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Updated: May 14, 2025
As Gessler passed Stauffacher's house in Steinen, one day, where the little chapel now stands, and saw how the house was well built, with many windows, and painted over with mottoes, after the manner of rich farmers' houses, he cried to his face, "Can one endure that these peasants should live in such houses?"
Tell made up his mind that Gessler should never make any one else suffer so much. There was only one thing to do. That was to kill Gessler, and that Tell meant to do. If Gessler escaped from the storm, Tell was sure that he would go straight to his castle at Küssnacht.
A guttural sound, and the tip-tap of bast slippers beating the narrow wooden stairs, and he would stand before one without coat, a little bent, in leather apron, with sleeves turned back, blinking as if awakened from some dream of boots, or like an owl surprised in daylight and annoyed at this interruption. And I would say: "How do you do, Mr. Gessler?
"My bow is used for hunting, your Lordship," said Tell proudly, "a right that all free men possess and have possessed from the very earliest times." "I'll curb your right and your talk of freedom," said Gessler fiercely. "Yonder is your son. Now harken to your punishment. Take your bow and shoot an apple from the child's head."
Walter, when alone, turned his steps toward Altorf, where unfortunately, and unknown to himself, he came into the presence of Gessler, to whom he uttered somewhat hard things about the state of the country, being led to commit himself by the artful questions of the tyrant, who immediately ordered the lad into confinement, with strict injunctions to the guards to seize whomsoever should claim him.
"By heaven," he cries, "he has clove the apple exactly in the center. Let us do justice; it is indeed a masterpiece of skill." Tell's friends congratulate him. He is about to set out for his home with the child who has been saved to him from the very jaws of death as it were. But Gessler stays him. "Thou hast concealed a second arrow in thy bosom," he says, sternly addressing Tell.
Only a blockhead would try to gain such an end in such a way. This, however, is only another way of saying what has often been pointed out, that Gessler is simply a fairy-tale tyrant, copied very closely from Tschudi; a sort of typical bad man, whom the saga, after inventing him out of nothing, has made as black as possible in order the more clearly and strongly to justify the revolt.
Gessler was a stern man, quick to punish any insult, and there were two of his soldiers lying on the ground with their nice armour all spoiled and dented, and his own cap on top of the pole had an arrow right through the middle of it, and would never look the same again, however much it might be patched. It seemed to Tell that there was a bad time coming. Gessler rode up, and reined in his horse.
"Verily," answered Tell, with mock humility, "how this happened I know not; 'tis an accident, and no mark of contempt. Suffer me, therefore, in thy clemency to depart." Gessler was irritated at this reply, feeling assured that there was something beneath the tranquil and bitter smile of the prisoner which he could not fathom.
At long last, on Sunday, 12th December, about two P.M., the Old Dessauer does appear; or General Gessler, his vanguard, does appear, Gessler of the sixty-seven standards, "always about an hour ahead." Gessler has summoned Meissen; has not got it, is haggling with it about terms, when, towards sunset of the short day, Old Dessauer himself arrives.
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