Alois

“ Months passed, the youth rode every day to the little house, and presently made so bold as to ask Fidella to marry him on the morrow’s morn. Little suspecting that Alois was aught but a simple squire of the court, the maiden answered with a nod, and promised to be ready to ride with him to the village on the hilltop, and there be wedded by the Master Villager. ”

“ The session over, the judge called Alois aside, and inquired how he had come to find so accurate an answer; upon which Alois, who burnt to proclaim the merit of his child, at once referred the honour to Katharina. [245]
“That is it, is it?” replied the judge. “I have often seen the girl at church, and am not surprised that so comely a form is inhabited by so clever a mind. Now, go home, and tell your daughter that if she finds out the way to come to me without any clothes on, and yet not naked; not by day, and yet not by night ”

“ We reached Botzen next morning in time for [202] the six o'clock mass; went to high mass again at nine; and strolled among the booths between the services. Here Alois, us usual, was very free with his money, buying ribbons and trinkets for Katrine, and behaving in every way as if he, and not Ulrich, were her acknowledged lover. At eleven, having met some of our St. Ulrich neighbours, we made a party and dined all together at a Gasthaus in the Silbergasse; and after dinner the young men proposed to take us to see an exhibition of rope-dancers and tumblers. ”

“ He thrust it in his shirt, and stroked Patrasche and drew him onward. The dog looked up wistfully in his face.
Nello made straight for the mill-house, and went to the house door and struck on its panels. The miller’s wife opened it weeping, with little Alois clinging close to her skirts. “Is it thee, thou poor lad?” she said kindly, through her tears. “Get thee gone ere the Baas see thee. We are in sore trouble to-night. He is out seeking for a power of money that he has let fall riding homeward, and in this snow he never will find it; and God knows it will go nigh to ruin us. ”

“ Meanwhile, before the fanfare is concluded, there is heard from the left a powerful chorus of male voices:
"When the moon sheddeth its glorious light—"
Curtain
↑ Copyright 1920 by the Poet Lore Company, all rights reserved. ↑ Alois Jirásek (born in 1851) is the most popular writer of recent years in Bohemia. ”

“ Therefore it often happened that even older men who already held some small office, came back to the philosophical studies; thus, beside the youths sat mature men, listening to the lectures of the Piarist fathers.
How lively was it, then, on the Jewish Hill, which formerly, in the Brethren’s time, was called Olivet! In the nearby renaissance castle lived his lordship with a numerous retinue of servants, and in the Piarist college lived many brethern of the order and regular clerics ”

“ Miss Elis looked with joy on the long columns of philosophers, who proudly marched behind the new flag, and Lenka’s face blushed when a tall officer looked up to her and greeted her with a smile. How soldierly he carried himself and how becoming his uniform was. ***
The stir of public life did not abate but rather increased each day. From Prague, the heart of Bohemia, activity radiated to all parts of the kingdom. Sudden, unexpected changes took place almost overnight, events continually new, domestic and foreign, kept all classes of people in tension and excitement. ”

“ Of course it would have been wiser to begin with a good work by a famous man, whose name was sufficiently popular in Vienna. I did visit Herr Doctor Haydn, but received the reply that he could not compose any more and would only review old works thenceforth.
Immediately at the commencement a stock of stones was needed. As we could foresee that we should need some thousands of stones in the course of time, Herr von Hartl decided to make a trip with me, by way of Munich and Augsburg, to the quarries of Solenhofen that we might inform ourselves on the spot about the best way to get stones. ”

“ There was not the least breath of wind to bring cooler air to the heated soil upon which we lay. Our lungs struggled to gulp down as much air as possible, and we could not bear to turn our eyes upon the glowing atmosphere. ”

“ Hanička.—What burden?
Grandmother.—They assigned this duty to us: if the nobility of this estate finds it a pleasure or takes a notion to pass here, from the mill to the old forest beyond the water, to the little castle near the lake, be it during a hunt or any other time, be it at high noon or at midnight itself, every time we from the mill must light the way for them. ”

“ That is why the light cheers one, particularly when one wanders through the wide fields in the autumn evenings, and when from the lantern on the pole a little light pierces the darkness as a wagon rattles along the deserted street.
Hanička.—And it is still gayer in winter when everything is covered with snow in the evening, when the young girls run to the spinning and light the way with lanterns. ”

“ Along the shore rises a mountain with a rocky ridge which projects to a dizzy height and from which mighty boulders have been torn away. At the foot of the mountain are sharp rocks close together in the sea, and behind them yawn caves eaten away by the waves. ”

“ Hanička.—Why? What would that lantern—?
Grandmother.—Merely a piece of glass and wood, and yet it is a heavy burden on our old mill. In the village and everywhere, and throughout the domain, they sigh in servitude, and a terrible nightmare—serfdom—smothers every one. Only our mill was and has been free since any one can remember. But during the time of Libor’s grandfather, no one knows how, but certainly through injustice, the nobility eventually did rob him of this freedom. ”

“ Magistrate (Sharply) .—I have heard nothing of the sort. (To the Courtier.) They are dangerous because they strengthen their stubborness and disobedience . . . There, under that linden, the dissatisfied have always had their gatherings. And to this day they gather there secretly and conspire against the officials and the nobility. The mill here has always been the shelter of every one, whether he be heretic or rebel; and when they were unable to conceal him here, he always managed to disappear yonder by the linden, without a sign of footprints. ”

“ We were anxious to get away from the oasis into the open desert, but our camels had not arrived. As we were at luncheon, however, we heard the growling noise of someone forcing the camels to kneel down. The sweetest music could not have been so gratifying to our ears. We immediately brought out our baggage and prepared for the journey to the camp of Chief ʻAwde abu Tâjeh of the tribe of Ḥwêṭât. ”

“ He saw the entire sky unveiled, and below him, in front, to the left and to the right, something of a softer, more misty blue, the land of Alsace. The smell of the fields and of plants wet with the dew, rose from the soil like a harvest of the night. The wind wafted it, the cold wind, the familiar passer-by on this plain, the vagabond companion of the Rhine. One could distinguish no detail in the shadow where Alsace slept, except at a distance of a few hundred yards, where lines of roofs clustered about a round grey belfry ending in a steeple. That was the village of Alsheim. ”

“ We turned back northward through the defile of ʻElw al-Jitâma, as I wanted to journey through Wâdi al-Jitm to the settlement of al-ʻAḳaba. Before us, to the northwest, rose the dark mountains of Sarbûṭ al-Amṛar with their vertical ribs, on which stand steep-walled, red, natural strongholds. The vertical ribs are of granite and the strongholds of limestone and sandstone. ”

“ The poor people go to Egypt to find work and profit, and when they return home a few months later they proclaim the splendor of Egypt. We all want our coast to become a possession of England, or at least of Egypt. ”

“ Just as the ancient history of Austria cannot be dissevered from the history of the Holy Roman Empire, so the modern history of Austria is inseparable from the modern history of Europe. Had the House of Austria been able to read the signs of the times, had it possessed the faintest inkling that moral factors—the sense of justice, respect for truth and sincere care for the well-being of peoples—play a large part in politics, it might today stand higher than any dynasty in Europe, and be surrounded by the respect of a peace-loving world. ”

“ This fame I now seek, not from ambition, but from love to my subjects. You all know Albert, Duke of Austria, to whom in preference to all other princes I gave my daughter in marriage, and whom I adopted as my son. You know that he possesses experience and every virtue becoming a prince. He found Austria in a state of disorder, and he has restored it to tranquillity. He is now of an age in which judgment and experience attain their perfection, and he is sovereign of Austria, which, lying between Hungary and Bohemia, forms a connecting link between the two kingdoms. ”

“ Farther to the south there extended olive-colored cones, horns, and ridges, with pink slopes, which seemed to throb in the burning and almost visible rays of the noonday sun. All the sides facing the northwest were covered with yellowish sand, while the eastern and northeastern sides had a dark brown gloss, and on some of them blood-red stripes could be distinguished. At two o’clock Mḥammad pointed out to me, far in the south, the sharp, jagged peaks of al-ʻÂǧât and, to the northwest of them, two cones and seven dome-shaped groups which formed Šeʻaṯa. ”

“ I am persuaded that later on, when life in the garrison takes me away from Alsace, I shall have visions of Alsheim. I shall see it in imagination, just as it stands there."
In the midst of its girdle of orchards were massed together the red roofs of the village. And both village and trees formed an island among the corn and April clover. Little birds, gilded by the sunshine, were flying over Alsheim. The house of the Oberlés at this distance seemed only to be one of many. There was so much sweetness in all things that one might have imagined life itself sweet. ”

“ We may therefore infer that the great transport route from Dedan to Syria traversed the territory of the people of Têmân and that the latter acted as sureties for the safety of the trade caravans. If this is the case, we must locate the people of Têmân in the eastern part of northern Edom, whence led and still lead the main routes connecting north and south, avoiding the deep gorges and ravines in the western part of northern Edom. When the people of Têmân were destroyed, the caravans of Dedan were without protection and could easily be plundered by the common enemy. ”

“ The pilgrims ride around this hill as rapidly as possible amid shouting, uproar, and the firing of pistols, in order that their camels may not hear the voice of the Prophet’s camel, for, if they hear it, they sink down on their knees and cannot get up again. ”

“ There it was that all the pilgrims to Sainte Odile met to see Alsace when the weather was clear. A wall, high enough to lean on, runs along the top of an enormous block of rock, advancing like a spur above the forest. It overlooks the pines which cover the slopes everywhere. From the extreme point shut in, like the lantern of a lighthouse, one can see to the right quite a group of mountains, and in front and to the left the plain of Alsace. At this moment the fog was divided into two parts, for the sun was shining on the peaks of the Vosges. ”

“ The oasis of Šarma is scarcely four hundred meters broad and is bordered on the north and south by low, steep, rocky slopes. Date palms thrive there admirably and their fruit ripens quite early in the year. ”

“ The camels grazed on fresh šaʻrân and rimṯ. The sun was scorching, the rocks and sand so hot that it was painful to touch them with the bare hand or foot. The camels, having drunk their fill at al-Ḳena’, were craving for pasture, but there was none in the šeʻîb of Ammu Nṣejb. I climbed up the slope and in a rather small hollow discovered a fairly extensive space with a growth of fresh šaʻrân, but our camels were so tired that they could not get up the steep declivity. After several vain attempts one camel after the other knelt down in order at least to rest, if it could not satisfy its hunger. ”

“ To the west of the spring the chief Ḥarb eben ʻAṭijje had fenced off a part of the ground with a wall of unburnt brick and had established a new garden, in which he had planted date palms, pomegranates, and a few fig trees, and his gardener cultivated vegetables there. But the artificial wall of this garden aroused the wrath of the wind, which deposited sand against it; the drift increased in size, surmounted the wall, and the sand was scattered into the garden. The gardens of Tebûk form the shape of a horseshoe open towards the northeast, and they enfold the stronghold and the settlement. ”

“ How beautiful is mere illusion, how prosaic is reality!
At 5.02 we rode through the broad šeʻîb of al-Mrâḥ, in which the luxuriant, dark green ʻasla grows.
To the east of this valley rise the plateaus of aṣ-Ṣeʻede and Radma, and above these plateaus project the isolated black cones and ridges of the granite mountains which form the above-mentioned chain on the watershed between the Red Sea and the lowland near the Ḥeǧâz railway. Naming them from the northwest, these mountains are al-Ḫejmri, al-ʻEnejme, Dafdaf, Ṣafwân, ar-Râwa, as-Sîḳ, aš-Šâṭi, and Ḳîr. ”