Transcriber's Note:
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BY COPYRIGHT ARRANGEMENT WITH THE AUTHOR.

THE NOVELS OF

FRIEDRICH SPIELHAGEN.

12mo, cloth, uniform in size and style, per vol., $2.00.

JUST PUBLISHED.

I.--PROBLEMATIC CHARACTERS.

II.--THROUGH NIGHT TO LIGHT.

III.--THE HOHENSTEINS.

The above translated by Prof. Schele de Vere.

IV.--HAMMER AND ANVIL.

Translated by Wm. Hand Browne.

IN PRESS.

V.--IN RANK AND FILE.

VI.--ROSE, AND THE VILLAGE COQUETTE.

CRITICAL NOTICES.

"Such a novel as no English author with whom we are acquainted could have written, and no American author except Hawthorne. What separates it from the multitude of American and English novels is the perfection of its plot, and its author's insight into the souls of his characters.... If Germany is poorer than England, as regards the number of its novelists, it is richer when we consider the intellectual value of their works. If it has not produced a Thackeray, or a Dickens, it has produced, we venture to think, two writers who are equal to them in genius, and superior to them in the depth and spirituality of their art--Auerbach and Spielhagen."--Putnam's Magazine.

"The name is suggested by a passage nn Goethe, which serves as a motto to the book. Spielhagen means to illustrate what Goethe speaks of--natures not in full possession of themselves, 'who are not equal to any situation in life, and whom no situation satisfies'--the Hamlet of our latest civilization. With these he deals in a poetic, ideal fashion, yet also with humor, and, what is less to be expected in a German, with sparkling, flashing wit, and a cynical vein that reminds one of Heine. He has none of the tiresome detail of Auerbach, while he lacks somewhat that excellent man's profound devotion to the moral sentiment. There is more depth of passion and of thought in Spielhagen, together with a French liveliness by no means common in German novelists.... At any rate, they are vastly superior to the bulk of English novels which are annually poured out upon us--as much above Trollope's as Steinberger Cabinet is better than London porter.--Springfield Republican.

"The reader lives among them (the characters) as he does among his acquaintances, and may plead each one's case as plausibly to his own judgment as he can those of the men whose mixed motives and actions he sees around him. In other words, these characters live, they are men and women, and the whole mystery of humanity is upon each of them. Has no superior in German romance for its enthusiastic and lively descriptions, and for the dignity and the tenderness with which its leading characters are invested."--New York Evening Post.

"He strikes with a blow like a blacksmith, making the sparks fly and the anvil ring. Terse, pointed, brilliant, rapid, and no dreamer, he has the best traits of the French manner, while in earnestness and fulness of matter he is thoroughly German. One sees, moreover, in his pages, how powerful is the impression which America has of late been making upon the mind of Europe."--Boston Commonwealth.

"The work is one of immense vigor; the characters are extraordinary, yet not unnatural; the plot is the sequence of an admirably-sustained web of incident and action. The portraitures of characteristic foibles and peculiarities remind one much of the masterhand of the great Thackeray. The author Spielhagen In Germany ranks very much as Thackeray does with us, and many of his English reviewers place him at the head and front of German novelists."--Troy Daily Times.

"His characters have, perhaps, more passion, and act their parts with as much dramatic effect as those which have passed under the hand of Auerbach."--Cincinnati Chronicle.

The N. Y. Times, of Oct. 23d, in a long Review of the above two works, says: "The descriptions of nature and art, the portrayals of character and emotion, are always striking and truthful. As one reads, there grows upon him gradually the conviction that this is one of the greatest of works of fiction.... No one, that is not a pure egoiste, can read Problematic Characters without profound and even solemn interest. It is altogether a tragic work, the tragedy of the nineteenth century--greater in its truth and earnestness, and absence of Hugoese affectation, than any tragedy the century has produced. It stands far above any of the productions of either Freytag or Auerbach."

LEYPOLDT & HOLT, Publishers,

25 BOND ST., NEW YORK.

Hammer and Anvil

A Novel

BY

FRIEDRICH SPIELHAGEN

Author's Edition.

NEW YORK

LEYPOLDT & HOLT

25 Bond Street

1870.

Hammer and Anvil

A NOVEL

BY

Friedrich Spielhagen

FROM THE GERMAN

BY

WILLIAM HAND BROWNE

Author's Edition.

NEW YORK

LEYPOLDT & HOLT

25 Bond Street

1870.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, by
LEYPOLDT & HOLT,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States
for the Southern District of New York.

HAMMER AND ANVIL.

Part First.

CHAPTER I.

We were standing in a deep recess at the open window of our class-room. The sparrows were noisily chattering in the school-yard, and some scattered rays of the late summer sun glanced past the old gray walls down to the grass-grown pavement; from the class-room, which was high-ceilinged, sunless, and ill-ventilated, came the buzzing sound of repressed talk from our schoolfellows, who were all in their places, bent over their Sophocles, and watching for the arrival of the "old man," who was looked for every moment.

"At the worst, you can shuffle through somehow," I was saying, when the door opened and he came in.

He--Professor Lederer, Provisory Director of the Gymnasium, and Ordinarius of the first form,[^[1]] "the old man," as we used to call him--was in reality not exactly old, but a man past the middle of the forties, whose small head, already turning gray, rested upon a stiff white cravat, and whose tall and extraordinarily lean figure was buttoned up, from one year's end to the other, summer and winter, in a coat of the finest and glossiest black. His slender hands, of which he took extreme care, with their long and tapering fingers--when twitching nervously, as they had a habit of doing, close under my eyes--had always a sort of fascination for me, and more than once I could scarcely resist the temptation to seize one of those artistic-looking hands and crush it in my own coarse brown fist.

Professor Lederer always paced the distance from the door to his desk in twelve measured, dignified strides, head and eyes a little drooped, with the austere look of intensest meditation; like a priest approaching the sacrificial altar, or a Caesar entering the senate--at all events like a being who, far removed from the modern plebeian sphere, walked day by day in the light of the sun of Homer, and was perfectly aware of the majestic fact. So it was never a judicious proceeding to try to detain this classical man upon this short journey, and in most cases a prohibitory gesture of his hand checked the attempt; but the sanguine Arthur was so sure that his request would not be refused, that he ventured it, reckless of further consequences. So, stepping out in front of the professor, he asked for a holiday for the day, which was Saturday.

"Certainly not," said the professor.

"To go sailing," urged Arthur, not in the least deterred by the stern tone of the professor, for my friend Arthur was not easily abashed--"to go in my uncle's steamboat to examine the oyster-beds which my uncle planted two years ago. I have a note from my father, you know, professor," and he produced the credential in question.

"Certainly not!" repeated the professor. His pale face flushed a little with irritation; his white hand, from which he had drawn his black glove, was extended towards Arthur with a classical minatory gesture; his blue eyes deepened in hue, like the sea when a cloud-shadow passes over it.

"Certainly not!" he exclaimed for the third time, strode past Arthur to his desk, and after silently folding his white hands, explained that he was too much excited to begin with the customary prayers. And presently followed a stammering philippic--the professor always stammered when irritated--against that pest of youth, worldliness and hankering after pleasure, which chiefly infected precisely those upon whom rested the smallest portion of the spirit of Apollo and Pallas Athené. "He was a mild and humane man," he said, "and well mindful of the words of the poet, that it was well to lay seriousness aside at the proper time and place; ay, even at times to quaff the wine-cup and move the feet in the dance; but then the cause should be sufficient to justify the license--a Virgil must have returned from a far-off land, or a Cleopatra have freed the people from imminent peril by her voluntary, yet involuntary death. But how could any one who notoriously was one of the worst scholars--yes, might be styled absolutely the worst, unless one other"--here the professor gave a side-glance at me--"could claim this evil pre-eminence--how could such a one dare to clutch at a garland which should only encircle a brow dripping with the sweat of industry! Was he, the speaker, too strict? He thought not. Assuredly, no one could wish it more earnestly than he, and no one would rejoice more heartily than he, if the subject of his severe rebuke would even now give the proof of his innocence by translating without an error the glorious chorus of the Antigone, which was the theme of the morning's lecture. Von Zehren, commence!"

Poor Arthur! I still see, after the lapse of so many years, his beautiful, but even then somewhat worn face, striving in vain to hold fast upon its lips the smile of aristocratic indifference with which he had listened to the professor's rebuke, as he took the book and read, not too fluently, a verse or two of the Greek. Even in this short reading the scornful smile gradually faded, and he glanced from under his dropped lids a look of beseeching perplexity towards his neighbor and Pylades. But how was it possible for me to help him; and who knew better than he how impossible it was? So the inevitable came to pass. He turned the "shaft of Helios" into a "shield of Æolus," and blundered on in pitiable confusion. The others announced their better knowledge by peals of laughter, and a grim smile of triumph over his discomfiture even played over the grave features of the professor.

"The curs!" muttered Arthur with white lips, as he took his seat after the recitation had lasted a couple of minutes. "But why did you not prompt me?"

I had no time to answer this idle question, for it was now my turn. But I had no notion of making sport for my comrades by submitting to be classically racked; so I declared that I was even less prepared than my friend, and added that I trusted this testimony would corroborate the charge that the professor had been pleased to bring against me.

I accompanied these words with a threatening look at the others, which at once checked their mirth; and the professor, either thinking he had gone far enough, or not deigning to notice my insolent speech, turned away with a shrug of the shoulders, and contented himself with treating us with silent contempt for the rest of the recitation, while towards the others he was unusually amiable, enlivening the lesson by sallies of the most classical and learned wit.

No sooner had the door closed behind him, than Arthur stood up before the first form and said:

"You fellows have behaved meanly again, as you always do; but as for me, I have no notion of staying here any longer. The old man will not be back any more to-day; and if the others ask for me, say I am sick."

"And for me too," cried I, stepping up to Arthur and laying my arm on his shoulder. "I am going with him. A fellow that deserts his friend is a sneak."

A moment later we had dropped from the window twelve feet into the yard, and crouching between two buttresses that the professor might not espy us as he went out, we consulted what was next to be done.

There were two ways of getting out of the closed court in which we now were: either to slip through the long crooked corridors of the gymnasium--an old monastery--and so out into the street; or to go directly through the professor's house, which joined the yard at one corner, and thence upon the promenade, which nearly surrounded the town, and had in fact been constructed out of the old demolished town-walls. The first course was hazardous, for it often happened that a pair of teachers would walk up and down the cool corridors in conversation long after the regular time for the commencement of the lessons, and we had no minute to lose in waiting. The other was still more dangerous, for it led right through the lion's den; but it was far shorter, and practicable every moment, so we decided to venture it.

Creeping close to the wall, right under the windows of our class-room, in which the second lesson had already begun, we reached the narrow gate that opened into the little yard of the professor's house. Here all was quiet; through the open door we could see into the wide hall paved with slabs of stone, where the professor, who had just returned, was playing with his youngest boy, a handsome black-haired little fellow of six years, chasing him with long strides, and clapping his white hands. The child laughed and shouted, and at one time ran out into the yard, directly towards where we were hidden behind a pile of firewood--two more steps of the little feet, and we should have been detected.

I have often thought, since that time, that on those two little steps, in reality, depended nothing less than the whole destiny of my life. If the child had discovered us, we had only to come forward from behind the wood-pile, which every one had to pass in going from the gymnasium to the director's house, as two scholars on their way to their teacher to ask his pardon for their misbehavior. At least Arthur confessed to me that this idea flashed into his mind as the child came towards us. Then there would have been another reprimand, but in a milder tone, for the professor was a kind man at the bottom of his heart; we should have gone back to the class-room, pretended to our schoolmates that our running away was only a joke, and--well, I do not know what would have happened then; certainly not what really did happen.

But the little trotting feet did not come to us; the father, following with long strides, caught the child and tossed it in the air till the black curls glistened in the sunshine, and then carried it back, caressing it, to the house, where Mrs. Professor now appeared at the door, with her hair in papers, and a white apron on; and then father, mother, and child disappeared. Through the open door we could see that the hall was empty--now or never was the time.

With beating hearts, such as only beat in the breasts of school-boys bent on some dangerous prank, we stole to the door through the silent hall where the motes were sparkling in the sunbeams that slanted through the gothic windows. As we opened the house-door, the bell gave a clear note of warning; but even now the leafy trees of the promenade were beckoning to us; in half a minute we were concealed by the thick bushes, and hastening with rapid steps, that now and then quickened to a half run, towards the port.

"What will you say to your father?" I asked.

"Nothing at all, because he will ask no questions," Arthur replied; "or if he does, I will say that I was let off; what else? It will be capital; I shall have splendid fun."

We kept on for a while in silence. For the first time it occurred to me that I had run away from school for just nothing at all. If Arthur came in for a couple of days in the dungeon, he, at all events, would have had "splendid fun," and thus, for him at least, there was some show of reason in the thing. His parents, too, were very indulgent; his share of the danger was as good as none, while I ran all the risk of discovery and punishment without the least compensation; and my stern old father was a man who understood no trifling, least of all in matters of this sort. So once again, as many times before, I had helped to pull the chestnuts out of the fire for somebody else. However, what did it matter? Here, under the rustling trees, after our brisk race, it was more pleasant than in the stifling class-room; and for me, in those times, every silly, venturesome frolic had a pleasure in itself. So I felt it a special piece of magnanimity on the part of my usually selfish friend, when he suddenly said:

"Look here, George, you shall come too. Uncle charged me particularly to bring as many friends as I could. I tell you it will be splendid. Elise Kohl and Emilie Heckepfennig are going with us. For once I shall leave Emilie to you. And then the oysters, and the champagne, and the pineapple punch--yes, you certainly must come."

"And my father?" I said; but I only said it, for my resolution to be one of the party was already taken. Emilie Heckepfennig--Emilie, with her little turned-up nose and laughing eyes, who had always shown me a decided preference; and recently, at forfeits, had given me a hearty kiss, to which she was in no wise bound, and whom Arthur, the coxcomb, was going to leave especially to me! Yes, I must go along, happen what might.

"Can I go as I am, do you think?" I asked, suddenly halting, with a glance at my dress, which was plain and neat, it is true--I was always neat--but not exactly the thing for company.

"Why not?" said Arthur. "What difference does it make? And, besides, we have not a minute to spare."

Arthur, who was in his best clothes, had not looked at me, nor slackened his pace in the least. We had not a minute to spare, that was true enough, for as slipping through some narrow alleys we reached the harbor, we heard the bell ringing on board the steamer that was lying at the wharf just ready to start. The sturdy figure of the captain was seen standing upon the paddle-box. We pushed through the crowd on the wharf, ran up the gang-plank, which they were just hauling in, and mingled with the gay throng on deck, as the wheels began to turn.

CHAPTER II.

"How you startled me!" said Frau von Zehren, seizing her son by both hands. "We began to think, what was really impossible, that Professor Lederer had refused you permission. You see now, Zehren, that I was right."

"Well, it is all right now," replied the steuerrath.[^[2]] "The young ladies were inconsolable at the prospect of your absence Arthur--or am I saying too much, Fräulein Emilie and Fräulein Elise?" and the steuerrath turned with a polite wave of his hand to the young ladies, who tittered and nodded their dark broad-brimmed straw-hats at each other.

"And now you must speak to your uncle," he went on; "but where is your uncle, then?" and he ran his eye over the company that was moving about the deck.

The Commerzienrath Streber came bouncing up. His little, light-blue eyes glittered under bushy gray brows, the long peak of his old-fashioned cap was pushed back from his bald forehead, the left sleeve of his loose blue frock-coat, with gold buttons, had slipped half off his shoulder, as he hurried along on his little legs, cased in yellow nankeen trousers:

"Where has that rascal John put the----?"

"Allow me, brother-in-law, to present my Arthur----."

"Very good," cried the commerzienrath, without even giving a look at the presentee. "Aha! there the villain is!" and he made a dart at his servant, who was just coming up the companion-way with a tray of glasses.

The steuerrath and his lady exchanged a look, in which "the old brute," or some similarly flattering expression, was plainly legible. Arthur had joined the young ladies and said something at which they burst out laughing and rapped him with their parasols; I, whom nobody seemed to notice, turned away and went on the more quiet forward deck, where I found a seat upon a coil of rope, and leaning my back against the capstan, looked out upon the bright sky and the bright sea.

In the meantime the boat had left the harbor, and was moving down with the coast on our larboard, where the red roofs of the fishermen's cottages shone through the trees and bushes; while on the narrow strip of level beach here and there figures were seen, seafaring folks probably, or sea-bathers, who were watching the steamer go by. To our right the shore receded, so that it was only just possible to distinguish it from the water; before us, but at a still more remote distance, gleamed the chalk-coast of the neighboring island over the blue expanse of sea, which now began to roughen a little under a fresher breeze, while countless flocks of seabirds now flew up from the approach of the puffing steamer, and now, with their cunning heads turned towards us, sported on the waves and filled the air with their monotonous cries.

It was a bright and lovely morning; but though I saw its beauty, it gave me no pleasure. I felt singularly dejected. Had the Penguin that, with a sluggishness altogether at variance with her name, was slowly toiling through the water, been a beautiful swift clipper, bound for China or Buenos Ayres, or somewhere thousands of miles away, and I a passenger with a great purse of gold, or even a sailor before the mast, with the assurance that I should never again set eyes on the hateful steeples of my native town, I should have been light-hearted enough. But now! what was it then that made me so low-spirited? The consciousness of my disobedience? Dread of the disagreeable consequences, now, to all human foresight, inevitable? Nothing of the sort. The worst could only be that my stern father would drive me from his house, as he had already often enough threatened to do; and this possibility I regarded as a deliverance from a yoke which seemed to grow more intolerable every day; and as the idea arose in my mind, I welcomed it with a smile of grim satisfaction. No, it was not that. What then?

Well, to have run away from school with an ardor as if some glorious prize was to be won, and then, in a merry company, on the deck of a steamboat, to sit away by myself on a coil of rope, not one of the gentlemen or ladies taking the slightest notice of me, and with not even the prospect that the waiter, with the caviar-rolls and port wine, would at last come round to me! This last neglect, to tell the honest truth, for the moment afflicted me most sorely of all. My appetite, as was natural for a robust youth of nineteen, was always of the best, and now by the brisk run from school to the harbor and the fresh sea-breeze, it was sharpened to a distressing keenness.

I stood up in a paroxysm of impatience, but quickly sat down again. No, Arthur certainly would come and take me to the company; it was the least that he owed me, after I had been so obliging as to run away with him. As if he had ever yet paid me what he owed me! How many fishing-rods, canary birds, shells, fifes, pocket-knives, had he not already bought of me, that is, coaxed and worried me out of, without ever paying me for them. Ay, how often had he not borrowed my slender stock of pocket-money, whenever the amount made it worth his while; for which sometimes even a couple of silbergroschen sufficed.

Curious, that just now, on this bright sunny morning, I should take to reckoning up this black account! It was certainly the first time since the beginning of our friendship, which dated at least from our sixth year. For I had always loved the handsome slender boy, who had such sunny hair and gentle brown eyes, and whose velvet Sunday jacket felt so soft to the touch. I had loved him as a great rough mastiff might love a delicate greyhound that he could crush with one snap of his jaws; and so I loved him even now, while he was flirting with the girls, and chattering and laughing with the company like the petit maître he was.

I grew very melancholy as I watched all this from my place, where nobody could see me--very melancholy and altogether disspirited. I must have been very hungry.

We were now just rounding a long headland, which ran out from the western coast. At its farthest low extremity, in a spot entirely surrounded by water, separated by a wide interval from the row of houses on the dune, and shadowed by a half-decayed oak, stood a cottage, the sight of which called into my mind a flood of pleasant memories. The old blacksmith, Pinnow, lived there, the father of my friend Klaus Pinnow. Smith Pinnow was by far the most remarkable personage of all my acquaintance. He possessed four old double-barreled percussion guns, and a long single-barreled fowling-piece with a flint lock, which he used to hire to the bathers when they took a fancy to have a little shooting, and sometimes to us youngsters when we were in funds, for Smith Pinnow was not in the habit of conferring gratuitous favors. He had, besides, a great sail-boat, also kept for the bathing company, at least of late years, since he had grown half blind and could not venture longer trips. The rumor ran that formerly he used to make very different voyages, of by no means so innocent a character; and the excise officers, my father's colleagues (my father had lately been promoted to an accountantship) shook their heads when Smith Pinnow's by-gone doings happened to be referred to. But what was that to us youngsters? Especially, what was it to me, who owed the happiest hours of my life to the four rusty guns, and the fowling-piece, and Smith Pinnow's old boat, and who had had the best comrade in the world in Klaus Pinnow? Had had, I say, for during the last four years, while Klaus was an apprentice to the locksmith Wangerow, and afterwards when he became a journeyman, I had seen him but seldom, and, indeed, for the last half year not at all.

He came at once into my mind as we steamed past his father's cottage, and I perceived a figure standing on the sands by the side of the boat which was drawn up on the beach. The distance was great, but my keen eyes recognized Christel Möwe, Klaus's adopted sister, whom sixteen years before, old Pinnow's wife--long since dead--had found the morning after a storm, lying on the beach among the boxes and planks driven ashore from a wreck, and whom the old blacksmith, in an unwonted impulse of generosity, as some said, or to raise his credit with the neighbors, according to others, had taken into his house. The wreck was a Dutch ship from Java, as they made out from some of the things cast ashore; but her name and owners were never discovered--probably from the negligence of the officials charged with the investigations--and they named the little foundling Christina, or Christel, Möwe [Gull], because the screams of a flock of gulls in the air had attracted Goodwife Pinnow to the spot where the child was lying.

A noise close at hand caused me to look round. Two paces from me a hatchway was opened, and out of the hatchway emerged the figure of a man who was standing on the ladder, but whose head rose high enough above the deck to allow him to see over the low bulwarks. His short stiff hair, his broad face, his bare muscular neck, his breast open almost to the belt, his shirt which had once been striped with red, and his trousers which had once been white--were all covered with a thick black deposit of coal-dust; and as he was blinking with his small eyes almost shut in order to see more keenly some distant object, he would have presented an unbroken surface of blackness, had he not at this moment expanded an immense mouth into a joyous grin, and displayed two rows of teeth of unsurpassed whiteness. And now he raised himself a few inches higher, waved his great black hand as a greeting towards the beach, and all at once I recognized him.

"Klaus!" I called out.

"Hallo!" he cried, starting, and quickly bringing his small eyes to bear upon me.

"That was a mighty affectionate salute of yours, Klaus."

Klaus blushed visibly through his rind of soot, and showed all his teeth. "Why, in the name of ----, George," cried he, "where do you come from, and what has brought you here?"

"And what has brought you here?"

"I have been here ever since Easter. I have had it in my mind for some time to come to see you and inquire after your health."

"You foolish fellow, why do you put on that respectful tone with me?"

"Oh, you belong to the great folks now," replied Klaus, jerking his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the quarter-deck.

"I wish I were below with you, and you would give me a good thick slice of bread and butter. Hang the great folks, as you call them."

Klaus looked at me in astonishment.

"Well, but why in the world----" he began.

"Why am I here? Is that what you mean? Why, because I am a fool and an ass."

"Oh, no," remonstrated Klaus.

"Yes, I am--a complete ass. I wish all my friends were as good as you are, Klaus." Here I gave a glance towards the perfidious Arthur, who was strutting about among the guests with the parasol of the perfidious Emilie, while she had set his little straw-hat in a coquettish fashion on her curls.

"I am wanted below," said Klaus, with a friendly grin; "Good-by." And down the ladder he went.

"Was that a chimney-sweep?" asked a clear voice behind me.

I turned hastily round, rising from my seat. There stood a charming little lady of eight, in a little white frock with ribbons of cornflower blue at the shoulders and streaming from her straw-hat, whose great cornflower blue eyes first stared with intense curiosity at the hatchway through which my black friend had vanished, and then turned inquiringly to me.

At this moment the hatch was raised again, and Klaus's head emerged--"Shall I really get you a slice?"

"Oh, mercy!" cried the little lady. Klaus vanished instantaneously, and the hatch shut down with a bang.

"Oh, mercy!" cried the little maid again. "How it frightened me!"

"What frightened you, ma chère!" asked another voice. The voice was extremely thin, and so was the lady to whom it belonged, and who had just come out of the deck-cabin. So also was the worn dress of changeable silk that fluttered about her figure, and the reddish locks that drooped on each side of her pale face.

This lady was Fräulein Amalie Duff, and the little maid with the cornflower eyes and ribbons was her pupil, Hermine Streber, the commerzienrath's only child. Of course I knew them both, as indeed I was pretty well acquainted with everybody in our little town, as soon as they were out of long-clothes; and they might well have known me, for I had been two or three times with Arthur in his uncle's large garden at the town-gate, and a fortnight before had even had the honor to swing the little Hermine in the great wooden swing, from which, if you swung high enough, you could catch a sight of the sea through the tops of the trees. Fräulein Duff, moreover, was a native of the little Saxon town which was the birthplace of my parents; and when she arrived, some months before, she brought various messages and greetings from the old home, which unhappily came too late for my good mother, who had been resting in the churchyard for fifteen years. She had frequently condescended indeed no longer ago than the afternoon of the swinging to bestow her instructive conversation upon me; but she was very near-sighted, and I could not take it amiss that she applied her gold double eye-glass to her pale eyes, and with a sweeping reverence, which in the dancing-school is called, I believe, grand compliment, inquired: "Whom have I the honor to----?"

I introduced myself.

CHAPTER II.

"O ciel!" cried Fräulein Duff, "mon jeune compatriote! A thousand pardons!--my near-sightedness! How is your respected father, and your amiable mother? Dear me! how confused I am! But your sudden appearance in this retired corner of the world has quite unnerved me. I was about to say--the company are asking for you. How did you manage to elude observation?--they are looking for you everywhere."

"Yet I might have been found easily enough," I said, probably with a touch of wounded pride in the tone, which did not escape the quick ear of Fräulein Duff.

"Ah, yes," she said, conveying a look of intelligence into her pale eyes. "'Who solace seeks in solitude'--alas! too true.

"'For gold all are longing,
Round gold all are thronging--'"

"Not so wild, ma chère! The dreadful creature will tear your dress!"

These last words were addressed to the little Hermine, who had begun to romp on the smooth deck with a pretty little spaniel that had run to her barking and jumping.

"You have a feeling heart," continued the governess, turning again to me; "I see it in the pained expression of your mouth. Your soul shrinks from noisy joys; this boisterous merriment is odious to you. But we poor ones must submit to the inevitable--or I, at least must. Would I be here if it were not so? Upon this tossing bark, in terror for my life? And all for what purpose? to assist at a cannibal feast! Innocent oysters, which men tear from the maternal bosom of the sea to devour alive! Is that a fit spectacle to be exhibited to a child?" and Fräulein Duff shook her thin locks with an expression of the deepest solicitude.

"It remains yet to be seen whether we shall find any," I said, with something like a sneer.

"Do you think so? The other gentlemen doubt it, too. The water of the Baltic is not salt enough. True, we are informed that the Romans propagated them in fresh-water lakes near Naples--but why parade my modest bit of learning before a young scholar like yourself? The good commerzienrath! Yes, yes; despise reason and learning who will!--but here he comes himself. Not a word of what we have been saying, my young friend, I beseech you!"

I had no time to assure the pale lady of my discretion, for nearly the whole company came crowding on the forward-deck, in the wake of the commerzienrath, who had the fat Mrs. Justizrath Heckepfennig upon his arm, to look at a three-master that was just passing us under full sail. In the next moment I was in the midst of the crowd, and the ice, in which I had been sitting, so to speak, was broken. Arthur, whose delicate face was already flushed by the wine he had been drinking, clapped me on the shoulder and asked where upon earth I had been hiding. The perfidious Emilie held out her hand and murmured: "Had you then entirely forgotten me?" and--as just at that moment a salute was fired from some small mortars on board the steamer--fell, with a little scream, into my arms. The three-master, that was just returning from the West Indies, belonged to the commerzienrath's fleet. They knew that she would arrive to-day; and it was by no means disagreeable to the commerzienrath to be able to carry his guests, on their way to his oyster-beds, past the finest of his ships. He mounted the paddle-box, speaking-trumpet in hand, and roared, at the pitch of his lungs, something which, amid the universal hurrahing and the explosions of the mortars, was perfectly inaudible to the bronzed captain of the ship, who shrugged his broad shoulders as a sign that he could not catch a word of it all. What difference did it make? It was a splendid sight; and the commerzienrath upon the paddle-box, trumpet in hand, was the chief figure in it. That was enough for him; and as the Albatros with her wide wings swept by, and the short legs of the Penguin began to paddle again, and he descended from his pedestal to receive the congratulations of the company, his little clear eyes sparkled, his nostrils expanded, and his loud laugh rang like the crowing of a cock, exulting in the proud consciousness that he is the master of the dunghill.

The rest of the poultry freely acknowledged this superiority: there was cackling and clucking, bowing and scraping, and no one more obsequious than Arthur's father, the steuerrath, who kept constantly at the side of the great man, saying, in his smooth voice, flatteries, which the other received as a matter of course--something to which he was well accustomed, especially from that quarter--with an indifference which to most others would have been insulting. It is quite possible that the steuerrath did not find this behavior on the part of his rich brother-in-law altogether pleasant, but he was too much a man of the world to give any outward sign of his inward emotions. But his spouse was not quite so successful in her self-command, who, as born Baroness Kippenreiter, had an unquestionable claim to respectful attention, and a right to be dissatisfied if this were withheld. So she sought to indemnify herself for the humiliation by the extremest possible condescension of manner towards the other ladies, Mrs. Burgomaster Koch, Mrs. Justizrath Heckepfennig, Mrs. Bauinspector Strombach, and the rest of the feminine élite of our little town, though even this satisfaction could not roll away the clouds from her aristocratic brow.

I had hardly begun to feel at ease in the company, which happened quickly enough, when my natural vivacity, which bordered on rudeness, returned and impelled me to a hundred pranks, which were decidedly not in the best taste, though certainly not instigated by any intention to offend, and which I carried on all the more recklessly, as I perceived I had all the laughers on my side. I could blush with shame even now, when I think of my shallow attempts at wit, and how poor in invention and clumsy in execution were the comic imitations to which I must needs treat my respectable audience, because forsooth I had a sort of celebrity in the town for this sort of thing, (my masterpiece, I remember, was a lover bent on regaling his mistress with a serenade, and incessantly disturbed by barking dogs, mewing cats, scolding neighbors, and malicious passers-by, and finally taken up by the watch,) what foolish flippancy and want of tact in the speeches that I made at the table, and with how many glasses of wine I repaid myself for all my ridiculous exertions.

And yet this lunch under an awning on deck of the steamer that was now anchored in the calm, smooth sea, was the last real merry-making that I was to have for many long years. I do not know if it was this that keeps it so bright in my memory, or rather the youth that then glowed in my veins, the wine that sparkled in the glasses, the bright sunshine that glistened on the sea, and the sweet air that swept so softly over the water that it did not suffice to cool the flushed cheeks of the maidens. It was rather all together--youth, sunlight, sea-breeze, golden wine, rosy cheeks; and ah! the oysters, the unlucky oysters, that had had two years in which to multiply like the sand of the sea, and which the sea-sand and sea-currents had buried and swept away, all to a few empty shells! What an inexhaustible theme were these empty shells, displayed with humorous ostentation in a splendid dish in the centre of the table! how every one tried his wit on them, and what a malicious joy each felt that the millionaire's obstinate conceit had had a lesson, and that not all his millions could extort from nature what she had determined to refuse!

But the old fellow bore it all with the utmost good-humor; and after he had bewailed his ill-luck in a humorous speech, suddenly a loud clamor arose on the forward-deck, and the sailors dragged forward great barrels of oysters, which they declared they had just taken up. Then there was no end to the exultation and cheers to our magnificent host, who once more had shown that his sagacity and foresight were even greater than his conceit and his obstinacy.

I do not know how late the feast was protracted, while the ladies promenaded the deck; it was certainly kept up far too long for us youngsters. Very queer stories were told, in which the commerzienrath particularly distinguished himself; we laughed, we shouted--I must volunteer songs, which were received with storms of applause, and I was not a little vain as my powerful bass drew even the ladies to the table again, and did my best, when both ladies and gentlemen joined in unison in the glee, "What it means I cannot tell," to carry through a second voice (in thirds), keeping my eye all the while on Fräulein Emilie--an attention which naturally set the other young ladies to giggling and nudging each other, and occasioned Arthur such pangs of jealousy, that afterwards, as we were walking up and down the deck, with our cigars, he called me to account for it.

By this time it was evening, for I remember that, while talking with Arthur, I noticed on the coast of the island, which we had neared on our return, an old ruin, standing picturesquely on a high and steep cliff, and glowing in the light of the setting sun. The sight of this ruin gave an unpleasant turn to our discussion, which had already grown sharp. This tower happened to be the sole remnant of the ancient Zehrenburg, the ancestral seat of Arthur's family, which, in former times, had enjoyed large possessions on the island. Arthur pointed with a pathetic gesture to the ruddy walls, and demanded that I, here and now, with my eye upon the castle of his ancestors, should renounce forever all pretensions to Emilie Heckepfennig. "A plebeian like myself," he said, "was in duty bound to give way to a patrician." I maintained that there were no such things as plebeians or patricians in affairs of the heart, and that I would never consent to a pledge which would entail perpetual wretchedness on both Emilie and myself.

"Slave!" cried Arthur, "is it thus that you repay me for the condescension that has so long tolerated your society?"

I laughed aloud, and my laughter still further exasperated Arthur's drunken passion.

"My father is Steuerrath von Zehren," he cried, "and yours a miserable subaltern."

"Let us leave our fathers out of the question, Arthur; you know I will not endure any insult to mine."

"Your father----"

"Once more I warn you, Arthur, leave my father's name alone. My father, at the very least, is as good as yours. And if you say another word about my father, I'll fling you overboard," and I shook my fist in Arthur's face.

"What's the matter here?" asked the steuerrath, who suddenly appeared. "How, young man, is this the respect that you owe to my son--that you owe to me? It appears that you are disposed to add the crown to your disgraceful behavior all day. My son has invited you into his company for the last time."

"Invited me, indeed!" I said. "We ran away, both of us!"--and I burst into a shout of laughter that quite justified the steuerrath's qualification of my behavior.

"How!" he exclaimed. "Arthur, what does this mean?"

But Arthur was not in condition to give an intelligible answer. He stammered out something, and rushed toward me, apparently with the intention of striking me, but his father caught his arm and led him away, speaking very earnestly to him in a low tone, and as he went he threw a furious look at me.

My blood, already excited, was now boiling in my veins. The next thing I remember I was walking arm-in-arm with the commerzienrath--I have never been able to understand how I did it--and passionately complaining to him of the crying outrage I had received from my best friend, for whom I was at all times ready to sacrifice fortune and blood. The commerzienrath seemed as if he would die with laughing. "Fortune and blood!" he cried; "as for the fortune"--here he shrugged his shoulders and blew out his cheeks--"and as for the blood"--here he nudged me with his elbow in the side. "Full blood, capital blood, of course. I have had one of the breed myself; a Kippenreiter! Baroness Kippenreiter! My Hermann, at all events, is of the half blood. There she runs; is she not an angel? Pity she was not a boy: that's the reason I always call her Hermann. Hermann! Hermann!"

The little maid came running: she had on a red scarf, which her father, after kissing her, wrapped closer around her delicate shoulders.

"Is she not an angel--a pride?" he went on taking my arm again. "She shall have a count for a husband; not a poor, penniless sprig of nobility, like my brother-in-law, nor like his drunken brother at Zehrendorf, nor the other, that sneaking fellow, the penitentiary superintendent at What-d'ye-call-it. No, a real count, a fellow six feet high, just like you, my boy, just like you!"

The short commerzienrath tried to lay his two fat hands upon my shoulders, and tipsy emotion blinked in his eyes.

"You are a capital fellow, a splendid fellow. Pity you are such a poor devil; you should be my son-in-law. But I must call you thou: thou mayst say thou to me, too, brother!" and the worthy man sobbed upon my breast and called for champagne, apparently with a view of solemnly ratifying the bond, of brotherhood after the ancient fashion.

I have my doubts whether he carried this design into effect: at all events I remember nothing of the ceremony, which could scarcely have escaped my memory. But I remember that not long after I was in the engine-room with a bottle of wine, hobnobbing with my friend Klaus, and swearing that he was the best and truest fellow in the world, and that I would appoint him head-stoker in hell as soon as I got there, which would not be long coming as I must have a settlement with father this evening, and that I would let myself be torn in pieces for him at any time, and that I would be glad if it were done right at once, and that if the great black fellow there did not stop swinging his long iron arm up and down I would lay my head under it, and there would be an end of George Hartwig.

How the good Klaus brought me out of this suicidal frame of mind, and how he got me up the ladder again, I cannot say; it must have been managed somehow, for as we steamed into the harbor I was sitting on deck, watching the masts of the anchored ships glide past us, and the stars glittering through the spars and cordage. The crescent moon that was standing over the spire of the church of St Nicholas seemed suddenly to drop behind it, but it was I that dropped, as the Penguin struck the timbers of the wharf, on which there was again assembled a crowd of people, not hurrahing, however, as when we started, but, as it seemed to me, strangely silent; and, as I made my way through them, staring at me I thought in a singular manner, so that I felt as if something terrible must have happened, or was on the point of happening, and that I was in some mysterious way the cause of it.

I stood before my father's small house in the narrow Water street. A light was glimmering through the closed shutters of the room to the left of the front door, by which I knew that my father was at home--he usually took a solitary walk around the town-wall at this hour. Could it be so very late, then? I took out my watch and tried to make out the time by the moonlight--for the street-lamps were never lighted in Uselin on moonlight nights--but could not succeed. No matter, I said to myself, it is all one! and grasped resolutely the brass knob of the front door. To my feverish hand it felt cold as ice.

CHAPTER III.

As I closed the door behind me, old Frederica, who, since my mother's death, had been housekeeper for my father, came suddenly out of the small room on the right. By the light of a lamp burning dimly on the hall-table I saw the good old woman throw up her hands and stare at me with wide, frightened eyes. "Has anything happened to my father?" I stammered, seizing the table to support myself What with the warm atmosphere of the house after the fresh night-air, and my alarm at Frederica's terrified looks, my breath failed me, the blood seemed to rush to my head, and the room began to go round.

"Wretched boy, what have you done?" piteously exclaimed the old woman.

"In heaven's name, what has happened?" I cried, seizing her by both hands.

Here my father opened the door of his room and appeared upon the threshold. Being a large man and the door small, he nearly filled up the doorway.

"Thank God!" I murmured to myself.

At this moment I experienced no other feeling than that of joyful relief from the anxiety which seemed on the point of suffocating me; in the next, this natural emotion gave way to another, and we glared at each other like two foes who suddenly meet, after one has long been seeking the other, and the other nerves himself for the result, be it what it may, from which he now sees there is no escape.

"Come in," said my father, making way for me to pass into his room.

I obeyed: there was a humming noise in my ears, but my step was firm; and if my heart beat violently in my breast, it was certainly not with fear.

As I entered, a tall black figure slowly rose from my father's large study-chair---my father allowed no sofa in his house--it was Professor Lederer. I stood near the door, my father to the right, by the stove, the professor at the writing-table in front of the lamp, so that his shadow reached from the ceiling to the floor, and fell directly upon me. No one moved or spoke; the professor wished to leave the first word to my father, and my father was under too much excitement to speak. In this way we stood for about half a minute, which seemed to me an eternity, and during which the certainty flashed into my mind that if the professor did not immediately leave the room and the house, all possible chance of an explanation between my father and myself was cut off.

"Misguided young man," at last began the professor.

"Leave me alone with my father, Herr Professor," I interrupted him.

The professor looked at me as if he could not believe his ears. A delinquent, a criminal--for such I was in his eyes--to dare to interrupt his judge in such a tone, and with such a request--it was impossible.

"Young man," he began again, but his tone was not as assured as the first time.

"I tell you, leave us alone together," I cried with a louder voice, and making a motion towards him.

"He is mad," said the professor, taking a hasty step backwards, which brought him in contact with the table.

"Sirrah!" exclaimed my father, stepping quickly forward, as if to protect the professor from my violence.

"If I am mad," I said, turning my burning eyes from one to the other, "so much the greater reason for leaving us alone."

The professor looked round for his hat, which stood behind him on the table.

"No; remain, remain," said my father, his voice quivering with passion. "Is this audacious boy again to have his insolent way? I have too long been culpably negligent; it is high time to take other measures."

My father began to pace up and down the room, as he always did when violently agitated.

"Yes, to take other measures," he continued. "This has gone on far too long. I have done all I could; I have nothing to reproach myself with; but I will not become a public by-word for the sake of a perverse boy. If he refuses to do what is his plain duty and obligation, then have I no further duty or obligation towards him; and let him see how he can get through the world without me."

He had not once looked at me while he uttered these words in a voice broken with passion. Later in life I saw a painting representing the Roman holding his burning hand in the glowing coals, and looking sideways upon the ground with an expression of intensest agony. It brought at once into my mind the remembrance of my father at this fateful moment.

"Your father is right"--commenced for the third time the professor, who held it his duty to strike in while the iron was hot--"when was there ever a father who has done more for his children than your excellent parent, whose integrity, industry and virtue have become a proverb, and who through your fault is now deprived of the crowning ornament of a good citizen; that is, a well-disciplined son, to be the stay of his declining years. Is it not enough that inevitable fate has already hard smitten this excellent man--that he has lost a dear consort and a son in the bloom of youth? Shall he now lose the last, the Benjamin of his old age? Shall his unwearied solicitude, his daily and nightly prayers----"

My father was a man of strictest principles, but far from devout, in the ordinary acceptation of the word; an untruth was his abhorrence, and it was an untruth to say that he had prayed by night and day; and besides, he had an excessive, almost morbid modesty, and the professor's panegyric struck him as exaggerated and ill-timed.

"Let all that pass, Herr Professor"--he interrupted the learned man rather impatiently--"I say again, I have done my duty. Enough! let him do his. I want nothing of him--nothing--nothing whatever--not so much as"--and he brushed one hand over the other; "but this I will have, and if he refuses----"

My father had worked himself into a rage again, and my apparent composure only further exasperated him. Strange! Had I fallen to prayers and entreaties, I know that my father would have despised me, and yet, because I did what he himself would most assuredly have done in my position, because I was silent and stubborn, he hated me at this moment as one hates anything that stands in one's way, and which yet cannot be spurned aside with contempt.

"You have been guilty of a heavy offence, George Hartwig"--the professor began again in a declamatory tone--"that of leaving the Gymnasium without the permission of your teachers. I will not speak of the boundless disrespect with which, as so often before, you rejected the precious opportunity offered you of acquiring knowledge: I will only speak of the terrible guilt of disobedience, of insolent defiance of orders, of the evil example that your disgraceful conduct has presented to your class-mates. If Arthur von Zehren's facile temper has at last been warped into confirmed frivolity, this is the evil fruit of your bad example. Never would that misguided boy have dared to do what he has done to-day----"

As I knew the misguided boy so much better than he, I here broke into a loud, contemptuous laugh, which drove the professor completely beyond his self-control. He caught up his hat, and muttering some unintelligible words, apparently expressing his conviction that I was lost beyond all possibility of reformation, was about to leave the room, when he was detained by my father.

"One moment, Herr Professor," he said, and then turning to me--"You will instantly ask pardon of your teacher for this additional insolence--instantly!"

"I will not," I replied.

"Instantly!" thundered my father.

"I will not!" I repeated.

"Once more, will you, or will you not?"

He stood before me his whole frame quivering with anger. His naturally sallow complexion had turned of an ashy gray, the veins of his brow were swollen, his eyes flashed. His last words had been spoken in a hoarse, hissing tone.

"I will not," I said for the third time.

My father raised his arm as if to strike me, but he did not strike; his arm slowly descended, and with outstretched hand he pointed to the door:

"Begone!" he said, slowly and firmly. "Leave my house forever!"

I looked straight into his eyes; I was about to say something--perhaps "Forgive me, father; I will ask your forgiveness;" but my heart lay like a stone in my breast; my teeth were clenched like a vice; I could not speak. I moved silently towards the door. The professor hurried after me and seized my arm, no doubt with the kindest intentions; but I saw in him only the cause of my disgrace. I thrust him roughly aside, flung the door to after me, ran past the old housekeeper--the good old creature had evidently been listening, for she stood there wringing her hands, the picture of despair--and out of the house into the street.

CHAPTER IV.

I ran for a short distance like a madman, when suddenly my limbs began to totter under me; the moonlit roofs, the lighted windows in some of the houses, danced wildly before my eyes; the fumes of the wine I had been drinking, repressed for a while by my mental excitement, now rose again to my brain; I had to lean against a wall to keep myself from falling.

I had probably remained for a few minutes in a state of partial insensibility when the voices of some maids, who were bringing water from the adjacent fountain, recalled me to consciousness. I roused myself, and staggered down the street. Soon my strong natural constitution began to assert itself; my steps grew firmer, and I began to consider what I should do, and first of all, whither I should go. The idea of seeking lodgings at an inn I rejected at once; I had never yet passed a night from home; and besides, my whole stock of money did not exceed one thaler--my father always kept me on a very meagre allowance of pocket-money--and I had an indistinct notion that I should have to make this slender sum go a long way. Had I not quarreled with Arthur and parted from him in anger, I should probably have gone to him; but as it was, I felt it impossible to present myself at his house as a supplicant; and, besides, by this time he was most likely sleeping off his intoxication, and his parents had never been friendly disposed towards me. The commerzienrath! He had embraced me, called me thou and brother: he would assuredly receive me with rapture, have me shown to a magnificent chamber, with a grand four-post curtained bed----

But while I was indulging in the picture of my brilliant reception at the commerzienrath's, I was hastening steadily in the opposite direction, towards the harbor. I passed some low taverns in which sailors were roaring out coarse songs. How if I went in and joined the drinkers, and to-morrow went out into the wide world a sailor, like my brother Fritz? That would be a way to be revenged upon my father! To lose two sons--both in the same way! And then to perish at sea, and my corpse to lie at the bottom of the ocean, where my brother's bones had long been lying! "Shame upon you, George!"--I said to myself--"shame! The poor old man!"

How if I turned back? The professor had certainly long since left the house. My father was alone in his room. I would go to him and say--"Strike me if you will, father; I will not resist; I will not move an eyelid!"

But I did not return, nor even slacken my pace; I had already left the town behind, and was now in the wide street of the suburb, on both sides of which stood the little cottages which at this season were chiefly occupied by the bathing-guests. Here and there they shone through the dark trees; some of them had lamps burning in glass globes at the doors, and under trellises, and in the little gardens sat cheerful groups; song and laughter and the merry voices of children came up on the pleasant evening air; a light breeze just stirred the tops of the trees over my head, and fire-flies twinkled in the bushes.

The moist, warm breeze from the sea seemed to refresh me; how pleasant it must be, I thought, over there beyond the houses; and on the instant, Smith Pinnow's cottage came into my mind. The very thing! there I was sure of a shelter. The old man would give me a bed, or at least a shake-down in the forge; or there was the old woman's great arm-chair--certainly she could not sit crouching in it all night as well as all day. Pity Klaus was not at home; but then the pretty Christel was there. Christel had always been a favorite of mine; indeed, at one time I had fancied myself really in love with her, and her charms had attracted me to the hut at least quite as often as the old man's four double-barrels and the long single-barrel, or the mulled wine which he used to sell in the winter to the skaters that thronged the beach.

Strange light-heartedness of youth! At this moment all the mischief I had done, my father's grief, my own serious position, were all forgotten; or, if not forgotten, they were only the dark background upon which shone brightly and cheerily the picture of the old ruinous hut with the glowing forge-fire, and above all the pretty figure of the brisk Christel moving lightly about. What was the school--what was my father's house and all the rest of my slavery to me now? At other times, when I had been out at this hour, I was haunted with anxiety how I should get in without the knowledge of my father, who went to bed punctually at half-past nine: now my father had himself driven me from his house. No need now to pull off my boots at the door, and creep softly up the creaking stair to my chamber; I was a free man and could do what I chose, and come and go at my pleasure.

The wide street and the suburbs were now behind me; I strode along the well-known path, on my left a little meadow, on my right a potato-field, here and there a solitary tree, blackly defined against the clear starlit sky, and on either side the water, whose hollow sound I heard plainer and plainer as the tongue of land narrowed, especially towards the west, the windward quarter, where lay the open sea. I noticed for the first time that I had no cap. I had either lost it or left it by the lamp on the hall-table; so much the better, the sea-breeze could play freely around my heated temples and in my loose hair.

A pair of wild swans flew high above me; I could not see them, but heard their peculiar wailing cry--two simple notes that rang strangely through the silence of the night. "Good speed!" I called out to them: "Good speed, my good comrades!"

A strangely happy feeling, mingled of sadness and joy, came over me, such as I had never known before. I could have thrown myself upon the earth and wept; I could have leaped and shouted in exultation. I could not then comprehend what it was that so singularly possessed me. Now I know well what it was: it was the sense of delight that must thrill through the fish when he darts like an arrow through the liquid crystal, the bird when he sweeps on expanded pinions through the air, the stag when he bounds over the wild plain; the rapture that thrills man's breast when in the full glow of youth and vigor he feels himself one with the great mother, Nature. The fore-feeling of this delight, the longing to taste it, are what drives the man from the narrow round of circumstances in which he was born, out into the wide world, across seas, into the desert, to the peaks of the Alps, anywhere where the winds blow free, where the heaven broadens grandly above, where he must risk his life to win it.

Does this after-thought excuse the insolent obstinacy of which I had been guilty towards my father; and the terrible rashness with which I staked my whole future on a cast of the die? Assuredly not. I will excuse nothing, extenuate nothing; but simply narrate what happened to me and within me during these events and those that followed; only giving an explanation here and there when circumstances seem to require it. Let the story tell its own moral; only this will I add, for the consolation of thoughtful souls, that if, as cannot be gainsaid, my conduct deserved punishment, this punishment was dealt out to me speedily, and that in no stinted measure.

But at the time the haggard form with the lame foot was still too far behind to cast the shade of her terrors upon me; two other figures, however, as I hastened with a quickened pace over the heath, appeared in sight, who had assuredly nothing spectral about them, for they were standing in a close embrace. They sprang apart, with a cry of alarm from a female voice, as, turning sharply around a hillock, I came directly upon them. The maiden caught up a great basket, which she had set upon the ground, having just had other employment for her arms, and her companion gave an "Ahem!" which was so loud and so confused that it could only have proceeded from a very innocent breast.

"Good evening," I said; "I trust----"

"Good Lord! is it really you?" said the man. "Why, Christel, only think it's him!"--and Klaus caught Christel Möwe, who was about taking to flight, by her dress, and detained her.

"Oh! I thought it was him!" stammered Christel, whose mind did not seem entirely relieved by the discovery that if they had been espied it was by a good friend.

Although the position in which Klaus and Christel evidently stood to each other did not exactly require an explanation, still I was somewhat astonished. As long as Klaus lived with his father, from the commencement of our friendship, I had never detected in the good fellow's heart anything more than brotherly affection for his pretty adopted sister; but then that was four years ago. Klaus was but sixteen when he went to work with locksmith Wangerow; and perhaps this temporary separation had aroused the love which otherwise would have calmly slumbered on, and possibly never awakened of itself. This was confirmed by what the lovers themselves told me, as we walked slowly on together towards the forge, often stopping for a minute at a time when the story reached a point of particularly critical interest. One of these points--and indeed the most serious--was the strongly and even violently expressed aversion of old Pinnow to the engagement. Klaus did not say so, but from all that I gathered I surmised that it was not altogether impossible that the old man himself had cast an eye upon his pretty adopted daughter; at least I could see no other reasonable explanation of the fact that year by year, and day by day, he had grown more morose and rancorous towards Klaus, and at last, after much snarling and storming over his gadding about, and his shameful waste of time, had ended by forbidding him the house, without the good fellow--as he solemnly asseverated, and I believed him--having ever given him the slightest cause of complaint. Therefore they--the lovers--were under the necessity of keeping their meetings secret, a proceeding not without considerable difficulties, as the old man was extraordinarily watchful and cunning. For instance, he would send the deaf and dumb apprentice, Jacob, to the town to make the necessary purchases, although he was certain to make some blunder or other; and to-day he would not have sent Christel, had he not heard that Klaus had some late work to do on board the steamer, that would prevent his coming ashore.

As I had a sincere affection for the good Klaus, who had been my comrade in many a merry frolic by land and water, and was no less fond of the rosy, soft-voiced Christel Möwe, I felt the liveliest sympathy with them; and improbable though it may seem, their love, with its sorrows and its joys, and the possibility of its happy termination, lay at this moment nearer my heart than the thought of my own fortune. My mind, however, recurred to my own situation, when, as we reached a slight elevation in the path, the forge, with the light of the kitchen-fire shining through its low window, appeared close at hand, and Klaus asked if we should now turn back. He then for the first time learned that it was no mere evening stroll that had brought me so far from the town across the heath, and that my intention was to ask his father for shelter for a day at least, or perhaps for several days. At the same time I briefly explained to him the cause that compelled me to so singular a step.

Klaus seemed greatly affected by what he heard; he grasped me by the hand, and taking me a little aside, asked in an agitated whisper if I had well considered what I was about? My father, he said, could not mean to deal so harshly with me, and would certainly forgive me if I returned at once. He himself would go and prepare the way, and let the storm spend its first wrath upon him.

"But, Klaus, old fellow," I said, "you are no better off than I. We are comrades in misery: your father has forbidden you his house, just as mine has done with me. What difference is there between us?"

"This difference," Klaus answered, "that I have done nothing to give my father the right to be angry with me, while you tell me yourself that you--don't take it hard of me--have been playing a very ugly trick."

I answered that, be that as it might, home I would never go. What further I should do, I did not know: I would come on board the steamer to-morrow and talk the matter over with him; it was very likely that I would need his assistance.

Klaus, who saw that my resolution was taken, and who had always been accustomed to adapt himself to my plans, gave my hand another hearty grasp, and said: "Well, then, till to-morrow."

His good heart was so full of what he had just heard that he was going off without bidding Christel good-by, had I not, laughing, called his attention to this highly reprehensible oversight. But he did not get the kiss I had hoped for him; Christel said I had been very wicked; and so we departed, Klaus going back towards the town, and soon disappearing in the darkness, and Christel and I keeping on to the forge, where through the window the fire was now blazing brighter than before.

"How does the old man come to be working so late?" I asked the girl.

"It just happens so," she answered.

I put other questions, to all of which I received but the briefest possible answers. Christel and I had always been the best friends in the world, and I had ever known her as the brightest, merriest creature. I could only suppose that she had been seriously offended by my bit of sportiveness. As it was never my nature, unless when overcome with passion, to wound the feelings of any one, least of all a poor girl of whom I was really fond, so I did not for a moment hesitate to frankly ask her pardon, if I had offended her, saying that what I had done was with the best intention in the world, namely, that her lover should not, through my fault, leave her without a good-by kiss. Christel made me no answer, and I was about placing my arm around her trim waist, in order to give more emphasis to my petition for forgiveness, when the girl suddenly burst into tears, and in a frightened tone said that I must not go with her to "his" house; and that it was anyhow of no use, for "he" would certainly give me no lodging there.

This declaration and this warning would have made most persons hesitate. The forge was in such a lonely place, the reputation of the old smith was far from being a good one, and I was sufficiently versed in robber-stories to recall the various romantic situations where the robber's daughter warns the hero, who has lost his way, against the remaining members of her estimable family, and at the same time reveals her love for him in a style equally discreet and intelligent. But I was never subject to those attacks of timidity to which imaginative persons are so liable; and besides, I thought, if the old man is jealous of his son--and this I set down as certain--why may he not be so of me?--and in the third place, a little cur at this moment rushed, furiously barking, at my legs, and simultaneously appeared a stout figure at the open door of the forge, and Smith Pinnow's familiar voice called out in his deep bass: "Who is there?"

"A friend--George Hartwig," I answered, tossing the little yelping brute with my foot into the bushes.

Christel must have given the old man an intimation of what I wanted as she pushed by him into the house, for he said at once, without moving from his post in the doorway, "I can give you no lodging here; my house is not an inn."

"I know that very well, Pinnow," I answered, stepping up and offering my hand; "but I thought you were my friend."

The old man did not take my hand, but muttered something that I did not catch.

"I shall not return home, you maybe sure of that," I continued. "So, if you do not mean that I shall lie here in the bushes, and join your dog in howling at the moon, you will let me in, and mix me a glass of grog--half-and-half, you know; and take a glass or two yourself: it will do you good, and put better thoughts in your head."

With these words, I laid my hand on the shoulder of the inhospitable smith, and gave him a hearty shake, in token of my friendly feelings.

"Would you attack a weak old man in his own house?" he exclaimed in an angry tone, and in my turn I felt on my shoulders two hands whose size and steely hardness were, for "a weak old man," quite remarkable. My blood, which the cooler night air had by no means yet lowered to the desirable temperature, needed but little provocation; and besides, here was too favorable an opportunity to put to the proof my much-admired strength; so I seized my antagonist, jerked him at a single effort from the threshold, and hurled him a couple of paces to one side. I had not the slightest design of forcing an entrance into his house; but the smith, who feared that this was my intention, and was resolved to prevent it at all hazards, threw himself upon me with such fury that I was obliged in self-defence to exert my whole strength. I had had many a hard tussle in my time, and had always come off victorious; but never before had I been so equally matched as now. Perhaps it was from some small remains of regard for the old man who now assaulted me, in sailor fashion, with heavy blows of his fist, that I refrained from repaying him in the same coin, but endeavored to grapple with him. At last I felt that I had him in my power: seizing a lower hold, I raised him from the ground, and the next moment he would have measured his length upon the sand, when a peal of laughter resounded close at hand. Startled, I lost my hold, and my antagonist, no sooner felt himself free, than he rushed upon me again. Unprepared for this new attack, I lost my balance, stumbled and fell, my antagonist above me. I felt his hands of iron at my throat, when suddenly the laughter ceased. "For shame, old man!" cried a sonorous voice, "he has not deserved that of you;" and a pair of strong arms tore the smith from me. I sprang to my feet and confronted my deliverer, for so I must call him, as without his interference I do not know what would have happened to me.

CHAPTER V.

He was, as well as I could distinguish by the faint light of the moon that was now partly obscured by clouds, a man of tall stature and slender frame; so alert in his movements that I took him to be young, or at least comparatively young, until, at a sudden turn he made, the flickering glare of the fire through the open door fell upon his face, and I saw that his features were deeply furrowed, apparently with age. And as now, holding my hand, he led me into the forge, which glowed with a strong light, he seemed to me to be neither young nor old, or rather both at once.

It is true, the moment was not precisely favorable to physiognomical investigations. The stranger surveyed me with large eyes that flashed uncannily out of the crumpled folds and wrinkles that surrounded them from head to foot, and felt my shoulders and arms, as a jockey might examine a horse that has got over a distance in three minutes that it takes other horses five to accomplish. Then, turning on his heel, he burst into a peal of laughter, as the smith turned upon the deaf and dumb apprentice, Jacob, who all this time had been blowing the bellows, quite indifferent to what was going forward, and gave him a push which spun him around like a top.

"Bravo! bravo!" cried the stranger, "that was well done! Easier handling him than the other--eh, Pinnow?"

"The other may thank his stars that he gets off so easily," growled the smith, as he drew a red-hot bar from the coals.

"I am ready to try it again at any time, Pinnow," I cried, and was delighted that the stranger, with an amused look, nodded his approbation, while with affected solemnity he cried: "For shame young man, for shame! a poor old man! Do you consider that a thing to boast of?"

The smith had seized his heavy forge-hammer, and was plying the glowing bar with furious strokes until the sparks flew in showers, and the windows rattled in the frames.

The stranger stopped his ears. "For heaven's sake, man," he cried, "stop that infamous noise! Who in the devil's name can stand it, do you think? Do you suppose that I have your plebeian ears? Stop, I say, or----"

He gave the smith a push, as the latter had just before done to his apprentice, but the old man stood more firmly than the young one. With a furious look he raised his hammer--it seemed as if the next moment he would bring it down on the stranger's head.

"Have you gone mad?" said the stranger, casting a stern look at the enraged smith. Then, as the latter slowly lowered the hammer, he began speaking to him in an undertone, to which the old man answered in a muttering voice, in which I thought I could at intervals distinguish my own name.

"It may be," said the stranger; "but here he is now, and here he shall stay."

"Excuse me," I said, "I have not the least idea of thrusting my company upon you: I would not have set my foot in the house, had not----"

"Now he's beginning again," exclaimed the stranger, with a laugh of half vexation; "will you ever come to your senses, you two? What I want is peace and quiet, and above all, some supper; and you shall keep me company. Hallo! Christel! Where is the girl? You, Pinnow, take off your leather apron and come in too."

With these words he opened the low door on the right of the forge-fire, which led from the forge into the living-room. I had often enough been in the latter, and indeed I knew the whole place well: the living-room was a moderately large apartment, but only half as high from floor to ceiling as the forge; the sleeping-rooms lying above it, which were reached by a steep stair, or sort of ladder, in a corner of the room, passing through a hole in the ceiling. There was also a door, reached by two steps, which led into a small side-room, where the smith's mother slept. This old woman, a prodigy of age, was now crouching in her easy-chair in her usual corner, close to the stove, which was heated from without. In the middle of the room stood a heavy oaken table, and on the table the great basket which Christel had brought from the town. Christel herself was apparently searching for something in a closet at the further end of the room.

"Now, Christel," said the stranger, taking a light to look into the basket, "what have you brought? That looks inviting. But bestir yourself, for I am hungry as a wolf--and you too," turning to me--"are you not? One is always hungry at your age. Come this way to the window. Sit down."

He made me sit on one of the two benches that stood in the recess of the window, seated himself on the other, and continued in a somewhat lower tone, with a glance at Christel, who was now, with a noiseless despatch, beginning to set the table:----

"A pretty girl: rather too much of a blonde, perhaps; she is a Hollander; but that is in keeping here: is not the old woman nodding there in her easy chair just like a picture by Terburg? Then old Pinnow, with the face of a bull-dog and the figure of a seal, and Jacob with his carp's eyes! But I like it; I seldom fail, when I have been in the town without my carriage, as happens to-day, to look in here, and let old Pinnow set me over; especially as with a good wind I can get across in half an hour, while by the town-ferry it takes me a full hour, and then afterwards as much more before I reach my estate."

The stranger spoke in a courteous, engaging manner, which pleased me exceedingly; and while speaking, repeatedly stroked with his left hand his thick beard, which fell half-way down his breast, and from time to time glanced at a diamond ring on his finger. I began to feel a great respect for the strange gentleman, and was extremely curious to know who he was, but could not venture to ask him.

"What an abominable atmosphere in this room!" he suddenly exclaimed; "enough to make one faint;" and he was about opening the window at which we were sitting, but checking himself, he turned and said: "To be sure! the old woman might take cold. Christel, can't you get the old lady to bed?"

"Yes, sir; directly," said Christel, who had just finished setting the table, and going up to the old woman, screamed in her ear, "Grandmother, you must go to bed!"

The old woman received this intimation with evident disfavor, for she shook her head energetically, but at last allowed herself to be raised from her crouching position, and tottered from the room, leaning on Christel's arm. When Christel reached the steps that led to the side room she looked round. I sprang to her assistance, and carried the old lady up the steps, while Christel opened the door, through which she then disappeared with her charge.

"Well done, young man," said my new acquaintance, as I came back to him; "we must always be polite to ladies. And now we will open the window."

He did so, and the night air rushed in. It had grown darker; the moon was hidden behind a heavy mass of cloud that was rolling up from the west; from the sea, which was but a few paces distant, came a hollow roaring and plashing of the waves breaking on the beach; a few drops of rain drove into my face.

The stranger looked out intently at the weather. "We must be off presently," I heard him say to himself. Then turning to me: "But now we will have some supper; I am almost dying of hunger. If Pinnow prefers grumbling to eating, let him consult his taste. Come."

He took his seat at the table, inviting me by a gesture to place myself beside him. I had, during the day, eaten far less than I had drunk, and my robust frame, which had long since overcome the effects of my intoxication, now imperatively demanded sustenance. So I very willingly complied with the invitation of my entertainer; and indeed the contents of the basket which Christel had now unpacked were of a nature to tempt a far more fastidious palate than mine. There were caviare, smoked salmon, ham, fresh sausage, pickles; nor was a supply of wine wanting. Two bottles of Bordeaux, with the label of a choice vintage, stood upon the table, and out of the basket peeped the silvery neck of a bottle of Champagne.

"Quite a neat display," said the stranger, filling both our glasses, helping himself first from one dish and then from another, and inviting me to follow his example, while chatting at intervals in his pleasant fashion. Without his questioning me directly, we had somehow come to speak of my affairs; and, unsuspicious and communicative as I was, before the first bottle was emptied I had given him a pretty fair account of my neither long nor eventful life. The occurrences of the past day, so momentous for me, occupied rather more time in the recital. In the ardor of my narration, I had, without observing it, filled and drunk several glasses of wine; the weight that had laid upon my spirits had disappeared; my old cheerful humor had returned, all the more as this meeting with the mysterious stranger under such singular circumstances, gave my imagination room for the wildest conjectures. I described our flight from the school, I mimicked Professor Lederer's voice and manner, I threw all my powers of satire into my sketch of the commerzienrath, and I fear that I smote the table with my fist when I came to speak of Arthur's shameful ingratitude, and the outrageous partiality of the steuerrath. But here my talkative tongue was checked; the melancholy dimness of my father's study spread a gloom over my spirits; I fell into a tragic tone, as I swore that though I should have to go on a pilgrimage to the North Cape, barefoot, as I was already bareheaded, and beg my bread from door to door--or, as begging was not my forte, should I have to take to the road--I would never more set foot in my father's house again, after he had once driven me from it. That what I was in duty bound to bear from a parent had here reached its limits; that nature's bond was cancelled, and that my resolution was as firmly fixed as the stars in the sky, and if any one chose to ridicule it, he did it at his peril.

With these words I sprang from the table, and set down the glass from which I had been drinking, so violently, that it shivered to pieces. For the stranger, whose evident enjoyment of my story had at times encouraged me, and at others embarrassed, when I came to my peroration, which was delivered with extreme pathos, burst into a paroxysm of laughter which seemed as if it would never end.

"You have been kind to me," I exclaimed; "true, I think I could have held my own without your assistance; but no matter for that--you came to my help at the right moment, and now you have entertained me with food and drink. You are welcome to laugh as much as you please, but I, for my part, will not stay to listen to it. Farewell!"

I looked round for my cap; then, remembering that I had none, strode to the door, when the stranger, who in the meantime had also risen from his seat, hastened after me, caught me by the arm, and in the grave but kindly tone that had previously so charmed me, said:

"Young man, I entreat your pardon. And now come back and take your seat again. I offer you the word of a nobleman that I will respect your feelings, even if your expression of them takes a somewhat singular form."

His dark eyes gleamed, and there were twitchings in the maze of wrinkles that surrounded them.

"You are jesting with me," I said.

"I am not," he replied, "upon the word of a nobleman. On the contrary, you please me extremely, and I was several times on the point of interrupting your story to ask a favor of you. Come and stay awhile with me. Whether you are reconciled with your father, as I hope, or if the breach be past closing, as you believe, at all events you must first have a roof over your head; and you cannot possibly stay here, where you are evidently not wanted. As I said, I will feel it a favor if you will accept my invitation. I cannot offer you much, but--there is my hand! Good! now we will pledge good fellowship in champagne."

I had already forgiven my mysterious but amiable acquaintance, and pledged him in the sparkling wine with all my heart. With merriment and laughter we had soon emptied the flask, when the smith entered. He had thrown off his leather apron, donned a sailor's jacket, and wrapped a thick muffler round his muscular neck. It now struck me for the first time that he had not on the great blue spectacles which for several years I had never seen him without, and which he wore on account of his alleged near-sightedness: and it now occurred to me that he was not wearing them at the time of our quarrel. Still, I might be mistaken on that point; but I had no time to reflect upon so unimportant a matter, for my attention was at once fixed by some words exchanged in a low tone between the smith and the stranger.

"Is it time?" asked the latter.

"It is," replied the smith.

"The wind is favorable?"

"Yes."

"Everything in order?"

"Except the anchor, which you would not let me finish."

"We can do without it."

"Not well."

The stranger stood for a few moments in thought; his handsome face seemed suddenly to have grown twenty years older; he stroked his beard, and I noticed that he was observing me from the corner of his eye. He then caught the smith by the arm and led him out of the door, which he closed behind him. Outside the door I heard them talking, but could make out nothing, for the stranger spoke in a subdued voice, and the smith's growling speech was at all times difficult to understand; presently, however, the dialogue grew louder, and, as it seemed, more and more vehement, especially on the part of the smith.

"I will have it so!" cried the stranger.

"And I say no!" maintained the smith.

"It is my affair."

"And my affair as well."

The voices sank again, and presently I heard the outer door creak. They had left the forge; I stepped to the open window and saw them go to the little shed close to the beach, by which Pinnow's boat was usually drawn up on the sand. They disappeared in the shadow of the shed; then I heard a chain rattle, and a grating on the sand; they were launching the boat. All was then still: the only sounds audible were the stronger roaring of the sea, mingled with the rush of the wind in the leaves of the old oak, which threw its half-decayed boughs over the forge.

I heard a rustling in the room, and turned quickly round. It was Christel; she stood behind me, looking with an intense gaze, as I had just done, through the window into the darkness.

"Well, Christel!" I said.

She placed her finger on her lips, and whispered, "Hush!" then beckoned me from the window. Surprised rather than alarmed, I followed her.

"What is the matter, Christel?"

"Don't go with them, whatever you do. And go away from here at once. You cannot stay here."

"But, Christel, why not? And who is the gentleman?"

"I must not tell you; I must not speak his name. If you go with them, you will learn it soon enough; but do not go!"

"Why? What will they do to me, Christel?"

"Do? They will do nothing to you. But do not go with them."

A noise was heard outside; Christel turned away and began clearing the table, while the voices of the two who were returning from the beach came nearer and nearer.

I do not know what another would have done in my place; I can only say that the girl's warning produced upon me an effect precisely opposite to that intended. True, I well remember that my heart beat quicker, and that I cast a hurried glance at the four double-barrels and the long fowling-piece that hung in the old places on the wall; but the desire to go through with the adventure was now fully awaked in me. I felt equal to any danger that might beset me; and, for the matter of that, Christel had just said that no harm was intended to me.

Besides--and this circumstance is, perhaps, the real key to my conduct that evening--the stranger, whoever he might be, with his partly serious and partly jocose, half-sympathetic and half-mocking language, had somehow established a mysterious influence over me. In later years, when I heard the legend of the Piper of Hameln, whom the children were irresistibly compelled to follow, I at once recalled this night and the stranger.

He now appeared at the door, dressed in a coarse, wide sailor's jacket, and wearing a low-crowned tarpaulin hat in place of his cloth cap. Pinnow opened a press in the wall, and produced a similar outfit for me, which the stranger made me put on.

"It is turning cold," he remarked, "and your present dress will be but little protection to you, though I trust our passage will be a short one. So: now you are equipped capitally: now let us be off."

The smith had stepped to Christel and whispered her a few words, to which she made no reply. She had turned her back upon me since the men had entered, and did not once turn her head as I bade her good-night.

"Come on," said the stranger.

We went through the forge, where the fire had now burnt down, and stepped out into the windy night. After proceeding a few steps, I turned my head: the light in the living-room was extinguished; the house lay dark in the darkness, and the wind roared and moaned in the dry branches of the old oak.

The noise of the sea had increased; the wind had freshened to a stiff breeze; the moon had set; no star shone through the scudding clouds which from time to time were lighted with a lurid gleam, followed by a mutter of distant thunder.

We reached the boat which was already half in the water, and they made me get on board, while the stranger, Pinnow, and the deaf and dumb Jacob, who had suddenly made his appearance out of the darkness, and was, as well as I could make out, also in sailor's dress and fisherman's boots--pushed off. In a few minutes we were flying through the water; the stranger stood at the helm, but presently yielded it to Pinnow, when the latter with Jacob's assistance had finished setting the sails, and took his seat beside me.