"Given in our airy habitation among the trees, under our usual seal."
Without adding a word, without a glance at the accused, Luther folded the paper and put it into his pocket. Wolfgang's feelings were those of a convicted criminal, whose sentence is being read. He turned red and white, and would have been glad to slip away, had such an escape been possible.
Hans sat limp and dejected. He was plunged from his eminence as the hero of a birthday celebration! He waited eagerly for a lecture from his father, which would have relieved his conscience. But when he was passed by without a glance, and the father, with tender, loving words turned to the other children, especially to Lena, the gentle little daughter, his torture became well-nigh unbearable. With secret horror he remembered the time when, for a mischievous prank, he had been banished for three days from his father's presence, and all his mother's pleadings had been in vain. His father's words still rang painfully in his ears: "I would rather have a dead son than a disobedient one. It is not for naught that St. Paul says 'a bishop shall rule well his own house, and have his children in subjection,'—that he may set a good example, and not become an offense to other people."
Hans would have wept, but inward fear dried up the source of his tears, and he was denied the relief of turning his trouble into water. At supper he was unable to swallow a morsel; and his father's kind words to the others pierced him like a knife. Lena sat very still;—-now and then her eyes wandered toward her brother,—his sorrow was hers. On a former occasion Luther had said to his wife: "If one would see a living illustration of the Saviour's words: 'Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep,' one needs but look at our little Lena. She has a fine, sensitive soul, like an Æolian harp, that sounds and sings, if but a breath of air touches its strings."
After supper, Lena clung to her father, caressed his hand, and looked up into his face with a wistful smile.
"What would you have, my Lena?" asked her father gently, lifting her upon his knee.
"It is Hans' birthday!" she whispered, and two great tears filled her soft, blue eyes. Her father, touched by her loving heart, folded his little daughter in his arms and kissed her forehead. He beckoned to Hans: "Come hither, thou sinner, thy intercessor has conquered my heart, so that I must needs have pity on thee!"
Hans would fain have shouted for joy, but he restrained himself, and pressing close to his sister, he whispered: "Lena, you shall have my clapper-mill for this!"
Luther turned to his wife and Aunt Lena. "Here you may see," he said, "how powerful a mediator we have in our Lord Jesus Christ, whom the Heavenly Father cannot refuse, when He pleads for sinners. If my daughter thus speedily conquered my heart, how much more able is Christ to dispel the Heavenly Father's anger, that the sinner may go free. When I found this assurance in the Holy Scriptures, that we cannot be saved by our own virtue, but only by the merits and intercession of Jesus Christ,—a new life was born within me, and I was constrained to proclaim it to all the world. I am heartily glad, and thank the Lord, that the Bible has gone forth among the German people, in the German tongue. Many a drop of sweat cleaves to it, yet I labored with pleasure and delight, for now all can see for themselves what God's Word is, and wherefore the Saviour came into the world.—I regard this work as the greatest of my life; and if God were now to call me hence, I should willingly say: Lord, here I am."
Here the little, chubby-faced Paul, bestriding a stick, came prancing along. In his haste he dashed against his father, and was miserably overthrown. Every one laughed at his discomfiture, but his father lifted the little fellow upon his knee, and said: "Paul must one day be a soldier, and ride against the Turks; then doubtless Germany will have peace from that quarter." He stroked the curly head, and turning to Katharine, said: "How fondly parents cling to their youngest children,—it is no doubt, because of their helpless condition. Hans, and Lena, and even Martin can make their wants known,—but these little ones cannot. Yet the love is the same toward them all."