O you, who have chosen a gun to bear,You care not for lodging or bed, lad,You feed like a prince on the finest fare,Of girls and of lice you’ve enough and to spare,But when will you ever be paid, lad?
O you, who have chosen a gun to bear,You care not for lodging or bed, lad,You feed like a prince on the finest fare,Of girls and of lice you’ve enough and to spare,But when will you ever be paid, lad?
O you, who have chosen a gun to bear,You care not for lodging or bed, lad,You feed like a prince on the finest fare,Of girls and of lice you’ve enough and to spare,But when will you ever be paid, lad?
When they came to the camp, the soldiers rushed together around them in the torch-light.General Ogilvy, who was sitting at table, came out of his tent.
“Beloved little father,” said one of the bearers, “Lieutenant Ivan Alexievitch humbly sends you this gift.”
Ogilvy grew pale and bit his lips under his bushy gray mustaches. His face, wrinkled and strained to harshness, was at bottom good-natured and friendly.
“Is he out of his right mind?” he thundered with pretended wrath, though in reality he was as frightened as a boy. “Put down the casket and break off the lid!”
The soldiers pried it open with their blades, and the dark lid rattled to one side.
Ogilvy stared. With that he burst out laughing. He guffawed so that he had to sit down on an earthen bench. And the soldiers laughed too. They laughed down through the whole lane of tents, so that they reeled and tottered and had to support themselves one against another like drunkards. Lina Andersdotter lay there in the casket with a half-eaten apple in her hand and made great eyes. She had now become warm again and was as blooming of cheek as a doll.
“By all the saints,” Ogilvy burst out. “Not ever in the catacombs of St. Anthony has man seen such a miracle. This is a corpse that ought to be sent to the Czar himself.”
“By no means,” answered one of his officers. “I sent him two little fair-haired baggages day before yesterday, but he only cares for thin brunettes.”
“So it is,” answered Ogilvy, and turned himself bending toward Narva. “Salute Ivan Alexievitch and say that, when the casket is returned, there shall lie in the bottom of it a captain’s commission.—Hey, sweetheart!”
He went forward and stroked Lina Andersdotter under the chin.
But at that she sat up, took hold of his hair, and gave him a resounding box on the ear, and after that another.
He did not let it affect him in the least, but continued to laugh.
“That’s the way I like them,” he said, “that’s the way I like them. I will make you queen of the marauders, my chick, and as token thereof I give you here a bracelet with a turquoise in the clasp. A band of our worst rabble stole it just now from the casket of Countess Horn in Narva.”
He shook the chain from his wrist and she caught it eagerly to her.
When later in the evening the cloth was laid in the tent, Lina Andersdotter sat at the table beside Ogilvy. She had now got French clothes of flowered brocade and wore a head-dress with blonde-lace. But what hands! She managed toeat with gloves, but under them swelled the big, broad fingers and the red shone between the buttons.
“Hoho! hoho!” shouted the generals. “Those hands make a man merrier than he would get with a whole flask of Hungary. Help! Loosen our belts! Hold us under the arms! It will be the death of us.”
Meanwhile she helped herself, munched sweetmeats, and sat with her spoon in the air. If anything tasted bad, she made a face. Eat she could. Drink, on the contrary, she would not but only took a swallow in her mouth and then spurted the wine over the generals. But all their curses and worst expressions she picked up while she sat ever alike blooming and gay.
“Help, help!” shrieked the generals, choked with laughter. “Blow out the light so they can slip her away! Hold our foreheads! Help! Will you have a little pull of a tobacco pipe, mademoiselle?”
“Go to the deuce! Can’t I sit in peace!” answered Lina Andersdotter.
There was one thing, though, that Ogilvy skillfully concealed so that the laughers should not turn to him and nudge him in the ribs and pull his coat-tails and say: “Oho, little father, you’ve got into water too deep for your bald head. Blessyou, little father, bless you and your little mishap!”
He pretended always to treat her with slightly indifferent familiarity, but he never sat so near her that his dog could not jump up between them. He never took hold of her so that anyone saw it, and never either when no one saw it, for then he knew that her hand would catch him on the face so that the glove would split and the red shine out in all its strength. It was enough that, notwithstanding, she now and then gave him a slap in the middle of the face, and no one did she snub worse than him. But at all that he only laughed with the others, so that never before had there been in the camp such a clamor and bedlam.
Sometimes he thought of knouting her, but he was ashamed before the others, because everything could be heard through the tent, and he feared that they then would the more easily guess how things stood and how little he got along with the girl. Wait, he thought, we shall be sitting alone sometime under lock and key. Just wait! Till then things may go on as they do.
“Help, help!” shouted the generals. “That’s how she carries her train. We must take hold of it. Lord, lord, no; but just look!”
“Take it up, you,” said she. “Take it up, you. That’s what you are for.”
And so the generals were cuffed and bore her train, both when she came to the table and when she went.
Then it happened one evening when she sat among the drinking old men that an adjutant stepped in, hesitating and embarrassed. He turned to Ogilvy.
“Dare I be frank?”
“Naturally, my lad.”
“And whatever I say will be forgiven?”
“By my honor. Only speak out!”
“The czar is on his way out to the camp.”
“Very good, he is my gracious lord.”
The adjutant pointed at Lina Andersdotter.
“The czar has a fancy for tall brunettes,” said Ogilvy.
“Your Excellency, in these last days he has changed his taste.”
“God! Call the troops to arms—and forward with the three-horse wagon!”
Now the alarm was struck. Drums rolled, trumpets shattered, weapons clattered, and shouts and trampling filled the night. The drinking party was broken up, and Lina Andersdotter was set in a baggage-wagon.
Beside the peasant who was driving, a soldier sprang up with a lighted lantern, and she heard the peasant softly inquire of him the purpose of the flight.
“The czar,” answered the soldier in a monotone and pointed with his thumb over his shoulder at the girl.
At that the peasant shrunk together as at a frost-cold breeze and whipped the small, shaggy horses more and more wildly. He hallooed and beat and urged them into a thundering gallop. The lantern-light fell caressingly on the fir bushes and the burnt homesteads; the wagon banged and tottered among the stones, and creaked in its joints.
Lina Andersdotter lay on her back in the hay and looked at the stars. Whither was she carried? What fate awaited her? She wondered and wondered. On her wrist hung the bracelet as a talisman, a pledge for the accomplishing of Ogilvy’s wonderful prediction. Queen of the Marauders! It sounded so grand, though at first she had so gradually discovered what the word really betokened. She stroked and plucked at the small silver rings. Then she sat up and scanned the stony road in the lantern’s light. Cautiously she moved further and further out. Unnoticed, she climbed slowly over the wagon-sill and lowered her feet to the ground. Would she be crushed and left lying? For a few steps she dragged along. Then she lost her hold, stumbled, and fell lacerated among the bushes.
On thundered the baggage-wagon with its threegalloping horses, and the lantern-light vanished. Then she got up and wiped off the blood from her cheeks while she wandered forth into the trackless woods.
When she met barbarous-looking fugitives and they saw her pretty face, they at once picked berries and mushrooms for her and followed along. She got a whole court of ragamuffins and she treated them so ill that they scarcely dared to touch her dress, but sometimes they stabbed each other. Finally she took service with a skipper’s wife, who was to sail with her husband to Danzig. Scarcely had it begun to grow dark when the ragamuffins came out one after another and took service for nothing. The skipper sat on his cabin in the moonlight, blew his shepherd’s pipe, and congratulated himself on having got such a willing crew. And never had an old woman seen a stronger serving-maid. But hardly had they put to sea when Lina Andersdotter sat herself beside the skipper with her arms crossed, and all the ragamuffins lay on their backs and sang in tune with the pipe.
“Do you think I’ll scour your bunks?” said she.
“Beat her, beat her,” cried the old woman, but the skipper only moved nearer and blew and blew on his pipe. Night and day the vessel rocked on the bright waves with slack sail, and the skipper played for Lina Andersdotter, who danced withher ragamuffins, but down in the cabin sat the old woman crying and lamenting.
When they came to Danzig the skipper stuck the pipe under his arm and slunk off the vessel at night with Lina Andersdotter and her ragamuffins. They guessed now that she thought of going to the Swedish troops in Poland and compelling the king himself to give her his hand.
When she with her followers stepped humming in among the Swedish women of the camp, there was uproar and alarm, because for two days they had sat by their wagons without food. The last provisions had been delivered to the sutlers and divided among the soldiers. Then she stepped forward to the first corporal she happened on and set her hands on her hips.
“Aren’t you ashamed,” said she, “to let my women starve, when in spite of all you can’t get along without them?”
“Yourwomen? Who are you?”
She pointed to her bracelet. “I am Lina Andersdotter, the Queen of the Marauders, and now take five men and follow us!”
He looked toward his captain, the reckless Jacob Elfsberg, he looked at her pretty face and at his men. How the line surrounded her with their muskets, and the women armed themselves with whip-handles and pokers! At night when the light of the camp-fire tinged the heavens, theking, inquisitive, got into his saddle. As the wild throng came back with well-laden wagons and oxen and sheep, the troops cheered louder than ever: “Hurrah for King Charles! Hurrah for Queen Caroline!”
The women thronged about the king’s horse so that the lackeys had to hold them back, and Lina Andersdotter went to him to shake hands with him. But he thereupon rose in his stirrups and shouted over the women’s heads to the corporal and the five soldiers: “That’s well maraudered, boys!”
From that moment she would never hear the king named, and whenever she met a man, she flung her sharpest abuse right in his face, whether he was plain private or general. When Malcomb Bjorkman, the young guardsman—who, however, was already famous for his exploits and wounds—held out his hand to her, she scornfully laid in it her ragged, empty purse; and she was never angrier than when she heard General Meyerfelt whistling as he rode before his dragoons, or recognized Colonel Grothusen’s yellow-brown cheeks and raven-black wig. But if a wounded wretch lay beside the road, she offered him the last drops from her tin flask and lifted him into her wagon. Frost and scratches soon calloused her cheeks. High on the baggage-wagon she sat with the butt of a whip and commanded all the wild camp-followers, loose women, lawful wives, and thievish fellows that streamed to them from east and West. When at night the flare of a fire arose toward heaven, the soldiers knew that Queen Caroline was out on a plundering raid.
Days and years went by. Then, after the jolly winter-quarters in Saxony, when the troops were marching toward the Ukraine, the king commanded that all women should leave the army.
“Teach him to mind his own affairs!” muttered Lina Andersdotter, and she very tranquilly drove on.
But when the army came to the Beresina, there was murmuring and lamenting among the women. They gathered around Lina Andersdotter’s cart and wrung their hands and lifted their babies on high.
“See what you have to answer for! The troops have already crossed the river and broken all the bridges behind them. They have left us as prey to the Cossacks.”
She sat with her whip on her knee with her high boots, but on her wrist gleamed the silver chain with its turquoise. All the more violently did the terrified women sob and moan around her, and from the closed baggage-wagons, which were like boxes, crept out painted and powdered Saxon hussies. Some of them, none the less, had satingowns and gold necklaces. From all sides came women she had never seen before.
“Dirty wenches!” muttered she. “Now at last I have a chance to see the smuggled goods that the captains and lieutenants brought along in their wagons. What have you to do among my poor baggage-crones? But now we all come to know what a man amounts to when his haversack is getting light.”
Then they caught hold of her clothes and called upon her as if she alone could seal their fate.
“Is there no one,” she asked, “who knows the psalm: ‘When I am borne through the Vale of Death’? Sing it, sing it!”
Some of the women struck up the psalm with choked and nearly whispering voices, but the others rushed down to the river, hunted out boats and wreckage from the bridges, and rowed themselves across. Each and every one who had a husband or a beloved in the army had hoped even at the last she would be taken along and hidden; but all the worst women of the rabble, who belonged neither to this man nor to that, stood with their rags or their tasteless, ridiculous gowns in a ring around Lina Andersdotter. Meanwhile swarms of Cossacks, who had crossed the river to snap up any straggling marauders, were sneaking up through the bushes on their hands and knees.
Then her heart failed her and she stepped down from the wagon.
“Poor children!” she said, and patted the hussies on the cheek. “Poor children, I will not desert you. But now,—devil take me!—do you pray to God that he will make your blood-red sins white, for I have nothing else to offer you than to shame the men and die a hero’s death.”
She opened the wagon-chest and hunted out from among her plunder some pikes and Polish sabres, which she put into the hands of the softly-singing women. Thereupon she herself grasped a musket without powder or shot and set herself among the others around the cart to wait. So they stood in the sunset light on the highest part of the shore.
Then the women on the river saw the Cossacks rush forward to the cart and cut down one after another of them with the idea that they were men in disguise. They wanted to turn their boats, and soldiers sprang down from their ranks to the water and opened fire.
“Hurrah for King Charles,” they cried with a thousand intermingled voices; “and hurrah—No, it’s too late. Look, look! There is Queen Caroline who in the midst of the harlots is dying a virgin with a musket in her hand!”
FAR out in the wastes of Småland and Finnved wondrous prodigies appeared in the air and after that work lost all worth and the morrow all hope. People either went hungry or ate and drank with riot and revel amid half-stifled curses. At every farm sat a mother or a widow in mourning. During the day’s occupation she talked of the fallen or the captives, and at night she started from her sleep and thought she was still hearing the thunder of the hideous wagons on which teamsters in black oil-cloth cloaks carried away those who had died of the plague.
In the church of Riddarsholm the body of the Princess Hedwig Sofia had lain unburied for seven years from lack of money, and now a new coffin had been laid out for the old Queen Dowager Hedwig Eleonora, Charles’s mother. Several sleepy ladies-in-waiting were keeping the death-watch, and wax-lights burned mistily around the dead, who lay wrapped in a simple covering of linen.
The youngest lady-in-waiting arose yawning, went to the window, and drew back the black broad-cloth to see if dawn had not appeared.
Limping steps were heard from the ante-room, and a little man of a gnarled and rugged figure, who in every way tried to subdue the thump of his wooden leg, advanced to the coffin and with signs of deep reverence lifted aside the drapery. His fair, almost white hair lay close along his head and extended down his neck as far as his collar. From a flask he poured embalming liquid into a funnel, which was set in the royal corpse between the kirtle and the bodice. But the liquid was absorbed very slowly, and, waiting, he set down the flask on the funeral carpet and went to the lady at the window.
“Is it not seven o’clock yet, Blomberg?” she whispered.
“It has just struck six. It’s an awful weather outside, and I feel in the stump of my leg that we’re going to have a snow-storm. But then it’s a long while since one could foretell anything good in Sweden. Trust me, not this time either will there be enough money for a decent funeral. It was only the beginning when the sainted Ekerot prophesied misery and conflagration. And perhaps the fire didn’t go on over the island in front of the castle! Over the plain of Upsala it threw its light from cathedral and citadel. In Vasterås and Linköping the tempest sweeps the ashes around the blackened wastes—and now there’s burning in all quarters of the kingdom. Forgivemy freedom, gracious mistress, but to tell the truth is in the long run less dangerous than to lie. That’s my old maxim that saved my life once down there by the Dnieper River.”
“Saved your life? You were then a surgeon in your regiment. You must sit down by me here and tell the story. The time is so long.”
Blomberg spoke resignedly and a trifle like a priest, from time to time lifting his dexter and middle fingers with the other fingers closed.
Both cast a glance at the corpse, which slept in its coffin with gracefully disposed locks, and wax and rouge in the deepest of the wrinkles. Thereupon they sat themselves on a bench in the window nook outside the hanging broad-cloth, and Blomberg began whispering his narrative.
I was lying unconscious in the marshy wilderness at Poltava. I had stumped along on my wooden leg and got a blow from a horse’s hoof, and when I came to, it was night. I felt a cold, strange hand fumble under my coat and pull at the buttons. An abomination before the Lord are the devices of the wicked, I thought; but gentle words are pure. Without becoming frightened, I seized the corpse-plunderer very silently by the breast, and by his stammered words of terror I perceived that he was one of the Zaporogeans who had made an alliance with theSwedes and followed the army. As surgeon I had tended many of these men, as well as captured Poles and Muscovites, and could make myself tolerably understood in their various languages.
“Many devices are in the heart of man,” said I meekly; “but the counsel of the Lord, that shall abide. No evil can befall the righteous, but the ungodly shall be filled with misfortunes.”
“Forgive me, pious sir,” whispered the Zaporogean. “The Swedish czar has left us poor Zaporogeans to our fate, and the Muscovite czar, whom we faithlessly deserted, is coming to maim and slay us. I only wanted to get me a Swedish coat so that in a moment of need I could give myself out as one of you. Do not be angry, godly sir!”
To see if he had any knife, I searched out flint and steel while he was speaking and made a fire with dry thistles and twigs which lay at my feet. I noted then that I had before me a little frightened old man with a sly face and two empty hands. He raised himself as vehemently as a hungry animal that has found its prey and bent in the light over a Swedish ensign who lay dead in the grass. Thinking that a dead man might willingly grant a helpless ally his coat, I did nothing to hinder the Zaporogean; but as he drew the coat from the fallen one, a letter slippedfrom the pocket. I saw by the address that Falkenburg was the name of the boy who had bled to death. He lay now as fairly and peacefully stretched out as if he had slept in the meadow by the house where he was born. The letter was from his sister, and I had only time to spell out the words which from that hour became my favorite maxim: To tell the truth is in the long run less dangerous than to lie. At that moment the Zaporogean put out my light.
“With your wise consent, sir,” he whispered, “do not draw the corpse-plunderers hither.”
I paid little attention to his talk, but repeated time after time: “To tell the truth is in the long run less dangerous than to lie. That is a big saying my old fellow, and you shall see that I get along further with it than you do with your disguise.”
“We may try it,” answered the Zaporogean, “but we must promise this, that the one of us who survives the other shall offer a prayer for the other’s soul.”
“That is agreed,” I said, and gave him my hand, for it seemed as if through misfortune I had found in this shaggy-bearded barbarian a friend and a brother.
He helped me up and at daybreak we fell into the long line of stragglers and wounded that silently tottered into Poltava to give themselvesup as prisoners. They willingly tried to conceal the Zaporogean among the rest. His big boots with their flaps reached up to his hips and his coat-tails hung down to his spurs. As soon as a Cossack looked at him, he turned to one of us and cried with raised voice the only Swedish words he had come to learn in the campaign: “I Shwede, Devil-damn!”
My Zaporogean and I with eight of my comrades were assigned quarters in the upper story of a big stone house. As we two had come up there first, we picked out for ourselves a little separate cubby-hole with a window on an alley. There was nothing else there than a little straw to lie on, but I had in my coat a tin flute, which I had from a fallen Kalmuck at Starodub, and on which I had taught myself to play a few pretty psalms. With that I shortened the time, and soon we noticed that, as often as I played, a young woman came to the window on the other side of the alley. Possibly for that reason I played more than I should have otherwise cared to and I know not rightly whether she was fairer and more seemly than all other women, or whether long sojourn among men had made my eye less accustomed, but I had great joy in beholding her. However, I never looked at her when she turned her face toward our window, because I have always been bashful before women-folk and havenever rightly understood how to conduct myself in that which pertains to them. Never, too, have I sought fellowship with men who go with their heads full of wenches and do nothing but hanker after gallant intrigues. “Let everyone keep his vessel in holiness,” Paul saith, “and not in the lust of desire as do the heathen, which know not God; also let no one in this matter dishonor and wrong his brother, because the Lord is a powerful avenger in all such things.”
I recognized, however, that a man should at all times bear himself courteously and fittingly, and as one arm of my coat was in tatters, I always turned that side inward when I played.
She usually sat with arms crossed above the window-sill, and her hands were round and white, though large. She had a scarlet-colored bodice with silver buttons and many chains. An old witch who often stood beneath her window with a wheel-barrow and sold bread covered with jam called her Feodosova.
When it grew dusk, she lighted a lamp, and since neither she nor we had any shutters, we could follow her with our glance when she blew on the fire, but I found it more proper that we should turn away and I therefore set myself with my Zaporogean on the straw in the corner.
Besides the prayer-book, I had a few torn-out leaves of Müller’s “Sermons,” and I read andtranslated many passages for my Zaporogean. But when I noticed that he did not listen, I gave it over for more worldly objects and asked him of our neighbor on the other side of the alley. He said that she was not unmarried, because maidens in that country always wore a long plait tied with ribbons and a little red tuft of silk. More likely she was a widow because her hair hung loose as a token of sorrow.
When it became wholly dark and we lay down on the straw, I discovered that the Zaporogean had stolen my silver snuff-spoon, but after I had taken it back and reproached him for his fault, we slept beside each other as friends.
I was almost bashful, when it was morning again, at feeling myself happier than for a long time, but as soon as I had held prayers with the Zaporogean and had washed and arranged myself sufficiently, I went to the window and played one of my most beautiful psalms.
Feodosova was already sitting in the sunlight. To show her how different the Swedes were from her fellow-countrymen I instructed my Zaporogean to clean our room, and after a couple of hours the white-washed walls were shining white and free from cobwebs. All this helped me to drive away my thoughts, but as soon as I set myself again at rest, my torments of conscience awakened, that I could be happy in such misery.In the hall outside, my comrades sat on floor and benches, sighing heavily and whispering about their dear ones at home. In due turn two of us every day were allowed to go out into the open air to the ramparts, but when I laid myself on my straw in the evening, I was ashamed to pray God that the lot next morning should fall upon me. I knew very well within myself that, if I longed for an hour’s freedom, it was only to invent an errand to the house opposite. And yet I felt that, if the lot really fell upon me without my prayer, I should still never venture to go up there.
When I came to the window in the morning, Feodosova lay sleeping in her clothes on the floor with a cushion under her neck. It was still early and cool, and I did not have the heart to set the tin flute to my mouth. But as I stood there and waited, she may have apprehended in her sleep that I was gazing at her, for she looked up and laughed and stretched her arms out, and all that so suddenly that I did not manage to draw back unnoticed. My brow became hot, I laid aside my flute, and behaved myself in every way so clumsily and unskilfully that I never was so displeased with myself. I pulled and straightened my belt, took my flute again from the window, inspected it, and pretended I was blowing dust out of it. When finally the Russian subaltern who hadcharge over us unfortunates informed my Zaporogean that he was one of the two who were to go out into the city that day, I drew the Zaporogean aside into a corner and enjoined him with many words to pick a bunch of yellow stellaria such as I had seen around the burned houses by the ramparts. At a suitable opportunity we should then give them to Feodosova I said. She appeared to be a good and worthy woman, who perchance in return might give us poor fellows some fruit or nuts, I said. The miserable bite of bread that the czar allowed us daily did not even quiet our worst hunger, I said.
He was afraid to show himself out in the sunlight, but neither did he dare to arouse mistrust by staying in, and therefore he obeyed and went.
Scarcely was he out of the door, though, when I began to regret that I had not held him back, because now in solitude my embarrassment grew much greater. I sat down on the bed in the corner, where I was invisible, and stayed there obstinately.
Still the time was long, for thoughts were many. After a while I heard the Zaporogean’s voice. Without reflecting, I went to the window and saw him standing by Feodosova with a great, splendid bouquet of stellaria, which reminded one of irises. First she didn’t want to take them but answered that they were impure, since they hadbeen given by a heathen. He pretended that he understood nothing and that he only knew a few words of her speech but with winkings and gestures and nods he made it intelligible that I had sent the flowers, and then at last she took them.
Beside myself with bashfulness, I went back into the corner, and when the Zaporogean returned, I seized him behind the shoulders, shook him, and stood him against the wall.
But scarcely had I let go my grasp when he with his thoughtless vivacity stood at the window again, made signs with his hands and threw kisses on all five of his fingers. Then I came forward, pushed him aside, and bowed. Feodosova sat picking the flowers apart, pulling off the leaves and letting them fall one by one to the ground. Vehemence helped me so that I took courage and began to speak, while I was still considering how it would be most polite to begin a conversation.
“The lady will not take amiss my comrade’s pranks and unseemly gestures,” I stammered.
She plucked still more eagerly at the flowers and answered after a time, “My husband, when he was alive, often used to say that from heel to head such well-made soldiers as the Swedes were not to be found. He had seen Swedish prisoners undressed and whipped by women and had seen that the women at the last were so moved because of their beauty, that they stuck the rodsunder their arms and sobbed themselves, instead of those they tormented. Therefore have I become very curious these days.... And the love songs which you play sound so wonderful!”
Her speech pleased me not altogether, and I found it little seemly to answer in the same spirit by praising her figure and white arms. Instead I took my flute and played my favorite psalm: “E’en from the bottom of my heart I call Thee in my need.”
After that we conversed of many things, and though my store of words was small, we soon understood each other so well that never did any day seem to me shorter.
At mid-day, after she had clattered about with jugs and plates and swung a palm-leaf fan over the embers in the fire-place, she lifted down from the ceiling a landing-net with which formerly her husband had caught small fish in the river. Into the net she put a pan with steaming cabbage and a wooden flask with kvass, and the net was so long that she could hand us the meal across the street. When I drank to her, she nodded and smiled and said that she did not regard it as wrong to feel pity for captured heathens. Toward evening she moved her spinning-wheel to the window, and we kept on conversing when it was dusk. I no longer felt it as a sin to be happy in the midst of the sorrow that surrounded us, because my intent was innocent and pure. Just as I had seen the stellaria shining over heaps of ashes among the burned and desolate houses by the ramparts as a song of praise to God’s goodness, so seemed to me now the joy of my heart.
When it became night and I had held prayer with my Zaporogean and yet once more reproached him that he had stolen my snuff-spoon, the garrulous man began to talk to me in an undertone and say: “I see clearly, little father, that you are in love with Feodosova, and in truth she is a good and pure woman whom you may take to wife. That you never would enter upon any love-dealing of another sort I have understood from the first.”
“Such stuff!” answered I, “such stuff!”
“Truth is in the long run less dangerous than lying, you used to say.”
When he struck me with my own maxim-staff, I became confounded, and he proceeded.
“The czar has promised good employment and wages to everyone of you Swedes who will become his subject and be converted to the true faith.”
“You are out of your wits. But if I could get off and take her home with me on horseback, I would do it.”
Next morning, when I had played my psalm, I learned that today it was my turn to go out under the open heavens.
I became warm and restless. I combed and fixed myself up even more carefully than at other times, and changed to the Zaporogean’s ensign coat so as not to wear my torn one. Meanwhile I deliberated with myself. Should I go up to her? What should I say then? Perhaps, though, that would be the only time in my life when I could get to speak with her, and how should I not repent thereafter even to my gray old age, if out of awkwardness I had missed that one chance! My heart beat more violently than at any affair with the enemy, when I stood with my bandages among the bullets and the fallen. I stuck the flute into my pocket and went out.
When I came down on the street she sat at the window without seeing me. I would not go to her without first asking leave, and I did not know rightly how I should conduct myself. Pondering, I took a couple of steps forward.
Then she heard me and looked out.
I lifted my hand to my hat, but with a long ringing burst of laughter she sprang up and cried, “Haha! Look, look, he has a wooden leg!”
I stood with my hand raised, and stared and stared, and I had neither thought nor feeling. It was as if my heart had swelled out and filled all my breast, so that it was near to bursting. I believe I stammered something. I only remember that I did not know whither I should turn, that Iheard her still laughing, that everything in the world was indifferent to me, that freedom would have frightened me as much as my captivity and my wretchedness, that of a sudden I had become a broken man.
I remember vaguely a long and steep lane without stone pavement, where I was accosted by other Swedish prisoners. Perhaps, even, I answered them, asked after their health, and took some puffs out of the tobacco pipes they lent me.
I believe I disturbed myself over the fact that it was so long till night, so that I had to return the same way and pass her window in brightest daylight. By every means I prolonged the time, speaking now to one man, now to another, but shortly the Russian dragoons came and ordered me to turn about to my place.
As I went up the lane, I persuaded myself that I should not betray myself, but should salute in a quite friendly manner before the window. Was it her fault that so many of the Swedish soldiers of whom she had had such fine dreams were now pitiful cripples on wooden legs?
“Hurry up there!” thundered the dragoons, and I hastened my steps so that the thumping of my wooden leg echoed between the walls of the houses.
“Dear Heavenly Father,” I muttered, “faithfully have I served my earthly master. Is thisthe reward Thou givest me, that Thou makest of me in my youth a defenseless captive, at whom women laugh? Yes, this is Thy recompense, and Thou wilt abase me into yet deeper humiliation, that thereby I may at length become worthy of the crown of blessedness.”
When I came under the window and carried my hand to my hat, I saw that Feodosova was away. That gave me no longer any relief. I stumbled up to my prison and at every step heard the thumping of my wooden leg.
“I have talked with Feodosova,” whispered the Zaporogean.
I gave him no reply. My happiness, my flower, that had grown up over the heaps of ashes, lay consumed; and if it had again shone out, I myself, in alarm, would have trampled it to death with my wooden leg. What signified to me the Zaporogean’s whisperings?
“Ah!” he went on, “when you were gone, I reproached Feodosova and said to her that you were fonder of her than she realized, and that, if you were not a stranger and a heathen, you would ask her to be your wife.”
In silence I clenched my hands and bit my lips together to lock up my vexation and embarrassment, and I thanked God that he abased me every moment more deeply in shame and ridicule before men.
I opened the door to the outer hall and began to talk to the other prisoners:
“As wild asses in the desert we go painfully to seek our food. On a field that we do not own we must go as husbandmen, and harvest in the vineyard of the ungodly. We lie naked the whole night from lack of garments, and are without covering against the cold. We are overwhelmed by the deluge from the mountains, and from lack of shelter we embrace the cliffs. But we beg Thee not for mitigation Almighty God. We pray only: Lead us, be nigh unto us! Behold, Thou hast turned away Thy countenance from our people and stuck thorns in our shoes, that we may become Thy servants and Thy children. In the mould of the battle-field our brothers sleep, and a fairer song of victory than that of the conquerors by the sword Thou dost offer to Thy chosen ones.”
“Yea, Lord lead us, be nigh unto us!” echoed all the prisoners murmuringly.
Then out of the darkest corner rose a lonely, trembling voice, which cried: “Oh, that I were as in former months, as in the days when God protected me, when His lamp shone upon my head, when with His light I went into the darkness! As I was in my autumn days, when God’s friendship was over my tent, while yet the Almighty was with me, and my children were about me! Thus my heart cries out with Job,but I hear it no longer and I stammer forth no longer: Take away my trials! With the ear I have heard tell of Thee, O God, but now hath mine eye beheld Thee.”
“Quiet, quiet!” whispered the Zaporogean, taking hold of me, and his hands were cold and trembling. “It can be no one else than the czar who is coming below in the lane.”
The lane had become filled with people, with beggars and boys and old women and soldiers. In the middle of the throng the czar, tall and lean, walked very calmly, without a guard. A swarm of hopping and shrieking dwarfs were his only retinue. Now and then, turning, he embraced and kissed the smallest dwarf on the forehead in a fatherly way. Here and there he stood still before a house and was offered a glass of brandy, which he jestingly emptied at a single gulp. It could be nobody but the czar, because one saw directly that he alone ruled over both people and city. He came so close under my window that I could have touched his green cloth cap and the half-torn brass buttons on his brown coat. On the skirt he had a great silver button with an artificial stone and on his legs rough woolen stockings. His brown eyes gleamed and flashed, and the small black mustaches stood straight up from his shining lips.
When he caught sight of Feodosova, he becameas if smitten with madness. When she came down on the street and knelt with a cup, he pinched her ear, then took her under the chin and lifted up her head so that he could look her in the eyes.
“Tell me, child,” he inquired, “where is there a comfortable room where I can eat? May there be one at your house?”
The czar had seldom with him on his excursions any master of ceremonies or other courtier. He took along neither bed nor bed-clothes nor cooking utensils; no, not even a cooking or eating vessel; but everything had to be provided in a turn of the hand wherever it occurred to him to take lodging. It was for this reason that there was now running and clatter at all the gates and stairs. From this direction came a man with a pan, from that another with an earthen platter, from yonder a third with a ladle and drinking utensils. Up in Feodosova’s room the floor was strewn deeply with straw. The czar helped with the work like a common servant, and the chief direction was carried on by a hunchbacked dwarf, who was called the Patriarch. The dwarf every once in a while put his thumb to his nose and blew it in the air straight in front of the czar’s face, or invented rascal tricks of which I cannot relate before a lady of quality.
Once when the czar turned with crossed arms to the window, he noticed me and the Zaporogean, and nodded like a comrade. The Zaporogean threw himself prostrate on the floor and stammered his “I Schwede. Devil-damn!” But I pushed him aside with my foot and told him once for all to be silent and get up, because no Swede conducted himself in that fashion. To cover him as much as possible, I stepped in front of him and took my position there.
“Dat is nit übel,” said the czar, but at once fell back into his mother speech and asked who I was.
“Blomberg, surgeon with the Uppland regiment,” I answered.
The czar scanned me with a narrowing gaze that was so penetrating I have never seen a more all-discerning look.
“Your regiment exists no longer,” he said, “and here you see Rehnskiöld’s sword.” He lifted the sword with its scabbard from his belt and threw it on the table so that the plates hopped. “But for certain you are a rogue, for you wear a captain’s or ensign’s uniform.”
I answered, “‘That is a hard saying,’ saith John the Evangelist. The coat I borrowed, after my own fell in rags, and if that be ill done, I will yet hope for grace, because this is my maxim: To tell the truth is in the long run less dangerous than to lie.”
“Good. If that is your motto, you shall takeyour servant with you and come over here so that we may prove it.”
The Zaporogean trembled and tottered as he followed behind me, but as soon as we entered, the czar pointed me to a chair among the others at the table as if I had been his equal and said: “Sit, Wooden-Leg!”
He had Feodosova on his knee, without the least consideration of what could be said about it, and round them stamped and whistled the dwarfs and a crowd of Boyars who now began to collect. A dwarf who was called Judas, because he carried a likeness of that arch-villain on the chain around his neck seized a handful of shrimps from the nearest plate and threw them to the ceiling, so that they fell in a rain over dishes and people. When in that way he had made the others turn toward him, he pointed at the czar with many grimaces and called cold-bloodedly to him: “You amuse yourself, you Peter Alexievitch. Even outside of the city I have heard tell of the pretty Feodosova of Poltava, I have; but you always scrape together the best things for yourself, you little father.”
“That you do,” chimed in the other dwarfs in a ring around the czar. “You are an arch-thief, you Peter Alexievitch.”
Sometimes the czar laughed or answered, sometimes he did not hear them, but sat seriousand meditative, and his eyes moved meanwhile like two green-glinting insects in the sunlight.
I called to mind how I had once seen the most blessed Charles the Eleventh converse with Rudbeck, and how it then came over me that Rudbeck, for all his bowings, amounted to far more than the king. Here it was the other way about. Although the czar himself went around and did the waiting and let himself be treated worse than a knave, I saw only him—and Feodosova. I read his thoughts in the smallest things. I recognized him in the forcibly curtailed caftans and shaven chins at the city gate.
There was a buzzing in my head, and I knelt humbly on the straw and stammered: “Imperial Majesty! To tell the truth is in the long run less dangerous than to lie, and the Lord said to Moses: ‘Thou shalt not hold with the great ones in that which is evil.’ Therefore I beseech that I may forego further eating. For behold I am soon done with the game, and my gracious lord—who is both like and unlike Your Imperial Majesty—has in the last year turned me to drinking filtered marsh water.”
A twitching and trembling began in the czar’s right cheek near the eye. “Yes, by Saint Andreas!” said he. “I am unlike my brother Charles, for he hates women like a woman, and wine like a woman, and offers up his people’s riches as a woman her husband’s, and abuses me like a woman; but I respect him like a man. His health, Wooden Leg! Drink, drink!”
The czar sprang forward, seized me by the hair, and held the goblet to my mouth, so that the Astrakan ale foamed over my chin and collar. As we drank the prescribed health, two soldiers entered in brownish-yellow uniforms with blue collars and discharged their pistols, so that the hot room, which was already filled with tobacco clouds and onion smell, was now also enveloped in powder smoke.
The czar sat down again at the table. Even in all that noise he wanted to sit and think, but he never allowed anyone else to shirk the duty of drinking and become serious like himself. He drew Feodosova afresh to his knee. Poor, poor Feodosova! She sat there, a bit sunk together, with arms hanging and mouth impotently half-open, as if she awaited cuff and blow amid the caresses. Why had she not courage to pull the sword to her from the table, press her wrist against the edge and save her honor, before it was too late? Over and over she might have laughed at my wooden leg and my disgrace, if with my life I could have preserved her honor. Nor had I ever before been so near her and seen so clearly to what a wondrous work she had been formed in the Heavenly Creator’s hands. Poor,poor Feodosova, if you had but felt in your heart with what a pure intent a friend regarded you in your humiliation and how he prayed for your well-being!
Hour after hour the banquet continued. Those of the Boyars and dwarfs who were most completely overcome already lay relaxed in the straw and vomited or made water, but the czar himself always rose up and leaned out through the window. “Drink, Wooden Leg, drink!” he commanded, and hunted me around the room with the glass, making the Boyars hold me till I had emptied every drop. The twitching in his face became ever more uncanny, and when we were finally together at the table again, he moved three brimful earthen bowls in front of me and said: “Now, Wooden Leg, you shall propose a health to be drunk all round and teach us to understand its meaning with your maxim.”
I raised myself again as well as I could.
“Your health, czar!” I shouted, “for you are assuredly born to command.”
“Why,” he asked, “should the soldiers present arms and salute me if any other was worthier to command? Where is there anything more pitiful than an incompetent ruler? The day I find my own son unworthy to inherit my great, beloved realm, that day shall he die. Your first truth, Wooden Leg, requires no bowl.”
The pistols cracked, and all drank but the czar.
Then I gathered the fragments of my understanding as a miser his coins, for I believed that, if I could catch the czar in a gracious and mild humour, I might perhaps save my Feodosova.
“Well, then, Imperial Majesty,” I continued, therefore, lifting one of the bowls on high “this is Astrakan ale, brewed of mead and brandy with pepper and tobacco. It burns much before it delights, and when it delights it puts one to sleep.”
With that I threw the bowl to the ground so that it broke in a thousand pieces. Then I lifted the next bowl.
“This is Hungarian wine. ‘Drink no more only water,’ writes the Apostle Paul to Timothy, ‘but use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake and because thou art so often sick.’ So speaks a holy one to weakly men and stay-at-homes. But go out on the battle-field amid frost and wailing and tell me: To how many of the groaning would this bowl of sweetish wine give relief from pain and a softer death?”
Therewith I threw that bowl also to the ground so that it broke. Then I lifted the third bowl.
“This is brandy. It is despised by the fortunate and the rich, because they thirst not after refreshment as the desert for coolness, but would only gibe at the pleasure it gives. But brandy assumes power in the very moment it swims overthe tongue, like a despot in the moment he steps across a threshold, and the bleeding and dying draw comfort from a few drops.”
“Right, right!” acclaimed the czar, and took the bowl and drank it, at the same time that he handed me two gold-pieces, while the pistols cracked. “You shall have a pass and a horse to go your way, and wherever you come, you shall tell about Poltava.”
Then I knelt yet again in the straw and stammered: “Imperial Majesty—in my pettiness and weakness—beside you sits a—a pure and good woman.”
“Haha!” screamed the dwarfs and Boyars and tottered to their feet. “Haha! haha!”
The czar got up and carried Feodosova toward me.
“I understand. He who limps on a wooden leg may fall in love, too. Good. I present her to you as she goes and stands, and you shall have a good situation with me. I have promised every Swede who enters into my service and is baptized in our faith that he shall become one of our people.”
Feodosova stood like a sleep-walker and stretched her hands toward me. What did it matter that she had laughed at me. I should soon have forgotten that and she would soon not have seen my wooden leg, for I should have cared forher and worked for her and prayed with her and made her home bright and tranquil. I should have lifted her up to my bosom as a child and asked her if an honest and faithful heart could not make another heart throb. Mayhap she already bore the answer on her tongue, for slowly she beamed up and became flushed, and her whole face became transfigured. Far away in a corner house on Priest Street in Stockholm a lonely old woman sat with her sermon-book and listened and wondered whether a letter would not be left for her through the door, whether no disabled man would step in with a greeting from the remote wilderness, whether I never should come or whether I lay already dead and buried. I had prayed for her every night. I had thought of her in the tumult in the midst of stretchers and wailing wounded. But at that moment I thought of her no longer; I saw and heard nothing else but Feodosova. And yet I was angry and strove against something heavy which weighed upon my heart and which I did not understand, but was only slowly and gradually able to make out.
I bent to Feodosova to kiss her hand, but she whispered, “The czar’s hand, the czar’s hand.”
Then I stretched myself toward the czar and kissed his hand.
“My faith,” I whispered equally softly, “and my royal lord I may not desert.”
The czar’s cheek still twitched, and the dwarfs in their terror pulled forth the Zaporogean from his nook to make the czar laugh at his ridiculous figure. But then the czar’s arms began to move convulsively. His face grew gray and he trembled in one of his dreaded fits. He went toward the Zaporogean and struck him in the face with clenched fist so that the blood streamed from his nose and mouth, and with such a hoarse and altered voice that it could no longer be recognized he hissed: “I have seen through you, liar, from the moment you came into the room. You are a Zaporogean, a renegade, who have hidden yourself in Swedish clothes.—To the wheel with him, to the wheel!”
All, even the drunken men, began to tremble and feel toward the doors, and in his terror one of the Boyars whispered: “Bring forward the woman! Shove her forward! As soon as he gets to see pretty faces and woman’s limbs, he grows quiet.”
They seized her, her bodice was cut over the bosom, and, softly wailing, she was supported forward step by step to the czar.
It grew black around me, and I staggered backward out of the room. I remained standing on the street under the stars and I heard the clamor grow muffled and the dwarfs began to sing.
Then I clenched my hands and remembered apromise on the field of battle to pray for a poor sinner’s soul. But the more fervently I spoke with my God, the further went my thoughts, and my invocation became a prayer for a yet greater sinner who with his last faithful followers wandered about on the desolate steppes.
The surgeon ceased with an anxious glance toward the coffin, and the lady-in-waiting followed him forward to the catafalque.
“Amen!” said she, and the two again spread the covering over the wax-pale Queen Dowager, Charles’ mother.
RENAUD’S eyes took the color of the day: dim, lustreless and dark at twilight; gleaming molten gold when the sunshine flitted across his hair and outstretched neck, so that they sparkled with widening and contracting flames as they looked out over the fields toward the blue haze against the slanting red of the dawn, or toward the rustling of hares in the thicket, of frightened birds and swaying branches.
Indolent and proud was his glance, the reflection of gilded steel on a sheathed dagger, of the luck-piece on the brown bosom of a gipsy girl; indolent and proud, too, the rhythmic motion of his naked feet, and the line of his arms as he laid himself down at full-length in the passion of the moment with his hands under his head and heard the horns jubilating in the distance and the earth quivering with the thud of the huntsmen.
But when it grew quiet—a quiet wonderfully intense, as if spread out in a domed vault of restless waiting, with two black huddled specks that rose in circles at the top—then Renaud raised his glance, as he leaned on his elbow, his eyes wideand lips half-parted. And when the specks came together and fell,—one subsiding in broken curves, the other dropping always above it in a line straight as a spear,—and the blue welkin rang again with voices, and the riders galloped forward to see the falcon and the heron finish their fight, the boy ran up close. He screamed with delight when the falcon, still trembling with ardor, was lifted on his master’s glove, its wings drooped and its eyes blinded under the hood.
He often followed along to Sir Enguerrand’s stable yard and saw the falconers bathe the yellow feet of the hunting birds in metal bowls, drying them carefully as if they were princes’ children each with its crested cloth, and caressing their necks till they shut their naked eyelids and dreamed against the shoulders of the attendants.
Renaud would have given ten years of his life or one of his ten fingers to be allowed to hold them like that, the proud, silent creatures; but they might not be touched by everybody, they were noble. They had each its glove ornamented according to its rank, each its hood with embroidered pattern, each its special food, and people talked to them in a strange, archaic speech with elaborate etiquette. Renaud almost blushed when he met their great eyes filled with languid repose, especially before Sir Enguerrand’s white Icelandfalcon, which had a crimson hood, a gold and crimson glove, a jess with silver bells on its foot, and a glance full of proud disdain and the yellow sunlight of heroic story.
The young birds, which still quivered with rage over their captivity and dreamed under the night of their hoods of hunting free and of lifting their necks to scream, birds that were being tamed by hunger and darkness,—them he might sometimes lift out of their cages. He might show them the light and see them first totter with blinded eyes and claws clasped about his wrist, then grow more calm, as their pupils contracted, almost gentle indeed when he gave them a bit of warm, bloody meat. But them he cared not for, them he soon wearied of, and he quickly learned to perceive that none had the Iceland falcon’s breast-muscles of steel, its long wide wings and quiescent strength. But it was the most delightful thing possible to see how the young falcons were trained to hunt according to the wise rules of King Modus, when they had reached the time that their memory of freedom wore off and they sat, heavy and blind, dozing on their perches.
The first thing was to accustom them again to fly, but with a cord on the foot, till they had learned at the falconer’s cry to swoop down upon the red cloth dummy fitted with a pair of large heron wings, which he swung in the air on a stringin oddly deliberate circles—that was fine to see!—and to which he had tied the breast of a quail or a piece of chicken. This the falcons afterwards devoured, the rage at their confinement being dulled by thirst of blood. Soon they grew so accustomed to this procedure that they never strained at their cord, no gleam of wildness remained in their eyes; they at once looked about calmly for the decoy and only rose according to rule, ascending in a curve at the proper time to swoop down indolently and playfully in a wide circle; and when the cord was taken off, they hardly seemed to notice.
The time had now come to train them for hunting, each for its particular quarry; the smaller for quail, partridge or sparrows, the larger for hare or heron or kites, the ignoble kites which had the nature of crows along with their powerful talons and beaks and which could never be tamed to eat at a knightly board.
First they were given decoys like their quarry, with a piece of their favorite food inside for them to search out; then disabled birds, which they could strike their claws into at once and tear to pieces in half-roused fury; and so on to prey that was harder to catch, until they learned to enjoy the intoxication of the hunt. Their old wild instincts awoke once more in full strength, but controlled and ennobled, so that they calmlydropped their dying quarry after a short mad drink of blood and ate only from their ornamented dishes, without greediness, as is fitting for the birds of a knight.
Their eyes grew indolent and proud and took on the color of the day, black when their hood was lifted off, brightening to molten gold when they rose in the sunlight, burning with flakes of fire above the shriek of their prey. They bent caressingly toward Renaud’s brown hand, but none of them was like the Iceland falcon with the weary, kinglike disdain in its glance, and he grew disgusted with them all, pressed their beaks harshly shut when they tried to play, and threw them from him carelessly, and mimicked the shriek of the kite so that they trembled with disquietude and left the aviary with men’s curses behind them and the wide brown plain before them.
Sir Enguerrand rode out hunting every day, nearly always wearing his red, gold-embroidered glove, for only the bell-tinkling flight of the Iceland falcon could awaken song within him and cause him to breathe the sharp, volatile morning air with delight as if he drank living wine. One day the falcon had struck a heron, bleeding, into a swamp behind a thicket, where the huntsman found it and cracked its neck; but the falcon itself was gone, either lured after a new quarry or recoiling from the brown water or capriciously letting itself be lifted and carried along by the wind. In vain they searched, in vain they called it by the prettiest names, in vain they made the notes of the horn rebound from every hill. Sir Enguerrand smote the mouth of the head falconer bloody with his red glove and rode straight home across the tussocks of the swamp with his lips shut more sharply and his eyelids sunk over the listless pupils more gloomily than ever. The falcon they did not find.
But Renaud found it, its jess caught in a wild rose bush, awaiting death by starvation with its grip fast on a branch, one wing drooping, the other lifted defiantly, its narrow head stretched threateningly forward with the eyes fixed and beak sharp—a splendid sight it was among the blood-red berries. Renaud’s hand trembled with eagerness as he loosed the jess from the thorns, as the bells tinkled around his fingers and the ring with Sir Enguerrand’s crest, and he cried aloud with joy when the sharp claws cut into his sinewy arm and he felt that it was his, the falcon of broadest breast and longest wings and proudest eyes of burning gold.
It was the more his in that he never would be able to show it to anyone, for he knew that strict laws protected the sport of the nobles. In the woods he would have to build a cage for it, early in the morning he would steal thither before thebird had shaken off its chill, they would go together across the open with searching looks directed at the whitish heavens, they would grow fond of each other as they let the sunlight rise and fall over their heads and the wind carry their silent thoughts along, and the falcon would never miss its red glove or the constraint of its pearl-sewn hood. He tied it again and ran down to the pond, returning shortly with a duck which he had killed with a stone. The falcon took it, and Renaud’s brain grew numb with intoxication, for that was a sign that it did not despise him, that it was willing to be his.
It became his; it bent its head forward, listening, with tranquil wide-open eyes when the frosty branches cracked under his step in the stillness of morning; it hopped lightly down from its cage and stretched out toward his hand, beating its wings as for flight, but it did not fly—that was only a reminder—and therewith they hurried out to the softly glowing expanse of the moor.
Their eyes glanced searchingly toward the dark-red welkin. Black lay the hills and thinning thickets, and the trees slept, their boughs heavy with silent birds. But the heavens grew brighter, flaming with gold and red and the lines of the plain turned to blue, and the owl sped close to the ground, seeking its covert, and the day birds stretched their wings and chirped softly becauseof the cold, and dark their flight cut through the gleaming air. But Renaud and his falcon went quickly on, for these were sparrows and thrushes, no prey fit for them. Down toward the marshes sounded already the drawling cry of the herons and wide-circling beat of their long wings, yonder was the quarry they sought. Then the falcon was cast with breast already expanded and wings prepared to beat, and Renaud saw it gilded by the sun as he stood with blinded eyes and dizzy head while the bird crouched against the deep blue, and heard how the clang of its bells mocked the shout of the herons.
They whirred like wheels in their terror; now they tended to shoot down to the shore and hide their long necks and stupid frightened heads with backward-pointing tufts under the dark wooded banks, now they tried in wavering uncertainty to rise up in a spiral, thrusting in their broad wings to attain higher than the enemy could follow, and they swerved like reeds in the terror of their pale hearts.
But the falcon singled out at the start one of the strongest, one of those that flew immediately aloft, because it loved to prove its strength and to feel sharp, light air under its wings, and it rose as fast and straight as if circling around a sunbeam. Soon it was uppermost; smaller than a sparrow it looked, but something in the poise ofthe wings, in the gathered strength of the body, made one divine the sparkling savagery of its eye, its outspread talons. Of a sudden it fell, heavy as steel, on the defenseless upturned neck of the quarry, and they dropped like a single stone, hardly once eddying aside by a wing’s breadth. Then Renaud ran and swam and waded so as to arrive before the heron, which had been stunned by the stroke, could gather itself together and in the wildness of its desperation make use of its pointed bill. The falcon gave it the death blow sharply and swiftly, turning its great eyes, already tranquil, on its master, for it did not care to soil its feathers with blood, and waiting to have the warm heart given to it.
Afterwards it did not fly any more that day; when Renaud cast it and ran ahead with a shout, it only took a couple of wingstrokes and lighted again on the lad’s shoulder close to his laughing face with proud composure. It seemed to despise all play and Renaud soon made an end, his expression taking on the far-gazing seriousness of the falcon. He grew more fond of it than he had ever been of anything; it seemed to him that it was his own soul, his longing, with its broad wings and its glance confident of victory. But there was suffering in his love, the dismal premonition of a misfortune. Sometimes he was afraid that the bird would fly away from him in afit of indifference; would vanish in a mocking sound of bells, and that would be his death, such an empty existence. Or it seemed to him that the falcon was honor, gleaming with sunlight against the blue, which rested itself on his shoulder for new exploits; and in the midst of his joy he was oppressed with his own insignificance, so that he hardly dared to look at it. There was grief at his heart that the bird would never share his delight, that its glance would never melt warmly into his, and he fled to the realm of dreams.
He laid himself down in the midst of the moor with the red heather under his head, and the clouds glided past like human destiny, heavy and light, gathered within a firm outline or scattered on high, with the winds’ invisible hand ever at their shoulder, while the bushes bent their rustling golden branches and Renaud told stories to the falcon.
King Arthur was come again, once more from out the British sea was handed to him his sword Excalibur, blue as the chill nightly heavens; his twelve knights lifted their heavy heads from the stone table and shook off their sleep, the earth resounded with their tread. Gareth was there, the prince’s son who put on the attire of a scullery boy and turned Lynette’s ringing scorn into love. Renaud was there, too, was of noble birth, his horse danced beneath him, and the falcon whichnow slept with sunken head sat high on his hand and sought his glance with eyes that gleamed with joy and the yellow sunlight of heroic story.
But the clouds glided past like human destiny, were driven dark, one over another into a gigantic vault, from the apertures of which fell sunbeams pale and sharp as spears, and the falcon dreamed dismal dreams of impotent wrath and waked with a shriek.
Before long some roving lads chanced to see Sir Enguerrand’s falcon on Renaud’s hand, and the knight’s men seized him and bore him to the castle. His heart froze within him when they took away the falcon, motionless and proud as ever, without a turn of its bended neck or a look from its cold, calm eyes. They took it to its master, but he had not a single caress for the missing favorite that had let itself be touched by ignoble hands. Sir Enguerrand looked down at Renaud in silence and more and more clearly in his thoughts took form the memory of an old hunting law from the time when the nobleman’s foot pressed, steel shod, on the neck of the common people, and his enjoyments fluttered unassailable around his shoulders. And Sir Enguerrand’s eyebrows contracted about the certainty that the old law had never been repealed. The law commanded that he who stole a falcon with a knight’s crest on its jess should pay twelve sols of silveror six ounces of flesh from his ribs under the beak of a hungry bird of prey.