When one pricks one's finger tears brim to the eyelids, and oftentimes old Anthony shed hot and bitter tears, that glistened like pearls. The largest pearls would fall on the coverlet with so sad a sound that it seemed his heart's strings were breaking.
Brightly would they glisten and illumine pictures of his childhood, never fading memories.
As he dried his tears on the nightcap, the scenes would vanish, but not the source of his tears: that lay deep in his heart.
The scenes did not follow the natural sequence of life; the saddest and most joyful together, but the last had the deepest shadows.
The beech forests of Denmark are admitted by all to be fine, but fairer still to the eyes of old Anthony were those around the Wartburg. More majestic and lofty the aged trees around the baronial castle, where the foliage of creepers trailed over the stone buttresses. Sweeter there the perfume of apple-blossoms. Vividly did he call them to mind, and a shining tear rolled down his cheek, wherein he saw two children, a boy and a girl, at play. The boy, rosy-cheeked and curly-haired, with clear blue eyes, was himself, the little Anthony. The girl had brown eyes, dark hair, and a merry, bright expression. She was the Burgomaster's daughter, Molly. The children were playing with an apple, which they shook to hear the pips rattle inside. They shared the apple and ate it up, all but one pip, which the little girl proposed they should plant in the earth.
"Then you will see something you'd never think of," said she; "an apple tree will grow, but not all at once." So they busied themselves planting it in a flower-pot. He made a hole, and she laid the pip in, and both heaped on the earth.
"Mind," said she, "you don't dig up the pip to see if it has struck root. Indeed, you mustn't. I did so only twice because I knew no better, and the flowers withered." Anthony kept the flower-pot, and every day the winter through watched it, but nothing was to be seen but the black earth. Then came the spring and warm sunshine, and two little twigs peeped forth from the pot. "Oh, how lovely!" cried Anthony, "they are for Molly and me."
Soon came another shoot; whom could that represent? Then another and yet another, and every week it grew, till it became a big plant. All this was mirrored in a single tear. Brush it away as he might, the source dwelled deep in his bosom.
Not far from Eisenach is a ridge of rocky heights, treeless and bare, known as the Venusberg.
Here was the abode of Venus, goddess of heathen mythology, known also to every child round about as Lady Holle. She it was who lured the knightly Tannhäuser,
the minstrel of the Wartburg, to her mountain.
Little Molly and Anthony would ofttimes stand at the foot of the mountain, and one day she asked him, "Do you dare knock and say, 'Lady Holle! Lady Holle! open the door. Tannhäuser is here'?" But Anthony was afraid, only his playmate ventured.
"Lady Holle! Lady Holle!" she cried, loud and clear, but the rest so low and indistinct that he believed that she did not utter it. She looked so winning and was of such high spirit. When they were at play with other children in the garden, Molly alone of them all would dare to kiss him, just because he was unwilling and resisted. "I dare kiss him," she would cry, and throw her arms round his neck, and the boy would submit to her embrace, for how charming, how saucy she was, to be sure!
Lady Holle, so people said, was beautiful, but her beauty was that of a wicked temptress. The noblest type of beauty was that of the devout Elizabeth, tutelary saint of the land, the pious lady whose gracious actions were known near and far. Her picture hangs in the chapel lit up by silver lamps, but she and Molly bore no resemblance to one another.
The apple tree they had planted grew year by year till it was so large it had to be planted anew in the open air, where the dew fell and the sun shed his warm rays; and it flourished and grew hardy, and could bear the wintry blast, blossoming in the springtide as if for very joy. In the autumn it bore two apples one for Molly, one for Anthony. Rapidly grew the tree, and with it grew Molly, fresh as one of its blossoms; but not for long was Anthony fated to watch this fair flower.
All things here on earth are subject to change.
Molly's father left the old home and went afar. Nowadays, by the railroad, it takes but some few hours, but in those times over a day and night, to travel so far east as to Weimar.
Both Molly and Anthony cried, and she told him he was more to her than all the fine folk in Weimar could be.
A year passed by two, three years and only two letters came: the first sent by a letter-carrier, the other by a traveler a long and devious way by town and hamlet.
How often had he and Molly together read the story of Tristan and Isolde, and bethought them the name Tristan meant "conceived in tribulation." But with Anthony no such thought could be harbored as "She has forsaken me."
True, Isolde did not forsake Tristan; buried side by side in the little churchyard, the lime trees met and entwined over their graves. Anthony loved this story, sad though it was.