MARS
505
mently within her, and the muffled drumming, now heightened by
oboes, flutes and horns, seemed to grow gradually more distinct, un–
til
it halted at a spot which she judged, by the sound, to be the
charnel house near the church. The stone walls of this underground
vault were decked with skulls and crossed bones, interspersed with
splintery rosettes. After service, the churchgoers occasionally descended
into this vault, and with pleasurable shudders pointed out the Span–
iards' skulls and those of the Swedes: the former being smaller and
perfectly round like bowling balls, the latter domed in the back and
of more delicate structure.
But at this hour of night there was no pleasure in contemplating
the dead warriors, and the woman turned her thoughts to her peace–
fully slumbering husband. He was a man in the prime of life; she
was
his
second wife. To his motherless little son she had given a
playmate-a daughter she had borne the innkeeper before they
were married-who exerted a gentle but strongly beneficial influence
on the boy, restraining his sudden fits of anger.
Only the day before the seven-year-old boy had once more given
evidence of his uncontrollable temper. Some very old, beautifully cut
wineglasses were being carried into the cellar, to be hidden under
some straw in a rotting cupboard. At that moment the boy came
by with his little sister. Attracted by the green shimmer, he adroitly
made off with one of the glasses. Filling it at the pump, he drained
the contents with many "Prosits" and began to imitate a drunkard
coming home and beating his wife: he threw himself on the little
girl
and, playfully at first and then more fiercely, so miserably
mauled the poor child that she burst into tears.
On hearing her screams the innkeeper, by nature a very mild
man, picked up the boy with one hand and whipped him with his
belt. He might not have punished him so severely if he had not
been made irritable and more sensitive to every kind of injustice
by the general misery of the times, and the constant spectacle of
the weak being maltreated. Only when his wife, horror-struck, rushed
clumsily to restrain him did he let go of the boy. Long after the
couple had fallen asleep, peaceably embracing, his unhappiness over
this event and perhaps also over
his
own lack of control had weighed
on
him,
troubling the first hours of his rest.
But to his wife, gazing at him with her chin on her fist, he once
