The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 07

"Inasmuch as you talk so sensibly, you have, I presume, thought better of my proposal," broke in the receiver. "As I, have already said, the government wants to convert into cash all the corn due from the farms in this region. It alone suffers a loss from it, for corn is corn, whereas money is worth so much today and so much tomorrow. Meanwhile, you see, it is their wish to free themselves from the burden of storing up corn. Kindly do me the favor, then, to sign this new cash-contract, which I have brought with me for that purpose."

"By no means!" answered the Justice vehemently. "For many hundreds of years corn, and only corn, has been paid over from the Oberhof to the monastery, and the receiver's office will have to content itself with that, just as the monastery has done. Does cash grow in my fields? No! Corn grows in them! Where, then, are you going to get the cash?"

"You're not going to be cheated, you know!" cried the receiver.

"We must always stand by the old ways of doing things," said the Justice solemnly. "Those were good times when the tablets with the lists of imposts and taxes of the peasantry used to hang in the church. In those days everything was fixed, and there were never any disagreements, as there are nowadays all too often. Afterwards it was said that the tablets with the hens and eggs and bushels and pecks of grain. interfered with devotion, and they were done away with." With that he went into the house.

"There is a stubborn fellow for you!" cried the horse-dealer, when he could no longer see his business friend. He put his varnished hat back on his head again with an air of vexation. "If he once makes up his mind not to do something, the devil himself cannot bring him around. The worst of it is that the fellow rears the best horses in this region, and after all, if you get right down to it, lets them go cheap enough."

"An obstinate, headstrong sort of people it is that lives hereabouts," said the receiver. "I have just recently come from Saxony and I notice the contrast. There they all live together, and for that reason they have to be courteous and obliging and tractable toward one another. But here, each one lives on his own property, and has his own wood, his own field, his own pasture around him, as if there were nothing else in the world. For that reason they cling so tenaciously to all their old foolish ways and notions, which have everywhere else fallen into disuse. What a lot of trouble I've had already with the other peasants on account of this stupid change in the mode of taxation! But this fellow here is the worst of all!" "The reason for that, Mr. Receiver, is that he is so rich," remarked the horse-dealer. "It is a wonder to me that you have put it through with the other peasants around here without him, for he is their general, their attorney and everything; they all follow his example in every matter and he bows to no one. A year ago a prince passed through here; the way the old fellow took off his hat to him, really, it looked as if he wanted to say: 'You are one, I am another.' To expect to get twenty-six pistoles for the mare! But that is the unfortunate part of it, when a peasant acquires too much property. When you come out on the other side of that oak wood, you walk for half an hour by the clock through his fields! And everything arranged in first rate order all the way! The day before yesterday I drove my team through the rye and wheat, and may God punish me if anything more than the horses' heads showed up above the tops. I thought I should be drowned."

"Where did he get it all?" asked the receiver.

"Oh!" cried the horse-dealer, "there are a lot more estates like this around here; they call them Oberhofs. And if they do not surpass many a nobleman's, my name isn't Marx. The land has been held intact for generations. And the good-for-nothing fellow has always been economical and industrious, you'll have to say that much for him I You saw, didn't you, how he worked away merely to save the expense of paying the blacksmith a few farthings? Now his daughter is marrying another rich fellow; she'll get a dowry, I tell you! I happened to pass the linen closet; flax, yarn, tablecloths and napkins and sheets and shirts and every possible kind of stuff are piled up to the ceiling in there. And in addition to that the old codger will give her six thousand thalers in cash! Just glance about you; don't you feel as if you were stopping with a count?"

During the foregoing dialogue the vexed horse-dealer had quietly put his hand into his money-bag and to the twenty gold pieces had added, with an air of unconcern, six more. The Justice appeared again at the door, and the other, without looking up, said, grumbling; "There are the twenty-six, since there is no other way out of it."

The old peasant smiled ironically and said: "I knew right well that you would buy the horse, Mr. Marx, for you are trying to find one for thirty pistoles for the cavalry lieutenant in Unna, and my little roan fills the bill as if she had been made to order. I went into the house only to fetch the gold-scales, and could see in advance that you would have bethought yourself in the meantime."

The old man, who one moment displayed something akin to hurry in his movements and the next the greatest deliberation, depending upon the business with which he happened to be occupied, sat down at the table, slowly and carefully wiped off his spectacles, fastened them on his nose, and began carefully to weigh the gold pieces. Two or three of them he rejected as being too light. The horse-dealer raised a loud objection to this, but the Justice, holding the scales in his hands, only listened in cold-blooded silence, until the other replaced them with pieces having full weight. Finally, the business was completed; the seller deliberately wrapped the money in a piece of paper and went with the horse-dealer to the stable, in order to deliver the horse over to him.

The receiver did not wait for them to return. "One can't accomplish anything with a clod-hopper like that," he said. "I But in the end if you don't come around and pay us up regularly, we will—" He felt for the legal documents in his pocket, realized by their crackling that they were still there, and left the yard.

Out of the stable came the horse-dealer, the Justice, and a farm-hand who was leading behind him two horses, the horse-dealer's own and the brown mare which he had just bought. The Justice, giving the latter a farewell pat, said "It always grieves one to sell a creature which one has raised, but who can do otherwise?—Now behave well, little brownie!" he added, giving the animal a hearty slap on her round, glossy haunches. In the meantime the horse-dealer had mounted. With his gaunt figure, his short riding-jacket under the broad-brimmed, varnished hat, his yellow breeches over his lean thighs, his high leather boots, his large, heavy spurs, and his whip, he looked like a highwayman. He rode away cursing and swearing, without saying good-by, leading the brown mare by a halter. He never once glanced back at the farm-house, but the mare several times bent her neck around and emitted a doleful neigh, as if complaining because her good days were now over. The Justice remained standing with the laborer, his arms set akimbo, until the two horses had passed out of sight through the orchard. Then the man said: "The animal is grieving."

"Why shouldn't she?" replied the Justice. "Aren't we grieving too? Come up to the granary—we'll measure the oats."

CHAPTER II

ADVICE AND SYMPATHY

As he turned around toward the house with the laborer, he saw that the place under the linden had already been reoccupied by new guests. The latter, however, had a very dissimilar appearance. For three or four peasants, his nearest neighbors, were sitting there, and beside them sat a young girl, as beautiful as a picture. This beautiful girl was the blond Lisbeth, who had passed the night at the Oberhof.

I shall not venture to describe her beauty; it would only result in telling of her red cheeks and blue eyes, and these things, fresh as they may be in reality, have become somewhat stale when put down in black and white.

The Justice, without paying any attention to his long-haired neighbors in blouses, approached his charming guest and said:

"Well, did you sleep all right, my little miss?" "Splendidly!" replied Lisbeth.

"What's the matter with your finger?—you have it bandaged," inquired the old man.

"Nothing," answered the young girl, blushing. She wanted to change the subject, but the Justice would not allow himself to be diverted; grasping her hand, the one with the bandaged finger, he said: "It's nothing serious, is it?"

"Nothing worth talking about," answered Lisbeth. "Yesterday evening when I was helping your daughter with her sewing, the needle pricked my finger and it bled a little. That is all."

"Oho!" exclaimed the Justice, smirking. "And I notice that it is the ring-finger too! That augurs something good. You doubtless know that when an unmarried girl helps an engaged one to sew her bridal linen, and in doing it pricks her ring-finger, it means that she herself is to become engaged in the same year? Well, you have my best wishes for a nice lover!"

The peasants laughed, but the blond Lisbeth did not allow herself to be disconcerted; she cried out joyfully: "And do you know my motto? It runs:

  As far as God on lily fair  And raven young bestows his care,  Thus far runs my land;  And, therefore, he who seeks my hand  Must have four horses to his carriage  Before I'll give myself in marriage.

"And," broke in the Justice—

  And he must catch me like a mouse,  And hook me like a fish,  And shoot me like a roe.

The report of a gun rang out nearby. "See, my little miss, it's coming true!"

"Now, Judge, make an end of your frivolous talk," said the young girl. "I have called to get your advice, and so give it to me now without any more foolish nonsense." The Justice settled himself in an attitude of dignity, ready to talk and listen. Lisbeth drew forth a little writing-tablet and read off the names of the peasants among whom she had been going around during the past few days for the purpose of collecting back-rent due her foster-father. Then she told the Justice how they had refused to pay their debts and what their excuses had been. One claimed to have paid up long ago, another said that he had only recently come into the farm, a third knew nothing about the matter, a fourth had pretended that he couldn't hear well, and so forth and so forth; so that the poor girl, like a little bird flying about in the winter in search of food and not finding a single grain of corn, had been turned away empty-handed from one door after another. But any one who thinks that these futile efforts had plunged her into grief is mistaken, for nothing greatly disturbed her and she related the story of her irksome wanderings with a cheerful smile.

The Justice wrote down on the table with chalk several of the names mentioned, and, when she had reached the end of her list, said:

"As far as the others are concerned, they do not live with us and I have no authority over them. If they are base enough to refuse to do their duty and to meet their obligations, then simply strike out the names of the scamps, for you can never get anything out of a peasant by a law-suit. But as against those who live in our precinct, I will help you to secure your rights. We still have means of accomplishing that."

"Oho, Squire!" said one of the peasants to him, half-aloud. "You talk as if you always carried the rope around with you in your coat-sleeve. When is the secret court to be held?"

"Be still, tree-warden!" interrupted the old man with earnestness.

"Sneering remarks like that might get you into trouble!"

The man addressed was disconcerted; he cast down his eyes and made no reply. Lisbeth thanked the old man for his offer of help, and inquired about the roads and paths to the other peasants whose names she still had left on her writing-tablet. The Justice pointed out to her the shortest way to the nearest farm, which led across the Priests' Meadow, past the three mills and over the Holle Hills. When she had put on her straw hat, taken her staff, expressed her thanks for the hospitality shown her, and had thus made herself ready to leave, he begged her to make her arrangements such that on her return she could stay for the wedding and a day thereafter. He hoped that he would be able to give her by that time definite assurance in regard to the rents, or, perhaps, even to give her the money itself to take home with her.

When the young girl's slender and graceful form had disappeared behind the last walnut-trees at the farther end of the orchard, the peasants broached the subject which had brought them to the Justice. The building of a new road, which was to establish a connection with the main highway, threatened, if the idea were carried out, to deprive them of a few strips of their land over which it was necessary to lay the new road. Against this loss, although the project would redound to the advantage of all the surrounding peasantry, they were anxious to protect themselves; and how to avert it was the question about which they were anxious to secure the advice of the owner of the Oberhof.

"Good day! How are you?" called out a voice, well known in this locality. A pedestrian, a man in respectable attire, but covered with dust from his gray gaiters to his green, visored cap, had entered through the gate and approached the table, unnoticed at first by the conversers.

"Ah, Mr. Schmitz, so we see you too, once more, eh?" said the old peasant very cordially, and he had the servant bring the fatigued man the best there was in the wine-cellar. The peasants politely moved closer together to make room for the new arrival. They insisted upon his sitting down, and he lowered himself into a chair with great care and deliberation, so as not to break what he was carrying. And this procedure was indeed very necessary, for the man was loaded down like an express-wagon, and the outlines of his form resembled a conglomeration of bundles tied together. Not only did his coat-pockets, which were crammed full of all sorts of round, square and oblong objects, bulge out from his body in an astonishing manner, but also his breast and side pockets, which were used for the same purpose, protruded in a manifold variety of swellings and eminences, which stuck out all the more sharply as the Collector, in order not to lose any of his treasures, had, in spite of the summer heat, buttoned his coat tightly together. Even the inside of his cap had been obliged to serve for the storing of several smaller articles, and had acquired from its contents the shape and semblance of a watermelon. He sipped, with manifest relish, the good wine that was put before him, and his elderly countenance, bloated and reddened with heat and fatigue, gradually acquired its natural color and form again.

"Been doing good business, Mr. Schmitz?" inquired the Justice, smiling.

"Judging from appearances, one might think so."

"Oh, fairly good," replied the Collector. "There is a rich blessing hidden in the dear earth. It not only brings forth corn and vegetables constantly and untiringly—an alert searcher may secure a harvest of antiquities from it all the time, no matter how much other people have scratched and dug for them. So I have once more taken my little trip through the country, and this time I got as far as the border of the Sieg valley. I am on my way back now and intend to go on as far as the city today. But I had to stop over a while at your place on the way, Justice, in order to rest myself a bit, for I am certainly tired."

"What are you bringing with you?" asked the Justice.

The Collector tapped gently and affectionately on all the swellings and protuberances of his various pockets, and said:

"Oh, well, some very nice things—all sorts of curiosities. A battle-axe, a pair of thunderbolts, some heathen rings—beautiful things all covered with green rust—ash-urns, tear-bottles, three idols and a pair of valuable lamps." He struck the nape of his neck with the back of his hand and continued: "And I also have here with me a perfectly preserved piece of bronze—I had no other place to put it, so I tied it fast here on my back under my coat. Well, it will probably not look amiss, once it is all cleaned up and given its proper place."

The peasants displayed some curiosity to see a few of the articles, but old Schmitz declared himself unable to satisfy it, because the antiquities were so carefully packed and put away with such ingenious use of every bit of space that it would be difficult, if it were once taken out, to get the entire load back in again. The Justice said something into the servant's ear, and the latter went into the house. In the meanwhile the Collector told in detail all about the places where he had come across the various acquisitions; then he moved his chair nearer to his host and said confidentially:

"But what is by far the most important discovery of this trip—I have now really found the actual place where Hermann defeated Varus!"

"You don't mean it?" replied the Justice, pushing his cap back and forth.

"They have all been on the wrong track—Clostermeier, Schmid, and whatever the names of the other people may be who have written about it!" cried the Collector ardently. "They have always thought that Varus withdrew in the direction of Aliso—the exact situation of which no man has ever discovered—well, anyway, in a northerly direction, and in accordance with that theory the battle is supposed to have taken place between the sources of the Lippe and the Ems, near Detmold, Lippspring, Paderborn, and God knows where else!"

The Justice said: "I think that Varus had to try with all his might to reach the Rhine, and that he could have done only by gaining the open country. The battle is said to have lasted three days, and in that length of time you can march a good distance. Hence I am rather of the opinion that the attack in the mountains which surround our plain did not take place very far from here."

"Wrong, wrong, Justice!" cried the Collector. "Here below everything was occupied and blocked up by the Cherusci, Catti, and Sigambri. No the battle was much farther south, near the region of the Ruhr, not far from Arnsberg. Varus had to push his way through the mountains, he had no egress anywhere, and his mind was bent on reaching the middle Rhine, whither the road leads diagonally across Sauerland. That is what I have always thought, and now I have discovered the most unmistakable evidence of it. Close by the Ruhr I found the bronze and bought the three idols, and a man from the village told me that hardly an hour's walk from there was a place in the woods among the mountains where an enormous quantity of bones were piled up in the sand and gravel. Ha! I exclaimed, the day is beginning to break. I went out there with a few peasants, had them excavate a little, and, behold! we came across bones to my heart's content. So that is the place where Germanicus had the remnants of the Roman legions buried six years after the battle of Teutoburg Wood, when he directed his last expeditions against Hermann. And I have therefore discovered the right battlefield."

"Bones do not ordinarily preserve themselves for a thousand years and more," said the Justice, shaking his head doubtfully.

"They have become petrified among the minerals there," said the collector angrily. "I'll have to put an evidence of my theory in your hand—here is one I have brought with me." He drew forth a large bone from his shirt and held it before his opponent's eyes. "Now, what do you call that?" he asked triumphantly.

The peasants stared at the bone in amazement. The Justice, after he had examined it, replied: "A cow's bone, Mr. Schmitz! You discovered a carrion-pit, not the battlefield of Teutoburg."

The Collector indignantly put the discredited antiquity back into its place and uttered a few violent imprecations, to which the old peasant knew the most effective way to reply. It seemed as if a quarrel might ensue between the two men, but as a matter of fact the appearances were of no significance. For it was a common thing for them, whenever they got together, to disagree about this and similar matters. But in spite of these controversies they always remained good friends. The Collector, who, in order to follow up his hobbies, even begrudged himself bread, was in the habit all the year round of feeding himself for weeks at a time out of the full meat-pots of the Oberhof, and in return for it he helped along his host's business by doing all kinds of writing for him. For the Collector had formerly been, by profession, a sworn and matriculated Imperial Notary.

Finally, after a great deal of fruitless argument on both sides, the Justice said: "I won't wrangle with you over the battlefield, although I still persist in my belief that Hermann defeated Varus somewhere around this neighborhood. As a matter of fact it doesn't make any particular difference to me where it happened—the question is one for the scholars. For if the other Roman general, six years afterwards, as you have often told me, marched into this region with another army, then the whole battle had but little significance."

"You don't know anything about it!" exclaimed the Collector. "The present existence and position of Germany rests entirely upon the battle won by Hermann. If it had not been for Hermann 'the liberator,' you would not be occupying these extensive premises now, marked off by your hedges and stakes. But you people simply live along from one day to the next, and have no use for history and antiquity."

"Oho, Mr. Schmitz, you do me great injustice there," replied the old peasant proudly. "God knows what pleasure it gives me to sit down of a winter evening and read the chronicles and histories, and you yourself know that I treat the sword of Carolus Magnus (the old man pronounced the second syllable long), which has now for a thousand years and more been in the possession of the Oberhof, as I do the apple of my eye, and consequently—"

"The sword of Charles the Great!" exclaimed the Collector scornfully.

"Friend, is it impossible to get these notions out of your head?

Listen—"

"I say and maintain that it is the genuine and actual sword of Carolus Magnus with which he here at the Oberhof located and established the 'Freemen's Tribunal.' And even today the sword still performs and fulfils its office, although nothing further may be said about it." The old man uttered these words with an expression on his features and a gesture which had something sublime in them.

"And I say and maintain that all that is sheer nonsense!" exclaimed the Collector with emphasis. "I have examined the old toasting-iron no less than a hundred times, and it isn't five hundred years old! It comes down perhaps from the time of the feud of Soest, when very likely one of the Archbishop's cavalrymen crawled into the bushes here and left it."

"The devil take you!" cried the Justice, pounding his fist on the table. Then he mumbled softly to himself "Just wait; you'll get your punishment for that this very day!"

The servant came out of the door. He was carrying a terra-cotta jug with a rather large circumference and a strange, exotic appearance, gripping it firmly and carefully by the handles with both hands.

"Oh!" cried the Collector, when he had obtained a closer view of it.

"What a splendid large amphora! Where did it come from?"

The Justice replied with an air of indifference: "Oh, I found the old jug in the ditch a week ago when we were digging out gravel. There was a lot more stuff around there, but the men smashed it all to pieces with their picks. This jug was the only thing they spared, and, inasmuch as you are here, I wanted you to see it."

The Collector looked at the large, well-preserved vessel with moist eyes. Finally he stammered: "Can't we strike a bargain for it?"

"No," replied the peasant coldly. "I'll keep the pot for myself." He motioned to the servant, and the latter started to carry the amphora back into the house. He was prevented from doing so, however, by the Collector, who, without turning his eyes away from it, besought its owner with all kinds of lively arguments to turn the longed-for wine-jug over to him. But it was all in vain; the Justice, in the face of the most urgent entreaties, maintained an attitude of unshakable composure. In this way he formed the motionless centre-figure of the group, of which the peasants, listening to the business with open mouths, the servant tugging the jug with both handles toward the house, and the antiquarian holding on to the lower end, constituted the excited lateral and secondary figures. Finally the Justice said that he had been of a mind to give the jug to his guest along with several other pieces which he had previously discovered, because he himself would take pleasure in seeing the old things arranged in order on the shelves of the collection around the room, but that the constant attacks made by the Collector against the sword of Carolus Magnus had annoyed him, and that he had decided, therefore, to keep the jug after all.