Diary And Notes Of Horace Templeton, Esq. Volume II. Lever Charles James
by his excitement, and at once recurring to his long unused exclamation: “Potztausend!”
“Hush, shameless thing!” said Fritz, angrily; “there is nothing for it but punishment!” And so he replaced him in the cage, covered him close on every side with his handkerchief, and trudged sorrowfully towards home.
For several days Fritz never spoke to Starling, even one word. He brought him his food in silence; and instead of taking him, as of old, along with him into the fields, he hung his cage in a gloomy corner of the hut, whence he could see little or nothing of what went on in the house – no small privation for a bird so alive to inquisitiveness. At length, when he believed punishment had gone far enough, he took him down and hung him on his back as usual, and brought him a long, long way into the hills. The day was fine, a fresh but balmy spring breathed over the young flowers, and the little stream danced and rippled pleasantly; and the clouds moved along overhead in large soft masses, bordered with a silvery edge. Star never noticed these things; he was indignant at the neglect, as he deemed it, which had been shewn him of late. His pride and spirit – and Starlings are not deficient in either – had sustained grievous injury; and he felt that, without due reparation made to him, he could not, consistently with honour, sign a treaty of reconciliation.
Fritz mistook these indications altogether – and who can blame him? What the world calls dignity is not unfrequently mere sulk. How should poor Fritz make distinctions great Ministers and Princes are sometimes incapable of?
The end of all this was a struggle, a long and violent struggle, on each side for the ascendancy. Fritz, however, had the advantage, for he could starve out the enemy – a harsh measure, no doubt, but greater folks have adopted even more severe ones to enforce their principles. Fritz, besides, had all the stern enthusiasm of a fanatic in the cause. The dark zeal of the Holy Office itself never enforced its decrees with more inflexible purpose than did he his. “Accept this creed, or die in your sins,” was, if not exactly his dictum, certainly his full meaning. Star stood out long, so long that Fritz began at last to fear that the creature meditated martyrdom, and in this dread he relaxed somewhat of his prison discipline.
It would scarcely be instructive – not any more than amusing – to recount the painful progress of this long contest – a contest, after all, in which there is nothing new to any reader of history; for when force is on one side and weakness on the other, the result may be deferred but is never doubtful. It is enough that we say, Star made submission. True, it was the submission of coercion – no matter for that, it was submission; for after three weeks of various successes on either side, the creature greeted Fritz one morning as he arose with a feint cry of “Maria, Maria!”
This was enough, more than enough, and Fritzerl could have hugged him to his heart.
His authority recognised, his will acknowledged, he was but too happy to take his rebellious subject into full favour again. Whether Star felt the benefits of his changed conduct so very satisfactory to his comfort, or that he was really disposed to please his master, I cannot say; but, from that hour out, he laboured strenuously to learn his new profession of faith, and screamed “Maria!” from day-dawn to dusk. The two following words were, however, downright puzzles; “Mutter-Gottes” was a combination that no Starling – even a German one, bred up among strong gutturals and flat labials – could master. He worked hard, however, and so did Fritz. If life depended upon it, neither of them could have exerted themselves more zealously; but it was no use. In any other language, perhaps, Star might have been able to invoke the Virgin, but here it was out of the question. The nearest approach the poor fellow could make was something like a cry of “Mörder – Mörder” (Murder – murder); so unfortunate a change that Fritz abandoned the lesson with the best grace he could, betaking himself to the concluding words, which happily presented no such unseemly similitudes.
His success here was such as to obliterate all memory of his former defeat. Starling made the most astonishing progress, and learned the words so perfectly, with such accuracy of enunciation, that to hear him at a little distance any one would say it was some pious Catholic invoking the Virgin with all his might. The “Hülf uns” was not a mere exclamation, but a cry for actual aid, so natural as to be perfectly startling.
So long as the bird’s education was incomplete, Fritzerl carefully screened him from public observation. He had all the susceptibility of a great artist, who would not let his canvass be looked upon before the last finishing touch was laid on the picture. No sooner, however, had full success crowned his teaching, than he proudly displayed him in a new cage made for the occasion at the door of the Bauer’s hut.
It was Sunday, and the villagers were on their way to mass; and what was their astonishment to hear themselves exhorted as they passed by the fervent cry of “Maria, hülf uns! Hülf uns, Maria!” Group after group stood in mute amazement, gazing at the wonderful bird, some blessing themselves with a pious fervour, others disposed to regard the sounds as miraculous, and more than either stood in dumb astonishment at this new specimen of ghostly counsel.
All this while Fritzerl lay hid beneath the window, enjoying his triumph with a heart full almost to bursting. Never did singing-master listen to the syren notes of his pupil, while as the prima donna of a great opera she electrified or entranced a crowded audience, with more enthusiastic rapture than did Fritz at his Starling’s performance. Poor little fellow! it was not merely vanity gratified by public applause – it was a higher feeling was engaged here. A sense of religious exaltation worked within him, that he had laboured in a great cause; a thrill of ecstasy trembled at his heart that another voice than his own was asking aid for him, and incessantly invoking the Virgin’s protection on his own head. Happy had it been for him that no other sentiment had intervened, and that he had not also indulged a vain pride in the accomplishment of his pupil!
It so chanced, that among those who passed the hut and stood to wonder at this astonishing creature, was a tall, ragged-looking, swarthy fellow, whose dress of untanned leather, and cap ornamented with the tail of many a wood squirrel, told that he was an “Engadiner,” one from the same land Fritz came himself. A strange wild land it is! where in dress, language, custom, and mode of life, there is no resemblance to any thing to be seen throughout Europe. A more striking representative of his strange country need not have been wished for. His jacket was hung round with various tufts of plumage and fur for making artificial birds, with whistles and birdcalls to imitate every note that ever thrilled through a leafy grove; his leathern breeches only reached to the knee, which was entirely bare, as well as the leg, to below the calf, where a rude sandal was fastened; his arms, also, copper-coloured as those of an Indian, were quite naked, two leathern bracelets enclosing each wrist, in which some metal hooks were inserted: by these he could hang on the branch of a tree, or the edge of a rock, leafing his hands at liberty. He wore his coal-black hair fer down on his back and shoulders, and his long moustache drooped deep beneath his lank jaw. If there was something wild almost to ferocity in his black and flashing eyes, the mouth, with its white and beautifully regular teeth, had a look of almost womanly delicacy and softness, – a character that was well suited to the musical sounds of his native language ~one not less pleasant to the ear than Italian itself. Such was he who stopped to listen to the bird, and who, stealing round to the end of the hut, lay down beneath some scattered branches of firewood to delight his ear to the uttermost.
It may be doubted whether a connoisseur ever listened to Orisi or Jenny Lind with more heartfelt rapture than did the Engadiner to the Starling; for while the bird, from time to time, would break forth with its newly acquired invocation, the general tenor of its song was a self-taught melody – one of those wild and delicious voluntaries in which conscious power displayed itself; now, astounding the ear by efforts the wildest and most capricious, now subduing the sense by notes plaintive almost to bring tears. In these latter it was that he mingled his cry of “Maria, hülf – hülf – hülf uns, Maria!” – words so touching and so truthful in their accents that at every time the Engadiner beard them he crossed himself twice on the forehead and the breast; which devout exercise, I am constrained to say, had in his case more of habit than true piety, as the sequel proved.
I forget whether it is not Madame de Seuderi has built a little theory upon the supposition that every mind has within it the tendency to yield to some one peculiar temptation. The majority, I fancy, have not limited