CHAPTER XX.

Madeleine and her mother retired to the window, and beckoned Gabrielle to join them.

The corporal and the colporteur lit their pipes, and Klaus with his knife began to cut a head out of a bit of box-wood he extracted from his pocket.

‘So, Master Percenez, you have come to witness the great struggle?’ said the soldier, fixing his blue eyes on the little man.

‘Yes, corporal, I have. I am interested in it,--but who is not? It seems to me that we must fight now, or give in for ever.’

‘A fight there will be,’ said the soldier; ‘a fight of tongues and hard words. Tongues for swords, hard words for bullets. Did you ever hear how we managed to gain our liberty in my country? I tell you that was not with speeches, but with blows. I doubt if your States-General will do much. I do not think much of talking, I like action.’

‘And are you free in Switzerland?’ asked Percenez.

‘Yes,’ answered Deschwanden, ‘we are free. We gained our liberty by our swords. Our brave land was subject to the despotic rule of the Duke of Austria, and we were reduced to much the same condition as you French are now. We paid taxes which were exorbitant, we were crushed by the privileged classes, and robbed of the just reward of our toil. Then Arnold of Melchthal, Werner Stauffacher, and Walter Fürst formed the resolution to resist, and lead the people to revolt, and so they threw off the yoke and became free.’

‘Father,’ said Nicholas, ‘do you remember the inn of the Confederates on the lake, with their figures painted on the white wall, five times the size of life?’

‘Ah so!’ exclaimed the corporal; ‘have I not drunk on the balcony of that same inn over against Grütli? Have I not seen the three fountains that bubbled up where the Confederates stood and joined hands and swore to liberate their country from the oppression of their Austrian governors, to be faithful to each other, and to be righteous in executing their judgments on the tyrants?’

The old man brushed up the hair on either side of his head, rose to his feet, filled his tumbler with wine, and waving it above his head, exclaimed joyously:

‘Here is to the memory of Arnold of Melchthal, Werner Stauffacher, and Walter Fürst!’

Percenez and young Nicholas drank, standing.

‘Did you ever hear,’ continued the soldier, reseating himself, ‘how William Tell refused to bow to the ducal cap set up on a pole, the badge of servitude, and how the governor--his name was Gessler--bade the valiant archer shoot an apple off his son’s head?’

‘I have heard the story,’ said the colporteur.

‘And I have seen the place,’ cried Nicholas; ‘have I not, father?’

‘We have both seen the very spot where the glorious William stood, and where grew the tree against which the lad was placed. The square is no more. Houses have invaded it, so that now Tell could not send an arrow from his standing-point to the site of the tree. Ah! he was a great liberator of his country, was Tell. Fill your glasses, friends! To William Tell!’ He rubbed up his hair, rose to his feet, and drained his glass again.

‘Have you ever heard how nearly Swiss freedom was lost, by treachery and gold? You must know that the Confederate States had vanquished Charles of Burgundy in three great battles, and had pillaged his camp, which was so full of booty that gold circulated among the people like copper. The cantons of Uri, of Schwytz, and Unterwalden--that latter is mine--desired peace, and those of Lucerne, and Berne, and Zurich desired to extend the Confederacy; so great quarrels arose, and soon that union which was the source of their strength promised to be dissolved, and civil war to break out, and ruin Swiss independence. The Confederates were assembled for consultation, for the last time, at Stanz. The animosity of party, however, was so great, that after three sessions of angry debates, the members rose with agitated countenances, and separated without taking leave of one another, to meet again, perhaps, only in the conflict of civil war. That which neither the power of Austria, nor the audacious might of Charles of Burgundy, had ever been able to accomplish, my people were themselves in danger of bringing about by these internal dissensions; and the liberty and happiness of their country stood in the most imminent peril.’

‘My faith!’ cried Madame Deschwanden, shrugging her shoulders, and throwing into her face, as she sat in the window, an expression of disgust and contempt, ‘they are getting upon the Bruder Klaus.’

‘Yes, wife,’ said the soldier, turning to her, and brushing up his hair, ‘glorious Bruder Klaus! Here’s to his---- but no, you shall hear the story first. So! up the face of a precipice in the Melchthal lived a hermit, Nicholas von der Flue. And here I may add that our captain is called by the same name. Well, then, this hermit, whom we call Brother Nicholas, or, for short, Brother Klaus, left his cell at the moment of danger, and sending a messenger before him to bid the deputies await his arrival, he walked all the way to Stanz without resting, and entered the town-hall, where the assembly sat. He wore his simple dark-coloured dress, which descended to his feet; he carried his chaplet in one hand, and grasped his staff in the other; he was, as usual, barefoot and bare-headed; and his long hair, a little touched by the snows of age, fell upon his shoulders. When the delegates saw him enter, they rose out of respect, and God gave him such grace that his words restored unanimity, and in an hour all difficulties were smoothed away; the land was preserved from civil war, and from falling again,--as in that case it must have fallen,--under the power of Burgundy or Austria.’

‘I have seen the very coat Bruder Klaus wore,’ said Nicholas, his large blue eyes full of pride and joy.

‘Yes,’ said the soldier, triumphantly; ‘we have both seen his habit; we have seen his body, too, at Sachseln. Fill your glasses!’ he rubbed up his hair, first over his ears and then above his forehead and at the back of the head, and starting to his feet, pledged Bruder Klaus of pious memory. Percenez and Nicholas joined enthusiastically.

‘See!’ said the latter, taking his black ribbon from his neck, and extending the medal to Percenez; ‘on that coin is a representation of the blessed hermit; that piece has been laid on his shrine, and has been blessed by the priest of Sachseln.’

‘Fetch him the statue of the glorious brother!’ cried the corporal to his son; ‘let him see what blessed Nicholas really was like.’

The lad instantly dived out of the room, down a passage, and presently reappeared with a wooden figure of the hermit, carved by himself. The face was exquisitely wrought, and the hands delicately finished. The whole was painted, but not coarsely.

‘He was very pale in the face, almost deadly white, and dark about the eyes,’ said the soldier. ‘We have his portrait, taken during his life, in the town-hall of Sarnen----’ all at once the corporal’s eyes rested on his watch.

‘Herr Je!’ he exclaimed; ‘we have exceeded our time by three minutes.’ He rapped with his knuckles on the table, and shouted the order:

‘Music!’

Instantly his son Nicholas produced a flute, and warbled on it a well-known Swiss air. The corporal folded his hands on his breast, threw back his head, fixed his eyes on the scrap of blue sky visible above the roofs of the houses opposite, and began to sing, ‘Herz, mein Herz warum so traurig’--of which we venture to give an English rendering:

‘Heart, my heart! why art thou weary, Why to grief and tears a prey? Foreign lands are bright and cheery; Heart, my heart, what ails thee, say?

‘That which ails me past appeasing! I am lost, a stranger here; What though foreign lands be pleasing, Home, sweet home, alone is dear.

‘Were I now to home returning, Oh, how swiftly would I fly! Home to father, home to mother, Home to native rocks and sky!

‘Through the fragrant pine-boughs bending I should see the glacier shine, See the nimble goats ascending Gentian-dappled slopes in line;

‘See the cattle, hear the tinkle Of the merry clashing bells, See white sheep the pastures sprinkle In the verdant dewy dells.

‘I should climb the rugged gorges To the azure Alpine lake, Where the snowy peak discharges Torrents, that the silence break.

‘I should see the old brown houses, At the doors, in every place, Neighbours sitting, children playing, Greetings in each honest face.

‘Oh my youth! to thee returning, Oft I ask, why did I roam? Oh my heart! my heart is burning At the memory of Home.

‘Heart, my heart! in weary sadness Breaking, far from fatherland, Restless, yearning, void of gladness, Till once more at home I stand.’

As the old man sang, the tears filled his large eyes, and slowly trickled down his weather-beaten cheeks. He sat for some while in silence and motionless, absorbed in memory. Now and then a smile played over his rugged features.

‘I remember walking from Beckenreid to Seelisberg one spring evening,’ he said, speaking to himself; ‘the rocks were covered with wild pinks. We never see wild pinks here. And the thyme was fragrant, multitudes of bees swarmed humming about it. I remember, because, when tired, I sat on the thyme, and listened to their buzz. Down below lay the deep blue green lake reflecting the mountains, still as glass. The bell of Gersau was chiming. The red roofs were so pretty under the brown rocks of the Scheideck and Hochflue. A little farther on, upon a mass of fallen rock in the water, in the midst of a feathery tuft of birch, stood the chapel of Kindlismord.’ He paused and smiled, and then a great tear dropped from his cheek to his breast. ‘I saw a foaming torrent rush through the forest and dart over a ledge and disappear. The golden clouds overhead were reflected in the lake. I picked a bunch of blue salvias and a tiger-lily.’ He drew a heavy sigh, brushed his hair down with his hands, shook his head, looked at his watch, and rapped the table with the order:

‘Prayers!’

Immediately all rose, and the old soldier led the way down the passage into Klaus’s workshop.

Klaus, as has already been said, carved statues for churches. His room was full of figures, some finished and coloured, others half done; some only sketched out of the block. On a shelf stood a row of little saints; but the majority were from three to five feet high. In the corner was a huge S. Christopher, carrying the infant Saviour on his shoulder, and leaning on a rugged staff. His work-table was strewn with tools and shavings and chips of wood, and the floor was encumbered with blocks of oak and box, wood shavings and sawdust. In a niche in the side of the room, on a pedestal, stood a life-sized figure of the Swiss hermit, the patron saint of the Deschwandens, with a pendent lamp before it. A crucifix of ebony and boxwood stood before the little window which lighted the room, and was situated immediately above his work-table. The corporal knelt down, followed by his family and the guests, and recited the usual evening prayers in a firm voice, ending with the Litany of the Saints.

After the last response, the corporal made a pause, and rapped with his knuckles against the bench in front of him, whereupon Madame Deschwanden rose with a sniff and a great rustle of her garments, and sailed out of the room, leaning on Madeleine.

‘You had better come, too,’ she said to Percenez and Gabrielle; ‘that father and son there have not done yet. They have their blessed Swiss saints to invoke in their barbarous jargon. But, as I do not approve either of their tongue or of their Klauses and Meinrads, Madeleine and I always leave them to themselves.’

The colporteur and his little ward rose, but not without hesitation, for the corporal and his son remained kneeling as stiff as any of the wooden figures surrounding them, with hands joined and eyes directed immediately in front of them.

‘Oh my faith!’ exclaimed Madame Deschwanden, as she reached the sitting-room; ‘to think that I have been reduced to this,--to become the spouse of a clockwork-man made of wood. Heavens! Étienne, the corporal does everything to the minute; dresses, washes, eats, prays, dreams of his precious Schweizerland, all by the watch, and I--poor I--I am in despair. This does not suit me at all.’

Percenez attempted to console his sister, and she rattled on with her story of grievance, whilst Gabrielle, musing and not speaking, heard the solemn voice of the old soldier sounding from the workshop:

‘Heiliger Meinrad!’

And Nicholas’s response: ‘Bitte für uns[2].’

‘Heiliger Gallus!’

‘Bitte für uns.’

‘Heiliger Beatus!’

‘Bitte für uns.’

‘Heiliger Moritz und deine Gefährte!’

‘Bittet für uns.’

‘Heiliger Bonifacius!’

‘Bitte für uns.’

‘Heilige Verena!’

‘Bitte für uns.’

‘Heiliger Bruder Klaus!’

‘Bitte für uns.’

Shortly after, the corporal and his son returned to the room. Gabrielle was sitting by herself in the dusk near the door--in fact, in that corner of the sofa into which Madame Deschwanden had driven Nicholas, when she wanted the paper with roses and jessamine and Brazilian humming-birds.

The young man walked towards her somewhat awkwardly, and leaning on the arm of the sofa with his back to the window, said:

‘You must be puzzled at our relationship in this house.’

‘I do not quite understand the relationship, I own,’ answered Gabrielle, shyly.

‘I am not the son of madame,’ said he, nodding his head in the direction of Percenez’s sister, ‘nor is Madeleine my own sister. My father married again, after my mother’s death, and Madame Chabry was a widow with an only daughter. Do you understand now?’

‘Yes, thank you.’

‘I should like to hear your opinion about the box,’ he continued. ‘Do you think we have any right to keep it? Mamma is set upon it, so is Madeleine, but the question is, have they any right to it?’

Gabrielle looked at her shawl, and plucked at the fringe.

‘You do not like to answer,’ said Klaus.

‘I think the box ought to be returned,’ she said, timidly, and in a low, faltering voice.

A smile beamed on the lad’s broad face. He nodded at her in a friendly, approving manner, and said, ‘So my father says. I consulted him in the other room. And now the difficulty is to get the box away. Observe my father.’

Gabrielle looked towards the corporal; he was standing near the window, with his back to the table on which the mother-of-pearl coffer lay, and was engaged in animated conversation with Percenez, Madame, and Madeleine. Gabrielle observed that the old soldier made a point of addressing his wife and daughter-in-law in turn, and then directing an observation to Percenez. From sentences she caught, the girl ascertained that the corporal was attacking the French character, and was especially caustic on the subject of French women. His wife was at once in a blaze, and Madeleine caught fire. Percenez took up cudgels on behalf of his countrywomen, but the soldier was not to be beaten by the three combined. As soon as the conversation or argument gave symptoms of flagging, he produced from his armoury some peculiarly pungent remark, which he cast as a bomb-shell among them, and which at once aroused a clatter of tongues.

‘There’s a story told in my country of a man who married a Frenchwoman,’ said the soldier, fixing his wife with his eye.

‘I will not listen to your stories,’ said Madame Deschwanden; ‘they are bad, wicked tales. Stop your ears, Percenez, as I stop mine. Madeleine, don’t listen to him. A Frenchman uses his tongue like a feather, but a German or Swiss knocks you down with it like a club.’

‘There is a story in my country,’ pursued the corporal, turning composedly towards the colporteur, ‘of a Swiss farmer who married a French mademoiselle.’

‘Ah! I pity her, poor thing, I do,’ said Madame Deschwanden, suddenly removing her hand from her ear and fluttering it in her husband’s face; ‘she doubtless thought him flesh and blood, and only too late found him out to be a Jacquemart--a wooden doll worked by springs.’

‘So!’ continued the soldier, calmly, ‘the man died----’

‘Of dry rot,’ interpolated madame; ‘there was a maggot in his head.’

‘He died,’ the soldier pursued; ‘and then, having left the earth, he presented himself at the gates of Paradise.’

‘Ah!’ exclaimed madame; ‘and he found that it was peopled with Bruder Klauses--like the wooden saints your boy carves.’

‘Now you know, Percenez, my good friend, that there is a preliminary stage souls have to pass through before they can enter the realm of the blessed; that stage is called purgatory. So! S. Peter opened the door to the Swiss Bauer and said, “You cannot come in. You have not been in purgatory!” “No,” answered the farmer, “but I have spent ten years married to a French wife.” “Then step in,” said the door-keeper, “you have endured purgatory in life.”’

‘I will not listen to you,’ screamed Madame Deschwanden, resolutely facing the window and presenting her back to her husband.

Madeleine followed suit, and was immediately engrossed in what was taking place in the street.

‘You Frenchwomen!’ called the corporal, tauntingly, as he stepped backwards with his hands behind him. The mother and daughter turned abruptly, and facing him exclaimed together, ‘We glory in the title;’ then reverted to their contemplation of the street.

‘Now,’ said Nicholas, in a low voice, ‘observe my father attentively; he is a skilful general.’

Corporal Deschwanden retreated leisurely backwards, as though retiring from the presence of royalty, till he reached the table, when his hands felt for the casket, and took it up; then, still fronting the window and the women at it, he sidled towards the door, keeping the mother-of-pearl box carefully out of sight.

Having reached the door, he asked Percenez if he would accompany him for a stroll. The colporteur gladly consented, and followed him out of the room.

The mother and daughter still maintained their position at the open window, till suddenly the former threw up her hands with a cry of dismay, sprang abruptly into the middle of the room, and shrieked out, ‘I am betrayed! the thief! the rogue! the malicious one! He has carried off the mother-of-pearl box. I saw it under his arm. He showed it to Étienne, and laughed as he crossed the street. Madeleine! what shall we do? We will take poison, and die in one another’s arms!’ Then, after a volley of shrieks, she fell on her daughter’s neck and deluged her with tears.

‘I think that was a skilfully-executed manœuvre of my father’s,’ said Nicholas, aside.

Gabrielle smiled; but then, observing how distressed was her hostess, she said, in a low voice, ‘I am afraid your mother is heart-broken over her loss.’

‘Yes, for half an hour, and then she will have forgotten all about it. You will see, when my father returns, it will be with a locket, or a brooch, or a ribbon, and then she will be all “ecstasy and raptures,” and will kiss him on both cheeks, and pronounce him the best of husbands.’

Gabrielle looked up into his face with an expression of delight in her eyes and on her lips.

The young man’s eyes rested on her countenance with pleasure. After a moment’s hesitation, he said:

‘Mademoiselle Gabrielle, may I ask you one little favour? I know I have not deserved it by anything I have done, but you will confer a debt of gratitude on my father and on me if you will accede to my request.’

‘What is it?’ asked the girl, opening her eyes very wide, and wondering very greatly what he meant.

‘Will you promise me not to take part with my mother and Madeleine against the Swiss? My father laughs, and I laugh, but what they say cuts us,--sometimes deeply. We are proud of our country;’ he brushed his hair from his brow and straightened himself, his attitude and action a reproduction of his father. ‘We have reason to be proud of it, and we do not like to be joked about it, and to hear slurs cast on it. Oh! Mademoiselle Gabrielle, I do not know why I ask this of you, but I should feel it dreadfully if you joined them against us, and so, too, would my father.’

‘I promise with all my heart.’

‘That is delightful!’ exclaimed Nicholas, clapping his hands, whilst a joyous flush overspread his open countenance; ‘and then, there is something more.’ His face grew solemn at once. ‘Do not speak against, or make a joke about, Bruder Klaus. You do not know what a man that was, what a saint he is, what he did for his country, what a miraculous life he led, what wonders are wrought yet at his tomb. You should have seen his portrait--the grave white face, and the eyes reddened with weeping, and the sunken cheeks! Oh, Mademoiselle Gabrielle, you may be sure that, among the greatest of saints, our Bruder Klaus----’

‘What!’ exclaimed Madame Deschwanden, looking up from her daughter’s shoulder, as she caught the word; ‘if that boy is not dinning Bruder Klaus into Mademoiselle André’s ear already. Was ever a woman so overwhelmed, so haunted as I am with these ragged old Swiss hermits? I have the nightmare, and dream that Bruder Klaus is dancing on my breast. I look out of the window in the dark, and see Bruder Klaus jabbering in the gloom, and pointing at me with his stick. I wish to goodness the precious Bruder had committed a mortal sin, and his sanctity had gone to the dogs, I do!’

Nicholas drew nearer to Gabrielle, as though shrinking from his stepmother’s expressions as impious, and willing to screen the girl from their pernicious influence. He stooped towards her, with his great blue eyes fastened on her with intensity of earnestness, as he whispered:

‘You will promise me that? Oh! please do, dear mademoiselle!’

‘Certainly I will,’ answered Gabrielle, frankly looking at him.

He caught her hand and kissed it, and then precipitately left the room.

END OF VOL. I.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The window is described from one existing in the north aisle of the church of S. Foy, at Conches, the stained glass in which church is perhaps the finest in Normandy.

[2] Holy Meinrad, &c. Pray for us.

Transcriber’s Notes

The Table of Contents at the beginning of the book was created by the transcriber.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation such as “boxwood”/“box-wood” have been maintained.

Minor punctuation and spelling errors have been silently corrected and, except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text, especially in dialogue, and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained.

Page 56: “epecially noticeable when a band of girls” changed to “especially noticeable when a band of girls”.