Poor little Walter was soon driven from the heaven which the praise of his teachers and the smiles of the venerable pastor had prepared for his heart. Conrad told his mother that Walter had made use of the meanest and most disgusting arts of hypocrisy and flattery to win the love of the teacher, and that it was entirely through unjust partiality that he had obtained the prizes, which all the boys in the school knew he did not deserve.
"Mean hypocrite!" cried the angry woman, "I'll teach you to play your low tricks upon us, you detestable viper! Do you really think I'll suffer you thus to impose upon my son, and not punish you for it? I don't care whether the schoolmaster or the parson does it, but it's infamous and scandalous that a miserable foundling, whom nobody knows anything about, nor in what jail or penitentiary his parents may now be stuck, should be preferred to the decent children of honest people!"
Walter's cheeks glowed like fire; he pressed his hands spasmodically together, while the lightning fairly flashed from his lustrous eye as he gazed angrily at the irritating woman. She well knew that there was nothing she could have said or done which would have wounded him as deeply as this stigma cast upon his unknown parents.
"Only look, mother!" said the malicious Conrad. "Look! Walter stares at you as if he were going to eat you up! He scorns and defies you, mother!"
"Does he? O, I know how to break him of that! I'll beat the life out of him, or I'll break his defiant temper!" said she, exasperated to perfect fury, while she slapped him again and again, with all her strength, in his face. "March into the room, sir! march! You sha'n't leave the house to-day! You sha'n't go to the school festival at all, sir! You are no fit companion for honest people's sons, you beggar's brat! The pastor shall know before the day is over what a mean, hypocritical, wicked, ungrateful boy you are!"
No expression altered in the lines of Walter's young face; he was so accustomed to abuse that he had long borne it with an air of calm and cold defiance. Without making any reply, he went quietly into the room, as he had been ordered, and concealed the rage boiling in his heart under an appearance of perfect indifference. He soon after took up his violin, and, as he played, peace and tranquillity returned to the tortured little breast.
Twilight began to darken into night, and the children had not yet returned from the school festival. Walter had played until he was really tired, had put his violin down upon the table, and, with his head resting upon his arm, had sunk to sleep. When the tailor, half intoxicated, returned home, the customary scene of quarrelling was renewed. Walter was awakened by the noise; he listened, and heard the falling of the blows which the strong and vigorous woman was heaping upon the fragile little man whom he loved, and who had never said an unkind word to him since his entrance into the family. His heart bled for the poor tailor, and all the bitterness in his nature was aroused against the wicked woman who treated them both so cruelly.
"Wait a moment, wicked woman!" he murmured. "Conrad is not in the house to help you, and the father shall have the best of it to-day!"
With one rapid bound he was in the room, and fastened his arms round the feet of Mother Bopp, so that she might be thrown down, and thus forced to release her husband. She was surprised for a moment when she felt herself thus suddenly caught, but seeing immediately that it was only Walter, she tried to push him away with her feet. With her left hand she grasped the little tailor by the throat, while with her right she brandished the yardstick. Again and again she struck him violently over the head and shoulders with it. Alas! Walter could endure it no longer! He seized the round and powerful arm, and fastened his sharp, snow-white teeth firmly in the solid flesh. She screamed loudly with the sudden pain, the yardstick sunk from her right hand, the left loosened its grasp from the throat of the tailor, and wreathed itself in the dark locks of the unfortunate boy. The tailor fell upon the floor, muttering words which were quite unintelligible. Walter had pulled his teeth out of the athletic arm, and the blood dropped down upon his head. He looked at it unaffrighted, nay, rather with a triumphant expression, and said,—