The morning is lovely beyond expression. The heat of the sun is great; but a gentle wind cools the air. Birds never sang more loud and clear. The flowers, too, on the window-sill, and on the table, rose, geranium, and the delicate crimson1 cactus2, are all so beautiful, that we think the German poet right, when he calls the flowers "stars in the firmament3 of the earth." Out of doors all is quiet. Opposite the window stands the village schoolhouse. There are two parasite4 trees, with their outspread branches nailed against the white walls, like the wings of culprit kites. There the rods grow. Under them, on a bench at the door, sit school-girls; and barefoot urchins5 in breeches are spelling out their lessons. The clock strikestwelve, and one by one they disappear, and go into the hive, like bees at the sound of a brass6 pan. At the door of the next house sits a poor woman, knitting in the shade; and in front of her is an aqueduct pouring its cool, clear water into a rough wooden trough. A travelling carriage without horses, stands at the inn-door, and a postilion in red jacket is talking with a blacksmith, who wears blue woollen stockings and a leather apron7. Beyond is a stable, and still further a cluster of houses and the village church. They are repairing the belfry and the bulbous steeple. A little farther, over the roofs of the houses, you can see Saint Wolfgang's Lake. Water so bright and beautiful hardly flows elsewhere. Green, and blue, and silver-white run into each other, with almost imperceptible change, like the streaks8 on the sides of a mackerel. And above are the pinnacles9 of the mountains; some bald, and rocky, and cone-shaped, and others bold, and broad, and dark with pines.
Such was the scene, which Paul Flemming beheldfrom his window a few mornings after Berkley's departure. The quiet of the place had soothed11 him. He had become more calm. His heart complained less loudly in the holy village silence, as we are wont12 to lower our voices when those around us speak in whispers. He began to feel at times an interest in the lowly things around him. The face of the landscape pleased him, but more than this the face of the poor woman who sat knitting in the shade. It was a pale, meek13 countenance14, with more delicacy15 in its features than is usual among peasantry. It wore also an expression of patient suffering. As he was looking at her, a deformed16 child came out of the door and hung upon her knees. She caressed17 him affectionately. It was her child; in whom she beheld10 her own fair features distorted and hardly to be recognised, as one sometimes sees his face reflected from the bowl of a spoon.
The child's deformity and the mother's tenderness interested the feelings of Flemming. The landlady18 told him something of the poor woman's history. She was the widow of a blacksmith, who had died soon after their marriage. But she survived to become a mother, just as, in oaks, immediately after fecundation, the male flower fades and falls, while the female continues and ripens19 into perfect fruit. Alas20! her child was deformed. Yet she looked upon him with eyes of maternal21 fondness and pity, loving him still more for his deformity. And in her heart she said, as the Mexicans say to their new-born offspring, "Child, thou art come into the world to suffer. Endure, and hold thy peace." Though poor, she was not entirely22 destitute23; for her husband had left her, beside the deformed child, a life estate in a tomb in the churchyard of Saint Gilgen. During the week she labored24 for other people, and on Sundays for herself, by going to church and reading the Bible. On one of the blank leaves she had recorded the day of her birth, and that of her child's, likewise her marriage and her husband's death. Thus she lived, poor, patient and resigned. Her heart was a passion-flower, bearing within it the crown of thorns and the cross of Christ. Her ideas of Heaven were few and simple. She rejected the doctrine25 that it was a place of constant activity, and not of repose26, and believed, that, when she at length reached it, she should work no more, but sit always in a clean white apron, and sing psalms27.
As Flemming sat meditating28 on these things, he paid new homage29 in his heart to the beauty and excellence30 of the female character. He thought of the absent and the dead; and said, with tears in his eyes;
"Shall I thank God for the green Summer, and the mild air, and the flowers, and the stars, and all that makes this world so beautiful, and not for the good and beautiful beings I have known in it? Has not their presence been sweeter to me than flowers? Are they not higher and holier than the stars? Are they not more to me than all things else?"
Thus the morning passed away in musings; andin the afternoon, when Flemming was preparing to go down to the lake, as his custom was, a carriage drew up before the door, and, to his great astonishment31, out jumped Berkley. The first thing he did was to give the Postmaster, who stood near the door, a smart cut with his whip. The sufferer gently expostulated, saying,
"Pray, Sir, don't; I am lame32."
Whereupon Berkley desisted, and began instead to shake the Postmaster's wife by the shoulders, and order his dinner in English. But all this was done so good-naturedly, and with such a rosy33, laughing face, that no offence was taken.
"So you have returned much sooner than you intended;" said Flemming, after the first friendly salutations.
"Yes," replied Berkley; "I got tired of Ischel,--very tired. I did not find the friends there, whom I expected. Now I am going back to Salzburg, and then to Gastein. There I shall certainly find them. You must go with me."
Flemming declined the invitation; and proposedto Berkley, that he should join him in his excursion on the lake.
"You shall hear the grand echo of the Falkenstein," said he, "and behold34 the scene of the Bridal Tragedy; and then we will go on as far as the village of Saint Wolfgang, which you have not yet seen, except across the lake."
"Well, this afternoon I devote to you; for to-morrow we part once more, and who knows when we shall meet again?"
They went down to the water's side without farther delay; and, taking a boat with two oars35, struck across an elbow of the lake towards a barren rock by the eastern shore, from which a small white monument shone in the sun.
"That monument," said one of the boatmen, a stout36 young lad in leather breeches, "was built by a butcher, to the glory of Saint Wolfgang, who saved him from drowning. He was one day riding an ox to market along the opposite bank; when the animal taking fright, sprang into the water, and swam over to this place, with the butcher on his back."
"And do you think he could have done this," asked Berkley; "if Saint Wolfgang had not helped him?"
"Of course not!" answered leather-breeches; and the Englishman laughed.
From this point they rowed along under the shore to a low promontory37, upon which stood another monument, commemorating38 a more tragical39 event.
"This is the place I was speaking of," said Flemming, as the boatmen rested on their oars. "The melancholy40 and singular event it commemorates41 happened more than two centuries ago. There was............