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Page 6
_The Eighth Chapter_
HOW OUR NEED WAXED SORER AND SORER, AND HOW I SENT OLD ILSE WITH ANOTHER
LETTER TO PUDGLA, AND HOW HEAVY A MISFORTUNE THIS BROUGHT UPON ME
Next day, when I had buried the poor corpses amid the lamentations of the
whole village (by the same token that they were all buried under where the
lime-tree overhangs the wall), I heard with many sighs that neither the
sea nor the Achterwater would yield anything. It was now ten days since
the poor people had caught a single fish. I therefore went out into the
field, musing how the wrath of the just God might be turned from us,
seeing that the cruel winter was now at hand, and neither corn, apples,
fish nor flesh to be found in the village, nor even throughout all the
parish. There was indeed plenty of game in the forests of Coserow and
Uekeritze; but the old forest ranger, Zabel Nehring, had died last year of
the plague, and there was no new one in his place. Nor was there a musket
nor a grain of powder to be found in all the parish; the enemy had robbed
and broken everything: we were therefore forced, day after day, to see
how the stags and the roes, the hares and the wild boars, _et cet_., ran
past us, when we would so gladly have had them in our bellies, but had no
means of getting at them: for they were too cunning to let themselves be
caught in pit-falls. Nevertheless, Claus Peer succeeded in trapping a roe,
and gave me a piece of it, for which may God reward him. _Item_, of
domestic cattle there was not a head left; neither was there a dog, nor
a cat, which the people had not either eaten in their extreme hunger,
or knocked on the head or drowned long since. Albeit old farmer Paasch
still owned two cows; _item_, an old man in Uekeritze was said to have
one little pig:--this was all. Thus, then, nearly all the people lived on
blackberries and other wild fruits: the which also soon grew to be scarce,
as may easily be guessed. Besides all this, a boy of fourteen was missing
(old Labahn his son) and was never more heard of, so that I shrewdly think
that the wolves devoured him.
And now let any Christian judge by his own heart in what sorrow and
heaviness I took my staff in my hand, seeing that my child fell away like
a shadow from pinching hunger; although I myself, being old, did not, by
the help of God's mercy, find any great failing in my strength. While I
thus went continually weeping before the Lord, on the way to Uekeritze, I
fell in with an old beggar with his wallet, sitting on a stone, and eating
a piece of God's rare gift, to wit, a bit of bread. Then truly did my poor
mouth so fill with water that I was forced to bow my head and let it run
upon the earth before I could ask, "Who art thou? and whence comest thou?
seeing that thou hast bread." Whereupon he answered that he was a poor man
of Bannemin, from whom the enemy had taken all; and as he had heard that
the Lieper Winkel had long been in peace, he had travelled thither to beg.
I straightway answered him, "Oh, poor beggar-man, spare to me, a sorrowful
servant of Christ, who is poorer even than thyself, one little slice of
bread for his wretched child; for thou must know that I am the pastor of
this village, and that my daughter is dying of hunger. I beseech thee by
the living God not to let me depart without taking pity on me, as pity
also hath been shown to thee!" But the beggar-man would give me none,
saying that he himself had a wife and four children, who were likewise
staggering towards death's door under the bitter pangs of hunger; that the
famine was sorer far in Bannemin than here, where we still had berries;
whether I had not heard that but a few days ago a woman (he told me her
name, but horror made me forget it) had there killed her own child, and
devoured it from hunger? That he could not therefore help me, and I might
go to the Lieper Winkel myself.
I was horror-stricken at his tale, as is easy to guess, for we in our own
trouble had not yet heard of it, there being little or no traffic between
one village and another; and thinking on Jerusalem, and sheer despairing
because the Lord had visited us, as of old that ungodly city, although we
had not betrayed or crucified him, I almost forgot all my necessities, and
took my staff in my hand to depart. But I had not gone more than a few
yards when the beggar called me to stop, and when I turned myself round he
came towards me with a good hunch of bread which he had taken out of his
wallet, and said, "There! but pray for me also, so that I may reach my
home; for if on the road they smell that I have bread, my own brother
would strike me dead, I believe." This I promised with joy, and instantly
turned back to take to my child the gift hidden in my pocket. And behold,
when I came to the road which leads to Loddin, I could scarce trust my
eyes (before I had overlooked it in my distress) when I saw my glebe,
which could produce seven bushels, ploughed, sown, and in stalk; the
blessed crop of rye had already shot lustily out of the earth a finger's
length in height. I could not choose but think that the Evil One had
deceived me with a false show, yet, however hard I rubbed my eyes, rye it
was and rye it remained. And seeing that old Paasch his piece of land
which joined mine was in like manner sown, and that the blades had shot up
to the same height, I soon guessed that the good fellow had done this
deed, seeing that all the other land lay waste. Wherefore, I readily
forgave him for not knowing the morning prayer; and thanking the Lord for
so much love from my flock, and earnestly beseeching him to grant me
strength and faith to bear with them steadfastly and patiently all the
troubles and adversities which it might please him henceforward to lay
upon us, according to his divine pleasure, I ran rather than walked back
into the village to old Paasch his farm, where I found him just about to
kill his cow, which he was slaughtering from grim hunger. "God bless
thee," said I, "worthy friend, for sowing my field; how shall I reward
thee?" But the old man answered, "Let that be, and do you pray for us";
and when I gladly promised this and asked him how he had kept his corn
safe from the savage enemy, he told me that he had hidden it secretly in
the caves of the Streckelberg, but that now all his store was used up.
Meanwhile he cut a fine large piece of meat from the top of the loin, and
said, "There is something for you, and when that is gone you can come
again for more." As I was then about to go with many thanks, his little
Mary, a child nearly seven years old, the same who had said the _Gratias_
on the Streckelberg, seized me by the hand and wanted to go to school to
my daughter; for since my _Custos_, as above mentioned, departed this life
in the plague, she had to teach the few little ones there were in the
village; this, however, had long been abandoned. I could not, therefore,
deny her, although I feared that my child would share her bread with her,
seeing that she dearly loved the little maid, who was her godchild; and so
indeed it happened; for when the child saw me take out the bread, she
shrieked for joy, and began to scramble up on the bench. Thus she also got
a piece of the slice, our maid got another, and my child put the third
piece into her own mouth, as I wished for none, but said that I felt no
signs of hunger and would wait until the meat was boiled, the which I now
threw upon the bench. It was a goodly sight to see the joy which my poor
child felt when I then also told her about the rye. She fell upon my neck,
wept, sobbed, then took the little one up in her arms, danced about the
room with her, and recited as she was wont, all manner of Latin _versus_,
which she knew by heart. Then she would prepare a right good supper for
us, as a little salt was still left in the bottom of a barrel of meat
which the Imperialists had broken up. I let her take her own way, and
having scraped some soot from the chimney and mixed it with water, I tore
a blank leaf out of _Virgilius_, and wrote to the _Pastor Liepensis_, his
reverence Abraham Tiburtius, praying that for God his sake he would take
our necessities to heart, and would exhort his parishioners to save us
from dying of grim hunger, and charitably to spare to us some meat and
drink, according as the all-merciful God had still left some to them,
seeing that a beggar had told me that they had long been in peace from
the terrible enemy. I knew not, however, wherewithal to seal the letter,
until I found in the church a little wax still sticking to a wooden
altar-candlestick, which the Imperialists had not thought it worth their
while to steal, for they had only taken the brass ones. I sent three
fellows in a boat with Hinrich Seden, the churchwarden, with this letter
to Liepe.
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