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Page 61
And now my grief was greater than ever it had been before; so patient and
resigned to the will of God as my child had shown herself heretofore, and
no martyr could have met her last hour stronger in God and Christ, so
impatient and despairing was she now. She gave up all hope, and took it
into her head that in these heavy times of war the young lord had been
killed by robbers. Nought availed with her, not even prayer, for when I
called upon God with her, on my knees, she straightway began so grievously
to bewail that the Lord had cast her off, and that she was condemned to
nought save misfortunes in this world; that it pierced through my heart
like a knife, and my thoughts forsook me at her words. She lay also at
night, and "like a crane or a swallow so did she chatter; she did mourn
like a dove; her eyes did fail with looking upward," because no sleep came
upon her eyelids. I called to her from my bed, "Dear child, wilt thou,
then, never cease? sleep, I pray thee!" and she answered and said, "Do you
sleep, dearest father; I cannot sleep until I sleep the sleep of death.
Alas, my father; that I was not burned!" But how could I sleep when she
could not? I indeed said, each morning, that I had slept a while, in order
to content her; but it was not so; but, like David, "all the night made I
my bed to swim; I watered my couch with my tears." Moreover I again fell
into heavy unbelief, so that I neither could nor would pray. Nevertheless
the Lord "did not deal with me after my sins, nor reward me according to
mine iniquities. For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great was
his mercy toward" me, miserable sinner!
For mark what happened on the very next Saturday! Behold, our old
maid-servant came running in at the door, quite out of breath, saying that
a horseman was coming over the Master's Mount, with a tall plume waving on
his hat, and that she believed it was the young lord. When my child, who
sat upon the bench combing her hair, heard this, she gave a shriek of joy,
which would have moved a stone under the earth, and straightway ran out of
the room to look over the paling. She presently came running in again,
fell upon my neck, and cried without ceasing, "The young lord! the young
lord!" whereupon she would have run out to meet him, but I forbade her,
saying she had better first bind up her hair, which she then remembered,
and laughing, weeping, and praying, all at once, she bound up her long
hair. And now the young lord came galloping round the corner, attired in a
green velvet doublet with red silk sleeves, and a grey hat with a heron's
feather therein; _summa_, gaily dressed as beseems a wooer. And when we
now ran out at the door, he called aloud to my child in the Latin, from
afar off, "_Quomodo stat dulcissima virgo?_" Whereupon she gave answer,
saying, "_Bene te aspecto._" He then sprang smiling off his horse, and
gave it into the charge of my ploughman, who meanwhile had come up
together with the maid; but he was affrighted when he saw my child so
pale, and taking her hand spake in the vulgar tongue, "My God! what is it
ails you, sweet maid? you look more pale than when about to go to the
stake." Whereupon she answered, "I have been at the stake daily since you
left us, good my lord, without coming into our house, or so much as
sending us tidings of whither you were gone."
This pleased him well, and he said, "Let us first of all go into the
chamber, and you shall hear all." And when he had wiped the sweat from
his brow, and sat down on the bench beside my child, he spake as
follows:--That he had straightway promised her that he would clear her
honour before the whole world, and the self-same day whereon he left us he
made the worshipful court draw up an authentic record of all that had
taken place, more especially the confession of the impudent constable,
_item_, that of my ploughboy, Claus Neels; wherewith he rode throughout
the same night, as he had promised, to Anclam, and next day to Stettin, to
our gracious sovereign Duke Bogislaw: who marvelled greatly when he heard
of the wickedness of his Sheriff, and of that which he had done to my
child: moreover, he asked whether she were the pastor's daughter who once
upon a time had found the signet-ring of his Princely Highness Philippus
Julius of most Christian memory in the castle garden at Wolgast? and as he
did not know thereof, the Duke asked, whether she knew Latin? And he, the
young lord, answered yes, that she knew the Latin better than he did
himself. His Princely Highness said, "Then, indeed, it must be the same,"
and straightway he put on his spectacles, and read the _acta_ himself.
Hereupon, and after his Princely Highness had read the record of the
worshipful court, shaking his head the while, the young lord humbly
besought his Princely Highness to give him an _amende honorable_ for my
child, _item, literas commendatitias_ for himself to our most gracious
Emperor at Vienna, to beg for a renewal of my patent of nobility, seeing
that he was determined to marry none other maiden than my daughter so long
as he lived.
When my child heard this, she gave a cry of joy, and fell back in a swound
with her head against the wall. But the young lord caught her in his arms,
and gave her three kisses (which I could not then deny him, seeing, as I
did with joy, how matters went), and when she came to herself again, he
asked her, whether she would not have him, seeing that she had given a cry
at his words? Whereupon she said, "Whether I will not have you, my lord!
Alas! I love you as dearly as my God and my Saviour! You first saved my
life, and now you have snatched my heart from the stake, whereon, without
you, it would have burned all the days of my life!" Hereupon I wept for
joy, when he drew her into his lap, and she clasped his neck with her
little hands.
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