Prison E-Book

mario smith

• Herausgeber: MariSo
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

There was a lot of shouting about the Black Forest stories from Auerbach. It would not have been necessary. Auerbach is not a Black Forester, he is a Jew. A Jew will never become a Black Forester, even if his ancestors had moved to Feldberg or Todtnau and settled there immediately after the destruction of Jerusalem. That is why Auerbach may at least describe external occurrences in the Black Forest; but if he wants to talk about the thinking and feeling of the Black Forest, he must take this from his imagination, which, however, has no Black Forest nature, but that of a Jewish writer. It seems to him that Auerbach was praised and read a great deal especially where one simply wanted entertaining reading and found the daily fodder, the romantic love affairs in the Black Forest peasant skirts, new and piquant; Also, many a trombone player on the literature market may have praised Master Auerbach because he has the merit of not being a Christian.

 

Leseprobe

PRISON

by

MARIO SMITH

Copyright © 2023 MARIO SMITH

Contents

PRISON

THE BOY

IN THE TOWER

PATRICK COMES OUT

PATRICK WANDERS AWAY

A DAY IN PRISON

THE LAST YEARS OF PATRICK

THE BOY

A dull, rainy September morning looks dull enough into the valleys of the Black Forest, the foothills are smoking profusely, heavy gray rain clouds are paying a visit to the higher mountains, and if not now and then a shot or the crowing of a raven from the higher, dark fir trees, what descended to the forest stream, one could easily think that all life in the forest and on the mountains had fallen silent, out of amazement at the visit that, after a long drought and severe heat, the clouds in the sky made again to the otherwise friendly mountains.

In contrast, things are not so quiet in the valley.

Murmuring and cheering, roaring and raging in wild joy because of the newly rejuvenated strength, the torrent runs and leaps and tumbles over hill and dale through the valley with its green meadows, proud fruit trees, isolated huts and stately new houses, on which moss-covered thatched roofs, age-grey shingles and browned boards, there is little left to discover. A little bell rings monotonously and out of tune through the valley, and a funeral procession is just moving past the screeching sawmill towards a churchyard whose white walls and dark crosses look down from a steep hill.

The train is very small; In front a chubby boy with black eyes and red cheeks proudly wears a simple cross and one does not know whether he prided himself more on the short leather pants and the brand-new Manchester smock or on his temporary dignity as a cross-bearer. It is followed by a very plain coffin, carried by four men, whose modest suits and indifferent faces proclaim that life is little given them, and that death is not the worst thing that could happen to them. At the back comes the priest, a tall young man with blond hair and mildly friendly features that seem to be filled with a special pain; His servants walk beside him, and close behind them, barefoot and in the most miserable attire, a boy whose red-weeping eyes indicate the mourner and who is led by the hand of a stately, comfortable-looking peasant. Two to three men and a dozen women, whose sulphur-yellow round straw hats, dark-colored heavy "Juppen" and rosaries remind of the "good old days", complete the escort.

People are praying, and their prayer might be called monotonous and mechanical, were it not for one voice above all others to be heard loud and strong. It is that of the stout sun landlady, Elsbeth, who is far and wide in the odor of piety and herself boasts that her incessant praying and going to church has brought her into a particularly great reputation with our Lord God; she was able to pray someone to their feet or under the ground, and five men had found out from her where Barthel got the cider and where the devil got godforsaken souls. Because God is just and she is Elsbeth, that's why the sun is also one of the stateliest inns in the whole forest, and if God gives her the sixth husband and maybe a child after all, then a new one, three stories high, will have to be built next to the old sun Inn to be put down, like none to be found in Friberg or Villingen. Prayer helps everything.

As if heaven wanted to make up for the missing tears of the corpse escort, a fine rain falls from the gray clouds, the train moves faster on the slippery path up the hill, the mountaineering makes the praying women dumb except for Elsbeth and everyone is happy, how they finally see the coffin standing next to a freshly dug grave in the churchyard.

The young priest seems to pay the least attention to the bad weather, performs the usual liturgies with the usual devotion and dignity, speaks the otherwise so mechanical miserere and de profundis with special emotion and does not seem to notice that the coffin that is on the being lowered into the grave with rustling ropes, do not sink deep enough.

As the grave is being blessed, he casts another deeply moved look at the coffin, the mourning boy begins to sob again and whimpers silently to himself, the holy water feather moves from one hand to the other, the people gather under their awnings and go away, on the way home each excuses the shortcomings and exalts the virtues of the dead.

"Oh, that people would only show the living the same forbearance and much love as they do to the dead!" said the young priest to the stout lady who had invited him under her umbrella, and Elsbeth began to enumerate all the good deeds she had done over a number of years to the deceased Brigitte who had just been buried.

The buried? Things won't go that quickly, and in order to convince ourselves of this, we can only return to the churchyard for a moment, and at the same time we want to give a kind of funeral speech here.

This time the gravedigger did not spit on his hands and grab a spade after the ceremony, as he usually does, but first pulled the ropes away from under the coffin, cursing, and then he jumped into the grave and kicked around on the coffin, because the grave was crooked and bad hewn and the man had to increase the weight of his body by jumping until the coffin was pressed down to the required depth.

He got there half shattered, the gravedigger gave poor Brigitte the last of the many kicks that she shared in life as a farewell to the world, the mourning boy looked on tearlessly and frightened and stayed standing until his mother's grave was almost completely filled.

He might have a dark feeling that the whole earth was now one big graveyard for him, and perhaps it would be best if he were to lie down in his mother's quiet, cool pit.

He found few people, poor Hannesle, to whom he could put his heart and soul in his life, he stood at his mother's grave as the poorest and most abandoned bastard in the valley and stood until the gravedigger finally chased him out of there too !

Brigitte died young and suffering, was one of those women who bring children into the world who have to be given their own surnames, and today her short story can sadly justifiably be called an everyday story .

Her father was a poor brushmaker who, with his itinerant life, found very little time to concern himself with religion or the upbringing of his child, and left both to his wife. A brush-binder without a thirsty liver is said to be a curiosity; We leave the correctness of this statement undecided and content ourselves with saying that Brigitte's father did not want to disgrace his craft in any respect and never had the opportunity to tear himself out of the inherited poverty with his family for sheer drinking.

He died prematurely, was hardly missed in his household and his wife, Marianne, believed that it was necessary to pray at least one rosary every evening for his poor soul, prayed the same with great conscientiousness up to the last time of her walk on earth and the Brigitte had to pray diligently. Marianne was not in bad shape in terms of time and forever.

As far as the time was concerned, cares and sorrows had indeed destroyed the original grace and beauty of her face, and everything in her room lay under and over one another, as untidy and dirty as many a junk Jew, but she had no share in a hut and by no means called the worst room in it your property? Didn't she own a small herb garden, two quarters of an acre, where not low oats and potatoes the size of peas thrive as up on the high wall, but rather the gifts of God from the Rhine plain? Wasn't Marianne a skilful and diligent weaver of straw, and some weeks she earned more than she needed?

If only her husband hadn't been a scoundrel, the people would have made it to something, because she was rightly regarded everywhere as a "righteous person" and she was serious about religion, at least the strictest pastor could find little fault with her apart from the excessive tenderness for the pretty little Brigitte.

Perhaps because the wife could not love her husband and was always glad when he left, she clung to her only child with all her heart and found in him her best comfort on earth.

She initiated "Brigittle" into all the high secrets and beautiful teachings of religion, often showed him in her own person an active Catholic, which is the main thing of all Catholic educators, and her drunken husband gave her enough opportunity to endure and endure, but she never had the heart to urge her little daughter to do something with seriousness and severity, and she bitterly regretted this unfortunate weakness later on.

Brigitte heard God's will and saw it obeyed, but was accustomed to living according to her own will through her mother and was therefore as spoiled as one might be spoiled in a valley where old costumes and old beliefs together with the old customs and customs are still alive prevailed and there was not much intercourse with the rest of the world.

At the age of 16, Brigitte was widely known as the "beautiful devil" and not without reason. The clothes, cut according to age-old fashion, disfigured the well-built figure, but a snow-white forehead peeked out from under the yellow straw hat, the fiery black eyes went very well with the mischievous snub nose, and the healthy red of the cheeks seemed to be the reflection of the fresh lips of the friendly mouth , which aroused all sorts of worldly thoughts to the proudest lads in the valley.

But the people also knew that beautiful foreheads develop dark wrinkles, eyes flash like hellish fire, cheeks turn pale, fresh lips twist convulsively, and coarse and nasty speech could flow out of delicate mouths, and whoever knew best, that was the aging mother and if the boys, who meant it honestly, didn't want to like Brigitte's delicate white hands, Marianne didn't like Brigitte as a whole any more.

As long as she was still a child, it was said: "She has too hot a blood, is equally bad and immediately good again, blissfully takes after her father!"—but since then Brigittle has become bigger and coarser, more stubborn and more arrogant every day and only gave good words to the mother, when she said yes to everything as an obedient maid after difficult dealings in big things, as she had done for years in small things, then she wailed: "God, what kind of cross do I have on me and where did I deserve this?"

She added a rosary for her daughter's recovery to the rosary for her brush binder, but if the rosary was not more fruitful for that one than the rosary for this one, then the desolate man of the pious praying woman did not fare too well in the afterlife .

If it was not lucky for Brigitte to lose her mother, it was hardly a misfortune for her that after countless sufferings and a protracted illness she was taken by God without having to experience the worst with her daughter, which at least was the case at the time could give for a good mother in the Black Forest.

Marianne left the people with a good memory of her, a melancholic one of her fate and no debts in earthly possessions, but no fortune either. The brush binder preferred to "brush" and make secret debts to brush, and his wife paid the creditors honestly. The latter had never been an excellent housekeeper when it came to the art of saving, Brigitte's upbringing also cost money and this money was not reimbursed because Brigitte did not like to work and least of all in the fields, finally after her mother's death the doctor and pharmacist brought mile long bills; the grave also devours some money, although the dead make their way into eternity without skin irons and food money and so it came about that the expelled person could no longer call anything her property apart from her "G'has" and her caretaker could not do any difficult calculations in embarrassment.

In recent years she has talked a lot about leaving the "old Franconian" costume, mother and home entirely and looking for a noble place to live and probably a man in Villingen or even in the large, magnificent Freiburg, you can only get one in the city little is given, one has to work and learn and understand many things that the country people of the mountains do not need.

Learning had not been Brigitte's thing even at school, she feared serious harm from work for her lovely face and delicate limbs, pride prevented her from seeking a job with a court farmer, ignorance and laziness above all held her back back home and a large, childless family gave her shelter, board and clothes and promised her wonderful things for the future.

However, the "beautiful devil" hardly lasted with this cousin from Jorgentag to Johanni, because cousin Bibiane also had a lot of a "devil" about him and where two such creatures come together, peace, joy and love may never thrive and people live like the damned in hell.

Brigitte was lazy and imperious, vain and short-tempered, knew little about housekeeping and nothing at all about saving, and under such circumstances the best of women, let alone a moody, quarrelsome, hard-hearted and, in small things, kinky Bibiane, would not have got on well with her.

The two lived like dogs and cats, but Brigitte was lazy and proud, the cousin didn't demand any hard work from her and she would have liked to eat light and good bread at a relative's a thousand times rather than at a stranger's table, and besides, the cousin was rich, childless and made promises in good hours, so that those who lusted after great things made their mouths water and their vain heart trembled with joy.

Bibiane, on the other hand, had to have someone with whom she could quarrel and at the same time someone whom she could love. Because she was already very close to Swabian age, she thought of the possibility of still having to die an old maid and with horror of a lonely joyless one Age when no one would take care of her and love her.

Under such circumstances, the two of them would have gradually settled into each other and gotten used to each other, at least they would not have thought of separating so soon, if only Michel had not come to the valley.

This Michel, an unattractive, tall, spindly fellow, whose old face gave the lie to his baptismal certificate by at least 15 years, was the son of a rich court farmer, Fesenfranz, who drove to Zurich every week in a huge wagon full of grain and stayed there in the Adler as in the Lilie in Villingen or in the Hirschen in Donaueschingen threw around Brabant and five livres as if they were beans.

"If Michel did like old Fesenfranz, then with all his wealth it would all go downhill and Mathaei would be the last one!" it was rightly said in the bar, because the father liked to drink and play, the son drank little, did not play at all and apart from money only loved women.

He no longer wanted to live with his father and continue the grain trade, but invest his fortune in an inn, first of all becoming really acquainted with everything that an innkeeper needs, and that in the cheapest possible way.

So Michel came to his cousin, the Barenwirt on the Steig, in the valley and met Brigitte, because the way to the church led her past the Baren and because the aunt often had cramps and then each time needed a bottle or two from the Rothen, so Brigitte also made the long way to the bear during the week, saw Michel's attraction to her, heard his flattering, snake-wise words, thought of his money, of all the labor pains of being unmarried and it didn't take long before you could look after the spindly all-world service candidate standing in the twilight under the nut trees with a certain brush maker's daughter.

Marianne had kept strictly to her household honour, and more than one person, who showed a desire to sneak around the little daughter and whom she did not trust, told heartily where the carpenter had made the hole, was on this single point, despite all the wailing and rage of the lovely ones, cutting faces daughter remained implacable and unshaken and had calmly replied a hundred times:

"If I'm soon under the ground, you can do what you like, because I no longer have any responsibility, but as long as I live, you'll stay wise as far as men are concerned, I know that!"—

Bibiane resembled the brush-maker in that she too would not tolerate any acquaintance of Brigitte, but not insofar as the reason for this was different, namely not fear of dishonor, but jealousy.

The old maid could go for hours on end unlovingly about the entire bearded sex, but in her heart there was still the hope of being able to bear the hard yoke of marriage like most of her fellow sisters and the thought that the very young, anemic but pretty baby would still come before her getting under the hood drove her mad.

It goes without saying that the suspicious girl soon found out why Brigitte had been so keen on going to the Baren for some time and when the latter once believed that Bibiane was fainting from sheer cramps and with which Michel was already calculating how much a week before the next Michaelmas day, the real Bibiane jumped like a tiger between the happy couple and attacked the bride. Hitherto Michel had come up with fine words and promises, dreadful oaths and wonderful plans, but otherwise nothing else, but this time he had to understand and did it.

Brigitte did not cross the doorstep of the aunt again, went with Michel to the Baren, which just needed a waitress, stayed there as such, and the next day Michel brought her her clothes and a magnificent silk shawl with it.

Less than a year later, Michel suddenly disappeared from the area and, if one wanted to believe the Barenwirt, lived in some Welsh town, at least 150 hours away, but Brigitte threshed in the barn of a valley farmer and hurried in the evening to the childless wife of a miserable frame maker , where Hannesle stretches out his little arms to her and after a while babbles her sweet mother's name.

Very soon after Michel's hasty departure, the Barenwirt sent away his waitress, who, seduced and deserted, wanted to crawl to the back of Brigitte and beg for admission from the wealthy cousin, but the virtuous Bibiane pushed her out of the house with indignant fists. The unfortunate ran back and forth by the stream for a while, then she was taken in by the frame maker's wife for the sake of God's mercy, and after the birth of Hannesle she had to be happy to find a job with a farmer, where she was given hard, miserable fare had to do the hardest work with almost no further wages.

Hannesle stayed in the frame maker's little house and thrived physically, his mother stayed with the hard farmer and endured the unspeakable; According to an ancient custom, which has only recently disappeared from most of the Black Forest valleys, as a mother without a husband she had to wear a special decoration and was so despised and ridiculed that she hardly dared to go to church and was in deep sorrow settled in her heart, who took away all trust and all love for people from her heart.

Man is truly unhappy only when religion has no life in him. Despite her external misfortune, Brigitte was also one of the unhappiest people on the inside, because seven years after the birth of Hannesle she proved that all misery did not improve her and led her back to God.

A year earlier the frame maker's good wife had died, Brigitte was persuaded to move in as housekeeper to the already gray widower and committed the second misstep that broke her heart. Some cheap-minded people, especially males, had let grass grow over the years over Brigitte's first misstep, and if Hannesle hadn't been jumping around in the valley as a two-legged reminder of tall Michel, perhaps some poor woodcutter or someone else would have both eyes squeezed and reached for the "beautiful devil" to bring the same home.

The cheap just considered how innocent some unmarried women are because there are no children, the spiritual masters considered what abominable life of sin is often led under the name of married life and would have gladly allowed Brigitte half the honesty by a husband, especially since the "beautiful devil" did not become a true Christian through all the hardships, but on the other hand did not become completely dishonorable and slovenly like some of her companions in fate, especially considered the menfolk to be nothing but Michels and shied away from worse than poison, fire and sword.

The women, above all the singles and among them those who had the most reason for lenient, mild judgment, had shown the fallen the greatest contempt and lack of love and stubbornly belittled them the more deeply, the higher they placed themselves in the wanted to put people's eyes.

Brigitte's second misstep aroused the rejoicing of the worst of women's tongues, for everything they had incessantly said against the fallen sister for years, despite their obvious shyness of men, now seemed justified.

It is true that everyone knew that the frame maker wanted to marry Brigitte, and that the pastor himself had been in favor of it, but the community would not have tolerated it at all, because the bridal couple could not bring together the legal fortune. It was well known that Brigitte did everything to persuade the cousin Bibiane to pay out a few doubloons of the share of the inheritance and in this case would have gladly renounced all the inheritance, as the cousin, full of malicious joy and inhumanity, mocked the marriage-seeking woman with scorn and mockery dismissed.

The frame maker himself kept claiming that the misfortune had happened and that he was ready at any hour because of the pity of the community towards him, who really needed a wife, and towards the old friend of his wife, whom he wanted to honor but was not allowed to to take Brigitte, especially since he always regarded and treated Hannesle as his own flesh and blood. But the community remained inexorable, the loveless tongues never rested, Brigitte had to leave the house of the frame maker, but he handed Hannesle over to the community because he could not use a child without a wife and wanted no other housekeeper apart from Brigitte.

The congregation should have taken over the boy and auctioned it off to the fewest takers, as has become the custom in Christian countries, at least in areas where Christian love has not yet progressed to orphanages and foundling homes; but Brigitte was not without honor and unmarried, employed the boy with poor people and paid a small, but for her almost unaffordable board money, which she saved on her own body.

Tall Michel never sent her a penny, she never sued him at the office, and would hardly have accepted anything from him if he had also offered her a significant compensation of his own free will.

Her strength was visibly dwindling, her pale face and the look of melancholy and longing for death that settled on the once so friendly smiling mouth proclaimed sufficiently that a deep grief was gnawing at her heart and her coughing that an incurable, creeping disease was afflicting her body rummage through.

Every day weaker, more miserable and more withdrawn, she finally could no longer work, the employer drove her away, she was not allowed to look for accommodation with the frame maker and had to stagger from one house to another every week and later be carried to be fed at the expense of the community will.

Her earthly purgatory had lasted six years, now her earthly hell began and the wanderings from house to house seem to have been the stations of suffering on which she was truly led back to God.

Children pointed at her with their fingers, girls and women spat in front of her, unmarried boys tore smuts and in more than one house they begrudged her every medicine that the doctor prescribed and every edible morsel that this or that pitiful soul of the seriously ill, the hard home cooking and coal-black bread was no longer able to digest.

In the house of her worst enemy, the cousin Bibiane, whom the community had to take her in for a few days because she didn't want to give any money and was not unwilling to take her in so she could really torment her, Brigitte recovered from a miserable little girl who died after just a few hours .

The doctor shrugged his shoulders and said nothing. Brigitte smiled for the first time in a long time, because she understood the doctor's silence and looked forward to death with a joy that not even the thought of the abandoned Hannesle could cloud.

There were not many real monsters among the inhabitants of the valley; Brigitte was sometimes treated inhumanly, because people only knew love for Jesus Christ from hearsay, and were possessed by a powerful idea of their own worth or by that crude self-interest that the educated concede behind beautiful phrases and a more or less finely calculated procedure know how to hide

In many a house the patient found pity, mercy and proper care, but an unwelcome guest, because he was intruded on and disturbed the course of the household, she remained almost everywhere, and it was precisely the great inequality of treatment and care that made her sicker. Soon everyone foresaw that she would not get by and would not be a burden to the community for too long.

Gradually she enjoyed better care everywhere, even among the most hard-hearted; not because people felt more pity, but because everyone feared she would die under his roof. Some didn't want any dead people in their house, others thought Brigitte's death would bring greater inconvenience and expense on them.

The pastor of the congregation was a 265-pound vicar, in addition to that, as the sovereign dean, was plagued with a lot of useless writing, suffered from torn limbs, did not want to carry his precious corpse to heaven too hastily through exaggerated efforts, kept a strong reputation and honor with the officials and so on he lacked both the time and inclination to visit the sick, and least of all did he think of eavesdropping on the long, painful agony of poor, despised, and disreputable Brigitte and relieving it with the consolations of religion.

Very much that this 265-pound pastorate did and did not do, the young vicar did and did instead, who unfortunately also took leave of the world all too soon. He was a faithful disciple of Christ, who not only preached Catholic to others, but, which gives the preaching of a clergyman the continuing emphasis among the people, lived and acted Catholic.

Loaded with all kinds of annoyance because of the slowness of the parish office and the unconditional supremacy of the parochial housekeeper, he had to shorten the recitation of the breviary for a few weeks in order to help the suffering Brigitte. He heard from her lips the simple yet profound story of her life and her aberrations, witnessed her suffering, her deep remorse and quiet resignation, and ever since he revealed to her the paths she had to walk in order to find out what it means honoring and loving Jesus Christ and His Divine Mother, he was in their eyes a comforting angel of heaven, in whose presence death lost every sting and hell lost every victory.

The living faith of the priest ignites the faith of the lay faithful, and the living faith of the laity ignites the enthusiasm of the priest striving to complete his high vocation; this fact throws a ray of light into the more desolate than comforting conditions of the "Christian" states!—

The young priest saw Brigitte die, squeezed her weary eyes shut, then sank to his knees and prayed aloud that the Lord would one day let him die like this.

He knew the deceased, hence his emotion during the funeral.

Now the brush maker's daughter lies in the half-shattered coffin with a happily broken heart, the autumn air caresses the lonely grave, the sky weeps its tears on it and how long will it be before Brigitte's name has faded away in the native valley of the Black Forest?—

The frame maker did not attend the funeral, but he heard the voice of the death knell, it trembled through his heart like an accusatory call from eternity. "The Thalherrn may take responsibility!" he cried, getting up from work and banging his fist on the table indignantly. He paced up and down the little room for a while, and when he chanced to look in the small mirror and saw his graying head and the features badly furrowed by life, he gave a start, ran his hand over his wrinkled forehead as if he had certain memories there wanted to wipe away, fell into a long, gloomy thought and then hurried to the Baren an der Steig to drive away the crickets with schnapps.

During this time Hannesle sat on the stove bench in the living room of the poor people with whom he had lived since he was driven out of the frame maker's little house and in the greatest peace of mind ate a "Dinnelen" which had been warmly taken out of the stove a quarter of an hour ago .

The good people had kept him, although the sick Brigitte was no longer able to pay her board and has not yet asked for any compensation from the community, on the contrary, Brigitte was also taken into the house from time to time when it was her turn.

On returning from the churchyard, the boy trembled and wept again at the sight of the silk shawl that Michel had given to Brigitte, who had left her in good condition as a souvenir before her death to the farmer's wife, but the farmer's wife gave him a fragrant "Dinnelen " and he ate from it the oblivion of his mother and the carefreeness of his uninhibited childhood.

The vicar, however, walked through the valley next to the stately landlady of the sun and seemed to be speaking very urgent words to her. He realized that Hannesle couldn't stay with his foster parents, because they only had a lot of children, Brigitte's son could expect a very poor lot and an even poorer education from them, and yet the vicar of the dying had promised to help the poor wretch wanting to take some care.

A parsonage is seldom a California, a vicar's purse is often leaner than one of Pharaoh's seven lean cows, the credit doesn't mean much either, because a vicar has little and has to be ready at any moment to tie the bundle. Our good little master couldn't help the boy with money and had contacted Base Bibianen so that she could take the orphan into her home. In more recent times she also wanted to stand in the odor of a capable Catholic woman, but her Christianity always stopped just where her teachings and commands began, the observance of which she did not like. She wanted to have very special reasons not to accept Hannesle, to happily do any other service, even the most difficult, to the vicar, just not the one he was now asking of her. The vicar was nothing less than a judge of character, had the best opinion of everyone and said very politely that Bibiane didn't need to take Hannesle into her house, on the contrary it would be better if he got a bit under a sharp breeding rod and the cousin was allowed just sweat a little money and he'll get things going. But Bibiane again had good and partly mysterious reasons not to give Hannesle any money either, and when she began to preach and told the vicar that the boy was a child of vice, whoever cherished and cared for him took a serious interest in the vice and that this would never be tolerated with her honor and her Christian conscience, the good Vicar shook his head and went away sadly.

At this moment his face shines with joy, because he has just found other views, better insights and a joyful will to works of mercy and all these glories with the fat sun landlady, Elsbeth.

When he spoke to her about Hannesle, she said that she had long since decided to take in the orphan, only wanted to give the authorities the honor of having the first word and was therefore expecting the vicar's proposal. May Hannesle come this hour, he will find a second mother in the sun, whose name is Elsbeth, and who is not missing anything in body or soul that is necessary.

The very next day after the mother's funeral, Hannesle went to the Sonnenwirtin and in the first week felt as happy as it may be with a boy who in his life has not yet worn a proper piece of clothing and seldom had a good bite to eat in the stomach and now suddenly gets whole clothes and good food, even if not a lot.

However, the glory lasted for a short time and for the simple reason that Hannesle was a naughty, neglected little boy, Elsbeth was a vain prayer sister, but not a real Christian and least of all a governess.

Parental love is the sun of the children's world and without love a child may well thrive like a plant in a greenhouse or in a sparsely lit cellar vault, never like a little tree growing in the fresh air and under the open sky and carefully cared for, protected and pruned by the gardener.

Much depends, however, on whether the love of the parents for their children corresponds to that of the animal for its young or that of the Redeemer for the human race, and however often both kinds of love are found mixed up with one another, it is also true that the natural usually outstrips and almost entirely stifles the supernatural. Brigitte was constantly reminded by the sight of Hannesle of the faithless Michel and of her disgrace and disgrace, but she had too much affectionate disposition not to forget this at the sight of the helpless and innocent boy, who alone lovingly stretched out his little arms to her and loved Hannesle with all that tenderness of a mother whose love is only directed towards the earth.

A poor peasant maid only finds time and opportunity to spend time with her child in the evenings and on Sundays and public holidays, is then less inclined to open her eyes to the germinating and growing naughtiness of the child and imagines that with the Ruthlein she is easily whipping all love out of him tender young hearts.

Hannesle remained under the care of the frame maker's wife, whom he called the "workday mother", looked forward to Brigitte, the "Sunday mother" throughout the day and week, and if he had played enough little pranks, he was certainly good when the latter sat nearby, for she seldom came without bringing him something to eat and giving him something for being good.

The frame maker's wife, a kind-hearted woman who would hardly have invented the powder, thought children were just children and Hannesle had to suffer enough from other children so that she didn't want to torment him any more; but the frame maker found his greatest joy in the naughtiness of the growing boy and almost burst out laughing when he "got his head around" played some clever trick or even lashed out at him angrily.

When Brigitte came, he didn't have enough good and sweet things to say about Hannesle, Brigitte was happy about it and also laughed at the pranks of the little tyke, whose face showed more and more like her and whose behavior reminded her a hundred times of her own childhood .

The boy wandered out of the frame maker's little house into the living room of poor people, which was heavily populated with children, and who thought they would deserve heaven from him and their own children if they could only get the necessary food and clothing, with the children before and after the meal and prayed especially late in the evening, encouraged them to go to church and, above all, to work. As small as Hannesle was, he seemed big and strong and smart enough to look after cows and goats, to collect brushwood and wild berries and to lend a hand in field business as in the house.

It is a harsh but often true saying that the curse of a generation is passed on to the seventh generation and probably even beyond. But the curse is mostly rooted in the bad qualities of the parents, which are passed on to the children and cannot bring any good fruit for them.

Brigitte took after her father, but Hannesle mostly took after her mother, was vain in rags, stubborn as a camel, wrathful as a tomcat, greedy as a spoiled lapdog and resembled Michel at most in that he was very active, lusted and loved work and showed to acquire.

Hannesle stood as a very neglected boy at his mother's grave and from him, in the opinion of the vicar, he should and could train the plump sun landlady, Elsbeth, famous for her Christianity, a genuine Christian and real model person.

Hannesle lived in her house for almost six full years, but he did not become a Christian, but became "Patrick", crippled in body and soul and went into the wide world and has never thanked his foster mother for all her effort and worried, but claimed in prison that the prison smock had been fitted to him in the sun.

The religion of Elsbeth was by no means rooted in the supernatural love for God and the Redeemer, but in the natural love for herself. She loved neither God nor people, but loved her own person beyond measure, behind her pious demeanor stood dear vanity, without her realizing it herself.

Today she would play a somewhat whimsical character if she did not reverse her role, for the honor of being considered a true Catholic is not nearly as great as that of belonging to the enlightened and liberal world. At that time it was different in the remote valley and the sun landlady was all the more important to some pious people because landlords tended to follow their customers in everything, including religious matters.

Landlords and merchants above all are the appointed champions of tolerance on the broadest democratic basis, and if the Dutch, above all, for the sake of trade, not only actually denied their Christianity to heathen peoples, but also seriously with oaths, so did their main heirs, the English , for the same reason, according to credible reports up to the most recent times, help to glorify the man-murdering festivals of the idol of Dschaggernaut and in Ceylon fired a lot of powder every year in honor of the devil, which was saved on Corpus Christi days in Old England.

We do not want to blame either Mynheeren or John Bull in particular for this, because one cannot know whether the Germans would not have become just as tolerant and docile if they had hitherto attained a decent naval power; In any case, one rarely has to look in shops or taverns here, too, if one wants to discover the tolerable influence of Christianity on trade and commerce, and the scholars who deny any such influence probably got their opinion there where they buy cloth for their skirts or theirs take scoops.

No one should have come to the Sonnenwirtin who wanted to remain firm in such a view, and even a Jew's beard would have cost him so much that he would hardly have come the other time.

There was hardly a more intolerant woman than Elsbeth in the entire Black Forest at the time, and she made no secret of her intolerance. She prayed for the conversion of the Gentiles, feared the Turks, hated the Jews, loathed the Protestants, and avidly railed against clergy and laity who were not Catholic enough for her.

There were people who claimed that the stout sun hostess had God and all the saints constantly on her lips, but ten devils in her heart and all the shortcomings that a bad woman could bear. The impious are easily taken with pious people, and because these have always formed the majority, one should not immediately assume that there is a lot of meaning behind bad shouting; also the Elsbeth has long been under the ground, one should not easily believe bad things about the deceased, moreover a beautiful tombstone with golden words praises so many virtues of the old sun landlady that no blame can arise and under such circumstances we want the deceased briefly and truthfully in the light of the seven deadly sins, defend Christians as well as possible and let Hannesle jump in as a witness.

The slanderers claim that Elsbeth was as full of pride as a sponge thrown into water, that she had never cried in her life, except when her good reputation was put under pressure and that she hurt her and that she did not seek God through pious behavior, but only herself to glorify. What remains certain is that one could only express a slight doubt about her beauty, her wealth, her equity, virtue and religion in order to be treated as hostile and persecuted by her for the rest of her life, but she was hostile to and persecuted such doubters with the laudable intention of making them To bring and convert an understanding of her godlessness and depravity, and in this respect she worked so vigorously for heaven that she dismissed her own five husbands as serious doubters and cut off Hannesle's leg because he once angrily claimed that he was the foster mother only act pious in front of the people and be a dragon at home and especially towards him, as Katzenlene also said.

Guests , servants, beggars, relatives and debtors knew unheard-of stories about the stinginess of the sun landlady; she actually did all the lucrative frauds that an innkeeper can commit without having to deal with the office and empty guest rooms, and these often amount to more annually than half a penitentiary full of rascals steals in ten years. But she did not force anyone to stop by her house who had no special business with her, paid low wages so that the servants and maids would not become cocky, and demanded hard work on a meager fare so that the temptations of the devil would not easily overwhelm them.

Pray and work! was their motto and if a beggar was not satisfied with that, Nero or Sultan had to bark him out of the house so that he could learn to move diligently. There has never been an example of her extending the deadline for a lender or helping a beleaguered father with a small capital out of trouble, but she was very reluctant to pay her debts in order to exercise Christian patience on her creditors and left everyone stuck in trouble , that the afflicted might put their trust in God rather than in men. Hannesle claimed until his death that he only ate his fill in the sun when Elsbeth was drunk or went on a pilgrimage to Friberg or Loffingen and the large crowd of servants and maids who emigrated to and from the sun every year leaving behind at least a few hundredweight of one's own sinful flesh in leaving, which no doubt the righteous heaven of our pious will have counted very highly.

the unchastity of the sun hostess and her husbands are said to have sighed heavily about it, but she had the misfortune of never getting anyone who stayed with her for a long time, dismissed servants have angry mouths and because Hannesle only goes to her came when she was already over forty, never noticed anything wrong and found it quite normal that every evening after the guests had left she stayed alone with the head servant for a long time to calculate the day's accounts; Finally, because he heard a hundred times how she dismissed unruly guests in a subtle or rude way, tolerated no love affair under her roof, patrolled the whole house at night and carefully shone a light into every bedroom, so we want to talk about youth, married life and behavior the widow throw the thickest cloak of Christian love.

Elsbethen's enemies said she envied her neighbors for the raindrops that fell on their meadows and fields, could hardly look at a woman blessed with children, sighed whenever something good happened to a valley resident and praised God when someone was afflicted by serious misfortune, but there is something that deserves more praise than blame, it is Elsbethen's envy, because her envy cannot have been envy, but rather love. She knew how carefree, self-confident, and high-spirited happiness makes people, and how adversity teaches them to pray, hence their sadness at happiness and their joy at the misfortune of their fellow men. She mourned Hannesle because of his handsome figure and prophesied that this would bring him temporal and eternal misery, as was the case with his "blasphemous" mother. When the boy got a goitre from drinking too much water, she absolutely refused to hear anything about any prescription; the ornament grew, hardened, and thrived splendidly, and would have had a lifelong souvenir of the devout foster-mother's concern for his salvation, even if she had never cut off a leg.

Only in later years did evil tongues rumor and rant about Elsbethen 's intemperance . It is true that she always enjoyed a very good appetite, perhaps eating too much, which the housemates got too little, and because over the years her body resembled a barrel walking on two blocks, which was almost only missing the hoops, it is not surprising that she took increasing care to fill the growing cask and gradually sent more and more little glasses as outposts and skirmishers ahead of the liqueur, which she had been accustomed to drinking in the evening since her first marriage.

Because Hannesle often saw the sun hostess drunk and then spent the best hours with her, she really became a drunkard in later years and mostly lost her belongings as a result, excessive drinking is one of the deadly sins, so we have to examine the probability a little more thoroughly awaken, even the accusation of this mortal sin includes a misjudgment and denigration.

We maintain that the drinking of the pious Elsbeth was not a mortal sin, hardly a venial sin, but probably the greatest of her virtues. why? Oh, she didn't drink for the sake of drinking, not even for herself, but for the sins of the world. The accusation that a drunkard loves drinking and would defer to cattle is often superficial and groundless, because most people only get drunk to forget their misery. A drunkard by no means descends among the animals, which never voluntarily get drunk, but ascends from the unfortunate to the fortunate of the earth; as long as he is still able to stand on his feet, he is a happy man, a king, a god, and if he sinks under the table, he clearly proves that he no longer knows the earth with all its suffering, torment and hard things and enjoy the greatest happiness that very learned and profound pagans could find and name, namely, the happiness of forgetting themselves and all things.

The older our Elsbeth got, the more clearly she recognized how bad the world was and how incorrigible people were, how outrageous the sins of most of the residents of the valley were, and in the last years of her life she sometimes said it out loud that God had long been on fire let the whole Black Forest and its valley rain first, if he didn't spare the sinful multitude for a little while for the sake of the less just. She was able to respect and love people less and less when she was sober; However, love is the first and greatest commandment of our religion and because love was pumped out of Elsbethen's heart the higher the level of alcohol in her stomach was, she drank diligently and because the world was getting worse every day, she had to do it every day for the sake of charity and drink more every year. When she was drunk she was the best soul in the world, never refused a servant's request, helped the needy, wrote receipts and promissory notes for everyone who wanted it and as long as she could hold a pen and at the end she often stammered the most ardent prayers up to heaven for the good of all people.

This trait of a pious soul that was often misunderstood in life and in the end only cried out [praised] by a tombstone is all the more noteworthy because it bears witness to Elsbethen's deep self-knowledge. She knew very well that she had brought into the world a hot temper and an angry disposition, and that her hatred of the wicked world grew and increased with her love of God. In her childhood she had not been hard and bitter against the world, through drinking she put herself back into the state of the uninhibited, because ignorant childhood, therefore her drinking was also a serious fight against her own sinful flesh and especially against her outbursts of anger and quarrels .

True, her anger emanated from heaven, because she thoroughly understood the bottomless depravity and endless hypocrisy of her neighbors and could not look at them with calm eyes. Whenever she had seriously offended, offended, or harmed anyone, she found solace in the thought that God would not allow evil to happen to anyone without His reason, and that she was but an instrument of divine wrath, but all her confessors opposed such In my opinion, she didn't want to and shouldn't spoil things completely with clergy, especially since the chapter dean lived in the valley and this circumstance could do as much damage to her economy and her reputation of godliness as it did to help. She therefore admitted her sinful inclination to anger, appeared in the confessional every time she had fully satisfied her cheekiness and her thirst for revenge, and because, despite confession and prayer, her heart hardened more and more against her fellow human beings, she made more and more eager use of it Discovery that drinking is a tried and tested means of keeping love alive and preventing temptations of anger.