At one time he seemed to feel the pangs of hunger, to faint with thirst. Was no one coming? None could come. He thought of those who perished of thirst, thought how the saintly Elizabeth, the noble lady of Thüringen, visited the lowliest hovels, bearing hope to and succoring the sick. Her pious deeds inspired his thoughts; he remembered how she would console those in pain, bind up their wounds, and though her stern lord and master stormed with rage, bear sustenance to the starving. He called to mind the legend how her husband followed her as she bore a well-stocked basket to the poor, and confronting her demanded what lay within. How in her great dread she replied, "Flowers I have culled in the garden." How when he snatched aside the cloth to see whether her words were true, wine, bread, and all the basket held miraculously changed to roses.
Such was the picture of the saint; so his weary eyes imagined her standing by his bed in the little room in a strange land. He raised his head and gazed into her gentle eyes. All round seemed bright and rosy-hued. The flowers expanded, and now he smelt the perfume of apple-blossoms; he saw an apple tree in bloom, its branches waving above him. It was the tree the children had planted in the flower-pot together.
And the drooping leaves fanned his burning brow and cooled his parched lips; they were as wine and bread on his breast. He felt calm and serene, and composed himself to sleep.
"Now I will sleep, and it will bring relief. To-morrow I shall be well; to-morrow I will rise. I planted it in love; I see it now in heavenly radiance." And he sunk to rest.
On the morrow the third day the storm abated, and his neighbors came to see old Anthony. Prone he lay, clasping in death his old nightcap in his hands.
Where were the tears he had shed, where the pearls? They were still in the
nightcap. True pearls change not. The old thoughts, the tears of long ago yes, they remained in the nightcap of the old pepper-fogey.
Covet not the old nightcap. It would make your brow burn, your pulse beat fast. It brings strange dreams. The first to put it on was to know this. It was fifty years later that the Burgomaster, who lived in luxury with wife and children, put it on. His dreams were of unhappy love, ruin, and starvation.
"Phew! how the nightcap burns," said he, and tore it off, and pearl after pearl fell from it to the ground. "Good gracious!" cried the Burgomaster, "I must be feverish; how they sparkle before my eyes." They were tears, wept half a century before by old Anthony of Eisenach.
To all who thereafter put on the nightcap came agitating visions and dreams. His own history was changed to that of Anthony, till it became quite a story. There may be many such stories; we, however, leave others to tell them.
We have told the first, and our last words shall be, "Don't wish for the old bachelor's nightcap."
THE GARDEN OF PARADISE. THE FOUR WINDS
THEREHis grandmother had told him, when he was quite a little boy, and beginning to go to school, that each flower in the Garden of the World was the most delicious cake, and had its stamina filled with luscious wine; on one stood written historical facts, on another geography or arithmetical tables and so one need only eat cakes to learn one's lesson, and the more one ate, the more history, geography, and arithmetic one acquired.
He used to believe this. But when he grew a little older, and had learned more and become wiser, he began to understand that there must be better delights than these in the Garden of the World.
He was now seventeen, and nothing ran in his head but this garden.
One day he went to take a walk in the forest, all alone, as he best liked to be.
As evening came on, the sky grew overcast, and there came on such a shower, that it seemed as if the heavens had become one vast sluice that kept pouring down water; besides this, it was darker than it usually is, even at night, except at the bottom of the deepest well. At every step, he either slipped on the wet grass, or stumbled over some bare rock. Everything was dripping wet, and the poor prince had not a dry thread about him. He was obliged to climb over huge blocks of stone, where water was running down from the thick moss. He was near fainting away, when he heard a singular rushing noise, and perceived a large cavern, lighted up by a huge fire, piled up in the middle, and fit to roast a whole deer. And this, indeed, was being done. A very fine deer, with its branching horns, was placed on a spit, and slowly turned round between the felled trunks of two pine-trees. An elderly woman, as bony and masculine as though she were a man in female attire, sat by the fire, and kept throwing in one log of wood after another.
"Come nearer," said she, "and sit by the fire, and dry your clothes."
"There is a great draught here," observed the prince, sitting down on the ground.
"It will be much worse when my sons come home," returned the woman. "You are in the Cavern of the Winds. My sons are the Four Winds of Heaven can you understand that?"