“Quaint old town of toil and travel, quaint old town of art and song,
Memories throng thy storied gateways, as the rooks thy buildings throng.”
LONGFELLOW.
BRIGHT were the days that followed for Giovana Graham. The beautiful old city, with its crowding memories, was opened out before her like a book, and studied lovingly almost from the dawn to the close of the long sunny days of June. The very house in which she dwelt, with its wealth of elaborate ornament, its carvings of stone without and of wood dark with age within, was a marvel and a mystery to her. Moreover, the grave, quiet stateliness that surrounded her, the tokens of luxury without ostentation that met her on every side, seemed a kind of music, accompanying and harmonizing all the details of life, never absent, yet never obtrusive. The head of the house, Baron and Colonel von Lübeling, was the representative of a long line of merchant princes, and himself a statesman, a soldier, and a scholar. His wife was dead, but a widowed sister, the Frau von Gunsdorf, presided gently, and indeed rather languidly, over a numerous retinue of servants; while she indulged to their hearts' content her two pretty and lively nieces, and above all her nephew August, the only son and heir, whom everyone seemed to have entered into a conspiracy to spoil, and who yet somehow was not spoiled.
Jeanie's study of the marvels of Nuremberg was conducted under the superintendence of August and his sisters. Whenever the Lady of Savelburg did not need her, her new friends claimed her eagerly, and led her willing feet to church or council house, to statue or sculptured fountain. She was soon familiar with all the town contained of the paintings of Albrecht Dürer, and the carved work of Adam Krafft, Peter Vischer, and Veit Stoss. It is true that the scriptural subjects in which they all dealt so largely were a source of pain and perplexity to the Scottish maiden, and she could never quite reconcile herself to them, although assured once and again by her Lutheran friends that they regarded them with no superstitious veneration. Still, in spite of this feeling, which was natural and justifiable, she was deeply impressed with the beauty, the interest, and the quaint, home-like charm of all she saw.
Her friends considered the shops and markets of their city almost as worthy of admiration as its paintings and statues. Were not their goldsmiths and their carvers in wood and ivory famous throughout the world? Many an hour was spent in inspecting the beautiful things in the various workshops, and when the young people grew tired of this amusement, they would remind Jeanie that their confectioners also enjoyed a worldwide reputation, and assure her that a repast of the excellent kind of ginger-bread, called Leb-ktichen, or some other celebrated Nuremberg dainty, was necessary to complete her knowledge of the city.
This was innocent enough; but when one day August ran back to the shop they had just quitted and purchased for her a costly gold brooch, for which she had inadvertently expressed a passing admiration, she felt a thrill of new, undefined uneasiness, and very courteously, but positively, declined to accept it. “The Lady of Savelburg would not approve,” she said.
At first August looked vexed, but it seemed as if no cloud could darken his sunny nature for more than a minute's space. “Never mind, Fraulein Hannchen,” he returned, brightening quickly. “It is a trifle, not worth troubling you about. I will not press it. Only promise me, please, that when I offer you one day a Nuremberg egg, you will not refuse it. Surely you can have no scruples about that? Anyone would accept an egg, even from the hand of a stranger. And we are not quite strangers now, are we, Fraulein?”
They were strangers less than ever after a talk they had the next day. They had been visiting, as they often did, the grand old church of St. Lawrence. With their happy young hearts hushed into reverent awe by the glory of its beauty, they stood long in silence before that
Pix of sculpture rare,
Like the foamy sheaf of fountains rising through the painted air.
Softly gleamed its wondrous tracery of pure white stone, over which the purple and gold and crimson of the stained window above threw their changeful magic. Yet the earnest eyes turned from all else to rest lovingly on the three kneeling figures, that, calm and strong in their carved repose, supported the lofty structure.
“Those three― they made it all,” August whispered.
“Let us come away,” said Jeanie, in a voice that sounded as if tears were not far distant. “It is too beautiful.”
They soon stood in the outer air, clear and bright with summer sunshine. As they walked up and down the Konigstrasse, Jeanie said, though in a very hesitating voice, “One forgets the wrong of it.”
“Wrong?” August repeated in surprise.
“Did they not make that beautiful thing to hold the piece of bread which, you know—they thought was—what I dare not say?”
August was a Lutheran, to whom the idea of Transubstantiation was not quite so abhorrent as to the staunch young disciple of Knox. He answered gently, “Yes, we know that in some things they thought amiss. But if they truly meant to do Him honor, our Lord has set them right before now. And I think they did. Our Hans Sachs could sing―
“‘What here may shine I all resign,
If the eternal crown be mine,
That through Thy bitter death,
Thou gainedst, O Lord Christ, for me;
For this, for this, I cry to Thee!’”
They walked on for some moments in silence. Then stopping suddenly, and gazing on the fine old church, he said, with a sigh of admiration, “Oh, how nobly they worked!”
“Who were they, Herr August?”
“It was Adam Krafft, the master sculptor, and his two workmen, who made that beautiful pix we have been looking at. Four years they wrought it, toiling patiently day by day. Only four years! And their work will live forever. Hundreds of years hence, when they and we are in the dust, men will come to look at it and to take joy out of its beauty. I call it grand to make things like that! I think I had rather do it than lead armies and conquer kingdoms.”
“Ah! would you?” said Jeanie, surprised. “But I thought you longed, most of all, to fight for the liberties of Germany.”
August paused a moment. “I was thinking of the glory,” he said; “I meant that I would rather have the glory of making beautiful things than of winning battles. But then there are better things than glory.”
“Yes,” said Jeanie. “Doing right is better, even though no one knew it or gave you praise for it.”
“True. Better to do grand things than to make them or to write or say them. Even our great Luther, whose glory will last forever, said of Leonard Keyser, ‘What am I, an empty talker, beside this great doer?’”
“Who was Leonard Keyser?”
“An obscure martyr, of whom no one knew much, save that he gave his life for his Lord. Do you know, Hannchen, I think that would be the grandest lot of all, and the most blessed―to die for one you love?” Turning as he spoke, he looked in Jeanie's face with eyes that shone through gathering tears.
“And we love Him,” she answered softly, interpreting his thought, “because He first loved us.”
“Yes,” August responded frankly. “But it is written, ‘for a good man some would even dare to die!’ And even that, I think, would be joy enough for me.”
Just then the bells of St. Lawrence rang out their clear, musical chime. It warned the young people to turn their footsteps homewards, whither their companions had already preceded them. They did so, August, after a pause, singing softly to himself a verse from one of the old songs he loved.
“What is it?” asked Jeanie, unable to catch the words distinctly.
August repeated for her―
“Although with the weak there should never succeed
The good thing for which he has earnestly striven;
Yet a Father who sees and who blesses the deed
Dwells high o'er the glimmering stars in His heaven.”
“The chimes are singing that for me,” he said. “It is from a song we have, about an old legend: that when the dear Lord hung upon the cross, two little birds alone, of all the creatures His hand had made, took pity on Him. They tried to loose the nails, but only bent and twisted their poor frail beaks, and at last flew sorrowfully away. But God saw and blessed them— ‘because it was in their hearts,’―and He put His mark upon their kind for evermore. Hence we call them cross-bills. It is only a legend, but I think it means that what is in our heart to do God counts as done already. And though we try, and fail, as men count failure, there is no failure with Him for the true heart that loves and trusts,”