the reflection of the sea that glistened outside: "Help me! Help me!
You are above the water. * * * God have mercy on the others!"

Her arms sank, there was a slight cracking of the bedstead; she had
ceased to live.

The child drew a deep sigh and raised her pale eyes to her father: "Is
she still dying?" she asked.

"She has finished!" said the dikegrave, and took the child in his arms.
"She is far away from us now, with God."

"With God," repeated the child and was silent for a while as if she
were thinking over the words. "Is it good to be with God?"

"Yes, best of all." But in Hauke's heart the dying woman's last words
tolled heavily. "God have mercy on the others!"--the words sounded
softly within him. What did the old witch mean? Can the dying prophesy?

Soon, after Trien' Jans had been buried up by the church, there began
to be ever louder talk of all kinds of misfortune and curious vermin
that were said to have frightened the people in northern Friesland. And
it was certain that on the Sunday in Mid-Lent the golden cock had been
thrown down from the top of the tower by a whirlwind; and it was true
too that in midsummer a shower of large insects fell from heaven like
snow so that it was impossible to open one's eyes and they lay nearly
as high as a hand on the fens and no one had ever seen anything like
it. But after the end of September when the head-man and the maid Ann
Grete came back from town where they had driven with grain and butter
for the market, they climbed down from their wagon with faces pale with
fear. "What is it? What is the matter with you?" cried the other maids,
who had come running out when they heard the sound of the wagon.

Ann Grete in her traveling dress stepped breathlessly into the roomy
kitchen. "Oh, hurry up and tell us!" called the girls again, "where is
the misfortune?"

"Oh, may our dear Jesus protect us!" cried Ann Grete. "You know from
the other side, across the water, that old Molly from Siegelhof--we
always stand together with our butter at the corner near the
apothecary's--she told me about it and Iven Johns said too, 'that
means a misfortune,' he said, 'a misfortune for the whole of northern
Friesland; believe me Ann Grete!' And"--she lowered her voice--"perhaps
after all it's not all right with the dikegrave's white horse."

"Ssh! Ssh!" said the other maids.

"Yes, yes; what does it matter to me! But over there, on the other
side, it's going on worse than with us! Not only flies and vermin,
blood too has fallen like rain from heaven; and on the Sunday morning
after that when the pastor went to his washbasin there were five
death's-heads, the size of peas, in it, and they all came to see it; in
the month of August horrible red-headed caterpillars went through the
land and ate up the grain and flour and bread and whatever they could
find and no fire was able to destroy them!"

Ann Grete suddenly ceased; none of the maids had noticed that their
mistress had come into the kitchen. "What tales are you telling there?"
she asked. "Don't let your master hear that!" And as they all wanted to
begin to tell her she went on, "It's not necessary; I heard enough of
it; go about your work, that will do you more good!" Then she took Ann
Grete with her into the sitting-room to go through her market accounts
with her.

So in the dikegrave's house none of the family paid any attention to
the superstitious gossip that was going about; but it was different in
the other houses and the longer the evenings grew the more easily did
it find its way in. Everyone lived as if in an oppressive atmosphere
and secretly people said to themselves that a misfortune, and a heavy
one, would fall on northern Friesland.

It was in October, before All Saints' Day. A strong wind had blown from
the southwest all day; in the evening the crescent moon was in the
sky, dark brown clouds drove past and a medley of shade and dull light
flew across the earth; the storm was growing. In the dikegrave's room
the empty supper table still stood; the men had been sent into the
stable to look after the cattle; the maids were busy in the house and
in the attics seeing that the doors and windows were securely fastened
so that the storm should not gain an entrance and do damage. Hauke
stood beside his wife at the window; he had just swallowed down his
supper; he had been out on the dike. He had gone there on foot early in
the afternoon; here and there, where the dike looked weak, he had had
pointed stakes and sacks of clay or earth piled up; everywhere he had
left men to drive in the stakes and make dams with the sacks in front
as soon as the tide should begin to damage the dike. The largest number
he had placed at the corner towards the northwest at the intersection
of the old and new dikes; their instructions were not to leave the
places assigned to them except in case of necessity. That was what he
had left behind him and then, scarcely a quarter of an hour ago, he had
come back to the house wet and disheveled and now, his ear fixed on the
gusts of winds that rattled the leaded panes, he gazed out absently
into the wild night; the clock behind the pane of glass in the wall was
just striking eight. The child, who was standing beside her mother,
started and buried her head in her mother's dress. "Klaus!" she called,
crying, "where is my Klaus?"

She might well ask, for this year, as indeed the year before, the
gull had not flown away for the winter. Her father did not heed the
question, but her mother lifted the child in her arms. "Your Klaus is
in the barn," she said, "he has a warm place there."

"Warm?" said Wienke, "is that good?"

"Yes, that's good."

The master still stood at the window. "It won't do any longer, Elke,"
he said; "call one of the girls, the storm will break in the panes; the
shutters must be screwed on!"

[Illustration: A GENTLEMAN OF THE OLD SCHOOL

JACOB ALBERTS]

At her mistress's word the maid had run out; they could see from the
room how her skirts were blown about; but when she unfastened the catch
the wind tore the shutter out of her hand and threw it against the
window so that a few broken panes flew into the room and one of the
lights flared and went out. Hauke himself had to go out to help and it
was only with great difficulty that the shutters were at last got into
place. When they opened the door again to come into the house a gust of
wind followed them that made the glass and silver in the cupboard shake
and clatter; upstairs in the house above their heads the beams trembled
and cracked as if the gale were trying to tear the roof off the walls.
But Hauke did not come back into the room. Elke heard him walking
across the floor towards the stable. "The white horse! The white horse,
John; quick!" She heard him call the order; then he came into the room,
his hair tumbled but his gray eyes sparkling. "The wind has shifted!"
he cried, "to the northwest, at half spring-tide! No wind; we have
never experienced such a storm!"

Elke had grown as pale as death: "And you must go out there again?"

He seized both her hands and pressed them convulsively: "That I must,
Elke."

Slowly she raised her dark eyes to his and for a few seconds they
looked at each other; but it was like an eternity. "Yes, Hauke,"
answered the woman; "I know well that you must!"

There was a sound of trotting before the front door. She flung herself
on Hauke's neck and for a moment it seemed as if she could not let him
go; but that too was only for a second. "This is _our_ fight," said
Hauke; "you are safe here, no tide has ever come up to this house. And
pray to God to be with me too!"

Hauke wrapped himself in his cloak and Elke took a scarf and wound it
carefully round his neck; she wanted to say a word, but her trembling
lips refused to utter it.

Outside the white horse neighed so that it sounded like a trumpet in
the howling storm. Elke went out with her husband; the old ash creaked
as if it were being split asunder. "Mount, master," called the man,
"the white horse is as if mad; the rein might break." Hauke threw his
arms round his wife: "I shall be here again at sunrise!"

Already he had leapt onto his horse; the animal reared; then, like a
war-horse rushing into battle, it charged down the mound with its rider
out into the night and the howling of the storm. "Father, my Father!"
cried a child's plaintive voice after him: "my dear Father!"

Wienke had run out after them in the dark; but she had not gone more
than a hundred steps before she stumbled against a heap of earth and
fell.

The man Johns brought the crying child back to her mother; the latter
was leaning against the trunk of the ash, the boughs of which lashed
the air above her, staring out absently into the night in which her
husband had disappeared; when the roaring of the gale and the distant
thunder of the sea ceased for a moment she started as if frightened;
she felt as if everything was trying just to destroy him and would
be dumb instantly when it had got him. Her knees trembled, the wind
had blown her hair down and now played with it at will. "Here is the
child!" John shouted to her; "hold her tight!" and he pressed the
little girl into her mother's arms.

"The child? I'd forgotten you, Wienke!" she exclaimed; "God forgive
me." Then she hugged her to her breast as closely as only love can and
dropped on her knees: "Lord God, and Thou, my Jesus, let us not become
widow and orphan! Protect him, Oh dear God; only Thou and I, we alone
know him!" And there was no more interruption to the gale; it resounded
and thundered as if the whole world were coming to an end in one vast
reverberation of sound.

"Go into the house, Missis!" said Johns; "come!" And he helped them and
led the two into the house and into the sitting-room.

The dikegrave, Hauke Haien, flew forward on his white horse towards the
dike. The narrow path was like a mire, for excessively heavy rain had
fallen in the preceding days; nevertheless the wet sticky clay did not
seem to hold the horse's hoofs, it moved as if treading on a firm dry
road. The clouds drove across the sky in a mad chase; below, the wide
marsh lay like an unrecognizable desert filled with agitated shades;
from the water behind the dike came an ever-increasing dull roar as if
it must swallow up everything else. "Forward, my white horse!" cried
Hauke; "we're riding our worst ride!"

At that moment a sound like a death cry came from under his mount's
hoofs. He pulled up and looked round; at his side, close above the
ground, screeching mockingly as they went, moved a flock of white
gulls, half flying, half tossed by the gale; they were seeking
protection on shore. One of them--the moon shone fleetingly through the
clouds--lay crushed on the path: it seemed to the rider as if a red
ribbon fluttered from its neck. "Klaus!" he cried. "Poor Klaus!"

Was it his child's bird? Had it recognized horse and rider and tried
to seek shelter with them? He did not know. "Forward!" he cried again,
and the white horse had already lifted his hoofs for a new race when
suddenly there was a pause in the storm and a deathlike silence took
its place; it lasted but an instant, then the gale returned with
renewed fury; but in the meantime the rider's ear had caught the sound
of men's voices and the faint barking of dogs and when he turned his
head back towards the village he distinguished, in the moonlight that
broke forth, people on the mounds and in front of the houses busy about
wagons that were loaded high; he saw, as if in flight, still other
wagons driving hurriedly towards the upland; the lowing of cattle being
driven up there out of their warm stables, met his ear. "Thank God,
they are saving themselves and their cattle!" his heart cried; and then
came an inward shriek of terror: "My wife! My child! No. No; the water
will not come up to our mound!"

But it was only for a moment; everything flew by him like a vision.

A fearful squall came roaring up from the sea and into its face horse
and rider stormed up the narrow path to the dike. Once on top Hauke
halted his steed with force. But where was the sea? Where Jeverssand?
Where lay the opposite shore? Nothing but mountains of water faced him,
rising up threateningly against the night sky, seeking to overtop one
another in the dreadful dusk, and beating, one over the next, on the
shore. They came forward with white crests, howling, as if the roar of
all the terrible beasts of prey in the wilderness were in them. The
white horse pawed the ground and snorted out into the din; but it came
over the rider as if here all human power were at an end; as if night,
death, chaos must now set in.

Still he considered: after all it was a storm-tide; only he himself
had never seen such a one as that; his wife, his child, they were safe
on the high mound, in the solid house; but his dike--and pride shot
through his heart--the Hauke-Haien-Dike, as the people called it; now
was the time for it to prove how dikes must be built!

But--what was this? He was at the angle between the two dikes; where
were the men whom he had ordered here, whose work it was to watch
this spot? He looked north up the old dike; for he had sent a few up
there too. Neither here nor there could he see a soul; he rode out a
piece; but still he was alone: only the soughing of the storm and the
surging of the sea that filled the air to an immeasurable distance
smote deafeningly on his ear. He turned his horse back; he came again
to the deserted corner and let his eyes pass along the line of the new
dike; he saw distinctly, the waves rolled up here more slowly, less
violently; it almost seemed as if there were other water there. "It
will stand, all right!" he murmured and felt a laugh rise within him.

But his inclination to laugh soon passed as his eyes glanced farther
along the line of his dike: on the northwest corner--what was that?
He saw a dark swarm of moving beings; he saw how industriously they
stirred and hurried--there could be no doubt, they were men! What were
they trying to do, what work were they doing on his dike now! And
already his spurs were in the white horse's flanks and the animal was
flying with him thither; the gale came from the broad side, at times
the gusts came with such force that they were almost swept down from
the dike into the new koog; but horse and rider knew where they were
riding. Hauke already perceived that probably a few dozen men were
working industriously there together and already he saw distinctly that
a gutter was cut right across through the new dike. Violently he reined
in his horse. "Stop!" he cried, "stop! What devil's work are you doing
here?"

The men had ceased shoveling with a start when they suddenly perceived
the dikegrave among them; the wind had carried his words to them and
he saw that several were trying to answer him; but he only caught
their vehement gestures, for they all stood at his left and what they
said was carried away by the gale which was so violent out here that
it hurled them against one another so that they were obliged to crowd
together. Hauke measured with his quick eyes the gutter that had been
dug and the height of the water which, in spite of the new profile,
dashed up almost to the top of the dike and spattered horse and rider.
Only ten minutes more work and then--he saw it distinctly--then the
high tide would break through the gutter and the Hauke-Haien Koog would
be buried by the sea!

The dikegrave beckoned one of the laborers to the other side of his
horse. "Now, speak," he shouted, "what are you doing here, what is the
meaning of this?"

And the man shouted back: "We've got to break through the new dike,
sir! So that the old dike doesn't break."

"What have you got to do?"

"Break through the new dike!"

"And flood the koog? What devil ordered you to do that?"

"No, sir, no devil; the commissioner Ole Peters has been here; he gave
the order!"

Anger flamed up into the rider's eyes: "Do you know me?" he shouted.
"Where I am Ole Peters has no orders to give! Away with you! Back to
your places where I left you."

And as they hesitated he dashed into the group with his horse: "Away,
to your own or the devil's grandmother!"

"Be careful, sir," shouted one of the group and struck at the madly
careering animal with his spade; but a kick from the horse knocked the
spade from his hand, another fell to the ground. At that moment there
suddenly arose a shriek from the rest of the group, a shriek such as
only deathly terror wrests from the human throat; for a moment all,
even the dikegrave and the horse, stood as if paralyzed; only one of
the laborers had extended his arm like a sign-post; he pointed to the
northwest corner of the two dikes, where the new one ran up to the old
one. Only the raging of the wind and the surging of the water could be
heard. Hauke turned in his saddle: what was that there? His eyes grew
large: "By God! A breach! A breach in the old dike!"

"Your fault, dikegrave," shouted a voice from the group. "Your fault!
Take it with you before God's throne!"

Hauke's face, first red with anger, had grown pale as death; the moon
which shone on it could not make it whiter; his arms hung limp, he
scarcely knew that he held the rein. But that too only lasted for a
second; already he drew himself up, a hard groan broke from his mouth;
then dumbly he turned his horse and with a snort it raced away with
him to the east along the dike. The rider's glance flew sharply in all
directions; thoughts were whirling in his head: What blame had he to
bear before God's throne? The break through the new dike--perhaps they
would have accomplished it if he had not called "stop!" But--there was
another thing and his heart grew hot, he knew it only too well--the
summer before, if only Ole Peters' evil mouth had not held him back
then--that was where it lay! He alone had recognized the weakness
of the old dike; he should have pushed on the new work in spite of
everything: "Lord God, I confess it," he cried out suddenly aloud into
the storm. "I have discharged my office badly."

At his left, close to his horse's hoofs, raged the sea; before him,
now in complete darkness, lay the old koog with its mounds and homes;
the moon's pale light on the sky had disappeared entirely; only at one
spot did light shine through the darkness. And something like comfort
crept into the man's heart; it must be shining over from his own house,
it seemed to him like a message from his wife and child. Thank God,
they were safe on the high mound! The others, certainly, they were
already in the upland village; more light glimmered from there than
he had ever seen before; yes, even high up in the air, probably from
the church-tower, light shone out into the night. "They will all have
gone away," said Hauke to himself; "to be sure, on more than one mound
a house will lie in ruins, bad years will come for the flooded fens;
drains and sluices to be repaired! We must bear it and I will help,
those too who have done me harm; only, Lord, my God, be merciful to us
men!"

He turned his eyes to the side, towards the new koog; about it foamed
the sea; but in it lay the peace of night. Involuntarily triumphant
rejoicing rose in the rider's breast: "The Hauke-Haien-Dike, it must
stand; it will hold after more than a hundred years!"

A roar like thunder at his feet roused him from these dreams; the white
horse did not want to go on. What was that? The horse jumped back and
he felt how a piece of the dike in front of him plunged down into the
depths. He opened his eyes wide and shook off all meditation: he had
stopped close to the old dike, the horse's front feet had been on it.
Involuntarily he jerked the horse back; at that moment the last veiling
of clouds swept from the moon and the mild planet illumined the horror
that seething and hissing rushed down before him into the old koog.

Hauke stared at it senselessly; it was a deluge, come to swallow up man
and beast. Then a light shone again into his eyes; it was the same one
that he had seen before; it was still burning on his mound; and now as,
encouraged, he looked down into the koog he perceived that behind the
confusing whirl that dashed down clamorously before him, only a breadth
of about a hundred feet was inundated; beyond that he could clearly
distinguish the way that led up from the koog. He saw still more: a
carriage, no, a two-wheeled gig came driving madly up towards the dike;
a woman, yes, and a child too, were sitting in it. And now--was not
that the shrill bark of a little dog that was borne by on the wind?
Almighty God! It was his wife, his child! They were already coming
quite close and the foaming mass of water was rushing towards them. A
shriek, a shriek of desperation broke from the rider's breast: "Elke!"
he shouted; "Elke! Back! Back!"

But wind and sea were not merciful, their raging tossed his words away;
only the wind had caught his cloak and nearly flung him from his horse;
and the approaching vehicle flew on steadily towards the rushing flood.
As he looked he saw his wife stretch out her arms as if up towards
him: had she recognized him? Had longing, had deathly anxiety about
him driven her out of her secure house? And now--was she shouting a
last word to him? These questions shot through his mind; they remained
unanswered: all words from her to him, from him to her were lost; only
an uproar as if the world were coming to an end filled their ears and
excluded all other sounds.

"My child! Oh Elke, Oh faithful Elke!" cried Hauke out into the
storm. Another large piece of the dike in front of him gave way and
thunderingly the sea plunged in after it; once more he saw below the
horse's head the wheels of the conveyance rise up out of the chaotic
horror and then disappear in a whirl. The fixed eyes of the rider who
stood so solitary on the dike saw nothing further. "The end!" he said
softly to himself; then he rode to the edge of the abyss where, below
him, the waters rushing uncannily were beginning to flood his home
village; he still saw the light shining from his house; he felt that
the soul had gone out of it. He raised himself high in the saddle and
drove his spurs into the white horse's flanks; the animal reared and
nearly fell over backwards; but the man's strength forced it down
again. "Forward!" he cried once more as he had so often urged it on to
a steady ride. "Take me, God; spare the others!"

Another pressure of the spurs; a shriek from the white horse that rose
above the gale and the roar of the waves; then from the plunging stream
below a dull splash, a brief struggle.

The moon looked down from above and illumined the scene; but on the
dike beneath there was no longer any life save that of the savage
waters which soon had almost completely covered the old koog. But still
the mound where stood Hauke Haien's home rose up out of the swelling
flood, the light still shone from there; and from the upland where the
houses gradually grew dark, the solitary light from the church steeple
threw its wavering beams across the seething waves.

The narrator ceased; I reached out for the filled glass that had long
been standing before me; but I did not put it to my mouth; my hand
remained lying on the table.

"That is the story of Hauke Haien," my host began again, "as I had to
tell it according to my best knowledge. Our dikegrave's housekeeper,
of course, would have made another tale; for this too people have to
report: after the flood the white skeleton of the horse was to be
seen again in the moonlight on Jevershallig as before; everyone in
the village believed he saw it. So much is certain: Hauke Haien with
his wife and child went down in that flood; I have not been able to
find even their graves up in the churchyard; the dead bodies were
undoubtedly carried back through the breach by the receding water out
to sea, at the bottom of which they gradually were dissolved into their
original component parts--thus they had peace from men. But the Hauke
Haien Dike still stands now after a hundred years, and tomorrow if you
ride to town and don't mind going half an hour out of your way you will
have it beneath your horse's hoofs.

"The thanks Jewe Manners once promised the builder that the
grandchildren should give have not come, as you have seen; for thus it
is, sir: they gave Socrates poison to drink and our Lord Jesus Christ
they nailed to the cross! It is not so easy to do such things as that
any longer; but--to make a saint of a man of violence or a malicious
bull-necked priest, or to make a ghost or a phantom of night of an able
fellow just because he is a whole head above the rest of us--that can
be done any day."

When the earnest little man had said that he got up and listened at the
window. "It is different out there now," he said, and drew the woolen
curtain back; it was bright moonlight. "See," he continued, "there are
the commissioners coming back, but they are separating, they are going
home; there must have been a break over on the other side; the water
has fallen."

I looked out beside him; the windows upstairs, where we were, lay
above the edge of the dike; it was as he had said. I took my glass and
finished it: "I thank you for this evening," I said; "I think we can
sleep in peace!"

"That we can," replied the little man; "I wish you a good night's sleep
from my heart!"

In going down I met the dikegrave below in the hall; he wanted to take
home with him a map that he had left in the tap-room. "It's all over,"
he said. "But our schoolmaster has told you a story of his own, I
suppose; he belongs to the rationalists!"

"He seems to be a sensible man."

"Oh yes, certainly; but you can't mistrust your own eyes after all. And
over on the other side, just as I said it would be, the dike is broken!"

I shrugged my shoulders: "We will have to take counsel with our pillows
about that! Good night, dikegrave!"

He laughed. "Good night!"

The next morning, in the most golden of sunlights, which had risen on a
wide devastation, I rode along the Hauke Haien Dike down to the town.

TO A DECEASED[2]

    But this is more than I can bear,
    That still the laughing sun is bright,
    As in the days when you were there,
    That clocks are striking, unaware,
    And mark the change of day and night--

    That we, as twilight dims the air,
    Assemble when the day is done,
    And that the place where stood your chair
    Already many others share,
    And that you seem thus missed by none;

    When meanwhile from the gate below
    The narrow strips of moonlight spare
    Into your vault down deeply go
    And with a ghostly pallid glow
    Are stealing o'er your coffin there.

THE CITY[2]

    The shore is gray, the sea is gray,
    And there the city stands;
    The mists upon the houses weigh
    And through the calm, the ocean gray
    Roars dully on the strands.

    There are no rustling woods, there fly
    No birds at all in May,
    The wild goose with its callous cry
    Alone on autumn nights soars by,
    The wind-blown grasses sway.

    And yet my whole heart clings to thee,
    Gray city by the sea;
    And e'er the spell of youth for me
    Doth smiling rest on thee, on thee
    Gray city by the sea.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] Translator: Margarete Münsterberg.

THE HEATH[3]

    It is so quiet here. There lies
    The heath in noon's warm sunshine gold.
    A gleam of light, all rosy, flies
    And hovers round the mounds of old.
    The herbs are blooming; fragrance fair
    Now fills the bluish summer air.

    The beetles rush through bush and trees,
    In little golden coats of mail;
    And on the heather-bells the bees
    Alight on all its branches frail.
    From out the grass there starts a throng
    Of larks and fills the air with song.

    A lonely house, half-crumbled, low:
    The farmer, in the doorway bent,
    Stands watching in the sunlight's glow
    The busy bees in sweet content.
    And on a stone near by his boy
    Is carving pipes from reeds with joy.

    Scarce trembling through the peace of noon
    The town-clock strikes--from far, it seems.
    The old man's eye-lids droop right soon,
    And of his honey crops he dreams.--
    The sounds that tell our time of stress
    Have not yet reached this loneliness.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] Translator: Margarete Münsterberg.

CONSOLATION[4]

    Let come to me whatever may,
    While you are with me it is day.

    Though in the world I wander far,
    My home is ever--where you are.

    Your face is all in all to me,
    The future's frown I do not see.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] Translator: Charles Wharton Stork.

WILHELM RAABE

                  BY EWALD EISERHARDT, PH.D.

        Assistant Professor of German, University of Rochester

Wilhelm Raabe was born on the eighth of September, 1831, in the little
town of Eschershausen in the Duchy of Braunschweig. He received his
schooling at the Gymnasiums in Holzminden and Wolfenbüttel; from
1849-53 he was employed in a bookstore in Magdeburg; then, while living
with his mother in Wolfenbüttel, he prepared for the university, and
later went to Berlin, where he studied chiefly history, philosophy, and
literature. After the success of his first book, _Records of Sparrow
Lane_ (1857), he turned entirely to authorship. In 1862 he married and
moved to Stuttgart, where he remained till 1870. From then on until his
death in 1910 he lived in Braunschweig. Raabe was an extraordinarily
productive writer, yet during the last ten years of his life he
entirely gave up all literary activity, and left his last work, _Old
Folks in the Old Home_, unfinished.

The underlying theme of Raabe's writings is the inner life of the
individual man and his specifically human sphere of family, society,
community, nation. With this he combines a strong preference for
what is characteristically German, which he loves just as much where
it is merely German, in fact, German to the point of being odd and
bizarre, as where it merges into the universally human. Raabe believes,
however, that both the peculiarly German and the broadly human types
are found with greater richness and depth among the Germans of the
first two-thirds of the nineteenth century than among those of the last
third. The period before the development of modern Germany is that in
which he loves best to linger. When he forsakes it, he does so to go
still farther back, into the realm of history proper.

What was it that interested Raabe in history? Not so much the causal
connection of events; not so much historical growth, as historical
conditions. And, moreover, to him the outward circumstances are merely
the necessary premises for what he really wishes to grasp, the spirit
of a period, the constitution of the folk-soul. The great historical
figures who led up to a period and stand out prominently in it he
pushes into the background. It is the forgotten men and women that he
seeks, and he pictures how circumstances or events ordered their lives,
whether the individual lived apart from his age and contrasted with the
mass, or whether the "milieu" wrought in him a particular condition of
mind and heart, so that he was drawn into situations and events, into
the "Zeitgeist," without actually exercising any decisive influence.
In _Else von der Tanne_ the German peasants, at the end of the Thirty
Years' War, are sunk in "brutish stupor," inwardly and outwardly
coarsened and demoralized, filled with boundless suspicion. When Else,
"the purest, holiest flower in the horrible devastation of the earth,"
appears among them, they look upon her as something monstrous, they
make a witch of her, and under their stoning the gentle miracle falls
stricken at the threshold of the house of God. In _Sankt Thomas_ the
struggle between Spain and the Netherlands kindles heroism in the
heart of a woman who, like a phenomenon, interposes in the fight, in
which she perishes after all, without being able to give its course a
favorable turn. "That was no longer that Camilla who had swung in the
hammock. * * * She now appeared as the beautiful but deadly genius of
this island; it was as if the destructive power of the tropical sun had
become embodied in her. * * * Camilla Drago, in league with the fire
from heaven, defended the castell Pavaosa." In _The Crown of the Realm_
the heroine feels the necessity of making her lover go through the
campaigns in Bohemia and Hungary from where he returns afflicted with
leprosy. He gives up his happiness for lost, but the girl, from whom he
has hidden, finds him, acknowledges her love for him, nurses him until
his death and becomes in the end the mother-nurse of the exiled lepers.

We do not really feel this last story to be historical; for the spirit
of the age, all the events and even the fate of the hero and heroine
are far eclipsed by the triumphant strength of those powers that,
standing above all time, are able to determine human life. _The Crown
of the Realm_ was indeed written after Raabe had tried in _The People
of the Forest_ and in his trilogy _The Hunger Pastor_, _Abu Telfan_,
and _The Dead-Wagon_--works round which all Raabe's writings circle as
round a pole--to comprehend the eternally problematical in human life
and to take up some attitude toward it.

"Gib Acht auf die Gassen!" (Watch the Streets), and "Blick auf zu den
Sternen!" (Look up to the Stars), are the mottos at whose point of
intersection lies the life-wisdom of _The People of the Forest_. To
wrestle with the factors of every-day life, to have a clear eye for
the different values of these factors, and in general to respect the
dignity of the common are indispensable to every real human life. But,
if one is to attain the goals that lie in the land of promise, one's
gaze must not remain fixed on the ground. For the universe and the
human soul are, in themselves, dark, and receive their light only from
the shining spheres that we call stars. In man's sky these are love,
friendship, faith, patience, mercy, courage, humility, honor. Still
more wonderful, however, than the existence of these stars is perhaps
the fact that originally we did not possess them at all, but have only
found them in the course of thousands of years. And how did they become
ours? Through life's suffering and distress and infamy. Here, indeed,
we arrive at the centre of Raabe's thought and work. All that is high
in the world has developed through friction with what is low, all
that is high requires the low. For just as white is seen in all its
intensity only in contrast with black, so, too, depth of love, nobility
of mind, strength to aspire are best manifested and unfolded in the
conflict with selfishness, baseness, indifference, and every kind of
distress and pain. That is why Hans Unwirrsch has Moses Freudenstein
for a companion; that is why the author lays so many and such different
obstacles in his way; that is why he allows him to attain only to
such a modest happiness at last; for the satisfied do not hunger, and
hunger for all that is noble is the meaning of our existence. That is
why, too, a book like _The Hunger Pastor_ exercises, on the whole, no
liberative influence; it does, however, strengthen and edify our souls
and warms our hearts with its inner glow.

But how is it? If the antagonism of those elements that increase life
and those that weaken it is necessary, must they therefore exist
eternally beside each other, and to which side will the final victory
incline? "If ye knew what I know, ye would weep much and laugh little:"
with these words of Mohammed's _Abu Telfan_ closes. Accordingly the
ideal, symbolized in _The Hunger Pastor_ by the cobbler's luminous ball
that accompanies Hans Unwirrsch everywhere, here finds only a place of
refuge in the secluded "Katzenmühle" (cat's mill). Deep resignation
is the predominant mood of this work. And in the _The Dead-Wagon_ the
place of the shining ball is taken even by the hearse, and the motto
of this book is, "The _Canaille_ is lord and remains lord." Antonie
Häusler falls into the power of her rascally grandfather, and attempts
to rescue her fail. Nevertheless chevalier von Gläubigern reports to
Jane Warwolf: "I got there in time, she is happy! Believe no one who
tries to tell you that she died in misery. * * * Pay no attention
to Hennig and those others about us, they know nothing * * *" The
chevalier is right. Antonie died, but in the triumph of martyrdom, and
this triumph, still and unnoticed as it was, continues to burn in the
hearts of the three old people whom we leave at the end of the novel
in the home for the old and sick in Krodebeck.

The circle of our trilogy is closed. Light and darkness war against
each other in all three parts. In _The Hunger Pastor_ love and work
finally win both external and internal victory; in _Abu Telfan_ we
are left full of worry that light is diminishing more and more; in
the _The Dead-Wagon_ the deepest shadows prevail, the noble and the
life-affirming forces experience external defeat, but they remain
unconquerable in themselves.

Further than in the _The Dead-Wagon_ a wise author who is just to
the world may not go in his pessimism, in spite of his study of
Schopenhauer, if he would not appear to indulge in mannerism, to be
one-sided. Raabe does not fall a victim to his deep penetration into
the hardship and infamy of life; it finally becomes to him merely the
means to an end. For he thus obtains from his strict conscience the
right from now on to develop for its own sake a side of his talent
which had already flashed through almost all his works--his humor. In
whatever relation good and evil, happiness and suffering may stand to
one another, man can not entirely get rid of either of these sides
of life. The idealist or pessimist seeks to emphasize one of the two
sides, the realist simply takes them as they are and bears them, the
humorist tries to reconcile one with the other. This reconciliation
must, of course, be subjective in its nature. It takes place in the
mind and heart of the man. A humorist like Raabe allows the oppressive
a place within him, and is untroubled because he recognizes that it is
an integral part of his lot, of humanity's lot. He does not bear it
with ridicule or bitterness, indifference or resignation, because he
knows he must, but rather he rejoices in the strength of his soul, he
rejoices that he can do it. In the consciousness of this ability he
has cast away "the fear of the earthly" and looks down smiling on the
mysterious play of the forces of life. He smiles at those who allow
themselves to be consumed by distress, he smiles at his own distress
which he has to overcome again and again, and is yet affected by grief,
is full of the deepest sympathy for all creation, for he knows that
he is fighting a common battle with it all. Humor is hearty, humor
is brave, humor is full of sunny, smiling wisdom. We have works and
characters in German literature that are more pronouncedly and purely
humorous than Raabe's. But probably in no other German writer has humor
become such a controlling mood of life as in him. With no one else do
we feel the faithful humorous personality of the author behind and
in his works as we do with Raabe. _Horacker_ (1876), _Old Familiar
Corners_ (1879), _The Hold-All_ (1890) may be quoted here.

By virtue of its elevation Raabe's humor has a quiet and certain
glance, and is apt to spend its all-embracing sympathy on what is
overlooked, what is insignificant, and in all it finds greatness and
light hidden and operative. The apparently contradictory attracts him
whether it appears to be contradictory in itself or contradictory to
what is generally accepted and traditional. He makes friends with
originals and oddities; he leads us into the isolation of small German
towns, and we feel at home in their sociability and narrowness, in
their affection for things and customs of olden times, in their
solidity and singularity, in all their local joys and sorrows. Among
his many stories we may refer in this connection to: _Der Dräumling_
(1872), _Wunnigel_ (1878), _The Horn of Wanza_ (1880).

Even in Germany Raabe became known only slowly. This was due to his
quiet character that disdained all striving after effect, to the
intentional mixture of various elements in his art which sometimes
makes it difficult to grasp the purpose of a work as a whole, to his
persistent pursuit of ends that lay outside the ruling interests of
his time. When once his countrymen began to come to themselves again,
however, he did not lack homage. And so it will probably continue to
be. An age whose interests are centered largely in the external side of
life will think little of him and pass him by, while one whose gaze is
directed rather within will take the pains to understand and appreciate
him. May his image never be blotted out entirely! For he belongs to
those who feel ever rising within them the question, "What shall it
profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"

[Illustration: WILHELM RAABE]

_WILHELM RAABE_

THE HUNGER PASTOR

                TRANSLATED AND ABRIDGED BY MURIEL ALMON

CHAPTER I

It is of hunger that I am going to speak in this good book of mine:
what it means, what it desires, what it is able to do. I cannot, to
be sure, show how, for the world as a whole, hunger is both Shiva and
Vishnu, destroyer and preserver in one; it is for history to show that;
but I can describe how it works in the individual as destroyer and
preserver, and will continue so to work till the end of the world.

To hunger, to the sacred power of genuine, true hunger, I dedicate
these pages, and, indeed, they belong to it by rights, as will, I hope,
be perfectly clear by the time we have reached the end. With this
latter assurance I am relieved of the necessity of writing a further
introduction which, after all, would contribute only in the slightest
degree to the reader's comfort, emotion, and excitement; and will begin
my story with unlimited good will toward my fellow men, past, present
and future, as well as toward myself and all those shadow-figures that
will pass before me in the course of this tale--reflexes of the great
cycle of birth, being, and passing away, of the infinite growth that is
called the evolution of the world--slightly more interesting and richer
than this book, it is true, but, unlike this book, not obliged to come
to a satisfactory conclusion in three parts.

"Here we have the boy at last! We have him at last--at last!" cried
the father of my hero, and drew a long breath of relief like a man who,
after long, vain yearning, hard work, many troubles and cares, had
finally reached his happy goal. He looked down with wise, shining eyes
at the tiny, pitiable bit of humanity that the midwife had laid in his
arms just as the evening bell had sounded. A tear stole over the man's
haggard cheek and the sharp, pointed, wise fatherly nose sank ever
lower and lower toward the insignificant, scarcely recognizable little
nose of the new-born infant, till it suddenly rose up again with a jerk
and turned with anxious inquiry toward the kind, capable woman who had
contributed so much to his delight.

"Oh, Mrs. Tiebus--good Mrs. Tiebus, is it really a boy? Tell me again
that you aren't mistaken--that it is really, really so!"

The midwife, who till now had watched the first tender greeting between
father and son with self-assured, smiling nods of the head, now jerked
_her_ nose into the air, dispelled all the spirits and sprites of good
will and contentment which had fluttered about her, with an inimitable
gesture of both arms, placed them akimbo, and, with scorn, contempt,
and insulted self-respect, began to speak:

"Master Unwirrsch, you are a fool! Have your picture painted on the
wall!... Is it one? Did ever anybody hear the like from such a sensible
old man and the head of a house?... Is it one? Master Unwirrsch, next,
I believe, you'll forget how to tell a boot from a shoe. This just
shows what a cross it is when God's gift comes so late. Isn't that
a boy that you've got there in your arms? Isn't that really a boy,
a fine, proper boy? Lord, if the old creature didn't have the poor
little thing in his arms I'd like to give him a good box on the ears
for putting such a silly, meddlesome question! Not a boy? Indeed it
is a boy, Father Pitch-thread--not one of the heaviest, to be sure;
but still a boy, and a proper boy at that! And how shouldn't it be
a boy? Isn't Bonnyparty, isn't Napoleum on his way again across the
water and won't there be war and tussling between today and tomorrow,
and don't we need boys, and isn't it exactly for that reason that in
these strange times of ours more boys than girls come into the world,
and aren't there three boys to one girl? and you come to me, to an
experienced and sensible person like me, and ask such outrageous
questions? Have your picture painted on the wall, Father Unwirrsch, and
have written underneath it what I think of you. Here, give the boy to
me, you don't deserve to have him bother with you--go along with you to
your wife--perhaps you'll ask her too, if it's--a--boy!"

Ungently the infant was snatched from the arms of the despised, crushed
father and, after getting his breath, Master Anton Unwirrsch hobbled
into the bedroom of his wife, and the evening bells still rang. But we
will not disturb either the father and mother or the bells--let them
give full utterance to their feelings with no one to interfere.

Poor people and rich people have different ways of life in this world;
but when the sun of happiness shines into their huts, houses, or
palaces, it gilds with the very same gold the wooden bench and the
velvet chair, the whitewashed wall and the gilt one, and more than one
sly dog of a philosopher says he has noticed that as far as joy and
sorrow are concerned the difference between rich and poor people is
not nearly as great as both classes often, very often, extremely often
think. Be that as it may; it is enough for us that laughter is not a
monopoly nor weeping an obligation on this spherical, fire-filled ball
with its flattened poles, onto which we find our way without desiring
it, and from which, without desiring it, we depart, after the interval
between our coming and going has been made bitter enough for us.

The sun now shone into the house of poor people. Happiness, smiling,
stooped to enter the low doorway, both her open hands extended in
greeting. There was great joy over the birth of the son on the part
of the parents, the shoemaker Unwirrsch and his wife, who had waited
for him so long that they were almost on the point of giving up hope
altogether.

And now he had come after all, come an hour before work ceased for the
day! All Kröppel Street already knew of the event, and the glad tidings
had even reached Master Nikolaus Grünebaum, the brother of the woman
who had just given birth to the child, though he lived almost at the
opposite end of the town. A grinning shoemaker's apprentice, carrying
his slippers under his arm so as to be able to run quicker, bore the
news there and shouted it breathlessly into Master Grünebaum's less
deaf ear with the result that for five minutes the good man looked
much stupider than he really was. But now he was already on his way
to Kröppel Street, and as he, a citizen, householder and resident
master of his trade, could not take his slippers under his arm, the
consequence was that one of them deserted him faithlessly at a street
corner, to begin life with nothing to depend on but its own hands, or
rather its own sole.

When Uncle Grünebaum arrived at his brother-in-law's house he found so
many good women of the neighborhood there, giving advice and expressing
their opinions, that, in his lamentable capacity of old bachelor and
pronounced woman-hater, he could but appear highly superfluous to
himself. And he did see himself in this light and would almost have
turned back if the thought of his brother-in-law and fellow-craftsman,
left miserably alone in the midst of all this "racket" had not enabled
him to master his feelings after all. Growling and grunting he pushed
his way through the womenfolk and at last did find his brother-in-law
in a not very enviable nor brilliant position and attitude.

The poor man had been pushed completely aside. Mrs. Tiebus had taken
measures to exclude him from his wife's room; in the living room among
the neighbors he was also entirely superfluous; Master Grünebaum
finally discovered him sitting in a miserable heap on a stool in the
corner where only the cat that was rubbing against his legs showed any
sympathy for him. But his eyes were still shining with that radiance
that seemed to come from another world; Master Unwirrsch heard nothing
of the women's whispering and chattering, saw nothing of the confusion
that reigned among them, nor did he see his brother-in-law till the
latter seized him by the shoulder and, not very gently, shook him back
to consciousness.

"Give a sign that you're still in the land of the living, Anton!"
growled Master Grünebaum. "Be a man, and drive the womenfolk out, all
of them except--except Auntie Schlotterbeck there. For although the
devil takes them one and all, odd and even, still she is the only one
among them that lets a man get in a word at least once an hour. Won't
you? Can't you? Don't you dare to? Well, then catch hold of my coat
behind till I get you out of this tumult in safety; come upstairs and
let things go on as they will down here. So the boy is here? Well,
praise be to God, I began to think we'd waited in vain again."

The two fellow-craftsmen pushed their way sideways through the women,
got out into the passage with difficulty, and mounted the narrow
creaking stairs that led to the upper story of the house. There Auntie
Schlotterbeck had rented a small living room, bedroom and kitchen,
which left only one room at the disposal of the Unwirrsch family,
and that was stuffed so full of all kinds of articles that scarcely
enough space remained for the two worthy guild-brothers to squat
down and exchange the innermost thoughts of their souls. Boxes and
chests, bunches of herbs, ears of corn, bundles of leather, strings
of onions, hams, sausages, endless odds and ends had here been hung,
or flung, stuffed or stuck below, above, before, beside and among one
another with a skill that approached genius, and it was no wonder that
Brother-in-law Grünebaum lost his second slipper there.

But through both the low windows the last rays of the sun shone
into the room; the comrades were safe from Mrs. Tiebus and the
neighbors.... They sat down opposite each other on two boxes and shook
hands for five well-counted minutes.

"Congratulations, Anton!" said Nikolaus Grünebaum.

"I thank you, Nikolaus!" said Anton Unwirrsch.

"Hooray, he is here! Hooray, long may he live! And again, hoo--"
shouted Master Grünebaum with the full power of his lungs, but broke
off when his brother-in-law held his hand over his mouth.

"Not so loud, for mercy's sake, not so loud, Nik'las. The wife is right
underneath us here and has trouble enough as it is with all those
women."

The new-made uncle let his fist fall on his knee:

"You're right, Brother; the devil take them, one and all, odd and
even. But now let her go, old man, and tell us how you feel. Not a bit
the way you usually do? Oh ho! And how does the little tadpole look?
Everything in the right place? Nose, mouth, arms, legs? Nothing wrong
anywhere? Everything in order: straps and legs, upper, vamp, heel and
sole? Well pitched, nailed, and neatly polished?"

"Everything as it should be, Brother," cried the happy father, rubbing
his hands. "A prize boy! May God bless us in him! Oh, Nik'las, I wanted
to say a thousand things to you, but I choke too much in my throat;
everything about me goes round----"

"Let it go as it will; when the cat is thrown down from the roof she
has to take time to collect herself," said Master Grünebaum. "The wife
is doing well, I suppose?"

"Yes, thank God. She behaved like a heroine; an empress couldn't have
done better."

"She is a Grünebaum," said Nikolaus with pride, "and in case of
necessity the Grünebaums can clench their teeth. What name are you
going to have the boy called by, Anton?"

The father of the new-born child passed his lean hand over his high,
furrowed forehead and stared out of the window into space for a few
moments. Then he said:

"He shall be christened after three fellow-craftsmen. He shall be
called Johannes like the poet in Nuremberg, and Jakob like the highly
honored philosopher of Goerlitz, and the two names shall be to him as
two wings on which to rise from the earth to the blue sky and take his
share of light. But as a third name I will give him Nikolaus so that he
may always know that he has a true friend and protector on earth, one
to whom he can turn when I am no longer here."

"I call that a sentence with a head full of sense and reason, and a
clumsy, ridiculous tail. Give him the names and it will be an honor for
all three of us, but keep away from me with those old foolish notions
of death. You're not fat, to be sure, and you couldn't exactly knock an
ox down with your bare fist either; but you can draw the pitch-thread
through the leather for many a long year yet, you ruminating bookworm."

Master Unwirrsch shook his head and changed the subject, and the two
brothers-in-law discussed this and that with each other till it had
grown perfectly dark in the storeroom.

Somebody knocked at the door, and Master Grünebaum called:

"Who is there? No womenfolk will be admitted."

"It's I," called a voice outside.

"Who?"

"I!"

"It's Auntie Schlotterbeck," said Unwirrsch. "Push the bolt back; we've
sat up here long enough; perhaps I may see the wife again now."

His brother-in-law obeyed, growling, and the light from Auntie
Schlotterbeck's lamp shone into the room.

"Here they are, really. Well, come along, you heroes; the women have
gone. Creep out. Your wife, Master Unwirrsch? Yes, she is well taken
care of; she is sleeping and you mustn't disturb her; but I've a
piece of news that you shall hear and thank God. At the house of the
Jew, Freudenstein, across the street, the same thing happened today
as in this house; but it wasn't quite the same. The child is alive--a
boy, too, but Blümchen Freudenstein is dead, and there is great
lamentation over there. Praise the Lord, Master Unwirrsch; and you,
Master Grünebaum, go home. Come, come, Unwirrsch, don't stand there so
dumbfounded; death enters, or passes by, according to God's command.
I feel as if I'd been broken on the wheel, and am going to bed. Good
night to you both."

Auntie Schlotterbeck disappeared behind her door, the two masters stole
downstairs on tiptoe, and in the public-house which he frequented
regularly, Uncle Grünebaum had far less to say that evening about
politics, municipal and other affairs than usual. Master Unwirrsch lay
all night without closing his eyes; the infant screamed mightily, and
it was no wonder that these unaccustomed tones kept the father awake
and stirred up a whirling throng of hopes and cares and drove it in a
wild chase through his heart and head.

It is not easy to produce a good sermon; but neither is it easy to
make a good boot. Skill, much skill is necessary to do either, and
bunglers and botchers had better keep their hands off, if they have any
regard for their fellow-men's welfare. I, for my part, have an uncommon
partiality for shoemakers, in their totality when they march in holiday
parades as well as for the individuals. As the people say, they are a
"ruminating tribe," and no other trade produces such excellent and odd
peculiarities in the members of its guild. The low work-table, the low
stool, the glass globe filled with water which catches the light of the
little oil lamp and reflects it with greater brilliance, the pungent
odor of leather and of pitch must naturally exert a lasting effect on
human nature, and that is just what they do, and powerfully too. What
curious originals this admirable trade has produced! A whole library
could be written about "remarkable shoemakers" without the materials
being in the least exhausted! The light which falls through the hanging
glass globe onto the work-table is the realm of fantastic spirits;
during the meditative work it fills the imagination with strange
figures and pictures and gives to thought a tinge that no other lamp,
patented or unpatented, can lend it. It makes one think of all sorts of
rhymes, queer legends, marvelous tales and merry and sad events of the
world which, when they have once been put on paper by an unpractised
hand, amaze the neighbors; at which the shoemaker's wife laughs or
is afraid when her husband hums them in a low voice in the dusk. Or,
perhaps, we begin to ponder still deeper, we feel the necessity of
"unraveling life's beginning." Deeper and deeper we look into the
glowing globe, and in the glass we see the universe in all its forms
and natures: we pass freely through the portals of all the heavens
and know them with all their stars and elements; intuitive perception
opens our minds to sublime visions and we write them down while Pastor
Richter, head clergyman of the parish, stirs up the mob against us from
the pulpit and the constable of Goerlitz, who is to fetch us to prison,
stands before the door.

"For this is eternity's right and eternal existence, that it has only
_one_ will. If it had two one would break the other and there would be
strife. It is indeed great in strength and miraculousness; but its life
is but love alone, from which light and majesty emanate. All creatures
in Heaven have _one_ will, and that is directed to God's own heart and
lives in God's own spirit, in the centre of multiplicity, in growing
and blooming; but God's spirit is life in all things, _Centrum Naturæ_
gives being, majesty and power, and the Holy Ghost is the leader."

Whoever has anything against shoemakers and does not know how to
appreciate their excellence individually and generally, let him keep
away from me. Whoever goes so far as to turn up his nose at them
contemptuously because of their often curious appearance, their
crooked legs, their hard, black paws, their crazy noses, their unkempt
tufts of hair, is no good to me; if he is lost I shall offer no reward
for his return. I treasure and love shoemakers, and above them all
I value the worthy Master Anton Unwirrsch, the father of Hans Jakob
Nikolaus Unwirrsch. Alas, it was not long after those vesper bells had
given greeting to his first and only born that the evening bells of
his own day on earth began to ring. Yet there are so many threads of
his life that run on into his son's that we cannot omit a description
of his personality and being. Physically, as we already know, he stood
not very firmly on his feet, but mentally he was straight and strong
enough and could cope with many a man who thought himself far superior.
All the relics of his hidden life show that he did his utmost to make
up for the defects of a neglected education, that he had a thirst for
knowledge--a very keen thirst. And even though he never learnt to spell
quite correctly he yet possessed a poetic soul, like his celebrated
fellow-craftsman from the "Mouse-trap" in Nuremberg, and read as much
as he possibly could. Moreover, what he read he usually understood
too; and if in some things he did not find the meaning that the author
had intended, he got another meaning out of it or read it into it
which belonged entirely to him alone and with which the author might
very often be well content. Although he loved his trade and did not
neglect it in any way it was no gold mine to him, and he remained a
poor man. Golden dreams, however, his occupation did bring him, and
all occupations that can do that are good and make those who practise
them happy. Anton Unwirrsch saw the world from his cobbler's stool
almost exactly as Hans Sachs had once seen it, but he did not become
so famous. He left a little book in close, fine handwriting which
his widow first kept like a sacred relic in the depths of her chest,
together with her hymn book, bridal wreath and a little black box of
which we shall hear more later on. As she would have a sacred relic,
the mother delivered the little book over to her son and he gave it
the place of honor in his library between the Bible and Shakespeare,
although in poetry and content it ranks a little below these two.

Auntie Schlotterbeck and Master Grünebaum had a vague suspicion of the
existence of this manuscript, but only the poet's wife had definite
knowledge of it. To her it was the most marvelous thing that could be
imagined. For did it not rhyme "like the hymn book," and had not her
husband written it? That was far beyond anything that the neighborhood
could bring to light.

To the son these leaves, sewed together, were a dear legacy and a
touching sign that even among the lowly there is an eternal striving
upward out of the depths and darkness to the heights, to the light, to
beauty.

The harmless, formless outpourings of shoemaker Unwirrsch's soul
were naturally devoted to the phenomena of nature, to the home, his
handicraft, and certain great facts of history, chiefly the deeds and
heroes of the War of Liberation which had just thundered by. They
testified to thought that, in all these directions, was sometimes
charmingly simple-hearted, sometimes lofty. There was a little humor
mixed up in it, but it was the pathetic that was most prominent and,
indeed, most often brought forth the familiar smile. The worthy
Master Anton had experienced so much thunder and lightning, so many
hailstorms, fires and floods, had seen so many Frenchmen, Rhenish
Confederates, Prussians, Austrians and Russians marching past his house
that it was no wonder if now and then he, too, tried his hand a little
at lightning and thunder and smiting dead. This did not cause any
enmity between him and his neighbors, for he remained what he was, a
"good fellow," and when he died he was mourned not alone by his wife,
his brother-in-law Grünebaum and Auntie Schlotterbeck; no, all Kröppel
Street knew and said that a good man had passed away and that it was a
pity.

He had waited long and yearningly for the birth of a son. He often
pictured to himself what he could and would make of him. He transferred
all his earnest striving for knowledge to him; the son should and
must attain to what his father could not. The thousand insurmountable
obstacles which life had thrown in the way of Master Anton should not
halt the career of the future Unwirrsch. He should find his course
clear, and no door of wisdom or of education should be closed to him by
life's labors and hardships.

Thus did Anton dream, and one year after another of his married life
passed. A daughter was born, but she died soon after; and then for a
long time there came nothing, and then--then at last came Johannes
Jakob Nikolaus Unwirrsch, whose entrance into the world has already
given us the material for a number of the foregoing pages and whose
later sufferings, joys, adventures, and travels--in short, whose
destinies will form the greater part of this book.

We saw the brother-in-law and uncle, Grünebaum, lose his slipper,
we saw and heard the tumult of the women, made the acquaintance of
Mrs. Tiebus and Auntie Schlotterbeck;--we saw, finally, the two
brothers-in-law sitting in the storeroom and saw the dusk creeping in
after the eventful sunset. Master Anton lived one more year after the
birth of his son and then died of pneumonia. Fate treated him as she
does many another: she gave him his share of joy in his hopes, and
refused him their fulfillment, which, indeed, never can catch up with
fleet-winged hope itself.

Johannes screamed lustily in the hour of his father's death, but not
for his father. But Mrs. Christine cried much for her husband and for
a long time could not be quieted either by Auntie Schlotterbeck's
words of consolation or by the philosophic admonitions of the wise
Master Nikolaus Grünebaum. The latter promised his dying brother-in-law
to do his best for those who were left and to stand by them in all
the crises of life according to his best ability. Once more Anton
Unwirrsch struggled for air, but the air for him was too full of flames
of fire; he sighed and died. The doctor wrote his death certificate;
Mrs. Kiebike, the layer-out, came and washed him, his coffin was ready
at the right time, a goodly train of neighbors and friends accompanied
him to the churchyard, and in the corner, beside the stove, sat Mrs.
Christine, who held her child on her lap and gazed with fixed, red and
swollen eyes at the low black work-stool and the low black work-table
and who still could not believe that her Anton would never again sit
on the one and in front of the other. Auntie Schlotterbeck cleared
away the empty cake plates, bottles and glasses which had been placed,
full, before the mourners, the pall-bearers and the condoling neighbors
to give them strength in their sorrow. Hans Jakob Nikolaus Unwirrsch
crowed with childish joy and stretched out his tiny hands longingly
toward the shining glass globe above his father's table, on which the
sun now fell and which had shed such a remarkable lustre on Anton
Unwirrsch's world of thought. The influence of this globe was long to
continue. The mother had become so accustomed to its light that she
could not dispense with it even after her husband's death; it shone on
far into the son's youth, Johannes heard many a tale of his father's
worth and excellence by its light, and gradually in the son's mind the
image of his father was joined inseparably to the brilliance of this
globe.

CHAPTER II

The ancients thought that it was to be considered a great piece of good
fortune if the gods allowed a man to be born in a famous town. But as
this good fortune has not fallen to the share of many famous men, such
towns as Bethlehem, Eisleben, Stratford, Kamenz, Marbach, not having
formerly been particularly brilliant spots in the minds of men, it
probably makes little difference to Hans Unwirrsch that he first saw
the light of the world in a little town called Neustadt. There are not
a few towns and townlets of the same name, but they have not quarreled
with one another for the honor of counting our hero among their
citizens. Johannes Jakob Nikolaus Unwirrsch did not make his birthplace
more famous in the world.

In the year 1819 the place had ten thousand inhabitants; today it has
a hundred and fifty more. It lay and lies in a wide valley, surrounded
by hills and mountains from which forests extend down to the town
limits. In spite of its name it is no longer new; with difficulty it
has maintained its existence through wild centuries, and now enjoys
a quiet, sleepy old age. It has gradually given up the hope of ever
attaining to bigger things and does not feel less comfortable on that
account. However, in the little State to which it belongs it is after
all a factor, and the government is considerate of it. The sound of its
church-bells made a pleasant impression on the wayfarer, as he came
out of the woods on the nearest height; and when the sun just happened
to shine in the windows of the two churches and of the houses the same
wayfarer seldom thought that all is not gold that glitters and that the
sound of bells, fertile fields, green meadows and a pretty little town
in the valley are far from being enough to produce an idyl. Amyntas,
Palaemon, Daphnis, Doris and Chloe were often able to make life down
in the valley very unpleasant for one another. But lads courted and
lasses consented and, taken all in all, they went through life quite
comfortably, to which the fact that the necessaries of life were not
unattainably dear, probably contributed. The devil take dear old
Gessner with all his rustic idyls when fruit and must don't turn out
well and milk and honey are rare in Arcadia!

But we shall have occasion again here and there to drop a few words
about all this, and if not it is of no consequence. For the present we
must turn back to the young Arcadian Hans Unwirrsch and see in what
way he makes himself at home in life.

The shoemaker's widow was truly an uneducated woman. She could scarcely
read and write, her philosophic education had been entirely neglected,
she cried easily and willingly. Born in darkness, she remained in
darkness, nursed her child, stood him on his feet, taught him to walk;
put him on his feet for life and taught him to walk firmly for the rest
of his life. That deserves great credit and the most educated mother
cannot do more for her child.

In a low dark room, into which little fresh air and still less sun
penetrated, Hans awakened to consciousness, and in one respect this
was good; later he was not too much afraid of the caverns in which far
the greater part of humanity that participates in the blessings of
civilization, must spend its life. Throughout his life he took light
and air for what they are, articles of luxury which fortune gives or
refuses and which she seems better pleased to refuse than to give.

The living room which looked out on the street and which had also been
Master Anton's workshop was kept unchanged in its former condition.
With anxious care his widow watched over it to see that none of her
blessed husband's tools was moved from its place. Uncle Grünebaum had
indeed wanted to buy all the superfluous stock in trade for a very fair
price, but Mrs. Christine could not make up her mind to part with any
of it. In all her leisure hours she sat in her usual place beside the
low cobbler's table and in the evening, as we know, she could knit or
sew or spell out the words in her large hymn-book only by the light of
the glass-globe.

The poor woman was now obliged to toil miserably in order to provide
an honest living for herself and her child; in the little bedroom, the
windows of which looked out on the yard, she lay awake many a night,
worrying, while Hans Unwirrsch in his father's big bedstead dreamt of
the large slices of bread and butter and the rolls enjoyed by happier
neighbors' children. Wise Master Grünebaum did what he could for his
relatives; but his trade did not yield to him such blessings as one
might expect from copy-book maxims; he was much too fond of making much
too long speeches at the "Red Ram" and his customers preferred to trust
him with the cure of a pair of sick shoes rather than to order a new
pair from him. He had hard work to keep his own head above water;--but
he was not backward with advice, which he gave willingly and in large
quantities and we regret to have to add that, as is not seldom the
case, the quantity usually did not stand at all in the proper relation
to the quality. Auntie Schlotterbeck, although far from being as wise
as Master Grünebaum, was more practical and it was on her advice that
Mrs. Christine became a washerwoman, who rose in the morning between
two and three o'clock and in the evening at eight, dead tired and
aching all over, came home to satisfy the first, the physical, hunger
of her child and to translate his dreams into reality.

Hans Unwirrsch retained dark, vague, curious memories of this period
in his life and later told his nearest friends about them. From his
earliest childhood he slept lightly and so he was often wakened by the
glimmer of the sulphur match with which his mother lit her lamp in the
cold dark winter night, in order to get ready for her early walk to
work. He lay warm among his pillows and did not move until his mother
bent over him to see whether the click-clack of her slippers had not
wakened the little sleeper. Then he twined his arms about her neck and
laughed, received a kiss and the admonition to go to sleep again quick,
as it wouldn't be day for a long time yet. He followed this advice
either at once, or not until later. In the latter case he watched
the burning lamp, his mother and the shadows on the wall through
half-closed eyelids.

Curiously enough nearly all these early memories were of winter time.
There was a ring of vapor round the flame of the lamp and the breath
was drawn in a cloud toward the light; the frozen window-panes
shimmered, it was bitterly cold, and with the comfort of his warm safe
bed there was mixed for the little watcher the dread of the bitter cold
from which he had to hide his little nose under the cover.

He could not understand why his mother got up so early while it was so
dark and cold and while such mad black shadows passed by on the wall,
nodded, straightened themselves up and bent down. His ideas of the
places where his mother went were still less clearly defined; according
to the mood in which he happened to be he imagined these places to be
more or less pleasant and with his imaginings were mixed all sorts
of details out of fairy-tales and fragments of conversation that he
had heard from grown people and which, in these vague moments between
sleeping and waking, took on more and more variegated colors and mixed
with one another.

At last his mother had finished dressing and bent once more over
the child's bed. Once more he received a kiss, all kinds of good
admonitions and tempting promises so that he should lie still, should
not cry, should go to sleep again soon. To these were added the
assurance that morning and Auntie Schlotterbeck would come soon; the
lamp was blown out, the room sank back into the deepest darkness,
the door squeaked, his mother's steps grew fainter;--sleep took
possession of him again quickly and when he woke the second time
Auntie Schlotterbeck was generally sitting by his bed and the fire was
crackling in the stove in the next room.

Although she was not older than Mrs. Christine Unwirrsch, Auntie
Schlotterbeck had always been Auntie Schlotterbeck. No one in Kröppel
Street knew her by any other name and she was as well known in Kröppel
Street as "Old Fritz," emperor "Napoleum" and old Blücher, although she
bore no other resemblance to these three famous heroes than that she
took snuff like the great Prussian king, and had an aquiline nose like
the "Corsican ravager." As to any resemblance to Marshal "Forward!"
that would indeed have been difficult to find.

Auntie Schlotterbeck had formerly also been a washerwoman but she had
long since been mustered out and managed to make a wretched living by
spinning, knitting stockings and similar work. The city magistrates
had granted her a scanty sum as poor-relief, and Master Anton, whose
very distant relative she was, had, out of kindness, let her have the
little room which she occupied in his house, for a very low price. In
reality she would deserve to have a whole chapter in this book devoted
to her, for she had a gift which not everybody can claim; to her those
who had died had not passed away from the earth, she saw them walking
through the streets, she met them in the marketplaces looking like
living persons and unexpectedly ran into them at the street corners.
There was not the slightest tinge of uncanniness connected with this
to her; she spoke of it as of something perfectly natural, usual, and
there was absolutely no difference to her between the mayor Eckerlein
who had died in the year 1769 and who passed her in front of the "Lion"
pharmacy in his wig and red velvet coat, and his grandchild to whom
in 1820 this same "Lion" pharmacy belonged and who was just looking
out of the window without being able to take any notice of his august
grandfather.

At last even Auntie Schlotterbeck's acquaintances ceased to regard her
gift with any feeling of "creepiness." The incredulous ones stopped
smiling at it and the credulous--of whom there were a good number--no
longer blessed themselves and clapped their hands together over their
heads. This high distinction had no detrimental influence on the
character of the good little woman herself. Auntie Schlotterbeck took
no undue pride in her strange gift of sight; she looked upon it as an
undeserved favor from God and remained humbler than many other people
who did not see nearly as much as the elderly spinster in Kröppel
Street.

As regards appearance, Auntie Schlotterbeck was of medium height but
she stooped very much when she walked and poked her head forward. Her
clothes hung on her like things that were not in their right place, and
her nose, as we have already heard, was very sharp and very hooked.
This nose would have made a disagreeable impression if it had not been
for her eyes. They made up for all the sins her nose committed. They
were remarkable eyes and, as we know, saw remarkable things too. They
remained clear and bright even when she was very, very old,--young,
blue eyes in an old, old dried-up face. Hans Unwirrsch never forgot
them although later he looked into eyes much more beautiful still.

In a naïve way Auntie Schlotterbeck was devoted to learning. She had
tremendous respect for scholarship and especially for theological
learning; little Hans owed her his first introduction to all those
branches of learning which he later mastered more or less. She could
have told fairy-tales to the Grimm brothers and when the wicked queen
drove the golden needle into her hated stepdaughter's head Hans
Unwirrsch felt the point way down to his diaphragm.

Hans and Auntie Schlotterbeck were inseparable companions during the
first years of the boy's life. From early in the morning till late in
the evening the seer of spirits had to fill his mother's place; nothing
that concerned him was done without her advice and assistance; she
satisfied his hunger for many things, but it was through her that he
learnt to know hunger for many other things. Uncle Grünebaum growled
often enough when he came to visit them; nothing good could come of
such companionship with women, he said, the devil take them, one and
all, odd and even; crochets, whimseys and spirit-imaginings were of no
use to any man and only made him an addle-pate and a muddlehead. "It's
nonsense! That's what I say and I'll stick to it."

In answer to such attacks Auntie Schlotterbeck merely shrugged her
shoulders and Hans crept closer to her side. Growling, as he had come,
Uncle Grünebaum departed;--he considered himself exceedingly practical
and clear-headed and snorted contempt through his nose without stopping
to think that even the best pipe stem may become clogged.

Hans Unwirrsch was a precocious child and learnt to speak almost before
he learnt to walk; reading came as easily to him as playing. Auntie
Schlotterbeck understood the difficult art well and only stumbled over
words that were all too long or all too foreign. She liked to read
aloud and with a whining pathos which made the greatest impression on
the child. Her library was composed mainly of the Bible, hymn book and
a long series of popular almanacs which followed one another without
a break from the year 1790 and each of which contained a touching,
a comic or a thrilling story besides a treasury of home and secret
remedies and a fine selection of humorous anecdotes. For the lively
imagination of a child an infinitely rich world was hidden in these
old numbers, and spirits of all sorts rose out of them, smiled and
laughed, grinned, threatened and led the young soul alternately through
thrills of awe and ecstasies. When the rain pelted against the panes,
when the sun shone into the room, when thunderstorms reached across
the roofs with black arms of cloud and hurled their red flashes above
the town, when the thunder rolled and the hail pattered and bounded on
the street pavement, in some way all these things came to be connected
with the figures and scenes in the almanacs and the heroes and heroines
of the stories strode through good and bad weather, perfectly clear,
plain and distinct, past dreamy little Hans who had laid his head in
the old spirit-seer's lap. The story of "good little Jasper and pretty
little Annie" struck a chord in his heart which continued to ring
through Hans' whole life; but the "book of books," the Bible, made a
still greater impression on the boy. The simple grandeur of the first
chapters of Genesis cannot but overwhelm children as well as grown
people, the poor in spirit as well as the millionaires of intellect.
Infinitely credible are these stories of the beginnings of things and
credible they remain even though every day it is more clearly proven
that the world was not created in seven days. At Auntie Schlotterbeck's
feet Hans lost himself with shuddering delight in the dark abyss of
chaos: and the earth was without form and void;--till God divided the
light from the darkness and the waters which were under the firmament
from the waters which were above the firmament. When sun, moon and
stars began their dance and God let them be for signs and for seasons
and for days and years, then he breathed freely again; and when the
earth brought forth grass and herb and the tree yielding fruit, when
the water, the air and the earth brought forth abundantly the moving
creature that hath life and every winged fowl after his kind, then he
clapped his little hands and felt that he stood on firm ground once
more. The manner in which God breathed the breath of life into Adam was
perfectly clear to him and of incontrovertible truth, whereas the first
critical doubt arose in the child's mind when the woman was created out
of the man's rib, for "that must hurt."

But following the simple stories of Paradise, of Cain and Abel, of the
flood, came the numbering of the tribes with the long difficult names.
These names were real bushes of thorns for reader and listener; they
were pitfalls into which they pitched heels over head, they were stones
over which they stumbled and fell on their noses. Ever again they
untangled themselves, rose to their feet and toiled on with reverential
solemnity: but the sons of Gomer are these: Ashkenez, Riphath and
Togarmah; and the sons of Javan are: Elishah, Tarshish, Kittim and
Dodanim.

But the days did not pass entirely in reading and telling stories.
Just as soon as Hans Unwirrsch ceased throwing his hands about in half
involuntary movements or stuffing them into his mouth, his mother and
Auntie Schlotterbeck introduced him to the great principle of work.
Auntie Schlotterbeck was an ingenious woman who earned a little extra
money by dressing dolls for a large toy factory, an occupation which
lay near enough to a child's sphere of interest and in which, before
long, Hans gladly assisted. Ladies and gentlemen, peasant lads and
lasses, shepherds and shepherdesses and many other merry little men
and women of all classes and ages took form under the hands of Auntie
Schlotterbeck, who worked bravely with glue and needle, pieces of
bright-colored fabrics, gold and silver tinsel, and gave to each his
share of these according to the price. It was a philosophic occupation
and the worker might indulge in many thoughts while engaged in it;
Hans Unwirrsch took to it kindly even though his childish joy in these
toys naturally soon disappeared. He who grows up in a shop full of
jumping-jacks cares little for the individual jumping-jack however
motley may be his garb and however funnily he may jerk his arms and
legs.

After Martinmas, which famous day could unfortunately not be celebrated
by the consumption of a roast goose, manufacturing began as an
independent undertaking. Auntie Schlotterbeck was now able to make the
greatest profit out of her talent for plastic art; she built little
men of raisins for the Christmas trade and others of prunes for more
easily satisfied souls. The first prune-man that Hans completed without
assistance gave him just as much pleasure as the disciple of art takes
in the piece of work that wins for him a stipend with which to go to
Italy. The opening of the Christmas-fair was a great event for the
little modeler. Epic poets describe many feelings by explaining why
they cannot describe them; Hans' feelings on this occasion were of that
kind, and with rapture he carried the lantern ahead while, on a little
cart, Auntie Schlotterbeck dragged her bench, her basket, her fire-pan
and a little table to the fair.

The opening of the business, in an angle of the buildings that was
sheltered from the keenest wind, was in itself a marvelous event. To
crouch down under the big old umbrella, to fan the glowing coals in
the fire-pan by blowing on them, to arrange the articles of trade on
the table, the first quiet and yet expectant glance at the bustle
of the fair--all these things had a heart-thrilling charm. The
first prune-man that was bargained about, sold and bought, raised a
genuine storm of ecstacy in the breast of Schlotterbeck & Company.
Dinner, which a good-natured child from Kröppel Street brought in an
earthenware pot, tasted entirely different out on the open market-place
from what it did at home in the dark room; but best of all was the
evening with its fog, its gleaming lights and lamps, and its redoubled
crowding and pushing and shouting and bustling.

The child could not always sit quietly on the bench beside the old
woman. Spellbound, in spite of cold, in spite of rain and snow, he went
on expeditions over the whole market-place and, as a partner in the
firm of Schlotterbeck & Company, he pushed his chin onto the table of
every other firm, with self-assurance and critical attitude.

At eight o'clock his mother came and took the younger partner of the
firm of Schlotterbeck home; but this was not done without opposition,
crying and struggling, and only the assurance that "there would be
another day tomorrow," could, at last, persuade the tiny merchant
prince to leave the business to the care of Auntie till the hour of
closing at eleven o'clock.

One thing that belongs to this period of our hero's life must be
reported. With the money gained by the sale of a raisin-man that he had
made himself, he bought--another raisin-man from a commercial house
which had established itself at the opposite end of the market. This
bore witness to a quality which was of great importance in the boy's
future development. Hans Unwirrsch, who made these black fellows for
others, wanted to know where the pleasure lay in buying such a fellow
oneself. He wanted to get to the bottom of this pleasure and naturally
found no joy in this much too early analysing. When the pennies had
been swept into the drawer by the seller and the purchaser held the
creature in his hand, the full measure of regret took possession of
him. Crying loudly he stood in the middle of the street and finally
threw his purchase far away from him and ran off as fast as he could,
swallowing the bitterest tears as he went. Neither Auntie nor his
mother ever found out where the groschen, for which one could have
bought up the whole fair, had gone.

Winter brings many joys, but with it come also the greatest hardships.
We have to do with very poor people and poor people usually don't
begin to live again till spring and the may-beetles come. Hundreds of
thousands, millions of people might well envy those happy creatures
that sleep through the cold days in comfortable unconsciousness.

After Christmas Eve, which was kept as well as it could be, came New
Year's Day and after that the Three Wise Men of the East approached.
The shades of many of those who were dead passed Auntie Schlotterbeck
in the streets at this time, or entered the church with her and walked
round the altar. After Candlemas some people said that the days were
growing longer but it wasn't very noticeable yet. By the time the
Annunciation came, however, the fact could no longer be denied; the
snowdrops had dared to come out, the snow could no longer keep the
world buried, the buds swelled and burst open, Auntie Schlotterbeck's
nose lost much of its redness; when Hans' mother got up early in the
morning now the lamp no longer shone through a frosty circle of vapor.
Hans Unwirrsch no longer yelled blue murder in front of the wash basin,
and his feet did not now have to be forced into his shoes. The means
of keeping warm was no longer carted into town by loutish wood-cutters
and sold at a "wicked price." The days now arrived when the sun shone
for nothing and did not even ask a word of thanks. Palm Sunday came
before anyone realized it and Easter started the weaving of the wreath
which the festival of joy, the verdant, blooming, jubilant Whitsuntide
pressed on the young year's brow. Auntie Schlotterbeck now did her
knitting on the bench in front of the door, and earnestly and shyly
Hans Unwirrsch watched Freudenstein, the junk-dealer across the street,
as he pushed his little Moses, a delicate, thin, miserable little piece
of humanity, well packed up in cushions and covers, out into the sun on
a wheelchair.

SUMMARY OF CHAPTERS III, IV AND V

[The boy, Hans Unwirrsch, was much admired and spoilt by his mother and
Auntie Schlotterbeck and it was a good thing for him when he grew to be
of school age. He was sent to the charity school. It stood in a dark,
blind alley and was a damp, one-story building in which the teacher,
Karl Silberlöffel, had to fight equally against gout and tuberculosis
and against the rude boys and girls he taught. Hans was no better than
his school-fellows. Just as at home he gradually sought to free himself
from the absolute dominion of the women and began to criticize fairy
tales and almanac stories, so too at school he joined his comrades with
word and deed in all their mischievous enterprises against the helpless
old master.

Here, however, Uncle Grünebaum's beneficial influence stepped in. Hans
often visited his uncle in the latter's untidy workshop where he only
did enough work to earn a scanty living for himself and his birds
and to pay for the _Post Courier_ which provided him with political
reading. It was particularly interesting just at that time because the
Greek struggle for independence against the Turks was raging and our
cobbler, like Auntie Schlotterbeck, was an enthusiastic Philhellenist.
He called Hans to account and tried to make it clear to him that he and
his school-fellows would drive their consumptive master into his grave
by their behavior and that it was no laughing matter to have a murder
on one's conscience. He advised Hans to be careful that the devil did
not take him, together with the other rogues, because of his conduct.

Such conversation had its effect. Hans did not take part in the next
conspiracy, and did not regret the pummeling he received from the other
boys on that account, for the next morning the teacher did not appear
at school in consequence of a hemorrhage. Not long after he died. Uncle
Grünebaum and Auntie Schlotterbeck were kind to him during his last
illness, and Hans with Auntie Schlotterbeck stood beside the bed of
the dying man. The exhausted man spoke of the bitterness of his life,
but Auntie Schlotterbeck understood little and Hans nothing of what
he said. He talked of how he had been hungry for love and thirsty for
knowledge and of how everything else had been as nothing; of how he had
lived in the shade and yet had been born for the light; of how shining,
golden fruit had fallen all around him, while his hands were bound.
Nothing had fallen to his share but his yearning, and that too was
coming to an end. He would be satisfied--in death.

Much as Hans had felt the solemn shudder of death, on the day after
the funeral, which had been attended by the whole charity school, he
was already playing again merrily in the street. Snow had fallen in
the night and a mighty snowman was built in Kröppel Street. When he
was finished and the boys were playing together, Moses Freudenstein,
the junk-dealer's son, happened to get into the crowd. They formed a
ring about him and made him hold out his hand to each in turn and every
young Christian spit into it with a shout of scorn. Up to that hour
Hans had howled with the wolves in such things too, but now it flashed
through him in an instant that something very low and cowardly was
being done. He did not spit into Moses' hand, but struck it away and,
turning protector, started to do battle for the Jewish boy. A fearful
fight ensued, the end of which was that Hans and Moses, dizzy, bruised,
with bleeding mouths and swollen eyes, rolled down into the shop of
the junk-dealer, Samuel Freudenstein. This hour had an incalculable
influence on Hans Unwirrsch's life, for he rolled out of the street
battle into relations which were to be infinitely important for him.

Samuel Freudenstein had seen more of the world than all the other
Neustädians together. After extensive commercial journeys, especially
in Southeastern Europe, he had settled in Neustadt and begun to trade
in second-hand goods and junk, as heavy losses in a speculation
prevented his embarking on a greater enterprise. He got on, and
married, but his wife died at the birth of their son in 1819, on the
very day when Hans Unwirrsch, too, was born. Samuel Freudenstein
brought up his son in his own way, which in many respects differed
widely from the curriculum of the charity school.

Samuel thanked Hans for the protection he had given Moses, and Hans'
mother and Uncle Grünebaum allowed him to continue his visits to the
Jew's house. Hans now discovered so many wonders in the gloom of the
junkshop that for the first time his life seemed to be filled with real
substance. At the same time he mounted a rung higher on the ladder of
knowledge by entering the lowest class of the grammar school. On this
occasion Uncle Grünebaum did not fail to make one of his finest and
longest speeches and to present Hans with his first pair of high boots.

Now, too, for the first time Hans entered into a more intimate relation
with the other sex. He found his first love, Sophie, the daughter of an
apple-woman. With her cat, Sophie sat in her mother's booth opposite
the school, sold her fruit with seriousness and had difficulty, on her
way home, in defending herself and her cat from the rough schoolboys.
Hans lent her his protection and he and Moses kept up a friendly
intercourse with her through the spring and summer. But in the course
of the winter one of the diseases of childhood carried her off,
and her companion, the cat, did not long outlive her. The death of
little Sophie and the cat made a deep impression on Hans. He did not
become friends with any other girl at present; but from now on the
second-hand shop gained an ever greater influence over him.

In this enchanted cave Hans saw the father, Samuel, going about, like
a magician, with brush and glue-pot, stuffing birds and quadrupeds,
collecting curious goblets and tankards, buying up odd portraits of
other people's ancestors. He listened attentively when father and son
talked of the history of their race, he lost himself completely in old
Dutch descriptions of travel, with their copperplates, one day he even
saw a real ostrich-egg. Moses was far ahead of Hans in all branches
of knowledge. Samuel Freudenstein had taught his son that knowledge
and money were the two most effective means of power and now they were
both indefatigable, the son in acquiring the former, the father in
accumulating the latter. Things were well classified in Moses' head,
he could find what he wanted there, any minute;--he had never been a
child, a real, true, natural child.

Hans Unwirrsch, on the other hand, remained a real child. His
imagination still retained its dominion over his reason; the circle in
which he stood, like any other human child, now expanded and became
filled with ever gayer, brighter, more enticing figures, scenes and
dreams.

One evening Hans came meditatively out of the darkness of the junkshop,
hurried across to his mother's house and there, in answer to Auntie
Schlotterbeck's questions, blurted out that Moses was going to learn
Latin and go to the "Gymnasium" while he should have to be a cobbler
and stay a cobbler all his life. Unfortunately for Hans these words
were overheard by Uncle Grünebaum, who happened to be present and whom
Hans had not noticed. There followed a dangerous scene. First Auntie
Schlotterbeck had to protect Hans so that his indignant relative,
as uncle, godfather, guardian, and master of the laudable trade of
shoemaking, did not half kill him but merely squeezed him between
his knees and talked urgently to him till Hans, yielding to the
double pressure, declared himself to be in thorough agreement with
his uncle's views. Then Auntie Schlotterbeck changed from defence
to attack. She read Uncle Grünebaum a lecture on his own conduct,
reminding him that he was not looked up to anywhere but on the bench
behind his mug of beer in the "Red Ram," that he neglected his house
and trade and was indeed no shining example of what the trade of
shoemaking turned out. When she finally threatened to call Frau
Christine to her aid the doughty cobbler speedily took a flight.

In the evening, however, he appeared as a hero in the "Red Ram," where
he conducted himself like a great politician, for which rôle the
news, which had just come, of the outbreak of a revolution in Paris,
offered him a splendid opportunity. He finally went to bed rather
tipsy and fully convinced of his greatness, and slept the sleep of
the just, which Hans Unwirrsch did not do, nor his mother, nor Auntie
Schlotterbeck either.]

CHAPTER VI

A lovely, fine night had followed the day; the moon shone above all
Europe and its peoples. All the clouds had been driven away and now lay
loweringly on the Atlantic Ocean: all who could sleep, slept; but not
everyone could sleep.

Bridal night and night of death in one! Through the woods the brooks
flashed their silver sparks; the great streams flowed on, calm
and shining. The woods, meadows and fields, the lakes, rivers and
brooks--they were all in full harmony with the moon, but the odd
pygmy-folk, men, in their cities and villages, far from being in
harmony with themselves, left much to be desired in that respect.
If she had not been the "gentle" moon, if she had not had a good
reputation to maintain, she would not have lighted mankind, in spite
of all the poets and lovers. She was gentle, and shone;--moreover,
perhaps, she was touched by the confidence of the municipal
authorities, who depended on her, and on her account did not light the
street lamps.

She shone with the same brilliance and calm on all Europe--on the poor,
tumultuous city of Paris where so many dead still lay unburied and so
many wounded wrestled with death, and on the tiny town of Neustadt in
its wide, peaceful valley. She glanced softly into the over-crowded
hospitals and morgues;--she glanced softly into the traveling-coach
of Charles X. and not less softly into the low chamber in which lay
Christine Unwirrsch with her boy.

The child slept, but the mother lay awake and could not sleep for
thinking of what she had heard when she came home so tired after her
hard work.

It had taken her a long time to understand the confused report that
Hans and Auntie Schlotterbeck had given; she was a simple woman who
needed time before she could grasp anything that lay beyond her daily
work and her poor household. To be sure, when once she did understand
a thing she could analyze it properly and intelligently and consider
and weigh the pros and cons of every detail; but she could scarcely
understand in its broadest outlines this, her child's, aspiration out
of the darkness toward the light.

[Illustration: THE COMMANDER OF THE FORTRESS

_Permission Franz Hanfstaengl_ KARL SPITZWEG]

She only knew that in this child the same hunger had now made itself
apparent, from which her Anton had suffered, that hunger which she did
not understand and for which she nevertheless had such respect, that
hunger which had so tormented her beloved, sainted husband, the hunger
for books and for the marvelous things which lay hidden in them. The
years which had passed since her husband had been carried to the grave
had not blurred a single remembrance. In the heart and mind of the
quiet woman the good man still lived with all his peculiarities, even
the smallest and most insignificant of which death had transfigured
and transformed into a good quality. How he paused in his work
to gaze for minutes into the glass globe in front of his lamp in
self-forgetfulness, how on his walks, on a beautiful holiday, he would
suddenly stand still and look at the ground and at the blue dome
above, how at night he woke and sat awake for hours in bed, murmuring
unconnected words--all that was not, and never could be, forgotten.
How the good man had toiled on at his trade between sighs and flushes
of joy, cheerful and depressed moods,--how in his rare leisure hours
he had studied so hard and, above all, what hopes he had set on his
son and with what wonderful aspirations he had dreamt of this son's
future--all lay clear before Christine Unwirrsch's soul.

The mother raised herself on her pillow and looked over at her child's
bed. The moonlight played on the counterpane and the pillows and
transfigured the face of the sleeping boy who had cried himself to
sleep after telling his sorrowful tale, and on whose cheeks the traces
of tears were still to be seen, although he now smiled again in his
slumber and knew no more of the day's trouble. Round about the town of
Neustadt the birds of night stirred in the bushes and along the edges
of the streams and ponds; the night-watchman's hoarse voice sounded now
near, now far; the clocks of the two churches quarreled about the right
time and were of very different opinions; all the bats and owls of
Neustadt were very lively, knowing their hours exactly and never making
a mistake of a minute; mice squeaked in the wall of the bedroom and one
mouse rustled under Mrs. Christine's bed; a bluebottle that could not
sleep either flew about buzzing, now here, now there, now banging his
head against the window, now against the wall and seeking in vain for
some way out; in the next room the grandfather's chair behind the stove
cracked and there was such a weird and ghostly pattering and creeping
about in the attic that it was hard to adhere to the soothing belief in
"cats." Mrs. Christine Unwirrsch, who, being gifted with a foreboding
mind, usually had a keen and fearful ear for all the noises and sounds
of the night and who did not in the least doubt the penetration of the
spirit-world into her bedroom, had no time in this night to listen to
these things and get goose-flesh in consequence. Her heart was too
full of other matters and the ghosts that roam between earth and heaven
and play at will on the nerves of men had no power over her. The mother
felt her responsibility for the destiny of her child weigh heavy upon
her and although she was a poor, ignorant woman she was not therefore
less concerned; indeed, her concern was perhaps greater because her
idea of her child's desire was incomplete and inadequate.

She looked long at sleeping Hans till the moon glided on in the
firmament and the rays slipped from the bed and slowly retired toward
the window. When at last complete darkness filled the room she sighed
deeply and whispered:

"His father wished it, and no one shall set himself against his
father's will. God will surely help me, poor, stupid woman that I am,
to make it come out right. His father wished it and the child shall
have his way according to his father's will."

She rose quietly from her couch and crept out of the room with bare
feet, so as not to wake the sleeping boy. In the living room she lit
the lamp. She sat down for a few moments on her husband's work-chair
and wiped the tears from her eyes; and then she carried the light to
that chest in the corner of which we have already told, knelt down and
opened the ancient lock which offered obstinate resistance to the key
as long as possible.

When the lid was laid back the room was filled with the scent of clean
linen and dried herbs, rosemary and lavender. This chest contained
everything precious and valuable that Mrs. Christine possessed and
carefully she controlled herself so that no tear should fall into it.
Carefully she laid back the white and colored linen, smoothing each
fold as she did so; carefully she laid aside the little boxes with
old, trivial knickknacks, broken, cheap jewelry, loose amber beads,
bracelets of colored glass beads and similar treasures of the poor and
of children, until, nearly at the bottom of the chest, she came to
what she was seeking in the stillness of the night. With timid hand
she first pulled out a little case with a glass cover; her head sank
lower as she opened it. It contained Master Anton's book of songs and
on the book lay a dried myrtle wreath. It was as if distant bells, the
tones of an organ trembled through the night and through the soul of
the kneeling woman; Auntie Schlotterbeck did not see the dead alive
more clearly and distinctly than Christine Unwirrsch saw them at that
moment. She folded her hands above the open case and her lips moved
softly. No other prayer came to her mind but "Our Father" and that
sufficed.

A second case stood beside the first, an old box made of oak, trimmed
with iron, with a strong lock, an ingenious piece of work belonging
to the seventeenth century, which had been in the possession of the
Unwirrsches for generations. Mrs. Christine carried this box to the
table and before she opened it she put everything back in its place in
the chest; she loved order in all things and did nothing in haste even
now.

It was a bright light that the little lamp and the hanging glass globe
gave, but the box on the table, black with age as it was, outshone them
both, its contents spoke louder of the preciousness of parents' love
than if its price had been announced by a thousand trumpets in all the
marketplaces of the world. The lock turned, the lid sprang open: money
was in the box!--much, much money--silver coins of all kinds and even
one gold piece wrapped in tissue paper. Rich people might well have
smiled at the treasure but if they had had to pay the true value of
every thaler and florin all their riches might not have sufficed to
buy the contents of the black box. Hunger and sweat had been paid for
every coin and a thousand noble thoughts and beautiful dreams clung to
each. A thousand hopes lay in the dark box, Master Anton had hidden his
purest self in it, and Christine Unwirrsch had added all her love and
her faithfulness.

Who, just looking at the scanty heap of well-fingered pieces of money,
could have imagined all this?

A little book, consisting of a few sheets of gray paper stitched
together, lay beside the money; the father's hand had filled the
first pages with letters and figures but then death had closed worthy
Master Anton's account and for many years now the mother had done the
bookkeeping, by faith, without letters and figures, and the account
still balanced.

How often had Christine Unwirrsch gone hungry to bed, how often had
she suffered all possible hardships without yielding to the temptation
to reach out her hand for the black box! In every form distress had
approached her in her miserable widowhood, but she had resisted with
heroism. Even without letters and figures, she could render her account
at any moment;--it was not her fault if the happy, honorable future
which the dead man had dreamt of for his son did not rise out of the
black box.

Mrs. Christine sat in front of the table for more than an hour that
night, counting on her fingers and calculating, while across the
street in a little back room of the junk-dealer's house a man also sat
figuring and counting. Samuel Freudenstein, too, was sitting up for his
sleeping boy's sake. More than a few rolls of gold pieces, more than a
few rolls of silver pieces lay before him; he had more to throw into
his child's scales of fortune than the poor widow.

"I will arm him with everything that is a weapon," he murmured. "They
shall find him prepared in every way, and he shall laugh at them. He
shall become a great man; he shall have everything that he wants. I was
a slave, he shall be a master among a strange people, and I will live
in his life. He has a good head, a sharp eye; he will make his way. He
shall think of his father when he has reached the height; I will live
in his life."

The widow divided her scanty day's wages into two parts. The greater
part fell into the oak box and was added to the other savings of
long years of toil, and the small coins gave a clear ring. Samuel
Freudenstein added more than a hundred shining thalers to his son's
fortune; no one in Kröppel Street as much as suspected what a rich man
the junk-dealer had again gradually grown to be.

The moonlight had entirely disappeared from the widow's bedroom when
she crept shiveringly back from the living room. Hans Unwirrsch still
slept soundly and not even the kiss that his mother pressed on his
forehead waked him. The lamp too went out and Mrs. Christine soon slept
as peacefully as her child. About the bed of King Solomon stood sixty
strong men with swords in their hands, skilled in battle, "for the sake
of the fear in the night;" but at the head of the widow and her child
there stood a spirit that kept better watch than all the armed men in
Israel.

Throughout nearly the whole summer the battle with Uncle Grünebaum went
on. It was long since the world had seen such an obstinate cobbler.
Tears, pleadings, and remonstrances did not soften, touch or convince
him. A man who could hold his own with the Seven Wise Masters, in every
respect, could not be moved from his standpoint so easily by two silly
women and a stupid boy. He had resolved in his shaggy, manly breast
that Hans Unwirrsch, like all the other Unwirrsches and Grünebaums,
should become a shoemaker and with a mocking whistle he repulsed every
attack on his understanding, his reason and his heart. Scarcely a day
passed on which he did not with his piping rouse Auntie Schlotterbeck
from her calm. The more irritated the women grew, the hotter in their
arguments, the sharper in their words, the more melodious did Uncle
Grünebaum become. He generally accompanied the beginning of every new
discussion with a valiant, warlike tune and brought the conversation to
a vain conclusion with the most melting, yearning melodies.

"Master Grünebaum, Master Grünebaum," cried Auntie, "if the child is
unhappy later it will be your fault--your fault alone! I have never
seen a man like you in all my born days."

Whether Prince Eugene's song was sung as an answer to these words was
open to doubt: Master Grünebaum whistled it like "himself a Turk."

"Oh, Niklas," cried his sister, "what kind of a man are you? He is such
a good child and his teachers are so satisfied with him and his father
wanted him to learn everything that there is to learn. Think of Anton,
Niklas, and do give in, please do, I beg you to."

Uncle Grünebaum did not give in for a long time yet. He expressed the
thought that cobbling was also a fine, meditative, learned business and
that "trade is the mother of money," very strikingly by means of the
melody: "The linen-weavers have a fine old guild," but refused to say
more.

"That's right, go on whistling!" screamed Auntie Schlotterbeck with her
arms angrily akimbo. "Go on whistling, you fool! But I tell you, you
may stand on your head, the child shall go to the great schools and
the universities nevertheless. Sit there like a blind bullfinch and go
on whistling. Cousin Christine, don't cry, don't show him you care,
it only gives him a wicked pleasure. Such a tyrant! Such a barbarian!
And after all, it's your child, not his! But the Lord will set things
right, I know, so do take your apron from your eyes. Keep on whistling
now, Master Grünebaum, but remember, you'll answer for it by and by;
think what you will say to Master Anton up above when the time comes!"

It seemed as if when the time came Uncle Grünebaum intended to justify
himself to his sainted brother-in-law by the beautiful song: "A
squirrel sat on the thorny hedge"--at least he whistled it with pensive
emotion, and twiddled his thumbs in accompaniment.

"Oh, Niklas, what a hard-hearted man you are!" sobbed his sister.
"Auntie is right, you will never be able to justify yourself for what
you are doing to your brother-in-law's child----"

"And it's better to be a rag-picker than such a shiftless cobbler who
wastes the time God has given him at the beer table in the Red Ram. And
a creature like that wants to balk and kick out behind if a poor child
wants to get ahead! If he'd only wash his hands and comb his hair, the
fellow! I'd like to see anybody that would want to take him for an
example and a model. There isn't anybody else like him and a man like
that wants to keep others from washing themselves and being an honor
to their parents. But I build on God, Master Grünebaum. He'll show you
what you really are. It's really absurd that a man wants to play the
guardian who can't even guard himself."

The melody "Kindly moon, thou glidest softly" must have a very soothing
effect indeed on human feelings; Uncle Grünebaum whistled it meltingly
as long as Auntie Schlotterbeck continued to speak, and however great
may have been the anger that boiled in his breast, the world saw
nothing of it. When Hans Unwirrsch came home from school with his bag
of books he found the two women in a very excited state with scarlet
faces, and his uncle quite composed, even-tempered and calm;--he did
indeed guess what they had been talking about again but he seldom
learnt any of the details of the discussion.

Usually Uncle Grünebaum took his departure while whistling a hymn or
some other solemn air and at the same time pinching poor Hans' ear with
a grin; Mephistopheles might have envied him his smile and after he had
gone the women generally dropped on the nearest chairs, exhausted and
broken in spirit, and for several hours were incapable of believing in
human and divine justice.

In the cornfields the scythes flashed and swished; Uncle Grünebaum had
still not given in. Without the aid of any wind all kinds of fruit
detached themselves from the branches and fell to the ground; Uncle
Grünebaum held more obstinately to his opinion than ever. Silver
threads spread over the earth and wavered through the air: Uncle
Grünebaum did not waver with them but laughed scornfully from his
low three-legged stool. The foliage in the woods changed daily to an
ever gayer hue, but Uncle Grünebaum's view of the world and life did
not change. Moses Freudenstein boasted more and more proudly in his
triumph, and Hans Unwirrsch's expression grew more and more miserable
and depressed. The song-birds chirped their last melodies and prepared
for their flight to the South: Uncle Grünebaum joined in the chirping,
but he put his trust in the psalmist's promise "so shalt thou dwell
in the land and verily thou shalt be fed," for he was too thoroughly
convinced that he was indispensable in Neustadt, in the "Red Ram" and
in his family. No _Deus ex machina_ descended to bring aid to poor Hans
and so he finally had no alternative but to help himself. He carried
out a plan which had required a long time to mature in his mind, thus
throwing Auntie Schlotterbeck and his mother into giddy amazement and
putting his stiff-necked Uncle Grünebaum entirely beside himself.

One Sunday morning at the beginning of September Professor Blasius
Fackler, doctor of philosophy and one of the lights of the local
"Gymnasium," ruled alone in his house and felt safe and comfortable, as
he seldom did, in his study.

His wife with her two daughters was at church, in all probability
praying to God to forgive her for the agitated hours which she
occasionally caused the "good man," that is, her lord and master. The
maid had absented herself on private business; the house was still, it
was indeed a gray day that looked into the study filled with clouds of
tobacco smoke, but the joyful soul of the professor roamed over a blue
welkin with the song-book of Quintus Valerius Catullus and drank in the
ecstatic moments of freedom,--

    Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus,
    rumoresque senum severiorum
    omnes unius aestimemus assis.

He strolled in the shade of the pomegranates and pines by the lake of
Benakus on the blessed peninsula of Sirmio and the sparkling rhythmic
waves of the Roman poet washed into nothingness all thoughts of the
present and of that Lesbia who at that moment was singing sharply and
shrilly in the church. He failed to hear the sound of the doorbell, did
not catch the timidly soft tread that mounted the stairs; he was not
roused till something scratched and tapped gently at his door. Quickly
the Latin rogue Catullus hid himself under a heap of more serious
scholarly equipment, and with dignity the professor and doctor of
philosophy called:

"Come in!"

No one accepted the invitation and it was repeated more loudly, but
this time too without success. Bewildered, the scholar rose from his
chair, drew his long dressing-gown tight about him, and now with still
greater amazement admitted a tiny laddie of about eleven years into
his study, a laddie who trembled in every joint and over whose cheeks
the tears ran down. No one was present at the interview that this
visitor had with Professor Fackler and we cannot give the details of
the conversation. Only this we can say, that when Lesbia returned from
church with her two daughters, the charming pledges of the "thousands
and thousands of kisses," she found her husband in a very pleased mood.
He did not give her the attention which she expected from him but
continued to straddle up and down the room and to murmur:

"I declare! A plucky little fellow! _Puer tenax propositi!_ He shall
have his way! By all the gods of Olympus he shall attain what he
desires and may it be of benefit to him!"

"What shall be of benefit? Of benefit to whom, Blasius?" asked Lesbia,
laying down her hymn-book.

"Someone shall be taken by the heel and dipped into the Styx, dearest,
so that he may be proof against the afflictions of life and emerge
victorious from the battle of men."

"This is one of your silly, incomprehensible days, Blasius," cried
Mrs. Fackler, with vexation and looked as if she would have liked to
give her husband a good shaking. Fortunately, however, at that moment
Eugenia and Cornelia came running in and hung on their father's arms
with all kinds of childish questions and requests. The latter pointed
to their mother and quoted with hollow voice:

    "Jove tonante, fulgurante, comitia populi habere nefas,"

drew on his coat, put on his hat, took his stick, went out and--paid a
visit to Uncle Grünebaum. Uncle Nikolaus Grünebaum, however, to his own
"highest perplexity" made a long, beautiful speech that afternoon in
Kröppel Street to the accompaniment of some most excellent coffee which
Auntie Schlotterbeck had brewed, and expressed himself more or less in
the following expectoration:

"Inasmuch as a cobbler is a noble and honorable calling yet
nevertheless all the children of men cannot be cobblers, but there must
also be other people, tailors, bakers, carpenters, masons and such
like, so that every feeling and sentiment may be provided for and no
sense be left without its necessary protection. But also because there
are other wants in the world and man needs much before and prior to the
time when he needs nothing more, there are also advocates and doctors
more than too many and in addition professors and pastors more than
enough. But God lets things go on as they will and the devil takes one
and all, odd and even, which is to say that a boy who wants to choose
his occupation must look far ahead and consider carefully in which
direction his bent lies, for it has happened more than once that an
ass has thought that he could play the lute. But it isn't everyone who
can make a boot either, it isn't as easy as it looks. Now there are
present here Christine Unwirrsch, widow of the late Anton Unwirrsch,
secondly the unmarried spinster Schlotterbeck, also a very good
specimen of sound common sense and natural ability. Moreover, there is
present, Master Nik'las Grünebaum, who am not up in the air, either,
but without wanting to boast, stand squarely on my feet. Before these
three there stands the individual whom the matter concerns, Hans Jakob
Nik'las Unwirrsch, who at least has demonstrated himself to be a youth
of courage and who has sought to trip up his dearest relatives behind
their backs. Such a little bantam!"

Both women raised their hands to beseech the blessing of heaven on the
youthful genius, Hans Unwirrsch; but his uncle continued.

"When the professor stood in front of me all of a sudden, I said to
myself, 'Steady, Grünebaum, hold on to your chair!' Such a boy! But the
professor is an estimable, reasonable, pleasant gentleman and so the
long and short of the matter is this, that from half past eleven this
morning on, I will have nothing more to do with it and will wash my
hands."

"In which you do very well, Master Grünebaum," said Auntie
Schlotterbeck.

"And so things may go as they like, the devil takes both odd and even!"
concluded Uncle Grünebaum.

"Nik'las!" cried Mrs. Christine, irritated, "I hope that my son will
never have to do with the devil either in an odd or even way, and as
for letting things go as they like, I hope he won't do that either."

"Come, come, don't be sacrilegious and touchy," growled her brother.
"Well then, what I and Professor Fackler wanted to say, as an
over-learned individual is still a man after all, you shall have your
way, my boy, as far as we are concerned. Enough, I have said it! And I
don't suppose the highly laudable profession of cobbling will lose any
miracle in you, scamp."

The mother's feelings found relief in a stream of tears, Auntie
Schlotterbeck nearly melted away with joyful emotion; Hans Unwirrsch
was never able afterwards to give an account of his feelings in that
hour, either to himself or to others. But the person who remained
entirely unmoved and calm, or seemed to, was Uncle Grünebaum. He
complacently pressed the tobacco down in his short pipe with his
cobbler's thumb, closed the lid carefully like a man who has done a
good work and who at most will allow the credit that rightly belongs to
him to be entered in the great ledger of heaven.

But however he might appear, he had lost his power over his nephew and
could never regain it. From the moment when Hans Unwirrsch gave the
rudder of his life such an effective jerk with his own small hand, he
confronted the worthy master with a fully enfranchised will of his
own and the latter's amazement and bewilderment were only the more
boundless, the greater the equanimity that he displayed.

Destinies had to be fulfilled and Hans Unwirrsch started on the road
that Anton Unwirrsch had not been allowed to travel. The following noon
Auntie Schlotterbeck met the deceased master; he was bent and hung his
head in his usual manner, but he smiled contentedly.

SUMMARY OF CHAPTER VII

[Hans and Moses now worked on from class to class through the
"Gymnasium." But the way that led through the vocabulary, declinations
and conjugations to the open and sunny clearness of classical antiquity
was considerably more difficult for Hans than for Moses, for the former
wanted to realize the beauty of the classic age in his imagination,
while the latter contented himself with the effort to understand it and
to master the languages in which it has come down to us. But in every
act of mental work Moses' highest aim was to forge weapons with which
to meet the world. He despised or smiled at everyone who did not, like
himself, sacrifice all other qualities in order to forge and whet the
keen-edged sword of reason, and excepted neither his "half-childish"
father nor his good-natured friend. Hans Unwirrsch, on the contrary,
did not forget what he owed to his parents' self-denial and heroism,
and all the sacrifices that poverty demanded of him became for him
precious duties, as is ever the case with noble natures. Professor
Fackler remained his paternal friend and also put him in the way of
making his first earnings by recommending him as a tutor for the two
sons of the director of a government office named Trüffler. At the same
time this afforded Hans the opportunity to see something of so-called
"higher social life." Although it was only with the deepest humility
that he raised his eyes to the goddesses of this other world, the
director's daughters, yet there were times when he was in danger of
despising Uncle Grünebaum and underestimating Auntie Schlotterbeck.
Against his will, however, the sardonic Moses rendered him valuable
service in this respect. The latter analyzed Hans' feelings to him and
explained that he was tormented by envy. Once having recognized this
condition the value of his mother's home became clear to him again
and he was irresistibly drawn back into its simple, heart-refreshing
atmosphere.]

CHAPTER VIII

Uncle Grünebaum in holiday raiment was a dignified, substantial,
self-assured and firm figure. Whoever took a fleeting glance at him at
first was usually so pleasantly surprised that he followed the glance
with steady observation lasting some minutes, observation which Uncle
Grünebaum either permitted with admirable composure or put an end to by
an inimitable: "Well?" according to the person who made it.

In his Sunday raiment Uncle Nik'las Grünebaum stood at the corner
opposite the "Gymnasium" and resembled an angel in so far as he wore
a long blue coat which, to be sure, as far as the cut was concerned,
had little in common with the garments in saints' pictures. The waist
of this coat had been placed by the manufacturer as near as possible
to the back of the neck and two _non plus ultra_ buttons marked its
beginning. The pockets showed themselves plainly in the lower region
of the coat-tails and a short pipe with gracefully dangling tassels
looked curiously out of one of them. Uncle Grünebaum wore a yellow
and brown striped waistcoat and trousers of a greenish blue color,
somewhat too short but of agreeable construction, too tight above, too
wide below. The watch charms which swung beneath the stomach of the
worthy man would really deserve several pages of description, and we
will say nothing of his hat, for fear that we should then be carried
irresistibly beyond the limits of the space at our disposal.

Wherefore did Uncle Grünebaum, dressed in his Sunday clothes on an
ordinary week-day, stand at the corner opposite the "Gymnasium"? Tell
us, Oh Muse, the reason of this! You have observed Master Nik'las long
enough, eloquent calliope, turn your divine eye toward the school-house
and tell us, like a good girl who hasn't it in her heart to let anyone
dangle long, what is going on in there!

Truly, there was reason enough for more than one of the persons who
have been mentioned in these pages to be excited, for on this Wednesday
before Maundy Thursday Hans Unwirrsch and Moses Freudenstein were
taking their final examination and, if they should pass, would thus
conclude their school life.

That was why Uncle Grünebaum had taken an unusual holiday and stood
at the corner in festive attire, that was why he held his position
in the market-day crowd with an obstinacy that deserved recognition,
that was why he plucked so convulsively at the coat buttons of
those acquaintances who incautiously inquired into the reason of
his unusually elaborate get-up. It was most unwillingly that Master
Grünebaum let go of any of the buttons that he took hold of that day.
His soul was full of the important event. It might be regarded from
almost too many points of view! If what was going on over there in the
school-house should turn out as was expected and desired, whom would
the world have to thank for it? None other than the honorable Master
Grünebaum! When the confused neighbor or acquaintance had finally torn
himself out of Master Grünebaum's grasp, he was far from being clear