house design'd.

He who would build on roads and streets

Must give every one a chance to try his wits.

I like what is fine,

Though it be not mine;

Though it cannot be my treasure,

It can always give me pleasure.

So I'll drink its health in some yellow wine:

Comrade, just fill up this glass of mine.

Builder! I drink to your satisfaction,

Not that I envy or wish you detraction,

But for good feeling and brotherhood.

Long life to the Kaiser and all his brood!

Destruction to every enemy,

And good luck to this worshipful company,

And to all the people, from far and near,

That have come to look at the building here.

Now I drink over all your heads:

Look out! what comes down's no feather-bed;

What goes up must come down:

Every man take care of his crown.

Now I'll think no more about it,

But drink the wine and throw away the glass without it."

Having dropped the glass, among the cheers of the crowd, he went on:--

"By God's help and his gracious power

We have finish'd this house in good time and hour.

And so we thank him, one and all,

That he has suffer'd none to fall,--

That none has been unfortunate

In life or limb, health or estate;

And also to our Lord we pray

Us henceforth still to keep alway;

And now I commend this house into his hand,

And all the German fatherland.

And hope the owner may use it so

As to make a good living out of those who come and go.

And I wish you, all together,

Health and success in all wind and weather.

And almost I had done great wrong

To have left the lassies out of my song,

Who have wound for us these garlands fine,

And hung them with roses and eglantine:

The flowers in our hats we mean to wear

In honor of our lassies fair."

With the rosemary in his hat, and the apron of skins, Joseph came down to receive the applause and congratulations of his friends. His intended, Hansgeorge's Maria, took both his hands, gazed into his face with radiant eyes, and then looked triumphantly round on the bystanders.

Turning to Ivo, Joseph said, "I can preach too, if it comes to that: can't I, Ivo? This was my first mass, you see."

Ivo sighed deeply at the mention of the first mass.

All now returned home, except those specially invited by Constantine to partake of a grand dinner. Ivo, however, could not be persuaded to accept this invitation: he stood still a while, looking at the airy rafters, and thinking how happy Constantine must be in the possession of a house of his own. "As for these parsonages," he said to himself, "they are like sentry-houses, which belong to no one, and where no one leaves a trace of his existence: a solitary sentinel takes the place of his predecessor until he is relieved in his turn. But let me not be selfish: if the joys of a home are not for me, I will work for the welfare of others.

"I like what is fine,

Though it be not mine;

Though it cannot be my treasure,

It can always give me pleasure."

A week later was Joseph's wedding. It was a merry time. Christina sat at the head of the table, beside her son Ivo, who was and remained the pride of the family. Ivo danced a figure with his sister-in-law, and another with Emmerence. She was overjoyed, and said, "So we've had a dance together: who knows whether we shall ever have another?"

Ivo's second brother now brought his sweetheart to him, and said, "Dance together." When they had done so, his mother came to him and said, "Why, you dance splendidly! Where did you learn it?"

"I never forgot it: the spin-wife used to teach me, you remember, in the twilight."

"Shall we try it?"

"Yes, mother."

All the others stopped to see Ivo dance with his mother. Valentine rose, snapped his fingers, and cried,--

"Gentlemen, play a national for me, and I'll send an extra bottle. Come, old girl!"

He took his wife by the arm, skipped and jumped,

and danced the old national dance, now wellnigh forgotten: he smacked his tongue, struck his breast and his thighs, swayed himself on his toes and his heels alternately, and executed all sorts of flourishes. Now he would hold his lady, now let her go, and trip round and round her with outstretched arms and loving gestures. Christina looked down modestly, but with manifest enjoyment, and turned round and round, almost without stirring from the spot on which she stood. Holding a corner of her apron in her hand, she slipped now under his right arm, now under his left, and sometimes they both turned under their uplifted arms. With a jump which shook the floor, Valentine concluded the dance.

Thus was their vacation full of joy, in the house and out of it.

14.

THE QUARREL.

Once more Ivo was compelled to leave these things behind and return to the convent. He no longer met Clement there, the latter having obtained permission to leave a year before the usual time, in order to enter a Bavarian monastery.

A new pang awaited him in the fate of Bart, of whom we, like him, have lost sight for some years. The poor, good-natured, but weak-minded, youth was in a terrible condition. He gnawed his finger-nails incessantly, and rubbed his hands as if they were cold: his walk was unsteady and tottering; the color of his face was a livid green; his cheeks were sunken; while the red nose and the ever-open mouth made the lank, ungainly lad a fright to look upon. He was not far from imbecility, and had to be transferred to the hospital. It was intended to make an effort for his recovery and then discharge him from the convent. Ivo shuddered when he went to see him. The only signs of mental vigor he displayed took the form of frenzied self-accusation.

The very air of the place now seemed infected. The design which had long worked within Ivo's breast at last became an outward act, and he wrote a letter to his parents, informing them of his unalterable resolution to leave the convent, as he could not become a clergyman: further than this he entered into no argumentations, well knowing that they would lead to no result. He would have been called ungodly if he had disclosed them fully, and thus the pain he caused would have been double. With a firm hand he wrote the letter; but with trembling he dropped it into the letter-box in the dusk of evening. As the paper glided down the opening, it seemed as if his past life was sinking into the grave; and every life--even a hopeless one--dies with a struggle. With a firm effort, however, he recovered his courage and looked the future in the face.

Some days after, Ivo had a visit from his parents. They took him with them to the Lamb Tavern. There Valentine ordered a room; and, when they were all in it, he bolted the door.

"What's the matter with you?" he said to Ivo, sternly.

"I cannot be a minister, dear father. Don't look so angrily at me: you have been young too, surely."

"Oh, that's where the shoe pinches, is it? You blessed scamp, why didn't you tell me that eight years ago?"

"I did not understand it then, father; and, besides, I would not have had the courage to say it."

"Courage,--eh! We'll make short work of it, my fine fellow: you shall be a minister; and there's an end."

"I'd rather jump into the river."

"No occasion for that. You shall never go out of this room alive if you don't give me your hand upon it to be a clerical man."

"That I won't do."

"What? That you won't do?" cried Valentine, seizing him by the throat.

"Father," cried Ivo, "for God's sake, father, let me go: do not force me to defend myself: I am not a child any more."

Christina seized her husband's arm. "Valentine," said she, "I shall cry 'Fire!' out of the window if you don't let him go this minute." Valentine released his hold, and she went on:--"Is this the gentleness you promised me? Ivo, forgive him: he is your father, and loves you dearly, and God has given him power over you. Valentine, if you speak another loud word you've seen the last of me, and I'll run away. Ivo, for my sake, give him your hand."

Ivo pressed his lips together, and big tears stole down his cheeks. "Father," he sobbed, "I did not designate myself for a clergyman; nor are you to blame, for you could not know whether I was suited for it or not. Why should we reproach each other?"

He went up to Valentine to take his hand; but he only said, "Very fine; but what does the gentleman intend to be?"

"Let me go to the school for veterinary surgeons for a year, and I shall manage to get settled somewhere or other as veterinary surgeon and farmer."

"A good idea; and I'm to pay off the convent, I suppose? Two hundred florins a year? Then they can sell my house; and it'll be a glorious thing to say, 'Yes: Ivo's to be a cat-doctor, and so it is no great matter if the house does go by the board.' And what do you mean to study with? Live on the old Kaiser's exchequer?--or do you suppose I'm to pay? You can go to law with me and ask your motherly portion; but I'll make up a little account against you then, to show what you've cost me."

"I shall petition the ministry to have the indemnity to the convent charged upon my future inheritance."

"We've had our say, and you needn't talk any more," interrupted Valentine. "If you won't obey, only don't make yourself believe you have a father in the world. You've been my pride till now; but, after this, I can never look into any man's face again, and must only be glad if people are good enough not to talk about you." The tears trickled down his cheeks; and, pressing both his hands to his face, he continued:--"I wish a clap of thunder had struck me into the earth before I had lived to see this day!" He laid his head upon the window-sill, turned his back upon them, and struck fiercely at the wall with his foot.

Such, again, is man! Valentine had no hesitation in displaying his grief and hatred to his son; but he had always been ashamed to show his love and his satisfaction, and had buried them in his heart like the memory of a crime. Do not educated and uneducated men equally resemble him in this?

Hitherto Christina had contented herself with admonishing each party to silence and gentleness by looks and gestures; but now she began, with a firmer voice than her countenance might have led one to expect,--

"Ivo, dear Ivo, you were always good and pious: there never was a vein of evil in you. I won't say that I always thought it would be a good word for me in heaven if you were clerical: that's neither here nor there: it is you we must consider. For the sake of Christ's blood, examine yourself: be good, be true, and our Lord will help you and will purify your heart of all things that should not be there. Oh, you always had such a pious mind! You see I can't speak much: it seems to tear out my very heart. Be good and pious again, as you always were; be my dear, dear Ivo." She fell upon his neck and wept. Ivo answered, embracing her,--

"Mother dear, mother dear, I cannot be a minister. Do you suppose I would have given you all this unhappiness if I could have done otherwise? I cannot."

"Don't say you cannot: that isn't pious. Only set your will to it, make up your mind firmly, and shake off all evil desires, and indeed you will find it easy. The All-Merciful will help you, and you shall be our pride and our joy again, and a good child before God and man."

"I am not bad, dear mother; but I cannot be a minister. Do not rend my heart so. Oh, how gladly I would obey you! but I cannot."

"Let him go to the devil, the rascal!" said his father, tearing Christina away from her son. "Can you see your mother begging and imploring this way?"

"Tear me to pieces," cried Ivo, "but I cannot be a minister."

"Out with you, or I'll lay hands upon your life!" cried Valentine, with foaming mouth. He opened the door and pushed Ivo out.

"It is over," said Ivo, breathing hard as he went tottering down the stairs. A noise was heard above: the door opened, and his mother came down after him. Hand in hand they walked to the convent, neither of them speaking a word. In taking leave, she said,--

"Give me your hand upon it that you'll think of it again, and that you will not lay hands upon yourself."

Ivo gave the required promise, and went in silence to his cell. The floor rocked under his feet; but the purpose of his soul remained unshaken not to let thoughts of childlike affection sway him in the choice of his vocation for life. "I have duties to myself, and must be responsible for my own actions," thought he. "I could die to please my mother; but to enter upon a pursuit the root of which must be the firmest conviction that it is my appointed mission, is what I dare not and must not do."

But in the middle of the night he suddenly awoke; and it seemed as if a cry from his mother had roused him. He sat up in his bed; and now the calling he was about to abjure suddenly presented itself to his mind in its most elevated and holy aspect. He thought of being the loving, comforting, helping friend of the poor and distressed, the father of the orphan and the forsaken, the dispenser of light and happiness in every heart: he lost sight of all theological dogmas, and even dreamed of taking part in the holy strife of liberating the world from superstition and human authority: he battled down the love of earth within him and resolved to live for others and for the other world: not a day would he suffer to pass without having refreshed some heavily-laden soul or gladdened some weary heart.

"Wherever a poor child of clay shall weep in bitter sadness, I will absorb his woes into my heart and let them fight their struggle there. I will dry the mourner's tears; and Thou, O Lord, wilt wipe the tears from my face when my spirit halts and I weep at night over my poor lonesome life."

Thus Ivo said to himself, and his heart was bright and clear. He seemed to have suddenly acquired the power of casting aside all earthly care, and winging his way to the fountain-head of bliss; and then again he experienced a sensation of triumph and of longing for the strife, as if he must go forth at once to battle. In an ecstasy of joy he called to mind the delight his return to his calling would awaken at home: his thoughts became indistinct, and he was again in the region of dreams.

Next morning he wrote a letter to his parents, announcing, with solemn earnestness and warm contrition, the recantation of his purpose, and praising the high character of the duties upon which he was resolved to enter. What he could not do to please his parents, he had achieved of his own free will. When he again heard the letter glide down into the box, he seemed to hear the swoop of the judicial sword: he had sentenced and executed himself. He returned, shaking his head. The elasticity of his spirit was bruised and broken. With all the power of his will, he returned to his studies, and succeeded for a time in quieting his mind.

At home the letter provoked the greatest exultation. But scarcely had the first flush of excitement passed away before a careful observer would have detected symptoms of uneasiness in the behavior of his mother. She often smiled sadly to herself, went thoughtfully about the house, and spoke little. Often, of an evening, she asked Emmerence to read the letter; and when she came to the words, "I will sacrifice my life to God, who gave it me; I will give you, my dear mother, the greatest earthly happiness," Christina sighed deeply.

One Saturday evening Christina and Emmerence sat together peeling potatoes for the next day: Emmerence, who had just read the letter once more, remarked,--

"Aunty, it always seems to me as if you were not quite happy to know that Ivo is going to be a clergyman, after all. Just tell me what you think about it. I see there is something the matter: you needn't conceal it from me."

"You're right. You see, I'll tell you. Before him" (meaning her husband) "I couldn't breathe a word about it, or the house would be on fire in a minute. It always seems to me as if I had done a great sin: I have made his heart so heavy. And he is such a good child: there's never a drop of bad blood in his heart; and now for love of me he's going to be a clergyman, when his heart clings to the world; and surely it's a great sin."

"Why, that's dreadful! Why, I wouldn't have a moment's peace. I'd make up my mind to set matters right immediately."

"Yes, but how? You see, I should like to tell him so, and unbeknown to him," (meaning her husband.) "I don't want to trust all this to the schoolmaster; and yet I can't write myself any more."

"Easy enough to help that. I'll write. I can write very well, and you can dictate to me."

"Yes, that's true: I never thought of that. You're a good child. Come; we'll set about it directly."

But another trouble soon arose, for nowhere was a pen to be found. Emmerence was ready to go to the schoolmaster to have one made and tell the schoolmaster's wife some story or other, if she asked questions; but Christina would not consent. "We can't begin with sinning," she said. With the same answer she dismissed Emmerence's second proposal, to steal one of the schoolmaster's pens, as she knew exactly where he kept them, and put a dozen fresh quills in its place. At length Emmerence cried, getting up, "I know where to get one. My sister's boy, Charlie, goes to school, and has pens; and he must give me one."

She soon returned in triumph, with a pen in her hand. Sitting down at the table, she drew up the wick of the lamp with a pin, squared herself to begin, and said, "Now dictate, aunty."

Ivo's mother sat behind the table in the corner under the crucifix, and tried to peel an additional potato. She said,--

"Write 'Dear Ivo.' 'Got that?"

"Yes."

"'I'm thinking of you now. Not an hour and not a day passes but I think of you; and at night, when I lie awake in bed, my thoughts are with you, dear Ivo.'"

"Not so fast, or I can't get it down," clamored poor Emmerence. She raised her blushing face, looked into the light, and gnawed her pen. These were the very words she would have written had she penned the letter in her own name. Laying her face almost on a level with the paper, she now began to write, and at last said, "'Dear Ivo.' Go on."

"No; first read to me what you have written."

Emmerence did so.

"That's right. Now write again, 'I am not quite easy about your having changed your mind so quickly'--Stop! don't write that: that's not a good way to begin."

Emmerence rested her chin on her hand and waited. But Christina said,--

"You've found out what I mean by this time. Now just you write the letter yourself: that's what the schoolmaster always does."

"I'll tell you what," began Emmerence, rising: "a letter like this might get into wrong hands, or be lost; and we don't know exactly how to write it, anyhow. The best way will be for me to go to Ivo and tell him all about it. To-morrow is Sunday; so I sha'n't miss any working-time: the feed is cut for the cows; I'll put it into the trough over-night, and my sister can see to them for one day: the potatoes are peeled. I'll fix it so that you'll have nothing to do but put the meat over the fire. It's only seven hours' walk to Tuebingen by the valley, and I'll travel like a fire-alarm: Sunday is long, and to-morrow night I'll be back in good time."

"All alone will you go? And at night?"

"Alone? Our Lord God is everywhere, and he will hold his hand over a poor girl." Almost angrily, she added, "I must go at night, or I wouldn't be back to-morrow; and then he" (meaning Valentine) "would scold."

"I can't say no; I feel as if it must be so. Go, in God's name.

Take my rosary with you: there's a bit of wood in it from Mount Lebanon, which I inherited from my great grandmother: that'll protect you." Taking her rosary from the door-post where it hung, she handed it to Emmerence, and continued, "Don't run too hard. Stay till Monday if you're tired: there's time enough. I've a six-creutzer piece which I'll give you; and here, take this bread with you: there's a blessing on bread taken from the box. But what shall I say when people ask what's become of you? I couldn't tell a story."

"Just say that I've something very important to do: people needn't know every thing. I'll make haste, so as to be gone before he comes home."

With astounding readiness, Emmerence tripped up and down stairs and arranged all things as she had proposed: then she went into her room to put on her Sunday clothes. Christina helped her. As the girl drew her prettiest collar out of the chest, something wrapped up in paper fell upon the floor. "What is that?" asked Ivo's mother.

"A bit of glass Ivo once gave me when we were little bits of children," said Emmerence, hastily concealing it.

When the toilet was finished, Christina, untying her apron-strings and tying them again, said, "I don't know how it is; but you ought not to go, after all."

"Not go! Ten horses wouldn't hold me now. Don't balk, aunty: you've agreed to let me go: it would be the first time for you to break your word."

After going into the front room once more to sprinkle herself with holy water by the door, she started on her way. At the front door Christina made another effort to detain her; but she strode off briskly with a "God bless you!" Christina sent her good wishes after her, as she watched her till she disappeared at the lower end of the garden.

She had chosen this road to avoid meeting any of the villagers. As she walked through the target-field, the moon retired behind a large cloud; so that, when she entered the forest which covered the descent to the Neckar, it was almost "as dark as the inside of a cow." At first she shuddered a little, and it seemed as if some one were treading closely at her heels; but soon, finding that it was her own steps which she heard, she picked up her courage, and skipped securely over the roots which crossed the narrow wood-path. Emmerence "had good learning," and did not believe in spooks or spirits; but in Firnut Pete she had the most undoubting faith, for she knew how many people had been compelled to work for him. By shrugging her shoulders from time to time she made sure that the goblin was not seated upon them. She also believed in Little Nick, who rolls himself before people's feet like a wild cat or a log of wood, so that, when you undertake to sit down upon it, you sink into slime.[¹⁴] She held the rosary wound firmly round her hand.

In the glade where stands the fine old beech on which an image of the Virgin is fastened, Emmerence knelt down,

took the rosary into her folded hands, and prayed fervently. The moon came forth full-cheeked, and seemed to smile upon the praying one, who arose with fresh courage and went on upon her journey.

The road now followed the course of the Neckar, on either bank of which the black fir woods rose to the tops of the hills; while the valley was, for the most part, so narrow as scarcely to hold more than the road, the river, and, at times, a narrow strip of meadow. All was silent, except that at times a bird chirped in its nest, as if to say, "Ah, I feel for the poor birds outside." The dogs gave the alarm as she passed the solitary farm-yards; the numerous mills rattled and thumped, but the heart of the girl outbeat them all.

Emmerence, who had never been more than two hours' walk from home before, was tossed by varied emotions. At first she praised her native village: "it lies upon the hills, and the fields have a soil like flitches of bacon." She only regretted that the Neckar did not flow across the mountain, so that the water might not be so scarce.

The stars twinkled brightly: Emmerence looked up to them, and said, "What a splendid sight it is to see those millions of stars just like a thousand lights twinkling on a rusty pan,--only much finer and more holy; and up there sits our Lord God and keeps watch. How much one loses by sleeping in the course of a year! And if you don't look about you you don't even see it when your eyes are open. He was right: I look out for things much more diligently now, and great pleasure it gives me." A shooting star came down. Raising her hands, Emmerence cried, "Ivo!" She stood still and looked blushing to the ground: she had revealed the inmost wish of her heart; for it is well known that what you wish when a shooting star falls will surely come to pass.

Still walking briskly on her way, Emmerence said again, "Oh, if I only had such a mill, wouldn't I work like a horse? Oh, my goodness! how fine it must be to look at one of these little properties and say, 'It's mine!' I should just like to know whom he would marry if he shouldn't be a minister. God is my witness, I'd run this errand for him just as willingly if he were to take another. Just as willingly? No, not quite: but still right willingly. He is right not to be a minister: to have nobody in the world to yourself, and belong to nobody, is a sorry piece of business. If it was our Lord God's wish that people shouldn't get married, he'd have made nothing but men and let them grow on trees. Well, if these a'n't the most wicked thoughts!" Emmerence closed her soliloquy, and ran the faster, to escape from her own reflections. With an effort, she directed her attention to external things, and, listening to the rush of waters which moved forward unceasingly like herself, "What a strange thing," thought she, "is such a stream of water! It runs and it runs. Ah, you'd like to just lumber along the road without working, wouldn't you? No, you don't, my darling; you must carry the rafts and drive the mills: every thing in the world must work, and so it should be. Why, that's Ivo's trouble, too: he wants to work hard, and not only preach and read mass and pore over his books. That isn't work at all, nor any thing like it. I'll tell him all about it; but what I think he shall never, never know."

Daylight came on, and with it all her natural high spirits returned. She smoothed down her clothes, stepped into the river, washed out her eyes, and combed her hair. She stood a while dreamily regarding her image, which the waters were struggling vainly to carry off with them: her eyes were riveted upon the billows, but she saw them not; she was in a brown study, for a thought had withdrawn her glance from surrounding things to objects which hovered before her soul. In passing on, Emmerence often looked around in a kind of wonder at finding herself on strange ground at the first dawn of morning, where no one knew her nor of her. Though her limbs assured her she had been walking, her eyes seemed to think she had been spirited there by magic.

It was a beautiful morning in August: the larks carolled in the air, and the robins shrilled in the brakes. All this, however, was so familiar to Emmerence that she did not stop to contemplate it, but walked on, singing,--

"The lofty, lofty mountains,

The valley deep and low!

To see my dearest sweetheart

For the last last time I go."

In Rottenburg she rested a while, and then set out with renewed energy. Not until she saw Tuebingen did she stop to consider how she should set about getting to see Ivo. She called to mind, however, that Christian's Betsy was cook at the district attorney's: the cook of a district attorney, she thought, must surely know what to do, when all the world is always running to her master for advice. After many inquiries, she found Betsy; but Betsy had no advice to give, and submitted the case to the judgment of the groom. The groom, rapidly calculating that a girl who wanted to confer with a Catholic priest in secret was not likely to be hard to please, said, "Come along: I'll show you." He tried to put his arm round her neck; but a blow on the breast which made it ring again induced him to change his mind. Muttering something about "hard-grained Black Foresters," he turned on his heel.

"'Tell you what," said Betsy, the astute lawyer's cook: "wait here for an hour till the bell rings for church, and then go to church and sit down in front on the left of the altar, and you'll see Ivo up in the gallery: tip him the wink to come out to you after church."

"In church?" cried Emmerence, raising her hands! "Jesus! Maria! Joseph! but you've been spoiled in the city! I'd rather go home again without seeing him."

"Well, then, do your own thinking, you psalm-singer."

"So I will," said Emmerence, going. She took her way straight to the convent, asked to see the principal, and told him frankly that she wished to talk to Ivo.

"Are you his sister?" asked the principal.

"No: I'm only the housemaid."

The principal looked steadily into her face: she returned his look so calmly and naturally that his suspicions, if he had any, were disarmed; and he directed the famulus to conduct her to Ivo.

She waited for him in the recess of a window on the long vaulted corridor. He came presently, and started visibly when he saw her.

"Why, Emmerence, what brings you here? All well at home, I hope?" said he, with a foreboding of evil.

"Yes, all well. Your mother sent me to give you a thousand loves from her, and to say that Ivo needn't be a clerical man if he doesn't want to be one with all his heart. Mother can't make her mind easy: she thinks she has made his heart so heavy, and that he only does so to please her, and that was what she didn't want, and he was her dear son for all that, even if he shouldn't be a minister, and----Yes: that's all."

"Don't look so frightened, Emmerence: talk without fear. Give me your hand," said Ivo, just as one of his inquisitive comrades had passed. "We are not strangers: we are good old friends, a'n't we?"

Emmerence now related, with astonishing facility, how she had tried to write the letter, and had wandered all night to see him: she often looked to the ground and turned her head as if in quest of something. Ivo's eyes rested on her with strange intentness, and whenever their glances met both blushed deeply; yet they had a dread of each other, and neither confessed the emotions of their hearts. When her story was all told, Ivo said, "Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I only hope a time may come when I may requite a little of your kindness."

"That's nothing. If it was for your good, and you were to say, 'Just run to Stuttgard for me to the king,' I'd go in a minute. I just have a feeling now as if--as if----"

"As if what?" asked Ivo.

"As if every thing must turn out for the very best after this."

Without speaking a word, the two stood face to face for a while, holding in their hearts the fondest converse. At last Ivo drew himself up, with a heavy sigh, and said,--

"Say to my mother that I must think over all these matters again, and that she must not be uneasy any more. Take good care of her, and don't let her work too hard with the arm that was broken. Next to my mother, you and Nat are the dearest persons in the world to me."

Ivo as well as Emmerence looked down at these words, while the former continued:--"Have you heard nothing of Nat?"

"No."

The time allowed for their interview had passed by before they were aware of it. "You are going to church, a'n't you?" asked Ivo.

"Yes; but afterward I must make haste to get home."

"If I can arrange it, I'll see you once more after church, down in the Neckar Bottom, on the road to Hirsau; but, if it can't be, good-bye. God bless you! Don't walk too fast, and,--be a good girl."

They parted. Although an hour before Emmerence had scolded Betsy so lustily, she now took her seat in church on the left of the altar, and was rejoiced at Ivo's nod of recognition.

For an hour she waited in the Neckar Bottom;

but no one came. She started on the road home, often stopping to look back: at last she resolved to do so no longer. "It is better so," she said. "I'm always afraid I haven't told him the matter just in the right way; but it's better so." Though she did not stop to look back any more, she soon sat down to eat her bread upon a hill which commanded a view of the whole length of the road to the city. Brushing the crumbs from her dress, she then rose up hastily and pursued her journey.

We cannot accompany her farther than to say that she arrived in good health and spirits. Our business is with Ivo, who was oppressed with heavy thoughts. He had in a manner domiciliated himself in the calling from which it seemed impossible to escape. The message from his mother had again unsettled the firm foundation of his will, and once more made him doubtful of himself. The sight of the girl of his heart had aroused a fresh straggle within him. He might easily have gone to the Neckar Bottom after church; but fear of himself and of others kept him away.

The pure, fresh action of the will which Ivo had vindicated before his parents was broken by his voluntary return, and it was not easy to reunite the fragments: It is very difficult to return to a project once firmly entertained but afterward abandoned. There is no vital thread to bind the future and the past: it is like the second crop of grass, which may be more tender than the first, but gives no nourishment.

15.

RELEASE.

A frightful casualty was required to restore Ivo to his early resolutions.

On St. Bartholomew's day, Bart had escaped from his keepers in the hospital. Racked by qualms of conscience, he sprang from a window and dashed out his brains. To prevent the effect of this deed upon the reputation of the convent, and in charitable consideration of Bart's partial derangement, it was resolved to give him a burial in the usual form. The conventuaries, wearing crape, followed the corpse to the sound of funeral music. Ivo blew the horn: its tones fluttered in the air like the shreds of ribbons rudely torn. At the grave Ivo stepped forward and made a heart-rending speech in memory of his lost comrade. At first he stumbled a little: all his pulses were trembling. For the first time in his life Death had really rolled a corpse at his feet, crying, "Learn, by death, to study life!" As he had fancied Clement lying dead at his feet, so now in reality the corpse of a companion of his youth, with whom he had spent so many years, lay before him. First he spoke in praise of life,--of the free, glad air of heaven,--and desired to banish death far from the haunts of men; but soon his speech warmed, and his words flowed as from a living spring; and, with griefless fervor, he praised the lot of the orphan now happy with his Father in heaven. Consecration overtook him before the hand of a priest had touched his head. He soared upward to the throne of the universal Parent, knelt, and implored grace for his friend. In short and broken sentences he then prayed for grace to himself, and for his own happy end and that of all men.

To the sound of a triumphal march the conventuaries returned home. Though the contemplation of death was one of their chief exercises, yet, like the standing-armies of earth, they, the standing-army of heaven, were not left long to the influence of sorrow, but were required forthwith to renew their strides toward the goal of their efforts. Ivo's courage also returned. Fate had robbed him of the two associates who had stood nearest to him,--of the one by spiritual, and of the other by bodily, suicide. He was alone, and therefore untrammelled. When the others, who had looked upon life and death with less of seriousness, went in a body to a tavern to observe an old custom of drinking a hundred quarts of beer, each at one draught, to the memory of their comrade, Ivo, with his bugle under his arm, went alone across the bridge, and walked on and on. The sun was sinking: his last rays still lingered on the earth: but the moon was high in the unclouded sky, as if to tell the children of earth, "Be not afraid: I shall watch over you and shed light upon your silent nightly paths until the sun returns." Ivo said to himself, "Thus do men cry and clamor whenever an opinion is wrecked or a doctrine dislodged. A new light is always at hand, though sometimes unseen to them; but they dread eternal night, because they do not know that light is indestructible."

When the darkness had fairly set in, he stood still for a moment, but immediately resumed his march, saying, "On, on! never turn back." He turned into another road, to avoid his home. He thought of his mother's grief; but he would write to her from Strasbourg, whither he had resolved to go. He meant to support himself by his instrument, or to hire out as a farm-hand, until he should have laid up money enough to go to America. His books were forgotten as if he had never seen them. He thought no more of theological dogmas and systems. He seemed to have been born again, and the remembrances of the past were like a dream. Thus he walked on all night without resting; and, when at the first dawn of morning he found himself in a strange valley, he stood still, and prayed fervently for God's assistance. He did not kneel; but his soul lay prostrate before the Lord. As he walked on, he hummed a song which he had often heard in childhood:--

"Now good-bye, beloved father,

Now good-bye: so fare ye well.

Would you once more seek to find me?

Climb the lofty hills behind me,

Look into this lowly dell,

Now good-bye: so fare ye well.

"Now good-bye, beloved mother,

Now good-bye: so fare ye well.

You who did with anguish bear me,

For the Church you did uprear me:

Let your blessing with me dwell.

Now good-bye: so fare ye well."

Sitting on a stone, Ivo reflected on his fate. He had gone away recklessly: there was not a copper in his pocket, and nothing which afforded even a hope of money except his bugle. He could hardly expect to escape the necessity of asking the assistance of the charitable. Even in the purest heart, and with the consciousness of perfect rectitude, begging is a dismal prospect: he blushed scarlet at the thought. Nor must we forget that he was the son of rich parents, and could not but think of the plentiful supplies at home. He sang, with a sad smile, a snatch of the old song,--

"The world's here and there,

But I haven't a share."

A drove of oxen came down the road, two brindles leading the way. Ivo joined the drovers and asked where they were going. They were on the way to a rich butcher in Strasbourg, and now on the direct road to Freiburg. Ivo had gone round many miles, but was still on the right road. He now asked the men to let him travel with them and help them, and to pay his expenses: they looked at the strange man in black, with the bugle under his arm, from head to foot, and whispered something to each other.

"As for going to Algiers with the foreign legion, there's no use in that at all," said one.

"Much better sit out your two or three years at home: they can't pull your head off." The complacent smile with which this was said proved conclusively that the speaker's personal experience vouched for its correctness. It was clear that they took Ivo for a criminal,--a notion which he did not venture to dissipate, as their pity was indispensable to him. They said they could not make a bargain, but must refer him to their employer, whom they expected to meet at Neustadt.

Ivo followed humbly in the train of the oxen: the graduate of the penitentiary committed the sceptre into his hands, and he ruled over the subject herd with mildness.

"Where did you get those brindles?" he asked.

"Ah," said the enemy of Algiers, "you can see what sort of a stable they came from, can't you? They were bought from Buchmaier, at the Hornberg fair."

Ivo ran up to the beasts, and recognised his favorite by the upturned hair in the middle of the forehead. He almost feared that the fate of the poor animal would be his own, and that death awaited him also; but he could not and would not turn back.

But what was his astonishment when, on arriving at Neustadt, the drovers saluted their employer, who was looking out of the window of the inn, and he recognised him as Florian! He could not believe his eyes, until Florian came up and welcomed the odd-looking drover with shouts of laughter.

Ivo told his story, and Florian, striking the table, cried, "Hurrah for you! Another bottle, waiter. I'll see you through, take my word for it. But how do you expect to get to Strasbourg without a passport? Here," (slipping out of his blue smock,) "put that on: that will make them all take you for a Strasbourg butcher. And," added he, laughingly taking up the heavy belt filled with money which lay before him, "carry that on your shoulder, and you'll be as good as one of us in earnest."

Ivo was well satisfied, and, after a hearty meal, he travelled on with Florian in good spirits. Florian was rejoiced to find such an opportunity of vaunting his prosperous circumstances, and of playing a trick on the Nordstetters: besides, he was really delighted to be of use to Ivo.

The day was hot. On the top of the Hell-Scramble they stopped for dinner. To escape Florian's unceasing invitations to help himself from the bottle, Ivo went into the adjoining smithy to chat with the blacksmith, as he had been wont to do at home. Suddenly he called to mind that this was the place and this the man with whom Nat had once been concealed: he was on the point of asking about him, when the blacksmith said to his boy, "There: take these two ploughshares over to the Beste farmer."

"How far is that?" asked Ivo.

"A good mile."

"I'm going with you," said Ivo. Running into the tavern and telling Florian that he would soon return and overtake him, he doffed his butcher's smock and took his bugle under his arm.

As they walked down the wood-path, he heard the torrent roar and the mills rattle; every tree seemed to stand between him and Nat. "Is the Beste farmer a fine man?" he asked the boy.

"Oh, yes; a finer man than his brother who is dead."

"What's the Christian name of the one that's on the farm now?"

"I don't know: we always call him the Beste farmer: he's been in many strange countries, as a serving-man and as a doctor."

Ivo fairly shouted with joy.

"Since when has he been here?" he asked, again.

"These two years. He worked for his brother a year, till he died: they do say he did it, for he's half a wizard: he wanted to kill him many years ago, and, as there were no children, the property came to him. Otherwise, though, he's a very fine man."

It was painful to be told that his dear Nat was under the suspicion of fratricide after all, as if to punish him for having once in his life meditated the sin; but Ivo soon reflected that such could only be the gossip of envious tongues and of old women.

They passed the saw-mill where Nat had spent so large a portion of his youth. Ivo was particularly pleased to see a fine walnut-tree flourishing in front of it, under the protection of the overtopping hill-side.

They ascended the hill on the other side. Ivo knew that a mile among neighboring farmers is of an elastic character; but he had not expected to find the distance greater than four miles,--as he did. Being very impatient, he relieved the boy of the heavy ploughshares, to enable the latter to keep up with him. The pitchy scent of the sun-stricken firs recalled the memory of home: he saw himself again seated on the harrow with Nat, in the field in the Violet Valley, singing and rejoicing. The associations of childhood danced around him. Having reached the "Wind-Corner," Ivo saw the well-known little cabin, from the window of which a pale female face was looking. It was Lizzie of the Corner, returned to her former solitude.

"How strange," thought Ivo, "that the Church should venture to prohibit what the Bible expressly enjoins! According to the Old Testament, the brother of a decedent was required to marry the childless widow; and this the canonical law expressly forbids. Nat and Lizzie could never marry." With a brush of his hand Ivo banished from his mind all remembrances of theological difficulties.

In the neighborhood of the great farm-house the roads were in fine condition. The stately building did not appear until they were almost at the door. Ivo saw Nat raking hay, while several farm-hands were at work around him. He did not run toward him, but set his bugle to his lips and played the tune of the old song,--

"Up yonder, up yonder,

At the heavenly gate,

A poor soul is standing

In sorrowful strait."

Then he cried "Nat," and they were in each other's arms.

* * * * *

After long pathless wanderings, our story has reached a smooth highway which will bear it rapidly to its close. Ivo remained with Nat, who treated him like a brother. As one of the richest farmers in the country, he could do much for him without feeling a sacrifice. He went to Nordstetten as his proxy, and brought Emmerence, with whom, on a bright, happy day, Ivo was united.

All the villagers, and even his parents, were reconciled to his change of pursuits. It is strange how easily people are satisfied with their friends the moment they pay their own expenses.

Nat presented Ivo with the saw-mill, where he now worked to his heart's content, in company with his Emmerence. Often of an evening he sits under the walnut-tree and plays his bugle, which fills the valley with its melody. Far around, at the isolated farm-houses, the boys and girls stand in the moonshine listening to the plaintive tones. Emmerence once drew Ivo's attention to this; and he said, "You see, music is an emblem of human life as it should be. I play for our own satisfaction; and yet if I know that the sounds gladden the hearts of other men also, I am still better pleased, and play with more life and spirit. Let every man attend to his own business well, and he will help others too, and make them happy. I am not disinterested enough to be satisfied with playing tunes for other people to dance by. I like to dance myself."

"Yes," said Emmerence: "you are a learned man, and yet I understand you. When the boys used to sing while gathering fir-nuts in the Neckar valley, I always thought, 'Well, they sing for themselves; and yet it makes me happy to hear them too, and every one who has ears;' and so do the birds sing for themselves, and yet we are delighted; and if every one sings his part well in church it all chords well together, and is beautiful."

Ivo embraced his Emmerence with transport.

"If only winter never came here," she said; "for it is rather solitary."

"Well, in winter you must come and live with me," said the well-known voice of Nat.