The Dove in the Eagles Nest | Page 7

of
tools, and the Mother sitting with her book, "pondering these things in
her heart." All around were blocks of wood and carvings in varying
states of progress--some scarcely shaped out, and others in perfect
completion. And the subjects were equally various. Here was an
adoring angel with folded wings, clasped hands, and rapt face; here a
majestic head of an apostle or prophet; here a lovely virgin saint,
seeming to play smilingly with the instrument of her martyrdom; here a
grotesque miserere group, illustrating a fairy tale, or caricaturing a
popular fable here a beauteous festoon of flowers and fruit, emulating
nature in all save colour; and on the work-table itself, growing under
the master's hand, was a long wreath, entirely composed of leaves and
seed-vessels in their quaint and beauteous forms--the heart-shaped
shepherd's purse, the mask-like skull-cap, and the crowned urn of the
henbane. The starred cap of the poppy was actually being shaped under
the tool, copied from a green capsule, surmounted with purple velvety
rays, which, together with its rough and wavy leaf, was held in the hand
of a young maiden who knelt by the table, watching the work with
eager interest.
She was not a beautiful girl--not one of those whose "bright eyes rain
influence, and judge the prize." She was too small, too slight, too
retiring for such a position. If there was something lily-like in her
drooping grace, it was not the queen-lily of the garden that she
resembled, but the retiring lily of the valley--so purely, transparently
white was her skin, scarcely tinted by a roseate blush on the cheek, so
tender and modest the whole effect of her slender figure, and the soft,
downcast, pensive brown eyes, utterly dissimilar in hue from those of
all her friends and kindred, except perhaps the bright, quick ones of her
uncle, the master-carver. Otherwise, his portly form, open visage, and
good-natured stateliness, as well as his furred cap and gold chain, were
thoroughly those of the German burgomaster of the fifteenth century;
but those glittering black eyes had not ceased to betray their French, or
rather Walloon, origin, though for several generations back the family
had been settled at Ulm. Perhaps, too, it was Walloon quickness and
readiness of wit that had made them, so soon as they became affiliated,

so prominent in all the councils of the good free city, and so noted for
excellence in art and learning. Indeed the present head of the family,
Master Gottfried Sorel, was so much esteemed for his learning that he
had once had serious thoughts of terming himself Magister
Gothofredus Oxalicus, and might have carried it out but for the very
decided objections of his wife, Dame Johanna, and his little niece,
Christina, to being dubbed by any such surname.
Master Gottfried had had a scapegrace younger brother named Hugh,
who had scorned both books and tools, had been the plague of the
workshop, and, instead of coming back from his wandering year of
improvement, had joined a band of roving Lanzknechts. No more had
been heard of him for a dozen or fifteen years, when he suddenly
arrived at the paternal mansion at Ulm, half dead with intermittent
fever, and with a young, broken-hearted, and nearly expiring wife, his
spoil in his Italian campaigns. His rude affection had utterly failed to
console her for her desolated home and slaughtered kindred, and it had
so soon turned to brutality that, when brought to comparative peace and
rest in his brother's home, there was nothing left for the poor Italian but
to lie down and die, commending her babe in broken German to
Hausfrau Johanna, and blessing Master Gottfried for his flowing Latin
assurances that the child should be to them even as the little maiden
who was lying in the God's acre upon the hillside
And verily the little Christina had been a precious gift to the bereaved
couple. Her father had no sooner recovered than he returned to his
roving life, and, except for a report that he had been seen among the
retainers of one of the robber barons of the Swabian Alps, nothing had
been heard of him; and Master Gottfried only hoped to be spared the
actual pain and scandal of knowing when his eyes were blinded and his
head swept off at a blow, or when he was tumbled headlong into a moat,
suspended from a tree, or broken on the wheel: a choice of fates that
was sure sooner or later to befall him. Meantime, both the burgomeister
and burgomeisterinn did their utmost to forget that the gentle little girl
was not their own; they set all their hopes and joys on her, and, making
her supply the place at once of son and daughter, they bred her up