|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 57
Sperver kept on humming and laughing. Suddenly putting his hand upon the
dwarf's misshapen back, he cried--
"Silence! Here is Knapwurst, our historian and chronicler! He is
preparing to speak. This hump holds all the history of the house of
Nideck from the beginning of time!"
The little hunchback, not at all indignant at so ambiguous a compliment,
directed his benevolent eyes upon the face of the huntsman, and replied--
"You, Sperver, you are one of the _reiters_ whose story I have been
telling you. You have the arm, and the courage, and the whiskers of a
_reiter_ of old! If that window opened wide, and a _reiter_ was to hold
out his hand at the end of his long arm to you, what would you say to
him?"
"I would say, 'You are welcome, comrade; sit down and drink. You will
find the wine just as good and the girls just as pretty as they were in
the days of old Hugh Lupus.' Look!"
And he pointed with his glass at the jolly young faces that brightened
the farther end of the table.
Certainly the damsels of Nideck were lovely. Some were blushing with
pleasure to hear their own praises; others half-veiled their rosy cheeks
with their long drooping eyelashes, while one or two seemed rather to
prefer to display their, sweet blue eyes by raising them to the smoky
ceiling. I wondered at my own insensibility that I had never before
noticed these fair roses blooming in the towers of the ancient manor.
"Silence!" cried Sperver for the second time. "Our friend Knapwurst is
going to tell us again the legend he related to us just now."
"Won't you have another instead?" asked the hunchback.
"No. I like this best."
"I know better ones than that."
"Knapwurst," insisted the huntsman, raising his finger impressively, "I
have reasons for wishing to hear the same again and no other. Cut it
shorter if you like. There is a great deal in it. Now, Fritz, listen!"
The dwarf, rather under the influence of the sparkling wine he had taken,
rested his elbows on the table, and with his cheeks clutched in his bony
fingers, and his eyes starting from his head with his concentrated
efforts to speak with becoming seriousness, he cried as if he were
publishing a proclamation--
"Bernard Hertzog relates that the burgrave Hugh, surnamed Lupus, or the
Wolf, when he was old, used to wear a cowl, which was a kind of knitted
cap that covered in the crest of the knight's helmet when engaged in
fighting. When the helmet tired him he would take it off and put on the
knitted cowl, and its long cape fell around his shoulders.
"Up to his eighty-second year Hugh still wore his armour, though he could
hardly breathe in it.
"Then he sent for Otto of Burlach, his chaplain, his eldest son Hugh, his
second son Berthold, and his daughter the red-haired Bertha, wife of a
Saxon chief named Bluderich, and said to them--
"'Your mother the she-wolf has bequeathed you her claws; her blood flows,
mingled with mine, in your veins. In you the wolf's blood will flow from
generation to generation; it shall weep and howl among the snows of the
Black Forest. Some will say, "Hark! The wind howls!" others, "No, it is
the owl hooting!" But not so; it is your blood, mine and the blood of the
she-wolf who drove me to murder Hedwige, my wife before God and the
Church. She died under my bloody hands! Cursed be the she-wolf! for it is
written, "I will visit the sins of the fathers upon the children." The
crime of the father shall be visited upon the children until justice
shall have been satisfied!'
"Then old Hugh the Wolf died.
"From that dreary day the north wind has howled across the wilds, and the
owl has hooted in the dark, and travellers by night know not that it is
the blood of the she-wolf weeping for the day of vengeance that will
come, whose blood will be renewed from generation to generation--so says
Hertzog--until the day when the first wife of Hugh, Hedwige the Fair,
shall reappear at Nideck under the form of an angel to comfort and to
forgive!"
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|