presently the key turned in the lock of the door, he heard heavy footsteps and the voice of the man who had said to his father, “you have a little mad dog; muzzle him!” the voice said, “ay, ay, you have called me a fool many times. now you shall see what i have gotten for two hundred dirty florins. potztausend! never did you do such a stroke of work.”
then the other voice grumbled and swore, and the steps of the two men approached more closely, and the heart of the child went pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat, as a mouse’s does when it is on the top of a cheese and hears a housemaid’s broom sweeping near. they began to strip the stove of its wrappings: that he could tell by the noise they made with the hay and the straw. soon they had stripped it wholly: that, too, he knew by the oaths and exclamations of wonder and surprise and rapture which broke from the man who had not seen it before.
“a right royal thing! a wonderful and never-to-be-rivalled thing! grander than the great stove of hohen-salzburg! sublime! magnificent! matchless!”
so the epithets ran on in thick guttural voices,[58] diffusing a smell of lager-beer so strong as they spoke that it reached august crouching in his stronghold. if they should open the door of the stove! that was his frantic fear. if they should open it, it would be all over with him. they would drag him out; most likely they would kill him, he thought, as his mother’s young brother had been killed in the wald.
the perspiration rolled off his forehead in his agony; but he had control enough over himself to keep quiet, and after standing by the nürnberg master’s work for nigh an hour, praising, marvelling, expatiating in the lengthy german tongue, the men moved to a little distance and began talking of sums of money and divided profits, of which discourse he could make out no meaning. all he could make out was that the name of the king—the king—the king came over very often in their arguments. he fancied at times they quarrelled, for they swore lustily and their voices rose hoarse and high; but after a while they seemed to pacify each other and agree to something, and were in great glee, and so in these merry spirits came and slapped the luminous sides of stately hirschvogel, and shouted to it,—
“old mumchance, you have brought us rare[59] good luck! to think you were smoking in a silly fool of a salt-baker’s kitchen all these years!”
then inside the stove august jumped up, with flaming cheeks and clinching hands, and was almost on the point of shouting out to them that they were the thieves and should say no evil of his father, when he remembered, just in time, that to breathe a word or make a sound was to bring ruin on himself and sever him forever from hirschvogel. so he kept still, and the men barred the shutters of the little lattice and went out by the door, double-locking it after them. he had made out from their talk that they were going to show hirschvogel to some great person: therefore he kept quite still and dared not move.
muffled sounds came to him through the shutters from the streets below,—the rolling of wheels, the clanging of church-bells, and bursts of that military music which is so seldom silent in the streets of munich. an hour perhaps passed by; sounds of steps on the stairs kept him in perpetual apprehension. in the intensity of his anxiety, he forgot that he was hungry and many miles away from cheerful, old world little hall, lying by the clear gray river-water, with the ramparts of the mountains all around.
presently the door opened again sharply. he[60] could hear the two dealers’ voices murmuring unctuous words, in which, “honor,” “gratitude,” and many fine long noble titles played the chief parts. the voice of another person, more clear and refined than theirs, answered them curtly, and then, close by the nürnberg stove and the boy’s ear, ejaculated a single “wunderschön!” august almost lost his terror for himself in his thrill of pride at his beloved hirschvogel being thus admired in the great city. he thought the master-potter must be glad too.
“wunderschön!” ejaculated the stranger a second time, and then examined the stove in all its parts, read all its mottoes, gazed long on all its devices.
“it must have been made for the emperor maximilian,” he said at last; and the poor little boy, meanwhile, within, was “hugged up into nothing,” as you children say, dreading that every moment he would open the stove. and open it truly he did, and examined the brass-work of the door; but inside it was so dark that crouching august passed unnoticed, screwed up into a ball like a hedgehog as he was. the gentleman shut to the door at length, without having seen anything strange inside it; and then he talked long and low with the tradesmen, and, as[61] his accent was different from that which august was used to, the child could distinguish little that he said, except the name of the king and the word “gulden” again and again. after awhile he went away, one of the dealers accompanying him, one of them lingering behind to bar up the shutters. then this one also withdrew again, double-locking the door.
the poor little hedgehog uncurled itself and dared to breathe aloud.
what time was it?
late in the day, he thought, for to accompany the stranger they had lighted a lamp; he had heard the scratch of the match, and through the brass fret-work had seen the lines of light.
he would have to pass the night here, that was certain. he and hirschvogel were locked in, but at least they were together. if only he could have had something to eat! he thought with a pang of how at this hour at home they ate the sweet soup, sometimes with apples in it from aunt maïla’s farm orchard, and sang together, and listened to dorothea’s reading of little tales, and basked in the glow and delight that had beamed on them from the great nürnberg fire-king.
“oh, poor, poor little ’gilda! what is she[62] doing without the dear hirschvogel?” he thought. poor little ’gilda! she had only now the black iron stove of the ugly little kitchen. oh, how cruel of father!
august could not bear to hear the dealers blame or laugh at his father, but he did feel that it had been so, so cruel to sell hirschvogel. the mere memory of all those long winter evenings, when they had all closed round it, and roasted chestnuts or crab-apples in it, and listened to the howling of the wind and the deep sound of the church-bells, and tried very much to make each other believe that the wolves still came down from the mountains into the streets of hall, and were that very minute growling at the house-door,—all this memory coming on him with the sound of the city bells, and the knowledge that night drew near upon him so completely, being added to his hunger and his fear, so overcame him that he burst out crying for the fiftieth time since he had been inside the stove, and felt that he would starve to death, and wondered dreamily if hirschvogel would care. yes, he was sure hirschvogel would care. had he not decked it all summer long with alpine roses and edelweiss and heaths and made it sweet with thyme and honeysuckle and great garden-lilies? had he[63] ever forgotten when santa claus came to make it its crown of holly and ivy and wreathe it all around?
“oh, shelter me; save me; take care of me!” he prayed to the old fire-king, and forgot, poor little man, that he had come on this wild-goose chase northward to save and take care of hirschvogel!
after a time he dropped asleep, as children can do when they weep, and little robust hill-born boys most surely do, be they where they may. it was not very cold in this lumber-room; it was tightly shut up, and very full of things, and at the back of it were the hot pipes of an adjacent house, where a great deal of fuel was burnt. moreover, august’s clothes were warm ones, and his blood was young. so he was not cold, though munich is terribly cold in the nights of december; and he slept on and on,—which was a comfort to him, for he forgot his woes, and his perils, and his hunger, for a time.
