Volume I Part 3 (1/2)
”Gracious Heaven!” cried a deep-base voice, and the lovers started from each other in terror.--Onophrius Goldmann stood at the open door, his left hand hid in his doublet, and supporting himself with the right, for he was exhausted almost to fainting; but his eyes shot lightning at the delinquents. Francis in vain sought to recover from the shame of surprise to his usual braving tone, and Agatha wrung her hands and wept.
”So you have at last succeeded, master Friend, in seducing my child,”
said the wretched father. ”May G.o.d reckon with you for it!--and you, obstinate girl, have I not warned, prayed, threatened? Did you not swear to me to shun the man who makes you thus unhappy? How have you deceived me!--a long time deceived me, with your wicked artifices; for, from what I now see, your sin is not of to-day. These are the consequences of the infernal love-songs and romances, which ought to be utterly forbidden to women; their place is at the hearth and the spindle. The mad trash, invented by the dry brains of the poetasters to tickle your n.o.bles, is for them poison. There it is they learn to build up air-castles in the midst of reality--there it is that they find every pa.s.sion painted in fine colours, and, before they dream of it, their honour is gone, and--G.o.d deliver us!--their eternal salvation also.”
”I give you my word,” at length stammered Francis, ”that Agatha's honour shall one day be redeemed before the world.”
”You!” cried Onophrius,--”a husband! Heaven have mercy on us! Would you send your wife after the murdered Netz, or, like count Gleichen, get a dispensation at Rome for a double wedlock?”
”Not so rough, old man,” exclaimed Francis in a tone of menace; ”I don't like to hear such language, nor does it become the servant towards his master's son.”
”That is the curse which rests upon the poor and lowly,” exclaimed Onophrius, crawling to the nearest chair, and sinking down upon it, exhausted. ”It is our curse that we are powerless, and weaponless, and lawless, against the great who wrong us, while, over and above all, we must spill our blood for our tyrants. Maimed in your defence, I return to my hovel, find you in the arms of my seduced child, and when my just anguish pours itself forth in words, you meanly appeal to your father's rank, and close my mouth by despicable threats.”
”Maimed!” cried Friend in alarm, and Agatha flew with loud lamentations to her father, who, drawing his left arm from his doublet, showed the stump, bound up in b.l.o.o.d.y cloths.
”Eternal mercy! your hand!” shrieked Agatha.
”It lies before the house of the widow Fox, in the market,” said Onophrius gloomily; ”Netz hewed it from the arm just before you killed him.”
”It grieves me; but on my honour I will make all good again.”
”That is more than you can do: though you were to empty out all your gold-bags into this room, yet would no hand grow again upon this stump; though you were to dress my child in brocade, and adorn her with pearls and diamonds, still she would be your strumpet, over whom I must tear the grey locks from this aged head. Gracious Heavens! how little must you gentlemen think of us poor people, that you fancy all is to be satisfied with gold,--all, life and limb, honour and conscience! Well; G.o.d is just, and will one day weigh you in even scales, and find you too light for his heaven.”
”Only let two eyes be closed first,” protested Francis, ”and if I do not then take home your Agatha as my wife, and make you a man of consequence in the city, you may call me villain in the public market-place.”
”My good Francis,” exclaimed Agatha, affectionately, and gave him her hand, even before the eyes of her stern parent.
”If we both live,” said Onophrius, with peculiar emphasis, ”if we both live, I will remind you of your promise; but I fear that we shall not get so far; I fear that this day's tumult will have worse consequences than you imagine. That Bieler has been killed is a sad misfortune. The n.o.bles will be mad, and I already begin to shudder at the idea of the jail and the scaffold.”
”Is Bieler, then, really dead?” asked Francis anxiously, after a long silence.
”I saw him carried as a corpse to the Guildhall,” replied Onophrius.
”The thing, too, happened naturally enough. As my left hand flew off, I cut at his head with my right, and you soon after made an end of him.”
”Upon all this we'll be silent to every one,” said Francis, who had again collected himself. ”For the rest, the whole business is of no great consequence. I was acting in self-defence; and you were only doing your duty. If any ill have grown out of it, Ra.s.selwitz, who began the strife by breaking into my house, must be the sufferer.”
”That won't satisfy the n.o.bles,” said Onophrius, shaking his head.
”Let them bite away their anger upon their nails,” exclaimed Francis boastfully. ”My father is master here in Schweidnitz, and will not let them hurt a hair upon my head.”
”_You_ are safe,--but _I_!” replied Onophrius, thoughtfully.
”You stand and fall with me, old friend. If I ever forget you, or what you have this day done and suffered for me, may G.o.d forget me in my dying hour!”
”Amen!” murmured Onophrius with failing voice, and, swooning with the loss of blood, he dropped from his seat.
”He is dying!” sobbed Agatha, as she caught her father in her arms.
”This is a day of evil,” shouted Francis, gazing for a moment on the mischief he had wrought, and striking his forehead wildly with his clenched hands, he dashed away.