The Broken Cup

Broken Cup, by Johann Heinrich
Daniel Zschokke

Project Gutenberg's The Broken Cup, by Johann Heinrich Daniel
Zschokke This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and
with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away
or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: The Broken Cup 1891
Author: Johann Heinrich Daniel Zschokke
Translator: P. G.
Release Date: October 17, 2007 [EBook #23062]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
BROKEN CUP ***

Produced by David Widger

THE BROKEN CUP
By Johann Heinrich Daniel Zschokke

Translated by P. G.
Copyright, 1891, by The Current Literature Publishing Company
Author's Note.--There is extant under this name a short piece by the
author of "Little Kate of Heilbronn." That and the tale which here
follows originated in an incident which took place at Bern in the year
1802. Henry von Kleist and Ludwig Wieland, the son of the poet, were
both friends of the writer, in whose chamber hung an engraving called
La Cruche Cassée, the persons and contents of which resembled the
scene set forth below, under the head of The Tribunal. The drawing,
which was full of expression, gave great delight to those who saw it,
and led to many conjectures as to its meaning. The three friends agreed,
in sport, that they would each one day commit to writing his peculiar
interpretation of its design. Wieland promised a satire; Von Kleist
threw off a comedy; and the author of the following tale what is here
given.
Transcriber's Note.--Two pages in the middle of this work are missing.
THAT Napoule is only a very little place on the bay of Cannes is true;
yet it is pretty well known through all Provence. It lies in the shade of
lofty evergreen palms, and darker orange trees; but that alone would
not make it renowned. Still they say that there are grown the most
luscious grapes, the sweetest roses, and the handsomest girls. I don't
know but it is so; in the mean time I believe it most readily. Pity that
Napoule is so small, and can not produce more luscious grapes, fragrant
roses, and handsome maidens; especially, as we might then have some
of them transplanted to our own country.
As, ever since the foundation of Napoule, all the Napoulese women
have been beauties, so the little Marietta was a wonder of wonders, as
the chronicles of the place declare. She was called the little Marietta;
yet she was not smaller than a girl of seventeen or thereabout ought to
be, seeing that her forehead just reached up to the lips of a grown man.
The chronicles aforesaid had very good ground for speaking of
Marietta. I, had I stood in the shoes of the chronicler, would have done

the same. For Marietta, who until lately had lived with her mother
Manon at Avignon, when she came back to her birthplace, quite upset
the whole village. Verily, not the houses, but the people and their heads;
and not the heads of all the people, but of those particularly whose
heads and hearts are always in danger when in the neighborhood of two
bright eyes. I know very well that such a position is no joke.
Mother Manon would have done much better if she had remained at
Avignon. But she had been left a small inheritance, by which she
received at Napoule an estate consisting of some vine-hills, and a house
that lay in the shadow of a rock, between certain olive trees and African
acacias. This is a kind of thing which no unprovided widow ever rejects;
and, accordingly, in her own estimation, she was as rich and happy as
though she were the Countess of Provence or something like it.
So much the worse was it for the good people of Napoule. They never
suspected their misfortune, not having read in Homer how a single
pretty woman had filled all Greece and Lesser Asia with discord and
war.
Marietta had scarcely been fourteen days in the house, between the
olive trees and the African acacias, before every young man of Napoule
knew that she lived there, and that there lived not, in all Provence, a
more charming girl than the one in that house.
Went she through the village, sweeping lightly along like a dressed-up
angel, her frock, with its pale-green bodice, and orange leaves and
rosebuds upon the bosom of it, fluttering in the breeze, and flowers and
ribbons waving about the straw bonnet, which shaded her beautiful
features--yes, then the grave old men spake out, and the young ones
were struck dumb. And everywhere, to the right and left, little windows
and