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

This thought, mingled with many others and with echoes of Don Juan, had surged through her troubled brain the night before, and it was almost daylight when she fell asleep. Now, the three women had seated themselves in the garden with their work; the men bore them company, and when the conversation, as was natural, turned upon Mozart, Eugenie did not conceal her apprehensions. No one shared them in the least, although the Baron understood her fully. She tried to rid herself of the feeling, and her friends, particularly her uncle, brought to her mind the most positive and cheering proofs that she was wrong. How gladly she heard them! She was almost ready to believe that she had been foolishly alarmed.

Some moments afterward, as she passed through the large hall which had just been swept and put in order, where the half-drawn green damask curtains made a soft twilight, she stopped sadly before the piano. It was like a dream, to think who had sat there but a few hours before. She looked long and thoughtfully at the keys which he had touched last; then she softly closed the lid and took away the key, in jealous care lest some other hand should open it too soon. As she went away, she happened to return to its place a book of songs; an old leaf fell out, the copy of a Bohemian folk-song, which Franziska, and she too, had sung long ago. She took it up, not without emotion, for in her present mood the most natural occurrence might easily seem an oracle. And the simple verses, as she read them through again, brought the hot tears to her eyes:

  "A pine-tree stands in a forest—who knows where?    A rose-tree in some garden fair doth grow;  Remember they are waiting there, my soul,    Till o'er thy grave they bend to whisper and to blow.  "Far in the pasture two black colts are feeding.    Toward home they canter when the master calls;  They shall go slowly with thee to thy grave,    Perchance ere from their hoofs the gleaming iron falls."* * * * *

ANNETTE ELIZABETH VON DROSTE-HÜLSHOFF

PENTECOST34 (1839)

  The day was still, the sun's bright glare  Fell sheer upon the Temple's beauteous wall  Withered by tropic heat, the air  Let, like a bird, its listless pinions fall.  Behold a group, young men and gray,  And women, kneeling; silence holds them all;  They mutely pray!  Where is the faithful Comforter  Whom, parting, Thou didst promise to Thine own?  They trust Thy word which cannot err,  But sad and full of fear the time has grown.  The hour draws nigh; for forty days  And forty wakeful nights toward Thee we've thrown  Our weeping gaze.  Where is He? Hour on hour doth steal,  And minute after minute swells the doubt.  Where doth He bide? And though a seal  Be on the mouth, the soul must yet speak out.  Hot winds blow, in the sandy lake  The panting tiger moans and rolls about,  Parched is the snake.  But hark! a murmur rises now,  Swelling and swelling like a storm's advance,  Yet standing grass-blades do not bow,  And the still palm-tree listens in a trance.  Why seem these men to quake with fear  While each on other casts a wondering glance?  Behold! 'Tis here!  'Tis here, 'tis here! the quivering light  Rests on each head; what floods of ecstasy  Throng in our veins with wondrous might!  The future dawns; the flood-gates open free;  Resistless pours the mighty Word;  Now as a herald's call, now whisperingly,  Its tone is heard.  Oh Light, oh Comforter, but there  Alas! and but to them art Thou revealed  And not to us, not everywhere  Where drooping souls for comfort have appealed!  I yearn for day that never breaks;  Oh shine, before this eye is wholly sealed,  Which weeps and wakes.* * * * *

THE HOUSE IN THE HEATH35 (1841)

  Beneath yon fir trees in the west,    The sunset round it glowing,  A cottage lies like bird on nest,    With thatch roof hardly showing.  And there across the window-sill    Leans out a white-starred heifer;  She snorts and stamps; then breathes her fill    Of evening's balmy zephyr.  Near-by reposes, hedged with thorn,    A garden neatly tended;  The sunflower looks about with scorn;    The bell-flower's head is bended.  And in the garden kneels a child,    She weeds or merely dallies,  A lily plucks with gesture mild    And wanders down the alleys.  A shepherd group in distance dim    Lie stretched upon the heather,  And with a simple evening hymn    Wake the still breeze together.  And from the roomy threshing hall    The hammer strokes ring cheery,  The plane gives forth a crunching drawl,    The rasping saw sounds weary.  The evening star now greets the scene    And smoothly soars above it,  And o'er the cottage stands serene;    He seems in truth to love it.  A vision with such beauty crowned,    Had pious monks observed it,  They straight upon a golden ground    Had painted and preserved it.  The carpenter, the herdsmen there    A pious choral sounding;  The maiden with the lily fair,    And peace the whole surrounding;  The wondrous star that beams on all    From out the fields of heaven—  May it not be that in the stall    The Christ is born this even?* * * * *

THE BOY ON THE MOOR36 (1841)

  'Tis an eerie thing o'er the moor to fare    When the eddies of peat-smoke justle,  When the wraiths of mist whirl here and there    And wind-blown tendrils tussle,      When every step starts a hidden spring      And the trodden moss-tufts hiss and sing  'Tis an eerie thing o'er the moor to fare    When the tangled reed-beds rustle.  The child with his primer sets out alone    And speeds as if he were hunted,  The wind goes by with a hollow moan—    There's a noise in the hedge-row stunted.      'Tis the turf-digger's ghost, near-by he dwells,      And for drink his master's turf he sells.  "Whoo! whoo!" comes a sound like a stray cow's groan;    The poor boy's courage is daunted.  Then stumps loom up beside the ditch,    Uncannily nod the bushes,  The boy running on, each nerve a twitch,    Through a jungle of spear-grass pushes.      And where it trickles and crackles apace      Is the Spinner's unholy hiding-place,  The home of the cursèd Spinning-witch    Who turns her wheel 'mid the rushes.  On, ever on, goes the fearsome rout,    In pursuit through that region fenny,  At each wild stride the bubbles burst out,    And the sounds from beneath are many.      Until at length from the midst of the din      Comes the squeak of a spectral violin,  That must be the rascally fiddler lout    Who ran off with the bridal penny!  The turf splits open, and from the hole    Bursts forth an unhappy sighing,  "Alas, alas, for my wretched soul!"    'Tis poor damned Margaret crying!      The lad he leaps like a wounded deer,      And were not his guardian angel near  Some digger might find in a marshy knoll    Where his little bleached bones were lying.  But the ground grows firmer beneath his feet,    And there from over the meadow  A lamp is flickering homely-sweet;    The boy at the edge of the shadow      Looks back as he pauses to take his breath,      And in his glance is the fear of death.  'Twas eerie there 'mid the sedge and peat,    Ah, that was a place to dread, O!* * * * *

ON THE TOWER37 (1842)

  I stand aloft on the balcony,    The starlings around me crying,  And let like maenad my hair stream free    To the storm o'er the ramparts flying.  Oh headlong wind, on this narrow ledge    I would I could try thy muscle  And, breast to breast, two steps from the edge,    Fight it out in a deadly tussle.  Beneath me I see, like hounds at play,    How billow on billow dashes;  Yea, tossing aloft the glittering spray,    The fierce throng hisses and clashes.  Oh, might I leap into the raging flood    And urge on the pack to harry  The hidden glades of the coral wood,    For the walrus, a worthy quarry!  From yonder mast a flag streams out    As bold as a royal pennant;  I can watch the good ship lunge about    From this tower of which I am tenant;  But oh, might I be in the battling ship,    Might I seize the rudder and steer her,  How gay o'er the foaming reef we'd slip    Like the sea-gulls circling near her!  Were I a hunter wandering free,    Or a soldier in some sort of fashion,  Or if I at least a man might be,    The heav'ns would grant me my passion.  But now I must sit as fine and still    As a child in its best of dresses,  And only in secret may have my will    And give to the wind my tresses.* * * * *

THE DESOLATE HOUSE38 (1842)

  Deep in a dell a woodsman's house    Has sunk in wild dilapidation;  There buried under vines and boughs    I often sit in contemplation.  So dense the tangle that the day    Through heavy lashes can but glimmer;    The rocky cleft is rendered dimmer  By overshadowing tree-trunks gray.  Within that dell I love to hear    The flies with their tumultuous humming,  And solitary beetles near    Amid the bushes softly drumming.  And when the trickling cliffs of slate    The color from the sunset borrow,    Methinks an eye all red with sorrow  Looks down on me disconsolate.  The arbor peak with jagged edge    Wears many a vine-shoot long and meagre  And from the moss beneath the hedge    Creep forth carnations, nowise eager.  There from the moist cliff overhead    The muddy drippings oft bedew them,    Then creep in lazy streamlets through them  To sink within a fennel-bed.  Along the roof o'ergrown with moss    Has many a tuft of thatch projected,  A spider-web is built across    The window-jamb, else unprotected;  The wing of a gleaming dragon-fly    Hangs in it like some petal tender,    The body armed in golden splendor  Lies headless on the sill near-by.  A butterfly sometimes may chance    In heedless play to flutter hither  And stop in momentary trance    Where the narcissus blossoms wither;  A dove that through the grove has flown    Above this dell no more will utter    Her coo, one can but hear her flutter  And see her shadow on the stone.  And in the fireplace where the snow    Each winter down the chimney dashes  A mass of bell-capped toad-stools grow    On viscid heaps of moldering ashes.  High on a peg above the rest    A hank of rope-yarn limply dangles    Like rotted hair, and in the tangles  The swallow built her last year's nest.  An old dog-collar set with bells    Swings from a hook by clasp and tether,  With rude embroidery that spells    "Diana" worked upon the leather.  A flute too, when the woodsman died,    The men who dug his grave forgot here;    The dog, his only friend, they shot here  And laid her by her master's side.  But while I sit in reverie,    A field-mouse near me shrilly crying,  The squirrel barking from his tree,    And from the marsh the frogs replying—  Then eerie shudders o'er me shoot,    As if I caught from out the dingle    Diana's bells once more a-jingle  And echoes of the dead man's flute.* * * * *

THE JEW'S BEECH-TREE (1841)

BY ANNETTE ELIZABETH VON DROSTE-HÜLSHOFFTRANSLATED BY LILLIE WINTER, A.B

Frederick Mergel, born in 1738, was the son of a so-called Halbmeier or property holder of low station in the village of B., which, however badly built and smoky it may be, still engrosses the eye of every traveler by the extremely picturesque beauty of its situation in a green woody ravine of an important and historically noteworthy mountain chain. The little country to which it belonged was, at that time, one of those secluded corners of the earth, without trade or manufacturing, without highways, where a strange face still excited interest and a journey of thirty miles made even one of the more important inhabitants the Ulysses of his vicinage—in short, a spot, as so many more that once could be found in Germany, with all the failings and the virtues, all the originality and the narrowness that can flourish only under such conditions.

Under very simple and often inadequate laws the inhabitants' ideas of right and wrong had, in some measure, become confused, or, rather, a second law had grown up beside the official, a law of public opinion, of custom, and of long uncontested privilege. The property holders, who sat as judges in the lower courts, meted out punishments or rewards in accordance with their own notions, which were, in most cases, honest. The common people did what seemed to them practicable and compatible with a somewhat lax conscience, and it was only the loser to whom it sometimes occurred to look up dusty old documents. It is hard to view that period without prejudice; since it has passed away it has been either haughtily criticised or foolishly praised; for those who lived through it are blinded by too many precious recollections, and the newer generation does not understand it. This much, however, one may assert, that the shell was weaker, the kernel stronger, crime more frequent, want of principle rarer. For he who acts according to his convictions, be they ever so faulty, can never be entirely debased; whereas nothing kills the soul more surely than appealing to the written law when it is at variance with one's own sense of what is right.

The inhabitants of the little country of which we speak, being more restless and enterprising than their neighbors, certain features of life came out more sharply here than would have been the case elsewhere under like conditions. Wood stealing and poaching were every-day occurrences, and in the numerous fights which ensued each one had to seek his own consolation if his head was bruised. Since great and productive forests constituted the chief wealth of the country, these forests were of course vigilantly watched over, less, however, by legal means than by continually renewed efforts to defeat violence and trickery with like weapons.

The village of B. was reputed to be the most arrogant, most cunning, and most daring community in the entire principality. Perhaps its situation in the midst of the deep and proud solitude of the forest had early strengthened the innate obstinacy of its inhabitants. The proximity of a river which flowed into the sea and bore covered vessels large enough to transport shipbuilding timber conveniently and safely to foreign ports, helped much in encouraging the natural boldness of the wood-thieves; and the fact that the entire neighborhood swarmed with foresters served only to aggravate matters, since in the oft-recurring skirmishes the peasants usually had the advantage. Thirty or forty wagons would start off together on beautiful moonlight nights with about twice as many men of every age, from the half-grown boy to the seventy-year-old village magistrate, who, as an experienced bell-wether, led the procession as proudly and self-consciously as when he took his seat in the court-room. Those who were left behind listened unconcernedly to the grinding and pounding of the wheels dying away in the narrow passes, and slept calmly on. Now and then an occasional shot, a faint scream, startled perhaps a young wife or an engaged girl; no one else paid any attention to it. At the first gray light of dawn the procession returned just as silently—every face bronzed, and here and there a bandaged head, which did not matter. A few hours later the neighborhood would be alive with talk about the misfortune of one or more foresters, who were being carried out of the woods, beaten, blinded with snuff, and rendered unable to attend to their business for some time.

In this community Frederick Mergel was born, in a house which attested the pretensions of its builder by the proud addition of a chimney and somewhat less diminutive window panes, but at the same time bespoke the miserable circumstances of its owner by its present state of dilapidation. What had once been a hedge around the yard and the garden had given way to a neglected fence; the roof was damaged; other people's cattle grazed in the pastures; other people's corn grew in the field adjoining the yard; and the garden contained, with the exception of a few woody rose bushes of a better time, more weeds than useful plants. Strokes of misfortune had, it is true, brought on much of this, but disorder and mismanagement had played their part. Frederick's father, old Herman Mergel, was, in his bachelor days, a so-called orderly drinker—that is, one who lay in the gutter on Sundays and holidays, but during the week was as well behaved as any one, and so he had had no difficulty in wooing and winning a right pretty and wealthy girl. There was great merrymaking at the wedding. Mergel did not get so very drunk, and the bride's parents went home in the evening satisfied; but the next Sunday the young wife, screaming and bloody, was seen running through the village to her family, leaving behind all her good clothes and new household furniture. Of course that meant great scandal and vexation for Mergel, who naturally needed consolation; by afternoon therefore there was not an unbroken pane of glass in his house and he was seen late at night still lying on his threshold, raising, from time to time, the neck of a broken bottle to his mouth and pitifully lacerating his face and hands. The young wife remained with her parents, where she soon pined away and died. Whether it was remorse or shame that tormented Mergel, no matter; he seemed to grow more and more in need of "spiritual" bolstering up, and soon began to be counted among the completely demoralized good-for-nothings.

The household went to pieces, hired girls caused disgrace and damage; so year after year passed. Mergel was and remained a distressed and finally rather pitiable widower, until all of a sudden he again appeared as a bridegroom. If the event itself was unexpected, the personality of the bride added still more to the general astonishment. Margaret Semmler was a good, respectable person, in her forties, a village belle in her youth, still respected for her good sense and thrift, and at the same time not without some money. What had induced her to take this step was consequently incomprehensible to every one. We think the reason is to be found in her very consciousness of perfection. On the evening before the wedding she is reported to have said: "A woman who is badly treated by her husband is either stupid or good-for-nothing; if I am unhappy, put it down as my fault." The result proved, unfortunately, that she had overestimated her strength. At first she impressed her husband; if he had taken too much, he would not come home, or would creep into the barn. But the yoke was too oppressive to be borne long, and soon they saw him quite often staggering across the street right into his house, heard his wild shouting within, and saw Margaret hastily closing doors and windows. On one such day—it was no longer a Sunday now—they saw her rush out of the house in the evening, without hood or Shawl, with her hair flying wildly about her head. They saw her throw herself down in the garden beside a vegetable bed and dig up the earth with her hands, then, anxiously looking about her, quickly pick off some vegetables and slowly return with them in the direction of the house, but, instead of entering it, go into the barn. It was said that this was the first time that Mergel had struck her, although she never let such an admission pass her lips. The second year of this unhappy marriage was marked by the coming of a son—one cannot say gladdened, for Margaret is reported to have wept bitterly when the child was handed to her. Nevertheless, although born beneath a heart full of grief, Frederick was a healthy, pretty child who grew strong in the fresh air. His father loved him dearly, never came home without bringing him a roll or something of that sort, and it was even thought he had become more temperate since the birth of the boy; at least the noise in the house decreased.

Frederick was in his ninth year. It was about the Feast of the Three Kings, a raw and stormy winter night. Herman had gone to a wedding, and had started out early because the bride's house was three miles away. Although he had promised to return in the evening, Mistress Mergel hardly counted on it because a heavy snowfall had set in after sunset. About ten o'clock she banked the fire and made ready to go to bed. Frederick stood beside her, already half undressed, and listened, to the howling of the wind and the rattling of the garret windows.

"Mother, isn't father coming home tonight?" he asked.

"No, child; tomorrow."

"But why not, mother? He promised to."

"Oh, God, if he only kept every promise he makes!—Hurry now, hurry and get ready."

They had hardly gone to bed when a gale started to rage as though it would carry the house along with it. The bed-stead quivered, and the chimney-stack rattled as if there were goblins in it.

"Mother, some one's knocking outside!"

"Quiet, Fritzy; that's the loose board on the gable being shaken by the wind."

"No; mother, it's at the door."

"It does not lock; the latch is broken. Heavens, go to sleep! Don't deprive me of my bit of rest at night!"

"But what if father should come now!"

His mother turned angrily in her bed. "The devil holds him tight enough!"

"Where is the devil, mother?

"Wait, you restless boy! He's standing at the door, ready to get you if you don't keep quiet!"

Frederick became quiet. A little while longer he listened, and then fell asleep. A few hours later he awoke. The wind had changed, and hissed like a snake through the cracks in the window near his ear. His shoulder was stiff; he crept clear under his quilt and lay still and trembling with fear. After a while he noticed that his mother was not asleep either. He heard her weep and moan between sobs: "Hail, Mary!" and "Pray for us poor sinners!" The beads of the rosary slid by his face. An involuntary sigh escaped him. "Frederick, are you awake?

"Yes, mother."

"Child, pray a little—you know half of the Paternoster already, don't you?-that God protect us from flood and fire."

Frederick thought of the devil, and wondered how he looked, anyway. The confused noise and rumbling in the house seemed strange to him. He thought there must be something alive within and without. "Listen, mother! I am sure I hear people knocking."

"Oh, no, child; but there's not an old board in the house that isn't rattling."

"Hark! Don't you hear? Someone's calling! Listen!"

His mother sat up; the raging of the storm subsided a moment. Knocking on the shutters, was distinctly audible, and several voices called: "Margaret!. Mistress Margaret! Hey there! Open the door!" Margaret ejaculated violently, "There, they're again bringing the swine home to me!"

The rosary flew clattering down on the wooden chair; hastily she snatched her clothes; she rushed to the hearth, and soon Frederick heard her walk across the hall with defiant steps. Margaret did not return; but in the kitchen there was a loud murmuring of strange voices. Twice a strange man came into the bedroom and seemed to be nervously searching for something. Suddenly a lamp was brought in; two men were supporting his mother. She was white as chalk and her eyes were closed; Frederick thought she was dead. He emitted a fearful scream, whereupon some one boxed his ear. That silenced him; and now he gradually gleaned from the remarks of the bystanders that his father had been found dead in the woods by his Uncle Franz Semmler and by Huelsmeyer, and was now lying in the kitchen.

As soon as Margaret regained consciousness she tried to get rid of the strangers. Her brother remained with her, and Frederick, who was threatened with severe punishment if he got out of bed, heard the fire crackling in the kitchen all night and a noise like stroking something back and forth, and brushing it. There was little spoken and that quietly, but now and then sobs broke out that went through and through the child, young as he was. Once he understood his uncle to say, "Margaret, don't take it so badly; we will all have three masses read, and at Eastertide we'll make together a pilgrimage to the Holy Virgin of Werl."

When the body was carried away two days later, Margaret sat on the hearth and covered her face with her apron. After a few minutes, when everything had become quiet, she mumbled, "Ten years, ten crosses! But we carried them together, after all, and now I am alone!" Then louder, "Fritzy, come here!"

Frederick approached her timidly; his mother had become quite uncanny to him with her black ribbons and her haggard, troubled face. "Fritzy," she said, "will you now really be good and make me happy, or will you be naughty and lie, or drink and steal?"

"Mother, Huelsmeyer steals."

"Huelsmeyer? God forbid! Must I spank you? Who tells you such wicked things?"

"The other day he beat Aaron and took six groschen from him."