In The Blue Pike | Page 5

young man was
carrying on a love affair with his daughter, he had summoned him
before a court of justice for a breach of the law which forbade minors
to betroth themselves without parental consent. The magistrates
sentenced Lienhard to five years' exile from the city but, through the
Emperor's mediation, he was spared the punishment. Old Harsdorffer
afterward succeeded in keeping the suitor away from his daughter a
long time, but finally relinquished his opposition.
"The devil came soon enough and broke his stiff neck," added Cyriax,

on whom the vagabond's story had had the same effect as a red rag
upon a bull. Spite of the old slanderer's mutilated tongue, invectives
flowed fast enough from his lips when he thought of young Frau
Groland's father. If the Groland outside resembled his father-in-law, he
would like to drink him a pledge that should burn like the plague and
ruin.
He snatched a flask from his pocket as he spoke, and after a long pull
and a still longer "A-ah!" he stammered:
"I've been obliged to bid farewell to my tongue, yet it feels as if it were
sticking in my throat like the dry sole of a shoe. That's what comes
from talking in this dog-day heat."
He looked into the empty bottle and was about to send Kuni out to fill
it again. In turning to do so he saw her pale face, wan with suffering,
but which now glowed with a happy light that lent it a strange beauty.
How large her blue eyes were! When he had picked her up in Spain she
was already a cripple and in sore distress. But Groland probably knew
what he was about when he released her. She must have been a pretty
creature enough at that time, and he knew that before her fall she was
considered one of the most skilful rope-dancers.
An elderly woman with a boy, whose blindness helped her to arouse
compassion, was crouching by Raban's side, and had just been greeted
by Kuni as an old acquaintance. They had journeyed from land to land
in Loni's famous troupe, and as Raban handed Cyriax his own bottle, he
turned from the dreaming girl, whose services he no longer needed, and
whispered to the blind boy's mother--who among the people of her own
calling still went by the name of Dancing Gundel--the question whether
yonder ailing cripple had once had any good looks, and what position
she had held among rope-dancers.
The little gray-haired woman looked up with sparkling eyes. Under the
name of "Phyllis" she had earned, ere her limbs were stiffened by age,
great applause by her dainty egg-dance and all sorts of feats with the
balancing pole. The manager of the band had finally given her the
position of crier to support herself and her blind boy. This had made

her voice so hollow and hoarse that it was difficult to understand her as,
with fervid eloquence, vainly striving to be heard by absent-minded
Kuni, she began: "She surpassed even Maravella the Spaniard. And her
feats at Augsburg during the Reichstag--I tell you, Cyriax, when she
ascended the rope to the belfry, with the pole and without--"
"I've just heard of that from another quarter," he interrupted. "What I
want to know is whether she pleased the eyes of men."
"What's that to you?" interposed red-haired Gitta jealously, trying to
draw him away from Gundel by the chain.
Raban laughed heartily, and lame Jungel, chuckling, rapped on the
floor with his right crutch, exclaiming:
"Good for you!"
Kuni was accustomed to such outbursts of merriment. They were
almost always awakened by some trifle, and this time she did not even
hear the laughing. But Cyriax struck his wife so rudely on the hand that
she jerked furiously at the chain and, with a muttered oath, blew on the
bruised spot. Meanwhile Gundel was telling the group how many
distinguished gentlemen had formerly paid court to Kuni. She was as
agile as a squirrel. Her pretty little face, with its sparkling blue eyes,
attracted the men as bacon draws mice. Then, pleased to have listeners,
she related how the girl had lured florins and zecchins from the purse of
many a wealthy ecclesiastic. She might have been as rich as the
Fuggers if she hadn't met with the accident and had understood how to
keep what she earned. But she could not hold on to her gold. She had
flung it away like useless rubbish. So long as she possessed anything
there had been no want in Loni's company. She, Gundel, had caught her
arm more than once when she was going to fling Hungarian ducats,
instead of coppers, to good-for-nothing beggars. She had often urged
her, too, to think of old age, but Kuni--never cared