it was a stove of 1532, and on it were the letters h. r. h., for it was in every portion the handwork of the great potter of nürnberg, augustin hirschvogel, who put his mark thus, as all the world knows.
the stove no doubt had stood in palaces and been made for princes, had warmed the crimson stockings of cardinals and the gold-broidered shoes of archduchesses, had glowed in presence-chambers and lent its carbon to help kindle sharp brains in anxious councils of state; no one knew what it had seen or done or been fashioned for; but it was a right royal thing. yet perhaps it had never been more useful than it was now in this poor desolate room, sending down heat and comfort into the troop of children tumbled together on a wolf-skin at its feet, who received frozen august among them with loud shouts of joy.
“oh, dear hirschvogel, i am so cold, so cold!” said august, kissing its gilded lion’s claws. “is father not in, dorothea?”
“no, dear. he is late.”
dorothea was a girl of seventeen, dark-haired and serious, and with a sweet sad face, for she[13] had had many cares laid on her shoulders, even whilst still a mere baby. she was the eldest of the strehla family, and there were ten of them in all. next to her there came jan and karl and otho, big lads, gaining a little for their own living; and then came august, who went up in the summer to the high alps with the farmers’ cattle, but in winter could do nothing to fill his own little platter and pot; and then all the little ones, who could only open their mouths to be fed like young birds,—albrecht and hilda, and waldo and christof, and last of all little three-year-old ermengilda, with eyes like forget-me-nots, whose birth had cost them the life of their mother.
they were of that mixed race, half austrian, half italian, so common in the tyrol; some of the children were white and golden as lilies, others were brown and brilliant as fresh-fallen chestnuts. the father was a good man, but weak and weary with so many to find for and so little to do it with. he worked at the salt-furnaces, and by that gained a few florins; people said he would have worked better and kept his family more easily if he had not loved his pipe and a draught of ale too well; but this had only been said of him after his wife’s death, when trouble and perplexity had begun to dull a brain never too vigorous,[14] and to enfeeble further a character already too yielding. as it was, the wolf often bayed at the door of the strehla household, without a wolf from the mountains coming down. dorothea was one of those maidens who almost work miracles, so far can their industry and care and intelligence make a home sweet and wholesome and a single loaf seem to swell into twenty. the children were always clean and happy, and the table was seldom without its big pot of soup once a day. still, very poor they were, and dorothea’s heart ached with shame, for she knew that their father’s debts were many for flour and meat and clothing. of fuel to feed the big stove they had always enough without cost, for their mother’s father was alive, and sold wood and fir cones and coke, and never grudged them to his grandchildren, though he grumbled at strehla’s improvidence and hapless, dreamy ways.
“father says we are never to wait for him: we will have supper, now you have come home, dear,” said dorothea, who, however she might fret her soul in secret as she knitted their hose and mended their shirts, never let her anxieties cast a gloom on the children; only to august she did speak a little sometimes, because he was so thoughtful and so tender of her always, and knew[15] as well as she did that there were troubles about money,—though, these troubles were vague to them both, and the debtors were patient and kindly, being neighbors all in the old twisting streets between the guard-house and the river.
supper was a huge bowl of soup, with big slices of brown bread swimming in it and some onions bobbing up and down: the bowl was soon emptied by ten wooden spoons, and then the three eldest boys slipped off to bed, being tired with their rough bodily labor in the snow all day, and dorothea drew her spinning-wheel by the stove and set it whirring, and the little ones got august down upon the old worn wolf-skin and clamored to him for a picture or a story. for august was the artist of the family.
he had a piece of planed deal that his father had given him, and some sticks of charcoal, and he would draw a hundred things he had seen in the day, sweeping each out with his elbow when the children had seen enough of it and sketching another in its stead,—faces and dogs’ heads, and men in sledges, and old women in their furs, and pine-trees, and cocks and hens, and all sorts of animals, and now and then—very reverently—a madonna and child. it was all very rough, for there was no one to teach him anything. but it[16] was all life-like, and kept the whole troop of children shrieking with laughter, or watching breathless, with wide open, wondering, awed eyes.
they were all so happy: what did they care for the snow outside? their little bodies were warm, and their hearts merry; even dorothea, troubled about the bread for the morrow, laughed as she spun; and august, with all his soul in his work, and little rosy ermengilda’s cheek on his shoulder, glowing after his frozen afternoon, cried out loud, smiling, as he looked up at the stove that was shedding its heat down on them all,—
“oh, dear hirschvogel! you are almost as great and good as the sun! no; you are greater and better, i think, because he goes away nobody knows where all these long, dark, cold hours, and does not care how people die for want of him; but you—you are always ready: just a little bit of wood to feed you, and you will make a summer for us all the winter through!”
the grand old stove seemed to smile through all its iridescent surface at the praises of the child. no doubt the stove, though it had known three centuries and more, had known but very little gratitude.
it was one of those magnificent stoves in enamelled faïence which so excited the jealousy[17] of the other potters of nürnberg that in a body they demanded of the magistracy that augustin hirschvogel should be forbidden to make any more of them,—the magistracy, happily, proving of a broader mind, and having no sympathy with the wish of the artisans to cripple their greater fellow.
it was of great height and breadth, with all the majolica lustre which hirschvogel learned to give to his enamels when he was making love to the young venetian girl whom he afterwards married. there was the statue of a king at each corner, modelled with as much force and splendor as his friend albrecht dürer could have given unto them on copperplate or canvas. the body of the stove itself was divided into panels, which had the ages of man painted on them in polychrome; the borders of the panels had roses and holly and laurel and other foliage, and german mottoes in black letter of odd old-world moralizing, such as the old teutons, and the dutch after them, love to have on their chimney-places and their drinking-cups, their dishes and flagons. the whole was burnished with gilding in many parts, and was radiant everywhere with that brilliant coloring of which the hirschvogel family, painters on glass and great in chemistry as they were, were all masters.[18]
the stove was a very grand thing, as i say: possibly hirschvogel had made it for some mighty lord of the tyrol at that time when he was an imperial guest at innspruck and fashioned so many things for the schloss amras and beautiful philippine welser, the burgher’s daughter, who gained an archduke’s heart by her beauty and the right to wear his honors by her wit. nothing was known of the stove at this latter day in hall. the grandfather strehla, who had been a master-mason, had dug it up out of some ruins where he was building, and, finding it without a flaw, had taken it home, and only thought it worth finding because it was such a good one to burn. that was now sixty years past, and ever since then the stove had stood in the big desolate empty room, warming three generations of the strehla family, and having seen nothing prettier perhaps in all its many years than the children tumbled now in a cluster like gathered flowers at its feet. for the strehla children, born to nothing else, were all born with beauty: white or brown, they were equally lovely to look upon, and when they went into the church to mass, with their curling locks and their clasped hands, they stood under the grim statues like cherubs flown down off some fresco.