She had written to our friend Cremer at Schweinfurth to send her a cook, thinking, that many women might be found anxious to obtain some shelter among those unfortunates who had been made destitute and homeless by the destruction of that city;—"ex miseris illis pauperculis et vagis Suinfordiensibus." But another friend, only designated by the initial N.,[128] writes from that misery–stricken place, to say, that he finds it wholly impossible to send her either an old woman, or a girl,—"anum aut ancillam." All at Schweinfurth are either dead or dying. "The mother of your former maid Kungunga would come, but is laid up with fever. Possibly she may come, should she recover."
We find our old acquaintance Barbara come to the surface again, after the cataclysm which had submerged so much that was more valuable. Barbara was willing to return to her old mistress; but then those intolerable "mores" do not seem to have been mended by all that had come and gone since the quiet Schweinfurth days. And this proposal, even in Olympia's pressing need, seems to have been rejected. Though, as she writes to Andreas Campanus, the schoolmaster at Mossbach, she would rather be her own maid, than put up with any such as were to be found at Heidelberg.
Are there no ladies recently come from their virtuous shires to establish a home in the great Babylon, who can sympathise with her? Heidelberg was the seat of a brilliant court, and a large university. And, doubtless, the abigails partook of the vices and corruptions incidental to both these phases of social life. The good "ludimagister" of Mossbach would have sent Olympia his own maid under escort of the postman, "cum tabellario," but that she too was down with sickness, as indeed were also all the family of poor Andreas.
So difficult a matter was it to come by an eligible maid–of–all–work in the year 1554! These domestic perplexities will, no doubt, be to readers of her own sex, the one touch of nature that makes all the world akin. But it may seem strange to them that Mrs. Grünthler ("Domina Grünthlera," as friend N. at Schweinfurth, writing on these household matters, alone of all her other correspondents, addresses her) did not communicate with other mistresses of families on such matters, instead of always with the gentlemen. It must be remembered, however, that Olympia understood no German, and the ladies around her no Latin. Unlike her friend Francisca, John Sinapi's Italian wife, she had never thought it worth her while to acquire the language of her adopted country; betraying, one might fancy, thereby, some little pedantic affectation of classicality, the lees of the old Grecian–virgin nature. The result was, that when she wanted to speak of the price of a gown, she had to talk unintelligible stuff about "sestercium nummorum;" and when she wanted a maid, could only seek assistance from bearded doctors as classical as herself.
HER CHARITY.
Still, let any reader of an un–hero–worshipping turn of mind take notice, that our Olympia is no subject for quizzing of his, on the score of any such little eccentricity of the spectacled Minerva kind. A passage in the letter of N. of Schweinfurth proves,[129] that the difficulties of her ciceronian idiom did not prevent her from visiting, and with her small means comforting the misery in the poor–house at Schweinfurth, during those fearful days, when every man's thought was for himself; though she did call the place a "Zenodochia." And when the "res angusta domi" was pressing her so hard, that Grünthler had to borrow money to meet the expenses of their first establishment at Heidelberg, she still found means to think of the poor she had left in miserable Schweinfurth. "If there is anyone in your neighbourhood," writes poor Grünthler to his friend the schoolmaster at Mossbach, "who could lend me twenty golden florins, I would send him a gold chain as a security, and would name a day for the repayment of the loan." Yet it is about the same time that "N." writes to say, that the poor she used to care for, had been all dispersed at the time of the sack and burning of the city, and it was impossible to know what had become of them. But he promises that the money sent shall be distributed in charity according to her wish.
Yet despite small means, past losses, and domestic troubles, a happy career of usefulness and honour might still have been before Grünthler and his highly gifted wife, if only the latter had retained sufficient vital force to have rallied from the Schweinfurth miseries. But the physician had the infinite pain of seeing her fade and perish daily, amid the manifold manifestations of the high place she occupied in the esteem and regard of her contemporaries.
The Elector, failing in his wish that she should reflect a lustre on his University by occupying one of its chairs, had wished to attach her to his court, as lady of honour to the Electress. But Olympia had had enough of courts! In a letter written in the year 1554 to her old friend and playmate Anne of Este, then Duchess of Guise, after regretting their total and inevitable separation, and wishing that she could be near her, she adds; "Not that I would again pass my life in a court; for I might have done so here had I wished it."
The same feeling is expressed in a letter to John Sinapi, written during the first days of her residence at Heidelberg. He had proposed again confiding his daughter Theodora to her care. Her presence will be in every respect agreeable, Olympia replies. Send her at once, but not with any idea of her frequenting the court; "for I purpose spending my days far from courts." But she will do all she can for her; will take her sometimes to the Countess of Erbach, where she may become acquainted with the three charming daughters of that excellent woman. She must bring her bed with her, "for we are unable at present to buy more beds, and they are extremely dear here." ... "Salute from me all your family, and the licentiate Faius, if he has ceased to be a monk."
In another letter to Chilian Sinapi, written about the same time, she regrets her inability to give assistance to some persons whom he had recommended to her. She had already charged herself with the keep of some utterly destitute poor; would fain do so for all the ruined unfortunates of Schweinfurth, were it possible. Poor Andreas Rosarius, the schoolmaster, had written to her too to say, that he was in great distress, and asked her whether there would be any chance of his finding any lessons in Heidelberg. But Olympia could give him no encouragement. There was no opening for a teacher in Heidelberg. It would seem that "professions were too full" in the world before the nineteenth century, as well as servants troublesome.