The most renowned scholar in Europe, at the time, was the Herr Doctor Franz Reikmann, who lived in Heidelberg. All Germany was proud of the venerable scholar, who lived in the simplest way, for great scholars are always poor. He was poor, as to money, but very rich in his sweet young daughter Hildegarde and his library. He had been all his life collecting his library, book and book, and he lived it as a miser loves his hoarded gold. He said the two strings of his heart were rooted, the one in his daughter, the other in his books; and that if either were severed he must die. Now in an evil hour, hoping to win a marriage portion for his child, this simple old man had intrusted his small savings to a sharper to be ventured in a glittering speculation. But that was not the worst of it: he signed a paper—without reading it. That is the way with poets and scholars; they always sign without reading. This cunning paper made him responsible for heaps of things. The rest was that one night he found himself in debt to the sharper eight thousand pieces of gold!—an amount so prodigious that it simply stupefied him to think of it. It was a night of woe in that house.
“I must part with my library—I have nothing else. So perishes one heartstring,” said the old man.
“What will it bring, father?” asked the girl.
“Nothing! It is worth seven hundred pieces of gold; but by auction it will go for little or nothing.”
“Then you will have parted with the half of your heart and the joy of your life to no purpose, since so mighty a burden of debt will remain behind.”
“There is no help for it, my child. Our darlings must pass under the hammer. We must pay what we can.”
“My father, I have a feeling that the dear Virgin will come to our help. Let us not lose heart.”
“She cannot devise a miracle that will turn nothing into eight thousand gold pieces, and lesser help will bring us little peace.”
“She can do even greater things, my father. She will save us, I know she will.”
Toward morning, while the old man sat exhausted and asleep in his chair where he had been sitting before his books as one who watches by his beloved dead and prints the features on his memory for a solace in the aftertime of empty desolation, his daughter sprang into the room and gently woke him, saying—
“My presentiment was true! She will save us. Three times has she appeared to me in my dreams, and said, ‘Go to the Herr Givenaught, go to the Herr Heartless, ask them to come and bid.’ There, did I not tell you she would save us, the thrice blessed Virgin!”
Sad as the old man was, he was obliged to laugh.
“Thou mightest as well appeal to the rocks their castles stand upon as to the harder ones that lie in those men’s breasts, my child. They bid on books writ in the learned tongues!—they can scarce read their own.”
But Hildegarde’s faith was in no wise shaken. Bright and early she was on her way up the Neckar road, as joyous as a bird.
Meantime Herr Givenaught and Herr Heartless were having an early breakfast in the former’s castle—the Sparrow’s Nest—and flavoring it with a quarrel; for although these twins bore a love for each other which almost amounted to worship, there was one subject upon which they could not touch without calling each other hard names—and yet it was the subject which they oftenest touched upon.
“I tell you,” said Givenaught, “you will beggar yourself yet with your insane squanderings of money upon what you choose to consider poor and worthy objects. All these years I have implored you to stop this foolish custom and husband your means, but all in vain. You are always lying to me about these secret benevolences, but you never have managed to deceive me yet. Every time a poor devil has been set upon his feet I have detected your hand in it—incorrigible ass!”
“Every time you didn’t set him on his feet yourself, you mean. Where I give one unfortunate a little private lift, you do the same for a dozen. The idea of your swelling around the country and petting yourself with the nickname of Givenaught—intolerable humbug! Before I would be such a fraud as that, I would cut my right hand off. Your life is a continual lie. But go on, I have tried my best to save you from beggaring yourself by your riotous charities—now for the thousandth time I wash my hands of the consequences. A maundering old fool! that’s what you are.”
“And you a blethering old idiot!” roared Givenaught, springing up.
“I won’t stay in the presence of a man who has no more delicacy than to call me such names. Mannerless swine!”
So saying, Herr Heartless sprang up in a passion. But some lucky accident intervened, as usual, to change the subject, and the daily quarrel ended in the customary daily living reconciliation. The gray-headed old eccentrics parted, and Herr Heartless walked off to his own castle.
Half an hour later, Hildegarde was standing in the presence of Herr Givenaught. He heard her story, and said—
“I am sorry for you, my child, but I am very poor, I care nothing for bookish rubbish, I shall not be there.”
He said the hard words kindly, but they nearly broke poor Hildegarde’s heart, nevertheless. When she was gone the old heartbreaker muttered, rubbing his hands—
Join or Log In!
You need to log in to continue reading
(Left Keyword <-) Previous:
APPENDIX D. The Awful German Language
Back
Next:
APPENDIX F. GERMAN JOURNALS
(Right Keyword:->)