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Page 67
This dismal personage traversed the hall with a hard and sounding step as
measured as the ticking of a clock, and placing his skinny hand upon the
hilt of an immense long rapier, and stamping with his heel on the floor,
he uttered in a horribly disagreeable creaking voice resembling the
grating of an engine these words, which dropped in a dry mechanical
fashion from his ashy lips:--
"This is mine--mine--Hans Burckhardt, Count of Barth!"
I felt a creeping sensation coming all over me.
At the same instant the door opposite flew open wide, and the Count of
Barth disappeared in the next apartment; and I could hear his hard, dry
automatic tread upon the stairs descending the steps, one by one, for
a long time; there seemed no end to it, until at last the awful sounds
died in the remote distance as if they had descended into the bowels of
the earth.
But as I was still listening, and hearing nothing further, all in a
moment the vast hall filled as if by magic with a numerous company; the
spinet began to jingle; there was music and singing of love, and
pleasure, and wine.
I gazed and saw by the bluish-grey moonlight ladies in the bloom of youth
negligently floating over the floor, and chiefly about the old spinet;
elegant cavaliers attired, as in the olden time, in innumerable dangling
ribbons, and the very perfection of lace collars and ruffles, seated
cross-legged upon gold-fringed stools, affectedly inclining sidelong,
shaking their perfumed locks, making little bows, studying all kinds of
graceful attitudes, and paying their court to the ladies, all so
elegantly, and with such an air of gallantry, that it reminded me of the
old mezzotint engravings of the graceful school of Lorraine in the
sixteenth century.
And the stiff little fingers of an ancient dowager, with a parrot bill,
were rattling the keys of the old spinet; bursts of thin laughter set
discordant echoes flying, and ended in little squeaks with such a sharp
discordant rattle of constrained laughter as made my hair stand on end.
All this silly little world--all this quintessence of fashion and
elegance, long out of date, all exhaled the acrid odour of rose-water and
essence of mignonette turned into vinegar.
I made new and superhuman exertions to get rid of this disagreeable
nightmare, but it was all in vain. But at that instant a lady of the
highest fashion cried aloud--
"Lords, you are at home here in all this domain--"
But she was cut short in her compliments; a silence like death fell on
the whole assembly. They faded away. I looked, and the whole picture had
vanished from my sight.
Then the sound of a trumpet fell on my listening ears. Horses were pawing
the ground outside, dogs were barking, while the moon, calm, clear,
inviting to meditation, still poured her soft light into my alcove.
The door opened as if by a blast of wind, and fifty huntsmen, followed by
a company of young ladies attired as they were two centuries ago, in long
trains, defiled with majestic pace out of one chamber into the other.
Four serving-men passed amongst them, bearing on their brawny shoulders
on a stout litter of oak boughs the bloody carcass of a monstrous wild
boar, with dim and faded eye, and with the foam yet lying white on his
formidable tusks and grisly jaws.
Then I heard the flourishes of the brazen trumpets redoubled in loudness
and energy; but silence fell, and the pomp and dignity, passed away with
a sigh like the last moans of a storm in the woods; then--nothing at
all--nothing to hear--nothing to see!
As I lay dreaming over this strange vision, and my eyes wandering vaguely
over the empty space in the silent darkness, I observed with astonishment
the blank space becoming silently occupied by one of the old Protestant
families of former days, calm, solemn, and dignified in their bearing and
conversation.
There sat the white-haired patriarch with the big Bible upon his knees;
the aged mother, tall and pale, spinning the flax grown by themselves,
sitting as straight and immovable as her own distaff, her ruff up to her
ears, her long waist compressed in a stiff black bodice; then there sat
the fat and rosy children, with serious countenances and thoughtful blue
eyes, leaning in silence with their elbows on the table; the dog lay
stretched by the great hearth apparently listening to the reading; the
old clock stood in the corner ticking seconds; farther on in the shadow
were girls' faces and young men, talking seriously to them about Jacob
and Rachel by way of love-making.
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