In the Fire of the Forge | Page 3

above the linden
already. It won't do. But I'll see you to-morrow and, please God, with a
lighter heart. We may have good news this very day."
"Of the wares from Venice and Milan?" asked Els anxiously.
"Yes, sweetheart. Two waggon trains will meet at Verona. The first
messenger came from Ingolstadt, the second from Munich, and the one
from Landshut has been here since day before yesterday. Another
should have arrived this morning, but the intense heat yesterday, or
some cause--at any rate there is reason for anxiety. You don't know
what is at stake."
"But peace was proclaimed yesterday," said Els, "and if robber knights
and bandits should venture----But, no! Surely the waggons have a
strong escort."
"The strongest," answered Wolff. "The first wain could not arrive
before to-morrow morning."
"You see!" cried the girl gaily. "Just wait patiently. When you are once
mine I'll teach you not to look on the dark side. O Wolff, why is
everything made so much harder for us than for others? Now this
evening, it would have been so pleasant to go to the ball with you."
"Yet, how often, dearest, I have urged you in vain----" he began, but
she hastily interrupted "Yes, it was certainly no fault of yours, but one
of us must remain with my mother, and Eva----"
"Yesterday she complained to me with tears in her eyes that she would
be forced to go to this dance, which she detested."

"That is the very reason she ought to go," explained Els. "She is
eighteen years old, and has never yet been induced to enter into any of
the pleasures other girls enjoy. When she isn't in the convent she is
always at home, or with Aunt Kunigunde or one of the nuns in the
woods and fields. If she wants to take the veil later, who can prevent it,
but the abbess herself advises that she should have at least a glimpse of
the world before leaving it. Few need it more, it seems to me, than our
Eva."
"Certainly," Wolff assented. "Such a lovely creature! I know no girl
more beautiful in all Nuremberg."
"Oh! you----," said his betrothed bride, shaking her finger at her lover,
but he answered promptly,
"You just told me that you preferred 'good' to 'better,' and so doubtless
'fair' to 'fairer,' and you are beautiful, Els, in person and in soul. As for
Eva, I admire, in pictures of madonnas and angels, those wonderful
saintly eyes with their uplifted gaze and marvellously long lashes, the
slight droop of the little head, and all the other charms; yet I gladly
dispense with them in my heart's darling and future wife. But you,
Els--if our Lord would permit me to fashion out of divine clay a life
companion after my own heart, do you know how she would look?"
"Like me--exactly like Els Ortlieb, of course," replied the girl laughing.
"A correct guess, with all due modesty," Wolff answered gaily. "But
take care that she does not surpass your wishes. For you know, if the
little saint should meet at the dance some handsome fellow whom she
likes better than the garb of a nun, and becomes a good Nuremberg
wife, the excess of angelic virtue will vanish; and if I had a brother--in
serious earnest--I would send him to your Eva."
"And," cried Els, "however quickly her mood changes, it will surely do
her no harm. But as yet she cares nothing about you men. I know her,
and the tears she shed when our father gave her the costly Milan
suckenie, in which she went to the ball, were anything but tears of joy."

[Suckenie--A long garment, fitting the upper part of the body closely
and widening very much below the waist, with openings for the arms.]
"I only wonder," added Wolff, "that you persuaded her to go; the pious
lamb knows how to use her horns fiercely enough."
"Oh, yes," Els assented, as if she knew it by experience; then she
eagerly continued, "She is still just like an April day."
"And therefore," Wolff remarked, "the dance which she began with
tears will end joyously enough. The young knights and nobles will
gather round her like bees about honey. Count von Montfort, my
brother-in-law Siebenburg says, is also at the Town Hall with his
daughter."
"And the comet Cordula was followed, as usual, by a long train of
admirers," said Els. "My father was obliged to give the count lodgings;
it could not be avoided. The Emperor Rudolph had named him to the
Council among those who must be treated with special courtesy. So he
was assigned to us, and the whole suite of apartments in the back of the
house, overlooking the garden, is now filled with Montforts, Montfort
household