I crept on hands and knees toward the tree, and peeped into the cavity. The next instant I was on my feet, hurling a million donnerwetters at the shaggy bear, whose monstrous body quite filled the only apartment of my dwelling.
I forgot that I was an anchorite, and cursed the brute roundly—
"Votum violatum," dictated the chair. "Broken vow—blasphemy! Capite plectetur."
"By my faith!" interposed the prince with considerable emphasis. "I would have sworn too! Qui bene distinguit, bene docet. How goes the paragraph relating to blasphemy? 'He that curses his fellowman'—and so forth. But, it doesn't say anything about punishment for him who curses his 'fellow-bear.' You see, therefore, that the votum ruptum does not fit this crime, for it was not the prisoner who broke the vow of the anchorite, but the bear; consequently bruin is the delinquent."
"Very good," assented the chair. "Then the bear is the guilty party: ursus comburatur! The robbery of the temple follows: I am curious to hear how the prisoner will clear himself of that! That he will accomplish it I am willing to wager my head!"
What was I to do? continued Hugo, when the mayor had concluded his remark. My house was occupied by a tenant who would not let me share it with him. I had nowhere else to go. I could not find another hermitage. If I could not be a hermit, I could become a beggar—begging was also a way to gain a livelihood, and I possessed the necessary equipment for it.
In Poland, no one who can say: "Give me bread," needs die of hunger. The iron band on my neck might, after all, be of advantage to me; it would give me a sort of superiority over other mendicants. If I were asked how I came by it, I should say that it had been forged on my neck by the Saracens, who took me captive when I was in the Holy Land, and because I had made my escape through a miracle, I continued to wear the band as a penance.
The good people to whom I told this story believed it; it brought me many a groschen and carried me comfortably across Poland.
I had no sooner crossed into Brandenburg (I was on my way to my native city, where I intended taking up the trade of my father, an honest and respectable tanner) than I was surrounded by a crowd of people—not a charitably disposed crowd, but inquisitive.
They wanted to know where I came from, where was I going, who and what was I and how I dared to have the impertinence to beg in their city.