Thus the vagrant family settled in the village. Florian has returned to the active use of his faithful knife.
The wife of the Protestant minister, who is very religious, claims to have discovered beyond a doubt that Crescence is not the parson's niece, but his daughter; but people don't believe it.
The dog, who is also in the butchering-line, has exchanged his name of Schlunkel for the honest one of Bless. The gloomy recollections of the past are buried in oblivion.
THE LAUTERBACHER.
The clear tones of the church-bell melted into the bright glow of noonday, and the peasants came homeward from the fields. The men carried their caps in their hands until they reached the highroad: the voice of God had called upon them to lay their farming-utensils aside and to seek refreshment in prayer and in bodily food. A young man of slender form had come up the road leading from the town to the village. He was attired in citizen's dress, and carried a brown "Ziegenhainer" walking-stick, with numerous names engraved upon it, in his hand. On coming in sight of the village, he stood still, listened to the song of the bell, and surveyed the forest of white-blossomed orchards in which the hamlet was imbedded. He saluted the people who came from the fields with a peculiar earnestness, as if they were his friends. They returned the greeting with almost equal cordiality, and often turned round to look at him again. It seemed to them as if he must be some native of the village returning home after long journeys; and yet they could not recall his features.
When the last sound of the bell had died away, when all the fields were hushed and not a human being remained in sight, while the larks alone continued to revel in the skies, the stranger sat down upon a bank, and, after another long look at the village, he drew out his note-book. Having assured himself that he was unobserved, he wrote into it as follows:--
"Greeks and Romans, how your triumphs rent the air and your trumpets brayed! But it was left for Christianity to steal the ore from the dark bowels of the earth, to hang it aloft in mid-air, and pour its tones over the land, summoning mankind to devotion, to joy, to mourning. How glorious must have been the sound of harp and drum at Jerusalem! But now there is no longer but one temple upon earth: Christianity has raised them by thousands, far and near. When I heard the sound just now, it was like a heavenly welcome to my entrance into this place. You looked at me in astonishment, good people. Ye know not what we are to be to each other. Oh for a magic charm to obtain, the entire control over the minds of these beings, so that I might free them from ignorance and superstition and give them a taste of the true pleasures of the mind! They walk the earth even as the cattle which they follow, seeking nothing but food for their mouths.
"This, then, is the spot where my new life is to begin,--there the dingles and the downs on which my eye shall rest when my mind is full of the experiences of labor and exertion! Wherever flowers are seen, the earth is beautiful and gladdening. And, though men do not understand me, thou dost understand me, O deathless Nature, and dost reward my attention to thy revelations with a kindly smile. Here the trees send forth their blossoms, and in the village I hear the merry shouts of the children into whose minds I am to cast the light of education."
He ceased writing, and, looking at his cane, he said to himself, "Ye are scattered to the four winds of heaven, ye friends of my youth, and your names alone are left me; but I lean upon the memory of your names in crossing the threshold of my new existence. I commit my greetings to the spring: may the birds of the air convey it to your ears and refresh your hearts!"
He rose and walked briskly to the village.