“Oh! yes, I am quite sure he does,” replied her friend. “He declares that for love of me he will always be good.”
“Well, although ’tis not the best reason he might have for keeping his faith, yet some fish are held by a very slender line,” added the other, smiling. “So, thank God! he loves you.”
Thus conversing about Ulrich and Tyrol, and listening to the merry songs of the birds, the girls continued their walk. It was dusk when they got home. And what a snug little home it is!
But before we enter let us call the reader’s attention to three letters, “C M B,” chalked upon the door. They stand for Caspar, Melchior, Balthasar, the names which tradition gives to the wise men who came with gifts for the infant Saviour; and beneath the letters, and likewise marked in chalk, are three crosses and the year of our Lord.[[46]]
But now open the door and see how clean and neat everything is within. Yonder quaint-looking closet, standing between the two bed-rooms, albeit a century old and more, shows no sign of age; not a particle of dust rests upon it, not a spider’s web. The floor, too, is well scrubbed and polished, and looks all the better for having no carpet. In one of the windows are a couple of flower-pots, wherein are blooming two magnificent roses; while in the other window is a cage containing a nightingale. The bird at this moment begins to warble a sweet melody to greet Walburga, who is its mistress; while Moida, who also has a pet, finds it no easy matter to prevent Caro—a black, shaggy poodle—from tearing her in pieces for joy.
“Poor, dear Caro!” she said, holding him at arm’s length, “the horrid police would kill you, if they knew you were alive, and so I must keep you shut up within doors. Poor, dear Caro!” And this was true. In Munich aged dogs are not allowed to live; and Caro is toothless and nearly blind. But his heart is as young as ever; and his tail—oh! how much expression there is in a dog’s tail. How it wags to and fro! How it whisks up and down! How it thumps on the floor! Moida sometimes, for fun, would try to hold fast Caro’s tail while she spoke endearing words to him. But in vain. No sooner would she open her lips than away it went, ten times quicker than the pendulum of a clock, and as impossible to clench as if ’twere a bit of machinery driven back and forth by steam-power.
Nothing could better show the difference between Walburga and her friend than a glance at the different books which each of them reads. In Walburga’s sleeping-chamber, on a table close by her bed, lie two well-fingered volumes: one is Master Eckhart, the Father of German Mystics; the other is Blessed Henry Suso’s Little Book of Eternal Wisdom. For a number of years these have been well-nigh her constant companions, and she knows them almost by heart. More than once have they inspired her to renewed effort when she felt disheartened, as well as lightened the cross which afflicted her. “The swiftest steed to carry us to perfection is suffering,” says Eckhart; and these words Walburga often repeats to herself.
But in Moida’s apartment, instead of the mystics we find a song-book, an arithmetic, and the Regensburg book of cookery.
While Caro was frisking about and yelping, the nightingale, as we have already observed, was warbling a song for its mistress, who stood listening with a pensive air.
“You shall never die in a cage,” she murmured presently. “’Tis a shame to keep you even one day a prisoner.”