Seldwyla Folks: Three Singular Tales

by Gottfried Keller

Now that the two children were dressed they were taken along for breakfast in the adjoining room. Early in the morning bread had been baked, and with the milk soup the little ones received each a fresh loaf of cummin seed bread, and in place of the one sweet roll which on ordinary days was specially baked for Kuengolt, there were two that day, and the little girl would have it that the boy received the larger of them. Dietegen ate without urging all that was offered him, just as though he had returned to his father's house after an enforced stay with evil strangers. But he was very still throughout, and he keenly observed everything around him: the pleasant mild woman who treated him like her own son, the sunny, light room, and the comfortable furniture with which it was fitted up. And after having eaten his breakfast with a good appetite, he continued these observations, noticing that the walls were wainscoted with smooth pine, and higher up decorated with painted wreaths and flowers, and that the leaded window panes showed the arms both of husband and wife. When he also carefully inspected the handsome closets and the sideboard with its load of shining vessels and tableware, he suddenly remembered the dingy silver jug that had almost brought him to his death, and the cheerless house of the beadle in Ruechenstein, and then, afraid that he should have to return there again, he asked with a tremor in his voice: "Must I now return home? But I don't know the way."

"There is no need of your knowing it," said the housewife, moved by his evident dread, and she stroked his smooth chin. "Have you not yet noticed that you are to remain with us? Go along with him now, my little Kuengolt, and show him the house and the woods, and everything else. But do not go too far away!"

Then Kuengolt took the boy by the hand, and first led him into the forester's armory where he kept his weapons. And there hung seven magnificent crossbows and arquebuses, and spears and javelins for the chase, hangers and dirks, and also the long sword of the master of the house which stood in the corner by itself. Dietegen examined all this, silently but with gleaming eyes, and Kuengolt mounted a chair to take down several of the finest crossbows from the wall, which she handed him so that he could look them over more at leisure, and he was delighted with these, for they showed ornaments inlaid in ivory or mother-of-pearl, daintily done by some expert artisan. The boy admired it all, in a silent sort of ecstasy, about as would a rather talented prentice in the studio of a great master painter while the latter might be absent from home. But Kuengolt's quick proposal to have him try his marksmanship outside in a meadow could not be realized at the time, because the bolts and arrows were locked away in a separate receptacle. But to make up for that she gave him a fine hunting spear to hold so that he should have a weapon of some kind to take along into the greenwoods. Near the house she showed him a hedged-in space full of deer and game, in which the town constantly kept its reserve of stock, so that at no time there should be lack of venison and other fine roasts for public or private banquets. The girl coaxed several roes and stags to come to her at the hedge, and this was astonishing to Dietegen, for so far he had seen such animals only when dead. With his spear, therefore, he stood attentive, his eyes fixed on these pretty denizens of the woods, and could not get his fill of watching them. Eagerly he held out his hand to fondle a finely antlered stag, and when the latter shyly bounded aside and leisurely trotted off, the boy scurried after him with a joyous halloo, and ran and jumped with the animal around in a wide circle. It was perhaps the first time in his life that he could use his young limbs in this way, and when he felt how his tendons stretched with the violent exercise and how he was able to race with the swift stag, the latter apparently taking as much pleasure in the sport as Dietegen himself, a feeling of untried strength and agility first woke within him.

But as they later on stepped into the domain of the deep forest, high up on the hill, the boy resumed once more his usual air of thoughtful quiet and deliberation. Up there mighty trees grew closer together, leaving hardly a fragment of sky to discover from below--tall pine and gnarled oak, spreading lindens, beeches, maple and spruce, all growing in a semidarkness where the sunlight seldom pierced. Red squirrels glided spectrelike from trunk to trunk, woodpeckers hammered incessantly for their fare, high up birds of prey shrilly pursued their quarry in the open, and a thousand forest mysteries were dimly at work. Below, in the dense underbrush, hares and foxes, deer and smaller game were waging war, and song birds twittered or warbled in a chorus of multiform sound. Kuengolt laughed and laughed because the boy knew nothing of all these secret doings in the forest, although he had grown up in a mountain fastness surrounded by the very life of the woods, but she at once began to explain to him these things of which he was so profoundly ignorant. She showed him the hawk and his nest, the cuckoo in his retreat, and the gay-clad woodpecker as he was just clambering up a thick trunk with bark promising him rich harvest. And about all these things he was highly amazed, and wondered that trees and bushes should bear so many names, and that each should differ from the next. For he had not even known the hazelnut bush or the whortleberry in their haunts. They came to a rushing brook, and disturbed by their steps, a snake made off into the water, and the girl seized the spear in the boy's hand and wanted to stick it into the rocky nook. But when Dietegen saw that she was going to blunt or break the edge of the finely tempered weapon, he at once took it out of her fingers, saying that she might damage the spear.

"That is well done," suddenly came the voice of the chief forester, his patron; "you will prove a help to me." With a gamekeeper he stood behind the two children. For the noise of the rushing water had drowned in their ears all other noise. The gamekeeper bore in his hand a woodcock, just shot, for the two had gone forth early in the morning. Dietegen was permitted to hang the stately bird to the tip of his spear, flinging it over his shoulder, so that the spread wings of the bird enveloped him, and the forester gazed with approval upon the handsome youngster, and made up his mind to make an all-around woodsman of him.

Just now, though, he was to learn somewhat the difficult arts of reading and writing, and for that purpose was obliged to walk every day to town with the little girl; there in a convent and in a monastery the two were taught as much of these mysteries as seemed good for them. But his chief lessons Dietegen had from the little girl herself when coming and going from town, Kuengolt delighting in informing him as to all that was going on in the world, so far at least as she herself knew, and more particularly as to the ordinary things of life, as to which Dietegen had been left in deplorable ignorance by his former taskmaster, the beadle.

But the little instructress was in her way a ruthless practical joker, and followed a unique method of her own in teaching the boy. She exaggerated, distorted or plainly misstated the facts as to most things in talking to her pupil, and abused grossly the credulity and trustfulness of the boy, merely for her amusement, and she did this as to most things. In this she showed a wonderful gift of invention, an exuberant fancy of the rarest. When Dietegen then had accepted her fictions, and would perhaps express his wonder at them, she would shame him with the cool statement that not a single word had been true. She would scornfully blame him for believing such palpable untruths, and then, with a show of infinite wisdom, she would tell him the real facts. Then he would redden under her sarcastic remarks, and would endeavor to avoid her pitfalls, but only until she saw fit to make sport of him once more. However, in the course of time Dietegen's powers of judging facts began to widen, and he ceased to be so gullible, and this another boy who attempted to emulate Kuengolt's example found out to his sorrow. For Dietegen simply slapped his face when he came out with a particularly outrageous whopper.

Kuengolt, rather taken aback at witnessing this castigation, was curious to ascertain whether this wrath under given circumstances would also turn against herself. She made a test on the spot, feeding him with some of her choicest fairy tales. But from her he accepted everything without a murmur, and so she continued her peculiar method of instruction. At last, though, she discovered that he had acquired enough independence of thought and a large enough stock of knowledge to enable him to play with her himself. He would answer her inventions with counterinventions, and would argue from her nonsensical statements in such shrewd fashion as to turn her first doctrines into ridicule, and he would do this in perfect good-nature, proving the untenableness of her own theories. Then she came to the conclusion that it was time to give up her nonsense. But in place of that amusement she now indulged in another. Namely, she began to tyrannize over him most unmercifully. It grew so that it was almost worse than things had been with the beadle's wife. His servitude was deplorable. She made him fetch and carry during all his spare time. He had to haul and hoist and labor for her in a truly ridiculous manner. She constantly required his presence about her; he had to bring her water, shake the trees, dig in the garden, crack open nuts after getting them for her, hold her little basket, and even to brush and comb her hair she wanted to train him--only that is where he drew a line. But then he was scolded by her for refusing this, and when her mother took sides against her she became quite obstreperous with the latter as well.

But Dietegen did not pay her back in her own coin, never lost his patience with her, and was always equally submissive and indulgent with her. Her mother saw that with vast pleasure, and to reward him for his fine conduct she treated the boy like her own son, and gave him all those finer hints and that almost imperceptible guidance and advice which else are only saved for children of one's own, and by means of which children finally acquire without knowing it those habits and better manners which are commonly comprised under the name of a careful education. Of course, she herself gained in a way from this; for her own daughter thus acquired unconsciously many of her lessons, Dietegen being there as a sort of mirror of what was expected of her. Truly, it was almost comical how little Kuengolt in her restless temperament veered and shifted constantly between imitating her better model or else becoming jealous and wroth and scorning it for the time. On one occasion she became so excited as to stab at him with all her might with a sharp pair of scissors. But Dietegen caught her wrist quickly, and without hurting her or showing any anger he made her drop them. This little scene which her mother had espied from a hiding-place, moved the latter so strongly that she came forth, took the boy in her arms, and kissed him. Pale and excited the girl herself left the room with out a word. "Go, follow her, my son," whispered the mother, "and reconcile her. You are her good angel."

Dietegen did as bidden. He found her behind the house and under a lilac bush. She was weeping wildly and tearing her amber necklace, trying, in fact, to throttle herself by means of it, and stamping on the scattered beads on the ground. When Dietegen approached her and wanted to seize her hands, she cried with a great sob: "Nobody but I may kiss you. For you belong to me alone. You are mine, my property. I alone have freed you from that horrid coffin, in which without me you would have remained forever."