Told by the death's head

by Mór Jókai

"No, Master Soldier, the death bell doesn't ring for such corpses. The poor old man hung himself—just here, on this limb above us!"

"Hung himself?" I repeated in horror.

"Yes, Master Soldier—he hung himself on that limb! You see he couldn't stand it when, after he had been told that his property would have to be sold to pay his debts, he heard that the burgomaster had received from Hamburg a warrant to arrest Hugo, his vagabond son, who had murdered a comrade of his in that city."

You may imagine my feeling when I heard these words! They banished from my mind all thought of making myself known as the long-lost Hugo, and the determination to keep my identity a strict secret was strengthened by the drummer who, at every beat he inflicted on the cracked calf-skin, exclaimed: "The rascal!" "The vagabond!" "The gallows-bird!" and similar titles of honor!

I deemed it wise to join him in execrating the reprobate, whose evil conduct had forced the honest old tanner to end his life on the green branch over our heads.

The bloody deed I had committed in Hamburg had driven my poor father to a suicide's grave. I could listen no longer to the monotonous drum-beats, and the call which came from the house: "Who bids higher?"

I stole away from the house to which I had brought disgrace and death. I stole away to that city of the silent multitude, where there is no higgling, no outbidding, no "who bids higher?"

Here, the wooden cross at the head of the grass-grown mound of earth, serves the same purpose, and serves it as well as the majestic marble monument. After a long search among many familiar, and some unfamiliar names, I found, on one of the wooden crosses, the name to which I had a claim.

Underneath that mound, bare of green sod, with no mourning wreath of never-fading flowers adorning the cross, rested the woman who had left behind her on earth nothing but a drunken husband, who drank to forget his shame; and a worthless son, whose name was a public disgrace in every city in the land.

I flung myself beside the mound. I dared not give vent to my sorrow in moans and tears, for fear a grave-digger, or some passer-by might hear me, and suspect me to be the son of the woman in the grave.