CHAPTER XLII.
RETRIBUTION.
Some days after this, I was hastening from the Frankendör towards the residence of Ernestine, when, at a corner of the Bourse, where the merchants were wont to meet, but where the rank grass grew between the untrodden stones, I observed a provision shop, or victualler's, the last in the street, which as yet maintained the aspect of having any thing like business, which all its less fortunate neighbours had long since hopelessly abandoned.
Upon the front wall of the house, there were cut and gilded the date 1600, with one of those verses, then so common in Stralsund, recording, in barbarous Latin, that Jaromar prince of Rügen had fortified the city, after it had been burned by the Danes and Pomeranians. Half concealing this, a gaudy sign-board was nailed over it, bearing the name and occupation of the retailer, the aspect of whose stock made me remember (what I seldom forgot) the larder of Ernestine's establishment; and, being without money, I twisted a few golden links from the chain her father had given me in more prosperous times, and desiring a soldier to follow me, entered the shop, the entire goods of which consisted of three somewhat shrivelled hams, a side of suspicious-like bacon, and a few strings of freshly made, but still more suspicions sausages, the material of which, at such a time, when the marshal and burgomaster had been living for months on horse-flesh or little better, made me resolve to have nothing to do with them. But then every thing was scrupulously neat and clean; the Mernel floor and counters were scrubbed to the whiteness of snow; the tin and brass work shone like silver and gold. An elderly man, with wiry grey mustaches, and wearing a nightcap and long apron of spotless white cotton, was busy with a chopping-knife preparing more sausages, which he seasoned profusely with garlic, salt, and pepper.
He appeared considerably disconcerted on my entrance, and, despite the deference usually paid by his class and all cits to a long mustache and long sword, he doggedly continued his occupation; but his wife, a smart little woman, with lively black eyes, and a face that was wofully ravaged by the small-pox, tripped forward to ask me what I would have.
The question had scarcely left her lips, when she grew paler than her white coif, trembled, and cast down her eyes. Her voice and her tout ensemble were familiar to me. I felt myself change colour in turn, and mingled emotions of pleasure, anger, and surprise ran through me.
"What a change is here!" said I; "is it possible that I find the Señora Prudentia—the sylph-like dancer, whose actions were so full of grace and beauty—the songstress who warbled like a fairy bird in summer—transformed into a little vender of sausages and ham!"
Perhaps there was something spiteful in this remark; but I had a lively recollection of the doubloons and the ring, bought from an honest jeweller of the Hebrew race in the Burgerplatz at Glückstadt.
"Herr Captain," she replied modestly and timidly, and with an air that well became her then, with her plain white linen coif, her large neckerchief, and short bunchy petticoats of scarlet cloth (for every way she had fairly become the little burgher's wife), "adversity has taught me a good lesson; I was vain, I was beautiful and wicked, and God has punished me. He sent a severe illness which robbed me of my beauty, and my vanity went with it. I should always have remembered that beauty fades like the summer, but, unlike the summer, returns no more. I shall never be beautiful again—never! (this was said with some bitterness.) I shall never sing more; for the same envious illness robbed me of my fine voice; but it matters not—I am at least content; yet ay de mi Espana! I shall never see Spain more. My husband——"
"What—-you are then married at last!"
"My husband is an honest man, and I am become an industrious little housewife. We should make quite a fortune but for this unhappy siege; and shall we not yet, Herr Spürrledter?—look up, and speak for yourself."