Eberhard, Albrecht, and Ulrich, wandering students, came into Hauptberg on a winter noon, and knowing the town, made straight for the Golden Eagle, an inn loved by all vagabond students, young and not so young, “new men,” “poets” as against schoolmen, lovers of the pagan knowledge, droppers of corrosives upon the existing order, prophets of a world behind this-world, the humanist left. The Golden Eagle stood in an angle of the town wall, high red-roofed, shining-windowed, kept by Hans Knapp and Bertha his wife. The December sun made vivid all the red roofs of Hauptberg, it turned the huge cathedral into something lighter than stone, it tossed nodding sheaves of light among the prosperous burghers’ houses, it overwrote the walls of a monastery of Augustinian Hermits, it added scroll and circle of its own to the ornamented storied front of the mighty guild hall; and garmented the winter trees in the university close. The bright and nipping air put ripe apple colour into the faces of the various street-farers. These moved quickly, with bodies slightly slanted, arms folded; if they were well-to-do, in woolen and furred mantles. The poor also moved quickly, with unmantled shoulders shrugged together. The town musicians were somewhere at practice. One heard a great drum and horns.

In a number of the street-farers showed a degree of{362} excitement, an eagerness to exchange speech and views with acquaintances, or even with non-acquaintances. This itch was evident in many who encountered the incoming, wandering students. “From Wittenberg way? And what is the news?”

Eberhard moved, a sinewy, bronzed, square-faced, blue-eyed fellow, in a green jerkin and a brown cloak. Ulrich was solid and blond, to the eye a benevolent young burgher, and to better apprehension a ramping dare-devil. Albrecht, slight, dark, and quick as a lizard, was the “poet,” with emphasis. He carried upon his back Virgil and Terence and Ovid, Cicero, and Seneca and Juvenal bound in a pack with Averro?s, Avicenna, and Avicebron, and when he was not in earnest made good love songs and praised the vine. When he was in earnest he treated with vitriol the garden of Holy Church, much overgrown with weeds.

The three were in wild spirits. They had news and they gave it. Some who received were terribly angered thereby, and some took with more or less evident pleasure, with a kind of half-frightened exultation. One or two said that wandering students were bred by the father of lies. A student from the university saying this more loudly than was prudent, Ulrich, moving amiably forward, took him by his girdle, swung him overhead, and set him—plank!—in the gutter skimmed with ice. A brawl threatened, Ulrich ready enough to stay for it. But Albrecht cried out that he was in ecstasy, that he had a vision of the Golden Eagle, that Hans Knapp was putting a log on the fire, Frau Knapp drawing the ale, and Gretchen Knapp setting a pasty on the table! So they swung from the drenched student and his somewhat timid backers. They had made miles that morning, and hungered and thirsted,{363} and they loved the Golden Eagle. That is Albrecht and Ulrich loved it; Eberhard was a stranger in Hauptberg.

Here was the steep red roof, and the swinging, creaking Eagle sign, and the benches in the sun beneath the eaves, and the open door, and out of the door coming a ruddy light, a good smell, and a sound of singing.

“That,” said Albrecht, “is the voice of Conrad Devilson!”

“Where Conrad is, is Walther von Langen.”

“Good meeting with them both!”

Conrad Devilson beat with his tankard upon the table of the Golden Eagle.
“That day of joy,
That lovely day,
When Aristotle,
Thomas Aquinas,
Albertus Magnus,
William of Occam,
Duns Scotus,
Peter the Lombard.
The monk,
The priest,
John Tetzel,
The Archbishop of Mainz,
The bull Exurge Domine, and
The Power of Rome
Shall pass away!”

He had a voice that boomed and reverberated. In came the three wandering students. “Why, here are others of the time’s darlings!” cried Walther von Langen.

Conrad Devilson put down his tankard and got to his feet. “Eberhard, Eberhard! Welcome to Hauptberg!”

He left the table to put his arm around Eberhard. “This is the man who saved me from wolves in the Black Forest{364}!—Then sat we down in the snow and re-ordered the round world!”

“I remember,” said Eberhard, “that your world turned from east to west!—Have you heard the Wittenberg news?”

Hans Knapp had a huge, great fire. His ale was famous, and so were Frau Knapp’s pasties, one of which Gretchen now set upon the table. Gretchen had a warm, sidelong glance, and cheeks and lips like roses. She was not so young as once she had been, and she knew how to like all wandering students and to keep all at arms’ length. Now she went about the inn room like a large and cheerful rose. The fire roared in the chimney—entered other patrons of the Golden Eagle. And all were men of the new times—of the times that were growing newer and newer, the old passing faster and faster into the new. A great part of the old resisted, held fiercely back with cries and objurgations. But those who came about the Golden Eagle were of the new, with its virtues and its faults. Hans Knapp, grey-bearded, huge-paunched, merry-eyed, had himself always stepped out with the new. The fire roared in the chimney, the Wittenberg news flew around the room, danced in the corners and in the middle. Arose loud discussion, the friendliness of substantial agreement, the spice of accidental difference. Speculation, jubilation, mounted high and mounted higher—men’s arms were over one another’s shoulders, eager faces craned, eyes sparkled. The Golden Eagle knew again the roaring blast of hope, excitement, the good, salt taste, the rapid motion of mental adventure. Happy were the five wandering students....

Said Conrad Devilson, “Let us go tell Gabriel Mayr and Thekla!{365}”

The short afternoon was now at mid-stroke. Gabriel Mayr lived in a small, red and brown house set between a woodcarver’s and a goldsmith’s. Around the house went a ribbon of garden, with currant bushes and cherry trees. Under a cherry tree in summer, in the chimney corner in winter, sat Gabriel Mayr, about him all the books he could buy or borrow. He was poor, but since his fifteenth year he had first purchased knowledge and then purchased bodily food. Now he was eighty.

The Golden Eagle had been growing too heated. The crisp, clean cold without refreshed, cleared heads. Conrad Devilson, Walther von Langen, Eberhard, Albrecht, and Ulrich danced as they moved up the narrow street. Eberhard made-believe to play, viol-wise, upon his staff. They came to the small red and brown house.

“Is this the place?” asked Eberhard. “I used to dream, in Erfurt, of Gabriel Mayr! So much work has he done, in his time, for the new, splendid world!”

Conrad Devilson knocked, “Hola! Hola! Wandering students!”

The door opened. Thekla Mayr said, “Enter, wandering students!”

She stood, slender, between fair and brown, in a red gown of her own weaving and fashioning. “Welcome, Conrad Devilson! Welcome, Walther von Langen! Welcome to Hauptberg, Albrecht and Ulrich! Welcome—”

“Thekla, this is Eberhard Gerson who made and engraved the pictures for ‘The Silver Bridge.’ With Ulrich and Albrecht he left Wittenberg yesterday.”

“Welcome, Eberhard Gerson!”

She went before them into a room where a fire burned, and in a great chair, in its light, sat Gabriel Mayr. “Father,{366} here are wandering students! Here are Conrad Devilson and Walther von Langen, and Albrecht and Ulrich and Eberhard Gerson who made the pictures for ‘The Silver Bridge!’ And they have news from Wittenberg.”

Gabriel Mayr roused himself. “Wait, young men.... I am old.... It takes time to get back into the blowing wind and the moving water.” He pressed his hands against his brows, shook himself in the cloak that was wrapped about him. He gathered energy as one blows coals with his breath. The coals glowed, his eyes brightened, he straightened in his chair, back in good measure came the old potency. “Wittenberg! Who comes from Wittenberg! What is Martin Luther doing now?”

“He has taken the Pope’s bull in his hands and burned it outside the town gate!”

“Ha-ah! Did he that?” Gabriel Mayr brought his hands together. “Thekla, Thekla! Do you hear a world gate clanging?”

He sat in his great chair, about him the young men, the wandering students. He wore a black cap, and from underneath his white hair streamed and mingled with the long white hair of his beard. His features were bloodless, his eyes sunken, but very bright. He looked a prophet, such an one as, down in Italy, Michael Angelo was painting. His daughter stood with her arm resting upon the back of his chair.

Mayr spoke on: “I knew that the vehemence of his ongoing would become to that young man an urgent d?mon! Now he cannot stop. He is Samson! He will carry away the gates upon his shoulders and the young and strong will pour in upon a decrepit city.... It is well! It is written! The city has become drunken and witless. Yet will some{367} flowers be trodden underfoot and works of art perish.... And he is Samson, he is not Socrates.... Yet, Thekla, Thekla! We must rejoice! We make a half-step toward freedom!”

Two of the wandering students cried out upon that. “A half-step! Do you not call it more than that, Master Gabriel?”

Mayr raised and regarded his finely shaped, thin, corded, sensitive hands. “Eighty years have I lived. I remember years when it seemed that the snail and the world raced toward freedom, and the snail appeared to win. And I remember years when it seemed that the world began to say, ‘We shall not get there unless we move faster!’ And now I remember years when the snail seems left behind. And for a long while now we have seemed to move faster and faster.... The ice is breaking and thawing in the springtime.... Well, I worship before the springtime! But Freedom is a great word and holds all other words. Pour into it all that you know or guess of freedom, and yet it is not full.”

Eberhard spoke. “This is a cool and brimming pailful, Master Gabriel! Every pailful makes more of the desert bloom.”

As he spoke he was looking at Thekla. She was looking at him. Their eyes were talking—pure and sincere words of fellowship.

“You are right in that, Eberhard Gerson,” said the old man. “Every pailful makes more of the desert bloom!”

Thekla spoke. “It has been believed that God was not to be come at save through officers and courtiers.... What is here is that it is seen that no other human being stands between a human being and God.{368}”

“So,” said Gabriel, and “So,” echoed the wandering students.

“Each growing straight to God, without running to any man’s door for permission.... Much is wrapped up,” said Thekla, “in that bundle!”

“Aye, truly!”

Thekla stood beside Gabriel’s chair. Her hands were young where his were old. The blue veins did not rise, her hands were not worn thin nor corded like his. But they were made like Gabriel’s, sensitive and most expressive like Gabriel’s. They commanded the eye as did his, they had their own intelligence. Now they were in motion. “All equal,” said Thekla ... “A republic.”

“In religion, the schools, art and knowledge!”

“The blowing wind will not bend the Black Forest and leave the Hartz Forest unbowed. Spring will not come to the Hartz Wood and leave the Black Wood bare. Without Pope ... without Emperor!”

“Come back, Thekla, from far away!”

“Every slave freed—”

“Come back! Come back!”

“Dawn for women—dawn for women!”

Above her moving hands Thekla’s face flushed like a rose. “As the Church to all, so have been men to women!... The Church might have become just from within, but does not, and the folk break down the gates of the city and take their own! But now, surely, the freeing folk will free on and on! And surely men will become just from within!” She raised her hands. “I shall go about the world as I will, and I shall build my ships and sail therein!... And my sister Elsa will come from her nunnery!{369}”

Gabriel Mayr nodded his head. But he sat in his great chair with sinews grown sunken and unbraced. His eyes had lost point, they seemed the eyes of one who contemplates a dream, recurrent but unsubstantial. Yet he nodded his head....

But Walther von Langen said roughly: “I am fond of Thekla, save when she speaks without knowledge!”

“No harvest ripens for man,” said Albrecht, “but woman may gather a good windfall in her apron!”

Quoth Ulrich: “When the house is afire the house-father brings out the house-mother no less than himself!—But that does not mean that she then goes about to set up for herself!”

“Women are women, but Thekla has lived beside a thinker of long and bold thoughts. Thekla cannot help herself!” Conrad Devilson lifted one of her long, brown tresses. “Remain fair, Thekla, and all women! Pick up in your apron the windfalls, and welcome! But we own and shake the tree.”

Ulrich and Albrecht, Conrad Devilson and Walther von Langen struck hand on hand or feet against the ground. “So it is!” they cried. “So it is!”

Thekla drew the tress of hair from Conrad Devilson’s hand. She stood with eyelids drooped, her lips curved in a slight smile.

The old man who seemed to make the clasp of the ring shook his head and sighed. “This matter of Owning is a long story, and events are yet to come.... I should like to see Albrecht Dürer try his hand on that.... Thekla, give me wine.”

Thekla left his side, then returned with a wheaten wafer and a cup of wine. The old man ate and drank. She{370} mended the fire for him, took away the cup and plate, and, returning, seated herself upon a cushion on the floor by his side. “Martin Luther has burned the Pope’s bull. Now will the Pope bid the Emperor to put him under ban. Maybe he will be slain as a heretic, and all persecuted who look to freedom. Maybe he will find friends in high places, and the Emperor will check the Pope. Maybe, with naught to aid but stronger light, he must fight both Emperor and Pope. Maybe, aroused, the people will go with him. Maybe all will see light—all—all!”

Eberhard, who had been silent before now, spoke. “If but many see, then will the wheel go toward the light.... I do not think it is more than twilight.... And, maiden, I believe not that man owns the tree, nor at any time has been wholly the shaker thereof!”

Thekla turned and looked at him. “I sinned and you sinned, and yet will we sin.... But now we know what either wishes, and lo, it is one wish, and wished by one Self!”

Said Conrad Devilson, “What do you two speak about, there by yourselves?”

He and Albrecht and Ulrich and Walther von Langen had risen from settle and stool. “We must fare back to the Golden Eagle! Heinrich and Karl and Johann come in to Hauptberg to-night.... Ah ho! Martin Luther has burned the Pope’s bull!”

Without the small red and brown house, across the ribbon of brown garden, in the narrow street red-flushed from the red west, three fell to singing,—
“Down goes the old world,
Up comes the new!
Death on a pale horse
Rides down the proud—”
{371}

They sang with enthusiasm, but their ardour had youth and geniality. They were wandering students, humanists, not reforming monks.

Eberhard and Conrad Devilson did not sing, but talked. They dropped a little behind the big, fronting voices. Whatever was the one, Eberhard was something more than wandering student—a man beginning to work with a mind-moved hand. He walked now with a lit face. “They live there alone together—the old man and his daughter?”

“Aye. He taught Thekla all he knew, as though she were a boy. It is a mistake to say that women are not teachable! But they must keep knowledge at home when they have got it.... He is past earning now. She embroiders arms for the noble upon velvet, silk, and linen, and so earns for both. He has another daughter—Elsa—in a convent twenty miles from here.”

The wandering students were singing,—
“Round turns the wheel,
The wheel turns round!
Comes down the lord of all,
The wheel grows an orb—”

Now they were before the Golden Eagle, and out of door and window floated voices of Heinrich, Karl, and Johann.

That was December. In February Charles the Fifth made to be drawn an edict against Luther. The Diet sitting at Worms refused assent. April, and Luther, at Worms, stood in his own defence, spoke with a great, plain eloquence. Eloquence never saved a man against whom set the main current of his time. The main current of his time going with him, Martin Luther rode in a seaworthy{372} boat. Storms there were, thunder and lightning, tempest and a lashed ocean—but the boat rode. May, and Pope and Emperor threatened that revolt and all who had share therein with fire in this world and in the world hereafter. The revolt made itself a stronger current.

In May, Eberhard Gerson came again to Hauptberg. He slept at the Golden Eagle, and in the bright, exquisite morning sought out the house where dwelled Gabriel Mayr and Thekla. The cherry trees were at late bloom, and the morning breeze shook down the white petals. The house seemed to stand among fountains.

Three times since that first December afternoon had Eberhard opened the gate, come in between the cherry trees.

Gabriel sat in his armchair under the largest tree, beneath his feet a cushion, about his shrunken frame, for all the May weather, a furred cloak, gift of old pupils. His eyes were closed, he was sleeping in the sun. Thekla sat beside him, embroidering upon a scarf arms of the greatest Hauptberg family. When she saw Eberhard she put her finger to her lips. He stood beneath the blooming trees; they gazed each upon the other for a moment, then she rose, put aside the embroidery frame, and, stepping lightly, moved from the sleeping old man. At some distance, among the currant bushes, stood a wooden bench. She moved to this, and Eberhard followed. Here they might mark the sleeper through an opening, but for the rest the green bushes closed them round. The air was full of a subdued, murmurous noise, bees, twittering birds, sounds from the woodcarver’s house of the woodcarver’s trade.

“Came one yesterday,” she said, “who told us that now{373} they are preaching against monastic vows. He said that what is preached is printed, and that it steals from overhead like the wind into cloisters, that monks and nuns read.... Oh, that it might unbar the door for Elsa!”

“You love Elsa so.”

“She is younger than me. She is unhappy—Elsa, my sister!”

“How was it, Thekla, that your sister went there?”

Thekla gazed at the tree heads against the blue sky. “Ah, cannot you remember a day when it seemed wisest and fairest to worship so—from a cell? She dreamed that, and being young, she went. Then her inner need travelled its own path, and it was hardly that path. But her body is held there, though her mind has gone forth. All the customs of the place clutch and bind too closely the growing being.... She would forth if she could.”

“Who may know where all this deep rebellion will stop? Thekla, I see a wider circle.”

“Oh, and I!... There is no stopping.”

Behind the small red and brown house a cock crew. The two listened. “The crowing of a cock.... When I hear it from far away,” said Eberhard, “it pleases me so! It seems the oldest, oldest sound....”

“He is a beautiful cock. His name is Welcome.”

“Welcome...?”

“Yes.... It is an old, old sound.”

The currant bushes almost closed them round. Above the currants showed the snowy cherry trees, and above the cherry trees the high, steep, red roofs of neighbouring houses. Thekla and Eberhard sat very still. “It seems to me,” said Eberhard, “that we have known each other the longest time{374}—”

“The longest time.... I think that we live always, and only fail to remember.”

“Known and loved.... What are we going to do now, Thekla?”

She looked at the sky above the trees. “We are going to free ourselves.”

“Free ourselves.”

“Yes. Free you—free me.”

“I am only beginning to earn. I have nothing but what I earn. I have letters telling me of good work to be had at the next Court. I may paint there the Prince’s portrait and those of his children. Moreover, he would have drawings of Christ’s Parables that in woodcuts may be scattered like seed over the land.... But it is far from Hauptberg.... I know not when I shall see you again.”

She looked at him. In her eyes shone tears, but in her countenance something smiled. “Have we not to learn that everywhere we see each other?”

Gabriel Mayr called her from under the cherry tree.

That year Eberhard the artist did good and true work. He painted the portraits of the Prince and his children, he saw put forth in woodcuts, far and wide, ten great drawings of Christ’s Parables.

A year and more, and he came again to the red and brown house between the woodcarver’s and the goldsmith’s. This time the cherries were ripe, the birds were pecking them. This time Gabriel lay abed, within the house. He spoke to Eberhard standing beside him. “My ship is tugging at her binding ropes.... Thekla has something to say to you. It is about Elsa. I approve. I cannot talk any more to-day.”

Thekla gave him water and wine. A girl of twelve, an{375} orphan for whom they made a home, took her place beside the bed. Thekla and Eberhard............