The Fiery Angel (2 page)

Thus, helping each other, now stubbornly arguing, now uniting to admire, in the cool days of winter and the starry nights of summer, we read all that we could obtain in our secluded backwater, transforming the garret of the apothecary into a veritable academy. In those ancients of whom I had heard no mention at the University, either at the
ordinarii
or the disputes—in Catullus, Martialis, Calpurnius, we found passages of beauty and taste for ever unexcelled, and in the creations of the divine Plato we looked into the remotest depths of human wisdom, not comprehending all, but moved by all. In the compositions of our own age, less perfect but nearer to us, we learnt to be conscious of that which, heretofore, had lived and swarmed within our souls, but had no words. We recognised our own, yet heretofore nebulous, views in the inexhaustibly amusing “Praise of Folly,” in the witty and noble—whatever one says—”Sponge,” in the mighty and merciless “Triumph of Venus,” and in the “Letters of Obscure Men” which we read six times from beginning to end, and to which antiquity itself can oppose perhaps Lucian alone.

Around us, meanwhile, great events were thundering, still fresh in the memory of all. It was a time of which the saying goes to-day: he who did not succumb in the year ’23, did not drown in ’24, and was not killed in ’25—must give thanks unto the Lord for a miracle. However, occupied by discourses with the noblest intellects, we were scarce disturbed by the black storms of current life. We could find no sympathy for the attack on Trier by the Knight Franz von Sickingen, whom some glorified as a friend of the righteous, but who in fact was a man of olden temper, sprung from the ranks of robbers, who hazard their heads to despoil a passing traveller. Our Archbishop repulsed the invader, thus showing that the times of Florisel of Nicea have become mere grandfather’s tales. For the two following years popular riots and revolts swept through the German lands like a Satanic roundelay—serfs broke into the villages and castles, burned, slaughtered and tormented. The dreamer Friedrich thought at first that this hurricane of blood and fire would help to establish better order and justice in the land, but I never expected anything of German peasants, still too wild and ignorant. All that resulted justified me and the bitter words of the writer:
rustica gens optima flens pessima gaudens
.

Great dissension was caused between us by the first rumours about Martin Luther, that “invincible heretic,” who then, already, had not a few followers among the ruling princes. People nowadays assure us that in those days it was as if nine-tenths of Germany cried “Long live Luther,” and in Spain they afterwards declared that with us religion changes like the weather, and that may-beetles fly between the three churches. But the dispute about Transubstantiation and Sanctifying Grace interested me personally not at all, and I have never been able to understand how Desiderius Erasmus, that unique genius, could interest himself in monastic preachings. Conscious with the best men of my time that faith consists in depth of heart and not in outward show, I felt for that reason no constraint either in the company of good Catholics or in the midst of fanatical Lutherans. Friedrich, on the contrary, who found in religion gloomy precipices to terrify him at every step, regarded the books of Luther as a shining revelation, though me they pleased only by a degree of strength and floridness in thé style, none the less rather unpolished—and our discussions at times slipped gradually into insulting quarrels.

At the beginning of the year ’26, immediately after Holy Easter, sister Louisa came to our house with her husband. Life with them in the house became quite unbearable for me, because they, untiringly, rained reproaches on me that I, in my twenties, still remained a yoke on the shoulders of my father and a millstone in the eyes of my mother. About that time Knight Georg von Frundsberg, the glorious vanquisher of the French, was commissioned by the Emperor to visit our lands for the purpose of enlisting recruits. Then it came into my mind to become a free landsknecht, for I saw no other means of changing my way of living, that was ready to go stagnant, like the water in a pond. Friedrich, who had dreamt that I should earn fame as a writer, was very sad, but found no reasons to dissuade me. And I declared to my father, definitely and determinedly, that I had chosen the military craft, since the sword became me more than the lancet. Father, as I had expected, flew into a rage and forbade me even to think of a military career, saying, All my life I have repaired human bodies, I do not desire that my son should mutilate them.” Neither I nor my friend had money for me to buy arms and clothing, so I decided to leave the parental roof surreptitiously. At night, I remember it was, on the 5th of June, unnoticed I made my way out of the house, taking with me twenty-five Rhine guldens. I remember well how Friedrich, accompanying me till I reached the entrance to the field, embraced me—perhaps for the last time, weeping by the grey willow standing pale as a corpse in the moonlight.

I, on the other hand, felt in my heart that day no heaviness of parting, for a new life shone before me, like the depth of a May morning. I was young and strong, the enlisting officers accepted me without question, and I was allotted to Frundsberg’s army of Italy. It will be readily understood by everyone that the days that followed were not easy for me, one has only to remember the nature of our landsknechts—men riotous, coarse, untutored, ostentatious in the gaudiness of their dress and the floridness of their speech, seeking only where they might drink deeper or seize richer booty. It was almost frightening to me, after the witticisms, tempered as a needle, of Martial, and the arguments of Marsilio Ficcino, soaring as the flight of a hawk, to share in the unrestrained jests of my new comrades, and sometimes the whole life appeared but an oppressive nightmare. My officers, however, could not fail to notice that I was different from my comrades both in learning and behaviour, and as, moreover, I could manage the arquebus well and was ready and willing for any task—I was constantly singled out and given occupations more suited to me.

As a landsknecht I made all that strenuous march into Italy, when we had to cross the snow-clad mountains in the cold of winter, ford rivers up to our throats in water, camp for whole weeks in the engulfing mud. It was then that I took part in the capture by assault of the Eternal City, on the 6th May of the year ’27, by the united Spanish and German troops. With my own eyes I saw the infuriated soldiers loot the churches of Rome, commit violations in nunneries, ride wearing mitres through the streets on Papal mules, throw the Holy Sacrament and the Relics of the Saints into the Tiber, set up a conclave and declare Martin Luther pope. After that I spent about a year in the various cities of Italy, acquainting myself more closely with the life of the country, a land truly enlightened and still remaining a shining example to the other nations of the world. This enabled me to become familiar with the entrancing creations of the Italian painters, whose works are so superior to those of ours, except of course to those of the inimitable Albrecht Dürer—amongst them, moreover, the creations of most recent times, those of the ever lamented Raphael d’Urbino, his worthy competitor Sebastiano del Piombo, the young but all-embracing genius Benvenuto Cellini, whom we also encountered as an enemy in the field, and Michael-Angelo Buonarotti, who despises somewhat the beauty of form, but is yet powerful and original.

In the spring of the following year, the lieutenant of the Spanish detachment, Don Miguel de Gamez, approached me to his person as physician, because I had gained a certain familiarity with the Spanish language. Together with Don Miguel I had to travel to Spain, whither he was despatched with secret letters to our Emperor, and this journey resolved my fate. Having found the court at the City of Toledo, we found there also the greatest of our contemporaries, a hero equal to the Hannibals, Scipios and other great men of antiquity—Hernando Cortes, the Marquis del Valje-Oaxaca. The reception arranged for that proud conqueror of Empires, as well as the narratives of those who had returned from the country so entrancingly described by Amerigo Vespucci, persuaded me to seek my fortune in that blessed haven for all the failures of this earth. I joined a friendly expedition, organised by German settlers in Seville, and set sail with light heart across the Ocean.

In the West Indies I entered at first the service of the Royal Audiencia; but soon, having seen proof of how unfaithfully and unskilfully it conducts its affairs, and of how unjustly it rewards abilities and services, I chose rather to execute commissions for those German houses that have factories in the New World, for preference for the Welzers who own copper mines in San Domingo, but also for the Fuggers, the Ellingers, the Krombergs and the Tetzels. Four times I made forays to the West, to the South and to the North, searching for new veins of ore, for fields of gems—amethysts and emeralds, and for a forest of precious timbers: twice under the command of others, and twice personally commanding the expeditions. In this way I marched through all the lands from Chicora to the port of Tumbes, spending long months among the dark-skinned heathen, beholding in the log-palaces of the natives riches so vast that before them the treasures of our Europe are as nothing, and several times escaping the destruction that hung over me as if almost by a miracle. In my love for an Indian woman, who concealed beneath her dark skin a heart that could feel both attachment and passion, it was my lot to experience powerful agonies of soul, but it would be out of place to relate of them here at greater length. I may say in short—that, just as those soft twilight days spent at the books with dear Friedrich educated my thoughts, so these terrible years of wandering tempered my will in the flame of trial, and endowed me with that most priceless attribute of man—faith in myself.

It is certainly quite erroneous for people in our country to imagine that across the Ocean gold is to be gathered from the earth merely by stooping down, but, none the less, after spending five years in America and the West Indies, I contrived, by unremitting industry and toil and not without the help of luck, to put by an adequate sum in savings. And it was then that the thought came to me to travel back to German lands, not with the object of settling peacefully in our almost sleepy township, but with the worldly desire to parade my successes in front of father, who could not but think of me as the ne’er-do-weel who robbed him. I shall not conceal, however, the fact that I was also filled with a burning longing and weariness for home, that I had never thought to feel for my native mountains, on whose slopes, embittered, I used to wander with my arbalist, and that I passionately wanted to see my dear mother, as well as the friend whom I had left behind, and whom I hoped to find still alive. Even then, however, I was firmly decided that, after having visited the home village and re-established connection with the family, I should return to New Spain, which I regarded as my second fatherland.

In the early spring of the year ’34, I sailed away in a ship of the Welzers from the port Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz, and after a stormy and difficult journey we arrived in the wealthy city of Antwerpen. Several weeks of my time were spent in accomplishing the various commissions I had undertaken to fulfil, and it was only in the month of August that, at last, I could set out upon the journey to the Rhine lands. From that moment, properly, begins my narrative.

F
ROM the Netherlands I decided to go overland, and I chose the route through Köln, for I wanted to see once more that city in which I had known so many pleasant hours. For thirty Spanish escudos I bought an excellent horse, capable without strain of carrying both me and my baggage, but, fearing robbers, I tried to assume the appearance of a simple sailor. I exchanged the gay and relatively sumptuous dress in which I had strutted about in luxurious Brabant for the outfit of an ordinary seaman, dark brown in colour and with breeches tied below the knee. But I retained my reliable long sword; for I placed no less faith in it than in Saint Gertruda, patroness of all land travellers. I set aside a small sum in silver joachimsthalers for my expenses on the journey, and my savings I sewed in the lining of a broad belt in golden pistoles.

After a pleasant five days’ journeying in the company of casual strangers, for I travelled without undue haste, I crossed the Maas at Venloo. I will not conceal the fact that when I reached the regions where German dresses began to flicker past me, and my hearing was assailed by the glib—oh, so familiar—speech of home, I was seized by emotions perhaps unworthy of a full-grown man! Leaving Venloo early, I reckoned to reach Neuss by the evening, and accordingly I took leave of my road companions at Viersen, for they purposed visiting Gladbach on the way, and turned, already alone, on to the Düsseldorf highway. As there was need to hasten I began to urge on my horse, but stumbling, it injured its ankle against a stone—and this insignificant occurrence gave rise, as direct cause, to the long series of remarkable happenings that it became my fate to live through after that day. But I had long observed that it is only insignificant happenings that prove the first links of those chains of heavy trial which, unseen and unheard, life sometimes forges for us.

On a lame horse I could advance but slowly, and I was still far outside the town when it became difficult to see in the grey twilight, and from the grass there rose a pungent mist. I was riding at that time through a thick beech forest, and was foreseeing not without misgivings a night spent in a place totally unknown to me, when suddenly, rounding a bend, I espied, in a small clearing at the very edge of the road, a little wooden house, all asquint, lonely, and as if it had lost its way. The gate was closely shut and locked, the lower windows more like large arrow-slits, but under the roof there dangled on a rope a half-broken bottle, indicating that here was a hostelry, and, riding up, I began to hammer on the shutters with the hilt of my sword. At my firm knocking, and at the furious barking of the dog, the hostess peered out, but for a long time she refused to let me in, questioning me as to who I was, and why I rode that way. All unsuspecting what future I was demanding for myself, I insisted with threats and with curses, so that at last a door was unlocked to me and my horse led away to its stall.