Chronicles of the Schonberg-Cotta Family Part 2

But it was in the monastic schools, no doubt, that he learned to be so shy and grave. He had been taught to look on married life as a low and evil thing; and, of course, we all know it cannot be so high and pure as the life in the convent. I remember now his look of wonder when Aunt Ursula, who is not fond of monks, said to him one day, "There is nothing on earth more lovely than the love of husband and wife, when it is in the fear of G.o.d."

In the warmth of her bright and sunny heart, his whole nature seemed to open like the flowers in summer. And now there is none in all our circle so popular and sociable as he is. He plays on the lute, and sings as we think no one else can. And our children all love him, he tells them such strange, beautiful stories about enchanted gardens and crusaders, and about his own childhood, among the pine-forests and the mines.

It is from Martin Luther, indeed, that I have heard more than from any one else, except from our grandmother, of the great world beyond Eisenach. He has lived already in three other towns, so that he is quite a traveller, and knows a great deal of the world, although he is not yet twenty. Our father has certainly told us wonderful things about the great islands beyond the seas which the Admiral Columbus discovered, and which will one day, he is sure, be found to be only the other side of the Indies and Tokay and Araby. Already the Spaniards have found gold in those islands, and our father has little doubt that they are the Ophir from which King Solomon's ships brought the gold for the temple. Also, he has told us about the strange lands in the south, in Africa, where the dwarfs live, and the black giants, and the great hairy men who climb the trees and make nests there, and the dreadful men-eaters, and the people who have their heads between their shoulders. But we have not yet met with any one who have seen all those wonders, so that Martin Luther and our grandmother are the greatest travellers Fritz and I are acquainted with.

Martin was born at Eisleben. His mother's is a burgher family. Three of her brothers live here at Eisenach, and here she was married. But his father came of a peasant race. His grandfather had a little farm of his own at Mora, among the Thuringian pine-forests; but Martin's father was the second son; their little property went to the eldest, and he became a miner, went to Eisleben, and then settled at Mansfeld, near the Hartz mountains where the silver and copper lie buried in the earth.

At Mansfeld Martin lived until he was nineteen. I should like to see the place. It must be so strange to watch the great furnaces, where they fuse the copper and smelt the precious silver, gleaming through the pine woods, for they burn all through the night in the clearings of the forest. When Martin was a little boy he may have watched by them with his father, who now has furnaces and a foundry of his own. Then there are the deep pits under the hills, out of which come from time to time troops of grim-looking miners. Martin is fond of the miners; they are such a brave and hardy race, and they have fine bold songs and choruses of their own which he can sing, and wild original pastimes. Chess is a favorite game with them. They are thoughtful too, as men may well be who dive into the secrets of the earth. Martin, when a boy, has often gone into the dark, mysterious pits and winding caverns with them, and seen the veins of precious ore. He has also often seen foreigners of various nations. They come from all parts of the world to Mansfeld for the silver,--from Bavaria and Switzerland, and even from the beautiful Venice, which is a city of palaces, where the streets are ca.n.a.ls filled by the blue sea, and instead of waggons they use boats, from which people land on the marble steps of the palaces. All these things Martin has heard described by those who have really seen them, besides what he has seen himself. His father also frequently used to have the schoolmasters and learned men at his house, that his sons might profit by their wise conversation. But I doubt if he can have enjoyed this so much. It must have been difficult to forget the rod with which once he was beaten fourteen times in one morning, so as to feel sufficiently at ease to enjoy their conversation. Old Count Gunther of Mansfeld thinks much of Martin's father, and often used to send for him to consult him about the mines.

Their house at Mansfeld stood at some distance from the school-house which was on the hill, so that, when he was little, an older boy used to be kind to him, and carry him in his arms to school. I daresay that was in winter, when his little feet were swollen with chilblains, and his poor mother used to go up to the woods to gather f.a.ggots for the hearth.

His mother must be a very good and holy woman, but not, I fancy, quite like our mother; rather more like Aunt Agnes. I think I should have been rather afraid of her. Martin says she is very religious. He honours and loves her very much, although she was very strict with him, and once, he told Fritz, beat him, for taking a nut from their stores, until the blood came. She must be a brave, truthful woman, who would not spare herself or others; but I think I should have felt more at home with his father, who used so often to kneel beside Martin's bed at night, and pray G.o.d to make him a good and useful man. Martin's father, however, does not seem so fond of the monks and nuns, and is therefore, I suppose, not so religious as his mother is. He does not at all wish Martin to become a priest or a monk, but to be a great lawyer, or doctor, or professor at some university.

Mansfeld, however, is a very holy place. There are many monasteries and nunneries there, and in one of them two of the countesses were nuns.

There is also a castle there, and our St. Elizabeth worked miracles there as well as here. The devil also is not idle at Mansfeld. A wicked old witch lived close to Martin's house, and used to frighten and distress his mother much, bewitching the children so that they nearly cried themselves to death. Once even, it is said, the devil himself got up into the pulpit, and preached, of course in disguise. But in all the legends it is the same. The devil never seems so busy as where the saints are, which is another reason why I feel how difficult it would be to be religious.

Martin had a sweet voice, and loved music as a child, and he used often to sing at people's doors as he did here. Once, at Christmas time, he was singing carols from village to village among the woods with other boys, when a peasant came to the door of his hut, where they were singing, and said in a loud gruff voice, "Where are you, boys?" The children were so frightened that they scampered away as fast as they could, and only found out afterwards that the man with a rough voice had a kind heart, and had brought them out some sausages. Poor Martin was used to blows in those days, and had good reason to dread them. It must have been pleasant, however, to hear the boys' voices carolling through the woods about Jesus born at Bethlehem. Voices echo so strangely among the silent pine-forests.

When Martin was thirteen he left Mansfeld and went to Magdeburg, where the Archbishop Ernest lives, the brother of our Elector, who has a beautiful palace, and twelve trumpeters to play to him always when he is at dinner. Magdeburg must be a magnificent city, very nearly, we think, as grand as Rome itself. There is a great cathedral there, and knights and princes and many soldiers, who prance about the streets; and tournaments and splendid festivals. But our Martin heard more than he saw of all this. He and John Reineck of Mansfeld (a boy older than himself, who is one of his greatest friends), went to the school of the Franciscan Cloister, and had to spend their time with the monks, or sing about the streets for bread, or in the church-yard when the Franciscans in their grey robes went there to fulfill their office of burying the dead. But it was not for him, the miner's son, to complain, when, as he says, he used to see a Prince of Anhalt going about the streets in a cowl begging bread, with a sack on his shoulders like a beast of burden, insomuch that he was bowed to the ground. The poor prince, Martin said, had fasted and watched and mortified his flesh until he looked like an image of death, with only skin and bones. Indeed, shortly after he died.

At Magdeburg also, Martin saw the picture of which he has often told us.

"A great ship was painted, meant to signify the Church, wherein there was no layman, not even a king or prince. There were none but the pope with his cardinals and bishops in the prow, with the Holy Ghost hovering over them, the priests and monks with their oars at the side; and thus they were sailing on heavenward. The laymen were swimming along in the water around the ship. Some of them were drowning; some were drawing themselves up to the ship by means of ropes, which the monks, moved with pity, and making over their own good works, did cast out to them to keep them from drowning, and to enable them to cleave to the vessel and to go with the others to heaven. There was no pope, nor cardinal, nor bishop, nor priest, nor monk in the water, but laymen only."

It must have been a very dreadful picture, and enough to make any one afraid of not being religious, or else to make one feel how useless it is for any one except the monks and nuns, to try to be religious at all.

Because however little merit any one had acquired, some kind monk might still be found to throw a rope out of the ship and help him in; and, however many good works any layman might do, they would be of no avail to help him out of the flood, or even to keep him from drowning, unless he had some friends in a cloister.

I said Martin was merry; and so he is, with the children, or when he is cheered with music or singing. And yet, on the whole, I think he is rather grave, and often he looks very thoughtful, and even melancholy.

His merriment does not seem to be so much from carelessness as from earnestness of heart, so that whether he is telling a story to the little ones, or singing a lively song, his whole heart is in it,--in his play as well as in his work.

In his studies Fritz says there is no one at Eisenach who can come near him, whether in reciting, or writing prose or verse, or translating, or church music.

Master Trebonius, the head of St. George's school, is a very learned man and very polite. He takes off his hat, Fritz says, and bows to his scholars when he enters the school, for he says that "among these boys are future burgomasters, chancellors, doctors, and magistrates." This must be very different from the masters at Mansfeld. Master Trebonius thinks very much of Martin. I wonder if he and Fritz will be burgomasters or doctors one day.

Martin is certainly very religious for a boy, and so is Fritz. They attend ma.s.s very regularly, and confession, and keep the fasts.

From what I have heard Martin say, however, I think he is as much afraid of G.o.d and Christ and the dreadful day of wrath and judgment as I am.

Indeed I am sure he feels, as every one must, there would be no hope for us were it not for the Blessed Mother of G.o.d who may remind her Son how she nursed and cared for him, and move him to have some pity.

But Martin has been at the University of Erfurt nearly two years, and Fritz has now left us to study there with him; and we shall have no more music, and the children no more stories until no one knows when.

These are the people I know. I have nothing else to say except about the things I possess, and the place we live in.

The things are easily described. I have a silver reliquary, with a lock of the hair of St. Elizabeth in it. That is my greatest treasure. I have a black rosary with a large iron cross which Aunt Agnes gave me. I have a missal, and part of a volume of the Nibelungen Lied; and besides my every-day dress, a black taffetas jacket and a crimson stuff petticoat, and two gold ear-rings, and a silver chain for holidays, which Aunt Ursula gave me. Fritz and I between us have also a copy of some old Latin hymns, with woodcuts, printed at Nurnberg. And in the garden I have two rose bushes; and I have a wooden crucifix carved in Rome out of wood which came from Bethlehem, and in a leather purse one gulden my G.o.dmother gave me at my christening; and that is all.

The place we live in is Eisenach, and I think it a beautiful place. But never having seen any other town, perhaps I cannot very well judge.

There are nine monasteries and nunneries here, many of them founded by St. Elizabeth. And there are I do not know how many priests. In the churches are some beautiful pictures of the sufferings and glory of the saints; and painted windows, and on the altars gorgeous gold and silver plate, and a great many wonderful relics which we go to adore on the great saint's days.

The town is in a valley, and high above the houses rises the hill on which stands the Wartburg, the castle where St. Elizabeth lived. I went inside it once with our father to take some books to the Elector. The rooms were beautifully furnished with carpets and velvet-covered chairs.

A lady dressed in silk and jewels, like St. Elizabeth in the pictures, gave me sweetmeats. But the castle seemed to me dark and gloomy. I wondered which was the room in which the proud mother of the Landgrave lived, who was so discourteous to St. Elizabeth when she came a young maiden from her royal home far away in Hungary; and which was the cold wall against which she pressed her burning brow, when she rushed through the castle in despair on hearing suddenly of the death of her husband.

I was glad to escape into the free forest again, for all around the castle, and over all the hills, as far as we can see around Eisenach, it is forest. The tall dark pine woods clothe the hills; but in the valleys the meadows are very green beside the streams. It is better in the valleys among the wild flowers than in that stern old castle, and I did not wonder so much after being there that St. Elizabeth built herself a hut in a lowly valley among the woods, and preferred to live and die there.

It is beautiful in summer in the meadows, at the edge of the pine woods, when the sun brings out the delicious aromatic perfume of the pines, and the birds sing, and the rooks caw. I like it better than the incense in St. George's Church, and almost better than the singing of the choir, and certainly better than the sermons which are so often about the dreadful fires and the judgment-day, or the confessional where they give us such hard penances. The lambs, and the birds, and even the insects, seem so happy, each with its own little bleat, or warble, or coo, or buzz of content.

It almost seems then as if Mary, the dear Mother of G.o.d, were governing the world instead of Christ, the Judge, or the Almighty with the thunders. Every creature seems so blithe and so tenderly cared for I cannot help feeling better there than at church. But that is because I have so little religion.

II.

Extracts from Friedrich's Chronicle.

ERFURT, 1503.

At last I stand on the threshold of the world I have so long desired to enter. Else's world is mine no longer; and yet, never until this week did I feel how dear that little home-world is to me. Indeed, Heaven forbid I should have left it finally. I look forward to returning to it again, nevermore, however, as a burden on our parents, but as their stay and support, to set our mother free from the cares which are slowly eating her precious life away, to set our father free to pursue his great projects, and to make our little Else as much a lady as any of the n.o.ble baronesses our grandmother tells us of. Although, indeed, as it is, when she walks beside me to church on holidays, in her crimson dress, with her round, neat, little figure in the black jacket with the white stomacher, and the silver chains, her fair hair so neatly braided, and her blue eyes so full of sunshine,--who can look better than Else?

And I can see I am not the only one in Eisenach who thinks so. I would only wish to make all the days holidays for her, and that it should not be necessary when the festival is over for my little sister to lay aside all her finery so carefully in the great chest, and put on her Aschputtel garments again, so that if the fairy prince we used to talk of, were to come, he would scarcely recognise the fair little princess he had seen at church. And yet no fairy prince need be ashamed of our Else even in her working, every-day clothes;--he certainly would not be the right one if he were. In the twilight, when the day's work is done, and the children are asleep, and she comes and sits beside me with her knitting in the lumber-room or under the pear tree in the garden, what princess could look fresher or neater than Else, with her smooth fair hair braided like a coronet? Who would think that she had been toiling all day, cooking, washing, nursing the children. Except, indeed, because of the healthy colour her active life gives her face, and for that sweet low voice of hers, which I think women learn best by the cradles of little children.

I suppose it is because I have never yet seen any maiden to compare to our Else that I have not yet fallen in love. And, nevertheless, it is not of such a face as Else's I dream, when dreams come, or even exactly such as my mother's. My mother's eyes are dimmed with many cares; is it not that very worn and faded brow that makes her sacred to me? More sacred than any saintly halo! And Else, good, practical little Else, she is a dear household fairy; but the face I dream of has another look in it. Else's eyes are good, as she says, for seeing and helping; and sweet, indeed, they are for loving--dear, kind, true eyes. But the eyes I dream of have another look, a fire like our grandmother's, as if from a southern sun; dim, dreamy, far-seeing glances, burning into the hearts, like the ladies in the romances, and yet piercing into heaven, like St. Cecilia's when she stands entranced by her organ. She should be a saint, at whose feet I might sit and look through her pure heart into heaven, and yet she should love me wholly, pa.s.sionately, fearlessly, devotedly, as if her heaven were all in my love. My love! and who am I that I should have such dreams? A poor burgher lad of Eisenach, a penniless student of a week's standing at Erfurt! The eldest son of a large dest.i.tute family, who must not dare to think of loving the most perfect maiden, in the world, when I meet her, until I have rescued a father, mother, and six brothers and sisters from the jaws of biting poverty. And even in a dream it seems almost a treachery to put any creature above Else. I fancy I see her kind blue eyes filling with reproachful tears. For there is no doubt that in Else's heart I have no rival, even in a dream. Poor, loving, little Else!

Yes, she must be rescued from the pressure of those daily fretting cares of penury and hope deferred, which have made our mother old so early. If I had been in the father's place, I could never have borne to see winter creeping so soon over the summer of her life. But he does not see it. Or if for a moment her pale face and the grey hairs which begin to come seem to trouble him, he kisses her forehead, and says,

"Little mother, it will soon be over; there is nothing wanting now but the last link to make this last invention perfect, and then--"

And then he goes into his printing-room; but to this day the missing link has never been found. Else and our mother, however, always believe it will turn up some day. Our grandmother has doubts. And I have scarcely any hope at all, although, for all the world, I would not breathe this to any one at home. To me that laboratory of my father's, with its furnace, its models, its strange machines, is the most melancholy place in the world. It is like a haunted chamber,--haunted with the helpless, nameless ghosts of infants that have died at their birth,--the ghosts of vain and fruitless projects; like the ruins of a city that some earthquake had destroyed before it was finished, ruined palaces that were never roofed, ruined houses that were never inhabited, ruined churches that were never worshipped in. The saints forbid that my life should be like that! and yet what it is which has made him so unsuccessful, I can never exactly make out. He is no dreamer. He is no idler. He does not sit lazily down with folded arms and imagine his projects. He makes his calculations with the most laborious accuracy; he consults all the learned men and books he has access to. He weighs, and measures, and constructs the neatest models possible. His room is a museum of exquisite models, which seem as if they must answer, and yet never do. The professors, and even the Elector's secretary, who has come more than once to consult him, have told me he is a man of remarkable genius.

What can it be, then, that makes his life such a failure? I cannot think; unless it is that other great inventors and discoverers seem to have made their discoveries and inventions as it were _by the way_, in the course of their every-day life. As a seaman sails on his appointed voyage to some definite port, he notices drift-wood or weeds which must have come from unknown lands beyond the seas. As he sails in his calling from port to port, the thought is always in his mind; everything he hears groups itself naturally around this thought; he observes the winds and currents; he collects information from mariners who have been driven out of their course, in the direction where he believes this unknown land to lie. And at length he persuades some prince that his belief is no mere dream, and like the great admiral Christopher Columbus, he ventures across the trackless unknown Atlantic and discovers the Western Indies. But before he was a discoverer, he was a mariner.

Or some engraver of woodcuts thinks of applying his carved blocks to letters, and the printing-press is invented. But it is in his calling.

He has not gone out of his way to hunt for inventions. He has found them in his path, the path of his daily calling. It seems to me people do not become great, do not become discoverers and inventors by trying to be so, but by determining to do in the very best way what they have to do.

Thus improvements suggest themselves, one by one, step by step; each improvement is tested as it is made by practical use, until at length the happy thought comes, not like an elf from the wild forest, but like an angel on the daily path; and the little improvements become the great invention. There is another great advantage, moreover, in this method over our father's. If the invention never comes, at all events we have the improvements, which are worth something. Every one cannot invent the printing-press or discover the New Indies; but every engraver may make his engravings a little better, and every mariner may explore a little further than his predecessors.

Yet it seems almost like treason to write thus of our father. What would Else or our mother think, who believe there is nothing but accident or the blindness of mankind between us and greatness? Not that they have learned to think thus from our father. Never in my life did I hear him say a grudging or depreciating word of any of those who have most succeeded where he has failed. He seems to look on all such men as part of a great brotherhood, and to rejoice in another man hitting the point which he missed, just as he would rejoice in himself succeeding in something to-day which he failed in yesterday. It is this n.o.bleness of character which makes me reverence him more than any mere successes could. It is because I fear, that in a life of such disappointments my character would not prove so generous, but that failure would sour my temper and penury degrade my spirit as they never have his, that I have ventured to search for the rocks on which he made shipwreck, in order to avoid them. All men cannot return wrecked, and tattered, and dest.i.tute from an unsuccessful voyage, with a heart as hopeful, a temper as generous, a spirit as free from envy and detraction, as if they brought the golden fleece with them. Our father does this again and again; and therefore I trust his argosies are laid up for him as for those who follow the rules of evangelical perfection, where neither moth nor rust can corrupt. I could not. I would never return until I could bring what I had sought, or I should return a miserable man, shipwrecked in heart as well as in fortune. And therefore I must examine my charts, and choose my port and my vessel carefully, before I sail.

All these thoughts came into my mind as I stood on the last height of the forest, from which I could look back on Eisenach, nestling in the valley under the shadow of the Wartburg. May the dear mother of G.o.d, St.

Elizabeth, and all the saints, defend it evermore!

But there was not much time to linger for a last view of Eisenach. The winter days were short; some snow had fallen in the previous night. The roofs of the houses in Eisenach were white with it, and the carvings of spire and tower seemed inlaid with alabaster. A thin covering lay on the meadows and hill-sides, and light feather-work frosted the pines. I had nearly thirty miles to walk through forest and plain before I reached Erfurt. The day was as bright and the air as light as my heart. The shadows of the pines lay across the frozen snow, over which my feet crunched cheerily. In the clearings, the outline of the black twigs were pencilled dark and clear against the light blue of the winter sky. Every outline was clear, and crisp, and definite, as I resolved my own aims in life should be. I knew my purposes were pure and high, and I felt as if Heaven must prosper me.

But as the day wore on, I began to wonder when the forest would end, until, as the sun sank lower and lower, I feared I must have missed my way; and at last as I climbed a height to make a survey, to my dismay it was too evident I had taken the wrong turning in the snow. Wide reaches of the forest lay all around me, one pine-covered hill folding over another; and only in one distant opening could I get a glimpse of the level land beyond, where I knew Erfurt must lie. The daylight was fast departing; my wallet was empty. I knew there were villages hidden in the valleys here and there; but not a wreath of smoke could I see, nor any sign of man, except here and there f.a.ggots piled in some recent clearing. Towards one of these clearings I directed my steps, intending to follow the wood-cutters' track, which I thought would probably lead me to the hut of some charcoal burner, where I might find fire and shelter. Before I reached this spot, however, night had set in. The snow began to fall again, and it seemed too great a risk to leave the broader path to follow any unknown track. I resolved, therefore, to make the best of my circ.u.mstances. They were not unendurable. I had a flint and tinder, and gathering some dry wood and twigs, I contrived with some difficulty to light a fire. Cold and hungry I certainly was, but for this I cared little. It was only an extra fast, and it seemed to me quite natural that my journey of life should commence with difficulty and danger. It was always so in legend of the saints, romance, or elfin tale, or when anything great was to be done.

But in the night, as the wind howled through the countless stems of the pines, not with the soft varieties of sound it makes amidst the summer oak-woods, but with a long monotonous wail like a dirge, a tumult awoke in my heart such as I had never known before. I knew these forests were infested by robber-bands, and I could hear in the distance the baying and howling of the wolves; but it was not fear which tossed my thoughts so wildly to and fro, at least not fear of bodily harm. I thought of all the stories of wild huntsmen, of wretched guilty men, hunted by packs of fiends; and the stories which had excited a wild delight in Else and me, as our grandmother told them by the fire at home, now seemed to freeze my soul with horror. For was not I a guilty creature, and were not the devils indeed too really around me?--and what was to prevent their possessing me? Who in all the universe was on my side? Could I look up with confidence to G.o.d? He loves only the holy. Or to Christ? He is the judge; and more terrible than any cries of legions of devils will it be to the sinner to hear his voice from the awful snow-white throne of judgment. Then, my sins rose before me--my neglected prayers, penances imperfectly performed, incomplete confessions. Even that morning, had I not been full of proud and ambitious thoughts--even perhaps vainly comparing myself with my good father, and picturing myself as conquering and enjoying all kinds of worldly delights? It was true, it could hardly be a sin to wish to save my family from penury and care; but it was certainly a sin to be ambitious of worldly distinction, as Father Christopher had so often told me. Then, how difficult to separate the two? Where did duty end, and ambition and pride begin? I determined to find a confessor as soon as I reached Erfurt, if ever I reached it. And yet, what could even the wisest confessor do for me in such difficulties? How could I ever be sure that I had not deceived myself in examining my motives, and then deceived him, and thus obtained an absolution on false pretences, which could avail me nothing? And if this might be so with future confessions, why not with all past ones?

The thought was horror to me, and seemed to open a fathomless abyss of misery yawning under my feet. I could no more discover a track out of my miserable perplexities than out of the forest.