The home at Schweinfurth.
"An obscure town; situated at the extremity of Bavaria, and watered by an unknown river—such, then was to be the asylum of this young woman,"[100] writes her French biographer. But this is not a correct description of Schweinfurth as it was in the sixteenth century.
Far from being an obscure town, it was a free imperial city, celebrated and important as the greatest corn–market in all central Germany. Far from being situated at the extremity of Bavaria, it was in the midst of the most central district of German civilisation and progress, and the Maine was not in the sixteenth, or, unless on the banks of the Seine, is it in the nineteenth century, by any means an unknown river. Nor were "silence" and "isolation" the doom of Olympia in her home at Schweinfurth. Writing thence soon after her arrival to an Italian friend, she says: "Besides, there are several good men in this place, for whose sake we are glad to be here; and most gladly resign to you your flesh–pots of Egypt;[101]—istas ollas Egyptiacas."
It may be admitted, however, that the contrast between life at Ferrara and life at Schweinfurth was great, but not altogether to the disadvantage of the latter residence. Freedom of conscience, liberty of life, the interchange of thought and opinion without danger of the Inquisition, and the independence of a home of her own, were well worth the sacrifice of Italian sunshine, brilliant skies, and all the festal out–door life belonging to them. And doubtless Olympia spoke from her heart, when she declared, that she most willingly resigned all share in such "flesh–pots."
The martyrdom of Fannio had dissipated the last hope that Rome might be induced to adopt a more moderate policy towards those who dissented from her doctrine. Soon after this event, and after being settled in her new home, Olympia writes to Celio Curione at Bâle as follows:—
"You invite us to take Bâle on our way, in case we should be returning to Italy. Alas! it is but too probable that we shall never return! Indeed, we did not come into Germany with any hope of soon seeing again my unfortunate country. You must know well all the dangers of a residence in a land where the great enemy of our faith is all powerful. The Pope is now so furiously persecuting our brothers in the faith, and hunting them down so cruelly, that the sufferings of the reformers under the last Pontiff were nothing in comparison to the persecutions of the present one. He has filled all the cities of Italy with his spies, and turns a deaf ear to all applications for mercy. I would far rather seek a refuge at the most distant shore of the far west, than return to a country so afflicted. Should, however, anything cause us to quit my husband's native city, there is no place in the world I should prefer to Bâle. Living near you, I should fancy myself once more among my own people. I should at least be nearer Italy. I should be able to write more frequently to my mother and sisters, the thought of whom is never absent from my mind night or day. I could also receive news from them more readily."
In another letter of this period from Olympia to the same Italian friend,[102] to whom she abandoned the flesh–pots, we find a curious indication of the degree to which Caraffa's inquisitors were pushing their system of espionage, and minute watchfulness. Sending greetings to a female friend, she cautions her correspondent to whisper them in her ear, lest she or any other friends might get into trouble by the mere mention of her name. Nor was it generally prudent to write any such matter at all. "I send you these letters open on account of the extreme suspiciousness of these days;—propter hæc suspiciosissima tempora," says she in another place.
In a letter to Thomas of Lucca,[103] however, written about this time, which accompanied some money she desired to remit to her mother—"aliquot nummos aureos,"—she ventures to say of the Interim, that "nobody has as yet been compelled to observe its provisions, but, as before, all live according to their own conscience." So that all the apparatus of men–at–arms, and forcible changes of municipal governments, had effected but little; and the Emperor's attempt to play Pope had issued very much in failure. So difficult is it to bring persecution for conscience sake to bear upon a people, to all whose habits, manners, and instincts, it is repugnant. Charles might issue his decrees; and all those who heard them might receive them with profound obeisance. But still it was the old story, "Water would not quench the fire, fire would not burn the stick, stick would not beat the pig," and Charles could not get his Interim to work.
One of the first letters Olympia wrote from Schweinfurth was to Lavinia della Rovere.[104] "Your spiritual welfare," she writes to her, "is a subject of my constant prayers; for I fear, lest, after your usual fashion, you suffer your mind to be distracted, and its vigour used up by worldly cares. Despite the various occupations which keep me busy, I have composed the dialogue sent herewith for you, in the hope that the perusal of it may divert your mind from your sorrows.[105] I suppose that the war with France has separated you from your husband, and that you are in consequence suffering the torment of anxiety. I have therefore introduced into this dialogue some thoughts, which seemed to me suitable to your situation. I send you also some of the writings of Dr. Martin Luther, which have been useful to me, in the hope that you also may find comfort from them."
It must have been by a right trusty and devoted messenger that writings of Luther's could then be sent into Italy. The task of carrying them thither was very far from being either an easy or a safe one. It is satisfactory to observe, however, that Olympia's Calvinism was not so strict as to prevent her from finding profit in the study of the works of Luther: and still more so to note, that from the closeness of her intimacy with Curione, and the high respect she frequently testifies for his authority, she probably shared his opinions on a subject on which they were diametrically opposed to those of the Swiss theologians. In a work entitled "De Amplitudine beati regni Dei," Curione ventured to maintain that the number of the elect was greater than that of the reprobate, a heresy of the most painful kind to the Calvinistic mind. "It is a matter of great surprise," says Bayle,[106] "that he could have dared to advocate such a doctrine in the midst of the Swiss. For it is one extremely objectionable to orthodox members of the Reformed Church; and I do not think that any preacher could maintain it at the present day in Holland with impunity."
Leaving, then, to the pious Dutchmen all the satisfaction derivable from the "orthodox reformed" doctrine, we may reserve to ourselves that of believing, that a pure and noble womanly heart dared to be heretical and human at least thus far.
In another letter, written about this time from Schweinfurth, she noticeably recurs to Luther rather than to Calvin for the means of converting Romanists to Protestantism. It is addressed to Flacius Illyricus, the classical alias of Mathias Flach, who was one of the writers of the centuries of Magdeburg, and author of a vast number of controversial works. Olympia had never seen him; and writes to him merely on the strength of his literary reputation. Having long been anxious, she says, to find the means of providing for her beloved Italy some share of that religious instruction so abundantly possessed by Germany, she had at length determined on applying to him, whose works were well known to her, to undertake the task. "No more would be needed," she writes, "than to translate from German into Italian some one of the writings of Martin Luther, in which the errors of the Roman Church are refuted. I would not have shrunk from the labour myself, were it not, that after two years' residence in this country, I am still ignorant of the language. Perhaps, also, you might write some work in Italian on the subject; which, with your profound knowledge of those Scriptures which I have but dipped into, it would be easy to you to do. It would be the means of enlightening many pious men, now living in darkness. Should your zeal for the truth give you courage to undertake such a work, you may rest assured that it would be received on the other side of the Alps with infinite gratitude. But for the success of such a book, it is essential that it should be written in Italian; for only a few of my compatriots read the learned languages."
The dialogue mentioned in the letter to Lavinia della Rovere, cited a few pages back, is one of the few compositions by Olympia which have been preserved.[107] It is a conversation between Philotima and Theophila, in which the former, who is meant to be Lavinia della Rovere, complains of the sorrows caused her by the continual absence of her husband; "for there is no greater happiness on earth than to live with him we love. But this felicity is refused me; and my sorrow is bitter in proportion to the eagerness with which I had looked forward to happiness."
Thereupon Theophila, who is, of course, Olympia, lectures her friend at considerable length, referring her to "the holy women in the Bible, who sought not in marriage the realisation of their dreams of earthly happiness, but the glory of God;" with several pages more in the usual strain of those writers, whose ethical system is based on the assumption, that every natural affection of the heart is in its nature evil. It is curious to recognise in Olympia's nearly irreproachable sixteenth–century Latin, the common stock phrases, similitudes, and metaphors, still in vogue in the Zion meeting–houses and little Bethel chapels. The well–turned sentences read very hollow; and though it is impossible to doubt Olympia's perfect sincerity, or her desire to school her own feelings into the unnatural quietism which she recommends to her friend, yet we cannot forget the very different tone of real feeling and earnestness manifest in those letters written from Ferrara during her own husband's absence, when she talked of pining to death unless he returned within the month! How came the glory of God and the holy women of the Bible to be forgotten, when there was so much need of the consolation to be derived from the meditation of such themes?
Then there are letters indicating that the Scheinfurth dwelling was beginning to take the semblance of a home, with the means and appliances of a scholarly life about it. Thanks to the intervention of good George Hermann, the box of books has arrived from Italy. The dear old books from the little library at Ferrara, where Olympia had passed among them so many, many solitary hours of ambitious girlhood; where Curione had been invited to enjoy "the blessings of solitude and peaceful study;" and in whose safe shelter many a dangerous talk on grace, free–will, and absolute decrees, had been prolonged far into the night! The dear old books, each individual of them bringing with it the well–remembered physiognomy of a familiar friend! In these days of unlimited literary supply, when books are made to be used like oranges, hastily sucked and chucked away, it is difficult to appreciate fully the reverential love felt by a sixteenth–century scholar for the precious tomes produced with so much labour and difficulty, and acquired at the cost of so much self–denial.
All the books came safely to their far northern home, except Avicenna, which was no where to be found in the box! And Olympia writes to a German friend at Padua,[108] thanking him for forwarding them, and asking what was due for their carriage. She complains in the same letter, that for fourteen months she has received no tidings from Ferrara, all her letters to her relatives and other friends having remained unanswered. "You have no doubt heard the news of the deliverance and restoration of the Elector of Saxony—(John Frederick, deposed, and long kept prisoner by Charles V.),—it is the great event of the day."
Another indication that the home of Grünthler and Olympia had assumed a certain amount of comfortable stability, as also of the high estimation in which they were held by their friends, may be found in the presence of Theodora, the daughter of John Sinapi, as an inmate of it. The learned physician had begged his former pupil to receive her to be educated together with Olympia's young brother, Emilio. The occupation was one particularly well suited to her. Her whole life, and all her associations, had been scholastic; and if, in the general tenor of her compositions,—putting aside, of course, questions of religious doctrine,—any tone grates possibly a little upon the ear of one who has pictured her to himself as a young, lovely, and fascinating woman, it is an occasional slight echo of pedagogue–ism, which is just the least bit in the world suggestive of Minerva, with a birch in her hand, and a pair of spectacles on her nose. She was herself childless. In one of her letters to Curione, sending him some of her Greek translations from the Psalms, she begs him to "accept these verses, the only offspring to which I have given birth. And for the present I have no hope of any other."
In one of her letters to Sinapi, she reports favourably of Theodora's progress. "Your daughter," she writes, "every day learns something, and is thus, little by little, putting together her riches."
Look, reader; see, if by putting your eye to the magic glass, you cannot discern the little party framed there in that autumn of the year 1552, in a rather large, but very low, wainscoted room of one of those narrow high–peaked houses, with quaint gables, seeming to be almost endowed with physiognomical expression, that wink and nod at each other across the narrow German street. Doctissimus dominus Andreas is abroad among his patients, of whom he has only too many, much disease being generated, as usual, by the cramming of a number of ill–paid, ill–fed, ill–lodged, and ill–lived soldiers into the narrow quarters of a close–walled town. Olympia and her two pupils are sitting near the small first–floor window which projects over the street, that they may have all the little pale light there is, as the three heads bend together over the small, but well–cut, type of that octavo volume of the Iliad which Luke Anthony Giunta printed at Venice in the year 1537, and which poor Peregrino Morato, being an exile in that city at the time, bought with so much difficulty. The precious volume is not endangered by any easy–chair fashion of holding it in the hand, or letting it lie on the lap, but reposes stately on a little wooden desk in front of Olympia's chair, while Theodora and Emilio stand one on each side the youthful matron's knee. The large low chamber, extending over the narrow entrance passage, and two small rooms, one on each side on the ground–floor, occupies the entire extent of the house on the first floor, and has two narrow windows.
At the other of these sits, occupied in some household task, our maid Barbara,—she alone of all the other maids–of–all–work, mending hose, washing windows, or stewing saur–kraut, that day in wide Germany, still extant,—a good servant enough, if "ipsius mores" could be tolerated.[109] For Barbara's immortality, sad to say, rests mainly like that of some other historical personages, on this questionability of her moral character. Yes! there, clearly enough, sits Barbara at the other window, doing what was to be done under the eye of her mistress, who does not approve of her hand–maiden running out into streets filled with Spanish soldiers, and who finds, as she says at the end of the dialogue she sent to Lavinia della Rovere, that all goes wrong in a house as soon as the mistress's back is turned.
In the background of the large room are two heavy wooden closed bedsteads, looking more like huge chests of drawers than any other modern piece of furniture, in which repose Olympia and her husband. For this, the best and only good room in the house, is the lady's bower and bedchamber. The two little damp rooms below serve, the one as a kitchen, and the other as the family refectory. Above, in the huge roof, two little narrow–windowed chambers held the pallet beds of Theodora and Emilio; and above these, squeezed into the narrowing roof, another cell, with its eye–like window, peering out under the projecting eaves of the gable, afforded a dormitory for Barbara of the intolerable morals.
Something like this, I fancy, must have been that quiet home, and the way of life in that pine–wood furnished low–roofed chamber, where the daily lessons occupied the morning; and where, in the evening, when the good doctor had returned from his work, some one or two of those "viri boni," for whose sake a residence at Schweinfurth was agreeable,—learned Dominus Johannes Cremer, or learned Magister Andreas Roser, the schoolmaster,—fortis Gyas, fortisque Cloanthus,—grave men in stiff ruffles, large dark–coloured cloaks, and flat wide hats, which they retained as they sat in the somewhat bleak room,—would come in and hold sober discourse in Latin—(Olympia did not understand German)—on the last new controversial work of some shining light, on the probability of the provisions of the Interim being enforced, on the certainty of the doctrine of election, or the uncertainty of the movements of the Emperor, or other such topics; and finish the evening by singing together one of Olympia's Greek Psalms, set to music by her husband; wherein one may fancy that the pure Italian soprano of Olympia, the childish treble of the two children, and the deep voices of the musical German guests, as they joined in the sonorous Greek syllables, under the guidance of Grünthler's bâton, produced a performance altogether sui generis. And all is well, if only that slippery ancilla, Barbara, had not taken the opportunity of running out into the street, and left perchance the door on the latch.
A pale life, vulgar cares, and monotonous duties for our Court–muse, so long accustomed to the flattering homage of a brilliant courtier circle in the splendid Ferrara saloons, glittering with gilding, and glowing with the colours of Dosso Dossi! The contrast must have presented itself sometimes to Olympia's mind; but the recollection was more calculated to produce a contented smile than a sigh of regret. It is a noticeable development of a richly endowed moral nature,—this change of one, who seemed so wholly and perfectly made and fitted for the element in which she then moved, into a being at least as thoroughly adapted to a life so violently contrasted to it in all ways.
Sometimes the perfect adaptation to her new position, as the learned wife of a distinguished professor, not without authority in her circle, shows itself amusingly in a little assumption of the birched Minerva attitude, to which, it has been hinted, she had a slight leaning. As when we find her writing to a divine,[110] whose name is discreetly left in blank, in this strain:
"As I have good information that your backslidings are frequent, I have thought it right to admonish you that you are acting in a manner at variance with the high dignity of your office, and disgraceful to your gray hairs, in giving way to your appetite as grossly as any Epicurus could do!" The gray–haired preacher, it would seem, was addicted to excessive potations; and Olympia's letter is long and eloquent enough on the subject to have mended his habits, if it was in the power of lecturing to do so.
Grünthler and his wife had hardly got settled at Schweinfurth before a very eligible appointment to a Professor's chair at Lintz was offered to him, through George Hermann. The position seemed to be all that could be desired, if only a favourably reply were returned to one question, which Olympia immediately writes[111] back to their kind friend and patron to ask. "Is anti–Christ raging at Lintz? Shall we be permitted, that is to say, to hold and to profess openly our own faith? Because, having been enlightened sufficiently to see and give testimony to the truth, our eternal happiness would be the price of any turning back from the plough."
The answer on this point was unfavourable. All thoughts, therefore, of the Lintz professorship were abandoned: and Grünthler and his wife were contented to remain in their humble home in the free city of Schweinfurth.
But the little family circle there was in the beginning of 1553, broken by the recall of Theodora to the death–bed of her mother. The premature death of Francesca Bucyronia, who had been Olympia's friend at the court of Ferrara, and whose destiny in life had been so singularly the counterpart of her own, was almost as deeply felt in the home at Schweinfurth as in her own at Würzburg. There is a letter from Sinapi to Calvin,[112] in which he tells him of his loss.
"I had been absent," he writes, "from Würzburg; and my return, and that of Theodora, our beloved daughter (whom we had confided to the care of a matron as pious as she is erudite, Olympia Morata, whose name is no doubt known to you), seemed to restore her" (his wife) "in some degree. But soon all hope was gone * * * Oh! what a faithful and tender friend I have lost in my Francesca. She had joyfully followed me into Germany; and had quickly familiarised herself with the language and manners of this country. She preferred the simple rusticity of my countrymen, to the insincerity and calumny from which she had suffered during the latter part of our residence at Ferrara."
This intimation that Francesca also had suffered from the displeasure of the Court of Ferrara, at the same time that Olympia had fallen into disgrace, would seem to add probability to the supposition, that the same cause, their common Protestantism, was the motive of the Court hostility in either case.
Olympia's French biographer[113] thinks that this period of her life at Schweinfurth, was "one of sacrifice," and that "isolation and obscurity were now her lot." It does not seem to me that this Schweinfurth home is thus fairly described, or that Olympia so regarded it. I think that it included a fair proportion of the elements of happiness, and that she was perfectly capable of appreciating those elements.
If only the simple home, with its quiet round of congenial duties and congenial pleasures could have been preserved to the physician and his wife, their story might have ended more in the idyllic than the tragic tone. From lyric girlhood to idyllic matronhood the progress is normal, and need excite no pity for its "isolation and obscurity." But the sequel of the tale, which remains to be told, renders it indeed a tragedy.
The makers of history.—The flight from Schweinfurth.
Happy times, and prosperous people, it has been said, afford but small materials for history. But great events, which were to shape the history of Europe for centuries to come, were convulsing Germany in those middle years of the sixteenth century. And the amount of misery suffered by the hod–men and day–labourers in this history–building business, was in proportion to the greatness of the work in hand. That "great man" Charles V. was a notable provider of "fine subjects" for history. Poor, gouty, narrow–minded specimen of humanity as he was, rising up early, and late taking rest, at his weary kingcraft and history–making, with a very unsound mind in a scarcely sounder body; with "vast views," analogous to those of the sailor, who having expended the first of his fairy–granted wishes on "as much rum as ever he could drink," could only utilise the third of them by asking for "a little more rum;" and with a "large intelligence," equal to the most extended application of the theory of that wise monkey who drew the chestnuts from the fire at the cost of other paws than his own: this "great figure in history" was a scourge to mankind, useful after the fashion of many other such scourges, to admonish men of the folly, meanness, and absurdity of permitting earth to be harassed by such.
During the winter of 1552, this Charles, suffering much from gout, and greatly troubled in mind about the proceedings of the great Church Council, so necessary for "healing the wounds of Christendom,"—for coupling up the unruly cattle of the great European team, that is to say, so that he, Charles, might have a somewhat less desperately difficult job of it, in driving them,—had taken up his quarters at Innspruck. All paternal care having been well taken for the good government of his German subjects, the Interim duly published, refractory preachers chained up, and good faithful Maurice of Saxony having brought the rebellious Magdeburgers to reason, the mighty Imperial intellect flattered itself that all was safe behind in Germany, and gave itself up to watching the goings on of the bishops down the valley below there at Trent, and endeavouring to persuade them to give such assurance of personal safety to the Protestant divines, as might induce them to trust themselves on the southern side of the Alps. For the smell of the blood of John Huss was strong on the threshold of the council chamber, and the Protestant representatives, driven up again and again to the doorway, could not be got to pass it.
But Germany was not in a loyal mood towards its Imperial master. The princes were discontented at arbitrary infringements of the powers and privileges of the Diet. They were angry at a recent attempt, inspired by the "vast views," to impose upon them as successor to the Imperial dignity that insolent, odious Philip II., who had come from Spain to be presented to the Electors, and, having thoroughly disgusted every one of them, had returned to that more congenial country. And they were revolted by the Imperial cruelty, faithlessness, and tyranny in the detention of the Landgrave of Hesse in prison; and by the general prospect held out by the Imperial wisdom, that Germany would ere long be as well and orderly governed a country as Spain. Then the burghers were of course discontented enough. It is the nature of such people to be so, as paternal rulers are too well aware.
In this state of things, Maurice of Saxony, whom the Emperor had made Elector, when he deposed the unfortunate John Frederick, began to show his real colour. That good faithful Maurice, of whose attached fidelity to his fortunes, Charles in his Imperial sagacity, and the profound political insight of the Imperial ministers had not the slightest doubt,—crafty, able, Maurice thought that the time was now come for throwing off a mask long carefully worn, and striking a blow for himself and for Germany, that should effectually clip the "vast views" and dangerous talons of the Imperial eagle.
So he suddenly drew together and put in motion the forces long prepared, and kept afoot on various skilfully devised pretexts, rendered specious by an abundance of "able" falsehoods, and made a dash at the wholly unprepared Imperial eagle at Innspruck, which all but caught him in his nest.
Charles had to escape as best he might across the snows in dreadful weather, with gnashing of teeth, gout in his legs, and et tu Brute! in his heart, to remote Villach among the Alps; where, with a foretaste of the later St. Just mood of thought on life and king–craft, he had to wait in very un–Imperial sort, till some accommodation could be come to with his numerous enemies.
This was effected on the 2nd of August 1552, at Passau, by a treaty of peace, which recognised, and in some degree secured the Germanic liberties, destroyed the life's labour of that mighty Imperial intelligence, and thenceforth limited very considerably the horizon of those Imperial vast views.
But, "quicquid delirant reges, plectuntur Achivi." For monarch's madness, subjects pay the smart. The law is inexorable. Despite treaties of peace, with whatsoever oaths, parchments, and seals of the Empire, the amount of misery due by normal action of cause and effect for the "vast views," which Charles had passed his life in endeavouring to carry out, had to be paid. And that particular little fraction of suffering, with which the present story is concerned, was assessed and levied in manner following.
Among the various allies whom able Maurice of Saxony had induced to join him against the Emperor, was one Albert of Brandenburg, who, having been Grand Master of the Teutonic Order of Knights, then the rulers of a considerable portion of the country now called Prussia, was so deeply moved by the doctrines of Luther, that for conscience sake he was obliged to play false to his brother knights, and seize on their territory as an independent state for himself. Now this Albert, being at the head of a powerful force of mercenary soldiers, veterans ready for anything,—except honest callings and peaceful labour,—and being as M. Bonnet writes,[114] "one of those brilliant types of the medieval soldier of fortune, brave, adroit, indefatigable, given to plunder, cruel, faithless, and lawless," was by no means willing, when his chief Maurice made peace at Passau, to allow all his brilliance to be rusted for want of action. Peace to him was like a hard frost to a fox–hunter. Besides his Protestant feelings were very strongly stimulated by the contemplation of the rich and very defenceless territories of those malignant Papists, the Bishops of Bamberg and Würzburg.
So he refused to join in, or be bound by the treaty of Passau, and determined to carry on the war on his own account. Which he did after so brilliantly Ishmaelitish a fashion, that a cry of mad dog was raised, and he was put to the ban of the Empire. Being thus driven from harrying the countries of the two prince–bishops, and obliged to look round for some shelter from his pursuers, he dashed at neighbouring Schweinfurth, seized it as a stronghold for himself and his troops; and was there besieged by the bishops, in conjunction with the Nürembergers and the Duke of Brunswick.
Which interrupted very disagreeably the morning Homer readings and the evening Greek psalm–singing in the quiet little home we were just now peeping into.
Deliration of princes indeed! Better, if fighting must needs be, to have a quarrel of your own to fight for, like the bold Magdeburgers, with Interim at their gates! But these hapless Schweinfurth citizens had their city turned to the uses of a badger–baiting tub for neither fault, quarrel, nor interest of their own. Let the upshot of the struggle be as it might, they had only ruin and destruction to fear from it. And this siege lasted for fourteen months! "For fourteen whole months did we live in the greatest possible straits, while the city was besieged;" writes Olympia to her sister. "If I were to attempt to recount to you all we went through, I should send you, not a letter, but a large volume. By day and by night we were in the midst of the missiles of the besiegers." The lawlessness of the troops within the town was a dreadful addition to their calamities. The homes of the citizens were constantly liable to predatory visits from bands of soldiers, whose "bravery, adroitness, cruelty, thievishness, and faithlessness" were quite as "brilliant" as their master's.
In the ordinary and fitting course of things, pestilence soon made its appearance in a city thus circumstanced; and, together, with an excessive scarcity of food, completed the misery of its inhabitants. It now became Grünthler's duty to be found in the van of the struggle, and in the hottest of the danger. And as usual in the annals of a profession, which has, more rarely, probably, than has been the case in any other department of human effort, been found wanting in the high estimate and full discharge of its duties in times of danger and difficulty, the physician was early and late at his post, struggling hand to hand with his enemy. But the fight had to be carried on under great disadvantages. All the stock of medicines in the town was exhausted. And drugs formed a larger portion of the means and appliances at the command of the skilled physician in those days, than is now the case. The sickness spread with fearful rapidity. "By contagion among the soldiers," writes Olympia,[115] "who are excessively crowded in the city, so malignant a form of disease has attacked almost the entire population, that nearly one half of the people have perished, terror and mental distress contributing no small part to the result."
Before long Grünthler was struck down in the midst of his labours. Help there was none. Every man was too much engrossed by his own desperate fight with the misery around him. Medicine there was none, food but little. And Olympia watched alone and helpless by the bedside of her husband; sustained only by the belief that her fervent and unceasing prayers might move Heaven to that miraculous interference with the unseen working of the material laws, which even then mankind had ceased to expect in cases where their operation is seen and comprehended. Even Olympia, whose love for her husband poured itself forth in such earnest supplications, that the fever in his blood might not produce the effect upon his organism, which in other men it did produce,—Olympia herself would not have prayed, that water closing over his head should fail to drown him.
Not the less did her belief sustain her in those long hours of dreadful desolation and sickening dread. She was comforted;—though at the cost of a lower ideal of the nature of the Creator than she would have attained had such comfort been impossible to her; and, therefore, at the cost of a proportionate inferiority in her own moral nature.
But the physician's malady was not "unto death." He recovered. As M. Bonnet writes;[116] "It required a miracle to save Grünthler.... Olympia's prayers and those of the Church of Schweinfurth were heard; and Grünthler was saved!"
Amid the horrors of this time Olympia found means to send out of the city a letter[117] to Lavinia della Rovere.
"What a good fortune is it," she writes, "in our misery to have found an opportunity of telling you of our sorrows. Weep for us, my friend; hut at the same time be thankful for our mercies. We are besieged in this town, and shut in without escape, between two great armies. But God has so kept us hitherto, that we have escaped from what seemed certain death. He has fed us, and continues to feed us, in a time of extreme scarcity. My husband, prostrated by disease, was on the brink of the grave. But He hath deigned to recall him to life in mercy to me, who could not have supported so heavy a blow.... In all these afflictions we have had but one consolation, prayer and meditation on the Holy Scriptures. Not once have I turned to look back with regret on the riches of Egypt. And I have felt that to meet death here, is preferable to the enjoyment of all the pleasures of the world elsewhere." "Egypt," and "elsewhere" of course mean Ferrara, with the necessity of concealing her religious faith. She concludes this letter, written amid so great misery, with a burst of affection, which shows how deeply the friendship of her early years had rooted itself in her heart, and how profoundly she had felt the kindness shown to her in her old time of distress.
"Once more, farewell! my own sweetest Lavinia, who livest ever in my heart's core,—quæ mihi semper hæres in medullis,—and whom I can never forget while life remains,—dum spiritus hos reget artus. Adieu! Adieu! and may you live in happiness!"
As the besieging forces, irritated at the length of time the Margrave had succeeded in holding the town against them, redoubled their efforts, the condition of those within the city became continually worse and worse. The houses no longer afforded the inhabitants shelter from the fire of the enemy. "During the whole of that period," writes Olympia to Curione,[118] of the latter part of the siege, "we were obliged to lie concealed in a cellar."
At length, Albert's means of resistance were exhausted; and that "brilliant" specimen of chivalry evacuated the town at the head of his soldiery, with the intention of cutting his way through the besieging forces. Great was the joy in Schweinfurth at his departure; but it was of very short duration. For while one portion of the allied troops pursued the flying Margrave, the forces of Nüremberg, and of the two Bishops, entered the town the next day, determined to treat it as a place taken by assault. They were all good Catholics, and the Schweinfurth people were almost all Protestants, unarmed, worn out by the long miseries of the siege, and much more than decimated by the pestilence.
It was a good opportunity for indulging in every evil passion, under the cloak of religious zeal. And Schweinfurth suffered all the horrors of a sack, inflicted in cold blood by fellow–countrymen, the citizens of neighbouring towns, divided from their victims only by some speculative differences of creed!
Olympia has recorded some of the incidents of that dreadful day in the letter to her sister, that has been already quoted. The soldiers, rushing into the town in complete disorder, set fire to the houses in many places. "In that moment of trepidation and panic terror," she writes, "my husband and I were rushing to the church as the safest asylum, when a soldier, altogether unknown to us, addressed us, and warned us to fly from the city if we would not be buried beneath its ruins. Had we remained in the church, we should have been suffocated by the smoke, as many were. We followed the man's advice, and made for the gate accordingly." But before they could reach it, the letter goes on to say, they fell into the hands of a party of soldiers, who stripped them of every thing, and took Grünthler prisoner. Escaping from their hands, he was a second time seized before they could reach the gate.[119] "Then, I can tell you, I knew what agony of mind is, if ever I knew it; then I prayed with ardour, if ever I did so. In my sore distress I cried aloud, 'Help me! Help me, Oh Lord, for Christ his sake!' nor did I cease my cry until He helped me, and set my husband free. I would that you could have seen in what a condition I was, covered with fluttering rags, for my clothes had been torn from off my back. In my flight I lost both shoes and stockings, and had to run barefoot over rough stones and rocks, so that in truth I know not how I won through. Again and again I said, 'Here I must fall and die, for I can endure no more.' Then I cried to God, 'Lord, if thou wilt, that I live, command thy angels that they carry me, for carry myself I cannot!'"
At length they reached the gate, and escaped from the horrors of the town. "And having my husband with me," says the letter to her sister, "I minded not the loss of all else, though I had only my shift—subucula—left to cover me."
In that plight, the fugitives had to travel ten miles that dreadful night, till they reached the village of Hammelburg. Olympia had been suffering the whole time from tertian fever, and was absolutely unable to proceed further. "Among the poorest of the poor," she writes to Curione, "I might have been taken for the queen of the beggars." At Hammelburg they met with scant hospitality. The people were afraid of giving offence to their prince–bishop by harbouring fugitives from Protestant Schweinfurth. Nevertheless, in the absolute impossibility of dragging herself out of the town, Olympia and her companions were allowed to remain there three days. On the fourth, though still very ill, and hardly able to walk with the support of her husband, the miserable wanderers were obliged again to take the road. But they were still in an enemy's country, and surrounded by danger. At the next town they reached, they were arrested and thrown into prison for several days, while the authorities of the place applied to their superiors for directions what was to be done with them. A general order had been given to put to death all fugitives from Schweinfurth; and these days were spent accordingly, as Olympia says in the letter already quoted, in an agony of hope and fear. They were at length released, and met with assistance of some charitable individuals, especially of one who, without allowing them to know his name, gave them fifteen golden crowns,[120] which enabled them to reach the residence of the Count de Reineck on the Saal. There they were kindly received, and assisted to continue their journey to Erbach, in the Odenwald.
The Counts of this picturesque little mountain town were at that time three brothers, who lived together in the castle, which may yet be seen there; and the eldest of whom had married the sister of the Count Palatine, Frederick II., the principal builder of the magnificent pile, still the boast and ornament of Heidelberg. They were zealous Protestants, who had more than once risked life and fortune in the cause, and enjoyed a very high reputation for their piety among their co–religionists, and even among their opponents, for their virtues and uprightness.
By these excellent men, and by the Countess, the wanderers were received with open arms, and comforted in every way that their miserable condition required. Olympia was not unknown to them by reputation; and the tale of sorrows she had now to tell, was not needed to make her a welcome guest at Erbach. She reached the hospitable roof utterly prostrated and broken down, almost literally naked, and having lost all that she and her husband possessed in the world. Worst and most irreparable loss of all, her books, those much–loved books, which had been the companions of her life, and with them a great quantity of her manuscripts, had perished in the burning of Schweinfurth.
It needed all the motherly care and kindness of the good Countess of Erbach, who insisted on ministering to her as she lay on a bed of sickness for several days, with her own hands, to restore her to some degree of convalescence.[121] Indeed, the shock which her system had received from the sufferings and fatigue of that awful night during the escape from the city, and the ten miles of weary wayfaring which followed it, was ultimately, though not immediately, fatal to her. She never recovered from the effects of it, though the repose and kind cares of which she was the object in the castle of Erbach, apparently restored her to some degree of health for the present.
Olympia and her husband and little brother seem to have remained some considerable time with these kind and noble hosts. She had an opportunity of observing the ordinary habits of their daily life, and has left us an interesting little sketch of the patriarchal manners prevailing in the pious household of a German country nobleman of that day.[122]
"The Count," she writes, "maintains sundry preachers in the town, and is always the first to be present at their sermons. Every day before breakfast, he gathers around him the members of his family and his servants, and reads to them a portion of one of St. Paul's Epistles. Then he kneels in prayer, together with his whole household. His next care is to visit his subjects, one by one, in their homes, when he talks familiarly with them and exhorts them to piety. For he says, that he is responsible before God for their souls. Would that all princes and lords resembled him!"
Of the Countess she writes to her sister, that "she is a woman religious before all else. Her conversation is ever of God and of the life hereafter, of which she speaks with the greatest enthusiasm and desire."
Grünthler's friends were meanwhile endeavouring to find some independent position for him. There is a letter from one Hubert of Heidelberg to him, among the collection of Olympia's letters,[123] in which he tells him, that all the councillors of the Palatine's court being then at Worms, "seeking means to avert, if possible, the calamities that menace Germany," he has no immediate hope of being able to obtain for him a chair in the University of Heidelberg. "But be assured," he continues, "that my house is open to you and to your family. Come to me without hesitation; and be sure that better days are in store for you;—'Grata superveniet, quæ non sperabitur, hora.'"
But very soon after receiving this kind, though unsatisfactory letter, Grünthler learned from the Count of Erbach, that he had obtained for him the Professorship of Medicine at Heidelberg from his brother–in–law the Elector. Thus, once more there was an assured life and sphere of duty before them; and taking leave of their benefactors and the quiet mountain home which had refitted them after the storm, they started pilgrim–wise across the Odenwald, with full hearts and renewed hopes towards their new home.