Our garden was surrounded by other gardens. On one side was the garden of a jovial master-joiner who loved to tease me. Even now I cannot understand how he could take his own life, as he did, later on. Once when I was a very little boy I had said to him over the hedge, with a precociously knowing look: "Neighbor, it is very cold!" and he never grew weary of repeating this remark to me, especially in the hot summer months.
Next to the garden of the joiner was that of the minister. It was inclosed by a high board fence, which prevented us children from looking over, but not from peeping through cracks and chinks. This afforded us infinite pleasure in the springtime when the beautiful strange flowers which filled the garden, came up again; but we trembled lest the minister should catch sight of us. We felt an unbounded reverence for him, which may have been inspired by his serious, severe, sallow face and his cold glance, as much as by his position and his functions, which seemed to us very imposing, such as, for example, walking behind the hearses, which always passed in front of our house. Whenever he looked over at us, as he occasionally did, we stopped playing and crept back into the house.
On another side an old well formed the boundary between our garden and the next. Shaded by trees and deep, as it was, with its rickety wooden roof covered with dark green moss, I never could look at it without a shudder. The longish quadrangle was closed by the garden of a dairy-man who was treated with the greatest respect by the whole neighborhood on account of the cows which he owned—and by the courtyard of a dresser of white leather, the most ill-humored of men. My mother always said of him that he looked as if he had swallowed one person and was just about to catch another by the head and take the first bite.
This was the atmosphere in which I lived as a child. It could not have been more restricted, and yet its impressions live on to the present day. Still the merry joiner looks at me over the hedge, the morose minister over the board fence. Still I see the strapping, corpulent dairy-man standing in his doorway, with his hands in his pockets, in token that they are not empty; still I look upon the dresser of white leather, with his bilious yellow face, to whom the mere red cheeks of a child were an insult, and who always seemed more terrible to me when he began to smile. Still I sit upon the little bench under the spreading pear-tree, and while refreshing myself in its shade, wait to see if a fruit, prematurely ripened by worm-holes, will not drop from its sun-lit top branches; and the well, the roof of which had to be repaired every little while, still inspires me with a feeling of dread.
[Illustration: GUNTHER AND HAGEN BROUGHT CAPTIVE BEFORE KRIEMHILD From the Painting by Schnorr von Carolsfeld]
II
My father was of a very serious disposition in his home, outside of it he was gay and talkative. He had acquired a reputation on account of his talent for telling fairy-tales; many years passed, however, before we heard them with our own ears. He could not bear to hear us laugh or make any noise; on the other hand he was fond of singing hymns, and indeed worldly songs as well, in the twilight of the long winter evenings, and loved to have us join in. My mother was excessively good-hearted and somewhat quick-tempered; the most touching kindliness shone from her blue eyes; when she felt passionately agitated, she began to cry. I was her favorite; my brother, two years younger than I, was my father's favorite. The reason was that I resembled my mother, and my brother seemed to resemble my father, though this was by no means the case, as was proved later.
My parents lived on the best of terms with one another so long as there was bread in the house. There were painful scenes at times when it was lacking. This seldom occurred in summer, but often happened in winter when work was scarce. Although these scenes never degenerated into violence, I cannot remember the time when they were not more terrible to me than anything else, and for that very reason I may not pass over them in silence.
I can remember an unpleasant incident of another kind which took place in my earliest childhood. It is the first that I recollect and it may have happened in my third year, if not in my second. I can tell about it without offending against the sacred memory of my parents; for whoever sees in it anything out of the ordinary is not acquainted with the lower classes. My father when following his trade generally had his meals provided by the persons for whom he worked. Then we at home, like all other families, ate our usual midday meal. Occasionally, however, he had to furnish his own food, in return for extra wages. Then dinner was deferred, and in order to ward off hunger a simple bread and butter sandwich was partaken of at twelve o'clock. It was an economical arrangement for the little household which could not afford two large meals. On one such day my mother baked some pancakes, certainly more to please us children than to satisfy any desire of her own. We ate them with the utmost relish and promised not to say anything about them to our father in the evening. When he arrived we had already gone to bed and were sound asleep. I do not know whether he may have been accustomed to find us still up and the contrary event made him suspect that the rule of the household had been broken. Suffice it to say he awoke me, petted me, took me in his arms and asked me what I had eaten. "Pancakes," I answered, sleepily. He then proceeded to reproach my mother with it. She had nothing to say, and placed his food before him, throwing me a glance, however, which foretold evil to come. When we were alone again the next day, she, to use her own expression, gave me with a rod a forcible lesson in silence. At other times, on the contrary, she inculcated in me the strictest love of truth. One would be inclined to think that these contradictions might have had disastrous consequences. It was not the case and never will be the case, for life entails many other similar ones, and human nature can adapt itself even to them. Certain it is that I acquired one piece of information which it is better for a child to acquire late or not at all, namely, that at times the father wishes one thing, and the mother another.
I do not remember that I really went hungry in my earliest childhood, as I did later, but I do recollect that my mother sometimes had to content herself with looking on while we children ate, and did so gladly, because otherwise we could not have had our fill.