“My worthy fellow craftsmen, dear friends and masters, I invite you, one and all, to dinner on Sunday next, when, over a good glass of Hochheimer, Johannisberger, or whatever other good wine out of my cellar you may prefer, we may consider and discuss what further may be best for our common advantage. Once more, consider yourselves all cordially invited.”
The faces of the Honourable Society, which had darkened considerably at Martin’s first arrogant words, now brightened again, and the gloomy silence was succeeded by lively conversation, in which much was said concerning the eminent merits of Master Martin, and of his celebrated cellar. Everyone promised to appear on Sunday, and gave his hand to the newly elected president, who shook them all cordially—and he even pressed one or two of the masters just the least little bit against his waistcoat, as if he half thought of embracing them.
The meeting dispersed in the best of humour and the highest spirits.
II
It so chanced that Master Jacobus Paumgartner, on his way to his own dwelling, had to pass the door of Master Martin’s house; and when together they had reached the said door and Paumgartner was about to proceed on his way, Master Martin, taking off his little cap and bowing as low as he could, said to the Councillor: “Ah! if you would not think it beneath you, my dear and honoured sir, to step into this poor house of mine for a brief hour; if you would but be so kind as to grant me the opportunity of profiting by and delighting in your wise conversation.”
“I am sure, Master Martin,” said the Councillor with a smile, “I shall only be too happy to accept your invitation to come in; though how you can call your house a poor one I cannot imagine. I know well that the wealthiest of our citizens do not surpass you in the costliness of your furniture and appointments. It is only the other day that you finished those additions to your house which have made it the ornament of our famous Imperial town; of the interior arrangements I say nothing, for I am aware that of them no patrician need be ashamed.”
Old Paumgartner was right; for when the brightly waxed and polished door studded with rich brasswork was opened, the spacious entrance hall with its beautifully laid floor, fine pictures on the walls, rich carpets, and elegant cabinets and chairs, was seen to be like a fine drawing-room; so that everyone willingly obeyed the instructions which, according to an old custom, were inscribed on a tablet hung up close to the door:
If you would climb this stair,
Take heed to wear clean shoon;
Or better, leave them there,
Then reproach there can be none.
A proper man would know
How his duty he should show.
It was warm weather, and the air in the rooms, now that the evening twilight was falling, was heavy and steamy; for which reason Master Martin took his guest into the cool, spacious “best kitchen”; such at that time was named the apartment which, in the houses of wealthy merchants, was furnished like a kitchen and adorned—not for use, but solely for display—with all manner of costly household implements. As soon as they came in, Master Martin cried loudly, “Rosa! Rosa!” The door presently opened, and Rosa, Master Martin’s only daughter, entered.
Gracious reader! I must here ask you to call to mind as vividly as you can the masterpieces of our grand Albrecht Dürer. Let those beautiful maidens whom he has portrayed, instinct with grace and charm, sweetness, gentleness, pious meekness, rise before you. Think of their noble, tender figures; the pure, rounded foreheads white as snow; the rose-tint suffusing the cheeks; the delicate lips, red as cherries; the eyes, looking far away, in dreamy longing, half shadowed by the dark lashes, as moonlight is by thick leafage. Think of the silky hair, carefully gathered and knotted. Think of all the heavenly beauty of those forms, and you will see the lovely Rosa. He who relates this tale cannot hope otherwise to portray her.
Let me, however, remind you of another great young painter into whose soul a quickening ray from those ancient days has penetrated: I mean our German Master Cornelius, in Rome. Just as he has made Margaret (in his illustrations to Goethe’s mighty Faust) appear, when she says—
I’m not a lady of rank; nor am I fair,
such was Rosa, when she felt constrained, bashfully and modestly, to evade the ardent advances of some admirer.
She now bent low before Paumgartner, in childlike deference, took his hand and pressed it to her lips. The old gentleman’s pale cheeks glowed. As the radiance of the evening sky, fading away into darkness, brightens up suddenly for a last moment, gilding the dark foliage before it sinks into night, so did the fire of youth long-passed flash up in his eyes. “Ah, Master Martin!” he cried, “you are a wealthy, prosperous man, but by far the most precious gift that Heaven has bestowed on you is your charming Rosa. The sight of her makes the hearts of us old fellows beat, as we sit at the Council Board; and if we can’t turn our eyes away from her, who can blame the young men if they stand staring like stone images when they meet her in the street; or see only her in church, and not the parson? What marvel that, when there is a festival in the common, they drive the other girls to despair by all running after your daughter, following exclusively her with their sighs, love-looks, and honeyed speeches? Well, Master Martin, you are aware you may pick and choose among the best patrician blood in the countryside for your son-in-law, or wherever else you have a mind.”
Master Martin’s face crumpled up into sombre folds. He told his daughter to go and bring some fine old wine; and when she, blushing over and over, with eyes fixed on the ground, had hurried away for it, he said to old Paumgartner:
“Ay, honourable sir! it is no doubt the truth that my daughter is gifted with exceptional beauty, and that Heaven has made me rich in that respect as well as in others; but how could you speak of it in the girl’s presence?—and as to a patrician son-in-law, that cannot be.”
“Nay, nay, Master Martin,” answered Paumgartner; “‘out of the abundance of the heart, the tongue speaketh,’ you know. My old sluggish blood begins to dance in my veins when I look at Rosa; and there can’t be much harm in my saying what she must know well enough to be true.”
Rosa brought the wine and two magnificent goblets. Martin drew the richly carved great table to the center of the room; but just as the old fellows had taken their places, and Martin was filling the goblets, a tramping of horses was heard in front of the house. A horseman seemed to be drawing bridle; a voice was heard ringing loudly in the hall. Rosa hastened to the door, and came back to say that the old Junker Heinrich von Spangenberg was there and wished to speak with Master Martin.
“Well!” said Martin, “this is really a wondrous lucky evening, since my good friend—my oldest patron and customer—has come to pay me a call. New orders, no doubt; something fresh to lay down in the cellar.” With which he made off as fast as he could, to greet his welcome guest.
III
The Hochheimer sparkled in the beautiful, cut goblets, and opened the hearts and loosened the tongues of the three old fellows. Spangenberg, advanced in years but still glowing with life and vigour, served up many a quaint tale and adventure of his younger days, so that Master Martin’s paunch waggled heartily, and he had times without end to wipe tears of irrepressible laughter from his eyes. Paumgartner, too, forgot his senatorial gravity more than usual, and gave himself up thoroughly to the enjoyment of the noble liquor and the entertaining talk. Then Rosa came in with a pretty basket, whence she brought out table-linen dazzling as snow. She tripped here and there with housewifely eagerness, laid the table, and covered it with all sorts of appetizing dishes and begged the gentlemen, with sweetest smiles, not to disdain what had been made ready in haste. The laughter and the flow of conversation ceased. Paumgartner and Spangenberg could neither of them move his eyes away from the beautiful girl, and even Master Martin watched her housewifely activities with a smile of satisfaction as he leaned back in his chair with folded hands. When Rosa would have left them, old Spangenberg jumped up as briskly as a youth, took her by both shoulders and cried over and over aga
in, with tears in his eyes, “Oh you good, precious angel!—you sweet, kind, charming girl!” Then he kissed her three times on the forehead and went back to his chair in deep reflection. Paumgartner drank a toast to her health.
“Yes!” began Spangenberg when she had left the room; “Yes, Master Martin! Heaven has, in that daughter of yours, bestowed on you a jewel which you cannot prize too highly. She will bring you to great honour one day. Who—of any rank whatever—wouldn’t be delighted to be your son-in-law?”
“You see,” said Paumgartner, “you see, Master Martin, the noble Herr von Spangenberg thinks exactly as I do. Already I see my darling Rosa a patrician’s bride, with the rich pearls in her lovely fair hair!”
“My dear gentlemen!” cried Master Martin, looking quite out of temper, “why should you persist in talking about a matter which has not even begun to enter my thoughts? My daughter Rosa is just eighteen; she is too young to be thinking of a husband; and how matters may come to pass hereafter, I leave wholly in God’s hands. But this much is certain—that neither a patrician nor any other man shall have my daughter’s hand, except that cooper who proves himself, to my satisfaction, to be the most utterly perfect master of his craft—always supposing that my daughter loves him; for I am not going to constrain my darling daughter to anything whatever in the world, least of all to a marriage that does not please her.”
Spangenberg and Paumgartner looked each other in the face, much astonished at this remarkable statement of the Master’s. Presently, after clearing his throat a good deal, Spangenberg began:
“Then your daughter is not to rise out of her own class, is she?”
“God forbid that she should,” answered Martin.
“But,” continued Spangenberg, “suppose some doughty young master belonging to some other noble craft—say, a goldsmith, or perhaps a talented young painter—were to come wooing your daughter and pleased her very specially, much more than any of her other wooers, how would it be then ? ”
Master Martin answered, drawing himself up, and throwing back his head:
“‘Show me,’ I should say, ‘show me, my good young sir, the two-fudder cask that you have built as your masterpiece.’ And if he couldn’t do that, I would open the door politely, and beg him, as civilly as I could, to try his luck elsewhere.”
Spangenberg resumed:
“Suppose the young fellow said, ‘I cannot show you a small-scale piece of work such as you speak of; but come with me to the market place, and look at that stately building, reaching its slender peaks proudly up to the skies. That is my masterpiece.’”
“Ah, my good sir!” Martin interrupted impatiently; “what is the good of your taking all this trouble to alter my determination? My son-in-law shall belong to my own craft and to no other; for I look upon my craft as being the most glorious that exists on earth. Do you suppose that all that is necessary to make a cask hold together is to fit the hoops onto the staves? Ah! ha! The glory and the beauty of our craft is that it presupposes a knowledge of the preservation and the nursing of that most precious of heaven’s gifts—noble wine, that so it may ripen and penetrate us with its strength and sweetness, a glowing spirit of life. Then there is the construction of the cask itself. If the build is to be successful, we have to measure and calculate all the curves, and the other dimensions, with rule and compass with the utmost accuracy. Geometers and arithmeticians we must be, that we may compute the proportions and the capacities of our casks. Ah, good sir, I can tell you my very heart laughs within my body when I see a fair, well-proportioned cask laid on the end-stool, the staves all beautifully finished off with the riving knife and the broad axe, and the men set to with the mallets, and ‘clipp, clapp’ ring the strokes of the driver. Ha! ha! that is merry music. There stands the work, perfect; and I may well look round me with a dash of pride when I take my marking-iron and brand it with my own trademark on the head of the cask—my own mark, known and respected by all genuine wine masters in the land. You spoke of master builders, dear sir. Very good; a grand, stately house is a fine work beyond doubt. But if I were a master builder and passed by one of my works, and saw some dirty-minded creature, some good-for-nothing, despicable wretch who had happened to become the owner of that house, looking down at me from one of the balconies, I should feel shame at the bottom of my heart; I would long to tear down that work of mine from sheer annoyance and disgust. Nothing of that sort can ever happen to me, for in my works dwells ever the very purest thing on earth—good wine. God’s blessing on my craft!”
“Your encomium,” said Spangenberg, “was admirable and heartily felt on your part. It is to your honour that you hold your craft in high esteem. But please be patient with me if I do not leave you in peace even now. Suppose a patrician did actually come and ask you for your daughter. Sometimes, when a matter really comes very close to one, much in it begins to assume a different appearance from what one thought.”
“Ah,” cried Martin a little warmly, “what could I say, except with a polite bow, ‘Honoured sir, if you were but a clever cooper; but as you are—’ ”
“Listen further,” interrupted Spangenberg. “If some fine morning a handsome noble were to come on a splendid charger, with a brilliant following all in grand clothes, and rein up at your door and ask for Rosa for his wife?”
“Hey! hey!” cried Master Martin more impetuously than before; “I would run as fast as I could and bolt and bar the door. Then I would cry and shout, ‘Ride on your road, your lordship. Roses such as mine do not bloom for you. I dare say my cellar and my cash-box please you well, and you’ll take the girl into the bargain. On your way!’ ”
Old Spangenberg rose up, his face red as fire. He leaned both hands on the table and looked down before him. “Well,” he began, after a short silence, “this is my last question, Master Martin. If the young noble at your door were my own son, if I myself were at your door with him, would you bar the door? Would you think we had come only for the sake of your cellar and your cash-box?”
“Most certainly not,” answered Master Martin. “My honoured and dear sir, I should open the door politely to you; everything in my house should be at your and your son’s command. But as regards Rosa, I should say, ‘Had it pleased Heaven that your noble son had been a clever cooper, no one on earth would have been more welcome to me as a son-in-law. As it is, however—’ But why should you plague me with all those extraordinary questions, honoured sir? Our delightful conversation has come to an end, and our glasses are standing full. Let us leave questions of the son-in-law and Rosa’s marriage aside. I drink your son’s good health. People say he is a fine, handsome gentleman.”
Master Martin took up his goblet, and Paumgartner followed his example, saying, “A truce to captious conversation; here’s to your noble son’s health.”
Spangenberg touched glasses with them, and then said with a forced smile, “You saw, of course, that I was only speaking in jest. My son, who has only to ask and have amongst the best and noblest in the land, would be a raving lunatic to come here begging for your daughter and so far to disregard his rank and birth as to sue for her. But you could have answered me in a more friendly way.”
“Ah, my dear sir,” answered Martin, “even if it were a joke I could answer it in no other manner, without loss of my proper self-respect. For you must confess, yourselves, that you are aware that I am justified in holding myself to be the best cooper in all the countryside; that all that can be known as to wine, I know; that I hold faithfully by the wine laws framed in the days of our departed Emperor Maximilian; that, as a pious man, I hate and despise all godlessness; that I never burn beyond an ounce of sulphur in a two-fudder cask, which is needful for the preservation thereof. All this, dear and honoured sirs, you can sufficiently trace the savour of, in my wine here.”
Spangenberg, resuming his seat, strove to assume a happier expression of countenance again, and Paumgartner led the conversation to other topics. But as the strings of an instrument, when once they have gone out
of tune, stretch and warp more and more, and the master cannot evoke from it the well-sounding chords which he could produce before, nothing that the three men tried to say would harmonize any longer. Spangenberg called his servants and went away depressed and out of temper from Martin’s house, which he had come to in such a jovial mood.
IV
Master Martin was somewhat concerned at his old friend and patron’s having gone away annoyed. He said to Paumgartner, who had finished his last goblet and was leaving too:
“I really cannot make out what the old gentleman was driving at with all those odd questions; and why should he be so vexed when he went away ? ”
“Dear Master Martin,” answered Paumgartner, “you are a fine, grand, noble, upright fellow, and you are right to set a value on what, by the help of God, you have brought to such a prosperous issue and carried on so well, and what has been a source of wealth and fortune to you at the same time. Still, this should not lead you to ostentation and pride, which are contrary to all Christian feeling. It was hardly right in you to set yourself above all the other masters at the meeting today as you did. Very likely you do know more of your craft than all the rest of them put together; but to go and cast this straight in their teeth could only give rise to anger and annoyance. And then your conduct this evening; you surely could not have been so blind as not to see that what Spangenberg was driving at was to find out how far your headstrong pride would really carry you. It could not help hurting the worthy gentleman sorely to hear you attribute any young noble’s wooing of your daughter to mere greed for your money. It would have all been well enough if you had got back into the right road when he began to talk about his own son. If you had said, ‘Ah, my good and honoured sir, if you were to come with your son to ask for my daughter (an honour on which, certainly, I never could have reckoned), I should waver in the firmness of my determination.’ If you had said that, what would have been the consequence but that old Spangenberg, forgetting his previous wrongs, would have smiled and got back into the fine temper he was in before.”
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