Tales of the Wild and the Wonderful [1867]

by Mary Diana Dods

THE YELLOW DWARF.
A TALE OF THE ORANGE TREE.

Oranges and Lemons.

Every body knows, or at least ought to know, with what an uproar of delight the birth of an heir to any noble family was celebrated in the old baronial times of fisty-cuff memory; exactly such a festival would we, the humble historian of the illustrious house of Tecklenburgh, describe if we knew how to render justice to the outrageous mirth which shook the old castle to its very foundation, on the day of the eventful morn on which the lady of the eldest son of the family had presented her lord, and his no less expecting father the count, with a new prop to the seat of their ancient dignities. It was amid the mingled uproar of trumpets, bells, soldiers, women, horses, and dogs, that the respectable purple-nosed dominican, who was confessor to the family, gave a blessing and a name to its future representative; and immediately after the ceremony, the knights and nobles, wearied by the blows given and received in the jousts, retired to the dining hall with the threefold intention of filling their empty stomachs with something better than the east wind, solacing their spirits with the biting jests of the count’s fool, and curing their wounds and bruises of the morning by bathing them in flagons of rhenish, till the moon should look down upon the evening.

But happiness will not endure for ever, like riches, she maketh herself wings and fleeth away: the company, after picking the flesh of the huge wild boar to the bone, began to stare at each other with bleared eyes, ask querulous questions with stuttering tongues, and reply with solemn and important visages; and the count of Tecklenburgh, fearing that his youngest son, the handsome Sir Ludolph, would soon grow as wise as the rest of the party, and of course utterly unfit for business, withdrew him quietly from the table and conducted him to his private apartment; there, seating himself in his state chair and enrobing his person, with an air of paternal dignity he solemnly demanded of his son, if he had, according to his particular order, considered the subject of their last conference. The young knight answered, without any hesitation, that he had not, for that the subject was so disagreeable to him that he had never suffered it to enter his mind since; that he thought the tonsure excessively unbecoming, and that he had no inclination to pray every time St. Benedict’s bells should ring; and he added moreover, that he was resolved to carve himself out a fortune with his sword, and for that purpose intended to set off immediately for the court of the injured princes of Thuringia, whose cause was a just and honourable one, and make them an offer of his services: all this was said with an air of so much determination and composure, as partly to disturb, and partly to amuse the gravity of the count of Tecklenburgh; but considering within himself for a few moments, he thought this last project of his son was not quite so foolish as he had at first been willing to imagine it. In addition to high courage and many knightly acquirements, Ludolph possessed a very handsome person, and this idea connecting itself with the beautiful sister of the princes of Thuringia, he began to think that it would be a pity to hide that fine form under a greasy cassock; he reflected that should the three sons of Albert the Depraved get their brains knocked out in the skirmish, (a consummation devoutly to be wished, and, from their warlike character and powerful enemies, very likely to happen,) their possessions would descend to their sister, who might possibly fall in love with his handsome son, and then possibly the margraviate of Thuringia might finally centre in his family. These, and many other possibilities working in the brain of father Tecklenburgh, worked a change in his countenance also; and Ludolph seeing a smile, or something like one, hovering over his iron features, judged it a favourable opportunity for re-enforcing his petition, which he did with all the zeal and eloquence he could muster—eloquence which touched the heart of his tender father, for he assured him that if he would permit him to depart, he would not draw the smallest piece of copper from his treasury to fit him out for the expedition, but would make his aunt’s legacy of relics answer every purpose. This last remonstrance settled the business; count Tecklenburgh, finding it was to cost him nothing, gave his consent to the measure, and made his son happy in his own way, though, if that happiness had cost him a single cruitzner, he would have held fast to the tonsure in spite of all the repugnance of poor Ludolph; as it was, he gave him his blessing, and dismissed him with much good advice, but not a single coin, and the knight was too happy in the granted permission to grieve at his father’s lack of liberality. With a lightened heart he went for his holy legacy, which he found much heavier than he had expected; every bone and rag was carefully marked with the name of its original owner, and, after getting the monk to read him their titles, and affix a value to each article, he hastened to dispose of his sanctified treasure. He imagined the most likely persons to bid handsomely for his commodities would be the monks, who paid such respectful and humble reverence to cargoes of that description; but, after visiting a convent of Dominicans situated near the castle, in this instance he found himself most grievously mistaken; these holy pedlars were much too wise to buy what they had long found their account in selling: they had already a good stock on hand, and, when this should be exhausted, they could manufacture others at a much cheaper rate than they could purchase them of count Ludolph: so he carried his legacy to the nuns, who rejected it instantaneously, doubting whether the articles were genuine. From the nuns he went to all the orders of mendicants, who treated him and his relics with great contempt, cried down his cargo, and impudently asserted that the leg of St. Bridget, which he had considered the most valuable article in the pious collection, was the leg of a woman who was hung some years before for sorcery in Nuremburg, as they themselves had the real original limb of the saint in their possession. Thus disappointed among the shorn lambs of the fold, Ludolph determined to seek for purchasers among the laity, and accordingly found them in the persons of priest-ridden princes, crusading nobles, pilgrim knights, and convent-founding ladies: the great variety of his good aunt’s collection enabled him to gratify the tastes of all, for his box contained one member or other of every saint mentioned in the monk of Treves’s martyrology. St. Bridget’s leg he sold at a high price to a miserable old noble who had grown rich by rapine, and who trusted by this measure to scare away the goblins and spectres who nightly kept their revels round his bed. The thumb of St. Austin was purchased by a beautiful princess, as the guard of her chastity amid the allurements of a court, and was suspended like a camphor bag around her delicate neck; while the illustrious mother of a reprobate young knight earnestly hoped, by tacking a piece of the hair shirt of St. Jerome to the shirt of her son, to effect a reformation in his morals, and an amendment in his manners. There were always abundance of fools in the world, and in those unlettered times it did not require the light of a lantern to look for them. Ludolph thought so, as, with a lightened box but a heavy purse, he returned to Tecklenburgh to fit out for his expedition. Hosen, boots, vests, tunics, hoods, harness, and arms, were all ready in a short time; for when a man has money, every thing else under the sun is very much at his service. His appointments were all of the handsomest kind; his device was a boar, and his colours were blue and scarlet. And thus, having equipped the knight and sent him forward, let us look back for a little, to ascertain whither he is going, and for what purpose when he shall arrive there.

The cause of the princes of Thuringia was, as count Ludolph had truly stated, a just and honourable one: their father, Albert the Depraved, had disinherited them, and banished their mother, in favour of a worthless mistress and his illegitimate son, for whom he anxiously endeavoured to procure the investiture of his dominions after his decease. Not succeeding in this notable project, and bent upon the ruin of his own children, he sold his landgraviate of Misnia to the emperor Adolphus, who dying before he could be benefited by his purchase, bequeathed this right, to which he had no right at all, to his brother Philip of Nassau, who, poor in character, and still poorer in purse, was now levying an army, aided by the emperor Albert, to deprive the legitimate heir, Frederic with the Bite, and his brother Dictman, of their rights and possessions. To this project they were by no means disposed to consent, more especially as their mother, Margaret, daughter of Frederic the Redbeard, continually kept alive their resentment against their worthless father and his abandoned associates. This princess, on being years before separated from her children by her husband, had requested permission to take leave of them ere their departure, which being granted, she, in the frenzy of rage and grief, left a singular memorial of her wrongs with her eldest son; she bit a piece out of his cheek, and the impression remaining upon his face for ever, inflamed his indignation against the original author of this disfigurement; so that, when capable of bearing arms, he deposed his father and assumed his place, to thrust him from which Philip of Nassau was now threatening, and to oppose whom half Germany was rising in arms to assist the cheek-bitten Frederic, and among many others the knight of Tecklenburgh.

Margaret of Suabia, the mother of the princes, during the early part of her life, had been confined by her husband in the castle of Wartzburg, in order that she might be removed the more readily into a still smaller abode, whenever the proper opportunity should occur, and which he piously determined not to neglect. She was at this period in a situation which might have interested any man but such a husband, for she promised to increase his illustrious family by an additional son or daughter; but as he cared for no children but the son of his mistress Cunegunda, this circumstance rather operated against the poor princess, who was left to amuse herself as well as she could in superintending the infancy of her sons, and hunting in the haunted forest of Eisenac. One day, while thus diverting her attention from the many anxieties which oppressed her, she found herself suddenly separated from her attendants; but hearing a horn sound to the right, she spurred on her palfrey in that direction, till, after an hour’s hard riding, she began to fear she was removing still further from her people, for no sound could she hear but that of the eternal bugle, no hoof-tramp but that of her own steed. Still the horn sounded, and still the princess galloped, till at length wearied by her exercise, and finding herself in a large open plain, she dismounted to reconnoitre; at the same moment she remarked the silence of the horn, and the appearance of a gigantic orange tree, loaded with fine fruit, in the centre of the tranquil plain. Astonishment she certainly felt on beholding so extraordinary and beautiful an object; but hunger and fatigue had entirely banished all notions of fear; besides, dame Margaret, having no small share of the curiosity of her grandmother Eve, could no more resist the temptation of tasting these oranges, than the first woman did the apple; so climbing up into the tree, she regaled herself to her heart’s content with this fine fruit of the forest. By the time she had fairly dined, and was as weary of eating as she had previously been of riding, she bethought her of the boys at home, and with what glee they would have marched to the sack of the orange tree; but as that was not possible, she determined they should not be without share of the spoil, and therefore began to fill her huge pockets with the ripest and the largest of the fruit. But this action displeased the hospitable master of the table at which she had been so plentifully regaled; “Eat, but take nothing away,” had been one of his maxims, and he was mortally offended to see this honest rule set at nought in the person of a princess, a lady who, he thought, ought to have understood better manners. Before, therefore, she had laid up provisions for the march, a little shrill voice from the tree commanded her highness “not to steal his fruit,” and, at the same instant, there issued from the trunk which opened to give him a passage, a figure which effectually satisfied the curiosity of the princess of Suabia. The animal which now quickly ascended the tree, and placed himself vis à vis with her highness, was a little deformed man, about three feet and a half high, with a face as yellow as the oranges upon which he lived, hair of the same hue hanging down to his heels, and a monstrous beard, of the same bilious complexion, gracefully descending to his feet; if you add to this, the gaiety of his yellow doublet, short cloak, and hose, you will not wonder that Margaret did not altogether relish the tête à tête in which she found herself so suddenly and singularly placed, independent of the awkwardness of paying a first visit in the boughs of a tree. “Princess,” said the little yellow devil, after staring at her some time with his two huge goggling yellow eyes, “what business have you here?” “I have lost my way,” she replied, “and being fatigued, was going to gather an orange to appease my hunger:” but he, without the least respect for his guest, or the rank of an emperor’s daughter, rudely answered, “Woman, you lie! you were stealing my property to carry away.” At this insolent reproach, Margaret, whose patience was never proverbial, felt a strong inclination to treat the demon as she afterwards did her son; but fearing that the little gentleman might not endure it quite so temperately, prudently restrained this effort of her indignation, and only said, “I did not know the tree had any other owner than myself, or I would not have gathered any; what I have eaten I cannot restore, but here is the last I have taken;” and she threw it rather roughly at the Dwarf, who, irritated excessively at this behaviour, told her, grinning hideously, and exhibiting for her admiration his monstrous overgrown yellow claws, that he had a strong temptation to tear her to pieces, which nothing but his wish to be allied to the blood of the emperors should have prevented. “My oranges,” said he, “which you have stolen, I estimate above all price, except that which I am going to demand: I am a powerful demon, and rule with unbounded sway many thousand spirits; but I am unhappy in not having a wife with whom to share my power; as Adam was not delighted in Paradise, neither am I in my Orange Tree, without a companion. You are about to present an infant to your lord, who is utterly indifferent about the matter; it will be a girl, and I demand her in marriage on the day she will be twenty years old: consent to be my mother, and I will avenge your injuries upon your husband, and load you with honours and riches; refuse, and I will tear you in pieces this moment, and furnish my supper table with your carcass.” Margaret, who had never been so terrified in all her life, and would not only have given her daughter, but her sons and husband into the bargain, to have got away, readily promised to agree with the Dwarf’s wishes, who now became exceedingly polite, embraced his dear mother, and assured her of his devotion. He then informed her he would give her notice some months before he should claim his wife, placed her carefully and tenderly upon her palfrey, and mounting behind, spurred on the animal, who flew like the wind to the entrance of the forest; where again embracing his good mother, he dismounted and disappeared. Margaret, freed from the odious company of the Yellow Dwarf, began to reflect with no very pleasant feelings upon her present adventure and future prospects. She was, indeed, safe out of the orange-coloured clutches of her dutiful and well-beloved son; and, vexed as she was by the horrible promise she had been obliged to make, she could not help congratulating herself with great sincerity upon this circumstance, and began, like all who have just escaped a present danger, to make light of the evils in the distance. The farther she cantered from the Orange Tree, the easier her mind became; and taking a few hints from “Time, the comforter,” she reflected that many things might occur before the expiration of twenty years: it was a long period to look forward; the little yellow devil might die, (and, indeed, she could not but allow that he looked most miserably ill,) or he might forget his bargain, or he might be conquered and killed by some black, pea-green, or true blue devil, who might be stronger or more powerful than himself; or, in case of the worst, she could secure her daughter in some strong castle or convent, or marry her, before the expiration of the term, to some prince capable of protecting her; at all events, thought Margaret, “sufficient to the day is the evil thereof;” and, delighted by these soothing reflections, and charmed to find herself in a whole skin, she trotted along with great complacency, and arrived quite comforted before the gates of Wartzburg.

CHAPTER II.

“These yellow cowslip cheeks,
And eyes as green as leeks.”

Twenty years is indeed a long period to look forward, but a very short one to look back, and so thought the now widowed princess, when, nineteen years and some months after her adventure in the forest, she sat beside her lovely daughter in the palace of Erfurt, listening with earnest and tender attention to the plans of her warlike sons for wresting their dominions from the iron grasp of Albert the One-eyed and Philip of Nassau. It was necessary that they should give battle to their enemies; and as the margrave of Misnia intended to fight for his country in person, this would unavoidably deprive her beloved daughter of that powerful protection which hitherto had been her security against the threats of the Yellow Dwarf. It now wanted but six months of the period when he had determined to claim his bride; and as he had not hitherto given any indication, according to his word, of his appearance for this purpose, she trusted he might have forgotten it altogether, and, quietly resolving not to complain of this breach of promise, forebore to mention the subject to her children.

One day, during the bustle of preparation for the approaching warfare, a knight, splendidly attired, arrived at the palace, and demanded to be introduced to the princess Margaret, who no sooner beheld him, than she recognised in the colour of his arms the livery of her dear son-in-law, the Dwarf of the Orange Tree. He announced himself as the knight of the king of the oranges, and his embassy was to place abundance of gold at the feet of the princess Margaret, and to carry away her daughter as the bride of his master. Concealment was no longer possible, so sending for her children, she informed them of her forest adventure, and its unfortunate result. Poor Brunilda fainted away; her brothers swore as lustily as ever queen Elizabeth did, and fairly bullied the knight ambassador for his presumption in daring to think of their sister as a helpmate for the little dirty low-lived sorcerer his master; and Margaret, who before their entrance had been absolutely terrified to death by his presence, now finding herself protected, suffered her tongue to wag at a most unconscionable rate against the poor ambassador. She told him she had a great mind to cut off his ears, for bringing her such a message; that his master was a little conceited monster; that if, with all this gold and silver, he would buy a fine castle, cut off his beard, and live like a gentleman, he should not want her interest with one of the dairy-maids, but as it was, the thing was utterly impossible, he would not succeed even with the lowest scullion. “Madam,” replied the knight, with a grim kind of gravity, which was not half relished by the princess, “I would have you to understand I came not hither to bandy words with you, nor to listen to a catalogue of my master’s perfections: I must, however, inform you, that he would not part from his Orange Tree, nor with his beard, for all the princesses in the universe, the fair Brunilda included. If you do not think proper to keep your promise, he will find means to oblige you: neither does he require human aid to obtain his betrothed bride; but his gallantry and good nature will not allow him to force the will of the fair princess, if he can relinquish his determination with honour. He is fully aware of your present repugnance to his nuptials, and he is now whispering me to say, that if the princess herself declines his vows (which he can hardly believe), he will release her upon condition of her finding a champion that shall conquer me, and afterwards my invincible master, before the six months have expired, in single combat on horseback, on foot, with lance or sword, according to his highness’s good pleasure at the time of meeting: shall I say these terms are accepted?” “You may,” replied the margrave, to whom these conditions did not appear very hard, and who thought it better to comply with than refuse them, as he was not aware of the strength of the enemy to whom his mother’s promise had really been given; and he remembered he should probably be compelled to leave his lovely sister unprotected, while absent on his distant wars. The arrangements were, therefore, soon made, and the yellow champion was satisfied.