Tales from the German. Volume II.Velde, C. F. van der (Carl Franz)
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Tales from the German. Volume II.
Velde, C. F. van der (Carl Franz)
German fiction -- Translations into English
As he laid down his knapsack in the tap room and called for a cup of
wine, the door opened and in tottered a pale thin man in a long black
clerical robe. He was followed by a light dashing fellow with the
countenance of a satyr, who carried his bundle for him.
'I can go no further,' groaned the pale man, sinking down upon the
nearest seat.
'Now, doctor, you are for the present indeed in safety,' said his
attendant to him, depositing the bundle upon the stove-bench. 'Permit
me to take a refreshing draught, and then to bid you farewell.'
'Thou dost not wish, then, to go to the good Hessenland, my son?' asked
the doctor, sorrowfully.
'No,' answered the youth, 'but do not consider me unkind. I return to
Munster. New governors will require new clothes, because much of the
dignity of office consists in the dress. My needle will not be
permitted to remain idle there, and I shall make great profits.
Moreover the doctrine of liberty and equality was plain to me from the
beginning; and if the good people would not come so easily to blows,
nothing could be said against it.'
'I thought you held fast to the ancient faith,' said the doctor
complainingly, 'since you sustained me so truly.'
'No,' laughingly replied the hare-brained youth. 'I held to you while
you benefitted me; and on that account I could not reconcile it to
myself to desert you in your hour of need. Now you are in safety; and I
must return to the only place where fellows like myself are held in
some degree of estimation; in any other I might remain all my life a
wandering ragamuffin.'
'One deception less,' sighed the doctor sinking into gloomy meditation,
when the host entered with a mug of wine for Alf. When he perceived the
doctor the mug fell, and, clasping his hands over his head, he cried:
'Holy God! are you also driven away, reverend sir?'
'The true shepherds must first be driven away,' said the doctor with a
melancholy smile, 'when the wolf desires undisturbedly to break into
the unfortunate fold. Nevertheless I may congratulate myself that I
held out until the last moment, and only yielded to open violence.'
'How was that possible in so short a time, doctor?' asked the host.
'The adherents of the Augsburg confession were certainly very powerful
as yet, in the city, as the papists also were.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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