The silver dial, volume 2 (of 3)
Date: 2025-06-24T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Romance fiction; Strasbourg (France) -- History -- 16th century -- Fiction; Astronomical clocks -- France -- Strasbourg -- Design and construction -- Fiction

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Title: The silver dial, volume 2 (of 3)

Author: Mary C. Rowsell

Release date: June 24, 2025 [eBook #76371]

Language: English

Original publication: London: Swan Sonnenschein, Le Bas & Lowrey, 1886

Credits: Susan Skinner (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SILVER DIAL, VOLUME 2 (OF 3) ***

THE SILVER DIAL.

BY
MARY C. ROWSELL.

AUTHOR OF
“ST. NICOLAS’ EVE,” “LOVE LOYAL,” “TRAITOR OR PATRIOT,” &c., &c.

“AS MANY LINES CLOSE IN THE DIAL’S CENTRE;
SO MANY A THOUSAND ACTIONS, ONCE AFOOT,
END IN ONE PURPOSE.”—Henry V.

VOL. II.

LONDON:
SWAN SONNENSCHEIN, LE BAS & LOWREY,
PATERNOSTER SQUARE.

1886.

THE ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY PRESS.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER | PAGE
XVIII.—Dagger and Poison Cup | 1
XIX.—“Were all thy Letters Suns, I could not see” | 18
XX.—A Noisy Committee | 30
XXI.—A Chilly Greeting | 38
XXII.—Unjust Suspicions | 47
XXIII.—“The Times are out of Joint” | 59
XXIV.—“What’s she worried about?” | 71
XXV.—Nine Days’ Wonder | 83
XXVI.—“Mere Hearsay” | 97
XXVII.—A Moonlight Meeting | 109
XXVIII.—“Affinities” | 124
XXIX.—“Worse than Silence” | 137
XXX.—A Cause Célèbre | 148
XXXI.—“Quo fata Vocant” | 172
XXXII.—Otto’s Little Difficulties | 187
XXXIII.—“Give up the Plans!” | 197
XXXIV.—“Inter alia” | 209
XXXV.—“Dolce far Niente!” | 222
XXXVI.—“Under the Shade of Melancholy Boughs” | 233
XXXVII.—“The Old Love or the New?” | 252
XXXVIII.—Time’s Changes | 266
XXXIX.—A Visit to the Dial | 278
XL.—Gretchen | 296
XLI.—A Clean Confession | 310
XLII.—Otto finds Consolation | 332
XLIII.—“Making Night hideous” | 340
XLIV.—Vox Populi | 353
XLV.—Old Friends | 363
XLVI.—How Extremes meet | 374
XLVII.—“Homo Sum” | 387

THE SILVER DIAL.

CHAPTER XVIII.

DAGGER AND POISON CUP.

By the time Sabina and her father had bidden adieu to Radegund, the grey wintry twilight had deepened into blackness, and the artist found it was too dark to seal up and direct Sabina’s letter. Merely folding it, therefore, she laid it on the ledge of her easel, and turned to take up her old brooding attitude in the flickering firelight, until a message was brought that the Bishop waited below to speak with her on some question concerning the Horologe.

She hurried down, and my lord, who always enjoyed a chat with her, prolonged his interview for some time after Radegund had heard her brother Otto striding impatiently to and fro in the adjoining room—sign unmistakable that he was waiting for her to come to supper. Indeed it was already past the usual hour for the meal, and Radegund was not sorry when at last her august visitor took his departure.

“The poor boy must be famished! he has been waiting this half-hour,” thought she, with the strong motherly solicitude she had for him.

To many, despite his handsome face, Otto was not an agreeable young man. Well-born and reared, he yet had about him a touch of that ill-breeding which is conceit’s unfailing attendant. Of firmness of character and self-reliance he had little; and his weak nature had allowed a natural jealousy of disposition to become an uncontrollable passion. He was impulsive, and not destitute of generosity. People were apt to mistake his transient fits of ardour for real deep-seated enthusiasm, but this quality for good and for evil belonged to his sister, and not at all to him. He was, however, quick-witted and to a degree clever, as who of the race of von Steinbach was not? but genius he utterly lacked; and his mediocre talents ran small chance of increase, since he had never been able to grasp the practical meaning of mental application. Compared with Radegund’s intellectual qualifications, his were as pinchbeck to gold, but that is in no way to refuse recognition to the qualities of pinchbeck.

Radegund, however, whose perception of people’s shortcomings was ordinarily acute, saw few faults in Otto; or if she did, never admitted their existence, and if it pleased her to tell him of his little failings now and again, that was her affair; but other folks, marriageable maidens notably, were to be filled with admiration and sighs for her Adonis-faced brother, and when first she heard that Sabina, instead of jumping down the irresistible creature’s throat, had dared “little chit of a thing!”—to refuse the offer of his delectable self, she could hardly credit her own ears, until—until she came to understand who was the favoured suitor.

Otto, when he could spare a thought from the consideration of his own perfections, would say that he admired Radegund, and that those who sought her favour were not so far wrong, and in his own rather shallow way he loved her. He always found her a patient listener, when he poured forth, as he very often did, a list of his numerous individual grievances. Sometimes, it must be confessed, he did not escape a sound rating for his pains, on account of his weak vacillating ways; and Radegund would declare that he ought to have been the woman and she the man; but oftener she would pity him, and even join in denouncing the unappreciating world he was thrown upon.

All this Radegund would do; but one thing she never did, and that was to confide in return, her own hopes and fears and joys and sorrows to him. “Poor child! no”—she always cheated herself into saying. “Why should I worry him with my vexations? He has enough of his own.” But she knew that was a self-deception; and had Otto been of her own calibre, she would have been glad to make a friend of him, this proud-hearted friendless woman. As it was, however, the two rubbed on their somewhat gloomy lives together in the magnificent old ancestral mansion, and people would point them out as a model brother and sister; which perhaps, as far as imperfect human nature let them be, they were.

At zero though Otto’s love affairs of late had been, he had not lost the rare appetite with which Providence had blessed him; and if he were kept waiting for his meals for even three little minutes, he considered himself very criminally dealt by; and on this particular evening he had come in, and found his sister not waiting for him as usual, and as he considered it behoved her to do. Otto always regarded Radegund’s absence from the guest-room at this hour of the evening as a personal affront; and the worst of it was that lately she had got into a trick of doing so, especially while the Saint Laurence picture had been on her easel.

Had there been, however, any shadow of an excuse for it then, there could be none now that the Saint Laurence was safe on the cathedral wall, and Otto did not mean Radegund to get into that aggravating way of neglecting him for pictures and things. Seizing a lamp therefore, he tore, three steps at a time? up the wide oaken staircase, and in his own privileged way, burst open the studio door.

“Aller Teufel!” he cried. “I’ve been in ever so long—I’m famished, Radegund, and it’s an abominable shame——”

But no Radegund was to be seen. Raising his lamp aloft, he peered among the shadows it cast, and called her by her name, knowing that it was perfectly possible for his sister to be within half-a-yard of him, and yet for her not to reply. It was another of her tiresome whims; and one which of late had much grown upon her, to pay not the slightest heed when spoken to; and you might as well be a wooden stick at once, for all the notice Radegund would sometimes take of you for hours together. Now, however, not even her bodily presence was there; and since Otto had no fancy for being alone in that great dark chamber, he turned to go downstairs again, when suddenly the flare of his lamp caught the picture on Radegund’s easel.

“What termagant creature is she putting on her canvas now?” he muttered to himself, as he approached the picture. “I never can, for the life of me, see any beauty in these viragos myself. One of your soft dove-eyed women now, is worth a dozen of ’em,” sighed poor Otto. “By Jupiter! didn’t I say it? Some she-demon or other!”

And he recoiled a step, as a pair of fierce eyes, more ghastly from their vagueness, glared out at him from the canvas.

“A Cassandra,” he went on, out of his little Latin, and less Greek which he had contrived to drum into his brains during his schoolboy years, “or is it Medea? Anyhow she’s pointing down at some piece of devilry she’s been at,” and involuntarily Otto’s eyes fell to the base of the picture whither the figure’s shadowy finger pointed. On the ledge of the easel lay a piece of folded parchment. Bringing his lamp-light closer to it, Otto saw that it was addressed in Radegund’s handwriting to Conrad Dasipodius.

“Now, what can she be having to say to him?” he mused, and as he stood considering it with wide open eyes, a cunning smile gathered about his lips. “Ah ha! sister mine!” he muttered, “I have you at last, have I?” Then he took the letter, and fingered it laughingly.

For long past Otto had had his suspicions that Radegund’s admiration for the stately Professor Dasipodius was not an exclusively artistic one. That Nature broke the mould after having created him, Radegund took a delight in declaring; especially in the hearing of those among her admirers who chanced to be insignificant in stature or of physiognomy; and this very plain-spoken avowal set those interested to find out the truth completely off the right scent. “For no woman,” as they argued, “ever blazons abroad such open admiration for a man she is in love with.” Shallow arguing! and the ways of woman, when she so chooses, are past man’s finding out; unless, possibly, to a disinterested man like Otto von Steinbach.

Disinterested indeed, as far as Radegund was concerned, Otto might be, since so long as she would one day settle quietly down with a decently wealthy and well-born suitor—the wealthier of course so much the better, because then he might rather help than hinder Otto’s own worldly prospects; the young man cared little enough who might be the favoured one. Otto, however, did care very much to arrive at any means which might compass the breaking of Dasipodius’ love plighting with Sabina von Steinbach. That once achieved, he had no fear whatever of making his own way with her. Why not?

And so when Otto’s eyes fell on this letter addressed to the mathematician in his sister’s own handwriting, he fancied himself quite on the right tack, or at least hope whispered very encouragingly to him. Still he could not quite see how he was going to bring things into train, and he stood and pondered, until his thoughts assumed an exceedingly definite shape. The letter was unsealed, could be opened and read as easily as looked at almost—and why—why should he not read it? What hindered?

Honour did for full two minutes, nearly three, and then the meaner spirit of him whispered that there must be no further shilly-shally, that such scruples were absurdly, fastidiously delicate, when in all probability, that letter contained nothing but Horologe business; and supposing, after all, it did touch on extraneous but interesting matter, was it not right and proper that he, Otto von Steinbach, as master of that house, should know what was going on under his own roof? Was he not guardian of his sister’s honour? and was it not high time that he should set about acquainting himself with some of those proceedings of hers which she kept so mysteriously to herself? Then too, there was his cousin Sabina’s imperilled happiness to be borne in mind. Yes, the sudden clearness with which Otto now saw these points utterly extinguished any intrusive little scruples, and anxiety on that score being thus quite set at rest, he set his lamp on the table, opened the letter—not without many glances first round the dark still chamber, and began to spell it carefully through. Otto, as already hinted, being rather a ten o’clock scholar, had some difficulty in mastering the hard words, but finding the contents interesting, it seemed to him worth while to persevere; and something over a quarter-of-an-hour left him in possession of as much as the missive had to tell; but to grasp all at once its full meaning was too great a tax on his brain, and for some moments his countenance wore an utterly dazed expression, and there, as though rooted to the spot, he stood, striving to set a little in order the bewildering suggestions it had called up within him. “Blind!” gasped he. “Now, who would have guessed that? And yet—ha! ha! so much for friend Conrad’s inspiration, as the fools call his star-gazing. Inspiration? Magic perhaps! What do I say? Perhaps? Why it must be. Seeing without eyes indeed! Oh! it’s horrible to think of—horrible! Why, the cleverest person, ever so clever—I myself can’t tie even a shoestring with shut eyes; and you mean to tell me—no, it won’t do. Besides, aren’t his eyes as good-looking—almost, as mine? Impossible.” Then with forefinger pressed against the corner of his wrinkling brow, and demonstrating the hollowness of his own proposition, since he shut his eyes fast in order to see the better into his own mind, he stood lost in meditation.

At last, carefully folding the letter, he replaced it where he had found it; then catching up his lamp, hurried with a light heart downstairs, and as he went, “Blind!” was the refrain of his pæan. “Dasipodius blind!—blind!”

This knowledge of the master’s affliction appeared certainly to have put his pupil into a charmingly good humour; he had not felt so pleased with himself and all the world for quite a long time, and went so far out of his ordinary way as to tell his sister, who now awaited him in the dining hall, that she was a splendid creature, by Venus! “And upon my honour, I don’t wonder at all the fellows being mad about you, my girl. Such a knack, too, as you have of putting on your clothes. You make a rare picture yourself, Radegund.”

And Radegund, standing there beside the supper-table, freighted with its costly silver-gilt and shining Venice glass, did look rarely handsome. Unlike so many sisters of her craft, artist inconsistencies, who drape their figures in graceful robes of happily-blended colouring, while they render real life hideous by dingy dress, crumpled lace, and disordered hair, Radegund well understood the value of personal adornment.

To-night her dress, whose sheeny folds swept the oaken floor, was of some dark tawny-coloured brocaded stuff, cut slightly open at the neck, and squared about the throat, and finished there by a band of dead gold passementerie. The sleeves puffed and slashed with velvet a shade or two lighter than the dress, and reaching to her shapely wrists, were edged with a narrow band of the same rich trimming, while a narrow frill of fine Flemish lace shaded the white, rather transparent hands. A broader ruff also of this same lace set off, more than concealed, the rounded outlines of her beautiful throat. This same ruff of the artist’s had afforded food for much discussion in certain circles. The feminine fashionable craze of the city vowed it was excessively absurd and antiquated of Radegund to persist in wearing such a stupid mimping scrap of lace; positively not four inches wide, and certainly, all unplaited, not above an ell long! But there, that always was Radegund von Steinbach—to go choosing to be different from everybody else, she did so dearly love anything that made her peculiar. Dispassionately regarded, one would have held the accusation of peculiarity to lie rather on the side of the existing fashion, than on that of the old-world frill to which Radegund was pleased to remain faithful. The ruffs of the really modish dames of that day were miracles of building-up, and had to be “under-propped round their goodly necks,” as an irate chronicler of the period has it, “and pinned up to their ears, or else let fluttering, like windmill sails in the wind”.

Now the ridiculous part of all this was, that the male sex, with that proverbial ignorance and ill-taste which invariably marks it in questions of the sort, took a positive delight in abusing the charming new fashion, and stuck so obstinately to their opinion that Radegund’s ruff was a thousand times more decent and becoming, that certain weak young Strassburg female minds began to entertain serious thoughts of going back again to the older style, in spite of such romantic nonsense being pooh-poohed by the stronger spirits.

“Decent and becoming! Radegund von Steinbach! Who’s she, pray, that she’s to set the fashions?” contended these. “Decent and becoming! A good joke!” and then the huffy outraged matrons at once became more ruffy and stiffly-starched than ever. Then, too, Radegund was possessed with “ideas” about her hair, and scorned to lend herself to the wearing of wigs of many colours, or to gold-powderings, or dyeings, or any other abominations of the sort practised in that unenlightened age, but gathered it all up, and wound it in coils about her beautiful head, and fastened it with a golden dagger-headed spillone, she had brought from Italy; and altogether there was a distinctiveness and magnificence about Radegund von Steinbach which made her a pleasant sight to eyes dazzled and wearied by the glitter of beads and bangles and gewgaws.

But to-night, notwithstanding, Radegund’s face wears a haggard look, and the crimson spot burning on either cheek, renders its paleness still more deathlike.

“You have kept me waiting,” is her sole response to her brother’s gallant little speeches. “Where have you been?”

“I—I was home rather late,” stammered he.

“Nay,” persisted Radegund, “but I heard you stamping about in here more than half-an-hour ago.”

“When a man’s ravenous,” says Otto, seating himself at the table, and commencing operations without further loss of time, “he’s apt to stamp about. It saves him from doing some awful mischief or other; and I’m so starving, I could eat a board to-night. But this capon is first-rate. You’ve found a decent cook at last—eh, old girl?” hurried on Otto nervously. “Do have a slice of this bird, Radegund.”

“No!” said Radegund. “I’m not hungry, Otto. Did I not hear you go upstairs to my studio?”

“Yes,” replied Otto. “I went to look for you; but you weren’t there; and—and so I came down again.”

“But not directly,” she said, fixing her eyes upon him with languid curiosity.

“No,” admitted the truthful Otto. “I—I stayed to look at your new sketch, Radegund. She’s an awful woman. Who is she?”

“Eleanor of England,” absently answered the artist.

“And what may she be pointing down at so savagely?”

“Ah! At fair Rosamond, while she drinks the poison.”

“A nice cheerful subject!” said Otto, fortifying his nerves with a brimming beaker of Burgundy. “But who is fair Rosamond?”

“That is too long a tale,” yawned Radegund; then with a sudden fierce energy she added: “Rosamond wronged Eleanor.”

“Oh! a love affair was it?” said Otto, with something of unfeigned interest. “And this Eleanor, she was jealous—eh?”

“Perhaps—I don’t know. I do wish you’d eat your supper, and not worry about the stupid picture. I thought you were so hungry.”

Otto stared at his sister. This was the first time within living memory that he had ever found her unwilling to talk about her art.

“I’m so tired to-night,” she went on more gently. “Tell me, Otto, did you notice a letter lying about up there?”

“A letter?—a letter?” said Otto, knitting his brows. “Yes, I—I think I saw something of the sort. Have you tasted the new bin of Burgundy yet, Radegund? By St. Laurence! what a bloom it has. Drink, my girl,” and he brimmed a goblet with the blood-red wine. “’Twill do you worlds of good.”

Radegund drank it thirstily. “It was addressed to the Professor Dasipodius,” she said.

“Oh, the letter. Ah, yes, it might have been for aught I know,” said Otto, nervously twiddling a spoon. It seemed to him that her eyes were reading him through and through.

“It was not sealed,” she said.

“Oh, h’m—was it not. Do you wish it sealed?” enquired the accommodating Otto. “I will fetch it down, and do it for you.”

“Nay, I will go myself presently.”

And after supper Radegund fetched the letter, and tying it with a silken thread, lighted a taper and sealed it fast.

“After all,” she said with a contemptuous weary smile, “it is nothing particular,” as though it were a trifle there had already been too much talk about.

“Ah, really!” said Otto in sleepy tones.

“It has to do with Horologe affairs.”

“Just so,” gravely assented he.

“And you are to give it yourself to Conrad Dasipodius.”

“Oh, certainly. Into his own hands.”

CHAPTER XIX.

“WERE ALL THY LETTERS SUNS, I COULD NOT SEE.”

“A letter for you, Master Dasipodius,” accordingly said Otto von Steinbach next morning, as he entered the studio.

“Thanks, Otto; from whom?” said the mathematician, stretching out one hand for it, and laying it unopened on the bench beside him.

“My sister—bade me give it you,” replied Otto.

“That is well,” said Dasipodius, calmly going on with the delicate little wire coil he was fashioning into a spring. “Ah! you are there still?” he added presently, for Otto had not stirred, but stood eyeing his superior curiously. “Do you know, my friend, that the wheel you finished off yesterday does not fit.”

“It’s right enough,” said Otto, snatching the offending wheel from his own work-bench, and thrusting it under Conrad’s eyes. “Look, you can see for yourself; what is amiss with it?”

“That,” answered Dasipodius, “is for Habrecht to decide. It is enough that he says the wheel will not do.”

“Habrecht is such a grumbler,” muttered Otto, but loud enough for Isaac to hear.

Now Isaac Habrecht was a worker after Dasipodius’ own heart; he lacked the soul and inventive genius of his superior, but whatever he did was done with all his might, and done well, and anything carelessly finished off was an intolerable abomination to him; and so when he overheard Otto’s remark, he did not think it worth his while to say more than: “The wheel won’t do; we can’t be having any slop-work about the Horologe”.

Otto turned on his heel, and noisily throwing down the wheel, glared wrathfully at it. He knew that he might just as well set about endeavouring to convince the two Nile statues that he had made his wheel well, as these two pig-headed mathematicians, when they said he had not; and unless he wanted, which he did not, to lose his appointment under Dasipodius, he dared not argue the matter further. Turning therefore on Dasipodius once more, he only said sulkily: “My sister bade me tell you that letter was urgent”.

To escape the one chance of his infirmity being detected, Dasipodius made it his invariable custom to request one or other of his pupils to read aloud to him any documents which happened to be brought to the Dial.

“Then will you kindly read it out,” he rejoined, “while I go on with my coil? I dare not let it unroll just now.”

But to read that letter was more than Otto had bargained with himself to do. Other reasons apart, he was horribly afraid of bungling over the hard words; for it was one thing to understand their meaning, and quite another to pronounce them properly viva voce. Muttering therefore something about having to attend to his unsatisfactory piece of workmanship, he was about to hand over the letter to Isaac Habrecht, but remembering just in time that this quick-sighted, ready-witted man would discover all too soon what manner of letter it was, and would therefore come to a halt long before he had reached its more striking clauses, he changed his mind, and looking towards Kaspar Habrecht, who was busy over his wooden blocks in the embrasure of the window, said, “Here, Kaspar, my lad. ’Tis said there are hopes of your making a fair clerk one of these days—give us a proof of your scholarship, and come and read out this letter to Master Dasipodius.”

“Ay do. That’s my brave Kaspar,” said Dasipodius.

The lad looked up from his work, and came forward, pushing his bright hair back from his broad white brow, and with a flush of proud content, received the missive from Otto von Steinbach’s hands.

“Will it please you to open it yourself?” he asked, turning to Dasipodius.

“Nay. You shall do that office for me,” smiled his master. “I cannot spare my hands.”

And so, disentangling the thread, and breaking the seal, Kaspar read out the superscription. “To the Herr Professor Dasipodius——”

“Never fret your brain about the preamble,” bluntly interrupted Isaac. “Let us hear at once what Mistress von Steinbach has to tell us.”

“Excuse me,” said Otto, “the letter’s none of your business, Isaac Habrecht.”

“The clock’s my business,” retorted Isaac; “and if your sister is going to be good enough to give us a notion at last, when she means to finish off these gods and goddesses of hers, why——”

“Holy Virgin!” cried Dasipodius, with a nervous knitting of his brows. “Do hold your tongue now, Isaac. There’ll be no hearing the letter all day at this rate! Go on, Kaspar.”

“Since we last met——” began Kaspar.

“A strange beginning!” thought Dasipodius, industriously manipulating his coil. “I saw her but yesterday.”

“I have come to know that of you which you have kept concealed from me——”

“What now?” mused the mathematician, with a half smile. “Some fresh offence of mine, clearly. Well, well, she is a wayward creature! Heaven help the man she will call husband! Poor old Bruno!”. And still he worked on contentedly at his spring-coil.

“It would have been so far, far better that I should have known all,” continued Kaspar in slow mumbling tones, for it began to be very evident to him that the letter’s contents were not intended for this house-top sort of proclamation.

Dasipodius, however, had no such impression. That one secret of his heart, Radegund had declared she equally desired to keep buried in hers. Turning therefore to Kaspar, he said jestingly: “Well, my Kaspar, but you are such a laggard at learning after all! Make haste and let me hear the rest.”

“Yes, get on, for patience sake,” said Otto. “Is this your fine schooling? Do you think Master Dasipodius is going to wait till next week for you to dunder out your words in that fashion. Give me the letter,” and he snatched it from the boy’s trembling fingers; for had he not by heart what came next. “Let me see—h’m—h’m—known all—h’m—h’m—trusted me—h’m—ah yes, here we are,” he went on raising his voice, and reading very distinctly, so that all who chose to listen might hear: “Why could you not have trusted me? Why did you not tell me you were blind?” But then his voice was lost in a strange clattering of metal, and jarring of wires, and falling of tools; and low-bending necks were suddenly upraised, and startled wondering looks were turned on the mathematician.

“What the foul fiend is my sister talking about?” said Otto, looking round with widely-rounded eyes. “Has she gone mad?”

But Dasipodius, with his fingers stayed in their deft movements, sat rigid and still; until at last in low monotone, he said once more, “Go on”.

“Yes, you know, but really—ha! ha! this is too absurd. Isn’t it—by Jove, really!” cried Otto, emboldened by the impassivity of Dasipodius. “Too much of a good joke. But—just listen to this now—but I will ask no questions, since I desire no answer. Your own heart knows it will be best for us both you should not answer; for that which you have called love between us——”

“Hush! Silence! It is from her, my poor child, yes. Give it me. Give it me,” cried Dasipodius, and casting down the spring and starting to his feet, he swayed forward with outstretched arms hither and thither, like some stately rudderless ship, while Otto, with swift dexterity, thrust forward the chair on which he had been leaning, and sprang noiselessly aside. Then, turning to his bewildered comrades, he pointed with mocking significant gestures at Dasipodius, who was advancing with rapid strides towards the spot on which he imagined Otto to be still standing, and still with his hands eagerly outstretched for the fatal letter; but his knee came in contact with the chair, and he stumbled and fell heavily forward against its sharply-carven corner. With a simultaneous rush, the students flew to his assistance. Kaspar was first beside him, and kneeling down, the boy gently raised his master’s head, and laid it back on his own breast; next instant his jerkin was dyed through and through with the blood streaming down from the broad brow, and it was all his slender frame could do to support its fainting burden. Then, however, the elder Habrecht came and lifted Dasipodius tenderly into his own strong arms, and with his handkerchief staunched the wound, gazing down, meanwhile, with loving anxiety on the pale closed eyelids.

Let be—let be awhile, friend Habrecht. Call not thy master back to life yet. Let him rest only for a few brief moments, pillowed there on thy kind heart. Rest, ere consciousness shall set again to his lips the cup of bitterness he must drink so deeply.

“So bravely! bravely then, Master!” said Habrecht, when after the lapse of a few seconds, Dasipodius once more opened his sightless eyes.

“What has happened?” asked the mathematician in faint, dreamy tones, lifting his hand to his head. Then with Isaac’s aid he slowly raised himself to his feet, but his cheek was deadly pale, and all blood-stained from the wound which had glanced startlingly near the temple. “That letter!” were his first words; “who has that letter? Give it me.”

“Do you hear?” sternly demanded Isaac, turning to where Otto had been standing. “Give the master his letter.”

But Otto was not there, nor in any other part of the spacious studio. Neither, although they all searched high and low, could the letter be found.

“Otto has taken it with him, no doubt,” said Habrecht. “What has he gone off like, that for? Run after him, Kaspar, and——”

“Nay, stay!” said Dasipodius, lifting his hand. “I have something to say first.”

“Not now, Master,” gently entreated Habrecht, marking how vainly the low agitated voice strove to regain its wonted firmness. “You will be stronger by-and-bye, and then we can clear up this strange mistake.”

“No,” replied the mathematician, in resolute measured tones. “It is no mistake. I am blind, my comrades,” he went on, turning to face them all, “utterly—stone blind, and the daylight to me is no more than the starless night. It has been so with me nearly all the time we have worked together.”

“Blind!” broke forth the wondering chorus. “But—no, no, it is impossible.”

“No, with God nothing is impossible. I would—I should like to explain to you—now—many things, but this letter—nay, I would of course say, this unlucky fall,” and Dasipodius lifted his hand to his head, “seems to have unnerved me, and my brain is all confused. Lend me your arm, Habrecht; I had planned to get through so much to-day; but I should spoil it now, and it must go—to-morrow—to-morrow. Nay, that is your stalwart arm, Isaac, I meant not you; Kaspar here will do me the good service to lead me home.”

Isaac stoutly remonstrated. He saw what mischief the fall and that “accursed letter,” as in his own mind he called it, had wrought, and it seemed to him hardly safe to trust Dasipodius, weak from his loss of blood and blind—(Heaven and earth! was it then true?)—with only his young stripling brother, through the jostling street-crowd, but Dasipodius insisted. “If you and I are both absent,” argued he, smiling faintly, “something or other will be sure to go amiss with our Horologe; for what is the body without the head? and by my faith, I think I have mislaid mine,—so be my representative for to-day, old friend.”

“For to-day—yes then,” conceded Isaac, and Dasipodius turned to go.

“Poor little coil!” he murmured, as he passed by his own bench, where his morning’s work lay all undone. “Strangled at thy birth. But Habrecht shall give thee new life. See to it, Isaac,” and he turned, and laid it tenderly, as if it were some sick, breathing thing, on Habrecht’s bench. “And,” continued the Master, with the stern, somewhat peremptory, ring in his voice, which, on rare occasions, did steal its wonted gentleness, “bid Otto von Steinbach, when he returns, attend to those wheel-teeth at once. Come, Kaspar.”

And one hand on his good stick, and the other on Kaspar Habrecht’s shoulder, Conrad Dasipodius went out from the scene of his labours into the streets, and as he passed along, many a fellow-citizen doffed his hat in respectful salutation to their mathematician. It never occurred to the good Strassburgers to take offence because Dasipodius rarely, if ever, returned their greetings. It was their creed that geniuses were not to be held amenable to ordinary social conditions; “and, of course,” said they, “he is far too deep in his calculations and things, to be able to see outside him as one may call it”. And in that way the worthy folks, out of the experience of all who had ever had to do with him of his natural courtesy and goodness, made every allowance for what they regarded as his little eccentricities. But undoubtedly, on this special occasion, if Dasipodius had been accommodated with all the eyes of the Apocalyptic Beast, they would have been to him no more than that unpardonable sin against the canons of true art, a matter of superfluous ornamentation; since all his faculties were turned inward, strained to gather up, and to grasp the full significance of that strange letter, whose ending he did not even yet know.

CHAPTER XX.

A NOISY COMMITTEE.

When Isaac Habrecht, having watched his master safely down the winding stone staircase, returned to the studio, he found the whole place in commotion. Work cast aside, benches overthrown, a deafening din of voices, and all other impending signs of miniature civil war. From a dozen and more of mouths praise and blame were pouring out on the absent chief. True, the odds were greatly in his favour, still a malcontent minority was not to be put down, just because the majority chanced to idolize Dasipodius.

Otto von Steinbach had reappeared upon the scene, and having constituted himself fugleman of the rebel party, seemed to be amazingly enjoying the distinction.

Mounted on his own work-bench, and gesticulating with marvellous energy, he was haranguing the whole posse comitatus with shrill eloquence.

“I put it to you all,” shrieked he—“to your ordinary powers of discrimination, you know, my friends, to decide whether this Dasipodius has not deceived us?”

“Ay, ay,” shouted some half-dozen voices. “Deceived, do I say?” continued the orator.

“That is no word for it——”

“No, no,” jeered the opposition. “Made egregious fools of us. What do we look like, I ask? What do we look like now, but double-dyed asses——”

“Hear! hear!” fell the universal assent. “And—who, I ask you, who has done this but the man we have called—I say now, called master, Conrad Dasipodius?”

“Ay! ay! So he has!” assented Otto’s party. “No! no! Down! down!” shouted the rest. “Be quiet! Let him say what he wants anyhow,” contended a couple of neutrals.

“Well,” continued Otto, “isn’t it as clear, you know, as the river Rhine——”

“The Rhine’s as thick as mud,” argued a voice; “and we don’t so much as know whether he is blind as yet.”

“He said he was himself.”

“Well, granted then. Whose business is it but his own? Anyway it isn’t ours.”

“Not our business?” wrathfully shouted Otto. “Not our business? And we are to be hoodwinked then in this fashion? Led by the nose by this blind mole of a——”

“Shame! shame!” cried nearly all. “Down! get down!”

But Otto did not mean to get down; he simply modulated his accents a little. “Well, you know what I mean to say is, don’t you see, that a man who can’t so much as tell you white from black is a pretty sort of a fellow to be laying down the law to a set of intelligent, educated, cultivated gentlemen like us. Do we not know,” went on Otto, plucking eloquence from the calm murmur of enthusiasm thrilling through all—“do we not know, and I put it to yourselves, one and all, that we have here among us minds—gifted minds with all their common senses about them—mark you, none of your——”

“Keep to the point.”

“Well, I am keeping to it, an’t I? Minds, I say, who understand horology every bit as well as this—this Dasipodius.”

Only a feeble sound of assent, however, sanctioned this bold utterance, and signs of dissent grew so ominous, that Otto, unable to beat a retreat, took forlorn hope in a desperate following up of the attack. “And do we not know as a fact,” he said, grinding his heel down on the faulty wheel, “that at the time of the competition for the Horologe commission, this fellow’s nomination was from beginning to end a matter of favour and prejudice?”

“Oh ho! prove that!” burst out the Dasipodians, with loud laughter. “Prove that.”

“You may laugh,” hysterically retorted Otto. “Just you see you don’t find yourselves having to do it the wrong side of your mouths one of these fine days. I tell you there were drawings among those sent in for the Horologe ever so much superior to old Herlin’s, or Dasipodius’ either.”

“Yours, for instance,” suggested Isaac Habrecht, speaking for the first time.

A burst of laughter greeted this remark.

“That isn’t for me to say,” modestly said Otto. “Syndic Hackernagel—”

“Ho! ho! ho! The crop-eared Anabaptist—”

“Syndic Tobias Hackernagel did not hesitate to pronounce my poor work as out of all comparison the best—the most attractive—the most——”

“Ho! ho! Kikeriki! Cock-a-doodle-doo! Fish to-day—Good red herring! Fish!”

“That is simply vulgar,” said Otto, crimsoning, and loftily waving away the delicate allusions to his patron’s early avocation. “And it is you who are wandering from the point now, my friends; I didn’t want to talk about it.”

That was true. Time, as he knew, was not yet ripe for him to plead his own cause in so many words. It was one thing for these hotheaded young fellows to enjoy a scrimmage, but quite another to fall in with his desire of waking up some fine morning, and finding himself installed in the Professor Dasipodius’ place. That indeed had not so much as yet entered their minds; he must be circumspect, and feel his way gingerly as a cat over a muddy road. Still it was pleasant to think he might be driving in the thin end of the wedge.

“All I had in my thoughts was that this Dasipodius should be taught to know his place—taken down a peg, as the saying is; and when he comes here in the morning I propose, you know, that we give him a piece of our minds, and—bar him out.”

Never had man more lamentably mis-estimated the temper of his audience; and amid cries of “Shame! Down! down! Let’s give him a souse in the duck-pond!” accompanied by a variety of ungentle lunges and clutches at his shins and ankles, Otto ran a perilous chance of being totally worsted, had it not been for Isaac Habrecht, who elbowing his way to the front of the orator’s extemporised rostrum, turned his broad protecting back on the orator, and lifting his hand, obtained by gestures, the cessation of yells and catcalls his tongue must have demanded only in vain.

“Hear then—hear!” broke forth an almost universal shout. “Isaac Habrecht! Hoch! for Isaac Habrecht. Let us hear what Isaac has to say.”

“What I have to say?” said Habrecht. “Well! it’s not much; only that you ought all to be ashamed of yourselves for a pack of scurvy rioters. What! Might not the master turn his back one poor five minutes, but you must, every man jack of you, be raising a witches’ sabbath loud enough to waken the blessed dead from their rest? Fine bargain you, forsooth! to go picking holes in other men’s coats, when you can’t stick for five minutes together to the work under your fingers. Is that the way the master made himself what he is, d’ye think? But look you, friends, I’m master here for this day; and if three minutes don’t see each one of you back in his place, I’ll have the watch turned in upon you for rioters and tumult-mongers. I’ve said my say,” concluded Isaac, looking round at Otto. “And as for you, young sheepshead! get down at once with you, and be seeing to those wheel teeth.”

And Otto, who knew the playful ways of his comrades when their blood was up, meekly descended from his elevation, and sitting down before it, sulkily took up his half-smashed wheel. Thoroughly disliking Habrecht, on account of his eternal fault-finding with his work, he by no means relished being beholden to him now for salvation from his friends; but he knew also something of that special predilection of the practical fellows for duck-pond pastime, and how they would indulge in it whenever opportunity presented itself. There being just then, moreover, a cold thaw on, he elected promptly to obey Isaac; while those of his compeers who had deprecated the late demonstration, hastened to fall in with Habrecht’s injunctions, and those who did not know their own minds, began to feel something like shame when their eyes fell upon the master’s vacant seat, and settled quietly again to their work; so that when some half-hour or so after my Lord Bishop just looked in to see how the Horologe was progressing, the studio looked quite a model of order and sobriety; and he said to Master Gottlieb, his chaplain, who chanced to be with him, “It quite does one’s heart good to see what a quiet, well-conducted set of young fellows those are at the Dial. Nothing in the least ramshackle about them.”

CHAPTER XXI.

A CHILLY GREETING.

Meantime Dasipodius and his young companion had almost reached their destination.

It had been a very silent walk, for the mathematician was lost in a maze of thought; while Kaspar felt that he dared not give utterance to the distress surging in his own young heart.

Once or twice it did seem to him that he must break forth, and tell his master of all the love and pity that he was feeling for him; but then, lifting his own sympathetic eyes to those grand sightless ones, an awesome dread restrained him.

Kaspar Habrecht’s was one of those natures folks even commonly observant are apt to denounce as cold and undemonstrative. It is true that his eyes were quick to glisten up with tears at a tale of suffering, or his clear cheek to glow at the relation of some deed of heroism, or his countenance to grow bright with animation, when he could stand by, and hear some learned question of art or science discussed; but the boy’s sympathies had to be truly fathomed ere they would respond; and few would have guessed at the world of chivalrous romance underlying his calm even demeanour and outspoken common sense. Where many would have fallen down and adored loudly, Kaspar stood afar off, and offered heartfelt, silent worship.

Such sort of honour and love as this it was that he had for Dasipodius; but the mathematician himself did not guess at the place he had won in this boy’s heart, as much at first, perhaps, by those little sentences of approbation and encouragement which he would bestow, and which Kaspar treasured up and made sustenance of for renewed efforts. Often too, when Conrad had been consulting with Isaac about the Horologe work, he would lay his hand on the boy’s head and say, “And what think’st thou, my Kaspar?” And in this way the great mathematical professor had come to be idolized by the young artist.

There could, of course, be no Orestes and Pylades element in this spiritual link between the master and his pupil. Its conditions were too unequal for friendship, but call it love, call it—as Otto did—infatuation, or by any other name whatsoever, the affinity drawing Kaspar’s young spirit to the kindred spirit of Dasipodius, made him feel acutely for the grief which had befallen him.

“Had it been me now whom the great God had afflicted like this,” he kept mentally saying again and again, as the two plodded onward, “I might have more understood it. But for him—him to be blind! To think that he cannot see the merry sparkles all over yonder snow-heap, nor those splendid red apples on Mother Hedwig’s stall. Donnerwetter! they make one’s mouth water”—(Kaspar was after all but a boy) “nor what a witch the old frau across the street there has made of herself with her new vertugadins. Not an inch of room to get past her—waddling old goose!” and as he turned to look after the fashionable dame, a smile flickered on the boy’s rosy lips, to die out again, as he remembered his master could see none of these things.

“Ah! and now if there isn’t old Burgomaster Niklaus, with Mistress Sabina, coming along,” he went on dismayedly. “A plague on them both! just when my master’s hardly able to walk—much less to stand chattering in the cold all about nothing! People always talk such nonsense when they meet in the streets.”

And Kaspar began to consider the feasibility of dragging his companion aside, and letting the two pass unnoticed, but tall folks are not so easily lost in a crowd, and before Kaspar could effect his purpose, Niklaus, with Sabina on his arm, came to a halt in front of them.

“Give you good morning, Master Dasipodius,” said the Burgomaster. “And were you going to pass old friends in the street like that—eh? But isn’t it a strange time of day for you to be gadding about? A thousand thunders man! what have you been doing to yourself, with that great gaping slash across your forehead? And as pale too as the moon! If it were not you now, professor, but some hectoring jackanapes or other, one would ask if you’d been at fisticuffs, hey?”

And the Burgomaster stared up in Dasipodius’ face with wide open puzzled eyes, while Kaspar stood fidgeting by, turning hot and cold with vexation.

“An accident, Burgomaster,” answered Dasipodius, “a trifling blow I gave myself just now. It was very stupid.”

“Well,” nodded the Burgomaster acquiescingly, “didn’t you see where you were going?”

“No.”

“But, upon my word, it hardly looks so trifling as you call it,” more seriously continued Niklaus. “It isn’t a very long cut certainly, but it’s an ugly one to fall just there, and has damaged your brave looks for many a day to come anyhow. Hasn’t it, Sabina? Bless thee, little heart! how pale the cold has made thee! I say these trifling blows are not becoming, are they?”

But the shrinking, tearful-eyed girl only stands mutely clinging and plucking at her father’s arm, while Dasipodius, discovering who the Burgomaster has for his companion, flushes crimson, and with a smile quite lacking the old gladness which had made it Sabina’s own heart’s sunshine, turns and lifts his cap. Oh me! and had it come to this? Yes, it is all clear enough and quite quite true, then, what Radegund has told her! True that he has no real love for her. Of course by this time her letter has reached him. Oh! how glad she is she has sent it. No real love for her. What need of further witness? Is not this enough, to see him standing there, bowing to her gravely and distantly? He, Conrad, who three little days ago had called her his life and his soul’s joy, and had held her with enfolding arms clasped to his breast, covering her rosy lips—ay, rosy then—how ashen pale and quivering now!—with warm kisses—and worse than that! oh so far far worse!—whom she had kissed! Think of it. There, close where now the blood still slowly oozes and trickles from the cruel wound. Ay, and would she not give her own heart’s blood to do it again? To take that dear head for a minute—oh! pitying Mother Mary! only for one gracious minute, and lay it on her own breast, and staunch the ugly stream, and kiss and comfort away the smarting dreadful pain? But he wanted nothing of all that. Has not she seen him lift his cap, and bow distantly, gravely to her, as to any grand haughty lady, and not the shivering, heart-broken Sabina, clenching her fingers into her father’s ample sleeve, so that she may not cry aloud in her great agony. “Come away, Väterle, come away!” she gasps under her breath to Niklaus;—and dunder-headed old father,—as indeed what better had he confessed himself to be? he sees no more through her piteous perplexity, than he sees through the flint wall opposite, and is just the least trifle in the world tetchy at not being allowed to be neighbourly.

“Well, well, child—a moment then, a moment,” he said. “Ah—bless my soul! Never you have a daughter, friend—an only daughter. They’re as full of whimsies as eggs are full of meat; that let me tell you. See now, I’m not even to be permitted to exchange a passing word with you, because Master Jack Frost happens to be nipping my little maid’s roses away, and making her shiver and shake like a leaf in a hurricane. Well, it is cold—decidedly cold—so come.”

And with a cheery “God-speed and have a care of yourself,” the Burgomaster tucked his daughter’s trembling little hand tighter under his arm, and passed on.

“Cold! cold!—ay, bitter cold!” murmured the mathematician, recalling to himself how no word had passed Sabina’s lips, save that reiterated pleading to go away. To escape his presence, it was so obviously her meaning. “Come away! come away!” How chill and harsh and loveless those words had sounded in the ears, unassisted by any sense of interpreting sight. And the mortal chill fallen on his love, fell then on his ambition too, or at least on ambition’s nobler part. “Cold! cold!” he shivered. “Yes—death cold!”

Kaspar glanced up at him with wistful doglike solicitude in his brown eyes.

“The cold is paining your wound, master?” he asked.

“Ay,” said Dasipodius, deadly pale, and leaning heavily on the boy’s shoulder, “and my heart, too, I think, Kaspar.”

“Yes,” answered Kaspar. “Such a wound as yours is enough to make the whole body sick. Cold does cut into wounds so sharp.”

“Like a knife,” said Dasipodius faintly.

“But we are close now to Dr. Bruno’s; so courage, master,” said Kaspar anxiously.

“I doubt if he can do much for me.”

“Not do——”

“Nay. Never mind—any way I have a question to ask him; and do you meanwhile go back, there’s a good lad, and see about that letter you were reading out to me, and bring it to me here.”

CHAPTER XXII.

UNJUST SUSPICIONS.

Trudel being out marketing when the two reached Bruno’s house, Dasipodius fortunately escaped any of the good creature’s jeremiads over his mishap, and it was the doctor himself who opened the door.

“Can you mend a broken head, Bruno?” the mathematician asked, as he followed his friend into the laboratory. “If so, here’s a subject for you.”

“Ay,” said Bruno. “Any number of broken heads. It’s only the broken hearts our skill won’t reach to.”

A prolonged weary sigh was all the answer to Bruno’s little sally, and the surgeon, who had already begun to unroll a piece of lint, turned to look at Dasipodius, where he had sunk down on the truckle-bed, leaning forward with both hands clasped upon his stick. His eyelids drooped heavily on the ashen grey cheeks, and it seemed to Bruno that his face had suddenly aged by ten years with those weary hopeless lines which had gathered about the handsome resolute mouth.

Pouring some strong cordial into a cup, he held it to the mathematician’s pale lips. “Drink this, Conrad,” he said; “it will give you new life.”

Dasipodius obeyed mechanically, and reviving a little, he said, “To think that it should bring a man to this. Eh, Bruno! We are but poor creatures after all—the strongest among us. I should have thought I could have borne it better.”

“It’s an uncommonly ugly blow,” said Bruno, examining the wound. “How the devil did it happen?”

“Oh! this wound? Ah! yes—well, I stumbled, poor blind wretch that I am, against a chair.”

The surgeon made no reply, but went on scraping vigorously at his piece of lint, and then proceeded to dress the wound, looking all the while very grave and thoughtful. “You are so silent, doctor. Is your considering cap on this morning?” asked Dasipodius, with a faint smile.

“Yes,” said Bruno, and he said no more.

“A heller for your thoughts, my Solon.”

“I was thinking,” answered Bruno slowly, “that your blindness has served you sorry trick.”

“Not a doubt of that.”

“Had it gone a couple of hair-breadths nearer the temple, it must have killed you, Conrad.”

“Yes?”

“Why yes, yes,” answered Bruno, provoked by his patient’s coolness. “And might not another such accident befall you at any moment? And where is our Professor Dasipodius then?”

“At peace,” said the other solemnly.

“Nonsense, man. Drink some more of this, and attend to me. So. I say, where would be Strassburg’s pride, where would be Sabina’s——”

“Oh hush! hush!” cried Dasipodius. “Do not speak of her—not now—presently, presently—not yet.”

“Well, well,” said Bruno, out of his knowledge that invalids must be humoured. “What I want to say is simply, why should you strive so carefully to conceal your loss of sight?”

“Why,” asked Dasipodius, lifting his head with sudden energy from the cushion Bruno had placed beneath it,—“why do you ask me such a question as that? I could not have believed you would have wasted breath on it. Don’t you see that they would perhaps deprive me of the Horologe commission?”

“Nonsense—stuff!” said Bruno, laughing outright. “Do you think we don’t know a clever man when we’ve got him better than that? Upon my honour, Conrad, you don’t give Strassburg credit for much.”

“No,” said Dasipodius, “not much.”

“Well,” conceded Bruno, “of course it’s undeniable that the world’s fuller of blockheads than of wise ones, and you may be right, only——”

“Time will show,” interrupted the mathematician, “and quickly too; for in twenty-four hours all Strassburg will know that I am blind.”

“What!” said Wolkenberg, turning with amazed eyes on Dasipodius. “How? In Heaven’s name, how?”

“By the usual channel for all secrets, a woman’s tongue.”

“Holy Virgin!” ejaculated the surgeon, pale now as his friend. “Not Radegund? No! she has not played me so false as that?”

“Oh, yes. She did that long ago. But never fret yourself on that score, Bruno. I have pardoned your share in the matter long since. I did not mean to have spoken of—of that mistaken kindness of yours! But it was weak of you, Bruno. Forgive me, my Bear, you know I love you far better than I love your Radegund; and I could easier have borne the truth from your own lips.”

“Oh, Conrad,” moaned Bruno. “But I did not betray you.”

“I thought you did.”

“No. As heaven will judge us all, I did not.”

“I believe you, Bruno, and I am glad—very glad.”

“Listen,” said Bruno, “and I will explain—”

“No, no. I’ll have no explainings, your word is as good as a thousand of them; and besides that is all past and gone. Be content, Bruno, your Radegund has no share in the misery this time. It comes from nearer home, so near—oh my God, Bruno!” and Dasipodius clutched wildly at the surgeon’s arm. “It is Sabina—Sabina von Steinbach who has done this.”

“Curse all women and their tongues,” growled Bruno through his set white teeth, and his yellow hair bristling. “But there is some devilry at the bottom of this. Tell me more about it, Conrad.”

“There is so little to tell,” answered Dasipodius; and then in a few words he related what had taken place that morning in the studio.

“And the letter,” asked Bruno, when he had done, “was in Mistress Sabina’s own handwriting, you say?”

“How could I tell?” demanded Dasipodius reproachfully. “I have an impression she cannot write; but it is of little enough consequence whether she wrote it herself, or found a scribe; it comes to just the same thing every way.”

But Dr. Wolkenberg only rumpled up his hair still higher with his fingers, and stared thoughtfully into the fire. “You have the letter of course?” he said at last.

“No. In the confusion, I suppose, it fell on the floor. Kaspar has gone back for it now. But that will not mend the matter. The cruel words will still be there.”

“And you are sure you understood them rightly?”

“I am not apt to misapprehend,” said the learned professor of mathematics.

“Ah! I mean, you know, you are sure you heard the letter to the end?”

“I am sure of nothing. How can I be?” demanded Dasipodius in tones strangely unlike his own. “How you do worry! Must I say again that what I heard was enough. A million others could not deaden their sting. Oh Bruno! Bruno! what hard hearts these women have! I could have sworn by the Holy Rood that the child loved me.”

“So could I,” murmured the surgeon. “There—let us speak no more of her, and for the rest, who can tell? Bruno, what a strange power guides our destiny. Why, think only, it is this heart’s love of mine that I thought so priceless, and would not have bartered for the Horologe itself, no, nor a dozen Horologes—I say it is this which has ruined all my brain’s labour, and what is left—what is left?”

And then, just as on that day when his old friend Chretei was laid to his rest, the mathematician, worn out with mental and bodily pain, laid down his head, and sobbed bitterly; but this time his pillow was no chill snow clod, but his friend’s warm sympathising breast, and for a while Bruno, knowing that all his skill could devise no such real relief, let the sobs have their way, and his own blue eyes grew moist for his friend’s trouble, but as he sat there beside him, he was puzzled sorely. “Ay, ay,” he kept saying over and over again to himself, “I could have sworn she loved him.”

Soon the mathematician’s almost dauntless spirit reasserted itself, and it seemed to him a blessed thing indeed then to be able to call such a man as this Bruno Wolkenberg, friend. Can one ever be really alone in the world with one true friend? If life was to have no more sunshine for him, at least there would be the soft starlight, and he rose up and grasped the surgeon’s hand in his. “So now,” he said, “I have been miserably selfish to keep you from your crucibles all this while.”

But Bruno detained him by the hand, and would not let him go.

“Loose my hand, Bruno,” he said, with a saddening little effort to smile. “If we stand mumchance here all night, you will be able to throw no light upon this question.”

“Do you recollect,” said Bruno, desperately rushing at his subject, “do you recollect the last time you were here?”

“Surely I do,” said Dasipodius; “just five days ago it was.”

“You recollect that as I let you out, some one else came in. Yes?”

“Yes,” quickly answered the mathematician.

“Do you know who it was?”

“I had a foolish idea, and as I went home I laughed at myself for my blind fancies—shall I tell you, Bruno—can your science explain, I wonder, why I should have thought——”

“You thought right. It was Sabina von Steinbach.”

“And what did she do, poor little one, out in the cold and darkness? Tell me, Bruno, what brought her to you at such an hour? A stolen visit——”

“To ask me if you were blind.”

“A practical-minded maiden, truly,” scornfully laughed Dasipodius. “Having picked up her suspicions, heaven knows where, she came to the fountainhead, and you said yes?”

“I did.”

“God forgive you, Bruno, you served me an ill turn,” and the gloom gathered heavily on the mathematician’s brow.

“I did it for your sake—for the best——”

“Naturally. You always do,” said Dasipodius bitterly, “as you told that other woman.”

“You are unjust,” answered Wolkenberg. “If you had seen her——”

“If I had seen her! If I had seen her! Oh great heaven, how have I been betrayed by the two I loved best in all the world!”

“I say you are unjust——”

“And you are weak as water. Farewell, Bruno Wolkenberg. When Kaspar returns with that letter, be so good as to send him after me to my house.”

And turning on his heel, the blind man strode out into the street alone, more utterly alone than ever he had felt in his life. For him love was dead since Sabina was false; and friendship a mockery, now Bruno had proved himself unworthy. Only the Horologe was left. Henceforth that would be to him friend and mistress and all. He had always loved it as if it were a human thing, as men do love their brain children, and now—now that he had, as he told himself, lost all else, it would be to him a thousand times more dear. It owned now his undivided love. He was like Faust before the arch-fiend came to tempt him away from his crucibles with fair dreams, and ruin him with sweet longings worse than vain. It was with him now at last, as Heaven from the first had meant it to be, and henceforth he would be able to give himself life and soul, and heart and body to his work, just as the priests of old Greece belonged to their temples. And he had thought to subdue destiny. Fritter his God-given life away on poor, fickle, foolish, perishable human affection! Had presumed to imagine that his heritage of intellect and genius might be made to go hand in hand with it. But he saw his error now. He had come to feel how blind—how doubly blind, more densely blind mentally than ever he could be physically—he had been. Now he could see how incomparably better than all the love—love forsooth!—of a little, capricious, shallow-hearted——. Nay! No, no, but the child was right. How was it possible to love a blind man? What woman could? Heaven was just, and had interposed for her, when his selfish mad passion would have carried him astray. It had been unjustifiable, a crime in him to conceal his affliction from her; and now he was well punished. Love a blind man! “Oh Sabina, my darling, heart’s dear—only little one. And it was this love of mine for thee did thee this cruel wrong. Forgive me—thou—my own first, last, lost love——”

Some one gently touched his arm. It was Kaspar Habrecht, who said that Otto von Steinbach had returned to the studio, and indignantly denied all knowledge of the letter; and though they had searched high and low for it, it was not to be found.

CHAPTER XXIII.

“THE TIMES ARE OUT OF JOINT.”

Never since the Burgomaster’s daughter returned from Freiburg, had the old house in the Munster Gasse seemed so dull and sombre as in these last days. A shadow had somehow settled upon it, and even the dining-hall, always the very sanctum of snugness, had come to be oppressively gloomy.

It was odd too, for the fire on the wide hearth burned and crackled as briskly as heretofore, the board was laden heavily as ever with good fare, and sparkled with ruby and golden tinted wines; and if folks have dainty food and warmth, what more can they possibly want to make life happy? Then Sabina’s cat Mitte purred and dozed away her precious life beside the fire, just as ever she had done since kittenhood had become to her as a foolish dream, and the old clock’s eyes goggled, and it ticked away at its eternal song, and the young house-mistress still plied her needle in the window corner. Truly she had given up singing the sweet old songs she used to sing, and her virginal stood, polished indeed, but idle and mute as the voice of the little mistress, and,—well, there is no doubt that very trifling matters greatly influence the atmosphere of daily life, and possibly it was the absence of Sabina’s happy voice which occasioned this palpable dreariness. Ever since Cousin Radegund had slipped in to pay Sabina that nocturnal visit, the child had grown so preternaturally grave and silent, walking about the house with slow noiseless footfall, and an air as serious as the demurest Anabaptist maiden in all Strassburg. Indeed, Niklaus almost began to fear she might have become infected with some one or other of the heretic notions flying about; but he soon dispossessed himself of that fancy, because his daughter was, if anything, more regular than ever in her visits to the Saint Laurence chapel. And at last, the utterly nonplussed Burgomaster asked Sabina point blank what ailed her, and Sabina said, “Nothing, Väterle; what put such fancies into your head?” in such admirably simulated tones of gaiety that Niklaus could say no more.

He was, however, not one whit better satisfied. Something, he felt persuaded, was out of joint, and he would have given his best diamond to set it right, even had it been only for his own selfish sake. It was so appallingly dull of an evening now for one thing. The Professor Dasipodius had, for instance, not looked in—oh, for quite these ten days past, and the Burgomaster missed his chats horribly. One thing, however, Niklaus argued from these dull facts, and that was that any foolish notions Sabina and Conrad Dasipodius might have had about each other had come to nothing, because when he had hinted they might do as they liked, the two perverse creatures had just turned off at a tangent, and chosen to stand aloof ever since. Oh, he had noticed it all. He did not wear his head in a bag, whatever people might think, and however certain wiseheads had blamed him for not playing the stern parent and forbidding any communication between them, if he was against the match—if he was, which indeed he had come to be not so sure about. In any case, he was no friend to curbing reins—let young creatures have their heads a bit, and then they would soon find their senses, as no doubt these two had done, and found out—before it was too late—Heaven be thanked, that they were not made to run in a couple. Had he been obdurate, then of course they would have made martyrs of themselves, and his life would have been rendered a burden to him by red eyes and ceaseless sighings, and the knowledge of being privately regarded as a monster—but now nothing of this sort could be laid to his charge. That was one comfort. But it was not all sufficing. The fact of the change in Sabina remained, and sorely it fretted him. Could it be the weather perhaps? Ay, ay. The weather it must be, of course. Such grey leaden sky, such snarling biting east winds, making handsome women look plain, and ordinary ones atrociously ugly, were not within living memory; and Sabina had so shivered that day when they had been out together and met Conrad Dasipodius. Detestable, nasty, cold-catching weather! Why, his own twinges might have taught him how it all was. As if any lady was ever cheerful yet with a wretched east wind howling! Would it amuse the poor little thing now if he were to invite her Cousin Radegund to come and stay a few days with her? That was a happy thought, and he opened it up to Sabina; but she said, and just the least bit snappishly too, that it wouldn’t amuse her at all; and that she didn’t want to be amused, and she would amuse herself very well indeed—and then she turned deadly pale, and some penitent tears welled up into her eyes as she stole a glance at the Burgomaster’s perplexed and troubled face, and she went on to tell him that he was a dear, and better than a million Radegunds. And still the old man was not satisfied; for those paling looks reminded him of that strange swooning fit of hers, and he threatened to call in Dr. Bruno Wolkenberg, and then Sabina grew downright fierce, and vowed that Dr. Wolkenberg might come and he might go, but that she would not see him, if there was the faintest idea of his setting foot professionally on her account inside the door.

Niklaus was, however, equal to the occasion, and after cunningly allowing a day or two to pass over, he invited the doctor to supper. To this Sabina dared offer no opposition, for Bruno being almost as great a favourite with the Burgomaster as the Professor Dasipodius himself, was frequently their guest, and on this occasion deferred other engagements to accept the invitation, and watched Sabina more closely than she ever guessed. And when he went away, he tried to comfort the distressed old man, saying that indeed Mistress Sabina did look a little pale, but it was best, in his opinion, not to worry her; and that with the warm spring days perhaps—no doubt indeed, the Lily would revive and be all herself again. Such weather as they were having would try a horse’s constitution. And then Niklaus said something not at all polite about the weather, and hoped Bruno was right, which was precisely what the doctor himself hoped, but he felt the hope to be rather a forlorn one, and his heart bled for the girl.

In the few moments tête-à-tête he was able to snatch with Sabina, he had striven to say something comforting to her, but he felt awkward and diffident, and blundered wretchedly over his words. Sabina had, however, smiled in her own gentle way, and murmured with quivering lips something about Bruno’s goodness, and that she should never forget all that he had done, and all he had tried to do for her; and then Bruno had stammered and bungled worse than ever, and said “that of all the perverse worlds he had ever known, this one seemed the worst, and in short there never was such an aggravating world as it was, and the more you tried to make things go straight and comfortable, the more they went crooked, and—and——”; and then he took to rumpling up his hair, and staring into the fire in his old dazed perplexed sort of way, and a few minutes after Niklaus came in, and no more could be said, which was after all quite as well perhaps, seeing it was impossible to say the right thing; and he might have foundered upon some remark so entirely wrong, that he would never have ceased repenting he had given it tongue.

Never had Bruno found himself on the horns of such a dilemma as this. Here on the one side the small breach between himself and his best friend had widened, because that friend believed he had betrayed his confidence—and this too, perhaps, for the second time—whereas Bruno was altogether guiltless.

From the bottom of his heart the surgeon loved truth; and when Sabina had gone to him, and demanded of him confirmation of that which she had not chosen to accept from Radegund alone, Bruno felt there was no alternative for him but to admit the truth. There had been no need to tell it. Sabina had simply required of him a yes or no. When she had come to him that night, and he had carried the half-fainting girl into his laboratory, and was tending her back to consciousness, he, guessing with a sort of shrinking dread at what the nature of her errand to him was, had sternly told himself that no power on earth, and certainly not this weak hysterical girl, should wring from him any admissions. The paroxysm, however, of distress and surprise at her unexpected encounter with Dasipodius past, Bruno found it was no weak hysterical girl he had to gain an easy victory over, but a grave calm woman; very pale and sad looking truly, but full of resolute earnestness; and simply, with no taint of heroics, she told the surgeon how all Conrad’s happiness and future welfare hung on the question she had come to ask him being honestly answered, and then she said: “Is Conrad Dasipodius blind? Yes or no?”

At first Bruno had striven to evade it, by saying that such a question should be put only to Dasipodius himself; but Sabina met this objection in her own way. “Do you think then, Dr. Wolkenberg,” she said, “that out of a piece of mean curiosity I should risk what I have risked in coming here to-night? Must I tell you that it is for his sake, that I will not ask him this question?”

Bruno was silent. Only the outworks of his barricade were as yet damaged.

“Answer me, Dr. Bruno,” she went on. “Have not I a right to know the truth?”

Still Bruno made no answer.

“Conrad Dasipodius is your friend, is he not?”

“Yes,” bluntly replied Bruno.

“You love him?”

“Ay,” murmured the surgeon; “from my soul I do.”

“So do I,” said Sabina, the red blood mantling over her white face. “Now will you believe me? Now will you tell me?”

And Bruno did believe, and no longer withheld from her the deplorable truth. He was not a little puzzled to think how she had come by her suspicion, and made several attempts in his turn to win from her some enlightenment on that score; but Sabina shrank from betraying Radegund to the man who made his idol of her, and she parried the questioning womanfully.

“I thought so, Dr. Bruno,” she said, “because I thought so.” And the surgeon admiringly credited her perceptive powers.

To his educated, professional insight, it had seemed marvellous that people had not long ago detected the truth. The mathematician’s eyes were clear and well opened it is true, but they wore the indescribable dull luminosity which marks the terrible disease. He could only attribute the undeniable fact that it had not been generally discovered to the abnormal beauty and magnificent conformation of the brow and temples, and the length of the shading lashes, which lent seeming expression and vitality to what was in actual truth dead. But what less interested folks had failed to mark, Sabina’s loving solicitude had taught her, and it raised her incredibly in the doctor’s estimation. Hitherto he had held her to be a charming, simple-minded little maiden, who would doubtless prove herself a very agreeable distraction and plaything for his friend when he should cast aside his professional cares; and he did not think, take things for all in all, that Dasipodius had chosen unwisely, but now as he looked at her and listened to the quiet earnest voice, it seemed to him that whoever placed his fate in this girl’s keeping, would never have to repent of what he had done. “She is to be his wife,” argued Bruno to himself; and already in her heart she is wife to him now; and to love and be loved again in such fashion as that, seemed to him a blessed thing indeed, and would make one proof against every other adversity under the sun.

To such devotion as he believed to be Sabina’s, he found that he dared not so much as whisper of conditions of secrecy; it would have been insult to tell her to keep her discovery to herself, and he only said to her as she drew her hood about her face again, and fastened her cloak: “You know how much for Conrad’s good or evil future rests upon this matter, Mistress Sabina. But you are to be trusted.”

And giving him her hand in farewell, she said, “I am to be trusted, Bruno Wolkenberg”.

Then declining all escort, she had found her way home alone. Yet here not a week gone, and Sabina had betrayed her trust! She must have done so. What a truism that a secret between three is no secret. Wolkenberg felt himself a traitorous fool now. What should he say to her for this she had done? He pondered on that question till his brain grew sick; and then when he came to the Munster-gasse, and saw the girl’s sad patient face, he said nothing at all to her; but he said to himself when he was outside in the street again, as he had said to Dasipodius, “I could swear she loves him—still. And there is some devilry at the bottom of this.”

CHAPTER XXIV.

“WHAT’S SHE WORRIED ABOUT?”

“And now,” was Wolkenberg’s one tormenting thought, as he plodded on towards Radegund’s house, “what is to be the outcome of it all?”

He had some half-defined purpose in going to her. He thought the brother and sister might have heard some tidings of that lost letter; and besides, Bruno was thoroughly unhappy, and he shivered at the prospect of going to sit down all alone with his thoughts in his gloomy laboratory. He would seek the dreary consolation he sometimes permitted himself, of feasting his eyes upon the woman he loved, and of breathing the same air with her.

On aught beyond this, Bruno could never reckon, for the moody Radegund’s receptions were as variable for him as they were for others, perhaps more so; but the surgeon was no fair-weather swain. Not the brave steed of that brave old legend Bruno loved perhaps above all other romance lore, waited more patiently at the wayside chapel door for the praying knight his master, than Bruno Wolkenberg waited upon and bore with Radegund’s every caprice. And he would sooner have thought of turning pagan, than of swerving by one hairsbreadth from his allegiance, because she chanced to frown when he would have given a decade of his natural life to see her smile.

To-night, however, Radegund’s welcome was unwontedly gracious. Never, her lover thought, had he seen her look so brilliantly handsome. It may be that very force of contrast heightened this effect, and some dim remembrance of that pale saddened face in the Munster-gasse haunted him still; but he was not conscious of any secondary impression whatsoever, as he sat in the dazzling glory of her presence, and gazed at the beautiful face lit up with a soft crimson glow, and the glamorous light in the dark eyes. She had smiled on Bruno as he entered, and stretching her white hand towards him, motioned him to a seat beside her; and, chatting over anything and everything with her and Otto, who lay his length, enjoying his accustomed evening dolce far niente in the firelight, the surgeon lost sight of other people’s cares in the delirious joy of being with her, and listening to the rich, somewhat deep tones of her beautiful voice, whose accents, for all she spoke in her homely German tongue, fell with some strange passionate echo of that fair Tuscan city where she had dwelt so long, and whose very stones she loved.

To-night she was solicitous even about Bruno.

“You look so tired, Dr. Bruno,” she said, filling a goblet with strong Rhenish, and herself handing it to him.

“I—have had a trying day,” answered Wolkenberg, his heart leaping at the sound of her softened, almost caressing, tones.

“Is there much sickness about then?” she asked.

“Now what a question,” grunted Otto, “in weather like this. Such cursed east winds. Eh, Wolkenberg?”

“There!” smiled Bruno. “That is what everybody is saying. Only half-an-hour ago, Burgomaster von Steinbach——”

“You have been to the Munster-gasse?” interrupted Radegund.

“Yes, I supped there.”

“Ah!” said Radegund, a faint gasp escaping her. “And they—are all well?”

“Middling.”

“There—yes—well, middling of course you know,” hurriedly interjected Otto. “This weather——”

“And little Sabina?” enquired Radegund. “As usual, I suppose. Blithe as a bird.”

“No,” said Bruno, almost curtly. “And I suppose even birds are not always blithe. She seemed very middling; and Burgomaster von Steinbach wished me to see what I could do for her, but she won’t have any of my doctoring, and insists she is very well, and very happy and——”

“And all that sort of thing,” interrupted Otto, getting to his feet with a yawn. “Only these confounded east winds. You prescribed a linctus, I suppose, Dr. Bruno?”

“No, I didn’t,” snapped Bruno. “I did nothing of the kind. A linctus won’t cure worry, will it?”

“But what——” began Otto.

“What’s she worried about?” said Radegund. “Now that’s a man all over! As if that great house and servants were not enough to plague a little creature just home from school, out of her senses! I do think my uncle ought to be told it is too much for her.”

“I don’t think it is,” said Bruno. “She seems a capital little housewife, and makes no bother about it.”

“No,” said Otto. “That’s why I do like—what’s the joke, Radegund? If I choose to say I—I like Sabina,” he went on, flushing furiously, “I—I’ve got a right to say it, haven’t I. Have a game, Wolkenberg?” and drawing a pack of cards from his pocket, Otto flung them noisily down on the table.

The surgeon consented, but he played like a man whose thoughts were gone a wool-gathering; and his eyes wandered hopelessly from the spades and diamonds to the Queen of his heart, where she, in the half shadows, sat silent and relapsed into thought. Notwithstanding he won the game. “Yet I played so badly,” he said.

“You got all the trumps, you know,” grumbled Otto. “It’s just my luck. There’s a sort of favour and prejudice in cards, just as there is in everything else that ever I have to do with,” and he rose sulkily from his seat.

“Don’t be cross, Otto dear,” smiled Radegund, rousing up. “Unlucky at cards, a handsome wife, you know. Come, cheer up.”

But he seemed by no means disposed to fall in with her raillery, and took up his night lamp.

“By the way,” said Bruno, as if the thought had suddenly struck him, “has anything been heard of that letter, do you know?”

“What letter?” said Radegund carelessly. “Ah, Conrad Dasipodius’ letter that was dropped in the studio a day or two ago. Some one said it was last seen in your hands, Otto, and I thought——”

“Some one was a fool,” said Otto, dragging a blazing bit of stick from the fire to light his lamp with.

“But——”

“What the devil should I know about the thing?” he interrupted savagely, and with cheeks aflame, from the blaze no doubt. “How could I help it all? I suppose they’ll be saying next that I—I——”

“You’ll set your sleeve on fire if you don’t mind, Otto,” said Radegund, looking sternly at him. “Hold the lamp steady.”

“But I heard,” persistently continued Bruno, turning to address Otto, and finding only empty space. “I heard——” he reiterated to Radegund in default of Otto’s presence.

“You should not have alluded to that before him,” she said calmly. “You must have known it wouldn’t be a pleasant subject.”

“Yes,” answered he. “I suppose I do know that; but it’s unpleasant to—others too, and must be sifted.”

“Nothing of the kind,” answered Radegund. “The less said about it the better.”

“But that is not like you, Radegund; to speak so, when we know that by now the whole city is talking about it.”

“The thing is done, and can’t be undone,” she said.

“Who did it, Radegund?” asked Bruno gravely.

“Now it is you, Bruno Wolkenberg, who are talking nonsense! Did not that child, Sabina, do it?”

“But I can’t understand. I would have staked my life she was true to the core.”

“Of course you would. Men are all alike. Always to be hoodwinked and cheated by the first woman whose purpose it may be to make tools of them. But really,” she went on with a careless laugh, “what this girl has about her that she can turn people round her little finger like this, I cannot understand. A timid, moon-faced, yellow-haired little thing, with hardly two grains of sense in her composition.”

“But no. There you mistake, Radegund,” stoutly contested Bruno. “You do indeed.”

“Of course I do,” she laughed mockingly. “Why, Dr. Wolkenberg, is she dragging you at her triumphal car, as she is trying to do Conrad Dasipodius?”

“Trying!” echoed Bruno. “There is no need for that in his case,” groaned Bruno.

“Do you mean to tell me,” cried Radegund, turning fiercely on him, “that you actually believe Dasipodius loves this child?”

“Assuredly I do.”

A bitter laugh was the artist’s comment.

“Since you are so infatuated, you should have finished your evening in this paragon of a girl’s society,” she said scornfully.

“Oh Radegund, you are hard, unjust. You who are always so noble and generous. I came here to ask—to implore you to do something for this poor child. She is so lonely—things are going so cross with her——”

“Can I help that?”

“She has no mother—no woman friend——”

“She has her male friends in any case,” said Radegund with curling lip.

“And you,” persevered Bruno, “who are so much older.”

Ah, Bruno Wolkenberg, wretchedly bungling advocate, how came you to damage your pleading so? Radegund’s face grew white with anger.

“Yes, yes,” she cried. “I see it now. I see it! It is these fragile little buds, with their poor pale beauty, who are the mode now-a-days! And the world may be turned upside down for them, while——” and her voice dropped into soft wistful cadence, “while the rich flowers are left to wither unsought—neglected.”

Who ever loved legend and symbol as did Bruno? and Radegund, when it suited her, would indulge him in such conceits; and tenderly lifting the thread of her little metaphor, he said, “The pale Lily flower has no charms for me, Radegund. It is the glorious red Rose I would take to my breast, and wear till I die.”

And coming near, he bent over her, and pressed his lips on her dark hair, and there came no flash of anger into her eyes at his bold daring. On the contrary, they softened, and she took his hand in hers. “Bruno,” she said, “what a faithful, good old friend you are to me! I wonder,” she went on dreamily, “will it be so to the end?”

“Do you doubt it?” said Bruno. “I swear——”

“No,” she said, “there’s no need. I believe in you, Bruno Wolkenberg, as I never believed in man, or woman either,” and she stroked his hand with a gentle caressing thoughtfulness. “Poor Bruno!”

“Oh Radegund!” cried he, feeling himself less to be compassionated than ever he had been in his whole existence, “Radegund! my——”

“And you think,” she interrupted, still stroking his hand, “that after all, he, Conrad Dasipodius, does not so much care for Sabina?”

“I think,” said Bruno, starting with a sigh from his Euthanasia, “that he loves her as I love you, Radegund, my——”

“What nonsense you always do talk, Bruno Wolkenberg!” she cried, fiercely flinging away his hand. “There never is any common sense in you for five minutes together!”

“But——”

“I will have no buts. At this hour too! As if this gossip-mongering place did not play too free with my name already! Hark! Striking nine. Go, I say. You call yourself my true friend! Go then—for pity’s sake—go.”

And he went, and when he found himself in the laboratory again, he cast himself upon his hard little bed and dreamed sublime dreams which now and then lapsed into almost the ridiculous; for it seemed to him that all the chairs of those silent rooms above stairs, started clean out of their cere-cloths and danced for joy, because they were going to be sat in at last. And the tables shouted, “Ho, bring venison, and wine, and good things all, and heap us high with them! for the wedding guests are coming, coming. Don’t you hear the bells?” And all the hearthplaces shone with merry dancing flames, and then—then seated there, spinning in their light, sits a gracious woman, with a grave sweet smile making her face radiant in its beauty; and over all floats a low glad harmony as of children’s voices, and—— Dream on, Bruno Wolkenberg!

But where the real woman of Bruno’s dreaming sits, there is no fire. Only a heap of grey dull ashes, and the woman is crouching over them, staring with dry hollow eyes at a piece of crumpled paper, bearing the signature of a faint, tremulous little cross; and far on, while Bruno dreams, she sits in the same unchanging attitude through the dark night hours, brooding—brooding.

CHAPTER XXV.

NINE DAYS’ WONDER!

“Monstrous!”

“Go and tell such tales to your grandmother!”

“Preposterous! Rubbish! Lies! Papperlapapp!”

Such were a few of that variety of comment uttered by the Strassburgers when the news spread abroad, as soon it did like wildfire, that Professor Dasipodius, the maker of their new Horologe, was blind.

Everybody made it the subject of conversation. Tradesmen and apprentices canvassed it open-mouthed at their booths; fine ladies paying calls discussed it, and said in the same breath: “Ah—dear, the pity of it,” and they did not believe it one bit. Such heavenly eyes—oh! absurd! No! House-mothers shook their heads, and sighed “Poor dear young man!” and for the first time in their lives, were thankful to think he was no son of theirs. Others maintained that the tale was not to be credited for an instant, and had only been got up to suit some party purposes or other. Heaven knew there were enough of them flying about the city; but many conceded the possibility; for it was well known that the devil never stood at anything when he had the faintest notion of being able to entrap a soul; and no one could gainsay that the mathematician, with his deep knowledge of the curious sciences, must be singularly available. Truly, said the Catholics, Dasipodius was a child of Holy Church, and went regularly to mass, and to allow each his due, was more liberal in alms-giving and divers secret good work beside, than many who fasted on barley bread and water twice a week without fail, and were otherwise more strictly orthodox. Still, when was Dasipodius ever heard disputing to edification with the Anabaptists, or insisting on the spotless purity and integrity of the Vatican proceedings, as it behoved every one in these perilous times, who owned a clever brain and an eloquent tongue? It was whispered, moreover, that the Professor Dasipodius was heretically tainted. He had been known to quote Erasmus more than once, and openly from his professorial chair, to have expressed admiration for some of that reasonable person’s writings.

On the other hand, flames of eloquence had been employed to bring Dasipodius over to Calvin’s conception of a beneficent Providence, and to impress him with a sense of the power of that irresistible grace which doomed Servetus to the flames; but he was not to be charmed. Then Zwinglius had made a snatch at this brand from popery’s burning Gehenna; and the orthodox Lutherans had plied his order-loving nature with much fair argument, but each had failed to influence Dasipodius; and if they agreed on no other point, all shared in the opinion that it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for mathematicians to be made into children of grace; and were full of dudgeon against this man, who having lent their arguments silent courteous attention, asked them when they had done, why they made confusion worse confounded by their speculations, instead of enlisting themselves into the ranks of those who still walked in the old paths, but were striving as they went to clear from them the garbage and dust which indolence and neglect had allowed to accumulate there. Surely that was better than striking out into countless intricate and dreary by-ways, which ended, some of them, strangely far away from the Beautiful Gate. And so, with the exception of certain kindred spirits at the university, who did not possess, and were at little pains to lay claim to much voice in the existing ruling of matters social and political in the city, the Professor Dasipodius owned no party friends against his hour of difficulty. It was not possible, in days when the multitude thought of little else than of theological disputation, and had small opinion of a man who did not mix himself up with all their speculations as to whether one must pay down alarming sums in hard cash for one poor hope of eternal happiness, or whether he might not gratuitously commit every abominable crime it suited him in this world, and then be made much of in the next.

It is true that Dasipodius possessed the general good-will and respect of Strassburg, as a clever useful man against whom no gross moral accusation could be brought; but such negative virtues would stand for little in face of this startling charge which had risen up against him. The stakes were as yet smouldering from the fires which had burned men and women for witchcraft and magic; and the protestant religionist made no more scruple of doing away with human life, than his catholic brother had done, so that judged by the one or the other, or both, as was most likely would be the case, Dasipodius stood in no small peril.

Within the last year or two, the violence of the contending sects had brought about their own downfall from the higher places. Peace-loving folks, unable longer to endure the strife of tongues, had sought refuge in the old ruling; and while Anabaptists ran naked and howling about the woods to propitiate the High God, the Host stood once again upon the Cathedral altar; and once more the Bishop ruled from his palace. To possess the esteem and friendship of Bishop John of Manderscheid, as Dasipodius did, could not but be regarded as a high privilege. One and all were constrained to acknowledge that he was just and gentle-hearted; and of his mental qualifications, it sufficed to remember when and where he ruled, to set them at something of their true value; but the most bigoted of both sides had their grudges against this man who set his face against extreme measures, and refused to anathematise any party. To this large majority a via media was hateful; the moderationist of the new University was looked askance upon for want of zeal in matters spiritual, while it was known that the Bishop had the place’s interests deeply at heart; and of all who taught or learned within its walls, he cared for none so well as he did for Conrad Dasipodius.

This very regard, however, was likely more to damage than to shield Dasipodius in the impending crisis. The zealots and the municipality contained not a few loving to say that the learned prelate would take the foul fiend, horns and hoofs and all to his bosom, if only he came in scholar’s cap and gown; but it chanced that just at that identical time, Bishop John was fifty miles away from Strassburg, engaged in a pastoral visitation among the villages of his diocese; and there being in those days no other posts than special messengers, he was likely to remain till his return, in ignorance of what had occurred.

The really great question was, what would the Town Council say about it? Individually the Town Council was stricken dumb with astonishment; but thinking that collectively breath and eloquence might be regainable, they called a meeting, at which chief Burgomaster Niklaus von Steinbach was required officially to preside. For once he took his place reluctantly and in silence; allowing the stormy Babel to say all it desired, which was not a little. On one point nearly all were agreed—that if indeed, as there seemed now hardly any doubt, this man were blind, he deserved to be broken on the wheel, for having so long led them all by the nose. There was hardly one of that conclave who did not esteem himself worth a dozen mathematicians, and held it monstrous to have been hoodwinked. There was a feeling about it which set those worthy drapers and fishmongers and tanners in a fume of fuss and indignation, but Niklaus von Steinbach took no part in the discussion. He only sat silent at the head of the long council table, with his hand half-shading his face, which bore a strangely troubled and perplexed expression. But at last, in the very height of the turmoil, he brought his clenched fist down on the table with a heavy thud, and roaring as loud as Demosthenes, when he outvoiced the sea waves, said: “Gentlemen, what we want is fact, not hearsay. Let Master Dasipodius speak for himself.”

This resolution was put to the vote by a show of hands; and though there were some dissentients, the ayes carried the day; and the recorder having spread out a broad sheet of parchment, a citation was drawn upon it summoning “the Professor Conrad Dasipodius to appear four days hence at the Chancellery, to answer in person anent certain rumours——”

“Charges,” amended Master Tobias Hackernagel the syndic. “Charges, Burgomaster.”

“No,” said the Burgomaster; “no such thing.”

“Libels, perhaps?” suggested Counsellor Frischlein.

“No, Master Frischlein, I think not. It isn’t exactly a libel you see, to say a man’s blind—hey, Master Recorder?”

“Not without being attended by aggravating circumstances, Burgomaster,” replied the man of law, patiently holding his pen poised an inch or two above his parchment.

“Ah, proceed then, Master Recorder—Certain rumours which have reached the ears of the Town Council——”

“Will they be long, Burgomaster?” meekly asked Counsellor Klausewitz, who had a punctual wife, and heard dinner-time strike.

“Not if I can help it,” said Niklaus. “Go on, Master Recorder—to the effect that he has lost the use of his sight——”

“Otherwise blind,” suggested the lawyer.

“Hang it, yes—if you choose,” testily said Niklaus. “A spade’s a spade, and Dasipodius isn’t the man to say it isn’t.”

“And of a consequence,” loftily continued Syndic Hackernagel. “Write ‘of a consequence,’ Master Recorder.”

“Consequences make an after consideration,” said Niklaus, taking the quill from the Recorder’s hand and setting his signature to the document. “Be pleased to sign your names, gentlemen, and then we can go home. This place is as stifling as an oven.”

“But I tell you, Burgomaster——” objected Hackernagel.

“By your leave, Master Hackernagel, the clock has struck,” interrupted the impatient Job.

“And the moral welfare of the city is to be sacrificed to your carnal appetites!” muttered the Anabaptist, as he scowlingly watched the Burgomaster place away the citation duly signed and sealed with the old free city’s insignia, under lock and key, and then with a curt good-morrow, stride out after his colleagues. “Dumb dogs that ye are! How long shall the unrighteous prevail—and the saints be made a mock unto themselves?”

Until recently Tobias Hackernagel had followed the vocation of fishmonger in Strassburg; but his natural gift for driving exceedingly lucrative, not to say hard bargains, had enabled him to retire from trade when not very far advanced beyond middle life. Having made good provision for himself, the quondam fishmonger turned his attention to his country, and contrived so entirely to impress people generally with his own firm conviction that he was no ordinary man, that one fine day he found himself elevated to nearly the highest point of his ambition,—syndic, that is to say, of his native city. This desired consummation he had brought about mainly by a judicious use of his ready tongue. Whenever he found his chance, Tobias Hackernagel would talk. What he said signified comparatively little. His custom of using the long word when there was a long and a short one to choose from, had won him hosts of admirers; and they would say it was a beautiful thing indeed to hear Syndic Hackernagel talk. If his education had been a very third-rate one, his sharp mother-wit atoned to him for much; and the superficial knowledge he had picked up, he tried to economise in such a manner, that it went twice as far with the multitude as the solid acquirements of many a better man.

Physically, even by his most enthusiastic disciples, Syndic Hackernagel was not esteemed prepossessing. Insignificant in stature, and with little to speak of as far as eye and brow and chin were concerned, his nose was of massive aquiline proportions, and vastly proud of this important feature the syndic was. Not without reason, for it was most useful to him on state occasions, when his magnificent manner of applying his handkerchief to it called attention to himself, as the trumpet call of a herald rivets the senses of all within earshot. The little fishmonger was in his idiosyncrasies the very antipodes of Conrad Dasipodius, and Tobias Hackernagel did not love the mathematician.

That Dasipodius did not reciprocate the negative sentiment, was owing possibly to the fact that he had never dreamed of spending two thoughts on him. Tobias had so rarely been thrown in his way. He did not so much as remember, what the syndic never tired of recalling, a certain time some years since, when the chief’s of the antinomian sect of which Tobias was an ardent if circumspect member, had made a fierce effort to win Dasipodius to their ranks; and the mathematician had frankly told them it was a form of belief with which not merely he had no sympathy, but which appeared to him to threaten the bringing Christianity itself into utmost disrepute.

When the election for the Horologe had taken place, Tobias Hackernagel had voted for Otto von Steinbach. Otto, as he knew, had good expectations, and could boast a fine ancestry; while the syndic, who was not so much as quite sure of his maternal grandfather’s name, had four daughters—none of them passing fair;—although certainly in the third of the quartette, Gretchen, some womanly graces, possibly inherited of her long dead mother, did exist.

As far as the world knew, and had there been anything to tell, it would probably have been apprised in all decent haste, these ladies had hitherto received no matrimonial overtures. A father’s leanings therefore towards an eligible young bachelor like Otto von Steinbach, against the proud bigoted misogynist of a Dasipodius, is at all events conceivable. The syndic however, patriot, disinterested protector of justice, guardian of civic rights, Syndic Tobias the incorruptible, acknowledged no secondary motives, in upholding, whenever opportunity presented, the cause of the hare-brained Otto.

Nothing could have better pleased him, take it for all in all, than this charge which had now got abroad against the mathematician. It delighted him immeasurably to see how people of all parties, Catholic and Protestant, differ as they would wherever they could possibly do so, were unanimous in their denunciations of the suspicion of magical arts in which they now conceived Dasipodius to be an adept. When you came, as they said, to consider how mathematics and its kindred subjects were a pagan invention, things, there was no denying it, did look suspicious; and many came forward and publicly disburdened their bosoms of the suspicions they had long nursed, that Dasipodius was a secret member, and a very powerful one too, of that mysterious brotherhood of the Caballists. Why, can’t you see, that if making a clock, and such a clock—without eyes, seeing in the dark—Du Lieber Himmel! think of it!—was not magic, what was? What a mercy to think his infirmity had been laid bare at last, before destruction had come upon the city, for having harboured such iniquity! A Horologe was a nice useful clever thing undoubtedly, but a thing which at best had about it a strange weirdness and witchery. It was so marvellous when you came to think, that a mere combination, you know, of brass and wood should be able to move, ay, and to speak—in its way, at the bidding of a man, and of a blind man! Then one great shudder convulsed the city, and the question flew from mouth to mouth: “What would the Bishop say to this? My lord, who had always shown Dasipodius such favour!”

CHAPTER XXVI.

“MERE HEARSAY.”

The wound from which Dasipodius was suffering proved more troublesome than he had at first anticipated; and for the next day or two he found himself unable to return to his work. Isaac Habrecht had called more than once to enquire after him; but during the few minutes he had stayed, was not communicative, beyond the assurance that things were going on straight. Otherwise Dasipodius had had no communication with the outside world.

Poor Christian, sorely distressed by the pain and unrest from which his son was suffering, was anxious to summon Dr. Bruno Wolkenberg; but Conrad peremptorily forbade any such thing. “Bruno,” he said, “had something better to do, than to go about doctoring scratches.”

Christian, however, continued to gaze ruefully at the pale face, and the once busy hands, now folded in sheer nerveless apathy, with something like despair in their convulsive twitching.

“You may call it a scratch,” said Christian, “but I call it a wound, and an uncommonly bad one too; and I wonder Dr Bruno has not looked in of himself——”

“Does not that prove my case?” said Dasipodius with a faint smile of reassurance. “Bruno would have been here no doubt, had he thought it necessary. Come now, leave Bruno alone; I shall do well enough—and sit down here beside me and be content. Your cool hand here in mine does me more good than an army of surgeons. See,” he went on, “in the lattice there, lies that Book of the Gospels Father Chretei gave me. Bring it here, and read to me a bit. Yes?”

Christian brought the book and began to turn its thick, richly illuminated vellum pages with a pre-occupied air.

“Nay,” said Conrad. “Just read where it opens first, Väterle. It cannot but be good hearing. What have you before you now?”

“And they bring a blind man unto Him,” read Christian.

“Ay, that will do—well enough. Read on, Väterle.”

And Christian obeyed, until he came to the words: “I see men as trees walking”.

“Yes,” dreamily interrupted Conrad. “‘Men as trees walking.’ That is well described. Excellently well. All blurred and indistinct, I know——I understand.”

Christian gazed up a little wonderingly into his son’s face.

“But,” continued Conrad, “it would be horrible now, to live on and on, in a haze like that. Wouldn’t it, Väterle? It would drive a man mad.”

“Yes,” answered Christian; “I do think I’d rather be quite right down blind at once.”

“Ay; and that would I, a thousand times.”

“But we won’t talk about such dreadful things. Let’s go on and see what our Lord Christ did for the poor fellow,” and Christian read on to the wondrous story’s end.

“If the Lord Christ walked the earth now-a-days, would He still do such gracious deeds, think you?” said Conrad wistfully.

“Well,” replied Christian, “that is what nobody can tell, can they? But Holy Church teaches, you know, that miraculous power has been handed down. Oh, you shake your head; but it is quite certain that a pilgrimage to St. Ottilie’s holy well, near Schlettstadt, is said to work wonderful cures on blind eyes, and even weak ones——”

“Ay, ay,” said Conrad. “Cold water does do great things. It’s a pity people don’t make more use of it.”

“Yes, and then special devotion to Our Lady of Alt Nöttingen is even——”

“Nay,” interrupted Conrad with an actual laugh. “That hideous black doll work divine deeds? No, no, Bruno Wolkenberg against Our Lady of Alt Nöttingen any day.”

“What odd notions you have, Conrad!” said the old man with a half-scandalised air. “But thank heaven, all that concerns us little enough, does it?”

“Read on, father,” said Conrad wearily.

And for a short while longer Christian read on, until they were interrupted by the announcement that three gentlemen from the Chancellery desired an audience of the Professor Dasipodius.

“I expected this,” he said, rising from his half-reclining position. “Bid them come in.”

“But,” interposed Christian, “you are not fit——”

“Hush, father. It must be. Lend me your arm,” and he rose to receive his visitors.

If those delegates had enjoyed their little dream of brief authority by anticipation, the pleasure ended rather abruptly for all, not excepting Master Hackernagel himself, who had volunteered to be spokesman, so that as he said, he might mercifully break the intelligence. They shuffled and hummed, and exchanged perturbed glances in that calm stately presence, until Dasipodius, wondering at the silence, said, “Well, gentlemen?”

Then the syndic recovered himself, and clearing his throat, and sounding to the attack after his own approved fashion, unrolled the parchment he carried. “Whereas,” he began in his best official voice, never too musical, “whereas—I—I crave pardon,” he interrupted himself. “I have in the first place and preliminarily to observe——”

“Certainly,” said Dasipodius, “say all you want to say, Master Hackernagel, when you have discharged your duty; but you have something to read there first?”

“Whereas,” resumed Tobias, after having stolen a glance at the mathematician’s face, “whereas certain rumours—ahem! Mere hearsay you observe, Professor,” he said, lifting his lynx-like eyes to Dasipodius.

“Just so. Mere hearsay,” cheerfully echoed the supernumeraries.

“Go on, Master Hackernagel,” said the mathematician in tones which effectually did away with further parenthetical observation on the syndic’s part.

Although thanks to Niklaus von Steinbach the document had the virtue of brevity, it was with the utmost difficulty that Conrad succeeded in imposing silence on Christian till its reading was ended. The old man’s arm on which he leaned, quivered and vibrated with suppressed agitation, and barely had the final syllable passed Hackernagel’s lips, than Christian burst angrily into speech. “What fooling is this?” he demanded. “Speak to these idiots, Conrad, and send them packing!”

“Master Christian!” wrathfully screeched the insulted dignitary, turning on Christian; but the old man had neither eyes nor ears for him, he was staring with bewildered entreaty in his son’s face. “Speak to them. Do you hear?” he gasped.

“You had something to observe, Master Hackernagel,” calmly said Dasipodius, lifting his hand to command silence.

“I—Professor? Ha—yes—precisely—h’m, h’m—I was simply about to remark that—h’m—rumour—many-tongued rumour——”

“Just so—yes,” endorsed his coadjutors. “Many-tongued rumour—exactly——”

“Is false—proverbially false. Hem!” and again for an instant Hackernagel’s small sharp orbits were fixed on the grand sightless ones, but once more fell shiftily. It seemed to him that they returned his glance with such calm, deep-seeing self-possession. “Proverbially false.”

“Proverbially false,” assented his satellites like a Greek chorus; but Dasipodius was silent.

“Conrad!” entreated Christian, “why will you not speak—why?——”

“Hush, father—hush! hush!” he said soothingly. “Gentlemen,” he continued, addressing his visitors, “I will attend at the appointed time. Have you anything further to communicate?”

“Hem! hem!” coughed Tobias. “We—I—should have been glad to hear—for certain——”

“That I am blind—assuredly. I should have known you would. This then for your contentment. Gentlemen,” and Dasipodius fixed his eyes on all three, till they writhed with discomposure; and even Tobias’ pink lids fell. “I am blind—stone-blind.”

“Oh! ha! h’m! Really I assure you, Herr Professor,” began one of the party, but Dasipodius paid him no heed. His whole being seemed absorbed in the endeavours he was making to comfort Christian.

“So—so, Väterle! Be brave now—brave; strong for my sake,” he said, gathering the trembling old man into his arms.

A vague sympathetic murmur thrilled the syndic’s companions, and they began to stammer out some well-meaning word or two.

“Nay, gentlemen,” interrupted Dasipodius, making a gesture of dismissal. “You have kind hearts. They will tell you we would be alone just now,” and with not so much as a word of farewell, the delegates departed, never exchanging a syllable until they had turned the corner of the street, where the syndic began roundly reproaching them for not having backed him up in a manner befitting the dignity of the occasion.

“If I had not been equal to my duty,” he said, “where would you all three have been, I should like to know?”

“Well,” said one, “but he’s got such a way with him always, has Dasipodius. Oh, hang it! No; I’d sooner stand to witness the headsman finish off half-a-dozen, than go through such a scene as that again. Poor old Christian! Did you mark the tears in his eyes, Master Tobias?” asked the speaker, dashing one or two suspicious drops away from his own.

“I marked nothing,” said Hackernagel sulkily, “but that all three of you let it be seen plainly enough, that you sympathised with the accused; and I should like to know what that is, if it isn’t being accessary—winking at crime. Holding a candle to—— Never mind, it is of no consequence. I feel at least I have performed my duty,” and the Incorruptible strode away, to spend the next three days in drawing up with infinitesimal care and patience, notes of all he intended to say, when Dasipodius should appear to give an account of himself.

And still in the chamber they had left, Christian lay upon his son’s breast, with his arms clasped convulsively round the blind man’s neck. “Tell them to go, Conrad. They are liars I say,” he wailed again and again. “Can’t they see for themselves that it’s all a lie? Blind! ha! ha! ha!” and Christian burst into a wild laugh. “Why! with such eyes as these? Your mother’s eyes—shining down on me—now; do I not see them? Clear and beautiful, like the moon through a night-cloud! Blind forsooth!—blind!” and again he broke into hysterical laughter.

“Hush, father,” said Dasipodius—“be a man. Bear it for me now, as I have borne it alone for long long weeks past. Those men did but speak the truth. I am blind.”

Christian groaned heavily.

“You see my eyes. They are wide open, you say: but your eyes I cannot see. No: nor the tears that I know they are wet with,” went on Dasipodius brokenly: “nor all the grief that is in them; nor the pardon for having hidden my affliction from you. That is there too, father? The forgiveness?”

“Oh my son! my son!” sobbed Christian, tightening his clasp round Conrad’s neck.

“So—that is well. I did it for the best. I was mad enough to think I could have kept it to myself. Well, I have been outwitted,” he continued with a sudden access of bitterness; “and there is no more to be said. Understand, father: no more to be said.”

“But——” began the bewildered Christian.

“Not now, Väterle; for my sake. We will talk of other things.”

“But tell me only this,” entreated Christian, “does Sabina—your little Sabina——”

“Hush! Not my Sabina—now. Sabina von Steinbach knows all; yes. God forgive her!” said Dasipodius in a hollow changed voice. “Speak no more about her, father. Come! come!” he added, making an effort at gaiety, “cheer thee—cheer thee now! Why surely, when the blind man himself breaks down, ’twill be time enough to spend tears on him! Look up—smile. Nay, but you are not smiling! Oh trust me, I can tell whether you are sad or merry, every whit as well as if I were made of eyes. So then—cheerily—cheerily—for my sake.”

And so it was the blind man strove to comfort his father, and gradually succeeded in bringing him to dwell calmly on their trouble. Notwithstanding, the mathematician’s own heart was heavy with forebodings. “Yet, it is wicked to meet troubles half way! It was she who said that once. Oh Sabina! Sabina! is it any wonder that I took you for true gold!”

CHAPTER XXVII.

A MOONLIGHT MEETING.

Next morning found Dasipodius back in his accustomed place. Every hand was hard at work over its appointed task, and there was no evidence in that silent well-ordered hive, of the recent little revolution.

When the mathematician, having made his way to his own work-bench, had passed his unerring hand over it, he found all as he had left it—not a thing disturbed; every tool, every scrap of metal, every morsel of wire lying intact. Even the little steel coil which had come to such sudden grief, had been carefully rewound into proper compass, and placed ready to hand by Isaac Habrecht. “It is correctly adjusted, I think?” he said, as Dasipodius took it up.

“Never fear for that,” answered his chief. “There is no surer hand for these things in all Elsass than yours.”

“Saving your own.”

“You and I will not bandy compliments. Isaac,” laughed Dasipodius.

“I meant no compliment,” grunted Isaac. “Nor split hairs then,” returned the mathematician. “I was but thinking what a useful right hand you have been to me all these months, Isaac Habrecht.”

His subordinate’s stolid face kindled. Nothing ever brightened it like an approving word from the master.

“Right hands,” went on Dasipodius, “sometimes become heads.”

There was a pause; while Habrecht’s face grew impenetrable again.

“I have no talent for riddles,” he said bluntly. “I mean,” said the mathematician, “that if the good people of Strassburg should take any fancy into their heads that this blindness of mine incapacitates me for the Horologe work—”

“Tut!—nonsense!” interrupted Isaac with an impatient wag of his bushy head. “D’ye think they’re likely to quarrel with their own noses like that?”

“I don’t think it is probable,” shrugged Dasipodius, “but it’s possible. The town council—”

“Would be greater asses even than I have ever taken them for. Can’t they see for themselves what you have already done? Can’t they judge?”

“Who can tell,” said Dasipodius, with a smile of some bitterness. “But in any case they will have you to fall back upon, Habrecht; and that would be an indescribable consolation to me.”

“Then I am sorry——” blurted Isaac; then he stopped abruptly, leaving unfinished, perhaps for the only time in his life, what he had begun to say, and silently concentrated his attention on his work.

“There is something amiss with this,” he went on presently, examining with a magnifier the piece of infinitesimal chain-work he was occupied upon. “Yet it measures the right length.”

“No such thing,” said the blind man, taking it from him and rapidly passing it through his fingers; “it has a link too many,” and he took up his tool and pinched off the superfluous scrap. “Try now,” he went on, returning it to Habrecht, and bending his neck with that attentive lateral movement peculiar to the blind, while Isaac adjusted the chain round a small cylinder. “Yes,” he nodded, “it’s right enough now”; and then the two horologists subsided into silence, and for the rest of that day all went on as usual.

Whatever the other clockmakers there might have to say, was not spoken out in their chiefs presence: natural generosity constrained them to silence. They were of course cognizant of the citation which had been served on Dasipodius, and were agreed to await the verdict of those assembled to judge the question; and so the hours passed until the sickly January sunbeams faded, and the short afternoon grew sombre and grey, and the students putting up their tools, wrapped themselves in their cloaks, and bade the master good-night.

“And since, as you all know, friends,” said Dasipodius, returning the valediction, “I have a summons to attend at the Chancellery to-morrow, it must be a—a holiday.”

“A waste day, the master means,” growled Isaac.

And silent as if they were at a funeral, the young men went out.

“But the next day, master?” wistfully asked a fresh young voice at his elbow.

“That will be seen to-morrow, my Kaspar,” said Dasipodius, laying his hand kindly on the lad’s head. “By the way, tell me, have you been able to learn anything about that letter?”

It was interesting to observe with what precipitation Otto von Steinbach, who was still hanging about the studio, caught up his cap and cloak, and effected his exit at that precise moment.

“I can learn nothing. I begin to think it must have fallen on the hearth and got burnt,” said Kaspar.

“Perhaps,” said Dasipodius. “Never mind,” he added wearily. “It is of little consequence. Good-night.” Then the brothers went away, leaving Dasipodius alone.

The moon rose, and cast a chill clear chequered light through the broad lattice down on the oaken floor which Dasipodius long unceasingly paced. In wild tumult thoughts were crowding the calm judging, clear brain of this man, who could tell to a millionth part when anything was amiss with his wheels and cogs, and springs and chains—whose geometrical and algebraical knowledge made him a proverb in Strassburg; and whose precision in the minutest particular made him a very terror to his pupils. This gifted man it is who is now struggling to thread the maze of trouble closing him so suddenly in. Here all parallel, and logic, and syllogism fail him. He knows indeed, that of one bitter heart-trial, others have been born; but which of these is parent to the others, he can in no wise tell.

Now it seems his loss of sight, now his passionate love for Sabina. Certainly it is clear that had it not been for her, he would have been able to have kept his secret, until it had come to be no longer worth the keeping. It was natural for people to say, as they were saying, that they had known he was blind all along. “Why, there—you had but to use your own eyes to see that!” and so on, and so on. People, prompted no doubt by revenge for having been so long hoodwinked, always do love to talk in that way, when once a cat is irretrievably out of its bag; and it does not lessen his sense of Sabina’s blame, that he has come to be a nine days’ wonder in the place.

“And yet,” he groaned, out of his soul’s heaviness, “I could have borne it all, if you had not been false to me, child!”

Feeling his way to the casement, and throwing it wide open, he loosened the collar of his doublet, and leaned his throbbing brow against the cold stone mullion, letting the keen frosty air breathe upon his face. This window high up and deep-sunken in the massive wall, commanded a good side view of the Cathedral Platz, whose heavily-gabled house roofs all muffled in their hoods of thick white snow, seemed to be clustering like cowled Dominicans about their mighty superior, with its one fair tower reaching far above towards the myriad stars glistening in the steel-blue sky.

Conrad Dasipodius was a man for whom the simplest objects of daily life had borne a significance. It had been his nature to see “sermons in stones, and good in everything”; and could he have looked on this scene before him, with all its wedded glory of nature and of art, he must have found in it some anodyne for the gnawing pain of hope disappointed. But he could have no part now in such joys, and to him the world was a dull leaden-hued wilderness. Winter and summer, day and night, in all the years to come, the same. A dismal chaos, a dark and thorny way indeed, where love and friendship had left him in his utmost need, to blunder on alone. Love! friendship. Well, well! It was a sharp necessary lesson; one that came no doubt sooner or later to be learned by every son of Adam. Love! friendship—why, in this world there was none of it—none—none!

So in the moonlight stood Dasipodius, seeming to see with fixed steadfast gaze, the ghosts of his dead joys. A strange visionary light gleamed in his eyes, and you would rather have guessed that they penetrated strangely far into life’s mysteries, than that all earthly objects at least were utterly hidden from them.

Almost incredible it seems, that indeed he can see nothing of that tall majestic figure standing in the glow of crimson drapery curtaining the window on the first floor of old Erwin’s house opposite. Instantly after, however, all is dark, and the figure, enveloped in a long mantle, stands in the ancient doorway; then softly closing it, turns to ascertain, seemingly, if any stragglers chance to be about; but the coast is quite clear, and gliding stealthily under the shadow of the cathedral’s broad western end, and reaching the opposite side of the Platz, it hurries on up the narrow street, halting at last beneath the open turret lattice of the Dial. The illusory moonlight throws this figure into strong relief, lending it a height it does not really possess; but its peculiar undulating grace of movement and of general outline, would tell it is a woman, even though the long robe sweeping the frosty ground entirely concealed the night wanderer’s form.

Laying her hand, glittering with costly jewels, upon the latch of the turret door, she lifts her eyes to the window above, and in a voice low and singularly sweet, calls the mathematician by his name.

“Ay!” he said, starting from his prolonged reverie. “Who is there? That is your voice, Mistress von Steinbach?”

“Yes,” replied the artist. “I have a word to say to you—about the Horologe.”

“I will come down,” he said, beginning to close the lattice.

“It will be better that I should come up,” she said, pushing the door further ajar, and setting one foot inside the threshold.

“No. By your leave I think not,” answered he, and before she could say more, he was descending the stair. “We can pace the Platz together,” he said, as he reached the foot; “there is little fear of our being disturbed. Our good neighbours seem to love their firesides better than to be out in this biting cold.”

“Yes, because they are all such dull fools,” she answered contemptuously.

“That is a sweeping assertion,” smiled he.

“You will find it is a true one—to-morrow,” she retorted.

“You had something to say about the Horologe?” he said, waiving away her last remark.

“Why, yes,” she replied. “You will of course carry on the work in spite of these men?”

“That is jumping at conclusions, as I could not have conceived—pardon me, Mistress von Steinbach—conceived of you, who have something beyond an ordinary woman’s mind.”

“But less than an ordinary woman’s heart, as you always seem to think,” she interrupted in bitterly impetuous tones.

“Indeed no,” he said. “I know the contrary too well to say any such thing. I wonder who could count the sick and poor of our great city, who bless the charity of Radegund von Steinbach.”

“Psha! what is that?” answered she. “I should be a skinflint indeed not to share a few of my gold pieces so. Does a woman’s love end where her charity does, think you?”

“Nay,” replied he, thus challenged. “You must not ask me. I cannot guess what woman’s love may be like. Once I thought—— But let that be, I was mistaken.”

“And did you indeed believe that was love?” she asked. “The foolish dallying of that pretty child? To think,” and she laughed mockingly, “how easily you clever men are deceived! And now—positively you are annoyed, as miserable almost as a child whose fragile toy is broken!”

“You know, then, that Sabina has been false?”

“I heard that—the bond between you had snapped,” she said. “I did not dream that you could regret it as you seem to do.”

And to give her her fair meed of justice, she spoke no more than the truth, as she saw it. “I say I did not dream you could regret her,” she reiterated, for he made no reply.

“Regrets are useless,” he said; “but it is a cruel thing for a woman to play a man false. Take warning from it, Mistress Radegund.”

“Nay, I would stake my soul for him I loved,” she murmured.

“That would be good hearing for——” Dasipodius paused.

“For whom?” she demanded hurriedly. “Say then.”

“For Bruno Wolkenberg,” said Dasipodius with a faint smile.

An angry spasm contracted her face. “Bruno Wolkenberg!” she echoed scornfully. “When will Strassburg learn to unlink our names?”

“Never, I trust,” he answered, “for Bruno loves you, Mistress Radegund, as I——”

“As you?——”

“As men seldom love.”

“Dr. Bruno Wolkenberg and I are good friends. How many a time have I not said so? But nearer—and dearer? No, that we can never be. He does not expect—he does not wish it,” she added, with an effort at unconcern.

“Ay, but he does, and you know it,” said Dasipodius.

“As soon might these snow crystals beneath our feet strive to rival the glory of yonder stars, as Bruno Wolkenberg seek to link his lot with mine,” she answered haughtily.

“Can it be true then, as some declare, that your heart does not know what affection means?” demanded Dasipodius, driven on his friend’s behalf, out of his usual reticence. “Nay, but you are not the woman I took you for,” and he turned on his heel.

“No indeed, there you speak truly, Conrad Dasipodius. You do not know—you cannot guess at the thoughts that are in my heart. Love Bruno Wolkenberg! Who dares say it? Poor Bruno, with his pretty golden curls, and his face, that I have heard languishing girls call ‘divine’! Oh, they are very welcome. To my soul, his beauty speaks not, conjures no bright dreams, kindles in it no fire. When has my heart ever throbbed one pulse the quicker because he came near——”

“Radegund!” interposed the mathematician.

“When has it ever seemed to me,” she hurried on passionately, “that to look once more—just once more upon him, I would have freely bartered all eternity’s promised joys? Has it been his face I have striven to picture to myself through the long dark night hours, until sleeping at last, I have dreamed that he has clasped me in his arms and said: ‘I love thee, Radegund’? No, no, and yet for one—for one I have done this, Conrad Dasipodius—I take no shame to myself that I have done it. But it was all a dream—a dream!” she murmured, drawing closer to the blind man’s side, until he felt her warm breath mingling with his.

“My heart bleeds for Bruno Wolkenberg,” he said, receding a step.

“Was it so,” she went on, affecting not to hear, “that Sabina loved you, Master Dasipodius?”

“Sabina is not free of speech,” he coldly answered.

“Ay—no,” she returned scornfully. “Always discretion itself is my little cousin. Charmingly discreet; but is it these models of maidenhood, think you, who will stand by a man when things go wrong with him, or your bold, unscrupulous women—such for instance as I——”

“Nay, but I would think you neither bold nor unscrupulous,” he contended.

“She has done well for herself. Very well,” continued Radegund. “She foresaw, this clever little girl, that the world might be about to deal hardly with you, Conrad Dasipodius.”

“To think,” said the mathematician sadly, “that Bruno should have so utterly betrayed me. Bruno!”

“Is it then so strange,” she asked, “that this fair lily—this syren, should have dragged Bruno Wolkenberg into her toils, when they have lured wiser men than he before now?”

CHAPTER XXVIII.

“AFFINITIES.”

This was a random shaft of Radegund’s, but it bore a curious significance in the mathematician’s ear. He believed, too, that it accounted for her wild words. Clearly she had grown jealous, and anything, as he told himself, uttered in the frenzies of jealousy, should have no more import attached to it than other mad utterances find. Could it be possible that this foolish woman had brought herself to fancy that Bruno Wolkenberg could swerve from his allegiance to herself? Preposterous! Such indeed was the mathematician’s first inward comment. But then—why then so preposterous? No such unreasonable supposition after all, that Bruno Wolkenberg had tired at last of this haughty, irritable woman, who must make life a burden for any man so unfortunate as to be in love with her. Surely it was no such great marvel that the surgeon should turn from her, to seek rest and consolation from the gentle Lily; and if Sabina had fled to Bruno for shelter from the storm of vexation, and the revulsion of feeling her recent discovery had roused within her, it was not after all so great a wonder. Rather his wonder was now at himself, that he should have accredited these two with being made of holier, finer stuff than ordinary men and women were; but that was his fault, not theirs. If they had been false to him, when he felt that had he been in the place of either, he should have been true, what then? These two disappointed hearts had sought each other at the rebound, and it was well, very well, for Bruno and for Sabina. The girl’s good angel had wrestled with him for her, and conquered. And for himself was left—what? That peaceful monk’s cell, the once much yearned for refuge, where he might enshrine his life’s great hope, all faded now, and give himself to the work which of late had seemed to him but part and parcel of his love, but which had grown jealous from fancied neglect, and was now taking summary and cruel vengeance.

Lightning swift these reflections coursed through the mathematicians brain. He forgot the very presence of Radegund, until having waited vainly for his response, she said, “We know that this fair cousin of mine has but to lift her little finger, for men to fall down and worship.”

“Ay,” acquiesced he, “indeed she has a most strange power.”

“And yet,” went on Radegund, “what is she after all more than a pretty doll?”

“You mis-estimate your cousin. She might, I think, prove herself to be a true noble-hearted woman one of these days.”

“As she has proved herself to you,” mocked the artist.

“I was about to say,” he answered, “true for one she truly loved.”

“And if she could not be true to you, where is the god among men to win the approbation of this most dainty lady? Pearls before swine! God in heaven! To think what she has so lightly cast away! And yet it is well. The clouds are gathering so fast about you, Conrad Dasipodius. To-morrow even they may burst, and what shelter would this pretty Sabina have been to you at such a time?”

The mathematician suppressed a bitter sigh. She would have been more than shelter, she would have been consolation, but that was no theme for discussion; and he told Radegund as much, adding, “And now to business”.

“We are coming to that,” nodded she with a curious smile. “That which she could not—cannot be to you, I can.”

Then she paused, and watched his face, hitherto pale to ghastliness under the moon’s light, but now suddenly flushed and agitated with some emotion not even her second sight could divine.

“I do not understand you, Mistress von Steinbach,” he stammered.

“No, you never do,” she answered fretfully. “I meant to say that to-morrow when they take the Horologe work from you, I will have it given back to you. You smile?”

“Pardon me, I cannot help it. This is such a very strange notion of yours. They would hardly be so——”

“So mad,” interrupted she. “So you think.”

“Truly. So I believe,” he replied, still smiling.

“Then wait till you are undeceived. And to-morrow, when these addlepates declare you unfit for your task, you will remember what I have said to-night. You will perhaps also repent having spurned my offer. Why, at your bidding, I would have defied them all—every mother’s son of them! I would have snapped my fingers in their faces. Would she do that, think you?”

“But what need,” laughed Dasipodius, “do you imagine there will be——”

“What need! what need!” she cried, angrily stamping her foot. “Wait then, only wait. Oh! how twofold is your blindness!”

“No,” contested he prosaically. “That is precisely the whole question. Never have my mind’s eyes been so true to me, as since my bodily eyes have refused to do their office.”

“And you flatter yourself these earth-clods will understand that! Oh, believe me, they will draw no such fine distinction.”

“And they need trouble themselves to draw none,” he returned. “If to the last letter I fulfil the contract, in what way can it concern them how I fulfil it?”

“It is being done by magic, the people say.”

The mathematician laughed more merrily than he had for many a day. “Say they so?” he cried. “Then by my faith am I glad my case is not at their tender mercies.”

“The town council is ruled by the mob.”

“Nay then, nay, what is to become of me?” he asked still in hugely amused tones.

“Laugh if you will,” said Radegund with stern sullenness. “I sought to stand by you in your trial-hour, Conrad Dasipodius, and you disdain my aid, and mock at me.”

“Why will you make me seem so churlish?” he said, regaining seriousness. “How would it be possible for me to disdain such generosity? But it is to myself I must stand or fall, Mistress von Steinbach. If—if I really cannot help myself, how are you to help me?”

“Many a time a woman’s word has been known to turn the balance, where a man’s best eloquence has fallen dead.”

“How often indeed!” he said, gallantly lifting his cap, and turning as if to leave her.

“Farewell then,” she said, setting her face towards the old house, where her lamp still gleamed through her studio’s curtained window. “And yet,” she murmured passionately, “I would have died to do you a service.”

“Oh Radegund!” he cried, turning back, and holding out both hands towards her, “do I not know you would. And may Heaven one day reward you for your noble heart!”

A light so radiant, so ecstatic, that it was hard to recall the vanished gloom, broke over the artist’s face, as she stretched her white arms towards him, and with a low joyous cry, laid her hands in his.

“It is but right,” she murmured tremulously, “that we artists should stand by—love each other to the death.”

“If need be,” assented he. “But go home now, Mistress von Steinbach; this will be serving you an ill turn else. Why, do you know that since I have held these two hands of yours, they have changed from ice to fire?”

Then he released them, and feeling for her mantle, wrapped it close and warm about her shoulders, and turned to accompany her to the door of her house.

Clit, clat! across the silent Platz comes the unmistakable sound of Burgomaster von Steinbach’s stick. Tempted by the beauty of the night, and because, too, he was restless with certain vexing thoughts, Niklaus has been across to spend an hour with his old chum Christian; but surely it is an evil genius which has prompted him to make his way back by the Dom Platz, instead of by the narrow cross-lane he generally affects, since for the second time in the space of a few weeks it pictures to him his niece and Dasipodius in all-absorbing tête-à-tête.

The Burgomaster came to a halt as he caught sight of them, and watched their two tall figures cross the Platz, until they reached the door of Radegund’s house. She entered it alone, while Dasipodius returning, made for the way Niklaus had just traversed; and the Burgomaster, bringing his stick down with stern emphasis, passed on his own opposite road, and when he got home, he declined to eat a scrap of any of the tempting little delicacies Sabina had ready for him. Moodily seating himself by the hearth he began, as he invariably did when his world wagged contrary, to grind the ashes to powder under his heel.

“Well, after all,” he blurted out at last, “it’s a right good riddance!”

“What is, father?” enquired Sabina, looking up from her work.

“A fine thing to have seen thee tied for life to a blind man.”

Sabina did not speak; she tried to lay in order some bright silken threads, which just persisted in twisting themselves more distractingly about for her pains. “Upon my honour, thou’rt a clever child. Worlds cleverer than thy poor old father. How didst thou find it out then, hey?”

But it seemed to Sabina that if she ventured to speak her heart must burst, and she went on tangling up her threads in silence.

“Christian says,” continued the Burgomaster, “’twas all your fault. He blames you, Sabina. Why do you shiver so?”

“I think the night is bitter cold,” said the girl, coming to her father’s side; and cowering down over the flame she contrived to say: “Did you see Con— Master Dasipodius to-night, father?”

“Hem—h’m—ay,” coughed he uneasily. “Yes I saw him.”

“And he,” she burst forth. “Oh, father! in pity tell me what did he say?”

“Nay,” said Niklaus evasively. “I did not speak with him.”

She gazed up in some perplexity. “You’re not angry with him?” she said with wistful earnestness. “No, you must not be angered with—Master Dasipodius.”

“That’s as it may be,” growled Niklaus, annihilating another piece of charred wood.

“You should have spoken with him in a neighbourly way,” she went on demurely. “Promise me that you will next time, for my sake, father. Promise.”

“What a queer child you are to be sure!” said Niklaus, gazing with puzzled eyes into her upturned face. “Well yes, then, I promise. Who said I dreamed of doing otherwise? But I had no chance of any word with him to-night. He was high busy talking with your cousin Radegund, out in the moonlight. I saw them as I came home.”

Then the Burgomaster made an effort to get a glimpse of his daughter’s face, but her head lay on his knee, and her eyes were fixed on the fire. Some pictures it made must have sorely distressed her, for presently a tear trickled all down the Burgomaster’s red hose, glistening in the dancing glow like a pearl; and then there came a sympathetic moisture into his own eyes, and he perforce too stared sorrowfully into the blaze, and thought his thoughts; more confusing ones than hers, which were not complex. She had merely sacrificed her love for the sake of him she loved. Nothing more than that. She still breathed, and walked, and talked, and ate, and slept; that is, the eating and sleeping would come by and bye; it was simply that the sunlight had all faded out from her young life, and dim and meaningless the years to come rose up before her—the years which but so lately had seemed laden with the golden grain of love and of sweet companionship. But it had been all a mistake; the love would have brought Conrad no happiness, because as Radegund had told her, there could be no true companionship between them—no affinities—(how Sabina hated that word to her life’s end)—between a soul so nobly gifted and hers, which had but its affection, and its few little feminine graces to bestow in return. Ah! and what plain common sense was that which her cousin had spoken! One day this man would meet with—not of course a kindred spirit, but still—no; Sabina would not trust herself to think of that now. She dared not so cruelly rack her heart. Yet despite her struggling to see nothing, there brooded over her blank a dim shadow which made all yet darker and more sad, until at last the fell shadow took shape, and as she knew it to be the form of Radegund, she shivered and moaned wearily: “It is so cold!—so cold!” echoing all unconsciously her lover’s very words, when at last he had come to believe his little mistress false.

But the Burgomaster found himself in a most distracting dilemma. Here, in the first place, long association had accustomed him to love and esteem the mathematician, and when the first rumour of his blindness had reached his ears, he had been first incredulous, then indignant, and finally he had striven to relieve his bewilderment by demanding from Christian Dasipodius the real facts of the case. These he had just now heard from the old man’s lips. For once the great cession question had been forgotten, and the flagon of Rhenish left to sparkle unheeded on the table, while Christian had related to his old friend the story of Conrad’s blindness, how it had stolen upon him very slowly, but so surely, that he knew it was not to be averted; and how he had set himself to grapple with the enemy, and render it impotent to spoil his life; and as Niklaus had listened, all his anger had vanished, and in spite of himself, he could only admire and think how he had triumphed over what other men would have regarded as an insuperable obstacle, and in proportion as he pondered over these things, so much his first flush of indignation at the blind man’s seeking of his child in marriage toned down.

“I don’t doubt,” argued Niklaus with himself, “he thought that if he could manage a clock without his eyes, he might manage a woman. Well! and he is clever, and has a stout heart, but I don’t know. Still that is a question I can have no concern with now,” he added with a sigh. “The little one has settled it for herself in her own way; but I’d give the best stone in my jewel drawer to be a hundred leagues away from Strassburg to-morrow. Ay, ay, ay! it was a bad day’s work when this girl of mine stole his heart,” and Niklaus pensively patted his child’s head. “But there, never fret about it,” he went on aloud. “You know best, little one, what pleases you. Besides, there are more fish for you in the water, than ever came out of it. And as to Master Dasipodius, well as far as I can see, fair ladies won’t be lacking to console him for your cruelty.”

And thus it was the Burgomaster did his best to comfort his daughter.

CHAPTER XXIX.

“WORSE THAN SILENCE.”

Mass is over in the Cathedral, and the few worshippers who have braved the early morning’s biting frost are gone shiveringly home to their firesides. The vast edifice seems utterly deserted; as indeed, says Prudentius, it always ought to be at daybreak; for what creature with an ounce of brains, would loiter about in it of his own free will just when Erwin’s daughter and the rest of the ghostly crew are flitting back to their niches and pedestals and dim corners out of the way of good honest broad daylight?

The sacristan, according to the long-established law which he has made unto himself, is in the buttery hatch, fortifying his inner man against the cold, and all those other little disagreeable incidentals, which he declares each day brings, as surely as fast follows feast.

Meanwhile in the Cathedral, laggard full daylight glides stealthily, yet with weird and awful grace, and through her filmy veil, like ghostly guardians of that silent temple’s chaste loveliness, loom the marble monuments and clustered shafts casting faint shadows along the aisles. Especially about the Saint Laurence chapel, where the wintry sunlight’s first pale ray steals in through the painted window, spreading a haze of mystic loveliness, these shadows fall very strangely, on picture and carving, and sheeny-broidered hangings.

Is it indeed true, as Prudentius avouches, that those statues walk the Cathedral at nights? or is it with Strassburg this cold winter morning as old legends tell it once was ages ago, with the fair old Norman city, when angels brought the statue of Our Lady across the waves, and set it there in a shrine to be the place’s patron-saint for evermore? At least the figure standing under the fretted gateway, as sculptured saint might stand in canopied niche, is a crowning grace to the chapel’s beauty. Pale and clear as purest alabaster is that sad young face, slightly upturned, but the hair rippling back from the brow is golden-hued, gleaming where it catches the chance sun-rays like purest metal. There too, all cunningly rose-tinted, are the transparent finger-tips of the white hands, one of which gathers close the ample blue velvet miniver-bordered mantle, while the other clasps a richly-bound missal, wound about with a chaplet of pearls and rubies strung on a golden chain. Judged by that uncertain light, the close-fitting under-dress might be taken for some soft, thick, white camlet stuff, and certain it is that the sculptor of this gracious figure must have been a true master of his craft, yet whether the beautiful yet suffering face might be a Saint Margaret’s, or whether she were a Jephtha’s daughter, or some other virgin-martyr or confessor of holy memory, no inscription was there to tell; or it might have been that the creator of this figure desired to personify Ruth the steadfast-minded, her of the loving clinging heart, who said: “Where thou diest, I will die”.

Such a place that Cathedral was for idealizing every-day things. For after all, the figure was but Sabina von Steinbach’s, the Burgomaster’s daughter, who had chanced to pause for an instant on the threshold of the chapel, where after mass she had stolen away to tell her beads. For once however she had treated them with somewhat scanty ceremony, hurrying on to make in the most persuasive terms her troubled heart could improvise, extemporary supplications suited to her own particular needs.

Sabina, always a most orthodox member of the orthodox church, had ordinarily small fancy for this sort of invocation. Hitherto she had always found the prayers in her missal and her Book of Hours amply sufficing; but on this special morning, not all the beatific doctors who had ever lived could have expressed her heart’s desire for her before high Heaven’s throne. Yet it was a simple matter enough; she had only entreated that things should go well that day and always for Conrad Dasipodius, and that no breath of the blight threatening him should fall.

For the old footing between him and herself to be renewed, she did not dream of asking. What to him was her love but a valueless burden which had already wrought, oh me! such boundless mischief? No! because this love of hers for Dasipodius was unquenchable, it must burn on, but henceforth it must be always hidden, self-consuming, and she was content—at least she told herself she was—quite content to live apart, finding her pride in his success, her joy in hearing his fellow-men speak well of him, and her peace in the conviction that her own death in life had made good some of that ill she had so unwittingly worked him.

For her henceforward, things must at best be cruelly dull and commonplace; yet what was that but just to find herself like anybody else, instead of the happy creature singled out by the one man in all the universe worth a thought.

And now Sabina is practising the new order of things. She is going home to see that all is bright and comfortable for her father. And when he comes in from his counting-house, it is to be no love-lorn Phyllis he is to kiss and bid good-morrow to, but a busy little housewife with never a thought in the world—ah dear no—not the shadow of one, beyond that solemn question touching the fitness of the great Westphalian boar’s head for immediate larding, and what quantity of sugar must be had in for the new confections aunt Ottilie has sent her the recipe for. And as Sabina, casting one parting look at the blessed Saint Laurence, stepped into the aisle, and made towards the western portal round in front of the Horologe scaffolding, all the mystery seemed to float away from her, and she was just once more a pretty, rather demure little lady, hastening home from early Mass. Demure it was absolutely incumbent on her to appear, because just across yonder a man was kneeling by one of the pillars of the Horologe, and although his face was now entirely hidden in his long black cloak as if absorbed in prayer, there never is any telling when a man’s head may pop up if a woman’s dress happens to rustle by; and that is precisely what did occur; and before Sabina well knew how it had all come about, he had risen to his feet, and she found herself face to face with Conrad Dasipodius, and heard his voice bidding her a formal good-morrow. With a painful effort she returned the greeting, and strove to pass on; but her feet refused to obey her will, and pale and trembling she stood, murmuring some incoherent words about the Horologe.

“No, Mistress von Steinbach,” replied Dasipodius, “it was not the Horologe work which brought me here this morning. I came to pray. We all have need of that sometimes.”

“Of course,” stammered Sabina—“always.”

“Very like,” he said; “but one prays with a difference.”

“I—I—do not—understand you, Master Dasipodius,” she faltered.

“No?” he said, with a slight shrug, and lifting of his brows. “Ah, I meant only to say, that the prayer which yesterday was an irksome task, becomes to-day a necessity. At least, I find it so; but these matters do seem to be quite another thing with you, Mistress von Steinbach, and such as you, whose sympathies are as evenly regulated as four sides of a square; never outrunning the angle of prudence, and whose pulses keep time as correctly as the beats of this clock here. Nay, often I despair of bringing this cold hard thing of wood and brass to such obedience. Maybe,” he continued with a harsh laugh, when no response reached him, “I should do well to entrust it to your discipline for a bit? You who so skilfully regulate that—which you call your heart.”

Could he have seen the bloodless, agonized face before him! But he could not; and he merely stood, with his head slightly bent forward in the old listening attitude she knew so well, while his eyes seemed striving to penetrate some dark veil hanging between him and all joyful things. It might have been that one word then from the girl beside him, could have rent it all away, but though her dry pale lips were parted, and quivered convulsively, no syllable came from them. Her very breathing was suspended; and a dead sad silence reigned in the vast Cathedral, while daylight, now striding on apace, cast a sickly glare upon those two white and stony faces.

“Your letter,” he continued, “reached me; but that of course you know. Everyone knows it.”

“And—and you?” she gasped.

“Ay, yes, yes. I am to blame for not having answered it yet—much to blame; but there is some indulgence to be accorded to blind men, even when they dare—as I have dared. Speak, will you not say one word to me? At least you forgive me—Sabina?”

She stretched her trembling arms towards him.

“It is you who should forgive me,” she said. “Oh—Master Dasipodius, what mischief I have done! If the Horologe——”

“Nay, never fret about the Horologe,” he said wearily. “I was thinking of—of that mistake of ours, when we thought we loved each other. I blame myself very much for this, Sabina. Not for all the horologes in the world,” he went on, while she stood shrinking back, with her eyes fixed in tense earnestness on his face, “ought I to have deceived you. And yet—do not think too hardly of me. I sought to act for the best—I felt so sure that you—your love——”

“Yes—I know,” she said, a crimson flush overspreading her ashen face. “You thought I had given it to you—before you had asked for it——”

“Indeed,” he interrupted in surprised tones, “I had no such——”

“And so,” she said, waving away his words with a slight involuntary gesture of contempt, “you thought you would take pity on me.”

“Pity!”

“Ay—yes; but it shall not be. I will have no such sacrifices; because—because——”

“No,” he answered coldly, “there must be no sacrifices, and we understand each other now quite well. Is it not so, Mistress Sabina? We need be at no more cross purposes. I am glad we have met. It is much better to be clear.”

“Oh, much better,” she said brokenly.

“And,” he went on, feeling with his hand for hers, and taking the death-cold fingers in his icy ones, “we are friends—henceforth—is it not so?”

And as hand-in-hand the two stood there, cold and impassive as a pair of marble statues, who could have guessed at the torn hearts quivering beneath?

“Oh, Master Dasipodius!” she sobbed forth at last, “if I could indeed be your real true friend: if I could give——”

“You would give me—anything in reason,” he said, with a smile of chilly sarcasm, “would you not?”

“I would give you my life if it——”

“Nay,” he said, “I need no such extravagant protestations. I am sure you are a good child; and friendship is an excellent thing no doubt,” he added with a groaning sigh, as he dropped her hand and turned away.

“Conrad!” she wailed, and in the agony of her despair, she clutched his mantle with her half-numbed fingers. “Conrad!”

“Mistress von Steinbach?” he said, pausing attently, but not another syllable reached his ear, and again he turned impatiently from her, all unconscious of her grasp. His action was so abrupt, that it wrenched the cloak from her feeble hold, and staggering back, she would have tripped and fallen, had it not been for the clock’s friendly wooden framework; while the blind man who would have stepped aside from trampling on the merest weed, strode with stern, set face from the woman he so passionately loved.

CHAPTER XXX.

A CAUSE CÉLÈBRE.

Never was such a curious trial—for if it was not to be called a trial, what was it to be called?—as this of the Professor Conrad Dasipodius; and not one of the pundits of the city felt that he cared to pronounce any foregone conclusions upon the case, because the head and front of the mathematician’s offending had not the shadow of a parallel in Strassburg’s archives; nor as far as curious enquirers could ascertain, in any other records ancient or modern; and even the Decalogue itself had provided no code against such an emergency.

Certainly the question was a most delicate one; and preliminary formalities must, so the wisest heads counselled, be conducted with the utmost discretion, and all appearance of coercion carefully avoided. Hitherto, it could only be generally conceded the Professor Dasipodius had borne a high, not to say most exalted reputation for probity and integrity; and his word of honour that he would appear to speak for himself must be accepted. In other words, he was not as yet manacled and ironed and dieted in a dungeon. This was held by Strassburg generally to be a mistake; and when standing agape at their shop doors, and hanging about the streets between old Christian’s house and the Chancellery, the people saw Dasipodius pass serene and composed through their midst, without so much as a halberdier at his back, they were sorely disappointed and put about.

“But just wait,” they said more cheerfully, “till he comes out again. He’ll sing another sort of tune then.”

“Maybe,” said Prudentius the sacristan, who leaving the Cathedral to take care of itself, had come out to see the fun; “but for my part, I’d liefer it had been the painting woman.”

“What?” said a bystander. “Mistress von Steinbach do you mean?”

Prudentius nodded.

“And what has she to do with it?”

“What hasn’t she? I’ll swear,” grumbled the sacristan, “they’ve got the wrong pig by the ear somehow.”

“And I’ll swear you’re turned idiot,” contended the other. “Aren’t they going to try this fellow because he’s the devil’s own cousin?”

“Oh, ho!” laughed Prudentius, “and what then may be your opinion of her?”

“Have a care how your tongue wags, you popish bald pate! or you shall have a taste of what this can do,” retorted Radegund’s champion, baring a brawny arm.

Having first wedged his stout person between the wall and the broad back of a spectator double his own height, the sacristan found himself in a position to reply that he never wasted breath on heretics; but finding his point of view worse than disadvantageous, he clambered on to the edge of the stone fountain, and there maintained his equilibrium by clinging with both arms round the neck of a marble Hebe, whose contrasted slender figure with his portly outlines, excited the crowd beneath him to a hailstorm of delicate badinage. Prudentius was not, however, easily discomfited, he was used to heretics and triflers, and could at anyrate afford to laugh at them; for none could see the show as well as he could, and he so dearly loved a show. The merest flash of a scarlet surcoat, or the faintest tweak of a horn, would charm the lay brother to the street corner, long before men and women of the world had even a notion that anything unusual was going on, and this morning promised a treat indeed. Professor Dasipodius’ case had become such a nine days’ wonder, as had not been heard of for miles round, time out of mind; and from a comparatively private piece of business, was grown into a question concerning which every citizen and citizeness from highest to lowest, recognised as a manifest duty to say all that chanced to enter their heads; and further, seeing that the Horologe was public property, they claimed a right to assist at the enquiry, hinting that if there should be closed doors on the occasion, the Town Council should hear about it afterwards. It had been therefore finally arranged that the great Justice Hall of the Chancellery should be the scene of the proceedings; and as mere work-a-day gowns and doublets would have been gratuitous insult to that awesome chamber, all the syndics and civic dignitaries wore their ceremonial garb, and presented an imposing picture as they filed in order due to their places.

Love of pomp and circumstance is inherent in the human heart, and let levellers strive to crush it as they may, will crop through; and although a large majority of the Strassburgers had discarded from their religious observances every iota of ornament and ceremonial, until their conventicles had become very valleys of bareness and dry bones, they were as eager as ever to feast their senses with a piece of colour, or a strain of music, even though such things were but heralding a rebel to the block, or some wretched thief to be broken on the wheel.

And such with its difference was the question now at issue. On that particular morning, justly or unjustly, there was a man to be worried, and Strassburg meant to make holiday; but whether it was to be a real red-letter day seemed questionable, because many were of opinion that not by any stretch of logic or sophistry, could the mathematician’s affliction be construed into a crime. Others, however, maintained that never was deeper-dyed criminal than he, and compared with him murderers or high treasoners were pure as the driven snow; for what doubt could there be but that the man, thwarted by this visitation of Heaven’s wrath upon him in his ambition to be the maker of their Horologe, had, rather than relinquish the work, invoked the devil and all his angels to finish it for him; and for those who defended him, what were they but aiders and abettors of his fearful crime? And so as the mathematician passed, the crowd pressed heavily after him, until to save him from being crushed, a guard was sent from the Chancellery for his safe conduct.

That was as it should be, and the mob beside itself with excitement and anticipation, pushed on, its vanguard squeezing into the vast council chamber, till the place was too densely packed for a pin to fall to the floor; while those whom ill luck had left in the rear, were forced to swarm outside in the raw morning mist, where they strove their best to keep from utterly congealing, by saluting the respective popular or unpopular representatives of their civic rights, with cheers and howls as the case might be. And as political opinion was just then very far from unanimous, the demonstrations became once or twice so uproarious, that some of the chief agitators found themselves spending the rest of the day in the guard-house cells, with ample leisure for reflecting whether they had not been better doing a good day’s work at home, and leaving the Horologe and its maker to settle their own affairs.

By the time the last official attendant at the proceedings had passed in, a heavy snowstorm fell on the vast gathering, beneath which it subsided in stolid silence, to indulge in the unsatisfactory pastime of speculating how those enviable persons who had got themselves a footing inside might be finding their reward for all the shoving and toe crushing they had endured.

This for some half hour or so was undoubtedly meagre; for save and excepting the dignitaries on the raised platform in their scarlet and gold bravery, which, though immensely imposing, was a sight as old as the hills, and the place’s architectural adornments, which for a couple of batzen they could, if they wanted, see comfortably any day of the week, there was nothing particularly amusing in the proceedings. There, indeed, was the Professor Dasipodius—but not, as everybody had anticipated, and Syndic Hackernagel had been distinctly heard to say would be the case, behind the bar where felons were always tried, but positively accommodated with a seat, and looking neither bowed with shame nor haughtily defiant, but much the same as he looked always,—perfectly calm and self-collected. To aggravate the prevailing disappointment and annoyance, his eyelids were not even closed; and a tremor chilled to the very marrow of the spectators, lest after all the whole affair should be a hoax.

It was simply impossible to suppose those eyes could not see. Rumour, it is true, had declared them to be wide open like a cat’s in the dark, but they had conceived that to be such a mere three black crow story, that it had not been credited for an instant by the thinking part of the community. Such sort of tales everyone had heard before—from their grandmothers, but hitherto no such instance of blind eyes, wide open, clear and lustrous, unusually lustrous, had come under their notice, and why should it occur now? And in short, with your common-sense, practical people, only seeing can be believing—and all they could say was, that if the case were actually as asserted, there must be something quite wrong at the bottom of it all; and with a thankful feeling that everything had come to light, they set about lending their earnest attention to the proceedings, which after a few preliminary formalities, virtually opened with the summoning of the informer against Conrad Dasipodius.

This person was not mentioned by name, and for the two or three intervening seconds the mathematician’s face was seen to grow deadly pale. A terrible suspicion had been forcing itself upon him. Was it—could it be possible that—no. Thank Heaven—no. Such bitterness at least was spared him, and the voice which answered to the summons was a man’s—the voice of Otto von Steinbach.

Otto looked discomposed and flushed, and his eyes kept glancing uneasily from the solemn circle before him, towards a woman in the crowded court, for whom everybody had made way; but of whose face, so closely concealed by a black hood, only an occasional flash of dark eyes could be seen.

“Now, tell us how you came by your information?” said the Burgomaster, sternly addressing his nephew. “Through some letter, I believe you said.”

“Y—yes,” answered Otto, shifting his eyes for an instant from Niklaus’ face, to seek those of the woman. “The letter I was charged to deliver to Master Dasipodius.”

“Charged by whom?”

“By my sister,” he mutteringly replied.

“Speak out,” shouted the town clerk, who was a little hard of hearing, or said he was.

“By my sister,” reiterated Otto, with a start.

“Did she write that letter?”

“That letter—yes—I mean no—it was from Mistress Sabina——”

“Gentlemen! gentlemen!” interposed the Burgomaster, whose face looked terribly harassed and aged. “This is not a formal trial. We know without any bush-beating that Master Dasipodius is blind. More’s the pity. Surely there’s no need to——”

“Produce that letter,” said Syndic Hackernagel, turning to Dasipodius.

“I cannot,” he replied.

“Cannot!” mockingly echoed the Syndic.

“These hands never touched it,” continued Dasipodius, “and these eyes, as you know, never saw it.”

“Then where is the letter?” demanded the Burgomaster, looking round, and finally letting his eyes rest on Otto. “Who has it?”

“How—how should I know?” stammered the young man, with changing colour, and his eyes again straying helplessly to the dark ones under the hood, as if his senses belonged to the woman who stood there, rather than to himself. “How should I know, I—I——”

“Be careful, sir, how you speak.”

“I am being—I—what could I have to do with it—af—after I gave it up?”

“Into whose hands?”

“Into Kaspar Habrecht’s,” he added in pathetically innocent tones, “as I was bidden.”

“By whom?”

“By Master Dasipodius himself to be sure. He never does lose a chance of favouring that boy, I can tell you, and——”

“Go down. Let Kaspar Habrecht be called.”

And then Kaspar told his simple story of how Dasipodius bade him read the letter aloud, and how he obeyed, “until”—and then the boy paused and coloured. “Go on,” prompted Tobias. “Until,” went on Kaspar, “I began to see that it was meant for my master’s ears alone, and——”

“Why?” interrupted the Syndic.

“Let the boy finish his story, Master Hackernagel,” said the Burgomaster.

“And I suppose I stopped short; and then Otto von Steinbach snatched it from me, and went on with it himself.”

“So that it was Otto von Steinbach who finished the reading of the letter?” said the Burgomaster.

“By all the saints, that I did not,” said Otto, glaring at Kaspar, “and if you say I did——”

“I do not say so, Otto von Steinbach,” answered the boy. “No one finished it, you know quite well.”

“Was it, then, never read to the end?” enquired Niklaus.

“Not to my knowledge,” replied Kaspar. “I left the studio with my master after his accident, and when, at his bidding, I returned for the letter, it was nowhere to be found.”

“But where the deuce—ahem—where could it have got to?” said Niklaus.

“Where the deuce indeed?” sympathetically murmured the crowd.

“Some one must have that letter?” queried Syndic Tobias looking round.

“Ask the witches!” said a mocking voice.

“Yes—that’s just it,” said Otto, “there is no dealing, is there, with a fellow who has doings with—with——”

“Doctor Bruno Wolkenberg!”

And Bruno came forward, his blue eyes sad, and his broad frank brow furrowed with anxious lines. He replied mechanically, almost absently, to the first few general questions put to him, but on being asked if he were a friend of the mathematician’s, his face brightened, and he animatedly answered “Yes”.

“And Master Dasipodius has sought your surgical aid for his blindness?”

“Yes.”

“It has been beyond your skill, Doctor Wolkenberg?” questioned Niklaus slowly.

“Yes,” sighed the surgeon.

“You believe him then to be stone blind?” asked Tobias Hackernagel, staring hard at Dasipodius.

“Assuredly, yes. I know him to be so,” said Bruno, flushing petulantly. “Has he not himself said it?”

“And what is your opinion, Surgeon Wolkenberg,” enquired Syndic Hackernagel in his best manner, “of a man who does such work as that of the Horologe, without the assistance of his natural vision?”

“That he is very clever,” answered Bruno, backing to make way for the next witness, Isaac Habrecht.

“Do you consider,” went on Tobias, “do you consider, Isaac Habrecht, that Master Dasipodius is competent for the work he has undertaken?”

“Yes,” nodded Isaac, with an emphasis betokening that a more superfluous question could not well be propounded.

“Do you consider that it might be placed in better hands?”

Isaac gazed round him as if he did not thoroughly understand.

“Your own, for instance,” blandly insinuated Tobias.

“Mine?” gruffly ejaculated Isaac.

“I am told, my friend, that you are an excellent workman.”

“Yes—I am a good workman.”

“None better?” sweetly smiled Tobias.

“That may be so,” nodded Isaac.

“And if—it should be decided to transfer the completion of the Horologe to your hands——”

“You may decide till doomsday, the whole pack of you, but I take no decisions excepting from my master, Conrad Dasipodius,” said Habrecht; then he leisurely turned his broad shoulders on the august convention, and mixed with the crowd again.

Otto von Steinbach being now again called to the fore, the query already put to Bruno Wolkenberg was propounded to him: “What do you think of a man who can work without being able to see?”

“Oh, you know,” said Otto, “it’s such nonsense.”

“What is?” gravely asked Niklaus.

“Why—whoever supposes he does?”

“Suppose! jackanapes,” thundered the Burgomaster, “are not the proofs all before us that he does?”

“Oh! but it is so absurd though,” insisted Otto; “why, I couldn’t do it myself. Such a thing was never heard of since the world began—by lawful means, you know.”

“You believe,” began Syndic Hackernagel in impressive tones, “that supernatural aid——”

“I’m sure of it,” nodded Otto.

“And the form assumed by such aids?”

“Well, I only know that Mother Barepenny’s black cat——”

“What the foul fiend——” interrupted the Burgomaster.

“Yes, exactly,” said Otto, plucking courage in the light of Syndic Hackernagel’s smiling countenance turned full upon him; “Dasipodius gives Mother Barepenny money—gold. I’ve seen him do it myself, many a time,” and Otto glanced round triumphantly.

“Is this true?” asked Hackernagel in sepulchral tones of Dasipodius, who assented with the suspicion of a smile curving the grave lips.

“This is indeed a fearful accusation,” continued the Syndic. “And your ostensible purpose in going to Mother Barepenny’s has been—?”

“Because those who should look after the poor seem invariably to forget to go to her,” answered Dasipodius. “Mother Barepenny has been very near dying of cold and starvation.”

“Mother Barepenny,” said a fat voice from the scarlet and gold and fur, “is a god-forsaken old woman.”

“At least a friend-forsaken one, gentlemen,” said the mathematician.

“Friend-forsaken!” croaked Hackernagel; “friend, forsooth! Why, she may thank Heaven she has not been burned for a witch ages ago! And you imperil your name for such a hag as this! Oh! no, no. That is too much! a head like yours, which perfectly well knows how to put two and two together! No. Have a care, Professor Dasipodius! have a care. We are getting on dangerous ground—very dangerous ground indeed,” and the countenance of Tobias Hackernagel waxed radiant. “And danger,” he went on addressing his compeers, “which I think, gentlemen, you will all agree with me, is not lessened by the additional facts I find here,” and Hackernagel opened his tablets. “Master Dasipodius, I have reason to believe, has in his possession several printed volumes, very curious books. I assume you will not deny this fact?” he enquired of the blind man.

“Indeed, no,” answered Dasipodius, a ray of proud content overspreading his face, “they are very rare and precious.”

“You see!” cried Tobias, pitching his voice to a high triumph key. “He is proud of it, absolutely proud. And these,” he added, dropping his voice to a groan, as he referred again to his tablets, “these are the books he glories in: Copernicus—Terrestrial Rotation. I think you will agree with me that the less we say about that the better.”

“Well, I don’t know,” speculatively began Counsellor Klausewitz. “I don’t know——”

“You do not, Master Klausewitz,” snapped Tobias; “none of us do. I trust we never shall—meddle with such things.”

“A History of the Gnostic Sect,” continued Hackernagel, referring again to his list.

“Now, that’s the first I’ve heard of it!” remarked a meditative voice. “Does it believe, I wonder, in Justification by——”

“Donnerwetter!” ejaculated the Syndic, surprised into an expletive, “these interruptions are unseemly.”

“Order!” cried the town clerk.

“Master Coverdale’s Bible,” read on Tobias, “and the only book on my list to the soul’s edification, excepting a manuscript book of the Gospels, whose popish pictures and gaudy colouring, however, completely nullify the grains of truth it may contain—hem, hem. And here: Sebastian Brandt’s Ship of Fools.”

A deep pleasurable murmur greeted this mention of the popular favourite.

“Quite so, good people—yes, yes,” assented Tobias, a little haltingly. “Quite right and proper of you all. Master Brandt’s work is clever, undoubtedly so; but shall we make idols unto ourselves? I cannot conceal from myself that for a scholar and an intellectual person to devote his powers to mere ethical teaching is a soul-ensnaring thing. When shall we grasp the precious truth that not our mode of self-conduct in this world is of any moment? It is the saving of our souls which is the one concern. What does it matter what we happen to do here below. Is this wicked world our resting-place? No, I must confess, I myself regard Master Brandt’s work as a monument of misdirected intellectual power. And,” continued the logical Tobias, “what is intellectual power? A dry stick—a puff of wind—a bubble—a—nothing. And this wit and humour you prize so curiously highly in him—what is it? nothing. I can’t even see it myself,” went on the Syndic, fillipping his podgy fingers among the leaves, “though I assume Master Dasipodius apprehends something in this passage, for these lines I find doubly underscored: Another fool is he who judges of hidden and mysterious things, such as God the Lord is alone able to judge. Hidden and mysterious things, and underscored! That looks suspicious, friends. You cannot deny that looks as if it signified something more than meets the eye—a blind man’s eye!” and the Syndic’s shoulders touched his ear tips. “And here again:

With measure just shall every one
Be measured as he may have done;
As thou judgest me and I judge thee,
So will our God judge thee and me.

The old exploded, popery-sated doctrine of works! Can a heart be regenerate and applaud such sentiments. Oh! lamentable! lamentable! Estimate for yourselves, my good friends, the frame of mind a man must be in who singles out such a passage as this! But it speaks for itself—let me pass on. The History of Reynard the Fox. Oh yes,” assented Tobias, as another loud cheer rang through the hall, “a well-aimed shaft, an excellently well-aimed shaft at the craft and cunning of popish rule, but——”

“But a knife that might cut two ways, if pure protestantism slipped into the throne; we’ll take it as said, Syndic,” interrupted Burgomaster von Steinbach.

“I said no such thing, Burgomaster; I protest against words being put into my mouth. I hope it is unnecessary. I was simply about to observe that this grotesque, fable acquires an unpleasant significance when we consider——”

“It’ll be growing dark soon, Master Hackernagel,” urged the voice of Councillor Klausewitz. “Will it please you to return to the point?”

“When I see how I have departed from it, Master Job, I’ll thank you for your interruption,” snarled the Syndic, casting a withering glance at his yawning civic brother. “The last volume on our list is, I find, intituled Prometheus Vinctus, set down in Greek characters by a certain heathen person, of whom I make more than doubt you have never heard.” Syndic Tobias had himself first made its acquaintance on the previous day, when, having laid violent hands on it, he surreptitiously conveyed it to a pedagogue neighbour, for coaching up concerning its drift. “We live, my friends, in an enlightened age,” continued Tobias, “and I fail to perceive what we, with our Christian privileges, our sermons, our exhortations, our discourses, our—and the rest of it, to be brief, what, I repeat—what motive—I would say, should move our having recourse to pagan productions, is beyond my conception. Although metaphorically, and in fact physically, I shrink from touching this book, which is a stage play, with a pair of tongs,” he went on, suiting the action of his fingers to marvellous imitations of those implements, “I have in the public interest made it my business to look into it; and I am told”—— a slight momentary huskiness impeded his utterance, “I perceive, of course, that underlying its rounded and incontestably elegant—h’m—hexameters, is a signification which—ahem—which—which——”

“For the dear Heaven’s sake!” cried Niklaus, “we’ll believe you. We take it for said, man.”

“Very good—it shall be so,” briskly assented Tobias, “since you desire it, Burgomaster; and I pass on to the last of my list: Johannes Calvinus on Predestination. Here we have a work,” went on the Syndic, whose accents came pipingly and weak out of the deafening thunder of applause and yells which the name evoked, “a work to be used, or abused, as its student may have put on the new man, or be still of the earth, earthy. Predestination is—now, Professor Dasipodius, let us hear,” continued Tobias, turning on the mathematician with folded arms, and closing his eyes, “do you believe in Predestination? Come, a plain simple answer to a plain simple question.”

“If Heaven be pleased to handle our fate for us as some of our fellow-men do, Master Tobias,” replied Dasipodius, “a man, it seems to me, can have no free will. I fancied until to-day that a person’s house, and what it might contain, were his own.”

“Oh, certainly,” acquiesced Tobias. “That is a rule which works fairly well for normal and properly regulated minds; but when a man, or a woman,—yes, I do not hesitate to assert as my conviction, that it equally applies to women, in those cases, happily so rare, where the female nature—h’m—h’m—forgets itself, and develops the faintest spark of what the world calls genius, there is a prevailing sense in those who look on, that it is as well”—and Tobias significantly laid the extreme tip of his forefinger on his smooth little forehead—“as well to keep an eye on them. I ask any ordinary person if this is not the case?” he asked appealing to his hearers, but the chorus of assent fell feebly. “The case before us amply substantiates my theory,” he continued. “The knowledge of good and evil, as the merest babe is aware, wisdom or knowledge, knowledge or wisdom—convertible or synonymous terms—of good and evil, I say, was the ruin of our first parents. Friends and fellow-citizens, may we all be preserved from too much wisdom!”

“Amen!” murmured the Town Council.

“Together, and side by side with these printed volumes, I have now to add, have been found in the Professor Dasipodius’ study, sheet upon sheet of paper and of parchment, closely covered with every conceivable and inconceivable geometrical shape. I suppose it is not possible to utter that word in disentanglement of its connection with astrological and other unlawful and occult sciences. The attached network of signs and figures is also bewildering to a degree; and ABC intrudes at every available corner. Now, Burgomaster and gentlemen, I presume we all know what ABC means.”

“Tut!” said Niklaus, “let’s hope so. I suppose knowledge——”

“Precisely,” nodded Tobias. “Knowledge—there is my argument. Inasmuch as I have proved, satisfactorily I trust, that knowledge in the best hands, our own for example, gentlemen, even a little of it, is a dangerous thing, what can—what CAN be predicated of that sort of knowledge which a blind man possesses? What, I ask, in such hands, can ABC signify, but abracadabra?”

CHAPTER XXXI.

“QUO FATA VOCANT.”

A shudder convulsed the Syndic’s frame as he uttered the terrible word; while Niklaus, pressing his hand to his forehead, turned towards Dasipodius. “Tell us yourself, Professor,” he said, “something about these same calculations. Maybe then we shall come to know what we are talking about.”

“They are chiefly the Horologe measurements,” replied Dasipodius.

“Chiefly,” echoed Hackernagel, with his head as much on one side as an inquisitive magpie, and blinking his pink eyelids. “Chiefly, and the rest?”

“I have in hand other works,” answered the mathematician, “which the present question in no way concerns.”

“Oh, excuse me, that is quite a mistake. If you have no right to be making the Horologe, the question at once suggests itself, have you a right to do anything at all? To be anything at all? Oh, I assure you, I have grave doubts. It appears to me that it very seriously disputes your claim to every privilege. I am led at once to ask, what is your right to free citizenship? Your right to come, your right to go? Are you, in short, a responsible individual, have you a right to—to breathe, as it were, to exist, to—to—to——”

“And all this,” asked Dasipodius with something of a smile, “because I am blind, Master Hackernagel?”

“Have a care, sir,” yapped the Syndic; “do not permit contumacy to aggravate the peril of your position here. Keep to the point, and explain what may be the nature of these documents.”

“I am writing a book, for instance.”

“Oh ho!” laughed Tobias. “So you write books as well as make clocks. Really one must be permitted to say you are vastly clever for a blind man, Professor; but admitting, for the sake of argument, that you can do these things, ought you, I ask once more, to be permitted to do them? For the dignity’s sake of our city, gentlemen and good friends, I think not. At least so far as this important work of the Horologe is concerned. I believe on this head there will not be two opinions.”

But to the orator’s amazement, there appeared to be countless ones, and their holders asserted them so vigorously, that more than ten minutes passed before order could be restored. Still the multitude entertained an exalted opinion of Syndic Hackernagel. He had a knack of stroking them the right way, and they always regarded his sense of justice as unassailable. Perceiving, therefore, that he had more to say, they at last subsided into silence, and the Syndic proceeded to remind them that the Horologe was their own property, to be paid for out of their own contributed public monies; and for a blind man to be receiving these, was simply to be allowing themselves to be hoodwinked and defrauded in the most barefaced manner.

“Master Dasipodius,” interposed the Burgomaster, “hasn’t seen a batzen of his money yet.”

“No, nor ever will SEE it,” said the Syndic, convulsively chuckling at his own exquisite wit. “Eh, Master Dasipodius? And yet I’ll dare swear you count on being paid.”

“Most assuredly,” assented Dasipodius.

“You hear!” cried Hackernagel, turning on his auditors, “and all this in the very teeth of such men as—well, let us say Master Otto von Steinbach, grandson, ever so many times removed, of the great Erwin himself! Oh! it is too much! Shade of our mighty fellow-citizen!” ejaculated Tobias, clasping his fat fingers aloft, “how wouldst thou have blushed to behold this day! To think we should be brought to see kinsman of thine set aside for—whom—what? Gentlemen! gentlemen! I could weep,” and his voice grew thick with emotion, as he stretched his arms towards the blushing Otto, “when I remember how you elected that man instead of Otto von Steinbach here.”

Then as half a hundred voices shouted, “Long live Otto von Steinbach!” Otto felt that truly life was worth living.

“But,” concluded Tobias, “who shall dare say it is too late? Who shall pronounce the error irretrievable? Master Dasipodius cannot stand there, and deny that the question has been discussed before you—I defy you to do so, Professor,” challenged Tobias.

“You give yourself unnecessary trouble, Syndic.”

“No. How can he indeed? Discussed, I repeat, before you, in a free, fair and becoming spirit, and without prejudice; and we may stay here all night——”

“Ay, ay, that may we,” said Councillor Klausewitz, rising with alacrity; “and the conference then is ended?”

“Nay—by your good leave, the premisses have as yet only been laid down; the conclusion——”

“That’s what I say,” hopefully said Klausewitz.

“And you are right, Councillor Klausewitz, the conclusion must be arrived at before we separate.”

The unfortunate Job sat down again, while Tobias lifted his voice and proceeded, in a lengthy oration, to remind his hearers that a solemn duty lay before them. That much as it grieved him to say it, he felt he had no choice but to urge them to cancel their suffrages in favour of Conrad Dasipodius. Originally, the question had not been simply and solely one of technical capability, but one also of the measure of personal consideration the candidate might enjoy; and while it was true (and Tobias conceded the awkward truth with a grace all his own) that the Guild of Clockmakers had voted unanimously in favour of Dasipodius, it ought to be borne in mind that he was a member of their company; and it was but poor frail human nature to rejoice in reflected honours, but individuals taking a more extended view of the matter, had been (as he, Tobias Hackernagel, was in a position, from his own personal knowledge, to say) much at variance in their opinion of the Professor Dasipodius. There was a something about him some people did not like; a reserve, stand-off deportment, which had given considerable offence in some quarters he—Tobias—knew intimately. A resenting of enquiry into his mode of conducting the work—and—but why harp on that string, was not the mystery explained now? Small wonder he had refused to enter into details with the troops of visitors who had honoured his studio. Small wonder that with courtesy which barely concealed his restiveness, he had dismissed them with the assurance that his labour would best be known by its fruits. A mere gloss to the vulgar axiom that the proof of the pudding was in the eating; while all the city could bear witness to the frank, confiding charm of his young friend, Otto von Steinbach’s bearing. There you found no pride, no reserve, no concealment—why? because he had nothing to conceal. On that head, however, he, Tobias, would say no more. What need? the two men stood before them, every line of their features, every gesture significant of their contrasted individuality. It was not for him, Tobias Hackernagel, to influence their decision by a feather’s weight. He had simply to recommend a collecting of voters’ suffrages a second time, the true wishes of Strassburg in regard to the Horologe being thereby ascertainable. In the meantime the work itself must be suspended; and should the result of the voting go against Dasipodius, there appeared but the one course for him to adopt, of gracefully retiring from the field. “I believe you will see the force of my conclusion, Professor? Exactly, I was convinced you would do so,” continued the Syndic, as Dasipodius opened his lips to reply. “Here we have then the case in a nutshell; and as before, my friends, the three former candidates seek your suffrages; ostensibly three: Otto von Steinbach, Isaac Habrecht——”

“What!” thundered a stentorian voice from the crowd, somewhere in the rear of the mathematician, who turned his head and said, “Hold your peace, Isaac, for pity’s sake!” and Habrecht subsided stormily.

“Isaac Habrecht, and Conrad Dasipodius. Virtually, however, as I flatter myself I have made clear, only two; the two first mentioned, since by all nature’s laws, the third has been proved physically incompetent for the task. Yet incontestable and satisfactory as these evidences are, let the formalities be duly observed. I am the last to wish to see appearances shorn of their rights. Vote as your consciences prompt you, always bearing in mind the moral question at issue, and the doubtful and mysterious elements enshrouding the very existence of the man who has this day been summoned to speak for himself, and the astonishingly, astoundingly little he has had to say.”

Syndic Hackernagel then passed on to observe that he had fully expected other witnesses to have come forward and substantiated the charges of sorcery and of magic-mongering against the accused; but the world had fallen upon evil days, and zeal appeared to be at her last gasp. In default of those who should have presented themselves, he had, however, done his poor best, he said, to make his own convictions clear, and that his reward would be in finding that his few observations had not fallen upon deaf ears.

“No, no,” shouted some of his auditors.

“I rejoice,” smiled Tobias, “that there are still to be found in Strassburg ten, peradventure, righteously inclined. Yet I repeat, my friends, that is a grievous falling off. Fifty years ago the voices against the sin of witchcraft would have gone up from this vast hall, like the voice of one man. What do I say? Forty, nay even thirty since, by the evidence obtained from my own personal exertions, aided by the valuable cooperation of my young friend here, Master Otto von Steinbach, we should have been able to have brought this person to the stake, or at least into mortal fear of it. Now, I cannot hide from myself that a certain amount of sympathy has been evinced on his behalf throughout this day’s proceedings, and that markedly in quarters,” and Tobias glanced towards the dais, “where one would have hoped for something very different. Some present had possibly been inclined to leniency, by the fact of the presence of the books of the reformed faith which had been found in the Professor Dasipodius’ possession, but that was a perilous misleading, since, as a set-off against these, were the popish and heathen works enumerated. Now what shall we say,” continued the Syndic, “of a man who looks—Heaven save the mark!—of a blind man who looks at all sides of a question?”

“I do think you have treated the subject quite exhaustively,” said Job, “good Master Tobias; you have said everything that can be said.”

“I think so,” smiled Tobias; “I flatter myself so. I have now, therefore, simply to remind you, my friends and fellow-citizens, that the matter lies in your hands; and three days hence the result of your collected opinions will be duly proclaimed from the Cathedral steps. For all this world’s filthy lucre I would not prejudice your decision, but it appears to me that one man alone claims universal consideration; for bear in mind, in regard to the second candidate, that the familiar spirit is but one degree less evil than its master.”

And with a sidelong glance in Isaac Habrecht’s direction, Syndic Hackernagel gathered up his notes, and folding his robes toga-wise about him, waited for the Burgomaster to intimate that the proceedings were ended.

“And now we can go, Burgomaster?” whispered Councillor Klausewitz, rising briskly to his feet. “Yes?”

But Niklaus did not stir. Job’s countenance fell, and he sank back with a groan, seeking sympathy in the faces of his colleagues, but they were all turned attently, expectant of what the Burgomaster might have to say; and Job, with an inward prayer that this threatened new harangue might not last above a quarter of an hour, assumed the virtue he had not, and looked the picture of interested attention.

“Syndic Hackernagel spoke the truth,” said the Burgomaster, rising and addressing the assemblage, “when he said that a solemn duty lies before you. See that you fulfil it like reasonable men, and may Heaven help you.”

“Amen!” assented Councillor Job, with brightening eyes, as Niklaus sat down again. “Can we go now, Burgomaster?”

“Ay, let us go,” replied Niklaus; “I long to breathe fresh air. And so too, I’ll warrant, does Master Dasipodius there,” he added, looking sadly at the pale wearied face of the mathematician. “One may play the fool too long.” And having received a brief formal dismissal, the conclave broke up, while the crowd began to hustle and struggle to gain the doors in time for witnessing the departure of the chief actors in the scene.

“We had best leave by the little side door, Master,” said Habrecht, coming close up beside Dasipodius, where he stood alone.

“Nay, Isaac,” said Dasipodius, starting from the reverie into which he seemed fallen, “what have I to do with little side doors? Lend me an arm, and let me go out as I came in.”

And so, leaning on Isaac’s strong arm, the blind man descended the Chancellery steps, where a deafening uproar greeted his appearance. Some in the crowd rushed forward to seize his hands, uttering fervent expressions of loyalty, and sympathy and respectful admiration. Others set up a hideous caterwauling, intermingled with elegant reference to Mother Barepenny, and flung showers of half-frozen slush and rotten eggs, and other missiles, whistling about his head; but these, thanks to Habrecht’s quick eye and stout stick, fell everywhere but on the object of attack. Moreover, the mob being so utterly divided against itself, soon found distraction, in favour of mutual fisticuffing and belabouring, so that it is problematical of how many broken heads that day’s work might have been productive, had not a sudden beating of drums and flourish of trumpets half drowned the uproar, and stricken the combatants temporarily motionless with expectation. It is true the drums had a cracked, rattling sound, as if their skins had seen some service, and even known the pain of a pike-thrust, and the trumpet-call was a tuneless screech; but being something fresh, it won its meed of attention. Nearer and nearer came on the hideous discord, and Isaac, hastening on Dasipodius, perceived that it heralded a procession of some two-score men, and about as many women, stepping out in solemn triumph, bearing aloft banners improvised of paper and coloured rag, and shouting in more or less harmony with the musical accompaniment, the name of Otto von Steinbach. Perched high in their midst sat the object of this ovation, clinging for dear life to the arms of a faded velvet and tarnished gilt chair, which was hoisted on to the shoulders of several men, among whom the faces of one or two of the mathematician’s disaffected pupils were distinguishable. Proud and pale Otto looked; proud, because who in such a position could feel otherwise? and pale, because frightened was a mild term to express his sensations. The enthusiasm of those who carried him rendered his seat appallingly unsteady, and sent him jolting and shifting from side to side, like a handful of corn in a horse’s nosebag; and the mingled pain and ecstasy his countenance expressed, coupled with his efforts to bow and smile acknowledgment of the honours thrust upon him, presented a curious and instructive study.

So the procession, increasing as it went, passed the foot of the Chancellery steps, shouting: “Long live Otto von Steinbach! Down with the Blind Sorcerer! Long live Otto von Steinbach, our Horologe maker!”

“Every dog has his day,” grunted Isaac.

“What is it all about, Isaac?” asked Dasipodius.

“Nothing,” answered Habrecht. “Come away, Master.”

“Have they chaired Otto von Steinbach?”

“Ay, Heaven help them.”

And then Dasipodius and Habrecht made their way unmolested through the deserted streets, for all the world had run after Otto von Steinbach.

CHAPTER XXXII.

OTTO’S LITTLE DIFFICULTIES.

To the astonishment of Syndic Hackernagel, it was found on the reckoning day that notwithstanding his eloquence in Otto von Steinbach’s favour, and that individual’s subsequent public triumph, the majority of votes were given, not to him, but to Isaac Habrecht. Isaac, however, who had small relish for rising on others’ ill fortunes, least of all on those of Dasipodius, when informed by those who waited on him for the purpose, that he was the successful candidate, replied that he was no candidate at all, and consequently could be neither successful nor unsuccessful; and that Syndic Hackernagel in connecting his name as he had done with the affair, had been guilty of the most unwarrantable conclusions.

“But,” said the disconcerted delegates, “you should have signified this earlier, Master Habrecht.”

“I did, plain enough,” returned he.

“Oh! but that was informally; and really, this contempt of informality on your part will place you in a most unfavourable light.”

“Maybe,” answered Isaac, “but where all has been informal, formality would have become me as little as it would have been understood; and if Syndic Hackernagel found pleasure in hearing himself gabble on as he did the other day, he was welcome, I suppose, to make a fool of himself; but that is no reason I should turn knave, and try and set foot in my master’s shoe.”

“But—your conscience is too tender, it is indeed, Master Habrecht; and you must be aware that your refusal will not reinstate the Professor Dasipodius into a post for which he has been found unfitted by—by——”

“A set of arrant sheepsheads,” thundered Isaac, “who can’t tell a silk purse from a sow’s ear.”

“And is this,” ejaculated the spokesman in injured tones, “is this all the gratitude our council has to expect for its delicacy in having refrained from bringing the question before a formal tribunal?”

“Would to Heaven!” exclaimed Isaac, “it had been brought before a formal tribunal. Master Dasipodius might have had justice then. But if you don’t want the clock, why, you can go without it.”

“Oh! as to the clock,” was the lofty rejoinder, “I imagine we can have a clock without Master Dasipodius’ assistance; or yours either for the matter of that, Isaac Habrecht.”

“No doubt,” assented Isaac, “you can have a clock.”

“I did not say a clock,” shouted the other in irate tones, and rapping his knuckles sharply on the bench; “I said the clock—the clock which Master Dasipodius has begun.”

“Ay—ay, can you so?” said Isaac.

“Yes, we can. Hasn’t he got his plans, and can’t the Town Council compel him to deliver them up.”

“I’m not so sure of it,” said Habrecht; “but granted, what then?”

“What then? why then, if you will not——”

“I won’t,” said Isaac, “and I can’t.”

“Oh! can’t, indeed! A good joke that! Then we’ll see if Otto von Steinbach can, that’s all.”

A general chuckle among the deputies greeted this sally; but happening to observe that Habrecht seemed to be equally shaken with inward laughter, they fell into a sudden composure, and after bestowing on him a few moments’ silent stare, wished him a preternaturally solemn good day, and departed; to return at once to the Chancellery, where they announced Habrecht’s refusal, and steps were at once taken to secure the reversion of the appointment to Otto von Steinbach, the fortunate possessor of the next greatest number of votes.

Since Dasipodius had not lifted a finger in his own behalf, and Habrecht had declined the honour some would have thrust upon him, Otto’s triumph was easily won. That, however, only made him appreciate it the more, because, as he explained in the eloquent address with which he graced his acceptance of the appointment, and with whose hearing Syndic Hackernagel generously supplied him, it was so gratifying to reflect that favour and prejudice had been compelled to yield to calm enquiry and dispassionate consideration, and that, to use a comprehensive figure of speech, the right man was at last in the right place.

Concerning the Horologe, although it was in a very advanced stage towards completion, Otto had nursed the hope of being able to set it aside in favour of the one projected on the lines of his own originally rejected plan. He found himself, however, forced to abandon such wild hopes as soon as thought of, on account of the insuperable objections which at once arose. In the first place he was conscious that his quondam fellow-students, who thought themselves as good as he, and were not far wrong, were by no means well pleased at finding themselves under his direction; and although at present kept in check by public opinion, the least spark of over-assumption of authority on his part would have fired their lurking spirit of insubordination, and hurled him from his high estate before he was fairly well fixed in it; and he came to the conclusion that when the Horologe was quite finished, would be the more meet opportunity for visiting his wrath upon certain impertinent inuendoes and quips and cranks which he knew they indulged in at his expense.

He had, moreover, other cogent incentives to circumspection; standing, as he did, in terrible awe of what his sister Radegund might be having to say on the matter. Hitherto she had said ominously little; and he lived long in hourly dread of some outbreak from her of a storm of angry sarcasm, but he had escaped with comparative ease; and when he had told her his appointment had been confirmed, she had simply counselled him to try and fit himself in some degree for the onerous task before him; but that, taking him at his best, he was a poor creature to succeed such a man as Conrad Dasipodius.

“Oh! ah! of course,” grumbled Otto, “I knew that. Beside this paragon of yours, even your own flesh and blood is just dirt, and you have not one word of congratulation for your poor brother.”

“Alas! no.”

“It’s a blessing that there are those who understand my value better than you do, Radegund,” said Otto, tugging vexedly at the end of his trim little beard.

“A man is not a prophet in his own country, Otto dear. Put it down to that if you like.”

“I shan’t!” whimperingly snapped he, “it’s all because you’re so prejudiced in favour of that fellow. I do believe you’re in love with him, yes I do, there!”

“What is that?” she cried, turning on him with flashing eyes. “Say that again if you dare.”

But he did not exactly dare. “Well, well, where’s the need of firing up like that at a little bit of fun, my dear?” he said. “But at least you must confess you are a kinder sister than you care to seem; for it is you, with that letter business of yours, who have brought about my advancement, and I owe all my honours to you.”

Then marking that Radegund’s handsome brows knitted till they met, and she bit her lip till the blood came, he was satisfied, and went out for a walk through the city’s chief thoroughfares, to seek from an admiring public the éclat and sympathy lacking in his own house.

Frivolous and shallow-pated, however, as Otto von Steinbach was, he was not heartless, nor even destitute of generosity when he gave himself time to reflect, and Radegund’s indifference to his triumph wounded something better in him than his vanity. It was a really bitter drop in his cup of sweetness, since after his own fashion his affection for her was great, and his pride in her almost exceeded his love; but there was one yet more bitter drop still, and that was the necessity for carrying out Dasipodius’ plans to the utmost minutiæ. Necessity, however, knows no law; and without wasting his precious time on superfluous niceties, he went to Dasipodius and asked him for all his drawings, elevations, sectional plans, calculations, notes, and any other document he might have in his possession bearing reference to the new Cathedral Horologe, and when the mathematician refused to deliver them up to him, his amazement was boundless. “But I can’t get on without them,” he said.

“Use your own,” replied Dasipodius.

“But I tell you we want yours.”

“You do?” said the mathematician.

“Yes, you know, and you must give them up.” Dasipodius shook his head.

“Oh now—but really—it’s too absurd to stand out about such trifles! I never dreamt you’d go making any difficulty. I told them I was sure you wouldn’t. Don’t you see yourself—I mean, don’t you understand, that such a thing as a blind person making a clock has never been heard of; and you’re blind you know, you owned you were, and so how can you——”

“Your syllogism has a false conclusion, my friend; I can make a clock.”

“Oh, bother!” said Otto; “well, the town council says you can’t, so it’s all the same. I say look here, if you don’t give up these things they’ll be putting you in prison, they will indeed.”

“Perhaps,” said the mathematician with a shrug.

“Well, I shouldn’t like it to come to that. To be sure, you’ve always stood in my light, Conrad Dasipodius; if it hadn’t been for you, you know, I should have had a chance with cousin Sabina——”

“Take it now,” answered Dasipodius; “Mistress Sabina von Steinbach is free.”

“I—I wasn’t thinking so much of Sabina just then,” replied Otto; “I was only going to say you took away my first chance with the Horologe and—and——”

“But you have it all your own way now.”

“Oh yes, but I shouldn’t like you to be sent to prison, it’s such an uncomfortable idea, and all for such a trifle. Why, if you’d only just give up these papers and things, it would all go so nice and smooth, it would really.”

“Yes?” said Dasipodius; “well, I cannot do it, Otto.”

“It’s a great shame of you to make such a fuss about nothing,” grumbled Otto; but he attempted no further persuasion of his own, for he knew Dasipodius, and went away sorely discomfited, brooding, as he walked, upon the mathematician’s want of feeling in throwing obstacles in his path up Parnassus.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

“GIVE UP THE PLANS!”

Meantime the Horologe was at a standstill, and its makers as sheep without a shepherd. Confusion reigned supreme among them. Some, vowing they would work under no other master than Dasipodius, among whom were the brothers Habrecht, sent in their resignations. Others, who because their daily bread depended on the work dared not give it up, grumblingly consented to remain; while a few, who had found their old chief’s conscientious supervision irksome, were delighted at the prospect of the new regime, and were eager to resume their places in the studio, which for a week past had remained closed.

Dasipodius himself had refrained from going near the place, and had spent nearly all his time beside Christian, who, weighed down by grief and mental distress, had been stricken by illness, which was only aggravated when he found it put a stop to his being present at the Chancellery on the important day. This, however, which Christian took so much to heart, was the source of not a little consolation to his son, who felt how much unnecessary pain it had saved Christian; and when he had returned home, and undergone a close cross-examination from the invalid as to what had passed, he did not scruple to put as brilliant a gloss upon the matter as it would well bear.

“And so you really think,” said Christian, with a suspicion of regret in his tones, “you really think it is best to give it all up? Well, well,—but will the resignation be accepted?”

“Oh, it must. A man can’t be made to work against his will.”

“That’s true,” mused Christian; “but I wouldn’t give you up, I know, if I were the town council.”

The mathematician smiled sadly, and gently stroked the old man’s hand.

“I am glad you can smile,” went on Christian a little petulantly, “I can’t somehow.”

“Yes, yes, but cheer up, Väterle. That is because you have been ill, and are still weak; but listen now, in a day or two we are going away—you and I, from the city, to have a little holiday. The spring-time is so near now, and we will go—you and I, and Rappel here,” and Dasipodius patted the head of the dog, who responsively wagged his tail, and barked a volley of short, quick, joyous barks, as if he understood, as no doubt he did understand, all they were saying. “Out into the fields, and among the fresh green and the flowers, and forget for awhile all about the Horologe and—and everything. Yes, Väterle, shall we?”

But Christian only said with a weary sigh: “I am glad your poor mother did not live to see this day. I never thought a time would come when I should thank God she was not beside me.”

And to this Conrad had no ready reply.

“It would have broken her heart,” went on the old man.

“Nay—nay, father, not that. If I had committed some crime, then indeed—” he paused. How nearly had he been told off for a criminal! “But,” he went on, “all is as God wills.”

“Ay,” said Christian fretfully, “I daresay it may be.” Then he turned his face to the wall, one by one silent tears rolled down his furrowed cheeks, and for a long time he refused to be comforted; but at last he fell asleep, and dreamed such sweet dreams of waving boughs, and green fields, and sparkling waters, that after all, Conrad’s efforts to cheer him were assuredly not entirely thrown away; and when morning came, Christian could smile, and chatted with Dr. Bruno Wolkenberg quite eagerly over that proposed trip.

Bruno being perfectly instructed in the little fiction, said it was indeed a most admirable notion, and sat on, discussing the matter with Christian, until the Burgomaster looked in to see his old friend; and Bruno, having watched the two safely launched into the great Cession question, felt that Christian was in a fair way to speedy recovery, and that his presence could be easily spared.

Leaving them to their talk, therefore, the surgeon made his way to the turret studio. He had barely gone half up the staircase before he heard the voices of Dasipodius and Habrecht engaged in such unwontedly animated discussion that even after he had opened the door, he hesitated to enter, for fear of disturbing them. The quick ear, however, of the blind man caught Bruno’s footfall. “Is that you, Bruno?” he said in strangely rapid and excited tones, and the surgeon saw there was brilliant fire in his eyes, and a red hectic spot burning into the cheeks grown so pale and haggard of late. “Come here then, and judge between us. Look at Isaac Habrecht there.”

And Bruno obeying, saw that after his own stolid fashion, Isaac was equally agitated, for the lines about his resolute mouth were deep and set, and every feature was silently eloquent of a firm adherence to some opinion of which he had apparently just delivered himself.

“Do you know,” said Dasipodius, gasping for breath as he convulsively clutched Bruno by the arm, “do you know what he would have me do?”

Wolkenberg looked again from Habrecht’s face to the uncontrollable agitation in his friend’s; wondering as he gently drew his hand in his, what could have turned its cool steady touch to the burning, trembling thing it was?

“I cannot guess,” he answered.

“No!” cried Dasipodius, laughing hysterically, “by the Rood that I’ll swear you cannot! Look at him, Bruno! look at him well. That is the man I thought my friend; oh, but it was a grievous error! every whit as bad as when I believed you”—and he broke into a hollow laugh—“you incorruptible—do you remember that, Bruno?”

“Nay, nay,” soothed Bruno, “but we are your friends, Conrad; I’ll stake my life on it, never man had more loyal ones,” he added, turning his eyes on Isaac, who seconded this assurance with an emphatic nod.

“Oh! I ask your pardon!” bitterly rejoined Dasipodius; “yes, you wish me well, to be sure. To be sure, and that is just what—what she said in that—letter of hers, and what the town council people said, and Hackernagel—Master Hackernagel—he said it too, ‘We are your best friends, Professor Dasipodius—your best friends I assure you’. Friends! and now Isaac—and you, Bruno Wolkenberg—oh! Heaven save me from you all! I had best have taken serpents to my heart, than any one of you! Friends, ho! ho!” and his mocking laughter echoed through the vaulted chamber. “No! no! keep off, I say. Let go my hands. Keep off,” he went on; “all your stuffs and anodynes can never cure these deadly stings! They have gone to my heart—to my soul, I tell you, through—and through!” and with a moan of mortal pain, Dasipodius clenched his hand upon his breast, and shrank away from Bruno. “And now it is all dead here, quite dead—dead. Tell me, Bruno Wolkenberg,” he said, after a momentary pause which neither of the other men dared to break, and coming once more beside the surgeon, he gripped him confidentially by the arm, “tell me—how long may a man live when all his life’s blood has been sucked away? How long, I mean, can he seem like living? how long?” and his breath, as he awaited Bruno’s answer, laboured cruelly, like one indeed mortally crushed.

“Hush now, be calm, Conrad, all is not lost——”

“Oh! not yet. No, not yet. He tried though, he tried his best to steal it from me, the traitor there,” whirled on Dasipodius, pointing at Habrecht, who, save by the occasional twitching of his brows, betrayed no more emotion than a wooden block. “‘Give them up,’ that is what he has been saying to me. Could you have believed it of him, Bruno? ‘Let him have them all’——”

“Ay, every shred,” said Habrecht, speaking for the first time.

“Have what?” asked the mystified Bruno.

“The plans, man—the plans!” wildly sobbed Dasipodius, sinking down on the chair beside his writing-table.

“Ay,” nodded Isaac, “the Horologe plans, Doctor Wolkenberg. They want them you see. Otto von Steinbach wants them.”

“I daresay he does,” said Bruno with a faint smile.

“And I say let him have them,” concluded Habrecht.

“You hear!” said Dasipodius, turning on Bruno.

“Oh! h’m—yes,” answered the surgeon. “Well—really—no, upon my honour, I think not. No, no.”

“God bless you, Bruno!” gasped the mathematician; “God bless you for that.”

“It would be feeding such a cruel injustice, you see,” said Bruno.

“It would be doing no such thing,” roundly contradicted Isaac.

“It would be too much——”

“Ay, ay, there you are right,” laughed he, “it would be too much indeed. That’s a good saying, Doctor Wolkenberg, ‘Give a dog rope enough, and he’ll hang himself’.”

“How?” queried Bruno interestedly. “Nay, Conrad, but he has his reasons; right or wrong, let him speak. How would he, Master Habrecht?”

“How?” echoed Habrecht, grimly measuring Bruno’s length and breadth. “Well, well, you are only a doctor. See here then,” he went on in slightly mollified tones, taking a formidably official-looking document from the table, “the town council in this commands my master to deliver up all the plans and drawings of our Horologe into the hands of this—this—Otto von Steinbach, in order that”—and a sardonic smile flitted over the grave rugged features—“that he may complete the Horologe from them. Very well, but first of all, Dr. Wolkenberg, comes the fellow himself, and makes the same demand. My master refuses both the one and the other.”

“Naturally,” assented Bruno.

“Wait; well and good, that’s how it seems; but that’s not how it is. Supposing they had these plans. What will they do with them?”

“Ah!” sighed Bruno, “they would contrive to finish off the Horologe from them somehow, I imagine.”

“Do you?” said Isaac; “I thought you did. But they couldn’t do it, they couldn’t do it though they died for it; and every batzen of the money these honest townspeople have contributed, might as well have been thrown into the Rhine for any good they’ll get.”

“That must occur in either case I suppose, whether their work is done from von Steinbach’s plans, or they——”

“Make a cuddle-muddle of ours? No; for they might go on and finish von Steinbach’s piece of gimcrackery for a stalking-horse of their stupidity; but a week at our models will make them drop it like monkeys with hot chestnuts. And so I say let them try, let them have every dot, every line, and be hanged to them all.”

“That is your advice,” said Bruno cogitatively.

“Yes,” said Isaac, “it is; and it would be any honest man’s. I’m not saying it’s nice, mind you, to have a pack of thick-skulled, thumb-fingered idiots poking and mauling——”

“Hold thy peace, Isaac!” moaned Dasipodius, shiveringly burying his face in his folded arms.

“But,” went on Isaac, “what they do can’t hurt it in the long run. A good thing is a good thing; and gold’s gold, and if it chances to be dragged through the mire, it comes out—well, when you’ve rubbed the dirt off it, it just comes out the brighter; and that’s like the work of my master’s hands, and like my master too; and he’d be the first to acknowledge what’s due to the people, and protect them from a handful of fools, when he’s himself. But he’s not himself now. They’ve worried him into a fever between them, God forgive them all. I suppose if they had his death on their hands they wouldn’t mind, and you’d best be seeing to him, Dr. Wolkenberg,” concluded Isaac, casting, as he slowly made his way to the door, a look of saddened indignation at the bowed form of Dasipodius; but when he had the latch in his hand, he turned and wistfully eyed a bundle of parchments on the table. “There they are,” he said; “I’d give my right hand for the master to be saying: ‘Take them, Isaac, and carry them to the Chancellery,’” and then he slowly opened wider the door to go out.

“Isaac!” said the mathematician, lifting his head, and his voice sounded so faint and low that it was hardly audible; but Isaac heard, and turning back once more, said: “Master?”

“Take the plans and carry them to the Chancellery.”

Then the mathematician’s head fell heavily again upon his folded arms, and he lay motionless as death; while Habrecht silently approached the table, and taking up the bundle of parchments, carried them to the Chancellery.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

“INTER ALIA.”

On hearing that the Horologe designs had been safely deposited at the Chancellery, Syndic Hackernagel took to himself no small credit for the satisfactory issue to which he had conducted the whole affair; and as he reflected how entirely Otto von Steinbach was beholden to him, his green eyes gleamed with triumph.

All the same, he was puzzled by his easy conquest.

“It is of course entirely gratifying,” as he passingly observed to Councillor Job Klausewitz. “I myself had an impression that the man would have made more difficulty about it. However,” he loftily added, “I must own that it shows his sense.”

And Job, who had caught a bad cold in his head on the trial day, and done nothing but sneeze ever since, said he thought it did; and that the Professor Dasipodius must be uncommonly glad at finding himself quit of the whole business.

The Syndic’s exultations fell considerably, however, when he found that both the Habrechts had resigned their posts. While he shrank from owning it even to himself, he had uncomfortable misgivings as to Otto’s scientific capabilities; and in the event of any deficiencies becoming inconveniently conspicuous, he had counted on Habrecht for glossing them over.

His vexation applied almost equally to Kaspar, who, stripling though he was, no older craftsman in all the city could replace. Any forlorn hope, however, Hackernagel had entertained, that the two brothers might be compelled to work on at the studio by the terms of their indentures, was annihilated when he consulted these; and the desperate final attempt he made to induce the two to remain, met with stout refusal.

To Niklaus von Steinbach the result of that day’s work at the Chancellery had been very grievous. He felt that under a guise of friendly delicacy a crying injustice had been done Dasipodius; and yet he did not feel that he had had the power to avert it. He had hoped and believed that calm discussion of facts would have put an end to the absurd rumours and ignorant scandal concerning the mathematician’s infirmity, and have done him the service of raising him still higher in public esteem; but there had been no discussion, only the empty pipings of a bigoted enthusiast, and Niklaus sorely repented of the manner in which he had permitted the whole affair to be conducted; and yet he feared still more to retrace the false steps, lest Dasipodius should be exposed to even worse than he was already enduring. Niklaus, after his lights, was a clever, even shrewd man, but he was not equal to grappling with, and trampling down the hydra-headed superstition and ignorance surging around him. It was no empty bugbear which Hackernagel held aloft, when he hinted at fire and stake as the reward of men who dealt in matters of which the ruck of that generation had no conception, and consequently no toleration. Had his relations towards the mathematician been less intimate and kindly disposed than they were, it seemed to him he might have been able to have spoken out on his behalf more freely, and found better eloquence for refuting Hackernagel’s absurd sophisms. That the Syndic’s mode of attack had been thoroughly unworthy of the position he occupied, it did not need half of the Burgomaster’s perception to see; but the people’s ignorant infatuation for this man had shown itself more than once before now, and if the demagogue chose to say black was white, they infinitely preferred saying so too, rather than use their prescriptive right of thinking out a question for themselves. There was nothing they appeared more to enjoy than letting Syndic Hackernagel lead them by the nose.

Had this all happened a year earlier, Niklaus felt that he might have said out all that came uppermost in his mind concerning Dasipodius, and done him real service thereby; but with that knowledge of his character which a closer intercourse with him had brought, the Burgomaster knew himself to be under the influence which the mathematician seemed to exercise upon all who had to do with him. If ever for prudential motives he had striven to withstand this influence, he had capitulated long since, and been constrained besides, not even to refuse him his treasure of treasures, his one ewe lamb, his Lily; and yet more than this, since when he learned the affliction which had befallen Dasipodius, although he certainly strove, to persuade himself that Heaven had been very merciful in averting such a marriage, he failed miserably, and soon gave up vexing himself with the fiction that he was glad.

Had he been told in the past years that he would have been content to see his child the wife of a blind man, and one even by comparison with his own worldly state, a poor blind man, he would have indignantly spurned the monstrous notion; but the Burgomaster bowed to facts, and now his warm generous heart only yearned to bring back the roses to Sabina’s cheeks, and to shield Dasipodius from the storm which was buffeting him.

And he knew not how to do it. However iniquitously party spirit might have influenced the public voice to pronounce against Dasipodius, he had still been set aside by a process which in itself was at least fair; and as for Sabina, she maintained such a complete, almost stern silence touching the sudden disruption between herself and her lover, that Niklaus felt like one with his hands tied, and could only be a sad and anxious spectator. It was true he had his suspicions that his niece Radegund knew something of the real state of affairs, and he once went the length of speaking a word with her about these troubles vexing and perplexing to him; but Radegund so fiercely demanded of him if he thought her the mathematician’s keeper, that Niklaus shrank into his shell, and only said: “Well, well, niece, the poor child is troubled; and I fancied that a woman, and such a clever woman too as you are, might have been able to do what a stupid old father only blunders over; and I thought as you and the Professor Dasipodius are such good friends——”

“We are not—friends,” interrupted she.

“Oh!” returned Niklaus, scrutinizing her gloomy face from under his bushy brows. “It looked like it anyhow.”

“Do you mean to insinuate——”

“No,” returned he acridly. “That’s not my way—insinuating.” Then he added rather more hesitatingly: “It is merely that I have twice come upon you, niece, and the Professor Dasipodius in close confabulation together after dark; and that sort of thing always seems—friendly.”

“Things are not always what they seem.”

“Ah, well,” said Niklaus in rather hurried tones, for he stood in dread of Radegund’s oracular moods, “if you could have righted things for my poor little woman, I know you would, niece. So we’ll say no more about it.”

And Niklaus was right. If his child’s troubles had been of any other nature under the sun, there was not woman living who would have gone to her, and soothed, and striven to comfort, and lain aside her own pleasures for her sake. For pain and poverty, and every sort of wretchedness, mental or physical, humanity knows, Radegund had boundless sympathy, and of that sterling sort which spends itself in endeavouring to alleviate the misery it looks upon; but the waves of that swift and troublous current to which she had abandoned herself, hissed and howled their evil music in her ears too deafeningly for her to catch aught beyond the faintest echo of those angel voices beseeching her to return; and the sternest Calvinist in all Alsace could not more calmly have yielded to Destiny’s decree, than did she to the sway of her passionate worship of Dasipodius. It numbed down like an opiate all her generosity and her high sense of honour. Yet dead these were not; and many and many a time wakening from their uneasy sleep, they stirred her to a different course; but fiercely hushing them to quiescence, she abided with sphinx-like impenetrability on her beautiful face and awful outward calmness, the solving of the riddle she had propounded for herself and for those she loved.

Even when rumour said the Professor Dasipodius was about to leave Strassburg, she betrayed no shadow of interest in his goings or comings; but silently and unflaggingly continued to pursue her own share at the Horologe work, and this to her brother Otto’s unspeakable relief. He had dreaded as an almost inevitable outcome of the new order of affairs, that Radegund would throw up her contract, and make things generally unpleasant; but his terrors proved groundless, and it was a comfort to him beyond power of words, to mark how she seemed to be throwing all her energies into superintending the fixing of two of the completed panels into the cornice of the clock. To be sure, the outside of the Horologe was going on promisingly indeed!

And truly time was not to be lost now. The last winter snows had melted, and among the little ones of the old city a whisper had gone forth that if you looked very carefully indeed along by the river banks, out there beyond the walls, you would find a few tiny violets; and bolder spirits, though they of course were “Sunday children,” who always know pleasant things before others, declared that Cuckoo had begun to hint his agreeable intelligence. This must certainly have been true, because on the very next sunny morning, before a creature was up, the primroses peeped out, and rather in a fluster at having been so long caught napping by the quiet violets and the fresh young grass blades, hastily shook out their golden stars, for the saucy little yellow things do so love to have the best freshness of the dark purple foil of their modest sisters, declaring that without it their beauty is not seen to anything like the same advantage; though at this indirect compliment of course the violets can afford to smile in their gentle way, and say: “Foil, forsooth; well, well, they are dear merry little things, the primroses, let them chatter as they like!” But ere long spring must ripen into summer, and later summer was to give Strassburg its new Horologe. Under Dasipodius’ untiring supervision, there had been little fear that its nearly completed mechanism would have been ready even some weeks before Saint Laurence’s day. But the master’s hand was stayed now, and his successor stumbled beneath the weight of his own responsibility. Yet for very shame he dared not share his burden with those about him. If he could have taken his sister Radegund into his confidence, he knew how useful she could have been to him; but he instinctively comprehended that he might as well have sought counsel from one of the Cathedral marble effigies as from her. She never so much as entered the studio where he now reigned with fussy consequence, and since neither by word nor look she ever troubled herself to enquire how he prospered, he found himself driven to maintain a dignified reticence, which was none the less vexatious, on account of his having to keep his annoyance to himself. “Oh you know,” he one day airily remarked to Syndic Hackernagel, “one has quite enough of the thing all day long; and I make it a rule never to talk shop at home. Besides, one has such an immense objection to women meddling in things so far above their heads, to say nothing of their being so confoundedly self-opinionated.”

Tobias assented with an emphatic nod.

“Yes, you know,” continued Otto, “Dasipodius got into a way of consulting her about one thing or another, till he made her positively unendurable. And that’s just the whole difference between his method and mine. We work you see on curiously contrasting principles; it may have suited Dasipodius to get an opinion from a petticoat, but——”

“I’ve a notion,” said Hackernagel with a knowing wink, “that Dasipodius vastly admired Mistress Radegund.”

“Ah, oh—well, everybody does you know,” returned Otto proudly; “don’t you?”

“H’m,” conceded the other, “she’s a magnificent creature, but——”

“Well?” challenged Otto, who tolerated no buts save his own where Radegund was concerned.

“Ah! I was merely about to observe—hem—I had an impression that fairer beauty was more to your individual taste.”

“Well, perhaps,” sighingly admitted Otto, “I believe you are not wrong, Syndic Hackernagel.”

And then Syndic Hackernagel, smiling an indulgent smile, reminded him of his promise to look in for half an hour that evening on their family circle; a custom which of late had not been infrequent with Otto, who enjoying as he did in an eminent degree, the sensation of having caps pulled for him, found it satisfied in that quarter to almost the top of his bent. The consciousness that behind his back internal strife waged high among the four Mistresses Hackernagel on his account, was balm to Otto’s unhealed love wounds. It was so soothing to find himself appreciated, to feel sure that he had but to hold out his little finger for it to be instantly caught at and caressed by eight fair freckled hands.

Yet it was precisely this overflow of appreciation which confused him, and rendered him for a long time irresolute as to which of the sandy-haired goddesses he should give the golden apple, that is supposing things really went so hard with him that he should be driven into bestowing it in that quarter at all. Clearly he could only marry one of them, and the reflection made him shrink with terror and commiseration from the picture he conjured to his imagination of the three rejected ones. Those smiles he now basked in, and the honeyed flattery which now soothed and tranquilized his whole being, would be all changed to bitterness, and the good times, in short, would be fled for him for ever. And all for what?—for the sake of having chosen where he had no choice, or next to none.

Choice indeed was hardly to be conceived of, since the four ladies, formed on the lines of their sire, so nearly resembled each other, with their light eyes, sandy hair, and sallow complexions. Only the third, Mistress Gretchen’s, eyes were a shade darker, her nose within more feminine proportions, her figure less angular, and above all, her voice less shrill than her sisters’; but Otto clung to liberty a little longer, and moreover he had not jeopardized so much for the mere chance of horological honours when he first set about executing the little manœuvre which had led to the overthrow of Conrad Dasipodius. The chance of being able to win Sabina from him had been at least an equal incentive to his efforts; and that the tide of favour and prejudice had now set in his way so strongly was, he considered, no more than due reward for all his efforts to help himself; and he looked now to be having his way a little with the world and its womankind, for all the coast was clear and his rival trod the steps of the city no more.

CHAPTER XXXV.

“DOLCE FAR NIENTE?”

“And now, my Kaspar, tell me what you see?”

“I see—— but first, master, come a step further. Now stoop low—lower, for here at its mouth the cave is not five feet high. So carefully. Master, I see a stone chamber—so dark in some corners one can hardly tell its size, vaulting high above our heads, and all encrusted with forms as dainty as though some cunning sculptor had carved them. On every side of us the walls sparkle with such soft light as stars and diamonds give; while here and there, where the noonday sunlight smiles down on them from above, they gleam and glisten again.”

“A beautiful place, Kaspar.”

“Ay, master, beautiful indeed. But that is not half I see, for there are other crevices all shaded and fringed about with crimson leaves and green ferns; and through them too the sunlight shadows itself down upon the fretted walls, and turns the crystal stones to ruby and emerald; and so it glints and glances down to the very sand and moss beneath our feet, until we seem to be standing on a carpet of richest green all flecked with threads of gold.”

“A palace for a fairy queen!”

“Yes,” and Kaspar lowered his voice to an awesome whisper. “The Kelpie queen has always held her court here.”

“You have seen her—yes?” Dasipodius asked gravely.

“Nay,” smiled Kaspar, “but——”

“You know the place well?”

“By heart, master; and since I could handle a tool, I have many and many a time brought my wood blocks here, and striven to copy its rare fretted work.”

“And that sound of rushing water?”

“It is the torrent hard by, foaming down among the dark pine trees from the tall precipices which shut in our little lake here, making it so gloomy with their shadows that our people call it the Lake of the Black Waters. They declare that no sunlight ever shines upon it; and indeed I have often stood to watch him steal a cloud veil from yonder crag as he goes on his way.”

“And the lake you say is very deep?”

“Deep as it is dark. Listen,” and picking up a fragment of sparry rock, Kaspar flung it into the still waters, which rippling out into great circles, closed over the stone with that awesome gurgle which seems to tell of unfathomable depths.

“And out upon the lake, is there really no gleam of sunlight at this midday hour?”

“No; ’tis all blackness and shadow.”

“A dreary spot, Kaspar?”

“Nay, master, but it is grand and beautiful. Sometimes I have thought to myself that it is like—so like——”

“Like?—well? You hesitate.”

“So like your life, master. The sun seems all gone out of that—now.”

“Not at all,” returned the blind man quickly. “Say rather that my life is like this quiet cave of yours, which has in it indeed many a sombre corner, where no sunrays ever pierce; but what of the stalactites and crystals shining upon its walls? They are like the blessed consolation of those talents which the good God has given into my keeping, and which none—man nor woman, nor pain have been able to take from me. And then those warm gentle colours, Kaspar, which you say are as beautiful as precious gems, they are like my friends, my true brave friends, Isaac and you, and——”

“And Dr. Bruno,” said the lad with a brightening face.

“And Dr. Bruno, ay”; for the mist which had passingly dimmed the friendship of these two men was all dispelled now. “And with such as these, should I not be a traitor to say no sunshine is in my life? Its light is dim, Kaspar, but it is there, it is there; and where it fails to illumine, it warms and brings my heart such comfort, that sometimes I think it is better as it is.”

But Kaspar sighed and shook his head.

“Now what are you sighing about, foolish boy.”

“I am thinking of our Horologe, master.”

And for that the mathematician had no answer. If Kaspar thought of it twenty times a day, with Dasipodius it was an ever present memory; and he yearned towards the work torn from his hands, as towards a living love which had become to him so much the dearer, since he had told himself that the love of woman was not for him. In those two affections, both now equally lost to him, there was so much analogous, that he felt neither the one nor the other could be truly replaced. Possibly indeed, as he had just now hinted to his young companion, there would be found some spot less dunderheaded than his native city, where his talent would be welcomed and estimated at something of its true worth; but to him no labour could ever again be so dear as the task bequeathed to him by Chretei Herlin.

In that first great bitterness of its being wrested from him, his fevered dreams had pictured the old monk, now looking down on him in stern reproach, now sorely weeping to see the Horologe all marred and desecrated by ignorant unloving hands, until he would waken with a cry of agony. Still, after a wretched inferior fashion, there might, and doubtless would be to him a substitute for the Horologe; for there were beginning to be folks in the world who, so long as they met with genius or superior talent, cared not whether it had the reputation of being born of heaven or of darkness, provided it bore the unmistakable stamp of excellence, and met their particular needs; but though an endless life-span should be given him, Dasipodius knew that for Sabina there could never be any substitute. The mathematician was not one of those men who, however passionately they may have loved, however grievously lost, do, although it may be after long years, find consolation in the love of other women. Dasipodius had yielded to the overmastering influence so unwillingly, with a certain ungraciousness even. Thirty years had tided past of his life, and not the most fleeting desire to change his bachelorhood for matrimonial chains had ever troubled him; and even when at last his fate overtook him, then jealous for the dominion of his intellect, he had struggled and striven to quell it; all in vain however, and his heart’s sternest bulwarks, which had yielded to no brilliant strategy of far lovelier women, capitulated to this gentle girl, whom Strassburg called its Lily, because of her fresh young beauty and gentle grace.

Yet now, what had his wooing proved to be but a beautiful dream, an episode too fair and good to last? and he had wakened from it. Her own word had severed the bond between them. At first he strove hard to cheat himself into the belief that he was thankful, that it was better that all hope of domestic happiness should be blasted for the greater health and strength’s sake of his intellectual being: but he soon gave up all such pretence of self-consolation. He knew that his affection for the Burgomaster’s daughter had been so real, so deep, had seemed so worthy of them both, that it had given him fresh ardour and nobler motive for labouring on; and so in the end, he had just brought himself to bend before the fate which had made the world sombre indeed for him and chill with its dreary shadows, but which had preserved her for some brighter lot.

“Poor little Lily!” he would murmur again and again to himself, as he wandered on these spring evenings by the Lake of the Black Waters in the silent Swiss valley. “What a mad fool I was to think your bright bloom could have flourished among the blighting shadows of my blind life! How was it I could be so selfishly cruel as to have one thought of plucking you for myself?” And then with a strange remorse, his thoughts would fly back to that last meeting of theirs in the Cathedral, and he would torture his memory to recall every word which had passed between them; but the whole of the black day lived in his mind, only as some ugly but indistinct dream. “Yet I must have been mad if indeed I said harsh things to you! Oh, my little love! My little love!”

And indeed for days after that one, he had been frequently on the confines of unreason. The calm, calculating mathematical brain had well-nigh lost its balance then; and so much the more as, after the nature of him, he had struggled to maintain an outward composure, so much the greater had been the inward conflict.

And he bore about him now traces only too evident of the ordeal. His spare but well-knit frame had grown fragile-looking, and the stately shoulders and grand head bent lower than of old, while more than one grey thread gleamed amid the dark-brown hair. Then too the healthful olive of his cheek had faded into a pallor, while lines of care and of physical suffering had gathered about his mouth and brow, and the sightless eyes were a thought sunken, and encircled with dark rings, yet their mysterious beauty had not lessened; it had rather grown the greater from their expression of patient endurance, while the old dreamy thoughtfulness had deepened into an almost unearthly glory from the increased dilation of the pupils, which, although to Bruno Wolkenberg it spoke a more utterly hopeless tale, added to their lustrous beauty. They had none of the lack lustre, nor the terrible glare disfiguring nearly all blind eyes; only if Sabina could have seen them now, she would indeed have said they looked weary—very weary.

It had been well for Dasipodius that the fret of daily life had called him to action. Had he been able to choose, he would have shut himself up in his little turret sanctum, and finding his best solace in yet more unremitting application to study, would have stayed there until he had made of himself an easy prey to fever, or some other cruel stroke of sickness; but his essentially unselfish nature prompted him to turn from his own cares, and to think of the sadness darkening his father’s days, and he decided that it would be good for him that they should leave the city for a while, and seek that change of scene and associations which is said to be the best sort of healing for such things; and then it was that Isaac Habrecht had proffered the hospitality of his own home in the little hamlet close by Schaffhausen in the Black Forest. At first the mathematician, in whose mind was passing the struggle between his inclination and what he regarded as his duty, shook his head. “I cannot leave the city yet for awhile, Isaac. It might be thought——”

But Isaac made no scruple of telling his master that such considerations were unworthy of him. “Is it of any consequence what is thought? If ever these blockheads think at all, that is. It is right for you to come away, master. There’ll be mischief else,” he added, with an anxious look at the mathematician’s haggard face.

“Is my father so much changed then?” asked Dasipodius.

“Folks can’t be vexed out of their lives without showing it,” growled Isaac. “So say you’ll come, master. Our Schaffhausen is not a grand city like Strassburg, but it’s honester, I take it, than hereabouts, and the Emperor himself couldn’t bid you more welcome than my mother will; and if Master Christian fancies to come and stay awhile with us, we shall feel proud. Shan’t we, Kaspar?”

“Yes,” cried Kaspar gleefully.

“And Rappel—he must come too. Oh! he’ll be having rare poaching bouts with Tolpatsch.”

“That’s our sheep-dog,” parenthetically explained Kaspar.

“Ay. They’ll be fine cadgers together, I’ll warrant, and we’re plain folks down there to be sure, Master Dasipodius; but there’s fresh air with us anyhow, and that’s the stuff that’s wanting to bring back the life-blood to—Master Christian’s old cheeks. Why, the very scent of the young grass, and the fresh breeze, and—Kaspar, do you tell the master,” said Isaac, floundering a little, “about the birds, and waterfalls, and things.”

But Kaspar only went softly to Dasipodius, and taking his hand, said, “You’ll come, master?”

And Dasipodius smiled and said, “Yes”. And so it was that Christian and he and Rappel left Strassburg behind them, and came to be living at the Habrechts’ cottage, within a mile of Schaffhausen.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

“UNDER THE SHADE OF MELANCHOLY BOUGHS.”

In all the cantons of the League it would have been hard to find a kinder-hearted, more hospitable house-mother than Gridel Habrecht, the mother of Isaac and Kaspar. Eldest and youngest of their generation, there was between them a tribe of married brothers and sisters settled in Schaffhausen and its neighbourhood; and an industrious and thriving lot they were, all more or less expert in the clock and watch making craft, which has for centuries distinguished the villages of the Black Forest. Kaspar Habrecht, however, from earliest childhood had shown a talent for the wood-carving, which is another branch of its industry, and no less marked a feature of the prosperous locality where it is said beggars are unknown. The sterling and scientific horological skill of Isaac Habrecht had earned for him a high reputation, which had reached Strassburg; and when, under the auspices of Chretei Herlin, the great mechanical clock had been begun, more now than two years ago, Isaac, at the special desire of the old mathematician, accepted the post in his studio, and at the same time established himself as a clockmaker and brass-work instrument maker at the sign of the Wheel in one of the city’s chief thoroughfares. Withholding however the lad’s identity, he had submitted some specimens of his young brother’s handicraft to Herlin and Radegund von Steinbach, and other competent judges; and one and all of them had pronounced the work surpassing in beauty of design, and delicacy of touch, anything of the sort they had ever seen; and Chretei at once desired to know whether the artist’s services could be had for the new Horologe case? It was a proud moment for Isaac, as then for the first time he explained that this artist was his brother Kaspar.

“And he is but a youth, but he’ll do his best to give you and the city satisfaction, Father; I’ll answer for that.”

And so Kaspar too had taken his place in the Dial studio. His mother had found it a hard task to part with this child of her old age; but she was made of stoical stuff, and when she saw the flush of joy which lit Kaspar’s face at the unexpected distinction offered him, she did not refuse to let him go, but bidding him to be true to himself and his employers, sent him to the great city, and saved her tears till he was gone; and when they had had their way, she dried her still handsome eyes, and made herself content with the reflection that Isaac was with him, and where Isaac was no harm could come to anybody, and whatever Isaac did was right. That, however, made it none the less a joy to her, when she found that he and Kaspar were coming home for a while; and when she was further desired to prepare for the guests they should bring with them, she set to work and brought out her finest linen, and all the best her house afforded, and excellent the best was; and her man Yörgli, whose normal round of duties was confined to stable and pasture work, was bidden to come indoors and help Mariannle to move about the cumbrous handsome old chairs and tables and presses in the best bed-chamber; and Yörgli, who had an avowed admiration for Mariannle, was nothing loth; neither perhaps had Mariannle any objection, since for all she laughed and danced and flirted whenever it suited her humour, she liked Yörgli, she said, well enough; quite enough, she would own if driven very close, to marry him when a sufficient number of florins had been saved up to buy a certain charming little cottage not far off, which Yörgli had his eye upon.

In those days when pens and newspapers had not as yet come to be things of course, Frau Habrecht could have but a very scanty conception of the events which had so recently created such a stir in Strassburg, until she had her son’s vivâ voce relation of it. Isaac had indeed warned her that Dasipodius was blind; rumour moreover had already brought so much within her ken, and when she found that he was actually to be her guest, she was a little put about at the threatened responsibility which she imagined the charge of a blind person would entail upon her, and her practical mind was much exercised to conceive what Conrad Dasipodius would be finding to do with himself all day in that little village, whose busy silence was only broken by the tapping of tiny hammers and the grating of files.

The briefest acquaintance however with the blind man dispelled all her perplexities. At first, indeed, she found it difficult to persuade herself that he was blind. It was not merely that his eyes were so clear and well open, but he was so entirely able to do things for himself—and for other people, as she was not slow to remark; and when, for example, at supper-time on the evening of their arrival, Dasipodius reached a chair and placed it for her at the table, her heart was won for ever.

“He did,” she said afterwards, “what you two forgot to do with both your fine eyes, and for all you saw to the poor little old mother, she might have set her own chair. He didn’t find it too much trouble to pay an old woman attentions, such as you two, I suppose, keep all for the young ones. And,” went on she, not a little delighted at being able to reassume the old tyranny over her two favourite sons, “I’ve not grown into an imbecile since you have been away, I can tell you, and I’ve more than an idea that you’ve been playing me some trick, and that he’s not blind at all; and if you have——”

“God forbid, mother!” said Isaac gravely. “I wish we had been; but the master’s stone blind.”

And the good woman allowed herself to be convinced; but she was greatly tempted to begin to question the use of eyes at all, if one could make one’s self so pleasant and so courtly without them. And so it was that Dasipodius won himself the first place in his hostess’s esteem, and henceforth her solicitude and anxiety for his personal comfort was as unceasing as it was unobtrusive, and never a suspicion of fuss in it; for with all his gentle ways, she stood in a certain sort of awe of him.

“Poor gentleman!” she said one day to Isaac. “At all events it doesn’t need you or anybody to tell me that he and trouble are close acquaintance; but it’s a noble face, Isaac, a noble face,” and then it seemed to her that in Dasipodius she had found another son.

Neither did Christian lack her kind hospitable care; and that time he spent in the Black Forest was very pleasant to him. Many a long year had passed since last he had basked in the sunshine of a country spring-tide; and he would wander away on those bright mornings, finding a chastened pleasure in giving rein to memory, till it reached that spring-time of his early manhood when he made the journey into the Vosges Mountains and found his first last love. If now and then time hung a little heavy for him, he kept that religiously to himself, for he knew the sacrifice which had been made to afford him the benefit of this change, which of course, taking all in all, he was enjoying well enough; but Christian sorely missed Burgomaster von Steinbach looking in, and would have given all the grey hairs off his head for a little squabble about the Cession. A dozen times a day the old man would be silently considering to himself what was going on in Strassburg; and when after they had been there about a fortnight, Dr. Bruno Wolkenberg guilefully contrived to give his patients the slip, and handing them over to the tender mercies of a deputy, made his appearance along with Balder at the cottage, Christian plied him with questions about things in general, among which Otto von Steinbach was by no means forgotten.

“And how does he get on with his work?” rather drily asked Christian.

But Bruno, who had fully and satisfactorily answered all his other enquiries, frowning impatiently, ruffling up his hair with his fingers, and muttering something not too complimentary about Otto, strode silently out into the air.

“Yes, I know,” nodded Christian, looking after him, “they made a mistake when they let my boy go; there’s no doubt of that.”

When, however, the friends found themselves alone, Dasipodius asked Bruno how Radegund’s pictures round the Horologe cornice were getting on.

“They are perfection,” said Bruno; “at least things outside will all be as they ought.”

“That will rejoice the Bishop’s heart,” replied the mathematician. “Has he returned?”

“No, but Radegund is anxiously looking for his coming.”

“But her pictures are not finished yet?” said Dasipodius.

“It is not the pictures she’s thinking of, I take it,” answered Wolkenberg.

“What then?”

“Ah! who can ever guess what she has in her head? ‘I have much to speak with him about,’ that is all she condescends to inform me. She might tell you more, Conrad,” jerked out the jealous Bruno, clutching up a handful of grass, and then scattering it to the four winds.

“What is vexing her?”

“Nay, she seems to live in a world of vexation. She never smiles now, Conrad, and it used to be like a golden sunset when Radegund smiled.”

“Poor girl! what a burden she makes life to herself; and to you—you patient old bear.”

“I am not patient,” groaned Bruno, his blue eyes growing at once moist and fiery. “Oh, Conrad, it is too hard; I think it will kill me if it goes on much longer.”

“I would to heaven I could make you both happy,” said Dasipodius musingly.

“Honestly, do you wish that?” demanded Wolkenberg, in whom the old suspicion was so hard to die.

“Honestly?” echoed Dasipodius, lifting his brows surprisedly; “why, from my heart yes. And—if—nay, if I speak all I think, I will say I wish your love might find another—that is a gratefuller, kinder——”

“What is that?” cried the surgeon, starting from his place beside Dasipodius, and his handsome face kindling and bristling like any lion’s. “Do you take me for a weathercock or a windmill?”

“Not a bit of it. Sit down again now, Bruno. I was only going to say that if indeed Radegund does not return your affection, then certainly she can have no heart, and you are worlds too good for a heartless——”

“My God! Conrad,” said Bruno, and his voice trembled with suppressed agitation and anger, “though it is you who say that, I could fell you to the ground for it.”

“Then I had best say no more,” answered Dasipodius. “We will not quarrel over this—over a woman. Is she—is there one worth it? Tell me, Bruno, have you seen—Sabina, Mistress Sabina von Steinbach?”

And Dasipodius’ cheek crimsoned and paled again before the surgeon answered curtly, “Yes”.

“And—she was well?”

“Oh, as far as I know; but she hardly spoke a word to me; and, I’ll warrant you, I did not to her.”

“Why not?”

“Why not? I can’t, Conrad,—there. It’s of no use. When I look at her pretty dove-like face, and think what she can be, how false and shallow-hearted—and to you, Conrad—to you.”

“Have done, Bruno Wolkenberg!” cried Dasipodius, clutching fiercely at a tree branch within reach, and bringing himself to his feet. “One word more about Sabina von Steinbach and we are enemies for ever.”

“Mistress von Steinbach,” said Bruno, in chilly even tones, and with a contemptuous shrug of his broad shoulders, “Mistress von Steinbach shall make no quarrel between us.”

“Good. There is no need to discuss her at all. She has passed out of my life. If I could hear,” went on Dasipodius after a short pause, “that another could atone to her for all the vexation my love has caused her—that some man worthy of her——”

“Oh,” bitterly interrupted Bruno. “I am glad to think you have come to regard it in that light. Mistress Sabina never did run short of admirers; and now you are out of the winning, she may choose where she pleases, and——”

“Well?” said Dasipodius, with quick short breath. “Why do you waste words? Speak. Who is it?”

“I did not say,” stammered the inconsequential Bruno, “that it was anybody—nobody—Otto von Steinbach that is——”

“Otto von Steinbach!” gasped Dasipodius.

“He’ll do as well as another I suppose,” muttered Bruno.

“No! no! no! It cannot be! You are wrong—you——”

“May be so; but he—you know he used to be very sweet at Hackernagel’s house; now he hardly ever goes there, and spends all his evenings at the Burgomaster’s.”

“And—she?” hoarsely demanded Dasipodius.

“Ah! She—sits and spins.”

Yes, yes, of course—the old old story all through again! Just as she had sat and spun—could not the blind man see it all in his memory so plainly? Those days that were gone! Every ripple in her golden hair gleaming wherever the sunlight touched it like purest gold, every shy soft glance of her eyes, the eloquent ebb and flow of rosy colour to her soft rounded cheek. All this, and much more, passed in mocking array before him; and so, still then in that old dining-hall, that drama—what? Nay, that farce of woman’s love was playing, only with just a change of lovers; for the dainty heroine, the same woman mimed it to as great a perfection as ever no doubt. Had her new coadjutor been worthier, perhaps Dasipodius could have borne to think of it differently, but—well, the last straw had been added to the burden now!—Otto von Steinbach! Ah, great heaven! could it be, the mathematician asked himself, that he had committed some unremembered crime, for which it was doomed that this scatterbrain, unstable boy, should be the avenger, and his supplanter in all that made life worth living?

Oh, woman! woman! to the end it will be like this. For your sake Troy may burn, for you noble hearts may crack; at your feet men will chain and enslave their best ambitions, and still, calm and silent, you sit and spin, and seem to take no heed!

But Sabina’s old love only said: “If a storm came by, Otto would be no shelter for the Lily, Bruno.”

“They are well enough matched,” said Bruno, hating himself that he spoke so harshly.

“It may be so,” said Dasipodius slowly and wistfully; and in unbroken silence the two sat on, listening to the low soughing of the spring breeze among the oak boughs, and the gentle creaking of the pine branches, and the waterfall’s distant roar, and the buzzing of the insects about them, thinking the while what a fallacy it was, that notion about nature being the counterpart of man’s life. Why, here in the one case, was not all peace and brightness and content? and as the days should lengthen out, this early promise would all ripen into golden summer, and still richer autumn’s harvesting, and the happiness of all living creatures would be perfected. Only for those two, the buds of hope had been nipped by cruel frosts, and ere their manhood’s summer was reached, the wintry clouds of disappointment were heavy upon them.

So noonday waned, and never a syllable more the two interchanged, until Kaspar came in search of them. “That is you, Kaspar?” said Dasipodius, his ear first detecting the boy’s light step over the fallen stones of the mountain side. “Come here; I was thinking of you this moment, and then—I hear your footstep. That is what they say of the angels.”

“I am but a poor sort of angel,” laughingly said the boy, as he flung himself full length upon the grass at the mathematician’s feet.

“Prove yourself at least a good spirit then. For we are sorely wanting one to take us out of ourselves for a bit. Come now, have I not over and over again heard you say there is a legend attached to this lake of yours?”

“Oh, yes,” cried Bruno, “there is, I know——”

“Hold your peace,” smiled Dasipodius, lifting his finger. “Of course you know, but you have been in a brown study this hour and more past, and your version might not be so cheerful as Kaspar’s. So come now, lad, begin. Once upon a time—”

“Yes,” said Kaspar. “Once upon a time there was a brave handsome knight dwelt in yonder castle, and he was beloved by two fair ladies——”

“He loved two fair ladies, you mean,” corrected the mathematician.

“He loved one of them, yes,” gravely assented Kaspar, “and——”

“But they were not both fair,” criticised Bruno. “One was dark; that is the way at least that I’ve heard the story, with hair and eyes like the raven’s wing.”

“I should have said, of course,” said the patient Kaspar, “two beautiful ladies; one a Count Palatine’s daughter, the Lady Aldegonda, and the other a poor esquire’s child, Veronica, fair-haired and blue-eyed, and it was her the knight loved. But when Aldegonda found that out, she went to the poor maiden, and laughing her love to scorn, bade her find lowlier wooers, that falcons mated with merlins, not with tercel-hawks; and that it was at her feet the knight Hugo would fain worship. And when the poor child heard this, her heart felt near to breaking and——”

“Now, Kaspar,” interrupted the mathematician, “surely your story is simple nonsense as it stands with your telling. I suppose the knight had told her that he loved her; that would have sufficed.”

“Yes, he had told her,” answered Kaspar, “but she was a woman, very young it is true, not very wise perhaps, but old enough to know men’s hearts can be fickle; wise enough to see how gloriously beautiful the Lady Aldegonda was, and she misdoubted the power of her own pale beauty in such rivalry. Don’t you understand, master?”

“Go on,” shrugged the mathematician.

“And so, as I was telling you, the Lady Aldegonda’s words almost broke Veronica’s heart, and there seemed nothing left for her but to die. And day after day, for the knight was absent just then from his castle, she would come and sit just hereabouts where we are now, on the lake’s brink, and gaze into the deep deep, cold cold water, and then there would steal terrible thoughts into her weary desolate soul.

“One day while she was sitting so, there seemed to come a low murmur from the Kelpie’s cave here. Nearer and nearer it came; but she sighed to herself, ‘It is but the wind whispering among the ferns,’ and still nearer and nearer came these sounds. ‘It is only the wavelets,’ she sadly said, ‘stirring the long rushes.’ And truly they were; and still the murmuring came closer, closer, until she knew it to be too sweet for the whispering of the wind or the rippling of the water, too sweet for aught save Hugo’s voice. ‘My life, I love you,’ it said. ‘Nay,’ sobbed she, but yielding all the while to the strong arms folding her so fond and close, ‘but the Lady Aldegonda says——’ ‘What can the Lady Aldegonda know,’ he rejoined, with a strange stern look, which fled again as his face bent over hers, ‘of the love I bear for you, sweetheart? Come, Father Sigurd waits at the holy altar to make us one. Wilt come, dear love?’ And so from the dark weeds the maiden rose up, her white dress heavy with the waters that had near been her grave, and the little forget-me-not flowers she had gathered, for all her bride’s bravery, in her bosom, and ere the Ave Maria chimed again, she stood in the castle halls yonder, Hugo’s dear true wife, and many a long and happy year they lived. That’s all, master; it isn’t so much of a tale as some are.”

“And what there is of it you’ve half left out,” grumbled Bruno. “The Lady Aldegonda——”

“Ah,” smiled Dasipodius. “She found a suitor more sensible to her charms, depend on it.”

“No such thing,” answered Bruno. “She killed herself for love of Hugo. Eh, Kaspar, is it not so?”

“They found her dead next dawn at the foot of the crag yonder,” said Kaspar.

“A cruel end,” said the mathematician.

“She deserved no better,” grumbled Bruno.

“You are unkind, Kaspar,” smiled Dasipodius. “Did I not say I expected something cheerful of you?”

“But,” pleaded the boy earnestly, “how could I twist the ending false, and make it happy when it wasn’t?”

“Why, it is but a legend!”

“The more reason to make it seem like life.”

“Well, well—if I had tears for bygones, I think I could spare a few for the Lady Aldegonda’s love. It is—come, Bruno, leave sighing, and cudgel your invention to help my square inch brain find a simile. What is misplaced love like?”

“I cannot say,” said Bruno, “unless it be like the precious pearls that proud Queen of Egypt wasted in a cup of vinegar.”

“It will do, though it has seen some service; but sometimes it has seemed to me that there may be some bright hidden meridian towards which such seemingly aimless lines all converge. There, confess now, if my science is not a match for your romance.”

CHAPTER XXXVII.

“THE OLD LOVE OR THE NEW?”

Yes, it was all true, as Bruno Wolkenberg had told Dasipodius, that Sabina von Steinbach sat and span, and attended to household affairs, and entertained her father’s guests, and so charmingly did all the thousand and one little duties and courtesies, and odds and ends of things expected of the daughter of a respected and well-to-do Burgomaster, that mothers of feather-headed, frivolous girls would say admiringly, “There’s an old head on young shoulders for you! That now is something like a daughter! You never see her flaunting all over the place pranked in furbelows and finery. Take example from her if you mean to land your sweethearts for husbands. Men like these housewifely ways a thousand times better than all your butterfly antics. Oh! flirt and talk nonsense to your fill, but it is such girls mind as Sabina von Steinbach they make their wives of—if they’ve an ounce of sense.”

And certainly it seemed as if the bachelors of Strassburg had gone out of their way to lay in a stock of that commodity; and the young foolish virgins might toss their heads and call this wise one a sly proud thing as much as they pleased, it did not alter the fact that masculine hearts did greatly incline towards Sabina von Steinbach, and no sooner was the coast clear of the old love, than a host of would-be new ones besieged the house in the Munster-gasse. Those among them, however, who went as far as to proffer hand and heart retired nonsuited, and apparently the Lily was not to be won; but backed by the fortunate accident of his cousinship and his inexhaustible stock of self-complacency, Otto von Steinbach contrived to renew his old footing in the goldsmith’s house.

Now, as always, Otto’s company bored the Burgomaster cruelly. Niklaus by no means delighted in his frequent visits, at the same time he never could find it in his heart to bid him make them fewer; and so, after the way of men, he contrived to shuffle the disagreeable task on to his womankind.

“You don’t like that jackanapes cousin of yours to be eternally skipping in and out like a tame magpie, do you?” he asked Sabina, after one of these inflictions.

“Not much,” answered she.

“Not much!” impatiently echoed the Burgomaster. “That is worse than no answer. If you are so nice about words, I must speak plainer; do you wish it?”

“Why should I, father?” she listlessly asked.

“Oh,” said Niklaus testily, “how should I know? Do I understand these things?”

“What things?”

“Well,” said the Burgomaster, growing red, and fidgeting his hands in his pockets, “it isn’t me nor Mitte he comes to see, I suppose, in his silver tags and sky-blue doublets; and if it isn’t—well, don’t I say I don’t understand these things? So do as you will, only—there, there, kiss your old father, little one, and try to be my dear bright Lily once again.”

Niklaus von Steinbach was a broad-natured man, and while he found a modicum of his nephew’s society go a very long way with himself, he did not overlook the fact that Otto was a well-looking young man; and reflecting on this fact, as he sat one day sorting a tray of precious stones, he went on to argue from it, that women did undoubtedly care for that sort of thing; “though somehow I had a notion that Sabina—yes,” he went on, critically examining a diamond he had in his hand, “these are all passable stones; but this—this is a beauty. I wouldn’t barter it for all the rest put together. I wonder,” and then Niklaus sighed, “I wonder how Dasipodius gets on; well, well.”

It was weary work for the old goldsmith to stand by and look on his child’s endurance of some mental suffering marked so unmistakably in her face, and to find himself powerless to make life brighter for her. It would, he thought, have been so much better if he could have found some carelessness or peccadillo in her to grumble at, and so to relieve his feelings; but day by day she went through her round of duties, and when he came near, would look up and welcome him with a smile that was but a poor faint shadow of its old sunny self; and he was not so blind but that he often saw how tears had been hastily brushed from the gentle eyes, and it was things such as these which led him to build up some sort of forlorn hope on Otto, and think that if he were able after all to stamp down the canker-worm of her jealously-hidden griefs, he would hardly dare to hinder him. As a practical step towards superinducing this crisis, which he at once shrank from and desired, he adopted the custom of betaking himself to his counting-house whenever Otto looked in, which on an average was at least twice a day, and leaving the cousins together; but Otto had seemed to lack his advancement so entirely, that at last out of all patience, Niklaus had hinted to Sabina that there must be no more shilly-shally, and things must be settled at once.

It had, however, but very recently dawned upon Sabina that there could be anything to settle. Otto had had his answer ever so long ago to a certain question he had put. It was because she had felt herself so safe in his cousinly society that she had allowed him within these few last weeks to indulge the fancy he appeared to have for making a sort of tame cat of himself about the place.

She knew very well that for some time past he had been dancing attendance at Syndic Hackernagel’s, and had rejoiced to think that in the society of the four ladies there, he might have come upon the heart which she once prophesied to him he would find. As time went on however, she discovered that these visits at Hackernagel’s house had grown few and far between, in favour of spending his valuable leisure at the Munster-gasse.

“Now it’s hard,” said Sabina, with a faint smile of self-complacency born of Otto’s return to his old allegiance, and an indignant frown for such fast and loose tricks; “it’s abominably hard if she’s fond of him; and there is, of course, no accounting for taste, poor thing!” The object of her compassion being Gretchen Hackernagel, whom, by some occult instinct, she was persuaded had been the chosen fair, though nobody had ever said so, least of all the young gentleman himself; and Sabina determined to do battle with him on Gretchen’s behalf, if it should come to any tug of war. Moreover, the wily little woman, in this determination to help her neighbour, found her own small difficulties lightened. “I will not have you making believe,” she said coquettishly, “when all the time you are dying to be round at Master Hackernagel’s. Oh yes, I know all about it,” she went on with a gleam of merriment in her eyes; “pray what would Ortruda say, or Adelheid, or—which is it, Otto?”

“Gretchen, I suppose you mean,” blushed the unwary Otto.

“Ah yes, Gretchen to be sure,” she said delightedly; “and what, pray, would she say to hear you talking this nonsense to me?”

“It isn’t my fault,” groaned Otto, “if they’re after me.”

“For shame!” flushed up she, “to say such a thing when you have gone spending half your time there, and they’ve been so kind to you!”

“Yes, but where there’s a pack of girls, one always is civilly treated.”

“And you—have been civil back?”

“Oh well, but it doesn’t follow because a fellow’s been civil to a girl, he must marry her.”

“And what may be her view? What, I mean, may be her opinion of you?”

“Opinion! ho!” airily smirked Otto—“opinion! I like that. My dear child, what has a woman to do with opinions, when she’s over head and ears in love with you.”

“With you?”

“Rather.”

“Ah! she has told you so?”

“Now, Sabina, don’t be absurd; of course she hasn’t.”

“Then how can you know?”

“Ah, there—one does pretty well know these things.”

“But I’d be quite sure, I would indeed, Otto. It would be so bad for you to have made any mistake after all,” she said gravely.

“Oh! I’m not in the least afraid of that.”

“Then you are fortunate, sir, and must never cease thanking Heaven for this true love which you have found. Do you remember I told you you would find it; and am I not a true Sibyl?—say now?”

But Otto only growled, and vowed he did not care one straw for Gretchen Hackernagel. “And she has become positively hideous to me since—come now, look here, Sabina, you’d better not be trifling with me in this cat and mouse way. I never mean to ask you a third time, I swear I don’t.”

“Otto, I cannot be your wife.”

“Well, it’s great nonsense, let me tell you; but people never do know their best chances when they’ve got them. It’ll just serve you right if you find yourself sticking here with your father all your life, that it will.”

“It is my desire,” she answered.

“But look here now, if the Burgomaster should—if you should be left alone?”

“I don’t care to think of that,” she replied, paling a little.

“Neither do I,” said he rather chokingly. “I couldn’t bear to think of you—left all alone in the world. It makes me wretched.”

“Don’t let it, Otto dear,” interrupted the girl, touched by his tones. “The Sisters at Freiburg would give me shelter if—if I wanted it. Aunt Ottilie——”

But what Otto said of the reverend mother and her little community at this juncture, need not be recorded here. “You’d never become a nun!” he burst out. “Oh! it’s a shame! a confounded horrid shame! and all because that Conrad Dasi——”

“Hush!” the girl’s thin cheek, which had flushed slightly, paled to ashen white; and her mobile lips closed so sternly, that the last syllables died on Otto’s lips. “There must be no word on that subject,” she said in cold steady tones. “Do you understand?”

“O certainly. Of course not, if you don’t like it. Not a word; but I wish Dasi—I mean, I wish the thing had never been born or thought of, that I do,” and the Horologe’s new master’s brow wrinkled over with care. “It’ll kill me soon.”

“Kill you?”

“Yes, that’ll be the end of it. I’m very ill already. Don’t I look awfully pale, Sabina?”

“Well, rather,” she said, lifting her eyes to his face with some interest; and indeed his almost feminine delicacy and transparency of complexion was dulled, and a harassed weary look was in his eyes.

“It’s that confounded clock,” continued he. “Women bother a fellow quite enough, but ten of ’em are nothing to that clock; and I tell you it will be the death of me.”

“Then give it up,” she said in mildly apprehensive tones.

“Oh yes, likely, isn’t it? and make myself the laughing stock of the place,” said Otto dismally. “I tell you what it is, Sabina, Dasipodius knew what he was about, when he wanted me to take it.”

“Wanted you to take it!” echoed she in amazement.

“Oh, depend upon it he did. He just wanted to wash his hands of the thing, I know. If he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have let me have his plans of it quite so easy a bargain. And small blame to him.”

“I think you’re raving,” she answered, still with her eyes transfixing her cousin’s face.

“There wouldn’t be much wonder if I was,” hysterically returned he, rubbing his forehead. “And if you could see the inside of that thing, it would just drive you mad too. Yes, only to look at it.”

“But I have seen it—many a time,” murmured she, thinking of the dear old days, “and it always looked very nice.”

“Did it!” returned he, in the irony of his despair. “It’s in an awful mess now, all the same. I don’t mind telling you so, Sabina,” and he heaved a tremendous sigh of relief. “You can keep a secret I know.”

“Oh, Otto!” she cried in dismayed reproach, “and it was all so beautiful and tidy when—when——” she hesitated, “everything, I mean, was in such perfect order; each part only waiting to be put in its place.”

“Yes, but that was because—don’t you understand—because Dasipodius knew what he was going to do, and that helps a man on; but I—the very idea, you know, of its being imagined that I can make head or tail of what might come into Dasipodius’ brain! Oh it’s absurd!” said Otto, thrusting his hands into his pockets and pacing the floor to and fro. “It all comes,” he went on, “of everybody being so prejudiced in favour of him. Oh you may laugh,” he said, detecting the bitter smile on her lips, “but they’re just all of them infatuated with him. And Radegund now, she’s every bit as bad as the rest. Why she won’t help me a bit, though she knows as well as he does, how it’s all meant to go.”

“And yet,” said Sabina in dreamy tones, “they have treated him so shamefully.”

“Oh, ha, h’m, well, but of course it wouldn’t have done to go on employing a man who—h’m, laboured under general suspicion as he did. Magic, don’t you see——”

“It couldn’t be proved,” she contested; “his worst enemies could hardly find a shadow of proof.”

“No, they couldn’t exactly find it—but—h’m—there’s no doubt he must. No fellow—and above all a blind fellow—ha! ha! why it’s ridiculous to think of!—could have invented such an infernal, confoundedly complicated bit of machinery, if the devil or somebody hadn’t backed him up.”

“Then,” cried she indignantly, “how is it they make you go on with his plans? Why didn’t they order you to begin with your own all over again? There was nothing—particular about them?”

“Oh no, nothing at all; but the whole thing has been a mass of favour and prejudice.”

“But if,” insisted Sabina, “if they were afraid of the Professor Dasipodius’ supervision, how is it they are not afraid to make use of his plans? I can’t understand.”

“My dear girl, of course you can’t. Women never can. These distinctions are too nice for them. Logical deduction and mathematical precision are too much for their brain power, and——”

“And if you’re not careful, they’ll be more than enough for yours, Cousin Otto. It never was over strong.”

“Ah!” languorously returned Otto, transported to have made of himself at any cost an object of her solicitude, “if it is your wish that I——”

“That you should take care of yourself?” she said smilingly. “Yes it is.”

“Then for your sake——”

“Nay—for Gretchen Hackernagel’s, I do hope you will.”

And without staying to say good-bye, Otto departed.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

TIME’S CHANGES.

The old city rests after its day’s work in the soft late Spring gloaming. Tower and spire and gabled roof catch the last lingering reflections of the golden and crimson clouds where the sun went down. Already this long time the storks have been gravely reposing in their loftily pitched nests, but the swallows and martins are still discussing their respective claims to the most desirable sleeping accommodation afforded by the fretted eaves of the Cathedral. A few stars are beginning to glimmer in the deep blue sky, which, however, is only to be caught in glimpses from the footway of the narrow streets, between whose overhanging stories and great wooden galleries, and facades heavy with carving, even the moon’s glare is hardly able to penetrate. The gaudy brilliancy of the countless street signs has not yet been obscured by the gathering shadows, and here a snow-white swift-footed stag, there a grizzly bear, next door a wild man, appalling in his hirsute but insufficient covering, brandishes his terrible knotted club. Across the road, and far more frightful still, only yielding indeed in fearsomeness to the strong-minded of later days, is the “Strong Woman,” who appears to be literally striding from her cast-iron frame, with bristling hyæna-like locks. Scarcely a shop which has not its sign; hardly a burgher’s dwelling lacking its cognizance or coat of arms; while for the most part the spaces between the mullioned casements are gorgeous with fresco painting, picturing forth the labours of the mighty Hercules, the departure of the good ship Argonaut, the loves of Venus and Adonis, and many another mythic tale.

High up on their deep sloping roofs the grand old houses proclaim their ages in gigantic figures, some of which date two and three centuries back. Very silent and half deserted the streets are now, for it is close upon seven and supper-time; and through half-open doors and lattice panes, peal forth now and again shouts of merry laughter mingled with the hum of voices; while under the little footbridges, and the arching foundations of the old houses themselves, the river gurgles onward towards open country. Even the great fountain in the Dom-Platz is so utterly deserted that the big dolphins seem almost to be finding leisure to take holiday, and spout lazily; and their blunt jaws look agape with delight at the sweet organ sounds floating through the Cathedral doors, for Master Wolfgang Dachstein is just a second Orpheus, and has been known many a time to have charmed dead souls back to new life, and to have softened hearts stony as one infers these monsters have.

This morning early, early enough to celebrate the first mass, Bishop John returned. All day since, however, he has not stirred from the palace. Work has accumulated for him after his long absence; and he has been very busy looking through his correspondence, and attending to the most pressing claims upon him. A bishop’s life when he does his duty is no sinecure; and John of Manderscheid has always striven to be worthy of his calling. During these past two months, he has been making a progress throughout his diocese, righting, as far as he might be able, the wrongs he had found; and they were many. Three-fourths of them born of the neglect and carelessness of the under clergy; and wherever he came upon these sins which cried aloud to Heaven, there, as surely as corruption follows death, he found heresy rampant. Truly indeed there were priests sticking through evil report and good to their posts, but comparatively these were rare in that desert of polemics which the fair vineyard of the Church had become. And the saddest part of it all, at least to such minds as Bishop John’s, was the reflection that untrustworthiness had brought the Nemesis upon them. He could look through the years of his life, and for half a dozen generations earlier, and trace back the first faint risings of the storm now raging so fiercely on every side. When the people had asked bread of their priestly guides, how often had they been given stones—or worse still! Was it then such wonder that at last they had turned elsewhere in quest of spiritual food?

That they had found, it the bishop was too faithful a Catholic to concede; but some baneful, and generally attractive poison, they were certainly endeavouring to sustain their spiritual existence upon, though to him it appeared dry tasteless stuff enough, and his heart yearned tenderly towards those starved misguided sheep. Far and near, hydra-headed heresy was tainting every little town and hill hamlet of his diocese, and his bitter experiences had thinned the grey hairs about his temples, and hollowed his worn cheeks.

Only towards sunset, wearied out with his toil, he at last indulged himself in a question lying very near his heart. “And how goes on the Horologe, Master Gottlieb?”

“Fairly I hope, my lord,” replied the chaplain with some hesitation.

Now that was an answer just calculated to ruffle the gentle serenity of the Bishop’s temper. He was a tolerant patient man, but the one thing he could not endure was want of zeal in matters temporal or spiritual. “Whatsoever thou doest, do it with all thine heart,” was his motto. Still, reminding himself that fidelity and plodding industry were always stronger points with his secretary than enthusiasm, he only said a little testily: “One doesn’t talk of hope, friend; one says a thing is, or it isn’t, when one has to do with the Professor Dasipodius”.

“But then,” replied Gottlieb, staring in some perplexity at his superior, “then one has not—you are aware of course, my lord, that one has not to do with the Professor Dasipodius. He is——”

“Is what? Speak, man,” cried the startled Bishop.

“Away. Absent from Strassburg.”

“Oh,” said the Bishop with a relieved sigh, turning to his papers again. “Taking a little holiday, eh? Well, he needs it no doubt; and yet—how long has he been gone?”

“More than a month.”

“What is the meaning of this?” demanded the Bishop, letting his gathered up papers fall again in a disordered heap.

“I really can’t quite say, my lord, unless—some, so I am told, consider the Professor Dasipodius to be—ahem—pardon me, my lord—the devil; though some,” continued the chaplain, while the Bishop gazed at him in speechless amazement, “only go so far as to pronounce him blind.”

“Blind! What is this nonsense you are talking?”

“You knew about it, my lord?”

“I heard some ridiculous rumour as I was passing through Schlettstadt, but I paid it no more heed than I did the wind blowing in my face. Tell me——”

“I am doing so, my lord. Some, I was about to observe, among whom is Master Tobias Hackernagel, the Anabaptist——”

“Ay, ay. That apostate fellow; and what has he to do with it?” demanded the Bishop, an angry spot rising to his cheek.

“Ah. A wonderful deal, I assure you. I am told he has been the life and soul of the whole affair. But I do not concern myself in other people’s business, and I assure you, my lord, I know next to nothing beyond the fact that Otto von Steinbach——”

“Holy Mother of God! Go on. And what of Otto von Steinbach?” breathlessly challenged the Bishop.

“I was about to inform you, my lord. Otto von Steinbach is appointed in the Professor Dasipodius’ place; at least so I am given to understand, but——”

“Am I in my senses?”

“I am sure I hope——” began the chaplain, eyeing his chief in dubious apprehension.

“And Radegund—Radegund von Steinbach?”

“Is about, my lord, and busy as ever. And really the Horologe looks remarkably nice. Remarkably nice,” said Master Gottlieb, waxing enthusiastic, then he relapsed into his normal quiescence, and proceeded with his docketing.

“Send her here,” said the Bishop, after a silence of some minutes, during which he seemed lost in thought.

“Whom, my lord?” asked Gottlieb, jerking his head up with a little start.

“Mistress von Steinbach.”

The chaplain departed on his mission, and in half-an-hour Radegund stood in the Bishop’s presence.

With a gesture which would have passed as easily for a malediction as a blessing, he motioned her nearer to him.

“Tell me all about this?” he said.

She lifted her dark eyes questioningly to his face.

“I am not to be trifled with,” he returned, for it seemed that a conspiracy to torment him had been set on foot.

“Heaven forbid,” she said gravely.

“Do you dare to stand there,” he demanded, raising his voice, “and feign ignorance of what I mean? When it is your—your own brother who is appointed in Dasipodius’ place? If my hearing is to be believed, that is.”

“It is, my lord, precisely as you say,” calmly replied the artist.

“And you pretend——”

“I am not given to pretence. And whether the Horologe has come to be a marvel of finish,” and her lips curled mockingly, “or whether it may be chaos confounded, I know no more than you do, my Lord Bishop; for since the Professor Dasipodius was called upon to relinquish his appointment——”

“At your instigation, treacherous woman! To make way for your flesh and blood!”

Radegund’s eyes glittered. “Have a care, my lord,” she said through her set teeth.

“Oh! I know your power,” said the Bishop hoarsely; “and how it can almost make wrong itself seem right. I know it well, but I believed you to be true; and I thought that your admiration for Dasipodius—ah, you have need to blush; I thought, I say, your sense of appreciation of the Professor Dasipodius’ great gifts, would have shielded you from such base corruption as this. And yet, no sooner is my back turned, than I find you moving heaven and earth to set this fellow, this jack-a-dandy, in his place. And why, heaven save us all! because he is your brother! Oh shame! shame!”

“My lord, you do me foul injustice.”

“Oh! I cry your pardon, mistress. Yes, one needs to be nice with one’s words in these days. I should have said that you permitted this, stretched out no preventing hand.”

“I had no power.”

“When she is pleased to exercise it, Mistress von Steinbach’s power is boundless.”

“Conrad Dasipodius at least does not acknowledge it,” she said coldly, “and he spurned the poor offers of aid I made him.”

“How?” asked the Bishop in gentler accents.

And then Radegund related how, on Dasipodius’ blindness being discovered, the enquiry had been instituted at the Chancellery.

“But how—how did they discover it?” insisted the Bishop.

“Ah, by mere accident,” carelessly answered she.

“Yes, yes, but tell me all; for I will have this business sifted to the bottom. How did it begin?”

“Some love affair not worth repeating,” she said carelessly, a sudden flush dyeing her pale face.

“Love affair?—Professor Dasipodius?” said the Bishop, knitting his brows perplexedly. “Never, the ideas are not reconcileable.”

“I believe you are right, my lord,” said Radegund in ironical tones; “but my cousin Sabina is apt, poor child, to fancy things.”

“What! your little cousin! the Lily of Strassburg! Ah! well, that is a different matter. Yes, and these two then are lovers?”

“No, my lord, it is all at an end.”

“Nay, but that would be a pity. The marriage tie is a holy thing, not lightly to be thought of, and then cast aside. It was not Dasipodius who did this?”

“It was her doing, my lord.”

“And her reasons? On account of his blindness? No.”

“That,” said Radegund, slowly bending her head, “was what she intimated in her letter to him.”

“Oh woman! woman!” groaned the Bishop. “Well, but she could not have truly loved him then, this pretty child?”

“She is nineteen, my lord.”

“Tut! tut!” smiled the old man, waving his hand; “young enough to play a dozen Corydons false before she settles her fancy; eh, Mistress?”

“You may be right.”

“If Dasipodius must bend to such—such trifles, he is worthier of some loftier love than that. Eh? don’t you think so?”

“Yes,” murmured Radegund, and then she hurriedly went on to explain that it was this same letter of Sabina’s which had been read aloud at the Dial.

“It was a dunderheaded affair from beginning to end,” said the Bishop when she had done; “and upon my honour, it always has been my unalloyed conviction that this world would get on just as well again without women. It is they who are—heaven and darkness! is it any business of other people’s, if a man chooses to be blind? And Dasipodius? What did he say in—Holy Saints!—in his defence?”

“Barely a dozen words, my lord.”

“No; I would stake my revenue on it he didn’t,” smiled the Bishop. “He knows these town councilmen. Deaf adders are nothing to them—nothing.” Then he dismissed Radegund.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

A VISIT TO THE DIAL.

An early hour next day found the Bishop at the studio. “I have come to see how the Horologe progresses,” he said; and then spent such an unconscionable time about the place, that he fidgeted Otto. “What did he want coming prying here for? what do bishops know about clocks, I should like to know?” he grumbled afterwards to Hackernagel.

“Some folks,” said Tobias, “imagine they possess an aptitude for everything under the sun.”

“Well, but I don’t like it you know. I can always stand anything but interference. And then the number of questions he kept asking! It’s disgusting!”

Undeniably the Bishop had done that. In his own mind he had determined to judge Otto fairly and impartially; and, for the moment, setting aside all remembrance of Dasipodius’ unjust treatment, he gave himself to ascertaining as far as his own powers permitted, how far Otto von Steinbach was competent for the task he had undertaken. The result of his investigations simply confirmed his forgone conclusion that the Horologe was in the worst possible plight. It was not only Otto’s inexperience and superficial acquaintance which rendered him unfit to rule, but also his unstable temperament. Had all the old hands remained on, Otto might have blundered through; but the best among them had left, and in their place were untried workers, who were only paid by the piece, and cared no more for the Horologe than they did for Archimedes.

“I miss Isaac Habrecht,” was almost the Bishop’s first observation, when his glance had traversed the unfamiliar group; but Otto’s attention was absorbed in something going on down in the street.

“I miss Isaac Habrecht,” reiterated his visitor.

“Oh, yes—you know, I mean—that is, my lord, Isaac Habrecht doesn’t work here now.”

“Why not?”

“Well, Isaac was a difficult fellow to deal with; and I don’t see why one is to put up with another fellow’s airs because he happens to be able to turn a piece of brass into a wheel rather better than another; do you, my lord?”

“I’m not so sure,” replied the Bishop, bending over the shoulder of Isaac’s successor. “Have you got that even, friend?” he asked, looking at the wheel the man was filing.

“Near enough, my lord,” was the half surly, half patronizing, and wholly confident rejoinder.

“And Kaspar?” said the Bishop, turning again to Otto, “wouldn’t he work with you either?”

“I’d rather have his room than his company. One could have done nothing with a head crammed so full of favour and pre——”

“But the carvings?”

“Ah! here they are. Ready as you see,” said Otto, who did not hold it necessary to explain that Kaspar’s work had been on the stroke of completion before he left Strassburg; and that nothing was lacking of it but an insignificant strip or two of beading. This however had now been added to the rest.

“Kaspar’s fingers were thumbs when he did this,” said the Bishop, examining the strips.

“Very likely,” said Otto with a shrug. “He was always full of fits and fancies as an egg’s full of meat. I do so hate your geniuses. I don’t pretend to be one myself; and such sort of people about me are simply a worry.”

And Bishop John, as he scanned the Master Horologist’s countenance, wondered whether unknowingly he had, after all, surrounded himself with geniuses; for it was, he thought, many a day since he had seen a man look more miserable and worried than did Otto von Steinbach.

“And that set of fine steel springs Dasipodius had in hand himself,” said the Bishop. “I remember how exquisite their finish was. You are over them I suppose?”

“Oh dear no, I have quite enough to do looking after other people: I never find time for a stroke of work myself.”

“Dasipodius did,” said the Bishop.

“Oh—yes; but it wouldn’t be right you know, my lord, to—to compare—my modus operandi——”

“With his. No, I suppose not. And now, tell me by how long shall you anticipate the Horologe’s completion?”

Otto stared vacuously.

“When will the Horologe be finished?” explained Bishop John.

“Oh, well, perhaps towards the end of Autumn.”

“What!” exclaimed the Bishop, “don’t you know it is to be ready by Saint Laurence’s day? and that is August, the beginning of August, man, isn’t it? or have you turned Anabaptist, and forgotten your saint’s days.”

“Oh, that’s only what was said.”

“It is promised down in the contract, in black and white.”

“Ah, very likely; but they’ll have to whistle for it.”

“They’ll be more likely to cudgel your brains out if you don’t hold to the agreement,” said the Bishop with kindling eyes; “you know Strassburg’s not to be played with.”

“I can’t do impossibilities,” said Otto sulkily.

“Then we must see who can. Good day,” and the Bishop went away.

“Ex nihilo, nihil fit,” soliloquized he, as he slowly returned to the palace; “and that will be the Horologe’s fate, or worse, if it remains at this scatterbrain’s mercies. I must see Bruno Wolkenberg at once; he is a man to be depended on. And I may be able to sift to the truth of this strange business from him.”

For to Bishop John the truth seemed at the bottom of a well indeed. Astounding stories, as remarkable for their diversity as for their wildness, had already reached his ears on the subject. Some said Dasipodius had turned out to be a were-wolf, and wandered abroad o’ nights in bloodthirsty search of little stray children; because Mother Barepenny had said that stray children, a whole stray baby especially, eaten at one meal, was an infallible remedy for blindness. Inasmuch, however, as stray babies were not to be come upon every day, he had had to content himself for the nonce with turning, by the same wise woman’s assistance, into a spider; for your spider is able to creep in where your were-wolf might meet with obstruction. Under this faint disguise, Dasipodius had, it appeared, succeeded in sucking enough infant blood to keep his eyes open, and so making believe he could see. But others said that was all nonsense; what, forsooth, did he want of such second-rate sort of backings up as were-wolves and vampires could give, when there were in the city hundreds ready to affirm that many and many a night they, with their own eyes, had distinctly seen the shadow of a huge pair of horns on the casement blind of the mathematician’s turret chamber?

While the Bishop might have sought more lucid details of Dasipodius’ resignation, or setting aside, or whatever it might be, from Radegund von Steinbach, he had not failed to mark her reserve, amounting almost to taciturnity, when he had spoken with her about it; and he came to the wise conclusion that after all, Bruno Wolkenberg, from his intimate friendship with Dasipodius, and by virtue of his professional knowledge of his affliction, was the really proper person from whom to obtain the information he desired. Accordingly he turned and made his way without further delay to the surgeon’s house, where Trudel, in answer to his enquiry whether her master was within and alone, nearly let slip her assurance that he was lone as the church weathercock; but remembering just in time that she was holding parley with a Bishop, and a prince of the empire, contrived by a superhuman effort to set a seal upon her lips, and with the plain unvarnished intimation that her Master was within, ushered his august visitor into the laboratory.

The surgeon was standing in the embrasure of the window, busily engaged in separating and arranging the petals and leaves of some medicinal herbs he had brought from Schaffhausen, whence he had but the previous day returned. The full sunlight fell upon his golden hair, and there was a glow of colour and a healthful tan embrowning his handsome face.

“The country air seems to have done you good service, Dr. Wolkenberg,” said the Bishop, seating himself in the chair Bruno placed for him.

“Well—yes, my lord,” answered Bruno; “such elixir as the air of the Schwarzwald, I fear all the alchemists in Christendom will never be able to distil. It would almost bring new life to the dead.”

“And sight to the blind?—Can it do that?”

“Even that perhaps, sometimes.”

The Bishop looked with eager, earnest eyes at the surgeon.

“You believe it may do something for Dasipodius?”

“No, my lord,” answered Wolkenberg, “I did not mean that. Dasipodius’ case is hopeless. Nothing would bring his eyesight back, short of a miracle.”

“But one that you can work, Dr. Wolkenberg? Yes?” said the Bishop in pleading tones; “so much depends on it.”

“I spoke literally, my lord,” answered the surgeon with grave calmness. “It is beyond the skill of the greatest of us. Certain of the eye nerves are totally destroyed.”

“And what then,” asked the Bishop, “is the nature of this blindness?”

“It is of the sort called Amaurosis.”

“But they tell me his eyes are not merely open, but as brilliant as when I went away a couple of months since.”

Bruno nodded assent. “Just the same, my lord. He was blind then.”

“Is it of that kind,” demanded the Bishop, “which one reads of the Arabs calling ‘Gutta Serena’?”

“Yes.”

“It is rare, is it not?”

“Comparatively, my lord, yes. This special form of it.”

“To me it is incredible.”

Bruno sighed.

“Incomprehensible. His eyes seemed to me full of expression and brilliancy. I could not have guessed at such a calamity.”

“You did not see with professional eyes, my lord. I have foreboded it these two years, and warned him of it.”

“How did it come about?”

“Over-study.”

“Oh,” said the Bishop. “Many a man studies as hard as he does, and yet preserves his sight.”

“Pardon me, my lord, not many. For these years past he has but laid down his book to take up his pen, and then only laid that aside to fashion piece by piece what he has thought out and planned; and not one pair of eyes in ten thousand could withstand such ceaseless wear and tear. A real master of Horology, my lord, must have a mind and an intellect as many-sided as a prism; and he needs above all, perhaps, to be a practical genius.”

“A rara avis indeed,” smiled the Bishop.

“It is much the same, I take it, as if one should speak of two men rolled into one.”

The Bishop was silent, and sat with his eyes meditatively fixed on the ground; presently, however, he looked up. “But he is to blame in this surely,” he said in ex-cathedra tones. “He has abused one of Heaven’s best gifts.”

“It was in a good cause at least,” answered the surgeon. “Prometheus stole fire from Heaven, and did his fellow-men a noble turn.”

“All the same,” said the Bishop regretfully, “your man has left his work incomplete.”

“That is no fault of his, my lord,” bluntly replied Bruno.

“Ah! I cannot believe that story,” said the Bishop, closely shaking his head. “For a blind man is a man bereft of his noblest sense.”

“Bereft? No, my lord, no, in such men as Dasipodius, it has but gone to lend its help to the other senses, and bring them closer to perfection.”

“I wish I could believe that, Dr. Wolkenberg.”

“You would do well to believe it. It is only such men as Tobias Hackernagel, and others of his complexion, who having no souls to compass the greatness of Conrad’s, take refuge in attributing its power to supernatural influences.”

“And they may be right,” smiled the Bishop. “You admit that, Dr. Bruno?”

“I do,” said the surgeon, with a responsive light in his eyes, “with this difference, that the base motives of these wretches have led them to attribute his power to Hell, when it is Heaven’s own. It is not the first time, my lord, in the world’s history that this has been so.”

The bishop bent his head reverently. “You are right, Dr. Wolkenberg; and your assurance of Dasipodius’ fitness to have carried on his work is only too welcome to me. I believed it might be possible. But tell me, did they really and absolutely try to fix on him the charge of sorcery.”

“Syndic Hackernagel did his best; but it fell through.”

“But why?” insisted the Bishop. “What good could it do Syndic Hackernagel?”

“Nay, little enough, as far as I know; but Hackernagel would burn Strassburg if it could win him half-an-hour’s notoriety.”

“For shame, Dr. Bruno. You want charity.”

“I think not, my lord. Charity for such creatures is worse waste than pearls thrown to swine. Ought I—ought you, my lord—ought anything that breathes, have—oh Heaven! have it! Seem to have it, I mean,” and Bruno’s face kindled, “for a creature who, if he could, would have brought Conrad Dasipodius to the stake, and felt his joy complete indeed if he had got the chance of firing the first faggot himself! I see,” added Bruno, “you do not, cannot credit this.”

“Nay,” said the Bishop. “Sin lies deep, and Tobias Hackernagel is—is—Anabaptism is Master Hackernagel’s own particular form of heterodoxy I believe, Dr. Bruno?”

“An Anabaptist he is, I think, my lord.”

“And so the plot fell through?”

“Thank Heaven, yes, so far it did. There was little fear as it seemed for Conrad’s life, his breathing animal life; but that other—the only life which is life to him, is all blighted. Not killed mark you, my lord, but cruelly, cruelly marred. Dasipodius is much changed since you saw him.”

“And he did not defend himself, Mistress Radegund von Steinbach tells me?”

“There he was wrong.”

“Forgive me, my lord, I think had you been there you would have reversed that judgment. It would have been worse than useless. The clack and clatter of Hackernagel’s sophistries drowned Dasipodius’ simple assurance. The people’s ears itched too much for some new thing to rest content with the good they had.”

“Alas!” sighed the Bishop, “that is true, but still——”

“And so Dasipodius left them to themselves. I think no man’s pride would let him stoop to stay where he was not welcome; and these flowers,” said Bruno, touching tenderly a posy of harebells in a little jar beside him, “are not more sensitive to foul air than Dasipodius is to falseness and treachery.”

“Over much surely,” said the Bishop.

“Maybe so, my lord, maybe not. It is his nature,” said Bruno conclusively; “and so now they—may whistle for their clock,” and he turned and absently flicked away a speck or two of dust from his specimens.

“And Radegund von Steinbach, did she suffer all this quietly? I gave her credit for more love of——”

“Of whom?” burst forth the surgeon, turning sharply on the Bishop. “Of whom?”

“Of whom? Of the Horologe, man, of the Horologe. I say I fancied she cared for it too well to let these tricks be played with it.”

“I know nothing about that,” returned Wolkenberg coldly. “She rarely mentions Dasipodius’ name. No doubt she would have aided him, if it had been in her power, but she is after all only a woman.”

“And such a one whose will might turn an empire’s fate as she listed. Why, men are threads to be wound about her little finger. Ah, Dr. Wolkenberg, do you sigh so deep as that? Your lofty wisdom bows then to her power. Nay, but don’t frown and bite your lip like some guilty thief taken in flagrante delicto—believe me, I have guessed this tender secret long ago. Come now tell me, is the marriage day to be—when? Give me due notice, for it is I myself who must tie that knot. No answer? Well, had you chosen to plead guilty, Master Balder here,” and the Bishop gently stroked the ears of the dog, who had for sometime been patiently awaiting that small attention from the visitor, “who, I will answer for it, knows all about it, could not keep the secret more faithfully than I would do. I am no gossip—but, I ask your pardon, I have no right to intrude myself upon your confidence.”

“My lord, you mistake. I fear such honour and such happiness can never be for me,” and Bruno turned abruptly away.

“Tut, tut, man,” said the Bishop, whose heart had always been set on the union of these two. He had watched their acquaintance with interest; and to this kind father of his spiritual children it seemed that for the dark-eyed magnificent woman and the golden-haired man, beautiful as a Norse god, to become husband and wife, would be a Heaven-planned marriage. He knew all the grandeur and nobility of Radegund’s nature, her scorn of things mean and base, her generosity and power of self-sacrifice; but he also knew how diamonds, valuable above all other precious stones, are more than all others subject to flaws. He knew that extremes meet, and judged Radegund to be capable of all that is best and worst; while in Bruno Wolkenberg’s warm heart and single mindedness combined with his no ordinary talent and pure enthusiasm, which some, but not Bishop John, might even have called quixotic, he saw one precisely fitted to nurture and cherish the luxuriance of the artist’s nature, while it would restrain it from squandering its generous strength.

“Patience, Dr. Wolkenberg,” he said, rising and laying his worn blue-veined hand on Bruno’s shoulder. “Patience, it is all but just as it should be. A woman is the more worth seeking who is not easily won.”

“It is three years,” groaningly began Bruno.

“Three years! Nay,” began the Bishop. “By Our Lady, that is a little long indeed!”

“An eternity.”

“And there is no other?”

“I do not understand you, my lord.”

“She has no other admirer?”

“She has a score,” returned Bruno, casting his despairing eyes upward.

“Ah! How absolute you are,” said the Bishop with a testy smile. “No other favoured one?”

“I have but my eyes to tell me.”

“And if my old ones can help me to see she has a great respect for you, Dr. Wolkenberg, what should your own not do? Besides she has told me many a time how much she esteems you.”

“Esteem is not love, my lord.”

“Come, come. You are in an oracular mood, and that is so seldom a happy one. Yet I must not quarrel with my oracle, since I have gathered from it brighter auguries for our poor Horologe than I had dared to hope. And so fare you well, Dr. Wolkenberg, and keep a good heart.”

And with a lighter step Bishop John returned to the palace, soliloquising, after his wont, on what he had heard, and strange, as he confessed to himself, though the story of the blind mathematician might be, one thing was stranger still—the mind of a woman. What could be its component qualities, that it always found such pleasure in worrying what it so loved? “For of course she does love him,” said the Bishop half aloud to himself, as he entered his vast silent hall. “Why should she not?”

And the cold stone walls faintly echoed, “Why not?”

CHAPTER XL.

GRETCHEN.

Many a heart, the old saw says, is caught at the rebound; and Otto von Steinbach, discharging himself as he did like a catapult from the Burgomaster’s house, never stopped till he fell flushed and almost breathless into a chair beside fair Mistress Gretchen Hackernagel. She, as kind fate would have it, sat at home alone in the absence of her father and sisters, who had all gone to a great treat which had been some time promising in the shape of a peripatetic preacher of the Anabaptist persuasion, who was to shed his eloquence on Strassburg for one day only; but Gretchen had, with the grain of sturdiness which no domestic tyranny could entirely eradicate, refused to join in the pious dissipation. There was something of the black sheep in Gretchen Hackernagel. Her compeers called her “odd,” her eccentricity developing itself mainly in a dislike to the tenets the rest of her family professed. This might, in the first place, have arisen from the surfeit of surface sanctity oppressing the domestic atmosphere, tainted as it was beneath with endless bickerings and petty jealousies; and the Christian faith, which she had heard called beautiful and love itself, wore for her a hateful ugliness.

One dreadful day, Gretchen had so far forgotten herself as to say in her father’s hearing that the few sweet organ tones which reached her as she came home from market round by the Cathedral, always told her more about Heaven in five minutes, than the longest discourse she ever remembered Master Boanerges Bakkerzeel to have poured forth. Henceforth, Gretchen Hackernagel’s path of life was not peace to her; she lived suspected of every sort of wickedness, and responsible for every mishap occurring in the household, not regulated better than one boasting four mistresses usually is. “It’s all Gretchen’s fault,” was synonymous there, with “the cat did it,” in other establishments.

With many secret tears Gretchen endured her misery, and with the sort of apathetic patience which sees no gleam of happier things. The Syndic’s house was none so cheerful, nor his womenkind so fair, that young men or women either, ever felt drawn to cultivate close acquaintance there; and life had grown to be a burden to poor Gretchen. It was little wonder, therefore, that when the handsome Otto took to looking in at Syndic Hackernagel’s, Gretchen’s heart was lost to her, before she was well aware she was burdened with one; and with all his faults, there was something to like in the young man. He was gentle and chivalrous with women, and spoke up frankly and openly, without the snuffle and whine which characterised the few young men it had been her dreary fortune to converse with. Then Otto wore such beautiful clothes, gay enough in all conscience they were, but still innocent of vulgarity. The vain creature had an instinctive taste for self-decoration, and well understood the difference between gew-gaw smartness, and real arrangement and blending of colour, and his clothes fitted him to perfection. No wonder Otto became an object of interest in Syndic Hackernagel’s house. The worst of it was, as three of the ladies said, he was a Catholic, and in making much of him, they told each other they had in view the charitable aim of effecting his conversion to their own persuasion, then—then—Après?—but since they did not confide even to each other any word of what ultimate course they intended to adopt, in regard to this brand which was going to be snatched from the burning, it would be presumption to surmise, and perhaps superfluous, seeing that Otto stuck to his creed with a pertinacity and mulishness creating as much disgust in the three elders as it charmed Gretchen, who plucked heart at the reflection that this ray of an outer world could breathe in their gloomy atmosphere and live.

The greatest marvel was how Syndic Hackernagel permitted such an intimacy to exist; but that was not to know Syndic Hackernagel aright, or else to forget that Otto von Steinbach belonged to an influential family, and had excellent private expectations. In short he was a gilded pill, which Tobias, faithful to his creed, was prepared, and with cheerful resignation, to swallow, should the young man’s final election to the state of being his son-in-law prove preordained by a wise providence.

Wedded as Tobias Hackernagel was to his own form of belief, and holding every other, Catholic and Protestant alike for inodorous pitch, his confidence in his own immaculacy was so great, that he believed he might yet touch it, and not be defiled; and by no means shrank from having worldly dealings with the hereafter-doomed of any persuasion whatsoever, provided they chanced to represent the dominant party.

Amid the never-ending alternations of power at that time, the Catholics were, and for some prolonged period had been, in the ascendant; and with the Catholics Hackernagel was careful to maintain peaceful, almost amicable relations, until the hour of their downfall should bring him his opportunity for turning upon them. The man, with all his veneer of holiness, was timeserving to the backbone, and felt no grain of compunction in bowing down in the house of Rimmon, nor even in taking to the domestic hearth such a rag of the Scarlet Lady as Otto von Steinbach; who, on his part, steeped from his earliest years in Catholic associations, and hating the reformers, from Luther to the last mushroom hair-splitter of yesterday, and the very name of Reformation for its general tendency towards levelling away all that made existence amusing and consequently endurable, still felt himself under no small obligation to the Syndic for his present lofty state, and thought his debt cheaply paid by making himself agreeable to the Syndic’s daughters. It cost him nothing; and if they liked it, why, you know, there was no harm done. There, however, the argument somehow failed. Harm was done, a very great deal, to poor Gretchen’s heart; and being one of that tenacious sort whose hearts, once given, will break if they are cast aside, there is no guessing what misery would have been in store for her, had not Otto, affronted and aggrieved by Sabina’s insensate treatment of him, fled where consolation was infallibly to be found; and then and there offered his delicate white hand and his fortune in esse and in posse to the happy Mistress Gretchen Hackernagel. With tears, and blushes, and rapture but transparently veiled, she accepted; and Otto found his consolation for his snubbings elsewhere. Here were favour and prejudice of the right sort if you like. If only cousin Sabina could have been there to see—and repent, now it was too late, he thought his content would have been complete.

“I shall never ask you again,” he had said to her, and he meant it too; and now here, an hour later, he was an engaged man.

The new sensation was as agreeable as complex. He was, of course, experiencing all the delights attendant upon a public career; but then the sweets of notoriety have their bitters, while these new joys were perfect—in their way. Honestly he found them so. He really liked Gretchen Hackernagel; there was something lacking to his volatile nature, which he found in hers. Pique, for once in a way, had done its victim a kind turn; and he confessed to himself that to be loved for one’s own sake was a good thing. And to love again?—well—and that was a good thing too; and might come to grow by what it fed on. Then Otto did so thoroughly enjoy his inamorata’s malicious little confidences which their closer intimacy brought him, touching certain sharp contests between her sisters for the distinction she had won; and he never tired of hearing how, with all their simulated scorn and indifference, they were so madly jealous.

Only once he found it incumbent on him to check such innocent small-talk; and that was when she said that the last new taunt they had conjured up was, that people were beginning to say he could no more make a clock than could the painted Cupid, who was to strut out and in of the little door above the second cornice-work of the new Horologe. With a ghastly smile, Gretchen’s fiancé said it was very amusing, excessively amusing, but he was afraid her words lacked charity in repeating what the poor disappointed things said, and that there was no need to talk about the Horologe at all.

The very word sent a cold shudder through Otto now; it had come to be to him such a hateful thing, this great unmanageable Horologe with its wheels—above all, possibly from certain older associations, he hated the wheels worst—and its chains and little spiky bits; and its whirring wires and springs which, if you were not tremendously careful, shot out, and gave you ever such a stinging rap on your cheek or your nose before you knew where you were.

To Otto, as to Dasipodius, the Horologe had become a nightmare—with a difference. To each it seemed a thing endowed with almost human attributes; only to Otto it was no fair lost mistress, but a fearful monster, whose every shadow haunting his dreams, resolved itself by day into a horrid tangible reality. The creation of the unhappy Frankenstein was nothing by comparison with the Horologe, because the sooner that soulless breathing terror was annihilated, the greater was everybody’s satisfaction; whereas all Strassburg was clamouring in Otto’s ears, and dogging his footsteps, and waylaying him at street corners for the latest intelligence touching this thing’s progress, and plaguing his life out for the precise date of its completion. “Time,” as they said cheerfully, “was getting on now.” If things continued like that much longer, he felt the Horologe would be his murderer, or responsible at least for manslaughter. It was killing him fast. The scraping of the studio files, the tap, tap, tap of its tiny hammers, confused his head till it ached again; the bright brass discs dazzled his eyes, until he began to feel something of sympathy for his predecessor’s affliction; the smell of the varnish and of the paint made him feel sick, and he would gladly have given Gretchen Hackernagel and all his other possessions to have been once more only the careless student, subject indeed to Isaac Habrecht’s fault-finding, or Dasipodius’s grave rebuke, but once outside the Dial’s walls, free as a butterfly to enjoy all the sweets life might afford, a well-looking, pleasant enough young fellow not far along the shady side of twenty-five. And yet he dared utter no thought of what he felt. Vanity, dread of his sister Radegund’s taunts, Tobias Hackernagel’s righteous wrath, what Sabina would say, and still more what the world would say, still bound him to the task which was so utterly beyond his powers. If only Dasipodius had persisted in his refusal to deliver up his plans, all might have been well for Otto. His own design was to be sure an extraordinary conglomerate of intricacy, and curiously characteristic of its originator’s genius for complicating matters; still he had made it himself, and understood perhaps if nobody else did, how he meant to make it go; but he had been tempted by Dasipodius’ plans, because they had looked so delightfully simple, and he had believed he might master them better even than his own, about whose practicability, supposing them even safely launched into working order, he had his misgivings. When, however, he had come into the much-coveted possession of the drawings, he found how sorely he had misapprehended their real nature, and learning too late that his predecessor was a master of the Ars celare Artem, wished he had bitten his tongue out before he had set about moving Heaven and earth to obtain them.

And so, groping in the dark, conscious of being secretly sneered at by those over whom he was set, sick at heart with vexation and wounded vanity, and bored to death by enforced application, the miserable man breathed on, finding his sole consolation in Gretchen. And well indeed it was for him that in those days of wretchedness he was able to turn to this girl, whose unassailable faith in his superiority over all men since the world began, tied him to a life which was fast growing for him into an intolerable burden. Although his ordinary stock of moral courage might not be large, he was by no means deficient in that pinchbeck sort of it which would face self-destruction; but endowed with little beauty, no great wit, nor much wealth, of a temper not faultless, but warm-hearted, Gretchen Hackernagel, in the power of her true honest woman’s love, came to be his saving grace, shielding him from himself; and for the sparks of self-complacency she kept alive in him he repaid her with a certain sort of affection, scanty at first, but gaining in strength as his perplexities gathered closer and thicker about him.

Sympathy in his own home Otto had long ceased to look for. Throughout the whole time, some five or six weeks now, that Dasipodius had been at Schaffhausen, Radegund had maintained a cold indifference towards her brother; and not the faintest allusion to the Horologe or to his new duties in connection with it ever passed her lips. If she had flown into one of her furies with him he thought he could have borne it far better; if she had even mocked him for his incapacity he would have preferred it, because then he might in the end have brought himself to a confession of the wretched truth, and besought her help to ward him from shameful exposure, for he knew quite well that Radegund could, if she would, make clear to him certain of Dasipodius’ intentions regarding the Clock’s mechanism, which would have materially aided in dispersing some of the greater difficulties; or, at all events, brought the problems within a little closer range of his own powers of solution; for though totally unfitted either by temperament or training for his onerous duties, Otto was no tyro in Horology; and could, under direction and when he chose, do good work.

Radegund was, however, impenetrable and imperturbable as a fate, and Otto dared not, ever so delicately, hint that she might be useful to him. He had not spent all the days of his life with her without knowing that these calm moods of hers presaged storm; and he did not care to bring it on his own devoted head by any provocation on his part, as he might by chance do, however ill warranted, for as he said to himself again and again, “She’s cross about Dasipodius. Just as if I could have helped it all! It’s awfully unkind of her to be put out about it with me. It just shows what contrary creatures women are. Crammed up with favour and prejudice. If any other woman now except Radegund had been my sister, she’d have been proud as a peacock of me. And to say nothing too of her reflected honours.”

It was no concern of hers that the honours were trying ones; and then the new chief horologist would groan, and call to mind some sort of a story he had heard once of that king of somewhere or other in the East, who always honoured any courtier he might be having a grudge against, with a present of a white elephant.

Now the courtier is proud of the distinction, but the white elephant on pain of death to the happy recipient must have a household to himself, and servants, and no end of attention and time spent on him; and very frequently that story of the white elephant occurred to Otto’s imagination; and the world, he thought, was much the same, go where you might in it.

CHAPTER XLI.

A CLEAN CONFESSION.

One morning, about ten days after Bishop John’s return into residence, there was great rejoicing in the house of Hackernagel, for the Syndic had received a command to wait upon my lord. It was an honour hitherto unaccorded him; and in a flutter, concealed beneath an air of nonchalance which deceived nobody, he informed his daughters that he was going to the palace, as the Bishop desired to confer with him on important business; then dressing himself with extreme care, but excruciating simplicity, he sallied forth.

Syndic Hackernagel’s smug air of satisfaction, as he walked along, expressed but a tithe of the elation he really felt. What he was wanted for, he had not the faintest conception, and cared not at all. If my lord had been in a merry humour, and been pleased to make a may-goose of him, and only said, “Bo! Syndic Hackernagel; now you can go home again,” still that would have been useful; and it was with infinite sweetness that the Anabaptist returned the covert, not too amiable, glances of the Bishop’s servants and hangers on scattered about the vestibule, and returned with insinuating graciousness the courteous but cold obeisance of Master Gottlieb, who silently ushered him into the audience-chamber. It was then not to be a tête-à-tête with my lord? By no means, for there, gathered in an irregular semi-circle towards the upper end of the room, stood some dozen or more of the city’s representatives, among whom Hackernagel’s needle-sharp eyes distinguished the countenances of Burgomaster von Steinbach, Councillor Job, and every one without exception of those who had been officially present at the Chancellery to enquire into the case of Dasipodius.

Facing them stood the Bishop, who acknowledging Hackernagel’s presence by a faint inclination of his head, relegated him by a gesture to a position midway between himself and the group before him. With an uneasy glance at the faces on his left, the Syndic obeyed. If only some voice had spoken one syllable; but not a conclave of corpses could have been more still and silent, where they stood, some with their eyes fixed in cold scrutiny upon himself, some upon the stately, but fragile form of Bishop John, whose benevolent face was set into resolute patient lines, while he waited for the last comer to settle himself. Fully impressed as he might be with the distinction of which he was the object, never had the Syndic felt himself more ready to exchange conditions with the obscurest citizen of Strassburg, than at that moment, and he cast an involuntary glance of longing at the lofty double-oaken doors by which he had entered, and which were guarded by two tall halberdiers still as statues, and with eyes inscrutable as glass ones, whose weapons gleamed dazzlingly in the bright May morning sunlight.

“I have desired your presence here, gentlemen, and Master Tobias Hackernagel,” began the Bishop, putting an abrupt termination to that person’s survey of his surroundings, and engendering in his mind a flutter of half-flattering, half-uneasy wonder at the speaker’s classification of his audience. “Gentlemen and Master Tobias Hackernagel—to ask your consideration of a matter touching the new Horologe. There is, I find,” continued the Bishop, lifting his hand to enforce the silence which Tobias’ opening lips seemed about to break, “an impression prevailing among the better informed persons of this city, that the Professor Dasipodius has been unjustly set aside, and an incompetent man put in his place. Gentlemen and Master Tobias Hackernagel, have you anything to say to this?”

Apparently not, in so far as the former division of the Bishop’s hearers was concerned. It contented itself with an interchange of glances, while Syndic Hackernagel answered in a low sullen tone: “The Town Council is not a pack of children. We knew what we were doing, my lord,” and he glanced round at the worshipful body in search of its approving nod, but not an eye met his.

“Even grey hairs,” replied the Bishop, “occasionally mistake, Syndic Hackernagel; and you were all gravely in error when you offered this appointment to a man who is totally incapable of carrying it through. I am leaving, for the moment, entirely out of the question the injury done the Professor Dasipodius.”

“Injury!” cried Tobias, his brush-like yellow-red hair bristling. “He ran a very near chance, my lord, of burning for a sorcerer.”

“Fortunate for you, Master Hackernagel,” calmly returned the Bishop, “that that did not happen. The torture for false accusers is, if I do not err, hardly less painful than the stake itself.”

“The man is blind,” Tobias muttered, after a somewhat prolonged silence.

“That is a circumstance which concerns neither you nor me, nor”—and the Bishop’s glance swept the faces of his auditors—“anyone but himself.”

“Not concern——” echoed Tobias, staring round him in open-mouthed amazement. “Not concern—— Do you assert, my lord, that you believe——”

“Alas no, Master Hackernagel,” sighed the Bishop. “By nature it may be, I am incredulous. I feel that I must see to believe; I hope to be able to test for myself the truth of what Dr. Bruno Wolkenberg here asserts.”

“He’d swear black was white for Dasipodius,” grumbled Hackernagel, covertly glaring at the surgeon, whom he now perceived among the group.

“And Mistress Radegund von Steinbach,” said the Bishop with a slight smile, “is she also so staunch a partizan?”

“Oh ho!” sneeringly answered Tobias. “Hardly likely; Otto’s own sister.”

“You would accept her word then against her brother’s incapacity?”

“Ah well,” returned Tobias with an insolent chuckle, “let her offer it first.”

The Bishop, turning silently, advanced towards the extreme upper end of the chamber, the rich crimsons and purples of the emblazoned window lights tinging his pale face and silver hairs, as his silken cassock swept along the parqueted floor. The vast audience-room of the Episcopal Palace was rich in oaken and ebony and ivory carvings. Its loftily-coped fireplace reaching half-way to the fretted and gilded ceiling, was crowded with historic alabaster statues of nearly life size; and where its wings terminated, a high-panelled wainscoting met them, heavy with allegorical figures and carvings of flowers and foliage.

The wall towards which the Bishop now slowly made his way, bore in its lower centre a large panel some three feet wide by five or six in height, carved in high relief with a gigantic sword thrust between the chains of a pair of scales. Extending on either side of this, ran two smaller series of panels, the one bearing, amid enframing wreaths and other graceful devices, sweet women’s and children’s faces, emblematical of the heavenly virtues; the other, the seven deadly sins, hideous mask-like countenances, with snaky hair and gnashing teeth writhing forth from their encircling flames, and fetters strung with instruments of torture.

Before this central panel, which was in fact a door communicating with several narrow corridors leading to the dwelling part of the palace, the Bishop paused, and pressing with his finger one of the bosses of the carved woodwork, it fell open, revealing a shadowy recess, where like some picture on a dim background stood Radegund von Steinbach, richly attired, as it was generally her pleasure to be, in a close-fitting dress of blood-red velvet, finished about the neck with a ruff of white Venice lace; while a black veil of the same costly fabric, wrapped about her head and shoulders, threw into startling contrast the faultless beauty of her face, pale now to ivory whiteness, after its wont when under the influence of strong concentrated excitement.

If to the startled assemblage the artist seemed more like a picture than a reality, she quickly dispelled the illusion, stepping at once to the floor, and following in the Bishop’s wake as he returned silently to his place. Then taking up the position to which he motioned her on his right hand, she swept a swift searching glance round, and turning to the Bishop, said: “But he is not here, my lord”.

Bishop John touched a little hand bell, in answer to whose summons the chaplain appeared.

“Bid Master Otto von Steinbach come in,” said his chief.

Gottlieb retired, but the next instant reentered, ushering in the trembling Otto von Steinbach. With downcast eyes, changing colour, and scared face, Otto stood, just within the threshold, shifting from one trembling leg to the other.

“Come close,” commanded Radegund, before the Bishop could speak. And the unhappy creature started, and with a wild stare round, shambled forward.

“I am here, gentlemen, and Syndic Hackernagel,” said his sister, addressing the group before her, “by my lord’s desire, to bear to you my witness that Otto von Steinbach——”

“Your own flesh and blood,” interrupted Hackernagel.

“My brother, Otto von Steinbach,” she went on, with the faintest possible flush crossing her pale forehead, but looking straight before her high above the Syndic’s head, “is incapable of doing the work which you have caused to be entrusted to his care. Further, I desire to state my conviction that the late horologist, Conrad Dasipodius,” and a faint tremour agitated the clear ringing tones, as his name left her lips, “has been unjustly and illegally set aside.”

“Not by me!” cried Hackernagel, starting forward with savage defiance scintillating in his pale eyes. “Not by me!”

“I dare to say, Tobias Hackernagel,” said the artist, letting her glance fall to the level of his face, “that saving yourself, I exonerate every person here from any desire to do the Professor Dasipodius an injustice.”

“Infamous!” fumed the Syndic.

“Lastly, I have to declare my conviction, founded on my own knowledge of the matter—”

“Presumption!” hissed the seething lips of Hackernagel.

“And confirmed by authority not lightly to be ignored,” here Radegund’s eyes turned on Otto, “that if the work of the Horologe remain under Otto von Steinbach’s direction, the oath of the Town Council to Strassburg is likely to become a mock. There stands my brother; let him refute what I have said if it so pleases him.”

But Otto stood speechless and immovable.

“All this,” said Hackernagel with a sneer, “is absurd—informal.”

“Ah!” said the Bishop. “It can be made a formal question if you so prefer, Syndic Hackernagel; but I am given to understand you are partial to informalities.”

“This is merely a friendly little enquiry,” said the Burgomaster, with an irrepressible smile. “Just such another as you proposed for the Professor Dasipodius at the Chancellery, if you remember. But, niece,” he continued, addressing Radegund—“your pardon, my lord—niece, I say, you should have told us all this long ago. It would have saved us needless vexations and heartburnings and——”

“And colds,” dolefully muttered Councillor Job. “I haven’t half got over mine yet. They do hang about one so——”

“And scandal,” continued Niklaus; “and if, let me tell you, you had had a spark of real consideration for Dasipodius——”

“He refused my poor aid,” said Radegund, with burning cheeks.

“Well,” sturdily observed Job, “we shouldn’t have done that. And you might as well have given it us first as last, Mistress von Steinbach.”

“You don’t understand women,” began Tobias. “Don’t you know they only find fault when it suits their purpose.”

“I leave expediency to you, Tobias Hackernagel,” retorted Radegund, a spot of angry scarlet burning on each cheek. “I speak only now in obedience to my Lord Bishop.”

“These churchmen!” muttered Hackernagel. “What a genius they have for meddling.”

“Have a care, Master Hackernagel,” sternly said the Bishop, who had caught the significance more than the actual words of the Syndic.

Hackernagel started, but hiding his confusion under a smile of cringing insolence, “I meant to observe, my lord,” he said, “that I marvel that spiritual guides—that is, I—I should say, I wished to remark, my lord, that the Horologe being so purely and entirely a secular matter, and as such so utterly beneath your consideration——”

“To see that men act justly towards each other, doing as they would be done by, cannot be beneath my consideration, Syndic Hackernagel. It is a charge specially committed to my keeping. And I should be an unworthy servant of a righteous Heaven were I to neglect it; either in the matter of our Horologe or of the meanest trifle I am cognizant of. And though all the forces of this heretical age were against me, I will see justice done! Those were good words of the blessed Apostle,” and now the Bishop’s voice rang clear through the chamber. “It seems to me you may search the Holy Scriptures through for better, ‘Show me thy faith, and I will show thee my works’.”

“An epistle of straw,” muttered the reformed Hackernagel, shrugging his narrow shoulders.

“Straw is a sterling commodity,” answered the Bishop, “as Master Luther himself found, when he tried to build without it. And at least our people—the bulk of our people,” sighingly amended he, “know better than to starve on a poor empty windbag of righteousness, or bow down to puppets of hypocrisy. I tell you, Master Hackernagel, they will have this business sifted to the bottom.”

“They did as they pleased,” said the Syndic sulkily.

“As they were cheated into fancying they pleased. Oh, I understand it all, Master Hackernagel. I know your petty grudges against Conrad Dasipodius. I know how Isaac Habrecht refused to play into your hands. I know how against his better judgment, you flattered this poor weak boy here into a task beyond his powers, and cozened him into believing himself to be what he never can be, that you might win a passing popularity—that as you went by, people might point after you and cry, ‘There goes our great Syndic! the upholder of our privileges! the champion of our liberties! who will see we are not trampled upon!’ and for such empty triumphs as these, you toyed with their ignorance, by the false witness you bore, and sacrificed to it the noblest heart among us. Has it ever broken one hour of your rest, I wonder, to think you have driven this man into banishment? Thank Heaven that there were those about you frustrated your yet fouler designs against him. Does it ever tell you that to feed your paltry—vanity—ambition is no fit word—a bond of honour should have been broken? The hard-earned money of our people frittered, and a work of Art reduced to a useless gimcrack, so your turn might be served? Did you ever spare a thought to the humiliation which sooner or later must have befallen this young man? Look at him now, and see what you have done.”

The Bishop paused, his eyes softening a little as he cast a brief glance at Otto, but they kindled again at the sound of Hackernagel’s voice demanding, tremulous with suppressed rage, “Who says he cannot do it?”

“Himself,” said Radegund. “He has confessed so much to me.”

Tobias laughed a low sneering laugh.

“Couldn’t he say it again,” suggested Job, in his tone of happiest inspiration. “That would settle the question, wouldn’t it, my lord?”

“Well, you know,” jerked out Otto, with painful twitchings about the mouth corners, “I—you see——”

“Come, speak out, nephew,” said Niklaus, but not harshly; “we won’t be shuffled with.”

“Well, I—I——” His voice failed him, and he stood mute and fumbling with damp fingers, burning and ice-cold by turns, at the long broken white feather in his hat.

“Yes or no?” demanded the Bishop in inexorable tones. And still only some faint inarticulate sounds gurgled through the miserable man’s pale and quivering lips.

“Speak,” commanded Radegund.

“No—I can’t—” he gasped, starting at the sound of her voice like some galvanized corpse, and then, heavy as death, his two arms fell beside him.

“On your oath do you declare that, nephew,” asked the Burgomaster.

“Oh yes, if—if you like,” he stammered; and staggering to a chair and sinking into it, he burst into tears.

“Coward! Fool!” hissed Hackernagel; but Radegund swept past to Otto’s side. “Eat your own words for lies, Tobias Hackernagel!” she cried, laying her arm protectingly about the young man’s drooping neck; “never less coward or fool than now, when he has dared to tell the truth and shame—you!”

And bending her proud head to the Bishop, she led Otto gently from the audience chamber.

“The lad has done right, my lord,” said Niklaus, breaking at last the prolonged silence which ensued. “If a man can’t do a thing, it’s best he should own to it.”

“It’s a pity he didn’t do it long ago though,” grumbled Klausewitz, “if it’s only to think——”

“My impression,” said the Bishop thoughtfully, “is that he did believe himself able; but—well, we make our mistakes sometimes,” he continued, with a glance of somewhat mitigated severity at Hackernagel. “And now it remains to us to take steps for getting Dasipodius back again.”

“Back again!” shrieked Hackernagel.

“And you, Master Syndic, are the man to ask him.”

“Never!” he gasped out, “never!”

“Ah, well,” said the Bishop, “there is of course the alternative.”

“And that?”

“Is to arrest you.”

“Me! on what charge?”

“Ah! on one or two. You would, for example, in the first place be tried for false accusing, then for misappropriation and waste of the public monies, then for——”

“And I have been brought here—inveigled, deceived into believing that I was wanted——”

“As you certainly were, my dear sir,” gleefully assured the Burgomaster.

“To assist,” went on Tobias, wrathfully glaring at Niklaus, “to assist——”

“Precisely,” nodded his tormentor, “at a friendly little enquiry.”

“And am I to stand here,” continued Tobias, with livid foaming lips, “to be mocked and insulted, and have my private opinions ferreted out of me like this? Am I, in the midst of this free city, to be made the victim of party spirit and cabal? exposed to the ridicule of a pack of—Look here, my lord,” said the Syndic, abruptly changing his key, “these men—it was all their faults, I was but one of them, they consented to be present.”

“Ay, that’s true,” groaned Klausewitz; “but if I’d have known——”

“They sat and heard all,” hurried on Hackernagel. “You know you did,” he said, turning on them in hysterical appealing tones.

“We did,” feelingly assented Niklaus.

“You hear, my lord; they cannot deny it. And am I—I alone to be answerable?”

“It appears so,” said the Bishop, who, in addition to his own careful review of the bearings of the case, had not omitted to encase himself in the panoply of the best available legal opinion. “It was you, Syndic, who set the matter on foot. These gentlemen were summoned first at your instance, to attend——”

“A friendly little enquiry, my lord,” prompted Niklaus.

“Exactly,” said the Bishop, referring to some papers on the table beside him. “And a mere preliminary, as you intimated, in the event of further measures being found necessary.”

“But, my lord,” urged Councillor Job, “as far as that goes, one sitting was more than enough.”

“Quite so, Councillor; as results prove. Syndic Hackernagel appears to have taken the law entirely into his own hands, and guided the question, begged it rather, into such a channel that the people were drifted into a fresh voting before they knew where they were. You did wrong, Tobias Hackernagel, wrong enough, heaven knows, to Dasipodius; but a wrong yet deeper against the public right, in presuming on your authority, and overstepping your vested power.”

“The people voted as they pleased,” protested Hackernagel.

“Not as they pleased, Tobias Hackernagel,” said Niklaus earnestly. “Their sense of right and wrong was utterly deadened by your sophistries. I thought, thick-headed fool that I was, that it might have been safely left to them. I could not credit, none of us here could have done so, that your special pleadings and your absurd representations would have influenced beings who boast the possession of reason. I thought—we all thought,” said Niklaus, turning on his colleagues, “that justice might be left to the people; but we’ll never think so again,” concluded the Burgomaster—“be sure of that, my lord.”

And as from one man broke forth the echoed assurance, “Never!”

“I am willing to believe,” continued the Bishop, still addressing himself to Hackernagel, “that in this you erred somewhat through ignorance.”

“What!” shrieked the Syndic, bounding from the floor and gasping with fury. Accusations of malice, lying, covetousness, and any other sin of the Decalogue he might in time have brought himself to pocket; but ignorance lying to his charge! Shade of Solomon! “This,” he said, his eyes shaking and rolling in frenzied and nervous indignation, to maintain an unruffled air of wounded dignity, “is the first time m—my ability has ever been called in question. I—I—I am no f—fool.”

“Then,” said the Bishop, “you must be the greatest knave in all Strassburg; and if knowingly, as it appears by your avowal it was, that you did this foul wrong, and refuse to atone for it by the simple means I have, with the general consent of these gentlemen here, offered you, there remains to me no choice but to detain you under a formal warrant of arrest.”

Like a tiger at bay, the Syndic backed, and glaring round at the stolid faces hemming him in, fixed his eyes on the doors; then, as through the dead silence fell the clash of the changing guard outside in the stone corridor, some half-fledged exclamation of defiance died down upon his livid lips into a whining meekness.

“I am a man of peace, my lord,” he said shudderingly.

“A blessed thing, Master Tobias,” said the Bishop, bowing his head.

“I would—do—a great deal—for the sake of peace,” and he looked round, possibly out of mere force of habit, for applause, but there was not a sound. “I think,” he went on, “sooner than bring on the earth a sword or captivity, a man should even lick the dust, especially when he has a family—four daughters. Think of it, my lord.”

“Well, Syndic,” said the Bishop, with a shade of impatience, “we are waiting your decision.”

“And,” went on Hackernagel, “I am convinced—morally convinced—that, provided there be two ways of doing a thing, the lesser should yield to the greater, the individual to the general. Yes, I am persuaded that a man is bound to make any sacrifice of his own private feelings, however painful it may be to——”

“Choose the easier. Come, Master Hackernagel, don’t apologise,” interrupted Niklaus, “but take your chance while you can get it; and thank your lucky star my lord has given it you. I don’t say it isn’t more than you deserve, but there take it, man, take it.”

And on the understanding that he had taken it, Syndic Hackernagel went forth from the palace walls, not altogether the man he entered them, but still a free agent.

CHAPTER XLII.

OTTO FINDS CONSOLATION.

Excepting that the hold of his sister’s hand on his own never relaxed until he found himself safe at home, Otto knew little how he came out of that terrible ordeal, and found himself sobbing bitter tears on Radegund’s shoulder, just as he had done many a time when he was a little boy, and contemporary juvenile favour and prejudice had chanced to deal crossly with him. Now, as then, she hushed him closely to her, and parting the tear-draggled hair from his heated face, kissed it more than once, saying: “That is my own Otto, my brave Otto,” just as she would have coaxed him long ago.

In the world’s eyes, this victory he had gained might be a sorry one enough, barely if at all distinguishable from cruellest defeat; but Radegund understood its worth, and envied him—envied the courage which had led him to confess the truth. It was altogether beside the question that she had urged and argued with, and threatened him into such a course; now she only remembered results, and that he had been true to his word; and as she sat there in the shadows, feeling the beats of Otto’s sore disappointed heart against her own, she yearned for that to have been as guileless. Though the world might taunt and sneer at the dethroned horologist, it was none the less true, as she had declared, that his hour of humiliation had been the noblest his life had known. If her heart-strings had nearly cracked with wounded pride, that brother of hers should have been brought to a confession of the sort—and she could have sobbed aloud for shame and regret far deeper seated than Otto’s own,—still he had his clear conscience. A clear conscience. Ah heaven! what a thing of joy that must be! Too blessed to dare even to think of; and she turned and busied herself in soothing down his grief, until the convulsive sobbings grew fewer and farther between, and he began to be able to collect himself. The first thoroughly lucid thought dawning on him was, that it was gone! That awful thing; gone for evermore! Then came the reaction; and he sat up and petulantly thrust Radegund from him. “Get away!” he said; “you’ve ruined me. I can never never show my face out of doors again after this. You’ve ruined me,” and the tears broke forth afresh.

“Poor child, no,” she said; “I have saved you—from yourself.”

Then she flung her arms about his neck, and this time he did not repel her, but sat staring through his blurred eyes, and letting memory creep back as it listed.

“I shan’t have to turn out to that hateful hole to-morrow morning, shall I?” he said presently. “Isn’t it a den, Radegund? The idea of any fellow ever being expected to—a fellow with eyes, that is, of course. When you’re blind, why it’s all the same wherever you are; and if it’s only for that, they’d better get Dasipodius back—if they can. I say, Radegund, did he call me a fool?”

“Conrad Dasipodius?”

“Dasipodius, no,” disgustfully returned Otto. “He never did; he knew better. He wasn’t a bad sort. I wish he’d come back. Do you, Radegund? I wonder whether he will—eh? It’s my belief he’d just go anywhere after that wretched Horologe. Queer, isn’t it? Why, they might beg me back till they choked, and I wouldn’t. I say, Radegund, do you know if I’d have had the faintest notion of all that was to have come of that letter—you know what I mean—I’d have cut my fingers off before I’d have touched it with a pair of tongs. I believe the devil himself was in that letter. Radegund, I say, what have you done with it?”

“What letter?” she said with a slight start.

“Why—you know; that letter I brought you back again, that day when—look here, Radegund, I want it—to give it him, I mean. I fancy it would set things straighter if he had it. You’ve kept it, haven’t you?”

No reply.

“Oh I say, but you have,” he went on a little anxiously, “and you might give it up; it can’t be of any earthly use to you. Radegund——”

“Do you suppose I hoard up little bits of paper?” she asked contemptuously.

“No, but it was something more than a little bit of paper,” he urged.

“I never could imagine what was your fancy in bringing it back,” she said.

“Oh well, I thought—you and Dasipodius—I didn’t choose for those fellows to go picking it up and—there—I forget all about it now,” said Otto, who in view of that transfer of his affections which he had made, did not care to recall the old vague intents of making mischief between Dasipodius and Sabina, which had been the chief motor power of that morning’s work. He had indeed long since been heartily ashamed of it all. “I wish the thing had never been written. It was all Sabina’s fault. And if she’d have married me when I asked her. I shouldn’t have been exposed to all this—annoyance. It is annoying, isn’t it? But I don’t care a bit; I’m very glad,” and the last lingering sob quivered through Otto’s frame, “very glad indeed. I’ve got as good as she is any day, and better, haven’t I, Radegund? Sabina’s a stupid little highty-tighty sort of a thing after all, isn’t she? Now Gretchen’s a lump of sense, every inch of her. She worships the ground I tread on; and she’s got such perceptive powers as I never—Radegund!” and he gazed up at her face, his eyes rounding with some sudden apprehensive thought.

“Well, child.”

“Don’t call me child.”

“Well, Otto dear,” she amended with a faint smile, as she stroked his glossy black curls, “what is it?”

“You don’t think she’ll throw me over because—because——” and he coloured painfully.

“Not if she’s worth a straw.”

“Oh, she is; I know she thinks no end of me.”

“Then she’ll be true to you,” comforted Radegund. “When we love, we don’t put it on and off like a glove.”

“No,” nodded Otto, cheering up entirely; “perhaps not. And you didn’t keep that letter then, Radegund?”

“What nonsense to suppose I should.”

“Well, it’s a pity, though perhaps it would have been too late now to—I say, Radegund, when on earth will supper be ready?”

“Directly, dear.”

“I’m fainting with hunger. I haven’t eaten a morsel since dinner. They kept me in that den of an ante-room for two mortal hours; and I couldn’t get out, say what I could. That fellow with the drawn sword at the door shook his head like a bell-clapper when I asked him, and said his orders were strict. Radegund, just you go into the kitchen, there’s a dear girl, and see they put calves’ brains enough in that salad; they didn’t last time, and it’s always half the battle—the brains.”

Meanwhile, the Burgomaster, hardly knowing whether to be more glad or sorry at the settlement to which things had been brought, walked slowly home. Personally he would have relished Hackernagel’s judicial tortures as thoroughly as a Madrileño enjoys a bull fight; but on the other hand he knew well enough the law’s delays, and in the event of the Syndic being required publicly to answer for his distortions of justice, it would have delayed the recall of Dasipodius, and this taken into account, he was content to accept the decision just arrived at, and went home in such a cheerful frame of mind, that for the life of him he could not refrain from telling Sabina, “whether she liked it or not,” as he said to himself, that there was a chance of their seeing Master Dasipodius back again.

“If he’ll come, that is. But it’s not every man kicked out of office who’ll consent to be put in again.”

“He’ll come, father,” said the girl. “He loved the Horologe so dearly. Oh, I know he will,” and her pale cheek glowed.

“Yes,” returned the Burgomaster. “I think he will, my girl. He’s a man, once he puts his heart into a thing, doesn’t take it out again in a hurry.”

“No, no. Not when he really cares for it.”

Niklaus glanced furtively at his daughter. Well, well, it was good to see her cheeks had not lost their power of getting rosy, as sometimes it seemed; and he hazarded a further remark: “And old friends are best anyhow?”

“Oh yes.”

“And still you’re Conrad Dasipodius’ friend, yes?”

“Oh yes indeed.”

And the Burgomaster was satisfied.

CHAPTER XLIII.

“MAKING NIGHT HIDEOUS.”

Syndic Hackernagel’s household was not a little put about at finding that on his return from the palace, he was in anything but a genial humour. Endowed, ordinarily speaking, with the healthiest of appetites, he declined to touch a morsel of supper; and with not a good-night to throw at a creature about the place, he betook himself sulkily to bed.

Over and above these portents, there were to be seen certain sparks scintillating in Tobias’ small green eyes, which were understood by melancholy experience, to bode ill for domestic tranquillity; and so, in the fervent hope that he might be better in the morning, he was let go his ways unquestioned.

“And to-morrow,” muttered the discomfited magistrate, as he put on his night-cap, and drew it well over his lank jaws, “to-morrow this proud churchman shall know who Syndic Hackernagel is.”

“It is an accursed thing,” continued Tobias, anathematising the Horologe as cordially as his predestined lips dared. “An evil thing invented to bring tribulation on the righteous. An accursed—verily a most accursed——” Then he sank to sleep, but not into oblivion; far off into the land of dreams that supreme subject of his waking moments followed him. Now it made itself into a hideous nightmare, and from its grinning face sprouted dead-cold claw-like fingers, which pinched and scratched him, and preternaturally long legs radiated from it, dancing and stamping upon him, till he awoke gasping with horror. Anon the spirit of his dreams waxed kinder, and the Syndic beheld himself hand on heart, haranguing all Strassburg from the forensic platform, and the dreamer smiled sweetly, for he thought then he heard the sound of his own voice.

“Good people,” he fancied he was saying, “go your ways. I wash my hands of you and your Horologe.”

Alas! that it was only a dream! One from which he was rudely awakened by a confused uproar of feminine shrieks within doors, and a deafening hubbub of masculine voices without.

And that red flare! illumining his room to daylight clearness? Merciful powers! was the house on fire? With one bound the Syndic sprang from his bed to the window, and wrenching it open, thrust out his head.

As well have put it in the pillory at once, for before he had time to draw it in again, a shower of such loathly missiles as only the ingenuity of a riotous mob can devise, fell around the benight-capped object showing out so conspicuously white through the darkness. Physically, however, Syndic Hackernagel sustained no further abiding damage from that dark night’s encounter than the marring of his nose’s bold outline by a broken eggshell, the mark of which, by the enigmatical law of scarification, which sometimes refuses ever to obliterate traces of a pin’s scratch, Tobias did carry with him to the grave.

Not so many weeks back, this justice of the peace, posted at a safe distance, had watched the exit of Conrad Dasipodius under a course of similar attentions from the crowd; and he had speculated a little curiously as to what sort of a sensation rotten egg and brickbat pelting might superinduce in the patient. Now enabled to realise it to the full, he slammed to his window even faster than he had opened it. His nocturnal visitors were not to be balked however, and with a crash and a prickly shower, the glass of the latticed panes lay shattered around him; while borne in upon the incoming chilly and damp night breeze, yells of laughter, mingled with ominous low growls, assailed the shivering Syndic’s ears through their cotton coverings.

“The Horologe!” shouted a hundred throats, till the very roof gables echoed again, causing every upper window in the street to fly open, bristling with heads.

“The Horologe! Where’s our Horologe?”

Tobias shrank back into the shadows.

“Come out! Show yourself!”

But he shrank to utter extinction, and was no more to be seen than a snail prodded with a bit of stick.

“If you don’t show yourself,” shouted an awful voice, “we’ll be up in a twinkling, and bring you out.”

Foremost among his besiegers, Hackernagel’s one glance had shown him more than one of the Dial horologiers, and for their lithe limbs to clamber over the projecting cornices of the lower casements, and jump in through the smashed one above, would be, as he knew, the work of half-a-dozen seconds; convinced therefore that nothing but surrender remained to him, he again advanced, in an agony of terror.

“The Horologe! the Horologe!” shouted the mob, as soon as his face, white now as his head-gear, peered forth into the red flare of the torches they carried.

“Where’s Dasipodius? We want Dasipodius.”

And with that shout, Hackernagel’s last lingering hope of being able to defy my lord Bishop faded from his calculations. Whatever doubt had hitherto remained, it was clear to him now that by hook or by crook these Strassburgers meant to have their man back again. He whom not two months since they had hounded from their streets, he on whose head one-half of the city had heaped insult and opprobrium, and the other half had not stretched out a finger to defend.

They wanted him back again. Well, what wonder? Was not his absence threatening dolorous danger to their pockets? Slowly but certainly it had dawned upon these good people that the Horologe had fallen into incompetent hands, and the hideous fact had become patent to them, that if they did not bestir themselves, every batzen of their subscribed florins would be as much lost as if thrown into the Rhine. Against this frightful possibility Calvinist and Catholic rose as one man, beginning hurriedly to catechise each other as to the legality of those summary proceedings at the Chancellery, and into a jeopardy it had never known before, Tobias Hackernagel’s name was falling now. Such ominous rumblings of discontent had for the last two or three weeks been growing so audible, that any man less in love with himself and all his actions than Syndic Hackernagel would have long since begun to tremble. To this most self-complacent of Sir Oracles, however, the notion of any dog whatsoever daring to bark after once he had opened his mouth had not occurred. Notwithstanding, the growls had daily grown louder; and if only a few days more had flowed on in their usual course, even Tobias must have been driven to mark whither the tide of opinion was tending.

Already before nightfall, there were few who were not cognizant of the light in which the Bishop, whose opinion Catholics venerated, and Protestants could not choose but respect, regarded Tobias Hackernagel’s dealings towards Dasipodius. The details of that interview between himself and my lord the previous afternoon had been circulated with no small gusto by more than one of the municipality who had been witnesses to it, and had spread before sundown like wildfire through the city’s breadth and length. Many of these men, while acknowledging that his very meddling proclivities had done their state some service by preventing stagnation, bore him personal grudges for his contemptuous bearing and pompous opposition to measures proposed by any but himself, and above all, his inter-meddling with matters he understood nothing about. And with an unction they were at no pains to conceal, they spread the story of Tobias’ explanation with Bishop John, and the upshot of it. By all which, it will be clear that the Syndic’s popularity was at zero. Even his very co-religionists had begun to lose confidence in him, when the appalling conviction loomed upon them that he had perhaps blundered away their money.

Compared with the horror of this, the very accusation of sorcery against Dasipodius paled to insignificance; and the firiest fanatics of every persuasion piteously added their suffrages to the general opinion, that at all hazards the blind mathematician must be fetched back to finish their clock for them, even though they should arrange to burn him afterwards.

Thus of self-interest was born what the Strassburgers pleased themselves by calling a sense of justice. It had however, in truth, long been honestly burning in many hearts. In none perhaps more purely and ardently than in Burgomaster von Steinbach’s. Not an hour had passed since that day when he had watched the blind man leave the presence of his inquisitors, that Niklaus had not pondered and planned for his reinstation; but there were many motives forbidding Niklaus from openly declaring himself the mathematician’s champion, dearly as he yearned to do it; though they were such as he did not care too nearly to analyse even to himself. Simply when they arose, he would look thoughtfully at Sabina, and the old speculations anent the mysterious ways of womankind would begin to worry his brain.

The ends and aims, however, of creatures of his own sex were things of altogether a different calibre, and quite, he believed, and justly too, within his powers of disentangling; and very attentively, but sharing his observations with no mortal creature, he had watched the current of public opinion, quietly making it his business to feed the growing discontent against Hackernagel, and the desire for the recall of Dasipodius. That the people as a body should desire it was, Niklaus believed, the one condition on which the mathematician would be induced to resume his old duties.

“But I wouldn’t answer for it,” he sighed. “They threw away their loaf, and if they can’t fish it up again, there’s nobody to blame but themselves. Hey, Master Klausewitz, what do you think of it?”

Klausewitz said that only so long as they didn’t make another endless day of it at the Chancellery, he “didn’t care how it was settled. The place in summer was like a furnace.”

Meantime Syndic Hackernagel is striving to address his midnight visitors as well as his chattering teeth permit.

“Good people,” he said, as the clamour for the banished horologier rose up on all sides of him, “Master Dasipodius——”

“Ay, ay!”

“The—the Horologe, I mean,” he continued piteously. “The Horologe——” But his weak attempts are drowned in fresh uproar, and while the unhappy Syndic, daring neither to retreat, still less to advance by half an inch, stands quaking with terror, amid yells and shouts, and catcalls, and every imaginable sort of rat’s music, high above all rise the chorused shouts for Dasipodius and the Horologe.

“Himmelsdonnerwetter! What is the meaning of all this?” broke forth a deep bass voice through the din; and never had it sounded so welcome in the Syndic’s ears. “Does the man keep the Horologe under his pillow, that you come disturbing the whole neighbourhood like this? See here, comrades, if you don’t instantly disperse, and take yourselves home to bed like decent fellows, I’ve got the watch behind me,” and Burgomaster Niklaus jerked his finger over his shoulder to a compact dark mass in his rear, “and they shall conduct you all to less comfortable lodgings.”

“Ah! ah! Dear Master von Steinbach,” screeched Tobias.

“Have done, Hans,” cried Niklaus, bringing down his strong hand on an arm just lifted to hurl some fresh missile at the white pyramidal object now oscillating over the parapet.

“Dear Master von Steinbach! is that really you? For the Lord’s sake——”

“How can the man speak, if you go breaking his head first?” demanded Niklaus of the surging mob.

“No, to be sure not, dear Master Niklaus. That’s what I say—what you say, I mean. You always do put it so sensibly; and if they’ll only listen, I’ll say anything they like—anything.”

“Time enough for that to-morrow morning, Tobias Hackernagel,” answered Niklaus. “You see you’ve come an hour or so too soon, comrades—hey?” continued he, turning to the ringleaders with a face stern as Rhadamanthus, but his eyes dancing gleefully in the gleam of their torches. “Just an hour or so too soon. In the morning I’m sure Syndic Hackernagel will talk to you, if you’ll meet him outside the Chancellery—eh, Master Tobias?”

“To be sure, Burgomaster, to be sure; and I’ll——”

“Ay, ay, of course he will; and tell you what will be sure to please you all.”

“Yes, yes,” protested the grateful Tobias. “It shall be just what they like. Tell them, will you, dear Master von Steinbach, anything.”

“It’s deeds we want, not words,” growled an angry voice. “We’ve had enough of them and to spare. And if he don’t fetch Dasipodius back, and look pretty sharp about it too——”

“Oh, but I will! I will. I will indeed.”

“Good,” said Niklaus.

“Good,” chorused Tobias’ visitors. “Tell us that again to-morrow morning. Good-night. Sweet dreams to you, Master Hackernagel.”

“Good-night,” piped the Syndic, of whom not a vestige was now visible. “Good-night, good people.”

“Oh! but that won’t do at all,” shouted up his tormentors. “We must see you again once more before we go. We shouldn’t sleep a bit if we didn’t. Here! Hi! Look out!”

And Tobias looked out. “Now tell us if you’ve been glad to see us,” exhorted their fugleman. “Too much for words to express? Is that it? Smile then. We shall understand.”

And Tobias smiled, a smile so ghastly, so abjectly wretched, than even his tormentors were satisfied; and with a parting yell which brought the last sleepiest heads in the street to their windows, they went quietly home.

CHAPTER XLIV.

VOX POPULI.

True as the needle to the pole, Tobias Hackernagel kept his appointment next morning. He clearly saw that there remained to him no choice but to deliver himself up with the best grace he could to the tide of circumstances. But alas, bad was the best. Never had his ingenuity been more heavily taxed, and his self-esteem more sharply pricked, than while he sat pondering over the terms which were to make it seem as though Dasipodius’ recall were the effect of his own spontaneous heart-promptings. In the end, however, the Syndic succeeded very fairly indeed to his own satisfaction, and that of his own devoted adherents; and for the general, they were content, so only he did as they demanded, to leave him his own way of doing it.

Even the most obstinately inimical allowed themselves, out of the generosity which conquest brings, to be kept in check; and with the exception of one or two solicitous enquiries pitched in a shrill key, as to what had befallen the most important feature of his face, they quietly settled themselves to listen to what some present afterwards pronounced to be the most astounding piece of oratory which had ever left the lips of Syndic Hackernagel.

That this, in the very nature of it, occupied some time, may be conceived; and for one whole hour and a quarter, the Syndic, with a few trifling interruptions, held forth from the Chancellery steps, to those who during the previous night’s small hours had convened that rendezvous, and to as many more who made it their business or their pleasure to hear what Master Hackernagel might be having to say for himself.

Himself! Gracious Powers! Self, in any case, was not to be his text on this occasion. Every nerve and sinew of him were, on the contrary, strained to turn the mental vision of his hearers in upon themselves, and to demonstrate to them what an egregious blunder they had committed in deposing the king of horologiers, the Professor Conrad Dasipodius. For who but they, as he boldly and indignantly demanded, had been guilty of this, by their own suffrages? The whole matter, as with a wave of the hand towards Burgomaster von Steinbach, who stood silently watching the scene, the whole matter, Tobias said, had been publicly and thoroughly sifted, and if it was not their subsequent voting which had thrust out Dasipodius, what had?

“Good people, there are things,” hurried on Hackernagel, incited to mend the pace of his oratory at this point, by certain ominous rumblings—“there are things a man may sorely repent of having done,” and here his saddened tones producing the soothing effect he aimed at, he perorated on, ringing the changes upon his syllogism with curious skill, and sticking to it with leech-like tenacity. Then too in that scarlet and fur panoply, he was almost invulnerable. Tobias Hackernagel shivering in his thin night-gear, under a cross-fire of practical hard-hitting, and Syndic Hackernagel clothed about in all the magnificence of his civic raiment, were as two utterly different men.

Personal courage was, as he always said, a mere animal attribute. In words, solely and entirely, his strength lay; and valiantly he squared up now to his difficulty, attacking at every point, never leaving one threatening salient angle looking in the slightest degree threateningly for himself, until he had smoothed it round to look like the work of the people. With meteoric bursts, his periods rushed across their intellectual vision, dazing it so utterly, that only afterwards some of his hearers found breath to question the flawlessness of his arguments.

And ever again, when he felt the smallest danger of getting out of his depth, he returned to that one incontrovertible assertion. “Did you not, each and all of you, enjoy your free right of voting for whom you pleased at the close of the enquiry? And was not Dasipodius’ name included among the candidates? Answer me that.”

“Ay, ay, that’s true, Master Hackernagel; we don’t deny that of course, but then——”

“And what is the result? That Dasipodius is rejected.” With mutual reproachful glares and contrite groans, they made the required admission.

“And Otto von Steinbach appointed.”

Longer and deeper utterances of contrition testified to this fact.

“Ay. Groan away,” muttered Burgomaster von Steinbach. “I’ll be hanged if I could have believed Strassburg was made up of such arrant——”

“Pray! I beg, Burgomaster,” said Tobias, “do not blame these good people. If only for your own sake, do not do that. What is it but the old story of popular ingratitude? You nurse a viper in your bosom, and it turns and stings you. Give these people here two seconds to speak in, and believe me it is on us they would cast the blame—on Us!”

“Speak for yourself, Tobias Hackernagel!” furiously cried Niklaus.

“Nay, for myself possibly—for you—for the whole bench I speak. Good friends,” he continued, turning again to his auditors, “Burgomaster von Steinbach here places the whole matter in—in——”

“A nutshell,” prompted Niklaus.

“In a nutshell,” smiled Tobias effusively. “It was, he observes, a grievous mistake you made when you——”

Has some invisible thunderbolt stricken Hackernagel, that the word dies on his wide-opening lips, while a paste-white hue overspreads his face, and his eyes fix themselves in a rigid stare on the figure of a woman who has mingled with the crowd, which is no sooner aware of her presence, than it divides respectfully for her to pass to the foot of the steps, where she takes her stand and watchfully eyes the speaker.

“When—when——” stammers Hackernagel.

“Well, Master Hackernagel? Don’t let me interrupt,” she says in a low tone,—“a grievous mistake that was made when——”

“When,” a sickly smile contorts Hackernagel’s lips, “when WE—sent away the Professor Dasipodius,” he gasps out.

“Good!” cried Niklaus. “Courage, man. You’ll do now.”

But never in all his public career had Tobias felt himself so near his undoing. It was all that woman’s eyes which had driven him to the disastrous admission. Had she kept in her own house at her sewing, as became women with an ounce of modesty in their composition, he could have pulled himself through with barely a hair’s damage; but here, forced in spite of himself, to cry peccavi! What in the name of Hecuba had she come here for, setting herself,—literally doing it, between him and the people at this crucial moment? Bearding him on his own particular hunting-ground? To be brow-beaten and trampled upon like this by a woman? Yet no, a million times no! and girting in his crimson and fur, until every crease of it was eloquent of the creature it wrapped about, he returned to the contest.

“Having arrived then,” he continues, “good friends, at the conclusion that you—that it was an error,” for still the artist’s eyes are transfixing his face, “to—to part with the Professor Dasipodius, we have come to the determination of—of fetching him back again.”

A thunder of applause greets the proposition.

“That’s by a long way the finest thing he ever said in his life. Isn’t it, Klausewitz?” said the Burgomaster, appealing to his much-enduring colleague, whom he had dragged to the scene of action.

“The sun’s burning hot,” grumbled Job. “If he doesn’t make haste, we shall all get sunstroke.”

“My Lord Bishop inclines to the opinion,” continued the Syndic, with a side glare of defiance at Radegund, “though here I must confess I am not at one with him, that Dasipodius will—not come. But I think you—we ought not to despair. My own opinion is that he will jump——”

“To the hangman with your opinions. Push on, man, and tell them what my lord said, can’t you?”

“But,” proceeded Tobias, thus assisted, “am I here to advocate my own poor sentiments? Is it not by the desire of the people that I stand here to-day?”

“Ay, ay!” cheered certain voices, which turned Tobias’ skin to gooseflesh under the sweltering crimson and fur.

“And I am prepared to sacrifice—I emancipate myself, so to speak, from my own impressions.”

“Good again,” nodded Niklaus, cheerily contemplating the signs of approval in the faces before him.

“This moment, as I have ever been,” and Tobias’ voice waxed shrill as chanticleer’s at dawn, “I am the people’s, always the people’s, body and soul of me. If it be your desire, good friends, as my Lord Bishop believes, that Dasipodius should be invited back again, I your friend, Tobias Hackernagel, will do it.”

Is it that everybody is stricken speechless with admiration for their Syndic’s disinterested proposition, or that because they are mentally debating the perfect wisdom of constituting him their envoy, that not a sound is heard?

“Ah, h’m,” coughed Hackernagel, “have I been speaking, as it were, over the heads of some of you, friends? Well, let me consider, how shall I convey to you, that some in certain high quarters feel that this mission demands for its ambassador, a person—h’m, h’m—of talent, a diplomatist, a tactician, a man of eloquence, of judgment, of—in short it is myself whom my Lord Bishop has requested——” and here Hackernagel’s eyes, sweeping with modest pride the faces before him, encountered the gaze of my lord himself fixed on him in stern curiosity.

“Choose your words better, Syndic Hackernagel,” he said in clear loud tones, “unless you will have me for a prompter.”

“Good morning, my lord,” said Tobias with a sickly smile. “I was just explaining to these good folks that you have—commanded me to fetch the Professor Dasipodius back again.” So Syndic Hackernagel concluded his peroration, somewhat abruptly; and he crept away from the sea of gaping grinning faces, feeling that somehow the whole city knew how he had been brought to bite the dust; or as Niklaus in his subsequent chats over the subject phrased it, had been made to eat humble pie; “the very sourest, toughest, humblest pie, friend Tobias ever swallowed in all his life!”

CHAPTER XLV.

OLD FRIENDS.

“Hush! I hear music. Do not you, Kaspar?”

“No, master.”

“It is coming this way,” and the mathematician bends his head attently.

The boy lies stretched at Dasipodius’ feet, in their favourite haunt by the stalactite cavern’s mouth. It is early June now; and for miles round there is no such blessed refuge from the burden and heat of midday as this green turf, sloping downwards to the lake’s silent shores. Not a ripple stirs the water, for there is hardly a breath of air, and the heat is at its sultriest. Seemingly the very birds in the leafy branches overhead are indulging in a siesta, for they are silent, and not so much as the fluttering of a wing breaks the stillness. There has been hardly a sound for a good hour past, save the sweet tones of Kaspar Habrecht, who has been dipping hap-hazard into a new edition of Euclid, just issued from the famous new Amsterdam printing press, and is reading aloud fragments of it for the blind man’s contentment. Not much for his own, excepting in so far as Dasipodius’ pleasure is always his; but from a selfish point of view, Kaspar would undoubtedly rather have been delighting his soul with the gay, daintily-illustrated volume of Gudrun with all its sea kings, and its vikings, and storm waves, which had come to hand in the self-same package, cheek by jowl with the sober, leathern-bound Euclid.

“Rectilineal figures which are similar to the same rectilineal figure are also similar to each other,” reads Kaspar, with a suspicion of weariness, not to say of contempt in his tones; did one, thought he, need Euclid to tell one that?

“Turn over,” nodded Dasipodius.

“If,” reads Kaspar again, this time suppressing a veritable yawn, “from the greater of two unequal magnitudes there be taken more than its half and——”

“Never mind about that,” says the mathematician.

“Next let E coincide with D,” continued the boy, making another chance dip, “then of the two angles ADC and BDC one must be obtuse and one acute. Suppose the angle ADC obtuse——”

“Shut the book, Kaspar,” smiled the mathematician, laying his hand on the boy’s, and helping him to the act; “it is you who are ADC this morning. You are yawning; ay, but I heard you; shut the book, I say.”

“Nay,” faintly protested Kaspar.

“Hush! and there, I hear that music again. Listen!” And now as Kaspar sat up, and also caught its faint strains, a joyful animation flashed into his dulled eyes; and heedlessly flinging aside “the elements of all true worldly wisdom,” he sprang to his feet, and listened breathlessly.

“It’s some water party landing down at Schaffhausen yonder; that’s what it is. Holy Mary! if they would but come up our way! what luck it would be, wouldn’t it, master? We never so much as hear the squeak of a fife, excepting at mass on Sundays, and when we were at Strassburg—” he stopped abruptly with a sigh.

“Sighing for the fleshpots, Kaspar?” said Dasipodius. “Is life growing so wearisome to you here already?”

“Nay,” said the boy blushingly; “but somehow a little music does so help one over the stones.”

“Ay,” and it was the master’s turn to sigh; “it is rough riding when all the music has died out of one’s life. And so—tell me, Kaspar, you want to be back in Strassburg again?”

“Yes,” sturdily answered Kaspar; “do not you, master?”

And next instant, seeing the shadow of pain which passed over the mathematician’s face, he would have given his deft right hand to have those words unspoken. “I never shall return to Strassburg, Kaspar,” he said with assumed calmness; “you know that.”

“Never?” cried the boy, opening wide his blue eyes.

“I think not; my place there is gone. If I cannot be as I have been there,” said the mathematician proudly, “I will not be there at all. I must seek out some new field for work; some place, if such there be, where a man’s word is taken for his bond, and his infirmity is not his crime. And by Saint Laurence,” he added more briskly, “I must be finding it quickly too. It will never do to stay rusticating away the days in this delightful way much longer. Yes, you and I will have to bid each other a ‘God be with you’ soon, Kaspar, and go our separate ways; we must part, lad.”

“Part?” echoed the boy, wrinkling his smooth white brow in saddened perplexity.

“Yes, listen. In Strassburg I have but to speak for you to find you work. The hands that carved the Horologe, interest or no interest indeed, would not hold themselves out idle long for want of something to do, and find a rich reward for it too. Are you listening, Kaspar? do you understand?”

“I am listening, master.”

“And when will you like to be going?”

“Going!” mechanically ejaculated the boy; “where?”

“Did not I say now you were gone wool-gathering this morning? Back to Strassburg.”

“I will never again set foot in Strassburg,” said Kaspar, a crimson flush kindling in his cheeks, and a fiery light to his eyes, “excepting it is by your side, master.”

“Then never again, I take it, will your foot be set there; for I am going—nay, as yet I do not know where.”

“But where you go, there I shall go too. Do not shake your head, do not—master, if you send me away from you, I—no—you shall not—master dear—” a burst of tears choked his pleading, and he flung himself on the blind man’s neck, and sobbed bitterly.

“Treuer Kamerad!” murmured Dasipodius; and the firm, beautiful lips quivered, and the blind eyes grew unwontedly lustrous as he stroked the boy’s sunny hair. “My faithful Kaspar! I think among those same stars we talked of once, which rose for me when my sun set, and I thought all my life was to be midnight blackness, that you are the brightest. And shall I repay you so? Let your unselfish heart profit mine, and teach me to think what is best—and right for you. Listen here now, Kaspar—hush, hush,” for still the boy clung fast to him, crying bitterly: “Come, be reasonable.”

“And so he is—reasonable,” growled the voice of Isaac Habrecht. “It is you who are unreasonable, Master Dasipodius.”

“Isaac?”

“Ay. Yes it’s Isaac; and Isaac—and Kaspar too, seemingly, it’s to be the end of the chapter for you. Come, Kaspar, don’t go weeping your soul out like that, dear boy,” continued Isaac, gently disengaging Kaspar’s arms from Dasipodius.

“The master was but jesting.”

“Nothing of the kind,” began Dasipodius.

“He never really meant to be sending you away.”

“But I did,” protested Dasipodius. “I have been thinking.”

“Then for shame!” indignantly cried Isaac. “Do you hear, Master Dasipodius, for shame!”

“It is best; it must be,” gravely urged Dasipodius. “Reflect for an instant how utterly my lot is changed from what it was. Once I might have lifted him as I rose, and you too, Isaac; I might have served you both; but now——”

“Now our turn has come to serve you; or at least it’s fair of you, master, to let us try; but with such a proud, independent, obstinate——”

“Have done!” smiled Dasipodius. “Am I to sit here and be called names? Et tu Brute! You, Isaac, of all others; in whose hands I am just a piece of clay, to be moulded as you will. Who was it, I wonder, bade me say like any parrot, ‘Take the drawings, Isaac Habrecht, and carry them to the Chancellery!’ and I said it, by heaven, I said it—I!”

“And I,” returned Isaac, a grim smile of satisfaction relaxing his massive features, which bore a marvellous family likeness to some of Kaspar’s wooden saints and heroes, “I obeyed, and took them, and—there they are now.”

“How?” asked Dasipodius, turning his head quickly. “You say——”

“There they are now.”

“But Otto von Steinbach——”

“Ah! von Steinbach. Yes, he fetched them away,” said Isaac, in tones of careless contempt, “of course; and he kept them—till they burnt his fingers. Then he took them back again, and there they are, safe and sound. So Syndic Klausewitz has just been telling me.”

“Syndic Klausewitz!” echoed Kaspar, passing his hand over his still wet eyes, and staring in amazement at his brother, and then in utter bewilderment at the apparition of Dr. Bruno Wolkenberg, who availing himself of his intimate acquaintance with the by-paths to their haunt, has suddenly appeared upon the scene, and is silently stretching his length upon the grass, within a few feet of Dasipodius. “And what brings him here?”

“What brings them all,” said the sententious Switzer. “Duty. There’s some two score,” he continued, jerking his head in the direction of a confused sound of tramping feet and many voices growing louder each moment, “of the Town Council, and ever so many old friends of yours besides, master, coming here to have a word with you; if they’re not grilled to death before they get as far. My last batzen to a florin, they’re rueing the day now, if they haven’t done it before, that they meddled with our Horologe. Ho! ho! ho! ha! ha! ha!” and the cavernous recesses behind them resounded again and again with the deep bass of Isaac’s laughter, grave stolid Isaac Habrecht. “I thought maybe,” he continued, “that you’d like me to step on and tell you they were coming; but they won’t be here yet awhile. It is no joke,” and Isaac lifted his hat and wiped the heat drops from his massive forehead, “tramping up yonder road; every inch of it in a white heat as it is; and a pig’s nothing to the way Syndic Hackernagel pulls backward.” And once more Isaac’s sonorous ha! ha! echoed through the cave as if all the gnomes of the Venusberg were gathered there, and sharing his enjoyment. “Well, well, patience! They’ll get him here in time. And there’s Burgomaster von Steinbach, and Dr. Bruno Wolk——”

“Dr. Bruno is welcome,” said Dasipodius, stretching out his hand to his friend. “Welcome as unexpected. But how about your large retinue, Dr. Wolkenberg? Have you been appointed Imperial Physician since last you came to Schaffhausen? or how else may your planet be in the ascendant?”

“Nay,” returned the surgeon; “if only you will have it so, it is yours which is in the fortunate house, Conrad.”

“Come! come! if we must have metaphor, minstrel mine, that same planet is far too cloud-covered ever to show again. Only a miracle could unveil it.”

“And lo! a miracle is here!” flourished Bruno. “A horse, a horse, Conrad! brought to the water, and made to drink. That’s what is going to happen.”

“The Sphinx’s riddle was child’s play to yours,” said Dasipodius, with a half-provoked smile. “What on earth do you mean?”

“Hush! hark!” said Bruno; “they’re here.”

“They? and must your horse then be drinking to such a clarion blast as that?” demanded the mystified mathematician.

“The Strassburgers would have it so,” shrugged Bruno.

“And the horse?”

“Stands before you,” answered Bruno, stepping back, and leaving Dasipodius to face his deputation alone.

CHAPTER XLVI.

HOW EXTREMES MEET.

Never did figure of speech so deplorably insult noble brute as this of Bruno Wolkenberg’s. A more wretchedly abject specimen of the creature man than Tobias Hackernagel looked at this moment, is not conceivable. For once his civic bravery seemed to fail in its power of lending him even meretricious magnificence, and Syndic Hackernagel’s coat did not make Syndic Hackernagel, but hung about his sloping shoulders in flabby dust-whitened folds, a thing to be joyfully wriggled out of, had time and place permitted. But to-day as ever, Tobias Hackernagel is the martyr, not to say the sport of circumstance and of public attention. An effective situation! one such as is generally the very apex of his ambition, to be standing the focus of every eye in that semicircle of municipal magnates and citizens all pranked in their best, and flanked with buff-jerkined halberdiers and a good round dozen of drummers and of trumpeters in gold and scarlet, set in a rapidly widening framework of native population, which, laying aside file and hammer, has turned out all eyes and ears to learn what yonder little ferret-eyed fellow, with the nose angular and wooden of aspect as any carven nutcracker monstrosity that ever left tyro’s chisel, may be having to say. For clearly he is to be spokesman, this pigmy personage, looking specially pigmy by comparison with the stately figure of Dasipodius, in whose presence he now stands, and with the burly form of Burgomaster von Steinbach beside him. Yet, is it from diffidence, or why does he evince such earnest desire to escape the distinction thrust upon him, and hangs back almost as persistently as his companions insist on his stepping forward, going the length even of combining to prod him well to the front with their pikes and other available weapons, among which Burgomaster von Steinbach’s stick does conspicuous service. Clearly to a man these excellently marshalled, resolute-looking representatives of Strassburg’s all sorts and conditions are not to be contravened in their most obvious intention, that Syndic Tobias Hackernagel shall do what he is there to do with all convenient speed.

Patiently expectant meanwhile, Dasipodius stands leaning against the oak, whose spreading boughs mellow the mid-day glare into a gracious light, transfiguring his pale calm features with almost unearthly effulgence, and streaking with golden his waves of dusky hair.

Patience, whatsoever other qualities they may possess or lack, is the special grace of men physically afflicted, and it well becomes him now, mingled as it is with the shade of saddened perplexity, that neither of that trio of trusty friends, within whispering distance of him, are at any pains to unriddle for him anything that is passing around.

A deafening and prolonged trumpet blare, echoing to the valley’s heights and depths, startles him from his speculations. Then, as at last that spends itself, there falls a silence, broken only by the buz-chirp-twee of the myriad insect creatures footing it about the sward, till Niklaus von Steinbach bursts forth with a stentorian “Well! Master Hackernagel?”

Syndic Hackernagel’s jaw starts open, much as if string were its motive power. The movement is, however, productive of nothing beyond a fearsome elongation of his hatchet face, and a silence intenser than the first prevails.

“Well, I say, Master Hackernagel,” reiterates von Steinbach, “we are waiting your very good pleasure,” and he glances peremptorily from the Syndic’s face to the parchment his lean fingers clutch with such convulsive restlessness, that presently it slips to the ground.

“I—I,” stammers Hackernagel, stooping to recover it, “am—must I—am I to—speak first?”

“First and last, my friend. You have it all your own way this time. I and these gentlemen here are but witnesses.”

“Yes, precisely—quite so—perfectly so. But—but,” and with an idiotic contortion of his lips, only by the grossest flattery to be construed into a smile, the Syndic blinks over his shoulder.

“Ay! ay! to be sure, Syndic, quite right,” nods Niklaus, following the direction of his glance. “So it should be.”

And the stick signals a second trumpet blast; which bursting with terrific force in the rear of the unprepared Syndic, sends him forward with a distracted bound.

“But I tell you,” gasps he, turning ragefully on Niklaus, and mopping the great heat drops beading profusely out all over his peaked forehead, “I tell you—this is informal! Out of all ruling. There should be some—something to lead up to—there sh—should be at least three preliminary——”

“And so there should. Thunder and lightning! so there should. You’re the man to understand these little things. Ho there! drums and trumpets, ho!”

And the Burgomaster’s stick evokes a third rousing blast, which rolls thunderously through the hills, and sends the birds flying frantically shrieking over the dark waters.

“That’s what you mean, isn’t it?”

“No, no!” protests Hackernagel, glowering through tears of mingled spite and discomfort at von Steinbach, and then with shuddering apprehension at the hateful array of musical instruments. “I didn’t; and—and let me tell you, Bur—Burgomaster——”

“O yes! O yes! O yes!” shouts the Recorder.

“Now, Master Hackernagel!” prompts Niklaus, lifting his stick with an admonitory flourish.

“But—but——”

“Now, Master Hackernagel!”

Soft, clear, resonant as a bell, falls that voice upon the Syndic’s ear, chasing from his face every particle of colour as entirely as it conjures the deepest of crimson flushes to Surgeon Wolkenberg’s.

Not all the trumpets in Christendom could galvanise Tobias Hackernagel to action as that woman’s voice does. And hardly staying fairly to unfold his voluminous document, he reads forth from it its heading and superscription in hurriedly confused tones. “To the most—hem—illustrious and—hem, hem.”

“He’s picked up a cold,” parenthesised Klausewitz in sympathetic sotto voce. “And no wonder neither. That confounded river mist last night was enough to——”

“Silence!” shouts Niklaus, “for Syndic Hackernagel. To the most illustrious and erudite—Go on, Syndic, we are all attention.”

“Hem—Professor Dasipodius, Citizen of Strassburg, Doctor of Sciences, and Head Mathematical Doctor of the University of the aforesaid city, on the part of me, individually, Tobias Hackernagel, Syndic of Strassburg, and farther, on the part of the Municipality and Citizens of the same city—greeting—hem——”

“Just so,” nods Burgomaster Niklaus, in such tones as a pedagogue will use towards a refractory scholar, in whom he fancies he sees a faint gleam of better things. Then he glances tentatively at Dasipodius, who, lifting his cap in acknowledgment of the salutation, remains bareheaded. “Proceed, Master Hackernagel.”

“Whereas,” continues Hackernagel, fumbling at his document.

“Speak up!” shouts a chorus of voices. “Pitch it higher!”

“Whereas in the month of January last,” valiantly pipes up the Syndic, “you, the most—hem—illustrious and—hem, hem—erudite Professor Conrad Dasipodius, being at such time, and for the space of two previous years, engaged upon the work of superintending the making of a Horologe for the Saint Laurence Chapel on the south side of the interior of the Cathedral Church of—of our—hem—Blessed Lady, in aforenamed City of Strassburg, such high and honourable charge being entrusted to you by general consent and suffrage of the Burgesses, and of the Most Worshipful Guild of Clockmakers of the city, guided in their choice of you, most erudite Professor Dasipodius, by their estimation of—hem—your fitness for such devoir, wherein, as the sages of old days did aptly observe, for the ignorant and unlearned to intermeddle, is a thing exceeding dangerous, and that they who do so presume are found to partake of the nature of fools.

“Wherefore,” hurried on Tobias, “seeing that the Science of Horology being a thing in itself so lofty and noble, does in a manner partake of the Divine Wisdom, and of a consequence of Heaven itself; and whereas, speaking under one of those divers figures or symbols of the great and abstruse Science of Mathematics, whereto also the knowledge of Horology doth of necessity pertain—extremes do meet—and whereas by the wilful and ignorant, the extreme of intimate, and of almost perfect knowledge which as aforesaid is the gift of Heaven, and attained—hem—unto by—hem, hem—you, most illustrious and erudite Professor Dasipodius, has been in divers times since the world’s beginning confounded with that other and most diabolical extreme of magic and of witchcraft, which is known to proceed out of the filthiness of hell, and is the firstborn of the archfiend Satan himself; and whereas the rumour that you, Professor Dasipodius, did attain unto your high academic estate and lofty repute by aid of such unlawful arts was sent abroad and fomented among the vulgar, even unto the detriment of your good name, and the endangerment of your precious life, by certain—hem—meddlesome persons holding office in the municipality of this city, wherewith I, Tobias Hackernagel, do stand officially connected; and whereas aforesaid rumour did magnify and grow when it came to be known beyond all manner of doubting, that Providence had deemed fit to deprive you of sight, afflicting you with that most strange and rare form of blindness which is called of all time Gutta Serena, and besides of modern chirurgeons Amaurosis, and because to the careless or superficial observer, in your outward eyes no trace of your so sorely-to-be-deplored calamity is observable, certain persons—hem—by reason of their most—hem, hem—pitiable lack of knowledge and wretched obliquity of vision (which doth challenge commiseration infinitely greater than pure physical affliction) did fondly lend credence to the most malicious and lying rumours circulated by me, Tobias Hackernagel—No, no, that’s not it!” shrieked Tobias agonizedly, interrupting himself. “I’ve turned over two leaves! I have indeed!”

“Circulated by certain evil-minded persons,” he went on, referring back, “thereby bringing about the setting aside of you, illustrious and erudite Professor Dasipodius, and the exalting into your office and dignities a certain—hem—ignorant and—hem, hem—incompetent-person, thereby imitating the foolish example of the Israelites of old, who did set up a golden calf——”

“It’s most awfully profane. Eh, Radegund?” whispered Otto von Steinbach, whose presence with the deputation had been officially and pressingly requested.

“A golden calf to worship, and seeing that it never has been, and never will be, in the power of stocks and stones——”

“Such long-winded twaddle, isn’t it?” parenthesised Otto again.

“To elaborate high and lofty works, and the condition to which the Cathedral Horologe has by such mismanagement been brought being so deplorable, the Burgesses of our city do plainly perceive that they have been placed grievously in error and hoodwinked by their false guides and advisers, whose—hem—ignorance, not only in the Science of Horology, but of much plain learning and common sense besides, is curiously great, do herewith acknowledge themselves sorely repentant of their decision which compassed your setting aside, most erudite Professor Dasipodius; and whereas it doth behove and become those who do err, and lead others to err, to make full and earnest confession of their error, the Burgesses of Strassburg and all others concerned do herewith depute and command me, Tobias Hack—hem—Hackernagel, humbly to acknowledge our grievous wrong committed against you, most illustrious and erudite Professor Conrad Dasipodius, and herewith do entreat you to pardon the ignorance and wilfulness of the act, and at once graciously to resume and to take up your duties laid aside, and all such dignities and honours appertaining thereto, and to hold yourself reinstated of the high consideration you formerly enjoyed. And by these are unanimously and for ever cancelled those suffrages which did unlawfully constitute one Otto von Steinbach Cathedral Horologist in your stead. Whereto witness our hand this fifth day of June, anno domini 1573. And hereby, as below, we do notify our full and hearty concurrence and approval of this measure.”

Here followed the signatures of those concerned, which, his own one safely got through with, the Syndic managed to read out in composed and collected tones, and even with something of his wonted style.

It earns however no attention; for not an eye there, not an ear but turns in absorbed and tense interest to Dasipodius. For the Syndic himself, as the last word leaves his lips, and utter silence prevails, it is an awful moment. If the mathematician should turn a deaf ear and refuse, think of it. Ah! and Hackernagel with a shudder glances covertly at the lake, whose calm, deadly smooth level grows fearsomely suggestive in his practical mind of one vast duckpool. Not in all Germany is such an excitable impulsive fellow as your Strassburger, in whose veins, come how it may, runs a dangerous current of Gallic blood; and now if things do not go as they desire, the Syndic feels that his chances of returning skin-whole to the bosom of his family are infinitesimal; and so with stranded fish-like gasps and eyes downcast, for somehow he dare not look, as the rest are looking, into the mathematician’s face, Tobias Hackernagel awaits the fiat.

CHAPTER XLVII.

“HOMO SUM.”

Away in Strassburg there has been much debating and variance of opinion touching the spirit in which Dasipodius will comport himself towards this recantation. Quidnuncs have contested it over their cups, burgher and trader have discussed it in the market-place, women have gossipped, apprentices have interchanged fisticuffs, and young bloods more than one rapier-thrust over it. University dons have argued the bearings of the case from all points; but on the one postulate only, that Dasipodius is a man cast in no ordinary mould, is absolute unanimity; otherwise it breaks off in curious divergence.

“A man,” contended but yesterday forenoon, one of a little group of grizzled dominis, “a man you won’t meet once in a century, is Dasipodius; eminently unselfish, loyal-minded to the marrow, a great-souled man in whom not a grain of guile or rancour could take root.”

“And yet homo sum—still a man,” said a thoughtful, cynical-lipped, yet withal not ill-natured-looking colleague.

The younger bystanders exchange disgustful smiles at the learned philosophers’ truisms.

“Yes, and a man, mind you,” hotly contended a third, “whose nature is so sensitive, that the faintest breath of all this whirlwind of insult which has swept over him, would be infinite torture.”

“Now, what the deuce,” grumbled a youth with restless, fire-bright eyes, tossing back a wealth of raven-black locks from his white brow, with the back of a slender hand, which holds a well-thumbed duodecimo Horace, “what do they mean with all their cant about his sensitiveness? He’s just a mathematician. No end of a one, I grant you; but as far as I can ever see, he always takes what the gods provide, rough or smooth, like a man of marble.”

“But still—a man, dear boy,” smiled the philosopher.

“And,” placidly ejaculated a portly cathedral canon, folding his velvety white hands, “what is man’s lot here below but to suffer?”

“Ah! but furor fit læsa sæpiens potientiæ, father,” cried another; “and worms will turn at last. And—well, look for instance at my dog Schnaps here. There’s not an amiabler brute in all Elsass, treat him like a decent christian; but just you give him a bone, and then try to take it away again. Just you try, that’s all.”

“But Dasipodius—is a man,” smiled the cynic.

“And they’ve treated him worse than a dog!” indignantly returned the other, whistling to Schnaps and striding away.

“While we,” musingly murmured a stout, gentle-eyed man, “stood by like so many posts, and permitted the injustice.”

“My son,” said the churchman, “it is for us all to submit to the powers that be.”

“Heaven send them wits then,” lightly laughed the poet.

But not his nearest friends, not Bruno Wolkenberg himself, not Kaspar’s wistful affection, can divine the shadow of what is passing now in the blind man’s mind, from any signs of it upon his face. Even unwontedly pale he is, as he stands, seemingly gazing on the sunlit crags yonder across the lake; while, evoked like some nightmare dream by Tobias Hackernagel’s harsh accents, rushes back all the memory of that weary time, clothed, perhaps, in colours tenfold more vivid by the lending of that exteriorly dead sense to his interior vision. Hidden out of memory, he has told himself they were, forgiven heartily the taunts and insults to his bodily affliction, the aspersions on his honour, the irritating ignorances, the petty impertinences of men who cared little for, and comprehended less of the art which was for him a thing of life, and so bound up in his own, that severance from that dear fair human love would have been easier than giving up intercommunion with it. Nay, had not he been almost angry with himself to find how this talent of his had wooed him to a comfort he had thought it impossible could ever again be his, when he believed Sabina’s love lost and gone for ever? His forgiveness of the injuries wrought against him had been the more complete, because of its birth in that lofty nature, which still, in its extremest distress, had echoed the Master’s utterance: “They know not what they do!” seeing, in his own, some reflex of that supreme endurance, whose sublimity had come home to him in these later days as it never had come before; and apprehending something of that infinite pity and charity, he had schooled himself unreservedly and entirely to forgive, as one day he hoped to be forgiven, the men who, out of their ignorance, or worse still, their woeful smattering of knowledge, could not gauge the measure of injury they had heaped on him.

To that crowd, now so curiously watching him, there is no trace of emotion visible in the mathematician’s face; only presently, Bruno Wolkenberg, standing nearest to him, Bruno, his heart’s chosen friend, Bruno, the clever physician, marvellously skilled in such sort of reading, marks the slight tremour thrilling his frame, and the deep flush gradually supplanting the pallor which had deadened and chilled his face at the sound of Syndic Hackernagel’s discords; and he believed that now at last the sluices of the self-contained nature are taking their course, and that Dasipodius’ moment of giving rein to some expression of just indignation has come. So it is our best friends know us; and, indeed, Bruno was not so far astray, the agitation stirring him was the effect of one transient startling doubt, whether in very truth, as he had so long believed, he felt himself free of that pride men call ‘proper’—that fetish, for ever stifling down human nature’s best and purest impulses?

Of that doubt, brief as a lightning flash, the assurance is born. “Is Otto von Steinbach here?” he asks.

There is, in Syndic Hackernagel’s eyes, in this meeting of question with question, such a deliberate defiance of the proprieties that it almost assumes the hideous proportions of contempt of court; and exercises the happy effect of restoring to him some degree of his normal confidence. And with a succession of preliminary gasps, he is preparing to remonstrate, but the mathematician waves him to silence. “Is Otto von Steinbach here?” he reiterates.

“Here, Master Dasipodius,” falteringly answers a voice somewhere within the sheltering shadow of Radegund von Steinbach; and then, with flurried steps, the ex-chief horologist stumbles into the presence of the other.

“Speak up, friend,” prompts Isaac Habrecht; “the master hasn’t got long ears like——”

“Be silent, Isaac,” rebukes Dasipodius; “and so, Otto, the Horologe does not prosper?”

A groan is Otto’s sole reply.

“Nay,” continues Dasipodius, “I want to hear about the progress——”

“Progress!” ejaculates Otto with contritely upturned eyes, “but—I tell you—but—there hasn’t been any.”

“None at all?”

Otto twiddles the rim of his smart velvet cap, and mutely shakes his head.

“What’s the use of doing that?” says Habrecht under his breath, and nudging his arm he glances significantly up at the blind man’s eyes. “Find your tongue, can’t you, and speak up.”

“It is just as it was then, yes?” enquires Dasipodius.

“N—no, Master Dasipodius, it is not,” blurts out the truthful Otto; “it—has gone backward. If only—only you could see——”

“Mind your words,” frowns Habrecht, “and whom you’re speaking to.”

“For pity’s sake,” urges Dasipodius, “do let him tell his tale in his own way. Am I so thin-skinned? Well, my friend, and if I could only see,—or is my affliction to prove my consoler? Maybe it is better I cannot see this poor Horologe—if I love it. Nay, be your old honest self, and say.”

“It’s in the most awful mess you ever—that anybody ever—I mean—oh, Master Dasipodius, you were always so good to me; and I—oh, Master Dasipodius!” And with a storm of sobs he fell at his old master’s feet.

“Nay, nay, come, Otto, be a man,” said the mathematician, laying his hand gently on Otto’s shoulder and raising him; “you’re not the first miscalculator of your own powers the world has known. If you have proved a bad master, you were a good servant; and, under guidance, could fashion excellent cog-wheels. Come, don’t sigh your heart out like that. See now, shall we go back to Strassburg, you and I, and Isaac Habrecht here——”

“Ay, ay,” assented Isaac.

“And put our heads together to right the mischief? And Kaspar,” added Dasipodius, stretching out his hand wet with Otto’s tears, “will you come too, lad?”

“Master,” cried the boy, seizing it joyfully and kissing it, “to the world’s end.”

“Ay. Not so far,” smiled Dasipodius, making no effort to suppress the content he felt at the prospect of standing in the old place, with all the old workers round him. “Not so far, else the good mother might be having a crow to pluck with me. Gentlemen,” he added, raising his voice and addressing the deputation, “we will come.”

One simultaneous prolonged cheer rang to the hill tops.

“But this,” protested Syndic Hackernagel out of the midst of the chorus, “is informal. It should be through the medium of myself; and—oh this is—this is altogether——”

“It is all we want,” interrupted Burgomaster von Steinbach. “Hang your formalities, Tobias Hackernagel, and thank your stars. Some time at his leisure the Professor Dasipodius will formally signify his reacceptance. In the meantime——”

“We can go, can’t we, Burgomaster?” enquired Councillor Job, finding the formal semi-circle about him breaking up into little scattered groups. “I wonder,” he went on, speculatively casting his eyes over the lake’s broad expanse, “where one can get a drink? Thousand thunders! if we stop here two minutes more, we shall be grilled to the bones!”

“My mother,” said Isaac Habrecht, “will be proud to offer you the best our poor house affords, gentlemen all.”

“Thanks! my good friend,” said Hackernagel with an ineffable smile. “A thousand thanks.”

“Give them where they’re due, Master Syndic,” bluntly returned Isaac, and eyeing the speaker’s length and breadth with undisguised contempt. “The Habrechts never turned away from their door the pitifullest cur that was in need of bit or sup.”

“Quite right,” nodded Hackernagel. “Quite right. One might entertain an angel unawares.”

“Or a devil,” muttered Isaac, turning away and lending an arm to Dasipodius, “as the case may be. Come, master.”

END OF VOL. II.

[Transcriber’s note—the following changes have been made to this text.

Page 14: stifly to stiffly—“stiffly-starched”.

Page 100: Schhlettstadt to Schlettstadt—“near Schlettstadt”.

Page 149: cheefully to cheerfully—“they said more cheerfully”.

Page 213: wordly to worldly—“own worldly state”.]

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Table of Contents

- THE SILVER DIAL.

- CONTENTS.

- CHAPTER XVIII.

- CHAPTER XIX.

- CHAPTER XX.

- CHAPTER XXI.

- CHAPTER XXII.

- CHAPTER XXIII.

- CHAPTER XXIV.

- CHAPTER XXV.

- CHAPTER XXVI.

- CHAPTER XXVII.

- CHAPTER XXVIII.

- CHAPTER XXIX.

- CHAPTER XXX.

- CHAPTER XXXI.

- CHAPTER XXXII.

- CHAPTER XXXIII.

- CHAPTER XXXIV.

- CHAPTER XXXV.

- CHAPTER XXXVI.

- CHAPTER XXXVII.

- CHAPTER XXXVIII.

- CHAPTER XXXIX.

- CHAPTER XL.

- CHAPTER XLI.

- CHAPTER XLII.

- CHAPTER XLIII.

- CHAPTER XLIV.

- CHAPTER XLV.

- CHAPTER XLVI.

- CHAPTER XLVII.

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE