Volume Ii Part 4 (1/2)
The lights, which were glittering here and there through the little village inns, had been gradually extinguished as the night grew later, till, at last none remained, save those around the door of the post-house, where a little group of loungers was gathered, As they talked together, one or other occasionally would step out into the road and seem to listen, and then rejoin his companions. ”No sign of him yet!
What can keep him so late as this?” cried the Post-master, holding up his watch, that the lamp-light should fall on it. ”It wants but four minutes to eleven--his time, by right, is half after nine.”
”He is trying the upper road belike, and the deep snow has detained him.”
”No, no,” said another, ”Old Cristoph's too knowing for that: bad as the lower road is, the upper is worse; and with the storm of last night, there will be drift there deep enough to swallow horse and mail-cart twice over.”
”There may be fallen snow on the lower road,” whispered a third; ”Cristoph told me last week he feared it would not be safe for another journey.”
”He's a daring old fellow,” said the Post-master, as he resumed his walk up and down to keep his feet warm; ”but he'll try that lower road once too often. He can't bear the upper road because it is a new one, and was not made when he was a boy. He thinks that the world is not half so wise, or so good, as it was some fifty years back.”
”If he make no greater mistakes than that,” muttered an old white-headed hostler, ”he may be trusted to choose his own road.”
”What's that Philip is mumbling?” said the Post-master; but a general cry of ”Here he comes! Here he is now!” interrupted the answer.
”See how he drives full speed over the bridge!” exclaimed the Post-master, angrily. ”Potz-Teufel! if the Burgomaster hears it, I shall have to pay a fine of four gulden; and I would not wonder if the noise awoke him.”
There was less exaggeration than might be supposed in this speech, for Old Cristoph, in open defiance of all German law, which requires that nothing faster than a slow walk should be used in crossing a wooden bridge, galloped at the full stride of his beast, making every crazy plank and timber tremble and vibrate with a crash like small arms.
Never relaxing in his speed, the old man drove at his fastest pace through the narrow old Roman gate, up the little paved hill, round the sharp corner, across the Platz, into the main street, and never slackened till he pulled up with a jerk at the door of the post-house: when, springing from his seat, he detached the lamp from its place, and thrust it into the waggon, crying with a voice that excitement had elevated into a scream,--”He's alive still!--I'll swear I heard him sigh! I know he's alive!”
It is hard to say what strange conjectures might have been formed of the old man's sanity, had he not backed his words by stooping down and lifting from the straw, at the bottom of the cart, the seemingly dead body of a boy, which, with the alacrity of one far younger, he carried up the steps, down the long arched pa.s.sage, and into the kitchen, where he laid him down before the fire.
”Quick now, Ernest; run for the doctor! Away, Johan; bring the Staats Physicus--bring two--all of them in the town! Frau Hostess, warm water and salt--salt, to rub him with--I know he is alive!”
A shake of the head from the old hostess seemed to offer a strong dissent.
”Never mind that! He is not dead, though he did fall from the Riesenfels.”
”From the Riesenfels!” exclaimed three or four together in amazement.
”Who was it came galloping at full speed over the Bridge, and pa.s.sed the grand guard on the Platz at the same disorderly pace?” said the deep voice of the Burger-meister, who arose from his bed to learn the cause of the tumult.
”It was I,” exclaimed Cristoph, ruggedly; ”there lies the reason.”
”The penalty is all the same,” growled the man of authority: ”four gulden for one, and two gulden thirty kreutzers for the other offence.”
Cristoph either did not hear or heed the speech.
”Where's the mail-bag? I haven't seen that yet,” chimed in the Post-master; who, like a wise official, followed the lead of the highest village functionary.
Old Cristoph bustled out, and soon returned, not only with the leathern sack in question, but with a huge fragment of a wooden cross over his shoulders.
”There's the bag, Herr Post-meister, all safe and dry,” said he; ”and here Herr Burger-meister, here's your fine finger-post that the Governor ordered to be stuck up on the Riesenfels. I suppose they'll need it again when the snow melts and the road is clear: though to be sure,”
added he, in a lower tone, ”he must have worse eyes than Old Cristoph who could not see his way to Imst from that cliff without a finger-post to guide him.”
The Burgermeister was not disposed to suffer this irony in silence; but the occasion to exert his authority with due severity was not at that moment, when the whole attention of the bystanders was directed to the proceedings of the three village doctors--one of them no less a personage than the Staats Physicus--who, with various hard terms of art, were discussing the condition of the senseless form before them.
Were I to recount one half of the learned surmises and deep prognostications of these wise Esculapians, the chances are, my reader would grow as weary of the recital as did poor old Cristoph of the reality. For at last, unable to endure any longer active controversies about the pia mater and the dura mater, the vitreous table and the cerebellum, with vague hints of ”congestion,” ”depression,” ”effusion,”
and so on, he broke in with, ”In G.o.d's name, dear gentlemen, let him be kept warm and have a good gla.s.s of 'schnaps' down his poor throat; and when he shews a chance of living, fight away about the name of the malady to your hearts' content.”
I am far from defending, Old Cristoph's rude interruption. The learned faculties should always be treated with becoming deference; but he was a rude, unpolished old fellow, and the best one can say is, that he meant it well. Certain it is they seemed to acknowledge the force of his suggestion; for they at once removed the child to a warm bed, while they ordered the hostess to administer a very comfortable cordial of her own devising; and, to shew their confidence in the remedy, had three likewise provided for their own individual comfort and support.