CHAPTER LVIII.
VADE SATANA.
“And now, Master Hackernagel, if you don’t mind, we’ll go,” said Prudentius, ignoring Hackernagel’s last remark. “You won’t see any more if you stand staring at it till midnight,” said the sacristan, lifting as he spoke the great bunch of keys hanging at his girdle, and selecting one smaller and more richly wrought than the rest, he inserted it in the lock of the chapel postern and threw the door open, motioning the Syndic to precede him.
Safe outside, he turned and carefully locked the door behind him, letting the keys fall with a clatter at his side again.
“You hold the power of the keys, friend,” said Hackernagel, lifting them into his hands, and looking at them with an air of languid interest.
“Ay. As I have done any time these twenty years past, Syndic Hackernagel,” said the sacristan proudly.
“An onerous trust.”
“Very much so,” acquiesced Prudentius.
“Sole and absolute power, if I mistake not?”
“You do not, Master Syndic. That is,” amended Prudentius, “with the exception of this one.”
“Which you have just used?”
“Which I have just used,” and he fingered it tenderly. “It is the key of the Saint Thomas Chapel as you saw. My lord likes to enter the cathedral this way; and had a duplicate made for his own private use; but this is the original.”
“And a charming specimen of metallic work it appears to be,” said Hackernagel, examining it, as if he cared for such vanities.
“You’re right there, Syndic. You wouldn’t find a handsomer if you were to hunt the empire through. It’s Master Wenzel Jamitzer of Nuremberg’s own designing and casting. See, here’s his token, W. J., graven in the midst of a shield, with the scutcheon of the Coppersmith’s guild above. Plain enough, eh?”
“Oh, perfectly so,” said Tobias, bringing it well up to the tip of his nose, and scrutinizing it through his squeezed-up eyelids, “perfectly so; I should know it—it would, as you observe, be recognizable at half a glance among all the others.”
“Seventeen in all,” said Prudentius, lifting the whole cluster and looking at them with proud affection, as he let them slip one by one through his fingers. “And a precious weight they are to be having dangling about you day and night.”
“Day and night? Dear me! dear me! How excessively interesting. Then you sleep with them about you?”
“I should rather think I did! ‘Safe bind, safe find,’ you know, Syndic; that’s my motto.”
“And a most wise one,” conceded Hackernagel. “The Bishop chose well when he elected you for a janitor.”
“I flatter myself he did, Syndic Hackernagel.”
“But I can well imagine your post is no sinecure. Your time,” elucidated Hackernagel, “is well occupied.”
“Occupied’s no word for it. As I told you before, Syndic, it’s just scrub, sweep, dust, from morning till night. Lock, unlock, take out, put away, cover up, uncover. And then the candles and lamps. There—I don’t complain, Master Hackernagel, but the mess and grease after there’s been a grand function on, is enough to send you into your grave. Takes it out of a man, till he’s as dry as any rotten stick. I don’t know that ever a cup of good wine comes amiss to an honest man, Master Tobias, but the morning after a red-letter day——”
“You drink wine?” queried Tobias, attentively considering the flesh tints of the sacristan’s nose.
“Give me my chance,” laughed Prudentius, “and I’ll soon answer you that question.”
“You’re a merry fellow,” smiled Hackernagel responsively. “And differ as we may,” he continued with an air of tolerance, which fitted him about as well as a lion’s skin would fit a hyena, “differ doctrinally as we may, far be it from me to assert that Scripture forbids imbibation of the juice of the grape.”
“Forbids!” cried Prudentius, holding up his two hands. “Odds, my life, man! It commands it! ‘Take a little wine for thy stomach’s sake.’ Ho! ha! Twist, and turn it how you may, you can’t make any other rhyme or reason out of that.”
“My friend,” returned the Syndic mildly, “do I wish to try? It is the abuse of such lawful pleasures I condemn; not their use.”
“And I have heard say,” returned Prudentius, “that there are some folks of your way of thinking, who carry that pretty far.”
“A mere invention of the enemy,” answered Tobias, waving away the imputation.
“I’m not so sure,” answered Prudentius, blinking meditatively through his half-closed eyelids; “I’ve got a cousin now, who has been for years in the service of Sauersuss and Sons, the famous vine-growers out by Treves, there, and they do business with that fellow Ezra Schlau, the landlord of the ‘Three Ravens,’ down by the Fisherman’s Gate, and times out of counting, I’ve heard Cousin Wendel say he’s their best customer; for all he’s such a close-fisted dog. Their best customer both for quantity and quality. None of your wish-wash for him. And Ezra’s a heretic of just your very cut and colour, Master Hackernagel, if I’m not out.”
“The Three Ravens is certainly a reformed house,” concluded the Syndic.
“Ah!” grinned Prudentius, “time it was, if some tales are true.”
“A most excellently conducted establishment,” hurried on Hackernagel; “I speak from personal knowledge.”
“Of its liquor?” said Prudentius.
“Of its landlord,” returned Tobias; “and I can only say that I have ever found him a shining example; a most precious saint among saints, seeking unwearingly for whatsoever things are best.”
“Just that,” said Prudentius. “Just what Cousin Wendel says; and if it wasn’t as much as my place is worth, to be seen within half-a-mile of his reformed ramshackle rat-hole, I don’t say but what I shouldn’t have more than half a mind to be finding my way down there, and letting him have my opinion of his wares one of these fine days.”
“Or nights,” said the Syndic.
“Eh?” said Prudentius, jerking his shaven head attently on one side, like a listening bird.
“I say, my good fellow, that if the narrowness of your creed shackles your liberty by daylight, you’re not such an idiot, I suppose, as to allow it to fetter you down after dark.”
“Oh well, you know,” returned Prudentius, “we’re under rule here.”
“Psha! you individually are not; your official duties exempt you from the mill-wheel ways of the rest.”
“That’s true. Yes. My lord, in consideration of the weakness of the flesh, has given me a dispensation from attending Compline after a hard day of it.”
“Exactly.”
“But we are all of us locked up as tight as maggots in a cheese, including my lord himself, by nine of the clock; and in half-an-hour after, every man-jack of us is snug and snoring till Lauds.”
“Nearly five hours.”
“And bolted and barred——”
“And Brother Prudentius has the keys. Ha! ha! ha!” laughed the Syndic.
“Ha! ha! ha!” chimed in Prudentius. “By the mass,” he went on, cogitatively smoothing his chin, “it wouldn’t be a mortal sin, I suppose.”
“Sin, my good friend! Heaven forbid that I should lay a stumbling block in your path. You have your dispensation. Can it concern my lord how you choose to turn it to account? In swinish sleep, or in contemplating calm moonlit nature?”
“That’s all fine enough talking,” said the sacristan, “but you don’t know our chapter. If so much as a mouse hereabouts should come to know that I’d been within a mile of that place, it would be better I hanged myself at once.”
“Who is to know?”
“Conscience, Master Tobias. Conscience must, anyhow.”
“Pooh! give it liberty—for once,” sneered Hackernagel.
“Oh! that’s well enough for the like of you; but we’ve got to keep ours straight and clear. We’ve got to make a clean breast of everything, don’t you see.”
Tobias grew pale. “You’d never confess——”
“Needs must,” shrugged Prudentius, “when the devil drives.”
“But confess that, man! Like one of your sins?”
“Eh!” returned Prudentius, opening his round eyes to their widest, “and Father Ottfried wouldn’t reckon my making a night of it down at your Three Ravens, one of the smallest of the lot, I fancy.”
“Then,” said Tobias cheerfully, “don’t tell him about it. That’s all you’ve got to do.”
“Is it?” said Prudentius, “and tumble out of the frying-pan into the fire! No thanks, Syndic Hackernagel. Drink of that sort’s good stuff, I grant you; but I don’t exactly feel inclined to lay perjury on my conscience for the sake of it.”
“You’d find it worth the risk,” said Tobias in tones of mocking contempt. “Ezra Schlau’s Niersteiner doesn’t find its match in all Elsass. But what is it to me? do as you like.”
The sacristan’s full rosy lips fell moistly apart, but he continued to shake his head resolutely.
“But tell me—seriously, my good friend. Let us put it, for the sake of argument, that you were to confide this little frolic to your priestly confessor, what do you imagine——”
“There’s no imagination about it,” ruefully interposed Prudentius, “it’s as certain as that nose is on your face, that he’d set me down to dry barley bread and cold water for the next six months.”
“Psha! That’s not what I mean. Would he dare to reveal your confession?”
“Ho! don’t you know better than that?” said Prudentius, compassionately measuring the Anabaptist’s length and breadth. “No, not exactly; if he cared to keep his skin whole on his body.”
“Bless me,” gaily cried the Syndic, “I’d no conception now, that flaying alive was the penalty for betraying the secrets of the confessional. Are you quite certain of this?”
“Well,” said the sacristan, “it’s something of the kind, more or less.”
“But nothing so very far short?” briskly pursued Tobias.
“Oh! it’s sharp enough anyhow. You’ll find it all set down in the canon law, if you want to know. It may be hanging, drawing, and quartering for all I can say. And he’d have his spiritual flaying alive in any case.”
“Spiritual?”
“Ay, yes; he’d be unfrocked.”
“Bless me; how curious now.”
“It would be curious if he wasn’t,” irefully cried Prudentius. “Would he be worthy of his cloth, after he’d broke his oath?”
“Not if he believed in—in the terms he swore by,” said Tobias, evading his gossip’s eyes and glancing round the Platz.
“No honest man would swear by them, if he didn’t believe in them,” said Prudentius, turning away in the direction of the neglected, but far from forgotten broil.
“One instant, friend,” said Hackernagel, laying his hand on the sacristan’s ample sleeve. “Do I understand you that the ecclesiastical law is so startlingly severe?”
“Not severer I fancy than your civil law is on a man who is false to his oath, eh! Syndic?” somewhat hotly rejoined Prudentius. “What may be the punishment now over yonder,” and he pointed towards the chancellery, “for perjury?”
“For per—per—” stammered the Syndic.
“Ay, for perjury. What may it be? You’ve got that at your finger ends, I make no doubt.”
“I—upon my honour—I—you are—common law is not my province; and,” added Hackernagel, breaking into a forced uneasy laugh, “what in the world all this has to do with Ezra Schlau, I—I fail to see.”
“I haven’t the least doubt you know what’s what, Syndic,” said Prudentius, shaking his head, “as well as the best of us; but it won’t do. You see I’m a——”
“Fool! craven! chicken-livered papist!”
“No such thing,” said Prudentius, squaring sharply round. “Say that again if you dare.”
“I do! I do!” hissed Tobias, jerking out his peaked little chin at him. “Are these swaddling clothes,” and he contemptuously tweaked the sacristan’s skirts, “that you may never drink a cup of wine without asking your priests’ permission.”
“No such thing——”
“Do you call yourself a man——”
“No such thing.”
“Then prove it,” snarled back Tobias.
“I will,” hysterically said Prudentius.
“And when?”
“To-morrow—to-night. Just whenever you please. Just whenever you please.”
“Softly! softly! my friend,” smiled Tobias. “Are you forgetting that I’m to stand treat? and I—my engagements, you understand, do not leave me free this next day or two. What do you say, for the sake of being definite, to this day week?”
“Won’t do at all,” said Prudentius, shaking his head; “it’s the eve of Saint Laurence.”
“And what then? If you wait till its neither fast nor feast with you,” growled Tobias, “you may wait till doomsday.”
“But the eve of Saint Laurence, surely you forget, Master Tobias, and next day the Horologe day.”
“And what that has to do with preventing you from drinking a cup of wine is past my comprehension. Certainly, I know as well as you do that Tuesday is what Saint worshippers are pleased to call Saint Laurence’s day; when this clock, which it appears to me is turning the heads of everybody——”
“Well,” interrupted the sacristan, “and think of all the preparations. Think of the chairs, and flowers, and trumpets, and flags, and candles, and crowds and crowds there’s room to be made for. Why, already I’m off my head nearly.”
“If not quite,” soothed Tobias, patting the little man’s shoulder, “if not quite. It really is painful,” he added sighingly, “to see such zeal and talented energy as yours thrown away on the serving of idols and gew-gaw trumperies. But, my worthy friend, I know as well as you do, that every detail is to be complete by the stroke of midday on Monday, by order of the Municipal Council. Did not I myself, in my official capacity, sign the order?”
“They may order as much as they please,” grumbled Prudentius, “we shall never be ready.”
“And what,” continued Tobias, “can be more refreshing after such hard physical toil, than a cup of good wine?”
“And ready or not ready,” went on Prudentius, “every door of the place is to be closed by dusk on Monday evening.”
“Precisely.”
“And not a soul, not my lord himself, is to be let come inside after. Unless, of course, Master Dasipodius may please to ‘look in,’ as he always calls it, poor gentleman!”
“When?—at what hour?” sharply demanded Tobias.
“Oh! betimes in the morning, before the doors are open. Just to make sure the last pin’s stuck in straight.”
“The last pin?”
“Why, that it’s all ready, don’t I mean.”
“He would do it before about eight of course.”
“I wouldn’t swear to that. Our Professor is in general as regular about his comings and goings as his own foot-rule; but o’Monday night, I shouldn’t feel myself safe from him, so to speak, after daylight; and I was thinking of asking my lord’s permission to stay all night in the Cathedral, in case of accidents.”
“Accidents?”
“Ah! I mean, just for the sake of being ready.”
“Oh! just so,” said Tobias.
“It isn’t everybody of course would care to offer such a thing in the dead hours, when you can’t hear so much as a mouse stirring outside. It’s trying to the nerves; most trying.”
“And what braces them better than the juice of the grape? So come, friend sacristan,” and Tobias slapped the custodian’s broad back with engaging familiarity. “I’m none so unreasonable after all. Eh?—ha, ha, ha!”
“Ha, ha, ha! you’re a sly one, you are,” laughed Prudentius, bestowing an appreciative dig into the Anabaptist’s lean ribs; “and hang me if I don’t take a look in at your Three Ravens o’Monday night as you say——”
“Hush! Hold your peace!” snapped Hackernagel, in sharp, savage undertones, which effectually scared the sacristan’s hilarity, while the Syndic’s jaws fell with an audible chap into their normal longitude, as Gretchen Hackernagel, basket on arm, stood at his elbow. “Gretchen, my good girl!” he asked turning on her, “what do you do here?”
“Do?” mechanically echoed the girl, in whose eyes, as she turned them on Prudentius, and then on her father’s face, was a strange bewildered expression, “I was—only—on my—way to market.”
“And is this the—way to market?” mimicked Tobias, joining his arms into hers, and roughly dragging her from the spot. “What were you doing there?” he demanded, in curiously less honeyed accents, when they were well out of the sacristan’s hearing. “Skulking about?”
“Father, I had but just crossed over, out of the hot sun.”
“By my soul!” he growled, letting his hand slip to her wrist, and tightening his grip till she cried out with the pain, “if it were hot as——”
“Father!”
“Let me catch you again within a street’s length of these popish walls, and—What did you hear me say? What was I saying? Eh? eh?”
“Nothing, father,” faltered the trembling girl.
“Sure?”
“Quite sure.”
“Did you hear me—smile?”
“I—I—fancied——”
“It was with pity then; of deepest, tenderest, heavenliest compassion for—for that poor lost sheep Prudentius. Do you understand? Hey, do you understand? Speak.”
“Yes, father,” answered Gretchen, casting down her eyes.
“Good. Now go,” said Tobias, releasing her and sending her on her ways with a rough push. “And if you’re going to buy capons, see you give the fellow half what he asks, and not a heller more. And hark you here, no dead flesh mind; pick them out alive, and see them pinned through the neck yourself.”