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The morning is lovely beyond expression. The
heat of the sun is great; but a gentle wind cools
the air. Birds never sang more loud and clear.
The flowers, too, on the window-sill, and on the
table, rose, geranium, and the delicate crimson
cactus, are all so beautiful, that we think the German
poet right, when he calls the flowers “stars
in the firmament of the earth.” Out of doors all
is quiet. Opposite the window stands the village
schoolhouse. There are two parasite trees, with
their outspread branches nailed against the white
walls, like the wings of culprit kites. There the
rods grow. Under them, on a bench at the door,
sit school-girls; and barefoot urchins in breeches
are spelling out their lessons. The clock strikes

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twelve, and one by one they disappear, and go
into the hive, like bees at the sound of a brass
pan. At the door of the next house sits a poor
woman, knitting in the shade; and in front of her
is an aqueduct pouring its cool, clear water into a
rough wooden trough. A travelling carriage without
horses, stands at the inn-door, and a postilion
in red jacket is talking with a blacksmith, who
wears blue woollen stockings and a leather apron.
Beyond is a stable, and still further a cluster of
houses and the village church. They are repairing
the belfry and the bulbous steeple. A little
farther, over the roofs of the houses, you can see
Saint Wolfgang's Lake. Water so bright and
beautiful hardly flows elsewhere. Green, and
blue, and silver-white run into each other, with
almost imperceptible change, like the streaks on
the sides of a mackerel. And above are the
pinnacles of the mountains; some bald, and rocky,
and cone-shaped, and others bold, and broad, and
dark with pines.

Such was the scene, which Paul Flemming

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beheld from his window a few mornings after Berkley's
departure. The quiet of the place had
soothed him. He had become more calm. His
heart complained less loudly in the holy village
silence, as we are wont to lower our voices when
those around us speak in whispers. He began to
feel at times an interest in the lowly things
around him. The face of the landscape pleased
him, but more than this the face of the poor
woman who sat knitting in the shade. It was a
pale, meek countenance, with more delicacy in
its features than is usual among peasantry. It
wore also an expression of patient suffering. As
he was looking at her, a deformed child came
out of the door and hung upon her knees. She
caressed him affectionately. It was her child;
in whom she beheld her own fair features distorted
and hardly to be recognised, as one sometimes
sees his face reflected from the bowl of a
spoon.

The child's deformity and the mother's tenderness
interested the feelings of Flemming. The

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landlady told him something of the poor woman's
history. She was the widow of a blacksmith,
who had died soon after their marriage. But she
survived to become a mother, just as, in oaks, immediately
after fecundation, the male flower fades
and falls, while the female continues and ripens
into perfect fruit. Alas! her child was deformed.
Yet she looked upon him with eyes of maternal
fondness and pity, loving him still more for his
deformity. And in her heart she said, as the
Mexicans say to their new-born offspring, “Child,
thou art come into the world to suffer. Endure,
and hold thy peace.” Though poor, she was not
entirely destitute; for her husband had left her,
beside the deformed child, a life estate in a tomb
in the churchyard of Saint Gilgen. During the
week she labored for other people, and on Sundays
for herself, by going to church and reading
the Bible. On one of the blank leaves she had
recorded the day of her birth, and that of her
child's, likewise her marriage and her husband's
death. Thus she lived, poor, patient and

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resigned. Her heart was a passion-flower, bearing
within it the crown of thorns and the cross of
Christ. Her ideas of Heaven were few and simple.
She rejected the doctrine that it was a place
of constant activity, and not of repose, and believed,
that, when she at length reached it, she
should work no more, but sit always in a clean
white apron, and sing psalms.

As Flemming sat meditating on these things, he
paid new homage in his heart to the beauty and
excellence of the female character. He thought
of the absent and the dead; and said, with tears
in his eyes;

“Shall I thank God for the green Summer, and
the mild air, and the flowers, and the stars, and
all that makes this world so beautiful, and not for
the good and beautiful beings I have known in it?
Has not their presence been sweeter to me than
flowers? Are they not higher and holier than the
stars? Are they not more to me than all things
else?”

Thus the morning passed away in musings; and

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in the afternoon, when Flemming was preparing to
go down to the lake, as his custom was, a carriage
drew up before the door, and, to his great astonishment,
out jumped Berkley. The first thing he
did was to give the Postmaster, who stood near
the door, a smart cut with his whip. The sufferer
gently expostulated, saying,

“Pray, Sir, don't; I am lame.”

Whereupon Berkley desisted, and began instead
to shake the Postmaster's wife by the shoulders,
and order his dinner in English. But all this
was done so good-naturedly, and with such a rosy,
laughing face, that no offence was taken.

“So you have returned much sooner than you
intended;” said Flemming, after the first friendly
salutations.

“Yes,” replied Berkley; “I got tired of Ischel,—
very tired. I did not find the friends there,
whom I expected. Now I am going back to
Salzburg, and then to Gastein. There I shall
certainly find them. You must go with me.”

Flemming declined the invitation; and proposed

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to Berkley, that he should join him in his excursion
on the lake.

“You shall hear the grand echo of the Falkenstein,”
said he, “and behold the scene of the
Bridal Tragedy; and then we will go on as far as
the village of Saint Wolfgang, which you have
not yet seen, except across the lake.”

“Well, this afternoon I devote to you; for
to-morrow we part once more, and who knows
when we shall meet again?”

They went down to the water's side without
farther delay; and, taking a boat with two oars,
struck across an elbow of the lake towards a barren
rock by the eastern shore, from which a small
white monument shone in the sun.

“That monument,” said one of the boatmen, a
stout young lad in leather breeches, “was built by
a butcher, to the glory of Saint Wolfgang, who
saved him from drowning. He was one day riding
an ox to market along the opposite bank; when
the animal taking fright, sprang into the water, and
swam over to this place, with the butcher on his
back.”

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“And do you think he could have done this,”
asked Berkley; “if Saint Wolfgang had not helped
him?”

“Of course not!” answered leather-breeches;
and the Englishman laughed.

From this point they rowed along under the
shore to a low promontory, upon which stood
another monument, commemorating a more tragical
event.

“This is the place I was speaking of,” said
Flemming, as the boatmen rested on their oars.
“The melancholy and singular event it commemorates
happened more than two centuries ago.
There was a bridal party here upon the ice one
winter; and in the midst of the dance the ice
broke, and the whole merry company were drowned
together, except the fiddlers, who were sitting
on the shore.”

They looked in silence at the monument, and at
the blue quiet water, under which the bones of the
dancers lay buried, hand in hand. The monument
is of stone, painted white, with an

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over-hanging roof to shelter it from storms. In a niche
in front is a small image of the Saviour, in a sitting
posture; and an inscription, upon a marble tablet
below, says that it was placed there by Longinus
Walther and his wife Barbara Juliana von Hainberg;
themselves long since peacefully crumbled
to dust, side by side in some churchyard.

“That was breaking the ice with a vengeance!”
said Berkley, as they pushed out into
the lake again; and ere long they were floating
beneath the mighty precipice of Falkenstein; a
steep wall of rock, crowned with a chapel and a
hermitage, where in days of old lived the holy
Saint Wolfgang. It is now haunted only by an
echo, so distinct and loud, that one might imagine
the ghost of the departed saint to be sitting there,
and repeating the voices from below, not word by
word, but sentence by sentence, as if he were
passing them up to the recording angel.

“Ho! ho! ho!” shouted Berkley; and the
sound seemed to strike the wall of stone, like the
flapping of steel plates; “Ho! ho! ho! How are

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you to-day, Saint Wolfgang! You infernal old
rascal! How is the Frau von Wolfgang!—God
save great George the King! Damn your eyes!
Hold your tongue! Ho! ho! ha! ha! hi!”

And the words were recorded above; and a
voice repeated them with awful distinctness in the
blue depths overhead, and Flemming felt in his
inmost soul the contrast between the holy heavens,
and the mockery of laughter, and the idle words,
which fall back from the sky above us and soil
not its purity.

In half an hour they were at the village of Saint
Wolfgang, threading a narrow street, above which
the roofs of quaint, picturesque old houses almost
met. It led them to a Gothic church; a magnificent
one for a village;—in front of which was
a small court, shut in by Italian-looking houses,
with balconies, and flowers at the windows. Here
a bronze fountain of elaborate workmanship was
playing in the shade. On its summit stood an
image of the patron Saint of the village; and,
running round the under lip of the water-basin

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below, they read this inscription in old German
rhymes;

“I am in the honor of Saint Wolfgang raised.
Abbot Wolfgang Habel of Emensee, he hath
made me for the use and delight of poor pilgrim
wight. Neither gold nor wine hath he; at this
water shall he merry be. In the year of the Lord
fifteen hundred and fifteen, hath the work completed
been. God be praised!”

As they were deciphering the rude characters
of this pious inscription, a village priest came
down a high flight of steps from the parsonage
near the church, and courteously saluted the
strangers. After returning the salutation, the mad
Englishman, without preface, asked him how many
natural children were annually born in the
parish. The question seemed to astonish the
good father, but he answered it civilly, as he did
several other questions, which Flemming thought
rather indiscreet, to say the least.

“You will excuse our curiosity,” said he to the
priest, by way of apology. “We are strangers

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from distant countries. My friend is an Englishman
and I an American.”

Berkley, however, was not so easily silenced.
After a few moments' conversation he broke out
into most audacious Latin, in which the only
words clearly intelligible were;

“Plurimum reverende, in Christo religiosissime,
ac clarissime Domine, necnon et amice observandissime!
Petrus sic est locutus; `Nec argentum
mihi, nec aurum est; sed quod habeo, hoc tibi do;
surge et ambula.' ”

He seemed to be speaking of the fountain.
The priest answered meekly,

“Non intellexi, Domine!”

But Berkley continued with great volubility to
speak of his being a stranger in the land, and all
men being strangers upon earth, and hoping to
meet the good priest hereafter in the kingdom of
Heaven. The priest seemed confounded, and
abashed. Through the mist of a strange pronunciation
he could recognise only here and there a

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familiar word. He took out his snuff-box; and
tried to quote a passage from Saint Paul;

“Ut dixit Sanctus Paulus; qui bene facit—”

Here his memory failed him, or, as the French
say, he was at the end of his Latin, and, stretching
forth his long forefinger, he concluded in
German;

“Yes;—I don't—so clearly remember—
what he did say.”

The Englishman helped him through with a
moral phrase; and then pulling off his hat, exclaimed
very solemnly;

“Vale, domine doctissime et reverendissime!”

And the Dominie, as if pursued by a demon,
made a sudden and precipitate retreat down a
flight of steps into the street.

“There!” said Berkley laughing, “I beat him
at his own weapons. What do you say of my
Latin?”

“I say of it,” replied Flemming, “what Holophernes
said of Sir Nathaniel's; `Priscian a little
scratched; 't will serve.' I think I have heard

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better. But what a whim! I thought I should
have laughed aloud.”

They were still sitting by the bronze fountain
when the priest returned, accompanied by a short
man, with large feet, and a long blue surtout, so
greasy, that it reminded one of Polilla's in the
Spanish play, which was lined with slices of pork.
His countenance was broad and placid, but his blue
eyes gleamed with a wild, mysterious, sorrowful
expression. Flemming thought the Latin contest
was to be renewed, with more powder and heavier
guns. He was mistaken. The stranger saluted
him in German, and said, that, having heard he
was from America, he had come to question him
about that distant country, for which he was on
the point of embarking. There was nothing peculiar
in his manner, nor in the questions he asked,
nor the remarks he made. They were the usual
questions and remarks about cities and climate,
and sailing the sea. At length Flemming asked
him the object of his journey to America. The

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stranger came close up to him, and lowering his
voice, said very solemnly;

“That holy man, Frederick Baraga, missionary
among the Indians at Lacroix, on Lake Superior,
has returned to his father-land, Krain; and I am
chosen by Heaven to go forth as Minister Extraordinary
of Christ, to unite all nations and people
in one church!”

Flemming almost started at the singular earnestness,
with which he uttered these words; and
looked at him attentively, thinking to see the face
of a madman. But the modest, unassuming look
of that placid countenance was unchanged; only
in the eyes burned a mysterious light, as if candles
had been lighted in the brain, to magnify
the daylight there.

“It is truly a high vocation,” said he in reply.
“But are you sure, that this is no hallucination?
Are you certain, that you have been chosen by
Heaven for this great work?”

“I am certain,” replied the German, in a tone
of great calmness and sincerity; “and, if Saint

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Peter and Saint Paul should come down from
Heaven to assure me of it, my faith would be no
stronger than it now is. It has been declared to
me by many signs and wonders. I can no longer
doubt, nor hesitate. I have already heard the
voice of the Spirit, speaking to me at night; and
I know that I am an apostle; and chosen for this
work.”

Such was the calm enthusiasm with which he
spoke, that Flemming could not choose but listen.
He felt interested in this strange being. There
was something awe-inspiring in the spirit that
possessed him. After a short pause he continued;

“If you wish to know who I am, I can tell you
in few words. I think you will not find the story
without interest.”

He then went on to relate the circumstances recorded
in the following chapter.

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