The snow outlined with white every gable and cornice of the beautiful
old wooden houses; the moonlight shone on the gilded signs, the lambs,
the grapes, the eagles, and all the quaint devices that hung before
the doors; covered lamps burned before the Nativities and Crucifixions
painted on the walls or let into the wood-work; here and there, where
a shutter had not been closed, a ruddy fire-light lit up a homely
interior, with the noisy band of children clustering round the
house-mother and a big brown loaf, or some gossips spinning and
listening to the cobbler's or the barber's story of a neighbour, while
the oil-wicks glimmered, and the hearth-logs blazed, and the chestnuts
sputtered in their iron roasting-pot. Little August saw all these
things as he saw everything with his two big bright eyes that had such
curious lights and shadows in them; but he went heedfully on his way
for the sake of the beer which a single slip of the foot would make
him spill. At his knock and call the solid oak door, four centuries
old if one, flew open, and the boy darted in with his beer, and
shouted, with all the force of mirthful lungs, "Oh, dear Hirschvogel,
but for the thought of you I should have died!"
It was a large barren room into which he rushed with so much pleasure,
and the bricks were bare and uneven. It had a walnut-wood press,
handsome and very old, a broad deal table, and several wooden stools
for all its furniture; but at the top of the chamber, sending out
warmth and colour together as the lamp sheds its rays upon it, was a
tower of porcelain, burnished with all the hues of a king's peacock
and a queen's jewels, and surmounted with armed figures, and shields,
and flowers of heraldry, and a great golden crown upon the highest
summit of all.
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