The Headsman - James Fenimore Cooper
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"I know not if this were legal!" interrupted the bailiff, quickly. "What
is your opinion, Her von Willading? Can any in Berne escape their
heritable duties, any more than hereditary privileges can be assumed? This
is a grave question; innovation leads to innovation, and our venerable
laws and our sacred usages must be preserved, if we would avert the curse
of change!"
"Balthazar hath well observed that a female cannot exercise the
executioner's office."
"True, but a female may bring forth them that can. This is a cunning
question for the doctors-in-law, and it must be examined; of all damnable
offences, Heaven keep me from that of a wish for change. If change is ever
to follow, why establish? Change is the unpardonable sin in politics,
Signor Grimaldi; since that which is often changed becomes valueless in
time, even if it be coin.
"The mother hath something she would utter, said the Genoese, whose quick
but observant eye had been watching the workings of the countenances of
the repudiated family, while the bailiff was digressing in his usual
prolix manner on things in general, and who detected the throes of feeling
which heaved the bosom of the respectable Marguerite, in a way to announce
a speedy birth to her thoughts.
"Hast thou aught to urge, good woman?" demanded Peterchen, who was well
enough disposed to hear both sides in all cases of controversy, unless
they happened to touch the supremacy of the great canton. "To speak the
truth, the reasons of Jacques Colis are plausible and witty, and are
likely to weigh heavy against thee."
The color slowly disappeared from the brow of the mother, and she turned
such a look of fondness and protection on her child, as spoke a complete
condensation of all her feelings in the engrossing, sentiment of a
mother's love.
"Have I aught to urge!" slowly repeated Marguerite, looking steadily about
her at the curious and unfeeling crowd which, bent on the indulgence of
its appetite for novelty, and excited by its prejudices, still pressed
upon the halberds of the officers--"Has a mother aught to say in defence
of her injured and insulted child! Why hast thou not also asked, Herr
Hofmeister, if I am human? We come of proscribed races, I know, Balthazar
and I, but like thee, proud bailiff, and the privileged at thy side, we
come too of God! The judgment and power of men have crushed us from the
beginning, and we are used to the world's scorn and to the world's
injustice!"
"Say not so, good woman, for no more is required than the law sanctions.
Thou art now talking against thine own interests, and I interrupt thee in
pure mercy. 'Twould be scandalous in me to sit here and listen to one that
hath bespattered the law with an evil tongue."
"I know naught of the subtleties of thy laws, but well do I know their
cruelty and wrongs, as respects me and mine! All others come into the
world with hope, but we have been crushed from the beginning. That surely
cannot be just which destroys hope. Even the sinner need not despair,
through the mercy of the Son of God! but we, that have come into the world
under thy laws, have little before us in life but shame and the scorn of
men!"
"Nay, thou quite mistakest the matter, dame; these privileges were first
bestowed on thy families in reward for good services, I make no doubt, and
it was long accounted profitable to be of this office."
"I do not say that in a darker age, when oppression stalked over the land,
and the best were barbarous as the worst to-day, some of those of whom we
are born may not have been fierce and cruel enough to take upon themselves
this office with good will; but I deny that any short of Him who holds the
universe in his hand, and who controls an endless future to compensate for
the evils of the present time, has the power to say to the son, that he
shall be the heritor of the father's wrongs!"
"How! dost question the doctrine of descents? We shall next hear thee
dispute the rights of the buergerschaft!"
"I know nothing, Herr Bailiff, of the nice distinctions of your rights in
the city, and wish to utter naught for or against. But an entire life of
contumely and bitterness is apt to become a life of thoughtfulness and
care; and I see sufficient difference between the preservation of
privileges fairly earned, though even these may and do bring with them
abuses hard to be borne, and the unmerited oppression of the offspring for
the ancestors' faults. There is little of that justice which savors of
Heaven in this, and the time will come when a fearful return will be made
for wrongs so sore!"
"Concern for thy pretty daughter, good Marguerite, causes thee to speak
strongly."
"Is not the daughter of a headsman and a headsman's wife their offspring,
as much as the fair maiden who sits near thee is the child of the noble at
her side? Am I to love her less, that she is despised by a cruel world?
Had I not the same suffering at the birth, the same joy in the infant
smile, the same hope in the childish promise, and the same trembling for
her fate when I consented to trust her happiness to another, as she that
bore that more fortunate but not fairer maiden hath had in her? Hath God
created two natures--two yearnings for the mother--two longings for our
children's weal--those of the rich and honored, and those of the crushed
and despised?"
"Go to, good Marguerite; thou puttest the matter altogether in a manner
that is unusual. Are our reverenced usages nothing--our solemn edicts
--our city's rule--and our resolution to govern and that fairly and with
effect?"
"I fear that these are stronger than the right, and likely to endure when
the tears of the oppressed are exhausted, when they and their fates shall
be forgotten!"
"Thy child is fair and modest," observed the Signor Grimaldi, "and will
yet find a youth who will more than atone for this injury. He that has
rejected her was not worthy of her faith."
Marguerite turned her look, which had been glowing with awakened feeling,
on her pale and still motionless daughter. The expression of her softened,
and she folded her child to her bosom, as the dove shelters its young.
All her aroused feelings appeared to dissolve in the sentiment of love.
"My child is fair, Herr Peter;" she continued, without adverting to the
interruption; "but better than fair, she is good! Christine is gentle and
dutiful, and not for a world would she bruise the spirit of another as
hers has been this day bruised. Humbled as we are, and despised of men,
bailiff, we have our thoughts, and our wishes, and our hopes, and memory,
and all the other feelings of those that are more fortunate; and when I
have racked my brain to reason on the justice of a fate which has
condemned all of my race to have little other communion with their kind
but that of blood, and when bitterness has swollen at my heart, ay, near
to bursting, and I have been ready to curse Providence and die, this mild,
affectionate girl hath been near to quench the fire that consumed me, and
to tighten the cords of life, until her love and innocence have left me
willing to live even under a heavier load than this I bear. Thou art of an
honored race, bailiff, and canst little understand most of our suffering;
but thou art a man, and shouldst know what it is to be wounded through
another, and that one who is dearer to thee than thine own flesh."
"Thy words are strong, good Marguerite," again interrupted the bailiff,
who felt an uneasiness, of which he would very gladly be rid. "Himmel! Who
can like any thing better than his own flesh? Besides, thou shouldst
remember that I am a bachelor, and bachelors are apt, naturally, to feel
more for their own flesh than for that of others. Stand aside, and let the
procession pass, that we may go to the banquet, which waits. If Jacques
Colis will none of thy girl, I hove not the power to make him. Double the
dowry, good woman, and thou shalt have a choice of husbands, in spite of
the axe and the sword that are in thy escutcheon. Let the halberdiers make
way for those honest people there who, at least, are functionaries of the
law, and are to be protected as well as ourselves."
The crowd obeyed, yielding readily to the advance of the officers, and, in
a few minutes, the useless attendants of the village nuptials, and the
train of Hymen, slunk away, sensible of the ridicule that, in a double
degree, attaches itself to folly when it fails of effecting even its own
absurdities.
Chapter XIX.
The weeping blood in woman's breast
Was never known to thee;
Nor the balm that drops on wounds of woe
From woman's pitying e'e.
Burns.
A large portion of the curious followed the disconcerted mummers from the
square, while others hastened to break their fasts at the several places
selected for this important feature in the business of the day. Most of
those who had been on the estrade now left it, and, in a few minutes, the
living carpet of heads around the little area in front of the bailiff was
reduced to a few hundreds of those whose better feelings were stronger
than their self indulgence. Perhaps this distribution of the multitude is
about in the proportion that is usually found in those cases in which
selfishness draws in one direction, while feeling or sympathy with the
wronged pulls in another, among all masses of human beings that are
congregated as spectators of some general and indifferent exhibition of
interests in which they have no near personal concern.
The bailiff and his immediate friends, the prisoners, and the family of
the headsman, with a sufficient number of the guards, were among those who
remained. The bustling Peterchen had lost some of his desire to take his
place at the banquet, in the difficulties of the question which had
arisen, and in the certainty that nothing material, in the way of
gastronomy, would be attempted until he appeared. We should do injustice
to his heart, did we not add, also, that he had troublesome qualms of
conscience, which intuitively admonished him that the world had dealt
hardly with the family of Balthazar. There remained the party of Maso,
too, to dispose of, and his character of an upright as well as of a firm
magistrate to maintain. As the crowd diminished, however, he and those
near him descended from their high places, and mixed with the few who
occupied the still guarded area in front of the stage.
Balthazar had not stirred from his riveted posture near the table of the
notary, for he shrunk from encountering, in the company of his wife and
daughter, the insults to which he should be exposed now his character was
known, by mingling with the crowd, and he waited for a favorable moment to
withdraw unseen. Marguerite still stood folding Christine to her bosom, as
if jealous of farther injury to her beloved. The recreant bridegroom had
taken the earliest opportunity to disappear, and was seen no more in Vevev
during the remainder of the revels.
Peterchen cast a hurried glance at this group, as his foot reached the
ground, and then turning towards the thief-takers he made a sign for them
to advance with their prisoners.
"Thy evil tongue has balked one of the most engaging rites of this day's
festival, knave;" observed the bailiff, addressing Pippo with a certain
magisterial reproof in his voice. "I should do well to send thee to Berne,
to serve a month among those who sweep the city streets, as a punishment
for thy raven throat. What, in the name of all thy Roman saints and idols,
hadst thou against the happiness of these honest people, that thou must
come, in this unseemly manner, to destroy it?"
"Naught but the love of truth, eccellenza, and a just horror of the man of
blood."
"That thou and all like thee should have a horror of the ministers of the
law, I can understand; and it is more than probable that thy dislike will
extend to me, for I am about to pronounce a just judgment on thee and thy
fellows for disturbing the harmony of the day, and especially for having
been guilty of the enormous crime of an outrage on our agents."
"Couldst thou grant me a moment's leave?" asked the Genoese in his ear.
"An hour, noble Gaetano, if thou wilt."
The two then conversed apart, for a minute or more. During the brief
dialogue, the Signor Grimaldi occasionally looked at the quiet and
apparently contrite Maso, and stretched his arm towards the Leman, in a
way to give the observers an inkling of his subject. The countenance of
the Herr Hofmeister changed from official sternness to an expression of
decent concern as he listened, and ere long it took a decidedly forgiving
laxity of muscle. When the other had done speaking, he bowed a ready
assent to what he had just heard, and returned to the prisoners.
"As I have just observed," he resumed, "it is my duty now to pronounce
finally on these men and their conduct. Firstly they are strangers, and as
such are not only ignorant of our laws, but entitled to our hospitality;
next, they have been punished sufficiently for the original offence, by
being abridged of the day's sports; and as to the crime committed against
ourselves, in the person of our agents, it is freely forgiven, for
forgiveness is a generous quality, and becomes a paternal form of rule.
Depart therefore, of God's name! all of ye to a man, and remember
henceforth to be discreet. Signore, and you, Herr Baron, shall we to the
banquet?"
The two old friends had already moved onward, in close and earnest
discourse, and the bailiff was obliged to seek out another companion. None
offered, at the moment, but Sigismund, who had stood, since quitting the
stage, in an attitude of complete indecision and helplessness,
notwithstanding his great physical energy and his usual moral readiness to
act. Taking the arm of the young soldier, with the disregard of ceremony
that denotes a sense of condescension, the bailiff drew him away from the
spot, heedless himself of the other's reluctance, and without observing
that, in consequence of the general desertion, for few were disposed to
indulge their compassion unless it were in company with the honored and
noble, Adelheid was left absolutely alone with the family of Balthazar.
"This office of a headsman, Herr Sigismund," commenced the unobservant
Peterchen, too full of his own opinions, and much too sensible of his
right to be delivered of them in the presence of his junior and inferior,
to note the youth's trouble, "is at the best but a disgusting affair;
though we, of station and authority, are obliged prudently to appear to
deem it otherwise before the people, in our own interest. Thou hast had
occasion to remark often, in the discipline of thy military followers,
that a false coloring must be put upon things, lest they who are very
necessary to the state should not think the state quite so necessary to
them. What is thy opinion, Captain Sigismund, as a man who has yet his
hopes and his views on the softer sex, of this act of Jacques Colis?--Is
it conduct to be approved of, or to be condemned?"
"I deem him a heartless, mercenary, miscreant!"
The suppressed energy with which these unexpected words were uttered
caused the bailiff to stop and to look up in his companion's face, as if
to ask its reason. But there all was already calm, for the young man had
too long been accustomed to drill its expression, when the sensitive sore
of his origin was probed, as so frequently happened, to permit the
momentary weakness long to maintain its ascendency.
"Ay, this is the opinion of thy years;" resumed Peterchen. "Thou art at a
time of life when we esteem a pretty face and a mellow eye of more account
even than gold. But we put on our interested spectacles after thirty, and
seldom see any thing very admirable, that is not at the same time very
lucrative. Here is Melchior de Willading's daughter, now, a woman to set a
city in a blaze, for she hath wit, and lands, and beauty, besides good
blood;--what, for instance, is thy opinion of her merit?"
"That she is deserving of all the happiness that every human excellence
ought to confer!"
"Hum--thou art nearer to thirty than I had thought thee, Herr Sigismund!
But touching this Balthazar, thou art not to believe, on account of the
few words of grace which fell from me, that my aversion for the wretch is
less than thine, or than that of any other honest man; but it would be
unseemly and unwise in a bailiff to desert the last minister of the law's
decrees in the face of the public. There are feelings and sentiments that
are natural to us all, and among them are to be classed respect and honor
for the well and nobly born," (the discourse was in German,) "and hatred
and contempt for those who are condemned of men. These are feelings which
belong to human nature itself, and God forbid that I, a man already past
the age of romance, should really entertain any sentiments that are not
strictly human."
"Do they not rather belong to abuses--to our prejudices?"
"The difference is not material, in a practical view, young man. That
which is fairly bred into the mind, by discipline and habit, gets to be
stronger than instinct, or even than one of the senses. Let there be an
unseemly sight, or a foul smell near thee, and thou hast only to turn thy
eyes, or hold thy nose, to be rid of it; but I could never find the means
to lessen a prejudice that was once fairly seated in the mind. Thou mayest
look whither thou wilt, and shut out the unsavory odors of the imagination
by all the means thou canst invent, but if a man is, in truth, condemned
of opinion, he might as well make his appeal to God at once for justice,
as to any mercy he is likely to receive from men. This much have I learned
in my experience as a public functionary."
"I should hope that these are not the legal dogmas of our ancient canton,"
returned the youth, conquering his feelings, though it cost him a severe
effort.
"As far from it as Basle is from Coire. We hold no such discreditable
doctrines. I challenge the world to show a state that possesses a fairer
set of maxims than ourselves, and we even endeavor to make our practice
chime in with our opinions, whenever it can be done in safety. No in these
particulars, Berne is a paragon of a community, and as rarely says one
thing and does another, as any government you shall see. What I now tell
thee, young man, is said to thee in the familiarity of a fete, as thou
know'st, in which there have been some fooleries, to open confidence and
to loosen the tongue. We openly and loudly profess great truth and
equality before the law saving the city's rights, and take holy, heavenly,
upright justice for our guide in all matters of theory. Himmel! If thou
would'st have thy affair decided on principle, go before the councils, or
the magistracy of the canton, and thou shalt hear such wisdom, and witness
such keen-sightedness into chicanery, as would have honored Solomon
himself!"
"And notwithstanding this, prejudice is a general master."
"How canst thou have it otherwise? Is not a man a man? Will he not lean as
he has been weighed upon?--does not the tree grow in the way the twig is
bent? No, while I adore justice, Herr Sigismund, as becomes a bailiff, I
confess to both prejudice and partiality, mentally considered. Now, yonder
maiden, the pretty Christine, lost some of her grace in my eyes, as no
doubt she did in thine, when the truth came to be known that she was
Balthazar's child. The girl is fair and modest and winning in her way; but
there is something--I cannot tell thee what--but a certain damnable
something--a taint--a color--a hue--a--a--a--that showed her origin the
instant I heard who was her parent--was it not so with thee?"
"When her origin was proved, but not previously."
"Ay, of a certainty; I mean not otherwise. But a thing is not seen any the
worse because it is seen thoroughly, although it may be seen falsely when
there are false covers to conceal its ugliness. Particularity is necessary
to philosophy. Ignorance is a mask to conceal the little details that are
necessary to knowledge. Your Moor might pass for a Christian in a mask,
but strip him of his covering and the true shade of the skin is seen.
Didst thou not observe, for instance, in all that touches feminine grace
and perfection, the manifest difference between the daughter of Melchior
de Willading and the daughter of this Balthazar?"
"There was the difference between a maiden of most honored and happy
extraction and a maiden most miserably condemned!"
"Nay, the Demoiselle de Willading is the fairer."
"Nature has certainly been most bountiful to the heiress of Willading,
Herr Bailiff, who is scarcely less attractive for her female grace and
goodness, than she is fortunate in the accidents of birth and condition."
"I knew thou couldst not, in secret, be of a different mind from the rest
of men!" exclaimed Peterchen in triumph, for he, took the warmth of his
companion's manner to be a reluctant and half-concealed assent to his own
proposition. Here the discourse ended: for, the earnest conference between
Melchior and the Signor Grimaldi having terminated, the bailiff hastened
to join his more important guests, and Sigismund was released from an
examination that had harrowed every feeling of his soul, while he even
despised the besotted loquacity of the man who had been the instrument of
his torture.
The separation of Adelheid from her father was anticipated and previously
provided for; since the men were expected to resort to the banquet at this
hour. She had continued near Christine and her mother, therefore, without
attracting any unusual attention to her movements, even in those who were
the objects of her sympathy, a feeling that was so natural in one of her
years and sex. A male attendant, in the livery of her father's house
remained near her person, a protector who certain to insure not only her
safety in the thronged streets of the town, but to exact from those whose
faculties were beginning to yield to the excesses of the occasion the
testimonials of respect that were due to her station. It was under these
circumstances, then, that the more honored, and, to the eyes of the
uninstructed, the happier of these maidens, approached the other, when
curiosity was so far appeased as to have left the family of Balthazar
nearly alone in the centre of the square.
"Is there no friendly roof near, to which thou canst withdraw?" asked the
heiress of Willading of the mother of the pallid and scarcely conscious
Christine; "thou wouldst do better to seek some shelter and privacy for
thy unoffending and much injured child. If any that belong to me can be of
service, I pray that thou wilt command as freely as if they were followers
of thine own."
Marguerite had never before spoken with a female of a rank superior to the
ordinary classes. The ample means of both her father's and her husband's
family had furnished all that was necessary to the improvement of the mind
of one in her station, and perhaps she had been the gainer, in mere
deportment, by having been greatly excluded, by their prejudices, from
association with females of her own condition. As is often seen among
those who have the thoughts without the conventional usages of a better
caste in life, she was slightly tinctured with an exhibition of what might
be termed an exaggerated manner, while at the same time it was perfectly
free from vulgarity or coarseness. The gentle accents of Adelheid fell on
her ear soothingly, and she gazed long and earnestly at the beautiful
speaker without a reply.
"Who and what art thou that canst think a headman's child may receive an
insult that is unmerited, and who offerest the service of thy menials, as
if the very vassal would not refuse his master's bidding in our behalf!"
"I am Adelheid de Willading, the daughter of the baron of that name, and
one much disposed to temper this cruel blow to the feelings of poor
Christine. Suffer that my people seek the means to convey thy child to
some other place!"
Marguerite folded her daughter still closer to her bosom, passing a hand
across her brow, as if to recall some half-obscured idea.
"I have heard of thee, lady.--'Tis said that thou art kind to the wronged,
and of excellent dispositions towards the unhappy--that thy father's
castle is an honored and hospitable abode, which those who enter rarely
love to quit. But hast thou well weighed the consequences of this
liberality towards a race, that is and has been proscribed of men, from
generation to generation--from him who first lent himself to his bloody
office, with a cruel heart and a greedy desire for gold, to him whose
courage is scarcely equal to the disgusting duty? Hast thou bethought thee
of this, or hast thou yielded, heedlessly, to a sudden and youthful
impulse?"
"Of all this have I thought," said Adelheid, eagerly; "whatever may be the
injustice of others, thou hast none to fear from me."
Marguerite yielded the form of her child to the support of her father's
arm, and drew nearer, with a gaze of earnest and pleased interest, to the
blushing but still composed Adelheid. She took the hand of the latter,
and, with a look of recognition and intelligence, said slowly, as if
communing with herself, rather than speaking to another----