Chronicles of the Schonberg-Cotta Family Part 19

The victory, however, can only be won by the combatant himself; and at length Brother Martin fought his way through once more, and as so often happens, just when the fight seemed hottest. It was with an old weapon he overcame--"_The just shall live by faith._"

Once more the words which have helped him so often, which so frequently he has repeated on this journey, came with power to his mind. Again he looked to the crucified Saviour; again he believed in him triumphant and ready to forgive on the throne of grace; and again his spirit was in the light.

His strength also soon began to return; and in a few days we are to be in Rome.

ROME.

The pilgrimage is over. The holy city is at length reached.

Across burning plains, under trellised vine-walks on the hill-sides, over wild, craggy mountains, through valleys green with chestnuts, and olives, and thickets of myrtle, and fragrant with lavender and cistus, we walked, until at last the sacred towers and domes burst on our sight, across a reach of the Campagna--the city where St. Paul and St. Peter were martyred--the metropolis of the kingdom of G.o.d.

The moment we came in sight of the city Brother Martin prostrated himself on the earth, and, lifting up his hands to heaven, exclaimed--

"Hail, sacred Rome! thrice sacred for the blood of the martyrs here shed."

And now we are within the sacred walls, lodged in the Augustinian monastery, near to the northern gate, through which we entered, called by the Romans the "Porta del Popolo."

Already Brother Martin has celebrated a ma.s.s in the convent church.

And to-morrow we may kneel where apostles and martyrs stood!

We may perhaps even see the holy father himself!

Are we indeed nearer heaven here?

It seems to me as I felt G.o.d nearer that night in the Black Forest.

There is so much tumult, and movement, and pomp around us in the great city.

When, however, I feel it more familiar and home-like, perhaps it will seem more heaven-like.

IX.

Else's Story.

EISENACH, _April_.

The last words I shall write in our dear old lumber-room, Fritz's and mine! I have little to regret in it now, however, that our twilight talks are over for ever. We leave early to-morrow morning for Wittemberg. It is strange to look out into the old street, and think how all will look exactly the same there to-morrow evening,--the monks slowly pacing along in pairs, the boys rus.h.i.+ng out of school, as they are now, the maid-servants standing at the doors with the baby in their arms, or wringing their mops,--and we gone. How small a blank people seem to make when they are gone, however large the s.p.a.ce they seemed to fill when they were present--except, indeed, to two or three hearts! I see this with Fritz. It seemed to me our little world must fall when he, its chief pillar, was withdrawn. Yet now everything seems to go on the same as before he became a monk,--except, indeed, with the mother and Eva and me.

The mother seems more and more like a shadow gliding in and out among us. Tenderly, indeed, she takes on her all she can of our family cares; but to family joys she seems spiritless and dead. Since she told me of the inclination she thinks she neglected in her youth towards the cloister, I understand her better,--the trembling fear with which she receives any good thing, and the hopeless submission with which she bows to every trouble, as to the blows of a rod always suspended over her, and only occasionally mercifully withheld from striking.

In the loss of Fritz the blow has fallen exactly where she would feel it most keenly. She had, I feel sure, planned another life for him. I see it in the peculiar tenderness of the tie which binds her to Eva. She said to me to-day, as we were packing up some of Fritz's books, "The sacrifice I was too selfish to make myself my son has made for me. O Else, my child, give at once, _at once_, whatever G.o.d demands of you.

What he demands must be given at last; and if only wrung out from us at last, G.o.d only knows with what fearful interest the debt may have to be paid."

The words weigh on me like a curse. I cannot help feeling sometimes, as I know she feels always, that the family is under some fatal spell.

But oh, how terrible the thought is that this is the way G.o.d exacts retribution!--a creditor, exacting to the last farthing for the most trifling transgression; and if payment is delayed, taking life or limb, or what is dearer, in exchange. I cannot bear to think of it. For if my mother is thus visited for a mistake, for neglecting a doubtful vocation, my pious, sweet mother, what hope is there for me, who scarcely pa.s.s a day without having to repent of saying some sharp word to those boys (who certainly are often very provoking), or doing what I ought not, or omitting some religious duty, or at least without envying some one who is richer, or inwardly murmuring at our lot,--even sometimes thinking bitter thoughts of our father and his discoveries!

Our dear father has at last arranged and fitted in all his treasures, and is the only one, except the children, who seems thoroughly pleased at the thought of our emigration. All day he has been packing, and unpacking, and repacking his machines into some specially safe corners of the great wagon which cousin Conrad Cotta has lent us for our journey.

Eva, on the other hand, seems to belong to this world as little as the mother. Not that she looks depressed or hopeless. Her face often perfectly beams with peace; but it seems entirely independent of everything here, and is neither ruffled by the difficulties we encounter, nor enhanced when anything goes a little better. I must confess it rather provokes me, almost as much as the boys do. I have serious fears that one day she will leave us, like Fritz, and take refuge in a convent. And yet I am sure I have not a fault to find with her. I suppose that is exactly what our grandmother and I feel so provoking. Lately she has abandoned all her Latin books for a German book ent.i.tled "Theologia Teutsch," or "Theologia Germanica," which Fritz sent us before he left the Erfurt convent on his pilgrimage to Rome.

This book seems to make Eva very happy; but as to me, it appears to me more unintelligible than Latin. Although it is quite different from all the other religious books I ever read, it does not suit me any better.

Indeed, it seems as if I never should find the kind of religion that would suit me. It all seems so sublime and vague, and so far out of my reach;--only fit for people who have time to climb the heights; whilst my path seems to lie in the valleys, and among the streets, and amidst all kinds of little every-day secular duties and cares, which religion is too lofty to notice.

I can only hope that some day at the end of my life G.o.d will graciously give me a little leisure to be religious and to prepare to meet him, or that Eva's and Fritz's prayers and merits will avail for me.

WITTEMBERG, _May_, 1510.

We are beginning to get settled into our new home, which is in the street near the University buildings. Martin Luther, or Brother Martin, has a great name here. They say his lectures are more popular than any one's. And he also frequently preaches in the city church. Our grandmother is not pleased with the change. She calls the town a wretched mud village, and wonders what can have induced the Electors of Saxony to fix their residence and found a university in such a sandy desert as this. She supposes it is very much like the deserts of Arabia.

But Christopher and I think differently. There are several very fine buildings here, beautiful churches, and the University, and the Castle, and the Augustinian Monastery; and we have no doubt that in time the rest of the town will grow up to them. I have heard our grandmother say that babies with features too large for their faces often prove the handsomest people when they grow up to their features. And so, no doubt, it will be with Wittemberg, which is at present certainly rather like an infant with the eyes and nose of a full-grown man. The mud walls and low cottages with thatched roofs look strangely out of keeping with the new buildings, the Elector's palace and church at the western end, the city church in the centre, and the Augustinian cloister and university at the eastern extremity, near the Elster gate, close to which we live.

It is true that there are no forests of pines, and wild hills, and lovely green valleys here, as around Eisenach. But our grandmother need not call it a wilderness. The white sand-hills on the north are broken with little dells and copses; and on the south, not two hundred rods from the town, across a heath, flows the broad, rapid Elbe.

The great river is a delight to me. It leads one's thoughts back to its quiet sources among the mountains, and onwards to its home in the great sea. We had no great river at Eisenach, which is an advantage on the side of Wittemberg. And then the banks are fringed with low oaks and willows, which bend affectionately over the water, and are delightful to sit amongst on summer evenings.

If I were not a little afraid of the people! The father does not like Eva and me to go out alone. The students are rather wild. This year, however, they have been forbidden by the rector to carry arms, which is some comfort. But the town's people also are warlike and turbulent, and drink a great deal of beer. There are one hundred and seventy breweries in the place, although there are not more than three hundred and fifty houses. Few of the inhabitants send their children to school, although there are five hundred students from all parts of Germany at the university.

Some of the poorer people, who come from the country around to the markets, talk a language I cannot understand. Our grandmother says they are Wends, and that this town is the last place on the borders of the civilized world. Beyond it, she declares, there are nothing but barbarians and Tartars. Indeed, she is not sure whether our neighbors themselves are Christians.

St. Boniface, the great apostle of the Saxons, did not extend his labours further than Saxony; and she says the Teutonic knights who conquered Prussia and the regions beyond us, were only Christian colonists living in the midst of half-heathen savages. To me it is rather a gloomy idea, to think that between Wittemberg and the Turks and Tartars, or even the savages in the Indies beyond, which Christopher Columbus has discovered, there are only a few half-civilized Wends, living in those wretched hamlets which dot the sandy heaths around the town.

But the father says it is a glorious idea, and that, if he were only a little younger, he would organize a land expedition, and traverse the country until he reached the Spaniards and the Portuguese, who sailed to the same point by sea.

"Only to think," he says, "that in a few weeks, or months at the utmost, we might reach Cathay, El Dorado, and even Atlantis itself, where the houses are roofed and paved with gold, and return laden with treasures!"

It seems to make him feel even his experiments with the retorts and crucibles in which he is always on the point of trans.m.u.ting lead into silver, to be tame and slow processes. Since we have been here, he has for the time abandoned his alchemical experiments, and sits for hours with a great map spread before him, calculating in the most accurate and elaborate manner how long it would take to reach the new Spanish discoveries by way of Wendish Prussia. "For," he remarks, "if I am never able to carry out the scheme myself, it may one day immortalize one of my sons, and enrich and enn.o.ble the whole of our family!"

Our journey from Eisenach was one continual fete to the children. For my mother and the baby--now two years old--we made a couch in the wagon, of the family bedding. My grandmother sat erect in a nook among the furniture. Little Thekla was enthroned like a queen on a pile of pillows, where she sat hugging her own especial treasures,--her broken doll, the wooden horse Christopher made for her, a precious store of cones and pebbles from the forest, and a very s.h.a.ggy disreputable foundling dog which she has adopted, and can by no means be persuaded to part with. She calls the dog Nix, and is sure that he is always asking her with his wistful eyes to teach him to speak, and give him a soul.

With these, her household G.o.ds, preserved to her, she showed little feeling at parting from the rest of our Eisenach world.

The father was equally absorbed with his treasures, his folios, and models, and instruments, which he jealously guarded.

Eva had but one inseparable treasure, the volume of the "Theologia Germanica," which she has appropriated.

The mother's especial thought was the baby. Chriemhild was overwhelmed with the parting with Pollux, who was left behind with Cousin Conrad Cotta, and Atlantis was so wild with delight at the thought of the new world and the new life, from which she was persuaded all the cares of the old were to be extracted for ever, that, had it not been for Christopher and me, I must say the general interest of the family would have been rather in the background.

For the time there was a truce between Christopher and me concerning "Reinecke Fuchs," and our various differences. All his faculties--which have been so prolific for mischief--seemed suddenly turned into useful channels, like the mischievous elves of the farm and hearth, when they are capriciously bent on doing some poor human being a good turn. He scarcely tried my temper once during the whole journey. Since we reached Wittemberg, however, I cannot say as much. I feel anxious about the companions he has found among the students, and often, often I long that Fritz's religion had led him to remain among us, at least until the boys had grown up.

I had nerved myself beforehand for the leave-taking with the old friends and the old home, but when the moving actually began, there was no time to think of anything but packing in the last things which had been nearly forgotten, and arranging every one in their places. I had not even a moment for a last look at the old house, for at the instant we turned the corner, Thekla and her treasures nearly came to an untimely end by the downfall of one of the father's machines; which so discouraged Thekla, and excited our grandmother, Nix and the baby, that it required considerable soothing to restore every one to equanimity; and, in the meantime, the corner of the street had been turned, and the dear old house was out of sight. I felt a pang, as if I had wronged it, the old home which had sheltered us so many years, and been the silent witness of so many joys, and cares, and sorrows!

We had few adventures during the first day, except that Thekla's peace was often broken by the difficulties in which Nix's self-confident but not very courageous disposition frequently involved him with the cats and dogs in the villages, and their proprietors.

The first evening in the forest was delightful. We encamped in a clearing. Sticks were gathered for a fire, round which we arranged such bedding and furniture as we could unpack, and the children were wild with delight at thus combining serious household work with play, whilst Christopher foddered and tethered the horses.