Matthew Phipps Shiel

“ He reeled like a dying man from the chamber.
Deianira, vaguely conscious of disturbance, slowly opened her eyes, and was alone.
But in little time Wilhelm of Horneck came dashing into the room, youth in every third projected leg, and before her fell prone to his old knees, with outstretched clasped hands, a world of prayer in his eyes.
‘O Gräfin—save the Count—you only can—for the love of God! Gräfin! There may be yet time—he thinks to make a sally—stark mad, raving! And the men, seeing certain death, refuse to follow him. Some devil, some furious devil, rides him. Save him! ”

“ Conduct as art? Marathon lovely as the Parthenon? The Crusades as Aphrodite? Caspar as Raphael? Was it so, then? And if not, how came this sight so to lift her bosom with the beauty-sense—with love perhaps? It was more than a revelation—it was a regenesis, the birth of a little child, as natural, as definite, as the conversion of Lydia. Not since their meeting-day to this hour had Caspar appealed unconquerably to the predominant in her—her abandonment to beauty. ”

“ Roland of Rolandspitze, biding his time, collecting his forces, had not forgotten his Madonna.
He was a species of Swabian Eppelein von Gailingen, a Sud-deutscher Wild Boar of Ardennes.
On the third day Caspar arrived—almost by stealth—with his little band of men-at-arms. He had heard tidings of trouble on the way. His blood was up.
Flushed with enthusiasms, high passions, he came to where the wool stood bundled before heron the distaff. ‘Ah . . . ah . . . ah!’ was all he could say, as he did, and did again, perfervid violence to her lips; she enduring with pensive patience. ”

“ The grandeur of the alp must have been novel after sylvan Colonus, and even Caspar’s eye was not callous: but Deianira saw here nothing but rudeness. Only, let once a lonely Sennhaus appear, the overhanging roof of thatch weighted with boulders, the variegated Sennerinn herself in thick-waisted shin-frock at the door, and instantly the Greek interest would flutter up at the hint of fitness, the making hand of man, and the artist reined to look with sidling head. ”

“ Albrecht sometimes flung from a zither an old psalm-air or dainty-tripping Minne-lied to the drugged breezes and wavelets of the See. Not yet had Jacob Stainer gone through the forest with little tapping steel-hammer, and found that ever the oldest tree had in it the mellowest Memnon-music: Mittenwald and the violins were therefore future; but every peasant of Bavaria, even then, was a maker and twanger of the zithers whose universal twitter filled the land with sounds.
‘Look!’ cried Deianira, ‘see—see how the presence of a man’s hand reforms the callous landscape! ”

“ But the restes of Caspar’s band, some twenty men, closed round him. They effected, still fighting, a slow retreat, till the ordnance of the bastions covered them. They reached in safety the castle-gate.
Deianira with haughty, crimson face—proud of him—of herself, that she was his, he hers—had descended the steps of the turret. As she passed along the corridor, she came to the shrine of the Dürer-head; stopped, thinking; then took from her bosom a key, unlocked the door, and entered. For a long time she stood, searching the painter’s face; his innocent, azure eyes. ”

“ The enterprise was as hardy as could be. Caspar only realised the steepness of the danger he had dared when he stood once more within his own good castle-gate. It was then breaking day. Helmeted still, visor down, glistening in wetted armour-plates, he winged his feet with the good news towards the bed-chamber of Deianira. As often, she had passed a sleepless night; her bed was unruffled. Thence with eager outlook he hurried to the apartment where the lychnoi, in a sleepy twilight inviolate as yet of the crude day, laved the empty couch of the Greek. ”

“ One stops at drowsy Füssen on the torrent Lech, and mounting an Einspanner, penetrates five miles into the richly-forested mountains. The new castle, like the one which preceded it, occupies the loneliness of a sharply-defined ridge-summit, and looks down upon the grey old lazy race of swans which haunts the Schwansee below, and upon the vague blue dream of yet three lakes visible from the height; but the oldest castle of all was lower down, near the plain, on the borders almost of the See. ”

“ Here and there, on the heights round Schwangau, cones of flame, smoke-plumed, burned upward to the deepening sky.
‘Sonnenwandfeuer,’ said Albrecht, ‘lit by the bauers. It is the Eve of St. John.’ ‘St. John!—why, it is the celebration of a solar myth—this, you know, is the summer solstice—the myth which underlies the story of Oedipus.’
‘Hardly, I think. We light the fires because St. John—’
‘And yet—they lack—arrangement. A supreme artist might so place them in reference to each other as actually to lift the scene into ideality. ”

“ And she had only seen it once, crossing the Alp to Schwangau, years before. Albrecht, without a word, self-abased, looked at it, she smiling at his blank face. What spurred his wonderment was the lifefulness—he well knew the scene—and then, far above all, the unlikeness to any life anywhere. Never Bavarian peasant, or peasant or man in the world, owned such meaning traits, look so strange and high. ”

“ Said old Wilhelm of the Horneck, garrulous as a rattle, inveterate tri-ped, having shot out an oaken limb ever since the reign of Caspar’s father: ‘But, Gräfin, you must e’en know that these are not the days that have been. Hey for the fair, gallant times when Wilhelm was tall as the rest; and land and laws were supple to the will of the grand reckless old Adels; and a free imperial knight might e’en marry a scullion, and forthwith have her ‘nobled without ado. But Wilhelm is old now, Gräfin, and things do flow to change. ”

“ The Burgh-wache, though insufficient to make even the proper show of strength, had no lack of fire, through hope of speedy help, and confidence in Caspar’s generalship. He was in every place, a strong, ubiquitous spirit of disposition, inspiration. Two parallel bastioned curtains defended the front and sides of the donjon; before each of these a fosse and drawbridge; and before the outermost drawbridge an out-work barbican. Upon this last the chief besieging party, under Roland himself and his brother Fritz, concentred their efforts with scaling-ladders, petards and grenadoes, potent enginery ”

“ Even he could see it, and went away wondering at her inertness, the death of her enthusiasm. But action, action was the word—no dallying over daubs! ‘Come, man, news, news!’ he cried to Wilhelm, towing the three-goer into a small room. Wilhelm, who was directness itself where the talk touched upon the old trade of war, was minute on the defences of the castle, ammunition, provisions, his own share in everything, the ravages of the Wolf. ”

“ Deianira rose, and adjusted them on the floor: Stephen stoned; Paul in prison at Philippi; the light at noon-day ‘above the brightness of the sun.’ For a minute, over each, the impeccable energy of her scrutiny worked intensely; then, without fail, she knew the truth of form, composition, drapery, effect. Coming to him, she rewarded him with a cold kiss. ”

“ She, surprised, rose. Outside they met men rushing hither and thither with wild looks. One said:
‘They are gone—just passed the inner Fallbrücke. God help them!’
The desire to see overcame her, and, mounting the steps of a turret, she took a seat on a planchette within the boldly-projecting machicolation near the battlements, looking through an aperture. Here she was alone, the donjon being as yet safe from shot. The small band—multifariously armed, hellebardiers, brigandined archers, carabiniers, Caspar at their head—were then issuing from the outer bridge. ”

“ No law of man could make such union good.’
‘Pah! do you not know that the dauber is son to a goldsmith of Ungarn!’
‘He is a son of the gods.’
‘There is but one God, Deianira, and’—crossing with low head—‘Jesu Christ whom He hath sent.’
Her eyes smiled and closed. ‘This hunting after beauty, beauty,’ he continued, calming, ‘is not good, Liebling. Best make sure that God and his blessed saints look not upon it as sinful with holy eye askance. What then is this divine ‘beauty’ that you speak so of? By’r Lady, I see it in none of these gimcracks of yours! ”

“ The end would have been different, had Dürer, like Deianira, been all artist; but the Nürnberg painter was first of all saint, and artist after.
But there was evil news at the Schloss of Schwangau in those very days. The old nose of Wilhelm perked high, sniffing danger on the wind. Bauers and yeomen from round Füssen and Eschach, leaving their farms, came crying to the Burg-vogt for protection. Sathan himself was loose. At Hopfen a whole street had burned, the church of St. Magnus been pillaged. Two villages flamed together. ”

“ But, already, in the corridor, he stopped. Such was the depth and power of his love for her. There was something fatherly in it—she so much younger than he! And this time, at least, she had wished to embrace him—this time she did not dream. ”

“ A sudden noon-day sun could not have dazzled and winded him more.
Some little time before this, while on his Italian trip he had written to a friend: ‘In Italy I am a gentleman; in Germany a parasite.’ Add to this that the genius was, by nature, shyer than a kid. ”