VIII
Presently the key turned in the lock of the door, he heard heavyfootsteps and the voice of the man who had said to his father,"You have a little mad dog; muzzle him!" The voice said, "Ay, ay,you have called me a fool many times. Now you shall see what Ihave gotten for two hundred dirty florins. _Potztausend!_ neverdid _you_ do such a stroke of work."
Then the other voice grumbled and swore, and the steps of the twomen approached more closely, and the heart of the child wentpit-a-pat, pit-a-pat, as a mouse's does when it is on the top ofa cheese and hears a housemaid's broom sweeping near. They beganto strip the stove of its wrappings: that he could tell by thenoise they made with the hay and the straw. Soon they hadstripped it wholly: that, too, he knew by the oaths andexclamations of wonder and surprise and rapture which broke fromthe man who had not seen it before.
"A right royal thing! A wonderful and never-to-be-rivalled thing!Grander than the great stove of Hohen-Salzburg! Sublime!magnificent! matchless!"
So the epithets ran on in thick guttural voices, diffusing asmell of lager-beer so strong as they spoke that it reachedAugust crouching in his stronghold. If they should open the doorof the stove! That was his frantic fear. If they should open it,it would be all over with him. They would drag him out; mostlikely they would kill him, he thought, as his mother's youngbrother had been killed in the Wald.
The perspiration rolled off his forehead in his agony; but he hadcontrol enough over himself to keep quiet, and after standing bythe Nuernberg master's work for nigh an hour, praising, marvelling,expatiating in the lengthy German tongue, the men moved to alittle distance and began talking of sums of money and dividedprofits, of which discourse he could make out no meaning. All hecould make out was that the name of the king--the king--the kingcame over very often in their arguments. He fancied at times theyquarrelled, for they swore lustily and their voices rose hoarseand high; but after a while they seemed to pacify each other andagree to something, and were in great glee, and so in these merryspirits came and slapped the luminous sides of stately Hirschvogel,and shouted to it,--
"Old Mumchance, you have brought us rare good luck! To think youwere smoking in a silly fool of a salt-baker's kitchen all theseyears!"
Then inside the stove August jumped up, with flaming cheeks andclinching hands, and was almost on the point of shouting out tothem that they were the thieves and should say no evil of hisfather, when he remembered, just in time, that to breathe a wordor make a sound was to bring ruin on himself and sever himforever from Hirschvogel. So he kept still, and the men barredthe shutters of the little lattice and went out by the door,double-locking it after them. He had made out from their talkthat they were going to show Hirschvogel to some great person:therefore he kept quite still and dared not move.
Muffled sounds came to him through the shutters from the streetsbelow,--the rolling of wheels, the clanging of church-bells, andbursts of that military music which is so seldom silent in thestreets of Munich. An hour perhaps passed by; sounds of steps onthe stairs kept him in perpetual apprehension. In the intensityof his anxiety, he forgot that he was hungry and many miles awayfrom cheerful, Old World little Hall, lying by the clear grayriver-water, with the ramparts of the mountains all around.
Presently the door opened again sharply. He could hear the twodealers' voices murmuring unctuous words, in which, "honor,""gratitude," and many fine long noble titles played the chiefparts. The voice of another person, more clear and refined thantheirs, answered them curtly, and then, close by the Nuernbergstove and the boy's ear, ejaculated a single "_Wunderschoen!_"August almost lost his terror for himself in his thrill of prideat his beloved Hirschvogel being thus admired in the great city.He thought the master-potter must be glad too.
"_Wunderschoen!_" ejaculated the stranger a second time, and thenexamined the stove in all its parts, read all its mottoes, gazedlong on all its devices.
"It must have been made for the Emperor Maximilian," he said atlast; and the poor little boy, meanwhile, within, was "hugged upinto nothing," as you children say, dreading that every moment hewould open the stove. And open it truly he did, and examined thebrass-work of the door; but inside it was so dark that crouchingAugust passed unnoticed, screwed up into a ball like a hedgehogas he was. The gentleman shut to the door at length, withouthaving seen anything strange inside it; and then he talked longand low with the tradesmen, and, as his accent was differentfrom that which August was used to, the child could distinguishlittle that he said, except the name of the king and the word"gulden" again and again. After awhile he went away, one of thedealers accompanying him, one of them lingering behind to bar upthe shutters. Then this one also withdrew again, double-lockingthe door.
The poor little hedgehog uncurled itself and dared to breathealoud.
What time was it?
Late in the day, he thought, for to accompany the stranger theyhad lighted a lamp; he had heard the scratch of the match, andthrough the brass fret-work had seen the lines of light.
He would have to pass the night here, that was certain. He andHirschvogel were locked in, but at least they were together. Ifonly he could have had something to eat! He thought with a pangof how at this hour at home they ate the sweet soup, sometimeswith apples in it from Aunt Maila's farm orchard, and sangtogether, and listened to Dorothea's reading of little tales, andbasked in the glow and delight that had beamed on them from thegreat Nuernberg fire-king.
"Oh, poor, poor little 'Gilda! What is she doing without thedear Hirschvogel?" he thought. Poor little 'Gilda! she had onlynow the black iron stove of the ugly little kitchen. Oh, howcruel of father!
August could not bear to hear the dealers blame or laugh at hisfather, but he did feel that it had been so, so cruel to sellHirschvogel. The mere memory of all those long winter evenings,when they had all closed round it, and roasted chestnuts orcrab-apples in it, and listened to the howling of the wind andthe deep sound of the church-bells, and tried very much to makeeach other believe that the wolves still came down from themountains into the streets of Hall, and were that very minutegrowling at the house-door,--all this memory coming on him withthe sound of the city bells, and the knowledge that night drewnear upon him so completely, being added to his hunger and hisfear, so overcame him that he burst out crying for the fiftiethtime since he had been inside the stove, and felt that he wouldstarve to death, and wondered dreamily if Hirschvogel would care.Yes, he was sure Hirschvogel would care. Had he not decked it allsummer long with Alpine roses and edelweiss and heaths and madeit sweet with thyme and honeysuckle and great garden-lilies? Hadhe ever forgotten when Santa Claus came to make it its crown ofholly and ivy and wreathe it all around?
"Oh, shelter me; save me; take care of me!" he prayed to the oldfire-king, and forgot, poor little man, that he had come on thiswild-goose chase northward to save and take care of Hirschvogel!
After a time he dropped asleep, as children can do when theyweep, and little robust hill-born boys most surely do, be theywhere they may. It was not very cold in this lumber-room; it wastightly shut up, and very full of things, and at the back of itwere the hot pipes of an adjacent house, where a great deal offuel was burnt. Moreover, August's clothes were warm ones, andhis blood was young. So he was not cold, though Munich isterribly cold in the nights of December; and he slept on andon,--which was a comfort to him, for he forgot his woes, and hisperils, and his hunger, for a time.