Violande, though, with that special knowledge which she had acquired from her former experiences, interrupted him.
"There is no need of force in this case," quoth she. "The Ruechenstein people have from old a law which says that any woman sentenced to death may be saved by a man and delivered over to him if he is willing and able to wed her on the spot."
Dietegen gazed at Violande long and in amazement wearing the while his sneering soldier's smile.
At last he spoke.
"I am then to marry a sort of courtesan," he growled darkly, twirling his small moustache daintily and putting on an incredulous mien, while yet at the same time a look of tenderness beamed forth from his eyes.
"Do not say so," put in Violande, "for it is not so."
And bursting into tears she seized Dietegen's hand, and continued: "In so far as she is to blame it is my own fault. Let me here confess it, that I wished to separate you and her, for I wanted you two out of the house in order to marry the father. And that is why I led the child into all sorts of folly."
"But she ought not to have let you do so," exclaimed Dietegen. "Her parents indeed came of good stock and deserved respect, but she has gone astray."
"But I swear to you on my hope of salvation," cried Violande, "it is as if a cleansing fire had passed over her, and all that once disfigured her has been removed. She is good and true, and she is so much in love with you that she long ago would have died if you also had left this world like her father. Besides, have you quite forgotten what you owe her? Would you now stand here in front of me, strong and handsome, if she had not rescued you out of the hangman's coffin? And mind you too of Kuengolt's kind mother and of her excellent father, who have educated and loved you like their own son. And are you entitled to be judge over the failings of a frail woman? Have you yourself never done wrong? Have you never slain a man in battle when there was no need of it? Have you never laid in ashes the hut of a defenceless and poor person during these wars? And even though you have not done any of these things, have you always shown mercy where you might?"
At this earnest plea Dietegen reddened, and then said: "I will not owe anything I can pay off, and will leave no debts behind me. If it be as you say regarding this Ruechenstein legal custom, I will go and help the child and take her to my heart. May God then help me and her if she is no longer able to conduct herself properly!"
Then Dietegen gave a sum of money to Violande, who was quite exhausted from the fatigues of her journey, and who needed rest and nourishment to strengthen herself for her return home. But he himself, only seizing his weapons, started off instantly right across the country, and had no rest or sleep until he discerned the dark towers and walls of Ruechenstein rising before his eyes.
There they had not delayed matters. They had, after the lapse of a few days consumed with legal formalities, condemned Kuengolt, who had meanwhile been confined in an old tower, to death. But inasmuch as her father had been of blameless life and reputation and had, moreover, fallen as a hero battling for his country, the sentence was that she would, as a sign of unusual mercy, be merely beheaded, instead of being brought from life to death by fire or the wheel, or by some other of their customary procedures.
Accordingly she was taken to the place of execution, just outside the great gate of the town, barefooted and clothed in nought but a delinquent's shift. All adown her back and neck floated her heavy golden strands of hair. Step for step she went her death path, in the midst of her tormentors, several times stumbling, but of good heart and steady courage, since she had quite submitted to her sad fate and had abandoned all hope of life or happiness.
"Thus luck may turn!" she was saying to herself, with a slight smile, but just then she was thinking again of Dietegen, and sweet tears rained down her cheeks. Memory came back to her of how he owed his vigorous life to her, and, so good and unselfish she had grown in adversity, she felt glad of it and kindly towards him.
Already she had been placed in the fatal chair and was, in a sense, thankful of the chance to renew her drooping strength before receiving the death stroke. For the last time she gazed ahead at the glories of the land, at the hazy chain of mountains and the darksome woods. Then the headsman tied up her eyes, and was on the point of cutting off the wealth of her hair, or as much of it as protruded from under the cloth. But he held his hand, for Dietegen was there, only a short distance away, shouting with all his strength and waving his spear and hat to draw attention. At the same time, though, to insure delay, he tore his musket from the shoulder and sent a shot over the executioner's head. Astonished and affrighted both judges and headsman stopped in their doings, and all around the spectators took firm hold of their weapons. But Dietegen did not hesitate. In a few bounds he had arrived at the place, and had climbed to the bloody scaffold, so that under his weight it nearly broke. Seizing Kuengolt in her chair by the hair and shoulder, since her hands were already fastened behind, he for a moment had to recover his breath before being able to speak.
The Ruechensteiners, as soon as assured that there was but a single man and that no murderous attack was intended, grew attentive and waited for further developments. When at last he had stated his business, the judges retired to take counsel.
Not only their own habit of always strictly conforming with customs firmly rooted in the past, but also the reputation enjoyed by Dietegen himself in those warlike days and his whole appearance and demeanor, were in favor of adjusting this matter according to his wishes, once the first annoyance at the unceremonious interruption of so solemn a spectacle as an execution had been overcome. Even the rancorous scribe, Hans Schafuerli, who had put in an appearance to make sure of the death of the witch, hid from the grim man of war, whose heavy hand he feared despite his ordinarily daring temper.
The same priest who a short while back had been praying for the poor delinquent, now was told to perform the wedding ceremony on the very scaffold itself. Kuengolt was untied, placed upon her swaying feet, and then asked whether she was willing to marry this man who sought her as his lawful wife, and to follow him through life.
Mute she looked up to him who, after the cloth had been removed from her eyes was the first object she saw again of this world that she had taken leave from a few moments before, and it seemed to her that it must all be a delicious dream. But in order to miss nothing even if it should only turn out a dream, she nodded, being still unable to speak, with great presence of mind, three or four times in rapid succession, in a ghost-like manner, so that the severe councilmen of Ruechenstein were touched, and to make quite sure she repeated her nodding another few times. And tremblingly Kuengolt was supported during the wedding ceremony by the same sinister men who had come to witness her shameful death. But she became his wife according to all the established forms of the Church.
And now, this done, she was handed over to Dietegen "with life and limb," as the phrase went, just as she was, without any later claim of dowry or recompense, damages, or excuse, against his payment of fees for the priest and of money for ten gallons of wine for headsman and assistants, as a wedding gift, and of three pounds of pennies for a new jerkin for the headsman.
After paying all this, Dietegen took his wife by the hand and left with her the place of execution.
Since he had to take her, however, just as she was, and she was not only barefooted but merely clad in her death shift, the season also being early and the weather chilly, she was suffering from this and unable to keep step with her husband. He lifted her, therefore, from the ground to his arms, pushed his hat back from his forehead, and then she put her arms around his neck, leaned her head against his, and immediately fell asleep, while he used his long spear as a staff in his other hand. Thus he walked swiftly along on the mountain path, all alone by himself, and he felt how in her sleep she was weeping softly, and how her breath grew less agitated. At last her tears ran along his own face, and then a strange illusion as though blessed bliss were baptising him anew came over him. And this rough, war-hardened man, for all his self-command, felt his own tears staining his ruddy bearded chin. His was the life he bore in his arms, and he held it as if God's whole world were in his keeping.
When they arrived on the spot where he himself, a small child, had sat among the women in his scanty garb and where more recently poor Kuengolt had been taken prisoner, the March sun shone clear and warm, and he concluded to take a short rest. Dietegen sat down on the boundary stone, and let his burden slowly glide down on his knees. The first glance which she gave him, and the first poor words which she stammered, were proof to him that he not only had truly fulfilled a sacred duty towards her by what he had done, but that in addition he had undertaken another, an even more sacred one, namely, to conduct himself through life in such a manner as to be worthy of the happy lot that had fallen to him in becoming the husband of the charming creature at his side. And this he silently vowed to do.
The soil around the boundary stone was already thickly speckled with primroses and wild violets, the sky was cloudless, and not a sound broke the still air but the cheery song of the finches in the wood.
So they spoke no more for some time, but both breathed the soft air that filled their lungs with new hope and life, but at last they rose, and because from now on there was but the velvety moss-covered ground to traverse which led through the beeches down to the forestry lodge, Kuengolt was able to walk by his side. Suddenly she touched her golden hair, being afraid that it had been shorn by the headsman. But as she still found it unharmed, she halted for a moment, saying: "May I not have a little bridal wreath?" And she looked at her husband with a half-roguish smile.
He let his eyes roam all about him, and discovered a bunch of snowdrops in full bloom. Quickly he went and cut off enough of the flowers to weave into a coronet for his bride, and then he carefully placed it on her head, saying: "It is not much. It is out of fashion. But let this wreath be a token to us and all the world that our domestic honor will remain as spotless as these. Whoever by word or deed will harm it, let him pay the penalty!"
Then he kissed her once, firmly and with a look that boded ill to any disturber of his peace, right under the wreath, and she looked up at him, satisfied and with confidence, and then they two resumed again their walk.
The forestry lodge they found empty and deserted. The house servants had left it unguarded, partly from mourning Kuengolt whose death on the scaffold they had assumed as certain, partly from neglect of their duty. None of them returned under its roof that day. But Kuengolt and Dietegen did not miss them. She now with every minute recovered more and more from the numbing effects of her recent miseries, and to feel herself at last in truth the mistress of this house and clothed with wifely dignity poured balm into her soul. Like a squirrel she busied herself, hurried from chamber to chamber, from closet to closet, counting her treasures, investigating all. Soon she returned dressed in the splendid bridal costume of her mother, the one she had told Dietegen about that night when they, both small children, had shared the same cot on the night of his first arrival, and she shone like a queen in it. But next she set the table, using the linen which her mother had always reserved for festive occasions, and placed in platters and dishes on the snowy surface what she had been able to find in the house.
All by themselves, with no noise from the outside world to disturb them, they then sat down, she in her wreath, and he with weapons laid aside, and ate the simple meal prepared by her. And then they went to bed just as peacefully.
"Thus luck may turn!" she said, the second time that day, as she lay content by the side of her beloved. For after all there was a bit of roguishness left in her heart, despite all she had gone through.
Dietegen rose to be a man of great and generally acknowledged reputation as a warrior and military leader in those troubled days. He was not much better than others of his ilk in those times, but rather subject to similar failings. He became a doughty captain in the field, taking service with or against various countries and belligerents, according to what seemed to him good and where his own advantage lay. He hired mercenaries, earned gold and rich booty, and so he drifted from one war to another, conducted one campaign after the other, always fighting and seeing the horrors of warfare closely. And in so doing he did precisely what the first men of his country did in those warlike days, and he grew steadily in power and influence, and his word and his mailed fist were held in awe in all those parts.
But with his wife he lived in uninterrupted concord and affection, and the honor of his hearth was never questioned. And she bore him a number of strong and militant children, all endowed with the vigorous spirit alive in father and mother. And of their descendants there are flourishing even at this day a number in sundry countries, rich in substance and potency, in countries whither the warlike gifts of their forbears had blown them.
Violande on her part soon after Dietegen's and Kuengolt's union, which latter had been in such large part brought about by herself, retired to a veritable convent, and became a nun for good and all. To the children of the couple she sent quite often all sorts of goodies and tidbits. She also rather retained her habit of being interested in the great events of the day, and in influencing them by dint of feminine intrigues more or less. She liked to sit along with other guests of distinction, respected as a woman of shrewd and subtle mind and with a huge golden cross on her bosom, on banquet days at Dietegen's house, and she would demurely advise Dietegen, now adorned not only with a long and majestic beard, but also with the heavy golden chain denoting knighthood, in matters of state. Her counsel would still flow as mellifluously as ever, and her politeness remained proverbial.
How Kuengolt looked at the beginning of the sixteenth century, after many years of happy married life, may still be studied from the painting of a great artist which hangs among others in a well-known collection and which is expressly designated as her portrait. One sees there a slim elegant patrician woman, the beautiful lineaments of the face bespeaking plainly deep seriousness and uncommon understanding, but tempered by a gentle and somewhat roguish humor.
She also died before old age had claimed her, like her mother in consequence of a chill. That was when her husband, in one of the campaigns for the possession of Milan, had perished and was buried in the cemetery next a small chapel in Lombardy. Kuengolt hastened there, intending to have a monument in his honor erected; but indeed she spent two long nights at his tomb, with a ceaseless rainstorm raging, thus contracting a fever that carried her off within a couple of days, and she thus lies next to her husband in Italian soil.
Near the fine river which flows along half an hour's distance from Seldwyla, rises in a long stretch a headland which finally, itself carefully cultivated, is lost in the fertile plain. Some distance away at the foot of this rise there lies a village, to which belong many large farms, and across the hillock itself there were, years ago, three splendid holdings, like unto as many giant ribbons, side by side.
One sunny September morning two peasants were plowing on two of these vast fields, the two which stretched along the middle one. The middle one itself seemed to have lain fallow and waste for a long, long time, for it was thickly covered with stones, bowlders and tall weeds, and a multitude of winged insects were humming around and over it. The two peasants who on both sides of this huge wilderness were following their plows, were big, bony men of near forty, and at the first glance one could tell them as men of substance and well-regulated circumstances. They wore short breeches made of strong canvas, and every fold in these garments seemed to be carved out of rock. When they hit against some obstacle with their plow their coarse shirt sleeves would tremble slightly, while the closely shaved faces continued to look steadfastly into the sunlight ahead. Tranquilly they would go on accurately measuring the width of the furrow, and now and then looking around them if some unusual noise reached their ears. They would then peer attentively in the direction indicated, while all about them the country spread out measureless and peaceful. Sedately and with a certain unconscious grace they would set one foot before the other, slowly advancing, and neither of them ever spoke a word unless it was to briefly instruct the hired man who was leading the horses. Thus they resembled each other strongly from a distance; for they fitly represented the peculiar type of people of the district, and at first sight one might have distinguished them from each other only by this one fact that he on the one side wore the peaked fold of his white cap in front and the other had it hanging down his neck. But even this kept changing, since they were plowing in opposite directions; for when they arrived at the end of the new furrow up on high, and thus passed each other, the one who now strode against the strong east wind had his cap tip turned over until it sat in the back of the bull neck, while the second one, who had now the wind behind him, got the tip of his cap reversed. There was also a middling moment, so to speak, when both caps of shining white seemed to flare skywards like shimmering flames. Thus they plowed and plowed in restful diligence, and it was a fine sight in this still golden September weather to see them every short while passing each other on the summit of the hill, then easily and slowly drifting farther and farther apart, until both disappeared like sinking stars beyond the curve of the rise, only to reappear a bit later in precisely the same fashion.
When they found a stone in their furrows they threw it on the fallow field between them, doing so leisurely and accurately, like men who have learnt by habit to gauge the correct distance. But this occurred rarely, for this waste field was apparently already loaded with about all the pebbles, bowlders and rocks to be discovered in the neighborhood.
In this quiet way the long forenoon was nearly spent when there approached from the village a tiny vehicle. So small it looked at first when it began to climb up the height that it seemed a toy. And indeed, it was just that in a sense, for it was a baby carriage, painted in vivid green, in which the children of the two plowers, a sturdy little youngster and a slip of a small girl, jointly brought the lunch for their parent's delectation. For each of the two fathers there lay a fine appetizing loaf in the cart, wrapped neatly in a clean napkin, a flask of cool wine, with glasses, and some smaller tidbits as well, all of which the tender farmer's wife had sent along for the hard-working husband. But there were other things as well in the little vehicle: apples and pears which the two children had picked up on the way and out of which they had taken a bite or so, and a wholly naked doll with only one leg and a face entirely soiled and besmeared, and which sat self-satisfied in this carriage like a dainty young lady and allowed herself to be transported in this way. This small vehicle after sundry difficulties and delays at last arrived in the shade of a high growth of underbrush which luxuriated there at the edge of the big field, and now it was time to take a look at the two drivers. One was a boy of seven, the other a little girl of five, both of them sound and healthy, and else there was nothing remarkable about them except that they had very fine eyes and the girl, besides, a rather tawny complexion and curly dark hair, and the expression of her little face was ardent and trustful.
The plowers meanwhile had also reached once more the top, given their horses a provender of clover, and left their plows in the half-done furrow; then as good neighbors they went to partake jointly of the tempting collation, and meeting there they gave greeting, for until that moment they had not yet spoken to each other on that day.
While they ate, slowly but with a keen appetite, and of their food also shared with the children, the latter not budging as long as there were eatables in sight, they allowed their glances to roam near and far, and their eyes rested on the town lying there spread out in its wreath of mountains, with its haze of shiny smoke. For the plentiful noonday meal which the Seldwylians prepared each and every day used to conjure up a silvery cloud of smoke surrounding the roofs and visible from afar, and this would float right along the sides of their mountains.
"These loafers at Seldwyla are again living on the fat of the land," said Manz, one of the two peasants, and Marti, the other, replied: "Yesterday a man called on me on account of these fallow fields."
"From the district council? Yes, he saw me too," rejoined Manz.
"Hm, and probably also said you might use the land and pay the rental to the council?"
"Yes, until it should have been decided whom the land belongs to and what is to be done with it. But I wouldn't think of it, with the land in the condition it's in, and told him they might sell the land and keep the money till the owner had been found, which probably will never be done. For, as we know, whatever is once in the hands of the custodian at Seldwyla, does not easily leave it again. Besides, the whole matter is rather involved, I've heard. But these Seldwyla folks would like nothing better than to receive every little while some money that they could spend in their foolish way. Of course, that they could also do with the sum received from a sale. However, we here would not be so stupid as to bid very high for it, and then at least we should know whom the land belongs to."
"Just what I think myself, and I said the same thing to the fellow."
They kept silent for a moment, and then Manz added: "A pity it is, all the same, that this fine soil is thus going to waste every year. I can scarce bear to see it. This has now been going on for a score of years, and nobody cares a rap about it, it seems, for here in the village there is really nobody who has any claim to it, nor does anybody know what has become of the children of that hornblower, the one who went to the dogs."
"Hm," muttered Marti, "that is as may be. When I have a look at the black fiddler, the one who is a vagrant for a spell, and then at other times plays the fiddle at dances, I could almost swear that he is a grandson of that hornblower, and who, of course, does not know that he is entitled to these fields. And what in the world could he do with them? To go on a month's spree, and then to be as badly off as before. Besides, what can one say for sure? After all, there is nothing to prove it."
"Indeed, yes, one might do harm by interfering," rejoined Manz. "As it is we have to do with our own affairs, and it takes trouble enough now to keep this hobo from acquiring home rights in our commune. All the time they want to burden us with that expense. But if his folks once have joined the stray sheep, let him keep to them and play his fiddle for a living. How can we really know whether he is the hornblower's grandson or no? As far as I'm concerned, although I believe I can recognize the old fellow in his dark face, I say to myself: It is human to err, and the slightest scrap of a legal document, a bit of a baptismal record or something, would be to my mind better proof than ten sinful human faces."
"My opinion exactly," opined Marti, "although he says it is not his fault that he never was baptized. But are we to lug our baptismal fount around in the woods? No indeed. That stands immovable in the church, and on the other hand, to carry around the dead we have the stretcher which is always hanging from the wall. As it is, we are too many now in our village and shall soon need another schoolmaster."
With that the colloquy and the midday meal of the two peasants came to an end, and they now rose and prepared to finish the rest of their day's task. The two children, on the other hand, having vainly planned to drive home with their fathers, now pulled their little vehicle into the shade of the linden saplings close by, and next undertook a campaign of adventure and discovery into the vast wilderness of the waste fields. To them this wilderness was interminable, with its immense weeds, its overgrown flower stalks, and its huge piles of stone and rock. After wandering, hand in hand, for some time in the very center of this waste, and after having amused themselves in swinging their joined hands over the top of the giant thistles, they at last sat down in the shade of a perfect forest of weeds, and the little girl began to clothe her doll with the long leaves of some of these plants, so that the doll soon wore a beautiful habit of green, with fringed borders, while a solitary poppy blossom she had found was drawn over dolly's head as a brilliant bonnet, and this she tied fast with a grass blade for ribbon. Now the little doll looked exactly like a good fairy, especially after being further ornamented with a necklace and a girdle of small scarlet berries. Then she sat it down high in the cup on the stalk of the thistle, and for a minute or so the two jointly admired the strangely beautified dolly. The boy tired first of this and brought dolly down with a well-aimed pebble. But in that way dolly's finery got disordered, and the little girl undressed it quickly and set to anew to decorate her pet. But just when the doll had been disrobed and only wore the poppy flower on her head, the boy grasped the doll, and threw it high into the air. The girl, though, with loud plaints jumped to catch it, and the boy again caught it first and tossed it again and again, the little girl all the while vainly attempting to recover it. Quite a while this wild game lasted, but in the violent hands of the boy the flying doll now came to grief, and sustained a small fracture near the knee of her sole remaining limb. And from a small aperture some sawdust and bran began to escape. Hardly had he perceived that when he became quiet as a mouse, with open lips endeavoring eagerly to enlarge the little hole with his nails, in order to investigate the inside and find out whence the scattered bran came. The poor little girl, rendered suspicious by the boy's sudden silence, now squeezed up and noticed with terror his efforts.
"Just look!" shouted the boy and swung the doll's leg right before his playmate's nose, so that the bran spurted into her face. When she tried to recover her doll, and pleaded and shrieked, he sprang away with his prey, and did not desist before the whole leg had been emptied of its filling and hung, a mere hollow shell, from his hand. Then, to crown his misdeeds, he actually threw the remains of the doll away, and behaved in a rude and grossly indifferent manner when the little girl gathered up her treasure and put it weeping in her apron.
But she took it out after a while and gazed with tears at what was left. When she fathomed the full extent of the damage, she resumed weeping, and it was particularly the ruined leg that grieved her; indeed it hung just as limp and thin as the tail of a salamander. When she wept aloud for sorrow the sinner evinced evidently some qualms of conscience, and he stood stock-still, his features suffused with anxiety and repentance. When she became aware of this state of the case, she stopped crying and struck him several times with her doll, and he pretended that she hurt him and exclaimed in a natural manner: "Outch!" So naturally indeed did he do so that she was satisfied and now engaged with him in the great sport of further and complete destruction. Together they bored hole upon hole into the martyred body, and let the bran out everywhere. This bran they collected with great pains, deposited it on a big flat stone, and stirred it over and over to ascertain its mysterious properties.
The sole part of the doll still in its former state was the head, and thus of course it attracted the special attention of the two children. With great care they separated it from the trunk, and peered in amazement at its hollow interior. Seeing this great hollow the thought occurred to them to fill it up with the loose bran. With their tiny baby fingers they stuffed and stuffed by turns the bran into the empty space, and for the first time in its existence this head was filled with something. The boy, however, evidently deemed the task incomplete; probably it required some life, something moving, to satisfy him. So he caught a huge blue fly, and while he held it tight he instructed the little girl to let out the bran once more. Then he placed the fly into the hollow head, and stopped up the exit with a small bunch of grass. The two children held the head to their ears, and then put it solemnly upon a great rock. Since the head was still covered with the scarlet poppy, this receptacle of sound now closely resembled a soothsaying oracle, and the two listened with great respect to queer noises it emitted, in deep silence as if fairy tales were being told, holding each other close meanwhile. But every prophet awakens not only respect but also terror and ingratitude. The odd noises inside the hollow head aroused the human cruelty of the children, and jointly they resolved to bury it. They dug a shallow grave, and placed the head in it, without first obtaining the views of the imprisoned fly on it. Then they erected over the grave a monument of stone. But awe seized them at this instance, since they had buried something living and conscious, and they went away from the scene of this pagan sacrifice. In a spot wholly overgrown with green herbs the little girl lay down on her back, being tired, and began singing, over and over again, a few simple words in a monotonous voice, and the little boy sat near and joined singing, and he, too, was so tired as almost to fall asleep. The sun shone right into the open mouth of the singing girl, illuminating her white little teeth, and rendered her scarlet lips semi-transparent. The boy saw these white teeth, and he held her head and curiously investigating them he said: "Guess how many teeth you have." The little girl reflected for a moment, and then she said at random: "A hundred!" "No," said the boy, "two and thirty." But he added: "Wait, I will count them!"
And he started to count them, and counted over and over, and it was at no time thirty-two, and so he resumed his count. The girl kept patient for a long time, but at last she got up and said: "Now I will count yours." And the boy lay down amongst the herbs, the little one above him, and she embraced his head, he opened wide his mouth, and she began to count: One, two, seven, five, two, one; for the little thing knew not yet how to count. The boy corrected her and instructed her how to go about it, and thus she also started again and again, and curiously enough it was precisely this little game that pleased them best of all that day. But at last the little girl sank down on the soft couch of herbs, and the two children fell asleep in the full glare of the noon sun.
Meanwhile the fathers had finished their job of plowing and had changed the stubble field into a brown plain, strongly scenting the earth. When at the end of the last furrow the helper of one of the two wanted to stop, his master shouted: "Why do you stop? Turn up another furrow!" "But we're done," said the helper. "Shut your mouth, and do what I tell you," replied the other. And they did turn once more and tore a big furrow right into the middle, the ownerless, field, so that weeds and stones flew about. But the peasant took no time to remove these. Probably he considered that there was ample time for that some other day. He was satisfied to do the thing for the nonce only in its main feature. Thus he went up the height softly, and when up on top and the delicious play of the wind now turned once more the tip of his white cap backwards, on the other side of the fallow field the second peasant was just plowing a similar furrow, the wind having also reversed the tip of his cap, and cut also a goodly furrow off from the same fallow field. Each of them saw, of course, what the other did, but neither seemed to do so, and thus they once more strode away one from the other, each falling star finally disappearing below the curve of the ground. Thus the woof of Fate spins its net around us, "and what he weaves no weaver knows."
One harvest after another went by and the two children grew steadily taller and handsomer, and the ownerless fields as steadily smaller between the two neighbors. With every new plowing the section between lost hither and thither one furrow, without there being a word said about it, and without a human eye apparently noting the misdeed. The stones and rocks became more and more compact and formed already a perfect and continuous ridge the whole length of the field, and the shrubs and weeds on it had already attained such an altitude that the two children, although they, too, had grown, could no longer see each other across them.
They no longer went to the field together, since ten-year-old Salomon, or Sali, as he was mostly called, now kept with the bigger boys or the men, and dusky Vreni,[1]though a fiery little thing, had already to place herself under the supervision of those of her sex, for fear of being laughed at as a tomboy. In spite of all that they improved the occasion of the harvest, when everybody was out in the fields, to climb once on top of the huge stony ridge, or breastworks, which ordinarily divided them, and to wage a toy war, pushing each other down from it, as the culmination of the battle. Even though they had no longer anything more to do with each other, this annual ceremony was maintained by them all the more carefully since the land of their fathers did not meet anywhere else.
However, now the fallow field was to be sold, after all, and the sum realized provisionally kept by the authorities. The day came at last, and the public sale took place on the spot itself. But beside Manz and Marti there were present only a few curious ones, since nobody but they felt like buying the odd piece of ground and cultivating it between the property of the two peasants. For although these two belonged among the best farmers of the village, and had done nothing but what two-thirds of the others would also have done under like circumstances, still now they were looked at askance because of it, and nobody wanted to be squeezed in between them in the diminished and orphaned field. For most men are so made as to be quite ready to commit a wrong which is more or less in vogue, especially if the circumstances of the case facilitate the wrong. But as soon as the wrong has been perpetrated by some one else, they are glad that it was not they who had been exposed to the temptation, and then they regard the guilty one almost as a warning example in regard to their own failings, and treat him with a delicate aversion as a sort of lightning rod of evil itself, as one marked by the gods themselves, while all the while their mouths are watering for the advantages thus accrued to him by means of his sin.
Manz and Marti were, therefore, the only ones who seriously bid on the ownerless land, and after a rather spirited contest, during which the price was driven up higher than had been supposed, it was Manz to whom it was awarded. The officials and the lookers-on soon drifted away, and the two neighbors who had been busy on their fields after the sale, met again, and Marti said: "I suppose you will now put your land, the old and the new, together, halve it, and work it in that way? That, at least, is what I should have done if I had got the land."
"That indeed is what I mean to do," answered Manz, "for as one single field it would not be easy to manage. But there is another thing I want to say. I noticed the other day that you drove into the lower end of this field that has now become mine, and that you cut off quite a good-sized triangle. It may be you thought at the time that you yourself would soon own the whole of it and that then it would make no difference anyway. But since now it belongs to me, you will admit that I cannot and will not permit such a curtailment of my property rights, and you will not take it amiss if I again straighten out the right lines. Of course you will not. There need be no hard feelings on that score."
Marti, however, replied just as coolly: "Neither do I look for any trouble. For my opinion is you have purchased the field just as it is. We both examined it before the sale, and of course it has not changed within an hour or so."
"Nonsense," said Manz, "what was done formerly, under different conditions, we will not go into. But too much is too much, and everything has its limit, and must be adjusted according to reason in the end. These three fields have from of old been lying one next to the other just as though marked with the measuring tape. You may think it funny to put in such an unjustifiable objection or claim. We both of us would get a new nickname if I let you keep that crooked end of it without rhyme or reason. It must come back where it by right belongs."
But Marti only laughed and said: "All at once so afraid of what people may think? But then, it's easily arranged. I have no objection at all to such a crooked-shaped bit of land. If you don't like it, all right, we can straighten it out. But not on my side, I swear."
"Don't talk so strange," replied Manz with some heat. "Of course it will be straightened out, and that on your side. You can bet your bottom dollar on that."
"Well, we'll see about that," was Marti's parting remark, and the two men separated without even looking at each other. On the contrary, they gazed steadfastly in different directions, as if something of enormous interest were floating in the air which it was absolutely necessary to keep an eye on.
On the next day already Manz sent his hired boy, also a wench working for daily wage, and his own boy Sali out to the new field, to begin removing the weeds and wild growths, and to pile them up at certain places, so as to make the loading up and carting away of the crop of stones all the easier. This noted a change in his character, this sending the little boy, scarcely eleven, whom he had never before driven to hard work such as weeding, out to field labor, and this against the will of the mother. It seemed indeed, since he defended his order with solemn and high-sounding words, as if he wanted to daze his own better conscience. At any rate, the slight wrong thus done to his own flesh and blood in insisting on onerous and unfit labor, was but one of the consequences growing out of the original wrong done by him for years in regard to the field itself. One by one more wrong, more evil unfolded itself. The three meanwhile weeded away industriously on the long strip of ground, and hacked away at the queer plants that had been flourishing on the soil for so many years. And to the young people doing this hard work, albeit it taxed and tried their strength greatly, it really was something of an amusement, since it was no carefully graduated and scaled task, but rather a wild job of destruction. After piling all this vegetable refuse up in heaps and letting the sun dry it, it was set afire with great jubilation and noise, and when the murky flames shot up and broad swaths of smoke waved irregularly, the young people jumped and danced about like a band of wild Indians.
But this was the last festival on the ominous new field, and little Vreni, Marti's young daughter, also crept out and joined the revels. The unusual occasion and the spirit of rampant gaiety easily brought it about that the two playmates of yore once more came in contact and were happy and jolly at their bonfire. Other children, too, gathered, until there was quite a crowd of youthful, excited merrymakers assembled. But always it happened that, as soon as the two became separated in the throng, Vreni would rejoin Sali, or Sali Vreni. When it was she it was a treat to watch her face when she slipped her little hand in that of the boy, her animated features and her glowing eyes fairly brimming with pleasure. To both of them it seemed as though this glorious day could never end. Old Manz, though, came out toward evening, to see what had been accomplished, and despite the fact that their labor had been done well and as directed, he scolded at the childish jollification and drove the young people off his ground. Almost at the same time Marti visited his own section adjoining, and noticing his little daughter from afar, he whistled to her shrill and peremptory, and when she obeyed the summons in frightened haste he struck her harshly in the face without giving any reason. So that both little ones went home weeping and sad; yet they were both still so much children that they scarcely knew at this time why they were so sad or knew before why they felt so happy. As for the rudeness of their fathers they did not understand the underlying motive of it, and it did not touch their hearts.
During the next days the labor became harder and more strenuous, and some men had to be hired for it. For the task was this time to load and clean off the huge crop of stones along the entire length of the field.
There seemed to be no end to this work, and one would have said that all the stones in the world had been collected there. But Manz did not have the stones carted off entirely from the field, but every load was taken to the triangular piece of ground in dispute, where it was dumped. It was dumped on the neatly plowed soil that Marti had toiled over. Manz had previously drawn a straight line as boundary, and now he loaded this spot down with all these thousands upon thousands of pebbles, rocks and bowlders which he and Marti had for whole decades thrown upon ownerless soil. The heap grew, and grew for days and weeks, until there was a mighty pyramid of stone which, as Manz felt convinced, his adversary would surely be loath to trouble with. Marti, in fact, had expected nothing of the kind. He had rather thought that Manz would go to work with his plow, as he used to do, and had therefore waited to see him appear in that part. And Marti did not hear of the rocky monument until almost completed. When he ran out in the full blast of his anger, and saw it all, he hastened home and fetched the village magistrate in order to protest against the accumulation of stones on "his" ground, and to have the small bit of ground officially declared as in litigation.
From that sinister day on the two peasants sued and countersued each other in court, and neither desisted until both were completely ruined.
The thinking of these two ordinarily shrewd and fair men became fundamentally wrong and fallacious. They were unable to view anything henceforth as unrelated with their quarrel. Their arguments fell short of the mark in everything. The most narrow sense of legality, of what was permitted and what not, filled the head of each of them, and neither was able to understand how the other could seize so entirely without reason or right this bit of soil, in itself so insignificant. In the case of Manz there was added a wonderful sense for symmetry and parallel lines, and he felt really and truly shortened in his rights by Martins insistence on retaining hold of a fragment of property laid out on different geometrical lines. But both tallied in their conceptions in this that the other must think him a veritable fool to try and get the better of him in this particular manner, in this impudent and unparalleled manner, since to make such an attempt at all was perhaps thinkable in the case of a mere nobody, of a man without reputation and substance, but surely not in the case of an upstanding, energetic and able man, of one who was both willing and able to take care of his interests. And it was this consideration above all that rankled and festered in the heart of each of the two once so friendly neighbors. Each felt himself hurt in his quaint sense of honor, and let himself go headlong in the rush of passion and of combativeness, without even attempting at any time to stop the resultant moral and material decay and ruin. Their two lives henceforth resembled the torture of two lost souls who, upon a narrow board, carried along a dark and fearsome river, yet deal tremendous blows at the air, seize upon each other and destroy each other finally, all in the false belief of having seized and trying to destroy their evil fate itself.
As their whole matter in dispute was in itself and on both sides not clean or lucid, they soon got into the hands of all sorts of swindlers and cutthroats, of pettifoggers and evil counselors, men who filled their imagination with glittering bubbles, containing no substance whatever. And especially it was the speculators and dishonest agents of Seldwyla who found this case one after their own heart, and soon each of the two litigants had a whole train of advisers, go-betweens and spies around him, fellows who in all sorts of crooked ways knew how to draw cash money out of them. For the quarrel for that tiny fragment of soil with the stone pyramid on top on which already a perfect forest of weeds, thistles and nettles had grown anew, was only the first stage in a labyrinth of errors that little by little changed the whole character and method of living for the two. It was singular, too, how in the case of two men of about fifty there could shoot up and become fixed an entire crop of new habits and morals, principles and hopes, all of a kind which were foreign to their former natures, how men who all their lives had been noted for their hard common-sense could become day-dreamers and gullible oafs.
And the more money they lost by all this the more they longed to acquire more, and the less they possessed the more persistently they endeavored to become rich and to shine before their fellows. Thus they easily allowed themselves to be hoodwinked by the clumsiest tricks, and year after year they would play in all the foreign lotteries of which Seldwyla agents were praising to them the splendid chances. But never so much as a dollar came their way in prizes. On the other hand, they forever heard of the big winnings in these lotteries made by others; they also were told that it had hung just by a hair that they would have done as well, and thus they were constantly bled by these leeches of their scantier and scantier means.
Now and then the rascally Seldwylians played a trick on the two deadly enemies which for its peculiar raciness was specially relished by them, the people of Seldwyla, that is. They would sell the two peasants sections of the same lottery tickets, so that Manz as well as Marti would build their hopes of a rich strike on precisely the same fallacious foundation, and also in the end would feel the same despondency from the same source. Half their time the two now spent in town, and there each had his headquarters in a miserable tavern. There they would indulge in foolish bragging and bluster, would drink too much and play the Lord Bountiful to loafers that would flatter the simpletons to the top of their bent, and all the while the dark doubt would assail them that they who in order not to be reckoned dunces had gone to law about a trifling object, had now really become just that and furthermore, were so reckoned by general consent.
The other half of the time they spent at home, morose and incapable of steady work or sober reflection. Habitually neglecting their farm labor, at times they tried to make up for that by undue haste, overworking their help and thus soon unable to retain any respectable men in their employ.
Thus things went from bad to worse little by little, and within less than ten years both of them were overburdened with debts, and stood like storks with one leg upon their farms, so that the slightest change might blow them over. But no matter how else they fared, the hatred between them grew more intense every day, since each looked upon the other as the cause of his misfortune, as his archenemy, as his foe without rhyme or reason, as the one being in the world whom the devil purposely had invented to ruin him. They spat out before each other when they saw the adversary approaching from afar. Nobody belonging to them was permitted to speak to wife, child or servants of the other, on pain of instant brutal punishment. Their wives behaved differently under these circumstances. Marti's wife, who came of good family and was of a fine disposition, did not long survive the rapid downfall of her house and family, sorrowed silently and died before her little daughter was fourteen. The wife of Manz, on the other hand, altered her whole character. Only for the worse, of course. And to do that all she needed to do was to aggravate some of her natural defects, let them go on, so to speak, without bridling them at all. Her passion for tidbits and sweets became boundless; her love of gossip deteriorated into a veritable craze, and she soon became unable to tell the truth about anything or anybody. She habitually spoke the very contrary of what was in her thoughts, cheated and deceived her own husband, and found keen pleasure in getting everybody by the ears. Her original frankness and her harmless delight in satisfying her feminine curiosity turned into evil intrigue and the inclination to make mischief between neighbors and friends. Instead of suffering patiently under the rudeness and changed habits of her husband, she fooled him and laughed behind his back in doing so. No matter if he now and then behaved with cruelty to her and his household, she did not care. She denied herself nothing, became more luxurious in her tastes as his money affairs grew steadily more involved, and fattened on the very misfortunes that were rapidly leading to complete ruin.
That with all that the two children fared any better was scarcely to be expected. While still mere human buds and incapable of meeting the harsh fate slowly preparing for them, they were done out of their youth and out of the hopes and advantages incident to their tender years. Vreni indeed was worse off in this respect than Sali, the boy, since her mother was dead and she was exposed in a wasted home to the tyranny of a father whose violent instincts found no check whatever. When sixteen Vreni had developed into a slender and charming young girl. Her hair of dark-brown naturally curled down to her flashing eyes; her swiftly coursing blood seemed to shimmer through the delicate oval of her dusky cheeks, and the scarlet of her dainty lips made a strikingly vivid contrast, so that everybody looked twice when she passed. And despite her sad bringing-up, an ardent love of life and an inextinguishable cheerfulness were trembling in every fibre of Vreni's being. Laughing and smiling at the least encouragement she forgot her troubles easily, and was always ready for a frolic and a romp if domestic weather permitted at all, that is, if her father did not hinder and torture her too cruelly. However, with all her lightheartedness and her buoyant temperament, the deepening shadows over the house inevitably enshrouded her all too often. She had to bear the brunt of her father's soured disposition, and she had hardly any help in trying to keep house for him after a fashion. On her young shoulders mainly rested the embarrassments of a home constantly threatened by importunate creditors and wild boon companions of her dissolute father. And not alone that. With the natural taste of her sex for a neat and clean appearance her father refused her nearly every means to gratify it. Thus she had great trouble to ornament her pretty person the way it deserved. But somehow she managed to do it, to possess always a becoming holiday attire, including even a couple of vividly colored kerchiefs that set off marvelously her darksome beauty. Full of youthful animation and gaiety she found it hard to mostly have to renounce all the social pleasures of her years; but at least this prevented her from falling into the opposite extreme. Besides, young as she was, she had witnessed the declining days and the death of her mother, and had been deeply impressed by it, so that this had acted as another restraint on her joyous disposition. It was almost a pathetic sight to observe how notwithstanding all these serious obstacles pretty Vreni instantly would respond to the calls of joy if the occasion was at all favorable, as a flower after drooping in a heavy rainstorm will raise its head at the first rays of the reappearing sun.
Sali was not faring quite so ill. He was a good-looking and vigorous young fellow who knew how to take care of himself and whose size and physical strength alone would have forbidden harsh bodily mistreatment. He saw, of course, how his parents were sliding down-hill more and more, and he seemed to remember a time when things had been otherwise. He even carried in his memory the picture of his father as that of an upstanding, determined, serious and energetic peasant, while now he saw before him all the while a man who was a gray-headed dolt, a quarrelsome fool, who with all his fits of impotent rage and all his brag and bluster was every hour more and more crawling backwards like a crawfish. But when these things displeased him and filled him with shame and sorrow, although he could not very well understand how it all had come about, the influence of his mother came to deaden this feeling and to fill him with an unjustified hope of improvement. She would flatter her son in the same extravagant and wholly unreasonable manner which had become her second nature in dealing with the new troubles that were gradually overcoming the whole family. For in order to lead her life of self-indulgence the more easily and to have one critical observer the less, and to make her son her partisan, but also as a vent for her love of display, she contrived to let her son have everything he had a desire for. She saw to it that he was always dressed with care, and entirely too expensively for the means of the family, and indulged him in his pleasures. He on his part accepted all that without much thought or gratitude, since he noticed at the same time how his mother was juggling with and tricking his father, and how she was continually telling untruths and vainly boasting. And while thus allowing his mother to spoil him without paying much attention to the process itself, no great harm was yet done in his case, since he had so far not been much tainted by the vices and sins of mother or father. Indeed, in his youthful pride he had the strong wish to become, if possible, a man such as he recalled his own father once to have been, a man of substance and of rational and successful conduct of his life. Sali was really very much as his father knew himself to have been at his own age, and a queer remnant of respectability urged the father to treat his son well. In honoring him he seemed to honor his old self. Confused reminiscences at such times drifted through his beclouded soul, and they afforded him a species of subconscious delight. But although in this manner Sali escaped some of the natural consequences of the process of domestic decay which was going on around him, he was not able to genuinely enjoy his life and to make rational plans for an assured future. He felt well enough that he was resting on quicksand, that he was neither doing anything much to bring himself into a position of independence nor to look for any secured future; nor was he learning much towards that end in the broken-down household and on the neglected farm of his father. The work done there was done haphazard style, and no systematic and orderly effort was made to get things done in season. His best consolation, therefore, was to preserve his good reputation, to work with a will on the farm when he could, and to turn his eyes away from a threatening future.
The sole orders laid upon him by his father were to avoid any sort of intercourse with all that bore the name of Marti. All he knew about the matter personally was that Marti had done wrong to his father, and that in Marti's house precisely the same bitter enmity was felt towards the Manz family. Of the details involved in this state of affairs, of the manner in which the old-time good-neighborliness and friendship existing for so many years between the two families had been turned into hatred and scorn Sali knew nothing, these things having shaped themselves at a period of his life when his boyish brain had been unable to grasp their true meaning. He had perforce been content with the verdict of his father, obeying the latter's prohibition to further consort with the Marti people without attempting to ascertain the underlying causes of the quarrel. So far he had not found it difficult to do as his father told him, and he did not meddle in the least with the whole business. He made no effort to either see or avoid Marti and his daughter Vreni, and while he assumed that his father must be in the right of it, he was no active enemy of the Martis. Vreni, on her part, was differently constituted from the lad. Having to suffer much more than Sali at home and feeling more deeply than he, woman-fashion, her almost total isolation, she was not so ready to let a sentiment of declared enmity enter her young and untried heart. In fact, she rather believed herself scorned and despised by the much better clad and apparently also much more fortunate former playmate. It was, therefore, only from a feeling of embarrassment that she hid from him, and whenever he came near enough to perceive her, she fled from him. He indeed never troubled to glance at her. So it happened that Sali had not seen the girl near enough for a couple of years to know what she was like. He had no notion that she was now almost grown-up, and that she was distinctly beautiful. And yet, once in a while he would remember her as his little playmate, as the merry companion of his carefree boyhood, and when at his home the Martis were mentioned he instinctively wondered what had become of her and how she would look now. He certainly did not hate her. In his memory she lived in a shadowy sort of way as a rather attractive girl.
It was his father, Manz, now who first had to go under. He was no longer able to stave off his creditors and had to leave farm and house behind. That he, though somewhat of better means originally than his neighbor and foe, was first to collapse was owing to his wife, who had lived in quite an extravagant style, and then he, too, had a son who, after all, cost him something. Marti, as we know, had but a little daughter who was scarcely any expense to him. Manz did not know what else to do but to follow the advice of some Seldwyla patrons and move to town, there to turn mine host of an inn or low tavern. It is always a sad sight to see a former peasant of some substance, a man who has been leading for many years a life of unremitting toil, it is true, but also one of independence and usefulness, after growing old among his acres, seek refuge from ill-fortune in town, taking the small remnants of his belongings with him and open a poor, shabby resort, in order to play, as the last safety anchor, the amiable and seductive host, all the while feeling by no means in a holiday mood himself. When the Manz family then left their farm to take this desperate step, it was first apparent how poor they had already grown. For all the household goods that were loaded on a cart were in a deplorable state, defective and not repaired for many years. Nevertheless the wife put on her best finery, when seating herself on top of the crazy old vehicle, and made a face of such pride as though she already looked down upon her neighbors as would a city lady of taste and refinement, while all the while the villagers peeped from behind their hedges full of pity at the sorry show made by the exodus. For Mother Manz had settled it in her foolish noddle to turn the heads of all Seldwyla by her fine manners and her wheedling tongue, thinking that if her boorish husband did not understand how to handle and cajole the town folks, it was vastly different with herself who would soon show these Seldwyla people what an alluring hostess she would make at the head of a tavern or inn doing a rushing business.
Great was her disenchantment, however, when she actually set eyes on this inn vaunted so much in advance by her addled spirits. For it was located in a small side-street of a rather disreputable quarter of Seldwyla, and the inn itself was one in which the predecessor, one of several that had gone the same way, had just been forcibly ousted because of being unable to pay his debts. His Seldwyla patrons had, in fact, rented this mean public house for a few hundred dollars a year to Manz in consideration of the fact that the latter still had some small sums outstanding in town, and because they could find nobody else to take the place at a venture. They also sold him a few barrels of inferior wine as well as the fixtures which consisted in the main of a couple of dozen glasses and bottles, and of some rude and hacked pine tables and benches that had once been painted a hue of deadly scarlet and were now reduced to a dingy brownish tint. Before the entrance door an iron hoop was clattering in the wind, and inside the hoop a tin hand was pouring out forever claret into a small shoppen vessel. Besides all these luxuries there was a sun-dried bunch of datura fastened above the door, all of which Manz had noted down in his lease. Knowing all this Manz was by no means so full of hopes and smiling humor as his spouse, but on the contrary whipped up his bony old horses, lent him by the new owner of his farm, with considerable foreboding. The last shabby helper he had had on his farm had left him several weeks before, and when he left the village on this his present errand he had not failed to note Marti who, full of grim joy and scorn, had busied himself with some trifling task along the road where his fallen foe had to pass. Manz saw it, cursed Marti, and held him to be the sole cause of his downfall. But Sali, as soon as the cart was fairly on the way, got down, speeded up his steps and reached the town along by-paths.
"Well, here we are," said Manz, when the cart had reached its destination. His wife was crestfallen when she noticed the dreary and unpropitious aspect of the place. The people of the neighborhood stepped in front of their housedoors to have a look at the new innkeeper, and when they saw the rustic appearance of the outfit and the miserable trappings, they put on their Seldwyla smile of superiority. Wrathfully Mother Manz climbed down from her high seat, and tears of anger were in her eyes as she quickly fled into the house, her limber tongue for once forsaking her. On that day at least she was no more seen below. For she herself was well aware of the sorry show made by her, and all the more as the tattered condition of her furniture could not be concealed from prying eyes when the various articles were now being unloaded. Her musty and torn beds, particularly, she felt ashamed of. Sali, too, shared her feelings, but he was obliged to help his father in unloading, and the two made quite a stir in the neighborhood with their rustic manners and speech, furnishing the curious children with food for laughter. These little folks, indeed, amused themselves abundantly that day at the expense of the "ragged peasant bankrupts." Inside the house, though, things looked still more desolate; the place, in fact, had more the looks of a robbers' roost than of an inn. The walls were of badly calsomined brick, damp with moisture, and beside the dark and poorly furnished guest room downstairs there were but a couple of bare and uninviting bedrooms, and everywhere their predecessor had left behind nothing but spider's webs, filth and dust.
That was the beginning of it, and thus it continued to the end. During the first few weeks indeed there came, especially in the evenings, a number of people anxious to see, out of sheer curiosity, "the peasant landlord," hoping there would be "some fun." But out of the landlord himself they could not get much of that, for Manz was stiff, unfriendly, and melancholy, and did not in the least know how to treat his guests, nor did he want to know. Slowly and awkwardly he would pour out the wine demanded, put it before the customer with a morose air, and then make an unsuccessful attempt to enter into some sort of conversation, but brought forth only some stammered commonplaces, whereupon he gave it up. All the more desperately did his wife endeavor to entertain her guests, and by her ludicrous and absurd behavior really managed, for a few days at least, to amuse people. But she did this in quite a different way from that intended by her. Mother Manz was rather corpulent, and she had from her own inventive brain composed a costume in which to wait on her guests and in which she believed herself to be simply irresistible. With a stout linen skirt she wore an old waist of green silk, a long cotton apron and a ridiculous broad collar around the neck. Out of her hair, no longer abundant, she had twisted corkscrew curls ornamenting her forehead, and in the back she had stuck a tall comb into her thin braids. Thus made up she mincingly danced on the tips of her toes before the particular guest to be entranced, pointed her mouth in a laughable manner, which she thought was "sweet," hopped about the table with forced elasticity, and serving the wine or the salted cheese she would exclaim smilingly: "Well, well, so alone? Lively, lively, you gentlemen!" And some more of such nonsense she would whisper in a stilted way, for the trouble was that although usually she could talk glibly about almost anything with her cronies from the village, she felt somewhat embarrassed with these city people, not being acquainted with the subjects of conversation they liked to touch on. The Seldwyla people of the roughest type who had dropped in for something to laugh at, put their hands before their mouths to prevent bursting out in her face, nearly suffocated with suppressed merriment, trod upon each other's feet under the table, and afterwards, in relating the matter, would say: "Zounds, that is a woman among a thousand, a paragon!" Another one said: "A heavenly creature, by the gods. It is worth while coming here just to watch her antics. Such a funny one we haven't had here for a long while."
Her husband noticed these goings on, with a mien of thunder, and he would perhaps punch her in the ribs and say: "You old cow, what is the matter with you?"
But then she gave him a superior glance, and would murmur: "Don't disturb me! You stupid old fool, don't you see how hard I am trying to please people? Those over there, of course, are only low fellows from among your own acquaintance, but if you don't interfere with me I shall soon have much more fashionable guests here, as you'll see."
These illusions of hers were illuminated in a room with but two tallow dips, but Sali, her son, went out into the dark kitchen, sat down at the hearth and wept about father and mother.
However, these first guests had soon their fill of this kind of sport, and began to stay away, and then went back to their old haunts where they got better drink and more rational conversation, and there they would laughingly comment on the queer peasant innkeepers. Only once in a while now a single guest of this type would drop in, usually to verify previous reports heard by him, and such a one found as a rule nothing more exciting to do than to yawn and gaze at the wall. Or perhaps a band of roystering blades, having heard the place spoken of by others, would wind up a jolly evening by a brief visit, and then there would be noise enough, but not much else, and the old couple could often not even thus be roused from their melancholy. For by that time both wife and husband had grown heartily sick of their bargain. The new style of living felt to him almost as lonesome and cold as the grave. For he who as a lifelong farmer had been used to see the sun rise, to hear and feel the wind blow, to breathe the pure air of the country from morning till night, and to have the sunshine come and go, was now cooped up within these dingy, hopeless walls, had to draw in his lungs with every breath the contaminated atmosphere of this miserable neighborhood, and when he thus dreamed day-dreams of the wide expanse of the fields he once owned and tilled, a dull sort of despair settled down on him like a pall. For hours and hours every day he would stare in a dark humor at the smoke-begrimed ceiling of his inn, having mostly little else to do, and dull visions of a future unrelieved by a single ray of hope would float across his saturnine mind. Insupportable his present life seemed to him then. Then a purposeless restlessness would come over him, when he would get up from his seat a dozen times an hour, run to the housedoor and peer out, then run back and resume his watch. The neighbors had already given him a nickname. The "wicked landlord," they dubbed him, because his glance was troubled and fierce.
Not long and they were totally impoverished, had not even enough ready money left to put in the little in drink and provisions needed for chance customers, so that the sausages and bread, the wine and liquor that were ordered by guests had to be got on trust. Often they even lacked the wherewithal to make a meal of, and had to go hungry for a while. It was a curious tavern they were keeping. When somebody strolled in by accident and demanded refreshment they were forced to send to the nearest competitor, around the corner, and obtain a measure of wine and some food, paying for it an hour or so later when they themselves had been paid. And with all that, they were expected to play the cheerful host and to talk pleasantly when their own stomachs were empty. They were almost glad when nobody came; then each of them would cower in a dark corner by the chimney, too lethargic to stir.
When Mother Manz underwent these sad experiences she once more took off her green silk waist, and another metamorphosis was noticed. As formerly she had shown a number of feminine vices, so now she exhibited some feminine virtues, and these grew with the evil times. She began to practice patience and sought to cheer up her morose husband and to encourage her young son in trying for remunerative work. She sacrificed her own comfort and convenience even, went about like a happy busybody, and chattered incessantly merrily, all in an attempt to put some heart into the two men. In short, she exerted in her own queer way an undoubted beneficial influence on them, and while this did not lead to anything tangible it helped at least to make things bearable for the time being and was far better than the reverse would have been. She would rack her poor brains, and give this advice or that how to mend things, and if it miscarried she would have something fresh to propose. Mostly she proved in the wrong with her counsel, but now and then, in one of the many trivial ways that her petty mind was dwelling on she was successful. When the contrary resulted, she gaily took the blame, remained cheerful under discouragement, and, in short, did everything which, if she had only done it before things were past repair, might have really cured the desperate situation.
In order to have at least some food in the house and to pass the dull time, father and son now began to devote their leisure time to the sport of fishing, that is, with the angle, as far as it is permissible to everybody in Switzerland. This, be it said, was also one of the favorite pastimes of those decrepit Seldwylians who had come to grief in the world, most of them having failed in business. When the weather was favorable, namely, and when the fish took the bait most readily, one might see dozens of these gentry wander off provided with rod and pail, and on a walk along the shores of the river you might see one of them, every little distance, angling, the one in a long brown coat once of fashionable make, but with his bare feet in the water, the next attired in a tattered blue frock, astride an old willow tree, his ragged felt hat shoved over his left ear. Farther down even you might perceive a third whose meagre limbs were wrapped in a shabby old dressing gown, since that was the only article of clothing he had left, his long tobacco pipe in one hand, and an equally long fishing rod in the other. And in turning a bend of the river one was apt to encounter another queer customer who stood, quite nude, with his bald head and his fat paunch, on top of a flat rock in the river. This one had, though almost living in the water during the warm season, feet black as coal, so that it looked from a distance as if he had kept his boots on. Each of these worthies had a pot or a small box at his side, in which were swarming angle worms, and to obtain these they were industriously digging at all hours of the day not actually employed in fishing. Whenever the sky began to cloud up and the air became close and sultry, threatening rain, these quaint figures could be seen most numerously along the softly rolling stream, immovable like a congregation of ancient saints on their pillars. Without ever deigning to cast a glance in their direction, rustics from farm and forest used to pass them by, and the boatmen on the river did not even look their way, whereas these lone fishermen themselves used to curse in a forlorn way at these disturbers of their prey.
If Manz had been told twelve years before when he was still plowing with a fine team of horses across the hillock above the shore, that he, too, one day would join this strange brotherhood of the rod, he would probably have treated such a prophet rather roughly. But even to-day Manz hastened past those fishermen that were rather crowding one another, until he stood, upstream and alone, like a wrathful shadow of Hades, by himself, just as if he preferred even in the abode of the damned a spot of his own choosing. But to stand thus with a rod, for hours and hours, neither he nor his son Sali had the patience, and they remembered the manner in which peasants in their own neighborhood used to catch fish, especially to grasp them with their hands in the purling brooks. Therefore, they had their rods with them only as a ruse, and they walked upstream further and further, following the tortuous windings of the water, where they knew from of old that trout, dainty and expensive trout, were to be had.