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Page 58
Then Sperver, rising from his seat, took a lamp and demanded of Knapwurst
the keys of the library, and beckoned to me to follow him.
We rapidly traversed the long dark gallery, then the armoury, and soon
the archive-chamber appeared at the end of the great corridor.
All noises had died away in the distance. The place seemed quite
deserted.
Once or twice I turned round, and could then see with a creeping feeling
of dread our two long fantastic shadows in ghostly fashion writhing in
strange distortions upon the high tapestry.
Sperver quickly opened the old oak door, and with torch uplifted, his
hair all bristling in disorder, and excited features, walked in the
first. Standing before the portrait of Hedwige, whose likeness to the
young countess had struck me at our first visit to the library, he
addressed me in these solemn words:--
"Here is she who was to return to comfort and pity me! She has returned!
At this moment she is downstairs with the old count. Look well, Fritz; do
you recognise her? Is it not Odile?"
Then turning to the picture of Hugh's second wife--
"There," he said, "is Huldine, the she-wolf. For a thousand years she has
wept in the deep gorges amongst the pine forests of the Schwartzwald; she
was the cause of the death of poor Lieverl�; but henceforward the lords
of Nideck may rest securely, for justice is done, and the good angel of
this lordly house has returned!"
MYRTLE.
CHAPTER I.
Just at the end of the village of Dosenheim, in Alsace, about fifty
yards from the gravelly road that leads into the wood, is a pretty
cottage surrounded with an orchard, the flat roof loaded with
boulder-stones, the gable-end looking down the valley.
Flights of pigeons wheel around it, hens are scratching and picking up
what they can under the fences, the cock takes his stand majestically on
the low garden wall, and sounds the _r�veill�e_, or the retreat, for the
echoes of Falberg to repeat; an outside staircase, with its wooden
banisters, the linen of the little household hanging over it, leads to
the first story, and a vine climbs up the front, and spreads its leafy
branches from side to side.
If you will only go up these steps you will see at the end of the narrow
entry the kitchen, with its dresser and its pewter plates and dishes, its
soup-tureens puffing out like balloons; open the door to the right and
you are in the parlour with its dark oak furniture, a ceiling crossed by
brown smoke-stained rafters, and its old Nuremberg clock click-clacking
monotonously.
Here sits a woman of five-and-thirty, spinning and dreaming, her waist
encircled with a long black taffety bodice, and her head covered with a
velvet headdress, with long ribbons.
A man in broad-skirted velveteen coat, with breeches of the same, and
with a fine open brow, looking calm and thoughtful, is dandling on his
knee a fine stout boy, whistling the call to "boot and saddle."
There lies the quiet village at the end of the valley, framed, as you
sit, in the little cottage window; the river is leaping over the mill-dam
and crossing the winding street; the old houses, with their deep and
gloomy eaves, their barns, their gabled windows, their nets drying in the
sun; the young girls, kneeling by the river-side on the stones, washing
linen; the cattle lazily lounging down to drink, and gravely lowing
amidst the willows; the young herdsmen cracking their whips; the mountain
summit, jagged like a saw by the pointed fir-tree tops--all these rural
objects lie reflected in the flowing blue stream, only broken by the
fleets of ducks sailing down or the occasional passage of an old tree
rooted up on the mountain-side.
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