Bartholomew Sastrow Part 2

CHAPTER II

My Student's Days at Greifswald--Victor Bole and his tragical End--A Servant possessed by the Devil--My Brother Johannes' Preceptors and Mine--My Father's never-ending Law Suits

Having acquired the certainty that the Hartmanns would never consent to my father's return to Greifswald, my parents, like the conscientious married couple they were, desired to bear in common the domestic burdens. In the spring of 1528 my mother, after having let her dwelling at Greifswald, joined her husband at Stralsund, where he had the freeman's right and a tumble-down old house. My maternal grandfather, Christian Schwarz, at that time city treasurer, kept me with him in order to let me pursue my studies. I underwent the ceremonial of installation, a kind of burlesque function of initiation applied to novices. My tutor was George Normann, of the island of Rugen, who terminated his career in the service of the King of Sweden. I was the reverse of a studious boy and fonder of roving about with my relative in his journeys about Greifswald than of books. As a consequence my mental progress was in proportion to my efforts.

There was at Greifswald a burgomaster named Victor Bole, belonging to a notable family of the island of Rugen. Before he attained his civic honours he was a good evangelical and a zealous friend of the preachers, but his apostasy was thorough. As much as he had supported the ministry before his election, as much did he oppose them afterwards. I remember seeing him at the meetings of the corporation seated in the front place in virtue of his dual quality of eldest member and burgomaster, more or less in liquor, browbeating and talking everybody down (in High-German always). As he had taken part in several expeditions, fighting was the invariable theme of his discourses. He generally summoned the musicians, cymbal players and pipers before him.

"Dost thou know a war cry?" he asked of a piper. "Yes, certainly," was the reply, while shrill notes rent the air. But the burgomaster was beaming. "This, at any rate, is a useful kind of fellow; while that Knipstro of Stralsund stammers in the pulpit about _pap_, _pap_, _pap_, I am sure he could play a war cry. Then what's the good of him?"

"Those who laugh last laugh loudest," says the proverb. That same year, 1528, the King of the May was Bertrand Smiterlow. I walked in front of him carrying his crown. Bole did Smiterlow the honour to prance by his side, being very pleased to parade his servants and his horses, of the latter of which he had four in his stable. If the skies had shown a little bit more clement we should have been very happy. But though it was the 1st May, there was not a bud nor a blade of gra.s.s to be seen.

On the contrary, the snow powdered our procession with large flakes, both on coming and on going. As a consequence everybody was in a hurry to get back again. Odd to relate, the seed did not seem to suffer.

After they had presented the crown to the May King in the city, everybody galloped back to his own roof tree. When the burgomaster reached his house he was taken with such violent colic that he had scarcely time to hand his horse to his servant before he dropped down dead. His neck was entirely twisted round, and his face was black. As a matter of course, people ascribed it to a visitation of G.o.d for having made fun of those who preached His Word.

In 1528 the States were called together at Stettin to ratify the pact of succession between the Elector of Brandenburg and the Dukes of Pomerania. The deputy of Greifswald, Burgomaster Gaspard Bunsaw, my mother's first cousin, took me with him as page, or rather as companion, and also to enable me to see something new. Our host had a magnificent garden; on the banks of a vast lake uprose a vast tower with an inside staircase, closed by a trap. One day that the company was amusing itself in watching the carps from that tower, I hauled myself up to the window out of curiosity, but I forgot the yawning trap door behind me, and was flung right to the bottom. It was a miracle that I did not break my neck, or, at any rate, my arms and my legs.

Heaven preserved me by means of its angels, who frustrate the tricks of the Evil One.

At the age of five, Nicholas, the eldest son of Bertrand Smiterlow, was already much taller and stronger than I; this incarnate fiend worried all the children of the neighbourhood, and instead of reprimanding him, his father took no notice of the complaints against him. This indulgence bore such excellent fruit that in order to prevent disputes and perhaps personal violence between young Nicholas' father and the neighbours, Christian Schwarz considered it advisable to take Nicholas to live with him, and so we shared the same bed. One morning as we were dressing on the big locker at the foot of the bed, the youngster, without saying a word and out of sheer mischief, hit me right in the chest and made me tumble backward, a downright dangerous fall. The grandfather gave a dinner-party to his children and other people. Late in the evening the servants came with links to take their masters home.

While they were waiting for that purpose, Nicholas began to play them tricks, which they endured from fear of the grandfather. Rendered bold by impunity, Nicholas struck some of the servants on the lips, but one of these retorted by a box on the ears which sent Nicholas whining to his grandfather. After the banquet the lanterns were lighted, and everybody was preparing to get home quietly when Bertrand Smiterlow, drawing his knife, rushed at the offending servant, who was lighting his master on his way, and wounded him seriously in the shoulder. On account of all this Christian Schwarz preferred to send me back to Stralsund to leaving me to enjoy the risky society of Nicholas. The boy grew up and his faults with him, for they amused his father, who encouraged them while n.o.body dared to say a word in protest. Nicholas had reached the age of twenty-seven when travelling to Rostock, he stopped for the night at Roevers.h.a.gen. Some travellers, knowing his quarrelsome character, preferred to take themselves and their conveyance to the inn opposite. One of these had a sporting dog, which, running about, found its way into the hostel where Smiterlow was staying. The latter tied up the animal, did not send it back, and next morning the rightful owner saw it being taken away on a leash.

Naturally, the man claimed his dog. Smiterlow, instead of giving him a civil answer, takes aim at him; the other, more prompt, quickly fires a bullet into the thigh. Smiterlow, in his wounded condition, got as far as Rostock, had his wound attended to; nevertheless died a few days later in consequence. The merchant continued his route without troubling himself, and no one lodged a complaint. Bertrand Smiterlow contracted the itch in the back; father and son, therefore, had their just reward. Heaven preserve me from criticizing the descendants of Herr Smiterlow, to whom I am doubly related, but I trust that mine will bring up their children in a more severe discipline and in the respect of their fellow-men.

In 1529 the English pest which had already been spoken of during the previous year, carried away many people at Stralsund. My mother had two attacks, from both of which she fortunately recovered. Being _enceinte_ with my brother Christian, she ordered, like the good housewife she was, a general cleaning before her confinement. It so happened that we had a servant-girl who was possessed. n.o.body had the faintest suspicion of this. When, at the moment of cleaning the kitchener and cooking utensils, she began noisily to fling about saucepans, frying-pans, etc., crying at the top of her voice, "I want to get out, I want to get out." Her mother, who lived in the Zinngiesser Stra.s.se (Pewterers'

Street), had to take her back. The poor girl was taken several times in a sleigh to St. Nicholas's, and they exorcised her after the sermon.

Her case, as far as the answers tended to show, was as follows: The mother had brought new cheese at the market. In her absence, the daughter had opened the cupboard and made a large breach in the cheese; the mother, on her return, had expressed the wish that the devil might take the perpetrator of this thing, and from that moment dated the "possession." The girl had, nevertheless, been to Communion since; how, then, could the Evil One have kept his position? The priest, interrogated on that point, had answered: "The scoundrel, who has hidden himself under a bridge, lets the honest man pa.s.s over his head"; in other words, during the sacramental act, the Evil One hid himself under the girl's tongue. The Evil One was excommunicated and exorcised by the faithful on their bended knees. The formula of exorcism was received with derision. When the priest summoned him to go, he exclaimed: "I am agreeable, but you do not expect me to go with empty hands. I want this, and that, and the other." If they refused him one thing he asked for something quite different; and inasmuch as one of the faithful had remained "covered" during prayers, the Evil One politely s.n.a.t.c.hed up his hat, and if G.o.d had let him have his own way, hair and skin would have accompanied the headgear.

At about the same period I witnessed an a.n.a.logous fact. Frau Kron, an honest and pious matron, was possessed by a demon; the minister was preparing to drive it out at all costs when Frau Wolff entered. She was a young woman who surpa.s.sed her sisters in the art of beautifying her face, arranging her cap, and posing before the looking gla.s.s. When the evil spirit caught sight of her, he shouted. "Ah, you are here, are you? Just wait a bit till I arrange your cap before the mirror. Your ears shall tingle, I can tell you."

To come back to our own servant. When the power of mischief noticed that the time for tormenting her had pa.s.sed away, and that the Lord was granting the prayers of the faithful, the Evil One asked in a mocking tone a pane of the belfry's window, which request was no sooner accorded to him than the pane shivered into ever so many splinters. The girl, however, ceased to be possessed; she married in the village, and had several children.

My brother Johannes had for his first tutor Herr Aepinus, before the latter had his doctor's degree,[14] and afterwards Hermannus Bonus,[15]

who would have been pleased to settle at Stralsund with fifty florins per annum, but the council of that particular period did not contain one member who had had a university training. Like the princes the council inclined towards papism, and looked askance at men of letters; hence, it rejected Bonnus' overtures. The latter soon afterwards became the tutor of the young King of Denmark, for whose use he composed his _Praecepta Grammaticae_, which was much more easy than the Donat Grammar, and prevails to the present day under the t.i.tle of the _Grammatica Bonni_. At his return from Denmark, Bonnus was appointed superintendent at Lubeck, where he is interred _honorifice_ behind the choir.

When my brother left the school at Lubeck, my parents made many heavy sacrifices to keep him at Wittemberg for several years, where, notwithstanding some _delicta juventutis_, he studied with advantage.

My tutor's name was Matthias Bra.s.sa.n.u.s. At the outset of his career he had been a monk at the monastery of Camp, but at the suppression of the inst.i.tution he had lived at Wittemberg at the cost of the prince, like Leonard Meisisch, the future court preacher and minister at Wolgast, and afterwards pastor at Altenkirchen--a downright Epicurean pig!

Bra.s.sa.n.u.s, on the other hand, was a small, polite, temperate, well-bred, evenly balanced man. After his stay at Wittemberg he became the preceptor of George and Johannes Smiterlow, and afterwards _rector scholae_. Their worships of Lubeck having prevailed upon the council of Stralsund to part with this able teacher, Bra.s.sa.n.u.s devoted the whole of his life successfully directing the school of Lubeck.

I profited as much by the lessons as my natural restlessness of character permitted. There was a great deal of apt.i.tude, but the application failed. In the winter time I ran amusing myself on the floating ice with my fellow-scholars of my own age. Johannes Gottschalk, our ringleader, always got scot-free, thanks to his long legs, while the rest of the gang (and I was invariably with them) took many enforced footbaths in order to get safely to the banks. My father, in crossing the bridge had occasion more than once to witness the prowess of his son, who received many a sound drubbing when he came to dry himself before the stove, for my father was a choleric gentleman.

In summer I was in the habit of bathing with my chums behind Lorbeer's grange, which at present is my property. Burgomaster Smiterlow, having noticed me from his garden, told of me, and one day, while I was still asleep, my father planted himself in front of my bed, flourishing a big stick. He spoke very loudly while placing himself into position, and I was obliged to open my eyes. The sight of the club told me that my hour had come; I burst into tears and pleaded for mercy. "Very well, my good sir," said my father; when he called me "my good sir" it was a bad sign. "Very well, my good sir, you have been bathing; now allow me to rub you down." Saying which, he got hold of his weapon, pulled my shirt over my head, and did frightful execution.

My parents brought us up carefully. My father was somewhat hasty, and now and again his anger carried him beyond all bounds. I put him out of temper one day when he was in the stable and I at the door. He caught up a pitchfork and flung it at me. I had just time to get out of the way; the pitchfork stuck into a bath made of oak, and they had much trouble to get it out. In that way the Evil One was frustrated in all his designs against me by Providence. In a similar case, my mother, who was gentleness and tenderness itself, came running to the spot. "Strike harder," she said, "the wicked boy deserves all he gets." At the same time she slyly held back the arm of her husband, preventing the stick from coming down too heavily. Oh, my children, pray that the knowledge may be vouchsafed to you of bringing up your family in the way they should go. Correct them temperately, without compromising either their health or their intelligence, but at the same time do not imitate the apes who from excess of tenderness, smother their young.

Rector Bra.s.sa.n.u.s insisted upon his pupils being present when he preached. Some were clever enough to get away on the sly; they went to buy pepper cakes, and repaired afterwards to the dram shop. The trick was done before there was time to look round. When the sermon drew to its close, every one was in his place again, and we went back to school as if nothing had happened. One day, however, we drank so much brandy that I felt horribly sick and vomited violently, and found it impossible either to keep on my legs or to articulate a syllable. The strongest of my schoolfellows took me home. My parents were under the impression that I was seriously ill; had they suspected the real cause of my malady, their treatment would have been less tender. When, at last, I avowed the truth, the fear of punishment had long ago vanished.

The adventure was productive of some good. It inspired me with a thorough disgust for brandy, so that I could not even bear the smell of it.

My daily playmate was George Smiterlow, for we were neighbours, nearly relatives, and of about the same age, I being but a year older than he.

One day he cut me with his knife between the index and the thumb, and I still bear the scar.

As I was whittling a piece of wood, my sister Anna s.n.a.t.c.hed it away from me, and in trying to get it back again, I drove the chisel into my right thigh up to the handle. Master Joachim Gelhaar, an excellent _chirurgus_, renowned far and wide, began by probing the wound, and by getting the bad blood out of it; after which he dressed it with a cabbage leaf which was constantly kept moist. I was just recovering the use of my leg again when I took it into my head to go to the wood with my schoolfellows, for it was always difficult for me to keep still. The fatigue thus incurred caused a relapse. Next morning I dragged myself as far as the surgeon, who suspected my excursion, and swore at seeing a month of his efforts wasted. I should have been in a nice predicament if he had complained to my father.

In 1531, on the Monday before St. Bartholomew, they burned at Stralsund, Bischof, a tailor who had outraged his own daughter, aged twelve. The fellow was so strong that he jumped from the pyre when the fire had destroyed his bonds, but the executioner plunged his knife into him, and flung him back into the flames.

The following happened in June, 1532. A young fellow, good-looking, and with most fascinating manner, but by no means well enough in worldly goods, courted a more or less well-preserved widow, notwithstanding her nine children of her first husband, which subsequently she increased by another nine of her second. Tempted by the amiability, the appearance, and the demeanour of the youngster, the dame consented to be his wife.

The happy day was already fixed, the viands ordered, and the preparations completed, but the bridegroom was at a loss how to pay for his wedding clothes, the customary presents and other things. Hence, one fine evening he left the city, and in the early morn reached the village of Putten, where, espying a ladder on a peasant's cart, he puts it against the wall of the church, breaks one of its windows, gets inside, forces the reliquary, possessing himself of the chalices, other holy vessels, all the gold and silver work, not forgetting the wooden box containing the money. After which, taking the way whence he had come, he flung away the box and entered the city laden with the spoil.

A local cowherd, driving his cattle to the field, happened to pick up the box. At the selfsame moment the sight of the ladder and of the broken window sets the whole of the place, rector, beadle, clerk, and peasantry, mad with excitement. The whole village is up in arms; the neighbouring roads are scoured in search of the perpetrator of the sacrilege. At twelve o'clock, the cowherd comes back with the box. He is arrested; the patrons of the church, who reside in the city, have him put to the torture. He confesses to the theft. There was, nevertheless, the absolute impossibility for him to have got rid of the stolen objects, inasmuch as he had been guarding his cattle during the five or six hours that had gone by between the robbery and his arrest; the slightest inquiry would have conclusively proved his innocence. In spite of this, the confession dragged from the poor wretch by unbearable pain, appears most conclusive. Condemned there and then, he is there and then put on the wheel. The real culprit watched the execution with the utmost composure.

The proceeds of this first crime were, however, by no means sufficient to defray the cost of the wedding, and the bridegroom forced another church. He took a reliquary and a holy vessel, reduced them to fragments, and tried to sell them to some goldsmiths at Greifswald.

This time he was unable to lead the pursuers off the scent. Having been arrested in the house of my wife's parents, he was racked alive, and his body left to the carrion birds.

A similar tragedy took place between the Easter and Whitsun of 1544. I antic.i.p.ate events, because the horror of them was pretty well equal, but there was a great difference in the procedure. In the one case, deplorable acts, at variance with all wisdom, and disgraceful to Christians; in the other place, a thoroughly laudable conduct, consistent with right and reason. On his return from Leipzig, whither he had gone to buy books, Johannes Altingk, the son of the late Werner Altingk, a notable citizen and bookseller of Stralsund, was killed on the road from Anelam to Greifswald. In consequence of active inquiries, two individuals on whom rested grave suspicions, were incarcerated at Wolgast. But the case was proceeded with more methodically than the one I have just narrated. The magistrates went with the instruments of torture to the prisoner, who seemed the least resolved. He made a complete avowal. His companion and he had put up for the night at an inn at Grosskistow; Johannes Altingk had taken his seat at their table and shared their meal. Then, before going to bed, he had paid for all three, showing at the same time a well filled purse. The scoundrels had at once made up their minds between them to kill him at a little distance from the inn on the foot-road, intersected here and there by deep ruts, and where consequently there was only room to pa.s.s in single file. "Next morning, then, when the young bookseller was marching along between his fellow-travellers, I struck him at the back of the head;"

said the accused. "The blow knocked him off his feet; we soon made an end of him altogether, and flung his body to the bottom of the deep bog. With my part of the spoil I bought myself this hat and this pair of shoes."

After this interrogatory, the judges, accompanied by the executioner and his paraphernalia, went to the second prisoner, who denied everything. It was in vain they pressed him and told him of his accomplice's avowal; he went on denying everything. When they were confronted, the one who had been first examined repeated all the particulars of the crime, beseeching the other to prevent a double martyrdom, inasmuch as the truth would be dragged from them by torture, and the punishment was unavoidable. No doubt the Stralsund authorities, those who had judged the above named perpetrator of the sacrilege, would have put the accused on the rack without the least compunction or ceremony, _de simplice et piano, sine strepitu judicii, quemadmodum Deus procedere solet_. At Wolgast, on the contrary, though the hangman had orders to hold himself in readiness, _ad actum propinquum_, the magistrates preferred to exercise some delay. The prince had the bog examined, but no body was found there. When taken to the spot, the prisoner who had confessed his guilt recognized the place of the murder, without being able, however, to point it out accurately. The landlord and his wife at Gross-Kistow, when examined carefully, denied having lodged any one at the period indicated.

Finally, a messenger of the Brandenburg March brought the news that an a.s.sa.s.sin condemned to death confessed to having killed in Pomerania a young librarian, for which crime two individuals were under lock and key at Wolgast. When taxed with having almost caused the death of innocent people by false avowals, the self-confessed murderer replied that death seemed to him preferable to the "criminal question," as that kind of torture was called. Their acquittal was p.r.o.nounced on their taking the oath to bring no further action.

But this only shows the precautions to be taken before applying the instruments of torture to merely suspected men. On the other hand, it has been shown over and over again that some of the guilty hardened to that kind of thing will allow themselves to be torn to pieces sooner than avow.

In that year (1531) Duke George died in the prime of his life. His second wife was the sister to Margrave Joachim; they got rid of her for about 40,000 florins, and she subsequently married a prince of Anhalt, but finally she eloped with a falconer.

My mother having realized all her property at Greifswald, my parents really possessed a considerable fortune in sterling coin, and they called my father "the rich man of the Pa.s.sen Stra.s.se." It wanted, however, but a few years to shake his credit and to impair the happiness of his family. Without exaggeration, two women, named Lubbeke and Engeln were the princ.i.p.al causes of our reverses. Not content to buy on credit our cloth, which they resold to heaven knows who, they borrowed of my father, fifty, a hundred, and as much as a hundred and fifty crowns on the slightest pretext. The crown in those days was worth eight and twenty shillings of Lubeck. They promised to refund at eight and twenty and a half, and to settle for their purchases at the same rate; but if now and again they happened to make a payment on account of a hundred florins, they took care to buy at the same time goods for double the amount. My mother did not look kindly upon those two customers; she imagined that her money would be better invested at five per cent., and she spared neither warnings, prayers, nor tears to dissuade my father from trusting them. She even took Pastor Knipstrow and others into her confidence to that effect. Finally, the account came to a considerable amount, while the debtors were unable to pay as much as twenty florins. Then it transpired what had become of the cloth. The mother of one townsman, Jacob Leveling, had had 800 florins of it; the wife of another, Hermann Bruser, 1,725 florins. Hermann Bruser was a big cloth merchant who sold retail much cheaper than any of his fellow-tradesmen.

My father having taken proceedings against his two customers as well as against the woman Bruser, the latter and her husband promised to pay the 1,725 florins. Nicholas Rode, who had married Bruser's sister, and the syndic of the city, Johannes Klocke, afterwards burgomaster, induced my father to accept that arrangement, and Bruser secured conditions after having signed an acknowledgment beginning as follows: "I, together with my legitimate wife, declare to be duly and lawfully indebted to etc., etc." The syndic had drawn up this act with his own hand. He had affixed his signature to it, and his seal, and Rode had in the latter two respects done the same. But the period of the first payment coinciding with the tumult against Nicholas Smiterlow, Bruser, one of the ringleaders, thought he could have the whip hand of my father as well as of the burgomaster. On his refusal to pay, the case came before the court once more; and then, while denying his debt, in spite of the formal terms of his declaration, Bruser denounced as usurious agreements obtained by litigation. Klocke and Rode a.s.sisted him with their advice and influence; the first-named, in his capacity of a lawyer, conducted the suit, and quoting the _leges et doctorum opiniones_, easily convinced his non-legally educated colleagues of the council. The Westphalian Cyriacus Erckhorst, the son-in-law of Rode, and a velvet merchant, plotted on his side. There were golden florins for the all-powerful burgomaster Lorbeer, and pieces of dress-material for Mrs. Burgomaster; so that, after long arguments on both sides, Bruser was allowed to swear that he was ignorant of the affair, which, moreover, was tainted with usury. My father could not conceive that this personage would have the audacity to deny his signature, and, supported in his supposition by Burgomaster Nicholas Smiterlow, he did not appeal against the judgment, and at the next sitting Bruser appeared at the bar of the inner court, took the oath, and offered to comply with the second part of the order; only, in consequence of the absence of his witness he claimed a delay of a twelvemonth and a day, which was accorded to him; after which my father appealed to the council of Stralsund and afterwards to that of Lubeck.

In due time my father started for Lubeck, and took me with him. At Rostock, we lodged at the sign of _The Hop_, in the Market Place. My father had a considerable sum upon him to pay cash for his purchases of salt, salted cod-fish and soap, and as a measure of precaution, he carried that money in his small clothes, for Mecklenburg was infested by footpads and highwaymen. While undressing, he dropped his purse under the bed, an accident which he did not notice until next day about twelve o'clock, when we had reached Bukow. As the court was just about to open it fell to my lot to take the road back to Rostock _per pedes_.

On that day I could get no further than Berkentin, but very early next morning I was at Rostock. Naturally, I rushed to the inn and to the room. Luckily the servants had not made the beds. I soon espied the little bag and was in time to take the coach to Wismar. My father, uneasy on my account, was already reproaching himself for having let me go.

Their worships of Lubeck condemned Bruser to keep his written promise; he then appealed to the Imperial Chamber. The suit dragged along for several years; finally, the supreme decision was to the effect that it had been well judged, but improperly thrown into appeal in the first instance, and that in the second it had been faultily judged and properly sent for appeal. The defendant was condemned to pay the costs to be determined by the judge.

And now I may be permitted to give an instance of the disloyalty of the procurators of the Imperial Chamber. Doctor Simeon Engelhardt, my father's procurator, did not hesitate to write to him that he had won his case, and asked for the bill of costs of the two previous instances, so that he might hand them to the taxing judge and apply for execution. He added that the trouble he had taken with the affair seemed to him to warrant special fees. My parents, elated with the news, promptly transmitted the bill of costs and their fees for the execution. Engelhardt produced the _cedula expensarum_; Bruser's procurator requested copy, not without pretending to raise objection.

Engelhardt delivered the required copy, leaving to the judge the case of designating the winning party; in other words, the one who had the right to present the _designatio expensarum_. Well, that right was adjudged to Bruser, who drew up the _cedula_ after _ours_. Engelhardt was compelled to hold his tongue and my father had to pay 164 florins.

That point having been settled, they pa.s.sed to the second _membrum_ of the Stralsund judgment; namely, whether the conditions stipulated for by my father were tainted with usury? After such an expensive and protracted lawsuit, the court, considering that Bruser had failed in his attempt to bring proof, condemned him to fulfil his engagements.

Against that sentence he appealed to Lubeck. Having been non-suited there, he wished to have recourse to the Imperial Chamber, but we signified opposition to the _exceptio devolutionis_. According to us, he had not complied with the privilege of Lubeck. Bruser's procurator maintained the contrary. The whole of the discussion bore entirely on the sense of the word "_wann_" inserted in the Lubeck _vidimus_. Was it a _conjunctio causalis, c.u.m posteaquam_, or an _adverbium temporis, quando_? After long-drawn debates, the appeal was rejected, and Bruser had all the costs to pay.

Then, to frustrate his adversary, he pleaded poverty on oath, although he gave to his daughter as many pearls and jewels as a burgomaster's girl could possibly pretend to. Foreseeing the upshot of the lawsuit, he had already disposed of one of his houses; after which he bestirred himself to safeguard his dwelling-house, his cellar and his various other property from being seized. Nicholas Rode, he who had signed the obligation, deposed to that effect, a doc.u.ment professedly anterior to my father's claim, an act const.i.tuting in his favour a general mortgage on all Bruser's property. As a matter of course, this led to a new lawsuit, which occupied respectively the courts of Stralsund and of Lubeck and the Imperial Chamber. The latter registered Rode's appeal at the moment the Protestant States denied its jurisdiction. A suspension of six years was the result, but after the reconst.i.tution of the chamber and the closure of the debates, I did not succeed, in spite of two years' stay at Spires, in getting a judgment.

Weary of being involved in law for thirty-four years, my father wound up by acquitting the heirs of Rode of all future liabilities in consideration of a sum of one thousand florins. As it happened the original debt was seventeen hundred and five and twenty florins; in addition to this, my father had refunded to Bruser one hundred and sixty-four florins expenses, his own costs exceeded a thousand florins and he had waited forty years for his money. The whole affair was nothing short of a downright calamity to our family; it interrupted my studies and caused the death of my brother Johannes. "_Dimidium plus toto_," says Hesiod, and the maxim is above all wise in connexion with a law-suit at the Imperial Chamber.

Writing, as I do, for the edification of my children, I consider it useful to mention here the subsequent fate of our G.o.dless adversaries.

The seventy-fifth Psalm says: "For in the hand of the Lord there is a cup, and the wine is red, and he poured out of the same, but the dregs thereof all the wicked of the earth shall wring them out and drink them." Yes, the Almighty has comforted me, he has permitted me to see the scattering of my enemies. The two princ.i.p.al ones, Hermann Bruser and his fraudulent wife, fell into abject misery; they lived for many years on the bounty of parents and friends; finally the husband became valet of Joachim Burwitz who from the position of porter and general servant at the school when I was young had risen to be the secretary of the King of Sweden. The devil, however, twisted Bruser's neck at Stockholm. He was found in his master's wardrobe, his face all distorted. His daughter, dowered _in fraudem mei patris_, did, for all that, not escape very close acquaintance with poverty. She sold her houses and her land; and at her death her husband became an inmate of the asylum of the Holy Ghost, where he is to this day. Bruser's son, it is true, rose to be a secretary in Sweden, but far from prospering, he committed all kind of foolish acts everywhere. His first wife, the daughter of Burgomaster Gentzkow,[16] died of grief at Stralsund, where he had left her with her children at his departure for Sweden. He was found dead one morning in his room; his descendants are vegetating some in the city, some in the country.

The author of the plot, the honest dispenser of advice, Johannes Klocke, managed to keep his wealth, but he was racked with gout and had to be carried in a chair to the Town Hall; he died after having suffered martyrdom for many years. The four sons of Nicholas Rode were reduced to beggary; the house Bruser sold in order to cheat my father actually belongs to my son-in-law. As for Burgomaster Christopher Lorbeer, so skilled in prolonging law-suits, does he not expiate, he and his, every day, the wrong in having lent himself to corruption.

Erckhorst, the man who tempted him, was robbed while engaged in transporting from one town to another two large bundles of velvet, silk, jewellery and pearls, the whole being estimated at several thousands of florins. His second wife was the byword of the city for her levity of conduct; at every moment she was caught in her own dwelling-house and in the most untoward spots committing acts of criminal intercourse with her apprentices. What had been saved from the thieves was devoured by his wife's paramours. Absolutely at a loss to reinstate himself in his former position, Erckhorst made an end of his life by stabbing himself.

My father's other debtor, the woman Leveling, was left a widow with an only son. Her property in houses and in land yielded, it was said, a golden florin and a fowl per day. That fortune, nevertheless, melted away, and Leveling, worried by her creditors, was obliged to quit her house with nothing but what she stood up in. Lest her son, a horrible ne'er-do-well of fifteen, should spend his nights in houses of ill-fame, she kept a mistress for him at home; after that she married him at such an early age as to astonish everybody, but he cared as much about the sanct.i.ty of marriage as a dog cares about Lent. During the ceremonies connected with rendering homage to Duke Philip, the d.u.c.h.ess lodged at Leveling's and stood G.o.dmother to his new-born daughter, which honour had not the slightest effect in changing the scandalous life he led with a concubine. One night, in company with a certain Valentin Buss, he emptied the baskets in the pond of the master of the fishmongers. An arrant thief, he was fast travelling towards the gallows. Buss, who wound up by going to prison, would have been hanged but for Leveling, who in order to redeem himself parted to the council with his last piece of ground, namely, that in which his father's body rested in the church. One day at the termination of the sermon, Leveling, sword in hand, pursued my father, who had just time to reach his domicile and to shut the door in his face. On the other hand, Master Sonnenberg, who sheltered the old woman Leveling while she was negotiating with her creditors, was not content with egging on her son to all sorts of evil deeds, but had the effrontery to say to my father: "I'll tame you so well that you shall come and eat out of my hands."