CHAPTER VII.
At the head of the table, which had been beautifully adorned for the betrothal-feast, the red-bearded captain had seated himself in terrible majesty. Desiring, for the present, to appear unusually gracious, he had invited the heads of the family and their children to take places at the table. The hospitality so kindly extended to them in their own house by a stranger, imparted no especial pleasure to those invited. The children had formed the heroic resolution of not eating a morsel, merely to show their dislike to the detestable red-beard. Fessel looked with a gloomy brow directly before him; while the faithful Katharine forced herself to introduce and sustain the conversation, that a want of occupation might not give the fiend leisure for evil thoughts. Four arquebusiers guarded the doors, and in every part of the house arose the boisterous songs of the converters, who were revelling with Fessel's choicest wines.
'We are satisfied,' said the captain; and, emptying his goblet, he took off his military cap, murmured some words in a low voice, crossed himself, again put on his cap, and then, with feigned affability asked: 'So, your mother-in-law left you last night, Herr Fessel?' and as the latter answered affirmatively, he further asked: 'And her daughter, little Faith,--did the good woman take her with her?'
'Certainly!' stammered Fessel, who was not altogether prepared for this close examination.
'Strange!' said the captain, extending his goblet to the lady of the house to be replenished. 'How a man's eyes may deceive him! As I was standing with the other officers before the house three hours since, I would have sworn that I saw the little Faith standing at that very window.'
'It was probably me whom you saw, captain,' interposed Katharine. 'You must have observed that I resemble my sister very nearly.'
'Possibly!' observed the captain with a still more hateful smile. 'You had, indeed, at that time, a rose-colored band in your blond hair, and now you have brown locks and a black plaited cap. However, that is not so very strange. Women's toilets often produce much greater transformations.'
At this moment a violent outcry was heard from without. Fessel hastened from the room, and soon returned with his eldest apprentice, who was profusely bleeding from a wound on the head.
'What is the matter?' asked the captain, addressing himself to the wounded man. 'How dare you thus disturb me while at table?'
'By your leave, captain!' said the apprentice, with confidence; 'your sergeant has robbed me of all the money I had about me, and then beat me over the head with his sword because I had no more to give him. It was proper that I should complain to you in order that you might take measures to punish the outrage.'
'You did not know how to behave yourself properly, my son,' said the captain. 'My people are always kind and harmless as children to all who are complaisant towards them, and give them every thing they desire. Go and have your wound dressed, and be more careful another time.'
'Is that all the satisfaction I am to get for my injuries?' asked the apprentice, irritated by the pain of his wound, and still more by the captain's contemptuous answer.
The captain's eyes flashed like two baneful meteors. 'Satisfaction!--injuries! How dare you, a damned heretic, use such words in my presence? vociferated he, starting from his seat. You ought to thank God that my sergeant did not cleave your head asunder. Pack yourself hence, if you do not wish that I should complete the work he began.'
He grasped his sword, the young man sprang beyond his reach, and Katharine, in soft and soothing tones, besought the savage to be pacified; but the last link of the chain, by which his natural brutality had hitherto been restrained, was now broken; the wild beast in human form was let loose, and yielded only to the most savage impulses.
'Do you suppose, vagabonds,' roared the fiend, 'that we have come here to keep strict discipline and to wait quietly for what you may please to dispense to us? We are come to chastise you for your heresy, which is a revolt alike against God and the emperor. We are come to convert you to the true faith; and if your stubbornness will not suffer our object to be accomplished by fair means, you are given over to us as a prize, with your property and lives, bodies and souls, to be tormented by us to our heart's content, until you are brought to repentance and an abandonment of your abominable opinions, or sink in despair.'
'No, captain,' cried Fessel, with manly firmness; 'that is not the will of our emperor, and I should consider it treasonable to believe your scandalous assertions. Nor was that the condition upon which we admitted you within our walls. From your colonel's own mouth have I heard quite a different speech, and I shall go and ask him if he is about to give the lie to his own words.'
'First go to your own chamber as an arrested prisoner,' said the captain, with a smile of contempt; 'until I have had you tried for your rebellious speech. Lead him forth!' commanded he to the guards. 'Lock him up, watch him sharply, and if he attempts to escape shoot him down.'
'Eternal justice, judge and avenge!' cried Fessel, as the soldiers dragged him away.
'Mercy!' implored his faithful wife, clasping the captain's knees; but the latter disengaged himself from her, put the children, who pressed around her, out of the room, drew Katharine to a window, and in a low voice said to her, 'you see that I can be either good or bad as you would have me. Upon you alone it depends how I shall further proceed. Therefore answer me honestly and truly, where is your sister?'
'She fled last night,' answered Katharine, with calm firmness; 'to escape the horrors which threaten us. Whither, I do not consider it my duty to inform you.'
'This is fine!' exclaimed the captain, grinning like a Bengal tiger when his keeper compels him to show his teeth. 'I like to know how people feel towards me. I now go to my colonel, and you shall soon hear from me again.'
He departed, and the children, again rushing in, embraced their mother with loud lamentation. Katharine sank upon her knees, and her children with her, and, raising their eyes and hands towards heaven, with a bleeding heart but nevertheless with confidence, the pious woman prayed in the words of the royal psalmist: 'Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? Hope thou in God; for I shall yet praise him for his countenance who is my help and my God.'
The boisterous sorrow of the children subsided into gentle weeping, and from every lip was heard the loud, believing, joyful, amen!'