Part 10

But I know my own mother would not even herself have uttered a word to keep Fritz back. When first we heard of it, and I entreated her to write and remonstrate, although the tears were streaming from her eyes, she said, "Not a word, Else, not a syllable. Shall not I give my son up freely to Him who gave him to me. God might have called him away from earth altogether when he lay smitten with the plague, and shall I grudge him to the cloister? I shall see him again," she added, "once or twice at least. When he is consecrated priest, shall I not have joy then, and see him in his white robes at the altar, and, perhaps, even receive my Creator from his hands!"

"Once or twice!--O mother!" I sobbed, "and in church, amongst hundreds of others! What pleasure will there be in that?"

"Else," she said softly, but with a firmness unusual with her, "my child, do not say another word. Once I myself had some faint inclination to the cloister, which, if I had nourished it, might have grown into a vocation. But I saw your father, and I neglected it. And see what troubles my children have to bear! Has there not also been a kind of fatal spell on all your father's inventions? Perhaps God will at last accept from me in my son what I withheld in myself, and will be pacified towards us, and send us better days; and then your father's great invention will be completed yet. But do not say anything of what I told you to him!"

I have never seen our father so troubled about anything.

"Just as he was able to understand my projects!" he said, "and I would have bequeathed them all to him!"

For some days he never touched a model! but now he has crept back to his old follies and his instruments, and tells us there was something in Fritz's horoscope which might have prepared us for this, had he only understood it a little before. However, this discovery, although too late to warn us of the blow, consoles our father, and he has resumed his usual occupations.

Eva looks very pale and fragile, partly, no doubt, from the effects of the pestilence; but when first the rumour reached us, I sought some sympathy from her, and said, "O Eva, how strange it seems, when Fritz always thought of us before himself, to abandon us all thus without one word of warning."

"Cousin Else," she said, "Fritz has done now as he always does. He _has_ thought of us first, I am as sure of it as if I could hear him say so. He thought he would serve us best by leaving us thus, or he would never have left us."

She understood him best of all, as she so often does. When his letter came to our mother, it gave just the reasons she had often told me she was sure had moved him.

It is difficult to tell what Eva feels, because of that strange inward peace in her which seems always to flow under all her other feelings.

I have not seen her shed any tears at all; and whilst I can scarcely bear to enter our dear old lumber-room, or to do anything I did with him, her great delight seems to be to read every book he liked, and to learn and repeat every hymn she learned with him.

Eva and the mother cling very closely together. She will scarcely let my mother do any household work, but insists on sharing every laborious task which hitherto we have kept her from, because of her slight and delicate frame.

It is true I rise early to save them all the work I can, because they have neither of them half the strength I have, and I enjoy stirring about. Thoughts come so much more bitterly on me when I am sitting still.

But when I am kneading the dough, or pounding the clothes with stones in the stream on washing-days, I feel as I were pounding at all my perplexities; and that makes my hands stronger and my perplexities more shadowy, until even now I find myself often singing as I am wringing the clothes by the stream. It is so pleasant in the winter sunshine, with the brook babbling among the rushes and cresses, and little Thekla prattling by my side, and pretending to help.

But when I have finished my day's work, and come into the house, I find the mother and Eva sitting close side by side; and perhaps Eva is silent and my mother brushes tears away as they fall on her knitting; but when they look up, their faces are calm and peaceful, and then I know they have been talking about Fritz.

EISENACH, _February_ 2.

Yesterday afternoon I found Eva translating a Latin hymn he loved, to our mother, and then she sang it through in her sweet clear voice. It was about the dear, dear country in heaven, and Jerusalem the Golden.

In the evening I said to her--

"O Eva, how can you bear to sing the hymns Fritz loved so dearly? I could not sing a line steadily of any song he had cared to hear me sing! And he delighted always so much to listen to you. His voice would echo 'never, never more' to every note I sung, and the songs would all end in sobs."

"But I do not feel separated from Fritz, Cousin Else," she said, "and I never shall. Instead of hearing that melancholy chant you think of, 'never, never more' echo from all the hymns he loved, I always seem to hear his voice responding, 'For ever and for evermore.' And I think of the time when we shall sing them together again."

"Do you mean in heaven, Eva?" I said, "that is so very far off, if we ever reach it--"

"Not so very far off, Cousin Else," she said. "I often think it is very near. If it were not so, how could the angels be so much with us and yet with God?"

"But life seems so long, now Fritz is gone."

"Not so very long, Cousin Else," she said. "I often think it may be very short, and often I pray it may."

"Eva!" I exclaimed, "you surely do not pray that you may die?"

"Why not?" she said, very quietly. "I think if God took us to himself, we might help those we love better there than at Eisenach, or perhaps even in the convent. And it is there we shall meet again, and there are never any partings. My father told me so," she added, "before he died."

Then I understood how Eva mourns for Fritz, and why she does not weep; but I could only say--

"O Eva, do not pray to die. There are all the saints in heaven: and you help us so much more here!"

_February_ 8.

I cannot feel at all reconciled to losing Fritz, nor do I think I ever shall. Like all the other troubles, it was no doubt meant to do me good; but it does me none, I am sure, although of course, that is my fault. What did me good was being happy, as I was when Fritz came back; and that is passed for ever.

My great comfort is our grandmother. The mother and Eva look on everything from such sublime heights; but my grandmother feels more as I do. Often, indeed, she speaks very severely of Fritz, which always does me good, because, of course, I defend him, and then she becomes angry, and says we are an incomprehensible family, and have the strangest ideas of right and wrong, from my father downward, she ever heard of; and then I grow angry, and say my father is the best and wisest man in the Electoral States. Then our grandmother begins to lament over her poor, dear daughter, and the life she has led, and rejoices, in a plaintive voice, that she herself has nearly done with the world altogether; and then I try to comfort her, and say that I am sure there is not much in the world to make any one wish to stay in it; and, having reached this point of despondency, we both cry and embrace each other, and she says I am a poor, good child, and Fritz was always the delight of her heart, which I know very well;--and thus we comfort each other. We have, moreover, solemnly resolved, our grandmother and I, that, whatever comes of it, we will never call Fritz anything but Fritz.

"Brother Sebastian, indeed!" she said, "your mother might as well take a new husband as your brother a new name! Was not she married, and was not he christened in church? Is not Friedrich a good, honest name, which hundreds of your ancestors have borne? And shall we call him instead a heathen foreign name, that none of your kindred were ever known by?"

"Not heathen, grandmother," I ventured to suggest. "You remember telling us of the martyrdom of St. Sebastian by the heathen emperor?"

"Do you contradict me, child?" she exclaimed.

"Did I not know the whole martyrology before your mother was born? I say it is a heathen name. No blame to the saint if his parents were poor benighted Pagans, and knew no better name to give him; but that our Fritz should adopt it instead of his own is a disgrace. My lips at least are too old to learn such new fashioned nonsense. I shall call him the name I called him at the font and in his cradle, and no other."

Yes, Fritz! Fritz! he is to us, and shall be always. Fritz in our hearts till death!

_February_ 15.

We have just heard that Fritz has finished his first month of probation, and has been invested with the frock of the novice. I hate to think of his thick, dark, waving hair clipped in the circle of the tonsure. But the worst part of it is the effect of his becoming a monk has had on the other boys, Christopher and Pollux.

They, who before this thought Fritz the model of everything good and great, seem repelled from all religion now. I have difficulty even in getting them to church.

Christopher said to me the other day--

"Else, why is a man who suddenly deserts his family to become a soldier called a villain, while the man who deserts those who depend on him to become a monk is called a saint?"

It is very unfortunate the boys should come to me with their religious perplexities, because I am so perplexed myself, I have no idea how to answer them. I generally advise them to ask Eva.

This time I could only say, as our grandmother had so often said to me,--

"You must wait till you are older, and then you will understand." But I added, "Of course it is quite different: one leaves his home for God, and the other for the world."

But Christopher is the worst, and he continued,--

"Sister Else, I do not like the monks at all. You and Eva and our mother have no idea how wicked many of them are. Reinhardt says he has seen them drunk often, and heard them swear, and that some of them make a jest even of the mass, and that the priests' houses are not fit for any honest maiden to visit, and,--

"Reinhardt is a bad boy," I said, colouring; "and I have often told you I do not want to hear anything he says."

"But I, at all events, shall never become a monk or a priest," retorted Christopher; "I think the merchants are better. Woman cannot understand about these things," he added, loftily, "and it is better they should not; but I know; and I intend to be a merchant or a soldier."

Christopher and Pollux are fifteen, and Fritz is two-and-twenty; but _he_ never talked in that lofty way to me about women not understanding!

It did make me indignant to hear Christopher, who is always tearing his clothes, and getting into scrapes, and perplexing us to get him out of them, comparing himself with Fritz, and looking down on his sisters; and I said, "It is only _boys_ who talk scornfully of women. Men, true men, honour women."

"The monks do not!" retorted Christopher. "I have heard them say things myself worse than I have ever said about any woman. Only last Sunday, did not Father Boniface say half the mischief in the world had been done by women, from Eve to Helen and Cleopatra?"

"Do not mention our mother Eve with those heathens, Christopher," said our grandmother, coming to my rescue, from her corner by the stove. "Eve is in the Holy Scriptures, and many of these pagans are not fit for people to speak of. Half the saints are women, you know very well. Peasants and traders," she added sublimely, "may talk slightingly of women; but no man can be a true knight who does."

"The monks do!" muttered Christopher doggedly.

"I have nothing to say about the monks," rejoined our grandmother tartly. And accepting this imprudent concession of our grandmother's Christopher retired from the contest.

_March_ 25.

I have just been looking at two letters addressed to Father Johann Braun, one of our Eisenach priests, by Martin Luther. They were addressed to him as "the holy and venerable priest of Christ and of Mary." So much I could understand, and also that he calls himself Brother Martin Luther, not Brother Augustine, a name he assumed on first entering the cloister. Therefore certainly, I may call our Fritz, Brother Friedrich Cotta.

_March_ 29, 1510.

A young man was at Aunt Ursula Cotta's this evening, who told us strange things about the doings at Annaberg.

Dr. Tetzel has been there two years, selling the papal indulgences to the people; and lately, out of regard, he says, to the great piety of the German people, he has reduced their price.

There was a great deal of discussion about it, which I rather regretted the boys were present to hear. My father said indulgences did not mean forgiveness of sins, but only remission of certain penances which the Church had imposed. But the young man from Annaberg told us that Dr. John Tetzel solemnly assured the people, that since it was impossible for them, on account of their sins, to make satisfaction to God by their works, our Holy Father the Pope, who has the control of all the treasury of merits accumulated by the Church throughout the ages, now graciously sells those merits to any who will buy, and thereby bestows on them forgiveness of sins (even of sins which no other priest can absolve), and a certain entrance into eternal life.

The young man said, also, that the great red cross has been erected in the nave of the principal church, with the crown of thorns, the nails, and spear suspended from it, and that at times it has been granted to the people even to see the blood of the Crucified flow from the cross. Beneath this cross are the banners of the Church, and the papal standard, with the triple crown. Before it is the large, strong iron money chest. On one side stands the pulpit, where Dr. Tetzel preaches daily, and exhorts the people to purchase this inestimable favour while yet there is time, for themselves and their relations in purgatory,--and translates the long parchment mandate of the Lord Pope, with the papal seals hanging from it. On the other side is a table, where sit several priests, with pen, ink, and writing desk, selling the indulgence tickets, and counting the money into boxes. Lately he told us, not only have the prices been reduced, but at the end of the letter affixed to the churches, it is added, "_Pauperibus dentur gratis_."

"Freely to the poor!" That certainly would suit us! And if I had only time to make a pilgrimage to Annaberg, if this is the kind of religion that pleases God, it certainly might be attainable even for me.

If Fritz had only known it before, he need not have made that miserable vow. A journey to Annaberg would have more than answered the purpose.

Only, if the Pope has such inestimable treasures at his disposal, why could he not always give them "freely to the poor," always and everywhere?

But I know it is a sin to question what the Lord Pope does. I might almost as well question what the Lord God Almighty does. For He also, who gave those treasures to the Pope, is He not everywhere, and could He not give them freely to us direct? It is plain these are questions too high for me.

I am not the only one perplexed by those indulgences, however. My mother says it is not the way she was taught, and she had rather keep to the old paths. Eva said, "If I were the Lord Pope, and had such a treasure, I think I could not help instantly leaving my palace and my beautiful Rome, and going over the mountains and over the seas, into every city and every village; every hut in the forests, and every room in the lowest streets, that none might miss the blessing, although I had to walk barefoot, and never saw holy Rome again."

"But then," said our father, "the great church at St. Peter's would never be built. It is on that, you know, the indulgence money is to be spent."

"But Jerusalem the Golden would be built, Uncle Cotta!" said Eva; "and would not that be better?"

"We had better not talk about it, Eva," said the mother. "The holy Jerusalem _is_ being built; and I suppose there are many different ways to the same end. Only I like the way I know best."

The boys, I regret to say, had made many irreverent gestures during this conversation about the indulgences, and afterwards I had to speak to them.

"Sister Else," said Christopher, "it is quite useless talking to me. I hate the monks, and all belonging to them. And I do not believe a word they say--at least, not because they say it. The boys at school say this Dr. Tetzel is a very bad man and a great liar. Last week Reinhardt told us something he did, which will show you what he is. One day he promised to show the people a feather which the devil plucked out the wing of the archangel Michael. Reinhardt says he supposes the devil gave it to Dr. Tetzel. However that may be, during the night some students in jest found their way to his relic-box, stole the feather, and replaced it by some coals. The next day, when Dr. Tetzel had been preaching fervently for a long time on the wonders of this feather, when he opened the box there was nothing in it but charcoal. But he was not to be disconcerted. He merely said, 'I have taken the wrong box of relics, I perceive; these are some most sacred cinders--the relics of the holy body of St. Laurence, who was roasted on a gridiron.'"

"Schoolboys' stories," said I.

"They are as good as monks' stories, at all events," rejoined Christopher.

I resolved to see if Pollux was as deeply possessed with this irreverent spirit as Christopher, and therefore this morning, when I found him alone, I said, "Pollux, you used to love Fritz so dearly, you would not surely take up thoughts which would pain him so deeply if he knew of it."

"I do love Fritz," Pollux replied, "but I can never think he was right in leaving us all; and I like the religion of the Creeds and the Ten Commandments better than that of the monks."

Daily, hourly I feel the loss of Fritz. It is not half as much the money he earned; although, of course, that helped us; we can do and struggle on without that. It is the influence he had over the boys. They felt he was before them in the same race and when he remonstrated with them about anything, they listened. But if I blame them, they think it is only a woman's ignorance, or a woman's superstition.--and boys, they say, cannot be like women. And now it is the same with Fritz. He is removed into another sphere, which is not theirs; and if I remind them of what he did or said, they say, "Yes, Fritz thought so; but you know he has become a monk; but we do not intend ever to be monks, and the religion of monks and laymen are different things."

_April_ 2.

The spring is come again. I wonder if it sends the thrill of joy into Fritz's cell at Erfurt that it does into all the forests around us here, and into my heart!

I suppose there are trees near him, and birds--little happy birds--making their nests among them, as they do in our yard, and singing as they work.

But the birds are not monks. Their nests are little homes, and they wander freely whither they will, only brought back by love. Perhaps Fritz does not like to listen to the birds now, because they remind him of home, and of our long spring days in the forest. Perhaps, too, they are part of the world he has renounced; and he must be dead to the world!

_April_ 3.

We have had a long day in the forest, gathering sticks and dry twigs. Every creature seemed so happy there! It was such a holiday to watch the ants roofing their nests with fir twigs, and the birds flying hither and thither with food for their nestlings; and to hear the wood-pigeons, which Fritz always said were like Eva, cooing softly in the depths of the forest.

At mid-day we sat down in a clearing of the forest, to enjoy the meal we had brought with us. A little quiet brook prattled near us, of which we drank, and the delicate young twigs on the topmost boughs of the dark, majestic pines trembled softly, as if for joy, in the breeze.

As we rested, we told each other stories. Pollux began with wild tales of demon hunts, which flew with the baying of demon dogs through these very forests at midnight. Then, as the children began to look fearfully around, and shiver, even at mid-day, while they listened, Christopher delighted them with quaint stories of wolves in sheeps' clothing politely offering themselves to the farmer as shepherds, which, I suspect, were from some dangerous satirical book, but, without the application, were very amusing.

Chriemhild and Atlantis had their stories of Kobolds, who played strange tricks in the cow-stall; and of Ruebezahl and the misshapen dwarf gnomes, who guarded the treasures of gold and silver in the glittering caves under the mountains; and of the elves, who danced beside the brooks at twilight.

"And I," said loving little Thekla, "always want to see poor Nix, the water-sprite, who cries by the streams at moonlight, and lets his tears mix with the waters, because he has no soul, and he wants to live for ever. I should like to give him half mine."

We should all of us have been afraid to speak of these creatures, in their own haunts among the pines, if the sun had not been high in the heavens. Even as it was, I began to feel a little uneasy, and I wished to turn the conversation from these elves and sprites, who, many think, are the spirits of the old heathen gods, who linger about their haunts. One reason why people think so is, that they dare not venture within the sound of the church bells; which makes some, again, think they are worse than poor, shadowy, dethroned heathen gods, and had, indeed, better be never mentioned at all. I thought I could not do better than tell the legend of my beloved giant Offerus, who became Christopher and a saint by carrying the holy child across the river.

Thekla wondered if her favourite Nix could be saved in the same way. She longed to see him and tell him about it.

But Eva had still her story to tell, and she related to us her legend of St. Catharine.

"St. Catharine," she said, "was a lady of royal birth, the only child of the king and queen of Egypt. Her parents were heathens, but they died and left her an orphan when she was only fourteen. She was more beautiful than any of the ladies of her court, and richer than any princess in the world; but she did not care for pomp, or dress, or all her precious things. God's golden stars seemed to her more magnificent than all the splendour of her kingdom, and she shut herself up in her palace, and studied philosophy and the stars until she grew wiser than all the wise men of the East.