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Fottner shed tears in advance, and all over the village they were telling tales of the dangers the missionaries had to undergo among the cannibals, who are wont to take such a martyr, stick a spit right through him, and then twist him slowly over the fire until he turns nice and brown.
To be sure, the present calling of the Fottner lad was not pleasing to God; but he himself liked it. The food was not bad, and the one-year volunteers willingly treated the big fellow to a glass of beer when he introduced himself as fellow-student, boasting that he had not been left behind when his former confratres had had a little convivial matin celebration.
That made it as clear as day, for now the Bridge Farmer asked anybody, what did a priest have to know Greek for, when services and mass were celebrated in Latin? They must be slick fellows, those gentlemen in Freising, reg'lar pickpockets. He was all-fired mad at them, for he couldn't put any blame on the Fottner boy.
But something else can be done, Bridge Farmer," he said, "if you are set on having Matt Fottner enter the ministry at all costs. There is a Collegium Germanicum in Rome, where German youths are trained by the Jesuits. They are very particular about faith, but as to education they close one eye in the interest of the faith."
And the Eynhofen folks that were forever quizzing him in the tavern about his Latin officer, they should open their eyes, too, one of these days. On the very next day he took the train to Munich. No joy is complete, and the palm of victory is never to be gained with easy toil. This was the experience of the Bridge Farmer when he communicated his plan to the royal corporal Matthew Fottner.
This to be sure Fottner did not do, for he was no friend of toilsome head-work, but his teacher was himself a clergyman, who knew that the servants of God could officiate without learning, if need be. Therefore he preferred, purely from a sense of duty, not to injure Matt, and with Christian charity he let him be promoted the second year.
In all the taverns men talked about it, and the old Bridge Farmer, who rarely went out any more since he had had his stroke, now sat in the barroom every day and gave back the taunts that he had had to take in times gone by. A week before the celebration Matthew Fottner arrived. He was met at the station with a decorated carriage, and thirty lads on horseback escorted him.
So he comforted himself with the reflection that a good horse pulls twice, and swallowed his bitter pill. Doubtless he did make a wry face over it, and his joy of Matt had become diminished by a good bit; grave doubts began to stir in his heart as to whether a bona fide priest could be made out of this gawky Goliath. But his bad humor was not contagious, at least not for Mr. Matthew Fottner.
For seven years old Fottner sat in his house, number eight in Eynhofen village, rejoicing over the future sanctity of his son; for seven years the inn-keeper kept figuring out in advance how many gallons of beer would be drunk at a first-class first-mass celebration; and for seven long years the Bridge Farmer went every month to the express office in Pettenbach and sent a postal money order to Roma, Collegio Germanico.
The girls soon went into service; of the boys the oldest, Georgie, stayed at home, the second, Vitus by name, went to the Shuller Farm, and the third well, I am going to tell you about him. Matthew his name was, and he came into the world long after the sixth child, and quite unexpectedly. At that time Fottner was already fifty, and his wife was in the forties.
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