He undressed, lay down to rest, and put out the light. He whispered two names into the pillow, these few chaste Norse syllables which designated for him the real and original type of his love, suffering, and happiness, which meant life, simple and intimate emotion, home. He looked back upon the years elapsed from that time to this. He thought of the wild adventures his senses, nerves, and intellect had gone through, saw himself devoured by irony and brilliance, made stagnant and lame by knowledge, half worn out by the fevers and frosts of creative work, unstable and in torments of conscience between crass extremes, cast back and forth between sanctity and passion, exquisite, impoverished, exhausted by frigid and artificially selected exaltations, astray, laid waste, tortured, diseased—and he sobbed with repentance and homesickness.

About him it was quiet and dark. But from below the sweet, trivial waltz time of life came up to him muffled and swaying.

IX

Tonio Kroeger sat in the North and wrote to Lisaveta Ivanovna, his friend, as he had promised.

Dear Lisaveta, down yonder in Arcadia, whither I shall soon return, he wrote. Here, then, is something like a letter, but it will probably disappoint you, for I am thinking of keeping it somewhat general. Not as if I had nothing to tell, or had not had this or that experience on my journey. At home, in my native town, they were actually going to arrest me ... but of that you shall hear by word of mouth. Now I frequently have days on which I prefer making some good general observations to telling stories.

I wonder if you still remember, Lisaveta, that you once called me a commoner, a commoner astray. You called me so at a time when I was confessing my love for that which I call Life, being led on to it by other confessions which I had allowed to escape me; and I ask myself whether you knew how closely you struck the truth in calling me so, how nearly my commonership and my love for "life" are one and the same thing. This journey has given me occasion to think about it ...

My father, you know, was of a Norse temperament: reflective, thorough, Puritanically correct, and inclined to melancholy; my mother of nondescript exotic blood, beautiful, sensual, naive, at once slovenly and passionate, and of an impulsive and unprincipled mind. Quite without doubt this was a mixture which involved extraordinary possibilities, and extraordinary dangers. What came of it was this: a commoner who lost his way into art, a Bohemian homesick for a model nursery, an artist with a bad conscience. For it is of course my bourgeois conscience which makes me see in all artistry, in all unusualness and all genius something deeply ambiguous, deeply dubious, deeply disreputable, and which fills me with this lovelorn weakness for the simple, candid, and agreeably normal, for the decent and mediocre.

I stand between two worlds, am at home in neither, and in consequence have rather a hard time of it. You artists call me a commoner, and commoners feel tempted to arrest me ... I do not know which wounds me more bitterly. Commoners are stupid; but you worshippers of beauty who call me phlegmatic and without yearning, ought to reflect that there is an artistry so deep, so primordial and elemental, that no yearning seems to it sweeter and more worthy of tasting than that for the raptures of commonplaceness.

I admire the proud and cold who go adventuring on the paths of great and demoniac beauty, and scorn "man"—but I do not envy them. For if anything is capable of making a poet out of a man of letters, it is this plebeian love of mine for the human, living, and commonplace. All warmth, all goodness, all humor is born of it, and it almost seems to me as if it were that love itself, of which it is written that a man might speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and yet without it be no more than sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.

What I have done is nothing, not much—as good as nothing. I shall do better things, Lisaveta—this is a promise. While I am writing, the sea's roar is coming up to me, and I close my eyes. I am looking into an unborn and shapeless world that longs to be called to life and order, I am looking into a throng of phantoms of human forms which beckon me to conjure them and set them free: some of them tragic, some of them ridiculous, and some that are both at once—and to these I am very devoted. But my deepest and most secret love belongs to the blond and blue-eyed, the bright-spirited living ones, the happy, amiable, and commonplace.

Do not speak lightly of this love, Lisaveta; it is good and fruitful. There is longing in it and melancholy envy, and a tiny bit of contempt, and an unalloyed chaste blissfulness.



LUDWIG THOMA

* * * * * *

MATT THE HOLY (1904)

The remarkable fortunes of the Reverend Matthew Fottner of Eynhofen, Studiosus, Soldier, and later Pastor at Rappertswyl

TRANSLATED BY BAYARD QUINCY MORGAN, PH.D. Assistant Professor of German, University of Wisconsin

Whoso has six horses in the stable is a freeholder, and he sits next to the burgomaster in the tavern and is a burgess. When he sees fit to open his head and grumble about the hard times and the taxes, his words are heeded, and the small fry go about the next day telling how Harlanger, or whatever his name is, has spoken his mind for once.

Whoso has five horses or less is a farmer, and he grumbles too. But it does not have the same weight, and is not worth spreading.

But whoso has no horses, and makes a pair of lean oxen draw his plow, is a cotter and must hold his tongue. In the tavern, in the town meeting, and everywhere. His opinion is worthless, and no regular farmer pays any attention to the poor beggar.

The professor of the Cobbler-Sebastian property, house number eight in Eynhofen, George Fottner by name, was a cotter. And a beggarly one at that. As to oxen, he had one, of cows very few, but a swarm of children. Four girls and three boys, making seven according to Adam Reese[A]; and when there was scarce enough food for the two old folks, it took good figuring and dividing to give the young ones something.

[Footnote A: popular arithmetic primer—TRANSLATOR.]

But in the country no one ever starved yet, and so the Fottners managed to pull their children through. As soon as one of them was eight or nine years old, it could begin to earn a bit, and of course there was no danger after it could quit school.

The girls soon went into service; of the boys the oldest, Georgie, stayed at home, the second, Vitus by name, went to the Shuller Farm, and the third—well, I am going to tell you about him.

Matthew his name was, and he came into the world long after the sixth child, and quite unexpectedly.

At that time Fottner was already fifty, and his wife was in the forties.

So in the opinion of all acquaintances there was absolutely no necessity of getting a seventh child to add to their six.

In its early years this child was weakly and puny to boot; its parents often thought it looked sickly and would soon become a little angel in Heaven. But it was not so; Matthew thrived, became a priest subsequently, and weighed in his prime two hundred and fifty, and not a pound less.

His choice of a clerical profession was unforeseen, and caused by nothing less than the pricks of conscience of the Upper-Bridge Farmer in Eynhofen.

The same had much money, no children, and a grievous sin that weighed on his heart. Years before he had perjured himself in a lawsuit with his neighbor and had won thereby.

At first he did not care much, for in swearing he had taken the precaution of turning down the fingers of his left hand. Venerable tradition has it that in this way the oath passes downward through the body into the ground, like a bolt striking a lightning-rod, and so can do no harm.



But the Bridge Farmer was a timid person, and as he grew older he brooded frequently over the affair, and resolved to repair the damage. That is, not the damage which the neighbor had suffered, but the disadvantages that might accrue to his own immortal soul.

Because we know nothing for certain, and because the Almighty Judge perhaps thought differently about the lightning-rod oath, and did not observe the Eynhofen tradition.

So he considered what and how much he must give in order to balance the account and make his merit outweigh his badness.

That was not simple and easy, for no one could tell him: So and so many masses will square you; but it was possible that he might make a miscount of one and lose everything.

The Bridge Farmer had never been stupid in his earthly affairs, and had often given too little, but never too much.

But in this deal with Heaven he thought more would be better, and as he had often read in the paper that nothing afforded a better claim on the next world than assistance in supplying priests for the many empty posts, he resolved to have a boy study for holy orders entirely at his own expense.

His choice fell upon Matthew Fottner, and this he rued more than once.

He should have considered more carefully the quality of the Fottner boy's intellectual endowments.

And he would have saved himself much vexation and much anxiety if he had taken more time and picked out some one else.

He was in too much of a hurry, and because the teacher said nothing against it and old man Fottner at once agreed with joy, he was satisfied.

Doubtless he took the priest at Eynhofen as an example, thinking that what he knew couldn't be hard to learn.

Now Matthew was not exactly stupid; but he had no very good head for studying, and his pleasure in it was not immoderate either.

When they told him that he was to become a priest, he was content, for the first thing he grasped was that he could then eat more and work less.

And so he went to the Latin School at Freising. The first three years were all right. Nothing brilliant, but good enough so he could show his reports at the parsonage when he came home for vacations.

And when the priest read that Matthew Fottner was of moderate talent and industry and was making sufficient progress, he would say each time in his fat voice: magnos progressus fecisti, discipule!

Matthew did not understand; nor did his father, who stood beside him. But the priest did not care for that.

He only said it for the sake of his reputation, so that certain doubters might see that he was a learned gentleman.

When folks talked about it in Eynhofen and told each other that Fottner's Matt could already talk Latin like a Roman, no one rejoiced more intensely than the Bridge Farmer.

That is comprehensible. For he had speculated in the scholarship of the lad, and watched him with rapt attention, as he would anything else that he had put money into.

So he was glad on general grounds, and especially so when Matt came home after the third year with glasses on his nose and an actually priestly look.

This tickled him to death, and he asked the teacher whether, in view of this circumstance, and inasmuch as Matt knew Latin, after all—more than was needed to read mass—whether it mightn't be possible to shorten the time.

When the teacher told him that such exceptions could not be made, he found it intelligible; but when the schoolmaster tried to explain the reason, saying that a priest didn't merely have to know the reading of the mass by heart, but must know even more, the Bridge Farmer shook his head and laughed a bit. He wasn't such a fool as to swallow that. Why did anybody have to learn more'n what he needed? Hey?

No, this is the way it was: them perfessers in Freising wanted to keep Matt a good long while, because they made money on him.

In this belief he was very much strengthened when Matthew Fottner flunked the fourth year in the Latin school. 'Count o' Greek. Because he couldn't learn Greek.

That made it as clear as day, for now the Bridge Farmer asked anybody, what did a priest have to know Greek for, when services and mass were celebrated in Latin?

They must be slick fellows, those gentlemen in Freising, reg'lar pickpockets.

He was all-fired mad at them, for he couldn't put any blame on the Fottner boy.

Matt told him that all he'd ever thought and known was that he'd simply have to study what the priest in Eynhofen knew. But he'd never heard him say a word of Greek all his life long, and so he hadn't been prepared for anything like that.

To this no objection could be made; on Matt's part the deal was straight and O. K. The rascality was on the part of the others, off there in Freising. The Bridge Farmer went to the priest and made complaint.

But thieves stand by each other, and the farmer gets done every time. The priest laughed at first, and said that was simply the law and he had had to learn it too; but when the Bridge Farmer doubted that, and told the priest, if that was the case, to celebrate mass once in Greek, and he would pay whatever it cost, his Reverence grew abusive and called the Bridge Farmer an impudent clod-hopper. Because he didn't know what to say, ye see?

Now things had come to the point where the Bridge Farmer had to make up his mind whether to try Matt again, or send somebody else to Freising who would figure on the Greek from the start.

If he did the latter, it would take three years more, and the money for the Fottner boy would be completely lost. And besides, nobody could tell whether they wouldn't think up something else there in Freising, if they couldn't trip up the new pupil on Greek. Therefore he resolved to have Matt try the thing once more, and admonished him that he'd just have to take a fresh hold and keep it.

This to be sure Fottner did not do, for he was no friend of toilsome head-work, but his teacher was himself a clergyman, who knew that the servants of God could officiate without learning, if need be. Therefore he preferred, purely from a sense of duty, not to injure Matt, and with Christian charity he let him be promoted the second year.

Matt came home as a member of the fifth form, and looked for all the world like a student.

He was already seventeen, and physically very much developed.

The Vicar of Aufhausen he overtopped by a head, and all his limbs were coarse and uncouth. And at this time also he lost his boyish voice and assumed a rasping bass.

When he foregathered with his school friends Joseph Scharl of Pettenbach and Martin Zollbert of Glonn, it was clear that he could drink vastly more than they, and that he already was well informed on all convivial regulations.

His class spirit was strong, and he would sing with his boon companions such college songs as "Vom hoh'n Olymp herab ward uns die Freude" or "Drum Bruederchen er-her-go biba-ha-mus"[A] so powerfully and loudly that the Bridge Farmer at the next table would be astonished at the scholarly attainments of the former village lad.

[Footnote A: Familiar drinking songs.—TRANSLATOR.]

And when Matt made his visit at the parsonage, he did not as in previous years request the cook to announce him, but handed her his calling card, on which was neatly printed:

Matthew Fottner stud. lit. et art.

Which means studiosus litterarum et artium, a devotee of letters and fine arts.

Old Fottner was proud of his son, on whom a faint reflection of his future dignity already rested, who was invited to dinner by the priest, took walks with the Vicar, and played tarot with the teacher and the chief of the constabulary.

And the Bridge Farmer was satisfied, too, even though he occasionally found the expenditures of his young protege somewhat large. But he said nothing, fearing that the latter might still lie down in the traces if he put too little oats before him.

So Matt spent a merry vacation, and marched back to Freising in October with renewed strength.

Unfortunately he was destined to fall on evil days. The master of the fifth form was a disagreeable man: strict and very caustic and sarcastic to boot.

The first time he saw this sky-scraping farmer lad, who did look queer enough on the school benches, he laughed and asked him whether he towered equally high above his fellow pupils in intellect. That this was not the case could not remain a secret, and then the bantering never ceased. At first the teacher really tried to strike sparks out of this stone; but when he found he could not, he soon enough gave up all hope.

Matthew Fottner made no objection at all when they no longer consulted his opinion on the Gallic War or Caius Julius Caesar, and conjugated the Greek verbs without his cooperation.

He laughed good-humoredly when every word in his exercises was underscored with red, and he marveled at the ambition of the little fellows before and beside him, disputing as to whether something was right or wrong.

But to be sure, given such a point of view, the end was easy to foresee, and in August the Bridge Farmer faced the same choice as two years before, whether or not to maintain his confidence in the Fottner youth.

That is, he really no longer had any choice, for now, after six years, he could not very well begin a new experiment with somebody else.

So he comforted himself with the reflection that a good horse pulls twice, and swallowed his bitter pill.

Doubtless he did make a wry face over it, and his joy of Matt had become diminished by a good bit; grave doubts began to stir in his heart as to whether a bona fide priest could be made out of this gawky Goliath.

But his bad humor was not contagious, at least not for Mr. Matthew Fottner.

The latter was a welcome guest during his vacation at all the taverns for ten miles around; and when he got out of money and was far from home, he remembered that a parsonage stands near every church, and would go in and ask for a viaticum (traveling money), which was due him as studiosus litterarum, a devotee of letters and fine arts.

And in so doing he would now and then encounter a young vicar, neophyte, or undergraduate, who would exchange reminiscences of Freising with him, and who, after the fifth pint of beer, would join in the fine songs: "Vom hoh'n Olymp herab ward uns die Freude" and "Bruederchen, er-her-go bi-ba-hamus."

When he again entered the seat of culture in October, his head was considerably thicker, his bass appreciably deeper, but otherwise everything was as before.

In the meantime he had not learned to love Caius Julius Caesar, nor to appreciate the Greek verbs; his teacher was as disagreeable as before, and the result at the close of the year was that Matt must once more forego promotion.

At the same time he was notified that he had passed the age limit and might not come back again. Now wouldn't that beat all?

So they were all out in the cold: old Fottner who had been so proud, the tavern-keeper who had already been joyfully looking forward to Matt's first mass, and the Catholic Church, which was losing such a pillar.

But most of all the Upper-Bridge Farmer of Eynhofen, whose whole deal with our Lord God was off. By all the devils, if that wasn't enough to madden a man and make him curse!

For seven long years he had had to pay over the nail, do nothing but pay, and no small sum, either; you can believe that. A mile away you could tell the quality of the fodder Matt had been standing in. And everything was in vain; on the heavenly record of the Bridge Farmer that lightning-rod oath was still written down, but there wasn't an ink-spot on the credit side.

For after all, nobody could suppose that our Lord God would let Matt's scholarly training be set down as anything to the good.

Such a miserable, outrageous piece of rascality surely had never existed before in the history of the world!

This time the rage of the Bridge Farmer was directed not merely against the teachers at Freising; the priest had enlightened him as to the fact that Matt was deficient in everything except tarot playing and beer-drinking. The ragamuffin, the good-for-nothing!

Now he was running around Eynhofen with glasses on his nose and a belly like an alderman. He looked like a regular Vicar, sure enough, who was going to begin reading mass the next day. And all the time he was nothing, absolutely nothing.

The only person who remained calm under these blows of fate was the quondam stud. lit. Matthew Fottner.

If he had studied longer and more, I should be fain to think he had learned this calm of soul from the seven wise men.

As it is, I must assume that it was inborn.

He had, to be sure, gained no treasure of classical learning for his future life, but he figured that in any case seven fat years had been accorded him, which no one could ever take from him again. Not even the Bridge Farmer with all his rage.

Why should man torment himself with thoughts of the future? The past is worth something, too, and especially such a jolly one as he had had in the secret tap-room of the Star Brewery, where he had sat with his boon-companions and had gradually mastered the art of draining a glass of beer at a draught. Where he had sung all the bully songs in the collection, such as "Crambambuli" and the "Bier la la," and the ever memorable and eternally beautiful "Drum Bruederchen er-her-go bi-ba-hamus."

Such recollections are also a treasure for life; and even if the sun-dried country bumpkins didn't understand it, jolly it had been all the same.

And the future couldn't be so terribly bad either.

For the time being he resolved to go into the army; he would have to serve his three years anyhow, and so it would be better if he reported right now. In this way he would get out of the Bridge Farmer's sight and be left in peace. He tried for the First Regiment of His Majesty's Grenadiers, and was accepted.

And if the Bridge Farmer wanted to, he could now sit in the Hofgarten and look with pride at the file-leader of the second company.

That head, which stuck up so big and red out of the collar of his uniform, had been fattened at the farmer's expense; and if it might have looked good over the black cassock, with the tonsure on the back of it, yet any just man must have admitted that it didn't make such a bad appearance over the white braid and the bright blue uniform.

To be sure, the present calling of the Fottner lad was not pleasing to God; but he himself liked it.

The food was not bad, and the one-year volunteers willingly treated the big fellow to a glass of beer when he introduced himself as fellow-student, boasting that he had not been left behind when his former confratres had had a little convivial matin celebration.

And as he showed himself apt in the drill manual, he gained the favor of the captain, and after only eight months he was duly appointed a petty officer.

All this would have been correct and pleasing, and all mankind, including Eynhofen, might have been satisfied with the life destiny of Matthew Fottner.

But a worm was gnawing at the heart of the Bridge Farmer.

It ate and ate and gave him no peace by day or night.

When other people lose all their prospects, they sigh, tie a heavy stone to their hopes, and sink them in the sea of forgetfulness.

A tenacious farmer does not do so; he keeps turning them over in his mind to see whether he cannot save a part, if he is not to have the whole.

And when the Bridge Farmer's anger had lost its edge, he again began to brood and plan.

But because it was a matter that concerned book-learning, his own wisdom did not satisfy him; so he resolved to go straight to the right shop and ask a priest's advice.

The one at Eynhofen he did not trust; not since that time long ago, when the priest had told him such barefaced lies about Greek.

But in Sintshausen, twelve miles off, there was a priest, the Reverend Joseph Shoebower, that one could put confidence in.

Oh, but he was a shrewd one; a deputy in the diet, three times as Catholic as the other "shepherds," and a hotheaded fighting-cock, who regularly chewed up Liberals with his salad and who set the king's Ministers dancing to the very maddest of tunes, until he finally got the best-paid post in the whole bishopric. To him our farmer went, for he would surely know some means of preventing such a robust churl as Matthew Fottner from being lost to the Church.

So he asked him whether you couldn't grease some one's palm,—the school at Freising, or the bishop, or some one.

"It is always a meritorious work," said the Reverend Shoebower, "when one invests his money for Catholic purposes; but in this case it would not do much good, for the certificate for admission to the university can only be got by an examination. At least as long as the civil power—I am sorry to say—still has the right to put in its oar in educational matters. But something else can be done, Bridge Farmer," he said, "if you are set on having Matt Fottner enter the ministry at all costs. There is a Collegium Germanicum in Rome, where German youths are trained by the Jesuits. They are very particular about faith, but as to education they close one eye in the interest of the faith."

"Hm," remarked the Bridge Farmer, "but I wonder if the masses that such a one reads, who's come all the way from Rome, have the same force."

"A bigger one, if anything, supposing that was possible at all," said the Reverend, "for you mustn't forget, Bridge Farmer, that the school in Rome is right near the Holy Father."

"Well, but I wonder if they require Greek there, too, and such like gammon."

"Only for the sake of appearances. Nobody will flunk on that account if he's all right in his faith, and pays his money correctly and in due season. But here in Germany Matthew Fottner can't be ordained."

"Well, I'd like to know why not?"

"Because those scoundrelly Prussians have made a law against it."

"Well now, aren't they a bad lot?"

"Right you are; and a lot worse than you think for. Probably Fottner would simply have to become a missionary. That ought to fill you with joy, for that's actually more deserving than to become priest here."

"Oh, but are you quite sure of that? I wouldn't want to have all those big expenses again and then have it turn out only a half-way business."

"It is certain and indisputable, for the messengers of the faith were always most highly honored."

The Bridge Farmer was happy, and went home from Sintshausen with his tail in the air.

Now everything must surely go right, and his plan would succeed.

They should make eyes in Freising when Matt Fottner got ordained in spite of them, or actually became a missionary who converts the Hindians, and whose masses count even more.

And the Eynhofen folks that were forever quizzing him in the tavern about his Latin officer, they should open their eyes, too, one of these days.

On the very next day he took the train to Munich. No joy is complete, and the palm of victory is never to be gained with easy toil.

This was the experience of the Bridge Farmer when he communicated his plan to the royal corporal Matthew Fottner.

The latter declared roundly that he neither wished to study nor to go out among the Hindians.

When the old man represented to him that he would only have to study a very little, he remarked that nothing at all was still better; and when the Bridge Farmer asseverated by all that was holy that he would become a saint, just like those plaster men in the church at Eynhofen, he replied that he didn't care a straw.

Everything was fruitless. The Bridge Farmer had to withdraw with his business undone, and with the old, gnawing worm in his heart. Nevertheless, he did not give up hope, but got after old Fottner and promised him the nicest things for his Matt.

For a long time it was in vain, but after about two years Heaven itself interposed and brought about a favorable turn of affairs.

The captain of the second company of His Majesty's Grenadiers was made a major. Into his position came a venomous gentleman who fairly pestered both troops and petty officers, and thus became an instrument of Holy Church.

For when Matthew Fottner was punished with solitary confinement for the second time, he resolved to serve no longer in the army and to give up altogether his purpose of reenlisting. Just at this time he received a letter from his father, which read as follows:

"DEER MATTY:

After waitin fur a long time I'll finely rite you the brijfarmer wuz heer agen Yestiddy an sez you cud becum a sanet an woodn haf to lern enythin ixcep that yood go to roam, deer matty think it over ef youd bee prest mung the hindeens but the furst mas sellabrayshun wood bee in the tavrn an by the way the brijfarmer sez hel pay you threthowzen marx too boot when yor dun. deer matty think it over wel and how mutch it wood pleez yor father. I didn rite this letter. Sensi rote it. I mus stop my ritin cuz the lite didn burn eny mor. With meni regards I reemane yor luving father. Good nite. Slepe wel and swete dreems. O revor mayx ushapy. Rite mee at wuns fur I cant wate fur yor ansur.

The letter had its effect. Corporal Fottner reflected that it woudn't be a bad life among the clerical gentlemen in Rome, better at any rate than in barracks under a captain who was so generous with the guard-house.

So he agreed, and when his time was up at the close of the summer maneuvres, he went to Eynhofen and got in writing the Bridge Farmer's promise relative to the three thousand marks.

When this matter had been arranged, and he had received a handsome sum for traveling expenses into the bargain, he set off for Rome.

For seven years he was not seen again; for seven years he dwelt as Fottnerus Eynhofenensis in the German College among the gentle Jesuits, who filed and polished at this four-square block for dear life. A high polish he did not get, but the worthy fathers thought it would suffice for the savages, and told him that the power of his faith would very well make amends for the lack of science.

Matthew Fottner had his own thoughts and said nothing.

For seven years old Fottner sat in his house, number eight in Eynhofen village, rejoicing over the future sanctity of his son; for seven years the inn-keeper kept figuring out in advance how many gallons of beer would be drunk at a first-class first-mass celebration; and for seven long years the Bridge Farmer went every month to the express office in Pettenbach and sent a postal money order to Roma, Collegio Germanico.

People grew old and gray; now there was a wedding and now a funeral; old Haberlschneider's house burned down, and Kloyber went bankrupt.

Little events in Eynhofen grew in numbers just like the big ones out in the world.

Until one day the priest—the new priest, for the old one had died three years before—announced from the chancel that on the 25th of July, the day of St. James the Apostle, the Reverend Licentiate Matthew Fottner would celebrate Holy Mass for the first time in Eynhofen. Then there was excitement and astonishment in the whole country round! In all the taverns men talked about it, and the old Bridge Farmer, who rarely went out any more since he had had his stroke, now sat in the barroom every day and gave back the taunts that he had had to take in times gone by.

A week before the celebration Matthew Fottner arrived. He was met at the station with a decorated carriage, and thirty lads on horseback escorted him.

A mile and a half from Eynhofen stood the first triumphal arch, which was adorned with fresh fir-branches and with blue and white flags.

At the entrance to the village another arch stood, and a third was set up near the tavern. From the steeple floated the yellow and white banner, salutes were crashing on the hill behind the Stackel Farm, and the Aufhausen band pealed out its ringing airs.

Now the carriage halted before the parental estate of the licentiate; Matthew Fottner descended and gave his father, his mother, and their other children his first blessing.

I must say he did have a clerical appearance and manner. His eyes had a mild glance, his chin was already double, and the movements of his fat hands had something well rounded, something actually dainty about them.

His speech was literary, emphasizing every syllable; he would now say that he had had a suf-fi-ci-en-cy, and that people had ma-ni-fest-ed much love to-ward him.

Of the file-leader in the second company of His Majesty's Grenadiers there was nothing left but the height and the uncouth feet and paws.

His sentiments were mild and kind. He forgave all who had in former days led him as-tray into temp-ta-tion, he forgave his parents and relatives and neighbors for having doubted him, he forgave the Bridge Farmer for having ut-ter-ed angry words to him, and he forgave everybody everything.

And he looked down with compassion and mercy on those sons of men who did not stand so close to the throne of God as he.

During the week preceding the first mass he paced from house to house and blessed all the people; the Bridge Farmer among them, who from that hour was unshaken in the belief that he was now square with our Lord God in the matter of that lightning-rod oath.

The first mass was celebrated with rare splendor; folks came from far and wide, for the blessing of a newly consecrated priest has especial power, and an old proverb says it is worth wearing out a pair of shoe-soles to get it.

The festival sermon was preached by the Very Reverend Joseph Shoebower, who had for years been Councillor for Spiritual Affairs and Papal Prelate.

He informed the awe-struck congregation into what a high, exalted, holy, incomparably holy, incomparably blessed calling the young priest was entering, and praised him in the most extravagant terms.

For you must know that Jesus Christ never was so praised on earth as a four-square young licentiate is praised nowadays.

After the spiritual feast came the secular one in the tavern, and no one can hope to imagine the magnificence of it.

Two oxen, three cows, a steer, eighteen calves, and twenty swine had been slaughtered by the host; and in addition countless geese, chickens, and ducks had to lose their lives. Two thousand gallons of beer were drunk, almost nine hundred more than the host had figured.

When the dishes were passed around to take up offerings during the festival dinner, the gifts flowed in so copiously that two thousand marks were left over for the licentiate.

It was an elevating occasion.

The people of Eynhofen thought the newly consecrated priest would board the very next ship and go off to the wild Hindians. Old Mrs. Fottner shed tears in advance, and all over the village they were telling tales of the dangers the missionaries had to undergo among the cannibals, who are wont to take such a martyr, stick a spit right through him, and then twist him slowly over the fire until he turns nice and brown.

But they little knew the honored son of Eynhofen, Matthew Fottner by name, if they thought he would have anything to do with that sort of enterprise.

He now had a fortune of five thousand marks; three thousand from the Bridge Farmer and two thousand from the special offering. With this capital he migrated to Switzerland and became a pastor in the Canton of Graubuenden. In those parts the people speak German as well as in Eynhofen, and they roast chickens and ducks on the spit, but no missionaries.

There Fottner spent his days in peace and contentment, and soon weighed two hundred and fifty, not a pound less.

For the Bridge Farmer, who would have liked to see Matt as a saint, this was a disappointment.

And for the Hindians too.

For they will never again enjoy the prospect of having a corporal of the Bavarian Royal Grenadiers come out to them as a missionary.



RUDOLF HANS BARTSCH

* * * * * *

THE STYRIAN WINE-CARTER

TRANSLATED BY BAYARD QUINCY MORGAN, PH.D. Assistant Professor of German, University of Wisconsin

Aye, any one not familiar with the Styrian-Carinthian highway through the valley of the Drau does not know what one of the good old Austrian imperial highroads in the good old days might undertake. Hop-up-and-down is its behavior, with snake-like humps, like a jumping polecat. Serpentine windings? Don't exist there. Straight as an arrow it heedlessly goes over mountain after mountain, down to the Drau and up again to airy heights, and any motorist who is slightly in a hurry will make a miniature descent into hell of some 250 feet, say beyond Voelkermarkt, approaching Lavamuend; the terrified shriek of the ladies is already resounding at the bottom, but their stomachs would still be on top of Voelkermarkt Hill, obeying the law of inertia, if they could have passed up through their mouths. And then immediately after, whee! up a fresh "mountain."

This is the way we treat the good old times nowadays. Was not that road, in its day, built to lengthen life? There you could ponder over your existence, for your little horses, like peripatetic philosophers, pushed onward with bobbing heads, laboriously and slowly, slowly.

Ah, but it is a beautiful road, beautiful! Beautiful enough to tarry on, to die on. The more remote from you, the higher rises, terrace-fashion, the titanic grandeur of the Alps. Clear to the south, the gigantic flight of the Sann Valley Dolomites sweeps on beyond the Obir, and then the ghostly pale Karawanken stare across at you. In the middle foreground the mighty plateaus of the Ferlacher and Eisenkappler Country gradually become quieter, and then comes the shining plain, crisscrossed into sections by groves and gold-gleaming fields, by pale-green marsh-meadows and red-blooming buckwheat. And with an abrupt descent from the road you come to the Drau far below, flowing with deep roar between steep banks thickly set with towering young spears of spruce, and tussling with rocky boulders; yet from the road one could not look down upon its battles there in the cool canyon, so precipitous are its banks, so densely black rises the legion of spruces. Only when a brook storms under the road and down to the Drau can one see its grayish flow and spume through the gap below—the stream that once halted the German language on its yearning flight toward the blue waves of that southern sea.

But we on the road, high up in the sunlight, send a whoop shooting like an arrow across river and plain into the divine vastness of the distance, toward the glimmering, rocky mountains, and salute as exultant children the Father of all that is mightiest in us.

Rarely, rarely nowadays does such a "ya-oo" flit from the wind-swept height across the valley. For the road has grown desolate and no longer carries weight. For hours at a time one may vainly hearken to the rustle of the woods, the deep rumble of the River Drau, without ever detecting the cheerful home-bound rattle of a rustic cart between pine-woods and the angle of a mountain. This proud, lofty road no longer serves a purpose on earth, that once was the soul of the Carinthian land.

Of all histories and human destinies those are the most conducive to meditation which are closely knitted together with a bit of universal fate, and so let me narrate here for the woeful diversion of men the story of Florian Hausbaum, who was once the youth and the song of this road.

Florian Hausbaum was a Styrian of the woods from Mahrenberg, that same superb, defiantly German Mahrenberg below which the Drau plunges over titanic boulders, and over which two churches stand face to face, tower against tower, like locomotives desirous of ramming each other; the old Slovene Church, and the new German-Evangelical Church.

But Florie Hausbaum's youth saw nothing of the future German death-struggle there in the wooded valley of the Drau. Every one was still singing the dear old songs, and Florian sang them best of all. He learned nothing, he never drudged, he merely sang, as forgetful of toil as the cricket of the south. And when it was time to go to work, the good-for-nothing did not care to earn his bread in the cool spruce-grown ravine with its saw-mills; his cheery, worthless soul felt drawn to the open, sunny country which reaches up a good stretch along the Drau westward of Marburg, until Bachern and Possruck bite together their bristly jaws at the river, making the region wild, precipitous, and rugged.

In sunny Marburg the wine flows down all the hills in streams to this very day. But at that time, more than forty years ago, there were three times as many vineyards, extending clear beyond Maria-Rast and Zellnitz, and Florian Hausbaum became a wine-carter and made trips into Carinthia.

And so he drove his nodding horses uphill and downhill through his native village across the border; and in Drauburg, in Lavamuend, in Voelkermarkt, and Klagenfurt, all the inn-keepers waited for him as the bringer of joy. And he was the lad for that. He sang all the way along the windblown road, and from all the windows men and maidens nodded to him.



Between Voelkermarkt and Lavamuend the liverymen had grown rich on the relaying which the excellent humps of the road brought them, and there they also had open purses and open hearts for wine. Hence at the two ends of his route, where the road did its maddest tricks, Florie was best loved and known: if for no other reason, because he had so much time on account of all the "getting his breath," staying over night, feeding, and changing horses.

He too liked best to dwell in that up-and-down world. For he had a girl in Drauburg, and one in Lavamuend; one at St. Martin and another at Eis close by (dangerous and burdensome sweethearting), one at Lippitzbach, one in Voelkermarkt, and a warm terminal station at Klagenfurt. These seven dear yearning creatures were just enough for him, but he was also just enough for them; for he never skipped one of them when he went his rounds.

He was a handsome fellow, of that becoming, jolly, light-blond type of Old Styria which is now beginning to grow rare among the men in the valley of the Drau. His eyes laughed; nothing else in the world laughed so, except his road, when the snow had melted away and the first trip began. Then the little puddles in the road, formed by the melting snow and rippled by the wind, looked at the sky out of a thousand bright blue eyes, and there was a wink and a smirk in them all the way from Drauburg to Klagenfurt.

He loved this road with all the power of his heart, which otherwise, i.e., for the girls, was far too gay. Besides, the girls changed, but the road remained. There was but the one, and it was unique.

His life obeyed the laws which God has given for Nature and wine. In the winter he lay quietly at Marburg, or made little wooden carts. But when February was past and the wine was seasoned, so that the new vintage was at last ready for transport, and when the snow trickled off the roads, then began his regal course, his bridal entry into Carinthia, his jubilant, earliest march of triumph.

He always wore a flower in his hat, and his nags each got one, too. But when in the early days of March he drove along the road, only just freed of snow, he would take a whole supply of violets with him, for in his blessed, sunny land these sometimes bloomed by the end of February in special sunny nooks. God of love, what eyes the forest-villagers along the Drau made at them, and still more the Carinthians, who often do not receive their violets from heaven before May! They scarcely would have primulas, while even Florie's horses were wearing violets on their collars, because he had kept them fresh between his casks.

To all the girls he brought the breath of the Styrian spring with him, and thus Florie Hausbaum fairly came to personify the spring-time over the whole length of the Carinthian Road, and as such he was cheered and loved like a young emperor.

He was happy.

The yellow-hammers perched near the road and sang, the larks rose high, the sun danced in bretzel-shaped figures in the mirroring puddles, the sparrows fought in exuberant glee over what Florie's horses had dropped for them, the relaying liverymen grinned, the inn-keepers stood planted before their doors waiting for him, and shouted Hooray, and beside him shook and gurgled the fragrant, mighty wine-casks.

But far before him longing girl-faces were waiting behind the windows near the long road. Love, love awaited him from one end of the road to the other. Whether it was the jubilee of his boon-companions, the relieved "At last!" of the inn-keepers, or the smothered sigh of the pretty girls—it was all a part of the same joy.

And these girls were so modest. First because they were Carinthians (where you don't always have to marry right away), and then because Florie had always been away all winter, so that nothing but woeful legend and delightful little stories about him were current. So recollection was at work in the yearning girlish hearts, and it made him twice as cheerful, as golden, as laughing, as slender and handsome, as he was.

But in March he would come along singing and with a violet in his hat, and as full of intoxicating power as his casks, and would make them all happy, inn-keepers and girls; there was a quatrain about him which all the lads along the Carinthian Road used to sing when they wanted to tease the love-sick girls. It went this way:

"A vi'let from the roadside, a kiss for the night: The Styrian wine-carter is my delight."

He knew what he meant to them all; he knew the feeling of happiness that radiated from him, and often when he creaked along the road in his wagon until far into the quiet, hissing night of the Foehn, and the gleam of a lighted window replied to the swaying light of his lantern on the horse-collar, he himself would send that same little ditty out into the yearning, burning spring night with his strong, clear voice, making the sleepless girls that heard it bite their pillows with delight.

Such a night it was that brought him a small misfortune and a great triumph. On that confounded Voelkermarkt Hump his cart had got onto the slope, while he was still filled with the echoes of the sweetness for the sake of which he had outstayed his time in Lippitzbach. There he had been received as the outstretched arms of the trees welcome the roaring Foehn, or the waiting spring earth a warm rain. Now as he drove on, happiness was still bounding within him, a sea of dreams, but late, late was the hour. So he drove through the entire night, and at the gray dawn he had reached the height opposite the Voelkermarkt Hollow. This time he was carting a delicious wine, which seldom grew in Styria. Farmer Pfriemer in Marburg had become a sworn rival of the Hungarians, and had begun to export a dark red wine, called Vinaria, so that the Carinthians might henceforth get a red wine from Styria, too. The first vintage had turned out sweet and heavy, and now Florian Hausbaum was carting the seasoned beverage up to Voelkermarkt in two casks, one of them tremendous, the other of very respectable size.

But while he was dreaming thus, his horses had already turned down the hill. The cart exerted enormous pressure and took the horses off their feet; at this moment the Styrian wine-carter started into wakefulness, and while the wagon was thundering downhill with more and more terrifying speed, he loosened the drag and threw it under the hind wheel, and at this abrupt braking the wagon leaped mightily into the air, like a startled rhinoceros. One of the poles on the side cracked, and the smaller cask toppled over and fell from the cart with a heavy bum-bum-bum-bum. Florie had tried to throw his weight against it, but the cask gave his head a severe slanting blow before dropping full weight into the road.

A stave had sprung, and the pressure made the deep-red fluid gurgle out in a flood. The white dust of the road, became ruddy. The young carter had just enough presence of mind to roll the heavy wine-cask into the grass, and then increasing faintness reeled about him. But with his last thought he clung to his wine. As he sank down he pressed his body against the crack from which the wine was streaming out, the cask leaned heavily against him and crushed him against the ground—and then he knew nothing more.

Many voices wakened him. A girl was crying, an old woman was storming, the inn-keeper called him by name, the heavy scent of new wine hung about him. A crowd of people stood around, and the cart was gone, and the cask resting on him the men pulled away, so that the wine at once leaped forth again. So they turned the damaged spot up. But he still lay there as formerly in his delight he had gone along the road, with his jacket torn open to let the air of spring cool his heart. Only his festive white shirt had become spotted with red from the spilled wine.

The keeper of the Ox Inn at Voelkermarkt, however, nearly fell upon him and kissed him. He had already been waiting on the hill-top when he saw the masterless cart, with the one cask, arrive at the bottom of Steil Valley and stand there; for of themselves the horses would not climb the hill. Then he had run for aid, and with him everybody that had been waiting for wine and Florie, and two score people had seen how the faithful Florian, in spite of unconsciousness and pain, had with his own body guarded the wine and prevented its escape.

That was a Styrian wine-carter!

Hausbaum was told the whole story while everything was still reeling about him and head and ribs ached. He had already begun to weep like a child; but when he learned of his heroic deed, his lips drew down only four or five times more; then his mouth changed from a horseshoe into a broad line, and at the end Florie laughed all over his face and so overpoweringly that all joined in.

Now he was carried in triumph to Voelkermarkt, found his horses sound and contented, and was extolled for the hero he was. For he had preserved a sacred treasure for Voelkermarkt.

This tale ran over half the Carinthian land, and that was the climax and the highest prosperity of Florian Hausbaum's bright life.

Then, however, his fortunes, his renown, and his importance declined all at once. Love and acclamation died away, and his calling with all its joys was crushed with him. And that was because, far below in the plain across the Drau, the railroad was built.

For another year Florie Hausbaum proudly and loftily carted his wine into the Carinthian land. Far below him, beyond the stream, they were working on the long iron serpent; but he did not even look at it.

In the second year he only carted his wine until the early days of summer. But even on his spring trip his heart grew anxious and heavy. The girls were no longer starved with love-pangs as formerly, not at all, for the handsome young engineers, and then the foremen and bosses, were turning things upside down. There had been dances, dances at Carnival time, even in the smallest villages.

And then came the day on which the first locomotive, decked out with flags, branches, ribbons, and flowers, pulled a whole trainful of jubilation from Marburg to Klagenfurt. Thirty young girls from the Styrian wine-centre were on the train in their festal finery, going to dance with the lads of Klagenfurt. All sang and shouted for joy because the new time had come, the time of youth.

But high up on the lonely road the fair-haired carter, who had meanwhile reached the shady side of thirty, held his hat with its fading bouquet before his face. The horses pulled till they trembled, but below them the iron serpent crawled along, overtook them without effort, and was lost to sight far ahead. Only a long, mocking whistle came to them from the distance, from the wooded moors beyond the Drau, wafted to them by wide-ranging breezes. From that day on it was the railroad that carried wine and love, wood and happiness, wares and hope.

But on the heights above Florian Hausbaum was making his last trip. His employer had given him notice. He let his quivering horses rest, and where in other days an outburst of happiness had made him send a halloo from the fairest spot far out across the conquered depths toward the Alps, there he now wept for a whole silly stretch.

Henceforth the road was desolate, at one blow—and no one even drove a cart over it any more. The manure which the farmers had conveyed to their fields was almost the only one of this world's goods which it still carried.

As for Florian Hausbaum, he became a driver for the Ox Inn at Voelkermarkt; that was a little consolation, at least; to settle down here on the scene of former triumphs, and ever and again to be able to drive at least a little load of grain or wood over the beloved road. To be sure, he could no longer reach all his girls with these present trips. Nor did they need it, for now there was other supply. From over yonder, from across the Drau, from Praevali, Bleiburg, and Kuehnsdorf, and also from Rueckersdorf and Grafenstein, and not to mention the provincial capital, from there came the new foes, who wore such handsome red caps when on duty, as resplendent as officers with their black velvet lapels and the gold rosettes and winged wheels. They were the young railroad officials, pupils and assistants, and each one was the Casanova of his district! In those small places there were no other uniforms, and what was the bouquet on Florian's hat worth, compared with those caps with gold braid and rosette! They took away his Lisi, Marianne at St. Martin, and the passionate beauty Resele in the little hamlet of Eis. At Klagenfurt and Voelkermarkt they danced all the girls away before his very nose, and it was just the winter, toward which he had looked forward with joyful anticipation, which became the way of the cross for him, where each stopping-place meant the end of a love and loyalty. Florie's best quality, his rarity, was of course gone; from now on he was always on hand, after all, and more than that, he was no longer the bringer of joy, the messenger of the thawing breeze, as of yore.

He defended his position with the girls; but as full-bred Styrian he began quarrels and brawls with his rivals on the railroad, instead of becoming a railroad man himself. So he was locked up in Klagenfurt for a couple of weeks, and for the first time this man, hitherto so open-hearted, so totally without reserve, developed a secret emotional life: hate of the railroad, and love for his deserted highway.

In reality it was love for his fleeting youth, the unquenchable thirst of yearning desire for the past, memory! But because the road had been the scene of his eternally faded greatness, therefore he attached all this love to it.

The years dropped out of sight in gnawing conflicts with his steadily thickening blood, and youth was where the violets of Marburg were, and the songs, and the new wine: with new generations.

For three or four years, indeed, Florie still lived on the echoes of his victorious days, and was still widely and warmly welcomed. But more and more strange faces came into the village, and new generations grew up that had not understood him in his glory of old. Girls of eighteen and twenty began to develop out of the children of that day, and these looked upon carter Hausbaum as a relic "of the time before the railroad came," as a venerable ancestor.

Rarer and rarer grew those admirers who would pound on the tavern table, saying, "Ah, old Florie, that was a devil of a lad for you!" So he himself began to play the narrator, and fiercely defended his own legend. But the more he had to tell, the older he appeared to the petticoated sex.

At first he was willingly listened to; then he was regarded as played out. Now he no longer talked with the old sorrowful ease, but with passionate bawling and irritation. He boastfully forced his stories upon people, and lost respect all the more.

Only the road, the old road remained his last sweetheart and remained quiet and faithful; both had become despised and useless, but they had clung to each other. Only, when he now drove over it—alas, how that too had changed. Formerly he brought along the new wine with the new spring.

Now he creaked along with the fire-wood for the winter.

His employer had begun a large business in wood; that made Hausbaum's carting period come in the fall. And so his little wagon again groaned over the deserted road, uphill, downhill, without his meeting a human soul. No driver but he was to be seen; he was like the ghost of the old road. The autumn tempest lodged in the canyon of the Drau, rebounded from all sides and whirled up, bidding him pull his old felt hat, on which he had long since given up putting any flowers, far down on his forehead. The land shook in the roaring sweep of a wrath of Doomsday, and his aging bones shivered. It was ending, ending; and where the larks of spring had once whirred about him, there he was now surrounded by the tittering dances of the withered leaves.

There he often saw once more the old houses with the little windows behind which he had had his girls, more of them and prettier ones than any lad in the land. But they had all married out of the houses or moved away, or had stayed on the spot and become care-worn housekeepers and mothers, who did not care to recognize him. The windows stared blindly at him, and no longer knew him for whom they had once opened like little gates of paradise, in passionate nights of spring. They had grown dull and gloomy; God knew who was now squatting behind them. But when from under one of the windows, despite the late October days, there came the breath of asters and everlasting, and some fresh young girl-face gazed in surprise toward the bony bachelor, who looked over inquiringly as with accursed, forlorn eyes, then his old heart would double up like a fist within him and cause him great pain.

It was all over; like fireworks.

And then, then even his very last sweetheart, which he had regarded as inalienable, was snatched from him: the highroad.

The first enemy he had merely followed with horrified eyes: the stinking, dust-whirling rattle-box, which flung the old road behind it as a spendthrift flings the precious money. But they kept coming oftener, the loud-colored power vehicles; faster and faster they became, and harder and harder it was for the carter's old hands to control the madly rearing horses.

In former days he had always walked beside his horses. Now that he had grown old and gray, he was very often glad to perch on the seat and doze there. But just when a short dream had helped him to forget the bitter change in his life, another of those monsters would roar behind him its spiteful, deep "too-oot, too-oot." Then it behooved him to jump down in a hurry, pull the nags to one side, and speak to the excited creatures words of calm, of love and kindness, while his old heart rose into his throat with fright and hate. But the unknown, insolent machine was already far ahead, and away off on that terrible hill where the carter's horses quivered and stamped, where he had to breathe them nine times and smoked a whole pipe of tobacco before he reached the top, he would see the monster whizzing upward. As with a shout of joy it stormed the ascent, so that it seemed to fly out into the air at the top, before it was engulfed by the next hollow. And mockingly, already at an incredible distance, the "too-oot, too-oot" would come back to him, its bawling tones seeming to ooze away.

The low curs! Their love for this road was like that of the sportsman for the shy pigeons: love to shoot them. They joyously sought out this hundred-hilled stretch, and they exulted when they rolled over these great humps on the second or even the third speed. It was a delight to make a mock of the old road. Landscape? Beauty? It was ahead, never anywhere but ahead, ahead.

Florian Hausbaum had thought he must die of wrath and woe when these road-gobblers appeared, and yet the opposite happened: he had a new lease of life. At last he had something that once more linked him to this earth; and if it was a hatred, it led him back to men! Now they all understood him, now he could once more get first hearing in all the taverns; he could tell of dangers he had escaped, so that half a village would hastily collect to hear him repeat the tale; he might curse and threat without being ridiculed, think up tricks to play, and wage malicious battles, and once again the bar-rooms resounded with the old cry, long silenced, "Hooray, Florie, good for you! A reg'lar devil, that Hausbaum. Eyah, that's the old Styrian wine-carter for you!"

He found assent, approval, confirmation, wherever he went, and his superb white hair silenced all contradiction. Venerable and mighty was the hatred of Florian Hausbaum in all the land, and the eyes of the old carter again began to sparkle, his cheeks to look red, and his heart swelled, making the old man look magnificent. He had something to live for!

On a Sunday in spring he was standing at one end of Voelkermarkt, in the midst of the men-folk who had come from church and were now puffing at their holiday pipes in God's delicious, mild air. There came a red motor through the place, quite slowly. A gentle and just citizen was riding in it, who himself hated the brutality of the speed-maniacs, and had accustomed himself to drive through towns with the mildness of a milk-wagon.

Old Hausbaum was still raging at the last "filthy brute," who had shot through the scattering holiday crowd like a barbarian on his scythed chariot in the battles of old. His pent-up rage was now vented upon these travelers, who came so opportunely into his clutches. He jumped into the path of the machine, the gentleman slowed down still more and tooted his horn. But Florian Hausbaum did not yield his ground. So the vehicle stopped.

And now it burst forth, the great speech of the old wine-carter; the mightiest one in the life of the Styrian, Florian Hausbaum:

"You wind-belchers! You road-stinkers, who sent for you? D' you bring any money into the land? Naw! D' you ever get out even once in Grafenstein, in Voelkermarkt, in Lippitzbach? Or at Eis, at Lavamuend, at Drauburg or Hohenmauten or Mahrenberg? Naw! You've come from the city, you tiresome city-dudes and you women with your faces tied up as if you had the tooth-ache, and you never stop till you're in Marburg again, or maybe in Graz, 'cause the country inn-keeper's little bit o' grub ain't good enough for you. But to run down the poor farmer's last goose, run over children, drive horses crazy, torment their drivers, cover the Lord God's grain with dust, and dirty up the hay so 't not a beast'll take a mouthful of it, go bellowing past the church just when the pastor's talking inside about the Kingdom o' Heaven, and not only that, but stink like the devil, that's what you like! You're sent by the devil, you look like the devil, you haven't got any more justice or mercy than he has, and now go and drive to the devil and break your necks, that's my wish for you. There, now you can go on stinking!"

The ladies in the automobile scolded, the farmers round about pressed forward threateningly; but the gentleman driving, a quiet, composed person, merely looked sadly at the gendarme who came hurrying up, and said, "Did you hear all that? Make way for us at least, so that we shall not be torn to pieces."

He had to crank again. Then he drove away, down into the deep valley and up the hill beyond and away; but Florian Hausbaum stood like Siegfried after the battle with the dragon.

The gendarme said to him with some reproach, "Right you were, Florie. But if the gentleman goes to law, I'll have to testify against you. Then it'll go hard with you; do be sensible in your old age!" And he went.

But all the rest were of the opinion that it was quite impossible to be sensible about this, and Florian was loudly applauded. "That was fine, what you told 'em! Eyah, old Florie. That's right, Styrian folks know how to use their tongues."

The old carter was quite intoxicated with success and praise. He knew that his renown would go circling out over the whole country-side, and every farmer who had been at church this day would carry home the mighty speech of Florian Hausbaum more accurately than the sermon. He was great as in the olden days, and his heart swelled with pride.

Then came the shriek of a siren from the other end of the village. "Another stinking devil," they said. "Get out of the road, Florie."

But the old carter remained standing there with widespread feet, and his white hair blew about wildly in the spring breeze. He knew that signal; it came from a great machine that tore through the country every day, as if the point were to rescue and prevent a misfortune, instead of conjuring up one. And this machine was hated throughout the whole Carinthian land.

"Here I stand," shouted the old man in a frenzy, "and here I'll stay and not let a single auto out o' the village!"

He had just had a pleasant experience, and thought every machine would stop for him like the last one. But the monster was already at hand, and as for stopping, it could not even if the driver had wished to. An angry shout in the machine, a horrified wail rising from a hundred voices, and with a mighty leap the automobile crashed over the toppled obstacle, jumped, dragged, and tore itself along for ten full paces more, despite brakes and cut-out, and not until then did it come to a stop. The occupants, wealthy young people, leaped out. There lay Florie Hausbaum by the roadside.

The automobile had fatally injured him and hurled him to one side. Now every one ran for aid, and the giddy young people cursed the fact that their machine was so well known; they feared that assistance here would be dangerous. But not a soul said a cross word to them. So they knelt beside the injured white-bearded victim, wiped the blood from his face, and opened his vest,

As the physician was working over him, Florian Hausbaum awoke once more in this life.

He looked about him, and drew breaths of pain and affliction. But the wonderful spring air of that day penetrated even his crushed lungs like a mild wine in a parched throat. Intoxicating was this air, as of yore; weak and peaceful, victorious and beloved he was, as of yore: when he had saved the precious red wine.

Then, in his wandering mind, all his evil days vanished, and all hatred. Age was forgotten, and at this moment, when his soul began to flutter its wings like a new butterfly, all the foregoing was blotted out; there was no longer any suffering, nor dying. Timeless! There was nothing but spring air, lovely, hopeful spring air. And truly, the evil days of old age, of mockery, and of the railroad, of autumn tempests on the road, of a pulse that slackened in the veins—nothing of this could stand its ground. It was all a mere dream.

For he felt as weak and as happy as on the day when he had almost sacrificed his glorious youth for a cask of wine. And look, here were the moist, dark-red spots in the sunlit dust of the road, and the ruby red on his Sunday shirt flamed even more intensely.

So an unexampled happiness reeled through the Styrian wine-carter's mind, because his life's greatest day and his deed of heroism were still upon him. He sobbed in pain and joy, "Leave me and catch the precious wine. It must not run out. People, the sacred wine!"

And with the happiness of intoxication he sank into the roseate dream of eternity.



EMIL STRAUSS

* * * * * *

MARA (1909)

TRANSLATED BY WILLIAM GUILD HOWARD Assistant Professor of German, Harvard University

It was in a Brazilian city. One morning I awoke early and felt my heart so full of repugnance to all life that I shut my eyes again and wondered what sort of dream could have left me in this feverish state of mind. But I could not recollect that I had had any dream; in the middle of the night, aroused by a creaking casement, I had started up out of a dreamless slumber. Whence came, then, for the second and the third time this darkness in me, this torturing feeling of oppression at every breath, this piteous longing never to have waked up and never again to have to wake up? I had gone contentedly to bed, and had slept a deep and peaceful sleep.

Confidingly and unguardedly you yield to fatigue and give yourself over to rest—what demon is it that then enters through the open portal, inoculates your heart with a black drop, stirs up and discolors and poisons with it all your blood until, foul and heavy as lead, it forces its way through your heart?

Or is it I—I who am that demon! As the dark bottom of a deep well is lighted up and revealed by the perpendicular rays of the sun only when the water above is quiet and clear as crystal—is it thus that the true color of my being stands forth from deep sleep when the will-o'-the-wisps of waking and dreaming are banished, and that color irradiates and fills its domain, and is just grazed by the abrupt ray of suddenly awaking consciousness?

There it is once for all, and there is no escaping it! What is this darkness? Is it a phantom and a weakness? Is it only an enemy who challenges you and vanishes away in proportion as your own self enlarges? Is it death slowly developing in you?

It is intolerable. If this pillow were saturated with mortal poison, you would take the corner between your lips as the infant takes his mother's breast, and would drink release from your troubles. But if the poison stood over there in the other corner of the room, the mere ten paces to reach it would carry you too far back into life again! And yet tomorrow, or a few days hence, there will be moments when this darkness will suddenly surge up in you and consume you as though it were fire, so that you shrivel up within yourself and cannot excuse in your own eyes the shame of living. Yes, even though you can calmly look back upon this thing, smile at it like a reasonable man and joke about it, even then there is a secret fibre in your being which yearns for that darkness, which shudders in pride and awe of it, which has a premonition that in it there is something purer than all light and all joy.

In search of protection from such worrying phantasms I finally opened my eyes and turned toward the open window. But what I saw outside was so surprising that I closed my eyes again and cried, "What the devil is that?"

Having recovered my composure and the consciousness that I had senses, I opened my eyes once more and peered out: but on the ridge-pole of the adjacent farm building, like doves on a German stable, there still sat at regular intervals five vultures, immovable and waiting. As though cut out of black paper, they seemed pasted on the gleaming blue morning sky.

"Shameless fellows!" I ejaculated. "I must admit that I have been philosophizing here to myself like a dead dog; but I am not yet ready for you by a good deal!" They remained quietly sitting there.

Franz Wilhelm Voigt

Then I jumped out of bed, took an orange from the fruit plate on the table, and threw it at the creatures. The orange flew neatly between two of them; the vulture perched nearest to its path straightened up, inquisitively turned his head with the greedy eyes to right and left, and then drew his head back again. And in their imperturbable, diabolical serenity the old fellows remained sitting on their perch, as uncanny as the stone gargoyles on the towers of Notre Dame in Paris.

I was not disposed to let these amiable beasts feast their eyes on me any longer; so I quickly took my bath, and dressed.

Although this day was still vacation, I made my rounds through the empty bedrooms and said to the only boy who—because his tuition had not been paid—had been required to spend the holidays at the boarding school, that he might as well roll over on his other side; on the morrow he should have once more to get under the douche at six o'clock in the morning. He really did not need, in vacation time, to pull the wool over my eyes, but even today he tried to make me believe he was fond of bathing. Not to be outdone in courtesy, I pretended to be convinced of the fact. And so we separated with mutual satisfaction.

Now I stepped up to the housekeeper's chamber door. As yet, the resounding report—one could hear it all over the house—with which at evening her bolt was drawn, and in the morning drawn back, had not announced to us that Donna Leocadia de Silva Soares e Pimentel had arrayed herself for contact with the hostile sex; therefore I cautiously approached the door and listened. But when I heard the sound of footsteps within, going back and forth with a tread appropriate to the name as well as to the bodily frame of the Senhora, I plucked up courage, knocked, and, retreating a pace, reported that I should breakfast in town. At the moment I could have said little that would have been more agreeable to the lady. Now she was most happily relieved of the necessity of dressing decently, early this blessed morning, merely in order to place a cup on the table before me and fill it with coffee; nevertheless, she assured me in the most touching tones of her regret that she must dispense with my agreeable company and drink her coffee alone. I replied that her regret was a source of pride to me, made a bow to the door, and departed.

In the courtyard I found the five black brethren still perching on the shed roof; I tried to scare them away by clapping my hands; they did not refer this action to themselves.

When I passed under the window of Donna Leocadia, it opened with a crash, and in a white dressing jacket that had been kept out of the wash for quite too long a time, the overflowing forms of the upper part of the lady's body settled into an easy position in the window frame. She bowed her head of black hair done up in blue and red curlpapers, and rolled her fine great stupid brown eyes. I merely waved my hat and strode on. At the garden gate I met the mulatto boy Alcides, who was just bringing the breakfast rolls in an open basket from the main house of the institution, across the street. I stopped him and asked why he was again carrying the bread in an open basket, instead of throwing a napkin over it, as he was supposed to do.

"Forgot it," he replied with an unconcerned shrug; for one had to speak to him more emphatically. I therefore selected from the Portuguese vocabulary of abuse, which is as massive and opulent as that of any Romance language whatever, a few juicy morsels, and swore that if this carelessness happened again I would shut the fellow up in the dark chamber and give him twenty-four hours to fix his duty in mind. He made a grimace.

"You may thank God," I cried, "that I haven't any gloves on. If I had, I would pound your face until you hadn't an eye or a tooth left in the right place!"

He contemptuously showed his two porcelain rows of white teeth.

In anger I made for him—he turned round, and I drew back for a mighty kick; but to my disgrace, the mishued curmudgeon knew how to frustrate my effort; the heel of my boot came in all too slight touch with the hostile posterior, I was hurled about by the momentum of my shot that missed its mark, and suddenly stood facing in the opposite direction. I had to laugh at myself. But Alcides made a quick move round the corner of the house. Donna Leocadia, whose corpulence still filled the window, called to me that I was always too good-natured; I ought not to have let the rascal run away, but ought to have banged his head several times against the wall. Then with an undulating lurch she got up and stepped back from the window, to receive the fellow in her room; she was not so squeamish as I, and she generally, moreover, had not washed her hands.

In the most cheerful frame of mind I now walked along the streets, which were still fairly cool with the freshness of the morning. I bought a copy of the latest newspaper, seated myself in the cane chair of a bootblack, got a shine, and read my paper. Then I entered a cafe and in deliberate European comfort sipped a cup of coffee with cream, and pitied the Brazilians, who hastily sat down at the nearest table they could find, stirred an enormous quantity of sugar in their thimbleful of coffee, poured the mixture down their throats, and rushed out into the street again, as though there or elsewhere they had anything whatever to do. I enjoyed my coffee as much as one can enjoy good coffee, and did not commit the impropriety of ordering a second cup, but bought of the tobacconist in the establishment a package of those cigarettes—not so much good, as genuine, Brazilian—which are rolled in corn straw instead of in paper. Leaning against a door-post, I remained standing there, gazed across the street, unrolled one of the cigarettes, poured the granular black tobacco into the palm of my hand, decanted it back into the corn leaf, and lighted the preparation. I looked across the street and was infinitely happy, though there was not much to see. Only a few people were passing in one direction or the other, for the most part with a newspaper fresh from the press in their hands. One man stood at the curb and had his boots blacked. A street car went rumbling by; the driver lashed his mules, one of which kicked out behind and struck the dashboard with both hoofs a thwack that resounded the length of the street.

Throwing away the stub of my cigarette, I now started off and loitered along. What should I do? Go to the book store and look at French books—continue my reading in Faubert's letters? No hurry; nobody will buy them anyway! The air is still too fine.

Or shall I go to the editorial rooms of the German newspaper and see my friend from Vienna, smoke a decent cigar, talk over the news, talk about young Vienna, about Hermann Bahr who in his furor teutonicus smashed a beer mug on the head of a Bohemian? About Loris, who is still a very young man, not permitted as yet to go alone to join his literary friends at the cafe—his father insists upon accompanying him—"I tell you what, a marvelous genius!"—?—But the upshot of the matter will be, he will lock me in when I am not noticing, and will keep me there until I have ground out an article for his paper. And the weather is really too fine for that.

Thereupon I was roused from my revery by a breath of sultry fragrance. I turned in the direction from which I heard footsteps, and caught sight of the tropical profile of a young lady, who with eyes looking straight ahead was going her way. Her simple, handsome face was not yellow, but of a hot-blooded, fine brown, which as the sign of aboriginal vitality is charming, and immediately made me breathe hard. Now, as if by chance, a calm glance of the great dark eye, the white of which was as soft as mother of pearl, fell upon me, and then a second, quick glance, which toppled me over like a stroke of lightning; thereupon the profile was turned somewhat rigidly forward again. Never losing sight of the daintily plump figure in the white lace gown, I gradually made way for her to pass by me; and if I had taken pleasure in contemplation of the face, I took, if possible, still more pleasure in contemplation of the easy walk which animated her whole body with its graceful rhythm.

In this manner we approached a cross street.

Then, as she stepped down from the sidewalk, she made a false calculation and swung herself somewhat too far forward; her foot came down hard upon the pavement, her whole body felt the shock, she stumbled, and her beauty was gone as quickly as a house built of cards collapses. I stood still for a moment, then I turned in my tracks, saying, "What a B[oe]otian and Hyperborean you are! Is there anything more fragile than enjoyment? Is there anything more sensitive to injury than grace? Did you not know that? If you had not followed this poor girl, she would have cleared the barrier as gracefully as a kitten; now she is as much ashamed as though you had seen her in her petticoat." I looked once more in her direction; sure enough, she too was looking round, with a flushed face and stupid, anxious eyes. O these soulful eyes, eyes like the roe, the antelope, the gazelle, or any other creature known to zoology. God be with them, and spare me!

Now I at once knew where to go and turned my steps toward the new streets farther out in the country, which are occupied principally by Germans. There I had a kind of sweetheart, all for the sake of her eyes. This had come to pass as follows:

After I had been several months in this beautiful and affluent country, and, whether in the midst of my boys at school or among the people at the theatre, in the circus, or in the cafe, kept seeing in the women, to whom I paid eager attention, always the same great dark eyes, these eyes began to pall upon me. Why? In Germany, by contrast to our cerulean blue, steel blue, greenish, and iron gray eyes, brown ones had often seemed to me especially beautiful and touched my heart as nothing else could do. Now they bored me. Always the same apparent expression of strength, which goes back to the contrast between the dark pupil and the surrounding white, and in turn between this white and the dusky skin; always, even on the most indifferent occasions, this pregnant glance, this rolling and melting! "Anyhow," I asked myself one day, "why have all these people replaced their human eyes with the eyes of animals?" I began, when on the streets, to look about for light-colored eyes, for glances which had something of the clearness of the sky or the wave in spring time, something of the lustre and translucency of a November mist, something of the keen brilliancy of an ice crystal. I paid attention once more to the people of the Northern Hemisphere, whom heretofore I had avoided, and these people of the North are, of course, mostly Germans.

Now it happened that one morning in those days I was going my way, and, in order to keep in the shade, sticking as closely as might be to the houses. Then out of a low window in the ground floor of one of these houses a hand shot out right before me, holding a dust-cloth, which it was about to shake; and I should naturally have got the full benefit of the operation. With a quick grasp I seized the hand by the wrist; and not until I had so secured myself could I look up to see to whom the hand belonged. The girl stood inclined somewhat forward, leaning on her other hand, and stared at me with great startled eyes, the most transparent, silvery-gleaming eyes that I remember ever to have seen.

I was so surprised that I lost all my audacity; but I still kept a firm hold of her hand. And so she was after all the first to recover her power of speech, and she said, "Pardon me."

"On the contrary, I thank you," I replied, rising on my toes, kissing her hand, and then releasing it.

She made no answer, her expression became troubled, she struggled with herself, her eyes filled with tears, and I felt that I had done violence to an innocent heart. That pained me and I blurted out, "Shake the cloth in my face! I have offended you. It was not my intention; but let me have my punishment."

"Not for the world!" she responded. "How can a man say such a thing!"

I looked at her in amazement and curiosity. Was that meant to be a reprimand? Did she strike a blow and pretend the while to put far away from her any such intention? No. Her eyes beamed appeasement and also appeasingly; surrendering myself to her, I had disarmed her resentment. Nevertheless, I continued, "He who can say such a thing has no right, then, to wear hair on his face? I shall presently go straight to the barber's. I have been so proud of my manliness! But—repulsed with loss! And, to make a clean breast of it, for an opportunity like this I would gladly remain a foolish youth a long while yet; like silly Jack, you know, in the fairy tale, who is always doing foolish things; but the princess with the blue eyes does not think any the worse of him on that account!"

Pricking up her ears and collecting her thoughts, she looked at me half roguishly out of the corner of her eye; then she shook her head with its heavy braids and said, "I do not understand you. You are so comical. You must talk quite simply to me."

She looked so charmingly simple that I forgot my speech and watched her standing there, so youthful and radiant in the window frame, against the dark background of the room. Everything about her was healthful and strong: her figure in the blue washable dress, her round throat, her well formed face, in which eyes and teeth gleamed brightly; but the abundance of her chestnut braids was so heavy that her neck seemed hardly able to support them.

"What sort of follies did silly Jack commit?" she asked when I became silent.

"I don't know myself; but when he came to woo the princess, and was asked what present he had brought her, he pulled a handful of mud out of his pocket and filled her white hands with it. She liked that so well that she took him for her husband."

"A handful of mud! Such a dirty fellow! Did she marry him?"

"Yes, indeed! The other suitors had brought her jewels and crowns—she had plently of those already. But with mud she would have been glad to play, like other children, if the court ladies had allowed her to. Therefore she now rejoiced in her childish heart, and she thought he would certainly be the pleasantest husband for her."

"Yes, yes—the fact of the matter is, she was right."

Thus it began, and so it continued.

She was the daughter of a German cabinet-maker, who had developed his business until he had a prosperous furniture factory. Two years before, her mother had died, and since that time she had run the household with the most complete devotion, in the way that she had learned, and as befitted her single-minded, unsophisticated nature. She did all her work as though it were a benefaction, with whole-souled joy and boundless happiness in her ability. As often as my way led me near to where she lived, and that was almost daily at the same hour, I looked in at her window and found her always occupied with some sort of work. We chatted for a quarter of an hour; she told me what animated her day, asked me about everything that interested her in my existence, and initiated me into the sphere of her domestic cares. It pleased her that my needs were few; but that I did not even feel the need of damming up the briskly flowing stream of my income and making a little lake of it, this appeared to her as frivolity, indeed as unrighteous, and she endeavored to reform me, to make me more aware of the value of money, of the money that I had earned, and in some measure to guide my expenditures. I do not mean to say that she ever made tiresome reprimands or admonitions. Simple and innocent as her mind was,—whenever she had resolved to bring pressure to bear upon my indifference or my wilfulness, she pondered the possible method with such affectionate patience that she did not fail to find a delicate or a touchingly irresistible form. I once brought her a rare orchid, whose fantastic form and brilliant colors I had so much admired in the shop window that I was unwilling to allow any other human being to possess it than Mariandel—by this name I called my friend. She did not say anything so commonplace as that I ought not to have done it, or I ought not to have spent so much money; she showed the honest joy of a child who is proud to have received such a costly gift; but she added to her praise of the flower, "It is sacred!"

The expression seemed to me somewhat pompous, as many of her expressions were; nevertheless, I could not but nod assent, thinking of the virgin forest in which this flower first gleamed forth through the twilight, as a new miracle rising out of the ruins of innumerable generations of trees. But Mariandel then continued, "It is a part of your life."

I smiled in astonishment.

"Perhaps you have given for it the hardest and unhappiest of your days of toil."

Such a thought as that did not come into her head on the spur of the moment. I knew at once that she had excogitated it, and kept it in reserve for a good opportunity of impressing upon my mind what my money was. And then for days at a time I strove not to employ my money in ways that ran counter to her honest feeling.

Neither in the city nor in the country did I know anything that afforded me a purer, more genuine joy than my meetings with this imperturbable, self-contained woman. We had rapidly come to confidential terms with one another, so that one day without consultation or emotion we said "Du" to each other—I do not even know whether it was she or I who began the practice.

And now I was once more walking along the broad, hot street with the one-storied houses, once more on the same side in the shade, which today, to be sure, was deeper than the first time; for it was still early morning. And now I stood by the window, put my arms on the window-sill and said, "Good morning, Mariandel, sweetmeats!" And she stood before an ironing board which rested on the windowsill and the table, and was ironing with a charcoal flat-iron. She put the iron down on the rest, gave me her firm, warm hand, and said, "Bom dia, senhor doutor! Passa bem?" and her eye seemed to beam more cordially than ever, and yet could not express more cordiality than it had expressed before.

She seated herself by the window, put her right hand on the sill, above which my head and shoulders protruded, and began to speak, turning her head in such a way that I saw now her profile, with the inconspicuous but firm lines of her nose, mouth, and chin, and the heavy braids of her lustrous hair about her neck, now her full face beaming upon me; then, however, I forgot all her other, beauty, in contemplation of the incomprehensibly reposeful and unsullied blue of her eye. I was never in love with her; never had the sight of her or thoughts of her taken my breath away; but never was I so full of joyous love for a human being as then for her.

After she had asked questions about this and that and had told me all sorts of things, she said, "Professor, don't let me forget to tell you: George Bleyle down there at the Mercadinho is not having very good trade, they say; if you need anything, just bear him in mind. He has bought at bottom prices a whole invoice of men's furnishings that was put up at auction down at the dock, and things are very cheap at his shop just now."

And she told what she had purchased for her father, and what her sister-in-law had got for her husband, named the prices, and praised the quality of the goods. I gazed first at her eyes, then at the glowing coals within the flat-iron, listened to the tones of her dear, faithful voice and thought of my home of long ago, of brothers and sisters and friends, of a home of my own with wife and children in it, of things dear and compelling, for which I could stake my life; and I tasted the sweetness of one of those moments which do their best to broaden our hearts, to strengthen them and renew their allegiance.

All at once she stopped speaking, and when I did not notice this she cried out, "Senhor, are you again failing to listen to me!" "Oh, yes. Henrique Bleyle has put up at auction a cargo of furnishing goods—"

"O nao, senhor, not at all! But you are a discourteous good-for-nothing; you think, 'Just let her talk!'"

"Missed by a mile, my child! I have been listening to you without hearing what you said. Look, when I sit down on the curb of a fountain and let myself be enveloped and captivated by its splashing and tinkling, its silvery spraying, and forget everything, even the fountain, and think uncommonly pure and good thoughts—don't these thoughts come from the fountain? Do I not hear them in its plashing, even though I no longer hear the sound of it, and am I, in this absentmindedness, not more the bondman of the fountain than if I had counted its drops of water? That is how it was just now. While I listened to your voice and felt your eye upon me, I learned something better from you than that Bleyle has socks for sale. Nevertheless, I shall buy the socks from him. But that you help me in my vanity and hastiness not merely to let serious thoughts enter my mind when they come like a stroke of lightning, but also quietly and modestly to admit them, to await them, and to attain to the inner core of their sweetness—that is to me more delightful and more important than all the cargoes of all the continents."

She looked at me with childlike confidence, put her little, warm hand on mine, and said, "You are not angry with me, Erwin?"

"How could I be angry with you for that? Is there a human being who could be angry with you? See, Mariandel, the only pain you cause me is the fact that I am not the only one who can take nothing ill of you!"

"Oh!" she cried, laughing down her shamefacedness like a school-girl, "just ask my brother and his wife whether they cannot take anything ill of me!"

"Then they are not human beings. There aren't so very many."

"No, my brother is good," she replied, "and Anna too."

"In any case, I shall prove to you that I am ready to help my fellow-man. I shall buy of Henrique Bleyle a complete new outfit from head to foot, and hope thereby to save him from bankruptcy."

"Not Henrique Bleyle, but George Bleyle at the Mercadinho, and there is no question of bankruptcy. For Heaven's sake don't say anything of the kind!" She looked at me in the utmost confusion and with guilty eyes; she had of course emphasized the fact that business was bad—as it was in general at that time—merely in order to induce me to buy of George Bleyle, since she feared she could not make me budge by speaking only of the cheapness of his wares.

Now I gave her great pleasure by inquiring at exactly what prices she had made her purchases, and by asking for advice of various sorts. I did not get much profit from this; the effort to distinguish between linen, cotton-warp linen, cotton, shirting, and fil d'Ecosse caused me something of a headache. But she was all joy and eagerness.

Then she had to use her iron while it was hot. She lifted one end of the ironing board, drew a light calico gown over it like a ring, put the board down again, and ironed, gradually letting the whole of the gown travel across the board.

The shade in which I stood grew smaller, the heat penetrated markedly nearer to me and awakened my daily desire to go to the city park and sit in the shade of its giant trees and bamboo bushes. I lighted a cigarette at one of the little glowing eyes of the charcoal flat-iron, and started away.

"Ate logo, senhor!" said she, using a phrase that corresponds exactly to the Rhenish "So long!" Since she did not know much Portuguese, she took pleasure in seizing all opportunities to use the most current expressions; but she used these with such perfect pronunciation that you would suppose she had complete command of the language.

As was always the case, I was in a peaceful frame of mind when I left her, I was filled with a sense of cosy comfort which gained all the more piquancy because flavored with an infinitely delicate bitterness that I could not understand. In a revery I strolled along through the streets which, because the diminutive houses cast so little shadow, became hotter every minute, and passed slowly out of the city.

When I looked up again, I had already passed through the great gate in the wall and felt as though immersed in the more expansive and, from the intermittent shade of shrubs and trees, more invigorating atmosphere of the great park. I stood still and peered into the depth of the garden through the silver-gray columns of two gigantic palms. Thickly surrounded by dark shrubs with a silvery sheen, enormous hedges, and groves of bamboo, a fountain reared the fluttering banner of its spray from the midst of a black pool confined within a white curb; but the bubbling pillar did not attain to the height of its dark sylvan background. In the dim background, however, above the cold deep green of the park, rose a mighty erythrina like a rose-colored flame into the rich blue air, like a monstrous, fiery syringa. The light coursed hotly down the smooth trunks of the palms, golden white it curled about the gentle curve of their slender hips, like frozen silver it weighed upon the serrated palm-leaves, often seeming to slip down and fall, so that the liberated leaf gave a little leap upward into a new bath of silver; the rigid leaves of black-green bushes were sown with immobile, penetrating scintillations; above the masses of dagger-sharp leaves in the grove of bamboo the light swarmed like a golden vapor rolling up, as it were, in itself; red and white and deep violet and yellow and iridescent blue flowers of gigantic size cowered in the dark green; the erythrina stood quietly there upright like a mountain of fire; everything rested voluptuously, or overwhelmed, in the glow of the higher-mounting sun—only the snowy importunity of the fountain wore itself out in impotent resistance to his sway. I too stood motionless in an unshaded opening; I no longer felt the glow as a burden; with rapture, with awe, with rapture I felt its untamable creative energy—just as years before, one cold winter night, I had felt its lust of destruction at a conflagration in a village of my mountain home,—the one as wild, as inexorable as the other.