Johannes was in a most trying position. He still had the child in his arms, no one had taken her from him. He could not carry her away,--he dared not leave the defenceless woman to the insults of the mob. He tried to speak to the people, but in vain; they paid no attention to him. They had heard and seen the countess rattle past the church a few minutes before, and all their fury was concentrated upon her.
Johannes made a sign to the countess, who stood up in her carriage, regarding the people with contempt, to drive on instantly; but she cried, "Croyez-vous que je craigne la canaille? Je ne quitterai pas cette place sans que vous veniez avec moi!"
Then a voice shrieked, in the midst of the tumult, "Holy Mother! my child, my poor child!" and a woman rushed up, tore the little girl out of Johannes's arms, and covered her with tears and kisses.
A handsome young peasant followed her, and gazed, wringing his hands, and stupefied with horror, at his senseless child. "God in heaven! what have we done, that we should be visited so heavily?" he murmured, and would have fallen, had not two of his friends supported him.
"Her eyes should be torn out!" shrieked the mother, metamorphosed to a fury, while she pressed her child to her breast, as if to guard her darling from the danger to which she had fallen a victim. "To jail with her, abandoned, God-accursed wretch that she is!" And she kissed the child and bathed it in tears.
"Do not curse," said her husband gloomily,--"it's sinful on a holiday. God will one day," and he pointed to Käthchen, "demand this life at her hands. She will not escape punishment."
"May it soon overtake her!" sobbed the woman.
The priest now approached from the church, with all the consolation that the occasion required of him, and the schoolmaster humbly followed.
"See, see, reverend father, what they have done to my child," the mother cried, when she saw them. "And Herr Leonhardt too,--ah, she was his pet. What is to be done?"
"What a piteous sight!" said Herr Leonhardt, stooping over his little favourite, while the tears dropped from his poor eyes, and all the women wailed in chorus. But the priest felt called to utter a few solemn words of consolation in season.