From Belfry to Porch [pp. 399-409]

FROM BELFRY TO PORCH.
see," he continued, drawing me to the helmet of mailed knight, and would have
side-window, and directing my attention brushed away that poor old man like a
to where, over a hundred feet below, at fly from off a lump of sugar. Then,
the entrance of the other tower, sat a there being no reason for longer tarrylittle, old, feeble man, clothed in a large, ing, I prepared to take my departure;
red cape-cloak and braided cocked-hat. and had indeed descended three or four
"That is the place I should have had of the steps, when he came forward to
by right -where plenty of people come me again, and arrested me. He had, in
and go, and where almost any day I the meantime, taken one more pull at
might chance to meet my long-lost fa- the ale-pitcher; and though not much
ther. For, of course, having lost me, he more intoxicated than before, it was evimust often stop and get out of his car- dent that the acerbity and restlessness
riage, and go up to the altar to pray for of his disposition had been increased.
me. They always do that-at least, they "A single question, Master," he said,
do it in stories; and what are the stories looking down at me as I there stood,
good for if they are not true? But I two or three feet below the level of the
suppose it is to aggravate me purposely belfry floor. "A question, Master-and
that they put that lazy old idiot in my I have never asked it of any one before,
place -a man that has no kith or kin in nor would I ask it of you, except that
the world, and therefore must be better I must know it from some one, and you,
off the fewer people he sees. I could being a stranger from another country,
knock his old head off sometimes, Mas- would never think nor speak of it again:
ter," the bell-ringer continued, his color If the old Duke or Count should ever
growing yet deeper with suppressed pas- find me out, what would she be, suppossion, as, in drunken humor, he thought ing she were yet alive, which may be she
upon his wrongs. "And yet, not being is not?"
able to get at him, you see, I can only "And who is she?"
stand here and shake my fist at him. "My wife, Master: that is to say, who
It's when I am ringing the.bells that I was my wife a great many years ago.
feel most like doing so, for it is then that Or here-we will put the question not
I think how the old Count or Duke, or of me, but of some other person," he
whatever he may be, is hearing the bells continued, with that grave air of pretenand going into the vespers, perhaps, and tious disguise with which a drunken
never knows that his long-lost son is man will often believe he is cunningly
making all the noise: and all because I leading suspicion astray. " Suppose that
am not down at the entrance to recog- a man-not me, you know-when twenty
nize him, and tell him who I am. But years old or so, were to go for a few
what, after all, is shaking one's fist? months to a strange place- we'll call it
It's no satisfaction at all, Master-not Eisenach, though of course it was not
the least." Eisenach-and there was to fall in love
Satisfaction or not, the bell-ringer did with a girl-say, the tavern-keeper's
it on the spot, partly to relieve his pres- daughter-and marry her. And supent wrath, and partly as illustrative of his pose that, being pretty wide-awake, he
wounded state of feeling: putting his were not to let her know his true name,
great sledge-hammer arm through the so that in case he did not like her as
window and indulging in a good, solid much as he expected, he could move
swing at the unconscious red cape and away again, and she be never the wiser
braided cocked-hat below- -a swing of for it; and so it turns out that as he
fist that might have cracked the steel does not like her as well as he expected,
[MAY,
402