Hammer and Anvil: A Novel

by Friedrich Spielhagen

This story the fair Circe had told the true-hearted Hans, with many tears and sighs, and blushes and smiles, and convulsive sobbings, and he, who did not possess the sceptical spirit of the much-enduring man, believed every word, and had returned to his modest lodgings, pondering and racking his brain to find out what he could do to help her.

To marry her was out of the question. A Trantow could take no woman to wife who was not as chaste as he himself was brave; not though she were a hundred times fairer and he had loved her a hundred times more dearly. But to share with her what he had, to protect her and care for her and do for her what in a similar case a brother might do for an unfortunate but dearly loved sister--this Hans could do and would do; and the next morning he went to lay his plans before her. But in the night Circe had taken other counsel, and left her palace under the protection of the aforesaid young Baron, who in reality stood in no connection whatever with the high lady she had referred to, but in a very intimate one with young Prince Prora, and since the young prince had left Naples a month before, by his father's orders, in quite an intimate relation to Constance herself, who had been transferred to him as an equivalent for a considerable sum of money which the prince had lost to him at play. So at least Hans was told--and much beside which he neither asked nor wanted to know--by a German waiter at the hotel, who seemed to have taken a very active, if not very creditable part in the whole affair. As Hans had not come to Naples to lounge along the Toledo, or visit Capri, or climb Vesuvius, he shook the dust from his feet and set out on his homeward journey. But the good faithful fellow did not get far. The unusual exertion and excitement of so long a journey made in such furious haste, the change of climate and mode of living, the fiery Italian wine, which from old habits he had drunk in great quantity, and more than all else the deep grief at this second atrocious treachery, which was far worse than the first, were too much for even his strong constitution, and one day a compassionate vetturino brought to the gate of a monastery near Rome a traveller who had fallen sick by the way, and who really seemed to have reached the end of all his journeys.

But it was not fated that the good Hans should exhale his free brave soul in the narrow cell of a Roman monastery; despite the extremely irrational treatment of Fra Antonio, the celebrated physician to the convent, he recovered, and in six weeks could walk about the garden. The garden was a very fine one, with a magnificent view of the Eternal City, and the monks, if not particularly clean, were very kind and hospitable, and very urgently pressed the worthy Hans to consider whether it would not be for the welfare of his soul to return no more to his barbarian home, but come rather to the bosom of the true Church, to die perhaps, if it were heaven's will, some day in that very monastery in the odor of sanctity. A singular proposal to the good Hans, who in his life had never given a moment's thought to the present or future welfare of his soul; but it was quite clear to him that however salutary it might be for his immortal part, to follow the counsel of the good fathers, he would have in doing so to renounce all the comfort of his life. The convent wine was right good of its kind, but it had a peculiar flavor to which he could never get accustomed, any more than he could to seeing the trees in blossom at the end of February, as if at this time there were no keen gusty north-east wind in the world, and no pine-woods whose boughs bent with their weight of pendent icicles; and when one night a comforting dream had conveyed him to Trantowitz, and by the feeble light of the northern stars and of the snow had let him shoot six hares in his cabbages out of his bedroom window, there was no holding him any longer after he awoke; he shook the brown dirty hands of his friendly hosts, one after the other, received the Prior's benediction upon his heretical head, and returned to his old home.

All this Hans told me in his monotonous way, while we sat on the edge of the trench. And the long-legged beetles shot back and forth in the brown water, and the birds twittered in the branches, and the call of the cuckoo came from the far-off woods.

I felt very sad. I believe I should have been less affected if Hans had exhibited the least emotion in the recital of the most eventful and certainly most painful passage of his life; but of this there was not the slightest trace. He felt no hatred towards Constance, no grudge against the young prince, who was now living at Rossow in the immediate neighborhood: in all that he said there lay a perfect resignation, an utter hopelessness; and this it was that made me so sad.

There was a rustling in the coppice behind us, and an old pointer trotting up greeted first Hans and then me with a melancholy wag of his tail.

"God bless me! that is not Caro, is it?" I asked.

"Yes it is," said Hans. "I believe he knows you."

"Poor old fellow!" I said, patting the dog; "and does he still do his duty?"

"So, so," said Hans. "He has been of no use with pheasants for a long time; and with ducks, that used to be his great point, he will not go into the water any more, so that I usually have to get them myself. But that is only natural: we are neither of us so young as we once were."