Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. by Various

V >> Various >> Lippincott\'s Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873.

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We had been resting during Joergel's narration: the long rays of the
declining sun now warned us to hasten on. Margaret, full of energy and
desirous of pushing forward up the almost vertical path, soon began
to lag behind. Thus I, looking back and waiting for her, saw a comely
peasant-woman who, quickly climbing the hill behind, offered her the
assistance of her arm. Although this was gratefully declined, the
stranger, apparently troubled at the sight of the tired lady, tarried
at her side, trying to be of service. She had a melodious voice and
a restful air, which made us, though she was but a poor illiterate
woman, feel better for her presence. Thus she was allowed to carry
our shawls, and whenever we rested she strayed into wayside glens,
returning with offerings of mellow bilberries; and finally she cheered
our lagging energies with the assurance that we should soon see blue
sky peeping through the trees, and that then there would be no more
climbing. At this point, Joergel, who had been carefully examining each
tree as we passed, expressed his fear that no actual hazel-fir tree
grew along this path. He, however, pointed out a well grown fir
tree, saying that a _hazelfichte_ merely possessed a straighter and a
smoother stem.

We had begun truly to descend, and our friendly woman, seeing that
"Shank's mare" required no further encouragement, bade us a friendly
good-evening, with a cheerful "May you live long and well!" She
had almost dipped out of sight when our Joergel, with praiseworthy
forethought, called after her to apprise the bath people, as she
passed, of our advent.

The path had become broader and more beaten. There was a gradual sense
of some human being, either from personal or unselfish interests,
having once been at work to make the woods still more attractive
and enjoyable. Benches of flat stones were raised at points where
snow-fields, fantastic and stern dolomite peaks and wooded slopes
formed exquisite pictures set in frames of stately, well-grown fir
trees--here a smooth lawn with its little shrine and wooden seat for
the wayfarer to meditate on the Flight into Egypt, which Joergel called
the "witches' ground;" there, under a spreading tree, a rural table
and seats--proofs that we must be approaching the bath-house; and no
little were we pleased by these signs of care and judgment, especially
as none of the rural bowers were either bran-new or in a state
of decay, but harmonizing with the tidy negligence of the woods
themselves.

"These paths promise well for the baths," we remarked to Joergel.

"Might have done so once," he replied, "but it was the old Frau
Wirthin who put them up. She was a woman with a head and a will, and
she took a pride in the place, seeing that the baths are as old as
the mountains, and they had been in her family since the Lord made
the Tyrol. Now they are in the hands of her son Seppl and his sister
Moidel. However, I never mix myself up in what does not concern me.
The master is at liberty, and so is she, and it is not for me or my
old Nanni to speak against unmarried people. Both they and we are
bound for _Herzing_ when we die, the spinsters to howl in the moor and
we men in the wood. That is what the lads and lasses say of us;" and
he gave a dry little laugh. "Ask my opinion of the water, and I'll
answer you straightforward. It's an elixir, a perfect elixir;" and
he repeated the sentence with the proud consciousness of using a
dictionary word. "As for the house, the master and the old maid, judge
for yourselves, or ask them that sent you here."

So saying, he sturdily marched on ahead, as if fearing to be
compromised. We did not feel encouraged, especially with night
steadily falling down upon us. Still less was the future hopeful when
Joergel pointed with his stick in advance, exclaiming, "Arrived at
last!"

Yes, arrived at an old weatherbeaten chalet, with a crazy barn to keep
it company, dilapidated and tottering as if in the bankruptcy court,
standing abruptly on the borders of the black fir wood, the air filled
with the odor of concentrated pigstye; dark male figures playing at
skittles on the path, and having to stop the game to enable us to
reach the door; black male figures playing at cards and drinking wine
in the dusky, close old parlor or _stube_, made still more gloomy by
the large, projecting brick stove, unlighted at this season of the
year.

We should never have proceeded on a voyage of discovery had not the
thick folds of a woman's yellow petticoat flickered before us on the
steps of a smoke-stained ladder.

Joergel, who, with the utmost determination, resolved to fulfill his
duty as guide, marshaled us up this old creaking ladder, then up a
second, until we stopped in an open gallery sheltered by the wooden
eaves, where a feeble old woman nursed an idiot child in the
gloaming. And yet what a landscape to relieve this desolate
foreground!--slumbrous mountains, dewy meadows, peaceful villages,
over which the calm of Sunday lay. We stood drinking in the tranquil
scene, when a woman in blue apron and of rapid motion quickly touched
my elbow with a large key; and bidding us follow she hastily flung
open the door of a narrow wainscoted closet, smelling of hay. "She had
no other room," she blurted forth, and then, without word of apology,
disappeared as speedily as she had come. We found ourselves the owners
of two large bedsteads and two dilapidated chairs: everywhere in the
house we had caught glimpses of broken-backed chairs, witnesses either
of poverty or riot.

A modest tap at the door announced worthy Joergel. He tried to comfort
us in his rough and honest way, with "They that sent you here are to
blame."

We interrupted him, saying that the fault lay with ourselves.

"Well, well! how could you tell? But have no fears. This house is
disorderly for the want of a head, but remember, there's an elixir of
life in the water. I'm very much satisfied with what you have paid
me, and the next time we meet we shall regard each other as old
acquaintance."

He lifted his empty _kraxe_ upon his shoulders, and went out. We
waited to see his square figure appear in the path below, like those
who were parting not only from a friend, but a protector. It was some
minutes before he was visible. We discovered shortly afterward that
not wishing to leave us in our desolation, and perceiving that some
"Herrschaft" must be in the house, as the best room had not been
given us, he had boldly introduced himself to them, and thus we found
ourselves committed by Joergel to a fresh Good Samaritan in the shape
of a well-to-do draper's wife, Frau T----. We knew her by name, but
did not deal at her shop. Still, she was ruled by no selfish thoughts,
and out of the genuine kindliness of her heart she joyfully fulfilled
Joergel's commission. It was she who insisted on preparing our supper;
it was her cloth that was spread on the table in the gallery as the
quietest, most suitable spot in the riotous house, she smoothing our
scruples by declaring it her pleasure, only regretting that we should
have arrived on such a noisy night, for the house was usually very
still. It was her servant who showed the deaf old woman, the one help
of the establishment, how to make our beds.

The aged crone, Nanni--half the female population of the Tyrol are
called either after the Virgin Mary or her traditionary mother, Saint
Ann--gazed in intense astonishment when we screamed to her our simple
requirements. We asked for a light, and she brought us a tallow candle
stuck in a bottle. We asked for a pitcher of water, and she muttered
something about the spout.

Worn-out, weary, very grateful to the good Frau T----, we went to bed,
but not to sleep. That would have been a vain endeavor, for shrill
laughter, loud words and boisterous songs, in which the high tones
of wild female voices rose painfully above the gruff singing of
half-besotted men, penetrated the room, whilst the old rafters groaned
and creaked from the heavy tramp of dancers below. All our belief in
the sobriety and goodness of the Tyrolese seemed swept away, and a
sense of their coarseness and dissipation to have taken its place.
We were in a very pandemonium, which never ceased until the sun was
rising.

Nor was the evil mitigated when we learned from the landlord's sister
a few hours later that the guests were only returning from Scapulary
Sunday in Reischach. Most of them belonged to the next village, and
had rested here on their way. After prayers it was right to sing and
dance: why should they not? And, look you, when wine got into people's
head, what could she do? She could not turn them out.

"Yes, but the master, her brother, might."

She shook her head ominously, and hurried into the kitchen--a smoky
old kitchen, but quaint from the little windows with the old ox-eyed
panes of thick glass.

It impressed itself forcibly on our minds that Seppl had compromised
himself on the preceding night. He was to be seen nowhere; only the
bustling sister Moidel, who had already swept out and cleaned the
scene of the late dissipation, and was now busy over our coffee, and
the old Nanni, who with bare feet and wet petticoats intimated that
she had scrubbed the female bath-room and placed two freshly scoured
tubs there at our disposition.

Both women meant kindly by us: the pleasant fir woods and the fresh
air seemed to whisper to us to stay. So we gave up the plan which we
had resolutely made in the night of leaving that very morning, and by
so doing found Bad Scharst not only endurable, but really, in a very
rough and ready way, enjoyable. The remembrance of the wild,
riotous night even became enveloped with a certain interest when we
recollected that this grim attempt at pleasure was in sober reality
one of those Tyrolese peasant balls which are represented in such fair
and attractive colors on the stage, in pictures or in novels. It was
well to be undeceived, and to see the deep shadows as well as the
bright side of Tyrolese life.

And what matter if for one night we had lost our sleep, whilst we
breathed exhilarating ozone and drank water which, to quote Joergel,
was truly an elixir of life? For all our temporary and trifling
inconveniences we found rich compensation when after an easy ascent
of two hours we reached the topmost platform of the mountain, the
Kronplatz. To the north, reaching from east to west, a long, unbroken
chain of glaciers, from the Furtschlaeg to the Gross Venediger Spitze
with its untrodden snows. Below us, at some four thousand feet, the
broad, rich Pusterthal, with its comfortable villages and its pastoral
tributary valleys. To the south, the stern limestone peaks of the
dolomite region; the Vedretta Marmolata, with its breastplate of ice,
king of these barbaric giants, the splintered pinnacles of the Drei
Zinnen, the pyramidal Antalao, and many another jagged, appalling
mountain, stern as the bewildering doctrines of election and
reprobation, whilst the pure glistening snow, green meadows and
pleasant woods opposite seemed to breathe forth the gentle, winning
truths of the glad tidings of peace.

It was delicious to lie on the short turf in an ethereal region with a
perception of the burden and heat of the day in the valley below; yet
the fresh breeze of the mountain drove us with a sense of hunger back
to the baths.

Having spoken of the scenery, let us now speak of the guests.
There were not many. Frau T----, ourselves and a young woman, a
sewing-machinist, occupied the available chambers of the chalet.
The rest were used as receptacles for hay and milk: the ground floor
contained the _stube_, the kitchen, the pigstye, or rather the room
set apart for the pig, and the cow-house. Several poor guests, men and
woman, hovered about the door of the barn. They slept in the various
lofts, divided into rooms, and cooked for themselves in a common
kitchen adjoining the bath-rooms. These were two long wooden sheds, in
which rows of large tubs were placed. The patients bathed twice a day,
being covered over with boards and a horse-rug, but the head was left
free. There was no doctor: each could doctor himself by lying in the
hot water and drinking more or fewer glasses of the iron water daily.
It poured from a spout into a wooden trough between the chalet and the
barn; and this explained old Nanni's mutterings after our arrival.

Although the peasant bathers as a class made no distinct impression on
us, the half dozen men looking like facsimiles of each other, and the
seven women appearing always to be one and the same, still there were
one or two figures which stand prominently forth, from the more direct
relations into which we came with them.

First, an old peasant-woman, whom we heard, as we descended from the
Kronplatz, singing to a crying baby as we approached the house:

Engeli, Bengeli, wilt thou go to America?
Rumelti, Pumelti, wilt thou go to England?

She instantly stopped her ditty when she saw us emerge from the wood.

Curious, was it not? and yet we had neither brought our passports with
us, nor had we followed the example of previous guests and proved our
learning by writing our names and birthplaces in the visitors' book--a
large volume for which every door-lintel and piece of wainscot in the
house acted as leaves. No, but some little bird had been whispering
about us on the mountain-side.

The next figure is another peasant-woman, tall and somewhat thin,
with a patient, beseeching look in her face. This I quietly perceived
whilst I sat busily writing near the house at a table which Moidel had
carried out for me, yet I would not look up, because she stood eyeing
me with an innocent stare, as if wishful to enter into conversation. A
few minutes later a buxom matron stepped forth from the passage of
the chalet. It acted as a convenient thoroughfare on the road between
Reischach and Geisselburg. Her daughter, a girl of sixteen, who was
with her, wore two beaver hats, the uppermost evidently bran-new and a
fresh purchase. The first peasant-woman addressed the newcomer with a
"God greet thee, Trina! Thou hast been shopping, I see."

"God greet thee, Gertraud! It is only a new hat for the moidel. We
were going down for Scapulary Sunday; so I thought I might go on to
town and sell thirty pounds of cow-hair, the savings of ten years;
for, now there's to be a railway, beds are wanted, and as I received
more than I expected, Moidel got her hat."

Then lowering her voice and pointing in my direction: "One of the
strange ladies? I saw the other in the wood gathering strawberries. I
heard she came from America, but she was quite pretty, without either
black skin or thick lips. There must be some mistake. But, Gertraud,
how's the sick little maid?"

"Very weak--cannot last long. The doctor was up yesterday, and he
said it was useless his coming again: however, he left it something
soothing. Adieu, Trina: greet all at home."

At first amused by the notions these fellow-creatures possessed of
us, then forgetting them in the trouble which I perceived occupied the
poor woman's mind, I lifted up my head when her friends were gone and
inquired if she had a sick child.

"Oh, na, na! not of my own. I'm nursing a little maid of five years
old: the father is a government postilion and the mother in service,
and so she brought her up here to see if the air and the water would
strengthen her. She is their only child. No, I myself live about an
hour from here: you can see my cottage amongst the cherry trees on
the slopes yonder. It looks nearer than it is, for there is a hidden
ravine between. Ah, Herr je! I've had children too, and have had to
give them all up. They are waiting for me with the dear God; but, Herr
je! it's long toiling and hoping to reach them. However, you'll oblige
me and tell me where you have really come from?"

"From Rome," was the reply.

"Mein Gott! as far off as heaven! The creation is frightfully big!
Well, I must not loiter. I came out to say a prayer, then to chop wood
for Moidel."

An hour later, while sitting at supper in the passage, the most
convenient and quiet place as we imagined, we found all the guests
marching past us, each saluting us with "A good appetite to you!" or
else "May you eat well!" They had been called together by Frau T----
and the sewing-machinist, Frauelein Magdalena, for Rosenkranz.

Hardly were they kneeling in the chapel, a small building at the
farther side of the chalet, when the pig marched also up the passage,
and grunting out his "Guten appetit," proposed taking his place at our
table. We drove him out of doors: he waited behind the house corner to
avoid detection until we were comfortably seated, when again he was
at our side, snuffing the dishes in the air and grunting his "Guten
appetit."

We were in despair. Moidel was not forthcoming, and we found that we
could not shut the door against our intruding visitor.

"_Was thust du? Na, na! Draus, draus, Kloane_!" ("What dost thou? No,
no! Out with thee, little one!"), said a voice in the passage; and
a short man, with a good-natured, half-foolish face, after releasing
himself from a heavily-laden basket which he carried on his back,
walked through the passage and out of the farther door, attended by
the pig, who lovingly rubbed his snout against him. The stranger knelt
down at one of the shattered windows of the chapel, his four-footed
companion standing patiently by him, until the orison was over and
the worshipers trooped out of the little chapel. Then the knowing pig
trotted off to his own quarters, whilst one voice exclaimed, "You are
back again, Seppl?"

"You've not forgotten my bread?" said a second.

"You've brought me the knitting needles?" said a third.

"You left the letter at the Lamb and Flag?" added a fourth.

This, then, was the master, evidently the common messenger of all,
who, whilst the guests called him behind his back "Headless Seppl,"
had managed to fulfill two dozen verbal commissions to everybody's
satisfaction. This was the landlord, whom we had pictured lying in a
drunken lethargy in some hay barn after the bout of the night before.
How we had maligned an evidently simple, honest soul, who had been
toiling from early morning, and who, having discharged the orders of
his different customers, started up the steep mountain-side, and we
heard him calling "_Koos, koos, koos_," lovingly to his cows! It was
only when he had milked them, patted them, called each by its name,
seen them comfortably housed for the night, that he had time to think
of resting or eating his dumplings for supper.

It was the fourth morning of our stay, and we were preparing to leave.
Seppl's basket was already packed with our belongings, and he, the
good beast of burden, had orders in half an hour to act as our guide,
when suddenly Moidel flew out of the kitchen, exclaiming, "He is
coming! he is coming!" and wiping her arms on her apron rushed down
the green meadows beyond the chapel. Fraeulein Magdalena, dropping her
work, uttered a joyful cry. "Yes, it is he! it's Herr Pflersch!" she
said, turning to us. "The king of Bad Scharst. Ah! why don't you stay,
for glorious days will begin? I've been here eleven years at the same
time as Herr Pflersch, and we have none of us gone to bed for seven
days together. We play at cards and he tells us tales."

The excitement in the whole establishment became universal. Herr
Pflersch was our grocer, a burly, good-natured man, who bowed politely
to us when he arrived at the house, led by a troop of admiring and
rejoicing friends. He was attended by his cook, and had brought with
him a sackful of provisions and his feather bed, which came toiling up
the hill in a cart.

Fraeulein Magdalena stood rapturously before the welcome guest,
offering him a quart glass of water: "No beer to offer you, Herr
Pflersch, but glorious water, Herr Pflersch."

Moidel apologized for not going a step of the way with us, "But Herr
Pflersch had come;" and whilst she said so she began putting one of
Herr Pflersch's own wax candles into a brass candlestick. "I have,
however, a favor to ask of you," she continued: "that is, if we ever
happen to meet on the high-road in the Pusterthal, you'll allow me to
recognize you." A humble request indeed, poor soul!

Gertraud came down from the barn to say good-bye to us. The "little
maid" was still lingering, but she added mysteriously, "She'll be
knocking thrice at her mother's door to-morrow."

Walking across the meadows, this time taking a different way from that
by which we had arrived, we met several groups of peasant-men carrying
bundles in their hands, who asked Seppl if the Herr had arrived, and
being answered in the affirmative, they hurried on, as if desirous to
act as Knights of the Round Table to King Pflersch.

CHAPTER VI.

In sending word to Anton to fetch us from the inn at Nieder Olang that
especial afternoon, we had not been aware that we had chosen a place
and hour when most of the pious male Catholics were gathered thither
to accord an unflinching, unequivocal assent to the Infallibility
dogma, as well as to condemn from the bottom of their clerical or
rustic souls the foul heresy of Old Catholicism, which was spreading
far and wide in the adjoining kingdom of Bavaria. Most of the farmers
and all the parish priests were assembled. The spacious _Widum_ or
parsonage, in festal array, kept open house, the large church was
full to overflowing, whilst the ample inn being still more crammed
we preferred waiting for Anton in a shady nook opposite. Here we had
ample leisure to observe the rows of clerical and bucolic backs ranged
against the open inn windows, and to listen to the hum of serious
voices, sounding as if a spiritual mass meeting were being held over
seitels of wine. It was a curious sight a quarter of an hour later,
the conclave being at an end, to watch the priests flocking forth,
some so old and shabby, in such stained, rusty frockcoats, that their
very assumption of dignity appeared painfully grotesque; others, more
scrupulously clean, displayed with pride a blue silk ribbon bound as
an order across their breasts; but whether shabby or decent, whether
singly or in groups, they were invariably received bareheaded by the
respectful villagers waiting outside, whilst a double salvo of homage
was awarded by priest and layman to a tall, elegant Italian monsignor
from Brixen, who, tucking up gracefully his rich violet garments,
walked with infinite care from the inn to the Widum, disappearing from
view under the gateway.

All the clergy now departing in various directions were complacently
chuckling over the security of their position, their quiet,
unquestioning sheep obediently following whithersoever they might lead
them. It was not always so in the Tyrol. In former ages, especially
at the time of the Reformation, the people had used their independent
judgment, allowing themselves neither to be oppressed nor led astray.
In these latter days, however, their freer, nobler instincts have
been overpowered by the marvelous, almost incredible, influence of
the Jesuits. In the last century, when this order was suppressed, the
Tyrolese gymnasiums were immediately improved, schools for the people
were opened, and such was the spirit of the age that the barons
Sternbach, Turn, Taxis and other noblemen became Freemasons--an act
which their descendants, now shackled with Jesuitical influences,
regard with the deepest horror. After the revolution of 1848 a spirit
of reaction arose in the Tyrol, which holds the people back, retards
progress and keeps the country far behind other European lands.

A very embodiment of this retrograding subordination stood before us
in the form of Seppl, who, dull, poor both in mind and pocket, still
lingered entranced with wonder and amazement at a power which appeared
to him capable of governing both earth and heaven.

Rich bauers and poor laborers in this peaceful, wealthy portion of the
Tyrol become daily more blindly attached to the priests. Should there
happen to be a thinker amongst them, he must keep his questionings to
himself: he will find no sympathy in his neighbors. In towns such as
Innsbruck, however, he will discover many fellows, for a feeling of
reaction has awakened there a more liberal, independent spirit.

If Seppl might be taken as an extreme type of the provincial mode
of thought, so might a young student with whom we shortly became
acquainted be regarded as representing that of the town. Pursuing a
long course of medical studies at the Innsbruck University, he implied
rather by his actions than by any outward expressions that he regarded
his worthy country relations as zealots, absented himself from
Rosenkranz and long family graces, and spoke compassionately of his
relatives as being "very naive;" and these simple, unsophisticated
people in their turn, though staggered by this spirit of quiet
innovation and rebellion in their midst, made their minds easy on the
score that a man of the world, such as he was, and honorably providing
for himself, could not be expected to be such as they were. He had not
time for prayers and confessions: he must study, and then must enjoy
relaxation; but some of their extra petitions might be put to his
account. Not that this was ever expressed in so many words: it was
rather from our own quiet observations that we drew these inferences.
Nor did opportunities fail, seeing that our new acquaintance was in
fact no other than the "Herr Student," the saintly personage whom
we had imagined in long black Noah's Ark coat, wearing the orthodox
clerical stock embroidered with blue and white beads, leading
Rosenkranz, and, should we ever have the honor of his acquaintance,
saying three Ave Marias before conversing with heretics.

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