The Nürnberg Stove | Page 8

I
will beg the people we owe money to to wait; they are all neighbors,
they will be patient. But sell Hirschvogel!--oh, never! never! never!
Give the florins back to the vile man. Tell him it would be like selling
the shroud out of mother's coffin, or the golden curls off Ermengilda's
head! Oh, father, dear father! do hear me, for pity's sake!"
Strehla was moved by the boy's anguish. He loved his children, though

he was often weary of them, and their pain was pain to him. But
besides emotion, and stronger than emotion, was the anger that August
roused in him: he hated and despised himself for the barter of the
heirloom of his race, and every word of the child stung him with a
stinging sense of shame.
And he spoke in his wrath rather than in his sorrow.
"You are a little fool," he said, harshly, as they had never heard him
speak. "You rave like a play-actor. Get up and go to bed. The stove is
sold. There is no more to be said. Children like you have nothing to do
with such matters. The stove is sold, and goes to Munich to-morrow.
What is it to you? Be thankful I can get bread for you. Get on your legs,
I say, and go to bed."
Strehla took up the jug of ale as he paused, and drained it slowly as a
man who had no cares.
August sprang to his feet and threw his hair back off his face; the blood
rushed into his cheeks, making them scarlet; his great soft eyes flamed
alight with furious passion.
"You dare not!" he cried, aloud, "you dare not sell it, I say! It is not
yours alone; it is ours----"
Strehla flung the emptied jug on the bricks with a force that shivered it
to atoms, and, rising to his feet, struck his son a blow that felled him to
the floor. It was the first time in all his life that he had ever raised his
hand against any one of his children.
Then he took the oil-lamp that stood at his elbow and stumbled off to
his own chamber with a cloud before his eyes.
"What has happened?" said August, a little while later, as he opened his
eyes and saw Dorothea weeping above him on the wolf-skin before the
stove. He had been struck backward, and his head had fallen on the
hard bricks where the wolf-skin did not reach. He sat up a moment,
with his face bent upon his hands.

"I remember now," he said, very low, under his breath.
Dorothea showered kisses on him, while her tears fell like rain.
"But, oh, dear, how could you speak so to father?" she murmured. "It
was very wrong."
"No, I was right," said August, and his little mouth, that hitherto had
only curled in laughter, curved downward with a fixed and bitter
seriousness. "How dare he? How dare he?" he muttered, with his head
sunk in his hands. "It is not his alone. It belongs to us all. It is as much
yours and mine as it is his."
Dorothea could only sob in answer. She was too frightened to speak.
The authority of their parents in the house had never in her
remembrance been questioned.
"Are you hurt by the fall, dear August?" she murmured, at length, for
he looked to her so pale and strange.
"Yes--no. I do not know. What does it matter?"
He sat up upon the wolf-skin with passionate pain upon his face; all his
soul was in rebellion, and he was only a child and was powerless.
"It is a sin; it is a theft; it is an infamy," he said, slowly, his eyes
fastened on the gilded feet of Hirschvogel.
"Oh, August, do not say such things of father!" sobbed his sister.
"Whatever he does, we ought to think it right."
[Illustration: "IT IS A SIN, IT IS A THEFT, IT IS AN INFAMY," HE
SAID]
August laughed aloud.
"Is it right that he should spend his money in drink?--that he should let
orders lie unexecuted?--that he should do his work so ill that no one
cares to employ him?--that he should live on grandfather's charity, and

then dare sell a thing that is ours every whit as much as it is his? To sell
Hirschvogel! Oh, dear God! I would sooner sell my soul!"
"August!" cried Dorothea, with piteous entreaty. He terrified her, she
could not recognize her little, gay, gentle brother in those fierce and
blasphemous words.
August laughed aloud again; then all at once his laughter broke down
into bitterest weeping. He threw himself forward on the stove, covering
it with kisses, and sobbing as though his heart would burst from his
bosom.
What could