The Treasure Chest Read online

  ‘We’ll saddle up a mount for you as well, but you’ll pay for it from your wages, mind! Next time pay more attention!’ And he hurried to give him an open letter to the authorities in all the villages in case he needed men to make up a posse. So the constable and Freddy Tinder rode along together looking for Freddy Tinder, until they came to a crossroads. At the crossroads Freddy told the constable which way he was to go and which way he would go himself. ‘We’ll meet up at the Rhine by the ferry!’ But when they were out of sight of each other Freddy turned to the right again and caused a commotion in all the villages with his letter and had them ring the alarm bells to warn that Freddy Tinder was in the area, until he came to the frontier. At the frontier he gave his horse a kick and rode across. Nothing like that could happen hereabouts!

  The Champion Swimmer

  Before the war and all its afflictions when you could still cross freely from France to England and drink a glass or two in Dover or buy material for a waistcoat, a large mail boat sailed from Calais across the straits to Dover and back again twice a week. For the sea between those two countries is only a few miles wide at that point, you see. But you had to get there before the boat left if you wanted to sail on it. A Frenchman from Gascony seemed not to know that, for he came to Calais a quarter of an hour too late, just as they were shutting up the hens, and the sky was clouding over. ‘Must I sit around here for a couple of days twiddling my thumbs? No,’ he thought, ‘I’d do better to pay a boatman a twelve-sous piece to go after the mail boat.’ For a small craft can sail faster than the heavy mail boat, you understand, and will catch up with it. But when he was sitting in the open boat the boatman said,

  ‘If I’d thought I’d have brought a tarpaulin!’ For it began to rain, and how! Very soon it poured down from the night sky as if a sea up above was emptying itself into the sea below. But the Gascon thought, ‘This is going to be fun!’ ‘Praise be,’ said the boatman at last, ‘I can see the mail boat.’ And he pulled up alongside and the Gascon climbed aboard, and when he suddenly appeared through the narrow hatchway in the middle of the night and in the middle of the sea and joined the passengers on the ship they all wondered where he had sprung from, all on his own, so late and so wet. For on a ship like that it is like being in a cellar, you can’t hear what is going on outside over the talk of the passengers, the sailors’ shouts, the noise of the wind, the flapping sails and the crashing waves, and nobody had any idea it was raining. ‘You look as if you’ve been keelhauled,’ said one, ‘pulled right under the

  ship from one side to the other, I mean. ‘Is that what you’re thinking?’ said the Gascon. ‘Do you imagine you can go swimming and stay dry? If you can tell me how to do that I’ll be glad to hear it, you see I’m the postman from Oléron and every Monday I swim over to the mainland with letters and messages, it’s quicker that way. But now I have a message to take to England. With your permission I’ll join you, since I was fortunate enough to meet up with you. Judging from the stars it can’t be far to Dover now.’ ‘You’re welcome, fellow countryman,’ said one (though he wasn’t a fellow Frenchman but an Englishman) and blew a cloud of tobacco smoke from his mouth. ‘If you have swum

  this far across the sea from Calais you must be a class above the black swimmer in London!’ ‘I’m not afraid of competition,’ said the Gascon. ‘Will you take him on,’ replied the Englishman, ‘if I place a hundred louis d’or on you?’ The Gascon said, ‘You can bet I will!’ It’s the custom of rich Englishmen to bet with each other for large sums placed on men who excel at some physical activity. And so it was that this Englishman on the ship took the Gascon to London with him at his expense and had him eat and drink well so that he stayed fit and strong. ‘My lord,’ he said to a good friend of his in London, ‘I have brought with me a swimmer I found at sea. I bet you a hundred guineas he can beat your Moor!’ His friend said, ‘You’re on!’

  The next day they both appeared with their swimmers at an agreed spot on the river Thames, and hundreds of curious people had gathered there and they laid their bets too, some on the Moor, some on the Gascon, one shilling, or six shillings, one, two, five, twenty guineas, and the Moor didn’t give the Gascon much of a chance. But when they had both undressed the Gascon tied a little box to his body with a leather strap without saying why, as if that were quite normal. The Moor said, ‘What are you up to? Have you learnt that from the champion jumper who had to tie lead weights to his feet when he was set to catch a hare and was afraid he would jump right over it?’ The Gascon opened his box and said, ‘I’ve only got a bottle of wine in here, a couple of saveloys and a small loaf of bread! I was going to ask you where you have your eats. ForI shall swim straight down the river Thames into the North Sea and down the Channel into the Atlantic and on to Cadiz, and I suggest we don’t call in anywhere on the way, for I have to be back in Oléron by Monday, that’s the 16th. But tomorrow morning in Cadiz at the White Horse I’ll order a good dinner for you so it will be ready by the time you arrive.’ You, good reader, will hardly be imagining that he could escape that way! But the Moor was scared stiff. ‘I can’t compete against that amphibian!’ he told his master. ‘You can please yourself what you do!’ And he got dressed again.

  So the bet was over, the Gascon was given a handsome reward by the Englishman who had brought him there and everyone scoffed at the Moor. For although they must have seen that the Frenchman was only shamming, they were all amused by his bravado and the unexpected outcome, and for a month after that he was treated in the inns and beerhouses by all those who had bet on him, and he admitted he had never been in the water in all his life.

  How a Fine Horse was Offered for Sale for Five of the Best

  The following true story happened, if not in Salzwedel, then somewhere else, and Your Family Friend has it here in writing.

  A cavalry officer, a captain, came into an inn. A customer there saw him dismount, he was a jew, and said, ‘That’s a splendid sorrel Your Honour was riding.’

  ‘You like the look of him then, Son of Jacob?’ asked the officer.

  ‘Not half! I’d put up with a hundred lashes just to lay hands on him!’ replied the Jew.

  The officer was tapping his whip against his boots. ‘Why a hundred?’ he said, ‘You can have him for fifty.’

  The Jew said, ‘How about twenty-five?’ ‘Twenty-five would do,’ said the officer, ‘or fifteen, or five if you like!’

  There was no telling whether he was joking or not. But when the officer said, ‘Five would do, if you ask me,’ the Jew thought, ‘I put up with ten regulation strokes outside the courthouse at Giinzburg, and I’m still kosher!’ ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘you’re an officer. Officer’s word of honour?’ The captain said, ‘Don’t you trust my word? Do you want it in writing?’

  ‘I’d prefer it that way,’ said the Jew.

  So the officer called a notary and had him draw up a deed for the Jew as follows: ‘If the bearer of this deed endures five good strokes from a trusty stick applied by the gentleman officer present the aforesaid officer shall without further dues and demands give to him the bearer to be his property the sorrel saddle-horse at present in the keeping of the officer aforesaid. Made this day and at this place by the undersigned.’

  When the Jew had put this document in his pocket he lay over a chair and the officer gave him such a hearty whack with a cane across his posterior that the Jew thought, ‘He’s a better hand at this than the constable in Günzburg!’ and cried Ow! out loud, though he had determined not to utter a squeak.

  But now the officer sat down and calmly drank a glass of wine. ‘How do you like it, Jacob’s son?’ he asked. The Jew said, ‘Never mind that, get on with it, let’s have it over and done with!’

  ‘My pleasure,’ said the officer and gave him number two, and the first now seemed only an appetiser in comparison, then he sat down again and had another drink.

  The third stroke was given in the same way, and the fourth. After the fourth the Jew said, ‘I’m not sure if I
should be grateful to Your Honour or not for allowing me time to relish each one separately. Now just give me number five to follow the fourth, then my happiness will be complete and the sorrel will know who to follow.’

  Then the officer said, ‘Jacob’s son, you’ll have to wait a long time for number five!’ and he calmly put the cane back where he had found it, and all the begging and imploring for the fifth stroke was to no avail.

  Now all those in the inn laughed until the house rocked on its foundations, but the Jew turned to the notary to help him get his fifth stroke and flourished the deed. But the notary said, ‘Jacobson, what am I supposed to do with that? If the captain won’t do it there’s nothing in the deed to say he must.’ So the Jew is still waiting to take receipt of the fifth stroke and the sorrel.

  Your Family Friend would not find anything to admire in this trick if the Jew had not laid himself open to it.

  Remember: A man who offers to take five of the best for profit deserves to get four of the best and gain nothing. You must never let yourself be abused for gain.

  Franziska

  In an insignificant little village on the Rhine, one evening just before nightfall a poor young weaver was still sitting at his loom, and as he worked he was thinking among other things of King Hezekiah,* and then of his father and mother, the threads of whose lives too had been spun till the bobbin was empty, and then of his grandfather on whose knees he had sat and whom he had accompanied to his grave; and he was so lost in his thoughts and his work that he didn’t notice a fine coach with four proud white horses come up to the house and draw to a halt. But when the latch opened and a young woman came in, a lovely creature with beautiful flowing hair and a long sky-blue dress, and she smiled a gentle smile and said in a soft voice, ‘Do you remember me, Henry?’ it was as if he woke with a start from a deep sleep, he was too amazed to speak. For he thought it was an angel, and he wasn’t too far wrong, for it was his sister Franziska, and she was still alive.

  Many a time once they had gone together barefoot collecting firewood in their baskets, many a Sunday they had picked

  strawberries together and taken them to town, and eaten a piece of bread on their way home and each took less so that the other should have enough. But after their father died and poverty drove her two brothers to leave home in search of work Franziska stayed behind with her old ailing mother and looked after her, earned a little money in a spinning mill to keep her, sat up with her during the long sleepless nights and read to her from an old tattered book about Holland, the beautiful houses there, the great ships, and the dreadful battle of Dogger Bank,* and she bore the whims of the sick old woman with the patience of a child. But one night at two in the morning her mother said, ‘Pray with me, daughter! I shall not see the light of day again in this world.’ Then the poor child prayed and sobbed and kissed her dying mother, and her mother said, ‘God bless you and’ – and she took the last part of her maternal blessing, ‘and reward

  you!’ with her to eternity. When she was buried, Franziska returned to the empty house and prayed and wept and wondered what was to become of her now, and something within her said, ‘Go to Holland!’ Slowly she raised her head and looked up pensively, and for the time being no more tears welled from her blue eyes. She made her way, praying and asking alms and trusting in God, from village to town and town to village till she reached Holland, and she had collected enough to buy a decent dress. And as she was walking alone and lonely through the busy streets of Rotterdam, again something within her said, ‘Go into that house there with the gilded bars at the window!’ She went through the entrance past the marble stairway and through into the yard, for she hoped to meet somebody there before she had to knock at a door – and there in the yard stood a distinguished and kindly looking old lady feeding the hens and doves and peacocks.

  ‘What are you doing here, my child?’ Franziska sensed she could trust this kind lady and told her her whole story. ‘I’m a poor fledgeling who needs your hand to feed me,’ said Franziska and asked for employment in her house. The lady felt she could trust the girl’s modesty and innocence and the tears in her eyes, and she said, ‘Don’t worry, my child, God will not fail to honour your mother’s blessing! I’ll give you a position in my house and see that you are looked after if you are good.’ For the woman was thinking, ‘Who knows, it may be the good Lord’s will that I should reward her’, and she was a rich Rotterdam merchant’s widow, though an Englishwoman by birth. So Franziska became a kitchen maid and then, when she proved a good faithful servant, she became parlour maid, and her mistress grew fond of her. And she showed good sense and learnt to fit in with refined ways and was employed as lady’s maid. But that wasn’t all.

  In the spring when the roses came into flower one of the distinguished lady’s relatives, a young Englishman, came from Genoa to visit her in Rotterdam. He came most years at this time, and as they talked about this and that and the young man was saying what it was like when the French had stood in the narrow Bochetta pass outside Genoa with the Austrians facing them,* Franziska came into the room with a happy smile and all the charm of youth and innocence to tidy something away – and when he saw her the Englishman’s heart missed a beat and he forgot all about the French and the Austrians. ‘Aunt,’ he said, ‘that girl you have as your lady’s maid is as pretty as a picture! It’s a pity she is not something better.’ The aunt said, ‘She is a poor orphan from Germany. She is not just pretty but also sensible, but more than that she is pious and virtuous, and I have come to love her as a daughter.’ Her nephew thought that sounded encouraging.

  Then, the next morning or the morning after that when he was walking with his aunt in the garden, she asked, ‘What do you think of this rose?’ He said, ‘She’s beautiful, very beautiful!’ The aunt said, ‘Nephew, you’re talking nonsense! Who’s beautiful? I was speaking of this rose!’ He said, ‘I meant the rose!’ ‘Not Franziska then?’ asked his aunt. ‘I’m not blind!’ she said. The nephew confessed that he loved the girl and would like to marry her. The aunt said, ‘Nephew, you shall stay here another three weeks. If you still feel the same then, I have no objections. The girl deserves a good husband.’ Then after three weeks he said, ‘It’s worse now and I don’t know how I could live without the girl!’ So they were engaged. Though much persuasion was needed to overcome the pious girl’s humility.

  She stayed another year with the woman who had been her mistress in the fine house with the gilded bars at the window, no longer as lady’s maid now but as friend and relative, and during this time she learnt English and French and to play the piano. ‘When we are in trouble sore’, ‘The Lord who all things doth rule’, ‘In you, dear Lord, my trust I place’, these and other things she learnt that a lady’s maid has no cause to know but a fine lady should. The groom returned a few weeks before the year was out and the wedding was celebrated in the aunt’s house. But when talk turned to the newly married couple leaving, the young wife looked beseechingly at her husband and asked that she might return to her beloved homeland again and visit her mother’s grave and thank her, and she would also like to see her brothers again and her friends.

  So it was that she paid a visit that evening on her brother, the poor weaver, and when he did not reply to her question, ‘Do you remember me, Henry?’, she said, ‘I’m your sister Franziska.’ In his surprise he dropped the shuttle on the floor, and his sister embraced him. Yet at first his joy was somewhat muted, for she was now a great lady and he was embarrassed that the foreign gentleman, her husband, should see poverty and riches embracing like brother and sister and on familiar terms with each other, until he saw that though she no longer wore the dress of poverty she was still clothed in humility, her position had changed, but not her heart. A few days later, after she had visited all her relatives and acquaintances, she left with her husband for Genoa, and they are probably living in England now, where some time later her husband inherited a rich estate.

  Your Family Friend will be honest and confess what m
oves him most in this story. He is most moved because the good Lord was present when the dying mother blessed her daughter and He called a merchant’s lady in Rotterdam in Holland and a good rich Englishman by the sea in Italy to fulfil a poor dying widow’s blessing on her pious child.

  ‘Thou everywhere hast sway,

  And all things serve Thy might.’

  Married on Sentry Duty

  At two o’clock one night without warning a regiment that had been stationed in a village for six weeks was suddenly given orders to break camp at once. So at three o’clock they were all on the march, except for a lone sentry out in the fields who had been forgotten in the hurry and remained where he was. At first time did not drag for this soldier alone at his sentry post. For he gazed at the stars and thought, ‘You can twinkle as long as you like, you’re not a patch on those two eyes that are sleeping now down at the bottom mill!’ Yet towards five o’clock he thought, ‘It must be getting on for three.’ But no one came to relieve him. The quails called, the village cock crowed, the last stars had disappeared, promising to return that next night, the day stirred into life, men came into the fields, but our musketeer still stood at his post waiting to be relieved. Eventually a farmer out on his field told him that the whole battalion had marched away at three o’clock, there was not a gaiter strap left in the village, let alone its owner. So the musketeer took matters in his own hands and went back to the village without being relieved. He ought to have marched after his regiment at the double. But this musketeer thought, ‘If they don’t need me any more, I can manage without them.’ He also thought, ‘It’s no bad thing. If I go to find them without orders and without being relieved I could find myself exposed to a storm of falling sticks.’ Besides, he thought, ‘The bottom miller has a pretty daughter, and she has a pretty mouth and her mouth lovely kisses,’ and if anything else had happened by then that’s none of our business. So he took off his blue tunic