III
"Tell us a story, August," they cried, in chorus, when they hadseen charcoal pictures till they were tired; and August did as hedid every night pretty nearly,--looked up at the stove and toldthem what he imagined of the many adventures and joys and sorrowsof the human being who figured on the panels from his cradle tohis grave.
To the children the stove was a household god. In summer theylaid a mat of fresh moss all round it, and dressed it up withgreen boughs and the numberless beautiful wild flowers of theTyrol country. In winter all their joys centred in it, andscampering home from school over the ice and snow they werehappy, knowing that they would soon be cracking nuts or roastingchestnuts in the broad ardent glow of its noble tower, which roseeight feet high above them with all its spires and pinnacles andcrowns.
Once a travelling peddler had told them that the letters on itmeant Augustin Hirschvogel, and that Hirschvogel had been a greatGerman potter and painter, like his father before him, in theart-sanctified city of Nuernberg, and had made many such stoves,that were all miracles of beauty and of workmanship, putting allhis heart and his soul and his faith into his labors, as the menof those earlier ages did, and thinking but little of gold orpraise.
An old trader, too, who sold curiosities not far from the churchhad told August a little more about the brave family ofHirschvogel, whose houses can be seen in Nuernberg to this day; ofold Veit, the first of them, who painted the Gothic windows ofSt. Sebald with the marriage of the Margravine; of his sons andof his grandsons, potters, painters, engravers all, and chief ofthem great Augustin, the Luca della Robbia of the North. AndAugust's imagination, always quick, had made a living personageout of these few records, and saw Hirschvogel as though he werein the flesh walking up and down the Maximilian-Strass in hisvisit to Innspruck, and maturing beautiful things in his brain ashe stood on the bridge and gazed on the emerald-green flood ofthe Inn.
So the stove had got to be called Hirschvogel in the family, asif it were a living creature, and little August was very proudbecause he had been named after that famous old dead German whohad had the genius to make so glorious a thing. All the childrenloved the stove, but with August the love of it was a passion;and in his secret heart he used to say to himself, "When I am aman, I will make just such things too, and then I will setHirschvogel in a beautiful room in a house that I will buildmyself in Innspruck just outside the gates, where the chestnutsare, by the river: that is what I will do when I am a man."
For August, a salt-baker's son and a little cow-keeper when hewas anything, was a dreamer of dreams, and when he was upon thehigh Alps with his cattle, with the stillness and the sky aroundhim, was quite certain that he would live for greater things thandriving the herds up when the spring-tide came among the blue seaof gentians, or toiling down in the town with wood and withtimber as his father and grandfather did every day of theirlives. He was a strong and healthy little fellow, fed on the freemountain-air, and he was very happy, and loved his familydevotedly, and was as active as a squirrel and as playful as ahare; but he kept his thoughts to himself, and some of them wenta very long way for a little boy who was only one among many, andto whom nobody had ever paid any attention except to teach himhis letters and tell him to fear God. August in winter was only alittle, hungry school-boy, trotting to be catechised by thepriest, or to bring the loaves from the bake-house, or to carryhis father's boots to the cobbler; and in summer he was only oneof hundreds of cow-boys, who drove the poor, half-blind,blinking, stumbling cattle, ringing their throat-bells, out intothe sweet intoxication of the sudden sunlight, and lived up withthem in the heights among the Alpine roses, with only the cloudsand the snow-summits near. But he was always thinking, thinking,thinking, for all that; and under his little sheepskin wintercoat and his rough hempen summer shirt his heart had and muchcourage in it as Hofer's ever had,--great Hofer, who is ahousehold word in all the Innthal, and whom August alwaysreverently remembered when he went to the city of Innspruck andran out by the foaming water-mill and under the wooded height ofBerg Isel.
August lay now in the warmth of the stove and told the childrenstories, his own little brown face growing red with excitement ashis imagination glowed to fever-heat. That human being on thepanels, who was drawn there as a baby in a cradle, as a boyplaying among flowers, as a lover sighing under a casement, as asoldier in the midst of strife, as a father with children roundhim, as a weary, old, blind man on crutches, and, lastly, as aransomed soul raised up by angels, had always had the mostintense interest for August, and he had made, not one history forhim, but a thousand; he seldom told them the same tale twice. Hehad never seen a story-book in his life; his primer and hismass-book were all the volumes he had. But nature had given himFancy, and she is a good fairy that makes up for the want of verymany things! only, alas! her wings are so very soon broken, poorthing, and then she is of no use at all.
"It is time for you all to go to bed, children," said Dorothea,looking up from her spinning. "Father is very late to-night; youmust not sit up for him."
"Oh, five minutes more, dear Dorothea!" they pleaded; and littlerosy and golden Ermengilda climbed up into her lap. "Hirschvogelis so warm, the beds are never so warm as he. Cannot you tell usanother tale, August?"
"No," cried August, whose face had lost its light, now that hisstory had come to an end, and who sat serious, with his handsclasped on his knees, gazing on to the luminous arabesques of thestove.
"It is only a week to Christmas," he said, suddenly.
"Grandmother's big cakes!" chuckled little Christof, who was fiveyears old, and thought Christmas meant a big cake and nothingelse.
"What will Santa Claus find for 'Gilda if she be good?" murmuredDorothea over the child's sunny head; for, however hard povertymight pinch, it could never pinch so tightly that Dorothea wouldnot find some wooden toy and some rosy apples to put in herlittle sister's socks.
"Father Max has promised me a big goose, because I saved thecalf's life in June," said August; it was the twentieth time hehad told them so that month, he was so proud of it.
"And Aunt Maila will be sure to send us wine and honey and abarrel of flour; she always does," said Albrecht. Their auntMaila had a chalet and a little farm over on the green slopestowards Dorp Ampas.
"I shall go up into the woods and get Hirschvogel's crown," saidAugust; they always crowned Hirschvogel for Christmas with pineboughs and ivy and mountain-berries. The heat soon withered thecrown; but it was part of the religion of the day to them, asmuch so as it was to cross themselves in church and raise theirvoices in the "O Salutaris Hostia."
And they fell chatting of all they would do on the Christ-night,and one little voice piped loud against another's, and they wereas happy as though their stockings would be full of golden pursesand jewelled toys, and the big goose in the soup-pot seemed tothem such a meal as kings would envy.