Seldwyla Folks: Three Singular TalesKeller, Gottfried
General
Seldwyla Folks: Three Singular Tales
Keller, Gottfried
Switzerland -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
And now there were left but a few more, decent and respectable
citizens, people against whom nothing could be urged reasonably, and it
was these between whom the final choice and decision lay. The smallest
bid was made by the gravedigger of the cemetery next the town
cathedral, a quiet and good man, who also possessed an excellent wife
and, so he thought, a suitable place where to keep such a prisoner in
safe custody, and who certainly had already had charge of several other
prisoners before.
To this man, then, Kuengolt was given in charge, and was taken at once
to his house which was situated between the cemetery and a side street.
Dietegen went along in order to see how she would be housed. It turned
out that her quarters would be an open, small antechamber of the house
itself, immediately adjoining the graveyard and only separated from it
by an iron fence. There, as it seemed, the sexton was in the habit of
keeping his prisoners during the warm season of the year, while for the
winter he simply admitted them into his own dwelling room, a slender
chain fastening them to the tile stove.
But when Kuengolt found herself in her prison and was separated merely
by a fence from the graves of the dead, moreover saw near by the old
deadhouse filled with skulls and bones, she began to tremble and begged
they would not leave her there all through the night. But the sexton's
wife who was just dragging in a straw mattress and a blanket, and also
hid the sight of the graves by suspending a curtain, answered that this
request could not be listened to, and that her new abode would be
wholesome for her moral welfare and as a means of repenting her sins.
And she could not be shaken in this resolve.
But Dietegen replied: "Be quiet, Kuengolt, for I am not afraid of the
dead or of any spook, and I will come here every night and keep watch
in front of the iron fence until you, too, will no longer fear."
He said this, however, in an aside to her, so that the woman could not
overhear it, and then he left for home. There he found the saddened
forester who had just reached an understanding with Violande that they
would not celebrate their wedding until after Kuengolt's release from
prison and after the scandal created by the occurrence should have had
time to blow over. During all their discussion of the matter Violande
kept still as a mouse, glad that she as the prime author of the whole
mischief should have escaped all the consequences, for the magical
philtre had been hers, as we know.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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