diff options
| -rw-r--r-- | .gitattributes | 4 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | LICENSE.txt | 11 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | README.md | 2 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/52135-0.txt | 8123 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/52135-h/52135-h.htm | 8272 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/52135-h/images/cover.jpg | bin | 120494 -> 0 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/old/52135-0.txt | 8514 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/old/52135-0.zip | bin | 170275 -> 0 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/old/52135-h.zip | bin | 292112 -> 0 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/old/52135-h/52135-h.htm | 8680 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/old/52135-h/images/cover.jpg | bin | 120494 -> 0 bytes |
11 files changed, 17 insertions, 33589 deletions
diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..06e7f60 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #52135 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/52135) diff --git a/old/52135-0.txt b/old/52135-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 8ee8b25..0000000 --- a/old/52135-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,8123 +0,0 @@ -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 52135 *** - -WANDA - -BY - -OUIDA - - -_'Doch!--alles was dazu mich trieb_; -_Gott!--war so gut, ach, war so lieb!_' -Goethe - - -IN THREE VOLUMES - -VOL. I. - - -London - -CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY - -1873 - - - - -TO - -'A PERFECT WOMAN, NOBLY PLANN'D' - -WALPURGA, LADY PAGET - -NÉE - -COUNTESS VON HOHENTHAL - - - -This book is inscribed - -IN ADMIRATION AND AFFECTION - - - - -WANDA. - - - - -PROEM. - - Doch--alles was dazu mich trieb, - Gott! war so gut! ach, war so lieb!--GOETHE. - - -Towards the close of a summer's day in Russia a travelling carriage was -compelled to pause before a little village whilst a smith rudely mended -its broken wheel. The hamlet was composed of a few very poor dwellings -grouped around a large low horse-shoe shaped building, which was the -manorial mansion of the absent proprietor. It was gloomy, and dropping -to decay; its many windows were barred and shuttered; the grass grew in -its courts, and flowering weeds had time to seed and root themselves -on its whitewashed walls. - -Around it the level ground was at this season covered with green -wheat, spreading for leagues on leagues, and billowing and undulating -under the wind that blew from the steppes, like the green sea which it -resembled. Farther on were woods of larch and clumps of willow; and in -the distance, across the great plain to the westward, rolled a vast -shining river, here golden with choking sand, here dun-coloured with -turbid waves, here broken with islets and swamps of reeds, where the -singing swan and the pelican made their nests. - -It was in one of those far-off provinces through which the Volga rolls -its sand-laden and yellow waves. The scene was bleak and mournful, -though for many leagues the green corn spread and caught the timid -sunshine and the shadow of the clouds. There were a few stunted -willows near the house, and a few gashed pines; a dried-up lake was -glittering with crystals of salt; the domes and minarets of a little -city rose above the sky line far away to the south-east; and farther -yet northward towered the peaks of the Ural Mountains; the wall of -stone that divides Siberia from the living world. All was desolate, -melancholy, isolated, even though the season was early summer; but the -vastness of the view, the majesty of the river, the suggestion of the -faint blue summits where the Urals rose against the sky, gave solemnity -and a melancholy charm to a landscape that was otherwise monotonous and -tedious. - -Prince Paul Ivanovitch Zabaroff was in Russia because he was on the -point of marriage with a great heiress of the southern provinces, and -was travelling across from Orenburg to the Krimea, where his betrothed -bride awaited him in the summer palace of her fathers. Russia, with the -exception of Petersburg, was an unknown and detested place to him; his -errand was distasteful, his journey tedious, his temper irritated; and -when a wheel of his _telegue_ came off in this miserable village of -the Northern Volga district, he was in no mood to brook with patience -such an accident. He paced to and fro restlessly as he looked round on -the few and miserable cabins of a district that had been continually -harried and fired through many centuries by Kossack and Tartar. - -'Whose house is that?' he said to his servant, pointing to the great -white building. - -The servant humbly answered, 'Little father, it is thine.' - -'Mine!' echoed Paul Zabaroff. He was astonished; then he laughed, as he -remembered that he had large properties around the city of Kazán. - -The whole soil was his own as far as his eyes could reach, till the -great river formed its boundary. He did not even know his steward here; -the villagers did not know him. He had been here once only, a single -night, in the late autumn time, long, long before, He was a man in -whose life incidents followed each other too rapidly for remembrance -to have any abiding-place or regret any home in his mind. He had -immense estates, north, south, east, west; his agents forwarded him -the revenues of each, or as much of the revenues as they chose him to -enjoy, when they themselves were satisfied with their gains. - -When he was not in Paris he was in Petersburg, and he was an -impassioned and very daring gamester. These great silent houses, in -the heart of fir woods, in the centre of grass plains, or on the banks -of lonely rivers, were all absolutely unknown to and indifferent to -him. He was too admired and popular at his Court ever to have had the -sentence passed upon him to retire to his estates; but had he been -forced to do so he would have been as utterly an exile in any one of -the houses of his fathers as if he had been consigned to Tobolsk itself. - -He looked around him now, an absolute stranger in the place where -he was as absolutely lord. All these square leagues he learned were -his, all these miserable huts, all these poor lives; for it was in -a day before the liberation of the serfs had been accomplished by -that deliverer whom Russia rewarded with death. A vague remembrance -came over him as he gazed around: he had been here once before. The -villagers, learning that it was their master who had arrived thus -unexpectedly in their midst, came timidly around and made their humble -prostrations: the steward who administered the lands was absent that -day in the distant town. He was entreated to go within his own deserted -dwelling, but he refused: the wheel was nearly mended, and he reflected -that a house abandoned for so long was probably damp and in disorder, -cold and comfortless. He was impatient to be gone, and urged the smith -to his best and quickest by the promise of many roubles. The _moujiks_, -excited and frightened, hastened to him with the customary offerings -of bread and salt; he touched the gifts carelessly; spoke to them with -good-humoured, indifferent carelessness; and asked if they had any -grievances to complain of, without listening to the answer. They had -many, but they did not dare to say so, knowing that their lord would be -gone in five minutes, but that the heavy hand of his steward would lie -for ever upon them. - -Soon the vehicle was repaired, and Paul Zabaroff ceased his restless -walk to and fro the sandy road, and prepared to depart from this weary -place of detention. But, from an _isba_ that stood apart, beneath one -of the banks of sand that broke the green level of the corn, the dark -spare figure of an old woman came, waving bony hands upon the air, and -crying with loud voice to the _barine_ to wait. - -'It is only mad Maritza,' said the people; yet they thought Maritza -had some errand with their lord, for they fell back and permitted her -to approach him as she cried aloud: 'Let me come! Let me come! I would -give him back the jewel he left here ten years ago!' - -She held a young boy by the hand, and dragged him with her as she spoke -and moved. She was a dark woman, once very handsome, with white hair -and an olive skin, and a certain rugged grandeur in her carriage; she -was strong and of strong purpose; she made her way to Paul Zabaroff as -he stood by the carriage, and she fell at his feet and touched the dust -with her forehead, and forced the child beside her to make the same -obeisance. - -'All hail to my lord, and heaven be with him! The poor Maritza comes -to give him back what he left.' - -Prince Zabaroff smiled in a kindly manner, being a man often careless, -but not cruel. - -'Nay, good mother, keep it, whatever it be: you have earned the right. -Is it a jewel, you say?' - -'It is a jewel.' - -'Then keep it. I had forgotten even that I was ever here.' - -'Ay! the great lord had forgot.' - -She rose up with the dust on her white hair, and thrust forward a young -boy, and put her hands on the boy's shoulders and made him kneel. - -'There is the jewel, Paul Ivanovitch. It is time the Gospodar kept it -now.' - -Paul Zabaroff did not understand. He looked down at the little serf -kneeling in the dust. - -'A handsome child. May the land have many such to serve the Tsar. Is he -your grandson, good mother?' - -The boy was beautiful, with long curling fair hair and a rosy mouth, -and eyes like the blue heavens in a night of frost. His limbs were -naked, and his chest. He had a shirt of sheepskin. - -Old Maritza kept her hands on the shoulders of the kneeling child. - -'He is thy son, O lord!' - -'My son!' - -'Ay. The lord has forgotten. The lord tarried but one night, but he -bade my Sacha serve drink to him in his chamber, and on the morrow, -when he left, Sacha wept. The lord has forgotten!' - -Paul Zabaroff stood silent, slowly remembering. In the boy's face -looking up at him, half-sullenly, half-timidly, he saw the features of -his own race mingled with something much more beautiful, oriental, and -superb. - -Yes: he had forgotten; quite forgotten; but he remembered now. - -The people stood around, remembering better than he, but thinking it no -wrong in him to have forgotten, because he was their ruler and lord, -and did that which seemed right to him; and when he had gone away, in -Sacha's bosom there had been a thick roll of gold. - -'Where is--the mother?' he said at length. - -Old Maritza made answer: - -'My Sacha died four summers ago. Always Sacha hoped that the lord might -some day return.' - -Prince Zabaroff's cheek reddened a little with pain. - -'Fool! why did you not marry her?' he said with impatience. 'There -were plenty of men. I would have given more dowry.' - -'Sacha would not wed. What the lord had honoured she thought holy.' - -'Poor soul!' muttered Paul Zabaroff; and he looked again at the boy, -who bore his own face, and was as like him as an eaglet to an eagle. - -'Do you understand what we say?' - -The boy answered sullenly, 'I understand.' 'What is your name?' - -'I am Vassia.' - -'And what do you do?' - -'I do nothing.' - -'Are you happy?' - -'What is that? I do not know.' - -Prince Zabaroff was silent. - -'Rise up, since you are my son,' he said at length. - -The boy rose. - -He was sullen, shy, tameless, timid, like a young animal from the pine -woods. The old woman took her hands off his shoulders. - -'I have delivered the jewel to the lord that owns it. I have done -Sacha's will.' - -Then she turned herself round and covered her face, and went towards -her home. - -The child stood, half-fierce, half-fearful, like a dog which an old -master drives away, and which fears the new one. - -'These jewels are as many as the sands of the sea, and as worthless,' -said Paul Zabaroff with a slight smile. - -Nevertheless, he resolved, since Maritza spoke truth, that the boy -should be cared for and well taught, and have all that gold could get -for him, and be sent away out from Russia; for in Russia he was a serf. - -The boy's hair hung over his eyes, which were hungrily watching the -dark lean figure of the woman as it went away through the tall corn to -the white wood hut that stood alone in the fields. He dimly understood -that his life was being changed for him, but how he knew not. He wanted -to go home with Maritza to his nest of moss, where his bear-cubs slept -with him by night and played with him at dawn. - -'Farewell,' said Paul Zabaroff, and he touched his son's cheek with his -hand. - -'You are magnificently handsome, my poor child; indeed, who knows -what you will be?--a jewel or only a toad's eye?' he said dreamily; -then he sprang up behind his horses, and was borne away through the -fast-falling shades of the evening, leaving behind him the boy Vassia -and a little rough mound of nameless grass, which he had never seen, -and which was Sacha's grave. - -The four fiery horses that bore the _telegue_ dashed away with it in -the sunlight, scattering the sand in yellow clouds, and the village -on the Volga plains beheld its lord never more in life. The boy stood -still, and looked after it with a sombre anger on his beautiful fair -Circassian face. - -'You will go and be a prince far away, Vassia,' said the men to him -with envy. The child could not have expressed the vague mute wrath and -shame that stirred together in him, but he turned from them without a -word, and ran fleet as a roe in the path which Maritza had taken. He -loved his great-grandmother with a strong affection that was almost -passion, though it was silent and almost unconscious of itself. She -never checked him, beat him, or cursed him as the other women often -did their children. She did her best by him, though they dwelt in a -miserable little _isba_, that often in winter time was covered up with -the snow like a bear's hole, and in summer, the fierce brief parching -summer of north-east Russia, was as hot as a scorched eye under a -sun-glass. Life was barren and wretched to her, but not to him. He was -loved and he was free: childhood wants nothing more; Maritza was a -Persian woman. Years and years before, when she had been in her youth, -she had come from the Caspian shore, where the land and the sea are -alike alive with the leaping naphtha of the Ghebir worship: she had -been born within the iron gates of Derbent, of Persian parentage, and -she had known war and capture and violence, and had had many troubles, -many privations, many miseries before she had found herself stranded in -her old age, with her grandchild, in this little desolate village on -the sand-bank by the Volga. - -She was very poor; she had an evil reputation: nothing evil was ever -really traced to her, but she had Oriental faiths and traditions -and worshipped fire, or so said her enemies the black clergy of the -scattered villages and their ready believers. Never did Maritza light a -lamp at nightfall, but her neighbours saw in the act a devil worship. - -She was silent, proud, fierce, calm, exceedingly poor; she was hated -accordingly. When her granddaughter Sacha bore a child that was -the offspring of Prince Paul Zabaroff, though she cursed him, the -neighbours envied her and begrudged her such an honour. - -Maritza had brought up the young Vassia with little tenderness, yet -with a great yearning over the boy, with his pure Persian face and -his beautiful fair body, like a pearl. The uttermost she wished for -him was that he should grow up a raftsman or a fisherman on the Volga -water; all that she dreaded was that the Kossacks would take him and -put a lance in his hand and have him slain in war, as in the old stern -days of her youth her lovers had been taken by the battle-god, that -devoured them one by one, and her sons after them. - -She never gave a thought to the boy's parentage as of possible use to -him, but she always said to herself, 'If Paul Zabaroff ever come back, -then shall he know his son,' and meanwhile the boy was happy, though -he had not known the meaning of the word. He would plunge in the tawny -Volga in the summer-time, and watch the slow crowd of rafts go down -it, and the iron pontoon pass by, closed like a bier, which took the -condemned prisoners to Siberia. Now and then a gang of such captives -would go by on foot and chained; miserable exceedingly, wounded, -exhausted, doomed to twelve months' foot-sore travel ere they reached -the endless darkness of the mines or the blindness of the perpetual -frost. He watched them; but that was all. He felt neither curiosity nor -pity as he lay on the tall rough grass, and they moved by him on the -dusty, flint-strewn, ill-made road towards that chain of blue hills -which marked their future home and their eternal grave. For sport the -boy had the bear, the wolf, the blue fox, the wild hare, in the long -wintertime; in the brief summer he helped chase the pelican and the -swan along the sand-banks of the Volga or upon its lime-choked waves. -He was keen of eye and swift of foot: the men of his native village -were always willing to have his company, child though he was. He was -fond of all beasts and birds, though fonder still of sport; once he -risked his own life to save a stork and her nest on a burning roof. -When asked why he did it, he who choked the cygnet and snared the cub, -he could not say: he was ashamed of his own tenderness. - -He wanted no other life than this rude freedom, but one day, a month or -more after Paul Zabaroff had passed through the country, there came to -the door of Maritza's hut a stranger, who displayed to her eyes, which -could not read, a letter with the Prince's seal and signature. He said: -'I am sent to take away the boy who is called Vassia.' - -The Persian woman bowed her head as before a headsman's glaive. - -'It is the will of God,' she said. - -But the time came when Vassia, grown to man's estate, thought that -devils rather than gods had meddled with him then. - -'Send him to a great school; send him out of Russia; spare no cost; -make him a gentleman,' Paul Zabaroff had said to his agents when he -had seen the son of Sacha, and he had been obeyed. The little fierce -half-naked boy who in frost was wrapped in wolf-fur and looked like a -little wild beast, had been taken from the free, headstrong, barbaric -life of the Volga plains, where he was under no law and knew no rule, -and passionately loved the river and the chase, and the great silent -snow-wrapt world of his birth, and was sent to a famous and severe -college near Paris, to the drill, and the class, and the uniform, and -the classic learning, and the tape-bound, hard, artificial routine of -mechanical education. The pride, of the Oriental and the subtlety of -the Slav were all he brought with him as arms in the unequal combat -with an unsympathetic crowd. - -For a year's time he was insulted, tormented, ridiculed; in another -twelve months he was let alone; in a third year he was admired and -feared. All the while his heart was bursting within him with the agony -of home-sickness and revolt; but he gave no sign of either. Only at -nights, when the others of his chamber were all sleeping, he would slip -out of bed and stare up at the stars, which did not look the same as -he had known, and think of Maritza and of the bear-cubs, and of the -Volga's waters bearing the wild white swans upon their breast; and then -he would sob his very soul out in silence. - -He had been entered upon the books of the college under the name -of Vassia Kazán; Kazán having been the place at which he had been -baptised, the golden-domed, many-towered, half Asiatic city which -was seen afar off from the little square window in Maritza's hut. -High influence and much gold had persuaded the principal of a great -college--the Lycée Clovis, situated between Paris and Versailles--not -to inquire too closely into the parentage of this beautiful little -savage from the far north. Russia still remains dim, distant, and -mysterious to the western mind; among his tutors and comrades it was -taken for granted that he was some young barbarian noble, and the -child's own lips were shut as close as if the ice of his own land had -frozen them. - -Eight years later, on another day when wheat was ripe and willows -waved in summer sunshine, a youth lay asleep with his head on an open -Lucretius in the deserted playground of a French college. The place -of recreation was a dusty gravelled square; there were high stone -walls all round it, and a few poplars stood in it white with dust. -It was August, and all the other scholars were away; he alone had -been forgotten; he was used to being forgotten. He was not dull or -sorrowful, as other lads are when left in vacation time alone. He had -many arts and pastimes, and he was a scholar by choice, if a capricious -one, and he had a quick and facile tact which taught him how to have -his own way always; and on many a summer night, when his teachers -believed him safe sleeping, he was out of college, and away dancing and -singing and laughing at students' halls, and in the haunts of artists, -and at the little theatre beyond the barrier, and he had never been -found out, and would have cared but little if he had been. And he slept -now with his fair forehead leaning on Lucretius, and a drowsy, heavy -heat around him, filled with the hum of flies and gnats. He did not -dream of the heat and the insects; he did not even dream of the saucy -beauty at the barrier ball the night before, who had kicked cherries -out of his mouth with her blue-shod feet, and kissed him on his curls. -He dreamt of a little, low, dark hut; of an old woman that knelt before -a brazen image; of slumbering bear-cubs in a nest of hay; of a winter -landscape, white and shining, that stretched away in an unbroken level -of snow to the sea that half the year was ice. He dreamed of these, -and, dreaming, sighed and woke. He thought he stood on the frozen sea, -and the ice broke, and the waters swallowed him. - -It was nothing; only the voice of his tutor calling him. He was -summoned to the Principal of the Lycée: a rare honour. He rose, a -slender, tall, beautiful youth, in the dark close-fitting costume -of the institute. He shook the dust off his uniform and his curls, -shut his book, and went within the large white prison-like building -which had been his home since he had left the lowly _isba_ among the -sandhills and the blowing corn by Volga. - -The Principal was sitting in one of his private chambers, a grim, -dark, book-lined chamber; he held an open letter in his hand, which -he had read and re-read. He was a clever man, and unscrupulous and -purchasable; but he was not without feeling, and he was disquieted, for -he had a painful office to fulfil. - -When the youth obeyed his summons he looked up and shaded his eyes -with his hand. He hesitated, looking curiously at the young man's -attitude, which had an easy grace in it, and some hauteur visible under -a semblance of respect. - -The Principal took up the open letter: 'I regret, I grieve, to tell -you,' he said slowly, 'your patron and friend, the Prince Zabaroff, has -died suddenly!' - -The face of Vassia Kazán grew very pale, but very cold. He said nothing. - -'He died quite suddenly,' continued the director of the college; 'a -blood-vessel broke in the brain, after great fatigue in hunting; he was -upon one of his estates in White Russia.' - -The son of Paul Zabaroff was still silent. His master wished that he -would show some emotion. - -'It was he who placed you here--was at all costs for your education. I -suppose you are aware of that?' he continued, with some embarrassment. - -Vassia Kazán bowed and still said nothing. He might have been made of -ice or of marble for any sign that he gave. He might only have heard -that an unknown man had died in the street. - -'You were placed here by him--at least, by his agents; you were the son -of a dead friend, they said. I did not inquire closer--payments were -always made in advance.' - -He passed his hand a little confusedly over his eyes, for he felt a -little shame; his college was of high repute, and the agents of Prince -Zabaroff had placed sums in his hands, to induce him to deviate from -his rules, larger than he would have cared to confess. - -The boy was silent. - -'If he would only speak!' thought his master. 'He must know--he must -know.' - -But the son of the dead Zabaroff did not speak. - -'I am sorry to say,' resumed his master, still with hesitation, 'I am -very sorry to say that the death of the Prince being thus sudden and -thus unforeseen, his agents write me that there are no instructions, no -arrangement, no testament, in short--you will understand what I mean; -you will understand that, in point of fact, there is nothing for you, -there is no one to pay anything any longer.' - -He paused abruptly; the fair face of the boy grew a shade paler, that -was all. He bore the shock without giving any sign. - -'Is he made of ice and steel?' thought the old man, who had been proud -of him as his most brilliant pupil. - -'It pains me to give you such terrible intelligence,' he muttered; 'but -it is my duty not to conceal it an hour. You are quite--penniless. It -is very sad.' - -The boy smiled slightly; it was not a smile for so young a face. - -'He has given me learning; he need not have done that,' he said -carelessly. The words sounded grateful, but it was not gratitude that -glanced from his eyes. - -'I believe I am a serf in Russia?' he added, after a short silence. - -'I do not know at all,' muttered the Principal, who felt ill at ease -and ashamed of himself for having taken for eight years the gold of -Prince Paul. - -'I cannot tell--lawyers would tell you--I am not sure at all; indeed, I -know nothing of your history; but you are young and friendless. You are -a brilliant scholar, but you are not fit for work. What will you do, my -poor lad?' - -The boy did not respond to the kindness that was in the tone, and he -resented the pity there was in it. - -'That will be my affair alone,' he said, still carelessly and very -haughtily. - -'All is paid up to the New Year,' said his master, feeling restless and -dissatisfied. 'There is no haste--I would not turn you from my roof. -You are a brilliant classic--you might be a teacher here, perhaps?' - -The youth smiled; then he said coldly: - -'You are very good. I had better go away at once. I should wish to be -away before the others return.' - -'But where will you go?' said the old man, staring at him with a dull -and troubled surprise. - -The boy shrugged his shoulders. - -'The world is large--at least it looks so when one has not been over -it. Can you tell me who inherits from Prince Paul Zabaroff?' - -'His eldest son by his marriage with a Princess Kourouassine. If he had -only left some will, some sort of command or direction--perhaps if I -wrote to the Princess, and told her the facts, she--' - -'Pray do not do that,' said the boy coldly. 'I thank you for all I have -learned here, and I will leave your house to-night. Farewell to you, -sir.' - -The boy's eyes were dry and calm; the old man's were wet and dim. He -rose hurriedly, and laid aside his stern habit of authority for a -moment, as he put his hand on the lad's shoulder. - -'Vassia, do not leave us like that. I do not like to see you so cold, -so quiet, so unnaturally indifferent. You are left friendless and -nameless--and after all he was your father.' - -The boy drew himself away gently, and shrugged his shoulders once more -with his slight gesture of contempt. - -'He never called me his son. I wish he had left me by the Volga with -the bear-cubs: that is all. Adieu, sir.' - -'But what do you mean to do?' - -'I will do what offers.' - -'But few things offer when one is friendless and you have many faults, -Vassia, though you have many talents. I fear for your future.' - -'Adieu, sir.' - -The boy bowed low, with composure and grace, and left the room. The -old man sat in the shadow by his desk, and blamed himself, and blamed -the dead. The young collegian went out from his presence with a firm -step and a careless carriage, and ascended the staircase of the -college to his dormitory. The large long room, with its whitewashed -walls, its barred casements, its rows of camp bedsteads, looked like a -barrack-room deserted by the soldiers. The aspen and poplar leaves were -quivering outside the grated windows; the rays of the bright August sun -streamed through and shone on the floor. The boy sat down on his bed. -It was at the top of the row of beds, next one of the casements. The -sun-rays touched his head; he was all alone. The clamour, the disputes, -the mirth, the wrong-doing with which he and his comrades had consoled -themselves for the stern discipline of the day, were all things of -the past, and he would know them no more. In a way he had been happy -here, being lord and king of the rebellious band that had filled this -chamber, and knowing so little of his own fate or of his own future -that any greatness or glory might be possible to him. - -Three years before he had been summoned to a château on the north coast -of France in the full summer season. It had entered into the capricious -fancy of Prince Zabaroff that he should like to see what the wild -young wolf-cub of the Volga plains had become. He had found in him a -youth so handsome, so graceful, so accomplished, that a certain fibre -of paternal pride had been touched in him; whilst the coldness, the -silence, and the disdainfulness of the boy's temper had commanded his -respect. No word of their relationship had passed between them, but by -the guests assembled there it had been assumed that the young Vassia -Kazán was near of kin to their host, whose lawfully-begotten sons and -daughters were far away in one of his summer palaces of the Krimea. - -The boy was beautiful, keen-witted, precocious in knowledge and tact; -the society assembled there, which was dissolute enough, dazzled and -indulged him. The days had gone by like a tale of magic. There had -been always in him the bitter, mortified, rebellious hatred of his -own position; but this he had not shown, and no one had suspected it. -These three summer months of unbridled luxury and indulgence had made -an indelible impression on him. He had felt that life was not worth the -living unless it could be passed in the same manner. He had known that -away there in Russia there were young Zabaroff princes, his brethren, -who would not have owned him; but the remembrance of them had not dwelt -on him. He had not known definitely what to expect of the future. -Though he was still there only Vassia Kazán, yet he had been treated -as though he were a son of the house. When the party had broken up he -had been sent back to his college with many gifts and a thousand francs -in gold. When he reached Paris he had given the presents to a dancing -girl and the money to an old professor of classics who had lost his -sight. Not a word had been said as to his future. Measuring both by the -indulgences and liberalities that were conceded to him, he had always -dreamed of it vaguely but gorgeously, as sure to bring recognition and -reverence, pomp and power, to him from the world. He had vaguely built -up ambitious hopes. He had been sensible of no ordinary intelligence, -of no common powers; and it had seemed legitimate to suppose that so -liberal and princely an education meant that some golden gates would -open to him at manhood: why should they rear him so if they intended -to leave him in obscurity? - -This day, as he had sat in the large white courtyard, shadowed by the -Parisian poplar trees, he had remembered that he was within a few weeks -of the completion of his eighteenth year, and he had wondered what -they meant to do with him. He had heard nothing from Prince Zabaroff -since those brilliant, vivid, tumultuous months which had left on him a -confused sense of dazzling though vague expectation. He had hoped every -summer to hear something, but each summer had passed in silence; and -now he was told that Paul Zabaroff was dead. - -He had been happy, being dowered with facile talents, quick wit, and -the great art of being able to charm others without effort to himself. -He had been seldom obedient, often guilty, yet always successful. The -place had been no prison to him; he had passed careless days and he had -dreamed grand dreams there; and now-- - -He sat on the little iron bed, and knew that in a few nights to come he -might have to make his bed with beggars under bridge arches and in the -dens of thieves. - -Tears gathered in his eyes, and fell slowly one by one. A sort of -convulsion passed over his face. He gripped his throat with his hand, -to stifle a sob that rose there. - -The intense stillness of the chamber was not broken even by the buzzing -of a gnat. - -He sat quite motionless, and his thoughts went back to the summer day -in the cornfields by the Volga; he saw the scene in all its little -details: the impatient good-humour of the great lord, the awe of the -listening peasants, the blowing wheat, the wooden cross, the stamping -horses, the cringing servants; he heard the voice of his father saying, -'Will you be a jewel or a toad's eye?' - -'Why could he not leave me there?' he thought; 'I should have known -nothing; I should have been a hunter; I should have done no harm on the -ice and the snow there, with old Maritza.' - -He thought of his grandmother, of the little hut, of the nest of skins, -of the young bears at play, of the glittering plains in winter, of the -low red sun, of the black lonely woods, of the grey icy river, of the -bright virgin snow--thought, with a great longing like that of thirst. -Why had they not let him be? Why had they not left him ignorant and -harmless in the clear, keen, solitary winter world? - -Instead of that they had flung him into hell, and now left him in it, -alone. - -There was a far-off murmur on the sultry summer air, and a far-off -gleam of metal beyond the leaves of the poplar trees; it was the murmur -of the streets, and the glisten of the roofs of Paris. - -About his neck there hung a little silver image of St. Paul. His mother -had hung it there at birth, and Maritza had prayed him never to disturb -it. Now he took it off, he spat on it, he trod on it, he threw it out -to fall into the dust. - -He did this insult to the sacred thing coldly, without passion. His -tears were no more on his cheeks, nor the sobs in his throat. - -He changed his clothes quickly, put together a few necessaries, leaving -behind nearly all that he possessed, because he hated everything that -the dead man's money had bought; and then, without noise and without -haste, looking back once down the long empty chamber, he went through -the house by back ways that he knew and had used in hours of forbidden -liberty, and opening the gate of the courtyard, went out into the long -dreary highway, white with dust, that stretched before him and led to -Paris. - -He had made friends, for he was a beautiful bold boy, gay of wit, -agile, and strong, and of many talents; but these friends were -artists little known in the world, soldiers who liked pleasure, young -dramatists without theatres, pretty frail women who had taught him to -eat the sweet and bitter apple that is always held out in the hand of -Eve. These and their like were all butterfly friends of a summer noon -or night; he knew that very well, for he had a premature and unerring -knowledge of the value of human words. They would be of no use in such -a strait as his; and the colour flushed back for one instant into his -pale cheeks, as he thought that he would die in a hospital before he -was twenty rather than ask their aid. - -As the grey dust, the hot wind, the nauseous smell of streets in summer -smote upon him, leaving the poplar-shadowed court of his old school, -he felt once more the same strange yearning of home-sickness for the -winter world of his birth, for the steel-grey waters, the darkened -skies, the forests of fir, the howl of the wolves on the wind, the joys -of the fresh fierce cold, the feel of the ice in the air, the smell of -the pines and the river. The bonds of birth are strong. - -'If Maritza were not dead I would go back,' he thought. But Maritza had -been long dead, laid away under the snow by her daughter's side. - -The boy went to Paris. - -Would it be any fault of his what he became? - -He told himself, No. - -It would lie with the dead; and with Paris. - - - - -CHAPTER I. - - -In the heart of the Hohe Tauern, province of lakes and streams, there -lies one lake called the Szalrassee: known to the pilgrim, to the -fisher, to the hunter, but to the traveller little, for it is shut -away from the hum and stir of man by the amphitheatre of its own hills -and forests. To the south-east of it lies the Iselthal, and to the -north-west the Wilde Gerlos; due east is the great Glöckner group, and -due west the Venediger. Farther away are the Alps of Zillerthal, and on -the opposite horizon the mountains of Karinthia. - -Here, where the foaming rivers thunder through their rocky channels, -and the ice bastions of a thousand glaciers glow in the sunrise and bar -the sight of sunset; here, where a thousand torrents bathe in silver -the hillsides, and the deep moan of subterranean waters sounds for -ever through the silence of the gorges, dark with the serried pines; -here, in the green and cloudy Austrian land, the merry trout have many -a joyous home, but none is fairer or more beloved by them than this -lovely lake of Hohenszalras; so green that it might have been made of -emeralds dissolved in sunbeams, so deep that at its centre no soundings -can be taken, so lonely that of the few wanderers who pass from S. -Johann im Wald or from Lienz to Matrey, even of those few scarce one in -a summer will know that a lake lies there, though they see from afar -off its great castle standing, many-turreted and pinnacled, with its -frowning keep, backed by the vast black forests, clothing slopes whose -summits hide themselves in cloud, whilst through the cold clear air the -golden vulture and the throated eagle wing their way. - -The lake lies like a crystal bedded in rock, lovely and lonely as the -little Gosausee when the skies are fair; perilous and terrible as the -great Königs-See in storm, when the north wind is racing in from the -Bœhmervald and the Polish steppes, and the rain-mists are dark and -dense, and the storks leave their home on the chapel roof because the -winter draws nigh. It is fed by snow and ice descending from a hundred -hills, and by underground streams and headlong-descending avalanches, -and in its turn feeds many a mountain waterfall, many a mountain tarn, -many a woodland brook, and many a village fountain. The great white -summits tower above it, and the dense still woods enshroud it; there -are a pier and harbour at either end, but these are only used by the -village people, and once a year by pilgrims who come to the Sacred -Island in its midst; pilgrims who flock thither from north, south, -east, and west, for the chapel of the Szalrassee is as renowned and -blessed as the silver shrine of holy Mariazell itself. - -On the right bank of its green glancing water, looking towards the -ice-peaks of the Glöckner on the east, and on the south towards the -Kitchbull mountains and the limestone Alps, a promontory juts out -into the lake and soars many hundred feet above it. It is of hard -granite rock. Down one of its sides courses a torrent, the other side -is clothed with wood; on the summit is the immense building that is -called the Hohenszalrasburg, a mass of towers and spires and high metal -roofs and frowning battlements, with a huge square fortress at one end -of them: it is the old castle of the Counts of Szalras, and the huge -donjon keep of it has been there twelve centuries, and in all these -centuries no man has ever seen its flag furled or its portcullis drawn -up for a conqueror's entry. - -The greater part of the Schloss now existing is the work of Meister -Wenzel of Klosterneuburg, begun in 1350, but the date of the keep -and of the foundations generally are much earlier, and the prisons -and clock tower are Romanesque. Majestic, magnificent, and sombre, -though not gloomy, by reason of its rude decoration and the brilliant -colours of its variegated roofs, it is scarcely changed since its lords -dwelt there in the fourteenth century, when their great banner, black -vultures on a ground of gold and red, floated then high up amongst the -clouds, even as it now shakes its heavy folds out on the strong wind -that blew so keenly from the Prussian and the Polish plains due north. - -It is a fortress that has wedded a palace; it is majestic, powerful, -imposing, splendid, like the great race, of which it so long has been -the stronghold and the birthplace. But it is as lonely in the quiet -heart of the everlasting hills as any falcon's or heron's nest hung in -the oak branches. - -And this loneliness seemed its sweetest charm in the eyes of its -châtelaine and mistress, the Countess Wanda von Szalras, as she leaned -one evening over the balustrade of her terrace, watching for the -after-glow to warm the snows of the Glöckner. She held in her hand an -open letter from her Kaiserin, and the letter in its conclusion said: -'You have sorrowed and tarried in seclusion long enough--too long; -longer than he would have wished you to do. Come back to us and to the -world.' - -And Wanda von Szalras thought to herself: 'What can the world give me? -What I love is Hohenszalras on earth, and Bela in heaven.' - -What could the world give her indeed? The world cannot give back the -dead. She wanted nothing of the world. She was rich in all that it can -ever give. - -In the time of Ferdinand the Second those who were then Counts of -Szalras had stitched the cloth cross on their sleeves and gone with the -Emperor to the Third Crusade. In gratitude for their escape, father -and son, from the perils of Palestine and the dangers of the high seas -and of the treacherous Danube water, from Moslem steel, and fever of -Jaffa, and chains of swarming Barbary corsairs, they, returning at last -in safety to their eyrie above the Szalrassee, had raised a chapel -on the island in the lake, and made it dedicate to the Holy Cross, -a Szalras of the following generation, belonging to the Dominican -community, and being a man of such saintly fervour and purity that he -was canonised by Innocent, had dwelt on the Holy Isle, and given to -it the benediction and the tradition of his sanctity and good works. -As centuries went on the holy fame of the shrine where the Crusader -had placed a branch from a thorn-tree of Nazareth grew, and gained in -legend and in miracle, and became as adored an object, of pilgrimage as -the Holy Phial of Heiligenblut. All the Hohe Tauern, and throngs even -from Karinthia on the one side and Tirol on the other, came thither on -the day of Ascension. - -The old faith still lives, very simple, warm, and earnest, in the -heart of Austria, and with that day-dawn in midsummer thousands of -peasant-folks flock from mountain villages and forest chalets and -little remote secluded towns, to speed over the green lake with flaming -crucifix and floating banner, and haunted anthem echoed from hill -to hill. One of those days of pilgrimage had made her mistress of -Hohenszalras. - -It was a martial and mighty race this which in the heart of the green -Tauern had made of fealty to God and the Emperor a religion for itself -and all its dependants. The Counts of Szalras had always been proud, -stern, and noble men: though their records were often stained with -fierce crimes, there was never in them any single soil of baseness, -treachery, or fear. They had been fierce and reckless in the wild days -when they were for ever at war with the Counts of Tirol and the warlike -Archbishops of Salzburg. Then with the Renaissance they had become no -less powerful, but more lettered, more courtly, and more splendid, and -had given alike friendship and service to the Habsburg. Now, of all -these princely and most powerful people there was but one descendant, -but one representative; and that one was a woman. - -Solferino had seen Count Gela fall charging at the head of his own -regiment of horse; Magenta had seen Count Victor cut in two by a -cannon-shot as he rode with the dragoons of Swartzenberg; and but a -few years later the youngest, Count Bela, had been drowned by his own -bright lake. - -Their father had died of grief for his eldest son; their mother had -been lost to them in infancy; Bela and Wanda had grown up together, -loving each other as only two lonely children can. She had been his -elder by a few years, and he younger than his age by reason of his -innocent simplicity of nature and his delicacy of body. They had always -thought to make a priest of him, and when that peaceful future was -denied him on his becoming the sole heir, it was the cause of bitter -though mute sorrow to the boy who was indeed so like a young saint in -church legends that the people called him tenderly _der Heilige Graf._ -He had never quitted Hohenszalras, and he knew every peasant around, -every blossom that blew, every mountain path, every forest beast -and bird, and every tale of human sorrow in his principality. When -he became lord of all after his brother's death he was saddened and -oppressed by the sense of his own overwhelming obligations. 'I am but -the steward of God,' he would say, with a tender smile, to the poor who -blessed him. - -One Ascension Day the lake was, as usual, crowded with the boats of -pilgrims; the morning was fair and cloudless, but, after noontide, wind -arose, the skies became overcast, and one of the sudden storms of the -country burst over the green waters. The little lord of Hohenszalras -was the first to see the danger to the clumsy heavy boats crowded with -country people, and with his household rowed out to their aid. The -storm had come so suddenly and with such violence that it smote, in -the very middle of the lake, some score of these boats laden with the -pilgrims of the Pinzgau and the Innthal, women chiefly; their screams -pierced through the noise of the roaring winds, and their terror added -fresh peril to the dangers of the lake, which changed in a few moments -to a seething whirlpool, and flung them to and fro like coots' nests -in a flood. The young Bela with his servants saved many, crossing and -recrossing the furious space of wind-lashed, leaping, foaming water; -but on the fourth voyage back the young Count's boat, over-burdened -with trembling peasants, whose fright made them blind and restive, -dipped heavily on one side, filled, and sank. Bela could swim well, -and did swim, even to the very foot of his own castle rock, where a -hundred hands were outstretched to save him; but, hearing a drowning -woman's moan, he turned and tried to reach her. A fresh surge of the -hissing water, a fresh gust of the bitter north wind, tossed him back -into a yawning gulf of blackness, and drove him headlong, and with no -more resistance in him than if he had been a broken bough, upon the -granite wall of his own rocks. He was caught and rescued almost on the -instant by his own men, but his head had struck upon the stone, and he -was senseless. He breathed a few hours, but he never spoke or opened -his eyes or gave any sign of conscious life, and before the night had -far advanced his innocent body was tenantless and cold, and his sweet -spirit lived only in men's memories. His sister, who was absent at that -time at the court of her Empress, became by his death the mistress of -Hohenszalras and the last of her line. - -When the tidings of his heroic end reached her at the imperial -hunting-place of Gödöllö all the world died for her; that splendid -pageant of a world, whose fairest and richest favours had been always -showered on the daughter of the mighty House of Szalras. She withdrew -herself from her friends, from her lovers, from her mistress, and -mourned for him with a grief that time could do little to assuage, -nothing to efface. She was then twenty years of age. - -She was thinking of that death now, four years later, as she stood on -the terrace which overhung the cruel rocks that had killed him. - -His loss was to her a sorrow that could never wholly pass away. - -Her other brothers had been dear to her, but only as brilliant young -soldiers are to a little child who sees them seldom. But Bela had been -her companion, her playmate, her friend, her darling. From Bela she had -been scarce ever parted. Every day and every night, herself, and all -her thoughts and all her time, were given to such administration of her -kingdom as should best be meet in the sight of God and his angels. 'I -am but Bela's almoner, as he was God's steward,' she said. - -She leaned against the parapet, and looked across the green and shining -water, the open letter hanging in her hand. - -The Countess Wanda von Szalras was a beautiful woman; but she had that -supreme distinction which eclipses beauty, that subtle, indescribable -grace and dignity which are never seen apart from some great lineage -with long traditions of culture, courtesy, and courage. She was very -tall, and her movements had a great repose and harmony in them; her -figure, richness and symmetry. Her eyes were of a deep brown hue, like -the velvety brown of a stag's throat; they were large, calm, proud, -and meditative. Her mouth was very beautiful; her hair was light and -golden; her skin exceedingly fair. She was one of the most beautiful -women of her country, and one of the most courted and the most -flattered; and her imperial mistress said now to her, 'Come back to us -and to the world.' - -Standing upon her terrace, in a gown of pale grey velvet that had no -ornament save an old gold girdle with an enamelled missal hung to -it, with two dogs at her side, one the black hunting-hound of St. -Hubert, the other the white sleuth-hound of Russia, she looked like a -châtelaine of the days of Mary of Burgundy or Elizabeth of Thuringia. -It seemed as if the dark cedar boughs behind her should lift and admit -to her presence some lover with her glove against the plume of his hat, -and her ring set in his sword-hilt, who would bow down before her feet -and not dare to touch her hand unbidden. - -But no lover was there. The Countess Wanda dismissed all lovers; she -was wedded to the memory of her brother, and to her own liberty and -power. - -She leaned on the stone parapet of her castle and gazed on the scene -that her eyes had rested on since they had first seen the light, yet of -which she never wearied. The intense depth of colour, that is the glory -of Austria, was deepening with each moment that the sun went nearer -to its setting in the dark blue of thunderclouds that brooded in the -west, over the Venediger and the Zillerthal Alps. Soon the sun would -pass that barrier of stone and ice, and evening would fall here in the -mountains of the Iselthal, whilst it would be still day for the plains -of the Ober Pinzgau and Salzkammergut. But as yet the radiance was -here; and the dark oak woods and birch woods, the purple pine forests, -the blue lake waters, and the glaciers of the Glöckner range, had -all that grandeur which makes a sunset in these highlands at once so -splendid and so peaceful. There is an infinite sense of peace in those -cool, vast, unworn mountain solitudes, with the rain-mists sweeping -like spectral armies over the level lands below, and the sun-rays -slanting heavenward, like the spears of an angelic host. There is such -abundance of rushing water, of deep grass, of endless shade, of forest -trees, of heather and pine, of torrent and tarn; and beyond these are -the great peaks that loom through breaking clouds, and the clear cold -air, in which the vulture wheels and the heron sails; and the shadows -are so deep, and the stillness is so sweet, and the earth seems so -green, and fresh, and silent, and strong. Nowhere else can one rest -so well; nowhere else is there so fit a refuge for all the faiths and -fancies that can find a home no longer in the harsh and hurrying world: -there is room for them all in the Austrian forests, from the Erl-King -to Ariel and Oberon. - -The Countess Wanda leaned against the balustrade of the terrace and -watched that banquet of colour on land and cloud and water; watched -till the sun sank out of sight behind the Venediger snows, and the -domes of the Glöckner, and all the lesser peaks opposite were changing -from the warmth, as of a summer rose, to a pure transparent grey, that -seemed here and there to be pierced as with fire. - -'How often do we thank God for the mountains?' she thought; 'yet we -ought every night that we pray.' - -Then she sighed as her eyes sank from the hill-tops to the lake water, -dark as iron, glittering as steel, now that the radiance of the sun had -passed off it. She remembered Bela. - -How could she ever forget him, with that murderous water shining for -ever at her feet? - -The world called her undiminished tenderness for her dead brother a -morbid grief, but then to the world at large any fidelity seems so -strange and stupid a waste of years: it does not understand that _tout -casse, tout lasse, tout passe_, was not written for strong natures. - -'How could I ever forget him, so long as that water glides there?' she -thought, as her eyes rested on the emerald and sparkling lake. - -'Yet her Majesty is so right! So right and so wise!' said a familiar -voice at her side. - -And there came up to her the loveliest little lady in all the empire; -an old lady, but so delicate, so charming, so pretty, so fragile, that -she seemed lovelier than all the young ones; a very fairy godmother, -covered up in lace and fur, and leaning on a gold-headed cane, and -wearing red shoes with high gilt heels, and smiling with serene blue -eyes, as though she had just stepped down out of a pictured copy of -Cinderella, and could change common pumpkins into gilded chariots, and -mice into horses, at a wish. - -She was the Princess Ottilie of Lilienhöhe, and had once been head of a -religious house. - -'Her Majesty is so right!' she said once more, with emphasis. - -The Countess Wanda turned and smiled, rather with her eyes than with -her lips. - -'It would not become my loyal affection to say she could be wrong. But -still, I know myself, and I know the world very well, and I far prefer -Hohenszalras to it.' - -'Hohenszalras is all very well in the summer and autumn,' said Princess -Ottilie, with a glance of anything but love at the great fantastic -solemn pile; 'but for a woman of your age and your possessions to -pass your days talking to farmers and fishermen, poring over books, -perplexing yourself as to whether it is right for you to accept wealth -that comes from such a source of danger to human life as your salt -mines--it is absurd, it is ludicrous. You are made for something more -than a political economist; you should be in the great world.' - -'I prefer my solitude and my liberty.' - -'Liberty! Who or what could dictate to you in the world? You reigned -there once; you would always reign there.' - -'Social life is a bondage, as an empress's is. It denies one the -greatest luxury of life--solitude.' - -'Certainly, if you love solitude so much, you have your heart's desire -here. It is an Alvernia! It is a Mount Athos! It is a snow-entombed -paraclete, a hermitage, only tempered by horses!' said the Princess, -with a little angry laugh. - -Her grand-niece smiled. - -'By many horses, certainly. Dearest aunt, what would you have? -Austrians are all centaurs and amazons. I am only like my Kaiserin in -that passion.' - -The Princess sighed. - -She had never been able to comprehend the forest life, the daring, the -intrepidity, the open-air pastimes, and the delight in danger which -characterised all the race of Szalras. Daughter of a North German -princeling, and with some French blood in her veins also, reared under -the formal etiquette of her hereditary court, and at an early age -canoness of one of those great semi-religious orders which are only -open to the offspring of royal or of most noble lines, her whole life -had been one moulded to form and conventional habit, and only her own -sweetness and sprightliness of temper had saved her from the narrowness -of judgment and the chilliness of formality which such a life begets. -The order of which until late years she had been superior was one for -magnificence and wealth unsurpassed in Europe; but, semi-secular in its -privileges, it had left her much liberty, and never wholly divorced -her from the world, which in an innocent way she had always loved -and enjoyed. After Count Victor's death she had resigned her office -on plea of age and delicacy of health, and had come to take up her -residence at Hohenszalras with her dead niece's children. She had done -so because she had believed it to be her duty, and her attachment to -Wanda and Bela had always been very great; but she had never learned to -love the solitude of the Hohe Tauern, or ceased to regard Hohenszalras -as a place of martyrdom. After the minute divisions of every hour -and observances of every smallest ceremonial that she had been used -to at her father's own little court of Lilienslüst, and in her own -religious house, where every member of the order was a daughter of -some one of the highest families of Germany or of Austria, the life at -Hohenszalras, with its outdoor pastimes, its feudal habits, its vast -liberties for man and beast, and its long frozen winters, when not a -soul could come near it from over the passes, seemed very terrible to -her. She could never understand her niece's passionate attachment to -it, and she in real truth only breathed entirely at ease in those few -weeks of the year which to please her niece she consented to pass away -from the Hohe Tauern. - -'Surely you will go to Ischl or go to Gödöllö this autumn, since Her -Majesty wishes it?' she said now, with an approving glance at the -imperial letter. - -'Her Majesty is so kind as always to wish it,' answered the Countess -Wanda. 'Let us leave time to show what it holds for us. This is -scarcely summer. Yesterday was the fifteenth of May.' - -'It is horribly cold,' said the Princess, drawing her silver-grey fur -about her. 'It is always horribly cold here, even in midsummer. And -when it does not snow it rains; you cannot deny _that._' - -'Come, come! we have seen the sun all day to-day. I hope we shall see -it many days, for they have begun planting-out, you see--the garden -will soon be gorgeous.' - -'When the mist allows it to be seen, it will be, I dare say,' said -Princess Ottilie, somewhat pettishly. 'It is tolerable here in the -summer, though never agreeable; but the Empress is so right, it is -absurd to shut yourself longer up in this gloomy place; you are bound -to return to the world. You owe it to your position to be seen in it -once more.' - -'The world does not want me, my dear aunt; nor do I want the world.' - -'That is sheer perversity----' - -'How am I perverse? I know the world very well, and I know that no one -is necessary to it, unless it be Herr von Bismarck.' - -'I do not see what Herr von Bismarck has to do with your going back to -your natural manner of life,' said the Princess, severely, who abhorred -any sort of levity in regard to the mighty minister who had destroyed -the Lilienhöhe princes one fine morning, as indifferently as a boy -plucks down a cranberry bough. 'In summer, or even autumn, Hohenszalras -is endurable, but in winter it is--hyperborean--even you must grant -that. One might as well be jammed in a ship, amidst icebergs, in the -midst of a frozen sea.' - -'And you were born on the Elbe, oh fie! But indeed, my dearest aunt, I -like the frozen sea. The white months have no terrors for me. What you -call, and what calls itself, the great world is far more narrow than -the Iselthal. Here one's fancies, at least, can fly high as the eagles -do; in the world who can rise out of the hot-house air of the salons, -and see beyond the doings of one's friends and foes?' - -'Surely one's own friends and foes--people like oneself, in a -word--must be as interesting as Hans, and Peter, and Katte, and -Grethel, with their crampons or their milkpails,' said the Princess, -with impatience. 'Besides, surely in the world there are political -movement, influence, interests.' - -'Oh, intrigue?--as useful as Mme. de Laballe's or Mme. de -Longueville's? No! I do not believe there is even that in our time, -when even diplomacy itself is fast becoming a mere automatic factor -in a world that is governed by newspapers, and which has changed the -tyranny of wits for the tyranny of crowds. The time is gone by when a -"Coterie of Countesses" could change ministries, if they ever did do so -outside the novels of Disraeli. Drawing-room cabals may still do some -mischief perhaps, but they can do no good. Sometimes, indeed, I think -that what is called Government everywhere is nothing but a gigantic -mischief-making and place-seeking. The State is everywhere too like a -mother who sweeps her doorstep diligently, and scolds the neighbours, -while her child scalds itself to death unseen within.' - -'In the world,' interrupted the Princess oppositely, 'you might -persuade them that the sweeping of doorsteps is not sufficient----' - -'I prefer to keep my own house in order. It is quite enough -occupation,' said the Countess Wanda, with a smile. 'Dear aunt, here -amongst my own folks I can do some real good, I have some tangible -influence, I can feel that my life is not altogether spent in vain. -Why should I exchange these simple and solid satisfactions, for the -frivolities and the inanities of a life of pleasure which would not -even please me?' - -'You are very hard to please, I know,' retorted the Princess. 'But say -what you will, it becomes ridiculous for a person of your age, your -great position, and your personal beauty, to immure yourself eternally -in what is virtually no better than confinement to a fortress!' - -'A court is more of a prison to me,' said Wanda von Szalras. 'I know -both lives, and I prefer this life. As for my being very hard to -please, I think I was very gay and mirthful before Bela's death. Since -then all the earth has grown grey for me.' - -'Forgive me, my beloved!' said Princess Ottilie, with quick contrition, -whilst moisture sprang into her limpid and still luminous blue eyes. - -Wanda von Szalras took the old abbess's hand in her own, and kissed it. - -'I understand all you wish for me, dear aunt. Believe me, I envy people -when I hear them laughing light-heartedly amongst each other. I think -I shall never laugh _so_ again.' - -'If you would only marry----' said the Princess, with some hesitation. - -'You think marriage amusing?' she said, with a certain contempt. 'If -you do, it is only because you escaped it.' - -'Amusing!' said the Princess, a little scandalised. 'I could speak of -no Sacrament of our Holy Church as "amusing." You rarely display such -levity of language. I confess I do not comprehend you. Marriage would -give you interests in life which you seem to lack sadly now. It would -restore you to the world. It would be a natural step to take with such -vast possessions as yours.' - -'It is not likely I shall ever take it,' said Wanda von Szalras, -drawing the soft fine ear of Donau through her fingers. - -'I know it is not likely. I am very sorry that it is not likely. Yet -what nobler creature does God's earth contain than your cousin Egon? - -'Egon? No: he is a good and brave and loyal gentleman, none better; but -I shall no more marry him than Donau here will wed a forest doe.' - -'Yet he has loved you for ten years. But if not he there are so -many others, men of high enough place to be above all suspicion of -mercenary motive. No woman has been more adored than you, Wanda. Look -at Hugo Landrassy.' - -'Oh, pray spare me their enumeration. It is like the Catalogue of -Ships!' said the Countess Wanda, with some coldness and some impatience -on her face. - -At that moment an old man, who was major-domo of Hohenszalras, -approached and begged with deference to know whether his ladies would -be pleased to dine. - -The Princess signified her readiness with alacrity; Wanda von Szalras -signed assent with less willingness. - -'What a disagreeable obligation dining is,' she said, as she turned -reluctantly from the evening scene, with the lake sleeping in dusk and -shadow, while the snow summits still shone like silver and glowed with -rose. - -'It is very wicked to think so,' said her great-aunt. 'When a merciful -Creator has appointed our appetites for our consolation and support it -is only an ingrate who is not thankful lawfully to indulge them.' - -'That view of them never occurred to me,' said the châtelaine of -Hohenszalras. 'I think you must have stolen it, aunt, from some abbé -galant or some chanoinesse as lovely as yourself in the last century. -Alas! if not to care to eat be ungrateful I am a sad ingrate. Donau -and Neva are more ready subscribers to your creed.' - -Donau and Neva were already racing towards the castle, and Wanda von -Szalras, with one backward lingering glance to the sunset, which -already was fading, followed them with slow steps to the grand house of -which she was mistress. - -In the north alone the sky was overcast and of a tawny colour, where -the Pinzgau lay, with the green Salzach water rushing through its -wooded gorges, and its tracks of sand and stone desolate as any desert. - -That slender space of angry yellow to the north boded ill for the -night. Bitter storms rolled in west from the Bœhmerwald, or north -from the Salzkammergut, many a time in the summer weather, changing it -to winter as they passed, tugging at the roof-ropes of the châlets, -driving the sheep into their sennerin's huts, covering with mist and -rain the mountain sides, and echoing in thunder from the peaks of the -Untersburg to the snows of the Ortler Spitze. It was such a sudden -storm which had taken Bela's life. - -'I think we shall have wild weather,' said the Princess, drawing her -furs around her, as she walked down the broad length of the stone -terrace. - -'I think so too,' said Wanda. 'It is coming very soon; and I fear I did -a cruel thing this morning.' - -'What was that?' - -'I sent a stranger to find his way over our hills to Matrey, as best -he might. He will hardly have reached it by now, and if a storm should -come----' - -'A stranger?' said Princess Ottilie, whose curiosity was always alive, -and had also lately no food for its hunger. - -'Only a poacher; but he was a gentleman, which made his crime the -worse.' - -'A gentleman, and you sent him over the hills without a guide? It seems -unlike the hospitality of Hohenszalras.' - -'Why he would have shot a _kuttengeier!_' - -'A _kuttengeier_ is a horrible beast,' said the Princess, with a -shudder; 'and a stranger, just for an hour or so, would be welcome.' - -'Even if his name were not in the Hof-Kalender?' asked her niece, -smiling. - -'If he had been a pedlar, or a clockmaker, you would have sent him in -to rest. For a gentlewoman, Wanda, and so proud a one as you are, you -become curiously cruel to your own class.' - -'I am always cruel to poachers. And to shoot a vulture in the month of -May!' - - - - -CHAPTER II. - - -The dining-hall was a vast chamber, panelled and ceiled with oak. In -the centre of the panels were emblazoned shields bearing the arms of -the Szalras, and of the families with which they had intermarried; the -long lancet windows had been painted by no less a hand than that of -Jacob of Ulm; the knights' stalls which ran round the hall were the -elaborate carving of Georges Syrlin; and old gorgeous banners dropped -down above them, heavy with broideries and bullion. - -There were upper servants in black clothes with knee breeches, and a -dozen lacqueys in crimson and gold liveries, ranged about the table. -In many ways there were a carelessness and ease in the household which -always seemed lamentable to the Princess Ottilie, but in matters of -etiquette the great household was ruled like a small court; and when -sovereigns became guests there little in the order of the day needed -change at Hohenszalras. - -The castle was half fortress, half palace; a noble and solemn place, -which had seen many centuries of warfare, of splendour, and of -alternate war and joy. Strangers used to Paris gilding, to Italian -sunlight, to English country-houses, found it too severe, too august, -too dark, and too stern in its majesty, and were awed by it. But she -who had loved it and played in it in infancy changed nothing there, -but cherished it as it had come to her; and it was in all much the -same as it had been in the days of Henry the Lion, from its Gothic -Silber-kapelle, that was like an ivory and jewelled casket set in dusky -silver, to its immense Rittersäal, with a hundred knights in full -armour standing down it, as the bronze figures stand round Maximilian's -empty tomb in Tirol. There are many such noble places hidden away in -the deep forests and the mountain glens of Maximilian's empire. - -In this hall there were some fifteen persons standing. They were the -priest, the doctor, the high steward, the almoner, some dames de -compagnie, and some poor ladies, widows or spinsters, who subsisted -on the charities of Hohenszalras. The two noble ladies bowed to them -all and said a few kind words; then passed on and seated themselves -at their own table, whilst these other persons took their seats -noiselessly at a longer table, behind a low screen of carved oak. - -The lords of Hohenszalras had always thus adhered to the old feudal -habit of dining in public, and in royal fashion, thus. - -The Countess Wanda and her aunt spoke little; the one was thinking -of many other things than of the food brought to her, the other was -enjoying to the uttermost each _bouchée_, each _relevée_, each morsel -of quail, each mouthful of wine-stewed trout, each succulent truffle, -and each rich drop of crown Tokaï. - -The repast was long, and to one of them extremely tedious; but these -formal and prolonged ceremonials had been the habit of her house, and -Wanda von Szalras carefully observed all hereditary usage and custom. -When her aunt had eaten her last fruit, and she herself had broken -her last biscuit between the dogs, they rose, one glad that the most -tiresome, and the other regretful that the most pleasant, hour of the -uneventful day was over. - -With a bow of farewell to the standing household, they went by mutual -consent their divers ways; the Princess to her favourite blue room -and her after-dinner doze, Wanda to her own study, the chamber most -essentially her own, where all were hers. - -The softness and radiance of the after-glow had given place to night -and rain; the mists and the clouds had rolled up from the Zillerthal -Alps, and the water was pouring from the skies. - -Lamps, wax candles, flambeaux, burning in sconces or upheld by statues -or swinging from chains, were illumining the darkness of the great -castle, but in her own study only one little light was shining, for -she, a daughter of the mystical mountains and forests, loved the -shadows of the night. - -She seated herself here by the unshuttered casement. The full moon was -rising above the Glöckner range, and the rain-clouds as yet did not -obscure it, though a film of falling water veiled all the westward -shore of the lake, and all the snows on the peaks and crests of the -Venediger. She leaned her elbows on the cushioned seat, and looked out -into the night. - -'Bela, my Bela! are you content with me?' she murmured. To her Bela -was as living as though he were present by her side; she lived in -the constant belief of his companionship and his sight. Death was a -cruel--ah, how cruel!--wall built up between him and her, forbidding -them the touch of each other's hands, denying them the smile of each -other's eyes; but none the less to her was he there, unseen, but ever -near, hidden behind that inexorable, invisible barrier which one day -would fall and let her pass and join him. - -She sat idle in the embrasure of the oriel window, whilst the one lamp -burned behind her. This, her favourite room, had scarcely been changed -since Maria Theresa, on a visit there, had made it her bower-room. -The window-panes had been painted by Selier of Landshut in 1440; -the stove was one of Hirschvögel's; the wood-carvings had been done -by Schuferstein; there was silver _repoussé_ work of Kellerthaler, -tapestries of Marc de Comans, enamels of Elbertus of Köln, of Jean of -Limoges, of Leonard Limousin, of Penicaudius; embroidered stuffs of -Isabeau Maire, damascened armour once worn by Henry the Lion, a painted -spinet that had belonged to Isabella of Bavaria, and an ivory Book of -Hours, once used by Carolus Magnus; and all these things, like the many -other treasures of the castle, had been there for centuries; gifts -from royal guests, spoils of foreign conquest, memorials of splendid -embassies or offices of state held by the lords of Szalras, or -marriage presents at magnificent nuptials in the old magnificent ages. - -In this room she, their sole living representative, was never disturbed -on any pretext. In the adjacent library (a great cedar-lined room, -holding half a million volumes, with many missals and early classics, -and many an _editio princeps_ of the Renaissance), she held all her -audiences, heard all petitions or complaints, audited her accounts, -conversed with her tenants or her stewards, her lawyers or her -peasants, and laboured earnestly to use to the best of her intelligence -the power bequeathed to her. - -'I am but God's and Bela's steward, as my steward is mine,' she said -always to herself, and never avoided any duty or labour entailed on -her, never allowed weariness or self-indulgence to enervate her. _Qui -facit per alium, facit per se_ had been early taught to her, and she -never forgot it. She never did anything vicariously which concerned -those dependent upon her. And she was an absolute sovereign in this her -kingdom of glaciers and forests; her frozen sea as she had called it. -She never avoided a duty merely because it was troublesome, and she -never gave her signature without knowing why and wherefore. It is easy -to be generous; to be just is more difficult and burdensome. Generous -by temper, she strove earnestly to be always just as well, and her life -was not without those fatigues which a very great fortune brings with -it to anyone who regards it as a sacred trust. - -She had wide possessions and almost incalculable wealth. She had salt -mines in Galicia, she had Vosläuer vineyards in the Salzkammergut, she -had vast plains of wheat, and leagues on leagues of green lands, where -broods of horses bred and reared away in the steppes of Hungary. She -had a palace in the Herrengasse at Vienna, another in the Residenzplatz -of Salzburg; she had forests and farms in the Innthal and the -Zillerthal; she had a beautiful little schloss on the green Ebensee, -which had been the dower-house of the Countesses of Szalras, and she -had pine-woods, quarries, vineyards, and even a whole riverain town -on the Danube, with a right to take toll on the ferry there, which -had been given to her forefathers as far back as the days of Mathias -Carvin, a right that she herself had let drop into desuetude. 'I do -not want the poor folks' copper kreutzer,' she said to her lawyers -when they remonstrated. What did please her was the fact coupled with -this right that even the Kaiser could not have entered her little town -without his marshal thrice knocking at the gates, and receiving from -the warder the permission to pass, in the words, 'The Counts of Idrac -bid you come in peace.' - -All these things and places made a vast source of revenue, and the -property, whose title-deeds and archives lay in many a chest and coffer -in the old city of Salzburg, was one of the largest in Europe. It would -have given large portions and dowries to a score of sons and daughters -and been none the worse. And it was all accumulating on the single head -of one young and lonely woman! She was the last of her race; there were -distant collateral branches, but none of them near enough to have any -title to Hohenszalras. She could bequeath it where she would, and she -had already willed it to her Kaiserin, in a document shut up in an iron -chest in the city of Salzburg. She thought the Crown would be a surer -and juster guardian of her place and people than any one person, whose -caprices she could not foretell, whose extravagance or whose injustice -she could not foresee. Sometimes, even to the spiritual mind of the -Princess Ottilie, the persistent refusal of her niece to think of any -marriage seemed almost a crime against mankind. - -What did the Crown want with it? - -The Princess was a woman of absolutely; loyal sentiment towards all -ancient sovereignties. She believed in Divine right, and was as strong -a royalist as it is possible for anyone to be whose fathers have been -devoured like an anchovy by M. de Bismarck, and who has the sympathy -of fellow feeling with Frohsdorf and Gmünden. But even her devotion to -the rights of monarchs failed to induce her to see why the Habsburg -should inherit Hohenszalras. The Crown is a noble heir, but it is one -which leaves the heart cold. Who would ever care for her people, and -her forests, and her animals as she had done? Even from her beloved -Kaiserin she could not hope for that. 'If I had married?' she thought, -the words of the Princess Ottilie coming back upon her memory. - -Perhaps, for the sake of her people and her lands, it might have been -better. - -But there are women to whom the thought of physical surrender of -themselves is fraught with repugnance and disgust; a sentiment so -strong that only a great passion vanquishes it. She was one of these -women, and passion she had never felt. - -'Even for Hohenszalras I could not,' she thought, as she leaned on -the embrasure cushions, and watched the moon, gradually covered with -the heavy blue-black clouds. The Crown should be her heir and reign -here after her, when she should be laid by the side of Bela in that -beautiful dusky chapel beneath the shrines of ivory and silver, where -all the dead of the House of Szalras slept. But it was an heir which -left her heart cold. - -She rose abruptly, left the embrasure, and began to examine the letters -of the day and put down heads of replies to them, which her secretary -could amplify on the morrow. - -One letter her secretary could not answer for her; it was a letter -which gave her pain, and which she read with an impatient sigh. It -urged her return to the world as the letter of her Empress had done, -and it urged with timidity, yet with passion, a love that had been -loyal to her from her childhood. It was signed 'Egon Vàsàrhely.' - -'It is the old story,' she thought. 'Poor Egon! If only one could have -loved him, how it would have simplified everything; and I do love him, -as I once loved Gela and Victor.' - -But that was not the love which Egon Vàsàrhely pleaded for with the -tenderness of one who had been to her as a brother from her babyhood, -and the frankness of a man who knew his own rank so high and his own -fortunes so great, that no mercenary motive could be attributed to -him even when he sought the mistress of Hohenszalras. It was the old -story: she had heard it many times from him and from others in those -brilliant winters in Vienna which had preceded Bela's death. And it had -always failed to touch her. Women who have never loved are harsh to -love from ignorance. - -At that moment a louder crash of thunder reverberated from hill to -hill, and the Glöckner domes seemed to shout to the crests of the -Venediger. - -'I hope that stranger is housed and safe,' she thought, her mind -reverting to the poacher of whom she had spoken on the terrace at -sunset. His face came before her memory: a beautiful face, oriental -in feature, northern in complexion, fair and cold, with blue eyes of -singular brilliancy. - -The forests of Hohenszalras are in themselves a principality. Under -enormous trees, innumerable brooks and little torrents dash downwards -to lose themselves in the green twilight of deep gorges; broad, dark, -still lakes lie like cups of jade in the bosom of the woods; up above, -where the Alpine firs and the pinus cembra shelter him, the bear lives -and the wolf too; and higher yet, where the glacier lies upon the -mountain side, the merry steinbock leaps from peak to peak, and the -white-throat vulture and the golden eagle nest. The oak, the larch, -the beech, the lime, cover the lower hills, higher grow the pines and -firs, the lovely drooping Siberian pine foremost amidst them. In the -lower wood grassy roads cross and thread the leafy twilight. A stranger -had been traversing these woods that morning, where he had no right -or reason to be. Forest-law was sincerely observed and meted out at -Hohenszalras, but of that he was ignorant or careless. - -Before him, in the clear air, a large, dark object rose and spread -huge pinions to the wind and soared aloft. The trespasser lifted his -rifle to his shoulder, and in another moment would have fired. But an -alpenstock struck the barrel up into the air, and the shot went off -harmless towards the clouds. The great bird, startled by the report, -flew rapidly to the westward; the Countess Wanda said quietly to the -poacher in her forest, 'You cannot carry arms here,' - -He looked at her angrily, and in surprise. - -'You have lost me the only eagle I have seen for years,' he said -bitterly, with a flush of discomfiture and powerless rage on his fair -face. - -She smiled a little. - -'That bird was not an eagle, sir; it was a white-throated vulture, a -_kuttengeier._ But had it been an eagle--or a sparrow--you could not -have killed it on my lands.' - -Pale still with anger, he uncovered his head. - -'I have not the honour to know in whose presence I stand,' he muttered -sullenly. 'But I have Imperial permission to shoot wherever I choose.' - -'His Majesty has no more loyal subject than myself,' she answered him. -'But his dominion does not extend over my forests. You are on the -ground of Hohenszalras, and your offence----' - -'I know nothing of Hohenszalras!' he interrupted, with impatience. - -She blew a whistle, and her head forester with three jägers sprang up -as if out of the earth, some great wolf-hounds, grinning with their -fangs, waiting but a word to spring. In one second the rangers had -thrown themselves on the too audacious trespasser, had pinioned him, -and had taken his rifle. - -Confounded, disarmed, humiliated, and stunned by the suddenness of the -attack, he stood mute and very pale. - -'You know Hohenszalras now!' said the mistress of it, with a smile, -as she watched his seizure seated on a moss-grown boulder of granite, -black Donau and white Neva by her side. He was pale with impotent fury, -conscious of an indefensible and absurd position. The jäger looked at -their mistress; they had slipped a cord over his wrists, and tied them -behind his back; they looked to her for a sign of assent to break his -rifle. She stood silent, amused with her victory and his chastisement; -a little derision shining in her lustrous eyes. - -'You know Hohenszalras now!' she said once more. 'Men have been shot -dead for what you were doing. If you be, indeed, a friend of my -Emperor's, of course you are welcome here; but----' - -'What right have you to offer me this indignity,' muttered the -offender, his fair features changing from white to red, and red to -white, in his humiliation and discomfiture. - -'Right!' echoed the mistress of the forests. 'I have the right to do -anything I please with you! You seem to me to understand but little of -forest laws.' - -'Madame, were you not a woman, you would have had bloodshed.' - -'Oh, very likely. That sometimes happens, although seldom, as all the -Hohe Tauern knows how strictly these forests are preserved. My men are -looking to me for permission to break your rifle. That is the law, sir.' - -'Since 'Forty-eight,' said the trespasser, with what seemed to her -marvellous insolence, 'all the old forest laws are null and void. It -is scarcely allowable to talk of trespass.' - -A look of deep anger passed over her face. 'The follies of 'Forty-eight -have nothing to do with Hohenszalras,' she said, very coldly. 'We hold -under charters of our own, by grants and rights which even Rudolf of -Habsburg never dared meddle with. I am not called on to explain this to -you, but you appear to labour under such strange delusions that it is -as well to dispel them.' - -He stood silent, his eyes cast downward. His humiliation seemed to -him enormously disproportioned to his offending. The hounds menaced -him with deep growls and grinning fangs; the jägers held his gun; his -wrists were tied behind him. 'Are you indeed a friend of the Kaiser?' -she repeated to him. - -'I am no friend of his,' he answered bitterly and sullenly. 'I met -him a while ago zad-hunting on the Thorstein. His signature is in my -pocket; bid your jäger take it out.' - -'I will not doubt your word,' she said to him. 'You look a gentleman. -If you will give me your promise to shoot no more on these lands I will -let them set you free and render you up your rifle.' - -'You have the law with you,' said the trespasser moodily. 'Since I can -do no less--I promise.' - -'You are ungracious, sir,' said Wanda, with a touch of severity and -irritation. 'That is neither wise nor grateful, since you are nothing -more or better than a poacher on my lands. Nevertheless, I will trust -you.' - -Then she gave a sign to the jägers and a touch to the hounds: the -latter rose and ceased their growling; the former instantly, though -very sorrowfully, untied the cord off the wrists of their prisoner, and -gave him back his unloaded rifle. - -'Follow that path into the ravine; cross that; ascend the opposite -hills, and you will find the high road. I advise you to take it, sir. -Good-day to you.' - -She pointed out the forest path which wound downward under the arolla -pines. He hesitated a moment, then bowed very low with much grace, -turned his back on her and her foresters and her dogs, and began slowly -to descend the moss-grown slope. - -He hated her for the indignity she had brought upon him, and the -ridicule to which she forced him to submit; yet the beauty of her had -startled and dazzled him. He had thought of the great Queen of the -Nibelungen-Lied, whose armour lies in the museum of Vienna. - -'Alas! why have you let him go, my Countess!' murmured Otto, the head -forester. - -'The Kaiser had made him sacred,' she answered, with a smile; and -then she called Donau and Neva, who were roaming, and went on her way -through her forest. - -'What strange and cruel creatures we are!' she thought. 'The vulture -would have dropped into the ravine. He would never have found it. The -audacity, too, to fire on a _kuttengeier_; if it had been any lesser -bird one might have pardoned it.' - -For the eagle, the gypæte, the white-throated pygargue, the buzzard, -and all the family of falcons were held sacred at Hohenszalras, and -lived in their mountain haunts rarely troubled. It was an old law there -that the great winged monarchs should never be chased, except by the -Kaiser himself when he came there. So that the crime of the stranger -had been more than trespass and almost treason! Her heart was hard to -him, and she felt that she had been too lenient. Who could tell but -that that rifle would bring down some free lord of the air? - -She listened with the keen ear of one used to the solitude of the hills -and woods; she thought he would shoot something out of bravado. But all -was silent in that green defile beneath whose boughs the stranger was -wending on his way. She listened long, but she heard no shots, although -in those still heights the slightest noise echoed from a hundred walls -of rock and ice. She walked onward through the deep shadow of the thick -growing beeches; she had her alpenstock in her right hand, her little -silver horn hung at her belt, and beside it was a pair of small ivory -pistols, pretty as toys, but deadly as revolvers could be. She stooped -here and there to gather some lilies of the valley, which were common -enough in these damp grassy glades. - -'Where could that stranger have come from, Otto?' she asked of her -jäger. - -'He must have come over the Hündspitz, my Countess,' said Otto. 'Any -other way he would have been stopped by our men and lightened of his -rifle.' - -'The Hündspitz!' she echoed, in wonder, for the mountain so called was -a wild inaccessible place, divided by a parapet of ice all the year -round from the range of the Gross Glöckner. - -'That must he,' said the huntsman,'and for sure if an honest man had -tried to come that way he would have been hurled headlong down the -ice-wall----' - -'He is the Kaiser's _protégé_, Otto,' said his mistress, with a smile, -but the old jäger muttered that they had only his own word for that. -It had pierced Otto's soul to let the poacher's rifle go. - -She thought of all this with some compunction now, as she sat in her -own warm safe chamber and heard the thunder, the wind, the raising of -the storm which had now fairly broken in full fury. She felt uneasy for -the erring stranger. The roads over the passes were still perilous from -avalanches and half melted snow in the crevasses; the time of year was -more dangerous than midwinter. - -'I ought to have given him a guide,' she thought, and went out and -joined the Princess Ottilie, who had awakened from her after-dinner -repose under the loud roll of the thunder and the constantly recurring -flashes of lightning. - -'I am troubled for that traveller whom I saw in the woods to-day,' she -said to her aunt. 'I trust he is safe housed.' - -'If he had been a pastry-cook from the Engadine, or a seditious -heretical _colporteur_ from Geneva, you would have sent him into the -kitchens to feast,' said the Princess, contentiously. - -'I hope he is safe housed,' repeated Wanda. 'It is several hours ago; -he may very well have reached the posthouse.' - -'You have the satisfaction of thinking the _kuttengeier_ is safe, -sitting on some rock tearing a fish to pieces,' said the Princess, who -was irritable because she was awakened before her time. 'Will you have -some coffee or some tea? You look disturbed, my dear; after all, you -say the man was a poacher.' - -'Yes. But I ought to have seen him safe off my ground. There are a -hundred kinds of death on the hills for anyone who does not know them -well. Let us look at the weather from the hall; one can see better from -there.' - -From the Rittersäal, whose windows looked straight down the seven -miles of the lake water, she watched the tempest. All the mountains -were sending back echoes of thunder, which sounded like salvoes of -artillery. There was little to be seen for the dense rain mist; the -beacon of the Holy Isle glimmered redly through the darkness. In the -upper air snow was falling; the great white peaks and pinnacles ever -and again flashed strangely into view as the lightning illumined them; -the Glöckner-wanda towered above all others a moment in the glare, and -seemed like ice and fire mingled. - -'They are like the great white thrones of the Apocalypse,' she thought. - -Beneath, the lake boiled and seethed in blackness like a witches' -cauldron. - -A storm was always terrible to her, from the memory of Bela. - -In the lull of a second in the tempest of sound it seemed to her as if -she heard some other cry than that of the wind. - -'Open one of these windows and listen,' she said to Hubert, her -major-domo. 'I fancy I hear a shout--a scream. I am not certain, but -listen well.' - -'There is some sound,' said Hubert, after a moment of attention. 'It -comes from the lake. But no boat could live long in that water, my -Countess.' - -'No!' she said, with a quick sigh, remembering how her brother had -died. 'But we must do what we can. It may be one of the lake fishermen -caught in the storm before he could make for home. Ring the alarm-bell, -and go out, all of you, to the water stairs. I will come, too.' - -In a few moments the deep bell that hung in the chime tower, and which -was never sounded except for death or danger, added its sonorous brazen -voice to the clang and clamour of the storm. All the household paused, -and at the summons, coming from north, south, east, and west of the -great pile of buildings, grooms, gardeners, huntsmen, pages, scullions, -underlings, all answered to the metal tongue, which told them of some -peril at Hohenszalras. - -With a hooded cloak thrown over her, she went out into the driving -rain, down the terrace to the head of what were called the water -stairs; a flight of granite steps leading to the little quay upon the -eastward shore of the Szalrassee, where were moored in fair weather the -pleasure boats, the fishing punts, and the canoes which belonged to the -castle: craft all now safe in the boat-house. - -'Make no confusion,' she said to them. 'There is no danger in the -castle. There is some boat, or some swimmer, on the lake. Light the -terrace beacon and we shall see.' - -She was very pale. There was no storm on those waters that did not -bring back to her, as poignant as the first fresh hours of its grief, -the death of Bela. - -The huge beacon of iron, a cage set on high and filled with tow and tar -and all inflammable things, was set on fire, and soon threw a scarlet -glare over the scene. - -The shouts had ceased. - -'They may be drowned,' she said, with her lips pressed tightly -together. 'I hear nothing now. Have you the rope and the lifeboat -ready? We must wait for more light.' - -At that moment the whole of the tar caught, and the beacon blazed at -its fiercest in its iron cage, as it had used to blaze in the ages gone -by as a war signal, when the Prelates of Salzburg and Birchtesgaden -were marching across the marshes of Pinzgau in quarrel or feud with the -lords of the strongest fortress in the Hohe Tauern. - -In the struggling light which met the blue glance of the lightning they -could see the angry waters of the lake as far as the Holy Isle, and -near to land, only his head above the water, was a man drowning, as the -pilgrims had drowned. - -'For the love of God--the rope!' she cried, and almost before the words -had escaped from her her men had thrown a lifebuoy to the exhausted -swimmer, and pushed one of the boats into the seething darkness of the -lake. But the swimmer had strength enough to catch hold of the buoy -as it was hurled to him by the _fischermeister's_ unerring hand, and -he clung to it and kept his grasp on it, despite the raging of the -wind and waters, until the boat reached him. He was fifty yards off -the shore, and he was pulled into the little vessel, which was tossed -to and fro upon the black waters like a shell; the _fohn_ was blowing -fiercely all the time, and flung the men headlong on the boat's bottom -twice ere they could seize the swimmer, who helped himself, for, though -mute; and almost breathless, he was not insensible, and had not lost -all his strength. If he had not been so near the land he and the boat's -crew would all have sunk, and dead bodies would once more have been -washed on the shore of the Szalrassee with the dawn of another day. - -Drenched, choked with water, and thrown from side to side as the wind -played with them as a child with its ball, the men ran their boat at -last against the stairs, and landed with their prize. - -Dripping from head to foot, and drawing deep breaths of exhaustion, -the rescued man stood on the terrace steps bareheaded and in his -shirt-sleeves, his brown velvet breeches pulled up to his knees, his -fair hair lifted by the wind, and soaked with wet. - -She recognised the trespasser of the forest. - -'Madame, behold me in your power again!' he said, with a little smile, -though he breathed with labour, and his voice was breathless and low. - -'You are welcome, sir. Any stranger or friend would be welcome in such -a night,' she said, with the red glow of the beacon light shed upon -her. 'Pray do not waste breath or time in courtesies. Come up the steps -and hurry to the house. You must be faint and bruised.' - -'No, no,' said the swimmer; but as he spoke his eyes closed, he -staggered a little; a deadly faintness and cold had seized him, and -cramp came on all his limbs. - -The men caught him, and carried him up the stairs; he strove to -struggle and protest, but Otto the forester stooped over him. - -'Keep you still,' he muttered. 'You have the Countess's orders. -Trespass has cost you dear, my master.' - -'I do not think he is greatly hurt,' said the mistress of Szaravola to -her house physician. 'But go you to him, doctor, and see that he is -warmly housed and has hot drinks. Put him in the Strangers' Gallery, -and pray take care my aunt is not alarmed.' - -The Princess Ottilie at that moment was alternately eating a _nougat_ -out of her sweetmeat box and telling the beads of her rosary. The sound -of the wind and the noise of the storm could not reach her in her -favourite blue-room, all _capitonnée_ with turquoise silks as it was; -the only chamber in all Szaravola that was entirely modern and French. - -'I do hope Wanda is running no risk,' she thought, from time to time. -'It would be quite like her to row down the lake.' - -But she sat still in her lamp light, and told her beads. - -A few moments later her niece entered. Her waterproof mantle had kept -her white gown from the rain and spray. - -There was a little moisture on her hair, that was all. She did not -look as if she had stirred further from her drawing-room than the -Princess had done. - -Now that the stranger was safe and sound he had ceased to have any -interest for her; he was nothing more than any flotsam of the lake; -only one other to sleep beneath the roofs of Hohenszalras, where half a -hundred slept already. - -The castle, in the wild winters that shut out the Hohe Tauern from the -world, was oftentimes a hospice for travellers, though usually those -travellers were only pedlars, colporteurs, mule-drivers, clock-makers -of the Zillerthal or carpet weavers of the Defreggerthal, too late in -the year to pursue their customary passage over the passes in safety. -To such the great beacon of the Holy Isle and the huge servants' hall -of Szaravola were well known. - -She sat down to her embroidery frame without speaking; she was working -some mountain flowers in silks on velvet, for a friend in Paris' The -flowers stood in a glass on a table. - -'It is unkind of you to go out in that mad way on such a night as -this, and return looking so unlike having had an adventure!' said the -Princess, a little pettishly. - -'There has been no adventure,' said Wanda von Szalras, with a smile. -'But there is what may do as well--a handsome stranger who' has been -saved from drowning.' - -Even as she spoke her face changed, her mouth quivered; she crossed -herself, and murmured, too low for the other to hear: - -'Bela, my beloved, think not that I forget!' - -The Princess Ottilie sat up erect in her chair, and her blue eyes -brightened like a girl of sixteen. - -'Then there _is_ an adventure! Tell it me quick! My dear, silence is -very stately and very becoming to you; but sometimes--excuse me--you do -push it to annoying extremes.' - -'I was afraid of agitation for you,' said the Countess Wanda; and then -she told the Princess what had occurred that night. - -'And I never knew that a poor soul was in peril!' cried the Princess, -conscious-stricken. 'And is that the last you have seen of him? Have -you never asked----?' - -'Hubert says he is only bruised; they have taken him to the Strangers' -Gallery. Here is Herr Greswold--he will tell us more.' - -The person who entered was the physician of Hohenszalras. He was -a little old man of great talent, with a clever, humorous, mild -countenance; he had, coupled with a love for rural life, a passion -for botany and natural history, which made his immurement in the -Iselthal welcome to him, and the many fancied ailments of the Princess -endurable. He bowed very low alternately to both ladies, and refused -with a protest the chair to which the Countess Wanda motioned him. He -said that the stranger was not in the least seriously injured; he had -been seized with cramp and chills, but he had administered a cordial, -and these were passing. The gentleman seemed indisposed to speak, -shivered a good deal, and was inclined to sleep. - -'He is a gentleman, think you? asked the Princess. - -The Herr Professor said that to him it appeared so. - -'And of what rank?' - -The physician thought it was impossible to say. - -'It is always possible,' said the Princess, a little impatiently. 'Is -his linen fine? Is his skin smooth? Are his hands white and slender? -Are his wrists and ankles small?' - -Herr Greswold said that he was sorely grieved, but he had not taken -any notice as to any of these things; he had been occupied with his -diagnosis of the patient's state; for, he added, he thought the swimmer -had been long in the water, and the Szalrassee was of very dangerously -low temperature at night, being fed as it Was from the glaciers and -snows of the mountains. - -'It is very interesting,' said the Princess; 'but pray observe what I -have named, now that you return to his chamber.' - -Greswold took the hint, and bowed himself out of the drawing-room. Frau -Ottilie returned to her nougats. - -'I wish that one could know who he was,' she said regretfully. To -harbour an unknown person was not agreeable to her in these days of -democracies and dynamite. - -'What does it matter?' said her niece. 'Though he were a Nihilist or a -convict from the mines, he would have to be sheltered to-night.' - -'The Herr Professor is very inattentive,' said the Princess, with an -accent that from one of her sweetness was almost severe. - -'The Herr Professor is compiling the Flora of the Hohe Tauern,' said -her niece, 'and he will publish it in Leipzig some time in the next -twenty years. How can a botanist care for so unlovely a creature as a -man? If it were a flower indeed!' - -'I never approved of that herbarium,' said the Princess, still -severely. 'It is too insignificant an occupation beside those great -questions of human ills which his services are retained to study. -He is inattentive, and he grows even impertinent: he almost told me -yesterday that my neuralgia was all imagination!' - -'He took you for a flower, mother mine, because you are so lovely; and -so he thought you could have no mortal pain!' said Wanda, tenderly. - -Then after a pause she added: - -'Dear aunt, come with me. I have asked Father Ferdinand to have a mass -to-night for Bela. I fancy Bela is glad that no other life has been -taken by the lake.' - -The Princess rose quickly and kissed her. - -In the Strangers' Gallery, in a great chamber of panelled oak and -Flemish tapestries, the poacher, as he lay almost asleep on a grand old -bed, with yellow taffeta hangings, and the crown of the Szalras Counts -in gilded bronze above its head, he heard as if in his dream the sound -of chanting voices and the deep slow melodies of an organ. - -He stirred and opened his drowsy eyes. - -'Am I in heaven?' he asked feebly. Yet he was a man who, when he was -awake and well, believed not in heaven. - -The physician, sitting by his bedside, laid his hand upon his wrist. -The pulse was beating strongly but quickly. - -'You are in the Burg of Hohenszalras,' he answered him. 'The music -you hear comes from the chapel; there is a midnight mass. A mass of -thanksgiving for you.' - -The heavy lids fell over the eyes of the weary man, and the dreamy -sense of warmth and peace that was upon him lulled him into the -indifference of slumber. - - - - -Chapter III - - -With the morning, though the storm had ceased and passed away, the -clouds were dark, the mountains were obscured, and the rain was pouring -down upon lake and land. - -It was still early in the day when the stranger was aroused to the full -sense of awaking in a room unknown to him; he had slept all through the -night; he was refreshed and without fever. His left arm was strained, -and he had many bruises; otherwise he was conscious of no hurt. - -'Twice in that woman's power,' he thought, with anger, as he looked -round the great tapestried chamber that sheltered him, and tried to -disentangle his actual memories of the past night from the dreams that -had haunted him of the Nibelungen Queen, who all night long he had -seen in her golden armour, with her eyes which, like those of the Greek -nymph, dazzled those on whom they gazed to madness. Dream and fact had -so interwoven themselves that it was with an effort he could sever the -two, awaking as he did now in an unfamiliar chamber, and surrounded -with those tapestries whose colossal figures seemed the phantoms of a -spirit world. - -He was a man in whom some vein of superstition had outlived the -cold reason and the cynical mockeries of the worldly experiences -and opinions in which he was steeped. A shudder of cold ran through -his blood as he opened his eyes upon that dim, tranquil, and vast -apartment, with the stories of the Tannhäuser legend embroidered on the -walls. - -'I am he! I am he!' he thought incoherently, watching the form of the -doomed knight speeding through the gloom and snow. - -'How does the most high and honourable gentleman feel himself this -morning?' asked of him, in German, a tall white-haired woman, who might -have stepped down from an old panel of Metzu. - -The simple commonplace question roused him from the mists of his -fancies and fears, and realised to him the bare fact that he was a -guest, unbidden, in the walls of Szaravola. - -The physician also drew near his bed to question him; and a boy brought -on a tray Rhine wine and Tokayer Ausbruck, coffee and chocolate, bread -and eggs. - -He broke his fast with a will, for he had eaten nothing since the day -before at noon; and the Professor Greswold congratulated him on his -good night's rest, and on his happy escape from the Szalrassee. - -Then he himself said, with a little confusion: - -'I saw a lady last night?' - -'Certainly, you saw our lady,' said Greswold, with a smile. - -'What do you call her?' he asked, eagerly. - -The physician answered: - -'She is the Countess Wanda von Szalras. She is sole mistress here. -But for her, my dear sir, I fear me you would be now lying in those -unfathomed depths that the bravest of us fear.' - -The stranger shuddered a little. - -'I was a madman to try the lake with such an overcast sky; but I had -missed my road, and I was told that it lay on the other side of the -water. Some peasants tried to dissuade me from crossing, but I am a -good rower and swimmer too; so I set forth to pull myself over your -lake.' - -'With a sky black as ink! I suppose you are used to more serene -summers. Midsummer is not so different to midwinter here that you can -trust to its tender mercies.' - -The stranger was silent. - -'She took my gun from me in the morning,' he said abruptly. The memory -of the indignity rankled in him, and made bitter the bread and wine. - -The physician laughed. - -'Were you poaching? Oh, that is almost a hanging matter in the -Hohenszalras woods. Had you met Otto without our lady he would most -likely have shot you without warning.' - -'Are you savages in the Tauern?' - -'Oh no; but we are very feudal still, and our forest laws have escaped -alteration in this especial part of the province.' - -'She has been very hospitable to me, since my crime was so great.' - -'She is the soul of hospitality, and the Schloss is a hospice,' said -the physician. 'When there is no town nearer than ten Austrian miles, -and the nearest posting-house is at Windisch-Matrey, it is very -necessary to exercise the primitive virtues; it is our compensation -for our feudalism. But take some tokayer, my dear sir; you are weaker -than you know. You have had a bath of ice; you had best lie still, and -I will send you some journals and books.' - -'I would rather get up and go away,' said the stranger. 'These bruises -are nothing. I will thank your lady, as you call her, and then go on my -way as quickly as I may.' - -'I see you do not understand feudal ways, though you have suffered from -them,' said the doctor. 'You shall get up if you wish; but I am certain -my lady will not let you leave here to-day. The rains are falling -in torrents; the roads are dangerous; a bridge has broken down over -the Bürgenbach, which you must cross to get away. In a word, if you -insist on departure, they will harness their best horses for you, for -all the antique virtues have refuge here, and amongst them is a grand -hospitality; but you will possibly kill the horses, and perhaps the -postillions, and you will not even then get very far upon your way. Be -persuaded by me. Wait at least until the morning dawns.' - -'I had better burden your lady with an unbidden guest than kill her -horses, certainly,' said the stranger. 'How is she sole mistress here? -Is there a Count von Szalras? Is she a widow?' - -'She has never married,' answered Greswold; and gave his patient a -brief sketch of the tragic fates of the lords of Hohenszalras, amongst -whom death had been so busy.' - -'A very happy woman to be so rich, and so free!' said the traveller, -with a little impatient envy; and he added, 'She is very handsome also; -indeed, beautiful. I now remember to have heard of her in Paris. Her -hand has been esteemed one of the great prizes of Europe.' - -'I think she will never marry,' said the old man. - -'Oh, my dear doctor, who can make such at least she looks young. What -age may she be?' - -'She was twenty-four years of age on Easter Day. As for happiness, -when you know the Countess Wanda, you will know that she would go out -as poor as S. Elizabeth, and self-dethroned like her, most willingly, -could she by such a sacrifice see her brothers living around her.' - -The stranger gave a little cynical laugh of utter incredulity, which -dismayed and annoyed the old professor. - -'You do not know her,' he said angrily. - -'I know humanity,' said the other. 'Will you kindly take all my -apologies and regrets to the Countess, and give her my name; the -Marquis de Sabran. She can satisfy herself as to my identity at any -embassy she may care to consult.' - -When he said his name, the professor gave a great cry and started from -his seat. - -'Sabran!' he echoed. 'You edited the "Mexico"!' he exclaimed, and gazed -over his spectacles in awe and sympathy commingled at the stranger, who -smiled and answered---- - -'Long ago, yes. Have you heard of it?' - -'Heard of it!' echoed Greswold. 'Do you take us for barbarians, sir?' -It is here, both in my small library, which is the collection of a -specialist, and in the great library of the castle, which contains a -million of volumes.' - -'I am twice honoured,' said the stranger, with a smile of some irony. -The good professor was a little disconcerted, and his enthusiasm was -damped and cooled. He felt as much embarrassment as though he had been -the owner of a discredited work. - -'May I not be permitted to congratulate you, sir?' he said timidly. 'To -have produced that great work is to possess a title to the gratitude -and esteem of all educated men.' - -'You are very good,' said Sabran, somewhat indifferently; 'but all -that is great in that book is the Marquis Xavier's. I am but the mere -compiler.' - -'The compilation, the editing of it, required no less learning than the -original writer displayed, and that was immense,' said the physician, -and with all the enthusiasm of a specialist he plunged into discussion -of the many notable points of a mighty intellectual labour, which had -received the praise of all the cultured world. - -Sabran listened courteously, but with visible weariness. 'You are very -good,' he said at last. 'But you will forgive me if I say that I have -heard so much of the "Mexico" that I am tempted to wish I had never -produced it. I did so as a duty; it was all I could do in honour of one -to whom I owed far more than mere life itself.' - -Greswold bowed and said no more. - -'Give me my belt,' said the stranger to the man who waited on him; -it was a leathern belt, which had been about his loins; it was made -to hold gold and notes, a small six-chambered revolver, and a watch; -these were all in it, and with his money was the imperial permission to -shoot, which had been given, him by Franz Josef the previous autumn on -the Thorstein. - -'Your Countess' will doubtless recognise her Emperor's signature,' he -said, as he gave the paper to the physician. 'It will serve at least as -a passport, if not as a letter of presentation.' - -Réné, Marquis de Sabran-Romaris, was one of those persons who -illustrate the old fairy tale, of all the good gifts at birth being -marred by the malison of one godmother. He had great physical beauty, -personal charm, and facile talent; but his very facility was his bane. -He did all things so easily and well, that he had never acquired the -sterner quality of application. He was a brilliant and even profound -scholar, an accomplished musician, a consummate critic of art; and -was endowed, moreover, with great natural tact, taste, and correct -intuition. - -Being, as he was, a poor man, these gifts should have made him an -eminent one or a wealthy one, but the perverse fairy who had cursed -when the other had blessed him, had contrived to make all these graces -and talents barren. Whether it be true or not that the world knows -nothing of its greatest men, it is quite true that its cleverest men -very often do nothing of importance all their lives long. He did -nothing except acquire a distinct repute as a _dilettante_ in Paris, -and a renown in the clubs of being always serene and fortunate at play. - -He had sworn to himself when he had been a youth to make his career -worthy of his name; but the years had slipped away, and he had done -nothing. He was a very clever man, and he had once set a high if a cold -and selfish aim before him as his goal. But he had done worse even than -fail; he had never even tried to reach it. - -He was only a _boulevardier_; popular and admired amongst men for his -ready wit and his cool courage, and by women often adored and often -hated, and sometimes, by himself, thoroughly despised: never so much -despised as when by simple luck at play or on the Bourse he made the -money which slid through his fingers with rapidity. - -All he had in the world were the wind-torn oaks and the sea-washed -rocks of a bleak and lonely Breton village, and a few hundred thousand -francs' worth of pictures, porcelains, arms, and _bibelots_, which -had accumulated in his rooms on the Boulevard Haussmann, bought at -the Drouot in the forenoons after successful play at night. Only two -things in him were unlike the men whose associate he was: he was as -temperate as an Arab, seldom even touching wine; and he was a keen -mountaineer and athlete, once off the asphalte of the Boulevards. For -the rest, popular though he was in the society he frequented, no -living man could boast of any real intimacy with him. He had a thousand -acquaintances, but he accepted no friend. Under the grace and suavity -of a very courtly manner he wore the armour of a great reserve. - -'At heart you have the taciturnity and the _sauvagerie_ of the -Armorican beneath all your polished suavity,' said a woman of his world -to him once; and he did not contradict her. - -Men did not quarrel with him for it: he was a fine swordsman and a dead -shot: and women were allured all the more surely to him because they -felt that they never really entered his life or took any strong hold on -it. - -Such as he was he lay now half-awake on the great bed under its amber -canopy, and gazed dreamily at the colossal figures of the storied -tapestry, where the Tuscan idlers of the Decamerone wore the sombre -hues and the stiff and stately garb of Flemish fashion of the sixteenth -century. - -'I wonder why I tried so hard to live last night! I am not in love -with life,' he thought to himself, as he slowly remembered all that -had happened, and recalled the face of the lady who had leaned down -to him from over the stone parapet in the play of the torchlight and -lightnings. And yet life seemed good and worth having as he recalled -that boiling dusky swirl of water which had so nearly swallowed him up -in its anger. - -He was young enough to enjoy; he was blessed with a fine constitution -and admirable health, which even his own excesses had not impaired; he -had no close ties to the world, but he had a frequent enjoyment of it, -which made it welcome to him. The recovery of existence always enhances -its savour; and as he lay dreamily recalling the sharp peril he had -run, he was simply and honestly glad to be amongst living men. - -He remained still when the physician had left and looked around him; -in the wide hearth a fire of oak logs was burning; rain was beating -against the painted panes of the oriel casements; there was old -oak, old silver, old ivory in the furniture of the chamber, and the -tapestries were sombre and gorgeous. It was a room of the sixteenth -century; but the wine was in jugs of Bacarat glass, and a box of -Turkish cigarettes stood beside them, with the Paris and Vienna -newspapers. Everything had been thought of that could contribute to -his comfort: he wondered if the doctor had thought of all this, or -if it was due to the lady. 'It is a magnificent hospice,' he said to -himself with a smile, and then he angrily remembered his rifle, his -good English rifle, that was now sunk for ever with his little boat in -the waters of the Szalrassee. 'Why did she offer me that outrage?' he -said to himself: it went hard with him to lie under her roof, to touch -her wine and bread. Yet he was aching in every limb, the bed was easy -and spacious, the warmth and the silence and the aromatic scent of the -burning pine-cones were alluring him to rest; he dropped off to sleep -again, the same calm sleep of fatigue that had changed into repose, and -nothing woke him till the forenoon was passed. - -'Good heavens! how I am trespassing on this woman's hospitality!' he -thought as he did awake, angry with himself for having been lulled into -this oblivion; and he began to rise at once, though he felt his limbs -stiff and his head for the moment light. - -'Cannot I get a carriage for S. Johann? My servant is waiting for me -there,' he said to the youth attending on him, when his bath was over. - -The lad smiled with amusement. - -'There are no carriages here but our lady's, and she will not let you -stir this afternoon, my lord,' he answered in German, as he aided the -stranger to put on his own linen and shooting breeches, now dry and -smoothed out by careful hands. - -'But I have no coat! said the traveller in discomfiture, remembering -that his coat was gone with his rifle and his powder-flask. - -'The Herr Professor thought you could perhaps manage with one of these. -They were all of Count Gela's, who was a tall man and about your make,' -said an older man-servant who had entered, and now showed him several -unworn or scarcely worn suits. - -'If you could wear one of these, my lord, for this evening, we will -send as soon as it is possible for your servant and your clothes to S. -Johann; but it is impossible to-day, because a bridge is down over the -Bürgenbach.' - -'You are all of you too good,' said Sabran, as he essayed a coat of -black velvet. - -Pull of his new acquaintance and all his talents, the good man Greswold -had hurried away to obey the summons of his ladies, who had desired -to see him. He found them in the white room, a grand salon hung with -white satin silver-fringed, and stately with white marble friezes -and columns, whence it took its name. It was a favourite room with -the mistress of the Schloss; at either end of it immense windows, -emblazoned and deeply embayed, looked out over the sublime landscape -without, of which at this moment every outline was shrouded in the grey -veil of an incessantly falling rain. - -With humble obeisances Greswold presented the message and the -credentials of her guest to Wanda von Szalras; it was the first -occasion that he had had of doing so. She read the document signed by -the Kaiser with a smile. - -'This is the paper which this unhappy gentleman spoke of when I -arrested him as a poacher,' she said to her aunt. 'The Marquis de -Sabran. The name is familiar to me: I have heard it before.' - -'Surely you do not forget the Pontêves-Bargême, the Ducs de Sabran?' -said the Princess, with some severity. S. Eleazar was a Comte de -Sabran!' - -'I know! But it is of something nearer to us than S. Eleazar that I am -thinking; there was surely some work or another which bore that name, -and was much read and quoted.' - -'He edited and annotated the great "Mexico",' said Herr Greswold, as -though all were told in that. - -'A _savant?_' murmured the Princess, in some contemptuous chagrin. -'Pray what is the "Mexico"?' - -'The grandest archæological and botanical work, the work of the finest -research and most varied learning that has been produced out of -Germany,' commenced the Professor, with eagerness, but the Princess -arrested him midway in his eloquence. - -'The French are all infidels, we know that; but one might have hoped -that in one of the old nobility, as his name would imply, some -lingering reverence for tradition remained.' - -'It is not a subversive, not a philosophic work,' said the Professor, -eagerly; but she silenced him. - -'It is a book! Why should a Marquis de Sabran write a book?' said the -Princess, with ineffable disdain. - -There were all the Fathers for anyone who wanted to read: what need for -any other use of printer's type? So she was accustomed to think and to -say when, scandalised, she saw the German, French, and English volumes, -of which whole cases were wont to arrive at Hohenszalras for the use -of Wanda von Szalras alone: works of philosophy and of science amongst -them which had been denounced in the 'Index.' - -'Dear mother,' said the Countess Wanda, 'I have read the "Mexico": -it is a grand monument raised to a dead man's memory out of his own -labours by one of his own descendants--his only descendant, if I -remember aright.' - -'Indeed,' said the Princess, unconvinced. 'I know those scientific -works by repute; they always consider the voyage of a germ of moss, -carried on an aerolite through an indefinite space for a billion of -ages, a matter much easier of credence than the "Life of St. Jerome." -I believe they call it sporadic transmission; they call typhus fever -the same.' - -'There is nothing of that in the "Mexico": it is a very fine work on -the archæology and history of the country, and on its flora.' - -'I should have supposed a Marquis de Sabran a gentleman,' said the -Princess, whom no precedent from the many monarchs who have been -guilty of inferior literature could convince that literature was other -than a trade much like shoemaking: at its best a sort of clerk's -quill-driving, to be equally pitied and censured. - -Here Greswold, who valued his post and knew his place too well to -defend either literature or sporadic germs, timidly ventured to suggest -that the Marquis might be well known amongst the nobility of western -France, although not of that immense distinction which finds its -chronicle in the Hof-Kalender. The Princess smiled. - -'_Petite noblesse._ You mean petite noblesse, my good Greswold? But -even the petite noblesse need not write books?' - -When, however, the further question arose of inviting the stranger to -come to their dinner-table, it was the haughtier Princess who advocated -the invitation; the mistress of the house demurred. She thought that -all requirements of courtesy and hospitality would be fulfilled by -allowing him to dine in his own apartments. - -'We do not know him,' she urged. 'No doubt he may very well be what he -says, but it is not easy to refer to an embassy while the rains are -making an island of the Tauern! Nay, dear mother, I am not suspicious; -but I think, as we are two women alone, we can fulfil all obligations -of hospitality towards this gentleman without making him personally -acquainted with ourselves.' - -'That is really very absurd. It is acting as if Hohenszalras were a -_gasthof_,' said the Princess, with petulance. 'It is not so often that -we have any relief to the tedium with which you are pleased to surround -yourself that we should be required to shut ourselves from any chance -break in it. Of course, if you send this person his dinner to his own -rooms, he will feel hurt, mortified; he will go away, probably on foot, -rather than remain where he is insulted. Breton nobility is not very -eminent, but it is very proud; it is provincial, territorial; but every -one knows it is ancient, and usually of the most loyal traditions alike -to Church and State. I should be the last person to advocate making a -friendship, or even an acquaintance, without the fullest inquiry; but -when it is a mere question of a politeness for twenty-four hours, -which can entail no consequences, then I must confess that I think -prejudices should yield before the obligations of courtesy. But of -course, my love, decide as you will: you are mistress.' - -The Countess Wanda smiled, and did not press her own opposition. She -perceived that the mind of her aunt was full of vivid and harmless -curiosity. - -In the end she suggested that the Princess should represent her, and -receive the foreign visitor with all due form and ceremony; but she -herself was still indisposed to admit a person of whose antecedents she -had no positive guarantee so suddenly and entirely into her intimacy. - -'You are extraordinarily suspicious,' said the elder lady, pettishly. -'If he were a pedlar or a colporteur, you would be willing to talk with -him.' - -'Pedlars and colporteurs cannot take any social advantage of one's -conversation afterwards,' replied her niece. 'We are not usually -invaded by men of rank here; so the precedent may not be perilous. Have -your own way, mother mine.' - -The Princess demurred, but finally accepted the compromise; reflecting -that if this stranger were to dine alone with her, she would be able to -ascertain much more about him than if Wanda, who had been created void -of all natural curiosity, and who would have been capable of living -with people twelve months without asking them a single question, would -render it possible to do were she present. - -Meanwhile, the physician hurried back to his new friend, who had a -great and peculiar interest for him as the editor of the "Mexico", and -offered him, with the permission of the Countess von Szalras, to wile -away the chill and gloomy day by an inspection of the Schloss. - -Joachim Greswold was a very learned and shrewd man, whom poverty and -love of tranquil opportunities of study had induced to bury himself -in the heart of the Glöckner mountains. He had already led a long, -severe, and blameless life of deep devotion and hard privation, -when the post of private physician at Hohenszalras in general, and -to the Princess Ottilie in especial, had been procured for him by -the interest of Prince Lilienhöhe. He had had many sorrows, trials, -and disappointments, which made the simple routine and the entire -solitude of his existence here welcome to him. But he was none the less -delighted to meet any companion of culture and intelligence to converse -with, and in his monotonous and lonely life it was a rare treat to be -able to exchange ideas with one fresh from the intellectual movements -of the outer world. - -The Professor found, not to his surprise since he had read the -"Mexico", that his elegant _grand seigneur_ knew very nearly as much -as he did of botany and of comparative anatomy; that he had travelled -nearly all over the world, and travelled to much purpose, and knew many -curious things of the flora of the Rio Grande, whilst it appeared that -he possessed in his cabinets in Paris a certain variety of orchid that -the doctor had always longed to obtain. He was entirely won over when -Sabran, to whom the dried flower was very indifferent, promised to -send it to him. The French Marquis had not Greswold's absolute love of -science; he had studied every thing that had come to his hand, because -he had a high intelligence, and an insatiable appetite for knowledge; -and he had no other kind of devotion to it; when he had penetrated its -mysteries, it lost all interest for him. - -At any rate he knew enough to make him an enchanting companion to a -learned man who was all alone in his learning, and received little -sympathy in it from anyone near him. - -'What a grand house to be shut up in the heart of the mountains!' said -Sabran, with a sigh. 'I do believe what romance there still is in the -world does lie in these forests of Austria, which have all the twilight -and the solitude that would suit Merlin or the Sleeping Beauty better -than anything we have in France, except, indeed, here and there an old -château like Chenonceaux, or Maintenon.' - -'The world has not spoilt us as yet,' said the doctor. 'We see few -strangers. Our people are full of old faiths, old loyalties, old -traditions. They are a sturdy and yet tender people. They are as -fearless as their own steinbock, and they are as reverent as saints -were in monastic days. Our mountains are as grand as the Swiss ones, -but, thank Heaven, they are unspoilt and little known. I tremble when -I think they have begun to climb the Gross Glöckner; all the mystery -and glory of our glaciers will vanish when they become mere points of -ascension. The alpenstock of the tourist is to the everlasting hills -what railway metals are to the plains. Thank God! the few railroads we -have are hundreds of miles asunder.' - -'You are a reactionist, Doctor?' - -'I am an old man, and I have learned the value of repose,' said -Greswold. 'You know we are called a slow race. It is only the unwise -amongst us who have quicksilver in their brains and toes.' - -'You have gold in the former, at least,' said Sabran, kindly, 'and I -dare say quicksilver is in your feet, too, when there is a charity to -be done?' - -Herr Joachim, who was simple in the knowledge of mankind, though shrewd -in mother-wit, coloured a little with pleasure. How well this stranger -understood him! - -The day went away imperceptibly and agreeably to the physician and to -the stranger in this pleasant rambling talk; whilst the rain poured -down in fury on the stone terraces and green lawns without, and the -Szalrassee was hidden under a veil of fog. - -'Am I not to see her at all?' thought Sabran. He did not like to -express his disquietude on that subject to the physician, and he was -not sure himself whether he most desired to ride away without meeting -the serene eyes of his châtelaine, or to be face to face with her once -more. - -He stood long before her portrait, done by Carolus Duran; she wore -in it a close-fitting gown of white velvet, and held in her hand a -great Spanish hat with white plumes; the two hounds were beside her; -the attitude had a certain grandeur and gravity in it which were very -impressive. - -'This was painted last year,' said Greswold, 'at the Princess's -request. It is admirably like----' - -'It is a noble picture,' said Sabran. 'But what a very proud woman she -looks!' - -'Blood tells,' said Greswold, 'far more than most people know or admit. -It is natural that my Lady, with the blood in her of so many mighty -nobles, who had the power of judgment and chastisement over whole -provinces, should be sometimes disposed to exercise too despotic a -will, to be sometimes contemptuous of the dictates of modern society, -which sends the princess and the peasant alike to a law court for sole -redress of their wrongs. She is at times irreconcilable with the world -as it stands; she is the representative and descendant in a direct -line of arrogant and omnipotent princes. That she combines with that -natural arrogance and instinct of dominion a very beautiful pitifulness -and even humility is a proof of the chastening influence of religious -faith on the nature of women; we are too apt to forget that, in our -haste to destroy the Church. Men might get on perhaps very well without -a religion of any kind; but I tremble to think what their mothers and -their mistresses would become.' - -They passed the morning in animated discussion, and as it drew to -a close, the good doctor did not perceive how adroitly his new -acquaintance drew out from him all details of the past and present of -Hohenszalras, and of the tastes and habits of its châtelaine, until he -knew all that there was to be known of that pure and austere life. - -'You may think her grief for her brother Bela's death--for all her -brothers' deaths--a morbid sentiment,' said the doctor as he spoke of -her. 'But it is not so--no. It is, perhaps, overwrought; but no life -can be morbid that is so active in duty, so untiring in charity, so -unsparing of itself. Her lands and riches, and all the people dependent -on her, are to the Countess Wanda only as so much trust, for which -hereafter she will be responsible to Bela and to God. You and I may -smile, you and I, who are philosophers, and have settled past dispute -that the human life has no more future than the snail-gnawed cabbage, -but yet--yet, my dear sir, one cannot deny that there is something -exalted in such a conception of duty; and--of this I am convinced--that -on the character of a woman it has a very ennobling influence.' - -'No doubt. But has she renounced all her youth? Does she mean never to -go into the world or to marry?' - -'I am quite sure she has made no resolve of the sort,' But I do not -think she will ever alter. She has refused many great alliances. -Her temperament is serene, almost cold; and her ideal it would be -difficult, I imagine, for any mortal man to realise.' - -'But when a woman loves----' - -'Oh, of course,' said Herr Joachim, rather drily. 'If the aloe -flower!----Love does not I think possess any part of the Countess -Wanda's thoughts or desires. She fancies it a mere weakness.' - -'A woman can scarcely be amiable without that weakness.' - -'No. Perhaps she is not precisely what we term amiable. She is rather -too far also from human emotions and human needs. The women of the -house of Szalras have been mostly very proud, silent, brave, and -resolute; great ladies rather than lovable wives. Luitgarde von Szalras -held this place with only a few archers and spearmen against Heinrich -Jasomergott in the twelfth century, and he raised the siege after five -months. "She is not a woman, nor human, she is a _kuttengeier_," he -said, as he retreated into his Wiener Wald. All the great monk-vultures -and the gyps and the pygargues have been sacred all through the Hohe -Tauern since that year.' - -'And I was about to shoot a _kuttengeier_--now I see that my offence -was beyond poaching, it was high treason almost!' - -'I heard the story from Otto. He would have hanged you cheerfully. -But I hope,' said the doctor, with a pang of misgiving, 'that I have -not given you any false impression of my Lady, as cold and hard and -unwomanly. She is full of tenderness of a high order; she is the -noblest, most truthful, and most generous nature that I have ever known -clothed in human form, and if she be too proud--well, it is a stately -sin, pardonable in one who has behind her eleven hundred years of -fearless and unblemished honour.' - -'I am a socialist,' said Sabran, a little curtly; then added, with a -little laugh, 'Though I believe not in rank, I do believe in race.' - -'_Bon sang ne peut mentir_,' murmured the old physician; the fair face -of Sabran changed slightly. - -'Will you come and look over the house?' said the Professor, who -noticed nothing, and only thought of propitiating the owner of the -rare orchid. 'There is almost as much to see as in the Burg at Vienna. -Everything has accumulated here undisturbed for a thousand years. -Hohenszalras has been besieged, but never deserted or dismantled. - -'It is a grand place!' said Sabran, with a look of impatience. 'It -seems intolerable that a woman should possess it all, while I only own -a few wind-blown oaks in the wilds of Finisterre.' - -'Ah, ah, that is pure socialism!' said the doctor, with a little -chuckle. '_Ote-toi, que je m'y mette._ That is genuine Liberalism all -the world over.' - -'You are no communist yourself, doctor?' - -'No,' said Herr Joachim, simply. 'All my studies lead me to the -conviction that equality is impossible, and were it possible, it would -be hideous. Variety, infinite variety, is the beneficent law of the -world's life. Why, in that most perfect of all societies, the beehive, -flawless mathematics are found co-existent with impassable social -barriers and unalterable social grades.' - -Sabran laughed good-humouredly. - -'I thought at least the bees enjoyed an undeniable Republic.' - -'A Republic with helots, sir, like Sparta. A Republic will always have -its helots. But come and wander over the castle. Come first and see the -parchments.' - -'Where are the ladies?' asked Sabran, wistfully. - -'The Princess is at her devotions and taking tisane. I visited her this -morning; she thinks she has a sore throat. As for our Lady, no one -ever disturbs her or knows what she is doing. When she wants any of us -ordinary folks, we are summoned. Sometimes we tremble. You know this -alone is an immense estate, and then there is a palace at the capital, -and one at Salzburg, not to speak of the large estates in Hungary -and the mines in Galicia. All these our Lady sees after and manages -herself. You can imagine that her secretary has no easy task, and that -secretary is herself; for she does not believe in doing anything well -by others.' - -'A second Maria Theresa!' said Sabran. - -'Not dissimilar, perhaps,' said the doctor, nettled at the irony of the -tone. 'Only where our great Queen sent thousands out to their deaths -the Countess von Szalras saves many lives. There are no mines in the -world--I will make bold to say--where there is so much comfort and so -little peril as those mines of hers in Stanislaw. She visited them -three years hence. But I forget, you are a stranger, and as you do not -share our cultus for the Grafin, cannot care to hear its Canticles. -Come to the muniment-room; you shall see some strange parchments.' - -'Heavens, how it rains!' said Sabran, as they left his chambers. 'Is -that common here?' - -'Very common, indeed!' said the doctor, with a laugh. 'We pass -two-thirds of the year between snow and water. But then we have -compensation. Where will you see such grass, such forests, such -gardens, when the summer sun does shine?' - -The Marquis de Sabran charmed him, and as they wandered over the huge -castle the physician delightedly displayed his own erudition, and -recognised that of his companion. The Hohenszalrasburg was itself -like some black-letter record of old South-German history; it was a -chronicle written in stone and wood and iron. The brave old house, -like a noble person, contained in itself a liberal education, and the -stranger whom through an accident it sheltered was educated enough to -comprehend and estimate it at its due value. In his passage through -it he won the suffrages of the household by his varied knowledge -and correct appreciation. In the stables his praises of the various -breeds of horses there commended itself by its accuracy to Ulrich, the -_stallmeister_, not less than a few difficult shots in the shooting -gallery proved his skill to his enemy of the previous day, Otto, the -_jägermeister._ Not less did he please Hubert, who was learned in such -things, with his cultured admiration of the wonderful old gold and -silver plate, the Limoges dishes and bowls, the Vienna and Kronenthal -china; nor less the custodian of the pictures, a collection of Flemish -and German masters, with here and there a modern _capolavoro_, hung all -by themselves in a little vaulted gallery which led into a much larger -one consecrated to tapestries, Flemish, French, and Florentine. - -When twilight came, and the greyness of the rain-charged atmosphere -deepened into the dark of night, Sabran had made all living things at -the castle his firm friends, down to the dogs of the house, save and -except the ladies who dwelt in it. Of them he had had no glimpse. They -kept their own apartments. He began to feel some fresh embarrassment -at remaining another night beneath a roof the mistress of which did -not deign personally to recognise his presence. A salon hung with -tapestries opened out of the bedchamber allotted to him; he wondered if -he were to dine there like a prisoner of state. - -He felt an extreme reluctance united to a strong curiosity to meet -again the woman who had treated him with such cool authority and -indifference as a common poacher in her woods. His cheek tingled still, -whenever he thought of the manner in which, at her signal, his hands -had been tied, and his rifle taken from him. She was the representative -of all that feudal, aristocratic, despotic, dominant spirit of a dead -time which he, with his modern, cynical, reckless Parisian Liberalism, -most hated, or believed that he hated. She was Austria Felix -personified, and he was a man who had always persuaded himself and -others that he was a socialist, a Philippe Egalité. And this haughty -patrician had mortified him and then had benefited and sheltered him! - -He would willingly have gone from under her roof without seeing -her, and yet a warm and inquisitive desire impelled him to feel an -unreasonable annoyance that the day was going by without his receiving -any intimation that he would be allowed to enter her presence, or be -expected to make his obeisances to her. When, however, the servants -entered to light the many candles in his room, Hubert entered behind -them, and expressed the desire of his lady that the Marquis would -favour them with his presence: they were about to dine. - -Sabran, standing before the mirror, saw himself colour like a boy: he -knew not whether he were most annoyed or pleased. He would willingly -have ridden away leaving his napoleons for the household, and seeing -no more the woman who had made him ridiculous in his own eyes; yet -the remembrance of her haunted him as something strange, imperious, -magnetic, grave, serene, stately; vague memories of a thousand things -he had heard said of her in embassies and at courts came to his mind; -she had been a mere unknown name to him then; he had not listened, -he had not cared, but now he remembered all he had heard; curiosity -and an embarrassment wholly foreign to him struggled together in him. -What could he say to a woman who had first insulted and then protected -him? It would tax all the ingenuity and the tact for which he was -famed. However, he only said to the major-domo, 'I am much flattered. -Express my profound gratitude to your ladies for the honour they are so -good as to do me.' Then he made his attire look as well as it could, -and considering that punctuality is due from guests as well as from -monarchs, he said that he was ready to follow the servant waiting for -him, and did so through the many tapestried and panelled corridors by -which the enormous house was traversed. - -Though light was not spared at the burg it was only such light as oil -and wax could give the galleries and passages; dim mysterious figures -loomed from the rooms and shadows seemed to stretch away on every side -to vast unknown chambers that might hold the secrets of a thousand -centuries. When he was ushered into the radiance of the great white -room he felt dazzled and blinded. - -He felt his bruise still, and he walked with a slight lameness from a -strain of his left foot, but this did not detract from the grace and -distinction of his bearing, and the pallor of his handsome features -became them; and when he advanced through the opened doors and bent -before the chair and kissed the hands of the Princess Ottilie she -thought to herself, 'What a perfectly beautiful person. Even Wanda -will have to admit that!' Whilst Hubert, going backward, said to his -regiment of under-servants: 'Look you! since Count Gela rode out to his -death at the head of the White Hussars, so grand a man as this stranger -has not set foot in this house.' - -He expected to see the Countess Wanda von Szalras. Instead, he saw -the loveliest little old lady he had ever seen in his life, clad in a -semi-conventual costume, leaning on a gold-headed cane, with clouds -of fragrant old lace about her, and a cross of emeralds hung at her -girdle of onyx beads, who saluted him with the ceremonious grace of -that etiquette which is still the common rule of life amongst the great -nobilities of the north. He hastened to respond in the same spirit with -an exquisite deference of manner. - -She greeted him with affable and smiling words, and he devoted himself -to her with deference and gallantry, expressing all his sense of -gratitude for the succour and shelter he received, with a few eloquent -and elegant phrases which said enough and not too much, with a grace -that it is difficult to lend to gratitude which is generally somewhat -halting and uncouth. - -'His name must be in the Hof-Kalendar!' she thought, as she replied to -his protestations with her prettiest smile which, despite her sacred -calling and her seventy years, was the smile of a coquette. - -'M. le Marquis,' she said, in her tender and flute-like voice, 'I -deserve none of your eloquent thanks. Age is sadly selfish. I did -nothing to rescue you, unless, indeed, Heaven heard my unworthy -prayer!--and this house is not mine, nor anything in it; the owner of -it, and, therefore, your châtelaine of the moment, is my grand-niece, -the Countess Wanda von Szalras.' - -'That I had your intercession with Heaven, however indirectly, was far -more than I deserved,' said Sabran, still standing before her. 'For the -Countess Wanda, I have been twice in her power, and she has been very -generous.' - -'She has done her duty, nothing more,' said the Princess a little -primly and petulantly, if princesses and petulance can mingle. 'We -should have scarce been Christians if we had not striven for your -life. As to leaving us this day it was out of the question. The storm -continues, the passes are torrents; I fear much that it will even be -impossible for your servant to come from S. Johann; we could not send -to Matrey even this morning for the post-bag, and they tell me the -bridge is down over the Bürgenbach.' - -'I have wanted for nothing, and my Parisian rogue is quite as well -yawning and smoking his days away at S. Johann,' said Sabran. 'Oh, -Madame! how can I ever express to you all my sense of the profound -obligations you have laid me under, stranger that I am!' - -'At least we were bound to atone for the incivility of the Szalrassee,' -said the Princess, with her pretty smile. 'It is a very horrible -country to live in. My niece, indeed, thinks it Arcadia, but an Arcadia -subject to the most violent floods, and imprisoned in snow and frost -for so many months, does not commend itself to me; no doubt it is very -grand and romantic.' - -The ideal of the Princess was neither grand nor romantic: it was life -in the little prim, yet gay north German town in the palace of which -she and all her people had been born; a little town, with red roofs, -green alleys, straight toylike streets, clipped trees, stiff soldiers, -set in the midst of a verdant plain; flat and green, and smooth as a -card table. - -The new comer interested her; she was quickly won by personal beauty, -and he possessed this in a great degree. It was a face unlike any she -had ever seen; it seemed to her to bear mystery with it and melancholy, -and she loved both those things; perhaps because she had never met with -either out of the pages of German poets and novelists of France. Those -who are united to them in real life find them uneasy bedfellows. - -'Perhaps he is some Kronprinz in disguise,' she thought with pleasure; -but then she sadly recollected that she knew every crown prince that -there was in Europe. She would have liked to have asked him many -questions, but her high-breeding was still stronger than her curiosity; -and a guest could never be interrogated. - -Dinner was announced as served. - -'My niece, the Countess Wanda,' said the Princess, with a little -reluctance visible in her hesitation, 'will dine in her own rooms. She -begs you to excuse her; she is tired from the storm last night.' - -'She will not dine with me,' thought Sabran, with the quick intuition -natural to him. - -'You leave me nothing to regret, Princess,' he said readily, with a -sweet smile, as he offered his arm to this lovely little lady, wrapped -in laces fine as cobweb, with her great cross of emeralds pendent from -her rosary. - -A woman is never too old to be averse to the thought that she can -charm; very innocent charming was that of the Princess Ottilie, and she -thought with a sigh if she had married--if she had had such a son; yet -she was not insensible to the delicate compliment which he paid her -in appearing indifferent to the absence of his châtelaine and quite -content with her own presence. - -Throughout dinner in that great hall, he, sitting on her right hand, -amused her, flattered her with that subtlest of all flattery, interest -and attention; diverted her with gay stories of worlds unknown to her, -and charmed her with his willingness to listen to her lament over the -degeneracy of mankind and of manners. After a few words of courtesy as -to his hostess's absence he seemed not even to remember that Wanda von -Salzras was absent from the head of her table. - -'And I have said that she was tired! She who is never more tired -than the eagles are! May heaven forgive me the untruth!' thought -the Princess more than once during the meal, which was long and -magnificent, and at which her guest ate sparingly and drank but little. - -'You have no appetite?' she said regretfully. - -'Pardon me, I have a good one,' he answered her; 'but I have always -been content to eat little and drink less. It is the secret of health; -and my health is all my riches.' - -She looked at him with interest. - -'I should think your riches in that respect are inexhaustible?' - -He smiled. - -'Oh yes! I have never had a day's illness, except once, long ago in the -Mexican swamps, a marsh fever and a snake-bite.' - -'You have travelled much?' - -'I have seen most of the known world, and a little of the unknown,' -he answered. 'I am like Ulysses; only there will be not even a dog to -welcome me when my wanderings are done.' - -'Have you no relatives?' - -'None!' he added, with an effort. Everyone is dead; dead long ago. I -have been long alone, and I am very well used to it.' - -'But you must have troops of friends?' - -'Oh!--friends who will win my last napoleon at play, or remember me as -long as they meet me every day on the boulevards? Yes, I have many of -that sort, but they are not worth Ulysses' dog.' - -He spoke carelessly, without any regard to the truth as far as it went, -but no study would have made him more apt to coin words to attract the -sympathy of his listeners. - -'He is unfortunate,' she thought. 'How often beauty brings misfortune. -My niece must certainly see him. I wish he belonged to the -Pontêves-Bargêmes!' - -Not to have a name that she knew, one of those names that fill all -Europe as with the trump of an archangel, was to be as one maimed or -deformed in the eyes of the Princess, an object for charity, not for -intercourse. - -'Your title is of Brittany, I think?' she said a little wistfully, -and as he answered something abruptly in the affirmative, she solaced -herself once more with the remembrance that there was a good deal of -_petite noblesse_, honourable enough, though not in the 'Almanac de -Gotha,' which was a great concession from her prejudices, invented on -the spur of the interest that he excited in her imagination. - -'I never saw any person so handsome,' she thought, as she glanced -at his face; while he in return thought that this silver-haired, -soft-cheeked, lace-enwrapped Holy Mother was _jolie à croquer_ in -the language of those boulevards, which had been his nursery and his -palestrum. She was so kind to him, she was so gracious and graceful, -she chatted with him so frankly and pleasantly, and she took so active -an interest in his welfare that he was touched and grateful. He had -known many women, many young ones and gay ones; he had never known what -the charm of a kindly and serene old age can be like in a woman who has -lived with pure thoughts, and will die in hope and in faith; and this -lovely old abbess, with her pretty touch of worldliness, was a study to -him, new with the novelty of innocence, and of a kind of veneration. -And he was careful not to let her perceive his mortification that the -Countess von Szalras would not deign to dine in his presence. In truth, -he thought of little else, but no trace of irritation or of absence of -mind was to be seen in him as he amused the Princess, and discovered -with her that they had in common some friends amongst the nobilities of -Saxony, of Wurtemberg, and of Bohemia. - -'Come and take your coffee in my own room, the blue-room,' she said to -him, and she rose and took his arm. 'We will go through the library; -you saw it this morning, I imagine? It is supposed to contain the -finest collection of Black Letter in the empire, or so we think.' - -And she led him through the great halls and up a few low stairs into a -large oval room lined with oaken bookcases, which held the manuscripts, -missals, and volumes of all dates which had been originally gathered -together by one of the race who had been also a bishop and a cardinal. - -The library was oak-panelled, and had an embossed and emblazoned -ceiling; silver lamps of old Italian _trasvorato_ work, hung by -silver chains, and shed a subdued clear light; beneath the porphyry -sculptures of the hearth a fire of logs was burning, for the early -summer evening here is chill and damp; there were many open fireplaces -in Hohenszalras, introduced there by a chilly Provençal princess, who -had wedded a Szalras in the seventeenth century, and who had abolished -the huge porcelain stoves in many apartments in favour of grand carved -mantel-pieces, and gilded andirons, and sweet smelling simple fires of -aromatic woods, such as made glad the sombre hotels and lonely châteaux -of the Prance of the Bourbons. - -Before this hearth, with the dogs stretched on the black bearskin -rugs, his hostess was seated; she had dined in a small dining-hall -opening out of the library, and was sitting reading with a shaded -light behind her. She rose with astonishment, and, as he fancied, -anger upon her face as she saw him enter, and stood in her full height -beneath the light of one of the silver hanging lamps. She wore a gown -of olive-coloured velvet, with some pale roses fastened amongst the -old lace at her breast; she had about her throat several rows of large -pearls, which she always wore night and day that they should not change -their pure whiteness by disuse; she looked very stately, cold, annoyed, -disdainful, as she stood there without speaking. - -'It is my niece, the Countess von Szalras,' said the Princess to her -companion in some trepidation. 'Wanda, my love, I was not aware you -were here; I thought you were in your own octagon room; allow me to -make you acquainted with your guest, whom you have already received -twice with little ceremony I believe.' - -The trifling falsehoods were trippingly but timidly said; the -Princess's blue eyes sought consciously her niece's forgiveness with -a pathetic appeal, to which Wanda, who loved her tenderly, could not -be long obdurate. Had it been any other than Mme. Ottilie who had -thus brought by force into her presence a stranger whom she had -marked her desire to avoid, the serene temper of the mistress of -the Hohenszalrasburg would not have preserved its equanimity, and -she would have quitted her library on the instant, sweeping a grand -courtesy which should have been greeting and farewell at once to one -too audacious. But the shy entreating appeal of the Princess's regard -touched her heart, and the veneration she had borne from childhood -to one so holy, and so sacred by years of grace, checked in her any -utterance or sign of annoyance. - -Sabran, meanwhile, standing by in some hesitation and embarrassment, -bowed low with consummate grace, and a timidity not less graceful. - -She advanced a step and held her hand out to him. - -'I fear I have been inhospitable, sir,' she said to him in his -own tongue. 'Are you wholly unhurt? You had a rough greeting from -Hohenszalras.' - -He took the tip of her fingers on his own and bent over them as humbly -as over an empress's. - -Well used to the world as he was, to its ceremonies, courts, and -etiquettes, he was awed by her as if he were a youth; he lost his ready -aptness of language, and his easy manner of adaptability. - -'I am but a vagrant, Madame!' he murmured, as he bowed over her hand. -'I have no right even to your charity!' - -For the moment it seemed to her as if he spoke in bitter and melancholy -earnest, and she looked at him in a passing surprise that changed into -a smile. - -'You were a poacher certainly, but that is forgiven. My aunt has taken -you under her protection; and you had the Kaiser's already: with such a -dual shelter you are safe. Are you quite recovered?' she said, bending -her grave glance upon him. 'I have to ask your pardon for my great -negligence in not sending one of my men to guide you over the pass to -Matrey.' - -'Nay, if you had done so I should not have enjoyed the happiness of -being your debtor,' he replied, meeting her close gaze with a certain -sense of confusion most rare with him; and added a few words of -eloquent gratitude, which she interrupted almost abruptly: - -'Pray carry no such burden of imaginary debt, and have no scruples in -staying as long as you like; we are a mountain refuge, use it as you -would a monastery. In the winter we have many travellers. We are so -entirely in the heart of the hills that we are bound by all Christian -laws to give a refuge to all who need it. But how came you on the lake -last evening? Could you not read the skies?' - -He explained his own folly and hardihood, and added, with a glance at -her, 'The offending rifle is in the Szalrassee. It was my haste to quit -your dominions that made me venture on to the lake. I had searched in -vain for the high road that you had told me of, and I thought if I -crossed the lake I should be off your soil.' - -'No; for many leagues you would not have been off it,' she answered -him. 'Our lands are very large, and, like the Archbishopric of -Berchtesgarten, are as high as they are broad. Our hills are very -dangerous for strangers, especially until the snows of the passes have -all melted. I repented me too late that I did not send a jäger with you -as a guide.' - -'All is well that ends well,' said the Princess. 'Monsieur is not the -worse for his bath in the lake, and we have the novelty of an incident -and of a guest, who we will hope in the future will become a friend.' - -'Madame, if I dared hope that I should have much to live for!' said the -stranger, and the Princess smiled sweetly upon him. - -'You must have very much to live for, as it is. Were I a man, and as -young as you, and as favoured by nature, I am afraid I should be -tempted to live for--myself.' - -'And I am most glad when I can escape from so poor a companion,' said -he, with a melancholy in the accent and a passing pain that was not -assumed. - -Before this gentle and gracious old woman in this warm and elegant -chamber he felt suddenly that he was a wanderer--perhaps an outcast. - -'You need not use the French language with him, Wanda,' interrupted the -Princess. 'The Marquis speaks admirable German: it is impossible to -speak better.' - -'We will speak our own tongue then,' said Wanda, who always regarded -her aunt as though she were a petted and rather wayward child. 'Are you -quite rested, M. de Sabran? and quite unhurt?' I did not dine with you. -It must have seemed churlish. But I am very solitary in my habits, and -my aunt entertains strangers so much better than I do that I grow more -hermit-like every year.' - -He smiled; he thought there was but little of the hermit in this -woman's supreme elegance and dignity as she stood beside her hearth -with its ruddy, fitful light playing on the great pearls at her throat -and burnishing into gold the bronze shadows of her velvet gown. - -'The Princess has told me that you are cruel to the world,' he answered -her. 'But it is natural with such a kingdom that you seldom care to -leave it.' - -'It is a kingdom of snow for seven months out of the year,' said the -Princess peevishly, 'and a water kingdom the other five. You see what -it is to-day, and this is the middle of May!' - -'I think one might well forget the rain and every other ill between -these four walls,' said the French Marquis, as he glanced around him, -and then slowly let his eyes rest on his châtelaine. - -'It is a grand library,' she answered him; 'but I must warn you that -there is nothing more recent in it than Diderot and Descartes. The -cardinal--Hugo von Szalras--who collected it lived in the latter half -of last century, and since his day no Szalras has been bookish save -myself. The cardinal, however, had all the MSS. and the black letters, -or nearly all, ready to his hand; what he added is a vast library -of science and history, and he also got together some of the most -beautiful missals in the world. Are you curious in such things?' - -She rose as she spoke, and unlocked one of the doors of the oak -bookcase and brought out an ivory missal carved by the marvellous -Prönner of Klagenfurt, with the arms of the Szalras on one side of it -and those of a princely German house on the other. - -'That was the nuptial missal of Georg von Szalras and Ida Windisgratz -in 1501,' she said; 'and these are all the other marriage-hours of our -people, if you care to study them'; and in that case next to this there -is a wonderful Evangelistarium, with miniatures of Angelico's. But I -see they tell all their stories to you; I see by the way you touch them -that you are a connoisseur.' - -'I fear I have studied them chiefly at the sales of the Rue Drouot,' -said Sabran, with a smile; but he had a great deal of sound knowledge -on all arts and sciences, and a true taste which never led him wrong. -With an illuminated chronicle in his hand, or a book of hours on his -knee, he conversed easily, discursively, charmingly, of the early -scribes and the early masters; of monkish painters and of church -libraries; of all the world has lost, and of all aid that art had -brought to faith. - -He talked well, with graceful and well-chosen language, with -picturesque illustration, with a memory that never was at fault for -name or date, or apt quotation; he spoke fluent and eloquent German, in -which there was scarcely any trace of foreign accent; and he disclosed -without effort the resources of a cultured and even learned mind. - -The antagonism she had felt against the poacher of her woods melted -away as she listened and replied to him; there was a melody in his -voice and a charm in his manner that it was not easy to resist; and -with the pale lights from the Italian lamp which swung near upon the -fairness of his face she reluctantly owned that her aunt had been -right: he was singularly handsome, with that uncommon and grand cast -of beauty which in these days is rarer than it was in the times of -Vandyck and of Velasquez--for manners and moods leave their trace on -the features, and this age is not great. - -The Princess in, her easy-chair, for once not sleeping after dinner, -listened to her and thought to herself, 'She is angry with me; but how -much better it is to talk with a living being than to pass the evening -over a philosophical treatise, or the accounts of her schools, or her -stables!' - -Sabran having conquered the momentary reluctance and embarrassment -which had overcome him in the presence of the woman to whom he owed -both an outrage and a rescue, endeavoured, with all the skill he -possessed, to interest and beguile her attention. He knew that she was -a great lady, a proud woman, a recluse, and a student, and a person -averse to homage and flattery of every kind; he met her on the common -ground of art and learning, and could prove himself her equal at all -times, even occasionally her master. When he fancied she had enough of -such serious themes he spoke of music. There was a new opera then out -at Paris, of which the theme was as yet scarcely known. He looked round -the library and said to her: - -'Were there an organ here or a piano I could give you some idea of the -motive; I can recall most of it.' - -'There are both in my own room. It is near here,' she said to him. -'Will you come?' - -Then she led the way across the gallery, which alone separated the -library from that octagon room which was so essentially her own where -all were hers. The Princess accompanied her: content as a child is who -has put a light to a slow match that leads it knows not whither. 'She -must approve of him, or she would not take him there,' thought the wise -Princess. - -'Go and play to us,' said Wanda von Szalras, as her guest entered the -sacred room. 'I am sure you are a great musician; you speak of music -as we only speak of what we love.' - -'What do you love?' he wondered mutely, as he sat down before the -grand piano and struck a few chords. He sat down and played without -prelude one of the most tender and most grave of Schubert's sonatas. -It was subtle, delicate, difficult to interpret, but he gave it with -consummate truth of touch and feeling. He had always loved German music -best. He played on and on, dreamily, with a perfection of skill that -was matched by his tenderness of interpretation. - -'You are a great artist,' said his hostess, as he paused. - -He rose and approached her. - -'Alas! no, I am only an amateur,' he answered her. 'To be an artist one -must needs have immense faith in one's art and in oneself: I have no -faith in anything. An artist steers straight to one goal; I drift.' - -'You have drifted to wise purpose----'You must have studied much?' - -'In my youth. Not since. An artist! Ah! how I envy artists! They -believe; they aspire; even if they never attain, they are happy, happy -in their very torment, and through it, like lovers.' - -'But your talent----' - -'Ah, Madame, it is only talent; it is nothing else. The _feu sacré_ is -wanting.' - -She looked at him with some curiosity. - -'Perhaps the habit of the world has put out that fire: it often does. -But if even it be only talent, what a beautiful talent it is! To -carry all that store of melody safe in your memory--it is like having -sunlight and moonlight ever at command.' - -Lizst had more than once summoned the spirits of Heaven to his call -there in that same room in Hohenszalras; and since his touch no one -had ever made the dumb notes speak as this stranger could do, and the -subdued power of his voice added to the melody he evoked. The light -of the lamps filled with silvery shadows the twilight of the chamber; -the hues of the tapestries, of the ivories, of the gold and silver -work, of the paintings, of the embroideries, made a rich chiaro-oscuro -of colour; the pine cones and the dried thyme burning on the hearth -shed an aromatic smell on the air; there were large baskets and vases -full of hothouse roses and white lilies from the gardens; she sat by -the hearth, left in shadow except where the twilight caught the gleam -of her pearls and the shine of her eyes; she listened, the jewels on -her hand glancing like little stars as she slowly waved to and fro a -feather screen in rhythm with what he sang or played: so might Mary -Stuart have looked, listening to Rizzio or Ronsard. 'She is a queen!' -he thought, and he sang-- - -'Si j'étais Roi!' - -'Go on!' she said, as he paused; he had thrown eloquence and passion -into the song. - -'Shall I not tire you?' - -'That is only a phrase! Save when Liszt passes by here I never hear -such music as yours.' - -'He obeyed her, and played and sang many and very different things. - -At last he rose a little abruptly. - -Two hours had gone by since they had entered the octagon chamber. - -'It would be commonplace to thank you,' she murmured with a little -hesitation. 'You have a great gift; one of all gifts the most generous -to others.' - -He made a gesture of repudiation, and walked across to a spinet of the -fifteenth century, inlaid with curious devices by Martin Pacher of -Brauneck, and having a painting of his in its lid. - -'What a beautiful old box,' he said, as he touched it. 'Has it any -sound, I wonder? If one be disposed to be sad, surely of all sad things -an old spinet is the saddest! To think of the hands that have touched, -of the children that have danced to it, of the tender old ballads that -have been sung to the notes that to us seem so hoarse and so faulty! -All the musicians dead, dead so long ago, and the old spinet still -answering when anyone calls! Shall I sing you a madrigal to it?' - -Very tenderly, very lightly, he touched the ivory keys of the painted -toy of the ladies so long dead and gone, and he sang in a minor key the -sweet, sad, quaint poem:-- - -Où sont les neiges d'antan? - -That ballad of fair women echoed softly through the stillness of the -chamber, touched with the sobbing notes of the spinet, even as it might -have been in the days of its writer: - -Où sont les neiges d'antan? - -The chords of the old music-box seemed to sigh and tremble with -remembrance. Where were they, all the beautiful dead women, all the -fair imperious queens, all the loved, and all the lovers? Where were -they? The snow had fallen through so many white winters since that song -was sung--so many! so many! - -The last words thrilled sadly and sweetly through the silence. - -He rose and bowed very low. - -'I have trespassed too long on your patience, madame; I have the honour -to wish you goodnight.' - -Wanda von Szalras was not a woman quickly touched to any emotion, but -her eyelids were heavy with a mist of unshed tears, as she raised them -and looked up from the fire, letting drop on her lap the screen of -plumes. - -'If there be a Lorelei in our lake, no wonder from envy she tried to -drown you,' she said, with a smile that cost her a little effort. -Good-night, sir; should you wish to leave us in the morning, Hubert -will see you reach S. Johann safely and as quickly as can be.' - -'Your goodness overwhelms me,' he murmured. 'I can never hope to show -my gratitude----' - -'There is nothing to be grateful for,' she said quickly. 'And if there -were, you would have repaid it: you have made a spinet, silent for -centuries, speak, and speak to our hearts. Good-night, sir; may you -have good rest and a fair journey!' - -When he had bowed himself out, and the tapestry of the door had closed -behind him, she rose and looked at a clock. - -'It is actually twelve!' - -'Acknowledge at least that he has made the evening pass well!' said -the Princess, with a little petulance and much triumph. - -'He has made it pass admirably,' said her niece. 'At the same time, -dear aunt, I think it would have been perhaps better if you had not -made a friend of a stranger.' - -'Why?' said the Princess with some asperity. - -'Because I think we can fulfil all the duties of hospitality without -doing so, and we know nothing of this gentleman.' - -'He is certainly a gentleman,' said the Princess, with not less -asperity. 'It seems to me, my dear Wanda, that you are for once in your -life--if you will pardon me the expression--ill-natured.' - -The Countess Wanda smiled a little. - -'I cannot imagine myself ill-natured; but I may be so. One never knows -oneself.' - -'And ungrateful,' added the Princess. 'When, I should like to know, -have you for years reached twelve o'clock at night without being -conscious of it?' - -'Oh, he sang beautifully, and he played superbly,' said her niece, -still with the same smile, balancing her ostrich-feathers. 'But let him -go on his way to-morrow; you and I cannot entertain strange men, even -though they give us music like Rubenstein's.' - -'If Egon were here----' - -'Oh, poor Egon! I think he would not like your friend at all. They both -want to shoot eagles----' - -'Perhaps he would not like him for another reason,' said the Princess, -with a look of mystery. 'Egon could never make the spinet speak.' - -'No; but who knows? Perhaps he can take better care of his own soul -because he cannot lend one to a spinet!' - -'You are perverse, Wanda!' - -'Perverse, inhospitable, and ill-natured? I fear I shall carry a heavy -burden of sins to Father Ferdinand in the morning!' - -'I wish you would not send horses to S. Johann in the morning. We never -have anything to amuse us in this solemn solitary place.' - -'Dear aunt, one would think you were very indiscreet.' - -'I wish you were more so!' said the pretty old lady with impatience, -and then her hand made a sign over the cross of emeralds, for she -knew that she had uttered an unholy wish. She kissed her niece with -repentant tenderness, and went to her own apartments. - -Wanda von Szalras, left alone in her chamber, stood awhile thoughtfully -beside the fire; then she moved away and touched the yellow ivory of -the spinet keys. - -'Why could he make them speak,' she said to herself, 'when everyone -else always failed?' - - - - -CHAPTER IV. - - -Sabran, as he undressed himself and laid himself down under the great -gold-fringed canopy of the stately bed, thought: 'Was I only a clever -comedian to-night, or did my eyes really grow wet as I sang that old -song and see her face through a mist as if she and I had met in the old -centuries long ago?' - -He stood and looked a moment at his own reflection in the great mirror -with the wax candles burning in its sconces. He was very pale. - -Où sont les neiges d'antan? - -The burden of it ran through his mind. - -Almost it seemed to him long ago--long ago--she had been his lady and -he her knight, and she had stooped to him, and he had died for her. -Then he laughed a little harshly. - -'I grow that best of all actors,' he thought, 'an actor who believes in -himself!' - -Then he turned from the mirror and stretched himself on the great -bed, with its carved warriors at its foot and its golden crown at its -head, and its heavy amber tissues shining in the shadows. He was a -sound sleeper at all times. He had slept peacefully on a wreck, in -a hurricane, in a lonely hut on the Andes, as after a night of play -in Paris, in Vienna, in Monaco. He had a nerve of steel, and that -perfect natural constitution which even excess and dissipation cannot -easily impair. But this night, under the roof of Hohenszalras, in the -guest-chamber of Hohenszalras, he could not summon sleep at his will, -and he lay long wide awake and restless, watching the firelight play on -the figures upon the tapestried walls, where the lords and ladies of -Tuscan Boccaccio and their sinful loves were portrayed in stately and -sombre guise, and German costumes of the days of Maximilian. - -Où sont les neiges d'antan? - -The line of the old romaunt ran through his brain, and when towards -dawn he did at length fall asleep it was not of Hohenszalras that he -dreamed, but of wide white steppes, of a great ice-fed rolling river, -of monotonous pine woods, with the gilded domes of a half eastern city -rising beyond them in the pale blue air of a northern twilight. - -With the early morning he awoke, resolute to get away be the weather -what it would. As it chanced, the skies were heavy still, but no rain -fell; the sun was faintly struggling through the great black masses of -cloud; the roads might be dangerous, but they were not impassable; the -bridge over the Bürgenbach might be broken, but at least Matrey could -be reached, if it were not possible to go on farther to Taxenbach or S. -Johann im Wald. High north, where far away stretched the wild marshes -and stony swamps of the Pinzgau (the Pinzgau so beautiful, where in its -hilly district the grand Salzach rolls on its impetuous way beneath -deep shade of fir-clad hills, tracks desolate as a desert of sand or -stone), the sky was overcast, and of an angry tawny colour that brooded -ill for the fall of night. But the skies were momentarily clear, and he -desired to rid of his presence the hospitable roof beneath which he was -but an alien and unbidden. - -He proposed to leave on foot, but of this neither Greswold nor the -major-domo would hear: they declared that such an indignity would -dishonour the Hohenszalrasburg for evermore. Guests there were masters. -'Bidden guests, perhaps,' said Sabran, reluctantly yielding to be -sped on his way by a pair of the strong Hungarian horses that he had -seen and admired in their stalls. He did not venture to disturb the -ladies of the castle by a request for a farewell audience at the early -hour at which it was necessary he should depart if he wished to try -to reach a railway the same evening, but he left two notes for them, -couched in that graceful compliment of which his Parisian culture made -him an admirable master, and took a warm adieu of the good physician, -with a promise not to forget the orchid of the Spiritù Santo. Then he -breakfasted hastily, and left the tapestried chamber in which he had -dreamed of the Nibelungen Queen. - -At the door he drew a ring of great value from his finger and passed it -to Hubert, but the old man, thanking him, protested he dared not take -it. - -'Old as I am in her service,' he said, 'the Countess would dismiss me -in an hour if I accepted any gifts from a guest.' - -'Your lady is very severe,' said Sabran. 'It is happy for her she has -servitors who subscribe to feudalism. If she were in Paris----' - -'We are bound to obey,' said the old man, simply. 'The Countess deals -with us most generously and justly. We are bound, in return, to render -her obedience.' - -'All the antique virtues have indeed found refuge here!' said Sabran; -but he left the ring behind him lying on a table in the Rittersäal. - -Four instead of two vigorous and half-broke horses from the Magyar -plains bore him away in a light travelling carriage towards the -Virgenthal; the household, with Herr Joachim at their head, watching -with regret the travelling carriage wind up amongst the woods and -disappear on the farther side of the lake. He himself looked back with -a pang of envy and regret at the stately pile towering towards the -clouds, with its deep red banner streaming out on the wind that blew -from the northern plains. - -'Happy woman!' he thought; 'happy--thrice happy--to possess such -dominion, such riches, and such ancestry! If I had had them I would -have had the world under my foot as well!' - -It was with a sense of pain that he saw the great house disappear -behind its screen of mantling woods, as his horses climbed the hilly -path beyond, higher and higher at every step, until all that he saw -of Hohenszalras was a strip of the green lake--green as an arum -leaf--lying far down below, bearing on its waters the grey willows of -the Holy Isle. - -'When I am very old and weary I will come and die there,' he thought, -with a touch of that melancholy which all his irony and cynicism could -not dispel from his natural temper. There were moments when he felt -that he was but a lonely and homeless wanderer on the face of the -earth, and this was one of those moments, as, alone, he went upon his -way along the perilous path, cut along the face of precipitous rocks, -passing over rough bridges that spanned deep defiles and darkening -ravines, clinging to the side of a mountain as a swallow's nest clings -to the wall of a house, and running high on swaying galleries above -dizzy depths, where nameless torrents plunged with noise and foam into -impenetrable chasms. The road had been made in the fifteenth century by -the Szalras lords themselves, and the engineering of it was bold and -vigorous though rude, and kept in sound repair, though not much changed. - -He had left a small roll of paper lying beside the ring in the knight's -hall. Hubert took them both to his mistress when, a few hours later, -he was admitted to her presence. Opening the paper she saw a roll of a -hundred napoleons, and on the paper was written, 'There can be no poor -where the Countess von Szalras rules. Let these be spent in masses for -the dead.' - -'What a delicate and graceful sentiment,' said the Princess Ottilie, -with vivacity and emotion. - -'It is prettily expressed and gracefully thought of,' her niece -admitted. - -'Charmingly--admirably!' said the Princess, with a much warmer accent. -'There is delicate gratitude there, as well as a proper feeling towards -a merciful God.' - -'Perhaps,' said her niece, with a little smile, 'the money was won at -play, in giving someone else what they call a _culotte_; what would you -say then, dear aunt? Would it be purified by entering the service of -the Church?' - -'I do not know why you are satirical,' said the Princess; 'and I cannot -tell either how you can bring yourself to use Parisian bad words.' - -'I will send these to the Bishop,' said Wanda, rolling up the gold. -'Alas! alas! there are always poor. As for the ring, Hubert, give it to -Herr Greswold, and he will transmit it to this gentleman's address in -Paris, as though it had been left behind by accident. You were so right -not to take it; but my dear people are always faithful.' - -These few words were dearer and more precious to the honest old man -than all the jewels in the world could ever have become. But the offer -of it and the gift of the gold for the Church's use had confirmed the -high opinion in which he and the whole household of Hohenszalras held -the departed guest. - -'Allow at least that this evening will be much duller than last!' said -the Princess, with much irritation. - -'Your friend played admirably,' said Wanda von Szalras, as she sat at -her embroidery frame. - -'You speak as if he were an itinerant pianist! What is your dislike to -your fellow creatures, when they are of your own rank, based upon? If -he had been a carpet-dealer from the Defreggerthal, as I said before, -you would have bidden him stay a month.' - -'Dearest aunt, be reasonable. How was it possible to keep here on a -visit a French Marquis of whom we know absolutely nothing, except from -himself?' - -'I never knew you were prudish!' - -'I never knew either that I was,' said the Countess Wanda, with her -serene temper unruffled. 'I quite admit your new friend has many -attractive qualities--on the surface at any rate; but if it were -possible for me to be angry with you, I should be so for bringing him -as you did into the library last night.' - -'You would never have known your spinet could speak if I had not. You -are very ungrateful, and I should not be in the least surprised to find -that he was a Crown Prince or a Grand Duke travelling incognito.' - -'We know them all, I fear.' - -'It is strange he should not have his name in the Hof-Kalender, beside -the Sabran-Pontêves!' insisted the Princess. 'He looks _prince du -sang_, if ever anyone did; so----' - -'There is good blood outside your Hof Kalender, dear mother mine.' - -'Certainly,' said the Princess, 'he must surely be a branch of that -family, though it would be more satisfactory if one found his record -there. One can never know too much or too certainly of a person whom -one admits to friendship.' - -'Friendship is a very strong word,' said Wanda von Szalras, with a -smile. 'This gentleman has only made a hostelry of Hohenszalras for a -day or two, and even that was made against his will. But as you are so -interested in him, _meine Liebe_, read this little record I have found.' - -She gave the Princess an old leather-bound volume of memoirs, written -and published at Lausanne, by an obscure noble in his exile, in the -year 1798. She had opened the book at one of the pages that narrated -the fates of many nobles of Brittany, relatives or comrades of the -writer. - -'And foremost amongst these,' said this little book, 'do I ever and -unceasingly regret the loss of my beloved cousin and friend, Yvon -Marquis de Sabran-Romaris. So beloved was he in his own province that -even the Convention was afraid to touch him, and being poor, despite -his high descent, as his father had ruined his fortunes in play and -splendour at the court of Louis XV., he thought to escape the general -proscription, and dwell peaceably on his rock-bound shores with his -young children. But the blood madness of the time so grew upon the -nation that even the love of his peasantry and his own poverty could -not defend him, and one black, bitter day an armed mob from Vannes -came over the heath, burning all they saw of ricks, or homesteads, or -châteaux, or cots, that they might warm themselves by those leaping -fires; and so they came on at last, yelling, and drunk, and furious, -with torches flaming and pikes blood-stained, up through the gates of -Romaris. Sabran went out to meet them, leading his eldest son by the -hand, a child of eight years old. "What seek ye?" he said to them: "I -am as poor as the poorest of you, and consciously have done no living -creature wrong. What do you come for here?" The calm courage of him, -and the glance of his eyes, which were very beautiful and proud, -quelled the disordered, mouthing, blood-drunk multitude in a manner, -and moved them to a sort of reverence, so that the leader of them, -stepping forth, said roughly, 'Citizen, we come to slit your throat -and burn your house; but if you will curse God and the King, and cry -'Long live the sovereign people!' we will leave you alone, for you -have been the friend of the poor. Come, say it!--come, shout it with -both lungs!--it is not much to ask? Sabran put his little boy behind -him with a tender gesture, then kissed the hilt of his sword, which he -held unsheathed in his hand: "I sorrow for the people," he said, "since -they are misguided and mad. But I believe in my God and I love my King, -and even so shall my children do after me;" and the words were scarce -out of his mouth before a score of pikes ran him through the body, and -the torches were tossed into his house, and he and his perished like -so many gallant gentlemen of the time, a prey to the blind fury of an -ingrate mob.' - -The Princess Ottilie's tender eyes moistened as she read, and she -closed the volume reverently, as though it were a sacred thing. - -'I thank you for sending me such a history,' she said. 'It does one's -soul good in these sad, bitter days of spiritless selfishness and -utter lack of all impersonal devotion. This gentleman must, then, be a -descendant of the child named in this narrative?' - -'The story says that he and his perished,' replied her niece. 'But I -suppose that child, or some other younger one, escaped the fire and the -massacre. If ever we see him again, we will ask him. Such a tradition -is as good as a page in the Almanac de Gotha.' - -'It is,' accented the Princess. 'Where did you find it?' - -'I read those memoirs when I was a child, with so many others of that -time,' answered the Countess Wanda. 'When I heard the name of your new -friend it seemed familiar to me, and thinking over it, I remembered -these Breton narratives.' - -'At least you need not have been afraid to dine with him!' said -the Princess Ottilie, who could never resist having the last word, -though she felt that the retort was a little ungenerous, and perhaps -undeserved. - -Meantime Sabran went on his way through the green valley under the -shadow of the Klein and the Kristallwand, with the ice of the great -Schaltten Gletscher descending like a huge frozen torrent. When he -reached the last stage before Matrey he dismissed his postillions with -a gratuity as large as the money remaining in his belt would permit, -and insisted on taking his way on foot over the remaining miles. -Baggage he had none, and he had not even the weight of his knapsack and -rifle. The men remonstrated with him, for they were afraid of their -lady's anger if they returned when they were still half a German mile -off their destination. But he was determined, and sent them backwards, -whilst they could yet reach home by daylight. The path to Matrey passed -across pastures and tracts of stony ground; he took a little goatherd -with him as a guide, being unwilling to run the risk of a second -misadventure, and pressed on his way without delay. - -The sun had come forth from out a watery world of cloud and mist, -which shrouded from sight all the domes and peaks and walls of ice -of the mountain region in which he was once more a wanderer. But -when the mists had lifted, and the sun was shining, it was beautiful -exceedingly: all the grasses were full of the countless wild flowers of -the late Austrian spring; the swollen brooks were blue with mouse-ear, -and the pastures with gentian; clumps of daffodils blossomed in all -the mossy nooks, and hyacinths purpled the pine-woods. On the upper -slopes the rain-fog still hung heavily, but the sun-rays pierced it -here and there, and the white vaporous atmosphere was full of fantastic -suggestions and weird half-seen shapes, as pine-trees loomed out of -the mist or a vast black mass of rock towered above the clouds. A -love of nature, of out-of-door movement, of healthful exercise and -sports, resisted in him the enervating influences of the Paris life -which he had led. He had always left the gay world at intervals for -the simple and rude pleasures of the mountaineer and the hunter. There -was an impulse towards that forest freedom which at times mastered -him, and made the routine of worldly dissipation and diversion wholly -intolerable to him. It was what his fair critic of Paris had called his -barbarism, which broke up out of the artificial restraints and habits -imposed by the world. - -His wakeful night had made him fanciful, and his departure from -Hohenszalras had made him regretful; for he, on his way back to Paris -and all his habits and associates and pleasures, looking around him -on the calm white mountain-sides, and penetrated by the pure, austere -mountain silence, suddenly felt an intense desire to stay amidst that -stillness and that solitude, and rest here in the green heart of the -Tauern. - -'Who knows but one might see her again?' he thought, as the sound of -the fall of the Gschlossbach came on his ear from the distance. That -stately figure seated by the great wood fire, with the light on her -velvet skirts, and the pearls at her throat, and the hounds lying -couched beside her, was always before his memory and his vision. - -And he paid and dismissed his goatherd at the humble door of the Zum -Rautter in Windisch-Matrey, and that evening began discussing with -Christ Rangediner and Egger, the guides there, the ascent of the -Kahralpe and the Lasörling, and the pass to Krimml, over the ice crests -of the Venediger group. - -A mountaineer who had dwelt beneath the shadow of Orizaba was not -common in the heart of the Tauern, and the men made much of their new -comrade, not the less because the gold pieces rattled in his pouch, and -the hunting-watch he earned had jewels at its back. - -'If anyone had told me that in the Mois de Marie I should bury myself -under an Austrian glacier!' he thought, with some wonder at his -own decision, for he was one of those foster-sons of Paris to whom -_parisine_ is an habitual and necessary intoxication. - -But there comes a time when even parisine, like chloral, ceases to -have power to charm; in a vague way he had often felt the folly and -the hollowness of the life that turned night into day, made the green -cloth of the gaming-table the sole field of battle, and offered as -all form of love the purchased smile of the _belle petite._ A sense of -repose and of freshness, like the breath of a cool morning blowing on -tired eyes, came to him as he sat in the grey twilight amidst the green -landscape, with the night coming down upon the eternal snows above, -whilst the honest, simple souls around him talked of hill perils and -mountaineers' adventures, and all the exploits of a hardy life; and in -the stillness, when their voices ceased, there was no sound but the -sound of water up above amidst the woods, tumbling and rippling in a -hundred unseen brooks and falls. - -'If they had let me alone,' he thought, 'I should have been a hunter -all my days; a guide, perhaps, like this Christ and this Egger here. An -honest man, at least----' - -His heart was heavy and his conscience ill at ease. The grand, serene -glance of Wanda von Szalras seemed to have reached his soul and called -up in him unavailing regrets, pangs of doubt long dormant, vague -remorse long put to sleep with the opiate of the world-taught cynicism, -which had become his second nature. The most impenetrable cynicism will -yield and melt, and seem but a poor armour, when it is brought amidst -the solemnity and solitude of the high hills. - - - - -CHAPTER V. - - -A few days later there arrived by post the 'Spiritù Santo' of Mexico, -addressed to the Professor Joachim Greswold. - -If he had received the order of the Saint Esprit he would not have -been more honoured, more enchanted; and he was deeply touched by the -remembrance of him testified by the gift whose donor he supposed -was back in the gay world of men, not knowing the spell which the -snow mountains of the Tauern had cast on a worldly soul. When he was -admitted to the presence of the Princess Ottilie to consult with her -on her various ailments, she conversed with him of this passer-by who -had so fascinated her fancy, and she even went so far as to permit him -to bring her the great volumes of the "Mexico" out of the library, -and point her out those chapters which he considered most likely to -interest her. - -'It is the work of a true Catholic and gentleman,' she said with -satisfaction, and perused with special commendation the passages which -treated of the noble conduct of the Catholic priesthood in those -regions, their frequent martyrdom and their devoted self-negation. When -she had thoroughly identified their late guest with the editor of these -goodly and blameless volumes, she was content to declare that better -credentials no man could bear. Indeed she talked so continually of -this single point of interest in her monotonous routine of life, that -her niece said to her, with a jest that was more than half earnest, -'Dearest mother, almost you make me regret that this gentleman did -not break his neck over the Engelhorn, or sink with his rifle in the -Szalrassee.' - -'The spinet would never have spoken,' said the Princess; 'and I am -surprised that a Christian woman can say such things, even in joke!' - -The weather cleared, the sun shone, the gardens began to grow gorgeous, -and great parterres of roses glowed between the emerald of the velvet -lawns: an Austrian garden has not a long life, but it has a very -brilliant one. All on a sudden, as the rains ceased, every alley, -group, and terrace were filled with every variety of blossom, and -the flora of Africa and India was planted out side by side with the -gentians and the alpine roses natural to the soil. All the northern -coniferæ spread the deep green of their branches above the turf, and -the larch, the birch, the beech, and the oak were massed in clusters, -or spread away in long avenues--deep defiles of foliage through which -the water of the lake far down below glistened like a jewel. - -'If your friend had been a fortnight later he would have seen -Hohenszalras in all its beauty,' said its mistress once to the -Princess Ottilie. 'It has two seasons of perfection: one its midsummer -flowering, and the other when all the world is frozen round it.' - -The Princess shivered in retrospect and in anticipation. She hated -winter. 'I should never live through another winter,' she said with a -sigh. - -'Then you shall not be tried by one; we will go elsewhere,' said Wanda, -to whom the ice-bound world, the absolute silence, the sense of the -sleigh flying over the hard snow, the perfect purity of the rarefied -air of night and day, made up the most welcome season of the year. - -'I suppose it is dull for you,' she added, indulgently. 'I have so -many occupations in the winter; a pair of skates and a sleigh are to me -of all forms of motion the most delightful. But you, shut up in your -blue-room, do no doubt find our winter hard and long.' - -'I hybernate, I do not live,' said the Princess, pettishly. 'It is not -even as if the house were full.' - -'With ill-assorted guests whose cumbersome weariness one would have -to try all day long to dissipate! Oh, my dear aunt, of all wearisome -_corvées_ the world holds there is nothing so bad as a house -party--even when Egon is here to lead the cotillion and the hunting.' - -'You are very inhospitable!' - -'That is the third time lately you have made that charge against me. I -begin to fear that I must deserve it.' - -'You deserve it, certainly. Oh, you are hospitable to the poor. You set -pedlars, or mule-drivers, or travelling clockmakers, by the dozen round -your hall fires, and you would feed a pilgrimage all the winter long. -But to your own order, to your own society, you are inhospitable. In -your mother's time the Schloss had two hundred guests for the autumn -parties, and then the winter season, from Carnival to Easter, was -always spent in the capital.' - -'She liked that, I suppose.' - -'Of course she liked it; everyone ought to like it at what was her age -then, and what is yours now.' - -'I like this,' said the Countess Wanda, to change the subject, as -the servants set a little Japanese tea-table and two arm-chairs of -gilt osier-work under one of the Siberian pines, whose boughs spread -tent-like over the grass, on which the dogs were already stretched in -anticipation of sugar and cakes. - -From this lawn there were seen only the old keep of the burg and the -turrets and towers of the rest of the building; ivy clambered over -one-half of the great stone pile, that had been raised with hewn -rock in the ninth century; and some arolla pines grew about it. A -low terrace, with low broad steps, separated it from the gardens. A -balustrade of stone, ivy-mantled, protected the gardens from the rocks; -while these plunged in a perpendicular descent of a hundred feet into -the lake. Some black yews and oaks, very large and old, grew against -the low stone pillars. It was a favourite spot with the mistress of -Hohenszalras; it looked westward, and beyond the masses of the vast -forests there shone the snow summit of the Venediger and the fantastic -peaks of the Klein and Kristallwand, whilst on a still day there could -be heard a low sound which she, familiar with it, knew came from the -thunder of the subterranean torrents filling the Szalrassee. - -'Oh, it is very nice,' said the Princess, a little deprecatingly. 'And -of course I at my years want nothing better than a gilt chair in the -sunshine. But then there is so very little sunshine! The chair must -generally stand by the stove! And I confess that I think it would be -fitter for your years and your rank if these chairs were multiplied -by ten or twenty, and if there were some pretty people laughing and -talking and playing games in those great gardens.' - -'It is glorious weather now,' said her niece, who would not assent and -did not desire to dispute. - -'Yes,' interrupted the Princess. 'But it will rain to-morrow. You know -we never have two fine days together.' - -'We will take it while we have it, and be thankful,' said Wanda, with a -good-humour that refused to be ruffled. 'Here is Hubert coming out to -us. What can he want? He looks very startled and alarmed.' - -The old major-domo's face was indeed gravely troubled, as he bowed -before his lady. - -'Pardon me the intrusion, my Countess,' he said hurriedly. 'But I -thought it right to inform you myself that a lad has come over from -Steiner's Inn to say that the foreign gentleman who was here fifteen -days ago has had an accident on the Umbal glacier. It seems he stayed -on in Matrey for sake of the climbing and the shooting. I do not make -out from the boy what the accident was, but the Umbal is very dangerous -at this season. The gentleman lies now at Pregratten. You know, my -ladies, what a very wretched place that is.' - -'I suppose they have come for the Herr Professor?' said Wanda, vaguely -disturbed, while the Princess very sorrowfully was putting a score of -irrelevant questions which Hubert could not answer. - -'No doubt he has no doctor there, and these people send for that -reason,' said Wanda, interrupting with an apology for the useless -interrogations. 'Get horses ready directly, and send for Greswold at -once wherever he may be. But it is a long bad way to Pregratten; I do -not see how he can return under twenty-four hours.' - -'Let him stay two nights, if he be wanted,' said the Princess, to whom -she spoke. She had always insisted that the physician should never be -an hour out of Hohenszalras whilst she was in it. - -'Your friend has been trying to shoot a _kuttengeier_ again, I -suppose,' said her niece, with a smile. 'He is very adventurous.' - -'And you are very heartless.' - -Wanda did not deny the charge; but she went into the house, saw the -doctor, and requested him to take everything with him of linen, wines, -food, or cordials that might possibly be wanted. - -'And stay as long as you are required,' she added, 'and send mules -over to us for anything you wish for. Do not think of us. If my dear -aunt should ail anything I can dispatch a messenger to you, or call a -physician from Salzburg.' - -Herr Joachim said a very few words, thanked her gratefully, and took -his departure behind two sure-footed mountain cobs that could climb -almost like chamois. - -'I think one of the Fathers should have gone too,' said Mme. Ottilie, -regretfully. - -'I hope he is not _in extremis_,' said her niece. 'And I fear if he -were he would hardly care for spiritual assistance.' - -'You are so prejudiced against him, Wanda!' - -'I do not think I am ever prejudiced,' said the Countess von Szalras. - -'That is so like a prejudiced person!' said the Princess, triumphantly. - -For twenty-four hours they heard nothing from Pregratten, which is in -itself a miserable little hamlet lying amidst some of the grandest -scenes that the earth holds: towards evening the next day a lad of the -village came on a mule and brought a letter to his ladies from the Herr -Professor, who wrote that the accident had been due, as usual, to the -gentleman's own carelessness, and to the fact of the snow being melted -by the midsummer sun until it was a thin crust over a deep crevasse. -He had found his patient suffering from severe contusions, high fever, -lethargy, and neuralgic pains, but he did not as yet consider there -were seriously dangerous symptoms. He begged permission to remain, and -requested certain things to be sent to him from his medicine-chests and -the kitchens. - -The boy slept at Hohenszalras that night, and in the morning returned -over the hills to Pregratten with all the doctor had asked for. Wanda -selected the medicines herself, and sent also some fruit and wine for -which he did not ask: the Princess sent a bone of S. Ottilie in an -ivory case and the assurance of her constant prayers. She was sincerely -anxious and troubled. 'Such a charming person, and so handsome,' she -said again and again. 'I suppose the priest of Pregratten is with -him.' Her niece did not remind her that her physician did not greatly -love any priests whatever, though on that subject he was always -discreetly mute at Hohenszalras. - -For the next ten days Greswold stayed at Pregratten, and the Princess -bore his absence, since it was to serve a person who had had the good -fortune to fascinate her, and whom also she chose to uphold because her -niece was, as she considered, unjust to him. Moreover, life at the burg -was very dull to the Princess, whatever it might be to its châtelaine, -who had so much interest in its farms, its schools, its mountains, and -its villages: an interest which to her great-aunt seemed quite out of -place, as all those questions, she considered, should belong to the -priesthood and the stewards, who ought not to be disturbed in their -direction, the one of spiritual and the other of agricultural matters. -This break in the monotony of her time was agreeable to her--of the -bulletins from Pregratten, of the dispatch of all that was wanted, -of the additional pleasure of complaining that she was deprived of -her doctor's counsels, and also of feeling at the same time that in -enduring this deprivation she was doing a charitable and self-denying -action. She further insisted on sending out to Steiner's Inn, greatly -to his own discomfort, her own confessor. - -'Nobles of Brittany have always deep religious feeling,' she said to -her niece; 'and Father Ferdinand has such skill and persuasion with the -dying.' - -'But no one is dying,' said Wanda, a little impatiently. - -'That is more than any human being can tell,' said the Princess, -piously. 'At all events, Father Ferdinand always uses every occasion -judiciously and well.' - -Father Ferdinand, however, was not very comfortable in Pregratten, and -soon returned, much jolted and worn by the transit on a hill pony. -He was reserved about his visitation, and told his patroness sadly -that he had been unable to effect much spiritual good, but that the -stranger was certainly recovering from his hurts, and had the ivory -case of S. Ottilie on his pillow; he had seemed averse, however, to -confession, and therefore, of course, there had been no possibility for -administration of the Sacrament. - -The Princess was inclined to set this rebelliousness down to the fault -of the physician, and determined to talk seriously to Greswold on -spiritual belief as soon as he should return. - -'If he be not orthodox we cannot keep him,' she said severely. - -'He is orthodox, dear aunt,' said Wanda von Szalras, with a smile. 'He -adores the wonders of every tiny blossom that blows, and every little -moss that clothes the rocks.' - -'What a profane, almost sacrilegious answer!' said the Princess. 'I -never should have imagined that _you_ would have jested on sacred -themes.' - -'I did not intend a jest. I was never more serious. A life like our old -Professor's is a perpetual prayer.' - -'Your great-aunt Walburga belonged to the Perpetual Adoration,' -rejoined the Princess, who only heard the last word but one. 'The order -was very severe. I always think it too great a strain on finite human -powers. She was betrothed to the Margraf Paul, but he was killed at -Austerlitz, and she took refuge in a life of devotion. I always used -to think that you would change Hohenszalras into a sacred foundation; -but now I am afraid. You are a deeply religious woman, Wanda--at least -I have always thought so--but you read too much German and French -philosophy, and I fear it takes something from your fervour, from your -entirety of devotion. You have a certain liberty of expression that -alarms me at times.' - -'I think it is a poor faith that dares not examine its adversaries' -charges,' said her niece, quietly. 'You would have faith blindfolded. -They call me a bigot at the Court, however. So you see it is hard to -please all.' - -'Bigot is not a word for a Christian and Catholic sovereign to employ,' -said the Princess, severely. 'Her Majesty must know that there can -never be too great an excess in faith and service.' - -On the eleventh day Greswold returned over the hills and was admitted -to immediate audience with his ladies. - -'Herr von Sabran is well enough for me to leave him,' he said, after -his first very humble salutations. 'But if your excellencies permit -it would be desirable for me to return there in a day or two. Yes, -my ladies, he is lying at Steiner's Inn in Pregratten, a poor place -enough, but your goodness supplied much that was lacking in comfort. -He can be moved before long. There was never any great danger, but it -was a very bad accident. He is a good mountaineer it seems, and he had -been climbing a vast deal in the Venediger group; that morning he meant -to cross the Umbal glacier to the Ahrenthal, and he refused to take a -guide, so Isaiah Steiner tells me.' - -'But I thought he left here to go to Paris?' - -'He did so, my Countess,' answered the doctor. 'But it seems he loves -the mountains, and their spell fell on him. When he sent back your -postillions he went on foot to Matrey, and there he remained; he -thought the weather advanced enough to make climbing safe; but it is -a dangerous pastime so early in summer, though Christ from Matrey, -who came over to see him, tells me he is of the first form as a -mountaineer. He reached the Clarahutte safely, and broke his fast -there; crossing the Umbal the ice gave way, and he fell into a deep -crevasse. He would be a dead man if a hunter on the Welitz side had -not seen him disappear and given the alarm at the hut. With ropes and -men enough they contrived to haul him up, after some hours, from a -great depth. These accidents are very common, and he has to thank his -own folly in going out on to the glacier unaccompanied. Of course he -was insensible, contused, and in high fever when I reached there: the -surgeon they had called from Lienz was an ignorant, who would soon -have sent him for ever to as great a deep as the crevasse. He is very -grateful to you both, my ladies, and would be more so were he not so -angry with himself that it makes him sullen with the world. Men of his -kind bear isolation and confinement ill. Steiner's is a dull place: -there is nothing to hear but the tolling of the church bell and the -fret of the Isel waters.' - -'That means, my friend, that you want him moved as soon as he can -bear it?' said Wanda. 'I think he cannot very well come here. We know -nothing of him. But there is no reason why you should not bring him -to the Lake Monastery. There is a good guest-chamber (the Archbishop -stayed there once), and he could have your constant care there, and -from here every comfort.' - -'Why should he not be brought to this house?' interrupted Mme. Ottilie; -'there are fifty men in it already----' - -'Servants and priests, no strangers. Beside, this gentleman will be -much more at his ease on the Holy Isle, where he can recompense the -monks at his pleasure; he would feel infinitely annoyed to be further -burdened with a hospitality he never asked!' - -'Of course it is as you please!' said the Princess, a little irritably. - -'Dear aunt! when he is on the island you can send him all the luxuries -and all the holy books you may think good for him. Go over to the monks -if you will be so kind, Herr Joachim, and prepare them for a sick -guest; and as for transport and all the rest of the assistance you may -need, use the horses and the household as you see fit. I give you carte -blanche. I know your wisdom and your prudence and your charity.' - -The physician again returned to Pregratten, where he found his patient -fretting with restless impatience at his enforced imprisonment. He had -a difficulty in persuading Sabran to go back to that Szalrassee which -had cost him so dear; but when he was assured that he could pay the -monks what he chose for their hospitality, he at last consented to be -taken to the island. - -'I shall see her again,' he thought, with a little anger at himself. -The mountain spirits had their own way of granting wishes, but they had -granted his. - -On the Holy Isle of the Szalrassee there was a small Dominican -congregation, never more than twelve, of men chiefly peasant-born, -and at this time all advanced in years. The monastery was a low, grey -pile, almost hidden beneath the great willows and larches of the isle, -but rich within from many centuries of gifts in art from the piety of -the lords of Szaravola. It had two guest-chambers for male visitors, -which were lofty and hung with tapestry, and which looked down the lake -towards the north and west, to where beyond the length of water there -rose the mighty forest hills washed by the Salzach and the Ache, backed -by the distant Rhœtian Alps. - -The island was almost in the centre of the lake, and, at a distance -of three miles, the rocks, on which the castle stood, faced it across -the water that rippled around it and splashed its trees and banks. It -was a refuge chosen in wild and rough times when repose was precious, -and no spot on earth was ever calmer, quieter, more secluded than this -where the fishermen never landed without asking a blessing of those who -dwelt there, and nothing divided the hours except the bells that called -to prayer or frugal food. The green willows and the green waters met -and blended and covered up this house of peace as a warbler's nest is -hidden in the reeds. A stranger resting-place had never befallen the -world-tossed, restless, imperious, and dissatisfied spirit of the man -who was brought there by careful hands lying on a litter, on a raft, -one gorgeous evening of a summer's day--one month after he had lifted -his rifle to bring down the _kuttengeier_ in the woods of Wanda von -Szalras. - -'Almost thou makest me believe,' he murmured, when he lay and looked -upward at the cross that shone against the evening skies, while the -raft glided slowly over the water, and from the walled retreat upon the -isle there came the low sound of the monks chanting their evensong. - -They laid him down on a low, broad bed opposite a window of three -bays, which let him look from his couch along the shining length of the -Szalrassee towards the great burg, where it frowned upon its wooded -cliffs with the stone brows of many mountains towering behind it, and -behind them the glaciers of the Glöckner and its lesser comrades. - -The sun had just then set. There was a lingering glow upon the water, -a slender moon had risen above a distant chain of pine-clothed hills, -the slow, soft twilight of the German Alps was bathing the grandeur of -the scene with tenderest, faintest colours and mists ethereal. The Ave -Maria was ringing from the chapel, and presently the deep bells of the -monastery chimed a Laus Deus. - -'Do you believe in fate?' said Sabran abruptly to his companion -Greswold. - -The old physician gave a little gesture of doubt. - -'Sometimes there seems something stronger than ourselves and our will, -but maybe it is only our own weakness that has risen up and stands -in another shape like a giant before us, as our shadow will do on a -glacier in certain seasons and states of the atmosphere.' - -'Perhaps that is all,' said Sabran. But he laid his head back on his -pillow with a deep breath that had in it an equal share of contentment -and regret, and lay still, looking eastward, while the peaceful night -came down upon land and water unbroken by any sound except that of a -gentle wind stirring amidst the willows or the plunge of an otter in -the lake. - -That deep stillness was strange to him who had lived so long in all the -gayest cities of the world; but it was welcome: it seemed like a silent -blessing: his life seemed to stand still while holy men prayed for him -and the ramparts of the mountains shut out the mad and headlong world. - -With these fancies he fell asleep and dreamed of pathless steppes, -which in the winter snows were so vast and vague, stretching away, -away, away to the frozen sea and the ice that no suns can melt, and -ceaseless silence, where sleep is death. - -In the monastic quiet of the isle he soon recovered sufficient strength -to leave his bed and move about slowly, though he was still stiff and -sprained from the fall on the Umbal; he could take his dinner in the -refectory, could get out and sit under the great willows of the bank, -and could touch their organ as the monks never had heard it played. - -It was a monotonous and perfectly simple life; but either because his -health was not yet strong, or because he had been surfeited with -excitement, it was not disagreeable or irksome to him; he bore it with -a serenity and cheerfulness which the monks attributed to religious -patience, and Herr Joachim to philosophy. It was not one nor the other: -it was partly from such willingness as an overtaxed racer feels to lie -down in the repose of the stall for a while to recruit his courage -and speed: it was partly due to the certainty which he felt that now, -sooner or later, he must see face to face once more the woman who had -forbade him to shoot the vulture. - -The face which had looked on him in the pale sunlight of the -pine-woods, and made him think of the Nibelungen queen, had been always -present to his thoughts, even during the semi-stupor of sedative-lulled -rest in his dull chamber by the lonely Isel stream. - -From this guest-room, where he passed his convalescence, the wide -casements all day long showed him the towers and turrets, the metal -roofs, the pinnacles and spires of her mighty home, backed by its -solemn neighbours of the glacier and the alps, and girdled with the -sombre green of the great forests. Once or twice he thought as he -looked at it and saw the noon sun make its countless oriels sparkle -like diamonds, or the starlight change its stones and marbles into -dream-like edifices meet for Arthur's own Avilion, once or twice he -thought to himself, 'If I owned Hohenszalras, and she Romaris, I would -write to her and say: "A moment is enough for love to be born."' - -But Romaris was his--those aged oaks, torn by sea-winds and splashed -with Atlantic spray, were all he had; and she was mistress here. - -When a young man made his first appearance in the society of Paris -who was called Réné Philippe Xavier, Marquis de Sabran-Romaris, his -personal appearance, which was singularly attractive, his manners, -which were of extreme distinction, and his talents, which were great, -made him at once successful in its highest society. He had a romantic -history. - -The son of that Marquis de Sabran who had fallen under the pikes of -the mob of Carrier had been taken in secret out of the country by -a faithful servant, smuggled on board a _chasse-marée_, which had -carried him to an outward-bound sailing ship destined for the seaboard -of America. The chaplain was devoted, the servant faithful. The boy -was brought up well at a Jesuit college in Mexico, and placed in full -possession, when he reached manhood, of his family papers and of such -remnants of the family jewels as had been brought away with him. His -identity as his father's only living son, and the sole representative -of the Sabrans of Romaris, was fully established and confirmed -before the French Consulate of the city. Instead of returning to his -country, as his Jesuit tutors advised and desired, the youth, when he -left college, gave the reins to a spirit of adventure and a passion -for archæology and natural history. He was possessed beyond all with -the desire to penetrate the mystery of the buried cities, and he had -conceived a strong attachment to the flowery and romantic land of -Guatemozin and of Montezuma. He plunged, therefore, into the interior -of that country, and, half as a Jesuit lay-missionary, and half as -an archeological explorer, let all his best years slip away under -the twilight shadows of the virgin forests, and amidst the flowering -wilderness of the banks of the great rivers, making endless notes upon -the ancient and natural history of these solitudes, and gathering -together an interminable store of tradition from the Indians and the -half-breeds with whom he grew familiar. He went further and further -away from the cities, and let longer and longer intervals elapse -without his old friends and teachers hearing anything of him. All that -was known of him was that he had married a beautiful Mexican woman, -who was said to have in her the blood of the old royal race, and that -he lived far from the steps of white men in the depths of the hills -whence the Pacific was in sight. Once he went to the capital for the -purpose of registering and baptizing his son by his Mexican wife. -After that he was lost sight of by those who cared for him, and it -was only known that he was compiling a history of those lost nations -whose temples and tombs, amidst the wilderness, had so powerfully -attracted his interest as a boy. A quarter of a century passed; his -old friends died away one by one, nobody remained in the country who -remembered or asked for him. The West is wide, and wild, and silent; -endless wars and revolutions changed the surface of the country and -the thoughts of men; the scholarly Marquis de Sabran, who only cared -for a hieroglyphic, or an orchid, or a piece of archaic sculpture, -passed away from the memories of the white men whose fellow student he -had been. The land was soaked in blood, the treasures were given up -to adventurers; the chiefs that each reigned their little hour, slew, -and robbed, and burned, and fell in their turn shot like vultures or -stabbed like sheep; and no one in that murderous _tohu-bohu_ had either -time or patience to give to the thought of a student of perished altars -and of swamp-flora. The college, even, where the Jesuits had sheltered -him, had been sacked and set on fire, and the old men and the young -men butchered indiscriminately. When six-and-twenty years later he -returned to the capital to register the birth of his grandson there was -no one who remembered his name. Another quarter of a century passed -by, and when his young representative left the Western world for Paris -he received a tender and ardent welcome from men and women to whom -his name was still a talisman, and found a cordial recognition from -that old nobility whose pride is so cautious and impregnable in its -isolation and reserve. Everyone knew that the young Marquis de Sabran -was the legitimate representative of the old race that had made its -nest on the rocks with the sea birds through a dozen centuries: that he -had but little wealth was rather to his credit than against it. - -When he gave to the world, in his grandfather's name, the result of all -those long years of study and of solitude in the heart of the Mexican -forests, he carried out the task as only a scientific scholar could -have done it, and the vast undigested mass of record, tradition, and -observation which the elder man had collected together in his many -years of observation and abstraction were edited and arranged with so -much skill that their mere preparation placed their young compiler -in the front frank of culture. That he disclaimed all merit of his -own, affirming that he had simply put together into shape all the -scattered memoranda of the elder scholar, did not detract from the -learning or from the value of his annotations. The volumes became the -first authority on the ancient history and the natural history of a -strange country, of which alike the past and the present were of rare -interest, and their production made his name known where neither rank -nor grace would have taken it. To those who congratulated him on the -execution of so complicated and learned a work, he only replied: 'It is -no merit of mine: all the learning is his. In giving it to the world I -do but pay my debt to him, and I am but a mere instrument of his as the -printing-press is that prints it.' - -This modesty, this affectionate loyalty in a young man whose attributes -seemed rather to lie on the side of arrogance, of disdainfulness, -and of coldness, attracted to him the regard of many persons to -whom the mere idler, which he soon became, would have been utterly -indifferent. He chose, as such persons thought, most unfortunately, to -let his intellectual powers lie in abeyance, but he had shown that he -possessed them. No one without large stores of learning and a great -variety of attainments could have edited and annotated as he had done -the manuscripts bequeathed to him by the Marquis Xavier as his most -precious legacy. He might have occupied a prominent place in the world -of science; but he was too indolent or too sceptical even of natural -facts, or too swayed towards the pleasures of manhood, to care for -continued consecration of his life to studies of which he was early -a master, and it was the only serious work that he ever carried out -or seemed likely ever to attempt. Gradually these severe studies were -left further and further behind him; but they had given him a certain -place that no future carelessness could entirely forfeit. He grew to -prefer to hear a _bluette d'amateur_ praised at the Mirliton, to be -more flattered when his presence was prayed for at a _première_ of the -Française; but it had carried his name wherever, in remote corners of -the earth, two or three wise men were gathered together. - -He had no possessions in France to entail any obligations upon him. The -single tower of the manoir which the flames had left untouched, and -an acre or two of barren shore, were all which the documents of the -Sabrans enabled him to claim. The people of the department were indeed -ready to adore him for the sake of the name he bore; but he had the -true Parisian's impatience of the province, and the hamlet of Romaris -but rarely saw his face. The sombre seaboard, with its primitive -people, its wintry storms, its monotonous country, its sad, hard, pious -ways of life, had nothing to attract a man who loved the gaslights of -the Champs-Élysées. Women loved him for that union of coldness and of -romance which always most allures them, and men felt a certain charm -of unused power in him which, coupled with his great courage and his -skill at all games, fascinated them often against their judgment. He -was a much weaker man than they thought him, but none of either sex -ever discovered it. Perhaps he was also a better man than he himself -believed. As he dwelt in the calm of this religious community his sins -seemed to him many and beyond the reach of pardon. - -Yet even with remorse, and a sense of shame in the background, this -tranquil life did him good. The simple fare, the absence of excitement, -the silent lake-dwelling where no sound came, except that of the bells -or the organ, or the voices of fishermen on the waters, the 'early -to bed and early to rise,' which were the daily laws of the monastic -life--these soothed, refreshed, and ennobled his life. - - - - -CHAPTER VI. - - -The days drifted by; the little boat crossed thrice a day from castle -to monastery, bringing the physician, bringing books, food, fruit, -wine; the rain came often, sheets of white water sweeping over the -lake, and blotting the burg and the hills and the forests from -sight; the sunshine came more rarely, but when it came it lit up the -amphitheatre of the Glöckner group to a supreme splendour, of solemn -darkness of massed pines, of snow-peaks shrouded in the clouds. So the -month wore away; he was in no haste to recover entirely; he could pay -the monks for his maintenance, and so felt free to stay, not being -allowed to know that his food came from the castle as his books did. -The simple priests were conquered and captivated by him; he played -grand Sistine masses for them, and canticles which he had listened -to in Nôtre Dame. Herr Joachim marvelled to see him so passive and -easily satisfied; for he perceived that his patient could not be -by nature either very tranquil or quickly content; but the doctor -thought that perhaps the severe nervous shock of the descent on the -Umbal might have shakened and weakened him, and knew that the pure -Alpine air, the harmless pursuits, and the early hours were the best -tonics and restoratives in the pharmacy of Nature. Therefore he could -consistently encourage him to stay, as his own wishes moved him to do; -for to the professor the companionship and discussion of a scholarly -and cultivated man were rarities, and he had conceived an affectionate -interest in one whose life he had in some measure saved; for without -skilled care the crevasse of the Iselthal might have been fatal to a -mountaineer who had successfully climbed the highest peaks of the Andes. - -'No doubt if I passed a year here,' thought Sabran, 'I should rebel -and grow sick with longing for the old unrest, the old tumult, the -old intoxication--no doubt; but just now it is very welcome: it makes -me comprehend why De Rancy created La Trappe, why so many soldiers -and princes and riotous livers were glad to go out into a Paraclete -amongst the hills with S. Bruno or S. Bernard.' - -He said something of the sort to Herr Joachim, who nodded consent; but -added: 'Only they took a great belief with them, and a great penitence, -the recluses of that time; in ours men mistake satiety for sorrow, and -so when their tired vices have had time to grow again, like nettles -that have been gnawed to the root but can spring up with fresh power -to sting, then, as their penitence was nothing but fatigue, they get -quickly impatient to go out and become beasts again. All the difference -between our times and S. Bruno's lies there; they believed in sin, we -do not. I say, "we," I mean the voluptuaries and idlers of your world.' - -'Perhaps not,' answered Sabran, a little gloomily. 'But we do believe -in dishonour.' - -'Do you?' said the doctor, with some irony. 'Oh, I suppose you do. You -may seduce Gretchen: you must not forsake Faustine; you must not lie to -a man: you may lie to a woman. You must not steal: you may beggar your -friend at baccara. I confess I have never understood the confusion of -your unwritten laws on ethics and etiquette.' - -Sabran laughed, but he did not take up the argument; and the doctor -thought that he seemed becoming a little morose; since his escape from -the tedium of confinement at Pregratten, confinement intolerable to a -man of strength and spirit, he had always found his patient of great -equability of temper, and of a good-humour and docility that had seemed -as charming as they were invariable. - -When he was recovered enough to make movement and change harmless to -him, there came to him a note in the fine and miniature writing of the -Princess Ottilie, bidding him come over to the castle at his pleasure, -and especially inviting him, in her niece's name, to the noon-day -breakfast at the castle on the following day, if his strength allowed. - -He sat a quarter of an hour or more with the note on his knee, looking -out at the light green willow foliage as it drooped above the deeper -green of the lake. - -'Our ladies are not used to refusals,' said the doctor, seeing his -hesitation. - -'I should be a churl to refuse,' said Sabran, with some little effort, -which the doctor attributed to a remembered mortification, and so -hastened to say: - -'You are resentful still that the Countess Wanda took your rifle away? -Surely she has made amends?' - -'I was not thinking of that. She was perfectly right. She only treated -me too well. She placed her house and her household at my disposition -with a hospitality quite Spanish. I owe her too much ever to be able to -express my sense of it.' - -'Then you will come and tell her so?' - -'I can do no less.' - -Princess Ottilie and the mistress of Hohenszalras had had a discussion -before that note of invitation was sent; a discussion which had ended -as usual in the stronger reasoner giving way to the whim and will of -the weaker. - -'Why should we not be kind to him?' the Princess had urged; 'he is -a gentleman. You know I took the precaution to write to Kaulnitz; -Kaulnitz's answer is clear enough: and to Frohsdorf, from which it was -equally satisfactory. I wrote also to the Comte de la Barée; his reply -was everything which could be desired.' - -'No doubt,' her niece had answered for the twentieth time; 'but I -think we have already done enough for Christianity and hospitality; we -need not offer him our personal friendship; as there is no master in -this house he will not expect to be invited to it.' We will wish him -God-speed when he is fully restored and is going away.' - -'You are really too prudish!' said the Princess, very angrily. 'I -should be the last person to counsel an imprudence, a failure in due -caution, in correct reserve and hesitation; but for you to pretend that -a Countess von Szalras cannot venture to invite a person to her own -residence because that person is of the opposite sex----' - -'That is not the question; the root of the matter is that he is a -chance acquaintance made quite informally; we should have been cruel if -we had done less than we have done, but there can be no need that we -should do more.' - -'I can ask more about him of Kaulnitz,' said Madame Ottilie. - -Kaulnitz was one of her innumerable cousins, and was then minister in -Paris. - -'Why should you?' said her niece. 'Do you think either that it is quite -honourable to make inquiries unknown to people? It always savours to me -too much of the Third Section.' - -'You are so exaggerated in all your scruples; you prefer to be -suspicious of a person in silence than to ask a few questions,' said -the Princess. 'But surely when two ambassadors and the Kaiser guarantee -his position you may be content.' - -The answer she had received from Kaulnitz had indeed only moderately -satisfied her. It said that there was nothing known to the detriment -of the Marquis de Sabran; that he had never been accused of anything -unfitting his rank and name; but that he was a _viveur_, and was said -to be very successful at play; he was not known to have any debts, but -he was believed to be poor and of precarious fortunes. On the whole the -Princess had decided to keep the answer to herself; she had remembered -with irritation that her niece had suggested baccara as the source of -the hundred gold pieces. - -'I never intended to convey that ambassadors would disown him or the -Kaiser either, whose signature is in his pocket-book. Only,' said -Wanda, 'as you and I are all alone, surely it will be as well to leave -this gentleman to the monks and to Greswold. That is all I mean.' - -'It is a perfectly unnecessary scruple, and not at all like one of your -race. The Szalras have always been hospitable and headstrong.' - -'I hope I am the first--I have done my best for M. de Sabran; as for -being headstrong--surely that is not a sweet or wise quality that you -should lament my loss of it?' - -'You need not quarrel with me,'said the Princess, pettishly. 'You have -a terrible habit of contradiction, Wanda: and you never give up your -opinion.' - -The mistress of Hohenszalras smiled, and sighed a little. - -'Dear mother, we will do anything that amuses you.' - -So the note was sent. - -The Princess had been always eager for such glimpses of the moving -world as had been allowed to her by any accidental change. Her -temperament would have led her to find happiness in the frivolous -froth and fume of a worldly existence; she delighted in gossip, in -innocent gaiety, in curiosity, in wonder; all her early years had been -passed under repression and constraint, and now in her old age she was -as eager as a child for any plaything, as inquisitive as a marmoset, -as animated as a squirrel. Her mother had been a daughter of a great -French family of the south, and much of the vivacity and sportive -malice and quick temper of the Gallic blood was in her still, beneath -the primness and the placidity that had become her habit, from long -years passed in a little German court and in a stately semi-religious -order. - -This stranger whom chance had brought to them was to her idea a -precious and providential source of excitement: already a hundred -romances had suggested themselves to her fertile mind; already a -hundred impossibilities had suggested themselves to her as probable. -She did not in the least believe that accident had brought him there. -She imagined that he had wandered there for the sake of seeing the -mistress of Hohenszalras, who had for so long been unseen by the -world, but whose personal graces and great fortune had remained in the -memories of many. To the romantic fancy of the Princess, which had -never been blunted by contact with harsh facts, nothing seemed prettier -or more probable than that the French marquis, when arrested as a -poacher, had been upon a pilgrimage of poetic adventure. It should not -be her fault, she resolved, if the wounded knight had to go away in -sorrow and silence, without the castle gates being swung open once at -least. - -'After all, if she would only take an interest in anything human,' she -thought, 'instead of always horses and mountains, and philosophical -treatises and councils, and calculations with the stewards! She ought -not to live and die alone. They made me vow to do so, and perhaps it -was for the best, but I would never say to anyone--Do likewise.' - -And then the Princess felt the warm tears on her own cheeks, thinking -of herself as she had been at seventeen, pacing up and down the stiff -straight alley of clipped trees at Lilienhöhe with a bright young -soldier who had fallen in a duel ere he was twenty. It was all so -long ago, so long ago, and she was a true submissive daughter of her -princely house, and of her Holy Church; yet she knew that it was not -meet for a woman to live and die without a man's heart to beat by her -own, without a child's hands to close her glazing eyes. - -And Wanda von Szalras wished so to live and so to die! Only one -magician could change her. Why should he not come? - -So on the morrow the little boat that had brought the physician to him -so often took him over the two miles of water to the landing stairs at -the foot of the castle rock. In a little while he stood in the presence -of his châtelaine. - -He was a man who never in his life had been confused, unnerved, or at a -loss for words; yet now he felt as a boy might have done, as a rustic -might; he had a mist before his eyes, his heart beat quickly, he grew -very pale. - -She thought he was still suffering, and looked at him with interest. - -'I am afraid that we did wrong to tempt you from the monastery,' she -said, in her grave melodious voice; and she stretched out her hand to -him with a look of sympathy. I am afraid you are still suffering and -weak, are you not?' - -He bent low as he touched it. - -'How can I thank you?' he murmured. 'You have treated a vagrant like a -king!' - -'You were a munificent vagrant to our chapel and our poor,' she replied -with a smile. And what have we done for you? Nothing more than is our -commonest duty, far removed from cities or even villages, as we are. -Are you really recovered? I may tell you now that there was a moment -when Herr Greswold was alarmed for you.' - -The Princess Ottilie entered at that moment and welcomed him with more -effusion and congratulation. They breakfasted in a chamber called the -Saxe room, an oval room lined throughout with lacquered white wood, -in the Louis Seize style; the panels were painted in Watteau-like -designs; it had been decorated by a French artist in the middle of the -eighteenth century, and with its hangings of flowered white satin, and -its collection of Meissen china figures, and its great window, which -looked over a small garden with velvet grass plots and huge yews, was -the place of all others to make an early morning meal most agreeable, -whether in summer when the casements were open to the old-fashioned -roses that climbed about them, or in winter when on the open hearth -great oak logs burned beneath the carved white wood mantelpiece, gay -with its plaques of Saxe and its garlands of foliage. The little oval -table bore a service of old Meissen, with tiny Watteau figures painted -on a ground of palest rose. Watteau figures of the same royal china -upheld great shells filled with the late violets of the woods of -Hohenszalras. - -'What an enchanting little room!' said Sabran, glancing round it, and -appreciating with the eyes of a connoisseur the Lancret designs, the -Riesiner cabinets, and the old china. He was as well versed in the -art and lore of the Beau Siècle as Arsène Houssaye or the Goncourts; -he talked now of the epoch with skill and grace, with that accuracy -of knowledge and that fineness of criticism which had made his -observations and his approval treasured and sought for by the artists -and the art patrons of Paris. - -The day was grey and mild; the casements were open; the fresh, pure -fragrance of the forests came in through the aromatic warmth of the -chamber; the little gay shepherds and shepherdesses seemed to breathe -and laugh. - -'This room was a caprice of an ancestress of mine, who was of your -country, and was, I am afraid, very wretched here,' said Wanda von -Szalras. 'She brought her taste from Marly and Versailles. It is not -the finest or the purest taste, but it has a grace and elegance of its -own that is very charming, as a change.' - -'It is a madrigal in porcelain,' he said, looking around him. 'I am -glad that the _alouette gauloise_ has sung here beside the dread and -majestic Austrian vulture.' - -'The _alouette gauloise_ always sings in Aunt Ottilie's heart; it -is what keeps her so young always. I assure you she is a great deal -younger than I am,' said his châtelaine, resting a glance of tender -affection on the pretty figure of the Princess caressing her Spitz dog -Bijou. - -She herself, with her great pearls about her throat, and a gown of -white serge, looked a stately and almost severe figure beside the -dainty picturesque prettiness of the elder lady and the fantastic -gaiety and gilding of the porcelain and the paintings. He felt a -certain awe of her, a certain hesitation before her, which the habits -of the world enabled him to conceal, but which moved him with a sense -of timidity, novel and almost painful. - -'One ought to be Dorat and Marmontel to be worthy of such a repast,' he -said, as he seated himself between his hostesses. - -'Neither Dorat nor Marmontel would have enjoyed your very terrible -adventure,' said the Princess, reflecting with satisfaction that it was -herself who had saved this charming and chivalrous life, since, at her -own risk and loss, she had sent her physicians, alike of body and of -soul, to wrestle for him with death by his sick bed at Pregratten. - -'Wanda would never have sent anyone to him,' thought the Princess: -'she is so unaccountably indifferent to any human life higher than her -peasantry.' - -'Adventures are to the adventurous,' quoted Sabran. - -'Yes,' said the Princess; 'but the pity is that the adventurous are too -often the questionable----' - -'Perhaps that is saying too much,' said Wanda; 'but it is certain that -the more solid qualities do not often lead into a career of excitement. -It has been always conceded--with a sigh--that duty is dull.' - -'I think adventure is like calamity: some people are born to it,' he -added,'and such cannot escape from it. Loyola may cover his head with -a cowl: he cannot become obscure. Eugene may make himself an abbé: he -cannot escape his horoscope cast in the House of Mars.' - -'What a fatalist you are!' - -'Do you think we ever escape our fate? Alexander slew all whom he -suspected, but he did not for that die in his bed of old age.' - -'That merely proves that crime is no buckler.' - -Sabran was silent. - -'My life has been very adventurous,' he said lightly, after a pause; -'but I have only regarded that as another name for misfortune. The -picturesque is not the prosperous; all beggars look well on canvas, -whilst Carolus Duran himself can make nothing of a portrait of Dives, -_roulant carrosse_ through his fifty millions.' - -He had not his usual strength; his loins had had a wrench in the -crashing fall from the Umbal which they had not wholly recovered, -despite the wise medicaments of Greswold. - -He moved with some difficulty, and, not to weary him, she remained -after breakfast in the Watteau room, making him recline at length in a -long chair beside one of the windows. She was touched by the weakness -of a man evidently so strong and daring by nature, and she regretted -the rough and inhospitable handling which he had experienced from her -beloved hills and waters. She, who spoke to no one all the year through -except her stewards and her priests, did not fail to be sensible of the -pleasure she derived from the cultured and sympathetic companionship of -a brilliant and talented mind. - -'Ah! if Egon had only talent like that!' she thought, with a sigh -of remembrance. Her cousin was a gallant nobleman and soldier, but -of literature he had no knowledge; for art he had a consummate -indifference; and the only eloquence he could command was a brief -address to his troopers, which would be answered by an _Eljén_! ringing -loud and long, like steel smiting upon iron. - -Sabran could at all times talk well. - -He had the gift of facile and eloquent words, and he had also what most -attracted the sympathies of his hostess, a genuine and healthful love -of the mountains and forests. All his life in Paris had not eradicated -from his character a deep love for Nature in her wildest and her -stormiest moods. They conversed long and with mutual pleasure of the -country around them, of which she knew every ravine and torrent, and -of whose bold and sombre beauty he was honestly enamoured. - -The noon had deepened into afternoon, and the chimes of the clock-tower -were sounding four when he rose to take his leave, and go on his way -across the green brilliancy of the tumbling water to his quiet home -with the Dominican brethren. He had still the languor and fatigue -about him of recent illness, and he moved slowly and with considerable -weakness. She said to him in parting, with unaffected kindness, 'Come -across to us whenever you like; we are concerned to think that one of -our own glaciers should have treated you so cruelly. I am often out -riding far and wide, but my aunt will always be pleased to receive you.' - -'I am the debtor of the Umbal ice,' he said, in a low voice. 'But for -that happy fall I should have gone on my way to my old senseless life -without ever having known true rest as I know it yonder. Will you be -offended, too, if I say that I stayed at Matrey with a vague, faint, -unfounded hope that your mountains might be merciful, and let me----' - -'Shoot a _kuttengeier?_' she said quickly, as though not desiring to -hear his sentence finished. 'You might shoot one easily sitting at a -window in the monastery, and watching till the vultures flew across the -lake; but you will remember you are on parole. I am sure you will be -faithful.' - -Long, long afterwards she remembered that he shrank a little at the -word, and that a flush of colour went over his face. - -'I will,' he said simply; 'and it was not the _kuttengeier_ for which I -desired to be allowed to revisit Hohenszalras.' - -'Well, if the monks starve you or weary you, you can remember that we -are here, and you must not give their organ quite all the music that -you bear so wonderfully in your mind and hands.' - -'I will play to you all day, if you will only allow me.' - -'Next time you come--to-morrow, if you like.' - -He went away, lying listlessly in the little boat, for he was still -far from strong; but life seemed to him very sweet and serene as the -evening light spread over the broad, bright water, and the water birds -rose and scattered before the plunge of the oars. - -Had the sovereign mistress of Hohenszalras ever said before to any -other living friend----to-morrow? Yet he was too clever a man to be -vain; and he did not misinterpret the calm kindness of her invitation. - -He went thither again the next day, though he left them early, for he -had a sensitive fear of wearying with his presence ladies to whom he -owed so much. - -But the Princess urged his speedy return, and the châtelaine of -Szaravola said once more, with that grave smile which was rather in the -eyes than on the lips, 'We shall always be happy to see you when you -are inclined to cross the lake.' - -He was a great adept at painting, and he made several broad, bold -sketches of the landscapes visible from the lake; he was famous for -many a drawing _brossé dans le vrai_, which hung at his favourite -club the Mirliton; he could paint, more finely and delicately also, -on ivory, on satin, on leather. He sent for some fans and screens -from Vienna, and did in _gouache_ upon them exquisite birds, foliage, -flowers, legends of saints, which were beautiful enough to be not -unworthy a place in those rooms of the burg where the Penicauds, the -Fragonards, the Pettitôts, were represented by much of their most -perfect work. - -He passed his mornings in labour of this sort; at noonday or in the -afternoon he rowed across to Hohenszalras, and loitered for an hour -or two in the gardens or the library. Little by little they became so -accustomed to his coming that it would have seemed strange if more than -a day had gone by without the little striped blue boat gliding from the -Holy Isle to the castle stairs. He never stayed very long; not so long -as the Princess desired. - -'Never in my life have I spent weeks so harmlessly!' he said once with -a smile to the doctor; then he gave a quick sigh and turned away, for -he thought to himself in a sudden repentance that these innocent and -blameless days were perhaps but the prelude to one of the greatest sins -of a not sinless life. - -He came to be looked for quite naturally at the noonday breakfast in -the pretty Saxe chamber. He would spend hours playing on the chapel -organ, or on the piano in the octagon room which Liszt had chosen. The -grand and dreamy music rolled out over the green lake towards the green -hills, and Wanda would look often at the marble figure of her brother -on his tomb, lying like the statue of the young Gaston de Foix, and -think to herself, 'If only Bela were listening, too!' - -Sometimes she was startled when she remembered into what continual -intimacy she had admitted a man of whom she had no real knowledge. - -The Princess, indeed, had said to her, 'I did ask Kaulnitz: Kaulnitz -knows him quite well;' but that was hardly enough to satisfy a woman -as reserved in her friendships, and as habituated to the observance of -a severe etiquette, as was the châtelaine of Hohenszalras. Every day -almost she said to herself that she would not see him when he came, or, -if she saw him, would show him, by greater chilliness of manner, that -it was time he quitted the island. But when he did come, if he did not -see her he went to the chapel and played a mass, a requiem, an anthem, -a sonata; and Beethoven, Palestrina, Schumann, Wagner, Berlioz, surely -allured her from her solitude, and she would come on to the terrace and -listen to the waves of melody rolling out through the cool sunless air, -through the open door of the place where her beloved dead rested. Then, -as a matter of course, he stayed, and after the noonday meal sometimes -he rode with her in the forests, or drove the Princess in her pony -chair, or received permission to bear his châtelaine company in her -mountain walks. They were seldom alone, but they were much together. - -'It is much better for her than solitude,' thought the Princess. 'It is -not likely that she will ever care anything for him: she is so cold; -but if she did, there would be no great harm done. He is of old blood, -and she has wealth enough to need no more. Of course any one of our -great princes would be better; but, then, as she will never take any -one of them----' - -And the Princess, who was completely fascinated by the deferential -homage to her of Sabran, and the pleasure he honestly found in her -society, would do all she could, in her innocent and delicate way, to -give her favourite the opportunities he desired of intercourse with the -mistress of Hohenszalras. She wanted to see again the life that she had -seen in other days at the Schloss; grand parties for the hunting season -and the summer season, royal and noble people in the guest-chambers, -great gatherings for the chase on the _rond-point_ in the woods, -covers for fifty laid at the table in the banqueting hall, and -besides--besides, thought the childless and loving old woman--little -children with long fair curls and gay voices wakening the echoes in the -Rittersäal with their sports and pastimes. - -It was noble and austere, no doubt, this life led by Wanda von Szalras -amidst the mountains in the Tauern, but it was lonely and monotonous to -the Princess, who still loved a certain movement, gossip, and diversion -as she liked to nibble a _nougat_ and sip her chocolate foaming under -its thick cream. It seemed to her that even to suffer a little would be -better for her niece than this unvarying solitude, this eternal calm. -That she should have mourned for her brother was most natural, but this -perpetual seclusion was an exaggeration of regret. - -If the presence of Sabran reconciled her with the world, with life as -it was, and induced her to return to the court and to those pleasures -natural to her rank and to her years, it would be well done, thought -the Princess; and as for him--if he carried away a broken heart it -would be a great pity, but persons who like to move others as puppets -cannot concern themselves with the accidental injury of one of their -toys; and Mme. Ottilie was too content with her success of the moment -to look much beyond it. - -'The charm of being here is to me precisely what I daresay makes it -tiresome to you,' the mistress of Hohenszalras said to him one day, 'I -mean its isolation. One can entirely forget that beyond those mountains -there is a world fussing, fuming, brewing its storms in saucers, -and inventing a quantity of increased unwholesomeness, in noise and -stench, which it calls a higher civilisation. No! I would never have -a telegraph wire brought here from Matrey. There is nothing I ever -particularly care to know about. If there were anyone I loved who was -away from me it would be different. But there is no one. There are -people I like, of course---- - -'But political events?' he suggested. - -'They do not attract me. They are ignoble. They are for the most part -contemptibly ill-managed, and to think that after so many thousands of -years humanity has not really progressed beyond the wild beasts' method -of settling disputes----' - -'There is so much of the wild beast in it. With such an opinion of -political life why do you counsel me to seek it?' - -'You are a man. There is nothing else for a man who has talent, and -who is--who is as you are, _désœuvré._ Intellectual work would be -better, but you do not care for it, it seems. Since your "Mexico"----' - -'The "Mexico" was no work of mine.' - -'Oh yes, pardon me: I have read it. All your notes, all your addenda, -show how the learning of the editor was even superior to that of the -original author.' - -'No; all that I could do was to simplify his immense erudition and -arrange it. I never loved the work; do not accredit me with so much -industry: but it was a debt that I paid, and paid easily too, for the -materials lay all to my hand, if in disorder.' - -'The Marquis Xavier must at least have infused his own love of -archæology and science into you?' - -'I can scarcely say even so much. I have a facility at acquiring -knowledge, which is not a very high quality. Things come easily to me. -I fear if Herr Joachim examined me he would find my science shallow.' - -'You have so many talents that perhaps you are like one of your own -Mexican forests; one luxuriance kills another.' - -'Had I had fewer I might have been more useful in my generation,' he -said, with a certain sincerity of regret. - -'You would have been much less interesting,' she thought to herself, as -she said aloud, 'There are the horses coming up to the steps: will you -ride with me? And do not be ungrateful for your good gifts. Talent is a -_Schlüsselblume_ that opens to all hidden treasures.' - -'Why are you not in the Chamber?' she had said a little before to him. -'You are eloquent; you have an ancestry that binds you to do your best -for France.' - -'I have no convictions,' he had said, with a flush on his face. 'It is -a sad thing to confess.' - -'It is; but if you have nothing better to substitute for them you might -be content to abide by those of your fathers.' - -He had been silent. - -'Besides,' she had added, 'patriotism is not an opinion, it is an -instinct.' - -'With good men. I am not one of them.' - -'Go into public life,' she had repeated. 'Convictions will come to you -in an active career, as the muscles develop in the gymnasium.' - -'I am indolent,' he had demurred, 'and I have desultory habits.' - -'You may break yourself of these. There must be much in which you could -interest yourself. Begin with the fishing interests of the coast that -belongs to you.' - -'Honestly, I care for nothing except for myself. You will say it is -base.' - -'I am afraid it is natural.' - -He but seldom spoke of his early life. When he did so it was with -reluctance, as if it gave him pain. His father he had never known; of -his grandfather, the Marquis Xavier, as he usually called him, he spoke -with extreme and reverent tenderness, but with little reticence. The -grave old man, in the stateliness and simplicity of his solitary life, -had been to his youthful imagination a solemn and sacred figure. - -'His was the noblest life I have ever known,' he said once, with an -emotion in the accent of the words which she had never heard in his -voice before, and which gave her a passing impression of a regret in -him that was almost remorse. - -It might be, she reflected, the remorse of a man who, in his careless -youth, had been less heedful of the value of an affection and the -greatness of a character which, as he grew older and wiser, he learned -to appreciate when it was too late. He related willingly how the old -man had trusted him to carry out into the light of the world the fruits -of his life of research, and with what pleasure he had seen the instant -and universal recognition of the labours of the brain and the hand -that were dust. But of his own life in the West he said little; he -referred his skill in riding to the wild horses of the pampas, and his -botanical and scientific knowledge to the studies which the solitudes -of the sierras had made him turn to as relaxation and occupation; but -of himself he said little, nothing, unless the conversation so turned -upon his life there that it was impossible for him to avoid those -reminiscences which were evidently little agreeable to him. Perhaps -she thought some youthful passion, some unwise love, had made those -flowering swamps and sombre plains painful in memory to him. There -might be other graves than that of the Marquis Xavier beneath the -plumes of pampas grass. Perhaps, also, to a man of the world, a man of -mere pleasure as he had become, that studious and lonesome youth of his -already had drifted so far away that, seen in distance, it seemed dim -and unreal as any dream. - -'How happy you are to have so many admirable gifts!' said Wanda to him -one day, when he had offered her a fan that he had painted on ivory. He -had a facile skill at most of the arts, and had acquired accuracy and -technique lounging through the painting-rooms of Paris. The fan was an -exquisite trifle, and bore on one side her monogram and the arms of her -house, and on the other mountain flowers and birds, rendered with the -delicacy of a miniaturist. - -'What is the use of a mere amateur?' he said, with indifference. 'When -one has lived amongst artists one learns heartily to despise oneself -for daring to flirt with those sacred sisters the Muses.' - -'Why? And, after all, when one has such perfect talent as yours, the -definition of amateur and artist seems a very arbitrary and meaningless -one. If you needed to make your fame and fortune by painting faces -you could do so. You do not need. Does that make the fan the less -precious? The more, I think, since gold cannot buy it.' - -'You are too kind to me. The world would not be as much so if I really -wanted its suffrages.' - -'You cannot tell that. I think you have that facility which is the -first note of genius. It is true all your wonderful talents seem the -more wonderful to me because I have none myself. I feel art, but I have -no power over it; and as for what are called accomplishments I have -none. I could, perhaps, beat you in the shooting gallery, and I will -try some day if you like, and I can ride--well, like my Kaiserin--but -accomplishments I have none.' - -'Surely you were yesterday reading Plato in his own text?' - -'I learnt Greek and Latin with my brother. You cannot call that an -accomplishment. The ladies of the old time often knew the learned -tongues, though they were greater at tapestry or distilling and at -the ordering of their household. In a solitary place like this it is -needful to know so many useful things. I can shoe my horse and harness -a sleigh; I can tell every useful herb and flower in the woods; I know -well what to do in frostbite or accidents; if I were lost in the hills -I could make my way by the stars; I can milk a cow, and can row any -boat, and I can climb with crampons; I am a mountaineer. Do not be so -surprised. I do all that I have the children taught in my schools. -But in a salon I am useless and stupid; the last new lady whose lord -has been decorated because he sold something wholesale or cheated -successfully at the Bourse would, I assure you, eclipse me easily in -the talents of the drawing-room.' - -Sabran looked at her and laughed outright. A compliment would have -seemed ridiculous before this beautiful patrician, with her serene -dignity, her instinctive grace, her unconscious hauteur, her entire -possession of all those attributes which are the best heirlooms of -a great nobility. To protest against her words would have been like -an insult to this daughter of knights and princes, to whom half the -sovereigns of modern Europe would have seemed but parvenus, the -accidental mushroom growth of the decay in the contest of nations. - -His laughter amused her, though it was, perhaps, the most discreet and -delicate of compliments. She was not offended by it as she would have -been with any spoken flattery. - -'After all, do not think me modest in what I have said,' she pursued. -'_Talents de société_ are but slight things at the best, and in our -day need not even have either wit or culture: a good travesty at a -costume-ball, a startling gown on a racecourse, a series of adventures -more or less true, a trick of laughing often and laughing long--any -one of these is enough for renown in your Paris. In Vienna we do more -homage to tradition still; our Court life has still something of the -grace of the minuet.' - -'Yet even in Vienna you refuse----' - -'To spend my time? Why not? The ceremonies of a Court are wearisome to -me; my duties lie here; and for the mirth and pomp of society I have -had no heart since the grief that you know of fell upon me.' - -It was the first time that she had ever spoken of her brother's loss to -him: he bowed very low in silent sympathy. - -'Who would not envy his death, since it has brought such remembrance!' -he said in a low tone, after some moments. - -'Ah, if only we could be sure that unceasing regret consoles the dead!' -she said, with an emotion, that softened and dimmed all her beauty. -Then, as if ashamed or repentant of having shown her feeling for Bela -to a stranger, she turned to him and said more distantly: - -'Would it entertain you to see my little scholars? I will take you to -the schoolhouses if you like.' - -He could only eagerly accept the offer: he felt his heart beat and his -eyes lighten as she spoke. He knew that such a condescension in her was -a mark of friendship, a sign of familiar intimacy. - -'It is but a mile or so through the woods. We will walk there,' she -said, as she took her tall cane from its rack and called to Neva and -Donau, where they lay on the terrace without. - -He fancied that the vague mistrust of him, the vague prejudice against -him of which he had been sensible in her, were passing away from her -mind; but still he doubted--doubted bitterly--whether she would ever -give him any other thought than that due to a passing and indifferent -acquaintance. That she admired his intelligence and that she pitied his -loneliness he saw; but there seemed to him that never, never, never, -would he break down in his own favour that impalpable but impassable -barrier due, half to her pride, half to her reserve, and absolutely to -her indifference, which separated Wanda von Szalras from the rest of -mankind. - -If she had any weakness or foible it was the children's schools on the -estates in the High Tauern and elsewhere. They had been founded on a -scheme of Bela's and her own, when they had been very young, and the -world to them a lovely day without end. Their too elaborate theories -had been of necessity curtailed, but the schools had been established -on the basis of their early dreams, and were unlike any others that -existed. She had read much and deeply, and had thought out all she had -read, and as she enjoyed that happy power of realising and embodying -her own theories which most theorists are denied, she had founded the -schools of the High Tauern in absolute opposition to all that the -school-boards of her generation have decreed as desirable. And in every -one of her villages she had her schools on this principle, and they -throve, and the children with them. Many of these could not read a -printed page, but all of them could read the shepherd's weather-glass -in sky and flower; all of them knew the worm that was harmful to the -crops, the beetle that was harmless in the grass; all knew a tree by a -leaf, a bird by a feather, an insect by a grub. - -Modern teaching makes a multitude of gabblers. She did not think it -necessary for the little goatherds, and dairymaids, and foresters, -and charcoal-burners, and sennerinn, and carpenters, and cobblers, to -study the exact sciences or draw casts from the antique. She was of -opinion, with Pope, that 'a little learning is a dangerous thing,' and -that a smattering of it will easily make a man morose and discontented, -whilst it takes a very deep and even lifelong devotion to it to teach a -man content with his lot. Genius, she thought, is too rare a thing to -make it necessary to construct village schools for it, and whenever or -wherever it comes upon earth it will surely be its own master. - -She did not believe in culture for little peasants who have to work for -their daily bread at the plough-tail or with the reaping-hook. She knew -that a mere glimpse of a Canaan of art and learning is cruelty to those -who never can enter into and never even can have leisure to merely gaze -on it. She thought that a vast amount of useful knowledge is consigned -to oblivion whilst children are taught to waste their time in picking -up the crumbs of a great indigestible loaf of artificial learning. She -had her scholars taught their 'ABC,' and that was all. Those who wished -to write were taught, but writing was not enforced. What they were made -to learn was the name and use of every plant in their own country; -the habits and ways of all animals; how to cook plain food well, and -make good bread; how to brew simples from the herbs of their fields -and woods, and how to discern the coming weather from the aspect of -the skies, the shutting-up of certain blossoms, and the time of day -from those 'poor men's watches,' the opening flowers. In all countries -there is a great deal of useful household and out-of-door lore that is -fast being choked out of existence under books and globes, and which, -unless it passes by word of mouth from generation to generation, is -quickly and irrevocably lost. All this lore she had cherished by her -schoolchildren. Her boys were taught in addition any useful trade they -liked--boot-making, crampon-making, horse-shoeing, wheel-making, or -carpentry. This trade was made a pastime to each. The little maidens -learned to sew, to cook, to spin, to card, to keep fowls and sheep and -cattle in good health, and to know all poisonous plants and berries by -sight. - -'I think it is what is wanted,' she said. 'A little peasant child does -not need to be able to talk of the corolla and the spathe, but he does -want to recognise at a glance the flower that will give him healing -and the berries that will give him death. His sister does not in the -least require to know why a kettle boils, but she does need to know -when a warm bath will be good for a sick baby or when hurtful. We want -a new generation to be helpful, to have eyes, and to know the beauty -of silence. I do not mind much whether my children read or not. The -labourer that reads turns Socialist, because his brain cannot digest -the hard mass of wonderful facts he encounters. But I believe every one -of my little peasants, being wrecked like Crusoe, would prove as handy -as he.' - -She was fond of her scholars and proud of them, and they were never -afraid of her. They knew well it was the great lady who filled all -their sacks the night of Santa Claus--even those of the naughty -children, because, as she said, childhood was so short that she thought -it cruel to give it any disappointments. - -The walk to the schoolhouse lay through the woods to the south of the -castle; woods of larch and beech and walnut and the graceful Siberian -pine, with deep mosses and thick fern-brakes beneath them, and ever and -again a watercourse tumbling through their greenery to fall into the -Szalrassee below. - -'I always fancy I can hear here the echo of the great Krimler -torrents,' she said to him as they passed through the trees. 'No -doubt it _is_ fancy, and the sound is only from our own falls. But -the peasants' tradition is, you may know, that our lake is the water -of the Krimler come to us underground from the Pinzgau. Do you know -our Sahara of the North? It is monotonous and barren enough, and yet -with its vast solitudes of marsh and stones, its flocks of wild fowl, -its reedy wastes, its countless streams, it is grand in its own way. -And then in the heart of it there are the thunder and the boiling fury -of Krimml! You will smile because I am an enthusiast for my country, -you who have seen Orinoco and Chimborazo; but even you will own that -the old Duchy of Austria, the old Archbishopric of Salzburg, the old -Countship of Tirol, have some beauty and glory in them. Here is the -schoolhouse. Now you shall see what I think needful for the peasant of -the future. Perhaps you will condemn me as a true Austrian: that is, as -a Reactionist.' - -The schoolhouse was a châlet, or rather a collection of châlets, set -one against another on a green pasture belted by pine woods, above -which the snows of the distant Venediger were gleaming amidst the -clouds. There was a loud hum of childish voices rising through the open -lattice, and these did not cease as they entered the foremost house. - -'Do not be surprised that they take no notice of our entrance,' she -said to him. 'I have taught them not to do so unless I bid them. If -they left off their tasks I could never tell how they did them; and is -not the truest respect shown in obedience?' - -'They are as well disciplined as soldiers,' he said with a smile, -as twenty curly heads bent over desks were lifted for a moment to -instantly go down again. - -'Surely discipline is next to health,' added Wanda. 'If the child do -not learn it early he must suffer fearfully when he reaches manhood, -since all men, even princes, have to obey some time or other, and the -majority of men are not princes, but are soldiers, clerks, porters, -guides, labourers, tradesmen, what not; certainly something subject -to law if not to a master. How many lives have been lost because a -man failed to understand the meaning of immediate and unquestioning -obedience! Soldiers are shot for want of it, yet children are not to be -taught it!' - -Whilst she spoke not a child looked up or left off his lesson: the -teacher, a white-haired old man, went on with his recitation. - -'Your teachers are not priests?' he said in some surprise. - -'No,' she answered; 'I am a faithful daughter of the Church, as you -know; but every priest is perforce a specialist, if I may be forgiven -the profanity, and the teacher of children should be of perfectly open, -simple and unbiassed mind; the priest's can never be that. Besides, -his teaching is apart. The love and fear of God are themes too vast -and too intimate to be mingled with the pains of the alphabet and the -multiplication tables. There alone I agree with your French Radicals, -though from a very different reason to theirs. Now in this part of the -schools you see the children are learning from books. These children -have wished to read, and are taught to do so; but I do not enforce -though I recommend it. You think that very barbarous? Oh! reflect for -a moment how much more glorious was the world, was literature itself, -before printing was invented. Sometimes I think it was a book, not a -fruit, that Satan gave. You smile incredulously. Well, no doubt to a -Parisian it seems absurd. How should you understand what is wanted in -the heart of these hills? Come and see the other houses.' - -In the next which they entered there was a group of small sturdy boys, -very sunburnt and rough and bright, who were seated in a row listening -with rapt attention to a teacher who was talking to them of birds and -their uses and ways; there were prints, of birds and birds' nests, and -the teacher was making them understand why and how a bird flew. - -'That is the natural history school,' she said; 'one day it is birds, -another animals, another insects, that they are told about. Those are -all little foresters born. They will go about their woods with eyes -that see, and with tenderness for all creation.' - -In the next school Herr Joachim himself, who took no notice of their -entrance, was giving a simple little lecture on the useful herbs and -the edible tubers, the way to know them and to turn them to profit. -There were several girls listening here. - -'Those girls will not poison their people at home with a false -cryptogram,' said Wanda, as they passed on to another place, where -a lesson on farriery and the treatment of cattle was going on, and -another where a teacher was instructing a mixed group of boys and -little maidens in the lore of the forests, of the grasses, of the -various causes that kill a tree in its prime, of the insects that -dwell in them, and of the different soils that they needed. In -another chamber there was a spinning-class and a sewing-class under a -kindly-faced old dame; and in yet another there were music-classes, -some playing on the zither, and others singing part-songs and glees -with baby voices. - -'Now you have seen all I have to show you,' said Wanda. 'In these two -other châlets are the workshops, where the boys learn any trade they -choose, and the girls are also taught to make a shoe or a jacket. My -children would not pass examinations in cities, certainly; but they -are being fitted in the best way they can for their future life, which -will pass either in these mountains and forests, as I hope, or in the -armies of the Emperor, and the humble work-a-day ways of poor folks -everywhere. If there be a Grillparzer or a Kaulbach amongst them, the -education is large and simple enough to let the originality he has been -born with develop itself; if, as is far more likely, they are all made -of ordinary human stuff, then the teaching they receive is such as to -make them contented, pious, honest, and useful working people. At least -that is what I strive for; and this is certain, that the children come -some of them a German mile and more with joy and willingness to their -schools, and that this at least they take away with them into their -future life--the sense of duty as a supreme rein over all instincts, -and mercifulness towards every living thing that God has given us.' - -She had spoken with unusual animation, and with an earnestness that -brought warmth over her cheek and moisture into her eyes. - -Sabran looked at her timidly; then as timidly he touched the tips of -her fingers, and raised them to his lips. - -'You are a noble woman,' he said very low; a sense of his own utter -unworthiness overwhelmed him and held him mute. - -She glanced at him in some surprise, vaguely tinged with displeasure. - -'There are schools on every estate,' she said, a little angrily and -disconnectedly. 'These are modelled on my own whim; that is all. The -world would say I ought to teach these little peasants the science -that dissects its own sources, and the philosophies that resolve -all creation into an egg. But I follow ancient ways enough to think -the country life the best, the healthiest, the sweetest: it is for -this that they are born, and to this I train them. If we had more -naturalists we should have fewer Communists.' - -'Yes, Audubon would scarcely have been a regicide, or Humboldt a -Camorrist,' he answered her, regaining his self-possession. 'No doubt a -love of nature is a triple armour against self-love. How can I say how -right I think your system with these children? You seem not to believe -me. There is only one thing in which I differ with you; you think the -'eyes that see' bring content. Surely not! surely not!' - -'It depends on what they see,' she said meditatively. 'When they are -wide open in the woods and fields, when they have been taught to see -how the tree-bee forms her cell and the mole his fortress, how the -warbler builds his nest for his love and the water-spider makes his -little raft, how the leaf comes forth from the hard stem and the fungi -from the rank mould, then I think that sight is content--content in the -simple life of the woodland place, and in such delighted wonder that -the heart of its own accord goes up in peace and praise to the Creator. -The printed page may teach envy, desire, covetousness, hatred, but the -Book of Nature teaches resignation, hope, willingness to labour and -live, submission to die. The world has gone further and further from -peace since larger and larger have grown its cities and its shepherd -kings are no more.' - -He was silent. - -Her voice moved him like sweet remembered music; yet in his own -remembrance what were there? Only 'envy, desire, covetousness, hatred,' -the unlovely shapes that were to her as emblems of the powers of evil. -His reason was with her, and his emotions were with her also, but -memory was busy in him, and in it he saw 'as in a glass darkly,' all -his passionate, cold, embittered youth, all his warped, irresolute, -useless, and untrue manhood. - -'Do not think,' she added, unconscious of the pain that she had -caused him, 'that I undervalue the blessing of great books; but I do -think that, to recognise the beauty of literature, as much culture and -comprehension are needed as to understand Leonardo's painting, or the -structure of Wagner's music. Those who read well are as rare as those -who love well. The curse of our age is superficial knowledge; it is -a _cryptogram_ of the rankest sort, and I will not let my scholars -touch it. Do you not think it is better for a country child to know -what flowers are poisonous for her cattle, and what herbs are useful -in her neighbours' fever, than to be able to spell through a Jesuit's -newspaper, or suck evil from a Communist's pamphlet? You will not have -your horse well shod if the smith be thinking of Bakounine while he -hammers the iron.' - -'I have held the views of Bakounine myself,' said Sabran, with -hesitation. 'I do not know what you will think of me. I have even been -tempted to be an anarchist, a Nihilist.' - -'You speak in the past tense. You must have abandoned those views? You -are received at Frohsdorf?' - -'They have, perhaps, abandoned me. My life has been idle, sinful -often. I have liked luxury, and have not denied myself folly. I -recognised the absurdity of such a man as I was joining in any -movement of seriousness and self-negation, so I threw away my political -persuasions, as one throws off a knapsack when tired of a journey on -foot.' - -'That was not very conscientious, surely?' - -'No, madame. It is perhaps, however, better than helping to adjust the -contradictions of the world with dynamite. And I cannot even claim that -they were persuasions; I fear they were mere personal impatience with -narrow fortunes and useless ambitions.' - -'I cannot pardon anyone of an old nobility turning Republican; it -is like a son insulting the tombs of his fathers!' she said, with -emphasis; then, fearing she had reproved him too strongly, she added, -with a smile, 'And yet I also could almost join the anarchists when I -see the enormous wealth of baseborn speculators and Hebrew capitalists -in such bitter contrast with the hunger of the poor, who starve all -over the world in winter like birds frozen on the snow. Oh, do not -suppose that, though I am an Austrian, I cannot see that feudalism is -doomed. We are still feudal here, but then in so much we are still as -we were in crusading days. The nobles have been, almost everywhere -except here, ousted by capitalists, and the capitalists will in turn -be devoured by the democracy. _Les loups se mangeront entre eux._ You -see, though I may be prejudiced, I am not blind. But you, as a Breton, -should think feudalism a loss, as I do.' - -'In those days, Barbe Bleue or Gilles de Retz were the nearest -neighbours of Romaris,' he said, with a smile. 'Yet if feudalism could -be sure of such châtelaines as the Countess von Szalras, I would wish -it back to-morrow.' - -'That is very prettily put for a Socialist. But you cannot be a -Socialist. You are received at Frohsdorf. Bretons are always royal; -they are born with the _cultus_ of God and the King.' - -He laughed a little, not quite easily. - -'Paris is a witch's caldron, in which all _cultes_ are melted down, and -evaporate in a steam of disillusion and mockery; into the caldron we -have long flung, alas! cross and crown, actual and allegoric. I am not -a Breton; I am that idle creation of modern life, a _boulevardier._' - -'But do you never visit Romaris?' - -'Why should I? There is nothing but a few sea-tormented oaks, endless -sands, endless marshes, and a dark dirty village jammed among rocks, -and reeking with the smell of the oil and the fish.' - -'Then I would go and make the village clean and the marshes healthy, -were I you. There must be something of interest in any people who -remain natural in their ways and dwell beside a sea, Is Romaris not -prosperous?' - -'Prosperous! God and man have forgotten it ever since the world began, -I should say. It is on a bay, so treacherous that it is called the Pool -of Death. The _landes_ separate it by leagues from any town. All it -has to live on is the fishing. It is dull as a grave, harried by every -storm, unutterably horrible.' - -'Well, I would not forsake its horrors were I a son of Romaris,' she -said softly; then, as she perceived that some association made the -name and memory of the old Armorican village painful to him, she blew -the whistle she always used, and at the summons the eldest pupil of -the school, a handsome boy of fourteen, came out and stood bareheaded -before her. - -'Hansl, ask the teachers to grant you all an hour's frolic, that you -may amuse this gentleman,' she said to him. 'And, Hansl, take care that -you do your best, all of you, in dancing, wrestling, and singing, and -above all with the zither, for the honour of the empire.' - -The lad, with a face of sunshine, bowed low and ran into the -school-houses. - -'It is almost their hour for rest, or I would not have disturbed them,' -she said to him. 'They come here at sunrise; bring their bread and -meat, and milk is given them; they disperse according to season, a -little before sunset. They have two hours' rest at different times, but -it is hardly wanted, for their labours interest them, and their classes -are varied.' - -Soon the children all trooped out, made their bow or curtsey -reverently, but without shyness, and began with song and national airs -played on the zither or the 'jumping wood.' Their singing and music -were tender, ardent, and yet perfectly precise. There was no false note -or slurred passage. Then they danced the merry national dances that -make gay the long nights in the snow-covered châlets in many a mountain -village which even the mountain letter-carrier, on his climbing irons, -cannot reach for months together when all the highlands are ice. They -ended their dances with the Hungarian czardas, into which they threw -all the vigour of their healthful young limbs and happy hearts. - -'My cousin Egon taught them the czardas; have you ever seen the Magyar -nobles in the madness of that dance?' - -'Your cousin Egon? Do you mean Prince Vàsàrhely?' - -'Yes. Do you know him?' - -'I have seen him.' - -His face grew paler as he spoke. He ceased to watch with interest the -figures of the jumping children in their picturesque national dress, as -they whirled and shouted in the sunshine on the green turf, with the -woods and the rocks towering beyond them. - -When the czardas was ended, the girls sat down on the sward to rest, -and the boys began their leaping, running, and stone-heaving, with -their favourite wrestling at the close. - -'They are as strong as chamois,' she said to him. 'There is no need -here to have a gymnasium. Their mountains teach them climbing, and -every Sunday on their village green their fathers make them wrestle -and shoot at marks. The favourite sport here is one I will not -countenance--the finger-hooking. If I gave the word any two of those -little fellows would hook their middle fingers together and pull till a -joint broke.' - -The boys were duly commended for their skill, and Sabran would have -thrown them a shower of florin notes had she allowed it. Then she bade -them sing as a farewell the Kaiser's Hymn. - -The grand melody rolled out on the fresh clear Alpine air in voices as -fresh and as clear, that went upward and upward towards the zenith like -the carol of the larks. - -'I would fain be the Emperor to have that prayer sung so for me,' -said Sabran, with truth, as the glad young voices dropped down into -silence--the intense silence of the earth where the glaciers reign. - -'He heard them last year, and he was pleased,' she said, as the -children raised a loud 'Hoch!' made their reverence once more at a sign -of dismissal from her, and vanished in a proud and happy crowd into the -schoolhouses. - -'Do you never praise them or reward them?' he asked in surprise. - -'Santa Claus rewards them. As for praise, they know when I smile that -all is well.' - -'But surely they have shown very unusual musical talent?' - -'They sing well because they are well taught. But they are not any -of them going to become singers. Those zithers and part-songs will -all serve to enliven the long nights of the farmhouse or the summer -solitude of the cattle-hut. We do not cultivate music one-half enough -among the peasantry. It lightens labour; it purifies and strengthens -the home-life; it sweetens black-bread. Do you remember that happy -picture of Jordaens' "Where the old sing, the young chirp," where the -old grandfather and grandmother, and the baby in its mother's arms, and -the hale five-year-old boy, and the rough servant, are all joining in -the same melody, while the goat crops the vine-leaves off the table? I -should like to see every cottage interior like that when the work was -done. I would hang up an etching from Jordaens where you would hang up, -perhaps, the programme of Proudhon.' - -Then she walked back with him through the green sun-gleaming woods. - -'I hope that I teach them content,' she continued. 'It is the lesson -most neglected in our day. "_Niemand will ein Schuster seyn; Jederman -ein Dichter._" It is true we are very happy in our surroundings. A -mountaineer's is such a beautiful life; so simple, healthful, hardy, -and fine; always face to face with nature. I try to teach them what -an inestimable joy that alone is. I do not altogether believe in the -prosaic views of rural life. It is true that the peasant digging his -trench sees the clod, not the sky but then when he does lift his head -the sky is there, not the roof, not the ceiling. That is so much in -itself. And here the sky is an everlasting grandeur: clouds and domes -of snow are blent together. When the stars are out above the glaciers -how serene the night is, how majestic! even the humblest creature feels -lifted up into that eternal greatness. Then you think of the home-life -in the long winters as dreary; but it is not so. Over away there, -at Lahn, and other places on the Hallstadtersee, they do not see the -sun for five months; the wall of rock behind them shuts them from all -light of day; but they live together, they dance, they work. The young -men recite poems, and the old men tell tales of the mountains and the -French war, and they sing the homely songs of the _Schnaderhupfeln._ -Then when winter passes, when the sun comes again up over the wall of -rocks, when they go out into the light once more, what happiness it -is! One old man said to me, 'It is like being born again!' and another -said, 'Where it is always warm and light I doubt they forget to thank -God for the sunshine;' and quite a young child said, all of his own -accord, 'The primroses live in the dusk all the winter, like us, and -then when the sun comes up we and they run out together, and the Mother -of Christ has set the waters and the little birds laughing.' I would -rather have the winter of Lahn than the winter of Belleville.' - -'But they do go away from their mountains a good deal? One meets -them----' - -'My own people never do, but from the valleys around they go--yes, -sometimes; but then they always come back. The Defereggenthal men, -over yonder where you see those ice summits, constantly go elsewhere -on reaching manhood; but as soon as they have made a little money they -return to dwell at home for the remainder of their days. I think living -amidst the great mountains creates a restfulness, a steadfastness -in the character. If Paris were set amidst Alps you would have had -Lamartine, you would not have had Rochefort.' - -When she spoke thus of her own country, of her own people, all her -coldness vanished, her eyes grew full of light, her reserve was broken -up into animation. They were what she truly loved, what touched her -affections and her sympathies. - -When he heard her speak thus, he thought if any man should succeed in -arousing in her the love and the loyalty that she gave her Austrian -Alps, what treasures he would win, into what a kingdom he would enter! -And then something that was perhaps higher than vanity and deeper than -egotism stirring in him whispered. 'If any, why not you?' - -Herr Joachim had at a message from her joined them. He talked of the -flowers around them and of the culture and flora of Mexico. Sabran -answered him with apparent interest, and with that knowledge which he -had always the presence of mind to recall at need, but his heart was -heavy and his mind absent. - -She had spoken to him of Romaris, and he had once known Egon Vàsàrhely. - -Those two facts overshadowed the sweetness and sunshine of the day; yet -he knew very well that he should have been prepared for both. - -The Princess Ottilie, seated in her gilt wickerwork chair under the -great yew on the south side of the house, saw them approach with -pleasure. - -'Come and have a cup of tea,' she said to them. 'But, my beloved Wanda, -you should not let the doctor walk beside you. Oh, I saw him in the -distance; of course he left you before you joined _me._ He is a worthy -man, a most worthy man; but so is Hubert, and you do not walk with -Hubert and converse with him about flowers.' - -'Are you so inexorable as to social grades, madame? murmured Sabran, as -he took his cup from her still pretty hand. - -'Most certainly!' said the Princess, with a little, a very little, -asperity. 'The world was much happier when distinctions and divisions -were impassable. There are no sumptuary laws now. What is the -consequence? That, your bourgeoise ruins her husband in wearing gowns -fit only for a duchess, and your prince imagines it makes him popular -to look precisely like a cabman or a bailiff.' - -'And even in the matter of utility,' said Sabran, who always agreed -with her, 'those sumptuary laws had much in their favour. If one look -through the chronicles and miniatures, say of the thirteenth and -fourteenth centuries, how much more sensible for the change of seasons -and the ease of work seems the costume of the working people? The -_cotte hardie_ was a thousand times more comfortable and more becoming -than anything we have. If we could dress once more as all did under -Louis Treize gentle and simple would alike benefit.' - -'What a charmingly intelligent person he is!' thought the Princess, as -she remarked that in Austria they were happier than the rest of the -world: there were peasant costumes still there. - -Wanda left them a little later to confer with one of her land stewards. -Sabran remained seated by the Princess, in whom he felt that he -possessed a friend. - -'What did you think of those schools? said Frau Ottilie. 'Oh, of course -you admire and approve; you must admire and approve when they are the -hobby of a beautiful woman, who is also your hostess.' - -'Does that mean, Princess, that you do not?' - -'No doubt the schools are excellent,' replied the Princess, in a tone -which condemned them as ridiculous. 'But for my own part I prefer those -things left to the Church, of which they constitute alike the privilege -and the province. I cannot see either why a peasant child requires -to know how a tree grows; that a merciful Providence placed it there -is all he can need to be told, and that he should be able to cut it -down without cutting off his own fingers is all the science that can -possibly be necessary to him. However, Wanda thinks otherwise, and she -is mistress here.' - -'But the schools surely are eminently practical ones?' - -'Practical! Is it practical to weave a romance as long as "Pamela" -about the changes of a chrysalis? I fail to see it. That a grub is -a destructive creature is all that any one needs to know; there -is nothing practical in making it the heroine of an interminable -metempsychosis. But all those ideas of 'Wanda's have a taint of that -modern poison which her mind, though it is so strong iii many things, -has not been strong enough to resist. She does not believe in the -efficacy of our holy relics (such as that which I sent you, and which -wrought your cure), but she does believe in the fables that naturalists -invent about weeds and beetles, and she finds a Kosmos in a puddle!' - -'You are very severe, Princess.' - -'I dislike inconsistency, and my niece is inconsistent, though she -imagines that perfect consistency is the staple of her character.' - -'Nay, madame, surely her character is the most evenly balanced, the -most harmonious, and consequently the most perfect that is possible to -humanity.' - -The Princess looked at him with a keen little glance. - -'You admire her very much? Are you sure you understand her?' - -'I should not dare to say that, but I dare to hope it. Her nature seems -to me serene and transparent as fine sunlight.' - -'So it is; but she has faults, I can assure you,' said the Princess, -with her curious union of shrewdness and simplicity. 'My niece is a -perfectly good woman, so far as goodness is possible to finite nature; -she is the best woman I have ever known out of the cloister. But -then there is this to be said--she has never been tempted. True, she -might be tempted to be arrogant, despotic, tyrannical; and she is not -so. But that is not precisely the temptation to try her. She is mild -and merciful out of her very pride; but her character would be sure -destruction of her pride were such a thing possible. You think she is -not proud because she is so gentle? You might as well say that Her -Majesty is not Empress because she washes the feet of the twelve poor -men! Wanda is the best woman that I know, but she is also the proudest.' - -'The Countess has never loved anyone?' said Sabran, who grew paler as -he heard. - -'Terrestrial love--no. It has not touched her. But it would not alter -her, believe me. Some women lose themselves in their affections; she -would not. She would always remain the mistress of it, and it would be -a love like her character. Of that I am sure.' - -Sabran was silent; he was discouraged. - -'I think the boldest man would always be held at a distance from her,' -he said, after a pause. 'I think none would ever acquire dominion over -her life.' - -'That is exactly what I have said,' replied the Princess. 'Your phrase -is differently worded, but it comes to the same thing.' - -'It would depend very much----' - -'On what?' - -'On how much she loved, and perhaps a little on how much she was loved.' - -'Not at all,' said the Princess, decidedly; 'you cannot get more out of -a nature than there is in it, and there is no sort of passion in the -nature of my niece.' - -He was silent again. - -'She was admirably educated,' added the Princess, hastily, conscious of -a remark not strictly becoming in herself; 'and her rare temperament -is serene, well balanced, void of all excess. Heaven has mercifully -eliminated from her almost all mortal errors.' - - 'By pride - Angels have fallen ere thy time!' - -suggested Sabran. - -'Angels, perhaps,' said the Princess, drily. 'But for women it is an -admirable preservative, second only to piety.' - -He went home sculling himself across the lake, now perfectly calm -beneath the rose and gold of a midsummer sunset. His heart was heavy, -and a dull fear seemed to beat at his conscience like a child suddenly -awaking who knocks at a long-closed door. Still, as a crime allures men -who contemplate it by the fascination of its weird power, so the sin he -desired to commit held him with its unholy beguilement, and almost it -looked holy to him because it wore the guise of Wanda von Szalras. - -He was not insensible to the charm of this interchange of thought. He -had had many passions in which his senses alone had been enlisted. -There was a more delicate attraction in the gradual and numberless -steps by which, only slowly and with patience, could he win any -way into her regard. She had for him the puissance that the almost -unattainable has for all humanity. When he could feel that he had -awakened any sympathy in her, his pride was more flattered than it -could have been by the most complete subjection of any other woman. -He had looked on all women with the chill, amorous cynicism of the -Parisian psychology, as _l'éternel féminin_, at best as '_la forme -perverse, vaporeuse, langoureuse, souple comme les roseaux, blanche -comme les lis, incapable de se mouvoir pendant les deux tiers du -jour--sans équilibre, sans but, sans équateur, donnant son corps en -pâture à sa tête._ He had had no other ideal; no other conception. This -psychology, like some other sciences, brutalises as it equalises. In -the woman who had risen up before him in the night of storm upon the -Szalrassee he had recognised with his intelligence a woman who made his -philosophy at fault, who aroused something beyond his mere instincts, -who was not to be classified with the Lias, or the Cesarines, or the -Jane de Simeroses, who had been in his love, as in his literature, the -various types of the _éternel féminin._ The simplicity and the dignity -of her life astonished and convinced him; he began to understand that -where he had imagined he had studied the universe in his knowledge of -women, he had in reality only seen two phases of it--the hothouse and -the ditch. It is a common error to take the forced flower and the slime -weed, and think that there is nothing between or beyond the two. - -He had the convictions of his school that all women were at heart -coquettes or hypocrites, consciously or unconsciously. Wanda von -Szalras routed all his theories. Before her candour, her directness and -gravity of thought, her serene indifference to all forms of compliment, -all his doctrines and all his experiences were useless. She inspired -him with reverential and hopeless admiration, which was mingled with an -angry astonishment, and something of the bitterness of envy. Sometimes, -as he sat and watched the green water of the lake tumble and roll -beneath a north wind's wrath under a cloudy sky which hid the snows -of the Glöckner range, he remembered a horrible story that had once -fascinated him of Malatesta of Rimini slaying the princess that would -have none of his love, striking his sword across her white throat in -the dusky evening time, and casting her body upon the silken curtains -of her wicked litter. Almost he could have found it in him to do such a -crime--almost. Only he thought that at one look of her eyes his sword -would have dropped upon the dust. - -Her personal beauty had inspired him with a sudden passion, but her -character checked it with the sense of fear which it imposed on him; -fear of those high and blameless instincts which were an integral -part of her nature, fear of that frank, unswerving truth which was -the paramount law of her life. As he rode with her, walked with her, -conversed with her in the long, light summer hours, he saw more and -more of the purity and nobility of her temper, but he saw or thought he -saw also an inexorable pride and a sternness in judgment which made him -believe that she would be utterly unforgiving to weakness or to sin. - -She remained the Nibelungen Queen to him, clothed in flawless armour -and aloof from men. - -He lingered on at the Holy Isle, finding a fresh charm each day in -this simple and peaceful existence, filled with the dreams of a woman -unlike every other he had known. He knew that it could not last, but -he was unwilling to end it himself. To rise to the sound of the monks' -matins, to pass his forenoons in art or open-air exercise, to be sure -that some hour or another before sunset he would meet her, either in -her home or abroad in the woods; to go early to bed, seeing, as he -lay, the pile of the great burg looming high above the water, like -the citadel of the Sleeping Beauty--all this, together making up an -existence so monotonous, harmless, and calm that a few months before he -would have deemed it impossible to endure it, was soothing, alluring, -and beguiling to him. He had told no one where he was; his letters -might lie and accumulate by the hundred in his rooms in Paris for aught -that he cared; he had no creditors, for he had been always scrupulously -careful to avoid all debt, and he had no friend for whose existence he -cared a straw. There were those who cared for him, indeed, but these -seldom trouble any man very greatly. - -In the last week of August, however, a letter found its way to him; it -was written in a very bad hand, on paper gorgeous with gold and silver. -It was signed 'Cochonette.' - -It contained a torrent of reproaches made in the broadest language that -the slang of the hour furnished, and every third word was misspelt. How -the writer had tracked him she did not say. He tore the letter up and -threw the pieces into the water flowing beneath his window. Had he ever -passionately desired and triumphed in the possession of that woman? It -seemed wonderful to him now. She was an idol of Paris; a creature with -the voice of a lark and the laugh of a child, with a lovely, mutinous -face, and eyes that could speak without words. As a pierrot, as a -mousquetaire, as a little prince, as a fairy king of operetta, she had -no rival in the eyes of Paris. She blazed with jewels when she played -a peasant, and she wore the costliest costume of Felix's devising -when she sung her triplets as a soubrette. She had been constant to -no one for three months, and she had been constant to him for three -years, or, at the least, had made him believe so; and she wrote to -him now furiously, reproachfully, entreatingly--fierce reproaches and -entreaties, all misspelt. - -The letter which he threw into the lake brought all the memories of his -old life before him; it was like the flavour of absinthe after drinking -spring water. It was a life which had had its successes, a life, as -the world called it, of pleasure; and it seemed utterly senseless to -him now as he tore up the note of Cochonette, and looked down the -water to where the towers and spires and battlements of Hohenszalras -soared upward in the mists. He shook himself as though to shake off the -memory of an unpleasant dream as he went out, descended the landing -steps, drew his boat from under the willows and sculled himself across -towards the water-stairs of the Schloss. In a quarter of an hour he was -playing the themes of the 'Gotterdammerung,' whilst his châtelaine sat -at her spinning-wheel a few yards from him. - -'Good heavens! can she and Cochonette belong to the same human race?' -he thought, as whilst he played his glance wandered to that patrician -figure seated in the light from the oriel window, with the white hound -leaning against her velvet skirts, and her jewelled fingers plying the -distaff and disentangling the flax. - -After the noonday breakfast the sun shone, the mists lifted from the -water, the clouds drifted from the lower mountains, only leaving the -snow-capped head of the Glöckner enveloped in them. - -'I am going to ride; will you come?' said Wanda von Szalras to him. -He assented with ardour, and a hunter, Siegfried, the mount which was -always given to him, was led round under the great terrace, in company -with her Arab riding-horse Ali. They rode far through the forests and -out on the one level road there was, which swept round the south side -of the lake; a road, turf-bordered, overhung with huge trees, closed -in with a dewy veil of greenery, across which ever and anon some -flash of falling water or some shimmer of glacier or of snow crest -shone through the dense leafage. They rode too fast for conversation, -both the horses racing like greyhounds; but as they returned, towards -the close of the afternoon, they slackened their pace in pity to the -steaming heaving flanks beneath their saddles, and then they could hear -each other's voices. - -'What a lovely life it is here!' he said, with a sigh. 'The world will -seem very vulgar and noisy to me after it.' - -'You would soon tire, and wish for the world,' she answered him. - -'No,' he said quickly; 'I have been two months on the Holy Isle, and I -have not known weariness for a moment.' - -'That is because it is still summer. If you were here in the winter you -would bemoan your imprisonment, like my aunt Ottilie. Even the post -sometimes fails us.' - -'I should not lament the post,' he replied, thinking of the letter -he had cast into the lake. 'My old life seems to me insanity, fever, -disease, beside these past two months I have spent with the monks.' - -'You can take the vows,' she suggested with a smile. He smiled too. - -'Nay: I should not dare to so insult our mother Church. One must not -empty ashes into a reliquary.' - -'Your life is not ashes yet.' - -He was silent. He could not say to her what he would have said could he -have laid his heart bare. - -'When you go away,' she pursued, 'remember my words. Choose some -career; make yourself some aim in life; do not fold your talents in a -napkin--in a napkin that lies on the supper table at Bignon's. That -idle, aimless life is very attractive, I dare say, in its way, but it -must grow wearisome and unsatisfactory as years roll on. The men of my -house have never been content with it; they have always been soldiers, -statesmen, something or other beside mere nobles.' - -'But they have had a great position.' - -'Men make their own position; they cannot make a name (at least, not to -my thinking). You have that good fortune; you have a great name; you -only need, pardon me, to make your manner of life worthy of it.' - -He grew pale as she spoke. - -'Cannot make a name?' he said, with forced gaiety. 'Surely in these -days the beggar rides on horseback in all the ministries and half the -nobilities!' - -A great contempt passed over her face. 'You mean that Hans, Pierre, or -Richard becomes a count, an excellency, or an earl? What does that -change? It alters the handle; it does not alter the saucepan. No one -can be ennobled. Blood is blood; nobility can only be inherited; it -cannot be conferred by all the heralds in the world. The very meaning -and essence of nobility are descent, inherited traditions, instincts, -habits, and memories--all that is meant by _noblesse oblige._' - -'Would you allow,' thought her companion, 'would you allow the same -nobility to Falcon-bridge as to Plantagenet?' - -But he dared not name the bar sinister to this daughter of princes. - -Siegfried started and reared: his rider did not reply, being absorbed -in calming him. - -'What frightened him?' she asked. - -'A hawk flew-by,' said Sabran. - -'A hawk, flying low enough for a horse to see it? It must be wounded.' - -He did not answer, and they quickened their pace, as the sun sunk -behind the glaciers of the west. - -When he returned to the monastery the evening had closed in; the -lantern was lit at his boat's prow. Dinner was prepared for him, but -he ate little. Later the moon rose; golden and round as a bowl. It -was a beautiful spectacle as it gave its light to the amphitheatre of -the mountains, to the rippling surface of the lake, to the stately, -irregular lines of the castle backed by the blackness of its woods. He -sat long by the open window lost in thought, pondering on the great -race which had ruled there. _L'honneur parle: il suffit_, had been -their law, and she who represented them held a creed no less stern and -pure than theirs. Her words spoken in their ride were like a weight of -ice on his heart. Never to her, never, could he confess the errors of -his past. He was a man bold to temerity, but he was not bold enough to -risk the contempt of Wanda von Szalras. He had never much heeded right -or wrong, or much believed in such ethical distinctions, only adhering -to the conventional honour and good breeding of the world, but before -her his moral sense awakened. - -'The Marquis Xavier would bid me go from here,' he thought to himself, -as the night wore on and he heard the footfall of the monks passing -down the passages to their midnight orisons. - -'After all these years in the _pourriture_ of Paris, have I such a -thing as conscience left?' he asked his own thoughts, bitterly. The -moon passed behind a cloud and darkness fell over the lake and hid -the great pile of the Hohenszalrasburg from his sight. He closed the -casement and turned away. 'Farewell!' he said, to the vanished castle. - -'Will you think of me sometimes, dear Princess, when I am far away?' -said Sabran abruptly the next morning to his best friend, who looked up -startled. - -'Away? Are you going away?' - -'Yes,' said Sabran, abruptly; 'and you, I think, madame, who have been -so good to me, can guess easily why.' - -'You love my niece?' - -He inclined his head in silence. - -'It is very natural,' said the Princess, faintly. 'Wanda is a beautiful -woman; many men have loved her; they might as well have loved that -glacier yonder.' - -'It is not that,' said Sabran, hastily. 'It is my own poverty----' - -The Princess looked at him keenly. - -'Do you think her not cold?' - -'She who can so love a brother would surely love her lover not less, -did she stoop to one,' he replied evasively. 'At least I think so; I -ought not to presume to judge.' - -'And you care for her?' The glance her eyes gave him added as plainly -as words could have done, 'It is not only her wealth, her position? Are -you sure?' - -He coloured very much as he answered quickly: 'Were she beggared -to-morrow, you would see.' - -'It is a pity,' murmured the Princess. He did not ask her what she -regretted; he knew her sympathy was with him. - -They were both mute. The Princess pushed the end of her cane -thoughtfully into the velvet turf. She hesitated some moments, then -said in a low voice: 'Were I you I would stay.' - -'Do not tempt me! I have stayed too long as it is. What can she think -of me?' - -'She does not think about your reasons; she is too proud a woman to be -vain. In a measure you have won her friendship. Perhaps--I do not know, -I have no grounds to say so--but perhaps in time you might win more.' - -She looked at him as she concluded. He grew exceedingly pale. - -He stooped over her chair, and spoke very low: - -'It is just because that appears possible that I go. Do not -misunderstand me, I am not a coxcomb; _je ne me pose pas en vainqueur._ -But I have no place here, since I have no equality with her from which -to be able to say, "I love you!" Absence alone can say it for me -without offence as without hope.' - -The Princess was silent. She was thinking of the maxim,; _L'absence -éteint les petites passions et allume les grandes_.' Which was his? - -'You have been so good to me,' he murmured caressingly, 'so benevolent, -so merciful, I dare to ask of you a greater kindness yet. Will you -explain for me to the Countess von Szalras that I am called away -suddenly, and make my excuses and my farewell? It will save me much -fruitless pain.' - -'And if it give her pain?' - -'I cannot suppose that, and I should not dare to hope it.' - -'I have no reason to suppose it either, but I think you are _de guerre -las_ before the battle is decided.' - -'There is no battle possible for me. There is only a quite certain -dishonour.' - -His face was dark and weary. He spoke low and with effort. She glanced -at him, and felt the vague awe with which strong unintelligible emotion -always filled her. - -'You must judge the question for yourself,' she said with a little -hesitation. 'I will express what you wish to my niece if you really -desire it.' - -'You are always so good to me,' he murmured, with some agitation, and -he bent down before her and reverently kissed her little white hands. - -'God be with you, sir,' she said, with tears in her own tender eyes. - -'You have been so good to me,' he murmured; 'the purest hours of my -worthless life have been spent at Hohenszalras. Here only have I known -what peace and holiness can mean. Give me your blessing ere I go.' - -In another moment he had bowed himself from her presence, and the -Princess sat mute and motionless in the sun. When she looked up at the -great feudal pile of the Schloss which towered above her, it was with -reproach and aversion to that stone emblem of the great possessions of -its châtelaine. - -'If she were a humbler woman,' she thought, 'how much happier she -would be! What a pity it all is--what a pity! Of course he is right; -of course he can do nothing else. If he did do anything else the world -would condemn him, and even she very likely would despise him--but it -is such a pity! If only she could have a woman's natural life about -her----This life is not good. It is very well while she is young, but -when she shall be no longer young?' - -And the tender heart of the old gentlewoman ached for a sorrow not her -own; and could she have given him a duchy to make him able to declare -his love, she would have done so at all costs. - - - - -CHAPTER VII - - -The sun was setting when the Countess Wanda returned from her distant -ride. She dismounted at the foot of the terrace-steps and ascended them -slowly, with Donau and Neva behind her, both tired and breathless. - -'You are safe home, my love?' said the Princess, turning her head -towards the steps. - -'Yes, dear mother mine; you always, I know, think that Death gets up on -the saddle. Is anything amiss? You looked troubled.' - -'I have a message for you,' said the Princess with a sigh, and she gave -Sabran's. - -Wanda von Szalras heard in silence. She showed neither surprise nor -regret. - -The Princess waited a little. - -'Well,' she said, at length, 'well, you do not even ask me why he -goes!' - -'You say he has been called away,' her niece answered. 'Surely that is -reason enough.' - -'You have no heart, Wanda.' - -'I do not understand you,' said the Countess von Szalras, very coldly. - -'Do you mean to say you have not seen that he loved you?' - -The face of Wanda grew colder still. - -'Did he instruct you to say this also?' - -'No, no,' said the Princess, hurriedly, perceiving her error. 'He -only bade me say that he was called away and must leave at once, and -begged you to accept through me his adieus and the expression of his -gratitude. But it is very certain that he does love you, and that -because he is too poor and too proud to say so he goes.' - -'You must weave your little romance!' said her niece, with some -impatience, striking the gilt wicker table with her riding-whip. 'I -prefer to think that M. de Sabran is, very naturally, gone back to the -world to which he belongs. My only wonder has been that he has borne so -long with the solitudes of the Szalrassee.' - -'If you were not the most sincere woman in the world, I should believe -you were endeavouring to deceive me. As it is,' said the Princess, -with some temper, 'I can only suppose that you deceive yourself.' - -'Have you any tea there?' said her niece, laying aside her gauntlets -and her whip, and casting some cakes to the two hounds. - -She had very plainly and resolutely closed the subject almost before -it was fairly opened. The Princess, a little intimidated and keenly -disappointed, did not venture to renew it. - -When, the next morning, questioning Hubert, the Princess found -that indeed her favourite had left the island monastery at dawn, -the landscape of the Hohe Tauern seemed to her more monotonous and -melancholy than it had ever done, and the days more tedious and dull. - -'You will miss the music, at least,' she said, with asperity, to her -niece. 'I suppose you will give him as much regret as you have done at -times to the Abbé Liszt?' - -'I shall miss the music, certainly,' said the Countess Wanda, calmly. -'Our poor Kapellmeister is very indifferent. If he were not so old -that it would be cruel to displace him, I would take another from the -Conservatorium.' - -The Princess was irritated and even incensed at the reply, but she let -it pass. Sabran's name was mentioned no more between them for many -days. - -No one knew whither he had gone, and no tidings came of him to -Hohenszalras. - -One day a foreign journal, amongst the many news-sheets that came by -post there, contained his name: 'The Marquis de Sabran broke the bank -at Monte Carlo yesterday,' was all that it said in its news of the -Riviera. - -'A winner at a _tripot_, what a hero for you, mother mine!' she said -with some bitterness, handing the paper to the Princess. She was -surprised at the disgust and impatience which she felt herself. What -could it concern her? - -That day as she rode slowly through the grass drives of her forests, -she thought with pain of her companion of a few weeks, who so late had -ridden over these very paths beside her, the dogs racing before them, -the wild flowers scenting the air, the pale sunshine falling down -across the glossy necks of their horses. - -'He ought to do better things than break a bank at a gaming-place,' she -thought with regret. 'With such natural gifts of body and mind, it is a -sin--a sin against himself and others--to waste his years in those base -and trivial follies. When he was here he seemed to feel so keenly the -charm of Nature, the beauty of repose, the possibility of noble effort.' - -She let the reins droop on her mare's throat and paced slowly over the -moss and the grass; though she was all alone--for in her own forests -she would not be accompanied even by a groom--the colour came into -her face as she remembered many things, many words, many looks, which -confirmed the assertion Madame Ottilie had made to her. - -'That may very well be,' she thought; 'but if it be, I think my -memory might have restrained him from becoming the hero of a gambling -apotheosis.' - -And she was astonished at herself to find how much regret mingled with -her disgust, and how much her disgust was intensified by a sentiment of -personal offence. - -When she reached home it was twilight, and she was told that her cousin -Prince Egon Vàsàrhely had arrived. She would have been perfectly glad -to see him, if she had been perfectly sure that he would have accepted -quietly the reply she had sent to his letter received on the night of -the great storm. As it was she met him in the blue-room before the -Princess Ottilie, and nothing could be said on that subject. - -Prince Egon, though still young, had already a glorious past behind -him. He came of a race of warriors, and the Vàsàrhely Hussars had been -famous since the days of Maria Theresa. The command of that brilliant -regiment was hereditary, and he had led them in repeated charges -into the French lines and the Prussian lines with such headlong and -dauntless gallantry that he had been called the 'Wild Boar of Taròc' -throughout the army. His hussars were the most splendid cavalry that -ever shook their bridles in the sunlight on the wide Magyar plains. -Their uniform remained the same as in the days of Aspern, and he was -prodigal of gold, and embroidery, and rich furs, and trappings, with -that martial coquetry which has been characteristic of so many great -soldiers from Scylla to Michael Skobeleff. - -With his regiment in the field, and without it in many adventures in -the wilder parts of the Austrian Empire and on the Turkish border, he -had become a synonym for heroism throughout the Imperial army, whilst -in his manner and mode of life no more magnificent noble ever came from -the dim romantic solitudes of Hungary to the court and the capital. -He had great personal beauty; he had unrivalled traditions of valour; -and he had a character as generous as it was daring: but he failed to -awaken more than a sisterly attachment in the heart of his cousin. She -had been so used to see him with her brothers that he seemed as near -to her as they had been. She loved him tenderly, but with no sort of -passion. She wondered that he should care for her in that sense, and -grew sometimes impatient of his reiterated prayers. - -'There are so many women who would listen to him and adore him,' she -said. 'Why must he come to me? - -Before Bela's death, and before she became her own mistress, she had -always urged that her own sisterly affection for Egon made any thought -of marriage with him out of the question. - -'I am fond of him as I was of Gela and Victor,' she said often to those -who pressed the alliance upon her; 'but that is not love. I will not -marry a man whom I do not love.' - -When she became absolutely her own mistress he was for some time -silent, fearing to importune her, or to seem mercenary. She had become -by Bela's death one of the greatest alliances in Europe. But at -length, confident that his own position exempted him from any possible -appearance of covetousness, he gently reminded her of her father's and -her brother's wishes; but to no effect. She gave him the same answer. -'You are sure of my affection, but I will not do you so bad a service -as to become your wife. I have no love for you.' From that he had no -power to move or change her. He had made her many appeals in his -frequent visits to Hohenszalras, but none with any success in inducing -her to depart from the frank and placid regard of close relationship. -She liked him well, and held him in high esteem; but this was not love; -nor, had she consented to call it love, would it ever have contented -the impetuous, ardent, and passionate spirit of Egon Vàsàrhely. - -They could not be lovers, but they still remained friends, partly -through consanguinity, partly because he could bear to see her thus so -long as no other was nearer to her than he. They greeted each other -now cordially and simply, and talked of the many cares and duties and -interests that sprang up daily in the administration of such vast -properties as theirs. - -Prince Vàsàrhely, though a brilliant soldier and magnificent noble, was -simple in his tastes, and occupied himself largely with the welfare of -his people. - -The Princess yawned discreetly behind her fan many times during this -conversation, to her utterly uninteresting, upon villages, vines, -harvests, bridges swept away by floods, stewards just and unjust, and -the tolls and general navigation of the Danube. Quite tired of all -these details and discussion of subjects which she considered ought to -be abandoned to the men of business, she said suddenly, in a pause: - -'Egon, did you ever know a very charming person, the Marquis de Sabran?' - -Vàsàrhely reflected a moment. - -'No,' he answered slowly. 'I have no recollection of such a name.' - -'I thought you might have met him in Paris.' - -'I am so rarely in Paris; since my father's death I have scarcely -passed a month there. Who is he?' - -'A stranger whose acquaintance we made through his being cast adrift -here in a storm,' said the Countess Wanda, with some impatience. 'My -dear aunt is devoted to him, because he has painted her a St. Ottilie -on a screen, with the skill of Meissonnier. Since he left us he has -become celebrated: he has broken the bank at Monte Carlo.' - -Egon Vàsàrhely looked at her quickly. - -'It seems to anger you? Did this stranger stay here any time?' - -'Sometime, yes; he had a bad accident on the Venediger. Herr Greswold -brought him to our island to pass his convalescence with the monks. -From the monks to Monte Carlo!----it is at least a leap requiring some -elasticity in moral gymnastics.' - -She spoke with some irritation, which did not escape the ear of her -cousin. He said merely himself: - -'Did you receive him, knowing nothing about him?' - -'We certainly did. It was an imprudence; but if he paint like -Meissonnier, he plays like Liszt: who was to resist such a combination -of gifts?' - -'You say that very contemptuously, Wanda,' said the Prince. - -'I am not contemptuous of the talent; I am of the possessor of it, who -comprehends his own powers so little that he breaks the bank at Monaco.' - -'I envy him at least his power to anger you,' said Egon Vàsàrhely. - -'I am angered to see anything wasted,' she answered, conscious of the -impatience she had shown. 'I was very angry with Otto's little daughter -yesterday; she had gathered a huge bundle of cowslips and thrown it -down in the sun; it was ingratitude to God who made them. This friend -of my aunt's does worse; he changes his cowslip into monkshood.' - -'Is he indeed such a favourite of yours, dear mother?' said Vàsàrhely. - -The Princess answered petulantly: - -'Certainly, a charming person. And our cousin Kaulnitz knows him well. -Wanda for once talks foolishly. Gambling is, it is true, a great sin at -all times, but I do not know that it is worse at public tables than it -is in your clubs. I myself am, of course, ignorant of these matters; -but I have heard that privately, at cards, whole fortunes have been -lost in a night, scribbled away with a pencil on a scrap of paper.' - -'To lose a fortune is better than to win one,' said her niece, as she -rose from the head of her table. - -When the Princess slept in her blue-room Egon Vàsàrhely approached his -cousin, where she sat at her embroidery frame. - -'This stranger has the power to make you angry,' he said sadly. 'I have -not even that.' - -'Dear Egon,' she said tenderly, 'you have done nothing in your life -that I could despise. Why should you be discontented at that?' - -'Would you care if I did?' - -'Certainly; I should be very sorry if my noble cousin did anything that -could belie his chivalry; but why should we suppose impossibilities?' - -'Suppose we were not cousins, would you love me then?' - -'How can I tell? This is mere non-sense----' - -'No; it is all my life. You know, Wanda, that I have loved you, only -you, ever since I saw you as I came back from France--a child, but -such a beautiful child, with your hair braided with pearls, and a dress -all stiff with gold, and your lap full of red roses.' - -'Oh, I remember,' she said hastily. 'There was a child's costume ball -at the Hof; I called myself Elizabeth of Thuringia, and Bela, my own -Bela, was my little Louis of Hungary. Oh, Egon, why will you speak of -those times?' - -'Because surely they make a kind of tie between us? They----' - -'They do make one that will last all our lives, unless you strain it -to bear a weight it is not made to bear. Dear Egon, you are very dear -to me, but not dear _so._ As my cousin, my gallant, kind, and loyal -cousin, you are very precious to me; but, Egon, if you could force me -to be your wife I should not be indifferent to you, I should hate you!' - -He grew white under his olive skin. He shrank a little, as if he -suffered some sharp physical pain. - -'Hate me!' he echoed in a stupor of surprise and suffering. - -'I believe I should, I _could_ hate. It is a frightful thing to say. -Dear Egon, look elsewhere; find some other amongst the many lovely -women that you see; do not waste your brilliant life on me. I shall -never say otherwise than I say to-night' and you will compel me to -lose the most trusted friend I have.' - -He was still very pale. He breathed heavily. There was a mist over his -handsome dark eyes, which were cast down. 'Until you love any other, I -shall never abandon hope.' - -'That is unwise. I shall probably love no one all my life long; I have -told you so often.' - -'All say so until love finds them out. I will not trouble you; I will -be your cousin, your friend, rather than be nothing to you. But it is -hard.' - -'Why think of me so? Your career has so much brilliancy, so many -charms, so many interests----' - -'You do not know what it is to love. I talk to you in an unknown -tongue, and you have no pity, because you do not understand.' - -She did not answer. Over her thoughts passed the memory of the spinet -whose music she had said he could not touch and waken. - -He remained a week at Hohenszalras, but he did not again speak to her -of his own sufferings. He was a proud man, though humble to her. - -With a sort of contrition she noticed for the first time that he -wearied her; that when he spoke of his departure she was glad. He -was a fine soldier, a keen hunter, rather than a man of talents. The -life he loved best was his life at home in his great castles, amidst -the immense plains and the primeval forests of Hungary and the lonely -fastnesses of the Karpathians, or scouring a field of battle with his -splendid troopers behind him, all of them his kith and kin, or men -of his own soil, whom he ruled with a firm, high hand, in a generous -despotism. - -When he was with her she missed all the graceful tact, the subtle -meanings, the varied suggestions and allusions that had made the -companionship of Sabran so welcome to her. Egon Vàsàrhely was no -scholar, no thinker, no satirist; he was only brave and generous, as -lions are, and, vaguely, a poet without words, from the wild solitudes -he loved, and the romance that lies in the nature of the Magyar. 'He -knows nothing!' she thought, impatiently recalling the stores of most -various and recondite knowledge with which her late companion had -played so carelessly and with such ease. It seemed to her that never in -her life had she weighed her cousin in scales so severe and found him -so utterly wanting. - -And yet how many others she knew would have found their ideal in that -gallant gentleman, with his prowess, and his hardihood, and his -gallantry in war, and his winsome temper, so full of fire to men, so -full of chivalry for women! When Prince Egon, in his glittering dress, -all fur and gold and velvet, passed up the ball-room at the Burg in -Vienna, no other man in all that magnificent assembly was so watched, -so admired, so sighed for: and he was her cousin, and he only wearied -her! - -As he was leaving, he paused a moment after bidding her farewell, and -after some moments of silence, said in a low voice: - -'Dear, I will not trouble you again until you summon me. Perhaps that -will be many years; but whether we meet or not, time will make no -change in me. I am your servant ever.' - -Then he bowed over her hand once more, once more saluted her, and in a -moment or two the quick trot of the horses that bore him away woke the -echoes of the green hills. - -She looked out of the huge arched entrance door down the green defile -that led to the outer world, and felt a pang of self-reproach, of -self-condemnation. - -'If one could force oneself to love by any pilgrimage or penance,' she -thought, 'there are none I would not take upon me to be able to love -Egon.' - -As she stood thoughtfully there on the doorway of her great castle, -the sweet linnet-like voice of the Princess Ottilie came on her ear. -It said, a little shrilly: 'You are always looking for a four-leaved -shamrock. In that sort of search life slips away unperceived; one is -very soon left alone with one's dead leaves.' - -Wanda von Szalras turned and smiled. - -'I am not afraid of being left alone,' she said. 'I shall have my -people and my forests always.' - -Then, apprehensive lest she should have seemed thankless and cold of -heart, she turned caressingly to Madame Ottilie. - -'Nay, I could not bear to lose you, my sweet fairy godmother. Think me -neither forgetful nor ungrateful.' - -'You could never be one or the other to me. But I shall not live, like -a fairy godmother, for ever. Before I die I would fain see you content -like others with the shamrocks as nature has made them.' - -'I think there are few people as content as I am,' said the Countess -Wanda, and said the truth. - -'You are content with yourself, not with others. You will pardon me -if I say there is a great difference between the two,' replied the -Princess Ottilie, with a little smile that was almost sarcastic on her -pretty small features. - -'You mean that I have a great deal of vanity and no sympathy?' - -'You have a great deal of pride,' said the Princess, discreetly, as she -began to take her customary noontide walk up and down the terrace, her -tall cane tapping the stones and her little dog running before her, -whilst a hood of point-lace and a sunshade of satin kept the wind from -her pretty white hair and the sun from her eyes, that were still blue -as the acres of mouse-ear that grew by the lake. - - - - -CHAPTER VIII. - - -The summer glided away and became autumn, and the Countess Wanda -refused obstinately to fill Hohenszalras with house-parties. In vain -her aunt spoke of the Lynau, the Windischgrätz, the Hohenlöhe, and the -other great families who were their relatives or their friends. In vain -she referred continually to the fact that every Schloss in Austria and -all adjacent countries was filling with guests at this season, and the -woods around it resounding with the hunter's horn and the hound's bay. -In vain did she recapitulate the glories of Hohenszalras in an earlier -time, and hint that the mistress of so vast a domain owed some duties -to society. - -Wanda von Szalras opposed to all these suggestions and declarations -that indifference which would have seemed obstinacy had it been less -mild. As for the hunting parties, she avowed with truth that although a -daughter of mighty hunters, she herself regarded all pastimes founded -on cruelty with aversion and contempt; the bears and the boars, the -wild deer and the mountain chamois, might dwell undisturbed for the -whole of their lives so far as she was concerned. When a bear came -down and ate off the heads of an acre or two of wheat, she recompensed -the peasant who had suffered the loss, but she would not have her -_jägermeister_ track the poor beast. The _jägermeister_ sighed as -Madame Ottilie did for the bygone times when a score of princes and -nobles had ridden out on a wolf-chase, or hundreds of peasants had -threshed the woods to drive the big game towards the Kaiser's rifle; -but for poachers his place would have been a sinecure and his days a -weariness. His mistress was not to be persuaded. She preferred her -forests left to their unbroken peace, their stillness filled with the -sounds of rushing waters and the calls of birds. - -The weeks glided on one after one with the even measured pace of -monotonous and unruffled time; her hours were never unoccupied, for her -duties were constant and numerous. - -She would go and visit the sennerinn in their loftiest cattle-huts, -and would descend an ice-slope with the swiftness and security of a -practised mountaineer. In her childhood she and Bela had gone almost -everywhere the chamois went, and she came of a race which, joined to -high courage, had the hereditary habits of a great endurance. In the -throne room of Vienna, with her great pearls about her, that had once -been sent by a Sultan to a Szalras who fought with Wenceslaus, she -was the stateliest and proudest lady of the greatest aristocracy of -the world; but on her own mountain sides she was as dauntless as an -ibis, as sure-footed as a goat, and would sit in the alpine cabins and -drink a draught of milk and break a crust of rye-bread as willingly as -though she were a sennerinn herself; so she would take the oars and row -herself unaided down the lake, so she would saddle her horse and ride -it over the wildest country, so she would drive her sledge over many -a German mile of snow, and even in the teeth of a north wind blowing -straight from the Russian plains and the Arctic seas. - -'Fear nothing!' had been said again and again to her in her childhood, -and she had learned that her race transmitted to and imposed its -courage no less on its daughters than on its sons. Cato would have -admired this mountain brood, even though its mountain lair was more -luxurious than he would have deemed was wise. - -She knew thoroughly what all her rights, titles, and possessions were. -She was never vague or uncertain as to any of her affairs, and it would -have been impossible to deceive or to cheat her. No one tried to do so, -for her lawyers were men of old-fashioned ways and high repute, and -for centuries the vast properties of the Counts von Szalras had been -administered wisely and honestly in the same advocates' offices, which -were close underneath the Calvarienburg in the good city of Salzburg. -Her trustees were her uncle Cardinal Vàsàrhely and her great-uncle -Prince George of Lilienhöhe; they were old men, both devoted to her, -and both fully conscious that her intelligence was much abler and -keener than their own. All these vast possessions gave her an infinite -variety of occupation and of interests, and she neglected none of them. -Still, all the properties and duties in the world will not suffice to -fill up the heart and mind of a woman of four-and-twenty years of age, -who enjoys the perfection of bodily health and of physical beauty. The -most spiritual and the most dutiful of characters cannot altogether -resist the impulses of nature. There were times when she now began to -think that her life was somewhat empty and passionless. - -But a certain sense of their monotony had begun for the first time to -come upon her; a certain vague dissatisfaction stirred in her now and -then. The discontent of Sabran seemed to have left a shadow of itself -upon her. For the first time she seemed to be listening, as it were, to -her life and to find a great silence in it; there was no echo in it of -voices she loved. - -Why had she never perceived it before? Why did she become conscious -of it now? She asked herself this impatiently as the slight but -bitter flavour of dissatisfaction touched her, and the days for once -seemed--now and then--over long. - -She loved her people and her forests and her mountains, and she had -always thought that they would be sufficient for her, and she had -honestly told the Princess that of solitude she was not afraid; and yet -a certain sense that her life was cold and in a measure empty had of -late crept upon her. She wondered angrily why a vague and intangible -melancholy stole on her at times, which was different from the sorrow -which still weighed on her for her brother's death. Now and then she -looked at the old painted box of the spinet, and thought of the player -who had awakened its dumb strings; but she did not suspect for a -moment that it was in any sense his companionship which, now that it -was lost, made the even familiar tenor of her time appear monotonous -and without much interest. In the long evenings, whilst the Princess -slumbered and she herself sat alone watching the twilight give way to -the night over the broad and solemn landscape, she felt a lassitude -which did not trouble her in the open air, in the daylight, or when she -was busied indoors over the reports and requirements of her estates. -Unacknowledged, indeed, unknown to her, she missed the coming of the -little boat from the Holy Isle, and missed the prayer and praise of the -great tone-poets rolling to her ear from the organ within. If anyone -had told her that her late guest had possessed any such power to make -her days look grey and pass tediously she would have denied it, and -been quite sincere in her denial. But as he had called out the long -mute music from the spinet, so he had touched, if only faintly, certain -chords in her nature that until then had been dumb. - -'I am not like you, my dear Olga,' she wrote to her relative, the -Countess Brancka. 'I am not easily amused. That _course effrénée_ of -the great world carries you honestly away with it; all those incessant -balls, those endless visits, those interminable conferences on your -toilettes, that continual circling of human butterflies round you, -those perpetual courtships of half a score of young men; it all -diverts you. You are never tired of it; you cannot understand any -life outside its pale. All your days, whether they pass in Paris or -Petersburg, at Trouville, at Biarritz, or at Vienna or Scheveningen, -are modelled on the same lines; you must have excitement as you have -your cup of chocolate when you wake. What I envy you is that the -excitement excites you. When I was amidst it I was not excited; I was -seldom even diverted. See the misfortune that it is to be born with a -grave nature! I am as serious as Marcus Antoninus. You will say that it -comes of having learned Latin and Greek. I do not think so; I fear I -was born unamusable. I only truly care about horses and trees, and they -are both grave things, though a horse can be playful enough sometimes -when he is allowed to forget his servitude. Your friends, the famous -tailors, send me admirably-chosen costumes which please that sense in -me which Titians and Vandycks do (I do not mean to be profane); but -I only put them on as the monks do their frocks. Perhaps I am very -unworthy of them; at least, I cannot talk toilette as you can with -ardour a whole morning and every whole morning of your life. You will -think I am laughing at you; indeed I am not. I envy your faculty of -sitting, as I am sure you are sitting now, in a straw chair on the -shore, with a group of _boulevardiers_ around you, and a crowd making -a double hedge to look at you when it is your pleasure to pace the -planks. My language is involved. I do not envy you the faculty of doing -it, of course; I could do it myself to-morrow. I envy you the faculty -of finding amusement in doing it, and finding flattery in the double -hedge.' - -A few days afterwards the Countess Brancka wrote back in reply: - -'The world is like wine; _ça se mousse et ça monte._ There are heads it -does not affect; there are palates that do not like it, yours amongst -them. But there is so much too in habit. Living alone amidst your -mountains you have lost all taste for the _brouhaha_ of society, which -grows noisier, it must be said, every year. Yes, we are noisy: we have -lost our dignity. You alone keep yours, you are the châtelaine of the -middle ages. Perceforest or Parsifal should come riding to your gates -of granite. By the way, I hear you have been entertaining one of our -_boulevardiers._ Réné de Sabran is charming, and the handsomest man in -Paris; but he is not Parsifal or Perceforest. Between ourselves, he has -an indifferent reputation, but perhaps he has repented on your Holy -Isle, They say he is changed; that he has quarrelled with Cochonette, -and that he is about to be made deputy for his department, whose -representative has just died. Pardon me for naming Cochonette; it is -part of our decadence that we laugh about all these naughty things and -naughty people who are, after all, not so very much worse than we are -ourselves. But you do not laugh, whether at these or at anything else. -You are too good, my beautiful Wanda; it is your sole defect. You have -even inoculated this poor Marquis, who, after a few weeks upon the -Szalrassee, surrenders Cochonette for the Chamber! My term of service -comes round next month: if you will have me I will take the Tauern on -my road to Gödöllö. I long to embrace you.' - -'Olga will take pity on our solitude,' said Wanda von Szalras to her -aunt. 'I have not seen her for four years, but I imagine she is little -changed.' - -The Princess read the letter, frowning and pursing her lips together in -pretty rebuke as she came to the name of Cochonette. - -'They have indeed lost all dignity,' she said with a sigh; 'and -something more than dignity also. Olga was always frivolous.' - -'All her _monde_ is; not she more than another.' - -'You were very unjust, you see, to M. de Sabran; he pays you the -compliment of following your counsels.' - -Wanda von Szalras rose a little impatiently. 'He had better have -followed them before he broke the bank at Monaco. It is an odd sort of -notoriety with which to attract the pious and taciturn Bretons; and -when he was here he had no convictions. I suppose he picked them up -with the gold pieces at the tables!' - -Olga, Countess Brancka, _née_ Countess Seriatine, of a noble Russian -family, had been married at sixteen to the young Gela von Szalras, who, -a few months after his bridal, had been shot dead on the battlefield of -Solferino. - -After scarce a year of mourning she had fascinated the brother of -Egon Vàsàrhely, a mere youth who bore the title of Count Brancka. -There had been long and bitter opposition made to the new alliance on -the part of both families, on account of the consanguinity between -Stefan Brancka and her dead lord. But opposition had only increased -the ardour of the young man and the young widow; they had borne down -all resistance, procured all dispensations, had been wedded, and in a -year's time had both wished the deed undone. Both were extravagant, -capricious, self-indulgent, and unreasonable; their two egotisms were -in a perpetual collision. They met but seldom, and never met without -quarrelling violently. The only issue of their union was two little, -fantastic, artificial fairies who were called respectively Mila and -Marie. - -At the time of the marriage of the Branckas, Wanda had been too young -to share in opposition to it; but the infidelity to her brother's -memory had offended and wounded her deeply, and in her inmost heart -she had never pardoned it, though the wife of Stefan Brancka had been -a passing guest at Hohenszalras, where, had Count Gela lived, she -would have reigned as sovereign mistress. That his sister reigned -there in her stead the Countess Olga resented keenly and persistently. -Her own portion of the wealth of the Szalras had been forfeited under -her first marriage contract by her subsequent alliance. But she never -failed to persuade herself that her exclusion from every share in that -magnificent fortune was a deep wrong done to herself, and she looked -upon Wanda von Szalras as the doer of that wrong. - -In appearance, however, she was always cordial, caressing, -affectionate, and if Wanda chose to mistrust her affection, it was, she -reflected, only because a life of unwise solitude had made a character -naturally grave become severe and suspicious. - -She did not fail to arrive there a week later. She was a small, -slender, lovely woman, with fair skin, auburn hair, wondrous black -eyes, and a fragile frame that never knew fatigue. She held a high -office at the Imperial Court, but when she was not on service, she -spent, under the plea of health, all her time at Paris or _les eaux._ -She came with her numerous attendants, her two tiny children, and a -great number of huge _fourgons_ full of all the newest marvels of -combination in costume. She was seductive and caressing, but she was -capricious, malicious, and could be even violent; in general she was -gaily given up to amusement and intrigue, but she had moments of rage -that were uncontrollable. She had had many indiscretions and some -passions, but the world liked her none the less for that; she was a -great lady, and in a sense a happy woman, for she had nerves of steel -despite all her maladies, and brought to the pleasures of life an -unflagging and even ravenous zest. - -When with her perfume of Paris, her restless animation, her children, -like little figures from a fashion-plate, her rapid voice that was -shrill yet sweet, like a silver whistle, and her eyes that sparkled -alike with mirth and with malice, she came on to the stately terraces -of Hohenszalras, she seemed curiously discordant with it and its old -world peace and gravity. She was like a pen-and-ink sketch of Cham -thrust between the illuminated miniatures of a missal. - -She felt it herself. - -'It is the Roman de la Rose in stone,' she said, as her eyes roved -over the building, which she had not visited for four years. 'And you, -Wanda, you look like Yseulte of the White Hand or the Marguerite des -Marguerites; you must be sorry you did not live in those times.' - -'Yes: if only for one reason. One could make the impress of one's own -personality so much more strongly on the time.' - -'And now the times mould us. We are all horribly alike. There is only -yourself who retain any individuality amidst all the women that I know. -'_La meule du pressoir de l'abrutissement_ might have been written of -our world. After all, you are wise to keep out of it. My straw chair at -Trouville looks trumpery beside that ivory chair in your Rittersäal. -I read the other day of some actresses dining off a truffled pheasant -and a sack of bon-bons. That is the sort of dinner we make all the year -round, morally--metaphorically--how do you say it? It makes us thirsty, -and perhaps, I am not sure, perhaps it leaves us half starved, though -we nibble the sweetmeats, and don't know it. - -'Your dinner must lack two things--bread and water.' - -'Yes: we never see either. It is all truffles and caramels and _vins -frappés._' - -'There is your bread.' - -She glanced at the little children, two pretty, graceful little maids -of six and seven years old. - -'_Ouf!_' said the Countess Zelenka. 'They are only little bits of puff -paste, a couple of _petits fours_ baked on the boulevards. If they be -_chic_, and marry well, I for one shall ask no more of them. If ever -you have children, I suppose you will rear them on science and the -Antonines?' - -'Perhaps on the open air and Homer,' said Wanda, with a smile. - -The Countess Brancka was silent a moment, then said abruptly: - -'You dismissed Egon again?' - -'Has he made you his ambassadress?' - -'No, oh no; he is too proud: only we all are aware of his wishes. -Wanda, do you know that you have some cruelty in you, some sternness?' - -'I think not. The cruelty would be to grant the wishes. With a loveless -wife Egon, would be much more unhappy than he is now.' - -'Oh, after a few months he would not care, you know; they never do. To -unite your fortunes is the great thing; you could lead your lives as -you liked.' - -'Our fortunes do very well apart,' said the Countess von Szalras, with -a patience which cost her some effort. - -'Yours is immense,' said Madame Brancka, with a sigh, for her own and -her husband's wealth had been seriously involved by extravagance and -that high play in which they both indulged. 'And it must accumulate in -your hands. You cannot spend much. I do not see how you could spend -much. You never receive; you never go to your palaces; you never leave -Hohenszalras; and you are so wise a woman that you never commit any -follies.' - -Wanda was silent. It did not appear to her that she was called on to -discuss her expenditure. - -Dinner was announced; their attendants took away the children; the -Princess woke up from a little dose, and said suddenly, 'Olga, is M. de -Sabran elected?' - -'Aunt Ottilie,' said her niece, hastily, 'has lost her affections to -that gentleman, because he painted her saint on a screen and had all -old Haydn at his fingers' ends.' - -'The election does not take place until next month,' said the Countess. -'He will certainly be returned, because of the blind fidelity of the -department to his name. The odd thing is that he should wish to be so.' - -'Wanda told him it was his duty,' said Princess Ottilie, with innocent -malice. - -The less innocent malice of the Countess Brancka's eyes fell for a -passing moment with inquiry and curiosity on the face of her hostess, -which, however, told her nothing. - -'Then he _was_ Parsifal or Perceforest!' she cried, 'and he has ridden -away to find the emerald cup of tradition. What a pity that he paused -on his way to break the bank at Monte Carlo. The two do not accord. I -fear he is but Lancelot.' - -'There is no reason why he should not pursue an honourable ambition,' -said the Princess, with some offence. - -'No reason at all, even if it be not an honourable one,' said Madame -Brancka, with a curious intonation. 'He always wins at baccara; he has -done some inimitable caricatures which hang at the Mirliton; he is an -amateur Rubenstein, and he has been the lover of Cochonette. These are -his qualifications for the Chamber, and if they be not as valiant ones -as those of _les Preux_ they are at least more amusing.' - -'My dear Olga,' said the Princess, with a certain dignity of reproof, -'you are not on your straw chair at Trouville. There are subjects, -expressions, suggestions, which are not agreeable to my ears or on your -lips.' - -'Cochonette!' murmured the offender, with a graceful little curtsey -of obedience and contrition. 'Oh, Madame, if you knew! A year ago we -talked of nothing else!' - -The Countess Brancka wished to talk still of nothing else, and though -she encountered a chillness and silence that would have daunted a less -bold spirit, she contrived to excite in the Princess a worldly and -almost unholy curiosity concerning that heroine of profane history -who had begun life in a little bakehouse of the Batignolles, and had -achieved the success of putting her name (or her nickname) upon the -lips of all Paris. - -Throughout dinner she spoke of little save of Cochonette, that -goddess of _bouffe_, and of Parsifal, as she persisted in baptising -the one lover to whom alone the goddess had ever been faithful. With -ill-concealed impatience her hostess bore awhile with the subject; then -dismissed it somewhat peremptorily. - -'We are provincials, my dear Olga,' she said, with a very cold -inflection of contempt in her voice. 'We are very antiquated in our -ways and our views. Bear with our prejudices and do not scare our -decorum. We keep it by us as we keep kingfishers' skins amongst our -furs in summer against moth; a mere superstition, I daresay, but we are -only rustic people.' - -'How you say that, Wanda,' said her guest, with a droll little laugh, -'and you look like Marie Antoinette all the while! Why will you bury -yourself? You would only need to be seen in Paris a week, and all the -world would turn after you and go back to tradition and ermine, instead -of _chien_ and plush. If you live another ten years as you live now you -will turn Hohenszalras into a religious house; and even Mme. Ottilie -would regret that. You will institute a Carmelite Order, because -white becomes you so. Poor Egon, he would sooner have you laugh about -Cochonette.' - -The evening was chill, but beautifully calm and free of mist. Wanda -von Szalras walked out on to the terrace, whilst her cousin and guest, -missing the stimulus of her usual band of lovers and friends, curled -herself up on a deep chair and fell sound asleep like a dormouse. - -There was no sound on the night except the ripple of the lake water -below and the splash of torrents falling down the cliffs around; a -sense of irritation and of pleasure moved her both in the same moment. -What was a French courtesan, a singer of lewd songs, an interpreter -of base passions to her? Nothing except a creature to be loathed and -pitied, as men in health feel a disgusted compassion for disease. -Yet she felt a certain anger stir in her as she recalled all this -frivolous, trivial, ill-flavoured chatter of her cousin's. And what was -it to her if one of the many lovers of this woman had cast her spells -from about him and left her for a manlier and a worthier arena? Yet -she could not resist a sense of delicate distant homage to herself in -the act, in the mute obedience to her counsels such as a knight might -render, even Lancelot with stained honour and darkened soul. - -The silence of it touched her. - -He had said nothing: only by mere chance, in the idle circling of -giddy rumour, she learned he had remembered her words and followed her -suggestion. There was a subtle and flattering reverence in it which -pleased the taste of a woman who was always proud but never vain. And -to any noble temperament there is a singularly pure and honest joy in -the consciousness of having been in any measure the means of raising -higher instincts and loftier desires in any human soul that was not -dead but dormant. - -The shrill voice of Olga Brancka startled her as it broke in on her -musings. - -'I have been asleep!' she cried, as she rose out of her deep chair and -came forth into the moonlight. 'Pray forgive me, Wanda. You will have -all that drowsy water running and tumbling all over the place; it makes -one think of the voices in the Sistine in Passion Week; there are the -gloom, the hush, the sigh, the shriek, the eternal appeal, the eternal -accusation. That water would drive me into hysteria; could you not -drain it, divert it, send it underground--silence it somehow?' - -'When you can keep the Neva flowing at New Year, perhaps I shall be -able. But I would not if I could. I have had all that water about me -from babyhood; when I am away from the sound of it I feel as if some -hand had woolled up my ears.' - -'That is what I feel when I am away from the noise of the streets. Oh, -Wanda! to think that you can do utterly as you like and yet do not like -to have the sea of light of the Champs-Élysées or the Graben before -your eyes, rather than that gliding, dusky water!' - -'The water is a mirror. I can see my own soul in it and Nature's; -perhaps one hopes even sometimes to see God's.' - -'That is not living, my dear, it is dreaming.' - -'Oh, no, my life is very real; it is as real as light to darkness, it -is absolute prose.' - -'Make it poetry then; that is very easy.' - -'Poetry is to the poetical; I am by no means poetical. My stud-book, -my stewards' ledgers, my bankers' accounts, form the chief of my -literature; you know I am a practical farmer.' - -'I know you are one of the most beautiful and one of the richest women -in Europe, and you live as if you were fifty years old, ugly, and -_dévote_; all this will grow on you. In a few years' time you will -be a hermit, a prude, an ascetic. You will found a new order, and be -canonised after death.' - -'My aunt is afraid that I shall die a freethinker. It is hard to -please every one,' replied the Countess Wanda, with unruffled good -humour. 'It is poetical people who found religious orders, enthusiasts, -visionaries; I wish I were one of them. But I am not. The utmost I -can do is to follow George Herbert's precept and sweep my own little -chambers, so that this sweeping may be in some sort a duty done.' - -'You are a good woman, Wanda, and I dare say a grand one, but you are -too grave for me.' - -'You mean that I am dull? People always grow dull who live much alone.' - -'But you could have the whole world at your feet if you only raised a -finger.' - -'That would not amuse me at all.' - -Her guest gave an impatient movement of her shoulders; after a little -she said, 'Did Réné de Sabran amuse you?' - -Wanda von Szalras hesitated a moment. - -'In a measure he interested me,' she answered, being a perfectly -truthful woman. 'He is a man who has the capacity of great things, -but he seems to me to be his own worst enemy; if he had fewer gifts -he might probably have more achievement. A waste of power is always a -melancholy sight.' - -'He is only a _boulevardier_, you know.' - -'No doubt your Paris asphalte is the modern embodiment of Circe.' - -'But he is leaving Circe.' - -'So much the better for him if he be. But I do not know why you speak -of him so much. He is a stranger to me, and will never, most likely, -cross my path again.' - -'Oh, Parsifal will come back,' said Madame Brancka, with a little -smile. 'Hohenszalras is his Holy Grail.' - -'He can scarcely come uninvited, and who will invite him here?' said -the mistress of Hohenszalras, with cold literalness. - -'Destiny will; the great master of the ceremonies who disposes of us -all,' said her cousin. - -'Destiny!' said Wanda, with some contempt. 'Ah, you are superstitious; -irreligious people always are. You believe in mesmerism and disbelieve -in God.' - -'Oh, most Holy Mother, cannot you make Wanda a little like other -people?' said the Countess Brancka when her hostess had left her alone -with Princess Ottilie. 'She is as much a fourteenth-century figure as -any one of those knights in the Rittersäal.' - -'Wanda is a gentlewoman,' said the Princess drily. 'You great ladies -are not always that, my dear Olga. You are all very _piquantes_ and -_provocantes_, no doubt, but you have forgotten what dignity is like, -and perhaps you have forgotten, too, what self-respect is like. It is -but another old-fashioned word.' - - - - -CHAPTER IX. - - -The late summer passed on into full autumn, and he never returned to -the little isle under the birches and willows. The monks spoke of him -often with the wondering admiration of rustic recluses for one who had -seemed to them the very incarnation of that world which to them was -only a vague name. His talents were remembered, his return was longed -for; a silver reliquary and an antique book of plain song which he -had sent them were all that remained to them of his sojourn there. As -they angled for trout under the drooping boughs, or sat and dosed in -the cloister as the rain fell, they talked together of that marvellous -visitant with regret. Sometimes they said to one another that they had -fancied once upon a time he would have become lord there, where the -spires and pinnacles and shining sloping roofs of the great Schloss -rose amidst the woods across the Szalrassee. When their grand prior -heard them say so he rebuked them. - -'Our lady is a true daughter of the Holy Church,' he said; 'all the -lands and all the wealth she has will come to the Church. You will see, -should we outlive her--which the saints send we may not do--that the -burg will be bequeathed by her to form a convent of Ursulines. It is -the order she most loves.' - -She overheard him say so once when she sat in her boat beneath the -willows drifting by under the island, and she sighed impatiently. - -'No, I shall not do that,' she thought. 'The religious foundations did -a great work in their time, but that time is over. They can no more -resist the pressure of the change of thought and habit than I can set -sail like S. Ursula with eleven thousand virgins. Hohenszalras shall -go to the Crown; they will do what seems best with it. But I may live -fifty years and more.' - -A certain sadness came over her as she thought so; a long life, a -lonely life, appalled her, even though it was cradled in all luxury and -strengthened with all power. - -'If only my Bela were living!' she said, half aloud; and the water grew -dim to her sight as it flowed away green and sparkling into the deep -long shadows of its pine-clothed shores, shadows, stretching darkly -across its western side, whilst the eastern extremity was still warm in -the afternoon light. - -The great pile of Hohenszalras seemed to tower up into the very clouds; -the evening sun, not yet sunk behind the Venediger range, shone ruddily -on all its towers and its gothic spires, and the grim sculptures and -the glistening metal, with which it was so lavishly ornamented, were -illumined till it looked like some colossal and enchanted citadel, -where soon the magic ivory horn of Childe Boland might sound and wake -the spell-bound warders. - -If only Bela, lord of all, had lived! - -But her regret was not only for her brother. - -In the October of that year her solitude was broken; her Sovereign -signified her desire to see Hohenszalras again. They were about to -visit Salzburg, and expressed their desire to pass three days in the -Iselthal. There was nothing to be done but to express gratitude for the -honour and make the necessary preparations. The von Szalras had been -always loyal allies rather than subjects, and their devotion to the -Habsburg house had been proved in many ways and with constancy. She -felt that she would rather have to collect and equip a regiment of -horse, as her fathers had done, than fill her home with the _tapage_ -inevitable to an Imperial reception, but she was not insensible to the -friendship that dictated this mark of honour. - -'Fate conspires to make me break my resolutions,' she said to the -Princess; who answered with scant sympathy: - -'There are some resolutions much more wisely broken than persevered in; -your vows of solitude are amongst them.' - -'Three days will not long affect my solitude.' - -'Who knows? At all events, Hohenszalras for those three days will be -worthy of its traditions--if only it will not rain.' - -'We will hope that it may not. Let us prepare the list of invitations.' - -When she had addressed all the invitations to some fifty of the -greatest families of the empire for the house party, she took one of -the cards engraved 'To meet their Imperial Majesties,' and hesitated -some moments, then wrote across it the name of Sabran. - -'You will like to see your friend,' she said as she passed it to her -aunt. - -'Certainly, I should like to do so, but I am quite sure he will not -come.' - -'Not come?' - -'I think he will not. You will never understand, my dear Wanda, that -men may love you.' - -'I certainly saw nothing of love in the conversation of M. de Sabran,' -she answered, with some irritation. - -'In his conversation? Very likely not; he is a proud man and poor.' - -'Since he has ceased to visit Monte Carlo.' - -'You are ungenerous, Wanda.' - -'I?' - -The accusation fell on her with a shock of surprise, under which some -sense of error stirred. Was it possible she could be ungenerous? She, -whose character had always, even in its faults, been cast on lines so -broad? She let his invitation go away with the rest in the post-bag to -Matrey. - -In a week his answer came with others. He was very sensible, very -grateful, but the political aspect of the time forbade him to leave -France. His election had entailed on him many obligations; the Chamber -would meet next month, etc., etc. He laid his homage and regrets at the -feet of the ladies of Hohenszalras. - -'I was sure he would say so,' the Princess observed. It did not lie -within her Christian obligations to spare the '_je vous l'avais bien -dit._' - -'It is very natural that he should not jeopardise his public -prospects,' answered Wanda herself, angrily conscious of a -disappointment, with which there was mingled also a sense of greater -respect for him than she had ever felt. - -'He cares nothing at all about those,' said the Princess, sharply. 'If -he had the position of Egon he would come. His political prospects! Do -you pretend to be ignorant that he only went to the Chamber as he went -to Romaris, because you recommended ambition and activity?' - -'If that be the case he is most wise not to come,' answered, with some -coldness, the châtelaine of Hohenszalras; and she went to visit the -stables, which would be more important in the eyes of her Imperial -mistress than any other part of the castle. - -'She will like Cadiga,' she thought, as she stroked the graceful throat -of an Arab mare which she had had over from Africa three months before, -a pure bred daughter of the desert 'shod with lightning.' - -She conversed long with her _stallmeister_ Ulrich, and gave him various -directions. - -'We are all grown very rustic and old-fashioned here,' she said with a -smile. 'But the horses at least will not disgrace us.' - -Ulrich asked his most high countess if the Margraf von Sabran would be -of the house party, and when she answered 'No,' said, with regret, -that no one had ever looked so well on Siegfried as he had done. - -'He did ride very well,' she said, and turned to the stall where the -sorrel Siegfried stood. She sighed unconsciously as she drew the -tufted hair hanging over-the horse's forehead through her fingers with -tenderness. What if she were to make Siegfried and all else his, if it -were true that he loved her? She thrust the thought away almost before -it took any real shape. - -'I do not even believe it,' she said half aloud, and yet in her -innermost heart she did believe it. - -The Imperial visit was made and became a thing of the past. - -The state apartments were opened, the servants wore their state -liveries, the lake had its banners and flags, its decorated -landing-stairs and velvet-cushioned boats; the stately and silent place -was full for three days and nights of animated and brilliant life, -and great hunting parties rejoiced the soul of old Otto, and made the -forests ring with sound of horn and rifle. The culverins on the keep -fired their salutes, the chimes of the island monastery echoed the -bells of the clock tower of the Schloss, the schools sang with clear -fresh voices the Kaiser's Hymn, the sun shone, the jäger were in full -glory, the castle was filled with guests and their servants,' the -long-unused theatre had a troop of Viennese to play comedies on its -bijou stage, the ball-room, lined with its Venetian mirrors and its -Reseiner gilding, was lit up once more after many years of gloom; the -nobles of the provinces came from far and wide at the summons of the -lady of Hohenszalras, and the greater nobles who formed the house-party -were well amused and well content, whilst the Imperial guests were -frankly charmed with all things, and honestly reluctant to depart. - -When she accompanied them to the foot of the terrace stairs, and there -took leave of them, she could feel that their visit had been one of -unfeigned enjoyment, and her farewell gift to her Kaiserin was Cadiga. -They had left early on the morning of the fourth day, and the remainder -of the day was filled till sunset by the departure of the other guests; -it was fatiguing and crowded. When the last visitor had gone she -dropped down on a great chair in the Rittersäal, and gave a long-drawn -sigh of relief. - -'What a long strain on one's powers of courtesy!' she murmured. 'It is -more exhausting than to climb Gross Glöckner!' - -'It has been perfectly successful!' said the Princess, whose cheeks -were warm and whose eyes were bright with triumph. - -'It has been only a matter of money,' said the Countess von Szalras, -with some contempt. 'Nothing makes one feel so _bourgeoise_ as a thing -like this. Any merchant or banker could do the same. It is impossible -to put any originality into it. It is like diamonds. Any one only heard -of yesterday could do as much if they had only the money to do it with; -you do not seem to see what I mean?' - -'I see that, as usual, you are discontented when any other woman would -be in paradise,' answered the Princess, a little tartly. 'Pray, could -the _bourgeoise_ have a residence ten centuries old?' - -'I am afraid she could buy one easily,' - -'Would that be the same thing?' - -'Certainly not, but it would enable her to do all I have done for the -last three days, if she had only money enough; she could even give away -Cadiga.' - -'She could not get Cadiga accepted!' said Mme. Ottilie, drily. 'You are -tired, my love, and so do not appreciate your own triumphs. It has been -a very great success.' - -'They were very kind; they are always so kind. But all the time I could -not help thinking, were they not horribly fatigued. It wearied me so -myself, I could not believe that they were otherwise than weary too.' - -'It has been a great success,' repeated the Princess. 'But you are -always discontented.' - -Wanda did not reply; she leaned back against the Cordovan leather -back of the chair, crushing her chestnut hair against the emblazoned -scutcheon of her house; she was very fatigued, and her face was pale. -For three whole days and evenings to preserve an incessant vigilance of -courtesy, a continual assumption of interest, an unremitting appearance -of enjoyment, a perpetual smile of welcome, is very tedious work: those -in love with social successes are sustained by the consciousness of -them, but she was not. An Imperial visit more or less could add not one -hair's breadth to the greatness of the house of Szalras. - -And there was a dull, half conscious pain at the bottom of her heart. -She was thinking of Egon Vàsàrhely, who had said he could not leave -his regiment; of Réné de Sabran, who had said he could not leave his -country. Even to those who care nothing for society, and dislike the -stir and noise of the world about them, there is still always a vague -sense of depression in the dispersion of a great party; the house -seems so strangely silent, the rooms seem so strangely empty, servants -flitting noiselessly here and there, a dropped flower, a fallen jewel, -an oppressive scent from multitudes of fading blossoms, a broken vase -perhaps, or perhaps a snapped fan--these are all that are left of -the teeming life crowded here one little moment ago. Though one may -be glad they are all gone, yet there is a certain sadness in it. '_Le -lendemain de la fête_' keeps its pathos, even though the fête itself -has possessed no poetry and no power to amuse. - -The Princess, who was very fatigued too, though she would not confess -that social duties could ever exhaust anyone, went softly away to -her own room, and Wanda sat alone in the great Rittersäal, with the -afternoon light pouring through the painted casements on to the -damascened armour, and the Flemish tapestries, and the great dais at -the end of the hall, with its two-headed eagle that Dante cursed, -its draperies of gold-coloured velvet, its escutcheons in beaten and -enamelled metal. - -Discontented! The Princess had left that truthful word behind her like -a little asp creeping upon a marble floor. It stung her conscience with -a certain reproach, her pride with a certain impatience. Discontented! -She who had always been so equable of temper, so enamoured of solitude, -so honestly loyal to her people and her duties, so entirely grateful to -the placid days that came and went as calmly as the breathing of her -breast! - -Was it possible she was discontented? - -How all the great world that had just left her would have laughed at -her, and asked what doubled rose-leaf made her misery? - -No one hardly on earth could be more entirely free than she was, more -covered with all good gifts of fortune and of circumstances; and she -had always been so grateful to her life until now. Would she never -cease to miss the coming of the little boat across from the Holy Isle? -She was angry that this memory should have so much power to pursue her -thought and spoil the present hours. Had he but been there, she knew -very well that the pageantry of the past three days would not have -been the mere empty formalities, the mere gilded tedium that they had -appeared to be to her. - -On natures thoughtful and profound, silence has sometimes a much -greater power than speech. Now and then she surprised herself in the -act of thinking how artificial human life had become, when the mere -accident of a greater or lesser fortune determined whether a man who -respected himself could declare his feeling for a woman he loved. It -seemed lamentably conventional and unreal, and yet had he not been -fettered by silence he would have been no gentleman. - -Life resumed its placid even tenor at Hohenszalras after this -momentary disturbance. Autumn comes early in the Glöckner and -Venediger groups. Madame Ottilie with a shiver heard the north winds -sweep through the yellowing forests, and watched the white mantle -descend lower and lower down the mountain sides. Another winter was -approaching, a winter in which she would see no one, hear nothing, sit -all day by her wood fire, half asleep for sheer want of interest to -keep her awake; the very postboy was sometimes detained by the snowfall -for whole days together in his passage to and from Matrey. - -'It is all very well for you,' she said pettishly to her niece. 'You -have youth, you have strength, you like to have four mad horses put in -your sleigh and drive them like demoniacs through howling deserts of -frozen pine forests, and come home when the great stars are all out, -with your eyes shining like the planets, and the beasts all white with -foam and icicles. You like that; you can do it; you prefer it before -anything, but I--what have I to do? One cannot eat nougats for ever, -nor yet read one's missal. Even you will allow that the evenings are -horribly long. Your horses cannot help you there. You embroider very -artistically, but they would do that all for you at any convent; and to -be sure you write your letters and audit your accounts, but you might -just as well leave it all to your lawyers. Olga Brancka is quite right, -though I do not approve of her mode of expression, but she is quite -right--you should be in the world.' - -But she failed to move Wanda by a hair's breadth, and soon the hush -of winter settled down on Hohenszalras, and when the first frost had -hardened the ground the four black horses were brought out in the -sleigh, and their mistress, wrapped in furs to the eyes, began those -headlong gallops through the silent forests which stirred her to a -greater exhilaration than any pleasures of the world could have raised -in her. To guide those high-mettled, half-broken, high-bred creatures, -fresh from freedom on the plains of the Danube, was like holding the -reins of the winds. - -One day at dusk as she returned from one of these drives, and went -to see the Princess Ottilie before changing her dress, the Princess -received her with a little smile and a demure air of triumph, of -smiling triumph. In her hand was an open letter which she held out to -her niece. - -'Read!' she said with much self-satisfaction. 'See what miracles you -and the Holy Isle can work.' - -Wanda took the letter, which she saw at a glance was in the writing -of Sabran. After some graceful phrases of homage to the Princess, -he proceeded in it to say that he had taken his seat in the French -Chamber, as deputy for his department. - -'I do not deceive myself,' he continued. 'The trust is placed in me for -the sake of the memories of the dead Sabran, not because I am anything -in the sight of these people; but I will endeavour to be worthy of it. -I am a sorry idler and of little purpose and strength in life, but I -will endeavour to make my future more serious and more deserving of -the goodness which was showered on me at Hohenszalras. It grieved me -to be unable to profit by the permission so graciously extended to -me at the time of their Imperial Majesties' sojourn with you, but it -was impossible for me to come. My thoughts were with you, as they are -indeed every hour. Offer my homage to the Countess von Szalras, with -the renewal of my thanks.' - -Then, with some more phrases of reverence and compliment blent in one -to the venerable lady whom he addressed, he ended an epistle which -brought as much pleasure to the recipient as though she had been -seventeen instead of seventy. - -She watched the face of Wanda during the perusal of these lines, but -she did not learn anything from its expression. - -'He writes admirably,' she said, when she had read it through; 'and I -think he is well fitted for a political career. They say that it is -always best in politics not to be burdened with convictions, and he -will be singularly free from such impediments, for he has none!' - -'You are very harsh and unjust,' said the Princess, angrily. 'No -person can pay you a more delicate compliment than lies in following -your counsels, and yet you have nothing better to say about it than to -insinuate an unscrupulous immorality.' - -'Politics are always immoral.' - -'Why did you recommend them to him, then?' said the Princess, sharply. - -'They are better than some other things--than _rouge et noir_, for -instance; but I did not perhaps do right in advising a mere man of -pleasure to use the nation as his larger gaming-table.' - -'You are beyond my comprehension! Your wire drawing is too fine for my -dull eyesight. One thing is certainly quite clear to me, dull as I am; -you live alone until you grow dissatisfied with everything. There is -no possibility of pleasing a woman who disapproves of the whole living -world!' - -'The world sees few unmixed motives,' said Wanda, to which the Princess -replied by an impatient movement. - -'The post has brought fifty letters for you. I have been looking over -the journals,' she answered. 'There is something you may also perhaps -deign to read.' - -She held out a French newspaper and pointed to a column in it. - -Wanda took it and read it, standing. It was a report of a debate in the -French Chamber. - -She read in silence and attentively, leaning against the great carved -chimney-piece. 'I was not aware he was so good an orator,' she said -simply, when she had finished reading. - -'You grant that it is a very fine speech, a very noble speech?' -said Madame Otillie, eagerly and with impatience. 'You perceive the -sensation it caused; it is evidently the first time he has spoken. You -will see in another portion of the print how they praise him.' - -'He has acquired his convictions with rapidity. He was a Socialist when -here.' - -'The idea! A man of his descent has always the instincts of his order: -he may pretend to resist them, but they are always stronger than he. -You might at least commend him, Wanda, since your words turned him -towards public life.' - -'He is no doubt eloquent,' she answered, with 'some reluctance. 'That -we could see here. If he be equally sincere he will be a great gain to -the nobility of France.' - -'Why should you doubt his sincerity?' - -'Is mere ambition ever sincere?' - -'I really cannot understand you. You censured his waste of ability and -accession; you seem equally disposed to cavil at his exertions and use -of his talent. Your prejudices are most cruelly tenacious.' - -'How can I applaud your friend's action until I am sure of his motive?' - -'His motive is to please you,' thought the Princess, but she was too -wary to say so. - -She merely replied: - -'No motive is ever altogether unmixed, as you cruelly observed; but I -should say that his must be on the whole sufficiently pure. He wishes -to relieve the inaction and triviality of a useless life.' - -'To embrace a hopeless cause is always in a manner noble,' assented her -niece. 'And I grant you that he has spoken very well.' - -Then she went to her own room to dress for dinner. - -In the evening she read the reported speech again, with closer -attention. It was eloquent, ironical, stately, closely reasoned, and -rose in its peroration to a caustic and withering eloquence of retort -and invective. It was the speech of a born orator, but it was also the -speech of a strongly conservative partisan. - -'How much of what he says does he believe?' she thought, with a doubt -that saddened her and made her wonder why it came to her. And whether -he believed or not, whether he were true or false in his political -warfare, whether he were selfish or unselfish in his ambitions, what -did it matter to her? - -He had stayed there a few weeks, and he had played so well that the -echoes of his music still seemed to linger after him, and that was all. -It was not likely they would ever meet again. - - - - -CHAPTER X. - - -With the New Year Madame Ottilie received another letter from him. -It was brief, grateful, and touching. It concluded with a message of -ceremonious homage to the châtelaine of Hohenszalras. Of his entrance -into political life it said nothing. With the letter came a screen of -gilded leather which he had painted himself, with passages from the -history of S. Julian Hospitador. - -'It will seem worthless,' he said, 'where every chamber is a museum -of art; but accept it as a sign of my grateful and imperishable -remembrance.' - -The Princess was deeply touched and sensibly flattered. - -'You will admit, at least,' she said, with innocent triumph, 'that he -knows how to make gratitude graceful.' - -'It is an ex-voto, and you are his patron saint, dear mother,' said -the Countess Wanda, with a smile but the smile was one of approval. -She thought his silence on his own successes and on her name was in -good taste. And the screen was so admirably painted that the Venetian -masters might have signed it without discredit. - -'May I give him no message from you,' said the Princess, as she was -about to write her reply. - -Her niece hesitated. - -'Say we have read his first speech, and are glad of his success,' she -said, after a few moments' reflection. - -'Nothing more?' - -'What else should I say?' replied Wanda, with some irritation. - -The Princess was too honourable a woman to depart from the text of -the congratulation, but she contrived to throw a little more warmth -into the spirit of it; and she did not show her letter to the mistress -of Hohenszalras. She set the screen near her favourite chair in the -blue-room. - -'If only there were any one to appreciate it!' she said, with a sigh. -'Like everything else in this house, it might as well be packed up in -a chest for aught people see of it. This place is not a museum; the -world goes to a museum: it is a crypt!' - -'Would it be improved by a crowd of sightseers at ten kreutzers a head?' - -'No: but it would be very much brightened by a house-party at Easter, -and now and then at midsummer and autumn. In your mother's time the -October parties for the bear-hunts, the wolf-hunts, the boar-hunts, -were magnificent. No, I do not think the chase contrary to God's -will; man has power over the beasts of the field and the forest. The -archdukes never missed an autumn here; they found the sport finer than -in Styria.' - -Her niece kissed her hand and went out to where her four black horses -were fretting and champing before the great doors, and the winter sun -was lighting up the gilded scrollwork, and the purple velvet, and the -brown sables of her sleigh, that had been built in Russia and been a -gift to her from Egon Vàsàrhely. She felt a little impatience of the -Princess Ottilie, well as she loved her; the complacent narrowness of -mind, the unconscious cruelty, the innocent egotism, the conventional -religion which clipped and fitted the ways of Deity to suit its own -habits and wishes: these fretted her, chafed her, oppressed her with a -sense of their utter vanity. The Princess would not herself have harmed -a sparrow or a mouse, yet it seemed to her that Providence had created -all the animal world only to furnish pastime for princes and their -jägers. She saw no contradiction in this view of the matter. The small -conventional mind of her had been cast in that mould and would never -expand: it was perfectly pure and truthful, but it was contracted and -filled with formula. - -Wanda von Szalras, who loved her tenderly, could not help a certain -impatience of this, the sole, companionship she had. A deep affection -may exist side by side with a mental disparity that creates an -unwilling but irresistible sense of tedium and discordance. A clear and -broad intelligence is infinitely patient of inferiority; but its very -patience has its reaction in its own fatigue and silent irritation. - -This lassitude came on her most in the long evenings whilst the -Princess slumbered and she herself sat alone. She was not haunted by -it when she was in the open air, or in the library, occupied with the -reports or the requirements on her estates. But the evenings were -lonely and tedious; they had not seemed so when the little boat had -come away from the monastery, and the prayer and praise of Handel and -Haydn, and the new-born glory of the Nibelungen tone-poems had filled -the quiet twilight hours. It was in no way probable that the musician -and she would ever meet again. She understood that his own delicacy -and pride must perforce keep him out of Austria, and she, however much -the Princess desired it, could never invite him there alone, and would -not probably gather such a house-party at Hohenszalras as might again -warrant her doing so. - -Nothing was more unlikely, she supposed, than that she would ever hear -again the touch that had awakened the dumb chords of the old painted -spinet. - -But circumstance, that master of the ceremonies, as Madame Brancka -termed it, who directs the _menuet de la cour_ of life, and who often -diverts himself by letting it degenerate into a dance of death, willed -it otherwise. There was a dear friend of hers who was a dethroned -and exiled queen. Their friendship was strong, tender, and born in -childish days. On the part of Wanda, it had been deepened by the august -adversity which impresses and attaches all noble natures. Herself born -of a great race, and with the instincts of a ruling class hereditary -in her, there was something sacred and awful in the fall of majesty. -Her friend, stripped of all appanages of her rank, and deserted by -nearly all who 'had so late sworn her allegiance, became more than ever -dear; she became holy to her, and she would sooner have denied the -request of a reigning sovereign than of one powerless to command or -to rebuke. 'When this friend, who had been so hardly smitten by fate, -sent her word that she was ill and would fain see her, she, therefore, -never even hesitated as to obedience before the summons. It troubled -and annoyed her; it came to her ill-timed and unexpected; and it was -above all disagreeable to her, because it would take her to Paris. But -it never occurred to her to send an excuse to this friend, who had no -longer any power to say, 'I will,' but could only say, like common -humanity, 'I hope.' - -Within two hours of her reception of the summons she was on her way to -Windisch-Matrey. The Princess did not accompany her; she intended to -make as rapid a journey as possible without pausing on the way, and her -great-aunt was too old and too delicate in health for such exertion. - -'Though I would fain go and see that great Parisian aurist,' she said -plaintively. 'My hearing is not what it used to be.' - -'The great aurist shall come to you, dear mother,' said Wanda. 'I will -bring him back with me.' - -She travelled with a certain state, since she did not think that the -moment of a visit to a dethroned sovereign was a fit time to lay -ceremony aside. She took several of her servants and some of her horses -with her, and journeyed by way of Munich and Strasburg. - -Madame Ottilie was too glad she should go anywhere to offer opposition; -and in her heart of hearts she thought of her favourite. He was in -Paris; who knew what might happen? - -It was midwinter, and the snow was deep on all the country, whether of -mountain or of plain, which stretched between the Tauern and the French -capital. But there was no great delay of the express, and in some forty -hours the Countess von Szalras, with her attendants, and her horses -with theirs, arrived at the Hôtel Bristol. - -The noise, the movement, the brilliancy of the streets seemed a strange -spectacle, after four years spent without leaving the woodland quiet -and mountain solitudes of Hohenszalras. - -She was angry with herself that, as she stood at the windows of her -apartment, she almost unconsciously watched the faces of the crowd -passing below, and felt a vague expectancy of seeing amongst them the -face of Sabran. - -She went that evening, to the modest hired house where the young and -beautiful sovereign she came to visit had found a sorry refuge. It -was a meeting full of pain to both. When they had last parted at the -Hofburg of Vienna, the young queen had been in all the triumph and hope -of brilliant nuptials; and at Hohenszalras, the people's Heilige Bela -had been living, a happy boy, in all his fair promise. - -Meanwhile, the news-sheets informed all their leaders that the Countess -von Szalras was in Paris. Ambassadors and ambassadresses, princes and -princesses, and a vast number of very great people, hastened to write -their names at the Hôtel Bristol. - -Amongst the cards left was that of Sabran. But he sent it; he did not -go in person. - -She refused all invitations, and declined almost all visits. She had -come there only to see her friend, the Queen of Natalia. Paris, which -loves anything new, talked a great deal about her; and its street -crowds, which admires what is beautiful, began to gather before the -doors at the hours when her black horses, driven Russian fashion, came -fretting and flashing like meteors over the asphalte. - -'Why did you bring your horses for so short a time?' said Madame -Kaulnitz to her. 'You could, of course, have had any of ours.' - -'I always like to have some of my horses with me,' she answered. -'I would have brought them all, only it would have looked so -ostentatious; you know they are my children.' - -'I do not see why you should not have other children,' said Madame -Kaulnitz. 'It is quite inhuman that you will not marry.' - -'I have never said that I will not. But I do not think it likely.' - -Two days after her arrival, as she was driving down the Avenue de -l'Impératrice, she saw Sabran on foot. She was driving slowly. She -would have stopped her carriage if he had paused in his walk; but he -did not, he only bowed low and passed on. It was almost rude, after the -hospitality of Hohenszalras, but the rudeness pleased her. It spoke -both of pride and of sensitiveness. It seemed scarcely natural, after -their long hours of intercourse, that they should pass each other thus -as strangers; yet it seemed impossible they should any more be friends. -She did not ask herself why it seemed so, but she felt it rather by -instinct than by reasoning. - -She was annoyed to feel that the sight of him had caused a momentary -emotion in her of mingled trouble and pleasure. - -No one mentioned his name to her, and she asked no one concerning him. -She spent almost all her time with the Queen of Natalia, and there -were other eminent foreign personages in Paris at that period whose -amiabilities she could not altogether reject, and she had only allowed -herself fifteen days as the length of her sojourn, as Madame Ottilie -was alone amidst the snow-covered mountains of the Tauern. - -On the fifth day after her meeting with Sabran he sent another card -of his to the hotel, and sent with it an immense basket of gilded -osier filled with white lilac. She remembered having once said to him -at Hohenszalras that lilac was her flower of preference. Her rooms -were crowded with bouquets, sent her by all sorts of great people, -and made of all kinds of rare blossoms, but the white lilac, coming -in the January snows, touched her more than all those. She knew that -his poverty was no fiction; and that great clusters of white lilac in -midwinter in Paris meant much money. - -She wrote a line or two in German, which thanked him for his -recollection of her taste, and sent it to the Chamber. She did not know -where he lived. - -That evening she mentioned his name to her godfather, the Duc de Noira, -and asked him if he knew it. The Duc, a Legitimist, a recluse, and a -man of strong prejudices, answered at once. - -'Of course I know it; he is one of us, and he has made a political -position for himself within the last year.' - -'Do you know him personally?' - -'No, I do not. I see no one, as you are aware; I live in greater -retirement than ever. But he bears an honourable name, and though I -believe that, until lately, he was but a _flâneur_, he has taken a -decided part this session, and he is a very great acquisition to the -true cause.' - -'It is surely very sudden, his change of front?' - -'What change? He took no part in politics that ever I heard of; it -is taken for granted that a Marquis de Sabran is loyal to his sole -legitimate sovereign. I believe he never thought of public life; but -they tell me that he returned from some long absence last autumn, -an altered and much graver man. Then one of the deputies for his -department died, and he was elected for the vacancy with no opposition.' - -The Duc de Noira proceeded to speak of the political aspects of the -time, and said no more. - -Involuntarily, as she drove through the avenues of the Bois de -Boulogne, she thought of the intuitive comprehension, the half-uttered -sympathy, the interchange of ideas, _à demi-mots_, which had made the -companionship of Sabran so welcome to her in the previous summer. They -had not always agreed, she often had not even approved him; but they -had always understood one another, they had never needed to explain. -She was startled to realise how much and how vividly she regretted him. - -'If one could only be sure of his sincerity,' she thought, 'there would -be few men living who would equal him.' - -She did not know why she doubted his sincerity. Some natures have keen -instincts like dogs. She regretted to doubt it; but the change in him -seemed to her too rapid to be one of conviction. Yet the homage in it -to herself was delicate and subtle. She would not have been a woman had -it not touched her, and she was too honest with herself not to frankly -admit in her own thoughts that she might very well have inspired a -sentiment which would go far to change a nature which it entered and -subdued. Many men had loved her; why not he? - -She drew the whip over the flanks of her horses as she felt that -mingled impatience and sadness with which sovereigns remember that they -can never be certain they are loved for themselves, and not for all -which environs them and lifts them up out of the multitude. - -She was angry with herself when she felt that what interested her most -during her Parisian sojourn was the report of the debates of the -French Chamber in the French journals. - -One night the Baron Kaulnitz spoke of Sabran in her hearing. - -'He is the most eloquent of the Legitimist party,' he said to some one -in her hearing. 'No one supposed that he had it in him; he was a mere -idler, a mere man of pleasure, and it was at times said of something -worse, but he has of late manifested great talent; it is displayed for -a lost cause, but it is none the less admirable as talent goes.' - -She heard what he said with pleasure. - -Advantage was taken of her momentary return to the world to press on -her the choice of a great alliance. Names as mighty as her own were -suggested to her, and more than one great prince, of a rank even higher -than hers, humbly solicited the honour of the hand which gave no caress -except to a horse's neck, a dog's head, a child's curls. But she did -not even pause to allow these proposals any consideration; she refused -them all curtly, and with a sense of irritation. - -'Have you sworn never to marry?' said the Duc de Noira, with much -chagrin, receiving her answer for a candidate of his own to whom he was -much attached. - -'I never swear anything,' she answered. 'Oaths are necessary for -people who do not know their own minds. I do know my own.' - -'You know that you will never marry?' - -'I hardly say that; but I shall never contract a mere alliance. It is -horrible--that union eternal of two bodies and souls without sympathy, -without fitness, without esteem, merely for sake of additional position -or additional wealth.' - -'It is not eternal! said the Duc, with a smile; 'and I can assure you -that my friend adores you for yourself. You will never understand, -Wanda, that you are a woman to inspire great love; that you would be -sought for your face, for your form, for your mind, if you had nothing -else.' - -'I do not believe it.' - -'Can you doubt at least that your cousin Egon----' - -'Oh, pray spare me the name of Egon!' she said with unwonted -irritation. 'I may surely be allowed to have left that behind me at -home!' - -It was a time of irritation and turbulence in Paris. The muttering of -the brooding storm was visible to fine ears through the false stillness -of an apparently serene atmosphere. She, who knew keen and brilliant -politicians who were not French, saw the danger that was at hand for -France which France did not see. - -'They will throw down the glove to Prussia; and they will repent of it -as long as the earth lasts,' she thought, and she was oppressed by her -prescience, for war had cost her race dear; and she said to herself, -'When that liquid fire is set flowing who shall say where it will -pause?' - -She felt an extreme desire to converse with Sabran as she had done -at home; to warn him, to persuade him, to hear his views and express -to him her own; but she did not summon him, and he did not come. She -did justice to the motive which kept him away, but she was not as -yet prepared to go as far as to invite him to lay his scruples aside -and visit her with the old frank intimacy which had brightened both -their lives at the Hohenszalrasburg. It had been so different there; -he had been a wanderer glad of rest, and she had had about her the -defence of the Princess's presence, and the excuse of the obligations -of hospitality. She reproached herself at times for hardness, for -unkindness; she had not said a syllable to commend him for that -abandonment of a frivolous life which was in itself so delicate and -lofty a compliment to herself. He had obeyed her quite as loyally as -knight ever did his lady, and she did not even say to him, 'It is well -done.' - -Wanda von Szalras--a daughter of brave men, and herself the bravest of -women--was conscious that she was for once a coward. She was afraid of -looking into her own heart. - -She said to her cousin, when he paid his respects to her, 'I should -like to hear a debate at the Chamber. Arrange it for me.' - -He replied: 'At your service in that as in all things.' - -The next day as she was about to drive out, about four o'clock, he met -her at the entrance of her hotel. - -'If you could come with me,' he said, 'you might hear something of -interest to-day; there will be a strong discussion. Will you accept my -carriage or shall I enter yours?' - -What she heard when she reached the Chamber did not interest her -greatly. There was a great deal of noise, of declamation, of personal -vituperation, of verbose rancour; it did not seem to her to be -eloquence. She had heard much more stately oratory in both the Upper -and Lower Reichsrath, and much more fiery and noble eloquence at Buda -Pesth. This seemed to her poor, shrill mouthing, which led to very -little, and the disorder of the Assembly filled her with contempt. - -'I thought it was the country of S. Louis!' she said, with a disdainful -sigh, to Kaulnitz who answered: - -'Cromwell is perhaps more wanted here than S. Louis.' - -'Their Cromwell will always be a lawyer without clients, or a -journalist _sans le sou!_' retorted the châtelaine of Hohenszalras. - -When she had been there an hour or more she saw Sabran enter the hall -and take his place. His height, his carriage, and his distinction of -appearance made him conspicuous in a multitude, while the extreme -fairness and beauty of his face were uncommon and striking. - -'Here is S. Louis,' said the ambassador, with a little smile, 'or a son -of S. Louis's crusaders at any rate. He is sure to speak. I think he -speaks very well; one would suppose he had done nothing else all his -life.' - -After a time, when some speakers, virulent, over-eager, and hot in -argument, had had their say, and a tumult had risen and been quelled, -and the little bell had rung violently for many minutes, Sabran entered -the tribune. He had seen the Austrian minister and his companion. - -His voice, at all times melodious, had a compass which could fill with -ease the large hall in which he was. He appeared to use no more effort -than if he were conversing in ordinary tones, yet no one there present -lost a syllable that he said. His gesture was slight, calm, and -graceful; his language admirably chosen, and full of dignity. - -His mission of the moment was to attack the ministry upon their foreign -policy, and he did so with exceeding skill, wit, irony, and precision. -His eloquence was true eloquence, and was not indebted in any way to -trickery, artifice, or over-ornament. He spoke with fire, force, and -courage, but his tranquillity never gave way for a moment. His speech -was brilliant and serene, in utter contrast to the turbulent and florid -declamation which had preceded him. There was great and prolonged -applause when he had closed with a peroration stately and persuasive; -and when Emile Ollivier rose to reply, that optimistic statesman was -plainly disturbed and at a loss. - -Sabran resumed his seat without raising his eyes to where the Countess -von Szalras sat. She remained there during the speech of the minister, -which was a lame and laboured one, for he had been pierced between the -joints of his armour. Then she rose and went away with her escort. - -'What do you think of S. Louis?' said he, jestingly. - -'I think he is very eloquent and very convincing, but I do not think he -is at all like a Frenchman.' - -'Well, he is a _Breton bretonnant_' rejoined the ambassador. 'They are -always more in earnest and more patrician.' - -'If he be sincere, if he be only sincere,' she thought: that doubt -pursued her. She had a vague sense that it was all only a magnificent -comedy after all. Could apathy and irony change all so suddenly to -conviction and devotion? Could the scoffer become so immediately the -devotee? Could he care, really care, for those faiths of throne and -altar which he defended with so much eloquence, so much earnestness? -And yet, why not? These faiths were inherited things with him; their -altars must have been always an instinct with him; for their sake his -fathers had lived and died. What great wonder, then, that they should -have been awakened in him after a torpor which had been but the outcome -of those drugs with which the world is always so ready to lay asleep -the soul? - -They had now got out into the corridors, and as they turned the corner -of one, they came straight upon Sabran. - -'I congratulate you,' said Wanda, as she stretched her hand out to him -with a smile. - -As he took it and bowed over it he grew very pale. - -'I have obeyed you,' he murmured, 'with less success than I could -desire.' - -'Do not be too modest, you are a great orator. You know how to remain -calm whilst you exalt, excite, and influence others.' - -He listened in silence, then inquired for the health of his kind friend -the Princess Ottilie. - -'She is well,' answered Wanda, 'and loses nothing of her interest in -you. She reads all your speeches with approval and pleasure; not the -less approval and pleasure because her political creed has become -yours.' - -He coloured slightly. - -'What did you tell me?' he said. 'That if I had no convictions, I could -do no better than abide by the traditions of the Sabrans? If their -cause were the safe and reigning one I would not support it for mere -expediency, but as it is----' - -'Your motives cannot be selfish ones,' she answered a little coldly. -'Selfishness would have led you to profess Bakouinism; it is the -popular profession, and a socialistic aristocrat is always attracted -and flattering to the _plebs._' - -'You are severe,' he said, with a flush on his cheek. 'I have no -intention of playing Philip Egalité now or in any after time.' - -She did hot reply; she was conscious of unkindness and want of -encouragement in her own words. She hesitated a little, and then said: - -'Perhaps you will have time to come and see me? I shall remain here a -few days more.' - -The ambassador joined them at that moment, and was too well bred to -display any sign of the supreme astonishment he felt at finding the -Countess von Szalras and the new deputy already known to each other. - -'He is a favourite of Aunt Ottilie's,' she explained to him as, leaving -Sabran, they passed down the corridor. 'Did I not tell you? He had an -accident on the Umbal glacier last summer, and in his convalescence we -saw him often.' - -'I recollect that your aunt asked me about him. Excuse me; I had quite -forgotten,' said the ambassador, understanding now why she had wanted -to go to the Chamber. - -The next day Sabran called upon her. There were with her three or four -great ladies. He did not stay long, and was never alone with her. She -felt an impatience of her friends' presence, which irritated her as -it awoke in her. He sent her a second basket of white lilac in the -following forenoon. She saw no more of him. - -She found herself wondering about the manner of his life. She did not -even know in what street he lived; she passed almost all her time with -the Queen of Natalia, who did not know him, and was still so unwell -that she received no one. - -She was irritated with herself because it compromised her consistency -to desire to stay on in Paris, and she did so desire; and she was one -of those to whom a consciousness of their own consistency is absolutely -necessary as a qualification for self-respect. There are natures that -fly contentedly from caprice to caprice, as humming-birds from blossom -to bud; but if she had once become changeable she would have become -contemptible to herself, she would hardly have been herself any longer. -With some anger at her own inclinations she resisted them, and when her -self-allotted fifteen days were over, she did not prolong them by so -much as a dozen hours. There was an impatience in her which was wholly -strange to her serene and even temper. She felt a vague dissatisfaction -with herself; she had been scarcely generous, scarcely cordial to him; -she failed to approve her own conduct, and yet she scarcely saw where -she had been at fault. - -The Kaulnitz and many other high persons were at the station in the -chill, snowy, misty day to say their last farewells. She was wrapped -in silver-fox fur from head to foot; she was somewhat pale; she felt -an absurd reluctance to go away from a city which was nothing to her. -But her exiled friend was recovering health, and Madame Ottilie was -all alone; and though she was utterly her own mistress, far more so -than most women, there were some things she could not do. To stay on in -Paris seemed to her to be one of them. - -The little knot of high personages said their last words; the train -began slowly to move upon its way; a hand passed through the window of -the carriage and laid a bouquet of lilies of the valley on her knee. - -'Adieu!' said Sabran very gently, as his eyes met hers once more. - -Then the express train rolled faster on its road, and passed out by the -north-east, and in a few moments had left Paris far behind it. - - -END OF THE FIRST VOLUME. - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Wanda, Vol. 1 (of 3), by Ouida - - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 52135 *** diff --git a/old/52135-h/52135-h.htm b/old/52135-h/52135-h.htm deleted file mode 100644 index 08ebb7d..0000000 --- a/old/52135-h/52135-h.htm +++ /dev/null @@ -1,8272 +0,0 @@ -<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" - "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> -<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> - <head> - <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" /> - <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> - <title> - The Project Gutenberg eBook of Wanda, vol. 1, by Ouida. - </title> - <style type="text/css"> - -body { - margin-left: 10%; - margin-right: 10%; -} - - h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { - text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ - clear: both; -} - -p { - margin-top: .51em; - text-align: justify; - margin-bottom: .49em; -} - -.p2 {margin-top: 2em;} -.p4 {margin-top: 4em;} -.p6 {margin-top: 6em;} - -hr { - width: 33%; - margin-top: 2em; - margin-bottom: 2em; - margin-left: auto; - margin-right: auto; - clear: both; -} - -hr.tb {width: 45%;} -hr.chap {width: 65%} -hr.full {width: 95%;} - -hr.r5 {width: 5%; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em;} -hr.r65 {width: 65%; margin-top: 3em; margin-bottom: 3em;} - -a:link {color: #000099; text-decoration: none; } - -v:link {color: #000099; text-decoration: none; } - -.blockquot { - margin-left: 5%; - margin-right: 10%; -} - - -.center {text-align: center;} - -.right {text-align: right;} - -.smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} - - - -.caption {font-weight: bold;} - -/* Images */ -.figcenter { - margin: auto; - text-align: center; -} - -.figleft { - float: left; - clear: left; - margin-left: 0; - margin-bottom: 1em; - margin-top: 1em; - margin-right: 1em; - padding: 0; - text-align: center; -} - -.figright { - float: right; - clear: right; - margin-left: 1em; - margin-bottom: - 1em; - margin-top: 1em; - margin-right: 0; - padding: 0; - text-align: center; -} - -/* Footnotes */ -.footnotes {border: dashed 1px;} - -.footnote {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;} - -.footnote .label {position: absolute; right: 84%; text-align: right;} - -.fnanchor { - vertical-align: super; - font-size: .8em; - text-decoration: - none; -} - - </style> - </head> -<body> - - -<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 52135 ***</div> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> -<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="500" alt="" /> -</div> -<h1>WANDA</h1> - -<h3>BY</h3> - -<h2>OUIDA</h2> - - -<p class="center"> -<i>'Doch!—alles was dazu mich trieb</i>;<br /> -<i>Gott!—war so gut, ach, war so lieb!</i>'<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 20%;">Goethe</span> -</p> - - -<h4>IN THREE VOLUMES</h4> - -<h4>VOL. I.</h4> - - -<h5>London</h5> - -<h5>CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY</h5> - -<h5>1873</h5> - -<hr class="full" /> - -<p class="center" style="font-size: 0.8em;">TO</p> - -<p class="center" style="font-size: 0.8em;">'A PERFECT WOMAN, NOBLY PLANN'D'</p> - -<h5>WALPURGA, LADY PAGET</h5> - -<p class="center" style="font-size: 0.8em;">NÉE</p> - -<p class="center" style="font-size: 0.8em;">COUNTESS VON HOHENTHAL</p> - -<p class="center">This book is inscribed</p> - -<p class="center" style="font-size: 0.8em;">IN ADMIRATION AND AFFECTION</p> - - - -<hr class="chap" /> -<h3>WANDA.</h3> - - - -<hr class="chap" /> -<h4><a name="PROEM" id="PROEM">PROEM.</a></h4> - - -<p style="margin-left: 20%;">Doch—alles was dazu mich trieb,<br /> -Gott! war so gut! ach, war so lieb!—<span style="font-size: 0.8em;">GOETHE.</span></p> - - -<p class="p2">Towards the close of a summer's day in Russia a travelling carriage was -compelled to pause before a little village whilst a smith rudely mended -its broken wheel. The hamlet was composed of a few very poor dwellings -grouped around a large low horse-shoe shaped building, which was the -manorial mansion of the absent proprietor. It was gloomy, and dropping -to decay; its many windows were barred and shuttered; the grass grew in -its courts, and flowering weeds had time to seed and root themselves -on its whitewashed walls.</p> - -<p>Around it the level ground was at this season covered with green -wheat, spreading for leagues on leagues, and billowing and undulating -under the wind that blew from the steppes, like the green sea which it -resembled. Farther on were woods of larch and clumps of willow; and in -the distance, across the great plain to the westward, rolled a vast -shining river, here golden with choking sand, here dun-coloured with -turbid waves, here broken with islets and swamps of reeds, where the -singing swan and the pelican made their nests.</p> - -<p>It was in one of those far-off provinces through which the Volga rolls -its sand-laden and yellow waves. The scene was bleak and mournful, -though for many leagues the green corn spread and caught the timid -sunshine and the shadow of the clouds. There were a few stunted -willows near the house, and a few gashed pines; a dried-up lake was -glittering with crystals of salt; the domes and minarets of a little -city rose above the sky line far away to the south-east; and farther -yet northward towered the peaks of the Ural Mountains; the wall of -stone that divides Siberia from the living world. All was desolate, -melancholy, isolated, even though the season was early summer; but the -vastness of the view, the majesty of the river, the suggestion of the -faint blue summits where the Urals rose against the sky, gave solemnity -and a melancholy charm to a landscape that was otherwise monotonous and -tedious.</p> - -<p>Prince Paul Ivanovitch Zabaroff was in Russia because he was on the -point of marriage with a great heiress of the southern provinces, and -was travelling across from Orenburg to the Krimea, where his betrothed -bride awaited him in the summer palace of her fathers. Russia, with the -exception of Petersburg, was an unknown and detested place to him; his -errand was distasteful, his journey tedious, his temper irritated; and -when a wheel of his <i>telegue</i> came off in this miserable village of -the Northern Volga district, he was in no mood to brook with patience -such an accident. He paced to and fro restlessly as he looked round on -the few and miserable cabins of a district that had been continually -harried and fired through many centuries by Kossack and Tartar.</p> - -<p>'Whose house is that?' he said to his servant, pointing to the great -white building.</p> - -<p>The servant humbly answered, 'Little father, it is thine.'</p> - -<p>'Mine!' echoed Paul Zabaroff. He was astonished; then he laughed, as he -remembered that he had large properties around the city of Kazán.</p> - -<p>The whole soil was his own as far as his eyes could reach, till the -great river formed its boundary. He did not even know his steward here; -the villagers did not know him. He had been here once only, a single -night, in the late autumn time, long, long before, He was a man in -whose life incidents followed each other too rapidly for remembrance -to have any abiding-place or regret any home in his mind. He had -immense estates, north, south, east, west; his agents forwarded him -the revenues of each, or as much of the revenues as they chose him to -enjoy, when they themselves were satisfied with their gains.</p> - -<p>When he was not in Paris he was in Petersburg, and he was an -impassioned and very daring gamester. These great silent houses, in -the heart of fir woods, in the centre of grass plains, or on the banks -of lonely rivers, were all absolutely unknown to and indifferent to -him. He was too admired and popular at his Court ever to have had the -sentence passed upon him to retire to his estates; but had he been -forced to do so he would have been as utterly an exile in any one of -the houses of his fathers as if he had been consigned to Tobolsk itself.</p> - -<p>He looked around him now, an absolute stranger in the place where -he was as absolutely lord. All these square leagues he learned were -his, all these miserable huts, all these poor lives; for it was in -a day before the liberation of the serfs had been accomplished by -that deliverer whom Russia rewarded with death. A vague remembrance -came over him as he gazed around: he had been here once before. The -villagers, learning that it was their master who had arrived thus -unexpectedly in their midst, came timidly around and made their humble -prostrations: the steward who administered the lands was absent that -day in the distant town. He was entreated to go within his own deserted -dwelling, but he refused: the wheel was nearly mended, and he reflected -that a house abandoned for so long was probably damp and in disorder, -cold and comfortless. He was impatient to be gone, and urged the smith -to his best and quickest by the promise of many roubles. The <i>moujiks</i>, -excited and frightened, hastened to him with the customary offerings -of bread and salt; he touched the gifts carelessly; spoke to them with -good-humoured, indifferent carelessness; and asked if they had any -grievances to complain of, without listening to the answer. They had -many, but they did not dare to say so, knowing that their lord would be -gone in five minutes, but that the heavy hand of his steward would lie -for ever upon them.</p> - -<p>Soon the vehicle was repaired, and Paul Zabaroff ceased his restless -walk to and fro the sandy road, and prepared to depart from this weary -place of detention. But, from an <i>isba</i> that stood apart, beneath one -of the banks of sand that broke the green level of the corn, the dark -spare figure of an old woman came, waving bony hands upon the air, and -crying with loud voice to the <i>barine</i> to wait.</p> - -<p>'It is only mad Maritza,' said the people; yet they thought Maritza -had some errand with their lord, for they fell back and permitted her -to approach him as she cried aloud: 'Let me come! Let me come! I would -give him back the jewel he left here ten years ago!'</p> - -<p>She held a young boy by the hand, and dragged him with her as she spoke -and moved. She was a dark woman, once very handsome, with white hair -and an olive skin, and a certain rugged grandeur in her carriage; she -was strong and of strong purpose; she made her way to Paul Zabaroff as -he stood by the carriage, and she fell at his feet and touched the dust -with her forehead, and forced the child beside her to make the same -obeisance.</p> - -<p>'All hail to my lord, and heaven be with him! The poor Maritza comes -to give him back what he left.'</p> - -<p>Prince Zabaroff smiled in a kindly manner, being a man often careless, -but not cruel.</p> - -<p>'Nay, good mother, keep it, whatever it be: you have earned the right. -Is it a jewel, you say?'</p> - -<p>'It is a jewel.'</p> - -<p>'Then keep it. I had forgotten even that I was ever here.'</p> - -<p>'Ay! the great lord had forgot.'</p> - -<p>She rose up with the dust on her white hair, and thrust forward a young -boy, and put her hands on the boy's shoulders and made him kneel.</p> - -<p>'There is the jewel, Paul Ivanovitch. It is time the Gospodar kept it -now.'</p> - -<p>Paul Zabaroff did not understand. He looked down at the little serf -kneeling in the dust.</p> - -<p>'A handsome child. May the land have many such to serve the Tsar. Is he -your grandson, good mother?'</p> - -<p>The boy was beautiful, with long curling fair hair and a rosy mouth, -and eyes like the blue heavens in a night of frost. His limbs were -naked, and his chest. He had a shirt of sheepskin.</p> - -<p>Old Maritza kept her hands on the shoulders of the kneeling child.</p> - -<p>'He is thy son, O lord!'</p> - -<p>'My son!'</p> - -<p>'Ay. The lord has forgotten. The lord tarried but one night, but he -bade my Sacha serve drink to him in his chamber, and on the morrow, -when he left, Sacha wept. The lord has forgotten!'</p> - -<p>Paul Zabaroff stood silent, slowly remembering. In the boy's face -looking up at him, half-sullenly, half-timidly, he saw the features of -his own race mingled with something much more beautiful, oriental, and -superb.</p> - -<p>Yes: he had forgotten; quite forgotten; but he remembered now.</p> - -<p>The people stood around, remembering better than he, but thinking it no -wrong in him to have forgotten, because he was their ruler and lord, -and did that which seemed right to him; and when he had gone away, in -Sacha's bosom there had been a thick roll of gold.</p> - -<p>'Where is—the mother?' he said at length.</p> - -<p>Old Maritza made answer:</p> - -<p>'My Sacha died four summers ago. Always Sacha hoped that the lord might -some day return.'</p> - -<p>Prince Zabaroff's cheek reddened a little with pain.</p> - -<p>'Fool! why did you not marry her?' he said with impatience. 'There -were plenty of men. I would have given more dowry.'</p> - -<p>'Sacha would not wed. What the lord had honoured she thought holy.'</p> - -<p>'Poor soul!' muttered Paul Zabaroff; and he looked again at the boy, -who bore his own face, and was as like him as an eaglet to an eagle.</p> - -<p>'Do you understand what we say?'</p> - -<p>The boy answered sullenly, 'I understand.' 'What is your name?'</p> - -<p>'I am Vassia.'</p> - -<p>'And what do you do?'</p> - -<p>'I do nothing.'</p> - -<p>'Are you happy?'</p> - -<p>'What is that? I do not know.'</p> - -<p>Prince Zabaroff was silent.</p> - -<p>'Rise up, since you are my son,' he said at length.</p> - -<p>The boy rose.</p> - -<p>He was sullen, shy, tameless, timid, like a young animal from the pine -woods. The old woman took her hands off his shoulders.</p> - -<p>'I have delivered the jewel to the lord that owns it. I have done -Sacha's will.'</p> - -<p>Then she turned herself round and covered her face, and went towards -her home.</p> - -<p>The child stood, half-fierce, half-fearful, like a dog which an old -master drives away, and which fears the new one.</p> - -<p>'These jewels are as many as the sands of the sea, and as worthless,' -said Paul Zabaroff with a slight smile.</p> - -<p>Nevertheless, he resolved, since Maritza spoke truth, that the boy -should be cared for and well taught, and have all that gold could get -for him, and be sent away out from Russia; for in Russia he was a serf.</p> - -<p>The boy's hair hung over his eyes, which were hungrily watching the -dark lean figure of the woman as it went away through the tall corn to -the white wood hut that stood alone in the fields. He dimly understood -that his life was being changed for him, but how he knew not. He wanted -to go home with Maritza to his nest of moss, where his bear-cubs slept -with him by night and played with him at dawn.</p> - -<p>'Farewell,' said Paul Zabaroff, and he touched his son's cheek with his -hand.</p> - -<p>'You are magnificently handsome, my poor child; indeed, who knows -what you will be?—a jewel or only a toad's eye?' he said dreamily; -then he sprang up behind his horses, and was borne away through the -fast-falling shades of the evening, leaving behind him the boy Vassia -and a little rough mound of nameless grass, which he had never seen, -and which was Sacha's grave.</p> - -<p>The four fiery horses that bore the <i>telegue</i> dashed away with it in -the sunlight, scattering the sand in yellow clouds, and the village -on the Volga plains beheld its lord never more in life. The boy stood -still, and looked after it with a sombre anger on his beautiful fair -Circassian face.</p> - -<p>'You will go and be a prince far away, Vassia,' said the men to him -with envy. The child could not have expressed the vague mute wrath and -shame that stirred together in him, but he turned from them without a -word, and ran fleet as a roe in the path which Maritza had taken. He -loved his great-grandmother with a strong affection that was almost -passion, though it was silent and almost unconscious of itself. She -never checked him, beat him, or cursed him as the other women often -did their children. She did her best by him, though they dwelt in a -miserable little <i>isba</i>, that often in winter time was covered up with -the snow like a bear's hole, and in summer, the fierce brief parching -summer of north-east Russia, was as hot as a scorched eye under a -sun-glass. Life was barren and wretched to her, but not to him. He was -loved and he was free: childhood wants nothing more; Maritza was a -Persian woman. Years and years before, when she had been in her youth, -she had come from the Caspian shore, where the land and the sea are -alike alive with the leaping naphtha of the Ghebir worship: she had -been born within the iron gates of Derbent, of Persian parentage, and -she had known war and capture and violence, and had had many troubles, -many privations, many miseries before she had found herself stranded in -her old age, with her grandchild, in this little desolate village on -the sand-bank by the Volga.</p> - -<p>She was very poor; she had an evil reputation: nothing evil was ever -really traced to her, but she had Oriental faiths and traditions -and worshipped fire, or so said her enemies the black clergy of the -scattered villages and their ready believers. Never did Maritza light a -lamp at nightfall, but her neighbours saw in the act a devil worship.</p> - -<p>She was silent, proud, fierce, calm, exceedingly poor; she was hated -accordingly. When her granddaughter Sacha bore a child that was -the offspring of Prince Paul Zabaroff, though she cursed him, the -neighbours envied her and begrudged her such an honour.</p> - -<p>Maritza had brought up the young Vassia with little tenderness, yet -with a great yearning over the boy, with his pure Persian face and -his beautiful fair body, like a pearl. The uttermost she wished for -him was that he should grow up a raftsman or a fisherman on the Volga -water; all that she dreaded was that the Kossacks would take him and -put a lance in his hand and have him slain in war, as in the old stern -days of her youth her lovers had been taken by the battle-god, that -devoured them one by one, and her sons after them.</p> - -<p>She never gave a thought to the boy's parentage as of possible use to -him, but she always said to herself, 'If Paul Zabaroff ever come back, -then shall he know his son,' and meanwhile the boy was happy, though -he had not known the meaning of the word. He would plunge in the tawny -Volga in the summer-time, and watch the slow crowd of rafts go down -it, and the iron pontoon pass by, closed like a bier, which took the -condemned prisoners to Siberia. Now and then a gang of such captives -would go by on foot and chained; miserable exceedingly, wounded, -exhausted, doomed to twelve months' foot-sore travel ere they reached -the endless darkness of the mines or the blindness of the perpetual -frost. He watched them; but that was all. He felt neither curiosity nor -pity as he lay on the tall rough grass, and they moved by him on the -dusty, flint-strewn, ill-made road towards that chain of blue hills -which marked their future home and their eternal grave. For sport the -boy had the bear, the wolf, the blue fox, the wild hare, in the long -wintertime; in the brief summer he helped chase the pelican and the -swan along the sand-banks of the Volga or upon its lime-choked waves. -He was keen of eye and swift of foot: the men of his native village -were always willing to have his company, child though he was. He was -fond of all beasts and birds, though fonder still of sport; once he -risked his own life to save a stork and her nest on a burning roof. -When asked why he did it, he who choked the cygnet and snared the cub, -he could not say: he was ashamed of his own tenderness.</p> - -<p>He wanted no other life than this rude freedom, but one day, a month or -more after Paul Zabaroff had passed through the country, there came to -the door of Maritza's hut a stranger, who displayed to her eyes, which -could not read, a letter with the Prince's seal and signature. He said: -'I am sent to take away the boy who is called Vassia.'</p> - -<p>The Persian woman bowed her head as before a headsman's glaive.</p> - -<p>'It is the will of God,' she said.</p> - -<p>But the time came when Vassia, grown to man's estate, thought that -devils rather than gods had meddled with him then.</p> - -<p>'Send him to a great school; send him out of Russia; spare no cost; -make him a gentleman,' Paul Zabaroff had said to his agents when he -had seen the son of Sacha, and he had been obeyed. The little fierce -half-naked boy who in frost was wrapped in wolf-fur and looked like a -little wild beast, had been taken from the free, headstrong, barbaric -life of the Volga plains, where he was under no law and knew no rule, -and passionately loved the river and the chase, and the great silent -snow-wrapt world of his birth, and was sent to a famous and severe -college near Paris, to the drill, and the class, and the uniform, and -the classic learning, and the tape-bound, hard, artificial routine of -mechanical education. The pride, of the Oriental and the subtlety of -the Slav were all he brought with him as arms in the unequal combat -with an unsympathetic crowd.</p> - -<p>For a year's time he was insulted, tormented, ridiculed; in another -twelve months he was let alone; in a third year he was admired and -feared. All the while his heart was bursting within him with the agony -of home-sickness and revolt; but he gave no sign of either. Only at -nights, when the others of his chamber were all sleeping, he would slip -out of bed and stare up at the stars, which did not look the same as -he had known, and think of Maritza and of the bear-cubs, and of the -Volga's waters bearing the wild white swans upon their breast; and then -he would sob his very soul out in silence.</p> - -<p>He had been entered upon the books of the college under the name -of Vassia Kazán; Kazán having been the place at which he had been -baptised, the golden-domed, many-towered, half Asiatic city which -was seen afar off from the little square window in Maritza's hut. -High influence and much gold had persuaded the principal of a great -college—the Lycée Clovis, situated between Paris and Versailles—not -to inquire too closely into the parentage of this beautiful little -savage from the far north. Russia still remains dim, distant, and -mysterious to the western mind; among his tutors and comrades it was -taken for granted that he was some young barbarian noble, and the -child's own lips were shut as close as if the ice of his own land had -frozen them.</p> - -<p>Eight years later, on another day when wheat was ripe and willows -waved in summer sunshine, a youth lay asleep with his head on an open -Lucretius in the deserted playground of a French college. The place -of recreation was a dusty gravelled square; there were high stone -walls all round it, and a few poplars stood in it white with dust. -It was August, and all the other scholars were away; he alone had -been forgotten; he was used to being forgotten. He was not dull or -sorrowful, as other lads are when left in vacation time alone. He had -many arts and pastimes, and he was a scholar by choice, if a capricious -one, and he had a quick and facile tact which taught him how to have -his own way always; and on many a summer night, when his teachers -believed him safe sleeping, he was out of college, and away dancing and -singing and laughing at students' halls, and in the haunts of artists, -and at the little theatre beyond the barrier, and he had never been -found out, and would have cared but little if he had been. And he slept -now with his fair forehead leaning on Lucretius, and a drowsy, heavy -heat around him, filled with the hum of flies and gnats. He did not -dream of the heat and the insects; he did not even dream of the saucy -beauty at the barrier ball the night before, who had kicked cherries -out of his mouth with her blue-shod feet, and kissed him on his curls. -He dreamt of a little, low, dark hut; of an old woman that knelt before -a brazen image; of slumbering bear-cubs in a nest of hay; of a winter -landscape, white and shining, that stretched away in an unbroken level -of snow to the sea that half the year was ice. He dreamed of these, -and, dreaming, sighed and woke. He thought he stood on the frozen sea, -and the ice broke, and the waters swallowed him.</p> - -<p>It was nothing; only the voice of his tutor calling him. He was -summoned to the Principal of the Lycée: a rare honour. He rose, a -slender, tall, beautiful youth, in the dark close-fitting costume -of the institute. He shook the dust off his uniform and his curls, -shut his book, and went within the large white prison-like building -which had been his home since he had left the lowly <i>isba</i> among the -sandhills and the blowing corn by Volga.</p> - -<p>The Principal was sitting in one of his private chambers, a grim, -dark, book-lined chamber; he held an open letter in his hand, which -he had read and re-read. He was a clever man, and unscrupulous and -purchasable; but he was not without feeling, and he was disquieted, for -he had a painful office to fulfil.</p> - -<p>When the youth obeyed his summons he looked up and shaded his eyes -with his hand. He hesitated, looking curiously at the young man's -attitude, which had an easy grace in it, and some hauteur visible under -a semblance of respect.</p> - -<p>The Principal took up the open letter: 'I regret, I grieve, to tell -you,' he said slowly, 'your patron and friend, the Prince Zabaroff, has -died suddenly!'</p> - -<p>The face of Vassia Kazán grew very pale, but very cold. He said nothing.</p> - -<p>'He died quite suddenly,' continued the director of the college; 'a -blood-vessel broke in the brain, after great fatigue in hunting; he was -upon one of his estates in White Russia.'</p> - -<p>The son of Paul Zabaroff was still silent. His master wished that he -would show some emotion.</p> - -<p>'It was he who placed you here—was at all costs for your education. I -suppose you are aware of that?' he continued, with some embarrassment.</p> - -<p>Vassia Kazán bowed and still said nothing. He might have been made of -ice or of marble for any sign that he gave. He might only have heard -that an unknown man had died in the street.</p> - -<p>'You were placed here by him—at least, by his agents; you were the son -of a dead friend, they said. I did not inquire closer—payments were -always made in advance.'</p> - -<p>He passed his hand a little confusedly over his eyes, for he felt a -little shame; his college was of high repute, and the agents of Prince -Zabaroff had placed sums in his hands, to induce him to deviate from -his rules, larger than he would have cared to confess.</p> - -<p>The boy was silent.</p> - -<p>'If he would only speak!' thought his master. 'He must know—he must -know.'</p> - -<p>But the son of the dead Zabaroff did not speak.</p> - -<p>'I am sorry to say,' resumed his master, still with hesitation, 'I am -very sorry to say that the death of the Prince being thus sudden and -thus unforeseen, his agents write me that there are no instructions, no -arrangement, no testament, in short—you will understand what I mean; -you will understand that, in point of fact, there is nothing for you, -there is no one to pay anything any longer.'</p> - -<p>He paused abruptly; the fair face of the boy grew a shade paler, that -was all. He bore the shock without giving any sign.</p> - -<p>'Is he made of ice and steel?' thought the old man, who had been proud -of him as his most brilliant pupil.</p> - -<p>'It pains me to give you such terrible intelligence,' he muttered; 'but -it is my duty not to conceal it an hour. You are quite—penniless. It -is very sad.'</p> - -<p>The boy smiled slightly; it was not a smile for so young a face.</p> - -<p>'He has given me learning; he need not have done that,' he said -carelessly. The words sounded grateful, but it was not gratitude that -glanced from his eyes.</p> - -<p>'I believe I am a serf in Russia?' he added, after a short silence.</p> - -<p>'I do not know at all,' muttered the Principal, who felt ill at ease -and ashamed of himself for having taken for eight years the gold of -Prince Paul.</p> - -<p>'I cannot tell—lawyers would tell you—I am not sure at all; indeed, I -know nothing of your history; but you are young and friendless. You are -a brilliant scholar, but you are not fit for work. What will you do, my -poor lad?'</p> - -<p>The boy did not respond to the kindness that was in the tone, and he -resented the pity there was in it.</p> - -<p>'That will be my affair alone,' he said, still carelessly and very -haughtily.</p> - -<p>'All is paid up to the New Year,' said his master, feeling restless and -dissatisfied. 'There is no haste—I would not turn you from my roof. -You are a brilliant classic—you might be a teacher here, perhaps?'</p> - -<p>The youth smiled; then he said coldly:</p> - -<p>'You are very good. I had better go away at once. I should wish to be -away before the others return.'</p> - -<p>'But where will you go?' said the old man, staring at him with a dull -and troubled surprise.</p> - -<p>The boy shrugged his shoulders.</p> - -<p>'The world is large—at least it looks so when one has not been over -it. Can you tell me who inherits from Prince Paul Zabaroff?'</p> - -<p>'His eldest son by his marriage with a Princess Kourouassine. If he had -only left some will, some sort of command or direction—perhaps if I -wrote to the Princess, and told her the facts, she—'</p> - -<p>'Pray do not do that,' said the boy coldly. 'I thank you for all I have -learned here, and I will leave your house to-night. Farewell to you, -sir.'</p> - -<p>The boy's eyes were dry and calm; the old man's were wet and dim. He -rose hurriedly, and laid aside his stern habit of authority for a -moment, as he put his hand on the lad's shoulder.</p> - -<p>'Vassia, do not leave us like that. I do not like to see you so cold, -so quiet, so unnaturally indifferent. You are left friendless and -nameless—and after all he was your father.'</p> - -<p>The boy drew himself away gently, and shrugged his shoulders once more -with his slight gesture of contempt.</p> - -<p>'He never called me his son. I wish he had left me by the Volga with -the bear-cubs: that is all. Adieu, sir.'</p> - -<p>'But what do you mean to do?'</p> - -<p>'I will do what offers.'</p> - -<p>'But few things offer when one is friendless and you have many faults, -Vassia, though you have many talents. I fear for your future.'</p> - -<p>'Adieu, sir.'</p> - -<p>The boy bowed low, with composure and grace, and left the room. The -old man sat in the shadow by his desk, and blamed himself, and blamed -the dead. The young collegian went out from his presence with a firm -step and a careless carriage, and ascended the staircase of the -college to his dormitory. The large long room, with its whitewashed -walls, its barred casements, its rows of camp bedsteads, looked like a -barrack-room deserted by the soldiers. The aspen and poplar leaves were -quivering outside the grated windows; the rays of the bright August sun -streamed through and shone on the floor. The boy sat down on his bed. -It was at the top of the row of beds, next one of the casements. The -sun-rays touched his head; he was all alone. The clamour, the disputes, -the mirth, the wrong-doing with which he and his comrades had consoled -themselves for the stern discipline of the day, were all things of -the past, and he would know them no more. In a way he had been happy -here, being lord and king of the rebellious band that had filled this -chamber, and knowing so little of his own fate or of his own future -that any greatness or glory might be possible to him.</p> - -<p>Three years before he had been summoned to a château on the north coast -of France in the full summer season. It had entered into the capricious -fancy of Prince Zabaroff that he should like to see what the wild -young wolf-cub of the Volga plains had become. He had found in him a -youth so handsome, so graceful, so accomplished, that a certain fibre -of paternal pride had been touched in him; whilst the coldness, the -silence, and the disdainfulness of the boy's temper had commanded his -respect. No word of their relationship had passed between them, but by -the guests assembled there it had been assumed that the young Vassia -Kazán was near of kin to their host, whose lawfully-begotten sons and -daughters were far away in one of his summer palaces of the Krimea.</p> - -<p>The boy was beautiful, keen-witted, precocious in knowledge and tact; -the society assembled there, which was dissolute enough, dazzled and -indulged him. The days had gone by like a tale of magic. There had -been always in him the bitter, mortified, rebellious hatred of his -own position; but this he had not shown, and no one had suspected it. -These three summer months of unbridled luxury and indulgence had made -an indelible impression on him. He had felt that life was not worth the -living unless it could be passed in the same manner. He had known that -away there in Russia there were young Zabaroff princes, his brethren, -who would not have owned him; but the remembrance of them had not dwelt -on him. He had not known definitely what to expect of the future. -Though he was still there only Vassia Kazán, yet he had been treated -as though he were a son of the house. When the party had broken up he -had been sent back to his college with many gifts and a thousand francs -in gold. When he reached Paris he had given the presents to a dancing -girl and the money to an old professor of classics who had lost his -sight. Not a word had been said as to his future. Measuring both by the -indulgences and liberalities that were conceded to him, he had always -dreamed of it vaguely but gorgeously, as sure to bring recognition and -reverence, pomp and power, to him from the world. He had vaguely built -up ambitious hopes. He had been sensible of no ordinary intelligence, -of no common powers; and it had seemed legitimate to suppose that so -liberal and princely an education meant that some golden gates would -open to him at manhood: why should they rear him so if they intended -to leave him in obscurity?</p> - -<p>This day, as he had sat in the large white courtyard, shadowed by the -Parisian poplar trees, he had remembered that he was within a few weeks -of the completion of his eighteenth year, and he had wondered what -they meant to do with him. He had heard nothing from Prince Zabaroff -since those brilliant, vivid, tumultuous months which had left on him a -confused sense of dazzling though vague expectation. He had hoped every -summer to hear something, but each summer had passed in silence; and -now he was told that Paul Zabaroff was dead.</p> - -<p>He had been happy, being dowered with facile talents, quick wit, and -the great art of being able to charm others without effort to himself. -He had been seldom obedient, often guilty, yet always successful. The -place had been no prison to him; he had passed careless days and he had -dreamed grand dreams there; and now—</p> - -<p>He sat on the little iron bed, and knew that in a few nights to come he -might have to make his bed with beggars under bridge arches and in the -dens of thieves.</p> - -<p>Tears gathered in his eyes, and fell slowly one by one. A sort of -convulsion passed over his face. He gripped his throat with his hand, -to stifle a sob that rose there.</p> - -<p>The intense stillness of the chamber was not broken even by the buzzing -of a gnat.</p> - -<p>He sat quite motionless, and his thoughts went back to the summer day -in the cornfields by the Volga; he saw the scene in all its little -details: the impatient good-humour of the great lord, the awe of the -listening peasants, the blowing wheat, the wooden cross, the stamping -horses, the cringing servants; he heard the voice of his father saying, -'Will you be a jewel or a toad's eye?'</p> - -<p>'Why could he not leave me there?' he thought; 'I should have known -nothing; I should have been a hunter; I should have done no harm on the -ice and the snow there, with old Maritza.'</p> - -<p>He thought of his grandmother, of the little hut, of the nest of skins, -of the young bears at play, of the glittering plains in winter, of the -low red sun, of the black lonely woods, of the grey icy river, of the -bright virgin snow—thought, with a great longing like that of thirst. -Why had they not let him be? Why had they not left him ignorant and -harmless in the clear, keen, solitary winter world?</p> - -<p>Instead of that they had flung him into hell, and now left him in it, -alone.</p> - -<p>There was a far-off murmur on the sultry summer air, and a far-off -gleam of metal beyond the leaves of the poplar trees; it was the murmur -of the streets, and the glisten of the roofs of Paris.</p> - -<p>About his neck there hung a little silver image of St. Paul. His mother -had hung it there at birth, and Maritza had prayed him never to disturb -it. Now he took it off, he spat on it, he trod on it, he threw it out -to fall into the dust.</p> - -<p>He did this insult to the sacred thing coldly, without passion. His -tears were no more on his cheeks, nor the sobs in his throat.</p> - -<p>He changed his clothes quickly, put together a few necessaries, leaving -behind nearly all that he possessed, because he hated everything that -the dead man's money had bought; and then, without noise and without -haste, looking back once down the long empty chamber, he went through -the house by back ways that he knew and had used in hours of forbidden -liberty, and opening the gate of the courtyard, went out into the long -dreary highway, white with dust, that stretched before him and led to -Paris.</p> - -<p>He had made friends, for he was a beautiful bold boy, gay of wit, -agile, and strong, and of many talents; but these friends were -artists little known in the world, soldiers who liked pleasure, young -dramatists without theatres, pretty frail women who had taught him to -eat the sweet and bitter apple that is always held out in the hand of -Eve. These and their like were all butterfly friends of a summer noon -or night; he knew that very well, for he had a premature and unerring -knowledge of the value of human words. They would be of no use in such -a strait as his; and the colour flushed back for one instant into his -pale cheeks, as he thought that he would die in a hospital before he -was twenty rather than ask their aid.</p> - -<p>As the grey dust, the hot wind, the nauseous smell of streets in summer -smote upon him, leaving the poplar-shadowed court of his old school, -he felt once more the same strange yearning of home-sickness for the -winter world of his birth, for the steel-grey waters, the darkened -skies, the forests of fir, the howl of the wolves on the wind, the joys -of the fresh fierce cold, the feel of the ice in the air, the smell of -the pines and the river. The bonds of birth are strong.</p> - -<p>'If Maritza were not dead I would go back,' he thought. But Maritza had -been long dead, laid away under the snow by her daughter's side.</p> - -<p>The boy went to Paris.</p> - -<p>Would it be any fault of his what he became?</p> - -<p>He told himself, No.</p> - -<p>It would lie with the dead; and with Paris.</p> - - - -<hr class="chap" /> -<h4><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I.</a></h4> - - -<p>In the heart of the Hohe Tauern, province of lakes and streams, there -lies one lake called the Szalrassee: known to the pilgrim, to the -fisher, to the hunter, but to the traveller little, for it is shut -away from the hum and stir of man by the amphitheatre of its own hills -and forests. To the south-east of it lies the Iselthal, and to the -north-west the Wilde Gerlos; due east is the great Glöckner group, and -due west the Venediger. Farther away are the Alps of Zillerthal, and on -the opposite horizon the mountains of Karinthia.</p> - -<p>Here, where the foaming rivers thunder through their rocky channels, -and the ice bastions of a thousand glaciers glow in the sunrise and bar -the sight of sunset; here, where a thousand torrents bathe in silver -the hillsides, and the deep moan of subterranean waters sounds for -ever through the silence of the gorges, dark with the serried pines; -here, in the green and cloudy Austrian land, the merry trout have many -a joyous home, but none is fairer or more beloved by them than this -lovely lake of Hohenszalras; so green that it might have been made of -emeralds dissolved in sunbeams, so deep that at its centre no soundings -can be taken, so lonely that of the few wanderers who pass from S. -Johann im Wald or from Lienz to Matrey, even of those few scarce one in -a summer will know that a lake lies there, though they see from afar -off its great castle standing, many-turreted and pinnacled, with its -frowning keep, backed by the vast black forests, clothing slopes whose -summits hide themselves in cloud, whilst through the cold clear air the -golden vulture and the throated eagle wing their way.</p> - -<p>The lake lies like a crystal bedded in rock, lovely and lonely as the -little Gosausee when the skies are fair; perilous and terrible as the -great Königs-See in storm, when the north wind is racing in from the -Bœhmervald and the Polish steppes, and the rain-mists are dark and -dense, and the storks leave their home on the chapel roof because the -winter draws nigh. It is fed by snow and ice descending from a hundred -hills, and by underground streams and headlong-descending avalanches, -and in its turn feeds many a mountain waterfall, many a mountain tarn, -many a woodland brook, and many a village fountain. The great white -summits tower above it, and the dense still woods enshroud it; there -are a pier and harbour at either end, but these are only used by the -village people, and once a year by pilgrims who come to the Sacred -Island in its midst; pilgrims who flock thither from north, south, -east, and west, for the chapel of the Szalrassee is as renowned and -blessed as the silver shrine of holy Mariazell itself.</p> - -<p>On the right bank of its green glancing water, looking towards the -ice-peaks of the Glöckner on the east, and on the south towards the -Kitchbull mountains and the limestone Alps, a promontory juts out -into the lake and soars many hundred feet above it. It is of hard -granite rock. Down one of its sides courses a torrent, the other side -is clothed with wood; on the summit is the immense building that is -called the Hohenszalrasburg, a mass of towers and spires and high metal -roofs and frowning battlements, with a huge square fortress at one end -of them: it is the old castle of the Counts of Szalras, and the huge -donjon keep of it has been there twelve centuries, and in all these -centuries no man has ever seen its flag furled or its portcullis drawn -up for a conqueror's entry.</p> - -<p>The greater part of the Schloss now existing is the work of Meister -Wenzel of Klosterneuburg, begun in 1350, but the date of the keep -and of the foundations generally are much earlier, and the prisons -and clock tower are Romanesque. Majestic, magnificent, and sombre, -though not gloomy, by reason of its rude decoration and the brilliant -colours of its variegated roofs, it is scarcely changed since its lords -dwelt there in the fourteenth century, when their great banner, black -vultures on a ground of gold and red, floated then high up amongst the -clouds, even as it now shakes its heavy folds out on the strong wind -that blew so keenly from the Prussian and the Polish plains due north.</p> - -<p>It is a fortress that has wedded a palace; it is majestic, powerful, -imposing, splendid, like the great race, of which it so long has been -the stronghold and the birthplace. But it is as lonely in the quiet -heart of the everlasting hills as any falcon's or heron's nest hung in -the oak branches.</p> - -<p>And this loneliness seemed its sweetest charm in the eyes of its -châtelaine and mistress, the Countess Wanda von Szalras, as she leaned -one evening over the balustrade of her terrace, watching for the -after-glow to warm the snows of the Glöckner. She held in her hand an -open letter from her Kaiserin, and the letter in its conclusion said: -'You have sorrowed and tarried in seclusion long enough—too long; -longer than he would have wished you to do. Come back to us and to the -world.'</p> - -<p>And Wanda von Szalras thought to herself: 'What can the world give me? -What I love is Hohenszalras on earth, and Bela in heaven.'</p> - -<p>What could the world give her indeed? The world cannot give back the -dead. She wanted nothing of the world. She was rich in all that it can -ever give.</p> - -<p>In the time of Ferdinand the Second those who were then Counts of -Szalras had stitched the cloth cross on their sleeves and gone with the -Emperor to the Third Crusade. In gratitude for their escape, father -and son, from the perils of Palestine and the dangers of the high seas -and of the treacherous Danube water, from Moslem steel, and fever of -Jaffa, and chains of swarming Barbary corsairs, they, returning at last -in safety to their eyrie above the Szalrassee, had raised a chapel -on the island in the lake, and made it dedicate to the Holy Cross, -a Szalras of the following generation, belonging to the Dominican -community, and being a man of such saintly fervour and purity that he -was canonised by Innocent, had dwelt on the Holy Isle, and given to -it the benediction and the tradition of his sanctity and good works. -As centuries went on the holy fame of the shrine where the Crusader -had placed a branch from a thorn-tree of Nazareth grew, and gained in -legend and in miracle, and became as adored an object, of pilgrimage as -the Holy Phial of Heiligenblut. All the Hohe Tauern, and throngs even -from Karinthia on the one side and Tirol on the other, came thither on -the day of Ascension.</p> - -<p>The old faith still lives, very simple, warm, and earnest, in the -heart of Austria, and with that day-dawn in midsummer thousands of -peasant-folks flock from mountain villages and forest chalets and -little remote secluded towns, to speed over the green lake with flaming -crucifix and floating banner, and haunted anthem echoed from hill -to hill. One of those days of pilgrimage had made her mistress of -Hohenszalras.</p> - -<p>It was a martial and mighty race this which in the heart of the green -Tauern had made of fealty to God and the Emperor a religion for itself -and all its dependants. The Counts of Szalras had always been proud, -stern, and noble men: though their records were often stained with -fierce crimes, there was never in them any single soil of baseness, -treachery, or fear. They had been fierce and reckless in the wild days -when they were for ever at war with the Counts of Tirol and the warlike -Archbishops of Salzburg. Then with the Renaissance they had become no -less powerful, but more lettered, more courtly, and more splendid, and -had given alike friendship and service to the Habsburg. Now, of all -these princely and most powerful people there was but one descendant, -but one representative; and that one was a woman.</p> - -<p>Solferino had seen Count Gela fall charging at the head of his own -regiment of horse; Magenta had seen Count Victor cut in two by a -cannon-shot as he rode with the dragoons of Swartzenberg; and but a -few years later the youngest, Count Bela, had been drowned by his own -bright lake.</p> - -<p>Their father had died of grief for his eldest son; their mother had -been lost to them in infancy; Bela and Wanda had grown up together, -loving each other as only two lonely children can. She had been his -elder by a few years, and he younger than his age by reason of his -innocent simplicity of nature and his delicacy of body. They had always -thought to make a priest of him, and when that peaceful future was -denied him on his becoming the sole heir, it was the cause of bitter -though mute sorrow to the boy who was indeed so like a young saint in -church legends that the people called him tenderly <i>der Heilige Graf.</i> -He had never quitted Hohenszalras, and he knew every peasant around, -every blossom that blew, every mountain path, every forest beast -and bird, and every tale of human sorrow in his principality. When -he became lord of all after his brother's death he was saddened and -oppressed by the sense of his own overwhelming obligations. 'I am but -the steward of God,' he would say, with a tender smile, to the poor who -blessed him.</p> - -<p>One Ascension Day the lake was, as usual, crowded with the boats of -pilgrims; the morning was fair and cloudless, but, after noontide, wind -arose, the skies became overcast, and one of the sudden storms of the -country burst over the green waters. The little lord of Hohenszalras -was the first to see the danger to the clumsy heavy boats crowded with -country people, and with his household rowed out to their aid. The -storm had come so suddenly and with such violence that it smote, in -the very middle of the lake, some score of these boats laden with the -pilgrims of the Pinzgau and the Innthal, women chiefly; their screams -pierced through the noise of the roaring winds, and their terror added -fresh peril to the dangers of the lake, which changed in a few moments -to a seething whirlpool, and flung them to and fro like coots' nests -in a flood. The young Bela with his servants saved many, crossing and -recrossing the furious space of wind-lashed, leaping, foaming water; -but on the fourth voyage back the young Count's boat, over-burdened -with trembling peasants, whose fright made them blind and restive, -dipped heavily on one side, filled, and sank. Bela could swim well, -and did swim, even to the very foot of his own castle rock, where a -hundred hands were outstretched to save him; but, hearing a drowning -woman's moan, he turned and tried to reach her. A fresh surge of the -hissing water, a fresh gust of the bitter north wind, tossed him back -into a yawning gulf of blackness, and drove him headlong, and with no -more resistance in him than if he had been a broken bough, upon the -granite wall of his own rocks. He was caught and rescued almost on the -instant by his own men, but his head had struck upon the stone, and he -was senseless. He breathed a few hours, but he never spoke or opened -his eyes or gave any sign of conscious life, and before the night had -far advanced his innocent body was tenantless and cold, and his sweet -spirit lived only in men's memories. His sister, who was absent at that -time at the court of her Empress, became by his death the mistress of -Hohenszalras and the last of her line.</p> - -<p>When the tidings of his heroic end reached her at the imperial -hunting-place of Gödöllö all the world died for her; that splendid -pageant of a world, whose fairest and richest favours had been always -showered on the daughter of the mighty House of Szalras. She withdrew -herself from her friends, from her lovers, from her mistress, and -mourned for him with a grief that time could do little to assuage, -nothing to efface. She was then twenty years of age.</p> - -<p>She was thinking of that death now, four years later, as she stood on -the terrace which overhung the cruel rocks that had killed him.</p> - -<p>His loss was to her a sorrow that could never wholly pass away.</p> - -<p>Her other brothers had been dear to her, but only as brilliant young -soldiers are to a little child who sees them seldom. But Bela had been -her companion, her playmate, her friend, her darling. From Bela she had -been scarce ever parted. Every day and every night, herself, and all -her thoughts and all her time, were given to such administration of her -kingdom as should best be meet in the sight of God and his angels. 'I -am but Bela's almoner, as he was God's steward,' she said.</p> - -<p>She leaned against the parapet, and looked across the green and shining -water, the open letter hanging in her hand.</p> - -<p>The Countess Wanda von Szalras was a beautiful woman; but she had that -supreme distinction which eclipses beauty, that subtle, indescribable -grace and dignity which are never seen apart from some great lineage -with long traditions of culture, courtesy, and courage. She was very -tall, and her movements had a great repose and harmony in them; her -figure, richness and symmetry. Her eyes were of a deep brown hue, like -the velvety brown of a stag's throat; they were large, calm, proud, -and meditative. Her mouth was very beautiful; her hair was light and -golden; her skin exceedingly fair. She was one of the most beautiful -women of her country, and one of the most courted and the most -flattered; and her imperial mistress said now to her, 'Come back to us -and to the world.'</p> - -<p>Standing upon her terrace, in a gown of pale grey velvet that had no -ornament save an old gold girdle with an enamelled missal hung to -it, with two dogs at her side, one the black hunting-hound of St. -Hubert, the other the white sleuth-hound of Russia, she looked like a -châtelaine of the days of Mary of Burgundy or Elizabeth of Thuringia. -It seemed as if the dark cedar boughs behind her should lift and admit -to her presence some lover with her glove against the plume of his hat, -and her ring set in his sword-hilt, who would bow down before her feet -and not dare to touch her hand unbidden.</p> - -<p>But no lover was there. The Countess Wanda dismissed all lovers; she -was wedded to the memory of her brother, and to her own liberty and -power.</p> - -<p>She leaned on the stone parapet of her castle and gazed on the scene -that her eyes had rested on since they had first seen the light, yet of -which she never wearied. The intense depth of colour, that is the glory -of Austria, was deepening with each moment that the sun went nearer -to its setting in the dark blue of thunderclouds that brooded in the -west, over the Venediger and the Zillerthal Alps. Soon the sun would -pass that barrier of stone and ice, and evening would fall here in the -mountains of the Iselthal, whilst it would be still day for the plains -of the Ober Pinzgau and Salzkammergut. But as yet the radiance was -here; and the dark oak woods and birch woods, the purple pine forests, -the blue lake waters, and the glaciers of the Glöckner range, had -all that grandeur which makes a sunset in these highlands at once so -splendid and so peaceful. There is an infinite sense of peace in those -cool, vast, unworn mountain solitudes, with the rain-mists sweeping -like spectral armies over the level lands below, and the sun-rays -slanting heavenward, like the spears of an angelic host. There is such -abundance of rushing water, of deep grass, of endless shade, of forest -trees, of heather and pine, of torrent and tarn; and beyond these are -the great peaks that loom through breaking clouds, and the clear cold -air, in which the vulture wheels and the heron sails; and the shadows -are so deep, and the stillness is so sweet, and the earth seems so -green, and fresh, and silent, and strong. Nowhere else can one rest -so well; nowhere else is there so fit a refuge for all the faiths and -fancies that can find a home no longer in the harsh and hurrying world: -there is room for them all in the Austrian forests, from the Erl-King -to Ariel and Oberon.</p> - -<p>The Countess Wanda leaned against the balustrade of the terrace and -watched that banquet of colour on land and cloud and water; watched -till the sun sank out of sight behind the Venediger snows, and the -domes of the Glöckner, and all the lesser peaks opposite were changing -from the warmth, as of a summer rose, to a pure transparent grey, that -seemed here and there to be pierced as with fire.</p> - -<p>'How often do we thank God for the mountains?' she thought; 'yet we -ought every night that we pray.'</p> - -<p>Then she sighed as her eyes sank from the hill-tops to the lake water, -dark as iron, glittering as steel, now that the radiance of the sun had -passed off it. She remembered Bela.</p> - -<p>How could she ever forget him, with that murderous water shining for -ever at her feet?</p> - -<p>The world called her undiminished tenderness for her dead brother a -morbid grief, but then to the world at large any fidelity seems so -strange and stupid a waste of years: it does not understand that <i>tout -casse, tout lasse, tout passe</i>, was not written for strong natures.</p> - -<p>'How could I ever forget him, so long as that water glides there?' she -thought, as her eyes rested on the emerald and sparkling lake.</p> - -<p>'Yet her Majesty is so right! So right and so wise!' said a familiar -voice at her side.</p> - -<p>And there came up to her the loveliest little lady in all the empire; -an old lady, but so delicate, so charming, so pretty, so fragile, that -she seemed lovelier than all the young ones; a very fairy godmother, -covered up in lace and fur, and leaning on a gold-headed cane, and -wearing red shoes with high gilt heels, and smiling with serene blue -eyes, as though she had just stepped down out of a pictured copy of -Cinderella, and could change common pumpkins into gilded chariots, and -mice into horses, at a wish.</p> - -<p>She was the Princess Ottilie of Lilienhöhe, and had once been head of a -religious house.</p> - -<p>'Her Majesty is so right!' she said once more, with emphasis.</p> - -<p>The Countess Wanda turned and smiled, rather with her eyes than with -her lips.</p> - -<p>'It would not become my loyal affection to say she could be wrong. But -still, I know myself, and I know the world very well, and I far prefer -Hohenszalras to it.'</p> - -<p>'Hohenszalras is all very well in the summer and autumn,' said Princess -Ottilie, with a glance of anything but love at the great fantastic -solemn pile; 'but for a woman of your age and your possessions to -pass your days talking to farmers and fishermen, poring over books, -perplexing yourself as to whether it is right for you to accept wealth -that comes from such a source of danger to human life as your salt -mines—it is absurd, it is ludicrous. You are made for something more -than a political economist; you should be in the great world.'</p> - -<p>'I prefer my solitude and my liberty.'</p> - -<p>'Liberty! Who or what could dictate to you in the world? You reigned -there once; you would always reign there.'</p> - -<p>'Social life is a bondage, as an empress's is. It denies one the -greatest luxury of life—solitude.'</p> - -<p>'Certainly, if you love solitude so much, you have your heart's desire -here. It is an Alvernia! It is a Mount Athos! It is a snow-entombed -paraclete, a hermitage, only tempered by horses!' said the Princess, -with a little angry laugh.</p> - -<p>Her grand-niece smiled.</p> - -<p>'By many horses, certainly. Dearest aunt, what would you have? -Austrians are all centaurs and amazons. I am only like my Kaiserin in -that passion.'</p> - -<p>The Princess sighed.</p> - -<p>She had never been able to comprehend the forest life, the daring, the -intrepidity, the open-air pastimes, and the delight in danger which -characterised all the race of Szalras. Daughter of a North German -princeling, and with some French blood in her veins also, reared under -the formal etiquette of her hereditary court, and at an early age -canoness of one of those great semi-religious orders which are only -open to the offspring of royal or of most noble lines, her whole life -had been one moulded to form and conventional habit, and only her own -sweetness and sprightliness of temper had saved her from the narrowness -of judgment and the chilliness of formality which such a life begets. -The order of which until late years she had been superior was one for -magnificence and wealth unsurpassed in Europe; but, semi-secular in its -privileges, it had left her much liberty, and never wholly divorced -her from the world, which in an innocent way she had always loved -and enjoyed. After Count Victor's death she had resigned her office -on plea of age and delicacy of health, and had come to take up her -residence at Hohenszalras with her dead niece's children. She had done -so because she had believed it to be her duty, and her attachment to -Wanda and Bela had always been very great; but she had never learned to -love the solitude of the Hohe Tauern, or ceased to regard Hohenszalras -as a place of martyrdom. After the minute divisions of every hour -and observances of every smallest ceremonial that she had been used -to at her father's own little court of Lilienslüst, and in her own -religious house, where every member of the order was a daughter of -some one of the highest families of Germany or of Austria, the life at -Hohenszalras, with its outdoor pastimes, its feudal habits, its vast -liberties for man and beast, and its long frozen winters, when not a -soul could come near it from over the passes, seemed very terrible to -her. She could never understand her niece's passionate attachment to -it, and she in real truth only breathed entirely at ease in those few -weeks of the year which to please her niece she consented to pass away -from the Hohe Tauern.</p> - -<p>'Surely you will go to Ischl or go to Gödöllö this autumn, since Her -Majesty wishes it?' she said now, with an approving glance at the -imperial letter.</p> - -<p>'Her Majesty is so kind as always to wish it,' answered the Countess -Wanda. 'Let us leave time to show what it holds for us. This is -scarcely summer. Yesterday was the fifteenth of May.'</p> - -<p>'It is horribly cold,' said the Princess, drawing her silver-grey fur -about her. 'It is always horribly cold here, even in midsummer. And -when it does not snow it rains; you cannot deny <i>that.</i>'</p> - -<p>'Come, come! we have seen the sun all day to-day. I hope we shall see -it many days, for they have begun planting-out, you see—the garden -will soon be gorgeous.'</p> - -<p>'When the mist allows it to be seen, it will be, I dare say,' said -Princess Ottilie, somewhat pettishly. 'It is tolerable here in the -summer, though never agreeable; but the Empress is so right, it is -absurd to shut yourself longer up in this gloomy place; you are bound -to return to the world. You owe it to your position to be seen in it -once more.'</p> - -<p>'The world does not want me, my dear aunt; nor do I want the world.'</p> - -<p>'That is sheer perversity——'</p> - -<p>'How am I perverse? I know the world very well, and I know that no one -is necessary to it, unless it be Herr von Bismarck.'</p> - -<p>'I do not see what Herr von Bismarck has to do with your going back to -your natural manner of life,' said the Princess, severely, who abhorred -any sort of levity in regard to the mighty minister who had destroyed -the Lilienhöhe princes one fine morning, as indifferently as a boy -plucks down a cranberry bough. 'In summer, or even autumn, Hohenszalras -is endurable, but in winter it is—hyperborean—even you must grant -that. One might as well be jammed in a ship, amidst icebergs, in the -midst of a frozen sea.'</p> - -<p>'And you were born on the Elbe, oh fie! But indeed, my dearest aunt, I -like the frozen sea. The white months have no terrors for me. What you -call, and what calls itself, the great world is far more narrow than -the Iselthal. Here one's fancies, at least, can fly high as the eagles -do; in the world who can rise out of the hot-house air of the salons, -and see beyond the doings of one's friends and foes?'</p> - -<p>'Surely one's own friends and foes—people like oneself, in a -word—must be as interesting as Hans, and Peter, and Katte, and -Grethel, with their crampons or their milkpails,' said the Princess, -with impatience. 'Besides, surely in the world there are political -movement, influence, interests.'</p> - -<p>'Oh, intrigue?—as useful as Mme. de Laballe's or Mme. de -Longueville's? No! I do not believe there is even that in our time, -when even diplomacy itself is fast becoming a mere automatic factor -in a world that is governed by newspapers, and which has changed the -tyranny of wits for the tyranny of crowds. The time is gone by when a -"Coterie of Countesses" could change ministries, if they ever did do so -outside the novels of Disraeli. Drawing-room cabals may still do some -mischief perhaps, but they can do no good. Sometimes, indeed, I think -that what is called Government everywhere is nothing but a gigantic -mischief-making and place-seeking. The State is everywhere too like a -mother who sweeps her doorstep diligently, and scolds the neighbours, -while her child scalds itself to death unseen within.'</p> - -<p>'In the world,' interrupted the Princess oppositely, 'you might -persuade them that the sweeping of doorsteps is not sufficient——'</p> - -<p>'I prefer to keep my own house in order. It is quite enough -occupation,' said the Countess Wanda, with a smile. 'Dear aunt, here -amongst my own folks I can do some real good, I have some tangible -influence, I can feel that my life is not altogether spent in vain. -Why should I exchange these simple and solid satisfactions, for the -frivolities and the inanities of a life of pleasure which would not -even please me?'</p> - -<p>'You are very hard to please, I know,' retorted the Princess. 'But say -what you will, it becomes ridiculous for a person of your age, your -great position, and your personal beauty, to immure yourself eternally -in what is virtually no better than confinement to a fortress!'</p> - -<p>'A court is more of a prison to me,' said Wanda von Szalras. 'I know -both lives, and I prefer this life. As for my being very hard to -please, I think I was very gay and mirthful before Bela's death. Since -then all the earth has grown grey for me.'</p> - -<p>'Forgive me, my beloved!' said Princess Ottilie, with quick contrition, -whilst moisture sprang into her limpid and still luminous blue eyes.</p> - -<p>Wanda von Szalras took the old abbess's hand in her own, and kissed it.</p> - -<p>'I understand all you wish for me, dear aunt. Believe me, I envy people -when I hear them laughing light-heartedly amongst each other. I think -I shall never laugh <i>so</i> again.'</p> - -<p>'If you would only marry——' said the Princess, with some hesitation.</p> - -<p>'You think marriage amusing?' she said, with a certain contempt. 'If -you do, it is only because you escaped it.'</p> - -<p>'Amusing!' said the Princess, a little scandalised. 'I could speak of -no Sacrament of our Holy Church as "amusing." You rarely display such -levity of language. I confess I do not comprehend you. Marriage would -give you interests in life which you seem to lack sadly now. It would -restore you to the world. It would be a natural step to take with such -vast possessions as yours.'</p> - -<p>'It is not likely I shall ever take it,' said Wanda von Szalras, -drawing the soft fine ear of Donau through her fingers.</p> - -<p>'I know it is not likely. I am very sorry that it is not likely. Yet -what nobler creature does God's earth contain than your cousin Egon?</p> - -<p>'Egon? No: he is a good and brave and loyal gentleman, none better; but -I shall no more marry him than Donau here will wed a forest doe.'</p> - -<p>'Yet he has loved you for ten years. But if not he there are so -many others, men of high enough place to be above all suspicion of -mercenary motive. No woman has been more adored than you, Wanda. Look -at Hugo Landrassy.'</p> - -<p>'Oh, pray spare me their enumeration. It is like the Catalogue of -Ships!' said the Countess Wanda, with some coldness and some impatience -on her face.</p> - -<p>At that moment an old man, who was major-domo of Hohenszalras, -approached and begged with deference to know whether his ladies would -be pleased to dine.</p> - -<p>The Princess signified her readiness with alacrity; Wanda von Szalras -signed assent with less willingness.</p> - -<p>'What a disagreeable obligation dining is,' she said, as she turned -reluctantly from the evening scene, with the lake sleeping in dusk and -shadow, while the snow summits still shone like silver and glowed with -rose.</p> - -<p>'It is very wicked to think so,' said her great-aunt. 'When a merciful -Creator has appointed our appetites for our consolation and support it -is only an ingrate who is not thankful lawfully to indulge them.'</p> - -<p>'That view of them never occurred to me,' said the châtelaine of -Hohenszalras. 'I think you must have stolen it, aunt, from some abbé -galant or some chanoinesse as lovely as yourself in the last century. -Alas! if not to care to eat be ungrateful I am a sad ingrate. Donau -and Neva are more ready subscribers to your creed.'</p> - -<p>Donau and Neva were already racing towards the castle, and Wanda von -Szalras, with one backward lingering glance to the sunset, which -already was fading, followed them with slow steps to the grand house of -which she was mistress.</p> - -<p>In the north alone the sky was overcast and of a tawny colour, where -the Pinzgau lay, with the green Salzach water rushing through its -wooded gorges, and its tracks of sand and stone desolate as any desert.</p> - -<p>That slender space of angry yellow to the north boded ill for the -night. Bitter storms rolled in west from the Bœhmerwald, or north -from the Salzkammergut, many a time in the summer weather, changing it -to winter as they passed, tugging at the roof-ropes of the châlets, -driving the sheep into their sennerin's huts, covering with mist and -rain the mountain sides, and echoing in thunder from the peaks of the -Untersburg to the snows of the Ortler Spitze. It was such a sudden -storm which had taken Bela's life.</p> - -<p>'I think we shall have wild weather,' said the Princess, drawing her -furs around her, as she walked down the broad length of the stone -terrace.</p> - -<p>'I think so too,' said Wanda. 'It is coming very soon; and I fear I did -a cruel thing this morning.'</p> - -<p>'What was that?'</p> - -<p>'I sent a stranger to find his way over our hills to Matrey, as best -he might. He will hardly have reached it by now, and if a storm should -come——'</p> - -<p>'A stranger?' said Princess Ottilie, whose curiosity was always alive, -and had also lately no food for its hunger.</p> - -<p>'Only a poacher; but he was a gentleman, which made his crime the -worse.'</p> - -<p>'A gentleman, and you sent him over the hills without a guide? It seems -unlike the hospitality of Hohenszalras.'</p> - -<p>'Why he would have shot a <i>kuttengeier!</i>'</p> - -<p>'A <i>kuttengeier</i> is a horrible beast,' said the Princess, with a -shudder; 'and a stranger, just for an hour or so, would be welcome.'</p> - -<p>'Even if his name were not in the Hof-Kalender?' asked her niece, -smiling.</p> - -<p>'If he had been a pedlar, or a clockmaker, you would have sent him in -to rest. For a gentlewoman, Wanda, and so proud a one as you are, you -become curiously cruel to your own class.'</p> - -<p>'I am always cruel to poachers. And to shoot a vulture in the month of -May!'</p> - - - -<hr class="chap" /> -<h4><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II.</a></h4> - - -<p>The dining-hall was a vast chamber, panelled and ceiled with oak. In -the centre of the panels were emblazoned shields bearing the arms of -the Szalras, and of the families with which they had intermarried; the -long lancet windows had been painted by no less a hand than that of -Jacob of Ulm; the knights' stalls which ran round the hall were the -elaborate carving of Georges Syrlin; and old gorgeous banners dropped -down above them, heavy with broideries and bullion.</p> - -<p>There were upper servants in black clothes with knee breeches, and a -dozen lacqueys in crimson and gold liveries, ranged about the table. -In many ways there were a carelessness and ease in the household which -always seemed lamentable to the Princess Ottilie, but in matters of -etiquette the great household was ruled like a small court; and when -sovereigns became guests there little in the order of the day needed -change at Hohenszalras.</p> - -<p>The castle was half fortress, half palace; a noble and solemn place, -which had seen many centuries of warfare, of splendour, and of -alternate war and joy. Strangers used to Paris gilding, to Italian -sunlight, to English country-houses, found it too severe, too august, -too dark, and too stern in its majesty, and were awed by it. But she -who had loved it and played in it in infancy changed nothing there, -but cherished it as it had come to her; and it was in all much the -same as it had been in the days of Henry the Lion, from its Gothic -Silber-kapelle, that was like an ivory and jewelled casket set in dusky -silver, to its immense Rittersäal, with a hundred knights in full -armour standing down it, as the bronze figures stand round Maximilian's -empty tomb in Tirol. There are many such noble places hidden away in -the deep forests and the mountain glens of Maximilian's empire.</p> - -<p>In this hall there were some fifteen persons standing. They were the -priest, the doctor, the high steward, the almoner, some dames de -compagnie, and some poor ladies, widows or spinsters, who subsisted -on the charities of Hohenszalras. The two noble ladies bowed to them -all and said a few kind words; then passed on and seated themselves -at their own table, whilst these other persons took their seats -noiselessly at a longer table, behind a low screen of carved oak.</p> - -<p>The lords of Hohenszalras had always thus adhered to the old feudal -habit of dining in public, and in royal fashion, thus.</p> - -<p>The Countess Wanda and her aunt spoke little; the one was thinking -of many other things than of the food brought to her, the other was -enjoying to the uttermost each <i>bouchée</i>, each <i>relevée</i>, each morsel -of quail, each mouthful of wine-stewed trout, each succulent truffle, -and each rich drop of crown Tokaï.</p> - -<p>The repast was long, and to one of them extremely tedious; but these -formal and prolonged ceremonials had been the habit of her house, and -Wanda von Szalras carefully observed all hereditary usage and custom. -When her aunt had eaten her last fruit, and she herself had broken -her last biscuit between the dogs, they rose, one glad that the most -tiresome, and the other regretful that the most pleasant, hour of the -uneventful day was over.</p> - -<p>With a bow of farewell to the standing household, they went by mutual -consent their divers ways; the Princess to her favourite blue room -and her after-dinner doze, Wanda to her own study, the chamber most -essentially her own, where all were hers.</p> - -<p>The softness and radiance of the after-glow had given place to night -and rain; the mists and the clouds had rolled up from the Zillerthal -Alps, and the water was pouring from the skies.</p> - -<p>Lamps, wax candles, flambeaux, burning in sconces or upheld by statues -or swinging from chains, were illumining the darkness of the great -castle, but in her own study only one little light was shining, for -she, a daughter of the mystical mountains and forests, loved the -shadows of the night.</p> - -<p>She seated herself here by the unshuttered casement. The full moon was -rising above the Glöckner range, and the rain-clouds as yet did not -obscure it, though a film of falling water veiled all the westward -shore of the lake, and all the snows on the peaks and crests of the -Venediger. She leaned her elbows on the cushioned seat, and looked out -into the night.</p> - -<p>'Bela, my Bela! are you content with me?' she murmured. To her Bela -was as living as though he were present by her side; she lived in -the constant belief of his companionship and his sight. Death was a -cruel—ah, how cruel!—wall built up between him and her, forbidding -them the touch of each other's hands, denying them the smile of each -other's eyes; but none the less to her was he there, unseen, but ever -near, hidden behind that inexorable, invisible barrier which one day -would fall and let her pass and join him.</p> - -<p>She sat idle in the embrasure of the oriel window, whilst the one lamp -burned behind her. This, her favourite room, had scarcely been changed -since Maria Theresa, on a visit there, had made it her bower-room. -The window-panes had been painted by Selier of Landshut in 1440; -the stove was one of Hirschvögel's; the wood-carvings had been done -by Schuferstein; there was silver <i>repoussé</i> work of Kellerthaler, -tapestries of Marc de Comans, enamels of Elbertus of Köln, of Jean of -Limoges, of Leonard Limousin, of Penicaudius; embroidered stuffs of -Isabeau Maire, damascened armour once worn by Henry the Lion, a painted -spinet that had belonged to Isabella of Bavaria, and an ivory Book of -Hours, once used by Carolus Magnus; and all these things, like the many -other treasures of the castle, had been there for centuries; gifts -from royal guests, spoils of foreign conquest, memorials of splendid -embassies or offices of state held by the lords of Szalras, or -marriage presents at magnificent nuptials in the old magnificent ages.</p> - -<p>In this room she, their sole living representative, was never disturbed -on any pretext. In the adjacent library (a great cedar-lined room, -holding half a million volumes, with many missals and early classics, -and many an <i>editio princeps</i> of the Renaissance), she held all her -audiences, heard all petitions or complaints, audited her accounts, -conversed with her tenants or her stewards, her lawyers or her -peasants, and laboured earnestly to use to the best of her intelligence -the power bequeathed to her.</p> - -<p>'I am but God's and Bela's steward, as my steward is mine,' she said -always to herself, and never avoided any duty or labour entailed on -her, never allowed weariness or self-indulgence to enervate her. <i>Qui -facit per alium, facit per se</i> had been early taught to her, and she -never forgot it. She never did anything vicariously which concerned -those dependent upon her. And she was an absolute sovereign in this her -kingdom of glaciers and forests; her frozen sea as she had called it. -She never avoided a duty merely because it was troublesome, and she -never gave her signature without knowing why and wherefore. It is easy -to be generous; to be just is more difficult and burdensome. Generous -by temper, she strove earnestly to be always just as well, and her life -was not without those fatigues which a very great fortune brings with -it to anyone who regards it as a sacred trust.</p> - -<p>She had wide possessions and almost incalculable wealth. She had salt -mines in Galicia, she had Vosläuer vineyards in the Salzkammergut, she -had vast plains of wheat, and leagues on leagues of green lands, where -broods of horses bred and reared away in the steppes of Hungary. She -had a palace in the Herrengasse at Vienna, another in the Residenzplatz -of Salzburg; she had forests and farms in the Innthal and the -Zillerthal; she had a beautiful little schloss on the green Ebensee, -which had been the dower-house of the Countesses of Szalras, and she -had pine-woods, quarries, vineyards, and even a whole riverain town -on the Danube, with a right to take toll on the ferry there, which -had been given to her forefathers as far back as the days of Mathias -Carvin, a right that she herself had let drop into desuetude. 'I do -not want the poor folks' copper kreutzer,' she said to her lawyers -when they remonstrated. What did please her was the fact coupled with -this right that even the Kaiser could not have entered her little town -without his marshal thrice knocking at the gates, and receiving from -the warder the permission to pass, in the words, 'The Counts of Idrac -bid you come in peace.'</p> - -<p>All these things and places made a vast source of revenue, and the -property, whose title-deeds and archives lay in many a chest and coffer -in the old city of Salzburg, was one of the largest in Europe. It would -have given large portions and dowries to a score of sons and daughters -and been none the worse. And it was all accumulating on the single head -of one young and lonely woman! She was the last of her race; there were -distant collateral branches, but none of them near enough to have any -title to Hohenszalras. She could bequeath it where she would, and she -had already willed it to her Kaiserin, in a document shut up in an iron -chest in the city of Salzburg. She thought the Crown would be a surer -and juster guardian of her place and people than any one person, whose -caprices she could not foretell, whose extravagance or whose injustice -she could not foresee. Sometimes, even to the spiritual mind of the -Princess Ottilie, the persistent refusal of her niece to think of any -marriage seemed almost a crime against mankind.</p> - -<p>What did the Crown want with it?</p> - -<p>The Princess was a woman of absolutely; loyal sentiment towards all -ancient sovereignties. She believed in Divine right, and was as strong -a royalist as it is possible for anyone to be whose fathers have been -devoured like an anchovy by M. de Bismarck, and who has the sympathy -of fellow feeling with Frohsdorf and Gmünden. But even her devotion to -the rights of monarchs failed to induce her to see why the Habsburg -should inherit Hohenszalras. The Crown is a noble heir, but it is one -which leaves the heart cold. Who would ever care for her people, and -her forests, and her animals as she had done? Even from her beloved -Kaiserin she could not hope for that. 'If I had married?' she thought, -the words of the Princess Ottilie coming back upon her memory.</p> - -<p>Perhaps, for the sake of her people and her lands, it might have been -better.</p> - -<p>But there are women to whom the thought of physical surrender of -themselves is fraught with repugnance and disgust; a sentiment so -strong that only a great passion vanquishes it. She was one of these -women, and passion she had never felt.</p> - -<p>'Even for Hohenszalras I could not,' she thought, as she leaned on -the embrasure cushions, and watched the moon, gradually covered with -the heavy blue-black clouds. The Crown should be her heir and reign -here after her, when she should be laid by the side of Bela in that -beautiful dusky chapel beneath the shrines of ivory and silver, where -all the dead of the House of Szalras slept. But it was an heir which -left her heart cold.</p> - -<p>She rose abruptly, left the embrasure, and began to examine the letters -of the day and put down heads of replies to them, which her secretary -could amplify on the morrow.</p> - -<p>One letter her secretary could not answer for her; it was a letter -which gave her pain, and which she read with an impatient sigh. It -urged her return to the world as the letter of her Empress had done, -and it urged with timidity, yet with passion, a love that had been -loyal to her from her childhood. It was signed 'Egon Vàsàrhely.'</p> - -<p>'It is the old story,' she thought. 'Poor Egon! If only one could have -loved him, how it would have simplified everything; and I do love him, -as I once loved Gela and Victor.'</p> - -<p>But that was not the love which Egon Vàsàrhely pleaded for with the -tenderness of one who had been to her as a brother from her babyhood, -and the frankness of a man who knew his own rank so high and his own -fortunes so great, that no mercenary motive could be attributed to -him even when he sought the mistress of Hohenszalras. It was the old -story: she had heard it many times from him and from others in those -brilliant winters in Vienna which had preceded Bela's death. And it had -always failed to touch her. Women who have never loved are harsh to -love from ignorance.</p> - -<p>At that moment a louder crash of thunder reverberated from hill to -hill, and the Glöckner domes seemed to shout to the crests of the -Venediger.</p> - -<p>'I hope that stranger is housed and safe,' she thought, her mind -reverting to the poacher of whom she had spoken on the terrace at -sunset. His face came before her memory: a beautiful face, oriental -in feature, northern in complexion, fair and cold, with blue eyes of -singular brilliancy.</p> - -<p>The forests of Hohenszalras are in themselves a principality. Under -enormous trees, innumerable brooks and little torrents dash downwards -to lose themselves in the green twilight of deep gorges; broad, dark, -still lakes lie like cups of jade in the bosom of the woods; up above, -where the Alpine firs and the pinus cembra shelter him, the bear lives -and the wolf too; and higher yet, where the glacier lies upon the -mountain side, the merry steinbock leaps from peak to peak, and the -white-throat vulture and the golden eagle nest. The oak, the larch, -the beech, the lime, cover the lower hills, higher grow the pines and -firs, the lovely drooping Siberian pine foremost amidst them. In the -lower wood grassy roads cross and thread the leafy twilight. A stranger -had been traversing these woods that morning, where he had no right -or reason to be. Forest-law was sincerely observed and meted out at -Hohenszalras, but of that he was ignorant or careless.</p> - -<p>Before him, in the clear air, a large, dark object rose and spread -huge pinions to the wind and soared aloft. The trespasser lifted his -rifle to his shoulder, and in another moment would have fired. But an -alpenstock struck the barrel up into the air, and the shot went off -harmless towards the clouds. The great bird, startled by the report, -flew rapidly to the westward; the Countess Wanda said quietly to the -poacher in her forest, 'You cannot carry arms here,'</p> - -<p>He looked at her angrily, and in surprise.</p> - -<p>'You have lost me the only eagle I have seen for years,' he said -bitterly, with a flush of discomfiture and powerless rage on his fair -face.</p> - -<p>She smiled a little.</p> - -<p>'That bird was not an eagle, sir; it was a white-throated vulture, a -<i>kuttengeier.</i> But had it been an eagle—or a sparrow—you could not -have killed it on my lands.'</p> - -<p>Pale still with anger, he uncovered his head.</p> - -<p>'I have not the honour to know in whose presence I stand,' he muttered -sullenly. 'But I have Imperial permission to shoot wherever I choose.'</p> - -<p>'His Majesty has no more loyal subject than myself,' she answered him. -'But his dominion does not extend over my forests. You are on the -ground of Hohenszalras, and your offence——'</p> - -<p>'I know nothing of Hohenszalras!' he interrupted, with impatience.</p> - -<p>She blew a whistle, and her head forester with three jägers sprang up -as if out of the earth, some great wolf-hounds, grinning with their -fangs, waiting but a word to spring. In one second the rangers had -thrown themselves on the too audacious trespasser, had pinioned him, -and had taken his rifle.</p> - -<p>Confounded, disarmed, humiliated, and stunned by the suddenness of the -attack, he stood mute and very pale.</p> - -<p>'You know Hohenszalras now!' said the mistress of it, with a smile, -as she watched his seizure seated on a moss-grown boulder of granite, -black Donau and white Neva by her side. He was pale with impotent fury, -conscious of an indefensible and absurd position. The jäger looked at -their mistress; they had slipped a cord over his wrists, and tied them -behind his back; they looked to her for a sign of assent to break his -rifle. She stood silent, amused with her victory and his chastisement; -a little derision shining in her lustrous eyes.</p> - -<p>'You know Hohenszalras now!' she said once more. 'Men have been shot -dead for what you were doing. If you be, indeed, a friend of my -Emperor's, of course you are welcome here; but——'</p> - -<p>'What right have you to offer me this indignity,' muttered the -offender, his fair features changing from white to red, and red to -white, in his humiliation and discomfiture.</p> - -<p>'Right!' echoed the mistress of the forests. 'I have the right to do -anything I please with you! You seem to me to understand but little of -forest laws.'</p> - -<p>'Madame, were you not a woman, you would have had bloodshed.'</p> - -<p>'Oh, very likely. That sometimes happens, although seldom, as all the -Hohe Tauern knows how strictly these forests are preserved. My men are -looking to me for permission to break your rifle. That is the law, sir.'</p> - -<p>'Since 'Forty-eight,' said the trespasser, with what seemed to her -marvellous insolence, 'all the old forest laws are null and void. It -is scarcely allowable to talk of trespass.'</p> - -<p>A look of deep anger passed over her face. 'The follies of 'Forty-eight -have nothing to do with Hohenszalras,' she said, very coldly. 'We hold -under charters of our own, by grants and rights which even Rudolf of -Habsburg never dared meddle with. I am not called on to explain this to -you, but you appear to labour under such strange delusions that it is -as well to dispel them.'</p> - -<p>He stood silent, his eyes cast downward. His humiliation seemed to -him enormously disproportioned to his offending. The hounds menaced -him with deep growls and grinning fangs; the jägers held his gun; his -wrists were tied behind him. 'Are you indeed a friend of the Kaiser?' -she repeated to him.</p> - -<p>'I am no friend of his,' he answered bitterly and sullenly. 'I met -him a while ago zad-hunting on the Thorstein. His signature is in my -pocket; bid your jäger take it out.'</p> - -<p>'I will not doubt your word,' she said to him. 'You look a gentleman. -If you will give me your promise to shoot no more on these lands I will -let them set you free and render you up your rifle.'</p> - -<p>'You have the law with you,' said the trespasser moodily. 'Since I can -do no less—I promise.'</p> - -<p>'You are ungracious, sir,' said Wanda, with a touch of severity and -irritation. 'That is neither wise nor grateful, since you are nothing -more or better than a poacher on my lands. Nevertheless, I will trust -you.'</p> - -<p>Then she gave a sign to the jägers and a touch to the hounds: the -latter rose and ceased their growling; the former instantly, though -very sorrowfully, untied the cord off the wrists of their prisoner, and -gave him back his unloaded rifle.</p> - -<p>'Follow that path into the ravine; cross that; ascend the opposite -hills, and you will find the high road. I advise you to take it, sir. -Good-day to you.'</p> - -<p>She pointed out the forest path which wound downward under the arolla -pines. He hesitated a moment, then bowed very low with much grace, -turned his back on her and her foresters and her dogs, and began slowly -to descend the moss-grown slope.</p> - -<p>He hated her for the indignity she had brought upon him, and the -ridicule to which she forced him to submit; yet the beauty of her had -startled and dazzled him. He had thought of the great Queen of the -Nibelungen-Lied, whose armour lies in the museum of Vienna.</p> - -<p>'Alas! why have you let him go, my Countess!' murmured Otto, the head -forester.</p> - -<p>'The Kaiser had made him sacred,' she answered, with a smile; and -then she called Donau and Neva, who were roaming, and went on her way -through her forest.</p> - -<p>'What strange and cruel creatures we are!' she thought. 'The vulture -would have dropped into the ravine. He would never have found it. The -audacity, too, to fire on a <i>kuttengeier</i>; if it had been any lesser -bird one might have pardoned it.'</p> - -<p>For the eagle, the gypæte, the white-throated pygargue, the buzzard, -and all the family of falcons were held sacred at Hohenszalras, and -lived in their mountain haunts rarely troubled. It was an old law there -that the great winged monarchs should never be chased, except by the -Kaiser himself when he came there. So that the crime of the stranger -had been more than trespass and almost treason! Her heart was hard to -him, and she felt that she had been too lenient. Who could tell but -that that rifle would bring down some free lord of the air?</p> - -<p>She listened with the keen ear of one used to the solitude of the hills -and woods; she thought he would shoot something out of bravado. But all -was silent in that green defile beneath whose boughs the stranger was -wending on his way. She listened long, but she heard no shots, although -in those still heights the slightest noise echoed from a hundred walls -of rock and ice. She walked onward through the deep shadow of the thick -growing beeches; she had her alpenstock in her right hand, her little -silver horn hung at her belt, and beside it was a pair of small ivory -pistols, pretty as toys, but deadly as revolvers could be. She stooped -here and there to gather some lilies of the valley, which were common -enough in these damp grassy glades.</p> - -<p>'Where could that stranger have come from, Otto?' she asked of her -jäger.</p> - -<p>'He must have come over the Hündspitz, my Countess,' said Otto. 'Any -other way he would have been stopped by our men and lightened of his -rifle.'</p> - -<p>'The Hündspitz!' she echoed, in wonder, for the mountain so called was -a wild inaccessible place, divided by a parapet of ice all the year -round from the range of the Gross Glöckner.</p> - -<p>'That must he,' said the huntsman,'and for sure if an honest man had -tried to come that way he would have been hurled headlong down the -ice-wall——'</p> - -<p>'He is the Kaiser's <i>protégé</i>, Otto,' said his mistress, with a smile, -but the old jäger muttered that they had only his own word for that. -It had pierced Otto's soul to let the poacher's rifle go.</p> - -<p>She thought of all this with some compunction now, as she sat in her -own warm safe chamber and heard the thunder, the wind, the raising of -the storm which had now fairly broken in full fury. She felt uneasy for -the erring stranger. The roads over the passes were still perilous from -avalanches and half melted snow in the crevasses; the time of year was -more dangerous than midwinter.</p> - -<p>'I ought to have given him a guide,' she thought, and went out and -joined the Princess Ottilie, who had awakened from her after-dinner -repose under the loud roll of the thunder and the constantly recurring -flashes of lightning.</p> - -<p>'I am troubled for that traveller whom I saw in the woods to-day,' she -said to her aunt. 'I trust he is safe housed.'</p> - -<p>'If he had been a pastry-cook from the Engadine, or a seditious -heretical <i>colporteur</i> from Geneva, you would have sent him into the -kitchens to feast,' said the Princess, contentiously.</p> - -<p>'I hope he is safe housed,' repeated Wanda. 'It is several hours ago; -he may very well have reached the posthouse.'</p> - -<p>'You have the satisfaction of thinking the <i>kuttengeier</i> is safe, -sitting on some rock tearing a fish to pieces,' said the Princess, who -was irritable because she was awakened before her time. 'Will you have -some coffee or some tea? You look disturbed, my dear; after all, you -say the man was a poacher.'</p> - -<p>'Yes. But I ought to have seen him safe off my ground. There are a -hundred kinds of death on the hills for anyone who does not know them -well. Let us look at the weather from the hall; one can see better from -there.'</p> - -<p>From the Rittersäal, whose windows looked straight down the seven -miles of the lake water, she watched the tempest. All the mountains -were sending back echoes of thunder, which sounded like salvoes of -artillery. There was little to be seen for the dense rain mist; the -beacon of the Holy Isle glimmered redly through the darkness. In the -upper air snow was falling; the great white peaks and pinnacles ever -and again flashed strangely into view as the lightning illumined them; -the Glöckner-wanda towered above all others a moment in the glare, and -seemed like ice and fire mingled.</p> - -<p>'They are like the great white thrones of the Apocalypse,' she thought.</p> - -<p>Beneath, the lake boiled and seethed in blackness like a witches' -cauldron.</p> - -<p>A storm was always terrible to her, from the memory of Bela.</p> - -<p>In the lull of a second in the tempest of sound it seemed to her as if -she heard some other cry than that of the wind.</p> - -<p>'Open one of these windows and listen,' she said to Hubert, her -major-domo. 'I fancy I hear a shout—a scream. I am not certain, but -listen well.'</p> - -<p>'There is some sound,' said Hubert, after a moment of attention. 'It -comes from the lake. But no boat could live long in that water, my -Countess.'</p> - -<p>'No!' she said, with a quick sigh, remembering how her brother had -died. 'But we must do what we can. It may be one of the lake fishermen -caught in the storm before he could make for home. Ring the alarm-bell, -and go out, all of you, to the water stairs. I will come, too.'</p> - -<p>In a few moments the deep bell that hung in the chime tower, and which -was never sounded except for death or danger, added its sonorous brazen -voice to the clang and clamour of the storm. All the household paused, -and at the summons, coming from north, south, east, and west of the -great pile of buildings, grooms, gardeners, huntsmen, pages, scullions, -underlings, all answered to the metal tongue, which told them of some -peril at Hohenszalras.</p> - -<p>With a hooded cloak thrown over her, she went out into the driving -rain, down the terrace to the head of what were called the water -stairs; a flight of granite steps leading to the little quay upon the -eastward shore of the Szalrassee, where were moored in fair weather the -pleasure boats, the fishing punts, and the canoes which belonged to the -castle: craft all now safe in the boat-house.</p> - -<p>'Make no confusion,' she said to them. 'There is no danger in the -castle. There is some boat, or some swimmer, on the lake. Light the -terrace beacon and we shall see.'</p> - -<p>She was very pale. There was no storm on those waters that did not -bring back to her, as poignant as the first fresh hours of its grief, -the death of Bela.</p> - -<p>The huge beacon of iron, a cage set on high and filled with tow and tar -and all inflammable things, was set on fire, and soon threw a scarlet -glare over the scene.</p> - -<p>The shouts had ceased.</p> - -<p>'They may be drowned,' she said, with her lips pressed tightly -together. 'I hear nothing now. Have you the rope and the lifeboat -ready? We must wait for more light.'</p> - -<p>At that moment the whole of the tar caught, and the beacon blazed at -its fiercest in its iron cage, as it had used to blaze in the ages gone -by as a war signal, when the Prelates of Salzburg and Birchtesgaden -were marching across the marshes of Pinzgau in quarrel or feud with the -lords of the strongest fortress in the Hohe Tauern.</p> - -<p>In the struggling light which met the blue glance of the lightning they -could see the angry waters of the lake as far as the Holy Isle, and -near to land, only his head above the water, was a man drowning, as the -pilgrims had drowned.</p> - -<p>'For the love of God—the rope!' she cried, and almost before the words -had escaped from her her men had thrown a lifebuoy to the exhausted -swimmer, and pushed one of the boats into the seething darkness of the -lake. But the swimmer had strength enough to catch hold of the buoy -as it was hurled to him by the <i>fischermeister's</i> unerring hand, and -he clung to it and kept his grasp on it, despite the raging of the -wind and waters, until the boat reached him. He was fifty yards off -the shore, and he was pulled into the little vessel, which was tossed -to and fro upon the black waters like a shell; the <i>fohn</i> was blowing -fiercely all the time, and flung the men headlong on the boat's bottom -twice ere they could seize the swimmer, who helped himself, for, though -mute; and almost breathless, he was not insensible, and had not lost -all his strength. If he had not been so near the land he and the boat's -crew would all have sunk, and dead bodies would once more have been -washed on the shore of the Szalrassee with the dawn of another day.</p> - -<p>Drenched, choked with water, and thrown from side to side as the wind -played with them as a child with its ball, the men ran their boat at -last against the stairs, and landed with their prize.</p> - -<p>Dripping from head to foot, and drawing deep breaths of exhaustion, -the rescued man stood on the terrace steps bareheaded and in his -shirt-sleeves, his brown velvet breeches pulled up to his knees, his -fair hair lifted by the wind, and soaked with wet.</p> - -<p>She recognised the trespasser of the forest.</p> - -<p>'Madame, behold me in your power again!' he said, with a little smile, -though he breathed with labour, and his voice was breathless and low.</p> - -<p>'You are welcome, sir. Any stranger or friend would be welcome in such -a night,' she said, with the red glow of the beacon light shed upon -her. 'Pray do not waste breath or time in courtesies. Come up the steps -and hurry to the house. You must be faint and bruised.'</p> - -<p>'No, no,' said the swimmer; but as he spoke his eyes closed, he -staggered a little; a deadly faintness and cold had seized him, and -cramp came on all his limbs.</p> - -<p>The men caught him, and carried him up the stairs; he strove to -struggle and protest, but Otto the forester stooped over him.</p> - -<p>'Keep you still,' he muttered. 'You have the Countess's orders. -Trespass has cost you dear, my master.'</p> - -<p>'I do not think he is greatly hurt,' said the mistress of Szaravola to -her house physician. 'But go you to him, doctor, and see that he is -warmly housed and has hot drinks. Put him in the Strangers' Gallery, -and pray take care my aunt is not alarmed.'</p> - -<p>The Princess Ottilie at that moment was alternately eating a <i>nougat</i> -out of her sweetmeat box and telling the beads of her rosary. The sound -of the wind and the noise of the storm could not reach her in her -favourite blue-room, all <i>capitonnée</i> with turquoise silks as it was; -the only chamber in all Szaravola that was entirely modern and French.</p> - -<p>'I do hope Wanda is running no risk,' she thought, from time to time. -'It would be quite like her to row down the lake.'</p> - -<p>But she sat still in her lamp light, and told her beads.</p> - -<p>A few moments later her niece entered. Her waterproof mantle had kept -her white gown from the rain and spray.</p> - -<p>There was a little moisture on her hair, that was all. She did not -look as if she had stirred further from her drawing-room than the -Princess had done.</p> - -<p>Now that the stranger was safe and sound he had ceased to have any -interest for her; he was nothing more than any flotsam of the lake; -only one other to sleep beneath the roofs of Hohenszalras, where half a -hundred slept already.</p> - -<p>The castle, in the wild winters that shut out the Hohe Tauern from the -world, was oftentimes a hospice for travellers, though usually those -travellers were only pedlars, colporteurs, mule-drivers, clock-makers -of the Zillerthal or carpet weavers of the Defreggerthal, too late in -the year to pursue their customary passage over the passes in safety. -To such the great beacon of the Holy Isle and the huge servants' hall -of Szaravola were well known.</p> - -<p>She sat down to her embroidery frame without speaking; she was working -some mountain flowers in silks on velvet, for a friend in Paris' The -flowers stood in a glass on a table.</p> - -<p>'It is unkind of you to go out in that mad way on such a night as -this, and return looking so unlike having had an adventure!' said the -Princess, a little pettishly.</p> - -<p>'There has been no adventure,' said Wanda von Szalras, with a smile. -'But there is what may do as well—a handsome stranger who' has been -saved from drowning.'</p> - -<p>Even as she spoke her face changed, her mouth quivered; she crossed -herself, and murmured, too low for the other to hear:</p> - -<p>'Bela, my beloved, think not that I forget!'</p> - -<p>The Princess Ottilie sat up erect in her chair, and her blue eyes -brightened like a girl of sixteen.</p> - -<p>'Then there <i>is</i> an adventure! Tell it me quick! My dear, silence is -very stately and very becoming to you; but sometimes—excuse me—you do -push it to annoying extremes.'</p> - -<p>'I was afraid of agitation for you,' said the Countess Wanda; and then -she told the Princess what had occurred that night.</p> - -<p>'And I never knew that a poor soul was in peril!' cried the Princess, -conscious-stricken. 'And is that the last you have seen of him? Have -you never asked——?'</p> - -<p>'Hubert says he is only bruised; they have taken him to the Strangers' -Gallery. Here is Herr Greswold—he will tell us more.'</p> - -<p>The person who entered was the physician of Hohenszalras. He was -a little old man of great talent, with a clever, humorous, mild -countenance; he had, coupled with a love for rural life, a passion -for botany and natural history, which made his immurement in the -Iselthal welcome to him, and the many fancied ailments of the Princess -endurable. He bowed very low alternately to both ladies, and refused -with a protest the chair to which the Countess Wanda motioned him. He -said that the stranger was not in the least seriously injured; he had -been seized with cramp and chills, but he had administered a cordial, -and these were passing. The gentleman seemed indisposed to speak, -shivered a good deal, and was inclined to sleep.</p> - -<p>'He is a gentleman, think you? asked the Princess.</p> - -<p>The Herr Professor said that to him it appeared so.</p> - -<p>'And of what rank?'</p> - -<p>The physician thought it was impossible to say.</p> - -<p>'It is always possible,' said the Princess, a little impatiently. 'Is -his linen fine? Is his skin smooth? Are his hands white and slender? -Are his wrists and ankles small?'</p> - -<p>Herr Greswold said that he was sorely grieved, but he had not taken -any notice as to any of these things; he had been occupied with his -diagnosis of the patient's state; for, he added, he thought the swimmer -had been long in the water, and the Szalrassee was of very dangerously -low temperature at night, being fed as it Was from the glaciers and -snows of the mountains.</p> - -<p>'It is very interesting,' said the Princess; 'but pray observe what I -have named, now that you return to his chamber.'</p> - -<p>Greswold took the hint, and bowed himself out of the drawing-room. Frau -Ottilie returned to her nougats.</p> - -<p>'I wish that one could know who he was,' she said regretfully. To -harbour an unknown person was not agreeable to her in these days of -democracies and dynamite.</p> - -<p>'What does it matter?' said her niece. 'Though he were a Nihilist or a -convict from the mines, he would have to be sheltered to-night.'</p> - -<p>'The Herr Professor is very inattentive,' said the Princess, with an -accent that from one of her sweetness was almost severe.</p> - -<p>'The Herr Professor is compiling the Flora of the Hohe Tauern,' said -her niece, 'and he will publish it in Leipzig some time in the next -twenty years. How can a botanist care for so unlovely a creature as a -man? If it were a flower indeed!'</p> - -<p>'I never approved of that herbarium,' said the Princess, still -severely. 'It is too insignificant an occupation beside those great -questions of human ills which his services are retained to study. -He is inattentive, and he grows even impertinent: he almost told me -yesterday that my neuralgia was all imagination!'</p> - -<p>'He took you for a flower, mother mine, because you are so lovely; and -so he thought you could have no mortal pain!' said Wanda, tenderly.</p> - -<p>Then after a pause she added:</p> - -<p>'Dear aunt, come with me. I have asked Father Ferdinand to have a mass -to-night for Bela. I fancy Bela is glad that no other life has been -taken by the lake.'</p> - -<p>The Princess rose quickly and kissed her.</p> - -<p>In the Strangers' Gallery, in a great chamber of panelled oak and -Flemish tapestries, the poacher, as he lay almost asleep on a grand old -bed, with yellow taffeta hangings, and the crown of the Szalras Counts -in gilded bronze above its head, he heard as if in his dream the sound -of chanting voices and the deep slow melodies of an organ.</p> - -<p>He stirred and opened his drowsy eyes.</p> - -<p>'Am I in heaven?' he asked feebly. Yet he was a man who, when he was -awake and well, believed not in heaven.</p> - -<p>The physician, sitting by his bedside, laid his hand upon his wrist. -The pulse was beating strongly but quickly.</p> - -<p>'You are in the Burg of Hohenszalras,' he answered him. 'The music -you hear comes from the chapel; there is a midnight mass. A mass of -thanksgiving for you.'</p> - -<p>The heavy lids fell over the eyes of the weary man, and the dreamy -sense of warmth and peace that was upon him lulled him into the -indifference of slumber.</p> - - - -<hr class="chap" /> -<h4><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III</a></h4> - - -<p>With the morning, though the storm had ceased and passed away, the -clouds were dark, the mountains were obscured, and the rain was pouring -down upon lake and land.</p> - -<p>It was still early in the day when the stranger was aroused to the full -sense of awaking in a room unknown to him; he had slept all through the -night; he was refreshed and without fever. His left arm was strained, -and he had many bruises; otherwise he was conscious of no hurt.</p> - -<p>'Twice in that woman's power,' he thought, with anger, as he looked -round the great tapestried chamber that sheltered him, and tried to -disentangle his actual memories of the past night from the dreams that -had haunted him of the Nibelungen Queen, who all night long he had -seen in her golden armour, with her eyes which, like those of the Greek -nymph, dazzled those on whom they gazed to madness. Dream and fact had -so interwoven themselves that it was with an effort he could sever the -two, awaking as he did now in an unfamiliar chamber, and surrounded -with those tapestries whose colossal figures seemed the phantoms of a -spirit world.</p> - -<p>He was a man in whom some vein of superstition had outlived the -cold reason and the cynical mockeries of the worldly experiences -and opinions in which he was steeped. A shudder of cold ran through -his blood as he opened his eyes upon that dim, tranquil, and vast -apartment, with the stories of the Tannhäuser legend embroidered on the -walls.</p> - -<p>'I am he! I am he!' he thought incoherently, watching the form of the -doomed knight speeding through the gloom and snow.</p> - -<p>'How does the most high and honourable gentleman feel himself this -morning?' asked of him, in German, a tall white-haired woman, who might -have stepped down from an old panel of Metzu.</p> - -<p>The simple commonplace question roused him from the mists of his -fancies and fears, and realised to him the bare fact that he was a -guest, unbidden, in the walls of Szaravola.</p> - -<p>The physician also drew near his bed to question him; and a boy brought -on a tray Rhine wine and Tokayer Ausbruck, coffee and chocolate, bread -and eggs.</p> - -<p>He broke his fast with a will, for he had eaten nothing since the day -before at noon; and the Professor Greswold congratulated him on his -good night's rest, and on his happy escape from the Szalrassee.</p> - -<p>Then he himself said, with a little confusion:</p> - -<p>'I saw a lady last night?'</p> - -<p>'Certainly, you saw our lady,' said Greswold, with a smile.</p> - -<p>'What do you call her?' he asked, eagerly.</p> - -<p>The physician answered:</p> - -<p>'She is the Countess Wanda von Szalras. She is sole mistress here. -But for her, my dear sir, I fear me you would be now lying in those -unfathomed depths that the bravest of us fear.'</p> - -<p>The stranger shuddered a little.</p> - -<p>'I was a madman to try the lake with such an overcast sky; but I had -missed my road, and I was told that it lay on the other side of the -water. Some peasants tried to dissuade me from crossing, but I am a -good rower and swimmer too; so I set forth to pull myself over your -lake.'</p> - -<p>'With a sky black as ink! I suppose you are used to more serene -summers. Midsummer is not so different to midwinter here that you can -trust to its tender mercies.'</p> - -<p>The stranger was silent.</p> - -<p>'She took my gun from me in the morning,' he said abruptly. The memory -of the indignity rankled in him, and made bitter the bread and wine.</p> - -<p>The physician laughed.</p> - -<p>'Were you poaching? Oh, that is almost a hanging matter in the -Hohenszalras woods. Had you met Otto without our lady he would most -likely have shot you without warning.'</p> - -<p>'Are you savages in the Tauern?'</p> - -<p>'Oh no; but we are very feudal still, and our forest laws have escaped -alteration in this especial part of the province.'</p> - -<p>'She has been very hospitable to me, since my crime was so great.'</p> - -<p>'She is the soul of hospitality, and the Schloss is a hospice,' said -the physician. 'When there is no town nearer than ten Austrian miles, -and the nearest posting-house is at Windisch-Matrey, it is very -necessary to exercise the primitive virtues; it is our compensation -for our feudalism. But take some tokayer, my dear sir; you are weaker -than you know. You have had a bath of ice; you had best lie still, and -I will send you some journals and books.'</p> - -<p>'I would rather get up and go away,' said the stranger. 'These bruises -are nothing. I will thank your lady, as you call her, and then go on my -way as quickly as I may.'</p> - -<p>'I see you do not understand feudal ways, though you have suffered from -them,' said the doctor. 'You shall get up if you wish; but I am certain -my lady will not let you leave here to-day. The rains are falling -in torrents; the roads are dangerous; a bridge has broken down over -the Bürgenbach, which you must cross to get away. In a word, if you -insist on departure, they will harness their best horses for you, for -all the antique virtues have refuge here, and amongst them is a grand -hospitality; but you will possibly kill the horses, and perhaps the -postillions, and you will not even then get very far upon your way. Be -persuaded by me. Wait at least until the morning dawns.'</p> - -<p>'I had better burden your lady with an unbidden guest than kill her -horses, certainly,' said the stranger. 'How is she sole mistress here? -Is there a Count von Szalras? Is she a widow?'</p> - -<p>'She has never married,' answered Greswold; and gave his patient a -brief sketch of the tragic fates of the lords of Hohenszalras, amongst -whom death had been so busy.'</p> - -<p>'A very happy woman to be so rich, and so free!' said the traveller, -with a little impatient envy; and he added, 'She is very handsome also; -indeed, beautiful. I now remember to have heard of her in Paris. Her -hand has been esteemed one of the great prizes of Europe.'</p> - -<p>'I think she will never marry,' said the old man.</p> - -<p>'Oh, my dear doctor, who can make such at least she looks young. What -age may she be?'</p> - -<p>'She was twenty-four years of age on Easter Day. As for happiness, -when you know the Countess Wanda, you will know that she would go out -as poor as S. Elizabeth, and self-dethroned like her, most willingly, -could she by such a sacrifice see her brothers living around her.'</p> - -<p>The stranger gave a little cynical laugh of utter incredulity, which -dismayed and annoyed the old professor.</p> - -<p>'You do not know her,' he said angrily.</p> - -<p>'I know humanity,' said the other. 'Will you kindly take all my -apologies and regrets to the Countess, and give her my name; the -Marquis de Sabran. She can satisfy herself as to my identity at any -embassy she may care to consult.'</p> - -<p>When he said his name, the professor gave a great cry and started from -his seat.</p> - -<p>'Sabran!' he echoed. 'You edited the "Mexico"!' he exclaimed, and gazed -over his spectacles in awe and sympathy commingled at the stranger, who -smiled and answered——</p> - -<p>'Long ago, yes. Have you heard of it?'</p> - -<p>'Heard of it!' echoed Greswold. 'Do you take us for barbarians, sir?' -It is here, both in my small library, which is the collection of a -specialist, and in the great library of the castle, which contains a -million of volumes.'</p> - -<p>'I am twice honoured,' said the stranger, with a smile of some irony. -The good professor was a little disconcerted, and his enthusiasm was -damped and cooled. He felt as much embarrassment as though he had been -the owner of a discredited work.</p> - -<p>'May I not be permitted to congratulate you, sir?' he said timidly. 'To -have produced that great work is to possess a title to the gratitude -and esteem of all educated men.'</p> - -<p>'You are very good,' said Sabran, somewhat indifferently; 'but all -that is great in that book is the Marquis Xavier's. I am but the mere -compiler.'</p> - -<p>'The compilation, the editing of it, required no less learning than the -original writer displayed, and that was immense,' said the physician, -and with all the enthusiasm of a specialist he plunged into discussion -of the many notable points of a mighty intellectual labour, which had -received the praise of all the cultured world.</p> - -<p>Sabran listened courteously, but with visible weariness. 'You are very -good,' he said at last. 'But you will forgive me if I say that I have -heard so much of the "Mexico" that I am tempted to wish I had never -produced it. I did so as a duty; it was all I could do in honour of one -to whom I owed far more than mere life itself.'</p> - -<p>Greswold bowed and said no more.</p> - -<p>'Give me my belt,' said the stranger to the man who waited on him; -it was a leathern belt, which had been about his loins; it was made -to hold gold and notes, a small six-chambered revolver, and a watch; -these were all in it, and with his money was the imperial permission to -shoot, which had been given, him by Franz Josef the previous autumn on -the Thorstein.</p> - -<p>'Your Countess' will doubtless recognise her Emperor's signature,' he -said, as he gave the paper to the physician. 'It will serve at least as -a passport, if not as a letter of presentation.'</p> - -<p>Réné, Marquis de Sabran-Romaris, was one of those persons who -illustrate the old fairy tale, of all the good gifts at birth being -marred by the malison of one godmother. He had great physical beauty, -personal charm, and facile talent; but his very facility was his bane. -He did all things so easily and well, that he had never acquired the -sterner quality of application. He was a brilliant and even profound -scholar, an accomplished musician, a consummate critic of art; and -was endowed, moreover, with great natural tact, taste, and correct -intuition.</p> - -<p>Being, as he was, a poor man, these gifts should have made him an -eminent one or a wealthy one, but the perverse fairy who had cursed -when the other had blessed him, had contrived to make all these graces -and talents barren. Whether it be true or not that the world knows -nothing of its greatest men, it is quite true that its cleverest men -very often do nothing of importance all their lives long. He did -nothing except acquire a distinct repute as a <i>dilettante</i> in Paris, -and a renown in the clubs of being always serene and fortunate at play.</p> - -<p>He had sworn to himself when he had been a youth to make his career -worthy of his name; but the years had slipped away, and he had done -nothing. He was a very clever man, and he had once set a high if a cold -and selfish aim before him as his goal. But he had done worse even than -fail; he had never even tried to reach it.</p> - -<p>He was only a <i>boulevardier</i>; popular and admired amongst men for his -ready wit and his cool courage, and by women often adored and often -hated, and sometimes, by himself, thoroughly despised: never so much -despised as when by simple luck at play or on the Bourse he made the -money which slid through his fingers with rapidity.</p> - -<p>All he had in the world were the wind-torn oaks and the sea-washed -rocks of a bleak and lonely Breton village, and a few hundred thousand -francs' worth of pictures, porcelains, arms, and <i>bibelots</i>, which -had accumulated in his rooms on the Boulevard Haussmann, bought at -the Drouot in the forenoons after successful play at night. Only two -things in him were unlike the men whose associate he was: he was as -temperate as an Arab, seldom even touching wine; and he was a keen -mountaineer and athlete, once off the asphalte of the Boulevards. For -the rest, popular though he was in the society he frequented, no -living man could boast of any real intimacy with him. He had a thousand -acquaintances, but he accepted no friend. Under the grace and suavity -of a very courtly manner he wore the armour of a great reserve.</p> - -<p>'At heart you have the taciturnity and the <i>sauvagerie</i> of the -Armorican beneath all your polished suavity,' said a woman of his world -to him once; and he did not contradict her.</p> - -<p>Men did not quarrel with him for it: he was a fine swordsman and a dead -shot: and women were allured all the more surely to him because they -felt that they never really entered his life or took any strong hold on -it.</p> - -<p>Such as he was he lay now half-awake on the great bed under its amber -canopy, and gazed dreamily at the colossal figures of the storied -tapestry, where the Tuscan idlers of the Decamerone wore the sombre -hues and the stiff and stately garb of Flemish fashion of the sixteenth -century.</p> - -<p>'I wonder why I tried so hard to live last night! I am not in love -with life,' he thought to himself, as he slowly remembered all that -had happened, and recalled the face of the lady who had leaned down -to him from over the stone parapet in the play of the torchlight and -lightnings. And yet life seemed good and worth having as he recalled -that boiling dusky swirl of water which had so nearly swallowed him up -in its anger.</p> - -<p>He was young enough to enjoy; he was blessed with a fine constitution -and admirable health, which even his own excesses had not impaired; he -had no close ties to the world, but he had a frequent enjoyment of it, -which made it welcome to him. The recovery of existence always enhances -its savour; and as he lay dreamily recalling the sharp peril he had -run, he was simply and honestly glad to be amongst living men.</p> - -<p>He remained still when the physician had left and looked around him; -in the wide hearth a fire of oak logs was burning; rain was beating -against the painted panes of the oriel casements; there was old -oak, old silver, old ivory in the furniture of the chamber, and the -tapestries were sombre and gorgeous. It was a room of the sixteenth -century; but the wine was in jugs of Bacarat glass, and a box of -Turkish cigarettes stood beside them, with the Paris and Vienna -newspapers. Everything had been thought of that could contribute to -his comfort: he wondered if the doctor had thought of all this, or -if it was due to the lady. 'It is a magnificent hospice,' he said to -himself with a smile, and then he angrily remembered his rifle, his -good English rifle, that was now sunk for ever with his little boat in -the waters of the Szalrassee. 'Why did she offer me that outrage?' he -said to himself: it went hard with him to lie under her roof, to touch -her wine and bread. Yet he was aching in every limb, the bed was easy -and spacious, the warmth and the silence and the aromatic scent of the -burning pine-cones were alluring him to rest; he dropped off to sleep -again, the same calm sleep of fatigue that had changed into repose, and -nothing woke him till the forenoon was passed.</p> - -<p>'Good heavens! how I am trespassing on this woman's hospitality!' he -thought as he did awake, angry with himself for having been lulled into -this oblivion; and he began to rise at once, though he felt his limbs -stiff and his head for the moment light.</p> - -<p>'Cannot I get a carriage for S. Johann? My servant is waiting for me -there,' he said to the youth attending on him, when his bath was over.</p> - -<p>The lad smiled with amusement.</p> - -<p>'There are no carriages here but our lady's, and she will not let you -stir this afternoon, my lord,' he answered in German, as he aided the -stranger to put on his own linen and shooting breeches, now dry and -smoothed out by careful hands.</p> - -<p>'But I have no coat! said the traveller in discomfiture, remembering -that his coat was gone with his rifle and his powder-flask.</p> - -<p>'The Herr Professor thought you could perhaps manage with one of these. -They were all of Count Gela's, who was a tall man and about your make,' -said an older man-servant who had entered, and now showed him several -unworn or scarcely worn suits.</p> - -<p>'If you could wear one of these, my lord, for this evening, we will -send as soon as it is possible for your servant and your clothes to S. -Johann; but it is impossible to-day, because a bridge is down over the -Bürgenbach.'</p> - -<p>'You are all of you too good,' said Sabran, as he essayed a coat of -black velvet.</p> - -<p>Pull of his new acquaintance and all his talents, the good man Greswold -had hurried away to obey the summons of his ladies, who had desired -to see him. He found them in the white room, a grand salon hung with -white satin silver-fringed, and stately with white marble friezes -and columns, whence it took its name. It was a favourite room with -the mistress of the Schloss; at either end of it immense windows, -emblazoned and deeply embayed, looked out over the sublime landscape -without, of which at this moment every outline was shrouded in the grey -veil of an incessantly falling rain.</p> - -<p>With humble obeisances Greswold presented the message and the -credentials of her guest to Wanda von Szalras; it was the first -occasion that he had had of doing so. She read the document signed by -the Kaiser with a smile.</p> - -<p>'This is the paper which this unhappy gentleman spoke of when I -arrested him as a poacher,' she said to her aunt. 'The Marquis de -Sabran. The name is familiar to me: I have heard it before.'</p> - -<p>'Surely you do not forget the Pontêves-Bargême, the Ducs de Sabran?' -said the Princess, with some severity. S. Eleazar was a Comte de -Sabran!'</p> - -<p>'I know! But it is of something nearer to us than S. Eleazar that I am -thinking; there was surely some work or another which bore that name, -and was much read and quoted.'</p> - -<p>'He edited and annotated the great "Mexico",' said Herr Greswold, as -though all were told in that.</p> - -<p>'A <i>savant?</i>' murmured the Princess, in some contemptuous chagrin. -'Pray what is the "Mexico"?'</p> - -<p>'The grandest archæological and botanical work, the work of the finest -research and most varied learning that has been produced out of -Germany,' commenced the Professor, with eagerness, but the Princess -arrested him midway in his eloquence.</p> - -<p>'The French are all infidels, we know that; but one might have hoped -that in one of the old nobility, as his name would imply, some -lingering reverence for tradition remained.'</p> - -<p>'It is not a subversive, not a philosophic work,' said the Professor, -eagerly; but she silenced him.</p> - -<p>'It is a book! Why should a Marquis de Sabran write a book?' said the -Princess, with ineffable disdain.</p> - -<p>There were all the Fathers for anyone who wanted to read: what need for -any other use of printer's type? So she was accustomed to think and to -say when, scandalised, she saw the German, French, and English volumes, -of which whole cases were wont to arrive at Hohenszalras for the use -of Wanda von Szalras alone: works of philosophy and of science amongst -them which had been denounced in the 'Index.'</p> - -<p>'Dear mother,' said the Countess Wanda, 'I have read the "Mexico": -it is a grand monument raised to a dead man's memory out of his own -labours by one of his own descendants—his only descendant, if I -remember aright.'</p> - -<p>'Indeed,' said the Princess, unconvinced. 'I know those scientific -works by repute; they always consider the voyage of a germ of moss, -carried on an aerolite through an indefinite space for a billion of -ages, a matter much easier of credence than the "Life of St. Jerome." -I believe they call it sporadic transmission; they call typhus fever -the same.'</p> - -<p>'There is nothing of that in the "Mexico": it is a very fine work on -the archæology and history of the country, and on its flora.'</p> - -<p>'I should have supposed a Marquis de Sabran a gentleman,' said the -Princess, whom no precedent from the many monarchs who have been -guilty of inferior literature could convince that literature was other -than a trade much like shoemaking: at its best a sort of clerk's -quill-driving, to be equally pitied and censured.</p> - -<p>Here Greswold, who valued his post and knew his place too well to -defend either literature or sporadic germs, timidly ventured to suggest -that the Marquis might be well known amongst the nobility of western -France, although not of that immense distinction which finds its -chronicle in the Hof-Kalender. The Princess smiled.</p> - -<p>'<i>Petite noblesse.</i> You mean petite noblesse, my good Greswold? But -even the petite noblesse need not write books?'</p> - -<p>When, however, the further question arose of inviting the stranger to -come to their dinner-table, it was the haughtier Princess who advocated -the invitation; the mistress of the house demurred. She thought that -all requirements of courtesy and hospitality would be fulfilled by -allowing him to dine in his own apartments.</p> - -<p>'We do not know him,' she urged. 'No doubt he may very well be what he -says, but it is not easy to refer to an embassy while the rains are -making an island of the Tauern! Nay, dear mother, I am not suspicious; -but I think, as we are two women alone, we can fulfil all obligations -of hospitality towards this gentleman without making him personally -acquainted with ourselves.'</p> - -<p>'That is really very absurd. It is acting as if Hohenszalras were a -<i>gasthof</i>,' said the Princess, with petulance. 'It is not so often that -we have any relief to the tedium with which you are pleased to surround -yourself that we should be required to shut ourselves from any chance -break in it. Of course, if you send this person his dinner to his own -rooms, he will feel hurt, mortified; he will go away, probably on foot, -rather than remain where he is insulted. Breton nobility is not very -eminent, but it is very proud; it is provincial, territorial; but every -one knows it is ancient, and usually of the most loyal traditions alike -to Church and State. I should be the last person to advocate making a -friendship, or even an acquaintance, without the fullest inquiry; but -when it is a mere question of a politeness for twenty-four hours, -which can entail no consequences, then I must confess that I think -prejudices should yield before the obligations of courtesy. But of -course, my love, decide as you will: you are mistress.'</p> - -<p>The Countess Wanda smiled, and did not press her own opposition. She -perceived that the mind of her aunt was full of vivid and harmless -curiosity.</p> - -<p>In the end she suggested that the Princess should represent her, and -receive the foreign visitor with all due form and ceremony; but she -herself was still indisposed to admit a person of whose antecedents she -had no positive guarantee so suddenly and entirely into her intimacy.</p> - -<p>'You are extraordinarily suspicious,' said the elder lady, pettishly. -'If he were a pedlar or a colporteur, you would be willing to talk with -him.'</p> - -<p>'Pedlars and colporteurs cannot take any social advantage of one's -conversation afterwards,' replied her niece. 'We are not usually -invaded by men of rank here; so the precedent may not be perilous. Have -your own way, mother mine.'</p> - -<p>The Princess demurred, but finally accepted the compromise; reflecting -that if this stranger were to dine alone with her, she would be able to -ascertain much more about him than if Wanda, who had been created void -of all natural curiosity, and who would have been capable of living -with people twelve months without asking them a single question, would -render it possible to do were she present.</p> - -<p>Meanwhile, the physician hurried back to his new friend, who had a -great and peculiar interest for him as the editor of the "Mexico", and -offered him, with the permission of the Countess von Szalras, to wile -away the chill and gloomy day by an inspection of the Schloss.</p> - -<p>Joachim Greswold was a very learned and shrewd man, whom poverty and -love of tranquil opportunities of study had induced to bury himself -in the heart of the Glöckner mountains. He had already led a long, -severe, and blameless life of deep devotion and hard privation, -when the post of private physician at Hohenszalras in general, and -to the Princess Ottilie in especial, had been procured for him by -the interest of Prince Lilienhöhe. He had had many sorrows, trials, -and disappointments, which made the simple routine and the entire -solitude of his existence here welcome to him. But he was none the less -delighted to meet any companion of culture and intelligence to converse -with, and in his monotonous and lonely life it was a rare treat to be -able to exchange ideas with one fresh from the intellectual movements -of the outer world.</p> - -<p>The Professor found, not to his surprise since he had read the -"Mexico", that his elegant <i>grand seigneur</i> knew very nearly as much -as he did of botany and of comparative anatomy; that he had travelled -nearly all over the world, and travelled to much purpose, and knew many -curious things of the flora of the Rio Grande, whilst it appeared that -he possessed in his cabinets in Paris a certain variety of orchid that -the doctor had always longed to obtain. He was entirely won over when -Sabran, to whom the dried flower was very indifferent, promised to -send it to him. The French Marquis had not Greswold's absolute love of -science; he had studied every thing that had come to his hand, because -he had a high intelligence, and an insatiable appetite for knowledge; -and he had no other kind of devotion to it; when he had penetrated its -mysteries, it lost all interest for him.</p> - -<p>At any rate he knew enough to make him an enchanting companion to a -learned man who was all alone in his learning, and received little -sympathy in it from anyone near him.</p> - -<p>'What a grand house to be shut up in the heart of the mountains!' said -Sabran, with a sigh. 'I do believe what romance there still is in the -world does lie in these forests of Austria, which have all the twilight -and the solitude that would suit Merlin or the Sleeping Beauty better -than anything we have in France, except, indeed, here and there an old -château like Chenonceaux, or Maintenon.'</p> - -<p>'The world has not spoilt us as yet,' said the doctor. 'We see few -strangers. Our people are full of old faiths, old loyalties, old -traditions. They are a sturdy and yet tender people. They are as -fearless as their own steinbock, and they are as reverent as saints -were in monastic days. Our mountains are as grand as the Swiss ones, -but, thank Heaven, they are unspoilt and little known. I tremble when -I think they have begun to climb the Gross Glöckner; all the mystery -and glory of our glaciers will vanish when they become mere points of -ascension. The alpenstock of the tourist is to the everlasting hills -what railway metals are to the plains. Thank God! the few railroads we -have are hundreds of miles asunder.'</p> - -<p>'You are a reactionist, Doctor?'</p> - -<p>'I am an old man, and I have learned the value of repose,' said -Greswold. 'You know we are called a slow race. It is only the unwise -amongst us who have quicksilver in their brains and toes.'</p> - -<p>'You have gold in the former, at least,' said Sabran, kindly, 'and I -dare say quicksilver is in your feet, too, when there is a charity to -be done?'</p> - -<p>Herr Joachim, who was simple in the knowledge of mankind, though shrewd -in mother-wit, coloured a little with pleasure. How well this stranger -understood him!</p> - -<p>The day went away imperceptibly and agreeably to the physician and to -the stranger in this pleasant rambling talk; whilst the rain poured -down in fury on the stone terraces and green lawns without, and the -Szalrassee was hidden under a veil of fog.</p> - -<p>'Am I not to see her at all?' thought Sabran. He did not like to -express his disquietude on that subject to the physician, and he was -not sure himself whether he most desired to ride away without meeting -the serene eyes of his châtelaine, or to be face to face with her once -more.</p> - -<p>He stood long before her portrait, done by Carolus Duran; she wore -in it a close-fitting gown of white velvet, and held in her hand a -great Spanish hat with white plumes; the two hounds were beside her; -the attitude had a certain grandeur and gravity in it which were very -impressive.</p> - -<p>'This was painted last year,' said Greswold, 'at the Princess's -request. It is admirably like——'</p> - -<p>'It is a noble picture,' said Sabran. 'But what a very proud woman she -looks!'</p> - -<p>'Blood tells,' said Greswold, 'far more than most people know or admit. -It is natural that my Lady, with the blood in her of so many mighty -nobles, who had the power of judgment and chastisement over whole -provinces, should be sometimes disposed to exercise too despotic a -will, to be sometimes contemptuous of the dictates of modern society, -which sends the princess and the peasant alike to a law court for sole -redress of their wrongs. She is at times irreconcilable with the world -as it stands; she is the representative and descendant in a direct -line of arrogant and omnipotent princes. That she combines with that -natural arrogance and instinct of dominion a very beautiful pitifulness -and even humility is a proof of the chastening influence of religious -faith on the nature of women; we are too apt to forget that, in our -haste to destroy the Church. Men might get on perhaps very well without -a religion of any kind; but I tremble to think what their mothers and -their mistresses would become.'</p> - -<p>They passed the morning in animated discussion, and as it drew to -a close, the good doctor did not perceive how adroitly his new -acquaintance drew out from him all details of the past and present of -Hohenszalras, and of the tastes and habits of its châtelaine, until he -knew all that there was to be known of that pure and austere life.</p> - -<p>'You may think her grief for her brother Bela's death—for all her -brothers' deaths—a morbid sentiment,' said the doctor as he spoke of -her. 'But it is not so—no. It is, perhaps, overwrought; but no life -can be morbid that is so active in duty, so untiring in charity, so -unsparing of itself. Her lands and riches, and all the people dependent -on her, are to the Countess Wanda only as so much trust, for which -hereafter she will be responsible to Bela and to God. You and I may -smile, you and I, who are philosophers, and have settled past dispute -that the human life has no more future than the snail-gnawed cabbage, -but yet—yet, my dear sir, one cannot deny that there is something -exalted in such a conception of duty; and—of this I am convinced—that -on the character of a woman it has a very ennobling influence.'</p> - -<p>'No doubt. But has she renounced all her youth? Does she mean never to -go into the world or to marry?'</p> - -<p>'I am quite sure she has made no resolve of the sort,' But I do not -think she will ever alter. She has refused many great alliances. -Her temperament is serene, almost cold; and her ideal it would be -difficult, I imagine, for any mortal man to realise.'</p> - -<p>'But when a woman loves——'</p> - -<p>'Oh, of course,' said Herr Joachim, rather drily. 'If the aloe -flower!—--Love does not I think possess any part of the Countess -Wanda's thoughts or desires. She fancies it a mere weakness.'</p> - -<p>'A woman can scarcely be amiable without that weakness.'</p> - -<p>'No. Perhaps she is not precisely what we term amiable. She is rather -too far also from human emotions and human needs. The women of the -house of Szalras have been mostly very proud, silent, brave, and -resolute; great ladies rather than lovable wives. Luitgarde von Szalras -held this place with only a few archers and spearmen against Heinrich -Jasomergott in the twelfth century, and he raised the siege after five -months. "She is not a woman, nor human, she is a <i>kuttengeier</i>," he -said, as he retreated into his Wiener Wald. All the great monk-vultures -and the gyps and the pygargues have been sacred all through the Hohe -Tauern since that year.'</p> - -<p>'And I was about to shoot a <i>kuttengeier</i>—now I see that my offence -was beyond poaching, it was high treason almost!'</p> - -<p>'I heard the story from Otto. He would have hanged you cheerfully. -But I hope,' said the doctor, with a pang of misgiving, 'that I have -not given you any false impression of my Lady, as cold and hard and -unwomanly. She is full of tenderness of a high order; she is the -noblest, most truthful, and most generous nature that I have ever known -clothed in human form, and if she be too proud—well, it is a stately -sin, pardonable in one who has behind her eleven hundred years of -fearless and unblemished honour.'</p> - -<p>'I am a socialist,' said Sabran, a little curtly; then added, with a -little laugh, 'Though I believe not in rank, I do believe in race.'</p> - -<p>'<i>Bon sang ne peut mentir</i>,' murmured the old physician; the fair face -of Sabran changed slightly.</p> - -<p>'Will you come and look over the house?' said the Professor, who -noticed nothing, and only thought of propitiating the owner of the -rare orchid. 'There is almost as much to see as in the Burg at Vienna. -Everything has accumulated here undisturbed for a thousand years. -Hohenszalras has been besieged, but never deserted or dismantled.</p> - -<p>'It is a grand place!' said Sabran, with a look of impatience. 'It -seems intolerable that a woman should possess it all, while I only own -a few wind-blown oaks in the wilds of Finisterre.'</p> - -<p>'Ah, ah, that is pure socialism!' said the doctor, with a little -chuckle. '<i>Ote-toi, que je m'y mette.</i> That is genuine Liberalism all -the world over.'</p> - -<p>'You are no communist yourself, doctor?'</p> - -<p>'No,' said Herr Joachim, simply. 'All my studies lead me to the -conviction that equality is impossible, and were it possible, it would -be hideous. Variety, infinite variety, is the beneficent law of the -world's life. Why, in that most perfect of all societies, the beehive, -flawless mathematics are found co-existent with impassable social -barriers and unalterable social grades.'</p> - -<p>Sabran laughed good-humouredly.</p> - -<p>'I thought at least the bees enjoyed an undeniable Republic.'</p> - -<p>'A Republic with helots, sir, like Sparta. A Republic will always have -its helots. But come and wander over the castle. Come first and see the -parchments.'</p> - -<p>'Where are the ladies?' asked Sabran, wistfully.</p> - -<p>'The Princess is at her devotions and taking tisane. I visited her this -morning; she thinks she has a sore throat. As for our Lady, no one -ever disturbs her or knows what she is doing. When she wants any of us -ordinary folks, we are summoned. Sometimes we tremble. You know this -alone is an immense estate, and then there is a palace at the capital, -and one at Salzburg, not to speak of the large estates in Hungary -and the mines in Galicia. All these our Lady sees after and manages -herself. You can imagine that her secretary has no easy task, and that -secretary is herself; for she does not believe in doing anything well -by others.'</p> - -<p>'A second Maria Theresa!' said Sabran.</p> - -<p>'Not dissimilar, perhaps,' said the doctor, nettled at the irony of the -tone. 'Only where our great Queen sent thousands out to their deaths -the Countess von Szalras saves many lives. There are no mines in the -world—I will make bold to say—where there is so much comfort and so -little peril as those mines of hers in Stanislaw. She visited them -three years hence. But I forget, you are a stranger, and as you do not -share our cultus for the Grafin, cannot care to hear its Canticles. -Come to the muniment-room; you shall see some strange parchments.'</p> - -<p>'Heavens, how it rains!' said Sabran, as they left his chambers. 'Is -that common here?'</p> - -<p>'Very common, indeed!' said the doctor, with a laugh. 'We pass -two-thirds of the year between snow and water. But then we have -compensation. Where will you see such grass, such forests, such -gardens, when the summer sun does shine?'</p> - -<p>The Marquis de Sabran charmed him, and as they wandered over the huge -castle the physician delightedly displayed his own erudition, and -recognised that of his companion. The Hohenszalrasburg was itself -like some black-letter record of old South-German history; it was a -chronicle written in stone and wood and iron. The brave old house, -like a noble person, contained in itself a liberal education, and the -stranger whom through an accident it sheltered was educated enough to -comprehend and estimate it at its due value. In his passage through -it he won the suffrages of the household by his varied knowledge -and correct appreciation. In the stables his praises of the various -breeds of horses there commended itself by its accuracy to Ulrich, the -<i>stallmeister</i>, not less than a few difficult shots in the shooting -gallery proved his skill to his enemy of the previous day, Otto, the -<i>jägermeister.</i> Not less did he please Hubert, who was learned in such -things, with his cultured admiration of the wonderful old gold and -silver plate, the Limoges dishes and bowls, the Vienna and Kronenthal -china; nor less the custodian of the pictures, a collection of Flemish -and German masters, with here and there a modern <i>capolavoro</i>, hung all -by themselves in a little vaulted gallery which led into a much larger -one consecrated to tapestries, Flemish, French, and Florentine.</p> - -<p>When twilight came, and the greyness of the rain-charged atmosphere -deepened into the dark of night, Sabran had made all living things at -the castle his firm friends, down to the dogs of the house, save and -except the ladies who dwelt in it. Of them he had had no glimpse. They -kept their own apartments. He began to feel some fresh embarrassment -at remaining another night beneath a roof the mistress of which did -not deign personally to recognise his presence. A salon hung with -tapestries opened out of the bedchamber allotted to him; he wondered if -he were to dine there like a prisoner of state.</p> - -<p>He felt an extreme reluctance united to a strong curiosity to meet -again the woman who had treated him with such cool authority and -indifference as a common poacher in her woods. His cheek tingled still, -whenever he thought of the manner in which, at her signal, his hands -had been tied, and his rifle taken from him. She was the representative -of all that feudal, aristocratic, despotic, dominant spirit of a dead -time which he, with his modern, cynical, reckless Parisian Liberalism, -most hated, or believed that he hated. She was Austria Felix -personified, and he was a man who had always persuaded himself and -others that he was a socialist, a Philippe Egalité. And this haughty -patrician had mortified him and then had benefited and sheltered him!</p> - -<p>He would willingly have gone from under her roof without seeing -her, and yet a warm and inquisitive desire impelled him to feel an -unreasonable annoyance that the day was going by without his receiving -any intimation that he would be allowed to enter her presence, or be -expected to make his obeisances to her. When, however, the servants -entered to light the many candles in his room, Hubert entered behind -them, and expressed the desire of his lady that the Marquis would -favour them with his presence: they were about to dine.</p> - -<p>Sabran, standing before the mirror, saw himself colour like a boy: he -knew not whether he were most annoyed or pleased. He would willingly -have ridden away leaving his napoleons for the household, and seeing -no more the woman who had made him ridiculous in his own eyes; yet -the remembrance of her haunted him as something strange, imperious, -magnetic, grave, serene, stately; vague memories of a thousand things -he had heard said of her in embassies and at courts came to his mind; -she had been a mere unknown name to him then; he had not listened, -he had not cared, but now he remembered all he had heard; curiosity -and an embarrassment wholly foreign to him struggled together in him. -What could he say to a woman who had first insulted and then protected -him? It would tax all the ingenuity and the tact for which he was -famed. However, he only said to the major-domo, 'I am much flattered. -Express my profound gratitude to your ladies for the honour they are so -good as to do me.' Then he made his attire look as well as it could, -and considering that punctuality is due from guests as well as from -monarchs, he said that he was ready to follow the servant waiting for -him, and did so through the many tapestried and panelled corridors by -which the enormous house was traversed.</p> - -<p>Though light was not spared at the burg it was only such light as oil -and wax could give the galleries and passages; dim mysterious figures -loomed from the rooms and shadows seemed to stretch away on every side -to vast unknown chambers that might hold the secrets of a thousand -centuries. When he was ushered into the radiance of the great white -room he felt dazzled and blinded.</p> - -<p>He felt his bruise still, and he walked with a slight lameness from a -strain of his left foot, but this did not detract from the grace and -distinction of his bearing, and the pallor of his handsome features -became them; and when he advanced through the opened doors and bent -before the chair and kissed the hands of the Princess Ottilie she -thought to herself, 'What a perfectly beautiful person. Even Wanda -will have to admit that!' Whilst Hubert, going backward, said to his -regiment of under-servants: 'Look you! since Count Gela rode out to his -death at the head of the White Hussars, so grand a man as this stranger -has not set foot in this house.'</p> - -<p>He expected to see the Countess Wanda von Szalras. Instead, he saw -the loveliest little old lady he had ever seen in his life, clad in a -semi-conventual costume, leaning on a gold-headed cane, with clouds -of fragrant old lace about her, and a cross of emeralds hung at her -girdle of onyx beads, who saluted him with the ceremonious grace of -that etiquette which is still the common rule of life amongst the great -nobilities of the north. He hastened to respond in the same spirit with -an exquisite deference of manner.</p> - -<p>She greeted him with affable and smiling words, and he devoted himself -to her with deference and gallantry, expressing all his sense of -gratitude for the succour and shelter he received, with a few eloquent -and elegant phrases which said enough and not too much, with a grace -that it is difficult to lend to gratitude which is generally somewhat -halting and uncouth.</p> - -<p>'His name must be in the Hof-Kalendar!' she thought, as she replied to -his protestations with her prettiest smile which, despite her sacred -calling and her seventy years, was the smile of a coquette.</p> - -<p>'M. le Marquis,' she said, in her tender and flute-like voice, 'I -deserve none of your eloquent thanks. Age is sadly selfish. I did -nothing to rescue you, unless, indeed, Heaven heard my unworthy -prayer!—and this house is not mine, nor anything in it; the owner of -it, and, therefore, your châtelaine of the moment, is my grand-niece, -the Countess Wanda von Szalras.'</p> - -<p>'That I had your intercession with Heaven, however indirectly, was far -more than I deserved,' said Sabran, still standing before her. 'For the -Countess Wanda, I have been twice in her power, and she has been very -generous.'</p> - -<p>'She has done her duty, nothing more,' said the Princess a little -primly and petulantly, if princesses and petulance can mingle. 'We -should have scarce been Christians if we had not striven for your -life. As to leaving us this day it was out of the question. The storm -continues, the passes are torrents; I fear much that it will even be -impossible for your servant to come from S. Johann; we could not send -to Matrey even this morning for the post-bag, and they tell me the -bridge is down over the Bürgenbach.'</p> - -<p>'I have wanted for nothing, and my Parisian rogue is quite as well -yawning and smoking his days away at S. Johann,' said Sabran. 'Oh, -Madame! how can I ever express to you all my sense of the profound -obligations you have laid me under, stranger that I am!'</p> - -<p>'At least we were bound to atone for the incivility of the Szalrassee,' -said the Princess, with her pretty smile. 'It is a very horrible -country to live in. My niece, indeed, thinks it Arcadia, but an Arcadia -subject to the most violent floods, and imprisoned in snow and frost -for so many months, does not commend itself to me; no doubt it is very -grand and romantic.'</p> - -<p>The ideal of the Princess was neither grand nor romantic: it was life -in the little prim, yet gay north German town in the palace of which -she and all her people had been born; a little town, with red roofs, -green alleys, straight toylike streets, clipped trees, stiff soldiers, -set in the midst of a verdant plain; flat and green, and smooth as a -card table.</p> - -<p>The new comer interested her; she was quickly won by personal beauty, -and he possessed this in a great degree. It was a face unlike any she -had ever seen; it seemed to her to bear mystery with it and melancholy, -and she loved both those things; perhaps because she had never met with -either out of the pages of German poets and novelists of France. Those -who are united to them in real life find them uneasy bedfellows.</p> - -<p>'Perhaps he is some Kronprinz in disguise,' she thought with pleasure; -but then she sadly recollected that she knew every crown prince that -there was in Europe. She would have liked to have asked him many -questions, but her high-breeding was still stronger than her curiosity; -and a guest could never be interrogated.</p> - -<p>Dinner was announced as served.</p> - -<p>'My niece, the Countess Wanda,' said the Princess, with a little -reluctance visible in her hesitation, 'will dine in her own rooms. She -begs you to excuse her; she is tired from the storm last night.'</p> - -<p>'She will not dine with me,' thought Sabran, with the quick intuition -natural to him.</p> - -<p>'You leave me nothing to regret, Princess,' he said readily, with a -sweet smile, as he offered his arm to this lovely little lady, wrapped -in laces fine as cobweb, with her great cross of emeralds pendent from -her rosary.</p> - -<p>A woman is never too old to be averse to the thought that she can -charm; very innocent charming was that of the Princess Ottilie, and she -thought with a sigh if she had married—if she had had such a son; yet -she was not insensible to the delicate compliment which he paid her -in appearing indifferent to the absence of his châtelaine and quite -content with her own presence.</p> - -<p>Throughout dinner in that great hall, he, sitting on her right hand, -amused her, flattered her with that subtlest of all flattery, interest -and attention; diverted her with gay stories of worlds unknown to her, -and charmed her with his willingness to listen to her lament over the -degeneracy of mankind and of manners. After a few words of courtesy as -to his hostess's absence he seemed not even to remember that Wanda von -Salzras was absent from the head of her table.</p> - -<p>'And I have said that she was tired! She who is never more tired -than the eagles are! May heaven forgive me the untruth!' thought -the Princess more than once during the meal, which was long and -magnificent, and at which her guest ate sparingly and drank but little.</p> - -<p>'You have no appetite?' she said regretfully.</p> - -<p>'Pardon me, I have a good one,' he answered her; 'but I have always -been content to eat little and drink less. It is the secret of health; -and my health is all my riches.'</p> - -<p>She looked at him with interest.</p> - -<p>'I should think your riches in that respect are inexhaustible?'</p> - -<p>He smiled.</p> - -<p>'Oh yes! I have never had a day's illness, except once, long ago in the -Mexican swamps, a marsh fever and a snake-bite.'</p> - -<p>'You have travelled much?'</p> - -<p>'I have seen most of the known world, and a little of the unknown,' -he answered. 'I am like Ulysses; only there will be not even a dog to -welcome me when my wanderings are done.'</p> - -<p>'Have you no relatives?'</p> - -<p>'None!' he added, with an effort. Everyone is dead; dead long ago. I -have been long alone, and I am very well used to it.'</p> - -<p>'But you must have troops of friends?'</p> - -<p>'Oh!—friends who will win my last napoleon at play, or remember me as -long as they meet me every day on the boulevards? Yes, I have many of -that sort, but they are not worth Ulysses' dog.'</p> - -<p>He spoke carelessly, without any regard to the truth as far as it went, -but no study would have made him more apt to coin words to attract the -sympathy of his listeners.</p> - -<p>'He is unfortunate,' she thought. 'How often beauty brings misfortune. -My niece must certainly see him. I wish he belonged to the -Pontêves-Bargêmes!'</p> - -<p>Not to have a name that she knew, one of those names that fill all -Europe as with the trump of an archangel, was to be as one maimed or -deformed in the eyes of the Princess, an object for charity, not for -intercourse.</p> - -<p>'Your title is of Brittany, I think?' she said a little wistfully, -and as he answered something abruptly in the affirmative, she solaced -herself once more with the remembrance that there was a good deal of -<i>petite noblesse</i>, honourable enough, though not in the 'Almanac de -Gotha,' which was a great concession from her prejudices, invented on -the spur of the interest that he excited in her imagination.</p> - -<p>'I never saw any person so handsome,' she thought, as she glanced -at his face; while he in return thought that this silver-haired, -soft-cheeked, lace-enwrapped Holy Mother was <i>jolie à croquer</i> in -the language of those boulevards, which had been his nursery and his -palestrum. She was so kind to him, she was so gracious and graceful, -she chatted with him so frankly and pleasantly, and she took so active -an interest in his welfare that he was touched and grateful. He had -known many women, many young ones and gay ones; he had never known what -the charm of a kindly and serene old age can be like in a woman who has -lived with pure thoughts, and will die in hope and in faith; and this -lovely old abbess, with her pretty touch of worldliness, was a study to -him, new with the novelty of innocence, and of a kind of veneration. -And he was careful not to let her perceive his mortification that the -Countess von Szalras would not deign to dine in his presence. In truth, -he thought of little else, but no trace of irritation or of absence of -mind was to be seen in him as he amused the Princess, and discovered -with her that they had in common some friends amongst the nobilities of -Saxony, of Wurtemberg, and of Bohemia.</p> - -<p>'Come and take your coffee in my own room, the blue-room,' she said to -him, and she rose and took his arm. 'We will go through the library; -you saw it this morning, I imagine? It is supposed to contain the -finest collection of Black Letter in the empire, or so we think.'</p> - -<p>And she led him through the great halls and up a few low stairs into a -large oval room lined with oaken bookcases, which held the manuscripts, -missals, and volumes of all dates which had been originally gathered -together by one of the race who had been also a bishop and a cardinal.</p> - -<p>The library was oak-panelled, and had an embossed and emblazoned -ceiling; silver lamps of old Italian <i>trasvorato</i> work, hung by -silver chains, and shed a subdued clear light; beneath the porphyry -sculptures of the hearth a fire of logs was burning, for the early -summer evening here is chill and damp; there were many open fireplaces -in Hohenszalras, introduced there by a chilly Provençal princess, who -had wedded a Szalras in the seventeenth century, and who had abolished -the huge porcelain stoves in many apartments in favour of grand carved -mantel-pieces, and gilded andirons, and sweet smelling simple fires of -aromatic woods, such as made glad the sombre hotels and lonely châteaux -of the Prance of the Bourbons.</p> - -<p>Before this hearth, with the dogs stretched on the black bearskin -rugs, his hostess was seated; she had dined in a small dining-hall -opening out of the library, and was sitting reading with a shaded -light behind her. She rose with astonishment, and, as he fancied, -anger upon her face as she saw him enter, and stood in her full height -beneath the light of one of the silver hanging lamps. She wore a gown -of olive-coloured velvet, with some pale roses fastened amongst the -old lace at her breast; she had about her throat several rows of large -pearls, which she always wore night and day that they should not change -their pure whiteness by disuse; she looked very stately, cold, annoyed, -disdainful, as she stood there without speaking.</p> - -<p>'It is my niece, the Countess von Szalras,' said the Princess to her -companion in some trepidation. 'Wanda, my love, I was not aware you -were here; I thought you were in your own octagon room; allow me to -make you acquainted with your guest, whom you have already received -twice with little ceremony I believe.'</p> - -<p>The trifling falsehoods were trippingly but timidly said; the -Princess's blue eyes sought consciously her niece's forgiveness with -a pathetic appeal, to which Wanda, who loved her tenderly, could not -be long obdurate. Had it been any other than Mme. Ottilie who had -thus brought by force into her presence a stranger whom she had -marked her desire to avoid, the serene temper of the mistress of -the Hohenszalrasburg would not have preserved its equanimity, and -she would have quitted her library on the instant, sweeping a grand -courtesy which should have been greeting and farewell at once to one -too audacious. But the shy entreating appeal of the Princess's regard -touched her heart, and the veneration she had borne from childhood -to one so holy, and so sacred by years of grace, checked in her any -utterance or sign of annoyance.</p> - -<p>Sabran, meanwhile, standing by in some hesitation and embarrassment, -bowed low with consummate grace, and a timidity not less graceful.</p> - -<p>She advanced a step and held her hand out to him.</p> - -<p>'I fear I have been inhospitable, sir,' she said to him in his -own tongue. 'Are you wholly unhurt? You had a rough greeting from -Hohenszalras.'</p> - -<p>He took the tip of her fingers on his own and bent over them as humbly -as over an empress's.</p> - -<p>Well used to the world as he was, to its ceremonies, courts, and -etiquettes, he was awed by her as if he were a youth; he lost his ready -aptness of language, and his easy manner of adaptability.</p> - -<p>'I am but a vagrant, Madame!' he murmured, as he bowed over her hand. -'I have no right even to your charity!'</p> - -<p>For the moment it seemed to her as if he spoke in bitter and melancholy -earnest, and she looked at him in a passing surprise that changed into -a smile.</p> - -<p>'You were a poacher certainly, but that is forgiven. My aunt has taken -you under her protection; and you had the Kaiser's already: with such a -dual shelter you are safe. Are you quite recovered?' she said, bending -her grave glance upon him. 'I have to ask your pardon for my great -negligence in not sending one of my men to guide you over the pass to -Matrey.'</p> - -<p>'Nay, if you had done so I should not have enjoyed the happiness of -being your debtor,' he replied, meeting her close gaze with a certain -sense of confusion most rare with him; and added a few words of -eloquent gratitude, which she interrupted almost abruptly:</p> - -<p>'Pray carry no such burden of imaginary debt, and have no scruples in -staying as long as you like; we are a mountain refuge, use it as you -would a monastery. In the winter we have many travellers. We are so -entirely in the heart of the hills that we are bound by all Christian -laws to give a refuge to all who need it. But how came you on the lake -last evening? Could you not read the skies?'</p> - -<p>He explained his own folly and hardihood, and added, with a glance at -her, 'The offending rifle is in the Szalrassee. It was my haste to quit -your dominions that made me venture on to the lake. I had searched in -vain for the high road that you had told me of, and I thought if I -crossed the lake I should be off your soil.'</p> - -<p>'No; for many leagues you would not have been off it,' she answered -him. 'Our lands are very large, and, like the Archbishopric of -Berchtesgarten, are as high as they are broad. Our hills are very -dangerous for strangers, especially until the snows of the passes have -all melted. I repented me too late that I did not send a jäger with you -as a guide.'</p> - -<p>'All is well that ends well,' said the Princess. 'Monsieur is not the -worse for his bath in the lake, and we have the novelty of an incident -and of a guest, who we will hope in the future will become a friend.'</p> - -<p>'Madame, if I dared hope that I should have much to live for!' said the -stranger, and the Princess smiled sweetly upon him.</p> - -<p>'You must have very much to live for, as it is. Were I a man, and as -young as you, and as favoured by nature, I am afraid I should be -tempted to live for—myself.'</p> - -<p>'And I am most glad when I can escape from so poor a companion,' said -he, with a melancholy in the accent and a passing pain that was not -assumed.</p> - -<p>Before this gentle and gracious old woman in this warm and elegant -chamber he felt suddenly that he was a wanderer—perhaps an outcast.</p> - -<p>'You need not use the French language with him, Wanda,' interrupted the -Princess. 'The Marquis speaks admirable German: it is impossible to -speak better.'</p> - -<p>'We will speak our own tongue then,' said Wanda, who always regarded -her aunt as though she were a petted and rather wayward child. 'Are you -quite rested, M. de Sabran? and quite unhurt?' I did not dine with you. -It must have seemed churlish. But I am very solitary in my habits, and -my aunt entertains strangers so much better than I do that I grow more -hermit-like every year.'</p> - -<p>He smiled; he thought there was but little of the hermit in this -woman's supreme elegance and dignity as she stood beside her hearth -with its ruddy, fitful light playing on the great pearls at her throat -and burnishing into gold the bronze shadows of her velvet gown.</p> - -<p>'The Princess has told me that you are cruel to the world,' he answered -her. 'But it is natural with such a kingdom that you seldom care to -leave it.'</p> - -<p>'It is a kingdom of snow for seven months out of the year,' said the -Princess peevishly, 'and a water kingdom the other five. You see what -it is to-day, and this is the middle of May!'</p> - -<p>'I think one might well forget the rain and every other ill between -these four walls,' said the French Marquis, as he glanced around him, -and then slowly let his eyes rest on his châtelaine.</p> - -<p>'It is a grand library,' she answered him; 'but I must warn you that -there is nothing more recent in it than Diderot and Descartes. The -cardinal—Hugo von Szalras—who collected it lived in the latter half -of last century, and since his day no Szalras has been bookish save -myself. The cardinal, however, had all the MSS. and the black letters, -or nearly all, ready to his hand; what he added is a vast library -of science and history, and he also got together some of the most -beautiful missals in the world. Are you curious in such things?'</p> - -<p>She rose as she spoke, and unlocked one of the doors of the oak -bookcase and brought out an ivory missal carved by the marvellous -Prönner of Klagenfurt, with the arms of the Szalras on one side of it -and those of a princely German house on the other.</p> - -<p>'That was the nuptial missal of Georg von Szalras and Ida Windisgratz -in 1501,' she said; 'and these are all the other marriage-hours of our -people, if you care to study them'; and in that case next to this there -is a wonderful Evangelistarium, with miniatures of Angelico's. But I -see they tell all their stories to you; I see by the way you touch them -that you are a connoisseur.'</p> - -<p>'I fear I have studied them chiefly at the sales of the Rue Drouot,' -said Sabran, with a smile; but he had a great deal of sound knowledge -on all arts and sciences, and a true taste which never led him wrong. -With an illuminated chronicle in his hand, or a book of hours on his -knee, he conversed easily, discursively, charmingly, of the early -scribes and the early masters; of monkish painters and of church -libraries; of all the world has lost, and of all aid that art had -brought to faith.</p> - -<p>He talked well, with graceful and well-chosen language, with -picturesque illustration, with a memory that never was at fault for -name or date, or apt quotation; he spoke fluent and eloquent German, in -which there was scarcely any trace of foreign accent; and he disclosed -without effort the resources of a cultured and even learned mind.</p> - -<p>The antagonism she had felt against the poacher of her woods melted -away as she listened and replied to him; there was a melody in his -voice and a charm in his manner that it was not easy to resist; and -with the pale lights from the Italian lamp which swung near upon the -fairness of his face she reluctantly owned that her aunt had been -right: he was singularly handsome, with that uncommon and grand cast -of beauty which in these days is rarer than it was in the times of -Vandyck and of Velasquez—for manners and moods leave their trace on -the features, and this age is not great.</p> - -<p>The Princess in, her easy-chair, for once not sleeping after dinner, -listened to her and thought to herself, 'She is angry with me; but how -much better it is to talk with a living being than to pass the evening -over a philosophical treatise, or the accounts of her schools, or her -stables!'</p> - -<p>Sabran having conquered the momentary reluctance and embarrassment -which had overcome him in the presence of the woman to whom he owed -both an outrage and a rescue, endeavoured, with all the skill he -possessed, to interest and beguile her attention. He knew that she was -a great lady, a proud woman, a recluse, and a student, and a person -averse to homage and flattery of every kind; he met her on the common -ground of art and learning, and could prove himself her equal at all -times, even occasionally her master. When he fancied she had enough of -such serious themes he spoke of music. There was a new opera then out -at Paris, of which the theme was as yet scarcely known. He looked round -the library and said to her:</p> - -<p>'Were there an organ here or a piano I could give you some idea of the -motive; I can recall most of it.'</p> - -<p>'There are both in my own room. It is near here,' she said to him. -'Will you come?'</p> - -<p>Then she led the way across the gallery, which alone separated the -library from that octagon room which was so essentially her own where -all were hers. The Princess accompanied her: content as a child is who -has put a light to a slow match that leads it knows not whither. 'She -must approve of him, or she would not take him there,' thought the wise -Princess.</p> - -<p>'Go and play to us,' said Wanda von Szalras, as her guest entered the -sacred room. 'I am sure you are a great musician; you speak of music -as we only speak of what we love.'</p> - -<p>'What do you love?' he wondered mutely, as he sat down before the -grand piano and struck a few chords. He sat down and played without -prelude one of the most tender and most grave of Schubert's sonatas. -It was subtle, delicate, difficult to interpret, but he gave it with -consummate truth of touch and feeling. He had always loved German music -best. He played on and on, dreamily, with a perfection of skill that -was matched by his tenderness of interpretation.</p> - -<p>'You are a great artist,' said his hostess, as he paused.</p> - -<p>He rose and approached her.</p> - -<p>'Alas! no, I am only an amateur,' he answered her. 'To be an artist one -must needs have immense faith in one's art and in oneself: I have no -faith in anything. An artist steers straight to one goal; I drift.'</p> - -<p>'You have drifted to wise purpose——'You must have studied much?'</p> - -<p>'In my youth. Not since. An artist! Ah! how I envy artists! They -believe; they aspire; even if they never attain, they are happy, happy -in their very torment, and through it, like lovers.'</p> - -<p>'But your talent——'</p> - -<p>'Ah, Madame, it is only talent; it is nothing else. The <i>feu sacré</i> is -wanting.'</p> - -<p>She looked at him with some curiosity.</p> - -<p>'Perhaps the habit of the world has put out that fire: it often does. -But if even it be only talent, what a beautiful talent it is! To -carry all that store of melody safe in your memory—it is like having -sunlight and moonlight ever at command.'</p> - -<p>Lizst had more than once summoned the spirits of Heaven to his call -there in that same room in Hohenszalras; and since his touch no one -had ever made the dumb notes speak as this stranger could do, and the -subdued power of his voice added to the melody he evoked. The light -of the lamps filled with silvery shadows the twilight of the chamber; -the hues of the tapestries, of the ivories, of the gold and silver -work, of the paintings, of the embroideries, made a rich chiaro-oscuro -of colour; the pine cones and the dried thyme burning on the hearth -shed an aromatic smell on the air; there were large baskets and vases -full of hothouse roses and white lilies from the gardens; she sat by -the hearth, left in shadow except where the twilight caught the gleam -of her pearls and the shine of her eyes; she listened, the jewels on -her hand glancing like little stars as she slowly waved to and fro a -feather screen in rhythm with what he sang or played: so might Mary -Stuart have looked, listening to Rizzio or Ronsard. 'She is a queen!' -he thought, and he sang—</p> - -<p> -'Si j'étais Roi!'<br /> -</p> - -<p>'Go on!' she said, as he paused; he had thrown eloquence and passion -into the song.</p> - -<p>'Shall I not tire you?'</p> - -<p>'That is only a phrase! Save when Liszt passes by here I never hear -such music as yours.'</p> - -<p>'He obeyed her, and played and sang many and very different things.</p> - -<p>At last he rose a little abruptly.</p> - -<p>Two hours had gone by since they had entered the octagon chamber.</p> - -<p>'It would be commonplace to thank you,' she murmured with a little -hesitation. 'You have a great gift; one of all gifts the most generous -to others.'</p> - -<p>He made a gesture of repudiation, and walked across to a spinet of the -fifteenth century, inlaid with curious devices by Martin Pacher of -Brauneck, and having a painting of his in its lid.</p> - -<p>'What a beautiful old box,' he said, as he touched it. 'Has it any -sound, I wonder? If one be disposed to be sad, surely of all sad things -an old spinet is the saddest! To think of the hands that have touched, -of the children that have danced to it, of the tender old ballads that -have been sung to the notes that to us seem so hoarse and so faulty! -All the musicians dead, dead so long ago, and the old spinet still -answering when anyone calls! Shall I sing you a madrigal to it?'</p> - -<p>Very tenderly, very lightly, he touched the ivory keys of the painted -toy of the ladies so long dead and gone, and he sang in a minor key the -sweet, sad, quaint poem:—</p> - -<p style="margin-left: 20%;"> -Où sont les neiges d'antan?<br /> -</p> - -<p>That ballad of fair women echoed softly through the stillness of the -chamber, touched with the sobbing notes of the spinet, even as it might -have been in the days of its writer:</p> - -<p style="margin-left: 20%;"> -Où sont les neiges d'antan?<br /> -</p> - -<p>The chords of the old music-box seemed to sigh and tremble with -remembrance. Where were they, all the beautiful dead women, all the -fair imperious queens, all the loved, and all the lovers? Where were -they? The snow had fallen through so many white winters since that song -was sung—so many! so many!</p> - -<p>The last words thrilled sadly and sweetly through the silence.</p> - -<p>He rose and bowed very low.</p> - -<p>'I have trespassed too long on your patience, madame; I have the honour -to wish you goodnight.'</p> - -<p>Wanda von Szalras was not a woman quickly touched to any emotion, but -her eyelids were heavy with a mist of unshed tears, as she raised them -and looked up from the fire, letting drop on her lap the screen of -plumes.</p> - -<p>'If there be a Lorelei in our lake, no wonder from envy she tried to -drown you,' she said, with a smile that cost her a little effort. -Good-night, sir; should you wish to leave us in the morning, Hubert -will see you reach S. Johann safely and as quickly as can be.'</p> - -<p>'Your goodness overwhelms me,' he murmured. 'I can never hope to show -my gratitude——'</p> - -<p>'There is nothing to be grateful for,' she said quickly. 'And if there -were, you would have repaid it: you have made a spinet, silent for -centuries, speak, and speak to our hearts. Good-night, sir; may you -have good rest and a fair journey!'</p> - -<p>When he had bowed himself out, and the tapestry of the door had closed -behind him, she rose and looked at a clock.</p> - -<p>'It is actually twelve!'</p> - -<p>'Acknowledge at least that he has made the evening pass well!' said -the Princess, with a little petulance and much triumph.</p> - -<p>'He has made it pass admirably,' said her niece. 'At the same time, -dear aunt, I think it would have been perhaps better if you had not -made a friend of a stranger.'</p> - -<p>'Why?' said the Princess with some asperity.</p> - -<p>'Because I think we can fulfil all the duties of hospitality without -doing so, and we know nothing of this gentleman.'</p> - -<p>'He is certainly a gentleman,' said the Princess, with not less -asperity. 'It seems to me, my dear Wanda, that you are for once in your -life—if you will pardon me the expression—ill-natured.'</p> - -<p>The Countess Wanda smiled a little.</p> - -<p>'I cannot imagine myself ill-natured; but I may be so. One never knows -oneself.'</p> - -<p>'And ungrateful,' added the Princess. 'When, I should like to know, -have you for years reached twelve o'clock at night without being -conscious of it?'</p> - -<p>'Oh, he sang beautifully, and he played superbly,' said her niece, -still with the same smile, balancing her ostrich-feathers. 'But let him -go on his way to-morrow; you and I cannot entertain strange men, even -though they give us music like Rubenstein's.'</p> - -<p>'If Egon were here——'</p> - -<p>'Oh, poor Egon! I think he would not like your friend at all. They both -want to shoot eagles——'</p> - -<p>'Perhaps he would not like him for another reason,' said the Princess, -with a look of mystery. 'Egon could never make the spinet speak.'</p> - -<p>'No; but who knows? Perhaps he can take better care of his own soul -because he cannot lend one to a spinet!'</p> - -<p>'You are perverse, Wanda!'</p> - -<p>'Perverse, inhospitable, and ill-natured? I fear I shall carry a heavy -burden of sins to Father Ferdinand in the morning!'</p> - -<p>'I wish you would not send horses to S. Johann in the morning. We never -have anything to amuse us in this solemn solitary place.'</p> - -<p>'Dear aunt, one would think you were very indiscreet.'</p> - -<p>'I wish you were more so!' said the pretty old lady with impatience, -and then her hand made a sign over the cross of emeralds, for she -knew that she had uttered an unholy wish. She kissed her niece with -repentant tenderness, and went to her own apartments.</p> - -<p>Wanda von Szalras, left alone in her chamber, stood awhile thoughtfully -beside the fire; then she moved away and touched the yellow ivory of -the spinet keys.</p> - -<p>'Why could he make them speak,' she said to herself, 'when everyone -else always failed?'</p> - - - -<hr class="chap" /> -<h4><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV.</a></h4> - - -<p>Sabran, as he undressed himself and laid himself down under the great -gold-fringed canopy of the stately bed, thought: 'Was I only a clever -comedian to-night, or did my eyes really grow wet as I sang that old -song and see her face through a mist as if she and I had met in the old -centuries long ago?'</p> - -<p>He stood and looked a moment at his own reflection in the great mirror -with the wax candles burning in its sconces. He was very pale.</p> - -<p style="margin-left: 20%;"> -Où sont les neiges d'antan?<br /> -</p> - -<p>The burden of it ran through his mind.</p> - -<p>Almost it seemed to him long ago—long ago—she had been his lady and -he her knight, and she had stooped to him, and he had died for her. -Then he laughed a little harshly.</p> - -<p>'I grow that best of all actors,' he thought, 'an actor who believes in -himself!'</p> - -<p>Then he turned from the mirror and stretched himself on the great -bed, with its carved warriors at its foot and its golden crown at its -head, and its heavy amber tissues shining in the shadows. He was a -sound sleeper at all times. He had slept peacefully on a wreck, in -a hurricane, in a lonely hut on the Andes, as after a night of play -in Paris, in Vienna, in Monaco. He had a nerve of steel, and that -perfect natural constitution which even excess and dissipation cannot -easily impair. But this night, under the roof of Hohenszalras, in the -guest-chamber of Hohenszalras, he could not summon sleep at his will, -and he lay long wide awake and restless, watching the firelight play on -the figures upon the tapestried walls, where the lords and ladies of -Tuscan Boccaccio and their sinful loves were portrayed in stately and -sombre guise, and German costumes of the days of Maximilian.</p> - -<p style="margin-left: 20%;"> -Où sont les neiges d'antan?<br /> -</p> - -<p>The line of the old romaunt ran through his brain, and when towards -dawn he did at length fall asleep it was not of Hohenszalras that he -dreamed, but of wide white steppes, of a great ice-fed rolling river, -of monotonous pine woods, with the gilded domes of a half eastern city -rising beyond them in the pale blue air of a northern twilight.</p> - -<p>With the early morning he awoke, resolute to get away be the weather -what it would. As it chanced, the skies were heavy still, but no rain -fell; the sun was faintly struggling through the great black masses of -cloud; the roads might be dangerous, but they were not impassable; the -bridge over the Bürgenbach might be broken, but at least Matrey could -be reached, if it were not possible to go on farther to Taxenbach or S. -Johann im Wald. High north, where far away stretched the wild marshes -and stony swamps of the Pinzgau (the Pinzgau so beautiful, where in its -hilly district the grand Salzach rolls on its impetuous way beneath -deep shade of fir-clad hills, tracks desolate as a desert of sand or -stone), the sky was overcast, and of an angry tawny colour that brooded -ill for the fall of night. But the skies were momentarily clear, and he -desired to rid of his presence the hospitable roof beneath which he was -but an alien and unbidden.</p> - -<p>He proposed to leave on foot, but of this neither Greswold nor the -major-domo would hear: they declared that such an indignity would -dishonour the Hohenszalrasburg for evermore. Guests there were masters. -'Bidden guests, perhaps,' said Sabran, reluctantly yielding to be -sped on his way by a pair of the strong Hungarian horses that he had -seen and admired in their stalls. He did not venture to disturb the -ladies of the castle by a request for a farewell audience at the early -hour at which it was necessary he should depart if he wished to try -to reach a railway the same evening, but he left two notes for them, -couched in that graceful compliment of which his Parisian culture made -him an admirable master, and took a warm adieu of the good physician, -with a promise not to forget the orchid of the Spiritù Santo. Then he -breakfasted hastily, and left the tapestried chamber in which he had -dreamed of the Nibelungen Queen.</p> - -<p>At the door he drew a ring of great value from his finger and passed it -to Hubert, but the old man, thanking him, protested he dared not take -it.</p> - -<p>'Old as I am in her service,' he said, 'the Countess would dismiss me -in an hour if I accepted any gifts from a guest.'</p> - -<p>'Your lady is very severe,' said Sabran. 'It is happy for her she has -servitors who subscribe to feudalism. If she were in Paris——'</p> - -<p>'We are bound to obey,' said the old man, simply. 'The Countess deals -with us most generously and justly. We are bound, in return, to render -her obedience.'</p> - -<p>'All the antique virtues have indeed found refuge here!' said Sabran; -but he left the ring behind him lying on a table in the Rittersäal.</p> - -<p>Four instead of two vigorous and half-broke horses from the Magyar -plains bore him away in a light travelling carriage towards the -Virgenthal; the household, with Herr Joachim at their head, watching -with regret the travelling carriage wind up amongst the woods and -disappear on the farther side of the lake. He himself looked back with -a pang of envy and regret at the stately pile towering towards the -clouds, with its deep red banner streaming out on the wind that blew -from the northern plains.</p> - -<p>'Happy woman!' he thought; 'happy—thrice happy—to possess such -dominion, such riches, and such ancestry! If I had had them I would -have had the world under my foot as well!'</p> - -<p>It was with a sense of pain that he saw the great house disappear -behind its screen of mantling woods, as his horses climbed the hilly -path beyond, higher and higher at every step, until all that he saw -of Hohenszalras was a strip of the green lake—green as an arum -leaf—lying far down below, bearing on its waters the grey willows of -the Holy Isle.</p> - -<p>'When I am very old and weary I will come and die there,' he thought, -with a touch of that melancholy which all his irony and cynicism could -not dispel from his natural temper. There were moments when he felt -that he was but a lonely and homeless wanderer on the face of the -earth, and this was one of those moments, as, alone, he went upon his -way along the perilous path, cut along the face of precipitous rocks, -passing over rough bridges that spanned deep defiles and darkening -ravines, clinging to the side of a mountain as a swallow's nest clings -to the wall of a house, and running high on swaying galleries above -dizzy depths, where nameless torrents plunged with noise and foam into -impenetrable chasms. The road had been made in the fifteenth century by -the Szalras lords themselves, and the engineering of it was bold and -vigorous though rude, and kept in sound repair, though not much changed.</p> - -<p>He had left a small roll of paper lying beside the ring in the knight's -hall. Hubert took them both to his mistress when, a few hours later, -he was admitted to her presence. Opening the paper she saw a roll of a -hundred napoleons, and on the paper was written, 'There can be no poor -where the Countess von Szalras rules. Let these be spent in masses for -the dead.'</p> - -<p>'What a delicate and graceful sentiment,' said the Princess Ottilie, -with vivacity and emotion.</p> - -<p>'It is prettily expressed and gracefully thought of,' her niece -admitted.</p> - -<p>'Charmingly—admirably!' said the Princess, with a much warmer accent. -'There is delicate gratitude there, as well as a proper feeling towards -a merciful God.'</p> - -<p>'Perhaps,' said her niece, with a little smile, 'the money was won at -play, in giving someone else what they call a <i>culotte</i>; what would you -say then, dear aunt? Would it be purified by entering the service of -the Church?'</p> - -<p>'I do not know why you are satirical,' said the Princess; 'and I cannot -tell either how you can bring yourself to use Parisian bad words.'</p> - -<p>'I will send these to the Bishop,' said Wanda, rolling up the gold. -'Alas! alas! there are always poor. As for the ring, Hubert, give it to -Herr Greswold, and he will transmit it to this gentleman's address in -Paris, as though it had been left behind by accident. You were so right -not to take it; but my dear people are always faithful.'</p> - -<p>These few words were dearer and more precious to the honest old man -than all the jewels in the world could ever have become. But the offer -of it and the gift of the gold for the Church's use had confirmed the -high opinion in which he and the whole household of Hohenszalras held -the departed guest.</p> - -<p>'Allow at least that this evening will be much duller than last!' said -the Princess, with much irritation.</p> - -<p>'Your friend played admirably,' said Wanda von Szalras, as she sat at -her embroidery frame.</p> - -<p>'You speak as if he were an itinerant pianist! What is your dislike to -your fellow creatures, when they are of your own rank, based upon? If -he had been a carpet-dealer from the Defreggerthal, as I said before, -you would have bidden him stay a month.'</p> - -<p>'Dearest aunt, be reasonable. How was it possible to keep here on a -visit a French Marquis of whom we know absolutely nothing, except from -himself?'</p> - -<p>'I never knew you were prudish!'</p> - -<p>'I never knew either that I was,' said the Countess Wanda, with her -serene temper unruffled. 'I quite admit your new friend has many -attractive qualities—on the surface at any rate; but if it were -possible for me to be angry with you, I should be so for bringing him -as you did into the library last night.'</p> - -<p>'You would never have known your spinet could speak if I had not. You -are very ungrateful, and I should not be in the least surprised to find -that he was a Crown Prince or a Grand Duke travelling incognito.'</p> - -<p>'We know them all, I fear.'</p> - -<p>'It is strange he should not have his name in the Hof-Kalender, beside -the Sabran-Pontêves!' insisted the Princess. 'He looks <i>prince du -sang</i>, if ever anyone did; so——'</p> - -<p>'There is good blood outside your Hof Kalender, dear mother mine.'</p> - -<p>'Certainly,' said the Princess, 'he must surely be a branch of that -family, though it would be more satisfactory if one found his record -there. One can never know too much or too certainly of a person whom -one admits to friendship.'</p> - -<p>'Friendship is a very strong word,' said Wanda von Szalras, with a -smile. 'This gentleman has only made a hostelry of Hohenszalras for a -day or two, and even that was made against his will. But as you are so -interested in him, <i>meine Liebe</i>, read this little record I have found.'</p> - -<p>She gave the Princess an old leather-bound volume of memoirs, written -and published at Lausanne, by an obscure noble in his exile, in the -year 1798. She had opened the book at one of the pages that narrated -the fates of many nobles of Brittany, relatives or comrades of the -writer.</p> - -<p>'And foremost amongst these,' said this little book, 'do I ever and -unceasingly regret the loss of my beloved cousin and friend, Yvon -Marquis de Sabran-Romaris. So beloved was he in his own province that -even the Convention was afraid to touch him, and being poor, despite -his high descent, as his father had ruined his fortunes in play and -splendour at the court of Louis XV., he thought to escape the general -proscription, and dwell peaceably on his rock-bound shores with his -young children. But the blood madness of the time so grew upon the -nation that even the love of his peasantry and his own poverty could -not defend him, and one black, bitter day an armed mob from Vannes -came over the heath, burning all they saw of ricks, or homesteads, or -châteaux, or cots, that they might warm themselves by those leaping -fires; and so they came on at last, yelling, and drunk, and furious, -with torches flaming and pikes blood-stained, up through the gates of -Romaris. Sabran went out to meet them, leading his eldest son by the -hand, a child of eight years old. "What seek ye?" he said to them: "I -am as poor as the poorest of you, and consciously have done no living -creature wrong. What do you come for here?" The calm courage of him, -and the glance of his eyes, which were very beautiful and proud, -quelled the disordered, mouthing, blood-drunk multitude in a manner, -and moved them to a sort of reverence, so that the leader of them, -stepping forth, said roughly, 'Citizen, we come to slit your throat -and burn your house; but if you will curse God and the King, and cry -'Long live the sovereign people!' we will leave you alone, for you -have been the friend of the poor. Come, say it!—come, shout it with -both lungs!—it is not much to ask? Sabran put his little boy behind -him with a tender gesture, then kissed the hilt of his sword, which he -held unsheathed in his hand: "I sorrow for the people," he said, "since -they are misguided and mad. But I believe in my God and I love my King, -and even so shall my children do after me;" and the words were scarce -out of his mouth before a score of pikes ran him through the body, and -the torches were tossed into his house, and he and his perished like -so many gallant gentlemen of the time, a prey to the blind fury of an -ingrate mob.'</p> - -<p>The Princess Ottilie's tender eyes moistened as she read, and she -closed the volume reverently, as though it were a sacred thing.</p> - -<p>'I thank you for sending me such a history,' she said. 'It does one's -soul good in these sad, bitter days of spiritless selfishness and -utter lack of all impersonal devotion. This gentleman must, then, be a -descendant of the child named in this narrative?'</p> - -<p>'The story says that he and his perished,' replied her niece. 'But I -suppose that child, or some other younger one, escaped the fire and the -massacre. If ever we see him again, we will ask him. Such a tradition -is as good as a page in the Almanac de Gotha.'</p> - -<p>'It is,' accented the Princess. 'Where did you find it?'</p> - -<p>'I read those memoirs when I was a child, with so many others of that -time,' answered the Countess Wanda. 'When I heard the name of your new -friend it seemed familiar to me, and thinking over it, I remembered -these Breton narratives.'</p> - -<p>'At least you need not have been afraid to dine with him!' said -the Princess Ottilie, who could never resist having the last word, -though she felt that the retort was a little ungenerous, and perhaps -undeserved.</p> - -<p>Meantime Sabran went on his way through the green valley under the -shadow of the Klein and the Kristallwand, with the ice of the great -Schaltten Gletscher descending like a huge frozen torrent. When he -reached the last stage before Matrey he dismissed his postillions with -a gratuity as large as the money remaining in his belt would permit, -and insisted on taking his way on foot over the remaining miles. -Baggage he had none, and he had not even the weight of his knapsack and -rifle. The men remonstrated with him, for they were afraid of their -lady's anger if they returned when they were still half a German mile -off their destination. But he was determined, and sent them backwards, -whilst they could yet reach home by daylight. The path to Matrey passed -across pastures and tracts of stony ground; he took a little goatherd -with him as a guide, being unwilling to run the risk of a second -misadventure, and pressed on his way without delay.</p> - -<p>The sun had come forth from out a watery world of cloud and mist, -which shrouded from sight all the domes and peaks and walls of ice -of the mountain region in which he was once more a wanderer. But -when the mists had lifted, and the sun was shining, it was beautiful -exceedingly: all the grasses were full of the countless wild flowers of -the late Austrian spring; the swollen brooks were blue with mouse-ear, -and the pastures with gentian; clumps of daffodils blossomed in all -the mossy nooks, and hyacinths purpled the pine-woods. On the upper -slopes the rain-fog still hung heavily, but the sun-rays pierced it -here and there, and the white vaporous atmosphere was full of fantastic -suggestions and weird half-seen shapes, as pine-trees loomed out of -the mist or a vast black mass of rock towered above the clouds. A -love of nature, of out-of-door movement, of healthful exercise and -sports, resisted in him the enervating influences of the Paris life -which he had led. He had always left the gay world at intervals for -the simple and rude pleasures of the mountaineer and the hunter. There -was an impulse towards that forest freedom which at times mastered -him, and made the routine of worldly dissipation and diversion wholly -intolerable to him. It was what his fair critic of Paris had called his -barbarism, which broke up out of the artificial restraints and habits -imposed by the world.</p> - -<p>His wakeful night had made him fanciful, and his departure from -Hohenszalras had made him regretful; for he, on his way back to Paris -and all his habits and associates and pleasures, looking around him -on the calm white mountain-sides, and penetrated by the pure, austere -mountain silence, suddenly felt an intense desire to stay amidst that -stillness and that solitude, and rest here in the green heart of the -Tauern.</p> - -<p>'Who knows but one might see her again?' he thought, as the sound of -the fall of the Gschlossbach came on his ear from the distance. That -stately figure seated by the great wood fire, with the light on her -velvet skirts, and the pearls at her throat, and the hounds lying -couched beside her, was always before his memory and his vision.</p> - -<p>And he paid and dismissed his goatherd at the humble door of the Zum -Rautter in Windisch-Matrey, and that evening began discussing with -Christ Rangediner and Egger, the guides there, the ascent of the -Kahralpe and the Lasörling, and the pass to Krimml, over the ice crests -of the Venediger group.</p> - -<p>A mountaineer who had dwelt beneath the shadow of Orizaba was not -common in the heart of the Tauern, and the men made much of their new -comrade, not the less because the gold pieces rattled in his pouch, and -the hunting-watch he earned had jewels at its back.</p> - -<p>'If anyone had told me that in the Mois de Marie I should bury myself -under an Austrian glacier!' he thought, with some wonder at his -own decision, for he was one of those foster-sons of Paris to whom -<i>parisine</i> is an habitual and necessary intoxication.</p> - -<p>But there comes a time when even parisine, like chloral, ceases to -have power to charm; in a vague way he had often felt the folly and -the hollowness of the life that turned night into day, made the green -cloth of the gaming-table the sole field of battle, and offered as -all form of love the purchased smile of the <i>belle petite.</i> A sense of -repose and of freshness, like the breath of a cool morning blowing on -tired eyes, came to him as he sat in the grey twilight amidst the green -landscape, with the night coming down upon the eternal snows above, -whilst the honest, simple souls around him talked of hill perils and -mountaineers' adventures, and all the exploits of a hardy life; and in -the stillness, when their voices ceased, there was no sound but the -sound of water up above amidst the woods, tumbling and rippling in a -hundred unseen brooks and falls.</p> - -<p>'If they had let me alone,' he thought, 'I should have been a hunter -all my days; a guide, perhaps, like this Christ and this Egger here. An -honest man, at least——'</p> - -<p>His heart was heavy and his conscience ill at ease. The grand, serene -glance of Wanda von Szalras seemed to have reached his soul and called -up in him unavailing regrets, pangs of doubt long dormant, vague -remorse long put to sleep with the opiate of the world-taught cynicism, -which had become his second nature. The most impenetrable cynicism will -yield and melt, and seem but a poor armour, when it is brought amidst -the solemnity and solitude of the high hills.</p> - - - -<hr class="chap" /> -<h4><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V.</a></h4> - - -<p>A few days later there arrived by post the 'Spiritù Santo' of Mexico, -addressed to the Professor Joachim Greswold.</p> - -<p>If he had received the order of the Saint Esprit he would not have -been more honoured, more enchanted; and he was deeply touched by the -remembrance of him testified by the gift whose donor he supposed -was back in the gay world of men, not knowing the spell which the -snow mountains of the Tauern had cast on a worldly soul. When he was -admitted to the presence of the Princess Ottilie to consult with her -on her various ailments, she conversed with him of this passer-by who -had so fascinated her fancy, and she even went so far as to permit him -to bring her the great volumes of the "Mexico" out of the library, -and point her out those chapters which he considered most likely to -interest her.</p> - -<p>'It is the work of a true Catholic and gentleman,' she said with -satisfaction, and perused with special commendation the passages which -treated of the noble conduct of the Catholic priesthood in those -regions, their frequent martyrdom and their devoted self-negation. When -she had thoroughly identified their late guest with the editor of these -goodly and blameless volumes, she was content to declare that better -credentials no man could bear. Indeed she talked so continually of -this single point of interest in her monotonous routine of life, that -her niece said to her, with a jest that was more than half earnest, -'Dearest mother, almost you make me regret that this gentleman did -not break his neck over the Engelhorn, or sink with his rifle in the -Szalrassee.'</p> - -<p>'The spinet would never have spoken,' said the Princess; 'and I am -surprised that a Christian woman can say such things, even in joke!'</p> - -<p>The weather cleared, the sun shone, the gardens began to grow gorgeous, -and great parterres of roses glowed between the emerald of the velvet -lawns: an Austrian garden has not a long life, but it has a very -brilliant one. All on a sudden, as the rains ceased, every alley, -group, and terrace were filled with every variety of blossom, and -the flora of Africa and India was planted out side by side with the -gentians and the alpine roses natural to the soil. All the northern -coniferæ spread the deep green of their branches above the turf, and -the larch, the birch, the beech, and the oak were massed in clusters, -or spread away in long avenues—deep defiles of foliage through which -the water of the lake far down below glistened like a jewel.</p> - -<p>'If your friend had been a fortnight later he would have seen -Hohenszalras in all its beauty,' said its mistress once to the -Princess Ottilie. 'It has two seasons of perfection: one its midsummer -flowering, and the other when all the world is frozen round it.'</p> - -<p>The Princess shivered in retrospect and in anticipation. She hated -winter. 'I should never live through another winter,' she said with a -sigh.</p> - -<p>'Then you shall not be tried by one; we will go elsewhere,' said Wanda, -to whom the ice-bound world, the absolute silence, the sense of the -sleigh flying over the hard snow, the perfect purity of the rarefied -air of night and day, made up the most welcome season of the year.</p> - -<p>'I suppose it is dull for you,' she added, indulgently. 'I have so -many occupations in the winter; a pair of skates and a sleigh are to me -of all forms of motion the most delightful. But you, shut up in your -blue-room, do no doubt find our winter hard and long.'</p> - -<p>'I hybernate, I do not live,' said the Princess, pettishly. 'It is not -even as if the house were full.'</p> - -<p>'With ill-assorted guests whose cumbersome weariness one would have -to try all day long to dissipate! Oh, my dear aunt, of all wearisome -<i>corvées</i> the world holds there is nothing so bad as a house -party—even when Egon is here to lead the cotillion and the hunting.'</p> - -<p>'You are very inhospitable!'</p> - -<p>'That is the third time lately you have made that charge against me. I -begin to fear that I must deserve it.'</p> - -<p>'You deserve it, certainly. Oh, you are hospitable to the poor. You set -pedlars, or mule-drivers, or travelling clockmakers, by the dozen round -your hall fires, and you would feed a pilgrimage all the winter long. -But to your own order, to your own society, you are inhospitable. In -your mother's time the Schloss had two hundred guests for the autumn -parties, and then the winter season, from Carnival to Easter, was -always spent in the capital.'</p> - -<p>'She liked that, I suppose.'</p> - -<p>'Of course she liked it; everyone ought to like it at what was her age -then, and what is yours now.'</p> - -<p>'I like this,' said the Countess Wanda, to change the subject, as -the servants set a little Japanese tea-table and two arm-chairs of -gilt osier-work under one of the Siberian pines, whose boughs spread -tent-like over the grass, on which the dogs were already stretched in -anticipation of sugar and cakes.</p> - -<p>From this lawn there were seen only the old keep of the burg and the -turrets and towers of the rest of the building; ivy clambered over -one-half of the great stone pile, that had been raised with hewn -rock in the ninth century; and some arolla pines grew about it. A -low terrace, with low broad steps, separated it from the gardens. A -balustrade of stone, ivy-mantled, protected the gardens from the rocks; -while these plunged in a perpendicular descent of a hundred feet into -the lake. Some black yews and oaks, very large and old, grew against -the low stone pillars. It was a favourite spot with the mistress of -Hohenszalras; it looked westward, and beyond the masses of the vast -forests there shone the snow summit of the Venediger and the fantastic -peaks of the Klein and Kristallwand, whilst on a still day there could -be heard a low sound which she, familiar with it, knew came from the -thunder of the subterranean torrents filling the Szalrassee.</p> - -<p>'Oh, it is very nice,' said the Princess, a little deprecatingly. 'And -of course I at my years want nothing better than a gilt chair in the -sunshine. But then there is so very little sunshine! The chair must -generally stand by the stove! And I confess that I think it would be -fitter for your years and your rank if these chairs were multiplied -by ten or twenty, and if there were some pretty people laughing and -talking and playing games in those great gardens.'</p> - -<p>'It is glorious weather now,' said her niece, who would not assent and -did not desire to dispute.</p> - -<p>'Yes,' interrupted the Princess. 'But it will rain to-morrow. You know -we never have two fine days together.'</p> - -<p>'We will take it while we have it, and be thankful,' said Wanda, with a -good-humour that refused to be ruffled. 'Here is Hubert coming out to -us. What can he want? He looks very startled and alarmed.'</p> - -<p>The old major-domo's face was indeed gravely troubled, as he bowed -before his lady.</p> - -<p>'Pardon me the intrusion, my Countess,' he said hurriedly. 'But I -thought it right to inform you myself that a lad has come over from -Steiner's Inn to say that the foreign gentleman who was here fifteen -days ago has had an accident on the Umbal glacier. It seems he stayed -on in Matrey for sake of the climbing and the shooting. I do not make -out from the boy what the accident was, but the Umbal is very dangerous -at this season. The gentleman lies now at Pregratten. You know, my -ladies, what a very wretched place that is.'</p> - -<p>'I suppose they have come for the Herr Professor?' said Wanda, vaguely -disturbed, while the Princess very sorrowfully was putting a score of -irrelevant questions which Hubert could not answer.</p> - -<p>'No doubt he has no doctor there, and these people send for that -reason,' said Wanda, interrupting with an apology for the useless -interrogations. 'Get horses ready directly, and send for Greswold at -once wherever he may be. But it is a long bad way to Pregratten; I do -not see how he can return under twenty-four hours.'</p> - -<p>'Let him stay two nights, if he be wanted,' said the Princess, to whom -she spoke. She had always insisted that the physician should never be -an hour out of Hohenszalras whilst she was in it.</p> - -<p>'Your friend has been trying to shoot a <i>kuttengeier</i> again, I -suppose,' said her niece, with a smile. 'He is very adventurous.'</p> - -<p>'And you are very heartless.'</p> - -<p>Wanda did not deny the charge; but she went into the house, saw the -doctor, and requested him to take everything with him of linen, wines, -food, or cordials that might possibly be wanted.</p> - -<p>'And stay as long as you are required,' she added, 'and send mules -over to us for anything you wish for. Do not think of us. If my dear -aunt should ail anything I can dispatch a messenger to you, or call a -physician from Salzburg.'</p> - -<p>Herr Joachim said a very few words, thanked her gratefully, and took -his departure behind two sure-footed mountain cobs that could climb -almost like chamois.</p> - -<p>'I think one of the Fathers should have gone too,' said Mme. Ottilie, -regretfully.</p> - -<p>'I hope he is not <i>in extremis</i>,' said her niece. 'And I fear if he -were he would hardly care for spiritual assistance.'</p> - -<p>'You are so prejudiced against him, Wanda!'</p> - -<p>'I do not think I am ever prejudiced,' said the Countess von Szalras.</p> - -<p>'That is so like a prejudiced person!' said the Princess, triumphantly.</p> - -<p>For twenty-four hours they heard nothing from Pregratten, which is in -itself a miserable little hamlet lying amidst some of the grandest -scenes that the earth holds: towards evening the next day a lad of the -village came on a mule and brought a letter to his ladies from the Herr -Professor, who wrote that the accident had been due, as usual, to the -gentleman's own carelessness, and to the fact of the snow being melted -by the midsummer sun until it was a thin crust over a deep crevasse. -He had found his patient suffering from severe contusions, high fever, -lethargy, and neuralgic pains, but he did not as yet consider there -were seriously dangerous symptoms. He begged permission to remain, and -requested certain things to be sent to him from his medicine-chests and -the kitchens.</p> - -<p>The boy slept at Hohenszalras that night, and in the morning returned -over the hills to Pregratten with all the doctor had asked for. Wanda -selected the medicines herself, and sent also some fruit and wine for -which he did not ask: the Princess sent a bone of S. Ottilie in an -ivory case and the assurance of her constant prayers. She was sincerely -anxious and troubled. 'Such a charming person, and so handsome,' she -said again and again. 'I suppose the priest of Pregratten is with -him.' Her niece did not remind her that her physician did not greatly -love any priests whatever, though on that subject he was always -discreetly mute at Hohenszalras.</p> - -<p>For the next ten days Greswold stayed at Pregratten, and the Princess -bore his absence, since it was to serve a person who had had the good -fortune to fascinate her, and whom also she chose to uphold because her -niece was, as she considered, unjust to him. Moreover, life at the burg -was very dull to the Princess, whatever it might be to its châtelaine, -who had so much interest in its farms, its schools, its mountains, and -its villages: an interest which to her great-aunt seemed quite out of -place, as all those questions, she considered, should belong to the -priesthood and the stewards, who ought not to be disturbed in their -direction, the one of spiritual and the other of agricultural matters. -This break in the monotony of her time was agreeable to her—of the -bulletins from Pregratten, of the dispatch of all that was wanted, -of the additional pleasure of complaining that she was deprived of -her doctor's counsels, and also of feeling at the same time that in -enduring this deprivation she was doing a charitable and self-denying -action. She further insisted on sending out to Steiner's Inn, greatly -to his own discomfort, her own confessor.</p> - -<p>'Nobles of Brittany have always deep religious feeling,' she said to -her niece; 'and Father Ferdinand has such skill and persuasion with the -dying.'</p> - -<p>'But no one is dying,' said Wanda, a little impatiently.</p> - -<p>'That is more than any human being can tell,' said the Princess, -piously. 'At all events, Father Ferdinand always uses every occasion -judiciously and well.'</p> - -<p>Father Ferdinand, however, was not very comfortable in Pregratten, and -soon returned, much jolted and worn by the transit on a hill pony. -He was reserved about his visitation, and told his patroness sadly -that he had been unable to effect much spiritual good, but that the -stranger was certainly recovering from his hurts, and had the ivory -case of S. Ottilie on his pillow; he had seemed averse, however, to -confession, and therefore, of course, there had been no possibility for -administration of the Sacrament.</p> - -<p>The Princess was inclined to set this rebelliousness down to the fault -of the physician, and determined to talk seriously to Greswold on -spiritual belief as soon as he should return.</p> - -<p>'If he be not orthodox we cannot keep him,' she said severely.</p> - -<p>'He is orthodox, dear aunt,' said Wanda von Szalras, with a smile. 'He -adores the wonders of every tiny blossom that blows, and every little -moss that clothes the rocks.'</p> - -<p>'What a profane, almost sacrilegious answer!' said the Princess. 'I -never should have imagined that <i>you</i> would have jested on sacred -themes.'</p> - -<p>'I did not intend a jest. I was never more serious. A life like our old -Professor's is a perpetual prayer.'</p> - -<p>'Your great-aunt Walburga belonged to the Perpetual Adoration,' -rejoined the Princess, who only heard the last word but one. 'The order -was very severe. I always think it too great a strain on finite human -powers. She was betrothed to the Margraf Paul, but he was killed at -Austerlitz, and she took refuge in a life of devotion. I always used -to think that you would change Hohenszalras into a sacred foundation; -but now I am afraid. You are a deeply religious woman, Wanda—at least -I have always thought so—but you read too much German and French -philosophy, and I fear it takes something from your fervour, from your -entirety of devotion. You have a certain liberty of expression that -alarms me at times.'</p> - -<p>'I think it is a poor faith that dares not examine its adversaries' -charges,' said her niece, quietly. 'You would have faith blindfolded. -They call me a bigot at the Court, however. So you see it is hard to -please all.'</p> - -<p>'Bigot is not a word for a Christian and Catholic sovereign to employ,' -said the Princess, severely. 'Her Majesty must know that there can -never be too great an excess in faith and service.'</p> - -<p>On the eleventh day Greswold returned over the hills and was admitted -to immediate audience with his ladies.</p> - -<p>'Herr von Sabran is well enough for me to leave him,' he said, after -his first very humble salutations. 'But if your excellencies permit -it would be desirable for me to return there in a day or two. Yes, -my ladies, he is lying at Steiner's Inn in Pregratten, a poor place -enough, but your goodness supplied much that was lacking in comfort. -He can be moved before long. There was never any great danger, but it -was a very bad accident. He is a good mountaineer it seems, and he had -been climbing a vast deal in the Venediger group; that morning he meant -to cross the Umbal glacier to the Ahrenthal, and he refused to take a -guide, so Isaiah Steiner tells me.'</p> - -<p>'But I thought he left here to go to Paris?'</p> - -<p>'He did so, my Countess,' answered the doctor. 'But it seems he loves -the mountains, and their spell fell on him. When he sent back your -postillions he went on foot to Matrey, and there he remained; he -thought the weather advanced enough to make climbing safe; but it is -a dangerous pastime so early in summer, though Christ from Matrey, -who came over to see him, tells me he is of the first form as a -mountaineer. He reached the Clarahutte safely, and broke his fast -there; crossing the Umbal the ice gave way, and he fell into a deep -crevasse. He would be a dead man if a hunter on the Welitz side had -not seen him disappear and given the alarm at the hut. With ropes and -men enough they contrived to haul him up, after some hours, from a -great depth. These accidents are very common, and he has to thank his -own folly in going out on to the glacier unaccompanied. Of course he -was insensible, contused, and in high fever when I reached there: the -surgeon they had called from Lienz was an ignorant, who would soon -have sent him for ever to as great a deep as the crevasse. He is very -grateful to you both, my ladies, and would be more so were he not so -angry with himself that it makes him sullen with the world. Men of his -kind bear isolation and confinement ill. Steiner's is a dull place: -there is nothing to hear but the tolling of the church bell and the -fret of the Isel waters.'</p> - -<p>'That means, my friend, that you want him moved as soon as he can -bear it?' said Wanda. 'I think he cannot very well come here. We know -nothing of him. But there is no reason why you should not bring him -to the Lake Monastery. There is a good guest-chamber (the Archbishop -stayed there once), and he could have your constant care there, and -from here every comfort.'</p> - -<p>'Why should he not be brought to this house?' interrupted Mme. Ottilie; -'there are fifty men in it already——'</p> - -<p>'Servants and priests, no strangers. Beside, this gentleman will be -much more at his ease on the Holy Isle, where he can recompense the -monks at his pleasure; he would feel infinitely annoyed to be further -burdened with a hospitality he never asked!'</p> - -<p>'Of course it is as you please!' said the Princess, a little irritably.</p> - -<p>'Dear aunt! when he is on the island you can send him all the luxuries -and all the holy books you may think good for him. Go over to the monks -if you will be so kind, Herr Joachim, and prepare them for a sick -guest; and as for transport and all the rest of the assistance you may -need, use the horses and the household as you see fit. I give you carte -blanche. I know your wisdom and your prudence and your charity.'</p> - -<p>The physician again returned to Pregratten, where he found his patient -fretting with restless impatience at his enforced imprisonment. He had -a difficulty in persuading Sabran to go back to that Szalrassee which -had cost him so dear; but when he was assured that he could pay the -monks what he chose for their hospitality, he at last consented to be -taken to the island.</p> - -<p>'I shall see her again,' he thought, with a little anger at himself. -The mountain spirits had their own way of granting wishes, but they had -granted his.</p> - -<p>On the Holy Isle of the Szalrassee there was a small Dominican -congregation, never more than twelve, of men chiefly peasant-born, -and at this time all advanced in years. The monastery was a low, grey -pile, almost hidden beneath the great willows and larches of the isle, -but rich within from many centuries of gifts in art from the piety of -the lords of Szaravola. It had two guest-chambers for male visitors, -which were lofty and hung with tapestry, and which looked down the lake -towards the north and west, to where beyond the length of water there -rose the mighty forest hills washed by the Salzach and the Ache, backed -by the distant Rhœtian Alps.</p> - -<p>The island was almost in the centre of the lake, and, at a distance -of three miles, the rocks, on which the castle stood, faced it across -the water that rippled around it and splashed its trees and banks. It -was a refuge chosen in wild and rough times when repose was precious, -and no spot on earth was ever calmer, quieter, more secluded than this -where the fishermen never landed without asking a blessing of those who -dwelt there, and nothing divided the hours except the bells that called -to prayer or frugal food. The green willows and the green waters met -and blended and covered up this house of peace as a warbler's nest is -hidden in the reeds. A stranger resting-place had never befallen the -world-tossed, restless, imperious, and dissatisfied spirit of the man -who was brought there by careful hands lying on a litter, on a raft, -one gorgeous evening of a summer's day—one month after he had lifted -his rifle to bring down the <i>kuttengeier</i> in the woods of Wanda von -Szalras.</p> - -<p>'Almost thou makest me believe,' he murmured, when he lay and looked -upward at the cross that shone against the evening skies, while the -raft glided slowly over the water, and from the walled retreat upon the -isle there came the low sound of the monks chanting their evensong.</p> - -<p>They laid him down on a low, broad bed opposite a window of three -bays, which let him look from his couch along the shining length of the -Szalrassee towards the great burg, where it frowned upon its wooded -cliffs with the stone brows of many mountains towering behind it, and -behind them the glaciers of the Glöckner and its lesser comrades.</p> - -<p>The sun had just then set. There was a lingering glow upon the water, -a slender moon had risen above a distant chain of pine-clothed hills, -the slow, soft twilight of the German Alps was bathing the grandeur of -the scene with tenderest, faintest colours and mists ethereal. The Ave -Maria was ringing from the chapel, and presently the deep bells of the -monastery chimed a Laus Deus.</p> - -<p>'Do you believe in fate?' said Sabran abruptly to his companion -Greswold.</p> - -<p>The old physician gave a little gesture of doubt.</p> - -<p>'Sometimes there seems something stronger than ourselves and our will, -but maybe it is only our own weakness that has risen up and stands -in another shape like a giant before us, as our shadow will do on a -glacier in certain seasons and states of the atmosphere.'</p> - -<p>'Perhaps that is all,' said Sabran. But he laid his head back on his -pillow with a deep breath that had in it an equal share of contentment -and regret, and lay still, looking eastward, while the peaceful night -came down upon land and water unbroken by any sound except that of a -gentle wind stirring amidst the willows or the plunge of an otter in -the lake.</p> - -<p>That deep stillness was strange to him who had lived so long in all the -gayest cities of the world; but it was welcome: it seemed like a silent -blessing: his life seemed to stand still while holy men prayed for him -and the ramparts of the mountains shut out the mad and headlong world.</p> - -<p>With these fancies he fell asleep and dreamed of pathless steppes, -which in the winter snows were so vast and vague, stretching away, -away, away to the frozen sea and the ice that no suns can melt, and -ceaseless silence, where sleep is death.</p> - -<p>In the monastic quiet of the isle he soon recovered sufficient strength -to leave his bed and move about slowly, though he was still stiff and -sprained from the fall on the Umbal; he could take his dinner in the -refectory, could get out and sit under the great willows of the bank, -and could touch their organ as the monks never had heard it played.</p> - -<p>It was a monotonous and perfectly simple life; but either because his -health was not yet strong, or because he had been surfeited with -excitement, it was not disagreeable or irksome to him; he bore it with -a serenity and cheerfulness which the monks attributed to religious -patience, and Herr Joachim to philosophy. It was not one nor the other: -it was partly from such willingness as an overtaxed racer feels to lie -down in the repose of the stall for a while to recruit his courage -and speed: it was partly due to the certainty which he felt that now, -sooner or later, he must see face to face once more the woman who had -forbade him to shoot the vulture.</p> - -<p>The face which had looked on him in the pale sunlight of the -pine-woods, and made him think of the Nibelungen queen, had been always -present to his thoughts, even during the semi-stupor of sedative-lulled -rest in his dull chamber by the lonely Isel stream.</p> - -<p>From this guest-room, where he passed his convalescence, the wide -casements all day long showed him the towers and turrets, the metal -roofs, the pinnacles and spires of her mighty home, backed by its -solemn neighbours of the glacier and the alps, and girdled with the -sombre green of the great forests. Once or twice he thought as he -looked at it and saw the noon sun make its countless oriels sparkle -like diamonds, or the starlight change its stones and marbles into -dream-like edifices meet for Arthur's own Avilion, once or twice he -thought to himself, 'If I owned Hohenszalras, and she Romaris, I would -write to her and say: "A moment is enough for love to be born."'</p> - -<p>But Romaris was his—those aged oaks, torn by sea-winds and splashed -with Atlantic spray, were all he had; and she was mistress here.</p> - -<p>When a young man made his first appearance in the society of Paris -who was called Réné Philippe Xavier, Marquis de Sabran-Romaris, his -personal appearance, which was singularly attractive, his manners, -which were of extreme distinction, and his talents, which were great, -made him at once successful in its highest society. He had a romantic -history.</p> - -<p>The son of that Marquis de Sabran who had fallen under the pikes of -the mob of Carrier had been taken in secret out of the country by -a faithful servant, smuggled on board a <i>chasse-marée</i>, which had -carried him to an outward-bound sailing ship destined for the seaboard -of America. The chaplain was devoted, the servant faithful. The boy -was brought up well at a Jesuit college in Mexico, and placed in full -possession, when he reached manhood, of his family papers and of such -remnants of the family jewels as had been brought away with him. His -identity as his father's only living son, and the sole representative -of the Sabrans of Romaris, was fully established and confirmed -before the French Consulate of the city. Instead of returning to his -country, as his Jesuit tutors advised and desired, the youth, when he -left college, gave the reins to a spirit of adventure and a passion -for archæology and natural history. He was possessed beyond all with -the desire to penetrate the mystery of the buried cities, and he had -conceived a strong attachment to the flowery and romantic land of -Guatemozin and of Montezuma. He plunged, therefore, into the interior -of that country, and, half as a Jesuit lay-missionary, and half as -an archeological explorer, let all his best years slip away under -the twilight shadows of the virgin forests, and amidst the flowering -wilderness of the banks of the great rivers, making endless notes upon -the ancient and natural history of these solitudes, and gathering -together an interminable store of tradition from the Indians and the -half-breeds with whom he grew familiar. He went further and further -away from the cities, and let longer and longer intervals elapse -without his old friends and teachers hearing anything of him. All that -was known of him was that he had married a beautiful Mexican woman, -who was said to have in her the blood of the old royal race, and that -he lived far from the steps of white men in the depths of the hills -whence the Pacific was in sight. Once he went to the capital for the -purpose of registering and baptizing his son by his Mexican wife. -After that he was lost sight of by those who cared for him, and it -was only known that he was compiling a history of those lost nations -whose temples and tombs, amidst the wilderness, had so powerfully -attracted his interest as a boy. A quarter of a century passed; his -old friends died away one by one, nobody remained in the country who -remembered or asked for him. The West is wide, and wild, and silent; -endless wars and revolutions changed the surface of the country and -the thoughts of men; the scholarly Marquis de Sabran, who only cared -for a hieroglyphic, or an orchid, or a piece of archaic sculpture, -passed away from the memories of the white men whose fellow student he -had been. The land was soaked in blood, the treasures were given up -to adventurers; the chiefs that each reigned their little hour, slew, -and robbed, and burned, and fell in their turn shot like vultures or -stabbed like sheep; and no one in that murderous <i>tohu-bohu</i> had either -time or patience to give to the thought of a student of perished altars -and of swamp-flora. The college, even, where the Jesuits had sheltered -him, had been sacked and set on fire, and the old men and the young -men butchered indiscriminately. When six-and-twenty years later he -returned to the capital to register the birth of his grandson there was -no one who remembered his name. Another quarter of a century passed -by, and when his young representative left the Western world for Paris -he received a tender and ardent welcome from men and women to whom -his name was still a talisman, and found a cordial recognition from -that old nobility whose pride is so cautious and impregnable in its -isolation and reserve. Everyone knew that the young Marquis de Sabran -was the legitimate representative of the old race that had made its -nest on the rocks with the sea birds through a dozen centuries: that he -had but little wealth was rather to his credit than against it.</p> - -<p>When he gave to the world, in his grandfather's name, the result of all -those long years of study and of solitude in the heart of the Mexican -forests, he carried out the task as only a scientific scholar could -have done it, and the vast undigested mass of record, tradition, and -observation which the elder man had collected together in his many -years of observation and abstraction were edited and arranged with so -much skill that their mere preparation placed their young compiler -in the front frank of culture. That he disclaimed all merit of his -own, affirming that he had simply put together into shape all the -scattered memoranda of the elder scholar, did not detract from the -learning or from the value of his annotations. The volumes became the -first authority on the ancient history and the natural history of a -strange country, of which alike the past and the present were of rare -interest, and their production made his name known where neither rank -nor grace would have taken it. To those who congratulated him on the -execution of so complicated and learned a work, he only replied: 'It is -no merit of mine: all the learning is his. In giving it to the world I -do but pay my debt to him, and I am but a mere instrument of his as the -printing-press is that prints it.'</p> - -<p>This modesty, this affectionate loyalty in a young man whose attributes -seemed rather to lie on the side of arrogance, of disdainfulness, -and of coldness, attracted to him the regard of many persons to -whom the mere idler, which he soon became, would have been utterly -indifferent. He chose, as such persons thought, most unfortunately, to -let his intellectual powers lie in abeyance, but he had shown that he -possessed them. No one without large stores of learning and a great -variety of attainments could have edited and annotated as he had done -the manuscripts bequeathed to him by the Marquis Xavier as his most -precious legacy. He might have occupied a prominent place in the world -of science; but he was too indolent or too sceptical even of natural -facts, or too swayed towards the pleasures of manhood, to care for -continued consecration of his life to studies of which he was early -a master, and it was the only serious work that he ever carried out -or seemed likely ever to attempt. Gradually these severe studies were -left further and further behind him; but they had given him a certain -place that no future carelessness could entirely forfeit. He grew to -prefer to hear a <i>bluette d'amateur</i> praised at the Mirliton, to be -more flattered when his presence was prayed for at a <i>première</i> of the -Française; but it had carried his name wherever, in remote corners of -the earth, two or three wise men were gathered together.</p> - -<p>He had no possessions in France to entail any obligations upon him. The -single tower of the manoir which the flames had left untouched, and -an acre or two of barren shore, were all which the documents of the -Sabrans enabled him to claim. The people of the department were indeed -ready to adore him for the sake of the name he bore; but he had the -true Parisian's impatience of the province, and the hamlet of Romaris -but rarely saw his face. The sombre seaboard, with its primitive -people, its wintry storms, its monotonous country, its sad, hard, pious -ways of life, had nothing to attract a man who loved the gaslights of -the Champs-Élysées. Women loved him for that union of coldness and of -romance which always most allures them, and men felt a certain charm -of unused power in him which, coupled with his great courage and his -skill at all games, fascinated them often against their judgment. He -was a much weaker man than they thought him, but none of either sex -ever discovered it. Perhaps he was also a better man than he himself -believed. As he dwelt in the calm of this religious community his sins -seemed to him many and beyond the reach of pardon.</p> - -<p>Yet even with remorse, and a sense of shame in the background, this -tranquil life did him good. The simple fare, the absence of excitement, -the silent lake-dwelling where no sound came, except that of the bells -or the organ, or the voices of fishermen on the waters, the 'early -to bed and early to rise,' which were the daily laws of the monastic -life—these soothed, refreshed, and ennobled his life.</p> - - - -<hr class="chap" /> -<h4><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI.</a></h4> - - -<p>The days drifted by; the little boat crossed thrice a day from castle -to monastery, bringing the physician, bringing books, food, fruit, -wine; the rain came often, sheets of white water sweeping over the -lake, and blotting the burg and the hills and the forests from -sight; the sunshine came more rarely, but when it came it lit up the -amphitheatre of the Glöckner group to a supreme splendour, of solemn -darkness of massed pines, of snow-peaks shrouded in the clouds. So the -month wore away; he was in no haste to recover entirely; he could pay -the monks for his maintenance, and so felt free to stay, not being -allowed to know that his food came from the castle as his books did. -The simple priests were conquered and captivated by him; he played -grand Sistine masses for them, and canticles which he had listened -to in Nôtre Dame. Herr Joachim marvelled to see him so passive and -easily satisfied; for he perceived that his patient could not be -by nature either very tranquil or quickly content; but the doctor -thought that perhaps the severe nervous shock of the descent on the -Umbal might have shakened and weakened him, and knew that the pure -Alpine air, the harmless pursuits, and the early hours were the best -tonics and restoratives in the pharmacy of Nature. Therefore he could -consistently encourage him to stay, as his own wishes moved him to do; -for to the professor the companionship and discussion of a scholarly -and cultivated man were rarities, and he had conceived an affectionate -interest in one whose life he had in some measure saved; for without -skilled care the crevasse of the Iselthal might have been fatal to a -mountaineer who had successfully climbed the highest peaks of the Andes.</p> - -<p>'No doubt if I passed a year here,' thought Sabran, 'I should rebel -and grow sick with longing for the old unrest, the old tumult, the -old intoxication—no doubt; but just now it is very welcome: it makes -me comprehend why De Rancy created La Trappe, why so many soldiers -and princes and riotous livers were glad to go out into a Paraclete -amongst the hills with S. Bruno or S. Bernard.'</p> - -<p>He said something of the sort to Herr Joachim, who nodded consent; but -added: 'Only they took a great belief with them, and a great penitence, -the recluses of that time; in ours men mistake satiety for sorrow, and -so when their tired vices have had time to grow again, like nettles -that have been gnawed to the root but can spring up with fresh power -to sting, then, as their penitence was nothing but fatigue, they get -quickly impatient to go out and become beasts again. All the difference -between our times and S. Bruno's lies there; they believed in sin, we -do not. I say, "we," I mean the voluptuaries and idlers of your world.'</p> - -<p>'Perhaps not,' answered Sabran, a little gloomily. 'But we do believe -in dishonour.'</p> - -<p>'Do you?' said the doctor, with some irony. 'Oh, I suppose you do. You -may seduce Gretchen: you must not forsake Faustine; you must not lie to -a man: you may lie to a woman. You must not steal: you may beggar your -friend at baccara. I confess I have never understood the confusion of -your unwritten laws on ethics and etiquette.'</p> - -<p>Sabran laughed, but he did not take up the argument; and the doctor -thought that he seemed becoming a little morose; since his escape from -the tedium of confinement at Pregratten, confinement intolerable to a -man of strength and spirit, he had always found his patient of great -equability of temper, and of a good-humour and docility that had seemed -as charming as they were invariable.</p> - -<p>When he was recovered enough to make movement and change harmless to -him, there came to him a note in the fine and miniature writing of the -Princess Ottilie, bidding him come over to the castle at his pleasure, -and especially inviting him, in her niece's name, to the noon-day -breakfast at the castle on the following day, if his strength allowed.</p> - -<p>He sat a quarter of an hour or more with the note on his knee, looking -out at the light green willow foliage as it drooped above the deeper -green of the lake.</p> - -<p>'Our ladies are not used to refusals,' said the doctor, seeing his -hesitation.</p> - -<p>'I should be a churl to refuse,' said Sabran, with some little effort, -which the doctor attributed to a remembered mortification, and so -hastened to say:</p> - -<p>'You are resentful still that the Countess Wanda took your rifle away? -Surely she has made amends?'</p> - -<p>'I was not thinking of that. She was perfectly right. She only treated -me too well. She placed her house and her household at my disposition -with a hospitality quite Spanish. I owe her too much ever to be able to -express my sense of it.'</p> - -<p>'Then you will come and tell her so?'</p> - -<p>'I can do no less.'</p> - -<p>Princess Ottilie and the mistress of Hohenszalras had had a discussion -before that note of invitation was sent; a discussion which had ended -as usual in the stronger reasoner giving way to the whim and will of -the weaker.</p> - -<p>'Why should we not be kind to him?' the Princess had urged; 'he is -a gentleman. You know I took the precaution to write to Kaulnitz; -Kaulnitz's answer is clear enough: and to Frohsdorf, from which it was -equally satisfactory. I wrote also to the Comte de la Barée; his reply -was everything which could be desired.'</p> - -<p>'No doubt,' her niece had answered for the twentieth time; 'but I -think we have already done enough for Christianity and hospitality; we -need not offer him our personal friendship; as there is no master in -this house he will not expect to be invited to it.' We will wish him -God-speed when he is fully restored and is going away.'</p> - -<p>'You are really too prudish!' said the Princess, very angrily. 'I -should be the last person to counsel an imprudence, a failure in due -caution, in correct reserve and hesitation; but for you to pretend that -a Countess von Szalras cannot venture to invite a person to her own -residence because that person is of the opposite sex——'</p> - -<p>'That is not the question; the root of the matter is that he is a -chance acquaintance made quite informally; we should have been cruel if -we had done less than we have done, but there can be no need that we -should do more.'</p> - -<p>'I can ask more about him of Kaulnitz,' said Madame Ottilie.</p> - -<p>Kaulnitz was one of her innumerable cousins, and was then minister in -Paris.</p> - -<p>'Why should you?' said her niece. 'Do you think either that it is quite -honourable to make inquiries unknown to people? It always savours to me -too much of the Third Section.'</p> - -<p>'You are so exaggerated in all your scruples; you prefer to be -suspicious of a person in silence than to ask a few questions,' said -the Princess. 'But surely when two ambassadors and the Kaiser guarantee -his position you may be content.'</p> - -<p>The answer she had received from Kaulnitz had indeed only moderately -satisfied her. It said that there was nothing known to the detriment -of the Marquis de Sabran; that he had never been accused of anything -unfitting his rank and name; but that he was a <i>viveur</i>, and was said -to be very successful at play; he was not known to have any debts, but -he was believed to be poor and of precarious fortunes. On the whole the -Princess had decided to keep the answer to herself; she had remembered -with irritation that her niece had suggested baccara as the source of -the hundred gold pieces.</p> - -<p>'I never intended to convey that ambassadors would disown him or the -Kaiser either, whose signature is in his pocket-book. Only,' said -Wanda, 'as you and I are all alone, surely it will be as well to leave -this gentleman to the monks and to Greswold. That is all I mean.'</p> - -<p>'It is a perfectly unnecessary scruple, and not at all like one of your -race. The Szalras have always been hospitable and headstrong.'</p> - -<p>'I hope I am the first—I have done my best for M. de Sabran; as for -being headstrong—surely that is not a sweet or wise quality that you -should lament my loss of it?'</p> - -<p>'You need not quarrel with me,'said the Princess, pettishly. 'You have -a terrible habit of contradiction, Wanda: and you never give up your -opinion.'</p> - -<p>The mistress of Hohenszalras smiled, and sighed a little.</p> - -<p>'Dear mother, we will do anything that amuses you.'</p> - -<p>So the note was sent.</p> - -<p>The Princess had been always eager for such glimpses of the moving -world as had been allowed to her by any accidental change. Her -temperament would have led her to find happiness in the frivolous -froth and fume of a worldly existence; she delighted in gossip, in -innocent gaiety, in curiosity, in wonder; all her early years had been -passed under repression and constraint, and now in her old age she was -as eager as a child for any plaything, as inquisitive as a marmoset, -as animated as a squirrel. Her mother had been a daughter of a great -French family of the south, and much of the vivacity and sportive -malice and quick temper of the Gallic blood was in her still, beneath -the primness and the placidity that had become her habit, from long -years passed in a little German court and in a stately semi-religious -order.</p> - -<p>This stranger whom chance had brought to them was to her idea a -precious and providential source of excitement: already a hundred -romances had suggested themselves to her fertile mind; already a -hundred impossibilities had suggested themselves to her as probable. -She did not in the least believe that accident had brought him there. -She imagined that he had wandered there for the sake of seeing the -mistress of Hohenszalras, who had for so long been unseen by the -world, but whose personal graces and great fortune had remained in the -memories of many. To the romantic fancy of the Princess, which had -never been blunted by contact with harsh facts, nothing seemed prettier -or more probable than that the French marquis, when arrested as a -poacher, had been upon a pilgrimage of poetic adventure. It should not -be her fault, she resolved, if the wounded knight had to go away in -sorrow and silence, without the castle gates being swung open once at -least.</p> - -<p>'After all, if she would only take an interest in anything human,' she -thought, 'instead of always horses and mountains, and philosophical -treatises and councils, and calculations with the stewards! She ought -not to live and die alone. They made me vow to do so, and perhaps it -was for the best, but I would never say to anyone—Do likewise.'</p> - -<p>And then the Princess felt the warm tears on her own cheeks, thinking -of herself as she had been at seventeen, pacing up and down the stiff -straight alley of clipped trees at Lilienhöhe with a bright young -soldier who had fallen in a duel ere he was twenty. It was all so -long ago, so long ago, and she was a true submissive daughter of her -princely house, and of her Holy Church; yet she knew that it was not -meet for a woman to live and die without a man's heart to beat by her -own, without a child's hands to close her glazing eyes.</p> - -<p>And Wanda von Szalras wished so to live and so to die! Only one -magician could change her. Why should he not come?</p> - -<p>So on the morrow the little boat that had brought the physician to him -so often took him over the two miles of water to the landing stairs at -the foot of the castle rock. In a little while he stood in the presence -of his châtelaine.</p> - -<p>He was a man who never in his life had been confused, unnerved, or at a -loss for words; yet now he felt as a boy might have done, as a rustic -might; he had a mist before his eyes, his heart beat quickly, he grew -very pale.</p> - -<p>She thought he was still suffering, and looked at him with interest.</p> - -<p>'I am afraid that we did wrong to tempt you from the monastery,' she -said, in her grave melodious voice; and she stretched out her hand to -him with a look of sympathy. I am afraid you are still suffering and -weak, are you not?'</p> - -<p>He bent low as he touched it.</p> - -<p>'How can I thank you?' he murmured. 'You have treated a vagrant like a -king!'</p> - -<p>'You were a munificent vagrant to our chapel and our poor,' she replied -with a smile. And what have we done for you? Nothing more than is our -commonest duty, far removed from cities or even villages, as we are. -Are you really recovered? I may tell you now that there was a moment -when Herr Greswold was alarmed for you.'</p> - -<p>The Princess Ottilie entered at that moment and welcomed him with more -effusion and congratulation. They breakfasted in a chamber called the -Saxe room, an oval room lined throughout with lacquered white wood, -in the Louis Seize style; the panels were painted in Watteau-like -designs; it had been decorated by a French artist in the middle of the -eighteenth century, and with its hangings of flowered white satin, and -its collection of Meissen china figures, and its great window, which -looked over a small garden with velvet grass plots and huge yews, was -the place of all others to make an early morning meal most agreeable, -whether in summer when the casements were open to the old-fashioned -roses that climbed about them, or in winter when on the open hearth -great oak logs burned beneath the carved white wood mantelpiece, gay -with its plaques of Saxe and its garlands of foliage. The little oval -table bore a service of old Meissen, with tiny Watteau figures painted -on a ground of palest rose. Watteau figures of the same royal china -upheld great shells filled with the late violets of the woods of -Hohenszalras.</p> - -<p>'What an enchanting little room!' said Sabran, glancing round it, and -appreciating with the eyes of a connoisseur the Lancret designs, the -Riesiner cabinets, and the old china. He was as well versed in the -art and lore of the Beau Siècle as Arsène Houssaye or the Goncourts; -he talked now of the epoch with skill and grace, with that accuracy -of knowledge and that fineness of criticism which had made his -observations and his approval treasured and sought for by the artists -and the art patrons of Paris.</p> - -<p>The day was grey and mild; the casements were open; the fresh, pure -fragrance of the forests came in through the aromatic warmth of the -chamber; the little gay shepherds and shepherdesses seemed to breathe -and laugh.</p> - -<p>'This room was a caprice of an ancestress of mine, who was of your -country, and was, I am afraid, very wretched here,' said Wanda von -Szalras. 'She brought her taste from Marly and Versailles. It is not -the finest or the purest taste, but it has a grace and elegance of its -own that is very charming, as a change.'</p> - -<p>'It is a madrigal in porcelain,' he said, looking around him. 'I am -glad that the <i>alouette gauloise</i> has sung here beside the dread and -majestic Austrian vulture.'</p> - -<p>'The <i>alouette gauloise</i> always sings in Aunt Ottilie's heart; it -is what keeps her so young always. I assure you she is a great deal -younger than I am,' said his châtelaine, resting a glance of tender -affection on the pretty figure of the Princess caressing her Spitz dog -Bijou.</p> - -<p>She herself, with her great pearls about her throat, and a gown of -white serge, looked a stately and almost severe figure beside the -dainty picturesque prettiness of the elder lady and the fantastic -gaiety and gilding of the porcelain and the paintings. He felt a -certain awe of her, a certain hesitation before her, which the habits -of the world enabled him to conceal, but which moved him with a sense -of timidity, novel and almost painful.</p> - -<p>'One ought to be Dorat and Marmontel to be worthy of such a repast,' he -said, as he seated himself between his hostesses.</p> - -<p>'Neither Dorat nor Marmontel would have enjoyed your very terrible -adventure,' said the Princess, reflecting with satisfaction that it was -herself who had saved this charming and chivalrous life, since, at her -own risk and loss, she had sent her physicians, alike of body and of -soul, to wrestle for him with death by his sick bed at Pregratten.</p> - -<p>'Wanda would never have sent anyone to him,' thought the Princess: -'she is so unaccountably indifferent to any human life higher than her -peasantry.'</p> - -<p>'Adventures are to the adventurous,' quoted Sabran.</p> - -<p>'Yes,' said the Princess; 'but the pity is that the adventurous are too -often the questionable——'</p> - -<p>'Perhaps that is saying too much,' said Wanda; 'but it is certain that -the more solid qualities do not often lead into a career of excitement. -It has been always conceded—with a sigh—that duty is dull.'</p> - -<p>'I think adventure is like calamity: some people are born to it,' he -added,'and such cannot escape from it. Loyola may cover his head with -a cowl: he cannot become obscure. Eugene may make himself an abbé: he -cannot escape his horoscope cast in the House of Mars.'</p> - -<p>'What a fatalist you are!'</p> - -<p>'Do you think we ever escape our fate? Alexander slew all whom he -suspected, but he did not for that die in his bed of old age.'</p> - -<p>'That merely proves that crime is no buckler.'</p> - -<p>Sabran was silent.</p> - -<p>'My life has been very adventurous,' he said lightly, after a pause; -'but I have only regarded that as another name for misfortune. The -picturesque is not the prosperous; all beggars look well on canvas, -whilst Carolus Duran himself can make nothing of a portrait of Dives, -<i>roulant carrosse</i> through his fifty millions.'</p> - -<p>He had not his usual strength; his loins had had a wrench in the -crashing fall from the Umbal which they had not wholly recovered, -despite the wise medicaments of Greswold.</p> - -<p>He moved with some difficulty, and, not to weary him, she remained -after breakfast in the Watteau room, making him recline at length in a -long chair beside one of the windows. She was touched by the weakness -of a man evidently so strong and daring by nature, and she regretted -the rough and inhospitable handling which he had experienced from her -beloved hills and waters. She, who spoke to no one all the year through -except her stewards and her priests, did not fail to be sensible of the -pleasure she derived from the cultured and sympathetic companionship of -a brilliant and talented mind.</p> - -<p>'Ah! if Egon had only talent like that!' she thought, with a sigh -of remembrance. Her cousin was a gallant nobleman and soldier, but -of literature he had no knowledge; for art he had a consummate -indifference; and the only eloquence he could command was a brief -address to his troopers, which would be answered by an <i>Eljén</i>! ringing -loud and long, like steel smiting upon iron.</p> - -<p>Sabran could at all times talk well.</p> - -<p>He had the gift of facile and eloquent words, and he had also what most -attracted the sympathies of his hostess, a genuine and healthful love -of the mountains and forests. All his life in Paris had not eradicated -from his character a deep love for Nature in her wildest and her -stormiest moods. They conversed long and with mutual pleasure of the -country around them, of which she knew every ravine and torrent, and -of whose bold and sombre beauty he was honestly enamoured.</p> - -<p>The noon had deepened into afternoon, and the chimes of the clock-tower -were sounding four when he rose to take his leave, and go on his way -across the green brilliancy of the tumbling water to his quiet home -with the Dominican brethren. He had still the languor and fatigue -about him of recent illness, and he moved slowly and with considerable -weakness. She said to him in parting, with unaffected kindness, 'Come -across to us whenever you like; we are concerned to think that one of -our own glaciers should have treated you so cruelly. I am often out -riding far and wide, but my aunt will always be pleased to receive you.'</p> - -<p>'I am the debtor of the Umbal ice,' he said, in a low voice. 'But for -that happy fall I should have gone on my way to my old senseless life -without ever having known true rest as I know it yonder. Will you be -offended, too, if I say that I stayed at Matrey with a vague, faint, -unfounded hope that your mountains might be merciful, and let me——'</p> - -<p>'Shoot a <i>kuttengeier?</i>' she said quickly, as though not desiring to -hear his sentence finished. 'You might shoot one easily sitting at a -window in the monastery, and watching till the vultures flew across the -lake; but you will remember you are on parole. I am sure you will be -faithful.'</p> - -<p>Long, long afterwards she remembered that he shrank a little at the -word, and that a flush of colour went over his face.</p> - -<p>'I will,' he said simply; 'and it was not the <i>kuttengeier</i> for which I -desired to be allowed to revisit Hohenszalras.'</p> - -<p>'Well, if the monks starve you or weary you, you can remember that we -are here, and you must not give their organ quite all the music that -you bear so wonderfully in your mind and hands.'</p> - -<p>'I will play to you all day, if you will only allow me.'</p> - -<p>'Next time you come—to-morrow, if you like.'</p> - -<p>He went away, lying listlessly in the little boat, for he was still -far from strong; but life seemed to him very sweet and serene as the -evening light spread over the broad, bright water, and the water birds -rose and scattered before the plunge of the oars.</p> - -<p>Had the sovereign mistress of Hohenszalras ever said before to any -other living friend——to-morrow? Yet he was too clever a man to be -vain; and he did not misinterpret the calm kindness of her invitation.</p> - -<p>He went thither again the next day, though he left them early, for he -had a sensitive fear of wearying with his presence ladies to whom he -owed so much.</p> - -<p>But the Princess urged his speedy return, and the châtelaine of -Szaravola said once more, with that grave smile which was rather in the -eyes than on the lips, 'We shall always be happy to see you when you -are inclined to cross the lake.'</p> - -<p>He was a great adept at painting, and he made several broad, bold -sketches of the landscapes visible from the lake; he was famous for -many a drawing <i>brossé dans le vrai</i>, which hung at his favourite -club the Mirliton; he could paint, more finely and delicately also, -on ivory, on satin, on leather. He sent for some fans and screens -from Vienna, and did in <i>gouache</i> upon them exquisite birds, foliage, -flowers, legends of saints, which were beautiful enough to be not -unworthy a place in those rooms of the burg where the Penicauds, the -Fragonards, the Pettitôts, were represented by much of their most -perfect work.</p> - -<p>He passed his mornings in labour of this sort; at noonday or in the -afternoon he rowed across to Hohenszalras, and loitered for an hour -or two in the gardens or the library. Little by little they became so -accustomed to his coming that it would have seemed strange if more than -a day had gone by without the little striped blue boat gliding from the -Holy Isle to the castle stairs. He never stayed very long; not so long -as the Princess desired.</p> - -<p>'Never in my life have I spent weeks so harmlessly!' he said once with -a smile to the doctor; then he gave a quick sigh and turned away, for -he thought to himself in a sudden repentance that these innocent and -blameless days were perhaps but the prelude to one of the greatest sins -of a not sinless life.</p> - -<p>He came to be looked for quite naturally at the noonday breakfast in -the pretty Saxe chamber. He would spend hours playing on the chapel -organ, or on the piano in the octagon room which Liszt had chosen. The -grand and dreamy music rolled out over the green lake towards the green -hills, and Wanda would look often at the marble figure of her brother -on his tomb, lying like the statue of the young Gaston de Foix, and -think to herself, 'If only Bela were listening, too!'</p> - -<p>Sometimes she was startled when she remembered into what continual -intimacy she had admitted a man of whom she had no real knowledge.</p> - -<p>The Princess, indeed, had said to her, 'I did ask Kaulnitz: Kaulnitz -knows him quite well;' but that was hardly enough to satisfy a woman -as reserved in her friendships, and as habituated to the observance of -a severe etiquette, as was the châtelaine of Hohenszalras. Every day -almost she said to herself that she would not see him when he came, or, -if she saw him, would show him, by greater chilliness of manner, that -it was time he quitted the island. But when he did come, if he did not -see her he went to the chapel and played a mass, a requiem, an anthem, -a sonata; and Beethoven, Palestrina, Schumann, Wagner, Berlioz, surely -allured her from her solitude, and she would come on to the terrace and -listen to the waves of melody rolling out through the cool sunless air, -through the open door of the place where her beloved dead rested. Then, -as a matter of course, he stayed, and after the noonday meal sometimes -he rode with her in the forests, or drove the Princess in her pony -chair, or received permission to bear his châtelaine company in her -mountain walks. They were seldom alone, but they were much together.</p> - -<p>'It is much better for her than solitude,' thought the Princess. 'It is -not likely that she will ever care anything for him: she is so cold; -but if she did, there would be no great harm done. He is of old blood, -and she has wealth enough to need no more. Of course any one of our -great princes would be better; but, then, as she will never take any -one of them——'</p> - -<p>And the Princess, who was completely fascinated by the deferential -homage to her of Sabran, and the pleasure he honestly found in her -society, would do all she could, in her innocent and delicate way, to -give her favourite the opportunities he desired of intercourse with the -mistress of Hohenszalras. She wanted to see again the life that she had -seen in other days at the Schloss; grand parties for the hunting season -and the summer season, royal and noble people in the guest-chambers, -great gatherings for the chase on the <i>rond-point</i> in the woods, -covers for fifty laid at the table in the banqueting hall, and -besides—besides, thought the childless and loving old woman—little -children with long fair curls and gay voices wakening the echoes in the -Rittersäal with their sports and pastimes.</p> - -<p>It was noble and austere, no doubt, this life led by Wanda von Szalras -amidst the mountains in the Tauern, but it was lonely and monotonous to -the Princess, who still loved a certain movement, gossip, and diversion -as she liked to nibble a <i>nougat</i> and sip her chocolate foaming under -its thick cream. It seemed to her that even to suffer a little would be -better for her niece than this unvarying solitude, this eternal calm. -That she should have mourned for her brother was most natural, but this -perpetual seclusion was an exaggeration of regret.</p> - -<p>If the presence of Sabran reconciled her with the world, with life as -it was, and induced her to return to the court and to those pleasures -natural to her rank and to her years, it would be well done, thought -the Princess; and as for him—if he carried away a broken heart it -would be a great pity, but persons who like to move others as puppets -cannot concern themselves with the accidental injury of one of their -toys; and Mme. Ottilie was too content with her success of the moment -to look much beyond it.</p> - -<p>'The charm of being here is to me precisely what I daresay makes it -tiresome to you,' the mistress of Hohenszalras said to him one day, 'I -mean its isolation. One can entirely forget that beyond those mountains -there is a world fussing, fuming, brewing its storms in saucers, -and inventing a quantity of increased unwholesomeness, in noise and -stench, which it calls a higher civilisation. No! I would never have -a telegraph wire brought here from Matrey. There is nothing I ever -particularly care to know about. If there were anyone I loved who was -away from me it would be different. But there is no one. There are -people I like, of course——</p> - -<p>'But political events?' he suggested.</p> - -<p>'They do not attract me. They are ignoble. They are for the most part -contemptibly ill-managed, and to think that after so many thousands of -years humanity has not really progressed beyond the wild beasts' method -of settling disputes——'</p> - -<p>'There is so much of the wild beast in it. With such an opinion of -political life why do you counsel me to seek it?'</p> - -<p>'You are a man. There is nothing else for a man who has talent, and -who is—who is as you are, <i>désœuvré.</i> Intellectual work would be -better, but you do not care for it, it seems. Since your "Mexico"——'</p> - -<p>'The "Mexico" was no work of mine.'</p> - -<p>'Oh yes, pardon me: I have read it. All your notes, all your addenda, -show how the learning of the editor was even superior to that of the -original author.'</p> - -<p>'No; all that I could do was to simplify his immense erudition and -arrange it. I never loved the work; do not accredit me with so much -industry: but it was a debt that I paid, and paid easily too, for the -materials lay all to my hand, if in disorder.'</p> - -<p>'The Marquis Xavier must at least have infused his own love of -archæology and science into you?'</p> - -<p>'I can scarcely say even so much. I have a facility at acquiring -knowledge, which is not a very high quality. Things come easily to me. -I fear if Herr Joachim examined me he would find my science shallow.'</p> - -<p>'You have so many talents that perhaps you are like one of your own -Mexican forests; one luxuriance kills another.'</p> - -<p>'Had I had fewer I might have been more useful in my generation,' he -said, with a certain sincerity of regret.</p> - -<p>'You would have been much less interesting,' she thought to herself, as -she said aloud, 'There are the horses coming up to the steps: will you -ride with me? And do not be ungrateful for your good gifts. Talent is a -<i>Schlüsselblume</i> that opens to all hidden treasures.'</p> - -<p>'Why are you not in the Chamber?' she had said a little before to him. -'You are eloquent; you have an ancestry that binds you to do your best -for France.'</p> - -<p>'I have no convictions,' he had said, with a flush on his face. 'It is -a sad thing to confess.'</p> - -<p>'It is; but if you have nothing better to substitute for them you might -be content to abide by those of your fathers.'</p> - -<p>He had been silent.</p> - -<p>'Besides,' she had added, 'patriotism is not an opinion, it is an -instinct.'</p> - -<p>'With good men. I am not one of them.'</p> - -<p>'Go into public life,' she had repeated. 'Convictions will come to you -in an active career, as the muscles develop in the gymnasium.'</p> - -<p>'I am indolent,' he had demurred, 'and I have desultory habits.'</p> - -<p>'You may break yourself of these. There must be much in which you could -interest yourself. Begin with the fishing interests of the coast that -belongs to you.'</p> - -<p>'Honestly, I care for nothing except for myself. You will say it is -base.'</p> - -<p>'I am afraid it is natural.'</p> - -<p>He but seldom spoke of his early life. When he did so it was with -reluctance, as if it gave him pain. His father he had never known; of -his grandfather, the Marquis Xavier, as he usually called him, he spoke -with extreme and reverent tenderness, but with little reticence. The -grave old man, in the stateliness and simplicity of his solitary life, -had been to his youthful imagination a solemn and sacred figure.</p> - -<p>'His was the noblest life I have ever known,' he said once, with an -emotion in the accent of the words which she had never heard in his -voice before, and which gave her a passing impression of a regret in -him that was almost remorse.</p> - -<p>It might be, she reflected, the remorse of a man who, in his careless -youth, had been less heedful of the value of an affection and the -greatness of a character which, as he grew older and wiser, he learned -to appreciate when it was too late. He related willingly how the old -man had trusted him to carry out into the light of the world the fruits -of his life of research, and with what pleasure he had seen the instant -and universal recognition of the labours of the brain and the hand -that were dust. But of his own life in the West he said little; he -referred his skill in riding to the wild horses of the pampas, and his -botanical and scientific knowledge to the studies which the solitudes -of the sierras had made him turn to as relaxation and occupation; but -of himself he said little, nothing, unless the conversation so turned -upon his life there that it was impossible for him to avoid those -reminiscences which were evidently little agreeable to him. Perhaps -she thought some youthful passion, some unwise love, had made those -flowering swamps and sombre plains painful in memory to him. There -might be other graves than that of the Marquis Xavier beneath the -plumes of pampas grass. Perhaps, also, to a man of the world, a man of -mere pleasure as he had become, that studious and lonesome youth of his -already had drifted so far away that, seen in distance, it seemed dim -and unreal as any dream.</p> - -<p>'How happy you are to have so many admirable gifts!' said Wanda to him -one day, when he had offered her a fan that he had painted on ivory. He -had a facile skill at most of the arts, and had acquired accuracy and -technique lounging through the painting-rooms of Paris. The fan was an -exquisite trifle, and bore on one side her monogram and the arms of her -house, and on the other mountain flowers and birds, rendered with the -delicacy of a miniaturist.</p> - -<p>'What is the use of a mere amateur?' he said, with indifference. 'When -one has lived amongst artists one learns heartily to despise oneself -for daring to flirt with those sacred sisters the Muses.'</p> - -<p>'Why? And, after all, when one has such perfect talent as yours, the -definition of amateur and artist seems a very arbitrary and meaningless -one. If you needed to make your fame and fortune by painting faces -you could do so. You do not need. Does that make the fan the less -precious? The more, I think, since gold cannot buy it.'</p> - -<p>'You are too kind to me. The world would not be as much so if I really -wanted its suffrages.'</p> - -<p>'You cannot tell that. I think you have that facility which is the -first note of genius. It is true all your wonderful talents seem the -more wonderful to me because I have none myself. I feel art, but I have -no power over it; and as for what are called accomplishments I have -none. I could, perhaps, beat you in the shooting gallery, and I will -try some day if you like, and I can ride—well, like my Kaiserin—but -accomplishments I have none.'</p> - -<p>'Surely you were yesterday reading Plato in his own text?'</p> - -<p>'I learnt Greek and Latin with my brother. You cannot call that an -accomplishment. The ladies of the old time often knew the learned -tongues, though they were greater at tapestry or distilling and at -the ordering of their household. In a solitary place like this it is -needful to know so many useful things. I can shoe my horse and harness -a sleigh; I can tell every useful herb and flower in the woods; I know -well what to do in frostbite or accidents; if I were lost in the hills -I could make my way by the stars; I can milk a cow, and can row any -boat, and I can climb with crampons; I am a mountaineer. Do not be so -surprised. I do all that I have the children taught in my schools. -But in a salon I am useless and stupid; the last new lady whose lord -has been decorated because he sold something wholesale or cheated -successfully at the Bourse would, I assure you, eclipse me easily in -the talents of the drawing-room.'</p> - -<p>Sabran looked at her and laughed outright. A compliment would have -seemed ridiculous before this beautiful patrician, with her serene -dignity, her instinctive grace, her unconscious hauteur, her entire -possession of all those attributes which are the best heirlooms of -a great nobility. To protest against her words would have been like -an insult to this daughter of knights and princes, to whom half the -sovereigns of modern Europe would have seemed but parvenus, the -accidental mushroom growth of the decay in the contest of nations.</p> - -<p>His laughter amused her, though it was, perhaps, the most discreet and -delicate of compliments. She was not offended by it as she would have -been with any spoken flattery.</p> - -<p>'After all, do not think me modest in what I have said,' she pursued. -'<i>Talents de société</i> are but slight things at the best, and in our -day need not even have either wit or culture: a good travesty at a -costume-ball, a startling gown on a racecourse, a series of adventures -more or less true, a trick of laughing often and laughing long—any -one of these is enough for renown in your Paris. In Vienna we do more -homage to tradition still; our Court life has still something of the -grace of the minuet.'</p> - -<p>'Yet even in Vienna you refuse——'</p> - -<p>'To spend my time? Why not? The ceremonies of a Court are wearisome to -me; my duties lie here; and for the mirth and pomp of society I have -had no heart since the grief that you know of fell upon me.'</p> - -<p>It was the first time that she had ever spoken of her brother's loss to -him: he bowed very low in silent sympathy.</p> - -<p>'Who would not envy his death, since it has brought such remembrance!' -he said in a low tone, after some moments.</p> - -<p>'Ah, if only we could be sure that unceasing regret consoles the dead!' -she said, with an emotion, that softened and dimmed all her beauty. -Then, as if ashamed or repentant of having shown her feeling for Bela -to a stranger, she turned to him and said more distantly:</p> - -<p>'Would it entertain you to see my little scholars? I will take you to -the schoolhouses if you like.'</p> - -<p>He could only eagerly accept the offer: he felt his heart beat and his -eyes lighten as she spoke. He knew that such a condescension in her was -a mark of friendship, a sign of familiar intimacy.</p> - -<p>'It is but a mile or so through the woods. We will walk there,' she -said, as she took her tall cane from its rack and called to Neva and -Donau, where they lay on the terrace without.</p> - -<p>He fancied that the vague mistrust of him, the vague prejudice against -him of which he had been sensible in her, were passing away from her -mind; but still he doubted—doubted bitterly—whether she would ever -give him any other thought than that due to a passing and indifferent -acquaintance. That she admired his intelligence and that she pitied his -loneliness he saw; but there seemed to him that never, never, never, -would he break down in his own favour that impalpable but impassable -barrier due, half to her pride, half to her reserve, and absolutely to -her indifference, which separated Wanda von Szalras from the rest of -mankind.</p> - -<p>If she had any weakness or foible it was the children's schools on the -estates in the High Tauern and elsewhere. They had been founded on a -scheme of Bela's and her own, when they had been very young, and the -world to them a lovely day without end. Their too elaborate theories -had been of necessity curtailed, but the schools had been established -on the basis of their early dreams, and were unlike any others that -existed. She had read much and deeply, and had thought out all she had -read, and as she enjoyed that happy power of realising and embodying -her own theories which most theorists are denied, she had founded the -schools of the High Tauern in absolute opposition to all that the -school-boards of her generation have decreed as desirable. And in every -one of her villages she had her schools on this principle, and they -throve, and the children with them. Many of these could not read a -printed page, but all of them could read the shepherd's weather-glass -in sky and flower; all of them knew the worm that was harmful to the -crops, the beetle that was harmless in the grass; all knew a tree by a -leaf, a bird by a feather, an insect by a grub.</p> - -<p>Modern teaching makes a multitude of gabblers. She did not think it -necessary for the little goatherds, and dairymaids, and foresters, -and charcoal-burners, and sennerinn, and carpenters, and cobblers, to -study the exact sciences or draw casts from the antique. She was of -opinion, with Pope, that 'a little learning is a dangerous thing,' and -that a smattering of it will easily make a man morose and discontented, -whilst it takes a very deep and even lifelong devotion to it to teach a -man content with his lot. Genius, she thought, is too rare a thing to -make it necessary to construct village schools for it, and whenever or -wherever it comes upon earth it will surely be its own master.</p> - -<p>She did not believe in culture for little peasants who have to work for -their daily bread at the plough-tail or with the reaping-hook. She knew -that a mere glimpse of a Canaan of art and learning is cruelty to those -who never can enter into and never even can have leisure to merely gaze -on it. She thought that a vast amount of useful knowledge is consigned -to oblivion whilst children are taught to waste their time in picking -up the crumbs of a great indigestible loaf of artificial learning. She -had her scholars taught their 'ABC,' and that was all. Those who wished -to write were taught, but writing was not enforced. What they were made -to learn was the name and use of every plant in their own country; -the habits and ways of all animals; how to cook plain food well, and -make good bread; how to brew simples from the herbs of their fields -and woods, and how to discern the coming weather from the aspect of -the skies, the shutting-up of certain blossoms, and the time of day -from those 'poor men's watches,' the opening flowers. In all countries -there is a great deal of useful household and out-of-door lore that is -fast being choked out of existence under books and globes, and which, -unless it passes by word of mouth from generation to generation, is -quickly and irrevocably lost. All this lore she had cherished by her -schoolchildren. Her boys were taught in addition any useful trade they -liked—boot-making, crampon-making, horse-shoeing, wheel-making, or -carpentry. This trade was made a pastime to each. The little maidens -learned to sew, to cook, to spin, to card, to keep fowls and sheep and -cattle in good health, and to know all poisonous plants and berries by -sight.</p> - -<p>'I think it is what is wanted,' she said. 'A little peasant child does -not need to be able to talk of the corolla and the spathe, but he does -want to recognise at a glance the flower that will give him healing -and the berries that will give him death. His sister does not in the -least require to know why a kettle boils, but she does need to know -when a warm bath will be good for a sick baby or when hurtful. We want -a new generation to be helpful, to have eyes, and to know the beauty -of silence. I do not mind much whether my children read or not. The -labourer that reads turns Socialist, because his brain cannot digest -the hard mass of wonderful facts he encounters. But I believe every one -of my little peasants, being wrecked like Crusoe, would prove as handy -as he.'</p> - -<p>She was fond of her scholars and proud of them, and they were never -afraid of her. They knew well it was the great lady who filled all -their sacks the night of Santa Claus—even those of the naughty -children, because, as she said, childhood was so short that she thought -it cruel to give it any disappointments.</p> - -<p>The walk to the schoolhouse lay through the woods to the south of the -castle; woods of larch and beech and walnut and the graceful Siberian -pine, with deep mosses and thick fern-brakes beneath them, and ever and -again a watercourse tumbling through their greenery to fall into the -Szalrassee below.</p> - -<p>'I always fancy I can hear here the echo of the great Krimler -torrents,' she said to him as they passed through the trees. 'No -doubt it <i>is</i> fancy, and the sound is only from our own falls. But -the peasants' tradition is, you may know, that our lake is the water -of the Krimler come to us underground from the Pinzgau. Do you know -our Sahara of the North? It is monotonous and barren enough, and yet -with its vast solitudes of marsh and stones, its flocks of wild fowl, -its reedy wastes, its countless streams, it is grand in its own way. -And then in the heart of it there are the thunder and the boiling fury -of Krimml! You will smile because I am an enthusiast for my country, -you who have seen Orinoco and Chimborazo; but even you will own that -the old Duchy of Austria, the old Archbishopric of Salzburg, the old -Countship of Tirol, have some beauty and glory in them. Here is the -schoolhouse. Now you shall see what I think needful for the peasant of -the future. Perhaps you will condemn me as a true Austrian: that is, as -a Reactionist.'</p> - -<p>The schoolhouse was a châlet, or rather a collection of châlets, set -one against another on a green pasture belted by pine woods, above -which the snows of the distant Venediger were gleaming amidst the -clouds. There was a loud hum of childish voices rising through the open -lattice, and these did not cease as they entered the foremost house.</p> - -<p>'Do not be surprised that they take no notice of our entrance,' she -said to him. 'I have taught them not to do so unless I bid them. If -they left off their tasks I could never tell how they did them; and is -not the truest respect shown in obedience?'</p> - -<p>'They are as well disciplined as soldiers,' he said with a smile, -as twenty curly heads bent over desks were lifted for a moment to -instantly go down again.</p> - -<p>'Surely discipline is next to health,' added Wanda. 'If the child do -not learn it early he must suffer fearfully when he reaches manhood, -since all men, even princes, have to obey some time or other, and the -majority of men are not princes, but are soldiers, clerks, porters, -guides, labourers, tradesmen, what not; certainly something subject -to law if not to a master. How many lives have been lost because a -man failed to understand the meaning of immediate and unquestioning -obedience! Soldiers are shot for want of it, yet children are not to be -taught it!'</p> - -<p>Whilst she spoke not a child looked up or left off his lesson: the -teacher, a white-haired old man, went on with his recitation.</p> - -<p>'Your teachers are not priests?' he said in some surprise.</p> - -<p>'No,' she answered; 'I am a faithful daughter of the Church, as you -know; but every priest is perforce a specialist, if I may be forgiven -the profanity, and the teacher of children should be of perfectly open, -simple and unbiassed mind; the priest's can never be that. Besides, -his teaching is apart. The love and fear of God are themes too vast -and too intimate to be mingled with the pains of the alphabet and the -multiplication tables. There alone I agree with your French Radicals, -though from a very different reason to theirs. Now in this part of the -schools you see the children are learning from books. These children -have wished to read, and are taught to do so; but I do not enforce -though I recommend it. You think that very barbarous? Oh! reflect for -a moment how much more glorious was the world, was literature itself, -before printing was invented. Sometimes I think it was a book, not a -fruit, that Satan gave. You smile incredulously. Well, no doubt to a -Parisian it seems absurd. How should you understand what is wanted in -the heart of these hills? Come and see the other houses.'</p> - -<p>In the next which they entered there was a group of small sturdy boys, -very sunburnt and rough and bright, who were seated in a row listening -with rapt attention to a teacher who was talking to them of birds and -their uses and ways; there were prints, of birds and birds' nests, and -the teacher was making them understand why and how a bird flew.</p> - -<p>'That is the natural history school,' she said; 'one day it is birds, -another animals, another insects, that they are told about. Those are -all little foresters born. They will go about their woods with eyes -that see, and with tenderness for all creation.'</p> - -<p>In the next school Herr Joachim himself, who took no notice of their -entrance, was giving a simple little lecture on the useful herbs and -the edible tubers, the way to know them and to turn them to profit. -There were several girls listening here.</p> - -<p>'Those girls will not poison their people at home with a false -cryptogram,' said Wanda, as they passed on to another place, where -a lesson on farriery and the treatment of cattle was going on, and -another where a teacher was instructing a mixed group of boys and -little maidens in the lore of the forests, of the grasses, of the -various causes that kill a tree in its prime, of the insects that -dwell in them, and of the different soils that they needed. In -another chamber there was a spinning-class and a sewing-class under a -kindly-faced old dame; and in yet another there were music-classes, -some playing on the zither, and others singing part-songs and glees -with baby voices.</p> - -<p>'Now you have seen all I have to show you,' said Wanda. 'In these two -other châlets are the workshops, where the boys learn any trade they -choose, and the girls are also taught to make a shoe or a jacket. My -children would not pass examinations in cities, certainly; but they -are being fitted in the best way they can for their future life, which -will pass either in these mountains and forests, as I hope, or in the -armies of the Emperor, and the humble work-a-day ways of poor folks -everywhere. If there be a Grillparzer or a Kaulbach amongst them, the -education is large and simple enough to let the originality he has been -born with develop itself; if, as is far more likely, they are all made -of ordinary human stuff, then the teaching they receive is such as to -make them contented, pious, honest, and useful working people. At least -that is what I strive for; and this is certain, that the children come -some of them a German mile and more with joy and willingness to their -schools, and that this at least they take away with them into their -future life—the sense of duty as a supreme rein over all instincts, -and mercifulness towards every living thing that God has given us.'</p> - -<p>She had spoken with unusual animation, and with an earnestness that -brought warmth over her cheek and moisture into her eyes.</p> - -<p>Sabran looked at her timidly; then as timidly he touched the tips of -her fingers, and raised them to his lips.</p> - -<p>'You are a noble woman,' he said very low; a sense of his own utter -unworthiness overwhelmed him and held him mute.</p> - -<p>She glanced at him in some surprise, vaguely tinged with displeasure.</p> - -<p>'There are schools on every estate,' she said, a little angrily and -disconnectedly. 'These are modelled on my own whim; that is all. The -world would say I ought to teach these little peasants the science -that dissects its own sources, and the philosophies that resolve -all creation into an egg. But I follow ancient ways enough to think -the country life the best, the healthiest, the sweetest: it is for -this that they are born, and to this I train them. If we had more -naturalists we should have fewer Communists.'</p> - -<p>'Yes, Audubon would scarcely have been a regicide, or Humboldt a -Camorrist,' he answered her, regaining his self-possession. 'No doubt a -love of nature is a triple armour against self-love. How can I say how -right I think your system with these children? You seem not to believe -me. There is only one thing in which I differ with you; you think the -'eyes that see' bring content. Surely not! surely not!'</p> - -<p>'It depends on what they see,' she said meditatively. 'When they are -wide open in the woods and fields, when they have been taught to see -how the tree-bee forms her cell and the mole his fortress, how the -warbler builds his nest for his love and the water-spider makes his -little raft, how the leaf comes forth from the hard stem and the fungi -from the rank mould, then I think that sight is content—content in the -simple life of the woodland place, and in such delighted wonder that -the heart of its own accord goes up in peace and praise to the Creator. -The printed page may teach envy, desire, covetousness, hatred, but the -Book of Nature teaches resignation, hope, willingness to labour and -live, submission to die. The world has gone further and further from -peace since larger and larger have grown its cities and its shepherd -kings are no more.'</p> - -<p>He was silent.</p> - -<p>Her voice moved him like sweet remembered music; yet in his own -remembrance what were there? Only 'envy, desire, covetousness, hatred,' -the unlovely shapes that were to her as emblems of the powers of evil. -His reason was with her, and his emotions were with her also, but -memory was busy in him, and in it he saw 'as in a glass darkly,' all -his passionate, cold, embittered youth, all his warped, irresolute, -useless, and untrue manhood.</p> - -<p>'Do not think,' she added, unconscious of the pain that she had -caused him, 'that I undervalue the blessing of great books; but I do -think that, to recognise the beauty of literature, as much culture and -comprehension are needed as to understand Leonardo's painting, or the -structure of Wagner's music. Those who read well are as rare as those -who love well. The curse of our age is superficial knowledge; it is -a <i>cryptogram</i> of the rankest sort, and I will not let my scholars -touch it. Do you not think it is better for a country child to know -what flowers are poisonous for her cattle, and what herbs are useful -in her neighbours' fever, than to be able to spell through a Jesuit's -newspaper, or suck evil from a Communist's pamphlet? You will not have -your horse well shod if the smith be thinking of Bakounine while he -hammers the iron.'</p> - -<p>'I have held the views of Bakounine myself,' said Sabran, with -hesitation. 'I do not know what you will think of me. I have even been -tempted to be an anarchist, a Nihilist.'</p> - -<p>'You speak in the past tense. You must have abandoned those views? You -are received at Frohsdorf?'</p> - -<p>'They have, perhaps, abandoned me. My life has been idle, sinful -often. I have liked luxury, and have not denied myself folly. I -recognised the absurdity of such a man as I was joining in any -movement of seriousness and self-negation, so I threw away my political -persuasions, as one throws off a knapsack when tired of a journey on -foot.'</p> - -<p>'That was not very conscientious, surely?'</p> - -<p>'No, madame. It is perhaps, however, better than helping to adjust the -contradictions of the world with dynamite. And I cannot even claim that -they were persuasions; I fear they were mere personal impatience with -narrow fortunes and useless ambitions.'</p> - -<p>'I cannot pardon anyone of an old nobility turning Republican; it -is like a son insulting the tombs of his fathers!' she said, with -emphasis; then, fearing she had reproved him too strongly, she added, -with a smile, 'And yet I also could almost join the anarchists when I -see the enormous wealth of baseborn speculators and Hebrew capitalists -in such bitter contrast with the hunger of the poor, who starve all -over the world in winter like birds frozen on the snow. Oh, do not -suppose that, though I am an Austrian, I cannot see that feudalism is -doomed. We are still feudal here, but then in so much we are still as -we were in crusading days. The nobles have been, almost everywhere -except here, ousted by capitalists, and the capitalists will in turn -be devoured by the democracy. <i>Les loups se mangeront entre eux.</i> You -see, though I may be prejudiced, I am not blind. But you, as a Breton, -should think feudalism a loss, as I do.'</p> - -<p>'In those days, Barbe Bleue or Gilles de Retz were the nearest -neighbours of Romaris,' he said, with a smile. 'Yet if feudalism could -be sure of such châtelaines as the Countess von Szalras, I would wish -it back to-morrow.'</p> - -<p>'That is very prettily put for a Socialist. But you cannot be a -Socialist. You are received at Frohsdorf. Bretons are always royal; -they are born with the <i>cultus</i> of God and the King.'</p> - -<p>He laughed a little, not quite easily.</p> - -<p>'Paris is a witch's caldron, in which all <i>cultes</i> are melted down, and -evaporate in a steam of disillusion and mockery; into the caldron we -have long flung, alas! cross and crown, actual and allegoric. I am not -a Breton; I am that idle creation of modern life, a <i>boulevardier.</i>'</p> - -<p>'But do you never visit Romaris?'</p> - -<p>'Why should I? There is nothing but a few sea-tormented oaks, endless -sands, endless marshes, and a dark dirty village jammed among rocks, -and reeking with the smell of the oil and the fish.'</p> - -<p>'Then I would go and make the village clean and the marshes healthy, -were I you. There must be something of interest in any people who -remain natural in their ways and dwell beside a sea, Is Romaris not -prosperous?'</p> - -<p>'Prosperous! God and man have forgotten it ever since the world began, -I should say. It is on a bay, so treacherous that it is called the Pool -of Death. The <i>landes</i> separate it by leagues from any town. All it -has to live on is the fishing. It is dull as a grave, harried by every -storm, unutterably horrible.'</p> - -<p>'Well, I would not forsake its horrors were I a son of Romaris,' she -said softly; then, as she perceived that some association made the -name and memory of the old Armorican village painful to him, she blew -the whistle she always used, and at the summons the eldest pupil of -the school, a handsome boy of fourteen, came out and stood bareheaded -before her.</p> - -<p>'Hansl, ask the teachers to grant you all an hour's frolic, that you -may amuse this gentleman,' she said to him. 'And, Hansl, take care that -you do your best, all of you, in dancing, wrestling, and singing, and -above all with the zither, for the honour of the empire.'</p> - -<p>The lad, with a face of sunshine, bowed low and ran into the -school-houses.</p> - -<p>'It is almost their hour for rest, or I would not have disturbed them,' -she said to him. 'They come here at sunrise; bring their bread and -meat, and milk is given them; they disperse according to season, a -little before sunset. They have two hours' rest at different times, but -it is hardly wanted, for their labours interest them, and their classes -are varied.'</p> - -<p>Soon the children all trooped out, made their bow or curtsey -reverently, but without shyness, and began with song and national airs -played on the zither or the 'jumping wood.' Their singing and music -were tender, ardent, and yet perfectly precise. There was no false note -or slurred passage. Then they danced the merry national dances that -make gay the long nights in the snow-covered châlets in many a mountain -village which even the mountain letter-carrier, on his climbing irons, -cannot reach for months together when all the highlands are ice. They -ended their dances with the Hungarian czardas, into which they threw -all the vigour of their healthful young limbs and happy hearts.</p> - -<p>'My cousin Egon taught them the czardas; have you ever seen the Magyar -nobles in the madness of that dance?'</p> - -<p>'Your cousin Egon? Do you mean Prince Vàsàrhely?'</p> - -<p>'Yes. Do you know him?'</p> - -<p>'I have seen him.'</p> - -<p>His face grew paler as he spoke. He ceased to watch with interest the -figures of the jumping children in their picturesque national dress, as -they whirled and shouted in the sunshine on the green turf, with the -woods and the rocks towering beyond them.</p> - -<p>When the czardas was ended, the girls sat down on the sward to rest, -and the boys began their leaping, running, and stone-heaving, with -their favourite wrestling at the close.</p> - -<p>'They are as strong as chamois,' she said to him. 'There is no need -here to have a gymnasium. Their mountains teach them climbing, and -every Sunday on their village green their fathers make them wrestle -and shoot at marks. The favourite sport here is one I will not -countenance—the finger-hooking. If I gave the word any two of those -little fellows would hook their middle fingers together and pull till a -joint broke.'</p> - -<p>The boys were duly commended for their skill, and Sabran would have -thrown them a shower of florin notes had she allowed it. Then she bade -them sing as a farewell the Kaiser's Hymn.</p> - -<p>The grand melody rolled out on the fresh clear Alpine air in voices as -fresh and as clear, that went upward and upward towards the zenith like -the carol of the larks.</p> - -<p>'I would fain be the Emperor to have that prayer sung so for me,' -said Sabran, with truth, as the glad young voices dropped down into -silence—the intense silence of the earth where the glaciers reign.</p> - -<p>'He heard them last year, and he was pleased,' she said, as the -children raised a loud 'Hoch!' made their reverence once more at a sign -of dismissal from her, and vanished in a proud and happy crowd into the -schoolhouses.</p> - -<p>'Do you never praise them or reward them?' he asked in surprise.</p> - -<p>'Santa Claus rewards them. As for praise, they know when I smile that -all is well.'</p> - -<p>'But surely they have shown very unusual musical talent?'</p> - -<p>'They sing well because they are well taught. But they are not any -of them going to become singers. Those zithers and part-songs will -all serve to enliven the long nights of the farmhouse or the summer -solitude of the cattle-hut. We do not cultivate music one-half enough -among the peasantry. It lightens labour; it purifies and strengthens -the home-life; it sweetens black-bread. Do you remember that happy -picture of Jordaens' "Where the old sing, the young chirp," where the -old grandfather and grandmother, and the baby in its mother's arms, and -the hale five-year-old boy, and the rough servant, are all joining in -the same melody, while the goat crops the vine-leaves off the table? I -should like to see every cottage interior like that when the work was -done. I would hang up an etching from Jordaens where you would hang up, -perhaps, the programme of Proudhon.'</p> - -<p>Then she walked back with him through the green sun-gleaming woods.</p> - -<p>'I hope that I teach them content,' she continued. 'It is the lesson -most neglected in our day. "<i>Niemand will ein Schuster seyn; Jederman -ein Dichter.</i>" It is true we are very happy in our surroundings. A -mountaineer's is such a beautiful life; so simple, healthful, hardy, -and fine; always face to face with nature. I try to teach them what -an inestimable joy that alone is. I do not altogether believe in the -prosaic views of rural life. It is true that the peasant digging his -trench sees the clod, not the sky but then when he does lift his head -the sky is there, not the roof, not the ceiling. That is so much in -itself. And here the sky is an everlasting grandeur: clouds and domes -of snow are blent together. When the stars are out above the glaciers -how serene the night is, how majestic! even the humblest creature feels -lifted up into that eternal greatness. Then you think of the home-life -in the long winters as dreary; but it is not so. Over away there, -at Lahn, and other places on the Hallstadtersee, they do not see the -sun for five months; the wall of rock behind them shuts them from all -light of day; but they live together, they dance, they work. The young -men recite poems, and the old men tell tales of the mountains and the -French war, and they sing the homely songs of the <i>Schnaderhupfeln.</i> -Then when winter passes, when the sun comes again up over the wall of -rocks, when they go out into the light once more, what happiness it -is! One old man said to me, 'It is like being born again!' and another -said, 'Where it is always warm and light I doubt they forget to thank -God for the sunshine;' and quite a young child said, all of his own -accord, 'The primroses live in the dusk all the winter, like us, and -then when the sun comes up we and they run out together, and the Mother -of Christ has set the waters and the little birds laughing.' I would -rather have the winter of Lahn than the winter of Belleville.'</p> - -<p>'But they do go away from their mountains a good deal? One meets -them——'</p> - -<p>'My own people never do, but from the valleys around they go—yes, -sometimes; but then they always come back. The Defereggenthal men, -over yonder where you see those ice summits, constantly go elsewhere -on reaching manhood; but as soon as they have made a little money they -return to dwell at home for the remainder of their days. I think living -amidst the great mountains creates a restfulness, a steadfastness -in the character. If Paris were set amidst Alps you would have had -Lamartine, you would not have had Rochefort.'</p> - -<p>When she spoke thus of her own country, of her own people, all her -coldness vanished, her eyes grew full of light, her reserve was broken -up into animation. They were what she truly loved, what touched her -affections and her sympathies.</p> - -<p>When he heard her speak thus, he thought if any man should succeed in -arousing in her the love and the loyalty that she gave her Austrian -Alps, what treasures he would win, into what a kingdom he would enter! -And then something that was perhaps higher than vanity and deeper than -egotism stirring in him whispered. 'If any, why not you?'</p> - -<p>Herr Joachim had at a message from her joined them. He talked of the -flowers around them and of the culture and flora of Mexico. Sabran -answered him with apparent interest, and with that knowledge which he -had always the presence of mind to recall at need, but his heart was -heavy and his mind absent.</p> - -<p>She had spoken to him of Romaris, and he had once known Egon Vàsàrhely.</p> - -<p>Those two facts overshadowed the sweetness and sunshine of the day; yet -he knew very well that he should have been prepared for both.</p> - -<p>The Princess Ottilie, seated in her gilt wickerwork chair under the -great yew on the south side of the house, saw them approach with -pleasure.</p> - -<p>'Come and have a cup of tea,' she said to them. 'But, my beloved Wanda, -you should not let the doctor walk beside you. Oh, I saw him in the -distance; of course he left you before you joined <i>me.</i> He is a worthy -man, a most worthy man; but so is Hubert, and you do not walk with -Hubert and converse with him about flowers.'</p> - -<p>'Are you so inexorable as to social grades, madame? murmured Sabran, as -he took his cup from her still pretty hand.</p> - -<p>'Most certainly!' said the Princess, with a little, a very little, -asperity. 'The world was much happier when distinctions and divisions -were impassable. There are no sumptuary laws now. What is the -consequence? That, your bourgeoise ruins her husband in wearing gowns -fit only for a duchess, and your prince imagines it makes him popular -to look precisely like a cabman or a bailiff.'</p> - -<p>'And even in the matter of utility,' said Sabran, who always agreed -with her, 'those sumptuary laws had much in their favour. If one look -through the chronicles and miniatures, say of the thirteenth and -fourteenth centuries, how much more sensible for the change of seasons -and the ease of work seems the costume of the working people? The -<i>cotte hardie</i> was a thousand times more comfortable and more becoming -than anything we have. If we could dress once more as all did under -Louis Treize gentle and simple would alike benefit.'</p> - -<p>'What a charmingly intelligent person he is!' thought the Princess, as -she remarked that in Austria they were happier than the rest of the -world: there were peasant costumes still there.</p> - -<p>Wanda left them a little later to confer with one of her land stewards. -Sabran remained seated by the Princess, in whom he felt that he -possessed a friend.</p> - -<p>'What did you think of those schools? said Frau Ottilie. 'Oh, of course -you admire and approve; you must admire and approve when they are the -hobby of a beautiful woman, who is also your hostess.'</p> - -<p>'Does that mean, Princess, that you do not?'</p> - -<p>'No doubt the schools are excellent,' replied the Princess, in a tone -which condemned them as ridiculous. 'But for my own part I prefer those -things left to the Church, of which they constitute alike the privilege -and the province. I cannot see either why a peasant child requires -to know how a tree grows; that a merciful Providence placed it there -is all he can need to be told, and that he should be able to cut it -down without cutting off his own fingers is all the science that can -possibly be necessary to him. However, Wanda thinks otherwise, and she -is mistress here.'</p> - -<p>'But the schools surely are eminently practical ones?'</p> - -<p>'Practical! Is it practical to weave a romance as long as "Pamela" -about the changes of a chrysalis? I fail to see it. That a grub is -a destructive creature is all that any one needs to know; there -is nothing practical in making it the heroine of an interminable -metempsychosis. But all those ideas of 'Wanda's have a taint of that -modern poison which her mind, though it is so strong iii many things, -has not been strong enough to resist. She does not believe in the -efficacy of our holy relics (such as that which I sent you, and which -wrought your cure), but she does believe in the fables that naturalists -invent about weeds and beetles, and she finds a Kosmos in a puddle!'</p> - -<p>'You are very severe, Princess.'</p> - -<p>'I dislike inconsistency, and my niece is inconsistent, though she -imagines that perfect consistency is the staple of her character.'</p> - -<p>'Nay, madame, surely her character is the most evenly balanced, the -most harmonious, and consequently the most perfect that is possible to -humanity.'</p> - -<p>The Princess looked at him with a keen little glance.</p> - -<p>'You admire her very much? Are you sure you understand her?'</p> - -<p>'I should not dare to say that, but I dare to hope it. Her nature seems -to me serene and transparent as fine sunlight.'</p> - -<p>'So it is; but she has faults, I can assure you,' said the Princess, -with her curious union of shrewdness and simplicity. 'My niece is a -perfectly good woman, so far as goodness is possible to finite nature; -she is the best woman I have ever known out of the cloister. But -then there is this to be said—she has never been tempted. True, she -might be tempted to be arrogant, despotic, tyrannical; and she is not -so. But that is not precisely the temptation to try her. She is mild -and merciful out of her very pride; but her character would be sure -destruction of her pride were such a thing possible. You think she is -not proud because she is so gentle? You might as well say that Her -Majesty is not Empress because she washes the feet of the twelve poor -men! Wanda is the best woman that I know, but she is also the proudest.'</p> - -<p>'The Countess has never loved anyone?' said Sabran, who grew paler as -he heard.</p> - -<p>'Terrestrial love—no. It has not touched her. But it would not alter -her, believe me. Some women lose themselves in their affections; she -would not. She would always remain the mistress of it, and it would be -a love like her character. Of that I am sure.'</p> - -<p>Sabran was silent; he was discouraged.</p> - -<p>'I think the boldest man would always be held at a distance from her,' -he said, after a pause. 'I think none would ever acquire dominion over -her life.'</p> - -<p>'That is exactly what I have said,' replied the Princess. 'Your phrase -is differently worded, but it comes to the same thing.'</p> - -<p>'It would depend very much——'</p> - -<p>'On what?'</p> - -<p>'On how much she loved, and perhaps a little on how much she was loved.'</p> - -<p>'Not at all,' said the Princess, decidedly; 'you cannot get more out of -a nature than there is in it, and there is no sort of passion in the -nature of my niece.'</p> - -<p>He was silent again.</p> - -<p>'She was admirably educated,' added the Princess, hastily, conscious of -a remark not strictly becoming in herself; 'and her rare temperament -is serene, well balanced, void of all excess. Heaven has mercifully -eliminated from her almost all mortal errors.'</p> - -<p> -<span style="margin-left: 7em;">'By pride</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Angels have fallen ere thy time!'</span><br /> -</p> - -<p>suggested Sabran.</p> - -<p>'Angels, perhaps,' said the Princess, drily. 'But for women it is an -admirable preservative, second only to piety.'</p> - -<p>He went home sculling himself across the lake, now perfectly calm -beneath the rose and gold of a midsummer sunset. His heart was heavy, -and a dull fear seemed to beat at his conscience like a child suddenly -awaking who knocks at a long-closed door. Still, as a crime allures men -who contemplate it by the fascination of its weird power, so the sin he -desired to commit held him with its unholy beguilement, and almost it -looked holy to him because it wore the guise of Wanda von Szalras.</p> - -<p>He was not insensible to the charm of this interchange of thought. He -had had many passions in which his senses alone had been enlisted. -There was a more delicate attraction in the gradual and numberless -steps by which, only slowly and with patience, could he win any -way into her regard. She had for him the puissance that the almost -unattainable has for all humanity. When he could feel that he had -awakened any sympathy in her, his pride was more flattered than it -could have been by the most complete subjection of any other woman. -He had looked on all women with the chill, amorous cynicism of the -Parisian psychology, as <i>l'éternel féminin</i>, at best as '<i>la forme -perverse, vaporeuse, langoureuse, souple comme les roseaux, blanche -comme les lis, incapable de se mouvoir pendant les deux tiers du -jour—sans équilibre, sans but, sans équateur, donnant son corps en -pâture à sa tête.</i> He had had no other ideal; no other conception. This -psychology, like some other sciences, brutalises as it equalises. In -the woman who had risen up before him in the night of storm upon the -Szalrassee he had recognised with his intelligence a woman who made his -philosophy at fault, who aroused something beyond his mere instincts, -who was not to be classified with the Lias, or the Cesarines, or the -Jane de Simeroses, who had been in his love, as in his literature, the -various types of the <i>éternel féminin.</i> The simplicity and the dignity -of her life astonished and convinced him; he began to understand that -where he had imagined he had studied the universe in his knowledge of -women, he had in reality only seen two phases of it—the hothouse and -the ditch. It is a common error to take the forced flower and the slime -weed, and think that there is nothing between or beyond the two.</p> - -<p>He had the convictions of his school that all women were at heart -coquettes or hypocrites, consciously or unconsciously. Wanda von -Szalras routed all his theories. Before her candour, her directness and -gravity of thought, her serene indifference to all forms of compliment, -all his doctrines and all his experiences were useless. She inspired -him with reverential and hopeless admiration, which was mingled with an -angry astonishment, and something of the bitterness of envy. Sometimes, -as he sat and watched the green water of the lake tumble and roll -beneath a north wind's wrath under a cloudy sky which hid the snows -of the Glöckner range, he remembered a horrible story that had once -fascinated him of Malatesta of Rimini slaying the princess that would -have none of his love, striking his sword across her white throat in -the dusky evening time, and casting her body upon the silken curtains -of her wicked litter. Almost he could have found it in him to do such a -crime—almost. Only he thought that at one look of her eyes his sword -would have dropped upon the dust.</p> - -<p>Her personal beauty had inspired him with a sudden passion, but her -character checked it with the sense of fear which it imposed on him; -fear of those high and blameless instincts which were an integral -part of her nature, fear of that frank, unswerving truth which was -the paramount law of her life. As he rode with her, walked with her, -conversed with her in the long, light summer hours, he saw more and -more of the purity and nobility of her temper, but he saw or thought he -saw also an inexorable pride and a sternness in judgment which made him -believe that she would be utterly unforgiving to weakness or to sin.</p> - -<p>She remained the Nibelungen Queen to him, clothed in flawless armour -and aloof from men.</p> - -<p>He lingered on at the Holy Isle, finding a fresh charm each day in -this simple and peaceful existence, filled with the dreams of a woman -unlike every other he had known. He knew that it could not last, but -he was unwilling to end it himself. To rise to the sound of the monks' -matins, to pass his forenoons in art or open-air exercise, to be sure -that some hour or another before sunset he would meet her, either in -her home or abroad in the woods; to go early to bed, seeing, as he -lay, the pile of the great burg looming high above the water, like -the citadel of the Sleeping Beauty—all this, together making up an -existence so monotonous, harmless, and calm that a few months before he -would have deemed it impossible to endure it, was soothing, alluring, -and beguiling to him. He had told no one where he was; his letters -might lie and accumulate by the hundred in his rooms in Paris for aught -that he cared; he had no creditors, for he had been always scrupulously -careful to avoid all debt, and he had no friend for whose existence he -cared a straw. There were those who cared for him, indeed, but these -seldom trouble any man very greatly.</p> - -<p>In the last week of August, however, a letter found its way to him; it -was written in a very bad hand, on paper gorgeous with gold and silver. -It was signed 'Cochonette.'</p> - -<p>It contained a torrent of reproaches made in the broadest language that -the slang of the hour furnished, and every third word was misspelt. How -the writer had tracked him she did not say. He tore the letter up and -threw the pieces into the water flowing beneath his window. Had he ever -passionately desired and triumphed in the possession of that woman? It -seemed wonderful to him now. She was an idol of Paris; a creature with -the voice of a lark and the laugh of a child, with a lovely, mutinous -face, and eyes that could speak without words. As a pierrot, as a -mousquetaire, as a little prince, as a fairy king of operetta, she had -no rival in the eyes of Paris. She blazed with jewels when she played -a peasant, and she wore the costliest costume of Felix's devising -when she sung her triplets as a soubrette. She had been constant to -no one for three months, and she had been constant to him for three -years, or, at the least, had made him believe so; and she wrote to -him now furiously, reproachfully, entreatingly—fierce reproaches and -entreaties, all misspelt.</p> - -<p>The letter which he threw into the lake brought all the memories of his -old life before him; it was like the flavour of absinthe after drinking -spring water. It was a life which had had its successes, a life, as -the world called it, of pleasure; and it seemed utterly senseless to -him now as he tore up the note of Cochonette, and looked down the -water to where the towers and spires and battlements of Hohenszalras -soared upward in the mists. He shook himself as though to shake off the -memory of an unpleasant dream as he went out, descended the landing -steps, drew his boat from under the willows and sculled himself across -towards the water-stairs of the Schloss. In a quarter of an hour he was -playing the themes of the 'Gotterdammerung,' whilst his châtelaine sat -at her spinning-wheel a few yards from him.</p> - -<p>'Good heavens! can she and Cochonette belong to the same human race?' -he thought, as whilst he played his glance wandered to that patrician -figure seated in the light from the oriel window, with the white hound -leaning against her velvet skirts, and her jewelled fingers plying the -distaff and disentangling the flax.</p> - -<p>After the noonday breakfast the sun shone, the mists lifted from the -water, the clouds drifted from the lower mountains, only leaving the -snow-capped head of the Glöckner enveloped in them.</p> - -<p>'I am going to ride; will you come?' said Wanda von Szalras to him. -He assented with ardour, and a hunter, Siegfried, the mount which was -always given to him, was led round under the great terrace, in company -with her Arab riding-horse Ali. They rode far through the forests and -out on the one level road there was, which swept round the south side -of the lake; a road, turf-bordered, overhung with huge trees, closed -in with a dewy veil of greenery, across which ever and anon some -flash of falling water or some shimmer of glacier or of snow crest -shone through the dense leafage. They rode too fast for conversation, -both the horses racing like greyhounds; but as they returned, towards -the close of the afternoon, they slackened their pace in pity to the -steaming heaving flanks beneath their saddles, and then they could hear -each other's voices.</p> - -<p>'What a lovely life it is here!' he said, with a sigh. 'The world will -seem very vulgar and noisy to me after it.'</p> - -<p>'You would soon tire, and wish for the world,' she answered him.</p> - -<p>'No,' he said quickly; 'I have been two months on the Holy Isle, and I -have not known weariness for a moment.'</p> - -<p>'That is because it is still summer. If you were here in the winter you -would bemoan your imprisonment, like my aunt Ottilie. Even the post -sometimes fails us.'</p> - -<p>'I should not lament the post,' he replied, thinking of the letter -he had cast into the lake. 'My old life seems to me insanity, fever, -disease, beside these past two months I have spent with the monks.'</p> - -<p>'You can take the vows,' she suggested with a smile. He smiled too.</p> - -<p>'Nay: I should not dare to so insult our mother Church. One must not -empty ashes into a reliquary.'</p> - -<p>'Your life is not ashes yet.'</p> - -<p>He was silent. He could not say to her what he would have said could he -have laid his heart bare.</p> - -<p>'When you go away,' she pursued, 'remember my words. Choose some -career; make yourself some aim in life; do not fold your talents in a -napkin—in a napkin that lies on the supper table at Bignon's. That -idle, aimless life is very attractive, I dare say, in its way, but it -must grow wearisome and unsatisfactory as years roll on. The men of my -house have never been content with it; they have always been soldiers, -statesmen, something or other beside mere nobles.'</p> - -<p>'But they have had a great position.'</p> - -<p>'Men make their own position; they cannot make a name (at least, not to -my thinking). You have that good fortune; you have a great name; you -only need, pardon me, to make your manner of life worthy of it.'</p> - -<p>He grew pale as she spoke.</p> - -<p>'Cannot make a name?' he said, with forced gaiety. 'Surely in these -days the beggar rides on horseback in all the ministries and half the -nobilities!'</p> - -<p>A great contempt passed over her face. 'You mean that Hans, Pierre, or -Richard becomes a count, an excellency, or an earl? What does that -change? It alters the handle; it does not alter the saucepan. No one -can be ennobled. Blood is blood; nobility can only be inherited; it -cannot be conferred by all the heralds in the world. The very meaning -and essence of nobility are descent, inherited traditions, instincts, -habits, and memories—all that is meant by <i>noblesse oblige.</i>'</p> - -<p>'Would you allow,' thought her companion, 'would you allow the same -nobility to Falcon-bridge as to Plantagenet?'</p> - -<p>But he dared not name the bar sinister to this daughter of princes.</p> - -<p>Siegfried started and reared: his rider did not reply, being absorbed -in calming him.</p> - -<p>'What frightened him?' she asked.</p> - -<p>'A hawk flew-by,' said Sabran.</p> - -<p>'A hawk, flying low enough for a horse to see it? It must be wounded.'</p> - -<p>He did not answer, and they quickened their pace, as the sun sunk -behind the glaciers of the west.</p> - -<p>When he returned to the monastery the evening had closed in; the -lantern was lit at his boat's prow. Dinner was prepared for him, but -he ate little. Later the moon rose; golden and round as a bowl. It -was a beautiful spectacle as it gave its light to the amphitheatre of -the mountains, to the rippling surface of the lake, to the stately, -irregular lines of the castle backed by the blackness of its woods. He -sat long by the open window lost in thought, pondering on the great -race which had ruled there. <i>L'honneur parle: il suffit</i>, had been -their law, and she who represented them held a creed no less stern and -pure than theirs. Her words spoken in their ride were like a weight of -ice on his heart. Never to her, never, could he confess the errors of -his past. He was a man bold to temerity, but he was not bold enough to -risk the contempt of Wanda von Szalras. He had never much heeded right -or wrong, or much believed in such ethical distinctions, only adhering -to the conventional honour and good breeding of the world, but before -her his moral sense awakened.</p> - -<p>'The Marquis Xavier would bid me go from here,' he thought to himself, -as the night wore on and he heard the footfall of the monks passing -down the passages to their midnight orisons.</p> - -<p>'After all these years in the <i>pourriture</i> of Paris, have I such a -thing as conscience left?' he asked his own thoughts, bitterly. The -moon passed behind a cloud and darkness fell over the lake and hid -the great pile of the Hohenszalrasburg from his sight. He closed the -casement and turned away. 'Farewell!' he said, to the vanished castle.</p> - -<p>'Will you think of me sometimes, dear Princess, when I am far away?' -said Sabran abruptly the next morning to his best friend, who looked up -startled.</p> - -<p>'Away? Are you going away?'</p> - -<p>'Yes,' said Sabran, abruptly; 'and you, I think, madame, who have been -so good to me, can guess easily why.'</p> - -<p>'You love my niece?'</p> - -<p>He inclined his head in silence.</p> - -<p>'It is very natural,' said the Princess, faintly. 'Wanda is a beautiful -woman; many men have loved her; they might as well have loved that -glacier yonder.'</p> - -<p>'It is not that,' said Sabran, hastily. 'It is my own poverty——'</p> - -<p>The Princess looked at him keenly.</p> - -<p>'Do you think her not cold?'</p> - -<p>'She who can so love a brother would surely love her lover not less, -did she stoop to one,' he replied evasively. 'At least I think so; I -ought not to presume to judge.'</p> - -<p>'And you care for her?' The glance her eyes gave him added as plainly -as words could have done, 'It is not only her wealth, her position? Are -you sure?'</p> - -<p>He coloured very much as he answered quickly: 'Were she beggared -to-morrow, you would see.'</p> - -<p>'It is a pity,' murmured the Princess. He did not ask her what she -regretted; he knew her sympathy was with him.</p> - -<p>They were both mute. The Princess pushed the end of her cane -thoughtfully into the velvet turf. She hesitated some moments, then -said in a low voice: 'Were I you I would stay.'</p> - -<p>'Do not tempt me! I have stayed too long as it is. What can she think -of me?'</p> - -<p>'She does not think about your reasons; she is too proud a woman to be -vain. In a measure you have won her friendship. Perhaps—I do not know, -I have no grounds to say so—but perhaps in time you might win more.'</p> - -<p>She looked at him as she concluded. He grew exceedingly pale.</p> - -<p>He stooped over her chair, and spoke very low:</p> - -<p>'It is just because that appears possible that I go. Do not -misunderstand me, I am not a coxcomb; <i>je ne me pose pas en vainqueur.</i> -But I have no place here, since I have no equality with her from which -to be able to say, "I love you!" Absence alone can say it for me -without offence as without hope.'</p> - -<p>The Princess was silent. She was thinking of the maxim,; <i>L'absence -éteint les petites passions et allume les grandes</i>.' Which was his?</p> - -<p>'You have been so good to me,' he murmured caressingly, 'so benevolent, -so merciful, I dare to ask of you a greater kindness yet. Will you -explain for me to the Countess von Szalras that I am called away -suddenly, and make my excuses and my farewell? It will save me much -fruitless pain.'</p> - -<p>'And if it give her pain?'</p> - -<p>'I cannot suppose that, and I should not dare to hope it.'</p> - -<p>'I have no reason to suppose it either, but I think you are <i>de guerre -las</i> before the battle is decided.'</p> - -<p>'There is no battle possible for me. There is only a quite certain -dishonour.'</p> - -<p>His face was dark and weary. He spoke low and with effort. She glanced -at him, and felt the vague awe with which strong unintelligible emotion -always filled her.</p> - -<p>'You must judge the question for yourself,' she said with a little -hesitation. 'I will express what you wish to my niece if you really -desire it.'</p> - -<p>'You are always so good to me,' he murmured, with some agitation, and -he bent down before her and reverently kissed her little white hands.</p> - -<p>'God be with you, sir,' she said, with tears in her own tender eyes.</p> - -<p>'You have been so good to me,' he murmured; 'the purest hours of my -worthless life have been spent at Hohenszalras. Here only have I known -what peace and holiness can mean. Give me your blessing ere I go.'</p> - -<p>In another moment he had bowed himself from her presence, and the -Princess sat mute and motionless in the sun. When she looked up at the -great feudal pile of the Schloss which towered above her, it was with -reproach and aversion to that stone emblem of the great possessions of -its châtelaine.</p> - -<p>'If she were a humbler woman,' she thought, 'how much happier she -would be! What a pity it all is—what a pity! Of course he is right; -of course he can do nothing else. If he did do anything else the world -would condemn him, and even she very likely would despise him—but it -is such a pity! If only she could have a woman's natural life about -her——This life is not good. It is very well while she is young, but -when she shall be no longer young?'</p> - -<p>And the tender heart of the old gentlewoman ached for a sorrow not her -own; and could she have given him a duchy to make him able to declare -his love, she would have done so at all costs.</p> - - - -<hr class="chap" /> -<h4><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII</a></h4> - - -<p>The sun was setting when the Countess Wanda returned from her distant -ride. She dismounted at the foot of the terrace-steps and ascended them -slowly, with Donau and Neva behind her, both tired and breathless.</p> - -<p>'You are safe home, my love?' said the Princess, turning her head -towards the steps.</p> - -<p>'Yes, dear mother mine; you always, I know, think that Death gets up on -the saddle. Is anything amiss? You looked troubled.'</p> - -<p>'I have a message for you,' said the Princess with a sigh, and she gave -Sabran's.</p> - -<p>Wanda von Szalras heard in silence. She showed neither surprise nor -regret.</p> - -<p>The Princess waited a little.</p> - -<p>'Well,' she said, at length, 'well, you do not even ask me why he -goes!'</p> - -<p>'You say he has been called away,' her niece answered. 'Surely that is -reason enough.'</p> - -<p>'You have no heart, Wanda.'</p> - -<p>'I do not understand you,' said the Countess von Szalras, very coldly.</p> - -<p>'Do you mean to say you have not seen that he loved you?'</p> - -<p>The face of Wanda grew colder still.</p> - -<p>'Did he instruct you to say this also?'</p> - -<p>'No, no,' said the Princess, hurriedly, perceiving her error. 'He -only bade me say that he was called away and must leave at once, and -begged you to accept through me his adieus and the expression of his -gratitude. But it is very certain that he does love you, and that -because he is too poor and too proud to say so he goes.'</p> - -<p>'You must weave your little romance!' said her niece, with some -impatience, striking the gilt wicker table with her riding-whip. 'I -prefer to think that M. de Sabran is, very naturally, gone back to the -world to which he belongs. My only wonder has been that he has borne so -long with the solitudes of the Szalrassee.'</p> - -<p>'If you were not the most sincere woman in the world, I should believe -you were endeavouring to deceive me. As it is,' said the Princess, -with some temper, 'I can only suppose that you deceive yourself.'</p> - -<p>'Have you any tea there?' said her niece, laying aside her gauntlets -and her whip, and casting some cakes to the two hounds.</p> - -<p>She had very plainly and resolutely closed the subject almost before -it was fairly opened. The Princess, a little intimidated and keenly -disappointed, did not venture to renew it.</p> - -<p>When, the next morning, questioning Hubert, the Princess found -that indeed her favourite had left the island monastery at dawn, -the landscape of the Hohe Tauern seemed to her more monotonous and -melancholy than it had ever done, and the days more tedious and dull.</p> - -<p>'You will miss the music, at least,' she said, with asperity, to her -niece. 'I suppose you will give him as much regret as you have done at -times to the Abbé Liszt?'</p> - -<p>'I shall miss the music, certainly,' said the Countess Wanda, calmly. -'Our poor Kapellmeister is very indifferent. If he were not so old -that it would be cruel to displace him, I would take another from the -Conservatorium.'</p> - -<p>The Princess was irritated and even incensed at the reply, but she let -it pass. Sabran's name was mentioned no more between them for many -days.</p> - -<p>No one knew whither he had gone, and no tidings came of him to -Hohenszalras.</p> - -<p>One day a foreign journal, amongst the many news-sheets that came by -post there, contained his name: 'The Marquis de Sabran broke the bank -at Monte Carlo yesterday,' was all that it said in its news of the -Riviera.</p> - -<p>'A winner at a <i>tripot</i>, what a hero for you, mother mine!' she said -with some bitterness, handing the paper to the Princess. She was -surprised at the disgust and impatience which she felt herself. What -could it concern her?</p> - -<p>That day as she rode slowly through the grass drives of her forests, -she thought with pain of her companion of a few weeks, who so late had -ridden over these very paths beside her, the dogs racing before them, -the wild flowers scenting the air, the pale sunshine falling down -across the glossy necks of their horses.</p> - -<p>'He ought to do better things than break a bank at a gaming-place,' she -thought with regret. 'With such natural gifts of body and mind, it is a -sin—a sin against himself and others—to waste his years in those base -and trivial follies. When he was here he seemed to feel so keenly the -charm of Nature, the beauty of repose, the possibility of noble effort.'</p> - -<p>She let the reins droop on her mare's throat and paced slowly over the -moss and the grass; though she was all alone—for in her own forests -she would not be accompanied even by a groom—the colour came into -her face as she remembered many things, many words, many looks, which -confirmed the assertion Madame Ottilie had made to her.</p> - -<p>'That may very well be,' she thought; 'but if it be, I think my -memory might have restrained him from becoming the hero of a gambling -apotheosis.'</p> - -<p>And she was astonished at herself to find how much regret mingled with -her disgust, and how much her disgust was intensified by a sentiment of -personal offence.</p> - -<p>When she reached home it was twilight, and she was told that her cousin -Prince Egon Vàsàrhely had arrived. She would have been perfectly glad -to see him, if she had been perfectly sure that he would have accepted -quietly the reply she had sent to his letter received on the night of -the great storm. As it was she met him in the blue-room before the -Princess Ottilie, and nothing could be said on that subject.</p> - -<p>Prince Egon, though still young, had already a glorious past behind -him. He came of a race of warriors, and the Vàsàrhely Hussars had been -famous since the days of Maria Theresa. The command of that brilliant -regiment was hereditary, and he had led them in repeated charges -into the French lines and the Prussian lines with such headlong and -dauntless gallantry that he had been called the 'Wild Boar of Taròc' -throughout the army. His hussars were the most splendid cavalry that -ever shook their bridles in the sunlight on the wide Magyar plains. -Their uniform remained the same as in the days of Aspern, and he was -prodigal of gold, and embroidery, and rich furs, and trappings, with -that martial coquetry which has been characteristic of so many great -soldiers from Scylla to Michael Skobeleff.</p> - -<p>With his regiment in the field, and without it in many adventures in -the wilder parts of the Austrian Empire and on the Turkish border, he -had become a synonym for heroism throughout the Imperial army, whilst -in his manner and mode of life no more magnificent noble ever came from -the dim romantic solitudes of Hungary to the court and the capital. -He had great personal beauty; he had unrivalled traditions of valour; -and he had a character as generous as it was daring: but he failed to -awaken more than a sisterly attachment in the heart of his cousin. She -had been so used to see him with her brothers that he seemed as near -to her as they had been. She loved him tenderly, but with no sort of -passion. She wondered that he should care for her in that sense, and -grew sometimes impatient of his reiterated prayers.</p> - -<p>'There are so many women who would listen to him and adore him,' she -said. 'Why must he come to me?</p> - -<p>Before Bela's death, and before she became her own mistress, she had -always urged that her own sisterly affection for Egon made any thought -of marriage with him out of the question.</p> - -<p>'I am fond of him as I was of Gela and Victor,' she said often to those -who pressed the alliance upon her; 'but that is not love. I will not -marry a man whom I do not love.'</p> - -<p>When she became absolutely her own mistress he was for some time -silent, fearing to importune her, or to seem mercenary. She had become -by Bela's death one of the greatest alliances in Europe. But at -length, confident that his own position exempted him from any possible -appearance of covetousness, he gently reminded her of her father's and -her brother's wishes; but to no effect. She gave him the same answer. -'You are sure of my affection, but I will not do you so bad a service -as to become your wife. I have no love for you.' From that he had no -power to move or change her. He had made her many appeals in his -frequent visits to Hohenszalras, but none with any success in inducing -her to depart from the frank and placid regard of close relationship. -She liked him well, and held him in high esteem; but this was not love; -nor, had she consented to call it love, would it ever have contented -the impetuous, ardent, and passionate spirit of Egon Vàsàrhely.</p> - -<p>They could not be lovers, but they still remained friends, partly -through consanguinity, partly because he could bear to see her thus so -long as no other was nearer to her than he. They greeted each other -now cordially and simply, and talked of the many cares and duties and -interests that sprang up daily in the administration of such vast -properties as theirs.</p> - -<p>Prince Vàsàrhely, though a brilliant soldier and magnificent noble, was -simple in his tastes, and occupied himself largely with the welfare of -his people.</p> - -<p>The Princess yawned discreetly behind her fan many times during this -conversation, to her utterly uninteresting, upon villages, vines, -harvests, bridges swept away by floods, stewards just and unjust, and -the tolls and general navigation of the Danube. Quite tired of all -these details and discussion of subjects which she considered ought to -be abandoned to the men of business, she said suddenly, in a pause:</p> - -<p>'Egon, did you ever know a very charming person, the Marquis de Sabran?'</p> - -<p>Vàsàrhely reflected a moment.</p> - -<p>'No,' he answered slowly. 'I have no recollection of such a name.'</p> - -<p>'I thought you might have met him in Paris.'</p> - -<p>'I am so rarely in Paris; since my father's death I have scarcely -passed a month there. Who is he?'</p> - -<p>'A stranger whose acquaintance we made through his being cast adrift -here in a storm,' said the Countess Wanda, with some impatience. 'My -dear aunt is devoted to him, because he has painted her a St. Ottilie -on a screen, with the skill of Meissonnier. Since he left us he has -become celebrated: he has broken the bank at Monte Carlo.'</p> - -<p>Egon Vàsàrhely looked at her quickly.</p> - -<p>'It seems to anger you? Did this stranger stay here any time?'</p> - -<p>'Sometime, yes; he had a bad accident on the Venediger. Herr Greswold -brought him to our island to pass his convalescence with the monks. -From the monks to Monte Carlo!—--it is at least a leap requiring some -elasticity in moral gymnastics.'</p> - -<p>She spoke with some irritation, which did not escape the ear of her -cousin. He said merely himself:</p> - -<p>'Did you receive him, knowing nothing about him?'</p> - -<p>'We certainly did. It was an imprudence; but if he paint like -Meissonnier, he plays like Liszt: who was to resist such a combination -of gifts?'</p> - -<p>'You say that very contemptuously, Wanda,' said the Prince.</p> - -<p>'I am not contemptuous of the talent; I am of the possessor of it, who -comprehends his own powers so little that he breaks the bank at Monaco.'</p> - -<p>'I envy him at least his power to anger you,' said Egon Vàsàrhely.</p> - -<p>'I am angered to see anything wasted,' she answered, conscious of the -impatience she had shown. 'I was very angry with Otto's little daughter -yesterday; she had gathered a huge bundle of cowslips and thrown it -down in the sun; it was ingratitude to God who made them. This friend -of my aunt's does worse; he changes his cowslip into monkshood.'</p> - -<p>'Is he indeed such a favourite of yours, dear mother?' said Vàsàrhely.</p> - -<p>The Princess answered petulantly:</p> - -<p>'Certainly, a charming person. And our cousin Kaulnitz knows him well. -Wanda for once talks foolishly. Gambling is, it is true, a great sin at -all times, but I do not know that it is worse at public tables than it -is in your clubs. I myself am, of course, ignorant of these matters; -but I have heard that privately, at cards, whole fortunes have been -lost in a night, scribbled away with a pencil on a scrap of paper.'</p> - -<p>'To lose a fortune is better than to win one,' said her niece, as she -rose from the head of her table.</p> - -<p>When the Princess slept in her blue-room Egon Vàsàrhely approached his -cousin, where she sat at her embroidery frame.</p> - -<p>'This stranger has the power to make you angry,' he said sadly. 'I have -not even that.'</p> - -<p>'Dear Egon,' she said tenderly, 'you have done nothing in your life -that I could despise. Why should you be discontented at that?'</p> - -<p>'Would you care if I did?'</p> - -<p>'Certainly; I should be very sorry if my noble cousin did anything that -could belie his chivalry; but why should we suppose impossibilities?'</p> - -<p>'Suppose we were not cousins, would you love me then?'</p> - -<p>'How can I tell? This is mere non-sense——'</p> - -<p>'No; it is all my life. You know, Wanda, that I have loved you, only -you, ever since I saw you as I came back from France—a child, but -such a beautiful child, with your hair braided with pearls, and a dress -all stiff with gold, and your lap full of red roses.'</p> - -<p>'Oh, I remember,' she said hastily. 'There was a child's costume ball -at the Hof; I called myself Elizabeth of Thuringia, and Bela, my own -Bela, was my little Louis of Hungary. Oh, Egon, why will you speak of -those times?'</p> - -<p>'Because surely they make a kind of tie between us? They——'</p> - -<p>'They do make one that will last all our lives, unless you strain it -to bear a weight it is not made to bear. Dear Egon, you are very dear -to me, but not dear <i>so.</i> As my cousin, my gallant, kind, and loyal -cousin, you are very precious to me; but, Egon, if you could force me -to be your wife I should not be indifferent to you, I should hate you!'</p> - -<p>He grew white under his olive skin. He shrank a little, as if he -suffered some sharp physical pain.</p> - -<p>'Hate me!' he echoed in a stupor of surprise and suffering.</p> - -<p>'I believe I should, I <i>could</i> hate. It is a frightful thing to say. -Dear Egon, look elsewhere; find some other amongst the many lovely -women that you see; do not waste your brilliant life on me. I shall -never say otherwise than I say to-night' and you will compel me to -lose the most trusted friend I have.'</p> - -<p>He was still very pale. He breathed heavily. There was a mist over his -handsome dark eyes, which were cast down. 'Until you love any other, I -shall never abandon hope.'</p> - -<p>'That is unwise. I shall probably love no one all my life long; I have -told you so often.'</p> - -<p>'All say so until love finds them out. I will not trouble you; I will -be your cousin, your friend, rather than be nothing to you. But it is -hard.'</p> - -<p>'Why think of me so? Your career has so much brilliancy, so many -charms, so many interests——'</p> - -<p>'You do not know what it is to love. I talk to you in an unknown -tongue, and you have no pity, because you do not understand.'</p> - -<p>She did not answer. Over her thoughts passed the memory of the spinet -whose music she had said he could not touch and waken.</p> - -<p>He remained a week at Hohenszalras, but he did not again speak to her -of his own sufferings. He was a proud man, though humble to her.</p> - -<p>With a sort of contrition she noticed for the first time that he -wearied her; that when he spoke of his departure she was glad. He -was a fine soldier, a keen hunter, rather than a man of talents. The -life he loved best was his life at home in his great castles, amidst -the immense plains and the primeval forests of Hungary and the lonely -fastnesses of the Karpathians, or scouring a field of battle with his -splendid troopers behind him, all of them his kith and kin, or men -of his own soil, whom he ruled with a firm, high hand, in a generous -despotism.</p> - -<p>When he was with her she missed all the graceful tact, the subtle -meanings, the varied suggestions and allusions that had made the -companionship of Sabran so welcome to her. Egon Vàsàrhely was no -scholar, no thinker, no satirist; he was only brave and generous, as -lions are, and, vaguely, a poet without words, from the wild solitudes -he loved, and the romance that lies in the nature of the Magyar. 'He -knows nothing!' she thought, impatiently recalling the stores of most -various and recondite knowledge with which her late companion had -played so carelessly and with such ease. It seemed to her that never in -her life had she weighed her cousin in scales so severe and found him -so utterly wanting.</p> - -<p>And yet how many others she knew would have found their ideal in that -gallant gentleman, with his prowess, and his hardihood, and his -gallantry in war, and his winsome temper, so full of fire to men, so -full of chivalry for women! When Prince Egon, in his glittering dress, -all fur and gold and velvet, passed up the ball-room at the Burg in -Vienna, no other man in all that magnificent assembly was so watched, -so admired, so sighed for: and he was her cousin, and he only wearied -her!</p> - -<p>As he was leaving, he paused a moment after bidding her farewell, and -after some moments of silence, said in a low voice:</p> - -<p>'Dear, I will not trouble you again until you summon me. Perhaps that -will be many years; but whether we meet or not, time will make no -change in me. I am your servant ever.'</p> - -<p>Then he bowed over her hand once more, once more saluted her, and in a -moment or two the quick trot of the horses that bore him away woke the -echoes of the green hills.</p> - -<p>She looked out of the huge arched entrance door down the green defile -that led to the outer world, and felt a pang of self-reproach, of -self-condemnation.</p> - -<p>'If one could force oneself to love by any pilgrimage or penance,' she -thought, 'there are none I would not take upon me to be able to love -Egon.'</p> - -<p>As she stood thoughtfully there on the doorway of her great castle, -the sweet linnet-like voice of the Princess Ottilie came on her ear. -It said, a little shrilly: 'You are always looking for a four-leaved -shamrock. In that sort of search life slips away unperceived; one is -very soon left alone with one's dead leaves.'</p> - -<p>Wanda von Szalras turned and smiled.</p> - -<p>'I am not afraid of being left alone,' she said. 'I shall have my -people and my forests always.'</p> - -<p>Then, apprehensive lest she should have seemed thankless and cold of -heart, she turned caressingly to Madame Ottilie.</p> - -<p>'Nay, I could not bear to lose you, my sweet fairy godmother. Think me -neither forgetful nor ungrateful.'</p> - -<p>'You could never be one or the other to me. But I shall not live, like -a fairy godmother, for ever. Before I die I would fain see you content -like others with the shamrocks as nature has made them.'</p> - -<p>'I think there are few people as content as I am,' said the Countess -Wanda, and said the truth.</p> - -<p>'You are content with yourself, not with others. You will pardon me -if I say there is a great difference between the two,' replied the -Princess Ottilie, with a little smile that was almost sarcastic on her -pretty small features.</p> - -<p>'You mean that I have a great deal of vanity and no sympathy?'</p> - -<p>'You have a great deal of pride,' said the Princess, discreetly, as she -began to take her customary noontide walk up and down the terrace, her -tall cane tapping the stones and her little dog running before her, -whilst a hood of point-lace and a sunshade of satin kept the wind from -her pretty white hair and the sun from her eyes, that were still blue -as the acres of mouse-ear that grew by the lake.</p> - - - -<hr class="chap" /> -<h4><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII.</a></h4> - - -<p>The summer glided away and became autumn, and the Countess Wanda -refused obstinately to fill Hohenszalras with house-parties. In vain -her aunt spoke of the Lynau, the Windischgrätz, the Hohenlöhe, and the -other great families who were their relatives or their friends. In vain -she referred continually to the fact that every Schloss in Austria and -all adjacent countries was filling with guests at this season, and the -woods around it resounding with the hunter's horn and the hound's bay. -In vain did she recapitulate the glories of Hohenszalras in an earlier -time, and hint that the mistress of so vast a domain owed some duties -to society.</p> - -<p>Wanda von Szalras opposed to all these suggestions and declarations -that indifference which would have seemed obstinacy had it been less -mild. As for the hunting parties, she avowed with truth that although a -daughter of mighty hunters, she herself regarded all pastimes founded -on cruelty with aversion and contempt; the bears and the boars, the -wild deer and the mountain chamois, might dwell undisturbed for the -whole of their lives so far as she was concerned. When a bear came -down and ate off the heads of an acre or two of wheat, she recompensed -the peasant who had suffered the loss, but she would not have her -<i>jägermeister</i> track the poor beast. The <i>jägermeister</i> sighed as -Madame Ottilie did for the bygone times when a score of princes and -nobles had ridden out on a wolf-chase, or hundreds of peasants had -threshed the woods to drive the big game towards the Kaiser's rifle; -but for poachers his place would have been a sinecure and his days a -weariness. His mistress was not to be persuaded. She preferred her -forests left to their unbroken peace, their stillness filled with the -sounds of rushing waters and the calls of birds.</p> - -<p>The weeks glided on one after one with the even measured pace of -monotonous and unruffled time; her hours were never unoccupied, for her -duties were constant and numerous.</p> - -<p>She would go and visit the sennerinn in their loftiest cattle-huts, -and would descend an ice-slope with the swiftness and security of a -practised mountaineer. In her childhood she and Bela had gone almost -everywhere the chamois went, and she came of a race which, joined to -high courage, had the hereditary habits of a great endurance. In the -throne room of Vienna, with her great pearls about her, that had once -been sent by a Sultan to a Szalras who fought with Wenceslaus, she -was the stateliest and proudest lady of the greatest aristocracy of -the world; but on her own mountain sides she was as dauntless as an -ibis, as sure-footed as a goat, and would sit in the alpine cabins and -drink a draught of milk and break a crust of rye-bread as willingly as -though she were a sennerinn herself; so she would take the oars and row -herself unaided down the lake, so she would saddle her horse and ride -it over the wildest country, so she would drive her sledge over many -a German mile of snow, and even in the teeth of a north wind blowing -straight from the Russian plains and the Arctic seas.</p> - -<p>'Fear nothing!' had been said again and again to her in her childhood, -and she had learned that her race transmitted to and imposed its -courage no less on its daughters than on its sons. Cato would have -admired this mountain brood, even though its mountain lair was more -luxurious than he would have deemed was wise.</p> - -<p>She knew thoroughly what all her rights, titles, and possessions were. -She was never vague or uncertain as to any of her affairs, and it would -have been impossible to deceive or to cheat her. No one tried to do so, -for her lawyers were men of old-fashioned ways and high repute, and -for centuries the vast properties of the Counts von Szalras had been -administered wisely and honestly in the same advocates' offices, which -were close underneath the Calvarienburg in the good city of Salzburg. -Her trustees were her uncle Cardinal Vàsàrhely and her great-uncle -Prince George of Lilienhöhe; they were old men, both devoted to her, -and both fully conscious that her intelligence was much abler and -keener than their own. All these vast possessions gave her an infinite -variety of occupation and of interests, and she neglected none of them. -Still, all the properties and duties in the world will not suffice to -fill up the heart and mind of a woman of four-and-twenty years of age, -who enjoys the perfection of bodily health and of physical beauty. The -most spiritual and the most dutiful of characters cannot altogether -resist the impulses of nature. There were times when she now began to -think that her life was somewhat empty and passionless.</p> - -<p>But a certain sense of their monotony had begun for the first time to -come upon her; a certain vague dissatisfaction stirred in her now and -then. The discontent of Sabran seemed to have left a shadow of itself -upon her. For the first time she seemed to be listening, as it were, to -her life and to find a great silence in it; there was no echo in it of -voices she loved.</p> - -<p>Why had she never perceived it before? Why did she become conscious -of it now? She asked herself this impatiently as the slight but -bitter flavour of dissatisfaction touched her, and the days for once -seemed—now and then—over long.</p> - -<p>She loved her people and her forests and her mountains, and she had -always thought that they would be sufficient for her, and she had -honestly told the Princess that of solitude she was not afraid; and yet -a certain sense that her life was cold and in a measure empty had of -late crept upon her. She wondered angrily why a vague and intangible -melancholy stole on her at times, which was different from the sorrow -which still weighed on her for her brother's death. Now and then she -looked at the old painted box of the spinet, and thought of the player -who had awakened its dumb strings; but she did not suspect for a -moment that it was in any sense his companionship which, now that it -was lost, made the even familiar tenor of her time appear monotonous -and without much interest. In the long evenings, whilst the Princess -slumbered and she herself sat alone watching the twilight give way to -the night over the broad and solemn landscape, she felt a lassitude -which did not trouble her in the open air, in the daylight, or when she -was busied indoors over the reports and requirements of her estates. -Unacknowledged, indeed, unknown to her, she missed the coming of the -little boat from the Holy Isle, and missed the prayer and praise of the -great tone-poets rolling to her ear from the organ within. If anyone -had told her that her late guest had possessed any such power to make -her days look grey and pass tediously she would have denied it, and -been quite sincere in her denial. But as he had called out the long -mute music from the spinet, so he had touched, if only faintly, certain -chords in her nature that until then had been dumb.</p> - -<p>'I am not like you, my dear Olga,' she wrote to her relative, the -Countess Brancka. 'I am not easily amused. That <i>course effrénée</i> of -the great world carries you honestly away with it; all those incessant -balls, those endless visits, those interminable conferences on your -toilettes, that continual circling of human butterflies round you, -those perpetual courtships of half a score of young men; it all -diverts you. You are never tired of it; you cannot understand any -life outside its pale. All your days, whether they pass in Paris or -Petersburg, at Trouville, at Biarritz, or at Vienna or Scheveningen, -are modelled on the same lines; you must have excitement as you have -your cup of chocolate when you wake. What I envy you is that the -excitement excites you. When I was amidst it I was not excited; I was -seldom even diverted. See the misfortune that it is to be born with a -grave nature! I am as serious as Marcus Antoninus. You will say that it -comes of having learned Latin and Greek. I do not think so; I fear I -was born unamusable. I only truly care about horses and trees, and they -are both grave things, though a horse can be playful enough sometimes -when he is allowed to forget his servitude. Your friends, the famous -tailors, send me admirably-chosen costumes which please that sense in -me which Titians and Vandycks do (I do not mean to be profane); but -I only put them on as the monks do their frocks. Perhaps I am very -unworthy of them; at least, I cannot talk toilette as you can with -ardour a whole morning and every whole morning of your life. You will -think I am laughing at you; indeed I am not. I envy your faculty of -sitting, as I am sure you are sitting now, in a straw chair on the -shore, with a group of <i>boulevardiers</i> around you, and a crowd making -a double hedge to look at you when it is your pleasure to pace the -planks. My language is involved. I do not envy you the faculty of doing -it, of course; I could do it myself to-morrow. I envy you the faculty -of finding amusement in doing it, and finding flattery in the double -hedge.'</p> - -<p>A few days afterwards the Countess Brancka wrote back in reply:</p> - -<p>'The world is like wine; <i>ça se mousse et ça monte.</i> There are heads it -does not affect; there are palates that do not like it, yours amongst -them. But there is so much too in habit. Living alone amidst your -mountains you have lost all taste for the <i>brouhaha</i> of society, which -grows noisier, it must be said, every year. Yes, we are noisy: we have -lost our dignity. You alone keep yours, you are the châtelaine of the -middle ages. Perceforest or Parsifal should come riding to your gates -of granite. By the way, I hear you have been entertaining one of our -<i>boulevardiers.</i> Réné de Sabran is charming, and the handsomest man in -Paris; but he is not Parsifal or Perceforest. Between ourselves, he has -an indifferent reputation, but perhaps he has repented on your Holy -Isle, They say he is changed; that he has quarrelled with Cochonette, -and that he is about to be made deputy for his department, whose -representative has just died. Pardon me for naming Cochonette; it is -part of our decadence that we laugh about all these naughty things and -naughty people who are, after all, not so very much worse than we are -ourselves. But you do not laugh, whether at these or at anything else. -You are too good, my beautiful Wanda; it is your sole defect. You have -even inoculated this poor Marquis, who, after a few weeks upon the -Szalrassee, surrenders Cochonette for the Chamber! My term of service -comes round next month: if you will have me I will take the Tauern on -my road to Gödöllö. I long to embrace you.'</p> - -<p>'Olga will take pity on our solitude,' said Wanda von Szalras to her -aunt. 'I have not seen her for four years, but I imagine she is little -changed.'</p> - -<p>The Princess read the letter, frowning and pursing her lips together in -pretty rebuke as she came to the name of Cochonette.</p> - -<p>'They have indeed lost all dignity,' she said with a sigh; 'and -something more than dignity also. Olga was always frivolous.'</p> - -<p>'All her <i>monde</i> is; not she more than another.'</p> - -<p>'You were very unjust, you see, to M. de Sabran; he pays you the -compliment of following your counsels.'</p> - -<p>Wanda von Szalras rose a little impatiently. 'He had better have -followed them before he broke the bank at Monaco. It is an odd sort of -notoriety with which to attract the pious and taciturn Bretons; and -when he was here he had no convictions. I suppose he picked them up -with the gold pieces at the tables!'</p> - -<p>Olga, Countess Brancka, <i>née</i> Countess Seriatine, of a noble Russian -family, had been married at sixteen to the young Gela von Szalras, who, -a few months after his bridal, had been shot dead on the battlefield of -Solferino.</p> - -<p>After scarce a year of mourning she had fascinated the brother of -Egon Vàsàrhely, a mere youth who bore the title of Count Brancka. -There had been long and bitter opposition made to the new alliance on -the part of both families, on account of the consanguinity between -Stefan Brancka and her dead lord. But opposition had only increased -the ardour of the young man and the young widow; they had borne down -all resistance, procured all dispensations, had been wedded, and in a -year's time had both wished the deed undone. Both were extravagant, -capricious, self-indulgent, and unreasonable; their two egotisms were -in a perpetual collision. They met but seldom, and never met without -quarrelling violently. The only issue of their union was two little, -fantastic, artificial fairies who were called respectively Mila and -Marie.</p> - -<p>At the time of the marriage of the Branckas, Wanda had been too young -to share in opposition to it; but the infidelity to her brother's -memory had offended and wounded her deeply, and in her inmost heart -she had never pardoned it, though the wife of Stefan Brancka had been -a passing guest at Hohenszalras, where, had Count Gela lived, she -would have reigned as sovereign mistress. That his sister reigned -there in her stead the Countess Olga resented keenly and persistently. -Her own portion of the wealth of the Szalras had been forfeited under -her first marriage contract by her subsequent alliance. But she never -failed to persuade herself that her exclusion from every share in that -magnificent fortune was a deep wrong done to herself, and she looked -upon Wanda von Szalras as the doer of that wrong.</p> - -<p>In appearance, however, she was always cordial, caressing, -affectionate, and if Wanda chose to mistrust her affection, it was, she -reflected, only because a life of unwise solitude had made a character -naturally grave become severe and suspicious.</p> - -<p>She did not fail to arrive there a week later. She was a small, -slender, lovely woman, with fair skin, auburn hair, wondrous black -eyes, and a fragile frame that never knew fatigue. She held a high -office at the Imperial Court, but when she was not on service, she -spent, under the plea of health, all her time at Paris or <i>les eaux.</i> -She came with her numerous attendants, her two tiny children, and a -great number of huge <i>fourgons</i> full of all the newest marvels of -combination in costume. She was seductive and caressing, but she was -capricious, malicious, and could be even violent; in general she was -gaily given up to amusement and intrigue, but she had moments of rage -that were uncontrollable. She had had many indiscretions and some -passions, but the world liked her none the less for that; she was a -great lady, and in a sense a happy woman, for she had nerves of steel -despite all her maladies, and brought to the pleasures of life an -unflagging and even ravenous zest.</p> - -<p>When with her perfume of Paris, her restless animation, her children, -like little figures from a fashion-plate, her rapid voice that was -shrill yet sweet, like a silver whistle, and her eyes that sparkled -alike with mirth and with malice, she came on to the stately terraces -of Hohenszalras, she seemed curiously discordant with it and its old -world peace and gravity. She was like a pen-and-ink sketch of Cham -thrust between the illuminated miniatures of a missal.</p> - -<p>She felt it herself.</p> - -<p>'It is the Roman de la Rose in stone,' she said, as her eyes roved -over the building, which she had not visited for four years. 'And you, -Wanda, you look like Yseulte of the White Hand or the Marguerite des -Marguerites; you must be sorry you did not live in those times.'</p> - -<p>'Yes: if only for one reason. One could make the impress of one's own -personality so much more strongly on the time.'</p> - -<p>'And now the times mould us. We are all horribly alike. There is only -yourself who retain any individuality amidst all the women that I know. -'<i>La meule du pressoir de l'abrutissement</i> might have been written of -our world. After all, you are wise to keep out of it. My straw chair at -Trouville looks trumpery beside that ivory chair in your Rittersäal. -I read the other day of some actresses dining off a truffled pheasant -and a sack of bon-bons. That is the sort of dinner we make all the year -round, morally—metaphorically—how do you say it? It makes us thirsty, -and perhaps, I am not sure, perhaps it leaves us half starved, though -we nibble the sweetmeats, and don't know it.</p> - -<p>'Your dinner must lack two things—bread and water.'</p> - -<p>'Yes: we never see either. It is all truffles and caramels and <i>vins -frappés.</i>'</p> - -<p>'There is your bread.'</p> - -<p>She glanced at the little children, two pretty, graceful little maids -of six and seven years old.</p> - -<p>'<i>Ouf!</i>' said the Countess Zelenka. 'They are only little bits of puff -paste, a couple of <i>petits fours</i> baked on the boulevards. If they be -<i>chic</i>, and marry well, I for one shall ask no more of them. If ever -you have children, I suppose you will rear them on science and the -Antonines?'</p> - -<p>'Perhaps on the open air and Homer,' said Wanda, with a smile.</p> - -<p>The Countess Brancka was silent a moment, then said abruptly:</p> - -<p>'You dismissed Egon again?'</p> - -<p>'Has he made you his ambassadress?'</p> - -<p>'No, oh no; he is too proud: only we all are aware of his wishes. -Wanda, do you know that you have some cruelty in you, some sternness?'</p> - -<p>'I think not. The cruelty would be to grant the wishes. With a loveless -wife Egon, would be much more unhappy than he is now.'</p> - -<p>'Oh, after a few months he would not care, you know; they never do. To -unite your fortunes is the great thing; you could lead your lives as -you liked.'</p> - -<p>'Our fortunes do very well apart,' said the Countess von Szalras, with -a patience which cost her some effort.</p> - -<p>'Yours is immense,' said Madame Brancka, with a sigh, for her own and -her husband's wealth had been seriously involved by extravagance and -that high play in which they both indulged. 'And it must accumulate in -your hands. You cannot spend much. I do not see how you could spend -much. You never receive; you never go to your palaces; you never leave -Hohenszalras; and you are so wise a woman that you never commit any -follies.'</p> - -<p>Wanda was silent. It did not appear to her that she was called on to -discuss her expenditure.</p> - -<p>Dinner was announced; their attendants took away the children; the -Princess woke up from a little dose, and said suddenly, 'Olga, is M. de -Sabran elected?'</p> - -<p>'Aunt Ottilie,' said her niece, hastily, 'has lost her affections to -that gentleman, because he painted her saint on a screen and had all -old Haydn at his fingers' ends.'</p> - -<p>'The election does not take place until next month,' said the Countess. -'He will certainly be returned, because of the blind fidelity of the -department to his name. The odd thing is that he should wish to be so.'</p> - -<p>'Wanda told him it was his duty,' said Princess Ottilie, with innocent -malice.</p> - -<p>The less innocent malice of the Countess Brancka's eyes fell for a -passing moment with inquiry and curiosity on the face of her hostess, -which, however, told her nothing.</p> - -<p>'Then he <i>was</i> Parsifal or Perceforest!' she cried, 'and he has ridden -away to find the emerald cup of tradition. What a pity that he paused -on his way to break the bank at Monte Carlo. The two do not accord. I -fear he is but Lancelot.'</p> - -<p>'There is no reason why he should not pursue an honourable ambition,' -said the Princess, with some offence.</p> - -<p>'No reason at all, even if it be not an honourable one,' said Madame -Brancka, with a curious intonation. 'He always wins at baccara; he has -done some inimitable caricatures which hang at the Mirliton; he is an -amateur Rubenstein, and he has been the lover of Cochonette. These are -his qualifications for the Chamber, and if they be not as valiant ones -as those of <i>les Preux</i> they are at least more amusing.'</p> - -<p>'My dear Olga,' said the Princess, with a certain dignity of reproof, -'you are not on your straw chair at Trouville. There are subjects, -expressions, suggestions, which are not agreeable to my ears or on your -lips.'</p> - -<p>'Cochonette!' murmured the offender, with a graceful little curtsey -of obedience and contrition. 'Oh, Madame, if you knew! A year ago we -talked of nothing else!'</p> - -<p>The Countess Brancka wished to talk still of nothing else, and though -she encountered a chillness and silence that would have daunted a less -bold spirit, she contrived to excite in the Princess a worldly and -almost unholy curiosity concerning that heroine of profane history -who had begun life in a little bakehouse of the Batignolles, and had -achieved the success of putting her name (or her nickname) upon the -lips of all Paris.</p> - -<p>Throughout dinner she spoke of little save of Cochonette, that -goddess of <i>bouffe</i>, and of Parsifal, as she persisted in baptising -the one lover to whom alone the goddess had ever been faithful. With -ill-concealed impatience her hostess bore awhile with the subject; then -dismissed it somewhat peremptorily.</p> - -<p>'We are provincials, my dear Olga,' she said, with a very cold -inflection of contempt in her voice. 'We are very antiquated in our -ways and our views. Bear with our prejudices and do not scare our -decorum. We keep it by us as we keep kingfishers' skins amongst our -furs in summer against moth; a mere superstition, I daresay, but we are -only rustic people.'</p> - -<p>'How you say that, Wanda,' said her guest, with a droll little laugh, -'and you look like Marie Antoinette all the while! Why will you bury -yourself? You would only need to be seen in Paris a week, and all the -world would turn after you and go back to tradition and ermine, instead -of <i>chien</i> and plush. If you live another ten years as you live now you -will turn Hohenszalras into a religious house; and even Mme. Ottilie -would regret that. You will institute a Carmelite Order, because -white becomes you so. Poor Egon, he would sooner have you laugh about -Cochonette.'</p> - -<p>The evening was chill, but beautifully calm and free of mist. Wanda -von Szalras walked out on to the terrace, whilst her cousin and guest, -missing the stimulus of her usual band of lovers and friends, curled -herself up on a deep chair and fell sound asleep like a dormouse.</p> - -<p>There was no sound on the night except the ripple of the lake water -below and the splash of torrents falling down the cliffs around; a -sense of irritation and of pleasure moved her both in the same moment. -What was a French courtesan, a singer of lewd songs, an interpreter -of base passions to her? Nothing except a creature to be loathed and -pitied, as men in health feel a disgusted compassion for disease. -Yet she felt a certain anger stir in her as she recalled all this -frivolous, trivial, ill-flavoured chatter of her cousin's. And what was -it to her if one of the many lovers of this woman had cast her spells -from about him and left her for a manlier and a worthier arena? Yet -she could not resist a sense of delicate distant homage to herself in -the act, in the mute obedience to her counsels such as a knight might -render, even Lancelot with stained honour and darkened soul.</p> - -<p>The silence of it touched her.</p> - -<p>He had said nothing: only by mere chance, in the idle circling of -giddy rumour, she learned he had remembered her words and followed her -suggestion. There was a subtle and flattering reverence in it which -pleased the taste of a woman who was always proud but never vain. And -to any noble temperament there is a singularly pure and honest joy in -the consciousness of having been in any measure the means of raising -higher instincts and loftier desires in any human soul that was not -dead but dormant.</p> - -<p>The shrill voice of Olga Brancka startled her as it broke in on her -musings.</p> - -<p>'I have been asleep!' she cried, as she rose out of her deep chair and -came forth into the moonlight. 'Pray forgive me, Wanda. You will have -all that drowsy water running and tumbling all over the place; it makes -one think of the voices in the Sistine in Passion Week; there are the -gloom, the hush, the sigh, the shriek, the eternal appeal, the eternal -accusation. That water would drive me into hysteria; could you not -drain it, divert it, send it underground—silence it somehow?'</p> - -<p>'When you can keep the Neva flowing at New Year, perhaps I shall be -able. But I would not if I could. I have had all that water about me -from babyhood; when I am away from the sound of it I feel as if some -hand had woolled up my ears.'</p> - -<p>'That is what I feel when I am away from the noise of the streets. Oh, -Wanda! to think that you can do utterly as you like and yet do not like -to have the sea of light of the Champs-Élysées or the Graben before -your eyes, rather than that gliding, dusky water!'</p> - -<p>'The water is a mirror. I can see my own soul in it and Nature's; -perhaps one hopes even sometimes to see God's.'</p> - -<p>'That is not living, my dear, it is dreaming.'</p> - -<p>'Oh, no, my life is very real; it is as real as light to darkness, it -is absolute prose.'</p> - -<p>'Make it poetry then; that is very easy.'</p> - -<p>'Poetry is to the poetical; I am by no means poetical. My stud-book, -my stewards' ledgers, my bankers' accounts, form the chief of my -literature; you know I am a practical farmer.'</p> - -<p>'I know you are one of the most beautiful and one of the richest women -in Europe, and you live as if you were fifty years old, ugly, and -<i>dévote</i>; all this will grow on you. In a few years' time you will -be a hermit, a prude, an ascetic. You will found a new order, and be -canonised after death.'</p> - -<p>'My aunt is afraid that I shall die a freethinker. It is hard to -please every one,' replied the Countess Wanda, with unruffled good -humour. 'It is poetical people who found religious orders, enthusiasts, -visionaries; I wish I were one of them. But I am not. The utmost I -can do is to follow George Herbert's precept and sweep my own little -chambers, so that this sweeping may be in some sort a duty done.'</p> - -<p>'You are a good woman, Wanda, and I dare say a grand one, but you are -too grave for me.'</p> - -<p>'You mean that I am dull? People always grow dull who live much alone.'</p> - -<p>'But you could have the whole world at your feet if you only raised a -finger.'</p> - -<p>'That would not amuse me at all.'</p> - -<p>Her guest gave an impatient movement of her shoulders; after a little -she said, 'Did Réné de Sabran amuse you?'</p> - -<p>Wanda von Szalras hesitated a moment.</p> - -<p>'In a measure he interested me,' she answered, being a perfectly -truthful woman. 'He is a man who has the capacity of great things, -but he seems to me to be his own worst enemy; if he had fewer gifts -he might probably have more achievement. A waste of power is always a -melancholy sight.'</p> - -<p>'He is only a <i>boulevardier</i>, you know.'</p> - -<p>'No doubt your Paris asphalte is the modern embodiment of Circe.'</p> - -<p>'But he is leaving Circe.'</p> - -<p>'So much the better for him if he be. But I do not know why you speak -of him so much. He is a stranger to me, and will never, most likely, -cross my path again.'</p> - -<p>'Oh, Parsifal will come back,' said Madame Brancka, with a little -smile. 'Hohenszalras is his Holy Grail.'</p> - -<p>'He can scarcely come uninvited, and who will invite him here?' said -the mistress of Hohenszalras, with cold literalness.</p> - -<p>'Destiny will; the great master of the ceremonies who disposes of us -all,' said her cousin.</p> - -<p>'Destiny!' said Wanda, with some contempt. 'Ah, you are superstitious; -irreligious people always are. You believe in mesmerism and disbelieve -in God.'</p> - -<p>'Oh, most Holy Mother, cannot you make Wanda a little like other -people?' said the Countess Brancka when her hostess had left her alone -with Princess Ottilie. 'She is as much a fourteenth-century figure as -any one of those knights in the Rittersäal.'</p> - -<p>'Wanda is a gentlewoman,' said the Princess drily. 'You great ladies -are not always that, my dear Olga. You are all very <i>piquantes</i> and -<i>provocantes</i>, no doubt, but you have forgotten what dignity is like, -and perhaps you have forgotten, too, what self-respect is like. It is -but another old-fashioned word.'</p> - - - -<hr class="chap" /> -<h4><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX.</a></h4> - - -<p>The late summer passed on into full autumn, and he never returned to -the little isle under the birches and willows. The monks spoke of him -often with the wondering admiration of rustic recluses for one who had -seemed to them the very incarnation of that world which to them was -only a vague name. His talents were remembered, his return was longed -for; a silver reliquary and an antique book of plain song which he -had sent them were all that remained to them of his sojourn there. As -they angled for trout under the drooping boughs, or sat and dosed in -the cloister as the rain fell, they talked together of that marvellous -visitant with regret. Sometimes they said to one another that they had -fancied once upon a time he would have become lord there, where the -spires and pinnacles and shining sloping roofs of the great Schloss -rose amidst the woods across the Szalrassee. When their grand prior -heard them say so he rebuked them.</p> - -<p>'Our lady is a true daughter of the Holy Church,' he said; 'all the -lands and all the wealth she has will come to the Church. You will see, -should we outlive her—which the saints send we may not do—that the -burg will be bequeathed by her to form a convent of Ursulines. It is -the order she most loves.'</p> - -<p>She overheard him say so once when she sat in her boat beneath the -willows drifting by under the island, and she sighed impatiently.</p> - -<p>'No, I shall not do that,' she thought. 'The religious foundations did -a great work in their time, but that time is over. They can no more -resist the pressure of the change of thought and habit than I can set -sail like S. Ursula with eleven thousand virgins. Hohenszalras shall -go to the Crown; they will do what seems best with it. But I may live -fifty years and more.'</p> - -<p>A certain sadness came over her as she thought so; a long life, a -lonely life, appalled her, even though it was cradled in all luxury and -strengthened with all power.</p> - -<p>'If only my Bela were living!' she said, half aloud; and the water grew -dim to her sight as it flowed away green and sparkling into the deep -long shadows of its pine-clothed shores, shadows, stretching darkly -across its western side, whilst the eastern extremity was still warm in -the afternoon light.</p> - -<p>The great pile of Hohenszalras seemed to tower up into the very clouds; -the evening sun, not yet sunk behind the Venediger range, shone ruddily -on all its towers and its gothic spires, and the grim sculptures and -the glistening metal, with which it was so lavishly ornamented, were -illumined till it looked like some colossal and enchanted citadel, -where soon the magic ivory horn of Childe Boland might sound and wake -the spell-bound warders.</p> - -<p>If only Bela, lord of all, had lived!</p> - -<p>But her regret was not only for her brother.</p> - -<p>In the October of that year her solitude was broken; her Sovereign -signified her desire to see Hohenszalras again. They were about to -visit Salzburg, and expressed their desire to pass three days in the -Iselthal. There was nothing to be done but to express gratitude for the -honour and make the necessary preparations. The von Szalras had been -always loyal allies rather than subjects, and their devotion to the -Habsburg house had been proved in many ways and with constancy. She -felt that she would rather have to collect and equip a regiment of -horse, as her fathers had done, than fill her home with the <i>tapage</i> -inevitable to an Imperial reception, but she was not insensible to the -friendship that dictated this mark of honour.</p> - -<p>'Fate conspires to make me break my resolutions,' she said to the -Princess; who answered with scant sympathy:</p> - -<p>'There are some resolutions much more wisely broken than persevered in; -your vows of solitude are amongst them.'</p> - -<p>'Three days will not long affect my solitude.'</p> - -<p>'Who knows? At all events, Hohenszalras for those three days will be -worthy of its traditions—if only it will not rain.'</p> - -<p>'We will hope that it may not. Let us prepare the list of invitations.'</p> - -<p>When she had addressed all the invitations to some fifty of the -greatest families of the empire for the house party, she took one of -the cards engraved 'To meet their Imperial Majesties,' and hesitated -some moments, then wrote across it the name of Sabran.</p> - -<p>'You will like to see your friend,' she said as she passed it to her -aunt.</p> - -<p>'Certainly, I should like to do so, but I am quite sure he will not -come.'</p> - -<p>'Not come?'</p> - -<p>'I think he will not. You will never understand, my dear Wanda, that -men may love you.'</p> - -<p>'I certainly saw nothing of love in the conversation of M. de Sabran,' -she answered, with some irritation.</p> - -<p>'In his conversation? Very likely not; he is a proud man and poor.'</p> - -<p>'Since he has ceased to visit Monte Carlo.'</p> - -<p>'You are ungenerous, Wanda.'</p> - -<p>'I?'</p> - -<p>The accusation fell on her with a shock of surprise, under which some -sense of error stirred. Was it possible she could be ungenerous? She, -whose character had always, even in its faults, been cast on lines so -broad? She let his invitation go away with the rest in the post-bag to -Matrey.</p> - -<p>In a week his answer came with others. He was very sensible, very -grateful, but the political aspect of the time forbade him to leave -France. His election had entailed on him many obligations; the Chamber -would meet next month, etc., etc. He laid his homage and regrets at the -feet of the ladies of Hohenszalras.</p> - -<p>'I was sure he would say so,' the Princess observed. It did not lie -within her Christian obligations to spare the '<i>je vous l'avais bien -dit.</i>'</p> - -<p>'It is very natural that he should not jeopardise his public -prospects,' answered Wanda herself, angrily conscious of a -disappointment, with which there was mingled also a sense of greater -respect for him than she had ever felt.</p> - -<p>'He cares nothing at all about those,' said the Princess, sharply. 'If -he had the position of Egon he would come. His political prospects! Do -you pretend to be ignorant that he only went to the Chamber as he went -to Romaris, because you recommended ambition and activity?'</p> - -<p>'If that be the case he is most wise not to come,' answered, with some -coldness, the châtelaine of Hohenszalras; and she went to visit the -stables, which would be more important in the eyes of her Imperial -mistress than any other part of the castle.</p> - -<p>'She will like Cadiga,' she thought, as she stroked the graceful throat -of an Arab mare which she had had over from Africa three months before, -a pure bred daughter of the desert 'shod with lightning.'</p> - -<p>She conversed long with her <i>stallmeister</i> Ulrich, and gave him various -directions.</p> - -<p>'We are all grown very rustic and old-fashioned here,' she said with a -smile. 'But the horses at least will not disgrace us.'</p> - -<p>Ulrich asked his most high countess if the Margraf von Sabran would be -of the house party, and when she answered 'No,' said, with regret, -that no one had ever looked so well on Siegfried as he had done.</p> - -<p>'He did ride very well,' she said, and turned to the stall where the -sorrel Siegfried stood. She sighed unconsciously as she drew the -tufted hair hanging over-the horse's forehead through her fingers with -tenderness. What if she were to make Siegfried and all else his, if it -were true that he loved her? She thrust the thought away almost before -it took any real shape.</p> - -<p>'I do not even believe it,' she said half aloud, and yet in her -innermost heart she did believe it.</p> - -<p>The Imperial visit was made and became a thing of the past.</p> - -<p>The state apartments were opened, the servants wore their state -liveries, the lake had its banners and flags, its decorated -landing-stairs and velvet-cushioned boats; the stately and silent place -was full for three days and nights of animated and brilliant life, -and great hunting parties rejoiced the soul of old Otto, and made the -forests ring with sound of horn and rifle. The culverins on the keep -fired their salutes, the chimes of the island monastery echoed the -bells of the clock tower of the Schloss, the schools sang with clear -fresh voices the Kaiser's Hymn, the sun shone, the jäger were in full -glory, the castle was filled with guests and their servants,' the -long-unused theatre had a troop of Viennese to play comedies on its -bijou stage, the ball-room, lined with its Venetian mirrors and its -Reseiner gilding, was lit up once more after many years of gloom; the -nobles of the provinces came from far and wide at the summons of the -lady of Hohenszalras, and the greater nobles who formed the house-party -were well amused and well content, whilst the Imperial guests were -frankly charmed with all things, and honestly reluctant to depart.</p> - -<p>When she accompanied them to the foot of the terrace stairs, and there -took leave of them, she could feel that their visit had been one of -unfeigned enjoyment, and her farewell gift to her Kaiserin was Cadiga. -They had left early on the morning of the fourth day, and the remainder -of the day was filled till sunset by the departure of the other guests; -it was fatiguing and crowded. When the last visitor had gone she -dropped down on a great chair in the Rittersäal, and gave a long-drawn -sigh of relief.</p> - -<p>'What a long strain on one's powers of courtesy!' she murmured. 'It is -more exhausting than to climb Gross Glöckner!'</p> - -<p>'It has been perfectly successful!' said the Princess, whose cheeks -were warm and whose eyes were bright with triumph.</p> - -<p>'It has been only a matter of money,' said the Countess von Szalras, -with some contempt. 'Nothing makes one feel so <i>bourgeoise</i> as a thing -like this. Any merchant or banker could do the same. It is impossible -to put any originality into it. It is like diamonds. Any one only heard -of yesterday could do as much if they had only the money to do it with; -you do not seem to see what I mean?'</p> - -<p>'I see that, as usual, you are discontented when any other woman would -be in paradise,' answered the Princess, a little tartly. 'Pray, could -the <i>bourgeoise</i> have a residence ten centuries old?'</p> - -<p>'I am afraid she could buy one easily,'</p> - -<p>'Would that be the same thing?'</p> - -<p>'Certainly not, but it would enable her to do all I have done for the -last three days, if she had only money enough; she could even give away -Cadiga.'</p> - -<p>'She could not get Cadiga accepted!' said Mme. Ottilie, drily. 'You are -tired, my love, and so do not appreciate your own triumphs. It has been -a very great success.'</p> - -<p>'They were very kind; they are always so kind. But all the time I could -not help thinking, were they not horribly fatigued. It wearied me so -myself, I could not believe that they were otherwise than weary too.'</p> - -<p>'It has been a great success,' repeated the Princess. 'But you are -always discontented.'</p> - -<p>Wanda did not reply; she leaned back against the Cordovan leather -back of the chair, crushing her chestnut hair against the emblazoned -scutcheon of her house; she was very fatigued, and her face was pale. -For three whole days and evenings to preserve an incessant vigilance of -courtesy, a continual assumption of interest, an unremitting appearance -of enjoyment, a perpetual smile of welcome, is very tedious work: those -in love with social successes are sustained by the consciousness of -them, but she was not. An Imperial visit more or less could add not one -hair's breadth to the greatness of the house of Szalras.</p> - -<p>And there was a dull, half conscious pain at the bottom of her heart. -She was thinking of Egon Vàsàrhely, who had said he could not leave -his regiment; of Réné de Sabran, who had said he could not leave his -country. Even to those who care nothing for society, and dislike the -stir and noise of the world about them, there is still always a vague -sense of depression in the dispersion of a great party; the house -seems so strangely silent, the rooms seem so strangely empty, servants -flitting noiselessly here and there, a dropped flower, a fallen jewel, -an oppressive scent from multitudes of fading blossoms, a broken vase -perhaps, or perhaps a snapped fan—these are all that are left of -the teeming life crowded here one little moment ago. Though one may -be glad they are all gone, yet there is a certain sadness in it. '<i>Le -lendemain de la fête</i>' keeps its pathos, even though the fête itself -has possessed no poetry and no power to amuse.</p> - -<p>The Princess, who was very fatigued too, though she would not confess -that social duties could ever exhaust anyone, went softly away to -her own room, and Wanda sat alone in the great Rittersäal, with the -afternoon light pouring through the painted casements on to the -damascened armour, and the Flemish tapestries, and the great dais at -the end of the hall, with its two-headed eagle that Dante cursed, -its draperies of gold-coloured velvet, its escutcheons in beaten and -enamelled metal.</p> - -<p>Discontented! The Princess had left that truthful word behind her like -a little asp creeping upon a marble floor. It stung her conscience with -a certain reproach, her pride with a certain impatience. Discontented! -She who had always been so equable of temper, so enamoured of solitude, -so honestly loyal to her people and her duties, so entirely grateful to -the placid days that came and went as calmly as the breathing of her -breast!</p> - -<p>Was it possible she was discontented?</p> - -<p>How all the great world that had just left her would have laughed at -her, and asked what doubled rose-leaf made her misery?</p> - -<p>No one hardly on earth could be more entirely free than she was, more -covered with all good gifts of fortune and of circumstances; and she -had always been so grateful to her life until now. Would she never -cease to miss the coming of the little boat across from the Holy Isle? -She was angry that this memory should have so much power to pursue her -thought and spoil the present hours. Had he but been there, she knew -very well that the pageantry of the past three days would not have -been the mere empty formalities, the mere gilded tedium that they had -appeared to be to her.</p> - -<p>On natures thoughtful and profound, silence has sometimes a much -greater power than speech. Now and then she surprised herself in the -act of thinking how artificial human life had become, when the mere -accident of a greater or lesser fortune determined whether a man who -respected himself could declare his feeling for a woman he loved. It -seemed lamentably conventional and unreal, and yet had he not been -fettered by silence he would have been no gentleman.</p> - -<p>Life resumed its placid even tenor at Hohenszalras after this -momentary disturbance. Autumn comes early in the Glöckner and -Venediger groups. Madame Ottilie with a shiver heard the north winds -sweep through the yellowing forests, and watched the white mantle -descend lower and lower down the mountain sides. Another winter was -approaching, a winter in which she would see no one, hear nothing, sit -all day by her wood fire, half asleep for sheer want of interest to -keep her awake; the very postboy was sometimes detained by the snowfall -for whole days together in his passage to and from Matrey.</p> - -<p>'It is all very well for you,' she said pettishly to her niece. 'You -have youth, you have strength, you like to have four mad horses put in -your sleigh and drive them like demoniacs through howling deserts of -frozen pine forests, and come home when the great stars are all out, -with your eyes shining like the planets, and the beasts all white with -foam and icicles. You like that; you can do it; you prefer it before -anything, but I—what have I to do? One cannot eat nougats for ever, -nor yet read one's missal. Even you will allow that the evenings are -horribly long. Your horses cannot help you there. You embroider very -artistically, but they would do that all for you at any convent; and to -be sure you write your letters and audit your accounts, but you might -just as well leave it all to your lawyers. Olga Brancka is quite right, -though I do not approve of her mode of expression, but she is quite -right—you should be in the world.'</p> - -<p>But she failed to move Wanda by a hair's breadth, and soon the hush -of winter settled down on Hohenszalras, and when the first frost had -hardened the ground the four black horses were brought out in the -sleigh, and their mistress, wrapped in furs to the eyes, began those -headlong gallops through the silent forests which stirred her to a -greater exhilaration than any pleasures of the world could have raised -in her. To guide those high-mettled, half-broken, high-bred creatures, -fresh from freedom on the plains of the Danube, was like holding the -reins of the winds.</p> - -<p>One day at dusk as she returned from one of these drives, and went -to see the Princess Ottilie before changing her dress, the Princess -received her with a little smile and a demure air of triumph, of -smiling triumph. In her hand was an open letter which she held out to -her niece.</p> - -<p>'Read!' she said with much self-satisfaction. 'See what miracles you -and the Holy Isle can work.'</p> - -<p>Wanda took the letter, which she saw at a glance was in the writing -of Sabran. After some graceful phrases of homage to the Princess, -he proceeded in it to say that he had taken his seat in the French -Chamber, as deputy for his department.</p> - -<p>'I do not deceive myself,' he continued. 'The trust is placed in me for -the sake of the memories of the dead Sabran, not because I am anything -in the sight of these people; but I will endeavour to be worthy of it. -I am a sorry idler and of little purpose and strength in life, but I -will endeavour to make my future more serious and more deserving of -the goodness which was showered on me at Hohenszalras. It grieved me -to be unable to profit by the permission so graciously extended to -me at the time of their Imperial Majesties' sojourn with you, but it -was impossible for me to come. My thoughts were with you, as they are -indeed every hour. Offer my homage to the Countess von Szalras, with -the renewal of my thanks.'</p> - -<p>Then, with some more phrases of reverence and compliment blent in one -to the venerable lady whom he addressed, he ended an epistle which -brought as much pleasure to the recipient as though she had been -seventeen instead of seventy.</p> - -<p>She watched the face of Wanda during the perusal of these lines, but -she did not learn anything from its expression.</p> - -<p>'He writes admirably,' she said, when she had read it through; 'and I -think he is well fitted for a political career. They say that it is -always best in politics not to be burdened with convictions, and he -will be singularly free from such impediments, for he has none!'</p> - -<p>'You are very harsh and unjust,' said the Princess, angrily. 'No -person can pay you a more delicate compliment than lies in following -your counsels, and yet you have nothing better to say about it than to -insinuate an unscrupulous immorality.'</p> - -<p>'Politics are always immoral.'</p> - -<p>'Why did you recommend them to him, then?' said the Princess, sharply.</p> - -<p>'They are better than some other things—than <i>rouge et noir</i>, for -instance; but I did not perhaps do right in advising a mere man of -pleasure to use the nation as his larger gaming-table.'</p> - -<p>'You are beyond my comprehension! Your wire drawing is too fine for my -dull eyesight. One thing is certainly quite clear to me, dull as I am; -you live alone until you grow dissatisfied with everything. There is -no possibility of pleasing a woman who disapproves of the whole living -world!'</p> - -<p>'The world sees few unmixed motives,' said Wanda, to which the Princess -replied by an impatient movement.</p> - -<p>'The post has brought fifty letters for you. I have been looking over -the journals,' she answered. 'There is something you may also perhaps -deign to read.'</p> - -<p>She held out a French newspaper and pointed to a column in it.</p> - -<p>Wanda took it and read it, standing. It was a report of a debate in the -French Chamber.</p> - -<p>She read in silence and attentively, leaning against the great carved -chimney-piece. 'I was not aware he was so good an orator,' she said -simply, when she had finished reading.</p> - -<p>'You grant that it is a very fine speech, a very noble speech?' -said Madame Otillie, eagerly and with impatience. 'You perceive the -sensation it caused; it is evidently the first time he has spoken. You -will see in another portion of the print how they praise him.'</p> - -<p>'He has acquired his convictions with rapidity. He was a Socialist when -here.'</p> - -<p>'The idea! A man of his descent has always the instincts of his order: -he may pretend to resist them, but they are always stronger than he. -You might at least commend him, Wanda, since your words turned him -towards public life.'</p> - -<p>'He is no doubt eloquent,' she answered, with 'some reluctance. 'That -we could see here. If he be equally sincere he will be a great gain to -the nobility of France.'</p> - -<p>'Why should you doubt his sincerity?'</p> - -<p>'Is mere ambition ever sincere?'</p> - -<p>'I really cannot understand you. You censured his waste of ability and -accession; you seem equally disposed to cavil at his exertions and use -of his talent. Your prejudices are most cruelly tenacious.'</p> - -<p>'How can I applaud your friend's action until I am sure of his motive?'</p> - -<p>'His motive is to please you,' thought the Princess, but she was too -wary to say so.</p> - -<p>She merely replied:</p> - -<p>'No motive is ever altogether unmixed, as you cruelly observed; but I -should say that his must be on the whole sufficiently pure. He wishes -to relieve the inaction and triviality of a useless life.'</p> - -<p>'To embrace a hopeless cause is always in a manner noble,' assented her -niece. 'And I grant you that he has spoken very well.'</p> - -<p>Then she went to her own room to dress for dinner.</p> - -<p>In the evening she read the reported speech again, with closer -attention. It was eloquent, ironical, stately, closely reasoned, and -rose in its peroration to a caustic and withering eloquence of retort -and invective. It was the speech of a born orator, but it was also the -speech of a strongly conservative partisan.</p> - -<p>'How much of what he says does he believe?' she thought, with a doubt -that saddened her and made her wonder why it came to her. And whether -he believed or not, whether he were true or false in his political -warfare, whether he were selfish or unselfish in his ambitions, what -did it matter to her?</p> - -<p>He had stayed there a few weeks, and he had played so well that the -echoes of his music still seemed to linger after him, and that was all. -It was not likely they would ever meet again.</p> - - - -<hr class="chap" /> -<h4><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X.</a></h4> - - -<p>With the New Year Madame Ottilie received another letter from him. -It was brief, grateful, and touching. It concluded with a message of -ceremonious homage to the châtelaine of Hohenszalras. Of his entrance -into political life it said nothing. With the letter came a screen of -gilded leather which he had painted himself, with passages from the -history of S. Julian Hospitador.</p> - -<p>'It will seem worthless,' he said, 'where every chamber is a museum -of art; but accept it as a sign of my grateful and imperishable -remembrance.'</p> - -<p>The Princess was deeply touched and sensibly flattered.</p> - -<p>'You will admit, at least,' she said, with innocent triumph, 'that he -knows how to make gratitude graceful.'</p> - -<p>'It is an ex-voto, and you are his patron saint, dear mother,' said -the Countess Wanda, with a smile but the smile was one of approval. -She thought his silence on his own successes and on her name was in -good taste. And the screen was so admirably painted that the Venetian -masters might have signed it without discredit.</p> - -<p>'May I give him no message from you,' said the Princess, as she was -about to write her reply.</p> - -<p>Her niece hesitated.</p> - -<p>'Say we have read his first speech, and are glad of his success,' she -said, after a few moments' reflection.</p> - -<p>'Nothing more?'</p> - -<p>'What else should I say?' replied Wanda, with some irritation.</p> - -<p>The Princess was too honourable a woman to depart from the text of -the congratulation, but she contrived to throw a little more warmth -into the spirit of it; and she did not show her letter to the mistress -of Hohenszalras. She set the screen near her favourite chair in the -blue-room.</p> - -<p>'If only there were any one to appreciate it!' she said, with a sigh. -'Like everything else in this house, it might as well be packed up in -a chest for aught people see of it. This place is not a museum; the -world goes to a museum: it is a crypt!'</p> - -<p>'Would it be improved by a crowd of sightseers at ten kreutzers a head?'</p> - -<p>'No: but it would be very much brightened by a house-party at Easter, -and now and then at midsummer and autumn. In your mother's time the -October parties for the bear-hunts, the wolf-hunts, the boar-hunts, -were magnificent. No, I do not think the chase contrary to God's -will; man has power over the beasts of the field and the forest. The -archdukes never missed an autumn here; they found the sport finer than -in Styria.'</p> - -<p>Her niece kissed her hand and went out to where her four black horses -were fretting and champing before the great doors, and the winter sun -was lighting up the gilded scrollwork, and the purple velvet, and the -brown sables of her sleigh, that had been built in Russia and been a -gift to her from Egon Vàsàrhely. She felt a little impatience of the -Princess Ottilie, well as she loved her; the complacent narrowness of -mind, the unconscious cruelty, the innocent egotism, the conventional -religion which clipped and fitted the ways of Deity to suit its own -habits and wishes: these fretted her, chafed her, oppressed her with a -sense of their utter vanity. The Princess would not herself have harmed -a sparrow or a mouse, yet it seemed to her that Providence had created -all the animal world only to furnish pastime for princes and their -jägers. She saw no contradiction in this view of the matter. The small -conventional mind of her had been cast in that mould and would never -expand: it was perfectly pure and truthful, but it was contracted and -filled with formula.</p> - -<p>Wanda von Szalras, who loved her tenderly, could not help a certain -impatience of this, the sole, companionship she had. A deep affection -may exist side by side with a mental disparity that creates an -unwilling but irresistible sense of tedium and discordance. A clear and -broad intelligence is infinitely patient of inferiority; but its very -patience has its reaction in its own fatigue and silent irritation.</p> - -<p>This lassitude came on her most in the long evenings whilst the -Princess slumbered and she herself sat alone. She was not haunted by -it when she was in the open air, or in the library, occupied with the -reports or the requirements on her estates. But the evenings were -lonely and tedious; they had not seemed so when the little boat had -come away from the monastery, and the prayer and praise of Handel and -Haydn, and the new-born glory of the Nibelungen tone-poems had filled -the quiet twilight hours. It was in no way probable that the musician -and she would ever meet again. She understood that his own delicacy -and pride must perforce keep him out of Austria, and she, however much -the Princess desired it, could never invite him there alone, and would -not probably gather such a house-party at Hohenszalras as might again -warrant her doing so.</p> - -<p>Nothing was more unlikely, she supposed, than that she would ever hear -again the touch that had awakened the dumb chords of the old painted -spinet.</p> - -<p>But circumstance, that master of the ceremonies, as Madame Brancka -termed it, who directs the <i>menuet de la cour</i> of life, and who often -diverts himself by letting it degenerate into a dance of death, willed -it otherwise. There was a dear friend of hers who was a dethroned -and exiled queen. Their friendship was strong, tender, and born in -childish days. On the part of Wanda, it had been deepened by the august -adversity which impresses and attaches all noble natures. Herself born -of a great race, and with the instincts of a ruling class hereditary -in her, there was something sacred and awful in the fall of majesty. -Her friend, stripped of all appanages of her rank, and deserted by -nearly all who 'had so late sworn her allegiance, became more than ever -dear; she became holy to her, and she would sooner have denied the -request of a reigning sovereign than of one powerless to command or -to rebuke. 'When this friend, who had been so hardly smitten by fate, -sent her word that she was ill and would fain see her, she, therefore, -never even hesitated as to obedience before the summons. It troubled -and annoyed her; it came to her ill-timed and unexpected; and it was -above all disagreeable to her, because it would take her to Paris. But -it never occurred to her to send an excuse to this friend, who had no -longer any power to say, 'I will,' but could only say, like common -humanity, 'I hope.'</p> - -<p>Within two hours of her reception of the summons she was on her way to -Windisch-Matrey. The Princess did not accompany her; she intended to -make as rapid a journey as possible without pausing on the way, and her -great-aunt was too old and too delicate in health for such exertion.</p> - -<p>'Though I would fain go and see that great Parisian aurist,' she said -plaintively. 'My hearing is not what it used to be.'</p> - -<p>'The great aurist shall come to you, dear mother,' said Wanda. 'I will -bring him back with me.'</p> - -<p>She travelled with a certain state, since she did not think that the -moment of a visit to a dethroned sovereign was a fit time to lay -ceremony aside. She took several of her servants and some of her horses -with her, and journeyed by way of Munich and Strasburg.</p> - -<p>Madame Ottilie was too glad she should go anywhere to offer opposition; -and in her heart of hearts she thought of her favourite. He was in -Paris; who knew what might happen?</p> - -<p>It was midwinter, and the snow was deep on all the country, whether of -mountain or of plain, which stretched between the Tauern and the French -capital. But there was no great delay of the express, and in some forty -hours the Countess von Szalras, with her attendants, and her horses -with theirs, arrived at the Hôtel Bristol.</p> - -<p>The noise, the movement, the brilliancy of the streets seemed a strange -spectacle, after four years spent without leaving the woodland quiet -and mountain solitudes of Hohenszalras.</p> - -<p>She was angry with herself that, as she stood at the windows of her -apartment, she almost unconsciously watched the faces of the crowd -passing below, and felt a vague expectancy of seeing amongst them the -face of Sabran.</p> - -<p>She went that evening, to the modest hired house where the young and -beautiful sovereign she came to visit had found a sorry refuge. It -was a meeting full of pain to both. When they had last parted at the -Hofburg of Vienna, the young queen had been in all the triumph and hope -of brilliant nuptials; and at Hohenszalras, the people's Heilige Bela -had been living, a happy boy, in all his fair promise.</p> - -<p>Meanwhile, the news-sheets informed all their leaders that the Countess -von Szalras was in Paris. Ambassadors and ambassadresses, princes and -princesses, and a vast number of very great people, hastened to write -their names at the Hôtel Bristol.</p> - -<p>Amongst the cards left was that of Sabran. But he sent it; he did not -go in person.</p> - -<p>She refused all invitations, and declined almost all visits. She had -come there only to see her friend, the Queen of Natalia. Paris, which -loves anything new, talked a great deal about her; and its street -crowds, which admires what is beautiful, began to gather before the -doors at the hours when her black horses, driven Russian fashion, came -fretting and flashing like meteors over the asphalte.</p> - -<p>'Why did you bring your horses for so short a time?' said Madame -Kaulnitz to her. 'You could, of course, have had any of ours.'</p> - -<p>'I always like to have some of my horses with me,' she answered. -'I would have brought them all, only it would have looked so -ostentatious; you know they are my children.'</p> - -<p>'I do not see why you should not have other children,' said Madame -Kaulnitz. 'It is quite inhuman that you will not marry.'</p> - -<p>'I have never said that I will not. But I do not think it likely.'</p> - -<p>Two days after her arrival, as she was driving down the Avenue de -l'Impératrice, she saw Sabran on foot. She was driving slowly. She -would have stopped her carriage if he had paused in his walk; but he -did not, he only bowed low and passed on. It was almost rude, after the -hospitality of Hohenszalras, but the rudeness pleased her. It spoke -both of pride and of sensitiveness. It seemed scarcely natural, after -their long hours of intercourse, that they should pass each other thus -as strangers; yet it seemed impossible they should any more be friends. -She did not ask herself why it seemed so, but she felt it rather by -instinct than by reasoning.</p> - -<p>She was annoyed to feel that the sight of him had caused a momentary -emotion in her of mingled trouble and pleasure.</p> - -<p>No one mentioned his name to her, and she asked no one concerning him. -She spent almost all her time with the Queen of Natalia, and there -were other eminent foreign personages in Paris at that period whose -amiabilities she could not altogether reject, and she had only allowed -herself fifteen days as the length of her sojourn, as Madame Ottilie -was alone amidst the snow-covered mountains of the Tauern.</p> - -<p>On the fifth day after her meeting with Sabran he sent another card -of his to the hotel, and sent with it an immense basket of gilded -osier filled with white lilac. She remembered having once said to him -at Hohenszalras that lilac was her flower of preference. Her rooms -were crowded with bouquets, sent her by all sorts of great people, -and made of all kinds of rare blossoms, but the white lilac, coming -in the January snows, touched her more than all those. She knew that -his poverty was no fiction; and that great clusters of white lilac in -midwinter in Paris meant much money.</p> - -<p>She wrote a line or two in German, which thanked him for his -recollection of her taste, and sent it to the Chamber. She did not know -where he lived.</p> - -<p>That evening she mentioned his name to her godfather, the Duc de Noira, -and asked him if he knew it. The Duc, a Legitimist, a recluse, and a -man of strong prejudices, answered at once.</p> - -<p>'Of course I know it; he is one of us, and he has made a political -position for himself within the last year.'</p> - -<p>'Do you know him personally?'</p> - -<p>'No, I do not. I see no one, as you are aware; I live in greater -retirement than ever. But he bears an honourable name, and though I -believe that, until lately, he was but a <i>flâneur</i>, he has taken a -decided part this session, and he is a very great acquisition to the -true cause.'</p> - -<p>'It is surely very sudden, his change of front?'</p> - -<p>'What change? He took no part in politics that ever I heard of; it -is taken for granted that a Marquis de Sabran is loyal to his sole -legitimate sovereign. I believe he never thought of public life; but -they tell me that he returned from some long absence last autumn, -an altered and much graver man. Then one of the deputies for his -department died, and he was elected for the vacancy with no opposition.'</p> - -<p>The Duc de Noira proceeded to speak of the political aspects of the -time, and said no more.</p> - -<p>Involuntarily, as she drove through the avenues of the Bois de -Boulogne, she thought of the intuitive comprehension, the half-uttered -sympathy, the interchange of ideas, <i>à demi-mots</i>, which had made the -companionship of Sabran so welcome to her in the previous summer. They -had not always agreed, she often had not even approved him; but they -had always understood one another, they had never needed to explain. -She was startled to realise how much and how vividly she regretted him.</p> - -<p>'If one could only be sure of his sincerity,' she thought, 'there would -be few men living who would equal him.'</p> - -<p>She did not know why she doubted his sincerity. Some natures have keen -instincts like dogs. She regretted to doubt it; but the change in him -seemed to her too rapid to be one of conviction. Yet the homage in it -to herself was delicate and subtle. She would not have been a woman had -it not touched her, and she was too honest with herself not to frankly -admit in her own thoughts that she might very well have inspired a -sentiment which would go far to change a nature which it entered and -subdued. Many men had loved her; why not he?</p> - -<p>She drew the whip over the flanks of her horses as she felt that -mingled impatience and sadness with which sovereigns remember that they -can never be certain they are loved for themselves, and not for all -which environs them and lifts them up out of the multitude.</p> - -<p>She was angry with herself when she felt that what interested her most -during her Parisian sojourn was the report of the debates of the -French Chamber in the French journals.</p> - -<p>One night the Baron Kaulnitz spoke of Sabran in her hearing.</p> - -<p>'He is the most eloquent of the Legitimist party,' he said to some one -in her hearing. 'No one supposed that he had it in him; he was a mere -idler, a mere man of pleasure, and it was at times said of something -worse, but he has of late manifested great talent; it is displayed for -a lost cause, but it is none the less admirable as talent goes.'</p> - -<p>She heard what he said with pleasure.</p> - -<p>Advantage was taken of her momentary return to the world to press on -her the choice of a great alliance. Names as mighty as her own were -suggested to her, and more than one great prince, of a rank even higher -than hers, humbly solicited the honour of the hand which gave no caress -except to a horse's neck, a dog's head, a child's curls. But she did -not even pause to allow these proposals any consideration; she refused -them all curtly, and with a sense of irritation.</p> - -<p>'Have you sworn never to marry?' said the Duc de Noira, with much -chagrin, receiving her answer for a candidate of his own to whom he was -much attached.</p> - -<p>'I never swear anything,' she answered. 'Oaths are necessary for -people who do not know their own minds. I do know my own.'</p> - -<p>'You know that you will never marry?'</p> - -<p>'I hardly say that; but I shall never contract a mere alliance. It is -horrible—that union eternal of two bodies and souls without sympathy, -without fitness, without esteem, merely for sake of additional position -or additional wealth.'</p> - -<p>'It is not eternal! said the Duc, with a smile; 'and I can assure you -that my friend adores you for yourself. You will never understand, -Wanda, that you are a woman to inspire great love; that you would be -sought for your face, for your form, for your mind, if you had nothing -else.'</p> - -<p>'I do not believe it.'</p> - -<p>'Can you doubt at least that your cousin Egon——'</p> - -<p>'Oh, pray spare me the name of Egon!' she said with unwonted -irritation. 'I may surely be allowed to have left that behind me at -home!'</p> - -<p>It was a time of irritation and turbulence in Paris. The muttering of -the brooding storm was visible to fine ears through the false stillness -of an apparently serene atmosphere. She, who knew keen and brilliant -politicians who were not French, saw the danger that was at hand for -France which France did not see.</p> - -<p>'They will throw down the glove to Prussia; and they will repent of it -as long as the earth lasts,' she thought, and she was oppressed by her -prescience, for war had cost her race dear; and she said to herself, -'When that liquid fire is set flowing who shall say where it will -pause?'</p> - -<p>She felt an extreme desire to converse with Sabran as she had done -at home; to warn him, to persuade him, to hear his views and express -to him her own; but she did not summon him, and he did not come. She -did justice to the motive which kept him away, but she was not as -yet prepared to go as far as to invite him to lay his scruples aside -and visit her with the old frank intimacy which had brightened both -their lives at the Hohenszalrasburg. It had been so different there; -he had been a wanderer glad of rest, and she had had about her the -defence of the Princess's presence, and the excuse of the obligations -of hospitality. She reproached herself at times for hardness, for -unkindness; she had not said a syllable to commend him for that -abandonment of a frivolous life which was in itself so delicate and -lofty a compliment to herself. He had obeyed her quite as loyally as -knight ever did his lady, and she did not even say to him, 'It is well -done.'</p> - -<p>Wanda von Szalras—a daughter of brave men, and herself the bravest of -women—was conscious that she was for once a coward. She was afraid of -looking into her own heart.</p> - -<p>She said to her cousin, when he paid his respects to her, 'I should -like to hear a debate at the Chamber. Arrange it for me.'</p> - -<p>He replied: 'At your service in that as in all things.'</p> - -<p>The next day as she was about to drive out, about four o'clock, he met -her at the entrance of her hotel.</p> - -<p>'If you could come with me,' he said, 'you might hear something of -interest to-day; there will be a strong discussion. Will you accept my -carriage or shall I enter yours?'</p> - -<p>What she heard when she reached the Chamber did not interest her -greatly. There was a great deal of noise, of declamation, of personal -vituperation, of verbose rancour; it did not seem to her to be -eloquence. She had heard much more stately oratory in both the Upper -and Lower Reichsrath, and much more fiery and noble eloquence at Buda -Pesth. This seemed to her poor, shrill mouthing, which led to very -little, and the disorder of the Assembly filled her with contempt.</p> - -<p>'I thought it was the country of S. Louis!' she said, with a disdainful -sigh, to Kaulnitz who answered:</p> - -<p>'Cromwell is perhaps more wanted here than S. Louis.'</p> - -<p>'Their Cromwell will always be a lawyer without clients, or a -journalist <i>sans le sou!</i>' retorted the châtelaine of Hohenszalras.</p> - -<p>When she had been there an hour or more she saw Sabran enter the hall -and take his place. His height, his carriage, and his distinction of -appearance made him conspicuous in a multitude, while the extreme -fairness and beauty of his face were uncommon and striking.</p> - -<p>'Here is S. Louis,' said the ambassador, with a little smile, 'or a son -of S. Louis's crusaders at any rate. He is sure to speak. I think he -speaks very well; one would suppose he had done nothing else all his -life.'</p> - -<p>After a time, when some speakers, virulent, over-eager, and hot in -argument, had had their say, and a tumult had risen and been quelled, -and the little bell had rung violently for many minutes, Sabran entered -the tribune. He had seen the Austrian minister and his companion.</p> - -<p>His voice, at all times melodious, had a compass which could fill with -ease the large hall in which he was. He appeared to use no more effort -than if he were conversing in ordinary tones, yet no one there present -lost a syllable that he said. His gesture was slight, calm, and -graceful; his language admirably chosen, and full of dignity.</p> - -<p>His mission of the moment was to attack the ministry upon their foreign -policy, and he did so with exceeding skill, wit, irony, and precision. -His eloquence was true eloquence, and was not indebted in any way to -trickery, artifice, or over-ornament. He spoke with fire, force, and -courage, but his tranquillity never gave way for a moment. His speech -was brilliant and serene, in utter contrast to the turbulent and florid -declamation which had preceded him. There was great and prolonged -applause when he had closed with a peroration stately and persuasive; -and when Emile Ollivier rose to reply, that optimistic statesman was -plainly disturbed and at a loss.</p> - -<p>Sabran resumed his seat without raising his eyes to where the Countess -von Szalras sat. She remained there during the speech of the minister, -which was a lame and laboured one, for he had been pierced between the -joints of his armour. Then she rose and went away with her escort.</p> - -<p>'What do you think of S. Louis?' said he, jestingly.</p> - -<p>'I think he is very eloquent and very convincing, but I do not think he -is at all like a Frenchman.'</p> - -<p>'Well, he is a <i>Breton bretonnant</i>' rejoined the ambassador. 'They are -always more in earnest and more patrician.'</p> - -<p>'If he be sincere, if he be only sincere,' she thought: that doubt -pursued her. She had a vague sense that it was all only a magnificent -comedy after all. Could apathy and irony change all so suddenly to -conviction and devotion? Could the scoffer become so immediately the -devotee? Could he care, really care, for those faiths of throne and -altar which he defended with so much eloquence, so much earnestness? -And yet, why not? These faiths were inherited things with him; their -altars must have been always an instinct with him; for their sake his -fathers had lived and died. What great wonder, then, that they should -have been awakened in him after a torpor which had been but the outcome -of those drugs with which the world is always so ready to lay asleep -the soul?</p> - -<p>They had now got out into the corridors, and as they turned the corner -of one, they came straight upon Sabran.</p> - -<p>'I congratulate you,' said Wanda, as she stretched her hand out to him -with a smile.</p> - -<p>As he took it and bowed over it he grew very pale.</p> - -<p>'I have obeyed you,' he murmured, 'with less success than I could -desire.'</p> - -<p>'Do not be too modest, you are a great orator. You know how to remain -calm whilst you exalt, excite, and influence others.'</p> - -<p>He listened in silence, then inquired for the health of his kind friend -the Princess Ottilie.</p> - -<p>'She is well,' answered Wanda, 'and loses nothing of her interest in -you. She reads all your speeches with approval and pleasure; not the -less approval and pleasure because her political creed has become -yours.'</p> - -<p>He coloured slightly.</p> - -<p>'What did you tell me?' he said. 'That if I had no convictions, I could -do no better than abide by the traditions of the Sabrans? If their -cause were the safe and reigning one I would not support it for mere -expediency, but as it is——'</p> - -<p>'Your motives cannot be selfish ones,' she answered a little coldly. -'Selfishness would have led you to profess Bakouinism; it is the -popular profession, and a socialistic aristocrat is always attracted -and flattering to the <i>plebs.</i>'</p> - -<p>'You are severe,' he said, with a flush on his cheek. 'I have no -intention of playing Philip Egalité now or in any after time.'</p> - -<p>She did hot reply; she was conscious of unkindness and want of -encouragement in her own words. She hesitated a little, and then said:</p> - -<p>'Perhaps you will have time to come and see me? I shall remain here a -few days more.'</p> - -<p>The ambassador joined them at that moment, and was too well bred to -display any sign of the supreme astonishment he felt at finding the -Countess von Szalras and the new deputy already known to each other.</p> - -<p>'He is a favourite of Aunt Ottilie's,' she explained to him as, leaving -Sabran, they passed down the corridor. 'Did I not tell you? He had an -accident on the Umbal glacier last summer, and in his convalescence we -saw him often.'</p> - -<p>'I recollect that your aunt asked me about him. Excuse me; I had quite -forgotten,' said the ambassador, understanding now why she had wanted -to go to the Chamber.</p> - -<p>The next day Sabran called upon her. There were with her three or four -great ladies. He did not stay long, and was never alone with her. She -felt an impatience of her friends' presence, which irritated her as -it awoke in her. He sent her a second basket of white lilac in the -following forenoon. She saw no more of him.</p> - -<p>She found herself wondering about the manner of his life. She did not -even know in what street he lived; she passed almost all her time with -the Queen of Natalia, who did not know him, and was still so unwell -that she received no one.</p> - -<p>She was irritated with herself because it compromised her consistency -to desire to stay on in Paris, and she did so desire; and she was one -of those to whom a consciousness of their own consistency is absolutely -necessary as a qualification for self-respect. There are natures that -fly contentedly from caprice to caprice, as humming-birds from blossom -to bud; but if she had once become changeable she would have become -contemptible to herself, she would hardly have been herself any longer. -With some anger at her own inclinations she resisted them, and when her -self-allotted fifteen days were over, she did not prolong them by so -much as a dozen hours. There was an impatience in her which was wholly -strange to her serene and even temper. She felt a vague dissatisfaction -with herself; she had been scarcely generous, scarcely cordial to him; -she failed to approve her own conduct, and yet she scarcely saw where -she had been at fault.</p> - -<p>The Kaulnitz and many other high persons were at the station in the -chill, snowy, misty day to say their last farewells. She was wrapped -in silver-fox fur from head to foot; she was somewhat pale; she felt -an absurd reluctance to go away from a city which was nothing to her. -But her exiled friend was recovering health, and Madame Ottilie was -all alone; and though she was utterly her own mistress, far more so -than most women, there were some things she could not do. To stay on in -Paris seemed to her to be one of them.</p> - -<p>The little knot of high personages said their last words; the train -began slowly to move upon its way; a hand passed through the window of -the carriage and laid a bouquet of lilies of the valley on her knee.</p> - -<p>'Adieu!' said Sabran very gently, as his eyes met hers once more.</p> - -<p>Then the express train rolled faster on its road, and passed out by the -north-east, and in a few moments had left Paris far behind it.</p> - - -<h4>END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.</h4> - -<hr class="full" /> -<p style="margin-left: 10%; font-size: 0.8em;"> -CONTENTS<br /><br /> -<a href="#PROEM">PROEM.</a><br /> -<a href="#CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I.</a><br /> -<a href="#CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II.</a><br /> -<a href="#CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III</a><br /> -<a href="#CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV.</a><br /> -<a href="#CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V.</a><br /> -<a href="#CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI.</a><br /> -<a href="#CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII</a><br /> -<a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII.</a><br /> -<a href="#CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX.</a><br /> -<a href="#CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X.</a><br /> -</p> - - - - - - - - -<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 52135 ***</div> - -</body> -</html> diff --git a/old/52135-h/images/cover.jpg b/old/52135-h/images/cover.jpg Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index 9c89af8..0000000 --- a/old/52135-h/images/cover.jpg +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/old/52135-0.txt b/old/old/52135-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 50bbf3a..0000000 --- a/old/old/52135-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,8514 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Wanda, Vol. 1 (of 3), by Ouida - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world 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. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: Wanda, Vol. 1 (of 3) - -Author: Ouida - -Release Date: May 23, 2016 [EBook #52135] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WANDA, VOL. 1 (OF 3) *** - - - - -Produced by Wanda Lee, Laura Natal Rodriguez and Marc -D'Hooghe at http://www.freeliterature.org (Images -generouslly made available by the Internet Archive.) - - - - - -WANDA - -BY - -OUIDA - - -_'Doch!--alles was dazu mich trieb_; -_Gott!--war so gut, ach, war so lieb!_' -Goethe - - -IN THREE VOLUMES - -VOL. I. - - -London - -CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY - -1873 - - - - -TO - -'A PERFECT WOMAN, NOBLY PLANN'D' - -WALPURGA, LADY PAGET - -NÉE - -COUNTESS VON HOHENTHAL - - - -This book is inscribed - -IN ADMIRATION AND AFFECTION - - - - -WANDA. - - - - -PROEM. - - Doch--alles was dazu mich trieb, - Gott! war so gut! ach, war so lieb!--GOETHE. - - -Towards the close of a summer's day in Russia a travelling carriage was -compelled to pause before a little village whilst a smith rudely mended -its broken wheel. The hamlet was composed of a few very poor dwellings -grouped around a large low horse-shoe shaped building, which was the -manorial mansion of the absent proprietor. It was gloomy, and dropping -to decay; its many windows were barred and shuttered; the grass grew in -its courts, and flowering weeds had time to seed and root themselves -on its whitewashed walls. - -Around it the level ground was at this season covered with green -wheat, spreading for leagues on leagues, and billowing and undulating -under the wind that blew from the steppes, like the green sea which it -resembled. Farther on were woods of larch and clumps of willow; and in -the distance, across the great plain to the westward, rolled a vast -shining river, here golden with choking sand, here dun-coloured with -turbid waves, here broken with islets and swamps of reeds, where the -singing swan and the pelican made their nests. - -It was in one of those far-off provinces through which the Volga rolls -its sand-laden and yellow waves. The scene was bleak and mournful, -though for many leagues the green corn spread and caught the timid -sunshine and the shadow of the clouds. There were a few stunted -willows near the house, and a few gashed pines; a dried-up lake was -glittering with crystals of salt; the domes and minarets of a little -city rose above the sky line far away to the south-east; and farther -yet northward towered the peaks of the Ural Mountains; the wall of -stone that divides Siberia from the living world. All was desolate, -melancholy, isolated, even though the season was early summer; but the -vastness of the view, the majesty of the river, the suggestion of the -faint blue summits where the Urals rose against the sky, gave solemnity -and a melancholy charm to a landscape that was otherwise monotonous and -tedious. - -Prince Paul Ivanovitch Zabaroff was in Russia because he was on the -point of marriage with a great heiress of the southern provinces, and -was travelling across from Orenburg to the Krimea, where his betrothed -bride awaited him in the summer palace of her fathers. Russia, with the -exception of Petersburg, was an unknown and detested place to him; his -errand was distasteful, his journey tedious, his temper irritated; and -when a wheel of his _telegue_ came off in this miserable village of -the Northern Volga district, he was in no mood to brook with patience -such an accident. He paced to and fro restlessly as he looked round on -the few and miserable cabins of a district that had been continually -harried and fired through many centuries by Kossack and Tartar. - -'Whose house is that?' he said to his servant, pointing to the great -white building. - -The servant humbly answered, 'Little father, it is thine.' - -'Mine!' echoed Paul Zabaroff. He was astonished; then he laughed, as he -remembered that he had large properties around the city of Kazán. - -The whole soil was his own as far as his eyes could reach, till the -great river formed its boundary. He did not even know his steward here; -the villagers did not know him. He had been here once only, a single -night, in the late autumn time, long, long before, He was a man in -whose life incidents followed each other too rapidly for remembrance -to have any abiding-place or regret any home in his mind. He had -immense estates, north, south, east, west; his agents forwarded him -the revenues of each, or as much of the revenues as they chose him to -enjoy, when they themselves were satisfied with their gains. - -When he was not in Paris he was in Petersburg, and he was an -impassioned and very daring gamester. These great silent houses, in -the heart of fir woods, in the centre of grass plains, or on the banks -of lonely rivers, were all absolutely unknown to and indifferent to -him. He was too admired and popular at his Court ever to have had the -sentence passed upon him to retire to his estates; but had he been -forced to do so he would have been as utterly an exile in any one of -the houses of his fathers as if he had been consigned to Tobolsk itself. - -He looked around him now, an absolute stranger in the place where -he was as absolutely lord. All these square leagues he learned were -his, all these miserable huts, all these poor lives; for it was in -a day before the liberation of the serfs had been accomplished by -that deliverer whom Russia rewarded with death. A vague remembrance -came over him as he gazed around: he had been here once before. The -villagers, learning that it was their master who had arrived thus -unexpectedly in their midst, came timidly around and made their humble -prostrations: the steward who administered the lands was absent that -day in the distant town. He was entreated to go within his own deserted -dwelling, but he refused: the wheel was nearly mended, and he reflected -that a house abandoned for so long was probably damp and in disorder, -cold and comfortless. He was impatient to be gone, and urged the smith -to his best and quickest by the promise of many roubles. The _moujiks_, -excited and frightened, hastened to him with the customary offerings -of bread and salt; he touched the gifts carelessly; spoke to them with -good-humoured, indifferent carelessness; and asked if they had any -grievances to complain of, without listening to the answer. They had -many, but they did not dare to say so, knowing that their lord would be -gone in five minutes, but that the heavy hand of his steward would lie -for ever upon them. - -Soon the vehicle was repaired, and Paul Zabaroff ceased his restless -walk to and fro the sandy road, and prepared to depart from this weary -place of detention. But, from an _isba_ that stood apart, beneath one -of the banks of sand that broke the green level of the corn, the dark -spare figure of an old woman came, waving bony hands upon the air, and -crying with loud voice to the _barine_ to wait. - -'It is only mad Maritza,' said the people; yet they thought Maritza -had some errand with their lord, for they fell back and permitted her -to approach him as she cried aloud: 'Let me come! Let me come! I would -give him back the jewel he left here ten years ago!' - -She held a young boy by the hand, and dragged him with her as she spoke -and moved. She was a dark woman, once very handsome, with white hair -and an olive skin, and a certain rugged grandeur in her carriage; she -was strong and of strong purpose; she made her way to Paul Zabaroff as -he stood by the carriage, and she fell at his feet and touched the dust -with her forehead, and forced the child beside her to make the same -obeisance. - -'All hail to my lord, and heaven be with him! The poor Maritza comes -to give him back what he left.' - -Prince Zabaroff smiled in a kindly manner, being a man often careless, -but not cruel. - -'Nay, good mother, keep it, whatever it be: you have earned the right. -Is it a jewel, you say?' - -'It is a jewel.' - -'Then keep it. I had forgotten even that I was ever here.' - -'Ay! the great lord had forgot.' - -She rose up with the dust on her white hair, and thrust forward a young -boy, and put her hands on the boy's shoulders and made him kneel. - -'There is the jewel, Paul Ivanovitch. It is time the Gospodar kept it -now.' - -Paul Zabaroff did not understand. He looked down at the little serf -kneeling in the dust. - -'A handsome child. May the land have many such to serve the Tsar. Is he -your grandson, good mother?' - -The boy was beautiful, with long curling fair hair and a rosy mouth, -and eyes like the blue heavens in a night of frost. His limbs were -naked, and his chest. He had a shirt of sheepskin. - -Old Maritza kept her hands on the shoulders of the kneeling child. - -'He is thy son, O lord!' - -'My son!' - -'Ay. The lord has forgotten. The lord tarried but one night, but he -bade my Sacha serve drink to him in his chamber, and on the morrow, -when he left, Sacha wept. The lord has forgotten!' - -Paul Zabaroff stood silent, slowly remembering. In the boy's face -looking up at him, half-sullenly, half-timidly, he saw the features of -his own race mingled with something much more beautiful, oriental, and -superb. - -Yes: he had forgotten; quite forgotten; but he remembered now. - -The people stood around, remembering better than he, but thinking it no -wrong in him to have forgotten, because he was their ruler and lord, -and did that which seemed right to him; and when he had gone away, in -Sacha's bosom there had been a thick roll of gold. - -'Where is--the mother?' he said at length. - -Old Maritza made answer: - -'My Sacha died four summers ago. Always Sacha hoped that the lord might -some day return.' - -Prince Zabaroff's cheek reddened a little with pain. - -'Fool! why did you not marry her?' he said with impatience. 'There -were plenty of men. I would have given more dowry.' - -'Sacha would not wed. What the lord had honoured she thought holy.' - -'Poor soul!' muttered Paul Zabaroff; and he looked again at the boy, -who bore his own face, and was as like him as an eaglet to an eagle. - -'Do you understand what we say?' - -The boy answered sullenly, 'I understand.' 'What is your name?' - -'I am Vassia.' - -'And what do you do?' - -'I do nothing.' - -'Are you happy?' - -'What is that? I do not know.' - -Prince Zabaroff was silent. - -'Rise up, since you are my son,' he said at length. - -The boy rose. - -He was sullen, shy, tameless, timid, like a young animal from the pine -woods. The old woman took her hands off his shoulders. - -'I have delivered the jewel to the lord that owns it. I have done -Sacha's will.' - -Then she turned herself round and covered her face, and went towards -her home. - -The child stood, half-fierce, half-fearful, like a dog which an old -master drives away, and which fears the new one. - -'These jewels are as many as the sands of the sea, and as worthless,' -said Paul Zabaroff with a slight smile. - -Nevertheless, he resolved, since Maritza spoke truth, that the boy -should be cared for and well taught, and have all that gold could get -for him, and be sent away out from Russia; for in Russia he was a serf. - -The boy's hair hung over his eyes, which were hungrily watching the -dark lean figure of the woman as it went away through the tall corn to -the white wood hut that stood alone in the fields. He dimly understood -that his life was being changed for him, but how he knew not. He wanted -to go home with Maritza to his nest of moss, where his bear-cubs slept -with him by night and played with him at dawn. - -'Farewell,' said Paul Zabaroff, and he touched his son's cheek with his -hand. - -'You are magnificently handsome, my poor child; indeed, who knows -what you will be?--a jewel or only a toad's eye?' he said dreamily; -then he sprang up behind his horses, and was borne away through the -fast-falling shades of the evening, leaving behind him the boy Vassia -and a little rough mound of nameless grass, which he had never seen, -and which was Sacha's grave. - -The four fiery horses that bore the _telegue_ dashed away with it in -the sunlight, scattering the sand in yellow clouds, and the village -on the Volga plains beheld its lord never more in life. The boy stood -still, and looked after it with a sombre anger on his beautiful fair -Circassian face. - -'You will go and be a prince far away, Vassia,' said the men to him -with envy. The child could not have expressed the vague mute wrath and -shame that stirred together in him, but he turned from them without a -word, and ran fleet as a roe in the path which Maritza had taken. He -loved his great-grandmother with a strong affection that was almost -passion, though it was silent and almost unconscious of itself. She -never checked him, beat him, or cursed him as the other women often -did their children. She did her best by him, though they dwelt in a -miserable little _isba_, that often in winter time was covered up with -the snow like a bear's hole, and in summer, the fierce brief parching -summer of north-east Russia, was as hot as a scorched eye under a -sun-glass. Life was barren and wretched to her, but not to him. He was -loved and he was free: childhood wants nothing more; Maritza was a -Persian woman. Years and years before, when she had been in her youth, -she had come from the Caspian shore, where the land and the sea are -alike alive with the leaping naphtha of the Ghebir worship: she had -been born within the iron gates of Derbent, of Persian parentage, and -she had known war and capture and violence, and had had many troubles, -many privations, many miseries before she had found herself stranded in -her old age, with her grandchild, in this little desolate village on -the sand-bank by the Volga. - -She was very poor; she had an evil reputation: nothing evil was ever -really traced to her, but she had Oriental faiths and traditions -and worshipped fire, or so said her enemies the black clergy of the -scattered villages and their ready believers. Never did Maritza light a -lamp at nightfall, but her neighbours saw in the act a devil worship. - -She was silent, proud, fierce, calm, exceedingly poor; she was hated -accordingly. When her granddaughter Sacha bore a child that was -the offspring of Prince Paul Zabaroff, though she cursed him, the -neighbours envied her and begrudged her such an honour. - -Maritza had brought up the young Vassia with little tenderness, yet -with a great yearning over the boy, with his pure Persian face and -his beautiful fair body, like a pearl. The uttermost she wished for -him was that he should grow up a raftsman or a fisherman on the Volga -water; all that she dreaded was that the Kossacks would take him and -put a lance in his hand and have him slain in war, as in the old stern -days of her youth her lovers had been taken by the battle-god, that -devoured them one by one, and her sons after them. - -She never gave a thought to the boy's parentage as of possible use to -him, but she always said to herself, 'If Paul Zabaroff ever come back, -then shall he know his son,' and meanwhile the boy was happy, though -he had not known the meaning of the word. He would plunge in the tawny -Volga in the summer-time, and watch the slow crowd of rafts go down -it, and the iron pontoon pass by, closed like a bier, which took the -condemned prisoners to Siberia. Now and then a gang of such captives -would go by on foot and chained; miserable exceedingly, wounded, -exhausted, doomed to twelve months' foot-sore travel ere they reached -the endless darkness of the mines or the blindness of the perpetual -frost. He watched them; but that was all. He felt neither curiosity nor -pity as he lay on the tall rough grass, and they moved by him on the -dusty, flint-strewn, ill-made road towards that chain of blue hills -which marked their future home and their eternal grave. For sport the -boy had the bear, the wolf, the blue fox, the wild hare, in the long -wintertime; in the brief summer he helped chase the pelican and the -swan along the sand-banks of the Volga or upon its lime-choked waves. -He was keen of eye and swift of foot: the men of his native village -were always willing to have his company, child though he was. He was -fond of all beasts and birds, though fonder still of sport; once he -risked his own life to save a stork and her nest on a burning roof. -When asked why he did it, he who choked the cygnet and snared the cub, -he could not say: he was ashamed of his own tenderness. - -He wanted no other life than this rude freedom, but one day, a month or -more after Paul Zabaroff had passed through the country, there came to -the door of Maritza's hut a stranger, who displayed to her eyes, which -could not read, a letter with the Prince's seal and signature. He said: -'I am sent to take away the boy who is called Vassia.' - -The Persian woman bowed her head as before a headsman's glaive. - -'It is the will of God,' she said. - -But the time came when Vassia, grown to man's estate, thought that -devils rather than gods had meddled with him then. - -'Send him to a great school; send him out of Russia; spare no cost; -make him a gentleman,' Paul Zabaroff had said to his agents when he -had seen the son of Sacha, and he had been obeyed. The little fierce -half-naked boy who in frost was wrapped in wolf-fur and looked like a -little wild beast, had been taken from the free, headstrong, barbaric -life of the Volga plains, where he was under no law and knew no rule, -and passionately loved the river and the chase, and the great silent -snow-wrapt world of his birth, and was sent to a famous and severe -college near Paris, to the drill, and the class, and the uniform, and -the classic learning, and the tape-bound, hard, artificial routine of -mechanical education. The pride, of the Oriental and the subtlety of -the Slav were all he brought with him as arms in the unequal combat -with an unsympathetic crowd. - -For a year's time he was insulted, tormented, ridiculed; in another -twelve months he was let alone; in a third year he was admired and -feared. All the while his heart was bursting within him with the agony -of home-sickness and revolt; but he gave no sign of either. Only at -nights, when the others of his chamber were all sleeping, he would slip -out of bed and stare up at the stars, which did not look the same as -he had known, and think of Maritza and of the bear-cubs, and of the -Volga's waters bearing the wild white swans upon their breast; and then -he would sob his very soul out in silence. - -He had been entered upon the books of the college under the name -of Vassia Kazán; Kazán having been the place at which he had been -baptised, the golden-domed, many-towered, half Asiatic city which -was seen afar off from the little square window in Maritza's hut. -High influence and much gold had persuaded the principal of a great -college--the Lycée Clovis, situated between Paris and Versailles--not -to inquire too closely into the parentage of this beautiful little -savage from the far north. Russia still remains dim, distant, and -mysterious to the western mind; among his tutors and comrades it was -taken for granted that he was some young barbarian noble, and the -child's own lips were shut as close as if the ice of his own land had -frozen them. - -Eight years later, on another day when wheat was ripe and willows -waved in summer sunshine, a youth lay asleep with his head on an open -Lucretius in the deserted playground of a French college. The place -of recreation was a dusty gravelled square; there were high stone -walls all round it, and a few poplars stood in it white with dust. -It was August, and all the other scholars were away; he alone had -been forgotten; he was used to being forgotten. He was not dull or -sorrowful, as other lads are when left in vacation time alone. He had -many arts and pastimes, and he was a scholar by choice, if a capricious -one, and he had a quick and facile tact which taught him how to have -his own way always; and on many a summer night, when his teachers -believed him safe sleeping, he was out of college, and away dancing and -singing and laughing at students' halls, and in the haunts of artists, -and at the little theatre beyond the barrier, and he had never been -found out, and would have cared but little if he had been. And he slept -now with his fair forehead leaning on Lucretius, and a drowsy, heavy -heat around him, filled with the hum of flies and gnats. He did not -dream of the heat and the insects; he did not even dream of the saucy -beauty at the barrier ball the night before, who had kicked cherries -out of his mouth with her blue-shod feet, and kissed him on his curls. -He dreamt of a little, low, dark hut; of an old woman that knelt before -a brazen image; of slumbering bear-cubs in a nest of hay; of a winter -landscape, white and shining, that stretched away in an unbroken level -of snow to the sea that half the year was ice. He dreamed of these, -and, dreaming, sighed and woke. He thought he stood on the frozen sea, -and the ice broke, and the waters swallowed him. - -It was nothing; only the voice of his tutor calling him. He was -summoned to the Principal of the Lycée: a rare honour. He rose, a -slender, tall, beautiful youth, in the dark close-fitting costume -of the institute. He shook the dust off his uniform and his curls, -shut his book, and went within the large white prison-like building -which had been his home since he had left the lowly _isba_ among the -sandhills and the blowing corn by Volga. - -The Principal was sitting in one of his private chambers, a grim, -dark, book-lined chamber; he held an open letter in his hand, which -he had read and re-read. He was a clever man, and unscrupulous and -purchasable; but he was not without feeling, and he was disquieted, for -he had a painful office to fulfil. - -When the youth obeyed his summons he looked up and shaded his eyes -with his hand. He hesitated, looking curiously at the young man's -attitude, which had an easy grace in it, and some hauteur visible under -a semblance of respect. - -The Principal took up the open letter: 'I regret, I grieve, to tell -you,' he said slowly, 'your patron and friend, the Prince Zabaroff, has -died suddenly!' - -The face of Vassia Kazán grew very pale, but very cold. He said nothing. - -'He died quite suddenly,' continued the director of the college; 'a -blood-vessel broke in the brain, after great fatigue in hunting; he was -upon one of his estates in White Russia.' - -The son of Paul Zabaroff was still silent. His master wished that he -would show some emotion. - -'It was he who placed you here--was at all costs for your education. I -suppose you are aware of that?' he continued, with some embarrassment. - -Vassia Kazán bowed and still said nothing. He might have been made of -ice or of marble for any sign that he gave. He might only have heard -that an unknown man had died in the street. - -'You were placed here by him--at least, by his agents; you were the son -of a dead friend, they said. I did not inquire closer--payments were -always made in advance.' - -He passed his hand a little confusedly over his eyes, for he felt a -little shame; his college was of high repute, and the agents of Prince -Zabaroff had placed sums in his hands, to induce him to deviate from -his rules, larger than he would have cared to confess. - -The boy was silent. - -'If he would only speak!' thought his master. 'He must know--he must -know.' - -But the son of the dead Zabaroff did not speak. - -'I am sorry to say,' resumed his master, still with hesitation, 'I am -very sorry to say that the death of the Prince being thus sudden and -thus unforeseen, his agents write me that there are no instructions, no -arrangement, no testament, in short--you will understand what I mean; -you will understand that, in point of fact, there is nothing for you, -there is no one to pay anything any longer.' - -He paused abruptly; the fair face of the boy grew a shade paler, that -was all. He bore the shock without giving any sign. - -'Is he made of ice and steel?' thought the old man, who had been proud -of him as his most brilliant pupil. - -'It pains me to give you such terrible intelligence,' he muttered; 'but -it is my duty not to conceal it an hour. You are quite--penniless. It -is very sad.' - -The boy smiled slightly; it was not a smile for so young a face. - -'He has given me learning; he need not have done that,' he said -carelessly. The words sounded grateful, but it was not gratitude that -glanced from his eyes. - -'I believe I am a serf in Russia?' he added, after a short silence. - -'I do not know at all,' muttered the Principal, who felt ill at ease -and ashamed of himself for having taken for eight years the gold of -Prince Paul. - -'I cannot tell--lawyers would tell you--I am not sure at all; indeed, I -know nothing of your history; but you are young and friendless. You are -a brilliant scholar, but you are not fit for work. What will you do, my -poor lad?' - -The boy did not respond to the kindness that was in the tone, and he -resented the pity there was in it. - -'That will be my affair alone,' he said, still carelessly and very -haughtily. - -'All is paid up to the New Year,' said his master, feeling restless and -dissatisfied. 'There is no haste--I would not turn you from my roof. -You are a brilliant classic--you might be a teacher here, perhaps?' - -The youth smiled; then he said coldly: - -'You are very good. I had better go away at once. I should wish to be -away before the others return.' - -'But where will you go?' said the old man, staring at him with a dull -and troubled surprise. - -The boy shrugged his shoulders. - -'The world is large--at least it looks so when one has not been over -it. Can you tell me who inherits from Prince Paul Zabaroff?' - -'His eldest son by his marriage with a Princess Kourouassine. If he had -only left some will, some sort of command or direction--perhaps if I -wrote to the Princess, and told her the facts, she--' - -'Pray do not do that,' said the boy coldly. 'I thank you for all I have -learned here, and I will leave your house to-night. Farewell to you, -sir.' - -The boy's eyes were dry and calm; the old man's were wet and dim. He -rose hurriedly, and laid aside his stern habit of authority for a -moment, as he put his hand on the lad's shoulder. - -'Vassia, do not leave us like that. I do not like to see you so cold, -so quiet, so unnaturally indifferent. You are left friendless and -nameless--and after all he was your father.' - -The boy drew himself away gently, and shrugged his shoulders once more -with his slight gesture of contempt. - -'He never called me his son. I wish he had left me by the Volga with -the bear-cubs: that is all. Adieu, sir.' - -'But what do you mean to do?' - -'I will do what offers.' - -'But few things offer when one is friendless and you have many faults, -Vassia, though you have many talents. I fear for your future.' - -'Adieu, sir.' - -The boy bowed low, with composure and grace, and left the room. The -old man sat in the shadow by his desk, and blamed himself, and blamed -the dead. The young collegian went out from his presence with a firm -step and a careless carriage, and ascended the staircase of the -college to his dormitory. The large long room, with its whitewashed -walls, its barred casements, its rows of camp bedsteads, looked like a -barrack-room deserted by the soldiers. The aspen and poplar leaves were -quivering outside the grated windows; the rays of the bright August sun -streamed through and shone on the floor. The boy sat down on his bed. -It was at the top of the row of beds, next one of the casements. The -sun-rays touched his head; he was all alone. The clamour, the disputes, -the mirth, the wrong-doing with which he and his comrades had consoled -themselves for the stern discipline of the day, were all things of -the past, and he would know them no more. In a way he had been happy -here, being lord and king of the rebellious band that had filled this -chamber, and knowing so little of his own fate or of his own future -that any greatness or glory might be possible to him. - -Three years before he had been summoned to a château on the north coast -of France in the full summer season. It had entered into the capricious -fancy of Prince Zabaroff that he should like to see what the wild -young wolf-cub of the Volga plains had become. He had found in him a -youth so handsome, so graceful, so accomplished, that a certain fibre -of paternal pride had been touched in him; whilst the coldness, the -silence, and the disdainfulness of the boy's temper had commanded his -respect. No word of their relationship had passed between them, but by -the guests assembled there it had been assumed that the young Vassia -Kazán was near of kin to their host, whose lawfully-begotten sons and -daughters were far away in one of his summer palaces of the Krimea. - -The boy was beautiful, keen-witted, precocious in knowledge and tact; -the society assembled there, which was dissolute enough, dazzled and -indulged him. The days had gone by like a tale of magic. There had -been always in him the bitter, mortified, rebellious hatred of his -own position; but this he had not shown, and no one had suspected it. -These three summer months of unbridled luxury and indulgence had made -an indelible impression on him. He had felt that life was not worth the -living unless it could be passed in the same manner. He had known that -away there in Russia there were young Zabaroff princes, his brethren, -who would not have owned him; but the remembrance of them had not dwelt -on him. He had not known definitely what to expect of the future. -Though he was still there only Vassia Kazán, yet he had been treated -as though he were a son of the house. When the party had broken up he -had been sent back to his college with many gifts and a thousand francs -in gold. When he reached Paris he had given the presents to a dancing -girl and the money to an old professor of classics who had lost his -sight. Not a word had been said as to his future. Measuring both by the -indulgences and liberalities that were conceded to him, he had always -dreamed of it vaguely but gorgeously, as sure to bring recognition and -reverence, pomp and power, to him from the world. He had vaguely built -up ambitious hopes. He had been sensible of no ordinary intelligence, -of no common powers; and it had seemed legitimate to suppose that so -liberal and princely an education meant that some golden gates would -open to him at manhood: why should they rear him so if they intended -to leave him in obscurity? - -This day, as he had sat in the large white courtyard, shadowed by the -Parisian poplar trees, he had remembered that he was within a few weeks -of the completion of his eighteenth year, and he had wondered what -they meant to do with him. He had heard nothing from Prince Zabaroff -since those brilliant, vivid, tumultuous months which had left on him a -confused sense of dazzling though vague expectation. He had hoped every -summer to hear something, but each summer had passed in silence; and -now he was told that Paul Zabaroff was dead. - -He had been happy, being dowered with facile talents, quick wit, and -the great art of being able to charm others without effort to himself. -He had been seldom obedient, often guilty, yet always successful. The -place had been no prison to him; he had passed careless days and he had -dreamed grand dreams there; and now-- - -He sat on the little iron bed, and knew that in a few nights to come he -might have to make his bed with beggars under bridge arches and in the -dens of thieves. - -Tears gathered in his eyes, and fell slowly one by one. A sort of -convulsion passed over his face. He gripped his throat with his hand, -to stifle a sob that rose there. - -The intense stillness of the chamber was not broken even by the buzzing -of a gnat. - -He sat quite motionless, and his thoughts went back to the summer day -in the cornfields by the Volga; he saw the scene in all its little -details: the impatient good-humour of the great lord, the awe of the -listening peasants, the blowing wheat, the wooden cross, the stamping -horses, the cringing servants; he heard the voice of his father saying, -'Will you be a jewel or a toad's eye?' - -'Why could he not leave me there?' he thought; 'I should have known -nothing; I should have been a hunter; I should have done no harm on the -ice and the snow there, with old Maritza.' - -He thought of his grandmother, of the little hut, of the nest of skins, -of the young bears at play, of the glittering plains in winter, of the -low red sun, of the black lonely woods, of the grey icy river, of the -bright virgin snow--thought, with a great longing like that of thirst. -Why had they not let him be? Why had they not left him ignorant and -harmless in the clear, keen, solitary winter world? - -Instead of that they had flung him into hell, and now left him in it, -alone. - -There was a far-off murmur on the sultry summer air, and a far-off -gleam of metal beyond the leaves of the poplar trees; it was the murmur -of the streets, and the glisten of the roofs of Paris. - -About his neck there hung a little silver image of St. Paul. His mother -had hung it there at birth, and Maritza had prayed him never to disturb -it. Now he took it off, he spat on it, he trod on it, he threw it out -to fall into the dust. - -He did this insult to the sacred thing coldly, without passion. His -tears were no more on his cheeks, nor the sobs in his throat. - -He changed his clothes quickly, put together a few necessaries, leaving -behind nearly all that he possessed, because he hated everything that -the dead man's money had bought; and then, without noise and without -haste, looking back once down the long empty chamber, he went through -the house by back ways that he knew and had used in hours of forbidden -liberty, and opening the gate of the courtyard, went out into the long -dreary highway, white with dust, that stretched before him and led to -Paris. - -He had made friends, for he was a beautiful bold boy, gay of wit, -agile, and strong, and of many talents; but these friends were -artists little known in the world, soldiers who liked pleasure, young -dramatists without theatres, pretty frail women who had taught him to -eat the sweet and bitter apple that is always held out in the hand of -Eve. These and their like were all butterfly friends of a summer noon -or night; he knew that very well, for he had a premature and unerring -knowledge of the value of human words. They would be of no use in such -a strait as his; and the colour flushed back for one instant into his -pale cheeks, as he thought that he would die in a hospital before he -was twenty rather than ask their aid. - -As the grey dust, the hot wind, the nauseous smell of streets in summer -smote upon him, leaving the poplar-shadowed court of his old school, -he felt once more the same strange yearning of home-sickness for the -winter world of his birth, for the steel-grey waters, the darkened -skies, the forests of fir, the howl of the wolves on the wind, the joys -of the fresh fierce cold, the feel of the ice in the air, the smell of -the pines and the river. The bonds of birth are strong. - -'If Maritza were not dead I would go back,' he thought. But Maritza had -been long dead, laid away under the snow by her daughter's side. - -The boy went to Paris. - -Would it be any fault of his what he became? - -He told himself, No. - -It would lie with the dead; and with Paris. - - - - -CHAPTER I. - - -In the heart of the Hohe Tauern, province of lakes and streams, there -lies one lake called the Szalrassee: known to the pilgrim, to the -fisher, to the hunter, but to the traveller little, for it is shut -away from the hum and stir of man by the amphitheatre of its own hills -and forests. To the south-east of it lies the Iselthal, and to the -north-west the Wilde Gerlos; due east is the great Glöckner group, and -due west the Venediger. Farther away are the Alps of Zillerthal, and on -the opposite horizon the mountains of Karinthia. - -Here, where the foaming rivers thunder through their rocky channels, -and the ice bastions of a thousand glaciers glow in the sunrise and bar -the sight of sunset; here, where a thousand torrents bathe in silver -the hillsides, and the deep moan of subterranean waters sounds for -ever through the silence of the gorges, dark with the serried pines; -here, in the green and cloudy Austrian land, the merry trout have many -a joyous home, but none is fairer or more beloved by them than this -lovely lake of Hohenszalras; so green that it might have been made of -emeralds dissolved in sunbeams, so deep that at its centre no soundings -can be taken, so lonely that of the few wanderers who pass from S. -Johann im Wald or from Lienz to Matrey, even of those few scarce one in -a summer will know that a lake lies there, though they see from afar -off its great castle standing, many-turreted and pinnacled, with its -frowning keep, backed by the vast black forests, clothing slopes whose -summits hide themselves in cloud, whilst through the cold clear air the -golden vulture and the throated eagle wing their way. - -The lake lies like a crystal bedded in rock, lovely and lonely as the -little Gosausee when the skies are fair; perilous and terrible as the -great Königs-See in storm, when the north wind is racing in from the -Bœhmervald and the Polish steppes, and the rain-mists are dark and -dense, and the storks leave their home on the chapel roof because the -winter draws nigh. It is fed by snow and ice descending from a hundred -hills, and by underground streams and headlong-descending avalanches, -and in its turn feeds many a mountain waterfall, many a mountain tarn, -many a woodland brook, and many a village fountain. The great white -summits tower above it, and the dense still woods enshroud it; there -are a pier and harbour at either end, but these are only used by the -village people, and once a year by pilgrims who come to the Sacred -Island in its midst; pilgrims who flock thither from north, south, -east, and west, for the chapel of the Szalrassee is as renowned and -blessed as the silver shrine of holy Mariazell itself. - -On the right bank of its green glancing water, looking towards the -ice-peaks of the Glöckner on the east, and on the south towards the -Kitchbull mountains and the limestone Alps, a promontory juts out -into the lake and soars many hundred feet above it. It is of hard -granite rock. Down one of its sides courses a torrent, the other side -is clothed with wood; on the summit is the immense building that is -called the Hohenszalrasburg, a mass of towers and spires and high metal -roofs and frowning battlements, with a huge square fortress at one end -of them: it is the old castle of the Counts of Szalras, and the huge -donjon keep of it has been there twelve centuries, and in all these -centuries no man has ever seen its flag furled or its portcullis drawn -up for a conqueror's entry. - -The greater part of the Schloss now existing is the work of Meister -Wenzel of Klosterneuburg, begun in 1350, but the date of the keep -and of the foundations generally are much earlier, and the prisons -and clock tower are Romanesque. Majestic, magnificent, and sombre, -though not gloomy, by reason of its rude decoration and the brilliant -colours of its variegated roofs, it is scarcely changed since its lords -dwelt there in the fourteenth century, when their great banner, black -vultures on a ground of gold and red, floated then high up amongst the -clouds, even as it now shakes its heavy folds out on the strong wind -that blew so keenly from the Prussian and the Polish plains due north. - -It is a fortress that has wedded a palace; it is majestic, powerful, -imposing, splendid, like the great race, of which it so long has been -the stronghold and the birthplace. But it is as lonely in the quiet -heart of the everlasting hills as any falcon's or heron's nest hung in -the oak branches. - -And this loneliness seemed its sweetest charm in the eyes of its -châtelaine and mistress, the Countess Wanda von Szalras, as she leaned -one evening over the balustrade of her terrace, watching for the -after-glow to warm the snows of the Glöckner. She held in her hand an -open letter from her Kaiserin, and the letter in its conclusion said: -'You have sorrowed and tarried in seclusion long enough--too long; -longer than he would have wished you to do. Come back to us and to the -world.' - -And Wanda von Szalras thought to herself: 'What can the world give me? -What I love is Hohenszalras on earth, and Bela in heaven.' - -What could the world give her indeed? The world cannot give back the -dead. She wanted nothing of the world. She was rich in all that it can -ever give. - -In the time of Ferdinand the Second those who were then Counts of -Szalras had stitched the cloth cross on their sleeves and gone with the -Emperor to the Third Crusade. In gratitude for their escape, father -and son, from the perils of Palestine and the dangers of the high seas -and of the treacherous Danube water, from Moslem steel, and fever of -Jaffa, and chains of swarming Barbary corsairs, they, returning at last -in safety to their eyrie above the Szalrassee, had raised a chapel -on the island in the lake, and made it dedicate to the Holy Cross, -a Szalras of the following generation, belonging to the Dominican -community, and being a man of such saintly fervour and purity that he -was canonised by Innocent, had dwelt on the Holy Isle, and given to -it the benediction and the tradition of his sanctity and good works. -As centuries went on the holy fame of the shrine where the Crusader -had placed a branch from a thorn-tree of Nazareth grew, and gained in -legend and in miracle, and became as adored an object, of pilgrimage as -the Holy Phial of Heiligenblut. All the Hohe Tauern, and throngs even -from Karinthia on the one side and Tirol on the other, came thither on -the day of Ascension. - -The old faith still lives, very simple, warm, and earnest, in the -heart of Austria, and with that day-dawn in midsummer thousands of -peasant-folks flock from mountain villages and forest chalets and -little remote secluded towns, to speed over the green lake with flaming -crucifix and floating banner, and haunted anthem echoed from hill -to hill. One of those days of pilgrimage had made her mistress of -Hohenszalras. - -It was a martial and mighty race this which in the heart of the green -Tauern had made of fealty to God and the Emperor a religion for itself -and all its dependants. The Counts of Szalras had always been proud, -stern, and noble men: though their records were often stained with -fierce crimes, there was never in them any single soil of baseness, -treachery, or fear. They had been fierce and reckless in the wild days -when they were for ever at war with the Counts of Tirol and the warlike -Archbishops of Salzburg. Then with the Renaissance they had become no -less powerful, but more lettered, more courtly, and more splendid, and -had given alike friendship and service to the Habsburg. Now, of all -these princely and most powerful people there was but one descendant, -but one representative; and that one was a woman. - -Solferino had seen Count Gela fall charging at the head of his own -regiment of horse; Magenta had seen Count Victor cut in two by a -cannon-shot as he rode with the dragoons of Swartzenberg; and but a -few years later the youngest, Count Bela, had been drowned by his own -bright lake. - -Their father had died of grief for his eldest son; their mother had -been lost to them in infancy; Bela and Wanda had grown up together, -loving each other as only two lonely children can. She had been his -elder by a few years, and he younger than his age by reason of his -innocent simplicity of nature and his delicacy of body. They had always -thought to make a priest of him, and when that peaceful future was -denied him on his becoming the sole heir, it was the cause of bitter -though mute sorrow to the boy who was indeed so like a young saint in -church legends that the people called him tenderly _der Heilige Graf._ -He had never quitted Hohenszalras, and he knew every peasant around, -every blossom that blew, every mountain path, every forest beast -and bird, and every tale of human sorrow in his principality. When -he became lord of all after his brother's death he was saddened and -oppressed by the sense of his own overwhelming obligations. 'I am but -the steward of God,' he would say, with a tender smile, to the poor who -blessed him. - -One Ascension Day the lake was, as usual, crowded with the boats of -pilgrims; the morning was fair and cloudless, but, after noontide, wind -arose, the skies became overcast, and one of the sudden storms of the -country burst over the green waters. The little lord of Hohenszalras -was the first to see the danger to the clumsy heavy boats crowded with -country people, and with his household rowed out to their aid. The -storm had come so suddenly and with such violence that it smote, in -the very middle of the lake, some score of these boats laden with the -pilgrims of the Pinzgau and the Innthal, women chiefly; their screams -pierced through the noise of the roaring winds, and their terror added -fresh peril to the dangers of the lake, which changed in a few moments -to a seething whirlpool, and flung them to and fro like coots' nests -in a flood. The young Bela with his servants saved many, crossing and -recrossing the furious space of wind-lashed, leaping, foaming water; -but on the fourth voyage back the young Count's boat, over-burdened -with trembling peasants, whose fright made them blind and restive, -dipped heavily on one side, filled, and sank. Bela could swim well, -and did swim, even to the very foot of his own castle rock, where a -hundred hands were outstretched to save him; but, hearing a drowning -woman's moan, he turned and tried to reach her. A fresh surge of the -hissing water, a fresh gust of the bitter north wind, tossed him back -into a yawning gulf of blackness, and drove him headlong, and with no -more resistance in him than if he had been a broken bough, upon the -granite wall of his own rocks. He was caught and rescued almost on the -instant by his own men, but his head had struck upon the stone, and he -was senseless. He breathed a few hours, but he never spoke or opened -his eyes or gave any sign of conscious life, and before the night had -far advanced his innocent body was tenantless and cold, and his sweet -spirit lived only in men's memories. His sister, who was absent at that -time at the court of her Empress, became by his death the mistress of -Hohenszalras and the last of her line. - -When the tidings of his heroic end reached her at the imperial -hunting-place of Gödöllö all the world died for her; that splendid -pageant of a world, whose fairest and richest favours had been always -showered on the daughter of the mighty House of Szalras. She withdrew -herself from her friends, from her lovers, from her mistress, and -mourned for him with a grief that time could do little to assuage, -nothing to efface. She was then twenty years of age. - -She was thinking of that death now, four years later, as she stood on -the terrace which overhung the cruel rocks that had killed him. - -His loss was to her a sorrow that could never wholly pass away. - -Her other brothers had been dear to her, but only as brilliant young -soldiers are to a little child who sees them seldom. But Bela had been -her companion, her playmate, her friend, her darling. From Bela she had -been scarce ever parted. Every day and every night, herself, and all -her thoughts and all her time, were given to such administration of her -kingdom as should best be meet in the sight of God and his angels. 'I -am but Bela's almoner, as he was God's steward,' she said. - -She leaned against the parapet, and looked across the green and shining -water, the open letter hanging in her hand. - -The Countess Wanda von Szalras was a beautiful woman; but she had that -supreme distinction which eclipses beauty, that subtle, indescribable -grace and dignity which are never seen apart from some great lineage -with long traditions of culture, courtesy, and courage. She was very -tall, and her movements had a great repose and harmony in them; her -figure, richness and symmetry. Her eyes were of a deep brown hue, like -the velvety brown of a stag's throat; they were large, calm, proud, -and meditative. Her mouth was very beautiful; her hair was light and -golden; her skin exceedingly fair. She was one of the most beautiful -women of her country, and one of the most courted and the most -flattered; and her imperial mistress said now to her, 'Come back to us -and to the world.' - -Standing upon her terrace, in a gown of pale grey velvet that had no -ornament save an old gold girdle with an enamelled missal hung to -it, with two dogs at her side, one the black hunting-hound of St. -Hubert, the other the white sleuth-hound of Russia, she looked like a -châtelaine of the days of Mary of Burgundy or Elizabeth of Thuringia. -It seemed as if the dark cedar boughs behind her should lift and admit -to her presence some lover with her glove against the plume of his hat, -and her ring set in his sword-hilt, who would bow down before her feet -and not dare to touch her hand unbidden. - -But no lover was there. The Countess Wanda dismissed all lovers; she -was wedded to the memory of her brother, and to her own liberty and -power. - -She leaned on the stone parapet of her castle and gazed on the scene -that her eyes had rested on since they had first seen the light, yet of -which she never wearied. The intense depth of colour, that is the glory -of Austria, was deepening with each moment that the sun went nearer -to its setting in the dark blue of thunderclouds that brooded in the -west, over the Venediger and the Zillerthal Alps. Soon the sun would -pass that barrier of stone and ice, and evening would fall here in the -mountains of the Iselthal, whilst it would be still day for the plains -of the Ober Pinzgau and Salzkammergut. But as yet the radiance was -here; and the dark oak woods and birch woods, the purple pine forests, -the blue lake waters, and the glaciers of the Glöckner range, had -all that grandeur which makes a sunset in these highlands at once so -splendid and so peaceful. There is an infinite sense of peace in those -cool, vast, unworn mountain solitudes, with the rain-mists sweeping -like spectral armies over the level lands below, and the sun-rays -slanting heavenward, like the spears of an angelic host. There is such -abundance of rushing water, of deep grass, of endless shade, of forest -trees, of heather and pine, of torrent and tarn; and beyond these are -the great peaks that loom through breaking clouds, and the clear cold -air, in which the vulture wheels and the heron sails; and the shadows -are so deep, and the stillness is so sweet, and the earth seems so -green, and fresh, and silent, and strong. Nowhere else can one rest -so well; nowhere else is there so fit a refuge for all the faiths and -fancies that can find a home no longer in the harsh and hurrying world: -there is room for them all in the Austrian forests, from the Erl-King -to Ariel and Oberon. - -The Countess Wanda leaned against the balustrade of the terrace and -watched that banquet of colour on land and cloud and water; watched -till the sun sank out of sight behind the Venediger snows, and the -domes of the Glöckner, and all the lesser peaks opposite were changing -from the warmth, as of a summer rose, to a pure transparent grey, that -seemed here and there to be pierced as with fire. - -'How often do we thank God for the mountains?' she thought; 'yet we -ought every night that we pray.' - -Then she sighed as her eyes sank from the hill-tops to the lake water, -dark as iron, glittering as steel, now that the radiance of the sun had -passed off it. She remembered Bela. - -How could she ever forget him, with that murderous water shining for -ever at her feet? - -The world called her undiminished tenderness for her dead brother a -morbid grief, but then to the world at large any fidelity seems so -strange and stupid a waste of years: it does not understand that _tout -casse, tout lasse, tout passe_, was not written for strong natures. - -'How could I ever forget him, so long as that water glides there?' she -thought, as her eyes rested on the emerald and sparkling lake. - -'Yet her Majesty is so right! So right and so wise!' said a familiar -voice at her side. - -And there came up to her the loveliest little lady in all the empire; -an old lady, but so delicate, so charming, so pretty, so fragile, that -she seemed lovelier than all the young ones; a very fairy godmother, -covered up in lace and fur, and leaning on a gold-headed cane, and -wearing red shoes with high gilt heels, and smiling with serene blue -eyes, as though she had just stepped down out of a pictured copy of -Cinderella, and could change common pumpkins into gilded chariots, and -mice into horses, at a wish. - -She was the Princess Ottilie of Lilienhöhe, and had once been head of a -religious house. - -'Her Majesty is so right!' she said once more, with emphasis. - -The Countess Wanda turned and smiled, rather with her eyes than with -her lips. - -'It would not become my loyal affection to say she could be wrong. But -still, I know myself, and I know the world very well, and I far prefer -Hohenszalras to it.' - -'Hohenszalras is all very well in the summer and autumn,' said Princess -Ottilie, with a glance of anything but love at the great fantastic -solemn pile; 'but for a woman of your age and your possessions to -pass your days talking to farmers and fishermen, poring over books, -perplexing yourself as to whether it is right for you to accept wealth -that comes from such a source of danger to human life as your salt -mines--it is absurd, it is ludicrous. You are made for something more -than a political economist; you should be in the great world.' - -'I prefer my solitude and my liberty.' - -'Liberty! Who or what could dictate to you in the world? You reigned -there once; you would always reign there.' - -'Social life is a bondage, as an empress's is. It denies one the -greatest luxury of life--solitude.' - -'Certainly, if you love solitude so much, you have your heart's desire -here. It is an Alvernia! It is a Mount Athos! It is a snow-entombed -paraclete, a hermitage, only tempered by horses!' said the Princess, -with a little angry laugh. - -Her grand-niece smiled. - -'By many horses, certainly. Dearest aunt, what would you have? -Austrians are all centaurs and amazons. I am only like my Kaiserin in -that passion.' - -The Princess sighed. - -She had never been able to comprehend the forest life, the daring, the -intrepidity, the open-air pastimes, and the delight in danger which -characterised all the race of Szalras. Daughter of a North German -princeling, and with some French blood in her veins also, reared under -the formal etiquette of her hereditary court, and at an early age -canoness of one of those great semi-religious orders which are only -open to the offspring of royal or of most noble lines, her whole life -had been one moulded to form and conventional habit, and only her own -sweetness and sprightliness of temper had saved her from the narrowness -of judgment and the chilliness of formality which such a life begets. -The order of which until late years she had been superior was one for -magnificence and wealth unsurpassed in Europe; but, semi-secular in its -privileges, it had left her much liberty, and never wholly divorced -her from the world, which in an innocent way she had always loved -and enjoyed. After Count Victor's death she had resigned her office -on plea of age and delicacy of health, and had come to take up her -residence at Hohenszalras with her dead niece's children. She had done -so because she had believed it to be her duty, and her attachment to -Wanda and Bela had always been very great; but she had never learned to -love the solitude of the Hohe Tauern, or ceased to regard Hohenszalras -as a place of martyrdom. After the minute divisions of every hour -and observances of every smallest ceremonial that she had been used -to at her father's own little court of Lilienslüst, and in her own -religious house, where every member of the order was a daughter of -some one of the highest families of Germany or of Austria, the life at -Hohenszalras, with its outdoor pastimes, its feudal habits, its vast -liberties for man and beast, and its long frozen winters, when not a -soul could come near it from over the passes, seemed very terrible to -her. She could never understand her niece's passionate attachment to -it, and she in real truth only breathed entirely at ease in those few -weeks of the year which to please her niece she consented to pass away -from the Hohe Tauern. - -'Surely you will go to Ischl or go to Gödöllö this autumn, since Her -Majesty wishes it?' she said now, with an approving glance at the -imperial letter. - -'Her Majesty is so kind as always to wish it,' answered the Countess -Wanda. 'Let us leave time to show what it holds for us. This is -scarcely summer. Yesterday was the fifteenth of May.' - -'It is horribly cold,' said the Princess, drawing her silver-grey fur -about her. 'It is always horribly cold here, even in midsummer. And -when it does not snow it rains; you cannot deny _that._' - -'Come, come! we have seen the sun all day to-day. I hope we shall see -it many days, for they have begun planting-out, you see--the garden -will soon be gorgeous.' - -'When the mist allows it to be seen, it will be, I dare say,' said -Princess Ottilie, somewhat pettishly. 'It is tolerable here in the -summer, though never agreeable; but the Empress is so right, it is -absurd to shut yourself longer up in this gloomy place; you are bound -to return to the world. You owe it to your position to be seen in it -once more.' - -'The world does not want me, my dear aunt; nor do I want the world.' - -'That is sheer perversity----' - -'How am I perverse? I know the world very well, and I know that no one -is necessary to it, unless it be Herr von Bismarck.' - -'I do not see what Herr von Bismarck has to do with your going back to -your natural manner of life,' said the Princess, severely, who abhorred -any sort of levity in regard to the mighty minister who had destroyed -the Lilienhöhe princes one fine morning, as indifferently as a boy -plucks down a cranberry bough. 'In summer, or even autumn, Hohenszalras -is endurable, but in winter it is--hyperborean--even you must grant -that. One might as well be jammed in a ship, amidst icebergs, in the -midst of a frozen sea.' - -'And you were born on the Elbe, oh fie! But indeed, my dearest aunt, I -like the frozen sea. The white months have no terrors for me. What you -call, and what calls itself, the great world is far more narrow than -the Iselthal. Here one's fancies, at least, can fly high as the eagles -do; in the world who can rise out of the hot-house air of the salons, -and see beyond the doings of one's friends and foes?' - -'Surely one's own friends and foes--people like oneself, in a -word--must be as interesting as Hans, and Peter, and Katte, and -Grethel, with their crampons or their milkpails,' said the Princess, -with impatience. 'Besides, surely in the world there are political -movement, influence, interests.' - -'Oh, intrigue?--as useful as Mme. de Laballe's or Mme. de -Longueville's? No! I do not believe there is even that in our time, -when even diplomacy itself is fast becoming a mere automatic factor -in a world that is governed by newspapers, and which has changed the -tyranny of wits for the tyranny of crowds. The time is gone by when a -"Coterie of Countesses" could change ministries, if they ever did do so -outside the novels of Disraeli. Drawing-room cabals may still do some -mischief perhaps, but they can do no good. Sometimes, indeed, I think -that what is called Government everywhere is nothing but a gigantic -mischief-making and place-seeking. The State is everywhere too like a -mother who sweeps her doorstep diligently, and scolds the neighbours, -while her child scalds itself to death unseen within.' - -'In the world,' interrupted the Princess oppositely, 'you might -persuade them that the sweeping of doorsteps is not sufficient----' - -'I prefer to keep my own house in order. It is quite enough -occupation,' said the Countess Wanda, with a smile. 'Dear aunt, here -amongst my own folks I can do some real good, I have some tangible -influence, I can feel that my life is not altogether spent in vain. -Why should I exchange these simple and solid satisfactions, for the -frivolities and the inanities of a life of pleasure which would not -even please me?' - -'You are very hard to please, I know,' retorted the Princess. 'But say -what you will, it becomes ridiculous for a person of your age, your -great position, and your personal beauty, to immure yourself eternally -in what is virtually no better than confinement to a fortress!' - -'A court is more of a prison to me,' said Wanda von Szalras. 'I know -both lives, and I prefer this life. As for my being very hard to -please, I think I was very gay and mirthful before Bela's death. Since -then all the earth has grown grey for me.' - -'Forgive me, my beloved!' said Princess Ottilie, with quick contrition, -whilst moisture sprang into her limpid and still luminous blue eyes. - -Wanda von Szalras took the old abbess's hand in her own, and kissed it. - -'I understand all you wish for me, dear aunt. Believe me, I envy people -when I hear them laughing light-heartedly amongst each other. I think -I shall never laugh _so_ again.' - -'If you would only marry----' said the Princess, with some hesitation. - -'You think marriage amusing?' she said, with a certain contempt. 'If -you do, it is only because you escaped it.' - -'Amusing!' said the Princess, a little scandalised. 'I could speak of -no Sacrament of our Holy Church as "amusing." You rarely display such -levity of language. I confess I do not comprehend you. Marriage would -give you interests in life which you seem to lack sadly now. It would -restore you to the world. It would be a natural step to take with such -vast possessions as yours.' - -'It is not likely I shall ever take it,' said Wanda von Szalras, -drawing the soft fine ear of Donau through her fingers. - -'I know it is not likely. I am very sorry that it is not likely. Yet -what nobler creature does God's earth contain than your cousin Egon? - -'Egon? No: he is a good and brave and loyal gentleman, none better; but -I shall no more marry him than Donau here will wed a forest doe.' - -'Yet he has loved you for ten years. But if not he there are so -many others, men of high enough place to be above all suspicion of -mercenary motive. No woman has been more adored than you, Wanda. Look -at Hugo Landrassy.' - -'Oh, pray spare me their enumeration. It is like the Catalogue of -Ships!' said the Countess Wanda, with some coldness and some impatience -on her face. - -At that moment an old man, who was major-domo of Hohenszalras, -approached and begged with deference to know whether his ladies would -be pleased to dine. - -The Princess signified her readiness with alacrity; Wanda von Szalras -signed assent with less willingness. - -'What a disagreeable obligation dining is,' she said, as she turned -reluctantly from the evening scene, with the lake sleeping in dusk and -shadow, while the snow summits still shone like silver and glowed with -rose. - -'It is very wicked to think so,' said her great-aunt. 'When a merciful -Creator has appointed our appetites for our consolation and support it -is only an ingrate who is not thankful lawfully to indulge them.' - -'That view of them never occurred to me,' said the châtelaine of -Hohenszalras. 'I think you must have stolen it, aunt, from some abbé -galant or some chanoinesse as lovely as yourself in the last century. -Alas! if not to care to eat be ungrateful I am a sad ingrate. Donau -and Neva are more ready subscribers to your creed.' - -Donau and Neva were already racing towards the castle, and Wanda von -Szalras, with one backward lingering glance to the sunset, which -already was fading, followed them with slow steps to the grand house of -which she was mistress. - -In the north alone the sky was overcast and of a tawny colour, where -the Pinzgau lay, with the green Salzach water rushing through its -wooded gorges, and its tracks of sand and stone desolate as any desert. - -That slender space of angry yellow to the north boded ill for the -night. Bitter storms rolled in west from the Bœhmerwald, or north -from the Salzkammergut, many a time in the summer weather, changing it -to winter as they passed, tugging at the roof-ropes of the châlets, -driving the sheep into their sennerin's huts, covering with mist and -rain the mountain sides, and echoing in thunder from the peaks of the -Untersburg to the snows of the Ortler Spitze. It was such a sudden -storm which had taken Bela's life. - -'I think we shall have wild weather,' said the Princess, drawing her -furs around her, as she walked down the broad length of the stone -terrace. - -'I think so too,' said Wanda. 'It is coming very soon; and I fear I did -a cruel thing this morning.' - -'What was that?' - -'I sent a stranger to find his way over our hills to Matrey, as best -he might. He will hardly have reached it by now, and if a storm should -come----' - -'A stranger?' said Princess Ottilie, whose curiosity was always alive, -and had also lately no food for its hunger. - -'Only a poacher; but he was a gentleman, which made his crime the -worse.' - -'A gentleman, and you sent him over the hills without a guide? It seems -unlike the hospitality of Hohenszalras.' - -'Why he would have shot a _kuttengeier!_' - -'A _kuttengeier_ is a horrible beast,' said the Princess, with a -shudder; 'and a stranger, just for an hour or so, would be welcome.' - -'Even if his name were not in the Hof-Kalender?' asked her niece, -smiling. - -'If he had been a pedlar, or a clockmaker, you would have sent him in -to rest. For a gentlewoman, Wanda, and so proud a one as you are, you -become curiously cruel to your own class.' - -'I am always cruel to poachers. And to shoot a vulture in the month of -May!' - - - - -CHAPTER II. - - -The dining-hall was a vast chamber, panelled and ceiled with oak. In -the centre of the panels were emblazoned shields bearing the arms of -the Szalras, and of the families with which they had intermarried; the -long lancet windows had been painted by no less a hand than that of -Jacob of Ulm; the knights' stalls which ran round the hall were the -elaborate carving of Georges Syrlin; and old gorgeous banners dropped -down above them, heavy with broideries and bullion. - -There were upper servants in black clothes with knee breeches, and a -dozen lacqueys in crimson and gold liveries, ranged about the table. -In many ways there were a carelessness and ease in the household which -always seemed lamentable to the Princess Ottilie, but in matters of -etiquette the great household was ruled like a small court; and when -sovereigns became guests there little in the order of the day needed -change at Hohenszalras. - -The castle was half fortress, half palace; a noble and solemn place, -which had seen many centuries of warfare, of splendour, and of -alternate war and joy. Strangers used to Paris gilding, to Italian -sunlight, to English country-houses, found it too severe, too august, -too dark, and too stern in its majesty, and were awed by it. But she -who had loved it and played in it in infancy changed nothing there, -but cherished it as it had come to her; and it was in all much the -same as it had been in the days of Henry the Lion, from its Gothic -Silber-kapelle, that was like an ivory and jewelled casket set in dusky -silver, to its immense Rittersäal, with a hundred knights in full -armour standing down it, as the bronze figures stand round Maximilian's -empty tomb in Tirol. There are many such noble places hidden away in -the deep forests and the mountain glens of Maximilian's empire. - -In this hall there were some fifteen persons standing. They were the -priest, the doctor, the high steward, the almoner, some dames de -compagnie, and some poor ladies, widows or spinsters, who subsisted -on the charities of Hohenszalras. The two noble ladies bowed to them -all and said a few kind words; then passed on and seated themselves -at their own table, whilst these other persons took their seats -noiselessly at a longer table, behind a low screen of carved oak. - -The lords of Hohenszalras had always thus adhered to the old feudal -habit of dining in public, and in royal fashion, thus. - -The Countess Wanda and her aunt spoke little; the one was thinking -of many other things than of the food brought to her, the other was -enjoying to the uttermost each _bouchée_, each _relevée_, each morsel -of quail, each mouthful of wine-stewed trout, each succulent truffle, -and each rich drop of crown Tokaï. - -The repast was long, and to one of them extremely tedious; but these -formal and prolonged ceremonials had been the habit of her house, and -Wanda von Szalras carefully observed all hereditary usage and custom. -When her aunt had eaten her last fruit, and she herself had broken -her last biscuit between the dogs, they rose, one glad that the most -tiresome, and the other regretful that the most pleasant, hour of the -uneventful day was over. - -With a bow of farewell to the standing household, they went by mutual -consent their divers ways; the Princess to her favourite blue room -and her after-dinner doze, Wanda to her own study, the chamber most -essentially her own, where all were hers. - -The softness and radiance of the after-glow had given place to night -and rain; the mists and the clouds had rolled up from the Zillerthal -Alps, and the water was pouring from the skies. - -Lamps, wax candles, flambeaux, burning in sconces or upheld by statues -or swinging from chains, were illumining the darkness of the great -castle, but in her own study only one little light was shining, for -she, a daughter of the mystical mountains and forests, loved the -shadows of the night. - -She seated herself here by the unshuttered casement. The full moon was -rising above the Glöckner range, and the rain-clouds as yet did not -obscure it, though a film of falling water veiled all the westward -shore of the lake, and all the snows on the peaks and crests of the -Venediger. She leaned her elbows on the cushioned seat, and looked out -into the night. - -'Bela, my Bela! are you content with me?' she murmured. To her Bela -was as living as though he were present by her side; she lived in -the constant belief of his companionship and his sight. Death was a -cruel--ah, how cruel!--wall built up between him and her, forbidding -them the touch of each other's hands, denying them the smile of each -other's eyes; but none the less to her was he there, unseen, but ever -near, hidden behind that inexorable, invisible barrier which one day -would fall and let her pass and join him. - -She sat idle in the embrasure of the oriel window, whilst the one lamp -burned behind her. This, her favourite room, had scarcely been changed -since Maria Theresa, on a visit there, had made it her bower-room. -The window-panes had been painted by Selier of Landshut in 1440; -the stove was one of Hirschvögel's; the wood-carvings had been done -by Schuferstein; there was silver _repoussé_ work of Kellerthaler, -tapestries of Marc de Comans, enamels of Elbertus of Köln, of Jean of -Limoges, of Leonard Limousin, of Penicaudius; embroidered stuffs of -Isabeau Maire, damascened armour once worn by Henry the Lion, a painted -spinet that had belonged to Isabella of Bavaria, and an ivory Book of -Hours, once used by Carolus Magnus; and all these things, like the many -other treasures of the castle, had been there for centuries; gifts -from royal guests, spoils of foreign conquest, memorials of splendid -embassies or offices of state held by the lords of Szalras, or -marriage presents at magnificent nuptials in the old magnificent ages. - -In this room she, their sole living representative, was never disturbed -on any pretext. In the adjacent library (a great cedar-lined room, -holding half a million volumes, with many missals and early classics, -and many an _editio princeps_ of the Renaissance), she held all her -audiences, heard all petitions or complaints, audited her accounts, -conversed with her tenants or her stewards, her lawyers or her -peasants, and laboured earnestly to use to the best of her intelligence -the power bequeathed to her. - -'I am but God's and Bela's steward, as my steward is mine,' she said -always to herself, and never avoided any duty or labour entailed on -her, never allowed weariness or self-indulgence to enervate her. _Qui -facit per alium, facit per se_ had been early taught to her, and she -never forgot it. She never did anything vicariously which concerned -those dependent upon her. And she was an absolute sovereign in this her -kingdom of glaciers and forests; her frozen sea as she had called it. -She never avoided a duty merely because it was troublesome, and she -never gave her signature without knowing why and wherefore. It is easy -to be generous; to be just is more difficult and burdensome. Generous -by temper, she strove earnestly to be always just as well, and her life -was not without those fatigues which a very great fortune brings with -it to anyone who regards it as a sacred trust. - -She had wide possessions and almost incalculable wealth. She had salt -mines in Galicia, she had Vosläuer vineyards in the Salzkammergut, she -had vast plains of wheat, and leagues on leagues of green lands, where -broods of horses bred and reared away in the steppes of Hungary. She -had a palace in the Herrengasse at Vienna, another in the Residenzplatz -of Salzburg; she had forests and farms in the Innthal and the -Zillerthal; she had a beautiful little schloss on the green Ebensee, -which had been the dower-house of the Countesses of Szalras, and she -had pine-woods, quarries, vineyards, and even a whole riverain town -on the Danube, with a right to take toll on the ferry there, which -had been given to her forefathers as far back as the days of Mathias -Carvin, a right that she herself had let drop into desuetude. 'I do -not want the poor folks' copper kreutzer,' she said to her lawyers -when they remonstrated. What did please her was the fact coupled with -this right that even the Kaiser could not have entered her little town -without his marshal thrice knocking at the gates, and receiving from -the warder the permission to pass, in the words, 'The Counts of Idrac -bid you come in peace.' - -All these things and places made a vast source of revenue, and the -property, whose title-deeds and archives lay in many a chest and coffer -in the old city of Salzburg, was one of the largest in Europe. It would -have given large portions and dowries to a score of sons and daughters -and been none the worse. And it was all accumulating on the single head -of one young and lonely woman! She was the last of her race; there were -distant collateral branches, but none of them near enough to have any -title to Hohenszalras. She could bequeath it where she would, and she -had already willed it to her Kaiserin, in a document shut up in an iron -chest in the city of Salzburg. She thought the Crown would be a surer -and juster guardian of her place and people than any one person, whose -caprices she could not foretell, whose extravagance or whose injustice -she could not foresee. Sometimes, even to the spiritual mind of the -Princess Ottilie, the persistent refusal of her niece to think of any -marriage seemed almost a crime against mankind. - -What did the Crown want with it? - -The Princess was a woman of absolutely; loyal sentiment towards all -ancient sovereignties. She believed in Divine right, and was as strong -a royalist as it is possible for anyone to be whose fathers have been -devoured like an anchovy by M. de Bismarck, and who has the sympathy -of fellow feeling with Frohsdorf and Gmünden. But even her devotion to -the rights of monarchs failed to induce her to see why the Habsburg -should inherit Hohenszalras. The Crown is a noble heir, but it is one -which leaves the heart cold. Who would ever care for her people, and -her forests, and her animals as she had done? Even from her beloved -Kaiserin she could not hope for that. 'If I had married?' she thought, -the words of the Princess Ottilie coming back upon her memory. - -Perhaps, for the sake of her people and her lands, it might have been -better. - -But there are women to whom the thought of physical surrender of -themselves is fraught with repugnance and disgust; a sentiment so -strong that only a great passion vanquishes it. She was one of these -women, and passion she had never felt. - -'Even for Hohenszalras I could not,' she thought, as she leaned on -the embrasure cushions, and watched the moon, gradually covered with -the heavy blue-black clouds. The Crown should be her heir and reign -here after her, when she should be laid by the side of Bela in that -beautiful dusky chapel beneath the shrines of ivory and silver, where -all the dead of the House of Szalras slept. But it was an heir which -left her heart cold. - -She rose abruptly, left the embrasure, and began to examine the letters -of the day and put down heads of replies to them, which her secretary -could amplify on the morrow. - -One letter her secretary could not answer for her; it was a letter -which gave her pain, and which she read with an impatient sigh. It -urged her return to the world as the letter of her Empress had done, -and it urged with timidity, yet with passion, a love that had been -loyal to her from her childhood. It was signed 'Egon Vàsàrhely.' - -'It is the old story,' she thought. 'Poor Egon! If only one could have -loved him, how it would have simplified everything; and I do love him, -as I once loved Gela and Victor.' - -But that was not the love which Egon Vàsàrhely pleaded for with the -tenderness of one who had been to her as a brother from her babyhood, -and the frankness of a man who knew his own rank so high and his own -fortunes so great, that no mercenary motive could be attributed to -him even when he sought the mistress of Hohenszalras. It was the old -story: she had heard it many times from him and from others in those -brilliant winters in Vienna which had preceded Bela's death. And it had -always failed to touch her. Women who have never loved are harsh to -love from ignorance. - -At that moment a louder crash of thunder reverberated from hill to -hill, and the Glöckner domes seemed to shout to the crests of the -Venediger. - -'I hope that stranger is housed and safe,' she thought, her mind -reverting to the poacher of whom she had spoken on the terrace at -sunset. His face came before her memory: a beautiful face, oriental -in feature, northern in complexion, fair and cold, with blue eyes of -singular brilliancy. - -The forests of Hohenszalras are in themselves a principality. Under -enormous trees, innumerable brooks and little torrents dash downwards -to lose themselves in the green twilight of deep gorges; broad, dark, -still lakes lie like cups of jade in the bosom of the woods; up above, -where the Alpine firs and the pinus cembra shelter him, the bear lives -and the wolf too; and higher yet, where the glacier lies upon the -mountain side, the merry steinbock leaps from peak to peak, and the -white-throat vulture and the golden eagle nest. The oak, the larch, -the beech, the lime, cover the lower hills, higher grow the pines and -firs, the lovely drooping Siberian pine foremost amidst them. In the -lower wood grassy roads cross and thread the leafy twilight. A stranger -had been traversing these woods that morning, where he had no right -or reason to be. Forest-law was sincerely observed and meted out at -Hohenszalras, but of that he was ignorant or careless. - -Before him, in the clear air, a large, dark object rose and spread -huge pinions to the wind and soared aloft. The trespasser lifted his -rifle to his shoulder, and in another moment would have fired. But an -alpenstock struck the barrel up into the air, and the shot went off -harmless towards the clouds. The great bird, startled by the report, -flew rapidly to the westward; the Countess Wanda said quietly to the -poacher in her forest, 'You cannot carry arms here,' - -He looked at her angrily, and in surprise. - -'You have lost me the only eagle I have seen for years,' he said -bitterly, with a flush of discomfiture and powerless rage on his fair -face. - -She smiled a little. - -'That bird was not an eagle, sir; it was a white-throated vulture, a -_kuttengeier._ But had it been an eagle--or a sparrow--you could not -have killed it on my lands.' - -Pale still with anger, he uncovered his head. - -'I have not the honour to know in whose presence I stand,' he muttered -sullenly. 'But I have Imperial permission to shoot wherever I choose.' - -'His Majesty has no more loyal subject than myself,' she answered him. -'But his dominion does not extend over my forests. You are on the -ground of Hohenszalras, and your offence----' - -'I know nothing of Hohenszalras!' he interrupted, with impatience. - -She blew a whistle, and her head forester with three jägers sprang up -as if out of the earth, some great wolf-hounds, grinning with their -fangs, waiting but a word to spring. In one second the rangers had -thrown themselves on the too audacious trespasser, had pinioned him, -and had taken his rifle. - -Confounded, disarmed, humiliated, and stunned by the suddenness of the -attack, he stood mute and very pale. - -'You know Hohenszalras now!' said the mistress of it, with a smile, -as she watched his seizure seated on a moss-grown boulder of granite, -black Donau and white Neva by her side. He was pale with impotent fury, -conscious of an indefensible and absurd position. The jäger looked at -their mistress; they had slipped a cord over his wrists, and tied them -behind his back; they looked to her for a sign of assent to break his -rifle. She stood silent, amused with her victory and his chastisement; -a little derision shining in her lustrous eyes. - -'You know Hohenszalras now!' she said once more. 'Men have been shot -dead for what you were doing. If you be, indeed, a friend of my -Emperor's, of course you are welcome here; but----' - -'What right have you to offer me this indignity,' muttered the -offender, his fair features changing from white to red, and red to -white, in his humiliation and discomfiture. - -'Right!' echoed the mistress of the forests. 'I have the right to do -anything I please with you! You seem to me to understand but little of -forest laws.' - -'Madame, were you not a woman, you would have had bloodshed.' - -'Oh, very likely. That sometimes happens, although seldom, as all the -Hohe Tauern knows how strictly these forests are preserved. My men are -looking to me for permission to break your rifle. That is the law, sir.' - -'Since 'Forty-eight,' said the trespasser, with what seemed to her -marvellous insolence, 'all the old forest laws are null and void. It -is scarcely allowable to talk of trespass.' - -A look of deep anger passed over her face. 'The follies of 'Forty-eight -have nothing to do with Hohenszalras,' she said, very coldly. 'We hold -under charters of our own, by grants and rights which even Rudolf of -Habsburg never dared meddle with. I am not called on to explain this to -you, but you appear to labour under such strange delusions that it is -as well to dispel them.' - -He stood silent, his eyes cast downward. His humiliation seemed to -him enormously disproportioned to his offending. The hounds menaced -him with deep growls and grinning fangs; the jägers held his gun; his -wrists were tied behind him. 'Are you indeed a friend of the Kaiser?' -she repeated to him. - -'I am no friend of his,' he answered bitterly and sullenly. 'I met -him a while ago zad-hunting on the Thorstein. His signature is in my -pocket; bid your jäger take it out.' - -'I will not doubt your word,' she said to him. 'You look a gentleman. -If you will give me your promise to shoot no more on these lands I will -let them set you free and render you up your rifle.' - -'You have the law with you,' said the trespasser moodily. 'Since I can -do no less--I promise.' - -'You are ungracious, sir,' said Wanda, with a touch of severity and -irritation. 'That is neither wise nor grateful, since you are nothing -more or better than a poacher on my lands. Nevertheless, I will trust -you.' - -Then she gave a sign to the jägers and a touch to the hounds: the -latter rose and ceased their growling; the former instantly, though -very sorrowfully, untied the cord off the wrists of their prisoner, and -gave him back his unloaded rifle. - -'Follow that path into the ravine; cross that; ascend the opposite -hills, and you will find the high road. I advise you to take it, sir. -Good-day to you.' - -She pointed out the forest path which wound downward under the arolla -pines. He hesitated a moment, then bowed very low with much grace, -turned his back on her and her foresters and her dogs, and began slowly -to descend the moss-grown slope. - -He hated her for the indignity she had brought upon him, and the -ridicule to which she forced him to submit; yet the beauty of her had -startled and dazzled him. He had thought of the great Queen of the -Nibelungen-Lied, whose armour lies in the museum of Vienna. - -'Alas! why have you let him go, my Countess!' murmured Otto, the head -forester. - -'The Kaiser had made him sacred,' she answered, with a smile; and -then she called Donau and Neva, who were roaming, and went on her way -through her forest. - -'What strange and cruel creatures we are!' she thought. 'The vulture -would have dropped into the ravine. He would never have found it. The -audacity, too, to fire on a _kuttengeier_; if it had been any lesser -bird one might have pardoned it.' - -For the eagle, the gypæte, the white-throated pygargue, the buzzard, -and all the family of falcons were held sacred at Hohenszalras, and -lived in their mountain haunts rarely troubled. It was an old law there -that the great winged monarchs should never be chased, except by the -Kaiser himself when he came there. So that the crime of the stranger -had been more than trespass and almost treason! Her heart was hard to -him, and she felt that she had been too lenient. Who could tell but -that that rifle would bring down some free lord of the air? - -She listened with the keen ear of one used to the solitude of the hills -and woods; she thought he would shoot something out of bravado. But all -was silent in that green defile beneath whose boughs the stranger was -wending on his way. She listened long, but she heard no shots, although -in those still heights the slightest noise echoed from a hundred walls -of rock and ice. She walked onward through the deep shadow of the thick -growing beeches; she had her alpenstock in her right hand, her little -silver horn hung at her belt, and beside it was a pair of small ivory -pistols, pretty as toys, but deadly as revolvers could be. She stooped -here and there to gather some lilies of the valley, which were common -enough in these damp grassy glades. - -'Where could that stranger have come from, Otto?' she asked of her -jäger. - -'He must have come over the Hündspitz, my Countess,' said Otto. 'Any -other way he would have been stopped by our men and lightened of his -rifle.' - -'The Hündspitz!' she echoed, in wonder, for the mountain so called was -a wild inaccessible place, divided by a parapet of ice all the year -round from the range of the Gross Glöckner. - -'That must he,' said the huntsman,'and for sure if an honest man had -tried to come that way he would have been hurled headlong down the -ice-wall----' - -'He is the Kaiser's _protégé_, Otto,' said his mistress, with a smile, -but the old jäger muttered that they had only his own word for that. -It had pierced Otto's soul to let the poacher's rifle go. - -She thought of all this with some compunction now, as she sat in her -own warm safe chamber and heard the thunder, the wind, the raising of -the storm which had now fairly broken in full fury. She felt uneasy for -the erring stranger. The roads over the passes were still perilous from -avalanches and half melted snow in the crevasses; the time of year was -more dangerous than midwinter. - -'I ought to have given him a guide,' she thought, and went out and -joined the Princess Ottilie, who had awakened from her after-dinner -repose under the loud roll of the thunder and the constantly recurring -flashes of lightning. - -'I am troubled for that traveller whom I saw in the woods to-day,' she -said to her aunt. 'I trust he is safe housed.' - -'If he had been a pastry-cook from the Engadine, or a seditious -heretical _colporteur_ from Geneva, you would have sent him into the -kitchens to feast,' said the Princess, contentiously. - -'I hope he is safe housed,' repeated Wanda. 'It is several hours ago; -he may very well have reached the posthouse.' - -'You have the satisfaction of thinking the _kuttengeier_ is safe, -sitting on some rock tearing a fish to pieces,' said the Princess, who -was irritable because she was awakened before her time. 'Will you have -some coffee or some tea? You look disturbed, my dear; after all, you -say the man was a poacher.' - -'Yes. But I ought to have seen him safe off my ground. There are a -hundred kinds of death on the hills for anyone who does not know them -well. Let us look at the weather from the hall; one can see better from -there.' - -From the Rittersäal, whose windows looked straight down the seven -miles of the lake water, she watched the tempest. All the mountains -were sending back echoes of thunder, which sounded like salvoes of -artillery. There was little to be seen for the dense rain mist; the -beacon of the Holy Isle glimmered redly through the darkness. In the -upper air snow was falling; the great white peaks and pinnacles ever -and again flashed strangely into view as the lightning illumined them; -the Glöckner-wanda towered above all others a moment in the glare, and -seemed like ice and fire mingled. - -'They are like the great white thrones of the Apocalypse,' she thought. - -Beneath, the lake boiled and seethed in blackness like a witches' -cauldron. - -A storm was always terrible to her, from the memory of Bela. - -In the lull of a second in the tempest of sound it seemed to her as if -she heard some other cry than that of the wind. - -'Open one of these windows and listen,' she said to Hubert, her -major-domo. 'I fancy I hear a shout--a scream. I am not certain, but -listen well.' - -'There is some sound,' said Hubert, after a moment of attention. 'It -comes from the lake. But no boat could live long in that water, my -Countess.' - -'No!' she said, with a quick sigh, remembering how her brother had -died. 'But we must do what we can. It may be one of the lake fishermen -caught in the storm before he could make for home. Ring the alarm-bell, -and go out, all of you, to the water stairs. I will come, too.' - -In a few moments the deep bell that hung in the chime tower, and which -was never sounded except for death or danger, added its sonorous brazen -voice to the clang and clamour of the storm. All the household paused, -and at the summons, coming from north, south, east, and west of the -great pile of buildings, grooms, gardeners, huntsmen, pages, scullions, -underlings, all answered to the metal tongue, which told them of some -peril at Hohenszalras. - -With a hooded cloak thrown over her, she went out into the driving -rain, down the terrace to the head of what were called the water -stairs; a flight of granite steps leading to the little quay upon the -eastward shore of the Szalrassee, where were moored in fair weather the -pleasure boats, the fishing punts, and the canoes which belonged to the -castle: craft all now safe in the boat-house. - -'Make no confusion,' she said to them. 'There is no danger in the -castle. There is some boat, or some swimmer, on the lake. Light the -terrace beacon and we shall see.' - -She was very pale. There was no storm on those waters that did not -bring back to her, as poignant as the first fresh hours of its grief, -the death of Bela. - -The huge beacon of iron, a cage set on high and filled with tow and tar -and all inflammable things, was set on fire, and soon threw a scarlet -glare over the scene. - -The shouts had ceased. - -'They may be drowned,' she said, with her lips pressed tightly -together. 'I hear nothing now. Have you the rope and the lifeboat -ready? We must wait for more light.' - -At that moment the whole of the tar caught, and the beacon blazed at -its fiercest in its iron cage, as it had used to blaze in the ages gone -by as a war signal, when the Prelates of Salzburg and Birchtesgaden -were marching across the marshes of Pinzgau in quarrel or feud with the -lords of the strongest fortress in the Hohe Tauern. - -In the struggling light which met the blue glance of the lightning they -could see the angry waters of the lake as far as the Holy Isle, and -near to land, only his head above the water, was a man drowning, as the -pilgrims had drowned. - -'For the love of God--the rope!' she cried, and almost before the words -had escaped from her her men had thrown a lifebuoy to the exhausted -swimmer, and pushed one of the boats into the seething darkness of the -lake. But the swimmer had strength enough to catch hold of the buoy -as it was hurled to him by the _fischermeister's_ unerring hand, and -he clung to it and kept his grasp on it, despite the raging of the -wind and waters, until the boat reached him. He was fifty yards off -the shore, and he was pulled into the little vessel, which was tossed -to and fro upon the black waters like a shell; the _fohn_ was blowing -fiercely all the time, and flung the men headlong on the boat's bottom -twice ere they could seize the swimmer, who helped himself, for, though -mute; and almost breathless, he was not insensible, and had not lost -all his strength. If he had not been so near the land he and the boat's -crew would all have sunk, and dead bodies would once more have been -washed on the shore of the Szalrassee with the dawn of another day. - -Drenched, choked with water, and thrown from side to side as the wind -played with them as a child with its ball, the men ran their boat at -last against the stairs, and landed with their prize. - -Dripping from head to foot, and drawing deep breaths of exhaustion, -the rescued man stood on the terrace steps bareheaded and in his -shirt-sleeves, his brown velvet breeches pulled up to his knees, his -fair hair lifted by the wind, and soaked with wet. - -She recognised the trespasser of the forest. - -'Madame, behold me in your power again!' he said, with a little smile, -though he breathed with labour, and his voice was breathless and low. - -'You are welcome, sir. Any stranger or friend would be welcome in such -a night,' she said, with the red glow of the beacon light shed upon -her. 'Pray do not waste breath or time in courtesies. Come up the steps -and hurry to the house. You must be faint and bruised.' - -'No, no,' said the swimmer; but as he spoke his eyes closed, he -staggered a little; a deadly faintness and cold had seized him, and -cramp came on all his limbs. - -The men caught him, and carried him up the stairs; he strove to -struggle and protest, but Otto the forester stooped over him. - -'Keep you still,' he muttered. 'You have the Countess's orders. -Trespass has cost you dear, my master.' - -'I do not think he is greatly hurt,' said the mistress of Szaravola to -her house physician. 'But go you to him, doctor, and see that he is -warmly housed and has hot drinks. Put him in the Strangers' Gallery, -and pray take care my aunt is not alarmed.' - -The Princess Ottilie at that moment was alternately eating a _nougat_ -out of her sweetmeat box and telling the beads of her rosary. The sound -of the wind and the noise of the storm could not reach her in her -favourite blue-room, all _capitonnée_ with turquoise silks as it was; -the only chamber in all Szaravola that was entirely modern and French. - -'I do hope Wanda is running no risk,' she thought, from time to time. -'It would be quite like her to row down the lake.' - -But she sat still in her lamp light, and told her beads. - -A few moments later her niece entered. Her waterproof mantle had kept -her white gown from the rain and spray. - -There was a little moisture on her hair, that was all. She did not -look as if she had stirred further from her drawing-room than the -Princess had done. - -Now that the stranger was safe and sound he had ceased to have any -interest for her; he was nothing more than any flotsam of the lake; -only one other to sleep beneath the roofs of Hohenszalras, where half a -hundred slept already. - -The castle, in the wild winters that shut out the Hohe Tauern from the -world, was oftentimes a hospice for travellers, though usually those -travellers were only pedlars, colporteurs, mule-drivers, clock-makers -of the Zillerthal or carpet weavers of the Defreggerthal, too late in -the year to pursue their customary passage over the passes in safety. -To such the great beacon of the Holy Isle and the huge servants' hall -of Szaravola were well known. - -She sat down to her embroidery frame without speaking; she was working -some mountain flowers in silks on velvet, for a friend in Paris' The -flowers stood in a glass on a table. - -'It is unkind of you to go out in that mad way on such a night as -this, and return looking so unlike having had an adventure!' said the -Princess, a little pettishly. - -'There has been no adventure,' said Wanda von Szalras, with a smile. -'But there is what may do as well--a handsome stranger who' has been -saved from drowning.' - -Even as she spoke her face changed, her mouth quivered; she crossed -herself, and murmured, too low for the other to hear: - -'Bela, my beloved, think not that I forget!' - -The Princess Ottilie sat up erect in her chair, and her blue eyes -brightened like a girl of sixteen. - -'Then there _is_ an adventure! Tell it me quick! My dear, silence is -very stately and very becoming to you; but sometimes--excuse me--you do -push it to annoying extremes.' - -'I was afraid of agitation for you,' said the Countess Wanda; and then -she told the Princess what had occurred that night. - -'And I never knew that a poor soul was in peril!' cried the Princess, -conscious-stricken. 'And is that the last you have seen of him? Have -you never asked----?' - -'Hubert says he is only bruised; they have taken him to the Strangers' -Gallery. Here is Herr Greswold--he will tell us more.' - -The person who entered was the physician of Hohenszalras. He was -a little old man of great talent, with a clever, humorous, mild -countenance; he had, coupled with a love for rural life, a passion -for botany and natural history, which made his immurement in the -Iselthal welcome to him, and the many fancied ailments of the Princess -endurable. He bowed very low alternately to both ladies, and refused -with a protest the chair to which the Countess Wanda motioned him. He -said that the stranger was not in the least seriously injured; he had -been seized with cramp and chills, but he had administered a cordial, -and these were passing. The gentleman seemed indisposed to speak, -shivered a good deal, and was inclined to sleep. - -'He is a gentleman, think you? asked the Princess. - -The Herr Professor said that to him it appeared so. - -'And of what rank?' - -The physician thought it was impossible to say. - -'It is always possible,' said the Princess, a little impatiently. 'Is -his linen fine? Is his skin smooth? Are his hands white and slender? -Are his wrists and ankles small?' - -Herr Greswold said that he was sorely grieved, but he had not taken -any notice as to any of these things; he had been occupied with his -diagnosis of the patient's state; for, he added, he thought the swimmer -had been long in the water, and the Szalrassee was of very dangerously -low temperature at night, being fed as it Was from the glaciers and -snows of the mountains. - -'It is very interesting,' said the Princess; 'but pray observe what I -have named, now that you return to his chamber.' - -Greswold took the hint, and bowed himself out of the drawing-room. Frau -Ottilie returned to her nougats. - -'I wish that one could know who he was,' she said regretfully. To -harbour an unknown person was not agreeable to her in these days of -democracies and dynamite. - -'What does it matter?' said her niece. 'Though he were a Nihilist or a -convict from the mines, he would have to be sheltered to-night.' - -'The Herr Professor is very inattentive,' said the Princess, with an -accent that from one of her sweetness was almost severe. - -'The Herr Professor is compiling the Flora of the Hohe Tauern,' said -her niece, 'and he will publish it in Leipzig some time in the next -twenty years. How can a botanist care for so unlovely a creature as a -man? If it were a flower indeed!' - -'I never approved of that herbarium,' said the Princess, still -severely. 'It is too insignificant an occupation beside those great -questions of human ills which his services are retained to study. -He is inattentive, and he grows even impertinent: he almost told me -yesterday that my neuralgia was all imagination!' - -'He took you for a flower, mother mine, because you are so lovely; and -so he thought you could have no mortal pain!' said Wanda, tenderly. - -Then after a pause she added: - -'Dear aunt, come with me. I have asked Father Ferdinand to have a mass -to-night for Bela. I fancy Bela is glad that no other life has been -taken by the lake.' - -The Princess rose quickly and kissed her. - -In the Strangers' Gallery, in a great chamber of panelled oak and -Flemish tapestries, the poacher, as he lay almost asleep on a grand old -bed, with yellow taffeta hangings, and the crown of the Szalras Counts -in gilded bronze above its head, he heard as if in his dream the sound -of chanting voices and the deep slow melodies of an organ. - -He stirred and opened his drowsy eyes. - -'Am I in heaven?' he asked feebly. Yet he was a man who, when he was -awake and well, believed not in heaven. - -The physician, sitting by his bedside, laid his hand upon his wrist. -The pulse was beating strongly but quickly. - -'You are in the Burg of Hohenszalras,' he answered him. 'The music -you hear comes from the chapel; there is a midnight mass. A mass of -thanksgiving for you.' - -The heavy lids fell over the eyes of the weary man, and the dreamy -sense of warmth and peace that was upon him lulled him into the -indifference of slumber. - - - - -Chapter III - - -With the morning, though the storm had ceased and passed away, the -clouds were dark, the mountains were obscured, and the rain was pouring -down upon lake and land. - -It was still early in the day when the stranger was aroused to the full -sense of awaking in a room unknown to him; he had slept all through the -night; he was refreshed and without fever. His left arm was strained, -and he had many bruises; otherwise he was conscious of no hurt. - -'Twice in that woman's power,' he thought, with anger, as he looked -round the great tapestried chamber that sheltered him, and tried to -disentangle his actual memories of the past night from the dreams that -had haunted him of the Nibelungen Queen, who all night long he had -seen in her golden armour, with her eyes which, like those of the Greek -nymph, dazzled those on whom they gazed to madness. Dream and fact had -so interwoven themselves that it was with an effort he could sever the -two, awaking as he did now in an unfamiliar chamber, and surrounded -with those tapestries whose colossal figures seemed the phantoms of a -spirit world. - -He was a man in whom some vein of superstition had outlived the -cold reason and the cynical mockeries of the worldly experiences -and opinions in which he was steeped. A shudder of cold ran through -his blood as he opened his eyes upon that dim, tranquil, and vast -apartment, with the stories of the Tannhäuser legend embroidered on the -walls. - -'I am he! I am he!' he thought incoherently, watching the form of the -doomed knight speeding through the gloom and snow. - -'How does the most high and honourable gentleman feel himself this -morning?' asked of him, in German, a tall white-haired woman, who might -have stepped down from an old panel of Metzu. - -The simple commonplace question roused him from the mists of his -fancies and fears, and realised to him the bare fact that he was a -guest, unbidden, in the walls of Szaravola. - -The physician also drew near his bed to question him; and a boy brought -on a tray Rhine wine and Tokayer Ausbruck, coffee and chocolate, bread -and eggs. - -He broke his fast with a will, for he had eaten nothing since the day -before at noon; and the Professor Greswold congratulated him on his -good night's rest, and on his happy escape from the Szalrassee. - -Then he himself said, with a little confusion: - -'I saw a lady last night?' - -'Certainly, you saw our lady,' said Greswold, with a smile. - -'What do you call her?' he asked, eagerly. - -The physician answered: - -'She is the Countess Wanda von Szalras. She is sole mistress here. -But for her, my dear sir, I fear me you would be now lying in those -unfathomed depths that the bravest of us fear.' - -The stranger shuddered a little. - -'I was a madman to try the lake with such an overcast sky; but I had -missed my road, and I was told that it lay on the other side of the -water. Some peasants tried to dissuade me from crossing, but I am a -good rower and swimmer too; so I set forth to pull myself over your -lake.' - -'With a sky black as ink! I suppose you are used to more serene -summers. Midsummer is not so different to midwinter here that you can -trust to its tender mercies.' - -The stranger was silent. - -'She took my gun from me in the morning,' he said abruptly. The memory -of the indignity rankled in him, and made bitter the bread and wine. - -The physician laughed. - -'Were you poaching? Oh, that is almost a hanging matter in the -Hohenszalras woods. Had you met Otto without our lady he would most -likely have shot you without warning.' - -'Are you savages in the Tauern?' - -'Oh no; but we are very feudal still, and our forest laws have escaped -alteration in this especial part of the province.' - -'She has been very hospitable to me, since my crime was so great.' - -'She is the soul of hospitality, and the Schloss is a hospice,' said -the physician. 'When there is no town nearer than ten Austrian miles, -and the nearest posting-house is at Windisch-Matrey, it is very -necessary to exercise the primitive virtues; it is our compensation -for our feudalism. But take some tokayer, my dear sir; you are weaker -than you know. You have had a bath of ice; you had best lie still, and -I will send you some journals and books.' - -'I would rather get up and go away,' said the stranger. 'These bruises -are nothing. I will thank your lady, as you call her, and then go on my -way as quickly as I may.' - -'I see you do not understand feudal ways, though you have suffered from -them,' said the doctor. 'You shall get up if you wish; but I am certain -my lady will not let you leave here to-day. The rains are falling -in torrents; the roads are dangerous; a bridge has broken down over -the Bürgenbach, which you must cross to get away. In a word, if you -insist on departure, they will harness their best horses for you, for -all the antique virtues have refuge here, and amongst them is a grand -hospitality; but you will possibly kill the horses, and perhaps the -postillions, and you will not even then get very far upon your way. Be -persuaded by me. Wait at least until the morning dawns.' - -'I had better burden your lady with an unbidden guest than kill her -horses, certainly,' said the stranger. 'How is she sole mistress here? -Is there a Count von Szalras? Is she a widow?' - -'She has never married,' answered Greswold; and gave his patient a -brief sketch of the tragic fates of the lords of Hohenszalras, amongst -whom death had been so busy.' - -'A very happy woman to be so rich, and so free!' said the traveller, -with a little impatient envy; and he added, 'She is very handsome also; -indeed, beautiful. I now remember to have heard of her in Paris. Her -hand has been esteemed one of the great prizes of Europe.' - -'I think she will never marry,' said the old man. - -'Oh, my dear doctor, who can make such at least she looks young. What -age may she be?' - -'She was twenty-four years of age on Easter Day. As for happiness, -when you know the Countess Wanda, you will know that she would go out -as poor as S. Elizabeth, and self-dethroned like her, most willingly, -could she by such a sacrifice see her brothers living around her.' - -The stranger gave a little cynical laugh of utter incredulity, which -dismayed and annoyed the old professor. - -'You do not know her,' he said angrily. - -'I know humanity,' said the other. 'Will you kindly take all my -apologies and regrets to the Countess, and give her my name; the -Marquis de Sabran. She can satisfy herself as to my identity at any -embassy she may care to consult.' - -When he said his name, the professor gave a great cry and started from -his seat. - -'Sabran!' he echoed. 'You edited the "Mexico"!' he exclaimed, and gazed -over his spectacles in awe and sympathy commingled at the stranger, who -smiled and answered---- - -'Long ago, yes. Have you heard of it?' - -'Heard of it!' echoed Greswold. 'Do you take us for barbarians, sir?' -It is here, both in my small library, which is the collection of a -specialist, and in the great library of the castle, which contains a -million of volumes.' - -'I am twice honoured,' said the stranger, with a smile of some irony. -The good professor was a little disconcerted, and his enthusiasm was -damped and cooled. He felt as much embarrassment as though he had been -the owner of a discredited work. - -'May I not be permitted to congratulate you, sir?' he said timidly. 'To -have produced that great work is to possess a title to the gratitude -and esteem of all educated men.' - -'You are very good,' said Sabran, somewhat indifferently; 'but all -that is great in that book is the Marquis Xavier's. I am but the mere -compiler.' - -'The compilation, the editing of it, required no less learning than the -original writer displayed, and that was immense,' said the physician, -and with all the enthusiasm of a specialist he plunged into discussion -of the many notable points of a mighty intellectual labour, which had -received the praise of all the cultured world. - -Sabran listened courteously, but with visible weariness. 'You are very -good,' he said at last. 'But you will forgive me if I say that I have -heard so much of the "Mexico" that I am tempted to wish I had never -produced it. I did so as a duty; it was all I could do in honour of one -to whom I owed far more than mere life itself.' - -Greswold bowed and said no more. - -'Give me my belt,' said the stranger to the man who waited on him; -it was a leathern belt, which had been about his loins; it was made -to hold gold and notes, a small six-chambered revolver, and a watch; -these were all in it, and with his money was the imperial permission to -shoot, which had been given, him by Franz Josef the previous autumn on -the Thorstein. - -'Your Countess' will doubtless recognise her Emperor's signature,' he -said, as he gave the paper to the physician. 'It will serve at least as -a passport, if not as a letter of presentation.' - -Réné, Marquis de Sabran-Romaris, was one of those persons who -illustrate the old fairy tale, of all the good gifts at birth being -marred by the malison of one godmother. He had great physical beauty, -personal charm, and facile talent; but his very facility was his bane. -He did all things so easily and well, that he had never acquired the -sterner quality of application. He was a brilliant and even profound -scholar, an accomplished musician, a consummate critic of art; and -was endowed, moreover, with great natural tact, taste, and correct -intuition. - -Being, as he was, a poor man, these gifts should have made him an -eminent one or a wealthy one, but the perverse fairy who had cursed -when the other had blessed him, had contrived to make all these graces -and talents barren. Whether it be true or not that the world knows -nothing of its greatest men, it is quite true that its cleverest men -very often do nothing of importance all their lives long. He did -nothing except acquire a distinct repute as a _dilettante_ in Paris, -and a renown in the clubs of being always serene and fortunate at play. - -He had sworn to himself when he had been a youth to make his career -worthy of his name; but the years had slipped away, and he had done -nothing. He was a very clever man, and he had once set a high if a cold -and selfish aim before him as his goal. But he had done worse even than -fail; he had never even tried to reach it. - -He was only a _boulevardier_; popular and admired amongst men for his -ready wit and his cool courage, and by women often adored and often -hated, and sometimes, by himself, thoroughly despised: never so much -despised as when by simple luck at play or on the Bourse he made the -money which slid through his fingers with rapidity. - -All he had in the world were the wind-torn oaks and the sea-washed -rocks of a bleak and lonely Breton village, and a few hundred thousand -francs' worth of pictures, porcelains, arms, and _bibelots_, which -had accumulated in his rooms on the Boulevard Haussmann, bought at -the Drouot in the forenoons after successful play at night. Only two -things in him were unlike the men whose associate he was: he was as -temperate as an Arab, seldom even touching wine; and he was a keen -mountaineer and athlete, once off the asphalte of the Boulevards. For -the rest, popular though he was in the society he frequented, no -living man could boast of any real intimacy with him. He had a thousand -acquaintances, but he accepted no friend. Under the grace and suavity -of a very courtly manner he wore the armour of a great reserve. - -'At heart you have the taciturnity and the _sauvagerie_ of the -Armorican beneath all your polished suavity,' said a woman of his world -to him once; and he did not contradict her. - -Men did not quarrel with him for it: he was a fine swordsman and a dead -shot: and women were allured all the more surely to him because they -felt that they never really entered his life or took any strong hold on -it. - -Such as he was he lay now half-awake on the great bed under its amber -canopy, and gazed dreamily at the colossal figures of the storied -tapestry, where the Tuscan idlers of the Decamerone wore the sombre -hues and the stiff and stately garb of Flemish fashion of the sixteenth -century. - -'I wonder why I tried so hard to live last night! I am not in love -with life,' he thought to himself, as he slowly remembered all that -had happened, and recalled the face of the lady who had leaned down -to him from over the stone parapet in the play of the torchlight and -lightnings. And yet life seemed good and worth having as he recalled -that boiling dusky swirl of water which had so nearly swallowed him up -in its anger. - -He was young enough to enjoy; he was blessed with a fine constitution -and admirable health, which even his own excesses had not impaired; he -had no close ties to the world, but he had a frequent enjoyment of it, -which made it welcome to him. The recovery of existence always enhances -its savour; and as he lay dreamily recalling the sharp peril he had -run, he was simply and honestly glad to be amongst living men. - -He remained still when the physician had left and looked around him; -in the wide hearth a fire of oak logs was burning; rain was beating -against the painted panes of the oriel casements; there was old -oak, old silver, old ivory in the furniture of the chamber, and the -tapestries were sombre and gorgeous. It was a room of the sixteenth -century; but the wine was in jugs of Bacarat glass, and a box of -Turkish cigarettes stood beside them, with the Paris and Vienna -newspapers. Everything had been thought of that could contribute to -his comfort: he wondered if the doctor had thought of all this, or -if it was due to the lady. 'It is a magnificent hospice,' he said to -himself with a smile, and then he angrily remembered his rifle, his -good English rifle, that was now sunk for ever with his little boat in -the waters of the Szalrassee. 'Why did she offer me that outrage?' he -said to himself: it went hard with him to lie under her roof, to touch -her wine and bread. Yet he was aching in every limb, the bed was easy -and spacious, the warmth and the silence and the aromatic scent of the -burning pine-cones were alluring him to rest; he dropped off to sleep -again, the same calm sleep of fatigue that had changed into repose, and -nothing woke him till the forenoon was passed. - -'Good heavens! how I am trespassing on this woman's hospitality!' he -thought as he did awake, angry with himself for having been lulled into -this oblivion; and he began to rise at once, though he felt his limbs -stiff and his head for the moment light. - -'Cannot I get a carriage for S. Johann? My servant is waiting for me -there,' he said to the youth attending on him, when his bath was over. - -The lad smiled with amusement. - -'There are no carriages here but our lady's, and she will not let you -stir this afternoon, my lord,' he answered in German, as he aided the -stranger to put on his own linen and shooting breeches, now dry and -smoothed out by careful hands. - -'But I have no coat! said the traveller in discomfiture, remembering -that his coat was gone with his rifle and his powder-flask. - -'The Herr Professor thought you could perhaps manage with one of these. -They were all of Count Gela's, who was a tall man and about your make,' -said an older man-servant who had entered, and now showed him several -unworn or scarcely worn suits. - -'If you could wear one of these, my lord, for this evening, we will -send as soon as it is possible for your servant and your clothes to S. -Johann; but it is impossible to-day, because a bridge is down over the -Bürgenbach.' - -'You are all of you too good,' said Sabran, as he essayed a coat of -black velvet. - -Pull of his new acquaintance and all his talents, the good man Greswold -had hurried away to obey the summons of his ladies, who had desired -to see him. He found them in the white room, a grand salon hung with -white satin silver-fringed, and stately with white marble friezes -and columns, whence it took its name. It was a favourite room with -the mistress of the Schloss; at either end of it immense windows, -emblazoned and deeply embayed, looked out over the sublime landscape -without, of which at this moment every outline was shrouded in the grey -veil of an incessantly falling rain. - -With humble obeisances Greswold presented the message and the -credentials of her guest to Wanda von Szalras; it was the first -occasion that he had had of doing so. She read the document signed by -the Kaiser with a smile. - -'This is the paper which this unhappy gentleman spoke of when I -arrested him as a poacher,' she said to her aunt. 'The Marquis de -Sabran. The name is familiar to me: I have heard it before.' - -'Surely you do not forget the Pontêves-Bargême, the Ducs de Sabran?' -said the Princess, with some severity. S. Eleazar was a Comte de -Sabran!' - -'I know! But it is of something nearer to us than S. Eleazar that I am -thinking; there was surely some work or another which bore that name, -and was much read and quoted.' - -'He edited and annotated the great "Mexico",' said Herr Greswold, as -though all were told in that. - -'A _savant?_' murmured the Princess, in some contemptuous chagrin. -'Pray what is the "Mexico"?' - -'The grandest archæological and botanical work, the work of the finest -research and most varied learning that has been produced out of -Germany,' commenced the Professor, with eagerness, but the Princess -arrested him midway in his eloquence. - -'The French are all infidels, we know that; but one might have hoped -that in one of the old nobility, as his name would imply, some -lingering reverence for tradition remained.' - -'It is not a subversive, not a philosophic work,' said the Professor, -eagerly; but she silenced him. - -'It is a book! Why should a Marquis de Sabran write a book?' said the -Princess, with ineffable disdain. - -There were all the Fathers for anyone who wanted to read: what need for -any other use of printer's type? So she was accustomed to think and to -say when, scandalised, she saw the German, French, and English volumes, -of which whole cases were wont to arrive at Hohenszalras for the use -of Wanda von Szalras alone: works of philosophy and of science amongst -them which had been denounced in the 'Index.' - -'Dear mother,' said the Countess Wanda, 'I have read the "Mexico": -it is a grand monument raised to a dead man's memory out of his own -labours by one of his own descendants--his only descendant, if I -remember aright.' - -'Indeed,' said the Princess, unconvinced. 'I know those scientific -works by repute; they always consider the voyage of a germ of moss, -carried on an aerolite through an indefinite space for a billion of -ages, a matter much easier of credence than the "Life of St. Jerome." -I believe they call it sporadic transmission; they call typhus fever -the same.' - -'There is nothing of that in the "Mexico": it is a very fine work on -the archæology and history of the country, and on its flora.' - -'I should have supposed a Marquis de Sabran a gentleman,' said the -Princess, whom no precedent from the many monarchs who have been -guilty of inferior literature could convince that literature was other -than a trade much like shoemaking: at its best a sort of clerk's -quill-driving, to be equally pitied and censured. - -Here Greswold, who valued his post and knew his place too well to -defend either literature or sporadic germs, timidly ventured to suggest -that the Marquis might be well known amongst the nobility of western -France, although not of that immense distinction which finds its -chronicle in the Hof-Kalender. The Princess smiled. - -'_Petite noblesse._ You mean petite noblesse, my good Greswold? But -even the petite noblesse need not write books?' - -When, however, the further question arose of inviting the stranger to -come to their dinner-table, it was the haughtier Princess who advocated -the invitation; the mistress of the house demurred. She thought that -all requirements of courtesy and hospitality would be fulfilled by -allowing him to dine in his own apartments. - -'We do not know him,' she urged. 'No doubt he may very well be what he -says, but it is not easy to refer to an embassy while the rains are -making an island of the Tauern! Nay, dear mother, I am not suspicious; -but I think, as we are two women alone, we can fulfil all obligations -of hospitality towards this gentleman without making him personally -acquainted with ourselves.' - -'That is really very absurd. It is acting as if Hohenszalras were a -_gasthof_,' said the Princess, with petulance. 'It is not so often that -we have any relief to the tedium with which you are pleased to surround -yourself that we should be required to shut ourselves from any chance -break in it. Of course, if you send this person his dinner to his own -rooms, he will feel hurt, mortified; he will go away, probably on foot, -rather than remain where he is insulted. Breton nobility is not very -eminent, but it is very proud; it is provincial, territorial; but every -one knows it is ancient, and usually of the most loyal traditions alike -to Church and State. I should be the last person to advocate making a -friendship, or even an acquaintance, without the fullest inquiry; but -when it is a mere question of a politeness for twenty-four hours, -which can entail no consequences, then I must confess that I think -prejudices should yield before the obligations of courtesy. But of -course, my love, decide as you will: you are mistress.' - -The Countess Wanda smiled, and did not press her own opposition. She -perceived that the mind of her aunt was full of vivid and harmless -curiosity. - -In the end she suggested that the Princess should represent her, and -receive the foreign visitor with all due form and ceremony; but she -herself was still indisposed to admit a person of whose antecedents she -had no positive guarantee so suddenly and entirely into her intimacy. - -'You are extraordinarily suspicious,' said the elder lady, pettishly. -'If he were a pedlar or a colporteur, you would be willing to talk with -him.' - -'Pedlars and colporteurs cannot take any social advantage of one's -conversation afterwards,' replied her niece. 'We are not usually -invaded by men of rank here; so the precedent may not be perilous. Have -your own way, mother mine.' - -The Princess demurred, but finally accepted the compromise; reflecting -that if this stranger were to dine alone with her, she would be able to -ascertain much more about him than if Wanda, who had been created void -of all natural curiosity, and who would have been capable of living -with people twelve months without asking them a single question, would -render it possible to do were she present. - -Meanwhile, the physician hurried back to his new friend, who had a -great and peculiar interest for him as the editor of the "Mexico", and -offered him, with the permission of the Countess von Szalras, to wile -away the chill and gloomy day by an inspection of the Schloss. - -Joachim Greswold was a very learned and shrewd man, whom poverty and -love of tranquil opportunities of study had induced to bury himself -in the heart of the Glöckner mountains. He had already led a long, -severe, and blameless life of deep devotion and hard privation, -when the post of private physician at Hohenszalras in general, and -to the Princess Ottilie in especial, had been procured for him by -the interest of Prince Lilienhöhe. He had had many sorrows, trials, -and disappointments, which made the simple routine and the entire -solitude of his existence here welcome to him. But he was none the less -delighted to meet any companion of culture and intelligence to converse -with, and in his monotonous and lonely life it was a rare treat to be -able to exchange ideas with one fresh from the intellectual movements -of the outer world. - -The Professor found, not to his surprise since he had read the -"Mexico", that his elegant _grand seigneur_ knew very nearly as much -as he did of botany and of comparative anatomy; that he had travelled -nearly all over the world, and travelled to much purpose, and knew many -curious things of the flora of the Rio Grande, whilst it appeared that -he possessed in his cabinets in Paris a certain variety of orchid that -the doctor had always longed to obtain. He was entirely won over when -Sabran, to whom the dried flower was very indifferent, promised to -send it to him. The French Marquis had not Greswold's absolute love of -science; he had studied every thing that had come to his hand, because -he had a high intelligence, and an insatiable appetite for knowledge; -and he had no other kind of devotion to it; when he had penetrated its -mysteries, it lost all interest for him. - -At any rate he knew enough to make him an enchanting companion to a -learned man who was all alone in his learning, and received little -sympathy in it from anyone near him. - -'What a grand house to be shut up in the heart of the mountains!' said -Sabran, with a sigh. 'I do believe what romance there still is in the -world does lie in these forests of Austria, which have all the twilight -and the solitude that would suit Merlin or the Sleeping Beauty better -than anything we have in France, except, indeed, here and there an old -château like Chenonceaux, or Maintenon.' - -'The world has not spoilt us as yet,' said the doctor. 'We see few -strangers. Our people are full of old faiths, old loyalties, old -traditions. They are a sturdy and yet tender people. They are as -fearless as their own steinbock, and they are as reverent as saints -were in monastic days. Our mountains are as grand as the Swiss ones, -but, thank Heaven, they are unspoilt and little known. I tremble when -I think they have begun to climb the Gross Glöckner; all the mystery -and glory of our glaciers will vanish when they become mere points of -ascension. The alpenstock of the tourist is to the everlasting hills -what railway metals are to the plains. Thank God! the few railroads we -have are hundreds of miles asunder.' - -'You are a reactionist, Doctor?' - -'I am an old man, and I have learned the value of repose,' said -Greswold. 'You know we are called a slow race. It is only the unwise -amongst us who have quicksilver in their brains and toes.' - -'You have gold in the former, at least,' said Sabran, kindly, 'and I -dare say quicksilver is in your feet, too, when there is a charity to -be done?' - -Herr Joachim, who was simple in the knowledge of mankind, though shrewd -in mother-wit, coloured a little with pleasure. How well this stranger -understood him! - -The day went away imperceptibly and agreeably to the physician and to -the stranger in this pleasant rambling talk; whilst the rain poured -down in fury on the stone terraces and green lawns without, and the -Szalrassee was hidden under a veil of fog. - -'Am I not to see her at all?' thought Sabran. He did not like to -express his disquietude on that subject to the physician, and he was -not sure himself whether he most desired to ride away without meeting -the serene eyes of his châtelaine, or to be face to face with her once -more. - -He stood long before her portrait, done by Carolus Duran; she wore -in it a close-fitting gown of white velvet, and held in her hand a -great Spanish hat with white plumes; the two hounds were beside her; -the attitude had a certain grandeur and gravity in it which were very -impressive. - -'This was painted last year,' said Greswold, 'at the Princess's -request. It is admirably like----' - -'It is a noble picture,' said Sabran. 'But what a very proud woman she -looks!' - -'Blood tells,' said Greswold, 'far more than most people know or admit. -It is natural that my Lady, with the blood in her of so many mighty -nobles, who had the power of judgment and chastisement over whole -provinces, should be sometimes disposed to exercise too despotic a -will, to be sometimes contemptuous of the dictates of modern society, -which sends the princess and the peasant alike to a law court for sole -redress of their wrongs. She is at times irreconcilable with the world -as it stands; she is the representative and descendant in a direct -line of arrogant and omnipotent princes. That she combines with that -natural arrogance and instinct of dominion a very beautiful pitifulness -and even humility is a proof of the chastening influence of religious -faith on the nature of women; we are too apt to forget that, in our -haste to destroy the Church. Men might get on perhaps very well without -a religion of any kind; but I tremble to think what their mothers and -their mistresses would become.' - -They passed the morning in animated discussion, and as it drew to -a close, the good doctor did not perceive how adroitly his new -acquaintance drew out from him all details of the past and present of -Hohenszalras, and of the tastes and habits of its châtelaine, until he -knew all that there was to be known of that pure and austere life. - -'You may think her grief for her brother Bela's death--for all her -brothers' deaths--a morbid sentiment,' said the doctor as he spoke of -her. 'But it is not so--no. It is, perhaps, overwrought; but no life -can be morbid that is so active in duty, so untiring in charity, so -unsparing of itself. Her lands and riches, and all the people dependent -on her, are to the Countess Wanda only as so much trust, for which -hereafter she will be responsible to Bela and to God. You and I may -smile, you and I, who are philosophers, and have settled past dispute -that the human life has no more future than the snail-gnawed cabbage, -but yet--yet, my dear sir, one cannot deny that there is something -exalted in such a conception of duty; and--of this I am convinced--that -on the character of a woman it has a very ennobling influence.' - -'No doubt. But has she renounced all her youth? Does she mean never to -go into the world or to marry?' - -'I am quite sure she has made no resolve of the sort,' But I do not -think she will ever alter. She has refused many great alliances. -Her temperament is serene, almost cold; and her ideal it would be -difficult, I imagine, for any mortal man to realise.' - -'But when a woman loves----' - -'Oh, of course,' said Herr Joachim, rather drily. 'If the aloe -flower!----Love does not I think possess any part of the Countess -Wanda's thoughts or desires. She fancies it a mere weakness.' - -'A woman can scarcely be amiable without that weakness.' - -'No. Perhaps she is not precisely what we term amiable. She is rather -too far also from human emotions and human needs. The women of the -house of Szalras have been mostly very proud, silent, brave, and -resolute; great ladies rather than lovable wives. Luitgarde von Szalras -held this place with only a few archers and spearmen against Heinrich -Jasomergott in the twelfth century, and he raised the siege after five -months. "She is not a woman, nor human, she is a _kuttengeier_," he -said, as he retreated into his Wiener Wald. All the great monk-vultures -and the gyps and the pygargues have been sacred all through the Hohe -Tauern since that year.' - -'And I was about to shoot a _kuttengeier_--now I see that my offence -was beyond poaching, it was high treason almost!' - -'I heard the story from Otto. He would have hanged you cheerfully. -But I hope,' said the doctor, with a pang of misgiving, 'that I have -not given you any false impression of my Lady, as cold and hard and -unwomanly. She is full of tenderness of a high order; she is the -noblest, most truthful, and most generous nature that I have ever known -clothed in human form, and if she be too proud--well, it is a stately -sin, pardonable in one who has behind her eleven hundred years of -fearless and unblemished honour.' - -'I am a socialist,' said Sabran, a little curtly; then added, with a -little laugh, 'Though I believe not in rank, I do believe in race.' - -'_Bon sang ne peut mentir_,' murmured the old physician; the fair face -of Sabran changed slightly. - -'Will you come and look over the house?' said the Professor, who -noticed nothing, and only thought of propitiating the owner of the -rare orchid. 'There is almost as much to see as in the Burg at Vienna. -Everything has accumulated here undisturbed for a thousand years. -Hohenszalras has been besieged, but never deserted or dismantled. - -'It is a grand place!' said Sabran, with a look of impatience. 'It -seems intolerable that a woman should possess it all, while I only own -a few wind-blown oaks in the wilds of Finisterre.' - -'Ah, ah, that is pure socialism!' said the doctor, with a little -chuckle. '_Ote-toi, que je m'y mette._ That is genuine Liberalism all -the world over.' - -'You are no communist yourself, doctor?' - -'No,' said Herr Joachim, simply. 'All my studies lead me to the -conviction that equality is impossible, and were it possible, it would -be hideous. Variety, infinite variety, is the beneficent law of the -world's life. Why, in that most perfect of all societies, the beehive, -flawless mathematics are found co-existent with impassable social -barriers and unalterable social grades.' - -Sabran laughed good-humouredly. - -'I thought at least the bees enjoyed an undeniable Republic.' - -'A Republic with helots, sir, like Sparta. A Republic will always have -its helots. But come and wander over the castle. Come first and see the -parchments.' - -'Where are the ladies?' asked Sabran, wistfully. - -'The Princess is at her devotions and taking tisane. I visited her this -morning; she thinks she has a sore throat. As for our Lady, no one -ever disturbs her or knows what she is doing. When she wants any of us -ordinary folks, we are summoned. Sometimes we tremble. You know this -alone is an immense estate, and then there is a palace at the capital, -and one at Salzburg, not to speak of the large estates in Hungary -and the mines in Galicia. All these our Lady sees after and manages -herself. You can imagine that her secretary has no easy task, and that -secretary is herself; for she does not believe in doing anything well -by others.' - -'A second Maria Theresa!' said Sabran. - -'Not dissimilar, perhaps,' said the doctor, nettled at the irony of the -tone. 'Only where our great Queen sent thousands out to their deaths -the Countess von Szalras saves many lives. There are no mines in the -world--I will make bold to say--where there is so much comfort and so -little peril as those mines of hers in Stanislaw. She visited them -three years hence. But I forget, you are a stranger, and as you do not -share our cultus for the Grafin, cannot care to hear its Canticles. -Come to the muniment-room; you shall see some strange parchments.' - -'Heavens, how it rains!' said Sabran, as they left his chambers. 'Is -that common here?' - -'Very common, indeed!' said the doctor, with a laugh. 'We pass -two-thirds of the year between snow and water. But then we have -compensation. Where will you see such grass, such forests, such -gardens, when the summer sun does shine?' - -The Marquis de Sabran charmed him, and as they wandered over the huge -castle the physician delightedly displayed his own erudition, and -recognised that of his companion. The Hohenszalrasburg was itself -like some black-letter record of old South-German history; it was a -chronicle written in stone and wood and iron. The brave old house, -like a noble person, contained in itself a liberal education, and the -stranger whom through an accident it sheltered was educated enough to -comprehend and estimate it at its due value. In his passage through -it he won the suffrages of the household by his varied knowledge -and correct appreciation. In the stables his praises of the various -breeds of horses there commended itself by its accuracy to Ulrich, the -_stallmeister_, not less than a few difficult shots in the shooting -gallery proved his skill to his enemy of the previous day, Otto, the -_jägermeister._ Not less did he please Hubert, who was learned in such -things, with his cultured admiration of the wonderful old gold and -silver plate, the Limoges dishes and bowls, the Vienna and Kronenthal -china; nor less the custodian of the pictures, a collection of Flemish -and German masters, with here and there a modern _capolavoro_, hung all -by themselves in a little vaulted gallery which led into a much larger -one consecrated to tapestries, Flemish, French, and Florentine. - -When twilight came, and the greyness of the rain-charged atmosphere -deepened into the dark of night, Sabran had made all living things at -the castle his firm friends, down to the dogs of the house, save and -except the ladies who dwelt in it. Of them he had had no glimpse. They -kept their own apartments. He began to feel some fresh embarrassment -at remaining another night beneath a roof the mistress of which did -not deign personally to recognise his presence. A salon hung with -tapestries opened out of the bedchamber allotted to him; he wondered if -he were to dine there like a prisoner of state. - -He felt an extreme reluctance united to a strong curiosity to meet -again the woman who had treated him with such cool authority and -indifference as a common poacher in her woods. His cheek tingled still, -whenever he thought of the manner in which, at her signal, his hands -had been tied, and his rifle taken from him. She was the representative -of all that feudal, aristocratic, despotic, dominant spirit of a dead -time which he, with his modern, cynical, reckless Parisian Liberalism, -most hated, or believed that he hated. She was Austria Felix -personified, and he was a man who had always persuaded himself and -others that he was a socialist, a Philippe Egalité. And this haughty -patrician had mortified him and then had benefited and sheltered him! - -He would willingly have gone from under her roof without seeing -her, and yet a warm and inquisitive desire impelled him to feel an -unreasonable annoyance that the day was going by without his receiving -any intimation that he would be allowed to enter her presence, or be -expected to make his obeisances to her. When, however, the servants -entered to light the many candles in his room, Hubert entered behind -them, and expressed the desire of his lady that the Marquis would -favour them with his presence: they were about to dine. - -Sabran, standing before the mirror, saw himself colour like a boy: he -knew not whether he were most annoyed or pleased. He would willingly -have ridden away leaving his napoleons for the household, and seeing -no more the woman who had made him ridiculous in his own eyes; yet -the remembrance of her haunted him as something strange, imperious, -magnetic, grave, serene, stately; vague memories of a thousand things -he had heard said of her in embassies and at courts came to his mind; -she had been a mere unknown name to him then; he had not listened, -he had not cared, but now he remembered all he had heard; curiosity -and an embarrassment wholly foreign to him struggled together in him. -What could he say to a woman who had first insulted and then protected -him? It would tax all the ingenuity and the tact for which he was -famed. However, he only said to the major-domo, 'I am much flattered. -Express my profound gratitude to your ladies for the honour they are so -good as to do me.' Then he made his attire look as well as it could, -and considering that punctuality is due from guests as well as from -monarchs, he said that he was ready to follow the servant waiting for -him, and did so through the many tapestried and panelled corridors by -which the enormous house was traversed. - -Though light was not spared at the burg it was only such light as oil -and wax could give the galleries and passages; dim mysterious figures -loomed from the rooms and shadows seemed to stretch away on every side -to vast unknown chambers that might hold the secrets of a thousand -centuries. When he was ushered into the radiance of the great white -room he felt dazzled and blinded. - -He felt his bruise still, and he walked with a slight lameness from a -strain of his left foot, but this did not detract from the grace and -distinction of his bearing, and the pallor of his handsome features -became them; and when he advanced through the opened doors and bent -before the chair and kissed the hands of the Princess Ottilie she -thought to herself, 'What a perfectly beautiful person. Even Wanda -will have to admit that!' Whilst Hubert, going backward, said to his -regiment of under-servants: 'Look you! since Count Gela rode out to his -death at the head of the White Hussars, so grand a man as this stranger -has not set foot in this house.' - -He expected to see the Countess Wanda von Szalras. Instead, he saw -the loveliest little old lady he had ever seen in his life, clad in a -semi-conventual costume, leaning on a gold-headed cane, with clouds -of fragrant old lace about her, and a cross of emeralds hung at her -girdle of onyx beads, who saluted him with the ceremonious grace of -that etiquette which is still the common rule of life amongst the great -nobilities of the north. He hastened to respond in the same spirit with -an exquisite deference of manner. - -She greeted him with affable and smiling words, and he devoted himself -to her with deference and gallantry, expressing all his sense of -gratitude for the succour and shelter he received, with a few eloquent -and elegant phrases which said enough and not too much, with a grace -that it is difficult to lend to gratitude which is generally somewhat -halting and uncouth. - -'His name must be in the Hof-Kalendar!' she thought, as she replied to -his protestations with her prettiest smile which, despite her sacred -calling and her seventy years, was the smile of a coquette. - -'M. le Marquis,' she said, in her tender and flute-like voice, 'I -deserve none of your eloquent thanks. Age is sadly selfish. I did -nothing to rescue you, unless, indeed, Heaven heard my unworthy -prayer!--and this house is not mine, nor anything in it; the owner of -it, and, therefore, your châtelaine of the moment, is my grand-niece, -the Countess Wanda von Szalras.' - -'That I had your intercession with Heaven, however indirectly, was far -more than I deserved,' said Sabran, still standing before her. 'For the -Countess Wanda, I have been twice in her power, and she has been very -generous.' - -'She has done her duty, nothing more,' said the Princess a little -primly and petulantly, if princesses and petulance can mingle. 'We -should have scarce been Christians if we had not striven for your -life. As to leaving us this day it was out of the question. The storm -continues, the passes are torrents; I fear much that it will even be -impossible for your servant to come from S. Johann; we could not send -to Matrey even this morning for the post-bag, and they tell me the -bridge is down over the Bürgenbach.' - -'I have wanted for nothing, and my Parisian rogue is quite as well -yawning and smoking his days away at S. Johann,' said Sabran. 'Oh, -Madame! how can I ever express to you all my sense of the profound -obligations you have laid me under, stranger that I am!' - -'At least we were bound to atone for the incivility of the Szalrassee,' -said the Princess, with her pretty smile. 'It is a very horrible -country to live in. My niece, indeed, thinks it Arcadia, but an Arcadia -subject to the most violent floods, and imprisoned in snow and frost -for so many months, does not commend itself to me; no doubt it is very -grand and romantic.' - -The ideal of the Princess was neither grand nor romantic: it was life -in the little prim, yet gay north German town in the palace of which -she and all her people had been born; a little town, with red roofs, -green alleys, straight toylike streets, clipped trees, stiff soldiers, -set in the midst of a verdant plain; flat and green, and smooth as a -card table. - -The new comer interested her; she was quickly won by personal beauty, -and he possessed this in a great degree. It was a face unlike any she -had ever seen; it seemed to her to bear mystery with it and melancholy, -and she loved both those things; perhaps because she had never met with -either out of the pages of German poets and novelists of France. Those -who are united to them in real life find them uneasy bedfellows. - -'Perhaps he is some Kronprinz in disguise,' she thought with pleasure; -but then she sadly recollected that she knew every crown prince that -there was in Europe. She would have liked to have asked him many -questions, but her high-breeding was still stronger than her curiosity; -and a guest could never be interrogated. - -Dinner was announced as served. - -'My niece, the Countess Wanda,' said the Princess, with a little -reluctance visible in her hesitation, 'will dine in her own rooms. She -begs you to excuse her; she is tired from the storm last night.' - -'She will not dine with me,' thought Sabran, with the quick intuition -natural to him. - -'You leave me nothing to regret, Princess,' he said readily, with a -sweet smile, as he offered his arm to this lovely little lady, wrapped -in laces fine as cobweb, with her great cross of emeralds pendent from -her rosary. - -A woman is never too old to be averse to the thought that she can -charm; very innocent charming was that of the Princess Ottilie, and she -thought with a sigh if she had married--if she had had such a son; yet -she was not insensible to the delicate compliment which he paid her -in appearing indifferent to the absence of his châtelaine and quite -content with her own presence. - -Throughout dinner in that great hall, he, sitting on her right hand, -amused her, flattered her with that subtlest of all flattery, interest -and attention; diverted her with gay stories of worlds unknown to her, -and charmed her with his willingness to listen to her lament over the -degeneracy of mankind and of manners. After a few words of courtesy as -to his hostess's absence he seemed not even to remember that Wanda von -Salzras was absent from the head of her table. - -'And I have said that she was tired! She who is never more tired -than the eagles are! May heaven forgive me the untruth!' thought -the Princess more than once during the meal, which was long and -magnificent, and at which her guest ate sparingly and drank but little. - -'You have no appetite?' she said regretfully. - -'Pardon me, I have a good one,' he answered her; 'but I have always -been content to eat little and drink less. It is the secret of health; -and my health is all my riches.' - -She looked at him with interest. - -'I should think your riches in that respect are inexhaustible?' - -He smiled. - -'Oh yes! I have never had a day's illness, except once, long ago in the -Mexican swamps, a marsh fever and a snake-bite.' - -'You have travelled much?' - -'I have seen most of the known world, and a little of the unknown,' -he answered. 'I am like Ulysses; only there will be not even a dog to -welcome me when my wanderings are done.' - -'Have you no relatives?' - -'None!' he added, with an effort. Everyone is dead; dead long ago. I -have been long alone, and I am very well used to it.' - -'But you must have troops of friends?' - -'Oh!--friends who will win my last napoleon at play, or remember me as -long as they meet me every day on the boulevards? Yes, I have many of -that sort, but they are not worth Ulysses' dog.' - -He spoke carelessly, without any regard to the truth as far as it went, -but no study would have made him more apt to coin words to attract the -sympathy of his listeners. - -'He is unfortunate,' she thought. 'How often beauty brings misfortune. -My niece must certainly see him. I wish he belonged to the -Pontêves-Bargêmes!' - -Not to have a name that she knew, one of those names that fill all -Europe as with the trump of an archangel, was to be as one maimed or -deformed in the eyes of the Princess, an object for charity, not for -intercourse. - -'Your title is of Brittany, I think?' she said a little wistfully, -and as he answered something abruptly in the affirmative, she solaced -herself once more with the remembrance that there was a good deal of -_petite noblesse_, honourable enough, though not in the 'Almanac de -Gotha,' which was a great concession from her prejudices, invented on -the spur of the interest that he excited in her imagination. - -'I never saw any person so handsome,' she thought, as she glanced -at his face; while he in return thought that this silver-haired, -soft-cheeked, lace-enwrapped Holy Mother was _jolie à croquer_ in -the language of those boulevards, which had been his nursery and his -palestrum. She was so kind to him, she was so gracious and graceful, -she chatted with him so frankly and pleasantly, and she took so active -an interest in his welfare that he was touched and grateful. He had -known many women, many young ones and gay ones; he had never known what -the charm of a kindly and serene old age can be like in a woman who has -lived with pure thoughts, and will die in hope and in faith; and this -lovely old abbess, with her pretty touch of worldliness, was a study to -him, new with the novelty of innocence, and of a kind of veneration. -And he was careful not to let her perceive his mortification that the -Countess von Szalras would not deign to dine in his presence. In truth, -he thought of little else, but no trace of irritation or of absence of -mind was to be seen in him as he amused the Princess, and discovered -with her that they had in common some friends amongst the nobilities of -Saxony, of Wurtemberg, and of Bohemia. - -'Come and take your coffee in my own room, the blue-room,' she said to -him, and she rose and took his arm. 'We will go through the library; -you saw it this morning, I imagine? It is supposed to contain the -finest collection of Black Letter in the empire, or so we think.' - -And she led him through the great halls and up a few low stairs into a -large oval room lined with oaken bookcases, which held the manuscripts, -missals, and volumes of all dates which had been originally gathered -together by one of the race who had been also a bishop and a cardinal. - -The library was oak-panelled, and had an embossed and emblazoned -ceiling; silver lamps of old Italian _trasvorato_ work, hung by -silver chains, and shed a subdued clear light; beneath the porphyry -sculptures of the hearth a fire of logs was burning, for the early -summer evening here is chill and damp; there were many open fireplaces -in Hohenszalras, introduced there by a chilly Provençal princess, who -had wedded a Szalras in the seventeenth century, and who had abolished -the huge porcelain stoves in many apartments in favour of grand carved -mantel-pieces, and gilded andirons, and sweet smelling simple fires of -aromatic woods, such as made glad the sombre hotels and lonely châteaux -of the Prance of the Bourbons. - -Before this hearth, with the dogs stretched on the black bearskin -rugs, his hostess was seated; she had dined in a small dining-hall -opening out of the library, and was sitting reading with a shaded -light behind her. She rose with astonishment, and, as he fancied, -anger upon her face as she saw him enter, and stood in her full height -beneath the light of one of the silver hanging lamps. She wore a gown -of olive-coloured velvet, with some pale roses fastened amongst the -old lace at her breast; she had about her throat several rows of large -pearls, which she always wore night and day that they should not change -their pure whiteness by disuse; she looked very stately, cold, annoyed, -disdainful, as she stood there without speaking. - -'It is my niece, the Countess von Szalras,' said the Princess to her -companion in some trepidation. 'Wanda, my love, I was not aware you -were here; I thought you were in your own octagon room; allow me to -make you acquainted with your guest, whom you have already received -twice with little ceremony I believe.' - -The trifling falsehoods were trippingly but timidly said; the -Princess's blue eyes sought consciously her niece's forgiveness with -a pathetic appeal, to which Wanda, who loved her tenderly, could not -be long obdurate. Had it been any other than Mme. Ottilie who had -thus brought by force into her presence a stranger whom she had -marked her desire to avoid, the serene temper of the mistress of -the Hohenszalrasburg would not have preserved its equanimity, and -she would have quitted her library on the instant, sweeping a grand -courtesy which should have been greeting and farewell at once to one -too audacious. But the shy entreating appeal of the Princess's regard -touched her heart, and the veneration she had borne from childhood -to one so holy, and so sacred by years of grace, checked in her any -utterance or sign of annoyance. - -Sabran, meanwhile, standing by in some hesitation and embarrassment, -bowed low with consummate grace, and a timidity not less graceful. - -She advanced a step and held her hand out to him. - -'I fear I have been inhospitable, sir,' she said to him in his -own tongue. 'Are you wholly unhurt? You had a rough greeting from -Hohenszalras.' - -He took the tip of her fingers on his own and bent over them as humbly -as over an empress's. - -Well used to the world as he was, to its ceremonies, courts, and -etiquettes, he was awed by her as if he were a youth; he lost his ready -aptness of language, and his easy manner of adaptability. - -'I am but a vagrant, Madame!' he murmured, as he bowed over her hand. -'I have no right even to your charity!' - -For the moment it seemed to her as if he spoke in bitter and melancholy -earnest, and she looked at him in a passing surprise that changed into -a smile. - -'You were a poacher certainly, but that is forgiven. My aunt has taken -you under her protection; and you had the Kaiser's already: with such a -dual shelter you are safe. Are you quite recovered?' she said, bending -her grave glance upon him. 'I have to ask your pardon for my great -negligence in not sending one of my men to guide you over the pass to -Matrey.' - -'Nay, if you had done so I should not have enjoyed the happiness of -being your debtor,' he replied, meeting her close gaze with a certain -sense of confusion most rare with him; and added a few words of -eloquent gratitude, which she interrupted almost abruptly: - -'Pray carry no such burden of imaginary debt, and have no scruples in -staying as long as you like; we are a mountain refuge, use it as you -would a monastery. In the winter we have many travellers. We are so -entirely in the heart of the hills that we are bound by all Christian -laws to give a refuge to all who need it. But how came you on the lake -last evening? Could you not read the skies?' - -He explained his own folly and hardihood, and added, with a glance at -her, 'The offending rifle is in the Szalrassee. It was my haste to quit -your dominions that made me venture on to the lake. I had searched in -vain for the high road that you had told me of, and I thought if I -crossed the lake I should be off your soil.' - -'No; for many leagues you would not have been off it,' she answered -him. 'Our lands are very large, and, like the Archbishopric of -Berchtesgarten, are as high as they are broad. Our hills are very -dangerous for strangers, especially until the snows of the passes have -all melted. I repented me too late that I did not send a jäger with you -as a guide.' - -'All is well that ends well,' said the Princess. 'Monsieur is not the -worse for his bath in the lake, and we have the novelty of an incident -and of a guest, who we will hope in the future will become a friend.' - -'Madame, if I dared hope that I should have much to live for!' said the -stranger, and the Princess smiled sweetly upon him. - -'You must have very much to live for, as it is. Were I a man, and as -young as you, and as favoured by nature, I am afraid I should be -tempted to live for--myself.' - -'And I am most glad when I can escape from so poor a companion,' said -he, with a melancholy in the accent and a passing pain that was not -assumed. - -Before this gentle and gracious old woman in this warm and elegant -chamber he felt suddenly that he was a wanderer--perhaps an outcast. - -'You need not use the French language with him, Wanda,' interrupted the -Princess. 'The Marquis speaks admirable German: it is impossible to -speak better.' - -'We will speak our own tongue then,' said Wanda, who always regarded -her aunt as though she were a petted and rather wayward child. 'Are you -quite rested, M. de Sabran? and quite unhurt?' I did not dine with you. -It must have seemed churlish. But I am very solitary in my habits, and -my aunt entertains strangers so much better than I do that I grow more -hermit-like every year.' - -He smiled; he thought there was but little of the hermit in this -woman's supreme elegance and dignity as she stood beside her hearth -with its ruddy, fitful light playing on the great pearls at her throat -and burnishing into gold the bronze shadows of her velvet gown. - -'The Princess has told me that you are cruel to the world,' he answered -her. 'But it is natural with such a kingdom that you seldom care to -leave it.' - -'It is a kingdom of snow for seven months out of the year,' said the -Princess peevishly, 'and a water kingdom the other five. You see what -it is to-day, and this is the middle of May!' - -'I think one might well forget the rain and every other ill between -these four walls,' said the French Marquis, as he glanced around him, -and then slowly let his eyes rest on his châtelaine. - -'It is a grand library,' she answered him; 'but I must warn you that -there is nothing more recent in it than Diderot and Descartes. The -cardinal--Hugo von Szalras--who collected it lived in the latter half -of last century, and since his day no Szalras has been bookish save -myself. The cardinal, however, had all the MSS. and the black letters, -or nearly all, ready to his hand; what he added is a vast library -of science and history, and he also got together some of the most -beautiful missals in the world. Are you curious in such things?' - -She rose as she spoke, and unlocked one of the doors of the oak -bookcase and brought out an ivory missal carved by the marvellous -Prönner of Klagenfurt, with the arms of the Szalras on one side of it -and those of a princely German house on the other. - -'That was the nuptial missal of Georg von Szalras and Ida Windisgratz -in 1501,' she said; 'and these are all the other marriage-hours of our -people, if you care to study them'; and in that case next to this there -is a wonderful Evangelistarium, with miniatures of Angelico's. But I -see they tell all their stories to you; I see by the way you touch them -that you are a connoisseur.' - -'I fear I have studied them chiefly at the sales of the Rue Drouot,' -said Sabran, with a smile; but he had a great deal of sound knowledge -on all arts and sciences, and a true taste which never led him wrong. -With an illuminated chronicle in his hand, or a book of hours on his -knee, he conversed easily, discursively, charmingly, of the early -scribes and the early masters; of monkish painters and of church -libraries; of all the world has lost, and of all aid that art had -brought to faith. - -He talked well, with graceful and well-chosen language, with -picturesque illustration, with a memory that never was at fault for -name or date, or apt quotation; he spoke fluent and eloquent German, in -which there was scarcely any trace of foreign accent; and he disclosed -without effort the resources of a cultured and even learned mind. - -The antagonism she had felt against the poacher of her woods melted -away as she listened and replied to him; there was a melody in his -voice and a charm in his manner that it was not easy to resist; and -with the pale lights from the Italian lamp which swung near upon the -fairness of his face she reluctantly owned that her aunt had been -right: he was singularly handsome, with that uncommon and grand cast -of beauty which in these days is rarer than it was in the times of -Vandyck and of Velasquez--for manners and moods leave their trace on -the features, and this age is not great. - -The Princess in, her easy-chair, for once not sleeping after dinner, -listened to her and thought to herself, 'She is angry with me; but how -much better it is to talk with a living being than to pass the evening -over a philosophical treatise, or the accounts of her schools, or her -stables!' - -Sabran having conquered the momentary reluctance and embarrassment -which had overcome him in the presence of the woman to whom he owed -both an outrage and a rescue, endeavoured, with all the skill he -possessed, to interest and beguile her attention. He knew that she was -a great lady, a proud woman, a recluse, and a student, and a person -averse to homage and flattery of every kind; he met her on the common -ground of art and learning, and could prove himself her equal at all -times, even occasionally her master. When he fancied she had enough of -such serious themes he spoke of music. There was a new opera then out -at Paris, of which the theme was as yet scarcely known. He looked round -the library and said to her: - -'Were there an organ here or a piano I could give you some idea of the -motive; I can recall most of it.' - -'There are both in my own room. It is near here,' she said to him. -'Will you come?' - -Then she led the way across the gallery, which alone separated the -library from that octagon room which was so essentially her own where -all were hers. The Princess accompanied her: content as a child is who -has put a light to a slow match that leads it knows not whither. 'She -must approve of him, or she would not take him there,' thought the wise -Princess. - -'Go and play to us,' said Wanda von Szalras, as her guest entered the -sacred room. 'I am sure you are a great musician; you speak of music -as we only speak of what we love.' - -'What do you love?' he wondered mutely, as he sat down before the -grand piano and struck a few chords. He sat down and played without -prelude one of the most tender and most grave of Schubert's sonatas. -It was subtle, delicate, difficult to interpret, but he gave it with -consummate truth of touch and feeling. He had always loved German music -best. He played on and on, dreamily, with a perfection of skill that -was matched by his tenderness of interpretation. - -'You are a great artist,' said his hostess, as he paused. - -He rose and approached her. - -'Alas! no, I am only an amateur,' he answered her. 'To be an artist one -must needs have immense faith in one's art and in oneself: I have no -faith in anything. An artist steers straight to one goal; I drift.' - -'You have drifted to wise purpose----'You must have studied much?' - -'In my youth. Not since. An artist! Ah! how I envy artists! They -believe; they aspire; even if they never attain, they are happy, happy -in their very torment, and through it, like lovers.' - -'But your talent----' - -'Ah, Madame, it is only talent; it is nothing else. The _feu sacré_ is -wanting.' - -She looked at him with some curiosity. - -'Perhaps the habit of the world has put out that fire: it often does. -But if even it be only talent, what a beautiful talent it is! To -carry all that store of melody safe in your memory--it is like having -sunlight and moonlight ever at command.' - -Lizst had more than once summoned the spirits of Heaven to his call -there in that same room in Hohenszalras; and since his touch no one -had ever made the dumb notes speak as this stranger could do, and the -subdued power of his voice added to the melody he evoked. The light -of the lamps filled with silvery shadows the twilight of the chamber; -the hues of the tapestries, of the ivories, of the gold and silver -work, of the paintings, of the embroideries, made a rich chiaro-oscuro -of colour; the pine cones and the dried thyme burning on the hearth -shed an aromatic smell on the air; there were large baskets and vases -full of hothouse roses and white lilies from the gardens; she sat by -the hearth, left in shadow except where the twilight caught the gleam -of her pearls and the shine of her eyes; she listened, the jewels on -her hand glancing like little stars as she slowly waved to and fro a -feather screen in rhythm with what he sang or played: so might Mary -Stuart have looked, listening to Rizzio or Ronsard. 'She is a queen!' -he thought, and he sang-- - -'Si j'étais Roi!' - -'Go on!' she said, as he paused; he had thrown eloquence and passion -into the song. - -'Shall I not tire you?' - -'That is only a phrase! Save when Liszt passes by here I never hear -such music as yours.' - -'He obeyed her, and played and sang many and very different things. - -At last he rose a little abruptly. - -Two hours had gone by since they had entered the octagon chamber. - -'It would be commonplace to thank you,' she murmured with a little -hesitation. 'You have a great gift; one of all gifts the most generous -to others.' - -He made a gesture of repudiation, and walked across to a spinet of the -fifteenth century, inlaid with curious devices by Martin Pacher of -Brauneck, and having a painting of his in its lid. - -'What a beautiful old box,' he said, as he touched it. 'Has it any -sound, I wonder? If one be disposed to be sad, surely of all sad things -an old spinet is the saddest! To think of the hands that have touched, -of the children that have danced to it, of the tender old ballads that -have been sung to the notes that to us seem so hoarse and so faulty! -All the musicians dead, dead so long ago, and the old spinet still -answering when anyone calls! Shall I sing you a madrigal to it?' - -Very tenderly, very lightly, he touched the ivory keys of the painted -toy of the ladies so long dead and gone, and he sang in a minor key the -sweet, sad, quaint poem:-- - -Où sont les neiges d'antan? - -That ballad of fair women echoed softly through the stillness of the -chamber, touched with the sobbing notes of the spinet, even as it might -have been in the days of its writer: - -Où sont les neiges d'antan? - -The chords of the old music-box seemed to sigh and tremble with -remembrance. Where were they, all the beautiful dead women, all the -fair imperious queens, all the loved, and all the lovers? Where were -they? The snow had fallen through so many white winters since that song -was sung--so many! so many! - -The last words thrilled sadly and sweetly through the silence. - -He rose and bowed very low. - -'I have trespassed too long on your patience, madame; I have the honour -to wish you goodnight.' - -Wanda von Szalras was not a woman quickly touched to any emotion, but -her eyelids were heavy with a mist of unshed tears, as she raised them -and looked up from the fire, letting drop on her lap the screen of -plumes. - -'If there be a Lorelei in our lake, no wonder from envy she tried to -drown you,' she said, with a smile that cost her a little effort. -Good-night, sir; should you wish to leave us in the morning, Hubert -will see you reach S. Johann safely and as quickly as can be.' - -'Your goodness overwhelms me,' he murmured. 'I can never hope to show -my gratitude----' - -'There is nothing to be grateful for,' she said quickly. 'And if there -were, you would have repaid it: you have made a spinet, silent for -centuries, speak, and speak to our hearts. Good-night, sir; may you -have good rest and a fair journey!' - -When he had bowed himself out, and the tapestry of the door had closed -behind him, she rose and looked at a clock. - -'It is actually twelve!' - -'Acknowledge at least that he has made the evening pass well!' said -the Princess, with a little petulance and much triumph. - -'He has made it pass admirably,' said her niece. 'At the same time, -dear aunt, I think it would have been perhaps better if you had not -made a friend of a stranger.' - -'Why?' said the Princess with some asperity. - -'Because I think we can fulfil all the duties of hospitality without -doing so, and we know nothing of this gentleman.' - -'He is certainly a gentleman,' said the Princess, with not less -asperity. 'It seems to me, my dear Wanda, that you are for once in your -life--if you will pardon me the expression--ill-natured.' - -The Countess Wanda smiled a little. - -'I cannot imagine myself ill-natured; but I may be so. One never knows -oneself.' - -'And ungrateful,' added the Princess. 'When, I should like to know, -have you for years reached twelve o'clock at night without being -conscious of it?' - -'Oh, he sang beautifully, and he played superbly,' said her niece, -still with the same smile, balancing her ostrich-feathers. 'But let him -go on his way to-morrow; you and I cannot entertain strange men, even -though they give us music like Rubenstein's.' - -'If Egon were here----' - -'Oh, poor Egon! I think he would not like your friend at all. They both -want to shoot eagles----' - -'Perhaps he would not like him for another reason,' said the Princess, -with a look of mystery. 'Egon could never make the spinet speak.' - -'No; but who knows? Perhaps he can take better care of his own soul -because he cannot lend one to a spinet!' - -'You are perverse, Wanda!' - -'Perverse, inhospitable, and ill-natured? I fear I shall carry a heavy -burden of sins to Father Ferdinand in the morning!' - -'I wish you would not send horses to S. Johann in the morning. We never -have anything to amuse us in this solemn solitary place.' - -'Dear aunt, one would think you were very indiscreet.' - -'I wish you were more so!' said the pretty old lady with impatience, -and then her hand made a sign over the cross of emeralds, for she -knew that she had uttered an unholy wish. She kissed her niece with -repentant tenderness, and went to her own apartments. - -Wanda von Szalras, left alone in her chamber, stood awhile thoughtfully -beside the fire; then she moved away and touched the yellow ivory of -the spinet keys. - -'Why could he make them speak,' she said to herself, 'when everyone -else always failed?' - - - - -CHAPTER IV. - - -Sabran, as he undressed himself and laid himself down under the great -gold-fringed canopy of the stately bed, thought: 'Was I only a clever -comedian to-night, or did my eyes really grow wet as I sang that old -song and see her face through a mist as if she and I had met in the old -centuries long ago?' - -He stood and looked a moment at his own reflection in the great mirror -with the wax candles burning in its sconces. He was very pale. - -Où sont les neiges d'antan? - -The burden of it ran through his mind. - -Almost it seemed to him long ago--long ago--she had been his lady and -he her knight, and she had stooped to him, and he had died for her. -Then he laughed a little harshly. - -'I grow that best of all actors,' he thought, 'an actor who believes in -himself!' - -Then he turned from the mirror and stretched himself on the great -bed, with its carved warriors at its foot and its golden crown at its -head, and its heavy amber tissues shining in the shadows. He was a -sound sleeper at all times. He had slept peacefully on a wreck, in -a hurricane, in a lonely hut on the Andes, as after a night of play -in Paris, in Vienna, in Monaco. He had a nerve of steel, and that -perfect natural constitution which even excess and dissipation cannot -easily impair. But this night, under the roof of Hohenszalras, in the -guest-chamber of Hohenszalras, he could not summon sleep at his will, -and he lay long wide awake and restless, watching the firelight play on -the figures upon the tapestried walls, where the lords and ladies of -Tuscan Boccaccio and their sinful loves were portrayed in stately and -sombre guise, and German costumes of the days of Maximilian. - -Où sont les neiges d'antan? - -The line of the old romaunt ran through his brain, and when towards -dawn he did at length fall asleep it was not of Hohenszalras that he -dreamed, but of wide white steppes, of a great ice-fed rolling river, -of monotonous pine woods, with the gilded domes of a half eastern city -rising beyond them in the pale blue air of a northern twilight. - -With the early morning he awoke, resolute to get away be the weather -what it would. As it chanced, the skies were heavy still, but no rain -fell; the sun was faintly struggling through the great black masses of -cloud; the roads might be dangerous, but they were not impassable; the -bridge over the Bürgenbach might be broken, but at least Matrey could -be reached, if it were not possible to go on farther to Taxenbach or S. -Johann im Wald. High north, where far away stretched the wild marshes -and stony swamps of the Pinzgau (the Pinzgau so beautiful, where in its -hilly district the grand Salzach rolls on its impetuous way beneath -deep shade of fir-clad hills, tracks desolate as a desert of sand or -stone), the sky was overcast, and of an angry tawny colour that brooded -ill for the fall of night. But the skies were momentarily clear, and he -desired to rid of his presence the hospitable roof beneath which he was -but an alien and unbidden. - -He proposed to leave on foot, but of this neither Greswold nor the -major-domo would hear: they declared that such an indignity would -dishonour the Hohenszalrasburg for evermore. Guests there were masters. -'Bidden guests, perhaps,' said Sabran, reluctantly yielding to be -sped on his way by a pair of the strong Hungarian horses that he had -seen and admired in their stalls. He did not venture to disturb the -ladies of the castle by a request for a farewell audience at the early -hour at which it was necessary he should depart if he wished to try -to reach a railway the same evening, but he left two notes for them, -couched in that graceful compliment of which his Parisian culture made -him an admirable master, and took a warm adieu of the good physician, -with a promise not to forget the orchid of the Spiritù Santo. Then he -breakfasted hastily, and left the tapestried chamber in which he had -dreamed of the Nibelungen Queen. - -At the door he drew a ring of great value from his finger and passed it -to Hubert, but the old man, thanking him, protested he dared not take -it. - -'Old as I am in her service,' he said, 'the Countess would dismiss me -in an hour if I accepted any gifts from a guest.' - -'Your lady is very severe,' said Sabran. 'It is happy for her she has -servitors who subscribe to feudalism. If she were in Paris----' - -'We are bound to obey,' said the old man, simply. 'The Countess deals -with us most generously and justly. We are bound, in return, to render -her obedience.' - -'All the antique virtues have indeed found refuge here!' said Sabran; -but he left the ring behind him lying on a table in the Rittersäal. - -Four instead of two vigorous and half-broke horses from the Magyar -plains bore him away in a light travelling carriage towards the -Virgenthal; the household, with Herr Joachim at their head, watching -with regret the travelling carriage wind up amongst the woods and -disappear on the farther side of the lake. He himself looked back with -a pang of envy and regret at the stately pile towering towards the -clouds, with its deep red banner streaming out on the wind that blew -from the northern plains. - -'Happy woman!' he thought; 'happy--thrice happy--to possess such -dominion, such riches, and such ancestry! If I had had them I would -have had the world under my foot as well!' - -It was with a sense of pain that he saw the great house disappear -behind its screen of mantling woods, as his horses climbed the hilly -path beyond, higher and higher at every step, until all that he saw -of Hohenszalras was a strip of the green lake--green as an arum -leaf--lying far down below, bearing on its waters the grey willows of -the Holy Isle. - -'When I am very old and weary I will come and die there,' he thought, -with a touch of that melancholy which all his irony and cynicism could -not dispel from his natural temper. There were moments when he felt -that he was but a lonely and homeless wanderer on the face of the -earth, and this was one of those moments, as, alone, he went upon his -way along the perilous path, cut along the face of precipitous rocks, -passing over rough bridges that spanned deep defiles and darkening -ravines, clinging to the side of a mountain as a swallow's nest clings -to the wall of a house, and running high on swaying galleries above -dizzy depths, where nameless torrents plunged with noise and foam into -impenetrable chasms. The road had been made in the fifteenth century by -the Szalras lords themselves, and the engineering of it was bold and -vigorous though rude, and kept in sound repair, though not much changed. - -He had left a small roll of paper lying beside the ring in the knight's -hall. Hubert took them both to his mistress when, a few hours later, -he was admitted to her presence. Opening the paper she saw a roll of a -hundred napoleons, and on the paper was written, 'There can be no poor -where the Countess von Szalras rules. Let these be spent in masses for -the dead.' - -'What a delicate and graceful sentiment,' said the Princess Ottilie, -with vivacity and emotion. - -'It is prettily expressed and gracefully thought of,' her niece -admitted. - -'Charmingly--admirably!' said the Princess, with a much warmer accent. -'There is delicate gratitude there, as well as a proper feeling towards -a merciful God.' - -'Perhaps,' said her niece, with a little smile, 'the money was won at -play, in giving someone else what they call a _culotte_; what would you -say then, dear aunt? Would it be purified by entering the service of -the Church?' - -'I do not know why you are satirical,' said the Princess; 'and I cannot -tell either how you can bring yourself to use Parisian bad words.' - -'I will send these to the Bishop,' said Wanda, rolling up the gold. -'Alas! alas! there are always poor. As for the ring, Hubert, give it to -Herr Greswold, and he will transmit it to this gentleman's address in -Paris, as though it had been left behind by accident. You were so right -not to take it; but my dear people are always faithful.' - -These few words were dearer and more precious to the honest old man -than all the jewels in the world could ever have become. But the offer -of it and the gift of the gold for the Church's use had confirmed the -high opinion in which he and the whole household of Hohenszalras held -the departed guest. - -'Allow at least that this evening will be much duller than last!' said -the Princess, with much irritation. - -'Your friend played admirably,' said Wanda von Szalras, as she sat at -her embroidery frame. - -'You speak as if he were an itinerant pianist! What is your dislike to -your fellow creatures, when they are of your own rank, based upon? If -he had been a carpet-dealer from the Defreggerthal, as I said before, -you would have bidden him stay a month.' - -'Dearest aunt, be reasonable. How was it possible to keep here on a -visit a French Marquis of whom we know absolutely nothing, except from -himself?' - -'I never knew you were prudish!' - -'I never knew either that I was,' said the Countess Wanda, with her -serene temper unruffled. 'I quite admit your new friend has many -attractive qualities--on the surface at any rate; but if it were -possible for me to be angry with you, I should be so for bringing him -as you did into the library last night.' - -'You would never have known your spinet could speak if I had not. You -are very ungrateful, and I should not be in the least surprised to find -that he was a Crown Prince or a Grand Duke travelling incognito.' - -'We know them all, I fear.' - -'It is strange he should not have his name in the Hof-Kalender, beside -the Sabran-Pontêves!' insisted the Princess. 'He looks _prince du -sang_, if ever anyone did; so----' - -'There is good blood outside your Hof Kalender, dear mother mine.' - -'Certainly,' said the Princess, 'he must surely be a branch of that -family, though it would be more satisfactory if one found his record -there. One can never know too much or too certainly of a person whom -one admits to friendship.' - -'Friendship is a very strong word,' said Wanda von Szalras, with a -smile. 'This gentleman has only made a hostelry of Hohenszalras for a -day or two, and even that was made against his will. But as you are so -interested in him, _meine Liebe_, read this little record I have found.' - -She gave the Princess an old leather-bound volume of memoirs, written -and published at Lausanne, by an obscure noble in his exile, in the -year 1798. She had opened the book at one of the pages that narrated -the fates of many nobles of Brittany, relatives or comrades of the -writer. - -'And foremost amongst these,' said this little book, 'do I ever and -unceasingly regret the loss of my beloved cousin and friend, Yvon -Marquis de Sabran-Romaris. So beloved was he in his own province that -even the Convention was afraid to touch him, and being poor, despite -his high descent, as his father had ruined his fortunes in play and -splendour at the court of Louis XV., he thought to escape the general -proscription, and dwell peaceably on his rock-bound shores with his -young children. But the blood madness of the time so grew upon the -nation that even the love of his peasantry and his own poverty could -not defend him, and one black, bitter day an armed mob from Vannes -came over the heath, burning all they saw of ricks, or homesteads, or -châteaux, or cots, that they might warm themselves by those leaping -fires; and so they came on at last, yelling, and drunk, and furious, -with torches flaming and pikes blood-stained, up through the gates of -Romaris. Sabran went out to meet them, leading his eldest son by the -hand, a child of eight years old. "What seek ye?" he said to them: "I -am as poor as the poorest of you, and consciously have done no living -creature wrong. What do you come for here?" The calm courage of him, -and the glance of his eyes, which were very beautiful and proud, -quelled the disordered, mouthing, blood-drunk multitude in a manner, -and moved them to a sort of reverence, so that the leader of them, -stepping forth, said roughly, 'Citizen, we come to slit your throat -and burn your house; but if you will curse God and the King, and cry -'Long live the sovereign people!' we will leave you alone, for you -have been the friend of the poor. Come, say it!--come, shout it with -both lungs!--it is not much to ask? Sabran put his little boy behind -him with a tender gesture, then kissed the hilt of his sword, which he -held unsheathed in his hand: "I sorrow for the people," he said, "since -they are misguided and mad. But I believe in my God and I love my King, -and even so shall my children do after me;" and the words were scarce -out of his mouth before a score of pikes ran him through the body, and -the torches were tossed into his house, and he and his perished like -so many gallant gentlemen of the time, a prey to the blind fury of an -ingrate mob.' - -The Princess Ottilie's tender eyes moistened as she read, and she -closed the volume reverently, as though it were a sacred thing. - -'I thank you for sending me such a history,' she said. 'It does one's -soul good in these sad, bitter days of spiritless selfishness and -utter lack of all impersonal devotion. This gentleman must, then, be a -descendant of the child named in this narrative?' - -'The story says that he and his perished,' replied her niece. 'But I -suppose that child, or some other younger one, escaped the fire and the -massacre. If ever we see him again, we will ask him. Such a tradition -is as good as a page in the Almanac de Gotha.' - -'It is,' accented the Princess. 'Where did you find it?' - -'I read those memoirs when I was a child, with so many others of that -time,' answered the Countess Wanda. 'When I heard the name of your new -friend it seemed familiar to me, and thinking over it, I remembered -these Breton narratives.' - -'At least you need not have been afraid to dine with him!' said -the Princess Ottilie, who could never resist having the last word, -though she felt that the retort was a little ungenerous, and perhaps -undeserved. - -Meantime Sabran went on his way through the green valley under the -shadow of the Klein and the Kristallwand, with the ice of the great -Schaltten Gletscher descending like a huge frozen torrent. When he -reached the last stage before Matrey he dismissed his postillions with -a gratuity as large as the money remaining in his belt would permit, -and insisted on taking his way on foot over the remaining miles. -Baggage he had none, and he had not even the weight of his knapsack and -rifle. The men remonstrated with him, for they were afraid of their -lady's anger if they returned when they were still half a German mile -off their destination. But he was determined, and sent them backwards, -whilst they could yet reach home by daylight. The path to Matrey passed -across pastures and tracts of stony ground; he took a little goatherd -with him as a guide, being unwilling to run the risk of a second -misadventure, and pressed on his way without delay. - -The sun had come forth from out a watery world of cloud and mist, -which shrouded from sight all the domes and peaks and walls of ice -of the mountain region in which he was once more a wanderer. But -when the mists had lifted, and the sun was shining, it was beautiful -exceedingly: all the grasses were full of the countless wild flowers of -the late Austrian spring; the swollen brooks were blue with mouse-ear, -and the pastures with gentian; clumps of daffodils blossomed in all -the mossy nooks, and hyacinths purpled the pine-woods. On the upper -slopes the rain-fog still hung heavily, but the sun-rays pierced it -here and there, and the white vaporous atmosphere was full of fantastic -suggestions and weird half-seen shapes, as pine-trees loomed out of -the mist or a vast black mass of rock towered above the clouds. A -love of nature, of out-of-door movement, of healthful exercise and -sports, resisted in him the enervating influences of the Paris life -which he had led. He had always left the gay world at intervals for -the simple and rude pleasures of the mountaineer and the hunter. There -was an impulse towards that forest freedom which at times mastered -him, and made the routine of worldly dissipation and diversion wholly -intolerable to him. It was what his fair critic of Paris had called his -barbarism, which broke up out of the artificial restraints and habits -imposed by the world. - -His wakeful night had made him fanciful, and his departure from -Hohenszalras had made him regretful; for he, on his way back to Paris -and all his habits and associates and pleasures, looking around him -on the calm white mountain-sides, and penetrated by the pure, austere -mountain silence, suddenly felt an intense desire to stay amidst that -stillness and that solitude, and rest here in the green heart of the -Tauern. - -'Who knows but one might see her again?' he thought, as the sound of -the fall of the Gschlossbach came on his ear from the distance. That -stately figure seated by the great wood fire, with the light on her -velvet skirts, and the pearls at her throat, and the hounds lying -couched beside her, was always before his memory and his vision. - -And he paid and dismissed his goatherd at the humble door of the Zum -Rautter in Windisch-Matrey, and that evening began discussing with -Christ Rangediner and Egger, the guides there, the ascent of the -Kahralpe and the Lasörling, and the pass to Krimml, over the ice crests -of the Venediger group. - -A mountaineer who had dwelt beneath the shadow of Orizaba was not -common in the heart of the Tauern, and the men made much of their new -comrade, not the less because the gold pieces rattled in his pouch, and -the hunting-watch he earned had jewels at its back. - -'If anyone had told me that in the Mois de Marie I should bury myself -under an Austrian glacier!' he thought, with some wonder at his -own decision, for he was one of those foster-sons of Paris to whom -_parisine_ is an habitual and necessary intoxication. - -But there comes a time when even parisine, like chloral, ceases to -have power to charm; in a vague way he had often felt the folly and -the hollowness of the life that turned night into day, made the green -cloth of the gaming-table the sole field of battle, and offered as -all form of love the purchased smile of the _belle petite._ A sense of -repose and of freshness, like the breath of a cool morning blowing on -tired eyes, came to him as he sat in the grey twilight amidst the green -landscape, with the night coming down upon the eternal snows above, -whilst the honest, simple souls around him talked of hill perils and -mountaineers' adventures, and all the exploits of a hardy life; and in -the stillness, when their voices ceased, there was no sound but the -sound of water up above amidst the woods, tumbling and rippling in a -hundred unseen brooks and falls. - -'If they had let me alone,' he thought, 'I should have been a hunter -all my days; a guide, perhaps, like this Christ and this Egger here. An -honest man, at least----' - -His heart was heavy and his conscience ill at ease. The grand, serene -glance of Wanda von Szalras seemed to have reached his soul and called -up in him unavailing regrets, pangs of doubt long dormant, vague -remorse long put to sleep with the opiate of the world-taught cynicism, -which had become his second nature. The most impenetrable cynicism will -yield and melt, and seem but a poor armour, when it is brought amidst -the solemnity and solitude of the high hills. - - - - -CHAPTER V. - - -A few days later there arrived by post the 'Spiritù Santo' of Mexico, -addressed to the Professor Joachim Greswold. - -If he had received the order of the Saint Esprit he would not have -been more honoured, more enchanted; and he was deeply touched by the -remembrance of him testified by the gift whose donor he supposed -was back in the gay world of men, not knowing the spell which the -snow mountains of the Tauern had cast on a worldly soul. When he was -admitted to the presence of the Princess Ottilie to consult with her -on her various ailments, she conversed with him of this passer-by who -had so fascinated her fancy, and she even went so far as to permit him -to bring her the great volumes of the "Mexico" out of the library, -and point her out those chapters which he considered most likely to -interest her. - -'It is the work of a true Catholic and gentleman,' she said with -satisfaction, and perused with special commendation the passages which -treated of the noble conduct of the Catholic priesthood in those -regions, their frequent martyrdom and their devoted self-negation. When -she had thoroughly identified their late guest with the editor of these -goodly and blameless volumes, she was content to declare that better -credentials no man could bear. Indeed she talked so continually of -this single point of interest in her monotonous routine of life, that -her niece said to her, with a jest that was more than half earnest, -'Dearest mother, almost you make me regret that this gentleman did -not break his neck over the Engelhorn, or sink with his rifle in the -Szalrassee.' - -'The spinet would never have spoken,' said the Princess; 'and I am -surprised that a Christian woman can say such things, even in joke!' - -The weather cleared, the sun shone, the gardens began to grow gorgeous, -and great parterres of roses glowed between the emerald of the velvet -lawns: an Austrian garden has not a long life, but it has a very -brilliant one. All on a sudden, as the rains ceased, every alley, -group, and terrace were filled with every variety of blossom, and -the flora of Africa and India was planted out side by side with the -gentians and the alpine roses natural to the soil. All the northern -coniferæ spread the deep green of their branches above the turf, and -the larch, the birch, the beech, and the oak were massed in clusters, -or spread away in long avenues--deep defiles of foliage through which -the water of the lake far down below glistened like a jewel. - -'If your friend had been a fortnight later he would have seen -Hohenszalras in all its beauty,' said its mistress once to the -Princess Ottilie. 'It has two seasons of perfection: one its midsummer -flowering, and the other when all the world is frozen round it.' - -The Princess shivered in retrospect and in anticipation. She hated -winter. 'I should never live through another winter,' she said with a -sigh. - -'Then you shall not be tried by one; we will go elsewhere,' said Wanda, -to whom the ice-bound world, the absolute silence, the sense of the -sleigh flying over the hard snow, the perfect purity of the rarefied -air of night and day, made up the most welcome season of the year. - -'I suppose it is dull for you,' she added, indulgently. 'I have so -many occupations in the winter; a pair of skates and a sleigh are to me -of all forms of motion the most delightful. But you, shut up in your -blue-room, do no doubt find our winter hard and long.' - -'I hybernate, I do not live,' said the Princess, pettishly. 'It is not -even as if the house were full.' - -'With ill-assorted guests whose cumbersome weariness one would have -to try all day long to dissipate! Oh, my dear aunt, of all wearisome -_corvées_ the world holds there is nothing so bad as a house -party--even when Egon is here to lead the cotillion and the hunting.' - -'You are very inhospitable!' - -'That is the third time lately you have made that charge against me. I -begin to fear that I must deserve it.' - -'You deserve it, certainly. Oh, you are hospitable to the poor. You set -pedlars, or mule-drivers, or travelling clockmakers, by the dozen round -your hall fires, and you would feed a pilgrimage all the winter long. -But to your own order, to your own society, you are inhospitable. In -your mother's time the Schloss had two hundred guests for the autumn -parties, and then the winter season, from Carnival to Easter, was -always spent in the capital.' - -'She liked that, I suppose.' - -'Of course she liked it; everyone ought to like it at what was her age -then, and what is yours now.' - -'I like this,' said the Countess Wanda, to change the subject, as -the servants set a little Japanese tea-table and two arm-chairs of -gilt osier-work under one of the Siberian pines, whose boughs spread -tent-like over the grass, on which the dogs were already stretched in -anticipation of sugar and cakes. - -From this lawn there were seen only the old keep of the burg and the -turrets and towers of the rest of the building; ivy clambered over -one-half of the great stone pile, that had been raised with hewn -rock in the ninth century; and some arolla pines grew about it. A -low terrace, with low broad steps, separated it from the gardens. A -balustrade of stone, ivy-mantled, protected the gardens from the rocks; -while these plunged in a perpendicular descent of a hundred feet into -the lake. Some black yews and oaks, very large and old, grew against -the low stone pillars. It was a favourite spot with the mistress of -Hohenszalras; it looked westward, and beyond the masses of the vast -forests there shone the snow summit of the Venediger and the fantastic -peaks of the Klein and Kristallwand, whilst on a still day there could -be heard a low sound which she, familiar with it, knew came from the -thunder of the subterranean torrents filling the Szalrassee. - -'Oh, it is very nice,' said the Princess, a little deprecatingly. 'And -of course I at my years want nothing better than a gilt chair in the -sunshine. But then there is so very little sunshine! The chair must -generally stand by the stove! And I confess that I think it would be -fitter for your years and your rank if these chairs were multiplied -by ten or twenty, and if there were some pretty people laughing and -talking and playing games in those great gardens.' - -'It is glorious weather now,' said her niece, who would not assent and -did not desire to dispute. - -'Yes,' interrupted the Princess. 'But it will rain to-morrow. You know -we never have two fine days together.' - -'We will take it while we have it, and be thankful,' said Wanda, with a -good-humour that refused to be ruffled. 'Here is Hubert coming out to -us. What can he want? He looks very startled and alarmed.' - -The old major-domo's face was indeed gravely troubled, as he bowed -before his lady. - -'Pardon me the intrusion, my Countess,' he said hurriedly. 'But I -thought it right to inform you myself that a lad has come over from -Steiner's Inn to say that the foreign gentleman who was here fifteen -days ago has had an accident on the Umbal glacier. It seems he stayed -on in Matrey for sake of the climbing and the shooting. I do not make -out from the boy what the accident was, but the Umbal is very dangerous -at this season. The gentleman lies now at Pregratten. You know, my -ladies, what a very wretched place that is.' - -'I suppose they have come for the Herr Professor?' said Wanda, vaguely -disturbed, while the Princess very sorrowfully was putting a score of -irrelevant questions which Hubert could not answer. - -'No doubt he has no doctor there, and these people send for that -reason,' said Wanda, interrupting with an apology for the useless -interrogations. 'Get horses ready directly, and send for Greswold at -once wherever he may be. But it is a long bad way to Pregratten; I do -not see how he can return under twenty-four hours.' - -'Let him stay two nights, if he be wanted,' said the Princess, to whom -she spoke. She had always insisted that the physician should never be -an hour out of Hohenszalras whilst she was in it. - -'Your friend has been trying to shoot a _kuttengeier_ again, I -suppose,' said her niece, with a smile. 'He is very adventurous.' - -'And you are very heartless.' - -Wanda did not deny the charge; but she went into the house, saw the -doctor, and requested him to take everything with him of linen, wines, -food, or cordials that might possibly be wanted. - -'And stay as long as you are required,' she added, 'and send mules -over to us for anything you wish for. Do not think of us. If my dear -aunt should ail anything I can dispatch a messenger to you, or call a -physician from Salzburg.' - -Herr Joachim said a very few words, thanked her gratefully, and took -his departure behind two sure-footed mountain cobs that could climb -almost like chamois. - -'I think one of the Fathers should have gone too,' said Mme. Ottilie, -regretfully. - -'I hope he is not _in extremis_,' said her niece. 'And I fear if he -were he would hardly care for spiritual assistance.' - -'You are so prejudiced against him, Wanda!' - -'I do not think I am ever prejudiced,' said the Countess von Szalras. - -'That is so like a prejudiced person!' said the Princess, triumphantly. - -For twenty-four hours they heard nothing from Pregratten, which is in -itself a miserable little hamlet lying amidst some of the grandest -scenes that the earth holds: towards evening the next day a lad of the -village came on a mule and brought a letter to his ladies from the Herr -Professor, who wrote that the accident had been due, as usual, to the -gentleman's own carelessness, and to the fact of the snow being melted -by the midsummer sun until it was a thin crust over a deep crevasse. -He had found his patient suffering from severe contusions, high fever, -lethargy, and neuralgic pains, but he did not as yet consider there -were seriously dangerous symptoms. He begged permission to remain, and -requested certain things to be sent to him from his medicine-chests and -the kitchens. - -The boy slept at Hohenszalras that night, and in the morning returned -over the hills to Pregratten with all the doctor had asked for. Wanda -selected the medicines herself, and sent also some fruit and wine for -which he did not ask: the Princess sent a bone of S. Ottilie in an -ivory case and the assurance of her constant prayers. She was sincerely -anxious and troubled. 'Such a charming person, and so handsome,' she -said again and again. 'I suppose the priest of Pregratten is with -him.' Her niece did not remind her that her physician did not greatly -love any priests whatever, though on that subject he was always -discreetly mute at Hohenszalras. - -For the next ten days Greswold stayed at Pregratten, and the Princess -bore his absence, since it was to serve a person who had had the good -fortune to fascinate her, and whom also she chose to uphold because her -niece was, as she considered, unjust to him. Moreover, life at the burg -was very dull to the Princess, whatever it might be to its châtelaine, -who had so much interest in its farms, its schools, its mountains, and -its villages: an interest which to her great-aunt seemed quite out of -place, as all those questions, she considered, should belong to the -priesthood and the stewards, who ought not to be disturbed in their -direction, the one of spiritual and the other of agricultural matters. -This break in the monotony of her time was agreeable to her--of the -bulletins from Pregratten, of the dispatch of all that was wanted, -of the additional pleasure of complaining that she was deprived of -her doctor's counsels, and also of feeling at the same time that in -enduring this deprivation she was doing a charitable and self-denying -action. She further insisted on sending out to Steiner's Inn, greatly -to his own discomfort, her own confessor. - -'Nobles of Brittany have always deep religious feeling,' she said to -her niece; 'and Father Ferdinand has such skill and persuasion with the -dying.' - -'But no one is dying,' said Wanda, a little impatiently. - -'That is more than any human being can tell,' said the Princess, -piously. 'At all events, Father Ferdinand always uses every occasion -judiciously and well.' - -Father Ferdinand, however, was not very comfortable in Pregratten, and -soon returned, much jolted and worn by the transit on a hill pony. -He was reserved about his visitation, and told his patroness sadly -that he had been unable to effect much spiritual good, but that the -stranger was certainly recovering from his hurts, and had the ivory -case of S. Ottilie on his pillow; he had seemed averse, however, to -confession, and therefore, of course, there had been no possibility for -administration of the Sacrament. - -The Princess was inclined to set this rebelliousness down to the fault -of the physician, and determined to talk seriously to Greswold on -spiritual belief as soon as he should return. - -'If he be not orthodox we cannot keep him,' she said severely. - -'He is orthodox, dear aunt,' said Wanda von Szalras, with a smile. 'He -adores the wonders of every tiny blossom that blows, and every little -moss that clothes the rocks.' - -'What a profane, almost sacrilegious answer!' said the Princess. 'I -never should have imagined that _you_ would have jested on sacred -themes.' - -'I did not intend a jest. I was never more serious. A life like our old -Professor's is a perpetual prayer.' - -'Your great-aunt Walburga belonged to the Perpetual Adoration,' -rejoined the Princess, who only heard the last word but one. 'The order -was very severe. I always think it too great a strain on finite human -powers. She was betrothed to the Margraf Paul, but he was killed at -Austerlitz, and she took refuge in a life of devotion. I always used -to think that you would change Hohenszalras into a sacred foundation; -but now I am afraid. You are a deeply religious woman, Wanda--at least -I have always thought so--but you read too much German and French -philosophy, and I fear it takes something from your fervour, from your -entirety of devotion. You have a certain liberty of expression that -alarms me at times.' - -'I think it is a poor faith that dares not examine its adversaries' -charges,' said her niece, quietly. 'You would have faith blindfolded. -They call me a bigot at the Court, however. So you see it is hard to -please all.' - -'Bigot is not a word for a Christian and Catholic sovereign to employ,' -said the Princess, severely. 'Her Majesty must know that there can -never be too great an excess in faith and service.' - -On the eleventh day Greswold returned over the hills and was admitted -to immediate audience with his ladies. - -'Herr von Sabran is well enough for me to leave him,' he said, after -his first very humble salutations. 'But if your excellencies permit -it would be desirable for me to return there in a day or two. Yes, -my ladies, he is lying at Steiner's Inn in Pregratten, a poor place -enough, but your goodness supplied much that was lacking in comfort. -He can be moved before long. There was never any great danger, but it -was a very bad accident. He is a good mountaineer it seems, and he had -been climbing a vast deal in the Venediger group; that morning he meant -to cross the Umbal glacier to the Ahrenthal, and he refused to take a -guide, so Isaiah Steiner tells me.' - -'But I thought he left here to go to Paris?' - -'He did so, my Countess,' answered the doctor. 'But it seems he loves -the mountains, and their spell fell on him. When he sent back your -postillions he went on foot to Matrey, and there he remained; he -thought the weather advanced enough to make climbing safe; but it is -a dangerous pastime so early in summer, though Christ from Matrey, -who came over to see him, tells me he is of the first form as a -mountaineer. He reached the Clarahutte safely, and broke his fast -there; crossing the Umbal the ice gave way, and he fell into a deep -crevasse. He would be a dead man if a hunter on the Welitz side had -not seen him disappear and given the alarm at the hut. With ropes and -men enough they contrived to haul him up, after some hours, from a -great depth. These accidents are very common, and he has to thank his -own folly in going out on to the glacier unaccompanied. Of course he -was insensible, contused, and in high fever when I reached there: the -surgeon they had called from Lienz was an ignorant, who would soon -have sent him for ever to as great a deep as the crevasse. He is very -grateful to you both, my ladies, and would be more so were he not so -angry with himself that it makes him sullen with the world. Men of his -kind bear isolation and confinement ill. Steiner's is a dull place: -there is nothing to hear but the tolling of the church bell and the -fret of the Isel waters.' - -'That means, my friend, that you want him moved as soon as he can -bear it?' said Wanda. 'I think he cannot very well come here. We know -nothing of him. But there is no reason why you should not bring him -to the Lake Monastery. There is a good guest-chamber (the Archbishop -stayed there once), and he could have your constant care there, and -from here every comfort.' - -'Why should he not be brought to this house?' interrupted Mme. Ottilie; -'there are fifty men in it already----' - -'Servants and priests, no strangers. Beside, this gentleman will be -much more at his ease on the Holy Isle, where he can recompense the -monks at his pleasure; he would feel infinitely annoyed to be further -burdened with a hospitality he never asked!' - -'Of course it is as you please!' said the Princess, a little irritably. - -'Dear aunt! when he is on the island you can send him all the luxuries -and all the holy books you may think good for him. Go over to the monks -if you will be so kind, Herr Joachim, and prepare them for a sick -guest; and as for transport and all the rest of the assistance you may -need, use the horses and the household as you see fit. I give you carte -blanche. I know your wisdom and your prudence and your charity.' - -The physician again returned to Pregratten, where he found his patient -fretting with restless impatience at his enforced imprisonment. He had -a difficulty in persuading Sabran to go back to that Szalrassee which -had cost him so dear; but when he was assured that he could pay the -monks what he chose for their hospitality, he at last consented to be -taken to the island. - -'I shall see her again,' he thought, with a little anger at himself. -The mountain spirits had their own way of granting wishes, but they had -granted his. - -On the Holy Isle of the Szalrassee there was a small Dominican -congregation, never more than twelve, of men chiefly peasant-born, -and at this time all advanced in years. The monastery was a low, grey -pile, almost hidden beneath the great willows and larches of the isle, -but rich within from many centuries of gifts in art from the piety of -the lords of Szaravola. It had two guest-chambers for male visitors, -which were lofty and hung with tapestry, and which looked down the lake -towards the north and west, to where beyond the length of water there -rose the mighty forest hills washed by the Salzach and the Ache, backed -by the distant Rhœtian Alps. - -The island was almost in the centre of the lake, and, at a distance -of three miles, the rocks, on which the castle stood, faced it across -the water that rippled around it and splashed its trees and banks. It -was a refuge chosen in wild and rough times when repose was precious, -and no spot on earth was ever calmer, quieter, more secluded than this -where the fishermen never landed without asking a blessing of those who -dwelt there, and nothing divided the hours except the bells that called -to prayer or frugal food. The green willows and the green waters met -and blended and covered up this house of peace as a warbler's nest is -hidden in the reeds. A stranger resting-place had never befallen the -world-tossed, restless, imperious, and dissatisfied spirit of the man -who was brought there by careful hands lying on a litter, on a raft, -one gorgeous evening of a summer's day--one month after he had lifted -his rifle to bring down the _kuttengeier_ in the woods of Wanda von -Szalras. - -'Almost thou makest me believe,' he murmured, when he lay and looked -upward at the cross that shone against the evening skies, while the -raft glided slowly over the water, and from the walled retreat upon the -isle there came the low sound of the monks chanting their evensong. - -They laid him down on a low, broad bed opposite a window of three -bays, which let him look from his couch along the shining length of the -Szalrassee towards the great burg, where it frowned upon its wooded -cliffs with the stone brows of many mountains towering behind it, and -behind them the glaciers of the Glöckner and its lesser comrades. - -The sun had just then set. There was a lingering glow upon the water, -a slender moon had risen above a distant chain of pine-clothed hills, -the slow, soft twilight of the German Alps was bathing the grandeur of -the scene with tenderest, faintest colours and mists ethereal. The Ave -Maria was ringing from the chapel, and presently the deep bells of the -monastery chimed a Laus Deus. - -'Do you believe in fate?' said Sabran abruptly to his companion -Greswold. - -The old physician gave a little gesture of doubt. - -'Sometimes there seems something stronger than ourselves and our will, -but maybe it is only our own weakness that has risen up and stands -in another shape like a giant before us, as our shadow will do on a -glacier in certain seasons and states of the atmosphere.' - -'Perhaps that is all,' said Sabran. But he laid his head back on his -pillow with a deep breath that had in it an equal share of contentment -and regret, and lay still, looking eastward, while the peaceful night -came down upon land and water unbroken by any sound except that of a -gentle wind stirring amidst the willows or the plunge of an otter in -the lake. - -That deep stillness was strange to him who had lived so long in all the -gayest cities of the world; but it was welcome: it seemed like a silent -blessing: his life seemed to stand still while holy men prayed for him -and the ramparts of the mountains shut out the mad and headlong world. - -With these fancies he fell asleep and dreamed of pathless steppes, -which in the winter snows were so vast and vague, stretching away, -away, away to the frozen sea and the ice that no suns can melt, and -ceaseless silence, where sleep is death. - -In the monastic quiet of the isle he soon recovered sufficient strength -to leave his bed and move about slowly, though he was still stiff and -sprained from the fall on the Umbal; he could take his dinner in the -refectory, could get out and sit under the great willows of the bank, -and could touch their organ as the monks never had heard it played. - -It was a monotonous and perfectly simple life; but either because his -health was not yet strong, or because he had been surfeited with -excitement, it was not disagreeable or irksome to him; he bore it with -a serenity and cheerfulness which the monks attributed to religious -patience, and Herr Joachim to philosophy. It was not one nor the other: -it was partly from such willingness as an overtaxed racer feels to lie -down in the repose of the stall for a while to recruit his courage -and speed: it was partly due to the certainty which he felt that now, -sooner or later, he must see face to face once more the woman who had -forbade him to shoot the vulture. - -The face which had looked on him in the pale sunlight of the -pine-woods, and made him think of the Nibelungen queen, had been always -present to his thoughts, even during the semi-stupor of sedative-lulled -rest in his dull chamber by the lonely Isel stream. - -From this guest-room, where he passed his convalescence, the wide -casements all day long showed him the towers and turrets, the metal -roofs, the pinnacles and spires of her mighty home, backed by its -solemn neighbours of the glacier and the alps, and girdled with the -sombre green of the great forests. Once or twice he thought as he -looked at it and saw the noon sun make its countless oriels sparkle -like diamonds, or the starlight change its stones and marbles into -dream-like edifices meet for Arthur's own Avilion, once or twice he -thought to himself, 'If I owned Hohenszalras, and she Romaris, I would -write to her and say: "A moment is enough for love to be born."' - -But Romaris was his--those aged oaks, torn by sea-winds and splashed -with Atlantic spray, were all he had; and she was mistress here. - -When a young man made his first appearance in the society of Paris -who was called Réné Philippe Xavier, Marquis de Sabran-Romaris, his -personal appearance, which was singularly attractive, his manners, -which were of extreme distinction, and his talents, which were great, -made him at once successful in its highest society. He had a romantic -history. - -The son of that Marquis de Sabran who had fallen under the pikes of -the mob of Carrier had been taken in secret out of the country by -a faithful servant, smuggled on board a _chasse-marée_, which had -carried him to an outward-bound sailing ship destined for the seaboard -of America. The chaplain was devoted, the servant faithful. The boy -was brought up well at a Jesuit college in Mexico, and placed in full -possession, when he reached manhood, of his family papers and of such -remnants of the family jewels as had been brought away with him. His -identity as his father's only living son, and the sole representative -of the Sabrans of Romaris, was fully established and confirmed -before the French Consulate of the city. Instead of returning to his -country, as his Jesuit tutors advised and desired, the youth, when he -left college, gave the reins to a spirit of adventure and a passion -for archæology and natural history. He was possessed beyond all with -the desire to penetrate the mystery of the buried cities, and he had -conceived a strong attachment to the flowery and romantic land of -Guatemozin and of Montezuma. He plunged, therefore, into the interior -of that country, and, half as a Jesuit lay-missionary, and half as -an archeological explorer, let all his best years slip away under -the twilight shadows of the virgin forests, and amidst the flowering -wilderness of the banks of the great rivers, making endless notes upon -the ancient and natural history of these solitudes, and gathering -together an interminable store of tradition from the Indians and the -half-breeds with whom he grew familiar. He went further and further -away from the cities, and let longer and longer intervals elapse -without his old friends and teachers hearing anything of him. All that -was known of him was that he had married a beautiful Mexican woman, -who was said to have in her the blood of the old royal race, and that -he lived far from the steps of white men in the depths of the hills -whence the Pacific was in sight. Once he went to the capital for the -purpose of registering and baptizing his son by his Mexican wife. -After that he was lost sight of by those who cared for him, and it -was only known that he was compiling a history of those lost nations -whose temples and tombs, amidst the wilderness, had so powerfully -attracted his interest as a boy. A quarter of a century passed; his -old friends died away one by one, nobody remained in the country who -remembered or asked for him. The West is wide, and wild, and silent; -endless wars and revolutions changed the surface of the country and -the thoughts of men; the scholarly Marquis de Sabran, who only cared -for a hieroglyphic, or an orchid, or a piece of archaic sculpture, -passed away from the memories of the white men whose fellow student he -had been. The land was soaked in blood, the treasures were given up -to adventurers; the chiefs that each reigned their little hour, slew, -and robbed, and burned, and fell in their turn shot like vultures or -stabbed like sheep; and no one in that murderous _tohu-bohu_ had either -time or patience to give to the thought of a student of perished altars -and of swamp-flora. The college, even, where the Jesuits had sheltered -him, had been sacked and set on fire, and the old men and the young -men butchered indiscriminately. When six-and-twenty years later he -returned to the capital to register the birth of his grandson there was -no one who remembered his name. Another quarter of a century passed -by, and when his young representative left the Western world for Paris -he received a tender and ardent welcome from men and women to whom -his name was still a talisman, and found a cordial recognition from -that old nobility whose pride is so cautious and impregnable in its -isolation and reserve. Everyone knew that the young Marquis de Sabran -was the legitimate representative of the old race that had made its -nest on the rocks with the sea birds through a dozen centuries: that he -had but little wealth was rather to his credit than against it. - -When he gave to the world, in his grandfather's name, the result of all -those long years of study and of solitude in the heart of the Mexican -forests, he carried out the task as only a scientific scholar could -have done it, and the vast undigested mass of record, tradition, and -observation which the elder man had collected together in his many -years of observation and abstraction were edited and arranged with so -much skill that their mere preparation placed their young compiler -in the front frank of culture. That he disclaimed all merit of his -own, affirming that he had simply put together into shape all the -scattered memoranda of the elder scholar, did not detract from the -learning or from the value of his annotations. The volumes became the -first authority on the ancient history and the natural history of a -strange country, of which alike the past and the present were of rare -interest, and their production made his name known where neither rank -nor grace would have taken it. To those who congratulated him on the -execution of so complicated and learned a work, he only replied: 'It is -no merit of mine: all the learning is his. In giving it to the world I -do but pay my debt to him, and I am but a mere instrument of his as the -printing-press is that prints it.' - -This modesty, this affectionate loyalty in a young man whose attributes -seemed rather to lie on the side of arrogance, of disdainfulness, -and of coldness, attracted to him the regard of many persons to -whom the mere idler, which he soon became, would have been utterly -indifferent. He chose, as such persons thought, most unfortunately, to -let his intellectual powers lie in abeyance, but he had shown that he -possessed them. No one without large stores of learning and a great -variety of attainments could have edited and annotated as he had done -the manuscripts bequeathed to him by the Marquis Xavier as his most -precious legacy. He might have occupied a prominent place in the world -of science; but he was too indolent or too sceptical even of natural -facts, or too swayed towards the pleasures of manhood, to care for -continued consecration of his life to studies of which he was early -a master, and it was the only serious work that he ever carried out -or seemed likely ever to attempt. Gradually these severe studies were -left further and further behind him; but they had given him a certain -place that no future carelessness could entirely forfeit. He grew to -prefer to hear a _bluette d'amateur_ praised at the Mirliton, to be -more flattered when his presence was prayed for at a _première_ of the -Française; but it had carried his name wherever, in remote corners of -the earth, two or three wise men were gathered together. - -He had no possessions in France to entail any obligations upon him. The -single tower of the manoir which the flames had left untouched, and -an acre or two of barren shore, were all which the documents of the -Sabrans enabled him to claim. The people of the department were indeed -ready to adore him for the sake of the name he bore; but he had the -true Parisian's impatience of the province, and the hamlet of Romaris -but rarely saw his face. The sombre seaboard, with its primitive -people, its wintry storms, its monotonous country, its sad, hard, pious -ways of life, had nothing to attract a man who loved the gaslights of -the Champs-Élysées. Women loved him for that union of coldness and of -romance which always most allures them, and men felt a certain charm -of unused power in him which, coupled with his great courage and his -skill at all games, fascinated them often against their judgment. He -was a much weaker man than they thought him, but none of either sex -ever discovered it. Perhaps he was also a better man than he himself -believed. As he dwelt in the calm of this religious community his sins -seemed to him many and beyond the reach of pardon. - -Yet even with remorse, and a sense of shame in the background, this -tranquil life did him good. The simple fare, the absence of excitement, -the silent lake-dwelling where no sound came, except that of the bells -or the organ, or the voices of fishermen on the waters, the 'early -to bed and early to rise,' which were the daily laws of the monastic -life--these soothed, refreshed, and ennobled his life. - - - - -CHAPTER VI. - - -The days drifted by; the little boat crossed thrice a day from castle -to monastery, bringing the physician, bringing books, food, fruit, -wine; the rain came often, sheets of white water sweeping over the -lake, and blotting the burg and the hills and the forests from -sight; the sunshine came more rarely, but when it came it lit up the -amphitheatre of the Glöckner group to a supreme splendour, of solemn -darkness of massed pines, of snow-peaks shrouded in the clouds. So the -month wore away; he was in no haste to recover entirely; he could pay -the monks for his maintenance, and so felt free to stay, not being -allowed to know that his food came from the castle as his books did. -The simple priests were conquered and captivated by him; he played -grand Sistine masses for them, and canticles which he had listened -to in Nôtre Dame. Herr Joachim marvelled to see him so passive and -easily satisfied; for he perceived that his patient could not be -by nature either very tranquil or quickly content; but the doctor -thought that perhaps the severe nervous shock of the descent on the -Umbal might have shakened and weakened him, and knew that the pure -Alpine air, the harmless pursuits, and the early hours were the best -tonics and restoratives in the pharmacy of Nature. Therefore he could -consistently encourage him to stay, as his own wishes moved him to do; -for to the professor the companionship and discussion of a scholarly -and cultivated man were rarities, and he had conceived an affectionate -interest in one whose life he had in some measure saved; for without -skilled care the crevasse of the Iselthal might have been fatal to a -mountaineer who had successfully climbed the highest peaks of the Andes. - -'No doubt if I passed a year here,' thought Sabran, 'I should rebel -and grow sick with longing for the old unrest, the old tumult, the -old intoxication--no doubt; but just now it is very welcome: it makes -me comprehend why De Rancy created La Trappe, why so many soldiers -and princes and riotous livers were glad to go out into a Paraclete -amongst the hills with S. Bruno or S. Bernard.' - -He said something of the sort to Herr Joachim, who nodded consent; but -added: 'Only they took a great belief with them, and a great penitence, -the recluses of that time; in ours men mistake satiety for sorrow, and -so when their tired vices have had time to grow again, like nettles -that have been gnawed to the root but can spring up with fresh power -to sting, then, as their penitence was nothing but fatigue, they get -quickly impatient to go out and become beasts again. All the difference -between our times and S. Bruno's lies there; they believed in sin, we -do not. I say, "we," I mean the voluptuaries and idlers of your world.' - -'Perhaps not,' answered Sabran, a little gloomily. 'But we do believe -in dishonour.' - -'Do you?' said the doctor, with some irony. 'Oh, I suppose you do. You -may seduce Gretchen: you must not forsake Faustine; you must not lie to -a man: you may lie to a woman. You must not steal: you may beggar your -friend at baccara. I confess I have never understood the confusion of -your unwritten laws on ethics and etiquette.' - -Sabran laughed, but he did not take up the argument; and the doctor -thought that he seemed becoming a little morose; since his escape from -the tedium of confinement at Pregratten, confinement intolerable to a -man of strength and spirit, he had always found his patient of great -equability of temper, and of a good-humour and docility that had seemed -as charming as they were invariable. - -When he was recovered enough to make movement and change harmless to -him, there came to him a note in the fine and miniature writing of the -Princess Ottilie, bidding him come over to the castle at his pleasure, -and especially inviting him, in her niece's name, to the noon-day -breakfast at the castle on the following day, if his strength allowed. - -He sat a quarter of an hour or more with the note on his knee, looking -out at the light green willow foliage as it drooped above the deeper -green of the lake. - -'Our ladies are not used to refusals,' said the doctor, seeing his -hesitation. - -'I should be a churl to refuse,' said Sabran, with some little effort, -which the doctor attributed to a remembered mortification, and so -hastened to say: - -'You are resentful still that the Countess Wanda took your rifle away? -Surely she has made amends?' - -'I was not thinking of that. She was perfectly right. She only treated -me too well. She placed her house and her household at my disposition -with a hospitality quite Spanish. I owe her too much ever to be able to -express my sense of it.' - -'Then you will come and tell her so?' - -'I can do no less.' - -Princess Ottilie and the mistress of Hohenszalras had had a discussion -before that note of invitation was sent; a discussion which had ended -as usual in the stronger reasoner giving way to the whim and will of -the weaker. - -'Why should we not be kind to him?' the Princess had urged; 'he is -a gentleman. You know I took the precaution to write to Kaulnitz; -Kaulnitz's answer is clear enough: and to Frohsdorf, from which it was -equally satisfactory. I wrote also to the Comte de la Barée; his reply -was everything which could be desired.' - -'No doubt,' her niece had answered for the twentieth time; 'but I -think we have already done enough for Christianity and hospitality; we -need not offer him our personal friendship; as there is no master in -this house he will not expect to be invited to it.' We will wish him -God-speed when he is fully restored and is going away.' - -'You are really too prudish!' said the Princess, very angrily. 'I -should be the last person to counsel an imprudence, a failure in due -caution, in correct reserve and hesitation; but for you to pretend that -a Countess von Szalras cannot venture to invite a person to her own -residence because that person is of the opposite sex----' - -'That is not the question; the root of the matter is that he is a -chance acquaintance made quite informally; we should have been cruel if -we had done less than we have done, but there can be no need that we -should do more.' - -'I can ask more about him of Kaulnitz,' said Madame Ottilie. - -Kaulnitz was one of her innumerable cousins, and was then minister in -Paris. - -'Why should you?' said her niece. 'Do you think either that it is quite -honourable to make inquiries unknown to people? It always savours to me -too much of the Third Section.' - -'You are so exaggerated in all your scruples; you prefer to be -suspicious of a person in silence than to ask a few questions,' said -the Princess. 'But surely when two ambassadors and the Kaiser guarantee -his position you may be content.' - -The answer she had received from Kaulnitz had indeed only moderately -satisfied her. It said that there was nothing known to the detriment -of the Marquis de Sabran; that he had never been accused of anything -unfitting his rank and name; but that he was a _viveur_, and was said -to be very successful at play; he was not known to have any debts, but -he was believed to be poor and of precarious fortunes. On the whole the -Princess had decided to keep the answer to herself; she had remembered -with irritation that her niece had suggested baccara as the source of -the hundred gold pieces. - -'I never intended to convey that ambassadors would disown him or the -Kaiser either, whose signature is in his pocket-book. Only,' said -Wanda, 'as you and I are all alone, surely it will be as well to leave -this gentleman to the monks and to Greswold. That is all I mean.' - -'It is a perfectly unnecessary scruple, and not at all like one of your -race. The Szalras have always been hospitable and headstrong.' - -'I hope I am the first--I have done my best for M. de Sabran; as for -being headstrong--surely that is not a sweet or wise quality that you -should lament my loss of it?' - -'You need not quarrel with me,'said the Princess, pettishly. 'You have -a terrible habit of contradiction, Wanda: and you never give up your -opinion.' - -The mistress of Hohenszalras smiled, and sighed a little. - -'Dear mother, we will do anything that amuses you.' - -So the note was sent. - -The Princess had been always eager for such glimpses of the moving -world as had been allowed to her by any accidental change. Her -temperament would have led her to find happiness in the frivolous -froth and fume of a worldly existence; she delighted in gossip, in -innocent gaiety, in curiosity, in wonder; all her early years had been -passed under repression and constraint, and now in her old age she was -as eager as a child for any plaything, as inquisitive as a marmoset, -as animated as a squirrel. Her mother had been a daughter of a great -French family of the south, and much of the vivacity and sportive -malice and quick temper of the Gallic blood was in her still, beneath -the primness and the placidity that had become her habit, from long -years passed in a little German court and in a stately semi-religious -order. - -This stranger whom chance had brought to them was to her idea a -precious and providential source of excitement: already a hundred -romances had suggested themselves to her fertile mind; already a -hundred impossibilities had suggested themselves to her as probable. -She did not in the least believe that accident had brought him there. -She imagined that he had wandered there for the sake of seeing the -mistress of Hohenszalras, who had for so long been unseen by the -world, but whose personal graces and great fortune had remained in the -memories of many. To the romantic fancy of the Princess, which had -never been blunted by contact with harsh facts, nothing seemed prettier -or more probable than that the French marquis, when arrested as a -poacher, had been upon a pilgrimage of poetic adventure. It should not -be her fault, she resolved, if the wounded knight had to go away in -sorrow and silence, without the castle gates being swung open once at -least. - -'After all, if she would only take an interest in anything human,' she -thought, 'instead of always horses and mountains, and philosophical -treatises and councils, and calculations with the stewards! She ought -not to live and die alone. They made me vow to do so, and perhaps it -was for the best, but I would never say to anyone--Do likewise.' - -And then the Princess felt the warm tears on her own cheeks, thinking -of herself as she had been at seventeen, pacing up and down the stiff -straight alley of clipped trees at Lilienhöhe with a bright young -soldier who had fallen in a duel ere he was twenty. It was all so -long ago, so long ago, and she was a true submissive daughter of her -princely house, and of her Holy Church; yet she knew that it was not -meet for a woman to live and die without a man's heart to beat by her -own, without a child's hands to close her glazing eyes. - -And Wanda von Szalras wished so to live and so to die! Only one -magician could change her. Why should he not come? - -So on the morrow the little boat that had brought the physician to him -so often took him over the two miles of water to the landing stairs at -the foot of the castle rock. In a little while he stood in the presence -of his châtelaine. - -He was a man who never in his life had been confused, unnerved, or at a -loss for words; yet now he felt as a boy might have done, as a rustic -might; he had a mist before his eyes, his heart beat quickly, he grew -very pale. - -She thought he was still suffering, and looked at him with interest. - -'I am afraid that we did wrong to tempt you from the monastery,' she -said, in her grave melodious voice; and she stretched out her hand to -him with a look of sympathy. I am afraid you are still suffering and -weak, are you not?' - -He bent low as he touched it. - -'How can I thank you?' he murmured. 'You have treated a vagrant like a -king!' - -'You were a munificent vagrant to our chapel and our poor,' she replied -with a smile. And what have we done for you? Nothing more than is our -commonest duty, far removed from cities or even villages, as we are. -Are you really recovered? I may tell you now that there was a moment -when Herr Greswold was alarmed for you.' - -The Princess Ottilie entered at that moment and welcomed him with more -effusion and congratulation. They breakfasted in a chamber called the -Saxe room, an oval room lined throughout with lacquered white wood, -in the Louis Seize style; the panels were painted in Watteau-like -designs; it had been decorated by a French artist in the middle of the -eighteenth century, and with its hangings of flowered white satin, and -its collection of Meissen china figures, and its great window, which -looked over a small garden with velvet grass plots and huge yews, was -the place of all others to make an early morning meal most agreeable, -whether in summer when the casements were open to the old-fashioned -roses that climbed about them, or in winter when on the open hearth -great oak logs burned beneath the carved white wood mantelpiece, gay -with its plaques of Saxe and its garlands of foliage. The little oval -table bore a service of old Meissen, with tiny Watteau figures painted -on a ground of palest rose. Watteau figures of the same royal china -upheld great shells filled with the late violets of the woods of -Hohenszalras. - -'What an enchanting little room!' said Sabran, glancing round it, and -appreciating with the eyes of a connoisseur the Lancret designs, the -Riesiner cabinets, and the old china. He was as well versed in the -art and lore of the Beau Siècle as Arsène Houssaye or the Goncourts; -he talked now of the epoch with skill and grace, with that accuracy -of knowledge and that fineness of criticism which had made his -observations and his approval treasured and sought for by the artists -and the art patrons of Paris. - -The day was grey and mild; the casements were open; the fresh, pure -fragrance of the forests came in through the aromatic warmth of the -chamber; the little gay shepherds and shepherdesses seemed to breathe -and laugh. - -'This room was a caprice of an ancestress of mine, who was of your -country, and was, I am afraid, very wretched here,' said Wanda von -Szalras. 'She brought her taste from Marly and Versailles. It is not -the finest or the purest taste, but it has a grace and elegance of its -own that is very charming, as a change.' - -'It is a madrigal in porcelain,' he said, looking around him. 'I am -glad that the _alouette gauloise_ has sung here beside the dread and -majestic Austrian vulture.' - -'The _alouette gauloise_ always sings in Aunt Ottilie's heart; it -is what keeps her so young always. I assure you she is a great deal -younger than I am,' said his châtelaine, resting a glance of tender -affection on the pretty figure of the Princess caressing her Spitz dog -Bijou. - -She herself, with her great pearls about her throat, and a gown of -white serge, looked a stately and almost severe figure beside the -dainty picturesque prettiness of the elder lady and the fantastic -gaiety and gilding of the porcelain and the paintings. He felt a -certain awe of her, a certain hesitation before her, which the habits -of the world enabled him to conceal, but which moved him with a sense -of timidity, novel and almost painful. - -'One ought to be Dorat and Marmontel to be worthy of such a repast,' he -said, as he seated himself between his hostesses. - -'Neither Dorat nor Marmontel would have enjoyed your very terrible -adventure,' said the Princess, reflecting with satisfaction that it was -herself who had saved this charming and chivalrous life, since, at her -own risk and loss, she had sent her physicians, alike of body and of -soul, to wrestle for him with death by his sick bed at Pregratten. - -'Wanda would never have sent anyone to him,' thought the Princess: -'she is so unaccountably indifferent to any human life higher than her -peasantry.' - -'Adventures are to the adventurous,' quoted Sabran. - -'Yes,' said the Princess; 'but the pity is that the adventurous are too -often the questionable----' - -'Perhaps that is saying too much,' said Wanda; 'but it is certain that -the more solid qualities do not often lead into a career of excitement. -It has been always conceded--with a sigh--that duty is dull.' - -'I think adventure is like calamity: some people are born to it,' he -added,'and such cannot escape from it. Loyola may cover his head with -a cowl: he cannot become obscure. Eugene may make himself an abbé: he -cannot escape his horoscope cast in the House of Mars.' - -'What a fatalist you are!' - -'Do you think we ever escape our fate? Alexander slew all whom he -suspected, but he did not for that die in his bed of old age.' - -'That merely proves that crime is no buckler.' - -Sabran was silent. - -'My life has been very adventurous,' he said lightly, after a pause; -'but I have only regarded that as another name for misfortune. The -picturesque is not the prosperous; all beggars look well on canvas, -whilst Carolus Duran himself can make nothing of a portrait of Dives, -_roulant carrosse_ through his fifty millions.' - -He had not his usual strength; his loins had had a wrench in the -crashing fall from the Umbal which they had not wholly recovered, -despite the wise medicaments of Greswold. - -He moved with some difficulty, and, not to weary him, she remained -after breakfast in the Watteau room, making him recline at length in a -long chair beside one of the windows. She was touched by the weakness -of a man evidently so strong and daring by nature, and she regretted -the rough and inhospitable handling which he had experienced from her -beloved hills and waters. She, who spoke to no one all the year through -except her stewards and her priests, did not fail to be sensible of the -pleasure she derived from the cultured and sympathetic companionship of -a brilliant and talented mind. - -'Ah! if Egon had only talent like that!' she thought, with a sigh -of remembrance. Her cousin was a gallant nobleman and soldier, but -of literature he had no knowledge; for art he had a consummate -indifference; and the only eloquence he could command was a brief -address to his troopers, which would be answered by an _Eljén_! ringing -loud and long, like steel smiting upon iron. - -Sabran could at all times talk well. - -He had the gift of facile and eloquent words, and he had also what most -attracted the sympathies of his hostess, a genuine and healthful love -of the mountains and forests. All his life in Paris had not eradicated -from his character a deep love for Nature in her wildest and her -stormiest moods. They conversed long and with mutual pleasure of the -country around them, of which she knew every ravine and torrent, and -of whose bold and sombre beauty he was honestly enamoured. - -The noon had deepened into afternoon, and the chimes of the clock-tower -were sounding four when he rose to take his leave, and go on his way -across the green brilliancy of the tumbling water to his quiet home -with the Dominican brethren. He had still the languor and fatigue -about him of recent illness, and he moved slowly and with considerable -weakness. She said to him in parting, with unaffected kindness, 'Come -across to us whenever you like; we are concerned to think that one of -our own glaciers should have treated you so cruelly. I am often out -riding far and wide, but my aunt will always be pleased to receive you.' - -'I am the debtor of the Umbal ice,' he said, in a low voice. 'But for -that happy fall I should have gone on my way to my old senseless life -without ever having known true rest as I know it yonder. Will you be -offended, too, if I say that I stayed at Matrey with a vague, faint, -unfounded hope that your mountains might be merciful, and let me----' - -'Shoot a _kuttengeier?_' she said quickly, as though not desiring to -hear his sentence finished. 'You might shoot one easily sitting at a -window in the monastery, and watching till the vultures flew across the -lake; but you will remember you are on parole. I am sure you will be -faithful.' - -Long, long afterwards she remembered that he shrank a little at the -word, and that a flush of colour went over his face. - -'I will,' he said simply; 'and it was not the _kuttengeier_ for which I -desired to be allowed to revisit Hohenszalras.' - -'Well, if the monks starve you or weary you, you can remember that we -are here, and you must not give their organ quite all the music that -you bear so wonderfully in your mind and hands.' - -'I will play to you all day, if you will only allow me.' - -'Next time you come--to-morrow, if you like.' - -He went away, lying listlessly in the little boat, for he was still -far from strong; but life seemed to him very sweet and serene as the -evening light spread over the broad, bright water, and the water birds -rose and scattered before the plunge of the oars. - -Had the sovereign mistress of Hohenszalras ever said before to any -other living friend----to-morrow? Yet he was too clever a man to be -vain; and he did not misinterpret the calm kindness of her invitation. - -He went thither again the next day, though he left them early, for he -had a sensitive fear of wearying with his presence ladies to whom he -owed so much. - -But the Princess urged his speedy return, and the châtelaine of -Szaravola said once more, with that grave smile which was rather in the -eyes than on the lips, 'We shall always be happy to see you when you -are inclined to cross the lake.' - -He was a great adept at painting, and he made several broad, bold -sketches of the landscapes visible from the lake; he was famous for -many a drawing _brossé dans le vrai_, which hung at his favourite -club the Mirliton; he could paint, more finely and delicately also, -on ivory, on satin, on leather. He sent for some fans and screens -from Vienna, and did in _gouache_ upon them exquisite birds, foliage, -flowers, legends of saints, which were beautiful enough to be not -unworthy a place in those rooms of the burg where the Penicauds, the -Fragonards, the Pettitôts, were represented by much of their most -perfect work. - -He passed his mornings in labour of this sort; at noonday or in the -afternoon he rowed across to Hohenszalras, and loitered for an hour -or two in the gardens or the library. Little by little they became so -accustomed to his coming that it would have seemed strange if more than -a day had gone by without the little striped blue boat gliding from the -Holy Isle to the castle stairs. He never stayed very long; not so long -as the Princess desired. - -'Never in my life have I spent weeks so harmlessly!' he said once with -a smile to the doctor; then he gave a quick sigh and turned away, for -he thought to himself in a sudden repentance that these innocent and -blameless days were perhaps but the prelude to one of the greatest sins -of a not sinless life. - -He came to be looked for quite naturally at the noonday breakfast in -the pretty Saxe chamber. He would spend hours playing on the chapel -organ, or on the piano in the octagon room which Liszt had chosen. The -grand and dreamy music rolled out over the green lake towards the green -hills, and Wanda would look often at the marble figure of her brother -on his tomb, lying like the statue of the young Gaston de Foix, and -think to herself, 'If only Bela were listening, too!' - -Sometimes she was startled when she remembered into what continual -intimacy she had admitted a man of whom she had no real knowledge. - -The Princess, indeed, had said to her, 'I did ask Kaulnitz: Kaulnitz -knows him quite well;' but that was hardly enough to satisfy a woman -as reserved in her friendships, and as habituated to the observance of -a severe etiquette, as was the châtelaine of Hohenszalras. Every day -almost she said to herself that she would not see him when he came, or, -if she saw him, would show him, by greater chilliness of manner, that -it was time he quitted the island. But when he did come, if he did not -see her he went to the chapel and played a mass, a requiem, an anthem, -a sonata; and Beethoven, Palestrina, Schumann, Wagner, Berlioz, surely -allured her from her solitude, and she would come on to the terrace and -listen to the waves of melody rolling out through the cool sunless air, -through the open door of the place where her beloved dead rested. Then, -as a matter of course, he stayed, and after the noonday meal sometimes -he rode with her in the forests, or drove the Princess in her pony -chair, or received permission to bear his châtelaine company in her -mountain walks. They were seldom alone, but they were much together. - -'It is much better for her than solitude,' thought the Princess. 'It is -not likely that she will ever care anything for him: she is so cold; -but if she did, there would be no great harm done. He is of old blood, -and she has wealth enough to need no more. Of course any one of our -great princes would be better; but, then, as she will never take any -one of them----' - -And the Princess, who was completely fascinated by the deferential -homage to her of Sabran, and the pleasure he honestly found in her -society, would do all she could, in her innocent and delicate way, to -give her favourite the opportunities he desired of intercourse with the -mistress of Hohenszalras. She wanted to see again the life that she had -seen in other days at the Schloss; grand parties for the hunting season -and the summer season, royal and noble people in the guest-chambers, -great gatherings for the chase on the _rond-point_ in the woods, -covers for fifty laid at the table in the banqueting hall, and -besides--besides, thought the childless and loving old woman--little -children with long fair curls and gay voices wakening the echoes in the -Rittersäal with their sports and pastimes. - -It was noble and austere, no doubt, this life led by Wanda von Szalras -amidst the mountains in the Tauern, but it was lonely and monotonous to -the Princess, who still loved a certain movement, gossip, and diversion -as she liked to nibble a _nougat_ and sip her chocolate foaming under -its thick cream. It seemed to her that even to suffer a little would be -better for her niece than this unvarying solitude, this eternal calm. -That she should have mourned for her brother was most natural, but this -perpetual seclusion was an exaggeration of regret. - -If the presence of Sabran reconciled her with the world, with life as -it was, and induced her to return to the court and to those pleasures -natural to her rank and to her years, it would be well done, thought -the Princess; and as for him--if he carried away a broken heart it -would be a great pity, but persons who like to move others as puppets -cannot concern themselves with the accidental injury of one of their -toys; and Mme. Ottilie was too content with her success of the moment -to look much beyond it. - -'The charm of being here is to me precisely what I daresay makes it -tiresome to you,' the mistress of Hohenszalras said to him one day, 'I -mean its isolation. One can entirely forget that beyond those mountains -there is a world fussing, fuming, brewing its storms in saucers, -and inventing a quantity of increased unwholesomeness, in noise and -stench, which it calls a higher civilisation. No! I would never have -a telegraph wire brought here from Matrey. There is nothing I ever -particularly care to know about. If there were anyone I loved who was -away from me it would be different. But there is no one. There are -people I like, of course---- - -'But political events?' he suggested. - -'They do not attract me. They are ignoble. They are for the most part -contemptibly ill-managed, and to think that after so many thousands of -years humanity has not really progressed beyond the wild beasts' method -of settling disputes----' - -'There is so much of the wild beast in it. With such an opinion of -political life why do you counsel me to seek it?' - -'You are a man. There is nothing else for a man who has talent, and -who is--who is as you are, _désœuvré._ Intellectual work would be -better, but you do not care for it, it seems. Since your "Mexico"----' - -'The "Mexico" was no work of mine.' - -'Oh yes, pardon me: I have read it. All your notes, all your addenda, -show how the learning of the editor was even superior to that of the -original author.' - -'No; all that I could do was to simplify his immense erudition and -arrange it. I never loved the work; do not accredit me with so much -industry: but it was a debt that I paid, and paid easily too, for the -materials lay all to my hand, if in disorder.' - -'The Marquis Xavier must at least have infused his own love of -archæology and science into you?' - -'I can scarcely say even so much. I have a facility at acquiring -knowledge, which is not a very high quality. Things come easily to me. -I fear if Herr Joachim examined me he would find my science shallow.' - -'You have so many talents that perhaps you are like one of your own -Mexican forests; one luxuriance kills another.' - -'Had I had fewer I might have been more useful in my generation,' he -said, with a certain sincerity of regret. - -'You would have been much less interesting,' she thought to herself, as -she said aloud, 'There are the horses coming up to the steps: will you -ride with me? And do not be ungrateful for your good gifts. Talent is a -_Schlüsselblume_ that opens to all hidden treasures.' - -'Why are you not in the Chamber?' she had said a little before to him. -'You are eloquent; you have an ancestry that binds you to do your best -for France.' - -'I have no convictions,' he had said, with a flush on his face. 'It is -a sad thing to confess.' - -'It is; but if you have nothing better to substitute for them you might -be content to abide by those of your fathers.' - -He had been silent. - -'Besides,' she had added, 'patriotism is not an opinion, it is an -instinct.' - -'With good men. I am not one of them.' - -'Go into public life,' she had repeated. 'Convictions will come to you -in an active career, as the muscles develop in the gymnasium.' - -'I am indolent,' he had demurred, 'and I have desultory habits.' - -'You may break yourself of these. There must be much in which you could -interest yourself. Begin with the fishing interests of the coast that -belongs to you.' - -'Honestly, I care for nothing except for myself. You will say it is -base.' - -'I am afraid it is natural.' - -He but seldom spoke of his early life. When he did so it was with -reluctance, as if it gave him pain. His father he had never known; of -his grandfather, the Marquis Xavier, as he usually called him, he spoke -with extreme and reverent tenderness, but with little reticence. The -grave old man, in the stateliness and simplicity of his solitary life, -had been to his youthful imagination a solemn and sacred figure. - -'His was the noblest life I have ever known,' he said once, with an -emotion in the accent of the words which she had never heard in his -voice before, and which gave her a passing impression of a regret in -him that was almost remorse. - -It might be, she reflected, the remorse of a man who, in his careless -youth, had been less heedful of the value of an affection and the -greatness of a character which, as he grew older and wiser, he learned -to appreciate when it was too late. He related willingly how the old -man had trusted him to carry out into the light of the world the fruits -of his life of research, and with what pleasure he had seen the instant -and universal recognition of the labours of the brain and the hand -that were dust. But of his own life in the West he said little; he -referred his skill in riding to the wild horses of the pampas, and his -botanical and scientific knowledge to the studies which the solitudes -of the sierras had made him turn to as relaxation and occupation; but -of himself he said little, nothing, unless the conversation so turned -upon his life there that it was impossible for him to avoid those -reminiscences which were evidently little agreeable to him. Perhaps -she thought some youthful passion, some unwise love, had made those -flowering swamps and sombre plains painful in memory to him. There -might be other graves than that of the Marquis Xavier beneath the -plumes of pampas grass. Perhaps, also, to a man of the world, a man of -mere pleasure as he had become, that studious and lonesome youth of his -already had drifted so far away that, seen in distance, it seemed dim -and unreal as any dream. - -'How happy you are to have so many admirable gifts!' said Wanda to him -one day, when he had offered her a fan that he had painted on ivory. He -had a facile skill at most of the arts, and had acquired accuracy and -technique lounging through the painting-rooms of Paris. The fan was an -exquisite trifle, and bore on one side her monogram and the arms of her -house, and on the other mountain flowers and birds, rendered with the -delicacy of a miniaturist. - -'What is the use of a mere amateur?' he said, with indifference. 'When -one has lived amongst artists one learns heartily to despise oneself -for daring to flirt with those sacred sisters the Muses.' - -'Why? And, after all, when one has such perfect talent as yours, the -definition of amateur and artist seems a very arbitrary and meaningless -one. If you needed to make your fame and fortune by painting faces -you could do so. You do not need. Does that make the fan the less -precious? The more, I think, since gold cannot buy it.' - -'You are too kind to me. The world would not be as much so if I really -wanted its suffrages.' - -'You cannot tell that. I think you have that facility which is the -first note of genius. It is true all your wonderful talents seem the -more wonderful to me because I have none myself. I feel art, but I have -no power over it; and as for what are called accomplishments I have -none. I could, perhaps, beat you in the shooting gallery, and I will -try some day if you like, and I can ride--well, like my Kaiserin--but -accomplishments I have none.' - -'Surely you were yesterday reading Plato in his own text?' - -'I learnt Greek and Latin with my brother. You cannot call that an -accomplishment. The ladies of the old time often knew the learned -tongues, though they were greater at tapestry or distilling and at -the ordering of their household. In a solitary place like this it is -needful to know so many useful things. I can shoe my horse and harness -a sleigh; I can tell every useful herb and flower in the woods; I know -well what to do in frostbite or accidents; if I were lost in the hills -I could make my way by the stars; I can milk a cow, and can row any -boat, and I can climb with crampons; I am a mountaineer. Do not be so -surprised. I do all that I have the children taught in my schools. -But in a salon I am useless and stupid; the last new lady whose lord -has been decorated because he sold something wholesale or cheated -successfully at the Bourse would, I assure you, eclipse me easily in -the talents of the drawing-room.' - -Sabran looked at her and laughed outright. A compliment would have -seemed ridiculous before this beautiful patrician, with her serene -dignity, her instinctive grace, her unconscious hauteur, her entire -possession of all those attributes which are the best heirlooms of -a great nobility. To protest against her words would have been like -an insult to this daughter of knights and princes, to whom half the -sovereigns of modern Europe would have seemed but parvenus, the -accidental mushroom growth of the decay in the contest of nations. - -His laughter amused her, though it was, perhaps, the most discreet and -delicate of compliments. She was not offended by it as she would have -been with any spoken flattery. - -'After all, do not think me modest in what I have said,' she pursued. -'_Talents de société_ are but slight things at the best, and in our -day need not even have either wit or culture: a good travesty at a -costume-ball, a startling gown on a racecourse, a series of adventures -more or less true, a trick of laughing often and laughing long--any -one of these is enough for renown in your Paris. In Vienna we do more -homage to tradition still; our Court life has still something of the -grace of the minuet.' - -'Yet even in Vienna you refuse----' - -'To spend my time? Why not? The ceremonies of a Court are wearisome to -me; my duties lie here; and for the mirth and pomp of society I have -had no heart since the grief that you know of fell upon me.' - -It was the first time that she had ever spoken of her brother's loss to -him: he bowed very low in silent sympathy. - -'Who would not envy his death, since it has brought such remembrance!' -he said in a low tone, after some moments. - -'Ah, if only we could be sure that unceasing regret consoles the dead!' -she said, with an emotion, that softened and dimmed all her beauty. -Then, as if ashamed or repentant of having shown her feeling for Bela -to a stranger, she turned to him and said more distantly: - -'Would it entertain you to see my little scholars? I will take you to -the schoolhouses if you like.' - -He could only eagerly accept the offer: he felt his heart beat and his -eyes lighten as she spoke. He knew that such a condescension in her was -a mark of friendship, a sign of familiar intimacy. - -'It is but a mile or so through the woods. We will walk there,' she -said, as she took her tall cane from its rack and called to Neva and -Donau, where they lay on the terrace without. - -He fancied that the vague mistrust of him, the vague prejudice against -him of which he had been sensible in her, were passing away from her -mind; but still he doubted--doubted bitterly--whether she would ever -give him any other thought than that due to a passing and indifferent -acquaintance. That she admired his intelligence and that she pitied his -loneliness he saw; but there seemed to him that never, never, never, -would he break down in his own favour that impalpable but impassable -barrier due, half to her pride, half to her reserve, and absolutely to -her indifference, which separated Wanda von Szalras from the rest of -mankind. - -If she had any weakness or foible it was the children's schools on the -estates in the High Tauern and elsewhere. They had been founded on a -scheme of Bela's and her own, when they had been very young, and the -world to them a lovely day without end. Their too elaborate theories -had been of necessity curtailed, but the schools had been established -on the basis of their early dreams, and were unlike any others that -existed. She had read much and deeply, and had thought out all she had -read, and as she enjoyed that happy power of realising and embodying -her own theories which most theorists are denied, she had founded the -schools of the High Tauern in absolute opposition to all that the -school-boards of her generation have decreed as desirable. And in every -one of her villages she had her schools on this principle, and they -throve, and the children with them. Many of these could not read a -printed page, but all of them could read the shepherd's weather-glass -in sky and flower; all of them knew the worm that was harmful to the -crops, the beetle that was harmless in the grass; all knew a tree by a -leaf, a bird by a feather, an insect by a grub. - -Modern teaching makes a multitude of gabblers. She did not think it -necessary for the little goatherds, and dairymaids, and foresters, -and charcoal-burners, and sennerinn, and carpenters, and cobblers, to -study the exact sciences or draw casts from the antique. She was of -opinion, with Pope, that 'a little learning is a dangerous thing,' and -that a smattering of it will easily make a man morose and discontented, -whilst it takes a very deep and even lifelong devotion to it to teach a -man content with his lot. Genius, she thought, is too rare a thing to -make it necessary to construct village schools for it, and whenever or -wherever it comes upon earth it will surely be its own master. - -She did not believe in culture for little peasants who have to work for -their daily bread at the plough-tail or with the reaping-hook. She knew -that a mere glimpse of a Canaan of art and learning is cruelty to those -who never can enter into and never even can have leisure to merely gaze -on it. She thought that a vast amount of useful knowledge is consigned -to oblivion whilst children are taught to waste their time in picking -up the crumbs of a great indigestible loaf of artificial learning. She -had her scholars taught their 'ABC,' and that was all. Those who wished -to write were taught, but writing was not enforced. What they were made -to learn was the name and use of every plant in their own country; -the habits and ways of all animals; how to cook plain food well, and -make good bread; how to brew simples from the herbs of their fields -and woods, and how to discern the coming weather from the aspect of -the skies, the shutting-up of certain blossoms, and the time of day -from those 'poor men's watches,' the opening flowers. In all countries -there is a great deal of useful household and out-of-door lore that is -fast being choked out of existence under books and globes, and which, -unless it passes by word of mouth from generation to generation, is -quickly and irrevocably lost. All this lore she had cherished by her -schoolchildren. Her boys were taught in addition any useful trade they -liked--boot-making, crampon-making, horse-shoeing, wheel-making, or -carpentry. This trade was made a pastime to each. The little maidens -learned to sew, to cook, to spin, to card, to keep fowls and sheep and -cattle in good health, and to know all poisonous plants and berries by -sight. - -'I think it is what is wanted,' she said. 'A little peasant child does -not need to be able to talk of the corolla and the spathe, but he does -want to recognise at a glance the flower that will give him healing -and the berries that will give him death. His sister does not in the -least require to know why a kettle boils, but she does need to know -when a warm bath will be good for a sick baby or when hurtful. We want -a new generation to be helpful, to have eyes, and to know the beauty -of silence. I do not mind much whether my children read or not. The -labourer that reads turns Socialist, because his brain cannot digest -the hard mass of wonderful facts he encounters. But I believe every one -of my little peasants, being wrecked like Crusoe, would prove as handy -as he.' - -She was fond of her scholars and proud of them, and they were never -afraid of her. They knew well it was the great lady who filled all -their sacks the night of Santa Claus--even those of the naughty -children, because, as she said, childhood was so short that she thought -it cruel to give it any disappointments. - -The walk to the schoolhouse lay through the woods to the south of the -castle; woods of larch and beech and walnut and the graceful Siberian -pine, with deep mosses and thick fern-brakes beneath them, and ever and -again a watercourse tumbling through their greenery to fall into the -Szalrassee below. - -'I always fancy I can hear here the echo of the great Krimler -torrents,' she said to him as they passed through the trees. 'No -doubt it _is_ fancy, and the sound is only from our own falls. But -the peasants' tradition is, you may know, that our lake is the water -of the Krimler come to us underground from the Pinzgau. Do you know -our Sahara of the North? It is monotonous and barren enough, and yet -with its vast solitudes of marsh and stones, its flocks of wild fowl, -its reedy wastes, its countless streams, it is grand in its own way. -And then in the heart of it there are the thunder and the boiling fury -of Krimml! You will smile because I am an enthusiast for my country, -you who have seen Orinoco and Chimborazo; but even you will own that -the old Duchy of Austria, the old Archbishopric of Salzburg, the old -Countship of Tirol, have some beauty and glory in them. Here is the -schoolhouse. Now you shall see what I think needful for the peasant of -the future. Perhaps you will condemn me as a true Austrian: that is, as -a Reactionist.' - -The schoolhouse was a châlet, or rather a collection of châlets, set -one against another on a green pasture belted by pine woods, above -which the snows of the distant Venediger were gleaming amidst the -clouds. There was a loud hum of childish voices rising through the open -lattice, and these did not cease as they entered the foremost house. - -'Do not be surprised that they take no notice of our entrance,' she -said to him. 'I have taught them not to do so unless I bid them. If -they left off their tasks I could never tell how they did them; and is -not the truest respect shown in obedience?' - -'They are as well disciplined as soldiers,' he said with a smile, -as twenty curly heads bent over desks were lifted for a moment to -instantly go down again. - -'Surely discipline is next to health,' added Wanda. 'If the child do -not learn it early he must suffer fearfully when he reaches manhood, -since all men, even princes, have to obey some time or other, and the -majority of men are not princes, but are soldiers, clerks, porters, -guides, labourers, tradesmen, what not; certainly something subject -to law if not to a master. How many lives have been lost because a -man failed to understand the meaning of immediate and unquestioning -obedience! Soldiers are shot for want of it, yet children are not to be -taught it!' - -Whilst she spoke not a child looked up or left off his lesson: the -teacher, a white-haired old man, went on with his recitation. - -'Your teachers are not priests?' he said in some surprise. - -'No,' she answered; 'I am a faithful daughter of the Church, as you -know; but every priest is perforce a specialist, if I may be forgiven -the profanity, and the teacher of children should be of perfectly open, -simple and unbiassed mind; the priest's can never be that. Besides, -his teaching is apart. The love and fear of God are themes too vast -and too intimate to be mingled with the pains of the alphabet and the -multiplication tables. There alone I agree with your French Radicals, -though from a very different reason to theirs. Now in this part of the -schools you see the children are learning from books. These children -have wished to read, and are taught to do so; but I do not enforce -though I recommend it. You think that very barbarous? Oh! reflect for -a moment how much more glorious was the world, was literature itself, -before printing was invented. Sometimes I think it was a book, not a -fruit, that Satan gave. You smile incredulously. Well, no doubt to a -Parisian it seems absurd. How should you understand what is wanted in -the heart of these hills? Come and see the other houses.' - -In the next which they entered there was a group of small sturdy boys, -very sunburnt and rough and bright, who were seated in a row listening -with rapt attention to a teacher who was talking to them of birds and -their uses and ways; there were prints, of birds and birds' nests, and -the teacher was making them understand why and how a bird flew. - -'That is the natural history school,' she said; 'one day it is birds, -another animals, another insects, that they are told about. Those are -all little foresters born. They will go about their woods with eyes -that see, and with tenderness for all creation.' - -In the next school Herr Joachim himself, who took no notice of their -entrance, was giving a simple little lecture on the useful herbs and -the edible tubers, the way to know them and to turn them to profit. -There were several girls listening here. - -'Those girls will not poison their people at home with a false -cryptogram,' said Wanda, as they passed on to another place, where -a lesson on farriery and the treatment of cattle was going on, and -another where a teacher was instructing a mixed group of boys and -little maidens in the lore of the forests, of the grasses, of the -various causes that kill a tree in its prime, of the insects that -dwell in them, and of the different soils that they needed. In -another chamber there was a spinning-class and a sewing-class under a -kindly-faced old dame; and in yet another there were music-classes, -some playing on the zither, and others singing part-songs and glees -with baby voices. - -'Now you have seen all I have to show you,' said Wanda. 'In these two -other châlets are the workshops, where the boys learn any trade they -choose, and the girls are also taught to make a shoe or a jacket. My -children would not pass examinations in cities, certainly; but they -are being fitted in the best way they can for their future life, which -will pass either in these mountains and forests, as I hope, or in the -armies of the Emperor, and the humble work-a-day ways of poor folks -everywhere. If there be a Grillparzer or a Kaulbach amongst them, the -education is large and simple enough to let the originality he has been -born with develop itself; if, as is far more likely, they are all made -of ordinary human stuff, then the teaching they receive is such as to -make them contented, pious, honest, and useful working people. At least -that is what I strive for; and this is certain, that the children come -some of them a German mile and more with joy and willingness to their -schools, and that this at least they take away with them into their -future life--the sense of duty as a supreme rein over all instincts, -and mercifulness towards every living thing that God has given us.' - -She had spoken with unusual animation, and with an earnestness that -brought warmth over her cheek and moisture into her eyes. - -Sabran looked at her timidly; then as timidly he touched the tips of -her fingers, and raised them to his lips. - -'You are a noble woman,' he said very low; a sense of his own utter -unworthiness overwhelmed him and held him mute. - -She glanced at him in some surprise, vaguely tinged with displeasure. - -'There are schools on every estate,' she said, a little angrily and -disconnectedly. 'These are modelled on my own whim; that is all. The -world would say I ought to teach these little peasants the science -that dissects its own sources, and the philosophies that resolve -all creation into an egg. But I follow ancient ways enough to think -the country life the best, the healthiest, the sweetest: it is for -this that they are born, and to this I train them. If we had more -naturalists we should have fewer Communists.' - -'Yes, Audubon would scarcely have been a regicide, or Humboldt a -Camorrist,' he answered her, regaining his self-possession. 'No doubt a -love of nature is a triple armour against self-love. How can I say how -right I think your system with these children? You seem not to believe -me. There is only one thing in which I differ with you; you think the -'eyes that see' bring content. Surely not! surely not!' - -'It depends on what they see,' she said meditatively. 'When they are -wide open in the woods and fields, when they have been taught to see -how the tree-bee forms her cell and the mole his fortress, how the -warbler builds his nest for his love and the water-spider makes his -little raft, how the leaf comes forth from the hard stem and the fungi -from the rank mould, then I think that sight is content--content in the -simple life of the woodland place, and in such delighted wonder that -the heart of its own accord goes up in peace and praise to the Creator. -The printed page may teach envy, desire, covetousness, hatred, but the -Book of Nature teaches resignation, hope, willingness to labour and -live, submission to die. The world has gone further and further from -peace since larger and larger have grown its cities and its shepherd -kings are no more.' - -He was silent. - -Her voice moved him like sweet remembered music; yet in his own -remembrance what were there? Only 'envy, desire, covetousness, hatred,' -the unlovely shapes that were to her as emblems of the powers of evil. -His reason was with her, and his emotions were with her also, but -memory was busy in him, and in it he saw 'as in a glass darkly,' all -his passionate, cold, embittered youth, all his warped, irresolute, -useless, and untrue manhood. - -'Do not think,' she added, unconscious of the pain that she had -caused him, 'that I undervalue the blessing of great books; but I do -think that, to recognise the beauty of literature, as much culture and -comprehension are needed as to understand Leonardo's painting, or the -structure of Wagner's music. Those who read well are as rare as those -who love well. The curse of our age is superficial knowledge; it is -a _cryptogram_ of the rankest sort, and I will not let my scholars -touch it. Do you not think it is better for a country child to know -what flowers are poisonous for her cattle, and what herbs are useful -in her neighbours' fever, than to be able to spell through a Jesuit's -newspaper, or suck evil from a Communist's pamphlet? You will not have -your horse well shod if the smith be thinking of Bakounine while he -hammers the iron.' - -'I have held the views of Bakounine myself,' said Sabran, with -hesitation. 'I do not know what you will think of me. I have even been -tempted to be an anarchist, a Nihilist.' - -'You speak in the past tense. You must have abandoned those views? You -are received at Frohsdorf?' - -'They have, perhaps, abandoned me. My life has been idle, sinful -often. I have liked luxury, and have not denied myself folly. I -recognised the absurdity of such a man as I was joining in any -movement of seriousness and self-negation, so I threw away my political -persuasions, as one throws off a knapsack when tired of a journey on -foot.' - -'That was not very conscientious, surely?' - -'No, madame. It is perhaps, however, better than helping to adjust the -contradictions of the world with dynamite. And I cannot even claim that -they were persuasions; I fear they were mere personal impatience with -narrow fortunes and useless ambitions.' - -'I cannot pardon anyone of an old nobility turning Republican; it -is like a son insulting the tombs of his fathers!' she said, with -emphasis; then, fearing she had reproved him too strongly, she added, -with a smile, 'And yet I also could almost join the anarchists when I -see the enormous wealth of baseborn speculators and Hebrew capitalists -in such bitter contrast with the hunger of the poor, who starve all -over the world in winter like birds frozen on the snow. Oh, do not -suppose that, though I am an Austrian, I cannot see that feudalism is -doomed. We are still feudal here, but then in so much we are still as -we were in crusading days. The nobles have been, almost everywhere -except here, ousted by capitalists, and the capitalists will in turn -be devoured by the democracy. _Les loups se mangeront entre eux._ You -see, though I may be prejudiced, I am not blind. But you, as a Breton, -should think feudalism a loss, as I do.' - -'In those days, Barbe Bleue or Gilles de Retz were the nearest -neighbours of Romaris,' he said, with a smile. 'Yet if feudalism could -be sure of such châtelaines as the Countess von Szalras, I would wish -it back to-morrow.' - -'That is very prettily put for a Socialist. But you cannot be a -Socialist. You are received at Frohsdorf. Bretons are always royal; -they are born with the _cultus_ of God and the King.' - -He laughed a little, not quite easily. - -'Paris is a witch's caldron, in which all _cultes_ are melted down, and -evaporate in a steam of disillusion and mockery; into the caldron we -have long flung, alas! cross and crown, actual and allegoric. I am not -a Breton; I am that idle creation of modern life, a _boulevardier._' - -'But do you never visit Romaris?' - -'Why should I? There is nothing but a few sea-tormented oaks, endless -sands, endless marshes, and a dark dirty village jammed among rocks, -and reeking with the smell of the oil and the fish.' - -'Then I would go and make the village clean and the marshes healthy, -were I you. There must be something of interest in any people who -remain natural in their ways and dwell beside a sea, Is Romaris not -prosperous?' - -'Prosperous! God and man have forgotten it ever since the world began, -I should say. It is on a bay, so treacherous that it is called the Pool -of Death. The _landes_ separate it by leagues from any town. All it -has to live on is the fishing. It is dull as a grave, harried by every -storm, unutterably horrible.' - -'Well, I would not forsake its horrors were I a son of Romaris,' she -said softly; then, as she perceived that some association made the -name and memory of the old Armorican village painful to him, she blew -the whistle she always used, and at the summons the eldest pupil of -the school, a handsome boy of fourteen, came out and stood bareheaded -before her. - -'Hansl, ask the teachers to grant you all an hour's frolic, that you -may amuse this gentleman,' she said to him. 'And, Hansl, take care that -you do your best, all of you, in dancing, wrestling, and singing, and -above all with the zither, for the honour of the empire.' - -The lad, with a face of sunshine, bowed low and ran into the -school-houses. - -'It is almost their hour for rest, or I would not have disturbed them,' -she said to him. 'They come here at sunrise; bring their bread and -meat, and milk is given them; they disperse according to season, a -little before sunset. They have two hours' rest at different times, but -it is hardly wanted, for their labours interest them, and their classes -are varied.' - -Soon the children all trooped out, made their bow or curtsey -reverently, but without shyness, and began with song and national airs -played on the zither or the 'jumping wood.' Their singing and music -were tender, ardent, and yet perfectly precise. There was no false note -or slurred passage. Then they danced the merry national dances that -make gay the long nights in the snow-covered châlets in many a mountain -village which even the mountain letter-carrier, on his climbing irons, -cannot reach for months together when all the highlands are ice. They -ended their dances with the Hungarian czardas, into which they threw -all the vigour of their healthful young limbs and happy hearts. - -'My cousin Egon taught them the czardas; have you ever seen the Magyar -nobles in the madness of that dance?' - -'Your cousin Egon? Do you mean Prince Vàsàrhely?' - -'Yes. Do you know him?' - -'I have seen him.' - -His face grew paler as he spoke. He ceased to watch with interest the -figures of the jumping children in their picturesque national dress, as -they whirled and shouted in the sunshine on the green turf, with the -woods and the rocks towering beyond them. - -When the czardas was ended, the girls sat down on the sward to rest, -and the boys began their leaping, running, and stone-heaving, with -their favourite wrestling at the close. - -'They are as strong as chamois,' she said to him. 'There is no need -here to have a gymnasium. Their mountains teach them climbing, and -every Sunday on their village green their fathers make them wrestle -and shoot at marks. The favourite sport here is one I will not -countenance--the finger-hooking. If I gave the word any two of those -little fellows would hook their middle fingers together and pull till a -joint broke.' - -The boys were duly commended for their skill, and Sabran would have -thrown them a shower of florin notes had she allowed it. Then she bade -them sing as a farewell the Kaiser's Hymn. - -The grand melody rolled out on the fresh clear Alpine air in voices as -fresh and as clear, that went upward and upward towards the zenith like -the carol of the larks. - -'I would fain be the Emperor to have that prayer sung so for me,' -said Sabran, with truth, as the glad young voices dropped down into -silence--the intense silence of the earth where the glaciers reign. - -'He heard them last year, and he was pleased,' she said, as the -children raised a loud 'Hoch!' made their reverence once more at a sign -of dismissal from her, and vanished in a proud and happy crowd into the -schoolhouses. - -'Do you never praise them or reward them?' he asked in surprise. - -'Santa Claus rewards them. As for praise, they know when I smile that -all is well.' - -'But surely they have shown very unusual musical talent?' - -'They sing well because they are well taught. But they are not any -of them going to become singers. Those zithers and part-songs will -all serve to enliven the long nights of the farmhouse or the summer -solitude of the cattle-hut. We do not cultivate music one-half enough -among the peasantry. It lightens labour; it purifies and strengthens -the home-life; it sweetens black-bread. Do you remember that happy -picture of Jordaens' "Where the old sing, the young chirp," where the -old grandfather and grandmother, and the baby in its mother's arms, and -the hale five-year-old boy, and the rough servant, are all joining in -the same melody, while the goat crops the vine-leaves off the table? I -should like to see every cottage interior like that when the work was -done. I would hang up an etching from Jordaens where you would hang up, -perhaps, the programme of Proudhon.' - -Then she walked back with him through the green sun-gleaming woods. - -'I hope that I teach them content,' she continued. 'It is the lesson -most neglected in our day. "_Niemand will ein Schuster seyn; Jederman -ein Dichter._" It is true we are very happy in our surroundings. A -mountaineer's is such a beautiful life; so simple, healthful, hardy, -and fine; always face to face with nature. I try to teach them what -an inestimable joy that alone is. I do not altogether believe in the -prosaic views of rural life. It is true that the peasant digging his -trench sees the clod, not the sky but then when he does lift his head -the sky is there, not the roof, not the ceiling. That is so much in -itself. And here the sky is an everlasting grandeur: clouds and domes -of snow are blent together. When the stars are out above the glaciers -how serene the night is, how majestic! even the humblest creature feels -lifted up into that eternal greatness. Then you think of the home-life -in the long winters as dreary; but it is not so. Over away there, -at Lahn, and other places on the Hallstadtersee, they do not see the -sun for five months; the wall of rock behind them shuts them from all -light of day; but they live together, they dance, they work. The young -men recite poems, and the old men tell tales of the mountains and the -French war, and they sing the homely songs of the _Schnaderhupfeln._ -Then when winter passes, when the sun comes again up over the wall of -rocks, when they go out into the light once more, what happiness it -is! One old man said to me, 'It is like being born again!' and another -said, 'Where it is always warm and light I doubt they forget to thank -God for the sunshine;' and quite a young child said, all of his own -accord, 'The primroses live in the dusk all the winter, like us, and -then when the sun comes up we and they run out together, and the Mother -of Christ has set the waters and the little birds laughing.' I would -rather have the winter of Lahn than the winter of Belleville.' - -'But they do go away from their mountains a good deal? One meets -them----' - -'My own people never do, but from the valleys around they go--yes, -sometimes; but then they always come back. The Defereggenthal men, -over yonder where you see those ice summits, constantly go elsewhere -on reaching manhood; but as soon as they have made a little money they -return to dwell at home for the remainder of their days. I think living -amidst the great mountains creates a restfulness, a steadfastness -in the character. If Paris were set amidst Alps you would have had -Lamartine, you would not have had Rochefort.' - -When she spoke thus of her own country, of her own people, all her -coldness vanished, her eyes grew full of light, her reserve was broken -up into animation. They were what she truly loved, what touched her -affections and her sympathies. - -When he heard her speak thus, he thought if any man should succeed in -arousing in her the love and the loyalty that she gave her Austrian -Alps, what treasures he would win, into what a kingdom he would enter! -And then something that was perhaps higher than vanity and deeper than -egotism stirring in him whispered. 'If any, why not you?' - -Herr Joachim had at a message from her joined them. He talked of the -flowers around them and of the culture and flora of Mexico. Sabran -answered him with apparent interest, and with that knowledge which he -had always the presence of mind to recall at need, but his heart was -heavy and his mind absent. - -She had spoken to him of Romaris, and he had once known Egon Vàsàrhely. - -Those two facts overshadowed the sweetness and sunshine of the day; yet -he knew very well that he should have been prepared for both. - -The Princess Ottilie, seated in her gilt wickerwork chair under the -great yew on the south side of the house, saw them approach with -pleasure. - -'Come and have a cup of tea,' she said to them. 'But, my beloved Wanda, -you should not let the doctor walk beside you. Oh, I saw him in the -distance; of course he left you before you joined _me._ He is a worthy -man, a most worthy man; but so is Hubert, and you do not walk with -Hubert and converse with him about flowers.' - -'Are you so inexorable as to social grades, madame? murmured Sabran, as -he took his cup from her still pretty hand. - -'Most certainly!' said the Princess, with a little, a very little, -asperity. 'The world was much happier when distinctions and divisions -were impassable. There are no sumptuary laws now. What is the -consequence? That, your bourgeoise ruins her husband in wearing gowns -fit only for a duchess, and your prince imagines it makes him popular -to look precisely like a cabman or a bailiff.' - -'And even in the matter of utility,' said Sabran, who always agreed -with her, 'those sumptuary laws had much in their favour. If one look -through the chronicles and miniatures, say of the thirteenth and -fourteenth centuries, how much more sensible for the change of seasons -and the ease of work seems the costume of the working people? The -_cotte hardie_ was a thousand times more comfortable and more becoming -than anything we have. If we could dress once more as all did under -Louis Treize gentle and simple would alike benefit.' - -'What a charmingly intelligent person he is!' thought the Princess, as -she remarked that in Austria they were happier than the rest of the -world: there were peasant costumes still there. - -Wanda left them a little later to confer with one of her land stewards. -Sabran remained seated by the Princess, in whom he felt that he -possessed a friend. - -'What did you think of those schools? said Frau Ottilie. 'Oh, of course -you admire and approve; you must admire and approve when they are the -hobby of a beautiful woman, who is also your hostess.' - -'Does that mean, Princess, that you do not?' - -'No doubt the schools are excellent,' replied the Princess, in a tone -which condemned them as ridiculous. 'But for my own part I prefer those -things left to the Church, of which they constitute alike the privilege -and the province. I cannot see either why a peasant child requires -to know how a tree grows; that a merciful Providence placed it there -is all he can need to be told, and that he should be able to cut it -down without cutting off his own fingers is all the science that can -possibly be necessary to him. However, Wanda thinks otherwise, and she -is mistress here.' - -'But the schools surely are eminently practical ones?' - -'Practical! Is it practical to weave a romance as long as "Pamela" -about the changes of a chrysalis? I fail to see it. That a grub is -a destructive creature is all that any one needs to know; there -is nothing practical in making it the heroine of an interminable -metempsychosis. But all those ideas of 'Wanda's have a taint of that -modern poison which her mind, though it is so strong iii many things, -has not been strong enough to resist. She does not believe in the -efficacy of our holy relics (such as that which I sent you, and which -wrought your cure), but she does believe in the fables that naturalists -invent about weeds and beetles, and she finds a Kosmos in a puddle!' - -'You are very severe, Princess.' - -'I dislike inconsistency, and my niece is inconsistent, though she -imagines that perfect consistency is the staple of her character.' - -'Nay, madame, surely her character is the most evenly balanced, the -most harmonious, and consequently the most perfect that is possible to -humanity.' - -The Princess looked at him with a keen little glance. - -'You admire her very much? Are you sure you understand her?' - -'I should not dare to say that, but I dare to hope it. Her nature seems -to me serene and transparent as fine sunlight.' - -'So it is; but she has faults, I can assure you,' said the Princess, -with her curious union of shrewdness and simplicity. 'My niece is a -perfectly good woman, so far as goodness is possible to finite nature; -she is the best woman I have ever known out of the cloister. But -then there is this to be said--she has never been tempted. True, she -might be tempted to be arrogant, despotic, tyrannical; and she is not -so. But that is not precisely the temptation to try her. She is mild -and merciful out of her very pride; but her character would be sure -destruction of her pride were such a thing possible. You think she is -not proud because she is so gentle? You might as well say that Her -Majesty is not Empress because she washes the feet of the twelve poor -men! Wanda is the best woman that I know, but she is also the proudest.' - -'The Countess has never loved anyone?' said Sabran, who grew paler as -he heard. - -'Terrestrial love--no. It has not touched her. But it would not alter -her, believe me. Some women lose themselves in their affections; she -would not. She would always remain the mistress of it, and it would be -a love like her character. Of that I am sure.' - -Sabran was silent; he was discouraged. - -'I think the boldest man would always be held at a distance from her,' -he said, after a pause. 'I think none would ever acquire dominion over -her life.' - -'That is exactly what I have said,' replied the Princess. 'Your phrase -is differently worded, but it comes to the same thing.' - -'It would depend very much----' - -'On what?' - -'On how much she loved, and perhaps a little on how much she was loved.' - -'Not at all,' said the Princess, decidedly; 'you cannot get more out of -a nature than there is in it, and there is no sort of passion in the -nature of my niece.' - -He was silent again. - -'She was admirably educated,' added the Princess, hastily, conscious of -a remark not strictly becoming in herself; 'and her rare temperament -is serene, well balanced, void of all excess. Heaven has mercifully -eliminated from her almost all mortal errors.' - - 'By pride - Angels have fallen ere thy time!' - -suggested Sabran. - -'Angels, perhaps,' said the Princess, drily. 'But for women it is an -admirable preservative, second only to piety.' - -He went home sculling himself across the lake, now perfectly calm -beneath the rose and gold of a midsummer sunset. His heart was heavy, -and a dull fear seemed to beat at his conscience like a child suddenly -awaking who knocks at a long-closed door. Still, as a crime allures men -who contemplate it by the fascination of its weird power, so the sin he -desired to commit held him with its unholy beguilement, and almost it -looked holy to him because it wore the guise of Wanda von Szalras. - -He was not insensible to the charm of this interchange of thought. He -had had many passions in which his senses alone had been enlisted. -There was a more delicate attraction in the gradual and numberless -steps by which, only slowly and with patience, could he win any -way into her regard. She had for him the puissance that the almost -unattainable has for all humanity. When he could feel that he had -awakened any sympathy in her, his pride was more flattered than it -could have been by the most complete subjection of any other woman. -He had looked on all women with the chill, amorous cynicism of the -Parisian psychology, as _l'éternel féminin_, at best as '_la forme -perverse, vaporeuse, langoureuse, souple comme les roseaux, blanche -comme les lis, incapable de se mouvoir pendant les deux tiers du -jour--sans équilibre, sans but, sans équateur, donnant son corps en -pâture à sa tête._ He had had no other ideal; no other conception. This -psychology, like some other sciences, brutalises as it equalises. In -the woman who had risen up before him in the night of storm upon the -Szalrassee he had recognised with his intelligence a woman who made his -philosophy at fault, who aroused something beyond his mere instincts, -who was not to be classified with the Lias, or the Cesarines, or the -Jane de Simeroses, who had been in his love, as in his literature, the -various types of the _éternel féminin._ The simplicity and the dignity -of her life astonished and convinced him; he began to understand that -where he had imagined he had studied the universe in his knowledge of -women, he had in reality only seen two phases of it--the hothouse and -the ditch. It is a common error to take the forced flower and the slime -weed, and think that there is nothing between or beyond the two. - -He had the convictions of his school that all women were at heart -coquettes or hypocrites, consciously or unconsciously. Wanda von -Szalras routed all his theories. Before her candour, her directness and -gravity of thought, her serene indifference to all forms of compliment, -all his doctrines and all his experiences were useless. She inspired -him with reverential and hopeless admiration, which was mingled with an -angry astonishment, and something of the bitterness of envy. Sometimes, -as he sat and watched the green water of the lake tumble and roll -beneath a north wind's wrath under a cloudy sky which hid the snows -of the Glöckner range, he remembered a horrible story that had once -fascinated him of Malatesta of Rimini slaying the princess that would -have none of his love, striking his sword across her white throat in -the dusky evening time, and casting her body upon the silken curtains -of her wicked litter. Almost he could have found it in him to do such a -crime--almost. Only he thought that at one look of her eyes his sword -would have dropped upon the dust. - -Her personal beauty had inspired him with a sudden passion, but her -character checked it with the sense of fear which it imposed on him; -fear of those high and blameless instincts which were an integral -part of her nature, fear of that frank, unswerving truth which was -the paramount law of her life. As he rode with her, walked with her, -conversed with her in the long, light summer hours, he saw more and -more of the purity and nobility of her temper, but he saw or thought he -saw also an inexorable pride and a sternness in judgment which made him -believe that she would be utterly unforgiving to weakness or to sin. - -She remained the Nibelungen Queen to him, clothed in flawless armour -and aloof from men. - -He lingered on at the Holy Isle, finding a fresh charm each day in -this simple and peaceful existence, filled with the dreams of a woman -unlike every other he had known. He knew that it could not last, but -he was unwilling to end it himself. To rise to the sound of the monks' -matins, to pass his forenoons in art or open-air exercise, to be sure -that some hour or another before sunset he would meet her, either in -her home or abroad in the woods; to go early to bed, seeing, as he -lay, the pile of the great burg looming high above the water, like -the citadel of the Sleeping Beauty--all this, together making up an -existence so monotonous, harmless, and calm that a few months before he -would have deemed it impossible to endure it, was soothing, alluring, -and beguiling to him. He had told no one where he was; his letters -might lie and accumulate by the hundred in his rooms in Paris for aught -that he cared; he had no creditors, for he had been always scrupulously -careful to avoid all debt, and he had no friend for whose existence he -cared a straw. There were those who cared for him, indeed, but these -seldom trouble any man very greatly. - -In the last week of August, however, a letter found its way to him; it -was written in a very bad hand, on paper gorgeous with gold and silver. -It was signed 'Cochonette.' - -It contained a torrent of reproaches made in the broadest language that -the slang of the hour furnished, and every third word was misspelt. How -the writer had tracked him she did not say. He tore the letter up and -threw the pieces into the water flowing beneath his window. Had he ever -passionately desired and triumphed in the possession of that woman? It -seemed wonderful to him now. She was an idol of Paris; a creature with -the voice of a lark and the laugh of a child, with a lovely, mutinous -face, and eyes that could speak without words. As a pierrot, as a -mousquetaire, as a little prince, as a fairy king of operetta, she had -no rival in the eyes of Paris. She blazed with jewels when she played -a peasant, and she wore the costliest costume of Felix's devising -when she sung her triplets as a soubrette. She had been constant to -no one for three months, and she had been constant to him for three -years, or, at the least, had made him believe so; and she wrote to -him now furiously, reproachfully, entreatingly--fierce reproaches and -entreaties, all misspelt. - -The letter which he threw into the lake brought all the memories of his -old life before him; it was like the flavour of absinthe after drinking -spring water. It was a life which had had its successes, a life, as -the world called it, of pleasure; and it seemed utterly senseless to -him now as he tore up the note of Cochonette, and looked down the -water to where the towers and spires and battlements of Hohenszalras -soared upward in the mists. He shook himself as though to shake off the -memory of an unpleasant dream as he went out, descended the landing -steps, drew his boat from under the willows and sculled himself across -towards the water-stairs of the Schloss. In a quarter of an hour he was -playing the themes of the 'Gotterdammerung,' whilst his châtelaine sat -at her spinning-wheel a few yards from him. - -'Good heavens! can she and Cochonette belong to the same human race?' -he thought, as whilst he played his glance wandered to that patrician -figure seated in the light from the oriel window, with the white hound -leaning against her velvet skirts, and her jewelled fingers plying the -distaff and disentangling the flax. - -After the noonday breakfast the sun shone, the mists lifted from the -water, the clouds drifted from the lower mountains, only leaving the -snow-capped head of the Glöckner enveloped in them. - -'I am going to ride; will you come?' said Wanda von Szalras to him. -He assented with ardour, and a hunter, Siegfried, the mount which was -always given to him, was led round under the great terrace, in company -with her Arab riding-horse Ali. They rode far through the forests and -out on the one level road there was, which swept round the south side -of the lake; a road, turf-bordered, overhung with huge trees, closed -in with a dewy veil of greenery, across which ever and anon some -flash of falling water or some shimmer of glacier or of snow crest -shone through the dense leafage. They rode too fast for conversation, -both the horses racing like greyhounds; but as they returned, towards -the close of the afternoon, they slackened their pace in pity to the -steaming heaving flanks beneath their saddles, and then they could hear -each other's voices. - -'What a lovely life it is here!' he said, with a sigh. 'The world will -seem very vulgar and noisy to me after it.' - -'You would soon tire, and wish for the world,' she answered him. - -'No,' he said quickly; 'I have been two months on the Holy Isle, and I -have not known weariness for a moment.' - -'That is because it is still summer. If you were here in the winter you -would bemoan your imprisonment, like my aunt Ottilie. Even the post -sometimes fails us.' - -'I should not lament the post,' he replied, thinking of the letter -he had cast into the lake. 'My old life seems to me insanity, fever, -disease, beside these past two months I have spent with the monks.' - -'You can take the vows,' she suggested with a smile. He smiled too. - -'Nay: I should not dare to so insult our mother Church. One must not -empty ashes into a reliquary.' - -'Your life is not ashes yet.' - -He was silent. He could not say to her what he would have said could he -have laid his heart bare. - -'When you go away,' she pursued, 'remember my words. Choose some -career; make yourself some aim in life; do not fold your talents in a -napkin--in a napkin that lies on the supper table at Bignon's. That -idle, aimless life is very attractive, I dare say, in its way, but it -must grow wearisome and unsatisfactory as years roll on. The men of my -house have never been content with it; they have always been soldiers, -statesmen, something or other beside mere nobles.' - -'But they have had a great position.' - -'Men make their own position; they cannot make a name (at least, not to -my thinking). You have that good fortune; you have a great name; you -only need, pardon me, to make your manner of life worthy of it.' - -He grew pale as she spoke. - -'Cannot make a name?' he said, with forced gaiety. 'Surely in these -days the beggar rides on horseback in all the ministries and half the -nobilities!' - -A great contempt passed over her face. 'You mean that Hans, Pierre, or -Richard becomes a count, an excellency, or an earl? What does that -change? It alters the handle; it does not alter the saucepan. No one -can be ennobled. Blood is blood; nobility can only be inherited; it -cannot be conferred by all the heralds in the world. The very meaning -and essence of nobility are descent, inherited traditions, instincts, -habits, and memories--all that is meant by _noblesse oblige._' - -'Would you allow,' thought her companion, 'would you allow the same -nobility to Falcon-bridge as to Plantagenet?' - -But he dared not name the bar sinister to this daughter of princes. - -Siegfried started and reared: his rider did not reply, being absorbed -in calming him. - -'What frightened him?' she asked. - -'A hawk flew-by,' said Sabran. - -'A hawk, flying low enough for a horse to see it? It must be wounded.' - -He did not answer, and they quickened their pace, as the sun sunk -behind the glaciers of the west. - -When he returned to the monastery the evening had closed in; the -lantern was lit at his boat's prow. Dinner was prepared for him, but -he ate little. Later the moon rose; golden and round as a bowl. It -was a beautiful spectacle as it gave its light to the amphitheatre of -the mountains, to the rippling surface of the lake, to the stately, -irregular lines of the castle backed by the blackness of its woods. He -sat long by the open window lost in thought, pondering on the great -race which had ruled there. _L'honneur parle: il suffit_, had been -their law, and she who represented them held a creed no less stern and -pure than theirs. Her words spoken in their ride were like a weight of -ice on his heart. Never to her, never, could he confess the errors of -his past. He was a man bold to temerity, but he was not bold enough to -risk the contempt of Wanda von Szalras. He had never much heeded right -or wrong, or much believed in such ethical distinctions, only adhering -to the conventional honour and good breeding of the world, but before -her his moral sense awakened. - -'The Marquis Xavier would bid me go from here,' he thought to himself, -as the night wore on and he heard the footfall of the monks passing -down the passages to their midnight orisons. - -'After all these years in the _pourriture_ of Paris, have I such a -thing as conscience left?' he asked his own thoughts, bitterly. The -moon passed behind a cloud and darkness fell over the lake and hid -the great pile of the Hohenszalrasburg from his sight. He closed the -casement and turned away. 'Farewell!' he said, to the vanished castle. - -'Will you think of me sometimes, dear Princess, when I am far away?' -said Sabran abruptly the next morning to his best friend, who looked up -startled. - -'Away? Are you going away?' - -'Yes,' said Sabran, abruptly; 'and you, I think, madame, who have been -so good to me, can guess easily why.' - -'You love my niece?' - -He inclined his head in silence. - -'It is very natural,' said the Princess, faintly. 'Wanda is a beautiful -woman; many men have loved her; they might as well have loved that -glacier yonder.' - -'It is not that,' said Sabran, hastily. 'It is my own poverty----' - -The Princess looked at him keenly. - -'Do you think her not cold?' - -'She who can so love a brother would surely love her lover not less, -did she stoop to one,' he replied evasively. 'At least I think so; I -ought not to presume to judge.' - -'And you care for her?' The glance her eyes gave him added as plainly -as words could have done, 'It is not only her wealth, her position? Are -you sure?' - -He coloured very much as he answered quickly: 'Were she beggared -to-morrow, you would see.' - -'It is a pity,' murmured the Princess. He did not ask her what she -regretted; he knew her sympathy was with him. - -They were both mute. The Princess pushed the end of her cane -thoughtfully into the velvet turf. She hesitated some moments, then -said in a low voice: 'Were I you I would stay.' - -'Do not tempt me! I have stayed too long as it is. What can she think -of me?' - -'She does not think about your reasons; she is too proud a woman to be -vain. In a measure you have won her friendship. Perhaps--I do not know, -I have no grounds to say so--but perhaps in time you might win more.' - -She looked at him as she concluded. He grew exceedingly pale. - -He stooped over her chair, and spoke very low: - -'It is just because that appears possible that I go. Do not -misunderstand me, I am not a coxcomb; _je ne me pose pas en vainqueur._ -But I have no place here, since I have no equality with her from which -to be able to say, "I love you!" Absence alone can say it for me -without offence as without hope.' - -The Princess was silent. She was thinking of the maxim,; _L'absence -éteint les petites passions et allume les grandes_.' Which was his? - -'You have been so good to me,' he murmured caressingly, 'so benevolent, -so merciful, I dare to ask of you a greater kindness yet. Will you -explain for me to the Countess von Szalras that I am called away -suddenly, and make my excuses and my farewell? It will save me much -fruitless pain.' - -'And if it give her pain?' - -'I cannot suppose that, and I should not dare to hope it.' - -'I have no reason to suppose it either, but I think you are _de guerre -las_ before the battle is decided.' - -'There is no battle possible for me. There is only a quite certain -dishonour.' - -His face was dark and weary. He spoke low and with effort. She glanced -at him, and felt the vague awe with which strong unintelligible emotion -always filled her. - -'You must judge the question for yourself,' she said with a little -hesitation. 'I will express what you wish to my niece if you really -desire it.' - -'You are always so good to me,' he murmured, with some agitation, and -he bent down before her and reverently kissed her little white hands. - -'God be with you, sir,' she said, with tears in her own tender eyes. - -'You have been so good to me,' he murmured; 'the purest hours of my -worthless life have been spent at Hohenszalras. Here only have I known -what peace and holiness can mean. Give me your blessing ere I go.' - -In another moment he had bowed himself from her presence, and the -Princess sat mute and motionless in the sun. When she looked up at the -great feudal pile of the Schloss which towered above her, it was with -reproach and aversion to that stone emblem of the great possessions of -its châtelaine. - -'If she were a humbler woman,' she thought, 'how much happier she -would be! What a pity it all is--what a pity! Of course he is right; -of course he can do nothing else. If he did do anything else the world -would condemn him, and even she very likely would despise him--but it -is such a pity! If only she could have a woman's natural life about -her----This life is not good. It is very well while she is young, but -when she shall be no longer young?' - -And the tender heart of the old gentlewoman ached for a sorrow not her -own; and could she have given him a duchy to make him able to declare -his love, she would have done so at all costs. - - - - -CHAPTER VII - - -The sun was setting when the Countess Wanda returned from her distant -ride. She dismounted at the foot of the terrace-steps and ascended them -slowly, with Donau and Neva behind her, both tired and breathless. - -'You are safe home, my love?' said the Princess, turning her head -towards the steps. - -'Yes, dear mother mine; you always, I know, think that Death gets up on -the saddle. Is anything amiss? You looked troubled.' - -'I have a message for you,' said the Princess with a sigh, and she gave -Sabran's. - -Wanda von Szalras heard in silence. She showed neither surprise nor -regret. - -The Princess waited a little. - -'Well,' she said, at length, 'well, you do not even ask me why he -goes!' - -'You say he has been called away,' her niece answered. 'Surely that is -reason enough.' - -'You have no heart, Wanda.' - -'I do not understand you,' said the Countess von Szalras, very coldly. - -'Do you mean to say you have not seen that he loved you?' - -The face of Wanda grew colder still. - -'Did he instruct you to say this also?' - -'No, no,' said the Princess, hurriedly, perceiving her error. 'He -only bade me say that he was called away and must leave at once, and -begged you to accept through me his adieus and the expression of his -gratitude. But it is very certain that he does love you, and that -because he is too poor and too proud to say so he goes.' - -'You must weave your little romance!' said her niece, with some -impatience, striking the gilt wicker table with her riding-whip. 'I -prefer to think that M. de Sabran is, very naturally, gone back to the -world to which he belongs. My only wonder has been that he has borne so -long with the solitudes of the Szalrassee.' - -'If you were not the most sincere woman in the world, I should believe -you were endeavouring to deceive me. As it is,' said the Princess, -with some temper, 'I can only suppose that you deceive yourself.' - -'Have you any tea there?' said her niece, laying aside her gauntlets -and her whip, and casting some cakes to the two hounds. - -She had very plainly and resolutely closed the subject almost before -it was fairly opened. The Princess, a little intimidated and keenly -disappointed, did not venture to renew it. - -When, the next morning, questioning Hubert, the Princess found -that indeed her favourite had left the island monastery at dawn, -the landscape of the Hohe Tauern seemed to her more monotonous and -melancholy than it had ever done, and the days more tedious and dull. - -'You will miss the music, at least,' she said, with asperity, to her -niece. 'I suppose you will give him as much regret as you have done at -times to the Abbé Liszt?' - -'I shall miss the music, certainly,' said the Countess Wanda, calmly. -'Our poor Kapellmeister is very indifferent. If he were not so old -that it would be cruel to displace him, I would take another from the -Conservatorium.' - -The Princess was irritated and even incensed at the reply, but she let -it pass. Sabran's name was mentioned no more between them for many -days. - -No one knew whither he had gone, and no tidings came of him to -Hohenszalras. - -One day a foreign journal, amongst the many news-sheets that came by -post there, contained his name: 'The Marquis de Sabran broke the bank -at Monte Carlo yesterday,' was all that it said in its news of the -Riviera. - -'A winner at a _tripot_, what a hero for you, mother mine!' she said -with some bitterness, handing the paper to the Princess. She was -surprised at the disgust and impatience which she felt herself. What -could it concern her? - -That day as she rode slowly through the grass drives of her forests, -she thought with pain of her companion of a few weeks, who so late had -ridden over these very paths beside her, the dogs racing before them, -the wild flowers scenting the air, the pale sunshine falling down -across the glossy necks of their horses. - -'He ought to do better things than break a bank at a gaming-place,' she -thought with regret. 'With such natural gifts of body and mind, it is a -sin--a sin against himself and others--to waste his years in those base -and trivial follies. When he was here he seemed to feel so keenly the -charm of Nature, the beauty of repose, the possibility of noble effort.' - -She let the reins droop on her mare's throat and paced slowly over the -moss and the grass; though she was all alone--for in her own forests -she would not be accompanied even by a groom--the colour came into -her face as she remembered many things, many words, many looks, which -confirmed the assertion Madame Ottilie had made to her. - -'That may very well be,' she thought; 'but if it be, I think my -memory might have restrained him from becoming the hero of a gambling -apotheosis.' - -And she was astonished at herself to find how much regret mingled with -her disgust, and how much her disgust was intensified by a sentiment of -personal offence. - -When she reached home it was twilight, and she was told that her cousin -Prince Egon Vàsàrhely had arrived. She would have been perfectly glad -to see him, if she had been perfectly sure that he would have accepted -quietly the reply she had sent to his letter received on the night of -the great storm. As it was she met him in the blue-room before the -Princess Ottilie, and nothing could be said on that subject. - -Prince Egon, though still young, had already a glorious past behind -him. He came of a race of warriors, and the Vàsàrhely Hussars had been -famous since the days of Maria Theresa. The command of that brilliant -regiment was hereditary, and he had led them in repeated charges -into the French lines and the Prussian lines with such headlong and -dauntless gallantry that he had been called the 'Wild Boar of Taròc' -throughout the army. His hussars were the most splendid cavalry that -ever shook their bridles in the sunlight on the wide Magyar plains. -Their uniform remained the same as in the days of Aspern, and he was -prodigal of gold, and embroidery, and rich furs, and trappings, with -that martial coquetry which has been characteristic of so many great -soldiers from Scylla to Michael Skobeleff. - -With his regiment in the field, and without it in many adventures in -the wilder parts of the Austrian Empire and on the Turkish border, he -had become a synonym for heroism throughout the Imperial army, whilst -in his manner and mode of life no more magnificent noble ever came from -the dim romantic solitudes of Hungary to the court and the capital. -He had great personal beauty; he had unrivalled traditions of valour; -and he had a character as generous as it was daring: but he failed to -awaken more than a sisterly attachment in the heart of his cousin. She -had been so used to see him with her brothers that he seemed as near -to her as they had been. She loved him tenderly, but with no sort of -passion. She wondered that he should care for her in that sense, and -grew sometimes impatient of his reiterated prayers. - -'There are so many women who would listen to him and adore him,' she -said. 'Why must he come to me? - -Before Bela's death, and before she became her own mistress, she had -always urged that her own sisterly affection for Egon made any thought -of marriage with him out of the question. - -'I am fond of him as I was of Gela and Victor,' she said often to those -who pressed the alliance upon her; 'but that is not love. I will not -marry a man whom I do not love.' - -When she became absolutely her own mistress he was for some time -silent, fearing to importune her, or to seem mercenary. She had become -by Bela's death one of the greatest alliances in Europe. But at -length, confident that his own position exempted him from any possible -appearance of covetousness, he gently reminded her of her father's and -her brother's wishes; but to no effect. She gave him the same answer. -'You are sure of my affection, but I will not do you so bad a service -as to become your wife. I have no love for you.' From that he had no -power to move or change her. He had made her many appeals in his -frequent visits to Hohenszalras, but none with any success in inducing -her to depart from the frank and placid regard of close relationship. -She liked him well, and held him in high esteem; but this was not love; -nor, had she consented to call it love, would it ever have contented -the impetuous, ardent, and passionate spirit of Egon Vàsàrhely. - -They could not be lovers, but they still remained friends, partly -through consanguinity, partly because he could bear to see her thus so -long as no other was nearer to her than he. They greeted each other -now cordially and simply, and talked of the many cares and duties and -interests that sprang up daily in the administration of such vast -properties as theirs. - -Prince Vàsàrhely, though a brilliant soldier and magnificent noble, was -simple in his tastes, and occupied himself largely with the welfare of -his people. - -The Princess yawned discreetly behind her fan many times during this -conversation, to her utterly uninteresting, upon villages, vines, -harvests, bridges swept away by floods, stewards just and unjust, and -the tolls and general navigation of the Danube. Quite tired of all -these details and discussion of subjects which she considered ought to -be abandoned to the men of business, she said suddenly, in a pause: - -'Egon, did you ever know a very charming person, the Marquis de Sabran?' - -Vàsàrhely reflected a moment. - -'No,' he answered slowly. 'I have no recollection of such a name.' - -'I thought you might have met him in Paris.' - -'I am so rarely in Paris; since my father's death I have scarcely -passed a month there. Who is he?' - -'A stranger whose acquaintance we made through his being cast adrift -here in a storm,' said the Countess Wanda, with some impatience. 'My -dear aunt is devoted to him, because he has painted her a St. Ottilie -on a screen, with the skill of Meissonnier. Since he left us he has -become celebrated: he has broken the bank at Monte Carlo.' - -Egon Vàsàrhely looked at her quickly. - -'It seems to anger you? Did this stranger stay here any time?' - -'Sometime, yes; he had a bad accident on the Venediger. Herr Greswold -brought him to our island to pass his convalescence with the monks. -From the monks to Monte Carlo!----it is at least a leap requiring some -elasticity in moral gymnastics.' - -She spoke with some irritation, which did not escape the ear of her -cousin. He said merely himself: - -'Did you receive him, knowing nothing about him?' - -'We certainly did. It was an imprudence; but if he paint like -Meissonnier, he plays like Liszt: who was to resist such a combination -of gifts?' - -'You say that very contemptuously, Wanda,' said the Prince. - -'I am not contemptuous of the talent; I am of the possessor of it, who -comprehends his own powers so little that he breaks the bank at Monaco.' - -'I envy him at least his power to anger you,' said Egon Vàsàrhely. - -'I am angered to see anything wasted,' she answered, conscious of the -impatience she had shown. 'I was very angry with Otto's little daughter -yesterday; she had gathered a huge bundle of cowslips and thrown it -down in the sun; it was ingratitude to God who made them. This friend -of my aunt's does worse; he changes his cowslip into monkshood.' - -'Is he indeed such a favourite of yours, dear mother?' said Vàsàrhely. - -The Princess answered petulantly: - -'Certainly, a charming person. And our cousin Kaulnitz knows him well. -Wanda for once talks foolishly. Gambling is, it is true, a great sin at -all times, but I do not know that it is worse at public tables than it -is in your clubs. I myself am, of course, ignorant of these matters; -but I have heard that privately, at cards, whole fortunes have been -lost in a night, scribbled away with a pencil on a scrap of paper.' - -'To lose a fortune is better than to win one,' said her niece, as she -rose from the head of her table. - -When the Princess slept in her blue-room Egon Vàsàrhely approached his -cousin, where she sat at her embroidery frame. - -'This stranger has the power to make you angry,' he said sadly. 'I have -not even that.' - -'Dear Egon,' she said tenderly, 'you have done nothing in your life -that I could despise. Why should you be discontented at that?' - -'Would you care if I did?' - -'Certainly; I should be very sorry if my noble cousin did anything that -could belie his chivalry; but why should we suppose impossibilities?' - -'Suppose we were not cousins, would you love me then?' - -'How can I tell? This is mere non-sense----' - -'No; it is all my life. You know, Wanda, that I have loved you, only -you, ever since I saw you as I came back from France--a child, but -such a beautiful child, with your hair braided with pearls, and a dress -all stiff with gold, and your lap full of red roses.' - -'Oh, I remember,' she said hastily. 'There was a child's costume ball -at the Hof; I called myself Elizabeth of Thuringia, and Bela, my own -Bela, was my little Louis of Hungary. Oh, Egon, why will you speak of -those times?' - -'Because surely they make a kind of tie between us? They----' - -'They do make one that will last all our lives, unless you strain it -to bear a weight it is not made to bear. Dear Egon, you are very dear -to me, but not dear _so._ As my cousin, my gallant, kind, and loyal -cousin, you are very precious to me; but, Egon, if you could force me -to be your wife I should not be indifferent to you, I should hate you!' - -He grew white under his olive skin. He shrank a little, as if he -suffered some sharp physical pain. - -'Hate me!' he echoed in a stupor of surprise and suffering. - -'I believe I should, I _could_ hate. It is a frightful thing to say. -Dear Egon, look elsewhere; find some other amongst the many lovely -women that you see; do not waste your brilliant life on me. I shall -never say otherwise than I say to-night' and you will compel me to -lose the most trusted friend I have.' - -He was still very pale. He breathed heavily. There was a mist over his -handsome dark eyes, which were cast down. 'Until you love any other, I -shall never abandon hope.' - -'That is unwise. I shall probably love no one all my life long; I have -told you so often.' - -'All say so until love finds them out. I will not trouble you; I will -be your cousin, your friend, rather than be nothing to you. But it is -hard.' - -'Why think of me so? Your career has so much brilliancy, so many -charms, so many interests----' - -'You do not know what it is to love. I talk to you in an unknown -tongue, and you have no pity, because you do not understand.' - -She did not answer. Over her thoughts passed the memory of the spinet -whose music she had said he could not touch and waken. - -He remained a week at Hohenszalras, but he did not again speak to her -of his own sufferings. He was a proud man, though humble to her. - -With a sort of contrition she noticed for the first time that he -wearied her; that when he spoke of his departure she was glad. He -was a fine soldier, a keen hunter, rather than a man of talents. The -life he loved best was his life at home in his great castles, amidst -the immense plains and the primeval forests of Hungary and the lonely -fastnesses of the Karpathians, or scouring a field of battle with his -splendid troopers behind him, all of them his kith and kin, or men -of his own soil, whom he ruled with a firm, high hand, in a generous -despotism. - -When he was with her she missed all the graceful tact, the subtle -meanings, the varied suggestions and allusions that had made the -companionship of Sabran so welcome to her. Egon Vàsàrhely was no -scholar, no thinker, no satirist; he was only brave and generous, as -lions are, and, vaguely, a poet without words, from the wild solitudes -he loved, and the romance that lies in the nature of the Magyar. 'He -knows nothing!' she thought, impatiently recalling the stores of most -various and recondite knowledge with which her late companion had -played so carelessly and with such ease. It seemed to her that never in -her life had she weighed her cousin in scales so severe and found him -so utterly wanting. - -And yet how many others she knew would have found their ideal in that -gallant gentleman, with his prowess, and his hardihood, and his -gallantry in war, and his winsome temper, so full of fire to men, so -full of chivalry for women! When Prince Egon, in his glittering dress, -all fur and gold and velvet, passed up the ball-room at the Burg in -Vienna, no other man in all that magnificent assembly was so watched, -so admired, so sighed for: and he was her cousin, and he only wearied -her! - -As he was leaving, he paused a moment after bidding her farewell, and -after some moments of silence, said in a low voice: - -'Dear, I will not trouble you again until you summon me. Perhaps that -will be many years; but whether we meet or not, time will make no -change in me. I am your servant ever.' - -Then he bowed over her hand once more, once more saluted her, and in a -moment or two the quick trot of the horses that bore him away woke the -echoes of the green hills. - -She looked out of the huge arched entrance door down the green defile -that led to the outer world, and felt a pang of self-reproach, of -self-condemnation. - -'If one could force oneself to love by any pilgrimage or penance,' she -thought, 'there are none I would not take upon me to be able to love -Egon.' - -As she stood thoughtfully there on the doorway of her great castle, -the sweet linnet-like voice of the Princess Ottilie came on her ear. -It said, a little shrilly: 'You are always looking for a four-leaved -shamrock. In that sort of search life slips away unperceived; one is -very soon left alone with one's dead leaves.' - -Wanda von Szalras turned and smiled. - -'I am not afraid of being left alone,' she said. 'I shall have my -people and my forests always.' - -Then, apprehensive lest she should have seemed thankless and cold of -heart, she turned caressingly to Madame Ottilie. - -'Nay, I could not bear to lose you, my sweet fairy godmother. Think me -neither forgetful nor ungrateful.' - -'You could never be one or the other to me. But I shall not live, like -a fairy godmother, for ever. Before I die I would fain see you content -like others with the shamrocks as nature has made them.' - -'I think there are few people as content as I am,' said the Countess -Wanda, and said the truth. - -'You are content with yourself, not with others. You will pardon me -if I say there is a great difference between the two,' replied the -Princess Ottilie, with a little smile that was almost sarcastic on her -pretty small features. - -'You mean that I have a great deal of vanity and no sympathy?' - -'You have a great deal of pride,' said the Princess, discreetly, as she -began to take her customary noontide walk up and down the terrace, her -tall cane tapping the stones and her little dog running before her, -whilst a hood of point-lace and a sunshade of satin kept the wind from -her pretty white hair and the sun from her eyes, that were still blue -as the acres of mouse-ear that grew by the lake. - - - - -CHAPTER VIII. - - -The summer glided away and became autumn, and the Countess Wanda -refused obstinately to fill Hohenszalras with house-parties. In vain -her aunt spoke of the Lynau, the Windischgrätz, the Hohenlöhe, and the -other great families who were their relatives or their friends. In vain -she referred continually to the fact that every Schloss in Austria and -all adjacent countries was filling with guests at this season, and the -woods around it resounding with the hunter's horn and the hound's bay. -In vain did she recapitulate the glories of Hohenszalras in an earlier -time, and hint that the mistress of so vast a domain owed some duties -to society. - -Wanda von Szalras opposed to all these suggestions and declarations -that indifference which would have seemed obstinacy had it been less -mild. As for the hunting parties, she avowed with truth that although a -daughter of mighty hunters, she herself regarded all pastimes founded -on cruelty with aversion and contempt; the bears and the boars, the -wild deer and the mountain chamois, might dwell undisturbed for the -whole of their lives so far as she was concerned. When a bear came -down and ate off the heads of an acre or two of wheat, she recompensed -the peasant who had suffered the loss, but she would not have her -_jägermeister_ track the poor beast. The _jägermeister_ sighed as -Madame Ottilie did for the bygone times when a score of princes and -nobles had ridden out on a wolf-chase, or hundreds of peasants had -threshed the woods to drive the big game towards the Kaiser's rifle; -but for poachers his place would have been a sinecure and his days a -weariness. His mistress was not to be persuaded. She preferred her -forests left to their unbroken peace, their stillness filled with the -sounds of rushing waters and the calls of birds. - -The weeks glided on one after one with the even measured pace of -monotonous and unruffled time; her hours were never unoccupied, for her -duties were constant and numerous. - -She would go and visit the sennerinn in their loftiest cattle-huts, -and would descend an ice-slope with the swiftness and security of a -practised mountaineer. In her childhood she and Bela had gone almost -everywhere the chamois went, and she came of a race which, joined to -high courage, had the hereditary habits of a great endurance. In the -throne room of Vienna, with her great pearls about her, that had once -been sent by a Sultan to a Szalras who fought with Wenceslaus, she -was the stateliest and proudest lady of the greatest aristocracy of -the world; but on her own mountain sides she was as dauntless as an -ibis, as sure-footed as a goat, and would sit in the alpine cabins and -drink a draught of milk and break a crust of rye-bread as willingly as -though she were a sennerinn herself; so she would take the oars and row -herself unaided down the lake, so she would saddle her horse and ride -it over the wildest country, so she would drive her sledge over many -a German mile of snow, and even in the teeth of a north wind blowing -straight from the Russian plains and the Arctic seas. - -'Fear nothing!' had been said again and again to her in her childhood, -and she had learned that her race transmitted to and imposed its -courage no less on its daughters than on its sons. Cato would have -admired this mountain brood, even though its mountain lair was more -luxurious than he would have deemed was wise. - -She knew thoroughly what all her rights, titles, and possessions were. -She was never vague or uncertain as to any of her affairs, and it would -have been impossible to deceive or to cheat her. No one tried to do so, -for her lawyers were men of old-fashioned ways and high repute, and -for centuries the vast properties of the Counts von Szalras had been -administered wisely and honestly in the same advocates' offices, which -were close underneath the Calvarienburg in the good city of Salzburg. -Her trustees were her uncle Cardinal Vàsàrhely and her great-uncle -Prince George of Lilienhöhe; they were old men, both devoted to her, -and both fully conscious that her intelligence was much abler and -keener than their own. All these vast possessions gave her an infinite -variety of occupation and of interests, and she neglected none of them. -Still, all the properties and duties in the world will not suffice to -fill up the heart and mind of a woman of four-and-twenty years of age, -who enjoys the perfection of bodily health and of physical beauty. The -most spiritual and the most dutiful of characters cannot altogether -resist the impulses of nature. There were times when she now began to -think that her life was somewhat empty and passionless. - -But a certain sense of their monotony had begun for the first time to -come upon her; a certain vague dissatisfaction stirred in her now and -then. The discontent of Sabran seemed to have left a shadow of itself -upon her. For the first time she seemed to be listening, as it were, to -her life and to find a great silence in it; there was no echo in it of -voices she loved. - -Why had she never perceived it before? Why did she become conscious -of it now? She asked herself this impatiently as the slight but -bitter flavour of dissatisfaction touched her, and the days for once -seemed--now and then--over long. - -She loved her people and her forests and her mountains, and she had -always thought that they would be sufficient for her, and she had -honestly told the Princess that of solitude she was not afraid; and yet -a certain sense that her life was cold and in a measure empty had of -late crept upon her. She wondered angrily why a vague and intangible -melancholy stole on her at times, which was different from the sorrow -which still weighed on her for her brother's death. Now and then she -looked at the old painted box of the spinet, and thought of the player -who had awakened its dumb strings; but she did not suspect for a -moment that it was in any sense his companionship which, now that it -was lost, made the even familiar tenor of her time appear monotonous -and without much interest. In the long evenings, whilst the Princess -slumbered and she herself sat alone watching the twilight give way to -the night over the broad and solemn landscape, she felt a lassitude -which did not trouble her in the open air, in the daylight, or when she -was busied indoors over the reports and requirements of her estates. -Unacknowledged, indeed, unknown to her, she missed the coming of the -little boat from the Holy Isle, and missed the prayer and praise of the -great tone-poets rolling to her ear from the organ within. If anyone -had told her that her late guest had possessed any such power to make -her days look grey and pass tediously she would have denied it, and -been quite sincere in her denial. But as he had called out the long -mute music from the spinet, so he had touched, if only faintly, certain -chords in her nature that until then had been dumb. - -'I am not like you, my dear Olga,' she wrote to her relative, the -Countess Brancka. 'I am not easily amused. That _course effrénée_ of -the great world carries you honestly away with it; all those incessant -balls, those endless visits, those interminable conferences on your -toilettes, that continual circling of human butterflies round you, -those perpetual courtships of half a score of young men; it all -diverts you. You are never tired of it; you cannot understand any -life outside its pale. All your days, whether they pass in Paris or -Petersburg, at Trouville, at Biarritz, or at Vienna or Scheveningen, -are modelled on the same lines; you must have excitement as you have -your cup of chocolate when you wake. What I envy you is that the -excitement excites you. When I was amidst it I was not excited; I was -seldom even diverted. See the misfortune that it is to be born with a -grave nature! I am as serious as Marcus Antoninus. You will say that it -comes of having learned Latin and Greek. I do not think so; I fear I -was born unamusable. I only truly care about horses and trees, and they -are both grave things, though a horse can be playful enough sometimes -when he is allowed to forget his servitude. Your friends, the famous -tailors, send me admirably-chosen costumes which please that sense in -me which Titians and Vandycks do (I do not mean to be profane); but -I only put them on as the monks do their frocks. Perhaps I am very -unworthy of them; at least, I cannot talk toilette as you can with -ardour a whole morning and every whole morning of your life. You will -think I am laughing at you; indeed I am not. I envy your faculty of -sitting, as I am sure you are sitting now, in a straw chair on the -shore, with a group of _boulevardiers_ around you, and a crowd making -a double hedge to look at you when it is your pleasure to pace the -planks. My language is involved. I do not envy you the faculty of doing -it, of course; I could do it myself to-morrow. I envy you the faculty -of finding amusement in doing it, and finding flattery in the double -hedge.' - -A few days afterwards the Countess Brancka wrote back in reply: - -'The world is like wine; _ça se mousse et ça monte._ There are heads it -does not affect; there are palates that do not like it, yours amongst -them. But there is so much too in habit. Living alone amidst your -mountains you have lost all taste for the _brouhaha_ of society, which -grows noisier, it must be said, every year. Yes, we are noisy: we have -lost our dignity. You alone keep yours, you are the châtelaine of the -middle ages. Perceforest or Parsifal should come riding to your gates -of granite. By the way, I hear you have been entertaining one of our -_boulevardiers._ Réné de Sabran is charming, and the handsomest man in -Paris; but he is not Parsifal or Perceforest. Between ourselves, he has -an indifferent reputation, but perhaps he has repented on your Holy -Isle, They say he is changed; that he has quarrelled with Cochonette, -and that he is about to be made deputy for his department, whose -representative has just died. Pardon me for naming Cochonette; it is -part of our decadence that we laugh about all these naughty things and -naughty people who are, after all, not so very much worse than we are -ourselves. But you do not laugh, whether at these or at anything else. -You are too good, my beautiful Wanda; it is your sole defect. You have -even inoculated this poor Marquis, who, after a few weeks upon the -Szalrassee, surrenders Cochonette for the Chamber! My term of service -comes round next month: if you will have me I will take the Tauern on -my road to Gödöllö. I long to embrace you.' - -'Olga will take pity on our solitude,' said Wanda von Szalras to her -aunt. 'I have not seen her for four years, but I imagine she is little -changed.' - -The Princess read the letter, frowning and pursing her lips together in -pretty rebuke as she came to the name of Cochonette. - -'They have indeed lost all dignity,' she said with a sigh; 'and -something more than dignity also. Olga was always frivolous.' - -'All her _monde_ is; not she more than another.' - -'You were very unjust, you see, to M. de Sabran; he pays you the -compliment of following your counsels.' - -Wanda von Szalras rose a little impatiently. 'He had better have -followed them before he broke the bank at Monaco. It is an odd sort of -notoriety with which to attract the pious and taciturn Bretons; and -when he was here he had no convictions. I suppose he picked them up -with the gold pieces at the tables!' - -Olga, Countess Brancka, _née_ Countess Seriatine, of a noble Russian -family, had been married at sixteen to the young Gela von Szalras, who, -a few months after his bridal, had been shot dead on the battlefield of -Solferino. - -After scarce a year of mourning she had fascinated the brother of -Egon Vàsàrhely, a mere youth who bore the title of Count Brancka. -There had been long and bitter opposition made to the new alliance on -the part of both families, on account of the consanguinity between -Stefan Brancka and her dead lord. But opposition had only increased -the ardour of the young man and the young widow; they had borne down -all resistance, procured all dispensations, had been wedded, and in a -year's time had both wished the deed undone. Both were extravagant, -capricious, self-indulgent, and unreasonable; their two egotisms were -in a perpetual collision. They met but seldom, and never met without -quarrelling violently. The only issue of their union was two little, -fantastic, artificial fairies who were called respectively Mila and -Marie. - -At the time of the marriage of the Branckas, Wanda had been too young -to share in opposition to it; but the infidelity to her brother's -memory had offended and wounded her deeply, and in her inmost heart -she had never pardoned it, though the wife of Stefan Brancka had been -a passing guest at Hohenszalras, where, had Count Gela lived, she -would have reigned as sovereign mistress. That his sister reigned -there in her stead the Countess Olga resented keenly and persistently. -Her own portion of the wealth of the Szalras had been forfeited under -her first marriage contract by her subsequent alliance. But she never -failed to persuade herself that her exclusion from every share in that -magnificent fortune was a deep wrong done to herself, and she looked -upon Wanda von Szalras as the doer of that wrong. - -In appearance, however, she was always cordial, caressing, -affectionate, and if Wanda chose to mistrust her affection, it was, she -reflected, only because a life of unwise solitude had made a character -naturally grave become severe and suspicious. - -She did not fail to arrive there a week later. She was a small, -slender, lovely woman, with fair skin, auburn hair, wondrous black -eyes, and a fragile frame that never knew fatigue. She held a high -office at the Imperial Court, but when she was not on service, she -spent, under the plea of health, all her time at Paris or _les eaux._ -She came with her numerous attendants, her two tiny children, and a -great number of huge _fourgons_ full of all the newest marvels of -combination in costume. She was seductive and caressing, but she was -capricious, malicious, and could be even violent; in general she was -gaily given up to amusement and intrigue, but she had moments of rage -that were uncontrollable. She had had many indiscretions and some -passions, but the world liked her none the less for that; she was a -great lady, and in a sense a happy woman, for she had nerves of steel -despite all her maladies, and brought to the pleasures of life an -unflagging and even ravenous zest. - -When with her perfume of Paris, her restless animation, her children, -like little figures from a fashion-plate, her rapid voice that was -shrill yet sweet, like a silver whistle, and her eyes that sparkled -alike with mirth and with malice, she came on to the stately terraces -of Hohenszalras, she seemed curiously discordant with it and its old -world peace and gravity. She was like a pen-and-ink sketch of Cham -thrust between the illuminated miniatures of a missal. - -She felt it herself. - -'It is the Roman de la Rose in stone,' she said, as her eyes roved -over the building, which she had not visited for four years. 'And you, -Wanda, you look like Yseulte of the White Hand or the Marguerite des -Marguerites; you must be sorry you did not live in those times.' - -'Yes: if only for one reason. One could make the impress of one's own -personality so much more strongly on the time.' - -'And now the times mould us. We are all horribly alike. There is only -yourself who retain any individuality amidst all the women that I know. -'_La meule du pressoir de l'abrutissement_ might have been written of -our world. After all, you are wise to keep out of it. My straw chair at -Trouville looks trumpery beside that ivory chair in your Rittersäal. -I read the other day of some actresses dining off a truffled pheasant -and a sack of bon-bons. That is the sort of dinner we make all the year -round, morally--metaphorically--how do you say it? It makes us thirsty, -and perhaps, I am not sure, perhaps it leaves us half starved, though -we nibble the sweetmeats, and don't know it. - -'Your dinner must lack two things--bread and water.' - -'Yes: we never see either. It is all truffles and caramels and _vins -frappés._' - -'There is your bread.' - -She glanced at the little children, two pretty, graceful little maids -of six and seven years old. - -'_Ouf!_' said the Countess Zelenka. 'They are only little bits of puff -paste, a couple of _petits fours_ baked on the boulevards. If they be -_chic_, and marry well, I for one shall ask no more of them. If ever -you have children, I suppose you will rear them on science and the -Antonines?' - -'Perhaps on the open air and Homer,' said Wanda, with a smile. - -The Countess Brancka was silent a moment, then said abruptly: - -'You dismissed Egon again?' - -'Has he made you his ambassadress?' - -'No, oh no; he is too proud: only we all are aware of his wishes. -Wanda, do you know that you have some cruelty in you, some sternness?' - -'I think not. The cruelty would be to grant the wishes. With a loveless -wife Egon, would be much more unhappy than he is now.' - -'Oh, after a few months he would not care, you know; they never do. To -unite your fortunes is the great thing; you could lead your lives as -you liked.' - -'Our fortunes do very well apart,' said the Countess von Szalras, with -a patience which cost her some effort. - -'Yours is immense,' said Madame Brancka, with a sigh, for her own and -her husband's wealth had been seriously involved by extravagance and -that high play in which they both indulged. 'And it must accumulate in -your hands. You cannot spend much. I do not see how you could spend -much. You never receive; you never go to your palaces; you never leave -Hohenszalras; and you are so wise a woman that you never commit any -follies.' - -Wanda was silent. It did not appear to her that she was called on to -discuss her expenditure. - -Dinner was announced; their attendants took away the children; the -Princess woke up from a little dose, and said suddenly, 'Olga, is M. de -Sabran elected?' - -'Aunt Ottilie,' said her niece, hastily, 'has lost her affections to -that gentleman, because he painted her saint on a screen and had all -old Haydn at his fingers' ends.' - -'The election does not take place until next month,' said the Countess. -'He will certainly be returned, because of the blind fidelity of the -department to his name. The odd thing is that he should wish to be so.' - -'Wanda told him it was his duty,' said Princess Ottilie, with innocent -malice. - -The less innocent malice of the Countess Brancka's eyes fell for a -passing moment with inquiry and curiosity on the face of her hostess, -which, however, told her nothing. - -'Then he _was_ Parsifal or Perceforest!' she cried, 'and he has ridden -away to find the emerald cup of tradition. What a pity that he paused -on his way to break the bank at Monte Carlo. The two do not accord. I -fear he is but Lancelot.' - -'There is no reason why he should not pursue an honourable ambition,' -said the Princess, with some offence. - -'No reason at all, even if it be not an honourable one,' said Madame -Brancka, with a curious intonation. 'He always wins at baccara; he has -done some inimitable caricatures which hang at the Mirliton; he is an -amateur Rubenstein, and he has been the lover of Cochonette. These are -his qualifications for the Chamber, and if they be not as valiant ones -as those of _les Preux_ they are at least more amusing.' - -'My dear Olga,' said the Princess, with a certain dignity of reproof, -'you are not on your straw chair at Trouville. There are subjects, -expressions, suggestions, which are not agreeable to my ears or on your -lips.' - -'Cochonette!' murmured the offender, with a graceful little curtsey -of obedience and contrition. 'Oh, Madame, if you knew! A year ago we -talked of nothing else!' - -The Countess Brancka wished to talk still of nothing else, and though -she encountered a chillness and silence that would have daunted a less -bold spirit, she contrived to excite in the Princess a worldly and -almost unholy curiosity concerning that heroine of profane history -who had begun life in a little bakehouse of the Batignolles, and had -achieved the success of putting her name (or her nickname) upon the -lips of all Paris. - -Throughout dinner she spoke of little save of Cochonette, that -goddess of _bouffe_, and of Parsifal, as she persisted in baptising -the one lover to whom alone the goddess had ever been faithful. With -ill-concealed impatience her hostess bore awhile with the subject; then -dismissed it somewhat peremptorily. - -'We are provincials, my dear Olga,' she said, with a very cold -inflection of contempt in her voice. 'We are very antiquated in our -ways and our views. Bear with our prejudices and do not scare our -decorum. We keep it by us as we keep kingfishers' skins amongst our -furs in summer against moth; a mere superstition, I daresay, but we are -only rustic people.' - -'How you say that, Wanda,' said her guest, with a droll little laugh, -'and you look like Marie Antoinette all the while! Why will you bury -yourself? You would only need to be seen in Paris a week, and all the -world would turn after you and go back to tradition and ermine, instead -of _chien_ and plush. If you live another ten years as you live now you -will turn Hohenszalras into a religious house; and even Mme. Ottilie -would regret that. You will institute a Carmelite Order, because -white becomes you so. Poor Egon, he would sooner have you laugh about -Cochonette.' - -The evening was chill, but beautifully calm and free of mist. Wanda -von Szalras walked out on to the terrace, whilst her cousin and guest, -missing the stimulus of her usual band of lovers and friends, curled -herself up on a deep chair and fell sound asleep like a dormouse. - -There was no sound on the night except the ripple of the lake water -below and the splash of torrents falling down the cliffs around; a -sense of irritation and of pleasure moved her both in the same moment. -What was a French courtesan, a singer of lewd songs, an interpreter -of base passions to her? Nothing except a creature to be loathed and -pitied, as men in health feel a disgusted compassion for disease. -Yet she felt a certain anger stir in her as she recalled all this -frivolous, trivial, ill-flavoured chatter of her cousin's. And what was -it to her if one of the many lovers of this woman had cast her spells -from about him and left her for a manlier and a worthier arena? Yet -she could not resist a sense of delicate distant homage to herself in -the act, in the mute obedience to her counsels such as a knight might -render, even Lancelot with stained honour and darkened soul. - -The silence of it touched her. - -He had said nothing: only by mere chance, in the idle circling of -giddy rumour, she learned he had remembered her words and followed her -suggestion. There was a subtle and flattering reverence in it which -pleased the taste of a woman who was always proud but never vain. And -to any noble temperament there is a singularly pure and honest joy in -the consciousness of having been in any measure the means of raising -higher instincts and loftier desires in any human soul that was not -dead but dormant. - -The shrill voice of Olga Brancka startled her as it broke in on her -musings. - -'I have been asleep!' she cried, as she rose out of her deep chair and -came forth into the moonlight. 'Pray forgive me, Wanda. You will have -all that drowsy water running and tumbling all over the place; it makes -one think of the voices in the Sistine in Passion Week; there are the -gloom, the hush, the sigh, the shriek, the eternal appeal, the eternal -accusation. That water would drive me into hysteria; could you not -drain it, divert it, send it underground--silence it somehow?' - -'When you can keep the Neva flowing at New Year, perhaps I shall be -able. But I would not if I could. I have had all that water about me -from babyhood; when I am away from the sound of it I feel as if some -hand had woolled up my ears.' - -'That is what I feel when I am away from the noise of the streets. Oh, -Wanda! to think that you can do utterly as you like and yet do not like -to have the sea of light of the Champs-Élysées or the Graben before -your eyes, rather than that gliding, dusky water!' - -'The water is a mirror. I can see my own soul in it and Nature's; -perhaps one hopes even sometimes to see God's.' - -'That is not living, my dear, it is dreaming.' - -'Oh, no, my life is very real; it is as real as light to darkness, it -is absolute prose.' - -'Make it poetry then; that is very easy.' - -'Poetry is to the poetical; I am by no means poetical. My stud-book, -my stewards' ledgers, my bankers' accounts, form the chief of my -literature; you know I am a practical farmer.' - -'I know you are one of the most beautiful and one of the richest women -in Europe, and you live as if you were fifty years old, ugly, and -_dévote_; all this will grow on you. In a few years' time you will -be a hermit, a prude, an ascetic. You will found a new order, and be -canonised after death.' - -'My aunt is afraid that I shall die a freethinker. It is hard to -please every one,' replied the Countess Wanda, with unruffled good -humour. 'It is poetical people who found religious orders, enthusiasts, -visionaries; I wish I were one of them. But I am not. The utmost I -can do is to follow George Herbert's precept and sweep my own little -chambers, so that this sweeping may be in some sort a duty done.' - -'You are a good woman, Wanda, and I dare say a grand one, but you are -too grave for me.' - -'You mean that I am dull? People always grow dull who live much alone.' - -'But you could have the whole world at your feet if you only raised a -finger.' - -'That would not amuse me at all.' - -Her guest gave an impatient movement of her shoulders; after a little -she said, 'Did Réné de Sabran amuse you?' - -Wanda von Szalras hesitated a moment. - -'In a measure he interested me,' she answered, being a perfectly -truthful woman. 'He is a man who has the capacity of great things, -but he seems to me to be his own worst enemy; if he had fewer gifts -he might probably have more achievement. A waste of power is always a -melancholy sight.' - -'He is only a _boulevardier_, you know.' - -'No doubt your Paris asphalte is the modern embodiment of Circe.' - -'But he is leaving Circe.' - -'So much the better for him if he be. But I do not know why you speak -of him so much. He is a stranger to me, and will never, most likely, -cross my path again.' - -'Oh, Parsifal will come back,' said Madame Brancka, with a little -smile. 'Hohenszalras is his Holy Grail.' - -'He can scarcely come uninvited, and who will invite him here?' said -the mistress of Hohenszalras, with cold literalness. - -'Destiny will; the great master of the ceremonies who disposes of us -all,' said her cousin. - -'Destiny!' said Wanda, with some contempt. 'Ah, you are superstitious; -irreligious people always are. You believe in mesmerism and disbelieve -in God.' - -'Oh, most Holy Mother, cannot you make Wanda a little like other -people?' said the Countess Brancka when her hostess had left her alone -with Princess Ottilie. 'She is as much a fourteenth-century figure as -any one of those knights in the Rittersäal.' - -'Wanda is a gentlewoman,' said the Princess drily. 'You great ladies -are not always that, my dear Olga. You are all very _piquantes_ and -_provocantes_, no doubt, but you have forgotten what dignity is like, -and perhaps you have forgotten, too, what self-respect is like. It is -but another old-fashioned word.' - - - - -CHAPTER IX. - - -The late summer passed on into full autumn, and he never returned to -the little isle under the birches and willows. The monks spoke of him -often with the wondering admiration of rustic recluses for one who had -seemed to them the very incarnation of that world which to them was -only a vague name. His talents were remembered, his return was longed -for; a silver reliquary and an antique book of plain song which he -had sent them were all that remained to them of his sojourn there. As -they angled for trout under the drooping boughs, or sat and dosed in -the cloister as the rain fell, they talked together of that marvellous -visitant with regret. Sometimes they said to one another that they had -fancied once upon a time he would have become lord there, where the -spires and pinnacles and shining sloping roofs of the great Schloss -rose amidst the woods across the Szalrassee. When their grand prior -heard them say so he rebuked them. - -'Our lady is a true daughter of the Holy Church,' he said; 'all the -lands and all the wealth she has will come to the Church. You will see, -should we outlive her--which the saints send we may not do--that the -burg will be bequeathed by her to form a convent of Ursulines. It is -the order she most loves.' - -She overheard him say so once when she sat in her boat beneath the -willows drifting by under the island, and she sighed impatiently. - -'No, I shall not do that,' she thought. 'The religious foundations did -a great work in their time, but that time is over. They can no more -resist the pressure of the change of thought and habit than I can set -sail like S. Ursula with eleven thousand virgins. Hohenszalras shall -go to the Crown; they will do what seems best with it. But I may live -fifty years and more.' - -A certain sadness came over her as she thought so; a long life, a -lonely life, appalled her, even though it was cradled in all luxury and -strengthened with all power. - -'If only my Bela were living!' she said, half aloud; and the water grew -dim to her sight as it flowed away green and sparkling into the deep -long shadows of its pine-clothed shores, shadows, stretching darkly -across its western side, whilst the eastern extremity was still warm in -the afternoon light. - -The great pile of Hohenszalras seemed to tower up into the very clouds; -the evening sun, not yet sunk behind the Venediger range, shone ruddily -on all its towers and its gothic spires, and the grim sculptures and -the glistening metal, with which it was so lavishly ornamented, were -illumined till it looked like some colossal and enchanted citadel, -where soon the magic ivory horn of Childe Boland might sound and wake -the spell-bound warders. - -If only Bela, lord of all, had lived! - -But her regret was not only for her brother. - -In the October of that year her solitude was broken; her Sovereign -signified her desire to see Hohenszalras again. They were about to -visit Salzburg, and expressed their desire to pass three days in the -Iselthal. There was nothing to be done but to express gratitude for the -honour and make the necessary preparations. The von Szalras had been -always loyal allies rather than subjects, and their devotion to the -Habsburg house had been proved in many ways and with constancy. She -felt that she would rather have to collect and equip a regiment of -horse, as her fathers had done, than fill her home with the _tapage_ -inevitable to an Imperial reception, but she was not insensible to the -friendship that dictated this mark of honour. - -'Fate conspires to make me break my resolutions,' she said to the -Princess; who answered with scant sympathy: - -'There are some resolutions much more wisely broken than persevered in; -your vows of solitude are amongst them.' - -'Three days will not long affect my solitude.' - -'Who knows? At all events, Hohenszalras for those three days will be -worthy of its traditions--if only it will not rain.' - -'We will hope that it may not. Let us prepare the list of invitations.' - -When she had addressed all the invitations to some fifty of the -greatest families of the empire for the house party, she took one of -the cards engraved 'To meet their Imperial Majesties,' and hesitated -some moments, then wrote across it the name of Sabran. - -'You will like to see your friend,' she said as she passed it to her -aunt. - -'Certainly, I should like to do so, but I am quite sure he will not -come.' - -'Not come?' - -'I think he will not. You will never understand, my dear Wanda, that -men may love you.' - -'I certainly saw nothing of love in the conversation of M. de Sabran,' -she answered, with some irritation. - -'In his conversation? Very likely not; he is a proud man and poor.' - -'Since he has ceased to visit Monte Carlo.' - -'You are ungenerous, Wanda.' - -'I?' - -The accusation fell on her with a shock of surprise, under which some -sense of error stirred. Was it possible she could be ungenerous? She, -whose character had always, even in its faults, been cast on lines so -broad? She let his invitation go away with the rest in the post-bag to -Matrey. - -In a week his answer came with others. He was very sensible, very -grateful, but the political aspect of the time forbade him to leave -France. His election had entailed on him many obligations; the Chamber -would meet next month, etc., etc. He laid his homage and regrets at the -feet of the ladies of Hohenszalras. - -'I was sure he would say so,' the Princess observed. It did not lie -within her Christian obligations to spare the '_je vous l'avais bien -dit._' - -'It is very natural that he should not jeopardise his public -prospects,' answered Wanda herself, angrily conscious of a -disappointment, with which there was mingled also a sense of greater -respect for him than she had ever felt. - -'He cares nothing at all about those,' said the Princess, sharply. 'If -he had the position of Egon he would come. His political prospects! Do -you pretend to be ignorant that he only went to the Chamber as he went -to Romaris, because you recommended ambition and activity?' - -'If that be the case he is most wise not to come,' answered, with some -coldness, the châtelaine of Hohenszalras; and she went to visit the -stables, which would be more important in the eyes of her Imperial -mistress than any other part of the castle. - -'She will like Cadiga,' she thought, as she stroked the graceful throat -of an Arab mare which she had had over from Africa three months before, -a pure bred daughter of the desert 'shod with lightning.' - -She conversed long with her _stallmeister_ Ulrich, and gave him various -directions. - -'We are all grown very rustic and old-fashioned here,' she said with a -smile. 'But the horses at least will not disgrace us.' - -Ulrich asked his most high countess if the Margraf von Sabran would be -of the house party, and when she answered 'No,' said, with regret, -that no one had ever looked so well on Siegfried as he had done. - -'He did ride very well,' she said, and turned to the stall where the -sorrel Siegfried stood. She sighed unconsciously as she drew the -tufted hair hanging over-the horse's forehead through her fingers with -tenderness. What if she were to make Siegfried and all else his, if it -were true that he loved her? She thrust the thought away almost before -it took any real shape. - -'I do not even believe it,' she said half aloud, and yet in her -innermost heart she did believe it. - -The Imperial visit was made and became a thing of the past. - -The state apartments were opened, the servants wore their state -liveries, the lake had its banners and flags, its decorated -landing-stairs and velvet-cushioned boats; the stately and silent place -was full for three days and nights of animated and brilliant life, -and great hunting parties rejoiced the soul of old Otto, and made the -forests ring with sound of horn and rifle. The culverins on the keep -fired their salutes, the chimes of the island monastery echoed the -bells of the clock tower of the Schloss, the schools sang with clear -fresh voices the Kaiser's Hymn, the sun shone, the jäger were in full -glory, the castle was filled with guests and their servants,' the -long-unused theatre had a troop of Viennese to play comedies on its -bijou stage, the ball-room, lined with its Venetian mirrors and its -Reseiner gilding, was lit up once more after many years of gloom; the -nobles of the provinces came from far and wide at the summons of the -lady of Hohenszalras, and the greater nobles who formed the house-party -were well amused and well content, whilst the Imperial guests were -frankly charmed with all things, and honestly reluctant to depart. - -When she accompanied them to the foot of the terrace stairs, and there -took leave of them, she could feel that their visit had been one of -unfeigned enjoyment, and her farewell gift to her Kaiserin was Cadiga. -They had left early on the morning of the fourth day, and the remainder -of the day was filled till sunset by the departure of the other guests; -it was fatiguing and crowded. When the last visitor had gone she -dropped down on a great chair in the Rittersäal, and gave a long-drawn -sigh of relief. - -'What a long strain on one's powers of courtesy!' she murmured. 'It is -more exhausting than to climb Gross Glöckner!' - -'It has been perfectly successful!' said the Princess, whose cheeks -were warm and whose eyes were bright with triumph. - -'It has been only a matter of money,' said the Countess von Szalras, -with some contempt. 'Nothing makes one feel so _bourgeoise_ as a thing -like this. Any merchant or banker could do the same. It is impossible -to put any originality into it. It is like diamonds. Any one only heard -of yesterday could do as much if they had only the money to do it with; -you do not seem to see what I mean?' - -'I see that, as usual, you are discontented when any other woman would -be in paradise,' answered the Princess, a little tartly. 'Pray, could -the _bourgeoise_ have a residence ten centuries old?' - -'I am afraid she could buy one easily,' - -'Would that be the same thing?' - -'Certainly not, but it would enable her to do all I have done for the -last three days, if she had only money enough; she could even give away -Cadiga.' - -'She could not get Cadiga accepted!' said Mme. Ottilie, drily. 'You are -tired, my love, and so do not appreciate your own triumphs. It has been -a very great success.' - -'They were very kind; they are always so kind. But all the time I could -not help thinking, were they not horribly fatigued. It wearied me so -myself, I could not believe that they were otherwise than weary too.' - -'It has been a great success,' repeated the Princess. 'But you are -always discontented.' - -Wanda did not reply; she leaned back against the Cordovan leather -back of the chair, crushing her chestnut hair against the emblazoned -scutcheon of her house; she was very fatigued, and her face was pale. -For three whole days and evenings to preserve an incessant vigilance of -courtesy, a continual assumption of interest, an unremitting appearance -of enjoyment, a perpetual smile of welcome, is very tedious work: those -in love with social successes are sustained by the consciousness of -them, but she was not. An Imperial visit more or less could add not one -hair's breadth to the greatness of the house of Szalras. - -And there was a dull, half conscious pain at the bottom of her heart. -She was thinking of Egon Vàsàrhely, who had said he could not leave -his regiment; of Réné de Sabran, who had said he could not leave his -country. Even to those who care nothing for society, and dislike the -stir and noise of the world about them, there is still always a vague -sense of depression in the dispersion of a great party; the house -seems so strangely silent, the rooms seem so strangely empty, servants -flitting noiselessly here and there, a dropped flower, a fallen jewel, -an oppressive scent from multitudes of fading blossoms, a broken vase -perhaps, or perhaps a snapped fan--these are all that are left of -the teeming life crowded here one little moment ago. Though one may -be glad they are all gone, yet there is a certain sadness in it. '_Le -lendemain de la fête_' keeps its pathos, even though the fête itself -has possessed no poetry and no power to amuse. - -The Princess, who was very fatigued too, though she would not confess -that social duties could ever exhaust anyone, went softly away to -her own room, and Wanda sat alone in the great Rittersäal, with the -afternoon light pouring through the painted casements on to the -damascened armour, and the Flemish tapestries, and the great dais at -the end of the hall, with its two-headed eagle that Dante cursed, -its draperies of gold-coloured velvet, its escutcheons in beaten and -enamelled metal. - -Discontented! The Princess had left that truthful word behind her like -a little asp creeping upon a marble floor. It stung her conscience with -a certain reproach, her pride with a certain impatience. Discontented! -She who had always been so equable of temper, so enamoured of solitude, -so honestly loyal to her people and her duties, so entirely grateful to -the placid days that came and went as calmly as the breathing of her -breast! - -Was it possible she was discontented? - -How all the great world that had just left her would have laughed at -her, and asked what doubled rose-leaf made her misery? - -No one hardly on earth could be more entirely free than she was, more -covered with all good gifts of fortune and of circumstances; and she -had always been so grateful to her life until now. Would she never -cease to miss the coming of the little boat across from the Holy Isle? -She was angry that this memory should have so much power to pursue her -thought and spoil the present hours. Had he but been there, she knew -very well that the pageantry of the past three days would not have -been the mere empty formalities, the mere gilded tedium that they had -appeared to be to her. - -On natures thoughtful and profound, silence has sometimes a much -greater power than speech. Now and then she surprised herself in the -act of thinking how artificial human life had become, when the mere -accident of a greater or lesser fortune determined whether a man who -respected himself could declare his feeling for a woman he loved. It -seemed lamentably conventional and unreal, and yet had he not been -fettered by silence he would have been no gentleman. - -Life resumed its placid even tenor at Hohenszalras after this -momentary disturbance. Autumn comes early in the Glöckner and -Venediger groups. Madame Ottilie with a shiver heard the north winds -sweep through the yellowing forests, and watched the white mantle -descend lower and lower down the mountain sides. Another winter was -approaching, a winter in which she would see no one, hear nothing, sit -all day by her wood fire, half asleep for sheer want of interest to -keep her awake; the very postboy was sometimes detained by the snowfall -for whole days together in his passage to and from Matrey. - -'It is all very well for you,' she said pettishly to her niece. 'You -have youth, you have strength, you like to have four mad horses put in -your sleigh and drive them like demoniacs through howling deserts of -frozen pine forests, and come home when the great stars are all out, -with your eyes shining like the planets, and the beasts all white with -foam and icicles. You like that; you can do it; you prefer it before -anything, but I--what have I to do? One cannot eat nougats for ever, -nor yet read one's missal. Even you will allow that the evenings are -horribly long. Your horses cannot help you there. You embroider very -artistically, but they would do that all for you at any convent; and to -be sure you write your letters and audit your accounts, but you might -just as well leave it all to your lawyers. Olga Brancka is quite right, -though I do not approve of her mode of expression, but she is quite -right--you should be in the world.' - -But she failed to move Wanda by a hair's breadth, and soon the hush -of winter settled down on Hohenszalras, and when the first frost had -hardened the ground the four black horses were brought out in the -sleigh, and their mistress, wrapped in furs to the eyes, began those -headlong gallops through the silent forests which stirred her to a -greater exhilaration than any pleasures of the world could have raised -in her. To guide those high-mettled, half-broken, high-bred creatures, -fresh from freedom on the plains of the Danube, was like holding the -reins of the winds. - -One day at dusk as she returned from one of these drives, and went -to see the Princess Ottilie before changing her dress, the Princess -received her with a little smile and a demure air of triumph, of -smiling triumph. In her hand was an open letter which she held out to -her niece. - -'Read!' she said with much self-satisfaction. 'See what miracles you -and the Holy Isle can work.' - -Wanda took the letter, which she saw at a glance was in the writing -of Sabran. After some graceful phrases of homage to the Princess, -he proceeded in it to say that he had taken his seat in the French -Chamber, as deputy for his department. - -'I do not deceive myself,' he continued. 'The trust is placed in me for -the sake of the memories of the dead Sabran, not because I am anything -in the sight of these people; but I will endeavour to be worthy of it. -I am a sorry idler and of little purpose and strength in life, but I -will endeavour to make my future more serious and more deserving of -the goodness which was showered on me at Hohenszalras. It grieved me -to be unable to profit by the permission so graciously extended to -me at the time of their Imperial Majesties' sojourn with you, but it -was impossible for me to come. My thoughts were with you, as they are -indeed every hour. Offer my homage to the Countess von Szalras, with -the renewal of my thanks.' - -Then, with some more phrases of reverence and compliment blent in one -to the venerable lady whom he addressed, he ended an epistle which -brought as much pleasure to the recipient as though she had been -seventeen instead of seventy. - -She watched the face of Wanda during the perusal of these lines, but -she did not learn anything from its expression. - -'He writes admirably,' she said, when she had read it through; 'and I -think he is well fitted for a political career. They say that it is -always best in politics not to be burdened with convictions, and he -will be singularly free from such impediments, for he has none!' - -'You are very harsh and unjust,' said the Princess, angrily. 'No -person can pay you a more delicate compliment than lies in following -your counsels, and yet you have nothing better to say about it than to -insinuate an unscrupulous immorality.' - -'Politics are always immoral.' - -'Why did you recommend them to him, then?' said the Princess, sharply. - -'They are better than some other things--than _rouge et noir_, for -instance; but I did not perhaps do right in advising a mere man of -pleasure to use the nation as his larger gaming-table.' - -'You are beyond my comprehension! Your wire drawing is too fine for my -dull eyesight. One thing is certainly quite clear to me, dull as I am; -you live alone until you grow dissatisfied with everything. There is -no possibility of pleasing a woman who disapproves of the whole living -world!' - -'The world sees few unmixed motives,' said Wanda, to which the Princess -replied by an impatient movement. - -'The post has brought fifty letters for you. I have been looking over -the journals,' she answered. 'There is something you may also perhaps -deign to read.' - -She held out a French newspaper and pointed to a column in it. - -Wanda took it and read it, standing. It was a report of a debate in the -French Chamber. - -She read in silence and attentively, leaning against the great carved -chimney-piece. 'I was not aware he was so good an orator,' she said -simply, when she had finished reading. - -'You grant that it is a very fine speech, a very noble speech?' -said Madame Otillie, eagerly and with impatience. 'You perceive the -sensation it caused; it is evidently the first time he has spoken. You -will see in another portion of the print how they praise him.' - -'He has acquired his convictions with rapidity. He was a Socialist when -here.' - -'The idea! A man of his descent has always the instincts of his order: -he may pretend to resist them, but they are always stronger than he. -You might at least commend him, Wanda, since your words turned him -towards public life.' - -'He is no doubt eloquent,' she answered, with 'some reluctance. 'That -we could see here. If he be equally sincere he will be a great gain to -the nobility of France.' - -'Why should you doubt his sincerity?' - -'Is mere ambition ever sincere?' - -'I really cannot understand you. You censured his waste of ability and -accession; you seem equally disposed to cavil at his exertions and use -of his talent. Your prejudices are most cruelly tenacious.' - -'How can I applaud your friend's action until I am sure of his motive?' - -'His motive is to please you,' thought the Princess, but she was too -wary to say so. - -She merely replied: - -'No motive is ever altogether unmixed, as you cruelly observed; but I -should say that his must be on the whole sufficiently pure. He wishes -to relieve the inaction and triviality of a useless life.' - -'To embrace a hopeless cause is always in a manner noble,' assented her -niece. 'And I grant you that he has spoken very well.' - -Then she went to her own room to dress for dinner. - -In the evening she read the reported speech again, with closer -attention. It was eloquent, ironical, stately, closely reasoned, and -rose in its peroration to a caustic and withering eloquence of retort -and invective. It was the speech of a born orator, but it was also the -speech of a strongly conservative partisan. - -'How much of what he says does he believe?' she thought, with a doubt -that saddened her and made her wonder why it came to her. And whether -he believed or not, whether he were true or false in his political -warfare, whether he were selfish or unselfish in his ambitions, what -did it matter to her? - -He had stayed there a few weeks, and he had played so well that the -echoes of his music still seemed to linger after him, and that was all. -It was not likely they would ever meet again. - - - - -CHAPTER X. - - -With the New Year Madame Ottilie received another letter from him. -It was brief, grateful, and touching. It concluded with a message of -ceremonious homage to the châtelaine of Hohenszalras. Of his entrance -into political life it said nothing. With the letter came a screen of -gilded leather which he had painted himself, with passages from the -history of S. Julian Hospitador. - -'It will seem worthless,' he said, 'where every chamber is a museum -of art; but accept it as a sign of my grateful and imperishable -remembrance.' - -The Princess was deeply touched and sensibly flattered. - -'You will admit, at least,' she said, with innocent triumph, 'that he -knows how to make gratitude graceful.' - -'It is an ex-voto, and you are his patron saint, dear mother,' said -the Countess Wanda, with a smile but the smile was one of approval. -She thought his silence on his own successes and on her name was in -good taste. And the screen was so admirably painted that the Venetian -masters might have signed it without discredit. - -'May I give him no message from you,' said the Princess, as she was -about to write her reply. - -Her niece hesitated. - -'Say we have read his first speech, and are glad of his success,' she -said, after a few moments' reflection. - -'Nothing more?' - -'What else should I say?' replied Wanda, with some irritation. - -The Princess was too honourable a woman to depart from the text of -the congratulation, but she contrived to throw a little more warmth -into the spirit of it; and she did not show her letter to the mistress -of Hohenszalras. She set the screen near her favourite chair in the -blue-room. - -'If only there were any one to appreciate it!' she said, with a sigh. -'Like everything else in this house, it might as well be packed up in -a chest for aught people see of it. This place is not a museum; the -world goes to a museum: it is a crypt!' - -'Would it be improved by a crowd of sightseers at ten kreutzers a head?' - -'No: but it would be very much brightened by a house-party at Easter, -and now and then at midsummer and autumn. In your mother's time the -October parties for the bear-hunts, the wolf-hunts, the boar-hunts, -were magnificent. No, I do not think the chase contrary to God's -will; man has power over the beasts of the field and the forest. The -archdukes never missed an autumn here; they found the sport finer than -in Styria.' - -Her niece kissed her hand and went out to where her four black horses -were fretting and champing before the great doors, and the winter sun -was lighting up the gilded scrollwork, and the purple velvet, and the -brown sables of her sleigh, that had been built in Russia and been a -gift to her from Egon Vàsàrhely. She felt a little impatience of the -Princess Ottilie, well as she loved her; the complacent narrowness of -mind, the unconscious cruelty, the innocent egotism, the conventional -religion which clipped and fitted the ways of Deity to suit its own -habits and wishes: these fretted her, chafed her, oppressed her with a -sense of their utter vanity. The Princess would not herself have harmed -a sparrow or a mouse, yet it seemed to her that Providence had created -all the animal world only to furnish pastime for princes and their -jägers. She saw no contradiction in this view of the matter. The small -conventional mind of her had been cast in that mould and would never -expand: it was perfectly pure and truthful, but it was contracted and -filled with formula. - -Wanda von Szalras, who loved her tenderly, could not help a certain -impatience of this, the sole, companionship she had. A deep affection -may exist side by side with a mental disparity that creates an -unwilling but irresistible sense of tedium and discordance. A clear and -broad intelligence is infinitely patient of inferiority; but its very -patience has its reaction in its own fatigue and silent irritation. - -This lassitude came on her most in the long evenings whilst the -Princess slumbered and she herself sat alone. She was not haunted by -it when she was in the open air, or in the library, occupied with the -reports or the requirements on her estates. But the evenings were -lonely and tedious; they had not seemed so when the little boat had -come away from the monastery, and the prayer and praise of Handel and -Haydn, and the new-born glory of the Nibelungen tone-poems had filled -the quiet twilight hours. It was in no way probable that the musician -and she would ever meet again. She understood that his own delicacy -and pride must perforce keep him out of Austria, and she, however much -the Princess desired it, could never invite him there alone, and would -not probably gather such a house-party at Hohenszalras as might again -warrant her doing so. - -Nothing was more unlikely, she supposed, than that she would ever hear -again the touch that had awakened the dumb chords of the old painted -spinet. - -But circumstance, that master of the ceremonies, as Madame Brancka -termed it, who directs the _menuet de la cour_ of life, and who often -diverts himself by letting it degenerate into a dance of death, willed -it otherwise. There was a dear friend of hers who was a dethroned -and exiled queen. Their friendship was strong, tender, and born in -childish days. On the part of Wanda, it had been deepened by the august -adversity which impresses and attaches all noble natures. Herself born -of a great race, and with the instincts of a ruling class hereditary -in her, there was something sacred and awful in the fall of majesty. -Her friend, stripped of all appanages of her rank, and deserted by -nearly all who 'had so late sworn her allegiance, became more than ever -dear; she became holy to her, and she would sooner have denied the -request of a reigning sovereign than of one powerless to command or -to rebuke. 'When this friend, who had been so hardly smitten by fate, -sent her word that she was ill and would fain see her, she, therefore, -never even hesitated as to obedience before the summons. It troubled -and annoyed her; it came to her ill-timed and unexpected; and it was -above all disagreeable to her, because it would take her to Paris. But -it never occurred to her to send an excuse to this friend, who had no -longer any power to say, 'I will,' but could only say, like common -humanity, 'I hope.' - -Within two hours of her reception of the summons she was on her way to -Windisch-Matrey. The Princess did not accompany her; she intended to -make as rapid a journey as possible without pausing on the way, and her -great-aunt was too old and too delicate in health for such exertion. - -'Though I would fain go and see that great Parisian aurist,' she said -plaintively. 'My hearing is not what it used to be.' - -'The great aurist shall come to you, dear mother,' said Wanda. 'I will -bring him back with me.' - -She travelled with a certain state, since she did not think that the -moment of a visit to a dethroned sovereign was a fit time to lay -ceremony aside. She took several of her servants and some of her horses -with her, and journeyed by way of Munich and Strasburg. - -Madame Ottilie was too glad she should go anywhere to offer opposition; -and in her heart of hearts she thought of her favourite. He was in -Paris; who knew what might happen? - -It was midwinter, and the snow was deep on all the country, whether of -mountain or of plain, which stretched between the Tauern and the French -capital. But there was no great delay of the express, and in some forty -hours the Countess von Szalras, with her attendants, and her horses -with theirs, arrived at the Hôtel Bristol. - -The noise, the movement, the brilliancy of the streets seemed a strange -spectacle, after four years spent without leaving the woodland quiet -and mountain solitudes of Hohenszalras. - -She was angry with herself that, as she stood at the windows of her -apartment, she almost unconsciously watched the faces of the crowd -passing below, and felt a vague expectancy of seeing amongst them the -face of Sabran. - -She went that evening, to the modest hired house where the young and -beautiful sovereign she came to visit had found a sorry refuge. It -was a meeting full of pain to both. When they had last parted at the -Hofburg of Vienna, the young queen had been in all the triumph and hope -of brilliant nuptials; and at Hohenszalras, the people's Heilige Bela -had been living, a happy boy, in all his fair promise. - -Meanwhile, the news-sheets informed all their leaders that the Countess -von Szalras was in Paris. Ambassadors and ambassadresses, princes and -princesses, and a vast number of very great people, hastened to write -their names at the Hôtel Bristol. - -Amongst the cards left was that of Sabran. But he sent it; he did not -go in person. - -She refused all invitations, and declined almost all visits. She had -come there only to see her friend, the Queen of Natalia. Paris, which -loves anything new, talked a great deal about her; and its street -crowds, which admires what is beautiful, began to gather before the -doors at the hours when her black horses, driven Russian fashion, came -fretting and flashing like meteors over the asphalte. - -'Why did you bring your horses for so short a time?' said Madame -Kaulnitz to her. 'You could, of course, have had any of ours.' - -'I always like to have some of my horses with me,' she answered. -'I would have brought them all, only it would have looked so -ostentatious; you know they are my children.' - -'I do not see why you should not have other children,' said Madame -Kaulnitz. 'It is quite inhuman that you will not marry.' - -'I have never said that I will not. But I do not think it likely.' - -Two days after her arrival, as she was driving down the Avenue de -l'Impératrice, she saw Sabran on foot. She was driving slowly. She -would have stopped her carriage if he had paused in his walk; but he -did not, he only bowed low and passed on. It was almost rude, after the -hospitality of Hohenszalras, but the rudeness pleased her. It spoke -both of pride and of sensitiveness. It seemed scarcely natural, after -their long hours of intercourse, that they should pass each other thus -as strangers; yet it seemed impossible they should any more be friends. -She did not ask herself why it seemed so, but she felt it rather by -instinct than by reasoning. - -She was annoyed to feel that the sight of him had caused a momentary -emotion in her of mingled trouble and pleasure. - -No one mentioned his name to her, and she asked no one concerning him. -She spent almost all her time with the Queen of Natalia, and there -were other eminent foreign personages in Paris at that period whose -amiabilities she could not altogether reject, and she had only allowed -herself fifteen days as the length of her sojourn, as Madame Ottilie -was alone amidst the snow-covered mountains of the Tauern. - -On the fifth day after her meeting with Sabran he sent another card -of his to the hotel, and sent with it an immense basket of gilded -osier filled with white lilac. She remembered having once said to him -at Hohenszalras that lilac was her flower of preference. Her rooms -were crowded with bouquets, sent her by all sorts of great people, -and made of all kinds of rare blossoms, but the white lilac, coming -in the January snows, touched her more than all those. She knew that -his poverty was no fiction; and that great clusters of white lilac in -midwinter in Paris meant much money. - -She wrote a line or two in German, which thanked him for his -recollection of her taste, and sent it to the Chamber. She did not know -where he lived. - -That evening she mentioned his name to her godfather, the Duc de Noira, -and asked him if he knew it. The Duc, a Legitimist, a recluse, and a -man of strong prejudices, answered at once. - -'Of course I know it; he is one of us, and he has made a political -position for himself within the last year.' - -'Do you know him personally?' - -'No, I do not. I see no one, as you are aware; I live in greater -retirement than ever. But he bears an honourable name, and though I -believe that, until lately, he was but a _flâneur_, he has taken a -decided part this session, and he is a very great acquisition to the -true cause.' - -'It is surely very sudden, his change of front?' - -'What change? He took no part in politics that ever I heard of; it -is taken for granted that a Marquis de Sabran is loyal to his sole -legitimate sovereign. I believe he never thought of public life; but -they tell me that he returned from some long absence last autumn, -an altered and much graver man. Then one of the deputies for his -department died, and he was elected for the vacancy with no opposition.' - -The Duc de Noira proceeded to speak of the political aspects of the -time, and said no more. - -Involuntarily, as she drove through the avenues of the Bois de -Boulogne, she thought of the intuitive comprehension, the half-uttered -sympathy, the interchange of ideas, _à demi-mots_, which had made the -companionship of Sabran so welcome to her in the previous summer. They -had not always agreed, she often had not even approved him; but they -had always understood one another, they had never needed to explain. -She was startled to realise how much and how vividly she regretted him. - -'If one could only be sure of his sincerity,' she thought, 'there would -be few men living who would equal him.' - -She did not know why she doubted his sincerity. Some natures have keen -instincts like dogs. She regretted to doubt it; but the change in him -seemed to her too rapid to be one of conviction. Yet the homage in it -to herself was delicate and subtle. She would not have been a woman had -it not touched her, and she was too honest with herself not to frankly -admit in her own thoughts that she might very well have inspired a -sentiment which would go far to change a nature which it entered and -subdued. Many men had loved her; why not he? - -She drew the whip over the flanks of her horses as she felt that -mingled impatience and sadness with which sovereigns remember that they -can never be certain they are loved for themselves, and not for all -which environs them and lifts them up out of the multitude. - -She was angry with herself when she felt that what interested her most -during her Parisian sojourn was the report of the debates of the -French Chamber in the French journals. - -One night the Baron Kaulnitz spoke of Sabran in her hearing. - -'He is the most eloquent of the Legitimist party,' he said to some one -in her hearing. 'No one supposed that he had it in him; he was a mere -idler, a mere man of pleasure, and it was at times said of something -worse, but he has of late manifested great talent; it is displayed for -a lost cause, but it is none the less admirable as talent goes.' - -She heard what he said with pleasure. - -Advantage was taken of her momentary return to the world to press on -her the choice of a great alliance. Names as mighty as her own were -suggested to her, and more than one great prince, of a rank even higher -than hers, humbly solicited the honour of the hand which gave no caress -except to a horse's neck, a dog's head, a child's curls. But she did -not even pause to allow these proposals any consideration; she refused -them all curtly, and with a sense of irritation. - -'Have you sworn never to marry?' said the Duc de Noira, with much -chagrin, receiving her answer for a candidate of his own to whom he was -much attached. - -'I never swear anything,' she answered. 'Oaths are necessary for -people who do not know their own minds. I do know my own.' - -'You know that you will never marry?' - -'I hardly say that; but I shall never contract a mere alliance. It is -horrible--that union eternal of two bodies and souls without sympathy, -without fitness, without esteem, merely for sake of additional position -or additional wealth.' - -'It is not eternal! said the Duc, with a smile; 'and I can assure you -that my friend adores you for yourself. You will never understand, -Wanda, that you are a woman to inspire great love; that you would be -sought for your face, for your form, for your mind, if you had nothing -else.' - -'I do not believe it.' - -'Can you doubt at least that your cousin Egon----' - -'Oh, pray spare me the name of Egon!' she said with unwonted -irritation. 'I may surely be allowed to have left that behind me at -home!' - -It was a time of irritation and turbulence in Paris. The muttering of -the brooding storm was visible to fine ears through the false stillness -of an apparently serene atmosphere. She, who knew keen and brilliant -politicians who were not French, saw the danger that was at hand for -France which France did not see. - -'They will throw down the glove to Prussia; and they will repent of it -as long as the earth lasts,' she thought, and she was oppressed by her -prescience, for war had cost her race dear; and she said to herself, -'When that liquid fire is set flowing who shall say where it will -pause?' - -She felt an extreme desire to converse with Sabran as she had done -at home; to warn him, to persuade him, to hear his views and express -to him her own; but she did not summon him, and he did not come. She -did justice to the motive which kept him away, but she was not as -yet prepared to go as far as to invite him to lay his scruples aside -and visit her with the old frank intimacy which had brightened both -their lives at the Hohenszalrasburg. It had been so different there; -he had been a wanderer glad of rest, and she had had about her the -defence of the Princess's presence, and the excuse of the obligations -of hospitality. She reproached herself at times for hardness, for -unkindness; she had not said a syllable to commend him for that -abandonment of a frivolous life which was in itself so delicate and -lofty a compliment to herself. He had obeyed her quite as loyally as -knight ever did his lady, and she did not even say to him, 'It is well -done.' - -Wanda von Szalras--a daughter of brave men, and herself the bravest of -women--was conscious that she was for once a coward. She was afraid of -looking into her own heart. - -She said to her cousin, when he paid his respects to her, 'I should -like to hear a debate at the Chamber. Arrange it for me.' - -He replied: 'At your service in that as in all things.' - -The next day as she was about to drive out, about four o'clock, he met -her at the entrance of her hotel. - -'If you could come with me,' he said, 'you might hear something of -interest to-day; there will be a strong discussion. Will you accept my -carriage or shall I enter yours?' - -What she heard when she reached the Chamber did not interest her -greatly. There was a great deal of noise, of declamation, of personal -vituperation, of verbose rancour; it did not seem to her to be -eloquence. She had heard much more stately oratory in both the Upper -and Lower Reichsrath, and much more fiery and noble eloquence at Buda -Pesth. This seemed to her poor, shrill mouthing, which led to very -little, and the disorder of the Assembly filled her with contempt. - -'I thought it was the country of S. Louis!' she said, with a disdainful -sigh, to Kaulnitz who answered: - -'Cromwell is perhaps more wanted here than S. Louis.' - -'Their Cromwell will always be a lawyer without clients, or a -journalist _sans le sou!_' retorted the châtelaine of Hohenszalras. - -When she had been there an hour or more she saw Sabran enter the hall -and take his place. His height, his carriage, and his distinction of -appearance made him conspicuous in a multitude, while the extreme -fairness and beauty of his face were uncommon and striking. - -'Here is S. Louis,' said the ambassador, with a little smile, 'or a son -of S. Louis's crusaders at any rate. He is sure to speak. I think he -speaks very well; one would suppose he had done nothing else all his -life.' - -After a time, when some speakers, virulent, over-eager, and hot in -argument, had had their say, and a tumult had risen and been quelled, -and the little bell had rung violently for many minutes, Sabran entered -the tribune. He had seen the Austrian minister and his companion. - -His voice, at all times melodious, had a compass which could fill with -ease the large hall in which he was. He appeared to use no more effort -than if he were conversing in ordinary tones, yet no one there present -lost a syllable that he said. His gesture was slight, calm, and -graceful; his language admirably chosen, and full of dignity. - -His mission of the moment was to attack the ministry upon their foreign -policy, and he did so with exceeding skill, wit, irony, and precision. -His eloquence was true eloquence, and was not indebted in any way to -trickery, artifice, or over-ornament. He spoke with fire, force, and -courage, but his tranquillity never gave way for a moment. His speech -was brilliant and serene, in utter contrast to the turbulent and florid -declamation which had preceded him. There was great and prolonged -applause when he had closed with a peroration stately and persuasive; -and when Emile Ollivier rose to reply, that optimistic statesman was -plainly disturbed and at a loss. - -Sabran resumed his seat without raising his eyes to where the Countess -von Szalras sat. She remained there during the speech of the minister, -which was a lame and laboured one, for he had been pierced between the -joints of his armour. Then she rose and went away with her escort. - -'What do you think of S. Louis?' said he, jestingly. - -'I think he is very eloquent and very convincing, but I do not think he -is at all like a Frenchman.' - -'Well, he is a _Breton bretonnant_' rejoined the ambassador. 'They are -always more in earnest and more patrician.' - -'If he be sincere, if he be only sincere,' she thought: that doubt -pursued her. She had a vague sense that it was all only a magnificent -comedy after all. Could apathy and irony change all so suddenly to -conviction and devotion? Could the scoffer become so immediately the -devotee? Could he care, really care, for those faiths of throne and -altar which he defended with so much eloquence, so much earnestness? -And yet, why not? These faiths were inherited things with him; their -altars must have been always an instinct with him; for their sake his -fathers had lived and died. What great wonder, then, that they should -have been awakened in him after a torpor which had been but the outcome -of those drugs with which the world is always so ready to lay asleep -the soul? - -They had now got out into the corridors, and as they turned the corner -of one, they came straight upon Sabran. - -'I congratulate you,' said Wanda, as she stretched her hand out to him -with a smile. - -As he took it and bowed over it he grew very pale. - -'I have obeyed you,' he murmured, 'with less success than I could -desire.' - -'Do not be too modest, you are a great orator. You know how to remain -calm whilst you exalt, excite, and influence others.' - -He listened in silence, then inquired for the health of his kind friend -the Princess Ottilie. - -'She is well,' answered Wanda, 'and loses nothing of her interest in -you. She reads all your speeches with approval and pleasure; not the -less approval and pleasure because her political creed has become -yours.' - -He coloured slightly. - -'What did you tell me?' he said. 'That if I had no convictions, I could -do no better than abide by the traditions of the Sabrans? If their -cause were the safe and reigning one I would not support it for mere -expediency, but as it is----' - -'Your motives cannot be selfish ones,' she answered a little coldly. -'Selfishness would have led you to profess Bakouinism; it is the -popular profession, and a socialistic aristocrat is always attracted -and flattering to the _plebs._' - -'You are severe,' he said, with a flush on his cheek. 'I have no -intention of playing Philip Egalité now or in any after time.' - -She did hot reply; she was conscious of unkindness and want of -encouragement in her own words. She hesitated a little, and then said: - -'Perhaps you will have time to come and see me? I shall remain here a -few days more.' - -The ambassador joined them at that moment, and was too well bred to -display any sign of the supreme astonishment he felt at finding the -Countess von Szalras and the new deputy already known to each other. - -'He is a favourite of Aunt Ottilie's,' she explained to him as, leaving -Sabran, they passed down the corridor. 'Did I not tell you? He had an -accident on the Umbal glacier last summer, and in his convalescence we -saw him often.' - -'I recollect that your aunt asked me about him. Excuse me; I had quite -forgotten,' said the ambassador, understanding now why she had wanted -to go to the Chamber. - -The next day Sabran called upon her. There were with her three or four -great ladies. He did not stay long, and was never alone with her. She -felt an impatience of her friends' presence, which irritated her as -it awoke in her. He sent her a second basket of white lilac in the -following forenoon. She saw no more of him. - -She found herself wondering about the manner of his life. She did not -even know in what street he lived; she passed almost all her time with -the Queen of Natalia, who did not know him, and was still so unwell -that she received no one. - -She was irritated with herself because it compromised her consistency -to desire to stay on in Paris, and she did so desire; and she was one -of those to whom a consciousness of their own consistency is absolutely -necessary as a qualification for self-respect. There are natures that -fly contentedly from caprice to caprice, as humming-birds from blossom -to bud; but if she had once become changeable she would have become -contemptible to herself, she would hardly have been herself any longer. -With some anger at her own inclinations she resisted them, and when her -self-allotted fifteen days were over, she did not prolong them by so -much as a dozen hours. There was an impatience in her which was wholly -strange to her serene and even temper. She felt a vague dissatisfaction -with herself; she had been scarcely generous, scarcely cordial to him; -she failed to approve her own conduct, and yet she scarcely saw where -she had been at fault. - -The Kaulnitz and many other high persons were at the station in the -chill, snowy, misty day to say their last farewells. She was wrapped -in silver-fox fur from head to foot; she was somewhat pale; she felt -an absurd reluctance to go away from a city which was nothing to her. -But her exiled friend was recovering health, and Madame Ottilie was -all alone; and though she was utterly her own mistress, far more so -than most women, there were some things she could not do. To stay on in -Paris seemed to her to be one of them. - -The little knot of high personages said their last words; the train -began slowly to move upon its way; a hand passed through the window of -the carriage and laid a bouquet of lilies of the valley on her knee. - -'Adieu!' said Sabran very gently, as his eyes met hers once more. - -Then the express train rolled faster on its road, and passed out by the -north-east, and in a few moments had left Paris far behind it. - - -END OF THE FIRST VOLUME. - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Wanda, Vol. 1 (of 3), by Ouida - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WANDA, VOL. 1 (OF 3) *** - -***** This file should be named 52135-0.txt or 52135-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/2/1/3/52135/ - -Produced by Wanda Lee, Laura Natal Rodriguez and Marc -D'Hooghe at http://www.freeliterature.org (Images -generouslly made available by the Internet Archive.) - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part -of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm -concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, -and may not be used if you charge for the eBooks, unless you receive -specific permission. If you do not charge anything for copies of this -eBook, complying with the rules is very easy. You may use this eBook -for nearly any purpose such as creation of derivative works, reports, -performances and research. They may be modified and printed and given -away--you may do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks -not protected by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the -trademark license, especially commercial redistribution. - -START: FULL LICENSE - -THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE -PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK - -To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free -distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work -(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project -Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full -Project Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at -www.gutenberg.org/license. - -Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works - -1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to -and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property -(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all -the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or -destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your -possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a -Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound -by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the -person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph -1.E.8. - -1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be -used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who -agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few -things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works -even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See -paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this -agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below. - -1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the -Foundation" or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection -of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual -works in the collection are in the public domain in the United -States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the -United States and you are located in the United States, we do not -claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing, -displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as -all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope -that you will support the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting -free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm -works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the -Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with the work. You can easily -comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the -same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg-tm License when -you share it without charge with others. - -1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern -what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are -in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, -check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this -agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, -distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any -other Project Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no -representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any -country outside the United States. - -1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: - -1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other -immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear -prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work -on which the phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the -phrase "Project Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, -performed, viewed, copied or distributed: - - This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and - most other parts of the world 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. If you are not located in the - United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you - are located before using this ebook. - -1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is -derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not -contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the -copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in -the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are -redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase "Project -Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply -either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or -obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg-tm -trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. - -1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted -with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution -must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any -additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms -will be linked to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works -posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the -beginning of this work. - -1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm -License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this -work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. - -1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this -electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without -prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with -active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project -Gutenberg-tm License. - -1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, -compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including -any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access -to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format -other than "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official -version posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site -(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense -to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means -of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original "Plain -Vanilla ASCII" or other form. Any alternate format must include the -full Project Gutenberg-tm License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. - -1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, -performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works -unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. - -1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing -access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works -provided that - -* You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from - the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method - you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed - to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he has - agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project - Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid - within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are - legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty - payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project - Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in - Section 4, "Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg - Literary Archive Foundation." - -* You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies - you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he - does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm - License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all - copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue - all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg-tm - works. - -* You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of - any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the - electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of - receipt of the work. - -* You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free - distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. - -1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic work or group of works on different terms than -are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing -from both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and The -Project Gutenberg Trademark LLC, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm -trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. - -1.F. - -1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable -effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread -works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project -Gutenberg-tm collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may -contain "Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate -or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other -intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or -other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or -cannot be read by your equipment. - -1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right -of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project -Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project -Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all -liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal -fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT -LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE -PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE -TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE -LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR -INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH -DAMAGE. - -1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a -defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can -receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a -written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you -received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium -with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you -with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in -lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person -or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second -opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If -the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing -without further opportunities to fix the problem. - -1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth -in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO -OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT -LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. - -1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied -warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of -damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement -violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the -agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or -limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or -unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the -remaining provisions. - -1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the -trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone -providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in -accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the -production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, -including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of -the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this -or any Project Gutenberg-tm work, (b) alteration, modification, or -additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any -Defect you cause. - -Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm - -Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of -electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of -computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It -exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations -from people in all walks of life. - -Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the -assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's -goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will -remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project -Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure -and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future -generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see -Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at -www.gutenberg.org - - - -Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation - -The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit -501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the -state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal -Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification -number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by -U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. - -The Foundation's principal office is in Fairbanks, Alaska, with the -mailing address: PO Box 750175, Fairbanks, AK 99775, but its -volunteers and employees are scattered throughout numerous -locations. Its business office is located at 809 North 1500 West, Salt -Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up to -date contact information can be found at the Foundation's web site and -official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact - -For additional contact information: - - Dr. Gregory B. Newby - Chief Executive and Director - gbnewby@pglaf.org - -Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg -Literary Archive Foundation - -Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide -spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of -increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be -freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest -array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations -($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt -status with the IRS. - -The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating -charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United -States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a -considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up -with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations -where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND -DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular -state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate - -While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we -have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition -against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who -approach us with offers to donate. - -International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make -any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from -outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. - -Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation -methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other -ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To -donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate - -Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. - -Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project -Gutenberg-tm concept of a library of electronic works that could be -freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and -distributed Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of -volunteer support. - -Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed -editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in -the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not -necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper -edition. - -Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search -facility: www.gutenberg.org - -This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, -including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to -subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. - diff --git a/old/old/52135-0.zip b/old/old/52135-0.zip Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index a748c86..0000000 --- a/old/old/52135-0.zip +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/old/52135-h.zip b/old/old/52135-h.zip Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index 8e549a7..0000000 --- a/old/old/52135-h.zip +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/old/52135-h/52135-h.htm b/old/old/52135-h/52135-h.htm deleted file mode 100644 index 4323aa1..0000000 --- a/old/old/52135-h/52135-h.htm +++ /dev/null @@ -1,8680 +0,0 @@ -<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" - "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> -<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> - <head> - <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" /> - <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> - <title> - The Project Gutenberg eBook of Wanda, vol. 1, by Ouida. - </title> - <style type="text/css"> - -body { - margin-left: 10%; - margin-right: 10%; -} - - h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { - text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ - clear: both; -} - -p { - margin-top: .51em; - text-align: justify; - margin-bottom: .49em; -} - -.p2 {margin-top: 2em;} -.p4 {margin-top: 4em;} -.p6 {margin-top: 6em;} - -hr { - width: 33%; - margin-top: 2em; - margin-bottom: 2em; - margin-left: auto; - margin-right: auto; - clear: both; -} - -hr.tb {width: 45%;} -hr.chap {width: 65%} -hr.full {width: 95%;} - -hr.r5 {width: 5%; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em;} -hr.r65 {width: 65%; margin-top: 3em; margin-bottom: 3em;} - -a:link {color: #000099; text-decoration: none; } - -v:link {color: #000099; text-decoration: none; } - -.blockquot { - margin-left: 5%; - margin-right: 10%; -} - - -.center {text-align: center;} - -.right {text-align: right;} - -.smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} - - - -.caption {font-weight: bold;} - -/* Images */ -.figcenter { - margin: auto; - text-align: center; -} - -.figleft { - float: left; - clear: left; - margin-left: 0; - margin-bottom: 1em; - margin-top: 1em; - margin-right: 1em; - padding: 0; - text-align: center; -} - -.figright { - float: right; - clear: right; - margin-left: 1em; - margin-bottom: - 1em; - margin-top: 1em; - margin-right: 0; - padding: 0; - text-align: center; -} - -/* Footnotes */ -.footnotes {border: dashed 1px;} - -.footnote {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;} - -.footnote .label {position: absolute; right: 84%; text-align: right;} - -.fnanchor { - vertical-align: super; - font-size: .8em; - text-decoration: - none; -} - - </style> - </head> -<body> - - -<pre> - -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Wanda, Vol. 1 (of 3), by Ouida - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world 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. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: Wanda, Vol. 1 (of 3) - -Author: Ouida - -Release Date: May 23, 2016 [EBook #52135] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WANDA, VOL. 1 (OF 3) *** - - - - -Produced by Wanda Lee, Laura Natal Rodriguez and Marc -D'Hooghe at http://www.freeliterature.org (Images -generouslly made available by the Internet Archive.) - - - - - - -</pre> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> -<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="500" alt="" /> -</div> -<h1>WANDA</h1> - -<h3>BY</h3> - -<h2>OUIDA</h2> - - -<p class="center"> -<i>'Doch!—alles was dazu mich trieb</i>;<br /> -<i>Gott!—war so gut, ach, war so lieb!</i>'<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 20%;">Goethe</span> -</p> - - -<h4>IN THREE VOLUMES</h4> - -<h4>VOL. I.</h4> - - -<h5>London</h5> - -<h5>CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY</h5> - -<h5>1873</h5> - -<hr class="full" /> - -<p class="center" style="font-size: 0.8em;">TO</p> - -<p class="center" style="font-size: 0.8em;">'A PERFECT WOMAN, NOBLY PLANN'D'</p> - -<h5>WALPURGA, LADY PAGET</h5> - -<p class="center" style="font-size: 0.8em;">NÉE</p> - -<p class="center" style="font-size: 0.8em;">COUNTESS VON HOHENTHAL</p> - -<p class="center">This book is inscribed</p> - -<p class="center" style="font-size: 0.8em;">IN ADMIRATION AND AFFECTION</p> - - - -<hr class="chap" /> -<h3>WANDA.</h3> - - - -<hr class="chap" /> -<h4><a name="PROEM" id="PROEM">PROEM.</a></h4> - - -<p style="margin-left: 20%;">Doch—alles was dazu mich trieb,<br /> -Gott! war so gut! ach, war so lieb!—<span style="font-size: 0.8em;">GOETHE.</span></p> - - -<p class="p2">Towards the close of a summer's day in Russia a travelling carriage was -compelled to pause before a little village whilst a smith rudely mended -its broken wheel. The hamlet was composed of a few very poor dwellings -grouped around a large low horse-shoe shaped building, which was the -manorial mansion of the absent proprietor. It was gloomy, and dropping -to decay; its many windows were barred and shuttered; the grass grew in -its courts, and flowering weeds had time to seed and root themselves -on its whitewashed walls.</p> - -<p>Around it the level ground was at this season covered with green -wheat, spreading for leagues on leagues, and billowing and undulating -under the wind that blew from the steppes, like the green sea which it -resembled. Farther on were woods of larch and clumps of willow; and in -the distance, across the great plain to the westward, rolled a vast -shining river, here golden with choking sand, here dun-coloured with -turbid waves, here broken with islets and swamps of reeds, where the -singing swan and the pelican made their nests.</p> - -<p>It was in one of those far-off provinces through which the Volga rolls -its sand-laden and yellow waves. The scene was bleak and mournful, -though for many leagues the green corn spread and caught the timid -sunshine and the shadow of the clouds. There were a few stunted -willows near the house, and a few gashed pines; a dried-up lake was -glittering with crystals of salt; the domes and minarets of a little -city rose above the sky line far away to the south-east; and farther -yet northward towered the peaks of the Ural Mountains; the wall of -stone that divides Siberia from the living world. All was desolate, -melancholy, isolated, even though the season was early summer; but the -vastness of the view, the majesty of the river, the suggestion of the -faint blue summits where the Urals rose against the sky, gave solemnity -and a melancholy charm to a landscape that was otherwise monotonous and -tedious.</p> - -<p>Prince Paul Ivanovitch Zabaroff was in Russia because he was on the -point of marriage with a great heiress of the southern provinces, and -was travelling across from Orenburg to the Krimea, where his betrothed -bride awaited him in the summer palace of her fathers. Russia, with the -exception of Petersburg, was an unknown and detested place to him; his -errand was distasteful, his journey tedious, his temper irritated; and -when a wheel of his <i>telegue</i> came off in this miserable village of -the Northern Volga district, he was in no mood to brook with patience -such an accident. He paced to and fro restlessly as he looked round on -the few and miserable cabins of a district that had been continually -harried and fired through many centuries by Kossack and Tartar.</p> - -<p>'Whose house is that?' he said to his servant, pointing to the great -white building.</p> - -<p>The servant humbly answered, 'Little father, it is thine.'</p> - -<p>'Mine!' echoed Paul Zabaroff. He was astonished; then he laughed, as he -remembered that he had large properties around the city of Kazán.</p> - -<p>The whole soil was his own as far as his eyes could reach, till the -great river formed its boundary. He did not even know his steward here; -the villagers did not know him. He had been here once only, a single -night, in the late autumn time, long, long before, He was a man in -whose life incidents followed each other too rapidly for remembrance -to have any abiding-place or regret any home in his mind. He had -immense estates, north, south, east, west; his agents forwarded him -the revenues of each, or as much of the revenues as they chose him to -enjoy, when they themselves were satisfied with their gains.</p> - -<p>When he was not in Paris he was in Petersburg, and he was an -impassioned and very daring gamester. These great silent houses, in -the heart of fir woods, in the centre of grass plains, or on the banks -of lonely rivers, were all absolutely unknown to and indifferent to -him. He was too admired and popular at his Court ever to have had the -sentence passed upon him to retire to his estates; but had he been -forced to do so he would have been as utterly an exile in any one of -the houses of his fathers as if he had been consigned to Tobolsk itself.</p> - -<p>He looked around him now, an absolute stranger in the place where -he was as absolutely lord. All these square leagues he learned were -his, all these miserable huts, all these poor lives; for it was in -a day before the liberation of the serfs had been accomplished by -that deliverer whom Russia rewarded with death. A vague remembrance -came over him as he gazed around: he had been here once before. The -villagers, learning that it was their master who had arrived thus -unexpectedly in their midst, came timidly around and made their humble -prostrations: the steward who administered the lands was absent that -day in the distant town. He was entreated to go within his own deserted -dwelling, but he refused: the wheel was nearly mended, and he reflected -that a house abandoned for so long was probably damp and in disorder, -cold and comfortless. He was impatient to be gone, and urged the smith -to his best and quickest by the promise of many roubles. The <i>moujiks</i>, -excited and frightened, hastened to him with the customary offerings -of bread and salt; he touched the gifts carelessly; spoke to them with -good-humoured, indifferent carelessness; and asked if they had any -grievances to complain of, without listening to the answer. They had -many, but they did not dare to say so, knowing that their lord would be -gone in five minutes, but that the heavy hand of his steward would lie -for ever upon them.</p> - -<p>Soon the vehicle was repaired, and Paul Zabaroff ceased his restless -walk to and fro the sandy road, and prepared to depart from this weary -place of detention. But, from an <i>isba</i> that stood apart, beneath one -of the banks of sand that broke the green level of the corn, the dark -spare figure of an old woman came, waving bony hands upon the air, and -crying with loud voice to the <i>barine</i> to wait.</p> - -<p>'It is only mad Maritza,' said the people; yet they thought Maritza -had some errand with their lord, for they fell back and permitted her -to approach him as she cried aloud: 'Let me come! Let me come! I would -give him back the jewel he left here ten years ago!'</p> - -<p>She held a young boy by the hand, and dragged him with her as she spoke -and moved. She was a dark woman, once very handsome, with white hair -and an olive skin, and a certain rugged grandeur in her carriage; she -was strong and of strong purpose; she made her way to Paul Zabaroff as -he stood by the carriage, and she fell at his feet and touched the dust -with her forehead, and forced the child beside her to make the same -obeisance.</p> - -<p>'All hail to my lord, and heaven be with him! The poor Maritza comes -to give him back what he left.'</p> - -<p>Prince Zabaroff smiled in a kindly manner, being a man often careless, -but not cruel.</p> - -<p>'Nay, good mother, keep it, whatever it be: you have earned the right. -Is it a jewel, you say?'</p> - -<p>'It is a jewel.'</p> - -<p>'Then keep it. I had forgotten even that I was ever here.'</p> - -<p>'Ay! the great lord had forgot.'</p> - -<p>She rose up with the dust on her white hair, and thrust forward a young -boy, and put her hands on the boy's shoulders and made him kneel.</p> - -<p>'There is the jewel, Paul Ivanovitch. It is time the Gospodar kept it -now.'</p> - -<p>Paul Zabaroff did not understand. He looked down at the little serf -kneeling in the dust.</p> - -<p>'A handsome child. May the land have many such to serve the Tsar. Is he -your grandson, good mother?'</p> - -<p>The boy was beautiful, with long curling fair hair and a rosy mouth, -and eyes like the blue heavens in a night of frost. His limbs were -naked, and his chest. He had a shirt of sheepskin.</p> - -<p>Old Maritza kept her hands on the shoulders of the kneeling child.</p> - -<p>'He is thy son, O lord!'</p> - -<p>'My son!'</p> - -<p>'Ay. The lord has forgotten. The lord tarried but one night, but he -bade my Sacha serve drink to him in his chamber, and on the morrow, -when he left, Sacha wept. The lord has forgotten!'</p> - -<p>Paul Zabaroff stood silent, slowly remembering. In the boy's face -looking up at him, half-sullenly, half-timidly, he saw the features of -his own race mingled with something much more beautiful, oriental, and -superb.</p> - -<p>Yes: he had forgotten; quite forgotten; but he remembered now.</p> - -<p>The people stood around, remembering better than he, but thinking it no -wrong in him to have forgotten, because he was their ruler and lord, -and did that which seemed right to him; and when he had gone away, in -Sacha's bosom there had been a thick roll of gold.</p> - -<p>'Where is—the mother?' he said at length.</p> - -<p>Old Maritza made answer:</p> - -<p>'My Sacha died four summers ago. Always Sacha hoped that the lord might -some day return.'</p> - -<p>Prince Zabaroff's cheek reddened a little with pain.</p> - -<p>'Fool! why did you not marry her?' he said with impatience. 'There -were plenty of men. I would have given more dowry.'</p> - -<p>'Sacha would not wed. What the lord had honoured she thought holy.'</p> - -<p>'Poor soul!' muttered Paul Zabaroff; and he looked again at the boy, -who bore his own face, and was as like him as an eaglet to an eagle.</p> - -<p>'Do you understand what we say?'</p> - -<p>The boy answered sullenly, 'I understand.' 'What is your name?'</p> - -<p>'I am Vassia.'</p> - -<p>'And what do you do?'</p> - -<p>'I do nothing.'</p> - -<p>'Are you happy?'</p> - -<p>'What is that? I do not know.'</p> - -<p>Prince Zabaroff was silent.</p> - -<p>'Rise up, since you are my son,' he said at length.</p> - -<p>The boy rose.</p> - -<p>He was sullen, shy, tameless, timid, like a young animal from the pine -woods. The old woman took her hands off his shoulders.</p> - -<p>'I have delivered the jewel to the lord that owns it. I have done -Sacha's will.'</p> - -<p>Then she turned herself round and covered her face, and went towards -her home.</p> - -<p>The child stood, half-fierce, half-fearful, like a dog which an old -master drives away, and which fears the new one.</p> - -<p>'These jewels are as many as the sands of the sea, and as worthless,' -said Paul Zabaroff with a slight smile.</p> - -<p>Nevertheless, he resolved, since Maritza spoke truth, that the boy -should be cared for and well taught, and have all that gold could get -for him, and be sent away out from Russia; for in Russia he was a serf.</p> - -<p>The boy's hair hung over his eyes, which were hungrily watching the -dark lean figure of the woman as it went away through the tall corn to -the white wood hut that stood alone in the fields. He dimly understood -that his life was being changed for him, but how he knew not. He wanted -to go home with Maritza to his nest of moss, where his bear-cubs slept -with him by night and played with him at dawn.</p> - -<p>'Farewell,' said Paul Zabaroff, and he touched his son's cheek with his -hand.</p> - -<p>'You are magnificently handsome, my poor child; indeed, who knows -what you will be?—a jewel or only a toad's eye?' he said dreamily; -then he sprang up behind his horses, and was borne away through the -fast-falling shades of the evening, leaving behind him the boy Vassia -and a little rough mound of nameless grass, which he had never seen, -and which was Sacha's grave.</p> - -<p>The four fiery horses that bore the <i>telegue</i> dashed away with it in -the sunlight, scattering the sand in yellow clouds, and the village -on the Volga plains beheld its lord never more in life. The boy stood -still, and looked after it with a sombre anger on his beautiful fair -Circassian face.</p> - -<p>'You will go and be a prince far away, Vassia,' said the men to him -with envy. The child could not have expressed the vague mute wrath and -shame that stirred together in him, but he turned from them without a -word, and ran fleet as a roe in the path which Maritza had taken. He -loved his great-grandmother with a strong affection that was almost -passion, though it was silent and almost unconscious of itself. She -never checked him, beat him, or cursed him as the other women often -did their children. She did her best by him, though they dwelt in a -miserable little <i>isba</i>, that often in winter time was covered up with -the snow like a bear's hole, and in summer, the fierce brief parching -summer of north-east Russia, was as hot as a scorched eye under a -sun-glass. Life was barren and wretched to her, but not to him. He was -loved and he was free: childhood wants nothing more; Maritza was a -Persian woman. Years and years before, when she had been in her youth, -she had come from the Caspian shore, where the land and the sea are -alike alive with the leaping naphtha of the Ghebir worship: she had -been born within the iron gates of Derbent, of Persian parentage, and -she had known war and capture and violence, and had had many troubles, -many privations, many miseries before she had found herself stranded in -her old age, with her grandchild, in this little desolate village on -the sand-bank by the Volga.</p> - -<p>She was very poor; she had an evil reputation: nothing evil was ever -really traced to her, but she had Oriental faiths and traditions -and worshipped fire, or so said her enemies the black clergy of the -scattered villages and their ready believers. Never did Maritza light a -lamp at nightfall, but her neighbours saw in the act a devil worship.</p> - -<p>She was silent, proud, fierce, calm, exceedingly poor; she was hated -accordingly. When her granddaughter Sacha bore a child that was -the offspring of Prince Paul Zabaroff, though she cursed him, the -neighbours envied her and begrudged her such an honour.</p> - -<p>Maritza had brought up the young Vassia with little tenderness, yet -with a great yearning over the boy, with his pure Persian face and -his beautiful fair body, like a pearl. The uttermost she wished for -him was that he should grow up a raftsman or a fisherman on the Volga -water; all that she dreaded was that the Kossacks would take him and -put a lance in his hand and have him slain in war, as in the old stern -days of her youth her lovers had been taken by the battle-god, that -devoured them one by one, and her sons after them.</p> - -<p>She never gave a thought to the boy's parentage as of possible use to -him, but she always said to herself, 'If Paul Zabaroff ever come back, -then shall he know his son,' and meanwhile the boy was happy, though -he had not known the meaning of the word. He would plunge in the tawny -Volga in the summer-time, and watch the slow crowd of rafts go down -it, and the iron pontoon pass by, closed like a bier, which took the -condemned prisoners to Siberia. Now and then a gang of such captives -would go by on foot and chained; miserable exceedingly, wounded, -exhausted, doomed to twelve months' foot-sore travel ere they reached -the endless darkness of the mines or the blindness of the perpetual -frost. He watched them; but that was all. He felt neither curiosity nor -pity as he lay on the tall rough grass, and they moved by him on the -dusty, flint-strewn, ill-made road towards that chain of blue hills -which marked their future home and their eternal grave. For sport the -boy had the bear, the wolf, the blue fox, the wild hare, in the long -wintertime; in the brief summer he helped chase the pelican and the -swan along the sand-banks of the Volga or upon its lime-choked waves. -He was keen of eye and swift of foot: the men of his native village -were always willing to have his company, child though he was. He was -fond of all beasts and birds, though fonder still of sport; once he -risked his own life to save a stork and her nest on a burning roof. -When asked why he did it, he who choked the cygnet and snared the cub, -he could not say: he was ashamed of his own tenderness.</p> - -<p>He wanted no other life than this rude freedom, but one day, a month or -more after Paul Zabaroff had passed through the country, there came to -the door of Maritza's hut a stranger, who displayed to her eyes, which -could not read, a letter with the Prince's seal and signature. He said: -'I am sent to take away the boy who is called Vassia.'</p> - -<p>The Persian woman bowed her head as before a headsman's glaive.</p> - -<p>'It is the will of God,' she said.</p> - -<p>But the time came when Vassia, grown to man's estate, thought that -devils rather than gods had meddled with him then.</p> - -<p>'Send him to a great school; send him out of Russia; spare no cost; -make him a gentleman,' Paul Zabaroff had said to his agents when he -had seen the son of Sacha, and he had been obeyed. The little fierce -half-naked boy who in frost was wrapped in wolf-fur and looked like a -little wild beast, had been taken from the free, headstrong, barbaric -life of the Volga plains, where he was under no law and knew no rule, -and passionately loved the river and the chase, and the great silent -snow-wrapt world of his birth, and was sent to a famous and severe -college near Paris, to the drill, and the class, and the uniform, and -the classic learning, and the tape-bound, hard, artificial routine of -mechanical education. The pride, of the Oriental and the subtlety of -the Slav were all he brought with him as arms in the unequal combat -with an unsympathetic crowd.</p> - -<p>For a year's time he was insulted, tormented, ridiculed; in another -twelve months he was let alone; in a third year he was admired and -feared. All the while his heart was bursting within him with the agony -of home-sickness and revolt; but he gave no sign of either. Only at -nights, when the others of his chamber were all sleeping, he would slip -out of bed and stare up at the stars, which did not look the same as -he had known, and think of Maritza and of the bear-cubs, and of the -Volga's waters bearing the wild white swans upon their breast; and then -he would sob his very soul out in silence.</p> - -<p>He had been entered upon the books of the college under the name -of Vassia Kazán; Kazán having been the place at which he had been -baptised, the golden-domed, many-towered, half Asiatic city which -was seen afar off from the little square window in Maritza's hut. -High influence and much gold had persuaded the principal of a great -college—the Lycée Clovis, situated between Paris and Versailles—not -to inquire too closely into the parentage of this beautiful little -savage from the far north. Russia still remains dim, distant, and -mysterious to the western mind; among his tutors and comrades it was -taken for granted that he was some young barbarian noble, and the -child's own lips were shut as close as if the ice of his own land had -frozen them.</p> - -<p>Eight years later, on another day when wheat was ripe and willows -waved in summer sunshine, a youth lay asleep with his head on an open -Lucretius in the deserted playground of a French college. The place -of recreation was a dusty gravelled square; there were high stone -walls all round it, and a few poplars stood in it white with dust. -It was August, and all the other scholars were away; he alone had -been forgotten; he was used to being forgotten. He was not dull or -sorrowful, as other lads are when left in vacation time alone. He had -many arts and pastimes, and he was a scholar by choice, if a capricious -one, and he had a quick and facile tact which taught him how to have -his own way always; and on many a summer night, when his teachers -believed him safe sleeping, he was out of college, and away dancing and -singing and laughing at students' halls, and in the haunts of artists, -and at the little theatre beyond the barrier, and he had never been -found out, and would have cared but little if he had been. And he slept -now with his fair forehead leaning on Lucretius, and a drowsy, heavy -heat around him, filled with the hum of flies and gnats. He did not -dream of the heat and the insects; he did not even dream of the saucy -beauty at the barrier ball the night before, who had kicked cherries -out of his mouth with her blue-shod feet, and kissed him on his curls. -He dreamt of a little, low, dark hut; of an old woman that knelt before -a brazen image; of slumbering bear-cubs in a nest of hay; of a winter -landscape, white and shining, that stretched away in an unbroken level -of snow to the sea that half the year was ice. He dreamed of these, -and, dreaming, sighed and woke. He thought he stood on the frozen sea, -and the ice broke, and the waters swallowed him.</p> - -<p>It was nothing; only the voice of his tutor calling him. He was -summoned to the Principal of the Lycée: a rare honour. He rose, a -slender, tall, beautiful youth, in the dark close-fitting costume -of the institute. He shook the dust off his uniform and his curls, -shut his book, and went within the large white prison-like building -which had been his home since he had left the lowly <i>isba</i> among the -sandhills and the blowing corn by Volga.</p> - -<p>The Principal was sitting in one of his private chambers, a grim, -dark, book-lined chamber; he held an open letter in his hand, which -he had read and re-read. He was a clever man, and unscrupulous and -purchasable; but he was not without feeling, and he was disquieted, for -he had a painful office to fulfil.</p> - -<p>When the youth obeyed his summons he looked up and shaded his eyes -with his hand. He hesitated, looking curiously at the young man's -attitude, which had an easy grace in it, and some hauteur visible under -a semblance of respect.</p> - -<p>The Principal took up the open letter: 'I regret, I grieve, to tell -you,' he said slowly, 'your patron and friend, the Prince Zabaroff, has -died suddenly!'</p> - -<p>The face of Vassia Kazán grew very pale, but very cold. He said nothing.</p> - -<p>'He died quite suddenly,' continued the director of the college; 'a -blood-vessel broke in the brain, after great fatigue in hunting; he was -upon one of his estates in White Russia.'</p> - -<p>The son of Paul Zabaroff was still silent. His master wished that he -would show some emotion.</p> - -<p>'It was he who placed you here—was at all costs for your education. I -suppose you are aware of that?' he continued, with some embarrassment.</p> - -<p>Vassia Kazán bowed and still said nothing. He might have been made of -ice or of marble for any sign that he gave. He might only have heard -that an unknown man had died in the street.</p> - -<p>'You were placed here by him—at least, by his agents; you were the son -of a dead friend, they said. I did not inquire closer—payments were -always made in advance.'</p> - -<p>He passed his hand a little confusedly over his eyes, for he felt a -little shame; his college was of high repute, and the agents of Prince -Zabaroff had placed sums in his hands, to induce him to deviate from -his rules, larger than he would have cared to confess.</p> - -<p>The boy was silent.</p> - -<p>'If he would only speak!' thought his master. 'He must know—he must -know.'</p> - -<p>But the son of the dead Zabaroff did not speak.</p> - -<p>'I am sorry to say,' resumed his master, still with hesitation, 'I am -very sorry to say that the death of the Prince being thus sudden and -thus unforeseen, his agents write me that there are no instructions, no -arrangement, no testament, in short—you will understand what I mean; -you will understand that, in point of fact, there is nothing for you, -there is no one to pay anything any longer.'</p> - -<p>He paused abruptly; the fair face of the boy grew a shade paler, that -was all. He bore the shock without giving any sign.</p> - -<p>'Is he made of ice and steel?' thought the old man, who had been proud -of him as his most brilliant pupil.</p> - -<p>'It pains me to give you such terrible intelligence,' he muttered; 'but -it is my duty not to conceal it an hour. You are quite—penniless. It -is very sad.'</p> - -<p>The boy smiled slightly; it was not a smile for so young a face.</p> - -<p>'He has given me learning; he need not have done that,' he said -carelessly. The words sounded grateful, but it was not gratitude that -glanced from his eyes.</p> - -<p>'I believe I am a serf in Russia?' he added, after a short silence.</p> - -<p>'I do not know at all,' muttered the Principal, who felt ill at ease -and ashamed of himself for having taken for eight years the gold of -Prince Paul.</p> - -<p>'I cannot tell—lawyers would tell you—I am not sure at all; indeed, I -know nothing of your history; but you are young and friendless. You are -a brilliant scholar, but you are not fit for work. What will you do, my -poor lad?'</p> - -<p>The boy did not respond to the kindness that was in the tone, and he -resented the pity there was in it.</p> - -<p>'That will be my affair alone,' he said, still carelessly and very -haughtily.</p> - -<p>'All is paid up to the New Year,' said his master, feeling restless and -dissatisfied. 'There is no haste—I would not turn you from my roof. -You are a brilliant classic—you might be a teacher here, perhaps?'</p> - -<p>The youth smiled; then he said coldly:</p> - -<p>'You are very good. I had better go away at once. I should wish to be -away before the others return.'</p> - -<p>'But where will you go?' said the old man, staring at him with a dull -and troubled surprise.</p> - -<p>The boy shrugged his shoulders.</p> - -<p>'The world is large—at least it looks so when one has not been over -it. Can you tell me who inherits from Prince Paul Zabaroff?'</p> - -<p>'His eldest son by his marriage with a Princess Kourouassine. If he had -only left some will, some sort of command or direction—perhaps if I -wrote to the Princess, and told her the facts, she—'</p> - -<p>'Pray do not do that,' said the boy coldly. 'I thank you for all I have -learned here, and I will leave your house to-night. Farewell to you, -sir.'</p> - -<p>The boy's eyes were dry and calm; the old man's were wet and dim. He -rose hurriedly, and laid aside his stern habit of authority for a -moment, as he put his hand on the lad's shoulder.</p> - -<p>'Vassia, do not leave us like that. I do not like to see you so cold, -so quiet, so unnaturally indifferent. You are left friendless and -nameless—and after all he was your father.'</p> - -<p>The boy drew himself away gently, and shrugged his shoulders once more -with his slight gesture of contempt.</p> - -<p>'He never called me his son. I wish he had left me by the Volga with -the bear-cubs: that is all. Adieu, sir.'</p> - -<p>'But what do you mean to do?'</p> - -<p>'I will do what offers.'</p> - -<p>'But few things offer when one is friendless and you have many faults, -Vassia, though you have many talents. I fear for your future.'</p> - -<p>'Adieu, sir.'</p> - -<p>The boy bowed low, with composure and grace, and left the room. The -old man sat in the shadow by his desk, and blamed himself, and blamed -the dead. The young collegian went out from his presence with a firm -step and a careless carriage, and ascended the staircase of the -college to his dormitory. The large long room, with its whitewashed -walls, its barred casements, its rows of camp bedsteads, looked like a -barrack-room deserted by the soldiers. The aspen and poplar leaves were -quivering outside the grated windows; the rays of the bright August sun -streamed through and shone on the floor. The boy sat down on his bed. -It was at the top of the row of beds, next one of the casements. The -sun-rays touched his head; he was all alone. The clamour, the disputes, -the mirth, the wrong-doing with which he and his comrades had consoled -themselves for the stern discipline of the day, were all things of -the past, and he would know them no more. In a way he had been happy -here, being lord and king of the rebellious band that had filled this -chamber, and knowing so little of his own fate or of his own future -that any greatness or glory might be possible to him.</p> - -<p>Three years before he had been summoned to a château on the north coast -of France in the full summer season. It had entered into the capricious -fancy of Prince Zabaroff that he should like to see what the wild -young wolf-cub of the Volga plains had become. He had found in him a -youth so handsome, so graceful, so accomplished, that a certain fibre -of paternal pride had been touched in him; whilst the coldness, the -silence, and the disdainfulness of the boy's temper had commanded his -respect. No word of their relationship had passed between them, but by -the guests assembled there it had been assumed that the young Vassia -Kazán was near of kin to their host, whose lawfully-begotten sons and -daughters were far away in one of his summer palaces of the Krimea.</p> - -<p>The boy was beautiful, keen-witted, precocious in knowledge and tact; -the society assembled there, which was dissolute enough, dazzled and -indulged him. The days had gone by like a tale of magic. There had -been always in him the bitter, mortified, rebellious hatred of his -own position; but this he had not shown, and no one had suspected it. -These three summer months of unbridled luxury and indulgence had made -an indelible impression on him. He had felt that life was not worth the -living unless it could be passed in the same manner. He had known that -away there in Russia there were young Zabaroff princes, his brethren, -who would not have owned him; but the remembrance of them had not dwelt -on him. He had not known definitely what to expect of the future. -Though he was still there only Vassia Kazán, yet he had been treated -as though he were a son of the house. When the party had broken up he -had been sent back to his college with many gifts and a thousand francs -in gold. When he reached Paris he had given the presents to a dancing -girl and the money to an old professor of classics who had lost his -sight. Not a word had been said as to his future. Measuring both by the -indulgences and liberalities that were conceded to him, he had always -dreamed of it vaguely but gorgeously, as sure to bring recognition and -reverence, pomp and power, to him from the world. He had vaguely built -up ambitious hopes. He had been sensible of no ordinary intelligence, -of no common powers; and it had seemed legitimate to suppose that so -liberal and princely an education meant that some golden gates would -open to him at manhood: why should they rear him so if they intended -to leave him in obscurity?</p> - -<p>This day, as he had sat in the large white courtyard, shadowed by the -Parisian poplar trees, he had remembered that he was within a few weeks -of the completion of his eighteenth year, and he had wondered what -they meant to do with him. He had heard nothing from Prince Zabaroff -since those brilliant, vivid, tumultuous months which had left on him a -confused sense of dazzling though vague expectation. He had hoped every -summer to hear something, but each summer had passed in silence; and -now he was told that Paul Zabaroff was dead.</p> - -<p>He had been happy, being dowered with facile talents, quick wit, and -the great art of being able to charm others without effort to himself. -He had been seldom obedient, often guilty, yet always successful. The -place had been no prison to him; he had passed careless days and he had -dreamed grand dreams there; and now—</p> - -<p>He sat on the little iron bed, and knew that in a few nights to come he -might have to make his bed with beggars under bridge arches and in the -dens of thieves.</p> - -<p>Tears gathered in his eyes, and fell slowly one by one. A sort of -convulsion passed over his face. He gripped his throat with his hand, -to stifle a sob that rose there.</p> - -<p>The intense stillness of the chamber was not broken even by the buzzing -of a gnat.</p> - -<p>He sat quite motionless, and his thoughts went back to the summer day -in the cornfields by the Volga; he saw the scene in all its little -details: the impatient good-humour of the great lord, the awe of the -listening peasants, the blowing wheat, the wooden cross, the stamping -horses, the cringing servants; he heard the voice of his father saying, -'Will you be a jewel or a toad's eye?'</p> - -<p>'Why could he not leave me there?' he thought; 'I should have known -nothing; I should have been a hunter; I should have done no harm on the -ice and the snow there, with old Maritza.'</p> - -<p>He thought of his grandmother, of the little hut, of the nest of skins, -of the young bears at play, of the glittering plains in winter, of the -low red sun, of the black lonely woods, of the grey icy river, of the -bright virgin snow—thought, with a great longing like that of thirst. -Why had they not let him be? Why had they not left him ignorant and -harmless in the clear, keen, solitary winter world?</p> - -<p>Instead of that they had flung him into hell, and now left him in it, -alone.</p> - -<p>There was a far-off murmur on the sultry summer air, and a far-off -gleam of metal beyond the leaves of the poplar trees; it was the murmur -of the streets, and the glisten of the roofs of Paris.</p> - -<p>About his neck there hung a little silver image of St. Paul. His mother -had hung it there at birth, and Maritza had prayed him never to disturb -it. Now he took it off, he spat on it, he trod on it, he threw it out -to fall into the dust.</p> - -<p>He did this insult to the sacred thing coldly, without passion. His -tears were no more on his cheeks, nor the sobs in his throat.</p> - -<p>He changed his clothes quickly, put together a few necessaries, leaving -behind nearly all that he possessed, because he hated everything that -the dead man's money had bought; and then, without noise and without -haste, looking back once down the long empty chamber, he went through -the house by back ways that he knew and had used in hours of forbidden -liberty, and opening the gate of the courtyard, went out into the long -dreary highway, white with dust, that stretched before him and led to -Paris.</p> - -<p>He had made friends, for he was a beautiful bold boy, gay of wit, -agile, and strong, and of many talents; but these friends were -artists little known in the world, soldiers who liked pleasure, young -dramatists without theatres, pretty frail women who had taught him to -eat the sweet and bitter apple that is always held out in the hand of -Eve. These and their like were all butterfly friends of a summer noon -or night; he knew that very well, for he had a premature and unerring -knowledge of the value of human words. They would be of no use in such -a strait as his; and the colour flushed back for one instant into his -pale cheeks, as he thought that he would die in a hospital before he -was twenty rather than ask their aid.</p> - -<p>As the grey dust, the hot wind, the nauseous smell of streets in summer -smote upon him, leaving the poplar-shadowed court of his old school, -he felt once more the same strange yearning of home-sickness for the -winter world of his birth, for the steel-grey waters, the darkened -skies, the forests of fir, the howl of the wolves on the wind, the joys -of the fresh fierce cold, the feel of the ice in the air, the smell of -the pines and the river. The bonds of birth are strong.</p> - -<p>'If Maritza were not dead I would go back,' he thought. But Maritza had -been long dead, laid away under the snow by her daughter's side.</p> - -<p>The boy went to Paris.</p> - -<p>Would it be any fault of his what he became?</p> - -<p>He told himself, No.</p> - -<p>It would lie with the dead; and with Paris.</p> - - - -<hr class="chap" /> -<h4><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I.</a></h4> - - -<p>In the heart of the Hohe Tauern, province of lakes and streams, there -lies one lake called the Szalrassee: known to the pilgrim, to the -fisher, to the hunter, but to the traveller little, for it is shut -away from the hum and stir of man by the amphitheatre of its own hills -and forests. To the south-east of it lies the Iselthal, and to the -north-west the Wilde Gerlos; due east is the great Glöckner group, and -due west the Venediger. Farther away are the Alps of Zillerthal, and on -the opposite horizon the mountains of Karinthia.</p> - -<p>Here, where the foaming rivers thunder through their rocky channels, -and the ice bastions of a thousand glaciers glow in the sunrise and bar -the sight of sunset; here, where a thousand torrents bathe in silver -the hillsides, and the deep moan of subterranean waters sounds for -ever through the silence of the gorges, dark with the serried pines; -here, in the green and cloudy Austrian land, the merry trout have many -a joyous home, but none is fairer or more beloved by them than this -lovely lake of Hohenszalras; so green that it might have been made of -emeralds dissolved in sunbeams, so deep that at its centre no soundings -can be taken, so lonely that of the few wanderers who pass from S. -Johann im Wald or from Lienz to Matrey, even of those few scarce one in -a summer will know that a lake lies there, though they see from afar -off its great castle standing, many-turreted and pinnacled, with its -frowning keep, backed by the vast black forests, clothing slopes whose -summits hide themselves in cloud, whilst through the cold clear air the -golden vulture and the throated eagle wing their way.</p> - -<p>The lake lies like a crystal bedded in rock, lovely and lonely as the -little Gosausee when the skies are fair; perilous and terrible as the -great Königs-See in storm, when the north wind is racing in from the -Bœhmervald and the Polish steppes, and the rain-mists are dark and -dense, and the storks leave their home on the chapel roof because the -winter draws nigh. It is fed by snow and ice descending from a hundred -hills, and by underground streams and headlong-descending avalanches, -and in its turn feeds many a mountain waterfall, many a mountain tarn, -many a woodland brook, and many a village fountain. The great white -summits tower above it, and the dense still woods enshroud it; there -are a pier and harbour at either end, but these are only used by the -village people, and once a year by pilgrims who come to the Sacred -Island in its midst; pilgrims who flock thither from north, south, -east, and west, for the chapel of the Szalrassee is as renowned and -blessed as the silver shrine of holy Mariazell itself.</p> - -<p>On the right bank of its green glancing water, looking towards the -ice-peaks of the Glöckner on the east, and on the south towards the -Kitchbull mountains and the limestone Alps, a promontory juts out -into the lake and soars many hundred feet above it. It is of hard -granite rock. Down one of its sides courses a torrent, the other side -is clothed with wood; on the summit is the immense building that is -called the Hohenszalrasburg, a mass of towers and spires and high metal -roofs and frowning battlements, with a huge square fortress at one end -of them: it is the old castle of the Counts of Szalras, and the huge -donjon keep of it has been there twelve centuries, and in all these -centuries no man has ever seen its flag furled or its portcullis drawn -up for a conqueror's entry.</p> - -<p>The greater part of the Schloss now existing is the work of Meister -Wenzel of Klosterneuburg, begun in 1350, but the date of the keep -and of the foundations generally are much earlier, and the prisons -and clock tower are Romanesque. Majestic, magnificent, and sombre, -though not gloomy, by reason of its rude decoration and the brilliant -colours of its variegated roofs, it is scarcely changed since its lords -dwelt there in the fourteenth century, when their great banner, black -vultures on a ground of gold and red, floated then high up amongst the -clouds, even as it now shakes its heavy folds out on the strong wind -that blew so keenly from the Prussian and the Polish plains due north.</p> - -<p>It is a fortress that has wedded a palace; it is majestic, powerful, -imposing, splendid, like the great race, of which it so long has been -the stronghold and the birthplace. But it is as lonely in the quiet -heart of the everlasting hills as any falcon's or heron's nest hung in -the oak branches.</p> - -<p>And this loneliness seemed its sweetest charm in the eyes of its -châtelaine and mistress, the Countess Wanda von Szalras, as she leaned -one evening over the balustrade of her terrace, watching for the -after-glow to warm the snows of the Glöckner. She held in her hand an -open letter from her Kaiserin, and the letter in its conclusion said: -'You have sorrowed and tarried in seclusion long enough—too long; -longer than he would have wished you to do. Come back to us and to the -world.'</p> - -<p>And Wanda von Szalras thought to herself: 'What can the world give me? -What I love is Hohenszalras on earth, and Bela in heaven.'</p> - -<p>What could the world give her indeed? The world cannot give back the -dead. She wanted nothing of the world. She was rich in all that it can -ever give.</p> - -<p>In the time of Ferdinand the Second those who were then Counts of -Szalras had stitched the cloth cross on their sleeves and gone with the -Emperor to the Third Crusade. In gratitude for their escape, father -and son, from the perils of Palestine and the dangers of the high seas -and of the treacherous Danube water, from Moslem steel, and fever of -Jaffa, and chains of swarming Barbary corsairs, they, returning at last -in safety to their eyrie above the Szalrassee, had raised a chapel -on the island in the lake, and made it dedicate to the Holy Cross, -a Szalras of the following generation, belonging to the Dominican -community, and being a man of such saintly fervour and purity that he -was canonised by Innocent, had dwelt on the Holy Isle, and given to -it the benediction and the tradition of his sanctity and good works. -As centuries went on the holy fame of the shrine where the Crusader -had placed a branch from a thorn-tree of Nazareth grew, and gained in -legend and in miracle, and became as adored an object, of pilgrimage as -the Holy Phial of Heiligenblut. All the Hohe Tauern, and throngs even -from Karinthia on the one side and Tirol on the other, came thither on -the day of Ascension.</p> - -<p>The old faith still lives, very simple, warm, and earnest, in the -heart of Austria, and with that day-dawn in midsummer thousands of -peasant-folks flock from mountain villages and forest chalets and -little remote secluded towns, to speed over the green lake with flaming -crucifix and floating banner, and haunted anthem echoed from hill -to hill. One of those days of pilgrimage had made her mistress of -Hohenszalras.</p> - -<p>It was a martial and mighty race this which in the heart of the green -Tauern had made of fealty to God and the Emperor a religion for itself -and all its dependants. The Counts of Szalras had always been proud, -stern, and noble men: though their records were often stained with -fierce crimes, there was never in them any single soil of baseness, -treachery, or fear. They had been fierce and reckless in the wild days -when they were for ever at war with the Counts of Tirol and the warlike -Archbishops of Salzburg. Then with the Renaissance they had become no -less powerful, but more lettered, more courtly, and more splendid, and -had given alike friendship and service to the Habsburg. Now, of all -these princely and most powerful people there was but one descendant, -but one representative; and that one was a woman.</p> - -<p>Solferino had seen Count Gela fall charging at the head of his own -regiment of horse; Magenta had seen Count Victor cut in two by a -cannon-shot as he rode with the dragoons of Swartzenberg; and but a -few years later the youngest, Count Bela, had been drowned by his own -bright lake.</p> - -<p>Their father had died of grief for his eldest son; their mother had -been lost to them in infancy; Bela and Wanda had grown up together, -loving each other as only two lonely children can. She had been his -elder by a few years, and he younger than his age by reason of his -innocent simplicity of nature and his delicacy of body. They had always -thought to make a priest of him, and when that peaceful future was -denied him on his becoming the sole heir, it was the cause of bitter -though mute sorrow to the boy who was indeed so like a young saint in -church legends that the people called him tenderly <i>der Heilige Graf.</i> -He had never quitted Hohenszalras, and he knew every peasant around, -every blossom that blew, every mountain path, every forest beast -and bird, and every tale of human sorrow in his principality. When -he became lord of all after his brother's death he was saddened and -oppressed by the sense of his own overwhelming obligations. 'I am but -the steward of God,' he would say, with a tender smile, to the poor who -blessed him.</p> - -<p>One Ascension Day the lake was, as usual, crowded with the boats of -pilgrims; the morning was fair and cloudless, but, after noontide, wind -arose, the skies became overcast, and one of the sudden storms of the -country burst over the green waters. The little lord of Hohenszalras -was the first to see the danger to the clumsy heavy boats crowded with -country people, and with his household rowed out to their aid. The -storm had come so suddenly and with such violence that it smote, in -the very middle of the lake, some score of these boats laden with the -pilgrims of the Pinzgau and the Innthal, women chiefly; their screams -pierced through the noise of the roaring winds, and their terror added -fresh peril to the dangers of the lake, which changed in a few moments -to a seething whirlpool, and flung them to and fro like coots' nests -in a flood. The young Bela with his servants saved many, crossing and -recrossing the furious space of wind-lashed, leaping, foaming water; -but on the fourth voyage back the young Count's boat, over-burdened -with trembling peasants, whose fright made them blind and restive, -dipped heavily on one side, filled, and sank. Bela could swim well, -and did swim, even to the very foot of his own castle rock, where a -hundred hands were outstretched to save him; but, hearing a drowning -woman's moan, he turned and tried to reach her. A fresh surge of the -hissing water, a fresh gust of the bitter north wind, tossed him back -into a yawning gulf of blackness, and drove him headlong, and with no -more resistance in him than if he had been a broken bough, upon the -granite wall of his own rocks. He was caught and rescued almost on the -instant by his own men, but his head had struck upon the stone, and he -was senseless. He breathed a few hours, but he never spoke or opened -his eyes or gave any sign of conscious life, and before the night had -far advanced his innocent body was tenantless and cold, and his sweet -spirit lived only in men's memories. His sister, who was absent at that -time at the court of her Empress, became by his death the mistress of -Hohenszalras and the last of her line.</p> - -<p>When the tidings of his heroic end reached her at the imperial -hunting-place of Gödöllö all the world died for her; that splendid -pageant of a world, whose fairest and richest favours had been always -showered on the daughter of the mighty House of Szalras. She withdrew -herself from her friends, from her lovers, from her mistress, and -mourned for him with a grief that time could do little to assuage, -nothing to efface. She was then twenty years of age.</p> - -<p>She was thinking of that death now, four years later, as she stood on -the terrace which overhung the cruel rocks that had killed him.</p> - -<p>His loss was to her a sorrow that could never wholly pass away.</p> - -<p>Her other brothers had been dear to her, but only as brilliant young -soldiers are to a little child who sees them seldom. But Bela had been -her companion, her playmate, her friend, her darling. From Bela she had -been scarce ever parted. Every day and every night, herself, and all -her thoughts and all her time, were given to such administration of her -kingdom as should best be meet in the sight of God and his angels. 'I -am but Bela's almoner, as he was God's steward,' she said.</p> - -<p>She leaned against the parapet, and looked across the green and shining -water, the open letter hanging in her hand.</p> - -<p>The Countess Wanda von Szalras was a beautiful woman; but she had that -supreme distinction which eclipses beauty, that subtle, indescribable -grace and dignity which are never seen apart from some great lineage -with long traditions of culture, courtesy, and courage. She was very -tall, and her movements had a great repose and harmony in them; her -figure, richness and symmetry. Her eyes were of a deep brown hue, like -the velvety brown of a stag's throat; they were large, calm, proud, -and meditative. Her mouth was very beautiful; her hair was light and -golden; her skin exceedingly fair. She was one of the most beautiful -women of her country, and one of the most courted and the most -flattered; and her imperial mistress said now to her, 'Come back to us -and to the world.'</p> - -<p>Standing upon her terrace, in a gown of pale grey velvet that had no -ornament save an old gold girdle with an enamelled missal hung to -it, with two dogs at her side, one the black hunting-hound of St. -Hubert, the other the white sleuth-hound of Russia, she looked like a -châtelaine of the days of Mary of Burgundy or Elizabeth of Thuringia. -It seemed as if the dark cedar boughs behind her should lift and admit -to her presence some lover with her glove against the plume of his hat, -and her ring set in his sword-hilt, who would bow down before her feet -and not dare to touch her hand unbidden.</p> - -<p>But no lover was there. The Countess Wanda dismissed all lovers; she -was wedded to the memory of her brother, and to her own liberty and -power.</p> - -<p>She leaned on the stone parapet of her castle and gazed on the scene -that her eyes had rested on since they had first seen the light, yet of -which she never wearied. The intense depth of colour, that is the glory -of Austria, was deepening with each moment that the sun went nearer -to its setting in the dark blue of thunderclouds that brooded in the -west, over the Venediger and the Zillerthal Alps. Soon the sun would -pass that barrier of stone and ice, and evening would fall here in the -mountains of the Iselthal, whilst it would be still day for the plains -of the Ober Pinzgau and Salzkammergut. But as yet the radiance was -here; and the dark oak woods and birch woods, the purple pine forests, -the blue lake waters, and the glaciers of the Glöckner range, had -all that grandeur which makes a sunset in these highlands at once so -splendid and so peaceful. There is an infinite sense of peace in those -cool, vast, unworn mountain solitudes, with the rain-mists sweeping -like spectral armies over the level lands below, and the sun-rays -slanting heavenward, like the spears of an angelic host. There is such -abundance of rushing water, of deep grass, of endless shade, of forest -trees, of heather and pine, of torrent and tarn; and beyond these are -the great peaks that loom through breaking clouds, and the clear cold -air, in which the vulture wheels and the heron sails; and the shadows -are so deep, and the stillness is so sweet, and the earth seems so -green, and fresh, and silent, and strong. Nowhere else can one rest -so well; nowhere else is there so fit a refuge for all the faiths and -fancies that can find a home no longer in the harsh and hurrying world: -there is room for them all in the Austrian forests, from the Erl-King -to Ariel and Oberon.</p> - -<p>The Countess Wanda leaned against the balustrade of the terrace and -watched that banquet of colour on land and cloud and water; watched -till the sun sank out of sight behind the Venediger snows, and the -domes of the Glöckner, and all the lesser peaks opposite were changing -from the warmth, as of a summer rose, to a pure transparent grey, that -seemed here and there to be pierced as with fire.</p> - -<p>'How often do we thank God for the mountains?' she thought; 'yet we -ought every night that we pray.'</p> - -<p>Then she sighed as her eyes sank from the hill-tops to the lake water, -dark as iron, glittering as steel, now that the radiance of the sun had -passed off it. She remembered Bela.</p> - -<p>How could she ever forget him, with that murderous water shining for -ever at her feet?</p> - -<p>The world called her undiminished tenderness for her dead brother a -morbid grief, but then to the world at large any fidelity seems so -strange and stupid a waste of years: it does not understand that <i>tout -casse, tout lasse, tout passe</i>, was not written for strong natures.</p> - -<p>'How could I ever forget him, so long as that water glides there?' she -thought, as her eyes rested on the emerald and sparkling lake.</p> - -<p>'Yet her Majesty is so right! So right and so wise!' said a familiar -voice at her side.</p> - -<p>And there came up to her the loveliest little lady in all the empire; -an old lady, but so delicate, so charming, so pretty, so fragile, that -she seemed lovelier than all the young ones; a very fairy godmother, -covered up in lace and fur, and leaning on a gold-headed cane, and -wearing red shoes with high gilt heels, and smiling with serene blue -eyes, as though she had just stepped down out of a pictured copy of -Cinderella, and could change common pumpkins into gilded chariots, and -mice into horses, at a wish.</p> - -<p>She was the Princess Ottilie of Lilienhöhe, and had once been head of a -religious house.</p> - -<p>'Her Majesty is so right!' she said once more, with emphasis.</p> - -<p>The Countess Wanda turned and smiled, rather with her eyes than with -her lips.</p> - -<p>'It would not become my loyal affection to say she could be wrong. But -still, I know myself, and I know the world very well, and I far prefer -Hohenszalras to it.'</p> - -<p>'Hohenszalras is all very well in the summer and autumn,' said Princess -Ottilie, with a glance of anything but love at the great fantastic -solemn pile; 'but for a woman of your age and your possessions to -pass your days talking to farmers and fishermen, poring over books, -perplexing yourself as to whether it is right for you to accept wealth -that comes from such a source of danger to human life as your salt -mines—it is absurd, it is ludicrous. You are made for something more -than a political economist; you should be in the great world.'</p> - -<p>'I prefer my solitude and my liberty.'</p> - -<p>'Liberty! Who or what could dictate to you in the world? You reigned -there once; you would always reign there.'</p> - -<p>'Social life is a bondage, as an empress's is. It denies one the -greatest luxury of life—solitude.'</p> - -<p>'Certainly, if you love solitude so much, you have your heart's desire -here. It is an Alvernia! It is a Mount Athos! It is a snow-entombed -paraclete, a hermitage, only tempered by horses!' said the Princess, -with a little angry laugh.</p> - -<p>Her grand-niece smiled.</p> - -<p>'By many horses, certainly. Dearest aunt, what would you have? -Austrians are all centaurs and amazons. I am only like my Kaiserin in -that passion.'</p> - -<p>The Princess sighed.</p> - -<p>She had never been able to comprehend the forest life, the daring, the -intrepidity, the open-air pastimes, and the delight in danger which -characterised all the race of Szalras. Daughter of a North German -princeling, and with some French blood in her veins also, reared under -the formal etiquette of her hereditary court, and at an early age -canoness of one of those great semi-religious orders which are only -open to the offspring of royal or of most noble lines, her whole life -had been one moulded to form and conventional habit, and only her own -sweetness and sprightliness of temper had saved her from the narrowness -of judgment and the chilliness of formality which such a life begets. -The order of which until late years she had been superior was one for -magnificence and wealth unsurpassed in Europe; but, semi-secular in its -privileges, it had left her much liberty, and never wholly divorced -her from the world, which in an innocent way she had always loved -and enjoyed. After Count Victor's death she had resigned her office -on plea of age and delicacy of health, and had come to take up her -residence at Hohenszalras with her dead niece's children. She had done -so because she had believed it to be her duty, and her attachment to -Wanda and Bela had always been very great; but she had never learned to -love the solitude of the Hohe Tauern, or ceased to regard Hohenszalras -as a place of martyrdom. After the minute divisions of every hour -and observances of every smallest ceremonial that she had been used -to at her father's own little court of Lilienslüst, and in her own -religious house, where every member of the order was a daughter of -some one of the highest families of Germany or of Austria, the life at -Hohenszalras, with its outdoor pastimes, its feudal habits, its vast -liberties for man and beast, and its long frozen winters, when not a -soul could come near it from over the passes, seemed very terrible to -her. She could never understand her niece's passionate attachment to -it, and she in real truth only breathed entirely at ease in those few -weeks of the year which to please her niece she consented to pass away -from the Hohe Tauern.</p> - -<p>'Surely you will go to Ischl or go to Gödöllö this autumn, since Her -Majesty wishes it?' she said now, with an approving glance at the -imperial letter.</p> - -<p>'Her Majesty is so kind as always to wish it,' answered the Countess -Wanda. 'Let us leave time to show what it holds for us. This is -scarcely summer. Yesterday was the fifteenth of May.'</p> - -<p>'It is horribly cold,' said the Princess, drawing her silver-grey fur -about her. 'It is always horribly cold here, even in midsummer. And -when it does not snow it rains; you cannot deny <i>that.</i>'</p> - -<p>'Come, come! we have seen the sun all day to-day. I hope we shall see -it many days, for they have begun planting-out, you see—the garden -will soon be gorgeous.'</p> - -<p>'When the mist allows it to be seen, it will be, I dare say,' said -Princess Ottilie, somewhat pettishly. 'It is tolerable here in the -summer, though never agreeable; but the Empress is so right, it is -absurd to shut yourself longer up in this gloomy place; you are bound -to return to the world. You owe it to your position to be seen in it -once more.'</p> - -<p>'The world does not want me, my dear aunt; nor do I want the world.'</p> - -<p>'That is sheer perversity——'</p> - -<p>'How am I perverse? I know the world very well, and I know that no one -is necessary to it, unless it be Herr von Bismarck.'</p> - -<p>'I do not see what Herr von Bismarck has to do with your going back to -your natural manner of life,' said the Princess, severely, who abhorred -any sort of levity in regard to the mighty minister who had destroyed -the Lilienhöhe princes one fine morning, as indifferently as a boy -plucks down a cranberry bough. 'In summer, or even autumn, Hohenszalras -is endurable, but in winter it is—hyperborean—even you must grant -that. One might as well be jammed in a ship, amidst icebergs, in the -midst of a frozen sea.'</p> - -<p>'And you were born on the Elbe, oh fie! But indeed, my dearest aunt, I -like the frozen sea. The white months have no terrors for me. What you -call, and what calls itself, the great world is far more narrow than -the Iselthal. Here one's fancies, at least, can fly high as the eagles -do; in the world who can rise out of the hot-house air of the salons, -and see beyond the doings of one's friends and foes?'</p> - -<p>'Surely one's own friends and foes—people like oneself, in a -word—must be as interesting as Hans, and Peter, and Katte, and -Grethel, with their crampons or their milkpails,' said the Princess, -with impatience. 'Besides, surely in the world there are political -movement, influence, interests.'</p> - -<p>'Oh, intrigue?—as useful as Mme. de Laballe's or Mme. de -Longueville's? No! I do not believe there is even that in our time, -when even diplomacy itself is fast becoming a mere automatic factor -in a world that is governed by newspapers, and which has changed the -tyranny of wits for the tyranny of crowds. The time is gone by when a -"Coterie of Countesses" could change ministries, if they ever did do so -outside the novels of Disraeli. Drawing-room cabals may still do some -mischief perhaps, but they can do no good. Sometimes, indeed, I think -that what is called Government everywhere is nothing but a gigantic -mischief-making and place-seeking. The State is everywhere too like a -mother who sweeps her doorstep diligently, and scolds the neighbours, -while her child scalds itself to death unseen within.'</p> - -<p>'In the world,' interrupted the Princess oppositely, 'you might -persuade them that the sweeping of doorsteps is not sufficient——'</p> - -<p>'I prefer to keep my own house in order. It is quite enough -occupation,' said the Countess Wanda, with a smile. 'Dear aunt, here -amongst my own folks I can do some real good, I have some tangible -influence, I can feel that my life is not altogether spent in vain. -Why should I exchange these simple and solid satisfactions, for the -frivolities and the inanities of a life of pleasure which would not -even please me?'</p> - -<p>'You are very hard to please, I know,' retorted the Princess. 'But say -what you will, it becomes ridiculous for a person of your age, your -great position, and your personal beauty, to immure yourself eternally -in what is virtually no better than confinement to a fortress!'</p> - -<p>'A court is more of a prison to me,' said Wanda von Szalras. 'I know -both lives, and I prefer this life. As for my being very hard to -please, I think I was very gay and mirthful before Bela's death. Since -then all the earth has grown grey for me.'</p> - -<p>'Forgive me, my beloved!' said Princess Ottilie, with quick contrition, -whilst moisture sprang into her limpid and still luminous blue eyes.</p> - -<p>Wanda von Szalras took the old abbess's hand in her own, and kissed it.</p> - -<p>'I understand all you wish for me, dear aunt. Believe me, I envy people -when I hear them laughing light-heartedly amongst each other. I think -I shall never laugh <i>so</i> again.'</p> - -<p>'If you would only marry——' said the Princess, with some hesitation.</p> - -<p>'You think marriage amusing?' she said, with a certain contempt. 'If -you do, it is only because you escaped it.'</p> - -<p>'Amusing!' said the Princess, a little scandalised. 'I could speak of -no Sacrament of our Holy Church as "amusing." You rarely display such -levity of language. I confess I do not comprehend you. Marriage would -give you interests in life which you seem to lack sadly now. It would -restore you to the world. It would be a natural step to take with such -vast possessions as yours.'</p> - -<p>'It is not likely I shall ever take it,' said Wanda von Szalras, -drawing the soft fine ear of Donau through her fingers.</p> - -<p>'I know it is not likely. I am very sorry that it is not likely. Yet -what nobler creature does God's earth contain than your cousin Egon?</p> - -<p>'Egon? No: he is a good and brave and loyal gentleman, none better; but -I shall no more marry him than Donau here will wed a forest doe.'</p> - -<p>'Yet he has loved you for ten years. But if not he there are so -many others, men of high enough place to be above all suspicion of -mercenary motive. No woman has been more adored than you, Wanda. Look -at Hugo Landrassy.'</p> - -<p>'Oh, pray spare me their enumeration. It is like the Catalogue of -Ships!' said the Countess Wanda, with some coldness and some impatience -on her face.</p> - -<p>At that moment an old man, who was major-domo of Hohenszalras, -approached and begged with deference to know whether his ladies would -be pleased to dine.</p> - -<p>The Princess signified her readiness with alacrity; Wanda von Szalras -signed assent with less willingness.</p> - -<p>'What a disagreeable obligation dining is,' she said, as she turned -reluctantly from the evening scene, with the lake sleeping in dusk and -shadow, while the snow summits still shone like silver and glowed with -rose.</p> - -<p>'It is very wicked to think so,' said her great-aunt. 'When a merciful -Creator has appointed our appetites for our consolation and support it -is only an ingrate who is not thankful lawfully to indulge them.'</p> - -<p>'That view of them never occurred to me,' said the châtelaine of -Hohenszalras. 'I think you must have stolen it, aunt, from some abbé -galant or some chanoinesse as lovely as yourself in the last century. -Alas! if not to care to eat be ungrateful I am a sad ingrate. Donau -and Neva are more ready subscribers to your creed.'</p> - -<p>Donau and Neva were already racing towards the castle, and Wanda von -Szalras, with one backward lingering glance to the sunset, which -already was fading, followed them with slow steps to the grand house of -which she was mistress.</p> - -<p>In the north alone the sky was overcast and of a tawny colour, where -the Pinzgau lay, with the green Salzach water rushing through its -wooded gorges, and its tracks of sand and stone desolate as any desert.</p> - -<p>That slender space of angry yellow to the north boded ill for the -night. Bitter storms rolled in west from the Bœhmerwald, or north -from the Salzkammergut, many a time in the summer weather, changing it -to winter as they passed, tugging at the roof-ropes of the châlets, -driving the sheep into their sennerin's huts, covering with mist and -rain the mountain sides, and echoing in thunder from the peaks of the -Untersburg to the snows of the Ortler Spitze. It was such a sudden -storm which had taken Bela's life.</p> - -<p>'I think we shall have wild weather,' said the Princess, drawing her -furs around her, as she walked down the broad length of the stone -terrace.</p> - -<p>'I think so too,' said Wanda. 'It is coming very soon; and I fear I did -a cruel thing this morning.'</p> - -<p>'What was that?'</p> - -<p>'I sent a stranger to find his way over our hills to Matrey, as best -he might. He will hardly have reached it by now, and if a storm should -come——'</p> - -<p>'A stranger?' said Princess Ottilie, whose curiosity was always alive, -and had also lately no food for its hunger.</p> - -<p>'Only a poacher; but he was a gentleman, which made his crime the -worse.'</p> - -<p>'A gentleman, and you sent him over the hills without a guide? It seems -unlike the hospitality of Hohenszalras.'</p> - -<p>'Why he would have shot a <i>kuttengeier!</i>'</p> - -<p>'A <i>kuttengeier</i> is a horrible beast,' said the Princess, with a -shudder; 'and a stranger, just for an hour or so, would be welcome.'</p> - -<p>'Even if his name were not in the Hof-Kalender?' asked her niece, -smiling.</p> - -<p>'If he had been a pedlar, or a clockmaker, you would have sent him in -to rest. For a gentlewoman, Wanda, and so proud a one as you are, you -become curiously cruel to your own class.'</p> - -<p>'I am always cruel to poachers. And to shoot a vulture in the month of -May!'</p> - - - -<hr class="chap" /> -<h4><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II.</a></h4> - - -<p>The dining-hall was a vast chamber, panelled and ceiled with oak. In -the centre of the panels were emblazoned shields bearing the arms of -the Szalras, and of the families with which they had intermarried; the -long lancet windows had been painted by no less a hand than that of -Jacob of Ulm; the knights' stalls which ran round the hall were the -elaborate carving of Georges Syrlin; and old gorgeous banners dropped -down above them, heavy with broideries and bullion.</p> - -<p>There were upper servants in black clothes with knee breeches, and a -dozen lacqueys in crimson and gold liveries, ranged about the table. -In many ways there were a carelessness and ease in the household which -always seemed lamentable to the Princess Ottilie, but in matters of -etiquette the great household was ruled like a small court; and when -sovereigns became guests there little in the order of the day needed -change at Hohenszalras.</p> - -<p>The castle was half fortress, half palace; a noble and solemn place, -which had seen many centuries of warfare, of splendour, and of -alternate war and joy. Strangers used to Paris gilding, to Italian -sunlight, to English country-houses, found it too severe, too august, -too dark, and too stern in its majesty, and were awed by it. But she -who had loved it and played in it in infancy changed nothing there, -but cherished it as it had come to her; and it was in all much the -same as it had been in the days of Henry the Lion, from its Gothic -Silber-kapelle, that was like an ivory and jewelled casket set in dusky -silver, to its immense Rittersäal, with a hundred knights in full -armour standing down it, as the bronze figures stand round Maximilian's -empty tomb in Tirol. There are many such noble places hidden away in -the deep forests and the mountain glens of Maximilian's empire.</p> - -<p>In this hall there were some fifteen persons standing. They were the -priest, the doctor, the high steward, the almoner, some dames de -compagnie, and some poor ladies, widows or spinsters, who subsisted -on the charities of Hohenszalras. The two noble ladies bowed to them -all and said a few kind words; then passed on and seated themselves -at their own table, whilst these other persons took their seats -noiselessly at a longer table, behind a low screen of carved oak.</p> - -<p>The lords of Hohenszalras had always thus adhered to the old feudal -habit of dining in public, and in royal fashion, thus.</p> - -<p>The Countess Wanda and her aunt spoke little; the one was thinking -of many other things than of the food brought to her, the other was -enjoying to the uttermost each <i>bouchée</i>, each <i>relevée</i>, each morsel -of quail, each mouthful of wine-stewed trout, each succulent truffle, -and each rich drop of crown Tokaï.</p> - -<p>The repast was long, and to one of them extremely tedious; but these -formal and prolonged ceremonials had been the habit of her house, and -Wanda von Szalras carefully observed all hereditary usage and custom. -When her aunt had eaten her last fruit, and she herself had broken -her last biscuit between the dogs, they rose, one glad that the most -tiresome, and the other regretful that the most pleasant, hour of the -uneventful day was over.</p> - -<p>With a bow of farewell to the standing household, they went by mutual -consent their divers ways; the Princess to her favourite blue room -and her after-dinner doze, Wanda to her own study, the chamber most -essentially her own, where all were hers.</p> - -<p>The softness and radiance of the after-glow had given place to night -and rain; the mists and the clouds had rolled up from the Zillerthal -Alps, and the water was pouring from the skies.</p> - -<p>Lamps, wax candles, flambeaux, burning in sconces or upheld by statues -or swinging from chains, were illumining the darkness of the great -castle, but in her own study only one little light was shining, for -she, a daughter of the mystical mountains and forests, loved the -shadows of the night.</p> - -<p>She seated herself here by the unshuttered casement. The full moon was -rising above the Glöckner range, and the rain-clouds as yet did not -obscure it, though a film of falling water veiled all the westward -shore of the lake, and all the snows on the peaks and crests of the -Venediger. She leaned her elbows on the cushioned seat, and looked out -into the night.</p> - -<p>'Bela, my Bela! are you content with me?' she murmured. To her Bela -was as living as though he were present by her side; she lived in -the constant belief of his companionship and his sight. Death was a -cruel—ah, how cruel!—wall built up between him and her, forbidding -them the touch of each other's hands, denying them the smile of each -other's eyes; but none the less to her was he there, unseen, but ever -near, hidden behind that inexorable, invisible barrier which one day -would fall and let her pass and join him.</p> - -<p>She sat idle in the embrasure of the oriel window, whilst the one lamp -burned behind her. This, her favourite room, had scarcely been changed -since Maria Theresa, on a visit there, had made it her bower-room. -The window-panes had been painted by Selier of Landshut in 1440; -the stove was one of Hirschvögel's; the wood-carvings had been done -by Schuferstein; there was silver <i>repoussé</i> work of Kellerthaler, -tapestries of Marc de Comans, enamels of Elbertus of Köln, of Jean of -Limoges, of Leonard Limousin, of Penicaudius; embroidered stuffs of -Isabeau Maire, damascened armour once worn by Henry the Lion, a painted -spinet that had belonged to Isabella of Bavaria, and an ivory Book of -Hours, once used by Carolus Magnus; and all these things, like the many -other treasures of the castle, had been there for centuries; gifts -from royal guests, spoils of foreign conquest, memorials of splendid -embassies or offices of state held by the lords of Szalras, or -marriage presents at magnificent nuptials in the old magnificent ages.</p> - -<p>In this room she, their sole living representative, was never disturbed -on any pretext. In the adjacent library (a great cedar-lined room, -holding half a million volumes, with many missals and early classics, -and many an <i>editio princeps</i> of the Renaissance), she held all her -audiences, heard all petitions or complaints, audited her accounts, -conversed with her tenants or her stewards, her lawyers or her -peasants, and laboured earnestly to use to the best of her intelligence -the power bequeathed to her.</p> - -<p>'I am but God's and Bela's steward, as my steward is mine,' she said -always to herself, and never avoided any duty or labour entailed on -her, never allowed weariness or self-indulgence to enervate her. <i>Qui -facit per alium, facit per se</i> had been early taught to her, and she -never forgot it. She never did anything vicariously which concerned -those dependent upon her. And she was an absolute sovereign in this her -kingdom of glaciers and forests; her frozen sea as she had called it. -She never avoided a duty merely because it was troublesome, and she -never gave her signature without knowing why and wherefore. It is easy -to be generous; to be just is more difficult and burdensome. Generous -by temper, she strove earnestly to be always just as well, and her life -was not without those fatigues which a very great fortune brings with -it to anyone who regards it as a sacred trust.</p> - -<p>She had wide possessions and almost incalculable wealth. She had salt -mines in Galicia, she had Vosläuer vineyards in the Salzkammergut, she -had vast plains of wheat, and leagues on leagues of green lands, where -broods of horses bred and reared away in the steppes of Hungary. She -had a palace in the Herrengasse at Vienna, another in the Residenzplatz -of Salzburg; she had forests and farms in the Innthal and the -Zillerthal; she had a beautiful little schloss on the green Ebensee, -which had been the dower-house of the Countesses of Szalras, and she -had pine-woods, quarries, vineyards, and even a whole riverain town -on the Danube, with a right to take toll on the ferry there, which -had been given to her forefathers as far back as the days of Mathias -Carvin, a right that she herself had let drop into desuetude. 'I do -not want the poor folks' copper kreutzer,' she said to her lawyers -when they remonstrated. What did please her was the fact coupled with -this right that even the Kaiser could not have entered her little town -without his marshal thrice knocking at the gates, and receiving from -the warder the permission to pass, in the words, 'The Counts of Idrac -bid you come in peace.'</p> - -<p>All these things and places made a vast source of revenue, and the -property, whose title-deeds and archives lay in many a chest and coffer -in the old city of Salzburg, was one of the largest in Europe. It would -have given large portions and dowries to a score of sons and daughters -and been none the worse. And it was all accumulating on the single head -of one young and lonely woman! She was the last of her race; there were -distant collateral branches, but none of them near enough to have any -title to Hohenszalras. She could bequeath it where she would, and she -had already willed it to her Kaiserin, in a document shut up in an iron -chest in the city of Salzburg. She thought the Crown would be a surer -and juster guardian of her place and people than any one person, whose -caprices she could not foretell, whose extravagance or whose injustice -she could not foresee. Sometimes, even to the spiritual mind of the -Princess Ottilie, the persistent refusal of her niece to think of any -marriage seemed almost a crime against mankind.</p> - -<p>What did the Crown want with it?</p> - -<p>The Princess was a woman of absolutely; loyal sentiment towards all -ancient sovereignties. She believed in Divine right, and was as strong -a royalist as it is possible for anyone to be whose fathers have been -devoured like an anchovy by M. de Bismarck, and who has the sympathy -of fellow feeling with Frohsdorf and Gmünden. But even her devotion to -the rights of monarchs failed to induce her to see why the Habsburg -should inherit Hohenszalras. The Crown is a noble heir, but it is one -which leaves the heart cold. Who would ever care for her people, and -her forests, and her animals as she had done? Even from her beloved -Kaiserin she could not hope for that. 'If I had married?' she thought, -the words of the Princess Ottilie coming back upon her memory.</p> - -<p>Perhaps, for the sake of her people and her lands, it might have been -better.</p> - -<p>But there are women to whom the thought of physical surrender of -themselves is fraught with repugnance and disgust; a sentiment so -strong that only a great passion vanquishes it. She was one of these -women, and passion she had never felt.</p> - -<p>'Even for Hohenszalras I could not,' she thought, as she leaned on -the embrasure cushions, and watched the moon, gradually covered with -the heavy blue-black clouds. The Crown should be her heir and reign -here after her, when she should be laid by the side of Bela in that -beautiful dusky chapel beneath the shrines of ivory and silver, where -all the dead of the House of Szalras slept. But it was an heir which -left her heart cold.</p> - -<p>She rose abruptly, left the embrasure, and began to examine the letters -of the day and put down heads of replies to them, which her secretary -could amplify on the morrow.</p> - -<p>One letter her secretary could not answer for her; it was a letter -which gave her pain, and which she read with an impatient sigh. It -urged her return to the world as the letter of her Empress had done, -and it urged with timidity, yet with passion, a love that had been -loyal to her from her childhood. It was signed 'Egon Vàsàrhely.'</p> - -<p>'It is the old story,' she thought. 'Poor Egon! If only one could have -loved him, how it would have simplified everything; and I do love him, -as I once loved Gela and Victor.'</p> - -<p>But that was not the love which Egon Vàsàrhely pleaded for with the -tenderness of one who had been to her as a brother from her babyhood, -and the frankness of a man who knew his own rank so high and his own -fortunes so great, that no mercenary motive could be attributed to -him even when he sought the mistress of Hohenszalras. It was the old -story: she had heard it many times from him and from others in those -brilliant winters in Vienna which had preceded Bela's death. And it had -always failed to touch her. Women who have never loved are harsh to -love from ignorance.</p> - -<p>At that moment a louder crash of thunder reverberated from hill to -hill, and the Glöckner domes seemed to shout to the crests of the -Venediger.</p> - -<p>'I hope that stranger is housed and safe,' she thought, her mind -reverting to the poacher of whom she had spoken on the terrace at -sunset. His face came before her memory: a beautiful face, oriental -in feature, northern in complexion, fair and cold, with blue eyes of -singular brilliancy.</p> - -<p>The forests of Hohenszalras are in themselves a principality. Under -enormous trees, innumerable brooks and little torrents dash downwards -to lose themselves in the green twilight of deep gorges; broad, dark, -still lakes lie like cups of jade in the bosom of the woods; up above, -where the Alpine firs and the pinus cembra shelter him, the bear lives -and the wolf too; and higher yet, where the glacier lies upon the -mountain side, the merry steinbock leaps from peak to peak, and the -white-throat vulture and the golden eagle nest. The oak, the larch, -the beech, the lime, cover the lower hills, higher grow the pines and -firs, the lovely drooping Siberian pine foremost amidst them. In the -lower wood grassy roads cross and thread the leafy twilight. A stranger -had been traversing these woods that morning, where he had no right -or reason to be. Forest-law was sincerely observed and meted out at -Hohenszalras, but of that he was ignorant or careless.</p> - -<p>Before him, in the clear air, a large, dark object rose and spread -huge pinions to the wind and soared aloft. The trespasser lifted his -rifle to his shoulder, and in another moment would have fired. But an -alpenstock struck the barrel up into the air, and the shot went off -harmless towards the clouds. The great bird, startled by the report, -flew rapidly to the westward; the Countess Wanda said quietly to the -poacher in her forest, 'You cannot carry arms here,'</p> - -<p>He looked at her angrily, and in surprise.</p> - -<p>'You have lost me the only eagle I have seen for years,' he said -bitterly, with a flush of discomfiture and powerless rage on his fair -face.</p> - -<p>She smiled a little.</p> - -<p>'That bird was not an eagle, sir; it was a white-throated vulture, a -<i>kuttengeier.</i> But had it been an eagle—or a sparrow—you could not -have killed it on my lands.'</p> - -<p>Pale still with anger, he uncovered his head.</p> - -<p>'I have not the honour to know in whose presence I stand,' he muttered -sullenly. 'But I have Imperial permission to shoot wherever I choose.'</p> - -<p>'His Majesty has no more loyal subject than myself,' she answered him. -'But his dominion does not extend over my forests. You are on the -ground of Hohenszalras, and your offence——'</p> - -<p>'I know nothing of Hohenszalras!' he interrupted, with impatience.</p> - -<p>She blew a whistle, and her head forester with three jägers sprang up -as if out of the earth, some great wolf-hounds, grinning with their -fangs, waiting but a word to spring. In one second the rangers had -thrown themselves on the too audacious trespasser, had pinioned him, -and had taken his rifle.</p> - -<p>Confounded, disarmed, humiliated, and stunned by the suddenness of the -attack, he stood mute and very pale.</p> - -<p>'You know Hohenszalras now!' said the mistress of it, with a smile, -as she watched his seizure seated on a moss-grown boulder of granite, -black Donau and white Neva by her side. He was pale with impotent fury, -conscious of an indefensible and absurd position. The jäger looked at -their mistress; they had slipped a cord over his wrists, and tied them -behind his back; they looked to her for a sign of assent to break his -rifle. She stood silent, amused with her victory and his chastisement; -a little derision shining in her lustrous eyes.</p> - -<p>'You know Hohenszalras now!' she said once more. 'Men have been shot -dead for what you were doing. If you be, indeed, a friend of my -Emperor's, of course you are welcome here; but——'</p> - -<p>'What right have you to offer me this indignity,' muttered the -offender, his fair features changing from white to red, and red to -white, in his humiliation and discomfiture.</p> - -<p>'Right!' echoed the mistress of the forests. 'I have the right to do -anything I please with you! You seem to me to understand but little of -forest laws.'</p> - -<p>'Madame, were you not a woman, you would have had bloodshed.'</p> - -<p>'Oh, very likely. That sometimes happens, although seldom, as all the -Hohe Tauern knows how strictly these forests are preserved. My men are -looking to me for permission to break your rifle. That is the law, sir.'</p> - -<p>'Since 'Forty-eight,' said the trespasser, with what seemed to her -marvellous insolence, 'all the old forest laws are null and void. It -is scarcely allowable to talk of trespass.'</p> - -<p>A look of deep anger passed over her face. 'The follies of 'Forty-eight -have nothing to do with Hohenszalras,' she said, very coldly. 'We hold -under charters of our own, by grants and rights which even Rudolf of -Habsburg never dared meddle with. I am not called on to explain this to -you, but you appear to labour under such strange delusions that it is -as well to dispel them.'</p> - -<p>He stood silent, his eyes cast downward. His humiliation seemed to -him enormously disproportioned to his offending. The hounds menaced -him with deep growls and grinning fangs; the jägers held his gun; his -wrists were tied behind him. 'Are you indeed a friend of the Kaiser?' -she repeated to him.</p> - -<p>'I am no friend of his,' he answered bitterly and sullenly. 'I met -him a while ago zad-hunting on the Thorstein. His signature is in my -pocket; bid your jäger take it out.'</p> - -<p>'I will not doubt your word,' she said to him. 'You look a gentleman. -If you will give me your promise to shoot no more on these lands I will -let them set you free and render you up your rifle.'</p> - -<p>'You have the law with you,' said the trespasser moodily. 'Since I can -do no less—I promise.'</p> - -<p>'You are ungracious, sir,' said Wanda, with a touch of severity and -irritation. 'That is neither wise nor grateful, since you are nothing -more or better than a poacher on my lands. Nevertheless, I will trust -you.'</p> - -<p>Then she gave a sign to the jägers and a touch to the hounds: the -latter rose and ceased their growling; the former instantly, though -very sorrowfully, untied the cord off the wrists of their prisoner, and -gave him back his unloaded rifle.</p> - -<p>'Follow that path into the ravine; cross that; ascend the opposite -hills, and you will find the high road. I advise you to take it, sir. -Good-day to you.'</p> - -<p>She pointed out the forest path which wound downward under the arolla -pines. He hesitated a moment, then bowed very low with much grace, -turned his back on her and her foresters and her dogs, and began slowly -to descend the moss-grown slope.</p> - -<p>He hated her for the indignity she had brought upon him, and the -ridicule to which she forced him to submit; yet the beauty of her had -startled and dazzled him. He had thought of the great Queen of the -Nibelungen-Lied, whose armour lies in the museum of Vienna.</p> - -<p>'Alas! why have you let him go, my Countess!' murmured Otto, the head -forester.</p> - -<p>'The Kaiser had made him sacred,' she answered, with a smile; and -then she called Donau and Neva, who were roaming, and went on her way -through her forest.</p> - -<p>'What strange and cruel creatures we are!' she thought. 'The vulture -would have dropped into the ravine. He would never have found it. The -audacity, too, to fire on a <i>kuttengeier</i>; if it had been any lesser -bird one might have pardoned it.'</p> - -<p>For the eagle, the gypæte, the white-throated pygargue, the buzzard, -and all the family of falcons were held sacred at Hohenszalras, and -lived in their mountain haunts rarely troubled. It was an old law there -that the great winged monarchs should never be chased, except by the -Kaiser himself when he came there. So that the crime of the stranger -had been more than trespass and almost treason! Her heart was hard to -him, and she felt that she had been too lenient. Who could tell but -that that rifle would bring down some free lord of the air?</p> - -<p>She listened with the keen ear of one used to the solitude of the hills -and woods; she thought he would shoot something out of bravado. But all -was silent in that green defile beneath whose boughs the stranger was -wending on his way. She listened long, but she heard no shots, although -in those still heights the slightest noise echoed from a hundred walls -of rock and ice. She walked onward through the deep shadow of the thick -growing beeches; she had her alpenstock in her right hand, her little -silver horn hung at her belt, and beside it was a pair of small ivory -pistols, pretty as toys, but deadly as revolvers could be. She stooped -here and there to gather some lilies of the valley, which were common -enough in these damp grassy glades.</p> - -<p>'Where could that stranger have come from, Otto?' she asked of her -jäger.</p> - -<p>'He must have come over the Hündspitz, my Countess,' said Otto. 'Any -other way he would have been stopped by our men and lightened of his -rifle.'</p> - -<p>'The Hündspitz!' she echoed, in wonder, for the mountain so called was -a wild inaccessible place, divided by a parapet of ice all the year -round from the range of the Gross Glöckner.</p> - -<p>'That must he,' said the huntsman,'and for sure if an honest man had -tried to come that way he would have been hurled headlong down the -ice-wall——'</p> - -<p>'He is the Kaiser's <i>protégé</i>, Otto,' said his mistress, with a smile, -but the old jäger muttered that they had only his own word for that. -It had pierced Otto's soul to let the poacher's rifle go.</p> - -<p>She thought of all this with some compunction now, as she sat in her -own warm safe chamber and heard the thunder, the wind, the raising of -the storm which had now fairly broken in full fury. She felt uneasy for -the erring stranger. The roads over the passes were still perilous from -avalanches and half melted snow in the crevasses; the time of year was -more dangerous than midwinter.</p> - -<p>'I ought to have given him a guide,' she thought, and went out and -joined the Princess Ottilie, who had awakened from her after-dinner -repose under the loud roll of the thunder and the constantly recurring -flashes of lightning.</p> - -<p>'I am troubled for that traveller whom I saw in the woods to-day,' she -said to her aunt. 'I trust he is safe housed.'</p> - -<p>'If he had been a pastry-cook from the Engadine, or a seditious -heretical <i>colporteur</i> from Geneva, you would have sent him into the -kitchens to feast,' said the Princess, contentiously.</p> - -<p>'I hope he is safe housed,' repeated Wanda. 'It is several hours ago; -he may very well have reached the posthouse.'</p> - -<p>'You have the satisfaction of thinking the <i>kuttengeier</i> is safe, -sitting on some rock tearing a fish to pieces,' said the Princess, who -was irritable because she was awakened before her time. 'Will you have -some coffee or some tea? You look disturbed, my dear; after all, you -say the man was a poacher.'</p> - -<p>'Yes. But I ought to have seen him safe off my ground. There are a -hundred kinds of death on the hills for anyone who does not know them -well. Let us look at the weather from the hall; one can see better from -there.'</p> - -<p>From the Rittersäal, whose windows looked straight down the seven -miles of the lake water, she watched the tempest. All the mountains -were sending back echoes of thunder, which sounded like salvoes of -artillery. There was little to be seen for the dense rain mist; the -beacon of the Holy Isle glimmered redly through the darkness. In the -upper air snow was falling; the great white peaks and pinnacles ever -and again flashed strangely into view as the lightning illumined them; -the Glöckner-wanda towered above all others a moment in the glare, and -seemed like ice and fire mingled.</p> - -<p>'They are like the great white thrones of the Apocalypse,' she thought.</p> - -<p>Beneath, the lake boiled and seethed in blackness like a witches' -cauldron.</p> - -<p>A storm was always terrible to her, from the memory of Bela.</p> - -<p>In the lull of a second in the tempest of sound it seemed to her as if -she heard some other cry than that of the wind.</p> - -<p>'Open one of these windows and listen,' she said to Hubert, her -major-domo. 'I fancy I hear a shout—a scream. I am not certain, but -listen well.'</p> - -<p>'There is some sound,' said Hubert, after a moment of attention. 'It -comes from the lake. But no boat could live long in that water, my -Countess.'</p> - -<p>'No!' she said, with a quick sigh, remembering how her brother had -died. 'But we must do what we can. It may be one of the lake fishermen -caught in the storm before he could make for home. Ring the alarm-bell, -and go out, all of you, to the water stairs. I will come, too.'</p> - -<p>In a few moments the deep bell that hung in the chime tower, and which -was never sounded except for death or danger, added its sonorous brazen -voice to the clang and clamour of the storm. All the household paused, -and at the summons, coming from north, south, east, and west of the -great pile of buildings, grooms, gardeners, huntsmen, pages, scullions, -underlings, all answered to the metal tongue, which told them of some -peril at Hohenszalras.</p> - -<p>With a hooded cloak thrown over her, she went out into the driving -rain, down the terrace to the head of what were called the water -stairs; a flight of granite steps leading to the little quay upon the -eastward shore of the Szalrassee, where were moored in fair weather the -pleasure boats, the fishing punts, and the canoes which belonged to the -castle: craft all now safe in the boat-house.</p> - -<p>'Make no confusion,' she said to them. 'There is no danger in the -castle. There is some boat, or some swimmer, on the lake. Light the -terrace beacon and we shall see.'</p> - -<p>She was very pale. There was no storm on those waters that did not -bring back to her, as poignant as the first fresh hours of its grief, -the death of Bela.</p> - -<p>The huge beacon of iron, a cage set on high and filled with tow and tar -and all inflammable things, was set on fire, and soon threw a scarlet -glare over the scene.</p> - -<p>The shouts had ceased.</p> - -<p>'They may be drowned,' she said, with her lips pressed tightly -together. 'I hear nothing now. Have you the rope and the lifeboat -ready? We must wait for more light.'</p> - -<p>At that moment the whole of the tar caught, and the beacon blazed at -its fiercest in its iron cage, as it had used to blaze in the ages gone -by as a war signal, when the Prelates of Salzburg and Birchtesgaden -were marching across the marshes of Pinzgau in quarrel or feud with the -lords of the strongest fortress in the Hohe Tauern.</p> - -<p>In the struggling light which met the blue glance of the lightning they -could see the angry waters of the lake as far as the Holy Isle, and -near to land, only his head above the water, was a man drowning, as the -pilgrims had drowned.</p> - -<p>'For the love of God—the rope!' she cried, and almost before the words -had escaped from her her men had thrown a lifebuoy to the exhausted -swimmer, and pushed one of the boats into the seething darkness of the -lake. But the swimmer had strength enough to catch hold of the buoy -as it was hurled to him by the <i>fischermeister's</i> unerring hand, and -he clung to it and kept his grasp on it, despite the raging of the -wind and waters, until the boat reached him. He was fifty yards off -the shore, and he was pulled into the little vessel, which was tossed -to and fro upon the black waters like a shell; the <i>fohn</i> was blowing -fiercely all the time, and flung the men headlong on the boat's bottom -twice ere they could seize the swimmer, who helped himself, for, though -mute; and almost breathless, he was not insensible, and had not lost -all his strength. If he had not been so near the land he and the boat's -crew would all have sunk, and dead bodies would once more have been -washed on the shore of the Szalrassee with the dawn of another day.</p> - -<p>Drenched, choked with water, and thrown from side to side as the wind -played with them as a child with its ball, the men ran their boat at -last against the stairs, and landed with their prize.</p> - -<p>Dripping from head to foot, and drawing deep breaths of exhaustion, -the rescued man stood on the terrace steps bareheaded and in his -shirt-sleeves, his brown velvet breeches pulled up to his knees, his -fair hair lifted by the wind, and soaked with wet.</p> - -<p>She recognised the trespasser of the forest.</p> - -<p>'Madame, behold me in your power again!' he said, with a little smile, -though he breathed with labour, and his voice was breathless and low.</p> - -<p>'You are welcome, sir. Any stranger or friend would be welcome in such -a night,' she said, with the red glow of the beacon light shed upon -her. 'Pray do not waste breath or time in courtesies. Come up the steps -and hurry to the house. You must be faint and bruised.'</p> - -<p>'No, no,' said the swimmer; but as he spoke his eyes closed, he -staggered a little; a deadly faintness and cold had seized him, and -cramp came on all his limbs.</p> - -<p>The men caught him, and carried him up the stairs; he strove to -struggle and protest, but Otto the forester stooped over him.</p> - -<p>'Keep you still,' he muttered. 'You have the Countess's orders. -Trespass has cost you dear, my master.'</p> - -<p>'I do not think he is greatly hurt,' said the mistress of Szaravola to -her house physician. 'But go you to him, doctor, and see that he is -warmly housed and has hot drinks. Put him in the Strangers' Gallery, -and pray take care my aunt is not alarmed.'</p> - -<p>The Princess Ottilie at that moment was alternately eating a <i>nougat</i> -out of her sweetmeat box and telling the beads of her rosary. The sound -of the wind and the noise of the storm could not reach her in her -favourite blue-room, all <i>capitonnée</i> with turquoise silks as it was; -the only chamber in all Szaravola that was entirely modern and French.</p> - -<p>'I do hope Wanda is running no risk,' she thought, from time to time. -'It would be quite like her to row down the lake.'</p> - -<p>But she sat still in her lamp light, and told her beads.</p> - -<p>A few moments later her niece entered. Her waterproof mantle had kept -her white gown from the rain and spray.</p> - -<p>There was a little moisture on her hair, that was all. She did not -look as if she had stirred further from her drawing-room than the -Princess had done.</p> - -<p>Now that the stranger was safe and sound he had ceased to have any -interest for her; he was nothing more than any flotsam of the lake; -only one other to sleep beneath the roofs of Hohenszalras, where half a -hundred slept already.</p> - -<p>The castle, in the wild winters that shut out the Hohe Tauern from the -world, was oftentimes a hospice for travellers, though usually those -travellers were only pedlars, colporteurs, mule-drivers, clock-makers -of the Zillerthal or carpet weavers of the Defreggerthal, too late in -the year to pursue their customary passage over the passes in safety. -To such the great beacon of the Holy Isle and the huge servants' hall -of Szaravola were well known.</p> - -<p>She sat down to her embroidery frame without speaking; she was working -some mountain flowers in silks on velvet, for a friend in Paris' The -flowers stood in a glass on a table.</p> - -<p>'It is unkind of you to go out in that mad way on such a night as -this, and return looking so unlike having had an adventure!' said the -Princess, a little pettishly.</p> - -<p>'There has been no adventure,' said Wanda von Szalras, with a smile. -'But there is what may do as well—a handsome stranger who' has been -saved from drowning.'</p> - -<p>Even as she spoke her face changed, her mouth quivered; she crossed -herself, and murmured, too low for the other to hear:</p> - -<p>'Bela, my beloved, think not that I forget!'</p> - -<p>The Princess Ottilie sat up erect in her chair, and her blue eyes -brightened like a girl of sixteen.</p> - -<p>'Then there <i>is</i> an adventure! Tell it me quick! My dear, silence is -very stately and very becoming to you; but sometimes—excuse me—you do -push it to annoying extremes.'</p> - -<p>'I was afraid of agitation for you,' said the Countess Wanda; and then -she told the Princess what had occurred that night.</p> - -<p>'And I never knew that a poor soul was in peril!' cried the Princess, -conscious-stricken. 'And is that the last you have seen of him? Have -you never asked——?'</p> - -<p>'Hubert says he is only bruised; they have taken him to the Strangers' -Gallery. Here is Herr Greswold—he will tell us more.'</p> - -<p>The person who entered was the physician of Hohenszalras. He was -a little old man of great talent, with a clever, humorous, mild -countenance; he had, coupled with a love for rural life, a passion -for botany and natural history, which made his immurement in the -Iselthal welcome to him, and the many fancied ailments of the Princess -endurable. He bowed very low alternately to both ladies, and refused -with a protest the chair to which the Countess Wanda motioned him. He -said that the stranger was not in the least seriously injured; he had -been seized with cramp and chills, but he had administered a cordial, -and these were passing. The gentleman seemed indisposed to speak, -shivered a good deal, and was inclined to sleep.</p> - -<p>'He is a gentleman, think you? asked the Princess.</p> - -<p>The Herr Professor said that to him it appeared so.</p> - -<p>'And of what rank?'</p> - -<p>The physician thought it was impossible to say.</p> - -<p>'It is always possible,' said the Princess, a little impatiently. 'Is -his linen fine? Is his skin smooth? Are his hands white and slender? -Are his wrists and ankles small?'</p> - -<p>Herr Greswold said that he was sorely grieved, but he had not taken -any notice as to any of these things; he had been occupied with his -diagnosis of the patient's state; for, he added, he thought the swimmer -had been long in the water, and the Szalrassee was of very dangerously -low temperature at night, being fed as it Was from the glaciers and -snows of the mountains.</p> - -<p>'It is very interesting,' said the Princess; 'but pray observe what I -have named, now that you return to his chamber.'</p> - -<p>Greswold took the hint, and bowed himself out of the drawing-room. Frau -Ottilie returned to her nougats.</p> - -<p>'I wish that one could know who he was,' she said regretfully. To -harbour an unknown person was not agreeable to her in these days of -democracies and dynamite.</p> - -<p>'What does it matter?' said her niece. 'Though he were a Nihilist or a -convict from the mines, he would have to be sheltered to-night.'</p> - -<p>'The Herr Professor is very inattentive,' said the Princess, with an -accent that from one of her sweetness was almost severe.</p> - -<p>'The Herr Professor is compiling the Flora of the Hohe Tauern,' said -her niece, 'and he will publish it in Leipzig some time in the next -twenty years. How can a botanist care for so unlovely a creature as a -man? If it were a flower indeed!'</p> - -<p>'I never approved of that herbarium,' said the Princess, still -severely. 'It is too insignificant an occupation beside those great -questions of human ills which his services are retained to study. -He is inattentive, and he grows even impertinent: he almost told me -yesterday that my neuralgia was all imagination!'</p> - -<p>'He took you for a flower, mother mine, because you are so lovely; and -so he thought you could have no mortal pain!' said Wanda, tenderly.</p> - -<p>Then after a pause she added:</p> - -<p>'Dear aunt, come with me. I have asked Father Ferdinand to have a mass -to-night for Bela. I fancy Bela is glad that no other life has been -taken by the lake.'</p> - -<p>The Princess rose quickly and kissed her.</p> - -<p>In the Strangers' Gallery, in a great chamber of panelled oak and -Flemish tapestries, the poacher, as he lay almost asleep on a grand old -bed, with yellow taffeta hangings, and the crown of the Szalras Counts -in gilded bronze above its head, he heard as if in his dream the sound -of chanting voices and the deep slow melodies of an organ.</p> - -<p>He stirred and opened his drowsy eyes.</p> - -<p>'Am I in heaven?' he asked feebly. Yet he was a man who, when he was -awake and well, believed not in heaven.</p> - -<p>The physician, sitting by his bedside, laid his hand upon his wrist. -The pulse was beating strongly but quickly.</p> - -<p>'You are in the Burg of Hohenszalras,' he answered him. 'The music -you hear comes from the chapel; there is a midnight mass. A mass of -thanksgiving for you.'</p> - -<p>The heavy lids fell over the eyes of the weary man, and the dreamy -sense of warmth and peace that was upon him lulled him into the -indifference of slumber.</p> - - - -<hr class="chap" /> -<h4><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III</a></h4> - - -<p>With the morning, though the storm had ceased and passed away, the -clouds were dark, the mountains were obscured, and the rain was pouring -down upon lake and land.</p> - -<p>It was still early in the day when the stranger was aroused to the full -sense of awaking in a room unknown to him; he had slept all through the -night; he was refreshed and without fever. His left arm was strained, -and he had many bruises; otherwise he was conscious of no hurt.</p> - -<p>'Twice in that woman's power,' he thought, with anger, as he looked -round the great tapestried chamber that sheltered him, and tried to -disentangle his actual memories of the past night from the dreams that -had haunted him of the Nibelungen Queen, who all night long he had -seen in her golden armour, with her eyes which, like those of the Greek -nymph, dazzled those on whom they gazed to madness. Dream and fact had -so interwoven themselves that it was with an effort he could sever the -two, awaking as he did now in an unfamiliar chamber, and surrounded -with those tapestries whose colossal figures seemed the phantoms of a -spirit world.</p> - -<p>He was a man in whom some vein of superstition had outlived the -cold reason and the cynical mockeries of the worldly experiences -and opinions in which he was steeped. A shudder of cold ran through -his blood as he opened his eyes upon that dim, tranquil, and vast -apartment, with the stories of the Tannhäuser legend embroidered on the -walls.</p> - -<p>'I am he! I am he!' he thought incoherently, watching the form of the -doomed knight speeding through the gloom and snow.</p> - -<p>'How does the most high and honourable gentleman feel himself this -morning?' asked of him, in German, a tall white-haired woman, who might -have stepped down from an old panel of Metzu.</p> - -<p>The simple commonplace question roused him from the mists of his -fancies and fears, and realised to him the bare fact that he was a -guest, unbidden, in the walls of Szaravola.</p> - -<p>The physician also drew near his bed to question him; and a boy brought -on a tray Rhine wine and Tokayer Ausbruck, coffee and chocolate, bread -and eggs.</p> - -<p>He broke his fast with a will, for he had eaten nothing since the day -before at noon; and the Professor Greswold congratulated him on his -good night's rest, and on his happy escape from the Szalrassee.</p> - -<p>Then he himself said, with a little confusion:</p> - -<p>'I saw a lady last night?'</p> - -<p>'Certainly, you saw our lady,' said Greswold, with a smile.</p> - -<p>'What do you call her?' he asked, eagerly.</p> - -<p>The physician answered:</p> - -<p>'She is the Countess Wanda von Szalras. She is sole mistress here. -But for her, my dear sir, I fear me you would be now lying in those -unfathomed depths that the bravest of us fear.'</p> - -<p>The stranger shuddered a little.</p> - -<p>'I was a madman to try the lake with such an overcast sky; but I had -missed my road, and I was told that it lay on the other side of the -water. Some peasants tried to dissuade me from crossing, but I am a -good rower and swimmer too; so I set forth to pull myself over your -lake.'</p> - -<p>'With a sky black as ink! I suppose you are used to more serene -summers. Midsummer is not so different to midwinter here that you can -trust to its tender mercies.'</p> - -<p>The stranger was silent.</p> - -<p>'She took my gun from me in the morning,' he said abruptly. The memory -of the indignity rankled in him, and made bitter the bread and wine.</p> - -<p>The physician laughed.</p> - -<p>'Were you poaching? Oh, that is almost a hanging matter in the -Hohenszalras woods. Had you met Otto without our lady he would most -likely have shot you without warning.'</p> - -<p>'Are you savages in the Tauern?'</p> - -<p>'Oh no; but we are very feudal still, and our forest laws have escaped -alteration in this especial part of the province.'</p> - -<p>'She has been very hospitable to me, since my crime was so great.'</p> - -<p>'She is the soul of hospitality, and the Schloss is a hospice,' said -the physician. 'When there is no town nearer than ten Austrian miles, -and the nearest posting-house is at Windisch-Matrey, it is very -necessary to exercise the primitive virtues; it is our compensation -for our feudalism. But take some tokayer, my dear sir; you are weaker -than you know. You have had a bath of ice; you had best lie still, and -I will send you some journals and books.'</p> - -<p>'I would rather get up and go away,' said the stranger. 'These bruises -are nothing. I will thank your lady, as you call her, and then go on my -way as quickly as I may.'</p> - -<p>'I see you do not understand feudal ways, though you have suffered from -them,' said the doctor. 'You shall get up if you wish; but I am certain -my lady will not let you leave here to-day. The rains are falling -in torrents; the roads are dangerous; a bridge has broken down over -the Bürgenbach, which you must cross to get away. In a word, if you -insist on departure, they will harness their best horses for you, for -all the antique virtues have refuge here, and amongst them is a grand -hospitality; but you will possibly kill the horses, and perhaps the -postillions, and you will not even then get very far upon your way. Be -persuaded by me. Wait at least until the morning dawns.'</p> - -<p>'I had better burden your lady with an unbidden guest than kill her -horses, certainly,' said the stranger. 'How is she sole mistress here? -Is there a Count von Szalras? Is she a widow?'</p> - -<p>'She has never married,' answered Greswold; and gave his patient a -brief sketch of the tragic fates of the lords of Hohenszalras, amongst -whom death had been so busy.'</p> - -<p>'A very happy woman to be so rich, and so free!' said the traveller, -with a little impatient envy; and he added, 'She is very handsome also; -indeed, beautiful. I now remember to have heard of her in Paris. Her -hand has been esteemed one of the great prizes of Europe.'</p> - -<p>'I think she will never marry,' said the old man.</p> - -<p>'Oh, my dear doctor, who can make such at least she looks young. What -age may she be?'</p> - -<p>'She was twenty-four years of age on Easter Day. As for happiness, -when you know the Countess Wanda, you will know that she would go out -as poor as S. Elizabeth, and self-dethroned like her, most willingly, -could she by such a sacrifice see her brothers living around her.'</p> - -<p>The stranger gave a little cynical laugh of utter incredulity, which -dismayed and annoyed the old professor.</p> - -<p>'You do not know her,' he said angrily.</p> - -<p>'I know humanity,' said the other. 'Will you kindly take all my -apologies and regrets to the Countess, and give her my name; the -Marquis de Sabran. She can satisfy herself as to my identity at any -embassy she may care to consult.'</p> - -<p>When he said his name, the professor gave a great cry and started from -his seat.</p> - -<p>'Sabran!' he echoed. 'You edited the "Mexico"!' he exclaimed, and gazed -over his spectacles in awe and sympathy commingled at the stranger, who -smiled and answered——</p> - -<p>'Long ago, yes. Have you heard of it?'</p> - -<p>'Heard of it!' echoed Greswold. 'Do you take us for barbarians, sir?' -It is here, both in my small library, which is the collection of a -specialist, and in the great library of the castle, which contains a -million of volumes.'</p> - -<p>'I am twice honoured,' said the stranger, with a smile of some irony. -The good professor was a little disconcerted, and his enthusiasm was -damped and cooled. He felt as much embarrassment as though he had been -the owner of a discredited work.</p> - -<p>'May I not be permitted to congratulate you, sir?' he said timidly. 'To -have produced that great work is to possess a title to the gratitude -and esteem of all educated men.'</p> - -<p>'You are very good,' said Sabran, somewhat indifferently; 'but all -that is great in that book is the Marquis Xavier's. I am but the mere -compiler.'</p> - -<p>'The compilation, the editing of it, required no less learning than the -original writer displayed, and that was immense,' said the physician, -and with all the enthusiasm of a specialist he plunged into discussion -of the many notable points of a mighty intellectual labour, which had -received the praise of all the cultured world.</p> - -<p>Sabran listened courteously, but with visible weariness. 'You are very -good,' he said at last. 'But you will forgive me if I say that I have -heard so much of the "Mexico" that I am tempted to wish I had never -produced it. I did so as a duty; it was all I could do in honour of one -to whom I owed far more than mere life itself.'</p> - -<p>Greswold bowed and said no more.</p> - -<p>'Give me my belt,' said the stranger to the man who waited on him; -it was a leathern belt, which had been about his loins; it was made -to hold gold and notes, a small six-chambered revolver, and a watch; -these were all in it, and with his money was the imperial permission to -shoot, which had been given, him by Franz Josef the previous autumn on -the Thorstein.</p> - -<p>'Your Countess' will doubtless recognise her Emperor's signature,' he -said, as he gave the paper to the physician. 'It will serve at least as -a passport, if not as a letter of presentation.'</p> - -<p>Réné, Marquis de Sabran-Romaris, was one of those persons who -illustrate the old fairy tale, of all the good gifts at birth being -marred by the malison of one godmother. He had great physical beauty, -personal charm, and facile talent; but his very facility was his bane. -He did all things so easily and well, that he had never acquired the -sterner quality of application. He was a brilliant and even profound -scholar, an accomplished musician, a consummate critic of art; and -was endowed, moreover, with great natural tact, taste, and correct -intuition.</p> - -<p>Being, as he was, a poor man, these gifts should have made him an -eminent one or a wealthy one, but the perverse fairy who had cursed -when the other had blessed him, had contrived to make all these graces -and talents barren. Whether it be true or not that the world knows -nothing of its greatest men, it is quite true that its cleverest men -very often do nothing of importance all their lives long. He did -nothing except acquire a distinct repute as a <i>dilettante</i> in Paris, -and a renown in the clubs of being always serene and fortunate at play.</p> - -<p>He had sworn to himself when he had been a youth to make his career -worthy of his name; but the years had slipped away, and he had done -nothing. He was a very clever man, and he had once set a high if a cold -and selfish aim before him as his goal. But he had done worse even than -fail; he had never even tried to reach it.</p> - -<p>He was only a <i>boulevardier</i>; popular and admired amongst men for his -ready wit and his cool courage, and by women often adored and often -hated, and sometimes, by himself, thoroughly despised: never so much -despised as when by simple luck at play or on the Bourse he made the -money which slid through his fingers with rapidity.</p> - -<p>All he had in the world were the wind-torn oaks and the sea-washed -rocks of a bleak and lonely Breton village, and a few hundred thousand -francs' worth of pictures, porcelains, arms, and <i>bibelots</i>, which -had accumulated in his rooms on the Boulevard Haussmann, bought at -the Drouot in the forenoons after successful play at night. Only two -things in him were unlike the men whose associate he was: he was as -temperate as an Arab, seldom even touching wine; and he was a keen -mountaineer and athlete, once off the asphalte of the Boulevards. For -the rest, popular though he was in the society he frequented, no -living man could boast of any real intimacy with him. He had a thousand -acquaintances, but he accepted no friend. Under the grace and suavity -of a very courtly manner he wore the armour of a great reserve.</p> - -<p>'At heart you have the taciturnity and the <i>sauvagerie</i> of the -Armorican beneath all your polished suavity,' said a woman of his world -to him once; and he did not contradict her.</p> - -<p>Men did not quarrel with him for it: he was a fine swordsman and a dead -shot: and women were allured all the more surely to him because they -felt that they never really entered his life or took any strong hold on -it.</p> - -<p>Such as he was he lay now half-awake on the great bed under its amber -canopy, and gazed dreamily at the colossal figures of the storied -tapestry, where the Tuscan idlers of the Decamerone wore the sombre -hues and the stiff and stately garb of Flemish fashion of the sixteenth -century.</p> - -<p>'I wonder why I tried so hard to live last night! I am not in love -with life,' he thought to himself, as he slowly remembered all that -had happened, and recalled the face of the lady who had leaned down -to him from over the stone parapet in the play of the torchlight and -lightnings. And yet life seemed good and worth having as he recalled -that boiling dusky swirl of water which had so nearly swallowed him up -in its anger.</p> - -<p>He was young enough to enjoy; he was blessed with a fine constitution -and admirable health, which even his own excesses had not impaired; he -had no close ties to the world, but he had a frequent enjoyment of it, -which made it welcome to him. The recovery of existence always enhances -its savour; and as he lay dreamily recalling the sharp peril he had -run, he was simply and honestly glad to be amongst living men.</p> - -<p>He remained still when the physician had left and looked around him; -in the wide hearth a fire of oak logs was burning; rain was beating -against the painted panes of the oriel casements; there was old -oak, old silver, old ivory in the furniture of the chamber, and the -tapestries were sombre and gorgeous. It was a room of the sixteenth -century; but the wine was in jugs of Bacarat glass, and a box of -Turkish cigarettes stood beside them, with the Paris and Vienna -newspapers. Everything had been thought of that could contribute to -his comfort: he wondered if the doctor had thought of all this, or -if it was due to the lady. 'It is a magnificent hospice,' he said to -himself with a smile, and then he angrily remembered his rifle, his -good English rifle, that was now sunk for ever with his little boat in -the waters of the Szalrassee. 'Why did she offer me that outrage?' he -said to himself: it went hard with him to lie under her roof, to touch -her wine and bread. Yet he was aching in every limb, the bed was easy -and spacious, the warmth and the silence and the aromatic scent of the -burning pine-cones were alluring him to rest; he dropped off to sleep -again, the same calm sleep of fatigue that had changed into repose, and -nothing woke him till the forenoon was passed.</p> - -<p>'Good heavens! how I am trespassing on this woman's hospitality!' he -thought as he did awake, angry with himself for having been lulled into -this oblivion; and he began to rise at once, though he felt his limbs -stiff and his head for the moment light.</p> - -<p>'Cannot I get a carriage for S. Johann? My servant is waiting for me -there,' he said to the youth attending on him, when his bath was over.</p> - -<p>The lad smiled with amusement.</p> - -<p>'There are no carriages here but our lady's, and she will not let you -stir this afternoon, my lord,' he answered in German, as he aided the -stranger to put on his own linen and shooting breeches, now dry and -smoothed out by careful hands.</p> - -<p>'But I have no coat! said the traveller in discomfiture, remembering -that his coat was gone with his rifle and his powder-flask.</p> - -<p>'The Herr Professor thought you could perhaps manage with one of these. -They were all of Count Gela's, who was a tall man and about your make,' -said an older man-servant who had entered, and now showed him several -unworn or scarcely worn suits.</p> - -<p>'If you could wear one of these, my lord, for this evening, we will -send as soon as it is possible for your servant and your clothes to S. -Johann; but it is impossible to-day, because a bridge is down over the -Bürgenbach.'</p> - -<p>'You are all of you too good,' said Sabran, as he essayed a coat of -black velvet.</p> - -<p>Pull of his new acquaintance and all his talents, the good man Greswold -had hurried away to obey the summons of his ladies, who had desired -to see him. He found them in the white room, a grand salon hung with -white satin silver-fringed, and stately with white marble friezes -and columns, whence it took its name. It was a favourite room with -the mistress of the Schloss; at either end of it immense windows, -emblazoned and deeply embayed, looked out over the sublime landscape -without, of which at this moment every outline was shrouded in the grey -veil of an incessantly falling rain.</p> - -<p>With humble obeisances Greswold presented the message and the -credentials of her guest to Wanda von Szalras; it was the first -occasion that he had had of doing so. She read the document signed by -the Kaiser with a smile.</p> - -<p>'This is the paper which this unhappy gentleman spoke of when I -arrested him as a poacher,' she said to her aunt. 'The Marquis de -Sabran. The name is familiar to me: I have heard it before.'</p> - -<p>'Surely you do not forget the Pontêves-Bargême, the Ducs de Sabran?' -said the Princess, with some severity. S. Eleazar was a Comte de -Sabran!'</p> - -<p>'I know! But it is of something nearer to us than S. Eleazar that I am -thinking; there was surely some work or another which bore that name, -and was much read and quoted.'</p> - -<p>'He edited and annotated the great "Mexico",' said Herr Greswold, as -though all were told in that.</p> - -<p>'A <i>savant?</i>' murmured the Princess, in some contemptuous chagrin. -'Pray what is the "Mexico"?'</p> - -<p>'The grandest archæological and botanical work, the work of the finest -research and most varied learning that has been produced out of -Germany,' commenced the Professor, with eagerness, but the Princess -arrested him midway in his eloquence.</p> - -<p>'The French are all infidels, we know that; but one might have hoped -that in one of the old nobility, as his name would imply, some -lingering reverence for tradition remained.'</p> - -<p>'It is not a subversive, not a philosophic work,' said the Professor, -eagerly; but she silenced him.</p> - -<p>'It is a book! Why should a Marquis de Sabran write a book?' said the -Princess, with ineffable disdain.</p> - -<p>There were all the Fathers for anyone who wanted to read: what need for -any other use of printer's type? So she was accustomed to think and to -say when, scandalised, she saw the German, French, and English volumes, -of which whole cases were wont to arrive at Hohenszalras for the use -of Wanda von Szalras alone: works of philosophy and of science amongst -them which had been denounced in the 'Index.'</p> - -<p>'Dear mother,' said the Countess Wanda, 'I have read the "Mexico": -it is a grand monument raised to a dead man's memory out of his own -labours by one of his own descendants—his only descendant, if I -remember aright.'</p> - -<p>'Indeed,' said the Princess, unconvinced. 'I know those scientific -works by repute; they always consider the voyage of a germ of moss, -carried on an aerolite through an indefinite space for a billion of -ages, a matter much easier of credence than the "Life of St. Jerome." -I believe they call it sporadic transmission; they call typhus fever -the same.'</p> - -<p>'There is nothing of that in the "Mexico": it is a very fine work on -the archæology and history of the country, and on its flora.'</p> - -<p>'I should have supposed a Marquis de Sabran a gentleman,' said the -Princess, whom no precedent from the many monarchs who have been -guilty of inferior literature could convince that literature was other -than a trade much like shoemaking: at its best a sort of clerk's -quill-driving, to be equally pitied and censured.</p> - -<p>Here Greswold, who valued his post and knew his place too well to -defend either literature or sporadic germs, timidly ventured to suggest -that the Marquis might be well known amongst the nobility of western -France, although not of that immense distinction which finds its -chronicle in the Hof-Kalender. The Princess smiled.</p> - -<p>'<i>Petite noblesse.</i> You mean petite noblesse, my good Greswold? But -even the petite noblesse need not write books?'</p> - -<p>When, however, the further question arose of inviting the stranger to -come to their dinner-table, it was the haughtier Princess who advocated -the invitation; the mistress of the house demurred. She thought that -all requirements of courtesy and hospitality would be fulfilled by -allowing him to dine in his own apartments.</p> - -<p>'We do not know him,' she urged. 'No doubt he may very well be what he -says, but it is not easy to refer to an embassy while the rains are -making an island of the Tauern! Nay, dear mother, I am not suspicious; -but I think, as we are two women alone, we can fulfil all obligations -of hospitality towards this gentleman without making him personally -acquainted with ourselves.'</p> - -<p>'That is really very absurd. It is acting as if Hohenszalras were a -<i>gasthof</i>,' said the Princess, with petulance. 'It is not so often that -we have any relief to the tedium with which you are pleased to surround -yourself that we should be required to shut ourselves from any chance -break in it. Of course, if you send this person his dinner to his own -rooms, he will feel hurt, mortified; he will go away, probably on foot, -rather than remain where he is insulted. Breton nobility is not very -eminent, but it is very proud; it is provincial, territorial; but every -one knows it is ancient, and usually of the most loyal traditions alike -to Church and State. I should be the last person to advocate making a -friendship, or even an acquaintance, without the fullest inquiry; but -when it is a mere question of a politeness for twenty-four hours, -which can entail no consequences, then I must confess that I think -prejudices should yield before the obligations of courtesy. But of -course, my love, decide as you will: you are mistress.'</p> - -<p>The Countess Wanda smiled, and did not press her own opposition. She -perceived that the mind of her aunt was full of vivid and harmless -curiosity.</p> - -<p>In the end she suggested that the Princess should represent her, and -receive the foreign visitor with all due form and ceremony; but she -herself was still indisposed to admit a person of whose antecedents she -had no positive guarantee so suddenly and entirely into her intimacy.</p> - -<p>'You are extraordinarily suspicious,' said the elder lady, pettishly. -'If he were a pedlar or a colporteur, you would be willing to talk with -him.'</p> - -<p>'Pedlars and colporteurs cannot take any social advantage of one's -conversation afterwards,' replied her niece. 'We are not usually -invaded by men of rank here; so the precedent may not be perilous. Have -your own way, mother mine.'</p> - -<p>The Princess demurred, but finally accepted the compromise; reflecting -that if this stranger were to dine alone with her, she would be able to -ascertain much more about him than if Wanda, who had been created void -of all natural curiosity, and who would have been capable of living -with people twelve months without asking them a single question, would -render it possible to do were she present.</p> - -<p>Meanwhile, the physician hurried back to his new friend, who had a -great and peculiar interest for him as the editor of the "Mexico", and -offered him, with the permission of the Countess von Szalras, to wile -away the chill and gloomy day by an inspection of the Schloss.</p> - -<p>Joachim Greswold was a very learned and shrewd man, whom poverty and -love of tranquil opportunities of study had induced to bury himself -in the heart of the Glöckner mountains. He had already led a long, -severe, and blameless life of deep devotion and hard privation, -when the post of private physician at Hohenszalras in general, and -to the Princess Ottilie in especial, had been procured for him by -the interest of Prince Lilienhöhe. He had had many sorrows, trials, -and disappointments, which made the simple routine and the entire -solitude of his existence here welcome to him. But he was none the less -delighted to meet any companion of culture and intelligence to converse -with, and in his monotonous and lonely life it was a rare treat to be -able to exchange ideas with one fresh from the intellectual movements -of the outer world.</p> - -<p>The Professor found, not to his surprise since he had read the -"Mexico", that his elegant <i>grand seigneur</i> knew very nearly as much -as he did of botany and of comparative anatomy; that he had travelled -nearly all over the world, and travelled to much purpose, and knew many -curious things of the flora of the Rio Grande, whilst it appeared that -he possessed in his cabinets in Paris a certain variety of orchid that -the doctor had always longed to obtain. He was entirely won over when -Sabran, to whom the dried flower was very indifferent, promised to -send it to him. The French Marquis had not Greswold's absolute love of -science; he had studied every thing that had come to his hand, because -he had a high intelligence, and an insatiable appetite for knowledge; -and he had no other kind of devotion to it; when he had penetrated its -mysteries, it lost all interest for him.</p> - -<p>At any rate he knew enough to make him an enchanting companion to a -learned man who was all alone in his learning, and received little -sympathy in it from anyone near him.</p> - -<p>'What a grand house to be shut up in the heart of the mountains!' said -Sabran, with a sigh. 'I do believe what romance there still is in the -world does lie in these forests of Austria, which have all the twilight -and the solitude that would suit Merlin or the Sleeping Beauty better -than anything we have in France, except, indeed, here and there an old -château like Chenonceaux, or Maintenon.'</p> - -<p>'The world has not spoilt us as yet,' said the doctor. 'We see few -strangers. Our people are full of old faiths, old loyalties, old -traditions. They are a sturdy and yet tender people. They are as -fearless as their own steinbock, and they are as reverent as saints -were in monastic days. Our mountains are as grand as the Swiss ones, -but, thank Heaven, they are unspoilt and little known. I tremble when -I think they have begun to climb the Gross Glöckner; all the mystery -and glory of our glaciers will vanish when they become mere points of -ascension. The alpenstock of the tourist is to the everlasting hills -what railway metals are to the plains. Thank God! the few railroads we -have are hundreds of miles asunder.'</p> - -<p>'You are a reactionist, Doctor?'</p> - -<p>'I am an old man, and I have learned the value of repose,' said -Greswold. 'You know we are called a slow race. It is only the unwise -amongst us who have quicksilver in their brains and toes.'</p> - -<p>'You have gold in the former, at least,' said Sabran, kindly, 'and I -dare say quicksilver is in your feet, too, when there is a charity to -be done?'</p> - -<p>Herr Joachim, who was simple in the knowledge of mankind, though shrewd -in mother-wit, coloured a little with pleasure. How well this stranger -understood him!</p> - -<p>The day went away imperceptibly and agreeably to the physician and to -the stranger in this pleasant rambling talk; whilst the rain poured -down in fury on the stone terraces and green lawns without, and the -Szalrassee was hidden under a veil of fog.</p> - -<p>'Am I not to see her at all?' thought Sabran. He did not like to -express his disquietude on that subject to the physician, and he was -not sure himself whether he most desired to ride away without meeting -the serene eyes of his châtelaine, or to be face to face with her once -more.</p> - -<p>He stood long before her portrait, done by Carolus Duran; she wore -in it a close-fitting gown of white velvet, and held in her hand a -great Spanish hat with white plumes; the two hounds were beside her; -the attitude had a certain grandeur and gravity in it which were very -impressive.</p> - -<p>'This was painted last year,' said Greswold, 'at the Princess's -request. It is admirably like——'</p> - -<p>'It is a noble picture,' said Sabran. 'But what a very proud woman she -looks!'</p> - -<p>'Blood tells,' said Greswold, 'far more than most people know or admit. -It is natural that my Lady, with the blood in her of so many mighty -nobles, who had the power of judgment and chastisement over whole -provinces, should be sometimes disposed to exercise too despotic a -will, to be sometimes contemptuous of the dictates of modern society, -which sends the princess and the peasant alike to a law court for sole -redress of their wrongs. She is at times irreconcilable with the world -as it stands; she is the representative and descendant in a direct -line of arrogant and omnipotent princes. That she combines with that -natural arrogance and instinct of dominion a very beautiful pitifulness -and even humility is a proof of the chastening influence of religious -faith on the nature of women; we are too apt to forget that, in our -haste to destroy the Church. Men might get on perhaps very well without -a religion of any kind; but I tremble to think what their mothers and -their mistresses would become.'</p> - -<p>They passed the morning in animated discussion, and as it drew to -a close, the good doctor did not perceive how adroitly his new -acquaintance drew out from him all details of the past and present of -Hohenszalras, and of the tastes and habits of its châtelaine, until he -knew all that there was to be known of that pure and austere life.</p> - -<p>'You may think her grief for her brother Bela's death—for all her -brothers' deaths—a morbid sentiment,' said the doctor as he spoke of -her. 'But it is not so—no. It is, perhaps, overwrought; but no life -can be morbid that is so active in duty, so untiring in charity, so -unsparing of itself. Her lands and riches, and all the people dependent -on her, are to the Countess Wanda only as so much trust, for which -hereafter she will be responsible to Bela and to God. You and I may -smile, you and I, who are philosophers, and have settled past dispute -that the human life has no more future than the snail-gnawed cabbage, -but yet—yet, my dear sir, one cannot deny that there is something -exalted in such a conception of duty; and—of this I am convinced—that -on the character of a woman it has a very ennobling influence.'</p> - -<p>'No doubt. But has she renounced all her youth? Does she mean never to -go into the world or to marry?'</p> - -<p>'I am quite sure she has made no resolve of the sort,' But I do not -think she will ever alter. She has refused many great alliances. -Her temperament is serene, almost cold; and her ideal it would be -difficult, I imagine, for any mortal man to realise.'</p> - -<p>'But when a woman loves——'</p> - -<p>'Oh, of course,' said Herr Joachim, rather drily. 'If the aloe -flower!—--Love does not I think possess any part of the Countess -Wanda's thoughts or desires. She fancies it a mere weakness.'</p> - -<p>'A woman can scarcely be amiable without that weakness.'</p> - -<p>'No. Perhaps she is not precisely what we term amiable. She is rather -too far also from human emotions and human needs. The women of the -house of Szalras have been mostly very proud, silent, brave, and -resolute; great ladies rather than lovable wives. Luitgarde von Szalras -held this place with only a few archers and spearmen against Heinrich -Jasomergott in the twelfth century, and he raised the siege after five -months. "She is not a woman, nor human, she is a <i>kuttengeier</i>," he -said, as he retreated into his Wiener Wald. All the great monk-vultures -and the gyps and the pygargues have been sacred all through the Hohe -Tauern since that year.'</p> - -<p>'And I was about to shoot a <i>kuttengeier</i>—now I see that my offence -was beyond poaching, it was high treason almost!'</p> - -<p>'I heard the story from Otto. He would have hanged you cheerfully. -But I hope,' said the doctor, with a pang of misgiving, 'that I have -not given you any false impression of my Lady, as cold and hard and -unwomanly. She is full of tenderness of a high order; she is the -noblest, most truthful, and most generous nature that I have ever known -clothed in human form, and if she be too proud—well, it is a stately -sin, pardonable in one who has behind her eleven hundred years of -fearless and unblemished honour.'</p> - -<p>'I am a socialist,' said Sabran, a little curtly; then added, with a -little laugh, 'Though I believe not in rank, I do believe in race.'</p> - -<p>'<i>Bon sang ne peut mentir</i>,' murmured the old physician; the fair face -of Sabran changed slightly.</p> - -<p>'Will you come and look over the house?' said the Professor, who -noticed nothing, and only thought of propitiating the owner of the -rare orchid. 'There is almost as much to see as in the Burg at Vienna. -Everything has accumulated here undisturbed for a thousand years. -Hohenszalras has been besieged, but never deserted or dismantled.</p> - -<p>'It is a grand place!' said Sabran, with a look of impatience. 'It -seems intolerable that a woman should possess it all, while I only own -a few wind-blown oaks in the wilds of Finisterre.'</p> - -<p>'Ah, ah, that is pure socialism!' said the doctor, with a little -chuckle. '<i>Ote-toi, que je m'y mette.</i> That is genuine Liberalism all -the world over.'</p> - -<p>'You are no communist yourself, doctor?'</p> - -<p>'No,' said Herr Joachim, simply. 'All my studies lead me to the -conviction that equality is impossible, and were it possible, it would -be hideous. Variety, infinite variety, is the beneficent law of the -world's life. Why, in that most perfect of all societies, the beehive, -flawless mathematics are found co-existent with impassable social -barriers and unalterable social grades.'</p> - -<p>Sabran laughed good-humouredly.</p> - -<p>'I thought at least the bees enjoyed an undeniable Republic.'</p> - -<p>'A Republic with helots, sir, like Sparta. A Republic will always have -its helots. But come and wander over the castle. Come first and see the -parchments.'</p> - -<p>'Where are the ladies?' asked Sabran, wistfully.</p> - -<p>'The Princess is at her devotions and taking tisane. I visited her this -morning; she thinks she has a sore throat. As for our Lady, no one -ever disturbs her or knows what she is doing. When she wants any of us -ordinary folks, we are summoned. Sometimes we tremble. You know this -alone is an immense estate, and then there is a palace at the capital, -and one at Salzburg, not to speak of the large estates in Hungary -and the mines in Galicia. All these our Lady sees after and manages -herself. You can imagine that her secretary has no easy task, and that -secretary is herself; for she does not believe in doing anything well -by others.'</p> - -<p>'A second Maria Theresa!' said Sabran.</p> - -<p>'Not dissimilar, perhaps,' said the doctor, nettled at the irony of the -tone. 'Only where our great Queen sent thousands out to their deaths -the Countess von Szalras saves many lives. There are no mines in the -world—I will make bold to say—where there is so much comfort and so -little peril as those mines of hers in Stanislaw. She visited them -three years hence. But I forget, you are a stranger, and as you do not -share our cultus for the Grafin, cannot care to hear its Canticles. -Come to the muniment-room; you shall see some strange parchments.'</p> - -<p>'Heavens, how it rains!' said Sabran, as they left his chambers. 'Is -that common here?'</p> - -<p>'Very common, indeed!' said the doctor, with a laugh. 'We pass -two-thirds of the year between snow and water. But then we have -compensation. Where will you see such grass, such forests, such -gardens, when the summer sun does shine?'</p> - -<p>The Marquis de Sabran charmed him, and as they wandered over the huge -castle the physician delightedly displayed his own erudition, and -recognised that of his companion. The Hohenszalrasburg was itself -like some black-letter record of old South-German history; it was a -chronicle written in stone and wood and iron. The brave old house, -like a noble person, contained in itself a liberal education, and the -stranger whom through an accident it sheltered was educated enough to -comprehend and estimate it at its due value. In his passage through -it he won the suffrages of the household by his varied knowledge -and correct appreciation. In the stables his praises of the various -breeds of horses there commended itself by its accuracy to Ulrich, the -<i>stallmeister</i>, not less than a few difficult shots in the shooting -gallery proved his skill to his enemy of the previous day, Otto, the -<i>jägermeister.</i> Not less did he please Hubert, who was learned in such -things, with his cultured admiration of the wonderful old gold and -silver plate, the Limoges dishes and bowls, the Vienna and Kronenthal -china; nor less the custodian of the pictures, a collection of Flemish -and German masters, with here and there a modern <i>capolavoro</i>, hung all -by themselves in a little vaulted gallery which led into a much larger -one consecrated to tapestries, Flemish, French, and Florentine.</p> - -<p>When twilight came, and the greyness of the rain-charged atmosphere -deepened into the dark of night, Sabran had made all living things at -the castle his firm friends, down to the dogs of the house, save and -except the ladies who dwelt in it. Of them he had had no glimpse. They -kept their own apartments. He began to feel some fresh embarrassment -at remaining another night beneath a roof the mistress of which did -not deign personally to recognise his presence. A salon hung with -tapestries opened out of the bedchamber allotted to him; he wondered if -he were to dine there like a prisoner of state.</p> - -<p>He felt an extreme reluctance united to a strong curiosity to meet -again the woman who had treated him with such cool authority and -indifference as a common poacher in her woods. His cheek tingled still, -whenever he thought of the manner in which, at her signal, his hands -had been tied, and his rifle taken from him. She was the representative -of all that feudal, aristocratic, despotic, dominant spirit of a dead -time which he, with his modern, cynical, reckless Parisian Liberalism, -most hated, or believed that he hated. She was Austria Felix -personified, and he was a man who had always persuaded himself and -others that he was a socialist, a Philippe Egalité. And this haughty -patrician had mortified him and then had benefited and sheltered him!</p> - -<p>He would willingly have gone from under her roof without seeing -her, and yet a warm and inquisitive desire impelled him to feel an -unreasonable annoyance that the day was going by without his receiving -any intimation that he would be allowed to enter her presence, or be -expected to make his obeisances to her. When, however, the servants -entered to light the many candles in his room, Hubert entered behind -them, and expressed the desire of his lady that the Marquis would -favour them with his presence: they were about to dine.</p> - -<p>Sabran, standing before the mirror, saw himself colour like a boy: he -knew not whether he were most annoyed or pleased. He would willingly -have ridden away leaving his napoleons for the household, and seeing -no more the woman who had made him ridiculous in his own eyes; yet -the remembrance of her haunted him as something strange, imperious, -magnetic, grave, serene, stately; vague memories of a thousand things -he had heard said of her in embassies and at courts came to his mind; -she had been a mere unknown name to him then; he had not listened, -he had not cared, but now he remembered all he had heard; curiosity -and an embarrassment wholly foreign to him struggled together in him. -What could he say to a woman who had first insulted and then protected -him? It would tax all the ingenuity and the tact for which he was -famed. However, he only said to the major-domo, 'I am much flattered. -Express my profound gratitude to your ladies for the honour they are so -good as to do me.' Then he made his attire look as well as it could, -and considering that punctuality is due from guests as well as from -monarchs, he said that he was ready to follow the servant waiting for -him, and did so through the many tapestried and panelled corridors by -which the enormous house was traversed.</p> - -<p>Though light was not spared at the burg it was only such light as oil -and wax could give the galleries and passages; dim mysterious figures -loomed from the rooms and shadows seemed to stretch away on every side -to vast unknown chambers that might hold the secrets of a thousand -centuries. When he was ushered into the radiance of the great white -room he felt dazzled and blinded.</p> - -<p>He felt his bruise still, and he walked with a slight lameness from a -strain of his left foot, but this did not detract from the grace and -distinction of his bearing, and the pallor of his handsome features -became them; and when he advanced through the opened doors and bent -before the chair and kissed the hands of the Princess Ottilie she -thought to herself, 'What a perfectly beautiful person. Even Wanda -will have to admit that!' Whilst Hubert, going backward, said to his -regiment of under-servants: 'Look you! since Count Gela rode out to his -death at the head of the White Hussars, so grand a man as this stranger -has not set foot in this house.'</p> - -<p>He expected to see the Countess Wanda von Szalras. Instead, he saw -the loveliest little old lady he had ever seen in his life, clad in a -semi-conventual costume, leaning on a gold-headed cane, with clouds -of fragrant old lace about her, and a cross of emeralds hung at her -girdle of onyx beads, who saluted him with the ceremonious grace of -that etiquette which is still the common rule of life amongst the great -nobilities of the north. He hastened to respond in the same spirit with -an exquisite deference of manner.</p> - -<p>She greeted him with affable and smiling words, and he devoted himself -to her with deference and gallantry, expressing all his sense of -gratitude for the succour and shelter he received, with a few eloquent -and elegant phrases which said enough and not too much, with a grace -that it is difficult to lend to gratitude which is generally somewhat -halting and uncouth.</p> - -<p>'His name must be in the Hof-Kalendar!' she thought, as she replied to -his protestations with her prettiest smile which, despite her sacred -calling and her seventy years, was the smile of a coquette.</p> - -<p>'M. le Marquis,' she said, in her tender and flute-like voice, 'I -deserve none of your eloquent thanks. Age is sadly selfish. I did -nothing to rescue you, unless, indeed, Heaven heard my unworthy -prayer!—and this house is not mine, nor anything in it; the owner of -it, and, therefore, your châtelaine of the moment, is my grand-niece, -the Countess Wanda von Szalras.'</p> - -<p>'That I had your intercession with Heaven, however indirectly, was far -more than I deserved,' said Sabran, still standing before her. 'For the -Countess Wanda, I have been twice in her power, and she has been very -generous.'</p> - -<p>'She has done her duty, nothing more,' said the Princess a little -primly and petulantly, if princesses and petulance can mingle. 'We -should have scarce been Christians if we had not striven for your -life. As to leaving us this day it was out of the question. The storm -continues, the passes are torrents; I fear much that it will even be -impossible for your servant to come from S. Johann; we could not send -to Matrey even this morning for the post-bag, and they tell me the -bridge is down over the Bürgenbach.'</p> - -<p>'I have wanted for nothing, and my Parisian rogue is quite as well -yawning and smoking his days away at S. Johann,' said Sabran. 'Oh, -Madame! how can I ever express to you all my sense of the profound -obligations you have laid me under, stranger that I am!'</p> - -<p>'At least we were bound to atone for the incivility of the Szalrassee,' -said the Princess, with her pretty smile. 'It is a very horrible -country to live in. My niece, indeed, thinks it Arcadia, but an Arcadia -subject to the most violent floods, and imprisoned in snow and frost -for so many months, does not commend itself to me; no doubt it is very -grand and romantic.'</p> - -<p>The ideal of the Princess was neither grand nor romantic: it was life -in the little prim, yet gay north German town in the palace of which -she and all her people had been born; a little town, with red roofs, -green alleys, straight toylike streets, clipped trees, stiff soldiers, -set in the midst of a verdant plain; flat and green, and smooth as a -card table.</p> - -<p>The new comer interested her; she was quickly won by personal beauty, -and he possessed this in a great degree. It was a face unlike any she -had ever seen; it seemed to her to bear mystery with it and melancholy, -and she loved both those things; perhaps because she had never met with -either out of the pages of German poets and novelists of France. Those -who are united to them in real life find them uneasy bedfellows.</p> - -<p>'Perhaps he is some Kronprinz in disguise,' she thought with pleasure; -but then she sadly recollected that she knew every crown prince that -there was in Europe. She would have liked to have asked him many -questions, but her high-breeding was still stronger than her curiosity; -and a guest could never be interrogated.</p> - -<p>Dinner was announced as served.</p> - -<p>'My niece, the Countess Wanda,' said the Princess, with a little -reluctance visible in her hesitation, 'will dine in her own rooms. She -begs you to excuse her; she is tired from the storm last night.'</p> - -<p>'She will not dine with me,' thought Sabran, with the quick intuition -natural to him.</p> - -<p>'You leave me nothing to regret, Princess,' he said readily, with a -sweet smile, as he offered his arm to this lovely little lady, wrapped -in laces fine as cobweb, with her great cross of emeralds pendent from -her rosary.</p> - -<p>A woman is never too old to be averse to the thought that she can -charm; very innocent charming was that of the Princess Ottilie, and she -thought with a sigh if she had married—if she had had such a son; yet -she was not insensible to the delicate compliment which he paid her -in appearing indifferent to the absence of his châtelaine and quite -content with her own presence.</p> - -<p>Throughout dinner in that great hall, he, sitting on her right hand, -amused her, flattered her with that subtlest of all flattery, interest -and attention; diverted her with gay stories of worlds unknown to her, -and charmed her with his willingness to listen to her lament over the -degeneracy of mankind and of manners. After a few words of courtesy as -to his hostess's absence he seemed not even to remember that Wanda von -Salzras was absent from the head of her table.</p> - -<p>'And I have said that she was tired! She who is never more tired -than the eagles are! May heaven forgive me the untruth!' thought -the Princess more than once during the meal, which was long and -magnificent, and at which her guest ate sparingly and drank but little.</p> - -<p>'You have no appetite?' she said regretfully.</p> - -<p>'Pardon me, I have a good one,' he answered her; 'but I have always -been content to eat little and drink less. It is the secret of health; -and my health is all my riches.'</p> - -<p>She looked at him with interest.</p> - -<p>'I should think your riches in that respect are inexhaustible?'</p> - -<p>He smiled.</p> - -<p>'Oh yes! I have never had a day's illness, except once, long ago in the -Mexican swamps, a marsh fever and a snake-bite.'</p> - -<p>'You have travelled much?'</p> - -<p>'I have seen most of the known world, and a little of the unknown,' -he answered. 'I am like Ulysses; only there will be not even a dog to -welcome me when my wanderings are done.'</p> - -<p>'Have you no relatives?'</p> - -<p>'None!' he added, with an effort. Everyone is dead; dead long ago. I -have been long alone, and I am very well used to it.'</p> - -<p>'But you must have troops of friends?'</p> - -<p>'Oh!—friends who will win my last napoleon at play, or remember me as -long as they meet me every day on the boulevards? Yes, I have many of -that sort, but they are not worth Ulysses' dog.'</p> - -<p>He spoke carelessly, without any regard to the truth as far as it went, -but no study would have made him more apt to coin words to attract the -sympathy of his listeners.</p> - -<p>'He is unfortunate,' she thought. 'How often beauty brings misfortune. -My niece must certainly see him. I wish he belonged to the -Pontêves-Bargêmes!'</p> - -<p>Not to have a name that she knew, one of those names that fill all -Europe as with the trump of an archangel, was to be as one maimed or -deformed in the eyes of the Princess, an object for charity, not for -intercourse.</p> - -<p>'Your title is of Brittany, I think?' she said a little wistfully, -and as he answered something abruptly in the affirmative, she solaced -herself once more with the remembrance that there was a good deal of -<i>petite noblesse</i>, honourable enough, though not in the 'Almanac de -Gotha,' which was a great concession from her prejudices, invented on -the spur of the interest that he excited in her imagination.</p> - -<p>'I never saw any person so handsome,' she thought, as she glanced -at his face; while he in return thought that this silver-haired, -soft-cheeked, lace-enwrapped Holy Mother was <i>jolie à croquer</i> in -the language of those boulevards, which had been his nursery and his -palestrum. She was so kind to him, she was so gracious and graceful, -she chatted with him so frankly and pleasantly, and she took so active -an interest in his welfare that he was touched and grateful. He had -known many women, many young ones and gay ones; he had never known what -the charm of a kindly and serene old age can be like in a woman who has -lived with pure thoughts, and will die in hope and in faith; and this -lovely old abbess, with her pretty touch of worldliness, was a study to -him, new with the novelty of innocence, and of a kind of veneration. -And he was careful not to let her perceive his mortification that the -Countess von Szalras would not deign to dine in his presence. In truth, -he thought of little else, but no trace of irritation or of absence of -mind was to be seen in him as he amused the Princess, and discovered -with her that they had in common some friends amongst the nobilities of -Saxony, of Wurtemberg, and of Bohemia.</p> - -<p>'Come and take your coffee in my own room, the blue-room,' she said to -him, and she rose and took his arm. 'We will go through the library; -you saw it this morning, I imagine? It is supposed to contain the -finest collection of Black Letter in the empire, or so we think.'</p> - -<p>And she led him through the great halls and up a few low stairs into a -large oval room lined with oaken bookcases, which held the manuscripts, -missals, and volumes of all dates which had been originally gathered -together by one of the race who had been also a bishop and a cardinal.</p> - -<p>The library was oak-panelled, and had an embossed and emblazoned -ceiling; silver lamps of old Italian <i>trasvorato</i> work, hung by -silver chains, and shed a subdued clear light; beneath the porphyry -sculptures of the hearth a fire of logs was burning, for the early -summer evening here is chill and damp; there were many open fireplaces -in Hohenszalras, introduced there by a chilly Provençal princess, who -had wedded a Szalras in the seventeenth century, and who had abolished -the huge porcelain stoves in many apartments in favour of grand carved -mantel-pieces, and gilded andirons, and sweet smelling simple fires of -aromatic woods, such as made glad the sombre hotels and lonely châteaux -of the Prance of the Bourbons.</p> - -<p>Before this hearth, with the dogs stretched on the black bearskin -rugs, his hostess was seated; she had dined in a small dining-hall -opening out of the library, and was sitting reading with a shaded -light behind her. She rose with astonishment, and, as he fancied, -anger upon her face as she saw him enter, and stood in her full height -beneath the light of one of the silver hanging lamps. She wore a gown -of olive-coloured velvet, with some pale roses fastened amongst the -old lace at her breast; she had about her throat several rows of large -pearls, which she always wore night and day that they should not change -their pure whiteness by disuse; she looked very stately, cold, annoyed, -disdainful, as she stood there without speaking.</p> - -<p>'It is my niece, the Countess von Szalras,' said the Princess to her -companion in some trepidation. 'Wanda, my love, I was not aware you -were here; I thought you were in your own octagon room; allow me to -make you acquainted with your guest, whom you have already received -twice with little ceremony I believe.'</p> - -<p>The trifling falsehoods were trippingly but timidly said; the -Princess's blue eyes sought consciously her niece's forgiveness with -a pathetic appeal, to which Wanda, who loved her tenderly, could not -be long obdurate. Had it been any other than Mme. Ottilie who had -thus brought by force into her presence a stranger whom she had -marked her desire to avoid, the serene temper of the mistress of -the Hohenszalrasburg would not have preserved its equanimity, and -she would have quitted her library on the instant, sweeping a grand -courtesy which should have been greeting and farewell at once to one -too audacious. But the shy entreating appeal of the Princess's regard -touched her heart, and the veneration she had borne from childhood -to one so holy, and so sacred by years of grace, checked in her any -utterance or sign of annoyance.</p> - -<p>Sabran, meanwhile, standing by in some hesitation and embarrassment, -bowed low with consummate grace, and a timidity not less graceful.</p> - -<p>She advanced a step and held her hand out to him.</p> - -<p>'I fear I have been inhospitable, sir,' she said to him in his -own tongue. 'Are you wholly unhurt? You had a rough greeting from -Hohenszalras.'</p> - -<p>He took the tip of her fingers on his own and bent over them as humbly -as over an empress's.</p> - -<p>Well used to the world as he was, to its ceremonies, courts, and -etiquettes, he was awed by her as if he were a youth; he lost his ready -aptness of language, and his easy manner of adaptability.</p> - -<p>'I am but a vagrant, Madame!' he murmured, as he bowed over her hand. -'I have no right even to your charity!'</p> - -<p>For the moment it seemed to her as if he spoke in bitter and melancholy -earnest, and she looked at him in a passing surprise that changed into -a smile.</p> - -<p>'You were a poacher certainly, but that is forgiven. My aunt has taken -you under her protection; and you had the Kaiser's already: with such a -dual shelter you are safe. Are you quite recovered?' she said, bending -her grave glance upon him. 'I have to ask your pardon for my great -negligence in not sending one of my men to guide you over the pass to -Matrey.'</p> - -<p>'Nay, if you had done so I should not have enjoyed the happiness of -being your debtor,' he replied, meeting her close gaze with a certain -sense of confusion most rare with him; and added a few words of -eloquent gratitude, which she interrupted almost abruptly:</p> - -<p>'Pray carry no such burden of imaginary debt, and have no scruples in -staying as long as you like; we are a mountain refuge, use it as you -would a monastery. In the winter we have many travellers. We are so -entirely in the heart of the hills that we are bound by all Christian -laws to give a refuge to all who need it. But how came you on the lake -last evening? Could you not read the skies?'</p> - -<p>He explained his own folly and hardihood, and added, with a glance at -her, 'The offending rifle is in the Szalrassee. It was my haste to quit -your dominions that made me venture on to the lake. I had searched in -vain for the high road that you had told me of, and I thought if I -crossed the lake I should be off your soil.'</p> - -<p>'No; for many leagues you would not have been off it,' she answered -him. 'Our lands are very large, and, like the Archbishopric of -Berchtesgarten, are as high as they are broad. Our hills are very -dangerous for strangers, especially until the snows of the passes have -all melted. I repented me too late that I did not send a jäger with you -as a guide.'</p> - -<p>'All is well that ends well,' said the Princess. 'Monsieur is not the -worse for his bath in the lake, and we have the novelty of an incident -and of a guest, who we will hope in the future will become a friend.'</p> - -<p>'Madame, if I dared hope that I should have much to live for!' said the -stranger, and the Princess smiled sweetly upon him.</p> - -<p>'You must have very much to live for, as it is. Were I a man, and as -young as you, and as favoured by nature, I am afraid I should be -tempted to live for—myself.'</p> - -<p>'And I am most glad when I can escape from so poor a companion,' said -he, with a melancholy in the accent and a passing pain that was not -assumed.</p> - -<p>Before this gentle and gracious old woman in this warm and elegant -chamber he felt suddenly that he was a wanderer—perhaps an outcast.</p> - -<p>'You need not use the French language with him, Wanda,' interrupted the -Princess. 'The Marquis speaks admirable German: it is impossible to -speak better.'</p> - -<p>'We will speak our own tongue then,' said Wanda, who always regarded -her aunt as though she were a petted and rather wayward child. 'Are you -quite rested, M. de Sabran? and quite unhurt?' I did not dine with you. -It must have seemed churlish. But I am very solitary in my habits, and -my aunt entertains strangers so much better than I do that I grow more -hermit-like every year.'</p> - -<p>He smiled; he thought there was but little of the hermit in this -woman's supreme elegance and dignity as she stood beside her hearth -with its ruddy, fitful light playing on the great pearls at her throat -and burnishing into gold the bronze shadows of her velvet gown.</p> - -<p>'The Princess has told me that you are cruel to the world,' he answered -her. 'But it is natural with such a kingdom that you seldom care to -leave it.'</p> - -<p>'It is a kingdom of snow for seven months out of the year,' said the -Princess peevishly, 'and a water kingdom the other five. You see what -it is to-day, and this is the middle of May!'</p> - -<p>'I think one might well forget the rain and every other ill between -these four walls,' said the French Marquis, as he glanced around him, -and then slowly let his eyes rest on his châtelaine.</p> - -<p>'It is a grand library,' she answered him; 'but I must warn you that -there is nothing more recent in it than Diderot and Descartes. The -cardinal—Hugo von Szalras—who collected it lived in the latter half -of last century, and since his day no Szalras has been bookish save -myself. The cardinal, however, had all the MSS. and the black letters, -or nearly all, ready to his hand; what he added is a vast library -of science and history, and he also got together some of the most -beautiful missals in the world. Are you curious in such things?'</p> - -<p>She rose as she spoke, and unlocked one of the doors of the oak -bookcase and brought out an ivory missal carved by the marvellous -Prönner of Klagenfurt, with the arms of the Szalras on one side of it -and those of a princely German house on the other.</p> - -<p>'That was the nuptial missal of Georg von Szalras and Ida Windisgratz -in 1501,' she said; 'and these are all the other marriage-hours of our -people, if you care to study them'; and in that case next to this there -is a wonderful Evangelistarium, with miniatures of Angelico's. But I -see they tell all their stories to you; I see by the way you touch them -that you are a connoisseur.'</p> - -<p>'I fear I have studied them chiefly at the sales of the Rue Drouot,' -said Sabran, with a smile; but he had a great deal of sound knowledge -on all arts and sciences, and a true taste which never led him wrong. -With an illuminated chronicle in his hand, or a book of hours on his -knee, he conversed easily, discursively, charmingly, of the early -scribes and the early masters; of monkish painters and of church -libraries; of all the world has lost, and of all aid that art had -brought to faith.</p> - -<p>He talked well, with graceful and well-chosen language, with -picturesque illustration, with a memory that never was at fault for -name or date, or apt quotation; he spoke fluent and eloquent German, in -which there was scarcely any trace of foreign accent; and he disclosed -without effort the resources of a cultured and even learned mind.</p> - -<p>The antagonism she had felt against the poacher of her woods melted -away as she listened and replied to him; there was a melody in his -voice and a charm in his manner that it was not easy to resist; and -with the pale lights from the Italian lamp which swung near upon the -fairness of his face she reluctantly owned that her aunt had been -right: he was singularly handsome, with that uncommon and grand cast -of beauty which in these days is rarer than it was in the times of -Vandyck and of Velasquez—for manners and moods leave their trace on -the features, and this age is not great.</p> - -<p>The Princess in, her easy-chair, for once not sleeping after dinner, -listened to her and thought to herself, 'She is angry with me; but how -much better it is to talk with a living being than to pass the evening -over a philosophical treatise, or the accounts of her schools, or her -stables!'</p> - -<p>Sabran having conquered the momentary reluctance and embarrassment -which had overcome him in the presence of the woman to whom he owed -both an outrage and a rescue, endeavoured, with all the skill he -possessed, to interest and beguile her attention. He knew that she was -a great lady, a proud woman, a recluse, and a student, and a person -averse to homage and flattery of every kind; he met her on the common -ground of art and learning, and could prove himself her equal at all -times, even occasionally her master. When he fancied she had enough of -such serious themes he spoke of music. There was a new opera then out -at Paris, of which the theme was as yet scarcely known. He looked round -the library and said to her:</p> - -<p>'Were there an organ here or a piano I could give you some idea of the -motive; I can recall most of it.'</p> - -<p>'There are both in my own room. It is near here,' she said to him. -'Will you come?'</p> - -<p>Then she led the way across the gallery, which alone separated the -library from that octagon room which was so essentially her own where -all were hers. The Princess accompanied her: content as a child is who -has put a light to a slow match that leads it knows not whither. 'She -must approve of him, or she would not take him there,' thought the wise -Princess.</p> - -<p>'Go and play to us,' said Wanda von Szalras, as her guest entered the -sacred room. 'I am sure you are a great musician; you speak of music -as we only speak of what we love.'</p> - -<p>'What do you love?' he wondered mutely, as he sat down before the -grand piano and struck a few chords. He sat down and played without -prelude one of the most tender and most grave of Schubert's sonatas. -It was subtle, delicate, difficult to interpret, but he gave it with -consummate truth of touch and feeling. He had always loved German music -best. He played on and on, dreamily, with a perfection of skill that -was matched by his tenderness of interpretation.</p> - -<p>'You are a great artist,' said his hostess, as he paused.</p> - -<p>He rose and approached her.</p> - -<p>'Alas! no, I am only an amateur,' he answered her. 'To be an artist one -must needs have immense faith in one's art and in oneself: I have no -faith in anything. An artist steers straight to one goal; I drift.'</p> - -<p>'You have drifted to wise purpose——'You must have studied much?'</p> - -<p>'In my youth. Not since. An artist! Ah! how I envy artists! They -believe; they aspire; even if they never attain, they are happy, happy -in their very torment, and through it, like lovers.'</p> - -<p>'But your talent——'</p> - -<p>'Ah, Madame, it is only talent; it is nothing else. The <i>feu sacré</i> is -wanting.'</p> - -<p>She looked at him with some curiosity.</p> - -<p>'Perhaps the habit of the world has put out that fire: it often does. -But if even it be only talent, what a beautiful talent it is! To -carry all that store of melody safe in your memory—it is like having -sunlight and moonlight ever at command.'</p> - -<p>Lizst had more than once summoned the spirits of Heaven to his call -there in that same room in Hohenszalras; and since his touch no one -had ever made the dumb notes speak as this stranger could do, and the -subdued power of his voice added to the melody he evoked. The light -of the lamps filled with silvery shadows the twilight of the chamber; -the hues of the tapestries, of the ivories, of the gold and silver -work, of the paintings, of the embroideries, made a rich chiaro-oscuro -of colour; the pine cones and the dried thyme burning on the hearth -shed an aromatic smell on the air; there were large baskets and vases -full of hothouse roses and white lilies from the gardens; she sat by -the hearth, left in shadow except where the twilight caught the gleam -of her pearls and the shine of her eyes; she listened, the jewels on -her hand glancing like little stars as she slowly waved to and fro a -feather screen in rhythm with what he sang or played: so might Mary -Stuart have looked, listening to Rizzio or Ronsard. 'She is a queen!' -he thought, and he sang—</p> - -<p> -'Si j'étais Roi!'<br /> -</p> - -<p>'Go on!' she said, as he paused; he had thrown eloquence and passion -into the song.</p> - -<p>'Shall I not tire you?'</p> - -<p>'That is only a phrase! Save when Liszt passes by here I never hear -such music as yours.'</p> - -<p>'He obeyed her, and played and sang many and very different things.</p> - -<p>At last he rose a little abruptly.</p> - -<p>Two hours had gone by since they had entered the octagon chamber.</p> - -<p>'It would be commonplace to thank you,' she murmured with a little -hesitation. 'You have a great gift; one of all gifts the most generous -to others.'</p> - -<p>He made a gesture of repudiation, and walked across to a spinet of the -fifteenth century, inlaid with curious devices by Martin Pacher of -Brauneck, and having a painting of his in its lid.</p> - -<p>'What a beautiful old box,' he said, as he touched it. 'Has it any -sound, I wonder? If one be disposed to be sad, surely of all sad things -an old spinet is the saddest! To think of the hands that have touched, -of the children that have danced to it, of the tender old ballads that -have been sung to the notes that to us seem so hoarse and so faulty! -All the musicians dead, dead so long ago, and the old spinet still -answering when anyone calls! Shall I sing you a madrigal to it?'</p> - -<p>Very tenderly, very lightly, he touched the ivory keys of the painted -toy of the ladies so long dead and gone, and he sang in a minor key the -sweet, sad, quaint poem:—</p> - -<p style="margin-left: 20%;"> -Où sont les neiges d'antan?<br /> -</p> - -<p>That ballad of fair women echoed softly through the stillness of the -chamber, touched with the sobbing notes of the spinet, even as it might -have been in the days of its writer:</p> - -<p style="margin-left: 20%;"> -Où sont les neiges d'antan?<br /> -</p> - -<p>The chords of the old music-box seemed to sigh and tremble with -remembrance. Where were they, all the beautiful dead women, all the -fair imperious queens, all the loved, and all the lovers? Where were -they? The snow had fallen through so many white winters since that song -was sung—so many! so many!</p> - -<p>The last words thrilled sadly and sweetly through the silence.</p> - -<p>He rose and bowed very low.</p> - -<p>'I have trespassed too long on your patience, madame; I have the honour -to wish you goodnight.'</p> - -<p>Wanda von Szalras was not a woman quickly touched to any emotion, but -her eyelids were heavy with a mist of unshed tears, as she raised them -and looked up from the fire, letting drop on her lap the screen of -plumes.</p> - -<p>'If there be a Lorelei in our lake, no wonder from envy she tried to -drown you,' she said, with a smile that cost her a little effort. -Good-night, sir; should you wish to leave us in the morning, Hubert -will see you reach S. Johann safely and as quickly as can be.'</p> - -<p>'Your goodness overwhelms me,' he murmured. 'I can never hope to show -my gratitude——'</p> - -<p>'There is nothing to be grateful for,' she said quickly. 'And if there -were, you would have repaid it: you have made a spinet, silent for -centuries, speak, and speak to our hearts. Good-night, sir; may you -have good rest and a fair journey!'</p> - -<p>When he had bowed himself out, and the tapestry of the door had closed -behind him, she rose and looked at a clock.</p> - -<p>'It is actually twelve!'</p> - -<p>'Acknowledge at least that he has made the evening pass well!' said -the Princess, with a little petulance and much triumph.</p> - -<p>'He has made it pass admirably,' said her niece. 'At the same time, -dear aunt, I think it would have been perhaps better if you had not -made a friend of a stranger.'</p> - -<p>'Why?' said the Princess with some asperity.</p> - -<p>'Because I think we can fulfil all the duties of hospitality without -doing so, and we know nothing of this gentleman.'</p> - -<p>'He is certainly a gentleman,' said the Princess, with not less -asperity. 'It seems to me, my dear Wanda, that you are for once in your -life—if you will pardon me the expression—ill-natured.'</p> - -<p>The Countess Wanda smiled a little.</p> - -<p>'I cannot imagine myself ill-natured; but I may be so. One never knows -oneself.'</p> - -<p>'And ungrateful,' added the Princess. 'When, I should like to know, -have you for years reached twelve o'clock at night without being -conscious of it?'</p> - -<p>'Oh, he sang beautifully, and he played superbly,' said her niece, -still with the same smile, balancing her ostrich-feathers. 'But let him -go on his way to-morrow; you and I cannot entertain strange men, even -though they give us music like Rubenstein's.'</p> - -<p>'If Egon were here——'</p> - -<p>'Oh, poor Egon! I think he would not like your friend at all. They both -want to shoot eagles——'</p> - -<p>'Perhaps he would not like him for another reason,' said the Princess, -with a look of mystery. 'Egon could never make the spinet speak.'</p> - -<p>'No; but who knows? Perhaps he can take better care of his own soul -because he cannot lend one to a spinet!'</p> - -<p>'You are perverse, Wanda!'</p> - -<p>'Perverse, inhospitable, and ill-natured? I fear I shall carry a heavy -burden of sins to Father Ferdinand in the morning!'</p> - -<p>'I wish you would not send horses to S. Johann in the morning. We never -have anything to amuse us in this solemn solitary place.'</p> - -<p>'Dear aunt, one would think you were very indiscreet.'</p> - -<p>'I wish you were more so!' said the pretty old lady with impatience, -and then her hand made a sign over the cross of emeralds, for she -knew that she had uttered an unholy wish. She kissed her niece with -repentant tenderness, and went to her own apartments.</p> - -<p>Wanda von Szalras, left alone in her chamber, stood awhile thoughtfully -beside the fire; then she moved away and touched the yellow ivory of -the spinet keys.</p> - -<p>'Why could he make them speak,' she said to herself, 'when everyone -else always failed?'</p> - - - -<hr class="chap" /> -<h4><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV.</a></h4> - - -<p>Sabran, as he undressed himself and laid himself down under the great -gold-fringed canopy of the stately bed, thought: 'Was I only a clever -comedian to-night, or did my eyes really grow wet as I sang that old -song and see her face through a mist as if she and I had met in the old -centuries long ago?'</p> - -<p>He stood and looked a moment at his own reflection in the great mirror -with the wax candles burning in its sconces. He was very pale.</p> - -<p style="margin-left: 20%;"> -Où sont les neiges d'antan?<br /> -</p> - -<p>The burden of it ran through his mind.</p> - -<p>Almost it seemed to him long ago—long ago—she had been his lady and -he her knight, and she had stooped to him, and he had died for her. -Then he laughed a little harshly.</p> - -<p>'I grow that best of all actors,' he thought, 'an actor who believes in -himself!'</p> - -<p>Then he turned from the mirror and stretched himself on the great -bed, with its carved warriors at its foot and its golden crown at its -head, and its heavy amber tissues shining in the shadows. He was a -sound sleeper at all times. He had slept peacefully on a wreck, in -a hurricane, in a lonely hut on the Andes, as after a night of play -in Paris, in Vienna, in Monaco. He had a nerve of steel, and that -perfect natural constitution which even excess and dissipation cannot -easily impair. But this night, under the roof of Hohenszalras, in the -guest-chamber of Hohenszalras, he could not summon sleep at his will, -and he lay long wide awake and restless, watching the firelight play on -the figures upon the tapestried walls, where the lords and ladies of -Tuscan Boccaccio and their sinful loves were portrayed in stately and -sombre guise, and German costumes of the days of Maximilian.</p> - -<p style="margin-left: 20%;"> -Où sont les neiges d'antan?<br /> -</p> - -<p>The line of the old romaunt ran through his brain, and when towards -dawn he did at length fall asleep it was not of Hohenszalras that he -dreamed, but of wide white steppes, of a great ice-fed rolling river, -of monotonous pine woods, with the gilded domes of a half eastern city -rising beyond them in the pale blue air of a northern twilight.</p> - -<p>With the early morning he awoke, resolute to get away be the weather -what it would. As it chanced, the skies were heavy still, but no rain -fell; the sun was faintly struggling through the great black masses of -cloud; the roads might be dangerous, but they were not impassable; the -bridge over the Bürgenbach might be broken, but at least Matrey could -be reached, if it were not possible to go on farther to Taxenbach or S. -Johann im Wald. High north, where far away stretched the wild marshes -and stony swamps of the Pinzgau (the Pinzgau so beautiful, where in its -hilly district the grand Salzach rolls on its impetuous way beneath -deep shade of fir-clad hills, tracks desolate as a desert of sand or -stone), the sky was overcast, and of an angry tawny colour that brooded -ill for the fall of night. But the skies were momentarily clear, and he -desired to rid of his presence the hospitable roof beneath which he was -but an alien and unbidden.</p> - -<p>He proposed to leave on foot, but of this neither Greswold nor the -major-domo would hear: they declared that such an indignity would -dishonour the Hohenszalrasburg for evermore. Guests there were masters. -'Bidden guests, perhaps,' said Sabran, reluctantly yielding to be -sped on his way by a pair of the strong Hungarian horses that he had -seen and admired in their stalls. He did not venture to disturb the -ladies of the castle by a request for a farewell audience at the early -hour at which it was necessary he should depart if he wished to try -to reach a railway the same evening, but he left two notes for them, -couched in that graceful compliment of which his Parisian culture made -him an admirable master, and took a warm adieu of the good physician, -with a promise not to forget the orchid of the Spiritù Santo. Then he -breakfasted hastily, and left the tapestried chamber in which he had -dreamed of the Nibelungen Queen.</p> - -<p>At the door he drew a ring of great value from his finger and passed it -to Hubert, but the old man, thanking him, protested he dared not take -it.</p> - -<p>'Old as I am in her service,' he said, 'the Countess would dismiss me -in an hour if I accepted any gifts from a guest.'</p> - -<p>'Your lady is very severe,' said Sabran. 'It is happy for her she has -servitors who subscribe to feudalism. If she were in Paris——'</p> - -<p>'We are bound to obey,' said the old man, simply. 'The Countess deals -with us most generously and justly. We are bound, in return, to render -her obedience.'</p> - -<p>'All the antique virtues have indeed found refuge here!' said Sabran; -but he left the ring behind him lying on a table in the Rittersäal.</p> - -<p>Four instead of two vigorous and half-broke horses from the Magyar -plains bore him away in a light travelling carriage towards the -Virgenthal; the household, with Herr Joachim at their head, watching -with regret the travelling carriage wind up amongst the woods and -disappear on the farther side of the lake. He himself looked back with -a pang of envy and regret at the stately pile towering towards the -clouds, with its deep red banner streaming out on the wind that blew -from the northern plains.</p> - -<p>'Happy woman!' he thought; 'happy—thrice happy—to possess such -dominion, such riches, and such ancestry! If I had had them I would -have had the world under my foot as well!'</p> - -<p>It was with a sense of pain that he saw the great house disappear -behind its screen of mantling woods, as his horses climbed the hilly -path beyond, higher and higher at every step, until all that he saw -of Hohenszalras was a strip of the green lake—green as an arum -leaf—lying far down below, bearing on its waters the grey willows of -the Holy Isle.</p> - -<p>'When I am very old and weary I will come and die there,' he thought, -with a touch of that melancholy which all his irony and cynicism could -not dispel from his natural temper. There were moments when he felt -that he was but a lonely and homeless wanderer on the face of the -earth, and this was one of those moments, as, alone, he went upon his -way along the perilous path, cut along the face of precipitous rocks, -passing over rough bridges that spanned deep defiles and darkening -ravines, clinging to the side of a mountain as a swallow's nest clings -to the wall of a house, and running high on swaying galleries above -dizzy depths, where nameless torrents plunged with noise and foam into -impenetrable chasms. The road had been made in the fifteenth century by -the Szalras lords themselves, and the engineering of it was bold and -vigorous though rude, and kept in sound repair, though not much changed.</p> - -<p>He had left a small roll of paper lying beside the ring in the knight's -hall. Hubert took them both to his mistress when, a few hours later, -he was admitted to her presence. Opening the paper she saw a roll of a -hundred napoleons, and on the paper was written, 'There can be no poor -where the Countess von Szalras rules. Let these be spent in masses for -the dead.'</p> - -<p>'What a delicate and graceful sentiment,' said the Princess Ottilie, -with vivacity and emotion.</p> - -<p>'It is prettily expressed and gracefully thought of,' her niece -admitted.</p> - -<p>'Charmingly—admirably!' said the Princess, with a much warmer accent. -'There is delicate gratitude there, as well as a proper feeling towards -a merciful God.'</p> - -<p>'Perhaps,' said her niece, with a little smile, 'the money was won at -play, in giving someone else what they call a <i>culotte</i>; what would you -say then, dear aunt? Would it be purified by entering the service of -the Church?'</p> - -<p>'I do not know why you are satirical,' said the Princess; 'and I cannot -tell either how you can bring yourself to use Parisian bad words.'</p> - -<p>'I will send these to the Bishop,' said Wanda, rolling up the gold. -'Alas! alas! there are always poor. As for the ring, Hubert, give it to -Herr Greswold, and he will transmit it to this gentleman's address in -Paris, as though it had been left behind by accident. You were so right -not to take it; but my dear people are always faithful.'</p> - -<p>These few words were dearer and more precious to the honest old man -than all the jewels in the world could ever have become. But the offer -of it and the gift of the gold for the Church's use had confirmed the -high opinion in which he and the whole household of Hohenszalras held -the departed guest.</p> - -<p>'Allow at least that this evening will be much duller than last!' said -the Princess, with much irritation.</p> - -<p>'Your friend played admirably,' said Wanda von Szalras, as she sat at -her embroidery frame.</p> - -<p>'You speak as if he were an itinerant pianist! What is your dislike to -your fellow creatures, when they are of your own rank, based upon? If -he had been a carpet-dealer from the Defreggerthal, as I said before, -you would have bidden him stay a month.'</p> - -<p>'Dearest aunt, be reasonable. How was it possible to keep here on a -visit a French Marquis of whom we know absolutely nothing, except from -himself?'</p> - -<p>'I never knew you were prudish!'</p> - -<p>'I never knew either that I was,' said the Countess Wanda, with her -serene temper unruffled. 'I quite admit your new friend has many -attractive qualities—on the surface at any rate; but if it were -possible for me to be angry with you, I should be so for bringing him -as you did into the library last night.'</p> - -<p>'You would never have known your spinet could speak if I had not. You -are very ungrateful, and I should not be in the least surprised to find -that he was a Crown Prince or a Grand Duke travelling incognito.'</p> - -<p>'We know them all, I fear.'</p> - -<p>'It is strange he should not have his name in the Hof-Kalender, beside -the Sabran-Pontêves!' insisted the Princess. 'He looks <i>prince du -sang</i>, if ever anyone did; so——'</p> - -<p>'There is good blood outside your Hof Kalender, dear mother mine.'</p> - -<p>'Certainly,' said the Princess, 'he must surely be a branch of that -family, though it would be more satisfactory if one found his record -there. One can never know too much or too certainly of a person whom -one admits to friendship.'</p> - -<p>'Friendship is a very strong word,' said Wanda von Szalras, with a -smile. 'This gentleman has only made a hostelry of Hohenszalras for a -day or two, and even that was made against his will. But as you are so -interested in him, <i>meine Liebe</i>, read this little record I have found.'</p> - -<p>She gave the Princess an old leather-bound volume of memoirs, written -and published at Lausanne, by an obscure noble in his exile, in the -year 1798. She had opened the book at one of the pages that narrated -the fates of many nobles of Brittany, relatives or comrades of the -writer.</p> - -<p>'And foremost amongst these,' said this little book, 'do I ever and -unceasingly regret the loss of my beloved cousin and friend, Yvon -Marquis de Sabran-Romaris. So beloved was he in his own province that -even the Convention was afraid to touch him, and being poor, despite -his high descent, as his father had ruined his fortunes in play and -splendour at the court of Louis XV., he thought to escape the general -proscription, and dwell peaceably on his rock-bound shores with his -young children. But the blood madness of the time so grew upon the -nation that even the love of his peasantry and his own poverty could -not defend him, and one black, bitter day an armed mob from Vannes -came over the heath, burning all they saw of ricks, or homesteads, or -châteaux, or cots, that they might warm themselves by those leaping -fires; and so they came on at last, yelling, and drunk, and furious, -with torches flaming and pikes blood-stained, up through the gates of -Romaris. Sabran went out to meet them, leading his eldest son by the -hand, a child of eight years old. "What seek ye?" he said to them: "I -am as poor as the poorest of you, and consciously have done no living -creature wrong. What do you come for here?" The calm courage of him, -and the glance of his eyes, which were very beautiful and proud, -quelled the disordered, mouthing, blood-drunk multitude in a manner, -and moved them to a sort of reverence, so that the leader of them, -stepping forth, said roughly, 'Citizen, we come to slit your throat -and burn your house; but if you will curse God and the King, and cry -'Long live the sovereign people!' we will leave you alone, for you -have been the friend of the poor. Come, say it!—come, shout it with -both lungs!—it is not much to ask? Sabran put his little boy behind -him with a tender gesture, then kissed the hilt of his sword, which he -held unsheathed in his hand: "I sorrow for the people," he said, "since -they are misguided and mad. But I believe in my God and I love my King, -and even so shall my children do after me;" and the words were scarce -out of his mouth before a score of pikes ran him through the body, and -the torches were tossed into his house, and he and his perished like -so many gallant gentlemen of the time, a prey to the blind fury of an -ingrate mob.'</p> - -<p>The Princess Ottilie's tender eyes moistened as she read, and she -closed the volume reverently, as though it were a sacred thing.</p> - -<p>'I thank you for sending me such a history,' she said. 'It does one's -soul good in these sad, bitter days of spiritless selfishness and -utter lack of all impersonal devotion. This gentleman must, then, be a -descendant of the child named in this narrative?'</p> - -<p>'The story says that he and his perished,' replied her niece. 'But I -suppose that child, or some other younger one, escaped the fire and the -massacre. If ever we see him again, we will ask him. Such a tradition -is as good as a page in the Almanac de Gotha.'</p> - -<p>'It is,' accented the Princess. 'Where did you find it?'</p> - -<p>'I read those memoirs when I was a child, with so many others of that -time,' answered the Countess Wanda. 'When I heard the name of your new -friend it seemed familiar to me, and thinking over it, I remembered -these Breton narratives.'</p> - -<p>'At least you need not have been afraid to dine with him!' said -the Princess Ottilie, who could never resist having the last word, -though she felt that the retort was a little ungenerous, and perhaps -undeserved.</p> - -<p>Meantime Sabran went on his way through the green valley under the -shadow of the Klein and the Kristallwand, with the ice of the great -Schaltten Gletscher descending like a huge frozen torrent. When he -reached the last stage before Matrey he dismissed his postillions with -a gratuity as large as the money remaining in his belt would permit, -and insisted on taking his way on foot over the remaining miles. -Baggage he had none, and he had not even the weight of his knapsack and -rifle. The men remonstrated with him, for they were afraid of their -lady's anger if they returned when they were still half a German mile -off their destination. But he was determined, and sent them backwards, -whilst they could yet reach home by daylight. The path to Matrey passed -across pastures and tracts of stony ground; he took a little goatherd -with him as a guide, being unwilling to run the risk of a second -misadventure, and pressed on his way without delay.</p> - -<p>The sun had come forth from out a watery world of cloud and mist, -which shrouded from sight all the domes and peaks and walls of ice -of the mountain region in which he was once more a wanderer. But -when the mists had lifted, and the sun was shining, it was beautiful -exceedingly: all the grasses were full of the countless wild flowers of -the late Austrian spring; the swollen brooks were blue with mouse-ear, -and the pastures with gentian; clumps of daffodils blossomed in all -the mossy nooks, and hyacinths purpled the pine-woods. On the upper -slopes the rain-fog still hung heavily, but the sun-rays pierced it -here and there, and the white vaporous atmosphere was full of fantastic -suggestions and weird half-seen shapes, as pine-trees loomed out of -the mist or a vast black mass of rock towered above the clouds. A -love of nature, of out-of-door movement, of healthful exercise and -sports, resisted in him the enervating influences of the Paris life -which he had led. He had always left the gay world at intervals for -the simple and rude pleasures of the mountaineer and the hunter. There -was an impulse towards that forest freedom which at times mastered -him, and made the routine of worldly dissipation and diversion wholly -intolerable to him. It was what his fair critic of Paris had called his -barbarism, which broke up out of the artificial restraints and habits -imposed by the world.</p> - -<p>His wakeful night had made him fanciful, and his departure from -Hohenszalras had made him regretful; for he, on his way back to Paris -and all his habits and associates and pleasures, looking around him -on the calm white mountain-sides, and penetrated by the pure, austere -mountain silence, suddenly felt an intense desire to stay amidst that -stillness and that solitude, and rest here in the green heart of the -Tauern.</p> - -<p>'Who knows but one might see her again?' he thought, as the sound of -the fall of the Gschlossbach came on his ear from the distance. That -stately figure seated by the great wood fire, with the light on her -velvet skirts, and the pearls at her throat, and the hounds lying -couched beside her, was always before his memory and his vision.</p> - -<p>And he paid and dismissed his goatherd at the humble door of the Zum -Rautter in Windisch-Matrey, and that evening began discussing with -Christ Rangediner and Egger, the guides there, the ascent of the -Kahralpe and the Lasörling, and the pass to Krimml, over the ice crests -of the Venediger group.</p> - -<p>A mountaineer who had dwelt beneath the shadow of Orizaba was not -common in the heart of the Tauern, and the men made much of their new -comrade, not the less because the gold pieces rattled in his pouch, and -the hunting-watch he earned had jewels at its back.</p> - -<p>'If anyone had told me that in the Mois de Marie I should bury myself -under an Austrian glacier!' he thought, with some wonder at his -own decision, for he was one of those foster-sons of Paris to whom -<i>parisine</i> is an habitual and necessary intoxication.</p> - -<p>But there comes a time when even parisine, like chloral, ceases to -have power to charm; in a vague way he had often felt the folly and -the hollowness of the life that turned night into day, made the green -cloth of the gaming-table the sole field of battle, and offered as -all form of love the purchased smile of the <i>belle petite.</i> A sense of -repose and of freshness, like the breath of a cool morning blowing on -tired eyes, came to him as he sat in the grey twilight amidst the green -landscape, with the night coming down upon the eternal snows above, -whilst the honest, simple souls around him talked of hill perils and -mountaineers' adventures, and all the exploits of a hardy life; and in -the stillness, when their voices ceased, there was no sound but the -sound of water up above amidst the woods, tumbling and rippling in a -hundred unseen brooks and falls.</p> - -<p>'If they had let me alone,' he thought, 'I should have been a hunter -all my days; a guide, perhaps, like this Christ and this Egger here. An -honest man, at least——'</p> - -<p>His heart was heavy and his conscience ill at ease. The grand, serene -glance of Wanda von Szalras seemed to have reached his soul and called -up in him unavailing regrets, pangs of doubt long dormant, vague -remorse long put to sleep with the opiate of the world-taught cynicism, -which had become his second nature. The most impenetrable cynicism will -yield and melt, and seem but a poor armour, when it is brought amidst -the solemnity and solitude of the high hills.</p> - - - -<hr class="chap" /> -<h4><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V.</a></h4> - - -<p>A few days later there arrived by post the 'Spiritù Santo' of Mexico, -addressed to the Professor Joachim Greswold.</p> - -<p>If he had received the order of the Saint Esprit he would not have -been more honoured, more enchanted; and he was deeply touched by the -remembrance of him testified by the gift whose donor he supposed -was back in the gay world of men, not knowing the spell which the -snow mountains of the Tauern had cast on a worldly soul. When he was -admitted to the presence of the Princess Ottilie to consult with her -on her various ailments, she conversed with him of this passer-by who -had so fascinated her fancy, and she even went so far as to permit him -to bring her the great volumes of the "Mexico" out of the library, -and point her out those chapters which he considered most likely to -interest her.</p> - -<p>'It is the work of a true Catholic and gentleman,' she said with -satisfaction, and perused with special commendation the passages which -treated of the noble conduct of the Catholic priesthood in those -regions, their frequent martyrdom and their devoted self-negation. When -she had thoroughly identified their late guest with the editor of these -goodly and blameless volumes, she was content to declare that better -credentials no man could bear. Indeed she talked so continually of -this single point of interest in her monotonous routine of life, that -her niece said to her, with a jest that was more than half earnest, -'Dearest mother, almost you make me regret that this gentleman did -not break his neck over the Engelhorn, or sink with his rifle in the -Szalrassee.'</p> - -<p>'The spinet would never have spoken,' said the Princess; 'and I am -surprised that a Christian woman can say such things, even in joke!'</p> - -<p>The weather cleared, the sun shone, the gardens began to grow gorgeous, -and great parterres of roses glowed between the emerald of the velvet -lawns: an Austrian garden has not a long life, but it has a very -brilliant one. All on a sudden, as the rains ceased, every alley, -group, and terrace were filled with every variety of blossom, and -the flora of Africa and India was planted out side by side with the -gentians and the alpine roses natural to the soil. All the northern -coniferæ spread the deep green of their branches above the turf, and -the larch, the birch, the beech, and the oak were massed in clusters, -or spread away in long avenues—deep defiles of foliage through which -the water of the lake far down below glistened like a jewel.</p> - -<p>'If your friend had been a fortnight later he would have seen -Hohenszalras in all its beauty,' said its mistress once to the -Princess Ottilie. 'It has two seasons of perfection: one its midsummer -flowering, and the other when all the world is frozen round it.'</p> - -<p>The Princess shivered in retrospect and in anticipation. She hated -winter. 'I should never live through another winter,' she said with a -sigh.</p> - -<p>'Then you shall not be tried by one; we will go elsewhere,' said Wanda, -to whom the ice-bound world, the absolute silence, the sense of the -sleigh flying over the hard snow, the perfect purity of the rarefied -air of night and day, made up the most welcome season of the year.</p> - -<p>'I suppose it is dull for you,' she added, indulgently. 'I have so -many occupations in the winter; a pair of skates and a sleigh are to me -of all forms of motion the most delightful. But you, shut up in your -blue-room, do no doubt find our winter hard and long.'</p> - -<p>'I hybernate, I do not live,' said the Princess, pettishly. 'It is not -even as if the house were full.'</p> - -<p>'With ill-assorted guests whose cumbersome weariness one would have -to try all day long to dissipate! Oh, my dear aunt, of all wearisome -<i>corvées</i> the world holds there is nothing so bad as a house -party—even when Egon is here to lead the cotillion and the hunting.'</p> - -<p>'You are very inhospitable!'</p> - -<p>'That is the third time lately you have made that charge against me. I -begin to fear that I must deserve it.'</p> - -<p>'You deserve it, certainly. Oh, you are hospitable to the poor. You set -pedlars, or mule-drivers, or travelling clockmakers, by the dozen round -your hall fires, and you would feed a pilgrimage all the winter long. -But to your own order, to your own society, you are inhospitable. In -your mother's time the Schloss had two hundred guests for the autumn -parties, and then the winter season, from Carnival to Easter, was -always spent in the capital.'</p> - -<p>'She liked that, I suppose.'</p> - -<p>'Of course she liked it; everyone ought to like it at what was her age -then, and what is yours now.'</p> - -<p>'I like this,' said the Countess Wanda, to change the subject, as -the servants set a little Japanese tea-table and two arm-chairs of -gilt osier-work under one of the Siberian pines, whose boughs spread -tent-like over the grass, on which the dogs were already stretched in -anticipation of sugar and cakes.</p> - -<p>From this lawn there were seen only the old keep of the burg and the -turrets and towers of the rest of the building; ivy clambered over -one-half of the great stone pile, that had been raised with hewn -rock in the ninth century; and some arolla pines grew about it. A -low terrace, with low broad steps, separated it from the gardens. A -balustrade of stone, ivy-mantled, protected the gardens from the rocks; -while these plunged in a perpendicular descent of a hundred feet into -the lake. Some black yews and oaks, very large and old, grew against -the low stone pillars. It was a favourite spot with the mistress of -Hohenszalras; it looked westward, and beyond the masses of the vast -forests there shone the snow summit of the Venediger and the fantastic -peaks of the Klein and Kristallwand, whilst on a still day there could -be heard a low sound which she, familiar with it, knew came from the -thunder of the subterranean torrents filling the Szalrassee.</p> - -<p>'Oh, it is very nice,' said the Princess, a little deprecatingly. 'And -of course I at my years want nothing better than a gilt chair in the -sunshine. But then there is so very little sunshine! The chair must -generally stand by the stove! And I confess that I think it would be -fitter for your years and your rank if these chairs were multiplied -by ten or twenty, and if there were some pretty people laughing and -talking and playing games in those great gardens.'</p> - -<p>'It is glorious weather now,' said her niece, who would not assent and -did not desire to dispute.</p> - -<p>'Yes,' interrupted the Princess. 'But it will rain to-morrow. You know -we never have two fine days together.'</p> - -<p>'We will take it while we have it, and be thankful,' said Wanda, with a -good-humour that refused to be ruffled. 'Here is Hubert coming out to -us. What can he want? He looks very startled and alarmed.'</p> - -<p>The old major-domo's face was indeed gravely troubled, as he bowed -before his lady.</p> - -<p>'Pardon me the intrusion, my Countess,' he said hurriedly. 'But I -thought it right to inform you myself that a lad has come over from -Steiner's Inn to say that the foreign gentleman who was here fifteen -days ago has had an accident on the Umbal glacier. It seems he stayed -on in Matrey for sake of the climbing and the shooting. I do not make -out from the boy what the accident was, but the Umbal is very dangerous -at this season. The gentleman lies now at Pregratten. You know, my -ladies, what a very wretched place that is.'</p> - -<p>'I suppose they have come for the Herr Professor?' said Wanda, vaguely -disturbed, while the Princess very sorrowfully was putting a score of -irrelevant questions which Hubert could not answer.</p> - -<p>'No doubt he has no doctor there, and these people send for that -reason,' said Wanda, interrupting with an apology for the useless -interrogations. 'Get horses ready directly, and send for Greswold at -once wherever he may be. But it is a long bad way to Pregratten; I do -not see how he can return under twenty-four hours.'</p> - -<p>'Let him stay two nights, if he be wanted,' said the Princess, to whom -she spoke. She had always insisted that the physician should never be -an hour out of Hohenszalras whilst she was in it.</p> - -<p>'Your friend has been trying to shoot a <i>kuttengeier</i> again, I -suppose,' said her niece, with a smile. 'He is very adventurous.'</p> - -<p>'And you are very heartless.'</p> - -<p>Wanda did not deny the charge; but she went into the house, saw the -doctor, and requested him to take everything with him of linen, wines, -food, or cordials that might possibly be wanted.</p> - -<p>'And stay as long as you are required,' she added, 'and send mules -over to us for anything you wish for. Do not think of us. If my dear -aunt should ail anything I can dispatch a messenger to you, or call a -physician from Salzburg.'</p> - -<p>Herr Joachim said a very few words, thanked her gratefully, and took -his departure behind two sure-footed mountain cobs that could climb -almost like chamois.</p> - -<p>'I think one of the Fathers should have gone too,' said Mme. Ottilie, -regretfully.</p> - -<p>'I hope he is not <i>in extremis</i>,' said her niece. 'And I fear if he -were he would hardly care for spiritual assistance.'</p> - -<p>'You are so prejudiced against him, Wanda!'</p> - -<p>'I do not think I am ever prejudiced,' said the Countess von Szalras.</p> - -<p>'That is so like a prejudiced person!' said the Princess, triumphantly.</p> - -<p>For twenty-four hours they heard nothing from Pregratten, which is in -itself a miserable little hamlet lying amidst some of the grandest -scenes that the earth holds: towards evening the next day a lad of the -village came on a mule and brought a letter to his ladies from the Herr -Professor, who wrote that the accident had been due, as usual, to the -gentleman's own carelessness, and to the fact of the snow being melted -by the midsummer sun until it was a thin crust over a deep crevasse. -He had found his patient suffering from severe contusions, high fever, -lethargy, and neuralgic pains, but he did not as yet consider there -were seriously dangerous symptoms. He begged permission to remain, and -requested certain things to be sent to him from his medicine-chests and -the kitchens.</p> - -<p>The boy slept at Hohenszalras that night, and in the morning returned -over the hills to Pregratten with all the doctor had asked for. Wanda -selected the medicines herself, and sent also some fruit and wine for -which he did not ask: the Princess sent a bone of S. Ottilie in an -ivory case and the assurance of her constant prayers. She was sincerely -anxious and troubled. 'Such a charming person, and so handsome,' she -said again and again. 'I suppose the priest of Pregratten is with -him.' Her niece did not remind her that her physician did not greatly -love any priests whatever, though on that subject he was always -discreetly mute at Hohenszalras.</p> - -<p>For the next ten days Greswold stayed at Pregratten, and the Princess -bore his absence, since it was to serve a person who had had the good -fortune to fascinate her, and whom also she chose to uphold because her -niece was, as she considered, unjust to him. Moreover, life at the burg -was very dull to the Princess, whatever it might be to its châtelaine, -who had so much interest in its farms, its schools, its mountains, and -its villages: an interest which to her great-aunt seemed quite out of -place, as all those questions, she considered, should belong to the -priesthood and the stewards, who ought not to be disturbed in their -direction, the one of spiritual and the other of agricultural matters. -This break in the monotony of her time was agreeable to her—of the -bulletins from Pregratten, of the dispatch of all that was wanted, -of the additional pleasure of complaining that she was deprived of -her doctor's counsels, and also of feeling at the same time that in -enduring this deprivation she was doing a charitable and self-denying -action. She further insisted on sending out to Steiner's Inn, greatly -to his own discomfort, her own confessor.</p> - -<p>'Nobles of Brittany have always deep religious feeling,' she said to -her niece; 'and Father Ferdinand has such skill and persuasion with the -dying.'</p> - -<p>'But no one is dying,' said Wanda, a little impatiently.</p> - -<p>'That is more than any human being can tell,' said the Princess, -piously. 'At all events, Father Ferdinand always uses every occasion -judiciously and well.'</p> - -<p>Father Ferdinand, however, was not very comfortable in Pregratten, and -soon returned, much jolted and worn by the transit on a hill pony. -He was reserved about his visitation, and told his patroness sadly -that he had been unable to effect much spiritual good, but that the -stranger was certainly recovering from his hurts, and had the ivory -case of S. Ottilie on his pillow; he had seemed averse, however, to -confession, and therefore, of course, there had been no possibility for -administration of the Sacrament.</p> - -<p>The Princess was inclined to set this rebelliousness down to the fault -of the physician, and determined to talk seriously to Greswold on -spiritual belief as soon as he should return.</p> - -<p>'If he be not orthodox we cannot keep him,' she said severely.</p> - -<p>'He is orthodox, dear aunt,' said Wanda von Szalras, with a smile. 'He -adores the wonders of every tiny blossom that blows, and every little -moss that clothes the rocks.'</p> - -<p>'What a profane, almost sacrilegious answer!' said the Princess. 'I -never should have imagined that <i>you</i> would have jested on sacred -themes.'</p> - -<p>'I did not intend a jest. I was never more serious. A life like our old -Professor's is a perpetual prayer.'</p> - -<p>'Your great-aunt Walburga belonged to the Perpetual Adoration,' -rejoined the Princess, who only heard the last word but one. 'The order -was very severe. I always think it too great a strain on finite human -powers. She was betrothed to the Margraf Paul, but he was killed at -Austerlitz, and she took refuge in a life of devotion. I always used -to think that you would change Hohenszalras into a sacred foundation; -but now I am afraid. You are a deeply religious woman, Wanda—at least -I have always thought so—but you read too much German and French -philosophy, and I fear it takes something from your fervour, from your -entirety of devotion. You have a certain liberty of expression that -alarms me at times.'</p> - -<p>'I think it is a poor faith that dares not examine its adversaries' -charges,' said her niece, quietly. 'You would have faith blindfolded. -They call me a bigot at the Court, however. So you see it is hard to -please all.'</p> - -<p>'Bigot is not a word for a Christian and Catholic sovereign to employ,' -said the Princess, severely. 'Her Majesty must know that there can -never be too great an excess in faith and service.'</p> - -<p>On the eleventh day Greswold returned over the hills and was admitted -to immediate audience with his ladies.</p> - -<p>'Herr von Sabran is well enough for me to leave him,' he said, after -his first very humble salutations. 'But if your excellencies permit -it would be desirable for me to return there in a day or two. Yes, -my ladies, he is lying at Steiner's Inn in Pregratten, a poor place -enough, but your goodness supplied much that was lacking in comfort. -He can be moved before long. There was never any great danger, but it -was a very bad accident. He is a good mountaineer it seems, and he had -been climbing a vast deal in the Venediger group; that morning he meant -to cross the Umbal glacier to the Ahrenthal, and he refused to take a -guide, so Isaiah Steiner tells me.'</p> - -<p>'But I thought he left here to go to Paris?'</p> - -<p>'He did so, my Countess,' answered the doctor. 'But it seems he loves -the mountains, and their spell fell on him. When he sent back your -postillions he went on foot to Matrey, and there he remained; he -thought the weather advanced enough to make climbing safe; but it is -a dangerous pastime so early in summer, though Christ from Matrey, -who came over to see him, tells me he is of the first form as a -mountaineer. He reached the Clarahutte safely, and broke his fast -there; crossing the Umbal the ice gave way, and he fell into a deep -crevasse. He would be a dead man if a hunter on the Welitz side had -not seen him disappear and given the alarm at the hut. With ropes and -men enough they contrived to haul him up, after some hours, from a -great depth. These accidents are very common, and he has to thank his -own folly in going out on to the glacier unaccompanied. Of course he -was insensible, contused, and in high fever when I reached there: the -surgeon they had called from Lienz was an ignorant, who would soon -have sent him for ever to as great a deep as the crevasse. He is very -grateful to you both, my ladies, and would be more so were he not so -angry with himself that it makes him sullen with the world. Men of his -kind bear isolation and confinement ill. Steiner's is a dull place: -there is nothing to hear but the tolling of the church bell and the -fret of the Isel waters.'</p> - -<p>'That means, my friend, that you want him moved as soon as he can -bear it?' said Wanda. 'I think he cannot very well come here. We know -nothing of him. But there is no reason why you should not bring him -to the Lake Monastery. There is a good guest-chamber (the Archbishop -stayed there once), and he could have your constant care there, and -from here every comfort.'</p> - -<p>'Why should he not be brought to this house?' interrupted Mme. Ottilie; -'there are fifty men in it already——'</p> - -<p>'Servants and priests, no strangers. Beside, this gentleman will be -much more at his ease on the Holy Isle, where he can recompense the -monks at his pleasure; he would feel infinitely annoyed to be further -burdened with a hospitality he never asked!'</p> - -<p>'Of course it is as you please!' said the Princess, a little irritably.</p> - -<p>'Dear aunt! when he is on the island you can send him all the luxuries -and all the holy books you may think good for him. Go over to the monks -if you will be so kind, Herr Joachim, and prepare them for a sick -guest; and as for transport and all the rest of the assistance you may -need, use the horses and the household as you see fit. I give you carte -blanche. I know your wisdom and your prudence and your charity.'</p> - -<p>The physician again returned to Pregratten, where he found his patient -fretting with restless impatience at his enforced imprisonment. He had -a difficulty in persuading Sabran to go back to that Szalrassee which -had cost him so dear; but when he was assured that he could pay the -monks what he chose for their hospitality, he at last consented to be -taken to the island.</p> - -<p>'I shall see her again,' he thought, with a little anger at himself. -The mountain spirits had their own way of granting wishes, but they had -granted his.</p> - -<p>On the Holy Isle of the Szalrassee there was a small Dominican -congregation, never more than twelve, of men chiefly peasant-born, -and at this time all advanced in years. The monastery was a low, grey -pile, almost hidden beneath the great willows and larches of the isle, -but rich within from many centuries of gifts in art from the piety of -the lords of Szaravola. It had two guest-chambers for male visitors, -which were lofty and hung with tapestry, and which looked down the lake -towards the north and west, to where beyond the length of water there -rose the mighty forest hills washed by the Salzach and the Ache, backed -by the distant Rhœtian Alps.</p> - -<p>The island was almost in the centre of the lake, and, at a distance -of three miles, the rocks, on which the castle stood, faced it across -the water that rippled around it and splashed its trees and banks. It -was a refuge chosen in wild and rough times when repose was precious, -and no spot on earth was ever calmer, quieter, more secluded than this -where the fishermen never landed without asking a blessing of those who -dwelt there, and nothing divided the hours except the bells that called -to prayer or frugal food. The green willows and the green waters met -and blended and covered up this house of peace as a warbler's nest is -hidden in the reeds. A stranger resting-place had never befallen the -world-tossed, restless, imperious, and dissatisfied spirit of the man -who was brought there by careful hands lying on a litter, on a raft, -one gorgeous evening of a summer's day—one month after he had lifted -his rifle to bring down the <i>kuttengeier</i> in the woods of Wanda von -Szalras.</p> - -<p>'Almost thou makest me believe,' he murmured, when he lay and looked -upward at the cross that shone against the evening skies, while the -raft glided slowly over the water, and from the walled retreat upon the -isle there came the low sound of the monks chanting their evensong.</p> - -<p>They laid him down on a low, broad bed opposite a window of three -bays, which let him look from his couch along the shining length of the -Szalrassee towards the great burg, where it frowned upon its wooded -cliffs with the stone brows of many mountains towering behind it, and -behind them the glaciers of the Glöckner and its lesser comrades.</p> - -<p>The sun had just then set. There was a lingering glow upon the water, -a slender moon had risen above a distant chain of pine-clothed hills, -the slow, soft twilight of the German Alps was bathing the grandeur of -the scene with tenderest, faintest colours and mists ethereal. The Ave -Maria was ringing from the chapel, and presently the deep bells of the -monastery chimed a Laus Deus.</p> - -<p>'Do you believe in fate?' said Sabran abruptly to his companion -Greswold.</p> - -<p>The old physician gave a little gesture of doubt.</p> - -<p>'Sometimes there seems something stronger than ourselves and our will, -but maybe it is only our own weakness that has risen up and stands -in another shape like a giant before us, as our shadow will do on a -glacier in certain seasons and states of the atmosphere.'</p> - -<p>'Perhaps that is all,' said Sabran. But he laid his head back on his -pillow with a deep breath that had in it an equal share of contentment -and regret, and lay still, looking eastward, while the peaceful night -came down upon land and water unbroken by any sound except that of a -gentle wind stirring amidst the willows or the plunge of an otter in -the lake.</p> - -<p>That deep stillness was strange to him who had lived so long in all the -gayest cities of the world; but it was welcome: it seemed like a silent -blessing: his life seemed to stand still while holy men prayed for him -and the ramparts of the mountains shut out the mad and headlong world.</p> - -<p>With these fancies he fell asleep and dreamed of pathless steppes, -which in the winter snows were so vast and vague, stretching away, -away, away to the frozen sea and the ice that no suns can melt, and -ceaseless silence, where sleep is death.</p> - -<p>In the monastic quiet of the isle he soon recovered sufficient strength -to leave his bed and move about slowly, though he was still stiff and -sprained from the fall on the Umbal; he could take his dinner in the -refectory, could get out and sit under the great willows of the bank, -and could touch their organ as the monks never had heard it played.</p> - -<p>It was a monotonous and perfectly simple life; but either because his -health was not yet strong, or because he had been surfeited with -excitement, it was not disagreeable or irksome to him; he bore it with -a serenity and cheerfulness which the monks attributed to religious -patience, and Herr Joachim to philosophy. It was not one nor the other: -it was partly from such willingness as an overtaxed racer feels to lie -down in the repose of the stall for a while to recruit his courage -and speed: it was partly due to the certainty which he felt that now, -sooner or later, he must see face to face once more the woman who had -forbade him to shoot the vulture.</p> - -<p>The face which had looked on him in the pale sunlight of the -pine-woods, and made him think of the Nibelungen queen, had been always -present to his thoughts, even during the semi-stupor of sedative-lulled -rest in his dull chamber by the lonely Isel stream.</p> - -<p>From this guest-room, where he passed his convalescence, the wide -casements all day long showed him the towers and turrets, the metal -roofs, the pinnacles and spires of her mighty home, backed by its -solemn neighbours of the glacier and the alps, and girdled with the -sombre green of the great forests. Once or twice he thought as he -looked at it and saw the noon sun make its countless oriels sparkle -like diamonds, or the starlight change its stones and marbles into -dream-like edifices meet for Arthur's own Avilion, once or twice he -thought to himself, 'If I owned Hohenszalras, and she Romaris, I would -write to her and say: "A moment is enough for love to be born."'</p> - -<p>But Romaris was his—those aged oaks, torn by sea-winds and splashed -with Atlantic spray, were all he had; and she was mistress here.</p> - -<p>When a young man made his first appearance in the society of Paris -who was called Réné Philippe Xavier, Marquis de Sabran-Romaris, his -personal appearance, which was singularly attractive, his manners, -which were of extreme distinction, and his talents, which were great, -made him at once successful in its highest society. He had a romantic -history.</p> - -<p>The son of that Marquis de Sabran who had fallen under the pikes of -the mob of Carrier had been taken in secret out of the country by -a faithful servant, smuggled on board a <i>chasse-marée</i>, which had -carried him to an outward-bound sailing ship destined for the seaboard -of America. The chaplain was devoted, the servant faithful. The boy -was brought up well at a Jesuit college in Mexico, and placed in full -possession, when he reached manhood, of his family papers and of such -remnants of the family jewels as had been brought away with him. His -identity as his father's only living son, and the sole representative -of the Sabrans of Romaris, was fully established and confirmed -before the French Consulate of the city. Instead of returning to his -country, as his Jesuit tutors advised and desired, the youth, when he -left college, gave the reins to a spirit of adventure and a passion -for archæology and natural history. He was possessed beyond all with -the desire to penetrate the mystery of the buried cities, and he had -conceived a strong attachment to the flowery and romantic land of -Guatemozin and of Montezuma. He plunged, therefore, into the interior -of that country, and, half as a Jesuit lay-missionary, and half as -an archeological explorer, let all his best years slip away under -the twilight shadows of the virgin forests, and amidst the flowering -wilderness of the banks of the great rivers, making endless notes upon -the ancient and natural history of these solitudes, and gathering -together an interminable store of tradition from the Indians and the -half-breeds with whom he grew familiar. He went further and further -away from the cities, and let longer and longer intervals elapse -without his old friends and teachers hearing anything of him. All that -was known of him was that he had married a beautiful Mexican woman, -who was said to have in her the blood of the old royal race, and that -he lived far from the steps of white men in the depths of the hills -whence the Pacific was in sight. Once he went to the capital for the -purpose of registering and baptizing his son by his Mexican wife. -After that he was lost sight of by those who cared for him, and it -was only known that he was compiling a history of those lost nations -whose temples and tombs, amidst the wilderness, had so powerfully -attracted his interest as a boy. A quarter of a century passed; his -old friends died away one by one, nobody remained in the country who -remembered or asked for him. The West is wide, and wild, and silent; -endless wars and revolutions changed the surface of the country and -the thoughts of men; the scholarly Marquis de Sabran, who only cared -for a hieroglyphic, or an orchid, or a piece of archaic sculpture, -passed away from the memories of the white men whose fellow student he -had been. The land was soaked in blood, the treasures were given up -to adventurers; the chiefs that each reigned their little hour, slew, -and robbed, and burned, and fell in their turn shot like vultures or -stabbed like sheep; and no one in that murderous <i>tohu-bohu</i> had either -time or patience to give to the thought of a student of perished altars -and of swamp-flora. The college, even, where the Jesuits had sheltered -him, had been sacked and set on fire, and the old men and the young -men butchered indiscriminately. When six-and-twenty years later he -returned to the capital to register the birth of his grandson there was -no one who remembered his name. Another quarter of a century passed -by, and when his young representative left the Western world for Paris -he received a tender and ardent welcome from men and women to whom -his name was still a talisman, and found a cordial recognition from -that old nobility whose pride is so cautious and impregnable in its -isolation and reserve. Everyone knew that the young Marquis de Sabran -was the legitimate representative of the old race that had made its -nest on the rocks with the sea birds through a dozen centuries: that he -had but little wealth was rather to his credit than against it.</p> - -<p>When he gave to the world, in his grandfather's name, the result of all -those long years of study and of solitude in the heart of the Mexican -forests, he carried out the task as only a scientific scholar could -have done it, and the vast undigested mass of record, tradition, and -observation which the elder man had collected together in his many -years of observation and abstraction were edited and arranged with so -much skill that their mere preparation placed their young compiler -in the front frank of culture. That he disclaimed all merit of his -own, affirming that he had simply put together into shape all the -scattered memoranda of the elder scholar, did not detract from the -learning or from the value of his annotations. The volumes became the -first authority on the ancient history and the natural history of a -strange country, of which alike the past and the present were of rare -interest, and their production made his name known where neither rank -nor grace would have taken it. To those who congratulated him on the -execution of so complicated and learned a work, he only replied: 'It is -no merit of mine: all the learning is his. In giving it to the world I -do but pay my debt to him, and I am but a mere instrument of his as the -printing-press is that prints it.'</p> - -<p>This modesty, this affectionate loyalty in a young man whose attributes -seemed rather to lie on the side of arrogance, of disdainfulness, -and of coldness, attracted to him the regard of many persons to -whom the mere idler, which he soon became, would have been utterly -indifferent. He chose, as such persons thought, most unfortunately, to -let his intellectual powers lie in abeyance, but he had shown that he -possessed them. No one without large stores of learning and a great -variety of attainments could have edited and annotated as he had done -the manuscripts bequeathed to him by the Marquis Xavier as his most -precious legacy. He might have occupied a prominent place in the world -of science; but he was too indolent or too sceptical even of natural -facts, or too swayed towards the pleasures of manhood, to care for -continued consecration of his life to studies of which he was early -a master, and it was the only serious work that he ever carried out -or seemed likely ever to attempt. Gradually these severe studies were -left further and further behind him; but they had given him a certain -place that no future carelessness could entirely forfeit. He grew to -prefer to hear a <i>bluette d'amateur</i> praised at the Mirliton, to be -more flattered when his presence was prayed for at a <i>première</i> of the -Française; but it had carried his name wherever, in remote corners of -the earth, two or three wise men were gathered together.</p> - -<p>He had no possessions in France to entail any obligations upon him. The -single tower of the manoir which the flames had left untouched, and -an acre or two of barren shore, were all which the documents of the -Sabrans enabled him to claim. The people of the department were indeed -ready to adore him for the sake of the name he bore; but he had the -true Parisian's impatience of the province, and the hamlet of Romaris -but rarely saw his face. The sombre seaboard, with its primitive -people, its wintry storms, its monotonous country, its sad, hard, pious -ways of life, had nothing to attract a man who loved the gaslights of -the Champs-Élysées. Women loved him for that union of coldness and of -romance which always most allures them, and men felt a certain charm -of unused power in him which, coupled with his great courage and his -skill at all games, fascinated them often against their judgment. He -was a much weaker man than they thought him, but none of either sex -ever discovered it. Perhaps he was also a better man than he himself -believed. As he dwelt in the calm of this religious community his sins -seemed to him many and beyond the reach of pardon.</p> - -<p>Yet even with remorse, and a sense of shame in the background, this -tranquil life did him good. The simple fare, the absence of excitement, -the silent lake-dwelling where no sound came, except that of the bells -or the organ, or the voices of fishermen on the waters, the 'early -to bed and early to rise,' which were the daily laws of the monastic -life—these soothed, refreshed, and ennobled his life.</p> - - - -<hr class="chap" /> -<h4><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI.</a></h4> - - -<p>The days drifted by; the little boat crossed thrice a day from castle -to monastery, bringing the physician, bringing books, food, fruit, -wine; the rain came often, sheets of white water sweeping over the -lake, and blotting the burg and the hills and the forests from -sight; the sunshine came more rarely, but when it came it lit up the -amphitheatre of the Glöckner group to a supreme splendour, of solemn -darkness of massed pines, of snow-peaks shrouded in the clouds. So the -month wore away; he was in no haste to recover entirely; he could pay -the monks for his maintenance, and so felt free to stay, not being -allowed to know that his food came from the castle as his books did. -The simple priests were conquered and captivated by him; he played -grand Sistine masses for them, and canticles which he had listened -to in Nôtre Dame. Herr Joachim marvelled to see him so passive and -easily satisfied; for he perceived that his patient could not be -by nature either very tranquil or quickly content; but the doctor -thought that perhaps the severe nervous shock of the descent on the -Umbal might have shakened and weakened him, and knew that the pure -Alpine air, the harmless pursuits, and the early hours were the best -tonics and restoratives in the pharmacy of Nature. Therefore he could -consistently encourage him to stay, as his own wishes moved him to do; -for to the professor the companionship and discussion of a scholarly -and cultivated man were rarities, and he had conceived an affectionate -interest in one whose life he had in some measure saved; for without -skilled care the crevasse of the Iselthal might have been fatal to a -mountaineer who had successfully climbed the highest peaks of the Andes.</p> - -<p>'No doubt if I passed a year here,' thought Sabran, 'I should rebel -and grow sick with longing for the old unrest, the old tumult, the -old intoxication—no doubt; but just now it is very welcome: it makes -me comprehend why De Rancy created La Trappe, why so many soldiers -and princes and riotous livers were glad to go out into a Paraclete -amongst the hills with S. Bruno or S. Bernard.'</p> - -<p>He said something of the sort to Herr Joachim, who nodded consent; but -added: 'Only they took a great belief with them, and a great penitence, -the recluses of that time; in ours men mistake satiety for sorrow, and -so when their tired vices have had time to grow again, like nettles -that have been gnawed to the root but can spring up with fresh power -to sting, then, as their penitence was nothing but fatigue, they get -quickly impatient to go out and become beasts again. All the difference -between our times and S. Bruno's lies there; they believed in sin, we -do not. I say, "we," I mean the voluptuaries and idlers of your world.'</p> - -<p>'Perhaps not,' answered Sabran, a little gloomily. 'But we do believe -in dishonour.'</p> - -<p>'Do you?' said the doctor, with some irony. 'Oh, I suppose you do. You -may seduce Gretchen: you must not forsake Faustine; you must not lie to -a man: you may lie to a woman. You must not steal: you may beggar your -friend at baccara. I confess I have never understood the confusion of -your unwritten laws on ethics and etiquette.'</p> - -<p>Sabran laughed, but he did not take up the argument; and the doctor -thought that he seemed becoming a little morose; since his escape from -the tedium of confinement at Pregratten, confinement intolerable to a -man of strength and spirit, he had always found his patient of great -equability of temper, and of a good-humour and docility that had seemed -as charming as they were invariable.</p> - -<p>When he was recovered enough to make movement and change harmless to -him, there came to him a note in the fine and miniature writing of the -Princess Ottilie, bidding him come over to the castle at his pleasure, -and especially inviting him, in her niece's name, to the noon-day -breakfast at the castle on the following day, if his strength allowed.</p> - -<p>He sat a quarter of an hour or more with the note on his knee, looking -out at the light green willow foliage as it drooped above the deeper -green of the lake.</p> - -<p>'Our ladies are not used to refusals,' said the doctor, seeing his -hesitation.</p> - -<p>'I should be a churl to refuse,' said Sabran, with some little effort, -which the doctor attributed to a remembered mortification, and so -hastened to say:</p> - -<p>'You are resentful still that the Countess Wanda took your rifle away? -Surely she has made amends?'</p> - -<p>'I was not thinking of that. She was perfectly right. She only treated -me too well. She placed her house and her household at my disposition -with a hospitality quite Spanish. I owe her too much ever to be able to -express my sense of it.'</p> - -<p>'Then you will come and tell her so?'</p> - -<p>'I can do no less.'</p> - -<p>Princess Ottilie and the mistress of Hohenszalras had had a discussion -before that note of invitation was sent; a discussion which had ended -as usual in the stronger reasoner giving way to the whim and will of -the weaker.</p> - -<p>'Why should we not be kind to him?' the Princess had urged; 'he is -a gentleman. You know I took the precaution to write to Kaulnitz; -Kaulnitz's answer is clear enough: and to Frohsdorf, from which it was -equally satisfactory. I wrote also to the Comte de la Barée; his reply -was everything which could be desired.'</p> - -<p>'No doubt,' her niece had answered for the twentieth time; 'but I -think we have already done enough for Christianity and hospitality; we -need not offer him our personal friendship; as there is no master in -this house he will not expect to be invited to it.' We will wish him -God-speed when he is fully restored and is going away.'</p> - -<p>'You are really too prudish!' said the Princess, very angrily. 'I -should be the last person to counsel an imprudence, a failure in due -caution, in correct reserve and hesitation; but for you to pretend that -a Countess von Szalras cannot venture to invite a person to her own -residence because that person is of the opposite sex——'</p> - -<p>'That is not the question; the root of the matter is that he is a -chance acquaintance made quite informally; we should have been cruel if -we had done less than we have done, but there can be no need that we -should do more.'</p> - -<p>'I can ask more about him of Kaulnitz,' said Madame Ottilie.</p> - -<p>Kaulnitz was one of her innumerable cousins, and was then minister in -Paris.</p> - -<p>'Why should you?' said her niece. 'Do you think either that it is quite -honourable to make inquiries unknown to people? It always savours to me -too much of the Third Section.'</p> - -<p>'You are so exaggerated in all your scruples; you prefer to be -suspicious of a person in silence than to ask a few questions,' said -the Princess. 'But surely when two ambassadors and the Kaiser guarantee -his position you may be content.'</p> - -<p>The answer she had received from Kaulnitz had indeed only moderately -satisfied her. It said that there was nothing known to the detriment -of the Marquis de Sabran; that he had never been accused of anything -unfitting his rank and name; but that he was a <i>viveur</i>, and was said -to be very successful at play; he was not known to have any debts, but -he was believed to be poor and of precarious fortunes. On the whole the -Princess had decided to keep the answer to herself; she had remembered -with irritation that her niece had suggested baccara as the source of -the hundred gold pieces.</p> - -<p>'I never intended to convey that ambassadors would disown him or the -Kaiser either, whose signature is in his pocket-book. Only,' said -Wanda, 'as you and I are all alone, surely it will be as well to leave -this gentleman to the monks and to Greswold. That is all I mean.'</p> - -<p>'It is a perfectly unnecessary scruple, and not at all like one of your -race. The Szalras have always been hospitable and headstrong.'</p> - -<p>'I hope I am the first—I have done my best for M. de Sabran; as for -being headstrong—surely that is not a sweet or wise quality that you -should lament my loss of it?'</p> - -<p>'You need not quarrel with me,'said the Princess, pettishly. 'You have -a terrible habit of contradiction, Wanda: and you never give up your -opinion.'</p> - -<p>The mistress of Hohenszalras smiled, and sighed a little.</p> - -<p>'Dear mother, we will do anything that amuses you.'</p> - -<p>So the note was sent.</p> - -<p>The Princess had been always eager for such glimpses of the moving -world as had been allowed to her by any accidental change. Her -temperament would have led her to find happiness in the frivolous -froth and fume of a worldly existence; she delighted in gossip, in -innocent gaiety, in curiosity, in wonder; all her early years had been -passed under repression and constraint, and now in her old age she was -as eager as a child for any plaything, as inquisitive as a marmoset, -as animated as a squirrel. Her mother had been a daughter of a great -French family of the south, and much of the vivacity and sportive -malice and quick temper of the Gallic blood was in her still, beneath -the primness and the placidity that had become her habit, from long -years passed in a little German court and in a stately semi-religious -order.</p> - -<p>This stranger whom chance had brought to them was to her idea a -precious and providential source of excitement: already a hundred -romances had suggested themselves to her fertile mind; already a -hundred impossibilities had suggested themselves to her as probable. -She did not in the least believe that accident had brought him there. -She imagined that he had wandered there for the sake of seeing the -mistress of Hohenszalras, who had for so long been unseen by the -world, but whose personal graces and great fortune had remained in the -memories of many. To the romantic fancy of the Princess, which had -never been blunted by contact with harsh facts, nothing seemed prettier -or more probable than that the French marquis, when arrested as a -poacher, had been upon a pilgrimage of poetic adventure. It should not -be her fault, she resolved, if the wounded knight had to go away in -sorrow and silence, without the castle gates being swung open once at -least.</p> - -<p>'After all, if she would only take an interest in anything human,' she -thought, 'instead of always horses and mountains, and philosophical -treatises and councils, and calculations with the stewards! She ought -not to live and die alone. They made me vow to do so, and perhaps it -was for the best, but I would never say to anyone—Do likewise.'</p> - -<p>And then the Princess felt the warm tears on her own cheeks, thinking -of herself as she had been at seventeen, pacing up and down the stiff -straight alley of clipped trees at Lilienhöhe with a bright young -soldier who had fallen in a duel ere he was twenty. It was all so -long ago, so long ago, and she was a true submissive daughter of her -princely house, and of her Holy Church; yet she knew that it was not -meet for a woman to live and die without a man's heart to beat by her -own, without a child's hands to close her glazing eyes.</p> - -<p>And Wanda von Szalras wished so to live and so to die! Only one -magician could change her. Why should he not come?</p> - -<p>So on the morrow the little boat that had brought the physician to him -so often took him over the two miles of water to the landing stairs at -the foot of the castle rock. In a little while he stood in the presence -of his châtelaine.</p> - -<p>He was a man who never in his life had been confused, unnerved, or at a -loss for words; yet now he felt as a boy might have done, as a rustic -might; he had a mist before his eyes, his heart beat quickly, he grew -very pale.</p> - -<p>She thought he was still suffering, and looked at him with interest.</p> - -<p>'I am afraid that we did wrong to tempt you from the monastery,' she -said, in her grave melodious voice; and she stretched out her hand to -him with a look of sympathy. I am afraid you are still suffering and -weak, are you not?'</p> - -<p>He bent low as he touched it.</p> - -<p>'How can I thank you?' he murmured. 'You have treated a vagrant like a -king!'</p> - -<p>'You were a munificent vagrant to our chapel and our poor,' she replied -with a smile. And what have we done for you? Nothing more than is our -commonest duty, far removed from cities or even villages, as we are. -Are you really recovered? I may tell you now that there was a moment -when Herr Greswold was alarmed for you.'</p> - -<p>The Princess Ottilie entered at that moment and welcomed him with more -effusion and congratulation. They breakfasted in a chamber called the -Saxe room, an oval room lined throughout with lacquered white wood, -in the Louis Seize style; the panels were painted in Watteau-like -designs; it had been decorated by a French artist in the middle of the -eighteenth century, and with its hangings of flowered white satin, and -its collection of Meissen china figures, and its great window, which -looked over a small garden with velvet grass plots and huge yews, was -the place of all others to make an early morning meal most agreeable, -whether in summer when the casements were open to the old-fashioned -roses that climbed about them, or in winter when on the open hearth -great oak logs burned beneath the carved white wood mantelpiece, gay -with its plaques of Saxe and its garlands of foliage. The little oval -table bore a service of old Meissen, with tiny Watteau figures painted -on a ground of palest rose. Watteau figures of the same royal china -upheld great shells filled with the late violets of the woods of -Hohenszalras.</p> - -<p>'What an enchanting little room!' said Sabran, glancing round it, and -appreciating with the eyes of a connoisseur the Lancret designs, the -Riesiner cabinets, and the old china. He was as well versed in the -art and lore of the Beau Siècle as Arsène Houssaye or the Goncourts; -he talked now of the epoch with skill and grace, with that accuracy -of knowledge and that fineness of criticism which had made his -observations and his approval treasured and sought for by the artists -and the art patrons of Paris.</p> - -<p>The day was grey and mild; the casements were open; the fresh, pure -fragrance of the forests came in through the aromatic warmth of the -chamber; the little gay shepherds and shepherdesses seemed to breathe -and laugh.</p> - -<p>'This room was a caprice of an ancestress of mine, who was of your -country, and was, I am afraid, very wretched here,' said Wanda von -Szalras. 'She brought her taste from Marly and Versailles. It is not -the finest or the purest taste, but it has a grace and elegance of its -own that is very charming, as a change.'</p> - -<p>'It is a madrigal in porcelain,' he said, looking around him. 'I am -glad that the <i>alouette gauloise</i> has sung here beside the dread and -majestic Austrian vulture.'</p> - -<p>'The <i>alouette gauloise</i> always sings in Aunt Ottilie's heart; it -is what keeps her so young always. I assure you she is a great deal -younger than I am,' said his châtelaine, resting a glance of tender -affection on the pretty figure of the Princess caressing her Spitz dog -Bijou.</p> - -<p>She herself, with her great pearls about her throat, and a gown of -white serge, looked a stately and almost severe figure beside the -dainty picturesque prettiness of the elder lady and the fantastic -gaiety and gilding of the porcelain and the paintings. He felt a -certain awe of her, a certain hesitation before her, which the habits -of the world enabled him to conceal, but which moved him with a sense -of timidity, novel and almost painful.</p> - -<p>'One ought to be Dorat and Marmontel to be worthy of such a repast,' he -said, as he seated himself between his hostesses.</p> - -<p>'Neither Dorat nor Marmontel would have enjoyed your very terrible -adventure,' said the Princess, reflecting with satisfaction that it was -herself who had saved this charming and chivalrous life, since, at her -own risk and loss, she had sent her physicians, alike of body and of -soul, to wrestle for him with death by his sick bed at Pregratten.</p> - -<p>'Wanda would never have sent anyone to him,' thought the Princess: -'she is so unaccountably indifferent to any human life higher than her -peasantry.'</p> - -<p>'Adventures are to the adventurous,' quoted Sabran.</p> - -<p>'Yes,' said the Princess; 'but the pity is that the adventurous are too -often the questionable——'</p> - -<p>'Perhaps that is saying too much,' said Wanda; 'but it is certain that -the more solid qualities do not often lead into a career of excitement. -It has been always conceded—with a sigh—that duty is dull.'</p> - -<p>'I think adventure is like calamity: some people are born to it,' he -added,'and such cannot escape from it. Loyola may cover his head with -a cowl: he cannot become obscure. Eugene may make himself an abbé: he -cannot escape his horoscope cast in the House of Mars.'</p> - -<p>'What a fatalist you are!'</p> - -<p>'Do you think we ever escape our fate? Alexander slew all whom he -suspected, but he did not for that die in his bed of old age.'</p> - -<p>'That merely proves that crime is no buckler.'</p> - -<p>Sabran was silent.</p> - -<p>'My life has been very adventurous,' he said lightly, after a pause; -'but I have only regarded that as another name for misfortune. The -picturesque is not the prosperous; all beggars look well on canvas, -whilst Carolus Duran himself can make nothing of a portrait of Dives, -<i>roulant carrosse</i> through his fifty millions.'</p> - -<p>He had not his usual strength; his loins had had a wrench in the -crashing fall from the Umbal which they had not wholly recovered, -despite the wise medicaments of Greswold.</p> - -<p>He moved with some difficulty, and, not to weary him, she remained -after breakfast in the Watteau room, making him recline at length in a -long chair beside one of the windows. She was touched by the weakness -of a man evidently so strong and daring by nature, and she regretted -the rough and inhospitable handling which he had experienced from her -beloved hills and waters. She, who spoke to no one all the year through -except her stewards and her priests, did not fail to be sensible of the -pleasure she derived from the cultured and sympathetic companionship of -a brilliant and talented mind.</p> - -<p>'Ah! if Egon had only talent like that!' she thought, with a sigh -of remembrance. Her cousin was a gallant nobleman and soldier, but -of literature he had no knowledge; for art he had a consummate -indifference; and the only eloquence he could command was a brief -address to his troopers, which would be answered by an <i>Eljén</i>! ringing -loud and long, like steel smiting upon iron.</p> - -<p>Sabran could at all times talk well.</p> - -<p>He had the gift of facile and eloquent words, and he had also what most -attracted the sympathies of his hostess, a genuine and healthful love -of the mountains and forests. All his life in Paris had not eradicated -from his character a deep love for Nature in her wildest and her -stormiest moods. They conversed long and with mutual pleasure of the -country around them, of which she knew every ravine and torrent, and -of whose bold and sombre beauty he was honestly enamoured.</p> - -<p>The noon had deepened into afternoon, and the chimes of the clock-tower -were sounding four when he rose to take his leave, and go on his way -across the green brilliancy of the tumbling water to his quiet home -with the Dominican brethren. He had still the languor and fatigue -about him of recent illness, and he moved slowly and with considerable -weakness. She said to him in parting, with unaffected kindness, 'Come -across to us whenever you like; we are concerned to think that one of -our own glaciers should have treated you so cruelly. I am often out -riding far and wide, but my aunt will always be pleased to receive you.'</p> - -<p>'I am the debtor of the Umbal ice,' he said, in a low voice. 'But for -that happy fall I should have gone on my way to my old senseless life -without ever having known true rest as I know it yonder. Will you be -offended, too, if I say that I stayed at Matrey with a vague, faint, -unfounded hope that your mountains might be merciful, and let me——'</p> - -<p>'Shoot a <i>kuttengeier?</i>' she said quickly, as though not desiring to -hear his sentence finished. 'You might shoot one easily sitting at a -window in the monastery, and watching till the vultures flew across the -lake; but you will remember you are on parole. I am sure you will be -faithful.'</p> - -<p>Long, long afterwards she remembered that he shrank a little at the -word, and that a flush of colour went over his face.</p> - -<p>'I will,' he said simply; 'and it was not the <i>kuttengeier</i> for which I -desired to be allowed to revisit Hohenszalras.'</p> - -<p>'Well, if the monks starve you or weary you, you can remember that we -are here, and you must not give their organ quite all the music that -you bear so wonderfully in your mind and hands.'</p> - -<p>'I will play to you all day, if you will only allow me.'</p> - -<p>'Next time you come—to-morrow, if you like.'</p> - -<p>He went away, lying listlessly in the little boat, for he was still -far from strong; but life seemed to him very sweet and serene as the -evening light spread over the broad, bright water, and the water birds -rose and scattered before the plunge of the oars.</p> - -<p>Had the sovereign mistress of Hohenszalras ever said before to any -other living friend——to-morrow? Yet he was too clever a man to be -vain; and he did not misinterpret the calm kindness of her invitation.</p> - -<p>He went thither again the next day, though he left them early, for he -had a sensitive fear of wearying with his presence ladies to whom he -owed so much.</p> - -<p>But the Princess urged his speedy return, and the châtelaine of -Szaravola said once more, with that grave smile which was rather in the -eyes than on the lips, 'We shall always be happy to see you when you -are inclined to cross the lake.'</p> - -<p>He was a great adept at painting, and he made several broad, bold -sketches of the landscapes visible from the lake; he was famous for -many a drawing <i>brossé dans le vrai</i>, which hung at his favourite -club the Mirliton; he could paint, more finely and delicately also, -on ivory, on satin, on leather. He sent for some fans and screens -from Vienna, and did in <i>gouache</i> upon them exquisite birds, foliage, -flowers, legends of saints, which were beautiful enough to be not -unworthy a place in those rooms of the burg where the Penicauds, the -Fragonards, the Pettitôts, were represented by much of their most -perfect work.</p> - -<p>He passed his mornings in labour of this sort; at noonday or in the -afternoon he rowed across to Hohenszalras, and loitered for an hour -or two in the gardens or the library. Little by little they became so -accustomed to his coming that it would have seemed strange if more than -a day had gone by without the little striped blue boat gliding from the -Holy Isle to the castle stairs. He never stayed very long; not so long -as the Princess desired.</p> - -<p>'Never in my life have I spent weeks so harmlessly!' he said once with -a smile to the doctor; then he gave a quick sigh and turned away, for -he thought to himself in a sudden repentance that these innocent and -blameless days were perhaps but the prelude to one of the greatest sins -of a not sinless life.</p> - -<p>He came to be looked for quite naturally at the noonday breakfast in -the pretty Saxe chamber. He would spend hours playing on the chapel -organ, or on the piano in the octagon room which Liszt had chosen. The -grand and dreamy music rolled out over the green lake towards the green -hills, and Wanda would look often at the marble figure of her brother -on his tomb, lying like the statue of the young Gaston de Foix, and -think to herself, 'If only Bela were listening, too!'</p> - -<p>Sometimes she was startled when she remembered into what continual -intimacy she had admitted a man of whom she had no real knowledge.</p> - -<p>The Princess, indeed, had said to her, 'I did ask Kaulnitz: Kaulnitz -knows him quite well;' but that was hardly enough to satisfy a woman -as reserved in her friendships, and as habituated to the observance of -a severe etiquette, as was the châtelaine of Hohenszalras. Every day -almost she said to herself that she would not see him when he came, or, -if she saw him, would show him, by greater chilliness of manner, that -it was time he quitted the island. But when he did come, if he did not -see her he went to the chapel and played a mass, a requiem, an anthem, -a sonata; and Beethoven, Palestrina, Schumann, Wagner, Berlioz, surely -allured her from her solitude, and she would come on to the terrace and -listen to the waves of melody rolling out through the cool sunless air, -through the open door of the place where her beloved dead rested. Then, -as a matter of course, he stayed, and after the noonday meal sometimes -he rode with her in the forests, or drove the Princess in her pony -chair, or received permission to bear his châtelaine company in her -mountain walks. They were seldom alone, but they were much together.</p> - -<p>'It is much better for her than solitude,' thought the Princess. 'It is -not likely that she will ever care anything for him: she is so cold; -but if she did, there would be no great harm done. He is of old blood, -and she has wealth enough to need no more. Of course any one of our -great princes would be better; but, then, as she will never take any -one of them——'</p> - -<p>And the Princess, who was completely fascinated by the deferential -homage to her of Sabran, and the pleasure he honestly found in her -society, would do all she could, in her innocent and delicate way, to -give her favourite the opportunities he desired of intercourse with the -mistress of Hohenszalras. She wanted to see again the life that she had -seen in other days at the Schloss; grand parties for the hunting season -and the summer season, royal and noble people in the guest-chambers, -great gatherings for the chase on the <i>rond-point</i> in the woods, -covers for fifty laid at the table in the banqueting hall, and -besides—besides, thought the childless and loving old woman—little -children with long fair curls and gay voices wakening the echoes in the -Rittersäal with their sports and pastimes.</p> - -<p>It was noble and austere, no doubt, this life led by Wanda von Szalras -amidst the mountains in the Tauern, but it was lonely and monotonous to -the Princess, who still loved a certain movement, gossip, and diversion -as she liked to nibble a <i>nougat</i> and sip her chocolate foaming under -its thick cream. It seemed to her that even to suffer a little would be -better for her niece than this unvarying solitude, this eternal calm. -That she should have mourned for her brother was most natural, but this -perpetual seclusion was an exaggeration of regret.</p> - -<p>If the presence of Sabran reconciled her with the world, with life as -it was, and induced her to return to the court and to those pleasures -natural to her rank and to her years, it would be well done, thought -the Princess; and as for him—if he carried away a broken heart it -would be a great pity, but persons who like to move others as puppets -cannot concern themselves with the accidental injury of one of their -toys; and Mme. Ottilie was too content with her success of the moment -to look much beyond it.</p> - -<p>'The charm of being here is to me precisely what I daresay makes it -tiresome to you,' the mistress of Hohenszalras said to him one day, 'I -mean its isolation. One can entirely forget that beyond those mountains -there is a world fussing, fuming, brewing its storms in saucers, -and inventing a quantity of increased unwholesomeness, in noise and -stench, which it calls a higher civilisation. No! I would never have -a telegraph wire brought here from Matrey. There is nothing I ever -particularly care to know about. If there were anyone I loved who was -away from me it would be different. But there is no one. There are -people I like, of course——</p> - -<p>'But political events?' he suggested.</p> - -<p>'They do not attract me. They are ignoble. They are for the most part -contemptibly ill-managed, and to think that after so many thousands of -years humanity has not really progressed beyond the wild beasts' method -of settling disputes——'</p> - -<p>'There is so much of the wild beast in it. With such an opinion of -political life why do you counsel me to seek it?'</p> - -<p>'You are a man. There is nothing else for a man who has talent, and -who is—who is as you are, <i>désœuvré.</i> Intellectual work would be -better, but you do not care for it, it seems. Since your "Mexico"——'</p> - -<p>'The "Mexico" was no work of mine.'</p> - -<p>'Oh yes, pardon me: I have read it. All your notes, all your addenda, -show how the learning of the editor was even superior to that of the -original author.'</p> - -<p>'No; all that I could do was to simplify his immense erudition and -arrange it. I never loved the work; do not accredit me with so much -industry: but it was a debt that I paid, and paid easily too, for the -materials lay all to my hand, if in disorder.'</p> - -<p>'The Marquis Xavier must at least have infused his own love of -archæology and science into you?'</p> - -<p>'I can scarcely say even so much. I have a facility at acquiring -knowledge, which is not a very high quality. Things come easily to me. -I fear if Herr Joachim examined me he would find my science shallow.'</p> - -<p>'You have so many talents that perhaps you are like one of your own -Mexican forests; one luxuriance kills another.'</p> - -<p>'Had I had fewer I might have been more useful in my generation,' he -said, with a certain sincerity of regret.</p> - -<p>'You would have been much less interesting,' she thought to herself, as -she said aloud, 'There are the horses coming up to the steps: will you -ride with me? And do not be ungrateful for your good gifts. Talent is a -<i>Schlüsselblume</i> that opens to all hidden treasures.'</p> - -<p>'Why are you not in the Chamber?' she had said a little before to him. -'You are eloquent; you have an ancestry that binds you to do your best -for France.'</p> - -<p>'I have no convictions,' he had said, with a flush on his face. 'It is -a sad thing to confess.'</p> - -<p>'It is; but if you have nothing better to substitute for them you might -be content to abide by those of your fathers.'</p> - -<p>He had been silent.</p> - -<p>'Besides,' she had added, 'patriotism is not an opinion, it is an -instinct.'</p> - -<p>'With good men. I am not one of them.'</p> - -<p>'Go into public life,' she had repeated. 'Convictions will come to you -in an active career, as the muscles develop in the gymnasium.'</p> - -<p>'I am indolent,' he had demurred, 'and I have desultory habits.'</p> - -<p>'You may break yourself of these. There must be much in which you could -interest yourself. Begin with the fishing interests of the coast that -belongs to you.'</p> - -<p>'Honestly, I care for nothing except for myself. You will say it is -base.'</p> - -<p>'I am afraid it is natural.'</p> - -<p>He but seldom spoke of his early life. When he did so it was with -reluctance, as if it gave him pain. His father he had never known; of -his grandfather, the Marquis Xavier, as he usually called him, he spoke -with extreme and reverent tenderness, but with little reticence. The -grave old man, in the stateliness and simplicity of his solitary life, -had been to his youthful imagination a solemn and sacred figure.</p> - -<p>'His was the noblest life I have ever known,' he said once, with an -emotion in the accent of the words which she had never heard in his -voice before, and which gave her a passing impression of a regret in -him that was almost remorse.</p> - -<p>It might be, she reflected, the remorse of a man who, in his careless -youth, had been less heedful of the value of an affection and the -greatness of a character which, as he grew older and wiser, he learned -to appreciate when it was too late. He related willingly how the old -man had trusted him to carry out into the light of the world the fruits -of his life of research, and with what pleasure he had seen the instant -and universal recognition of the labours of the brain and the hand -that were dust. But of his own life in the West he said little; he -referred his skill in riding to the wild horses of the pampas, and his -botanical and scientific knowledge to the studies which the solitudes -of the sierras had made him turn to as relaxation and occupation; but -of himself he said little, nothing, unless the conversation so turned -upon his life there that it was impossible for him to avoid those -reminiscences which were evidently little agreeable to him. Perhaps -she thought some youthful passion, some unwise love, had made those -flowering swamps and sombre plains painful in memory to him. There -might be other graves than that of the Marquis Xavier beneath the -plumes of pampas grass. Perhaps, also, to a man of the world, a man of -mere pleasure as he had become, that studious and lonesome youth of his -already had drifted so far away that, seen in distance, it seemed dim -and unreal as any dream.</p> - -<p>'How happy you are to have so many admirable gifts!' said Wanda to him -one day, when he had offered her a fan that he had painted on ivory. He -had a facile skill at most of the arts, and had acquired accuracy and -technique lounging through the painting-rooms of Paris. The fan was an -exquisite trifle, and bore on one side her monogram and the arms of her -house, and on the other mountain flowers and birds, rendered with the -delicacy of a miniaturist.</p> - -<p>'What is the use of a mere amateur?' he said, with indifference. 'When -one has lived amongst artists one learns heartily to despise oneself -for daring to flirt with those sacred sisters the Muses.'</p> - -<p>'Why? And, after all, when one has such perfect talent as yours, the -definition of amateur and artist seems a very arbitrary and meaningless -one. If you needed to make your fame and fortune by painting faces -you could do so. You do not need. Does that make the fan the less -precious? The more, I think, since gold cannot buy it.'</p> - -<p>'You are too kind to me. The world would not be as much so if I really -wanted its suffrages.'</p> - -<p>'You cannot tell that. I think you have that facility which is the -first note of genius. It is true all your wonderful talents seem the -more wonderful to me because I have none myself. I feel art, but I have -no power over it; and as for what are called accomplishments I have -none. I could, perhaps, beat you in the shooting gallery, and I will -try some day if you like, and I can ride—well, like my Kaiserin—but -accomplishments I have none.'</p> - -<p>'Surely you were yesterday reading Plato in his own text?'</p> - -<p>'I learnt Greek and Latin with my brother. You cannot call that an -accomplishment. The ladies of the old time often knew the learned -tongues, though they were greater at tapestry or distilling and at -the ordering of their household. In a solitary place like this it is -needful to know so many useful things. I can shoe my horse and harness -a sleigh; I can tell every useful herb and flower in the woods; I know -well what to do in frostbite or accidents; if I were lost in the hills -I could make my way by the stars; I can milk a cow, and can row any -boat, and I can climb with crampons; I am a mountaineer. Do not be so -surprised. I do all that I have the children taught in my schools. -But in a salon I am useless and stupid; the last new lady whose lord -has been decorated because he sold something wholesale or cheated -successfully at the Bourse would, I assure you, eclipse me easily in -the talents of the drawing-room.'</p> - -<p>Sabran looked at her and laughed outright. A compliment would have -seemed ridiculous before this beautiful patrician, with her serene -dignity, her instinctive grace, her unconscious hauteur, her entire -possession of all those attributes which are the best heirlooms of -a great nobility. To protest against her words would have been like -an insult to this daughter of knights and princes, to whom half the -sovereigns of modern Europe would have seemed but parvenus, the -accidental mushroom growth of the decay in the contest of nations.</p> - -<p>His laughter amused her, though it was, perhaps, the most discreet and -delicate of compliments. She was not offended by it as she would have -been with any spoken flattery.</p> - -<p>'After all, do not think me modest in what I have said,' she pursued. -'<i>Talents de société</i> are but slight things at the best, and in our -day need not even have either wit or culture: a good travesty at a -costume-ball, a startling gown on a racecourse, a series of adventures -more or less true, a trick of laughing often and laughing long—any -one of these is enough for renown in your Paris. In Vienna we do more -homage to tradition still; our Court life has still something of the -grace of the minuet.'</p> - -<p>'Yet even in Vienna you refuse——'</p> - -<p>'To spend my time? Why not? The ceremonies of a Court are wearisome to -me; my duties lie here; and for the mirth and pomp of society I have -had no heart since the grief that you know of fell upon me.'</p> - -<p>It was the first time that she had ever spoken of her brother's loss to -him: he bowed very low in silent sympathy.</p> - -<p>'Who would not envy his death, since it has brought such remembrance!' -he said in a low tone, after some moments.</p> - -<p>'Ah, if only we could be sure that unceasing regret consoles the dead!' -she said, with an emotion, that softened and dimmed all her beauty. -Then, as if ashamed or repentant of having shown her feeling for Bela -to a stranger, she turned to him and said more distantly:</p> - -<p>'Would it entertain you to see my little scholars? I will take you to -the schoolhouses if you like.'</p> - -<p>He could only eagerly accept the offer: he felt his heart beat and his -eyes lighten as she spoke. He knew that such a condescension in her was -a mark of friendship, a sign of familiar intimacy.</p> - -<p>'It is but a mile or so through the woods. We will walk there,' she -said, as she took her tall cane from its rack and called to Neva and -Donau, where they lay on the terrace without.</p> - -<p>He fancied that the vague mistrust of him, the vague prejudice against -him of which he had been sensible in her, were passing away from her -mind; but still he doubted—doubted bitterly—whether she would ever -give him any other thought than that due to a passing and indifferent -acquaintance. That she admired his intelligence and that she pitied his -loneliness he saw; but there seemed to him that never, never, never, -would he break down in his own favour that impalpable but impassable -barrier due, half to her pride, half to her reserve, and absolutely to -her indifference, which separated Wanda von Szalras from the rest of -mankind.</p> - -<p>If she had any weakness or foible it was the children's schools on the -estates in the High Tauern and elsewhere. They had been founded on a -scheme of Bela's and her own, when they had been very young, and the -world to them a lovely day without end. Their too elaborate theories -had been of necessity curtailed, but the schools had been established -on the basis of their early dreams, and were unlike any others that -existed. She had read much and deeply, and had thought out all she had -read, and as she enjoyed that happy power of realising and embodying -her own theories which most theorists are denied, she had founded the -schools of the High Tauern in absolute opposition to all that the -school-boards of her generation have decreed as desirable. And in every -one of her villages she had her schools on this principle, and they -throve, and the children with them. Many of these could not read a -printed page, but all of them could read the shepherd's weather-glass -in sky and flower; all of them knew the worm that was harmful to the -crops, the beetle that was harmless in the grass; all knew a tree by a -leaf, a bird by a feather, an insect by a grub.</p> - -<p>Modern teaching makes a multitude of gabblers. She did not think it -necessary for the little goatherds, and dairymaids, and foresters, -and charcoal-burners, and sennerinn, and carpenters, and cobblers, to -study the exact sciences or draw casts from the antique. She was of -opinion, with Pope, that 'a little learning is a dangerous thing,' and -that a smattering of it will easily make a man morose and discontented, -whilst it takes a very deep and even lifelong devotion to it to teach a -man content with his lot. Genius, she thought, is too rare a thing to -make it necessary to construct village schools for it, and whenever or -wherever it comes upon earth it will surely be its own master.</p> - -<p>She did not believe in culture for little peasants who have to work for -their daily bread at the plough-tail or with the reaping-hook. She knew -that a mere glimpse of a Canaan of art and learning is cruelty to those -who never can enter into and never even can have leisure to merely gaze -on it. She thought that a vast amount of useful knowledge is consigned -to oblivion whilst children are taught to waste their time in picking -up the crumbs of a great indigestible loaf of artificial learning. She -had her scholars taught their 'ABC,' and that was all. Those who wished -to write were taught, but writing was not enforced. What they were made -to learn was the name and use of every plant in their own country; -the habits and ways of all animals; how to cook plain food well, and -make good bread; how to brew simples from the herbs of their fields -and woods, and how to discern the coming weather from the aspect of -the skies, the shutting-up of certain blossoms, and the time of day -from those 'poor men's watches,' the opening flowers. In all countries -there is a great deal of useful household and out-of-door lore that is -fast being choked out of existence under books and globes, and which, -unless it passes by word of mouth from generation to generation, is -quickly and irrevocably lost. All this lore she had cherished by her -schoolchildren. Her boys were taught in addition any useful trade they -liked—boot-making, crampon-making, horse-shoeing, wheel-making, or -carpentry. This trade was made a pastime to each. The little maidens -learned to sew, to cook, to spin, to card, to keep fowls and sheep and -cattle in good health, and to know all poisonous plants and berries by -sight.</p> - -<p>'I think it is what is wanted,' she said. 'A little peasant child does -not need to be able to talk of the corolla and the spathe, but he does -want to recognise at a glance the flower that will give him healing -and the berries that will give him death. His sister does not in the -least require to know why a kettle boils, but she does need to know -when a warm bath will be good for a sick baby or when hurtful. We want -a new generation to be helpful, to have eyes, and to know the beauty -of silence. I do not mind much whether my children read or not. The -labourer that reads turns Socialist, because his brain cannot digest -the hard mass of wonderful facts he encounters. But I believe every one -of my little peasants, being wrecked like Crusoe, would prove as handy -as he.'</p> - -<p>She was fond of her scholars and proud of them, and they were never -afraid of her. They knew well it was the great lady who filled all -their sacks the night of Santa Claus—even those of the naughty -children, because, as she said, childhood was so short that she thought -it cruel to give it any disappointments.</p> - -<p>The walk to the schoolhouse lay through the woods to the south of the -castle; woods of larch and beech and walnut and the graceful Siberian -pine, with deep mosses and thick fern-brakes beneath them, and ever and -again a watercourse tumbling through their greenery to fall into the -Szalrassee below.</p> - -<p>'I always fancy I can hear here the echo of the great Krimler -torrents,' she said to him as they passed through the trees. 'No -doubt it <i>is</i> fancy, and the sound is only from our own falls. But -the peasants' tradition is, you may know, that our lake is the water -of the Krimler come to us underground from the Pinzgau. Do you know -our Sahara of the North? It is monotonous and barren enough, and yet -with its vast solitudes of marsh and stones, its flocks of wild fowl, -its reedy wastes, its countless streams, it is grand in its own way. -And then in the heart of it there are the thunder and the boiling fury -of Krimml! You will smile because I am an enthusiast for my country, -you who have seen Orinoco and Chimborazo; but even you will own that -the old Duchy of Austria, the old Archbishopric of Salzburg, the old -Countship of Tirol, have some beauty and glory in them. Here is the -schoolhouse. Now you shall see what I think needful for the peasant of -the future. Perhaps you will condemn me as a true Austrian: that is, as -a Reactionist.'</p> - -<p>The schoolhouse was a châlet, or rather a collection of châlets, set -one against another on a green pasture belted by pine woods, above -which the snows of the distant Venediger were gleaming amidst the -clouds. There was a loud hum of childish voices rising through the open -lattice, and these did not cease as they entered the foremost house.</p> - -<p>'Do not be surprised that they take no notice of our entrance,' she -said to him. 'I have taught them not to do so unless I bid them. If -they left off their tasks I could never tell how they did them; and is -not the truest respect shown in obedience?'</p> - -<p>'They are as well disciplined as soldiers,' he said with a smile, -as twenty curly heads bent over desks were lifted for a moment to -instantly go down again.</p> - -<p>'Surely discipline is next to health,' added Wanda. 'If the child do -not learn it early he must suffer fearfully when he reaches manhood, -since all men, even princes, have to obey some time or other, and the -majority of men are not princes, but are soldiers, clerks, porters, -guides, labourers, tradesmen, what not; certainly something subject -to law if not to a master. How many lives have been lost because a -man failed to understand the meaning of immediate and unquestioning -obedience! Soldiers are shot for want of it, yet children are not to be -taught it!'</p> - -<p>Whilst she spoke not a child looked up or left off his lesson: the -teacher, a white-haired old man, went on with his recitation.</p> - -<p>'Your teachers are not priests?' he said in some surprise.</p> - -<p>'No,' she answered; 'I am a faithful daughter of the Church, as you -know; but every priest is perforce a specialist, if I may be forgiven -the profanity, and the teacher of children should be of perfectly open, -simple and unbiassed mind; the priest's can never be that. Besides, -his teaching is apart. The love and fear of God are themes too vast -and too intimate to be mingled with the pains of the alphabet and the -multiplication tables. There alone I agree with your French Radicals, -though from a very different reason to theirs. Now in this part of the -schools you see the children are learning from books. These children -have wished to read, and are taught to do so; but I do not enforce -though I recommend it. You think that very barbarous? Oh! reflect for -a moment how much more glorious was the world, was literature itself, -before printing was invented. Sometimes I think it was a book, not a -fruit, that Satan gave. You smile incredulously. Well, no doubt to a -Parisian it seems absurd. How should you understand what is wanted in -the heart of these hills? Come and see the other houses.'</p> - -<p>In the next which they entered there was a group of small sturdy boys, -very sunburnt and rough and bright, who were seated in a row listening -with rapt attention to a teacher who was talking to them of birds and -their uses and ways; there were prints, of birds and birds' nests, and -the teacher was making them understand why and how a bird flew.</p> - -<p>'That is the natural history school,' she said; 'one day it is birds, -another animals, another insects, that they are told about. Those are -all little foresters born. They will go about their woods with eyes -that see, and with tenderness for all creation.'</p> - -<p>In the next school Herr Joachim himself, who took no notice of their -entrance, was giving a simple little lecture on the useful herbs and -the edible tubers, the way to know them and to turn them to profit. -There were several girls listening here.</p> - -<p>'Those girls will not poison their people at home with a false -cryptogram,' said Wanda, as they passed on to another place, where -a lesson on farriery and the treatment of cattle was going on, and -another where a teacher was instructing a mixed group of boys and -little maidens in the lore of the forests, of the grasses, of the -various causes that kill a tree in its prime, of the insects that -dwell in them, and of the different soils that they needed. In -another chamber there was a spinning-class and a sewing-class under a -kindly-faced old dame; and in yet another there were music-classes, -some playing on the zither, and others singing part-songs and glees -with baby voices.</p> - -<p>'Now you have seen all I have to show you,' said Wanda. 'In these two -other châlets are the workshops, where the boys learn any trade they -choose, and the girls are also taught to make a shoe or a jacket. My -children would not pass examinations in cities, certainly; but they -are being fitted in the best way they can for their future life, which -will pass either in these mountains and forests, as I hope, or in the -armies of the Emperor, and the humble work-a-day ways of poor folks -everywhere. If there be a Grillparzer or a Kaulbach amongst them, the -education is large and simple enough to let the originality he has been -born with develop itself; if, as is far more likely, they are all made -of ordinary human stuff, then the teaching they receive is such as to -make them contented, pious, honest, and useful working people. At least -that is what I strive for; and this is certain, that the children come -some of them a German mile and more with joy and willingness to their -schools, and that this at least they take away with them into their -future life—the sense of duty as a supreme rein over all instincts, -and mercifulness towards every living thing that God has given us.'</p> - -<p>She had spoken with unusual animation, and with an earnestness that -brought warmth over her cheek and moisture into her eyes.</p> - -<p>Sabran looked at her timidly; then as timidly he touched the tips of -her fingers, and raised them to his lips.</p> - -<p>'You are a noble woman,' he said very low; a sense of his own utter -unworthiness overwhelmed him and held him mute.</p> - -<p>She glanced at him in some surprise, vaguely tinged with displeasure.</p> - -<p>'There are schools on every estate,' she said, a little angrily and -disconnectedly. 'These are modelled on my own whim; that is all. The -world would say I ought to teach these little peasants the science -that dissects its own sources, and the philosophies that resolve -all creation into an egg. But I follow ancient ways enough to think -the country life the best, the healthiest, the sweetest: it is for -this that they are born, and to this I train them. If we had more -naturalists we should have fewer Communists.'</p> - -<p>'Yes, Audubon would scarcely have been a regicide, or Humboldt a -Camorrist,' he answered her, regaining his self-possession. 'No doubt a -love of nature is a triple armour against self-love. How can I say how -right I think your system with these children? You seem not to believe -me. There is only one thing in which I differ with you; you think the -'eyes that see' bring content. Surely not! surely not!'</p> - -<p>'It depends on what they see,' she said meditatively. 'When they are -wide open in the woods and fields, when they have been taught to see -how the tree-bee forms her cell and the mole his fortress, how the -warbler builds his nest for his love and the water-spider makes his -little raft, how the leaf comes forth from the hard stem and the fungi -from the rank mould, then I think that sight is content—content in the -simple life of the woodland place, and in such delighted wonder that -the heart of its own accord goes up in peace and praise to the Creator. -The printed page may teach envy, desire, covetousness, hatred, but the -Book of Nature teaches resignation, hope, willingness to labour and -live, submission to die. The world has gone further and further from -peace since larger and larger have grown its cities and its shepherd -kings are no more.'</p> - -<p>He was silent.</p> - -<p>Her voice moved him like sweet remembered music; yet in his own -remembrance what were there? Only 'envy, desire, covetousness, hatred,' -the unlovely shapes that were to her as emblems of the powers of evil. -His reason was with her, and his emotions were with her also, but -memory was busy in him, and in it he saw 'as in a glass darkly,' all -his passionate, cold, embittered youth, all his warped, irresolute, -useless, and untrue manhood.</p> - -<p>'Do not think,' she added, unconscious of the pain that she had -caused him, 'that I undervalue the blessing of great books; but I do -think that, to recognise the beauty of literature, as much culture and -comprehension are needed as to understand Leonardo's painting, or the -structure of Wagner's music. Those who read well are as rare as those -who love well. The curse of our age is superficial knowledge; it is -a <i>cryptogram</i> of the rankest sort, and I will not let my scholars -touch it. Do you not think it is better for a country child to know -what flowers are poisonous for her cattle, and what herbs are useful -in her neighbours' fever, than to be able to spell through a Jesuit's -newspaper, or suck evil from a Communist's pamphlet? You will not have -your horse well shod if the smith be thinking of Bakounine while he -hammers the iron.'</p> - -<p>'I have held the views of Bakounine myself,' said Sabran, with -hesitation. 'I do not know what you will think of me. I have even been -tempted to be an anarchist, a Nihilist.'</p> - -<p>'You speak in the past tense. You must have abandoned those views? You -are received at Frohsdorf?'</p> - -<p>'They have, perhaps, abandoned me. My life has been idle, sinful -often. I have liked luxury, and have not denied myself folly. I -recognised the absurdity of such a man as I was joining in any -movement of seriousness and self-negation, so I threw away my political -persuasions, as one throws off a knapsack when tired of a journey on -foot.'</p> - -<p>'That was not very conscientious, surely?'</p> - -<p>'No, madame. It is perhaps, however, better than helping to adjust the -contradictions of the world with dynamite. And I cannot even claim that -they were persuasions; I fear they were mere personal impatience with -narrow fortunes and useless ambitions.'</p> - -<p>'I cannot pardon anyone of an old nobility turning Republican; it -is like a son insulting the tombs of his fathers!' she said, with -emphasis; then, fearing she had reproved him too strongly, she added, -with a smile, 'And yet I also could almost join the anarchists when I -see the enormous wealth of baseborn speculators and Hebrew capitalists -in such bitter contrast with the hunger of the poor, who starve all -over the world in winter like birds frozen on the snow. Oh, do not -suppose that, though I am an Austrian, I cannot see that feudalism is -doomed. We are still feudal here, but then in so much we are still as -we were in crusading days. The nobles have been, almost everywhere -except here, ousted by capitalists, and the capitalists will in turn -be devoured by the democracy. <i>Les loups se mangeront entre eux.</i> You -see, though I may be prejudiced, I am not blind. But you, as a Breton, -should think feudalism a loss, as I do.'</p> - -<p>'In those days, Barbe Bleue or Gilles de Retz were the nearest -neighbours of Romaris,' he said, with a smile. 'Yet if feudalism could -be sure of such châtelaines as the Countess von Szalras, I would wish -it back to-morrow.'</p> - -<p>'That is very prettily put for a Socialist. But you cannot be a -Socialist. You are received at Frohsdorf. Bretons are always royal; -they are born with the <i>cultus</i> of God and the King.'</p> - -<p>He laughed a little, not quite easily.</p> - -<p>'Paris is a witch's caldron, in which all <i>cultes</i> are melted down, and -evaporate in a steam of disillusion and mockery; into the caldron we -have long flung, alas! cross and crown, actual and allegoric. I am not -a Breton; I am that idle creation of modern life, a <i>boulevardier.</i>'</p> - -<p>'But do you never visit Romaris?'</p> - -<p>'Why should I? There is nothing but a few sea-tormented oaks, endless -sands, endless marshes, and a dark dirty village jammed among rocks, -and reeking with the smell of the oil and the fish.'</p> - -<p>'Then I would go and make the village clean and the marshes healthy, -were I you. There must be something of interest in any people who -remain natural in their ways and dwell beside a sea, Is Romaris not -prosperous?'</p> - -<p>'Prosperous! God and man have forgotten it ever since the world began, -I should say. It is on a bay, so treacherous that it is called the Pool -of Death. The <i>landes</i> separate it by leagues from any town. All it -has to live on is the fishing. It is dull as a grave, harried by every -storm, unutterably horrible.'</p> - -<p>'Well, I would not forsake its horrors were I a son of Romaris,' she -said softly; then, as she perceived that some association made the -name and memory of the old Armorican village painful to him, she blew -the whistle she always used, and at the summons the eldest pupil of -the school, a handsome boy of fourteen, came out and stood bareheaded -before her.</p> - -<p>'Hansl, ask the teachers to grant you all an hour's frolic, that you -may amuse this gentleman,' she said to him. 'And, Hansl, take care that -you do your best, all of you, in dancing, wrestling, and singing, and -above all with the zither, for the honour of the empire.'</p> - -<p>The lad, with a face of sunshine, bowed low and ran into the -school-houses.</p> - -<p>'It is almost their hour for rest, or I would not have disturbed them,' -she said to him. 'They come here at sunrise; bring their bread and -meat, and milk is given them; they disperse according to season, a -little before sunset. They have two hours' rest at different times, but -it is hardly wanted, for their labours interest them, and their classes -are varied.'</p> - -<p>Soon the children all trooped out, made their bow or curtsey -reverently, but without shyness, and began with song and national airs -played on the zither or the 'jumping wood.' Their singing and music -were tender, ardent, and yet perfectly precise. There was no false note -or slurred passage. Then they danced the merry national dances that -make gay the long nights in the snow-covered châlets in many a mountain -village which even the mountain letter-carrier, on his climbing irons, -cannot reach for months together when all the highlands are ice. They -ended their dances with the Hungarian czardas, into which they threw -all the vigour of their healthful young limbs and happy hearts.</p> - -<p>'My cousin Egon taught them the czardas; have you ever seen the Magyar -nobles in the madness of that dance?'</p> - -<p>'Your cousin Egon? Do you mean Prince Vàsàrhely?'</p> - -<p>'Yes. Do you know him?'</p> - -<p>'I have seen him.'</p> - -<p>His face grew paler as he spoke. He ceased to watch with interest the -figures of the jumping children in their picturesque national dress, as -they whirled and shouted in the sunshine on the green turf, with the -woods and the rocks towering beyond them.</p> - -<p>When the czardas was ended, the girls sat down on the sward to rest, -and the boys began their leaping, running, and stone-heaving, with -their favourite wrestling at the close.</p> - -<p>'They are as strong as chamois,' she said to him. 'There is no need -here to have a gymnasium. Their mountains teach them climbing, and -every Sunday on their village green their fathers make them wrestle -and shoot at marks. The favourite sport here is one I will not -countenance—the finger-hooking. If I gave the word any two of those -little fellows would hook their middle fingers together and pull till a -joint broke.'</p> - -<p>The boys were duly commended for their skill, and Sabran would have -thrown them a shower of florin notes had she allowed it. Then she bade -them sing as a farewell the Kaiser's Hymn.</p> - -<p>The grand melody rolled out on the fresh clear Alpine air in voices as -fresh and as clear, that went upward and upward towards the zenith like -the carol of the larks.</p> - -<p>'I would fain be the Emperor to have that prayer sung so for me,' -said Sabran, with truth, as the glad young voices dropped down into -silence—the intense silence of the earth where the glaciers reign.</p> - -<p>'He heard them last year, and he was pleased,' she said, as the -children raised a loud 'Hoch!' made their reverence once more at a sign -of dismissal from her, and vanished in a proud and happy crowd into the -schoolhouses.</p> - -<p>'Do you never praise them or reward them?' he asked in surprise.</p> - -<p>'Santa Claus rewards them. As for praise, they know when I smile that -all is well.'</p> - -<p>'But surely they have shown very unusual musical talent?'</p> - -<p>'They sing well because they are well taught. But they are not any -of them going to become singers. Those zithers and part-songs will -all serve to enliven the long nights of the farmhouse or the summer -solitude of the cattle-hut. We do not cultivate music one-half enough -among the peasantry. It lightens labour; it purifies and strengthens -the home-life; it sweetens black-bread. Do you remember that happy -picture of Jordaens' "Where the old sing, the young chirp," where the -old grandfather and grandmother, and the baby in its mother's arms, and -the hale five-year-old boy, and the rough servant, are all joining in -the same melody, while the goat crops the vine-leaves off the table? I -should like to see every cottage interior like that when the work was -done. I would hang up an etching from Jordaens where you would hang up, -perhaps, the programme of Proudhon.'</p> - -<p>Then she walked back with him through the green sun-gleaming woods.</p> - -<p>'I hope that I teach them content,' she continued. 'It is the lesson -most neglected in our day. "<i>Niemand will ein Schuster seyn; Jederman -ein Dichter.</i>" It is true we are very happy in our surroundings. A -mountaineer's is such a beautiful life; so simple, healthful, hardy, -and fine; always face to face with nature. I try to teach them what -an inestimable joy that alone is. I do not altogether believe in the -prosaic views of rural life. It is true that the peasant digging his -trench sees the clod, not the sky but then when he does lift his head -the sky is there, not the roof, not the ceiling. That is so much in -itself. And here the sky is an everlasting grandeur: clouds and domes -of snow are blent together. When the stars are out above the glaciers -how serene the night is, how majestic! even the humblest creature feels -lifted up into that eternal greatness. Then you think of the home-life -in the long winters as dreary; but it is not so. Over away there, -at Lahn, and other places on the Hallstadtersee, they do not see the -sun for five months; the wall of rock behind them shuts them from all -light of day; but they live together, they dance, they work. The young -men recite poems, and the old men tell tales of the mountains and the -French war, and they sing the homely songs of the <i>Schnaderhupfeln.</i> -Then when winter passes, when the sun comes again up over the wall of -rocks, when they go out into the light once more, what happiness it -is! One old man said to me, 'It is like being born again!' and another -said, 'Where it is always warm and light I doubt they forget to thank -God for the sunshine;' and quite a young child said, all of his own -accord, 'The primroses live in the dusk all the winter, like us, and -then when the sun comes up we and they run out together, and the Mother -of Christ has set the waters and the little birds laughing.' I would -rather have the winter of Lahn than the winter of Belleville.'</p> - -<p>'But they do go away from their mountains a good deal? One meets -them——'</p> - -<p>'My own people never do, but from the valleys around they go—yes, -sometimes; but then they always come back. The Defereggenthal men, -over yonder where you see those ice summits, constantly go elsewhere -on reaching manhood; but as soon as they have made a little money they -return to dwell at home for the remainder of their days. I think living -amidst the great mountains creates a restfulness, a steadfastness -in the character. If Paris were set amidst Alps you would have had -Lamartine, you would not have had Rochefort.'</p> - -<p>When she spoke thus of her own country, of her own people, all her -coldness vanished, her eyes grew full of light, her reserve was broken -up into animation. They were what she truly loved, what touched her -affections and her sympathies.</p> - -<p>When he heard her speak thus, he thought if any man should succeed in -arousing in her the love and the loyalty that she gave her Austrian -Alps, what treasures he would win, into what a kingdom he would enter! -And then something that was perhaps higher than vanity and deeper than -egotism stirring in him whispered. 'If any, why not you?'</p> - -<p>Herr Joachim had at a message from her joined them. He talked of the -flowers around them and of the culture and flora of Mexico. Sabran -answered him with apparent interest, and with that knowledge which he -had always the presence of mind to recall at need, but his heart was -heavy and his mind absent.</p> - -<p>She had spoken to him of Romaris, and he had once known Egon Vàsàrhely.</p> - -<p>Those two facts overshadowed the sweetness and sunshine of the day; yet -he knew very well that he should have been prepared for both.</p> - -<p>The Princess Ottilie, seated in her gilt wickerwork chair under the -great yew on the south side of the house, saw them approach with -pleasure.</p> - -<p>'Come and have a cup of tea,' she said to them. 'But, my beloved Wanda, -you should not let the doctor walk beside you. Oh, I saw him in the -distance; of course he left you before you joined <i>me.</i> He is a worthy -man, a most worthy man; but so is Hubert, and you do not walk with -Hubert and converse with him about flowers.'</p> - -<p>'Are you so inexorable as to social grades, madame? murmured Sabran, as -he took his cup from her still pretty hand.</p> - -<p>'Most certainly!' said the Princess, with a little, a very little, -asperity. 'The world was much happier when distinctions and divisions -were impassable. There are no sumptuary laws now. What is the -consequence? That, your bourgeoise ruins her husband in wearing gowns -fit only for a duchess, and your prince imagines it makes him popular -to look precisely like a cabman or a bailiff.'</p> - -<p>'And even in the matter of utility,' said Sabran, who always agreed -with her, 'those sumptuary laws had much in their favour. If one look -through the chronicles and miniatures, say of the thirteenth and -fourteenth centuries, how much more sensible for the change of seasons -and the ease of work seems the costume of the working people? The -<i>cotte hardie</i> was a thousand times more comfortable and more becoming -than anything we have. If we could dress once more as all did under -Louis Treize gentle and simple would alike benefit.'</p> - -<p>'What a charmingly intelligent person he is!' thought the Princess, as -she remarked that in Austria they were happier than the rest of the -world: there were peasant costumes still there.</p> - -<p>Wanda left them a little later to confer with one of her land stewards. -Sabran remained seated by the Princess, in whom he felt that he -possessed a friend.</p> - -<p>'What did you think of those schools? said Frau Ottilie. 'Oh, of course -you admire and approve; you must admire and approve when they are the -hobby of a beautiful woman, who is also your hostess.'</p> - -<p>'Does that mean, Princess, that you do not?'</p> - -<p>'No doubt the schools are excellent,' replied the Princess, in a tone -which condemned them as ridiculous. 'But for my own part I prefer those -things left to the Church, of which they constitute alike the privilege -and the province. I cannot see either why a peasant child requires -to know how a tree grows; that a merciful Providence placed it there -is all he can need to be told, and that he should be able to cut it -down without cutting off his own fingers is all the science that can -possibly be necessary to him. However, Wanda thinks otherwise, and she -is mistress here.'</p> - -<p>'But the schools surely are eminently practical ones?'</p> - -<p>'Practical! Is it practical to weave a romance as long as "Pamela" -about the changes of a chrysalis? I fail to see it. That a grub is -a destructive creature is all that any one needs to know; there -is nothing practical in making it the heroine of an interminable -metempsychosis. But all those ideas of 'Wanda's have a taint of that -modern poison which her mind, though it is so strong iii many things, -has not been strong enough to resist. She does not believe in the -efficacy of our holy relics (such as that which I sent you, and which -wrought your cure), but she does believe in the fables that naturalists -invent about weeds and beetles, and she finds a Kosmos in a puddle!'</p> - -<p>'You are very severe, Princess.'</p> - -<p>'I dislike inconsistency, and my niece is inconsistent, though she -imagines that perfect consistency is the staple of her character.'</p> - -<p>'Nay, madame, surely her character is the most evenly balanced, the -most harmonious, and consequently the most perfect that is possible to -humanity.'</p> - -<p>The Princess looked at him with a keen little glance.</p> - -<p>'You admire her very much? Are you sure you understand her?'</p> - -<p>'I should not dare to say that, but I dare to hope it. Her nature seems -to me serene and transparent as fine sunlight.'</p> - -<p>'So it is; but she has faults, I can assure you,' said the Princess, -with her curious union of shrewdness and simplicity. 'My niece is a -perfectly good woman, so far as goodness is possible to finite nature; -she is the best woman I have ever known out of the cloister. But -then there is this to be said—she has never been tempted. True, she -might be tempted to be arrogant, despotic, tyrannical; and she is not -so. But that is not precisely the temptation to try her. She is mild -and merciful out of her very pride; but her character would be sure -destruction of her pride were such a thing possible. You think she is -not proud because she is so gentle? You might as well say that Her -Majesty is not Empress because she washes the feet of the twelve poor -men! Wanda is the best woman that I know, but she is also the proudest.'</p> - -<p>'The Countess has never loved anyone?' said Sabran, who grew paler as -he heard.</p> - -<p>'Terrestrial love—no. It has not touched her. But it would not alter -her, believe me. Some women lose themselves in their affections; she -would not. She would always remain the mistress of it, and it would be -a love like her character. Of that I am sure.'</p> - -<p>Sabran was silent; he was discouraged.</p> - -<p>'I think the boldest man would always be held at a distance from her,' -he said, after a pause. 'I think none would ever acquire dominion over -her life.'</p> - -<p>'That is exactly what I have said,' replied the Princess. 'Your phrase -is differently worded, but it comes to the same thing.'</p> - -<p>'It would depend very much——'</p> - -<p>'On what?'</p> - -<p>'On how much she loved, and perhaps a little on how much she was loved.'</p> - -<p>'Not at all,' said the Princess, decidedly; 'you cannot get more out of -a nature than there is in it, and there is no sort of passion in the -nature of my niece.'</p> - -<p>He was silent again.</p> - -<p>'She was admirably educated,' added the Princess, hastily, conscious of -a remark not strictly becoming in herself; 'and her rare temperament -is serene, well balanced, void of all excess. Heaven has mercifully -eliminated from her almost all mortal errors.'</p> - -<p> -<span style="margin-left: 7em;">'By pride</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Angels have fallen ere thy time!'</span><br /> -</p> - -<p>suggested Sabran.</p> - -<p>'Angels, perhaps,' said the Princess, drily. 'But for women it is an -admirable preservative, second only to piety.'</p> - -<p>He went home sculling himself across the lake, now perfectly calm -beneath the rose and gold of a midsummer sunset. His heart was heavy, -and a dull fear seemed to beat at his conscience like a child suddenly -awaking who knocks at a long-closed door. Still, as a crime allures men -who contemplate it by the fascination of its weird power, so the sin he -desired to commit held him with its unholy beguilement, and almost it -looked holy to him because it wore the guise of Wanda von Szalras.</p> - -<p>He was not insensible to the charm of this interchange of thought. He -had had many passions in which his senses alone had been enlisted. -There was a more delicate attraction in the gradual and numberless -steps by which, only slowly and with patience, could he win any -way into her regard. She had for him the puissance that the almost -unattainable has for all humanity. When he could feel that he had -awakened any sympathy in her, his pride was more flattered than it -could have been by the most complete subjection of any other woman. -He had looked on all women with the chill, amorous cynicism of the -Parisian psychology, as <i>l'éternel féminin</i>, at best as '<i>la forme -perverse, vaporeuse, langoureuse, souple comme les roseaux, blanche -comme les lis, incapable de se mouvoir pendant les deux tiers du -jour—sans équilibre, sans but, sans équateur, donnant son corps en -pâture à sa tête.</i> He had had no other ideal; no other conception. This -psychology, like some other sciences, brutalises as it equalises. In -the woman who had risen up before him in the night of storm upon the -Szalrassee he had recognised with his intelligence a woman who made his -philosophy at fault, who aroused something beyond his mere instincts, -who was not to be classified with the Lias, or the Cesarines, or the -Jane de Simeroses, who had been in his love, as in his literature, the -various types of the <i>éternel féminin.</i> The simplicity and the dignity -of her life astonished and convinced him; he began to understand that -where he had imagined he had studied the universe in his knowledge of -women, he had in reality only seen two phases of it—the hothouse and -the ditch. It is a common error to take the forced flower and the slime -weed, and think that there is nothing between or beyond the two.</p> - -<p>He had the convictions of his school that all women were at heart -coquettes or hypocrites, consciously or unconsciously. Wanda von -Szalras routed all his theories. Before her candour, her directness and -gravity of thought, her serene indifference to all forms of compliment, -all his doctrines and all his experiences were useless. She inspired -him with reverential and hopeless admiration, which was mingled with an -angry astonishment, and something of the bitterness of envy. Sometimes, -as he sat and watched the green water of the lake tumble and roll -beneath a north wind's wrath under a cloudy sky which hid the snows -of the Glöckner range, he remembered a horrible story that had once -fascinated him of Malatesta of Rimini slaying the princess that would -have none of his love, striking his sword across her white throat in -the dusky evening time, and casting her body upon the silken curtains -of her wicked litter. Almost he could have found it in him to do such a -crime—almost. Only he thought that at one look of her eyes his sword -would have dropped upon the dust.</p> - -<p>Her personal beauty had inspired him with a sudden passion, but her -character checked it with the sense of fear which it imposed on him; -fear of those high and blameless instincts which were an integral -part of her nature, fear of that frank, unswerving truth which was -the paramount law of her life. As he rode with her, walked with her, -conversed with her in the long, light summer hours, he saw more and -more of the purity and nobility of her temper, but he saw or thought he -saw also an inexorable pride and a sternness in judgment which made him -believe that she would be utterly unforgiving to weakness or to sin.</p> - -<p>She remained the Nibelungen Queen to him, clothed in flawless armour -and aloof from men.</p> - -<p>He lingered on at the Holy Isle, finding a fresh charm each day in -this simple and peaceful existence, filled with the dreams of a woman -unlike every other he had known. He knew that it could not last, but -he was unwilling to end it himself. To rise to the sound of the monks' -matins, to pass his forenoons in art or open-air exercise, to be sure -that some hour or another before sunset he would meet her, either in -her home or abroad in the woods; to go early to bed, seeing, as he -lay, the pile of the great burg looming high above the water, like -the citadel of the Sleeping Beauty—all this, together making up an -existence so monotonous, harmless, and calm that a few months before he -would have deemed it impossible to endure it, was soothing, alluring, -and beguiling to him. He had told no one where he was; his letters -might lie and accumulate by the hundred in his rooms in Paris for aught -that he cared; he had no creditors, for he had been always scrupulously -careful to avoid all debt, and he had no friend for whose existence he -cared a straw. There were those who cared for him, indeed, but these -seldom trouble any man very greatly.</p> - -<p>In the last week of August, however, a letter found its way to him; it -was written in a very bad hand, on paper gorgeous with gold and silver. -It was signed 'Cochonette.'</p> - -<p>It contained a torrent of reproaches made in the broadest language that -the slang of the hour furnished, and every third word was misspelt. How -the writer had tracked him she did not say. He tore the letter up and -threw the pieces into the water flowing beneath his window. Had he ever -passionately desired and triumphed in the possession of that woman? It -seemed wonderful to him now. She was an idol of Paris; a creature with -the voice of a lark and the laugh of a child, with a lovely, mutinous -face, and eyes that could speak without words. As a pierrot, as a -mousquetaire, as a little prince, as a fairy king of operetta, she had -no rival in the eyes of Paris. She blazed with jewels when she played -a peasant, and she wore the costliest costume of Felix's devising -when she sung her triplets as a soubrette. She had been constant to -no one for three months, and she had been constant to him for three -years, or, at the least, had made him believe so; and she wrote to -him now furiously, reproachfully, entreatingly—fierce reproaches and -entreaties, all misspelt.</p> - -<p>The letter which he threw into the lake brought all the memories of his -old life before him; it was like the flavour of absinthe after drinking -spring water. It was a life which had had its successes, a life, as -the world called it, of pleasure; and it seemed utterly senseless to -him now as he tore up the note of Cochonette, and looked down the -water to where the towers and spires and battlements of Hohenszalras -soared upward in the mists. He shook himself as though to shake off the -memory of an unpleasant dream as he went out, descended the landing -steps, drew his boat from under the willows and sculled himself across -towards the water-stairs of the Schloss. In a quarter of an hour he was -playing the themes of the 'Gotterdammerung,' whilst his châtelaine sat -at her spinning-wheel a few yards from him.</p> - -<p>'Good heavens! can she and Cochonette belong to the same human race?' -he thought, as whilst he played his glance wandered to that patrician -figure seated in the light from the oriel window, with the white hound -leaning against her velvet skirts, and her jewelled fingers plying the -distaff and disentangling the flax.</p> - -<p>After the noonday breakfast the sun shone, the mists lifted from the -water, the clouds drifted from the lower mountains, only leaving the -snow-capped head of the Glöckner enveloped in them.</p> - -<p>'I am going to ride; will you come?' said Wanda von Szalras to him. -He assented with ardour, and a hunter, Siegfried, the mount which was -always given to him, was led round under the great terrace, in company -with her Arab riding-horse Ali. They rode far through the forests and -out on the one level road there was, which swept round the south side -of the lake; a road, turf-bordered, overhung with huge trees, closed -in with a dewy veil of greenery, across which ever and anon some -flash of falling water or some shimmer of glacier or of snow crest -shone through the dense leafage. They rode too fast for conversation, -both the horses racing like greyhounds; but as they returned, towards -the close of the afternoon, they slackened their pace in pity to the -steaming heaving flanks beneath their saddles, and then they could hear -each other's voices.</p> - -<p>'What a lovely life it is here!' he said, with a sigh. 'The world will -seem very vulgar and noisy to me after it.'</p> - -<p>'You would soon tire, and wish for the world,' she answered him.</p> - -<p>'No,' he said quickly; 'I have been two months on the Holy Isle, and I -have not known weariness for a moment.'</p> - -<p>'That is because it is still summer. If you were here in the winter you -would bemoan your imprisonment, like my aunt Ottilie. Even the post -sometimes fails us.'</p> - -<p>'I should not lament the post,' he replied, thinking of the letter -he had cast into the lake. 'My old life seems to me insanity, fever, -disease, beside these past two months I have spent with the monks.'</p> - -<p>'You can take the vows,' she suggested with a smile. He smiled too.</p> - -<p>'Nay: I should not dare to so insult our mother Church. One must not -empty ashes into a reliquary.'</p> - -<p>'Your life is not ashes yet.'</p> - -<p>He was silent. He could not say to her what he would have said could he -have laid his heart bare.</p> - -<p>'When you go away,' she pursued, 'remember my words. Choose some -career; make yourself some aim in life; do not fold your talents in a -napkin—in a napkin that lies on the supper table at Bignon's. That -idle, aimless life is very attractive, I dare say, in its way, but it -must grow wearisome and unsatisfactory as years roll on. The men of my -house have never been content with it; they have always been soldiers, -statesmen, something or other beside mere nobles.'</p> - -<p>'But they have had a great position.'</p> - -<p>'Men make their own position; they cannot make a name (at least, not to -my thinking). You have that good fortune; you have a great name; you -only need, pardon me, to make your manner of life worthy of it.'</p> - -<p>He grew pale as she spoke.</p> - -<p>'Cannot make a name?' he said, with forced gaiety. 'Surely in these -days the beggar rides on horseback in all the ministries and half the -nobilities!'</p> - -<p>A great contempt passed over her face. 'You mean that Hans, Pierre, or -Richard becomes a count, an excellency, or an earl? What does that -change? It alters the handle; it does not alter the saucepan. No one -can be ennobled. Blood is blood; nobility can only be inherited; it -cannot be conferred by all the heralds in the world. The very meaning -and essence of nobility are descent, inherited traditions, instincts, -habits, and memories—all that is meant by <i>noblesse oblige.</i>'</p> - -<p>'Would you allow,' thought her companion, 'would you allow the same -nobility to Falcon-bridge as to Plantagenet?'</p> - -<p>But he dared not name the bar sinister to this daughter of princes.</p> - -<p>Siegfried started and reared: his rider did not reply, being absorbed -in calming him.</p> - -<p>'What frightened him?' she asked.</p> - -<p>'A hawk flew-by,' said Sabran.</p> - -<p>'A hawk, flying low enough for a horse to see it? It must be wounded.'</p> - -<p>He did not answer, and they quickened their pace, as the sun sunk -behind the glaciers of the west.</p> - -<p>When he returned to the monastery the evening had closed in; the -lantern was lit at his boat's prow. Dinner was prepared for him, but -he ate little. Later the moon rose; golden and round as a bowl. It -was a beautiful spectacle as it gave its light to the amphitheatre of -the mountains, to the rippling surface of the lake, to the stately, -irregular lines of the castle backed by the blackness of its woods. He -sat long by the open window lost in thought, pondering on the great -race which had ruled there. <i>L'honneur parle: il suffit</i>, had been -their law, and she who represented them held a creed no less stern and -pure than theirs. Her words spoken in their ride were like a weight of -ice on his heart. Never to her, never, could he confess the errors of -his past. He was a man bold to temerity, but he was not bold enough to -risk the contempt of Wanda von Szalras. He had never much heeded right -or wrong, or much believed in such ethical distinctions, only adhering -to the conventional honour and good breeding of the world, but before -her his moral sense awakened.</p> - -<p>'The Marquis Xavier would bid me go from here,' he thought to himself, -as the night wore on and he heard the footfall of the monks passing -down the passages to their midnight orisons.</p> - -<p>'After all these years in the <i>pourriture</i> of Paris, have I such a -thing as conscience left?' he asked his own thoughts, bitterly. The -moon passed behind a cloud and darkness fell over the lake and hid -the great pile of the Hohenszalrasburg from his sight. He closed the -casement and turned away. 'Farewell!' he said, to the vanished castle.</p> - -<p>'Will you think of me sometimes, dear Princess, when I am far away?' -said Sabran abruptly the next morning to his best friend, who looked up -startled.</p> - -<p>'Away? Are you going away?'</p> - -<p>'Yes,' said Sabran, abruptly; 'and you, I think, madame, who have been -so good to me, can guess easily why.'</p> - -<p>'You love my niece?'</p> - -<p>He inclined his head in silence.</p> - -<p>'It is very natural,' said the Princess, faintly. 'Wanda is a beautiful -woman; many men have loved her; they might as well have loved that -glacier yonder.'</p> - -<p>'It is not that,' said Sabran, hastily. 'It is my own poverty——'</p> - -<p>The Princess looked at him keenly.</p> - -<p>'Do you think her not cold?'</p> - -<p>'She who can so love a brother would surely love her lover not less, -did she stoop to one,' he replied evasively. 'At least I think so; I -ought not to presume to judge.'</p> - -<p>'And you care for her?' The glance her eyes gave him added as plainly -as words could have done, 'It is not only her wealth, her position? Are -you sure?'</p> - -<p>He coloured very much as he answered quickly: 'Were she beggared -to-morrow, you would see.'</p> - -<p>'It is a pity,' murmured the Princess. He did not ask her what she -regretted; he knew her sympathy was with him.</p> - -<p>They were both mute. The Princess pushed the end of her cane -thoughtfully into the velvet turf. She hesitated some moments, then -said in a low voice: 'Were I you I would stay.'</p> - -<p>'Do not tempt me! I have stayed too long as it is. What can she think -of me?'</p> - -<p>'She does not think about your reasons; she is too proud a woman to be -vain. In a measure you have won her friendship. Perhaps—I do not know, -I have no grounds to say so—but perhaps in time you might win more.'</p> - -<p>She looked at him as she concluded. He grew exceedingly pale.</p> - -<p>He stooped over her chair, and spoke very low:</p> - -<p>'It is just because that appears possible that I go. Do not -misunderstand me, I am not a coxcomb; <i>je ne me pose pas en vainqueur.</i> -But I have no place here, since I have no equality with her from which -to be able to say, "I love you!" Absence alone can say it for me -without offence as without hope.'</p> - -<p>The Princess was silent. She was thinking of the maxim,; <i>L'absence -éteint les petites passions et allume les grandes</i>.' Which was his?</p> - -<p>'You have been so good to me,' he murmured caressingly, 'so benevolent, -so merciful, I dare to ask of you a greater kindness yet. Will you -explain for me to the Countess von Szalras that I am called away -suddenly, and make my excuses and my farewell? It will save me much -fruitless pain.'</p> - -<p>'And if it give her pain?'</p> - -<p>'I cannot suppose that, and I should not dare to hope it.'</p> - -<p>'I have no reason to suppose it either, but I think you are <i>de guerre -las</i> before the battle is decided.'</p> - -<p>'There is no battle possible for me. There is only a quite certain -dishonour.'</p> - -<p>His face was dark and weary. He spoke low and with effort. She glanced -at him, and felt the vague awe with which strong unintelligible emotion -always filled her.</p> - -<p>'You must judge the question for yourself,' she said with a little -hesitation. 'I will express what you wish to my niece if you really -desire it.'</p> - -<p>'You are always so good to me,' he murmured, with some agitation, and -he bent down before her and reverently kissed her little white hands.</p> - -<p>'God be with you, sir,' she said, with tears in her own tender eyes.</p> - -<p>'You have been so good to me,' he murmured; 'the purest hours of my -worthless life have been spent at Hohenszalras. Here only have I known -what peace and holiness can mean. Give me your blessing ere I go.'</p> - -<p>In another moment he had bowed himself from her presence, and the -Princess sat mute and motionless in the sun. When she looked up at the -great feudal pile of the Schloss which towered above her, it was with -reproach and aversion to that stone emblem of the great possessions of -its châtelaine.</p> - -<p>'If she were a humbler woman,' she thought, 'how much happier she -would be! What a pity it all is—what a pity! Of course he is right; -of course he can do nothing else. If he did do anything else the world -would condemn him, and even she very likely would despise him—but it -is such a pity! If only she could have a woman's natural life about -her——This life is not good. It is very well while she is young, but -when she shall be no longer young?'</p> - -<p>And the tender heart of the old gentlewoman ached for a sorrow not her -own; and could she have given him a duchy to make him able to declare -his love, she would have done so at all costs.</p> - - - -<hr class="chap" /> -<h4><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII</a></h4> - - -<p>The sun was setting when the Countess Wanda returned from her distant -ride. She dismounted at the foot of the terrace-steps and ascended them -slowly, with Donau and Neva behind her, both tired and breathless.</p> - -<p>'You are safe home, my love?' said the Princess, turning her head -towards the steps.</p> - -<p>'Yes, dear mother mine; you always, I know, think that Death gets up on -the saddle. Is anything amiss? You looked troubled.'</p> - -<p>'I have a message for you,' said the Princess with a sigh, and she gave -Sabran's.</p> - -<p>Wanda von Szalras heard in silence. She showed neither surprise nor -regret.</p> - -<p>The Princess waited a little.</p> - -<p>'Well,' she said, at length, 'well, you do not even ask me why he -goes!'</p> - -<p>'You say he has been called away,' her niece answered. 'Surely that is -reason enough.'</p> - -<p>'You have no heart, Wanda.'</p> - -<p>'I do not understand you,' said the Countess von Szalras, very coldly.</p> - -<p>'Do you mean to say you have not seen that he loved you?'</p> - -<p>The face of Wanda grew colder still.</p> - -<p>'Did he instruct you to say this also?'</p> - -<p>'No, no,' said the Princess, hurriedly, perceiving her error. 'He -only bade me say that he was called away and must leave at once, and -begged you to accept through me his adieus and the expression of his -gratitude. But it is very certain that he does love you, and that -because he is too poor and too proud to say so he goes.'</p> - -<p>'You must weave your little romance!' said her niece, with some -impatience, striking the gilt wicker table with her riding-whip. 'I -prefer to think that M. de Sabran is, very naturally, gone back to the -world to which he belongs. My only wonder has been that he has borne so -long with the solitudes of the Szalrassee.'</p> - -<p>'If you were not the most sincere woman in the world, I should believe -you were endeavouring to deceive me. As it is,' said the Princess, -with some temper, 'I can only suppose that you deceive yourself.'</p> - -<p>'Have you any tea there?' said her niece, laying aside her gauntlets -and her whip, and casting some cakes to the two hounds.</p> - -<p>She had very plainly and resolutely closed the subject almost before -it was fairly opened. The Princess, a little intimidated and keenly -disappointed, did not venture to renew it.</p> - -<p>When, the next morning, questioning Hubert, the Princess found -that indeed her favourite had left the island monastery at dawn, -the landscape of the Hohe Tauern seemed to her more monotonous and -melancholy than it had ever done, and the days more tedious and dull.</p> - -<p>'You will miss the music, at least,' she said, with asperity, to her -niece. 'I suppose you will give him as much regret as you have done at -times to the Abbé Liszt?'</p> - -<p>'I shall miss the music, certainly,' said the Countess Wanda, calmly. -'Our poor Kapellmeister is very indifferent. If he were not so old -that it would be cruel to displace him, I would take another from the -Conservatorium.'</p> - -<p>The Princess was irritated and even incensed at the reply, but she let -it pass. Sabran's name was mentioned no more between them for many -days.</p> - -<p>No one knew whither he had gone, and no tidings came of him to -Hohenszalras.</p> - -<p>One day a foreign journal, amongst the many news-sheets that came by -post there, contained his name: 'The Marquis de Sabran broke the bank -at Monte Carlo yesterday,' was all that it said in its news of the -Riviera.</p> - -<p>'A winner at a <i>tripot</i>, what a hero for you, mother mine!' she said -with some bitterness, handing the paper to the Princess. She was -surprised at the disgust and impatience which she felt herself. What -could it concern her?</p> - -<p>That day as she rode slowly through the grass drives of her forests, -she thought with pain of her companion of a few weeks, who so late had -ridden over these very paths beside her, the dogs racing before them, -the wild flowers scenting the air, the pale sunshine falling down -across the glossy necks of their horses.</p> - -<p>'He ought to do better things than break a bank at a gaming-place,' she -thought with regret. 'With such natural gifts of body and mind, it is a -sin—a sin against himself and others—to waste his years in those base -and trivial follies. When he was here he seemed to feel so keenly the -charm of Nature, the beauty of repose, the possibility of noble effort.'</p> - -<p>She let the reins droop on her mare's throat and paced slowly over the -moss and the grass; though she was all alone—for in her own forests -she would not be accompanied even by a groom—the colour came into -her face as she remembered many things, many words, many looks, which -confirmed the assertion Madame Ottilie had made to her.</p> - -<p>'That may very well be,' she thought; 'but if it be, I think my -memory might have restrained him from becoming the hero of a gambling -apotheosis.'</p> - -<p>And she was astonished at herself to find how much regret mingled with -her disgust, and how much her disgust was intensified by a sentiment of -personal offence.</p> - -<p>When she reached home it was twilight, and she was told that her cousin -Prince Egon Vàsàrhely had arrived. She would have been perfectly glad -to see him, if she had been perfectly sure that he would have accepted -quietly the reply she had sent to his letter received on the night of -the great storm. As it was she met him in the blue-room before the -Princess Ottilie, and nothing could be said on that subject.</p> - -<p>Prince Egon, though still young, had already a glorious past behind -him. He came of a race of warriors, and the Vàsàrhely Hussars had been -famous since the days of Maria Theresa. The command of that brilliant -regiment was hereditary, and he had led them in repeated charges -into the French lines and the Prussian lines with such headlong and -dauntless gallantry that he had been called the 'Wild Boar of Taròc' -throughout the army. His hussars were the most splendid cavalry that -ever shook their bridles in the sunlight on the wide Magyar plains. -Their uniform remained the same as in the days of Aspern, and he was -prodigal of gold, and embroidery, and rich furs, and trappings, with -that martial coquetry which has been characteristic of so many great -soldiers from Scylla to Michael Skobeleff.</p> - -<p>With his regiment in the field, and without it in many adventures in -the wilder parts of the Austrian Empire and on the Turkish border, he -had become a synonym for heroism throughout the Imperial army, whilst -in his manner and mode of life no more magnificent noble ever came from -the dim romantic solitudes of Hungary to the court and the capital. -He had great personal beauty; he had unrivalled traditions of valour; -and he had a character as generous as it was daring: but he failed to -awaken more than a sisterly attachment in the heart of his cousin. She -had been so used to see him with her brothers that he seemed as near -to her as they had been. She loved him tenderly, but with no sort of -passion. She wondered that he should care for her in that sense, and -grew sometimes impatient of his reiterated prayers.</p> - -<p>'There are so many women who would listen to him and adore him,' she -said. 'Why must he come to me?</p> - -<p>Before Bela's death, and before she became her own mistress, she had -always urged that her own sisterly affection for Egon made any thought -of marriage with him out of the question.</p> - -<p>'I am fond of him as I was of Gela and Victor,' she said often to those -who pressed the alliance upon her; 'but that is not love. I will not -marry a man whom I do not love.'</p> - -<p>When she became absolutely her own mistress he was for some time -silent, fearing to importune her, or to seem mercenary. She had become -by Bela's death one of the greatest alliances in Europe. But at -length, confident that his own position exempted him from any possible -appearance of covetousness, he gently reminded her of her father's and -her brother's wishes; but to no effect. She gave him the same answer. -'You are sure of my affection, but I will not do you so bad a service -as to become your wife. I have no love for you.' From that he had no -power to move or change her. He had made her many appeals in his -frequent visits to Hohenszalras, but none with any success in inducing -her to depart from the frank and placid regard of close relationship. -She liked him well, and held him in high esteem; but this was not love; -nor, had she consented to call it love, would it ever have contented -the impetuous, ardent, and passionate spirit of Egon Vàsàrhely.</p> - -<p>They could not be lovers, but they still remained friends, partly -through consanguinity, partly because he could bear to see her thus so -long as no other was nearer to her than he. They greeted each other -now cordially and simply, and talked of the many cares and duties and -interests that sprang up daily in the administration of such vast -properties as theirs.</p> - -<p>Prince Vàsàrhely, though a brilliant soldier and magnificent noble, was -simple in his tastes, and occupied himself largely with the welfare of -his people.</p> - -<p>The Princess yawned discreetly behind her fan many times during this -conversation, to her utterly uninteresting, upon villages, vines, -harvests, bridges swept away by floods, stewards just and unjust, and -the tolls and general navigation of the Danube. Quite tired of all -these details and discussion of subjects which she considered ought to -be abandoned to the men of business, she said suddenly, in a pause:</p> - -<p>'Egon, did you ever know a very charming person, the Marquis de Sabran?'</p> - -<p>Vàsàrhely reflected a moment.</p> - -<p>'No,' he answered slowly. 'I have no recollection of such a name.'</p> - -<p>'I thought you might have met him in Paris.'</p> - -<p>'I am so rarely in Paris; since my father's death I have scarcely -passed a month there. Who is he?'</p> - -<p>'A stranger whose acquaintance we made through his being cast adrift -here in a storm,' said the Countess Wanda, with some impatience. 'My -dear aunt is devoted to him, because he has painted her a St. Ottilie -on a screen, with the skill of Meissonnier. Since he left us he has -become celebrated: he has broken the bank at Monte Carlo.'</p> - -<p>Egon Vàsàrhely looked at her quickly.</p> - -<p>'It seems to anger you? Did this stranger stay here any time?'</p> - -<p>'Sometime, yes; he had a bad accident on the Venediger. Herr Greswold -brought him to our island to pass his convalescence with the monks. -From the monks to Monte Carlo!—--it is at least a leap requiring some -elasticity in moral gymnastics.'</p> - -<p>She spoke with some irritation, which did not escape the ear of her -cousin. He said merely himself:</p> - -<p>'Did you receive him, knowing nothing about him?'</p> - -<p>'We certainly did. It was an imprudence; but if he paint like -Meissonnier, he plays like Liszt: who was to resist such a combination -of gifts?'</p> - -<p>'You say that very contemptuously, Wanda,' said the Prince.</p> - -<p>'I am not contemptuous of the talent; I am of the possessor of it, who -comprehends his own powers so little that he breaks the bank at Monaco.'</p> - -<p>'I envy him at least his power to anger you,' said Egon Vàsàrhely.</p> - -<p>'I am angered to see anything wasted,' she answered, conscious of the -impatience she had shown. 'I was very angry with Otto's little daughter -yesterday; she had gathered a huge bundle of cowslips and thrown it -down in the sun; it was ingratitude to God who made them. This friend -of my aunt's does worse; he changes his cowslip into monkshood.'</p> - -<p>'Is he indeed such a favourite of yours, dear mother?' said Vàsàrhely.</p> - -<p>The Princess answered petulantly:</p> - -<p>'Certainly, a charming person. And our cousin Kaulnitz knows him well. -Wanda for once talks foolishly. Gambling is, it is true, a great sin at -all times, but I do not know that it is worse at public tables than it -is in your clubs. I myself am, of course, ignorant of these matters; -but I have heard that privately, at cards, whole fortunes have been -lost in a night, scribbled away with a pencil on a scrap of paper.'</p> - -<p>'To lose a fortune is better than to win one,' said her niece, as she -rose from the head of her table.</p> - -<p>When the Princess slept in her blue-room Egon Vàsàrhely approached his -cousin, where she sat at her embroidery frame.</p> - -<p>'This stranger has the power to make you angry,' he said sadly. 'I have -not even that.'</p> - -<p>'Dear Egon,' she said tenderly, 'you have done nothing in your life -that I could despise. Why should you be discontented at that?'</p> - -<p>'Would you care if I did?'</p> - -<p>'Certainly; I should be very sorry if my noble cousin did anything that -could belie his chivalry; but why should we suppose impossibilities?'</p> - -<p>'Suppose we were not cousins, would you love me then?'</p> - -<p>'How can I tell? This is mere non-sense——'</p> - -<p>'No; it is all my life. You know, Wanda, that I have loved you, only -you, ever since I saw you as I came back from France—a child, but -such a beautiful child, with your hair braided with pearls, and a dress -all stiff with gold, and your lap full of red roses.'</p> - -<p>'Oh, I remember,' she said hastily. 'There was a child's costume ball -at the Hof; I called myself Elizabeth of Thuringia, and Bela, my own -Bela, was my little Louis of Hungary. Oh, Egon, why will you speak of -those times?'</p> - -<p>'Because surely they make a kind of tie between us? They——'</p> - -<p>'They do make one that will last all our lives, unless you strain it -to bear a weight it is not made to bear. Dear Egon, you are very dear -to me, but not dear <i>so.</i> As my cousin, my gallant, kind, and loyal -cousin, you are very precious to me; but, Egon, if you could force me -to be your wife I should not be indifferent to you, I should hate you!'</p> - -<p>He grew white under his olive skin. He shrank a little, as if he -suffered some sharp physical pain.</p> - -<p>'Hate me!' he echoed in a stupor of surprise and suffering.</p> - -<p>'I believe I should, I <i>could</i> hate. It is a frightful thing to say. -Dear Egon, look elsewhere; find some other amongst the many lovely -women that you see; do not waste your brilliant life on me. I shall -never say otherwise than I say to-night' and you will compel me to -lose the most trusted friend I have.'</p> - -<p>He was still very pale. He breathed heavily. There was a mist over his -handsome dark eyes, which were cast down. 'Until you love any other, I -shall never abandon hope.'</p> - -<p>'That is unwise. I shall probably love no one all my life long; I have -told you so often.'</p> - -<p>'All say so until love finds them out. I will not trouble you; I will -be your cousin, your friend, rather than be nothing to you. But it is -hard.'</p> - -<p>'Why think of me so? Your career has so much brilliancy, so many -charms, so many interests——'</p> - -<p>'You do not know what it is to love. I talk to you in an unknown -tongue, and you have no pity, because you do not understand.'</p> - -<p>She did not answer. Over her thoughts passed the memory of the spinet -whose music she had said he could not touch and waken.</p> - -<p>He remained a week at Hohenszalras, but he did not again speak to her -of his own sufferings. He was a proud man, though humble to her.</p> - -<p>With a sort of contrition she noticed for the first time that he -wearied her; that when he spoke of his departure she was glad. He -was a fine soldier, a keen hunter, rather than a man of talents. The -life he loved best was his life at home in his great castles, amidst -the immense plains and the primeval forests of Hungary and the lonely -fastnesses of the Karpathians, or scouring a field of battle with his -splendid troopers behind him, all of them his kith and kin, or men -of his own soil, whom he ruled with a firm, high hand, in a generous -despotism.</p> - -<p>When he was with her she missed all the graceful tact, the subtle -meanings, the varied suggestions and allusions that had made the -companionship of Sabran so welcome to her. Egon Vàsàrhely was no -scholar, no thinker, no satirist; he was only brave and generous, as -lions are, and, vaguely, a poet without words, from the wild solitudes -he loved, and the romance that lies in the nature of the Magyar. 'He -knows nothing!' she thought, impatiently recalling the stores of most -various and recondite knowledge with which her late companion had -played so carelessly and with such ease. It seemed to her that never in -her life had she weighed her cousin in scales so severe and found him -so utterly wanting.</p> - -<p>And yet how many others she knew would have found their ideal in that -gallant gentleman, with his prowess, and his hardihood, and his -gallantry in war, and his winsome temper, so full of fire to men, so -full of chivalry for women! When Prince Egon, in his glittering dress, -all fur and gold and velvet, passed up the ball-room at the Burg in -Vienna, no other man in all that magnificent assembly was so watched, -so admired, so sighed for: and he was her cousin, and he only wearied -her!</p> - -<p>As he was leaving, he paused a moment after bidding her farewell, and -after some moments of silence, said in a low voice:</p> - -<p>'Dear, I will not trouble you again until you summon me. Perhaps that -will be many years; but whether we meet or not, time will make no -change in me. I am your servant ever.'</p> - -<p>Then he bowed over her hand once more, once more saluted her, and in a -moment or two the quick trot of the horses that bore him away woke the -echoes of the green hills.</p> - -<p>She looked out of the huge arched entrance door down the green defile -that led to the outer world, and felt a pang of self-reproach, of -self-condemnation.</p> - -<p>'If one could force oneself to love by any pilgrimage or penance,' she -thought, 'there are none I would not take upon me to be able to love -Egon.'</p> - -<p>As she stood thoughtfully there on the doorway of her great castle, -the sweet linnet-like voice of the Princess Ottilie came on her ear. -It said, a little shrilly: 'You are always looking for a four-leaved -shamrock. In that sort of search life slips away unperceived; one is -very soon left alone with one's dead leaves.'</p> - -<p>Wanda von Szalras turned and smiled.</p> - -<p>'I am not afraid of being left alone,' she said. 'I shall have my -people and my forests always.'</p> - -<p>Then, apprehensive lest she should have seemed thankless and cold of -heart, she turned caressingly to Madame Ottilie.</p> - -<p>'Nay, I could not bear to lose you, my sweet fairy godmother. Think me -neither forgetful nor ungrateful.'</p> - -<p>'You could never be one or the other to me. But I shall not live, like -a fairy godmother, for ever. Before I die I would fain see you content -like others with the shamrocks as nature has made them.'</p> - -<p>'I think there are few people as content as I am,' said the Countess -Wanda, and said the truth.</p> - -<p>'You are content with yourself, not with others. You will pardon me -if I say there is a great difference between the two,' replied the -Princess Ottilie, with a little smile that was almost sarcastic on her -pretty small features.</p> - -<p>'You mean that I have a great deal of vanity and no sympathy?'</p> - -<p>'You have a great deal of pride,' said the Princess, discreetly, as she -began to take her customary noontide walk up and down the terrace, her -tall cane tapping the stones and her little dog running before her, -whilst a hood of point-lace and a sunshade of satin kept the wind from -her pretty white hair and the sun from her eyes, that were still blue -as the acres of mouse-ear that grew by the lake.</p> - - - -<hr class="chap" /> -<h4><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII.</a></h4> - - -<p>The summer glided away and became autumn, and the Countess Wanda -refused obstinately to fill Hohenszalras with house-parties. In vain -her aunt spoke of the Lynau, the Windischgrätz, the Hohenlöhe, and the -other great families who were their relatives or their friends. In vain -she referred continually to the fact that every Schloss in Austria and -all adjacent countries was filling with guests at this season, and the -woods around it resounding with the hunter's horn and the hound's bay. -In vain did she recapitulate the glories of Hohenszalras in an earlier -time, and hint that the mistress of so vast a domain owed some duties -to society.</p> - -<p>Wanda von Szalras opposed to all these suggestions and declarations -that indifference which would have seemed obstinacy had it been less -mild. As for the hunting parties, she avowed with truth that although a -daughter of mighty hunters, she herself regarded all pastimes founded -on cruelty with aversion and contempt; the bears and the boars, the -wild deer and the mountain chamois, might dwell undisturbed for the -whole of their lives so far as she was concerned. When a bear came -down and ate off the heads of an acre or two of wheat, she recompensed -the peasant who had suffered the loss, but she would not have her -<i>jägermeister</i> track the poor beast. The <i>jägermeister</i> sighed as -Madame Ottilie did for the bygone times when a score of princes and -nobles had ridden out on a wolf-chase, or hundreds of peasants had -threshed the woods to drive the big game towards the Kaiser's rifle; -but for poachers his place would have been a sinecure and his days a -weariness. His mistress was not to be persuaded. She preferred her -forests left to their unbroken peace, their stillness filled with the -sounds of rushing waters and the calls of birds.</p> - -<p>The weeks glided on one after one with the even measured pace of -monotonous and unruffled time; her hours were never unoccupied, for her -duties were constant and numerous.</p> - -<p>She would go and visit the sennerinn in their loftiest cattle-huts, -and would descend an ice-slope with the swiftness and security of a -practised mountaineer. In her childhood she and Bela had gone almost -everywhere the chamois went, and she came of a race which, joined to -high courage, had the hereditary habits of a great endurance. In the -throne room of Vienna, with her great pearls about her, that had once -been sent by a Sultan to a Szalras who fought with Wenceslaus, she -was the stateliest and proudest lady of the greatest aristocracy of -the world; but on her own mountain sides she was as dauntless as an -ibis, as sure-footed as a goat, and would sit in the alpine cabins and -drink a draught of milk and break a crust of rye-bread as willingly as -though she were a sennerinn herself; so she would take the oars and row -herself unaided down the lake, so she would saddle her horse and ride -it over the wildest country, so she would drive her sledge over many -a German mile of snow, and even in the teeth of a north wind blowing -straight from the Russian plains and the Arctic seas.</p> - -<p>'Fear nothing!' had been said again and again to her in her childhood, -and she had learned that her race transmitted to and imposed its -courage no less on its daughters than on its sons. Cato would have -admired this mountain brood, even though its mountain lair was more -luxurious than he would have deemed was wise.</p> - -<p>She knew thoroughly what all her rights, titles, and possessions were. -She was never vague or uncertain as to any of her affairs, and it would -have been impossible to deceive or to cheat her. No one tried to do so, -for her lawyers were men of old-fashioned ways and high repute, and -for centuries the vast properties of the Counts von Szalras had been -administered wisely and honestly in the same advocates' offices, which -were close underneath the Calvarienburg in the good city of Salzburg. -Her trustees were her uncle Cardinal Vàsàrhely and her great-uncle -Prince George of Lilienhöhe; they were old men, both devoted to her, -and both fully conscious that her intelligence was much abler and -keener than their own. All these vast possessions gave her an infinite -variety of occupation and of interests, and she neglected none of them. -Still, all the properties and duties in the world will not suffice to -fill up the heart and mind of a woman of four-and-twenty years of age, -who enjoys the perfection of bodily health and of physical beauty. The -most spiritual and the most dutiful of characters cannot altogether -resist the impulses of nature. There were times when she now began to -think that her life was somewhat empty and passionless.</p> - -<p>But a certain sense of their monotony had begun for the first time to -come upon her; a certain vague dissatisfaction stirred in her now and -then. The discontent of Sabran seemed to have left a shadow of itself -upon her. For the first time she seemed to be listening, as it were, to -her life and to find a great silence in it; there was no echo in it of -voices she loved.</p> - -<p>Why had she never perceived it before? Why did she become conscious -of it now? She asked herself this impatiently as the slight but -bitter flavour of dissatisfaction touched her, and the days for once -seemed—now and then—over long.</p> - -<p>She loved her people and her forests and her mountains, and she had -always thought that they would be sufficient for her, and she had -honestly told the Princess that of solitude she was not afraid; and yet -a certain sense that her life was cold and in a measure empty had of -late crept upon her. She wondered angrily why a vague and intangible -melancholy stole on her at times, which was different from the sorrow -which still weighed on her for her brother's death. Now and then she -looked at the old painted box of the spinet, and thought of the player -who had awakened its dumb strings; but she did not suspect for a -moment that it was in any sense his companionship which, now that it -was lost, made the even familiar tenor of her time appear monotonous -and without much interest. In the long evenings, whilst the Princess -slumbered and she herself sat alone watching the twilight give way to -the night over the broad and solemn landscape, she felt a lassitude -which did not trouble her in the open air, in the daylight, or when she -was busied indoors over the reports and requirements of her estates. -Unacknowledged, indeed, unknown to her, she missed the coming of the -little boat from the Holy Isle, and missed the prayer and praise of the -great tone-poets rolling to her ear from the organ within. If anyone -had told her that her late guest had possessed any such power to make -her days look grey and pass tediously she would have denied it, and -been quite sincere in her denial. But as he had called out the long -mute music from the spinet, so he had touched, if only faintly, certain -chords in her nature that until then had been dumb.</p> - -<p>'I am not like you, my dear Olga,' she wrote to her relative, the -Countess Brancka. 'I am not easily amused. That <i>course effrénée</i> of -the great world carries you honestly away with it; all those incessant -balls, those endless visits, those interminable conferences on your -toilettes, that continual circling of human butterflies round you, -those perpetual courtships of half a score of young men; it all -diverts you. You are never tired of it; you cannot understand any -life outside its pale. All your days, whether they pass in Paris or -Petersburg, at Trouville, at Biarritz, or at Vienna or Scheveningen, -are modelled on the same lines; you must have excitement as you have -your cup of chocolate when you wake. What I envy you is that the -excitement excites you. When I was amidst it I was not excited; I was -seldom even diverted. See the misfortune that it is to be born with a -grave nature! I am as serious as Marcus Antoninus. You will say that it -comes of having learned Latin and Greek. I do not think so; I fear I -was born unamusable. I only truly care about horses and trees, and they -are both grave things, though a horse can be playful enough sometimes -when he is allowed to forget his servitude. Your friends, the famous -tailors, send me admirably-chosen costumes which please that sense in -me which Titians and Vandycks do (I do not mean to be profane); but -I only put them on as the monks do their frocks. Perhaps I am very -unworthy of them; at least, I cannot talk toilette as you can with -ardour a whole morning and every whole morning of your life. You will -think I am laughing at you; indeed I am not. I envy your faculty of -sitting, as I am sure you are sitting now, in a straw chair on the -shore, with a group of <i>boulevardiers</i> around you, and a crowd making -a double hedge to look at you when it is your pleasure to pace the -planks. My language is involved. I do not envy you the faculty of doing -it, of course; I could do it myself to-morrow. I envy you the faculty -of finding amusement in doing it, and finding flattery in the double -hedge.'</p> - -<p>A few days afterwards the Countess Brancka wrote back in reply:</p> - -<p>'The world is like wine; <i>ça se mousse et ça monte.</i> There are heads it -does not affect; there are palates that do not like it, yours amongst -them. But there is so much too in habit. Living alone amidst your -mountains you have lost all taste for the <i>brouhaha</i> of society, which -grows noisier, it must be said, every year. Yes, we are noisy: we have -lost our dignity. You alone keep yours, you are the châtelaine of the -middle ages. Perceforest or Parsifal should come riding to your gates -of granite. By the way, I hear you have been entertaining one of our -<i>boulevardiers.</i> Réné de Sabran is charming, and the handsomest man in -Paris; but he is not Parsifal or Perceforest. Between ourselves, he has -an indifferent reputation, but perhaps he has repented on your Holy -Isle, They say he is changed; that he has quarrelled with Cochonette, -and that he is about to be made deputy for his department, whose -representative has just died. Pardon me for naming Cochonette; it is -part of our decadence that we laugh about all these naughty things and -naughty people who are, after all, not so very much worse than we are -ourselves. But you do not laugh, whether at these or at anything else. -You are too good, my beautiful Wanda; it is your sole defect. You have -even inoculated this poor Marquis, who, after a few weeks upon the -Szalrassee, surrenders Cochonette for the Chamber! My term of service -comes round next month: if you will have me I will take the Tauern on -my road to Gödöllö. I long to embrace you.'</p> - -<p>'Olga will take pity on our solitude,' said Wanda von Szalras to her -aunt. 'I have not seen her for four years, but I imagine she is little -changed.'</p> - -<p>The Princess read the letter, frowning and pursing her lips together in -pretty rebuke as she came to the name of Cochonette.</p> - -<p>'They have indeed lost all dignity,' she said with a sigh; 'and -something more than dignity also. Olga was always frivolous.'</p> - -<p>'All her <i>monde</i> is; not she more than another.'</p> - -<p>'You were very unjust, you see, to M. de Sabran; he pays you the -compliment of following your counsels.'</p> - -<p>Wanda von Szalras rose a little impatiently. 'He had better have -followed them before he broke the bank at Monaco. It is an odd sort of -notoriety with which to attract the pious and taciturn Bretons; and -when he was here he had no convictions. I suppose he picked them up -with the gold pieces at the tables!'</p> - -<p>Olga, Countess Brancka, <i>née</i> Countess Seriatine, of a noble Russian -family, had been married at sixteen to the young Gela von Szalras, who, -a few months after his bridal, had been shot dead on the battlefield of -Solferino.</p> - -<p>After scarce a year of mourning she had fascinated the brother of -Egon Vàsàrhely, a mere youth who bore the title of Count Brancka. -There had been long and bitter opposition made to the new alliance on -the part of both families, on account of the consanguinity between -Stefan Brancka and her dead lord. But opposition had only increased -the ardour of the young man and the young widow; they had borne down -all resistance, procured all dispensations, had been wedded, and in a -year's time had both wished the deed undone. Both were extravagant, -capricious, self-indulgent, and unreasonable; their two egotisms were -in a perpetual collision. They met but seldom, and never met without -quarrelling violently. The only issue of their union was two little, -fantastic, artificial fairies who were called respectively Mila and -Marie.</p> - -<p>At the time of the marriage of the Branckas, Wanda had been too young -to share in opposition to it; but the infidelity to her brother's -memory had offended and wounded her deeply, and in her inmost heart -she had never pardoned it, though the wife of Stefan Brancka had been -a passing guest at Hohenszalras, where, had Count Gela lived, she -would have reigned as sovereign mistress. That his sister reigned -there in her stead the Countess Olga resented keenly and persistently. -Her own portion of the wealth of the Szalras had been forfeited under -her first marriage contract by her subsequent alliance. But she never -failed to persuade herself that her exclusion from every share in that -magnificent fortune was a deep wrong done to herself, and she looked -upon Wanda von Szalras as the doer of that wrong.</p> - -<p>In appearance, however, she was always cordial, caressing, -affectionate, and if Wanda chose to mistrust her affection, it was, she -reflected, only because a life of unwise solitude had made a character -naturally grave become severe and suspicious.</p> - -<p>She did not fail to arrive there a week later. She was a small, -slender, lovely woman, with fair skin, auburn hair, wondrous black -eyes, and a fragile frame that never knew fatigue. She held a high -office at the Imperial Court, but when she was not on service, she -spent, under the plea of health, all her time at Paris or <i>les eaux.</i> -She came with her numerous attendants, her two tiny children, and a -great number of huge <i>fourgons</i> full of all the newest marvels of -combination in costume. She was seductive and caressing, but she was -capricious, malicious, and could be even violent; in general she was -gaily given up to amusement and intrigue, but she had moments of rage -that were uncontrollable. She had had many indiscretions and some -passions, but the world liked her none the less for that; she was a -great lady, and in a sense a happy woman, for she had nerves of steel -despite all her maladies, and brought to the pleasures of life an -unflagging and even ravenous zest.</p> - -<p>When with her perfume of Paris, her restless animation, her children, -like little figures from a fashion-plate, her rapid voice that was -shrill yet sweet, like a silver whistle, and her eyes that sparkled -alike with mirth and with malice, she came on to the stately terraces -of Hohenszalras, she seemed curiously discordant with it and its old -world peace and gravity. She was like a pen-and-ink sketch of Cham -thrust between the illuminated miniatures of a missal.</p> - -<p>She felt it herself.</p> - -<p>'It is the Roman de la Rose in stone,' she said, as her eyes roved -over the building, which she had not visited for four years. 'And you, -Wanda, you look like Yseulte of the White Hand or the Marguerite des -Marguerites; you must be sorry you did not live in those times.'</p> - -<p>'Yes: if only for one reason. One could make the impress of one's own -personality so much more strongly on the time.'</p> - -<p>'And now the times mould us. We are all horribly alike. There is only -yourself who retain any individuality amidst all the women that I know. -'<i>La meule du pressoir de l'abrutissement</i> might have been written of -our world. After all, you are wise to keep out of it. My straw chair at -Trouville looks trumpery beside that ivory chair in your Rittersäal. -I read the other day of some actresses dining off a truffled pheasant -and a sack of bon-bons. That is the sort of dinner we make all the year -round, morally—metaphorically—how do you say it? It makes us thirsty, -and perhaps, I am not sure, perhaps it leaves us half starved, though -we nibble the sweetmeats, and don't know it.</p> - -<p>'Your dinner must lack two things—bread and water.'</p> - -<p>'Yes: we never see either. It is all truffles and caramels and <i>vins -frappés.</i>'</p> - -<p>'There is your bread.'</p> - -<p>She glanced at the little children, two pretty, graceful little maids -of six and seven years old.</p> - -<p>'<i>Ouf!</i>' said the Countess Zelenka. 'They are only little bits of puff -paste, a couple of <i>petits fours</i> baked on the boulevards. If they be -<i>chic</i>, and marry well, I for one shall ask no more of them. If ever -you have children, I suppose you will rear them on science and the -Antonines?'</p> - -<p>'Perhaps on the open air and Homer,' said Wanda, with a smile.</p> - -<p>The Countess Brancka was silent a moment, then said abruptly:</p> - -<p>'You dismissed Egon again?'</p> - -<p>'Has he made you his ambassadress?'</p> - -<p>'No, oh no; he is too proud: only we all are aware of his wishes. -Wanda, do you know that you have some cruelty in you, some sternness?'</p> - -<p>'I think not. The cruelty would be to grant the wishes. With a loveless -wife Egon, would be much more unhappy than he is now.'</p> - -<p>'Oh, after a few months he would not care, you know; they never do. To -unite your fortunes is the great thing; you could lead your lives as -you liked.'</p> - -<p>'Our fortunes do very well apart,' said the Countess von Szalras, with -a patience which cost her some effort.</p> - -<p>'Yours is immense,' said Madame Brancka, with a sigh, for her own and -her husband's wealth had been seriously involved by extravagance and -that high play in which they both indulged. 'And it must accumulate in -your hands. You cannot spend much. I do not see how you could spend -much. You never receive; you never go to your palaces; you never leave -Hohenszalras; and you are so wise a woman that you never commit any -follies.'</p> - -<p>Wanda was silent. It did not appear to her that she was called on to -discuss her expenditure.</p> - -<p>Dinner was announced; their attendants took away the children; the -Princess woke up from a little dose, and said suddenly, 'Olga, is M. de -Sabran elected?'</p> - -<p>'Aunt Ottilie,' said her niece, hastily, 'has lost her affections to -that gentleman, because he painted her saint on a screen and had all -old Haydn at his fingers' ends.'</p> - -<p>'The election does not take place until next month,' said the Countess. -'He will certainly be returned, because of the blind fidelity of the -department to his name. The odd thing is that he should wish to be so.'</p> - -<p>'Wanda told him it was his duty,' said Princess Ottilie, with innocent -malice.</p> - -<p>The less innocent malice of the Countess Brancka's eyes fell for a -passing moment with inquiry and curiosity on the face of her hostess, -which, however, told her nothing.</p> - -<p>'Then he <i>was</i> Parsifal or Perceforest!' she cried, 'and he has ridden -away to find the emerald cup of tradition. What a pity that he paused -on his way to break the bank at Monte Carlo. The two do not accord. I -fear he is but Lancelot.'</p> - -<p>'There is no reason why he should not pursue an honourable ambition,' -said the Princess, with some offence.</p> - -<p>'No reason at all, even if it be not an honourable one,' said Madame -Brancka, with a curious intonation. 'He always wins at baccara; he has -done some inimitable caricatures which hang at the Mirliton; he is an -amateur Rubenstein, and he has been the lover of Cochonette. These are -his qualifications for the Chamber, and if they be not as valiant ones -as those of <i>les Preux</i> they are at least more amusing.'</p> - -<p>'My dear Olga,' said the Princess, with a certain dignity of reproof, -'you are not on your straw chair at Trouville. There are subjects, -expressions, suggestions, which are not agreeable to my ears or on your -lips.'</p> - -<p>'Cochonette!' murmured the offender, with a graceful little curtsey -of obedience and contrition. 'Oh, Madame, if you knew! A year ago we -talked of nothing else!'</p> - -<p>The Countess Brancka wished to talk still of nothing else, and though -she encountered a chillness and silence that would have daunted a less -bold spirit, she contrived to excite in the Princess a worldly and -almost unholy curiosity concerning that heroine of profane history -who had begun life in a little bakehouse of the Batignolles, and had -achieved the success of putting her name (or her nickname) upon the -lips of all Paris.</p> - -<p>Throughout dinner she spoke of little save of Cochonette, that -goddess of <i>bouffe</i>, and of Parsifal, as she persisted in baptising -the one lover to whom alone the goddess had ever been faithful. With -ill-concealed impatience her hostess bore awhile with the subject; then -dismissed it somewhat peremptorily.</p> - -<p>'We are provincials, my dear Olga,' she said, with a very cold -inflection of contempt in her voice. 'We are very antiquated in our -ways and our views. Bear with our prejudices and do not scare our -decorum. We keep it by us as we keep kingfishers' skins amongst our -furs in summer against moth; a mere superstition, I daresay, but we are -only rustic people.'</p> - -<p>'How you say that, Wanda,' said her guest, with a droll little laugh, -'and you look like Marie Antoinette all the while! Why will you bury -yourself? You would only need to be seen in Paris a week, and all the -world would turn after you and go back to tradition and ermine, instead -of <i>chien</i> and plush. If you live another ten years as you live now you -will turn Hohenszalras into a religious house; and even Mme. Ottilie -would regret that. You will institute a Carmelite Order, because -white becomes you so. Poor Egon, he would sooner have you laugh about -Cochonette.'</p> - -<p>The evening was chill, but beautifully calm and free of mist. Wanda -von Szalras walked out on to the terrace, whilst her cousin and guest, -missing the stimulus of her usual band of lovers and friends, curled -herself up on a deep chair and fell sound asleep like a dormouse.</p> - -<p>There was no sound on the night except the ripple of the lake water -below and the splash of torrents falling down the cliffs around; a -sense of irritation and of pleasure moved her both in the same moment. -What was a French courtesan, a singer of lewd songs, an interpreter -of base passions to her? Nothing except a creature to be loathed and -pitied, as men in health feel a disgusted compassion for disease. -Yet she felt a certain anger stir in her as she recalled all this -frivolous, trivial, ill-flavoured chatter of her cousin's. And what was -it to her if one of the many lovers of this woman had cast her spells -from about him and left her for a manlier and a worthier arena? Yet -she could not resist a sense of delicate distant homage to herself in -the act, in the mute obedience to her counsels such as a knight might -render, even Lancelot with stained honour and darkened soul.</p> - -<p>The silence of it touched her.</p> - -<p>He had said nothing: only by mere chance, in the idle circling of -giddy rumour, she learned he had remembered her words and followed her -suggestion. There was a subtle and flattering reverence in it which -pleased the taste of a woman who was always proud but never vain. And -to any noble temperament there is a singularly pure and honest joy in -the consciousness of having been in any measure the means of raising -higher instincts and loftier desires in any human soul that was not -dead but dormant.</p> - -<p>The shrill voice of Olga Brancka startled her as it broke in on her -musings.</p> - -<p>'I have been asleep!' she cried, as she rose out of her deep chair and -came forth into the moonlight. 'Pray forgive me, Wanda. You will have -all that drowsy water running and tumbling all over the place; it makes -one think of the voices in the Sistine in Passion Week; there are the -gloom, the hush, the sigh, the shriek, the eternal appeal, the eternal -accusation. That water would drive me into hysteria; could you not -drain it, divert it, send it underground—silence it somehow?'</p> - -<p>'When you can keep the Neva flowing at New Year, perhaps I shall be -able. But I would not if I could. I have had all that water about me -from babyhood; when I am away from the sound of it I feel as if some -hand had woolled up my ears.'</p> - -<p>'That is what I feel when I am away from the noise of the streets. Oh, -Wanda! to think that you can do utterly as you like and yet do not like -to have the sea of light of the Champs-Élysées or the Graben before -your eyes, rather than that gliding, dusky water!'</p> - -<p>'The water is a mirror. I can see my own soul in it and Nature's; -perhaps one hopes even sometimes to see God's.'</p> - -<p>'That is not living, my dear, it is dreaming.'</p> - -<p>'Oh, no, my life is very real; it is as real as light to darkness, it -is absolute prose.'</p> - -<p>'Make it poetry then; that is very easy.'</p> - -<p>'Poetry is to the poetical; I am by no means poetical. My stud-book, -my stewards' ledgers, my bankers' accounts, form the chief of my -literature; you know I am a practical farmer.'</p> - -<p>'I know you are one of the most beautiful and one of the richest women -in Europe, and you live as if you were fifty years old, ugly, and -<i>dévote</i>; all this will grow on you. In a few years' time you will -be a hermit, a prude, an ascetic. You will found a new order, and be -canonised after death.'</p> - -<p>'My aunt is afraid that I shall die a freethinker. It is hard to -please every one,' replied the Countess Wanda, with unruffled good -humour. 'It is poetical people who found religious orders, enthusiasts, -visionaries; I wish I were one of them. But I am not. The utmost I -can do is to follow George Herbert's precept and sweep my own little -chambers, so that this sweeping may be in some sort a duty done.'</p> - -<p>'You are a good woman, Wanda, and I dare say a grand one, but you are -too grave for me.'</p> - -<p>'You mean that I am dull? People always grow dull who live much alone.'</p> - -<p>'But you could have the whole world at your feet if you only raised a -finger.'</p> - -<p>'That would not amuse me at all.'</p> - -<p>Her guest gave an impatient movement of her shoulders; after a little -she said, 'Did Réné de Sabran amuse you?'</p> - -<p>Wanda von Szalras hesitated a moment.</p> - -<p>'In a measure he interested me,' she answered, being a perfectly -truthful woman. 'He is a man who has the capacity of great things, -but he seems to me to be his own worst enemy; if he had fewer gifts -he might probably have more achievement. A waste of power is always a -melancholy sight.'</p> - -<p>'He is only a <i>boulevardier</i>, you know.'</p> - -<p>'No doubt your Paris asphalte is the modern embodiment of Circe.'</p> - -<p>'But he is leaving Circe.'</p> - -<p>'So much the better for him if he be. But I do not know why you speak -of him so much. He is a stranger to me, and will never, most likely, -cross my path again.'</p> - -<p>'Oh, Parsifal will come back,' said Madame Brancka, with a little -smile. 'Hohenszalras is his Holy Grail.'</p> - -<p>'He can scarcely come uninvited, and who will invite him here?' said -the mistress of Hohenszalras, with cold literalness.</p> - -<p>'Destiny will; the great master of the ceremonies who disposes of us -all,' said her cousin.</p> - -<p>'Destiny!' said Wanda, with some contempt. 'Ah, you are superstitious; -irreligious people always are. You believe in mesmerism and disbelieve -in God.'</p> - -<p>'Oh, most Holy Mother, cannot you make Wanda a little like other -people?' said the Countess Brancka when her hostess had left her alone -with Princess Ottilie. 'She is as much a fourteenth-century figure as -any one of those knights in the Rittersäal.'</p> - -<p>'Wanda is a gentlewoman,' said the Princess drily. 'You great ladies -are not always that, my dear Olga. You are all very <i>piquantes</i> and -<i>provocantes</i>, no doubt, but you have forgotten what dignity is like, -and perhaps you have forgotten, too, what self-respect is like. It is -but another old-fashioned word.'</p> - - - -<hr class="chap" /> -<h4><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX.</a></h4> - - -<p>The late summer passed on into full autumn, and he never returned to -the little isle under the birches and willows. The monks spoke of him -often with the wondering admiration of rustic recluses for one who had -seemed to them the very incarnation of that world which to them was -only a vague name. His talents were remembered, his return was longed -for; a silver reliquary and an antique book of plain song which he -had sent them were all that remained to them of his sojourn there. As -they angled for trout under the drooping boughs, or sat and dosed in -the cloister as the rain fell, they talked together of that marvellous -visitant with regret. Sometimes they said to one another that they had -fancied once upon a time he would have become lord there, where the -spires and pinnacles and shining sloping roofs of the great Schloss -rose amidst the woods across the Szalrassee. When their grand prior -heard them say so he rebuked them.</p> - -<p>'Our lady is a true daughter of the Holy Church,' he said; 'all the -lands and all the wealth she has will come to the Church. You will see, -should we outlive her—which the saints send we may not do—that the -burg will be bequeathed by her to form a convent of Ursulines. It is -the order she most loves.'</p> - -<p>She overheard him say so once when she sat in her boat beneath the -willows drifting by under the island, and she sighed impatiently.</p> - -<p>'No, I shall not do that,' she thought. 'The religious foundations did -a great work in their time, but that time is over. They can no more -resist the pressure of the change of thought and habit than I can set -sail like S. Ursula with eleven thousand virgins. Hohenszalras shall -go to the Crown; they will do what seems best with it. But I may live -fifty years and more.'</p> - -<p>A certain sadness came over her as she thought so; a long life, a -lonely life, appalled her, even though it was cradled in all luxury and -strengthened with all power.</p> - -<p>'If only my Bela were living!' she said, half aloud; and the water grew -dim to her sight as it flowed away green and sparkling into the deep -long shadows of its pine-clothed shores, shadows, stretching darkly -across its western side, whilst the eastern extremity was still warm in -the afternoon light.</p> - -<p>The great pile of Hohenszalras seemed to tower up into the very clouds; -the evening sun, not yet sunk behind the Venediger range, shone ruddily -on all its towers and its gothic spires, and the grim sculptures and -the glistening metal, with which it was so lavishly ornamented, were -illumined till it looked like some colossal and enchanted citadel, -where soon the magic ivory horn of Childe Boland might sound and wake -the spell-bound warders.</p> - -<p>If only Bela, lord of all, had lived!</p> - -<p>But her regret was not only for her brother.</p> - -<p>In the October of that year her solitude was broken; her Sovereign -signified her desire to see Hohenszalras again. They were about to -visit Salzburg, and expressed their desire to pass three days in the -Iselthal. There was nothing to be done but to express gratitude for the -honour and make the necessary preparations. The von Szalras had been -always loyal allies rather than subjects, and their devotion to the -Habsburg house had been proved in many ways and with constancy. She -felt that she would rather have to collect and equip a regiment of -horse, as her fathers had done, than fill her home with the <i>tapage</i> -inevitable to an Imperial reception, but she was not insensible to the -friendship that dictated this mark of honour.</p> - -<p>'Fate conspires to make me break my resolutions,' she said to the -Princess; who answered with scant sympathy:</p> - -<p>'There are some resolutions much more wisely broken than persevered in; -your vows of solitude are amongst them.'</p> - -<p>'Three days will not long affect my solitude.'</p> - -<p>'Who knows? At all events, Hohenszalras for those three days will be -worthy of its traditions—if only it will not rain.'</p> - -<p>'We will hope that it may not. Let us prepare the list of invitations.'</p> - -<p>When she had addressed all the invitations to some fifty of the -greatest families of the empire for the house party, she took one of -the cards engraved 'To meet their Imperial Majesties,' and hesitated -some moments, then wrote across it the name of Sabran.</p> - -<p>'You will like to see your friend,' she said as she passed it to her -aunt.</p> - -<p>'Certainly, I should like to do so, but I am quite sure he will not -come.'</p> - -<p>'Not come?'</p> - -<p>'I think he will not. You will never understand, my dear Wanda, that -men may love you.'</p> - -<p>'I certainly saw nothing of love in the conversation of M. de Sabran,' -she answered, with some irritation.</p> - -<p>'In his conversation? Very likely not; he is a proud man and poor.'</p> - -<p>'Since he has ceased to visit Monte Carlo.'</p> - -<p>'You are ungenerous, Wanda.'</p> - -<p>'I?'</p> - -<p>The accusation fell on her with a shock of surprise, under which some -sense of error stirred. Was it possible she could be ungenerous? She, -whose character had always, even in its faults, been cast on lines so -broad? She let his invitation go away with the rest in the post-bag to -Matrey.</p> - -<p>In a week his answer came with others. He was very sensible, very -grateful, but the political aspect of the time forbade him to leave -France. His election had entailed on him many obligations; the Chamber -would meet next month, etc., etc. He laid his homage and regrets at the -feet of the ladies of Hohenszalras.</p> - -<p>'I was sure he would say so,' the Princess observed. It did not lie -within her Christian obligations to spare the '<i>je vous l'avais bien -dit.</i>'</p> - -<p>'It is very natural that he should not jeopardise his public -prospects,' answered Wanda herself, angrily conscious of a -disappointment, with which there was mingled also a sense of greater -respect for him than she had ever felt.</p> - -<p>'He cares nothing at all about those,' said the Princess, sharply. 'If -he had the position of Egon he would come. His political prospects! Do -you pretend to be ignorant that he only went to the Chamber as he went -to Romaris, because you recommended ambition and activity?'</p> - -<p>'If that be the case he is most wise not to come,' answered, with some -coldness, the châtelaine of Hohenszalras; and she went to visit the -stables, which would be more important in the eyes of her Imperial -mistress than any other part of the castle.</p> - -<p>'She will like Cadiga,' she thought, as she stroked the graceful throat -of an Arab mare which she had had over from Africa three months before, -a pure bred daughter of the desert 'shod with lightning.'</p> - -<p>She conversed long with her <i>stallmeister</i> Ulrich, and gave him various -directions.</p> - -<p>'We are all grown very rustic and old-fashioned here,' she said with a -smile. 'But the horses at least will not disgrace us.'</p> - -<p>Ulrich asked his most high countess if the Margraf von Sabran would be -of the house party, and when she answered 'No,' said, with regret, -that no one had ever looked so well on Siegfried as he had done.</p> - -<p>'He did ride very well,' she said, and turned to the stall where the -sorrel Siegfried stood. She sighed unconsciously as she drew the -tufted hair hanging over-the horse's forehead through her fingers with -tenderness. What if she were to make Siegfried and all else his, if it -were true that he loved her? She thrust the thought away almost before -it took any real shape.</p> - -<p>'I do not even believe it,' she said half aloud, and yet in her -innermost heart she did believe it.</p> - -<p>The Imperial visit was made and became a thing of the past.</p> - -<p>The state apartments were opened, the servants wore their state -liveries, the lake had its banners and flags, its decorated -landing-stairs and velvet-cushioned boats; the stately and silent place -was full for three days and nights of animated and brilliant life, -and great hunting parties rejoiced the soul of old Otto, and made the -forests ring with sound of horn and rifle. The culverins on the keep -fired their salutes, the chimes of the island monastery echoed the -bells of the clock tower of the Schloss, the schools sang with clear -fresh voices the Kaiser's Hymn, the sun shone, the jäger were in full -glory, the castle was filled with guests and their servants,' the -long-unused theatre had a troop of Viennese to play comedies on its -bijou stage, the ball-room, lined with its Venetian mirrors and its -Reseiner gilding, was lit up once more after many years of gloom; the -nobles of the provinces came from far and wide at the summons of the -lady of Hohenszalras, and the greater nobles who formed the house-party -were well amused and well content, whilst the Imperial guests were -frankly charmed with all things, and honestly reluctant to depart.</p> - -<p>When she accompanied them to the foot of the terrace stairs, and there -took leave of them, she could feel that their visit had been one of -unfeigned enjoyment, and her farewell gift to her Kaiserin was Cadiga. -They had left early on the morning of the fourth day, and the remainder -of the day was filled till sunset by the departure of the other guests; -it was fatiguing and crowded. When the last visitor had gone she -dropped down on a great chair in the Rittersäal, and gave a long-drawn -sigh of relief.</p> - -<p>'What a long strain on one's powers of courtesy!' she murmured. 'It is -more exhausting than to climb Gross Glöckner!'</p> - -<p>'It has been perfectly successful!' said the Princess, whose cheeks -were warm and whose eyes were bright with triumph.</p> - -<p>'It has been only a matter of money,' said the Countess von Szalras, -with some contempt. 'Nothing makes one feel so <i>bourgeoise</i> as a thing -like this. Any merchant or banker could do the same. It is impossible -to put any originality into it. It is like diamonds. Any one only heard -of yesterday could do as much if they had only the money to do it with; -you do not seem to see what I mean?'</p> - -<p>'I see that, as usual, you are discontented when any other woman would -be in paradise,' answered the Princess, a little tartly. 'Pray, could -the <i>bourgeoise</i> have a residence ten centuries old?'</p> - -<p>'I am afraid she could buy one easily,'</p> - -<p>'Would that be the same thing?'</p> - -<p>'Certainly not, but it would enable her to do all I have done for the -last three days, if she had only money enough; she could even give away -Cadiga.'</p> - -<p>'She could not get Cadiga accepted!' said Mme. Ottilie, drily. 'You are -tired, my love, and so do not appreciate your own triumphs. It has been -a very great success.'</p> - -<p>'They were very kind; they are always so kind. But all the time I could -not help thinking, were they not horribly fatigued. It wearied me so -myself, I could not believe that they were otherwise than weary too.'</p> - -<p>'It has been a great success,' repeated the Princess. 'But you are -always discontented.'</p> - -<p>Wanda did not reply; she leaned back against the Cordovan leather -back of the chair, crushing her chestnut hair against the emblazoned -scutcheon of her house; she was very fatigued, and her face was pale. -For three whole days and evenings to preserve an incessant vigilance of -courtesy, a continual assumption of interest, an unremitting appearance -of enjoyment, a perpetual smile of welcome, is very tedious work: those -in love with social successes are sustained by the consciousness of -them, but she was not. An Imperial visit more or less could add not one -hair's breadth to the greatness of the house of Szalras.</p> - -<p>And there was a dull, half conscious pain at the bottom of her heart. -She was thinking of Egon Vàsàrhely, who had said he could not leave -his regiment; of Réné de Sabran, who had said he could not leave his -country. Even to those who care nothing for society, and dislike the -stir and noise of the world about them, there is still always a vague -sense of depression in the dispersion of a great party; the house -seems so strangely silent, the rooms seem so strangely empty, servants -flitting noiselessly here and there, a dropped flower, a fallen jewel, -an oppressive scent from multitudes of fading blossoms, a broken vase -perhaps, or perhaps a snapped fan—these are all that are left of -the teeming life crowded here one little moment ago. Though one may -be glad they are all gone, yet there is a certain sadness in it. '<i>Le -lendemain de la fête</i>' keeps its pathos, even though the fête itself -has possessed no poetry and no power to amuse.</p> - -<p>The Princess, who was very fatigued too, though she would not confess -that social duties could ever exhaust anyone, went softly away to -her own room, and Wanda sat alone in the great Rittersäal, with the -afternoon light pouring through the painted casements on to the -damascened armour, and the Flemish tapestries, and the great dais at -the end of the hall, with its two-headed eagle that Dante cursed, -its draperies of gold-coloured velvet, its escutcheons in beaten and -enamelled metal.</p> - -<p>Discontented! The Princess had left that truthful word behind her like -a little asp creeping upon a marble floor. It stung her conscience with -a certain reproach, her pride with a certain impatience. Discontented! -She who had always been so equable of temper, so enamoured of solitude, -so honestly loyal to her people and her duties, so entirely grateful to -the placid days that came and went as calmly as the breathing of her -breast!</p> - -<p>Was it possible she was discontented?</p> - -<p>How all the great world that had just left her would have laughed at -her, and asked what doubled rose-leaf made her misery?</p> - -<p>No one hardly on earth could be more entirely free than she was, more -covered with all good gifts of fortune and of circumstances; and she -had always been so grateful to her life until now. Would she never -cease to miss the coming of the little boat across from the Holy Isle? -She was angry that this memory should have so much power to pursue her -thought and spoil the present hours. Had he but been there, she knew -very well that the pageantry of the past three days would not have -been the mere empty formalities, the mere gilded tedium that they had -appeared to be to her.</p> - -<p>On natures thoughtful and profound, silence has sometimes a much -greater power than speech. Now and then she surprised herself in the -act of thinking how artificial human life had become, when the mere -accident of a greater or lesser fortune determined whether a man who -respected himself could declare his feeling for a woman he loved. It -seemed lamentably conventional and unreal, and yet had he not been -fettered by silence he would have been no gentleman.</p> - -<p>Life resumed its placid even tenor at Hohenszalras after this -momentary disturbance. Autumn comes early in the Glöckner and -Venediger groups. Madame Ottilie with a shiver heard the north winds -sweep through the yellowing forests, and watched the white mantle -descend lower and lower down the mountain sides. Another winter was -approaching, a winter in which she would see no one, hear nothing, sit -all day by her wood fire, half asleep for sheer want of interest to -keep her awake; the very postboy was sometimes detained by the snowfall -for whole days together in his passage to and from Matrey.</p> - -<p>'It is all very well for you,' she said pettishly to her niece. 'You -have youth, you have strength, you like to have four mad horses put in -your sleigh and drive them like demoniacs through howling deserts of -frozen pine forests, and come home when the great stars are all out, -with your eyes shining like the planets, and the beasts all white with -foam and icicles. You like that; you can do it; you prefer it before -anything, but I—what have I to do? One cannot eat nougats for ever, -nor yet read one's missal. Even you will allow that the evenings are -horribly long. Your horses cannot help you there. You embroider very -artistically, but they would do that all for you at any convent; and to -be sure you write your letters and audit your accounts, but you might -just as well leave it all to your lawyers. Olga Brancka is quite right, -though I do not approve of her mode of expression, but she is quite -right—you should be in the world.'</p> - -<p>But she failed to move Wanda by a hair's breadth, and soon the hush -of winter settled down on Hohenszalras, and when the first frost had -hardened the ground the four black horses were brought out in the -sleigh, and their mistress, wrapped in furs to the eyes, began those -headlong gallops through the silent forests which stirred her to a -greater exhilaration than any pleasures of the world could have raised -in her. To guide those high-mettled, half-broken, high-bred creatures, -fresh from freedom on the plains of the Danube, was like holding the -reins of the winds.</p> - -<p>One day at dusk as she returned from one of these drives, and went -to see the Princess Ottilie before changing her dress, the Princess -received her with a little smile and a demure air of triumph, of -smiling triumph. In her hand was an open letter which she held out to -her niece.</p> - -<p>'Read!' she said with much self-satisfaction. 'See what miracles you -and the Holy Isle can work.'</p> - -<p>Wanda took the letter, which she saw at a glance was in the writing -of Sabran. After some graceful phrases of homage to the Princess, -he proceeded in it to say that he had taken his seat in the French -Chamber, as deputy for his department.</p> - -<p>'I do not deceive myself,' he continued. 'The trust is placed in me for -the sake of the memories of the dead Sabran, not because I am anything -in the sight of these people; but I will endeavour to be worthy of it. -I am a sorry idler and of little purpose and strength in life, but I -will endeavour to make my future more serious and more deserving of -the goodness which was showered on me at Hohenszalras. It grieved me -to be unable to profit by the permission so graciously extended to -me at the time of their Imperial Majesties' sojourn with you, but it -was impossible for me to come. My thoughts were with you, as they are -indeed every hour. Offer my homage to the Countess von Szalras, with -the renewal of my thanks.'</p> - -<p>Then, with some more phrases of reverence and compliment blent in one -to the venerable lady whom he addressed, he ended an epistle which -brought as much pleasure to the recipient as though she had been -seventeen instead of seventy.</p> - -<p>She watched the face of Wanda during the perusal of these lines, but -she did not learn anything from its expression.</p> - -<p>'He writes admirably,' she said, when she had read it through; 'and I -think he is well fitted for a political career. They say that it is -always best in politics not to be burdened with convictions, and he -will be singularly free from such impediments, for he has none!'</p> - -<p>'You are very harsh and unjust,' said the Princess, angrily. 'No -person can pay you a more delicate compliment than lies in following -your counsels, and yet you have nothing better to say about it than to -insinuate an unscrupulous immorality.'</p> - -<p>'Politics are always immoral.'</p> - -<p>'Why did you recommend them to him, then?' said the Princess, sharply.</p> - -<p>'They are better than some other things—than <i>rouge et noir</i>, for -instance; but I did not perhaps do right in advising a mere man of -pleasure to use the nation as his larger gaming-table.'</p> - -<p>'You are beyond my comprehension! Your wire drawing is too fine for my -dull eyesight. One thing is certainly quite clear to me, dull as I am; -you live alone until you grow dissatisfied with everything. There is -no possibility of pleasing a woman who disapproves of the whole living -world!'</p> - -<p>'The world sees few unmixed motives,' said Wanda, to which the Princess -replied by an impatient movement.</p> - -<p>'The post has brought fifty letters for you. I have been looking over -the journals,' she answered. 'There is something you may also perhaps -deign to read.'</p> - -<p>She held out a French newspaper and pointed to a column in it.</p> - -<p>Wanda took it and read it, standing. It was a report of a debate in the -French Chamber.</p> - -<p>She read in silence and attentively, leaning against the great carved -chimney-piece. 'I was not aware he was so good an orator,' she said -simply, when she had finished reading.</p> - -<p>'You grant that it is a very fine speech, a very noble speech?' -said Madame Otillie, eagerly and with impatience. 'You perceive the -sensation it caused; it is evidently the first time he has spoken. You -will see in another portion of the print how they praise him.'</p> - -<p>'He has acquired his convictions with rapidity. He was a Socialist when -here.'</p> - -<p>'The idea! A man of his descent has always the instincts of his order: -he may pretend to resist them, but they are always stronger than he. -You might at least commend him, Wanda, since your words turned him -towards public life.'</p> - -<p>'He is no doubt eloquent,' she answered, with 'some reluctance. 'That -we could see here. If he be equally sincere he will be a great gain to -the nobility of France.'</p> - -<p>'Why should you doubt his sincerity?'</p> - -<p>'Is mere ambition ever sincere?'</p> - -<p>'I really cannot understand you. You censured his waste of ability and -accession; you seem equally disposed to cavil at his exertions and use -of his talent. Your prejudices are most cruelly tenacious.'</p> - -<p>'How can I applaud your friend's action until I am sure of his motive?'</p> - -<p>'His motive is to please you,' thought the Princess, but she was too -wary to say so.</p> - -<p>She merely replied:</p> - -<p>'No motive is ever altogether unmixed, as you cruelly observed; but I -should say that his must be on the whole sufficiently pure. He wishes -to relieve the inaction and triviality of a useless life.'</p> - -<p>'To embrace a hopeless cause is always in a manner noble,' assented her -niece. 'And I grant you that he has spoken very well.'</p> - -<p>Then she went to her own room to dress for dinner.</p> - -<p>In the evening she read the reported speech again, with closer -attention. It was eloquent, ironical, stately, closely reasoned, and -rose in its peroration to a caustic and withering eloquence of retort -and invective. It was the speech of a born orator, but it was also the -speech of a strongly conservative partisan.</p> - -<p>'How much of what he says does he believe?' she thought, with a doubt -that saddened her and made her wonder why it came to her. And whether -he believed or not, whether he were true or false in his political -warfare, whether he were selfish or unselfish in his ambitions, what -did it matter to her?</p> - -<p>He had stayed there a few weeks, and he had played so well that the -echoes of his music still seemed to linger after him, and that was all. -It was not likely they would ever meet again.</p> - - - -<hr class="chap" /> -<h4><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X.</a></h4> - - -<p>With the New Year Madame Ottilie received another letter from him. -It was brief, grateful, and touching. It concluded with a message of -ceremonious homage to the châtelaine of Hohenszalras. Of his entrance -into political life it said nothing. With the letter came a screen of -gilded leather which he had painted himself, with passages from the -history of S. Julian Hospitador.</p> - -<p>'It will seem worthless,' he said, 'where every chamber is a museum -of art; but accept it as a sign of my grateful and imperishable -remembrance.'</p> - -<p>The Princess was deeply touched and sensibly flattered.</p> - -<p>'You will admit, at least,' she said, with innocent triumph, 'that he -knows how to make gratitude graceful.'</p> - -<p>'It is an ex-voto, and you are his patron saint, dear mother,' said -the Countess Wanda, with a smile but the smile was one of approval. -She thought his silence on his own successes and on her name was in -good taste. And the screen was so admirably painted that the Venetian -masters might have signed it without discredit.</p> - -<p>'May I give him no message from you,' said the Princess, as she was -about to write her reply.</p> - -<p>Her niece hesitated.</p> - -<p>'Say we have read his first speech, and are glad of his success,' she -said, after a few moments' reflection.</p> - -<p>'Nothing more?'</p> - -<p>'What else should I say?' replied Wanda, with some irritation.</p> - -<p>The Princess was too honourable a woman to depart from the text of -the congratulation, but she contrived to throw a little more warmth -into the spirit of it; and she did not show her letter to the mistress -of Hohenszalras. She set the screen near her favourite chair in the -blue-room.</p> - -<p>'If only there were any one to appreciate it!' she said, with a sigh. -'Like everything else in this house, it might as well be packed up in -a chest for aught people see of it. This place is not a museum; the -world goes to a museum: it is a crypt!'</p> - -<p>'Would it be improved by a crowd of sightseers at ten kreutzers a head?'</p> - -<p>'No: but it would be very much brightened by a house-party at Easter, -and now and then at midsummer and autumn. In your mother's time the -October parties for the bear-hunts, the wolf-hunts, the boar-hunts, -were magnificent. No, I do not think the chase contrary to God's -will; man has power over the beasts of the field and the forest. The -archdukes never missed an autumn here; they found the sport finer than -in Styria.'</p> - -<p>Her niece kissed her hand and went out to where her four black horses -were fretting and champing before the great doors, and the winter sun -was lighting up the gilded scrollwork, and the purple velvet, and the -brown sables of her sleigh, that had been built in Russia and been a -gift to her from Egon Vàsàrhely. She felt a little impatience of the -Princess Ottilie, well as she loved her; the complacent narrowness of -mind, the unconscious cruelty, the innocent egotism, the conventional -religion which clipped and fitted the ways of Deity to suit its own -habits and wishes: these fretted her, chafed her, oppressed her with a -sense of their utter vanity. The Princess would not herself have harmed -a sparrow or a mouse, yet it seemed to her that Providence had created -all the animal world only to furnish pastime for princes and their -jägers. She saw no contradiction in this view of the matter. The small -conventional mind of her had been cast in that mould and would never -expand: it was perfectly pure and truthful, but it was contracted and -filled with formula.</p> - -<p>Wanda von Szalras, who loved her tenderly, could not help a certain -impatience of this, the sole, companionship she had. A deep affection -may exist side by side with a mental disparity that creates an -unwilling but irresistible sense of tedium and discordance. A clear and -broad intelligence is infinitely patient of inferiority; but its very -patience has its reaction in its own fatigue and silent irritation.</p> - -<p>This lassitude came on her most in the long evenings whilst the -Princess slumbered and she herself sat alone. She was not haunted by -it when she was in the open air, or in the library, occupied with the -reports or the requirements on her estates. But the evenings were -lonely and tedious; they had not seemed so when the little boat had -come away from the monastery, and the prayer and praise of Handel and -Haydn, and the new-born glory of the Nibelungen tone-poems had filled -the quiet twilight hours. It was in no way probable that the musician -and she would ever meet again. She understood that his own delicacy -and pride must perforce keep him out of Austria, and she, however much -the Princess desired it, could never invite him there alone, and would -not probably gather such a house-party at Hohenszalras as might again -warrant her doing so.</p> - -<p>Nothing was more unlikely, she supposed, than that she would ever hear -again the touch that had awakened the dumb chords of the old painted -spinet.</p> - -<p>But circumstance, that master of the ceremonies, as Madame Brancka -termed it, who directs the <i>menuet de la cour</i> of life, and who often -diverts himself by letting it degenerate into a dance of death, willed -it otherwise. There was a dear friend of hers who was a dethroned -and exiled queen. Their friendship was strong, tender, and born in -childish days. On the part of Wanda, it had been deepened by the august -adversity which impresses and attaches all noble natures. Herself born -of a great race, and with the instincts of a ruling class hereditary -in her, there was something sacred and awful in the fall of majesty. -Her friend, stripped of all appanages of her rank, and deserted by -nearly all who 'had so late sworn her allegiance, became more than ever -dear; she became holy to her, and she would sooner have denied the -request of a reigning sovereign than of one powerless to command or -to rebuke. 'When this friend, who had been so hardly smitten by fate, -sent her word that she was ill and would fain see her, she, therefore, -never even hesitated as to obedience before the summons. It troubled -and annoyed her; it came to her ill-timed and unexpected; and it was -above all disagreeable to her, because it would take her to Paris. But -it never occurred to her to send an excuse to this friend, who had no -longer any power to say, 'I will,' but could only say, like common -humanity, 'I hope.'</p> - -<p>Within two hours of her reception of the summons she was on her way to -Windisch-Matrey. The Princess did not accompany her; she intended to -make as rapid a journey as possible without pausing on the way, and her -great-aunt was too old and too delicate in health for such exertion.</p> - -<p>'Though I would fain go and see that great Parisian aurist,' she said -plaintively. 'My hearing is not what it used to be.'</p> - -<p>'The great aurist shall come to you, dear mother,' said Wanda. 'I will -bring him back with me.'</p> - -<p>She travelled with a certain state, since she did not think that the -moment of a visit to a dethroned sovereign was a fit time to lay -ceremony aside. She took several of her servants and some of her horses -with her, and journeyed by way of Munich and Strasburg.</p> - -<p>Madame Ottilie was too glad she should go anywhere to offer opposition; -and in her heart of hearts she thought of her favourite. He was in -Paris; who knew what might happen?</p> - -<p>It was midwinter, and the snow was deep on all the country, whether of -mountain or of plain, which stretched between the Tauern and the French -capital. But there was no great delay of the express, and in some forty -hours the Countess von Szalras, with her attendants, and her horses -with theirs, arrived at the Hôtel Bristol.</p> - -<p>The noise, the movement, the brilliancy of the streets seemed a strange -spectacle, after four years spent without leaving the woodland quiet -and mountain solitudes of Hohenszalras.</p> - -<p>She was angry with herself that, as she stood at the windows of her -apartment, she almost unconsciously watched the faces of the crowd -passing below, and felt a vague expectancy of seeing amongst them the -face of Sabran.</p> - -<p>She went that evening, to the modest hired house where the young and -beautiful sovereign she came to visit had found a sorry refuge. It -was a meeting full of pain to both. When they had last parted at the -Hofburg of Vienna, the young queen had been in all the triumph and hope -of brilliant nuptials; and at Hohenszalras, the people's Heilige Bela -had been living, a happy boy, in all his fair promise.</p> - -<p>Meanwhile, the news-sheets informed all their leaders that the Countess -von Szalras was in Paris. Ambassadors and ambassadresses, princes and -princesses, and a vast number of very great people, hastened to write -their names at the Hôtel Bristol.</p> - -<p>Amongst the cards left was that of Sabran. But he sent it; he did not -go in person.</p> - -<p>She refused all invitations, and declined almost all visits. She had -come there only to see her friend, the Queen of Natalia. Paris, which -loves anything new, talked a great deal about her; and its street -crowds, which admires what is beautiful, began to gather before the -doors at the hours when her black horses, driven Russian fashion, came -fretting and flashing like meteors over the asphalte.</p> - -<p>'Why did you bring your horses for so short a time?' said Madame -Kaulnitz to her. 'You could, of course, have had any of ours.'</p> - -<p>'I always like to have some of my horses with me,' she answered. -'I would have brought them all, only it would have looked so -ostentatious; you know they are my children.'</p> - -<p>'I do not see why you should not have other children,' said Madame -Kaulnitz. 'It is quite inhuman that you will not marry.'</p> - -<p>'I have never said that I will not. But I do not think it likely.'</p> - -<p>Two days after her arrival, as she was driving down the Avenue de -l'Impératrice, she saw Sabran on foot. She was driving slowly. She -would have stopped her carriage if he had paused in his walk; but he -did not, he only bowed low and passed on. It was almost rude, after the -hospitality of Hohenszalras, but the rudeness pleased her. It spoke -both of pride and of sensitiveness. It seemed scarcely natural, after -their long hours of intercourse, that they should pass each other thus -as strangers; yet it seemed impossible they should any more be friends. -She did not ask herself why it seemed so, but she felt it rather by -instinct than by reasoning.</p> - -<p>She was annoyed to feel that the sight of him had caused a momentary -emotion in her of mingled trouble and pleasure.</p> - -<p>No one mentioned his name to her, and she asked no one concerning him. -She spent almost all her time with the Queen of Natalia, and there -were other eminent foreign personages in Paris at that period whose -amiabilities she could not altogether reject, and she had only allowed -herself fifteen days as the length of her sojourn, as Madame Ottilie -was alone amidst the snow-covered mountains of the Tauern.</p> - -<p>On the fifth day after her meeting with Sabran he sent another card -of his to the hotel, and sent with it an immense basket of gilded -osier filled with white lilac. She remembered having once said to him -at Hohenszalras that lilac was her flower of preference. Her rooms -were crowded with bouquets, sent her by all sorts of great people, -and made of all kinds of rare blossoms, but the white lilac, coming -in the January snows, touched her more than all those. She knew that -his poverty was no fiction; and that great clusters of white lilac in -midwinter in Paris meant much money.</p> - -<p>She wrote a line or two in German, which thanked him for his -recollection of her taste, and sent it to the Chamber. She did not know -where he lived.</p> - -<p>That evening she mentioned his name to her godfather, the Duc de Noira, -and asked him if he knew it. The Duc, a Legitimist, a recluse, and a -man of strong prejudices, answered at once.</p> - -<p>'Of course I know it; he is one of us, and he has made a political -position for himself within the last year.'</p> - -<p>'Do you know him personally?'</p> - -<p>'No, I do not. I see no one, as you are aware; I live in greater -retirement than ever. But he bears an honourable name, and though I -believe that, until lately, he was but a <i>flâneur</i>, he has taken a -decided part this session, and he is a very great acquisition to the -true cause.'</p> - -<p>'It is surely very sudden, his change of front?'</p> - -<p>'What change? He took no part in politics that ever I heard of; it -is taken for granted that a Marquis de Sabran is loyal to his sole -legitimate sovereign. I believe he never thought of public life; but -they tell me that he returned from some long absence last autumn, -an altered and much graver man. Then one of the deputies for his -department died, and he was elected for the vacancy with no opposition.'</p> - -<p>The Duc de Noira proceeded to speak of the political aspects of the -time, and said no more.</p> - -<p>Involuntarily, as she drove through the avenues of the Bois de -Boulogne, she thought of the intuitive comprehension, the half-uttered -sympathy, the interchange of ideas, <i>à demi-mots</i>, which had made the -companionship of Sabran so welcome to her in the previous summer. They -had not always agreed, she often had not even approved him; but they -had always understood one another, they had never needed to explain. -She was startled to realise how much and how vividly she regretted him.</p> - -<p>'If one could only be sure of his sincerity,' she thought, 'there would -be few men living who would equal him.'</p> - -<p>She did not know why she doubted his sincerity. Some natures have keen -instincts like dogs. She regretted to doubt it; but the change in him -seemed to her too rapid to be one of conviction. Yet the homage in it -to herself was delicate and subtle. She would not have been a woman had -it not touched her, and she was too honest with herself not to frankly -admit in her own thoughts that she might very well have inspired a -sentiment which would go far to change a nature which it entered and -subdued. Many men had loved her; why not he?</p> - -<p>She drew the whip over the flanks of her horses as she felt that -mingled impatience and sadness with which sovereigns remember that they -can never be certain they are loved for themselves, and not for all -which environs them and lifts them up out of the multitude.</p> - -<p>She was angry with herself when she felt that what interested her most -during her Parisian sojourn was the report of the debates of the -French Chamber in the French journals.</p> - -<p>One night the Baron Kaulnitz spoke of Sabran in her hearing.</p> - -<p>'He is the most eloquent of the Legitimist party,' he said to some one -in her hearing. 'No one supposed that he had it in him; he was a mere -idler, a mere man of pleasure, and it was at times said of something -worse, but he has of late manifested great talent; it is displayed for -a lost cause, but it is none the less admirable as talent goes.'</p> - -<p>She heard what he said with pleasure.</p> - -<p>Advantage was taken of her momentary return to the world to press on -her the choice of a great alliance. Names as mighty as her own were -suggested to her, and more than one great prince, of a rank even higher -than hers, humbly solicited the honour of the hand which gave no caress -except to a horse's neck, a dog's head, a child's curls. But she did -not even pause to allow these proposals any consideration; she refused -them all curtly, and with a sense of irritation.</p> - -<p>'Have you sworn never to marry?' said the Duc de Noira, with much -chagrin, receiving her answer for a candidate of his own to whom he was -much attached.</p> - -<p>'I never swear anything,' she answered. 'Oaths are necessary for -people who do not know their own minds. I do know my own.'</p> - -<p>'You know that you will never marry?'</p> - -<p>'I hardly say that; but I shall never contract a mere alliance. It is -horrible—that union eternal of two bodies and souls without sympathy, -without fitness, without esteem, merely for sake of additional position -or additional wealth.'</p> - -<p>'It is not eternal! said the Duc, with a smile; 'and I can assure you -that my friend adores you for yourself. You will never understand, -Wanda, that you are a woman to inspire great love; that you would be -sought for your face, for your form, for your mind, if you had nothing -else.'</p> - -<p>'I do not believe it.'</p> - -<p>'Can you doubt at least that your cousin Egon——'</p> - -<p>'Oh, pray spare me the name of Egon!' she said with unwonted -irritation. 'I may surely be allowed to have left that behind me at -home!'</p> - -<p>It was a time of irritation and turbulence in Paris. The muttering of -the brooding storm was visible to fine ears through the false stillness -of an apparently serene atmosphere. She, who knew keen and brilliant -politicians who were not French, saw the danger that was at hand for -France which France did not see.</p> - -<p>'They will throw down the glove to Prussia; and they will repent of it -as long as the earth lasts,' she thought, and she was oppressed by her -prescience, for war had cost her race dear; and she said to herself, -'When that liquid fire is set flowing who shall say where it will -pause?'</p> - -<p>She felt an extreme desire to converse with Sabran as she had done -at home; to warn him, to persuade him, to hear his views and express -to him her own; but she did not summon him, and he did not come. She -did justice to the motive which kept him away, but she was not as -yet prepared to go as far as to invite him to lay his scruples aside -and visit her with the old frank intimacy which had brightened both -their lives at the Hohenszalrasburg. It had been so different there; -he had been a wanderer glad of rest, and she had had about her the -defence of the Princess's presence, and the excuse of the obligations -of hospitality. She reproached herself at times for hardness, for -unkindness; she had not said a syllable to commend him for that -abandonment of a frivolous life which was in itself so delicate and -lofty a compliment to herself. He had obeyed her quite as loyally as -knight ever did his lady, and she did not even say to him, 'It is well -done.'</p> - -<p>Wanda von Szalras—a daughter of brave men, and herself the bravest of -women—was conscious that she was for once a coward. She was afraid of -looking into her own heart.</p> - -<p>She said to her cousin, when he paid his respects to her, 'I should -like to hear a debate at the Chamber. Arrange it for me.'</p> - -<p>He replied: 'At your service in that as in all things.'</p> - -<p>The next day as she was about to drive out, about four o'clock, he met -her at the entrance of her hotel.</p> - -<p>'If you could come with me,' he said, 'you might hear something of -interest to-day; there will be a strong discussion. Will you accept my -carriage or shall I enter yours?'</p> - -<p>What she heard when she reached the Chamber did not interest her -greatly. There was a great deal of noise, of declamation, of personal -vituperation, of verbose rancour; it did not seem to her to be -eloquence. She had heard much more stately oratory in both the Upper -and Lower Reichsrath, and much more fiery and noble eloquence at Buda -Pesth. This seemed to her poor, shrill mouthing, which led to very -little, and the disorder of the Assembly filled her with contempt.</p> - -<p>'I thought it was the country of S. Louis!' she said, with a disdainful -sigh, to Kaulnitz who answered:</p> - -<p>'Cromwell is perhaps more wanted here than S. Louis.'</p> - -<p>'Their Cromwell will always be a lawyer without clients, or a -journalist <i>sans le sou!</i>' retorted the châtelaine of Hohenszalras.</p> - -<p>When she had been there an hour or more she saw Sabran enter the hall -and take his place. His height, his carriage, and his distinction of -appearance made him conspicuous in a multitude, while the extreme -fairness and beauty of his face were uncommon and striking.</p> - -<p>'Here is S. Louis,' said the ambassador, with a little smile, 'or a son -of S. Louis's crusaders at any rate. He is sure to speak. I think he -speaks very well; one would suppose he had done nothing else all his -life.'</p> - -<p>After a time, when some speakers, virulent, over-eager, and hot in -argument, had had their say, and a tumult had risen and been quelled, -and the little bell had rung violently for many minutes, Sabran entered -the tribune. He had seen the Austrian minister and his companion.</p> - -<p>His voice, at all times melodious, had a compass which could fill with -ease the large hall in which he was. He appeared to use no more effort -than if he were conversing in ordinary tones, yet no one there present -lost a syllable that he said. His gesture was slight, calm, and -graceful; his language admirably chosen, and full of dignity.</p> - -<p>His mission of the moment was to attack the ministry upon their foreign -policy, and he did so with exceeding skill, wit, irony, and precision. -His eloquence was true eloquence, and was not indebted in any way to -trickery, artifice, or over-ornament. He spoke with fire, force, and -courage, but his tranquillity never gave way for a moment. His speech -was brilliant and serene, in utter contrast to the turbulent and florid -declamation which had preceded him. There was great and prolonged -applause when he had closed with a peroration stately and persuasive; -and when Emile Ollivier rose to reply, that optimistic statesman was -plainly disturbed and at a loss.</p> - -<p>Sabran resumed his seat without raising his eyes to where the Countess -von Szalras sat. She remained there during the speech of the minister, -which was a lame and laboured one, for he had been pierced between the -joints of his armour. Then she rose and went away with her escort.</p> - -<p>'What do you think of S. Louis?' said he, jestingly.</p> - -<p>'I think he is very eloquent and very convincing, but I do not think he -is at all like a Frenchman.'</p> - -<p>'Well, he is a <i>Breton bretonnant</i>' rejoined the ambassador. 'They are -always more in earnest and more patrician.'</p> - -<p>'If he be sincere, if he be only sincere,' she thought: that doubt -pursued her. She had a vague sense that it was all only a magnificent -comedy after all. Could apathy and irony change all so suddenly to -conviction and devotion? Could the scoffer become so immediately the -devotee? Could he care, really care, for those faiths of throne and -altar which he defended with so much eloquence, so much earnestness? -And yet, why not? These faiths were inherited things with him; their -altars must have been always an instinct with him; for their sake his -fathers had lived and died. What great wonder, then, that they should -have been awakened in him after a torpor which had been but the outcome -of those drugs with which the world is always so ready to lay asleep -the soul?</p> - -<p>They had now got out into the corridors, and as they turned the corner -of one, they came straight upon Sabran.</p> - -<p>'I congratulate you,' said Wanda, as she stretched her hand out to him -with a smile.</p> - -<p>As he took it and bowed over it he grew very pale.</p> - -<p>'I have obeyed you,' he murmured, 'with less success than I could -desire.'</p> - -<p>'Do not be too modest, you are a great orator. You know how to remain -calm whilst you exalt, excite, and influence others.'</p> - -<p>He listened in silence, then inquired for the health of his kind friend -the Princess Ottilie.</p> - -<p>'She is well,' answered Wanda, 'and loses nothing of her interest in -you. She reads all your speeches with approval and pleasure; not the -less approval and pleasure because her political creed has become -yours.'</p> - -<p>He coloured slightly.</p> - -<p>'What did you tell me?' he said. 'That if I had no convictions, I could -do no better than abide by the traditions of the Sabrans? If their -cause were the safe and reigning one I would not support it for mere -expediency, but as it is——'</p> - -<p>'Your motives cannot be selfish ones,' she answered a little coldly. -'Selfishness would have led you to profess Bakouinism; it is the -popular profession, and a socialistic aristocrat is always attracted -and flattering to the <i>plebs.</i>'</p> - -<p>'You are severe,' he said, with a flush on his cheek. 'I have no -intention of playing Philip Egalité now or in any after time.'</p> - -<p>She did hot reply; she was conscious of unkindness and want of -encouragement in her own words. She hesitated a little, and then said:</p> - -<p>'Perhaps you will have time to come and see me? I shall remain here a -few days more.'</p> - -<p>The ambassador joined them at that moment, and was too well bred to -display any sign of the supreme astonishment he felt at finding the -Countess von Szalras and the new deputy already known to each other.</p> - -<p>'He is a favourite of Aunt Ottilie's,' she explained to him as, leaving -Sabran, they passed down the corridor. 'Did I not tell you? He had an -accident on the Umbal glacier last summer, and in his convalescence we -saw him often.'</p> - -<p>'I recollect that your aunt asked me about him. Excuse me; I had quite -forgotten,' said the ambassador, understanding now why she had wanted -to go to the Chamber.</p> - -<p>The next day Sabran called upon her. There were with her three or four -great ladies. He did not stay long, and was never alone with her. She -felt an impatience of her friends' presence, which irritated her as -it awoke in her. He sent her a second basket of white lilac in the -following forenoon. She saw no more of him.</p> - -<p>She found herself wondering about the manner of his life. She did not -even know in what street he lived; she passed almost all her time with -the Queen of Natalia, who did not know him, and was still so unwell -that she received no one.</p> - -<p>She was irritated with herself because it compromised her consistency -to desire to stay on in Paris, and she did so desire; and she was one -of those to whom a consciousness of their own consistency is absolutely -necessary as a qualification for self-respect. There are natures that -fly contentedly from caprice to caprice, as humming-birds from blossom -to bud; but if she had once become changeable she would have become -contemptible to herself, she would hardly have been herself any longer. -With some anger at her own inclinations she resisted them, and when her -self-allotted fifteen days were over, she did not prolong them by so -much as a dozen hours. There was an impatience in her which was wholly -strange to her serene and even temper. She felt a vague dissatisfaction -with herself; she had been scarcely generous, scarcely cordial to him; -she failed to approve her own conduct, and yet she scarcely saw where -she had been at fault.</p> - -<p>The Kaulnitz and many other high persons were at the station in the -chill, snowy, misty day to say their last farewells. She was wrapped -in silver-fox fur from head to foot; she was somewhat pale; she felt -an absurd reluctance to go away from a city which was nothing to her. -But her exiled friend was recovering health, and Madame Ottilie was -all alone; and though she was utterly her own mistress, far more so -than most women, there were some things she could not do. To stay on in -Paris seemed to her to be one of them.</p> - -<p>The little knot of high personages said their last words; the train -began slowly to move upon its way; a hand passed through the window of -the carriage and laid a bouquet of lilies of the valley on her knee.</p> - -<p>'Adieu!' said Sabran very gently, as his eyes met hers once more.</p> - -<p>Then the express train rolled faster on its road, and passed out by the -north-east, and in a few moments had left Paris far behind it.</p> - - -<h4>END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.</h4> - -<hr class="full" /> -<p style="margin-left: 10%; font-size: 0.8em;"> -CONTENTS<br /><br /> -<a href="#PROEM">PROEM.</a><br /> -<a href="#CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I.</a><br /> -<a href="#CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II.</a><br /> -<a href="#CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III</a><br /> -<a href="#CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV.</a><br /> -<a href="#CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V.</a><br /> -<a href="#CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI.</a><br /> -<a href="#CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII</a><br /> -<a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII.</a><br /> -<a href="#CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX.</a><br /> -<a href="#CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X.</a><br /> -</p> - - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Wanda, Vol. 1 (of 3), by Ouida - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WANDA, VOL. 1 (OF 3) *** - -***** This file should be named 52135-h.htm or 52135-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/2/1/3/52135/ - -Produced by Wanda Lee, Laura Natal Rodriguez and Marc -D'Hooghe at http://www.freeliterature.org (Images -generouslly made available by the Internet Archive.) - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part -of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm -concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, -and may not be used if you charge for the eBooks, unless you receive -specific permission. If you do not charge anything for copies of this -eBook, complying with the rules is very easy. You may use this eBook -for nearly any purpose such as creation of derivative works, reports, -performances and research. They may be modified and printed and given -away--you may do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks -not protected by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the -trademark license, especially commercial redistribution. - -START: FULL LICENSE - -THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE -PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK - -To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free -distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work -(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project -Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full -Project Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at -www.gutenberg.org/license. - -Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works - -1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to -and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property -(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all -the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or -destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your -possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a -Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound -by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the -person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph -1.E.8. - -1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be -used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who -agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few -things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works -even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See -paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this -agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below. - -1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the -Foundation" or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection -of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual -works in the collection are in the public domain in the United -States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the -United States and you are located in the United States, we do not -claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing, -displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as -all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope -that you will support the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting -free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm -works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the -Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with the work. You can easily -comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the -same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg-tm License when -you share it without charge with others. - -1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern -what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are -in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, -check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this -agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, -distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any -other Project Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no -representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any -country outside the United States. - -1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: - -1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other -immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear -prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work -on which the phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the -phrase "Project Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, -performed, viewed, copied or distributed: - - This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and - most other parts of the world 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. If you are not located in the - United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you - are located before using this ebook. - -1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is -derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not -contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the -copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in -the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are -redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase "Project -Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply -either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or -obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg-tm -trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. - -1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted -with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution -must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any -additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms -will be linked to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works -posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the -beginning of this work. - -1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm -License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this -work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. - -1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this -electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without -prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with -active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project -Gutenberg-tm License. - -1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, -compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including -any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access -to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format -other than "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official -version posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site -(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense -to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means -of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original "Plain -Vanilla ASCII" or other form. Any alternate format must include the -full Project Gutenberg-tm License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. - -1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, -performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works -unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. - -1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing -access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works -provided that - -* You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from - the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method - you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed - to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he has - agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project - Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid - within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are - legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty - payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project - Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in - Section 4, "Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg - Literary Archive Foundation." - -* You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies - you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he - does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm - License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all - copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue - all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg-tm - works. - -* You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of - any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the - electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of - receipt of the work. - -* You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free - distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. - -1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic work or group of works on different terms than -are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing -from both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and The -Project Gutenberg Trademark LLC, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm -trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. - -1.F. - -1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable -effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread -works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project -Gutenberg-tm collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may -contain "Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate -or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other -intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or -other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or -cannot be read by your equipment. - -1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right -of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project -Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project -Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all -liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal -fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT -LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE -PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE -TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE -LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR -INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH -DAMAGE. - -1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a -defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can -receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a -written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you -received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium -with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you -with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in -lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person -or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second -opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If -the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing -without further opportunities to fix the problem. - -1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth -in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO -OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT -LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. - -1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied -warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of -damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement -violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the -agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or -limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or -unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the -remaining provisions. - -1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the -trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone -providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in -accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the -production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, -including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of -the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this -or any Project Gutenberg-tm work, (b) alteration, modification, or -additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any -Defect you cause. - -Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm - -Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of -electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of -computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It -exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations -from people in all walks of life. - -Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the -assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's -goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will -remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project -Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure -and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future -generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see -Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at -www.gutenberg.org - - - -Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation - -The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit -501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the -state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal -Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification -number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by -U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. - -The Foundation's principal office is in Fairbanks, Alaska, with the -mailing address: PO Box 750175, Fairbanks, AK 99775, but its -volunteers and employees are scattered throughout numerous -locations. Its business office is located at 809 North 1500 West, Salt -Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up to -date contact information can be found at the Foundation's web site and -official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact - -For additional contact information: - - Dr. Gregory B. Newby - Chief Executive and Director - gbnewby@pglaf.org - -Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg -Literary Archive Foundation - -Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide -spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of -increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be -freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest -array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations -($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt -status with the IRS. - -The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating -charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United -States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a -considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up -with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations -where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND -DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular -state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate - -While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we -have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition -against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who -approach us with offers to donate. - -International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make -any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from -outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. - -Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation -methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other -ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To -donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate - -Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. - -Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project -Gutenberg-tm concept of a library of electronic works that could be -freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and -distributed Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of -volunteer support. - -Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed -editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in -the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not -necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper -edition. - -Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search -facility: www.gutenberg.org - -This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, -including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to -subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. - - - -</pre> - -</body> -</html> diff --git a/old/old/52135-h/images/cover.jpg b/old/old/52135-h/images/cover.jpg Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index 9c89af8..0000000 --- a/old/old/52135-h/images/cover.jpg +++ /dev/null |
