The Treasure Chest

by Johann Hebel

  The Cunning Girl

  A number of rich and distinguished gentlemen were enjoying a day out in a large town. One of them thought, ‘If we can spend fifteen hundred guilders or more at the inn and on the musicians then we can give something for the poor too.’ So it was that when they were at their merriest a pretty, neatly dressed girl came up with a plate and with winning smiles and charming words asked for alms for the poor. All of them gave, some more, some less, according to the size of his purse and his heart. For small purse and tight heart give little, large purse and big heart give in plenty. The man the girl now approached had a big heart. For when he looked into her sparkling, appealing eyes he almost lost it to her. So he put two louis d’or in the plate and whispered into the girl’s ear, ‘For your pair of lovely blue eyes!’ What he meant was this: Because you, my pretty alms-collector, have such beautiful eyes, I’m giving the poor two beautiful louis d’or, otherwise one would do! But the cunning girl pretended to take his meaning quite differently. For he said, ‘For your pair of lovely blue eyes’ - and so she very coyly took the two louis d’or from the plate, pocketed them for herself and said with a winning curtsy, ‘Thank you kindly, sir! But be so kind and give something for the poor too!’ The gentleman then put another two louis d’or in the plate, gave the girl a friendly pinch on the cheek and said, ‘You little rascal, you!’ But the others made cruel fun of him, and they drank to the girl’s health, and the band sounded a flourish.

  A Good Prescription

  The Emperor Joseph* in Vienna was, as everyone knows, a wise and benevolent monarch, but not everyone knows that he once was a doctor and cured a poor woman.

  A poor woman who was ill said to her small son, ‘Fetch a doctor, I can’t stand the pain any longer!’ The little lad ran off to the nearest doctor and then to the next, but they wouldn’t come, for in Vienna a visit costs a guilder and the poor lad had nothing but tears, coins that may indeed be accepted in heaven, but not

  by everybody on earth. But when he was on his way to the third doctor or coming back home again the Emperor was driving slowly by in an open carriage. The boy obviously took him to be a rich man though he didn’t know it was the Emperor, and he thought, I’ll try him! ‘Kind sir,’ he said, ‘please give me a guilder, do be so kind!’ The Emperor thought: he doesn’t waste words and thinks if he gets a guilder in one go he won’t need to beg for a kreuzer sixty times over! ‘Won’t a six-kreuzer bit do, or two twenties?’ asked the Emperor. The boy said it wouldn’t and explained why he needed the money. So the Emperor gave him the guilder and found out from him his mother’s name and exactly where she lived, and while the boy was running to fetch the third doctor and the sick woman was praying at home that God should not forsake her, the Emperor drove to her lodgings and drew his cloak around him so that he couldn’t be recognized unless you took a close look. But when he came into the sick

  woman’s room, and thoroughly bare and joyless it looked, she thought it was the doctor and told him about her illness and how she was so poor too and couldn’t provide for herself. The Emperor said, ‘I’ll write you out a prescription straight away,’ and she told him where to find the boy’s pen and paper. So he wrote out the prescription, told her which chemist’s to take it to when the boy got back, and left it on the table. Yet he had hardly been gone a minute when the real doctor arrived as well. The woman was not a little surprised when she heard that he was the doctor, and said she was sorry, one had already called and left a prescription, and she was only waiting for her son. The doctor picked up the prescription to see who it was who had called and what sort of potion or pills he had prescribed, and then he too was not a little surprised. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you’re in the hands of a good doctor, for he has prescribed twenty-five doubloons to be

  collected from the paymaster’s and it’s signed Joseph, you may have heard of him? I couldn’t have prescribed anything half as effective to sort out your stomach and do your heart good and bring a sparkle back into your eyes!’ At that the woman cast her eyes towards heaven and was overcome by emotion and speechless with gratitude, and afterwards the money was paid out at the paymaster’s all correct and without fuss, and the doctor prescribed a mixture for her, and with the good medicine and the good food she could now afford she was well and on her feet again within a few days. So it was that the doctor cured the sick woman and the Emperor cured the poor woman, and she is still alive and has married again.

  Terrible Disasters in Switzerland

  Every stretch of land is a good place to live, yet each has its bad side too, and when we sometimes hear of what happens elsewhere we surely have cause to be happy with our own homeland. Switzerland, for instance, has many mountain pastures rich in cattle, it has cheese and butter and freedom, but it has avalanches too. The 12th of December 1809 brought a terrible night for the high mountain valleys of that land. It teaches us how we all have daily cause to remember the words: ‘In the midst of life we are in death.’ All the high mountains were covered by a deep fall of fresh snow. That 12th of December brought a thaw and a strong wind. Everyone then feared a great disaster and said their prayers. Those who thought they and their homes were safe were troubled by sadness and fear for the unfortunate people who would suffer, and those who did not feel safe said to their children, ‘We shall not see another day,’ and prepared to meet their Maker. Then suddenly everywhere great masses of snow broke loose from the highest mountain ridges and came thundering down in avalanches over the long slopes, growing bigger and bigger, gaining in speed, rushing on with an ever more fearful roar, driving the air before them and causing it to gust this way and that, so that even before an avalanche arrived whole forests were felled by the blast, and byres and barns and woodlands were blown away like chaff; and where the avalanches plunged down on to the valley floor whole areas lay crushed under their weight for hours on end, and all the houses and all living creatures that drew breath there were destroyed, but for those who were saved as if by divine miracle.

  One of two brothers in Uri who shared the same house was up on the roof facing the mountain behind, planning to pack the space between the roof and the mountainside with snow. ‘I’ll level it out so that when the avalanche comes it will pass over the house and perhaps we . . .’ And as he was about to say, ‘perhaps we will escape with our lives’, the sudden gust that preceded the avalanche tossed him off the roof and he was carried away through the air, soaring like a bird over a ghastly precipice. And just as he was in danger of crashing down into the bottomless depths where his remains would never have been found, the avalanche swept past him and threw him sideways on to a slope. He says it wasn’t a good feeling, yet though stunned he was able to grab a tree and hold fast to it until it was all over, and he escaped unharmed and went back home to his brother, who was also still alive, though the cowshed next to the house had been swept clean away as if by a broom. For this too there are apt words: ‘The Lord gave His angels charge over thee to bear thee up in their hands. For He maketh the winds that blow announce His majesty and the avalanches to act according to His will.’

  It was a different story in Sturnen, which is in Canton Uri too. After prayers that evening a man said to his wife and their three children, ‘We shall ask a special blessing for the poor people who are in danger tonight.’ And while they were still knelt in prayer all the valleys echoed with the thunder of distant avalanches, and still they were praying when all at once the barn and the house collapsed. The father was carried off by the rushing wind, out into the terrible darkness and down to the foot of the mountain, and was buried in the snowdrifts. He was still alive, but the next morning when with enormous effort he dug himself free and made his way back to where the house had stood and looked to see what had become of his family, merciful heavens! there was nothing there but snow upon snow, no trace to be found of a house, nor any sign of life. Yet after calling anxiously for some time, from under the snow as if from deep in a grave he heard his wife’s voice. And when he had dug her out safe
and unharmed, now they heard another dear familiar voice. ‘Mother, I think I’m still alive,’ a child was calling, ‘but I can’t get out of here!’ So father and mother set to work again and dug out their son too, and he had lost one of his arms. Now their hearts were filled with joy and pain and their eyes shed tears of thanks and sorrow. They found the other two children too, but they were dead.

  In Pilzeig, also in Canton Uri, a mother with her two children was swept away and buried deep under the snow. The avalanche had thrown their neighbour down there too, he heard their moans and dug them out. But in vain did their faces shine with hope. When the scantily dressed woman looked around her she no longer recognized her surroundings. Her rescuer had himself fallen in a faint. New hills and mountains of snow and a terrible whirlwind of snowflakes filled the air. Seeing this she said, ‘Children, we are lost; let us pray and submit to God’s will!’ They were at prayer when the seven-year-old daughter sank dying into her mother’s arms. The heartbroken mother, her strength draining from her too, was talking to her, recommending her to God’s mercy. She was two weeks into confinement, and she too died, with the dear dead body of her child in her womb. The other daughter, an eleven-year-old, stayed with her mother and sister, weeping and wringing her hands, until they were both dead, then in silent grief she closed their eyes. Only then did she turn her mind to her own escape, with untold effort and through unimaginable danger she hauled herself up to a tree and then to a rock, and at last towards midnight she reached a house and was dragged in through a window, and was safe together with those who lived there.

  You have read enough to understand that in all the mountain cantons of Switzerland, in Berne, Glarus, Uri, Schwyz, Graubünden, in that one night, and almost within the space of the same hour, whole families were smothered by avalanches, whole herds and their byres were crushed, pastures, gardens and orchards were swept away, scooped out down to the bare rock, and whole forests were destroyed, flung down into the valley below or the trees tangled, crushed, bent and broken like blades of corn in the fields after a hailstorm. In the one small canton of Uri alone, almost in one fell swoop eleven people were engulfed under the snow never to arise again, thirty or so houses and more than one hundred and fifty hay-sheds were destroyed, three hundred and fifty-nine head of cattle perished, and there was no way of reckoning the damage done in how many hundreds of thousands of guilders, not counting the lives lost. For the life of a father or mother, a godfearing husband or child is not to be measured in gold.

  How a Ghastly Story was Brought to Light by a Common or Garden Butcher’s Dog

  Two butchers out in their district buying in animals came to a village and split up, one went left past the Swan, the other right, and they said, ‘We’ll meet up again in the Swan.’ But they never did meet up again. For one of them went with a farmer into his cowshed. The farmer’s wife went as well, though she was doing the washing in the kitchen, and their child decided to follow too. The devil gave the woman a nudge: ‘Look at that belt full of money peeping out from under the butcher’s shirt!’ The woman gave her husband a wink, he gave her a nod, and they killed the poor butcher in the cowshed and hurriedly hid his body under some straw. The devil nudged the woman again: ‘Look who’s watching!’ She looked round and saw the child. So, driven out of their minds by fear, they went back together into the house and locked the doors as if the enemy were near. Then the woman, whose heart was not just as black as sin but blacker and hotter than hell, said, ‘Child, just look at you again! Come into the kitchen she said, ‘I’ll clean you up.’ In the kitchen she pushed her child’s head into the hot suds and scalded him to death. Now, she thought, there’s no one to tell on us – but she didn’t think of the murdered butcher’s dog.

  The murdered butcher’s dog had run along a bit with the other butcher, and then, while the child was being boiled and then popped into the bread oven, the dog doubled back and picked up his master’s scent, sniffed at the cowshed door, scratched at the door to the house, and knew that something was wrong. Off he ran at once, back into the village, looking for the other butcher. Soon he was whinging and whining and pulling at this butcher’s coat, and the butcher, too, knew something was wrong. So he went with the dog back to the house, in no doubt that something dreadful had happened there. He beckoned over two men who were passing nearby. When the murderers heard the dog whining and the butcher shouting, they had nothing but the gallows before their eyes and the fear of helfire in their hearts. The man tried to escape through the back window but his wife grabbed him by his coat and said, ‘Stay here with me!’ The man said, ‘Come with me!’ She answered, ‘I can’t, my legs won’t move! Can’t you see that ghastly figure outside the window, with its flaming eyes and fiery breath?’ Meanwhile the door had been broken open. They soon found the two corpses. The criminals were taken and brought to court. Six weeks later they were put to death, their villainous corpses bound to the wheel, and even now the crows are still saying, ‘That’s tasty meat, that is!’

  A Strange Divorce

  A young Swiss from Balsthal went into Spanish service, did well and earned himself a little fortune. But when he was doing all too nicely he thought, ‘Shall I or shan’t I?’ In the end he decided he would, and took a pretty and well-to-do Spanish girl to wife, and so he put an end to his days of happiness. For in Spanish households the wife is the master, a lover plays the husband, and the husband is the maid.

  The poor fellow was soon tired of slavery and persecution, and he began as if by chance to speak to her in praise of the happy life in Switzerland and its golden mountains (he meant the snowy peaks in the sunshine beyond the gorge at Klus), and what a pleasure it was to make the pilgrimage to Einsiedeln, how lovely to pray at the grave of the Holy Brother Nicholas of Flues, and what a great fortune he had there at home, but it couldn’t be taken out of the country. In the end the Spanish woman’s mouth watered at the thought of that wonderful land and the fortune, and she agreed to turn her property into money and to go with him back to his golden homeland. So they travelled together across the great Pyrenees mountains to the stone that marks the boundary between the kingdom of Spain and France, she on a donkey with the money, he on foot alongside. But when they had passed the boundary stone he said, ‘Wife, if you don’t mind, up

  till now we have followed Spanish customs, from now on we’ll do things the German way! You have ridden from Madrid to the border and I’ve trotted after you on foot all the way up the mountain, so I shall ride from here to Balsthal in the canton of Solothurn. Now it’s your turn to walk!’ Yet she refused to listen, and cursed and threatened and wouldn’t get off the animal. ‘Woman, you haven’t understood yet,’ he said then, ‘and I can’t say I blame you!’ But he cut off a good-sized branch by the roadside and used it to teach her a long lesson on the Balsthal laws on marriage and husband’s rights, and when she had taken it all in he asked her, ‘Will you come with me now, you dago witch, and behave yourself, or will you go back where you come from?’ Then she sobbed and said, ‘Where I come from’, and that was what he wanted to hear. So the honest Swiss shared the fortune with her and they separated at this ‘Boundary Stone of Woman’s Rights’, as a well-known book was called, and they both went

  back to their own countries. ‘You can take your fellow countryman with you,’ he said, ‘the one you rode here!’

  Remember: In the kingdom of Spain women go too far, but in Balsthal men do too sometimes! A husband should never beat his wife, or he brings dishonour on himself. For you are one body.

  The Cunning Styrian

  It was in Styria during the last war* and some way off the main road, and a rich farmer was thinking: ‘How can I keep my thalers and my dear little ducats safe in these evil times? I’m ever so fond of the Empress Maria Theresa, God bless her, and the Emperor Joseph, God bless him, and the Emperor Francis, God give him long life and health! And just when you think you have these dear sovereigns ever so safe and out of harm’s way the enemy gets a whiff of them as soon as he s
ticks his nose into the village and takes them off prisoner to Lorraine or Champagne! It’s enough to make a poor patriotic Austrian’s heart bleed!’ ‘I’ve got it!’ he said,

  ‘I know what I’ll do,’ and in the dark moonless night he took his money out into the kitchen garden. ‘The Seven Sisters will not betray me,’ he said. Out in the garden he put the money straight down between the wallflowers and the sweet peas. Next to it he dug a hole in the path between the beds, threw all the soil on top of the coins and trampled on the beautiful flowers and the chard all around like someone treading down sauerkraut. The next Monday the Chasseurs were scouting all round the district, and on the Tuesday a patrol entered the village and went straight to the mill, and then with white elbows from the mill to our farmer. And an Alsatian brandished his sword and bawled at him, ‘Out with your money, farmer, or say your last Our Father!’ The farmer said they were welcome in God’s name to take whatever they could find. He had nothing left, it had all gone yesterday and the day before that. ‘You’ll not find anything,’ he said, ‘you fine fellows!’ When they found nothing except for a couple of coppers and a gilded threepenny piece with the image of the Empress Maria Theresa on it and a ring to hang it up by, the Alsatian said, ‘Farmer, you’ve buried your money! Show us here and now where you buried your money or you’ll leave for the hereafter without saying your last Our Father!’ ‘I can’t show you it here and now,’ said the farmer, ‘I’m sorry, but you’ll have to come with me out into the kitchen garden. I’ll show you where it was hidden there and what happened. Our lords and masters, the enemy,