Читать книгу L'Arrabiata and Other Tales - Paul Heyse - Страница 12

Table of Contents

While I was at College, I chanced, one summer, to fall into habits of frequent and intimate intercourse with a young man, whose intellectual countenance and refinement of character never failed to exercise a winning influence, even upon the most cursory of his acquaintance.

I may call our connection intimate; for I was the only one of our student set, whom he ever asked to go and see him, or himself occasionally visited. But in our relations, there was nothing of that wild, exuberant, often obtrusive kind of fraternizing, affected by our studious youth. From that, we were as far, when we parted in the autumn, as we had been on our first walk by the Rhine; when the same road, and the same delight in the marvellous beauty of the spring scenery before us had first introduced us to each other's notice.

Even of his worldly circumstances, I had learned but little. I had heard that he came of an ancient and noble house;--that his boyhood had been passed at his father. Count ----'s castle, under the direction of a French tutor, with whom he had then been sent to travel; and finally, at his own express desire, to college. There, he had ascertained, what he had long suspected; viz.: that in each and every branch of regular instruction he was totally deficient--Upon which, straightway he shut himself up with books and private tutors;--suffered the tumult of loose Burschen-life to sweep by him, without once lifting his eyes from his task;--and by the time I knew him, he had got so far as to rise every morning with the Ethica of Aristotle, and to lie down, at night, with a chorus of Euripides.

Not a shade of pedantry;--not a taint of scholastic rust,--was left to clog the free play of his mind, at the close of all those years of sharp-set study.--Numbers of industrious people work, because they do not know how to live. But his life was in his work;--he took science in its plenitude, with all his faculties at once. He acknowledged no intellectual gain, that did not tend to elevate his character, or stood at variance with his mental instincts.

In this sense, his was, perhaps, the most ideal nature I ever knew; if the term be not abused, as it too often is, to mean a vapid kind of beauty worship, and a sentimental distaste for rough realities; but used in its loftier, and certainly far rarer sense: an ideal standard of human character, resolutely upheld, and steadily pursued; with undaunted spirit, if with moderate expectations; and at whatever sacrifice of present brilliance and success, a thorough contempt of cram, as well as of every other form of professional narrow mindedness.

It is quite conceivable therefore, that the coarser kind of student pleasures could not prove ensnaring to this young hermit, whose seclusion came to be interpreted as aristocratic prejudice, from which no man could be more free. Education may have done something to confirm his natural aversion to all that was coarse, excessive, or impure. But as his scrupulous personal cleanliness was innate, so also was his almost maidenly delicacy in matters of morality. Never have I met such firmness of resolve, never so much masculine energy of intellect, united to so girlish a reluctance to talk of love and love affairs. Consequently, he kept aloof from all those clamorous carouses, where, amidst the fumes of liquor and tobacco, liberty and patriotism, love and friendship, God and immortality, are in their turns, discussed on the same broad basis of easy joviality as the last ball, or the newest cut of College cap. Even in a tête à tête, where he could so eloquently hold forth on any scientific problem, he very rarely touched on questions dealing with the most private and personal interests of man. History, diplomacy, politics, or the classics, were subjects he would discuss with passionate eagerness. Then he could wax as warm and fluent in debate, as though he were addressing a listening nation he would have won to some great purpose. To things of common life, he rarely referred. Of his own family, I never heard him speak. His father, he mentioned only once.

One evening, when I went to ask him whether he would join me in a row upon the river;--in one of those excursions of which he was so fond, when we used to take a little boat to a tavern a mile or two below the town, and, after a frugal meal, to walk home by starlight;--I found him just as he had thrown aside his pen, and was struggling with the resolution necessary to dress for an evening party.

"Pity me!" he cried, as I came in; "only look at that magnificent sunset, and imagine that I am doomed to turn my back upon it, and to go where I shall see no other midnight splendour but that of the stars on dress-coats!"

And he mentioned one of the most distinguished houses in the town, where a party was to be given in honor of some passing diplomate.

"And must you?"--I asked, with sincerest sympathy. For all our intimacy, we had never come to saying thou.--

"I must," he sighed; "my father, who has set his heart on making a diplomate of me, whether I will or no, would be indignant if I were to go home without being able to inform him, whether the suppers at Baron N.'s are still such as to justify their European reputation. Hitherto, I have been so culpable as to ignore them, and now, at the last, I have to fill up these blanks in my course of study."

He saw me smile, and hastily added: "My father, you must know, has, if possible, a still more uncivil opinion than I have of the liveried nonentities that stop the way in that kind of society; only what he finds wanting in them, is not what I do.--He is of the old school; a diplomate of the Empire. He has seen the world in flames, and cannot forget the demoniac light by which he then saw all things, good and bad; fair and foul; high and low. Now the world is quiet, and regular enough; but sleepy, tame, and colorless. At least he thinks so. Still it is the world, and he who would rule in his generation, must make himself acquainted with his subjects. He gave me very few maxims to take away with me, when I came here; but this one, certainly with fifty variations, 'Read men more than books.'--'When I was at your age,' he used to say, 'books played a very subordinate part in the world. I have known many a clever man, who from the time he entered into society never read a line save the newest novel, or the latest war-bulletin, and never wrote a syllable, except in love-letters or dispatches. He had all the more time to act, or, if necessary, to think;--and when is it not necessary to think? But learning, book-learning! we never thought of such a thing, and yet, we knew everything, of course.--It was in the air; and where, now-a-days, you very soon get to the end of your Latin, our French took us a good way farther.'

"So I considered that as settled, and more than once I have girded up my loins, to go and read these men, and study them. But after the first few pages, I generally found out that their titles were the most important part about them. Either I am a stupid reader; (a 'kind reader', I know I am not!), or else the great world of the present day really is a most insipid study."

His carriage came to the door, and I went away, for I had often noticed that it embarrassed him, when any one was present while he was dressing.

At a later hour, as I chanced to pass the house where the aristocracy of ---- was to be assembled, I saw him getting out of the carriage; we exchanged a short look with a shade of irony; and then he went slowly up the carpetted steps, and I looked after him, while I felt proud of his knightly bearing, and of the grace of his stalwart figure.

He could be dangerous to womankind, as I had heard from several sources. They even told a story of a distinguished Englishwoman, who, after divers attempts to win him, attempts as fruitless as unequivocal, had at last gone off in rage and undisguised despair, after having wrung her parrot's neck, for screaming from the window, day and night, the name of the coy young count.

I was not able to learn more of this, nor of any other of his adventures; he carefully avoided any conversation about women; still, nothing he ever said could have led me to assume that he thought meanly of them, or that he was suffering from any hidden wound, of which he could not bear the probing.

Judging by the whole tenor of his conduct, I decided, that, striving as he did, at aims so serious, he found no time for trifling flirtations, and never had been touched by a deeper feeling. His mother had died very soon after the birth of her first-born son, but he would occasionally receive letters, addressed in a feminine hand, and he told me they came from an old nurse of his, who had been as a second mother to him. She was evidently very dear to him; but even of her he spoke but little; eager discussions upon his own studies, or on mine, were ever burning on his lips.

He was several years in advance of me, and when we parted in the autumn, he went to pass his diplomatic examination at Berlin. We bid each other a very affectionate farewell, without much hope of continuous intercourse;--we knew that what we had hitherto exchanged, no correspondence could have replaced. But we were young, and we parted in the confident hope that life and its chances must, in some way or other, bring us together again.

For many a long year, I heard nothing of him but his name; the last I learned was from a newspaper, which stated that Count Ernest ---- had been appointed secretary of Legation at Stockholm. Again a long time elapsed, without the smallest tidings of him, and I confess that his image had considerably faded in my memory, when it chanced, that, on a pedestrian tour, I suddenly lit upon his name, printed upon a road-post that pointed to a deep lane, all overgrown with brushwood, cutting at right angles the road which I had taken. I stopped, and, as if by a magician's wand, the country round me seemed metamorphosed.

Again the Rhine was rolling at my feet, and again I saw his straight lithe figure, as he walked along, holding his hat in his hand, and letting the fresh breeze from the current play among his luxuriant hair of reddish gold; and those fine eyes of his, so full of thought, gazing over the river towards the mountains, until my voice would rouse him from his musings. This visionary play of memory lasted but a moment, and then an incontrollable desire came over me to look upon that face once more, and abundantly to make up for what I had lost so long.

It was early in the afternoon; I hoped that I should not mistake the road, and never doubted but that at this autumn season, I should find my friend at home; he was an eager sportsman, and had spoken far oftener of the trees, than of the persons he had known from childhood.

I may have followed this ravine for about an hour, when it suddenly occurred to me as strange, that the road should be so neglected and overgrown; it was evident that no sort of carriage could possibly have passed this way for years. The foliage of past autumns lay mouldering in deep crevices;--here and there, a fragment of rock, or rotten branch, had been hurled from the edge by the winter storms; only in the firmest parts of the ground, were occasional tracks of human passage. I sent my doubts to sleep, with the supposition, that long before this, some other and more level road, must have been made between the castle and the plain. And yet, on entering the ravine, I had certainly ascertained that no nearer way was possible, from the little manufacturing town I had left behind. At the summit of the pass, where half a dozen neglected paths diverged, I stopped, in real perplexity. I climbed up a wide armed beech-tree, and looked all round me.

A deep circular hollow lay before me, almost like a lake, filled with lovely bright green waves of densest foliage. It was a vast forest of old beech-trees. Just in the centre rose the turrets of the castle, over which the wilderness seemed to close.

It was like a fairy tale, to see the spires and weather-cocks glittering in the bright autumn sun; as in those stories of sunken castles, which shew their pinnacles on some clear day, peeping from the hidden depths of water. There was not a sound of human life; the woodpecker tapped monotonously against the trees;--a careless deer ran past me, with more surprise than terror;--while swarms of audacious squirrels, among the branches, were aiming at the intruder, with the empty husks of beechnuts.

I was on the point of giving it up, when, with a sharper look at the enchanted castle, I saw a thin thread of smoke, to inform me that it could not exclusively be harbouring hobgoblins.

That the owner had not been here for ages, might, with some degree of certainty, be surmised; but some sort of castellan or game-keeper might be there, and from him, I hoped to hear some tidings of my friend and his welfare, and at least to spend a night in a home which he had loved with all his heart.

I took one of these downward paths at a venture, and soon plunged into the strangest, darkest night of wood that ever stirred above a wanderer's head.

And in the night come dreams;--and these soon wove a spell about me, and I quite forgot whence I had come, and whither I was going, and blindly left my legs to guide me, as they stepped uniformly on, until they came to an involuntary halt, at a broad stream, where not a trace of path could be discerned; the trees stood thick, interlacing their branches with the brushwood, and forming an impenetrable barrier. I immediately turned back, and walked steadily upwards, until a path to the right again seduced me; then I tried another downwards, went astray again, and so went wandering on for hours, making the whole round of the valley, without catching a single glimpse of the castle peeping through the thickets. The moon was already shining upon the tree tops, and I made up my mind to pass the night in the airiest of lodgings.

Suddenly, when I least expected it, the brushwood opened, and there, like an island in the midst of a lake of verdure, the old grey building stood square before me, with countless glassless windows, but without one trace of human habitation. A broad stone-bridge across the dried-up moat, reached right into the dark court, from which the three square wings of the building rose ponderous and unadorned. Not a balcony, nor jutting window, was there to relieve the stern monotony of the walls; nothing but a gigantic coat of arms hewn in stone above the gateway, in which I recognised the bearings of a well-remembered signet ring.

Nearer to the roof, the castle wore a gayer aspect the copper-plates about the gables shone mildly in the moonbeams, and the numerous chimney tops with weathercocks and flagstaffs, seemed all spangled over with silver. Nowhere a light; nor a window opened to the evening air; even the smoke I had seen upon the roof was gone.

As I stood upon the bridge, and looked upon the rank vegetation, which, struggling upwards, was choking up the moat; and then at the forest pressing onwards to the very threshold of the castle, the thought would force itself upon me, that in fifty years or so, all this vast work of human hands would be destroyed and overcome by the exuberance of nature; that these tall beeches would thrust their branches into the deserted halls; would take possession of the court, and sink their roots deep into the vaulted cellars; till, stone by stone, the whole fabric would give way, and again the forest reign alone.

I entered the court-yard; and where the long grass that grew in the chinks between the paving stones, muffled the echo of my steps, I began to be sensible of a strange sound, proceeding from a small building that had been patched on beside the bridge; at first, I took it for the jarring of a shutter shaken by the wind; and then I thought, that noise could only be produced by some vigorous deep-bass snoring. I saw a light at one small window, and stole up to it to peep in. In a low room, two men were seated at a table, with bottles and half emptied glasses before them, and a pack of cards. One of them, huddled into a corner, had fallen asleep. The other sat leaning on his elbows, staring into the light with sleepy swimming eyes, a short pipe between his teeth. Now and then, he caught a fly, and burned it at the candle, and hardly turned his head when he heard me at the window-pane.

"What's the matter now?"--he called, in a voice worn and hollowed out by drunkenness,--"bid the Mamsell^[1] send our supper, the devil take her!"

Before I could speak, I heard another and a more gentle voice, calling to me across the court: "Who is there?--is a stranger there?" I turned, and at the chief entrance I saw a female figure standing, whom, by the huge bunch of keys she carried at her girdle, I could not err in taking for the housekeeper. She was dressed all in black; all but a tremendous cap, of which the broad bright ribbons fluttered oddly about her delicate faded face.

Taking off my hat to her, I enquired, as politely as I could, while I drew near, whether this really was the castle of Count Ernest ----, and despite the deserted look, whether he might not chance to be at home? I wished to be announced to him as an old friend, although, to be sure, we had not met for years.

The old lady stood looking at me for awhile, with a melancholy searching gaze, and then she said: "This certainly is the castle of the Counts of ----; but my master, whom you seek, you will not find. It is two years since Count Ernest took leave of this place for ever. Perhaps you are not aware that he is settled in Sweden? It is true," she added, after a pause, "the world is very different to these woods; things that will keep sounding in my ears all my lifetime, may be scarcely heard out there. But will you not come in? You cannot leave this place to-night, and you must be so kind as to put up with the little we have to offer. It used to be very different; in our hospitable days, guests used to be glad to stay a week. Since the castle has been kept in trust for the two little counts, all has gone to ruin. You have seen, yourself, Sir, the sinful way in which the Forester and Monsieur Pierre kill the time. They clean out nothing but the cellars; and when I say a word of what is needful to be done, the villains turn upon their heels, and I might as well have spoken to the walls. I myself am old, and my eyes get worse and worse, so that I can hardly see to cleanliness and order as I should do. But pray, come in, Sir, and take a bite of something, and talk to me of my dear Count Ernest, of whom now I can only talk to empty rooms and pictures. Your visit will be the greatest favor you can do me."

I still stood on the steps before the great arched door, and felt strangely moved. This old woman's thin quavering voice, and the weary blue eyes with which she looked so sadly on me, increased the dreariness of the place and sharpened the recollections that came crowding over me.

"You are Mamsell Flor," I said, at last; "from whom my friend used to get letters when he was at college; he appeared to be very much attached to you."

At these words her eyes overflowed at once. "Come," she said, and stretched out a slim withered hand; "I see you know me--we are old friends. I have been sadly wanting to see some kind and sympathizing face, once more before I die. It is a long while to have lived only among servants, for indeed I have been used to better company."

She led me across the dark entrance-hall, and through a vaulted passage to a great hall, dimly lighted by a few candles. Two farm-servants and a maid were seated at a heavy stone table, supping, who stared astonished, when they heard a strange voice wishing them good evening. My companion gave a few whispered orders to the maid, and turned to me again.

"The provisions we have in the house are but poor," she said; "everything we want has to be carried for miles through the woods; and I myself require so little. But for one night, Sir, you will not mind bad cookery. This hall, you see, was once a chapel, in old times, when the counts were Catholic; it was then left some time to dust and ruin, until at last Count Henry, our Count Ernest's father, had the altar, the benches, and the pictures taken away, and an eating room arranged. You can still see the niche for the choristers over there, where the floor is raised and boarded. That is the master's table, at which Count Henry used to sup all his life, with the officials about the place--the steward, the forester, and the castellan, (not Monsieur Pierre then), and the bailiff; and at this stone table I supped with the servants; we had crowds of them then. We never spoke a word, and the count seldom asked a question. When he had company staying with him, the table was laid upstairs in the great saloon, as it always was at dinner, when he dined with the countess. I will just light this candelabrum on the master's table; who knows whether I shall live to see it lighted again?"

She placed a heavy five-branched candelabrum of massive silver on the table, which she had laid with a snow-white damask cloth, and shortly after, a supper was served up, that might have been far more frugal still, to appear excellent after my long wanderings. Whilst I ate and drank, the old lady disappeared, and left me to my meditations. The men were already gone. I looked up into a twilight depth of desert space, broken by a few tall pointed windows, through which the moonbeams fell. The cross-vaults of the ceiling were supported by square pillars, fretted all over with antlers; and the same ornament was placed at regular intervals along the walls, with a small tablet under each, recording the date of the shot, and the name of the shooter. What changes had the world not seen, from the days when the first high mass was celebrated here, to the present evening, when a stranger sits alone at a deserted table, counting these dust-worn trophies! I took the candelabrum to light myself along while I went reading the names on the little tablets, reaching about two centuries back.

Counts, and princes, and princely prelates; even a few highborn dames had been pleased to immortalize their luck. Presently I came to a well-known name, beneath a stately antler of fourteen:

"On the 20th of September, Count Ernest shot this mighty stag, (who numbers as many antlers as the young count years,) in the glade by the deer's drought; Anno Domini 183--."

Heavy steps now came sounding along the passages, and two men made their boisterous entrance.

I immediately recognised the respectable pair of the watch-tower by the bridge. The farm-servants may have told them that there was a stranger in the house, and they had shaken themselves out of their drunken sleep, and come to assert their rights as guardians and watchmen. The castellan, Monsieur Pierre, blinking on me with his small yellow much inflamed eyes, measured me from head to foot, with a very comical combination of sleepiness and impudence. He stammered out a few words in a hoarse coarse voice, in very indifferent French, but he was soon talked down by his companion, who walked straight up to me, and in the most brutal tone of official zeal, enquired who I was, and what I wanted?

I drily answered, that I was a friend of Count Ernest's, and had come to see the castle. Upon which straightway a change came over the spirit of the pair. The castellan commenced a series of crouching cat-like obeisances, while the forester contrived to hit on the happiest transition from the most insolent aggressiveness to the respectful bluntness of the honest woodman. I perceived that I was taken for a far more important personage than I was--for an emissary--(no less!)--from the family, come to hold an impromptu inspection of the castle and its condition. The forester, officiously relieving me from the candlestick, forced me into a seat again, and sent a man to the cellar, for a bottle of the best and oldest; while, with a sly kick, or a smothered imprecation, he made an occasional attempt to awaken his drowsy colleague to the full gravity of the situation. However I did not care to be initiated into the details of the administration of woods and buildings, and I felt so much disgusted with the voluble servility of this precious pair of rogues, that I broke off suddenly, as soon as the old lady returned to the hall, and excusing myself with the natural fatigue of a pedestrian, I begged her to light me to my room.

She cast a look of meaning on the two, who were hardly to be prevented from following us upstairs.

"Did you see the face Monsieur Pierre made at me, sir? and how the forester took up his knife? Of course they are afraid that I should tell of them. Good Lord! as if one could not see with half an eye the state the place is in! I did once write about it to Sweden; but Sweden is a long way off; too long, it would appear, for things to be remedied in this castle. When one has seen it in better days, one feels the worm that eats through wood and silk, gnawing at one's very heart, Sir!"

"It is high to climb;" she apologised, as we came to the third steep flight of stairs, "but I thought I would put you here, as you might like to sleep in the rooms in which Count Ernest grew up to be the man he is, and which he always preferred to any others. And they are more comfortable too, for I look after them myself, and carefully dust out every corner. And to-morrow morning, when you awake, you can see his favorite tree by the window; it has grown up so high meanwhile, that by reaching out your hand you can lay hold of it. Ah, and well a day! when we live to be so old, we live to see many a young child, and many a young tree, grow up and reach to Heaven, and leave us wearily to climb after them!"

With these words, we came to the top, where a long low corridor ran past a range of garret rooms, hardly above man's height. A covey of newly fledged bats, scared by the light, were flapping about against the ceiling. "There must be a hole somewhere in the roof;" said the old lady looking up, with a shake of her head; "I have told the man to mend it ten times and more. But he always pretends he can find no hole, and thus it is with every thing."

She opened a door, and shewed me into a large low room, where a light was burning on a chiffonier, and where the atmosphere was purer and more lifelike than without.

"Here we are;" she said. "Here he lived until he went on his travels with Monsieur Leclerc, and then again before he went to college; and also the last time he was here. Everything is just as it used to be. That faded tapestry with the great hunting pieces may have faded a trifle more; and the writing-table there, with the brass mountings, by the window--the wood-worm is making sad havoc of it. Every time I come, I find above an inch of yellow dust to sweep away. That is his own pretty blue water-bottle; and the gilded glass was a present from his tutor. I worked that little rug before the bed, to give him when he was confirmed, and he never would allow it to be removed, long after the work was quite worn away. The bed is not his; I took his down stairs;" and, with a faint flush, that brought back a touching tint of youth to her refined old face, she added: "in that I sleep myself."

"Indeed, my dear Mamsell Flor," I said; "and he was worthy of being loved by a heart so faithful. He bore the stamp of his most ingenuous soul so clearly upon his noble brow, that even those who merely saw him pass, could not choose but believe all good of him. By the time I knew him he had become reserved; but what must he have been to you, who reared him from his birth, and were to him as a mother! What happened to make him give up this place, and leave a home for ever, that used to be so dear to him?"

She shook her head sadly, and sat down upon the sofa, as if the weight of all these rushing memories at once, were too heavy to be borne standing. She remained a while absorbed in thought; and then at last, taking an agate snuffbox from her pocket, she strengthened herself with a pinch, before she answered.

"It is a strange story, Sir, which nobody can tell so well as I can; and I may tell it now, that the grass is growing over many a younger head than this old foolish one of mine. It will be nine-and-forty years at Christmas, since I went up these stairs for the first time. I was the schoolmaster's daughter, a silly green young thing, and I thought I was being taken straight to Heaven, when our gracious Countess first took me into her service as a waiting maid. The young Count was not born then, nor ever likely to be: there was little love between my master and my mistress. To be sure my lady would always have been willing to worship him, for all he did to vex her. But they were an illmatched pair; and when Count Henry, who was almost always travelling about, came home in Autumn for the shooting-season, he managed to make his pretty patient wife still more unhappy than when he was away.

"I had not been two days in the castle, before I knew that my lady was suffering from some sore trouble; I used to find her pillow wet of mornings, and her eyes all swollen with crying.

"For you see, Sir, the count was a gentleman who had a quick temper and a wild way of his own, and the countess was meekness itself; she was too quiet for him, and he soon wearied of her.--I suppose he had only married her to please his father; some wilful, imperious, dark-eyed lady would have done better for him; some Frenchwoman, or Spaniard, such as often came to visit at the castle; who would have kept him at his wits' end, and made him hate her mortally to-day, and love her desperately to-morrow. He only loved what gave him trouble; he rode the wildest horses, and shot the biggest stags.

"Our countess loved him far too well, and that was her misfortune--and our young count was exactly like her, and that was his. Only she was small-made and delicate, and had a voice like the clearest bell. When at last, after many long years of waiting, she had hopes of being a mother, she looked like some fair angel; her joy was shining so peacefully in her eyes! And the count seemed kinder, and even stayed here all the summer, to be present at the baby's birth. When the nurse brought it to him, so small and weakly looking, with its little yellow down upon its head, he said nothing, but put it back into its cradle, and left the room without a word.

"I saw that my lady was deeply hurt, and I felt so angry, that I could not keep from saying, half to myself; 'Boys don't come into the world on horseback!' But I repented directly, for my lady heard me, and sent me out of the room. A week after this, she died.

"It was I who had to go and tell my master. He was sitting at the piano, which he played, oh, so beautifully! I could have listened to him for ever. It was early in the morning: he had watched through the night in my lady's ante-chamber, and as she seemed to be rather better, he had just gone upstairs; only instead of going to bed, he sat down to play, and, while he was playing, she died. He shut down the piano, without changing one feature of his face, and went down stairs to look at his dead wife with the same proud step he always had; and in the outer room, where our little master lay asleep in his cradle, he passed the poor babe as though it were only a dead image, as its poor mother was. When he came out again, he said to me:

"'A wet-nurse must be found,' he said; 'meantime, Flor, I give the child in charge to you. I hold you responsible for every proper care.--'

"And then he ordered his favorite horse, and rode away, and did not come home till evening.

"Three days after this, they buried our countess in the cemetery of the town. The count went with the funeral on horseback. And I could not help thinking--God forgive me!--there he goes, prancing away like any conqueror, with his poor victim carried after him for his triumph.

"When the ceremony was over, and all the servants were assembled, eating their funeral feast in silence, and I was alone upstairs, sitting by the little one's cradle, and crying while I was singing him to sleep, in comes my master, stares at the babe a while, and says:

"'They had to send the nurse away, I hear;--the child would not take to her at all?'--'No, Sir, he wouldn't.'

"'It will be hard to find another one to suit, in that little hole of a place. Do you think you could undertake to bring up the child yourself by hand, with milk and water, as they do in France? You are a person I can depend upon--I had rather leave the child to you, than to twenty wet-nurses.'

"I burst out crying, and took my master's hand and kissed it; for when he pleased, he had a way with him, and a voice, that could turn the heart of his bitterest enemies. 'It is well;' he said, and drew away his hand: 'I shall be some time away; you will write to me twice a year about the boy, and I shall give orders that no one shall interfere with you.' That same day he left the castle, and for many a long year we saw no more of him.

"I will not weary you, Sir, by telling everything--how my little master grew up to be a great boy;--although I remember it all as if it were only yesterday;--and many's the lonesome hour I spend thinking over the past, from the first tooth he cut, to the first bird he shot with his little gun. And when I watched him playing in the court with the dogs, or looked after him when he rode out on the bailiff's horse, every muscle as firm and supple as a steel spring, and then that sweet face of his, and that dear little voice--I used to wonder at his father, who could go wandering about in foreign parts, rather than see his child grow up. To be sure, the boy did not take after him at all, except in his love for horses, and field sports.--For the rest, he was just his mother over again, both in face and temper. And so, when his father came and saw him at ten years old, he frowned, and looked as coldly on him as on a stranger. At night my darling asked me: 'Is Papa always so grave-looking, Flor?' And of course, I could not tell him how it was.

"However, by-and-by, things began to mend. The Count came every autumn for the shooting season, and grew quite paternal with our boy;--kind or affectionate he never was. I cannot call to mind that he ever kissed him, or even so much as stroked his cheek.

"But he gave him, on his thirteenth birthday, a small dun pony, with a bushy mane like a thick clothes-brush, and a pretty saddle; and then Count Ernest was taken to ride out with his papa, away through the forests, for whole days, and often to pay visits in the neighbourhood, where the great folks were always pleased to see the boy. Nobody ever dared to say how like his mother he was, for that always vexed the count; in general the countess was never spoken of, and the full length picture of her was hung in a room that was never used. Only her son would go into it now and then; and loved it well!--He often made me talk about his mother. But do you know, Sir, even then he had the sense to see that it was wisest not to mention her to his father. He had found out that even Death had failed to make her dearer to him. And then, he may have seen that it was just the proudest and wildest among the beauties of the neighbourhood, (and there were several then) who attracted his father most. The count amused himself with them all, and was a very different man to what he was at home. And the boy could not make these doings suit with what he had heard of his mother.

"'Poor child!' I thought; 'Pray Heaven you may not get a stepmother who may suit your father better!'

"However, that did not seem to be so likely, and by-and-by, it came to be rumoured, that the count never intended to marry again at all. He had his loves in Paris, where he always spent the winter, and would not give them up. Of course, Count Ernest never heard a word of this; he was as innocent as any girl could be; and not even that horrid creature, Monsieur Pierre,--who was then the count's own man, and used to think it a good joke to make an honest woman blush by his loose talk,--even he would affect propriety before the boy.

"A sly fox he was, and knew how to accommodate himself to every one. For the rest, he was a country lad from these parts, and his name was Peter; but after he had been to Paris we never ventured to hint at that. He went every where with the count, and was indispensable to him--He was terribly afraid of him, and worshipped him as a god;--but he robbed him always.

"And now just fancy, Sir!--when our young master was about twelve years old, the count had almost determined on giving him this wretch as a sort of tutor, and asked me what I thought of it? The boy must first learn French, he said, before he began his other studies. I felt as shocked as though he had thought of poisoning the child; and so I took heart and spoke up, and told my master plainly what I thought of Monsieur Pierre, and I said I had rather lose my place than stay to see such disgraceful doings.

"The count let me have my say, and was not a bit angry. He only motioned me to go, and never said another word about the matter. But when he came home in the following September, he brought a stranger with him, whom he presented to us as our young master's tutor. We called him Mr. Leclerc, though that was not his real name; he was a nobleman in needy circumstances, who had been glad to find a decent living--otherwise a harmless gentleman enough, who, to the very last day of his life, never could learn one word of German, so that we, all of us, soon picked up enough French to speak it fairly.--

"He had some little talents, which he used to teach the young count; such as, dancing, fencing, and playing the flute; and then they read some books together; but Master Ernest once told me with a laugh, that before they had read three pages, Monsieur Leclerc would fall asleep, and leave him to read, on to himself till the great clock struck, when he would wake up with a start, and shake the powder from his sleeve, which he had sprinkled over with it while he was nodding, and say; 'Eh! bien, c'est ça!' and then he would fall asleep again. One thing he used to be very busy with; and that was a knack he had, of modelling little figures in pink wax; and he would paint them and varnish them so prettily that they really looked like life--little marquises and viscounts. He had a whole court of them, and would make them dance menuets, while a sweet little queen was sitting on a throne, looking on. Afterwards I heard from Count Ernest that he had taken into his head that Marie Antoinette had been in love with him; he was as old as that, although he used to go tripping about like any dancing master.

"But here I am, running on, sir, telling you all this nonsense, and you wanting to go to sleep!--Yes, when once I begin, I can find no end; and indeed there is not a chair in the castle but could tell ever so long a story of its own.

"Just there, where you are sitting now, sir, I stood one morning, and Master Ernest was sitting here on this very sofa; he had been at a ball for the first time. It had been given at X by the small officials and chief burghers. He was just sixteen--and quite grown up, although he was slighter than when you knew him. 'Well Count Ernest,' I said; 'and how did you like it? Were there any pretty girls? And whom did you dance with? And who got your posy at the cotillion?'

"'Flor;' he said; he always called me Flor, and I was also the only person, until he married, to whom he ever used the 'thou'--'Flor, it was all very pleasant; and one there was most pleasant--'

"His eyes were sparkling, and he looked at me in a kind of shy pretty way I had never seen in him before--he even blushed a little.

"'Come come;' I said, 'Master Ernest, you make me curious--was it one of the young ladies who had been invited, or one of the townspeople's daughters?'

"'I am not going to betray myself any farther, Flor;' he said; 'but she was very pretty and very wise, and talked so pleasantly, I only wish we were going to have another ball to-night!'

"'Why, that sounds quite alarming, Master Ernest,' I said, and laughed--'to stay up all night dancing and go riding all the morning, and then to want more dancing! Our gracious count will be quite pleased! And is this really to be your last word, and all your faithful Flor is to be allowed to hear?'

"'My very last word, Flor; it is my own secret, and I mean to keep it.'

"'I must get hold of Mr. Leclerc, then;' I said, he will be able to tell me who you danced with oftenest.'

"'Try him, Flor:' cried the naughty boy; and laughed; 'all my partners were the same to him; only--"jeunes Allemandes, jolies bourgeoises!"--he looked after my pas, and never minded where my eyes went; besides, he played écarté all the evening with the director of the saltworks. Ah! Flor, I never thought there could be such sweet eyes in the world; I used to think that your two were the sweetest!'

"You see, sir, this was what I got for all my pains and my anxiety!

"But this merry mood of his did not last. Next day he grew quiet and thoughtful, avoided all my questions, and shut himself up in his room at an unusually early hour; and then I heard him playing the flute for ever so long after. He could not get this girl out of his head--I saw that. At first he had felt no more than a pleasant smart, as it were, and could joke about it; but the fever followed. He could not hold out four-and-twenty hours, but he ordered his horse and rode out alone, returning at night quite cast down. It was plain that he had not seen his flame, and had been too shy to find her out and pay her a visit. And so he rode to X several times over, with more or less good luck. One night, when his heart was full, he could not refrain from telling me his adventure, as I was lighting him upstairs to bed. His face was radiant; but Good Lord! to any other man, it would not have been worth the telling; Count Henry would only have said, 'Pshaw!'--but to him it was a rare delight. Just at the gates he had met her, out walking with two of her young companions, and all three of them had roses in their hands. Just as he rode by, and bowed, his horse had given a jump, and the young lady had been so startled that she dropped a rose: 'I saw it,' said Master Ernest, 'and in a moment I was out of my saddle, and had picked it up and given it her; and she thanked me very kindly, and walked away towards the woods.'"

"'And you rode on, and the lady did not even give you a rose for your reward? Any other man would have picked up the flower, and stuck it in his buttonhole, and galloped off in triumph.'

"He looked at me, and seemed quite struck; 'Flor,' says he; 'I do believe you know more of these things than I, although you are a woman.'

"'More likely, because I am a woman. Master Ernest,' I said. 'Well, well, I see, the young lady is badly off for mother-wit, or else she can't abide you.'

"Of course I was only joking; for how could I think the girl existed who would not like him? But for all that, it made him silent, and I saw that he really thought she did dislike him.

"Only once again did he ride over to X, and after that he stayed at home, and was quite downhearted; he spoke to nobody, but sat in his room writing--verses, as I believe,--and played the flute, and pined away so, that when Count Henry came back, he was quite angry about his looks, and scolded him, and told him he did not take exercise enough, and he asked me if Count Ernest had been ailing? That he had a heartache I did not like to say--he never would have forgiven me, and Count Henry would have laughed. At last it was decided that our young count was to travel for a time with Mr. Leclerc, and both of them seemed to like the plan. 'Flor,' said my boy, 'it is well that I leave this place. Life is become wearisome to me.'

"'God bless you, my dearest boy,' I said; 'the world is so beautiful, they say, that I suppose one can't long be sad in travelling.'

"He looked at me with an unbelieving smile; but afterwards he wrote to me from Vienna, that he was well, and often thought of me. God knows! I thought of him, day and night.

"I did not get a sight of him again for three long years, and when he wrote to me from the great cities where he went to court, among all the fine folks--he will get properly spoiled, I thought, as befits his rank. I shall not know him again. But just the contrary; when he came back at last in his twentieth year, without Mr. Leclerc, who had died in Russia of the climate, the very first word he spoke: 'Flor,' says he, 'and how is Miss Mimi?'--That was a cat I had, Sir, of whom he used to be almost jealous, as a child.

"'Returns thanks for kind enquiries. Master Ernest,' I said; 'she has just kittened, and will be delighted, as we all are, to see your honour back again.'

"'I am afraid it is a delight that won't last long, Flor,' he said; and at night, when I was lighting him to bed, as I always did, he told me all about it; how he had done his father's bidding, and been to see the great world, and he had seen enough of it to find it terribly tedious; and now he had had some trouble in carrying his point, which was to go and study alone for a year or two. 'It was a shame,' he said, 'the confusion that was in his brain.' I could only stare at this, for to me he seemed a man in all things, and cleverer, I thought, it was not possible to be, when I heard him talk with others. But he knew best, of course, and I did not contradict him then; for there were other things I was more curious to know. I asked him about the life he had been leading, and whether the fine ladies he had been dancing with, were handsomer than the daughters of our townspeople? And look you, Sir, at this, he turned as red as a boy;--he, the accomplished fine-grown gentleman, who had just come from living among the fine folks;--and he only said: 'Some perhaps, not many;' and so I saw that old love does not always rust. The very next day he rode over to the town; I suppose to make enquiries, and find out whether she were still unmarried. Of course, I did not know, for I had never heard who she was. When he came back, in the evening, he looked very grave. 'It is all over,' I said to myself, 'and all the better that it is so; what could have ever come of it?'

"Between him and his father things were no better than they used to be. When I helped to wait at table, I saw that the count was always ready for a quarrel with his son, who could never say or do a single thing to please him. He seemed provoked to be, in a manner, forced to respect the lad, who never by any chance forgot himself, but only quietly defended his own opinion, or held his tongue. Just as the blessed countess had always done, and the count was not fond of being reminded of her. Nothing would have pleased him better than to see his son just such another bold bird of prey as he himself still was, for all his half century. Never had he found a horse too wild, a woman too witty, or a sword too sharp for him. He could not forgive the boy for being so modest. Indeed I often thought--God forgive me!--that he had rather have seen Count Ernest forget his duty to him as his father, if he only would have forgotten that the countess was his mother. Therefore the count always went back to talk of the good old times, when the world was merrier and less particular. Now it was only a world for sneaks and lubbers. And when he had drunk a glass beyond the common, he would tell us all sorts of love-adventures he had had when he was young; while the young count would look straight before him, and hold his peace. I was horrified to hear him, and said to myself: 'Can a father really find it in his heart to be the tempter of his son, when he finds his innocence a reproach to him?'"

"To be sure, I knew that was not the way to tempt my boy at all; he did not even lose the respect he owed him as a father. Only it grieved him sadly, never to see the slightest sign that his father loved him; that I saw by his eyes; but he never spoke about it, not even to me, to whom he generally told everything. And so I was almost glad when he left us in a week to go to College, and never once came home for the next five years; much as he loved his home, and his woods, and everything about the place, and often as he used to enquire after them in his letters.

"I say, I was almost glad, and was more glad presently.

"The young count may have been away for about three years, when I fell into a bad illness; and that left me a weakness in my limbs, so that I could hardly drag myself up and down the stairs. For I kept all the keys, and nobody but Mamsell Flor ever touched a thing in the cellars, store-rooms, or plate-chests. When the count came home in the autumn, and saw me crawling about the house with a stick; 'Flor,' he said, 'you have been doing too much for your strength; you must have some assistance; a sort of housekeeper under you, to save you going up and down the stairs.' So kind he was, you see, sir, in some things; and for all I could say against it, next day, it appeared in the daily papers, that a housekeeper was wanted at the castle.

"All sorts of women came, but none to please me. One or two among them I even suspected of coveting a higher place, (or a lower, as one takes it) than that of housekeeper; for the count was known to be a gallant gentleman. I was rather pleased that none of them could be found to suit; I was always too particular, and none of them did things as I liked to have them done. And so we had nearly forgotten that we had wanted one, when one afternoon, in comes a tall slight young woman, in deep mourning, with very weary eyes. She had come two days' journey from a town where her father and mother, one after the other, had lately died, and left her entirely unprovided for. Her father had been a functionary of some importance, and had lived upon his pay. Her only brother was an engineer, and was now employed in England on a railway, which he could not leave without the sacrifice of all his prospects. She had therefore written to him not to mind her; she had found a situation in a noble family, and was well provided for; meaning if she were not accepted here, to take even a lower place.

"Although everything I could learn about the poor child was entirely satisfactory, and though she passed the severest examination I could think of in household matters, I felt a something in my heart, that warned me not to take her. I told her plainly I thought it might not be for her good. I said she was too young, and what more I could think of. And just as she was going, quite submissively, without any prayers or tears, I called her back, and kept her after all. In fact I was only afraid she might please the count too well, for she was as fine a girl as you could see, with a splendid figure, and a high-bred face like nobody else's; and then such a weight of long brown hair, that could reach three times round her head. But I found that she had a grave decided way with her, and that she was not easily to be put upon. And besides, Count Henry was just then over head and ears in love, as Mr. Pierre had whispered, with a singer he had met in London, and had only broken from her chains for a short time, to hasten back to them as fast as ever he could. So he did not take much notice of the stranger, when she took her place at the servants' table for the first time; he just glanced at her from head to foot, gave an approving nod, and sat all the evening alone, at the master's table, playing with his ring, and letting the beautiful green stone glitter at the light, and Mr. Pierre told us it was a present from his London friend. And I suppose it was true, for when he came back next year, the ring was gone, and Mr. Pierre told us strange stories about it, which you will not care to hear, sir.

"When the count first saw the girl again, Mamsell Gabrielle, as she was called, I watched his face attentively as she walked across the hall. He looked much as he used to do, when the dealers brought him horses, and he had them trotted out into the yard. But he treated her just as he did the rest of us, only that he spoke to her less often. She had begun to bloom again, in the quiet life here among the woods, and with the exercise she took when she was busy about the house. She had left off mourning, and sometimes I even heard her singing in the little garden she had laid out with her own hands in the moat, that we might have our vegetables more handy.

"In this, as in everything else, she was clever, quiet, and independent; I may say I got to love her dearly, and thought we never should be able to do without her; and yet we had done so long!--We used to sit together for many a pleasant hour, spinning and chatting. I used to talk to her of my dear Count Ernest, and read his letters to her, and when Count Henry was at home, we would stand at the window till late at night, listening to his beautiful playing, and to the nightingales singing. Then she would tell me how her childhood had been passed, and of the happy life she had led when her parents were alive, and how well off they had been; and also about her brother; and she spoke of all this without any bitterness, and so I saw that she was quite contented; and that the longer she lived among us, the more she liked us.

"And now, for the first time, I was glad when the winter came, and we were snowed up again by ourselves. When the count was here, we had no peace; though he only received gentlemen, and was particular about these. To be safe from the ladies of the neighbourhood, he had left all the roads without repair, save only a few bridle paths. But it did not come at all as I expected. The count did not leave the castle, and Mr. Pierre insinuated that it was because he had never been able to forget that faithless love of his, and therefore preferred to live in solitude. I could not get this idea into my stupid old head, for I knew my master too well to believe that he could be so long cast down, for such an amour as that. However, stay he did, and the winter came, and snowed us up; and with us, the count and Mr. Pierre.

"How he managed to get through those long winter-days, is more than I can tell; for he never had been fond of his book. We could hear him playing on the piano out of his own head for hours together, and then he used to take long rides into the woods, and it was fine to see him come home, riding in a cloud of smoke from the nostrils of his snorting horse, his beard all tinkling with icicles, and his grand proud face colored by the frosty air. He had always been a handsome man, and if his hair was getting a trifle thinner and more grey, his eyes looked all the darker and more fiery. He must have found a sweetheart in this neighbourhood, I thought, but we heard nothing; not even in this dull place, where we could hear the leaf fall; market-women and butter-women took care of that. Visits or invitations there were none. I used to shake my head, and Mr. Pierre, who had been used to a gayer life, shook his. He had never dreamed that the count would hold out so long as Christmas.

"'Mamsell Flor,' he said; 'il y a du mystère, as sure as my name is Pierre!' and he would whistle the Marseillaise and wink; but in fact, the rogue knew nothing. To pass the time, he took it into his head to make love to Mamsell Gabrielle, but he soon let that alone. For modest as she was, yet she had a way of throwing back her head at times, you would have thought she was a duchess, and he found out that it was none of his Paris sewing women he had to deal with. Something French he must have, and so he took to the Bordeaux wine in our cellars, and often he was so drunk that he could not wait at table. But his master never said a word to him. The count was more gentle than he used to be; he never said an angry word, and at Christmas he made each of us a present. With the new year he took to dining downstairs in the hall, and of an evening he came early, and sat reading the newspapers all alone, at the master's table. But he did not like us to be silent; on the contrary, after supper, he made us stay and sing. The second forester had a fine bass voice, and Mamselle Gabrielle could sing like the very wood witch herself. We often sat up till past eleven, and it sounded, beautifully in the echo of the great hall. Many a time I saw the count drop the paper, and listen pensively, with his head leaning on his hand. But I always kept thinking of my own dear young count, and what a weary time he had been away; and I used to talk of him to Mamselle Gabrielle, till she sometimes fell asleep;--which made me cross with her.

"For the rest, we were always the best of friends, and it was no small shock to me, when one morning she came to tell me, that she was obliged to give up her place. She did not think the air was good for her; she meant to try another. Well, she had slept very badly, I knew, the night before. She still looked feverish, and her eyes were red; and as often as I called to her, she would begin trembling all over. She might have caught cold, for she had come home late from a walk in the woods the day before, and had gone straight to bed, without coming down to supper. 'Child,' I said;--'it will pass off. The air of this place is healthy; and where will you find so easy a situation, and so kind a master?--not to speak of my own humble self.' But the more I talked, the more positive she grew, and I thought I should only make her worse; so I went upstairs to my master, to tell him that Mamselle Gabrielle had just given warning.

"The count heard me out, and then he said: 'Do you know any reason for her going, Flor?'--when I began about her health;--'What room have you given her?' 'I took her into mine. Sir,' I said; 'Your honor knows the rooms on the first story, just opposite my lady's bedroom; I have slept in them for twenty years and more, and I never found anything unwholesome for one moment.'"

"He considered a while, and said: 'If Mamselle Gabrielle chooses to go, of course we can't prevent her, Flor; she is her own mistress. But at least, she shall not say that she lost her health in my service. Your rooms look to the forest, and the west winds come blowing against the windows. It must be damp; and in winter there is not a finger's breadth of sunshine. While Mamselle Gabrielle remains, you will have to give her another room. Put her in those opposite, that look into the court; they have the morning-sun full upon them; and then you may advertise for another situation for her.'

"I stared at him. 'I am to put Mamselle Gabrielle in the appartments where our gracious countess slept?'"

"He nodded. 'I will have it so:' he said shortly."

"'But all the furniture is just as it was then;' I went on, without minding his frown. 'How can I give my blessed mistress's things,--her bed and table, and her toilette service--to a stranger?'"

"'You can do as I bid you;' he said, very quietly. 'Leave every thing as it stands.'"

"'And if the poor thing gets worse;'--and I spoke more eagerly;--'whom has she at hand to look after her?'"

"'There is only the passage between you;' he answered. 'If Mamselle Gabrielle should be unwell, it will be very easy for you to nurse her.'"

"He sat down to the piano, and began to play, and so I was obliged to go. And I must say, fond as I was of Mamselle Gabrielle, it cut me to the heart to have to go down-stairs, and air those beautiful appartments, to put a servant in them. For that she was, the same as I was. And moreover, I did not like her face, when I told her what the count had been pleased to order. She first turned white, as if she had been frightened, and then she grew scarlet; she curled her lip half scornfully, and said: 'Very well; God will not forget me, wherever you may please to put me!' She took over her little bed with her, and would not put her bits of clothes in those beautiful inlaid drawers, but left them packed in her little trunk, all ready to go. And I liked that of her; and I kissed her, and begged her pardon in my heart, for having so grudged her my lady's rooms. She sobbed a while on my shoulder, and I had some little trouble in soothing her, but I laid it all upon the fever. That night, I left my door ajar, to hear if she went quietly to sleep; and all was quiet till about twelve o'clock. Then, all of a sudden, I thought I heard her talking loud and angrily. I jumped out of bed, and all the time I was feeling for my slippers, I heard her talking on. I could not catch the words till I got into the passage, and then I distinctly heard her say: 'I am only a poor servant-girl; but may the walls of this castle fall upon me, and crush me, rather than … '

"I knocked at the door,--(which she had bolted by my advice),--and screamed out: 'Gabrielle, child! What is the matter? Answer me, for the love of God! Whom are you talking to?--Is the room haunted?'--No answer. I looked through the keyhole--nothing to be seen--I went on knocking and calling, but it was a long time before I could get a wiselike answer. 'Mamsell Flor? is that you? what makes you come so late?'--and presently I heard her unbolting the door.

"She stood before me in the darkness; only the snow gave a faint light from the windows. I took her hand, and felt it trembling and ice-cold. 'What makes you come to me so late, Mamsell Flor?' she said--'Have I been talking in my sleep? Oh! yes, I am ill; I think I am in a fever; just feel how my limbs are shaking!' And with that, she burst out crying. I got her to bed again as fast as ever I could, and sat up all night with her.

"In the morning she was too ill to rise, and did not get well again for more than a week. The count did not seem much concerned about it, though he sent Mr. Pierre to enquire after her.

"The first time she came downstairs to supper, my master went up to her, and said a few words in a low voice, and then she walked silently and thoughtfully to her seat. And silent and thoughtful she remained, for the matter of that. But she slept quietly of nights, and did her work, as usual, like a pattern. She asked me now and then, whether any answer had been made to our advertisement. Our letters all went through Mr. Pierre's hands, and he had heard of none. But she seemed in no hurry to go, and I was only too glad to have her stay.

"Spring came, and we were still without my dear young count. Instead of him, there arrived one day a very disagreeable stranger, a gentleman from London--and indeed I don't think that even my master was quite glad to see him. But he did his best to receive him civilly, as was due to an old acquaintance; he rode with him all over the country, and he invited people to play cards with him. They would sit up gambling till daybreak; trying all the wines in the cellar, and never once coming down to the hall.

"This went on for about a fortnight, and glad enough I was when I heard that the English Lord was going away next morning. The last day, they had been to dine at the Baron's, eight miles off; it might be about nine o'clock, when we heard their horses come pattering over the bridge. We were just at supper, and I was getting up to take a candle, and light the gentleman upstairs, but before we could leave the table, they came in. The English gentleman foremost, with that look he had in his eyes when he had just dined. And the count came after him, with his riding-whip under his arm, and his spurs jingling with that heavy tread by which I knew that his spirit was up.

"We all rise, and make our bows and curtsies; the English Lord, keeping his hat upon his head, gives us a sort of condescending nod, and says: 'Devil take long rides, Harry! I feel as stiff as a poker! don't let us go upstairs to-night; let us have our grog down here by the chimney corner--I incline to affability towards these your trusty vassals!'--and he stared from one of us to the other, and never listened to what the count was saying to him in French, in a low voice. All at once he catches sight of Mamsell Gabrielle, and chuckles quite out loud. 'Ha! Harry, old boy!' he cries; 'what an old fox you are! do you keep such doves as these in your hen-house? Foi de gentilhomme!'--and he laughed so insolently that I felt the blood rush into my face. 'Let us have this dove at supper, I say, with a good glass of Burgundy: you have plucked it long ago, of course--' and then another great roar of laughter. My very heart stood still--I looked at the poor girl--she was as white as the wall--and my master looked--Sir, I cannot tell you how he looked. He went close up to the Englishman, where he stood laughing, and said out loud: 'You will ask the young lady's pardon, sir, this moment--and then you will leave the room. I can protect my people from the insolence of any man, be he who he may!'"

"The Lord did not seem to hear him, and kept staring at the girl. 'By Jove!' he said, speaking thick with drink; 'deuced neat built she is! and I have been in the house a week and more, and never yet--Ah! Harry--I say--d--d sly old fox is Harry. Come, dear, don't let me frighten you.' And he stretched out his arm to take her round the waist, while the poor thing stood motionless against the wall, as if she had been struck by lightning--when we heard a sharp sound whistling through the air, and with a great oath the Lord drew back his hand. The count had drawn a broad red stripe across it with his riding-whip.

"Sir, I need not tell you all that passed that night; only, that by seven o'clock next morning my master had fought the stranger, without seconds, at a place they call the wolfs gap. We heard the crack of the four shots in the still February morning, and half an hour afterwards, the count came home bleeding from his left hand. He did not send for a surgeon, but had it bound up by his valet, Mr. Pierre, who had been with him on the ground, and told us that the Lord had not come off so easily; but he had been able to get on horseback and ride on to the next town.

"What that poor thing,--Gabrielle,--said to it all? Good Lord! She held her peace, as if she had really been turned to stone that evening--and what surprised me rather--she never thought of going to thank her master for what he had done; but she never talked of leaving now.

"From that morning when we heard the shots, she was so changed, I should scarcely have known her. She went through her work as usual, and was neither glad nor sad, only absent; so absent, that of an evening she would sit for hours, staring into the light, as if she were in a trance--and I must say these strange ways became her; she grew handsomer from day to day. We every one of us noticed it. As to the younger functionaries about the place, there was not a single man of them, who was not over head and ears in love with her. But she never seemed to see it--and not one of them had a kinder word to boast of than the others.

"Summer came, and brought no change. The count was still at the castle; Mr. Pierre sitting with his bottle before him half the day; and every body wondering and conjecturing what was likely to come of this new style of living. The busy tongues had a fresh match ready every week for my Master. For he had got to be far gayer; he willingly accepted invitations in the neighbourhood, and even gave little fêtes in return, where he was all politeness. I had never known him to be in such a humour before, and I thanked God for it; the more, as we expected our young count to come home in the Autumn, and it would have broken my heart if they had not met in peace and kindness.

"And oh! Sir, that night, when my Count Ernest came, and his father rode out to meet him--(he came from Berlin, after having passed his examination most brilliantly)--I felt--his own mother could not have felt more. And when I saw him, so tall and handsome, riding beside his father through the triumphal arch of fir-trees the men had put up for him across the bridge--and the lovely transparency over the gate, with the word: 'Welcome!' and Mr. Pierre's rockets whizzing right up into the sky, I burst into tears, and could not speak a word--I only took his hand, and kept kissing it again and again.--

"And he was just the same as ever; and he stroked my face, and had his old jokes with me, that were only between us two. Ah! Sir, that was a pleasant meeting! The count--I mean the father--walked upstairs with his son, looking quite pleased and proud; and indeed it was a son to be proud of. I felt so cross with Mamsell Gabrielle, when I asked her what she thought of our young count, and found she could not tell me whether he were dark or fair. But when I came to consider of it, I said to myself that, after all, this was better than falling in love with him--for that was what I had always been afraid of.--Poor shortsighted creatures that we are!

"In the evening I was called upstairs, to help to wait upon the gentlemen, who had their supper in Count Henry's room. Monsieur Pierre's fireworks had so heated him, that he was not to be got out of the cool cellars that night at all; and I was only too happy to take his place, and have a good look at my young count. But my pleasure was soon spoiled, for the count his father soon began to talk again, as he used to do, of the good old times. 'The young folks of the present day,' he said, 'are fit for nothing but to sit by the chimney-corner, with their noses on their books--worse still, to write themselves--even for the daily papers.' I don't remember all he said--only some things that appeared to me the worst--some things I shall not forget to my dying-day.

"You must know. Sir, that when Count Henry had been a half-grown lad, he had, been taken to Paris by his father, just when the Empire was at its height; and as the old count (grand-father to our Count Ernest) had always been of those to whom Napoleon was as a god, of course they met with the best reception. The old count had been at Paris before, for some years during the revolution; and most of those bad bloody men had been his friends; and Count Henry began to talk of these. 'Do you suppose,' he said, 'that the Emperor could have fought these battles with our good bourgeois of the present day? Wild beasts those were he had to tame, and to let loose upon his enemies. There was a scent of blood in the very air of Paris then, that was withering to the sicklier plants; and turned the weaker spirits faint. But to a resolute man, the sulphureous atmosphere proved intoxicating. He would have dared a thousand devils. And as the men, so the women; all had tasted blood--and blood makes brighter eyes than household dust. Just look at our present world,'--he said--'our German world at least--compared to that! all so prim, precise, and regular, like the straight lines of a Dutch garden. Fathers, schoolmasters, and wise professors are there to trim it, and if anything escapes them, there is the police. If ever the brute begins to shew itself in man,--in civilized man--quick comes the police with a summons to expel it; but the beast is not to be expelled--it must have blood--if not in pailfuls, at least in drops--it will turn sneakingly domestic, and suck it from the veins of its nearest neighbour. Out upon the small sly social vices of the day! they are so shabby!--worse:--they are so stupid!--see what they will do for this puny generation when a time for action comes--for great deeds to be done by thorough men, and genuine mettle. When a man says he shrinks from shedding blood, and would not crush a worm, I say it is his own blood he is so chary of, and shrinks from shedding. At that time Death was the Parisian's familiar,--his bosom friend; together they fought and won the Emperor's great victories.' And then my master went on to talk of a ball where his father had been; they called it 'le bal des Zéphirs,' because it was given on a spot which had been a churchyard--I forget the name of the church. And just above the skull and cross-bones upon the gateway, they had put up a transparency with the inscription: 'Le bal des Zéphirs;' and they had danced like mad upon the graves and tombstones, till morning.

"All this time, my dear young count sat grave and silent, opposite his father, whose discourse, I could plainly see, appeared as blasphemous to him, as it did to me; but he spoke very calmly, and beautiful were the things he said:--'Man has progressed since then,' he said; 'it requires more energy to build up than to destroy.' In his opinion: 'a world without a sense of veneration must necessarily decay and fall in pieces, like a building without cement;' and more of the like which I have forgotten, more's the pity; but when he spoke, I used rather to watch his eyes, than mind his lips! His eyes would grow so clear, you could look right through them. Only one thing more I recollect; he said: 'A generation that can dance on the graves of its fathers, will assuredly care little for its children; a man who tramples upon the past, is unworthy of a future--'