The knight had always wished to act rightly according to his convictions, consequently when some few years before this time—that is, a short time before he paid the visit to Worms, where he first heard Dr Luther speak—he had been urged by Father Nicholas and his wife to allow his youngest daughter Ava, to become, as they called it, the spouse of Christ, or, in other words, to enter a nunnery; she raising no objection, he consented, believing, as he had been assured, that her eternal happiness would thus be secured, and that she would be better provided for than becoming the wife of one of the rough, fierce, warlike, beer-drinking knights, who alone were likely to seek her hand. The knight, however, often sighed as he thought of his fair blooming little Ava shut up in the monastery of Nimptsch, and wished to have her back again to sing and talk to him and to cheer his heart with her bright presence, but he dared not to express his feelings to any of his family, as he knew that they would be considered rank heresy. Often he would have liked to write to his dear child, but, in the first place, he was but a poor scribe, and in the second, he guessed that any epistle he might send would be opened by the lady superior, and its contents scanned before delivery, and adverse comments made, if it was not withheld altogether. So little Ava stayed on at the convent, embroidering priests’ dresses and other ornaments for churches, and attending mass. Whether or not she ever felt like a wild bird shut up in a cage, wishing to be free, he could not say; he thought it possible. She was wont once to go about the Castle singing like a bright happy bird, not shut up in a cage then. He wondered whether she sang now. He was sure that the nun’s dress could not become her as the bright-coloured bodice and skirt she wore. He wondered, too, whether she ever went out now, as she was accustomed to do when at home, among the cottagers in the neighbourhood, with a basket of food and simples, and distributed them to the sick and needy with gentle words, which won their hearts, or whether when mendicants came to the gate she stopped and listened to their tales of suffering, relieved them when she could, and seldom failed to drop a tear of sympathy for their griefs, which went like balm to the hearts of many. He opined that the high-born ladies of the monastery of Nimptsch would scarcely condescend thus to employ their time. They undoubtedly were brides of Christ, but, as the lady abbess had once remarked, it was the business of His more humble spouses to imitate His example in that manner. After the Knight had been thinking in this style, when he descended into the hall he was invariably accused of being sullen and out of temper. Not that he had any fault to find with his good Frau Margaret, or with his daughter Laneta. They were excellent, pious women in their way. They had embroidered five altar-cloths, seven robes of silk for the Virgin Mary, and three for Saint Perpetua, Saint Agatha, and Saint Anne; they had performed several severe penances for somewhat trifling faults; not a piece of meat had passed their lips during Lent; and they had fasted on each Friday and other canonical days throughout the year. Alms they gave whenever they could get money from the Knight for the purpose, and doles of bread to the poor with stated regularity; indeed, they felt sure that they would richly have merited heaven, even with a less amount of good deeds. Still they were desirous of making security doubly secure.
When, therefore, in the year 1517, that is, before Ava went to the convent, Dr John Tetzel, prior of the Dominicans, apostolic commissary and inquisitor, set up his pulpit and booth in the neighbouring village for the sale of indulgences, they had been among the crowds who had flocked to his market. Near him was erected a tall red cross, with the arms of the Pope suspended from it.
“Indulgences, dear friends,” he exclaimed, when he saw a large mob collected round him, “are the most precious and noble of God’s gifts. See this cross; it has as much efficacy as the cross of Christ. Come, and I will give you letters, all properly sealed, by which even the sins which you intend to commit may be pardoned. I would not change my privileges for those of Saint Peter in heaven, for I have saved more souls by my indulgences than the apostle by his sermons. There is no sin so great that an indulgence cannot remit; only pay, pay well, and all will be forgiven. Only think, for a florin you may introduce into Paradise, not a vile coin, but an immortal soul, without its running any risk. But, more than this, indulgences avail not only for the living, but for the dead. For that repentance is not even necessary. Priest! noble! merchant! wife! youth! maiden! do you not hear your parents and your other friends who are dead, and who cry from the bottom of the abyss, ‘We are suffering horrible torments! A trifling alms would deliver us; you can give it, and you will not.’” Then Tetzel had told them how Saint Peter and Saint Paul’s bodies were rotting at Rome because the Pope, pious as he was, could not afford to build a proper edifice to shelter them from the weather without their help. “Bring—bring—bring!” he shouted, in conclusion.
Dame Margaret and her daughters were greatly moved by these appeals, though little Ava thought the monk need not have shouted so loudly. The dame, who had just before persuaded her lord to give her a good sum of money, bought a large supply of indulgences, not only for herself and daughters, but for the Knight, who, she secretly believed, required them far more than they did, because he never performed penances, made quick work at confession, and regularly grumbled on fast-days; besides, she could not tell of what sins he might have been guilty in his youth. She did not tell him what she had done, but she felt much more happy than before to think that they would now all go to heaven together. She would even, in her zeal, have made further purchases, had not Father Nicholas expostulated with her, observing that it would be much better if she paid the money to enable him to say masses, which would prove quite as efficacious; and, besides, be spent in Germany instead of going to Rome. She was greatly horrified, some time after this, to hear the Knight inveigh furiously against Tetzel and his indulgences, and call him an arch rogue and impostor. Of course, on this, she did not tell him how she had spent his money, lest he might make some unpleasant reflections on the subject; besides, she suspected that he would not appreciate the advantages she had secured for him. But this was after Ava had been sent away to Nimptsch.
Chapter Four.
Eric, now a close prisoner in the Castle of Schweinsburg, felt very indignant at the treatment he had received, and apprehensive of the consequences of his capture by his father’s enemy. Though the fierce Baron would not have scrupled to put an ordinary man to death, he did not think he would venture to injure him or his person further than keeping him shut up. It was on his father’s account that he was most anxious, as he guessed that the Baron had seized him for the sake of enforcing his unjust claims on Count von Lindburg, and that unless these were yielded to, he himself might be kept a prisoner for years. Who indeed was to say what had become of him? The Baron and his retainers were the only people cognisant of his capture, except little Platter, and of course he would have run away, and must have been too frightened to be able to give any clear account of the matter. It would be, of course, supposed that he and Hans had been set on by robbers, of whom there were many prowling about the country, and been murdered in some wood, and their bodies buried or thrown into a pond.
“Patience, my dear young master,” answered Hans, when Eric had thus expressed his apprehensions; “we are in a difficulty, of that there is no doubt, but I have been in a worse one and escaped out of it. Once your honoured father and I were captured by the Saracens, and we fully expected to lose our heads, but the very last night we thought that we should be alive on earth we had a file conveyed to us in a loaf of bread by a little damsel who had taken a fancy to his handsome countenance, and we were able to let ourselves down from the window of our prison. A couple of fleet horses were in readiness, and we were away and in Christian territory before the morning dawned. I have been praying heartily to the Holy Virgin and to the Saints, and I have no doubt that they will help us.”
“I have not the slightest hope of any such thing, my good Hans,” said Eric, who had already imbibed many Protestant opinions. “It is God in heaven who hears our prayers. If He will not attend to them, no one else will, for He loves us more than human beings can, whether they are in this world or in another. He often, however, works out His plans for our good by what appear to us such small means that we fail to perceive them. I have read in the Greek Testament that ‘Not a sparrow falls to the ground but that He knows it; and that even the very hairs of our head are all numbered.’ Is it likely, therefore, that He would employ any intermediate agents between Himself and man, except the one great, well-beloved intercessor, His only Son. Would He even allow them to interfere if they were to offer their services? Our Lord Himself, when, on one occasion, His mother ventured to interfere in a work He was about, rebuked her, though with perfect respect, with these remarkable words, ‘Woman, what have I to do with thee?’ Again, when on the cross, He recommended her to the care of His well-beloved disciple, Saint John; he said, ‘Behold thy mother!’ ‘Woman, behold thy Son!’ O Hans, I wish that you and all the people of our fatherland, could read the Bible itself in our own tongue, you would than see how different is the religion we have been taught by the ‘pfaffs’ to that which Jesus Christ came on earth to announce to sinful man. It will be happy for our country should that day ever come, because then the people will be able to understand on what their religion is grounded, and be able to refute the false arguments of those who oppose it. There is a certain young professor at Wittemburg whose works I have read with peculiar delight, as he seems, even more than Dr Martin impressed by a sense of the love God has for man, and His willingness to hear all who go to Him in the name of His dear Son.”