path: root/76371-0.txt

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76371 ***





THE SILVER DIAL.

BY

MARY C. ROWSELL.

AUTHOR OF

“ST. NICOLAS’ EVE,” “LOVE LOYAL,” “TRAITOR OR PATRIOT,” &c., &c.

       *       *       *       *       *

    “AS MANY LINES CLOSE IN THE DIAL’S CENTRE;
    SO MANY A THOUSAND ACTIONS, ONCE AFOOT,
    END IN ONE PURPOSE.”—_Henry V._

       *       *       *       *       *

VOL. II.

[Illustration]

LONDON: SWAN SONNENSCHEIN, LE BAS & LOWREY, PATERNOSTER SQUARE.

       *       *       *       *       *

1886.

       *       *       *       *       *

THE ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY PRESS.




CONTENTS.


[Illustration]

  CHAPTER                                                           PAGE

    XVIII.—Dagger and Poison Cup                                       1

      XIX.—“Were all thy Letters Suns, I could not see”               18

       XX.—A Noisy Committee                                          30

      XXI.—A Chilly Greeting                                          38

     XXII.—Unjust Suspicions                                          47

    XXIII.—“The Times are out of Joint”                               59

     XXIV.—“What’s she worried about?”                                71

      XXV.—Nine Days’ Wonder                                          83

     XXVI.—“Mere Hearsay”                                             97

    XXVII.—A Moonlight Meeting                                       109

   XXVIII.—“Affinities”                                              124

     XXIX.—“Worse than Silence”                                      137

      XXX.—A Cause Célèbre                                           148

     XXXI.—“Quo fata Vocant”                                         172

    XXXII.—Otto’s Little Difficulties                                187

   XXXIII.—“Give up the Plans!”                                      197

    XXXIV.—“Inter alia”                                              209

     XXXV.—“Dolce far Niente!”                                       222

    XXXVI.—“Under the Shade of Melancholy Boughs”                    233

   XXXVII.—“The Old Love or the New?”                                252

  XXXVIII.—Time’s Changes                                            266

    XXXIX.—A Visit to the Dial                                       278

       XL.—Gretchen                                                  296

      XLI.—A Clean Confession                                        310

     XLII.—Otto finds Consolation                                    332

    XLIII.—“Making Night hideous”                                    340

     XLIV.—Vox Populi                                                353

      XLV.—Old Friends                                               363

     XLVI.—How Extremes meet                                         374

    XLVII.—“Homo Sum”                                                387




THE SILVER DIAL.

[Illustration]




CHAPTER XVIII.

DAGGER AND POISON CUP.


By the time Sabina and her father had bidden adieu to Radegund, the
grey wintry twilight had deepened into blackness, and the artist found
it was too dark to seal up and direct Sabina’s letter. Merely folding
it, therefore, she laid it on the ledge of her easel, and turned to
take up her old brooding attitude in the flickering firelight, until a
message was brought that the Bishop waited below to speak with her on
some question concerning the Horologe.

She hurried down, and my lord, who always enjoyed a chat with her,
prolonged his interview for some time after Radegund had heard her
brother Otto striding impatiently to and fro in the adjoining
room—sign unmistakable that he was waiting for her to come to supper.
Indeed it was already past the usual hour for the meal, and Radegund
was not sorry when at last her august visitor took his departure.

“The poor boy must be famished! he has been waiting this half-hour,”
thought she, with the strong motherly solicitude she had for him.

To many, despite his handsome face, Otto was not an agreeable young
man. Well-born and reared, he yet had about him a touch of that
ill-breeding which is conceit’s unfailing attendant. Of firmness of
character and self-reliance he had little; and his weak nature had
allowed a natural jealousy of disposition to become an uncontrollable
passion. He was impulsive, and not destitute of generosity. People
were apt to mistake his transient fits of ardour for real deep-seated
enthusiasm, but this quality for good and for evil belonged to his
sister, and not at all to him. He was, however, quick-witted and to
a degree clever, as who of the race of von Steinbach was not? but
genius he utterly lacked; and his mediocre talents ran small chance
of increase, since he had never been able to grasp the practical
meaning of mental application. Compared with Radegund’s intellectual
qualifications, his were as pinchbeck to gold, but that is in no way to
refuse recognition to the qualities of pinchbeck.

Radegund, however, whose perception of people’s shortcomings was
ordinarily acute, saw few faults in Otto; or if she did, never
admitted their existence, and if it pleased her to tell him of his
little failings now and again, that was her affair; but other folks,
marriageable maidens notably, were to be filled with admiration and
sighs for her Adonis-faced brother, and when first she heard that
Sabina, instead of jumping down the irresistible creature’s throat, had
dared “little chit of a thing!”—to refuse the offer of his delectable
self, she could hardly credit her own ears, until—until she came to
understand who was the favoured suitor.

Otto, when he could spare a thought from the consideration of his own
perfections, would say that he admired Radegund, and that those who
sought her favour were not so far wrong, and in his own rather shallow
way he loved her. He always found her a patient listener, when he
poured forth, as he very often did, a list of his numerous individual
grievances. Sometimes, it must be confessed, he did not escape a sound
rating for his pains, on account of his weak vacillating ways; and
Radegund would declare that he ought to have been the woman and she the
man; but oftener she would pity him, and even join in denouncing the
unappreciating world he was thrown upon.

All this Radegund would do; but one thing she never did, and that was
to confide in return, her own hopes and fears and joys and sorrows to
him. “Poor child! no”—she always cheated herself into saying. “Why
should I worry him with my vexations? He has enough of his own.”
But she knew that was a self-deception; and had Otto been of her
own calibre, she would have been glad to make a friend of him, this
proud-hearted friendless woman. As it was, however, the two rubbed on
their somewhat gloomy lives together in the magnificent old ancestral
mansion, and people would point them out as a model brother and sister;
which perhaps, as far as imperfect human nature let them be, they were.

At zero though Otto’s love affairs of late had been, he had not lost
the rare appetite with which Providence had blessed him; and if he
were kept waiting for his meals for even three little minutes, he
considered himself very criminally dealt by; and on this particular
evening he had come in, and found his sister not waiting for him as
usual, and as he considered it behoved her to do. Otto always regarded
Radegund’s absence from the guest-room at this hour of the evening as a
personal affront; and the worst of it was that lately she had got into
a trick of doing so, especially while the Saint Laurence picture had
been on her easel.

Had there been, however, any shadow of an excuse for it then, there
could be none now that the Saint Laurence was safe on the cathedral
wall, and Otto did not mean Radegund to get into that aggravating way
of neglecting him for pictures and things. Seizing a lamp therefore, he
tore, three steps at a time? up the wide oaken staircase, and in his
own privileged way, burst open the studio door.

“Aller Teufel!” he cried. “I’ve been in ever so long—I’m famished,
Radegund, and it’s an abominable shame——”

But no Radegund was to be seen. Raising his lamp aloft, he peered among
the shadows it cast, and called her by her name, knowing that it was
perfectly possible for his sister to be within half-a-yard of him, and
yet for her not to reply. It was another of her tiresome whims; and one
which of late had much grown upon her, to pay not the slightest heed
when spoken to; and you might as well be a wooden stick at once, for
all the notice Radegund would sometimes take of you for hours together.
Now, however, not even her bodily presence was there; and since Otto
had no fancy for being alone in that great dark chamber, he turned to
go downstairs again, when suddenly the flare of his lamp caught the
picture on Radegund’s easel.

“What termagant creature is she putting on her canvas now?” he muttered
to himself, as he approached the picture. “I never can, for the life of
me, see any beauty in these viragos myself. One of your soft dove-eyed
women now, is worth a dozen of ’em,” sighed poor Otto. “By Jupiter!
didn’t I say it? Some she-demon or other!”

And he recoiled a step, as a pair of fierce eyes, more ghastly from
their vagueness, glared out at him from the canvas.

“A Cassandra,” he went on, out of his little Latin, and less Greek
which he had contrived to drum into his brains during his schoolboy
years, “or is it Medea? Anyhow she’s pointing down at some piece of
devilry she’s been at,” and involuntarily Otto’s eyes fell to the
base of the picture whither the figure’s shadowy finger pointed. On
the ledge of the easel lay a piece of folded parchment. Bringing his
lamp-light closer to it, Otto saw that it was addressed in Radegund’s
handwriting to Conrad Dasipodius.

“Now, what can she be having to say to him?” he mused, and as he stood
considering it with wide open eyes, a cunning smile gathered about his
lips. “Ah ha! sister mine!” he muttered, “I have you at last, have I?”
Then he took the letter, and fingered it laughingly.

For long past Otto had had his suspicions that Radegund’s admiration
for the stately Professor Dasipodius was not an exclusively artistic
one. That Nature broke the mould after having created him, Radegund
took a delight in declaring; especially in the hearing of those
among her admirers who chanced to be insignificant in stature or of
physiognomy; and this very plain-spoken avowal set those interested
to find out the truth completely off the right scent. “For no woman,”
as they argued, “ever blazons abroad such open admiration for a man
she is in love with.” Shallow arguing! and the ways of woman, when
she so chooses, are past man’s finding out; unless, possibly, to a
disinterested man like Otto von Steinbach.

Disinterested indeed, as far as Radegund was concerned, Otto might
be, since so long as she would one day settle quietly down with a
decently wealthy and well-born suitor—the wealthier of course so much
the better, because then he might rather help than hinder Otto’s own
worldly prospects; the young man cared little enough who might be the
favoured one. Otto, however, did care very much to arrive at any means
which might compass the breaking of Dasipodius’ love plighting with
Sabina von Steinbach. That once achieved, he had no fear whatever of
making his own way with her. Why not?

And so when Otto’s eyes fell on this letter addressed to the
mathematician in his sister’s own handwriting, he fancied himself quite
on the right tack, or at least hope whispered very encouragingly to
him. Still he could not quite see how he was going to bring things
into train, and he stood and pondered, until his thoughts assumed an
exceedingly definite shape. The letter was unsealed, could be opened
and read as easily as looked at almost—and why—why should he not read
it? What hindered?

Honour did for full two minutes, nearly three, and then the meaner
spirit of him whispered that there must be no further shilly-shally,
that such scruples were absurdly, fastidiously delicate, when in all
probability, that letter contained nothing but Horologe business;
and supposing, after all, it did touch on extraneous but interesting
matter, was it not right and proper that he, Otto von Steinbach, as
master of that house, should know what was going on under his own
roof? Was he not guardian of his sister’s honour? and was it not high
time that he should set about acquainting himself with some of those
proceedings of hers which she kept so mysteriously to herself? Then
too, there was his cousin Sabina’s imperilled happiness to be borne in
mind. Yes, the sudden clearness with which Otto now saw these points
utterly extinguished any intrusive little scruples, and anxiety on
that score being thus quite set at rest, he set his lamp on the table,
opened the letter—not without many glances first round the dark still
chamber, and began to spell it carefully through. Otto, as already
hinted, being rather a ten o’clock scholar, had some difficulty
in mastering the hard words, but finding the contents interesting,
it seemed to him worth while to persevere; and something over a
quarter-of-an-hour left him in possession of as much as the missive
had to tell; but to grasp all at once its full meaning was too great a
tax on his brain, and for some moments his countenance wore an utterly
dazed expression, and there, as though rooted to the spot, he stood,
striving to set a little in order the bewildering suggestions it had
called up within him. “Blind!” gasped he. “Now, who would have guessed
that? And yet—ha! ha! so much for friend Conrad’s inspiration, as the
fools call his star-gazing. Inspiration? Magic perhaps! What do I say?
Perhaps? Why it must be. Seeing without eyes indeed! Oh! it’s horrible
to think of—horrible! Why, the cleverest person, ever so clever—I
myself can’t tie even a shoestring with shut eyes; and you mean to tell
me—no, it won’t do. Besides, aren’t his eyes as good-looking—almost,
as mine? Impossible.” Then with forefinger pressed against the corner
of his wrinkling brow, and demonstrating the hollowness of his own
proposition, since he shut his eyes fast in order to see the better
into his own mind, he stood lost in meditation.

At last, carefully folding the letter, he replaced it where he had
found it; then catching up his lamp, hurried with a light heart
downstairs, and as he went, “Blind!” was the refrain of his pæan.
“Dasipodius blind!—blind!”

This knowledge of the master’s affliction appeared certainly to have
put his pupil into a charmingly good humour; he had not felt so pleased
with himself and all the world for quite a long time, and went so far
out of his ordinary way as to tell his sister, who now awaited him in
the dining hall, that she was a splendid creature, by Venus! “And upon
my honour, I don’t wonder at all the fellows being mad about you, my
girl. Such a knack, too, as you have of putting on your clothes. You
make a rare picture yourself, Radegund.”

And Radegund, standing there beside the supper-table, freighted with
its costly silver-gilt and shining Venice glass, did look rarely
handsome. Unlike so many sisters of her craft, artist inconsistencies,
who drape their figures in graceful robes of happily-blended colouring,
while they render real life hideous by dingy dress, crumpled lace,
and disordered hair, Radegund well understood the value of personal
adornment.

To-night her dress, whose sheeny folds swept the oaken floor, was of
some dark tawny-coloured brocaded stuff, cut slightly open at the neck,
and squared about the throat, and finished there by a band of dead gold
passementerie. The sleeves puffed and slashed with velvet a shade or
two lighter than the dress, and reaching to her shapely wrists, were
edged with a narrow band of the same rich trimming, while a narrow
frill of fine Flemish lace shaded the white, rather transparent hands.
A broader ruff also of this same lace set off, more than concealed,
the rounded outlines of her beautiful throat. This same ruff of the
artist’s had afforded food for much discussion in certain circles. The
feminine fashionable craze of the city vowed it was excessively absurd
and antiquated of Radegund to persist in wearing such a stupid mimping
scrap of lace; positively not four inches wide, and certainly, all
unplaited, not above an ell long! But there, that always was Radegund
von Steinbach—to go choosing to be different from everybody else, she
did so dearly love anything that made her peculiar. Dispassionately
regarded, one would have held the accusation of peculiarity to lie
rather on the side of the existing fashion, than on that of the
old-world frill to which Radegund was pleased to remain faithful.
The ruffs of the really modish dames of that day were miracles of
building-up, and had to be “under-propped round their goodly necks,” as
an irate chronicler of the period has it, “and pinned up to their ears,
or else let fluttering, like windmill sails in the wind”.

Now the ridiculous part of all this was, that the male sex, with
that proverbial ignorance and ill-taste which invariably marks it in
questions of the sort, took a positive delight in abusing the charming
new fashion, and stuck so obstinately to their opinion that Radegund’s
ruff was a thousand times more decent and becoming, that certain weak
young Strassburg female minds began to entertain serious thoughts of
going back again to the older style, in spite of such romantic nonsense
being pooh-poohed by the stronger spirits.

“Decent and becoming! Radegund von Steinbach! Who’s she, pray, that
she’s to set the fashions?” contended these. “Decent and becoming! A
good joke!” and then the huffy outraged matrons at once became more
ruffy and stiffly-starched than ever. Then, too, Radegund was possessed
with “ideas” about her hair, and scorned to lend herself to the wearing
of wigs of many colours, or to gold-powderings, or dyeings, or any
other abominations of the sort practised in that unenlightened age, but
gathered it all up, and wound it in coils about her beautiful head,
and fastened it with a golden dagger-headed spillone, she had brought
from Italy; and altogether there was a distinctiveness and magnificence
about Radegund von Steinbach which made her a pleasant sight to eyes
dazzled and wearied by the glitter of beads and bangles and gewgaws.

But to-night, notwithstanding, Radegund’s face wears a haggard look,
and the crimson spot burning on either cheek, renders its paleness
still more deathlike.

“You have kept me waiting,” is her sole response to her brother’s
gallant little speeches. “Where have you been?”

“I—I was home rather late,” stammered he.

“Nay,” persisted Radegund, “but I heard you stamping about in here
more than half-an-hour ago.”

“When a man’s ravenous,” says Otto, seating himself at the table, and
commencing operations without further loss of time, “he’s apt to stamp
about. It saves him from doing some awful mischief or other; and I’m so
starving, I could eat a board to-night. But this capon is first-rate.
You’ve found a decent cook at last—eh, old girl?” hurried on Otto
nervously. “Do have a slice of this bird, Radegund.”

“No!” said Radegund. “I’m not hungry, Otto. Did I not hear you go
upstairs to my studio?”

“Yes,” replied Otto. “I went to look for you; but you weren’t there;
and—and so I came down again.”

“But not directly,” she said, fixing her eyes upon him with languid
curiosity.

“No,” admitted the truthful Otto. “I—I stayed to look at your new
sketch, Radegund. She’s an awful woman. Who is she?”

“Eleanor of England,” absently answered the artist.

“And what may she be pointing down at so savagely?”

“Ah! At fair Rosamond, while she drinks the poison.”

“A nice cheerful subject!” said Otto, fortifying his nerves with a
brimming beaker of Burgundy. “But who is fair Rosamond?”

“That is too long a tale,” yawned Radegund; then with a sudden fierce
energy she added: “Rosamond wronged Eleanor.”

“Oh! a love affair was it?” said Otto, with something of unfeigned
interest. “And this Eleanor, she was jealous—eh?”

“Perhaps—I don’t know. I do wish you’d eat your supper, and not worry
about the stupid picture. I thought you were so hungry.”

Otto stared at his sister. This was the first time within living memory
that he had ever found her unwilling to talk about her art.

“I’m so tired to-night,” she went on more gently. “Tell me, Otto, did
you notice a letter lying about up there?”

“A letter?—a letter?” said Otto, knitting his brows. “Yes, I—I think I
saw something of the sort. Have you tasted the new bin of Burgundy yet,
Radegund? By St. Laurence! what a bloom it has. Drink, my girl,” and
he brimmed a goblet with the blood-red wine. “’Twill do you worlds of
good.”

Radegund drank it thirstily. “It was addressed to the Professor
Dasipodius,” she said.

“Oh, the letter. Ah, yes, it might have been for aught I know,” said
Otto, nervously twiddling a spoon. It seemed to him that her eyes were
reading him through and through.

“It was not sealed,” she said.

“Oh, h’m—was it not. Do you wish it sealed?” enquired the accommodating
Otto. “I will fetch it down, and do it for you.”

“Nay, I will go myself presently.”

And after supper Radegund fetched the letter, and tying it with a
silken thread, lighted a taper and sealed it fast.

“After all,” she said with a contemptuous weary smile, “it is nothing
particular,” as though it were a trifle there had already been too much
talk about.

“Ah, really!” said Otto in sleepy tones.

“It has to do with Horologe affairs.”

“Just so,” gravely assented he.

“And you are to give it yourself to Conrad Dasipodius.”

“Oh, certainly. Into his own hands.”




CHAPTER XIX.

“WERE ALL THY LETTERS SUNS, I COULD NOT SEE.”


“A letter for you, Master Dasipodius,” accordingly said Otto von
Steinbach next morning, as he entered the studio.

“Thanks, Otto; from whom?” said the mathematician, stretching out one
hand for it, and laying it unopened on the bench beside him.

“My sister—bade me give it you,” replied Otto.

“That is well,” said Dasipodius, calmly going on with the delicate
little wire coil he was fashioning into a spring. “Ah! you are there
still?” he added presently, for Otto had not stirred, but stood eyeing
his superior curiously. “Do you know, my friend, that the wheel you
finished off yesterday does not fit.”

“It’s right enough,” said Otto, snatching the offending wheel from his
own work-bench, and thrusting it under Conrad’s eyes. “Look, you can
see for yourself; what is amiss with it?”

“That,” answered Dasipodius, “is for Habrecht to decide. It is enough
that he says the wheel will not do.”

“Habrecht is such a grumbler,” muttered Otto, but loud enough for Isaac
to hear.

Now Isaac Habrecht was a worker after Dasipodius’ own heart; he lacked
the soul and inventive genius of his superior, but whatever he did
was done with all his might, and done well, and anything carelessly
finished off was an intolerable abomination to him; and so when he
overheard Otto’s remark, he did not think it worth his while to say
more than: “The wheel won’t do; we can’t be having any slop-work about
the Horologe”.

Otto turned on his heel, and noisily throwing down the wheel, glared
wrathfully at it. He knew that he might just as well set about
endeavouring to convince the two Nile statues that he had made his
wheel well, as these two pig-headed mathematicians, when they said
he had not; and unless he wanted, which he did not, to lose his
appointment under Dasipodius, he dared not argue the matter further.
Turning therefore on Dasipodius once more, he only said sulkily: “My
sister bade me tell you that letter was urgent”.

To escape the one chance of his infirmity being detected, Dasipodius
made it his invariable custom to request one or other of his pupils to
read aloud to him any documents which happened to be brought to the
Dial.

“Then will you kindly read it out,” he rejoined, “while I go on with my
coil? I dare not let it unroll just now.”

But to read that letter was more than Otto had bargained with himself
to do. Other reasons apart, he was horribly afraid of bungling over
the hard words; for it was one thing to understand their meaning,
and quite another to pronounce them properly _viva voce_. Muttering
therefore something about having to attend to his unsatisfactory piece
of workmanship, he was about to hand over the letter to Isaac Habrecht,
but remembering just in time that this quick-sighted, ready-witted man
would discover all too soon what manner of letter it was, and would
therefore come to a halt long before he had reached its more striking
clauses, he changed his mind, and looking towards Kaspar Habrecht, who
was busy over his wooden blocks in the embrasure of the window, said,
“Here, Kaspar, my lad. ’Tis said there are hopes of your making a fair
clerk one of these days—give us a proof of your scholarship, and come
and read out this letter to Master Dasipodius.”

“Ay do. That’s my brave Kaspar,” said Dasipodius.

The lad looked up from his work, and came forward, pushing his bright
hair back from his broad white brow, and with a flush of proud content,
received the missive from Otto von Steinbach’s hands.

“Will it please you to open it yourself?” he asked, turning to
Dasipodius.

“Nay. You shall do that office for me,” smiled his master. “I cannot
spare my hands.”

And so, disentangling the thread, and breaking the seal, Kaspar read
out the superscription. “_To the Herr Professor Dasipodius_——”

“Never fret your brain about the preamble,” bluntly interrupted Isaac.
“Let us hear at once what Mistress von Steinbach has to tell us.”

“Excuse me,” said Otto, “the letter’s none of your business, Isaac
Habrecht.”

“The clock’s my business,” retorted Isaac; “and if your sister is
going to be good enough to give us a notion at last, when she means to
finish off these gods and goddesses of hers, why——”

“Holy Virgin!” cried Dasipodius, with a nervous knitting of his brows.
“Do hold your tongue now, Isaac. There’ll be no hearing the letter all
day at this rate! Go on, Kaspar.”

“_Since we last met_——” began Kaspar.

“A strange beginning!” thought Dasipodius, industriously manipulating
his coil. “I saw her but yesterday.”

“_I have come to know that of you which you have kept concealed from
me_——”

“What now?” mused the mathematician, with a half smile. “Some fresh
offence of mine, clearly. Well, well, she is a wayward creature! Heaven
help the man she will call husband! Poor old Bruno!”. And still he
worked on contentedly at his spring-coil.

“_It would have been so far, far better that I should have known all_,”
continued Kaspar in slow mumbling tones, for it began to be very
evident to him that the letter’s contents were not intended for this
house-top sort of proclamation.

Dasipodius, however, had no such impression. That one secret of his
heart, Radegund had declared she equally desired to keep buried in
hers. Turning therefore to Kaspar, he said jestingly: “Well, my Kaspar,
but you are such a laggard at learning after all! Make haste and let me
hear the rest.”

“Yes, get on, for patience sake,” said Otto. “Is this your fine
schooling? Do you think Master Dasipodius is going to wait till
next week for you to dunder out your words in that fashion. Give me
the letter,” and he snatched it from the boy’s trembling fingers;
for had he not by heart what came next. “Let me see—h’m—h’m—_known
all_—h’m—h’m—_trusted me_—h’m—ah yes, here we are,” he went on raising
his voice, and reading very distinctly, so that all who chose to
listen might hear: “_Why could you not have trusted me? Why did you
not tell me you were blind?_” But then his voice was lost in a strange
clattering of metal, and jarring of wires, and falling of tools; and
low-bending necks were suddenly upraised, and startled wondering looks
were turned on the mathematician.

“What the foul fiend is my sister talking about?” said Otto, looking
round with widely-rounded eyes. “Has she gone mad?”

But Dasipodius, with his fingers stayed in their deft movements, sat
rigid and still; until at last in low monotone, he said once more, “Go
on”.

“Yes, you know, but really—ha! ha! this is too absurd. Isn’t it—by
Jove, really!” cried Otto, emboldened by the impassivity of Dasipodius.
“Too much of a good joke. _But_—just listen to this now—_but I will ask
no questions, since I desire no answer. Your own heart knows it will be
best for us both you should not answer; for that which you have called
love between us_——”

“Hush! Silence! It is from her, my poor child, yes. Give it me. Give it
me,” cried Dasipodius, and casting down the spring and starting to his
feet, he swayed forward with outstretched arms hither and thither, like
some stately rudderless ship, while Otto, with swift dexterity, thrust
forward the chair on which he had been leaning, and sprang noiselessly
aside. Then, turning to his bewildered comrades, he pointed with
mocking significant gestures at Dasipodius, who was advancing with
rapid strides towards the spot on which he imagined Otto to be still
standing, and still with his hands eagerly outstretched for the fatal
letter; but his knee came in contact with the chair, and he stumbled
and fell heavily forward against its sharply-carven corner. With a
simultaneous rush, the students flew to his assistance. Kaspar was
first beside him, and kneeling down, the boy gently raised his master’s
head, and laid it back on his own breast; next instant his jerkin was
dyed through and through with the blood streaming down from the broad
brow, and it was all his slender frame could do to support its fainting
burden. Then, however, the elder Habrecht came and lifted Dasipodius
tenderly into his own strong arms, and with his handkerchief staunched
the wound, gazing down, meanwhile, with loving anxiety on the pale
closed eyelids.

Let be—let be awhile, friend Habrecht. Call not thy master back to life
yet. Let him rest only for a few brief moments, pillowed there on thy
kind heart. Rest, ere consciousness shall set again to his lips the cup
of bitterness he must drink so deeply.

“So bravely! bravely then, Master!” said Habrecht, when after the
lapse of a few seconds, Dasipodius once more opened his sightless eyes.

“What has happened?” asked the mathematician in faint, dreamy tones,
lifting his hand to his head. Then with Isaac’s aid he slowly
raised himself to his feet, but his cheek was deadly pale, and all
blood-stained from the wound which had glanced startlingly near the
temple. “That letter!” were his first words; “who has that letter? Give
it me.”

“Do you hear?” sternly demanded Isaac, turning to where Otto had been
standing. “Give the master his letter.”

But Otto was not there, nor in any other part of the spacious studio.
Neither, although they all searched high and low, could the letter be
found.

“Otto has taken it with him, no doubt,” said Habrecht. “What has he
gone off like, that for? Run after him, Kaspar, and——”

“Nay, stay!” said Dasipodius, lifting his hand. “I have something to
say first.”

“Not now, Master,” gently entreated Habrecht, marking how vainly the
low agitated voice strove to regain its wonted firmness. “You will be
stronger by-and-bye, and then we can clear up this strange mistake.”

“No,” replied the mathematician, in resolute measured tones. “It is no
mistake. I am blind, my comrades,” he went on, turning to face them
all, “utterly—stone blind, and the daylight to me is no more than the
starless night. It has been so with me nearly all the time we have
worked together.”

“Blind!” broke forth the wondering chorus. “But—no, no, it is
impossible.”

“No, with God nothing is impossible. I would—I should like to explain
to you—now—many things, but this letter—nay, I would of course say,
this unlucky fall,” and Dasipodius lifted his hand to his head, “seems
to have unnerved me, and my brain is all confused. Lend me your arm,
Habrecht; I had planned to get through so much to-day; but I should
spoil it now, and it must go—to-morrow—to-morrow. Nay, that is your
stalwart arm, Isaac, I meant not you; Kaspar here will do me the good
service to lead me home.”

Isaac stoutly remonstrated. He saw what mischief the fall and that
“accursed letter,” as in his own mind he called it, had wrought,
and it seemed to him hardly safe to trust Dasipodius, weak from his
loss of blood and blind—(Heaven and earth! was it then true?)—with
only his young stripling brother, through the jostling street-crowd,
but Dasipodius insisted. “If you and I are both absent,” argued he,
smiling faintly, “something or other will be sure to go amiss with
our Horologe; for what is the body without the head? and by my faith,
I think I have mislaid mine,—so be my representative for to-day, old
friend.”

“For to-day—yes then,” conceded Isaac, and Dasipodius turned to go.

“Poor little coil!” he murmured, as he passed by his own bench, where
his morning’s work lay all undone. “Strangled at thy birth. But
Habrecht shall give thee new life. See to it, Isaac,” and he turned,
and laid it tenderly, as if it were some sick, breathing thing, on
Habrecht’s bench. “And,” continued the Master, with the stern, somewhat
peremptory, ring in his voice, which, on rare occasions, did steal its
wonted gentleness, “bid Otto von Steinbach, when he returns, attend to
those wheel-teeth at once. Come, Kaspar.”

And one hand on his good stick, and the other on Kaspar Habrecht’s
shoulder, Conrad Dasipodius went out from the scene of his labours
into the streets, and as he passed along, many a fellow-citizen doffed
his hat in respectful salutation to their mathematician. It never
occurred to the good Strassburgers to take offence because Dasipodius
rarely, if ever, returned their greetings. It was their creed that
geniuses were not to be held amenable to ordinary social conditions;
“and, of course,” said they, “he is far too deep in his calculations
and things, to be able to see outside him as one may call it”. And
in that way the worthy folks, out of the experience of all who had
ever had to do with him of his natural courtesy and goodness, made
every allowance for what they regarded as his little eccentricities.
But undoubtedly, on this special occasion, if Dasipodius had been
accommodated with all the eyes of the Apocalyptic Beast, they would
have been to him no more than that unpardonable sin against the canons
of true art, a matter of superfluous ornamentation; since all his
faculties were turned inward, strained to gather up, and to grasp the
full significance of that strange letter, whose ending he did not even
yet know.




CHAPTER XX.

A NOISY COMMITTEE.


When Isaac Habrecht, having watched his master safely down the winding
stone staircase, returned to the studio, he found the whole place in
commotion. Work cast aside, benches overthrown, a deafening din of
voices, and all other impending signs of miniature civil war. From
a dozen and more of mouths praise and blame were pouring out on the
absent chief. True, the odds were greatly in his favour, still a
malcontent minority was not to be put down, just because the majority
chanced to idolize Dasipodius.

Otto von Steinbach had reappeared upon the scene, and having
constituted himself fugleman of the rebel party, seemed to be amazingly
enjoying the distinction.

Mounted on his own work-bench, and gesticulating with marvellous
energy, he was haranguing the whole _posse comitatus_ with shrill
eloquence.

“I put it to you all,” shrieked he—“to your ordinary powers of
discrimination, you know, my friends, to decide whether this Dasipodius
has not deceived us?”

“Ay, ay,” shouted some half-dozen voices. “Deceived, do I say?”
continued the orator.

“That is no word for it——”

“No, no,” jeered the opposition. “Made egregious fools of us. What do
we look like, I ask? What do we look like now, but double-dyed asses——”

“Hear! hear!” fell the universal assent. “And—who, I ask you, who has
done this but the man we have called—I say now, called master, Conrad
Dasipodius?”

“Ay! ay! So he has!” assented Otto’s party. “No! no! Down! down!”
shouted the rest. “Be quiet! Let him say what he wants anyhow,”
contended a couple of neutrals.

“Well,” continued Otto, “isn’t it as clear, you know, as the river
Rhine——”

“The Rhine’s as thick as mud,” argued a voice; “and we don’t so much as
know whether he is blind as yet.”

“He said he was himself.”

“Well, granted then. Whose business is it but his own? Anyway it isn’t
ours.”

“Not our business?” wrathfully shouted Otto. “Not our business? And
we are to be hoodwinked then in this fashion? Led by the nose by this
blind mole of a——”

“Shame! shame!” cried nearly all. “Down! get down!”

But Otto did not mean to get down; he simply modulated his accents a
little. “Well, you know what I mean to say is, don’t you see, that a
man who can’t so much as tell you white from black is a pretty sort of
a fellow to be laying down the law to a set of intelligent, educated,
cultivated gentlemen like us. Do we not know,” went on Otto, plucking
eloquence from the calm murmur of enthusiasm thrilling through all—“do
we not know, and I put it to yourselves, one and all, that we have
here among us minds—gifted minds with all their common senses about
them—mark you, none of your——”

“Keep to the point.”

“Well, I am keeping to it, an’t I? Minds, I say, who understand
horology every bit as well as this—this Dasipodius.”

Only a feeble sound of assent, however, sanctioned this bold utterance,
and signs of dissent grew so ominous, that Otto, unable to beat a
retreat, took forlorn hope in a desperate following up of the attack.
“And do we not know as a fact,” he said, grinding his heel down on the
faulty wheel, “that at the time of the competition for the Horologe
commission, this fellow’s nomination was from beginning to end a matter
of favour and prejudice?”

“Oh ho! prove that!” burst out the Dasipodians, with loud laughter.
“Prove that.”

“You may laugh,” hysterically retorted Otto. “Just you see you don’t
find yourselves having to do it the wrong side of your mouths one of
these fine days. I tell you there were drawings among those sent in
for the Horologe ever so much superior to old Herlin’s, or Dasipodius’
either.”

“Yours, for instance,” suggested Isaac Habrecht, speaking for the first
time.

A burst of laughter greeted this remark.

“That isn’t for me to say,” modestly said Otto. “Syndic Hackernagel—”

“Ho! ho! ho! The crop-eared Anabaptist—”

“Syndic Tobias Hackernagel did not hesitate to pronounce my poor work
as out of all comparison the best—the most attractive—the most——”

“Ho! ho! Kikeriki! Cock-a-doodle-doo! Fish to-day—Good red herring!
Fish!”

“That is simply vulgar,” said Otto, crimsoning, and loftily waving away
the delicate allusions to his patron’s early avocation. “And it is you
who are wandering from the point now, my friends; I didn’t want to talk
about it.”

That was true. Time, as he knew, was not yet ripe for him to plead his
own cause in so many words. It was one thing for these hotheaded young
fellows to enjoy a scrimmage, but quite another to fall in with his
desire of waking up some fine morning, and finding himself installed
in the Professor Dasipodius’ place. That indeed had not so much as yet
entered their minds; he must be circumspect, and feel his way gingerly
as a cat over a muddy road. Still it was pleasant to think he might be
driving in the thin end of the wedge.

“All I had in my thoughts was that this Dasipodius should be taught to
know his place—taken down a peg, as the saying is; and when he comes
here in the morning I propose, you know, that we give him a piece of
our minds, and—bar him out.”

Never had man more lamentably mis-estimated the temper of his audience;
and amid cries of “Shame! Down! down! Let’s give him a souse in the
duck-pond!” accompanied by a variety of ungentle lunges and clutches
at his shins and ankles, Otto ran a perilous chance of being totally
worsted, had it not been for Isaac Habrecht, who elbowing his way
to the front of the orator’s extemporised rostrum, turned his broad
protecting back on the orator, and lifting his hand, obtained by
gestures, the cessation of yells and catcalls his tongue must have
demanded only in vain.

“Hear then—hear!” broke forth an almost universal shout. “Isaac
Habrecht! Hoch! for Isaac Habrecht. Let us hear what Isaac has to say.”

“What I have to say?” said Habrecht. “Well! it’s not much; only that
you ought all to be ashamed of yourselves for a pack of scurvy rioters.
What! Might not the master turn his back one poor five minutes, but you
must, every man jack of you, be raising a witches’ sabbath loud enough
to waken the blessed dead from their rest? Fine bargain you, forsooth!
to go picking holes in other men’s coats, when you can’t stick for
five minutes together to the work under your fingers. Is that the way
the master made himself what he is, d’ye think? But look you, friends,
I’m master here for this day; and if three minutes don’t see each one
of you back in his place, I’ll have the watch turned in upon you for
rioters and tumult-mongers. I’ve said my say,” concluded Isaac, looking
round at Otto. “And as for you, young sheepshead! get down at once with
you, and be seeing to those wheel teeth.”

And Otto, who knew the playful ways of his comrades when their blood
was up, meekly descended from his elevation, and sitting down before
it, sulkily took up his half-smashed wheel. Thoroughly disliking
Habrecht, on account of his eternal fault-finding with his work, he
by no means relished being beholden to him now for salvation from
his friends; but he knew also something of that special predilection
of the practical fellows for duck-pond pastime, and how they would
indulge in it whenever opportunity presented itself. There being just
then, moreover, a cold thaw on, he elected promptly to obey Isaac;
while those of his compeers who had deprecated the late demonstration,
hastened to fall in with Habrecht’s injunctions, and those who did not
know their own minds, began to feel something like shame when their
eyes fell upon the master’s vacant seat, and settled quietly again to
their work; so that when some half-hour or so after my Lord Bishop just
looked in to see how the Horologe was progressing, the studio looked
quite a model of order and sobriety; and he said to Master Gottlieb,
his chaplain, who chanced to be with him, “It quite does one’s heart
good to see what a quiet, well-conducted set of young fellows those are
at the Dial. Nothing in the least ramshackle about them.”




CHAPTER XXI.

A CHILLY GREETING.


Meantime Dasipodius and his young companion had almost reached their
destination.

It had been a very silent walk, for the mathematician was lost in a
maze of thought; while Kaspar felt that he dared not give utterance to
the distress surging in his own young heart.

Once or twice it did seem to him that he must break forth, and tell his
master of all the love and pity that he was feeling for him; but then,
lifting his own sympathetic eyes to those grand sightless ones, an
awesome dread restrained him.

Kaspar Habrecht’s was one of those natures folks even commonly
observant are apt to denounce as cold and undemonstrative. It is
true that his eyes were quick to glisten up with tears at a tale of
suffering, or his clear cheek to glow at the relation of some deed
of heroism, or his countenance to grow bright with animation, when
he could stand by, and hear some learned question of art or science
discussed; but the boy’s sympathies had to be truly fathomed ere they
would respond; and few would have guessed at the world of chivalrous
romance underlying his calm even demeanour and outspoken common sense.
Where many would have fallen down and adored loudly, Kaspar stood afar
off, and offered heartfelt, silent worship.

Such sort of honour and love as this it was that he had for Dasipodius;
but the mathematician himself did not guess at the place he had won in
this boy’s heart, as much at first, perhaps, by those little sentences
of approbation and encouragement which he would bestow, and which
Kaspar treasured up and made sustenance of for renewed efforts. Often
too, when Conrad had been consulting with Isaac about the Horologe
work, he would lay his hand on the boy’s head and say, “And what
think’st thou, my Kaspar?” And in this way the great mathematical
professor had come to be idolized by the young artist.

There could, of course, be no Orestes and Pylades element in this
spiritual link between the master and his pupil. Its conditions
were too unequal for friendship, but call it love, call it—as Otto
did—infatuation, or by any other name whatsoever, the affinity drawing
Kaspar’s young spirit to the kindred spirit of Dasipodius, made him
feel acutely for the grief which had befallen him.

“Had it been me now whom the great God had afflicted like this,” he
kept mentally saying again and again, as the two plodded onward, “I
might have more understood it. But for him—him to be blind! To think
that he cannot see the merry sparkles all over yonder snow-heap, nor
those splendid red apples on Mother Hedwig’s stall. _Donnerwetter!_
they make one’s mouth water”—(Kaspar was after all but a boy) “nor what
a witch the old frau across the street there has made of herself with
her new vertugadins. Not an inch of room to get past her—waddling old
goose!” and as he turned to look after the fashionable dame, a smile
flickered on the boy’s rosy lips, to die out again, as he remembered
his master could see none of these things.

“Ah! and now if there isn’t old Burgomaster Niklaus, with Mistress
Sabina, coming along,” he went on dismayedly. “A plague on them both!
just when my master’s hardly able to walk—much less to stand chattering
in the cold all about nothing! People always talk such nonsense when
they meet in the streets.”

And Kaspar began to consider the feasibility of dragging his companion
aside, and letting the two pass unnoticed, but tall folks are not so
easily lost in a crowd, and before Kaspar could effect his purpose,
Niklaus, with Sabina on his arm, came to a halt in front of them.

“Give you good morning, Master Dasipodius,” said the Burgomaster. “And
were you going to pass old friends in the street like that—eh? But
isn’t it a strange time of day for you to be gadding about? A thousand
thunders man! what have you been doing to yourself, with that great
gaping slash across your forehead? And as pale too as the moon! If it
were not you now, professor, but some hectoring jackanapes or other,
one would ask if you’d been at fisticuffs, hey?”

And the Burgomaster stared up in Dasipodius’ face with wide open
puzzled eyes, while Kaspar stood fidgeting by, turning hot and cold
with vexation.

“An accident, Burgomaster,” answered Dasipodius, “a trifling blow I
gave myself just now. It was very stupid.”

“Well,” nodded the Burgomaster acquiescingly, “didn’t you see where you
were going?”

“No.”

“But, upon my word, it hardly looks so trifling as you call it,” more
seriously continued Niklaus. “It isn’t a very long cut certainly, but
it’s an ugly one to fall just there, and has damaged your brave looks
for many a day to come anyhow. Hasn’t it, Sabina? Bless thee, little
heart! how pale the cold has made thee! I say these trifling blows are
not becoming, are they?”

But the shrinking, tearful-eyed girl only stands mutely clinging and
plucking at her father’s arm, while Dasipodius, discovering who the
Burgomaster has for his companion, flushes crimson, and with a smile
quite lacking the old gladness which had made it Sabina’s own heart’s
sunshine, turns and lifts his cap. Oh me! and had it come to this?
Yes, it is all clear enough and quite quite true, then, what Radegund
has told her! True that he has no real love for her. Of course by
this time her letter has reached him. Oh! how glad she is she has sent
it. No real love for her. What need of further witness? Is not this
enough, to see him standing there, bowing to her gravely and distantly?
He, Conrad, who three little days ago had called her his life and his
soul’s joy, and had held her with enfolding arms clasped to his breast,
covering her rosy lips—ay, rosy then—how ashen pale and quivering
now!—with warm kisses—and worse than that! oh so far far worse!—whom
she had kissed! Think of it. There, close where now the blood still
slowly oozes and trickles from the cruel wound. Ay, and would she not
give her own heart’s blood to do it again? To take that dear head for a
minute—oh! pitying Mother Mary! only for one gracious minute, and lay
it on her own breast, and staunch the ugly stream, and kiss and comfort
away the smarting dreadful pain? But he wanted nothing of all that. Has
not she seen him lift his cap, and bow distantly, gravely to her, as
to any grand haughty lady, and not the shivering, heart-broken Sabina,
clenching her fingers into her father’s ample sleeve, so that she may
not cry aloud in her great agony. “Come away, Väterle, come away!” she
gasps under her breath to Niklaus;—and dunder-headed old father,—as
indeed what better had he confessed himself to be? he sees no more
through her piteous perplexity, than he sees through the flint wall
opposite, and is just the least trifle in the world tetchy at not being
allowed to be neighbourly.

“Well, well, child—a moment then, a moment,” he said. “Ah—bless my
soul! Never you have a daughter, friend—an only daughter. They’re as
full of whimsies as eggs are full of meat; that let me tell you. See
now, I’m not even to be permitted to exchange a passing word with you,
because Master Jack Frost happens to be nipping my little maid’s roses
away, and making her shiver and shake like a leaf in a hurricane. Well,
it is cold—decidedly cold—so come.”

And with a cheery “God-speed and have a care of yourself,” the
Burgomaster tucked his daughter’s trembling little hand tighter under
his arm, and passed on.

“Cold! cold!—ay, bitter cold!” murmured the mathematician, recalling
to himself how no word had passed Sabina’s lips, save that reiterated
pleading to go away. To escape his presence, it was so obviously her
meaning. “Come away! come away!” How chill and harsh and loveless those
words had sounded in the ears, unassisted by any sense of interpreting
sight. And the mortal chill fallen on his love, fell then on his
ambition too, or at least on ambition’s nobler part. “Cold! cold!” he
shivered. “Yes—death cold!”

Kaspar glanced up at him with wistful doglike solicitude in his brown
eyes.

“The cold is paining your wound, master?” he asked.

“Ay,” said Dasipodius, deadly pale, and leaning heavily on the boy’s
shoulder, “and my heart, too, I think, Kaspar.”

“Yes,” answered Kaspar. “Such a wound as yours is enough to make the
whole body sick. Cold does cut into wounds so sharp.”

“Like a knife,” said Dasipodius faintly.

“But we are close now to Dr. Bruno’s; so courage, master,” said Kaspar
anxiously.

“I doubt if he can do much for me.”

“Not do——”

“Nay. Never mind—any way I have a question to ask him; and do you
meanwhile go back, there’s a good lad, and see about that letter you
were reading out to me, and bring it to me here.”




CHAPTER XXII.

UNJUST SUSPICIONS.


Trudel being out marketing when the two reached Bruno’s house,
Dasipodius fortunately escaped any of the good creature’s jeremiads
over his mishap, and it was the doctor himself who opened the door.

“Can you mend a broken head, Bruno?” the mathematician asked, as he
followed his friend into the laboratory. “If so, here’s a subject for
you.”

“Ay,” said Bruno. “Any number of broken heads. It’s only the broken
hearts our skill won’t reach to.”

A prolonged weary sigh was all the answer to Bruno’s little sally, and
the surgeon, who had already begun to unroll a piece of lint, turned to
look at Dasipodius, where he had sunk down on the truckle-bed, leaning
forward with both hands clasped upon his stick. His eyelids drooped
heavily on the ashen grey cheeks, and it seemed to Bruno that his face
had suddenly aged by ten years with those weary hopeless lines which
had gathered about the handsome resolute mouth.

Pouring some strong cordial into a cup, he held it to the
mathematician’s pale lips. “Drink this, Conrad,” he said; “it will give
you new life.”

Dasipodius obeyed mechanically, and reviving a little, he said, “To
think that it should bring a man to this. Eh, Bruno! We are but poor
creatures after all—the strongest among us. I should have thought I
could have borne it better.”

“It’s an uncommonly ugly blow,” said Bruno, examining the wound. “How
the devil did it happen?”

“Oh! this wound? Ah! yes—well, I stumbled, poor blind wretch that I am,
against a chair.”

The surgeon made no reply, but went on scraping vigorously at his
piece of lint, and then proceeded to dress the wound, looking all the
while very grave and thoughtful. “You are so silent, doctor. Is your
considering cap on this morning?” asked Dasipodius, with a faint smile.

“Yes,” said Bruno, and he said no more.

“A heller for your thoughts, my Solon.”

“I was thinking,” answered Bruno slowly, “that your blindness has
served you sorry trick.”

“Not a doubt of that.”

“Had it gone a couple of hair-breadths nearer the temple, it must have
killed you, Conrad.”

“Yes?”

“Why yes, yes,” answered Bruno, provoked by his patient’s coolness.
“And might not another such accident befall you at any moment? And
where is our Professor Dasipodius then?”

“At peace,” said the other solemnly.

“Nonsense, man. Drink some more of this, and attend to me. So. I say,
where would be Strassburg’s pride, where would be Sabina’s——”

“Oh hush! hush!” cried Dasipodius. “Do not speak of her—not
now—presently, presently—not yet.”

“Well, well,” said Bruno, out of his knowledge that invalids must be
humoured. “What I want to say is simply, why should you strive so
carefully to conceal your loss of sight?”

“Why,” asked Dasipodius, lifting his head with sudden energy from the
cushion Bruno had placed beneath it,—“why do you ask me such a question
as that? I could not have believed you would have wasted breath on
it. Don’t you see that they would perhaps deprive me of the Horologe
commission?”

“Nonsense—stuff!” said Bruno, laughing outright. “Do you think we don’t
know a clever man when we’ve got him better than that? Upon my honour,
Conrad, you don’t give Strassburg credit for much.”

“No,” said Dasipodius, “not much.”

“Well,” conceded Bruno, “of course it’s undeniable that the world’s
fuller of blockheads than of wise ones, and you may be right, only——”

“Time will show,” interrupted the mathematician, “and quickly too; for
in twenty-four hours all Strassburg will know that I am blind.”

“What!” said Wolkenberg, turning with amazed eyes on Dasipodius. “How?
In Heaven’s name, how?”

“By the usual channel for all secrets, a woman’s tongue.”

“Holy Virgin!” ejaculated the surgeon, pale now as his friend. “Not
Radegund? No! she has not played me so false as that?”

“Oh, yes. She did that long ago. But never fret yourself on that score,
Bruno. I have pardoned your share in the matter long since. I did not
mean to have spoken of—of that mistaken kindness of yours! But it was
weak of you, Bruno. Forgive me, my Bear, you know I love you far better
than I love your Radegund; and I could easier have borne the truth from
your own lips.”

“Oh, Conrad,” moaned Bruno. “But I did not betray you.”

“I thought you did.”

“No. As heaven will judge us all, I did not.”

“I believe you, Bruno, and I am glad—very glad.”

“Listen,” said Bruno, “and I will explain—”

“No, no. I’ll have no explainings, your word is as good as a thousand
of them; and besides that is all past and gone. Be content, Bruno, your
Radegund has no share in the misery this time. It comes from nearer
home, so near—oh my God, Bruno!” and Dasipodius clutched wildly at the
surgeon’s arm. “It is Sabina—Sabina von Steinbach who has done this.”

“Curse all women and their tongues,” growled Bruno through his set
white teeth, and his yellow hair bristling. “But there is some devilry
at the bottom of this. Tell me more about it, Conrad.”

“There is so little to tell,” answered Dasipodius; and then in a few
words he related what had taken place that morning in the studio.

“And the letter,” asked Bruno, when he had done, “was in Mistress
Sabina’s own handwriting, you say?”

“How could I tell?” demanded Dasipodius reproachfully. “I have an
impression she cannot write; but it is of little enough consequence
whether she wrote it herself, or found a scribe; it comes to just the
same thing every way.”

But Dr. Wolkenberg only rumpled up his hair still higher with his
fingers, and stared thoughtfully into the fire. “You have the letter of
course?” he said at last.

“No. In the confusion, I suppose, it fell on the floor. Kaspar has gone
back for it now. But that will not mend the matter. The cruel words
will still be there.”

“And you are sure you understood them rightly?”

“I am not apt to misapprehend,” said the learned professor of
mathematics.

“Ah! I mean, you know, you are sure you heard the letter to the end?”

“I am sure of nothing. How can I be?” demanded Dasipodius in tones
strangely unlike his own. “How you do worry! Must I say again that what
I heard was enough. A million others could not deaden their sting. Oh
Bruno! Bruno! what hard hearts these women have! I could have sworn by
the Holy Rood that the child loved me.”

“So could I,” murmured the surgeon. “There—let us speak no more of her,
and for the rest, who can tell? Bruno, what a strange power guides
our destiny. Why, think only, it is this heart’s love of mine that I
thought so priceless, and would not have bartered for the Horologe
itself, no, nor a dozen Horologes—I say it is this which has ruined all
my brain’s labour, and what is left—what is left?”

And then, just as on that day when his old friend Chretei was laid to
his rest, the mathematician, worn out with mental and bodily pain,
laid down his head, and sobbed bitterly; but this time his pillow was
no chill snow clod, but his friend’s warm sympathising breast, and
for a while Bruno, knowing that all his skill could devise no such
real relief, let the sobs have their way, and his own blue eyes grew
moist for his friend’s trouble, but as he sat there beside him, he
was puzzled sorely. “Ay, ay,” he kept saying over and over again to
himself, “I could have sworn she loved him.”

Soon the mathematician’s almost dauntless spirit reasserted itself, and
it seemed to him a blessed thing indeed then to be able to call such a
man as this Bruno Wolkenberg, friend. Can one ever be really alone in
the world with one true friend? If life was to have no more sunshine
for him, at least there would be the soft starlight, and he rose up
and grasped the surgeon’s hand in his. “So now,” he said, “I have been
miserably selfish to keep you from your crucibles all this while.”

But Bruno detained him by the hand, and would not let him go.

“Loose my hand, Bruno,” he said, with a saddening little effort to
smile. “If we stand mumchance here all night, you will be able to throw
no light upon this question.”

“Do you recollect,” said Bruno, desperately rushing at his subject,
“do you recollect the last time you were here?”

“Surely I do,” said Dasipodius; “just five days ago it was.”

“You recollect that as I let you out, some one else came in. Yes?”

“Yes,” quickly answered the mathematician.

“Do you know who it was?”

“I had a foolish idea, and as I went home I laughed at myself for my
blind fancies—shall I tell you, Bruno—can your science explain, I
wonder, why I should have thought——”

“You thought right. It was Sabina von Steinbach.”

“And what did she do, poor little one, out in the cold and darkness?
Tell me, Bruno, what brought her to you at such an hour? A stolen
visit——”

“To ask me if you were blind.”

“A practical-minded maiden, truly,” scornfully laughed Dasipodius.
“Having picked up her suspicions, heaven knows where, she came to the
fountainhead, and you said yes?”

“I did.”

“God forgive you, Bruno, you served me an ill turn,” and the gloom
gathered heavily on the mathematician’s brow.

“I did it for your sake—for the best——”

“Naturally. You always do,” said Dasipodius bitterly, “as you told that
other woman.”

“You are unjust,” answered Wolkenberg. “If you had seen her——”

“If I had seen her! If I had seen her! Oh great heaven, how have I been
betrayed by the two I loved best in all the world!”

“I say you are unjust——”

“And you are weak as water. Farewell, Bruno Wolkenberg. When Kaspar
returns with that letter, be so good as to send him after me to my
house.”

And turning on his heel, the blind man strode out into the street
alone, more utterly alone than ever he had felt in his life. For
him love was dead since Sabina was false; and friendship a mockery,
now Bruno had proved himself unworthy. Only the Horologe was left.
Henceforth that would be to him friend and mistress and all. He had
always loved it as if it were a human thing, as men do love their
brain children, and now—now that he had, as he told himself, lost all
else, it would be to him a thousand times more dear. It owned now his
undivided love. He was like Faust before the arch-fiend came to tempt
him away from his crucibles with fair dreams, and ruin him with sweet
longings worse than vain. It was with him now at last, as Heaven from
the first had meant it to be, and henceforth he would be able to give
himself life and soul, and heart and body to his work, just as the
priests of old Greece belonged to their temples. And he had thought
to subdue destiny. Fritter his God-given life away on poor, fickle,
foolish, perishable human affection! Had presumed to imagine that his
heritage of intellect and genius might be made to go hand in hand with
it. But he saw his error now. He had come to feel how blind—how doubly
blind, more densely blind mentally than ever he could be physically—he
had been. Now he could see how incomparably better than all the
love—love forsooth!—of a little, capricious, shallow-hearted——. Nay!
No, no, but the child was right. How was it possible to love a blind
man? What woman could? Heaven was just, and had interposed for her,
when his selfish mad passion would have carried him astray. It had
been unjustifiable, a crime in him to conceal his affliction from her;
and now he was well punished. Love a blind man! “Oh Sabina, my darling,
heart’s dear—only little one. And it was this love of mine for thee did
thee this cruel wrong. Forgive me—thou—my own first, last, lost love——”

Some one gently touched his arm. It was Kaspar Habrecht, who said that
Otto von Steinbach had returned to the studio, and indignantly denied
all knowledge of the letter; and though they had searched high and low
for it, it was not to be found.




CHAPTER XXIII.

“THE TIMES ARE OUT OF JOINT.”


Never since the Burgomaster’s daughter returned from Freiburg, had
the old house in the Munster Gasse seemed so dull and sombre as in
these last days. A shadow had somehow settled upon it, and even the
dining-hall, always the very sanctum of snugness, had come to be
oppressively gloomy.

It was odd too, for the fire on the wide hearth burned and crackled as
briskly as heretofore, the board was laden heavily as ever with good
fare, and sparkled with ruby and golden tinted wines; and if folks
have dainty food and warmth, what more can they possibly want to make
life happy? Then Sabina’s cat Mitte purred and dozed away her precious
life beside the fire, just as ever she had done since kittenhood had
become to her as a foolish dream, and the old clock’s eyes goggled,
and it ticked away at its eternal song, and the young house-mistress
still plied her needle in the window corner. Truly she had given up
singing the sweet old songs she used to sing, and her virginal stood,
polished indeed, but idle and mute as the voice of the little mistress,
and,—well, there is no doubt that very trifling matters greatly
influence the atmosphere of daily life, and possibly it was the absence
of Sabina’s happy voice which occasioned this palpable dreariness.
Ever since Cousin Radegund had slipped in to pay Sabina that nocturnal
visit, the child had grown so preternaturally grave and silent, walking
about the house with slow noiseless footfall, and an air as serious
as the demurest Anabaptist maiden in all Strassburg. Indeed, Niklaus
almost began to fear she might have become infected with some one or
other of the heretic notions flying about; but he soon dispossessed
himself of that fancy, because his daughter was, if anything, more
regular than ever in her visits to the Saint Laurence chapel. And at
last, the utterly nonplussed Burgomaster asked Sabina point blank what
ailed her, and Sabina said, “Nothing, Väterle; what put such fancies
into your head?” in such admirably simulated tones of gaiety that
Niklaus could say no more.

He was, however, not one whit better satisfied. Something, he felt
persuaded, was out of joint, and he would have given his best diamond
to set it right, even had it been only for his own selfish sake. It
was so appallingly dull of an evening now for one thing. The Professor
Dasipodius had, for instance, not looked in—oh, for quite these ten
days past, and the Burgomaster missed his chats horribly. One thing,
however, Niklaus argued from these dull facts, and that was that any
foolish notions Sabina and Conrad Dasipodius might have had about each
other had come to nothing, because when he had hinted they might do
as they liked, the two perverse creatures had just turned off at a
tangent, and chosen to stand aloof ever since. Oh, he had noticed it
all. He did not wear his head in a bag, whatever people might think,
and however certain wiseheads had blamed him for not playing the stern
parent and forbidding any communication between them, if he was against
the match—if he was, which indeed he had come to be not so sure about.
In any case, he was no friend to curbing reins—let young creatures have
their heads a bit, and then they would soon find their senses, as no
doubt these two had done, and found out—before it was too late—Heaven
be thanked, that they were not made to run in a couple. Had he been
obdurate, then of course they would have made martyrs of themselves,
and his life would have been rendered a burden to him by red eyes and
ceaseless sighings, and the knowledge of being privately regarded as a
monster—but now nothing of this sort could be laid to his charge. That
was one comfort. But it was not all sufficing. The fact of the change
in Sabina remained, and sorely it fretted him. Could it be the weather
perhaps? Ay, ay. The weather it must be, of course. Such grey leaden
sky, such snarling biting east winds, making handsome women look plain,
and ordinary ones atrociously ugly, were not within living memory; and
Sabina had so shivered that day when they had been out together and met
Conrad Dasipodius. Detestable, nasty, cold-catching weather! Why, his
own twinges might have taught him how it all was. As if any lady was
ever cheerful yet with a wretched east wind howling! Would it amuse the
poor little thing now if he were to invite her Cousin Radegund to come
and stay a few days with her? That was a happy thought, and he opened
it up to Sabina; but she said, and just the least bit snappishly
too, that it wouldn’t amuse her at all; and that she didn’t want to
be amused, and she would amuse herself very well indeed—and then she
turned deadly pale, and some penitent tears welled up into her eyes as
she stole a glance at the Burgomaster’s perplexed and troubled face,
and she went on to tell him that he was a dear, and better than a
million Radegunds. And still the old man was not satisfied; for those
paling looks reminded him of that strange swooning fit of hers, and
he threatened to call in Dr. Bruno Wolkenberg, and then Sabina grew
downright fierce, and vowed that Dr. Wolkenberg might come and he might
go, but that she would not see him, if there was the faintest idea of
his setting foot professionally on her account inside the door.

Niklaus was, however, equal to the occasion, and after cunningly
allowing a day or two to pass over, he invited the doctor to supper.
To this Sabina dared offer no opposition, for Bruno being almost as
great a favourite with the Burgomaster as the Professor Dasipodius
himself, was frequently their guest, and on this occasion deferred
other engagements to accept the invitation, and watched Sabina more
closely than she ever guessed. And when he went away, he tried to
comfort the distressed old man, saying that indeed Mistress Sabina did
look a little pale, but it was best, in his opinion, not to worry her;
and that with the warm spring days perhaps—no doubt indeed, the Lily
would revive and be all herself again. Such weather as they were having
would try a horse’s constitution. And then Niklaus said something not
at all polite about the weather, and hoped Bruno was right, which was
precisely what the doctor himself hoped, but he felt the hope to be
rather a forlorn one, and his heart bled for the girl.

In the few moments _tête-à-tête_ he was able to snatch with Sabina, he
had striven to say something comforting to her, but he felt awkward
and diffident, and blundered wretchedly over his words. Sabina had,
however, smiled in her own gentle way, and murmured with quivering lips
something about Bruno’s goodness, and that she should never forget all
that he had done, and all he had tried to do for her; and then Bruno
had stammered and bungled worse than ever, and said “that of all the
perverse worlds he had ever known, this one seemed the worst, and in
short there never was such an aggravating world as it was, and the
more you tried to make things go straight and comfortable, the more
they went crooked, and—and——”; and then he took to rumpling up his
hair, and staring into the fire in his old dazed perplexed sort of way,
and a few minutes after Niklaus came in, and no more could be said,
which was after all quite as well perhaps, seeing it was impossible to
say the right thing; and he might have foundered upon some remark so
entirely wrong, that he would never have ceased repenting he had given
it tongue.

Never had Bruno found himself on the horns of such a dilemma as this.
Here on the one side the small breach between himself and his best
friend had widened, because that friend believed he had betrayed his
confidence—and this too, perhaps, for the second time—whereas Bruno was
altogether guiltless.

From the bottom of his heart the surgeon loved truth; and when Sabina
had gone to him, and demanded of him confirmation of that which she
had not chosen to accept from Radegund alone, Bruno felt there was no
alternative for him but to admit the truth. There had been no need to
tell it. Sabina had simply required of him a yes or no. When she had
come to him that night, and he had carried the half-fainting girl into
his laboratory, and was tending her back to consciousness, he, guessing
with a sort of shrinking dread at what the nature of her errand to him
was, had sternly told himself that no power on earth, and certainly not
this weak hysterical girl, should wring from him any admissions. The
paroxysm, however, of distress and surprise at her unexpected encounter
with Dasipodius past, Bruno found it was no weak hysterical girl he had
to gain an easy victory over, but a grave calm woman; very pale and
sad looking truly, but full of resolute earnestness; and simply, with
no taint of heroics, she told the surgeon how all Conrad’s happiness
and future welfare hung on the question she had come to ask him being
honestly answered, and then she said: “Is Conrad Dasipodius blind? Yes
or no?”

At first Bruno had striven to evade it, by saying that such a question
should be put only to Dasipodius himself; but Sabina met this objection
in her own way. “Do you think then, Dr. Wolkenberg,” she said, “that
out of a piece of mean curiosity I should risk what I have risked in
coming here to-night? Must I tell you that it is for his sake, that I
will not ask him this question?”

Bruno was silent. Only the outworks of his barricade were as yet
damaged.

“Answer me, Dr. Bruno,” she went on. “Have not I a right to know the
truth?”

Still Bruno made no answer.

“Conrad Dasipodius is your friend, is he not?”

“Yes,” bluntly replied Bruno.

“You love him?”

“Ay,” murmured the surgeon; “from my soul I do.”

“So do I,” said Sabina, the red blood mantling over her white face.
“Now will you believe me? Now will you tell me?”

And Bruno did believe, and no longer withheld from her the deplorable
truth. He was not a little puzzled to think how she had come by her
suspicion, and made several attempts in his turn to win from her some
enlightenment on that score; but Sabina shrank from betraying Radegund
to the man who made his idol of her, and she parried the questioning
womanfully.

“I thought so, Dr. Bruno,” she said, “because I thought so.” And the
surgeon admiringly credited her perceptive powers.

To his educated, professional insight, it had seemed marvellous that
people had not long ago detected the truth. The mathematician’s
eyes were clear and well opened it is true, but they wore the
indescribable dull luminosity which marks the terrible disease. He
could only attribute the undeniable fact that it had not been generally
discovered to the abnormal beauty and magnificent conformation of the
brow and temples, and the length of the shading lashes, which lent
seeming expression and vitality to what was in actual truth dead.
But what less interested folks had failed to mark, Sabina’s loving
solicitude had taught her, and it raised her incredibly in the doctor’s
estimation. Hitherto he had held her to be a charming, simple-minded
little maiden, who would doubtless prove herself a very agreeable
distraction and plaything for his friend when he should cast aside his
professional cares; and he did not think, take things for all in all,
that Dasipodius had chosen unwisely, but now as he looked at her and
listened to the quiet earnest voice, it seemed to him that whoever
placed his fate in this girl’s keeping, would never have to repent of
what he had done. “She is to be his wife,” argued Bruno to himself;
and already in her heart she is wife to him now; and to love and be
loved again in such fashion as that, seemed to him a blessed thing
indeed, and would make one proof against every other adversity under
the sun.

To such devotion as he believed to be Sabina’s, he found that he dared
not so much as whisper of conditions of secrecy; it would have been
insult to tell her to keep her discovery to herself, and he only said
to her as she drew her hood about her face again, and fastened her
cloak: “You know how much for Conrad’s good or evil future rests upon
this matter, Mistress Sabina. But you are to be trusted.”

And giving him her hand in farewell, she said, “I am to be trusted,
Bruno Wolkenberg”.

Then declining all escort, she had found her way home alone. Yet here
not a week gone, and Sabina had betrayed her trust! She must have done
so. What a truism that a secret between three is no secret. Wolkenberg
felt himself a traitorous fool now. What should he say to her for this
she had done? He pondered on that question till his brain grew sick;
and then when he came to the Munster-gasse, and saw the girl’s sad
patient face, he said nothing at all to her; but he said to himself
when he was outside in the street again, as he had said to Dasipodius,
“I could swear she loves him—still. And there is some devilry at the
bottom of this.”




CHAPTER XXIV.

“WHAT’S SHE WORRIED ABOUT?”


“And now,” was Wolkenberg’s one tormenting thought, as he plodded on
towards Radegund’s house, “what is to be the outcome of it all?”

He had some half-defined purpose in going to her. He thought the
brother and sister might have heard some tidings of that lost letter;
and besides, Bruno was thoroughly unhappy, and he shivered at the
prospect of going to sit down all alone with his thoughts in his gloomy
laboratory. He would seek the dreary consolation he sometimes permitted
himself, of feasting his eyes upon the woman he loved, and of breathing
the same air with her.

On aught beyond this, Bruno could never reckon, for the moody
Radegund’s receptions were as variable for him as they were for others,
perhaps more so; but the surgeon was no fair-weather swain. Not the
brave steed of that brave old legend Bruno loved perhaps above all
other romance lore, waited more patiently at the wayside chapel door
for the praying knight his master, than Bruno Wolkenberg waited upon
and bore with Radegund’s every caprice. And he would sooner have
thought of turning pagan, than of swerving by one hairsbreadth from his
allegiance, because she chanced to frown when he would have given a
decade of his natural life to see her smile.

To-night, however, Radegund’s welcome was unwontedly gracious. Never,
her lover thought, had he seen her look so brilliantly handsome. It may
be that very force of contrast heightened this effect, and some dim
remembrance of that pale saddened face in the Munster-gasse haunted him
still; but he was not conscious of any secondary impression whatsoever,
as he sat in the dazzling glory of her presence, and gazed at the
beautiful face lit up with a soft crimson glow, and the glamorous
light in the dark eyes. She had smiled on Bruno as he entered, and
stretching her white hand towards him, motioned him to a seat beside
her; and, chatting over anything and everything with her and Otto, who
lay his length, enjoying his accustomed evening _dolce far niente_ in
the firelight, the surgeon lost sight of other people’s cares in the
delirious joy of being with her, and listening to the rich, somewhat
deep tones of her beautiful voice, whose accents, for all she spoke
in her homely German tongue, fell with some strange passionate echo
of that fair Tuscan city where she had dwelt so long, and whose very
stones she loved.

To-night she was solicitous even about Bruno.

“You look so tired, Dr. Bruno,” she said, filling a goblet with strong
Rhenish, and herself handing it to him.

“I—have had a trying day,” answered Wolkenberg, his heart leaping at
the sound of her softened, almost caressing, tones.

“Is there much sickness about then?” she asked.

“Now what a question,” grunted Otto, “in weather like this. Such cursed
east winds. Eh, Wolkenberg?”

“There!” smiled Bruno. “That is what everybody is saying. Only
half-an-hour ago, Burgomaster von Steinbach——”

“You have been to the Munster-gasse?” interrupted Radegund.

“Yes, I supped there.”

“Ah!” said Radegund, a faint gasp escaping her. “And they—are all well?”

“Middling.”

“There—yes—well, middling of course you know,” hurriedly interjected
Otto. “This weather——”

“And little Sabina?” enquired Radegund. “As usual, I suppose. Blithe as
a bird.”

“No,” said Bruno, almost curtly. “And I suppose even birds are not
always blithe. She seemed very middling; and Burgomaster von Steinbach
wished me to see what I could do for her, but she won’t have any of my
doctoring, and insists she is very well, and very happy and——”

“And all that sort of thing,” interrupted Otto, getting to his feet
with a yawn. “Only these confounded east winds. You prescribed a
linctus, I suppose, Dr. Bruno?”

“No, I didn’t,” snapped Bruno. “I did nothing of the kind. A linctus
won’t cure worry, will it?”

“But what——” began Otto.

“What’s she worried about?” said Radegund. “Now that’s a man all over!
As if that great house and servants were not enough to plague a little
creature just home from school, out of her senses! I do think my uncle
ought to be told it is too much for her.”

“I don’t think it is,” said Bruno. “She seems a capital little
housewife, and makes no bother about it.”

“No,” said Otto. “That’s why I do like—what’s the joke, Radegund? If I
choose to say I—I like Sabina,” he went on, flushing furiously, “I—I’ve
got a right to say it, haven’t I. Have a game, Wolkenberg?” and drawing
a pack of cards from his pocket, Otto flung them noisily down on the
table.

The surgeon consented, but he played like a man whose thoughts were
gone a wool-gathering; and his eyes wandered hopelessly from the spades
and diamonds to the Queen of his heart, where she, in the half shadows,
sat silent and relapsed into thought. Notwithstanding he won the game.
“Yet I played so badly,” he said.

“You got all the trumps, you know,” grumbled Otto. “It’s just my luck.
There’s a sort of favour and prejudice in cards, just as there is in
everything else that ever I have to do with,” and he rose sulkily from
his seat.

“Don’t be cross, Otto dear,” smiled Radegund, rousing up. “Unlucky at
cards, a handsome wife, you know. Come, cheer up.”

But he seemed by no means disposed to fall in with her raillery, and
took up his night lamp.

“By the way,” said Bruno, as if the thought had suddenly struck him,
“has anything been heard of that letter, do you know?”

“What letter?” said Radegund carelessly. “Ah, Conrad Dasipodius’ letter
that was dropped in the studio a day or two ago. Some one said it was
last seen in your hands, Otto, and I thought——”

“Some one was a fool,” said Otto, dragging a blazing bit of stick from
the fire to light his lamp with.

“But——”

“What the devil should I know about the thing?” he interrupted
savagely, and with cheeks aflame, from the blaze no doubt. “How could I
help it all? I suppose they’ll be saying next that I—I——”

“You’ll set your sleeve on fire if you don’t mind, Otto,” said
Radegund, looking sternly at him. “Hold the lamp steady.”

“But I heard,” persistently continued Bruno, turning to address Otto,
and finding only empty space. “I heard——” he reiterated to Radegund in
default of Otto’s presence.

“You should not have alluded to that before him,” she said calmly. “You
must have known it wouldn’t be a pleasant subject.”

“Yes,” answered he. “I suppose I do know that; but it’s unpleasant
to—others too, and must be sifted.”

“Nothing of the kind,” answered Radegund. “The less said about it the
better.”

“But that is not like you, Radegund; to speak so, when we know that by
now the whole city is talking about it.”

“The thing is done, and can’t be undone,” she said.

“Who did it, Radegund?” asked Bruno gravely.

“Now it is you, Bruno Wolkenberg, who are talking nonsense! Did not
that child, Sabina, do it?”

“But I can’t understand. I would have staked my life she was true to
the core.”

“Of course you would. Men are all alike. Always to be hoodwinked and
cheated by the first woman whose purpose it may be to make tools of
them. But really,” she went on with a careless laugh, “what this girl
has about her that she can turn people round her little finger like
this, I cannot understand. A timid, moon-faced, yellow-haired little
thing, with hardly two grains of sense in her composition.”

“But no. There you mistake, Radegund,” stoutly contested Bruno. “You do
indeed.”

“Of course I do,” she laughed mockingly. “Why, Dr. Wolkenberg, is
she dragging you at her triumphal car, as she is trying to do Conrad
Dasipodius?”

“Trying!” echoed Bruno. “There is no need for that in his case,”
groaned Bruno.

“Do you mean to tell me,” cried Radegund, turning fiercely on him,
“that you actually believe Dasipodius loves this child?”

“Assuredly I do.”

A bitter laugh was the artist’s comment.

“Since you are so infatuated, you should have finished your evening in
this paragon of a girl’s society,” she said scornfully.

“Oh Radegund, you are hard, unjust. You who are always so noble and
generous. I came here to ask—to implore you to do something for this
poor child. She is so lonely—things are going so cross with her——”

“Can I help that?”

“She has no mother—no woman friend——”

“She has her male friends in any case,” said Radegund with curling lip.

“And you,” persevered Bruno, “who are so much older.”

Ah, Bruno Wolkenberg, wretchedly bungling advocate, how came you to
damage your pleading so? Radegund’s face grew white with anger.

“Yes, yes,” she cried. “I see it now. I see it! It is these fragile
little buds, with their poor pale beauty, who are the mode now-a-days!
And the world may be turned upside down for them, while——” and her
voice dropped into soft wistful cadence, “while the rich flowers are
left to wither unsought—neglected.”

Who ever loved legend and symbol as did Bruno? and Radegund, when it
suited her, would indulge him in such conceits; and tenderly lifting
the thread of her little metaphor, he said, “The pale Lily flower has
no charms for me, Radegund. It is the glorious red Rose I would take to
my breast, and wear till I die.”

And coming near, he bent over her, and pressed his lips on her dark
hair, and there came no flash of anger into her eyes at his bold
daring. On the contrary, they softened, and she took his hand in hers.
“Bruno,” she said, “what a faithful, good old friend you are to me! I
wonder,” she went on dreamily, “will it be so to the end?”

“Do you doubt it?” said Bruno. “I swear——”

“No,” she said, “there’s no need. I believe in you, Bruno Wolkenberg,
as I never believed in man, or woman either,” and she stroked his hand
with a gentle caressing thoughtfulness. “Poor Bruno!”

“Oh Radegund!” cried he, feeling himself less to be compassionated than
ever he had been in his whole existence, “Radegund! my——”

“And you think,” she interrupted, still stroking his hand, “that after
all, he, Conrad Dasipodius, does not so much care for Sabina?”

“I think,” said Bruno, starting with a sigh from his Euthanasia, “that
he loves her as I love you, Radegund, my——”

“What nonsense you always do talk, Bruno Wolkenberg!” she cried,
fiercely flinging away his hand. “There never is any common sense in
you for five minutes together!”

“But——”

“I will have no buts. At this hour too! As if this gossip-mongering
place did not play too free with my name already! Hark! Striking
nine. Go, I say. You call yourself my true friend! Go then—for pity’s
sake—go.”

And he went, and when he found himself in the laboratory again, he cast
himself upon his hard little bed and dreamed sublime dreams which now
and then lapsed into almost the ridiculous; for it seemed to him that
all the chairs of those silent rooms above stairs, started clean out
of their cere-cloths and danced for joy, because they were going to be
sat in at last. And the tables shouted, “Ho, bring venison, and wine,
and good things all, and heap us high with them! for the wedding guests
are coming, coming. Don’t you hear the bells?” And all the hearthplaces
shone with merry dancing flames, and then—then seated there, spinning
in their light, sits a gracious woman, with a grave sweet smile making
her face radiant in its beauty; and over all floats a low glad harmony
as of children’s voices, and—— Dream on, Bruno Wolkenberg!

But where the real woman of Bruno’s dreaming sits, there is no fire.
Only a heap of grey dull ashes, and the woman is crouching over them,
staring with dry hollow eyes at a piece of crumpled paper, bearing the
signature of a faint, tremulous little cross; and far on, while Bruno
dreams, she sits in the same unchanging attitude through the dark night
hours, brooding—brooding.




CHAPTER XXV.

NINE DAYS’ WONDER!


“Monstrous!”

“Go and tell such tales to your grandmother!”

“Preposterous! Rubbish! Lies! Papperlapapp!”

Such were a few of that variety of comment uttered by the Strassburgers
when the news spread abroad, as soon it did like wildfire, that
Professor Dasipodius, the maker of their new Horologe, was blind.

Everybody made it the subject of conversation. Tradesmen and
apprentices canvassed it open-mouthed at their booths; fine ladies
paying calls discussed it, and said in the same breath: “Ah—dear,
the pity of it,” and they did not believe it one bit. Such heavenly
eyes—oh! absurd! No! House-mothers shook their heads, and sighed
“Poor dear young man!” and for the first time in their lives, were
thankful to think he was no son of theirs. Others maintained that the
tale was not to be credited for an instant, and had only been got up
to suit some party purposes or other. Heaven knew there were enough
of them flying about the city; but many conceded the possibility; for
it was well known that the devil never stood at anything when he had
the faintest notion of being able to entrap a soul; and no one could
gainsay that the mathematician, with his deep knowledge of the curious
sciences, must be singularly available. Truly, said the Catholics,
Dasipodius was a child of Holy Church, and went regularly to mass,
and to allow each his due, was more liberal in alms-giving and divers
secret good work beside, than many who fasted on barley bread and water
twice a week without fail, and were otherwise more strictly orthodox.
Still, when was Dasipodius ever heard disputing to edification with the
Anabaptists, or insisting on the spotless purity and integrity of the
Vatican proceedings, as it behoved every one in these perilous times,
who owned a clever brain and an eloquent tongue? It was whispered,
moreover, that the Professor Dasipodius was heretically tainted. He
had been known to quote Erasmus more than once, and openly from his
professorial chair, to have expressed admiration for some of that
reasonable person’s writings.

On the other hand, flames of eloquence had been employed to bring
Dasipodius over to Calvin’s conception of a beneficent Providence, and
to impress him with a sense of the power of that irresistible grace
which doomed Servetus to the flames; but he was not to be charmed.
Then Zwinglius had made a snatch at this brand from popery’s burning
Gehenna; and the orthodox Lutherans had plied his order-loving nature
with much fair argument, but each had failed to influence Dasipodius;
and if they agreed on no other point, all shared in the opinion that
it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than
for mathematicians to be made into children of grace; and were full
of dudgeon against this man, who having lent their arguments silent
courteous attention, asked them when they had done, why they made
confusion worse confounded by their speculations, instead of enlisting
themselves into the ranks of those who still walked in the old paths,
but were striving as they went to clear from them the garbage and
dust which indolence and neglect had allowed to accumulate there.
Surely that was better than striking out into countless intricate and
dreary by-ways, which ended, some of them, strangely far away from the
Beautiful Gate. And so, with the exception of certain kindred spirits
at the university, who did not possess, and were at little pains to
lay claim to much voice in the existing ruling of matters social and
political in the city, the Professor Dasipodius owned no party friends
against his hour of difficulty. It was not possible, in days when the
multitude thought of little else than of theological disputation, and
had small opinion of a man who did not mix himself up with all their
speculations as to whether one must pay down alarming sums in hard
cash for one poor hope of eternal happiness, or whether he might not
gratuitously commit every abominable crime it suited him in this world,
and then be made much of in the next.

It is true that Dasipodius possessed the general good-will and respect
of Strassburg, as a clever useful man against whom no gross moral
accusation could be brought; but such negative virtues would stand for
little in face of this startling charge which had risen up against
him. The stakes were as yet smouldering from the fires which had burned
men and women for witchcraft and magic; and the protestant religionist
made no more scruple of doing away with human life, than his catholic
brother had done, so that judged by the one or the other, or both, as
was most likely would be the case, Dasipodius stood in no small peril.

Within the last year or two, the violence of the contending sects had
brought about their own downfall from the higher places. Peace-loving
folks, unable longer to endure the strife of tongues, had sought refuge
in the old ruling; and while Anabaptists ran naked and howling about
the woods to propitiate the High God, the Host stood once again upon
the Cathedral altar; and once more the Bishop ruled from his palace.
To possess the esteem and friendship of Bishop John of Manderscheid,
as Dasipodius did, could not but be regarded as a high privilege.
One and all were constrained to acknowledge that he was just and
gentle-hearted; and of his mental qualifications, it sufficed to
remember when and where he ruled, to set them at something of their
true value; but the most bigoted of both sides had their grudges
against this man who set his face against extreme measures, and refused
to anathematise any party. To this large majority _a via media_ was
hateful; the moderationist of the new University was looked askance
upon for want of zeal in matters spiritual, while it was known that the
Bishop had the place’s interests deeply at heart; and of all who taught
or learned within its walls, he cared for none so well as he did for
Conrad Dasipodius.

This very regard, however, was likely more to damage than to shield
Dasipodius in the impending crisis. The zealots and the municipality
contained not a few loving to say that the learned prelate would take
the foul fiend, horns and hoofs and all to his bosom, if only he came
in scholar’s cap and gown; but it chanced that just at that identical
time, Bishop John was fifty miles away from Strassburg, engaged in a
pastoral visitation among the villages of his diocese; and there being
in those days no other posts than special messengers, he was likely to
remain till his return, in ignorance of what had occurred.

The really great question was, what would the Town Council say about
it? Individually the Town Council was stricken dumb with astonishment;
but thinking that collectively breath and eloquence might be
regainable, they called a meeting, at which chief Burgomaster Niklaus
von Steinbach was required officially to preside. For once he took his
place reluctantly and in silence; allowing the stormy Babel to say
all it desired, which was not a little. On one point nearly all were
agreed—that if indeed, as there seemed now hardly any doubt, this man
were blind, he deserved to be broken on the wheel, for having so long
led them all by the nose. There was hardly one of that conclave who did
not esteem himself worth a dozen mathematicians, and held it monstrous
to have been hoodwinked. There was a feeling about it which set those
worthy drapers and fishmongers and tanners in a fume of fuss and
indignation, but Niklaus von Steinbach took no part in the discussion.
He only sat silent at the head of the long council table, with his hand
half-shading his face, which bore a strangely troubled and perplexed
expression. But at last, in the very height of the turmoil, he brought
his clenched fist down on the table with a heavy thud, and roaring as
loud as Demosthenes, when he outvoiced the sea waves, said: “Gentlemen,
what we want is fact, not hearsay. Let Master Dasipodius speak for
himself.”

This resolution was put to the vote by a show of hands; and though
there were some dissentients, the ayes carried the day; and the
recorder having spread out a broad sheet of parchment, a citation was
drawn upon it summoning “the Professor Conrad Dasipodius to appear
four days hence at the Chancellery, to answer in person anent certain
rumours——”

“Charges,” amended Master Tobias Hackernagel the syndic. “Charges,
Burgomaster.”

“No,” said the Burgomaster; “no such thing.”

“Libels, perhaps?” suggested Counsellor Frischlein.

“No, Master Frischlein, I think not. It isn’t exactly a libel you see,
to say a man’s blind—hey, Master Recorder?”

“Not without being attended by aggravating circumstances, Burgomaster,”
replied the man of law, patiently holding his pen poised an inch or two
above his parchment.

“Ah, proceed then, Master Recorder—_Certain rumours which have reached
the ears of the Town Council_——”

“Will they be long, Burgomaster?” meekly asked Counsellor Klausewitz,
who had a punctual wife, and heard dinner-time strike.

“Not if I can help it,” said Niklaus. “Go on, Master Recorder—_to the
effect that he has lost the use of his sight_——”

“Otherwise blind,” suggested the lawyer.

“Hang it, yes—if you choose,” testily said Niklaus. “A spade’s a spade,
and Dasipodius isn’t the man to say it isn’t.”

“And of a consequence,” loftily continued Syndic Hackernagel. “Write
‘of a consequence,’ Master Recorder.”

“Consequences make an after consideration,” said Niklaus, taking
the quill from the Recorder’s hand and setting his signature to the
document. “Be pleased to sign your names, gentlemen, and then we can go
home. This place is as stifling as an oven.”

“But I tell you, Burgomaster——” objected Hackernagel.

“By your leave, Master Hackernagel, the clock has struck,” interrupted
the impatient Job.

“And the moral welfare of the city is to be sacrificed to your carnal
appetites!” muttered the Anabaptist, as he scowlingly watched the
Burgomaster place away the citation duly signed and sealed with the
old free city’s insignia, under lock and key, and then with a curt
good-morrow, stride out after his colleagues. “Dumb dogs that ye are!
How long shall the unrighteous prevail—and the saints be made a mock
unto themselves?”

Until recently Tobias Hackernagel had followed the vocation of
fishmonger in Strassburg; but his natural gift for driving exceedingly
lucrative, not to say hard bargains, had enabled him to retire from
trade when not very far advanced beyond middle life. Having made good
provision for himself, the quondam fishmonger turned his attention to
his country, and contrived so entirely to impress people generally
with his own firm conviction that he was no ordinary man, that one
fine day he found himself elevated to nearly the highest point of his
ambition,—syndic, that is to say, of his native city. This desired
consummation he had brought about mainly by a judicious use of his
ready tongue. Whenever he found his chance, Tobias Hackernagel would
talk. What he said signified comparatively little. His custom of using
the long word when there was a long and a short one to choose from,
had won him hosts of admirers; and they would say it was a beautiful
thing indeed to hear Syndic Hackernagel talk. If his education had been
a very third-rate one, his sharp mother-wit atoned to him for much;
and the superficial knowledge he had picked up, he tried to economise
in such a manner, that it went twice as far with the multitude as the
solid acquirements of many a better man.

Physically, even by his most enthusiastic disciples, Syndic Hackernagel
was not esteemed prepossessing. Insignificant in stature, and with
little to speak of as far as eye and brow and chin were concerned,
his nose was of massive aquiline proportions, and vastly proud of
this important feature the syndic was. Not without reason, for it was
most useful to him on state occasions, when his magnificent manner
of applying his handkerchief to it called attention to himself, as
the trumpet call of a herald rivets the senses of all within earshot.
The little fishmonger was in his idiosyncrasies the very antipodes
of Conrad Dasipodius, and Tobias Hackernagel did not love the
mathematician.

That Dasipodius did not reciprocate the negative sentiment, was owing
possibly to the fact that he had never dreamed of spending two thoughts
on him. Tobias had so rarely been thrown in his way. He did not so
much as remember, what the syndic never tired of recalling, a certain
time some years since, when the chiefs of the antinomian sect of which
Tobias was an ardent if circumspect member, had made a fierce effort to
win Dasipodius to their ranks; and the mathematician had frankly told
them it was a form of belief with which not merely he had no sympathy,
but which appeared to him to threaten the bringing Christianity itself
into utmost disrepute.

When the election for the Horologe had taken place, Tobias Hackernagel
had voted for Otto von Steinbach. Otto, as he knew, had good
expectations, and could boast a fine ancestry; while the syndic, who
was not so much as quite sure of his maternal grandfather’s name,
had four daughters—none of them passing fair;—although certainly in
the third of the quartette, Gretchen, some womanly graces, possibly
inherited of her long dead mother, did exist.

As far as the world knew, and had there been anything to tell, it
would probably have been apprised in all decent haste, these ladies
had hitherto received no matrimonial overtures. A father’s leanings
therefore towards an eligible young bachelor like Otto von Steinbach,
against the proud bigoted misogynist of a Dasipodius, is at all events
conceivable. The syndic however, patriot, disinterested protector of
justice, guardian of civic rights, Syndic Tobias the incorruptible,
acknowledged no secondary motives, in upholding, whenever opportunity
presented, the cause of the hare-brained Otto.

Nothing could have better pleased him, take it for all in all, than
this charge which had now got abroad against the mathematician. It
delighted him immeasurably to see how people of all parties, Catholic
and Protestant, differ as they would wherever they could possibly do
so, were unanimous in their denunciations of the suspicion of magical
arts in which they now conceived Dasipodius to be an adept. When
you came, as they said, to consider how mathematics and its kindred
subjects were a pagan invention, things, there was no denying it,
did look suspicious; and many came forward and publicly disburdened
their bosoms of the suspicions they had long nursed, that Dasipodius
was a secret member, and a very powerful one too, of that mysterious
brotherhood of the Caballists. Why, can’t you see, that if making a
clock, and such a clock—without eyes, seeing in the dark—Du Lieber
Himmel! think of it!—was not magic, what was? What a mercy to think his
infirmity had been laid bare at last, before destruction had come upon
the city, for having harboured such iniquity! A Horologe was a nice
useful clever thing undoubtedly, but a thing which at best had about it
a strange weirdness and witchery. It was so marvellous when you came
to think, that a mere combination, you know, of brass and wood should
be able to move, ay, and to speak—in its way, at the bidding of a man,
and of a blind man! Then one great shudder convulsed the city, and the
question flew from mouth to mouth: “What would the Bishop say to this?
My lord, who had always shown Dasipodius such favour!”




CHAPTER XXVI.

“MERE HEARSAY.”


The wound from which Dasipodius was suffering proved more troublesome
than he had at first anticipated; and for the next day or two he found
himself unable to return to his work. Isaac Habrecht had called more
than once to enquire after him; but during the few minutes he had
stayed, was not communicative, beyond the assurance that things were
going on straight. Otherwise Dasipodius had had no communication with
the outside world.

Poor Christian, sorely distressed by the pain and unrest from which
his son was suffering, was anxious to summon Dr. Bruno Wolkenberg; but
Conrad peremptorily forbade any such thing. “Bruno,” he said, “had
something better to do, than to go about doctoring scratches.”

Christian, however, continued to gaze ruefully at the pale face, and
the once busy hands, now folded in sheer nerveless apathy, with
something like despair in their convulsive twitching.

“You may call it a scratch,” said Christian, “but I call it a wound,
and an uncommonly bad one too; and I wonder Dr. Bruno has not looked in
of himself——”

“Does not that prove my case?” said Dasipodius with a faint smile of
reassurance. “Bruno would have been here no doubt, had he thought it
necessary. Come now, leave Bruno alone; I shall do well enough—and sit
down here beside me and be content. Your cool hand here in mine does me
more good than an army of surgeons. See,” he went on, “in the lattice
there, lies that Book of the Gospels Father Chretei gave me. Bring it
here, and read to me a bit. Yes?”

Christian brought the book and began to turn its thick, richly
illuminated vellum pages with a pre-occupied air.

“Nay,” said Conrad. “Just read where it opens first, Väterle. It cannot
but be good hearing. What have you before you now?”

“_And they bring a blind man unto Him_,” read Christian.

“Ay, that will do—well enough. Read on, Väterle.”

And Christian obeyed, until he came to the words: “_I see men as trees
walking_”.

“Yes,” dreamily interrupted Conrad. “‘Men as trees walking.’ That is
well described. Excellently well. All blurred and indistinct, I know——I
understand.”

Christian gazed up a little wonderingly into his son’s face.

“But,” continued Conrad, “it would be horrible now, to live on and on,
in a haze like that. Wouldn’t it, Väterle? It would drive a man mad.”

“Yes,” answered Christian; “I do think I’d rather be quite right down
blind at once.”

“Ay; and that would I, a thousand times.”

“But we won’t talk about such dreadful things. Let’s go on and see what
our Lord Christ did for the poor fellow,” and Christian read on to the
wondrous story’s end.

“If the Lord Christ walked the earth now-a-days, would He still do such
gracious deeds, think you?” said Conrad wistfully.

“Well,” replied Christian, “that is what nobody can tell, can they?
But Holy Church teaches, you know, that miraculous power has been
handed down. Oh, you shake your head; but it is quite certain that a
pilgrimage to St. Ottilie’s holy well, near Schlettstadt, is said to
work wonderful cures on blind eyes, and even weak ones——”

“Ay, ay,” said Conrad. “Cold water does do great things. It’s a pity
people don’t make more use of it.”

“Yes, and then special devotion to Our Lady of Alt Nöttingen is even——”

“Nay,” interrupted Conrad with an actual laugh. “That hideous black
doll work divine deeds? No, no, Bruno Wolkenberg against Our Lady of
Alt Nöttingen any day.”

“What odd notions you have, Conrad!” said the old man with a
half-scandalised air. “But thank heaven, all that concerns us little
enough, does it?”

“Read on, father,” said Conrad wearily.

And for a short while longer Christian read on, until they were
interrupted by the announcement that three gentlemen from the
Chancellery desired an audience of the Professor Dasipodius.

“I expected this,” he said, rising from his half-reclining position.
“Bid them come in.”

“But,” interposed Christian, “you are not fit——”

“Hush, father. It must be. Lend me your arm,” and he rose to receive
his visitors.

If those delegates had enjoyed their little dream of brief authority by
anticipation, the pleasure ended rather abruptly for all, not excepting
Master Hackernagel himself, who had volunteered to be spokesman, so
that as he said, he might mercifully break the intelligence. They
shuffled and hummed, and exchanged perturbed glances in that calm
stately presence, until Dasipodius, wondering at the silence, said,
“Well, gentlemen?”

Then the syndic recovered himself, and clearing his throat, and
sounding to the attack after his own approved fashion, unrolled the
parchment he carried. “_Whereas_,” he began in his best official
voice, never too musical, “_whereas_—I—I crave pardon,” he interrupted
himself. “I have in the first place and preliminarily to observe——”

“Certainly,” said Dasipodius, “say all you want to say, Master
Hackernagel, when you have discharged your duty; but you have something
to read there first?”

“_Whereas_,” resumed Tobias, after having stolen a glance at the
mathematician’s face, “_whereas certain rumours_—ahem! Mere hearsay you
observe, Professor,” he said, lifting his lynx-like eyes to Dasipodius.

“Just so. Mere hearsay,” cheerfully echoed the supernumeraries.

“Go on, Master Hackernagel,” said the mathematician in tones which
effectually did away with further parenthetical observation on the
syndic’s part.

Although thanks to Niklaus von Steinbach the document had the virtue
of brevity, it was with the utmost difficulty that Conrad succeeded
in imposing silence on Christian till its reading was ended. The old
man’s arm on which he leaned, quivered and vibrated with suppressed
agitation, and barely had the final syllable passed Hackernagel’s lips,
than Christian burst angrily into speech. “What fooling is this?” he
demanded. “Speak to these idiots, Conrad, and send them packing!”

“Master Christian!” wrathfully screeched the insulted dignitary,
turning on Christian; but the old man had neither eyes nor ears for
him, he was staring with bewildered entreaty in his son’s face. “Speak
to them. Do you hear?” he gasped.

“You had something to observe, Master Hackernagel,” calmly said
Dasipodius, lifting his hand to command silence.

“I—Professor? Ha—yes—precisely—h’m, h’m—I was simply about to remark
that—h’m—rumour—many-tongued rumour——”

“Just so—yes,” endorsed his coadjutors. “Many-tongued rumour—exactly——”

“Is false—proverbially false. Hem!” and again for an instant
Hackernagel’s small sharp orbits were fixed on the grand sightless
ones, but once more fell shiftily. It seemed to him that they returned
his glance with such calm, deep-seeing self-possession. “Proverbially
false.”

“Proverbially false,” assented his satellites like a Greek chorus; but
Dasipodius was silent.

“Conrad!” entreated Christian, “why will you not speak—why?——”

“Hush, father—hush! hush!” he said soothingly. “Gentlemen,” he
continued, addressing his visitors, “I will attend at the appointed
time. Have you anything further to communicate?”

“Hem! hem!” coughed Tobias. “We—I—should have been glad to hear—for
certain——”

“That I am blind—assuredly. I should have known you would. This then
for your contentment. Gentlemen,” and Dasipodius fixed his eyes on all
three, till they writhed with discomposure; and even Tobias’ pink lids
fell. “I am blind—stone-blind.”

“Oh! ha! h’m! Really I assure you, Herr Professor,” began one of the
party, but Dasipodius paid him no heed. His whole being seemed absorbed
in the endeavours he was making to comfort Christian.

“So—so, Väterle! Be brave now—brave; strong for my sake,” he said,
gathering the trembling old man into his arms.

A vague sympathetic murmur thrilled the syndic’s companions, and they
began to stammer out some well-meaning word or two.

“Nay, gentlemen,” interrupted Dasipodius, making a gesture of
dismissal. “You have kind hearts. They will tell you we would be alone
just now,” and with not so much as a word of farewell, the delegates
departed, never exchanging a syllable until they had turned the corner
of the street, where the syndic began roundly reproaching them for not
having backed him up in a manner befitting the dignity of the occasion.

“If I had not been equal to my duty,” he said, “where would you all
three have been, I should like to know?”

“Well,” said one, “but he’s got such a way with him always, has
Dasipodius. Oh, hang it! No; I’d sooner stand to witness the headsman
finish off half-a-dozen, than go through such a scene as that again.
Poor old Christian! Did you mark the tears in his eyes, Master Tobias?”
asked the speaker, dashing one or two suspicious drops away from his
own.

“I marked nothing,” said Hackernagel sulkily, “but that all three
of you let it be seen plainly enough, that you sympathised with the
accused; and I should like to know what that is, if it isn’t being
accessary—winking at crime. Holding a candle to—— Never mind, it is
of no consequence. I feel at least I have performed my duty,” and the
Incorruptible strode away, to spend the next three days in drawing up
with infinitesimal care and patience, notes of all he intended to say,
when Dasipodius should appear to give an account of himself.

And still in the chamber they had left, Christian lay upon his son’s
breast, with his arms clasped convulsively round the blind man’s neck.
“Tell them to go, Conrad. They are liars I say,” he wailed again and
again. “Can’t they see for themselves that it’s all a lie? Blind! ha!
ha! ha!” and Christian burst into a wild laugh. “Why! with such eyes
as these? Your mother’s eyes—shining down on me—now; do I not see
them? Clear and beautiful, like the moon through a night-cloud! Blind
forsooth!—blind!” and again he broke into hysterical laughter.

“Hush, father,” said Dasipodius—“be a man. Bear it for me now, as I
have borne it alone for long long weeks past. Those men did but speak
the truth. I am blind.”

Christian groaned heavily.

“You see my eyes. They are wide open, you say: but your eyes I cannot
see. No: nor the tears that I know they are wet with,” went on
Dasipodius brokenly: “nor all the grief that is in them; nor the pardon
for having hidden my affliction from you. That is there too, father?
The forgiveness?”

“Oh my son! my son!” sobbed Christian, tightening his clasp round
Conrad’s neck.

“So—that is well. I did it for the best. I was mad enough to think
I could have kept it to myself. Well, I have been outwitted,” he
continued with a sudden access of bitterness; “and there is no more to
be said. Understand, father: no more to be said.”

“But——” began the bewildered Christian.

“Not now, Väterle; for my sake. We will talk of other things.”

“But tell me only this,” entreated Christian, “does Sabina—your little
Sabina——”

“Hush! Not my Sabina—now. Sabina von Steinbach knows all; yes. God
forgive her!” said Dasipodius in a hollow changed voice. “Speak no
more about her, father. Come! come!” he added, making an effort at
gaiety, “cheer thee—cheer thee now! Why surely, when the blind man
himself breaks down, ’twill be time enough to spend tears on him! Look
up—smile. Nay, but you are not smiling! Oh trust me, I can tell whether
you are sad or merry, every whit as well as if I were made of eyes. So
then—cheerily—cheerily—for my sake.”

And so it was the blind man strove to comfort his father, and
gradually succeeded in bringing him to dwell calmly on their trouble.
Notwithstanding, the mathematician’s own heart was heavy with
forebodings. “Yet, it is wicked to meet troubles half way! It was she
who said that once. Oh Sabina! Sabina! is it any wonder that I took you
for true gold!”




CHAPTER XXVII.

A MOONLIGHT MEETING.


Next morning found Dasipodius back in his accustomed place. Every hand
was hard at work over its appointed task, and there was no evidence in
that silent well-ordered hive, of the recent little revolution.

When the mathematician, having made his way to his own work-bench, had
passed his unerring hand over it, he found all as he had left it—not a
thing disturbed; every tool, every scrap of metal, every morsel of wire
lying intact. Even the little steel coil which had come to such sudden
grief, had been carefully rewound into proper compass, and placed ready
to hand by Isaac Habrecht. “It is correctly adjusted, I think?” he
said, as Dasipodius took it up.

“Never fear for that,” answered his chief. “There is no surer hand for
these things in all Elsass than yours.”

“Saving your own.”

“You and I will not bandy compliments. Isaac,” laughed Dasipodius.

“I meant no compliment,” grunted Isaac. “Nor split hairs then,”
returned the mathematician. “I was but thinking what a useful right
hand you have been to me all these months, Isaac Habrecht.”

His subordinate’s stolid face kindled. Nothing ever brightened it like
an approving word from the master.

“Right hands,” went on Dasipodius, “sometimes become heads.”

There was a pause; while Habrecht’s face grew impenetrable again.

“I have no talent for riddles,” he said bluntly. “I mean,” said the
mathematician, “that if the good people of Strassburg should take any
fancy into their heads that this blindness of mine incapacitates me for
the Horologe work—”

“Tut!—nonsense!” interrupted Isaac with an impatient wag of his bushy
head. “D’ye think they’re likely to quarrel with their own noses like
that?”

“I don’t think it is probable,” shrugged Dasipodius, “but it’s
possible. The town council—”

“Would be greater asses even than I have ever taken them for. Can’t
they see for themselves what you have already done? Can’t they judge?”

“Who can tell,” said Dasipodius, with a smile of some bitterness. “But
in any case they will have you to fall back upon, Habrecht; and that
would be an indescribable consolation to me.”

“Then I am sorry——” blurted Isaac; then he stopped abruptly, leaving
unfinished, perhaps for the only time in his life, what he had begun to
say, and silently concentrated his attention on his work.

“There is something amiss with this,” he went on presently, examining
with a magnifier the piece of infinitesimal chain-work he was occupied
upon. “Yet it measures the right length.”

“No such thing,” said the blind man, taking it from him and rapidly
passing it through his fingers; “it has a link too many,” and he took
up his tool and pinched off the superfluous scrap. “Try now,” he went
on, returning it to Habrecht, and bending his neck with that attentive
lateral movement peculiar to the blind, while Isaac adjusted the chain
round a small cylinder. “Yes,” he nodded, “it’s right enough now”; and
then the two horologists subsided into silence, and for the rest of
that day all went on as usual.

Whatever the other clockmakers there might have to say, was not spoken
out in their chief’s presence: natural generosity constrained them to
silence. They were of course cognizant of the citation which had been
served on Dasipodius, and were agreed to await the verdict of those
assembled to judge the question; and so the hours passed until the
sickly January sunbeams faded, and the short afternoon grew sombre and
grey, and the students putting up their tools, wrapped themselves in
their cloaks, and bade the master good-night.

“And since, as you all know, friends,” said Dasipodius, returning the
valediction, “I have a summons to attend at the Chancellery to-morrow,
it must be a—a holiday.”

“A waste day, the master means,” growled Isaac.

And silent as if they were at a funeral, the young men went out.

“But the next day, master?” wistfully asked a fresh young voice at his
elbow.

“That will be seen to-morrow, my Kaspar,” said Dasipodius, laying his
hand kindly on the lad’s head. “By the way, tell me, have you been
able to learn anything about that letter?”

It was interesting to observe with what precipitation Otto von
Steinbach, who was still hanging about the studio, caught up his cap
and cloak, and effected his exit at that precise moment.

“I can learn nothing. I begin to think it must have fallen on the
hearth and got burnt,” said Kaspar.

“Perhaps,” said Dasipodius. “Never mind,” he added wearily. “It is of
little consequence. Good-night.” Then the brothers went away, leaving
Dasipodius alone.

The moon rose, and cast a chill clear chequered light through the broad
lattice down on the oaken floor which Dasipodius long unceasingly
paced. In wild tumult thoughts were crowding the calm judging, clear
brain of this man, who could tell to a millionth part when anything
was amiss with his wheels and cogs, and springs and chains—whose
geometrical and algebraical knowledge made him a proverb in Strassburg;
and whose precision in the minutest particular made him a very terror
to his pupils. This gifted man it is who is now struggling to thread
the maze of trouble closing him so suddenly in. Here all parallel, and
logic, and syllogism fail him. He knows indeed, that of one bitter
heart-trial, others have been born; but which of these is parent to
the others, he can in no wise tell.

Now it seems his loss of sight, now his passionate love for Sabina.
Certainly it is clear that had it not been for her, he would have been
able to have kept his secret, until it had come to be no longer worth
the keeping. It was natural for people to say, as they were saying,
that they had known he was blind all along. “Why, there—you had but to
use your own eyes to see that!” and so on, and so on. People, prompted
no doubt by revenge for having been so long hoodwinked, always do love
to talk in that way, when once a cat is irretrievably out of its bag;
and it does not lessen his sense of Sabina’s blame, that he has come to
be a nine days’ wonder in the place.

“And yet,” he groaned, out of his soul’s heaviness, “I could have borne
it all, if you had not been false to me, child!”

Feeling his way to the casement, and throwing it wide open, he
loosened the collar of his doublet, and leaned his throbbing brow
against the cold stone mullion, letting the keen frosty air breathe
upon his face. This window high up and deep-sunken in the massive wall,
commanded a good side view of the Cathedral Platz, whose heavily-gabled
house roofs all muffled in their hoods of thick white snow, seemed
to be clustering like cowled Dominicans about their mighty superior,
with its one fair tower reaching far above towards the myriad stars
glistening in the steel-blue sky.

Conrad Dasipodius was a man for whom the simplest objects of daily
life had borne a significance. It had been his nature to see “sermons
in stones, and good in everything”; and could he have looked on this
scene before him, with all its wedded glory of nature and of art,
he must have found in it some anodyne for the gnawing pain of hope
disappointed. But he could have no part now in such joys, and to him
the world was a dull leaden-hued wilderness. Winter and summer, day
and night, in all the years to come, the same. A dismal chaos, a dark
and thorny way indeed, where love and friendship had left him in his
utmost need, to blunder on alone. Love! friendship. Well, well! It was
a sharp necessary lesson; one that came no doubt sooner or later to be
learned by every son of Adam. Love! friendship—why, in this world there
was none of it—none—none!

So in the moonlight stood Dasipodius, seeming to see with fixed
steadfast gaze, the ghosts of his dead joys. A strange visionary light
gleamed in his eyes, and you would rather have guessed that they
penetrated strangely far into life’s mysteries, than that all earthly
objects at least were utterly hidden from them.

Almost incredible it seems, that indeed he can see nothing of that tall
majestic figure standing in the glow of crimson drapery curtaining the
window on the first floor of old Erwin’s house opposite. Instantly
after, however, all is dark, and the figure, enveloped in a long
mantle, stands in the ancient doorway; then softly closing it, turns
to ascertain, seemingly, if any stragglers chance to be about; but the
coast is quite clear, and gliding stealthily under the shadow of the
cathedral’s broad western end, and reaching the opposite side of the
Platz, it hurries on up the narrow street, halting at last beneath
the open turret lattice of the Dial. The illusory moonlight throws
this figure into strong relief, lending it a height it does not really
possess; but its peculiar undulating grace of movement and of general
outline, would tell it is a woman, even though the long robe sweeping
the frosty ground entirely concealed the night wanderer’s form.

Laying her hand, glittering with costly jewels, upon the latch of the
turret door, she lifts her eyes to the window above, and in a voice low
and singularly sweet, calls the mathematician by his name.

“Ay!” he said, starting from his prolonged reverie. “Who is there? That
is your voice, Mistress von Steinbach?”

“Yes,” replied the artist. “I have a word to say to you—about the
Horologe.”

“I will come down,” he said, beginning to close the lattice.

“It will be better that I should come up,” she said, pushing the door
further ajar, and setting one foot inside the threshold.

“No. By your leave I think not,” answered he, and before she could say
more, he was descending the stair. “We can pace the Platz together,”
he said, as he reached the foot; “there is little fear of our being
disturbed. Our good neighbours seem to love their firesides better than
to be out in this biting cold.”

“Yes, because they are all such dull fools,” she answered
contemptuously.

“That is a sweeping assertion,” smiled he.

“You will find it is a true one—to-morrow,” she retorted.

“You had something to say about the Horologe?” he said, waiving away
her last remark.

“Why, yes,” she replied. “You will of course carry on the work in spite
of these men?”

“That is jumping at conclusions, as I could not have conceived—pardon
me, Mistress von Steinbach—conceived of you, who have something beyond
an ordinary woman’s mind.”

“But less than an ordinary woman’s heart, as you always seem to think,”
she interrupted in bitterly impetuous tones.

“Indeed no,” he said. “I know the contrary too well to say any such
thing. I wonder who could count the sick and poor of our great city,
who bless the charity of Radegund von Steinbach.”

“Psha! what is that?” answered she. “I should be a skinflint indeed not
to share a few of my gold pieces so. Does a woman’s love end where her
charity does, think you?”

“Nay,” replied he, thus challenged. “You must not ask me. I cannot
guess what woman’s love may be like. Once I thought—— But let that be,
I was mistaken.”

“And did you indeed believe that was love?” she asked. “The foolish
dallying of that pretty child? To think,” and she laughed mockingly,
“how easily you clever men are deceived! And now—positively you are
annoyed, as miserable almost as a child whose fragile toy is broken!”

“You know, then, that Sabina has been false?”

“I heard that—the bond between you had snapped,” she said. “I did not
dream that you could regret it as you seem to do.”

And to give her her fair meed of justice, she spoke no more than the
truth, as she saw it. “I say I did not dream you could regret her,” she
reiterated, for he made no reply.

“Regrets are useless,” he said; “but it is a cruel thing for a woman to
play a man false. Take warning from it, Mistress Radegund.”

“Nay, I would stake my soul for him I loved,” she murmured.

“That would be good hearing for——” Dasipodius paused.

“For whom?” she demanded hurriedly. “Say then.”

“For Bruno Wolkenberg,” said Dasipodius with a faint smile.

An angry spasm contracted her face. “Bruno Wolkenberg!” she echoed
scornfully. “When will Strassburg learn to unlink our names?”

“Never, I trust,” he answered, “for Bruno loves you, Mistress Radegund,
as I——”

“As you?——”

“As men seldom love.”

“Dr. Bruno Wolkenberg and I are good friends. How many a time have I
not said so? But nearer—and dearer? No, that we can never be. He does
not expect—he does not wish it,” she added, with an effort at unconcern.

“Ay, but he does, and you know it,” said Dasipodius.

“As soon might these snow crystals beneath our feet strive to rival the
glory of yonder stars, as Bruno Wolkenberg seek to link his lot with
mine,” she answered haughtily.

“Can it be true then, as some declare, that your heart does not know
what affection means?” demanded Dasipodius, driven on his friend’s
behalf, out of his usual reticence. “Nay, but you are not the woman I
took you for,” and he turned on his heel.

“No indeed, there you speak truly, Conrad Dasipodius. You do not
know—you cannot guess at the thoughts that are in my heart. Love Bruno
Wolkenberg! Who dares say it? Poor Bruno, with his pretty golden curls,
and his face, that I have heard languishing girls call ‘divine’! Oh,
they are very welcome. To my soul, his beauty speaks not, conjures no
bright dreams, kindles in it no fire. When has my heart ever throbbed
one pulse the quicker because he came near——”

“Radegund!” interposed the mathematician.

“When has it ever seemed to me,” she hurried on passionately, “that to
look once more—just once more upon him, I would have freely bartered
all eternity’s promised joys? Has it been his face I have striven to
picture to myself through the long dark night hours, until sleeping at
last, I have dreamed that he has clasped me in his arms and said: ‘I
love thee, Radegund’? No, no, and yet for one—for one I have done this,
Conrad Dasipodius—I take no shame to myself that I have done it. But
it was all a dream—a dream!” she murmured, drawing closer to the blind
man’s side, until he felt her warm breath mingling with his.

“My heart bleeds for Bruno Wolkenberg,” he said, receding a step.

“Was it so,” she went on, affecting not to hear, “that Sabina loved
you, Master Dasipodius?”

“Sabina is not free of speech,” he coldly answered.

“Ay—no,” she returned scornfully. “Always discretion itself is
my little cousin. Charmingly discreet; but is it these models of
maidenhood, think you, who will stand by a man when things go wrong
with him, or your bold, unscrupulous women—such for instance as I——”

“Nay, but I would think you neither bold nor unscrupulous,” he
contended.

“She has done well for herself. Very well,” continued Radegund. “She
foresaw, this clever little girl, that the world might be about to deal
hardly with you, Conrad Dasipodius.”

“To think,” said the mathematician sadly, “that Bruno should have so
utterly betrayed me. Bruno!”

“Is it then so strange,” she asked, “that this fair lily—this syren,
should have dragged Bruno Wolkenberg into her toils, when they have
lured wiser men than he before now?”




CHAPTER XXVIII.

“AFFINITIES.”


This was a random shaft of Radegund’s, but it bore a curious
significance in the mathematician’s ear. He believed, too, that it
accounted for her wild words. Clearly she had grown jealous, and
anything, as he told himself, uttered in the frenzies of jealousy,
should have no more import attached to it than other mad utterances
find. Could it be possible that this foolish woman had brought herself
to fancy that Bruno Wolkenberg could swerve from his allegiance to
herself? Preposterous! Such indeed was the mathematician’s first inward
comment. But then—why then so preposterous? No such unreasonable
supposition after all, that Bruno Wolkenberg had tired at last of
this haughty, irritable woman, who must make life a burden for any
man so unfortunate as to be in love with her. Surely it was no such
great marvel that the surgeon should turn from her, to seek rest and
consolation from the gentle Lily; and if Sabina had fled to Bruno
for shelter from the storm of vexation, and the revulsion of feeling
her recent discovery had roused within her, it was not after all so
great a wonder. Rather his wonder was now at himself, that he should
have accredited these two with being made of holier, finer stuff than
ordinary men and women were; but that was his fault, not theirs. If
they had been false to him, when he felt that had he been in the place
of either, he should have been true, what then? These two disappointed
hearts had sought each other at the rebound, and it was well, very
well, for Bruno and for Sabina. The girl’s good angel had wrestled
with him for her, and conquered. And for himself was left—what? That
peaceful monk’s cell, the once much yearned for refuge, where he might
enshrine his life’s great hope, all faded now, and give himself to the
work which of late had seemed to him but part and parcel of his love,
but which had grown jealous from fancied neglect, and was now taking
summary and cruel vengeance.

Lightning swift these reflections coursed through the mathematicians
brain. He forgot the very presence of Radegund, until having waited
vainly for his response, she said, “We know that this fair cousin
of mine has but to lift her little finger, for men to fall down and
worship.”

“Ay,” acquiesced he, “indeed she has a most strange power.”

“And yet,” went on Radegund, “what is she after all more than a pretty
doll?”

“You mis-estimate your cousin. She might, I think, prove herself to be
a true noble-hearted woman one of these days.”

“As she has proved herself to you,” mocked the artist.

“I was about to say,” he answered, “true for one she truly loved.”

“And if she could not be true to you, where is the god among men to
win the approbation of this most dainty lady? Pearls before swine! God
in heaven! To think what she has so lightly cast away! And yet it is
well. The clouds are gathering so fast about you, Conrad Dasipodius.
To-morrow even they may burst, and what shelter would this pretty
Sabina have been to you at such a time?”

The mathematician suppressed a bitter sigh. She would have been more
than shelter, she would have been consolation, but that was no theme
for discussion; and he told Radegund as much, adding, “And now to
business”.

“We are coming to that,” nodded she with a curious smile. “That which
she could not—cannot be to you, I can.”

Then she paused, and watched his face, hitherto pale to ghastliness
under the moon’s light, but now suddenly flushed and agitated with some
emotion not even her second sight could divine.

“I do not understand you, Mistress von Steinbach,” he stammered.

“No, you never do,” she answered fretfully. “I meant to say that
to-morrow when they take the Horologe work from you, I will have it
given back to you. You smile?”

“Pardon me, I cannot help it. This is such a very strange notion of
yours. They would hardly be so——”

“So mad,” interrupted she. “So you think.”

“Truly. So I believe,” he replied, still smiling.

“Then wait till you are undeceived. And to-morrow, when these
addlepates declare you unfit for your task, you will remember what
I have said to-night. You will perhaps also repent having spurned
my offer. Why, at your bidding, I would have defied them all—every
mother’s son of them! I would have snapped my fingers in their faces.
Would _she_ do that, think you?”

“But what need,” laughed Dasipodius, “do you imagine there will be——”

“What need! what need!” she cried, angrily stamping her foot. “Wait
then, only wait. Oh! how twofold is your blindness!”

“No,” contested he prosaically. “That is precisely the whole question.
Never have my mind’s eyes been so true to me, as since my bodily eyes
have refused to do their office.”

“And you flatter yourself these earth-clods will understand that! Oh,
believe me, they will draw no such fine distinction.”

“And they need trouble themselves to draw none,” he returned. “If to
the last letter I fulfil the contract, in what way can it concern them
how I fulfil it?”

“It is being done by magic, the people say.”

The mathematician laughed more merrily than he had for many a day. “Say
they so?” he cried. “Then by my faith am I glad my case is not at their
tender mercies.”

“The town council is ruled by the mob.”

“Nay then, nay, what is to become of me?” he asked still in hugely
amused tones.

“Laugh if you will,” said Radegund with stern sullenness. “I sought to
stand by you in your trial-hour, Conrad Dasipodius, and you disdain my
aid, and mock at me.”

“Why will you make me seem so churlish?” he said, regaining
seriousness. “How would it be possible for me to disdain such
generosity? But it is to myself I must stand or fall, Mistress von
Steinbach. If—if I really cannot help myself, how are you to help me?”

“Many a time a woman’s word has been known to turn the balance, where a
man’s best eloquence has fallen dead.”

“How often indeed!” he said, gallantly lifting his cap, and turning as
if to leave her.

“Farewell then,” she said, setting her face towards the old house,
where her lamp still gleamed through her studio’s curtained window.
“And yet,” she murmured passionately, “I would have died to do you a
service.”

“Oh Radegund!” he cried, turning back, and holding out both hands
towards her, “do I not know you would. And may Heaven one day reward
you for your noble heart!”

A light so radiant, so ecstatic, that it was hard to recall the
vanished gloom, broke over the artist’s face, as she stretched her
white arms towards him, and with a low joyous cry, laid her hands in
his.

“It is but right,” she murmured tremulously, “that we artists should
stand by—love each other to the death.”

“If need be,” assented he. “But go home now, Mistress von Steinbach;
this will be serving you an ill turn else. Why, do you know that since
I have held these two hands of yours, they have changed from ice to
fire?”

Then he released them, and feeling for her mantle, wrapped it close and
warm about her shoulders, and turned to accompany her to the door of
her house.

Clit, clat! across the silent Platz comes the unmistakable sound of
Burgomaster von Steinbach’s stick. Tempted by the beauty of the night,
and because, too, he was restless with certain vexing thoughts, Niklaus
has been across to spend an hour with his old chum Christian; but
surely it is an evil genius which has prompted him to make his way back
by the Dom Platz, instead of by the narrow cross-lane he generally
affects, since for the second time in the space of a few weeks it
pictures to him his niece and Dasipodius in all-absorbing _tête-à-tête_.

The Burgomaster came to a halt as he caught sight of them, and watched
their two tall figures cross the Platz, until they reached the door of
Radegund’s house. She entered it alone, while Dasipodius returning,
made for the way Niklaus had just traversed; and the Burgomaster,
bringing his stick down with stern emphasis, passed on his own opposite
road, and when he got home, he declined to eat a scrap of any of the
tempting little delicacies Sabina had ready for him. Moodily seating
himself by the hearth he began, as he invariably did when his world
wagged contrary, to grind the ashes to powder under his heel.

“Well, after all,” he blurted out at last, “it’s a right good riddance!”

“What is, father?” enquired Sabina, looking up from her work.

“A fine thing to have seen thee tied for life to a blind man.”

Sabina did not speak; she tried to lay in order some bright silken
threads, which just persisted in twisting themselves more distractingly
about for her pains. “Upon my honour, thou’rt a clever child. Worlds
cleverer than thy poor old father. How didst thou find it out then,
hey?”

But it seemed to Sabina that if she ventured to speak her heart must
burst, and she went on tangling up her threads in silence.

“Christian says,” continued the Burgomaster, “’twas all your fault. He
blames you, Sabina. Why do you shiver so?”

“I think the night is bitter cold,” said the girl, coming to her
father’s side; and cowering down over the flame she contrived to say:
“Did you see Con— Master Dasipodius to-night, father?”

“Hem—h’m—ay,” coughed he uneasily. “Yes I saw him.”

“And he,” she burst forth. “Oh, father! in pity tell me what did he
say?”

“Nay,” said Niklaus evasively. “I did not speak with him.”

She gazed up in some perplexity. “You’re not angry with him?” she said
with wistful earnestness. “No, you must not be angered with—Master
Dasipodius.”

“That’s as it may be,” growled Niklaus, annihilating another piece of
charred wood.

“You should have spoken with him in a neighbourly way,” she went on
demurely. “Promise me that you will next time, for my sake, father.
Promise.”

“What a queer child you are to be sure!” said Niklaus, gazing with
puzzled eyes into her upturned face. “Well yes, then, I promise. Who
said I dreamed of doing otherwise? But I had no chance of any word with
him to-night. He was high busy talking with your cousin Radegund, out
in the moonlight. I saw them as I came home.”

Then the Burgomaster made an effort to get a glimpse of his daughter’s
face, but her head lay on his knee, and her eyes were fixed on the
fire. Some pictures it made must have sorely distressed her, for
presently a tear trickled all down the Burgomaster’s red hose,
glistening in the dancing glow like a pearl; and then there came a
sympathetic moisture into his own eyes, and he perforce too stared
sorrowfully into the blaze, and thought his thoughts; more confusing
ones than hers, which were not complex. She had merely sacrificed her
love for the sake of him she loved. Nothing more than that. She still
breathed, and walked, and talked, and ate, and slept; that is, the
eating and sleeping would come by and bye; it was simply that the
sunlight had all faded out from her young life, and dim and meaningless
the years to come rose up before her—the years which but so lately had
seemed laden with the golden grain of love and of sweet companionship.
But it had been all a mistake; the love would have brought Conrad no
happiness, because as Radegund had told her, there could be no true
companionship between them—no affinities—(how Sabina hated that word to
her life’s end)—between a soul so nobly gifted and hers, which had but
its affection, and its few little feminine graces to bestow in return.
Ah! and what plain common sense was that which her cousin had spoken!
One day this man would meet with—not of course a kindred spirit, but
still—no; Sabina would not trust herself to think of that now. She
dared not so cruelly rack her heart. Yet despite her struggling to see
nothing, there brooded over her blank a dim shadow which made all yet
darker and more sad, until at last the fell shadow took shape, and
as she knew it to be the form of Radegund, she shivered and moaned
wearily: “It is so cold!—so cold!” echoing all unconsciously her
lover’s very words, when at last he had come to believe his little
mistress false.

But the Burgomaster found himself in a most distracting dilemma. Here,
in the first place, long association had accustomed him to love and
esteem the mathematician, and when the first rumour of his blindness
had reached his ears, he had been first incredulous, then indignant,
and finally he had striven to relieve his bewilderment by demanding
from Christian Dasipodius the real facts of the case. These he had just
now heard from the old man’s lips. For once the great cession question
had been forgotten, and the flagon of Rhenish left to sparkle unheeded
on the table, while Christian had related to his old friend the story
of Conrad’s blindness, how it had stolen upon him very slowly, but
so surely, that he knew it was not to be averted; and how he had set
himself to grapple with the enemy, and render it impotent to spoil his
life; and as Niklaus had listened, all his anger had vanished, and in
spite of himself, he could only admire and think how he had triumphed
over what other men would have regarded as an insuperable obstacle,
and in proportion as he pondered over these things, so much his
first flush of indignation at the blind man’s seeking of his child in
marriage toned down.

“I don’t doubt,” argued Niklaus with himself, “he thought that if he
could manage a clock without his eyes, he might manage a woman. Well!
and he is clever, and has a stout heart, but I don’t know. Still that
is a question I can have no concern with now,” he added with a sigh.
“The little one has settled it for herself in her own way; but I’d
give the best stone in my jewel drawer to be a hundred leagues away
from Strassburg to-morrow. Ay, ay, ay! it was a bad day’s work when
this girl of mine stole his heart,” and Niklaus pensively patted his
child’s head. “But there, never fret about it,” he went on aloud.
“You know best, little one, what pleases you. Besides, there are more
fish for you in the water, than ever came out of it. And as to Master
Dasipodius, well as far as I can see, fair ladies won’t be lacking to
console him for your cruelty.”

And thus it was the Burgomaster did his best to comfort his daughter.




CHAPTER XXIX.

“WORSE THAN SILENCE.”


Mass is over in the Cathedral, and the few worshippers who have braved
the early morning’s biting frost are gone shiveringly home to their
firesides. The vast edifice seems utterly deserted; as indeed, says
Prudentius, it always ought to be at daybreak; for what creature with
an ounce of brains, would loiter about in it of his own free will just
when Erwin’s daughter and the rest of the ghostly crew are flitting
back to their niches and pedestals and dim corners out of the way of
good honest broad daylight?

The sacristan, according to the long-established law which he has made
unto himself, is in the buttery hatch, fortifying his inner man against
the cold, and all those other little disagreeable incidentals, which he
declares each day brings, as surely as fast follows feast.

Meanwhile in the Cathedral, laggard full daylight glides stealthily,
yet with weird and awful grace, and through her filmy veil, like
ghostly guardians of that silent temple’s chaste loveliness, loom
the marble monuments and clustered shafts casting faint shadows
along the aisles. Especially about the Saint Laurence chapel, where
the wintry sunlight’s first pale ray steals in through the painted
window, spreading a haze of mystic loveliness, these shadows fall very
strangely, on picture and carving, and sheeny-broidered hangings.

Is it indeed true, as Prudentius avouches, that those statues walk
the Cathedral at nights? or is it with Strassburg this cold winter
morning as old legends tell it once was ages ago, with the fair old
Norman city, when angels brought the statue of Our Lady across the
waves, and set it there in a shrine to be the place’s patron-saint
for evermore? At least the figure standing under the fretted gateway,
as sculptured saint might stand in canopied niche, is a crowning
grace to the chapel’s beauty. Pale and clear as purest alabaster is
that sad young face, slightly upturned, but the hair rippling back
from the brow is golden-hued, gleaming where it catches the chance
sun-rays like purest metal. There too, all cunningly rose-tinted, are
the transparent finger-tips of the white hands, one of which gathers
close the ample blue velvet miniver-bordered mantle, while the other
clasps a richly-bound missal, wound about with a chaplet of pearls and
rubies strung on a golden chain. Judged by that uncertain light, the
close-fitting under-dress might be taken for some soft, thick, white
camlet stuff, and certain it is that the sculptor of this gracious
figure must have been a true master of his craft, yet whether the
beautiful yet suffering face might be a Saint Margaret’s, or whether
she were a Jephtha’s daughter, or some other virgin-martyr or confessor
of holy memory, no inscription was there to tell; or it might have
been that the creator of this figure desired to personify Ruth the
steadfast-minded, her of the loving clinging heart, who said: “Where
thou diest, I will die”.

Such a place that Cathedral was for idealizing every-day things. For
after all, the figure was but Sabina von Steinbach’s, the Burgomaster’s
daughter, who had chanced to pause for an instant on the threshold of
the chapel, where after mass she had stolen away to tell her beads.
For once however she had treated them with somewhat scanty ceremony,
hurrying on to make in the most persuasive terms her troubled heart
could improvise, extemporary supplications suited to her own particular
needs.

Sabina, always a most orthodox member of the orthodox church, had
ordinarily small fancy for this sort of invocation. Hitherto she had
always found the prayers in her missal and her Book of Hours amply
sufficing; but on this special morning, not all the beatific doctors
who had ever lived could have expressed her heart’s desire for her
before high Heaven’s throne. Yet it was a simple matter enough; she
had only entreated that things should go well that day and always for
Conrad Dasipodius, and that no breath of the blight threatening him
should fall.

For the old footing between him and herself to be renewed, she did
not dream of asking. What to him was her love but a valueless burden
which had already wrought, oh me! such boundless mischief? No! because
this love of hers for Dasipodius was unquenchable, it must burn on,
but henceforth it must be always hidden, self-consuming, and she was
content—at least she told herself she was—quite content to live apart,
finding her pride in his success, her joy in hearing his fellow-men
speak well of him, and her peace in the conviction that her own death
in life had made good some of that ill she had so unwittingly worked
him.

For her henceforward, things must at best be cruelly dull and
commonplace; yet what was that but just to find herself like anybody
else, instead of the happy creature singled out by the one man in all
the universe worth a thought.

And now Sabina is practising the new order of things. She is going home
to see that all is bright and comfortable for her father. And when he
comes in from his counting-house, it is to be no love-lorn Phyllis he
is to kiss and bid good-morrow to, but a busy little housewife with
never a thought in the world—ah dear no—not the shadow of one, beyond
that solemn question touching the fitness of the great Westphalian
boar’s head for immediate larding, and what quantity of sugar must be
had in for the new confections aunt Ottilie has sent her the recipe
for. And as Sabina, casting one parting look at the blessed Saint
Laurence, stepped into the aisle, and made towards the western portal
round in front of the Horologe scaffolding, all the mystery seemed
to float away from her, and she was just once more a pretty, rather
demure little lady, hastening home from early Mass. Demure it was
absolutely incumbent on her to appear, because just across yonder a man
was kneeling by one of the pillars of the Horologe, and although his
face was now entirely hidden in his long black cloak as if absorbed
in prayer, there never is any telling when a man’s head may pop up
if a woman’s dress happens to rustle by; and that is precisely what
did occur; and before Sabina well knew how it had all come about, he
had risen to his feet, and she found herself face to face with Conrad
Dasipodius, and heard his voice bidding her a formal good-morrow. With
a painful effort she returned the greeting, and strove to pass on; but
her feet refused to obey her will, and pale and trembling she stood,
murmuring some incoherent words about the Horologe.

“No, Mistress von Steinbach,” replied Dasipodius, “it was not the
Horologe work which brought me here this morning. I came to pray. We
all have need of that sometimes.”

“Of course,” stammered Sabina—“always.”

“Very like,” he said; “but one prays with a difference.”

“I—I—do not—understand you, Master Dasipodius,” she faltered.

“No?” he said, with a slight shrug, and lifting of his brows. “Ah, I
meant only to say, that the prayer which yesterday was an irksome task,
becomes to-day a necessity. At least, I find it so; but these matters
do seem to be quite another thing with you, Mistress von Steinbach, and
such as you, whose sympathies are as evenly regulated as four sides of
a square; never outrunning the angle of prudence, and whose pulses keep
time as correctly as the beats of this clock here. Nay, often I despair
of bringing this cold hard thing of wood and brass to such obedience.
Maybe,” he continued with a harsh laugh, when no response reached him,
“I should do well to entrust it to your discipline for a bit? You who
so skilfully regulate that—which you call your heart.”

Could he have seen the bloodless, agonized face before him! But he
could not; and he merely stood, with his head slightly bent forward
in the old listening attitude she knew so well, while his eyes seemed
striving to penetrate some dark veil hanging between him and all joyful
things. It might have been that one word then from the girl beside
him, could have rent it all away, but though her dry pale lips were
parted, and quivered convulsively, no syllable came from them. Her very
breathing was suspended; and a dead sad silence reigned in the vast
Cathedral, while daylight, now striding on apace, cast a sickly glare
upon those two white and stony faces.

“Your letter,” he continued, “reached me; but that of course you know.
Everyone knows it.”

“And—and you?” she gasped.

“Ay, yes, yes. I am to blame for not having answered it yet—much to
blame; but there is some indulgence to be accorded to blind men, even
when they dare—as I have dared. Speak, will you not say one word to me?
At least you forgive me—Sabina?”

She stretched her trembling arms towards him.

“It is you who should forgive me,” she said. “Oh—Master Dasipodius,
what mischief I have done! If the Horologe——”

“Nay, never fret about the Horologe,” he said wearily. “I was thinking
of—of that mistake of ours, when we thought we loved each other. I
blame myself very much for this, Sabina. Not for all the horologes in
the world,” he went on, while she stood shrinking back, with her eyes
fixed in tense earnestness on his face, “ought I to have deceived you.
And yet—do not think too hardly of me. I sought to act for the best—I
felt so sure that you—your love——”

“Yes—I know,” she said, a crimson flush overspreading her ashen face.
“You thought I had given it to you—before you had asked for it——”

“Indeed,” he interrupted in surprised tones, “I had no such——”

“And so,” she said, waving away his words with a slight involuntary
gesture of contempt, “you thought you would take pity on me.”

“Pity!”

“Ay—yes; but it shall not be. I will have no such sacrifices;
because—because——”

“No,” he answered coldly, “there must be no sacrifices, and we
understand each other now quite well. Is it not so, Mistress Sabina? We
need be at no more cross purposes. I am glad we have met. It is much
better to be clear.”

“Oh, much better,” she said brokenly.

“And,” he went on, feeling with his hand for hers, and taking the
death-cold fingers in his icy ones, “we are friends—henceforth—is it
not so?”

And as hand-in-hand the two stood there, cold and impassive as a pair
of marble statues, who could have guessed at the torn hearts quivering
beneath?

“Oh, Master Dasipodius!” she sobbed forth at last, “if I could indeed
be your real true friend: if I could give——”

“You would give me—anything in reason,” he said, with a smile of chilly
sarcasm, “would you not?”

“I would give you my life if it——”

“Nay,” he said, “I need no such extravagant protestations. I am sure
you are a good child; and friendship is an excellent thing no doubt,”
he added with a groaning sigh, as he dropped her hand and turned away.

“Conrad!” she wailed, and in the agony of her despair, she clutched his
mantle with her half-numbed fingers. “Conrad!”

“Mistress von Steinbach?” he said, pausing attently, but not another
syllable reached his ear, and again he turned impatiently from her, all
unconscious of her grasp. His action was so abrupt, that it wrenched
the cloak from her feeble hold, and staggering back, she would have
tripped and fallen, had it not been for the clock’s friendly wooden
framework; while the blind man who would have stepped aside from
trampling on the merest weed, strode with stern, set face from the
woman he so passionately loved.




CHAPTER XXX.

A CAUSE CÉLÈBRE.


Never was such a curious trial—for if it was not to be called a trial,
what was it to be called?—as this of the Professor Conrad Dasipodius;
and not one of the pundits of the city felt that he cared to pronounce
any foregone conclusions upon the case, because the head and front
of the mathematician’s offending had not the shadow of a parallel in
Strassburg’s archives; nor as far as curious enquirers could ascertain,
in any other records ancient or modern; and even the Decalogue itself
had provided no code against such an emergency.

Certainly the question was a most delicate one; and preliminary
formalities must, so the wisest heads counselled, be conducted with the
utmost discretion, and all appearance of coercion carefully avoided.
Hitherto, it could only be generally conceded the Professor Dasipodius
had borne a high, not to say most exalted reputation for probity and
integrity; and his word of honour that he would appear to speak for
himself must be accepted. In other words, he was not as yet manacled
and ironed and dieted in a dungeon. This was held by Strassburg
generally to be a mistake; and when standing agape at their shop doors,
and hanging about the streets between old Christian’s house and the
Chancellery, the people saw Dasipodius pass serene and composed through
their midst, without so much as a halberdier at his back, they were
sorely disappointed and put about.

“But just wait,” they said more cheerfully, “till he comes out again.
He’ll sing another sort of tune then.”

“Maybe,” said Prudentius the sacristan, who leaving the Cathedral to
take care of itself, had come out to see the fun; “but for my part, I’d
liefer it had been the painting woman.”

“What?” said a bystander. “Mistress von Steinbach do you mean?”

Prudentius nodded.

“And what has she to do with it?”

“What hasn’t she? I’ll swear,” grumbled the sacristan, “they’ve got the
wrong pig by the ear somehow.”

“And I’ll swear you’re turned idiot,” contended the other. “Aren’t they
going to try this fellow because he’s the devil’s own cousin?”

“Oh, ho!” laughed Prudentius, “and what then may be your opinion of
her?”

“Have a care how your tongue wags, you popish bald pate! or you shall
have a taste of what this can do,” retorted Radegund’s champion, baring
a brawny arm.

Having first wedged his stout person between the wall and the broad
back of a spectator double his own height, the sacristan found himself
in a position to reply that he never wasted breath on heretics; but
finding his point of view worse than disadvantageous, he clambered on
to the edge of the stone fountain, and there maintained his equilibrium
by clinging with both arms round the neck of a marble Hebe, whose
contrasted slender figure with his portly outlines, excited the crowd
beneath him to a hailstorm of delicate badinage. Prudentius was not,
however, easily discomfited, he was used to heretics and triflers, and
could at anyrate afford to laugh at them; for none could see the show
as well as he could, and he so dearly loved a show. The merest flash
of a scarlet surcoat, or the faintest tweak of a horn, would charm
the lay brother to the street corner, long before men and women of the
world had even a notion that anything unusual was going on, and this
morning promised a treat indeed. Professor Dasipodius’ case had become
such a nine days’ wonder, as had not been heard of for miles round,
time out of mind; and from a comparatively private piece of business,
was grown into a question concerning which every citizen and citizeness
from highest to lowest, recognised as a manifest duty to say all that
chanced to enter their heads; and further, seeing that the Horologe was
public property, they claimed a right to assist at the enquiry, hinting
that if there should be closed doors on the occasion, the Town Council
should hear about it afterwards. It had been therefore finally arranged
that the great Justice Hall of the Chancellery should be the scene of
the proceedings; and as mere work-a-day gowns and doublets would have
been gratuitous insult to that awesome chamber, all the syndics and
civic dignitaries wore their ceremonial garb, and presented an imposing
picture as they filed in order due to their places.

Love of pomp and circumstance is inherent in the human heart, and
let levellers strive to crush it as they may, will crop through; and
although a large majority of the Strassburgers had discarded from
their religious observances every iota of ornament and ceremonial,
until their conventicles had become very valleys of bareness and dry
bones, they were as eager as ever to feast their senses with a piece
of colour, or a strain of music, even though such things were but
heralding a rebel to the block, or some wretched thief to be broken on
the wheel.

And such with its difference was the question now at issue. On that
particular morning, justly or unjustly, there was a man to be worried,
and Strassburg meant to make holiday; but whether it was to be a real
red-letter day seemed questionable, because many were of opinion that
not by any stretch of logic or sophistry, could the mathematician’s
affliction be construed into a crime. Others, however, maintained
that never was deeper-dyed criminal than he, and compared with him
murderers or high treasoners were pure as the driven snow; for what
doubt could there be but that the man, thwarted by this visitation
of Heaven’s wrath upon him in his ambition to be the maker of their
Horologe, had, rather than relinquish the work, invoked the devil and
all his angels to finish it for him; and for those who defended him,
what were they but aiders and abettors of his fearful crime? And so as
the mathematician passed, the crowd pressed heavily after him, until to
save him from being crushed, a guard was sent from the Chancellery for
his safe conduct.

That was as it should be, and the mob beside itself with excitement and
anticipation, pushed on, its vanguard squeezing into the vast council
chamber, till the place was too densely packed for a pin to fall to
the floor; while those whom ill luck had left in the rear, were forced
to swarm outside in the raw morning mist, where they strove their best
to keep from utterly congealing, by saluting the respective popular or
unpopular representatives of their civic rights, with cheers and howls
as the case might be. And as political opinion was just then very far
from unanimous, the demonstrations became once or twice so uproarious,
that some of the chief agitators found themselves spending the rest of
the day in the guard-house cells, with ample leisure for reflecting
whether they had not been better doing a good day’s work at home, and
leaving the Horologe and its maker to settle their own affairs.

By the time the last official attendant at the proceedings had passed
in, a heavy snowstorm fell on the vast gathering, beneath which it
subsided in stolid silence, to indulge in the unsatisfactory pastime
of speculating how those enviable persons who had got themselves a
footing inside might be finding their reward for all the shoving and
toe crushing they had endured.

This for some half hour or so was undoubtedly meagre; for save and
excepting the dignitaries on the raised platform in their scarlet and
gold bravery, which, though immensely imposing, was a sight as old
as the hills, and the place’s architectural adornments, which for a
couple of batzen they could, if they wanted, see comfortably any day of
the week, there was nothing particularly amusing in the proceedings.
There, indeed, was the Professor Dasipodius—but not, as everybody had
anticipated, and Syndic Hackernagel had been distinctly heard to say
would be the case, behind the bar where felons were always tried,
but positively accommodated with a seat, and looking neither bowed
with shame nor haughtily defiant, but much the same as he looked
always,—perfectly calm and self-collected. To aggravate the prevailing
disappointment and annoyance, his eyelids were not even closed; and a
tremor chilled to the very marrow of the spectators, lest after all the
whole affair should be a hoax.

It was simply impossible to suppose those eyes could not see. Rumour,
it is true, had declared them to be wide open like a cat’s in the dark,
but they had conceived that to be such a mere three black crow story,
that it had not been credited for an instant by the thinking part of
the community. Such sort of tales everyone had heard before—from their
grandmothers, but hitherto no such instance of blind eyes, wide open,
clear and lustrous, unusually lustrous, had come under their notice,
and why should it occur now? And in short, with your common-sense,
practical people, only seeing can be believing—and all they could
say was, that if the case were actually as asserted, there must be
something quite wrong at the bottom of it all; and with a thankful
feeling that everything had come to light, they set about lending their
earnest attention to the proceedings, which after a few preliminary
formalities, virtually opened with the summoning of the informer
against Conrad Dasipodius.

This person was not mentioned by name, and for the two or three
intervening seconds the mathematician’s face was seen to grow deadly
pale. A terrible suspicion had been forcing itself upon him. Was
it—could it be possible that—no. Thank Heaven—no. Such bitterness at
least was spared him, and the voice which answered to the summons was a
man’s—the voice of Otto von Steinbach.

Otto looked discomposed and flushed, and his eyes kept glancing
uneasily from the solemn circle before him, towards a woman in the
crowded court, for whom everybody had made way; but of whose face, so
closely concealed by a black hood, only an occasional flash of dark
eyes could be seen.

“Now, tell us how you came by your information?” said the Burgomaster,
sternly addressing his nephew. “Through some letter, I believe you
said.”

“Y—yes,” answered Otto, shifting his eyes for an instant from Niklaus’
face, to seek those of the woman. “The letter I was charged to deliver
to Master Dasipodius.”

“Charged by whom?”

“By my sister,” he mutteringly replied.

“Speak out,” shouted the town clerk, who was a little hard of hearing,
or said he was.

“By my sister,” reiterated Otto, with a start.

“Did she write that letter?”

“That letter—yes—I mean no—it was from Mistress Sabina——”

“Gentlemen! gentlemen!” interposed the Burgomaster, whose face looked
terribly harassed and aged. “This is not a formal trial. We know
without any bush-beating that Master Dasipodius is blind. More’s the
pity. Surely there’s no need to——”

“Produce that letter,” said Syndic Hackernagel, turning to Dasipodius.

“I cannot,” he replied.

“Cannot!” mockingly echoed the Syndic.

“These hands never touched it,” continued Dasipodius, “and these eyes,
as you know, never saw it.”

“Then where is the letter?” demanded the Burgomaster, looking round,
and finally letting his eyes rest on Otto. “Who has it?”

“How—how should I know?” stammered the young man, with changing colour,
and his eyes again straying helplessly to the dark ones under the
hood, as if his senses belonged to the woman who stood there, rather
than to himself. “How should I know, I—I——”

“Be careful, sir, how you speak.”

“I am being—I—what could I have to do with it—af—after I gave it up?”

“Into whose hands?”

“Into Kaspar Habrecht’s,” he added in pathetically innocent tones, “as
I was bidden.”

“By whom?”

“By Master Dasipodius himself to be sure. He never does lose a chance
of favouring that boy, I can tell you, and——”

“Go down. Let Kaspar Habrecht be called.”

And then Kaspar told his simple story of how Dasipodius bade him read
the letter aloud, and how he obeyed, “until”—and then the boy paused
and coloured. “Go on,” prompted Tobias. “Until,” went on Kaspar, “I
began to see that it was meant for my master’s ears alone, and——”

“Why?” interrupted the Syndic.

“Let the boy finish his story, Master Hackernagel,” said the
Burgomaster.

“And I suppose I stopped short; and then Otto von Steinbach snatched
it from me, and went on with it himself.”

“So that it was Otto von Steinbach who finished the reading of the
letter?” said the Burgomaster.

“By all the saints, that I did not,” said Otto, glaring at Kaspar, “and
if you say I did——”

“I do not say so, Otto von Steinbach,” answered the boy. “No one
finished it, you know quite well.”

“Was it, then, never read to the end?” enquired Niklaus.

“Not to my knowledge,” replied Kaspar. “I left the studio with my
master after his accident, and when, at his bidding, I returned for the
letter, it was nowhere to be found.”

“But where the deuce—ahem—where could it have got to?” said Niklaus.

“Where the deuce indeed?” sympathetically murmured the crowd.

“Some one must have that letter?” queried Syndic Tobias looking round.

“Ask the witches!” said a mocking voice.

“Yes—that’s just it,” said Otto, “there is no dealing, is there, with a
fellow who has doings with—with——”

“Doctor Bruno Wolkenberg!”

And Bruno came forward, his blue eyes sad, and his broad frank brow
furrowed with anxious lines. He replied mechanically, almost absently,
to the first few general questions put to him, but on being asked if
he were a friend of the mathematician’s, his face brightened, and he
animatedly answered “Yes”.

“And Master Dasipodius has sought your surgical aid for his blindness?”

“Yes.”

“It has been beyond your skill, Doctor Wolkenberg?” questioned Niklaus
slowly.

“Yes,” sighed the surgeon.

“You believe him then to be stone blind?” asked Tobias Hackernagel,
staring hard at Dasipodius.

“Assuredly, yes. I know him to be so,” said Bruno, flushing petulantly.
“Has he not himself said it?”

“And what is your opinion, Surgeon Wolkenberg,” enquired Syndic
Hackernagel in his best manner, “of a man who does such work as that of
the Horologe, without the assistance of his natural vision?”

“That he is very clever,” answered Bruno, backing to make way for the
next witness, Isaac Habrecht.

“Do you consider,” went on Tobias, “do you consider, Isaac Habrecht,
that Master Dasipodius is competent for the work he has undertaken?”

“Yes,” nodded Isaac, with an emphasis betokening that a more
superfluous question could not well be propounded.

“Do you consider that it might be placed in better hands?”

Isaac gazed round him as if he did not thoroughly understand.

“Your own, for instance,” blandly insinuated Tobias.

“Mine?” gruffly ejaculated Isaac.

“I am told, my friend, that you are an excellent workman.”

“Yes—I am a good workman.”

“None better?” sweetly smiled Tobias.

“That may be so,” nodded Isaac.

“And if—it should be decided to transfer the completion of the Horologe
to your hands——”

“You may decide till doomsday, the whole pack of you, but I take no
decisions excepting from my master, Conrad Dasipodius,” said Habrecht;
then he leisurely turned his broad shoulders on the august convention,
and mixed with the crowd again.

Otto von Steinbach being now again called to the fore, the query
already put to Bruno Wolkenberg was propounded to him: “What do you
think of a man who can work without being able to see?”

“Oh, you know,” said Otto, “it’s such nonsense.”

“What is?” gravely asked Niklaus.

“Why—whoever supposes he does?”

“Suppose! jackanapes,” thundered the Burgomaster, “are not the proofs
all before us that he does?”

“Oh! but it is so absurd though,” insisted Otto; “why, I couldn’t do it
myself. Such a thing was never heard of since the world began—by lawful
means, you know.”

“You believe,” began Syndic Hackernagel in impressive tones, “that
supernatural aid——”

“I’m sure of it,” nodded Otto.

“And the form assumed by such aids?”

“Well, I only know that Mother Barepenny’s black cat——”

“What the foul fiend——” interrupted the Burgomaster.

“Yes, exactly,” said Otto, plucking courage in the light of Syndic
Hackernagel’s smiling countenance turned full upon him; “Dasipodius
gives Mother Barepenny money—gold. I’ve seen him do it myself, many a
time,” and Otto glanced round triumphantly.

“Is this true?” asked Hackernagel in sepulchral tones of Dasipodius,
who assented with the suspicion of a smile curving the grave lips.

“This is indeed a fearful accusation,” continued the Syndic. “And your
ostensible purpose in going to Mother Barepenny’s has been—?”

“Because those who should look after the poor seem invariably to forget
to go to her,” answered Dasipodius. “Mother Barepenny has been very
near dying of cold and starvation.”

“Mother Barepenny,” said a fat voice from the scarlet and gold and fur,
“is a god-forsaken old woman.”

“At least a friend-forsaken one, gentlemen,” said the mathematician.

“Friend-forsaken!” croaked Hackernagel; “friend, forsooth! Why, she
may thank Heaven she has not been burned for a witch ages ago! And you
imperil your name for such a hag as this! Oh! no, no. That is too
much! a head like yours, which perfectly well knows how to put two and
two together! No. Have a care, Professor Dasipodius! have a care. We
are getting on dangerous ground—very dangerous ground indeed,” and the
countenance of Tobias Hackernagel waxed radiant. “And danger,” he went
on addressing his compeers, “which I think, gentlemen, you will all
agree with me, is not lessened by the additional facts I find here,”
and Hackernagel opened his tablets. “Master Dasipodius, I have reason
to believe, has in his possession several printed volumes, very curious
books. I assume you will not deny this fact?” he enquired of the blind
man.

“Indeed, no,” answered Dasipodius, a ray of proud content overspreading
his face, “they are very rare and precious.”

“You see!” cried Tobias, pitching his voice to a high triumph key. “He
is proud of it, absolutely proud. And these,” he added, dropping his
voice to a groan, as he referred again to his tablets, “these are the
books he glories in: Copernicus—_Terrestrial Rotation_. I think you
will agree with me that the less we say about that the better.”

“Well, I don’t know,” speculatively began Counsellor Klausewitz. “I
don’t know——”

“You do not, Master Klausewitz,” snapped Tobias; “none of us do. I
trust we never shall—meddle with such things.”

“_A History of the Gnostic Sect_,” continued Hackernagel, referring
again to his list.

“Now, that’s the first I’ve heard of it!” remarked a meditative voice.
“Does it believe, I wonder, in Justification by——”

“Donnerwetter!” ejaculated the Syndic, surprised into an expletive,
“these interruptions are unseemly.”

“Order!” cried the town clerk.

“_Master Coverdale’s Bible_,” read on Tobias, “and the only book on
my list to the soul’s edification, excepting a manuscript book of the
Gospels, whose popish pictures and gaudy colouring, however, completely
nullify the grains of truth it may contain—hem, hem. And here:
_Sebastian Brandt’s Ship of Fools_.”

A deep pleasurable murmur greeted this mention of the popular favourite.

“Quite so, good people—yes, yes,” assented Tobias, a little haltingly.
“Quite right and proper of you all. Master Brandt’s work is clever,
undoubtedly so; but shall we make idols unto ourselves? I cannot
conceal from myself that for a scholar and an intellectual person
to devote his powers to mere ethical teaching is a soul-ensnaring
thing. When shall we grasp the precious truth that not our mode of
self-conduct in this world is of any moment? It is the saving of our
souls which is the one concern. What does it matter what we happen
to do here below. Is this wicked world our resting-place? No, I
must confess, I myself regard Master Brandt’s work as a monument
of misdirected intellectual power. And,” continued the logical
Tobias, “what is intellectual power? A dry stick—a puff of wind—a
bubble—a—nothing. And this wit and humour you prize so curiously highly
in him—what is it? nothing. I can’t even see it myself,” went on the
Syndic, fillipping his podgy fingers among the leaves, “though I assume
Master Dasipodius apprehends something in this passage, for these lines
I find doubly underscored: _Another fool is he who judges of hidden and
mysterious things, such as God the Lord is alone able to judge._ Hidden
and mysterious things, and underscored! That looks suspicious, friends.
You cannot deny that looks as if it signified something more than
meets the eye—a blind man’s eye!” and the Syndic’s shoulders touched
his ear tips. “And here again:

    With measure just shall every one
    Be measured as he may have done;
    As thou judgest me and I judge thee,
    So will our God judge thee and me.

The old exploded, popery-sated doctrine of works! Can a heart be
regenerate and applaud such sentiments. Oh! lamentable! lamentable!
Estimate for yourselves, my good friends, the frame of mind a man
must be in who singles out such a passage as this! But it speaks for
itself—let me pass on. _The History of Reynard the Fox._ Oh yes,”
assented Tobias, as another loud cheer rang through the hall, “a
well-aimed shaft, an excellently well-aimed shaft at the craft and
cunning of popish rule, but——”

“But a knife that might cut two ways, if pure protestantism slipped
into the throne; we’ll take it as said, Syndic,” interrupted
Burgomaster von Steinbach.

“I said no such thing, Burgomaster; I protest against words being put
into my mouth. I hope it is unnecessary. I was simply about to observe
that this grotesque, fable acquires an unpleasant significance when we
consider——”

“It’ll be growing dark soon, Master Hackernagel,” urged the voice of
Councillor Klausewitz. “Will it please you to return to the point?”

“When I see how I have departed from it, Master Job, I’ll thank you
for your interruption,” snarled the Syndic, casting a withering glance
at his yawning civic brother. “The last volume on our list is, I find,
intituled _Prometheus Vinctus_, set down in Greek characters by a
certain heathen person, of whom I make more than doubt you have never
heard.” Syndic Tobias had himself first made its acquaintance on the
previous day, when, having laid violent hands on it, he surreptitiously
conveyed it to a pedagogue neighbour, for coaching up concerning its
drift. “We live, my friends, in an enlightened age,” continued Tobias,
“and I fail to perceive what we, with our Christian privileges, our
sermons, our exhortations, our discourses, our—and the rest of it,
to be brief, what, I repeat—what motive—I would say, should move
our having recourse to pagan productions, is beyond my conception.
Although metaphorically, and in fact physically, I shrink from touching
this book, which is a stage play, with a pair of tongs,” he went
on, suiting the action of his fingers to marvellous imitations of
those implements, “I have in the public interest made it my business
to look into it; and I am told”—— a slight momentary huskiness
impeded his utterance, “I perceive, of course, that underlying its
rounded and incontestably elegant—h’m—hexameters, is a signification
which—ahem—which—which——”

“For the dear Heaven’s sake!” cried Niklaus, “we’ll believe you. We
take it for said, man.”

“Very good—it shall be so,” briskly assented Tobias, “since you desire
it, Burgomaster; and I pass on to the last of my list: _Johannes
Calvinus on Predestination_. Here we have a work,” went on the Syndic,
whose accents came pipingly and weak out of the deafening thunder
of applause and yells which the name evoked, “a work to be used, or
abused, as its student may have put on the new man, or be still of the
earth, earthy. Predestination is—now, Professor Dasipodius, let us
hear,” continued Tobias, turning on the mathematician with folded arms,
and closing his eyes, “do you believe in Predestination? Come, a plain
simple answer to a plain simple question.”

“If Heaven be pleased to handle our fate for us as some of our
fellow-men do, Master Tobias,” replied Dasipodius, “a man, it seems
to me, can have no free will. I fancied until to-day that a person’s
house, and what it might contain, were his own.”

“Oh, certainly,” acquiesced Tobias. “That is a rule which works fairly
well for normal and properly regulated minds; but when a man, or a
woman,—yes, I do not hesitate to assert as my conviction, that it
equally applies to women, in those cases, happily so rare, where the
female nature—h’m—h’m—forgets itself, and develops the faintest spark
of what the world calls genius, there is a prevailing sense in those
who look on, that it is as well”—and Tobias significantly laid the
extreme tip of his forefinger on his smooth little forehead—“as well
to keep an eye on them. I ask any ordinary person if this is not the
case?” he asked appealing to his hearers, but the chorus of assent
fell feebly. “The case before us amply substantiates my theory,”
he continued. “The knowledge of good and evil, as the merest babe
is aware, wisdom or knowledge, knowledge or wisdom—convertible or
synonymous terms—of good and evil, I say, was the ruin of our first
parents. Friends and fellow-citizens, may we all be preserved from too
much wisdom!”

“Amen!” murmured the Town Council.

“Together, and side by side with these printed volumes, I have now to
add, have been found in the Professor Dasipodius’ study, sheet upon
sheet of paper and of parchment, closely covered with every conceivable
and inconceivable geometrical shape. I suppose it is not possible to
utter that word in disentanglement of its connection with astrological
and other unlawful and occult sciences. The attached network of signs
and figures is also bewildering to a degree; and ABC intrudes at every
available corner. Now, Burgomaster and gentlemen, I presume we all know
what ABC means.”

“Tut!” said Niklaus, “let’s hope so. I suppose knowledge——”

“Precisely,” nodded Tobias. “Knowledge—there is my argument. Inasmuch
as I have proved, satisfactorily I trust, that knowledge in the
best hands, our own for example, gentlemen, even a little of it, is
a dangerous thing, what can—what CAN be predicated of that sort of
knowledge which a blind man possesses? What, I ask, in such hands, can
ABC signify, but abracadabra?”




CHAPTER XXXI.

“QUO FATA VOCANT.”


A shudder convulsed the Syndic’s frame as he uttered the terrible
word; while Niklaus, pressing his hand to his forehead, turned towards
Dasipodius. “Tell us yourself, Professor,” he said, “something about
these same calculations. Maybe then we shall come to know what we are
talking about.”

“They are chiefly the Horologe measurements,” replied Dasipodius.

“Chiefly,” echoed Hackernagel, with his head as much on one side as an
inquisitive magpie, and blinking his pink eyelids. “Chiefly, and the
rest?”

“I have in hand other works,” answered the mathematician, “which the
present question in no way concerns.”

“Oh, excuse me, that is quite a mistake. If you have no right to be
making the Horologe, the question at once suggests itself, have you a
right to do anything at all? To be anything at all? Oh, I assure you,
I have grave doubts. It appears to me that it very seriously disputes
your claim to every privilege. I am led at once to ask, what is your
right to free citizenship? Your right to come, your right to go?
Are you, in short, a responsible individual, have you a right to—to
breathe, as it were, to exist, to—to—to——”

“And all this,” asked Dasipodius with something of a smile, “because I
am blind, Master Hackernagel?”

“Have a care, sir,” yapped the Syndic; “do not permit contumacy to
aggravate the peril of your position here. Keep to the point, and
explain what may be the nature of these documents.”

“I am writing a book, for instance.”

“Oh ho!” laughed Tobias. “So you write books as well as make clocks.
Really one must be permitted to say you are vastly clever for a blind
man, Professor; but admitting, for the sake of argument, that you can
do these things, ought you, I ask once more, to be permitted to do
them? For the dignity’s sake of our city, gentlemen and good friends,
I think not. At least so far as this important work of the Horologe is
concerned. I believe on this head there will not be two opinions.”

But to the orator’s amazement, there appeared to be countless ones, and
their holders asserted them so vigorously, that more than ten minutes
passed before order could be restored. Still the multitude entertained
an exalted opinion of Syndic Hackernagel. He had a knack of stroking
them the right way, and they always regarded his sense of justice as
unassailable. Perceiving, therefore, that he had more to say, they at
last subsided into silence, and the Syndic proceeded to remind them
that the Horologe was their own property, to be paid for out of their
own contributed public monies; and for a blind man to be receiving
these, was simply to be allowing themselves to be hoodwinked and
defrauded in the most barefaced manner.

“Master Dasipodius,” interposed the Burgomaster, “hasn’t seen a batzen
of his money yet.”

“No, nor ever will SEE it,” said the Syndic, convulsively chuckling at
his own exquisite wit. “Eh, Master Dasipodius? And yet I’ll dare swear
you count on being paid.”

“Most assuredly,” assented Dasipodius.

“You hear!” cried Hackernagel, turning on his auditors, “and all this
in the very teeth of such men as—well, let us say Master Otto von
Steinbach, grandson, ever so many times removed, of the great Erwin
himself! Oh! it is too much! Shade of our mighty fellow-citizen!”
ejaculated Tobias, clasping his fat fingers aloft, “how wouldst thou
have blushed to behold this day! To think we should be brought to see
kinsman of thine set aside for—whom—what? Gentlemen! gentlemen! I could
weep,” and his voice grew thick with emotion, as he stretched his arms
towards the blushing Otto, “when I remember how you elected that man
instead of Otto von Steinbach here.”

Then as half a hundred voices shouted, “Long live Otto von Steinbach!”
Otto felt that truly life was worth living.

“But,” concluded Tobias, “who shall dare say it is too late? Who shall
pronounce the error irretrievable? Master Dasipodius cannot stand
there, and deny that the question has been discussed before you—I defy
you to do so, Professor,” challenged Tobias.

“You give yourself unnecessary trouble, Syndic.”

“No. How can he indeed? Discussed, I repeat, before you, in a free,
fair and becoming spirit, and without prejudice; and we may stay here
all night——”

“Ay, ay, that may we,” said Councillor Klausewitz, rising with
alacrity; “and the conference then is ended?”

“Nay—by your good leave, the premisses have as yet only been laid down;
the conclusion——”

“That’s what I say,” hopefully said Klausewitz.

“And you are right, Councillor Klausewitz, the conclusion must be
arrived at before we separate.”

The unfortunate Job sat down again, while Tobias lifted his voice and
proceeded, in a lengthy oration, to remind his hearers that a solemn
duty lay before them. That much as it grieved him to say it, he felt
he had no choice but to urge them to cancel their suffrages in favour
of Conrad Dasipodius. Originally, the question had not been simply and
solely one of technical capability, but one also of the measure of
personal consideration the candidate might enjoy; and while it was true
(and Tobias conceded the awkward truth with a grace all his own) that
the Guild of Clockmakers had voted unanimously in favour of Dasipodius,
it ought to be borne in mind that he was a member of their company; and
it was but poor frail human nature to rejoice in reflected honours,
but individuals taking a more extended view of the matter, had been
(as he, Tobias Hackernagel, was in a position, from his own personal
knowledge, to say) much at variance in their opinion of the Professor
Dasipodius. There was a something about him some people did not like;
a reserve, stand-off deportment, which had given considerable offence
in some quarters he—Tobias—knew intimately. A resenting of enquiry into
his mode of conducting the work—and—but why harp on that string, was
not the mystery explained now? Small wonder he had refused to enter
into details with the troops of visitors who had honoured his studio.
Small wonder that with courtesy which barely concealed his restiveness,
he had dismissed them with the assurance that his labour would best be
known by its fruits. A mere gloss to the vulgar axiom that the proof
of the pudding was in the eating; while all the city could bear witness
to the frank, confiding charm of his young friend, Otto von Steinbach’s
bearing. There you found no pride, no reserve, no concealment—why?
because he had nothing to conceal. On that head, however, he, Tobias,
would say no more. What need? the two men stood before them, every
line of their features, every gesture significant of their contrasted
individuality. It was not for him, Tobias Hackernagel, to influence
their decision by a feather’s weight. He had simply to recommend a
collecting of voters’ suffrages a second time, the true wishes of
Strassburg in regard to the Horologe being thereby ascertainable. In
the meantime the work itself must be suspended; and should the result
of the voting go against Dasipodius, there appeared but the one course
for him to adopt, of gracefully retiring from the field. “I believe
you will see the force of my conclusion, Professor? Exactly, I was
convinced you would do so,” continued the Syndic, as Dasipodius opened
his lips to reply. “Here we have then the case in a nutshell; and as
before, my friends, the three former candidates seek your suffrages;
ostensibly three: Otto von Steinbach, Isaac Habrecht——”

“What!” thundered a stentorian voice from the crowd, somewhere in the
rear of the mathematician, who turned his head and said, “Hold your
peace, Isaac, for pity’s sake!” and Habrecht subsided stormily.

“Isaac Habrecht, and Conrad Dasipodius. Virtually, however, as I
flatter myself I have made clear, only two; the two first mentioned,
since by all nature’s laws, the third has been proved physically
incompetent for the task. Yet incontestable and satisfactory as these
evidences are, let the formalities be duly observed. I am the last to
wish to see appearances shorn of their rights. Vote as your consciences
prompt you, always bearing in mind the moral question at issue, and
the doubtful and mysterious elements enshrouding the very existence of
the man who has this day been summoned to speak for himself, and the
astonishingly, astoundingly little he has had to say.”

Syndic Hackernagel then passed on to observe that he had fully expected
other witnesses to have come forward and substantiated the charges of
sorcery and of magic-mongering against the accused; but the world had
fallen upon evil days, and zeal appeared to be at her last gasp. In
default of those who should have presented themselves, he had, however,
done his poor best, he said, to make his own convictions clear, and
that his reward would be in finding that his few observations had not
fallen upon deaf ears.

“No, no,” shouted some of his auditors.

“I rejoice,” smiled Tobias, “that there are still to be found in
Strassburg ten, peradventure, righteously inclined. Yet I repeat, my
friends, that is a grievous falling off. Fifty years ago the voices
against the sin of witchcraft would have gone up from this vast hall,
like the voice of one man. What do I say? Forty, nay even thirty
since, by the evidence obtained from my own personal exertions, aided
by the valuable cooperation of my young friend here, Master Otto von
Steinbach, we should have been able to have brought this person to the
stake, or at least into mortal fear of it. Now, I cannot hide from
myself that a certain amount of sympathy has been evinced on his behalf
throughout this day’s proceedings, and that markedly in quarters,”
and Tobias glanced towards the dais, “where one would have hoped for
something very different. Some present had possibly been inclined to
leniency, by the fact of the presence of the books of the reformed
faith which had been found in the Professor Dasipodius’ possession,
but that was a perilous misleading, since, as a set-off against these,
were the popish and heathen works enumerated. Now what shall we say,”
continued the Syndic, “of a man who looks—Heaven save the mark!—of a
blind man who looks at all sides of a question?”

“I do think you have treated the subject quite exhaustively,” said Job,
“good Master Tobias; you have said everything that can be said.”

“I think so,” smiled Tobias; “I flatter myself so. I have now,
therefore, simply to remind you, my friends and fellow-citizens, that
the matter lies in your hands; and three days hence the result of your
collected opinions will be duly proclaimed from the Cathedral steps.
For all this world’s filthy lucre I would not prejudice your decision,
but it appears to me that one man alone claims universal consideration;
for bear in mind, in regard to the second candidate, that the familiar
spirit is but one degree less evil than its master.”

And with a sidelong glance in Isaac Habrecht’s direction, Syndic
Hackernagel gathered up his notes, and folding his robes toga-wise
about him, waited for the Burgomaster to intimate that the proceedings
were ended.

“And now we can go, Burgomaster?” whispered Councillor Klausewitz,
rising briskly to his feet. “Yes?”

But Niklaus did not stir. Job’s countenance fell, and he sank back with
a groan, seeking sympathy in the faces of his colleagues, but they were
all turned attently, expectant of what the Burgomaster might have to
say; and Job, with an inward prayer that this threatened new harangue
might not last above a quarter of an hour, assumed the virtue he had
not, and looked the picture of interested attention.

“Syndic Hackernagel spoke the truth,” said the Burgomaster, rising and
addressing the assemblage, “when he said that a solemn duty lies before
you. See that you fulfil it like reasonable men, and may Heaven help
you.”

“Amen!” assented Councillor Job, with brightening eyes, as Niklaus sat
down again. “Can we go now, Burgomaster?”

“Ay, let us go,” replied Niklaus; “I long to breathe fresh air. And so
too, I’ll warrant, does Master Dasipodius there,” he added, looking
sadly at the pale wearied face of the mathematician. “One may play
the fool too long.” And having received a brief formal dismissal, the
conclave broke up, while the crowd began to hustle and struggle to gain
the doors in time for witnessing the departure of the chief actors in
the scene.

“We had best leave by the little side door, Master,” said Habrecht,
coming close up beside Dasipodius, where he stood alone.

“Nay, Isaac,” said Dasipodius, starting from the reverie into which he
seemed fallen, “what have I to do with little side doors? Lend me an
arm, and let me go out as I came in.”

And so, leaning on Isaac’s strong arm, the blind man descended the
Chancellery steps, where a deafening uproar greeted his appearance.
Some in the crowd rushed forward to seize his hands, uttering fervent
expressions of loyalty, and sympathy and respectful admiration. Others
set up a hideous caterwauling, intermingled with elegant reference to
Mother Barepenny, and flung showers of half-frozen slush and rotten
eggs, and other missiles, whistling about his head; but these, thanks
to Habrecht’s quick eye and stout stick, fell everywhere but on the
object of attack. Moreover, the mob being so utterly divided against
itself, soon found distraction, in favour of mutual fisticuffing and
belabouring, so that it is problematical of how many broken heads that
day’s work might have been productive, had not a sudden beating of
drums and flourish of trumpets half drowned the uproar, and stricken
the combatants temporarily motionless with expectation. It is true the
drums had a cracked, rattling sound, as if their skins had seen some
service, and even known the pain of a pike-thrust, and the trumpet-call
was a tuneless screech; but being something fresh, it won its meed of
attention. Nearer and nearer came on the hideous discord, and Isaac,
hastening on Dasipodius, perceived that it heralded a procession of
some two-score men, and about as many women, stepping out in solemn
triumph, bearing aloft banners improvised of paper and coloured rag,
and shouting in more or less harmony with the musical accompaniment,
the name of Otto von Steinbach. Perched high in their midst sat the
object of this ovation, clinging for dear life to the arms of a
faded velvet and tarnished gilt chair, which was hoisted on to the
shoulders of several men, among whom the faces of one or two of the
mathematician’s disaffected pupils were distinguishable. Proud and
pale Otto looked; proud, because who in such a position could feel
otherwise? and pale, because frightened was a mild term to express his
sensations. The enthusiasm of those who carried him rendered his seat
appallingly unsteady, and sent him jolting and shifting from side to
side, like a handful of corn in a horse’s nosebag; and the mingled pain
and ecstasy his countenance expressed, coupled with his efforts to bow
and smile acknowledgment of the honours thrust upon him, presented a
curious and instructive study.

So the procession, increasing as it went, passed the foot of the
Chancellery steps, shouting: “Long live Otto von Steinbach! Down with
the Blind Sorcerer! Long live Otto von Steinbach, our Horologe maker!”

“Every dog has his day,” grunted Isaac.

“What is it all about, Isaac?” asked Dasipodius.

“Nothing,” answered Habrecht. “Come away, Master.”

“Have they chaired Otto von Steinbach?”

“Ay, Heaven help them.”

And then Dasipodius and Habrecht made their way unmolested through the
deserted streets, for all the world had run after Otto von Steinbach.




CHAPTER XXXII.

OTTO’S LITTLE DIFFICULTIES.


To the astonishment of Syndic Hackernagel, it was found on the
reckoning day that notwithstanding his eloquence in Otto von
Steinbach’s favour, and that individual’s subsequent public triumph,
the majority of votes were given, not to him, but to Isaac Habrecht.
Isaac, however, who had small relish for rising on others’ ill
fortunes, least of all on those of Dasipodius, when informed by
those who waited on him for the purpose, that he was the successful
candidate, replied that he was no candidate at all, and consequently
could be neither successful nor unsuccessful; and that Syndic
Hackernagel in connecting his name as he had done with the affair, had
been guilty of the most unwarrantable conclusions.

“But,” said the disconcerted delegates, “you should have signified this
earlier, Master Habrecht.”

“I did, plain enough,” returned he.

“Oh! but that was informally; and really, this contempt of informality
on your part will place you in a most unfavourable light.”

“Maybe,” answered Isaac, “but where all has been informal, formality
would have become me as little as it would have been understood; and
if Syndic Hackernagel found pleasure in hearing himself gabble on as
he did the other day, he was welcome, I suppose, to make a fool of
himself; but that is no reason I should turn knave, and try and set
foot in my master’s shoe.”

“But—your conscience is too tender, it is indeed, Master Habrecht; and
you must be aware that your refusal will not reinstate the Professor
Dasipodius into a post for which he has been found unfitted by—by——”

“A set of arrant sheepsheads,” thundered Isaac, “who can’t tell a silk
purse from a sow’s ear.”

“And is this,” ejaculated the spokesman in injured tones, “is this all
the gratitude our council has to expect for its delicacy in having
refrained from bringing the question before a formal tribunal?”

“Would to Heaven!” exclaimed Isaac, “it had been brought before a
formal tribunal. Master Dasipodius might have had justice then. But if
you don’t want the clock, why, you can go without it.”

“Oh! as to the clock,” was the lofty rejoinder, “I imagine we can have
a clock without Master Dasipodius’ assistance; or yours either for the
matter of that, Isaac Habrecht.”

“No doubt,” assented Isaac, “you can have a clock.”

“I did not say a clock,” shouted the other in irate tones, and rapping
his knuckles sharply on the bench; “I said the clock—the clock which
Master Dasipodius has begun.”

“Ay—ay, can you so?” said Isaac.

“Yes, we can. Hasn’t he got his plans, and can’t the Town Council
compel him to deliver them up.”

“I’m not so sure of it,” said Habrecht; “but granted, what then?”

“What then? why then, if you will not——”

“I won’t,” said Isaac, “and I can’t.”

“Oh! can’t, indeed! A good joke that! Then we’ll see if Otto von
Steinbach can, that’s all.”

A general chuckle among the deputies greeted this sally; but happening
to observe that Habrecht seemed to be equally shaken with inward
laughter, they fell into a sudden composure, and after bestowing on him
a few moments’ silent stare, wished him a preternaturally solemn good
day, and departed; to return at once to the Chancellery, where they
announced Habrecht’s refusal, and steps were at once taken to secure
the reversion of the appointment to Otto von Steinbach, the fortunate
possessor of the next greatest number of votes.

Since Dasipodius had not lifted a finger in his own behalf, and
Habrecht had declined the honour some would have thrust upon him,
Otto’s triumph was easily won. That, however, only made him appreciate
it the more, because, as he explained in the eloquent address with
which he graced his acceptance of the appointment, and with whose
hearing Syndic Hackernagel generously supplied him, it was so
gratifying to reflect that favour and prejudice had been compelled to
yield to calm enquiry and dispassionate consideration, and that, to
use a comprehensive figure of speech, the right man was at last in the
right place.

Concerning the Horologe, although it was in a very advanced stage
towards completion, Otto had nursed the hope of being able to set it
aside in favour of the one projected on the lines of his own originally
rejected plan. He found himself, however, forced to abandon such wild
hopes as soon as thought of, on account of the insuperable objections
which at once arose. In the first place he was conscious that his
quondam fellow-students, who thought themselves as good as he, and were
not far wrong, were by no means well pleased at finding themselves
under his direction; and although at present kept in check by public
opinion, the least spark of over-assumption of authority on his part
would have fired their lurking spirit of insubordination, and hurled
him from his high estate before he was fairly well fixed in it; and
he came to the conclusion that when the Horologe was quite finished,
would be the more meet opportunity for visiting his wrath upon certain
impertinent inuendoes and quips and cranks which he knew they indulged
in at his expense.

He had, moreover, other cogent incentives to circumspection; standing,
as he did, in terrible awe of what his sister Radegund might be having
to say on the matter. Hitherto she had said ominously little; and
he lived long in hourly dread of some outbreak from her of a storm
of angry sarcasm, but he had escaped with comparative ease; and when
he had told her his appointment had been confirmed, she had simply
counselled him to try and fit himself in some degree for the onerous
task before him; but that, taking him at his best, he was a poor
creature to succeed such a man as Conrad Dasipodius.

“Oh! ah! of course,” grumbled Otto, “I knew that. Beside this paragon
of yours, even your own flesh and blood is just dirt, and you have not
one word of congratulation for your poor brother.”

“Alas! no.”

“It’s a blessing that there are those who understand my value better
than you do, Radegund,” said Otto, tugging vexedly at the end of his
trim little beard.

“A man is not a prophet in his own country, Otto dear. Put it down to
that if you like.”

“I shan’t!” whimperingly snapped he, “it’s all because you’re so
prejudiced in favour of that fellow. I do believe you’re in love with
him, yes I do, there!”

“What is that?” she cried, turning on him with flashing eyes. “Say
that again if you dare.”

But he did not exactly dare. “Well, well, where’s the need of firing
up like that at a little bit of fun, my dear?” he said. “But at least
you must confess you are a kinder sister than you care to seem; for it
is you, with that letter business of yours, who have brought about my
advancement, and I owe all my honours to you.”

Then marking that Radegund’s handsome brows knitted till they met, and
she bit her lip till the blood came, he was satisfied, and went out for
a walk through the city’s chief thoroughfares, to seek from an admiring
public the _éclat_ and sympathy lacking in his own house.

Frivolous and shallow-pated, however, as Otto von Steinbach was, he was
not heartless, nor even destitute of generosity when he gave himself
time to reflect, and Radegund’s indifference to his triumph wounded
something better in him than his vanity. It was a really bitter drop in
his cup of sweetness, since after his own fashion his affection for her
was great, and his pride in her almost exceeded his love; but there was
one yet more bitter drop still, and that was the necessity for carrying
out Dasipodius’ plans to the utmost minutiæ. Necessity, however, knows
no law; and without wasting his precious time on superfluous niceties,
he went to Dasipodius and asked him for all his drawings, elevations,
sectional plans, calculations, notes, and any other document he might
have in his possession bearing reference to the new Cathedral Horologe,
and when the mathematician refused to deliver them up to him, his
amazement was boundless. “But I can’t get on without them,” he said.

“Use your own,” replied Dasipodius.

“But I tell you we want yours.”

“You do?” said the mathematician.

“Yes, you know, and you must give them up.” Dasipodius shook his head.

“Oh now—but really—it’s too absurd to stand out about such trifles! I
never dreamt you’d go making any difficulty. I told them I was sure you
wouldn’t. Don’t you see yourself—I mean, don’t you understand, that
such a thing as a blind person making a clock has never been heard of;
and you’re blind you know, you owned you were, and so how can you——”

“Your syllogism has a false conclusion, my friend; I can make a clock.”

“Oh, bother!” said Otto; “well, the town council says you can’t, so
it’s all the same. I say look here, if you don’t give up these things
they’ll be putting you in prison, they will indeed.”

“Perhaps,” said the mathematician with a shrug.

“Well, I shouldn’t like it to come to that. To be sure, you’ve always
stood in my light, Conrad Dasipodius; if it hadn’t been for you, you
know, I should have had a chance with cousin Sabina——”

“Take it now,” answered Dasipodius; “Mistress Sabina von Steinbach is
free.”

“I—I wasn’t thinking so much of Sabina just then,” replied Otto; “I
was only going to say you took away my first chance with the Horologe
and—and——”

“But you have it all your own way now.”

“Oh yes, but I shouldn’t like you to be sent to prison, it’s such an
uncomfortable idea, and all for such a trifle. Why, if you’d only just
give up these papers and things, it would all go so nice and smooth, it
would really.”

“Yes?” said Dasipodius; “well, I cannot do it, Otto.”

“It’s a great shame of you to make such a fuss about nothing,” grumbled
Otto; but he attempted no further persuasion of his own, for he knew
Dasipodius, and went away sorely discomfited, brooding, as he walked,
upon the mathematician’s want of feeling in throwing obstacles in his
path up Parnassus.




CHAPTER XXXIII.

“GIVE UP THE PLANS!”


Meantime the Horologe was at a standstill, and its makers as sheep
without a shepherd. Confusion reigned supreme among them. Some, vowing
they would work under no other master than Dasipodius, among whom
were the brothers Habrecht, sent in their resignations. Others, who
because their daily bread depended on the work dared not give it up,
grumblingly consented to remain; while a few, who had found their
old chief’s conscientious supervision irksome, were delighted at the
prospect of the new regime, and were eager to resume their places in
the studio, which for a week past had remained closed.

Dasipodius himself had refrained from going near the place, and had
spent nearly all his time beside Christian, who, weighed down by grief
and mental distress, had been stricken by illness, which was only
aggravated when he found it put a stop to his being present at the
Chancellery on the important day. This, however, which Christian took
so much to heart, was the source of not a little consolation to his
son, who felt how much unnecessary pain it had saved Christian; and
when he had returned home, and undergone a close cross-examination
from the invalid as to what had passed, he did not scruple to put as
brilliant a gloss upon the matter as it would well bear.

“And so you really think,” said Christian, with a suspicion of regret
in his tones, “you really think it is best to give it all up? Well,
well,—but will the resignation be accepted?”

“Oh, it must. A man can’t be made to work against his will.”

“That’s true,” mused Christian; “but I wouldn’t give you up, I know, if
I were the town council.”

The mathematician smiled sadly, and gently stroked the old man’s hand.

“I am glad you can smile,” went on Christian a little petulantly, “I
can’t somehow.”

“Yes, yes, but cheer up, Väterle. That is because you have been
ill, and are still weak; but listen now, in a day or two we are
going away—you and I, from the city, to have a little holiday. The
spring-time is so near now, and we will go—you and I, and Rappel here,”
and Dasipodius patted the head of the dog, who responsively wagged
his tail, and barked a volley of short, quick, joyous barks, as if he
understood, as no doubt he did understand, all they were saying. “Out
into the fields, and among the fresh green and the flowers, and forget
for awhile all about the Horologe and—and everything. Yes, Väterle,
shall we?”

But Christian only said with a weary sigh: “I am glad your poor mother
did not live to see this day. I never thought a time would come when I
should thank God she was not beside me.”

And to this Conrad had no ready reply.

“It would have broken her heart,” went on the old man.

“Nay—nay, father, not that. If I had committed some crime, then
indeed—” he paused. How nearly had he been told off for a criminal!
“But,” he went on, “all is as God wills.”

“Ay,” said Christian fretfully, “I daresay it may be.” Then he turned
his face to the wall, one by one silent tears rolled down his furrowed
cheeks, and for a long time he refused to be comforted; but at last he
fell asleep, and dreamed such sweet dreams of waving boughs, and green
fields, and sparkling waters, that after all, Conrad’s efforts to cheer
him were assuredly not entirely thrown away; and when morning came,
Christian could smile, and chatted with Dr. Bruno Wolkenberg quite
eagerly over that proposed trip.

Bruno being perfectly instructed in the little fiction, said it was
indeed a most admirable notion, and sat on, discussing the matter with
Christian, until the Burgomaster looked in to see his old friend; and
Bruno, having watched the two safely launched into the great Cession
question, felt that Christian was in a fair way to speedy recovery, and
that his presence could be easily spared.

Leaving them to their talk, therefore, the surgeon made his way to
the turret studio. He had barely gone half up the staircase before
he heard the voices of Dasipodius and Habrecht engaged in such
unwontedly animated discussion that even after he had opened the door,
he hesitated to enter, for fear of disturbing them. The quick ear,
however, of the blind man caught Bruno’s footfall. “Is that you,
Bruno?” he said in strangely rapid and excited tones, and the surgeon
saw there was brilliant fire in his eyes, and a red hectic spot burning
into the cheeks grown so pale and haggard of late. “Come here then, and
judge between us. Look at Isaac Habrecht there.”

And Bruno obeying, saw that after his own stolid fashion, Isaac was
equally agitated, for the lines about his resolute mouth were deep and
set, and every feature was silently eloquent of a firm adherence to
some opinion of which he had apparently just delivered himself.

“Do you know,” said Dasipodius, gasping for breath as he convulsively
clutched Bruno by the arm, “do you know what he would have me do?”

Wolkenberg looked again from Habrecht’s face to the uncontrollable
agitation in his friend’s; wondering as he gently drew his hand in his,
what could have turned its cool steady touch to the burning, trembling
thing it was?

“I cannot guess,” he answered.

“No!” cried Dasipodius, laughing hysterically, “by the Rood that I’ll
swear you cannot! Look at him, Bruno! look at him well. That is the
man I thought my friend; oh, but it was a grievous error! every whit
as bad as when I believed you”—and he broke into a hollow laugh—“you
incorruptible—do you remember that, Bruno?”

“Nay, nay,” soothed Bruno, “but we are your friends, Conrad; I’ll stake
my life on it, never man had more loyal ones,” he added, turning his
eyes on Isaac, who seconded this assurance with an emphatic nod.

“Oh! I ask your pardon!” bitterly rejoined Dasipodius; “yes, you
wish me well, to be sure. To be sure, and that is just what—what she
said in that—letter of hers, and what the town council people said,
and Hackernagel—Master Hackernagel—he said it too, ‘We are your best
friends, Professor Dasipodius—your best friends I assure you’. Friends!
and now Isaac—and you, Bruno Wolkenberg—oh! Heaven save me from you
all! I had best have taken serpents to my heart, than any one of you!
Friends, ho! ho!” and his mocking laughter echoed through the vaulted
chamber. “No! no! keep off, I say. Let go my hands. Keep off,” he
went on; “all your stuffs and anodynes can never cure these deadly
stings! They have gone to my heart—to my soul, I tell you, through—and
through!” and with a moan of mortal pain, Dasipodius clenched his hand
upon his breast, and shrank away from Bruno. “And now it is all dead
here, quite dead—dead. Tell me, Bruno Wolkenberg,” he said, after a
momentary pause which neither of the other men dared to break, and
coming once more beside the surgeon, he gripped him confidentially by
the arm, “tell me—how long may a man live when all his life’s blood has
been sucked away? How long, I mean, can he seem like living? how long?”
and his breath, as he awaited Bruno’s answer, laboured cruelly, like
one indeed mortally crushed.

“Hush now, be calm, Conrad, all is not lost——”

“Oh! not yet. No, not yet. He tried though, he tried his best to steal
it from me, the traitor there,” whirled on Dasipodius, pointing at
Habrecht, who, save by the occasional twitching of his brows, betrayed
no more emotion than a wooden block. “‘Give them up,’ that is what he
has been saying to me. Could you have believed it of him, Bruno? ‘Let
him have them all’——”

“Ay, every shred,” said Habrecht, speaking for the first time.

“Have what?” asked the mystified Bruno.

“The plans, man—the plans!” wildly sobbed Dasipodius, sinking down on
the chair beside his writing-table.

“Ay,” nodded Isaac, “the Horologe plans, Doctor Wolkenberg. They want
them you see. Otto von Steinbach wants them.”

“I daresay he does,” said Bruno with a faint smile.

“And I say let him have them,” concluded Habrecht.

“You hear!” said Dasipodius, turning on Bruno.

“Oh! h’m—yes,” answered the surgeon. “Well—really—no, upon my honour, I
think not. No, no.”

“God bless you, Bruno!” gasped the mathematician; “God bless you for
that.”

“It would be feeding such a cruel injustice, you see,” said Bruno.

“It would be doing no such thing,” roundly contradicted Isaac.

“It would be too much——”

“Ay, ay, there you are right,” laughed he, “it would be too much
indeed. That’s a good saying, Doctor Wolkenberg, ‘Give a dog rope
enough, and he’ll hang himself’.”

“How?” queried Bruno interestedly. “Nay, Conrad, but he has his
reasons; right or wrong, let him speak. How would he, Master Habrecht?”

“How?” echoed Habrecht, grimly measuring Bruno’s length and breadth.
“Well, well, you are only a doctor. See here then,” he went on in
slightly mollified tones, taking a formidably official-looking document
from the table, “the town council in this commands my master to
deliver up all the plans and drawings of our Horologe into the hands
of this—this—Otto von Steinbach, in order that”—and a sardonic smile
flitted over the grave rugged features—“that he may complete the
Horologe from them. Very well, but first of all, Dr. Wolkenberg, comes
the fellow himself, and makes the same demand. My master refuses both
the one and the other.”

“Naturally,” assented Bruno.

“Wait; well and good, that’s how it seems; but that’s not how it is.
Supposing they had these plans. What will they do with them?”

“Ah!” sighed Bruno, “they would contrive to finish off the Horologe
from them somehow, I imagine.”

“Do you?” said Isaac; “I thought you did. But they couldn’t do it, they
couldn’t do it though they died for it; and every batzen of the money
these honest townspeople have contributed, might as well have been
thrown into the Rhine for any good they’ll get.”

“That must occur in either case I suppose, whether their work is done
from von Steinbach’s plans, or they——”

“Make a cuddle-muddle of ours? No; for they might go on and finish
von Steinbach’s piece of gimcrackery for a stalking-horse of their
stupidity; but a week at our models will make them drop it like monkeys
with hot chestnuts. And so I say let them try, let them have every dot,
every line, and be hanged to them all.”

“That is your advice,” said Bruno cogitatively.

“Yes,” said Isaac, “it is; and it would be any honest man’s. I’m
not saying it’s nice, mind you, to have a pack of thick-skulled,
thumb-fingered idiots poking and mauling——”

“Hold thy peace, Isaac!” moaned Dasipodius, shiveringly burying his
face in his folded arms.

“But,” went on Isaac, “what they do can’t hurt it in the long run. A
good thing is a good thing; and gold’s gold, and if it chances to be
dragged through the mire, it comes out—well, when you’ve rubbed the
dirt off it, it just comes out the brighter; and that’s like the work
of my master’s hands, and like my master too; and he’d be the first to
acknowledge what’s due to the people, and protect them from a handful
of fools, when he’s himself. But he’s not himself now. They’ve worried
him into a fever between them, God forgive them all. I suppose if they
had his death on their hands they wouldn’t mind, and you’d best be
seeing to him, Dr. Wolkenberg,” concluded Isaac, casting, as he slowly
made his way to the door, a look of saddened indignation at the bowed
form of Dasipodius; but when he had the latch in his hand, he turned
and wistfully eyed a bundle of parchments on the table. “There they
are,” he said; “I’d give my right hand for the master to be saying:
‘Take them, Isaac, and carry them to the Chancellery,’” and then he
slowly opened wider the door to go out.

“Isaac!” said the mathematician, lifting his head, and his voice
sounded so faint and low that it was hardly audible; but Isaac heard,
and turning back once more, said: “Master?”

“Take the plans and carry them to the Chancellery.”

Then the mathematician’s head fell heavily again upon his folded arms,
and he lay motionless as death; while Habrecht silently approached the
table, and taking up the bundle of parchments, carried them to the
Chancellery.




CHAPTER XXXIV.

“INTER ALIA.”


On hearing that the Horologe designs had been safely deposited at the
Chancellery, Syndic Hackernagel took to himself no small credit for the
satisfactory issue to which he had conducted the whole affair; and as
he reflected how entirely Otto von Steinbach was beholden to him, his
green eyes gleamed with triumph.

All the same, he was puzzled by his easy conquest.

“It is of course entirely gratifying,” as he passingly observed to
Councillor Job Klausewitz. “I myself had an impression that the man
would have made more difficulty about it. However,” he loftily added,
“I must own that it shows his sense.”

And Job, who had caught a bad cold in his head on the trial day, and
done nothing but sneeze ever since, said he thought it did; and that
the Professor Dasipodius must be uncommonly glad at finding himself
quit of the whole business.

The Syndic’s exultations fell considerably, however, when he found
that both the Habrechts had resigned their posts. While he shrank from
owning it even to himself, he had uncomfortable misgivings as to Otto’s
scientific capabilities; and in the event of any deficiencies becoming
inconveniently conspicuous, he had counted on Habrecht for glossing
them over.

His vexation applied almost equally to Kaspar, who, stripling though
he was, no older craftsman in all the city could replace. Any forlorn
hope, however, Hackernagel had entertained, that the two brothers might
be compelled to work on at the studio by the terms of their indentures,
was annihilated when he consulted these; and the desperate final
attempt he made to induce the two to remain, met with stout refusal.

To Niklaus von Steinbach the result of that day’s work at the
Chancellery had been very grievous. He felt that under a guise of
friendly delicacy a crying injustice had been done Dasipodius; and yet
he did not feel that he had had the power to avert it. He had hoped
and believed that calm discussion of facts would have put an end to
the absurd rumours and ignorant scandal concerning the mathematician’s
infirmity, and have done him the service of raising him still higher
in public esteem; but there had been no discussion, only the empty
pipings of a bigoted enthusiast, and Niklaus sorely repented of the
manner in which he had permitted the whole affair to be conducted; and
yet he feared still more to retrace the false steps, lest Dasipodius
should be exposed to even worse than he was already enduring. Niklaus,
after his lights, was a clever, even shrewd man, but he was not equal
to grappling with, and trampling down the hydra-headed superstition
and ignorance surging around him. It was no empty bugbear which
Hackernagel held aloft, when he hinted at fire and stake as the reward
of men who dealt in matters of which the ruck of that generation had
no conception, and consequently no toleration. Had his relations
towards the mathematician been less intimate and kindly disposed than
they were, it seemed to him he might have been able to have spoken out
on his behalf more freely, and found better eloquence for refuting
Hackernagel’s absurd sophisms. That the Syndic’s mode of attack had
been thoroughly unworthy of the position he occupied, it did not need
half of the Burgomaster’s perception to see; but the people’s ignorant
infatuation for this man had shown itself more than once before now,
and if the demagogue chose to say black was white, they infinitely
preferred saying so too, rather than use their prescriptive right of
thinking out a question for themselves. There was nothing they appeared
more to enjoy than letting Syndic Hackernagel lead them by the nose.

Had this all happened a year earlier, Niklaus felt that he might have
said out all that came uppermost in his mind concerning Dasipodius, and
done him real service thereby; but with that knowledge of his character
which a closer intercourse with him had brought, the Burgomaster knew
himself to be under the influence which the mathematician seemed to
exercise upon all who had to do with him. If ever for prudential
motives he had striven to withstand this influence, he had capitulated
long since, and been constrained besides, not even to refuse him
his treasure of treasures, his one ewe lamb, his Lily; and yet more
than this, since when he learned the affliction which had befallen
Dasipodius, although he certainly strove, to persuade himself that
Heaven had been very merciful in averting such a marriage, he failed
miserably, and soon gave up vexing himself with the fiction that he was
glad.

Had he been told in the past years that he would have been content to
see his child the wife of a blind man, and one even by comparison with
his own worldly state, a poor blind man, he would have indignantly
spurned the monstrous notion; but the Burgomaster bowed to facts, and
now his warm generous heart only yearned to bring back the roses to
Sabina’s cheeks, and to shield Dasipodius from the storm which was
buffeting him.

And he knew not how to do it. However iniquitously party spirit might
have influenced the public voice to pronounce against Dasipodius, he
had still been set aside by a process which in itself was at least
fair; and as for Sabina, she maintained such a complete, almost stern
silence touching the sudden disruption between herself and her lover,
that Niklaus felt like one with his hands tied, and could only be a sad
and anxious spectator. It was true he had his suspicions that his niece
Radegund knew something of the real state of affairs, and he once went
the length of speaking a word with her about these troubles vexing
and perplexing to him; but Radegund so fiercely demanded of him if he
thought her the mathematician’s keeper, that Niklaus shrank into his
shell, and only said: “Well, well, niece, the poor child is troubled;
and I fancied that a woman, and such a clever woman too as you are,
might have been able to do what a stupid old father only blunders
over; and I thought as you and the Professor Dasipodius are such good
friends——”

“We are not—friends,” interrupted she.

“Oh!” returned Niklaus, scrutinizing her gloomy face from under his
bushy brows. “It looked like it anyhow.”

“Do you mean to insinuate——”

“No,” returned he acridly. “That’s not my way—insinuating.” Then he
added rather more hesitatingly: “It is merely that I have twice come
upon you, niece, and the Professor Dasipodius in close confabulation
together after dark; and that sort of thing always seems—friendly.”

“Things are not always what they seem.”

“Ah, well,” said Niklaus in rather hurried tones, for he stood in dread
of Radegund’s oracular moods, “if you could have righted things for my
poor little woman, I know you would, niece. So we’ll say no more about
it.”

And Niklaus was right. If his child’s troubles had been of any other
nature under the sun, there was not woman living who would have gone
to her, and soothed, and striven to comfort, and lain aside her
own pleasures for her sake. For pain and poverty, and every sort
of wretchedness, mental or physical, humanity knows, Radegund had
boundless sympathy, and of that sterling sort which spends itself in
endeavouring to alleviate the misery it looks upon; but the waves of
that swift and troublous current to which she had abandoned herself,
hissed and howled their evil music in her ears too deafeningly for
her to catch aught beyond the faintest echo of those angel voices
beseeching her to return; and the sternest Calvinist in all Alsace
could not more calmly have yielded to Destiny’s decree, than did she to
the sway of her passionate worship of Dasipodius. It numbed down like
an opiate all her generosity and her high sense of honour. Yet dead
these were not; and many and many a time wakening from their uneasy
sleep, they stirred her to a different course; but fiercely hushing
them to quiescence, she abided with sphinx-like impenetrability on her
beautiful face and awful outward calmness, the solving of the riddle
she had propounded for herself and for those she loved.

Even when rumour said the Professor Dasipodius was about to leave
Strassburg, she betrayed no shadow of interest in his goings or
comings; but silently and unflaggingly continued to pursue her own
share at the Horologe work, and this to her brother Otto’s unspeakable
relief. He had dreaded as an almost inevitable outcome of the new order
of affairs, that Radegund would throw up her contract, and make things
generally unpleasant; but his terrors proved groundless, and it was
a comfort to him beyond power of words, to mark how she seemed to be
throwing all her energies into superintending the fixing of two of the
completed panels into the cornice of the clock. To be sure, the outside
of the Horologe was going on promisingly indeed!

And truly time was not to be lost now. The last winter snows had
melted, and among the little ones of the old city a whisper had gone
forth that if you looked very carefully indeed along by the river
banks, out there beyond the walls, you would find a few tiny violets;
and bolder spirits, though they of course were “Sunday children,” who
always know pleasant things before others, declared that Cuckoo had
begun to hint his agreeable intelligence. This must certainly have been
true, because on the very next sunny morning, before a creature was
up, the primroses peeped out, and rather in a fluster at having been
so long caught napping by the quiet violets and the fresh young grass
blades, hastily shook out their golden stars, for the saucy little
yellow things do so love to have the best freshness of the dark purple
foil of their modest sisters, declaring that without it their beauty is
not seen to anything like the same advantage; though at this indirect
compliment of course the violets can afford to smile in their gentle
way, and say: “Foil, forsooth; well, well, they are dear merry little
things, the primroses, let them chatter as they like!” But ere long
spring must ripen into summer, and later summer was to give Strassburg
its new Horologe. Under Dasipodius’ untiring supervision, there had
been little fear that its nearly completed mechanism would have been
ready even some weeks before Saint Laurence’s day. But the master’s
hand was stayed now, and his successor stumbled beneath the weight
of his own responsibility. Yet for very shame he dared not share his
burden with those about him. If he could have taken his sister Radegund
into his confidence, he knew how useful she could have been to him; but
he instinctively comprehended that he might as well have sought counsel
from one of the Cathedral marble effigies as from her. She never so
much as entered the studio where he now reigned with fussy consequence,
and since neither by word nor look she ever troubled herself to enquire
how he prospered, he found himself driven to maintain a dignified
reticence, which was none the less vexatious, on account of his having
to keep his annoyance to himself. “Oh you know,” he one day airily
remarked to Syndic Hackernagel, “one has quite enough of the thing all
day long; and I make it a rule never to talk shop at home. Besides,
one has such an immense objection to women meddling in things so far
above their heads, to say nothing of their being so confoundedly
self-opinionated.”

Tobias assented with an emphatic nod.

“Yes, you know,” continued Otto, “Dasipodius got into a way of
consulting her about one thing or another, till he made her positively
unendurable. And that’s just the whole difference between his method
and mine. We work you see on curiously contrasting principles; it may
have suited Dasipodius to get an opinion from a petticoat, but——”

“I’ve a notion,” said Hackernagel with a knowing wink, “that Dasipodius
vastly admired Mistress Radegund.”

“Ah, oh—well, everybody does you know,” returned Otto proudly; “don’t
you?”

“H’m,” conceded the other, “she’s a magnificent creature, but——”

“Well?” challenged Otto, who tolerated no _buts_ save his own where
Radegund was concerned.

“Ah! I was merely about to observe—hem—I had an impression that fairer
beauty was more to your individual taste.”

“Well, perhaps,” sighingly admitted Otto, “I believe you are not wrong,
Syndic Hackernagel.”

And then Syndic Hackernagel, smiling an indulgent smile, reminded him
of his promise to look in for half an hour that evening on their family
circle; a custom which of late had not been infrequent with Otto, who
enjoying as he did in an eminent degree, the sensation of having caps
pulled for him, found it satisfied in that quarter to almost the top
of his bent. The consciousness that behind his back internal strife
waged high among the four Mistresses Hackernagel on his account, was
balm to Otto’s unhealed love wounds. It was so soothing to find himself
appreciated, to feel sure that he had but to hold out his little finger
for it to be instantly caught at and caressed by eight fair freckled
hands.

Yet it was precisely this overflow of appreciation which confused
him, and rendered him for a long time irresolute as to which of
the sandy-haired goddesses he should give the golden apple, that
is supposing things really went so hard with him that he should be
driven into bestowing it in that quarter at all. Clearly he could only
marry one of them, and the reflection made him shrink with terror and
commiseration from the picture he conjured to his imagination of the
three rejected ones. Those smiles he now basked in, and the honeyed
flattery which now soothed and tranquilized his whole being, would be
all changed to bitterness, and the good times, in short, would be fled
for him for ever. And all for what?—for the sake of having chosen where
he had no choice, or next to none.

Choice indeed was hardly to be conceived of, since the four ladies,
formed on the lines of their sire, so nearly resembled each other,
with their light eyes, sandy hair, and sallow complexions. Only the
third, Mistress Gretchen’s, eyes were a shade darker, her nose within
more feminine proportions, her figure less angular, and above all, her
voice less shrill than her sisters’; but Otto clung to liberty a little
longer, and moreover he had not jeopardized so much for the mere chance
of horological honours when he first set about executing the little
manœuvre which had led to the overthrow of Conrad Dasipodius. The
chance of being able to win Sabina from him had been at least an equal
incentive to his efforts; and that the tide of favour and prejudice had
now set in his way so strongly was, he considered, no more than due
reward for all his efforts to help himself; and he looked now to be
having his way a little with the world and its womankind, for all the
coast was clear and his rival trod the steps of the city no more.




CHAPTER XXXV.

“DOLCE FAR NIENTE?”


“And now, my Kaspar, tell me what you see?”

“I see—— but first, master, come a step further. Now stoop low—lower,
for here at its mouth the cave is not five feet high. So carefully.
Master, I see a stone chamber—so dark in some corners one can hardly
tell its size, vaulting high above our heads, and all encrusted with
forms as dainty as though some cunning sculptor had carved them. On
every side of us the walls sparkle with such soft light as stars and
diamonds give; while here and there, where the noonday sunlight smiles
down on them from above, they gleam and glisten again.”

“A beautiful place, Kaspar.”

“Ay, master, beautiful indeed. But that is not half I see, for there
are other crevices all shaded and fringed about with crimson leaves
and green ferns; and through them too the sunlight shadows itself
down upon the fretted walls, and turns the crystal stones to ruby and
emerald; and so it glints and glances down to the very sand and moss
beneath our feet, until we seem to be standing on a carpet of richest
green all flecked with threads of gold.”

“A palace for a fairy queen!”

“Yes,” and Kaspar lowered his voice to an awesome whisper. “The Kelpie
queen has always held her court here.”

“You have seen her—yes?” Dasipodius asked gravely.

“Nay,” smiled Kaspar, “but——”

“You know the place well?”

“By heart, master; and since I could handle a tool, I have many and
many a time brought my wood blocks here, and striven to copy its rare
fretted work.”

“And that sound of rushing water?”

“It is the torrent hard by, foaming down among the dark pine trees from
the tall precipices which shut in our little lake here, making it so
gloomy with their shadows that our people call it the Lake of the Black
Waters. They declare that no sunlight ever shines upon it; and indeed I
have often stood to watch him steal a cloud veil from yonder crag as
he goes on his way.”

“And the lake you say is very deep?”

“Deep as it is dark. Listen,” and picking up a fragment of sparry rock,
Kaspar flung it into the still waters, which rippling out into great
circles, closed over the stone with that awesome gurgle which seems to
tell of unfathomable depths.

“And out upon the lake, is there really no gleam of sunlight at this
midday hour?”

“No; ’tis all blackness and shadow.”

“A dreary spot, Kaspar?”

“Nay, master, but it is grand and beautiful. Sometimes I have thought
to myself that it is like—so like——”

“Like?—well? You hesitate.”

“So like your life, master. The sun seems all gone out of that—now.”

“Not at all,” returned the blind man quickly. “Say rather that my life
is like this quiet cave of yours, which has in it indeed many a sombre
corner, where no sunrays ever pierce; but what of the stalactites and
crystals shining upon its walls? They are like the blessed consolation
of those talents which the good God has given into my keeping, and
which none—man nor woman, nor pain have been able to take from me. And
then those warm gentle colours, Kaspar, which you say are as beautiful
as precious gems, they are like my friends, my true brave friends,
Isaac and you, and——”

“And Dr. Bruno,” said the lad with a brightening face.

“And Dr. Bruno, ay”; for the mist which had passingly dimmed the
friendship of these two men was all dispelled now. “And with such as
these, should I not be a traitor to say no sunshine is in my life? Its
light is dim, Kaspar, but it is there, it is there; and where it fails
to illumine, it warms and brings my heart such comfort, that sometimes
I think it is better as it is.”

But Kaspar sighed and shook his head.

“Now what are you sighing about, foolish boy.”

“I am thinking of our Horologe, master.”

And for that the mathematician had no answer. If Kaspar thought of it
twenty times a day, with Dasipodius it was an ever present memory;
and he yearned towards the work torn from his hands, as towards a
living love which had become to him so much the dearer, since he had
told himself that the love of woman was not for him. In those two
affections, both now equally lost to him, there was so much analogous,
that he felt neither the one nor the other could be truly replaced.
Possibly indeed, as he had just now hinted to his young companion,
there would be found some spot less dunderheaded than his native city,
where his talent would be welcomed and estimated at something of its
true worth; but to him no labour could ever again be so dear as the
task bequeathed to him by Chretei Herlin.

In that first great bitterness of its being wrested from him, his
fevered dreams had pictured the old monk, now looking down on him in
stern reproach, now sorely weeping to see the Horologe all marred and
desecrated by ignorant unloving hands, until he would waken with a cry
of agony. Still, after a wretched inferior fashion, there might, and
doubtless would be to him a substitute for the Horologe; for there were
beginning to be folks in the world who, so long as they met with genius
or superior talent, cared not whether it had the reputation of being
born of heaven or of darkness, provided it bore the unmistakable stamp
of excellence, and met their particular needs; but though an endless
life-span should be given him, Dasipodius knew that for Sabina there
could never be any substitute. The mathematician was not one of those
men who, however passionately they may have loved, however grievously
lost, do, although it may be after long years, find consolation in
the love of other women. Dasipodius had yielded to the overmastering
influence so unwillingly, with a certain ungraciousness even. Thirty
years had tided past of his life, and not the most fleeting desire
to change his bachelorhood for matrimonial chains had ever troubled
him; and even when at last his fate overtook him, then jealous for
the dominion of his intellect, he had struggled and striven to quell
it; all in vain however, and his heart’s sternest bulwarks, which had
yielded to no brilliant strategy of far lovelier women, capitulated to
this gentle girl, whom Strassburg called its Lily, because of her fresh
young beauty and gentle grace.

Yet now, what had his wooing proved to be but a beautiful dream, an
episode too fair and good to last? and he had wakened from it. Her own
word had severed the bond between them. At first he strove hard to
cheat himself into the belief that he was thankful, that it was better
that all hope of domestic happiness should be blasted for the greater
health and strength’s sake of his intellectual being: but he soon gave
up all such pretence of self-consolation. He knew that his affection
for the Burgomaster’s daughter had been so real, so deep, had seemed
so worthy of them both, that it had given him fresh ardour and nobler
motive for labouring on; and so in the end, he had just brought himself
to bend before the fate which had made the world sombre indeed for him
and chill with its dreary shadows, but which had preserved her for some
brighter lot.

“Poor little Lily!” he would murmur again and again to himself, as
he wandered on these spring evenings by the Lake of the Black Waters
in the silent Swiss valley. “What a mad fool I was to think your
bright bloom could have flourished among the blighting shadows of my
blind life! How was it I could be so selfishly cruel as to have one
thought of plucking you for myself?” And then with a strange remorse,
his thoughts would fly back to that last meeting of theirs in the
Cathedral, and he would torture his memory to recall every word which
had passed between them; but the whole of the black day lived in his
mind, only as some ugly but indistinct dream. “Yet I must have been mad
if indeed I said harsh things to you! Oh, my little love! My little
love!”

And indeed for days after that one, he had been frequently on the
confines of unreason. The calm, calculating mathematical brain had
well-nigh lost its balance then; and so much the more as, after the
nature of him, he had struggled to maintain an outward composure, so
much the greater had been the inward conflict.

And he bore about him now traces only too evident of the ordeal. His
spare but well-knit frame had grown fragile-looking, and the stately
shoulders and grand head bent lower than of old, while more than one
grey thread gleamed amid the dark-brown hair. Then too the healthful
olive of his cheek had faded into a pallor, while lines of care and
of physical suffering had gathered about his mouth and brow, and the
sightless eyes were a thought sunken, and encircled with dark rings,
yet their mysterious beauty had not lessened; it had rather grown the
greater from their expression of patient endurance, while the old
dreamy thoughtfulness had deepened into an almost unearthly glory
from the increased dilation of the pupils, which, although to Bruno
Wolkenberg it spoke a more utterly hopeless tale, added to their
lustrous beauty. They had none of the lack lustre, nor the terrible
glare disfiguring nearly all blind eyes; only if Sabina could have seen
them now, she would indeed have said they looked weary—very weary.

It had been well for Dasipodius that the fret of daily life had called
him to action. Had he been able to choose, he would have shut himself
up in his little turret sanctum, and finding his best solace in yet
more unremitting application to study, would have stayed there until
he had made of himself an easy prey to fever, or some other cruel
stroke of sickness; but his essentially unselfish nature prompted him
to turn from his own cares, and to think of the sadness darkening
his father’s days, and he decided that it would be good for him that
they should leave the city for a while, and seek that change of scene
and associations which is said to be the best sort of healing for
such things; and then it was that Isaac Habrecht had proffered the
hospitality of his own home in the little hamlet close by Schaffhausen
in the Black Forest. At first the mathematician, in whose mind was
passing the struggle between his inclination and what he regarded as
his duty, shook his head. “I cannot leave the city yet for awhile,
Isaac. It might be thought——”

But Isaac made no scruple of telling his master that such
considerations were unworthy of him. “Is it of any consequence what is
thought? If ever these blockheads think at all, that is. It is right
for you to come away, master. There’ll be mischief else,” he added,
with an anxious look at the mathematician’s haggard face.

“Is my father so much changed then?” asked Dasipodius.

“Folks can’t be vexed out of their lives without showing it,” growled
Isaac. “So say you’ll come, master. Our Schaffhausen is not a grand
city like Strassburg, but it’s honester, I take it, than hereabouts,
and the Emperor himself couldn’t bid you more welcome than my mother
will; and if Master Christian fancies to come and stay awhile with us,
we shall feel proud. Shan’t we, Kaspar?”

“Yes,” cried Kaspar gleefully.

“And Rappel—he must come too. Oh! he’ll be having rare poaching bouts
with Tolpatsch.”

“That’s our sheep-dog,” parenthetically explained Kaspar.

“Ay. They’ll be fine cadgers together, I’ll warrant, and we’re plain
folks down there to be sure, Master Dasipodius; but there’s fresh air
with us anyhow, and that’s the stuff that’s wanting to bring back the
life-blood to—Master Christian’s old cheeks. Why, the very scent of the
young grass, and the fresh breeze, and—Kaspar, do you tell the master,”
said Isaac, floundering a little, “about the birds, and waterfalls, and
things.”

But Kaspar only went softly to Dasipodius, and taking his hand, said,
“You’ll come, master?”

And Dasipodius smiled and said, “Yes”. And so it was that Christian and
he and Rappel left Strassburg behind them, and came to be living at the
Habrechts’ cottage, within a mile of Schaffhausen.




CHAPTER XXXVI.

“UNDER THE SHADE OF MELANCHOLY BOUGHS.”


In all the cantons of the League it would have been hard to find a
kinder-hearted, more hospitable house-mother than Gridel Habrecht, the
mother of Isaac and Kaspar. Eldest and youngest of their generation,
there was between them a tribe of married brothers and sisters settled
in Schaffhausen and its neighbourhood; and an industrious and thriving
lot they were, all more or less expert in the clock and watch making
craft, which has for centuries distinguished the villages of the Black
Forest. Kaspar Habrecht, however, from earliest childhood had shown a
talent for the wood-carving, which is another branch of its industry,
and no less marked a feature of the prosperous locality where it is
said beggars are unknown. The sterling and scientific horological skill
of Isaac Habrecht had earned for him a high reputation, which had
reached Strassburg; and when, under the auspices of Chretei Herlin,
the great mechanical clock had been begun, more now than two years
ago, Isaac, at the special desire of the old mathematician, accepted
the post in his studio, and at the same time established himself as a
clockmaker and brass-work instrument maker at the sign of the Wheel
in one of the city’s chief thoroughfares. Withholding however the
lad’s identity, he had submitted some specimens of his young brother’s
handicraft to Herlin and Radegund von Steinbach, and other competent
judges; and one and all of them had pronounced the work surpassing in
beauty of design, and delicacy of touch, anything of the sort they had
ever seen; and Chretei at once desired to know whether the artist’s
services could be had for the new Horologe case? It was a proud moment
for Isaac, as then for the first time he explained that this artist was
his brother Kaspar.

“And he is but a youth, but he’ll do his best to give you and the city
satisfaction, Father; I’ll answer for that.”

And so Kaspar too had taken his place in the Dial studio. His mother
had found it a hard task to part with this child of her old age;
but she was made of stoical stuff, and when she saw the flush of
joy which lit Kaspar’s face at the unexpected distinction offered
him, she did not refuse to let him go, but bidding him to be true to
himself and his employers, sent him to the great city, and saved her
tears till he was gone; and when they had had their way, she dried
her still handsome eyes, and made herself content with the reflection
that Isaac was with him, and where Isaac was no harm could come to
anybody, and whatever Isaac did was right. That, however, made it none
the less a joy to her, when she found that he and Kaspar were coming
home for a while; and when she was further desired to prepare for the
guests they should bring with them, she set to work and brought out
her finest linen, and all the best her house afforded, and excellent
the best was; and her man Yörgli, whose normal round of duties was
confined to stable and pasture work, was bidden to come indoors and
help Mariannle to move about the cumbrous handsome old chairs and
tables and presses in the best bed-chamber; and Yörgli, who had an
avowed admiration for Mariannle, was nothing loth; neither perhaps had
Mariannle any objection, since for all she laughed and danced and
flirted whenever it suited her humour, she liked Yörgli, she said, well
enough; quite enough, she would own if driven very close, to marry him
when a sufficient number of florins had been saved up to buy a certain
charming little cottage not far off, which Yörgli had his eye upon.

In those days when pens and newspapers had not as yet come to be things
of course, Frau Habrecht could have but a very scanty conception of the
events which had so recently created such a stir in Strassburg, until
she had her son’s _vivâ voce_ relation of it. Isaac had indeed warned
her that Dasipodius was blind; rumour moreover had already brought so
much within her ken, and when she found that he was actually to be her
guest, she was a little put about at the threatened responsibility
which she imagined the charge of a blind person would entail upon her,
and her practical mind was much exercised to conceive what Conrad
Dasipodius would be finding to do with himself all day in that little
village, whose busy silence was only broken by the tapping of tiny
hammers and the grating of files.

The briefest acquaintance however with the blind man dispelled all her
perplexities. At first, indeed, she found it difficult to persuade
herself that he was blind. It was not merely that his eyes were so
clear and well open, but he was so entirely able to do things for
himself—and for other people, as she was not slow to remark; and when,
for example, at supper-time on the evening of their arrival, Dasipodius
reached a chair and placed it for her at the table, her heart was won
for ever.

“He did,” she said afterwards, “what you two forgot to do with both
your fine eyes, and for all you saw to the poor little old mother, she
might have set her own chair. He didn’t find it too much trouble to pay
an old woman attentions, such as you two, I suppose, keep all for the
young ones. And,” went on she, not a little delighted at being able to
reassume the old tyranny over her two favourite sons, “I’ve not grown
into an imbecile since you have been away, I can tell you, and I’ve
more than an idea that you’ve been playing me some trick, and that he’s
not blind at all; and if you have——”

“God forbid, mother!” said Isaac gravely. “I wish we had been; but the
master’s stone blind.”

And the good woman allowed herself to be convinced; but she was greatly
tempted to begin to question the use of eyes at all, if one could make
one’s self so pleasant and so courtly without them. And so it was that
Dasipodius won himself the first place in his hostess’s esteem, and
henceforth her solicitude and anxiety for his personal comfort was as
unceasing as it was unobtrusive, and never a suspicion of fuss in it;
for with all his gentle ways, she stood in a certain sort of awe of him.

“Poor gentleman!” she said one day to Isaac. “At all events it
doesn’t need you or anybody to tell me that he and trouble are close
acquaintance; but it’s a noble face, Isaac, a noble face,” and then it
seemed to her that in Dasipodius she had found another son.

Neither did Christian lack her kind hospitable care; and that time
he spent in the Black Forest was very pleasant to him. Many a long
year had passed since last he had basked in the sunshine of a country
spring-tide; and he would wander away on those bright mornings, finding
a chastened pleasure in giving rein to memory, till it reached that
spring-time of his early manhood when he made the journey into the
Vosges Mountains and found his first last love. If now and then time
hung a little heavy for him, he kept that religiously to himself, for
he knew the sacrifice which had been made to afford him the benefit of
this change, which of course, taking all in all, he was enjoying well
enough; but Christian sorely missed Burgomaster von Steinbach looking
in, and would have given all the grey hairs off his head for a little
squabble about the Cession. A dozen times a day the old man would be
silently considering to himself what was going on in Strassburg; and
when after they had been there about a fortnight, Dr. Bruno Wolkenberg
guilefully contrived to give his patients the slip, and handing them
over to the tender mercies of a deputy, made his appearance along with
Balder at the cottage, Christian plied him with questions about things
in general, among which Otto von Steinbach was by no means forgotten.

“And how does he get on with his work?” rather drily asked Christian.

But Bruno, who had fully and satisfactorily answered all his other
enquiries, frowning impatiently, ruffling up his hair with his fingers,
and muttering something not too complimentary about Otto, strode
silently out into the air.

“Yes, I know,” nodded Christian, looking after him, “they made a
mistake when they let my boy go; there’s no doubt of that.”

When, however, the friends found themselves alone, Dasipodius asked
Bruno how Radegund’s pictures round the Horologe cornice were getting
on.

“They are perfection,” said Bruno; “at least things outside will all be
as they ought.”

“That will rejoice the Bishop’s heart,” replied the mathematician. “Has
he returned?”

“No, but Radegund is anxiously looking for his coming.”

“But her pictures are not finished yet?” said Dasipodius.

“It is not the pictures she’s thinking of, I take it,” answered
Wolkenberg.

“What then?”

“Ah! who can ever guess what she has in her head? ‘I have much to speak
with him about,’ that is all she condescends to inform me. She might
tell you more, Conrad,” jerked out the jealous Bruno, clutching up a
handful of grass, and then scattering it to the four winds.

“What is vexing her?”

“Nay, she seems to live in a world of vexation. She never smiles now,
Conrad, and it used to be like a golden sunset when Radegund smiled.”

“Poor girl! what a burden she makes life to herself; and to you—you
patient old bear.”

“I am not patient,” groaned Bruno, his blue eyes growing at once moist
and fiery. “Oh, Conrad, it is too hard; I think it will kill me if it
goes on much longer.”

“I would to heaven I could make you both happy,” said Dasipodius
musingly.

“Honestly, do you wish that?” demanded Wolkenberg, in whom the old
suspicion was so hard to die.

“Honestly?” echoed Dasipodius, lifting his brows surprisedly; “why,
from my heart yes. And—if—nay, if I speak all I think, I will say I
wish your love might find another—that is a gratefuller, kinder——”

“What is that?” cried the surgeon, starting from his place beside
Dasipodius, and his handsome face kindling and bristling like any
lion’s. “Do you take me for a weathercock or a windmill?”

“Not a bit of it. Sit down again now, Bruno. I was only going to say
that if indeed Radegund does not return your affection, then certainly
she can have no heart, and you are worlds too good for a heartless——”

“My God! Conrad,” said Bruno, and his voice trembled with suppressed
agitation and anger, “though it is you who say that, I could fell you
to the ground for it.”

“Then I had best say no more,” answered Dasipodius. “We will not
quarrel over this—over a woman. Is she—is there one worth it? Tell me,
Bruno, have you seen—Sabina, Mistress Sabina von Steinbach?”

And Dasipodius’ cheek crimsoned and paled again before the surgeon
answered curtly, “Yes”.

“And—she was well?”

“Oh, as far as I know; but she hardly spoke a word to me; and, I’ll
warrant you, I did not to her.”

“Why not?”

“Why not? I can’t, Conrad,—there. It’s of no use. When I look at
her pretty dove-like face, and think what she can be, how false and
shallow-hearted—and to you, Conrad—to you.”

“Have done, Bruno Wolkenberg!” cried Dasipodius, clutching fiercely at
a tree branch within reach, and bringing himself to his feet. “One word
more about Sabina von Steinbach and we are enemies for ever.”

“Mistress von Steinbach,” said Bruno, in chilly even tones, and with
a contemptuous shrug of his broad shoulders, “Mistress von Steinbach
shall make no quarrel between us.”

“Good. There is no need to discuss her at all. She has passed out of my
life. If I could hear,” went on Dasipodius after a short pause, “that
another could atone to her for all the vexation my love has caused
her—that some man worthy of her——”

“Oh,” bitterly interrupted Bruno. “I am glad to think you have come
to regard it in that light. Mistress Sabina never did run short of
admirers; and now you are out of the winning, she may choose where she
pleases, and——”

“Well?” said Dasipodius, with quick short breath. “Why do you waste
words? Speak. Who is it?”

“I did not say,” stammered the inconsequential Bruno, “that it was
anybody—nobody—Otto von Steinbach that is——”

“Otto von Steinbach!” gasped Dasipodius.

“He’ll do as well as another I suppose,” muttered Bruno.

“No! no! no! It cannot be! You are wrong—you——”

“May be so; but he—you know he used to be very sweet at Hackernagel’s
house; now he hardly ever goes there, and spends all his evenings at
the Burgomaster’s.”

“And—she?” hoarsely demanded Dasipodius.

“Ah! She—sits and spins.”

Yes, yes, of course—the old old story all through again! Just as she
had sat and spun—could not the blind man see it all in his memory so
plainly? Those days that were gone! Every ripple in her golden hair
gleaming wherever the sunlight touched it like purest gold, every shy
soft glance of her eyes, the eloquent ebb and flow of rosy colour to
her soft rounded cheek. All this, and much more, passed in mocking
array before him; and so, still then in that old dining-hall, that
drama—what? Nay, that farce of woman’s love was playing, only with
just a change of lovers; for the dainty heroine, the same woman mimed
it to as great a perfection as ever no doubt. Had her new coadjutor
been worthier, perhaps Dasipodius could have borne to think of
it differently, but—well, the last straw had been added to the
burden now!—Otto von Steinbach! Ah, great heaven! could it be, the
mathematician asked himself, that he had committed some unremembered
crime, for which it was doomed that this scatterbrain, unstable boy,
should be the avenger, and his supplanter in all that made life worth
living?

Oh, woman! woman! to the end it will be like this. For your sake Troy
may burn, for you noble hearts may crack; at your feet men will chain
and enslave their best ambitions, and still, calm and silent, you sit
and spin, and seem to take no heed!

But Sabina’s old love only said: “If a storm came by, Otto would be no
shelter for the Lily, Bruno.”

“They are well enough matched,” said Bruno, hating himself that he
spoke so harshly.

“It may be so,” said Dasipodius slowly and wistfully; and in unbroken
silence the two sat on, listening to the low soughing of the spring
breeze among the oak boughs, and the gentle creaking of the pine
branches, and the waterfall’s distant roar, and the buzzing of the
insects about them, thinking the while what a fallacy it was, that
notion about nature being the counterpart of man’s life. Why, here in
the one case, was not all peace and brightness and content? and as
the days should lengthen out, this early promise would all ripen into
golden summer, and still richer autumn’s harvesting, and the happiness
of all living creatures would be perfected. Only for those two, the
buds of hope had been nipped by cruel frosts, and ere their manhood’s
summer was reached, the wintry clouds of disappointment were heavy upon
them.

So noonday waned, and never a syllable more the two interchanged, until
Kaspar came in search of them. “That is you, Kaspar?” said Dasipodius,
his ear first detecting the boy’s light step over the fallen stones of
the mountain side. “Come here; I was thinking of you this moment, and
then—I hear your footstep. That is what they say of the angels.”

“I am but a poor sort of angel,” laughingly said the boy, as he flung
himself full length upon the grass at the mathematician’s feet.

“Prove yourself at least a good spirit then. For we are sorely wanting
one to take us out of ourselves for a bit. Come now, have I not over
and over again heard you say there is a legend attached to this lake of
yours?”

“Oh, yes,” cried Bruno, “there is, I know——”

“Hold your peace,” smiled Dasipodius, lifting his finger. “Of course
you know, but you have been in a brown study this hour and more past,
and your version might not be so cheerful as Kaspar’s. So come now,
lad, begin. Once upon a time—”

“Yes,” said Kaspar. “Once upon a time there was a brave handsome knight
dwelt in yonder castle, and he was beloved by two fair ladies——”

“He loved two fair ladies, you mean,” corrected the mathematician.

“He loved one of them, yes,” gravely assented Kaspar, “and——”

“But they were not both fair,” criticised Bruno. “One was dark; that is
the way at least that I’ve heard the story, with hair and eyes like the
raven’s wing.”

“I should have said, of course,” said the patient Kaspar, “two
_beautiful_ ladies; one a Count Palatine’s daughter, the Lady
Aldegonda, and the other a poor esquire’s child, Veronica, fair-haired
and blue-eyed, and it was her the knight loved. But when Aldegonda
found that out, she went to the poor maiden, and laughing her love to
scorn, bade her find lowlier wooers, that falcons mated with merlins,
not with tercel-hawks; and that it was at her feet the knight Hugo
would fain worship. And when the poor child heard this, her heart felt
near to breaking and——”

“Now, Kaspar,” interrupted the mathematician, “surely your story is
simple nonsense as it stands with your telling. I suppose the knight
had told her that he loved her; that would have sufficed.”

“Yes, he had told her,” answered Kaspar, “but she was a woman, very
young it is true, not very wise perhaps, but old enough to know men’s
hearts can be fickle; wise enough to see how gloriously beautiful the
Lady Aldegonda was, and she misdoubted the power of her own pale beauty
in such rivalry. Don’t you understand, master?”

“Go on,” shrugged the mathematician.

“And so, as I was telling you, the Lady Aldegonda’s words almost broke
Veronica’s heart, and there seemed nothing left for her but to die. And
day after day, for the knight was absent just then from his castle,
she would come and sit just hereabouts where we are now, on the lake’s
brink, and gaze into the deep deep, cold cold water, and then there
would steal terrible thoughts into her weary desolate soul.

“One day while she was sitting so, there seemed to come a low murmur
from the Kelpie’s cave here. Nearer and nearer it came; but she sighed
to herself, ‘It is but the wind whispering among the ferns,’ and still
nearer and nearer came these sounds. ‘It is only the wavelets,’ she
sadly said, ‘stirring the long rushes.’ And truly they were; and still
the murmuring came closer, closer, until she knew it to be too sweet
for the whispering of the wind or the rippling of the water, too sweet
for aught save Hugo’s voice. ‘My life, I love you,’ it said. ‘Nay,’
sobbed she, but yielding all the while to the strong arms folding
her so fond and close, ‘but the Lady Aldegonda says——’ ‘What can the
Lady Aldegonda know,’ he rejoined, with a strange stern look, which
fled again as his face bent over hers, ‘of the love I bear for you,
sweetheart? Come, Father Sigurd waits at the holy altar to make us one.
Wilt come, dear love?’ And so from the dark weeds the maiden rose up,
her white dress heavy with the waters that had near been her grave,
and the little forget-me-not flowers she had gathered, for all her
bride’s bravery, in her bosom, and ere the Ave Maria chimed again, she
stood in the castle halls yonder, Hugo’s dear true wife, and many a
long and happy year they lived. That’s all, master; it isn’t so much of
a tale as some are.”

“And what there is of it you’ve half left out,” grumbled Bruno. “The
Lady Aldegonda——”

“Ah,” smiled Dasipodius. “She found a suitor more sensible to her
charms, depend on it.”

“No such thing,” answered Bruno. “She killed herself for love of Hugo.
Eh, Kaspar, is it not so?”

“They found her dead next dawn at the foot of the crag yonder,” said
Kaspar.

“A cruel end,” said the mathematician.

“She deserved no better,” grumbled Bruno.

“You are unkind, Kaspar,” smiled Dasipodius. “Did I not say I expected
something cheerful of you?”

“But,” pleaded the boy earnestly, “how could I twist the ending false,
and make it happy when it wasn’t?”

“Why, it is but a legend!”

“The more reason to make it seem like life.”

“Well, well—if I had tears for bygones, I think I could spare a few for
the Lady Aldegonda’s love. It is—come, Bruno, leave sighing, and cudgel
your invention to help my square inch brain find a simile. What is
misplaced love like?”

“I cannot say,” said Bruno, “unless it be like the precious pearls that
proud Queen of Egypt wasted in a cup of vinegar.”

“It will do, though it has seen some service; but sometimes it has
seemed to me that there may be some bright hidden meridian towards
which such seemingly aimless lines all converge. There, confess now, if
my science is not a match for your romance.”




CHAPTER XXXVII.

“THE OLD LOVE OR THE NEW?”


Yes, it was all true, as Bruno Wolkenberg had told Dasipodius, that
Sabina von Steinbach sat and span, and attended to household affairs,
and entertained her father’s guests, and so charmingly did all the
thousand and one little duties and courtesies, and odds and ends
of things expected of the daughter of a respected and well-to-do
Burgomaster, that mothers of feather-headed, frivolous girls would say
admiringly, “There’s an old head on young shoulders for you! That now
is something like a daughter! You never see her flaunting all over the
place pranked in furbelows and finery. Take example from her if you
mean to land your sweethearts for husbands. Men like these housewifely
ways a thousand times better than all your butterfly antics. Oh! flirt
and talk nonsense to your fill, but it is such girls mind as Sabina
von Steinbach they make their wives of—if they’ve an ounce of sense.”

And certainly it seemed as if the bachelors of Strassburg had gone
out of their way to lay in a stock of that commodity; and the young
foolish virgins might toss their heads and call this wise one a sly
proud thing as much as they pleased, it did not alter the fact that
masculine hearts did greatly incline towards Sabina von Steinbach,
and no sooner was the coast clear of the old love, than a host of
would-be new ones besieged the house in the Munster-gasse. Those among
them, however, who went as far as to proffer hand and heart retired
nonsuited, and apparently the Lily was not to be won; but backed by the
fortunate accident of his cousinship and his inexhaustible stock of
self-complacency, Otto von Steinbach contrived to renew his old footing
in the goldsmith’s house.

Now, as always, Otto’s company bored the Burgomaster cruelly. Niklaus
by no means delighted in his frequent visits, at the same time he never
could find it in his heart to bid him make them fewer; and so, after
the way of men, he contrived to shuffle the disagreeable task on to his
womankind.

“You don’t like that jackanapes cousin of yours to be eternally
skipping in and out like a tame magpie, do you?” he asked Sabina, after
one of these inflictions.

“Not much,” answered she.

“Not much!” impatiently echoed the Burgomaster. “That is worse than no
answer. If you are so nice about words, I must speak plainer; do you
wish it?”

“Why should I, father?” she listlessly asked.

“Oh,” said Niklaus testily, “how should I know? Do I understand these
things?”

“What things?”

“Well,” said the Burgomaster, growing red, and fidgeting his hands in
his pockets, “it isn’t me nor Mitte he comes to see, I suppose, in his
silver tags and sky-blue doublets; and if it isn’t—well, don’t I say I
don’t understand these things? So do as you will, only—there, there,
kiss your old father, little one, and try to be my dear bright Lily
once again.”

Niklaus von Steinbach was a broad-natured man, and while he found a
modicum of his nephew’s society go a very long way with himself, he
did not overlook the fact that Otto was a well-looking young man; and
reflecting on this fact, as he sat one day sorting a tray of precious
stones, he went on to argue from it, that women did undoubtedly
care for that sort of thing; “though somehow I had a notion that
Sabina—yes,” he went on, critically examining a diamond he had in his
hand, “these are all passable stones; but this—this is a beauty. I
wouldn’t barter it for all the rest put together. I wonder,” and then
Niklaus sighed, “I wonder how Dasipodius gets on; well, well.”

It was weary work for the old goldsmith to stand by and look on his
child’s endurance of some mental suffering marked so unmistakably in
her face, and to find himself powerless to make life brighter for her.
It would, he thought, have been so much better if he could have found
some carelessness or peccadillo in her to grumble at, and so to relieve
his feelings; but day by day she went through her round of duties, and
when he came near, would look up and welcome him with a smile that
was but a poor faint shadow of its old sunny self; and he was not so
blind but that he often saw how tears had been hastily brushed from
the gentle eyes, and it was things such as these which led him to
build up some sort of forlorn hope on Otto, and think that if he were
able after all to stamp down the canker-worm of her jealously-hidden
griefs, he would hardly dare to hinder him. As a practical step towards
superinducing this crisis, which he at once shrank from and desired,
he adopted the custom of betaking himself to his counting-house
whenever Otto looked in, which on an average was at least twice a day,
and leaving the cousins together; but Otto had seemed to lack his
advancement so entirely, that at last out of all patience, Niklaus had
hinted to Sabina that there must be no more shilly-shally, and things
must be settled at once.

It had, however, but very recently dawned upon Sabina that there could
be anything to settle. Otto had had his answer ever so long ago to a
certain question he had put. It was because she had felt herself so
safe in his cousinly society that she had allowed him within these few
last weeks to indulge the fancy he appeared to have for making a sort
of tame cat of himself about the place.

She knew very well that for some time past he had been dancing
attendance at Syndic Hackernagel’s, and had rejoiced to think that in
the society of the four ladies there, he might have come upon the
heart which she once prophesied to him he would find. As time went on
however, she discovered that these visits at Hackernagel’s house had
grown few and far between, in favour of spending his valuable leisure
at the Munster-gasse.

“Now it’s hard,” said Sabina, with a faint smile of self-complacency
born of Otto’s return to his old allegiance, and an indignant frown
for such fast and loose tricks; “it’s abominably hard if she’s fond of
him; and there is, of course, no accounting for taste, poor thing!”
The object of her compassion being Gretchen Hackernagel, whom, by some
occult instinct, she was persuaded had been the chosen fair, though
nobody had ever said so, least of all the young gentleman himself; and
Sabina determined to do battle with him on Gretchen’s behalf, if it
should come to any tug of war. Moreover, the wily little woman, in this
determination to help her neighbour, found her own small difficulties
lightened. “I will not have you making believe,” she said coquettishly,
“when all the time you are dying to be round at Master Hackernagel’s.
Oh yes, I know all about it,” she went on with a gleam of merriment in
her eyes; “pray what would Ortruda say, or Adelheid, or—which is it,
Otto?”

“Gretchen, I suppose you mean,” blushed the unwary Otto.

“Ah yes, Gretchen to be sure,” she said delightedly; “and what, pray,
would she say to hear you talking this nonsense to me?”

“It isn’t my fault,” groaned Otto, “if they’re after me.”

“For shame!” flushed up she, “to say such a thing when you have gone
spending half your time there, and they’ve been so kind to you!”

“Yes, but where there’s a pack of girls, one always is civilly treated.”

“And you—have been civil back?”

“Oh well, but it doesn’t follow because a fellow’s been civil to a
girl, he must marry her.”

“And what may be her view? What, I mean, may be her opinion of you?”

“Opinion! ho!” airily smirked Otto—“opinion! I like that. My dear
child, what has a woman to do with opinions, when she’s over head and
ears in love with you.”

“With you?”

“Rather.”

“Ah! she has told you so?”

“Now, Sabina, don’t be absurd; of course she hasn’t.”

“Then how can you know?”

“Ah, there—one does pretty well know these things.”

“But I’d be quite sure, I would indeed, Otto. It would be so bad for
you to have made any mistake after all,” she said gravely.

“Oh! I’m not in the least afraid of that.”

“Then you are fortunate, sir, and must never cease thanking Heaven for
this true love which you have found. Do you remember I told you you
would find it; and am I not a true Sibyl?—say now?”

But Otto only growled, and vowed he did not care one straw for Gretchen
Hackernagel. “And she has become positively hideous to me since—come
now, look here, Sabina, you’d better not be trifling with me in this
cat and mouse way. I never mean to ask you a third time, I swear I
don’t.”

“Otto, I cannot be your wife.”

“Well, it’s great nonsense, let me tell you; but people never do know
their best chances when they’ve got them. It’ll just serve you right
if you find yourself sticking here with your father all your life, that
it will.”

“It is my desire,” she answered.

“But look here now, if the Burgomaster should—if you should be left
alone?”

“I don’t care to think of that,” she replied, paling a little.

“Neither do I,” said he rather chokingly. “I couldn’t bear to think of
you—left all alone in the world. It makes me wretched.”

“Don’t let it, Otto dear,” interrupted the girl, touched by his tones.
“The Sisters at Freiburg would give me shelter if—if I wanted it. Aunt
Ottilie——”

But what Otto said of the reverend mother and her little community at
this juncture, need not be recorded here. “You’d never become a nun!”
he burst out. “Oh! it’s a shame! a confounded horrid shame! and all
because that Conrad Dasi——”

“Hush!” the girl’s thin cheek, which had flushed slightly, paled to
ashen white; and her mobile lips closed so sternly, that the last
syllables died on Otto’s lips. “There must be no word on that subject,”
she said in cold steady tones. “Do you understand?”

“O certainly. Of course not, if you don’t like it. Not a word; but I
wish Dasi—I mean, I wish the thing had never been born or thought of,
that I do,” and the Horologe’s new master’s brow wrinkled over with
care. “It’ll kill me soon.”

“Kill you?”

“Yes, that’ll be the end of it. I’m very ill already. Don’t I look
awfully pale, Sabina?”

“Well, rather,” she said, lifting her eyes to his face with some
interest; and indeed his almost feminine delicacy and transparency of
complexion was dulled, and a harassed weary look was in his eyes.

“It’s that confounded clock,” continued he. “Women bother a fellow
quite enough, but ten of ’em are nothing to that clock; and I tell you
it will be the death of me.”

“Then give it up,” she said in mildly apprehensive tones.

“Oh yes, likely, isn’t it? and make myself the laughing stock of the
place,” said Otto dismally. “I tell you what it is, Sabina, Dasipodius
knew what he was about, when he wanted me to take it.”

“Wanted you to take it!” echoed she in amazement.

“Oh, depend upon it he did. He just wanted to wash his hands of the
thing, I know. If he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have let me have his plans of
it quite so easy a bargain. And small blame to him.”

“I think you’re raving,” she answered, still with her eyes transfixing
her cousin’s face.

“There wouldn’t be much wonder if I was,” hysterically returned he,
rubbing his forehead. “And if you could see the inside of that thing,
it would just drive you mad too. Yes, only to look at it.”

“But I have seen it—many a time,” murmured she, thinking of the dear
old days, “and it always looked very nice.”

“Did it!” returned he, in the irony of his despair. “It’s in an awful
mess now, all the same. I don’t mind telling you so, Sabina,” and he
heaved a tremendous sigh of relief. “You can keep a secret I know.”

“Oh, Otto!” she cried in dismayed reproach, “and it was all so
beautiful and tidy when—when——” she hesitated, “everything, I mean,
was in such perfect order; each part only waiting to be put in its
place.”

“Yes, but that was because—don’t you understand—because Dasipodius
knew what he was going to do, and that helps a man on; but I—the very
idea, you know, of its being imagined that I can make head or tail of
what might come into Dasipodius’ brain! Oh it’s absurd!” said Otto,
thrusting his hands into his pockets and pacing the floor to and fro.
“It all comes,” he went on, “of everybody being so prejudiced in favour
of him. Oh you may laugh,” he said, detecting the bitter smile on her
lips, “but they’re just all of them infatuated with him. And Radegund
now, she’s every bit as bad as the rest. Why she won’t help me a bit,
though she knows as well as he does, how it’s all meant to go.”

“And yet,” said Sabina in dreamy tones, “they have treated him so
shamefully.”

“Oh, ha, h’m, well, but of course it wouldn’t have done to go on
employing a man who—h’m, laboured under general suspicion as he did.
Magic, don’t you see——”

“It couldn’t be proved,” she contested; “his worst enemies could
hardly find a shadow of proof.”

“No, they couldn’t exactly find it—but—h’m—there’s no doubt he must.
No fellow—and above all a blind fellow—ha! ha! why it’s ridiculous
to think of!—could have invented such an infernal, confoundedly
complicated bit of machinery, if the devil or somebody hadn’t backed
him up.”

“Then,” cried she indignantly, “how is it they make you go on with his
plans? Why didn’t they order you to begin with your own all over again?
There was nothing—_particular_ about them?”

“Oh no, nothing at all; but the whole thing has been a mass of favour
and prejudice.”

“But if,” insisted Sabina, “if they were afraid of the Professor
Dasipodius’ supervision, how is it they are not afraid to make use of
his plans? I can’t understand.”

“My dear girl, of course you can’t. Women never can. These distinctions
are too nice for them. Logical deduction and mathematical precision are
too much for their brain power, and——”

“And if you’re not careful, they’ll be more than enough for yours,
Cousin Otto. It never was over strong.”

“Ah!” languorously returned Otto, transported to have made of himself
at any cost an object of her solicitude, “if it is your wish that I——”

“That you should take care of yourself?” she said smilingly. “Yes it
is.”

“Then for your sake——”

“Nay—for Gretchen Hackernagel’s, I do hope you will.”

And without staying to say good-bye, Otto departed.




CHAPTER XXXVIII.

TIME’S CHANGES.


The old city rests after its day’s work in the soft late Spring
gloaming. Tower and spire and gabled roof catch the last lingering
reflections of the golden and crimson clouds where the sun went down.
Already this long time the storks have been gravely reposing in
their loftily pitched nests, but the swallows and martins are still
discussing their respective claims to the most desirable sleeping
accommodation afforded by the fretted eaves of the Cathedral. A few
stars are beginning to glimmer in the deep blue sky, which, however, is
only to be caught in glimpses from the footway of the narrow streets,
between whose overhanging stories and great wooden galleries, and
facades heavy with carving, even the moon’s glare is hardly able to
penetrate. The gaudy brilliancy of the countless street signs has
not yet been obscured by the gathering shadows, and here a snow-white
swift-footed stag, there a grizzly bear, next door a wild man,
appalling in his hirsute but insufficient covering, brandishes his
terrible knotted club. Across the road, and far more frightful still,
only yielding indeed in fearsomeness to the strong-minded of later
days, is the “Strong Woman,” who appears to be literally striding
from her cast-iron frame, with bristling hyæna-like locks. Scarcely a
shop which has not its sign; hardly a burgher’s dwelling lacking its
cognizance or coat of arms; while for the most part the spaces between
the mullioned casements are gorgeous with fresco painting, picturing
forth the labours of the mighty Hercules, the departure of the good
ship Argonaut, the loves of Venus and Adonis, and many another mythic
tale.

High up on their deep sloping roofs the grand old houses proclaim
their ages in gigantic figures, some of which date two and three
centuries back. Very silent and half deserted the streets are now, for
it is close upon seven and supper-time; and through half-open doors
and lattice panes, peal forth now and again shouts of merry laughter
mingled with the hum of voices; while under the little footbridges,
and the arching foundations of the old houses themselves, the river
gurgles onward towards open country. Even the great fountain in the
Dom-Platz is so utterly deserted that the big dolphins seem almost to
be finding leisure to take holiday, and spout lazily; and their blunt
jaws look agape with delight at the sweet organ sounds floating through
the Cathedral doors, for Master Wolfgang Dachstein is just a second
Orpheus, and has been known many a time to have charmed dead souls back
to new life, and to have softened hearts stony as one infers these
monsters have.

This morning early, early enough to celebrate the first mass, Bishop
John returned. All day since, however, he has not stirred from the
palace. Work has accumulated for him after his long absence; and he has
been very busy looking through his correspondence, and attending to the
most pressing claims upon him. A bishop’s life when he does his duty is
no sinecure; and John of Manderscheid has always striven to be worthy
of his calling. During these past two months, he has been making a
progress throughout his diocese, righting, as far as he might be able,
the wrongs he had found; and they were many. Three-fourths of them born
of the neglect and carelessness of the under clergy; and wherever he
came upon these sins which cried aloud to Heaven, there, as surely as
corruption follows death, he found heresy rampant. Truly indeed there
were priests sticking through evil report and good to their posts,
but comparatively these were rare in that desert of polemics which
the fair vineyard of the Church had become. And the saddest part of
it all, at least to such minds as Bishop John’s, was the reflection
that untrustworthiness had brought the Nemesis upon them. He could
look through the years of his life, and for half a dozen generations
earlier, and trace back the first faint risings of the storm now raging
so fiercely on every side. When the people had asked bread of their
priestly guides, how often had they been given stones—or worse still!
Was it then such wonder that at last they had turned elsewhere in quest
of spiritual food?

That they had found, it the bishop was too faithful a Catholic to
concede; but some baneful, and generally attractive poison, they were
certainly endeavouring to sustain their spiritual existence upon,
though to him it appeared dry tasteless stuff enough, and his heart
yearned tenderly towards those starved misguided sheep. Far and near,
hydra-headed heresy was tainting every little town and hill hamlet of
his diocese, and his bitter experiences had thinned the grey hairs
about his temples, and hollowed his worn cheeks.

Only towards sunset, wearied out with his toil, he at last indulged
himself in a question lying very near his heart. “And how goes on the
Horologe, Master Gottlieb?”

“Fairly I hope, my lord,” replied the chaplain with some hesitation.

Now that was an answer just calculated to ruffle the gentle serenity of
the Bishop’s temper. He was a tolerant patient man, but the one thing
he could not endure was want of zeal in matters temporal or spiritual.
“Whatsoever thou doest, do it with all thine heart,” was his motto.
Still, reminding himself that fidelity and plodding industry were
always stronger points with his secretary than enthusiasm, he only said
a little testily: “One doesn’t talk of hope, friend; one says a thing
is, or it isn’t, when one has to do with the Professor Dasipodius”.

“But then,” replied Gottlieb, staring in some perplexity at his
superior, “then one has not—you are aware of course, my lord, that one
has not to do with the Professor Dasipodius. He is——”

“Is what? Speak, man,” cried the startled Bishop.

“Away. Absent from Strassburg.”

“Oh,” said the Bishop with a relieved sigh, turning to his papers
again. “Taking a little holiday, eh? Well, he needs it no doubt; and
yet—how long has he been gone?”

“More than a month.”

“What is the meaning of this?” demanded the Bishop, letting his
gathered up papers fall again in a disordered heap.

“I really can’t quite say, my lord, unless—some, so I am told, consider
the Professor Dasipodius to be—ahem—pardon me, my lord—the devil;
though some,” continued the chaplain, while the Bishop gazed at him in
speechless amazement, “only go so far as to pronounce him blind.”

“Blind! What is this nonsense you are talking?”

“You knew about it, my lord?”

“I heard some ridiculous rumour as I was passing through Schlettstadt,
but I paid it no more heed than I did the wind blowing in my face. Tell
me——”

“I am doing so, my lord. Some, I was about to observe, among whom is
Master Tobias Hackernagel, the Anabaptist——”

“Ay, ay. That apostate fellow; and what has he to do with it?” demanded
the Bishop, an angry spot rising to his cheek.

“Ah. A wonderful deal, I assure you. I am told he has been the life and
soul of the whole affair. But I do not concern myself in other people’s
business, and I assure you, my lord, I know next to nothing beyond the
fact that Otto von Steinbach——”

“Holy Mother of God! Go on. And what of Otto von Steinbach?”
breathlessly challenged the Bishop.

“I was about to inform you, my lord. Otto von Steinbach is appointed in
the Professor Dasipodius’ place; at least so I am given to understand,
but——”

“Am I in my senses?”

“I am sure I hope——” began the chaplain, eyeing his chief in dubious
apprehension.

“And Radegund—Radegund von Steinbach?”

“Is about, my lord, and busy as ever. And really the Horologe looks
remarkably nice. Remarkably nice,” said Master Gottlieb, waxing
enthusiastic, then he relapsed into his normal quiescence, and
proceeded with his docketing.

“Send her here,” said the Bishop, after a silence of some minutes,
during which he seemed lost in thought.

“Whom, my lord?” asked Gottlieb, jerking his head up with a little
start.

“Mistress von Steinbach.”

The chaplain departed on his mission, and in half-an-hour Radegund
stood in the Bishop’s presence.

With a gesture which would have passed as easily for a malediction as a
blessing, he motioned her nearer to him.

“Tell me all about this?” he said.

She lifted her dark eyes questioningly to his face.

“I am not to be trifled with,” he returned, for it seemed that a
conspiracy to torment him had been set on foot.

“Heaven forbid,” she said gravely.

“Do you dare to stand there,” he demanded, raising his voice, “and
feign ignorance of what I mean? When it is your—your own brother who
is appointed in Dasipodius’ place? If my hearing is to be believed,
that is.”

“It is, my lord, precisely as you say,” calmly replied the artist.

“And you pretend——”

“I am not given to pretence. And whether the Horologe has come to be
a marvel of finish,” and her lips curled mockingly, “or whether it
may be chaos confounded, I know no more than you do, my Lord Bishop;
for since the Professor Dasipodius was called upon to relinquish his
appointment——”

“At your instigation, treacherous woman! To make way for your flesh and
blood!”

Radegund’s eyes glittered. “Have a care, my lord,” she said through her
set teeth.

“Oh! I know your power,” said the Bishop hoarsely; “and how it can
almost make wrong itself seem right. I know it well, but I believed you
to be true; and I thought that your admiration for Dasipodius—ah, you
have need to blush; I thought, I say, your sense of appreciation of the
Professor Dasipodius’ great gifts, would have shielded you from such
base corruption as this. And yet, no sooner is my back turned, than I
find you moving heaven and earth to set this fellow, this jack-a-dandy,
in his place. And why, heaven save us all! because he is your brother!
Oh shame! shame!”

“My lord, you do me foul injustice.”

“Oh! I cry your pardon, mistress. Yes, one needs to be nice with one’s
words in these days. I should have said that you permitted this,
stretched out no preventing hand.”

“I had no power.”

“When she is pleased to exercise it, Mistress von Steinbach’s power is
boundless.”

“Conrad Dasipodius at least does not acknowledge it,” she said coldly,
“and he spurned the poor offers of aid I made him.”

“How?” asked the Bishop in gentler accents.

And then Radegund related how, on Dasipodius’ blindness being
discovered, the enquiry had been instituted at the Chancellery.

“But how—how did they discover it?” insisted the Bishop.

“Ah, by mere accident,” carelessly answered she.

“Yes, yes, but tell me all; for I will have this business sifted to the
bottom. How did it begin?”

“Some love affair not worth repeating,” she said carelessly, a sudden
flush dyeing her pale face.

“Love affair?—Professor Dasipodius?” said the Bishop, knitting his
brows perplexedly. “Never, the ideas are not reconcileable.”

“I believe you are right, my lord,” said Radegund in ironical tones;
“but my cousin Sabina is apt, poor child, to fancy things.”

“What! your little cousin! the Lily of Strassburg! Ah! well, that is a
different matter. Yes, and these two then are lovers?”

“No, my lord, it is all at an end.”

“Nay, but that would be a pity. The marriage tie is a holy thing, not
lightly to be thought of, and then cast aside. It was not Dasipodius
who did this?”

“It was her doing, my lord.”

“And her reasons? On account of his blindness? No.”

“That,” said Radegund, slowly bending her head, “was what she intimated
in her letter to him.”

“Oh woman! woman!” groaned the Bishop. “Well, but she could not have
truly loved him then, this pretty child?”

“She is nineteen, my lord.”

“Tut! tut!” smiled the old man, waving his hand; “young enough to play
a dozen Corydons false before she settles her fancy; eh, Mistress?”

“You may be right.”

“If Dasipodius must bend to such—such trifles, he is worthier of some
loftier love than that. Eh? don’t you think so?”

“Yes,” murmured Radegund, and then she hurriedly went on to explain
that it was this same letter of Sabina’s which had been read aloud at
the Dial.

“It was a dunderheaded affair from beginning to end,” said the Bishop
when she had done; “and upon my honour, it always has been my unalloyed
conviction that this world would get on just as well again without
women. It is they who are—heaven and darkness! is it any business of
other people’s, if a man chooses to be blind? And Dasipodius? What did
he say in—Holy Saints!—in his defence?”

“Barely a dozen words, my lord.”

“No; I would stake my revenue on it he didn’t,” smiled the Bishop. “He
knows these town councilmen. Deaf adders are nothing to them—nothing.”
Then he dismissed Radegund.




CHAPTER XXXIX.

A VISIT TO THE DIAL.


An early hour next day found the Bishop at the studio. “I have come
to see how the Horologe progresses,” he said; and then spent such an
unconscionable time about the place, that he fidgeted Otto. “What did
he want coming prying here for? what do bishops know about clocks, I
should like to know?” he grumbled afterwards to Hackernagel.

“Some folks,” said Tobias, “imagine they possess an aptitude for
everything under the sun.”

“Well, but I don’t like it you know. I can always stand anything but
interference. And then the number of questions he kept asking! It’s
disgusting!”

Undeniably the Bishop had done that. In his own mind he had determined
to judge Otto fairly and impartially; and, for the moment, setting
aside all remembrance of Dasipodius’ unjust treatment, he gave himself
to ascertaining as far as his own powers permitted, how far Otto von
Steinbach was competent for the task he had undertaken. The result
of his investigations simply confirmed his forgone conclusion that
the Horologe was in the worst possible plight. It was not only Otto’s
inexperience and superficial acquaintance which rendered him unfit to
rule, but also his unstable temperament. Had all the old hands remained
on, Otto might have blundered through; but the best among them had
left, and in their place were untried workers, who were only paid
by the piece, and cared no more for the Horologe than they did for
Archimedes.

“I miss Isaac Habrecht,” was almost the Bishop’s first observation,
when his glance had traversed the unfamiliar group; but Otto’s
attention was absorbed in something going on down in the street.

“I miss Isaac Habrecht,” reiterated his visitor.

“Oh, yes—you know, I mean—that is, my lord, Isaac Habrecht doesn’t work
here now.”

“Why not?”

“Well, Isaac was a difficult fellow to deal with; and I don’t see why
one is to put up with another fellow’s airs because he happens to be
able to turn a piece of brass into a wheel rather better than another;
do you, my lord?”

“I’m not so sure,” replied the Bishop, bending over the shoulder of
Isaac’s successor. “Have you got that even, friend?” he asked, looking
at the wheel the man was filing.

“Near enough, my lord,” was the half surly, half patronizing, and
wholly confident rejoinder.

“And Kaspar?” said the Bishop, turning again to Otto, “wouldn’t he work
with you either?”

“I’d rather have his room than his company. One could have done nothing
with a head crammed so full of favour and pre——”

“But the carvings?”

“Ah! here they are. Ready as you see,” said Otto, who did not hold
it necessary to explain that Kaspar’s work had been on the stroke of
completion before he left Strassburg; and that nothing was lacking of
it but an insignificant strip or two of beading. This however had now
been added to the rest.

“Kaspar’s fingers were thumbs when he did this,” said the Bishop,
examining the strips.

“Very likely,” said Otto with a shrug. “He was always full of fits and
fancies as an egg’s full of meat. I do so hate your geniuses. I don’t
pretend to be one myself; and such sort of people about me are simply a
worry.”

And Bishop John, as he scanned the Master Horologist’s countenance,
wondered whether unknowingly he had, after all, surrounded himself with
geniuses; for it was, he thought, many a day since he had seen a man
look more miserable and worried than did Otto von Steinbach.

“And that set of fine steel springs Dasipodius had in hand himself,”
said the Bishop. “I remember how exquisite their finish was. You are
over them I suppose?”

“Oh dear no, I have quite enough to do looking after other people: I
never find time for a stroke of work myself.”

“Dasipodius did,” said the Bishop.

“Oh—yes; but it wouldn’t be right you know, my lord, to—to compare—my
modus operandi——”

“With his. No, I suppose not. And now, tell me by how long shall you
anticipate the Horologe’s completion?”

Otto stared vacuously.

“When will the Horologe be finished?” explained Bishop John.

“Oh, well, perhaps towards the end of Autumn.”

“What!” exclaimed the Bishop, “don’t you know it is to be ready by
Saint Laurence’s day? and that is August, the beginning of August, man,
isn’t it? or have you turned Anabaptist, and forgotten your saint’s
days.”

“Oh, that’s only what was said.”

“It is promised down in the contract, in black and white.”

“Ah, very likely; but they’ll have to whistle for it.”

“They’ll be more likely to cudgel your brains out if you don’t hold
to the agreement,” said the Bishop with kindling eyes; “you know
Strassburg’s not to be played with.”

“I can’t do impossibilities,” said Otto sulkily.

“Then we must see who can. Good day,” and the Bishop went away.

“_Ex nihilo, nihil fit_,” soliloquized he, as he slowly returned to the
palace; “and that will be the Horologe’s fate, or worse, if it remains
at this scatterbrain’s mercies. I must see Bruno Wolkenberg at once; he
is a man to be depended on. And I may be able to sift to the truth of
this strange business from him.”

For to Bishop John the truth seemed at the bottom of a well indeed.
Astounding stories, as remarkable for their diversity as for their
wildness, had already reached his ears on the subject. Some said
Dasipodius had turned out to be a were-wolf, and wandered abroad o’
nights in bloodthirsty search of little stray children; because Mother
Barepenny had said that stray children, a whole stray baby especially,
eaten at one meal, was an infallible remedy for blindness. Inasmuch,
however, as stray babies were not to be come upon every day, he had had
to content himself for the nonce with turning, by the same wise woman’s
assistance, into a spider; for your spider is able to creep in where
your were-wolf might meet with obstruction. Under this faint disguise,
Dasipodius had, it appeared, succeeded in sucking enough infant blood
to keep his eyes open, and so making believe he could see. But others
said that was all nonsense; what, forsooth, did he want of such
second-rate sort of backings up as were-wolves and vampires could give,
when there were in the city hundreds ready to affirm that many and many
a night they, with their own eyes, had distinctly seen the shadow of a
huge pair of horns on the casement blind of the mathematician’s turret
chamber?

While the Bishop might have sought more lucid details of Dasipodius’
resignation, or setting aside, or whatever it might be, from Radegund
von Steinbach, he had not failed to mark her reserve, amounting almost
to taciturnity, when he had spoken with her about it; and he came to
the wise conclusion that after all, Bruno Wolkenberg, from his intimate
friendship with Dasipodius, and by virtue of his professional knowledge
of his affliction, was the really proper person from whom to obtain the
information he desired. Accordingly he turned and made his way without
further delay to the surgeon’s house, where Trudel, in answer to his
enquiry whether her master was within and alone, nearly let slip her
assurance that he was lone as the church weathercock; but remembering
just in time that she was holding parley with a Bishop, and a prince
of the empire, contrived by a superhuman effort to set a seal upon her
lips, and with the plain unvarnished intimation that her Master was
within, ushered his august visitor into the laboratory.

The surgeon was standing in the embrasure of the window, busily engaged
in separating and arranging the petals and leaves of some medicinal
herbs he had brought from Schaffhausen, whence he had but the previous
day returned. The full sunlight fell upon his golden hair, and there
was a glow of colour and a healthful tan embrowning his handsome face.

“The country air seems to have done you good service, Dr. Wolkenberg,”
said the Bishop, seating himself in the chair Bruno placed for him.

“Well—yes, my lord,” answered Bruno; “such elixir as the air of the
Schwarzwald, I fear all the alchemists in Christendom will never be
able to distil. It would almost bring new life to the dead.”

“And sight to the blind?—Can it do that?”

“Even that perhaps, sometimes.”

The Bishop looked with eager, earnest eyes at the surgeon.

“You believe it may do something for Dasipodius?”

“No, my lord,” answered Wolkenberg, “I did not mean that. Dasipodius’
case is hopeless. Nothing would bring his eyesight back, short of a
miracle.”

“But one that you can work, Dr. Wolkenberg? Yes?” said the Bishop in
pleading tones; “so much depends on it.”

“I spoke literally, my lord,” answered the surgeon with grave calmness.
“It is beyond the skill of the greatest of us. Certain of the eye
nerves are totally destroyed.”

“And what then,” asked the Bishop, “is the nature of this blindness?”

“It is of the sort called Amaurosis.”

“But they tell me his eyes are not merely open, but as brilliant as
when I went away a couple of months since.”

Bruno nodded assent. “Just the same, my lord. He was blind then.”

“Is it of that kind,” demanded the Bishop, “which one reads of the
Arabs calling ‘Gutta Serena’?”

“Yes.”

“It is rare, is it not?”

“Comparatively, my lord, yes. This special form of it.”

“To me it is incredible.”

Bruno sighed.

“Incomprehensible. His eyes seemed to me full of expression and
brilliancy. I could not have guessed at such a calamity.”

“You did not see with professional eyes, my lord. I have foreboded it
these two years, and warned him of it.”

“How did it come about?”

“Over-study.”

“Oh,” said the Bishop. “Many a man studies as hard as he does, and yet
preserves his sight.”

“Pardon me, my lord, not many. For these years past he has but laid
down his book to take up his pen, and then only laid that aside to
fashion piece by piece what he has thought out and planned; and not
one pair of eyes in ten thousand could withstand such ceaseless wear
and tear. A real master of Horology, my lord, must have a mind and an
intellect as many-sided as a prism; and he needs above all, perhaps, to
be a practical genius.”

“A _rara avis_ indeed,” smiled the Bishop.

“It is much the same, I take it, as if one should speak of two men
rolled into one.”

The Bishop was silent, and sat with his eyes meditatively fixed on the
ground; presently, however, he looked up. “But he is to blame in this
surely,” he said in _ex-cathedra_ tones. “He has abused one of Heaven’s
best gifts.”

“It was in a good cause at least,” answered the surgeon. “Prometheus
stole fire from Heaven, and did his fellow-men a noble turn.”

“All the same,” said the Bishop regretfully, “your man has left his
work incomplete.”

“That is no fault of his, my lord,” bluntly replied Bruno.

“Ah! I cannot believe that story,” said the Bishop, closely shaking his
head. “For a blind man is a man bereft of his noblest sense.”

“Bereft? No, my lord, no, in such men as Dasipodius, it has but gone to
lend its help to the other senses, and bring them closer to perfection.”

“I wish I could believe that, Dr. Wolkenberg.”

“You would do well to believe it. It is only such men as Tobias
Hackernagel, and others of his complexion, who having no souls to
compass the greatness of Conrad’s, take refuge in attributing its power
to supernatural influences.”

“And they may be right,” smiled the Bishop. “You admit that, Dr. Bruno?”

“I do,” said the surgeon, with a responsive light in his eyes, “with
this difference, that the base motives of these wretches have led them
to attribute his power to Hell, when it is Heaven’s own. It is not the
first time, my lord, in the world’s history that this has been so.”

The bishop bent his head reverently. “You are right, Dr. Wolkenberg;
and your assurance of Dasipodius’ fitness to have carried on his work
is only too welcome to me. I believed it might be possible. But tell
me, did they really and absolutely try to fix on him the charge of
sorcery.”

“Syndic Hackernagel did his best; but it fell through.”

“But why?” insisted the Bishop. “What good could it do Syndic
Hackernagel?”

“Nay, little enough, as far as I know; but Hackernagel would burn
Strassburg if it could win him half-an-hour’s notoriety.”

“For shame, Dr. Bruno. You want charity.”

“I think not, my lord. Charity for such creatures is worse waste than
pearls thrown to swine. Ought I—ought you, my lord—ought anything
that breathes, have—oh Heaven! have it! Seem to have it, I mean,” and
Bruno’s face kindled, “for a creature who, if he could, would have
brought Conrad Dasipodius to the stake, and felt his joy complete
indeed if he had got the chance of firing the first faggot himself! I
see,” added Bruno, “you do not, cannot credit this.”

“Nay,” said the Bishop. “Sin lies deep, and Tobias Hackernagel
is—is—Anabaptism is Master Hackernagel’s own particular form of
heterodoxy I believe, Dr. Bruno?”

“An Anabaptist he is, I think, my lord.”

“And so the plot fell through?”

“Thank Heaven, yes, so far it did. There was little fear as it seemed
for Conrad’s life, his breathing animal life; but that other—the only
life which is life to him, is all blighted. Not killed mark you, my
lord, but cruelly, cruelly marred. Dasipodius is much changed since you
saw him.”

“And he did not defend himself, Mistress Radegund von Steinbach tells
me?”

“There he was wrong.”

“Forgive me, my lord, I think had you been there you would have
reversed that judgment. It would have been worse than useless. The
clack and clatter of Hackernagel’s sophistries drowned Dasipodius’
simple assurance. The people’s ears itched too much for some new thing
to rest content with the good they had.”

“Alas!” sighed the Bishop, “that is true, but still——”

“And so Dasipodius left them to themselves. I think no man’s pride
would let him stoop to stay where he was not welcome; and these
flowers,” said Bruno, touching tenderly a posy of harebells in a little
jar beside him, “are not more sensitive to foul air than Dasipodius is
to falseness and treachery.”

“Over much surely,” said the Bishop.

“Maybe so, my lord, maybe not. It is his nature,” said Bruno
conclusively; “and so now they—may whistle for their clock,” and he
turned and absently flicked away a speck or two of dust from his
specimens.

“And Radegund von Steinbach, did she suffer all this quietly? I gave
her credit for more love of——”

“Of whom?” burst forth the surgeon, turning sharply on the Bishop. “Of
whom?”

“Of whom? Of the Horologe, man, of the Horologe. I say I fancied she
cared for it too well to let these tricks be played with it.”

“I know nothing about that,” returned Wolkenberg coldly. “She rarely
mentions Dasipodius’ name. No doubt she would have aided him, if it had
been in her power, but she is after all only a woman.”

“And such a one whose will might turn an empire’s fate as she listed.
Why, men are threads to be wound about her little finger. Ah, Dr.
Wolkenberg, do you sigh so deep as that? Your lofty wisdom bows then
to her power. Nay, but don’t frown and bite your lip like some guilty
thief taken in _flagrante delicto_—believe me, I have guessed this
tender secret long ago. Come now tell me, is the marriage day to
be—when? Give me due notice, for it is I myself who must tie that knot.
No answer? Well, had you chosen to plead guilty, Master Balder here,”
and the Bishop gently stroked the ears of the dog, who had for sometime
been patiently awaiting that small attention from the visitor, “who, I
will answer for it, knows all about it, could not keep the secret more
faithfully than I would do. I am no gossip—but, I ask your pardon, I
have no right to intrude myself upon your confidence.”

“My lord, you mistake. I fear such honour and such happiness can never
be for me,” and Bruno turned abruptly away.

“Tut, tut, man,” said the Bishop, whose heart had always been set
on the union of these two. He had watched their acquaintance with
interest; and to this kind father of his spiritual children it seemed
that for the dark-eyed magnificent woman and the golden-haired man,
beautiful as a Norse god, to become husband and wife, would be a
Heaven-planned marriage. He knew all the grandeur and nobility of
Radegund’s nature, her scorn of things mean and base, her generosity
and power of self-sacrifice; but he also knew how diamonds, valuable
above all other precious stones, are more than all others subject to
flaws. He knew that extremes meet, and judged Radegund to be capable
of all that is best and worst; while in Bruno Wolkenberg’s warm heart
and single mindedness combined with his no ordinary talent and pure
enthusiasm, which some, but not Bishop John, might even have called
quixotic, he saw one precisely fitted to nurture and cherish the
luxuriance of the artist’s nature, while it would restrain it from
squandering its generous strength.

“Patience, Dr. Wolkenberg,” he said, rising and laying his worn
blue-veined hand on Bruno’s shoulder. “Patience, it is all but just as
it should be. A woman is the more worth seeking who is not easily won.”

“It is three years,” groaningly began Bruno.

“Three years! Nay,” began the Bishop. “By Our Lady, that is a little
long indeed!”

“An eternity.”

“And there is no other?”

“I do not understand you, my lord.”

“She has no other admirer?”

“She has a score,” returned Bruno, casting his despairing eyes upward.

“Ah! How absolute you are,” said the Bishop with a testy smile. “No
other favoured one?”

“I have but my eyes to tell me.”

“And if my old ones can help me to see she has a great respect for you,
Dr. Wolkenberg, what should your own not do? Besides she has told me
many a time how much she esteems you.”

“Esteem is not love, my lord.”

“Come, come. You are in an oracular mood, and that is so seldom a happy
one. Yet I must not quarrel with my oracle, since I have gathered from
it brighter auguries for our poor Horologe than I had dared to hope.
And so fare you well, Dr. Wolkenberg, and keep a good heart.”

And with a lighter step Bishop John returned to the palace,
soliloquising, after his wont, on what he had heard, and strange, as he
confessed to himself, though the story of the blind mathematician might
be, one thing was stranger still—the mind of a woman. What could be its
component qualities, that it always found such pleasure in worrying
what it so loved? “For of course she does love him,” said the Bishop
half aloud to himself, as he entered his vast silent hall. “Why should
she not?”

And the cold stone walls faintly echoed, “Why not?”




CHAPTER XL.

GRETCHEN.


Many a heart, the old saw says, is caught at the rebound; and Otto
von Steinbach, discharging himself as he did like a catapult from the
Burgomaster’s house, never stopped till he fell flushed and almost
breathless into a chair beside fair Mistress Gretchen Hackernagel.
She, as kind fate would have it, sat at home alone in the absence of
her father and sisters, who had all gone to a great treat which had
been some time promising in the shape of a peripatetic preacher of the
Anabaptist persuasion, who was to shed his eloquence on Strassburg
for one day only; but Gretchen had, with the grain of sturdiness
which no domestic tyranny could entirely eradicate, refused to join
in the pious dissipation. There was something of the black sheep in
Gretchen Hackernagel. Her compeers called her “odd,” her eccentricity
developing itself mainly in a dislike to the tenets the rest of her
family professed. This might, in the first place, have arisen from the
surfeit of surface sanctity oppressing the domestic atmosphere, tainted
as it was beneath with endless bickerings and petty jealousies; and the
Christian faith, which she had heard called beautiful and love itself,
wore for her a hateful ugliness.

One dreadful day, Gretchen had so far forgotten herself as to say in
her father’s hearing that the few sweet organ tones which reached her
as she came home from market round by the Cathedral, always told her
more about Heaven in five minutes, than the longest discourse she
ever remembered Master Boanerges Bakkerzeel to have poured forth.
Henceforth, Gretchen Hackernagel’s path of life was not peace to her;
she lived suspected of every sort of wickedness, and responsible for
every mishap occurring in the household, not regulated better than one
boasting four mistresses usually is. “It’s all Gretchen’s fault,” was
synonymous there, with “the cat did it,” in other establishments.

With many secret tears Gretchen endured her misery, and with the
sort of apathetic patience which sees no gleam of happier things.
The Syndic’s house was none so cheerful, nor his womenkind so fair,
that young men or women either, ever felt drawn to cultivate close
acquaintance there; and life had grown to be a burden to poor Gretchen.
It was little wonder, therefore, that when the handsome Otto took
to looking in at Syndic Hackernagel’s, Gretchen’s heart was lost to
her, before she was well aware she was burdened with one; and with
all his faults, there was something to like in the young man. He was
gentle and chivalrous with women, and spoke up frankly and openly,
without the snuffle and whine which characterised the few young men
it had been her dreary fortune to converse with. Then Otto wore such
beautiful clothes, gay enough in all conscience they were, but still
innocent of vulgarity. The vain creature had an instinctive taste for
self-decoration, and well understood the difference between gew-gaw
smartness, and real arrangement and blending of colour, and his clothes
fitted him to perfection. No wonder Otto became an object of interest
in Syndic Hackernagel’s house. The worst of it was, as three of the
ladies said, he was a Catholic, and in making much of him, they told
each other they had in view the charitable aim of effecting his
conversion to their own persuasion, then—then—Après?—but since they
did not confide even to each other any word of what ultimate course
they intended to adopt, in regard to this brand which was going to
be snatched from the burning, it would be presumption to surmise,
and perhaps superfluous, seeing that Otto stuck to his creed with a
pertinacity and mulishness creating as much disgust in the three elders
as it charmed Gretchen, who plucked heart at the reflection that this
ray of an outer world could breathe in their gloomy atmosphere and live.

The greatest marvel was how Syndic Hackernagel permitted such an
intimacy to exist; but that was not to know Syndic Hackernagel aright,
or else to forget that Otto von Steinbach belonged to an influential
family, and had excellent private expectations. In short he was a
gilded pill, which Tobias, faithful to his creed, was prepared, and
with cheerful resignation, to swallow, should the young man’s final
election to the state of being his son-in-law prove preordained by a
wise providence.

Wedded as Tobias Hackernagel was to his own form of belief, and
holding every other, Catholic and Protestant alike for inodorous pitch,
his confidence in his own immaculacy was so great, that he believed he
might yet touch it, and not be defiled; and by no means shrank from
having worldly dealings with the hereafter-doomed of any persuasion
whatsoever, provided they chanced to represent the dominant party.

Amid the never-ending alternations of power at that time, the Catholics
were, and for some prolonged period had been, in the ascendant; and
with the Catholics Hackernagel was careful to maintain peaceful,
almost amicable relations, until the hour of their downfall should
bring him his opportunity for turning upon them. The man, with all
his veneer of holiness, was timeserving to the backbone, and felt no
grain of compunction in bowing down in the house of Rimmon, nor even
in taking to the domestic hearth such a rag of the Scarlet Lady as
Otto von Steinbach; who, on his part, steeped from his earliest years
in Catholic associations, and hating the reformers, from Luther to
the last mushroom hair-splitter of yesterday, and the very name of
Reformation for its general tendency towards levelling away all that
made existence amusing and consequently endurable, still felt himself
under no small obligation to the Syndic for his present lofty state,
and thought his debt cheaply paid by making himself agreeable to the
Syndic’s daughters. It cost him nothing; and if they liked it, why,
you know, there was no harm done. There, however, the argument somehow
failed. Harm was done, a very great deal, to poor Gretchen’s heart;
and being one of that tenacious sort whose hearts, once given, will
break if they are cast aside, there is no guessing what misery would
have been in store for her, had not Otto, affronted and aggrieved
by Sabina’s insensate treatment of him, fled where consolation was
infallibly to be found; and then and there offered his delicate white
hand and his fortune in _esse_ and in _posse_ to the happy Mistress
Gretchen Hackernagel. With tears, and blushes, and rapture but
transparently veiled, she accepted; and Otto found his consolation
for his snubbings elsewhere. Here were favour and prejudice of the
right sort if you like. If only cousin Sabina could have been there to
see—and repent, now it was too late, he thought his content would have
been complete.

“I shall never ask you again,” he had said to her, and he meant it too;
and now here, an hour later, he was an engaged man.

The new sensation was as agreeable as complex. He was, of course,
experiencing all the delights attendant upon a public career; but
then the sweets of notoriety have their bitters, while these new joys
were perfect—in their way. Honestly he found them so. He really liked
Gretchen Hackernagel; there was something lacking to his volatile
nature, which he found in hers. Pique, for once in a way, had done its
victim a kind turn; and he confessed to himself that to be loved for
one’s own sake was a good thing. And to love again?—well—and that was a
good thing too; and might come to grow by what it fed on. Then Otto did
so thoroughly enjoy his inamorata’s malicious little confidences which
their closer intimacy brought him, touching certain sharp contests
between her sisters for the distinction she had won; and he never tired
of hearing how, with all their simulated scorn and indifference, they
were so madly jealous.

Only once he found it incumbent on him to check such innocent
small-talk; and that was when she said that the last new taunt they
had conjured up was, that people were beginning to say he could no more
make a clock than could the painted Cupid, who was to strut out and in
of the little door above the second cornice-work of the new Horologe.
With a ghastly smile, Gretchen’s fiancé said it was very amusing,
excessively amusing, but he was afraid her words lacked charity in
repeating what the poor disappointed things said, and that there was no
need to talk about the Horologe at all.

The very word sent a cold shudder through Otto now; it had come to be
to him such a hateful thing, this great unmanageable Horologe with its
wheels—above all, possibly from certain older associations, he hated
the wheels worst—and its chains and little spiky bits; and its whirring
wires and springs which, if you were not tremendously careful, shot
out, and gave you ever such a stinging rap on your cheek or your nose
before you knew where you were.

To Otto, as to Dasipodius, the Horologe had become a nightmare—with
a difference. To each it seemed a thing endowed with almost human
attributes; only to Otto it was no fair lost mistress, but a fearful
monster, whose every shadow haunting his dreams, resolved itself
by day into a horrid tangible reality. The creation of the unhappy
Frankenstein was nothing by comparison with the Horologe, because the
sooner that soulless breathing terror was annihilated, the greater was
everybody’s satisfaction; whereas all Strassburg was clamouring in
Otto’s ears, and dogging his footsteps, and waylaying him at street
corners for the latest intelligence touching this thing’s progress,
and plaguing his life out for the precise date of its completion.
“Time,” as they said cheerfully, “was getting on now.” If things
continued like that much longer, he felt the Horologe would be his
murderer, or responsible at least for manslaughter. It was killing him
fast. The scraping of the studio files, the tap, tap, tap of its tiny
hammers, confused his head till it ached again; the bright brass discs
dazzled his eyes, until he began to feel something of sympathy for his
predecessor’s affliction; the smell of the varnish and of the paint
made him feel sick, and he would gladly have given Gretchen Hackernagel
and all his other possessions to have been once more only the careless
student, subject indeed to Isaac Habrecht’s fault-finding, or
Dasipodius’s grave rebuke, but once outside the Dial’s walls, free as
a butterfly to enjoy all the sweets life might afford, a well-looking,
pleasant enough young fellow not far along the shady side of
twenty-five. And yet he dared utter no thought of what he felt. Vanity,
dread of his sister Radegund’s taunts, Tobias Hackernagel’s righteous
wrath, what Sabina would say, and still more what the world would say,
still bound him to the task which was so utterly beyond his powers. If
only Dasipodius had persisted in his refusal to deliver up his plans,
all might have been well for Otto. His own design was to be sure an
extraordinary conglomerate of intricacy, and curiously characteristic
of its originator’s genius for complicating matters; still he had made
it himself, and understood perhaps if nobody else did, how he meant to
make it go; but he had been tempted by Dasipodius’ plans, because they
had looked so delightfully simple, and he had believed he might master
them better even than his own, about whose practicability, supposing
them even safely launched into working order, he had his misgivings.
When, however, he had come into the much-coveted possession of the
drawings, he found how sorely he had misapprehended their real nature,
and learning too late that his predecessor was a master of the _Ars
celare Artem_, wished he had bitten his tongue out before he had set
about moving Heaven and earth to obtain them.

And so, groping in the dark, conscious of being secretly sneered at by
those over whom he was set, sick at heart with vexation and wounded
vanity, and bored to death by enforced application, the miserable man
breathed on, finding his sole consolation in Gretchen. And well indeed
it was for him that in those days of wretchedness he was able to turn
to this girl, whose unassailable faith in his superiority over all
men since the world began, tied him to a life which was fast growing
for him into an intolerable burden. Although his ordinary stock of
moral courage might not be large, he was by no means deficient in that
pinchbeck sort of it which would face self-destruction; but endowed
with little beauty, no great wit, nor much wealth, of a temper not
faultless, but warm-hearted, Gretchen Hackernagel, in the power of her
true honest woman’s love, came to be his saving grace, shielding him
from himself; and for the sparks of self-complacency she kept alive in
him he repaid her with a certain sort of affection, scanty at first,
but gaining in strength as his perplexities gathered closer and thicker
about him.

Sympathy in his own home Otto had long ceased to look for. Throughout
the whole time, some five or six weeks now, that Dasipodius had been
at Schaffhausen, Radegund had maintained a cold indifference towards
her brother; and not the faintest allusion to the Horologe or to his
new duties in connection with it ever passed her lips. If she had flown
into one of her furies with him he thought he could have borne it far
better; if she had even mocked him for his incapacity he would have
preferred it, because then he might in the end have brought himself to
a confession of the wretched truth, and besought her help to ward him
from shameful exposure, for he knew quite well that Radegund could,
if she would, make clear to him certain of Dasipodius’ intentions
regarding the Clock’s mechanism, which would have materially aided
in dispersing some of the greater difficulties; or, at all events,
brought the problems within a little closer range of his own powers
of solution; for though totally unfitted either by temperament or
training for his onerous duties, Otto was no tyro in Horology; and
could, under direction and when he chose, do good work.

Radegund was, however, impenetrable and imperturbable as a fate, and
Otto dared not, ever so delicately, hint that she might be useful to
him. He had not spent all the days of his life with her without knowing
that these calm moods of hers presaged storm; and he did not care to
bring it on his own devoted head by any provocation on his part, as he
might by chance do, however ill warranted, for as he said to himself
again and again, “She’s cross about Dasipodius. Just as if I could have
helped it all! It’s awfully unkind of her to be put out about it with
me. It just shows what contrary creatures women are. Crammed up with
favour and prejudice. If any other woman now except Radegund had been
my sister, she’d have been proud as a peacock of me. And to say nothing
too of her reflected honours.”

It was no concern of hers that the honours were trying ones; and then
the new chief horologist would groan, and call to mind some sort of a
story he had heard once of that king of somewhere or other in the East,
who always honoured any courtier he might be having a grudge against,
with a present of a white elephant.

Now the courtier is proud of the distinction, but the white elephant
on pain of death to the happy recipient must have a household to
himself, and servants, and no end of attention and time spent on him;
and very frequently that story of the white elephant occurred to Otto’s
imagination; and the world, he thought, was much the same, go where you
might in it.




CHAPTER XLI.

A CLEAN CONFESSION.


One morning, about ten days after Bishop John’s return into residence,
there was great rejoicing in the house of Hackernagel, for the
Syndic had received a command to wait upon my lord. It was an honour
hitherto unaccorded him; and in a flutter, concealed beneath an air
of nonchalance which deceived nobody, he informed his daughters that
he was going to the palace, as the Bishop desired to confer with him
on important business; then dressing himself with extreme care, but
excruciating simplicity, he sallied forth.

Syndic Hackernagel’s smug air of satisfaction, as he walked along,
expressed but a tithe of the elation he really felt. What he was wanted
for, he had not the faintest conception, and cared not at all. If my
lord had been in a merry humour, and been pleased to make a may-goose
of him, and only said, “Bo! Syndic Hackernagel; now you can go home
again,” still that would have been useful; and it was with infinite
sweetness that the Anabaptist returned the covert, not too amiable,
glances of the Bishop’s servants and hangers on scattered about the
vestibule, and returned with insinuating graciousness the courteous
but cold obeisance of Master Gottlieb, who silently ushered him into
the audience-chamber. It was then not to be a _tête-à-tête_ with my
lord? By no means, for there, gathered in an irregular semi-circle
towards the upper end of the room, stood some dozen or more of the
city’s representatives, among whom Hackernagel’s needle-sharp eyes
distinguished the countenances of Burgomaster von Steinbach, Councillor
Job, and every one without exception of those who had been officially
present at the Chancellery to enquire into the case of Dasipodius.

Facing them stood the Bishop, who acknowledging Hackernagel’s presence
by a faint inclination of his head, relegated him by a gesture to a
position midway between himself and the group before him. With an
uneasy glance at the faces on his left, the Syndic obeyed. If only
some voice had spoken one syllable; but not a conclave of corpses
could have been more still and silent, where they stood, some with
their eyes fixed in cold scrutiny upon himself, some upon the stately,
but fragile form of Bishop John, whose benevolent face was set into
resolute patient lines, while he waited for the last comer to settle
himself. Fully impressed as he might be with the distinction of which
he was the object, never had the Syndic felt himself more ready to
exchange conditions with the obscurest citizen of Strassburg, than at
that moment, and he cast an involuntary glance of longing at the lofty
double-oaken doors by which he had entered, and which were guarded by
two tall halberdiers still as statues, and with eyes inscrutable as
glass ones, whose weapons gleamed dazzlingly in the bright May morning
sunlight.

“I have desired your presence here, gentlemen, and Master Tobias
Hackernagel,” began the Bishop, putting an abrupt termination to that
person’s survey of his surroundings, and engendering in his mind a
flutter of half-flattering, half-uneasy wonder at the speaker’s
classification of his audience. “Gentlemen and Master Tobias
Hackernagel—to ask your consideration of a matter touching the new
Horologe. There is, I find,” continued the Bishop, lifting his hand
to enforce the silence which Tobias’ opening lips seemed about to
break, “an impression prevailing among the better informed persons of
this city, that the Professor Dasipodius has been unjustly set aside,
and an incompetent man put in his place. Gentlemen and Master Tobias
Hackernagel, have you anything to say to this?”

Apparently not, in so far as the former division of the Bishop’s
hearers was concerned. It contented itself with an interchange of
glances, while Syndic Hackernagel answered in a low sullen tone: “The
Town Council is not a pack of children. We knew what we were doing, my
lord,” and he glanced round at the worshipful body in search of its
approving nod, but not an eye met his.

“Even grey hairs,” replied the Bishop, “occasionally mistake, Syndic
Hackernagel; and you were all gravely in error when you offered this
appointment to a man who is totally incapable of carrying it through.
I am leaving, for the moment, entirely out of the question the injury
done the Professor Dasipodius.”

“Injury!” cried Tobias, his brush-like yellow-red hair bristling. “He
ran a very near chance, my lord, of burning for a sorcerer.”

“Fortunate for you, Master Hackernagel,” calmly returned the Bishop,
“that that did not happen. The torture for false accusers is, if I do
not err, hardly less painful than the stake itself.”

“The man is blind,” Tobias muttered, after a somewhat prolonged silence.

“That is a circumstance which concerns neither you nor me, nor”—and the
Bishop’s glance swept the faces of his auditors—“anyone but himself.”

“Not concern——” echoed Tobias, staring round him in open-mouthed
amazement. “Not concern—— Do you assert, my lord, that you believe——”

“Alas no, Master Hackernagel,” sighed the Bishop. “By nature it may be,
I am incredulous. I feel that I must see to believe; I hope to be able
to test for myself the truth of what Dr. Bruno Wolkenberg here asserts.”

“He’d swear black was white for Dasipodius,” grumbled Hackernagel,
covertly glaring at the surgeon, whom he now perceived among the group.

“And Mistress Radegund von Steinbach,” said the Bishop with a slight
smile, “is she also so staunch a partizan?”

“Oh ho!” sneeringly answered Tobias. “Hardly likely; Otto’s own sister.”

“You would accept her word then against her brother’s incapacity?”

“Ah well,” returned Tobias with an insolent chuckle, “let her offer it
first.”

The Bishop, turning silently, advanced towards the extreme upper
end of the chamber, the rich crimsons and purples of the emblazoned
window lights tinging his pale face and silver hairs, as his silken
cassock swept along the parqueted floor. The vast audience-room of the
Episcopal Palace was rich in oaken and ebony and ivory carvings. Its
loftily-coped fireplace reaching half-way to the fretted and gilded
ceiling, was crowded with historic alabaster statues of nearly life
size; and where its wings terminated, a high-panelled wainscoting
met them, heavy with allegorical figures and carvings of flowers and
foliage.

The wall towards which the Bishop now slowly made his way, bore in
its lower centre a large panel some three feet wide by five or six in
height, carved in high relief with a gigantic sword thrust between
the chains of a pair of scales. Extending on either side of this, ran
two smaller series of panels, the one bearing, amid enframing wreaths
and other graceful devices, sweet women’s and children’s faces,
emblematical of the heavenly virtues; the other, the seven deadly sins,
hideous mask-like countenances, with snaky hair and gnashing teeth
writhing forth from their encircling flames, and fetters strung with
instruments of torture.

Before this central panel, which was in fact a door communicating
with several narrow corridors leading to the dwelling part of the
palace, the Bishop paused, and pressing with his finger one of the
bosses of the carved woodwork, it fell open, revealing a shadowy
recess, where like some picture on a dim background stood Radegund von
Steinbach, richly attired, as it was generally her pleasure to be, in a
close-fitting dress of blood-red velvet, finished about the neck with
a ruff of white Venice lace; while a black veil of the same costly
fabric, wrapped about her head and shoulders, threw into startling
contrast the faultless beauty of her face, pale now to ivory whiteness,
after its wont when under the influence of strong concentrated
excitement.

If to the startled assemblage the artist seemed more like a picture
than a reality, she quickly dispelled the illusion, stepping at once to
the floor, and following in the Bishop’s wake as he returned silently
to his place. Then taking up the position to which he motioned her on
his right hand, she swept a swift searching glance round, and turning
to the Bishop, said: “But he is not here, my lord”.

Bishop John touched a little hand bell, in answer to whose summons the
chaplain appeared.

“Bid Master Otto von Steinbach come in,” said his chief.

Gottlieb retired, but the next instant reentered, ushering in the
trembling Otto von Steinbach. With downcast eyes, changing colour, and
scared face, Otto stood, just within the threshold, shifting from one
trembling leg to the other.

“Come close,” commanded Radegund, before the Bishop could speak. And
the unhappy creature started, and with a wild stare round, shambled
forward.

“I am here, gentlemen, and Syndic Hackernagel,” said his sister,
addressing the group before her, “by my lord’s desire, to bear to you
my witness that Otto von Steinbach——”

“Your own flesh and blood,” interrupted Hackernagel.

“My brother, Otto von Steinbach,” she went on, with the faintest
possible flush crossing her pale forehead, but looking straight before
her high above the Syndic’s head, “is incapable of doing the work which
you have caused to be entrusted to his care. Further, I desire to state
my conviction that the late horologist, Conrad Dasipodius,” and a faint
tremour agitated the clear ringing tones, as his name left her lips,
“has been unjustly and illegally set aside.”

“Not by me!” cried Hackernagel, starting forward with savage defiance
scintillating in his pale eyes. “Not by me!”

“I dare to say, Tobias Hackernagel,” said the artist, letting her
glance fall to the level of his face, “that saving yourself, I
exonerate every person here from any desire to do the Professor
Dasipodius an injustice.”

“Infamous!” fumed the Syndic.

“Lastly, I have to declare my conviction, founded on my own knowledge
of the matter—”

“Presumption!” hissed the seething lips of Hackernagel.

“And confirmed by authority not lightly to be ignored,” here Radegund’s
eyes turned on Otto, “that if the work of the Horologe remain under
Otto von Steinbach’s direction, the oath of the Town Council to
Strassburg is likely to become a mock. There stands my brother; let him
refute what I have said if it so pleases him.”

But Otto stood speechless and immovable.

“All this,” said Hackernagel with a sneer, “is absurd—informal.”

“Ah!” said the Bishop. “It can be made a formal question if you so
prefer, Syndic Hackernagel; but I am given to understand you are
partial to informalities.”

“This is merely a friendly little enquiry,” said the Burgomaster, with
an irrepressible smile. “Just such another as you proposed for the
Professor Dasipodius at the Chancellery, if you remember. But, niece,”
he continued, addressing Radegund—“your pardon, my lord—niece, I say,
you should have told us all this long ago. It would have saved us
needless vexations and heartburnings and——”

“And colds,” dolefully muttered Councillor Job. “I haven’t half got
over mine yet. They do hang about one so——”

“And scandal,” continued Niklaus; “and if, let me tell you, you had had
a spark of real consideration for Dasipodius——”

“He refused my poor aid,” said Radegund, with burning cheeks.

“Well,” sturdily observed Job, “we shouldn’t have done that. And you
might as well have given it us first as last, Mistress von Steinbach.”

“You don’t understand women,” began Tobias. “Don’t you know they only
find fault when it suits their purpose.”

“I leave expediency to you, Tobias Hackernagel,” retorted Radegund,
a spot of angry scarlet burning on each cheek. “I speak only now in
obedience to my Lord Bishop.”

“These churchmen!” muttered Hackernagel. “What a genius they have for
meddling.”

“Have a care, Master Hackernagel,” sternly said the Bishop, who had
caught the significance more than the actual words of the Syndic.

Hackernagel started, but hiding his confusion under a smile of cringing
insolence, “I meant to observe, my lord,” he said, “that I marvel that
spiritual guides—that is, I—I should say, I wished to remark, my lord,
that the Horologe being so purely and entirely a secular matter, and as
such so utterly beneath your consideration——”

“To see that men act justly towards each other, doing as they would be
done by, cannot be beneath my consideration, Syndic Hackernagel. It is
a charge specially committed to my keeping. And I should be an unworthy
servant of a righteous Heaven were I to neglect it; either in the
matter of our Horologe or of the meanest trifle I am cognizant of. And
though all the forces of this heretical age were against me, I will see
justice done! Those were good words of the blessed Apostle,” and now
the Bishop’s voice rang clear through the chamber. “It seems to me you
may search the Holy Scriptures through for better, ‘Show me thy faith,
and I will show thee my works’.”

“An epistle of straw,” muttered the reformed Hackernagel, shrugging his
narrow shoulders.

“Straw is a sterling commodity,” answered the Bishop, “as Master Luther
himself found, when he tried to build without it. And at least our
people—the bulk of our people,” sighingly amended he, “know better than
to starve on a poor empty windbag of righteousness, or bow down to
puppets of hypocrisy. I tell you, Master Hackernagel, they will have
this business sifted to the bottom.”

“They did as they pleased,” said the Syndic sulkily.

“As they were cheated into fancying they pleased. Oh, I understand
it all, Master Hackernagel. I know your petty grudges against Conrad
Dasipodius. I know how Isaac Habrecht refused to play into your hands.
I know how against his better judgment, you flattered this poor weak
boy here into a task beyond his powers, and cozened him into believing
himself to be what he never can be, that you might win a passing
popularity—that as you went by, people might point after you and cry,
‘There goes our great Syndic! the upholder of our privileges! the
champion of our liberties! who will see we are not trampled upon!’
and for such empty triumphs as these, you toyed with their ignorance,
by the false witness you bore, and sacrificed to it the noblest heart
among us. Has it ever broken one hour of your rest, I wonder, to think
you have driven this man into banishment? Thank Heaven that there were
those about you frustrated your yet fouler designs against him. Does
it ever tell you that to feed your paltry—vanity—ambition is no fit
word—a bond of honour should have been broken? The hard-earned money of
our people frittered, and a work of Art reduced to a useless gimcrack,
so your turn might be served? Did you ever spare a thought to the
humiliation which sooner or later must have befallen this young man?
Look at him now, and see what you have done.”

The Bishop paused, his eyes softening a little as he cast a brief
glance at Otto, but they kindled again at the sound of Hackernagel’s
voice demanding, tremulous with suppressed rage, “Who says he cannot do
it?”

“Himself,” said Radegund. “He has confessed so much to me.”

Tobias laughed a low sneering laugh.

“Couldn’t he say it again,” suggested Job, in his tone of happiest
inspiration. “That would settle the question, wouldn’t it, my lord?”

“Well, you know,” jerked out Otto, with painful twitchings about the
mouth corners, “I—you see——”

“Come, speak out, nephew,” said Niklaus, but not harshly; “we won’t be
shuffled with.”

“Well, I—I——” His voice failed him, and he stood mute and fumbling with
damp fingers, burning and ice-cold by turns, at the long broken white
feather in his hat.

“Yes or no?” demanded the Bishop in inexorable tones. And still only
some faint inarticulate sounds gurgled through the miserable man’s pale
and quivering lips.

“Speak,” commanded Radegund.

“No—I can’t—” he gasped, starting at the sound of her voice like some
galvanized corpse, and then, heavy as death, his two arms fell beside
him.

“On your oath do you declare that, nephew,” asked the Burgomaster.

“Oh yes, if—if you like,” he stammered; and staggering to a chair and
sinking into it, he burst into tears.

“Coward! Fool!” hissed Hackernagel; but Radegund swept past to Otto’s
side. “Eat your own words for lies, Tobias Hackernagel!” she cried,
laying her arm protectingly about the young man’s drooping neck; “never
less coward or fool than now, when he has dared to tell the truth and
shame—you!”

And bending her proud head to the Bishop, she led Otto gently from the
audience chamber.

“The lad has done right, my lord,” said Niklaus, breaking at last the
prolonged silence which ensued. “If a man can’t do a thing, it’s best
he should own to it.”

“It’s a pity he didn’t do it long ago though,” grumbled Klausewitz, “if
it’s only to think——”

“My impression,” said the Bishop thoughtfully, “is that he did believe
himself able; but—well, we make our mistakes sometimes,” he continued,
with a glance of somewhat mitigated severity at Hackernagel. “And now
it remains to us to take steps for getting Dasipodius back again.”

“Back again!” shrieked Hackernagel.

“And you, Master Syndic, are the man to ask him.”

“Never!” he gasped out, “never!”

“Ah, well,” said the Bishop, “there is of course the alternative.”

“And that?”

“Is to arrest you.”

“_Me!_ on what charge?”

“Ah! on one or two. You would, for example, in the first place be tried
for false accusing, then for misappropriation and waste of the public
monies, then for——”

“And I have been brought here—inveigled, deceived into believing that I
was wanted——”

“As you certainly were, my dear sir,” gleefully assured the Burgomaster.

“To assist,” went on Tobias, wrathfully glaring at Niklaus, “to
assist——”

“Precisely,” nodded his tormentor, “at a friendly little enquiry.”

“And am I to stand here,” continued Tobias, with livid foaming lips,
“to be mocked and insulted, and have my private opinions ferreted out
of me like this? Am I, in the midst of this free city, to be made
the victim of party spirit and cabal? exposed to the ridicule of a
pack of—Look here, my lord,” said the Syndic, abruptly changing his
key, “these men—it was all their faults, I was but one of them, they
consented to be present.”

“Ay, that’s true,” groaned Klausewitz; “but if I’d have known——”

“They sat and heard all,” hurried on Hackernagel. “You know you did,”
he said, turning on them in hysterical appealing tones.

“We did,” feelingly assented Niklaus.

“You hear, my lord; they cannot deny it. And am I—I alone to be
answerable?”

“It appears so,” said the Bishop, who, in addition to his own careful
review of the bearings of the case, had not omitted to encase himself
in the panoply of the best available legal opinion. “It was you,
Syndic, who set the matter on foot. These gentlemen were summoned first
at your instance, to attend——”

“A friendly little enquiry, my lord,” prompted Niklaus.

“Exactly,” said the Bishop, referring to some papers on the table
beside him. “And a mere preliminary, as you intimated, in the event of
further measures being found necessary.”

“But, my lord,” urged Councillor Job, “as far as that goes, one sitting
was more than enough.”

“Quite so, Councillor; as results prove. Syndic Hackernagel appears
to have taken the law entirely into his own hands, and guided the
question, begged it rather, into such a channel that the people were
drifted into a fresh voting before they knew where they were. You did
wrong, Tobias Hackernagel, wrong enough, heaven knows, to Dasipodius;
but a wrong yet deeper against the public right, in presuming on your
authority, and overstepping your vested power.”

“The people voted as they pleased,” protested Hackernagel.

“Not as they pleased, Tobias Hackernagel,” said Niklaus earnestly.
“Their sense of right and wrong was utterly deadened by your
sophistries. I thought, thick-headed fool that I was, that it might
have been safely left to them. I could not credit, none of us here
could have done so, that your special pleadings and your absurd
representations would have influenced beings who boast the possession
of reason. I thought—we all thought,” said Niklaus, turning on his
colleagues, “that justice might be left to the people; but we’ll never
think so again,” concluded the Burgomaster—“be sure of that, my lord.”

And as from one man broke forth the echoed assurance, “Never!”

“I am willing to believe,” continued the Bishop, still addressing
himself to Hackernagel, “that in this you erred somewhat through
ignorance.”

“What!” shrieked the Syndic, bounding from the floor and gasping with
fury. Accusations of malice, lying, covetousness, and any other sin
of the Decalogue he might in time have brought himself to pocket; but
ignorance lying to his charge! Shade of Solomon! “This,” he said,
his eyes shaking and rolling in frenzied and nervous indignation, to
maintain an unruffled air of wounded dignity, “is the first time m—my
ability has ever been called in question. I—I—I am no f—fool.”

“Then,” said the Bishop, “you must be the greatest knave in all
Strassburg; and if knowingly, as it appears by your avowal it was, that
you did this foul wrong, and refuse to atone for it by the simple means
I have, with the general consent of these gentlemen here, offered you,
there remains to me no choice but to detain you under a formal warrant
of arrest.”

Like a tiger at bay, the Syndic backed, and glaring round at the
stolid faces hemming him in, fixed his eyes on the doors; then, as
through the dead silence fell the clash of the changing guard outside
in the stone corridor, some half-fledged exclamation of defiance died
down upon his livid lips into a whining meekness.

“I am a man of peace, my lord,” he said shudderingly.

“A blessed thing, Master Tobias,” said the Bishop, bowing his head.

“I would—do—a great deal—for the sake of peace,” and he looked round,
possibly out of mere force of habit, for applause, but there was not a
sound. “I think,” he went on, “sooner than bring on the earth a sword
or captivity, a man should even lick the dust, especially when he has a
family—four daughters. Think of it, my lord.”

“Well, Syndic,” said the Bishop, with a shade of impatience, “we are
waiting your decision.”

“And,” went on Hackernagel, “I am convinced—morally convinced—that,
provided there be two ways of doing a thing, the lesser should yield to
the greater, the individual to the general. Yes, I am persuaded that
a man is bound to make any sacrifice of his own private feelings,
however painful it may be to——”

“Choose the easier. Come, Master Hackernagel, don’t apologise,”
interrupted Niklaus, “but take your chance while you can get it; and
thank your lucky star my lord has given it you. I don’t say it isn’t
more than you deserve, but there take it, man, take it.”

And on the understanding that he had taken it, Syndic Hackernagel went
forth from the palace walls, not altogether the man he entered them,
but still a free agent.




CHAPTER XLII.

OTTO FINDS CONSOLATION.


Excepting that the hold of his sister’s hand on his own never relaxed
until he found himself safe at home, Otto knew little how he came out
of that terrible ordeal, and found himself sobbing bitter tears on
Radegund’s shoulder, just as he had done many a time when he was a
little boy, and contemporary juvenile favour and prejudice had chanced
to deal crossly with him. Now, as then, she hushed him closely to her,
and parting the tear-draggled hair from his heated face, kissed it more
than once, saying: “That is my own Otto, my brave Otto,” just as she
would have coaxed him long ago.

In the world’s eyes, this victory he had gained might be a sorry one
enough, barely if at all distinguishable from cruellest defeat; but
Radegund understood its worth, and envied him—envied the courage
which had led him to confess the truth. It was altogether beside the
question that she had urged and argued with, and threatened him into
such a course; now she only remembered results, and that he had been
true to his word; and as she sat there in the shadows, feeling the
beats of Otto’s sore disappointed heart against her own, she yearned
for that to have been as guileless. Though the world might taunt and
sneer at the dethroned horologist, it was none the less true, as she
had declared, that his hour of humiliation had been the noblest his
life had known. If her heart-strings had nearly cracked with wounded
pride, that brother of hers should have been brought to a confession
of the sort—and she could have sobbed aloud for shame and regret far
deeper seated than Otto’s own,—still he had his clear conscience. A
clear conscience. Ah heaven! what a thing of joy that must be! Too
blessed to dare even to think of; and she turned and busied herself in
soothing down his grief, until the convulsive sobbings grew fewer and
farther between, and he began to be able to collect himself. The first
thoroughly lucid thought dawning on him was, that _it was gone!_ That
awful thing; gone for evermore! Then came the reaction; and he sat up
and petulantly thrust Radegund from him. “Get away!” he said; “you’ve
ruined me. I can never never show my face out of doors again after
this. You’ve ruined me,” and the tears broke forth afresh.

“Poor child, no,” she said; “I have saved you—from yourself.”

Then she flung her arms about his neck, and this time he did not repel
her, but sat staring through his blurred eyes, and letting memory creep
back as it listed.

“I shan’t have to turn out to that hateful hole to-morrow morning,
shall I?” he said presently. “Isn’t it a den, Radegund? The idea of any
fellow ever being expected to—a fellow with eyes, that is, of course.
When you’re blind, why it’s all the same wherever you are; and if it’s
only for that, they’d better get Dasipodius back—if they can. I say,
Radegund, did he call me a fool?”

“Conrad Dasipodius?”

“Dasipodius, no,” disgustfully returned Otto. “He never did; he knew
better. He wasn’t a bad sort. I wish he’d come back. Do you, Radegund?
I wonder whether he will—eh? It’s my belief he’d just go anywhere
after that wretched Horologe. Queer, isn’t it? Why, they might beg me
back till they choked, and I wouldn’t. I say, Radegund, do you know if
I’d have had the faintest notion of all that was to have come of that
letter—you know what I mean—I’d have cut my fingers off before I’d have
touched it with a pair of tongs. I believe the devil himself was in
that letter. Radegund, I say, what have you done with it?”

“What letter?” she said with a slight start.

“Why—you know; that letter I brought you back again, that day when—look
here, Radegund, I want it—to give it him, I mean. I fancy it would set
things straighter if he had it. You’ve kept it, haven’t you?”

No reply.

“Oh I say, but you have,” he went on a little anxiously, “and you might
give it up; it can’t be of any earthly use to you. Radegund——”

“Do you suppose I hoard up little bits of paper?” she asked
contemptuously.

“No, but it was something more than a little bit of paper,” he urged.

“I never could imagine what was your fancy in bringing it back,” she
said.

“Oh well, I thought—you and Dasipodius—I didn’t choose for those
fellows to go picking it up and—there—I forget all about it now,” said
Otto, who in view of that transfer of his affections which he had
made, did not care to recall the old vague intents of making mischief
between Dasipodius and Sabina, which had been the chief motor power of
that morning’s work. He had indeed long since been heartily ashamed of
it all. “I wish the thing had never been written. It was all Sabina’s
fault. And if she’d have married me when I asked her. I shouldn’t have
been exposed to all this—annoyance. It is annoying, isn’t it? But I
don’t care a bit; I’m very glad,” and the last lingering sob quivered
through Otto’s frame, “very glad indeed. I’ve got as good as she is
any day, and better, haven’t I, Radegund? Sabina’s a stupid little
highty-tighty sort of a thing after all, isn’t she? Now Gretchen’s a
lump of sense, every inch of her. She worships the ground I tread on;
and she’s got such perceptive powers as I never—Radegund!” and he gazed
up at her face, his eyes rounding with some sudden apprehensive thought.

“Well, child.”

“Don’t call me child.”

“Well, Otto dear,” she amended with a faint smile, as she stroked his
glossy black curls, “what is it?”

“You don’t think she’ll throw me over because—because——” and he
coloured painfully.

“Not if she’s worth a straw.”

“Oh, she is; I know she thinks no end of me.”

“Then she’ll be true to you,” comforted Radegund. “When we love, we
don’t put it on and off like a glove.”

“No,” nodded Otto, cheering up entirely; “perhaps not. And you didn’t
keep that letter then, Radegund?”

“What nonsense to suppose I should.”

“Well, it’s a pity, though perhaps it would have been too late now to—I
say, Radegund, when on earth will supper be ready?”

“Directly, dear.”

“I’m fainting with hunger. I haven’t eaten a morsel since dinner.
They kept me in that den of an ante-room for two mortal hours; and I
couldn’t get out, say what I could. That fellow with the drawn sword
at the door shook his head like a bell-clapper when I asked him, and
said his orders were strict. Radegund, just you go into the kitchen,
there’s a dear girl, and see they put calves’ brains enough in that
salad; they didn’t last time, and it’s always half the battle—the
brains.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Meanwhile, the Burgomaster, hardly knowing whether to be more glad or
sorry at the settlement to which things had been brought, walked slowly
home. Personally he would have relished Hackernagel’s judicial tortures
as thoroughly as a Madrileño enjoys a bull fight; but on the other hand
he knew well enough the law’s delays, and in the event of the Syndic
being required publicly to answer for his distortions of justice,
it would have delayed the recall of Dasipodius, and this taken into
account, he was content to accept the decision just arrived at, and
went home in such a cheerful frame of mind, that for the life of him he
could not refrain from telling Sabina, “whether she liked it or not,”
as he said to himself, that there was a chance of their seeing Master
Dasipodius back again.

“If he’ll come, that is. But it’s not every man kicked out of office
who’ll consent to be put in again.”

“He’ll come, father,” said the girl. “He loved the Horologe so dearly.
Oh, I know he will,” and her pale cheek glowed.

“Yes,” returned the Burgomaster. “I think he will, my girl. He’s a man,
once he puts his heart into a thing, doesn’t take it out again in a
hurry.”

“No, no. Not when he really cares for it.”

Niklaus glanced furtively at his daughter. Well, well, it was good to
see her cheeks had not lost their power of getting rosy, as sometimes
it seemed; and he hazarded a further remark: “And old friends are best
anyhow?”

“Oh yes.”

“And still you’re Conrad Dasipodius’ friend, yes?”

“Oh yes indeed.”

And the Burgomaster was satisfied.




CHAPTER XLIII.

“MAKING NIGHT HIDEOUS.”


Syndic Hackernagel’s household was not a little put about at finding
that on his return from the palace, he was in anything but a genial
humour. Endowed, ordinarily speaking, with the healthiest of appetites,
he declined to touch a morsel of supper; and with not a good-night to
throw at a creature about the place, he betook himself sulkily to bed.

Over and above these portents, there were to be seen certain sparks
scintillating in Tobias’ small green eyes, which were understood by
melancholy experience, to bode ill for domestic tranquillity; and so,
in the fervent hope that he might be better in the morning, he was let
go his ways unquestioned.

“And to-morrow,” muttered the discomfited magistrate, as he put on his
night-cap, and drew it well over his lank jaws, “to-morrow this proud
churchman shall know who Syndic Hackernagel is.”

“It is an accursed thing,” continued Tobias, anathematising the
Horologe as cordially as his predestined lips dared. “An evil thing
invented to bring tribulation on the righteous. An accursed—verily a
most accursed——” Then he sank to sleep, but not into oblivion; far off
into the land of dreams that supreme subject of his waking moments
followed him. Now it made itself into a hideous nightmare, and from its
grinning face sprouted dead-cold claw-like fingers, which pinched and
scratched him, and preternaturally long legs radiated from it, dancing
and stamping upon him, till he awoke gasping with horror. Anon the
spirit of his dreams waxed kinder, and the Syndic beheld himself hand
on heart, haranguing all Strassburg from the forensic platform, and the
dreamer smiled sweetly, for he thought then he heard the sound of his
own voice.

“Good people,” he fancied he was saying, “go your ways. I wash my hands
of you and your Horologe.”

Alas! that it was only a dream! One from which he was rudely awakened
by a confused uproar of feminine shrieks within doors, and a deafening
hubbub of masculine voices without.

And that red flare! illumining his room to daylight clearness? Merciful
powers! was the house on fire? With one bound the Syndic sprang from
his bed to the window, and wrenching it open, thrust out his head.

As well have put it in the pillory at once, for before he had time
to draw it in again, a shower of such loathly missiles as only the
ingenuity of a riotous mob can devise, fell around the benight-capped
object showing out so conspicuously white through the darkness.
Physically, however, Syndic Hackernagel sustained no further abiding
damage from that dark night’s encounter than the marring of his
nose’s bold outline by a broken eggshell, the mark of which, by the
enigmatical law of scarification, which sometimes refuses ever to
obliterate traces of a pin’s scratch, Tobias did carry with him to the
grave.

Not so many weeks back, this justice of the peace, posted at a safe
distance, had watched the exit of Conrad Dasipodius under a course
of similar attentions from the crowd; and he had speculated a little
curiously as to what sort of a sensation rotten egg and brickbat
pelting might superinduce in the patient. Now enabled to realise it to
the full, he slammed to his window even faster than he had opened it.
His nocturnal visitors were not to be balked however, and with a crash
and a prickly shower, the glass of the latticed panes lay shattered
around him; while borne in upon the incoming chilly and damp night
breeze, yells of laughter, mingled with ominous low growls, assailed
the shivering Syndic’s ears through their cotton coverings.

“The Horologe!” shouted a hundred throats, till the very roof gables
echoed again, causing every upper window in the street to fly open,
bristling with heads.

“The Horologe! Where’s our Horologe?”

Tobias shrank back into the shadows.

“Come out! Show yourself!”

But he shrank to utter extinction, and was no more to be seen than a
snail prodded with a bit of stick.

“If you don’t show yourself,” shouted an awful voice, “we’ll be up in a
twinkling, and bring you out.”

Foremost among his besiegers, Hackernagel’s one glance had shown him
more than one of the Dial horologiers, and for their lithe limbs to
clamber over the projecting cornices of the lower casements, and jump
in through the smashed one above, would be, as he knew, the work of
half-a-dozen seconds; convinced therefore that nothing but surrender
remained to him, he again advanced, in an agony of terror.

“The Horologe! the Horologe!” shouted the mob, as soon as his face,
white now as his head-gear, peered forth into the red flare of the
torches they carried.

“Where’s Dasipodius? We want Dasipodius.”

And with that shout, Hackernagel’s last lingering hope of being able
to defy my lord Bishop faded from his calculations. Whatever doubt had
hitherto remained, it was clear to him now that by hook or by crook
these Strassburgers meant to have their man back again. He whom not
two months since they had hounded from their streets, he on whose head
one-half of the city had heaped insult and opprobrium, and the other
half had not stretched out a finger to defend.

They wanted him back again. Well, what wonder? Was not his absence
threatening dolorous danger to their pockets? Slowly but certainly it
had dawned upon these good people that the Horologe had fallen into
incompetent hands, and the hideous fact had become patent to them, that
if they did not bestir themselves, every batzen of their subscribed
florins would be as much lost as if thrown into the Rhine. Against this
frightful possibility Calvinist and Catholic rose as one man, beginning
hurriedly to catechise each other as to the legality of those summary
proceedings at the Chancellery, and into a jeopardy it had never
known before, Tobias Hackernagel’s name was falling now. Such ominous
rumblings of discontent had for the last two or three weeks been
growing so audible, that any man less in love with himself and all his
actions than Syndic Hackernagel would have long since begun to tremble.
To this most self-complacent of Sir Oracles, however, the notion of
any dog whatsoever daring to bark after once he had opened his mouth
had not occurred. Notwithstanding, the growls had daily grown louder;
and if only a few days more had flowed on in their usual course, even
Tobias must have been driven to mark whither the tide of opinion was
tending.

Already before nightfall, there were few who were not cognizant of the
light in which the Bishop, whose opinion Catholics venerated, and
Protestants could not choose but respect, regarded Tobias Hackernagel’s
dealings towards Dasipodius. The details of that interview between
himself and my lord the previous afternoon had been circulated with no
small gusto by more than one of the municipality who had been witnesses
to it, and had spread before sundown like wildfire through the city’s
breadth and length. Many of these men, while acknowledging that his
very meddling proclivities had done their state some service by
preventing stagnation, bore him personal grudges for his contemptuous
bearing and pompous opposition to measures proposed by any but
himself, and above all, his inter-meddling with matters he understood
nothing about. And with an unction they were at no pains to conceal,
they spread the story of Tobias’ explanation with Bishop John, and
the upshot of it. By all which, it will be clear that the Syndic’s
popularity was at zero. Even his very co-religionists had begun to lose
confidence in him, when the appalling conviction loomed upon them that
he had perhaps blundered away their money.

Compared with the horror of this, the very accusation of sorcery
against Dasipodius paled to insignificance; and the firiest fanatics
of every persuasion piteously added their suffrages to the general
opinion, that at all hazards the blind mathematician must be fetched
back to finish their clock for them, even though they should arrange to
burn him afterwards.

Thus of self-interest was born what the Strassburgers pleased
themselves by calling a sense of justice. It had however, in truth,
long been honestly burning in many hearts. In none perhaps more
purely and ardently than in Burgomaster von Steinbach’s. Not an hour
had passed since that day when he had watched the blind man leave
the presence of his inquisitors, that Niklaus had not pondered and
planned for his reinstation; but there were many motives forbidding
Niklaus from openly declaring himself the mathematician’s champion,
dearly as he yearned to do it; though they were such as he did not
care too nearly to analyse even to himself. Simply when they arose, he
would look thoughtfully at Sabina, and the old speculations anent the
mysterious ways of womankind would begin to worry his brain.

The ends and aims, however, of creatures of his own sex were things
of altogether a different calibre, and quite, he believed, and justly
too, within his powers of disentangling; and very attentively, but
sharing his observations with no mortal creature, he had watched the
current of public opinion, quietly making it his business to feed the
growing discontent against Hackernagel, and the desire for the recall
of Dasipodius. That the people as a body should desire it was, Niklaus
believed, the one condition on which the mathematician would be induced
to resume his old duties.

“But I wouldn’t answer for it,” he sighed. “They threw away their
loaf, and if they can’t fish it up again, there’s nobody to blame but
themselves. Hey, Master Klausewitz, what do you think of it?”

Klausewitz said that only so long as they didn’t make another endless
day of it at the Chancellery, he “didn’t care how it was settled. The
place in summer was like a furnace.”

Meantime Syndic Hackernagel is striving to address his midnight
visitors as well as his chattering teeth permit.

“Good people,” he said, as the clamour for the banished horologier
rose up on all sides of him, “Master Dasipodius——”

“Ay, ay!”

“The—the Horologe, I mean,” he continued piteously. “The Horologe——”
But his weak attempts are drowned in fresh uproar, and while the
unhappy Syndic, daring neither to retreat, still less to advance by
half an inch, stands quaking with terror, amid yells and shouts, and
catcalls, and every imaginable sort of rat’s music, high above all rise
the chorused shouts for Dasipodius and the Horologe.

“_Himmelsdonnerwetter!_ What is the meaning of all this?” broke forth
a deep bass voice through the din; and never had it sounded so welcome
in the Syndic’s ears. “Does the man keep the Horologe under his pillow,
that you come disturbing the whole neighbourhood like this? See here,
comrades, if you don’t instantly disperse, and take yourselves home to
bed like decent fellows, I’ve got the watch behind me,” and Burgomaster
Niklaus jerked his finger over his shoulder to a compact dark mass
in his rear, “and they shall conduct you all to less comfortable
lodgings.”

“Ah! ah! Dear Master von Steinbach,” screeched Tobias.

“Have done, Hans,” cried Niklaus, bringing down his strong hand on
an arm just lifted to hurl some fresh missile at the white pyramidal
object now oscillating over the parapet.

“Dear Master von Steinbach! is that really you? For the Lord’s sake——”

“How can the man speak, if you go breaking his head first?” demanded
Niklaus of the surging mob.

“No, to be sure not, dear Master Niklaus. That’s what I say—what you
say, I mean. You always do put it so sensibly; and if they’ll only
listen, I’ll say anything they like—anything.”

“Time enough for that to-morrow morning, Tobias Hackernagel,”
answered Niklaus. “You see you’ve come an hour or so too soon,
comrades—hey?” continued he, turning to the ringleaders with a face
stern as Rhadamanthus, but his eyes dancing gleefully in the gleam of
their torches. “Just an hour or so too soon. In the morning I’m sure
Syndic Hackernagel will talk to you, if you’ll meet him outside the
Chancellery—eh, Master Tobias?”

“To be sure, Burgomaster, to be sure; and I’ll——”

“Ay, ay, of course he will; and tell you what will be sure to please
you all.”

“Yes, yes,” protested the grateful Tobias. “It shall be just what they
like. Tell them, will you, dear Master von Steinbach, anything.”

“It’s deeds we want, not words,” growled an angry voice. “We’ve had
enough of them and to spare. And if he don’t fetch Dasipodius back, and
look pretty sharp about it too——”

“Oh, but I will! I will. I will indeed.”

“Good,” said Niklaus.

“Good,” chorused Tobias’ visitors. “Tell us that again to-morrow
morning. Good-night. Sweet dreams to you, Master Hackernagel.”

“Good-night,” piped the Syndic, of whom not a vestige was now visible.
“Good-night, good people.”

“Oh! but that won’t do at all,” shouted up his tormentors. “We must
see you again once more before we go. We shouldn’t sleep a bit if we
didn’t. Here! Hi! Look out!”

And Tobias looked out. “Now tell us if you’ve been glad to see us,”
exhorted their fugleman. “Too much for words to express? Is that it?
Smile then. We shall understand.”

And Tobias smiled, a smile so ghastly, so abjectly wretched, than even
his tormentors were satisfied; and with a parting yell which brought
the last sleepiest heads in the street to their windows, they went
quietly home.




CHAPTER XLIV.

VOX POPULI.


True as the needle to the pole, Tobias Hackernagel kept his appointment
next morning. He clearly saw that there remained to him no choice but
to deliver himself up with the best grace he could to the tide of
circumstances. But alas, bad was the best. Never had his ingenuity
been more heavily taxed, and his self-esteem more sharply pricked,
than while he sat pondering over the terms which were to make it seem
as though Dasipodius’ recall were the effect of his own spontaneous
heart-promptings. In the end, however, the Syndic succeeded very fairly
indeed to his own satisfaction, and that of his own devoted adherents;
and for the general, they were content, so only he did as they
demanded, to leave him his own way of doing it.

Even the most obstinately inimical allowed themselves, out of the
generosity which conquest brings, to be kept in check; and with the
exception of one or two solicitous enquiries pitched in a shrill key,
as to what had befallen the most important feature of his face, they
quietly settled themselves to listen to what some present afterwards
pronounced to be the most astounding piece of oratory which had ever
left the lips of Syndic Hackernagel.

That this, in the very nature of it, occupied some time, may be
conceived; and for one whole hour and a quarter, the Syndic, with a
few trifling interruptions, held forth from the Chancellery steps, to
those who during the previous night’s small hours had convened that
rendezvous, and to as many more who made it their business or their
pleasure to hear what Master Hackernagel might be having to say for
himself.

Himself! Gracious Powers! Self, in any case, was not to be his text
on this occasion. Every nerve and sinew of him were, on the contrary,
strained to turn the mental vision of his hearers in upon themselves,
and to demonstrate to them what an egregious blunder they had committed
in deposing the king of horologiers, the Professor Conrad Dasipodius.
For who but they, as he boldly and indignantly demanded, had been
guilty of this, by their own suffrages? The whole matter, as with a
wave of the hand towards Burgomaster von Steinbach, who stood silently
watching the scene, the whole matter, Tobias said, had been publicly
and thoroughly sifted, and if it was not their subsequent voting which
had thrust out Dasipodius, what had?

“Good people, there are things,” hurried on Hackernagel, incited
to mend the pace of his oratory at this point, by certain ominous
rumblings—“there are things a man may sorely repent of having done,”
and here his saddened tones producing the soothing effect he aimed
at, he perorated on, ringing the changes upon his syllogism with
curious skill, and sticking to it with leech-like tenacity. Then too
in that scarlet and fur panoply, he was almost invulnerable. Tobias
Hackernagel shivering in his thin night-gear, under a cross-fire of
practical hard-hitting, and Syndic Hackernagel clothed about in all the
magnificence of his civic raiment, were as two utterly different men.

Personal courage was, as he always said, a mere animal attribute. In
words, solely and entirely, his strength lay; and valiantly he squared
up now to his difficulty, attacking at every point, never leaving one
threatening salient angle looking in the slightest degree threateningly
for himself, until he had smoothed it round to look like the work of
the people. With meteoric bursts, his periods rushed across their
intellectual vision, dazing it so utterly, that only afterwards some of
his hearers found breath to question the flawlessness of his arguments.

And ever again, when he felt the smallest danger of getting out of his
depth, he returned to that one incontrovertible assertion. “Did you
not, each and all of you, enjoy your free right of voting for whom
you pleased at the close of the enquiry? And was not Dasipodius’ name
included among the candidates? Answer me that.”

“Ay, ay, that’s true, Master Hackernagel; we don’t deny that of course,
but then——”

“And what is the result? That Dasipodius is rejected.” With mutual
reproachful glares and contrite groans, they made the required
admission.

“And Otto von Steinbach appointed.”

Longer and deeper utterances of contrition testified to this fact.

“Ay. Groan away,” muttered Burgomaster von Steinbach. “I’ll be hanged
if I could have believed Strassburg was made up of such arrant——”

“Pray! I beg, Burgomaster,” said Tobias, “do not blame these good
people. If only for your own sake, do not do that. What is it but the
old story of popular ingratitude? You nurse a viper in your bosom, and
it turns and stings you. Give these people here two seconds to speak
in, and believe me it is on us they would cast the blame—on _Us_!”

“Speak for yourself, Tobias Hackernagel!” furiously cried Niklaus.

“Nay, for myself possibly—for you—for the whole bench I speak. Good
friends,” he continued, turning again to his auditors, “Burgomaster von
Steinbach here places the whole matter in—in——”

“A nutshell,” prompted Niklaus.

“In a nutshell,” smiled Tobias effusively. “It was, he observes, a
grievous mistake you made when you——”

Has some invisible thunderbolt stricken Hackernagel, that the word
dies on his wide-opening lips, while a paste-white hue overspreads his
face, and his eyes fix themselves in a rigid stare on the figure of a
woman who has mingled with the crowd, which is no sooner aware of her
presence, than it divides respectfully for her to pass to the foot of
the steps, where she takes her stand and watchfully eyes the speaker.

“When—when——” stammers Hackernagel.

“Well, Master Hackernagel? Don’t let me interrupt,” she says in a low
tone,—“a grievous mistake that was made when——”

“When,” a sickly smile contorts Hackernagel’s lips, “when WE—sent away
the Professor Dasipodius,” he gasps out.

“Good!” cried Niklaus. “Courage, man. You’ll do now.”

But never in all his public career had Tobias felt himself so near
his undoing. It was all that woman’s eyes which had driven him to the
disastrous admission. Had she kept in her own house at her sewing, as
became women with an ounce of modesty in their composition, he could
have pulled himself through with barely a hair’s damage; but here,
forced in spite of himself, to cry _peccavi!_ What in the name of
Hecuba had she come here for, setting herself,—literally doing it,
between him and the people at this crucial moment? Bearding him on his
own particular hunting-ground? To be brow-beaten and trampled upon
like this by a woman? Yet no, a million times no! and girting in his
crimson and fur, until every crease of it was eloquent of the creature
it wrapped about, he returned to the contest.

“Having arrived then,” he continues, “good friends, at the conclusion
that you—that it was an error,” for still the artist’s eyes are
transfixing his face, “to—to part with the Professor Dasipodius, we
have come to the determination of—of fetching him back again.”

A thunder of applause greets the proposition.

“That’s by a long way the finest thing he ever said in his life. Isn’t
it, Klausewitz?” said the Burgomaster, appealing to his much-enduring
colleague, whom he had dragged to the scene of action.

“The sun’s burning hot,” grumbled Job. “If he doesn’t make haste, we
shall all get sunstroke.”

“My Lord Bishop inclines to the opinion,” continued the Syndic, with a
side glare of defiance at Radegund, “though here I must confess I am
not at one with him, that Dasipodius will—not come. But I think you—we
ought not to despair. My own opinion is that he will jump——”

“To the hangman with your opinions. Push on, man, and tell them what my
lord said, can’t you?”

“But,” proceeded Tobias, thus assisted, “am I here to advocate my own
poor sentiments? Is it not by the desire of the people that I stand
here to-day?”

“Ay, ay!” cheered certain voices, which turned Tobias’ skin to
gooseflesh under the sweltering crimson and fur.

“And I am prepared to sacrifice—I emancipate myself, so to speak, from
my own impressions.”

“Good again,” nodded Niklaus, cheerily contemplating the signs of
approval in the faces before him.

“This moment, as I have ever been,” and Tobias’ voice waxed shrill as
chanticleer’s at dawn, “I am the people’s, always the people’s, body
and soul of me. If it be your desire, good friends, as my Lord Bishop
believes, that Dasipodius should be invited back again, I your friend,
Tobias Hackernagel, will do it.”

Is it that everybody is stricken speechless with admiration for their
Syndic’s disinterested proposition, or that because they are mentally
debating the perfect wisdom of constituting him their envoy, that not a
sound is heard?

“Ah, h’m,” coughed Hackernagel, “have I been speaking, as it were,
over the heads of some of you, friends? Well, let me consider, how
shall I convey to you, that some in certain high quarters feel that
this mission demands for its ambassador, a person—h’m, h’m—of talent,
a diplomatist, a tactician, a man of eloquence, of judgment, of—in
short it is myself whom my Lord Bishop has requested——” and here
Hackernagel’s eyes, sweeping with modest pride the faces before him,
encountered the gaze of my lord himself fixed on him in stern curiosity.

“Choose your words better, Syndic Hackernagel,” he said in clear loud
tones, “unless you will have me for a prompter.”

“Good morning, my lord,” said Tobias with a sickly smile. “I was just
explaining to these good folks that you have—commanded me to fetch the
Professor Dasipodius back again.” So Syndic Hackernagel concluded his
peroration, somewhat abruptly; and he crept away from the sea of gaping
grinning faces, feeling that somehow the whole city knew how he had
been brought to bite the dust; or as Niklaus in his subsequent chats
over the subject phrased it, had been made to eat humble pie; “the very
sourest, toughest, humblest pie, friend Tobias ever swallowed in all
his life!”




CHAPTER XLV.

OLD FRIENDS.


“Hush! I hear music. Do not you, Kaspar?”

“No, master.”

“It is coming this way,” and the mathematician bends his head attently.

The boy lies stretched at Dasipodius’ feet, in their favourite haunt
by the stalactite cavern’s mouth. It is early June now; and for miles
round there is no such blessed refuge from the burden and heat of
midday as this green turf, sloping downwards to the lake’s silent
shores. Not a ripple stirs the water, for there is hardly a breath of
air, and the heat is at its sultriest. Seemingly the very birds in the
leafy branches overhead are indulging in a siesta, for they are silent,
and not so much as the fluttering of a wing breaks the stillness. There
has been hardly a sound for a good hour past, save the sweet tones of
Kaspar Habrecht, who has been dipping hap-hazard into a new edition of
Euclid, just issued from the famous new Amsterdam printing press, and
is reading aloud fragments of it for the blind man’s contentment. Not
much for his own, excepting in so far as Dasipodius’ pleasure is always
his; but from a selfish point of view, Kaspar would undoubtedly rather
have been delighting his soul with the gay, daintily-illustrated volume
of Gudrun with all its sea kings, and its vikings, and storm waves,
which had come to hand in the self-same package, cheek by jowl with the
sober, leathern-bound Euclid.

“_Rectilineal figures which are similar to the same rectilineal figure
are also similar to each other_,” reads Kaspar, with a suspicion of
weariness, not to say of contempt in his tones; did one, thought he,
need Euclid to tell one that?

“Turn over,” nodded Dasipodius.

“_If_,” reads Kaspar again, this time suppressing a veritable yawn,
“_from the greater of two unequal magnitudes there be taken more than
its half and_——”

“Never mind about that,” says the mathematician.

“_Next let E coincide with D_,” continued the boy, making another
chance dip, “_then of the two angles ADC and BDC one must be obtuse
and one acute. Suppose the angle ADC obtuse_——”

“Shut the book, Kaspar,” smiled the mathematician, laying his hand on
the boy’s, and helping him to the act; “it is you who are ADC this
morning. You are yawning; ay, but I heard you; shut the book, I say.”

“Nay,” faintly protested Kaspar.

“Hush! and there, I hear that music again. Listen!” And now as Kaspar
sat up, and also caught its faint strains, a joyful animation flashed
into his dulled eyes; and heedlessly flinging aside “the elements
of all true worldly wisdom,” he sprang to his feet, and listened
breathlessly.

“It’s some water party landing down at Schaffhausen yonder; that’s
what it is. Holy Mary! if they would but come up our way! what luck it
would be, wouldn’t it, master? We never so much as hear the squeak of a
fife, excepting at mass on Sundays, and when we were at Strassburg—” he
stopped abruptly with a sigh.

“Sighing for the fleshpots, Kaspar?” said Dasipodius. “Is life growing
so wearisome to you here already?”

“Nay,” said the boy blushingly; “but somehow a little music does so
help one over the stones.”

“Ay,” and it was the master’s turn to sigh; “it is rough riding when
all the music has died out of one’s life. And so—tell me, Kaspar, you
want to be back in Strassburg again?”

“Yes,” sturdily answered Kaspar; “do not you, master?”

And next instant, seeing the shadow of pain which passed over the
mathematician’s face, he would have given his deft right hand to have
those words unspoken. “I never shall return to Strassburg, Kaspar,” he
said with assumed calmness; “you know that.”

“Never?” cried the boy, opening wide his blue eyes.

“I think not; my place there is gone. If I cannot be as I have been
there,” said the mathematician proudly, “I will not be there at all. I
must seek out some new field for work; some place, if such there be,
where a man’s word is taken for his bond, and his infirmity is not
his crime. And by Saint Laurence,” he added more briskly, “I must be
finding it quickly too. It will never do to stay rusticating away the
days in this delightful way much longer. Yes, you and I will have to
bid each other a ‘God be with you’ soon, Kaspar, and go our separate
ways; we must part, lad.”

“Part?” echoed the boy, wrinkling his smooth white brow in saddened
perplexity.

“Yes, listen. In Strassburg I have but to speak for you to find you
work. The hands that carved the Horologe, interest or no interest
indeed, would not hold themselves out idle long for want of something
to do, and find a rich reward for it too. Are you listening, Kaspar? do
you understand?”

“I am listening, master.”

“And when will you like to be going?”

“Going!” mechanically ejaculated the boy; “where?”

“Did not I say now you were gone wool-gathering this morning? Back to
Strassburg.”

“I will never again set foot in Strassburg,” said Kaspar, a crimson
flush kindling in his cheeks, and a fiery light to his eyes, “excepting
it is by your side, master.”

“Then never again, I take it, will your foot be set there; for I am
going—nay, as yet I do not know where.”

“But where you go, there I shall go too. Do not shake your head, do
not—master, if you send me away from you, I—no—you shall not—master
dear—” a burst of tears choked his pleading, and he flung himself on
the blind man’s neck, and sobbed bitterly.

“Treuer Kamerad!” murmured Dasipodius; and the firm, beautiful lips
quivered, and the blind eyes grew unwontedly lustrous as he stroked
the boy’s sunny hair. “My faithful Kaspar! I think among those same
stars we talked of once, which rose for me when my sun set, and I
thought all my life was to be midnight blackness, that you are the
brightest. And shall I repay you so? Let your unselfish heart profit
mine, and teach me to think what is best—and right for you. Listen here
now, Kaspar—hush, hush,” for still the boy clung fast to him, crying
bitterly: “Come, be reasonable.”

“And so he is—reasonable,” growled the voice of Isaac Habrecht. “It is
you who are unreasonable, Master Dasipodius.”

“Isaac?”

“Ay. Yes it’s Isaac; and Isaac—and Kaspar too, seemingly, it’s to be
the end of the chapter for you. Come, Kaspar, don’t go weeping your
soul out like that, dear boy,” continued Isaac, gently disengaging
Kaspar’s arms from Dasipodius.

“The master was but jesting.”

“Nothing of the kind,” began Dasipodius.

“He never really meant to be sending you away.”

“But I did,” protested Dasipodius. “I have been thinking.”

“Then for shame!” indignantly cried Isaac. “Do you hear, Master
Dasipodius, for shame!”

“It is best; it must be,” gravely urged Dasipodius. “Reflect for an
instant how utterly my lot is changed from what it was. Once I might
have lifted him as I rose, and you too, Isaac; I might have served you
both; but now——”

“Now our turn has come to serve you; or at least it’s fair of you,
master, to let us try; but with such a proud, independent, obstinate——”

“Have done!” smiled Dasipodius. “Am I to sit here and be called names?
_Et tu Brute!_ You, Isaac, of all others; in whose hands I am just a
piece of clay, to be moulded as you will. Who was it, I wonder, bade me
say like any parrot, ‘Take the drawings, Isaac Habrecht, and carry them
to the Chancellery!’ and I said it, by heaven, I said it—I!”

“And I,” returned Isaac, a grim smile of satisfaction relaxing his
massive features, which bore a marvellous family likeness to some of
Kaspar’s wooden saints and heroes, “I obeyed, and took them, and—there
they are now.”

“How?” asked Dasipodius, turning his head quickly. “You say——”

“There they are now.”

“But Otto von Steinbach——”

“Ah! von Steinbach. Yes, he fetched them away,” said Isaac, in tones
of careless contempt, “of course; and he kept them—till they burnt his
fingers. Then he took them back again, and there they are, safe and
sound. So Syndic Klausewitz has just been telling me.”

“Syndic Klausewitz!” echoed Kaspar, passing his hand over his still
wet eyes, and staring in amazement at his brother, and then in utter
bewilderment at the apparition of Dr. Bruno Wolkenberg, who availing
himself of his intimate acquaintance with the by-paths to their haunt,
has suddenly appeared upon the scene, and is silently stretching his
length upon the grass, within a few feet of Dasipodius. “And what
brings him here?”

“What brings them all,” said the sententious Switzer. “Duty. There’s
some two score,” he continued, jerking his head in the direction of
a confused sound of tramping feet and many voices growing louder each
moment, “of the Town Council, and ever so many old friends of yours
besides, master, coming here to have a word with you; if they’re not
grilled to death before they get as far. My last batzen to a florin,
they’re rueing the day now, if they haven’t done it before, that they
meddled with our Horologe. Ho! ho! ho! ha! ha! ha!” and the cavernous
recesses behind them resounded again and again with the deep bass of
Isaac’s laughter, grave stolid Isaac Habrecht. “I thought maybe,”
he continued, “that you’d like me to step on and tell you they were
coming; but they won’t be here yet awhile. It is no joke,” and Isaac
lifted his hat and wiped the heat drops from his massive forehead,
“tramping up yonder road; every inch of it in a white heat as it is;
and a pig’s nothing to the way Syndic Hackernagel pulls backward.”
And once more Isaac’s sonorous ha! ha! echoed through the cave as if
all the gnomes of the Venusberg were gathered there, and sharing his
enjoyment. “Well, well, patience! They’ll get him here in time. And
there’s Burgomaster von Steinbach, and Dr. Bruno Wolk——”

“Dr. Bruno is welcome,” said Dasipodius, stretching out his hand to his
friend. “Welcome as unexpected. But how about your large retinue, Dr.
Wolkenberg? Have you been appointed Imperial Physician since last you
came to Schaffhausen? or how else may your planet be in the ascendant?”

“Nay,” returned the surgeon; “if only you will have it so, it is yours
which is in the fortunate house, Conrad.”

“Come! come! if we must have metaphor, minstrel mine, that same planet
is far too cloud-covered ever to show again. Only a miracle could
unveil it.”

“And lo! a miracle is here!” flourished Bruno. “A horse, a horse,
Conrad! brought to the water, and made to drink. That’s what is going
to happen.”

“The Sphinx’s riddle was child’s play to yours,” said Dasipodius, with
a half-provoked smile. “What on earth do you mean?”

“Hush! hark!” said Bruno; “they’re here.”

“They? and must your horse then be drinking to such a clarion blast as
that?” demanded the mystified mathematician.

“The Strassburgers would have it so,” shrugged Bruno.

“And the horse?”

“Stands before you,” answered Bruno, stepping back, and leaving
Dasipodius to face his deputation alone.




CHAPTER XLVI.

HOW EXTREMES MEET.


Never did figure of speech so deplorably insult noble brute as this of
Bruno Wolkenberg’s. A more wretchedly abject specimen of the creature
man than Tobias Hackernagel looked at this moment, is not conceivable.
For once his civic bravery seemed to fail in its power of lending him
even meretricious magnificence, and Syndic Hackernagel’s coat did not
make Syndic Hackernagel, but hung about his sloping shoulders in flabby
dust-whitened folds, a thing to be joyfully wriggled out of, had time
and place permitted. But to-day as ever, Tobias Hackernagel is the
martyr, not to say the sport of circumstance and of public attention.
An effective situation! one such as is generally the very apex of his
ambition, to be standing the focus of every eye in that semicircle of
municipal magnates and citizens all pranked in their best, and flanked
with buff-jerkined halberdiers and a good round dozen of drummers and
of trumpeters in gold and scarlet, set in a rapidly widening framework
of native population, which, laying aside file and hammer, has turned
out all eyes and ears to learn what yonder little ferret-eyed fellow,
with the nose angular and wooden of aspect as any carven nutcracker
monstrosity that ever left tyro’s chisel, may be having to say. For
clearly he is to be spokesman, this pigmy personage, looking specially
pigmy by comparison with the stately figure of Dasipodius, in whose
presence he now stands, and with the burly form of Burgomaster von
Steinbach beside him. Yet, is it from diffidence, or why does he
evince such earnest desire to escape the distinction thrust upon him,
and hangs back almost as persistently as his companions insist on his
stepping forward, going the length even of combining to prod him well
to the front with their pikes and other available weapons, among which
Burgomaster von Steinbach’s stick does conspicuous service. Clearly to
a man these excellently marshalled, resolute-looking representatives
of Strassburg’s all sorts and conditions are not to be contravened in
their most obvious intention, that Syndic Tobias Hackernagel shall do
what he is there to do with all convenient speed.

Patiently expectant meanwhile, Dasipodius stands leaning against the
oak, whose spreading boughs mellow the mid-day glare into a gracious
light, transfiguring his pale calm features with almost unearthly
effulgence, and streaking with golden his waves of dusky hair.

Patience, whatsoever other qualities they may possess or lack, is the
special grace of men physically afflicted, and it well becomes him now,
mingled as it is with the shade of saddened perplexity, that neither of
that trio of trusty friends, within whispering distance of him, are at
any pains to unriddle for him anything that is passing around.

A deafening and prolonged trumpet blare, echoing to the valley’s
heights and depths, startles him from his speculations. Then, as at
last that spends itself, there falls a silence, broken only by the
buz-chirp-twee of the myriad insect creatures footing it about the
sward, till Niklaus von Steinbach bursts forth with a stentorian “Well!
Master Hackernagel?”

Syndic Hackernagel’s jaw starts open, much as if string were its
motive power. The movement is, however, productive of nothing beyond a
fearsome elongation of his hatchet face, and a silence intenser than
the first prevails.

“Well, I say, Master Hackernagel,” reiterates von Steinbach, “we are
waiting your very good pleasure,” and he glances peremptorily from
the Syndic’s face to the parchment his lean fingers clutch with such
convulsive restlessness, that presently it slips to the ground.

“I—I,” stammers Hackernagel, stooping to recover it, “am—must I—am I
to—speak first?”

“First and last, my friend. You have it all your own way this time. I
and these gentlemen here are but witnesses.”

“Yes, precisely—quite so—perfectly so. But—but,” and with an idiotic
contortion of his lips, only by the grossest flattery to be construed
into a smile, the Syndic blinks over his shoulder.

“Ay! ay! to be sure, Syndic, quite right,” nods Niklaus, following the
direction of his glance. “So it should be.”

And the stick signals a second trumpet blast; which bursting with
terrific force in the rear of the unprepared Syndic, sends him forward
with a distracted bound.

“But I tell you,” gasps he, turning ragefully on Niklaus, and mopping
the great heat drops beading profusely out all over his peaked
forehead, “I tell you—this is informal! Out of all ruling. There should
be some—something to lead up to—there sh—should be at least three
preliminary——”

“And so there should. Thunder and lightning! so there should. You’re
the man to understand these little things. Ho there! drums and
trumpets, ho!”

And the Burgomaster’s stick evokes a third rousing blast, which rolls
thunderously through the hills, and sends the birds flying frantically
shrieking over the dark waters.

“That’s what you mean, isn’t it?”

“No, no!” protests Hackernagel, glowering through tears of mingled
spite and discomfort at von Steinbach, and then with shuddering
apprehension at the hateful array of musical instruments. “I didn’t;
and—and let me tell you, Bur—Burgomaster——”

“O yes! O yes! O yes!” shouts the Recorder.

“Now, Master Hackernagel!” prompts Niklaus, lifting his stick with an
admonitory flourish.

“But—but——”

“Now, Master Hackernagel!”

Soft, clear, resonant as a bell, falls that voice upon the Syndic’s
ear, chasing from his face every particle of colour as entirely as it
conjures the deepest of crimson flushes to Surgeon Wolkenberg’s.

Not all the trumpets in Christendom could galvanise Tobias Hackernagel
to action as that woman’s voice does. And hardly staying fairly
to unfold his voluminous document, he reads forth from it its
heading and superscription in hurriedly confused tones. “_To the
most_—hem—_illustrious and_—hem, hem.”

“He’s picked up a cold,” parenthesised Klausewitz in sympathetic _sotto
voce_. “And no wonder neither. That confounded river mist last night
was enough to——”

“Silence!” shouts Niklaus, “for Syndic Hackernagel. To the most
illustrious and erudite—Go on, Syndic, we are all attention.”

“Hem—_Professor Dasipodius, Citizen of Strassburg, Doctor of Sciences,
and Head Mathematical Doctor of the University of the aforesaid
city, on the part of me, individually, Tobias Hackernagel, Syndic of
Strassburg, and farther, on the part of the Municipality and Citizens
of the same city—greeting_—hem——”

“Just so,” nods Burgomaster Niklaus, in such tones as a pedagogue will
use towards a refractory scholar, in whom he fancies he sees a faint
gleam of better things. Then he glances tentatively at Dasipodius,
who, lifting his cap in acknowledgment of the salutation, remains
bareheaded. “Proceed, Master Hackernagel.”

“_Whereas_,” continues Hackernagel, fumbling at his document.

“Speak up!” shouts a chorus of voices. “Pitch it higher!”

“_Whereas in the month of January last_,” valiantly pipes up the
Syndic, “_you, the most_—hem—_illustrious and_—hem, hem—_erudite
Professor Conrad Dasipodius, being at such time, and for the space of
two previous years, engaged upon the work of superintending the making
of a Horologe for the Saint Laurence Chapel on the south side of the
interior of the Cathedral Church of—of our—_hem—_Blessed Lady, in
aforenamed City of Strassburg, such high and honourable charge being
entrusted to you by general consent and suffrage of the Burgesses,
and of the Most Worshipful Guild of Clockmakers of the city, guided
in their choice of you, most erudite Professor Dasipodius, by their
estimation of_—hem—_your fitness for such devoir, wherein, as the
sages of old days did aptly observe, for the ignorant and unlearned to
intermeddle, is a thing exceeding dangerous, and that they who do so
presume are found to partake of the nature of fools._

“_Wherefore_,” hurried on Tobias, “_seeing that the Science of
Horology being a thing in itself so lofty and noble, does in a manner
partake of the Divine Wisdom, and of a consequence of Heaven itself;
and whereas, speaking under one of those divers figures or symbols
of the great and abstruse Science of Mathematics, whereto also the
knowledge of Horology doth of necessity pertain—extremes do meet—and
whereas by the wilful and ignorant, the extreme of intimate, and of
almost perfect knowledge which as aforesaid is the gift of Heaven,
and attained_—hem—_unto by_—hem, hem—_you, most illustrious and
erudite Professor Dasipodius, has been in divers times since the
world’s beginning confounded with that other and most diabolical
extreme of magic and of witchcraft, which is known to proceed out of
the filthiness of hell, and is the firstborn of the archfiend Satan
himself; and whereas the rumour that you, Professor Dasipodius, did
attain unto your high academic estate and lofty repute by aid of such
unlawful arts was sent abroad and fomented among the vulgar, even
unto the detriment of your good name, and the endangerment of your
precious life, by certain_—hem—_meddlesome persons holding office in
the municipality of this city, wherewith I, Tobias Hackernagel, do
stand officially connected; and whereas aforesaid rumour did magnify
and grow when it came to be known beyond all manner of doubting, that
Providence had deemed fit to deprive you of sight, afflicting you
with that most strange and rare form of blindness which is called of
all time Gutta Serena, and besides of modern chirurgeons Amaurosis,
and because to the careless or superficial observer, in your outward
eyes no trace of your so sorely-to-be-deplored calamity is observable,
certain persons_—hem—_by reason of their most_—hem, hem—_pitiable lack
of knowledge and wretched obliquity of vision (which doth challenge
commiseration infinitely greater than pure physical affliction) did
fondly lend credence to the most malicious and lying rumours circulated
by me, Tobias Hackernagel_—No, no, that’s not it!” shrieked Tobias
agonizedly, interrupting himself. “I’ve turned over two leaves! I have
indeed!”

“_Circulated by certain evil-minded persons_,” he went on, referring
back, “_thereby bringing about the setting aside of you, illustrious
and erudite Professor Dasipodius, and the exalting into your office and
dignities a certain_—hem—_ignorant and_—hem, hem—_incompetent-person,
thereby imitating the foolish example of the Israelites of old, who did
set up a golden calf_——”

“It’s most awfully profane. Eh, Radegund?” whispered Otto von
Steinbach, whose presence with the deputation had been officially and
pressingly requested.

“_A golden calf to worship, and seeing that it never has been, and
never will be, in the power of stocks and stones_——”

“Such long-winded twaddle, isn’t it?” parenthesised Otto again.

“_To elaborate high and lofty works, and the condition to which the
Cathedral Horologe has by such mismanagement been brought being so
deplorable, the Burgesses of our city do plainly perceive that they
have been placed grievously in error and hoodwinked by their false
guides and advisers, whose_—hem—_ignorance, not only in the Science
of Horology, but of much plain learning and common sense besides, is
curiously great, do herewith acknowledge themselves sorely repentant
of their decision which compassed your setting aside, most erudite
Professor Dasipodius; and whereas it doth behove and become those who
do err, and lead others to err, to make full and earnest confession
of their error, the Burgesses of Strassburg and all others concerned
do herewith depute and command me, Tobias Hack_—hem—_Hackernagel,
humbly to acknowledge our grievous wrong committed against you, most
illustrious and erudite Professor Conrad Dasipodius, and herewith do
entreat you to pardon the ignorance and wilfulness of the act, and
at once graciously to resume and to take up your duties laid aside,
and all such dignities and honours appertaining thereto, and to hold
yourself reinstated of the high consideration you formerly enjoyed. And
by these are unanimously and for ever cancelled those suffrages which
did unlawfully constitute one Otto von Steinbach Cathedral Horologist
in your stead. Whereto witness our hand this fifth day of June, anno
domini 1573. And hereby, as below, we do notify our full and hearty
concurrence and approval of this measure._”

Here followed the signatures of those concerned, which, his own one
safely got through with, the Syndic managed to read out in composed and
collected tones, and even with something of his wonted style.

It earns however no attention; for not an eye there, not an ear but
turns in absorbed and tense interest to Dasipodius. For the Syndic
himself, as the last word leaves his lips, and utter silence prevails,
it is an awful moment. If the mathematician should turn a deaf ear
and refuse, think of it. Ah! and Hackernagel with a shudder glances
covertly at the lake, whose calm, deadly smooth level grows fearsomely
suggestive in his practical mind of one vast duckpool. Not in all
Germany is such an excitable impulsive fellow as your Strassburger,
in whose veins, come how it may, runs a dangerous current of Gallic
blood; and now if things do not go as they desire, the Syndic feels
that his chances of returning skin-whole to the bosom of his family are
infinitesimal; and so with stranded fish-like gasps and eyes downcast,
for somehow he dare not look, as the rest are looking, into the
mathematician’s face, Tobias Hackernagel awaits the fiat.




CHAPTER XLVII.

“HOMO SUM.”


Away in Strassburg there has been much debating and variance of opinion
touching the spirit in which Dasipodius will comport himself towards
this recantation. Quidnuncs have contested it over their cups, burgher
and trader have discussed it in the market-place, women have gossipped,
apprentices have interchanged fisticuffs, and young bloods more than
one rapier-thrust over it. University dons have argued the bearings
of the case from all points; but on the one postulate only, that
Dasipodius is a man cast in no ordinary mould, is absolute unanimity;
otherwise it breaks off in curious divergence.

“A man,” contended but yesterday forenoon, one of a little group
of grizzled dominis, “a man you won’t meet once in a century, is
Dasipodius; eminently unselfish, loyal-minded to the marrow, a
great-souled man in whom not a grain of guile or rancour could take
root.”

“And yet _homo sum_—still a man,” said a thoughtful, cynical-lipped,
yet withal not ill-natured-looking colleague.

The younger bystanders exchange disgustful smiles at the learned
philosophers’ truisms.

“Yes, and a man, mind you,” hotly contended a third, “whose nature is
so sensitive, that the faintest breath of all this whirlwind of insult
which has swept over him, would be infinite torture.”

“Now, what the deuce,” grumbled a youth with restless, fire-bright
eyes, tossing back a wealth of raven-black locks from his white brow,
with the back of a slender hand, which holds a well-thumbed duodecimo
Horace, “what do they mean with all their cant about his sensitiveness?
He’s just a mathematician. No end of a one, I grant you; but as far as
I can ever see, he always takes what the gods provide, rough or smooth,
like a man of marble.”

“But still—a man, dear boy,” smiled the philosopher.

“And,” placidly ejaculated a portly cathedral canon, folding his
velvety white hands, “what is man’s lot here below but to suffer?”

“Ah! but _furor fit læsa sæpiens potientiæ_, father,” cried another;
“and worms will turn at last. And—well, look for instance at my dog
Schnaps here. There’s not an amiabler brute in all Elsass, treat him
like a decent christian; but just you give him a bone, and then try to
take it away again. Just you try, that’s all.”

“But Dasipodius—is a man,” smiled the cynic.

“And they’ve treated him worse than a dog!” indignantly returned the
other, whistling to Schnaps and striding away.

“While we,” musingly murmured a stout, gentle-eyed man, “stood by like
so many posts, and permitted the injustice.”

“My son,” said the churchman, “it is for us all to submit to the powers
that be.”

“Heaven send them wits then,” lightly laughed the poet.

But not his nearest friends, not Bruno Wolkenberg himself, not Kaspar’s
wistful affection, can divine the shadow of what is passing now in the
blind man’s mind, from any signs of it upon his face. Even unwontedly
pale he is, as he stands, seemingly gazing on the sunlit crags yonder
across the lake; while, evoked like some nightmare dream by Tobias
Hackernagel’s harsh accents, rushes back all the memory of that weary
time, clothed, perhaps, in colours tenfold more vivid by the lending
of that exteriorly dead sense to his interior vision. Hidden out of
memory, he has told himself they were, forgiven heartily the taunts
and insults to his bodily affliction, the aspersions on his honour,
the irritating ignorances, the petty impertinences of men who cared
little for, and comprehended less of the art which was for him a thing
of life, and so bound up in his own, that severance from that dear fair
human love would have been easier than giving up intercommunion with
it. Nay, had not he been almost angry with himself to find how this
talent of his had wooed him to a comfort he had thought it impossible
could ever again be his, when he believed Sabina’s love lost and gone
for ever? His forgiveness of the injuries wrought against him had been
the more complete, because of its birth in that lofty nature, which
still, in its extremest distress, had echoed the Master’s utterance:
“They know not what they do!” seeing, in his own, some reflex of that
supreme endurance, whose sublimity had come home to him in these later
days as it never had come before; and apprehending something of that
infinite pity and charity, he had schooled himself unreservedly and
entirely to forgive, as one day he hoped to be forgiven, the men who,
out of their ignorance, or worse still, their woeful smattering of
knowledge, could not gauge the measure of injury they had heaped on him.

To that crowd, now so curiously watching him, there is no trace of
emotion visible in the mathematician’s face; only presently, Bruno
Wolkenberg, standing nearest to him, Bruno, his heart’s chosen friend,
Bruno, the clever physician, marvellously skilled in such sort of
reading, marks the slight tremour thrilling his frame, and the deep
flush gradually supplanting the pallor which had deadened and chilled
his face at the sound of Syndic Hackernagel’s discords; and he believed
that now at last the sluices of the self-contained nature are taking
their course, and that Dasipodius’ moment of giving rein to some
expression of just indignation has come. So it is our best friends know
us; and, indeed, Bruno was not so far astray, the agitation stirring
him was the effect of one transient startling doubt, whether in very
truth, as he had so long believed, he felt himself free of that pride
men call ‘proper’—that fetish, for ever stifling down human nature’s
best and purest impulses?

Of that doubt, brief as a lightning flash, the assurance is born. “Is
Otto von Steinbach here?” he asks.

There is, in Syndic Hackernagel’s eyes, in this meeting of question
with question, such a deliberate defiance of the proprieties that
it almost assumes the hideous proportions of contempt of court; and
exercises the happy effect of restoring to him some degree of his
normal confidence. And with a succession of preliminary gasps, he is
preparing to remonstrate, but the mathematician waves him to silence.
“Is Otto von Steinbach here?” he reiterates.

“Here, Master Dasipodius,” falteringly answers a voice somewhere
within the sheltering shadow of Radegund von Steinbach; and then, with
flurried steps, the ex-chief horologist stumbles into the presence of
the other.

“Speak up, friend,” prompts Isaac Habrecht; “the master hasn’t got long
ears like——”

“Be silent, Isaac,” rebukes Dasipodius; “and so, Otto, the Horologe
does not prosper?”

A groan is Otto’s sole reply.

“Nay,” continues Dasipodius, “I want to hear about the progress——”

“Progress!” ejaculates Otto with contritely upturned eyes, “but—I tell
you—but—there hasn’t been any.”

“None at all?”

Otto twiddles the rim of his smart velvet cap, and mutely shakes his
head.

“What’s the use of doing that?” says Habrecht under his breath, and
nudging his arm he glances significantly up at the blind man’s eyes.
“Find your tongue, can’t you, and speak up.”

“It is just as it was then, yes?” enquires Dasipodius.

“N—no, Master Dasipodius, it is not,” blurts out the truthful Otto;
“it—has gone backward. If only—only you could see——”

“Mind your words,” frowns Habrecht, “and whom you’re speaking to.”

“For pity’s sake,” urges Dasipodius, “do let him tell his tale in his
own way. Am I so thin-skinned? Well, my friend, and if I could only
see,—or is my affliction to prove my consoler? Maybe it is better I
cannot see this poor Horologe—if I love it. Nay, be your old honest
self, and say.”

“It’s in the most awful mess you ever—that anybody ever—I mean—oh,
Master Dasipodius, you were always so good to me; and I—oh, Master
Dasipodius!” And with a storm of sobs he fell at his old master’s feet.

“Nay, nay, come, Otto, be a man,” said the mathematician, laying his
hand gently on Otto’s shoulder and raising him; “you’re not the first
miscalculator of your own powers the world has known. If you have
proved a bad master, you were a good servant; and, under guidance,
could fashion excellent cog-wheels. Come, don’t sigh your heart out
like that. See now, shall we go back to Strassburg, you and I, and
Isaac Habrecht here——”

“Ay, ay,” assented Isaac.

“And put our heads together to right the mischief? And Kaspar,” added
Dasipodius, stretching out his hand wet with Otto’s tears, “will you
come too, lad?”

“Master,” cried the boy, seizing it joyfully and kissing it, “to the
world’s end.”

“Ay. Not so far,” smiled Dasipodius, making no effort to suppress the
content he felt at the prospect of standing in the old place, with all
the old workers round him. “Not so far, else the good mother might be
having a crow to pluck with me. Gentlemen,” he added, raising his voice
and addressing the deputation, “we will come.”

One simultaneous prolonged cheer rang to the hill tops.

“But this,” protested Syndic Hackernagel out of the midst of the
chorus, “is informal. It should be through the medium of myself; and—oh
this is—this is altogether——”

“It is all we want,” interrupted Burgomaster von Steinbach. “Hang
your formalities, Tobias Hackernagel, and thank your stars. Some time
at his leisure the Professor Dasipodius will formally signify his
reacceptance. In the meantime——”

“We can go, can’t we, Burgomaster?” enquired Councillor Job, finding
the formal semi-circle about him breaking up into little scattered
groups. “I wonder,” he went on, speculatively casting his eyes over the
lake’s broad expanse, “where one can get a drink? Thousand thunders! if
we stop here two minutes more, we shall be grilled to the bones!”

“My mother,” said Isaac Habrecht, “will be proud to offer you the best
our poor house affords, gentlemen all.”

“Thanks! my good friend,” said Hackernagel with an ineffable smile. “A
thousand thanks.”

“Give them where they’re due, Master Syndic,” bluntly returned Isaac,
and eyeing the speaker’s length and breadth with undisguised contempt.
“The Habrechts never turned away from their door the pitifullest cur
that was in need of bit or sup.”

“Quite right,” nodded Hackernagel. “Quite right. One might entertain an
angel unawares.”

“Or a devil,” muttered Isaac, turning away and lending an arm to
Dasipodius, “as the case may be. Come, master.”


END OF VOL. II.

       *       *       *       *       *

[Transcriber’s note—the following changes have been made to this text.

Page 14: stifly to stiffly—“stiffly-starched”.

Page 100: Schhlettstadt to Schlettstadt—“near Schlettstadt”.

Page 149: cheefully to cheerfully—“they said more cheerfully”.

Page 213: wordly to worldly—“own worldly state”.]



*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76371 ***