by Ouida
Ere long he came to a big walled house, with turrets and grated casements, — very big it looked to him, — like one of the first Findelkind’s own castles. His heart beat loud against his side, but he plucked up his courage, and knocked as loud as his heart was beating.
He knocked and knocked, but no answer came. The house was empty. But he did not know that; he thought it was that the people within were cruel, and he went sadly onward with the road winding before him, and on his right the beautiful impetuous gray river, and on his left the green Mittelgebirge and the mountains that rose behind it. By this time the day was up; the sun was glowing on the red of the cranberry shrubs and the blue of the bilberry-boughs; he was hungry and thirsty and tired. But he did not give in for that; he held on steadily; he knew that there was near, somewhere near, a great city that the people called Sprugg, and thither he had resolved to go. By noontide he had walked eight miles, and came to a green place where men were shooting at targets, the tall thick grass all around them; and a little way farther off was a train of people chanting and bearing crosses and dressed in long flowing robes.
The place was the Hottinger Au, and the day was Saturday, and the village was making ready to perform a miracle play on the morrow.
Findelkind ran to the robed singing-folk, quite sure that he saw the people of God. “Oh, take me, take me!” he cried to them; “do take me with you to do heaven’s work.”
But they pushed him aside for a crazy little boy that spoiled their rehearsing.
“It is only for Hotting folk,” said a lad older than himself. “Get out of the way with you, Liebchen.” And the man who earned the cross knocked him with force on the head, by mere accident; but Findelkind thought he had meant it.
Were people so much kinder five centuries before, he wondered, and felt sad as the many-colored robes swept on through the grass, and the crack of the rifles sounded sharply through the music of the chanting voices. He went on footsore and sorrowful, thinking of the castle doors that had opened, and the city gates that had unclosed, at the summons of the little long-haired boy whose figure was painted on the missal.
He had come now to where the houses were much more numerous, though under the shade of great trees, — lovely old gray houses, some of wood, some of stone, some with frescos on them and gold and color and mottoes, some with deep barred casements, and carved portals, and sculptured figures; houses of the poorer people now, but still memorials of a grand and gracious time. For he had wandered into the quarter of St. Nicholas in this fair mountain city, which he, like his country-folk, called Sprugg, though the government calls it Innspruck.
He got out upon a long gray wooden bridge, and looked up and down the reaches of the river, and thought to himself, maybe this was not Sprugg but Jerusalem, so beautiful it looked with its domes shining golden in the sun, and the snow of the Soldstein and Branjoch behind them. For little Findelkind had never come so far as this before. As he stood on the bridge so dreaming, a hand clutched him, and a voice said: —
“A whole kreutzer, or you do not pass!”
Findelkind started and trembled.
A kreutzer! he had never owned such a treasure in all his life.
“I have no money,” he murmured timidly; “I came to see if I could get money for the poor.”
The keeper of the bridge laughed.
“You are a little beggar, you mean? Oh, very well! Then over my bridge you do not go.”
“But it is the city on the other side?”
“To be sure it is the city; but over nobody goes without a kreutzer.”
“I never have such a thing of my own! never! never!” said
Findelkind, ready to cry.
“Then you were a little fool to come away from your home, wherever that may be,” said the man at the bridge-head. “Well, I will let you go, for you look a baby. But do not beg; that is bad.”
“Findelkind did it!”
“Then Findelkind was a rogue and a vagabond,” said the taker of tolls.
“Oh, no — no — no!”
“Oh, yes — yes — yes, little sauce-box; and take that,” said the man, giving him a box on the ear, being angry at contradiction.
Findelkind’s head drooped, and he went slowly over the bridge, forgetting that he ought to have thanked the toll taker for a free passage. The world seemed to him very difficult. How had Findelkind done when he had come to bridges? — and, oh, how had Findelkind done when he had been hungry?
For this poor little Findelkind was getting very hungry, and his stomach was as empty as was his wallet.
A few steps brought him to the Goldenes Dachl.
He forgot his hunger and his pain, seeing the sun shine on all that gold, and the curious painted galleries under it. He thought it was real solid gold. Real gold laid out on a house roof — and the people all so poor! Findelkind began to muse, and wonder why everybody did not climb up there and take a tile off and be rich? But perhaps it would be wicked. Perhaps God put the roof there with all that gold to prove people. Findelkind got bewildered.
If God did such a thing, was it kind?
His head seemed to swim, and the sunshine went round and round with him. There went by him, just then, a very venerable-looking old man with silver hair; he was wrapped in a long cloak. Findelkind pulled at the coat gently, and the old man looked down.
“What is it, my boy?” he asked.
Findelkind answered, “I came out to get gold; may I take it off that roof?”
“It is not gold, child, it is gilding.”
“What is gilding?”
“It is a thing made to look like gold: that is all.”
“It is a lie, then!”
The old man smiled. “Well, nobody thinks so. If you like to put it so, perhaps it is. What do you want gold for, you wee thing?”
“To build a monastery and house the poor.”
The old man’s face scowled and grew dark, for he was a Lutheran pastor from Bavaria.
“Who taught you such trash?” he said crossly.
“It is not trash. It is faith.”
And Findelkind’s face began to burn and his blue eyes to darken and moisten. There was a little crowd beginning to gather, and the crowd was beginning to laugh. There were many soldiers and rifle- shooters in the throng, and they jeered and joked, and made fun of the old man in the long cloak, who grew angry then with the child. “You are a little idolater and a little impudent sinner!” he said wrathfully, and shook the boy by the shoulder, and went away, and the throng that had gathered round had only poor Findelkind left to tease.
He was a very poor little boy indeed to look at, with his sheepskin tunic, and his bare feet and legs, and his wallet that never was to get filled.
“Where do you come from, and what do you want?” they asked; and he answered, with a sob in his voice: —
“I want to do like Findelkind of Arlberg.”
And then the crowd laughed, not knowing at all what he meant, but laughing just because they did not know: as crowds always will do. And only the big dogs that are so very big in this country, and are all loose, and free, and good-natured citizens, came up to him kindly, and rubbed against him, and made friends; and at that tears came into his eyes, and his courage rose, and he lifted his head.
“You are cruel people to laugh,” he said indignantly; “the dogs are kinder. People did not laugh at Findelkind. He was a little boy just like me, no better and no bigger, and as poor; and yet he had so much faith, and the world then was so good, that he left his sheep and got money enough to build a church and a hospice to Christ and St. Christopher. And I want to do the same for the poor. Not for myself, no; for the poor! I am Findelkind, too, and Findelkind of Arlberg that is in heaven speaks to me.”
Then he stopped, and a sob rose again in his throat.
“He is crazy!” said the people, laughing, yet a little scared; for the priest at Zirl had said rightly, this is not an age of faith. At that moment there sounded, coming from the barracks,
that used to be the Schloss in the old days of Kaiser Max and Mary of Burgundy, the sound of drums and trumpets and the tramp of marching feet. It was one of the corps of Jagers of Tyrol, going down from the avenue to the Rudolfplatz, with their band before them and their pennons streaming. It was a familiar sight, but it drew the street throngs to it like magic: the age is not fond of dreamers, but it is very fond of drums. In almost a moment the old dark arcades and the riverside and the passages near were all empty, except for the women sitting at their stalls of fruit or cakes, or toys, They are wonderful old arched arcades, like the cloisters of a cathedral more than anything else, and the shops under them are all homely and simple — shops of leather, of furs, of clothes, of wooden playthings, of sweet and wholesome bread. They are very quaint, and kept by poor folks for poor folks; but to the dazed eyes of Findelkind they looked like a forbidden paradise, for he was so hungry and so heartbroken, and he had never seen any bigger place than little Zirl.
He stood and looked wistfully, but no one offered him anything. Close by was a stall of splendid purple grapes, but the old woman that kept it was busy knitting. She only called to him to stand out of her light.
“You look a poor brat; have you a home?” said another woman, who sold bridles and whips and horses’ bells and the like.
“Oh, yes, I have a home — by Martinswand,” said Findelkind, with a sigh.
The woman looked at him sharply. “Your parents have sent you on an errand here?”
“No; I have run away.”
“Run away? Oh, you bad boy! — unless, indeed — are they cruel to you?”
“No; very good.”
“Are you a little rogue, then, or a thief?”
“You are a bad woman to think such things,” said Findelkind, hotly, knowing himself on how innocent and sacred a quest he was.
“Bad? I? Oh ho!” said the old dame, cracking one of her new whips in the air, “I should like to make you jump about with this, you thankless little vagabond. Be off!”
Findelkind sighed again, his momentary anger passing; for he had been born with a gentle temper, and thought himself to blame much more readily than he thought other people were, — as, indeed, every wise child does, only there are so few children — or men — that are wise.
He turned his head away from the temptation of the bread and fruit stalls, for in truth hunger gnawed him terribly, and wandered a little to the left. From where he stood he could see the long, beautiful street of Teresa, with its oriels and arches, painted windows and gilded signs, and the steep, gray, dark mountains closing it in at the distance; but the street frightened him, it looked so grand, and he knew it would tempt him; so he went where he saw the green tops of some high elms and beeches. The trees, like the dogs, seemed like friends. It was the human creatures that were cruel.
At that moment there came out of the barrack gates, with great noise of trumpets and trampling of horses, a group of riders in gorgeous uniforms, with sabres and chains glancing and plumes tossing. It looked to Findelkind like a group of knights — those knights who had helped and defended his namesake with their steel and their gold in the old days of the Arlberg quest. His heart gave a great leap, and he jumped on the dust for joy, and he ran forward and fell on his knees and waved his cap like a little mad thing, and cried out: —
“Oh, dear knights! oh, great soldiers! help me! Fight for me, for the love of the saints! I have come all the way from Martinswand, and I am Findelkind, and I am trying to serve St. Christopher like Findelkind of Arlberg.”
But his little swaying body and pleading hands and shouting voice and blowing curls frightened the horses; one of them swerved and very nearly settled the woes of Findelkind forever and aye by a kick. The soldier who rode the horse reined him in with difficulty; he was at the head of the little staff, being indeed no less or more than the general commanding the garrison, which in this city is some fifteen thousand strong. An orderly sprang from his saddle and seized the child, and shook him, and swore at him. Findelkind was frightened; but he shut his eyes and set his teeth, and said to himself that the martyrs must have had very much worse than these things to suffer in their pilgrimage. He had fancied these riders were knights — such knights as the priest had shown him the likeness of in old picture books, whose mission it had been to ride through the world succoring the weak and weary, and always defending the right.
“What are your swords for, if you are not knights?” he cried, desperately struggling in his captor’s grip, and seeing through his half-closed lids the sunshine shining on steel scabbards.
“What does he want?” asked the officer in command of the garrison, whose staff all this bright and martial array was. He was riding out from the barracks to an inspection on the Rudolfplatz. He was a young man, and had little children himself, and was half amused, half touched, to see the tiny figure of the little dusty boy.
“I want to build a monastery, like Findelkind of Arlberg, and to help the poor,” said our Findelkind, valorously, though his heart was beating like that of a little mouse caught in a trap; for the horses were trampling up the dust around him, and the orderly’s grip was hard.
The officers laughed aloud; and indeed he looked a poor little scrap of a figure, very ill able to help even himself.
“Why do you laugh?” cried Findelkind, losing his terror in his indignation, and inspired with the courage which a great earnestness always gives. “You should not laugh. If you were true knights, you would not laugh; you would fight for me. I am little, I know, — I am very little, — but he was no bigger than I; and see what great things he did. But the soldiers were good in those days; they did not laugh and use bad words—”
And Findelkind, on whose shoulder the orderly’s hold was still fast, faced the horses, which looked to him as huge as Martinswand, and the swords, which he little doubted were to be sheathed in his heart.
The officers stared, laughed again, then whispered together, and Findelkind heard them say the word “crazed.” Findelkind, whose quick little ears were both strained like a mountain leveret’s, understood that the great men were saying among themselves that it was not safe for him to be about alone, and that it would be kinder to him to catch and cage him — the general view with which the world regards enthusiasts.
He heard, he understood; he knew that they did not mean to help him, these men with the steel weapons and the huge steeds, but that they meant to shut him up in a prison; he, little free-born, forest-fed Findelkind. He wrenched himself out of the soldier’s grip, as the rabbit wrenches itself out of the jaws of the trap even at the cost of leaving a limb behind, shot between the horses’ legs, doubled like a hunted thing, and spied a refuge. Opposite the avenue of gigantic poplars and pleasant stretches of grass shaded by other bigger trees, there stands a very famous church, famous alike in the annals of history and of art, — the church of the Franciscans, that holds the tomb of Kaiser Max, though, alas! it holds not his ashes, as his dying desire was that it should. The church stands here, a noble, sombre place, with the Silver Chapel of Philippina Wessler adjoining it, and in front the fresh cool avenues that lead to the river and the broad water- meadows and the grand Hall road bordered with the painted stations of the Cross.
There were some peasants coming in from the country driving cows, and some burghers in their carts, with fat, slow horses; some little children were at play under the poplars and the elms; great dogs were lying about on the grass; everything was happy and at peace, except the poor, throbbing heart of little Findelkind, who thought the soldiers were coming after him to lock him up as mad, and ran and ran as fast as his trembling legs would carry him, making for sanctuary, as, in the old bygone days that he loved, many a soul less innocent than his had done. The wide doors of the Hofkirche stood open, and on the steps lay a black-and-tan hound, watching no doubt for its master or mistress, who had gone within to pray. Findelkind, in his terror, vaulted over the dog, and into the church tumbled headlong.
It seemed quite dark, aft
er the brilliant sunshine on the river and the grass; his forehead touched the stone floor as he fell, and as he raised himself and stumbled forward, reverent and bareheaded, looking for the altar to cling to when the soldiers should enter to seize him, his uplifted eyes fell on the great tomb.
The tomb seems entirely to fill the church, as, with its twenty- four guardian figures round it, it towers up in the twilight that reigns here even at midday. There are a stern majesty and grandeur in it which dwarf every other monument and mausoleum. It is grim, it is rude, it is savage, with the spirit of the rough ages that created it; but it is great with their greatness, it is heroic with their heroism, it is simple with their simplicity.
As the awe-stricken eyes of the terrified child fell on the mass of stone and bronze, the sight smote him breathless. The mailed warriors standing around it, so motionless, so solemn, rilled him with a frozen, nameless fear. He had never a doubt that they were the dead arisen. The foremost that met his eyes were Theodoric and Arthur; the next, grim Rudolf, father of a dynasty of emperors. There, leaning on their swords, the three gazed down on him, armored, armed, majestic, serious, guarding the empty grave, which to the child, who knew nothing of its history, seemed a bier; and at the feet of Theodoric, who alone of them all looked young and merciful, poor little desperate Findelkind fell with a piteous sob, and cried: “I am not mad! Indeed, indeed, I am not mad!”
He did not know that these grand figures were but statues of bronze. He was quite sure they were the dead, arisen, and meeting there, around that tomb on which the solitary kneeling knight watched and prayed, encircled, as by a wall of steel, by these his comrades. He was not frightened, he was rather comforted and stilled, as with a sudden sense of some deep calm and certain help.
Findelkind, without knowing that he was like so many dissatisfied poets and artists much bigger than himself, dimly felt in his little tired mind how beautiful and how gorgeous and how grand the world must have been when heroes and knights like these had gone by in its daily sunshine and its twilight storms. No wonder Findelkind of Arlberg had found his pilgrimage so fair, when if he had needed any help he had only had to kneel and clasp these firm, mailed limbs, these strong cross-hiked swords, in the name of Christ and of the poor.