Seldwyla Folks: Three Singular Tales

by Gottfried Keller

Only now Kuengolt suddenly felt the full force and meaning of these words and of his previous devotion, and her heart seemed to stand still. Pale and faint she sank down on her bench at the stove, and the jolly gathering broke up. Even before the midnight bells tolled out the new year the light in the sexton's window was gone, and the girl was weeping bitter tears of sorrow.

From that night on she remained almost forgotten by the forester and his household. Great days were on the way. The Swiss federation was humming like a beehive with war's alarum. Those events were in the making which in history are known as the Burgundian War.

When spring had come and the great day of Grandison approached, the town of Seldwyla, too, like Ruechenstein and many others, sent her embattled citizens into the field, and it was for the forester as well as for Dietegen a happy release to be able to leave the disturbed harmony and comfort of the house and to step into the clear, rugged atmosphere of war.

With firm tread they both went along with their banner, though perhaps more silent than most, and joined with the other hurrying detachments the mighty battle array of the federated Swiss allies, coming most opportunely to the armed aid of the latter.

Like unto an iron garden stood the long square of the fighting men, and in its midst waved the standards and pennons of the cantons and towns there represented. In serried ranks they stood, many thousands of them, each in his independence and reliability again a world in himself; in fearlessness and will each could depend on his neighbor, and yet all of them together, after all, but a throng of fallible human beings.

There was the spendthrift and the light-hearted side by side with the curmudgeon and the cautious, each awaiting the hour of supreme sacrifice. The quarrelsome and the peaceable had to stay on with equal patience. He whose heart was heavy within his bosom was no more taciturn than the talkative and the braggart. The poor and indigent stood in equal pride next to the wealthy and domineering. Whole squares made up of neighbors ordinarily disagreeing were here one single unit. And envy or jealousy held spear or halberd as manfully and firmly as did generosity or reconciliation, and unjust as just aimed for the nonce both of them to fulfil the duty immediately urgent. Whoever had done with life and meant to sacrifice without regrets the mean remnant of it, was no more or less than the reckless red-cheeked youth upon whom his mother had built all her hope and in whom rested the future. The morose submitted without protest to the silly sallies of the jester or buffoon, and the latter on his part saw without ridicule the prosaic conceits of the small-souled philistine.

Next to the banner of Seldwyla was visible that of Ruechenstein, so that the serried ranks of the inimicable neighbors closely touched each other, and the forester who was leader of a section of his fellow citizens and formed the cornerstone of their whole formation, was the very neighbor of the council scribe of Ruechenstein, who on his part stood at the tail end of one of the ranks of his townsmen. But at this hour not one of them all seemed to recall reasons for differences or to remember the past. Dietegen was among the sharpshooters and "lost fellows," somewhat outside these regimental formations, and was already in the very heat of combat when the main body of the Swiss suddenly began to move and to plunge right into the midst of battle, in order to administer a stupendous defeat upon one of the most brilliant warrior-princes and his luxurious and splendid army, and to drive him to ignominous flight like a fabled king.

In the pressure of the hard-fought battle the forester with some of his gamekeepers had been separated by Burgundian cavalry from his banner and now fought his way through the latter, but only to encounter on the other side enemy foot soldiery. In meeting his new foe the doughty warrior set to work hewing and carving out for himself a roomy corner of his own, and he had already achieved this task when through this new opening a belated and spent cannon ball from the hosts of Charles the Bold came smashing and crushed the broad manly chest of the man, so that within another moment or two he had found in peace his eternal rest, and nothing more troubled him.

When Dietegen, sound and hearty, returned from the fight and from following the fleeing Burgundians, inquiring for his friend and father, he found his body after but a short search, and he buried him together with his trusty sword within the mighty roots of a far-spreading oak, not far from the battlefield on the edge of a grove.

Then he returned home with the remainder of the Swiss hosts, and because of his intrepidity and the ability shown by him during the campaign he was by the town authorities made provisional chief forester, and was given the house that had been his home for so long as his new abode and to supervise the assistants. With the death of his dear old patron his household had been dissolved. His savings and accumulated wealth had vanished during the last few years preceding his death, owing to careless management, and now Kuengolt had nothing left in the world save her own self and the care of Dietegen, provided he was able to give it, for he himself was but poor. She sat day after day at her stove, leaning her cheeks against its tiles representing, in four or five groups that recurred around the whole surface, the loss of Paradise, the creation of Adam and of Eve, the Tree of Knowledge, and the expulsion at last from their blessed abode. When the girl's face ached from the rough imprint of these raised images, she shifted it by turning to the next series, always and always contemplating them, and between the intervals shedding tears over her lot. But even then she could sometimes not help laughing outright when her glance traveled to that scene showing the expulsion from the Garden of Eden. For by reason of the potter's inadvertence this picture had been so modelled as to give to Adam instead of a real navel on his abdomen, a round little button and this protuberance repeating itself twentyfold on the surface of the stove excited unfailingly her playful humor, though it also heightened her discomfort when leaning against it.