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FINDELKIND By Louise de la Ramee (Ouida)
Works of Louisa de la Ramee ("Ouida")

Findelkind Muriella A Dog of Flanders The Nurnberg Stove A
Provence Rose Two Little Wooden Shoes

FINDELKIND
There was a little boy, a year or two ago, who lived under the shadow
of Martinswand. Most people know, I should suppose, that the
Martinswand is that mountain in the Oberinnthal, where, several
centuries past, brave Kaiser Max lost his footing as he stalked the
chamois, and fell upon a ledge of rock, and stayed there, in mortal peril,
for thirty hours, till he was rescued by the strength and agility of a
Tyrol hunter,--an angel in the guise of a hunter, as the chronicles of the
time prefer to say.
The Martinswand is a grand mountain, being one of the spurs of the

greater Sonnstein, and rises precipitously, looming, massive and lofty,
like a very fortress for giants, where it stands right across that road
which, if you follow it long enough, takes you through Zell to
Landeck,--old, picturesque, poetic Landeck, where Frederick of the
Empty Pockets rhymed his sorrows in ballads to his people,--and so on
by Bludenz into Switzerland itself, by as noble a highway as any
traveller can ever desire to traverse on a summer's day. It is within a
mile of the little burg of Zell, where the people, in the time of their
emperor's peril, came out with torches and bells, and the Host lifted up
by their priest, and all prayed on their knees underneath the steep, gaunt
pile of limestone, that is the same today as it was then, whilst Kaiser
Max is dust; it soars up on one side of this road, very steep and very
majestic, having bare stone at its base, and being all along its summit
crowned with pine woods; and on the other side of the road are a little
stone church, quaint and low, and gray with age, and a stone farmhouse,
and cattle-sheds, and timber-sheds, all of wood that is darkly brown
from time; and beyond these are some of the most beautiful meadows
in the world, full of tall grass and countless flowers, with pools and
little estuaries made by the brimming Inn River that flows by them; and
beyond the river are the glaciers of the Sonnstein and the Selrain and
the wild Arlberg region, and the golden glow of sunset in the west,
most often seen from here through the veil of falling rain.
At this farmhouse, with Martinswand towering above it, and Zell a mile
beyond, there lived, and lives still, a little boy who bears the old
historical name of Findelkind, whose father, Otto Korner, is the last of
a sturdy race of yeomen, who had fought with Hofer and Haspinger,
and had been free men always.
Findelkind came in the middle of seven other children, and was a pretty
boy of nine years, with slenderer limbs and paler cheeks than his rosy
brethren, and tender dreamy eyes that had the look, his mother told him,
of seeking stars in midday: de chercher midi a quatorze heures, as the
French have it. He was a good little lad, and seldom gave any trouble
from disobedience, though he often gave it from forgetfulness. His
father angrily complained that he was always in the clouds,--that is, he
was always dreaming, and so very often would spill the milk out of the
pails, chop his own fingers instead of the wood, and stay watching the
swallows when he was sent to draw water. His brothers and sisters were

always making fun of him; they were sturdier, ruddier, and merrier
children than he was, loved romping and climbing, and nutting,
thrashing the walnut-trees and sliding down snow-drifts, and got into
mischief of a more common and childish sort than Findelkind's freaks