Fair maids will have their hero in history. Siegfried was Margarita’s chosen. She sang of Siegfried all over the house. ‘O the old days of Germany, when such a hero walked!’ she sang.
‘And who wins Margarita,’ mused Farina, ‘happier than Siegfried, has in his arms Brunhild and Chrimhild together!’
Crowning the young girl’s breast was a cameo, and the skill of some cunning artist out of Welschland had wrought on it the story of the Drachenfels. Her bosom heaved the battle up and down.
This cameo was a north star to German manhood, but caused many chaste expressions of abhorrence from Aunt Lisbeth, Gottlieb’s unmarried sister, who seemed instinctively to take part with the Dragon. She was a frail-fashioned little lady, with a face betokening the perpetual smack of lemon, and who reigned in her brother’s household when the good wife was gone. Margarita’s robustness was beginning to alarm and shock Aunt Lisbeth’s sealed stock of virtue.
‘She must be watched, such a madl as that,’ said Aunt Lisbeth. ‘Ursula! what limbs she has!’
Margarita was watched; but the spy being neither foe nor friend, nothing was discovered against her. This did not satisfy Aunt Lisbeth, whose own suspicion was her best witness. She allowed that Margarita dissembled well.
‘But,’ said she to her niece, ‘though it is good in a girl not to flaunt these naughtinesses in effrontery, I care for you too much not to say—Be what you seem, my little one!’
‘And that am I!’ exclaimed Margarita, starting up and towering.
‘Right good, my niece,’ Lisbeth squealed; ‘but now Frau Groschen lies in God’s acre, you owe your duty to me, mind! Did you confess last week?’
‘From beginning to end,’ replied Margarita.
Aunt Lisbeth fixed pious reproach on Margarita’s cameo.
‘And still you wear that thing?’
‘Why not?’ said Margarita.
‘Girl! who would bid you set it in such a place save Satan? Oh, thou poor lost child! that the eyes of the idle youths may be drawn there! and thou become his snare to others, Margarita! What was that Welsh wandering juggler but the foul fiend himself, mayhap, thou maiden of sin! They say he has been seen in Cologne lately. He was swarthy as Satan and limped of one leg. Good Master in heaven, protect us! it was Satan himself I could swear!’
Aunt Lisbeth crossed brow and breast.
Margarita had commenced fingering the cameo, as if to tear it away; but Aunt Lisbeth’s finish made her laugh outright.
‘Where I see no harm, aunty, I shall think the good God is,’ she answered; ‘and where I see there’s harm, I shall think Satan lurks.’
A simper of sour despair passed over Aunt Lisbeth. She sighed, and was silent, being one of those very weak reeds who are easily vanquished and never overcome.
‘Let us go on with the Tapestry, child,’ said she.
Now, Margarita was ambitious of completing a certain Tapestry for presentation to Kaiser Heinrich on his entry into Cologne after his last campaign on the turbaned Danube. The subject was again her beloved Siegfried slaying the Dragon on Drachenfels. Whenever Aunt Lisbeth indulged in any bitter virginity, and was overmatched by Margarita’s frank maidenhood, she hung out this tapestry as a flag of truce. They were working it in bits, not having contrivances to do it in a piece. Margarita took Siegfried and Aunt Lisbeth the Dragon. They shared the crag between them. A roguish gleam of the Rhine toward Nonnenwerth could be already made out, Roland’s Corner hanging like a sentinel across the chanting island, as one top-heavy with long watch.
Aunt Lisbeth was a great proficient in the art, and had taught Margarita. The little lady learnt it, with many other gruesome matters, in the Palatine of Bohemia’s family. She usually talked of the spectres of Hollenbogenblitz Castle in the passing of the threads. Those were dismal spectres in Bohemia, smelling of murder and the charnel-breath of midnight. They uttered noises that wintered the blood, and revealed sights that stiffened hair three feet long; ay, and kept it stiff!
Margarita placed herself on a settle by the low-arched window, and Aunt Lisbeth sat facing her. An evening sun blazoned the buttresses of the Cathedral, and shadowed the workframes of the peaceful couple to a temperate light. Margarita unrolled a sampler sheathed with twists of divers coloured threads, and was soon busy silver-threading Siegfried’s helm and horns.
‘I told you of the steward, poor Kraut, did I not, child?’ inquired Aunt Lisbeth, quietly clearing her throat.
‘Many times!’ said Margarita, and went on humming over her knee
‘Her love was a Baron,
A Baron so bold;
She loved him for love,
He loved her for gold.’
‘He must see for himself, and be satisfied,’ continued Aunt Lisbeth; ‘and Holy Thomas to warn him for an example! Poor Kraut!’
‘Poor Kraut!’ echoed Margarita.
‘The King loved wine, and the Knight loved wine,
And they loved the summer weather:
They might have loved each other well,
But for one they loved together.’
‘You may say, poor Kraut, child!’ said Aunt Lisbeth. ‘Well! his face was before that as red as this dragon’s jaw, and ever after he went about as white as a pullet’s egg. That was something wonderful!’ ‘That was it!’ chimed Margarita.
‘O the King he loved his lawful wife,
The Knight a lawless lady:
And ten on one-made ringing strife,
Beneath the forest shady.’
‘Fifty to one, child!’ said Aunt Lisbeth: ‘You forget the story. They made Kraut sit with them at the jabbering feast, the only mortal there. The walls were full of eye-sockets without eyes, but phosphorus instead, burning blue and damp.’
‘Not to-night, aunty dear! It frightens me so,’ pleaded Margarita, for she saw the dolor coming.
‘Night! when it’s broad mid-day, thou timid one! Good heaven take pity on such as thou! The dish was seven feet in length by four broad. Kraut measured it with his eye, and never forgot it. Not he! When the dish-cover was lifted, there he saw himself lying, boiled!
“‘I did not feel uncomfortable then,” Kraut told us. “It seemed natural.”
‘His face, as it lay there, he says, was quite calm, only a little wrinkled, and piggish-looking-like. There was the mole on his chin, and the pucker under his left eyelid. Well! the Baron carved. All the guests were greedy for a piece of him. Some cried out for breast; some for toes. It was shuddering cold to sit and hear that! The Baroness said, “Cheek!”’
‘Ah!’ shrieked Margarita, ‘that can I not bear! I will not hear it, aunt; I will not!’
‘Cheek!’ Aunt Lisbeth reiterated, nodding to the floor.
Margarita put her fingers to her ears.
‘Still, Kraut says, even then he felt nothing odd. Of course he was horrified to be sitting with spectres as you and I should be; but the first tremble of it was over. He had plunged into the bath of horrors, and there he was. I ‘ve heard that you must pronounce the names of the Virgin and Trinity, sprinkling water round you all the while for three minutes; and if you do this without interruption, everything shall disappear. So they say. “Oh! dear heaven of mercy!” says Kraut, “what I felt when the Baron laid his long hunting-knife across my left cheek!”’
Here Aunt Lisbeth lifted her eyes to dote upon Margarita’s fright. She was very displeased to find her niece, with elbows on the window-sill and hands round her head, quietly gazing into the street.
She said severely, ‘Where did you learn that song you were last singing, Margarita? Speak, thou girl!’
Margarita laughed.
‘The thrush, and the lark, and the blackbird,
They taught me how to sing:
And O that the hawk would lend his eye,
And the eagle lend his wing.’
‘I will not hear these shameless songs,’ exclaimed Aunt Lisbeth.
‘For I would view the lands they view,
And be where they have been:
It is not enough to be singing
For ever in dells unseen!’
A voice was heard applauding her. ‘Good! right good! Carol again, Gretelchen! my birdie!’
Margarita turned, and beheld her father in the doorway. She tripped toward him, and heartily gave him their kiss of meeting. Gottlieb glanced at the helm of Siegfried.
‘Guessed the work was going well; you sing so lightsomely to-day, Grete! Very pretty! And that’s Drachenfels? Bones of the Virgins! what a bold fellow was Siegfried, and a lucky, to have the neatest lass in Deutschland in love with him. Well, we must marry her to Siegfried after all, I believe! Aha? or somebody as good as Siegfried. So chirrup on, my darling!’
‘Aunt Lisbeth does not approve of my songs,’ replied Margarita, untwisting some silver threads.
‘Do thy father’s command, girl!’ said Aunt Lisbeth.
‘And doing his command,
Should I do a thing of ill,
I’d rather die to his lovely face,
Than wanton at his will.’
‘There—there,’ said Aunt Lisbeth, straining out her fingers; ‘you see, Gottlieb, what over-indulgence brings her to. Not another girl in blessed Rhineland, and Bohemia to boot, dared say such words!—than—I can’t repeat them!—don’t ask me!—She’s becoming a Frankish girl!’
‘What ballad’s that?’ said Gottlieb, smiling.
‘The Ballad of Holy Ottilia; and her lover was sold to darkness. And she loved him—loved him——’
‘As you love Siegfried, you little one?’
‘More, my father; for she saw Winkried, and I never saw Siegfried. Ah! if I had seen Siegfried! Never mind. She loved him; but she loved Virtue more. And Virtue is the child of God, and the good God forgave her for loving Winkried, the Devil’s son, because she loved Virtue more, and He rescued her as she was being dragged down—down—down, and was half fainting with the smell of brimstone—rescued her and had her carried into His Glory, head and feet, on the wings of angels, before all men, as a hope to little maidens.
‘And when I thought that I was lost
I found that I was saved,
And I was borne through blessed clouds,
Where the banners of bliss were waved.’
‘And so you think you, too, may fall in, love with Devils’ sons, girl?’ was Aunt Lisbeth’s comment.
‘Do look at Lisbeth’s Dragon, little Heart! it’s so like!’ said Margarita to her father.
Old Gottlieb twitted his hose, and chuckled.
‘She’s my girl! that may be seen,’ said he, patting her, and wheezed up from his chair to waddle across to the Dragon. But Aunt Lisbeth tartly turned the Dragon to the wall.
‘It is not yet finished, Gottlieb, and must not be looked at,’ she interposed. ‘I will call for wood, and see to a fire: these evenings of Spring wax cold’: and away whimpered Aunt Lisbeth.
Margarita sang:
‘I with my playmates,
In riot and disorder,
Were gathering herb and blossom
Along the forest border.’
‘Thy mother’s song, child of my heart!’ said Gottlieb; ‘but vex not good Lisbeth: she loves thee!’
‘And do you think she loves me?
And will you say ‘tis true?
O, and will she have me,
When I come up to woo?’
‘Thou leaping doe! thou chattering pie!’ said Gottlieb.
‘She shall have ribbons and trinkets,
And shine like a morn of May,
When we are off to the little hill-church,
Our flowery bridal way.’
‘That she shall; and something more!’ cried Gottlieb. ‘But, hark thee, Gretelchen; the Kaiser will be here in three days. Thou dear one! had I not stored and hoarded all for thee, I should now have my feet on a hearthstone where even he might warm his boot. So get thy best dresses and jewels in order, and look thyself; proud as any in the land. A simple burgher’s daughter now, Grete; but so shalt thou not end, my butterfly, or there’s neither worth nor wit in Gottlieb Groschen!’
‘Three days!’ Margarita exclaimed; ‘and the helm not finished, and the tapestry-pieces not sewed and joined, and the water not shaded off.—Oh! I must work night and day.’
‘Child! I’ll have no working at night! Your rosy cheeks will soon be sucked out by oil-light, and you look no better than poor tallow Court beauties—to say nothing of the danger. This old house saw Charles the Great embracing the chief magistrate of his liege city yonder. Some swear he slept in it. He did not sneeze at smaller chambers than our Kaisers abide. No gold ceilings with cornice carvings, but plain wooden beams.’
‘Know that the men of great renown,
Were men of simple needs:
Bare to the Lord they laid them down,
And slept on mighty deeds.’
‘God wot, there’s no emptying thy store of ballads, Grete: so much shall be said of thee. Yes; times are changeing: We’re growing degenerate. Look at the men of Linz now to what they were! Would they have let the lads of Andernach float down cabbage-stalks to them without a shy back? And why? All because they funk that brigand-beast Werner, who gets redemption from Laach, hard by his hold, whenever he commits a crime worth paying for. As for me, my timber and stuffs must come down stream, and are too good for the nixen under Rhine, or think you I would acknowledge him with a toll, the hell-dog? Thunder and lightning! if old scores could be rubbed out on his hide!’
Gottlieb whirled a thong-lashing arm in air, and groaned of law and justice. What were they coming to!
Margarita softened the theme with a verse:
‘And tho’ to sting his enemy,
Is sweetness to the angry bee,
The angry bee must busy be,
Ere sweet of sweetness hiveth he.
The arch thrill of his daughter’s voice tickled Gottlieb. ‘That’s it, birdie! You and the proverb are right. I don’t know which is best,
‘Better hive
And keep alive
Than vengeance wake
With that you take.’
A clatter in the cathedral square brought Gottlieb on his legs to the window. It was a company of horsemen sparkling in harness. One trumpeter rode at the side of the troop, and in front a standard-bearer, matted down the chest with ochre beard, displayed aloft to the good citizens of Cologne, three brown hawks, with birds in their beaks, on an azure stardotted field.
‘Holy Cross!’ exclaimed Gottlieb, low in his throat; ‘the arms of Werner! Where got he money to mount his men? Why, this is daring all Cologne in our very teeth! ‘Fend that he visit me now! Ruin smokes in that ruffian’s track. I ‘ve felt hot and cold by turns all day.’
The horsemen came jingling carelessly along the street in scattered twos and threes, laughing together, and singling out the maidens at the gable-shadowed windows with hawking eyes. The good citizens of Cologne did not look on them favourably. Some showed their backs and gruffly banged their doors: others scowled and pocketed their fists: not a few slunk into the side alleys like well-licked curs, and scurried off with forebent knees. They were in truth ferocious-looking fellows these trusty servants of the robber Baron Werner, of Werner’s Eck, behind Andernach. Leather, steel, and dust, clad them from head to foot; big and black as bears; wolf-eyed, fox-nosed. They glistened bravely in the falling beams of the sun, and Margarita thrust her fair braided yellow head a little forward over her father’s shoulder to catch the whole length of the grim cavalcade. One of the troop was not long in discerning the young beauty. He pointed her boldly out to a comrade, who approved his appetite, and referred her to a third. The rest followed lead, and Margarita was as one spell-struck when she became aware that all those hungry eyes were preying on hers. Old Gottlieb was too full of his own fears to think for her, and when he drew in his head rather suddenly, it was with a dismal foreboding that Werner’s destination in Cologne was direct to the house of Gottlieb Groschen, for purposes only too well to be divined.
‘Devil’s breeches!’ muttered Gottlieb; ‘look again, Grete, and see if that hell-troop stop the way outside.’
Margarita’s cheeks were overflowing with the offended rose.
‘I will not look at them again, father.’
Gottlieb stared, and then patted her.
‘I would I were a man, father!’
Gottlieb smiled, and stroked his beard.
‘Oh! how I burn!’
And the girl shivered visibly.
‘Grete! mind to be as much of a woman as you can, and soon such raff as this you may sweep away, like cobwebs, and no harm done.’
He was startled by a violent thumping at the streetdoor, and as brazen a blast as if the dead were being summoned. Aunt Lisbeth entered, and flitted duskily round the room, crying:
‘We are lost: they are upon us! better death with a bodkin! Never shall it be said of me; never! the monsters!’
Then admonishing them to lock, bar, bolt, and block up every room in the house, Aunt Lisbeth perched herself on the edge of a chair, and reversed the habits of the screech-owl, by being silent when stationary.
‘There’s nothing to fear for you, Lisbeth,’ said Gottlieb, with discourteous emphasis.
‘Gottlieb! do you remember what happened at the siege of Mainz? and poor Marthe Herbstblum, who had hoped to die as she was; and Dame Altknopfchen, and Frau Kaltblut, and the old baker, Hans Topf’s sister, all of them as holy as abbesses, and that did not save them! and nothing will from such godless devourers.’
Gottlieb was gone, having often before heard mention of the calamity experienced by these fated women.
‘Comfort thee, good heart, on my breast,’ said Margarita, taking Lisbeth to that sweet nest of peace and fortitude.
‘Margarita! ‘tis your doing! have I not said—lure them not, for they swarm too early upon us! And here they are! and, perhaps, in five minutes all will be over!
Herr Je!—What, you are laughing! Heavens of goodness, the girl is delighted!’
Here a mocking ha-ha! accompanied by a thundering snack at the door, shook the whole house, and again the trumpet burst the ears with fury.
This summons, which seemed to Aunt Lisbeth final, wrought a strange composure in her countenance. She was very pale, but spread her dress decently, as if fear had departed, and clasped her hands on her knees.
‘The will of the Lord above must be done,’ said she; ‘it is impious to complain when we are given into the hand of the Philistines. Others have been martyred, and were yet acceptable.’
To this heroic speech she added, with cold energy: ‘Let them come!’
‘Aunt,’ cried Margarita, ‘I hear my father’s voice with those men. Aunty! I will not let him be alone. I must go down to him. You will be safe here. I shall come to you if there’s cause for alarm.’
And in spite of Aunt Lisbeth’s astonished shriek of remonstrance, she hurried off to rejoin Gottlieb.
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