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Page 3
"We were a kind of Pharisees in our home," she said, "and except we
washed our hands, never ate bread."
Hans growled a little, but he took the hint, for her sake and the
boy's, and gradually found the practice so pleasant on its own account,
that the washing of his hands and face became a daily process.
On his patron saint's day (St. John, February 8), Mother Magdalis went
a step further, and presented him with a clean suit of clothes, very
humble but neat and sound, of her own making out of old hoards. Not for
holidays only, she said, but that he might change his clothes every
day, after work, as her Berthold used.
"Dainty, burgher ways," Hans called them, but he submitted, and
Gottlieb was greatly comforted, and thought his old friend a long way
advanced in his transformation into an angel.
So, between the sweetness of the boy's temper and of his dear mother's
love which folded him close, the bitter was turned into sweet within
him.
But Ursula, who heard the mocking of the boys with indignation, was
not so wise in her consolations.
"Wicked, envious little devils!" said she. "Never thou heed them, my
lamb! They would be glad enough, any of them, to be the master's angel,
or Dwarf Hans' darling, for that matter, if they could. It is nothing
but mean envy and spite, my little prince, my little wonder; never thou
heed them!"
And then the enemy crept unperceived into the child's heart.
Was he indeed a little prince and a wonder, on his platform of gifts
and goodness? And were all those naughty boys far below him, in another
sphere, hating him as the little devils in the mystery-plays seemed to
hate and torment the saints?
Had the "raven" been sent to him, after all, as to the prophet of old,
not only because he was hungry and pitied by God, but because he was
good and a favorite of God?
It seemed clear he was something quite out of the common. He seemed the
favorite of every one, except those few envious, wicked boys.
The great ladies of the city entreated for him to come and sing at
their feasts; and all their guests stopped in the midst of their eager
talk to listen to him, and they gave him sweetmeats and praised him to
the skies, and they offered him wine from their silver flagons, and
when he refused it, as his mother bade him, they praised him more than
ever, and once the host himself, the burgomaster, emptied the silver
flagon of the wine he had refused, and told him to take it home to his
mother and tell her she had a child whose dutifulness was worth more
than all the silver in the city.
But when he told his mother this, instead of looking delighted, as he
expected, she looked grave, and almost severe, and said:
"You only did your duty, my boy. It would have been a sin and a shame
to do otherwise. And, of course, you would not for the world."
"Certainly I would not, mother," he said.
But he felt a little chilled. Did his mother think it was always so
easy for boys to do their duty? and that every one did it?
Other people seemed to think it a very uncommon and noble thing to do
one's duty. And what, indeed, could the blessed saints do more?
So the slow poison of praise crept into the boy's heart. And while he
thought his life was being filled with light, unknown to him the
shadows were deepening,--the one shadow which eclipses the sun, the
terrible shadow of self.
For he could not but be conscious how, even in the cathedral, a kind of
hush and silence fell around when he began to sing.
And instead of the blessed presence of God filling the holy place, and
his singing in it, as of old, like a happy little bird in the sunshine,
his own sweet voice seemed to fill the place, rising and falling like a
tide up and down the aisles, leaping to the vaulted roof like a
fountain of joy, and dropping into the hearts of the multitude like dew
from heaven.
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