Four weeks after the inspector’s visit a letter came for Balzer. He was
offered the school at Ottenheim. Ottenheim lay in the rich district
of teeming pastures--“the butter district.” So the school was twice
as important as that of Neideck. That same evening, too, a neighbor
stopped at the castle to offer Balzer his congratulations on another
“streak of luck,” the death of Röderbauer. Röderbauer had climbed a
tree to pick cherries to make his celebrated cordial; he had fallen
from the tree and been picked up dead. Delicacy impelled Balzer to deny
that he saw luck in Röderbauer’s death, but in his heart he knew that
the event would make his own life easier, and he could not find any
excuse for attributing this last blessing to his castle.
He gave his pupils a three days’ vacation and set off for Ottenheim,
wondering if it would be possible to live so far from Neideck. He was
not sure of this. As he passed the new castle, the home of the heirs
and owners of Neideck, a smile of pity flitted over his lips. What a
fall; from Neideck to Westerau! History had made Neideck glorious;
Westerau had no history! A prince may build a castle, but even
Omnipotence can not give ancestry to an unfledged baron!--Philip was
shocked; pride in his castle had caused him to blaspheme; he had cast a
doubt upon Omnipotence!
Driving back these confusing thoughts, he went on across the crest of
the Dill Mountains, that looked down upon the broad green plains,
the well-kept, regularly measured meadows, the corn-fields swaying in
the wind, and the highway lined with fruit trees. Set on the verdant,
gold-flecked carpet rested the villages with red-tiled roofs. The
church spires were glittering in the sunlight. But it was tame! There
were no woods, no rocks, no stronghold. Not a ruin! The long stretch of
level land oppressed him, but he went on. Arrived at Ottenheim, he saw
the schoolroom; large, light, limewashed. The windows looked out on a
playground; from the ground sprang four slim young lindens; they looked
like brooms standing on their sticks. His heart quailed. Homesick dread
filled his soul. How could he live and teach in such a place? He turned
and fled.
At Steinfurt he stopped to salute the girl with the long, fair hair.
In her black dress, her long lashes wet with tears, Lizzie was even
prettier than when she had visited Neideck. In his dust-stained
traveling coat (he had no other) Philip followed Röderbauer’s coffin to
the grave--and the peasants envied him.
After the funeral he talked of the future with his betrothed. His
appointment to Ottenheim pleased the girl, but she knew that she had
money enough now to build in Neideck. Philip declared that he would
never live in the butter district, where there were no woods, no
rocks, no strongholds. His future, a great future, lay in Neideck. He
knew it.
“Such talk is foolish,” answered Lizzie, and they quarreled; the girl
told him that she would never live in the lodge. She called the castle
“old and ugly.” She refused to marry him. Philip protested that he
would die a bachelor rather than go to Ottenheim. He reminded Lizzie
of her visits to Neideck and of the beauty of the castle. Lizzie
answered: “I did not go there to see the castle; I went there to see
you.” That was too much! Philip set off for Neideck cut to the heart.
But he was not rash; he gave her time to think it over. After two
weeks he returned to Steinfurt--and again they quarreled. “Whoever
takes me must take my castle!” said Philip; and Lizzie answered: “If
you do not love me more than you love the castle, I do not want you!”
Philip’s heart was heavy; Lizzie thought less of the matter. Pride was
mingled with Philip’s sorrow. “The castle has done so much for me,”
thought he; “it has made me what I am. Even if I have to renounce my
love to keep my trust, I must be faithful.” So he declined the offer of
Ottenheim and continued to appear before the world as the poorest of
the schoolmasters, the head of the smallest school in Germany.
V
From the eastern wing of the Renaissance Castle in Westerau the view
over the Felber Valley was beautiful; far off one could see the rocky
height where the towers of Castle Neideck rose against the horizon.
In that wing resided Princess Isabella, the ruling prince’s younger
daughter, with her lady-in-waiting, Fräulein von Martigny.
The young Princess, only eighteen years old, often gazed longingly
toward those ancestral towers, wishing she were there, to look far out
over the open country, and then to travel through it, on and on and on.
Here, in her father’s castle, with its aristocratic ennui, she felt as
if she were in prison. I wonder which is the greater torture: a prison
window that looks out upon high walls, or one with a beautiful view
into the distance? One reminds us every hour that we are imprisoned;
the other that we can not get away. And the Princess would have liked
so much to fly away, but at her father’s court the rules of etiquette
were observed as strictly as in a Spanish convent, particularly with
regard to ladies. Isabella’s sister had entered a convent to escape the
monotony of the castle, and in the convent she had been more at ease
than in the castle.
There was some analogy between the conditions of the warder of the old
castle and the Princess of the new castle. As with all his heart Balzer
desired marriage with Lizzie, but would not buy his happiness with the
sacrifice of his castle, so with all her heart the Princess of the new
castle desired liberty--to be free from her father’s house--but she
would not buy her liberty by marriage with her cousin, Frederick, Count
Vierstein.
Everything slept at Westerau. When Isabella sat in her luxurious room
it seemed to her that all four walls were yawning, and when she walked
in the castle garden all the trees seemed to sleep, and the gods and
goddesses of stone between the trimmed hedges of hornbeam were surely
snoring. She arose in the morning at nine o’clock, because it was
necessary for her to rest from the preceding day’s ennui, and when they
put on her stockings while she was dressing, it often took half an hour
to proceed from the right to the left foot.
During the day she was never alone, not one minute; for Fräulein
von Martigny, who was not only lady-in-waiting, but took the place
of a mother, never left her side. A true feminine Minos in matters
of etiquette, the old lady was also nervous and irritable. When the
Princess had been washing and bathing during her morning toilet,
Fräulein always kept a few steps away, asserting that she would just as
easily catch cold by going near a newly washed being as by walking over
a newly washed floor.
After the dressing hour came the reading hour. Fräulein read aloud,
in French, only classical authors from the time of Louis the Great,
and the very cadence of the verses seemed to produce sleep. Then
followed the painting lesson. Court-painter Timothy Niedermeyer taught
the Princess to paint in water-colors, and every one in the family
received a bouquet in water-colors as a birthday gift. This Niedermeyer
had a fine talent, but had become a mannerist. This also was the
result of ennui, for by princely decree he had every year to deliver,
in return for his salary, twenty-four oil paintings, mostly family
portraits. There were portraits of the Princess at all ages, in every
possible position and costume; the most recent pictures showed her
as an angel with wings, among clouds; as an eighteen-year-old girl,
blowing soap-bubbles into the air, and as a shepherdess with crook,
leading a sheep by a red ribbon; these three pictures had been sent
to Vierstein, as gifts for the intended bridegroom. The Princess was,
in truth, beautiful, but her life of utter seclusion had given to
her face the soft, languid beauty of a hot-house flower, and as the
artist, with a wish to flatter, had over-refined the delicate features,
the result was that the child-angel-shepherdess head looked utterly
expressionless. Ennui is the hunger of the aristocrat; hunger is the
ennui of the common people; the painted face of the Princess showed
that she had never felt hungry, but very often bored. Isabella was to
marry the Count of Vierstein, but did not wish to do so; and the Count
of Vierstein would have nothing to do with Isabella, who was to be
his bride. They were cousins, had met as children, and Isabella had
shed many a tear over the wild boy, whose rough manner frightened and
troubled her. Later they lost sight of each other; the Count traveled
extensively and entered foreign service. The two fathers had by letter,
and on their own responsibility, betrothed their children without
consulting those who were most concerned, although the two castles were
only a day’s journey apart.
They considered such action more suitable to their rank than to permit
an engagement from love, as among ordinary people. The fine portraits
of the court-painter were intended to arouse in the reluctant Count
some interest for his unwilling bride, but they had the opposite
effect. Nor did the half-length portrait of the Count, that arrived
at the same time in Westerau, have any better success. This portrait
represented the young man as a hussar. Vierstein could not boast of
a court-painter--his court being interested only in hunting and the
army--so the picture had been painted by a traveling artist, whose
vigorous brush had given the poor Count’s face a ferocious expression.
The Princess was frightened to tears, as she had been when a child.
And Fräulein von Martigny made use of this fear to give background to
the cousin’s bad reputation. She hinted at a certain Potsdam barrack
atmosphere that Vierstein carried into sitting-room and bedrooms; that
no one over there cared for anything but soldiers, horses, dogs. For
in her heart the Fräulein shared Isabella’s aversion to this marriage,
and would have preferred to see her beloved foster child become an old
maid. Then might the Fräulein be to the end of her life Mistress of the
Robes at this dear court, whose ennui she was not sensible of, although
she did her utmost to promote it.
To be sure the painting and the painting lessons were as tiresome as
everything else in the castle, yet a certain dramatic interest was
attached to them--an interest that was woefully lacking in the rest of
the day’s proceedings, which went like clockwork--and all the clocks
in the castle were correct. Every day the Prince rode out at the same
hour, on the same road, and returned at the same minute. Breakfast was
served at eleven o’clock; at twelve o’clock they held an audience, the
Princess as well. Her lady-in-waiting was careful to impress upon her
beforehand how to open the conversation. There were only three phrases
from which to select; Isabella sometimes wished to add a fourth or
fifth, but had not the courage to do so.
They dined at three o’clock. Conversation at table, though the merest
gossip, was very solemn. Isabella discovered, in listening to it, that
the people in the town could not be quite such bores as were those in
the castle, for, at least, they furnished material for conversation.
She sometimes wished to become acquainted with the wife of one of the
officials or even of a common tradesman, but Fräulein assured her that
that would be improper as well as unpleasant. “These common people have
such a peculiar odor,” she said, taking a double dose of snuff. She
always maintained that it was one of the finest traits in the Landgrave
of Hesse, that he could not bear the odor of common people.
After dinner the whole party went out for a walk; they proceeded in
pairs, the marshal with his staff going before, two chasseurs with
their carbines closing the procession. Isabella would have preferred
an excursion to Neideck; they had even promised it to her, but they
never found time for it. Simply because there was nothing to do, the
hours were fully occupied. This never-fulfilled promise increased the
Princess’s longing to see the charmed Castle of Neideck; it became to
her the symbol of freedom, ever alluring, forever unattainable.
After the walk the Prince, following the example of Louis XIV, fed and
caressed his numerous dogs. If her father was in an unusually good
humor, Isabella received permission to pat the dogs, a thing she hated
to do. Afterward Fräulein von Martigny never failed to remind her that
as Cousin Frederick owned even a larger number of dogs, as Countess
Vierstein she would never be able to get away from dog-atmosphere.
The best comfort of the unfortunate, provided they can sleep, is
night. The Princess had a magnificent canopy-bed, with the softest of
pillows and the finest silken covers. When a child lies comfortably in
its little bed, it is often said to be lying there “like a princess.”
The saying did not originate with Princess Isabella, for she felt
no comfort even in bed. She wished to sleep in the dark, but it was
considered proper for her to have a Dutch night-lamp burning in her
own bedroom, and a German lamp in the one adjoining, where her maid
slept. And from the 15th of October to the 15th of April open fires
were kept burning throughout the night in both rooms; such were the
palace regulations. So the poor Princess often lay awake, counting the
strokes of the big castle clock and of all the other numerous clocks in
the rooms, following one another “like clockwork.” Her whole young life
seemed to her like one long sleepless night.
It was in the month of May. The nights were now growing shorter,
fortunately; but Isabella was still awake at one o’clock, staring
about her with wide-open eyes. She noticed a small red book on the
window-sill, an unusual sight in these rooms, where nothing was ever
left lying about. What kind of a book could it be? All the books in the
castle were bound in blue. She slipped out of bed to look at it.
The red cover was in bad taste and overdecorated; the leaves were
gilt-edged, but the paper was bad, like blotting paper, and the print
was poor and blurred. The title was: “Notable description and history
of the princely Castle of Neideck, brought to light by Philip Balzer,
schoolmaster and student of the history of his fatherland.”
The Princess went to bed again, and, by the light of her very good
Dutch night-lamp, began to read this little book. Scarcely had she
finished the few pages which treated of the origin and twenty-five
meanings of the name “Neideck,” when she began to feel drowsy, and when
she reached page ten she fell asleep, and slept soundly until late in
the morning.
After this she decided to read a little of the book every evening; she
also inquired as to whom it belonged and how it came to be in her room.