Part 16

Such infamous treatment would at another time have been the greatest triumph of his martyrdom. Now too he laughed silently, but it was in a different sense. Once more he walked about the wall of the town, his red coat fluttering in the wind; a glorious breeze blew across the glittering sea from Holy Land, but the monk’s heart was growing more and more worldly, and involuntarily he turned his steps back to the noisy streets of the town, sought out the house where Jole lived, and did her will.

He now grew to be as excellent and complete a man of the world and husband as he had been a martyr. The church, hearing the true facts of the case, was inconsolable to have lost such a saint, and did all within her power to win the truant back to her bosom. But Jole held him fast, and said she thought he was well enough where he was.

_Gottfried Keller._

_MILITARY INSPECTION._

THE officers stood about the right wing of the battalion, two young lieutenants and--yes, it was he--my friend and patron in former times, the Premier-Lieutenant von Schwenkenberg. There was no mistaking him, he was quite the same; the endless stretch of neck, which made the low collar of his uniform look quite childish, the tall and lank figure with the formidable-looking sword at the hip, which almost grazed the ground, and was in constant collision with his heels. Now he went to meet the sergeant a few steps. Oh, I should have known him among thousands by his gait! He leaned forward a trifle, and swung from side to side as he stepped.

“Be--sure--you--don’t--forget--Sergeant Möller,” said Lieutenant von Schwenkenberg, “that--we--are--to--have--an--artillery-drill--on--the-- bastion--this--afternoon. Pick--out--the--weakest--of--the--men; a--bit--of--exercise--will--be--just--the--thing--for--them. Lieutenant Schwarz--will--have--the--goodness--to--take--charge--of--this matter.”

Lieutenant Schwarz was a young second-lieutenant, whom, of course, I did not know. It was evident that he was fresh from the artillery school. His face still retained that indescribable expression of supreme astonishment with which young officers just entering practical military life are wont to regard things. Everything about him was new--his uniform, his epaulettes, his way of dressing his hair, his beard; while Lieutenant von Schwenkenberg looked as if he had just passed through a hazardous winter campaign.

Shyly I walked about the battalion and looked at the Captain, who was standing by a fine horse fully equipped for battle, which one of the soldiers was holding. The Captain’s was a short but very agile figure, never keeping the same position for two seconds at a time. Now he went tripping from the right side of the horse to the left, then darting behind it for a more thorough inspection.

“The parade doesn’t agree with him,” he exclaimed, “doesn’t agree with him at all. But there’s no help for it. Misdemeanour must be followed up by punishment. Sergeant Möller, how often has Cæsar been to parade? If I am not mistaken, it was eight times. I want him to come four more times. Let’s have the dozen full, by all means. Confound him! We’ll teach him better manners than to get up on his hind legs and caper. All I could do to keep him from falling. Did I tell you all the details of the story, Lieutenant von Schwenkenberg?”

“I--had--the--good--fortune--to--be--an--eye-witness,” leisurely remarked the lieutenant.

“Ah, presence of mind, presence of mind, there’s nothing like having presence of mind in an emergency. The deuce! the very last thing we’d want on the battle-field would be a nag that stumbles and falls.--Keep right on, Sergeant Möller,” he added, turning to the latter, who had stopped calling the roll to listen to the Captain’s speech, and looked up to his superior with unbounded reverence. “Keep right on; never mind me. I always take this time to examine not only the battalion within and without, but the barracks as well--yes, the barracks.” Saying these words, he had twice pranced round about the battalion, casting many a glance into an open door which, as the emerging smoke would indicate, marked the entrance to the regimental kitchen.

“What is the story about the horse?” the young lieutenant asked his superior.

The latter shrugged his shoulders gently to and fro, and then replied, “The--horse--behaved--rather--badly,--the--Herr--Captain--thought-- best--to--chastise--him,--and when--the--horse--took--it--ill,--they-- parted company,--you--see. As--a--well-deserved--punishment--Cæsar--is-- to--come--to--parade--for--twelve--consecutive--days--saddled--and packed with--the--full--equipment--for--battle.”

“Seems to me that is harder on the groom than it is on the horse.”

“Does--it--strike--you--so?” remarked Lieutenant von Schwenkenberg with imperturbable tranquillity.

Now the voice of the Captain was heard again. “Lieutenant Schwarz, will you have the goodness to look at this man of your column.” He had ordered a man in the left wing to turn around, and was standing close before him. “I have told you, no doubt, that it takes a practised eye; look closely at the man, will you? Well? What is it? What do you see that’s wrong about him?”

The young officer inspected him carefully from all sides, but he was bound to confess, with a shrug of his shoulders, that he saw nothing unusual.

The Captain smiled with evident satisfaction. Then he said in a gratified tone, “Ah yes, a practised eye is not a thing to be acquired in a day or two. Just look at the buttons on his jacket.”

“They are not polished as brightly as they might be,” the young officer remarked timidly.

“It’s not that, Lieutenant Schwarz. Ye saints, it’s not that,” replied the Captain, raising his left hand like a mason holding a plumb-line. “Imagine a line drawn from the hook of his collar to the middle seam of his trousers. Do you discover nothing? Nothing whatever? Well, my dear Herr Lieutenant, it would really be expecting too much, altogether too much. All that will come to you in good time, no doubt. I have not served in the army for twenty-five years for nothing. Well now, I’ll tell you. The fourth button counting from the top is about half a line too far to the left. You think it is the tailor’s fault, do you? No, sir; I never make the tailor responsible for such things in my regiment. Saints preserve us! I always test them with a plumb-line. Tell that fellow to unbutton his jacket, and if you don’t find a _manœuvre de force_ at the fourth button then I’m very much mistaken.”

The cannoneer unbuttoned his jacket, and sure enough it was just as the Captain had said. Instead of being sewed on, the fourth button was fastened with a small stick, which set it slightly awry, and brought its owner under the ban of the penal code.

_F. W. Hackländer_ (1816-1877).

_THE KING OF MACCAROONIA._

THE King of Maccaroonia, who was just in the prime of life, and in fact had been there for some time past, arose one morning and sat himself down in his night attire upon a chair by the side of his bed. His Minister of State stood before him holding his stockings, one of which had a large hole in the heel. Although he carefully turned the stocking in such a way that the king should not perceive the hole, and although it was much more in the king’s line to have an eye for dainty boots than for well-mended stockings, the hole had not escaped his royal penetration. With horror he seized the stocking, put his fore-finger through the hole up to his knuckles, and then remarked with a sigh--

“What good is there in being a king, so long as I have no queen! What think you of the project of taking a wife?”

“That, your Majesty, is indeed a sublime idea,” replied the Minister; “an idea which I am confident I, your humble subject, should have made bold to conceive, had I not felt that your Majesty himself would deign to utter it this very day.”

“Very well then!” answered the king; “but do you think it will be an easy matter for me to find just the right kind of a wife?”

“Pooh!” said the Minister, “you’ll find a dozen!”

“Do not forget that I am very fastidious. To please me, a princess must be beautiful and clever. And then there is another point that I would lay special stress on. You know how fond I am of ginger-nuts. In my whole kingdom there is not a person who knows how to bake them--that is, to bake them as they should be baked, not too hard and not too soft, but just nice and crisp. She must _partout_ know how to bake ginger-nuts.”

When the Minister heard this his heart fell. But he soon recovered, and replied: “A king like your Majesty will, without doubt, be able to find a princess who can bake ginger-nuts.”

“Well then, we will look about us!” said the king; and that same day he set out accompanied by his Minister on a journey to such of his neighbours as had princesses to dispose of. But it so happened that only three princesses were discovered whose beauty and cleverness were sufficient to satisfy the king, and none of the three could bake ginger-nuts.

“I am sorry to say I can’t bake ginger-nuts,” said the first princess, in answer to the king’s question, “but I can bake delicious little almond-cakes. Wouldn’t those do?”

“No!” replied the king, “nothing short of ginger-nuts will do!”

The second princess snapped her fingers when he asked her, and said pettishly, “Go away with your nonsense! There is no such thing as a princess who can bake ginger-nuts.”

But the king fared worse than this even with the third, who was, alas! the fairest and cleverest. She gave him no opportunity to ask his question; before he could do so, she confronted him with a query on her part asking him if he knew how to play on the Jew’s-harp. When he answered in the negative she rejected him, politely expressing her regrets. She liked him well enough, she said; but she had a particular fancy for the Jew’s-harp, and it was her firm intention to marry no man unable to play upon that instrument.

So the king and his minister drove home again, and as he was getting down from the carriage he said quite dejectedly, “So this was a wild-goose chase!”

But a king must needs have a queen, and some time later he sent for the minister once more, and informed him that he had given up finding a wife who could bake ginger-nuts, and resolved to marry the princess they had visited first. “It is the one who knows how to bake little almond-cakes,” he added. “Go and ask her if she will be my wife.”

The next day the minister came back, and narrated to him how the princess was quite out of the reach of such offers, having married the king of the land where capers grow.

“Well, then, go to the second princess!” But this time too the minister came home again without having accomplished his errand. The old king, he said, regretted exceedingly that it was quite out of his power to gratify him, his daughter having unfortunately died.

The king was very thoughtful for a while, but being quite determined to have a queen, he ordered his minister to go once more to the third princess, as there was no knowing but she too might have changed her mind. And the minister yielded to his orders, although his own inclination was quite averse to the project, and although his wife told him it would be quite useless. The king awaited his return in some trepidation. He was thinking of the question concerning the Jew’s-harp, and the recollection was no agreeable one.

But the third princess received the minister very graciously, and told him that once she had been quite determined to have only such a husband as could play on the Jew’s-harp; but that now, after all, she had come to the conclusion that dreams are flighty, especially the dreams of youth. She saw now, she said, that the realisation of her wish was quite out of the question, and as she had taken a fancy to the king she was willing to have him.

Then the minister drove home as fast as his horses would go, and the king embraced him, and gave him a tremendous medal to wear about his neck. Bright flags decorated the town, garlands were hung from house to house across the streets, and altogether the wedding was such a splendid affair that nothing else was talked of for the next fortnight.

The king and the young queen lived in a state of bliss and rapture for the space of an entire year. The king never thought of ginger-nuts, and that little matter of the Jew’s-harp had quite slipped out of the queen’s mind.

But one morning the king got up with his wrong leg first, and everything went wrong. It rained the whole day long; the imperial globe fell down, and the little cross on top of it broke off; then the court painter came and brought the new map of the kingdom, and when the king looked at it he found that the land was painted red instead of blue, as he had ordered it; and besides all this, the queen had a headache.

So it happened that the couple had their first quarrel; what it was all about they themselves did not know next morning, or if they did know it they did not want to say. In short, the king grumbled and the queen pouted and would always have the last word. After they had wrangled for some time, the queen shrugged her shoulders contemptuously and said--

“It seems to me you might be silent, and stop finding fault with everything you set your eyes on, when you yourself don’t even know how to play on the Jew’s-harp.”

But no sooner were the words out of her mouth than the king petulantly interrupted her with the words, “And you cannot so much as bake ginger-nuts!”

Thereupon the queen for the first time had no repartee upon her tongue’s end, and succumbed into silence, and without another word they both walked away. The queen sat down in a corner of her sofa in her own room, weeping bitterly, and thinking, “What a foolish woman I am! Where did I have my senses? That was the silliest thing I could have done!”

The king walked up and down in his room, gleefully rubbing his hands, and saying, “What a piece of good fortune it is that my wife doesn’t know how to bake ginger-nuts! If she did, I should have been sadly put to for an answer when she reproached me for being unable to play on the Jew’s-harp!”

After he had repeated this three or four times his mood brightened visibly. He began to whistle a favourite tune, then he went and looked at a large likeness of the queen hanging on the wall. He got up on a chair and took out his handkerchief to brush off a cobweb hanging down straight over the queen’s nose, and at last he said--

“She must have been very much put out, the dear little woman! I will go and see what she is doing!”

With that he went out into the hall, into which all the rooms opened. But this being a day on which everything went wrong, the valet had forgotten to light the lamps, although it was already eight o’clock, and moreover pitch dark.

So the king put out his hands before him so as not to bump his royal head, and cautiously felt his way along the wall. Suddenly he came upon something. “Who is there?” he asked.

“It is I,” answered the queen.

“What are you looking for, my love?”

“I was coming to ask your forgiveness,” replied the queen, “because I hurt your feelings.”

“You needn’t do that!” said the king, putting his arms about her neck. “The fault was more mine than yours, and I don’t give it another thought. But I’ll tell you one thing: two words shall be forbidden on pain of death in our kingdom, Jew’s-harp and----”

“And ginger-nuts,” the queen interrupted him, laughing and secretly wiping a tear from the corner of her eye; and that is the end of the story.

_Professor Volkmann_ (1830-1891).

_THE SAD TALE OF SEVEN KISSES._

IT is quite a while ago, I think, since one day the dear God called the angel Gabriel to him, as he often does, and said, “Thou Gabriel, go and open the slide and look down! Methinks I hear some crying!” Gabriel went and did as the dear God said, put his hand up to his eyes because the sunlight dazzled him, looked all around, and finally said, “Down there is a long green meadow; at one end sits Barbelie pasturing her geese, at the other sits Christoph pasturing his pigs, and both of them are weeping to melt a heart of stone.”

“Indeed!” said the dear God; “go away, you tall fellow, and let me see.”

When he had looked he found it was just as Gabriel had said.

And this was how it came that Christoph and Barbelie were weeping so pitifully. Christoph and Barbelie loved each other dearly; one of them took care of the geese and the other took care of the pigs, and so it was a very suitable match, there being no disparity of rank. They made up their minds to be married, and they thought being fond of each other was a good enough reason. But here their employers differed from them. So they were obliged to be content with a betrothal. Now, as it is well to be methodical in all things, and as kissing plays an important part in betrothals, they had come to an agreement to the effect that seven kisses in the morning and seven kisses in the evening would be quite the proper thing. For a while all went well, the seven kisses being duly given and received at the appointed time. But on the morning of the day when this story occurred it came about that, just as the seventh kiss was coming around, Barbelie’s pet goose and Christoph’s pet pig had a falling-out over their breakfast, threatening to end in a serious _melée_. To settle this difficulty it was necessary for the two to stop short of the proper number. Later, when they were sitting lonely and far apart by the edge of the meadow, it occurred to them how very bad a thing this was, and they both began to weep, and were still weeping when the dear God looked down.

The dear God thought at first that in the course of time their sorrow would subside of itself; but when the sound of weeping waxed louder and louder, and Christoph’s pet pig and Barbelie’s pet goose began to grow sad for sympathy, and to make woe-begone faces, he said, “I will help them! Whatever they wish for this day shall come true.”

But as it was the two had but one thought; as each looked in the direction where the other one sat, and neither could see the other, for the meadow was long and there was a bush in the middle, Christoph thought, “If I were but over where the geese are!” and Barbelie sighed, “Oh, could I but be near the pigs!”

All at once Christoph found himself sitting by the geese, and Barbelie was with the pigs; but for all that they were not together, and there was still no possibility of correcting that wrong number.

Then thought Christoph: “Barbelie very likely wanted to make me a little visit;” and Barbelie thought, “No doubt Christoph has gone around to see me!” “Oh, if I could but be with my geese!” “Oh, if I could but be with my pigs!”

So Barbelie sat once more beside her geese, and Christoph sat beside his pigs, and so it went turn and turn about all day, because they always wished past each other. And so to this day they are short of that seventh morning kiss. Christoph, to be sure, was all for making it up that same evening when they both came home tired to death with wishing, but Barbelie assured him it wouldn’t do a bit of good, and that there was no possibility of getting things straightened out again.

And when the dear God saw how the two had been wishing themselves away from each other, he said: “Well, this is a nice kettle of fish. But what I have once said I _have_ said! There is no help for it!” He made up his mind then and there never to grant lovers’ wishes rashly in future, before having made careful inquiries as to what it was they wanted. Later, I am told, he once told Gabriel confidentially that it was really a great pity that their wishes were so very rarely of a kind that he could grant them; and a long long time ago, when I applied to him in a similar affair, he did not so much as give me a hearing. Later Gabriel told me this story, and then I ceased to wonder.

_Professor Volkmann._

_A COUNTRY COMEDY._

IN the open door of the house the dark figure of a woman stood out distinctly against the brilliant snow--it was Eva Barbara. Without a word she seized his hand and drew him after her; he felt her pulses beat, and her quick breath betrayed her excitement. At a rapid pace she drew him along the silent streets, retarding her steps only as she approached her father’s farmyard, where she dropped his hand, and with a shiver wrapped herself closer in her little shawl.

Suddenly the girl raised her head as if listening, and with a sob she said, “I am the most unhappy lass on God’s earth!” Then with a sudden start: “Hark! they are coming. I am yours, Paul, whatever may come. Sure you can depend on me. Don’t you hear them? For God’s sake, Paul, don’t stay here. It would be death to me to think you might fall into the hands of the Rottenstein lads! Be quick and away--why do you stand and look at me? If you care for me, go! God knows what a hard time I shall have of it with the old folks, without having to tremble for your safety!”

“Eva Barbara--my own Eva Barbara! I _will_ turn over a new leaf; I----”

“Oh, my God, don’t you hear how they are surrounding the house? Away with you, before it is too late!”

Paul turned to fly--it was too late! Logs of wood came crashing into the farmyard, and were shivered into bits against the house. With a leap Martin, who was far ahead of his comrades, came bounding around the corner, and with a cry of rage he threw himself upon his hated rival. But in the face of danger Paul had regained his self-possession; cleverly evading the attack, he seized Martin and threw him down. Then he felt his hand seized, he dipped into deep darkness, a door was thrown to--at the same time there was a fearful crash upon the threshold, making the silent house resound. Eva Barbara quickly fastened the bolts and hooks, and for the time being Paul was safe.

For the time being!

A thrill of suppressed rage passed through the lad standing in the dark, icy-cold entry beside the weeping girl, while his enemies raged about without the house, now shaking the doors, now demanding admission. What an ill-fated, miserable sort of scrape was this he was in! He felt like a grain of wheat between two mill-stones. He dared not go out; his life, or at least his future bodily welfare, was at stake. But if he stayed, and the farmer found him in his house--and there was not the slightest doubt that the peasant would soon find him, what with the unearthly din without--what would await him then he faintly divined!

Again there were heavy thumps against the door, and Martin’s voice was heard crying, “Open it quick! Open it, peasant, or by the devil we’ll smash the door! Open it--Paul Schülzle is in your house--deliver him over, or we’ll open fight!”

“My God, my God! how shall this end?” moaned the trembling girl. “Hark! Don’t you hear anything? Sure enough----Oh, goodness me, father is awake! Come upstairs. I can’t let you into the barn because the door creaks, and you can’t stay here by the stairs. Come, find a hiding-place upstairs, in the hall or in the kitchen--come quick! Oh, blessed Saviour, turn this misfortune! Come! father will be here with a candle in a minute; if he finds us together--you know what his temper is!”

Paul’s hand was seized again, and he was drawn upstairs; fortunately the resounding blows against the door smothered his stumbling steps. In the sitting-room the peasant was swearing about the matches that would not catch fire; the girl trembled. “Straight ahead you’ll find the kitchen-door! God be with you; I can help you no further. If father finds me here all is lost.”