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deemer hath sent ye through me!" Whereupon they all wept, sobbed, and groaned; and the little children again came running up and held out their hands, crying, "See, bread, bread!" But as I myself could not pray for heaviness of soul, I bade Paasch his little girl say the Gratias the while my Mary cut up the loaf and gave to each his share. And now we all joyfully began to eat our meat from God in the wilderness.

Meanwhile I had to tell in what manner I had found the blessed manna bread, wherein I neglected not again to exhort them to lay to heart this great sign and wonder, how that God in his mercy had done to them as of old to the prophet Elijah, to whom a raven brought bread in his great need in the wilderness; as likewise this bread had been given to me by means of a raven, which showed it to me, when otherwise I might have passed it by in my heaviness without ever seeing it.

When we were satisfied with food, I said the thanksgiving from Luke xii. 24, where the Lord saith, "Consider the ravens : for they neither sow nor reap; which neither have storehouse nor barn; and God feedeth them: how much more are ye better than the fowls ?" But our sins stank before the Lord. For old Lizzie, as I afterwards heard, would not eat her birds because she thought them unsavoury, but threw them among the juniper bushes; whereupon the wrath of the Lord was kindled against us as of old against the people of Israel, and at night we found but seven birds in the snares, and next morning but two. Neither did any raven come again to give us bread. Wherefore I rebuked old Lizzie, and admonished the people to take upon themselves willingly the righteous chastisement of the Most High God, to pray without ceasing, to return to their desolate dwellings, and to see whether the all-merciful God would peradventure give them more on the sea. That I also would call upon him with prayer night and day, remaining for a time in the cavern with my daughter and the maid to watch the springes, and see whether his wrath might be turned from us. That they should meanwhile put my manse to rights to the best of their power, seeing that the cold was become very irksome to me. This they promised me, and departed with many sighs. What a little flock! I counted but twenty-five souls where there used to be above eighty; all the rest had been slain by hunger, pestilence,

or the sword.* I then abode awhile alone and sorrowing in the cave, praying to God, and sent my daughter with the maid into the village to see how things stood at the manse; item, to gather together the books and papers, and also to bring me word whether Hinze the carpenter, whom I had straightway sent back to the village, had knocked together some coffins for the poor corpses, so that I might bury them next day. I then went to look at the springes, but found only one single little bird, whereby I saw that the wrath of God had not yet passed away. Howbeit, I found a fine blackberry bush, from which I gathered nearly a pint of berries, and put them, together with the bird, in Staffer Zuter his pot, which the honest fellow had left with us for a while, and set them on the fire for supper against my child and the maid should return. It was not long before they came through the coppice, and told me of the fearful devastation which Satan had made in the village and manse by the permission of all-righteous God. My child had gathered together a few books, which she brought with her, above all, a Virgilius and a Greek Bible. And after she had told me that the carpenter would not have done till next day, and we had satisfied the cravings of hunger, I made her read to me again, for the greater strengthening of my faith, the locus about the blessed raven from the Greek of Luke, at the 12th chapter; also, the beautiful locus parallelus, Matt. vi. After which the maid said the evening blessing, and we all went into the cave to rest for the night. When I awoke next morning, just as the blessed sun rose out the sea and peeped over the mountain, I heard my poor hungry child already standing outside the cave, reciting the beautiful verses about the joys of paradise which St. Augustine wrote and I had taught her. She sobbed for grief as she spoke the words:

"Uno pane vivunt cives utriusque patriæ

Avidi et semper pleni, quod habent desiderant
Non sacietas fastidit, neque fames cruciat
Inhiantes semper edunt, et edentes inhiant

*This took place in the year 1628, and the horrors of the Thirty Years' War were spread most fearfully over this island: pity that the description of the old vicar, which he doubtless gave in the preceding pages, has been lost.

+ This is an error. The following verses are written by the Cardinal Bishop of Ostia, Peter Damianus (d. 23rd Feb. 1072), after Augustine's prose.

Flos perpetuus rosarum ver agit perpetuum,
Candent lilia, rubescit crocus, sudat balsamum,
Virent prata, vernant sata, rivi mellis influunt
Pigmentorum spirat odor liquor et aromatum,
Pendent poma floridorum non lapsura nemorum
Non alternat luna vices, sol vel cursus syderum
Agnus est fœlicis urbis lumen inocciduum.”*

At these words my own heart was melted; and when she ceased from speaking, I asked, "What art thou doing, my child?" Whereupon she answered, "Father, I am eating." Thereat my tears now indeed began to flow, and I praised her for feeding her soul, as she had no meat for her body. I had not, however, spoken long, before she cried to me to come and look at the great wonder that had risen out of the sea, and already appeared over the cave. For behold a cloud, in shape just like a cross, came over us, and let great heavy drops, as big or bigger than large peas, fall on our heads, after which it sank behind the coppice. I presently arose, and ran up the mountain with my daughter to look after it. It floated on towards the Achterwater,† where it spread itself out into a long blue streak, whereon the sun shone so brightly that it seemed like a golden bridge, on which, as my child said, the blessed angels danced. I fell on my knees with her, and thanked the Lord that our cross had passed away from us; but alas! our cross was yet to come, as will be told hereafter.

* The following version is from the pen of a friend.-Trans.

In that far land the citizens all share one equal bread,

And keep desire and hunger still, although to fulness fed:
Unwearied by satiety, unracked by hunger's strife,

The air they breathe is nourishment, and spiritual life!

Around them, bright with endless Spring, perpetual roses bloom;

Warm balsams gratefully exude luxurious perfume;

Red crocuses, and lilies white, shine dazzling in the sun;

Green meadows yield them harvests green, and streams with honey run; Unbroken droop the laden boughs, with heavy fruitage bent,

Of incense and of odours strange the air is redolent;

And neither sun, nor moon, nor stars, dispense their changeful light,
But the Lamb's eternal glory makes the happy city bright!"

† A wash formed by the River Peene in the neighbourhood.

f

CHAPTER VIII.

How our need waxed sorer and sorer, and how I sent old Ilse with another letter to Pudgla, and how heavy a misfortune this brought upon me.

NEXT day, when I had buried the poor corpses amid the lamentations of the whole village (by the same token that they were all buried under where the lime-tree overhangs the wall*), I heard with many sighs that neither the sea nor the Achterwater would yield anything. It was now ten days since the poor people had caught a single fish. I therefore went out into the field, musing how the wrath of the just God might be turned from us, seeing that the cruel winter was now at hand, and neither corn, apples, fish nor flesh, to be found in the village, nor even throughout all the parish. There was indeed plenty of game in the forests of Coserow and Uekeritze; but the old forest ranger, Zabel Nehring, had died last year of the plague, and there was no new one in his place. Nor was there a musket nor a grain of powder to be found in all the parish; the enemy had robbed and broken everything we were therefore forced, day after day, to see how the stags and the roes, the hares and the wild boars, et cet., ran past us, when we would so gladly have had them in our bellies, but had no means at getting at them: for they were too cunning to let themselves be caught in pit-falls. Nevertheless, Claus Peer succeeded in trapping a roe, and gave me a piece of it, for which may God reward him. Item, of domestic cattle there was not a head left; neither was there a dog nor a cat, which the people had not either eaten in their extreme hunger, or knocked on the head, or drowned long since. Albeit old farmer Paasch still owned two cows; item, an old man in Uekeritze was said to have one little pig:-this was all. Thus, then, nearly all the people lived on blackberries and other wild fruits; the which also soon grew to be scarce, as may easily be guessed. Besides all this, a boy of fourteen was missing (old Labahn his son) and was

* This exists no longer.

never more heard of, so that I shrewdly think that the wolves devoured him.

And now let any Christian judge by his own heart in what sorrow and heaviness I took my staff in my hand, seeing that my child fell away like a shadow from pinching hunger; although I myself, being old, did not, by the help of God's mercy, find any great failing in my strength. While I thus went continually weeping before the Lord, on the way to Uekeritze, I fell in with an old beggar with his wallet, sitting on a stone, and eating a piece of God's rare gift, to wit, a bit of bread. Then truly did my poor mouth so fill with water, that I was forced to bow my head and let it run upon the earth before I could ask, "Who art thou? and whence comest thou? seeing that thou hast bread." Whereupon he answered that he was a poor man of Bannemin, from whom the enemy had taken all; and as he had heard that the Lieper Winkel* had long been in peace, he had travelled thither to beg. I straightway answered him, "Oh, poor beggarman, spare to me, a sorrowful servant of Christ, who is poorer even than thyself, one little slice of bread for his wretched child; for thou must know that I am the pastor of this village, and that my daughter is dying of hunger. I beseech thee by the living God not to let me depart without taking pity on me, as pity also hath been shown to thee!" But the beggarman would give me none, saying that he himself had a wife and four children, who were likewise staggering towards death's door under the bitter pangs of hunger; that the famine was sorer far in Bannemin than here, where we still had berries; whether I had not heard that but a few days ago a woman (he told me her name, but horror made me forget it) had there killed her own child, and devoured it from hunger?† That he could not therefore help me, and I might go to the Lieper Winkel myself.

I was horror-stricken at his tale, as is easy to guess, for we in our own trouble had not yet heard of it, there being little or no traffic between one village and another; and thinking on Jerusalem,‡ and sheer despairing because the Lord had visited * A remote part of the Island of Usedom.

+ Micrælius also mentions this horrible event in his history of Pomerania. Where, according to Josephus, the same thing occurred.

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