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Page 55
This was the purport of the old servant's disclosures to the young baron,
who believed that in so doing he was only fulfilling his duty.
The son, anxious at any sacrifice to know the truth of this account, had,
that very year, ascertained it, first by following his mother to Baden,
and then by penetrating on her track into the gorges of the Black Forest.
The footsteps which S�balt had tracked in the woods were his.
When the baron had thus imparted his knowledge to me, I thought I ought
not to conceal from him the mysterious influence which the appearance of
the old woman in the neighbourhood of the castle exercised over the
count, nor the other circumstances of this unaccountable series of
events.
We were both amazed at the extraordinary coincidence between the facts
narrated, the mysterious attraction which these beings unconsciously
exercised the one over the other, the tragic drama which they performed
in union, the familiarity which the old woman had shown with the castle,
and its most secret passages, without any previous examination of them;
the costume which she had discovered in which to carry out this secret
act, and which could only have been rummaged out of some mysterious
retreat revealed to her by the strange instinct of insanity. Finally,
we were agreed that there are unknown, unfathomed depths in our being,
and that the mystery of death is not the only secret which God has veiled
from our eyes, although it may seem to us the most important.
But the darkness of night was beginning to yield to the pale tints of
early dawn. A bat was sounding the departure of the hours of darkness
with a singular note resembling the gurgling of liquid from a narrow
bottle-neck. A neighing of horses was heard far up the defile; then, with
the first rays of dawn, we distinguished a sledge driven by the baron's
servant; its bottom was littered with straw; on this the body was laid.
I mounted my horse, who seemed not sorry to use his limbs again, which
had been numbed by standing upon ice and snow the whole night through. I
rode after the sledge to the exit from the defile, when, after a grave
salutation--the usual token of courtesy between the nobility and the
people--they drove off in the direction of Hirschland and I rode towards
the towers of Nideck.
At nine I was in the presence of Mademoiselle Odile, to whom I gave a
faithful narrative of all that had taken place.
Then repairing to the count's apartments, I found him in a very
satisfactory state of improvement. He felt very weak, as was to be
expected after the terrible shocks of such crises as he had gone through,
but had returned to the full possession of his clear faculties, and
the fever had left him the evening before. There was, therefore, every
prospect of a speedy cure.
A few days later, seeing the old lord in a state of convalescence, I
expressed a desire to return to Fribourg, but he entreated me so
earnestly to stay altogether at Nideck, and offered me terms so
honourable and advantageous, that I felt myself unable to refuse
compliance with his wishes.
I shall long remember the first boar-hunt in which I had the honour to
join with the count, and especially the magnificent return home in a
torchlight procession after having sat in the saddle for twelve hours
together.
I had just had supper, and was going up into Hugh Lupus's tower
completely knocked up, when, passing Sperver's room, whose door was half
open, shouts and cries of joy reached my ears. I stopped, when the most
jovial spectacle burst upon me. Around the massive oaken table beamed
twenty square rosy faces, bright and ruddy with health and fun.
The hob and nobbing of the glasses gave out an incessant tinkling and
clattering. There was sitting Sperver with his bossy forehead, his
moustaches bedewed with Rhenish wine, his eyes sparkling, and his grey
hair rather disordered; at his right was Marie Lagoutte, on his left
Knapwurst. He was raising aloft the ancient silver-gilt and chased goblet
dimmed with age, and on his manly chest glittered the silver plate of
his shoulder-belt, for, according to his custom on a hunting day, he was
still wearing the uniform of his office.
The colour of Marie Lagoutte's cheeks, rather redder even than usual,
told of an evening of jollity, and her broad cap-frills seemed as if they
were wanting to fly all abroad; she sat laughing, now with one, then with
another.
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