Page:Select Popular Tales from the German of Musaeus.djvu/49



HREE miles beyond Dinkelsbuhl, in Swabia, there stood in former times an old castle, which belonged to a powerful knight called Wackerman Uhlfinger, the flower of fist and club ruling knighthood, the terror of the Swabian confederated states, as well as of all travellers and merchants, who had no letter of protection from him. Whenever Wackerman put on his cuirass and helmet, girded his sword on his loins, and buckled his golden spurs on his heels, he was, after the manner of his contemporaries, a rude hard-hearted man, who considered robbery and plunder the prerogative of nobility; he made war against the weak; and, because he himself was lusty and stout, he recognised no other law than the right of the strong. When it was rumoured, “Uhlfinger is approaching—Wackerman comes,” terror spread throughout Swabia; the people fled into the fortified cities, and the watchmen from the battlements of the walls blew their horns, and made known the approach of danger. In that rude age, however, this barbarous heroism did not make his fame so abhorred throughout the land, as would have been the case in our more civilized age.

But this dreaded man, when he had laid aside his armour at home, was as quiet as a lamb, hospitable as an Arabian, a good-tempered head of the family and a tender husband. His wife was a tender and loving woman, well-bred and virtuous; like whom there are very few, even in this day. She loved her husband with inviolable constancy, and attended industriously to her household concerns, never looked out of the lattice in search of unlawful adventures when her husband was away, but covered her distaff with flax as fine as silk, turned her spindle with an active hand, and wove a thread which the Lydian Arachne would have claimed as her own. She was the mother of two daughters, whom she brought up with the greatest care, in virtue and frugality. In this cloister-like seclusion nothing disturbed her happiness but the freebooties of her husband, who enriched himself with unrighteous wealth. In her heart she disapproved of these privileged robberies, and it gave her no joy when he presented her with lordly stuffs, embroidered with gold and silver for rich clothes. “What good is plunder to me,” she often said to herself, “on which hang sobs and tears?” She threw these gifts with secret aversion into her chests, and thought them worthy of no further notice, compassionated the unfortunate ones who