CHAPTER XV.
The day appointed for madam Fessel's interment was drawing to a close. A crowd of people had assembled in the parish church-yard, with weeping eyes and pallid faces, awaiting in gloomy silence the arrival of the funeral procession. Two grave-diggers stood leaning upon their spades beside the open grave.
The procession came. 'Now for God's sake summon resolution,' said a young Franciscan monk, whose face was almost wholly covered by his cowl, to an elderly rustic woman and a beautiful young peasant boy, whose eyes were almost blinded by their tears, pressing forward with them to a grassy hillock in the vicinity of the grave. A Lichtensteiner who had found himself in the crowd, surprised at the exclamation, placed himself near them and continued to watch their movements narrowly.
The mournful hymn of the choristers was now heard approaching. High waved the crucifix upon the church yard gate, shining silvery bright through the evening twilight, and the choristers in double ranks drew slowly toward the grave. After them came the Lutheran preachers, with their heads cast down. Next came the black coffin upon the shoulders of the bearers; upon its appearance the whole assembly broke into loud sobs, and notwithstanding all the efforts of the monk to restrain them, the peasant woman and young man upon the hillock wrung their hands with irrepressible sorrow. After the coffin, came the weeping clerks, apprentices, and household servants. Then followed the bereaved husband, pale and tearless. With each hand he led one of his little daughters, who again each led a brother. To them succeeded, a nursery maid, bearing the little Johannes with his blooming angel face, who smiled upon the crowd and by his happy unconsciousness stirred the hearts of the people even more than the sight of the father and sisters, who followed their best beloved to the grave with a full knowledge of their irreparable loss.
An immeasurable line of neighbors and friends closed the procession, whose tears and sighs, an ample testimony of the worth of the deceased, solemnized the burial instead of tolling bells and funereal music, which the rigor of the new church government denied to heretics.
The corpse had now reached the grave. The bearers sat it down and removed the lid of the coffin, and a loud lament filled the air at the sight of the martyr. The kiss of the angel of death had removed all traces of her late sufferings from her countenance. With softly closed eyes, and a heavenly smile upon her lips, she lay, as if awaiting that blessed morning whose aurora seemed already dawning upon her spiritual vision.
With outward composure the widower approached the coffin, clasped the folded hands of the pale corpse, murmured, 'Farewell, thou true one; soon shall we meet again,'--and silently retired.
The weeping children now rushed forward, but the clergyman, Beer, directed the servants to lead them back. He then stepped to the coffin, requested the audience to be silent, and with a loud voice addressed them as follows:
''Father forgive them, for they know not what they do!' These words of Christ, with which he prayed for his persecutors, were the last words I heard from the blessed being whose earthly remains we are now about to consign to the grave. My anger was inflamed by the atrocities which were daily committed in our city under the mantle of religion, and I prayed that the avenging fire of God's wrath might descend and consume our tormentors. This deceased saint checked my imprecation by calling to my mind the divine prayer of our holy Savior, and with a chastened and humble spirit I repeated after her: 'Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.'
'And so must you henceforth pray, my hearers. Of the men who now by divine permission pursue and persecute us, by far the greater number are acting not from inveterate cruelty but under the influence of a mistaken sense of religious duty, and desire to lead us back to that path which they deem the only safe one; and this desire is not censurable.
'But that they seek, by means of persecution and torture, to compel us to receive what they hold to be the true faith,--that they would bind the immortal spirit with earthly chains, when the word of God cannot be bound or confined,--therein lies their error. It therefore becomes us as christians to forgive them; 'they know not what they do.'
'Even that terrible man whose barbarity has destroyed this blessed martyr to our faith, knew not, as we charitably hope, what he did,--and therefore will we not curse him, but pray to God that he will purify his heart and enlighten his mind.
'Therefore let us patiently suffer the afflictions which the Lord may yet send us for our good, without hatred towards the instruments he may employ for that purpose, and thus seek to become worthy of the glorious martyrs to the pure Christianity of the first ages, and of this our blessed friend. Should He require us also to lay down our lives for our faith, so will we without anger or opposition bow our necks to the death-dealing axe, and die with the departing exclamation of our Savior, 'it is fulfilled!--Amen.''
He retired. The lid of the coffin was fastened down, and it was then lowered into the earth.
In accordance with a pious old custom, the husband and orphans each cast three handsful of earth into the grave, as a last farewell, and the bereaved man then retired, tearless as he had come, while the children found relief for their sorrow in audible weeping.
All the spectators now-pressed about the grave to pay the last honors to the dear departed, and from hundreds of hands fell the earth upon the coffin below. The young Franciscan also, by great exertion made a path for himself to the grave; having thrown in his handful of earth, he hastily caught hold of his companions, and exclaiming, 'now forward, the moments are precious!' led them away.
'Why should the moments be so precious to this monk?' mused the observant Lichtensteiner; and then, after a moment's reflection, he suddenly cried, 'the captain may be able to explain it!'--and ran from the church-yard.