When spring came, Findelkind sat by the edge of the bright pure
water among the flowering grasses, and felt his heart heavy.
Findelkind of Arlberg who was in heaven now must look down, he
fancied, and think him so stupid and so selfish, sitting there.
The first Findelkind, a few centuries before, had trotted down on
his bare feet from his mountain pass, and taken his little crook,
and gone out boldly over all the land on his pilgrimage, and
knocked at castle gates and city walls in Christ's name and for
love of the poor! That was to do something indeed!
This poor little living Findelkind would look at the miniatures in
the priest's missal, in one of which there was the little
fourteenth-century boy with long hanging hair and a wallet and
bare feet, and he never doubted that it was the portrait of the
blessed Findelkind who was in heaven; and he wondered if he looked
like a little boy there, or if he were changed to the likeness of
an angel.
"He was a boy just like me," thought the poor little fellow, and
he felt so ashamed of himself--so very ashamed; and the priest had
told him to try and do the same. He brooded over it so much, and
it made him so anxious and so vexed, that his brothers ate his
porridge and he did not notice it, his sisters pulled his curls
and he did not feel it, his father brought a stick down on his
back and he only started and stared, and his mother cried because
he was losing his mind and would grow daft, and even his mother's
tears he scarcely saw. He was always thinking of Findelkind in
heaven.
When he went for water, he spilt one-half; when he did his
lessons, he forgot the chief part; when he drove out the cow, he
let her munch the cabbages; and when he was set to watch the oven,
he let the loaves burn, like great Alfred. He was always busied
thinking: "Little Findelkind that is in heaven did so great a
thing: why may not I? I ought! I ought!" What was the use of being
named after Findelkind that was in heaven, unless one did
something great, too?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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