Seldwyla Folks: Three Singular Tales

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Gottfried Keller. Seldwyla Folks: Three Singular Tales

Seldwyla Folks: Three Singular Tales

Table of Contents

THE THREE DECENT COMBMAKERS

THE THREE DECENT COMBMAKERS

DIETEGEN

DIETEGEN

ROMEO AND JULIET OF THE VILLAGE

ROMEO AND JULIET OF THE VILLAGE

FOOTNOTE:

THE END

Отрывок из книги

Gottfried Keller

Published by Good Press, 2019

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It was one of the better peculiarities of the Seldwyla folk that they were averse to wed unattractive or unamiable women just for the sake of a somewhat larger dowry. There was no very great temptation anyway, for wealthy heiresses there were none in their town, either pretty or homely ones, and thus they at least maintained their sturdy and manly independence even by disdaining the smaller mouthfuls, and preferred to unite themselves rather with goodlooking and merry girls, and thus lead for a few years with them at any rate a happy life. Hence it was not hard for the Suabian, spying about for a suitable partner, to find his way into the good graces of a virtuous maiden. She dwelt in the same street, and in conversation with old women he had soon ascertained that she possessed as her own undoubted property a mortgage of seven hundred florins. This maiden was Zues Buenzlin, the twenty-eight-year-old daughter of a washerwoman. She lived with her mother, but could freely dispose of this legacy from her deceased father. This valuable bit of paper she kept in a highly varnished trunk. There, too, she had the accumulated interest money, her baptismal certificate, her testimonial of confirmation, and a painted and gilt Easter egg; in addition to all this she preserved there half a dozen silver spoons, the Lord's Prayer printed in gold letters upon transparent glass, although she believed the material to be human skin, a cherry stone into which was carved the Passion of Christ, and a small box of ivory, lined with red satin, and in which were concealed a tiny mirror and a silver thimble; there was also in it another cherry stone in which you could hear clattering a diminutive set of ninepins, a nutshell in which a madonna became visible behind glass, a silver heart, in a hollow of which was a scent bottle, and a candy box fashioned out of dried lemon peel, on the cover of which was painted a strawberry, and in which there might be discovered a golden pin displayed on a couch of cotton wool representing a forget-me-not, and a locket showing on the inside a monument woven out of hair; lastly, a bundle of age-yellowed papers with recipes, secrets, and so forth; also a small flask of Cologne water, another holding stomach drops, a box of musk, another with marten excrements, and a small basket woven out of odoriferous grasses, another of beads and cloves, and then a small book bound in sky-blue silk and entitled "Golden Life Rules for the Maiden as Betrothed, Wife and Mother"; and a dream book, a letter writer, five or six love letters, and a lancet for use to let blood. This last piece came from a barber and assistant surgeon to whom she had once been engaged, and since she was a naturally skillful and very sensible person she had learned from her fiancé how to open a vein, to put on leeches, and similar things, and had even been able to shave him herself. But alas, he had proved an unworthy object of her affections, with whom she might easily have risked her temporal and heavenly welfare, and thus she had with saddened but wise resolution broken the engagement. Gifts were returned on both sides, with the exception of the lancet. This she kept in pawn as pledge for one florin and eight and forty stuyvers, which sum she on one occasion had lent him in cash. The unworthy one claimed, however, that she had no right to it since she had given him the money on the occasion of a ball, in order to defray joint expenses, and he added that she had eaten twice as much as himself. Thus it happened that he kept the florin and forty-eight stuyvers, while she kept the surgical appliance, with which Zues operated extensively among her female acquaintance and earned many a penny. But every time she used the instrument she could not help mentioning the low habits of him who had once stood so close to her and who had almost become her partner for life.

If, however, this neat soap gallery proclaimed her exact working tactics and her passion for toil, a row of books, arranged in orderly fashion on the window ledge, did honor to her religious and disciplined mind. These books were of a miscellaneous description, and she read and reread them studiously on Sundays. She still possessed all her school books, never having lost a single one of them. She also still carried in her head all her little stock of scholastic learning acquired at school; she knew the whole catechism by heart, as well as the contents of the grammar, of the arithmetic, of her geography book, of the collection of biblical stories, and of the various readers and spellers. Then she also owned some of the pretty tales by Christoph Schmid and the latter's short novelettes, with handsome verses at the end, at least a half dozen of sundry treasuries of poetry and gatherings of popular fairy tales, a number of almanacs full of specimens of homely wisdom and practical experience, several precise and remarkable prophecies of tremendous events to come, a guide for laying the cards, a book of edification for every day of the year intended for the use of thoughtful virgins, and an old and slightly damaged copy of Schiller's "The Robbers," which she slowly perused again and again, as often as she feared she might begin to forget this stirring drama. And each time she read it, the play appealed to her sentimental heart anew, so that she made constant references to it and commented in a highly praiseworthy manner on the various personages presented in it. And really all there was in these books she also retained in her memory, and understood exceedingly well how to speak about them and about many other things as well. When she felt cheerful and contented and did not have to hasten her labors too greatly, speech flowed continuously from her lips, and everything under the sun she knew how to judge and to put into its proper category. Young and old, high and low, learned and unlearned, they all were compelled to listen and to receive instruction from her. First, she would hear everybody out, meanwhile smilingly and sensibly straightening out the case in her wise little head. And then, having now perceived whither all these plaints or fears tended, she would solve the more or less knotty problem at a stroke. Sometimes she would speak so unctuously and elaborately on matters that irreverent criticasters had compared her to learned blind persons who have never had sight of the world and whose sole solace it is to hear themselves talk.

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