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Learning from Sure Start pb 18/5/05 1:33 pm Page 1

Learning from Sure Start

LEARNING FROM SURE START
Working with Young Children and their Families

“This book demonstrates the key strength of Sure Start, its breadth of
vision… It shows how with the right effort, statutory and voluntary
organisations can work side by side. It also shows how important it is to
engage local people in finding solutions, blending professional and
community support to strengthen both… Learning from Sure Start is a
significant contribution to the evidence base on what works for young
LEARNING from
children and families.”

Sure Start
Naomi Eisenstadt, Director, Sure Start Unit

Sure Start, an exciting initiative in early childhood care and education with
families in the UK, has been developing new forms of community-focused
early interventions, with the aim of having all children ‘ready to flourish’
when they start school.
This book, the first of its kind, is the result of a close collaboration
Working with Young Children

Weinberger, Pickstone and Hannon

between one local programme and a university over a five year period.
The contributors all have first hand experience as practitioners or
researchers in the Sure Start programme at Foxhill & Parson Cross in
Sheffield, which has provided a wide range of new services. Contributors:
and Their Families
• Describe various services within health, education and social welfare
• Examine implications of the development of inter-agency theory and
practice for planning and delivery of services for children
• Evaluate methods that were employed
• Identify what worked and what didn’t
• Indicate lessons that can be drawn from experience

This is indispensable reading for students of early childhood and early

years practitioners, policy makers, and researchers.

Jo Weinberger is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Sheffield,

has previously worked as a lecturer, nursery teacher and community
worker, and is author of Literacy Goes to School (1996).
Caroline Pickstone is a Research Fellow and Honorary Clinical Lecturer
in the University of Sheffield. She is an experienced Speech and
Language Therapist.
Peter Hannon is Professor of Education at the University of Sheffield. He
is the author of Literacy, Home and School (1995) and Reflecting on
Literacy in Education (2000).
ISBN 0-335-21638-2

Cover design: del norte (Leeds) Ltd

www.openup.co.uk 9 780335 216383 Edited by Jo Weinberger • Caroline Pickstone • Peter Hannon

BL2172 Prelims 12/05/2005 8:51 PM Page i

Learning from Sure Start

BL2172 Prelims 12/05/2005 8:51 PM Page ii
BL2172 Prelims 12/05/2005 8:51 PM Page iii

Learning from Sure

Start

Working with young children and

their families

Edited by Jo Weinberger, Caroline Pickstone and

Peter Hannon

Open University Press

BL2172 Prelims 12/05/2005 8:51 PM Page iv

Open University Press

McGraw-Hill Education
McGraw-Hill House
Shoppenhangers Road
Maidenhead, Berkshire
England SL6 2QL

email: [email protected]
world wide web: www.openup.co.uk

and Two Penn Plaza, New York, NY 1012–2289

USA

First published 2005

Copyright © Jo Weinberger, Caroline Pickstone and Peter Hannon 2005

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of
criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written
permission of the publisher or a licence from the Copyright Licensing Agency
Limited. Details of such licences (for reprographic reproduction) may be obtained
from the Copyright Licensing Agency Limited of 90 Tottenham Court Road,
London, W1T 4LP.

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 0 335 216382 (pb) 0 335 216390 (hb)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

CIP data has been applied for

Typeset by BookEns Ltd, Royston, Herts.

Printed and bound in Great Britain by
??????MP????G Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall
BL2172 Prelims 12/05/2005 8:51 PM Page v

To the children and families of

Foxhill and Parson Cross
BL2172 Prelims 12/05/2005 8:51 PM Page vi
BL2172 Prelims 12/05/2005 8:51 PM Page vii

Acknowledgements

To all the parents, children, workers and members of the community who
have contributed ideas, information and time to turn this book into a
reality.
Particular thanks are due to Heather Scott, for the fantastic support and
imagination she has contributed throughout to the whole project, extend-
ing well beyond the role of research secretary. Our thanks also extend to
Greg Brooks, Michele Moore, Cathy Nutbrown, members of the Sure Start
Foxhill and Parson Cross Research, Evaluation and Advisory Committee and
everyone else who has made a contribution to this collective enterprise.
BL2172 Prelims 12/05/2005 8:51 PM Page viii
BL2172 Prelims 12/05/2005 8:51 PM Page ix

Contents

Foreword Naomi Eisenstadt, Director of Sure Start,

Department for Education and Skills xiii

Contributors xv

List of abbreviations xix

Part One: Introduction

Chapter 1 Why we should learn from Sure Start 3
Peter Hannon and Linda Fox

Chapter 2 Listening to families: a survey of

parents’ views 13
Jo Weinberger

Part Two: Improving social and emotional development

Chapter 3 Family support 31
Jo Weinberger

Chapter 4 ‘Connecting with our Kids’ parenting

programme 43
Margaret Drake with Jo Weinberger
and Peter Hannon

Chapter 5 Meeting the needs of teenage parents 55

Deborah Crofts

Part Three: Improving health

Chapter 6 Low birth weight – exploring the
contribution of nutrition 71
Fiona Ford
BL2172 Prelims 12/05/2005 8:51 PM Page x

x CONTENTS

Chapter 7 Supporting breastfeeding mothers 86

Sue Battersby

Chapter 8 The impact of Sure Start on health visiting 102

Ann Rowe

Chapter 9 Child Safety Scheme 115

Robin Carlisle

Part Four: Improving children’s ability to learn

Chapter 10 Quality of play and learning opportunities 131
Simon Martinez

Chapter 11 Community teaching in a Sure Start

context 141
Jackie Marsh and Jan Forde

Chapter 12 Screening and language development 154

Caroline Pickstone

Chapter 13 Media, popular culture and

young children 166
Jackie Marsh

Chapter 14 A dialogic reading intervention

programme for parents and
preschoolers 177
Anne Morgan

Part Five: Strengthening families and communities

Chapter 15 Community involvement 193
Helen Lomas and Peter Hannon

Chapter 16 The Young Families’ Advice Service 205

Imogen Hale

Chapter 17 Community research 217

Jo Weinberger
BL2172 Prelims 12/05/2005 8:51 PM Page xi

CONTENTS xi

Part Six: What have we learned? What do we need to know?

Chapter 18 Bringing it together: the role of the
programme manager 231
Linda Fox, programme manager,
talks to the editors

Chapter 19 Looking to the future 248

Peter Hannon, Caroline Pickstone,
Jo Weinberger and Linda Fox

Appendices
Appendix 1 List of Sure Start services 263

Appendix 2 Interview schedule for survey of

parents of 4-year-olds, condensed version 267

Index 275
BL2172 Prelims 12/05/2005 8:51 PM Page xii
BL2172 Prelims 12/05/2005 8:51 PM Page xiii

Foreword

I am delighted to be asked to write this foreword. Foxhill and Parson Cross

was a Sure Start ‘trailblazer’, set up in the very early days of the programme,
and has grown from strength to strength. I had the pleasure of attending
the launch of the programme in August 1999. It was a cold, wet day on a
grim patch of land on a Sheffield estate. Hundreds of people turned out for
the event, including the local MP, David Blunkett. Wide community
involvement as well as significant political commitment was evident from
the start.
This book demonstrates the key strength of Sure Start, its breadth of
vision, working on health, education, social welfare and community devel-
opment. Indeed, my favourite part of the book is the appendix describing
the range of services available from Foxhill and Parson Cross Sure Start. It
shows not only the range of services, but also that it is possible for the same
organization to provide services for all along with services for families with
quite complex difficulties. It shows how, with the right effort, statutory and
voluntary organizations can work side by side. It also shows how important
it is to engage local people in finding solutions, blending professional and
community support to strengthen both.
Another asset of the Foxhill and Parson Cross programme was the
involvement of academic researchers from the very start of the project. The
evaluation strategy was not a second thought after one or two years of
operation; it was built in from the beginning, ensuring a complete story
told by the researchers, the service providers, and the parents who used the
services.
Sure Start has grown enormously since the early days of establishing
the trailblazer programmes, but has managed to maintain some key fea-
tures. Indeed, these features have informed the broader children’s agenda
set out in Every Child Matters*, working with parents as well as children, tai-
loring services to individual family needs, working in interdisciplinary
teams, and the need for good information and evaluation. We now have

* Department for Education and Skills (2003) Green Paper, sets out for consultation a framework
for improving outcomes for all children and their families, to protect them, to promote their
well-being and to support all children to develop their full potential.
BL2172 Prelims 12/05/2005 8:51 PM Page xiv

xiv FOREWORD

the opportunity to make this real for all children, not just under-4s living
in poor areas.
Documenting the Sure Start experience is critically important if future
investment in children and communities is to be maximized. Learning from
Sure Start is a significant contribution to the evidence base on what works
for young children and families.

Naomi Eisenstadt
Director, Sure Start Unit
BL2172 Prelims 12/05/2005 8:51 PM Page xv

Contributors

Sue Battersby
Sue is a Lecturer in Midwifery at the University of Sheffield. She has been
the lead researcher for breastfeeding projects within the Sure Start Foxhill
and Parson Cross programme. Highly experienced in both hospital and
community midwifery posts in England and the Middle East, she has had a
personal interest in infant feeding for many years, including involvement
in local infant feeding initiatives.

Robin Carlisle
Robin is a Specialist Registrar in Public Health Medicine working across
South Yorkshire. He carried out an evaluation of the Sure Start Home Injury
Prevention Programme in partnership with Sheffield Health Informatics.
Prior to becoming a public health specialist, Robin was a GP, a lecturer at
Nottingham University, and led a multi-practice research programme on
health inequalities and primary care.

Deborah Crofts
Deborah is a health visitor, currently employed as a public health nurse in
Sure Start Foxhill and Parson Cross. She has previously been involved in
working on two extensive research projects at the University of Sheffield. As
part of her work for Sure Start, she has worked with teenage parents along-
side the Sure Start midwife and the safer care worker, and is completing a
PhD on the work outlined in her chapter.

Margaret Drake
Margaret was a Parenting Programme Manager of the ‘C’mon Everybody’
(Connecting with our Kids) team, a partner with Sure Start Foxhill and
Parson Cross since it began in 1998. Margaret is a highly experienced
teacher with a long-standing interest in children with behavioural prob-
lems, and delivered Webster Stratton parenting programmes within Sure
Start.
BL2172 Prelims 12/05/2005 8:51 PM Page xvi

xvi CONTRIBUTORS

Fiona Ford
Fiona is a Research Dietician in the Centre for Pregnancy Nutrition at the
University of Sheffield. She coordinates a group of colleagues whose aim is
to reduce inequalities in low birth weight rates across Sheffield. She inves-
tigated the nutritional status of pregnant women in the Sure Start Foxhill
and Parson Cross area with a view to designing a nutrition intervention to
reduce the incidence of low birth weight.

Jan Forde
Jan is currently a Foundation Stage teacher in a large inner-city primary
school. She was formerly a community teacher for Sheffield Young
Children’s Service and Sure Start Foxhill and Parson Cross, working with a
wide range of providers for preschool children and local parents. Her previ-
ous experience includes family literacy and numeracy, adult literacy, early
years teaching, training and journalism.

Linda Fox
Linda is the programme manager for Sure Start Foxhill and Parson Cross.
She has a background in nursing and health visiting, and her main inter-
ests include maternal depression and issues of social exclusion. She joined
Sure Start Foxhill and Parson Cross having had long experience of working
with disadvantaged families, and has been at the forefront of developing
the programme from its earliest stages.

Imogen Hale
Imogen is currently a welfare adviser (academic) at the University of
Sheffield Union of Students Advice Centre, and previously worked as a
Young Families Advice Worker (Foxhill and Parson Cross Advice Service),
where she was employed to set up and deliver a Sure Start-funded advice
service to families with young children. Her main areas of advice were debt,
housing, employment and benefits.

Peter Hannon
Peter is a Professor in the School of Education, University of Sheffield. He
has directed projects in parental involvement in young children’s develop-
ment, family literacy, early literacy development and research in commu-
nity-focused programmes. He has been collaborating with the Sure Start
Foxhill and Parson Cross trailblazer programme since its inception, and is
responsible, with the programme manager, for coordination of research and
evaluation.
BL2172 Prelims 12/05/2005 8:51 PM Page xvii

CONTRIBUTORS xvii

Helen Lomas
Helen is the Parent Involvement Coordinator at Sure Start Foxhill and
Parson Cross, having been involved since the start of the programme as a
local parent, a volunteer and a parent involvement worker. She has assisted
research and evaluation in the programme and its links with the commu-
nity. She currently coordinates a team of four parent involvement workers.

Jackie Marsh
Jackie is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education at the University of
Sheffield, where she teaches on the MA Literacy and Language in Education
and MA Early Childhood Education. Her research focuses on the role of
popular culture and the media in young children’s lives and early literacy
experiences.

Simon Martinez
Simon is currently Sheffield Citywide Sure Start Manager and was previ-
ously the Early Years Manager for Sure Start Foxhill and Parson Cross, a role
that he undertook from the early stages of the programme. His previous
related professional work was as a health visitor.

Anne Morgan
Anne is currently a Research Fellow in the School of Education, University
of Sheffield. Prior to that, she was Literacy Coordinator in a Sheffield
primary school and taught across Key Stage 1. At this time, she also worked
on an early literacy intervention conducted by the University of Sheffield
(the REAL Project) as a programme teacher.

Caroline Pickstone
Caroline is a Research Fellow and also Honorary Clinical Lecturer in the
University of Sheffield and has worked with Sure Start Foxhill and Parson
Cross on a research study since 2000. She is an experienced speech and lan-
guage therapist and manager and has long been involved with the devel-
opment of new working models for child services.

Ann Rowe
Ann is a Research and Development Facilitator within the Institute of
General Practice and Primary Care at the University of Sheffield. Her previ-
ous experience includes working as a nurse, health visitor and teenage par-
enting project worker. Ann has led a number of professional and
organizational development programmes, and has researched and pub-
lished widely in the field of public health and health visiting.
BL2172 Prelims 12/05/2005 8:51 PM Page xviii

xviii CONTRIBUTORS

Jo Weinberger
Jo is a Senior Research Fellow at Sheffield University and has been working
on research and evaluation in the Sheffield Sure Start Foxhill and Parson
Cross initiative since 2001. She has previously worked as a lecturer in edu-
cation, nursery teacher, adult literacy tutor, special needs teacher and com-
munity worker focusing on home school literacy development.
BL2172 Prelims 12/05/2005 8:51 PM Page xix

List of abbreviations

BIBS Breastfeeding is Best Support

CCPL Community Childcare Play and Learning
DoH Department of Health
ECERS-R Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale, Revised edition
EPPE Effective Provision of Preschool Education research project
EYDO Early Years Development Officer
F&PC SS Foxhill and Parson Cross Sure Start
FPCAS Foxhill and Parson Cross Advice Service
FWT First Words Test
HV health visitor
LBW low birth weight
LEA Local Education Authority
NESS National Evaluation of Sure Start
PCT Primary Care Trust
REAC Research and Evaluation Advisory Committee
RNI recommended nutritional intake
SGA small for gestational age
SLT speech and language therapy
SMP statutory maternity pay
SSLM Sure Start Language Measure
SSU Sure Start Unit
SYCS Sheffield Young Children’s Service
WFTC Working Families’ Tax Credit
YFAS Young Families’ Advice Service
BL2172 Prelims 12/05/2005 8:51 PM Page xx
BL2172 ch01 26/04/2005 7:04 PM Page 1

Part One
Introduction
BL2172 ch01 26/04/2005 7:04 PM Page 2
BL2172 ch01 26/04/2005 7:04 PM Page 3

1 Why we should learn from

Sure Start
Peter Hannon and Linda Fox

Introduction

It is rare that announcements of government policy concerning young

children and their families immediately make practitioners and researchers
sit up and take notice. However, one such occasion occurred in England in
1998 when the Government announced an initiative, to be called Sure
Start, that was intended to improve support for families with children aged
from birth to 4 years. The purpose of the initiative was stated thus.

The aim of Sure Start is to work with parents and children to

promote the physical, intellectual, social and emotional develop-
ment of children – particularly those who are disadvantaged – to
make sure they are ready to thrive when they get to school. (Glass,
1999, p. 258)

The initiative was striking for several reasons. First, there was to be a
significant level of funding – many hundreds of millions of pounds – at a
time when the new Labour Government was committed elsewhere to no
increase in public expenditure. Second, Sure Start was to be focused on rel-
atively small areas of high need, reflecting not only a recognition of the
relationships between poverty, family circumstances, health and preschool
development but also the desirability of action at the level of communities.
Third, in marked contrast to the centralizing tendency of governments for
many years previously, there was to be a high degree of local autonomy for
Sure Start programmes. Applications were to be welcomed from local com-
munities and, provided they worked to national targets, they were free to
develop any reasonable services for their programmes. Fourth, there was the
ambitious aim of establishing some 500 local programmes by 2004. It
looked as if something quite radical was about to happen that could have a
major impact on early childhood health, care and education in England.
This book concerns events and developments in one Sure Start area, in
Sheffield, a large industrial city in the north of England. It is written by
BL2172 ch01 26/04/2005 7:04 PM Page 4

4 INTRODUCTION

practitioners and researchers who worked together in the Foxhill and

Parson Cross local programme. We hope that our work will be of interest to
other practitioners and researchers, whether they work in Sure Start or in
other settings, and perhaps to those, including policymakers, concerned
more generally with young children and their families.

The local context

The Foxhill and Parson Cross area consists of two linked neighbourhoods
some 5 miles to the north of the city centre, with extensive public housing,
built from the 1930s to 1970s, when there was high employment in local
industry. In the 1980s and 1990s, Sheffield experienced severe economic
challenges as steel production, coal mining and engineering contracted.
Foxhill and Parson Cross had never been a prosperous area, but by the late
1990s its largely white, working-class community had much higher levels
of poverty, experienced poorer health and had lower levels of educational
achievement than was the case for the city, or the nation, as a whole. The
response to this situation from professionals working in the area and from
members of the community was to begin to develop local regeneration and
improved services and self-help initiatives in health, care and education.
When news of the Sure Start initiative reached Foxhill and Parson
Cross, there was an eager response. Two professionals, one a health visitor
based at the Foxhill Medical Centre, and the other, then manager of an
NCH Family Centre in the area, were able to draw on close relationships
with parents in the community to work on an application for a programme.
They and a group of parents were joined by other professionals to design a
Sure Start programme to address the community’s needs. One of those who
contributed to the group was a professor in the School of Education at the
University of Sheffield. By early 1999, the group had produced an applica-
tion for a programme that included ideas for many services wanted by fam-
ilies in the area. Some of the services that were eventually established are
described in this book.
From its beginning, the Foxhill and Parson Cross group had a commit-
ment to research and evaluation. The 1999 application stated that it
regarded,

evaluation as absolutely essential for the development of the pro-

gramme and for sharing lessons learned in Sheffield with Sure Start
programmes elsewhere.

After many twists and turns, the application was successful and a delivery
plan for the Foxhill and Parson Cross programme was approved in late
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pains; that pretty statue is not a woman; she weeps all day long and never looks at
me.”
The young man, unable thus far to interrupt the officer’s extreme volubility,
uttered an exclamation of surprise:—
“What! What did you say? Charged you to seduce the daughter of that unfortunate
Schumacker!”
“Seduce? Well, so be it, if that is the name you give it now in Copenhagen; but I
defy the Devil himself to succeed. Day before yesterday, being on duty, I put on for
her express benefit a superb French ruff sent direct from Paris. Would you believe that
she never even raised her eyes to look at me, although I passed through her room
three or four times clinking my new spurs, whose rowels are no bigger than a
Lombardy ducat? That’s the newest fashion, is n’t it?”
“Heavens! Heavens!” said the young man, striking his forehead; “but this
confounds me!”
“I thought it would!” rejoined the officer, mistaking the meaning of the remark.
“Not to take the least notice of me! It is incredible, and yet it is true.”
The young man strode up and down the room in violent excitement.
“Won’t you take some refreshment, Captain Dispolsen?” cried the officer.
The young man started.
“I am not Captain Dispolsen.”
“What!” said the officer angrily, sitting up as he spoke; “and pray who are you,
then, that venture to introduce yourself here at this hour?”
The young man displayed his papers.
“I wish to see Count Griffenfeld,—I would say, your prisoner.”
“The Count! the Count!” muttered the officer in some displeasure. “But, to be
sure, this paper is in order; here is the signature of Vice-Chancellor Grummond de
Knud. ‘Admit the bearer to visit all the royal prisons at any hour and at any time.’
Grummond de Knud is brother to old General Levin de Knud, who is in command at
Throndhjem, and you must know that this old general had the bringing up of my
future brother-in-law.”
“Thanks for these family details, Lieutenant. Don’t you think you have told me
enough of them?”
“The impertinent fellow is right,” said the lieutenant, biting his lips. “Hullo, there,
officer, officer of the tower! Escort this stranger to Schumacker, and do not scold if I
have taken down your lamp with three beaks and but one wick. I was curious to
examine an article which is doubtless the work of Sciold the Pagan or Havar the
giant-killer; and besides it is no longer the fashion to hang anything but crystal
chandeliers from the ceiling.”
 With these words, as the young man and his escort crossed the deserted donjon
garden, the martyr to fashion resumed the thread of the love adventures of the
Amazonian Clelia and Horatius the One-eyed.
 IV.

Benvolio. Where the devil should this Romeo be? Came he not home
to-night?
Mercutio. Not to his father’s; I spoke with his man.
Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet.

A MAN and two horses entered the courtyard of the palace of the governor of
Throndhjem. The horseman dismounted, shaking his head with a discontented air.
He was about to lead the two animals to the stable, when his arm was seized, and
a voice cried: “How! You here alone, Poël! And your master,—where is your
master?”
It was old General Levin de Knud, who, seeing from his window the young man’s
servant and the empty saddle, descended quickly, and fastened upon the groom a gaze
which betrayed even more alarm than his question.
“Your Excellency,” said Poël, with a low bow, “my master has left Throndhjem.”
“What! has he been here, and gone again without seeing his general, without
greeting his old friend! And how long since?”
“He arrived this evening and left this evening.”
“This evening,—this very evening! But where did he stay? Where has he gone?”
“He stopped at the Spladgest, and has embarked for Munkholm.”
“Ah! I supposed he was at the antipodes. But what is his business at that castle?
What took him to the Spladgest? Just like my knight-errant. After all, I am rather to
blame, for why did I give him such a bringing up? I wanted him to be free in spite of
his rank.”
“Therefore he is no slave to etiquette,” said Poël.
“No; but he is to his own caprice. Well, he will doubtless return. Rest and refresh
yourself, Poël. Tell me,” and the general’s face took on an expression of solicitude,
“tell me, Poël, have you been doing much running up and down?”
“General, we came here direct from Bergen. My master was melancholy.”
“Melancholy! Why, what can have occurred between him and his father? Is he
averse to this marriage?”
“I do not know. But they say that his Serene Highness insists upon it.”
“Insists! You say, Poël, that the viceroy insists upon this match! But why should
he insist unless Ordener refused?”
“I don’t know, your Excellency. He seems sad.”
“Sad! Do you know how his father received him?”
 “The first time, it was at the camp, near Bergen. His Serene Highness said, ‘I
seldom see you, my son.’ ‘So much the better for me, my lord and father,’ replied my
master, ‘if you take note of it.’ Then he gave his Grace certain details about his travels
in the North, and his Grace said: ‘It is well.’ Next day my master came back from the
palace and said: ‘They want me to marry; but I must consult my second father,
General Levin.’ I saddled the horses, and here we are.”
“Really, my good Poël,” said the general, in trembling tones, “did he really call me
his second father?”
“Yes, your Excellency.”
“Woe to me if this marriage distresses him, for I will sooner incur the king’s
displeasure than lend myself to it. And yet, the daughter of the Lord High Chancellor
of both kingdoms—By the way, Poël, does Ordener know that his future mother-in-
law, Countess d’Ahlefeld, has been here incognito since yesterday, and that the count
is expected?”
“I don’t know, General.”
“Oh, yes,” thought the old governor, “he knows it; for why else should he beat a
retreat the instant that he arrived?”
Upon this, the general, with a friendly wave of the hand to Poël, and a salute to the
sentinel who presented arms to him, returned in anxious mood to the quarters which
he had left in anxious mood.
 V.
It seemed as if every emotion had stirred his heart, and had also deserted it; nothing remained but
the mournful, piercing gaze of a man thoroughly familiar with men, who saw, at a glance, the aim and
object of all things.—Schiller: The Visions.

W HEN, after leading the stranger along the winding stairs and lofty halls of the
donjon of the Lion of Schleswig, the officer finally threw open the door of the
room occupied by the man he sought, the first words that fell upon his ear were
once more these: “Has Captain Dispolsen come at last?”
The speaker was an old man, seated with his back to the door, his elbows on a
writing-table, his head buried in his hands. He wore a black woollen gown, and above
a bed at one end of the room hung a broken escutcheon, around which were grouped
the broken collars of the orders of the Elephant and the Dannebrog; a count’s coronet,
reversed, was fastened under the shield, and two fragments of a hand of Justice, tied
crosswise, completed the strange ornamentation. The old man was Schumacker.
“No, my Lord,” replied the officer; then he said to the stranger, “This is the
prisoner;” and leaving them together, he closed the door, without heeding the shrill
voice of the old man, who exclaimed: “If it is not the captain, I will see no one.”
At these words the stranger remained by the door; and the prisoner, thinking
himself alone,—for he had turned away,—fell back into his silent revery. Suddenly he
exclaimed: “The captain has assuredly forsaken and betrayed me! Men,—men are
like the icicle which an Arab took for a diamond; he hid it carefully in his wallet, and
when he looked for it again he found not even a drop of water.”
“I am no such man,” said the stranger.
Schumacker rose quickly. “Who is here? Who overhears me? Is it some miserable
tool of that Guldenlew?”
“Speak no evil of the viceroy, my lord Count.”
“Lord Count! Do you address me thus to flatter me? You have your labor for your
pains; I am powerful no longer.”
“He who speaks to you never knew you in your day of power, and is none the less
your friend.”
“Because he still hopes to gain something from me; those memories of the
unhappy which linger in the minds of men are to be measured by the hopes of future
gain.”
“I am the one who should complain, noble Count; for I remember you, and you
have forgotten me. I am Ordener.”
A flash of joy lit up the old man’s sad eyes, and a smile which he could not repress
parted his white beard, as when a sunbeam breaks through a cloud.
 “Ordener! Welcome, traveller Ordener! A thousand prayers for the happiness of
the traveller who remembers the prisoner!”
“But,” inquired Ordener, “had you really forgotten me?”
“I had forgotten you,” said Schumacker, resuming his sombre mood, “as we forget
the breeze which refreshes us and passes by; we are fortunate if it does not become a
whirlwind to destroy us.”
“Count Griffenfeld,” rejoined the young man, “did you not count upon my
return?”
“Old Schumacker did not count upon it; but there is a maiden here, who reminded
me this very day that it was a year on the 8th of last May, since you went away.”
Ordener started.
“Heavens! Can it be your Ethel, noble Count?”
“Who else?”
“Your daughter, my Lord, has deigned to count the months of my absence! Oh,
how many dreary days I have passed! I have traversed Norway from Christiania to
Wardhus; but my journeyings always tended back toward Throndhjem.”
“Use your freedom, young man, while you may. But tell me who you are. I would
like, Ordener, to know you by some other name. The son of one of my mortal foes is
called Ordener.”
“Perhaps, my lord Count, this mortal foe feels greater kindness for you than you
for him.”
“You evade my question; but keep your secret. I might learn that the fruit which
quenches my thirst is a poison which will destroy me.”
“Count!” cried Ordener, angrily; “Count!” he repeated, in tones of pity and
reproach.
“Why should I trust you,” replied Schumacker,—“you who to my very face
defend the merciless Guldenlew?”
“The viceroy,” gravely interrupted the young man, “has just ordered that for the
future you shall be free and unguarded within the entire precinct of the Lion of
Schleswig keep. This news I learned at Bergen, and you will doubtless soon hear it
from headquarters.”
“This is a favor for which I dared not hope, and I thought you were the only
person to whom I had mentioned my wish. So they lessen the weight of my chains as
that of my years increases; and when old age renders me helpless, they will probably
tell me, ‘You are free.’ ”
So saying, the old man smiled bitterly, and added: “And you, young man, do you
still cling to your foolish ideas of independence?”
“If I had not those same foolish ideas, I should not be here.”
“How did you come to Throndhjem?”
 “Why, on horseback.”
“How did you reach Munkholm?”
“By boat.”
“Poor fool! You think yourself free, and yet you only leave a horse for a boat. It is
not your own limbs that carry out your wishes; it is a brute beast, it is material matter;
and you call that free will!”
“I force animate beings to obey me.”
“To assume a right to the obedience of certain beings is to give others a right to
command you. Independence exists only in isolation.”
“You do not love mankind, noble Count?”
The old man laughed sadly. “I weep that I am a man, and I laugh at him who
would console me. You will yet learn, if you do not already know, that misfortune
creates suspicion as prosperity does ingratitude. Tell me, since you come from
Bergen, what favoring winds blow upon Captain Dispolsen. Some good fortune must
have befallen him, that he forgets me.”
Ordener looked grave and embarrassed.
“Dispolsen, my lord Count? I come here to-day to talk to you of him. I know that
he possessed your entire confidence.”
“You know?” broke in the prisoner, uneasily. “You are mistaken. No one on earth
has my confidence. Dispolsen has, it is true, my papers, and very important papers
too. He went to Copenhagen, to the king, for me. I may even confess that I reckoned
more surely upon him than upon any one else, for in the days of my prosperity I never
did him a service.”
“Well, noble Count, I saw him to-day—”
“Your distress tells me the rest; he is a traitor.”
“He is dead.”
“Dead!”
The prisoner folded his arms and bent his head, then looking up at the young man,
said: “I told you some good fortune must have befallen him!”
His eye turned to the wall, where the signs of his former grandeur hung, and he
waved his hand, as if to dismiss the witness of a grief which he strove to conquer.
“I do not pity him; ’tis but one man the less. Nor do I pity myself; what have I to
lose? But my daughter,—my unfortunate daughter! I shall be the victim of this
infernal plot; and what is to become of her, if her father is taken from her?”
He turned quickly to Ordener. “How did he die? Where did you see him?”
“I saw him at the Spladgest. No one knows whether he died by suicide or by the
hand of an assassin.”
 “That is now all-important. If he was murdered, I know who dealt the blow. Then
all is lost. He bore proofs of the conspiracy against me. Those proofs might have
saved me and ruined them! Unhappy Ethel!”
“My lord Count,” said Ordener, bowing, “to-morrow I will tell you whether he
was murdered.”
Schumacker, without answering, cast on Ordener, as he left the room, a look of
quiet despair more terrible than the calm of death.
Ordener found himself in the prisoner’s empty antechamber, not knowing which
way to turn. Night was far advanced and the room was dark. He opened a door at
haphazard and entered a vast corridor lighted only by the moon, which moved rapidly
through pale clouds. Its misty beams fell now and again upon the long, narrow glass
windows, and painted on the opposite wall what seemed a procession of ghosts,
appearing and disappearing simultaneously in the depths of the passage. The young
man slowly crossed himself, and walked toward a light which shone faintly at the end
of the corridor.
A door stood ajar; a young girl knelt in a Gothic oratory, at the foot of a bare altar,
reciting in low tones litanies to the Virgin,—simple and sublime aspirations, in which
the soul that rises toward the Mother of Seven Sorrows asks nothing but her prayers.
The young girl was dressed in black crape and white gauze, as if to show at a
glance that her days had hitherto been passed in grief and innocence. Even in this
modest attitude she bore the impress of a strange nature. Her eyes and her long hair
were black (a very rare beauty in the North); her eyes, raised to heaven, seemed
kindled with rapture rather than dimmed by meditation. She seemed a virgin from the
shores of Cyprus or the banks of the Tiber, clad in the fanciful disguise of one of
Ossian’s characters and prostrate before the wooden cross and stone altar of Christ
Jesus.
Ordener started and almost fell, for he recognized the devotee.
She was praying for her father, for the mighty who had fallen, for the old and
desolate prisoner; and she recited aloud the psalm of the deliverance out of Egypt.
She prayed for another as well, but Ordener did not hear his name. He did not hear it,
for she did not utter it; she merely recited the canticle of the Sulamite, the bride who
awaits her bridegroom and the return of her beloved.
Ordener stepped back into the gallery; he respected the maiden holding converse
with the sky. Prayer is a great mystery, and his heart was involuntarily filled with
unknown but profane ecstasy.
The door of the oratory was gently closed. Soon a light borne by a white figure
moved toward him through the darkness. He stood still, for he felt one of the strongest
emotions of his life; he leaned against the gloomy wall; his body was weak, and his
limbs trembled beneath him. In the silence of his entire being the beating of his heart
was plainly audible to his own ear.
 As the young girl passed, she heard the rustle of a garment, and a quick, sudden
gasp, and cried out in terror.
Ordener rushed forward. With one arm he supported her, with the other he vainly
tried to grasp the lamp which she had dropped, and which went out.
“It is I,” he said softly.
“It is Ordener!” said the girl; for the last echo of that voice, which she had not
heard for a year, still rang in her ear.
And the moon, passing by, revealed the joy of her fair face. Then she repeated, in
timid confusion, freeing herself from the young man’s arms, “It is my lord Ordener.”
“Himself, Countess Ethel.”
“Why do you call me countess?”
“Why do you call me my lord?”
The young girl smiled, and was silent. The young man was silent, and sighed. She
was first to break the silence.
“How came you here?”
“Pardon me, if my presence disturbs you. I came to see the count, your father.”
“Then,” said Ethel, in a changed tone, “you only came for my father’s sake.”
The young man bent his head, for these words seemed to him unjust.
“I suppose you have been in Throndhjem a long time,” she continued
reproachfully, “I suppose you have been here a long time already? Your absence from
this castle cannot have seemed long to you.”
Ordener, deeply wounded, made no reply.
“You are right,” said the prisoner, in a voice which trembled with anger and
distress; “but,” she added, in a haughty tone, “I hope, my lord Ordener, that you did
not overhear my prayers?”
“Countess,” reluctantly replied the young man, “I did hear you.”
“Ah! my lord Ordener, it was far from courteous to listen.”
“I did not listen, noble Countess,” said Ordener in a low voice; “I overheard you
accidentally.”
“I prayed for my father,” rejoined the girl, looking steadily at him, as if expecting
an answer to this very simple statement.
Ordener was silent.
“I also prayed,” she continued uneasily, and apparently anxious as to the effect
which her words might produce upon him, “I also prayed for some one who bears
your name, for the son of the viceroy, Count Guldenlew. For we should pray for every
one, even our persecutors.”
And she blushed, for she thought she was lying; but she was offended with the
young man, and she fancied that she had mentioned him in her prayer; she had only
named him in her heart.
“Ordener Guldenlew is very unfortunate, noble lady, if you reckon him among the
number of your persecutors; and yet he is very fortunate to possess a place in your
prayers.”
“Oh, no,” said Ethel, troubled and alarmed by his cold manner, “no, I did not pray
for him. I do not know what I did, nor what I do. As for the viceroy’s son, I detest
him; I do not know him. Do not look at me so sternly; have I offended you? Can you
not forgive a poor prisoner,—you who spend your days in the society of some fair and
noble lady, free and happy like yourself?”
“I, Countess!” exclaimed Ordener.
Ethel burst into tears; the young man flung himself at her feet.
“Did you not tell me,” she continued, smiling through her tears, “that your
absence seemed to you short?”
“Who, I, Countess?”
“Do not call me countess,” said she, gently; “I am no longer a countess to any one,
and far less to you.”
The young man sprang up, and could not help clasping her to his heart in
convulsive delight.
“Oh, my adored Ethel, call me your own Ordener! Tell me,”—and his ardent
glances rested on her eyes wet with tears,—“tell me, do you love me still?”
The young girl’s answer went unheard, for Ordener, carried away by his emotions,
snatched from her lips with her reply that first favor, that sacred kiss, which in the
sight of God suffices to make two lovers man and wife.
Both were speechless, because the moment was one of those solemn ones, so rare
and so brief in this world, when the soul seems to feel something of celestial bliss.
These instants when two souls thus converse in a language understood by no other are
not to be described; then all that is human is hushed, and the two immaterial beings
become mysteriously united for life in this world and eternity in the next.
Ethel slowly withdrew from Ordener’s arms, and by the light of the moon each
gazed into the other’s face with ecstasy; only, the young man’s eye of fire flashed
with masculine pride and leonine courage, while the maiden’s downcast face was
marked by that modesty and angelic shame which in a virgin beauty are always
blended with all the joys of love.
“Were you trying to avoid me just now,” she said at last, “here in this corridor, my
Ordener?”
“Not to avoid you. I was like the unfortunate blind man who is restored to sight
after the lapse of long years, and who turns away from the light’s first radiance.”
“Your comparison is more applicable to me, for during your absence my only
pleasure has been the presence of a wretched man, my father. I spent my weary days
in trying to comfort him, and,” she added, looking down, “in hoping for your coming.
I read the fables of the Edda to my father, and when he doubted all men, I read him
the Gospel, that at least he might not doubt Heaven; then I talked to him of you, and
he was silent, which shows that he loves you. But when I had spent my evenings in
vainly watching the arrival of travellers by various roads, and the ships which
anchored in the harbor, he shook his head with a bitter smile, and I wept. This prison,
where my whole past life has been spent, grew hateful to me; and yet my father, who
until you came was all-sufficient for my wants, was still here; but you were not here,
and I longed for that liberty which I had never known.”
There was a charm which no tongue can express, in the maiden’s eyes, in the
simplicity of her love, and the sweet hesitation of her confession. Ordener listened
with the dreamy delight of a being who has been removed from the world of reality to
enjoy an ideal world.
“And I,” said he, “no longer desire that liberty which you do not share!”
“What, Ordener!” quickly exclaimed Ethel, “will you leave us no more?”
These words recalled the young man to all that he had forgotten.
“My Ethel, I must leave you this very night. I will see you again to-morrow, and
to-morrow I must leave you again, to remain until I may return never more to leave
you.”
“Alas!” mournfully broke in the girl, “must you leave me again?”
“I repeat, my beloved Ethel, that I will come back soon to wrest you from this
prison or bury myself in it with you.”
“A prisoner with him!” she said softly. “Ah! do not deceive me. Must I only hope
for such happiness?”
“What oath do you require? What would you have me do?” cried Ordener; “tell
me, Ethel, are you not my wife?” And in a transport of affection he pressed her to his
heart.
“I am yours,” she whispered.
The two pure and noble hearts throbbed rapturously together, and were but purer
and nobler for the embrace.
At this moment a violent burst of laughter was heard close by. A man wrapped in a
cloak opened a dark lantern which he had concealed, and the light suddenly revealed
Ethel’s alarmed, confused face and Ordener’s proud but astonished features.
“Courage, my pretty pair! Courage! It strikes me that after so short a walk in the
regions of Romance you can scarcely have followed all the windings of the stream of
Sentiment, but that you must have taken a short-cut to reach the village of Kisses so
quickly.”
Our readers have doubtless recognized the lieutenant, who so cordially admired
Mademoiselle de Scudéry. Roused from his reading of “Clelia” by the midnight bell,
which the two lovers had failed to hear, he started on his nightly rounds. As he passed
the end of the eastern corridor, he caught a few words, and saw what seemed two
ghosts moving in the gallery by the light of the moon. Being naturally bold and
curious, he hid his lantern under his cloak, and advanced on tiptoe to the two
phantoms, so disagreeably awakened from their ecstasy by his sudden burst of
laughter.
Ethel made a movement to escape from Ordener; then, returning to his side as if
instinctively, and to ask his protection, she hid her burning blushes on her lover’s
breast.
He raised his head with all the dignity of a king.
“Woe,” said he, “woe to him who has frightened and distressed you, Ethel!”
“Yes, indeed,” said the lieutenant; “woe befall me if I am so unfortunate as to
alarm so sensitive a lady!”
“Sir Lieutenant,” haughtily exclaimed Ordener, “I command you to be silent!”
“Sir Insolent,” replied the officer, “I command you to be silent!”
“Do you hear me?” returned Ordener in tones of thunder. “Buy pardon by your
silence.”
“Tibi tua,” responded the lieutenant; “take your own advice,—buy pardon by your
silence!”
“Silence!” cried Ordener in a voice which made the windows shake; and seating
the trembling girl in one of the old arm-chairs in the corridor, he grasped the officer
rudely by the arm.
“Oh, clown!” said the lieutenant, half laughing, half angry; “don’t you see that the
doublet which you are so mercilessly crushing is made of the finest Abingdon
velvet?”
Ordener looked him full in the face.
“Lieutenant, my patience is not so long as my sword.”
“I understand you, my fine fellow,” said the lieutenant with a sardonic smile. “You
want me to do you the honor to fight with you. But do you know who I am? No, no, if
you please! ‘Prince with prince; clown with clown,’ as the fair Leander has it.”
“If he had added, ‘Coward with coward,’ ” Ordener replied, “I should assuredly
never have the distinguished honor of measuring weapons with you.”
“I would not hesitate, most worthy shepherd, if you did but wear a uniform.”
“I have neither lace nor fringes, Lieutenant; but I wear a sword.”
The proud youth, flinging back his cloak, set his cap firmly on his head and
grasped his sword-hilt, when Ethel, roused by such imminent danger, seized his arm
and clasped his neck, with an exclamation of terror and entreaty.
“You are wise, my pretty mistress, if you do not want your young coxcomb
punished for his temerity,” said the lieutenant, who at Ordener’s threats had put
himself upon his guard without any show of emotion; “for Cyrus was about to quarrel
with Cambyses,—if it be not too great an honor to compare this rustic to Cambyses.”
“For Heaven’s sake, Lord Ordener,” said Ethel, “do not make me the cause and
witness of such a misfortune!” Then lifting her lovely eyes to his, she added,
“Ordener, I implore you!”
Ordener slowly replaced his half-drawn blade in its scabbard, and the lieutenant
exclaimed,—
“By my faith, Sir Knight,—I do not know whether you be a knight, but I give you
the title because you seem to deserve it,—let us act according to the laws of valor, if
not of gallantry. The lady is right. Engagements like that which I believe you worthy
to enter upon with me should not be witnessed by ladies, although—begging this
charming damsel’s pardon—they may be caused by them. We can therefore only
properly discuss the duellum remotum here and now, and as the offended party if you
will fix the time, place, and weapons, my fine Toledo blade on my Merida dagger
shall be at the service of your chopping-knife from the Ashkreuth forges or your
hunting-knife tempered in Lake Sparbo.”
The “duel adjourned,” which the officer suggested was usual in the North, where
scholars aver that the custom of duelling originated.
The most valiant gentlemen offered and accepted a duellum remotum. It was
sometimes deferred for several months, or even years, and during that space of time
the foes must not allude by word or deed to the matter which caused the challenge.
Thus in love both rivals forbore to see their sweetheart, so that things might remain
unchanged. All confidence was put in the loyalty of a knight upon such a point; as in
the ancient tournament, if the judges, deeming the laws of courtesy violated, cast their
truncheon into the arena, instantly every combatant stayed his hand; but until the
doubt was cleared up, the throat of the conquered man must remain at the selfsame
distance from his victor’s sword.
“Very well, Chevalier,” replied Ordener, after a brief reflection; “a messenger shall
inform you of the place.”
“Good!” answered the lieutenant; “so much the better. That will give me time to
go to my sister’s wedding; for you must know that you are to have the honor of
fighting with the future brother-in-law of a great lord, the son of the viceroy of
Norway, Baron Ordener Guldenlew, who upon the occasion of this ‘auspicious
union,’ as Artamenes has it, will be made Count Daneskiold, a colonel, and a knight
of the Order of the Elephant; and I myself, who am a son of the lord high chancellor
of both kingdoms, shall undoubtedly be made a captain.”
“Very good, very good, Lieutenant d’Ahlefeld,” impatiently exclaimed Ordener,
“you are not a captain yet, nor is the son of the viceroy a colonel; and swords are
always swords.”
 “And clowns always clowns, in spite of every effort to lift them to our own level,”
muttered the soldier.
“Chevalier,” added Ordener, “you know the laws of duelling. You are not to enter
this donjon again, and you are not to speak of this affair.”
“Trust me to be silent; I shall be as dumb as Mutius Scævola when he held his
hand on the burning coals. I will not enter the donjon again, nor permit any Argus of
the garrison to do so; for I have just received orders to allow Schumacker to go
unguarded in future, which order I was directed to convey to him to-night,—as I
should have done had I not spent most of the evening in trying on some new boots
from Cracow. The order, between you and me, is a very rash one. Would you like to
have me show you my boots?”
During this conversation Ethel, seeing that their anger was appeased, and not
knowing the meaning of a duellum remotum, had disappeared, first softly whispering
in Ordener’s ear, “To-morrow.”
“I wish, Lieutenant d’Ahlefeld, that you would help me out of the fortress.”
“Gladly,” said the officer, “although it is somewhat late, or rather very early. But
how will you find a boat?”
“That is my affair,” said Ordener.
Then, chatting pleasantly, they crossed the garden, the circular courtyard, and the
square court, Ordener escorted by the officer of the guard, meeting with no obstacle;
they passed through the great gate, the ordnance-room, the parade-ground, and
reached the low tower, whose iron doors opened at the lieutenant’s order.
“Good-by, Lieutenant d’Ahlefeld,” said Ordener.
“Good-by,” replied the officer. “I declare that you are a brave champion, although
I do not know who you are or whether those of your peers whom you may bring to
our meeting will be entitled to assume the position of seconds, and ought not rather
confine themselves to the modest part of witnesses.”
They shook hands, the iron grating was closed, and the lieutenant went back,
humming an air by Lully, to enjoy his Polish boots and French novel.
Ordener, left alone upon the threshold, took off his clothes, which he wrapped in
his cloak and fastened upon his head with his sword-belt; then, putting into practice
Schumacker’s principles of independence, he sprang into the still, cold waters of the
fjord, and swam through the darkness towards the shore, in the direction of the
Spladgest,—a point which he was almost sure to reach, dead or alive.
The fatigues of the day had exhausted him, so that it was only with great difficulty
that he landed. He dressed himself hastily, and walked towards the Spladgest, which
reared its black bulk before him, the moon having been for some time completely
veiled.
As he approached the building he heard the sound of voices; a faint light shone
from the opening in the roof. Amazed, he knocked loudly at the square door. The
noise ceased; the light disappeared. He knocked again. The light reappeared, and he
saw a black figure climb out of the hole in the roof and vanish. Ordener knocked for
the third time with the hilt of his sword, and shouted: “Open, in the name of his
Majesty the King! Open, in the name of his Serene Highness the Viceroy!”
The door opened slowly, and Ordener found himself face to face with the pale
features and tall, thin figure of Spiagudry, who, his clothes in disorder, his eyes fixed,
his hair standing erect, his hands covered with blood, held a lamp, whose flame
trembled less visibly than his long and lanky figure.
 VI.
Pirro. Never!
Angelo. What! I believe you would try to play the virtuous man. Wretch! If you utter a single word
—
Pirro. But, Angelo, I beseech you, for the love of God—
Angelo. Do not meddle with what you cannot prevent.
Pirro. Ah! When the Devil holds one by a single hair, as well yield him the entire head. Unhappy
that I am!
Emilia Galotti.

A N hour after the young traveller with the black plume left the Spladgest, night
fell, and the crowd dispersed. Oglypiglap closed the outer door of the funereal
structure, while his master, Spiagudry, gave the bodies deposited within a final
sprinkling. Then both withdrew to their scantily furnished abode, and while
Oglypiglap slept upon his wretched pallet, like one of the corpses intrusted to his
care, the venerable Spiagudry, seated at a stone table covered with old books, dried
plants, and fleshless bones, was buried in grave studies which, although really very
harmless, had done no little to give him a reputation among the people, for sorcery
and witchcraft,—the disagreeable consequence of science at this period.
He had been absorbed in his meditations for some hours, and, ready at last to
exchange his books for his bed, he paused at this mournful passage from Thormodr
Torfesen: “When a man lights his lamp, death is beside him ere it be extinguished.”
“With the learned doctor’s leave,” he muttered, “he shall not be beside me to-
night.”
And he took up his lamp to blow it out.
“Spiagudry!” cried a voice from the room where the corpses lay.
The old man shook from head to foot. Not that he believed, as another might have
done in his place, that the gloomy guests of the Spladgest had risen in revolt against
their master. He was enough of a scholar to be proof against such imaginary terrors;
and his alarm was genuine, because he knew the voice which called him only too
well.
“Spiagudry!” angrily repeated the voice, “must I come and pull off your ears
before I can make you hear me?”
“Saint Hospitius have mercy, not on my soul, but on my body!” said the terrified
old man; and with a step both hastened and delayed by fear, he moved towards the
second side door, which he opened. Our readers have not forgotten that this door led
into the mortuary.
 His lamp lit up a strange and hideous scene,—on the one hand, the thin, tall,
stooping figure of Spiagudry; on the other, a short, stout man, dressed from head to
foot in the skins of wild beasts, still stained with dried blood, standing at the feet of
Gill Stadt’s corpse, which, with the dead bodies of the young girl and the captain,
occupied the background. These three mute witnesses, buried in shadow, were the
only ones who could behold, without flying in horror, the two living beings who now
entered into conversation.
The features of the little man, thrown into vivid relief by the light, were singularly
wild and fierce. His beard was red and bushy, and his forehead, hidden under an
elkskin cap, seemed bristling with hair of the same color; his mouth was large, his lips
thick, his teeth white, sharp, and far apart, his nose hooked like an eagle’s beak; and
his grayish-blue eyes, which were extremely quick, flashed a side glance at
Spiagudry, in which the ferocity of a tiger was only tempered by the malice of a
monkey. This singular character was armed with a broadsword, an unsheathed dagger,
and a stone axe, upon whose long handle he leaned; his hands were covered with
thick gloves made of a blue fox-skin.
“That old ghost keeps me waiting a long time,” said he, as if talking to himself;
and he uttered a sound like the roar of a wild beast.
Spiagudry would certainly have turned pale with fright, had he been capable of
turning paler than he was.
“Do you know,” continued the little man, addressing him directly, “that I come
from Urchtal Sands? Do you
 Hans of Iceland finding the Body of his Son, Gill Stadt.
Photo-Etching.—From drawing by François Flameng.

want to change your straw bed for one of these beds of stone, that you keep me
waiting thus?”
Spiagudry trembled more than ever; the two solitary teeth left to him chattered in
his head.
“Excuse me, master,” said he, bending his long back to a level with the little man;
“I was asleep.”
“Do you want me to make you acquainted with a far sounder sleep than that?”
Spiagudry’s face assumed an expression of terror, the only thing which could be
more comic than his expression of mirth.
“Well! what is it?” continued the little man. “What ails you? Is my presence
disagreeable to you?”
“Oh, my lord and master!” replied the old keeper, “there can surely be no greater
happiness for me than to see your Excellence.”
And the effort which he made to twist his frightened face into a smile would have
unbent the brow of any but the dead.
“Tailless old fox, my Excellence commands you to hand over the clothes of Gill
Stadt.”
As he uttered this name, the little man’s fierce, mocking features grew dark and
sad.
“Oh, master, pardon me, but I no longer have them!” said Spiagudry. “Your Grace
knows that we are obliged to turn over the property of all workers in the mine to the
Crown, the king inheriting by right of their being his wards.”
The little man turned to the corpse, folded his arms, and said in a hollow voice:
“He is right. These miserable miners are like the eider duck;[5] their nests are made
for them, but their down is plucked from them.”
Then raising the corpse in his arms and hugging it to his heart, he began to utter
wild yells of love and grief, like the howls of a bear caressing her young. With these
inarticulate sounds were blended, at intervals, a few words in a strange lingo, which
Spiagudry did not understand.
He let the corpse drop back upon the stone, and turned towards the guardian.
“Do you know, accursed sorcerer, the name of the ill-fated soldier who was so
unlucky as to be preferred by that girl to Gill?”
And he kicked the cold remains of Guth Stersen.
Spiagudry shook his head.
“Well! by the axe of Ingulf, the first of my race, I will exterminate every wearer of
that uniform!” and he pointed to the officer’s dress. “He on whom I must be avenged
will surely be of the number. I will burn down the entire forest to consume the
poisonous shrub that it contains. I swore it on the day that Gill died, and I have
already given him a companion that will delight his corpse. Oh, Gill! so there you lie,
lifeless and powerless,—you who outswam the seal, outran the deer; you who
outwrestled the bear in the mountains of Kiölen. There you lie motionless,—you who
traversed the province of Throndhjem, from the Orkel to the Lake of Miösen, in a
single day; you who climbed the peaks of the Dovrefjeld as the squirrel climbs the
oak. There you lie mute and dumb, Gill,—you who on the stormy summits of
Kongsberg sang louder than the thunder’s roar. Oh, Gill! so it is in vain that for your
sake I filled up the Färöe mines; in vain for your sake I burned the Throndhjem
cathedral. All my labor is in vain, and I shall never see the race of the children of
Iceland, the descendants of Ingulf the Destroyer, perpetuated in you; you will never
inherit my stone axe; but you leave me the legacy of your skull, from which I may
henceforth drink sea-water and the blood of men.”
With these words he seized the corpse by the head, exclaiming: “Help me,
Spiagudry!” And pulling off his gloves, he displayed his broad hands, armed with
long, hard, crooked nails, like the claws of a wild beast.
Spiagudry, seeing him about to hew off the corpse’s head with his sword, cried out
with unconcealed horror, “Good heavens! master! A dead man!”
“Well,” calmly responded the little man, “would you rather have me sharpen my
blade upon a living one?”
“Oh, let me entreat your Grace—How can your Excellency commit such
profanation? Your Worship—Sir, your Serenity would not—”
“Are you done? Do I require all these titles, living skeleton, to believe in your
deep respect for my sabre?”
“By Saint Waldemar! By Saint Usuph! In the name of Saint Hospitius, spare the
dead!”
“Help me, and do not talk of saints to the devil!”
“My lord,” continued the suppliant Spiagudry, “by your illustrious ancestor, Saint
Ingulf—”
“Ingulf the Destroyer was an outlaw like myself.”
“In the name of Heaven,” said the old man, falling on his knees, “whose anger I
would spare you!”
Impatience overcame the little man. His dull gray eyes flashed like a couple of
live coals.
“Help me!” he repeated, flourishing his sword.
These words were uttered in the voice which might beseem a lion, could he speak.
The keeper, shuddering and half dead with fright, sat down upon the black stone slab,
and held Gill’s cold, damp head in his hands, while the little man, by means of sword
and dagger, removed the crown with rare skill.
 When his task was done, he gazed at the bloody skull for some time, muttering
strange words; then he handed it over to Spiagudry, to be cleaned and prepared,
saying with a sort of howl,—
“And I, when I die, shall not have the comfort of thinking that an heir to the soul
of Ingulf will drink sea-water and the blood of men from out my skull.”
After a mournful pause, he added,—
“The hurricane is followed by a hurricane, each avalanche brings down another
avalanche, but I shall be the last of my race. Why did not Gill hate every human face
even as I do? What demon foe to the demon of Ingulf urged him into those fatal
mines in search of a handful of gold?”
Spiagudry, who now returned with Gill’s skull, interrupted him: “Your Excellency
is right; even gold, as Snorri Sturleson says, may often be bought at too high a price.”
“You remind me,” said the little man, “of a commission I have for you; here is an
iron casket which I found upon yonder officer, all of whose property, as you see, did
not fall into your possession; it is so firmly fastened, that it must contain gold,—the
only thing precious in the eyes of men. You will give it to widow Stadt, in Thoctree
village, to pay her for her son.”
He drew a small iron box from his reindeer-skin knapsack. Spiagudry received it
with a low bow.
“Obey my orders faithfully,” said the little man, with a piercing glance;
“remember that nothing can prevent two demons from meeting; I think you are even
more of a coward than a miser, and you will answer to me for that box.”
“Oh, master, with my soul!”
“Not at all. With your flesh and bones.”
At this moment the outer door of the Spladgest echoed with a loud knock. The
little man was amazed; Spiagudry tottered, and shaded his lamp with his hand.
“Who is there?” growled the little man. “And you, old villain, how you will shake
when you hear the last trump sound, if you shiver so now!”
A second and louder knock was heard.
“It is some dead man in haste to enter,” said the little man.
“No, master,” muttered Spiagudry, “no corpses are brought here after midnight.”
“Living or dead, he drives me hence. You, Spiagudry, be faithful and be dumb. I
swear to you, by the spirit of Ingulf and the skull of Gill, that you shall see the dead
bodies of the entire regiment of Munkholm pass through your hostelry in review.”
And the little man, binding Gill’s skull to his belt, and drawing on his gloves,
hurried, with the nimbleness of a goat, and by the help of Spiagudry’s shoulders,
through the opening in the roof, where he vanished.
A third knock shook the whole Spladgest, and a voice outside commanded him to
open in the name of the king and viceroy. Then the keeper, moved alike by two
different terrors,—one of which might be called the terror of memory, and the other of
hope,—hurried toward the low door, and opened it.
 VII.
In the pursuit of such pleasure as may be found in temporal felicity, she wore herself out, on rough
and painful paths, without ever attaining her object.—Confessions of Saint Augustine.

R ETURNING to his closet after leaving Poël, the governor of Throndhjem

ensconced himself in a big easy-chair, and to distract his thoughts directed one of
his secretaries to read over the petitions presented to the government.
Bowing low, the secretary began:—
“1. The Rev. Dr. Anglyvius prays that a substitute may be provided for the Rev.
Dr. Foxtipp, the head of the Episcopal library, on account of his incompetency. The
petitioner does not know who should take the place of the said incompetent doctor; he
would merely state that he, Dr. Anglyvius, has for a long time exercised the functions
of librari—”
“Send the rascal to the bishop,” interrupted the general.
“2. Athanasius Munder, priest and chaplain to the prisons, asks pardon for twelve
penitent convicts on the occasion of the glorious marriage of his Grace, Ordener
Guldenlew, Baron Thorwick, Knight of the Dannebrog, son of the viceroy, and the
noble lady Ulrica d’Ahlefeld, daughter of his Grace the lord high chancellor of the
two kingdoms.”
“Lay it on the table,” said the general. “I pity convicts.”
“3. Faustus-Prudens Destrombidès, Norwegian subject and Latin poet, asks leave
to write the epithalamium for the said noble pair.”
“Ah, ha! The worthy man must be growing old, for he is the same man who wrote
an epithalamium in 1674, for the marriage planned between Schumacker, then Count
of Griffenfeld, and Princess Louisa Charlotte of Holstein-Augustenburg,—a marriage
which never took place. I fear,” muttered the governor, “that Faustus-Prudens is
destined to be the poet of broken matches. Lay his petition on the table, and go on.
Inquire, on behalf of the said poet, if there be not a vacant bed at the Throndhjem
hospital.”
“4. The miners of Guldbrandsdal, the Färöe Islands, Sund-Moer, Hubfallo,
Roeraas, and Kongsberg, petition to be released from the costs of the royal
protectorate.”
“These miners are restless. I hear that they are even beginning to grumble at our
long delay in answering their petition. Let it be laid aside for mature consideration.”
“5. Braal, fisherman, declares, in virtue of the Odelsrecht,[6] that he persists in his
intention of buying back his patrimony.
“6. The magistrates of Nœs, Loevig, Indal, Skongen, Stod, Sparbo, and other
towns and villages of Northern Throndhjem, pray that a price may be set upon the
head of the assassin, thief, and incendiary, Hans, said to be a native of Klipstadur, in
Iceland. Nychol Orugix, executioner for the province of Throndhjem, who claims that
Hans is his property, opposes the petition. Benignus Spiagudry, keeper of the
Spladgest, to whom the corpse should belong, supports the petition.”
“That robber is a very dangerous fellow,” said the general, “particularly now that
we are threatened with trouble among the miners. Issue a proclamation offering a
thousand crowns reward for his head.”
“7. Benignus Spiagudry, doctor, antiquary, sculptor, mineralogist, naturalist,
botanist, lawyer, chemist, mechanic, physicist, astronomer, theologian, grammarian
—”
“Why,” broke in the general, “is not this the same Spiagudry who keeps the
Spladgest?”
“Yes, to be sure, your Excellency,” replied the secretary,—“keeper, for his
Majesty, of the institution of the Spladgest, in the royal city of Throndhjem, sets forth
that he, Benignus Spiagudry, discovered that the stars called fixed are not lighted by
the star called the sun; item, that the real name of Odin is Frigg, son of Fridulf; item,
that the marine lobworm feeds on sand; item, that the noise of the inhabitants drives
the fish away from the coast of Norway, so that the means of subsistence are growing
less in proportion to the increase of the population; item, that the fjord known as Otte-
Sund was formerly known as Limfjord, and only took the name of Otte-Sund after
Otho the Red cast his spear into it; item, he sets forth that it was by his advice and
under his direction that an old statue of Freya was changed into the statue of Justice,
which now adorns the market-place in Throndhjem, and that the lion found at the feet
of the idol has been turned into a devil, symbolizing crime; item—”
“Oh, spare me the rest of his eminent services! Let me see,—what does he want?”
The secretary turned over several pages, and went on:
“Your most humble petitioner feels that he may justly petition your Excellency, in
return for so many useful labors in the domain of science and literature, to increase
the reward to ten escalins for every corpse, male or female, which cannot but be
gratifying to the dead, as proving the value set upon their bodies.”
Here the door opened, and the usher in a loud voice announced, “The noble lady,
Countess d’Ahlefeld.”
At the same time a tall woman, wearing the small coronet of a countess, richly
dressed in scarlet satin trimmed with gold fringe and ermine, entered, and accepting
the hand which the general offered her, seated herself beside him.
The countess was perhaps fifty years old. Age had added little to the furrows with
which pride and ambition had long since marked her face. She looked at the old
governor haughtily, and with an artificial smile.
“Well, General, your ward delays. He should have been here before sunset.”
 “He would have been here, my lady Countess, if he had not gone to Munkholm
upon his arrival.”
“To Munkholm! I hope it was not to see Schumacker?”
“That may be.”
“Could Baron Thorwick’s first visit be to Schumacker!”
“Why not, Countess? Schumacker is unfortunate and unhappy.”
“What, General! Is the viceroy’s son on familiar terms with a prisoner of state?”
“When Frederic Guldenlew confided his son to my care, he begged me, noble
lady, to bring him up as if he were my own. I thought that an acquaintance with
Schumacker might be useful to Ordener, who is destined some day to wield such
power; consequently, with the viceroy’s permission, I obtained from my brother,
Grummond de Knud, a permit to enter all the prisons, which I gave to Ordener. He
often uses it.”
“And how long, noble General, has Baron Ordener had the pleasure of this useful
acquaintance?”
“Rather more than a year, Countess. It seems that Schumacker’s society pleased
him, for it kept him at Throndhjem for a long time; and it was only reluctantly, and by
my express request, that he left the city last year to visit Norway.”
“And does Schumacker know that his comforter is the son of one of his greatest
enemies?”
“He knows that he is a friend, and that is enough for him, as for us.”
“But you, General,” said the countess, with a searching look, “when you tolerated
—nay, encouraged—this connection, did you know that Schumacker had a daughter?”
“I knew it, noble Countess.”
“And this fact seemed to you of no importance to your pupil?”
“The pupil of Levin de Knud, the son of Frederic Guldenlew, is an honest man.
Ordener knows the barrier which separates him from Schumacker’s daughter; he is
incapable of winning the affection, unless his purpose was upright, of any girl, above
all the daughter of an unfortunate man.”
The noble Countess d’Ahlefeld blushed and paled. She turned away her head to
avoid the calm gaze of the old man, as if it were that of an accuser.
“But,” she stammered, “this connection strikes me, General,—let me speak my
mind,—as strange and imprudent. It is said that the miners and tribes of the North are
threatening to revolt, and that the name of Schumacker is mixed up with the affair.”
“Noble lady, you surprise me!” exclaimed the governor. “Schumacker has hitherto
borne his misfortunes calmly. The report is doubtless ill-founded.”
At this moment the door opened, and the usher announced that a messenger from
his Grace the lord high chancellor wished to speak with the noble countess.
 The lady rose hurriedly, took leave of the governor, and while he continued his
inspection of the petitions she hastened to her apartments in a wing of the palace,
directing that the messenger should follow her.
She had been seated on a rich sofa in the midst of her women for a few instants
only, when the messenger entered. The countess on seeing him made a slight gesture
of aversion, which she hid at once by a friendly smile.
And yet the messenger’s appearance was not at all repulsive. He was a man of
somewhat diminutive stature, whose plumpness suggested anything else rather than a
messenger. Still, a close study of his face showed it to be frank to the point of
impudence, and his look of good-humor had a spice of deviltry and malice. He bowed
low to the countess, and offered her a package sealed with silk thread.
“Noble lady,” said he, “deign to permit me to venture to lay at your feet a precious
message from his Grace your illustrious husband, my revered master.”
“Is he not coming himself? And why did he choose you as his messenger?”
inquired the countess.
“Important business delays the coming of his Grace, as this letter will inform you,
Madam. For myself, I am by the orders of my noble master to enjoy the distinguished
honor of a private interview with you.”
The countess turned pale, and exclaimed in a trembling voice, “With me,—me,
Musdœmon?”
“If it distresses the noble lady in the slightest degree, her unworthy servant will be
reduced to despair.”
“Distress me! No, of course not,” returned the countess, trying to smile. “But is
this conversation so essential?”
The messenger bowed down to the ground.
“Absolutely essential. The letter which the illustrious countess has deigned to
receive from my hands probably contains a formal order to that effect.”
It was strange to see the proud Countess d’Ahlefeld tremble and turn pale before a
servant who paid her such profound respect. She slowly opened the package and read
its contents. After a second reading she turned to her women, and said in a faint voice:
“Go; leave us alone.”
“I hope the noble lady,” said the messenger, bending his knee, “will deign to
pardon the liberty which I venture to take and the trouble which I seem to cause her.”
“On the contrary,” replied the countess, with a forced smile, “I assure you that I
am very happy to see you.”
The women withdrew.
“Elphega, have you forgotten that there was a time when you were not averse to
being alone with me?”
 It was the messenger who addressed the noble countess, and the words were
accompanied by a laugh like that uttered by the Devil, at the instant that his compact
expires and he seizes the soul which sold itself to him.
The great lady bowed her humbled head.
“Would that I had indeed forgotten it!” she murmured.
“Poor fool! Why should you blush for things which no human eye ever saw?”
“God sees what men do not see.”
“God, weak woman! You are not worthy to deceive your husband, for he is less
credulous than you.”
“Your insults to my remorse are scarcely generous, Musdœmon.”
“Well, if you feel remorse, Elphega, why insult it yourself by daily committing
fresh crimes?”
The Countess d’Ahlefeld hid her face in her hands; the messenger continued:
“Elphega, you must choose: remorse and more crimes, or crime and no more remorse.
Do as I do: choose the second course; it is better—at least it is more cheerful.”
“Heaven grant,” said the countess, in low tones, “that those words may not be
counted against you in eternity.”
“Come, my dear, a truce to jest.”
Then Musdœmon, seating himself behind the countess, and putting his arm about
her neck, added: “Elphega, try to be, at least in imagination, what you were twenty
years ago.”
The unfortunate countess, the slave of her accomplice, strove to respond to his
loathsome caresses. There was something too revolting, even for these degraded
souls, in this adulterous embrace of two beings who scorned and despised each other.
The illegal caresses which had once delighted them, and which some horrible and
unknown expediency compelled them still to lavish upon each other, now tortured
them. Strange but just change of guilty affections! Their crime had become their
punishment.
The countess, to cut short this guilty torment, at last asked her odious lover,
tearing herself from his arms, with what verbal message her husband had charged
him.
“D’Ahlefeld,” said Musdœmon, “just as he was about to see his power confirmed
by the marriage of Ordener Guldenlew to our daughter—”
“Our daughter!” exclaimed the haughty countess; and she fixed her eye on
Musdœmon with a look of pride and contempt.
“Well,” coldly continued the messenger, “I think that Ulrica is at least as much
mine as his. I was saying that the match would not be wholly satisfactory to your
husband unless Schumacker could at the same time be destroyed. In his remote prison
the old favorite is yet almost as much to be dreaded as in his palace. He has obscure
but powerful friends at court,—powerful because they are obscure; and the king,
learning a month since that the chancellor’s negotiations with the Duke of Holstein-
Ploen were at a standstill, cried out impatiently: ‘Griffenfeld knew more than all of
them put together.’ A schemer named Dispolsen, come from Munkholm to
Copenhagen, had several secret interviews with him, after which the king sent to the
chancellor’s office for Schumacker’s patents of nobility and title-deeds. No one
knows the object of Schumacker’s ambition; but if he desire nothing but his liberty,
for a prisoner of state that is the same as to desire power! He must therefore die, and
must die by authority of justice; we are now striving to invent a crime for him. Your
husband, Elphega, on the plea of inspecting the northern provinces incognito, will
assure himself of the result of our underhand dealings among the miners, whom we
hope to incite to rebel, in Schumacker’s name, which revolt we can easily put down
later. What troubles us is the loss of certain important papers relating to this plot, and
which we have every reason to believe have fallen into the hands of Dispolsen.
Knowing that he had set out to return to Munkholm, carrying to Schumacker his
parchments, his diplomas, and possibly these documents which might ruin, or at least
compromise us, we posted certain faithful men in the gorges of Kiölen, directing them
to rid us of him, after robbing him of his papers. But if, as we are assured, Dispolsen
left Bergen by water, our efforts in that quarter are in vain. However, as I came along
I gathered vague reports of the murder of a captain by the name of Dispolsen. We
shall see. Meantime we are searching for a famous bandit, Hans, called Hans of
Iceland, whom we wish to put at the head of the revolt in the mines. And you, my
dear,—what news have you for me here? Has the pretty bird at Munkholm been
caught in her cage? Has the old minister’s daughter finally fallen a prey to our falco
fulvus, our son Frederic?”
The countess, recovering her pride, again exclaimed: “Our son!”
“I’ faith, how old may he be? Twenty-four. We have known each other some
twenty-six years, Elphega.”
“God knows,” cried the countess, “my Frederic is the chancellor’s lawful heir.”
“If God knows it,” laughingly replied the messenger, “the Devil does not.
Moreover, your Frederic is but a presumptuous youngster, quite unworthy of me, and
it is not worth our while to quarrel for such a trifle. He is only fit to make love to a
girl. Has he at least succeeded?”
“Not yet, so far as I know.”
“Oh, Elphega, do try to play a less passive part in our affairs. The count and
myself, as you see, are tolerably active. I return to your husband to-morrow. For
mercy’s sake, do not confine yourself to praying for our sins, like the Madonna whom
the Italians invoke when about to commit a murder! D’Ahlefeld, too, must see to
rewarding me a little more munificently than he has hitherto done. My fortune is
closely connected with yours; but I am tired of being the husband’s servant when I am
the wife’s lover, and of being only the tutor, the teacher, the pedagogue, when I am
almost the father.”
At this instant midnight struck, and one of the women entered, reminding the
countess that by the palace regulations all lights must be put out at that hour.
The countess, glad to end a painful interview, recalled her attendants.
“Permit me, gracious Countess,” said Musdœmon, as he withdrew, “to retain a
hope of seeing you to-morrow, and to lay at your feet my homage and sincere
respect.”
VIII.