 
Fairy Tales & Ghost Stories

Theodor Storm

Copyright Robert Seidel Costic 2014

Smashwords Edition

Translator's Introduction

Theodor Storm (1817-1888) was an author of German literary realism, and his novellas Immensee and The Rider on the White Horse are among his most famous works. However, throughout his life he also wrote a number of fairy tales, which are all presented here in English. "Hans Bear" (1837) is modeled after the Brother Grimms' tales about a powerfully strong character named Hans who goes on wild adventures. "Little Häwelmann" (1850), most clearly intended for little children as a bedtime story, seems to be modeled after the myth of Icarus. "Hinzelmeier" (1857) is about a man who goes on a quest to find the Philosopher's Stone. "Bulemann's House" (1873) feels like a darker, grimmer version of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol." "The Rain Maiden" (1873) features young lovers who seek to end a severe drought crippling their community. "The Mirror of Cyprianus" (1873) follows an infertile countess who is given a magic mirror to grant her the power to bare a child. Included here is also a collection of ghost stories, "At the Fireplace" (1862), told as a dialogue among intimate companions.

Translator's Acknowledgements

This translation is dedicated to my father, Robert Lee Costic, who read my translations, edited them, and researched many of the obscure colloquialisms and terms that appear in these tales. This translation would not be possible without his help.

Table of Contents

Hans Bear

Little Häwelmann

Hinzelmeier

Bulemann's House

The Rain Maiden

The Mirror of Cyprianus

At the Fireplace

Hans Bear

In an old spruce forest once lived many, many years ago a poor charcoal burner with his wife, who had recently given him a healthy little boy christened with the name of Hans. He developed soon after his birth such bodily strength that with his little hands he squeezed to death three puppies he parents gave him as playmates. From that they undoubtedly got the message about their boy; but they were happy with their little son's wonderful abilities and thought frequently of making something big out of it. But not for long would they enjoy such pleasure, as I will tell you immediately: In the selfsame woods lived namely an enormous bear that had two cubs taken by hunters, and she was very distressed and thus howled in pain about the forest day and night.

When the bear saw the boy it was a vivid reminder of her own children, and to take revenge against the humans who had robbed her she ran to Hans to eat him. Hans, however, ripped a little tree out of the ground and so bravely beat the great bear that she, amazed at the strength and courage of the child, very soon changed her mind and thought to herself, "You should take the boy to your cave and suckle him with your milk and make him strong, as you would with your cubs, so that he can care and protect you when you become old and weak." Such thought the bear mother with sense, so in spite of its screaming and reluctance she took little Hans softly between her front paws and trotted into the forest to her cave.

As soon as she arrived, she immediately laid her newly adopted son on the soft bed that she had previously readied for her children, shook the straw straight, and growled pleasantly at him, that little Hans gradually calmed down and from exhaustion and fatigue finally fell asleep.

When he opened his eyes the next morning, he saw the old bear sitting in front of his bed to give him from her paws lots of beautiful, red strawberries which she had picked in the forest during the early hours; then she offered him her breast and suckled him with her milk, which little Hans really enjoyed, and soon fell on her wide back for him to ruffle her shaggy fur, which was a real joy. When they had played for a while, the bear went back out of the cave, but before she left she rolled a huge stone over the opening, so that our little Hans was locked behind the gate and door, since she preferred to have him back inside.

So it went on for a time, in the morning the bear went out, at noon she came back home, where she always brought nice berries or flowers for her little adopted son, and after she had played with him a while, she trotted in the evening back out to the forest, but to Hans' chagrin she always rolled the stone over the mouth of the cave. Little by little Hans grew stronger and larger, which the consumption of powerful bear milk had truly contributed not a little; and the stronger and bigger he became, the more morose he became about the great stone, which blocked the way to the beautiful green forest. So when one morning, as the old bear trotted as usual in the forest for breakfast food, such as some sweet honey or a fat bunny, little Hans sat with all his power back against the stone, but it moved only a little from its place in spite of his stamping and kicking; and now as the old bear came home and saw the stone had been moved, she looked grimly at Hans and laid more stones before the entrance for the next time she left the cave. So then little Hans at first had to take patience, because his powers had not yet stretched out to move the stones entirely across the opening. At times he very much feared for the wrath of the bear, should she see that little Hans, despite all his care, made a second attempt at escape. But when he finally realized he was big and strong enough to move all the stones away, he did not take it any longer. With all his might he heaved himself against the stones while the bear had taken her usual afternoon trip – and who could describe the joy! Crack, crash! it went, and right and left rocks fell down and broke apart. There he stood in the great outdoors, which he had yearned so long to go out, and rushed to the tall, green trees, and over him merry forest birds sang their light songs, which would have made him glad and lightened his heart had he not feared that the bear would want to bring him back to the cave. Therefore, he ran as fast as he could, always following his nose forward, until he finally came to the charcoal burner's hut.

It was evening, however, and the charcoal burner was resting with his wife already after the day's work, so Hans knocked softly on the door, still fearful of the bear, and when the good people finally opened and asked what he wanted, he asked them earnestly to take him into their service as a servant and told his whole story as far as he knew about himself. The charcoal burner and his wife looked upon him with sharp eyes and recognized from the black warts on little Hans' left shoulder that the supplicant was none other than their own little son that they had lost in such a fantastical manner many years ago. Who was happier than Hans, who so unexpectedly found his dear parents! Who was happier than the charcoal burner and his wife, who so unexpectedly found their dear son, who had grown from a little boy into a large man.

Although he lingered for a long time with them and told them his wonderful story often enough, he longed at last for the unknown and one day announced to his parents that he cherished a great desire to go on a peregrination, and because they had nothing against it, he packed his bags one morning and walked away.

So after he now looked around the country enough, he was tired of the prolong wandering; and when he once saw a big, stately farm he thought not long but came quickly and offered his services to the farmer. When the farmer saw this big, strong lad he asked him his name and took him as a servant in his house. At this time the fruit had ripened in the orchards, so Hans was sent the next morning to the garden to shake his master's fruit trees. But when he began to shake, he shook out the branches along with the fruit, and when his master came into the garden soon afterwards to see the work of his new servant, Hans spoke frankly to him, "Lord, your fruit trees must be old and brittle, because I wanted to shake the fruit, the branches broke down with them!" The lord spoke angrily, saying that he ruined his beautiful trees, and then sent him into the forest to cut wood and gave him a shiny ax along the way. Hans, however, threw the ax aside and sought a strong iron chain. Once he found them he went as he was ordered into the woods, and he wrapped his chains to this and then that tree and so pulled each after the other to the root, until the evening when his master came with other servants in a wagon to bring the felled timber home.

But when they saw that half the forest was torn up by the roots from the earth, they almost did not believe their eyes and asked one after the other, "So tell us, Hans, who gave you such bodily strength that you do in one day what our toes wouldn't be able to do in a hundred!"

Hans, who, with all his strength was very kind and obliging by nature, satisfied their curiosity, told his whole story truthfully, threw two of the thickest oak trees on his shoulders, and walked slowly home with them. But the others were still long in the forest and tried in vain to load the torn trees on their carts and wagons.

Soon the story was known far and wide, and because Hans had suckled and drawn his strength from a bear, and became as strong as a bear, he was everywhere just called Hans Bear.

The farmer and his servants became so tremendously fearful of his inordinate physical strength, they decided to get rid of strong Hans in any possible way, but what they wanted did not quite succeed. They held a secret, wicked counsel and discussed how they wanted to take the good Hans Bear's life so that he would not inflict great suffering with his strength.

So after they deliberated, the Lord went to Hans one day and said, "Behold, my aunt has confided to me that her father buried a treasure underneath the fountain in my courtyard, and since the heat has dried up all the water, you shall go down and dig, whether you may find it!" Hans did as he commanded.

But hardly had he gone down, the Lord came with his other servants and threw stones down into the well, for they thought it would be so easy to get him out of the way. Hans knew their evil intentions now of course very well, as their stone-throwing at him did not cause any pain, so he let them have peace. But when they had gradually thrown down probably a few hundred stones, he lost patience at last. "So the chickens hunt me from the well," he called to them from below, "they better not scatter sand in my eyes, or I will never dig the treasure out of the well!"

When the farmer and his servants heard this speech they were terrified, but after they had recovered a little from their fright, they rolled a large millstone to the well and threw it down. - Now they surely thought that they kept the dangerous Hans Bear at bay. But Hans Bear picked up the millstone and stuck his head through the hole so that he hung the stone like a collar around his neck, and when they looked down into the well to assure themselves of his death, he called to them, laughing, "What, you want to make me into such a priest that you hang such a powerful clerical collar around my neck! But now let's put the folly to an end, and pull me out!" And so he threw out of the well the millstone, which buried one of the wicked servants underneath. The others were violently afraid and quickly dragged him out. But the farmer saw that they were too weak to take such a strong man's life, and offered him a large amount of gold if he did not retaliate because of their ill will on him, but instead put together his bundle and leave the house. - And Hans, who wanted to look further around the world, took the gold, tied up his bundle and walked away.

As he marched for some days he heard far and wide much talk of the great beauty of the princess; but he also heard that a hulking giant also desired to be her husband and how the king, her father, was very much in fear and distress, so that he promised to anyone who killed the giant half his kingdom and his daughter as wife.

Hans was unfailingly curious to see the beautiful princess. The closer he came to the royal city, the more he heard talk of her incomparable beauty and goodness. Finally, the city was reached.

There sat the beautiful princess looking out the bay window of her castle, weeping bitter tears that such a hideous giant should take her away to make himself her husband.

Hans was so charmed by the sight that he at once decided to wage battle with the giant, who had already killed three beautiful and brave knights who dared to challenge him for the king's bride. So he went soon to an arms smith and bought with the gold that he had received from his former master a nice helmet, a bright iron skirt, a sword, and above all, a sharp, strong sword. Thus equipped, he went before the king and asked him for permission to fight with the giant. The king gave him his blessing and promised him his daughter and half his kingdom if he should kill the giant. As Hans walked away the king kneeled and prayed for his soul, for he surely believed that he, too, like the other three, would receive his deathblow.

Hans, however, sought to challenge the giant to a duel. As the giant saw him come he thought he would have another light game. Therefore, he leaned comfortably against a tree trunk and jeered at him, "Little man, are you coming perhaps to break my neck? So try it once, before you draw your terrible sword against me, as high as you, my little sword, may rise from the earth! And so he unstrapped his huge battle sword from his waist and threw it on the ground. The giant did such as he assumed that Hans, like the other three, would not pick it up from the ground. Hans took the sword with but one hand high above his head and flung it so far away it fell all the way to its handle into the hard earth. The giant thought to himself, "He's probably still stronger than you," and talked to him, saying, "I see very well now that I have wronged you and that you are not a common fighter, so let's make peace with each other, because two such brave warriors should easily part as friends. Behold, I will give you as much gold and other valuables, as you may take away in three wagons. You take your wages, and leave me the beautiful princess, because I love her more than all the gold and precious stones of the earth."

Hans, however, loved the beautiful princess more than all the gold and precious stones in the world, even more than his own life, and so did not listen to what the giant said, but quickly drew his sword, and the giant had to pull his own out of the earth where Hans had it thrown. Oh how the swords blared together, that bright sparks jumped out. But it did not take long until Hans cut with huge blows the giant's head from his body, so that his black blood splashed around the green earth.

When the king saw him so enter into his chamber, he went to meet him and embraced him, and rejoiced with him his victory. Then he said to him: "Come with me, my son, so that I can lead you to the princess, my daughter, and cede you half of my kingdom." And when they came to the king's beautiful daughter, she was also pleased by the death of the evil giant and about the handsome man that the king brought to her as her future husband. For although Hans Bear was of great bodily strength, his beauty was not less than his strength. Therefore, the princess was pleased very much of such a beautiful groom and soon presented him before the altar, with her heart and hand.

Shortly afterwards the old king died, and after they solemnly buried him Hans now inherited the other half of the empire from his father-in-law, and went immediately with his wife to the home of his parents and siblings to take them with him to his residence.

How they were astonished when the great golden carriage rolled before the low door of the hut and held still, well I don't need to describe to you! And as they now fully recognized in the king their dear son Hans, he introduced the beautiful princess as their daughter-in-law. There was never-ending wonder and joy! Hans drove with the parents and siblings and entire entourage to the bear cave, to his old foster mother. And when they were no longer far away, they all began to fear and begged the king to turn back. But he calmed them down and went, so as soon as they arrived at the cave without any attendants inside -- but then he was terrified! – as the bear was lying prostrate on her bed, miserable and wanting to die. Because she was so ill and weak and could no longer get food from the forest, she nearly died of starvation, had King Hans not come at the right time.

When the bear saw his foster son, she wanted to sit up to crawl up against him, but her strength failed her, and she fell back on her bed. Hans said unto his servants to bring him food and drink, and then he sat down with his bear on the litter and stroked her with his hands and took care of her in every way. And the bear with her rough tongue licked the king's hands and looked at him friendlily, as if to say, "So you're coming finally to prove to me this last time, that I nursed and cared for you but not for nothing."

Gradually, everyone entered into the cave, and the queen laid the head of the bear on her lap so that she could stroke her with her beautiful hands, as her husband used all the possible means available to him.

But all in vain! The great bear was too old and too weak to even be able to live longer. After she had cast a grateful glance at the king and his beautiful wife, she stretched out her limbs and died. The king cried to his old foster mother, and everyone was very much saddened by the death of the good animal and stood for a long time at her bedside.

Then they buried her in the trunk of an old oak, and all went back to the capital, where Hans Bear, the king, reigned for many years with his beautiful wife, happy and at peace.

Little Häwelmann

Once there was a little boy named Häwelmann. At night he slept in a crib on wheels, and also in the afternoon when he was tired; but when he was not tired, his mother had to move him in it around the room, and he could never get enough of it.

Now the little Häwelmann one night lay in his crib and could not fall asleep; beside him, his mother had long been sleeping in her big four-poster bed. "Mother," cried the little Häwelmann, "I want to move!" And the mother in her sleep reached with her arm out of the bed and rolled the little bedstead here and there, and if her arm became tired, little Häwelmann would cry, "More, more," and the rolling would begin again! But at last she fell completely asleep, and as much as Häwelmann was able to scream, she couldn't hear it; she was completely gone. That didn't last long, because before long the moon looked through the windowpane, the good, old moon, and what he saw there was so funny that he first ran his coat sleeve over his face to wipe his eyes, it was something the old moon has not seen his whole life. There laid the small Häwelmann with open eyes in his bedroll and with one leg held like a mast in the air. He had taken his little shirt off and hung it like a sail on his little toe, and then he took a tiny corner of the shirt in each hand and with both cheeks began to blow. And gradually, gently, gently, it began to roll across the floor, then up the wall, then headed over along the ceiling and then back down the other wall. "More, more!" cried Häwelmann, as he was back on the floor; and then he blew out his cheeks again, and it went upside up and upside down. It was great luck for the little Häwelmann that it was just night and the earth was turned upside down; otherwise he could have too easily broken his neck.

When he had made the trip three times, the moon suddenly looked in his face. "Boy," he said, "have you still not enough?" – "No," Häwelmann cried, "more, more! Open the door! I want to travel through the city. All men should see me drive." – "That I can not," said the good moon, but he let a long beam fall through the keyhole, and on this the small Häwelmann travelled out of the house.

It was quite still and deserted on the street. The tall houses stood in the bright light of the moon and stared with their black windows quite silently out into the city; but mankind was nowhere to be seen. It truly rattled as the little Häwelmann travelled in his wheeled crib on the cobblestones, the good moon always beside him to light the way. So they drove out of one street, into another, but the people were nowhere to be seen. As they passed near the church the golden cock on the steeple crowed. They kept quiet. "What are you doing?" cried up little Häwelmann. - "I crow for the first time!" called down the golden cock. - "Where are the people?" called up little Häwelmann. \- "They sleep," called down the golden cock. "When I crow for the third time, the first man wakes up." - "It will take me too long," said Häwelmann. "I want to go into the forest, all the animals will see me go! "-" Boy," said the good old moon," have you not had enough?" - " No," cried Häwelmann, "more, more! Light, old Moon, shine!" And he blew out his cheeks, and the good old moon shone, and they went out through the city gate and across the field and into the dark forest. The good moon had great difficulty getting through between the many trees, sometimes he was quite a bit back, but he caught up to little Häwelmann again and again.

In the forest it was quiet and deserted, and the animals were not visible, neither the deer nor the hare, nor the little mice. So they went on and on, through pine and beech forests, uphill and downhill. The good moon went alongside and shone in all the bushes, but the animals were not visible, only a small cat was sitting up in an oak tree, glaring with his eyes. There it kept quiet. "It's the little Hinze! "Häwelmann said, "I know it well. it wants to imitate the stars." And as they drove on, the little cat leaped from tree to tree. "What are you doing?" cried little Häwelmann up. - "I illuminate!" cried the little cat down. - "Where are the other animals?" cried the little Häwelmann up. - "They sleep," the little cat shouted down and leaped to a farther tree. "Listen to how they snore." - "Boy," said the good old moon, "have you still not enough?" - " No," cried Häwelmann, "more, more! Light, old moon, shine," and then he blew out his cheeks and the good old moon glowed! And they rode out of the woods and then into the meadow to the end of the world, and then straight into the sky.

It was merry, all the stars were awake and their eyes flashed, and that the whole sky sparkled. "Make way!" Häwelmann screamed and ran into the crowd, that the stars fell from fear to the left and right of the sky. - "Boy," said the good old moon, "have you still not enough?" - "No," screamed the little Häwelmann, "more, more!" And – have you not seen! he drove across the nose of the good old moon, so that he became very dark brown in the face. "Ugh," said the moon and sneezed three times, "everything in moderation!" And he turned snuffing out his lantern, and all the stars closed their eyes. At once the whole sky was suddenly so dark that one could truly grasp it with his hands. "Light, old moon, shine," cried Häwelmann, but the moon was nowhere to be seen, as well as the stars! They had all gone to bed. There the little Häwelmann was very afraid, because he was so alone in the sky. He took the little shirt corners in his hands and blew out his cheeks, but he knew not whether to go out or in, and so he drove back and forth, this way and that, and nobody saw him go, neither the people nor animals, nor the lovely stars.

There from below, under the bottom edge of the sky, a read round face peeped up at him, and the small Häwelmann thought that the moon had risen again. "Light, old moon, shine," he said. And then he blew out his cheeks and drove back across the sky and quite wildly. But it was the sun that had just came up from the sea. "Boy," she cried, and then looked him in the face with her glowing eyes, "what are you doing here in my sky?" And - one, two, three! she took the little Häwelmann and threw him in the middle of the great water. There he could learn to swim.

And then?

Yes and then? Do you not remember? If you and I had not come and taken the little Häwelmann into our boat, he could have easily drowned!

Hinzelmeier

A Thoughtful Story
Chapter One: The White Wall

In a sprawling old house lived Mr. Hinzelmeier and the beautiful Ms. Abel; they were now going into their twelfth year of marriage, and the people of the city reckoned that they bore between the two of them about 80 years, but they were still young and beautiful and had neither a wrinkle on the forehead nor crow's feat around the eyes. That these things did not happen normally was clear enough, and if the Himzelmeiers came under discussion, the aunties in the town's coffee shops would have drunk three more cups than on the first Easter Sunday afternoon. One said, "They have the fountain of youth in their court." The other: "It is a maiden restoration shop." The third said, "The little boy Hinzelmeier was born into the world with a caul and now the old ones take turns wearing it, night after night!" The little Hinzelmeier of course did not think like that; on the contrary, it came naturally to him before that his parents were always young and beautiful, but he nevertheless got his own nut that he futilely tried to crack.

One autumn afternoon, when it had already approaching twilight, he sat in the long corridor of the upper floor and played hermit; since the silver-gray cat that otherwise went to school with him had just sneaked down into the garden to look for finches, he had to stop playing professor for the day. He sat there as a hermit in a corner and thought all sorts of things, like where most birds flew and how the world may well look abroad, and still more deep thoughts, because he wanted to give the cat a lecture the next day about this – when he saw his mother, the beautiful Ms. Abel, pass by him. "Hi, mother!" he said, but she did not hear him, walking with rapid steps to the end of the corridor, where she stopped and struck a handkerchief three times against the white wall. Little Hinzelmeier counted in his mind, "One, two," and no sooner had he counted "three" than he saw the wall open silently and his mother disappear into it; hardly could the end of the handkerchief slip along through before everything went with a gentle clap back together, and now the hermit thought about where his mother went through the wall. In the meantime it gradually became darker, the dusk of his corner had become so great that it had swallowed him completely, when it happened, as before, a gentle clap, and the beautiful Mrs. Abel came out of the wall back into the corridor. The scent of roses struck the boy as she strode over to him. "Mother, mother!" he said, but he did not hold her back; he heard her go down the stairs and into his father's room, where he had tied his rocking horse in the morning on the brass knob. Now it no longer held him, he jumped through the corridor and rode like the wind down the banister. When he entered the room, it was full of rose fragrance and it seemed almost as if his own mother was a rose, so radiant was her face. Hinzelmeier was very thoughtful.

"Dear mother," he said finally, "why are you always going through the wall?"

And as Frau Abel fell silent, the father said, "Why, my son, because the other people always go through the door."

For little Hinzelmeier that was already obvious, so he wanted to learn more.

"Where are you going when you go through the wall?" he asked. "And where are the roses?"

But before he knew it, his father had turned him head over heals onto the rocking horse and his mother sang the beautiful song:

Hatto from Mainz and Poppo from Trier

Rode together from Lünebier;

Hatto hott hott! Always in a trot!

Poppo hop, hop! Always gallop!

One, two, three!

Things seem to flee;

One, two, three, four!

Now here's the door.

"Untie it! Untie it!" cried Hinzelmeier; and the father untethered the little horse from the oven knob, and the mother sang, and the horseman rode hopping up and hopping down and soon had forgotten all the roses and white walls throughout the world.
Chapter Two: The Corner

Now many years passed without Hinzelmeier having experienced a repetition of the miracle; he thought not more about it, although his parents remained young and beautiful, as they had always been, and often in winter the wonderful rose scent surrounded them.

In the lonely corridors of the upper floor Hinzelmeier was now seldom to be found; because the cat died of old age, and so his school perished on its own from a lack of students.

It was for him almost already around those certain years when a beard begins to grow, that he went one afternoon in the old hall to see the white wall, because he wanted that evening to perform the shadow play "Nebuchadnezzar and his Nutcracker." In this intention he went at the end of the hallway and examined the white wall opposite from top to bottom, when to his astonishment he saw the corner of a handkerchief hanging out of it. He bent down to see it more precisely; in the corner was stitched the letters "A.H.," which could otherwise be none other than "Abel Hinzelmeier." It was his mother's handkerchief. Now a buzzing began in his head and the thoughts worked backwards, farther and farther, until they suddenly stopped in the first chapter of this story. Hereupon he attempted to pull the handkerchief out of the wall, which after somewhat painful experiments he was successful. Then he hit, as did the lovely Mrs. Abel, three times with the cloth against the wall, and "one -- two -- three --!" it came soundlessly apart, and Hinzelmeier slipped through and stood -- where he least thought to arrive at -- on the attic floor of the house. But there was no doubt, there stood the great-grandmother cabinet with the wobble-headed pagodas, beside it his own cradle and further back the rocking horse, simple worn-out equipment. Alongside the beam on iron hooks hung like always his father's long coats and travel cape that turned if a draft roamed in through the sky-lit dormer window. "Strange!" said Hinzelmeier. "Why did mother always go through the wall? But since he noticed among the familiar objects nothing noteworthy, he wanted to go through the bottom attic door back into the house. But the door was not there. He was puzzled for a moment and thought initially that he was mistaken, because he had come up from another direction than usual. He turned and walked between the coats to the old cabinet, in order to orient himself correctly from there on, and right there opposite was the door. He did not understand how he could have overlooked it. But as he walked up to it, everything suddenly appeared again all so strange, that he began to doubt whether he was even before the right door. But he knew this much: there were no others. What puzzled him most was that the iron latch was missing and the key was removed, which would otherwise always be plugged. He therefore put his eye to the keyhole, so he could perhaps perceive someone on the stairs or the landing who would let him out. To his surprise, he saw not the dark stairs but a bright spacious room whose existence he had hitherto no idea.

In the middle of it he saw a pyramid-shaped shrine, which was closed by two doors shimmering with gold and decorated with wonderful carvings. Hinzelmeier did not know exactly whether the narrow keyhole confused his view, but it was almost as if the shapes of snakes and lizards in the brown leaf garland, which ran down the edging, rustled to and fro, sometime even stretching their supple heads over the gold background of the doors. All this occupied the boy so, that he only now noticed the beautiful Mrs. Abel and her husband, who had knelt with bowed heads before the shrine. He involuntarily held his breath to keep from being noticed, and now he heard the voices of his parents in a soft song:

Rinke, ranke, rosy light,

Open your shrine outright!

And close us in tight,

Rinke, ranke, rosy light!

During the singing the animation of the reptiles in the foliage stiffened. The golden doors opened slowly and showed inside the cabinet a crystal goblet, in which a half-opened rose stood on slender stern. The calyx gradually opened, more and more, until one of the shimmering leaves peeled off and fell down between those kneeling. But before it reached the ground, it scattered into the air with a ringing sound and filled the room with rose-colored mist.

A strong rose scent emanated through the keyhole. The boy pressed his eye to the opening, but he saw nothing except now and then a light that burst out in the reddish dim light and broke up and disappeared again. After a while he heard footsteps at the door. He wanted to jump up, but a violent pain on his forehead robbed him of his senses.
Chapter Three: The Rose

Hinzelmeier lay in his bed when he awoke from a daze. Mrs. Abel was sitting beside him and held his hand in hers. She smiled as he opened his eyes to her, and the reflection of the rose was on her face. "You overheard too much for you not to need to learn still more," she said. "Only for today may you not leave the bed, but in the meantime I will share with you the secret of your family. You are now big enough for you to know."

"Tell me, mother," said Hinzelmeier and laid his head back on the cushions. And then Mrs. Abel said, "Far from this small city stands the ancient rose garden, from which the legend goes, was created on the sixth day of creation. Within its walls are a thousand red rose bushes which never cease to bloom, and each time a child is born in our lineage, which has spread in many branches through all the countries of the world, a new bud sprouts from the leaves. Each bud has a maiden commissioned as a guardian, and she may not leave the yard until the rose has been fetched by him through whose birth it has sprouted. Such a rose that you have just seen has the power to give its owners lifelong youth and beauty. Someone therefore does not lightly fail to pick up his rose; it just depends on finding the right path, because the ways are many and often surprising. Here it passes through a densely overgrown fence, then sometimes through a little corner gate" – and Mrs. Abel saw her husband, who was just entering the room with mischievous eyes – "and sometimes through the window!"

Mr. Hinzelmeier smiled and sat down beside the bed of his son.

Then Mrs. Abel went on. "By this way will the greatest number of maidens be freed from their captivity and leave the garden with the owner of the rose. Even your mother was a rose maiden who for sixteen years tended the rose of your father. But those who pass the garden without stopping in are permitted never back. Instead now the rose maiden is permitted after three times three years to go into the world to seek the rose master and through the rose redeem herself from captivity. If she does not find him in this time, she must return to the garden and must wait three times three years again before renewing another attempt. But few take the first, almost none the second procedure, for the rose maidens fear the world, and when they go out in their white garments they go with downcast eyes and trembling feet, and among a hundred such brave ones, has scarcely a single one found. For these is the rose then lost, and while the virgins go back to eternal imprisonment, he also has forfeited the grace of his birth and must like ordinary humans age and perish miserably. And you, my son, belong to the rose masters, and if you go into the world outside, then, so forget the rose garden not."

Mr. Hinzelmeier bowed to Mrs. Abel and kissed her silken hair and said, genially seizing the boy's other hand, "You're big enough now! Would you like to go out into the world and learn an art or skill?"

"Yes," said Hinzelmeier, "but it must be a great art, one that no one else can yet learn!"

Mrs. Abel shook her head sorrowfully, and the father said, "I want you to bring a wise master who lives many miles away from here in a big city, where you yourself can choose an art.

That satisfied Hinzelmeier.

A few days later Mrs. Abel grabbed a large suitcase with many countless clothes and Hinzelmeier himself put a shaving kit inside so that when his beard came he could cut it immediately. Then one day the wagon drove up before the door, and when the mother hugged her son goodbye, she said tearfully to him, "Forget the rose not!"
Chapter Four: Krahirius

After Hinzelmeier had been a year with the wise master, he wrote to his parents that he had now picked a task: he wanted to seek the Philosopher's Stone. After two years his master would release him – then he wanted to wander and not return until he had found the stone. This is a task that had not been learned by anyone, for even the master was actually just an old journeyman, since the stone was in no way found by him.

When the beautiful Mrs. Abel had read the letter, she folded her hands together and exclaimed, "Oh, he will never come into the rose garden! It will go like our foolish neighbor Kasperle who moved out twenty years ago and never came back home!"

Mr. Hinzelmeier but kissed his beautiful wife and said, "He had to go his way! I also wanted to find the philosopher's stone, and found instead the rose."

And so Hinzelmeier stayed with his master and gradually passed the time.

It was already deep in the night. Hinzelmeier sat in front of a smoky lamp, bent over a tome. But it was not going well that day, and he felt it throbbing and seething in his veins, a fear overcame him that the understanding of the deep wisdom of the formulas and maxims that the old book preserved might be lost on him forever.

Sometimes he turned his pale face to the room and stared thoughtlessly into the top corner, where the morose figure of his master busied himself before a low fireplace between flasks and crucibles. Sometimes, when the bats swept past the windowpane, he looked longingly out into the moonlit night that lay like a spell outside over the fields. Next to the master crouched an herb lady on the floor. She had the gray house cat on her lap and gently raised the sparks from its fur. Sometimes, if it really crackled snugly and the animal meowed before a pleasant shutter, the master would reach fondly for it and say, coughing, "The cat is the companion of the wise."

Suddenly a long-drawn, wistful sound rang outside, from the ridge of the roof, which was below the window, as of that of all animals only the cat and only in springtime is capable of. The cat inside sat up and dug its claws into the apron of the old woman. Again it called outside. There sprang the animal with such a robust leap onto the floor and over Hinzelmeier's shoulder through the windowpane to the outside that the broken glass shards scattered with tinkling sounds after it.

A sweet primrose fragrance rambled with the draft into the room. Hinzelmeier sprang up. "It's spring, master!" he cried and threw back his chair.

The old man lowered his nose deeper into his crucible. Hinzelmeier went up to him and grabbed him by the shoulder. "Did you not hear, master?"

The master touched his graying beard and stared at the boy daftly through his green glasses.

"The ice is cracking," cried Hinzelmeier. "It's ringing through the air!"

The master took him by the wrist and began to count his pulse. "Ninety-six," he said thoughtfully. But Hinzelmeier ignored it and asked for his dismissal and at this very hour. The master directed him to take a staff and a satchel and went with him to the front door, from where they were able to see far into the country. The boundless plain laid in the clear moonlight at their feet. Here they stood, the master's face furrowed by a thousand wrinkles, his back bowed, his beard hung low down over his brown robe, looking unspeakably old. Hinzelmeier's face was also pale, but his eyes lit up. "Your time's up," the master said to him. "Kneel down, so that you may be released." Then he pulled a white wand out of his sleeve and touched the one kneeling three times on the neck, saying:

The word is your wife

among the specter;

call it to life,

so you are the master.

Present in no kingdom;

it is a name, a mist

a finding-creating system,

that is the gist!

Then he directed him to get up. A shiver ran through the youth as he gazed into the gray-haired, solemn face of the master. He took the stick and knapsack from the ground wanting from thence to go, but the master said, "Forget not the raven." He put his skinny fist in his beard and pulled out a black hair! He blew it over his fingers, so that it soared into the air as a raven.

Then he waved his staff in a circle around his head, and as he swung the raven flew; then he stretched out his arm and the bird perched on his fist. Then he lifted the green spectacles from his nose, and while he held them fast on the raven's beak he said,

Paths you shall proclaim,

Krahirius shall be your name!

Then the raven cried, "Krahira! Krahira!" and leaped with outstretched wings on Hinzelmeier's shoulder. The master said to him,

Wandering decree and wandering book,

have you now, and now enough have took!

Then he pointed his finger down into the valley, where the endless path ran across the plain, and while Hinzelmeier, saluting with his traveling hat, went into the spring night, Krahirius soared up and flew above his head.
Chapter Five: The Entrance to the Rose Garden

The sun was already high in the sky. Hinzelmeier had taken a short cut across a field of green winter wheat that stretched before him boundlessly. At the end of that the trail led through the opening in the embankment out to a spacious area, and Hinzelmeier stood in front of the buildings of a large farm. It had been raining and now the thatched roofs were steaming in the sharp spring sunshine. He thrust his walking stick into the ground and looked up to the ridge of the house, where a host of sparrows went on in their own way. Suddenly he saw out of one of the two white chimneys a shiny disc rise into the air, turn slowly in the sunshine, and fall back down into the chimney.

Hinzelmeier took out his pocket watch. "It's noon!" he said. "They're baking pancakes." A delicious fragrance spread out, and again a pancake rose into the sunshine and fell after a short moment back into the chimney.

Hunger announced itself. Hinzelmeier came into the house and entered through a wide vestibule into a large, spacious kitchen like those that used to be in the larger farms. At the hearth, on which a bright brushwood burned, stood a sturdy farm woman who poured batter into a sizzling pan.

Krahirius, who had silently flown in from behind, set himself on the hearth mantle while Hinzelmeier asked whether he could for love or money get a good meal there.

"This is not an inn!" said the woman and swung her pan, so that the pancake went crackling up the black chimney and after only a short moment slapped back into the pan on the flipped side.

Hinzelmeier reached for his stick, which he had placed by the door upon entering. The old woman stuck a fork into the pancake and flipped it quickly onto a dish. "Now, now!" she said. "That's not how I meant it. Let it sit; this one is just ready." Then she pushed a wooden chair to the kitchen table for him and put the steaming pancake in front of him along with bread and a jug of fresh local wine.

Hinzelmeier approved and soon consumed the robust food and a good portion of the hard rye bread. Then he put the jug to his lips and took a hearty gulp to the health of the old woman and then took another to his own good health. This pleased him so that he began to sing simultaneously. "He is a jovial man," cried the old woman across from her stove. Hinzelmeier nodded. At once all the songs occurred to him that he had formerly heard from his beautiful mother in his parents' home. Now he sang them to her, one after the other:

There once was a Nightingale

That sang the entire night;

From her sweet song,

From the sound and its echoes,

The roses sprang up.

It was otherwise a wild breed,

Now goes it deep in thought,

Carries in hand the summer hat,

And silently tolerates the sun's heat,

And she knows not what to do.

There once was a Nightingale

That sang the entire night! -

There was in the wall, opposite from the hearth, under the rows of shiny pewter plates, a little sliding window that was drawn back, and a beautiful blond girl, who could have been the farmer's daughter, stuck her head out of curiosity into the kitchen.

Hinzelmeier, who heard the rattling of the little sliding window, stopped singing and let his eyes wander over to the walls of the kitchen, over the butter churn and the shiny cheese kettle and over the wide back of the old woman to the open little sliding window, where they stayed stuck on two other young eyes.

The girl turned red. "He sings beautifully!" she finally said.

"It just now came to me," Hinzelmeier responded. "But I really don't sing."

Then they were both silent for a while, so one could hear the sizzling of the frying pan and the crackling of the pancakes.

"Kasper also sings beautifully!" began the girl again.

"Well of course!" Hinzelmeier said.

"Yes," said the girl, "but not as beautiful as you. Where did you get that beautiful song?"

Hinzelmeier did not answer, but stepped on an overturned washtub that stood underneath the sliding window and looked passed the girl into the chamber. The inside was full of sunshine. On the paving stones of the floor were the shadows of carnations and rose trees, which may have stood aside the front of a window. Suddenly, in the back of the chamber the door flew open. The spring wind came roaring in and tore from the girl's Riegelhaube cap a blue silk ribbon, then carried it through the sliding window and flew its prize whirling around the kitchen. Hinzelmeier threw his hat after it and caught it like a summer bird.

The window was a little high. He wanted to stretch up to the girl, and she bent down to him. Then both heads came together so that they cracked. The girl screamed. The plates rattled. Hinzelmeier became quite confused.

"He has a truly valiant head!" said the girl and wiped the tears from her cheeks with her hand. As Hinzelmeier brushed the hair from his forehead and looked boldly into her face, she cast her eyes down and said, "You haven't hurt yourself?"

Hinzelmeier laughed. "No, miss," he said – he did not know how it had suddenly occurred to him – "don't take it the wrong way, but you certainly have a sweet heart!"

She placed her fist under her chin and tried to look defiantly at him, but her eyes remained stuck on his. "He babbles well," she said softly.

Hinzelmeier shook his head. There was silence between the two.

"Miss," Hinzelmeier said after a while, "I'd like to bring the ribbon to you in the chamber!"

The girl nodded.

"But how do I get in there?"

A sound came to his ears. "Sometimes through the window!" – That was the voice of his mother. He saw her sitting on his bed. He saw her smile. It was suddenly to him as if he were caught in a rosy mist that came into the kitchen from the sliding window. He stepped again on the tub and laid his hands around the girl's neck. There he looked through the open chamber door into a garden. In it stood blooming rose bushes like a red sea, and in the distance sang crystalline girls' voices:

Rose light

Open, then seal us tight!

Hinzelmeier gently pressed the girl back into the chamber and propped his hands on the windowsill in order to swing himself in with a leap. Then he heard "Krahira, Krahira!" buzzing over his head, and before he knew it the raven let the green eyeglasses fall from the air straight on his nose. Just like in a dream he saw the girl's arms reach out for him; then everything suddenly vanished before his eyes. But in the distance he saw through the green glasses a dark figure sitting in a deep rock basin, who seemed to be eagerly boring with a chisel into the ground.
Chapter Six: A Master Shot

"That one seeks the Philosopher's Stone!" thought Hinzelmeier, and his cheeks began to burn. He strode off bravely towards the vision, but it was farther than it looked through the eyeglasses. He called to the raven, who had to fan his temples with his wings. Only after hours had he reached the bottom of the ravine. Now he saw before him a black, rough figure that had two horns on its forehead and a long tail that hung down behind him over the rocks. With Hinzelmeier's arrival it took the chisel between its teeth and greeted him with the most courteous nod of its head as it swept together the debris with the tuft of its tail. Hinzelmeier was almost embarrassed by the salutation, so he nodded each time with the same civility so that these compliments lasted a long time. The other finally said, "Don't you know me well?"

"No," said Hinzelmeier. "Are you perhaps a master pump driller?"

"Yes," said the other. "Something like that. I am the devil."

Hinzelmeier didn't want to believe it, but the devil saw him with two of those owl eyes so that in the end he was thoroughly convinced and modestly said, "May I ask, whether you intend to make a physical experiment with this monstrous hole?"

"Do you know the ultima ratio regum?" asked the devil.

"No," Hinzelmeier said. "The ratio regum has nothing to do with my practice."

The devil scratched behind his ears with his horse hoof and then said, assuming a superior tone, "My child, do you know what a gun cannon is?"

"Of course," Hinzelmeier said with a smile, for he suddenly saw the whole wooden arsenal from his childhood rise up before him in spirit.

The devil clapped in delight with his tail against the rocks. "Three pounds of gunpowder, a spark of hellfire, then -- !" Here he put a paw in the bore-hole, and while he placed the other on Hinzelmeier's shoulder he said confidently, "The world has become ungovernable! I want to blow it up."

"Good heavens," cried Hinzelmeier, "but that is a radical cure, a truly extreme cure!"

"Yes," said the devil, "ultima ratio regum! Rest assured that it takes a superhumanly good nature to bear such a thing! But now excuse me for a little while. I have to inspect a little. With these words he drew his tail between his thighs and jumped down into the hole. All at once a quite supernatural courage overcame Hinzelmeier that he decided for himself to shoot the devil out of the world. With a firm hand he drew his tinderbox from his pocket, struck a flame, and threw the fire into the hole. Then he counted, "One.. two..." but had not yet counted "three" when this boundless pistol discharged its round together with the additional load. The earth was frightfully jarred in its orbit through the heavens. Hinzelmeier fell to his knees. The devil flew like a bombshell through the air, from one planetary system to another, where our planet's gravity could no longer reach him. Hinzelmeier watched him for a while, but as the devil flew further and further and never seeming to stop, Hinzelmeier's eyes almost popped out of his head. As soon as the earth had calmed down enough so that he could stand back on his two legs, he jumped up and looked around him. At his feet yawned the black burnt-out mortar. From time to time a cloud of brown smoke welled up and moved lazily toward the rocks. But the sun already broke through the fumes and gilded the tops of the rocks everywhere. Hinzelmeier then took his tobacco pipe from his pocket, and as he blew a blue cloud in front of him, he exclaimed triumphantly, "Well then! I've shot the Stumbling Stone out of the world! The Philosopher's Stone can't escape me!"

Then he continued his wandering, and Krahirius flew above his head.
Chapter Seven: The Rose Maiden

He wandered here and there, back and forth, grew more and more tired, and his back became bent, but he could never find the Philosopher's Stone. So nine years passed until one evening he stopped at an inn situated at the entrance of a big city. Krahirius took the glasses with his claws and cleaned them with his wings. Then he put it on him again and hopped into the kitchen. As the residents saw him they laughed at his glasses, calling him, "Mr. Professor," and threw him the choicest morsels.

"If you are the master of that bird," said the innkeeper to Hinzelmeier, "you've been asked about."

"That certainly is me," said Hinzelmeier.

"What's your name, then?"

"I'm called Hinzelmeier."

"Aye, aye," said the host, "your dear son, the husband of the beautiful Frau Abel, I know very well."

"That is my father," said Hinzelmeier petulantly, "and the beautiful Mrs. Abel is my mother."

The people laughed and said the gentleman was extremely amusing. Hinzelmeier however looked with anger into a shiny kettle.

Then he stared as one sullen face full of wrinkles and crow's feet stared back at him and saw clearly that he had become terribly old.

"Yes, yes," he cried and shook himself, as if to get out of a bad dream. "Where was it? I was so close to it." He then inquired of the innkeeper who had asked about him.

"It was just a poor lass," said the farmer. "She wore a white dress and was barefoot."

"That was the Rose Maiden," cried Hinzelmeier.

"Yes," answered the farmer, "a flower girl she may well have been, but she had one rose in her little basket."

"Where did she go?" cried Hinzelmeier.

"If you want to talk to her," the farmer said, "you will be able to find her on one of the street corners in the city."

Once Hinzelmeier heard that, he walked in a hurry out of the house and into the city. Krahirius, the glasses on his beak, flew croaking from behind. He walked from one street to another and at all the curbstones stood flower girls, but they wore crude buckled shoes and shouted out their merchandise for sale. There were no rose maidens. Finally, when the sun had already gone down behind the houses, Hinzelmeier came to an old house from whose open door a soft glow pressed out into the dim alley. Krahirius threw back his head and nervously beat his wings. Hinzelmeier did not pay attention and stepped over the threshold into a large hall that shimmered full of red. Deep in the background, on the bottom step of a spiral staircase, he saw a pale girl sitting. In a basket which she held in her lap lay a red rose from whose calyx a soft light burst forth. The girl seemed exhausted. At that moment she placed her lips to an earthen water jug that a boy held up to her with both his hands. A large dog lay next to her on the stairs and, like the child, seemed to belong to this house, laying its head on her white garment and licked her bare feet. "It's her!" said Hinzelmeier, and his steps became uncertain from hope and expectation. And when the maiden raised her face to him, it was as if the scales had fallen from his eyes and he recognized at once the girl from the country kitchen. Only she wasn't wearing the colorful bodice today, and the red in her cheeks was only the reflection of the light of the rose.

"Oh you," cried Hinzelmeier, "now everything, everything will be all right!"

She stretched out her arms to him. She wanted to smile, but tears sprang from her eyes. "Where have you been so long running around the world?" she said.

And as he now saw her eyes, he was startled out of sheer joy. There stood his own image, but not that image like that which had just previously stared out at him from the copper kettle. No, a face so young and fresh and cheerful, that he shouted out with joy. He would not have given it up for all the world.

From the street a human swarm streamed into the house, shouting and gesticulating. "Here stands the master of the birds!" cried a squat little man, at which everyone surged toward Hinzelmeier.

He took her hand and asked, "What is the matter with the raven?"

"What is it?" said the fat man. "He stole the mayor's wig!" "Yes, yes!" cried everyone, "and now he is sitting in the gutter, the monster, and has the wig in its claws and stares at its characteristics through its green spectacles!"

Hinzelmeier wanted to talk, but they took him into their midst and pushed him against the door. With horror he felt the hand of the rose maiden sliding out of his own, and then he went out on the street.

Up on the gutter of the house the raven still sat and warily looked down with his black eyes on those coming out of the house. Suddenly he opened his claws, and while the citizens reached around with their sticks and umbrellas for the mayor's wig, Hinzelmeier heard, "Krahira, Krahira!" buzzing over his head, and at the same moment the green spectacles sat on his nose.

All at once the city vanished from his sight, but through he glasses he saw at his feet a green valley with dairy farms and villages. Sunlit meadows appeared round about, on which barefoot lasses stepped through the grass with shiny milk pails, while further away from the villages young guys swung scythes. But what captivated Hinzelmeier's eyes was the figure of a man in red and white blouse with a pointed cap on his head, who seemed to be sitting on a stone in the middle of a field with arms supported on his knees in a thoughtful position.
Chapter Eight: Neighbor Kasperle

Hinzelmeier thought, "That is the Philosopher's Stone!" and went straight toward him. The man, however, remained in his thoughtful position, save that, to Hinzelmeier's astonishment, his large nose hung over his chin as if it were made of flexible rubber.

"Oh dear sir, what are you doing there?" cried Hinzelmeier.

"I don't know," said the man, but I have an enchanted bell on this cap, which horribly interferes with my thoughts."

"Why do you pick your nose so horribly?"

"Oh," said the man and let the tip of his nose go, so that it jumped back with a slap to its old form. "Please excuse me, but my mind is often afflicted with thoughts, for I'm seeking the Philosopher's Stone."

"My God!" said Hinzelmeier, "Are you perhaps my neighbor Kasperle, the one who never returned back home?"

"Yes," said the man, offering Hinzelmeier his hand, "that I am."

"And I'm your neighbor Hinzelmeier," said the latter, "and seek the Philosopher's Stone."

They shook hands again and their fingers crossed in a way so that they knew each other as initiates. Kasperle said, "I no longer seek the Philosopher's Stone."

"Are you perhaps traveling to the rose garden?" Hinzelmeier asked.

"No," said Kasperle. "I no longer seek the Stone, but I've already found it."

That silenced Hinzelmeier for quite some time, but at last he reverently folded his hands and solemnly said, "It had to be so, I knew it well, for nine years ago I shot the devil out of the world."

"That must've been his son," said the other. "I met the old devil the day before yesterday."

"No," Hinzelmeier said, "he was the old devil, for he had horns on his head and a tail with black tassel. But tell me how you found the stone."

"That is easy," said Kasperle, "Down under the village live truly stupid people who associate only with sheep and cattle. They didn't realize what a treasure they had, because I found it in an old cellar and paid for it with three six-Pfennig coins. And now I've been wondering since yesterday what its use could be, and I probably would have if this cursed bell had not been disturbing me.

"Dear colleague," said Hinzelmeier, "that is one of the most critical questions which before you probably no man has considered. But where do you keep the Stone?"

"I sit on it," said Kasperle and, rising, showed Hinzelmeier its round, wax-yellow body on which he had been sitting.

"Yeah," said Hinzelmeier, "There is no doubt, you've really found it. But now let's think about what use it has."

So they sat down on the ground opposite from each other as they placed the Stone between them and propped their elbows on their knees.

So they sat and sat. The sun went under, the moon came up, and still they found nothing. Sometimes one of them would ask the other, "Do you have it?" but the other always shook his head and said, "No, I haven't. Have you?" And then the other would answer, "Me neither."

Krahirius was quite delighted, going up and down in the grass and catching frogs. Kasperle tugged again on his big, beautiful nose. The moon went down, and the sun came up, and Hinzelmeier asked again, "Have you?" and Kasperle shook his head and said, "No, I don't. Have you?" and Hinzelmeier answered sadly, "Me neither."

After thinking some more for a while, Hinzelmeier finally said, "So we have to polish the glasses, then we should be able to see what its use could be." And scarcely had Hinzelmeier removed his glasses when he let them fall into the grass in astonishment, "I have it! Comrade, you have to eat it! Please take the glasses from your beautiful nose."

Kasperle also took down the glasses, and after he saw the stone for a while he said, "This is a so-called leather cheese and must be eaten with the help of heaven. Help yourself, my dear comrade!"

And now both took their knives out of their pockets and bravely cut into the cheese. Krahirius came flying by and collected the glasses from out of the grass, and after he clamped them over his beak he slowly sat comfortably between those eating and snapped at the rind.

"I don't know," Hinzelmeier said after the cheese was consumed. "I may be wrong but I feel as if I were considerably closer to the Philosopher's Stone."

"Dear most worthy comrade," said Kasperle. "You speak from my soul. Let's then continue our journey without delay."

After these words they embraced. Kasperle went west, Hinzelmeier went east, and at his head, his glasses on its beak, flew Krahirius.
Chapter Nine: The Philosopher's Stone

But he walked back and forth, here and there, his hair grew gray, his legs became unsteady. He went from land to land, and yet he never found the Philosopher's Stone. So another nine years passed, when one evening, like he did every night, he went to a public inn. Krahirius cleaned his glasses as usual and then hopped into the kitchen to beg for his supper. Hinzelmeier went into the room and leaned his staff on the corner of the tiled stove, then sat still and tired in the big armchair. The innkeeper put a jug of wine in front of him and said gently, "You seem tired, my dear. Drink. It will make you stronger."

"Yeah," said Hinzelmeier and grabbed the bottle with both of his hands, "very tired. I've been walking for a very long time. He closed his eyes and took a thirsty gulp from the wine bottle.

"If you're the master of the bird, as I believe, you have been inquired about," said the host. "What is your name, dear sir?"

"My name is Hinzelmeier."

"Now," said the host, "your grandson, the husband of the beautiful Mrs. Abel, I know quite well."

"That's my father," said Hinzelmeier, "and the beautiful Mrs. Abel is my mother."

The host shrugged his shoulders and while he turned himself back toward the tavern, he said, "The poor man has become childish."

Hinzelmeier let his head sink on his chest and inquired who asked after him.

"It was only a poor wench," said the host, "she wore a white dress and walked on bare feet." Then Hinzelmeier smiled and said softly, "That was the Rose maiden. Now it will soon be better. Where did she go?"

"It seemed to be a flower girl," said the host. "If you want to talk to her, she'll be easy to find on the street corners."

"I must sleep a little while," said Hinzelmeier. "Give me a room and when the cock crows, knock on my door."

The host gave him a room, and Hinzelmeier lied down to rest. He dreamed of his beautiful mother. He smiled. She spoke to him in a dream. Then Krahirius flew through the open window and sat at his head on the bed. He bristled his black feathers and picked the glasses off his beak with his claws. Then he stood motionless on one leg and looked down at the sleeping man. He dreamed, and his mother said to him, "Don't forget the rose." The sleeper quietly nodded his head, but the raven let the glasses fall on his nose.

He dreams thus changed. His sunken cheeks began to twitch, he stretched out long and began to groan. So came the night.

When at the first light the cock had crowed, the host knocked on the bedroom door. Krahirius stretched his wings and plucked his coat of feathers into order. Then he screamed, "Krahira! Krahira!" Hinzelmeier sat up with difficulty and looked around him. He saw through the glasses that sat on his nose out the bedroom door to a wide, deserted field, then further on to a gradually rising hill. On this, under the trunk of an old willow, lay a gray, flat stone. The area was deserted, no person within sight.

"That is the Philosopher's Stone!" said Hinzelmeier to himself. "At last, at last will it become mine!"

He hastily threw on his clothes, took his staff and knapsack, and walked out the door. Krahirius flew at his head, clapping with his beak and flying summersaults in the air. Thus they wandered several hours. At last they seemed closer to their goal, but Hinzelmeier was exhausted, his chest panted, the sweat dripped from his white hair, he stood still and leaned on his staff. There came from far away, behind him, at quite a distance, almost like a dream, a song to him:

Rinke, ranke, rosy light!

Don't let it out of sight!

Hold it fast, hold it tight!

Rinke, ranke, rosy light!

It spun like a golden net around him. He let his head sink on his chest, but Krahirius screamed, "Krahira! Krahira!" The song was forgotten, and as Hinzelmeier opened his eyes he stood at the foot of the hill.

"Just a little while yet," he said to himself and let his tired feet walk again. But as he looked at all the great, wide stone nearby he thought, "You'll never be able to lift it."

At last they reached the top. Krahirius flew forward with outstretched wings and settled on the tree trunk. Hinzelmeier tottered trembling behind. As he reached the tree he collapsed, the staff slipped out of his hand, and his head fell back on the stone. But at the same moment the glasses fell of his nose. He saw deep on the horizon, on the edge of the deserted plain that he had wandered, the white figure of the rose maiden, and once more he heard from the far distance:

Rinke – ranke – rosy light.

He wanted to get up, but he was no longer capable of that. He outstretched his arms, but a chill ran down his limbs. The sky became grayer and grayer, the snow began to fall, flake by flake, it shimmered and sparkled and drew a white veil between him and the distant, misty figure. He dropped his arms, his eyes fell, and his breathing stopped. On the willow stump to his head the raven put his beak under the cover of its wing to sleep. The snow fell over them both.

The night came, and after the night came morning, and with the morning came the sun that melted away the snow, and with the sun came the rose maiden, who loosened her braids, knelt beside the dead so that her blond hair completely covered his pale face, and cried until the day passed. But when the sun went out, the raven cooed in her sleep and rustled its feathers. The delicate shape of the maiden straightened on the ground, she grabbed the raven by the wings with her white hand and threw him into the air. As he croaked and flew into the gray sky, she planted the red rose at the stone and sang:

Now sink your root with all your might,

Now throw your leaves over the gravesite,

And if the wind sings in the twilight,

Then speak a word to coming night,

With rinke, ranke, rosy light.

Then she tore her white dress from the hem to the waist and went back to perpetual confinement in the rose garden.

Bulemann's House

In a seaside city in northern Germany, in the so-called gloomy street, stands an old dilapidated house. It is narrow, but three stories high; in the middle of it, from the ground almost to the top of the gable, the walls spring out in a bow-like extension, which is provided on each floor with windows on the front and sides, so that in the bright nights the moon can shine through them.

Since time immemorial, no one has gone inside and no one out of this house, and the heavy brass knocker on the front door is almost black with tarnish, between the cracks of the stone steps grass grows year in, year out. If a stranger asks, "What kind of house is that?" he receives the answer, "It is Bulemann's house," but when he goes on to ask, "Who lives in it?" they say, just as surely, "No one lives there." The children in the streets and the nurses at the cradle sing:

In Bulemann's house

In Bulemann's house

There peeps a mouse

Out the window.

And the merry brothers who passed by there from nightly revelries would have heard a squeaking from a number of mice behind the dark windows. One who in high spirits claims to have heard the echo resounding through the barren rooms, and even claimed to clearly hear the bounding of large animals on the steps. "It almost," he, in telling this, was accustomed to add, "sounded like the bounding of large predators which were shown in the animal pens in the town hall market."

The house standing opposite is one story lower, so that at nightfall the moonlight falls unobstructed through the upper windows of the old house. From such a night even the watchman has something to tell, but it's just a little old man's face with a colorful sleeping cap that he claimed to have seen up there behind the round bay windows. The neighbors in opposition were of the opinion that the watchman was drunk once again; they had never seen something on those windows that was like a human being.

An old man living in a distant quarter of the city, who has for years been organist at St. Mary Magdalene Church, seems to be able to give the most particulars. "I remember," he said, when he was once asked about it, "very well the gaunt man who lived during my childhood alone with an old female in that house. With my father, who was a junk dealer, he was connected for a couple years in brisk commerce, and I would have at the time sometimes been sent to him with messages. I also remember that I did not gladly go in that direction and often thought of all sorts of excuses to seek escape, for even in the daytime I was afraid to climb the narrow stairs to Mr. Bulemann's chamber on the third floor. One called him among the people the "slave trader," and already this name gave me angst, especially since all sorts of scary talk about him was in vogue. He had, before he occupied the house from after his father's death, moved many years as cargo master to the West Indies. There he is said to have married a black woman; but when he came home, one waited in vain to see any woman with associated dark children. And soon it was said that he had met a slave ship on his return journey and sold to its captain his own flesh and blood, together with their mother for vile gold. – What was true in such talk, I can not say," the gay haired one was accustomed to add, "for I do not want to offend a dead man, but this much is certain, he was a miserly and misanthropic crank, and his eyes looked also as if they had witnessed evil deeds. No unfortunate or someone seeking help was allowed to enter his threshold, and whenever I was there at that time, there was always iron chain placed before the door on the inside. –If I then had to repeatedly strike the heavy knockers, I heard it from the top of the stairs down the scolding voice of the householder: Mrs. Anken! Mrs. Anken! Are you deaf? Don't you hear the knocking!" Soon one could hear from the parlor and corridor of the back house the shuffling steps of the old woman. Before she opened, however, she asked, clearing her throat, "Who is it?" and only if I answered, "It is Leberecht," the chain was unhooked. If I hastily gone up the seventy-seven steps – for I have counted once - Mr. Bulemann was accustomed to wait for me in the little dim vestibule outside his room, which he never allowed me to go inside. I can still see him in his yellow-flowered dressing gown with the cap's pointed tip in front of me with one hand behind his back holding the latch of his door. While stating my business, he considered me impatiently with his piercing, round eyes and thereafter dismissed me severely and quickly. What most aroused my attention were a couple of monstrous cats, one yellow and one black, which sometimes pressed out of his room behind him and rubbed their thick heads on his knees. – After a few years, however, the business with my father stopped, and I was no longer there. – All this is now over seventy years ago, and Mr. Bulemann must have long since been carried to the place from whence no one returns." – One is mistaken when he spoke. Mr. Bulemann has not been carried from his house; he still lives in it now.

This is how it went. Before him, from the time of pigtails and powdered hair, the last owner that lived in that house was a pawnbroker, a bent-over old male. There he had operated his business with care for over five decades, and with a woman who conducted his housekeeping after his wife's death, and from living most sparsely he finally became a rich man. The wealth amounted to an almost incalculable number of valuables, gadgets, and the strangest junk, which he had received over the years in pawn from spendthrifts or the destitute and then, because the repayment of the loans did not ensue, remained in his possession. Because with the sale of these pawned items, which had to happen legally through the courts, he would have had to give out the surplus proceeds to the owner, he therefore preferred to pile them in large walnut cabinets, which for this purpose gradually occupied the rooms of the first and finally even the second story. At night, once Mrs. Anken snored in the back of the house in her little, lonely room, and the heavy chain hung at the front door, he often went with gentle steps up and down the steps. Buttoned his in his bluish-gray caped travel coat, in one hand a lamp and in the other a bunch of keys, he opened now in the first, now in the second floor of the parlor rooms and the cabinet doors, took here a golden, chiming pocket watch, there an enamel snuffbox from a hiding place and calculated for the years of his possession and whether the original owners of these things probably died or disappeared, or whether they would once again return with the money in hand to reclaim their pawns.

The mortgage lender was in extreme old age finally taken by death away from his treasure and had left behind the house along with the full cabinets to his only son, who had during his life tried in every way to stay away from it.

This son was for the little Leberecht the greatly feared cargo master, who had just returned from an overseas trip to his native town. After his father's funeral he gave up his former business and moved into the room on the third floor of the old bay-windowed house, where now, instead of the stooped little man in the bluish-gray roquelaure, a long, lean figure in a yellow-flowered dressing gown and colorful stocking cap walked up and down or stood doing calculations at the deceased's small desk. – Mr. Bulemann had not inherited, however, the delight of the old pawnbroker for the accumulated treasures. After he had studied the contents behind locked doors of the large walnut cabinets, he asked himself whether he should risk a clandestine sale of these things that were still the property of others and to whose value he had a claim only to the level of the inherited and extremely meager amount, as the books showed, of the loans given out at the time of pawning. But Mr. Bulemann was not one of the irresolute. In just a few days a deal was buttoned up with a secondhand dealer residing in one of the outer suburbs, and after some pawns from the later years had been set aside, the motley contents of the large walnut cabinets was secretly and carefully converted into solid silver coins. That was the time when the boy Leberecht came into the house. – Mr. Bulemann put this redeemed money in large, ironbound chests, which he put side-by-side in his bedroom; because of the illegality of his possessions he did not dare to execute mortgages from it or otherwise openly invest it.

When everything was sold, he set out to calculate the total conceivable expenses for his possible lifespan. He took initially an age of ninety years and divided the money into individual parcels, each for a week, and, for each quarter, he set aside a little roll for unforeseen expenses. This money was put in a box by itself which stood in the neighboring living room, and every Sunday morning the housekeeper Mrs. Anken, whom he had taken over from his father's estate, appeared to receive a new package and to settle over the disbursement of the previous account.

As already said, Mr. Bulemann had not brought a wife or children; there were however two particularly large cats, one yellow and one back, that were the day after the old pawnbroker's burial carried by a sailor from on board a ship to the house strongly tied up in a sack. These animals were soon the only company of the gentleman. They received their own bowls in the afternoon, which Mrs. Anken, in sullen anger, had to prepare for them day in and day out; after they ate, as Mr. Bulemann finished his short noonday nap, they sat satiated next to him on the couch, letting a little flap of their tongues hang out and blinking sleepily at him with their green eyes. When they went on mouse hunts in the lower rooms of the house, they always earned a secret kick from the old woman, and so they first brought their captured mice dragging in their mouths to the old man to show them to him before they crawled under the couch to eat them. Then night came and Mr. Bulemann exchanged his colorful stocking cap with a white one, and buried himself with both his cats in the large curtained bed in the neighboring room, where he allowed himself to be brought to sleep by the steady purring of the animals burrowing at his feet.

This peaceful life was not, however, without disturbance. Over the first few years individual owners of the pawned items had come and, for the paying back of the little sums previously received for them, desired the surrender of their valuables. And Mr. Bulemann, for fear of litigation, which could make his proceedings become public, reached into his big chest and bought by larger or smaller sums of compensation the silence of those involved. This made him even more misanthropic and grim. The business with the secondhand dealer long since ceased, he sat in his lonely little room with the bay window, seeking the solution of an often sought problem, the calculation of a certain winning number through which he could increase his treasures into the immeasurable. Graps and Schnor, the two large cats, now also had to suffer under his whim. Had he in one moment stroked them with his long fingers, so could he in another, particularly if perhaps the calculations on the ledger did not want to agree, provide a toss of the sand pot or the paper scissors, so that they limped howling into the corner.

Mr. Bulemann had a relative, a daughter from his mother's first marriage, who, however, was already compensated at the death for her inheritance rights and therefore had no claims on the treasures inherited by him. He did not trouble himself with this half-sister, although she lived in a suburb in the most wretched conditions, for even less than with other men loved Herr Bulemann communion with poor relatives. Only once, when after the death of her husband she bore at a late age a sickly child, did she come to him seeking help. Mrs. Anken, who let her in, had remained listening at the bottom of the stairs, and soon she heard from above the sharp voice of her master, until finally the door was ripped open and the woman came down the stairs crying. That same evening Mrs. Anken received strict orders not to draw the chain from the door in the future if Christine should, perhaps, come back again.

The old one began to be afraid more and more before the hooknose and piercing owl eyes of her master. If he called her name from the upper staircase bannister, or, as he was accustomed to do from ships, only gave a shrill whistle with his fingers, so she came, to be sure, creeping forth from whatever corner she was sitting in as fast as possible, and climbed up the narrow stairs groaning and babbling forth words of insult and lamentation.

Like in the third floor with Mr. Bulemann, so had Mrs. Anken also accumulated in the lower floors her not entirely legitimately acquired treasures.-Already in the first years of their life together she had been attacked by a kind of childish fear that her master might one day take over the business of the expenditure of the household money himself and she would, by the greed of him, have to suffer want even to her old days. To avert this, she lied to him; the price of wheat had risen, and soon demanded a corresponding additional sum for the bread ration. The cargo master, who had just begun his life expenses, scolding tore up his lifetime budget and then drew up anew his life time budget again and added to the weekly allowance the sum needed.– But Mrs. Anken, after she had achieved her purpose, had to protect her conscience and thought of the saying, "Licking is not stealing," now embezzled not the excess shillings received, but rather, on a regular basis now, purchased the wheat rolls with them, with which she, since Mr. Bulemann never entered the lower rooms, little by little stuffed her precious contents in the large empty walnut cabinets.

So about ten years elapsed. Mr. Bulemann became more gaunt and gray, his yellow-flowered dressing gown more threadbare. Days would often go by without his having to open his mouth to speak, for he saw no living creature other than his two cats and his old, half-childish housekeeper. Only on and then, when he heard the neighborhood kids ride down the curbstones in front of his home, would he stick his head out the window a little and scold down into the alley with his sharp voice, "Slave trader! Slave trader!" so the children screamed and scattered from each other. Mr. Bulemann cursed and swore but still more and more furiously, until he finally slammed the window shut and inside gave Graps and Schnorsuffer his anger.

To avoid any contact with neighbors, Mrs. Anken had to do her household shopping in the outlying streets for quite some time. She was allowed to go out only with the onset of darkness and then had to shut the door behind her.

It might have been eight days before Christmas, when the old woman had to leave the house again one evening for such a purpose. Despite her usual care, she had been guilty this time, however, of forgetfulness. For as Mr. Bulemann had just let a match burn his candle, he listened to his amazement a racket outside on the stairs, and when he came out with the light held before him into hallway, he saw his half-sister with a pale boy standing before him.

"How did you come into the house?" he addressed them imperiously, after which he stared surprised and furiously at them for a moment.

"The door was open below," the woman said timidly.

He muttered a curse upon his maid between his teeth. "What do you want?" He asked.

"Do not be so hard, brother," asked the woman, "I may not have the courage to talk to you."

"I do not know what you have to say to me. You've got your share. We're finished with each other."

The sister stood silently before him and sought in vain for the right words. –Inside the repeated scratching at the door was audible. When Mr. Bulemann leaned back and opened the door, the two big cats jumped out into the hallway and ran purring around the pale boy, who retreated from them to the wall. Their master looked impatiently at the woman still standing silently before him. "Now, will it be soon?" he asked.

"I wanted to ask you for something, Daniel," she began at last. "Your father had taken a few years before his death, when I was in dire need, a little silver cup as in pawn from me."

"My father from you?" asked Mr. Bulemann.

"Yes, Daniel, your father and the husband of both our mothers. Here is the pawn ticket. He did not give me much for it."

"Go on!" said Mr. Bulemann, who with a quick glance surveyed the empty hands of his sister.

"Some time ago," she continued timidly, "I dreamt that I went with my sick child in the churchyard. When we arrived at the grave of our mother, she sat on her gravestone under a bush full of blooming white roses. She had in her hand that little cup that I once as a child received as a gift from her, but when we were closer, she placed it to her lips, and while knowingly smiling at the boy, I distinctly heard her say: 'To health." - It was her gentle voice, Daniel, as in life, and this dream I dreamed three nights in succession."

"What is this?" asked Mr. Bulemann.

"Give me the cup back, brother! The Christmas feast is near; put it on the empty Christmas plate of the sick child.

The gaunt man in his yellow-flowered dressing gown stood motionless before her, and she looked round with his glaring eyes. "Do you have the money with you?" he asked. "With dreams you cannot redeem pawns."

"O Daniel," she cried, "think of our mother! He will be healthy if he drinks from that small cup. Be merciful, he is after all of your blood!"

She had her hands stretched out to him, but he took a step back. "Stay away from me," he said. Then he called to his cats. "Graps, old beast! Schnor, my little son!" And the big yellow cat leapt onto the arm of its master and clawed with its claws into the colorful stocking cap, while the black beast stretched itself up to his knees meowing.

The sick boy had crept closer. "Mother," he said, tugging strenuously at her dress, "is that the evil uncle, who sold his black children?"

But just at that moment Mr. Bulemann had thrown the cat off and seized the arm of the shrieking boy. "Damn brood of beggars," he cried, "So you also whistle that crazy song!"

"Brother, brother," wailed the woman. - But the boy was lying down below there whimpering on the staircase landing. His mother sprang towards him and took him gently in her arms but then she straightened herself up, and with the bleeding head of the child at her breast, she raised her fist up towards her brother, who stood up there at the stair railing between his purring cats. "Wicked, wicked man," she said. "May you be ruined by your beasts!"

"Curse as much as you want to," replied the brother, "but make sure you get out of the house."

Then, while the woman went down the dark stairs with the crying, he lured his cats and slammed the chamber door behind him. - He did not consider that the curses of the poor can be dangerous if the hardheartedness of the rich called them forth.

A few days later Mrs.Anken brought lunch into the room of her master as usual. But she squeezed her thin lips now more than usual, and her silly little eyes shined with pleasure. Because she had not forgotten the harsh words she suffered for her negligence that night, and she thought now to repay him again with interest.

"Did you hear St. Magdalene's ringing?" she asked.

"No," replied curtly Mr. Bulemann, who sat over his ledger.

"Do you know then what it has rung for?" asked the old woman again.

"Stupid nonsense! I do not listen to the tinkling."

"It was but for your sister's son!"

Mr. Bulemann laid down his pen. "What are you chattering, old woman?"

"I say," she replied, "that they have just buried the little Christopher."

Mr. Bulemann had already started writing again. "Why are you telling me this? What is the boy to me?"

"Well, I just thought, one talks about of course what news is happening in the city..."

When she was gone, Mr. Bulemann he put his quill away again and stepped with his hands behind his back up and down his room for a long time. If there was a noise in the street below, he went hastily to the window, as if he expected to see enter the civil servant who would summon him before the Council, should they cite him on account of the mistreatment of the boy. The black Graps, who, meowing demand for his share of the dished up food, got a kick that flew it howling into the corner. But was it now the hunger, or had the otherwise so submissive nature of the animal been unexpectedly changed; he turned against his master and flew hissing and snorting at him. Mr. Bulemann gave him a second kick. "Eat," he said. "You do not need to wait for me."

With one leap, the two cats were at the full bowl that he placed on the floor.

But then something strange happened.

As the yellow Schor, who had finished his meal first, stood now in the middle of the room, stretched himself, and arched his back, Mr. Bulemann suddenly stopped in front of him; then he walked around the animal and examined it from all sides. "Schnor, old scoundrel, what's that?" He said, stroking the tom cat's head. "You're still growing in your old age!" - At that moment the other cat sprang thereto. She bristled her shiny fur and then stood up high on her black legs. Mr. Bulemann pushed the colorful stocking cap from his forehead. "She, too," he muttered. "Strange, it must lie in the breed."

Meanwhile, it had become dark and since no one came and disturbed him, he sat down to the dishes that were on the table. Finally, he even began inspect his big cats, who sat beside him on the sofa, with a certain pleasure. "A pair of splendid guys you are!" he said, nodding to them. "Now the old woman below will no longer have to poison the rats!"- After he went into his neighboring bedroom that evening he didn't let them in as he otherwise had; and when that night he heard them with their paws falling against the chamber door and sliding them underneath it meowing, he pulled the comforter over his two ears and thought, "Meow on! I've seen your claws."

Then came the next day and when it became noon, the same thing happened that had happened the day before. From the emptied bowl the cats jumped up with a heavy leap into the middle of the room, extended themselves, and when Mr. Bulemann, who was back on his ledger, cast a glance at them, he pushed back his chair in horror and remained standing with a sprained neck. There, with a quiet whimper, as if something terrible would be done to them, Graps and Schnor stood trembling with curled tails, their hair bristling; he saw clearly that they became bigger and bigger.

One more moment he stood, hands clasped on the table, and then suddenly he strode past the animals and threw open the parlor door. "Mrs. Anken, Mrs. Anken!" he cried, and since she seemed not to hear, he whistled with his fingers, and soon the old woman shuffled out of the back of the house below and panted up the stairs, one after another.

"Look at the cats," he cried as she entered the room.

"Which I've seen many times before, Mr. Bulemann."

"So you see nothing?"

"That I don't know, Mr. Bulemann" she replied with her silly, blinking eyes.

"What kind of animals are these? They are no longer cats!"- He grabbed the old woman's arms and crashed her against the wall. "Red-eyed witch," he cried, "confess what you've brewed up for my cats!"

The woman clutched her bony hands together and began to babble forth with unintelligible prayers. But the terrible cats jumped from the right and left onto the shoulders of her master and licked him with their sharp tongues on his face. Therefore he had to let the old woman go.

Continually chattering, and coughing, she slipped out of the room and crept down the stairs. She was afraid - whether more by her master or more by the large cats, she herself did not know. So she came back into her room. With trembling hands she pulled a woolen stocking stuffed with money out of her bed, then she took from a chest a load from a number of old skirts and rags and wrapped it around her treasure, so that finally it was a large bundle. At that point she wanted to go, to go at any price. She thought of the poor half-sister of her master out in the suburbs; she who had always been kind to her, to her she wished to go. Of course, it was a long way, through many streets, over many long and narrow bridges, crossed over dark canals and waterways, and outside dusk was already falling over the winter evening. Nevertheless, she continued. Without thinking of her thousands of bread rolls, which she had piled up in childish care in the large walnut cabinets, she stepped out of the house with a heavy bundle on her neck. She locked carefully the heavy oak door with the big, intricate key, put it in her leather bag, and then went out into the dark city. -

Mrs. Anken never returned, and the door to Bulemann's house has never again been unlocked.

That same day, however, after she went away, a young hooligan who had been running about the houses playing Knecht Ruprecht, he told his comrades with laughter, because, as he was going in his rough fur coat over the Krezentius Bridge, he had an old woman so frightened that she leaped as if insane into the dark water with her bundle. - Also, in the morning the next morning the corpse of an old woman who was tied firmly with a large bundle was fished up by the watchmen in the outermost suburbs and thereafter, because no one knew her, she was buried in a plain coffin in the pauper section of the local cemetery.

This next morning was the morning of Christmas Eve. - Mr. Bulemann had had a bad night, the scratching and working of the animals against his chamber door this time gave him now no rest; only towards dawn did he fall into a long, leaden sleep. When he finally stuck his head with the pointed cap into the living room, he saw the two cats purring loudly and walking with restless steps around each other. It was already after noon, the clock pointed to one. "They have gotten hungry, those beasts," he muttered.

Then he opened the door to the hallway and whistled for the old woman. At the same time the cats thrust out and ran down the stairs, and soon he heard from the kitchen below jumping and dish rattling. They must have jumped on the cupboard where Mrs. Anken kept the food for the next day.

Mr. Bulemann stood on top of the stairs and cried loudly and scoldingly after Mrs. Anken, but only silence answered him from below or a weak echo below upward from the corners of the old house. He had already clapped the sides of his flowered dressing gown over each other and wanted to go down himself, but then there was a rumble down there on the stairs, and the two cats came running up again. But these were no more cats; they were two terrible, nameless predators. They positioned themselves towards him, looked at him with their smoldering eyes and let out a hoarse yell. He wanted to walk by them, but a strike with a claw that ripped a shred from his dressing gown drove him back. He ran into the room; he wanted to tear open a window to call the people on the street, but the cat jumped after him and got in front of him first. Ferociously purring, with tails held high, they walked up and down in front of the windows. Mr. Bulemann ran out into the hallway and slammed the door behind him, but the cats fought with their paws on the door handle and stood before him on the stairs. - Again, he fled back into the room, and again there were the cats.

The day already disappeared, and darkness crept into all corners. Deep below from the street he heard singing; boys and girls went from house to house singing Christmas carols. They went to every door; he stood and listened. Would no one come to his door? – But he knew the answer was yes, he had driven them all away himself; nobody knocked, no one shook the locked door as they passed by, and gradually it was quiet, deathly quiet in the street. And again he tried to escape, he wanted to use force, he wrestled with the animals, and he let his face and hands get torn bloody.

Then he turned to trickery; he called them with the old pet names, he stroke sparks out of their fur and even dared to stroke their flat heads with the big white teeth. They thus threw themselves in front of him and rolled purring at his feet, but when he thought that the right moment had come, he slipped out the door, and they jumped up and stood before him, uttering their hoarse cry. Thus passed the night, so the day came, and still he ran between the stairs and the windows of his room to and fro, wringing his hands, panting, his gray hair disheveled.

And twice the day and night alternated, when at last he threw himself, completely exhausted, quivering in every limb, on the sofa. The cats sat down opposite him and blinked sleepily at him through half-closed eyes. Gradually the functioning of his body lessened, and finally it stopped completely. Pallor appeared on his face under the stubble of the gray beard, breathing out one more time he stretched his arms and spread his long fingers over his knees, and then never moved again.

Downstairs in the deserted rooms, however, it was not quiet. Outside the door in the back of the house, which also leads out to the narrow courtyard, there was an industrious gnawing and eating. Finally emerged over the threshold of an opening, which became larger and larger, a gray mouse head, pushed its way through, then another, and soon a whole swarm of mice scurried down the vestibule and up the stairs to the first floor. Here the work was started again at the door to the room, and when this was gnawed through, they came to the big cabinets in which lay hoarded up Mrs. Ankens' left-behind treasures. There was life like in paradise; whoever wanted only had to eat it.

And the vermin began to fill their bellies, and when they no longer wanted to continue eating, they curled up their tails and napped in the holes eaten into the bread rolls. At night they came, scurrying across the planks, or sat before the window and looked, if the moon was shining, down into the street with their little shiny eyes.

But this cozy business soon had to reach its end. On the third night, just as Mr. Bulemann had closed his eyes above, there was a racket on the stairs outside. The big cats came leaping towards it, opened with a blow of their paws the door of the room and began their hunt. Then the majesty came to an end. The fat mice ran around squeaking and wheezing, striving helplessly to get up the walls. It was in vain; they died one after another between the crushing teeth of the two predators.

Then it grew silent, and soon in the whole house nothing was audible but the quiet purring of the big cats, which with outstretched paws lay before their master's room and licked the blood from their whiskers.

Below on the house door the lock rusted, tarnish covered the brass knocker, and grass began to grow between the stone stairs.

But outside the world went its course unconcerned. When summer came, a little white rosebush appeared on the grave of little Christopher at the churchyard of St. Mary Magdalene, and soon a small memorial stone lay under it. His mother had planted the rose bush for him; she of course had not procured the stone. But Christopher had a friend, a young musician and the son of a pawnbroker, who lived in the house opposite of him. At first he would slip under the window whenever the musician sat inside at the piano; later he would take him occasionally to the Church of Magdalene, where he used to practice playing the organ in the afternoon. – There the pale boy sat on a little stool at his feet, he leaned his head on the organ bench listening to the organ and watched as the sunlight played through the church window. If the young musician got carried away by the development of his themes, letting the deep powerful organ stops to sound through the vaults, or if he sometimes drew the tremolo-stops and the tones flooded out as if trembling before the majesty of God, so it could well happen that the boy broke out in quiet sobs and his friend was only able with great difficulty to calm him down. Once he said pleadingly, "It hurts me, Leberecht. Do not play so loud!"

The organ player shoved in immediately again the large organ stops and laid hold of the flutes and other soft voices, and the boy's favorite song "Entrust Your Way" swelled sweetly and touchingly through the still church. – With his ailing voice he began to sing softly along. "I also want to learn to play," he said when the organ was silent. "Will you teach me, Leberecht?'

The young musician dropped his hand on the boy's head, and stroking the blond hair, he replied: "First get really healthy, Christopher, and I will gladly teach you."

But Christopher did not get healthy. - The young musician, at the side of his mother, followed his little coffin. They spoke together for the first time here, and the mother told him about the dream she dreamed three times about the small sliver heirloom cup.

"The cup," Leberecht said, "I could have given to you; my father, who many years ago made a deal for it, along with many other things, from your brother, gave me the dainty piece once as a Christmas present."

The woman burst into the most bitter laments. "Oh," she cried again, "he would have certainly become healthy!"

The young man walked a while in silence by her side. "Our Christopher should still have the cup yet," he said finally.

And so it happened. After a few days he had negotiated a very good price from a collector of such valuables for the cup; from the money he let be made the monument for the grave of little Christopher. On it he inserted a little marble plague that was chiseled with the image of the cup. Underneath were words engraved, "To good health!"

Throughout the many years, whether the snow might lie over the grave or whether the bush might be, in the June sun, overflowing with roses, a pale woman often came and read attentively and thoughtfully the two words on the gravestone. Then one summer she did not come again, but the world went unconcerned on its course.

Only once, after many years, did a very old man visit the grave, he had looked at the small memorial stone and broken off a white rose from the old rose bush. That was the organist emeritus of St. Mary Magdalene.

But we must leave the child's peaceful grave and, if the report should be completed, must cast another glance over there in the city into the old bay-windowed house of the dismal street. –It still stood there silent and closed. While outside life flooded over incessantly, inside the enclosed spaces mushrooms had grown luxuriously out of the floorboard cracks, and the plaster on the ceiling loosened and fell down, and rushing eerie echoes over the hallways and stairs on lonely nights. The children, who had sung on that Christmas night in the street, lived now as old people in their homes, or they had already finished with their lives and had died, the people who were now walking in the street wore different clothing, and out on the suburban churchyard was the black numbered stake on Frau Ankens' nameless grave long ago rotted away. And then one night, as had happened so often, the full moon shined over the neighbor's house across into the bay window on the third floor and delineated with its bluish light the small round panes onto the floor.

The room was empty; curled only on the sofa sat a small figure crouched together the size of a year-old child, but the face was old and bearded and the skinny nose disproportionately large; it wore also a stocking cap falling far over the ears and a certain, long dressing obviously intended for a grown man, on which he had drawn up his feet to the area for the lap.

This figure was Mr. Bulemann. - The hunger had not killed him, but by the lack of food, his body dried up and shriveled, so he had over the years become smaller and smaller. He was awaken sometimes on full moon nights like this and had, if also with weakening strength, tried to escape from his guards. Had he sunk exhausted from the fruitless efforts onto the couch, or finally crept up there, and then had the leaden sleep seize him, Graps and Schnor would stretch on the stairs outside, whipping their tails on the floor and listening to whether Mrs. Anken's treasures had attracted new migrations of mice into the house.

Today it was different; the cats were neither in the room nor even outside in the hallway. When the moonlight, falling through the window, rose up across the floor and gradually to the little figure, it began to stir; the big, round eyes opened, and Mr. Bulemann stared into the empty room. After a while he slip down from the sofa, throwing back the long sleeves and laboriously and slowly stepped to the door, while the broad back of his dressing gown swept behind him. Drawing on his tiptoes for the door handle, he was able to open the room door and to stride forth up to the railing of the stairs. For a while he remained standing, panting; then he stretched out his head and struggled to shout: "Mrs. Anken, Mrs. Anken!" but his voice was like the whisper of a sick child. "Mrs. Anken, I am hungry. Hear me!"

Everything was quiet; only the mice squeaked vigorously now in the lower rooms.

This made him angry. "Cursed witch, what do you whistle, then?" and a torrent of incomprehensible whispered insults flowed from his mouth, until a cough seized him and paralyzed his tongue.

Outside, down at the front door, the heavy brass knocker was struck so the sound pressed upwards to the top of the house. It might have been that nocturnal fellow, who was mentioned in the beginning of this story.

Mr. Bulemann had recovered. "So but open it," he whispered; "It is the boy Christopher. He wants to take the cup."

Suddenly from below upward became audible, amongst the squealing of the mice, the leaping and snarling of the two big cats. He seemed to recollect himself; for the first time at his awakening they had left the top floor and had left him alone. - Hastily, the long dressing gown dragging after him, he trudged back into the room.

Outside, from the depths of the street he heard the watchman calling. "A man, a man!" he muttered, "The night is so long, so many times have I awoken, and yet the moon is always shining."

He climbed up onto the upholstered chair that stood in the bay window. He worked diligently with his small withered hands on the hooks of the window, because down there on the moonlit street he had seen the guard stand. But the hinges were rusted shut, and he struggled in vain to open them. Then he saw the man who had stared up a while step back into the shadows of the houses.

A faint cry broke from his mouth, trembling, with clenched fists he beat against the windowpanes, but his strength was not enough to shatter it. Now whispering to the other he began to beg and promise indiscriminately; gradually, while the figure of the man walking below became more and more distant, his hoarse whisper became a hoarse croak; he wanted to share his treasure with him; if he would only have heard, he could have it all, since he himself wanted nothing, absolutely nothing to keep to himself; only the cup, which was the property of little Christopher.

But the man below went his way unconcerned, and soon he vanished in the next street. - Of all the words spoken by Mr. Bulemann that night, none had been heard by a human soul.

Finally, after all the futile efforts of the small figure crouched up together on the upholstered chair, he straightened his pointed cap and looked up into the empty night sky, muttering unintelligible words.

So he sits even now and awaits God's mercy.

The Rain Maiden

There had not been such a hot summer, not for a hundred years. Almost no green was to be seen; domestic and wild animals lay languishing in the fields.

It was on a morning. The village streets were empty; whoever could, fled into the interior of the houses. Even the yapping dog had hidden himself. Only the fat meadow farmer stood imperiously in the gateway to his stately house and smoked in the sweat of his brow from the bowl of his large Meerschaum pipe. He looked smiling at a mighty load of hay that his servants had brought into the entry. – He had acquired a significant expanse of marshy meadowland years ago at a low price, and the recent dry years, which scorched the grass in the fields of his neighbors, supplied his barns with fragrant hay and filled his chests with Kronentalers.

He stood now and figured what, with the ever-rising prices, the excess crop might bring him. "They all get nothing," he muttered as he shaded his eyes with his hand and looked between the neighboring farmsteads in the shimmering distance. "There is no more rain in the world." Then he went to the wagon that was just being unloaded, pulled out a handful of hay, raised it to his broad nose, and smiled slyly, as if he could smell some of the coins from its strong fragrance.

At the same moment a woman around fifty years old stepped in the house. She looked pale and ill, and with the black silk handkerchief that she placed around her neck the troubled expression on her face stood out even more. "Good day, neighbor," she said as she reached out her hand to the meadow farmer's, "It is so hot that the hairs catch fire on one's head!"

"Let it burn, Mother Stine, let it burn," he replied. "Just look at the load of hay! For me it can not be too bad!"

"Yes, yes, meadow farmer, you can really laugh, but what should become of us if this keeps continuing!"

The farmer pressed with his thumbs the ashes in his pipe bowl and expelled a couple of clouds of enormous smoke into the air. "You see," said he, "it comes from overthinking. I always said it, but your late husband wanted to better understand everything. Why did he need to exchange all his lowland! Now you're sitting there with the high fields where your seeds withered and your cattle wasted away."

The woman sighed.

The fat man was suddenly condescending. "But, Mother Stine," he said, "I notice already you didn't come hither by chance in particular; fire away what you have on your mind!"

The widow looked down at the ground. "You know well," she said, "the fifty talers you loaned me to pay back John, the due date is approaching."

The farmer put his meaty hand on her shoulder. "Now you need not worry, woman! I don't need the money; I'm not a man who lives from hand to mouth. You can pledge your land to me; it is not among the best, but for now it should be good enough for me. On Saturday you can go with me to the court administrator."

The distressed woman sighed. "It will mean more expenses," she said, "but thank you for that anyway."

The meadow farmer did not let his little shrewd eyes leave from her. "And," he continued, "since we are here together again, I also want to tell you that Andrew, your boy, is pursuing my daughter!"

"Dear God, neighbor, the kids grew up together!"

"That may be, woman, but if the chap thinks that he can marry himself into the whole farm business here he's made his reckoning without me!"

The poor woman sat up a little and looked at him with almost angry eyes. "What fault do you find with my Andrew?"

"I to your Andrew, Frau Stine? – Nothing in the world! But," and he ran his hand over the silver buttons of his red waistcoat, "my daughter is only my daughter, and the meadow farmer's daughter could do better."

"Don't be so obstinate," the woman said mildly, "before the hot years came --!"

"But they came and are still here, and for this year there is no chance you'll get a crop into the barn. And so your farm business is going further and further backwards."

The woman sank deep in thought; she seemed to scarcely hear the last words. "Yes," she said, "you might be right, the Rain Maiden must have fallen asleep, but – she can be awoken!"

"The Rain Maiden?" repeated the farmer stiffly. "Do you believe in that drivel?"

"No drivel, neighbor!" she replied mysteriously. "My great grandmother, when she was young, once woke her up. She still knew the spell and would often tell it to me, but I have since forgotten it."

The fat man laughed so that the silver buttons on his belly danced. "Now, Mother Stine, so sit down and focus on your little spell. I rely on my weather barometer, and it has been continuing fine for eight weeks!"

"That weather glass is a dead thing, neighbor; it can not make the weather."

"And your Rain Maiden is a haunted thing, a pipe dream, a nothing!"

"Well, meadow farmer," said the woman shyly, "you are one of the new believers!"

But the man became more and more zealous. "New – or old belief!" he shouted, "go in search of your rain woman and speak your little spell, if you can get it together. And if you make rain within a day and twenty-four hours, then--!" He paused and puffed a few thick clouds of smoke before himself.

"What then, neighbor?" asked the woman.

"Then – then – to the devil, yes, your son Andrew and my Maren shall marry!"

At this moment the door to the living room opened, and a beautiful, slim girl with fawn-colored eyes stepped out to him on the passage way. "Agreed, father" she said, "that should do!" And turning to an elderly man who had just entered a house from the street, she added, "You heard it, Cousin Mayor!"

"Now, now, Maren," said the meadow farmer, "you don't need to call up a witness against your father, from my mouth to you, a mouse could not bite off a small fragment."

The mayor looked out into the open daylight, meanwhile, leaning on his long cane; and his sharp eye saw a white dot floating in the depths of the glowing sky, or he wished it only and therefore believed he had seen it, and smiled guilefully and said, "May it do you good, dear meadow farmer, that Andrew is always a hearty lad!"

Soon thereafter, while the meadow farmer and the mayor were sitting together in the former's living room over bills, Maren walked to the other side of the village street with Mother Stine into her little chamber.

"But child," said the widow as she took her spinning wheel out of the corner, "do you know the spell for the Rain Maiden?"

"Me?" asked the girl, throwing her head back in astonishment.

"Well, I only thought because you so boldly confronted your father."

"Not yet, Mother Stine, only it was in my heart, and I also thought you yourself would get it still together. Tidy up a bit in your head; I'm sure it must be lying cast aside somewhere!"

Mrs. Stine shook her head. "My great-grandmother died when I was young. But this I remember well, when we had the great drought, like now, and disaster struck us with the seeds or the livestock, then they would all certainly used to secretly say, 'What the Fire Man is doing to us is a hoax, because I at once woke the Rain Maiden!"

"The Fire Man?" asked the girl. "Who is that again?" But before she could get an answer, she already sprang to the window and shouted, "Oh God, Mother, here comes Andrew; only look, how downcast he appears!"

The widow rose from her spinning wheel, "Of course, child," she said disheartened. "Don't you see what he's carrying on his back? It is already one of the sheep dead from thirst."

So the young farmer came into the room and laid the dead animal on the floor in front of the women. "There you have it," he said grimly as he stroked the sweat from his hot forehead with his hand.

The women looked more at his face than at the dead creature. "Don't take it to heart, Andrew!" said Maren. "We will wake the Rain Maiden, and then all will become good again."

"The Rain Maiden!" he repeated flatly. "Yeah, Maren, who could wake her! – But it's not just this alone; something else happened to me outside."

The mother tenderly clutched his hand. "So tell me, dear son," she urged, "so it doesn't make you faint!"

"So listen then!" he replied. "I wanted to see after our sheep and whether the water that I carried up to them yesterday evening had not yet evaporated. But when I came to the pasture I saw at once that something was not right. The water tub was not where I put it, and the sheep were not to be seen. I went down the ridge up to the giant hill. When I reached the other side I saw them all lying, panting, with their necks outstretched. The poor creature here was already dead. Nearby lay the tub overturned and already completely dry. The animals couldn't have done it. A malicious hand must have played a role here."

"Child, child," the mother interrupted him, "who would add sorrow to a poor widow!"

"Listen now, Mother, there's even more. "I climbed the hill and looked in all directions over the plain, but no man could be seen. The burning heat lay as on all the other days silently over the fields. Just near me, on one of the large stones, between which the small cave goes into the hill, sat a salamander sunning its ugly body. As I stared around me, half perplexed, half angrily, I heard behind me all at once a muttering from the other side of the hill, like someone eagerly talking to himself, and when I turned around I saw a gnarled little man in a fire-red coat and red pointed cap down between the heather trudging up and down. – I was frightened, when it suddenly approached! – And it looked so evil and deformed. Its big brown-red hands were folded behind his back, with his crooked fingers playing in the air like spider legs. I stepped behind the thorn bush that grew beside the stones on the hill and could see everything there without being seen. The monstrosity below was still down there in movement. It bent down and pulled a bunch of singed grass from the ground, that I thought it must have plunged headfirst with its pumpkin head. But then it stood again on its pin legs, and while it rubbed the dry weeds into powder with its big fists it began to laugh so terribly that on the other side of the hill the half-dead sheep sprang up and in wild flight fled down behind the bank. The little man laughed then even more shrilly, and it began to spring from one leg to another, such that I feared that the little sticks would collapse under its chunky body. It was gruesome to behold, as sparks really leapt neatly out of its little black eyes."

The widow had quietly taken the girl's hand.

"Do you know now who the Fire Man is?" she said. Maren nodded.

"But the mostly horribly gruesome thing," Andrew continued, "was his voice. 'If only they knew, if only they knew!' he screamed, 'those louts, those yokels!' And then he sang with his rasping, squeaking voice a strange little verse, always repeating it, as if he couldn't get enough of it. But wait, I am getting it together!"

After a few moments he continued:

"No rain! No dew! Just woes.

No spring, not one, still flows."

The mother suddenly left the spinning wheel, which she had been turning eagerly during the story, and looked at her son with wide-open eyes. But he became silent again and seemed to reflect.

"More," she said quietly.

"I don't know more, mother. It's gone, and I recited it to myself a hundred times along the way."

But when Mrs. Stine continued with an unsure voice:

"The woods now silence knows,

in fields the Fire Man sows!"

He then added quickly:

"Open your eyes to sight!

And look to left and right!

Or mom will grab you tight

And take you home tonight!"

"That's the Rain Maiden's spell!" cried Mrs. Stine, "And now quickly once more! And you, Maren, pay attention as well so that it doesn't get forgotten again!"

And now the mother and son said it again together and without hesitation:

"No rain! No dew! Just woes.

No spring, not one, still flows.

The woods now silence knows

in fields the Fire Man sows!

"Open your eyes to sight!

And look to left and right!

Or mom will grab you tight

And take you home tonight!"

"Now all our problems have an end!" cried Maren. "Now we will awaken the Rain Maiden; tomorrow the fields will all be green again, and the day after tomorrow there will be a wedding!" And with flying words and shining eyes she told her Andrew the promises she had won from her father.

"Child," said the widow further, "do you know the way to the Rain Maiden?"

"No, Mother Stine. Do you also not know the way anymore?"

"But, Maren, it was my great grandmother who went to the Rain Maiden; about the way there she never said anything."

"Well, Andrew," said Maren and grabbed the arm of the young farmer, who meanwhile had been staring with furrowed brow. "Say something! You always have good advice!"

"Perhaps once again I have some," he said thoughtfully. "This afternoon I need to carry water up to the sheep. Maybe I can eavesdrop on the Fire Man behind the thorn bush again! If he revealed the spell, he'll reveal the way as well, for his thick head seems to overflow with these things."

And this decision remained. As much as they talked back and forth, they could not think up anything better.

Soon thereafter Andrew was with his load of water up there on the pasture. When he came near the giant hill he already saw the goblin from afar sitting on one of the stones at the dwarf hole. He combed his red beard with his five extended fingers; and every time he pulled out his hand, a little heap of fiery flakes came out and floated in the harsh sunshine onto the fields.

"You arrived too late," Andrew thought, "you won't learn anything today," and turned sideways as if he had seen nothing, turning to the spot where the overturned tub still lay. But he was hailed. "I thought you wanted to speak to me!" he heard the squeaking voice of the goblin behind him.

Andrew turned around and took a few steps back. "What do I have to say to you?" he replied. "I don't know you."

"But you'd like to know the way to the Rain Maiden?"

"Who told you that?"

"My little finger, and it is smarter than many a big guy."

Andrew gathered his courage and walked a few steps closer up to the monstrosity on the hill. "Your little finger may indeed be smart," he said, "but it doesn't know the way to the Rain Maiden, because not even the wisest people know."

The goblin swelled out like a toad and drew his paw several times through his beard, that Andrew staggered back a step from the outpouring heat. But suddenly, staring at the young farmer with the expression of superior derision from his evil little eyes, he snarled at him, "You're too simple, Andrew. If I told you that the Rain Maiden lives beyond the great forest, you also wouldn't know that beyond the forest a hollow willow stands!"

"Here it will pay to play the fool!" thought Andrew, for although he was otherwise an honest farmer, he also got a good portion of the farmer's shrewdness towards the world as well. "You're right," he said and opened his mouth, "I would certainly not know that!"

"And," the goblin continued, "if I told you told you that beyond the forest the hollow willow stood, you also wouldn't know that in the tree a staircase leads down to the garden of the Rain Maiden."

"How one can indeed miscalculate," Andrew cried. "I thought one could walk in directly."

"And if you also could walk in directly," the goblin said, "you also wouldn't know that the Rain Maiden can only be awoken by a pure virgin."

"Now of course," Andrew thought, "that doesn't help me at all. Therefore I will place myself immediately back on the path home."

A malicious smile twisted the wide mouth of the goblin. "Don't you want to pour the water into the tub?" he asked. "The beautiful animals are nearly wasted away."

"That's the fourth time your right!" replied the lad and went with his buckets around the hill. As he poured the water into the hot tub, it hit hissing up and dissipated into the air in white clouds of steam. "Oh great!" he thought, "I'll drive my sheep back home, and at the earliest tomorrow I'll accompany Maren to the Rain Maiden. She should be able to awaken her!"

On the other side of the hill the goblin jumped from his stones. He threw his red cap in the air and raved with whinnying laughter down the mountain. He then sprang again on his scrawny spindle legs, danced about like mad, and screamed with his screeching voice once over and over, "That overgrown child, that farmer thought that he could dupe me and doesn't know that the maiden can only be awoken by the right spell. And no one knows the spell like Eckeneckenpen, and Eckeneckenpen – is me!"

The evil goblin did not know that he had himself betrayed the spell that morning.

On the sunflowers, standing before Maren's room in the garden, the first morning rays fell, as she already opened up the window and stuck her head out into the fresh air. The meadow farmer, who slept in the alcove of the living room, must have been awaken thereby, because his snoring, which had just been penetrating through all the walls, suddenly stopped. "What are you doing, Maren?" he called with a sleepy voice. "Is there something wrong?" The girl put her finger to her lips, for she knew well that if her father knew of her intentions, she would not be let out of the house. But she composed herself quickly. "I couldn't sleep, father," she called back. "I want to go with the people into the field; it is so beautifully fresh this morning."

"There's no need for that, Maren," replied the farmer, "my daughter is no servant!" And after a while he added, "Well, if it pleases you! But come back home at the right time, before the big heat comes. And don't forget my breakfast!" He threw himself to the other side, so that the bedstead creaked, and at the moment the girl heard again the well-known, measured snoring.

She gently pushed her chamber door. As she went through the doorway outside she heard the servant awaken the two maids. "It's so shameful," she thought, "that you have to lie, but" – and she sighed a little – "what doesn't one do for one's sweetheart."

Outside in his Sunday best stood Andrew already waiting for her. "Do you still know the spell?" he called out to her.

"Yes, Andrew! And do you still know the way?"

He just nodded.

"So let's go!" But just then Mother Stine came out of the house and stuck a bottle filled with mead in her son's pocket. "This is still from my great grandmother," she said, "she always did very mysterious and valuable things with it that will do you good in the heat!"

They then went in the morning light down the quiet village street, and the widow stood a long time and looked in the direction where the young vigorous figures disappeared.

The couple's path led behind the village border over a wide heath. After that they came into the great forest. But the forest's leaves lay mostly dried on the ground, so that the sun shined through everywhere; they were almost blinded by the alternating light. Once they had advanced for a considerable time between the tall trunks of the oaks and beeches, the girl took the hand of the young man.

"What's wrong, Maren?" he asked.

"I heard our village clock strike, Andrew."

"Yeah, me too."

"It must be six o'clock!" he said further. "Who's going to cook breakfast for father? The maids are all in the field."

"I don't know, Maren, but that can't be helped."

"No," she said, "that can't be helped. But do you still know our spell?"

"Of course, Maren!

"No rain! No dew! Just woes.  
No spring, not one, still flows."

And when he hesitated for a moment, she said quickly:

"The woods now silence knows

in fields the Fire Man sows!"

"Oh," she cried, "how the sun burns!"

"Yeah," Andrew said and rubbed his cheek, "It's really giving me a regular sunstroke."

Finally they came out of the forest, and there, a few steps in front of them, also stood the old willow tree. The might trunk was completely hollowed, and the darkness that prevailed within seemed to lead deep into the abyss of the earth. Andrew climbed down first alone while Maren leaned on the hollow of the tree and tried to look after him. But soon she saw nothing more of him, only the sound of descending steps struck in her ear. She began to become worried, above around her it was so lonely, and from below she finally heard no more sound. She stuck her head deep in the hollow and called, "Andrew! Andrew!" But it remained silent, and she called once more, "Andrew!" After some time it seemed to her as if she heard from below a coming back up, and she gradually recognized the voice of the young man whose voice she called and held the hand which he held out to her. "It leads down a flight of stairs," he said, "but it's steep and crumbling, and who knows how deep below to the bottom it is!"

Maren was startled. "Don't be afraid," he said, "I'll carry you. I have a sure foot." He then lifted the slender girl on his wide shoulders, and as she put her arms around his neck he climbed cautiously with her into the depths. Thick darkness surrounded them, but Maren still breathed a sigh of relief while she was carried down step by step at a snail's pace; then it was cool in the bowels of the earth. Not a sound from above came down to them; only once did they hear muffled by a distance the dull roar of the underground water that was vainly working to raise itself up to the light.

"What was that?" whispered the girl.

"I don't know, Maren."

"But is there no end?"

"It almost doesn't seem so."

"Maybe the goblin cheated you!"

"I don't think so, Maren."

So they climbed deeper and deeper. Finally they detected below them again the glimmer of sunlight, which was illuminating with every step; but at the same time a suffocating heat rose up on them.

Once they stepped on the lowest step into the open, they saw a completely unknown region before them. Maren looked around baffled. "But the sun is still shining as usual!" she said finally.

"It's not the least bit cooler," Andrew said while lifting the girl to the ground.

From the place where they found themselves, on a broad paved roadway, ran an avenue of old willows out into the distance. They pondered not long, but went as the way indicated to them, along between the rows of trees. When they looked to one or the other side, they saw a deserted, boundless low-laying plain that was torn apart by all kinds of gullies and depressions, as it consisted of an endless tangle of abandoned lake and stream beds. This seemed to be affirmed by an oppressive fume, like that of a dried reed, that filled the air. There positioned between the shadows of the separately standing trees such a fervor that it seemed to the two wayfarers as if they saw little white flames fly onward on the dusty road. Andrew must have thought of the flakes from the goblin's fire-beard. Once it even seemed to him that he saw two dark eye circles in the bright sunshine; then he clearly believed to hear the frenzied leaps of the spindle legs. Soon it was on the left, soon on the right of his side. But when he turned, he could see nothing; only the white-hot air trembled, sparkling and dazzling before his eyes. "Yes," he thought as he took the girl's hand, and they both walked laboriously forward, "you make us sore, but you're not winning today!"

On and on they went, one listening to the heavier and heavier breathing of the other. The monotonous path seemed to have no end; beside them the unending gray, half-defoliated willows, sideways aside them here and there among those eerie, fuming lowlands.

Suddenly Maren stood and leaned with closed eyes on the trunk of a willow. "I can go no further," she murmured, "the air is pure fire."

There Andrew thought of the bottle of mead that they had until then left untouched. – When he pulled off the plug, a fragrance spread, as if there rose to bloom again a thousand flowers from whose chalices perhaps more than a hundred years ago the bees had carried together the honey for this drink. No sooner had the girl's lips touched the edge of the bottle then her eyes already cracked open. "Oh," she called, "on what beautiful meadow are we?"

"On no meadow, Maren, but just drink; it will strengthen you!"

As she drank she straightened up and looked with bright eyes around her. "Drink once, too," she said, "a woman is such a miserable creation!"

"But that is a genuine drop!" said Andrew, after he had also tasted it. Heaven only knows from what the great-grandmother brewed this!"

Then they went further, strengthened and chatting cheerfully. But after a while the girl stayed still again. "What's wrong, Maren?" Andrew asked.

"Oh nothing. I only thought—"

"Yeah, Maren?"

"Do you see, Andrew! My father still has half the hay out in the meadows, and I go out and want to make it rain!"

"Your father is a rich man, Maren, but the rest of us have our little scraps of hay in the barn and all our grain is still on the dry stalks."

"Yes, Yes, Andrew, you're right; one must think of others!" After a while she added in silence to herself, "Maren, Maren, you're making self-justifying rationalizations; you are doing everything because of your sweetheart!"

So they again for a while continued on, but the girl suddenly said, "What is this? Where are we? It is a large, gigantic garden!"

And indeed they had arrived, without knowing how, out of the monotonous willow avenue into a large park. From the wide, now of course scorched lawn, rose everywhere groups of large, magnificent trees. Although their foliage had partly fallen or hung withered and limp on the branches, the bold structure of the branches still strove to the sky and the mighty roots still spread themselves far out over the earth. An abundance of flowers, such as the two had never seen before, covered the ground here and there; but all of these flowers were wilted and fragrantless and seemed to have been, during the height of their flowering, hit by the deadly heat.

"I think we are in the right place!" Andrew said.

Maren nodded, "You must now stay here until I come back."

"Of course," he replied as he stretched out in the shade of a large oak. "The rest is now your affair! Hold fast to your spell and don't misspeak it!"

So she then went on over the wide lawn and under the heaven-reaching trees, and soon the one left behind saw nothing more of her. But she walked on and through the solitude. Soon the groups of trees ceased, and the ground sank. She recognized well that she was traveling into the dried bed of a body of water; white sand and pebbles covered the ground, among which dead fish lay and flashed their silver scales in the sun. In the middle of the basin she saw a gray, foreign bird stand; it appeared to her to be like a heron, but it was so much bigger that its head, if it held it erect, must have towered above that of a human. Now it had laid its long neck between the wings and appeared to sleep. Maren was afraid. Besides the motionless, eerie bird no living creature was visible, not even the buzzing of a fly interrupted the silence; the silence lay like a horror over this place. For a moment fear pushed her to call for her lover, but she dared not repeat it, because to hear the sound of her own voice in this deserted place seemed still more terrible than anything else.

So she fixed her eyes firmly on the distance, where a dense cluster of trees again seemed to rise from the ground, and stepped further, without looking to the right or left. The large bird did not move as she walked passed it with quiet steps, only for a moment did the black under its white eyelids flash out. – She breathed out a sigh of relief. – After that she walked a long distance, where the lakebed narrowed into the channel of a moderate stream that led on under a broad group of Linden trees. The branches of these mighty trees were so dense, that despite the lack of foliage no sunbeam could penetrate through.

Maren went further into this channel, the sudden coolness around her, the high dark clouds of the treetops over her; it almost appeared to her as if she went through a church. But suddenly her eyes were struck by a blinding light; the trees ceased, and before her stood a gray rock on which burned the most glaring sun.

Maren stood herself in an empty, sandy basin into which a waterfall might once have hurled down over the rocks, which then had its outlet through the channel to the now evaporated lake downstream. She searched with her eyes where the path led up between the cliffs. But she was suddenly startled. For that there at half the height of the precipice could not be part of the rock; even if it were as gray and rigid as those in the motionless air, but soon she recognized that it was a garment which covered in folds a sleeping figure. – With bated breath she stepped closer. There she saw clearly; it was a beautiful, powerful feminine figure. The head lay sunken back deep on the rock; the blond hair, which flowed down to the waist, was full of dust and dry leaves. Maren looked carefully at it. "She must have been very beautiful," she thought, "before those cheeks became so slack and those eyes so sunken. Oh, and how pale her lips are! Could that truly be the Rain Maiden? But she doesn't sleep; she is dead! Oh, it is terribly lonely here!"

The strong girl soon recomposed herself. She stepped very close and, kneeling down and bowing down to her, put her fresh lips to the pale as marble ear of the sleeper. Then, taking all her courage, she spoke loudly and clearly:

"No rain! No dew! Just woes.  
No spring, not one, still flows.

The woods now silence knows

in fields the Fire Man sows!"

There rang out from the pale mouth a deeply mournful sound, but the girl said, becoming stronger and more insistent:

"Open your eyes to sight!

And look to left and right!

Or mom will grab you tight

And take you home tonight!"

There was a slight gentle rustling through the treetops, and in the distance it thundered softly as if from a thunderstorm. But at the same time and, like it seemed, coming from the other side of the stone, a piercing sound cut through the air like the scream of fury of a malevolent animal. When Maren looked up, the tall figure of the maiden was standing erect before her. "What do you want?" she asked.

"Oh, Ms. Maiden," answered the girl still kneeling. "You have slept so cruelly long, that you are making all the foliage and all the creatures perish!"

The maiden saw her with wide-open eyes as if she was struggling to come out of oppressive dreams.

Finally she asked with a flat voice, "The spring runs no longer?"

"No, Rain Maiden," replied Maren.

"My bird no longer circles around the lake?"

"It stands in the hot sun and sleep!"

"Woe," moaned the Rain Maiden. "So it is high time. Get up and follow me, but don't forget the pitcher lying there are your feet!"

Maren did as she was told, and both now climbed up on the side of the rock. – Even more massive tree groups, even more wonderful flowers had sprouted from the earth here, but here also was everything wilted and scentless. They went along on the channel of the creek that behind them had its plunge from the rocks. Slowly and unsteadily the maiden strode on in front of the girl, only now and then sadly looking around. Nevertheless Maren believed that a green glow remained on the lawn where her foot had stepped, and when the gray garment trailed over the dry grass it rustled it so peculiarly that she always had to listen to it. "Is it raining already, Rain Maiden?" she asked.

"Oh no, child, first you must unlock the fountain!"

"The fountain? Where is it then?"

They had just stepped out of a group of trees. "There!" the maiden said, and several thousand steps ahead of them Maren saw a monstrous structure rising up before them. It seemed to be piled up with gray, jagged, and irregular stones; up to heaven, thought Maren, because from above upwards everything dissolved in the air and sunshine. The front, at the ground level, jutting out in gigantic bowed windows, was everywhere pierced through by high, sharply arched gate- and window- openings, without nevertheless anything being seen of the windows or the wings of the gates themselves.

For a while they walked straight towards it until they were stopped by the precipice of the bank of the stream that seemed to circle around the structure. Nevertheless the water had evaporated down to a narrow thread, which still flowed in the middle; a skiff lay shattered on the dry mud surface of the streambed.

"Step through!" said the maiden. "It has no power over you. But don't forget to scoop up some water; you'll need it soon!"

When Maren, obeying the command, stepped down to the bank, she almost drew back her foot, because the ground was so hot that she could feel the heat through her shoe. "Nonsense! Let the shoes burn!" she thought and vigorously stepped further with her pitcher. But suddenly she stood still; the expression of the deepest horror entered into her eyes. Because next to her the dry mud surface was ripped open and a great brown-red fist with crooked fingers came up out of it and grabbed after her.

"Courage!" she heard the voice of the maiden behind her from the bank.

Only then did she let out a loud cry, and the specter vanished.

"Close yours eyes!" she heard again the maiden say. – There she went on with her eyes closed; but when she felt the water touching her foot, she bent down and filled her pitcher. Then she rose easily and safely up on the other bank again.

Soon she had reached the castle and went with a pounding heart through one of the large open gateways. But inside she stopped astonished in the entrance. The whole interior seemed to be only a single boundless room. Mighty pillars of stalactite carried an odd ceiling of an almost unseeable height; Maren almost thought that it seemed to be nothing but gigantic gray cobwebs that hung everywhere in folds and lace between the capitals of the pillars. She stood as if lost in the same place and soon looked directly before her, soon at one and the other side, but these immense spaces seemed except for the front through which Maren had entered to be entirely without borders. Pillar after pillar rose up, and no matter how hard she strained, she could never see the end. There her eye remained fixed on a recess in the ground. And behold! There, not far from her, was the fountain; and the golden key she saw lying on the trapdoor.

As she approached it, she noticed that the flooring was not like she saw it in her village church, with stone slabs, but everywhere was covered with dried reeds and meadow plants. But already now nothing surprised her.

Now she stood at the well and was about to take the key; there she quickly pulled her hand back. Because she clearly recognized that the key that was illuminated in the glaring light of one of the rays of sunshine falling in from outside, was red from heat and not from gold. Without hesitation she poured her pitcher out, so that the sizzling of the water boiling away echoed in the vast spaces. Then she quickly unlocked the fountain. A fresh scent rose from the depths as she struck back the trapdoor and soon filled everything with a fine wet dust, which climbed up like a delicate cloud between the pillars.

Musing and relieved in the fresh coolness, Maren walked around. There began a new wonder at her feet. Like a breath rippled a light green over the ground surface of withered vegetation, the stalks straightened up, and soon the girl strolled through a wealth of sprouting leaves and flowers. At the foot of the pillars it became blue from forget-me-nots; there between bloomed yellow and brown-violet irses that breathed out their delicate fragrance. At the tips of the leaves little dragonflies climbed up, tested their wings, and then floated shimmering and fluttering above the flower cups, while the fresh scent that continually rose from the fountain filled more and more of the air, and danced like silver sparks in the sun rays falling in.

While Maren could find no end to the joy and marvel, she heard behind her a tranquil humming as from a sweet female voice. And actually, as she turned her eyes toward the basin of the fountain, she saw on the green mossy rim that sprouted up there the resting figure of a wonderfully beautiful radiant woman. She had propped her head on her bare sparkling arm, over which the blond hair fell over like waves of silk, and let her eyes wander up between the pillars to the ceiling.

Maren also looked up involuntarily. There she now saw well that that which she thought to be a large cobweb was nothing other than the delicate gauzy webs of rainclouds that were being filled by the vapor rising up out of the fountain and were becoming heavier and heavier. Such a cloud in the middle of the ceiling had just then detached and sank floating down, so that Maren saw the face of the beautiful woman at the fountain shining as if through a gray veil. This one clapped her hands, and the cloud immediately swam to the nearest window opening and flowed through it into the outside.

"Well," cried the beautiful woman. "How do you like that?" And she smiled her red lips, and her white teeth flashed.

Then she waved Maren to her, and this one made her sit next to her in the moss; and just when another web of vapor once again sank down from the ceiling, she said, "Now claps your hands!" And when Maren did that, and this cloud, like the first, was drawn out into the open, she said, "Do you see how easy it is! You can do it better than I!"

Maren looked astonished at the beautiful, spirited woman. "But," she said, "who are you really?"

"Who am I? Come on, child, are you naïve!"

The girl looked at her again with uncertain eyes; finally she said hesitantly, "But you couldn't be the Rain Maiden?"

"And who should I be otherwise?"

"But forgive me! You are surely so beautiful and cheerful now!"

Then the maiden became very quiet. "Yes," she said, "I must be grateful to you. If you hadn't awoken me, the Fire Man would've become master, and I would have had to go down to the mother under the earth." And while she contracted her white shoulders a little as if from an inner horror, she added, "And it is so beautiful and green up here!"

Then Maren had to explain how she came hither, and the maiden lay back down on the moss and listened. Sometimes she picked one of the flowers that sprouted up beside her, and she put it in her or the girl's hair. When Maren reported on the toilsome path on the willow causeway, the maiden sighed and said, "The avenue was built from you people yourselves, but that was a long, long time ago! Such garments as you wear, I have never seen on your women. They came often to me, I gave them seeds and grains for new plants and crops, and they brought to me thanks for their fruits. As they did not forget me, so I didn't forget them, and their fields were never without rain. But after a long time the people became estranged from me, no one comes to me any longer. There I fell asleep from the heat and sheer boredom, and the malicious Fire Man almost achieved victory."

Maren had meanwhile laid back also with closed eyes on the moss, the dew fell so softly around her, and the sound of the beautiful maiden sounded so sweet and intimate.

"Only once," she continued, "but it is a long time ago, a girl still came, and she looked like you and wore almost the same such garments. I gave her my meadow honey, and that was the last gift that a person has received from my hand."

"Look," Maren said, "that's certainly a coincidence! That girl must have been the great-grandmother of my sweetheart, and the drink that made me so strong today must have been from you!"

The rain woman still thought well of her young friend from back then, because she asked, "Did she have such beautiful brown curls on her forehead?"

"Who, Rain Maiden?"

"Now, the great-grandmother that you mentioned!"

"Oh no, Rain Maiden," Maren replied, and she felt herself almost superior to her powerful friend. "The great-grandmother has become quite as old as the hills."

"Old?" asked the beautiful woman. She did not understand, because she did not know aging.

Maren had great difficulty explaining it to her. "Just imagine," she said finally, "having gray hair and red eyes and ugly and sullen! See, Rain Maiden, that we call old!"

"Of course," she replied, "I remember now; there were those among the women of the people; but the ancestor should to me come, I can make her happy and beautiful again."

Maren shook her head. "That can't happen, Rain Maiden," she said. "The great-grandmother has been long under the earth."

The maiden sighed. "Poor ancestor."

Hereupon both were silent, while they still lay stretched out comfortably on the soft moss. "But child!" the maiden suddenly said, "Because of all this chatter we forgot about the rainmaking. Open your eyes! We're buried under nothing but clouds; I can't even see you any more!"

"One will become as wet as a cat!" Maren said as she had opened her eyes.

The maiden laughed. "Just claps your hands a little, but watch out that you don't tear the clouds!"

So they both began to softly clap their hands; and immediately created a billowing and a shoving, the fog formations thronged to the openings and swam, one after the other, into the open. After a short time Maren saw again the fountain before her and the green ground with the yellow and violet iris flowers. Then the window openings became free, and she saw far over the trees of the garden the clouds covering the whole sky. Gradually the sun disappeared. Still a couple moments, and she heard it blow outside like a shower through the leaves of the trees and bushes, and then it rushed down, powerful and incessant.

Maren sat upright with folded hands. "Rain Maiden, it's raining," she said softly.

She gave a scarcely noticed nod with her beautiful blond head; she sat as if dreaming.

But suddenly a loud pattering and howling arose outside, and as Maren looked out startled, she saw enormous white steam clouds raise themselves intermittently into the air from the nearby stream which she shortly before had stepped across. In this same moment she felt herself embraced by the arms of the beautiful rain woman, who snuggled trembling up beside the young human child resting beside her. "Now it extinguishes the Fire Man out," she whispered, "just hear how he resists! But it doesn't help him anymore."

They embraced each other for a while; then it became quiet outside, and there was nothing to hear than the gentle murmur of the rain. Then she stood up, and the maiden lowered the fountain's trapdoor and locked it.

Maren kissed her white hand and said, "I thank you, dear Rain Maiden, for myself and all the people in our village! And" – she added a little hesitantly – "now I'd like to go back home!"

"Go already?" asked the maiden.

"You know it surely, my darling waits for me; he may already have become thoroughly wet.

The maiden raised her finger. "Will you never let him wait afterwards?"

"Certainly not, Rain Maiden!"

"So go, my child; and when you come home, tell the other people about me, so that they henceforth not forget me. – And now come! I will accompany you."

Outside under the fresh heavenly dew and everywhere already the green of the grass and of the foliage of the trees and bushes had sprouted up. – When they came to the stream, the water had filled the entire bed, and as if it expected her, the boat rested, restored by an invisible hand, swaying on the lush grass on the bank of the stream. They climbed in, and they quietly slipped over while the droplets played and tinkled in the stream. There, just as they stepped onto the other side, the nightingales began to sing next to them in the dark of the bushes. "Oh," said the maiden and breathed out a real sigh of relief from the bottom of her heart, "It is still Nightingale time, it is not yet too late!"

They went along the stream, which led to the waterfall. It plunged again roaring over the rocks and continuously flowed forth then gushing in the wide channel under the dark Lindens. When they stepped into the open again, Maren saw the strange bird soaring in large circles over the lake whose large basin stretched at her feet. Soon they went down along the shore, constantly breathing the sweetest scents and listening to the rustling of the waves that flowed up over the shiny pebbles on the shore. Thousands of flowers bloomed everywhere, even violets and Maililien, Maren noticed, and other flowers whose time was really long past because they were unable to grow in the vicious heat. "They also don't want to be left behind," said the maiden, "now everything is blooming indiscriminately."

Sometimes she shook her blond hair so that drops like sparks sprayed around her, or she folded her hands together so that the water flowed down from her white arms as if from a water basin. Again she tore her hands apart from each other, and where the spraying drops touched the earth, there sprang up new rose scents, and a play of colors from fresh, never-before seen flowers pressed themselves sparkling from the lawn.

As they walked around the lake, Maren looked back once more at the wide surface of the water, now with the falling rain, barely visible in full; then she almost shuddered at the thought that she walked with dry feet that morning through those depths. Soon she had to be near the place where she had left Andrew behind. And yes! There under the high trees he lay with a propped up arm; he appeared to be sleeping. But when Maren looked at the beautiful maiden, how she walked with her red smiling mouth so proudly next to her, she suddenly seemed to herself in her peasant clothes so inelegant and ugly, that she thought, "Oh, it won't be good, Andrew doesn't need to see her!" Aloud she told her, "Thank you for your company, Rain Maiden, I can find it myself now!"

"But I must still see your darling!"

"Please don't trouble yourself, Rain Maiden," replied Maren, "it is just a lad like the others and just good enough for a girl from the village."

The maiden looked at her with penetrating eyes. "You're a beautiful, little fool!" she said and raised her finger threateningly. "Aren't you also in your village the most beautiful of all?" The pretty maiden blushed so that her eyes filled with tears. But the maiden kept smiling. "So remember!" she said, "because now that all the fountains spring again, you can take a shortcut. Immediately below to the left of the willow avenue lies a boat. Climb in confidently; it will bring you quickly and safely to your homeland! – And now farewell," she said and put her arm around the girl's neck and kissed her. "Oh, how sweetly tastes the such a human mouth!"

Then she turned and went away under the falling drops over the lawn. She began to sing; it sounded sweet and unvaried; and as the beautiful figure disappeared among the trees, Maren didn't know, if she still heard from the distance the song, or was it only the murmur of the falling rain.

For a while the girl stood still; then, as if in a sudden longing, she stretched out her arms. "Farewell, beautiful, lovely Rain Maiden, farewell!" she said. – But no answer came back; she recognized it now clearly, it was only the rain that swept down.

As she slowly walked up to the entrance of the garden, she saw the young farmer stand up erect under the trees. "What are you looking at?" she asked as she came closer.

"Hey, Maren!" said Andrew, "What kind of pretty woman was that?"

The girl grabbed the arm of the boy and turned him around with a rough jerk. "Don't wear your eyes out looking!" she said, "she is not for you; that was the Rain Maiden!"

Andrew laughed. "Now, Maren," he replied, "that you had to wake her properly, that I have already noticed here; because the rain is so drenching, I think, like never before, and such a turning-green have I also in all my life never before seen! – But come now! We want to go home, and your father should make good on his given word."

Down at the willow avenue they found the boat and climbed in. The whole wide lowland was already flooded over, on the water and in the air existed all sorts of birds; the slender Sea Swallows shot screaming over them and plunged the tips of their wings in the flood, while the herring swam majestically beside their onward shooting boat; on the green islets, where they passed here and there, they saw the Ruffs with their golden collars conducting their courtship battles.

So they glided swiftly on. The rain still fell, gently but incessantly. Now however the water narrowed, and soon it was only a moderately broad creek.

Andrew had looked for a while with her hand over his eyes into the distance. "Look, Maren," he said, "isn't that my rye field?"

"Of course, Andrew; and it has become lush green! But don't you see that is our village creek that we're traveling?"

"That's right, Maren, but what is that there? There it is completely flooded!"

"Oh, dear God!" said Maren, "that is surely my father's field. Just look at the beautiful hay; it's floats everywhere."

Andrew squeezed the girl's hand. "Never mind, Maren!" he said. "The price is, I think not so high, and my fields are bearing now so much the better."

The boat laid by the village linden. They stepped onto the bank, and soon they went hand in hand down the streets. There they were nodded to from all sides, because Mother Stine in their absence had been gossiping.

"It's raining!" said the children who ran under the drops through the street. "It's raining!" said Cousin Mayor, who looked comfortable from his open window and shook the hands of both of them with a hearty grip. "Yes, yes, it rains!" said the meadow farmer, who stood in the door gateway of his stately home with his Meerschaum pipe. "And you, Maren, boldly lied to me this morning. But come in here, you both! Andrew, like Cousin Mayor says, is always a good boy, his harvest will this year also be good, and if it should again be another three years of rain, then it would not be bad in the end if the heights and the depths come together. Therefore go over to Mother Stine, for we want to settle the affair immediately.

Several weeks had since passed. The rain had long since stopped again, and the last heavy harvest wagons were drawn in with wreaths and fluttering ribbons in the barns; then marched a huge wedding procession in the beautiful sunshine to the church. Maren and Andrew were the bride and groom; behind them went hand in hand Mother Stine and the meadow farmer. When they had almost reached the church door, so that they could already hear the chorale which the old cantor was playing on the organ for their entrance, suddenly a little white cloud rose above them in the blue sky, and a pair of light raindrops fell on the bride's wreath. – "That means luck!" said the people standing in the churchyard. "That was the Rain Maiden!" whispered the bride and groom and squeezed each other's hands.

Then the procession stepped into the church; the sun shined again, the organ became silent, and the priest performed his task.

The Mirror of Cyprianus

The count's palace – really it was a castle – was exposed on the height; ancient pines and oaks projected with their tops out of the depths; and over them and the forests and meadows that spread out below the mountain lay the spring sunshine. But inside mourning reigned, because the only little son of the count was diseased with an unexplained sickness, and the most distinguished doctors who were summoned were not able to recognize the origin of this evil.

In the veiled chamber lay the boy sleeping with a bloodless face. Women sat at one side of the bed, beholding him with the strained look of concern; the old one in the clothing of a more genteel servant, the other unmistakably the lady of the house, almost still young except for the traces of past suffering in the pale, kind face. – In the most beautiful days of her youth the count courted the lady of little wealth; but with nothing more lacking than the "formal proposal" he had turned away. A rich, beautiful lady, who envied the poor lady for her stately consort and his domain, had ensnared the light-hearted man in her web of love; and while she entered as the mistress to the count's palace, the one remained in the widow's chamber of her mother.

But the fortune of the young countess did not last. When, after a period of a year, she gave birth to the little Kuno, she was swept away by an evil puerperal fever; and after another year passed, the count then knew no better mother's touch for his motherless son then she who he once spurned. And she with her still heart forgave the offense completely and became now his wife. – So she sat now caring and watching for her child of her formal rival.

"He is sleeping quietly now," said the old woman. "The Countess should rest a little."

"Not now, nurse," replied the gentle woman, "I don't need to. I'm sitting here all right in my soft armchair."

"But through so many nights! It is never a sleep if the person never comes out of the clothes." And after a while she added: "There has never been such a stepmother here in the palace."

"You must not compliment me, nurse!"

"Don't you know the story of the mirror of Cyprianus?" ask the old woman in turn; and when the countess said no she continued. "So I'll tell you; it'll help distract the thoughts. And just look how the child sleeps, the breath goes so quietly out of the mouth! Take this cushion from below the cross, and now the little feet on the footstool here! And now wait a little while so I can remember correctly."

Then when the countess placed herself on the cushion and had nodded cordially to her, the experienced servant of the house began her story:

"Over a hundred years ago a countess once lived in this palace; she had been called by all the people merely the good countess. The name was appropriate, because she was humble in her heart and did not despise the poor and lowly. But a happy countess she was not. If she went down in the village bringing help to the homes of the cottagers, so had she looked with suffering at the little band of children who often blocked the entrance to the low doors and thought: "What wouldn't you give for a single such chubby angel!" For some ten years she lived with her husband, but their marriage remained unblessed; also a motherless child had not been laid in her arms by the Lord God, as with your Grace. The count had begun meanwhile to regard as ominous that the heir to his great domain had still not be born. – Oh dear God!" – interrupted the narrator – "The rich were going without; and the poor often wished in vain that they could have from their handful an angel or two in heaven who might pray for them."

"Tell more!" asked her mistress, and the old woman went on:

"It was during the end of the great war and the castle here was often overrun by enemy and allied troops, that it happened one day that an old doctor who came into the country with the Swedes had been wounded by an imperial bullet in an encounter down below in the forest while he, awaiting the outcome, was keeping watch by his chests of medicine. The man, who was called Cyprianus, was carried here into the palace and, although the dominion was imperial, was cared for by the good countess with great devotion. The outcome was fortunately good – still there much time passed over it. The peace had already been closed when she still often strolled up and down in the little herb garden behind the palace by the side of the convalescing old man and listened to his speeches on the power and mysteries of nature. He had given her many tips and many remedies from the mountain's herbs that would be used later for the benefit of her patients. And so a mutually rewarding friendship gradually emerged between the beautiful woman and the old, wise master.

"Around this time the count, who for a year was in the field with the Emperor's army, returned to his palace. When the first joy of reunion was now past, the doctor believed to recognize with his searching eyes the outline of a silent sorrow in the face of the good countess; but the modesty of the old man had always kept back a question about it from his lips. But when he one day saw a woman from the dark traveling people, who at that time were marching throughout the whole empire under their Duke Michael, sneak out of her chamber, then he had taken her hand in the evening at the pleasure stroll in the little garden and forcefully exhorted her: 'Why did you allow, around noon, when your Lord takes his nap, that evil heathen into your chamber?'

"The good countess was frightened; but when she looked in the mild face of the old man, she said, 'I have a great sorrow, Master Cyprianus, and would like to know, whether a time will come where it would be taken from me.'

"'So open your heart to me,' he said; 'perhaps that I know better advice than those traveling people who certainly understand the deception of the gullible but in no way the future!'

"At these words the countess confided in the old master with her grief, and how she feared to lose even the heart of her husband through her childlessness.

"They went during this along the circling wall of the little garden, and Cyprianus looked out over the forests lying below, on which the red evening light lay. 'The sun is departing,' he said, 'and when it comes up tomorrow, it must see me on my journey to my homeland. But I owe you life and health, and so I want to offer, really a thank-you gift, that I will send to you through secure hands from home, don't despair.'

"'Must you really go, Master Cyprianus,' said the grieving woman. 'Then will my dearest comforter abandon me!'

"'Don't lament over it, Madame Countess!' he replied; 'the gift of which I spoke, is a speculum, a mirror in German, manufactured during a special intersection of the constellations and in the most salutary time of year. Put it in your chamber and there use it for the manner of women, and it will be able to soon bring you better information than the deceptive people of the heathen. One regards me,' added the man smiling mysteriously, 'in my homeland as not ignorant of the things of nature.'" The narrator interrupted herself. – "You know well that the name Cyprianus later became known throughout the North as that of a powerful sorcerer. After his death they placed in chains the books that he wrote in the underground vaults of a castle because they believed that it was evil to include therein things that were dangerous to the salvation of the soul. But those that did that were in error, or they themselves were not pure of heart; because – as Cyprianus is reported to have often said during his stay in this house – 'the powers of nature are never evil in the right hand.'

"But I want to proceed with my story. – A few moons later, after the master had left the palace among comforting words of encouragement to both the noble spouses, that one day a cart with a great wooden chest halted in the courtyard; and when the count and his wife, who were standing idly in the window in the afternoon hours, had gone down driven by curiosity, a written letter on parchment was presented to them from the coachman. The crate contained the gift of thanks promised at his departure. 'May' – so the letter stated – 'this mirror add as many days of joy to your life as it cost me hours of the most sacred work. But don't forget, the end of all things is always in the hands of the unfathomable God.

"'\-- Only one thing is to be avoided. Never may the image of an evil act fall on this mirror; the healing forces that have assisted in its preparation would otherwise turn into their opposite; particularly may grow out of it a deathly danger to the children, that then - God grant it - will soon surround you, and only an expiation, sprung from the blood of the offender, would be able to restore the healing power of the mirror. However, the goodness of your house is so great that no such thing can happen; and thus receive with it in hope and confidence this gift from the hand of a thankful friend.'

"And as the master requested, the spouses received his gift in hope and confidence. When the chest was carried into the hall and opened, the framework appeared first artfully worked in bronze. Then the mirror was lifted out, a tall, slim glass of a wonderful bluish light luster. 'Is it not, my husband,' said the countess, who threw a glance towards him, 'as if the world reflected therein lies in a soft moonlight?' The frame was of cut steel in whose thousands of facets of captured and refracted rays of light flashed like a colorful fire.

"Soon the beautiful work was set up in the bedroom of the spouses, and on every morning while the maid stroked her blond hair or loosened the silken braids of her hair bun the good countess sat with folded hands in front of the mirror of Cyprianus and looked attentively and with hope at her own dear face. But when the morning sun shined on the facets of the frame, the image of the beautiful woman sat like in a wreath of star-like sparks. Often after his first tour through the field and forest her husband stepped again into the bedroom and leaned silently behind her chair; and if she saw him then in the mirror, she thought each time that his eyes looked a little less grim.

"A considerable time passed when the countess one morning, after the chambermaid already left her, wanted to in passing still have another look in the mirror. But there appeared a haze on the glass so that she could not clearly see her face. She took her handkerchief and tried to whip it away, but it did not help; and she saw that it was not on, but within the glass. The closer she approached the mirror, so more clearly did her countenance step out of it; but if she stepped further back, then there was hovering like a rosy vapor between her and her mirror image. – Pensively she put her handkerchief away and went the day about the house silently and full of a quiet premonition, so that her husband, who met her in the hall said, 'Why are you smiling so blissfully, woman of my heart?' She was still silent and just put her arms around his neck and kissed him.

"But day by day, when her husband and her maid left, she stood in solitude before the mirror of the good master, and every morning she saw more clearly the little rose cloud floating in the glass.

"So May had come, and from the little garden outside the scent of violets wafted through the open window; then the good countess stepped one morning again before the mirror. No sooner had she looked in than an "Ah!" of rapture broke out of her lips, and her hands went to her heart; because in the spring sun, which shone brightly in the mirror, she recognize clearly a sleeping child's face that appeared from the little rose cloud. With bated breath she stood; she could not eat her full of the sight.

"Then she heard a horn call from outside before the bridge, and she remembered that it must be her husband coming back from his hunt. She closed her eyes and stood still waiting until he, followed by his hound, came to her in the chamber. Then she embraced him with both arms, and pointing to the mirror she spoke quietly: 'Greet the heir to your house!' Now had the good count also recognized the tiny face in the little rose cloud; but the flash of joy from his eyes disappeared at once, and the countess saw in the mirror as he turned pale. 'Don't you see it?' she whispered.

"'Of course I see it, woman of my heart,' he replied, 'but it frightens me that the little child cries.'

"She turned to him and cradled his head. 'You foolish man,' she said, 'he is slumbering, it's smiling in a dream.'

"And so it remained with them both. He was worried, but she prepared in cheerful mood with her housekeeper the cradle together with down pillows and the little delicate clothes for the future heir of the house. Sometimes, when she stood before the mirror, she stretched out her arms to the little rose cloud like in a fantastic desire, but when her finger pressed on the cold surface of the mirror she would let her arms sink again and thought of a saying of Cyprianus: 'Everything has its time.'

"And her hour came. The little cloud in the mirror disappeared, and instead there lay a rosy boy on the white linen of their bed. It gave great joy to the palace and down in the village, and as the good count rode through the smiling open fields, he let the reins strike the neighing golden fox-colored horse and cried jubilantly out in the sunshine, "My son is born!"

"After she started attending church again after the six weeks of child birth confinement, one saw her go again in the warm summer days to the cottagers of the village; only that she now no longer looked on in sorrow at the peasant children. She often stood long and bent down to them and led them in their games; and wherever she saw a truly strong boy she thought as well, 'Mine is still stronger than him!'

"But, as Cyprianus had written, the end rests in the hand of unknowable God. – In the fall an evil fever fell over the village. People died; but before they died, they lay languishing and supplicating on their beds. And the good countess did not let them wait on her. She went with the ancient wisdom of the old master into the huts; she sat on the beds of the sick and wiped with her handkerchief the last sweat off their foreheads when death came. But finally, as little Kuno reached the first half of his year, death, which had snatched so many lives, came himself into to the palace with her; and after her poor cheeks had burned in the fever like two dark roses, he stretched her out white and cold on her bed. Then all the joy was gone. The count rode with sunken head through his open fields and let his horse go as it wanted. 'Now I know why my poor boy had to cry even before birth,' he always said to himself, 'because mother's love is only once in the world.'

"Alone stood the ornate mirror in the bedroom; and as often as the early sun sprayed its sparks on the steel wreath of the frame, the image of the good countess no longer sat therein. 'Take it away,' said the count one morning to his house caretaker; 'the flashing hurts my eyes!' – The house master let the mirror be brought in a remote chamber in the upper floors, where it served at the time as storage for all kinds of old weapons; and as the servants that carried it up left, the old man took a black shroud from the funeral burial of the good countess and thus veiled the artwork of the Master Cyprianus so that no light could touch it henceforth.

"But the count was still young; and when a couple years had passed in the land and the powerful boy began to romp around the wide corridors of the palace, the count thought: 'It's fitting that you seek for your son a new mother to raise him in noble manners as befits his heritage.' And he thought further: 'At the court of the emperor there are many gracious women; it would be bad if you did not find the right one.' A voice that was also in his ears said, 'A mother for the child, a wife for you; the love of a woman is a sweet drink!' And so, when May came once again, the travel things were prepared and the count went with his boy accompanied by stately attendants to the large city of Vienna.

"They stayed away for a long time, and the old house caretaker went around into the upper empty chambers and opened the windows wide so that the effects that once served the good mistress would not perish in the enclosed air. But finally, when the threads of autumn already flew over the fields, many boxes arrived one after another with expensive carpets, gold-pressed leather wall coverings, and all types of fashionable things, as it had never been seen by the servants there, and the house master received orders to prepare the large rooms of the ground floor for the new countess."

The old storyteller paused for a few moments, because the little patient had thrown off the bedcover in sleep. But then, as she carefully covered him again and the boy continued to sleep, she began again:

"You know her, dear countess, the life-size image of the woman that hangs in the Knights Assembly Hall up next to the fireplace should be a similar likeness to you. She is a little fox with gold-red hair, like those who are so dangerous to men, especially the older ones. I have often regarded her in this – how she so lightly throws back her head and how the mouth so sweetly and deceitfully smiles and the gold-colored hair flies in loose lovelocks over the white neck, then perhaps even someone with cooler blood than that the good count not been able to withstand. – I just want to say, she had been a young widow and had to leave behind a child from this first marriage, a little daughter, who was left behind with the relatives of her deceased husband in the imperial city. This much is certain, to this castle here that daughter never came.

"But now! At last the carriage rattled into the courtyard; and the assembled servants looked on in amazement as the count and the foreign-speaking young lady's maid helped the lady out of the wagon. And as she now stepped up the stairs in her almond-colored silk dress with slight nods of her head, there your delicate ear would have heard several softly whispered admiring words about the beauty of the new countess.

"It was only when the lady had disappeared into the door, that the little Kuno climbed out of the following servant wagon. 'Oh, squire,' cried a red-cheeked maid to him, 'You have a beautiful mother now!' But the boy frowned and said defiantly, 'She is not my mother!' And the old housemaster, who had just returned from accompanying the lord, said darkly to the strumpet: 'Don't you see that that is the son of the good countess!' And looking tenderly into the blue eyes of the boy, he took him by the arm and bore him into his father's house.

"There from now on the strange woman ruled. The servants praised her affability, and the poor in the village soon thought she had even more generous hand than the deceased; only she did not care at all about the children, and also one could not complain to her about their difficulties as before to the good countess. – While she captivated most of the palace occupants with her beauty, the housemaster had only a cold view of her; it displeased him that she proceeded, as he said, 'dressed like a Jezebel,' even on weekdays. He did not trust the caresses with which she sometimes showered little Kuno in his and the count's presence. And even the boy himself she did not win over; he had nothing for her but a silent gaze; and when her arms and eyes let go of him, he ran outside into the open, took his little crossbow and fired at a wooden bird that the house master had carved for him; or he sat in the evening in the room of his old friend and read in a large book about the joys of noble hunting. –

"The good count saw nothing but the beauty of his wife. If he went into the room and encountered her, she stood smiling until he embraced her; had she faced the beautiful neck to the door, she likely picked up the hand mirror that hung on a golden chain from her belt from the folds of her silken skirt and nodded to them from the mirror's surface.

"But when the spring came back, a the boy contracted a fever from the damp moss of the forest, and he lay in the restless slumber of the sick on his pillow. Next to the bed stood the chair of the good countess with the carved back and the blue velvet padding, on which she often had sat in front of the mirror of Master Cyprianus, as once in the spring air the violet fragrance blew to her in the open window; but now the chair stood empty. The beautiful stepmother was also present and sat next to the count at the foot of the little bed; because she could see how the father worried about his child and didn't want to let himself be absent. The boy then called out from his fever, 'Mother, mother!' and rose from his pillows with open eyes. 'Do you hear, my husband!' the beautiful woman said, 'Our son asked for me!' But when she got up and bent down to him, the child reached with his arms past her to the empty chair of the good countess.

"The count grew pale, and overcome from the sorrow of the sudden memory, he fell to his knee beside the bed of his son. The proud woman stepped back, and as she secretly clenched the little fist around her belt she left the room never to step into it again. But the boy became healthy even without her care.

"Soon after, as the rose buds sprouted outside, the countess bore a little boy. But the count did not know why it felt so heavy in his heart as the little Kuno ran toward him with this news. He indeed left his horse to be led out of the stall in order to ride with his thoughts out into the heath, but not in order to cry out jubilantly over the meadow and lake. As he sat level in the stirrup, the old housemaster raised little Kuno to him on the saddle and said, 'Don't forget the son of the good countess!' The father closed his arms around the child and rode with him uphill and down – away, until the sun had sunk; but when they rode over on the return home under the windows of the chapel, in which were the countship's burial vaults, there he let his horse go slower and whispered in the boy's ear: 'Don't forget that mother's love is only once in the world!' – At his entrance in the room of the woman lying in maternal confinement the waiting nurse laid the newly born in his arms, he was overcome by nostalgia for the dead, and he suddenly knew that she alone was the woman of his heart; the boy, although of his blood, was like a stranger to him, because he was not also of her blood. The eyes of the countess, which were now more beautiful than ever as a result of her confinement, exercised no further magic on him. He rode alone through the fields; a word from Master Cyprianus stood like a dark writing before his eyes: 'Living in the past is even with God's help not permitted!'

"Meanwhile the boys grew up together, and soon a great love between them showed itself. When little Wolf could first go into the open with him, Kuno became his teacher in all the arts that are practiced by boys. He let him climb over rocks and up into trees, he carved little quarrels for him for his little crossbow, and shot with him at the target or even after an unreachable bird of prey that was reconnoitering over them in the sunlight.

"So once again winter had come, when one evening a man in the uniform of an imperial colonel came riding with his servant into the palace courtyard. – Hager was his name, and a gaunt, bony man he was said to have been, with an angular forehead and small, fierce eyes; the shaggy, straw-yellow beard – it was said – stood out from him like rays from his chin and the wings of his nose. He called himself a cousin of the first husband of the countess and was, as he said, just come for a visit; but he stayed from one week to another and gradually became regarded a permanent member of the household. The count had not initially concerned himself with the visit; but the colonel soon showed himself to be a master of the art of hunting, and as the first snow fell, the two men went together into the pine thicket, and from now on one could hear almost daily the roaring of the hounds and the 'Ho Ridoh' of the hunters through the silent forest. Then one afternoon during a boar hunt the hunting horn of the colonel sounded from a remote valley floor, where he without attendants became lost with the count; and when the handler of the hounds and the hunters, following the calls, met together there, they saw the boar laid dead between the fir trees; but there next to it also lay the count in his blood. The colonel stood leading on his hunting spear, his hunting horn in hand. 'Your boar spear was useless,' he said shortly, 'the boar beat them back;' and as they all stood there paralyzed by fright, he glared at them with his little, fierce eyes: 'Why do you stand still! Break branches into a litter and carry your lord into the palace!' And the people did as he commanded.

"But the count did not go again with the colonel on the hunt. For when the old housemaster wanted to send the groom to a doctor so that the wound could be examined, he received notice that the doctor was not necessary, the count was already dead.

"And soon he rested in the burial vault by his good countess, and little Kuno was a father- and motherless child. But the colonel remained in the palace as before, and the countess permitted it, so imperceptibly one portion after another of the count's regiment went into his hand. Although the servants grumbled when he hectored them with his sharp voice, they did not dare resist the fierce man. – Even with both the boys he busied himself. One morning, when Kuno went down into the stable, next to the black horse of the colonel stood a little black Northlands horse with a red gold-embroidered saddlecloth. 'That is your own,' said the colonel, who had entered with him, 'climb up so that I can show you how a man should sit on a horse.' Soon he saw that even little Wolf got a horse, and now he taught the both riding according to the rules of the art. It was not long before one saw the lanky colonel ride on his long-legged black horse between the two boys on their little Northlands horses over the fields. But it was strange conversations he would have with them. If they once got into a squabble, as it happens with children, he bent down from his high black horse and whispered to the elder, "You are the lord; from the court you can banish the boy!" and then to the younger on the other side: "He wants to show you that you ride on his ground and land!" But such words only caused the boys to immediately desist from their quarrels, even to jump from their horses and fall weeping in each other's arms.

"The colonel was perceptive; he had certainly noticed how the eyes of the beautiful countess, if she saw the stepson going with her own son out the door, became overtaken by a sudden darkness and how her glances irritably and malevolently followed the one leaving.

"On a sunny afternoon he stood with her in the little herb garden where the good countess once listened to the wisdom of the Master Cyprianus. As this proud woman looked out over the surrounding wall to the forests and meadows lying below, he said warily: 'Kuno will accede to a beautiful domain when he comes into his own years.' And as she silently and with only dark eyes stared into the distance, he added, 'Your Wolf is a delicate little plant; but Kuno appears born for rule, he looks long lived and robust.'

"At this moment came both the boys flying forward on their horses on the meadow which lay in the depths below the little garden. They rode so close together that the Kuno's brown locks waved together with the blond ones of little Wolf. The horse of the latter shook its mane and whinnied loudly into the sunshine. The mother was afraid and let out a scream; but Kuno put his arm around his brother, and as they trotted by he threw a proud, lustrous glance up to those standing above.

"'How do you like these eyes, beautiful countess?' asked the colonel.

"She was startled and roamed with an uncertain glance over him.

"'What do you mean?' she whispered then.

"But he replied similarly, his hand on her chin, 'Count on me, beautiful woman; the colonel is your truly loyal servant!'

"She then whispered, and he saw how her face became deadly pale, 'The eyes please me more if they were closed.'

"'And what would you give if you could see such beauty?'

"She laid for a moment her white hand on his; then she threw back her shining locks and stepped without looking back out of the little garden.

"When an hour later little Kuno roamed through the corridors of the upper floor he saw the colonel standing in a window niche. The boy wanted to get past, for the man looked so sinister there. But he was addressed, 'Where are you running, boy?'

"'To the old armory,' said Kuno, 'I want to get my crossbow.'

"'So I'll go with you.' And the colonel walked beside the boy there to the remote room, where the mirror of Cyprianus stood still covered with the heavy shroud among all sorts of weapons. When they had entered the colonel shot the locking iron bolt and stood with his back to the door. As the boy saw the man's wild eyes he screamed, 'Hager, Hager, you want to kill me!'

"'That's not a bad guess,' said the colonel and grabbed at him. But the boy sprang away under his hands and tore from the wall his cocked crossbow, which he had previously hung there during the day. He shot, and the impression of his quarrel you could still see to this day in the oak paneling; but he did not hit the colonel.

"Then he threw himself on his knees and cried: 'Let me live; I will give you my little Northland horse and also the beautiful red saddle!'

"The dark man stood with folded arms before him. 'Your Northlands horse,' he replied, 'does not run fast enough for me.'

"'Dear Hager, let me live!' cried the boy again; 'if I grow up, I will give you my palace and all the beautiful forests that belong to it.'

"'I want to get that sooner,' said the colonel.

"The boy thus lowered his head and cried, 'So I surrender myself to the mercy of God!'

"'That's the right word!' said the evil man. But the boy sprang once again and flew along the walls of the chamber; the colonel chased after him like a wild animal. But when they came to the shrouded mirror the boy tangled his feet in the shroud so that he suddenly fell to the floor. There was also the evil man over him. – –

"At this same moment – it is said – 'as he swung blows with his fists and the boy his little hands crossed protectively over his heart, the old housemaster stood deep below in the farthest chamber of the cellar, where a servant was occupied with the tapping of an Ingelheim wine barrel. 'Didn't you hear, Kasper?" he said and put the little lamp that he held in his hand on the barrel.

"The servant shook his head.

"'I did,' said the old one, 'It was to me as if I heard the lord Kuno call my name.'

"'You're mistaken, Master,' replied the servant; 'down here nothing can be heard!'

"So it stood; then the old one cried again: 'Oh God, Kasper, it called me again; there was a cry of distress out of my lord's throat!'

"The servant went on with his work. 'I hear only the red wine running from the barrel,' he said.

"But the old man did not allow himself to be reassured; he climbed up the palace and went from door to door, first on the ground floor and then up to the upper story. When he opened the door to the remote armory, there glowed the mirror of Cyprianus, on which the evening sun shined. 'What ruthless hand has torn this off?' murmured the elder; when he lifted the shroud from the ground he saw underneath it the body of the boy and saw the dark locks lying over the closed eyelids.

"The old man fell to his knees and threw himself moaning over him. He loosened the clothes and looked at the body of his dear for the sign of death. But he found nothing except for a dark red spot over the heart. For a long time he remained grim and brooding on his knees. Then he wrapped the boy in the shroud, took him in his arms and carried him to the ground floor to the room of the countess. As he entered, he saw the proud woman death-pale and trembling before the colonel, who, it seemed, grasped her hand partly with force.

"There laid the elder the body between the both on the floor, and his eyes glued hard on them he said, 'The hereditary lord Kuno is dead; your little son, Madame Countess, is now the heir of this domain.'

"It might have been a month after the burial of the young heir when the countess one afternoon leaned on the railing of a little balcony that, hanging over the depths, permitted an access from her room into the open air. Little Wolf stood beside her and watched a flock of birds which were busy with loud cries in the treetops of the pines and oaks that towered up from below.

"'Look!' said the countess. 'They're screaming at the owl; it's sitting there next to the knothole in the oak.' And she pointed with a finger before her.

"The boy's eyes followed with eagerness. 'I see it already, Mother,' he said; 'that is the bird of death; it screamed in front of window when poor Kuno died.'

"'Take your crossbow and shoot it!' said the mother.

"The boy jumped out of the window, down the steps, and into the stable. There lay the crossbow beside his little horse. But the string was broken; he had not used it for a long time because Kuno was no longer there to carve the quarrels for him and stick the wooden bird to the stake. – He then ran back to the palace. He remembered that his brother used to hang his crossbow up in the armory. When he arrived there in the remote part of the palace and had pushed himself with great difficult through the heavy oak door, the mirror of Cyprianus shined against him with its bluish glow. The steel facets of the frame sparkled in the last ray of the evening sun. The boy had never seen it; whenever he came here before with his brother, the artwork had been always covered with the heavy shroud. Now he stood before it and saw in amazement his own image in this splendor; he seemed to have completely forgotten the crossbow. – There must have been something besides he himself in the mirror that captured from him his whole mind, for he knelt down and put his forehead against the glass so as to look into it as closely as possible.

"But suddenly he grabbed for his heart with both hands. Then he sprang into the air up with a scream of pain. 'Help!' he screamed, 'Help!' and still once with a penetrating scream: 'Help!' Then the mother heard it below on the balcony; and in deathly fear she wandered from passage to passage, from door to door. 'Wolf! Where are you, Wolf?' she cried. 'Answer me!' And finally she came to the right door. There lay the child, writing in convulsions of death on the floor.

"She threw herself over him. 'Wolf! Wolf! What happened?' she cried.

"The boy stirred his pale lips. 'It gave me a blow to the heart,' he stammered.

"'Who, who did it?' whispered the mother. 'Wolf, speak only a single word more; who did it?'

"The boy pointed with a raised finger at the mirror. And holding the dying child in her arms, she looked bent forward into the glass of Cyprianus. But while looking, horror appeared in her face, and her light-blue eyes became hard as diamonds. For in the evening light that broke through the cloudy window she saw in the deepest background like a compact sphere of fog the figure of a child; how mournfully he crouched on the floor and seemed to sleep. She threw a nervous glance behind her in the room; but there lay only the twilight in the corners. Again, as if she exorcised it, she looked with anxious eyes in the mirror, and he was still lying there. – Then she felt the head of little Wolf slipping in her arms, and in the same moments she saw a gentle smoke move towards the glass mirror. Like a breath it ran over it. Then the glass was clear again; but behind it it moved like a little gray cloud into the depths; and now suddenly she saw there in the depths of the mirror like two little hazy figures who embraced.

"With a scream the countess sprang up; her son lay motionless with waxen pale face; the open blue lips proclaimed his death. – She tore the silk waistcoat from his chest; there she saw the dark red mark on his heart that she had just seen on the chest of little Kuno. 'Hager, Hager!' she screamed – because the secret of the mirror was unknown to her – 'that is your fist! He was also in your way; but you are not the lord in the palace, and I swear you will never become it!'

"She went down; she sought him; but the colonel had just ridden to a neighboring palace to hunt and had said that he would return in the morning.

"The sudden death of the last son of the count spread a dull terror among the servants. On the stairs and corridors they stood and whispered to each other, and if the countess approached they stole timidly away. It became night. The body of little Wolf was carried down and lay stretched out on his little bed in the chamber. But the countess had no rest by the dead. In the light moonshine, while everyone slept, she climbed up to the armory. There she stood before the mirror that shone in the blue light, looking in with staring eyes and twisted her hands around each other. Then again, as if a sudden horror had driven her, she plunged out of the chamber and ran through all the passages until she reached the door of her bedroom and slammed it shut behind her. – So passed the night.

"As the housemaster wanted to step into the room of the countess the next morning, he heard harsh and violent talking inside. He recognized the voice of the colonel, who had just returned; and soon the countess answered in the same way. These were words of deadly hatred that the elder heard. Shaking his head he stepped back from the door. 'Such are the judgments of God!' he said and climbed a staircase higher up to the platform of the round tower, for he felt he had to inhale God's clean air.

"He leaned over the parapet and looked out into the sunny morning. 'How beautifully the forests flourish!' he said to himself. 'And they are all dead! The good countess and the count, my boy Kuno, and now even little Wolf!'

"—Then he heard from below on the courtyard a horse being led out of the stable; not long after that, the sound of galloping hoofs thundered over the drawbridge; then less audibly outside on the road, and over out of the crowns of the old oak trees that stood alongside flew the ravens cawing into the air.

"In this same moment came up from below a cry of the women; and when the old man had descended, it came to him from all sides, the countess lay slain in her blood. – 'Where is the colonel?' asked the housemaster. 'He's gone,' said the servant who came up from the courtyard, 'along with his long-legged black horse.'

"The pursuit was quickly arranged by the elder; but the next morning all the lather-covered steeds returned home without having succeeded. – 'So let us then bury the dead,' he said, 'and send a messenger to the new lord of this beautiful estate!'

"And so it happened," the storyteller concluded her report, "the lordship came to an ancestor of your husband, who was next in the bloodline. The old housemaster is said to have lived long after his arrival there below in the gatehouse, a loyal guard at the tomb of his beloved nobles."

"That's a terrible story!" said the countess as the nurse was silent. "But did you not hear what the first husband of the unfortunate woman was called?"

"Of course," replied the old woman, "her widow's name is on the frame of the picture." And hereupon she is named one of the first noble families.

"Strange!" said the countess, "so it my ancestor!"

That old woman shook her head. "Impossible," she said, "You, Madame Countess, from the blood of that evil woman?"

"It is quite certain, nurse; that daughter that stayed back in Vienna became the wife of my ancestors." – –

The conversation was interrupted by the entrance of the doctor. The boy still lay in a death-like slumber and did not awake as the hand of the doctor searched for the signs of life on his little limbs.

"Is it true, will he recover?" asked the countess as she looked anxiously into the closed face of the doctor.

"The question is too much for one man," he replied, "but Madame Countess must sleep; it is quite necessary." And when she made remonstrance he continued, "Nothing will happen to the patient until the morning, I know that; the nurse can keep the vigil.

Finally she was persuaded and went into her bedroom once the doctor explained that he would not leave the house until he was sure of it.

When the old woman was alone with him, she asked, "Are you sure that Madame Countess may sleep in peace?"

"For the specified time, yes."

"And then, good doctor?"

"Then, once your ladyship has slept, then you may prepare her; because the boy must die."

"The old woman looked with firm eyes on the doctor. "Is it quite certain?" she asked.

"Quite certain, nurse, because it would take a miracle."

– – The doctor had left, and instead the countess now shared with a young maid the vigil with the old woman. She rested her head on the edge of the bed and observed the pale face of little Kuno, in whom death already engraved its sharp features. "A miracle!" she murmured twice. "A miracle!"

Then the boy stirred on his pillow. "I want to play with the children!" he whispered.

The old woman opened wide her eyes. "With what children?" she asked softly.

And the boy said likewise in sleep, "With the mirror children, nurse!"

She almost screamed. "Unlucky child, so you have looked into the mirror of Cyprianus! – – But it should be standing in the vestry; and the vestry is walled in!" She reflected for a moment; then she said to the girl, "Get me Vincent, Ursel!"

Vincent, the groom, came. – "Have you recently been at the construction in the chapel?" asked the old woman."

"I'm there every day."

"Is the vestry open?"

"That happened a fortnight ago."

"Did you see a mirror there?"

He reflected. "Well of course, it stood there in a corner; the frame seemed of steel, but the rust had eaten it."

The old woman gave him a large carpet. "Cover the mirror carefully!" she said. "Then carry it here into the room. But quietly, so that the boy doesn't awake."

Vincent went, and soon a tall object covered with the carpet was carried by him and a worker into the room.

"Is that the mirror, Vincent?" the nurse asked; and when he had affirmed it she continued, "Stand it at the foot of the bed, so that little Kuno can look in as soon as the carpet is taken away."

After the mirror was set up and the carriers had departed, the old woman sat again at the side of the bed. "A miracle must happen!" she said to herself. Then she sat with closed eyes like a stone image; hope and fear fought unseen inside hear. She waited on the future return of the countess; but how long would she still have to wait until the sleep would have entirely left the awakened woman.

Then the door opened, and the countess came in. "I couldn't fall sleep, nurse," she said, "forgive me! You are as faithful and good and more understanding than I am, and yet I feel like I should not leave the bed of the child."

The old woman did not respond to this. "Tell me again, Madame Countess," she said, and her heart beat so wildly that she could hardly get the words out, "are you quite certain that the evil woman was your ancestor?"

"I am quite certain. But why do you ask, nurse?"

The old woman stood up, and with a firm hand she tore the carpet from the mirror.

The countess screamed aloud. "My child, my child! That is the mirror of Cyprianus!" – When she had but thrown a glance at the soft glow of the glass, she saw therein little Kuno lay with open eyes on his pillow; she saw him smile, and the ruddiness of good health flew like a breath onto his cheeks. She turned around; there he already sat upright, fresh and flourishing.

"The children! The children!" he cried with a bright, ringing voice and stretched his arms out to the mirror.

"Where are they?" asked the countess.

"There, there!" cried the old woman. "Just look, they smile, they nod, oh! And they have wings; they're two little angels!"

"What are you talking about? asked the countess. "I don't see them."

"There, there!" little Kuno cried again. – "Oh!" he sadly continued, "now they have flown away."

Then the old nurse sank back on the chair. "Our Kuno is saved!" she cried and broke into out sobs. "Your love has done that and has taken away the curse from the work of the old master!"

But the countess stood and looked blissfully smiling into the mirror. On its surface swam the whiff of a little rosy cloud, from it clearly gleamed out a slumbering child's face. "Wolf he should be called if it is a boy; Wolf and Kuno!" she whispered softly. "And let us pray, nurse, that they become happier than those who formerly bore those names!"

At the Fireplace

1.

"I'll tell some ghost stories! Yes, all the young ladies are clapping their hands."

"Where did you get the ghost stories, old man?"

"Me? – that is easy. Just listen, how the pines blow in the October wind! And then in here, this bright, little, pine cone fire!"

"But I thought that ghost stories were completely the tools of reaction."

"Gracious Dame, under your watchfulness, we will risk telling them."

"Don't make such eyes, old man!"

"I'm making not eyes, but we want to set chairs around the fireplace. – So! The chaise can stay where it is. – No, Clara, do not put out the lights! I recognize your intent, but... et cetera."

"So start already!"

"In my hometown..."

"Wait. I want to lie down in front of the fireplace and throw pine cones."

"Sure! -- So, a doctor in my hometown had a four year-old son who he called Peter."

"That's a pretty boring start!"

"Clara, pay attention to your pine cones! – The little Peter dreamed one night—"

"Ah – dreams!"

"What dreams? My ladies, I must ask."

"Should I choke on an rejected ghost story?"

"That isn't a ghost story. Dreams are not ghosts."

"Shut up, dear Clara! – Where was I then?"

"You weren't far."

"Shh! – The father awoke one silent night, Clara! – from the terrified screams of the boy, who slept next to his bed. He took him and tried to cheer him up, but the child would not calm down. 'What's wrong, boy?' 'There was a big wolf, he was behind me, and he wanted to eat me.' 'You were dreaming, my child.' 'No, no, papa, it was a real wolf. His rough hair came to my face.' He buried his face in his father's chest and would not go back to his crib. So at last he fell asleep. After some time, the doctor heard the one o'clock hour strike from the clock tower outside.

"In the doctor's house also lived an old sister who treasured Peter especially close in her heart. – He was a real tomboy, the boy, in an evening party of his parents, that he had once eaten all the anchovies from the buttered rolls. But that has nothing to do with the aunt's love.

"On the following morning, as the doctor stepped out of his bedroom, she was the first to meet him. 'Guess, Karl, what I dreamed!' 'Now?' 'I changed into a wolf and wanted to eat little Peter. I trotted on all fours while the boy ran screaming in front of me.' 'Ugh!' 'Don't you know what hour it was?' 'It must have been after midnight. I can't say exactly.'

– – – – – – – – – –

"And then, old man?"

"And then nothing. That's the end of the story."

"Ugh! The aunt was a werewolf!"

"I can assure you that she was an excellent lady. But Clara, put on another pine cone!"

"Sure, but dreams still aren't ghosts."

"Don't anger the old man! You see, I know better how to deal with him. Here appears the drink with which the holy Hoffmann told his Serapion stories. – Place the bowl in front of the fireplace, Martin! – There is also a half bottle Maraschino, old man!"

"I kiss your hand, madam."

"That sort of thing you just don't understand at all."

"I can't deny that. One doesn't do that in my home. However, I at least begin to talk about it already."

"Please have a drink! – Clara, so that you have something to do, give him a full glass!"

– – – – – – – – – –

"I don't know, my ladies, if you've ever driven through the marsh! In the fall and in the rain I wouldn't wish it for you, but in the dry summertime there may be no better way, the fine gray clay, of which the ground consists, is hard and flat, and the wagon goes smoothly and easily over it. A few years ago I went in northern Schleswig for business to the little town T., which is located in the marsh of the same name. In the evening I was with the local family of the local country clerk. After dinner, as the cigars were lit, we were suddenly caught up in ghost stories, which isn't difficult there, for the city is a veritable nest of ghosts and still full of pagan beliefs. Not just that every time a stork stood on the church tower a councilor would die, but also that at night a glass-eyed, three-legged horse went through the streets, and where it stopped and looked through the window, a coffin would soon be taken out. People called it "De Hel," unaware that it is the horse of their ancient goddess of death, who must have long ago quit her service for that of Death. Of the many such conversations and stories that evening, for me however there was only one simple story that stuck in my mind.

"It was about ten years ago" – so told our host – "when I made a pleasure trip with a young businessman and some other acquaintances to a farm, which belonged to the father of the former and was governed by a so-called Hofmann. It was the best summer weather. The grass in the fens sparkled just so in the sun, and the starlings flew about in flocks with their merry cries around the grazing cattle. The company in the wagon, which rolled along smoothly over the flat marsh, was in the most cheerful mood, and no one more than our young business friend. But suddenly, just as we were driving through a rapes field in bloom, he stopped in the middle of most lively conversation, and his eyes took on a glassy expression so strange, stranger than I had ever before seen on a living person. I, who sat across from him, grabbed his arm and shook him. 'Fritz, Fritz, what's wrong?' I asked. He took a deep breath and said without looking at me, 'That used to be a terrible place.' – 'A terrible place? It's as flat as a board!' – 'Yeah,' he replied, still in a dream, 'it was still not a good way to get away.' – Gradually he roused himself, and his face recovered life and expression, but he gave no other word in answer to our questions. This little incident, which for the moment brought down the mood a little, was, however, soon forgotten after we arrived at the farm by the serenity of the environment and our own youth. We were served coffee by the old housekeeper in the gazebo, we went to the fens to look at the oxen, and in the evening after flasks we had brought along were emptied in the company of the old Hofmann, we all went back home as merry as we had gone out.

"Eight days later in the afternoon our friend rode out to the farm on the orders of his father. In the evening his horse came back alone. The old man, who had just come back home from his men's club, at once set out with all of his people to look for his only son. When they came with their hand lanterns to the blooming rapes field, they found him dead, lying on the road. What was the cause of his death, I can no longer give."

– – – – – – – – – –

It may go vigorously

over stone and road,

but there is a place in the way

that cannot be rode.

"Aha! Our poetic friend is improvising."

"That not, Mr. Assessor. The verse is already printed. But Clara appears to be unsatisfied with my story again. She strikes me as much too impatient with the punch."

"There! – You have a glass of punch! – I'm not saying anything more."

"Now, so listen!"

"My barber – from whom I have this story – is the son of a clothier. When his father was still young, he came one evening as a traveling apprentice in a small Silesian town. At the inn he learned that he could work with one of the oldest masters. – 'I only hope that it will be of some duration,' the innkeeper told him. – 'With goodwill, father,' said the fellow, 'you don't trust me, or is there something wrong with the master?' – The host shook his head. – 'What, then, father?' – 'It's just,' the old man said, 'although they wanted to have three apprentices, after a month they always lost one."

"Our apprentice didn't challenge him, but went that same evening to his new master. He found both an old couple who spoke to him kindly, and a solid, homely dinner to strengthen him after his journey. When it was his bedtime, the master himself led him down a long corridor of the building back to the upper floor and showed him to his bedroom. The space for the other two apprentices was located in the bottom, but there was not space to accommodate a third bed.

"When the master wished him good night, the young man stood still for a moment and listened as the steps of the old man became more distant down the staircase and gradually were lost down the long passageway. Then he looked at his new quarters. It was a long, very narrow chamber with bare white walls. Below, engaging the entire width of the transverse wall, stood the bed; next to it the small table and a small chair of pinewood; and that was all the furniture. One single, very high window with small panes of glass set in lead seemed, as far as could be recognized by the moonshine outside, to look out to a large garden. – But he was already seeing it with dreamy eyes, and when he stretched out under the rough comforter and put out the light he fell into a deep sleep.

"How long it lasted, he could not say. He only knew that he was awoken abruptly by a sound in his room. And soon he distinctly heard a sweeping sound like that of a sharp broom, which gradually moved from the direction of the window to the depth of the room. He sat up and stared wide-eyed in front of himself, and the chamber was quite bright in the moonlight, with one wall lit from it, but he could not see anything but a totally empty room.

"Suddenly before it came very close to him, everything was quiet again. He listened for a while and tried in vain to make sense of it. At last, tired as he was, he fell again into a deep sleep.

"In the morning, when the matter came up between him and the master, he heard from him that whatever individual had previously slept in that room he would have heard the similar there. However, it has only been during the time of the full moon, and incidentally nothing has happened to anyone. – The young clothier allowed himself to be reassured, and in the nights that followed his sleep was not disturbed by anything that happened. Here in this house he had everything he wished. Work and income were regular, and he got on a good footing with both of his fellow apprentices.

"This went one day after another, until finally the time of the full moon came. But he did not pay attention because there was heavy, overcast sky and no light fell into the room as he lay down to sleep at night. Suddenly he was awoken again by that half-forgotten sound. Even more zealously and sharply, it seemed to him, than the first time it swept and brushed through his room, and strangely enough, now where it was most dark he thought he could see a shadow moving around towards the window. But, like the first time, after a while everything was quiet again, without it having reached the bed and without him being able to recognize something more precise. This time, however, he could not fall asleep as quickly and thus listened to the church tower beat one hour after another. Finally the moon broke through the clouds and shined into the room, but it illuminated only the bare walls.

"These things were so little agreeable to the fellow that he decided not to mention it to anyone, at least to suppress the sinister activities of the place for himself. As usual, the ensuing nights went without disturbance. – After a month had passed, he returned home late at night from a neighboring town, where his master had sent him with some business errands. When he reached the city he went not through the streets, but along the city walls to go through the garden in the back of the house, which he could enter with a key he received from his master. There was bright moonlight. Already in the vicinity of the house, as he walked between the flowerbeds along the straight paths of the garden, he happened to cast a glance up at the window of his room. – Up there was one thing, deformed and translucent, looking down through the windowpanes into the garden.

"The young man suddenly lost the desire to share quarters with such a companion. He turned around and sought shelter at an inn for the night. The next morning – so his son told me – he took his departure and left the city without anyone ever knowing what he had lived with for so long in the room."

– – – – – – – – – –

"I can't think of anything, either."

"I feel the same way, old man."

"I should think that would be a real ghost story. Or what was still wrong with it?"

"It had no point."

"So? -- But a part of these stories confronts us with the allure of mystery and urges us to trace the things that, although long since passed, can still let shadows fall on an empty room."

"Well, and your story?"

"I want to trust the whole acuity of the ladies and you'd rather say otherwise, when such a connection is self-evident by reflecting that the incident coincides with this self-appearance in a moment."

"At the H. Gymnasium I had a classmate, an industrious and talented person who, because he lived in my neighborhood, I came into contact with almost daily. Just as he entered his second year his father, who held a small municipal office, died, and left his widow and son under the most difficult circumstances. – With the aid of scholarships, of which there were many, my friend could have nevertheless probably fulfilled his plan to study law, but the eager desire to earn something now to alleviate the last years of his aging mother induced him to leave gymnasium and enter the local government as a pay clerk. Our acquaintance wasn't interrupted. We went as usual at noon on our sociable walks, and in the evening when he came home from the office, we sat in a room occupied jointly by him and his mother and went through with each other the lessons which should come the following days in school; for he had not entirely given up on his life plans, and when the evening was not over he unthinkingly used the night to help. So I've spent many hours working together or in friendly conversation. The mother used to sit with her knitting near us in front of a small lamp. I can still see the silent, ill face when she sometimes looked up from her work and rested her eyes on her only child with a look of care. If he noticed it, he then certainly took her pale hand and held it in his while he continued reading the books lying before him. But his reading was not as usual; it was as if the affection for his mother had scattered his thoughts, and I remember how on such occasions tears sprang from his eyes and with a smile and short glance of his eyes laid her hand back in her lap. There was an air of peace and tranquility in the room as I have experienced nowhere else. On one wall was an old, shabby piano at which we sometimes sang. Then the old woman put her knitting back on her lap, and if it was by chance a tune from her youth, she stood up along and went with inaudible steps softly humming to herself to and fro in the room. But if the cuckoo clock on the wall struck ten, she began to throw an uneasy look at the bedstead, which was at the back of a spacious room. Then we took our books, said goodnight, and went down the stairs to her son's small bedroom, where we spent a few more hours continuing to study. She could peacefully slumber in the upper room, for it lay next to a courtyard where nothing would disturb the nightly quiet.

But this life with its simple pleasures reached its end after a few years. Shortly before I left for the university the mother fell ill. It was the seed of death, long lying in her, that now came to development. Neither she nor her son misunderstood that. At her request, I visited her before I left. The once friendly room was now dark and dreary, the window heavily curtained, and from the pillows under the dark canopy looked the suffering face of the good woman. As her thin hand grabbed mine, she just said, "Live quite well!" But we both felt that it was a final farewell for life.

"Now what followed, I heard later from the mouth of my friend, for I had left the city the next day. – He had, as his mother's weakness increased in an unusual manner, received permission to finish work at home and sat in the sick room at the farthest window, where he threw back the curtain a little, now busily writing, now casting anxious glances at the dark curtains of the bed. If his mother woke, he sat in the old armchair by her bedside and spoke softly to her, or read to her from the Bible. Or he was only by her so that her eyes could rest tenderly on him. He would also stay there nights, and if the patient saw his controlled face she'd say, "George, lay down to sleep! George, you can't endure it!" or when she assured him, "Go ahead, there's no danger today," he would grasp her hand all the more firmly, as if she would be torn away from him right now if he distanced himself from her.

But one night, as an alleviation of the pain had occurred and since he could barely hold himself upright, he let himself be persuaded. Below in his room he laid on his bed undressed in a dreamless, deep, leaden sleep. Upstairs in the glow of the night lamp he had left his mother in gentle slumber. Meanwhile the night had passed and as the day began to dawn he was drawn from his sleep by a gentle force. When he looked up, he saw the door of the room opened and a hand with a white handkerchief wave at him. He automatically jumped from his bed, but he was mistaken. The door to his room was latched as he had left it with his own hand that night. Almost without thinking, he went upstairs to the sick room. – It was quiet inside, the night lamp had burned out, and under the dark bed canopy he found by the dim light of dawn his mother's corpse. As he bent down to press the dead hand hanging over the edge of the bed to his mouth, he was transfixed by her white handkerchief, which she held between her closed fingers."

– – – – – – – – – –

"And your friend? What happened to him?"

"He's doing well, because after much trouble and hard work he realized his life plan, and he lives now just as if in the presence of his mother. Her love, that she so unreservedly gave him in life, became an asset which in the darkest hours will not fail him."

"But Clara, why do you have your hands over your eyes?"

"Oh – I'm not scared."

"But you're crying!"

"Me? – Why do you tell such stupid stories!"

"Well! So may that be the last. I know for today nothing better to tell."

2.

"But it has once again become summer, old man! What are our stories? A fireplace can't be lit when it's 16 degrees Celsius!"

"Madam, even if there is sheet lightning outside, we are nevertheless already deep into November. The tea table will do for today. Let only the kettle whistle. I for my part am happy with the accommodation. Of course –"

"What then, of course?"

"If the tea kettle is to represent the hearth, it must necessarily boil on a brazier, and certainly on peal coals, glowing red hot. It also provides a longer duration than that unpleasant apparatus."

"Well, old man, for me it shouldn't come on a can of gas!"

"Keep nevertheless the pharmacist's flame of the spirit lamp! – However, meanwhile there is neither peat nor even a tea Komfort – you don't even recognize that fact? –, so I'll accept the gas can."

"So, get on your soapbox. What do you have to tell?"

"Today as I was passing a newly opened milliner's shop, I had a vivid memory of an old friend from back home. She was the daughter of a craftsman from a neighboring town and lived a long time in a little house whose courtyard bordered the garden of our dwelling house. Much against her inclination, she sought an income by fancy millinery work which she made for the women in the neighborhood. She in no way concealed that the business at present was going fairly poorly; and if she was able to give herself a free evening she shut her hated work in the dresser drawer and in place took one of her beloved books in hand, or she took herself to her pen and wrote a little story or some meaningful thoughts on paper. The limited nature of her living condition, coupled with the urge to take in all sorts of fine spiritual nourishment – for Rahel's writings were her favorite food – produced by her an unusual but not uninteresting view of things for her; and we've had some entertaining chats together over the garden picket fence.

"Hans!"

"What is it, woman?"

"You left out something. – Through that house is a shortcut to the main street, and next to the road was the milliner's shop. Confess: you sat between lilies and roses!"

"But ladies, my friend was in no way a St. Genevieve, but a sedate, lean person of 45!"

"But she had bright, brown eyes, Hans, and her lively red face bore witness to the excitability of her heart, and if she expressed her joy for our engagement with careful words, because of the naughty character of the young man's visits could no longer be misconstrued, I could not ignore the veiled confession of mutual affection."

"In no way do I want to diminish our mutual affection. That remark from my friend probably came from an virginal purity that can be called from time to time driving forth from being in a single state for too long a time. Because when she later got married and, to the astonishment of world, gave birth to a boy, she could not be persuaded initially to lay her boy on her chest because, as she put it, the child was of the opposite sex."

"Hans! – You are lying. She had never married."

"No? – Well, I confused the story. Be that as it may, this friend, of whom I preserve a faithful memory, was in secret at home in the supernatural as she was as the domestic affairs. Of her many stories to me however – forgive me, Clara! – only a dream in memory stays!

"There was – so she told me – long ago in our area a rich Dutch family who gradually came into possession of all the large farms in the area around my hometown – I say long ago because the fortune of the van A..., it did not last. In my childhood there only lived the old lady, the widow of the long-dead penny pincher van A..., the other members of the family had died, sometimes losing their lives in strange and violent ways; and of the immense possessions only an old gabled house in the city had been left behind, in which the last of that name lived the rest of her days in solitude. I often saw her, that narrow, sharply cut face bordered by her bonnet ribbons; but we kids were afraid of her, there was something in her eyes that scared us. There was also kinds of scary talk, not only about the acquisition of assets in earlier times, but also about the means by which the penny pincher had try to avoid ruin. Whether it was an abuse of office or whether it might have been something else, I don't remember, but the surviving widow was considered the actual originator. Nevertheless, it was always a kind of holiday if, at the order of my parents, I spent a few minutes in the high room filled with old-fashioned curiosities. I can still see her before me, how she sat straight and stiff in her easy chair next to the glass cabinet, groping around between journals and ledgers or moving her gaunt fingers around a large piece of knitting. Only once have I met another person with her except for her old servant; and the short scene that I was eye-witness to at the time gave me a deep impression, without being able make the significance of it clear to myself. It was a ragged woman from the city standing in front of the old woman. Upon my entering she threw a valuable coin before the feet and then went out the door with jeering, passionate words. The woman van A..., who replied to none of this, now stood up from her chair without taking any notice of me, spent a long while to and fro in the room, wringing her hands and blurting half-loud plaintive words. – Suddenly one morning it was that she died, and soon in the afternoon I decided to sneak into the house of mourning and observed with mixed feelings of horror and curiosity, through the window of the room's door, the wax face that jutted from the white pillow of the alcove bedstead. Then a few days later came the funeral; I ate with great relish the delicious butter kringels that were distributed during the neighborhood's funeral feast, and saw from our stone stairs a coffin covered in a black cloth carried out of the old house and down the long street.

"A few weeks later I dreamt that I was playing in the twilight in our long hallway. In the increasing darkness all of a sudden a feeling of loneliness overcame me, and I was about to go into the room with my mother when the doorbell rang and I saw the old woman van A... enter. I was fully aware that she was dead and slipped as she came nearer and only barely slipped past her into the living room, where my mother had just ignited the light. While I ran to her and held tight to her apron, I noticed that the deceased was dressed in a colorful night jacket and a white woolen petticoat, like I sometimes saw her in the early morning hours. She walked to the small, enclosed oven bricked into the wall and with trembling hands caressed the brass knobs, while she turned her heard to my mother and said in a sad voice, 'Ah, dear neighbor, may I warm up a bit? I am freezing!' And while she stood still, sighing softly to herself for a while, I noticed that under the hem of her woolen coat several spots were burnt. -- -- How the dream ended, I don't know; I thought the next morning about it not at all long and also told no one about it. But it came back. – A few nights later I dreamt that I was sitting as usual with my sewing beside my mother in the room, when it rang outside the front door. 'See who it is,' said my mother; and as I opened the door to see, there stood the woman van A... before me again, in the same clothing I saw her in the previous time. Overcome by the terrible horror, I jumped back and crawled along the wall under the table that stood in the corner by the window. Like the last time the woman went moaning quietly to herself to the oven. 'I'm freezing, oh, I'm freezing!' she said, and I distinctly heard her teeth chattering. From the glow of the light on the table I also noticed that she had bare feet, but oddly enough there were also burn wounds, and the wool coat was burnt far more than on the previous night. And she stood there constantly and clung herself with her hands on the oven, only occasionally uttering a sigh or a deep groan.

This time the dream would not let me forget it in the morning. During breakfast my father didn't tolerate that we would suggest something upsetting or unpleasant would be raised. But later, as my mother got up and went into the kitchen, I followed her and told her exactly what I had dreamt on both nights. I can still see the dismay expressed on her face during my story. I had barely ended when she put her hands together over her head and cried in Platt Deutsch, 'Dear God in heaven, even in my dream!' – Then she told me that in the same night she experienced the same dream as I. -- -- Later we did not experience this dream again."

– – – – – – – – – –

"Where did the dead woman come from?"

"I can unfortunately give no answer.

"But two other questions strike me even more closely, the truth of which I have no reason to doubt, are even closer to me. Was one dream just the source of another, which obviously seemed to be the case in the story of the wolf, or was it a third, which was the original source of these two? –

"Let me tell you, however, about another incident.

"Some years ago I spent, as you know, a couple of weeks with my wife at my brother's estate. If we had strolled that day between meadows and cornfields or even rode with the children in the nearby forest, in the evening there stood ready for us a very cozy tea table, at which one or the other neighboring landowners would make an appearance. On such an occasion my brother complained to his nextdoor neighbor, a man with whom it is very comfortable talking, that for some time small quantities of fruit had been constantly going missing from his ground without ever being able to discover the thief. After it was all talked through, as whatever might serve as clarification, Mr. B..r said, 'With me, in a similar situation, it has gone according to the Proverb: God gives the lazy their sleep.' After closer questioning he then told the following:

"'As you know, I took care of the trap door to my oat floor by locking the padlock and taking the key at bedtime to my bedroom. This is what I've done for many years. In the fall, before you came in the spring, I noticed several times when I came in the morning on the floor, that in the night someone, in apparent haste, was over at the oats. For it was rooted in at the one, then at the other end of the heap, and a lot of grains were scattered messily across the floor, where I had not noticed them in the evenings before though by chance I had been there. My first thought was that my coachman, who I for some time, to his great annoyance, had reduced rations for the horses, out of love for the poor animals had become a rogue. Alone out of the various reasons I abandoned that suspicion.

"'Then one night I dreamt that I stood in the moonlight on the oat floor at the window. How I had gotten there, I cannot state, because I was very well aware that the trap door was closed. Suddenly I heard the key turn in the padlock; immediately the door opens, and I see by the moonlight existing in the room a human face emerge from the stairs, such that I could clearly recognize an old worker who worked for me for many years and who I had not suspected. While he with his arm pushed back the door, he seemed to be aware of me, but the door closed and I saw no more.

"'But I awoke. The face was so vivid that my heart pounded, and there shined the moon so brightly in the room, exactly as I saw it in the dream. I wanted to get up and investigate the matter immediately, but I called myself just a fool; it was also cold outside, going through the courtyard, and the bed was so cozy and warm. In a word, I couldn't bring myself and finally fell asleep again.

"'The next morning, as I sat for breakfast old Martin came up to me in the room. He looked confused, turned his hat in his hands, and stood for a while in front of me without being able to utter a word. "Do not chase me away, sir," he said finally. "It is done out of a great need." – "What do you mean, Martin?" I asked. – He looked at me. "I was already once at the bin again," he said then, "but I was so frightened when I saw you standing there at the window." – While I was perhaps at this moment no less frightened, I learned by and by the circumstances of the theft and the unfortunate circumstances that had made the honest man into a criminal.'

– – – – – – – – – –

"Here the narrator paused. I later learned from my brother that he then thoroughly helped old Martin and kept him until his death on the farm. -- -- So we have thus a story where someone awake was led to a vision by someone who was dreaming. – But the tea should be ready; is Clara perhaps so kind?"

"But what do you see then in the cup, old man? It is prepared as you instructed."

"Oh dear! He who prophesizes from the teacup or even more from the cup of tea does it like the witch from coffee grounds. Namely, not perchance the fate, but rather the level of culture of the family, in the way the cup was presented, and if we here were not such undoubtedly educated people, I would believe, this might be one occasion to doubt it."

"What is it, old man! Justify yourself, or – rather prophesize yourself for once; you have the cup in hand."

"My dear lady, you will concede to me, that, just as beer is the enemy, so is tea the friend of the thinking man; and therefore it is likely the way this friend is handled- or rather mishandled in a house, how it is served and enjoyed, to justify all sorts of not quite misleading conclusions in the indicated reference."

"This is a really shameless theory!"

"I want to go to sleep; for now follow the whole prescription for the making of tea."

"No, Clare, it doesn't follow, although to hear such a thing from a coastal person it could be beneficial for you."

"Don't be so rude, old man!"

"I punish myself with silence. But Mr. T. will tell you the story that I've since long detected in your face."

"You have not seen incorrectly; something occurred to me, however, that is connected somewhat to the previous narrative, except that it goes even one step further."

"We're ready to listen."

"A few years ago, as I stood in garrison in B. around Easter – so Captain von K. told me – the local officers wanted to give a farewell ball for the lovely foreigners with whom we danced much and gladly over the winter. An absolutely necessary repair was the reason we relinquished the hall of the casino and had to look around for another place. That was his difficulty in that in B. such spaces were not abundant. There was a committee of four stewards established, which I belonged, to whom was commissioned the whole arrangement of the affair, especially the ferreting out of the ballroom. Finally after much trouble it was found, in a big, fairly ramshackle home in the suburbs, in which in former years, as B. was still a university town, had served as public dance hall. Now it was used in the upper spaces as a granary; the immense hall itself was currently empty and unused. But while it might have enjoyed at the best of time only modest furnishing, now with the walls dripping from moisture, with the musty air behind the closed shutters, it seemed to me at my first entrance in reality like a large crypt. The more there was for us to do, the more the dance-hungry officer corps was discouraged. There was, however, a new obstacle to overcome. The leaseholder of the house had just purchased a quantity of corn that had to be stored for the next few days in the hall, because the garrets were almost full. We weren't able to dispute it; we went to the owner's agents, we chatted with him, we were gracious and brought it to the point that got the compliant man, apparently against his better judgment, to allow the grain to be stored in the upper rooms of the building. Then masons, carpenters, and decorators were put to work, and the old hall was ventilated, hammered, draped, and painted, and every done one or the other of us went there to oversee the work and direct it. – Suddenly, to my regret, I was assigned to H. There was no way out; I had to abandon the ball. In my place Captain von L., my oldest and most intimate childhood friend, entered at my suggestion the festival committee.

"A couple days after I had reached my new destination, I sat one afternoon busy writing letters in my room. I wrote to L., wanting to ask him to forward some of my personal possessions and the payment of some small debts. I also had much else on my mind that I needed to share with friends. So I sat, completely engrossed in my letter. But when I by chance happened to lift up my eyes again, I saw to my surprise L. standing in the corner of the room and staring strangely at me with exceptionally expressionless eyes. He did not speak, but he moved with a slow gesture of his hand to his lips and seemed to pull something out of his mouth. It seemed to me as if it were grains of corn. As I strained my eyes to see more clearly, the figure became indistinct, and soon I saw nothing but the bare walls. Only now, when I was again alone in the bright room, I felt the feeling of uncanniness; I got up and shut up my started letter in my secretary, because I could not bring myself to finish it.

"A few days later I received the news from other comrades that on that morning the hall, overloaded with grain, had collapsed. As they cleared the grain away, they found the body of Captain von L., who, since the workers were gone for lunch, at the time of the accident had stayed behind alone in the almost completely remodeled festival hall rooms."

– – – – – – – – – –

"Horatio says it's just imagination!"

"Who's talking there? – You, Alexis? At last?"

"I stood at the door at the beginning of your story and listened as you progressed from the dreamer to the dying. There remains still one left, and if you want to listen, I will not shrink from taking that last step. – No, remain quietly seated! It can also be told from here.

"I have this strange story from a close relative who partially experienced it himself, partially learned later from a close source. He stopped temporarily several years ago in B., where at the time the Privy Medical Counselor W. lived among the well-known in academic and artistic circles. One evening, as he came into company with the mentioned W., the conversation fell on by reason of a recently published book, On the Life of the Soul, imperceptibly into that dark region, where we fumble around so much with uncertain fingers. They discussed the continued existence of the soul after the body passes away, and finally, the possibility of the influence of the dead on the living. The Counselor had in this last turn in the conversation sat silently in his easy chair. Now he raised his white powdered head and said, 'Esteemed gentlemen, if something like that were possible, I would have undoubtedly experienced it, and I will not deny that sometimes I have such thoughts; however, it has never happened to me.' Upon further urging he continued, 'It is no secret here, I can tell this intimate circle well, especially you, who know and certainly honored him who it concerns. I think of our late friend, Privy Law Counselor Z. You will recall that he was ailing for years from a heart condition, until it suddenly brought his active life to an end. The sick man's condition was such that the most differing opinions prevailed among the doctors who were brought in to advise. – During the final months I had with this worthy friend, who in no way gave in to delusions regarding his approaching death, various conversations ensued like what we have heard here tonight; he especially loved to indulge in hypothetical musings about a necessary connection of the body with the soul. Just from this I can explain it is that an otherwise rational man became afflicted by an almost incomprehensible fear of a future autopsy of his corpse, which he on the other hand could expect with good reason from the scientific curiosity of my colleagues.

"'So it happened one evening that I, who attended him in his last year in, at that time, consultation with Professor X, I gave him a solemn promise at his urgent request to prevent at the onset of death the opening of his body under any condition. – Shortly before this took place, I had to leave town by reason of an official commission, after which I transferred the care of him as for my other patients to Professor X. – After several days' absence I returned to the city. It was already dark. As I drove past the house of Counselor Z., I was amazed to see that both living rooms were brightly lit, which it occurred to me because the window of the sick room also looked out towards the courtyard. I stopped the driver, and then I immediately went out of the coach into the house. When I entered the first room the scalpels and other equipment gleamed towards me from a cabinet top; and with it a significant smell, unmistakable for an anatomist. From the adjoining room I heard the voice of Professor X. dictating; I didn't need to know anything more, I knew everything that happened. – When I opened the second door, I saw the dead body of my friend lying on the table, he was already opened, the intestines removed in part, the autopsy in full course. I was violently agitated, and instead of responding to the scholarly explanations of the doctor and his assisting physicians, I imparted to them my solemn promise given to the dead. Although the men wanted to only regard these as only comforting words that would be given to a sick person without the intention of their being fulfilled, they eventually promised me to desist from further proceedings and put the removed organs back into the body. I then left and went to my apartment, tired from the trip, full of pain from my friend's death, and burdened with a mysterious sadness that I was not able to keep the word I had given him. It's not been almost a year, but nevertheless – I have never been reminded of this.'

"The Medical Counselor was silent, and there arose a momentary silence among the company, which might have been meant for the memory of the deceased. All of a sudden however the attention of the audience went back to the narrator, who had left his chair and stood with outstretched hands in the direction of the listeners. In the wrinkled old face was the expression of the highest excitement that there was no mistaking his dismay. After a while one could hear him say softly, as if to himself, 'It's horrible!' As the host of the house, one of his oldest friends, hereupon took him by the hand, he slowly straightened up and looked around his company, as if to make sure of where he was. 'Esteemed gentlemen,' he said then, 'I just realized something – what and from where, excuse me from sharing with you. Only so much I want to say, that my previously expressed views should essentially be corrected. – At the same time I must ask myself to be released for the evening; I have a necessary task to do.' The Medical Counselor took his hat and cane and left the company. When he was outside he walked across the market to the home of Professor X, whom he encountered in his study. He addressed him without further ado, "Do you still remember the Judicial Counselor, Herr Professor, and whose autopsy you directed?' – 'Certainly, Herr Doctor.' – 'Even the promise given to me on this occasion?' – 'Of course.' – 'But you have deceived me, Herr Colleague!' – 'I don't understand, Herr Colleague.' – 'You will understand me if you only allow me to clear away some of the books there in the third shelf of your bookcase!" – And before the other could still respond, the excited old man already approached, and after he placed with trembling hands some volumes aside, he took out of the corner of the shelf a glass jar out in which there was a specimen in the alcohol. It was an unusually large human heart. – 'It is the heart of my friend,' he said, holding the glass in both hands; 'I know it, but the dead must have it again, today, this very night!' – The professor was shocked; he was sure that no one could have betrayed his secret possession to the doctor. But he admitted that in fact that evening his anatomical desires had succeeded over the suffering of his conscience. – The heart of the dead was laid that same night with the dead in his coffin."

– – – – – – – – – –

"Whew! Who will rid me of this shiver?"

"Shiver? You speak like a modern literary storyteller."

"Me? Why?"

"Because you only see the goose bumps in Horror."

"Well, and how would it be different?"

"How would it be different? – If we consider correctly, the living human lives each for itself, in terrible loneliness; a lost point in the immeasurable and incomprehensible space. We forget it, but sometimes the feeling attacks us suddenly in the face of the incomprehensible and enormous; and that, I think, should be something to which we are able to call Horror."

"Nonsense! Horror is when one night a bucket of fish is poured into bed; that I already know as well as that my shoes cost three Hellers."

"You're right, Clara! Or if one shines a light under the beds and dressers in the evening before going to sleep, and I know one who is very industrious in this work. It could even happen very soon, for it's late, ladies and gentlemen, 'bourgeois bedtime,' as I almost said in this distinguished company.
