At length the servant of the burgomaster rose to take his
departure, and having enjoined his rival to be of good cheer, bent his
steps again towards the township, chuckling by the way at his own
devices. Arrived at the gates of the town, he showed his pass, and was
permitted to enter without let or hindrance. Hurrying through the
streets until he reached the burgomaster's house, he presented himself
before that worthy, whom he found seated at a table before a plate of
sausage, and in the act of draining to the dregs an enormous tankard of
beer. "Well, what news?" asked his master. "Oh! the very best; he took the bait greedily. It was quite a pleasure
to see how he enjoyed the news. No one had been before me, so I had him
all to myself. The matter will now go off as smoothly as could be
desired; but, by the saints! I had a narrow escape of failure." "Indeed! How was that?" "When I was nearly half way to the Scharfrichter's house, who should I
see just ahead of me but that cursed old gossip, Gustav Meyer. I stopped
him and asked him where he was going. _Potztausend!_ what a chatterbox! I thought I should not get an answer out of him before nightfall, and
when I did, where do you think he _was_ going? Why, straight to the
house of the Henker to have a quiet chat with young Leo upon the subject
of the murder, and reveal to him all that I had taken such pains to keep
secret. He seemed delighted at the idea of being the first to deliver
the news." The burgomaster laughed heartily. "Well, what did you do?" said he, at length. "What did I do! I told him his presence was particularly wanted at the
township, and seizing him by the collar, dragged him all the way back
again, regardless of his cackling. I informed him that you had lost some
valuables, and had given me orders to arrest anyone leaving the town on
suspicion. He was indignant at the charge. Protested, declared his
innocence, and spoke of the high character he had always borne in the
town, etc., etc. He seemed in despair at being deprived of his little
gossip with the Henker's son, and begged and entreated me to let him
have it out quietly; but, deaf to all his chattering, I dragged him home
again in spite of himself, and lodged him safely within the gates of the
town. _Donner und Blitzen!_ but it was enough to raise the bile of a
saint to listen to the wanderings of that antique driveller, to say
nothing of having one's plan so nearly frustrated; by such a worm as
that too!" Here and again the burgomaster burst into a loud laugh, in which Göbel,
in spite of himself, joined. "Ah," said he, at length recovering himself, "there is one thing yet to
be done. I must go to the jailor of the prison with private orders from
you to prevent the prisoner having an interview with his son, should he
ask for one. This accomplished, there will be no more difficulty." "Ah, yes," said the burgomaster, "it would be as well. But what an
interest you seem to take in this case, Heinrich! One would imagine that
you had a private grudge against the prisoner." "I like to see things well done," was the reply, and the servant shortly
after left the presence of his master. A great sensation was caused in ----dorf when it was given out that the
execution had been hurried on a week, and much speculation arose as to
what could have been the burgomaster's motive. Half the town already
knew by the tongue of old Gustav of his having been arrested by the
servant of the burgomaster on suspicion of having robbed his master of
certain valuables just at the very time when he (Gustav) was
contemplating the pleasure he would have in being the first to
communicate the melancholy tidings of the murder to the young headsman. They therefore concluded that Leo must still be in ignorance of the real
state of the case. The other half of ----dorf, however, never gave a
thought as to whether he knew it or not; enough for them that someone
was going to be beheaded and that they should have a spectacle to vary
the monotony of their humdrum lives. At length the fatal day arrived. The gates of the town were thrown open
(for the servant of the burgomaster gave out that the thief had been
discovered and the valuables regained), and now all ----dorf was in an
uproar, while crowds of peasants from all the surrounding villages
flocked to witness the bloody spectacle. The scaffold, or the mound of earth which was to serve as such, had been
erected half way between the township and the house of the executioner,
and was already surrounded by a file of soldiers, around which thronged
the mob so closely that they were every now and then repulsed by the
military. From the sea of human heads that inundated the place of
execution resounded a hum of voices, in which salutations, sallies, bad
language, coarse jokes, and coarser laughter, together with murmurs and
imprecations, and an occasional scream from the women when the crowd
pressed too closely, were confusedly mingled, and resembled at a little
distance the bleating of an immense flock of sheep. Classes of all sorts
were jostled together, from the lowest grade of handwerksbursch to the
university student. There were pretty peasant girls in their holiday
costumes, and sturdy peasants from all parts of the country. There were
Jew hawkers, sharpers, pickpockets, ruffianly bullies, cripples, and
mendicants. There were mothers with young children in their arms, which
latter contributed their feeble cries to the general buzz. All had turned out to feast their eyes upon the death of a fellow
mortal. Nor was this an ordinary execution like that described in an
earlier part of this story. No; this was an exceptional case--something
out of the common way, a sublimer spectacle. In this case the condemned was no obscure handwerksbursch, of whose
career the multitude knew nothing, and cared as little about. The
criminal was no less a man than Franz Wenzel, the far-famed
Scharfrichter, who had amputated the heads of "poor sinners" for the
last thirty or forty years, and was now doomed to lose his own. The interest in the case was considerably heightened when it was known
that the veteran executioner was to be operated upon by the hands of his
own son. Then the facts of the murder were so strange, so unnatural. Fancy the cunning of that hardened old sinner, the ex-headsman, who,
according to his own confession, made in prison the day before the
execution, had waylaid, robbed, and murdered the innocent Count of
Waffenburg, a scion of one of the most wealthy and respected noble
families for miles round, disguised as a Capuchin friar, and in order to
conceal the identity of the murdered man, had dissevered the head of the
corpse, which he had endeavoured to hide for ever from the eye of man by
throwing it into the trunk of a hollow chestnut tree.