Seven Legends

by Gottfried Keller

Such eccentricities were in the air just at that time.

All the time Eugenia felt herself anything but well and happy. Her well-trained servitors must needs philosophize through heaven and earth and hell, only to be suddenly interrupted and forced to wander about in the country with her for hours together without being favoured with a single word. One day she was seized with the desire to make an excursion to a country-seat. She herself drove the carriage, and was in an amiable mood, for it was a bright spring day, and the air was full of balmy fragrance. The Hyacinths were delighted at her good humour. So they made their way through a country suburb where the Christians were permitted to hold their worship. They were in the act of celebrating Sunday; from the chapel of a monastery came the tones of a devout hymn. Eugenia checked her horses to listen, and caught the words of the psalm, "Like as the hart desireth the water-brooks: so longeth my soul after thee, O God. My soul is athirst for the living God."

At the sound of these words, sung by humble pious lips, her artificial life was made simple at last; her heart was touched, and seemed to realize what it desired; and slowly, without a word, she went on her way to the country-house. There she secretly put on men's clothes, signed to the two Hyacinths to come with her, and left the house unobserved by the menials. She went back to the convent, knocked at the door, and presented herself and her companions to the abbot as three young men who desired to be received into the convent that they might bid farewell to the world and live for eternity. Thanks to her good training, she was able to answer the abbot's searching questions so cleverly that he received all three, whom he could not help taking for refined and distinguished persons, into the convent, and permitted them to assume the monastic habit.

Eugenia made a beautiful, almost angelic, monk, and was called Brother Eugenius, while the two Hyacinths found themselves transformed for better or worse into monks; for they were never even consulted, and they had long been accustomed only to live according to the will of their female paragon. Still, they did not find the monkish life amiss; they enjoyed incomparably more peaceful days, did not require to study any more, and found no difficulty in surrendering themselves entirely to a passive obedience.

Brother Eugenius, on the other hand, did not remain idle, but became a notable monk, his visage white as marble, but with glowing eyes and the presence of an archangel. He converted many heathen, tended the sick and destitute, became profound in the Scriptures, preached in a golden bell-like voice, and on the abbot's death was actually chosen to be his successor. So now the tender Eugenia became abbot over seventy good monks, great and small.

During the time that she and her companions were thus mysteriously vanished and were nowhere to be found, her father had made enquiries at an oracle as to what had become of his daughter, and it answered that Eugenia had been taken away by the gods and placed among the stars. For the priests utilized the event to contrive a miracle as a counterblast to the Christians, who all the time had the bird safely caged. They went so far as to point out a star in the firmament with two smaller stars adjacent as the new constellation, and the Alexandrians stood in the streets and on their house-tops to gaze at it, while many, who had formerly seen her going in and out, recalled her beauty, became enamoured of her memory, and looked up with moist eyes to the star, which swam placidly in the purple sky.

Aquilinus too looked up; but he shook his head and was not altogether satisfied about the business. The father of the vanished maiden was all the more obstinate in his credence, felt himself not a little exalted, and contrived, with the support of the priests, to have a statue erected and divine honours decreed to Eugenia. Aquilinus, from whom official sanction had to be obtained, granted it subject to the condition that the image should be made an exact likeness of the ravished one. That was easily accomplished, as there was quite a collection of busts and portraits of her in existence, and so her statue in marble was set up in the fore-court of the temple of Minerva, and challenged the inspection of gods and mortals, for, in spite of being a speaking likeness, it was an ideal work in features, pose, and drapery.

When this news was discussed among the seventy monks of the convent, they were bitterly chagrined at the trump card played by the heathen, as well as at the erection of a new idol and the shameless worship of a mortal woman. Their most violent objurgations were showered upon the woman herself as a runagate and juggling impostor, and they made a most unaccustomed noise during their midday meal. The Hyacinths, who had become two good little priestlings and had their abbot's secret concealed in their hearts, glanced significantly towards him, but he signed to them to keep silence, and suffered the outcry and abuse to pass as a penance for his former heathenish sinful mind.

But when that night was half run, Eugenia rose from her couch, took a heavy hammer, and went softly out of the convent to find the statue and break it in pieces. She easily found her way to the quarter of the city, all glistening with marble, where the temples and public buildings were situated, and where she had passed her youth. Not a soul stirred in the silent world of marble. Just as the female monk ascended the steps to the temple, the moon rose above the shadows of the city, and cast her beams as bright as day among the pillars of the fore-court. There Eugenia saw her statue, white as new-fallen snow, standing in wonderful grace and beauty, the finely-folded draperies chastely drawn over the shoulders, and looking straight forward with rapt eye and gently-smiling mouth.

Full of curiosity the Christian advanced towards it, the hammer uplifted in her hand; but a sweet shudder went through her heart when she obtained a clear view of the statue. She let the hammer sink, and breathlessly fed her gaze on the vision of her own former existence. A bitter regret took possession of her, a feeling as if she had been thrust out of a fairer world and was now wandering an unhappy shade in the wilderness. For although the image was elevated to the ideal, still the very ideal represented Eugenia's genuine inner nature, which had only been obscured by her pedantry, and it was a nobler emotion than vanity which now led her to recognize her better self by the magical moonlight. She suddenly felt as if she had played the wrong card--to use a modern expression; for, of course, there were no cards in those days.