Seldwyla Folks: Three Singular Tales

by Gottfried Keller

When Dietegen had experienced this, he turned silently away, and from that day on avoided the whole company. Anyway, he had now attained the age when vigorous youths begin to think of making strong men of themselves. Upon the holding upon which stood the forester's house there was, from time immemorial laid the duty of maintaining three or four fully equipped fighting men, and this obligation the forester himself had always carried out most scrupulously. With great pleasure he found that Dietegen, shot up straight and nimble, would soon fill the same fine armor in which he had once hoped to see his own son.

Thus Dietegen with other young gamekeepers and helpers on lengthy winter evenings went to fencing school, where he learned to make proper use of the shorter weapons, according to the methods of his home, and during the spring and summer seasons he spent many a Sunday or holiday upon spacious fields or forest clearings where the youths of the district learned to march in closed formations for hours at a stretch, and to attack, leaping broad trenches by the aid of their long spears, and in every other way to render their bodies supple, active and strong, or else, perhaps, to practice the new art of the musketeer whose weapon is loaded with powder and shot.

Since by all these changes mentioned above life in the forester's house altered greatly, and since particularly the feminine doings there disturbed him sadly, although he paid scant attention to the latter, it happened that he little by little acquired the habit of frequenting the taverns where his townsfellows met much oftener than had been the case during his married life. And while absenting himself from the childish folly practiced at his own house, he succumbed to the maturer folly of men, and it would happen now and then that he would carry his head like a heavy burden, but always upright, to his forest home as late as midnight or more.

Things went on in this way until, on a sunny St. John's Day, a network of events began to close in.

The forester himself went to town to the headquarters of his guild, where on that festive day all were summoned to attend the settlement of important affairs concerning the craft, to conclude with a great annual feast, and he intended to remain and join there in the carousal until the advance of night.

Dietegen on his part went to the sharpshooter's meeting place, intending to spend the whole long midsummer's day in perfecting himself as a marksman. The other assistants of the forester and his servants of the household also went their own way, the one to visit his relatives some distance across the country, another to the dance with his sweetheart, and the third to the holiday fair to buy himself cloth for a new coat and a pair of shoes.

So the women were sitting all by themselves in the house, not at all delighted with the rude manner in which the men had left them to their own devices, but yet eyeing every passer-by and peering out at the sunny landscape in the hope that some guests would show up and with their help a festivity of their own might be arranged.

As a suitable preparation for that or any contingency they began to bake spice cakes and prepare all sorts of sweets, and they brewed a huge bowlful of heady May wine flavored with honey and herbs, so as to be ready for either chance comers or to offer a night cup to the men returning home. Next they decked themselves in holiday finery, and ornamented head and bosom with flowers, while other young maidens, bidden to join them in a feminine festival time, one after the other also came from town, and even the very last and least of the serving maids belonging to the household was freshly attired to look her best.

Under broadspreading linden trees, right in front of the house, the table was set for a dainty meal, the westering sun sending his last golden rays like a benediction abroad over town and valley.

There the women now were seated about the table, relishing all the good things prepared for them, and soon the chorus of them were intoning folk-songs with melodious voices, songs telling in many stanzas of the delights and despair of love, songs like that of the two royal children, or "There dallied a knight with his maiden dear," and similar ones. All the tunes sounded the longing of love-lorn hearts, the faith kept or broken, the eternal drama of passion. Far out into the evening the sweet voices were carrying, alluring, inviting. The birds nesting up in the dense foliage of the linden trees, after being silenced for a spell, now joined in, rivaling their human competitors, and from over in the forest other feathered songsters assisted. But suddenly another band of choristers could be heard above the din. That new volume of sound came floating down the mountain side, a mingling of male voices with the more strident notes of fiddle and tabor pipes. A troop of youths had come from Ruechenstein, and this instant issued from the edge of the woods. Thus they came, striding along the path that led past the forester's home down to the valley, a number of musicians at their head. There was the son of the burgomaster of Ruechenstein, rather a madcap and therefore a great exception to the overwhelming majority of his townsfolk, who clearly dominated the noisy throng. Having left the university abroad, he had brought with him a few fellow-students after his own heart, among them being a couple of divinity students and a young and jolly monk, as well as Hans Schafuerli, the council scribe, or secretary, of Ruechenstein, who was a scrawny, bent figure of a man, with a mighty hunchback and a long rapier. He was the last of the train, all walking singly because of the narrow path.