Part 13 (1/2)

Next morning, pretty Michal had a blue mark under one eye and a wheal on her forehead, and the precious amulet, the amulet she had received from her father as a bridal gift, was no longer round her neck.

”What's the good of you,” cried she, addressing the amulet, ”if you cannot defend me? How can you save me from the Black Death when you cannot save me from the hand of man?”

Then she took the dove which she had brought with her from home, and said to it:

”It is all your fault! Why was my heart so soft on your account, why had I not the courage to kill you there and then? If I had wrung your neck, plucked your feathers, stuck you on a spit and carved you, I should not be here now! Fly home! Take back the amulet! I'll tie it round your neck. Take it to my father! May the amulet defend you on the way from vultures and hawks, may it preserve my father from ever feeling such heavy woe as I am feeling here.”

With that, she took the amulet and fastened it beneath the dove's wings with the ribbon, in such a way as to show that it had not been unloosed but torn from her neck. Then she opened the window and let the dove go.

The dove cooed, flew into the air, and Michal saw it no more.

And pray what became of the dove? Only this. On the same day it came home to Keszmar and tapped at the window, while the great scholar sat poring over his folios. The learned Professor Frohlich, much amazed, admitted the winged messenger through the cas.e.m.e.nt, and still greater grew his astonishment when he perceived beneath her wings the precious amulet, tied by a ribbon which had evidently been violently torn. Being a very great and learned mathematician, he naturally concluded therefrom that some great evil must have befallen his daughter; whereupon, without thinking of consulting the heavenly bodies as to whether this was a lucky day for traveling, without waiting for a caravan to pa.s.s by that way and pick him up, he took his hat and stick and went off at once and alone to seek his daughter.

He made straight for Great Leta, now going on foot, now sitting on a wagon, now riding on an a.s.s, according as opportunity offered. The young married couple must certainly be at Great Leta, thought he.

But at Great Leta the late pastor's widow received him with great lamentations. She had not set eyes on the young people. It was wrong, very wrong of them not to come, for all the new-born children in the place were being taken to the next parish to be christened; and still more scandalous, during the Leutschau fair last week, Protestant malefactors had to be accompanied to the scaffold by a Papist priest. Such things were no less than flagrant infringements of the Council of Linz, and had lost the parish four Kremnitz ducats.

Thence the learned gentleman proceeded to Zeb, where he inquired after Henry's father, old Catsrider.

No one had ever heard such a name at Zeb. The father and grandfather of Henry had always been called the vihodar, and that was all. Not even in the civic accounts was the name of Catsrider to be found. So they laughed the old man out of countenance with his Catsriders.

They told him that people were making an April fool of him. But for all that he would not budge, but actually made a house to house visitation through the town of Zeb, to find out what had become of his son-in-law and his daughter.

Yet for all his learning and wisdom it never once occurred to him to visit the solitary house which stood without the city walls.

CHAPTER XII.

Consists of a very few words which are, however, of all the more consequence.

When Barbara Pirka visited the young woman next morning, she was greatly astonished to find her quite dressed. Michal had on the beautiful cornflower-blue silk dress of the beheaded Polish countess.

She drove out the housekeeper with her morning broth.

”Bring me broiled flesh and red wine,” she cried, imperiously.

So she could speak and eat again at last!

When Barbara Pirka returned with the cold meat, flavored with garlic, and a flask of wine, Michal sat down at the table and took a long draught, and then she ate, and then she drank again.

”Fill up!” she cried to the housekeeper.

After she had eaten and drank her fill, she turned to Barbara Pirka and said:

”What ought a wife to do who hates her husband?”

”Leave that to me, I understand a little about it.”