The Romance of the Canoness. Paul Heyse
left me--with too much confidence--to myself. An elderly, somewhat weak-minded aunt, who even in the great city kept house for us, regarded me as a small miracle, and, therefore, had neither judgment nor power to uproot the weeds of spiritual arrogance from my heart. The latter had already flourished so rankly that they continued to grow luxuriantly even in the freer air of the capital. When, at eighteen, I entered the university, I instantly formed a pietistical society, which behaved almost like a students' consistory. We preached to each other to our hearts' content, debated the most difficult theological points of controversy, wrote hymns, which I set to music and accompanied on our harmonium; in short, we were a set of insufferable young saints, not a single one of whom, had he knocked at the door of heaven with his long locks and meekly turned-down collar, would Saint Peter have admitted.
I need scarcely state that I held aloof from all worldly amusements, considered the theatre a vestibule of hell, and the other beautiful arts as mere pagan jugglery. But the thing that now seems to me the drollest of all is the relation I then occupied toward the female sex. With the best intentions, I could imagine pure maids and matrons in no other guise than as a devout congregation in Sunday attire, gazing upward in gentle ecstasy at their pastor, and drinking in with fervent gratitude the heavenly dew that fell from his lips. In some far remote background of time I beheld one of these humble creatures nestling in my embrace, trembling in the ecstasy of her bliss, and overwhelmed with gratitude at the knowledge of being chosen before all her sisters to stand by the side of the man of God--whom she had long secretly worshiped--as his unworthy wife, iron his snow-white bands, embroider his slippers, and write down his sermon every Sunday.
In this state of supernal self-glorification, I considered it only natural that, as soon as I had passed my examination with special brilliancy, and crossed the threshold of the position of candidate, the most advantageous projects should open to me from more than one direction. My dear father's heart was far too kind, and he practiced the injunction of Christian charity of his own impulse in too wide a sense, to permit him to find his salary sufficient either in the little town or the great capital, and when suddenly summoned from this life he left me nothing but his blessing and a choice theological library, the only luxury he had ever allowed himself.
I was now forced to rely, with God's assistance, upon myself, and as, with all the innocence of the dove, I possessed a sufficient measure of the wisdom of the serpent, I did not merely examine superficially the three places offered to me, but made careful inquiries to discover in which one I should have the softest bed. All three were tutor's situations in the country, with a prospect of the pastorate, which would fall vacant in a longer or shorter time. I decided in favor of the estate of the most aristocratic of the three employers, who also owned two villages located in a region described to me as being very fertile and not lacking in rural beauty. The pastor there was almost eighty; the baron's children, whom I was to teach, were but two in number, a boy, and a girl twelve or fourteen years old; my patron was reported to be particularly strict in his religious views, and--a fact by no means least influential--his letter, which my dear father received with tears of joy on his death-bed and read aloud to me in a trembling voice, expressed emphatic praise of my admirable self, a pleasant report of my gifts and virtues having spread through the country.
So in my heart I praised God, who so paternally provided a fitting career for his favorites here below, embraced my poor old aunt, who was left behind in a wretched attic, and set forth on the journey to my paradise with proud hopes and a joyousness but slightly subdued by my recent grief.
This exalted mood was somewhat depressed when, on reaching the last railway-station, I vainly looked for the coach in which I was to make my entry into the place of my destination. The baron had written that he would send for me. I expected nothing less than a splendid carriage, not drawn by four horses, it is true, but perhaps hung with garlands as befits a young ecclesiastical conqueror. Instead, there was nothing stopping at the station but an insignificant cart, which I suspected was generally used for the transportation of calves or sheep, drawn by two plow-horses, dejectedly switching their long tails to and fro. An old man-servant, who did not even take the stump of a pipe from his mouth when he came up to me, asked in his surly Low German dialect if I was the tutor whom he was to take to the estate, then, with many a muttered oath, lifted my trunk and three heavy boxes of books into the cart, and pointed with his whip to the seat, where the sole provision made for my comfort was a thin leather cushion.
He himself--after relighting his pipe and starting his horses by a drawling Hi-i!--trudged beside the cart as it creaked slowly along.
I tried to bear my disappointment with Christian resignation, and, after we had gone a few hundred paces, asked in my gentlest voice how far the castle was, and whether we were to go the whole distance at a walk.
The horses were plowing all day yesterday, growled the old man, and the road was too bad for them to trot. We should be two hours at least, "p'raps a bit more"; the sand began just beyond the next village, and then, with the big boxes, we should move still more slowly.
Rustic ways! I thought, to console myself, jolted about on my hard seat for a while longer, and, at the beginning of the sandy road, which ran sometimes between fields and meadows, sometimes between low fir-woods, sprang nimbly from the cart to relieve the panting animals. It was toward the end of April, a warm spring wind blew over the wide, quiet country, the crows were perched in dense flocks on the freshly turned furrows, and the low twittering of birds was heard from the bare tops of the birches. At three and twenty the theological bark around my heart was not yet hard enough to prevent all this stir and movement of Nature from penetrating it. In a very short time, while striding a few horse-lengths ahead of my vehicle, I was so happy in the thought of my God that I seemed to myself like King David, and my great wooden trunk the ark of the covenant, and could scarcely refrain from falling into a dancing step and letting the hymns I was singing in my heart escape my lips.
Yet I was glad when the two hours and "p'raps a bit more" were over, and old Krischan, pointing with his whip to the roof of a tower, visible between the lofty elms in the avenue, muttered between his teeth: "Here we are!"
I had made several vain efforts on the way to question him about the lord of the castle and his family. I had learned nothing except that the baron was "a bit strict," and the old baroness "always very kind and gracious." Of the heir he only uttered a significant hum! and of the pastor merely said, "He's poorly just now." So my curiosity and impatience increased with every step the horses took in the grinding sand; and, as the rural charms of which I had dreamed were nowhere visible, the village through which I passed differed in no respect from an utterly unattractive Mark hamlet, and the few women and children who stared at me from the doors of the houses appeared extremely indifferent to the great event of my arrival, I climbed back with a sigh into the cart as we turned into the avenue and traversed the rest of the way at a trot.
We drove directly up to the castle, which looked very stately through the bare branches, and, as the road at last passed over a slight ascent, the horses relapsed into their former comfortable walk. Yet we overtook a queer little cart, to which the--according to the Mark ideas--considerable hill gave more trouble than to us.
A very old woman had harnessed herself and a spotted dog to a small hand-cart, heavily laden with a large, well-filled sack, several bundles of fagots, and various utensils and tools, the whole, tied together with old ropes, towering so high aloft that the swaying structure could scarcely keep its balance. The little dog's red tongue was hanging out of its mouth, and the old dame panted and coughed as she bent under the drawing-rope, which cut deep into her shoulder. Spite of her four-footed assistant, she could scarcely have pulled the load up-hill, had not a vigorous push from behind aided her. This was given by a tall, slender figure, a young lady dressed in city style, who, with both hands braced against the back, walked firmly on, relieving the toiling pair of half the weight.
As we passed she merely turned her face toward us for a moment without the slightest change of expression. I could not see her features distinctly, owing to the shifting play of the shadows cast by the bare branches above, but I perceived that the face was young and grave. It made a singular impression on me, though she flashed but a single glance at me and then instantly lowered her eyes. I noticed too that her smoothly brushed hair, over which she had knotted a black kerchief, was of a remarkable