Short Stories, - [books to read fiction .txt] 📗

on the Weser-bridge? Will it be one of my old acquaintances, by whom, since my ruin, I have been entirely forgotten? How will he pave the way to me for happiness? And will this way be short or long, easy or toilsome? To the whole of which Reason, in spite of her thinking, answered not a word.

In about an hour the bridge began to get awake; there was riding, driving, walking to and fro on it, and much commercial ware passing this way and that. The usual dayguard of beggars and importunate persons also by degrees took up this post, so favorable for their trade, to levy contributions on the public benevolence; for of poorhouses and workhouses the wisdom of legislators had as yet formed no scheme. The first of the tattered cohort that applied for alms to the jovial promenader, from whose eyes gay hope laughed forth, was a discharged soldier, provided with the military badge of a timber leg, which had been lent him, seeing he had fought so stoutly in former days for his native country, as the recompense of his valor, with the privilege of begging where he pleased; and who now, in the capacity of physiognomist, pursued the study of man upon the Weser-bridge, with such success, that he very seldom failed in his attempts for charity. Nor did his exploratory glance mislead him in the present instance; for Franz, in the joy of his heart, threw a white engelgroshen into the cripple’s hat.

During the morning hours, when none but the laborious artisan is busy, and the more exalted townsmen still lie in sluggish rest, he scarcely looked for his promised friend; he expected him in the higher classes, and took little notice of the present passengers. About the council-hour, however, when the proceres of Bremen were driving past to the hall, in their gorgeous robes of office, and about exchange time, he was all eye and ear; he spied the passengers from afar, and when a right man came along the bridge his blood began to flutter, and he thought here was the creator of his fortune. Meanwhile hour after hour passed on; the sun rose high; ere long the noontide brought a pause in business; the rushing crowd faded away, and still the expected friend appeared not. Franz now walked up and down the bridge quite alone; had no society in view but the beggars, who were serving out their cold collations without moving from the place. He made no scruple to do the same; purchased some fruit, and took his dinner inter ambulandum.

The whole club that was dining on the Weser-bridge had remarked the young man watching here from early morning till noon, without addressing any one or doing any sort of business. They held him to be a lounger; and though all of them had tasted his bounty, he did not escape their critical remarks. In jest they had named him the bridge-bailiff. The physiognomist with the timber-toe, however, noticed that his countenance was not now so gay as in the morning; he appeared to be reflecting earnestly on something; he had drawn his hat close over his face; his movement was slow and thoughtful; he had nibbled at an apple rind for some time, without seeming to be conscious that he was doing so. From this appearance of affairs the man-spier thought he might extract some profit; therefore he put his wooden and his living leg in motion, and stilted off to the other end of the bridge, and lay in wait for the thinker, that he might assail him, under the appearance of a new arrival, for a fresh alms. This invention prospered to the full; the musing philosopher gave no heed to the mendicant, put his hand into his pocket mechanically, and threw a six-groat piece into the fellow’s hat, to be rid of him.

In the afternoon a thousand new faces once more came abroad. The watcher was now tired of his unknown friend’s delaying, yet hope still kept his attention on the stretch. He stepped into the view of every passenger, hoped that one of them would clasp him in his arms; but all proceeded coldly on their way, the most did not observe him at all, and few returned his salute with a slight nod. The sun was already verging to decline, the shadows were becoming longer, the crowd upon the bridge diminished; and the beggar-brigade by degrees drew back into their barracks in the Mattenburg. A deep sadness sank upon the hopeless Franz when he saw his expectation mocked, and the lordly prospect which had lain before him in the morning vanish from his eyes at evening. He fell into a sort of sulky desperation; was on the point of springing over the parapet, and dashing himself down from the bridge into the river. But the thought of Meta kept him back, and induced him to postpone his purpose till he had seen her yet once more. He resolved to watch her next day when she should go to church, for the last time to drink delight from her looks, and then forthwith to still his warm love forever in the cold stream of the Weser.

While about to leave the bridge he was met by the invalided pikeman with the wooden leg, who, for pastime, had been making many speculations as to what could be the young man’s object, that had made him watch upon the bridge from dawn to darkness. He himself had lingered beyond his usual time, that he might wait him out; but as the matter hung too long upon the pegs, curiosity incited him to turn to the youth himself, and question him respecting it.

“No offence, young gentleman,” said he, “allow me to ask you a question.”

Franz, who was not in a talking humor, and was meeting, from the mouth of a cripple, the address which he had looked for with such longing from a friend, answered rather testily, “Well, then, what is it? Speak, old graybeard.”

“We two,” said the other, “were the first upon the bridge to-day, and now, you see, we are the last. As to me and others of my kidney, it is our vocation brings us hither, our trade of alms-gathering; but for you, in sooth you are not of our guild; yet you have watched here the whole blessed day. Now I pray you, tell me, if it is not a secret, what is it that brings you hither, or what stone is lying on your heart.”

“What good were it to thee, old blade,” said Franz, bitterly, “to know where the shoe pinches me, or what concern is lying on my heart? It will give thee small care.”

“Sir, I have a kind wish toward you, because you opened your hand and gave me alms; but your countenance at night is not so cheerful as in the morning, and that grieves my heart.”

The kindly sympathy of this old warrior pleased the misanthrope, so that he willingly pursued the conversation.

“Why, then,” answered he, “if thou wouldst know what has made me battle here all day with tedium, thou must understand that I was waiting for a friend, who appointed me hither, and now leaves me to expect in vain.”

“Under favor,” answered Timbertoe, “if I might speak my mind, this friend of yours, be he who he like, is little better than a rogue, to lead you such a dance. If he treated me so, by my faith, his crown should get acquainted with my crutch next time we met. If he could not keep his word he should have let you know, and not thus bamboozle you as if you were a child.”

“Yet I cannot altogether blame this friend,” said Franz, “for being absent; he did not promise; it was but a dream that told me I should meet him here.”

The goblin tale was too long for him to tell, so he veiled it under cover of a dream.

“Ah! that is another story,” said the beggar; “if you build on dreams it is little wonder that your hope deceives you. I myself have dreamed much foolish stuff in my time, but I was never such a madman as to heed it. Had I all the treasures that have been allotted to me in dreams, I might buy the city of Bremen, were it sold by auction. But I never credited a jot of them, or stirred hand or foot to prove their worth or worthlessness. I knew well it would be lost. Ha! I must really laugh in your face, to think that, on the order of an empty dream, you have squandered a fair day of your life, which you might have spent better at a merry banquet.”

“The issue shows that thou art right, old man, and that dreams many times deceive. But,” continued Franz, defensively, “I dreamed so vividly and circumstantially, above three months ago, that on this very day, in this very place, I should meet a friend, who would tell me things of the deepest importance, that it was well worth while to come and see if it would come to pass.”

“O, as for vividness,” said Timbertoe, “no man can dream more vividly than I. There is one dream I had, which I shall never in my life forget. I dreamed, who knows how many years ago, that my guardian angel stood before my bed in the figure of a youth, with golden hair, and two silver wings on his back, and said to me: ‘Berthold, listen to the words of my mouth, that none of them be lost from thy heart. There is a treasure appointed thee which thou shalt dig, to comfort thy heart withal for the remaining days of thy life. To-morrow, about evening, when the sun is going down, take spade and shovel upon thy shoulder; go forth from the Mattenburg on the right, across the Tieber, by the Balkenbrücke, past the cloister of St. John’s, and on to the Great Roland. Then take thy way over the court of the cathedral, through the Schüsselkorb, till thou arrive without the city at a garden, which has this mark, that a stair of three stone steps leads down from the highway to its gate. Wait by a side, in secret, till the sickle of the moon shall shine on thee, then push with the strength of a man against the weak-barred gate, which will resist thee little. Enter boldly into the garden, and turn thee to the vine trellises which overhang the covered walk; behind this, on the left, a tall apple tree overtops the lowly shrubs. Go to the trunk of this tree, thy face turned right against the moon; look three ells before thee on the ground, thou shalt see two cinnamon rose bushes; there strike in and dig three spans deep, till thou find a stone plate; under this lies the treasure, buried in an iron chest, full of money and money’s worth. Though the chest be heavy and clumsy, avoid not the labor of lifting it from its bed; it will reward thy trouble well, if thou seek the key which lies hid beneath it.’”

In astonishment at what he heard, Franz stared and gazed upon the dreamer, and could not have concealed his amazement had not the dusk of night been on his side. By every mark in the description he had recognized his own garden, left him by his father, and which in the days of his extravagance, he had sold for an old song.

To Franz the pikeman had at once become extremely interesting, as he perceived that this was the very friend to whom the goblin in the castle of Rummelsburg had consigned him. Gladly could he have embraced the veteran, and in the first rapture called him friend and father; but he restrained himself, and found it more advisable to