In the year 1819 the place had ten thousand inhabitants; today it has a hundred and fifty more. It lay and lies in a wide valley, surrounded by hills and mountains from which forests extend down to the town limits. In spite of its name it is no longer new; with difficulty it has maintained its existence through wild centuries, and now enjoys a quiet, sleepy old age. It has gradually given up the hope of ever attaining to bigger things and does not feel less comfortable on that account. However, in the little State to which it belongs it is after all a factor, and the government is considerate of it. The sound of its church-bells made a pleasant impression on the wayfarer, as he came out of the woods on the nearest height; and when the sun just happened to shine in the windows of the two churches and of the houses the same wayfarer seldom thought that all is not gold that glitters and that the sound of bells, fertile fields, green meadows and a pretty little town in the valley are far from being enough to produce an idyl. Amyntas, Palaemon, Daphnis, Doris and Chloe were often able to make life down in the valley very unpleasant for one another. But lads courted and lasses consented and, taken all in all, they went through life quite comfortably, to which the fact that the necessaries of life were not unattainably dear, probably contributed. The devil take dear old Gessner with all his rustic idyls when fruit and must don't turn out well and milk and honey are rare in Arcadia!
But we shall have occasion again here and there to drop a few words about all this, and if not it is of no consequence. For the present we must turn back to the young Arcadian Hans Unwirrsch and see in what way he makes himself at home in life.
The shoemaker's widow was truly an uneducated woman. She could scarcely read and write, her philosophic education had been entirely neglected, she cried easily and willingly. Born in darkness, she remained in darkness, nursed her child, stood him on his feet, taught him to walk; put him on his feet for life and taught him to walk firmly for the rest of his life. That deserves great credit and the most educated mother cannot do more for her child.
In a low dark room, into which little fresh air and still less sun penetrated, Hans awakened to consciousness, and in one respect this was good; later he was not too much afraid of the caverns in which far the greater part of humanity that participates in the blessings of civilization, must spend its life. Throughout his life he took light and air for what they are, articles of luxury which fortune gives or refuses and which she seems better pleased to refuse than to give.
The living room which looked out on the street and which had also been Master Anton's workshop was kept unchanged in its former condition. With anxious care his widow watched over it to see that none of her blessed husband's tools was moved from its place. Uncle Grünebaum had indeed wanted to buy all the superfluous stock in trade for a very fair price, but Mrs. Christine could not make up her mind to part with any of it. In all her leisure hours she sat in her usual place beside the low cobbler's table and in the evening, as we know, she could knit or sew or spell out the words in her large hymn-book only by the light of the glass-globe.
The poor woman was now obliged to toil miserably in order to provide an honest living for herself and her child; in the little bedroom, the windows of which looked out on the yard, she lay awake many a night, worrying, while Hans Unwirrsch in his father's big bedstead dreamt of the large slices of bread and butter and the rolls enjoyed by happier neighbors' children. Wise Master Grünebaum did what he could for his relatives; but his trade did not yield to him such blessings as one might expect from copy-book maxims; he was much too fond of making much too long speeches at the "Red Ram" and his customers preferred to trust him with the cure of a pair of sick shoes rather than to order a new pair from him. He had hard work to keep his own head above water;—but he was not backward with advice, which he gave willingly and in large quantities and we regret to have to add that, as is not seldom the case, the quantity usually did not stand at all in the proper relation to the quality. Auntie Schlotterbeck, although far from being as wise as Master Grünebaum, was more practical and it was on her advice that Mrs. Christine became a washerwoman, who rose in the morning between two and three o'clock and in the evening at eight, dead tired and aching all over, came home to satisfy the first, the physical, hunger of her child and to translate his dreams into reality.
Hans Unwirrsch retained dark, vague, curious memories of this period in his life and later told his nearest friends about them. From his earliest childhood he slept lightly and so he was often wakened by the glimmer of the sulphur match with which his mother lit her lamp in the cold dark winter night, in order to get ready for her early walk to work. He lay warm among his pillows and did not move until his mother bent over him to see whether the click-clack of her slippers had not wakened the little sleeper. Then he twined his arms about her neck and laughed, received a kiss and the admonition to go to sleep again quick, as it wouldn't be day for a long time yet. He followed this advice either at once, or not until later. In the latter case he watched the burning lamp, his mother and the shadows on the wall through half-closed eyelids.
Curiously enough nearly all these early memories were of winter time. There was a ring of vapor round the flame of the lamp and the breath was drawn in a cloud toward the light; the frozen window-panes shimmered, it was bitterly cold, and with the comfort of his warm safe bed there was mixed for the little watcher the dread of the bitter cold from which he had to hide his little nose under the cover.
He could not understand why his mother got up so early while it was so dark and cold and while such mad black shadows passed by on the wall, nodded, straightened themselves up and bent down. His ideas of the places where his mother went were still less clearly defined; according to the mood in which he happened to be he imagined these places to be more or less pleasant and with his imaginings were mixed all sorts of details out of fairy-tales and fragments of conversation that he had heard from grown people and which, in these vague moments between sleeping and waking, took on more and more variegated colors and mixed with one another.
At last his mother had finished dressing and bent once more over the child's bed. Once more he received a kiss, all kinds of good admonitions and tempting promises so that he should lie still, should not cry, should go to sleep again soon. To these were added the assurance that morning and Auntie Schlotterbeck would come soon; the lamp was blown out, the room sank back into the deepest darkness, the door squeaked, his mother's steps grew fainter;—sleep took possession of him again quickly and when he woke the second time Auntie Schlotterbeck was generally sitting by his bed and the fire was crackling in the stove in the next room.