On another occasion the monkeys managed to steal a roll of ducats out of their too indulgent master’s desk, which had been left open. They climbed up with their spoil to the roof. Breaking the seal, they took out a couple of coins, which were inspected on both sides with indescribable curiosity by each monkey in succession. One of the coins accidentally fell out of the hand of the monkey who was holding it, and, rolling over the roof, tumbled, with a sharp ringing sound, into the tin gutter, and thence into the pipe by which the rain-water was conveyed down the house. This kind of music caused the monkeys such delight that they despatched all the remaining coins after the first one. While doing so they hung close together on the pipe, and, with open ears, listened to the sound of the descending ducats.
But a trick played by Troll might have been attended with more disastrous consequences. The bailiff’s wife had left an infant, almost three years old, lying in the cradle while she was busy in the kitchen. Troll crept upstairs, and, opening the door of the room in which the cradle stood, obtained possession of the infant. He then ran off quickly with it. Some maid-servants in the yard noticed him, but, instead of enticing him to them, frightened him away by the fearful screams they uttered. At the end of the yard was a new building of wood, finished in the frame, up to the roof, and to this building Troll hurried off. Pressing the child closely to his breast with one arm, and swinging himself from beam to beam with the other, he clambered over the rafters of the roof, and took his seat on the very ridge. The screams were really heartrending, and enough to deafen any one, when the unhappy mother came rushing out. Wringing her hands in despair, she kept exclaiming—“Help! help! save my poor child!” All the inmates of the place came running to the spot, but the men were, unfortunately, busy at work in the fields or in the wood, and represented only by the General’s French cook, Mons. Lebrun, whose reputation for courage and determination was not exactly the best. Troll, however, had selected him to become the hero of the day. Dressed in his neat white costume, with apron and cap, he sprang into the middle of the crowd of wailing women, and cried out in a voice that would have become a general in the din of battle—“Now you shall all be quite still, you unreasonable womans. You make wild se monkey. I vill obtain tout seul votre enfant!” With these words he stretched out his arms, and drove back all the women into the passage of the gamekeeper’s house, the door of which was open. The mother was the only one he could not force from the spot, so he assigned her a place whence, without being in the way, she might witness his campaign, having first promised him, by the value she set upon her infant’s life, to remain quiet. Meanwhile, unconcerned by what was going on below, the monkey was seated upon the ridge of the roof, with his back leaning against the fir-tree, which, according to the old custom, the carpenters had set up there the day previously on the completion of their labours. At one instant he pressed the child with ecstasy to his breast; at the next he rocked it on his lap. At length he began untying and unrolling the long strip of flannel in which the child was enveloped. The child, in happy ignorance of its danger, was perfectly still. Directly he had pacified and sent away the women, the cook began clambering up the ladder, and when he had reached the end of that, climbing from one beam to another, up to the rafters of the roof. Troll ignored him altogether, though Mons. Lebrun coaxingly held out some preserves, for the purpose of prevailing on him to come down. In order to properly appreciate the boldness of the undertaking, the reader must bear in mind that Mons. Lebrun had long ceased to be a youth, that he was very poorly, and not a practised climber. At last, in order to get quite near the monkey, he was obliged to pursue his perilous course over the fragile laths. Now for the first time did Troll appear to take any notice of him. He half rose, cast an angry look at him, and, quickly grasping the child, together with the roll of flannel, now nearly half undone, prepared to depart. “Ah, Monsieur Troll,” said the courageous cook coaxingly, “vhy you not come down to your dîner? Take un peu de biscuit! Monsieur Troll is a vary good boy! Permeet that I see your poupée, Monsieur Troll. Geeve me your poupée, and I shall geeve you dis confiture!” The above and similar persuasive arguments did the worthy man employ to prevail on the monkey to give up the infant. But Troll remained immovable. The cook threw him a piece of biscuit. Troll did not even stretch out his hand after it. At length Mons. Lebrun approached so near, that the women below uttered a half-suppressed shriek. He was now deterred from seizing the monkey by the throat only by the thought that if he did so the monkey would instantly let the child fall. He had, therefore, recourse once again to the sweetmeats, and held out a candied fig.
Fearful, probably, that it would take the same road as the biscuit, which he had allowed to fall, Troll made a snatch at it, intending to swallow it at once. The cook felt an immense weight removed from his breast, for he knew that the monkey could not resist these sweets if he once tasted them. Troll actually now moved a lath’s distance nearer; the cook retired two laths’ distance, and held out a second fig. In this manner did the monkey follow, lath by lath, and beam by beam, still holding the child closely, and immediately drawing back if the cook made a movement to stretch out his hand towards it. At last he stood once more upon the solid ground. “Move not from your place, madame,” he cried to the mother. “Move not from your place!” Still walking backwards, he enticed Troll over the yard into his room. After bolting the door, he threw some sweetmeats into a white cotton nightcap, which he offered the monkey. To draw the dainties out of the long cap it was necessary for Troll to employ two hands. Without taking long to consider, he gently and carefully laid down the child that had begun crying and kicking as hard as it could. At the same moment the cook clutched him vigorously by the nape of the neck and flung him so violently into a dark room, that he was greatly astonished to see the prisoner come out again alone, when the General himself released him in the evening. An instant afterwards, delighted at the success of his stratagem, the cook placed the child in the arms of the weeping mother, and from that day forward no one ever again dared to cast a doubt on the courage and determination of Monsieur Lebrun.
But it was not always that the acts of the troublesome guests ended so well, and the old gentleman, for whose sake people winked at a good deal, because he was kind, benevolent, and charitable towards everybody, was often exposed by his favourites to vexation. On some occasions they engaged in sanguinary strife with children and harmless pedestrians. He paid liberally doctors’ bills and smart-money, when these were not rejected; but he did not conceal from himself the fact that, if such cases were often repeated, the authorities would take up the matter, and compel him either to send the monkeys away or have them shut up. But he never raised his stick against them; if they ever did anything more extravagant than usual he read them a lesson, and was always of opinion that they understood this better than a beating. It is very certain, too, that they assumed a bearing and appearance as though crushed by remorse. They might, it is true, have pleaded as an excuse for many of their malicious tricks that they were always on the defensive, for, with the exception of their master, every one in the place was their sworn foe. They were beaten, inundated with cold and hot water, plagued and baited in every possible manner by everybody who could do so unobserved. Unfortunately, the want of speech prevented them from formulating their complaints. Under these circumstances, all the affection and attachment of which their apish souls were capable they concentrated on their master, with whom they always found protection and indulgence. They accompanied him to the borders of the wood when he rode off, as was his custom, to Cassel; while, in the evening, they looked out impatiently from the tops of the trees for him, and were perfectly mad with delight as soon as they perceived him, with his two tall servants, riding through the corn-fields.
This state of things lasted for several years, and the monkeys excited the attention of all the country round. Great and small made pilgrimages to Windhausen for the purpose of seeing these strangers, thus transported fifty or sixty degrees of latitude from their tropical home, till, one fine morning, the whole thing was quite unexpectedly brought to a terrible termination.
A young peasant girl was attacked by one of the strongest monkeys as she was proceeding through the forest. Half dead with fear and loathing, she screamed for help, but some time elapsed before the people ran up from the farmyard. They found the girl lying on the ground, and engaged in a desperate struggle with the animal, who had now become perfectly wild. Her long hair was dishevelled and partially torn from her head, while her face, neck, and hands were entirely covered with blood. The monkey was in a state of uncontrollable fury, such as he had never been seen in before. The head ploughman, who courageously sprang forward and seized him by the hair on the top of his head, was, in a few minutes, so bitten and scratched, that he could no longer see or hear. The noise attracted the other monkeys, who were scattered about the forest, as well as all the persons belonging to the farm, and who hastened up, armed with cudgels and flails. Among the first to reach the girl was the gamekeeper. He no sooner perceived the magnitude of the danger than he hurried back to procure his double-barrelled gun. The courageous ploughman was still exposed to the furious attacks of the monkey, when a well-directed bullet, whizzing close past his ear, crushed the animal’s head. Now, however, followed a most strange and unexpected scene. Scarcely was the shot fired, and the bleeding body of their companion stretched writhing on the ground, when all the monkeys, as if at a concerted signal, rushed with a wild howl upon the persons present. A fearful conflict ensued, but, through all the tumult, the bailiff’s voice was distinctly heard, crying, “Kill all the devils! I will take the responsibility on myself, at the risk of losing my place!” It was an obstinate struggle; not a single combatant, man or monkey, made the slightest attempt to withdraw from the scene of action. It seemed as though long-cherished hate had suddenly burst forth on both sides, to end in mutual destruction. But it was not long before the matter was decided. Before the expiration of a quarter of an hour, five monkeys lay dead upon the ground, with their skulls shattered by bullets or blows from cudgels; about as many were running round on the down-trodden grass, with their backs flayed or their limbs broken. The rest were tied up and bound to trees. The lives of these last had been provisionally spared only in compliance with the earnest and warning persuasion of the gamekeeper. The victors, also, were in an evil plight. The bailiff had lost the upper part of his left ear. One of the farm-servants was stretched on the ground by a blow intended for a monkey. He recovered, it is true, but remained, all his life, hard of hearing. Nearly all, except the gamekeeper, had bleeding faces and hands, and their clothes torn to rags. The girl was carried in a swoon to the house, and given into the custody of the women. There was still a troublesome piece of work left to be executed—namely, to place in safe keeping the surviving monkeys, rendered more spiteful and malicious than ever by their defeat. But this also was done. The dead, the wounded, and the living were flung together in one barn, and the door closed upon them.
An hour later the inmates of Windhausen assembled before the gamekeeper’s lodge to consult as to how the “confounded business” might be communicated in the gentlest form to the General. The latter had set off, on horseback, an hour or two previously for Cassel, without any presentiment of the fate awaiting his favourites on that day. Although every person assured everybody else, for the purpose of mutual encouragement, that, under the circumstances, they could not have acted differently to what they had, yet everybody in that small assembly felt as though there was a hundredweight upon his breast. It was at length resolved that the gamekeeper, a faithful old servant, should undertake the unthankful task of going to meet their master, and preparing him for what had happened. With a view to this a man was stationed as an outpost to bring information immediately the General was perceived approaching. It was somewhere about five o’clock in the afternoon when the old soldier, with his stereotyped attendants, the two lanky servants, came in sight. As usual when he returned from Cassel, he had his pockets full of sweetmeats for his monkeys. But what strangely oppressive feeling overpowered him more and more as he neared the wood? What, was not a single one of his merry brown rascals to be seen upon the branches? Why did the spare form of the old gamekeeper, with his earth-coloured face and hang-dog look, stand there, as though rooted to the spot, like some warning notice? He felt compelled to ease his mind by speaking.
“Good evening, my old friend!” he cried to the gamekeeper.
“Thank your honour, your excellency——”
“My house is not burnt down, is it?”