Contents:

The Love of Ulrich Nebendahl ...........................................................................................................................1

Jerome K. Jerome .....................................................................................................................................1

Perhaps of all, it troubled most the Herr Pfarrer. Was he not the father of the village? And as such did it not

fall to him to see his children marry well and suitably? marry in any case. It was the duty of every worthy

citizen to keep alive throughout the ages the sacred hearth fire, to rear up sturdy lads and honest lassies that

would serve God, and the Fatherland. A true son of Saxon soil was the Herr Pastor Winckelmannkindly,

"Why, at your age, Ulrichat your age," repeated the Herr Pastor, setting down his beer and wiping with the

back of his hand his large uneven lips, "I was the father of a familytwo boys and a girl. You never saw her,

Ulrich; so sweet, so good. We called her Maria." The Herr Pfarrer sighed and hid his broad red face behind

"They must be good fun in a house, the little ones," commented Ulrich, gazing upward with his dreamy eyes

at the wreath of smoke ascending from his longstemmed pipe. "The little ones, always my heart goes out to

"Take to yourself a wife," urged the Herr Pfarrer. "It is your duty. The good God has given to you ample

means. It is not right that you should lead this lonely life. Bachelors make old maids; things of no use."

"That is so," Ulrich agreed. "I have often said the same unto myself. It would be pleasant to feel one was not

"Elsa, now," went on the Herr Pfarrer, "she is a good child, pious and economical. The price of such is above

Ulrich"s face lightened with a pleasant smile. "Aye, Elsa is a good girl," he answered. "Her little

"I thinkI do not thinkshe would say no. Her mother, I have reason to believe Let me sound

themdiscreetly." The old pastor's red face glowed redder, yet with pleasurable anticipation; he was a born

"A little longer," he pleaded. "Let me think it over. A man should not marry without first being sure he loves.

The Herr Pfarrer stretched his hand across the table and laid it upon Ulrich's arm.

"It is a lonesome way for a timid maiden; and there is the stream to cross," explained the wheelwright.

"Well, well, why not? Elsa would have been better in some respects, but Hedwigah, yes, she, too, is a good

Again there fell that troubled look into those dreamy eyes. This time it was Ulrich who, laying aside his pipe,

"Now, how does a man know when he is in love?" asked Ulrich of the Pastor who, having been married

twice, should surely be experienced upon the point. "How should he be sure that it is this woman and no other

A commonplacelooking man was the Herr Pastor, short and fat and bald. But there had been other days, and

these had left to him a voice that still was young; and the evening twilight screening the seared face, Ulrich

"She will be dearer to you than yourself. Thinking of her, all else will be as nothing. For her you would lay

They sat in silence for a while; for the fat little Herr Pfarrer was dreaming of the past; and long, lanky Ulrich

That evening, as chance would have it, Ulrich returning to his homesteada rambling mill beside the river,

where he dwelt alone with ancient Annamet Elsa of the dimpled hands upon the bridge that spans the

How sweet it had been to watch her oxlike eyes shyly seeking his, to press her dimpled hand and feel his

own great strength. Surely he loved her better than he did himself. There could be no doubt of it. He pictured

her in trouble, in danger from the savage soldiery that came and went like evil shadows through these

pleasant Saxon valleys, leaving death and misery behind them: burnt homesteads; wildeyed women, hiding

Until next morning, when, raising his eyes from the whirling saw, there stood before him Margot, laughing.

Margot, mischiefloving, wayward, that would ever be to him the baby he had played with, nursed, and

comforted. Margot weary! Had he not a thousand times carried her sleeping in his arms. Margot in danger! At

All that afternoon Ulrich communed with himself, tried to understand himself, and could not. For Elsa and

Margot and Hedwig were not the only ones by a long way. What girl in the village did he not love, if it came

to that: Liesel, who worked so hard and lived so poorly, bullied by her crossgrained granddam. Susanna,

plain and a little crotchety, who had never had a sweetheart to coax the thin lips into smiles. The little

onesfor so they seemed to long, lanky Ulrich, with their pleasant waysUlrich smiled as he thought of

"That is not love. Gott in Himmel! think what it would lead to? The good God never would have arranged

"But you, yourself, Herr Pastor, you have twice been married," suggested the puzzled wheelwright.

Why should it not come to him, alone among men? Surely it was a beautiful thing, this love; a thing worthy

of a man, without which a man was but a useless devourer of food, cumbering the earth.

So Ulrich pondered, pausing from his work one drowsy summer's afternoon, listening to the low song of the

waters. How well he knew the winding Muhlde's merry voice. He had worked beside it, played beside it all

his life. Often he would sit and talk to it as to an old friend, reading answers in its changing tones.

Trudchen, seeing him idle, pushed her cold nose into his hand. Trudchen just now was feeling clever and

important. Was she not the mother of the five most wonderful puppies in all Saxony? They swarmed about

his legs, pressing him with their little foolish heads. Ulrich stooped and picked up one in each big hand. But

this causing jealousy and heartburning, laughing, he lay down upon a log. Then the whole five stormed over

him, biting his hair, trampling with their clumsy paws upon his face; till suddenly they raced off in a body to

attack a floating feather. Ulrich sat up and watched them, the little rogues, the little foolish, helpless things,

that called for so much care. A mother thrush twittered above his head. Ulrich rose and creeping on tiptoe,

peeped into the nest. But the mother bird, casting one glance towards him, went on with her work. Whoever

was afraid of Ulrich the wheelwright! The tiny murmuring insects buzzed to and fro about his feet. An old

man, passing to his evening rest, gave him "goodday." A zephyr whispered something to the leaves, at

which they laughed, then passed upon his way. Here and there a shadow crept out from its hidingplace.

The spring that followed let loose the dogs of war again upon the bloodstained land, for now all Germany,

taught late by common suffering forgetfulness of local rivalries, was rushing together in a mighty wave that

would sweep French feet for ever from their hold on German soil. Ulrich, for whom the love of woman

seemed not, would at least be the lover of his country. He, too, would march among those brave stern hearts

that, stealing like a thousand rivulets from every German valley, were flowing north and west to join the

But even love of country seemed denied to Ulrich of the dreamy eyes. His wheelwright's business had called

him to a town far off. He had been walking all the day. Towards evening, passing the outskirts of a wood, a

feeble cry for help, sounding from the shadows, fell upon his ear. Ulrich paused, and again from the sombre

wood crept that weary cry of pain. Ulrich ran and came at last to where, among the wild flowers and the

grass, lay prone five human figures. Two of them were of the German Landwehr, the other three Frenchmen

in the hated uniform of Napoleon's famous scouts. It had been some unimportant "affair of outposts," one of

those common incidents of warfare that are never recordednever remembered save here and there by some

sad face unnoticed in the crowd. Four of the men were dead; one, a Frenchman was still alive, though

bleeding copiously from a deep wound in the chest that with a handful of dank grass he was trying to staunch.

Ulrich raised him in his arms. The man spoke no German, and Ulrich knew but his mother tongue; but when

the man, turning towards the neighbouring village with a look of terror in his halfglazed eyes, pleaded with

his hands, Ulrich understood, and lifting him gently carried him further into the wood.

He found a small deserted shelter that had been made by charcoalburners, and there on a bed of grass and

leaves Ulrich laid him; and there for a week all but a day Ulrich tended him and nursed him back to life,

coming and going stealthily like a thief in the darkness. Then Ulrich, who had thought his one desire in life to

be to kill all Frenchmen, put food and drink into the Frenchman's knapsack and guided him half through the

Ulrich did not return to Alt Waldnitz, that lies hidden in the forest beside the murmuring Muhlde. They

would think he had gone to the war; he would let them think so. He was too great a coward to go back to

them and tell them that he no longer wanted to fight; that the sound of the drum brought to him only the

So, with head bowed down in shame, to and fro about the moaning land, Ulrich of the dreamy eyes came and

went, guiding his solitary footsteps by the sounds of sorrow, driving away the things of evil where they

crawled among the wounded, making his way swiftly to the side of pain, heedless of the uniform.

Thus one day he found himself by chance near again to forestgirdled Waldnitz. He would push his way

across the hills, wander through its quiet ways in the moonlight while the good folks all lay sleeping. His

footsteps quickened as he drew nearer. Where the trees broke he would be able to look down upon it, see

every roof he knew so wellthe church, the mill, the winding Muhldethe green, worn grey with dancing

feet, where, when the hateful war was over, would be heard again the Saxon folksongs.

Another was there, where the forest halts on the brow of the hilla figure kneeling on the ground with his

face towards the village. Ulrich stole closer. It was the Herr Pfarrer, praying volubly but inaudibly. He

scrambled to his feet as Ulrich touched him, and his first astonishment over, poured forth his tale of woe.

There had been trouble since Ulrich's departure. A French corps of observation had been camped upon the

hill, and twice within the month had a French soldier been found murdered in the woods. Heavy had been the

penalties exacted from the village, and terrible had been the Colonel's threats of vengeance. Now, for a third

time, a soldier stabbed in the back had been borne into camp by his raging comrades, and this very afternoon

the Colonel had sworn that if the murderer were not handed over to him within an hour from dawn, when the

camp was to break up, he would before marching burn the village to the ground. The Herr Pfarrer was on his

way back from the camp where he had been to plead for mercy, but it had been in vain.

"The people are mad with hatred of the French," answered the Herr Pastor. "It may be one, it may be a dozen

"Can you expect it of them! There is no hope for us; the village will burn as a hundred others have burned."

Aye, that was true; Ulrich had seen their blackened ruins; the old sitting with white faces among the

wreckage of their homes, the little children wailing round their knees, the tiny broods burned in their nests.

The Herr Pfarrer had gone forward on his melancholy mission to prepare the people for their doom.

Ulrich stood alone, looking down upon Alt Waldnitz bathed in moonlight. And there came to him the words

of the old pastor: "She will be dearer to you than yourself. For her you would lay down your life." And Ulrich

knew that his love was the village of Alt Waldnitz, where dwelt his people, the old and wrinkled, the

laughing "little ones," where dwelt the helpless dumb things with their deep pathetic eyes, where the bees

They hanged him high upon a withered elm, with his face towards Alt Waldnitz, that all the village, old and

young, might see; and then to the beat of drum and scream of fife they marched away; and foresthidden

Waldnitz gathered up once more its many threads of quiet life and wove them into homely pattern.

They talked and argued many a time, and some there were who praised and some who blamed. But the Herr

Until years later a dying man unburdened his soul so that the truth became known.

Then they raised Ulrich's coffin reverently, and the yonng men carried it into the village and laid it in the

churchyard that it might always be among them. They reared above him what in their eyes was a grand