The Storyteller.

Waikato Argus, Volume V, Issue 375, 3 December 1898, Page 1 (Supplement)

The Storyteller.

AM A LIESE. i. It was a beautiful spring morning towards the end of the seventeenth century —the scene Germany. In a meadow thickly carpeted with flowers, a boy and a girl were strolling hand-in-hand. He was about 10 years old, and his dress betokened him of high birth. She was about a year younger and wore the attire of a girl of the middle class. Her face was one of the loveliest ever seen, with her gentle blue eyes and bright, fair hair, which fell in two long plaits down her back, and the boy’s eye rested upon her with an expression of loving admiration which softened down his usually haughty and defiant cast of countenance. He had twisted a handful of field flowers into a wreath, and placing it upon her head he sprang away laughing to survey the effect of his adornment. ‘ How pretty thou art, Anna Liese !’ he cried. ‘There is no other like thee anywhere in the wide world. When thou art older thou should’at wear a crown of jewels instead of one of flowers, for thou art born to be a little queen.’ The little girl laughed gently and shook her bead.

‘ An apothecary’s daughter cannot become a great lady, much less a queen,’ she said; ‘so I shall have to do without a crown and be content with my mother’s trinkets when I grow' up.’ The boy drew her to him, and bending his head so as to be on a level with hers, whispered : •Thou shalt bo a great lady, little Anna Liese, for I mean, when I’m a man, to marry thee, and then tbou’lt be princess of this province and have as many fine jewels as my lady-mother. Does that please thee V

‘ It sounds a pretty tale,’ laughed the little girl smiling, ‘but thou knowest it is nothing but a dream. They let us play together and be friends, because we are only children ; but when thou art a man we shall have to be strangers, and thou wilt marry-a noble lady who will bring thee more wealth and lands. That is what princesses have to do, I know.’

‘But I shall not, Wiesgen,’cried the boy. * I mean what 1 say, and who even now dares to cross my will 1 Thou and no other shall be my wife and my princess, so now thou knowest thy fate.’ Still the little girl shook her loving blonde head incredulously, and at that moment a man’s figure appeared at the further end of the field.

1 See,’ said Anna Liese, ‘ they come from the castle to look for thee. We must say good.bye for to-day.’ The boy looked angrily in the direction of the richly-attired servitor.

‘ I shall not go,’ he said defiantly, I wiah to remain where I am.’

‘ If the prince or thy mother wish to speak to thee they will be angry,’ said Anna Liese, ‘ and perhaps they will not let us be playmates any more. Go with him now,’ she added persuasively, stroking his arm and trying to smile away the frown that darkened his face, ‘ and to-morrow we can come here again. Go, to please roe !’ ‘ Well then,’ said the boy, his lips relaxing into a smile as he looked at her, ‘ to please thee I will go. But remember, to-morrow at the same hour be thou here, Wiesgen, Auf wiedersehen,’ and he kissed her pretty rosy lips as he spoke.

Little Anna Liess from the apothecary’s shop and Prince Leopold from the castle had been playmates from early childhood. The prince was the only surviving son of adoring parents whose indulgence had helped to foster a disposition already by nature wild and ungovernable, and there was no one in the wide world who could persuade or guide him so well as gentle Anna Liese. Seeing this, and knowing that the little girl was a good child and well brought up, his mother placed no obstacle in the way of their meeting together, and so they grew up, as one may say, side by side, loving each other devotedly.

But as the months and years passed on, and Leopold grew into a tedl youth and Anna Liese into the fairest maid in all the land, the Princess Henriettc began to see danger in this constant companionship. And her fears proved but too Well founded. The affection of the little child merged imperceptibly into the passionate love of man for maid, and Leopold displayed an open adoration for Anna Liese which appalled his mother. He spoke of marriage—marriage with an daughter ! He, the reigning prince of the province, for his father had been dead some years. At any cost,, she told herself, a stop must be put to this youthful folly. In those days the ‘grand tour’ was considered to give the finishing touch to a young gentleman’s education. The princess decided that Leopold should travel ; he should go to Italy, and amidst the excitements and splendours of the various courts to which he could have access, how could he fail to get over this mad infatuation for a girl so far beneath him ?

The prince protested against the decision ; he did not want to leave

Germany and Anna Liese ; but his mother managed very skilfully to overrule his objections, and in company with a young nobleman he set forth on the tour planned for him. His absence lasted nearly two years, during which his mother hoped and believed that her specific had been successful—that Leopold among the fair and high-born ladies of other lands had forgotten his simple German first love. 11. The road to the castle was gaily decorated with floral arches and waving banners, and a host of retainers and servants were assembled to welcome back the young prince. His mother stood in the great hall anxiously listening for the sound of horses’ feet which should tell of her loved one’s approach. Already the time when his arrival was expected was past, and still he came nob. Softly the minutes crept on ; anxiously the mother waited. No princely son appeared. In front of the apothecary’s house in the little town bleow, a party of riders had drawn up, and the most brilliantly dressed among them was leaning from his horse, speaking words of passionate love and joyous greeting to a beautiful girl, who stood with flushed face and downcast eyes before him. It was Prince Leopold, whose first thought upon reaching home was his Anna Liese.

‘ I have seen no one to prefer to thee,’ he whispered. ‘ Tell me, Wiesgen, dost thou still lore me best of all V

Ami Anna Liese’s sweet blue eyes answered for her as she raised them a moment to his.

When the princess heard the reason of her son’s tardy arrival, she was in. despair. If nearly two years of abssnce among novel and brilliant scenes could not cure her son, the case was hopeless. Bitterly she rued her blindness in having allowed the old childish friendship to continue so long. But she was a woman of resources. She did not yet give up the battle 3 she only changed her tactics. Previously she had been loth to mention Anna Liese if she could help it 3 now, of her own accord, she often spoke of her, and Leopold heard long accounts of his loved one. The princess, rendered desperate by the state of affairs, resorted to means she would otherwise have despised. She collected what gossip she could concerning Anna Liese, and retailed it in a very garbled form to her son. Thus the girl, according to these accounts, had, become t a practised coquette 3 she was beset with admirers and lavished smiles on them one and all. Latterly there was one whom she had seemed to favour more than the others 3 a cousin, a young doctor, who had just returned from lengthy travels. To him everyone said Anna Liese was sure to be betrothed before very long.

The lady’s tactics succeeded in their primary object ; Leopold became furiously jealous. He did not believe the part about Anna Liese’s coquetries (which was indeed an utter fabrication), but the idea of any other man daring to look with covetous eyes upon his treasure made him wild with anger. Pretty Anna Liesc, the innocent cause of all these heart-burnings, was sitting one day at work beside one of the quaint old windows of her father’s house. It was in the front of the dwelling, and looked out into the street, for which reason it was a favourite place with the girl, who lilted to watch the passersby. To her entered her cousin, Doctor Wilhelm, with some curious old coins and other articles amassed on his foreign travels. ‘ See, cousin,’ he said, ‘ I have brought the things I promised to show you.’

And Lieso put down her work and drew near to the young man. Their heads were bent very close together over the curiosities, and to anyone passing in the street and chancing to look up, their attitude might very well pass for that ot lovers.

As misfortune would have it, it so happened that the princess and her son rode past on their way to the castle. Leopold’s eyes, of course, sought his loved one’s dwelling, and his mother’s gaze followed his. As his glance fell upon the scene in the window, her eyes lit up, and touching her son’s arm, she said :

‘ Look there, my son, and see for yourself the truth of what I told you. Your Anna Liese loves not you, but another !’

The effect on the passionate young man was tremendous, and the result very different from what the shortsighted mother had forseen. Uttering a cry of rage, he sprang from his horse and dashed into the house. With drawn sword, he flew up the stairs and into the apartment whore the cousins were. As Arina Liese saw him distorted with passion, she uttered a terriiied shriek, and the young doctor eyed the intruder with amazment.

Leopold, for the nonce quite mad, rushed straight at him, and the torrent of abuse which ho poured forth, together with his wild demeanour, left no doubt as against whom his hostility was directed. The doctor was a man of pease, and timid. He turned and fled into another room. The prince followed him, and before Anna Liese —who had rushed after him—could

stay his arm, he had stabbed the unfortunate Wilhelm through the heart. The young man fell, bathed in blood, and Leopold, all his fury suddenly abating before the dreadful sight, looked down horrorstricken upon the victim of his mad wrath ; while the household of the apothecary, aroused by Anna Liese's frantic cries, crowded round, speechless and terrified.

111. The despair of the princess at the outcome of the jealously which she herself had aroused in her son can be imagined. True she had no need to fear for him. Prince of the land, he stood in too high and unassailable a position to be called to account for his crime ; beside which such affairs were looked upon with much less severity in those stormy times that they are now, and this particular unhappy matter had been so carefully hushed up that few beyond those immediately concerned knew all the true facts of the case. What affected the princess most deeply was the bitter reflection that the whole terrible episode was of her own bringing about. She had known so well her son’s passionate, undisciplined nature, and, notwithstanding that, had played upon it in so dangerous a style! Too late she realised the tremendous power of the love against ovhich she had tried to battle, and now her dearest wish was to bring about that marriage which she had hitherto striven with all her might to prevent. For it seemed to her now in that alone lay her son’s salvation.

It was a matter which required some delicate handling. The apothecary’s family—firm and deep as was their loyalty and affection for their prince—could not fail to feel but these sentiments deeply shaken by his fatal act; and to give Anna Liese in marriage to the very man who had slain her cousin would no doubt seem to them too dreadful a thing to contemplate. As for the pretty maid herself she was very much in Juliet’s predicament. bhe had loved- her cousin and mourned him deeply, but she loved his destroyer still more, and that love nothing was powerful enough to kill, How could she forget that his fury had all been born of his love for her, and who knew better than she, his playmate of old, that terrible side of his character, which once brought into play, led him into acts for which he was hardly responsible 1 Many were the tears poor Anna Liese shed in the solitude and silence of her little chamber, both for the dead cousin and that still dearer one, whom she had not seen since the fatal day, and whom she knew would he now enduring all the agonies of unavailing remorse. She was sitting thus, some weeks latsr, with her sad thoughts for sole companions, when the door openedand “her mother with tear-stained eyes stood before her. ‘ Daughter, I have come to fetch thee,’ she said in tones that trembled. c The princess is down below with thy father, and thou art wanted.”

,Anna Kiese turned pale. The princess, mother !' ‘ Yes, my child !’ And then the mother took the girl into her arms and her tears welled forth afresh ‘She comes to ask thee of us for her. son’s wife,’, she murmured. 1 She says she was to blame for all his jealousy, and beseeches us to consent to the marriage. She told us that she sees now that thou alone canst guide him as he needs to be led and make him a good man; that his life for good or evil is in thy hands to make or mar.”

‘ And you and my father—what did you say V faltered Anna Liese. Her mother gently stroked her hair as she answered :

‘ Thy father said at last thine own heart should decide, my child. It may be that the princess is right, and that thou art the one pointed out by Heaven to be this man’s good angel. If that is so, we have no right to withhold his salvation. God, who is so great and wise, knows what is for the best, and He will guide thee the right way, my child.’ Leopold meanwhile was sitting brooding all alone in one of the massively-furnished rooms of the castle. It was getting dark very rapidly, but he did not notice the increasing gloom \ it accorded but too well with the darkness of his mind. His head was sunk forward on his breast, his eyes were fixed on vacancy, while all manner of tormenting reflections were surging through his brain. As the chief of these, which kept ever recurring was, that by bis own hand he had placed a barrier between his love and himself for ever. For_ she the gentle, peace-looking maiden, would surely never forgive such an act as his! lS : o, his pretty Anna Liese, his darling Wiesgen, as he had been wont to call her, was lost to him for ever. Bitter tears welled to his eyes and ho cursed his rnad and fatal impulse for the thousandth time.

At that moment the door behind him opened noiselessly, light footsteps glided across the polished floor and some one came and stood beside him. And looking up he saw with wondering eyes his love, his Anna Liese, more beautiful than he had ever yet beheld her, with tears, half of sadness, half of joy, in the tender eyes that gazed upon him. Then, even as he sat, speechless and be-

wildered, half doubting his own eyes, his mother glided up to hi m and placed his sweetheart’s hand in his.

Though this true story happened in times far from idyllic, and the prince was by nature far from an ideal hero of romance, one might well end the narrative of his wooing with the old finale of the fairy tales : ‘ They lived happily ever after,’ for Leopold and his wife, from the time they were wedded till Anna Liese’s death, 47 years later, were lovers to the last.

, Nearly 200 years have passed since the day when pretty Anna Lieses became the great heroine o f her native land ; but the names of both maid and lover still live in the pages of German history. For the prince was Leopold Fursb von Anhalt-Dessau, famous in Prussian annals as •' der alte Dessauer,” the general who fought as a young man under Fredrich Wilhelm of Brandenburg, the Great Elector, and as an old one under Frederick the Great himself, and who for a period of nearly half a century stood out conspicuously as one of the greatest soldiers of that day. The memory of Anna Liese Fose is still held in honour in her native province. For she showed herself well worthy to fill the exalted position to which she was raised. She knew just how to manage her rough and self-willed lord, and to use her influence for the good of the people. Well acquainted with the wants and necessities of the Dessau province, she held the reins of government during the prince’s enforced absence in the wars wisely and well, and risen herself from the people succeeded in winning in the highest degree their loyalty and love. And thus across the rough soldier’s life of the old Dessauer, with its constant turmoil and its clash of arms, there shines one ray of pure golden light—his love for Anna Liese.—Argosy.