Part 6

The gentlemen who were standing on the tables and chairs in the gardens and roadhouses laughed fit to split their sides. Their roars sounded across the highway and streets, and woke the echoes, and the affair was turned into a popular festival. Small boys and the entire rabble of the town followed densely in the wake of the two, and this mob stirred up thick volumes of biting dust, so that the racers were almost stifled before they arrived at the near goal. The whole immense cloud rolled towards the town gate, and even women and girls ran along, and mingled their high, squeaking voices with those of the male ruffians. Now they had almost reached the old town gate, the two towers of which were lined with the curious who were waving their caps and hats. The two were still running, foaming at the mouth, eyes starting out of sockets, running like two run-away horses, without sense or mind, their hearts full of fear and torture. Suddenly one of the little street boys knelt down on Jobst's small vehicle, and had Jost pull him along, the crowd howling with appreciation of the joke. Jobst turned and pleaded with the youngster to get off, even struck at him with his staff. But the blows did not reach the urchin, who merely grinned at him. With that Fridolin gained on Jobst, and as Jobst noticed this, he threw his staff between the other's feet, so that Fridolin stumbled and fell. But as Jobst attempted to pass him, the Bavarian pulled him by the tail of his coat, and by the aid of that got again on his feet. Jobst struck him upon his hands like a maniac, and shouted: "Let go! Let go!" But Fridolin did not let go, and so Jobst seized him also by the coat tail, and thus both had hold of each other, and were slowly making their way into the gateway, once in a while attempting to get rid of the other by venturing on a bound. They wept, sobbed and howled like babies, shouted in the agony of their grief and fear: "My God, let go!" "For the love of Heaven, let go!" "Let go, you devil; you must let go!" Between whiles each struck hard blows at the other's hands, but with all that they advanced a little all the time. Their hats and staffs had been lost in the scuffle, and ahead of them and behind them the hooting mob was accompanying them, their escort growing more turbulent and violent each minute. All the windows were occupied by the ladies of Seldwyla, and they threw, so to speak, their silvery laughter into this avalanche of noise, and all were agreed that for years past there had not been such a ludicrous scene as this.

As a matter of fact, this crazy free show was so much to the taste of the whole town that nobody took the trouble to point out to the two rivals their ultimate goal, the house of their old master. They themselves, these two, did not see it. Indeed, they did not see anything more. They reached their goal and did not perceive it, but went past and hurried crazily on, on and on, always escorted by the shouts and yells of the mob, fighting each other, their faces drawn and pinched as though in death, on and on, until they reached the other end of the little town and so through the second gate out into the open once more. The master himself had stood at the window of his house, laughing and greatly amused, and after patiently waiting for another hour for the victor in the strange tournament, he had been on the point of leaving the house and joining some of his cronies at the tavern, when Zues and Dietrich quietly and unobtrusively entered.

For Zues had meanwhile been busy with her thoughts, combining, after her wont, this and that. And thus she had reached the conclusion that in all likelihood the master combmaker would be willing to sell his business outright on a cash basis, since he could not continue it himself much longer. For that purpose Zues herself was ready to give up her interest-bearing mortgage, which together with the slender savings of Dietrich would doubtless suffice and thus they two would remain victors and could laugh at the other two. This plan, together with their intention to marry, they told the astonished master about, and he, readily seeing that thus he could cheat his creditors and by concluding the bargain quickly would also get possession of a considerable sum of money to do with as he pleased, was glad of the opportunity thus afforded him. Quickly, therefore, the two parties were in agreement as to the terms, and before the sun went down Zues became the lawful owner of the business and her promised husband the tenant of the house in which the business was being conducted. Thus it was Zues, without indeed having intended or suspected it in the morning, who was tied down and conquered by the quickwitted Suabian.

Half dead with shame, exhaustion and anger, Jobst and Fridolin meanwhile lay in the inn to which they had been taken when picked up limp and spent in the open field. To separate the two rivals, thirsting for each other's blood and maddened from the whole crazy adventure, had been no light task. The whole of Seldwyla now, having in their peculiar reckless way already forgotten the immediate cause of the whole turmoil, was now celebrating and making a night of it. In many houses there was dancing, and in the taverns there was much drinking and singing and noise, just as on the greatest Seldwyla holidays. For the people of Seldwyla never required much urging to enjoy themselves to the top of their bent. When the two poor devils saw how their own superior cunning with which they had counted on making a good haul had, on the contrary, only served these careless people in all their folly to make a feast of it, how they themselves had been the immediate cause of their own downfall, and had made a laughingstock of themselves for all the world, they thought their hearts would break. For they had managed not only to defeat the wise and patient plans of so many years, but had also lost forever the reputation of being shrewd men themselves.

Jobst as the oldest of the three and having spent in Seldwyla full seven years, was wholly overwhelmed and dazed by the collapse of all his secret hopes, and quite unable to reconstruct a new world after having lost the one of his dreams. Utterly dejected he left his sleepless pillow before daybreak, wandered away from town and crept to the very spot where the day before they and Zues had sat under the linden tree, and there he hanged himself to one of the lowest branches. When the Bavarian, but an hour later, passed there on his way into strange parts, such a fit of fright seized him that he ran off like a lunatic, altered completely his whole ways, and later on was heard to have become a dissolute spendthrift, who never saved a penny, and who was in the habit of cursing God and men, being no one's friend any more.

Dietrich the Suabian alone remained one of the Decent and Just, and stayed on in the little town. But he had little good of it, for Zues left him nothing to say, and ruled him strictly, never allowing him to have his way in anything. On the contrary, she continued to consider herself the sole source of all wisdom and success.

DIETEGEN

DIETEGEN

To the north of those hills and woods where Seldwyla nestles, there flourished as late as the end of the fifteenth century the town of Ruechenstein, lying in the cool shade, whereas her rival Seldwyla basked in the full glare of the midday sun. Gray and forbidding looked the massed body of its towers and strong walls, and upstanding and just were its councilmen and citizens, but severe and morose also, and their chief employment consisted in the execution of their prerogatives as an independent city, in the exercise of law and justice, the issuing of mandates and decrees, of impeachments and committals. The greatest source of their pride was the fact that there had been conferred on them the exercise and enforcement of the power over life and death of all subject to their sway, and so eager and willing they were to sacrifice for this power their all, their privileges and their substance, as entrusted to them by Empire and supreme ruler, as other commonwealths were to achieve their liberty of conscience and the freedom of worship according to their faith.

On the rocky promontories all around their town wore conspicuous the emblems of their dread sovereignty. Such as tall gallows and scaffolds, sundry places of execution, showing the wheel where miscreants had their limbs broken, the stake where heretics or other evildoers were made to suffer, and their grim-faced town hall was hung full of iron chains with neck rings; steel cages were exhibited on the towers of the walls, and wooden drills wherein loose-tongued or wicked women were being stretched and turned, could be seen at almost every corner. Even by the shore of the dark-blue river which washed the walls of the town, sundry stations had been erected where malefactors could be drowned or ducked, with tied feet or in sacks, according to the finer discriminations of the decree of judgment.

Now it need not be supposed that because of all this the Ruechensteiners were iron men, robust and inspiring terror by their looks, such as one would be inclined to think from their favorite pastimes. That was indeed not the case. Rather were they people of ordinary, philistine appearance, with thin shanks and pot-bellies, their only distinctive mark being their yellow noses, the same noses with which the year around they used to besniff and watch each other. And nobody indeed would have guessed from the more than commonplace and scanty semblance of their whole physical being that their nerves were like ropes, such as were absolutely required not only to view all along the grewsome sights offered to them by their authorities in the putting to a shameful and lingering death of scores and scores of felons and other poor wretches condemned by their councilmen, but actually to enjoy the sight. These cruel instincts of theirs were not apparent on their faces; they were hidden away in their hearts.

Thus they kept spread like a dense net their judiciary powers over the dominion subject to their fierce rule, always eager for a chance to apply it. And indeed nowhere were there such singular crimes to punish as in this same Ruechenstein. Their inventive gift was fairly inexhaustible. It seemed almost as though their talent for discovering ever new and hitherto unheard-of crimes acted as a spur on sinners to commit the latest delinquencies threatened with penalties of the severest type. However, if despite all this at any time there was a lack of evildoers, the people of the town knew how to help themselves. For then they simply caught and punished the rascals of other towns. And it was only a man with a clear conscience who had the hardihood to cross at any time the territory of Ruechenstein. For when they heard of a crime committed, even if done far away from their own area, they would seize and hold the first landloper that came along, put him to the torture and make him confess his guilt. Not infrequently it would happen that such enforced confession related to a crime that, as later turned out, had only been based on hearsay, and had really never been done. But then it was too late. The supposed malefactor had been hung in chains on the gallows or otherwise disposed of, and could not be brought to life again. Of course, it was unavoidable that because of this inclination of the people of Ruechenstein they would often get into a more or less acrimonious controversy with other towns whose citizens they had thus overzealously dispatched, and they even had constantly pending a number of such cases before the Swiss federal council, and had to be sharply reprimanded, but that did not cure them.

By preference the people of Ruechenstein liked calm, sunny, pleasant weather when indulging in their favorite amusement of holding penal executions, burnings at the stake, and forcible drownings, and that is why on fine summer days there was always something of the kind going on there. The wanderer in a far-off field might then, keeping his eyes fastened on the greyish rock buttress high up on the horizon, notice not infrequently the flashing of the headsman's sword, the smoke pillar of the stake, or in the bed of the river something like the glittering leaping of a fish, which would usually mean the bobbing up and down of a witch undergoing the solemn test. And the word of God on a Sunday they would not have relished at all without at least one erring lovers' couple with straw wreaths before the altar and without the reading out of some sharpened moral mandates.

Other festivals, processions and public pleasures there were none; all such were prohibited by numerous mandates or ordinances.

It may easily be supposed that a town of that stripe could have no more distasteful neighbors than Seldwyla, and behind their woods, too, they would forever think up new methods of interfering with and annoying them. Any Seldwylian whom they caught on their own soil was seized and tortured to get at the facts regarding the latest breach of the peace or any other misdemeanor charged upon their neighbor's score. And on their account, to get even, the Seldwyla people made fast every man of Ruechenstein and, on their public market square, administered to him six choice blows with the rod, on the spot which they deemed specially adapted for that purpose. This, though, was as far as they ever went, for they had a prejudice against bloody spectacles, and amongst themselves never indulged in corporal punishments. But in addition to this mild chastisement they would also blacken the long nose of the culprit, and then they would let him run home. That was why there always were in Ruechenstein several specially disgruntled persons with noses dyed black that but slowly were recovering their pristine hue, and these naturally were particularly zealous in trying to unearth miscreants that could be dealt with severely and subjected to castigation or torture.

The Seldwylians on their part kept this black paint constantly ready in a huge iron pot, and upon this was limned the Ruechenstein town escutcheon, and they denominated this pot the "friendly neighbor." This and the huge paint brush belonging to it was always suspended under the arch of the gate fronting towards Ruechenstein. When this tincture had dried up or been used up it was renewed and the occasion utilized to get up a frolicsome procession ending with a gay banquet, all with a view to rendering the neighbor ridiculous. And because of this at one time the latter became so wrathful that their whole town turned out, banners flying, to inflict punishment on the Seldwylians.

But these, informed of this intention, quickly issued forth and waylaid the Ruechenstein hosts, attacking them unawares. However, the Ruechensteiners had marching at the head of their column a dozen of graybearded and fierce-looking civic soldiers, with new ropes tied to the handles of their long swords, and these wore such an unholy mien as to scare the merry Seldwylian blades. The latter, in fact, began to back out, and they were on the point of losing the fight if a clever conceit had not saved them. For just for fun they had been carrying along the punitive pot of paint, etc., "the friendly neighbor," and instead of a banner the long paint brush. With quick intuition the bearer of the latter dipped his brush deeply into the dark liquid, bounded ahead of his comrades like a flash, and bedaubed the faces of the leading rank of foes a sable hue before these knew what he was about. So that all those in front, threatened immediately with this indelible paint, turned and fled, and that nobody of them all further felt like marching in the van of the host. With that the whole outfit began to sway, and a strange terror fell on them all, whereas the Seldwylians now, their courage restored, manfully went up against the men of Ruechenstein, pressing them back towards the rear, in the direction of their own town. With savage laughter the Seldwyla people took advantage of the occasion, and wherever their foes dared to defend themselves the dreaded paint brush came into instant action, handled with supreme skill by means of its long shaft, and in the melee there was indeed no lack of real heroism. For twice already the daring painters had been pierced by arrows and fallen to rise no more. But each time some other equally courageous fellow had sprung into the gap, and had treated the foe in the same ignominious manner.

In the end the Ruechensteiners were totally defeated, and they fled with their banner towards the clump of woods which led to their town, with the Seldwyla people on their heels. Barely were they able to find refuge in their town, and to close the gate thereof, and the latter, too, was painted all over by the pursuing foe with the black paint, together with its drawbridge, until the Ruechensteiners, somewhat recovered and collected again, threw potfuls of whitewash upon the heads of the uproarious painters.

But because a few Seldwylians of note who in the heat of combat had penetrated into the town and there been taken prisoner, and also about a dozen of the Ruechensteiners had likewise been seized and held by the victors, there was effected an armistice after the lapse of a few days. The prisoners were exchanged on both sides, and a regular peace was concluded, in which both sides gave way a bit. There had been fighting enough to suit them for a spell, and there was a desire for a mutual adjustment. So it came to pass that both sides made fair promises of future good behavior. The Seldwyla people bound themselves to give up the iron paint pot, and to abolish it forever, and the people of Ruechenstein solemnly relinquished all rights of seizure against Seldwylians out walking or strolling in the Ruechenstein territory, and all other privileges and prerogatives on either side were carefully weighed and mostly abolished.

To confirm this agreement a day was appointed, and as place of meeting was chosen the mountain clearing where the chief fight had occurred. From Ruechenstein came a few of the younger councilmen; for their elders had not succeeded in overcoming their strong feelings of reluctance to consort with their ancient foes on terms of quasi friendship. The Seldwyla people on their part showed up in goodly numbers, brought the "friendly neighbor," the heraldic paint pot, as well as a small cask of their choicest and oldest wine, grown on the municipal vineyards, with them, and also a number of their finest silver or gilt tankards and trenchers which belonged to their municipal treasure. In this way they nicely befooled the delegates from Ruechenstein, glad to escape for even a short spell the rigid regimen of their own town, and they were so charmed at this reception that they, instead of immediately returning after the consummation of their errand, allowed themselves to be inveigled in following the tempters to Seldwyla itself. There they were escorted to the town hall, where a grand feast was awaiting them. Beautiful ladies and maidens attended the occasion, and more and more tankards, beakers, and flagons were set up on the banqueting board, so that with the glitter and sheen of all this precious metal and the gleaming of all these bewitching eyes the poor Ruechensteiners clean forgot their original mission and became as gay as larks. They sang, since they knew no other tunes, one Latin psalm after another, while the Seldwylians on their part hummed wicked drinking songs, and finally they wound up in the midst of the noise by inviting their new Seldwyla friends to make a return visit to their own town, being most particular to include the Seldwyla ladies in the invitation, and promising them the most hospitable reception.

This invitation was accepted unanimously, amidst great enthusiasm on both sides, and when the delegates from Ruechenstein at last departed, they did so under the happiest auspices, smiling blissfully from all the choice wine under their belts, and deeming themselves conquerors of the handsome Seldwyla ladies besides, since a number of these, laughing and in rosy humor, gave them safe conduct as far as the gates of the city.

Of course, things took on a somewhat different hue when these jolly young councilmen of Ruechenstein on the following day awoke in their stern city and had to give an account of their stewardship and of the whole proceedings on the day previous. Little was wanting indeed, and they would have been incarcerated and subjected to ardent tests on the charge of having been bewitched. However, they themselves had also a right to speak with authority, and notwithstanding that the whole matter already seemed to them a mistake on their part, they nevertheless stuck to their bargain, and strongly represented to their elder colleagues that the very honor of the city demanded a resplendent reception of the Seldwylian folks. Their views gained acceptance among a section of the citizens, especially when they described the magnificent table silver that had been brought out to honor them, and when they spoke of the handsome Seldwyla ladies and their gracefulness and beautiful attire. The men were of opinion that such ostentatious hospitality must not go unrebuked and unrivaled, and that it was necessary to reciprocate at the coming return visit of their ancient foes by a display of their own wealth, jeweled and precious tableware glittering in their own iron safes aplenty. The women again were itching to circumvent on such a favorable occasion the strict decrees against too profuse finery from which they had been suffering so long, and under the guise of civic patriotism to make a gaudy display of all their hidden trinkets and gorgeous silks. For in their coffers and lockers there was slumbering enough of costly stuffs to outshine the Seldwyla ladies tenfold, they thought. If that had not been the case they would surely long ago have rebelled against the severe sumptuary decrees in vogue and brought the regiment in power to its fall. Therefore, everything considered, the promise made by the Ruechenstein emissaries was formally approved, to the great grief of the elder and sterner members of the council.