Encircled with this fair retinue of dreams, he arrived at the gate of his native town, without observing it, till the watchful guardian of public tranquillity let down his beam in front of him, and questioned the stranger, Who he was, what business had brought him to the town, and whether his intentions were peaceable or not? The mettled Kurt gave ready answer; and now rode along the streets at a soft pace, lest his horse's tramp might too soon betray the secret of his coming. He fastened his beast to the door-ring, and stole, without noise, into the court of his dwelling, where the old chained house-dog first received him with joyful bark. Yet he wondered somewhat at the sight of two lively chub-faced children, like the Angels in the Gleichen bed-tester, frisking to and fro upon the area. He had no time to speculate on the phenomenon, for the mistress of the house, in her carefulness, stept out of doors to see who was there. Alas, what a difference between ideal and original! The tooth of Time had, in these seven years, been mercilessly busy with her charms; yet the leading features of her physiognomy had been in so far spared, that to the eye of the critic she was still recognisable, like the primary stamp of a worn coin. Joy at meeting somewhat veiled this want of beauty from the mettled Kurt, and the thought that sorrow for his absence had so furrowed the smooth face of his consort put him into a sentimental mood; he embraced her with great cordiality, and said: "Welcome, dear wife of my heart! Forget all thy sorrow. See, I am still alive; thou hast got me back!"
The pious Rebecca answered this piece of tenderness by a heavy thwack on the short ribs, which thwack made the mettled Kurt stagger to the wall; then raised loud shrieks, and shouted to her servants for help against violence, and scolded and stormed like an Infernal Fury. The loving husband excused this unloving reception, on the score of his virtuous spouse's delicacy, which his bold kiss of welcome had offended, she not knowing who he was; and tore his lungs with bawling to undo this error; but his preaching was to deaf ears, and he soon found that there was no misunderstanding in the case. "Thou shameless varlet," cried she, in shrieking treble, "after wandering seven long years up and down the world, following thy wicked courses with other women, dost thou think that I will take thee back to my chaste bed? Off with thee! Did not I publicly cite thee at three church-doors, and wert not thou, for thy contumacious non-appearance, declared to be dead as mutton? Did not the High Court authorise me to put aside my widow's chair, and marry Bürgermeister Wipprecht? Have not we lived six years as man and wife, and received these children as a blessing of our wedlock? And now comes the Marpeace to perplex my house! Off with thee! Pack, I say, this instant, or the Amtmann shall crop thy ears, and put thee in the pillory, to teach such vagabonds, that run and leave their poor tender wives." This welcome from his once-loved helpmate was a sword's-thrust through the heart of the mettled Kurt; but the gall poured itself as a defence into his blood.
"O thou faithless strumpet!" answered he; "what holds me that I do not take thee and thy bastards, and wring your necks this moment? Dost thou recollect thy promise, and the oath thou hast so often sworn in the trustful marriage-bed, that death itself should not part thee from me? Didst thou not engage, unasked, that should thy soul fly up directly from thy mouth to Heaven, and I were roasting in Purgatory, thou wouldst turn again from Heaven's gate, and come down to me, to fan cool air upon me till I were delivered from the flames? Devil broil thy false tongue, thou gallows carrion!"
Though the Prima Donna of Ordruff was endowed with a glib organ, which, in the faculty of cursing, yielded no whit to that of the tumultuous pretender, she did not judge it good to enter into farther debate with him, but gave her menials an expressive sign; and, in an instant, man and maid seized hold of the mettled Kurt, and brevi manu ejected his body from the house; in which act of domestic jurisdiction Dame Rebecca herself bore a hand with the besom, and so swept away this discarded helpmate from the premises. The mettled Kurt, half-broken on the wheel, then mounted his horse, and dashed full gallop down the street, which he had rode along so gingerly some minutes before.
As his blood, when he was on the road home, began to cool, he counted loss and gain, and found himself not ill contented with the balance; for he found, that except the comfort of having cool air fanned upon his soul in Purgatory after death, his smart amounted to nothing. He never more returned to Ordruff, but continued with the Count at Gleichen all his life, and was an eye-witness of the most incredible occurrence, that two ladies shared the love of one man without quarrelling or jealousy, and this even under one bed-tester! The fair Angelica continued childless, yet she loved and watched over her associate's children as if they had been her own, and divided with Ottilia the care of their education. In the trefoil of this happy marriage, she was the first leaf which faded away in the autumn of life. Countess Ottilia soon followed her; and the afflicted widower, now all too lonely in his large castle and wide bed, lingered but a few months longer. The firmly-established arrangement of these noble spouses in the marriage-bed through life, was maintained unaltered after their death. They rest all three in one grave, in front of the Gleichen Altar, in St. Peter's Church at Erfurt, on the Hill; where their place of sepulture is still to be seen, overlaid with a stone, on which the noble group are sculptured after the life. To the right lies the Countess Ottilia, with a mirror in her hand, the emblem of her praiseworthy prudence; on the left Angelica, adorned with a royal crown; and in the midst, the Count reposing on his coat-of-arms, the lion-leopard.[27] Their famous triple bedstead is still preserved as a relic in the old Castle; it stands in the room called the Junkernkammer, or Knight's Chamber; and a splinter of it, worn by way of busk in a lady's bodice, is said to have the virtue of dispelling every movement of jealousy from her heart.
[27] A plate of this tombstone may be seen in Falkenstein's Analecta Nordgaviensia.—M.