THE "WIESHERRLE."
High above the rushing Wildbach, where the stream bursts through the crumbling rocks and in its fierce rush sends heavy stones grinding over one another--a man lay on the damp cliff which trembled under the shock of the falling masses of water. The rough precipices, dripping with spray, pressed close about him, shutting him into the cool, moss-grown ravine, through which no patch of blue sky was visible, no sunbeam stole.
Here the wanderer, deceived in everything, lay resting on his way home. With his head propped on his hand, he gazed steadfastly down into the swirl of the foaming, misty, ceaseless rush of the falling water! On the rock before him lay a small memorandum book, in which he was slowly writing sorrowful words, just as they welled from his soul--slowly and sluggishly, as the resin oozes from the gashed trees. Wherever a human heart receives a deep, fatal wound, the poetry latent in the blood of the people streams from the hurt. All our sorrowful old folk-songs are such drops of the heart's blood of the people. The son of a race of mountaineers who sung their griefs and joys was composing his own mournful wayfaring ballad for not one of those which he knew and cherished in his memory expressed the unutterable grief he experienced. He did not know how he wrote it--he was ignorant of rhyme and metre. When he finished, that is, when he had said all he felt, it seemed as though the song had flown to him, as the seed of some plant is blown upon a barren cliff, takes root, and grows there.
But now, after he had created the form of the verses, he first realized the full extent of his misery!
Hiding the little book in his pocket, he rose to follow the toilsome path he was seeking high among the mountains where there were only a few scattered homesteads, and he met no human being.
While Countess Wildenau in the deserted hunting-castle was weeping over the cast-off garments with which he had flung aside the form of a servant, the free man was striding over the heights, fanned by the night-breeze, lashed by the rain in his thin coat--free--but also free to be exposed to grief, to the elements--to hunger! Free--but so free that he had not even a roof beneath which to shelter his head within four protecting walls.
"Both love and faith have fled for aye,
Like chaff by wild winds swept away--
Naught, naught is left me here below
Save keen remorse and endless woe.
"No home have I on the wide earth--
A ragged beggar fare I forth,
In midnight gloom, by tempests met,
Broken my staff, my star has set.
"With raiment tattered by the sleet,
My brain scorched by the sun's fierce heat,
My heart torn by a human hand,
A shadow--I glide through the land.
"Homeward I turn, white is my hair,
Of love and faith my life is bare--
Whoe'er beholds me makes the sign
Of the cross--God save a fate like mine."
So the melancholy melody echoed through the darkness of the night, from peak to peak along the road from the Griess to Ammergau. And wherever it sounded, the birds flew startled from the trees deeper into the forest, the deer fled into the thickets and listened, the child in the cradle started and wept in its sleep. The dogs in the lonely courtyards barked loudly.
"That was no human voice, it was a shot deer or an owl"--the peasants said to their trembling wives, listening for a time to the ghostly, wailing notes dying faintly away till all was still once more--and the spectre had passed. But when morning dawned and the time came when the matin bells drove all evil spirits away the song, too, ceased, and only its prophecy came true. Whoever recognized in the emaciated man, with hollow eyes and cheeks, the Christus-Freyer of Ammergau, doubtless made the sign of the cross in terror, exclaiming: "Heaven preserve us!" But the lighter it grew, the farther he plunged into the forest. He was ashamed to be seen! His gait grew more and more feeble, his garments more shabby by his long walk in the rain and wind.
He still had a few pennies in his pocket--the exact sum he possessed when he left Ammergau. He was keeping them for a night's lodgings, which he must take once during the twenty-four hours. He could have reached Ammergau easily by noon--but he did not want to enter it in broad day as a ragged beggar. So he rested by day and walked at night.
At a venerable old inn, the "Shield," on the road from Steingaden to Ammergau, he asked one of the servants if he might lie a few hours on the straw to rest. The latter hesitated before granting permission--the man looked so doubtful. At last he said: "Well, I won't refuse you, but see that you carry nothing off when you go away from here."
Freyer made no reply. The wrath which had made him hurl the lackey from the countess' door, no longer surged within him--now it was his home which was punishing him, speaking to him in her rude accents--let her say what she would, he accepted it as a son receives a reproof from a mother. He hung his drenched coat to dry in the sun, which now shone warmly again, then slipped into the barn and lay down on the hay. A refreshing slumber embraced him, poverty and humility took the sorrowing soul into their maternal arms, as a poor man picks up the withered blossom the rich one has carelessly flung aside, and carrying it home makes it bloom again.
Rest, weary soul! You no longer need to stretch and distort the noble proportions of your existence to fit them to relations to which they were not born. You need be nothing more than you are, a child of the people, suckled by the sacred breast of nature and can always return there without being ashamed of it. Poverty and lowliness extend their protecting mantle over you and hide you from the looks of scorn and contempt which rend your heart.
A peaceful expression rested upon the sleeper's face, but his breathing was deep and labored as if some powerful feeling was stirring his soul under the quiet repose of slumber and from beneath his closed lids stole a tear.
During several hours the exhausted body lay between sleeping and waking, unconscious grief and comfort.
Opposite, "on the Wies" fifteen minutes walk from the "Shield," a bell rang in the church where the pilgrims went. There an ancient Christ "our Lord of the Wies," called simply "the Wiesherrle," carved from mouldering, painted wood, was hung from the cross by chains which rattled when the image was laughed at incredulously, and with real hair, which constantly grew again when an impious hand cut it. At times of special visitation it could sweat blood, and hundreds journeyed to the "Wies," trustfully seeking the wonder-working "Wiesherrle." It was a terrible image of suffering, and the first sight of the scourged body and visage contorted by pain caused an involuntary thrill of horror--increased by the black beard and long hair, such as often grows in the graves of the dead. The face stared fixedly at the beholder with its glassy eyes, as if to say: "Do you believe in me?" The emaciated body was so lifelike, that it might have been an embalmed corpse placed erect. But the horror vanished when one gazed for a while, for an expression of patience rested on the uncanny face, the lashes of the fixed eyes began to quiver, the image became instinct with life, the chains swayed slightly, and the drops of blood again grew liquid. Why should they not? The heart, which loves forever can also, to the eye of faith, bleed forever. Hundreds of wax limbs and silver hearts, consecrated bones and other anomalies bore witness to past calamities where the Wiesherrle had lent its aid. But he could also be angry, as the rattling of his chains showed, and this gave him a somewhat spectral, demoniac aspect.
Under the protection of this strange image of Christ, whose power extended over the whole mountain plateau, the living image of Christ lay unconscious. Then the vesper-bells, ringing from the church, roused him. He hastily started up and, in doing so, struck against the block where the wood was split. A chain flung upon it fell. Freyer raised and held it a moment before replacing it on the block, thinking of the scourging in the Passion Play.
"Heavens, the Wiesherrle!" shrieked a terrified voice, and the door leading into the barn, which had been softly opened, was hurriedly shut.
"Father, father, come quick--the Wiesherrle is in the barn!"--screamed some one in deadly fright.
"Silly girl," Freyer heard a man say. "Are you crazy? What are you talking about?"
"Really, Father, on my soul; just go there. The Wiesherrle is standing in the middle of the hay. I saw him. By our Lord and the Holy Cross. Amen!"
Freyer heard the girl sink heavily on the bench by the stove. The father answered angrily: "Silly thing, silly thing!" and went to the door in his hob-nailed shoes. "Is any one in here?" he asked. But as Freyer approached, the peasant himself almost started back in terror: "Good Lord, who are you? Why do you startle folks so? Can't you speak?"
"I asked the man if I might rest there, and then I fell asleep."
"I don't see why you should be so lazy, turning night into day. Tramp on, and sleep off your drunkenness somewhere else! I want no miracles--and no Wiesherrle in my house."
"I'll pay for everything," said Freyer humbly, almost beseechingly, holding out his little stock of ready money, for he was overpowered with hunger and thirst.
"What do I care for your pennies!" growled the tavern keeper angrily, closing the door.
There stood the hapless man, in whom the girl's soul had recognized with awe the martyred Christ, but whom the rude peasant turned from his door as a vagrant--hungry and thirsty, worn almost unto death, and with a walk of five hours before him. He took his hat and his staff, hung his dry coat over his shoulder, and left the barn.
As he went out he heard the last notes of the vesper-bell, and felt a yearning to go to Him for whom he had been mistaken, it seemed as if He were calling in the echoing bells: "Come to me, I have comfort for you." He struck into the forest path that led to the Wiesherrle. The white walls of the church soon appeared and he stepped within, where the showy, antiquated style of the last century mingled with the crude notions of the mountaineers for and by whom it was built.
Skulls, skeletons of saints, chubby-cheeked cupids, cruel martyrdoms, and Arcadian shepherdesses, nude penitents and fiends dragging them down into the depths, lambs of heaven and dogs of hell were all in motley confusion! Above the chaotic medley arched on fantastic columns the huge dome with a gate of heaven painted in perspective, which, according to the beholder's standpoint rose or sank, was foreshortened or the opposite.
A wreath of lucernes beautifully ornamented, through which the blue sky peeped and swallows building their nests flew in and out, formed as it were the jewel in the architecture of the cornice. Even the eye of God was not lacking, a tarnished bit of mirror inserted above the pulpit in the centre of golden rays, and intended to flash when the sun shone on it.
And there in a glass shrine directly beneath all the tinsel rubbish, on the gilded carving of the high altar, the poor, plain little Wiesherrle hung in chains. The two, the wooden image of God, and the one of flesh and blood, confronted each other--the Christ of the Ammergau Play greeted the Christ of the Wies. It is true, they did resemble each other, like suffering and pain. Freyer knelt long before the Wiesherrle and what they confided to each other was heard only by the God in whose service and by whose power they wrought miracles--each in his own way.
"You are happy," said the Wiesherrle. "Happier than I! Human hands created and faith animated me; where that is lacking, I am a mere dead wooden puppet, only fit to be flung into the fire. But you were created by God, you live and breathe, can move and act--and highest of all--suffer like Him whom we represent. I envy you!"
"Yes!" cried Freyer; "You are right; to suffer like Christ is highest of all! My God, I thank Thee that I suffer."
This was the comfort the Wiesherrle had for his sorely tried brother. It was a simple thought, but it gave him strength to bear everything. It is always believed that a great grief requires a great consolation. This is not true, the poorer the man is, the more value the smallest gift has for him, and the more wretched he is--the smallest comfort! To the husbandman whose crops have been destroyed by hail, it would be no comfort to receive the gift of a blossom, which would bring rapture to the sultry attic chamber of a sick man.
In a great misfortune we often ask: "What gave the person strength to endure it?" It was nothing save these trivial comforts which only the unhappy know. The soul lamenting the loss of a loved one while many others are left is not comforted when the lifeless figure of a martyr preaches patience--but to the desolate one, who no longer has aught which speaks to him, the lifeless wooden image becomes a friend and its mute language a consolation.
Beside the altar stood an alms-box. The gifts for which it was intended were meant for repairs on the church and the preservation of the Wiesherrle, who sometimes needed a new cloth about his loins. Freyer flung into it the few coins which the innkeeper had disdained, because he looked like the Wiesherrle, now they should go to him. He felt as if he should need no more money all his life, as if the comfort he had here received raised him far above earthly need and care.
Twilight was gathering, the sun had sunk behind the blue peaks of the Pfrontner mountains, and now the hour struck--the sacred hour of the return home.
Already he felt with joy the throbbing of the pulses of his home, a mysterious connection between this place and distant Ammergau. And he was right: Childish as was the representation of the divine ideal, it was, nevertheless, the rippling of one of those hidden springs of faith which blend in the Passion Play, forming the great stream of belief which is to supply a thirsting world. As on a barren height, amid tangled thickets, we often greet with delight the low murmur of a hidden brook which in the valley below becomes the mighty artery of our native soil, so the returning wanderer hurried on longingly toward the mysterious spring which led him to the mother's heart. But his knees trembled, human nature asserted its rights. He must eat or he would fall fainting. But where could food be had? The last pennies were in the alms-box--he could not have taken them out again, even had he wished it. There was no way save to ask some one--for bread. He dragged himself wearily to the parsonage--he would try there, the priest would be less startled by the "Wiesherrle" than the peasant. Thrice he attempted to pull the bell, but very gently. He fancied the whole world could hear that he was ringing--to beg. Yet, if it did not sound, no one would open the door. At last, with as much effort as though he was pulling the bell-rope in the church steeple, he rang. The bell echoed shrilly. The pastor's old cook appeared.
Freyer raised his hat. "Might I ask you for a piece of bread?" he murmured softly, and the tall figure seemed to droop lower with every word.
The cook, who was never allowed to turn a beggar from the door, eyed him a moment with mingled pity and anxiety. "Directly," she answered, and went in search of something, but prudently closed the door, leaving him outside as we do with suspicious individuals. Freyer waited, hat in hand. The evening breeze swept chill across the lofty mountain plateau and blew his hair around his uncovered head. At last the cook came, bringing him some soup and a bit of bread. Freyer thanked her, and ate it! When he had finished he gave the little dish back to the woman--but his hand trembled so that he almost let it fall and his brow was damp. Then he thanked her again, but without raising his eyes, and quietly pursued his way.