Part 2

The other half of the story of the picture, however, would not do for Aunt Ursula. In the apron of the saint, instead of loaves of bread are beautiful clusters of red roses. Our grandmother told us the meaning of this. The good Landgravine's husband did not quite like her giving so much to the poor; because she was so generous she would have left the treasury bare. So she used to give her alms unknown to him. But on this day when she was giving away those loaves to the beggars at the castle gate, he happened suddenly to return, and finding her occupied in this way, he asked her rather severely what she had in her apron. She said "roses!"

"Let me see," said the Landgrave.

And God loved her so much, that to save her from being blamed, he wrought a miracle. When she opened her apron, instead of the loaves she had been distributing, there were beautiful flowers. And this is what the picture represents. I always wanted to know the end of the story. I hope God worked another miracle when the Landgrave went away, and changed the roses back into loaves. I suppose He did, because the starving people look so contented. But our grandmother does not know. Only in this, I do not think Aunt Ursula would have done the same as the Landgravine. I think she would have said boldly if Cousin Cotta had asked her, "I have loaves in my apron, and I am giving them to these poor starving subjects of yours and mine," and never been afraid of what he would say. And then, perhaps, Cousin Cotta--I mean the Landgrave's--heart would have been so touched, that he would have forgiven her, and even praised her, and brought her some more loaves. And then instead of the bread being changed to flowers, the Landgrave's heart would have been changed from stone to flesh, which does seem a better thing. But when I once said this to grandmother, she said it was very wrong to fancy other ends to the legends of the saints, just as if they were fairy tales; that St. Elizabeth really lived in that old castle of the Wartburg, not more than three hundred years ago, and walked through those very streets of Eisenach, and gave alms to the poor here, and went into the hospitals, and dressed the most loathsome wounds that no one else would touch, and spoke tender loving words to wretched outcasts no one else would look at. That seems to me so good and dear of her; but that is not what made her a saint, because Aunt Ursula and our mother do things like that, and our mother has told me again and again that it is Aunt Agnes who is like the saint, and not she.

It is what she suffered, I suppose, that has made them put her in the Calendar; and yet it is not suffering in itself that makes people saints, because I do not believe St. Elizabeth herself suffered more than our mother. It is true she used to leave her husband's side and kneel all night on the cold floor, while he was asleep. But the mother has done the same as that often and often. When any of the little ones has been ill, how often she has walked up and down hour after hour, with the sick child in her arms, soothing and fondling it, and quieting all its fretful cries with unwearying tender patience. Then St. Elizabeth fasted until she was almost a shadow; but how often have I seen our mother quietly distribute all that was nice and good in our frugal meals to my father and the children, scarcely leaving herself a bit, and hiding her plate behind a dish that the father might not see. And Fritz and I often say how wasted and worn she looks; not like the Mother of Mercy as we remember her, but too much like the wan pale Mother of Sorrows with the pierced heart. Then as to pain, have not I seen our mother suffer pain compared with which Aunt Agnes or St. Elizabeth's discipline must be like the prick of a pin.

But yet all that is not the right kind of suffering to make a saint. Our precious mother walks up and down all night not to make herself a saint, but to soothe her sick child. She eats no dinner, not because she chooses to fast, but because we are poor, and bread is dear. She suffers, because God lays suffering upon her, not because she takes it on herself. And all this cannot make her a saint. When I say anything to compassionate or to honour her, she smiles and says,--

"My Else, I chose this lower life instead of the high vocation of your Aunt Agnes, and I must take the consequences. We cannot have our portion both in this world and the next."

If the size of our mother's portion in the next world were to be in proportion to its smallness in this, I think she might have plenty to spare; but this I do not venture to say to her.

There is one thing St. Elizabeth did which certainly our mother would never do. She left her little father less children to go into a convent. Perhaps it was this that pleased God and the Lord Jesus Christ so very much, that they took her up to be so high in heaven. If this is the case, it is a great mercy for our father and for us that our mother has not set her heart on being a saint. We sometimes think, however, that perhaps although He cannot make her a saint on account of the rules they have in heaven about it, God may give our mother some little good thing, or some kind word, because of her being so very good to us. _She_ says this is no merit, however, because of her loving us so much. If she loved us less, and so found it more a trouble to work for us; or if we were little stranger beggar children she _chose_ to be kind to, instead of her own, I suppose God would like it better.

There is one thing, moreover, in St. Elizabeth's history which once brought Fritz and me into great trouble and perplexity. When we were little children and did not understand things as we do now, but thought we ought to try and imitate the saints, and that what was right for them must be right for us, and when our grandmother had been telling us about the holy Landgravine privately selling her jewels, and emptying her husband's treasury to feed the poor, we resolved one day to go and do likewise. We knew a very poor old woman in the next street, with a great many orphan grandchildren, and we planned a long time together before we thought of the way to help her like St. Elizabeth. At length the opportunity came. It was Christmas eve, and for a rarity there were some meat, and apples, and pies in our storeroom. We crept into the room in the twilight, filled my apron with pies, and meat, and cakes, and stole out to our old woman's to give her our booty.

The next morning the larder was found, despoiled of half of what was to have been our Christmas dinner. The children cried, and the mother looked almost as distressed as they did. The father's placid temper for once was roused, and he cursed the cat and the rats, and wished he had completed his new infallible rat trap. Our grandmother said very quietly,--

"Thieves more discriminating than rats or mice have been here. There are no crumbs, and not a thing is out of place. Besides, I never heard of rats or mice eating pie-dishes."

Fritz and I looked at each other, and began to fear that we had done wrong, when little Christopher said--

"I saw Fritz and Else carry out the pies last night."

"Else! Fritz!" said our father, "what does this mean?"

I would have confessed, but I remembered St. Elizabeth and the roses, and said, with a trembling voice--

"They were not pies you saw, Christopher, but roses."

"Roses," said the mother very gravely, "at Christmas!"

I almost hoped the pies would have reappeared on the shelves. It was the very juncture at which they did in the legend; but they did not. On the contrary, everything seemed to turn against us.

"Fritz," said our father very sternly, "tell the truth, or I shall give you a flogging."

This was a part of the story where St. Elizabeth's example quite failed us. I did not know what she would have done if some one else had been punished for her generosity; but I felt no doubt what I must do.

"O father!" I said, "it is my fault--it was my thought! We took the things to the poor old woman in the next street for her grandchildren."

"Then she is no better than a thief," said our father, "to have taken them. Fritz and Else, foolish children, shall have no Christmas dinner for their pains and Else shall, moreover, be locked into her own room for telling a story."

I was sitting shivering in my room, wondering how it was that things succeeded so differently with St. Elizabeth and with us, when Aunt Ursula's round pleasant voice sounded up the stairs, and in another minute she was holding me laughing in her arms.

"My poor little Else! We must wait a little before we imitate our patron saint; or we must begin at the other end. It would never do, for instance, for me to travel to Rome with eleven thousand young ladies like St. Ursula."

My grandmother had guessed the meaning of our foray, and Aunt Ursula coming in at the time, had heard the narrative, and insisted on sending us another Christmas dinner. Fritz and I secretly believed that St. Elizabeth had a good deal to do with the replacing of our Christmas dinner; but after that, we understood that caution was needed in transferring the holy example of the saints to our own lives, and that at present we must not venture beyond the ten commandments.

Yet to think that St. Elizabeth, a real canonized saint--whose picture is over altars in the churches--whose good deeds are painted on the church windows, and illumined by the sun shining through them--whose bones are laid up in reliquaries, one of which I wear always next my heart--actually lived and prayed in that dark old castle above us, and walked along these very streets--perhaps even had been seen from this window of Fritz's and my beloved lumber-room.

Only three hundred years ago! If only I had lived three hundred years earlier, or she three hundred years later, I might have seen her and talked to her, and asked her what it was that made her a saint. There are so many questions I should like to have asked her. I would have said, "Dear St. Elizabeth, tell me what it is that makes you a saint? It cannot be your charity, because no one can be more charitable than Aunt Ursula, and she is not a saint; and it cannot be your sufferings, or your patience, or your love, or your denying yourself for the sake of others, because our mother is like you in all that, and she is not a saint. Was it because you left your little children, that God loves you so much? or because you not only did and bore the things God laid on you, as our mother does, but chose out other things for yourself, which you thought harder?" And if she were gentle (as I think she was), and would have listened, I would have asked her, "Holy Landgravine, why are things which were so right and holy in you, wrong for Fritz and me?" And I would also have asked her, "Dear St. Elizabeth, my patroness, what is it in heaven that makes you so happy there?"

But I forgot--she would not have been in heaven at all. She would not even have been made a saint, because it was only after her death, when the sick and crippled were healed by touching her body, that they found out what a saint she had been. Perhaps, even, she would not herself have known she was a saint. And if so, I wonder if it can be possible that our mother is a saint after all, only she does not know it.

* * * * *

Fritz and I are four or five years older than any of the children. Two little sisters died of the plague before any more were born. One was baptized, and died when she was a year old, before she could soil her baptismal robes. Therefore we feel sure she is in paradise. I think of her whenever I look at the cloud of glory around the Blessed Virgin in St. George's Church. Out of the cloud peep a number of happy child-faces--some leaning their round soft cheeks on their pretty dimpled hands, and all looking up with such confidence at the dear mother of God. I suppose the little children in heaven especially belong to her. It must be very happy, then, to have died young.

But of that other little nameless babe who died at the same time none of us ever dare to speak. It was not baptized, and they say the souls of little unbaptized babes hover about for ever in the darkness between heaven and hell. Think of the horror of falling from the loving arms of our mother into the cold and the darkness, to shiver and wail there for ever, and belong to no one. At Eisenach we have a Foundling Hospital, attached to one of the nunneries founded by St. Elizabeth, for such forsaken little ones. If St. Elizabeth could only establish a Foundling somewhere near the gates of paradise, for such little nameless outcast child-souls! But I suppose she is too high in heaven, and too far from the gates to hear the plaintive cries of such abandoned little ones. Or perhaps God, who was so much pleased with her for deserting her own little children, would not allow it. I suppose the saints in heaven who have been mothers, or even elder sisters like me, leave their mother's hearts on earth, and that in paradise they are all monks and nuns like Aunt Agnes and Father Christopher.

Next to that little nameless one came the twin girls Chriemhild (named after our grandmother), and Atlantis, so christened by our father on account of the discovery of the great world beyond the sea which he had so often thought of, and which the great admiral Christopher Columbus accomplished about that time. Then the twin boys Boniface Pollux and Christopher Castor; their names being a compromise between our father, who was struck with some remarkable conjunction of their stars at their birth, and my mother, who thought it only right to counterbalance such Pagan appellations with names written in heaven. Then another boy, who only lived a few weeks; and then the present baby, Thekla, who is the plaything and darling of us all.

* * * * *

These are nearly all the people I know well; except, indeed, Martin Luther, the miner's son, to whom Aunt Ursula Cotta has been so kind. He is dear to us all as one of our own family. He is about the same age as Fritz, who thinks there is no one like him. And he has such a voice, and is so religious, and yet so merry withal; at least at times. It was his voice and his devout ways which first drew Aunt Ursula's attention to him. She had seen him often at the daily prayers at church. He used to sing as a chorister with the boys of the Latin school of the parish of St. George, where Fritz and he studied. The ringing tones of his voice, so clear and true, often attracted Aunt Ursula's attention; and he always seemed so devout. But we knew little about him. He was very poor, and had a pinched, half-starved look when first we noticed him. Often I have seen him on the cold winter evenings singing about the streets for alms, and thankfully receiving a few pieces of broken bread and meat at the doors of the citizens; for he was never a bold and impudent beggar as some of the scholars are. Our acquaintance with him, however, began one day which I remember well. I was at Aunt Ursula's house, which is in George Street, near the church and school. I had watched the choir of boys singing from door to door through the street. No one had given them anything: they looked disappointed and hungry. At last they stopped before the window where Aunt Ursula and I were sitting with her little boy. That clear, high, ringing voice was there again. Aunt Ursula went to the door and called Martin in, and then she went herself to the kitchen, and after giving him a good meal himself, sent him away with his wallet full, and told him to come again very soon. After that, I suppose she consulted with Cousin Conrad Cotta, and the result was that Martin Luther became an inmate of their house, and has lived among us familiarly since then like one of our own cousins.

He is wonderfully changed since that day. Scarcely any one would have thought then what a joyous nature his is. The only thing in which it seemed then to flow out was in his clear true voice. He was subdued and timid like a creature that had been brought up without love. Especially he used to be shy with young maidens, and seemed afraid to look in a woman's face. I think they must have been very severe with him at home. Indeed, he confessed to Fritz, that he had often as a child been beaten till the blood came for trifling offences, such as taking a nut, and that he was afraid to play in his parents' presence. And yet he would not hear a word reflecting on his parents. He says his mother is the most pious woman in Mansfeld, where his family live, and his father denies himself in every way to maintain and educate his children, especially Martin, who is to be the learned man of the family. His parents are inured to hardships themselves, and believe it to be the best early discipline for boys. Certainly poor Martin had enough of hardship here. But that may be the fault of his mother's relations at Eisenach, who, they hoped, would have been kind to him, but who do not seem to have cared for him at all. At one time he told Fritz he was so pinched and discouraged by the extreme poverty he suffered, that he thought of giving up study in despair, and returning to Mansfeld to work with his father at the smelting furnaces, or in the mines under the mountains. Yet indignant tears start to his eyes if any one ventures to hint that his father might have done more for him. He was a poor digger in the mines, he told Fritz, and often he had seen his mother carrying firewood on her shoulders from the pine-woods near Mansfeld.

But it was in the monastic schools, no doubt, that he learned to be so shy and grave. He had been taught to look on married life as a low and evil thing; and, of course, we all know it cannot be so high and pure as the life in the convent. I remember now his look of wonder when Aunt Ursula, who is not fond of monks, said to him one day, "There is nothing on earth more lovely than the love of husband and wife, when it is in the fear of God."

In the warmth of her bright and sunny heart, his whole nature seemed to open like the flowers in summer. And now there is none in all our circle so popular and sociable as he is. He plays on the lute, and sings as we think no one else can. And our children all love him, he tells them such strange, beautiful stories about enchanted gardens and crusaders, and about his own childhood, among the pine-forests and the mines.

It is from Martin Luther, indeed, that I have heard more than from any one else, except from our grandmother, of the great world beyond Eisenach. He has lived already in three other towns, so that he is quite a traveller, and knows a great deal of the world, although he is not yet twenty. Our father has certainly told us wonderful things about the great islands beyond the seas which the Admiral Columbus discovered, and which will one day, he is sure, be found to be only the other side of the Indies and Tokay and Araby. Already the Spaniards have found gold in those islands, and our father has little doubt that they are the Ophir from which King Solomon's ships brought the gold for the temple. Also, he has told us about the strange lands in the south, in Africa, where the dwarfs live, and the black giants, and the great hairy men who climb the trees and make nests there, and the dreadful men-eaters, and the people who have their heads between their shoulders. But we have not yet met with any one who have seen all those wonders, so that Martin Luther and our grandmother are the greatest travellers Fritz and I are acquainted with.

Martin was born at Eisleben. His mother's is a burgher family. Three of her brothers live here at Eisenach, and here she was married. But his father came of a peasant race. His grandfather had a little farm of his own at Mora, among the Thuringian pine-forests; but Martin's father was the second son; their little property went to the eldest, and he became a miner, went to Eisleben, and then settled at Mansfeld, near the Hartz mountains where the silver and copper lie buried in the earth.

At Mansfeld Martin lived until he was nineteen. I should like to see the place. It must be so strange to watch the great furnaces, where they fuse the copper and smelt the precious silver, gleaming through the pine woods, for they burn all through the night in the clearings of the forest. When Martin was a little boy he may have watched by them with his father, who now has furnaces and a foundry of his own. Then there are the deep pits under the hills, out of which come from time to time troops of grim-looking miners. Martin is fond of the miners; they are such a brave and hardy race, and they have fine bold songs and choruses of their own which he can sing, and wild original pastimes. Chess is a favorite game with them. They are thoughtful too, as men may well be who dive into the secrets of the earth. Martin, when a boy, has often gone into the dark, mysterious pits and winding caverns with them, and seen the veins of precious ore. He has also often seen foreigners of various nations. They come from all parts of the world to Mansfeld for the silver,--from Bavaria and Switzerland, and even from the beautiful Venice, which is a city of palaces, where the streets are canals filled by the blue sea, and instead of waggons they use boats, from which people land on the marble steps of the palaces. All these things Martin has heard described by those who have really seen them, besides what he has seen himself. His father also frequently used to have the schoolmasters and learned men at his house, that his sons might profit by their wise conversation. But I doubt if he can have enjoyed this so much. It must have been difficult to forget the rod with which once he was beaten fourteen times in one morning, so as to feel sufficiently at ease to enjoy their conversation. Old Count Gunther of Mansfeld thinks much of Martin's father, and often used to send for him to consult him about the mines.

Their house at Mansfeld stood at some distance from the school-house which was on the hill, so that, when he was little, an older boy used to be kind to him, and carry him in his arms to school. I daresay that was in winter, when his little feet were swollen with chilblains, and his poor mother used to go up to the woods to gather faggots for the hearth.

His mother must be a very good and holy woman, but not, I fancy, quite like our mother; rather more like Aunt Agnes. I think I should have been rather afraid of her. Martin says she is very religious. He honours and loves her very much, although she was very strict with him, and once, he told Fritz, beat him, for taking a nut from their stores, until the blood came. She must be a brave, truthful woman, who would not spare herself or others; but I think I should have felt more at home with his father, who used so often to kneel beside Martin's bed at night, and pray God to make him a good and useful man. Martin's father, however, does not seem so fond of the monks and nuns, and is therefore, I suppose, not so religious as his mother is. He does not at all wish Martin to become a priest or a monk, but to be a great lawyer, or doctor, or professor at some university.