Zigzag Journeys in Northern Lands by Hezekiah Butterworth (books like harry potter TXT) đź“–
- Author: Hezekiah Butterworth
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BELL TOWER OF HEIDELBERG.
At last the moulds were broken, and the bells came out of their husks perfect in form, and shining as stars in Otto’s happy eyes. They were mounted in the great belfry, and for the test-chime Otto had employed the best bell-ringers in the city.
It was a lovely May morning; and, almost crazed with excitement and anxiety, Otto, accompanied by a few chosen friends, waited outside the city for the first notes of the Harmony Chime. At some distance he thought he could better judge of the merits of his work.
At last the first notes were struck, clear, sonorous, and so melodious that his friends cried aloud with delight. But with finger upraised for silence, and eyes full of ecstatic delight, Otto stood like a statue until the last note died away. Then his friends caught him as he fell forward in a swoon,—a swoon so like death that no one thought he would recover.
But it was not death, and he came out of it with a look of serene peace on his face that it had not worn since boyhood. He was married to Gertrude that very day, but every one noticed that the ecstasy which transfigured his face seemed to be drawn more from the sound of the bells than the sweet face beside him.
“Don’t you see a spell is cast on him as soon as they begin to ring?” said one, after the bells had ceased to be a wonder. “If he is walking, he stops short, and if he is working, the work drops and a strange fire comes in his eyes; and I have seen him shudder all over as it he had an ague.”
In good truth, the bells seemed to have drawn a portion of Otto’s life to them. When the incursions of the war forced him to fly from Ghent with his family, his regrets were not for his injured property, but that he could not hear the bells.
He was absent two years, and when he returned it was to find the cathedral almost a ruin, and the bells gone no one knew where. From that moment a settled melancholy took possession of Otto. He made no attempt to retrieve his losses; in fact, he gave up work altogether, and would sit all day with his eyes fixed on the ruined belfry.
People said he was melancholy mad, and I suppose it was the truth; but he was mad with a kind of gentle patience very sad to see. His mother had died during their exile, and now his wife, unable with all her love to rouse him from his torpor, faded slowly away. He did not notice her sickness, and his poor numbed brain seemed imperfectly to comprehend her death. But he followed her to the grave, and turning from it moved slowly down the city, passed the door of his old home without looking at it, and went out of the city gates.
After that he was seen in every city in Europe at different intervals. Charitable people gave him alms, but he never begged. He would enter a town, take his station near a church and wait until the bells rang for matins or vespers, then take up his staff and, sighing deeply, move off. People noting the wistful look in his eyes would ask him what he wanted.
“I am seeking,—I am seeking,” was his only reply; and those were almost the only words any one ever heard from him, and he muttered them often to himself. Years rolled over the head of the wanderer, but still his slow march from town to town continued. His hair had grown white, and his strength had failed him so much that he only tottered instead of walked, but still that wistful seeking look was in his eyes.
He heard the old bells on the Rhine in his wanderings. He lingered long near the belfries of the sweetest voices; but their melodious tongues only spoke to him of his lost hope.
He left the river of sweet bells, and made a pilgrimage to England. It was the days of cathedrals in their beauty and glory, and here he again heard the tones that he loved, but which failed to realize his own ideal.
When a person fails to fulfil his ideal, his whole life seems a failure,—like something glorious and beautiful one meets and loses, and never again finds.
“Be true to the dreams of thy youth,” says a German author; and every soul is unhappy until the dreams of youth prove true.
One glorious evening in midsummer Otto was crossing a river in Ireland. The kind-hearted boatman had been moved by the old man’s imploring gestures to cross him. “He’s mighty nigh his end, anyhow,” he muttered, looking at the feeble movements of the old pilgrim as he stumbled to his seat.
Suddenly through the still evening air came the distant sound of a melodious chime. At the first note the pilgrim leaped to his feet and threw up his arms.
“O my God,” he cried, “found at last!”
“It’s the bells of the Convent,” said the wondering man, not understanding Otto’s words spoken in a foreign tongue, but answering his gesture. “They was brought from somewhere in Holland when they were fighting there. Moighty fine bells they are, anyhow. But he isn’t listening to me.”
No, he heard nothing but the bells. He merely whispered, “Come back to me after so many years,—O love of my soul, O thought of my life! Peal on, for your voices tell me of Paradise.”
The last note floated through the air, and as it died away something else soared aloft forever, free from the clouds and struggles of life.
BRESLAU.
His ideal was fulfilled now. Otto lay dead, his face full of peace and joy, for the weary quest of his crazy brain was over, and the Harmony Chime had called him to his eternal rest.
And, past that change of life that men call Death, we may well believe that he heard in the ascension to the celestial atmosphere the ringing of welcoming bells more beautiful than the Harmony Chime.
“I will relate another story,” said Mr. Beal. “It is like the Harmony Chime, but has a sadder ending.”
THE BELL-FOUNDER OF BRESLAU.There once lived in Breslau a famous bell-founder, the fame of whose skill caused his bells to be placed in many German towers. According to the ballad of Wilhelm Müller,—
So full and clear and pure:
He poured his faith and love in,
Of that all men were sure.
But of all bells that ever
He cast, was one the crown,
That was the bell for sinners
At Breslau in the town.”
He had an ambition to cast one bell that would surpass all others in purity of tone, and that should render his own name immortal.
He was required to cast a bell for the Magdalen Church tower of that city of noble churches,—Breslau. He felt that this was opportunity for his masterpiece. All of his thoughts centred on the Magdalen bell.
After a long period of preparation, his metals were arranged for use. The form was walled up and made steady; the melting of the metals in the great bell-kettle had begun.
The old bell-founder had two faults which had grown upon him; a love of ale and a fiery temper.
While the metals were heating in the kettle, he said to his fire-watch, a little boy,—
“Tend the kettle for a moment; I am overwrought: I must go over to the inn, and take my ale, and nerve me for the casting.
“But, boy,” he added, “touch not the stopple; if you do, you shall rue it. That bell is my life, I have put all I have learned in life into it. If any man were to touch that stopple, I would strike him dead.”
FINISHING THE BELL.
AT THE INN.
The boy had an over-sensitive, nervous temperament. He was easily excited, and was subject to impulses that he could not easily control.
The command that he should not touch the stopple, under the dreadful penalty, strongly affected his mind, and made him wish to do the very thing he had been forbidden.
He watched the metal in the great kettle. It bubbled, billowed, and ran to and fro. In the composition of the glowing mass he knew that his master had put his heart and soul.
It would be a bold thing to touch the stopple,—adventurous. His hand began to move towards it.
The evil impulse grew, and his hand moved on.
He touched the stopple. The impulse was a wild passion now,—he turned it.
Then his mind grew dark—he was filled with horror. He ran to his master.
“I have turned the stopple; I could not help it,” he said. “The Devil tempted me!”
The old bell-founder clasped his hands and looked upward in agony. Then his temper flashed over him. He seized his knife, and stabbed the boy to the heart.
He rushed back to the foundry, hoping to stay the stream. He found the metal whole; the turning of the stopple had not caused the metal to flow.
The boy lay dead on the ground.
THE DAY OF EXECUTION.
The old bell-founder knew the consequences of his act, and he did not seek to escape them. He cast the bell; then he went to the magistrates, and said,—
“My work is done; but I am a murderer. Do with me as you will.”
The trial was short; it greatly excited the city. The judges could not do otherwise than sentence him to death. But as he was penitent, he was promised that on the day of his execution he should receive the offices and consolations of the Church.
“You are good,” he said. “But grant me another favor. My bells will delight many ears when I am gone; my soul is in them; grant me another favor.”
“Name it,” said the judges.
“That I may hear the sound of my new bell before I die.”
The judges consulted, and answered,—
“It shall toll for your execution.”
The fatal day came.
Toll, toll, toll!
There was a sadness in the tone of the bell that touched every heart in Breslau. The bell seemed human.
Toll, toll, toll!
How melodious! how perfect! how beautiful! The very air seemed charmed! The years would come and go, and this bell would be the tongue of Breslau!
The old man came forth. He had forgotten his fate in listening to the bell. The heavy clang was so melodious that it filled his heart with joy.
“That is it! that is it; my heart, my life!” he said. “I know all the metals; I made the voice! Ring on, ring on forever! Ring in holy days, and happy festivals, and joy eternal to Breslau.”
Toll, toll, toll!
On passed the white-haired man, listening still to the call of the bell that summoned him to death.
He bowed his head at the place of execution to meet the stroke just as the last tone of the bell
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