Pictor's Metamorphoses (10 page)

Astonished at such steadfastness of purpose, the maidservant returned to her master, brought him his letter, and reported all that the maiden had said.

Although she added several consoling words, the youth burst out in loud lamentations, rent his garments, and cast dirt upon his head. He no longer dared cross the maiden's path, and sought to catch sight of her only from a distance. Nights he lay sleepless in his chamber, crying aloud the name of his beloved, and a hundred fond terms of endearment; he called her his Light and his Star, his Roe Deer and his Palm, his Eyebright and his Pearl, and when he awakened from these reveries to find himself alone in the dark room, he clenched his teeth, cursed the name of God, and battered his head against the wall.

This earthly love had eclipsed and extinguished all piety in his heart. And scarcely had the Devil gained entry than he hurled the youth from one abomination to another. The youth took an oath that he would have the lovely girl for himself, and would do so by force. He journeyed to Memphis, where he entered the school of the heathen priests of Asklepios, and took instruction in the arts of sorcery. He zealously pursued these studies for a year before returning home to Gaza.

Upon his return, he incised on a copper tablet signs and words of power to induce a strong love charm. In the dark of night, he buried the tablet under the threshold of the house in which the maiden lived.

Even on the very next day, the girl was remarkably changed. She gave free reign to her once so modestly lowered gaze; she loosed her hair and let it fall freely; she neglected her prayers and failed to attend divine services, and to herself she sang a little love song which no one had taught her. Daily her condition grew more serious, and nightly she tossed and turned in her bed, crying aloud the youth's name, calling him her most dearly beloved, desiring him near.

Her much-altered condition could not long remain concealed from the bewitched girl's parents. Having become suspicious of her changed words and manners, they listened in on her at night, and were so shocked and horrified at what they heard that the father wanted to disown his ill-bred daughter, as he called her. The mother, however, begged him to have patience; they began to examine the matter more closely and recognized that their daughter must have fallen into such a sad state of confusion owing to the influence of a magic spell.

But the maiden remained possessed of a demon, spewing blasphemies and calling out loudly for her beloved. At long last, her parents remembered the saintly hermit Hilarion, who for many years had lived in a desolate spot far from the town and who was so close to God that all his prayers were heard. He had healed so many sick and had cast out so many devils that, next to Saint Anthony, he could perhaps be called the most powerful holy man of his day. They brought their daughter to him, and while telling him all that had come to pass, they implored him to heal her.

The saint turned to the maiden and bellowed: “Who has made of God's handmaid a vessel of unholy lust?” But the girl, her body shrunken, her skin ashen, looked at him and began to revile him, boasting of her white skin and her sleek body, calling the man of God a scabious scarecrow, so that her poor parents sank down on their knees and hid their heads in shame. But Hilarion, recognizing the demon that resided in the girl, smiled and launched a vigorous attack, so that it acknowledged its name and confessed all. Forcefully, the saint exorcised the violently contentious demon from the maiden. Then she awakened, as if out of some feverish dream, recognized and greeted her weeping parents, asked Hilarion for his blessing, and was, from that moment on, the same pious bride to God she had been before.

The young man had been waiting for the charm to overpower the maiden and thrust her into his arms. He spent several days secure in his hope, during which time the things related with respect to the maiden had come to pass. Already healed, she had returned to the town, and as the youth was crossing the street, he saw her coming from afar and walked toward her. As she came nearer, he could see that her forehead again glowed with its former purity; over her face such a peaceful beauty spread that she seemed to be coming directly from paradise. Perplexed, the youth hung back, having begun, the moment he saw her, to feel ashamed of the sacrilege he had committed. But he defended himself against it, and when she came close by him, he put his trust in the efficacy of the charm, went over to her, took hold of her hand, and said: “Now do you love me?”

Without blushing, the maiden raised her pure eyes, which shone on him like stars. An ineffable loving kindness radiated from them. She pressed his hand and said: “Yes, my brother, I love you. I love your poor soul, and I beg of you, deliver it from evil, and give it into God's keeping, so that it can again be beautiful and pure.”

An invisible hand touched the youth's heart. His eyes brimmed with tears, and he cried: “Oh, must I renounce you forever? But give me a command, I will do naught but what you bid me.”

She smiled like an angel and said to him: “You need not renounce me forever. There will come a day when we will stand before God's throne. Let us prepare ourselves for that day so that we can look Him in the face and endure His judgment. Then I will be your friend. It is but for a short time that we must remain apart.”

Gently he let go her hand, and smiling she walked away. For a while he stood like one under a spell, then he too walked on, locked up his house, and went into the wilderness to serve God. His beauty left him; he grew thin and brown and shared his dwelling with the beasts of the field. And when he grew weary and suffered doubt and could find no other consolation, he would endlessly repeat her words: “It is but for a short time…”

And probably the time seemed long to him; he grew gray and white and stayed on the earth even into his eighty-first year. What are a mere eighty years? The ages flee and are gone, as if on the wings of a bird. Since the days of that youth, one thousand and several hundred years have gone by, and how soon, too, will our names and deeds be forgotten, and no more trace of our life remain than perhaps a short, uncertain legend …

Three Lindens

M
ORE THAN
a hundred years ago, in the green cemetery of the Hospital of the Holy Ghost in Berlin, there stood three splendid old linden trees. They were so big that the branches and boughs of their gigantic crowns had grown tangled into one another, and they arched over the entire cemetery like one enormous roof. The origin of these beautiful lindens, however, lies several centuries further back and is the subject of this story.

In Berlin there lived three brothers, among whom there was such hearty friendship and intimacy as is seldom seen. It so happened one day that the youngest of them went out alone in the evening, saying nothing to his brothers, because he was to meet a young woman in another part of town and go walking with her. But before he came to the appointed place, as he made his way thither immersed in pleasant reveries, out of a dark and lonely spot between two houses he heard a gentle, plaintive cry and something that sounded like a death rattle, which he immediately walked toward; for he thought an animal, or perhaps a child, had met with misfortune and lay there waiting for help. Stepping into the darkness of the secluded place, he saw, with horror, that a man lay there in a pool of his own blood. He bent over the man and asked compassionately what had happened, but there was no reply except for weak moaning and sobbing. The injured man had a knife wound in his heart, and a few moments later passed away in the arms of the one who had come to his aid.

The young man did not know what to do next, and since the slain man showed no further sign of life, the youth, dismayed and disconcerted, proceeded with uncertain footsteps to return to the alley. At that very moment, along came two sentries on duty, and while he was considering whether to call out to them for help or walk away in silence, the sentries, observing his terror-stricken condition, approached him. Seeing the blood on his shoes and coat sleeves, they seized him by force, scarcely listening to what he now was beseechingly trying to tell them. They found the dead man close by, the body already cold; and without delay they took the alleged murderer to prison, where he was put in irons and closely guarded.

The next morning, the judge heard his case. The corpse was brought out; and now, in broad daylight, the youth recognized him as a journeyman blacksmith whose companionship he had occasionally enjoyed. But in his prior testimony he had stated that he neither recognized nor knew anything at all about the slain man. Thus, the suspicion that he had stabbed the man grew stronger. And, during the course of the day, witnesses who knew the dead man came forward and testified that formerly the youth had cultivated a friendship with the blacksmith but they had fallen out on account of a young woman. Though there was but little truth in this, there was still a small grain, which the innocent man fearlessly admitted, asserting his innocence and asking, not for mercy, but for justice.

The judge was persuaded that the youth was the murderer, and soon thought he had sufficient evidence to pass judgment and turn him over to the hangman. The more the prisoner disavowed his prior testimony, claiming to know nothing at all, the more guilty he appeared to be.

In the meantime, one of his brothers—the eldest had gone abroad on business the day before—returned home, and waited and looked for the youngest in vain. When he heard that his brother was in prison, accused of committing a murder which he stubbornly denied, he went immediately to see the judge.

“Your Honor,” he said, “you have imprisoned an innocent man. Release him. I am the murderer, and I do not want an innocent man to suffer in my place. The blacksmith was my enemy; I had been following him, and last night I met up with him when some private urge brought him to that very corner; then I went after him and plunged the dagger into his heart.”

Astonished, the judge listened to this confession and had the brother shackled and closely guarded until such time as the truth should come to light. And so both brothers lay in chains under the same roof, but the youngest knew nothing of what his brother had done for him, and he went on zealously protesting his own innocence.

Two days went by without the discovery of any new evidence, and now the judge was inclined to believe the testimony of the ostensible murderer who had turned himself in. Then the eldest brother returned to Berlin from his business abroad, found no one at home, and learned from the neighbors what had happened to his youngest brother and how his other brother had himself gone before the judge. Then he went out into the night, had the judge awakened, and knelt before him, saying: “Your Honor! Two innocent men are lying in chains suffering for my crime. Neither of my two brothers killed the journeyman blacksmith, but rather it was I who committed the murder. I cannot bear to have others imprisoned in my place, others who have committed no offense whatsoever; and I sorely entreat you to release them and take me, for I am ready to pay for my crime with my life.”

Now the judge was even more astonished and knew no other recourse but to take the third brother into custody as well.

Early the next morning, however, when the warder brought the youngest prisoner his bread, he said as he passed it through the door: “Now, I really would like to know the truth as to which of you three really is the monster.” No matter how the youngest pleaded and begged, the warder would not tell him anything more; but the youth concluded from these words that his brothers had come to offer their lives in place of his. Then he burst into tears and demanded vehemently to be brought before the judge. As he stood in chains before him, he again began to weep and said: “Oh, your Honor, pardon me for having put you off so long! I thought that no one had seen what I'd done, that no one could prove my guilt. But now I realize that justice will have its way, I can struggle no longer and want to confess that indeed it was I who killed the blacksmith, and it is I who must pay for it with my wretched life.”

Then the judge, thinking that he was dreaming, opened his eyes wide in astonishment; his wonder was indescribable, and his heart began to cower in the face of this unusual turn of events. Once again he had the prisoner locked up and put under guard, as he did his two brothers, and for a long time he sat lost in thought. He realized, of course, that only one of the brothers could be the murderer and that the others had offered themselves up to the hangman out of magnanimity and a strange kind of brotherly love.

His meditations came to an end as he understood that the reasoning that generally applied produced no results in this case. Thus, the next day, he left the prisoners in protective custody and went to see the Elector, to whom he related the remarkable story as clearly as possible.

The Elector listened to him with the greatest astonishment, and in the end said: “This is a strange and unusual case! In my heart I believe that none of the three has committed the murder, not even the youngest, whom your sentries apprehended, but rather that all he said in the beginning is the truth. However, since this concerns a crime punishable by death, we cannot simply allow the accused to go free. Thus I will call upon God Himself to pronounce judgment on these three loyal brothers, and to His judgment they must submit.”

And so his plan was carried out. It was springtime, and on a bright warm day the three brothers were taken out to a green plot of ground; and each one was given a strong young linden tree to plant. But they were to plant the lindens not with their roots but with their young green crowns in the earth, so that the roots stood out against the sky; and whose sapling would be the first to perish or wither, he would be regarded as the murderer and judged accordingly.

And so each of the brothers carefully dug a hole for his little tree and planted its branches in the earth. Only a short time had passed when all three of the trees began to bud and set new crowns, a sign that all three brothers were innocent. And the lindens quickly grew tall and stood for many hundreds of years in the cemetery of the Hospital of the Holy Ghost in Berlin.