CHAPTER LX.
“MAN PROPOSES.”
Preparations, as the sacristan has told Tobias Hackernagel, are being made on a grand scale for the Horologe’s unveiling and inauguration.
In the Cathedral, High Mass having first been celebrated by the Lord Bishop, the Horologe is to be solemnly denuded of its bonds and shroudings; and a musical service of strophe and antistrophe, decani and cantoris is to follow, especially arranged by Master Wolfgang Dachstein for the occasion, and to swell whose triumph burst, all the city’s capable harps, sackbuts, and dulcimers have been chartered. An Orpheus indeed, Master Dachstein, with his music that promises to hush down for once the strife of tongues, and charm into one vast friendly concourse under the mighty old Cathedral’s roof, men and women of all persuasions.
The bishop and his chapter are to preside; and Strassburg’s civic dignity is to be represented by all her chief magnates, Town Council, University rector and dons. A raised crimson-draped dais, flower garlanded, has been erected for all those engaged in the making of the Horologe, and the central figure of this goodly body will of course be the Professor Conrad Dasipodius. These duly accommodated with specially assigned seats, “first come, first served” is to be the order of the day; and Teutonic endurance will meet a crucial testing, since by seven o’clock ante-meridian, Brother Prudentius is to open the great western portals, and admit the outside world to the broad nave and aisles of the church, although not sooner than ten o’clock the long procession, with wreath and banner, and smoking censer, will enter in ceremonial and festive garb; and chanting the introit as they proceed to the celebration of Mass at the High Altar. But, as Prudentius says, it will be such an affair as you’ll never see the like of again if you lived to the age of Methusalem; and if you can’t keep yourself still for three hours for the sake of it, you must be poor creatures!
By almost general consent, party differences have then been sunken on this august occasion. Rector Sturm of the University, albeit of the new persuasion, is no bigot, and all the professors have followed his suit, and accepted my Lord Bishop’s invitation to attend the ceremony.
The municipality, consisting, indeed, of many Lutherans and Calvinists, has also signified that it will have pleasure in attending; and the science of Professor Dasipodius seems to present a basis of unanimity and cordiality which gladdens the hearts of most.
One member only of the municipality, Master Syndic Hackernagel, declines to countenance the festivities. “Is it to be supposed, or conceived, or imagined,” as he pathetically puts it in his response to the invitation, that he should dream of imperilling his precious soul’s welfare by putting even as much as his head inside the place? and then with phraseological flow and elegant circumlocution, he sets forth some few of his motives for refusing to be present at what he styles a preposterous piece of papistical pageantry. Before it had been half read through, however, this priceless document, forwarded in due course to the Horologe Managing Committee, and intended by the inditer to be preserved among the city archives, owing to pressure of affairs, got set aside for the moment, with a view to after consideration; and by misadventure slipped into my lord’s chaplain’s waste-paper basket, so that it was never known in its entirety. Had it been read to its ending, it would have been found that Syndic Hackernagel further intimated his intention of withdrawing the light of his countenance from the very city itself on the great festival day; and in order to avoid as much as possible all their profane preparations, contemplated taking his departure early on the preceding evening. “Your scarlet, and purple, and fine linen offend my vision. Your sweet odours and incense stink in my nostrils,” politely wrote the Syndic. “Is this a time, oh! sons and daughters of Adam, to pipe and to make merry?”
That it is, clearly speaks the prevailing opinion; and the old free city vies with the Cathedral in preparations for pranking herself out with gay garlands and streamers, and gorgeous Flanders tapestry; and the solemnities over, there is to be rope-dancing and mountebanking, and rumour, though some hold that news too good to be true, says the conduits are to run with wine; and at sundown there is to be a magnificent civic banquet, when health and long years to the Professor Dasipodius is to be drunk with three times three; and for those who do not regard play-acting as the devil’s own pastime, there will be performed the merry comedy of “The Birds,” done into the vulgar tongue; but since even Aristophanes made easy may prove caviare to some of the groundlings, the whole is to conclude with a fytte or two of mummery and buffoonery; so that sage and simple, rich wits and poor ones, and no wits at all, may have their fill of pleasure. Lastly, when darkness has quite set in, a fine transparency, allegorical of everything, is to be lit up, and fireworks are to turn night into day, and proclaim to Elsass far and near that the famous Horologe stands complete in all its wonder and beauty. And so “man proposes”.
The mainspring of all this busy stir, Professor Conrad Dasipodius, in his own heart of hearts, is hardly so enraptured as some consider it behoves him, at all these noisy honours. To begin with, a brand new suit of clothes will have to be struggled with on that hot auspicious morning; for hot most unmistakably it promises to be; and although the raiment’s magnificence is of the soberest sort, still it is new; and Dasipodius abhors new clothes, and all his mathematical genius has no more helped him to solve the problem of fitting himself comfortably into a yesterday’s made doublet, than it has revealed to him the way of fitting square into round. It is a minor evil, but it worries him in an ever-present sort of way, just as does the consciousness of his having to make a speech at that banquet; and the mathematician is not great at sparkling rhetorical impromptu. All this is the Nemesis of genius, impregnating its laurels with a bitter taste; and Dasipodius utters a passing word of impatience over it to Isaac Habrecht, accompanied by a sighing wish that the day were well over, and the world in its senses and its work-a-day dress again. But for once the great mathematician has miscalculated; and his perplexities find no sympathy from the downright unsentimental Switzer, who wholly and unreservedly sides with the populace. “They were never more in their senses than they are now,” roundly asseverates he, “when they’ve made up their minds to give honour to whom honour is due. They’ve got certain rotten-egg scores to wipe off, and they know it; and how they—ha! ha! ha!—how they did hoist that young jackanapes up aloft.”
“For pity’s sake!” laughed Dasipodius, “I hope they will not extend any such attentions to me. One must need sharp eyes for such giddy elevations. I can’t conceive how he managed to hold on.”
“He didn’t—long,” sardonically grinned Isaac. “He came down like a plummet.”
“Never mind, Isaac, let that be; Otto’s an honest lad enough, and he’s done good work lately.”
“Ay,” grunted Isaac; “I’m not going to deny that; and I’m right glad he’s to be one of us when we take our seats on that fine dais they’re hammering up—alongside of you, master.”
“You on my right hand, is it not so?” asked Dasipodius.
“Nay,” rejoined Isaac; “I on your left. Mistress Radegund on your right.”
“Ay, to be sure. How could I forget her? That comes of being the poor blind mole I am. Place of course to fair ladies; and our gifted townswoman will look a veritable rose among weeds like us, eh, Isaac?”
“It will be but a white one then,” answered he. “Mistress Radegund has grown sadly pale and thin lately.”
“Why, that is bad hearing,” said Dasipodius in a tone of real concern. “She has been working too hard perhaps?”
“I do not know,” shrugged Isaac. “I see only she is greatly changed these last few months; since about—well, I think you would scarcely recognise her, if——”
“If I could see her? I hope it would not be so bad as that. You are a croaker, Isaac, and see through grey spectacles.”
“May be so,” acquiesced Isaac, “but I’m not the only one who does, I take it. Doctor Wolkenberg, and he should know, sees it too, or I much mistake.”
“I think you must,” returned the mathematician. “He has breathed no hint of it to me.”
“Like enough,” sententiously responded Habrecht, glancing up from his work at the calm blind face before him. “Men—nor women neither, I suppose, don’t always say all they think. If they did, the world would be pretty soon upside down.”
“True, true,” said Dasipodius absently; “and now can you tell me,” he went on, “since you seem to be having the order of the day at your fingers’ ends, how the—the other ladies are to be placed?”
“The ladies,” echoed Isaac, looking up again from his brass filings, and fixing his eyes with an air of profound mystification on his chief. Had he heard aright? “Did you say—the ladies?”
“Why not?” challenged Dasipodius, turning away and bending over the sill of the lattice to fling it wider open.
When he faced round again, there was a deep flush on his pale cheek, possibly the result of his struggle with the window hook. “I simply asked you how the ladies, the Syndics’, and professors’, and Burgomasters’ wives and sisters and daughters are to be accommodated?”
“Oh bravely. Though it is said that there’s no end of hubbub and squabbling going on about it. They all want the best places, you see. Frau this vows she won’t sit second to Frau that; and Frau the other’s madly jealous of both. I expect the committee’s got a nice time of it between them all. Mistress Sabina von Steinbach,” went on Isaac, scraping away with increased vigour, “has a special seat assigned her, as chief Burgomaster’s daughter. And lovelier Queen of Beauty never graced knightly tournament. ’Tis a pity our Lily’s heart is not as gentle as her face.”
“What did you say, Isaac?” sternly demanded Dasipodius.
“I say,” replied the shifty Isaac, “that folks do say Mistress Sabina has declined to be present.”
“Likely as not,” sighed Dasipodius; “but on what ground?”
“A woman’s; that never yet grew rhyme nor reason. But I say it’s not true. She’ll be there. Trust her for it. Oh yes.”
“Do you think——” said Dasipodius brightening.
“I think never was raree show that didn’t bring young maids, ay, and old ones too, and matrons too, to say nothing of the widows, out of their shells, like snails after a shower. They’re all of one weft—women.”
“What a misogynist you’re grown,” said Dasipodius with a faint smile.
“Am I?” said Isaac, pushing his tools together, and pocketing the result of his labours. “Well, Strassburg seems to me a rare good training school for that craft.”