Black Forest Village Stories Part 12

Next day an array of more than a hundred farmers, with axes in their hands, marched through the village. They often stopped before the door of a house and called for the belated master, who rushed out in great haste, pulling on his coat as he walked along the road. Jokes and witticisms were pa.s.sed about, but died away whenever the speaker's eye fell upon Buchmaier, who walked on silently with contracted brows. Not a drop had been tasted before going to court. Business first, pleasure afterward, was the motto of the farmers.

The judge was lounging at the window in his dressing-gown, with his long pipe in his mouth. On seeing the approach of the armed force, he closed the window in all haste, and ran to ring the bell; but, as his boots were always spurred, he stumbled over the window-curtain and fell at full length upon the floor. His long pipe lay beside him like a weapon of offence. He rose quickly, however, rang for the tipstaff, sent him to the commandant and to the captain of the gens-d'armes, and ordered them all to come up with arms heavily loaded. Unfortunately, there happened to be but four men in the town. He now ordered them to remain in the porter's room and hold themselves in readiness to act at a moment's warning. He then gave directions that but one farmer should be admitted at a time, and the door always closed upon him.

Buchmaier, being first called in, said, holding the door in his hand, "Good-morning, your honor;" and then, turning to the others, "Come in, men: we have a common grievance I'm not going to speak for myself alone."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Write down word for word what I say.]

Before the judge could interfere, the room was filled with farmers, each carrying an axe on his left arm. Buchmaier stepped up to the clerk, and said, stretching out his hand, "Write down word for word what I say; I want them to read it at the Provincial Government." Then, after pa.s.sing his hand twice through his shirt-collar, he rested his hand upon the green baize of the table, and continued:--

"All respect and honor to you, judge: the king has sent you, and we must obey you, as the law requires. The king is a good and a true man, and we know it isn't his will to have the farmers knocked about like dumb cattle or boxed on the ears like children. But the little lords and gentlemen that hang by one another from the top to the bottom are mighty fond of commanding and giving orders: one of these days they will set it down in notes how the hens must cackle over their eggs. I'm going to lift the lid off the pan and just give you a bit of my mind. I know it won't do any particular good just now; but, once for all, it must be said: it has been tickling my throat too long, and I'm going to get it out of me. The commune is to be put on the shelf altogether, and all things to be done in the rooms of you office-holders. Then why don't you sow and reap in the rooms too? Such a little whippersnapper of a clerk twists a whole town-housefull of farmers on his fingers, and before you know it you find clerk after clerk saddled upon us for a squire: then it is all fixed to the liking of you pen-and-ink fellows.

What is true is true, and there must be law and order in the land; but the first thing is to see whether we can't get along better without tape-fellows than with them; and then we don't carry our heads under our elbows, either, and we can mind our own business, if we can't talk law-Latin. There must be studied men and scholars to overlook matters; but, first, the citizens must arrange their own affairs themselves."

"Come to the point," said the judge, impatiently.

"It's all to the point. You've ordered and commanded so much that there's nothing left to be ordered or commanded, and now you begin to prevent and precaution: you'll end by putting a policeman under every tree to keep it from quarrelling with the wind and drinking too much when it rains. If you go on this way a body might as well ride away on the cow's back. You want to take every thing from us: now, there happens to be one thing our minds are made up to hold on to." Raising his axe and gnashing his teeth, he continued:--"And if I must split every door between me and the king with this very axe, I will not give it out of my hand. From time immemorial it is our right to carry axes; and if they are to be taken from us the a.s.sembly of the hundred must do it, or the estates of the realm; and before them we shall have a hearing also. But why do you want to take them from us? To protect the forests? You have woodrangers, and laws and penalties, for that, and they fall alike on the n.o.ble and the beggar. How many teeth must a poor farmer have to eat potatoes with? Pluck out the rest, so that he may not be tempted to steal meat. How do you come to let the dogs run about with their fangs? When a boy is eight or nine years old he has his knife in his pocket, and if he cuts his finger it's his own fault, and there's an end; if he hurts anybody else he gets his fingers chowsed.

Who told you that we are worse than little children, and you our teachers and guardians? You gentlemen seem to think that if it wasn't for you I'd jump out of the window this minute and dash my brains out.

In all the main matters of life everybody must care for himself, and every commune for itself, and not you lords and gentlemen. Lords, did I say? Our servants you are, and we are the lords. You always think we are here on your account, so that you may have something to give orders about: we pay you that there may be order in the land, and not for the purpose of being bothered by you. You are the servants of the State, and we, the citizens, are the State itself. If we must look for our rights, we don't mean to go to the spout, but to the well; and I will sooner lay my head on the block and let the hangman chop it off with my axe than give up my axe to an office-holder against my will. There!

I've done."

There was a general silence; the spectators looked on each other with twitching eyes, which seemed to say, "There! he's got his pipe stuffed: now let him smoke it."

Bat whispered to Beck, "He knows how to ask for a piece of bread and b.u.t.ter when he wants it." "Yes," said Beck; "he doesn't carry his tongue in his pocket."

The judge did not suffer the impression made by this speech to remain long undisturbed. Twirling a bit of paper in his fingers, he began calmly to dilate on the enormity of the offence which had been committed. Many a side-thrust was levelled at Buchmaier, who only shook his head slightly, as if he were driving flies away. At length the judge came to speak of barrators and unquiet spirits, of conceited gentlemen-farmers who had once drunk a stoup of wine with a lawyer, who heard a bell ring without knowing where it was. Returning from this digression, he entered once more on the case in hand; he spoke of some of those present by name, and praised them as good, orderly citizens, utterly incapable of such an action. He expressed his firm conviction that they had been misled by Buchmaier's bad example: he conjured them, by their conscience, by their loyalty to their king and country, by the love of their wives and children, not to load this heavy guilt upon themselves, but frankly to confess the seduction, and their punishment would be lenient.

Again there was silence: some looked at each other and then cast their eyes on the ground. Buchmaier's mien was bold and confident: he looked them all in the face, his breast heaved, and his breath remained suspended with expectation. Mat had already opened his mouth to speak, but John, the blacksmith, stopped his mouth; for at this moment the old squire, who alone of all present had occupied a chair, was seen to rise. With heavy steps, hardly lifting his feet, he came up to the green table and spoke. At first he panted a little, and often stopped for breath, but soon his speech became quite fluent:--"Many thanks to your honor," said he, "for the good opinion your honor has of me and of some others; but what Buchmaier has said I say, to the last I dot. If there was any more proof wanted that the gentlemenfolks look at us as if we were under age, or little children, your honor has given it just now. No, your honor: I am seventy-six years old, and have been squire for twenty years; we are not children, and we don't do things because we have been misled into doing them by naughty boys. My axe sha'n't go out of my hand until I am laid between six boards myself. If there are any children here, let them say so. I am a man, and know what I am about; and, if there's punishing to be done, I am ready to be punished as well as another."

"So are we!" said all the farmers with one voice. Mat could be heard above the rest.

Buchmaier's face was as if bathed in light: he pressed his axe closer to his bosom.

The necessary formalities were soon concluded and the minutes signed.

After Buchmaier had requested a copy of the latter, the farmers quietly left the court-house.

Several other communes also remonstrated against the ordinance, and the matter was carried up to the Provincial Government. Those communes who had protested so violently with the axes themselves were mulcted in a heavy fine. Judge Rellings, however, was removed after a time, and the ordinance became obsolete. The men carried their axes on their left arms, as they had done before.

I may have something more to tell of Buchmaier at some other time.

THE HOSTILE BROTHERS.

In the little cold alley called the "Knee-Cap" is a little house, with a stable, a shed, and three windows glazed with paper. At the dormer-window a shutter dangles by one hinge, threatening every moment to fall. The patch of garden, small as it is, has a division-line of leafless thorns to cut it into two equal halves. The premises were inhabited by two brothers, who had been in constant warfare for fourteen years. As in the garden, so in the house, all things were part.i.tioned into halves, from the attic down to the kennel of a cellar.

The trap-door was open, but underneath the domain of each was enclosed in lattice-work and padlocked. All the other doors were likewise hung with locks, as if an attack of burglars was looked for every moment.

The stable was the property of one brother, and the shed of another.

Not a word was ever spoken in the house, unless when one of them cursed or swore for his own edification.

Mike and Conrad--such were their names--were both past the prime of life and alone in the world. Conrad's wife had died early, and now he lived by himself; and Mike had never been married.

A blue chest, of the kind called "bench-chests," was the first cause of the quarrel. After their mother's death all the property should have been divided between them: their sister, who was married in the village, had received her share in advance. Conrad claimed the chest as having been bought by his own money, earned by breaking stones on the turnpike: he had only lent it to his mother, he said, and it belonged to him. Mike alleged, on the other hand, that Conrad had eaten his mother's bread and therefore had no property of his own. After a violent altercation, the matter came before the squire, and then before the court; and it was finally decided that, as the brothers could not agree, every thing in the house, including the chest, should be sold and the proceeds divided. The house itself was put up at auction; but, as no purchaser was found, the brothers had nothing to do but to keep it.

They were now compelled to publicly buy their own chattels,--their bedding and other furniture. Conrad disliked this greatly. There are many things in every house which no stranger is rich enough to pay for, for there are a.s.sociations connected with them which have no value for any one but the original possessor. Such things should descend quietly from generation to generation: this preserves their value unimpaired.

But, when they must be torn from the hands of strangers by the force of money, a great part of their value is lost: they are thenceforth things purchased for coin, and have not the more sacred character of an inheritance. Thoughts like these often made Conrad shake his head when some old utensil was knocked down to him; and when the velvet-bound hymn-book of his mother, with the silver studs and buckles, came up, and a peddler weighed it in his hand to judge of the value of the silver, Conrad reddened up to his eyes. He bought it at a high price.

The box was sold last. Mike hemmed aloud, and looked at his brother in defiance: he bid a large sum. Conrad bid a florin more, without looking up, and pretended to count the b.u.t.tons on his coat. Mike, looking saucily around, went still higher. None of the strangers present interfered, and the brothers were both determined not to give way. Each comforted himself with the thought that he would only have to pay half of what he bid, and so they continued to raise the price up to more than five times its real value,--when it was knocked down to Conrad for twenty-eight florins.

Then he looked up for the first time, and his face was entirely changed. Spite and mockery leered out of his glaring eyes, his open mouth, and his protruding mien. "When you die, I'll make you a present of the chest to lie in," he said to Mike, trembling with rage: and those were the last words he had spoken to him for fourteen years.

The story of the chest was an excellent theme for fun and waggery in the village. Whenever anybody met Conrad, something was said about the mean way in which Mike had acted toward him; and Conrad talked himself into a rage against his brother, which increased with every word he said.

The brothers were of different dispositions in all things, and went their different ways. Conrad kept a cow, which he would yoke with the cow of his neighbor Christian to do field-work. When there was nothing to be done afield, he broke stones on the turnpike for fifteen creutzers, or about five cents, a day. He was very near-sighted. When he struck a flint to light his pipe, he always held his face very near the s.p.u.n.k, to see whether it was lit. All the village called him "blind Conrad." He was short and thick-set.

Mike was the opposite of all this. He was tall and lank, and walked with a firm step. He dressed like a farmer, not because he was one, (for he was not,) but because it was of advantage to him in his business. He dealt in old horses; and people have great faith in a horse bought of a man who is dressed in farmers' clothes. Mike was what is called in Germany a "spoiled blacksmith,"--one who had deserted his trade and lived by d.i.c.kering. He rented out and sold his fields, and lived like a gentleman. He was a person of importance in the whole country round. In a circuit of twenty miles--in Wurtemberg, in Sigmaringen and Hechingen, and in Baden--he knew the condition and the muster of every stable just as accurately as a great statesman knows the statistics of foreign states and the position of cabinets; and, as the latter sounds the state of public feeling in the newspapers, so did Mike in the taverns. In every village he had a scapegrace as minister-resident, with whom he often held secret conferences, and who, in cases of importance, would send him couriers,--to wit, themselves,--asking nothing but a good drink-money, in the strict sense of the word. Besides these, he had secret agents who would incite people to revolutions in their stables; and thus his shed, which served the purpose of a stable, was generally tenanted by some broken-down hack in the course of preparation for publicity,--_i.e._ for sale on market-day. He would dye the hair over its eyes and file its teeth; and, though the poor beast was thereby disabled from eating any thing but bran, and must starve on any thing else, he cared little, for at the next market he was sure to sell it again.

He had some curious tricks of the trade. Sometimes he instructed an understrapper to pretend to be making a trade with him. They would become very noisy, and at last Mike would say, in a very loud tone of voice, "I can't trade. I've no feed and no stabling; and, if I must give the horse away for a ducat, away he must go." Or he would pay some stupid farmer's lout to ride the horse up and down, and then observe, "If a man had that horse that knew what to do with it he might make something out of it. The build is capital: the bones are English. If he had a little flesh he would be worth his twenty ducats." If a purchaser turned up, he would undertake to get him the horse, stipulating a commission for himself for the sale of his own property. What he hated most was a warranty: rather than sign that he always agreed to throw off a ducat or two. Nevertheless, he had many a lawsuit, which eat up the horse and the profit; but the unsettled life he led had such a charm that he could not think of leaving it, and he always hoped that the profit on one speculation would compensate for the losses on another. His principle was never to leave the market without a bargain.

The Jews of the markets were also his accomplices, and he would return their favors in kind.

[Ill.u.s.tration: He would pa.s.s his brother breaking stones on the road.]

Sometimes, in riding out on these excursions, or in coming home, he would pa.s.s his brother breaking stones on the road. He would look at him half in pity and half in contempt, saying to himself, "This poor devil works from morning to night for fifteen creutzers; and, if I have any luck, I clear fifteen florins."

Conrad, seeing a little of these thoughts in spite of his nearsightedness, would strike the stones until a thousand splinters flew on every side.

We shall see hereafter whether Mike or Conrad did better in the end.

Mike was what is called "good company." He could tell stories day and night, knew a thousand tricks, and was acquainted, as the German proverb has it, with G.o.d and the world. Not that his acquaintance with G.o.d was very intimate,--though he went to church now and then, as no one in the country can avoid doing; but he went, like many others, without thinking much about what he heard there, or endeavoring to act accordingly.

Conrad also had his faults, among which perhaps the greatest was his hatred of his brother and the manner in which he expressed it. When asked, "How's Mike comin' on?" he would answer, "He'll come to this some day," pa.s.sing his hands under his chin as if to tie a knot, and then lifting them up and stretching out his tongue. Of course people were not chary in putting the question; and, whenever the standing answer came, it was the signal for peals of merriment. In other ways, also, people would try to keep the hatred of the brothers at the boiling-point, not so much from malice as for fun. Mike never did more than shrug his shoulders contemptuously when the "poor devil" was mentioned.

They never remained in the same room. When they met at the inn, or at their sister's, one of them always went away. No one ever thought of making peace between them; and whenever people lived at daggers' points it became proverbial to say, "They live like Mike and Conrad."

When they met at home they never spoke a word, nor even looked at each other. Yet, when one perceived that the other was lying ill in bed, he would go all the way to their sister's, who lived away off in Frog Alley, and say, "Go up: I guess he's poorly:" and then he would make as little noise as possible while he worked, so as not to disturb the other.

Out of doors, however, and among the neighbors, they kept up their feud without blinking; and no one would have thought of finding a spark of brotherly love in their hearts.

This had now lasted wellnigh fourteen years. Mike, with his traffic and d.i.c.kering, had let the money received for his two acres slip through his fingers,--he scarce knew how. Conrad, on the contrary, had bought another field from an emigrant, and very nearly paid for it. Mike did a commission-business, and thought of selling another field to set himself afloat again.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The new parson was a young man of great zeal.]

"Now, there arose up a new king over Egypt," is a verse of which the people of the village might have made a peculiar application. The old parson was dead. He was a good man, but let things go their own way.

The new parson was a young man of great zeal. He was bent upon righting all things, and did accomplish a great deal, until at last he got into a declared connection with Lisa, the Lamb Innkeeper's daughter; after which he ceased to meddle with people's private affairs,--for then he might have been told to sweep at his own door. But as yet he was in the full tide of reform.

One Sunday afternoon, when church was over, people sat about on the lumber brought for the new engine-house which was to be built near the town-house well. Mike was there too, sitting with his elbows on his knees and chewing a straw. Peter, Shackerle's John's boy, who was only five years old, was pa.s.sing. Somebody cried, "Peter, I'll give you a handful of nuts if you'll do like Conrad: how does Conrad do?" The child shook his head, and was going on, for he was afraid of Mike; but they held him fast, and teased him till at last he did the tying of the knot, the pulling up, and the stretching out of the tongue. The shouts of laughter could have been heard through half the village. The boy called for his nuts, but the contractor was found unable to furnish them; so Peter kicked at him,--which made them all laugh again.

The new parson, who chanced to be coming down the little hill at the town-house, had stopped to see the whole transaction. When the boy was on the point of being pummelled for his indignant dunning, the parson stepped up quickly and took the boy away. The farmers all arose in great haste and pulled off their caps. The parson walked on, taking with him the image-keeper, who happened to be among the crowd. From him he heard the story of the feud between the brothers.

Next Sat.u.r.day, as Conrad was breaking stones in the village, he was summoned to meet the parson next morning after church. He looked astonished: his pipe went out, and for two seconds the stone under his plank-soled foot remained unbroken. He was at a loss to think what could have happened at the parsonage, and would rather have gone there at once.