me with a curious eye, drew back a little farther, but not without some hesitation.
“Aha!” I exclaimed, “you are beginning to understand what is going to happen. Yes, let me get you into that corner, and your doom is sealed!”
And undoubtedly, when he had got to the spot where the ledge came to an end, Azazel seemed puzzled to know what to do next. I edged up to him closer and closer, full of a noble excitement, and laughing in anticipation at the coming descent and the splash in the torrent below.
I now beheld him at four paces from me, and I was grasping tightly a root of holly that was growing out of a rock to launch out a kick at the devoted beast.
“Look, Elias, see the accursed!” I cried.
When, all in a moment, I felt in my stomach a most awful blow, a butt which would have sent me into the Holderloch had I not kept hold of that blessed root of holly. The fact was that that miserable goat, seeing himself driven into a corner, had himself commenced the attack.
Oh, what was my astonishment! Before I knew where I was or what had happened, there was the brute standing up again on his hind-legs, and his horns digging into my stomach and my sides with a hollow sound.
What a position to be in! It is impossible to be more astounded than I was at that moment! It was the world upside down. It was a bad dream—a nightmare! The precipice with all its jagged peaks seemed to dance around me, and so did the trees and sky above. At the same moment I heard piercing cries from Elias of “Help! help!” while Azazel’s horns were ploughing up my sides.
Then I lost all presence of mind. The goat with his long beard and his hard, sharp horns pounding me, now in my chest, now in my stomach, and then in my shaking limbs, produced a most diabolical effect upon me. My hold on the root slowly relaxed, and I let go. But happily something kept me from falling, something which I could not understand at first. But it was the shepherd Yeri, of the Holderloch, who from the next platform above had caught me by the coat-collar with his crook.
Thanks to his assistance, instead of falling down into the chasm I lay full length along the ledge, and that awful goat walked over my body to get away about his business.
“Come, take firm hold of my crook,” cried the shepherd to Elias; “now I will go down for him. Don’t let go!”
“You may rely upon me,” answered Elias.
I heard all that as if it were a nightmare. I had almost lost consciousness.
When I opened my eyes I saw standing before me that gigantic shepherd, with his grey eyes sunk underneath his bushy eyebrows, his yellow beard, a sheepskin thrown over his shoulders, and I thought I had awoke in the age of Oedipus, which made me wonder a good deal.
“Well,” cried the shepherd, in a harsh guttural, “this will teach you not to curse my goat any more!”
Then I saw Azazel rubbing himself comfortably against his master’s colossal legs, and looking slily, and I thought ironically, at me; and then I saw Elias standing behind me, and making the greatest efforts not to laugh.
My scattered senses were beginning to return. I sat myself down with pain and difficulty, for Azazel had bruised me all over, and I felt fearfully stiff and sore.
“Was it you who saved me?” I asked the shepherd.
“Yes, my boy, it was.”
“Well, you are a good fellow, and I am much obliged to you. I withdraw the curse I laid upon your goat. Here, take this.”
I handed him my purse with sixteen florins in it.
“Thank you, sir,” said he, “and now you can begin again if you like on even ground. Down there it was not fair; the goat had all the advantage.”
“Thank you very much! But I have had quite enough. Shake hands, old fellow; I’ll never forget you. Let us go now.”
My comrade and I, arm-in-arm, then descended the hill.
The shepherd, leaning on his crook, watched us till we disappeared. The goat had resumed his walk and his supper on the very edge of the crags. The sky was lovely, the air balmy with a thousand sweet mountain perfumes carried on it with the distant sounds of the shepherd’s horn and the booming of the torrent.
We returned to Tubingen with our hearts full.
Since that time my friend Elias has found some comfort for slaying the Seigneur Kaspar, but in an original fashion.
Scarcely had he taken his doctor’s degree when he married Mademoiselle Eva Salomon, with the hope of having a numerous family to make up for the loss of that individual who had met with an untimely end at his hand.
Four years ago I was at his wedding as best man, and already there are two fat babies making the pretty little house in Crispin street to rejoice.
This was a promising commencement!
Don’t let me be misunderstood. I don’t pretend to say that the method I prescribed for making expiation for taking away a life is better than that taught in our holy religion, which, according to the Catholic Church, consists in masses and in giving away your goods to the Church. But I do think it better than the Hindoo practice, and I think the theory of the famous scapegoat is not to be compared with that which is taught us by pure religion.
A NIGHT IN THE WOODS
CHAPTER I
My worthy uncle, Bernard Hertzog, the historian and antiquary, surmounted with his grand three-cornered hat and wig, and with a long iron-shod mountain-pole firmly grasped in his hand, was coming down one evening by the Luppersberg, hailing every turn in the landscape with enthusiastic exclamations.
Years had never quenched in him the love of knowledge. At sixty he was still at work upon his History of Alsacian Antiquities, and never allowed himself to write a complete account of a ruined and defaced monument, or any relic of former days, until he had examined it a hundred times from every point of view.
“No man,” said he, “who has had the happy privilege of being born in the Vosges, between Haut Bar, Nideck, and Geierstein has any business to think of travelling. Where are there nobler forests, older fir and beech trees, more lovely smiling valleys, wilder rocks? Where is the country with richer possessions in memorable story? Here, in olden times, used the high and powerful lords of Lutzelstein, Dagsberg, Leiningen, and Fénétrange, to fight clad in mail from head to foot. Here the eldest son of the Church and the rulers of the Holy Roman Empire exchanged blows in the Middle Ages with swords two yards long. What are our wars compared with those terrible battles where warriors fought hand to hand, where they hammered upon each other’s skulls with huge battle-axes, and drove the dagger between the bars of the closed visor? Were not those heroic feats of arms? was not that a courage worthy to be chronicled to all posterity? But our young people want to see new things; they are not satisfied with their own native land: they must wander through Germany, make tours in France. Worse still, they abandon science and its noble fields for trade, arts, industry, as if there had not been in the former glorious days much more curious industrial arts and pursuits than in our own day! Witness the Hanseatic League, the maritime enterprise of Venice, Genoa, and the Levant, Flemish manufactures, Florentine art, the triumphs in art of Rome and Antwerp! No! all that is laid aside; people now-a-days pride themselves upon their ignorance of those glorious days; above all, they neglect our dear old Alsace. Now, candidly,
