“TELL us a story, August,” they cried, in chorus, when they had seen charcoal1 pictures till they were tired; and August did as he did every night pretty nearly,—looked up at the stove and told them what he imagined of the many adventures and joys and sorrows of the human being who figured on the panels from his cradle to his grave.
To the children the stove was a household god. In summer they laid a mat of fresh moss2 all round it, and dressed it up with green boughs3 and the numberless beautiful wild flowers of the Tyrol country. In winter all their joys centred in it, and scampering4 home from school over the ice and snow they were happy, knowing that they would soon be cracking nuts or roasting chestnuts5 in the broad ardent6 glow of its noble tower, which rose eight feet high above them with all its spires7 and pinnacles8 and crowns.
Once a travelling peddler had told them that the letters on it meant Augustin Hirschvogel, and that Hirschvogel had been a great German potter and painter, like his father before him, in the art-sanctified city of Nürnberg, and had made many such stoves, that were all miracles[20] of beauty and of workmanship, putting all his heart and his soul and his faith into his labors9, as the men of those earlier ages did, and thinking but little of gold or praise.
An old trader, too, who sold curiosities not far from the church had told August a little more about the brave family of Hirschvogel, whose houses can be seen in Nürnberg to this day; of old Veit, the first of them, who painted the Gothic windows of St. Sebald with the marriage of the Margravine; of his sons and of his grandsons, potters, painters, engravers all, and chief of them great Augustin, the Luca della Robbia of the North. And August’s imagination, always quick, had made a living personage out of these few records, and saw Hirschvogel as though he were in the flesh walking up and down the Maximilian-Strass in his visit to Innspruck, and maturing beautiful things in his brain as he stood on the bridge and gazed on the emerald-green flood of the Inn.
So the stove had got to be called Hirschvogel in the family, as if it were a living creature, and little August was very proud because he had been named after that famous old dead German who had had the genius to make so glorious a thing. All the children loved the stove, but with August[21] the love of it was a passion; and in his secret heart he used to say to himself, “When I am a man, I will make just such things too, and then I will set Hirschvogel in a beautiful room in a house that I will build myself in Innspruck just outside the gates, where the chestnuts are, by the river: that is what I will do when I am a man.”
For August, a salt-baker’s son and a little cow-keeper when he was anything, was a dreamer of dreams, and when he was upon the high Alps with his cattle, with the stillness and the sky around him, was quite certain that he would live for greater things than driving the herds10 up when the spring-tide came among the blue sea of gentians, or toiling11 down in the town with wood and with timber as his father and grandfather did every day of their lives. He was a strong and healthy little fellow, fed on the free mountain-air, and he was very happy, and loved his family devotedly12, and was as active as a squirrel and as playful as a hare; but he kept his thoughts to himself, and some of them went a very long way for a little boy who was only one among many, and to whom nobody had ever paid any attention except to teach him his letters and tell him to fear God. August in winter was only a little, hungry school-boy, trotting13 to be catechised[22] by the priest, or to bring the loaves from the bake-house, or to carry his father’s boots to the cobbler; and in summer he was only one of hundreds of cow-boys, who drove the poor, half-blind, blinking, stumbling cattle, ringing their throat-bells, out into the sweet intoxication14 of the sudden sunlight, and lived up with them in the heights among the Alpine15 roses, with only the clouds and the snow-summits near. But he was always thinking, thinking, thinking, for all that; and under his little sheepskin winter coat and his rough hempen16 summer shirt his heart had and much courage in it as Hofer’s ever had,—great Hofer, who is a household word in all the Innthal, and whom August always reverently17 remembered when he went to the city of Innspruck and ran out by the foaming18 water-mill and under the wooded height of Berg Isel.
August lay now in the warmth of the stove and told the children stories, his own little brown face growing red with excitement as his imagination glowed to fever-heat. That human being on the panels, who was drawn19 there as a baby in a cradle, as a boy playing among flowers, as a lover sighing under a casement20, as a soldier in the midst of strife21, as a father with children round him,[23] as a weary, old, blind man on crutches22, and, lastly, as a ransomed23 soul raised up by angels, had always had the most intense interest for August, and he had made, not one history for him, but a thousand; he seldom told them the same tale twice. He had never seen a story-book in his life; his primer and his mass-book were all the volumes he had. But nature had given him Fancy, and she is a good fairy that makes up for the want of very many things! only, alas24! her wings are so very soon broken, poor thing, and then she is of no use at all.
“It is time for you all to go to bed, children,” said Dorothea, looking up from her spinning. “Father is very late to-night; you must not sit up for him.”
“Oh, five minutes more, dear Dorothea!” they pleaded; and little rosy25 and golden Ermengilda climbed up into her lap. “Hirschvogel is so warm, the beds are never so warm as he. Cannot you tell us another tale, August?”
“No,” cried August, whose face had lost its light, now that his story had come to an end, and who sat serious, with his hands clasped on his knees, gazing on to the luminous26 arabesques27 of the stove.[24]
“It is only a week to Christmas,” he said, suddenly.
“Grandmother’s big cakes!” chuckled28 little Christof, who was five years old, and thought Christmas meant a big cake and nothing else.
“What will Santa Claus find for ’Gilda if she be good?” murmured Dorothea over the child’s sunny head; for, however hard poverty might pinch, it could never pinch so tightly that Dorothea would not find some wooden toy and some rosy apples to put in her little sister’s socks.
“Father Max has promised me a big goose, because I saved the calf’s life in June,” said August; it was the twentieth time he had told them so that month, he was so proud of it.
“And Aunt Maïla will be sure to send us wine and honey and a barrel of flour; she always does,” said Albrecht. Their aunt Maïla had a chalet and a little farm over on the green slopes towards Dorp Ampas.
“I shall go up into the woods and get Hirschvogel’s crown,” said August; they always crowned Hirschvogel for Christmas with pine boughs and ivy29 and mountain-berries. The heat soon withered30 the crown; but it was part of the religion of the day to them, as much so as it was[25] to cross themselves in church and raise their voices in the “O Salutaris Hostia.”
And they fell chatting of all they would do on the Christ-night, and one little voice piped loud against another’s, and they were as happy as though their stockings would be full of golden purses and jewelled toys, and the big goose in the soup-pot seemed to them such a meal as kings would envy.
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1
charcoal
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| n.炭，木炭，生物炭 | |
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2
moss
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| n.苔，藓，地衣 | |
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3
boughs
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| 大树枝( bough的名词复数 ) | |
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4
scampering
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| v.蹦蹦跳跳地跑，惊惶奔跑( scamper的现在分词 ) | |
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5
chestnuts
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| n.栗子( chestnut的名词复数 )；栗色；栗树；栗色马 | |
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6
ardent
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，强烈的，烈性的 | |
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7
spires
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| n.（教堂的） 塔尖，尖顶( spire的名词复数 ) | |
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8
pinnacles
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| 顶峰( pinnacle的名词复数 )； 顶点； 尖顶； 小尖塔 | |
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9
labors
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| v.努力争取(for)( labor的第三人称单数 )；苦干；详细分析；（指引擎）缓慢而困难地运转 | |
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10
herds
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| 兽群( herd的名词复数 )； 牧群； 人群； 群众 | |
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11
toiling
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| 长时间或辛苦地工作( toil的现在分词 )； 艰难缓慢地移动，跋涉 | |
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12
devotedly
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| 专心地； 恩爱地； 忠实地； 一心一意地 | |
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13
trotting
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| 小跑，急走( trot的现在分词 )； 匆匆忙忙地走 | |
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14
intoxication
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| n.wild excitement;drunkenness；poisoning | |
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15
alpine
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| adj.高山的；n.高山植物 | |
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16
hempen
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| adj. 大麻制的, 大麻的 | |
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17
reverently
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| adv.虔诚地 | |
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18
foaming
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| adj.布满泡沫的；发泡 | |
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19
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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casement
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| n.竖铰链窗；窗扉 | |
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strife
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| n.争吵，冲突，倾轧，竞争 | |
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crutches
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| n.拐杖, 支柱 v.支撑 | |
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23
ransomed
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| 付赎金救人，赎金( ransom的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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24
alas
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| int.唉(表示悲伤、忧愁、恐惧等) | |
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rosy
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| adj.美好的，乐观的，玫瑰色的 | |
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luminous
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| adj.发光的，发亮的；光明的；明白易懂的；有启发的 | |
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27
arabesques
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| n.阿拉伯式花饰( arabesque的名词复数 )；错综图饰；阿拉伯图案；阿拉贝斯克芭蕾舞姿（独脚站立，手前伸，另一脚一手向后伸） | |
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28
chuckled
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| 轻声地笑( chuckle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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29
ivy
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| n.常青藤，常春藤 | |
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30
withered
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| adj. 枯萎的，干瘪的，（人身体的部分器官）因病萎缩的或未发育良好的 动词wither的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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