XI
The porters began their toilsome journey, and moved off from thevillage pier. He could see nothing, for the brass door was overhis head, and all that gleamed through it was the clear gray sky.He had been tilted on to his back, and if he had not been alittle mountaineer, used to hanging head-downwards overcrevasses, and, moreover, seasoned to rough treatment by thehunters and guides of the hills and the salt-workers in the town,he would have been made ill and sick by the bruising and shakingand many changes of position to which he had been subjected.
The way the men took was a mile and a half in length, but theroad was heavy with snow, and the burden they bore was heavierstill. The dealers cheered them on, swore at them and praisedthem in one breath; besought them and reiterated their splendidpromises, for a clock was striking eleven, and they had beenordered to reach their destination at that hour, and, though theair was so cold, the heat-drops rolled off their foreheads asthey walked, they were so frightened at being late. But theporters would not budge a foot quicker than they chose, and asthey were not poor four-footed carriers their employers dared notthrash them, though most willingly would they have done so.
The road seemed terribly long to the anxious tradesmen, to theplodding porters, to the poor little man inside the stove, as hekept sinking and rising, sinking and rising, with each of theirsteps.
Where they were going he had no idea, only after a very long timehe lost the sense of the fresh icy wind blowing on his facethrough the brass-work above, and felt by their movements beneathhim that they were mounting steps or stairs. Then he heard agreat many different voices, but he could not understand what wasbeing said. He felt that his bearers paused some time, then movedon and on again. Their feet went so softly he thought they mustbe moving on carpet, and as he felt a warm air come to him heconcluded that he was in some heated chambers, for he was aclever little fellow, and could put two and two together, thoughhe was so hungry and so thirsty and his empty stomach felt sostrangely. They must have gone, he thought, through some verygreat number of rooms, for they walked so long on and on, on andon. At last the stove was set down again, and, happily for him,set so that his feet were downward.
What he fancied was that he was in some museum, like that whichhe had seen in the city of Innspruck.
The voices he heard were very hushed, and the steps seemed to goaway, far away, leaving him alone with Hirschvogel. He dared notlook out, but he peeped through the brass work, and all he couldsee was a big carved lion's head in ivory, with a gold crownatop. It belonged to a velvet fauteuil, but he could not see thechair, only the ivory lion.
There was a delicious fragrance in the air,--a fragrance as offlowers. "Only how can it be flowers?" thought August. "It isDecember!"
From afar off, as it seemed, there came a dreamy, exquisitemusic, as sweet as the spinet's had been, but so much fuller, somuch richer, seeming as though a chorus of angels were singingall together. August ceased to think of the museum: he thought ofheaven. "Are we gone to the Master?" he thought, remembering thewords of Hirschvogel.
All was so still around him; there was no sound anywhere exceptthe sound of the far-off choral music.
He did not know it, but he was in the royal castle of Berg, andthe music he heard was the music of Wagner, who was playing in adistant room some of the motives of "Parsival."
Presently he heard a fresh step near him, and he heard a lowvoice say, close behind him, "So!" An exclamation no doubt, hethought, of admiration and wonder at the beauty of Hirschvogel.
Then the same voice said, after a long pause, during which nodoubt, as August thought, this new-comer was examining all thedetails of the wondrous fire-tower, "It was well bought; it isexceedingly beautiful! It is most undoubtedly the work ofAugustin Hirschvogel."
Then the hand of the speaker turned the round handle of the brassdoor, and the fainting soul of the poor little prisoner withingrew sick with fear.
The handle turned, the door was slowly drawn open, some one bentdown and looked in, and the same voice that he had heard inpraise of its beauty called aloud, in surprise, "What is this init? A live child!"
Then August, terrified beyond all self-control, and dominated byone master-passion, sprang out of the body of the stove and fellat the feet of the speaker.
"Oh, let me stay! Pray, meinherr, let me stay!" he sobbed. "Ihave come all the way with Hirschvogel!"
Some gentlemen's hands seized him, not gently by any means, andtheir lips angrily muttered in his ear, "Little knave, peace! bequiet! hold your tongue! It is the king!"
They were about to drag him out of the august atmosphere as if hehad been some venomous, dangerous beast come there to slay, butthe voice he had heard speak of the stove said, in kind accents,"Poor little child! he is very young. Let him go: let him speakto me."
The word of a king is law to his courtiers: so, sorely againsttheir wish, the angry and astonished chamberlains let Augustslide out of their grasp, and he stood there in his little roughsheepskin coat and his thick, mud-covered boots, with his curlinghair all in a tangle, in the midst of the most beautiful chamberhe had ever dreamed of, and in the presence of a young man with abeautiful dark face, and eyes full of dreams and fire; and theyoung man said to him,--
"My child, how came you here, hidden in this stove? Be notafraid: tell me the truth. I am the king."
August in an instinct of homage cast his great battered blackhat with the tarnished gold tassels down on the floor of theroom, and folded his little brown hands in supplication. He wastoo intensely in earnest to be in any way abashed; he was toolifted out of himself by his love for Hirschvogel to be consciousof any awe before any earthly majesty. He was only so glad--soglad it was the king. Kings were always kind; so the Tyrolesethink, who love their lords.
"Oh, dear king!" he said, with trembling entreaty in his faintlittle voice, "Hirschvogel was ours, and we have loved it all ourlives; and father sold it. And when I saw that it did really gofrom us, then I said to myself I would go with it; and I havecome all the way inside it. And last night it spoke and saidbeautiful things. And I do pray you to let me live with it, and Iwill go out every morning and cut wood for it and you, if onlyyou will let me stay beside it. No one ever has fed it with fuelbut me since I grew big enough, and it loves me;--it does indeed;it said so last night; and it said that it had been happier withus than if it were in any palace----"
And then his breath failed him, and, as he lifted his little,eager, pale face to the young king's, great tears were fallingdown his cheeks.
Now, the king likes all poetic and uncommon things, and there wasthat in the child's face which pleased and touched him. Hemotioned to his gentlemen to leave the little boy alone.
"What is your name?" he asked him.
"I am August Strehla. My father is Karl Strehla. We live in Hall,in the Innthal; and Hirschvogel has been ours so long,--so long!"
His lips quivered with a broken sob.
"And have you truly travelled inside this stove all the way fromTyrol?"
"Yes," said August; "no one thought to look inside till you did."
The king laughed; then another view of the matter occurred tohim.
"Who bought the stove of your father?" he inquired.
"Traders of Munich," said August, who did not know that he oughtnot to have spoken to the king as to a simple citizen, and whoselittle brain was whirling and spinning dizzily round its onecentral idea.
"What sum did they pay your father, do you know?" asked thesovereign.
"Two hundred florins," said August, with a great sigh of shame."It was so much money, and he is so poor, and there are so manyof us."
The king turned to his gentlemen-in-waiting. "Did these dealersof Munich come with the stove?"
He was answered in the affirmative. He desired them to be soughtfor and brought before him. As one of his chamberlains hastenedon the errand, the monarch looked at August with compassion.
"You are very pale, little fellow: when did you e
at last?"
"I had some bread and sausage with me; yesterday afternoon Ifinished it."
"You would like to eat now?"
"If I might have a little water I would be glad; my throat isvery dry."
The king had water and wine brought for him, and cake also; butAugust, though he drank eagerly, could not swallow anything. Hismind was in too great a tumult.
"May I stay with Hirschvogel?--may I stay?" he said, withfeverish agitation.
"Wait a little," said the king, and asked, abruptly; "What do youwish to be when you are a man?"
"A painter. I wish to be what Hirschvogel was,--I mean the masterthat made _my_ Hirschvogel."
"I understand," said the king.
Then the two dealers were brought into their sovereign'spresence. They were so terribly alarmed, not being either soinnocent or so ignorant as August was, that they were tremblingas though they were being led to the slaughter, and they were soutterly astonished too at a child having come all the way fromTyrol in the stove, as a gentleman of the court had just toldthem this child had done, that they could not tell what to say orwhere to look, and presented a very foolish aspect indeed.
"Did you buy this Nuernberg stove of this little boy's father fortwo hundred florins?" the king asked them; and his voice was nolonger soft and kind as it had been when addressing the child,but very stern.
"Yes, your majesty," murmured the trembling traders.
"And how much did the gentleman who purchased it for me give toyou?"
"Two thousand ducats, your majesty," muttered the dealers,frightened out of their wits, and telling the truth in theirfright.
The gentleman was not present: he was a trusted counsellor in artmatters of the king's, and often made purchases for him.
The king smiled a little, and said nothing. The gentleman hadmade out the price to him as eleven thousand ducats.
"You will give at once to this boy's father the two thousand goldducats that you received, less the two hundred Austrian florinsthat you paid him," said the king to his humiliated and abjectsubjects. "You are great rogues. Be thankful you are not moregreatly punished."
He dismissed them by a sign to his courtiers, and to one of thesegave the mission of making the dealers of the Marienplatzdisgorge their ill-gotten gains.
August heard, and felt dazzled yet miserable. Two thousand goldBavarian ducats for his father! Why, his father would never needto go any more to the salt-baking! And yet, whether for ducats orfor florins, Hirschvogel was sold just the same, and would theking let him stay with it?--would he?
"Oh, do! oh, please do!" he murmured, joining his little brownweather-stained hands, and kneeling down before the youngmonarch, who himself stood absorbed in painful thought, for thedeception so basely practised for the greedy sake of gain on himby a trusted counsellor was bitter to him.
He looked down on the child, and as he did so smiled once more.
"Rise up, my little man," he said, in a kind voice; "kneel onlyto your God. Will I let you stay with your Hirschvogel? Yes, Iwill; you shall stay at my court, and you shall be taught to be apainter,--in oils or on porcelain as you will, and you must growup worthily, and win all the laurels at our Schools of Art, andif when you are twenty-one years old you have done well andbravely, then I will give you your Nuernberg stove, or, if I am nomore living, then those who reign after me shall do so. And nowgo away with this gentleman, and be not afraid, and you shalllight a fire every morning in Hirschvogel, but you will not needto go out and cut the wood."
Then he smiled and stretched out his hand; the courtiers tried tomake August understand that he ought to bow and touch it with hislips, but August could not understand that anyhow; he was toohappy. He threw his two arms about the king's knees, and kissedhis feet passionately; then he lost all sense of where he was,and fainted away from hunger, and tire, and emotion, and wondrousjoy.
As the darkness of his swoon closed in on him, he heard in hisfancy the voice from Hirschvogel saying,--
"Let us be worthy our maker!"
* * * * *
He is only a scholar yet, but he is a happy scholar, and promisesto be a great man. Sometimes he goes back for a few days to Hall,where the gold ducats have made his father prosperous. In the oldhouse-room there is a large white porcelain stove of Munich, theking's gift to Dorothea and 'Gilda.
And August never goes home without going into the great churchand saying his thanks to God, who blessed his strange winter'sjourney in the Nuernberg stove. As for his dream in the dealers'room that night, he will never admit that he did dream it; hestill declares that he saw it all, and heard the voice ofHirschvogel. And who shall say that he did not? for what is thegift of the poet and the artist except to see the sights whichothers cannot see and to hear the sounds that others cannot hear?
THE CHILDREN'S CLASSICS
Each beautifully illustrated in color and tastefully bound
BY WASHINGTON IRVING THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW RIP VAN WINKLE
SELECTED TALES OF WASHINGTON IRVING'S ALHAMBRA
BY JOHN RUSKIN THE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER
BY ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON A CHILD'S GARDEN OF VERSES
SELECTED HANS ANDERSEN'S FAIRY TALES
BY MISS MULOCK THE LITTLE LAME PRINCE THE ADVENTURES OF A BROWNIE
BY EMMA GELLIBRAND J. COLE
BY JOHANNA SPYRI MONI THE GOAT BOY
BY OUIDA MOUFFLOU AND OTHER STORIES THE NUeRNBERG STOVE A DOG OF FLANDERS
SELECTED WONDERLAND STORIES ALL TIME TALES
BY JONATHAN SWIFT GULLIVER'S TRAVELS (LILLIPUT LAND)
BY GEORGE MACDONALD THE PRINCESS AND THE GOBLIN THE PRINCESS AND CURDIE AT THE BACK OF THE NORTH WIND
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