L'Arrabiata and Other Tales. Paul Heyse

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СКАЧАТЬ comical combination of sleepiness and impudence. He stammered out a few words in a hoarse coarse voice, in very indifferent French, but he was soon talked down by his companion, who walked straight up to me, and in the most brutal tone of official zeal, enquired who I was, and what I wanted?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      "Three СКАЧАТЬ