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Updated: May 31, 2025
"Good God!" he said; he bent over the body again, examined the scar with great care, and in his intense agitation was silent for some time. Then he turned to the foresters. "It is not right that the innocent should suffer for the guilty; just tell everybody this man here" he pointed to the dead body "was Frederick Mergel." The body was buried in the potter's field.
In this community Frederick Mergel was born, in a house which attested the pretensions of its builder by the proud addition of a chimney and somewhat less diminutive window panes, but at the same time bespoke the miserable circumstances of its owner by its present state of dilapidation.
It was about the Feast of the Three Kings, a raw and stormy winter night. Herman had gone to a wedding, and had started out early because the bride's house was three miles away. Although he had promised to return in the evening, Mistress Mergel hardly counted on it because a heavy snowfall had set in after sunset. About ten o'clock she banked the fire and made ready to go to bed.
"Now, John," said the Baron, "do tell me all about your adventures. But," as he surveyed him through his glasses, "you wasted away terribly there in Turkey, didn't you?" John began telling how Mergel had called him away from the hearth at night and said he must go away with him. "But why did the foolish fellow ever run away? I suppose you know that he was innocent?" John looked down.
Mergel brought what he wished, he asked "Where is Frederick?" She was just then busy getting a plate out and did not hear the question. He drank hesitatingly and in short draughts. Then he asked, "Do you know that last night the 'Blue Smocks' again cleared away a whole tract in the Mast forest as bare as my hand?" "Oh, you don't mean it!" she replied indifferently.
Frederick Mergel, born in 1738, was the son of a so-called Halbmeier or property holder of low station in the village of B., which, however badly built and smoky it may be, still engrosses the eye of every traveler by the extremely picturesque beauty of its situation in a green woody ravine of an important and historically noteworthy mountain chain.
Mergel did not get so very drunk, and the bride's parents went home in the evening satisfied; but the next Sunday the young wife, screaming and bloody, was seen running through the village to her family, leaving behind all her good clothes and new household furniture.
The young wife remained with her parents, where she soon pined away and died. Whether it was remorse or shame that tormented Mergel, no matter; he seemed to grow more and more in need of "spiritual" bolstering up, and soon began to be counted among the completely demoralized good-for-nothings. The household went to pieces, hired girls caused disgrace and damage; so year after year passed.
Herr von S. opened the box; five groschen lay in it, neatly wrapped in paper, and four silver vest-buttons. The Baron examined them with interest. "A remembrance from Mergel," he muttered, and stepped out, for he felt quite oppressed in the musty, close room. The search was continued until they had convinced themselves that John was no longer in the vicinity at least, not alive.
Of course that meant great scandal and vexation for Mergel, who naturally needed consolation; by afternoon therefore there was not an unbroken pane of glass in his house and he was seen late at night still lying on his threshold, raising, from time to time, the neck of a broken bottle to his mouth and pitifully lacerating his face and hands.
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