Part 2 (2/2)

As I was whittling a piece of wood, my sister Anna s.n.a.t.c.hed it away from me, and in trying to get it back again, I drove the chisel into my right thigh up to the handle. Master Joachim Gelhaar, an excellent _chirurgus_, renowned far and wide, began by probing the wound, and by getting the bad blood out of it; after which he dressed it with a cabbage leaf which was constantly kept moist. I was just recovering the use of my leg again when I took it into my head to go to the wood with my schoolfellows, for it was always difficult for me to keep still. The fatigue thus incurred caused a relapse. Next morning I dragged myself as far as the surgeon, who suspected my excursion, and swore at seeing a month of his efforts wasted. I should have been in a nice predicament if he had complained to my father.

In 1531, on the Monday before St. Bartholomew, they burned at Stralsund, Bischof, a tailor who had outraged his own daughter, aged twelve. The fellow was so strong that he jumped from the pyre when the fire had destroyed his bonds, but the executioner plunged his knife into him, and flung him back into the flames.

The following happened in June, 1532. A young fellow, good-looking, and with most fascinating manner, but by no means well enough in worldly goods, courted a more or less well-preserved widow, notwithstanding her nine children of her first husband, which subsequently she increased by another nine of her second. Tempted by the amiability, the appearance, and the demeanour of the youngster, the dame consented to be his wife.

The happy day was already fixed, the viands ordered, and the preparations completed, but the bridegroom was at a loss how to pay for his wedding clothes, the customary presents and other things. Hence, one fine evening he left the city, and in the early morn reached the village of Putten, where, espying a ladder on a peasant's cart, he puts it against the wall of the church, breaks one of its windows, gets inside, forces the reliquary, possessing himself of the chalices, other holy vessels, all the gold and silver work, not forgetting the wooden box containing the money. After which, taking the way whence he had come, he flung away the box and entered the city laden with the spoil.

A local cowherd, driving his cattle to the field, happened to pick up the box. At the selfsame moment the sight of the ladder and of the broken window sets the whole of the place, rector, beadle, clerk, and peasantry, mad with excitement. The whole village is up in arms; the neighbouring roads are scoured in search of the perpetrator of the sacrilege. At twelve o'clock, the cowherd comes back with the box. He is arrested; the patrons of the church, who reside in the city, have him put to the torture. He confesses to the theft. There was, nevertheless, the absolute impossibility for him to have got rid of the stolen objects, inasmuch as he had been guarding his cattle during the five or six hours that had gone by between the robbery and his arrest; the slightest inquiry would have conclusively proved his innocence. In spite of this, the confession dragged from the poor wretch by unbearable pain, appears most conclusive. Condemned there and then, he is there and then put on the wheel. The real culprit watched the execution with the utmost composure.

The proceeds of this first crime were, however, by no means sufficient to defray the cost of the wedding, and the bridegroom forced another church. He took a reliquary and a holy vessel, reduced them to fragments, and tried to sell them to some goldsmiths at Greifswald.

This time he was unable to lead the pursuers off the scent. Having been arrested in the house of my wife's parents, he was racked alive, and his body left to the carrion birds.

A similar tragedy took place between the Easter and Whitsun of 1544. I antic.i.p.ate events, because the horror of them was pretty well equal, but there was a great difference in the procedure. In the one case, deplorable acts, at variance with all wisdom, and disgraceful to Christians; in the other place, a thoroughly laudable conduct, consistent with right and reason. On his return from Leipzig, whither he had gone to buy books, Johannes Altingk, the son of the late Werner Altingk, a notable citizen and bookseller of Stralsund, was killed on the road from Anelam to Greifswald. In consequence of active inquiries, two individuals on whom rested grave suspicions, were incarcerated at Wolgast. But the case was proceeded with more methodically than the one I have just narrated. The magistrates went with the instruments of torture to the prisoner, who seemed the least resolved. He made a complete avowal. His companion and he had put up for the night at an inn at Grosskistow; Johannes Altingk had taken his seat at their table and shared their meal. Then, before going to bed, he had paid for all three, showing at the same time a well filled purse. The scoundrels had at once made up their minds between them to kill him at a little distance from the inn on the foot-road, intersected here and there by deep ruts, and where consequently there was only room to pa.s.s in single file. ”Next morning, then, when the young bookseller was marching along between his fellow-travellers, I struck him at the back of the head;”

said the accused. ”The blow knocked him off his feet; we soon made an end of him altogether, and flung his body to the bottom of the deep bog. With my part of the spoil I bought myself this hat and this pair of shoes.”

After this interrogatory, the judges, accompanied by the executioner and his paraphernalia, went to the second prisoner, who denied everything. It was in vain they pressed him and told him of his accomplice's avowal; he went on denying everything. When they were confronted, the one who had been first examined repeated all the particulars of the crime, beseeching the other to prevent a double martyrdom, inasmuch as the truth would be dragged from them by torture, and the punishment was unavoidable. No doubt the Stralsund authorities, those who had judged the above named perpetrator of the sacrilege, would have put the accused on the rack without the least compunction or ceremony, _de simplice et piano, sine strepitu judicii, quemadmodum Deus procedere solet_. At Wolgast, on the contrary, though the hangman had orders to hold himself in readiness, _ad actum propinquum_, the magistrates preferred to exercise some delay. The prince had the bog examined, but no body was found there. When taken to the spot, the prisoner who had confessed his guilt recognized the place of the murder, without being able, however, to point it out accurately. The landlord and his wife at Gross-Kistow, when examined carefully, denied having lodged any one at the period indicated.

Finally, a messenger of the Brandenburg March brought the news that an a.s.sa.s.sin condemned to death confessed to having killed in Pomerania a young librarian, for which crime two individuals were under lock and key at Wolgast. When taxed with having almost caused the death of innocent people by false avowals, the self-confessed murderer replied that death seemed to him preferable to the ”criminal question,” as that kind of torture was called. Their acquittal was p.r.o.nounced on their taking the oath to bring no further action.

But this only shows the precautions to be taken before applying the instruments of torture to merely suspected men. On the other hand, it has been shown over and over again that some of the guilty hardened to that kind of thing will allow themselves to be torn to pieces sooner than avow.

In that year (1531) Duke George died in the prime of his life. His second wife was the sister to Margrave Joachim; they got rid of her for about 40,000 florins, and she subsequently married a prince of Anhalt, but finally she eloped with a falconer.

My mother having realized all her property at Greifswald, my parents really possessed a considerable fortune in sterling coin, and they called my father ”the rich man of the Pa.s.sen Stra.s.se.” It wanted, however, but a few years to shake his credit and to impair the happiness of his family. Without exaggeration, two women, named Lubbeke and Engeln were the princ.i.p.al causes of our reverses. Not content to buy on credit our cloth, which they resold to heaven knows who, they borrowed of my father, fifty, a hundred, and as much as a hundred and fifty crowns on the slightest pretext. The crown in those days was worth eight and twenty s.h.i.+llings of Lubeck. They promised to refund at eight and twenty and a half, and to settle for their purchases at the same rate; but if now and again they happened to make a payment on account of a hundred florins, they took care to buy at the same time goods for double the amount. My mother did not look kindly upon those two customers; she imagined that her money would be better invested at five per cent., and she spared neither warnings, prayers, nor tears to dissuade my father from trusting them. She even took Pastor Knipstrow and others into her confidence to that effect. Finally, the account came to a considerable amount, while the debtors were unable to pay as much as twenty florins. Then it transpired what had become of the cloth. The mother of one townsman, Jacob Leveling, had had 800 florins of it; the wife of another, Hermann Bruser, 1,725 florins. Hermann Bruser was a big cloth merchant who sold retail much cheaper than any of his fellow-tradesmen.

My father having taken proceedings against his two customers as well as against the woman Bruser, the latter and her husband promised to pay the 1,725 florins. Nicholas Rode, who had married Bruser's sister, and the syndic of the city, Johannes Klocke, afterwards burgomaster, induced my father to accept that arrangement, and Bruser secured conditions after having signed an acknowledgment beginning as follows: ”I, together with my legitimate wife, declare to be duly and lawfully indebted to etc., etc.” The syndic had drawn up this act with his own hand. He had affixed his signature to it, and his seal, and Rode had in the latter two respects done the same. But the period of the first payment coinciding with the tumult against Nicholas Smiterlow, Bruser, one of the ringleaders, thought he could have the whip hand of my father as well as of the burgomaster. On his refusal to pay, the case came before the court once more; and then, while denying his debt, in spite of the formal terms of his declaration, Bruser denounced as usurious agreements obtained by litigation. Klocke and Rode a.s.sisted him with their advice and influence; the first-named, in his capacity of a lawyer, conducted the suit, and quoting the _leges et doctorum opiniones_, easily convinced his non-legally educated colleagues of the council. The Westphalian Cyriacus Erckhorst, the son-in-law of Rode, and a velvet merchant, plotted on his side. There were golden florins for the all-powerful burgomaster Lorbeer, and pieces of dress-material for Mrs. Burgomaster; so that, after long arguments on both sides, Bruser was allowed to swear that he was ignorant of the affair, which, moreover, was tainted with usury. My father could not conceive that this personage would have the audacity to deny his signature, and, supported in his supposition by Burgomaster Nicholas Smiterlow, he did not appeal against the judgment, and at the next sitting Bruser appeared at the bar of the inner court, took the oath, and offered to comply with the second part of the order; only, in consequence of the absence of his witness he claimed a delay of a twelvemonth and a day, which was accorded to him; after which my father appealed to the council of Stralsund and afterwards to that of Lubeck.

In due time my father started for Lubeck, and took me with him. At Rostock, we lodged at the sign of _The Hop_, in the Market Place. My father had a considerable sum upon him to pay cash for his purchases of salt, salted cod-fish and soap, and as a measure of precaution, he carried that money in his small clothes, for Mecklenburg was infested by footpads and highwaymen. While undressing, he dropped his purse under the bed, an accident which he did not notice until next day about twelve o'clock, when we had reached Bukow. As the court was just about to open it fell to my lot to take the road back to Rostock _per pedes_.

On that day I could get no further than Berkentin, but very early next morning I was at Rostock. Naturally, I rushed to the inn and to the room. Luckily the servants had not made the beds. I soon espied the little bag and was in time to take the coach to Wismar. My father, uneasy on my account, was already reproaching himself for having let me go.

Their wors.h.i.+ps of Lubeck condemned Bruser to keep his written promise; he then appealed to the Imperial Chamber. The suit dragged along for several years; finally, the supreme decision was to the effect that it had been well judged, but improperly thrown into appeal in the first instance, and that in the second it had been faultily judged and properly sent for appeal. The defendant was condemned to pay the costs to be determined by the judge.

And now I may be permitted to give an instance of the disloyalty of the procurators of the Imperial Chamber. Doctor Simeon Engelhardt, my father's procurator, did not hesitate to write to him that he had won his case, and asked for the bill of costs of the two previous instances, so that he might hand them to the taxing judge and apply for execution. He added that the trouble he had taken with the affair seemed to him to warrant special fees. My parents, elated with the news, promptly transmitted the bill of costs and their fees for the execution. Engelhardt produced the _cedula expensarum_; Bruser's procurator requested copy, not without pretending to raise objection.

Engelhardt delivered the required copy, leaving to the judge the case of designating the winning party; in other words, the one who had the right to present the _designatio expensarum_. Well, that right was adjudged to Bruser, who drew up the _cedula_ after _ours_. Engelhardt was compelled to hold his tongue and my father had to pay 164 florins.

That point having been settled, they pa.s.sed to the second _membrum_ of the Stralsund judgment; namely, whether the conditions stipulated for by my father were tainted with usury? After such an expensive and protracted lawsuit, the court, considering that Bruser had failed in his attempt to bring proof, condemned him to fulfil his engagements.

Against that sentence he appealed to Lubeck. Having been non-suited there, he wished to have recourse to the Imperial Chamber, but we signified opposition to the _exceptio devolutionis_. According to us, he had not complied with the privilege of Lubeck. Bruser's procurator maintained the contrary. The whole of the discussion bore entirely on the sense of the word ”_wann_” inserted in the Lubeck _vidimus_. Was it a _conjunctio causalis, c.u.m posteaquam_, or an _adverbium temporis, quando_? After long-drawn debates, the appeal was rejected, and Bruser had all the costs to pay.

Then, to frustrate his adversary, he pleaded poverty on oath, although he gave to his daughter as many pearls and jewels as a burgomaster's girl could possibly pretend to. Foreseeing the upshot of the lawsuit, he had already disposed of one of his houses; after which he bestirred himself to safeguard his dwelling-house, his cellar and his various other property from being seized. Nicholas Rode, he who had signed the obligation, deposed to that effect, a doc.u.ment professedly anterior to my father's claim, an act const.i.tuting in his favour a general mortgage on all Bruser's property. As a matter of course, this led to a new lawsuit, which occupied respectively the courts of Stralsund and of Lubeck and the Imperial Chamber. The latter registered Rode's appeal at the moment the Protestant States denied its jurisdiction. A suspension of six years was the result, but after the reconst.i.tution of the chamber and the closure of the debates, I did not succeed, in spite of two years' stay at Spires, in getting a judgment.

Weary of being involved in law for thirty-four years, my father wound up by acquitting the heirs of Rode of all future liabilities in consideration of a sum of one thousand florins. As it happened the original debt was seventeen hundred and five and twenty florins; in addition to this, my father had refunded to Bruser one hundred and sixty-four florins expenses, his own costs exceeded a thousand florins and he had waited forty years for his money. The whole affair was nothing short of a downright calamity to our family; it interrupted my studies and caused the death of my brother Johannes. ”_Dimidium plus toto_,” says Hesiod, and the maxim is above all wise in connexion with a law-suit at the Imperial Chamber.

Writing, as I do, for the edification of my children, I consider it useful to mention here the subsequent fate of our G.o.dless adversaries.

The seventy-fifth Psalm says: ”For in the hand of the Lord there is a cup, and the wine is red, and he poured out of the same, but the dregs thereof all the wicked of the earth shall wring them out and drink them.” Yes, the Almighty has comforted me, he has permitted me to see the scattering of my enemies. The two princ.i.p.al ones, Hermann Bruser and his fraudulent wife, fell into abject misery; they lived for many years on the bounty of parents and friends; finally the husband became valet of Joachim Burwitz who from the position of porter and general servant at the school when I was young had risen to be the secretary of the King of Sweden. The devil, however, twisted Bruser's neck at Stockholm. He was found in his master's wardrobe, his face all distorted. His daughter, dowered _in fraudem mei patris_, did, for all that, not escape very close acquaintance with poverty. She sold her houses and her land; and at her death her husband became an inmate of the asylum of the Holy Ghost, where he is to this day. Bruser's son, it is true, rose to be a secretary in Sweden, but far from prospering, he committed all kind of foolish acts everywhere. His first wife, the daughter of Burgomaster Gentzkow,[16] died of grief at Stralsund, where he had left her with her children at his departure for Sweden. He was found dead one morning in his room; his descendants are vegetating some in the city, some in the country.

The author of the plot, the honest dispenser of advice, Johannes Klocke, managed to keep his wealth, but he was racked with gout and had to be carried in a chair to the Town Hall; he died after having suffered martyrdom for many years. The four sons of Nicholas Rode were reduced to beggary; the house Bruser sold in order to cheat my father actually belongs to my son-in-law. As for Burgomaster Christopher Lorbeer, so skilled in prolonging law-suits, does he not expiate, he and his, every day, the wrong in having lent himself to corruption.

Erckhorst, the man who tempted him, was robbed while engaged in transporting from one town to another two large bundles of velvet, silk, jewellery and pearls, the whole being estimated at several thousands of florins. His second wife was the byword of the city for her levity of conduct; at every moment she was caught in her own dwelling-house and in the most untoward spots committing acts of criminal intercourse with her apprentices. What had been saved from the thieves was devoured by his wife's paramours. Absolutely at a loss to reinstate himself in his former position, Erckhorst made an end of his life by stabbing himself.

My father's other debtor, the woman Leveling, was left a widow with an only son. Her property in houses and in land yielded, it was said, a golden florin and a fowl per day. That fortune, nevertheless, melted away, and Leveling, worried by her creditors, was obliged to quit her house with nothing but what she stood up in. Lest her son, a horrible ne'er-do-well of fifteen, should spend his nights in houses of ill-fame, she kept a mistress for him at home; after that she married him at such an early age as to astonish everybody, but he cared as much about the sanct.i.ty of marriage as a dog cares about Lent. During the ceremonies connected with rendering homage to Duke Philip, the d.u.c.h.ess lodged at Leveling's and stood G.o.dmother to his new-born daughter, which honour had not the slightest effect in changing the scandalous life he led with a concubine. One night, in company with a certain Valentin Buss, he emptied the baskets in the pond of the master of the fishmongers. An arrant thief, he was fast travelling towards the gallows. Buss, who wound up by going to prison, would have been hanged but for Leveling, who in order to redeem himself parted to the council with his last piece of ground, namely, that in which his father's body rested in the church. One day at the termination of the sermon, Leveling, sword in hand, pursued my father, who had just time to reach his domicile and to shut the door in his face. On the other hand, Master Sonnenberg, who sheltered the old woman Leveling while she was negotiating with her creditors, was not content with egging on her son to all sorts of evil deeds, but had the effrontery to say to my father: ”I'll tame you so well that you shall come and eat out of my hands.”

<script>