There is an old story of a king of the dwarfs whose wife died in giving birth to the heir to the throne. This king chose a poor woman from the human race to be his son's wet-nurse, and as the woman would not come of her own free will the little dwarf-folk fetched her one night and brought her by force into the underground kingdom of the gnomes. The woman was not to be allowed to return till she had fulfilled her office of nurse to the little dwarf prince, and she lived a year in exile far from her people under the spell of the strange uncanny folks in their realm of ore and earth. She had to surrender all of her human nature, that gave joy to her heart in the fountain of life, by which the child was nourished--mother's milk and mother's love--but otherwise she might never be in any way human and her reward was barren gold. But she persevered, not for the sake of the gold only, but because motherly-love is so good a thing, a thing that grows with rapid increase, throwing out aerial roots that cling blindly to any support that is offered them. As the hen loves her changeling duckling, so the human foster-mother clung to her dwarf foster-child, and so the cloistered wet-nurse loved the child of the Church that had been forced upon her although she also felt that she was in a strange realm; in a realm between the grave and Heaven, quite other indeed and higher than the kingdom of the dwarfs, but inhabited too by uncanny beings outside and beyond all natural relationships, and having nothing in common with flesh and blood; and that the child to whom she was as a mother belonged to the same strange race. And the more deeply she felt this, the more painfully did her heart cling to the child to whom she had no right; that might never be truly human and that yet was nourished by the milk of a human mother. She knew not what her feeling was--it was a strange pity for the boy, so that she loved him almost better than her own child. Her own child had its natural belongings--a mother and a father--but this poor child had no one in the world. The cold and strong church-walls were its home and no human lip might ever touch it, nor its head ever rest on a soft warm human breast. And as if to compensate to it for all future privations she loved and kissed it with double fervour, and cradled it with double tenderness in her bosom.
Almost seven months had passed since the child was received into the monastery; a long time for the young and ardent wife who, as if it were a sin, could only slip away from time to time and by stealth to meet her husband behind the door where for months together the bitter wind blew the kisses away from their lips.
The cloistered nurse was sitting with her nursling at the dim little window in the east turret-room. It was a mild spring evening and death-like stillness reigned all round. Deep shadows fell on the bed of Lady Uta; one star threw its pale rays into the lonely room and they fell and were lost on the silk hangings, which Lord Ulrich had brought from the gorgeous East on his return from a pilgrimage. High up by the window something whisked by; it was a swallow flying home to the nest she had built at a giddy height on the ridge of the roof. The swallow was no better off indeed up there than Berntrudis herself--but she was free. So Berntrudis thought, and a deep sigh broke from her breast on which the children lay slumbering. In the corner, in Lady Uta's chest, she could hear the soft and regular sound of the death-tick, and the white linen hanging in the room--the linen woven by the chaste hands of the penitent Berntrudis of old--was stirred by the draught through the room to a ghostly flutter. But the warm living soul that sat by the window, looking longingly out to the distance--where human hearts might beat and not count it a sin--she was thinking neither of death nor of penance, but her pulses throbbed while she wondered how late it was and whether her husband would tap for her to-night at the convent gate? She closed her eyes and threw back her head while her full lips breathed a kiss upon the air--a message of love sent out to meet her looked-for husband. But he came seldom, he had quite run wild during this long separation; he was wandering about unsettled and discontented, she knew it well; and bitter anxiety gnawed at her heart.
Thus she waits evening after evening till her head-aches, and she throws herself wearily into bed. Then the soul of the heart-sick woman is nailed as with iron clamps to two opposite points--the present and the expected moment, and the farther these two points recede from each other the more the poor heart is torn--an invisible rack of which the tension almost cracks her heart-strings.
Out on the other side in the western wing brother Correntian was leaning his hot brow against his window panes and gazing out on the falling night. He had closed the window, for the evening breath of spring wafted up the sweet perfume of half-opened flowers, which soothed his senses--so he flung the window to. He who cannot resist the temptations of Satan in small things will never conquer him in great ones! So there he stood in the soft spring evening shut in by walls damp with the chills of winter, and he cast a reproving glance across to the eastern tower where the wet-nurse was housed. He hated this woman, he himself knew not why, but he hated her with a deadly hatred; as often as he met her--when occasionally she went down into the court-yard to fetch water or walked in the little garden with the child--he turned his eyes earthwards with horror and aversion, as if in the poor, sweet, blooming woman he beheld the snake that destroyed Paradise. He would have poisoned her with a glance, have torn her up like a root of sin if he could; he had to endure her presence, that he understood; but he could not leave her in peace in his thoughts, his hatred must needs pursue her even into her quiet turret-chamber--it dragged him nightly from his bed and forced him to go to his window, and watch and spy the strong walls that sheltered her, as the foe spies out in his antagonist's harness the joints through which he hopes to give him his death-blow. And he could see through those walls as though the stones were glass--he could always see her and loathe himself for doing so; see her wake in the morning and hold the children to her young and innocent breast--comb her long and waving hair--all--everything--he saw it all, whether he would or not. At this very moment he could see her, as she flung herself on her bed--and the kiss that her unguarded lips breathed into space.
But stay! what was that? was it a trick of his senses--the very spirit of his hatred that had taken bodily form and glided across the star-lighted court-yard to the eastern tower? He held his breath--he checked the beating of his heart.
A second figure stole along by its side and cautiously knocked at the little turret-door. The first, a sturdy, manly figure in a short tunic such as was worn by serfs, disappeared into the tower; the other--quite unmistakably the gatekeeper--glided back again and returned to the gate-house. It is the fisherman--the nurse's husband. He has bribed the gatekeeper and has stolen in to see his wife. Now--now he is up stairs, they are clasped in each other's arms.--Oh! shame and disgrace--that this should happen within the sacred precincts of the convent!
The monk was shivering as in an ague fit, all the suppressed fire in his blood broke out. Loathing, aversion--he knew not what--all the furies of hell were lashing him. He rushed raving down the rows of sleeping brethren.
"Up--get up--the cloister is defiled, do not suffer such disgrace. Up! holy Abbot--the nurse up there is receiving stolen visits by night from her husband. Is this house to be the abode of love making and shameful doings?"
The brethren flung on their cowls in hot haste; the Abbot came out in high wrath. "She promised me that she would obey the convent-rules and she is doubly guilty, if she has let in her husband and broken in on the peace of the cloister."