"Both love and faith have fled for aye,
Like chaff by wild winds swept away--
Naught, naught is left me here below
Save keen remorse and endless woe.
"No home have I on the wide earth--
A ragged beggar fare I forth,
In midnight gloom, by tempests met,
Broken my staff, my star has set.
"With raiment tattered by the sleet,
My brain scorched by the sun's fierce heat,
My heart torn by a human hand,
A shadow--I glide through the land.
"Homeward I turn, white is my hair,
Of love and faith my life is bare--
Whoe'er beholds me makes the sign
Of the cross--God save a fate like mine."
So the melancholy melody echoed through the darkness of the night, from peak to peak along the road from the Griess to Ammergau. And wherever it sounded, the birds flew startled from the trees deeper into the forest, the deer fled into the thickets and listened, the child in the cradle started and wept in its sleep. The dogs in the lonely courtyards barked loudly.
"That was no human voice, it was a shot deer or an owl"--the peasants said to their trembling wives, listening for a time to the ghostly, wailing notes dying faintly away till all was still once more--and the spectre had passed. But when morning dawned and the time came when the matin bells drove all evil spirits away the song, too, ceased, and only its prophecy came true. Whoever recognized in the emaciated man, with hollow eyes and cheeks, the Christus-Freyer of Ammergau, doubtless made the sign of the cross in terror, exclaiming: "Heaven preserve us!" But the lighter it grew, the farther he plunged into the forest. He was ashamed to be seen! His gait grew more and more feeble, his garments more shabby by his long walk in the rain and wind.
He still had a few pennies in his pocket--the exact sum he possessed when he left Ammergau. He was keeping them for a night's lodgings, which he must take once during the twenty-four hours. He could have reached Ammergau easily by noon--but he did not want to enter it in broad day as a ragged beggar. So he rested by day and walked at night.
At a venerable old inn, the "Shield," on the road from Steingaden to Ammergau, he asked one of the servants if he might lie a few hours on the straw to rest. The latter hesitated before granting permission--the man looked so doubtful. At last he said: "Well, I won't refuse you, but see that you carry nothing off when you go away from here."
Freyer made no reply. The wrath which had made him hurl the lackey from the countess' door, no longer surged within him--now it was his home which was punishing him, speaking to him in her rude accents--let her say what she would, he accepted it as a son receives a reproof from a mother. He hung his drenched coat to dry in the sun, which now shone warmly again, then slipped into the barn and lay down on the hay. A refreshing slumber embraced him, poverty and humility took the sorrowing soul into their maternal arms, as a poor man picks up the withered blossom the rich one has carelessly flung aside, and carrying it home makes it bloom again.
Rest, weary soul! You no longer need to stretch and distort the noble proportions of your existence to fit them to relations to which they were not born. You need be nothing more than you are, a child of the people, suckled by the sacred breast of nature and can always return there without being ashamed of it. Poverty and lowliness extend their protecting mantle over you and hide you from the looks of scorn and contempt which rend your heart.