CHAPTER VI.

The days drifted by; the little boat crossed thrice a day from castle

to monastery, bringing the physician, bringing books, food, fruit,

wine; the rain came often, sheets of white water sweeping over the

lake, and blotting the burg and the hills and the forests from

sight; the sunshine came more rarely, but when it came it lit up the

amphitheatre of the Glöckner group to a supreme splendour, of solemn

darkness of massed pines, of snow-peaks shrouded in the clouds. So the

month wore away; he was in no haste to recover entirely; he could pay

the monks for his maintenance, and so felt free to stay, not being

allowed to know that his food came from the castle as his books did.

The simple priests were conquered and captivated by him; he played

grand Sistine masses for them, and canticles which he had listened

to in Nôtre Dame. Herr Joachim marvelled to see him so passive and

easily satisfied; for he perceived that his patient could not be

by nature either very tranquil or quickly content; but the doctor

thought that perhaps the severe nervous shock of the descent on the

Umbal might have shakened and weakened him, and knew that the pure

Alpine air, the harmless pursuits, and the early hours were the best

tonics and restoratives in the pharmacy of Nature. Therefore he could

consistently encourage him to stay, as his own wishes moved him to do;

for to the professor the companionship and discussion of a scholarly

and cultivated man were rarities, and he had conceived an affectionate

interest in one whose life he had in some measure saved; for without

skilled care the crevasse of the Iselthal might have been fatal to a

mountaineer who had successfully climbed the highest peaks of the Andes.

'No doubt if I passed a year here,' thought Sabran, 'I should rebel

and grow sick with longing for the old unrest, the old tumult, the

old intoxication--no doubt; but just now it is very welcome: it makes

me comprehend why De Rancy created La Trappe, why so many soldiers

and princes and riotous livers were glad to go out into a Paraclete

amongst the hills with S. Bruno or S. Bernard.'

He said something of the sort to Herr Joachim, who nodded consent; but

added: 'Only they took a great belief with them, and a great penitence,

the recluses of that time; in ours men mistake satiety for sorrow, and

so when their tired vices have had time to grow again, like nettles

that have been gnawed to the root but can spring up with fresh power

to sting, then, as their penitence was nothing but fatigue, they get

quickly impatient to go out and become beasts again. All the difference

between our times and S. Bruno's lies there; they believed in sin, we

do not. I say, "we," I mean the voluptuaries and idlers of your world.'

'Perhaps not,' answered Sabran, a little gloomily. 'But we do believe

in dishonour.'

'Do you?' said the doctor, with some irony. 'Oh, I suppose you do. You

may seduce Gretchen: you must not forsake Faustine; you must not lie to

a man: you may lie to a woman. You must not steal: you may beggar your

friend at baccara. I confess I have never understood the confusion of

your unwritten laws on ethics and etiquette.'

Sabran laughed, but he did not take up the argument; and the doctor

thought that he seemed becoming a little morose; since his escape from

the tedium of confinement at Pregratten, confinement intolerable to a

man of strength and spirit, he had always found his patient of great

equability of temper, and of a good-humour and docility that had seemed

as charming as they were invariable.

When he was recovered enough to make movement and change harmless to

him, there came to him a note in the fine and miniature writing of the

Princess Ottilie, bidding him come over to the castle at his pleasure,

and especially inviting him, in her niece's name, to the noon-day

breakfast at the castle on the following day, if his strength allowed.

He sat a quarter of an hour or more with the note on his knee, looking

out at the light green willow foliage as it drooped above the deeper

green of the lake.

'Our ladies are not used to refusals,' said the doctor, seeing his

hesitation.

'I should be a churl to refuse,' said Sabran, with some little effort,

which the doctor attributed to a remembered mortification, and so

hastened to say:

'You are resentful still that the Countess Wanda took your rifle away?

Surely she has made amends?'

'I was not thinking of that. She was perfectly right. She only treated

me too well. She placed her house and her household at my disposition

with a hospitality quite Spanish. I owe her too much ever to be able to

express my sense of it.'

'Then you will come and tell her so?'

'I can do no less.'

Princess Ottilie and the mistress of Hohenszalras had had a discussion

before that note of invitation was sent; a discussion which had ended

as usual in the stronger reasoner giving way to the whim and will of

the weaker.

'Why should we not be kind to him?' the Princess had urged; 'he is

a gentleman. You know I took the precaution to write to Kaulnitz;

Kaulnitz's answer is clear enough: and to Frohsdorf, from which it was

equally satisfactory. I wrote also to the Comte de la Barée; his reply

was everything which could be desired.'

'No doubt,' her niece had answered for the twentieth time; 'but I

think we have already done enough for Christianity and hospitality; we

need not offer him our personal friendship; as there is no master in

this house he will not expect to be invited to it.' We will wish him

God-speed when he is fully restored and is going away.'

'You are really too prudish!' said the Princess, very angrily. 'I

should be the last person to counsel an imprudence, a failure in due

caution, in correct reserve and hesitation; but for you to pretend that

a Countess von Szalras cannot venture to invite a person to her own

residence because that person is of the opposite sex----'

'That is not the question; the root of the matter is that he is a

chance acquaintance made quite informally; we should have been cruel if

we had done less than we have done, but there can be no need that we

should do more.'

'I can ask more about him of Kaulnitz,' said Madame Ottilie.

Kaulnitz was one of her innumerable cousins, and was then minister in

Paris.

'Why should you?' said her niece. 'Do you think either that it is quite

honourable to make inquiries unknown to people? It always savours to me

too much of the Third Section.'

'You are so exaggerated in all your scruples; you prefer to be

suspicious of a person in silence than to ask a few questions,' said

the Princess. 'But surely when two ambassadors and the Kaiser guarantee

his position you may be content.'

The answer she had received from Kaulnitz had indeed only moderately

satisfied her. It said that there was nothing known to the detriment

of the Marquis de Sabran; that he had never been accused of anything

unfitting his rank and name; but that he was a _viveur_, and was said

to be very successful at play; he was not known to have any debts, but

he was believed to be poor and of precarious fortunes. On the whole the

Princess had decided to keep the answer to herself; she had remembered

with irritation that her niece had suggested baccara as the source of

the hundred gold pieces.

'I never intended to convey that ambassadors would disown him or the

Kaiser either, whose signature is in his pocket-book. Only,' said

Wanda, 'as you and I are all alone, surely it will be as well to leave

this gentleman to the monks and to Greswold. That is all I mean.'

'It is a perfectly unnecessary scruple, and not at all like one of your

race. The Szalras have always been hospitable and headstrong.'

'I hope I am the first--I have done my best for M. de Sabran; as for

being headstrong--surely that is not a sweet or wise quality that you

should lament my loss of it?'

'You need not quarrel with me,'said the Princess, pettishly. 'You have

a terrible habit of contradiction, Wanda: and you never give up your

opinion.'

The mistress of Hohenszalras smiled, and sighed a little.

'Dear mother, we will do anything that amuses you.'

So the note was sent.

The Princess had been always eager for such glimpses of the moving

world as had been allowed to her by any accidental change. Her

temperament would have led her to find happiness in the frivolous

froth and fume of a worldly existence; she delighted in gossip, in

innocent gaiety, in curiosity, in wonder; all her early years had been

passed under repression and constraint, and now in her old age she was

as eager as a child for any plaything, as inquisitive as a marmoset,

as animated as a squirrel. Her mother had been a daughter of a great

French family of the south, and much of the vivacity and sportive

malice and quick temper of the Gallic blood was in her still, beneath

the primness and the placidity that had become her habit, from long

years passed in a little German court and in a stately semi-religious

order.

This stranger whom chance had brought to them was to her idea a

precious and providential source of excitement: already a hundred

romances had suggested themselves to her fertile mind; already a

hundred impossibilities had suggested themselves to her as probable.

She did not in the least believe that accident had brought him there.

She imagined that he had wandered there for the sake of seeing the

mistress of Hohenszalras, who had for so long been unseen by the

world, but whose personal graces and great fortune had remained in the

memories of many. To the romantic fancy of the Princess, which had

never been blunted by contact with harsh facts, nothing seemed prettier

or more probable than that the French marquis, when arrested as a

poacher, had been upon a pilgrimage of poetic adventure. It should not

be her fault, she resolved, if the wounded knight had to go away in

sorrow and silence, without the castle gates being swung open once at

least.

'After all, if she would only take an interest in anything human,' she

thought, 'instead of always horses and mountains, and philosophical

treatises and councils, and calculations with the stewards! She ought

not to live and die alone. They made me vow to do so, and perhaps it

was for the best, but I would never say to anyone--Do likewise.'

And then the Princess felt the warm tears on her own cheeks, thinking

of herself as she had been at seventeen, pacing up and down the stiff

straight alley of clipped trees at Lilienhöhe with a bright young

soldier who had fallen in a duel ere he was twenty. It was all so

long ago, so long ago, and she was a true submissive daughter of her

princely house, and of her Holy Church; yet she knew that it was not

meet for a woman to live and die without a man's heart to beat by her

own, without a child's hands to close her glazing eyes.

And Wanda von Szalras wished so to live and so to die! Only one

magician could change her. Why should he not come?

So on the morrow the little boat that had brought the physician to him

so often took him over the two miles of water to the landing stairs at

the foot of the castle rock. In a little while he stood in the presence

of his châtelaine.

He was a man who never in his life had been confused, unnerved, or at a

loss for words; yet now he felt as a boy might have done, as a rustic

might; he had a mist before his eyes, his heart beat quickly, he grew

very pale.

She thought he was still suffering, and looked at him with interest.

'I am afraid that we did wrong to tempt you from the monastery,' she

said, in her grave melodious voice; and she stretched out her hand to

him with a look of sympathy. I am afraid you are still suffering and

weak, are you not?'

He bent low as he touched it.

'How can I thank you?' he murmured. 'You have treated a vagrant like a

king!'

'You were a munificent vagrant to our chapel and our poor,' she replied

with a smile. And what have we done for you? Nothing more than is our

commonest duty, far removed from cities or even villages, as we are.

Are you really recovered? I may tell you now that there was a moment

when Herr Greswold was alarmed for you.'

The Princess Ottilie entered at that moment and welcomed him with more

effusion and congratulation. They breakfasted in a chamber called the

Saxe room, an oval room lined throughout with lacquered white wood,

in the Louis Seize style; the panels were painted in Watteau-like

designs; it had been decorated by a French artist in the middle of the

eighteenth century, and with its hangings of flowered white satin, and

its collection of Meissen china figures, and its great window, which

looked over a small garden with velvet grass plots and huge yews, was

the place of all others to make an early morning meal most agreeable,

whether in summer when the casements were open to the old-fashioned

roses that climbed about them, or in winter when on the open hearth

great oak logs burned beneath the carved white wood mantelpiece, gay

with its plaques of Saxe and its garlands of foliage. The little oval

table bore a service of old Meissen, with tiny Watteau figures painted

on a ground of palest rose. Watteau figures of the same royal china

upheld great shells filled with the late violets of the woods of

Hohenszalras.

'What an enchanting little room!' said Sabran, glancing round it, and

appreciating with the eyes of a connoisseur the Lancret designs, the

Riesiner cabinets, and the old china. He was as well versed in the

art and lore of the Beau Siècle as Arsène Houssaye or the Goncourts;

he talked now of the epoch with skill and grace, with that accuracy

of knowledge and that fineness of criticism which had made his

observations and his approval treasured and sought for by the artists

and the art patrons of Paris.

The day was grey and mild; the casements were open; the fresh, pure

fragrance of the forests came in through the aromatic warmth of the

chamber; the little gay shepherds and shepherdesses seemed to breathe

and laugh.

'This room was a caprice of an ancestress of mine, who was of your

country, and was, I am afraid, very wretched here,' said Wanda von

Szalras. 'She brought her taste from Marly and Versailles. It is not

the finest or the purest taste, but it has a grace and elegance of its

own that is very charming, as a change.'

'It is a madrigal in porcelain,' he said, looking around him. 'I am

glad that the _alouette gauloise_ has sung here beside the dread and

majestic Austrian vulture.'

'The _alouette gauloise_ always sings in Aunt Ottilie's heart; it

is what keeps her so young always. I assure you she is a great deal

younger than I am,' said his châtelaine, resting a glance of tender

affection on the pretty figure of the Princess caressing her Spitz dog

Bijou.

She herself, with her great pearls about her throat, and a gown of

white serge, looked a stately and almost severe figure beside the

dainty picturesque prettiness of the elder lady and the fantastic

gaiety and gilding of the porcelain and the paintings. He felt a

certain awe of her, a certain hesitation before her, which the habits

of the world enabled him to conceal, but which moved him with a sense

of timidity, novel and almost painful.

'One ought to be Dorat and Marmontel to be worthy of such a repast,' he

said, as he seated himself between his hostesses.

'Neither Dorat nor Marmontel would have enjoyed your very terrible

adventure,' said the Princess, reflecting with satisfaction that it was

herself who had saved this charming and chivalrous life, since, at her

own risk and loss, she had sent her physicians, alike of body and of

soul, to wrestle for him with death by his sick bed at Pregratten.

'Wanda would never have sent anyone to him,' thought the Princess:

'she is so unaccountably indifferent to any human life higher than her

peasantry.'

'Adventures are to the adventurous,' quoted Sabran.

'Yes,' said the Princess; 'but the pity is that the adventurous are too

often the questionable----'

'Perhaps that is saying too much,' said Wanda; 'but it is certain that

the more solid qualities do not often lead into a career of excitement.

It has been always conceded--with a sigh--that duty is dull.'

'I think adventure is like calamity: some people are born to it,' he

added,'and such cannot escape from it. Loyola may cover his head with

a cowl: he cannot become obscure. Eugene may make himself an abbé: he

cannot escape his horoscope cast in the House of Mars.'

'What a fatalist you are!'

'Do you think we ever escape our fate? Alexander slew all whom he

suspected, but he did not for that die in his bed of old age.'

'That merely proves that crime is no buckler.'

Sabran was silent.

'My life has been very adventurous,' he said lightly, after a pause;

'but I have only regarded that as another name for misfortune. The

picturesque is not the prosperous; all beggars look well on canvas,

whilst Carolus Duran himself can make nothing of a portrait of Dives,

_roulant carrosse_ through his fifty millions.'

He had not his usual strength; his loins had had a wrench in the

crashing fall from the Umbal which they had not wholly recovered,

despite the wise medicaments of Greswold.

He moved with some difficulty, and, not to weary him, she remained

after breakfast in the Watteau room, making him recline at length in a

long chair beside one of the windows. She was touched by the weakness

of a man evidently so strong and daring by nature, and she regretted

the rough and inhospitable handling which he had experienced from her

beloved hills and waters. She, who spoke to no one all the year through

except her stewards and her priests, did not fail to be sensible of the

pleasure she derived from the cultured and sympathetic companionship of

a brilliant and talented mind.

'Ah! if Egon had only talent like that!' she thought, with a sigh

of remembrance. Her cousin was a gallant nobleman and soldier, but

of literature he had no knowledge; for art he had a consummate

indifference; and the only eloquence he could command was a brief

address to his troopers, which would be answered by an _Eljén_! ringing

loud and long, like steel smiting upon iron.

Sabran could at all times talk well.

He had the gift of facile and eloquent words, and he had also what most

attracted the sympathies of his hostess, a genuine and healthful love

of the mountains and forests. All his life in Paris had not eradicated

from his character a deep love for Nature in her wildest and her

stormiest moods. They conversed long and with mutual pleasure of the

country around them, of which she knew every ravine and torrent, and

of whose bold and sombre beauty he was honestly enamoured.

The noon had deepened into afternoon, and the chimes of the clock-tower

were sounding four when he rose to take his leave, and go on his way

across the green brilliancy of the tumbling water to his quiet home

with the Dominican brethren. He had still the languor and fatigue

about him of recent illness, and he moved slowly and with considerable

weakness. She said to him in parting, with unaffected kindness, 'Come

across to us whenever you like; we are concerned to think that one of

our own glaciers should have treated you so cruelly. I am often out

riding far and wide, but my aunt will always be pleased to receive you.'

'I am the debtor of the Umbal ice,' he said, in a low voice. 'But for

that happy fall I should have gone on my way to my old senseless life

without ever having known true rest as I know it yonder. Will you be

offended, too, if I say that I stayed at Matrey with a vague, faint,

unfounded hope that your mountains might be merciful, and let me----'

'Shoot a _kuttengeier?_' she said quickly, as though not desiring to

hear his sentence finished. 'You might shoot one easily sitting at a

window in the monastery, and watching till the vultures flew across the

lake; but you will remember you are on parole. I am sure you will be

faithful.'

Long, long afterwards she remembered that he shrank a little at the

word, and that a flush of colour went over his face.

'I will,' he said simply; 'and it was not the _kuttengeier_ for which I

desired to be allowed to revisit Hohenszalras.'

'Well, if the monks starve you or weary you, you can remember that we

are here, and you must not give their organ quite all the music that

you bear so wonderfully in your mind and hands.'

'I will play to you all day, if you will only allow me.'

'Next time you come--to-morrow, if you like.'

He went away, lying listlessly in the little boat, for he was still

far from strong; but life seemed to him very sweet and serene as the

evening light spread over the broad, bright water, and the water birds

rose and scattered before the plunge of the oars.

Had the sovereign mistress of Hohenszalras ever said before to any

other living friend----to-morrow? Yet he was too clever a man to be

vain; and he did not misinterpret the calm kindness of her invitation.

He went thither again the next day, though he left them early, for he

had a sensitive fear of wearying with his presence ladies to whom he

owed so much.

But the Princess urged his speedy return, and the châtelaine of

Szaravola said once more, with that grave smile which was rather in the

eyes than on the lips, 'We shall always be happy to see you when you

are inclined to cross the lake.'

He was a great adept at painting, and he made several broad, bold

sketches of the landscapes visible from the lake; he was famous for

many a drawing _brossé dans le vrai_, which hung at his favourite

club the Mirliton; he could paint, more finely and delicately also,

on ivory, on satin, on leather. He sent for some fans and screens

from Vienna, and did in _gouache_ upon them exquisite birds, foliage,

flowers, legends of saints, which were beautiful enough to be not

unworthy a place in those rooms of the burg where the Penicauds, the

Fragonards, the Pettitôts, were represented by much of their most

perfect work.

He passed his mornings in labour of this sort; at noonday or in the

afternoon he rowed across to Hohenszalras, and loitered for an hour

or two in the gardens or the library. Little by little they became so

accustomed to his coming that it would have seemed strange if more than

a day had gone by without the little striped blue boat gliding from the

Holy Isle to the castle stairs. He never stayed very long; not so long

as the Princess desired.

'Never in my life have I spent weeks so harmlessly!' he said once with

a smile to the doctor; then he gave a quick sigh and turned away, for

he thought to himself in a sudden repentance that these innocent and

blameless days were perhaps but the prelude to one of the greatest sins

of a not sinless life.

He came to be looked for quite naturally at the noonday breakfast in

the pretty Saxe chamber. He would spend hours playing on the chapel

organ, or on the piano in the octagon room which Liszt had chosen. The

grand and dreamy music rolled out over the green lake towards the green

hills, and Wanda would look often at the marble figure of her brother

on his tomb, lying like the statue of the young Gaston de Foix, and

think to herself, 'If only Bela were listening, too!'

Sometimes she was startled when she remembered into what continual

intimacy she had admitted a man of whom she had no real knowledge.

The Princess, indeed, had said to her, 'I did ask Kaulnitz: Kaulnitz

knows him quite well;' but that was hardly enough to satisfy a woman

as reserved in her friendships, and as habituated to the observance of

a severe etiquette, as was the châtelaine of Hohenszalras. Every day

almost she said to herself that she would not see him when he came, or,

if she saw him, would show him, by greater chilliness of manner, that

it was time he quitted the island. But when he did come, if he did not

see her he went to the chapel and played a mass, a requiem, an anthem,

a sonata; and Beethoven, Palestrina, Schumann, Wagner, Berlioz, surely

allured her from her solitude, and she would come on to the terrace and

listen to the waves of melody rolling out through the cool sunless air,

through the open door of the place where her beloved dead rested. Then,

as a matter of course, he stayed, and after the noonday meal sometimes

he rode with her in the forests, or drove the Princess in her pony

chair, or received permission to bear his châtelaine company in her

mountain walks. They were seldom alone, but they were much together.

'It is much better for her than solitude,' thought the Princess. 'It is

not likely that she will ever care anything for him: she is so cold;

but if she did, there would be no great harm done. He is of old blood,

and she has wealth enough to need no more. Of course any one of our

great princes would be better; but, then, as she will never take any

one of them----'

And the Princess, who was completely fascinated by the deferential

homage to her of Sabran, and the pleasure he honestly found in her

society, would do all she could, in her innocent and delicate way, to

give her favourite the opportunities he desired of intercourse with the

mistress of Hohenszalras. She wanted to see again the life that she had

seen in other days at the Schloss; grand parties for the hunting season

and the summer season, royal and noble people in the guest-chambers,

great gatherings for the chase on the _rond-point_ in the woods,

covers for fifty laid at the table in the banqueting hall, and

besides--besides, thought the childless and loving old woman--little

children with long fair curls and gay voices wakening the echoes in the

Rittersäal with their sports and pastimes.

It was noble and austere, no doubt, this life led by Wanda von Szalras

amidst the mountains in the Tauern, but it was lonely and monotonous to

the Princess, who still loved a certain movement, gossip, and diversion

as she liked to nibble a _nougat_ and sip her chocolate foaming under

its thick cream. It seemed to her that even to suffer a little would be

better for her niece than this unvarying solitude, this eternal calm.

That she should have mourned for her brother was most natural, but this

perpetual seclusion was an exaggeration of regret.

If the presence of Sabran reconciled her with the world, with life as

it was, and induced her to return to the court and to those pleasures

natural to her rank and to her years, it would be well done, thought

the Princess; and as for him--if he carried away a broken heart it

would be a great pity, but persons who like to move others as puppets

cannot concern themselves with the accidental injury of one of their

toys; and Mme. Ottilie was too content with her success of the moment

to look much beyond it.

'The charm of being here is to me precisely what I daresay makes it

tiresome to you,' the mistress of Hohenszalras said to him one day, 'I

mean its isolation. One can entirely forget that beyond those mountains

there is a world fussing, fuming, brewing its storms in saucers,

and inventing a quantity of increased unwholesomeness, in noise and

stench, which it calls a higher civilisation. No! I would never have

a telegraph wire brought here from Matrey. There is nothing I ever

particularly care to know about. If there were anyone I loved who was

away from me it would be different. But there is no one. There are

people I like, of course----

'But political events?' he suggested.

'They do not attract me. They are ignoble. They are for the most part

contemptibly ill-managed, and to think that after so many thousands of

years humanity has not really progressed beyond the wild beasts' method

of settling disputes----'

'There is so much of the wild beast in it. With such an opinion of

political life why do you counsel me to seek it?'

'You are a man. There is nothing else for a man who has talent, and

who is--who is as you are, _désœuvré._ Intellectual work would be

better, but you do not care for it, it seems. Since your "Mexico"----'

'The "Mexico" was no work of mine.'

'Oh yes, pardon me: I have read it. All your notes, all your addenda,

show how the learning of the editor was even superior to that of the

original author.'

'No; all that I could do was to simplify his immense erudition and

arrange it. I never loved the work; do not accredit me with so much

industry: but it was a debt that I paid, and paid easily too, for the

materials lay all to my hand, if in disorder.'

'The Marquis Xavier must at least have infused his own love of

archæology and science into you?'

'I can scarcely say even so much. I have a facility at acquiring

knowledge, which is not a very high quality. Things come easily to me.

I fear if Herr Joachim examined me he would find my science shallow.'

'You have so many talents that perhaps you are like one of your own

Mexican forests; one luxuriance kills another.'

'Had I had fewer I might have been more useful in my generation,' he

said, with a certain sincerity of regret.

'You would have been much less interesting,' she thought to herself, as

she said aloud, 'There are the horses coming up to the steps: will you

ride with me? And do not be ungrateful for your good gifts. Talent is a

_Schlüsselblume_ that opens to all hidden treasures.'

'Why are you not in the Chamber?' she had said a little before to him.

'You are eloquent; you have an ancestry that binds you to do your best

for France.'

'I have no convictions,' he had said, with a flush on his face. 'It is

a sad thing to confess.'

'It is; but if you have nothing better to substitute for them you might

be content to abide by those of your fathers.'

He had been silent.

'Besides,' she had added, 'patriotism is not an opinion, it is an

instinct.'

'With good men. I am not one of them.'

'Go into public life,' she had repeated. 'Convictions will come to you

in an active career, as the muscles develop in the gymnasium.'

'I am indolent,' he had demurred, 'and I have desultory habits.'

'You may break yourself of these. There must be much in which you could

interest yourself. Begin with the fishing interests of the coast that

belongs to you.'

'Honestly, I care for nothing except for myself. You will say it is

base.'

'I am afraid it is natural.'

He but seldom spoke of his early life. When he did so it was with

reluctance, as if it gave him pain. His father he had never known; of

his grandfather, the Marquis Xavier, as he usually called him, he spoke

with extreme and reverent tenderness, but with little reticence. The

grave old man, in the stateliness and simplicity of his solitary life,

had been to his youthful imagination a solemn and sacred figure.

'His was the noblest life I have ever known,' he said once, with an

emotion in the accent of the words which she had never heard in his

voice before, and which gave her a passing impression of a regret in

him that was almost remorse.

It might be, she reflected, the remorse of a man who, in his careless

youth, had been less heedful of the value of an affection and the

greatness of a character which, as he grew older and wiser, he learned

to appreciate when it was too late. He related willingly how the old

man had trusted him to carry out into the light of the world the fruits

of his life of research, and with what pleasure he had seen the instant

and universal recognition of the labours of the brain and the hand

that were dust. But of his own life in the West he said little; he

referred his skill in riding to the wild horses of the pampas, and his

botanical and scientific knowledge to the studies which the solitudes

of the sierras had made him turn to as relaxation and occupation; but

of himself he said little, nothing, unless the conversation so turned

upon his life there that it was impossible for him to avoid those

reminiscences which were evidently little agreeable to him. Perhaps

she thought some youthful passion, some unwise love, had made those

flowering swamps and sombre plains painful in memory to him. There

might be other graves than that of the Marquis Xavier beneath the

plumes of pampas grass. Perhaps, also, to a man of the world, a man of

mere pleasure as he had become, that studious and lonesome youth of his

already had drifted so far away that, seen in distance, it seemed dim

and unreal as any dream.

'How happy you are to have so many admirable gifts!' said Wanda to him

one day, when he had offered her a fan that he had painted on ivory. He

had a facile skill at most of the arts, and had acquired accuracy and

technique lounging through the painting-rooms of Paris. The fan was an

exquisite trifle, and bore on one side her monogram and the arms of her

house, and on the other mountain flowers and birds, rendered with the

delicacy of a miniaturist.

'What is the use of a mere amateur?' he said, with indifference. 'When

one has lived amongst artists one learns heartily to despise oneself

for daring to flirt with those sacred sisters the Muses.'

'Why? And, after all, when one has such perfect talent as yours, the

definition of amateur and artist seems a very arbitrary and meaningless

one. If you needed to make your fame and fortune by painting faces

you could do so. You do not need. Does that make the fan the less

precious? The more, I think, since gold cannot buy it.'

'You are too kind to me. The world would not be as much so if I really

wanted its suffrages.'

'You cannot tell that. I think you have that facility which is the

first note of genius. It is true all your wonderful talents seem the

more wonderful to me because I have none myself. I feel art, but I have

no power over it; and as for what are called accomplishments I have

none. I could, perhaps, beat you in the shooting gallery, and I will

try some day if you like, and I can ride--well, like my Kaiserin--but

accomplishments I have none.'

'Surely you were yesterday reading Plato in his own text?'

'I learnt Greek and Latin with my brother. You cannot call that an

accomplishment. The ladies of the old time often knew the learned

tongues, though they were greater at tapestry or distilling and at

the ordering of their household. In a solitary place like this it is

needful to know so many useful things. I can shoe my horse and harness

a sleigh; I can tell every useful herb and flower in the woods; I know

well what to do in frostbite or accidents; if I were lost in the hills

I could make my way by the stars; I can milk a cow, and can row any

boat, and I can climb with crampons; I am a mountaineer. Do not be so

surprised. I do all that I have the children taught in my schools.

But in a salon I am useless and stupid; the last new lady whose lord

has been decorated because he sold something wholesale or cheated

successfully at the Bourse would, I assure you, eclipse me easily in

the talents of the drawing-room.'

Sabran looked at her and laughed outright. A compliment would have

seemed ridiculous before this beautiful patrician, with her serene

dignity, her instinctive grace, her unconscious hauteur, her entire

possession of all those attributes which are the best heirlooms of

a great nobility. To protest against her words would have been like

an insult to this daughter of knights and princes, to whom half the

sovereigns of modern Europe would have seemed but parvenus, the

accidental mushroom growth of the decay in the contest of nations.

His laughter amused her, though it was, perhaps, the most discreet and

delicate of compliments. She was not offended by it as she would have

been with any spoken flattery.

'After all, do not think me modest in what I have said,' she pursued.

'_Talents de société_ are but slight things at the best, and in our

day need not even have either wit or culture: a good travesty at a

costume-ball, a startling gown on a racecourse, a series of adventures

more or less true, a trick of laughing often and laughing long--any

one of these is enough for renown in your Paris. In Vienna we do more

homage to tradition still; our Court life has still something of the

grace of the minuet.'

'Yet even in Vienna you refuse----'

'To spend my time? Why not? The ceremonies of a Court are wearisome to

me; my duties lie here; and for the mirth and pomp of society I have

had no heart since the grief that you know of fell upon me.'

It was the first time that she had ever spoken of her brother's loss to

him: he bowed very low in silent sympathy.

'Who would not envy his death, since it has brought such remembrance!'

he said in a low tone, after some moments.

'Ah, if only we could be sure that unceasing regret consoles the dead!'

she said, with an emotion, that softened and dimmed all her beauty.

Then, as if ashamed or repentant of having shown her feeling for Bela

to a stranger, she turned to him and said more distantly:

'Would it entertain you to see my little scholars? I will take you to

the schoolhouses if you like.'

He could only eagerly accept the offer: he felt his heart beat and his

eyes lighten as she spoke. He knew that such a condescension in her was

a mark of friendship, a sign of familiar intimacy.

'It is but a mile or so through the woods. We will walk there,' she

said, as she took her tall cane from its rack and called to Neva and

Donau, where they lay on the terrace without.

He fancied that the vague mistrust of him, the vague prejudice against

him of which he had been sensible in her, were passing away from her

mind; but still he doubted--doubted bitterly--whether she would ever

give him any other thought than that due to a passing and indifferent

acquaintance. That she admired his intelligence and that she pitied his

loneliness he saw; but there seemed to him that never, never, never,

would he break down in his own favour that impalpable but impassable

barrier due, half to her pride, half to her reserve, and absolutely to

her indifference, which separated Wanda von Szalras from the rest of

mankind.

If she had any weakness or foible it was the children's schools on the

estates in the High Tauern and elsewhere. They had been founded on a

scheme of Bela's and her own, when they had been very young, and the

world to them a lovely day without end. Their too elaborate theories

had been of necessity curtailed, but the schools had been established

on the basis of their early dreams, and were unlike any others that

existed. She had read much and deeply, and had thought out all she had

read, and as she enjoyed that happy power of realising and embodying

her own theories which most theorists are denied, she had founded the

schools of the High Tauern in absolute opposition to all that the

school-boards of her generation have decreed as desirable. And in every

one of her villages she had her schools on this principle, and they

throve, and the children with them. Many of these could not read a

printed page, but all of them could read the shepherd's weather-glass

in sky and flower; all of them knew the worm that was harmful to the

crops, the beetle that was harmless in the grass; all knew a tree by a

leaf, a bird by a feather, an insect by a grub.

Modern teaching makes a multitude of gabblers. She did not think it

necessary for the little goatherds, and dairymaids, and foresters,

and charcoal-burners, and sennerinn, and carpenters, and cobblers, to

study the exact sciences or draw casts from the antique. She was of

opinion, with Pope, that 'a little learning is a dangerous thing,' and

that a smattering of it will easily make a man morose and discontented,

whilst it takes a very deep and even lifelong devotion to it to teach a

man content with his lot. Genius, she thought, is too rare a thing to

make it necessary to construct village schools for it, and whenever or

wherever it comes upon earth it will surely be its own master.

She did not believe in culture for little peasants who have to work for

their daily bread at the plough-tail or with the reaping-hook. She knew

that a mere glimpse of a Canaan of art and learning is cruelty to those

who never can enter into and never even can have leisure to merely gaze

on it. She thought that a vast amount of useful knowledge is consigned

to oblivion whilst children are taught to waste their time in picking

up the crumbs of a great indigestible loaf of artificial learning. She

had her scholars taught their 'ABC,' and that was all. Those who wished

to write were taught, but writing was not enforced. What they were made

to learn was the name and use of every plant in their own country;

the habits and ways of all animals; how to cook plain food well, and

make good bread; how to brew simples from the herbs of their fields

and woods, and how to discern the coming weather from the aspect of

the skies, the shutting-up of certain blossoms, and the time of day

from those 'poor men's watches,' the opening flowers. In all countries

there is a great deal of useful household and out-of-door lore that is

fast being choked out of existence under books and globes, and which,

unless it passes by word of mouth from generation to generation, is

quickly and irrevocably lost. All this lore she had cherished by her

schoolchildren. Her boys were taught in addition any useful trade they

liked--boot-making, crampon-making, horse-shoeing, wheel-making, or

carpentry. This trade was made a pastime to each. The little maidens

learned to sew, to cook, to spin, to card, to keep fowls and sheep and

cattle in good health, and to know all poisonous plants and berries by

sight.

'I think it is what is wanted,' she said. 'A little peasant child does

not need to be able to talk of the corolla and the spathe, but he does

want to recognise at a glance the flower that will give him healing

and the berries that will give him death. His sister does not in the

least require to know why a kettle boils, but she does need to know

when a warm bath will be good for a sick baby or when hurtful. We want

a new generation to be helpful, to have eyes, and to know the beauty

of silence. I do not mind much whether my children read or not. The

labourer that reads turns Socialist, because his brain cannot digest

the hard mass of wonderful facts he encounters. But I believe every one

of my little peasants, being wrecked like Crusoe, would prove as handy

as he.'

She was fond of her scholars and proud of them, and they were never

afraid of her. They knew well it was the great lady who filled all

their sacks the night of Santa Claus--even those of the naughty

children, because, as she said, childhood was so short that she thought

it cruel to give it any disappointments.

The walk to the schoolhouse lay through the woods to the south of the

castle; woods of larch and beech and walnut and the graceful Siberian

pine, with deep mosses and thick fern-brakes beneath them, and ever and

again a watercourse tumbling through their greenery to fall into the

Szalrassee below.

'I always fancy I can hear here the echo of the great Krimler

torrents,' she said to him as they passed through the trees. 'No

doubt it _is_ fancy, and the sound is only from our own falls. But

the peasants' tradition is, you may know, that our lake is the water

of the Krimler come to us underground from the Pinzgau. Do you know

our Sahara of the North? It is monotonous and barren enough, and yet

with its vast solitudes of marsh and stones, its flocks of wild fowl,

its reedy wastes, its countless streams, it is grand in its own way.

And then in the heart of it there are the thunder and the boiling fury

of Krimml! You will smile because I am an enthusiast for my country,

you who have seen Orinoco and Chimborazo; but even you will own that

the old Duchy of Austria, the old Archbishopric of Salzburg, the old

Countship of Tirol, have some beauty and glory in them. Here is the

schoolhouse. Now you shall see what I think needful for the peasant of

the future. Perhaps you will condemn me as a true Austrian: that is, as

a Reactionist.'

The schoolhouse was a châlet, or rather a collection of châlets, set

one against another on a green pasture belted by pine woods, above

which the snows of the distant Venediger were gleaming amidst the

clouds. There was a loud hum of childish voices rising through the open

lattice, and these did not cease as they entered the foremost house.

'Do not be surprised that they take no notice of our entrance,' she

said to him. 'I have taught them not to do so unless I bid them. If

they left off their tasks I could never tell how they did them; and is

not the truest respect shown in obedience?'

'They are as well disciplined as soldiers,' he said with a smile,

as twenty curly heads bent over desks were lifted for a moment to

instantly go down again.

'Surely discipline is next to health,' added Wanda. 'If the child do

not learn it early he must suffer fearfully when he reaches manhood,

since all men, even princes, have to obey some time or other, and the

majority of men are not princes, but are soldiers, clerks, porters,

guides, labourers, tradesmen, what not; certainly something subject

to law if not to a master. How many lives have been lost because a

man failed to understand the meaning of immediate and unquestioning

obedience! Soldiers are shot for want of it, yet children are not to be

taught it!'

Whilst she spoke not a child looked up or left off his lesson: the

teacher, a white-haired old man, went on with his recitation.

'Your teachers are not priests?' he said in some surprise.

'No,' she answered; 'I am a faithful daughter of the Church, as you

know; but every priest is perforce a specialist, if I may be forgiven

the profanity, and the teacher of children should be of perfectly open,

simple and unbiassed mind; the priest's can never be that. Besides,

his teaching is apart. The love and fear of God are themes too vast

and too intimate to be mingled with the pains of the alphabet and the

multiplication tables. There alone I agree with your French Radicals,

though from a very different reason to theirs. Now in this part of the

schools you see the children are learning from books. These children

have wished to read, and are taught to do so; but I do not enforce

though I recommend it. You think that very barbarous? Oh! reflect for

a moment how much more glorious was the world, was literature itself,

before printing was invented. Sometimes I think it was a book, not a

fruit, that Satan gave. You smile incredulously. Well, no doubt to a

Parisian it seems absurd. How should you understand what is wanted in

the heart of these hills? Come and see the other houses.'

In the next which they entered there was a group of small sturdy boys,

very sunburnt and rough and bright, who were seated in a row listening

with rapt attention to a teacher who was talking to them of birds and

their uses and ways; there were prints, of birds and birds' nests, and

the teacher was making them understand why and how a bird flew.

'That is the natural history school,' she said; 'one day it is birds,

another animals, another insects, that they are told about. Those are

all little foresters born. They will go about their woods with eyes

that see, and with tenderness for all creation.'

In the next school Herr Joachim himself, who took no notice of their

entrance, was giving a simple little lecture on the useful herbs and

the edible tubers, the way to know them and to turn them to profit.

There were several girls listening here.

'Those girls will not poison their people at home with a false

cryptogram,' said Wanda, as they passed on to another place, where

a lesson on farriery and the treatment of cattle was going on, and

another where a teacher was instructing a mixed group of boys and

little maidens in the lore of the forests, of the grasses, of the

various causes that kill a tree in its prime, of the insects that

dwell in them, and of the different soils that they needed. In

another chamber there was a spinning-class and a sewing-class under a

kindly-faced old dame; and in yet another there were music-classes,

some playing on the zither, and others singing part-songs and glees

with baby voices.

'Now you have seen all I have to show you,' said Wanda. 'In these two

other châlets are the workshops, where the boys learn any trade they

choose, and the girls are also taught to make a shoe or a jacket. My

children would not pass examinations in cities, certainly; but they

are being fitted in the best way they can for their future life, which

will pass either in these mountains and forests, as I hope, or in the

armies of the Emperor, and the humble work-a-day ways of poor folks

everywhere. If there be a Grillparzer or a Kaulbach amongst them, the

education is large and simple enough to let the originality he has been

born with develop itself; if, as is far more likely, they are all made

of ordinary human stuff, then the teaching they receive is such as to

make them contented, pious, honest, and useful working people. At least

that is what I strive for; and this is certain, that the children come

some of them a German mile and more with joy and willingness to their

schools, and that this at least they take away with them into their

future life--the sense of duty as a supreme rein over all instincts,

and mercifulness towards every living thing that God has given us.'

She had spoken with unusual animation, and with an earnestness that

brought warmth over her cheek and moisture into her eyes.

Sabran looked at her timidly; then as timidly he touched the tips of

her fingers, and raised them to his lips.

'You are a noble woman,' he said very low; a sense of his own utter

unworthiness overwhelmed him and held him mute.

She glanced at him in some surprise, vaguely tinged with displeasure.

'There are schools on every estate,' she said, a little angrily and

disconnectedly. 'These are modelled on my own whim; that is all. The

world would say I ought to teach these little peasants the science

that dissects its own sources, and the philosophies that resolve

all creation into an egg. But I follow ancient ways enough to think

the country life the best, the healthiest, the sweetest: it is for

this that they are born, and to this I train them. If we had more

naturalists we should have fewer Communists.'

'Yes, Audubon would scarcely have been a regicide, or Humboldt a

Camorrist,' he answered her, regaining his self-possession. 'No doubt a

love of nature is a triple armour against self-love. How can I say how

right I think your system with these children? You seem not to believe

me. There is only one thing in which I differ with you; you think the

'eyes that see' bring content. Surely not! surely not!'

'It depends on what they see,' she said meditatively. 'When they are

wide open in the woods and fields, when they have been taught to see

how the tree-bee forms her cell and the mole his fortress, how the

warbler builds his nest for his love and the water-spider makes his

little raft, how the leaf comes forth from the hard stem and the fungi

from the rank mould, then I think that sight is content--content in the

simple life of the woodland place, and in such delighted wonder that

the heart of its own accord goes up in peace and praise to the Creator.

The printed page may teach envy, desire, covetousness, hatred, but the

Book of Nature teaches resignation, hope, willingness to labour and

live, submission to die. The world has gone further and further from

peace since larger and larger have grown its cities and its shepherd

kings are no more.'

He was silent.

Her voice moved him like sweet remembered music; yet in his own

remembrance what were there? Only 'envy, desire, covetousness, hatred,'

the unlovely shapes that were to her as emblems of the powers of evil.

His reason was with her, and his emotions were with her also, but

memory was busy in him, and in it he saw 'as in a glass darkly,' all

his passionate, cold, embittered youth, all his warped, irresolute,

useless, and untrue manhood.

'Do not think,' she added, unconscious of the pain that she had

caused him, 'that I undervalue the blessing of great books; but I do

think that, to recognise the beauty of literature, as much culture and

comprehension are needed as to understand Leonardo's painting, or the

structure of Wagner's music. Those who read well are as rare as those

who love well. The curse of our age is superficial knowledge; it is

a _cryptogram_ of the rankest sort, and I will not let my scholars

touch it. Do you not think it is better for a country child to know

what flowers are poisonous for her cattle, and what herbs are useful

in her neighbours' fever, than to be able to spell through a Jesuit's

newspaper, or suck evil from a Communist's pamphlet? You will not have

your horse well shod if the smith be thinking of Bakounine while he

hammers the iron.'

'I have held the views of Bakounine myself,' said Sabran, with

hesitation. 'I do not know what you will think of me. I have even been

tempted to be an anarchist, a Nihilist.'

'You speak in the past tense. You must have abandoned those views? You

are received at Frohsdorf?'

'They have, perhaps, abandoned me. My life has been idle, sinful

often. I have liked luxury, and have not denied myself folly. I

recognised the absurdity of such a man as I was joining in any

movement of seriousness and self-negation, so I threw away my political

persuasions, as one throws off a knapsack when tired of a journey on

foot.'

'That was not very conscientious, surely?'

'No, madame. It is perhaps, however, better than helping to adjust the

contradictions of the world with dynamite. And I cannot even claim that

they were persuasions; I fear they were mere personal impatience with

narrow fortunes and useless ambitions.'

'I cannot pardon anyone of an old nobility turning Republican; it

is like a son insulting the tombs of his fathers!' she said, with

emphasis; then, fearing she had reproved him too strongly, she added,

with a smile, 'And yet I also could almost join the anarchists when I

see the enormous wealth of baseborn speculators and Hebrew capitalists

in such bitter contrast with the hunger of the poor, who starve all

over the world in winter like birds frozen on the snow. Oh, do not

suppose that, though I am an Austrian, I cannot see that feudalism is

doomed. We are still feudal here, but then in so much we are still as

we were in crusading days. The nobles have been, almost everywhere

except here, ousted by capitalists, and the capitalists will in turn

be devoured by the democracy. _Les loups se mangeront entre eux._ You

see, though I may be prejudiced, I am not blind. But you, as a Breton,

should think feudalism a loss, as I do.'

'In those days, Barbe Bleue or Gilles de Retz were the nearest

neighbours of Romaris,' he said, with a smile. 'Yet if feudalism could

be sure of such châtelaines as the Countess von Szalras, I would wish

it back to-morrow.'

'That is very prettily put for a Socialist. But you cannot be a

Socialist. You are received at Frohsdorf. Bretons are always royal;

they are born with the _cultus_ of God and the King.'

He laughed a little, not quite easily.

'Paris is a witch's caldron, in which all _cultes_ are melted down, and

evaporate in a steam of disillusion and mockery; into the caldron we

have long flung, alas! cross and crown, actual and allegoric. I am not

a Breton; I am that idle creation of modern life, a _boulevardier._'

'But do you never visit Romaris?'

'Why should I? There is nothing but a few sea-tormented oaks, endless

sands, endless marshes, and a dark dirty village jammed among rocks,

and reeking with the smell of the oil and the fish.'

'Then I would go and make the village clean and the marshes healthy,

were I you. There must be something of interest in any people who

remain natural in their ways and dwell beside a sea, Is Romaris not

prosperous?'

'Prosperous! God and man have forgotten it ever since the world began,

I should say. It is on a bay, so treacherous that it is called the Pool

of Death. The _landes_ separate it by leagues from any town. All it

has to live on is the fishing. It is dull as a grave, harried by every

storm, unutterably horrible.'

'Well, I would not forsake its horrors were I a son of Romaris,' she

said softly; then, as she perceived that some association made the

name and memory of the old Armorican village painful to him, she blew

the whistle she always used, and at the summons the eldest pupil of

the school, a handsome boy of fourteen, came out and stood bareheaded

before her.

'Hansl, ask the teachers to grant you all an hour's frolic, that you

may amuse this gentleman,' she said to him. 'And, Hansl, take care that

you do your best, all of you, in dancing, wrestling, and singing, and

above all with the zither, for the honour of the empire.'

The lad, with a face of sunshine, bowed low and ran into the

school-houses.

'It is almost their hour for rest, or I would not have disturbed them,'

she said to him. 'They come here at sunrise; bring their bread and

meat, and milk is given them; they disperse according to season, a

little before sunset. They have two hours' rest at different times, but

it is hardly wanted, for their labours interest them, and their classes

are varied.'

Soon the children all trooped out, made their bow or curtsey

reverently, but without shyness, and began with song and national airs

played on the zither or the 'jumping wood.' Their singing and music

were tender, ardent, and yet perfectly precise. There was no false note

or slurred passage. Then they danced the merry national dances that

make gay the long nights in the snow-covered châlets in many a mountain

village which even the mountain letter-carrier, on his climbing irons,

cannot reach for months together when all the highlands are ice. They

ended their dances with the Hungarian czardas, into which they threw

all the vigour of their healthful young limbs and happy hearts.

'My cousin Egon taught them the czardas; have you ever seen the Magyar

nobles in the madness of that dance?'

'Your cousin Egon? Do you mean Prince Vàsàrhely?'

'Yes. Do you know him?'

'I have seen him.'

His face grew paler as he spoke. He ceased to watch with interest the

figures of the jumping children in their picturesque national dress, as

they whirled and shouted in the sunshine on the green turf, with the

woods and the rocks towering beyond them.

When the czardas was ended, the girls sat down on the sward to rest,

and the boys began their leaping, running, and stone-heaving, with

their favourite wrestling at the close.

'They are as strong as chamois,' she said to him. 'There is no need

here to have a gymnasium. Their mountains teach them climbing, and

every Sunday on their village green their fathers make them wrestle

and shoot at marks. The favourite sport here is one I will not

countenance--the finger-hooking. If I gave the word any two of those

little fellows would hook their middle fingers together and pull till a

joint broke.'

The boys were duly commended for their skill, and Sabran would have

thrown them a shower of florin notes had she allowed it. Then she bade

them sing as a farewell the Kaiser's Hymn.

The grand melody rolled out on the fresh clear Alpine air in voices as

fresh and as clear, that went upward and upward towards the zenith like

the carol of the larks.

'I would fain be the Emperor to have that prayer sung so for me,'

said Sabran, with truth, as the glad young voices dropped down into

silence--the intense silence of the earth where the glaciers reign.

'He heard them last year, and he was pleased,' she said, as the

children raised a loud 'Hoch!' made their reverence once more at a sign

of dismissal from her, and vanished in a proud and happy crowd into the

schoolhouses.

'Do you never praise them or reward them?' he asked in surprise.

'Santa Claus rewards them. As for praise, they know when I smile that

all is well.'

'But surely they have shown very unusual musical talent?'

'They sing well because they are well taught. But they are not any

of them going to become singers. Those zithers and part-songs will

all serve to enliven the long nights of the farmhouse or the summer

solitude of the cattle-hut. We do not cultivate music one-half enough

among the peasantry. It lightens labour; it purifies and strengthens

the home-life; it sweetens black-bread. Do you remember that happy

picture of Jordaens' "Where the old sing, the young chirp," where the

old grandfather and grandmother, and the baby in its mother's arms, and

the hale five-year-old boy, and the rough servant, are all joining in

the same melody, while the goat crops the vine-leaves off the table? I

should like to see every cottage interior like that when the work was

done. I would hang up an etching from Jordaens where you would hang up,

perhaps, the programme of Proudhon.'

Then she walked back with him through the green sun-gleaming woods.

'I hope that I teach them content,' she continued. 'It is the lesson

most neglected in our day. "_Niemand will ein Schuster seyn; Jederman

ein Dichter._" It is true we are very happy in our surroundings. A

mountaineer's is such a beautiful life; so simple, healthful, hardy,

and fine; always face to face with nature. I try to teach them what

an inestimable joy that alone is. I do not altogether believe in the

prosaic views of rural life. It is true that the peasant digging his

trench sees the clod, not the sky but then when he does lift his head

the sky is there, not the roof, not the ceiling. That is so much in

itself. And here the sky is an everlasting grandeur: clouds and domes

of snow are blent together. When the stars are out above the glaciers

how serene the night is, how majestic! even the humblest creature feels

lifted up into that eternal greatness. Then you think of the home-life

in the long winters as dreary; but it is not so. Over away there,

at Lahn, and other places on the Hallstadtersee, they do not see the

sun for five months; the wall of rock behind them shuts them from all

light of day; but they live together, they dance, they work. The young

men recite poems, and the old men tell tales of the mountains and the

French war, and they sing the homely songs of the _Schnaderhupfeln._

Then when winter passes, when the sun comes again up over the wall of

rocks, when they go out into the light once more, what happiness it

is! One old man said to me, 'It is like being born again!' and another

said, 'Where it is always warm and light I doubt they forget to thank

God for the sunshine;' and quite a young child said, all of his own

accord, 'The primroses live in the dusk all the winter, like us, and

then when the sun comes up we and they run out together, and the Mother

of Christ has set the waters and the little birds laughing.' I would

rather have the winter of Lahn than the winter of Belleville.'

'But they do go away from their mountains a good deal? One meets

them----'

'My own people never do, but from the valleys around they go--yes,

sometimes; but then they always come back. The Defereggenthal men,

over yonder where you see those ice summits, constantly go elsewhere

on reaching manhood; but as soon as they have made a little money they

return to dwell at home for the remainder of their days. I think living

amidst the great mountains creates a restfulness, a steadfastness

in the character. If Paris were set amidst Alps you would have had

Lamartine, you would not have had Rochefort.'

When she spoke thus of her own country, of her own people, all her

coldness vanished, her eyes grew full of light, her reserve was broken

up into animation. They were what she truly loved, what touched her

affections and her sympathies.

When he heard her speak thus, he thought if any man should succeed in

arousing in her the love and the loyalty that she gave her Austrian

Alps, what treasures he would win, into what a kingdom he would enter!

And then something that was perhaps higher than vanity and deeper than

egotism stirring in him whispered. 'If any, why not you?'

Herr Joachim had at a message from her joined them. He talked of the

flowers around them and of the culture and flora of Mexico. Sabran

answered him with apparent interest, and with that knowledge which he

had always the presence of mind to recall at need, but his heart was

heavy and his mind absent.

She had spoken to him of Romaris, and he had once known Egon Vàsàrhely.

Those two facts overshadowed the sweetness and sunshine of the day; yet

he knew very well that he should have been prepared for both.

The Princess Ottilie, seated in her gilt wickerwork chair under the

great yew on the south side of the house, saw them approach with

pleasure.

'Come and have a cup of tea,' she said to them. 'But, my beloved Wanda,

you should not let the doctor walk beside you. Oh, I saw him in the

distance; of course he left you before you joined _me._ He is a worthy

man, a most worthy man; but so is Hubert, and you do not walk with

Hubert and converse with him about flowers.'

'Are you so inexorable as to social grades, madame? murmured Sabran, as

he took his cup from her still pretty hand.

'Most certainly!' said the Princess, with a little, a very little,

asperity. 'The world was much happier when distinctions and divisions

were impassable. There are no sumptuary laws now. What is the

consequence? That, your bourgeoise ruins her husband in wearing gowns

fit only for a duchess, and your prince imagines it makes him popular

to look precisely like a cabman or a bailiff.'

'And even in the matter of utility,' said Sabran, who always agreed

with her, 'those sumptuary laws had much in their favour. If one look

through the chronicles and miniatures, say of the thirteenth and

fourteenth centuries, how much more sensible for the change of seasons

and the ease of work seems the costume of the working people? The

_cotte hardie_ was a thousand times more comfortable and more becoming

than anything we have. If we could dress once more as all did under

Louis Treize gentle and simple would alike benefit.'

'What a charmingly intelligent person he is!' thought the Princess, as

she remarked that in Austria they were happier than the rest of the

world: there were peasant costumes still there.

Wanda left them a little later to confer with one of her land stewards.

Sabran remained seated by the Princess, in whom he felt that he

possessed a friend.

'What did you think of those schools? said Frau Ottilie. 'Oh, of course

you admire and approve; you must admire and approve when they are the

hobby of a beautiful woman, who is also your hostess.'

'Does that mean, Princess, that you do not?'

'No doubt the schools are excellent,' replied the Princess, in a tone

which condemned them as ridiculous. 'But for my own part I prefer those

things left to the Church, of which they constitute alike the privilege

and the province. I cannot see either why a peasant child requires

to know how a tree grows; that a merciful Providence placed it there

is all he can need to be told, and that he should be able to cut it

down without cutting off his own fingers is all the science that can

possibly be necessary to him. However, Wanda thinks otherwise, and she

is mistress here.'

'But the schools surely are eminently practical ones?'

'Practical! Is it practical to weave a romance as long as "Pamela"

about the changes of a chrysalis? I fail to see it. That a grub is

a destructive creature is all that any one needs to know; there

is nothing practical in making it the heroine of an interminable

metempsychosis. But all those ideas of 'Wanda's have a taint of that

modern poison which her mind, though it is so strong iii many things,

has not been strong enough to resist. She does not believe in the

efficacy of our holy relics (such as that which I sent you, and which

wrought your cure), but she does believe in the fables that naturalists

invent about weeds and beetles, and she finds a Kosmos in a puddle!'

'You are very severe, Princess.'

'I dislike inconsistency, and my niece is inconsistent, though she

imagines that perfect consistency is the staple of her character.'

'Nay, madame, surely her character is the most evenly balanced, the

most harmonious, and consequently the most perfect that is possible to

humanity.'

The Princess looked at him with a keen little glance.

'You admire her very much? Are you sure you understand her?'

'I should not dare to say that, but I dare to hope it. Her nature seems

to me serene and transparent as fine sunlight.'

'So it is; but she has faults, I can assure you,' said the Princess,

with her curious union of shrewdness and simplicity. 'My niece is a

perfectly good woman, so far as goodness is possible to finite nature;

she is the best woman I have ever known out of the cloister. But

then there is this to be said--she has never been tempted. True, she

might be tempted to be arrogant, despotic, tyrannical; and she is not

so. But that is not precisely the temptation to try her. She is mild

and merciful out of her very pride; but her character would be sure

destruction of her pride were such a thing possible. You think she is

not proud because she is so gentle? You might as well say that Her

Majesty is not Empress because she washes the feet of the twelve poor

men! Wanda is the best woman that I know, but she is also the proudest.'

'The Countess has never loved anyone?' said Sabran, who grew paler as

he heard.

'Terrestrial love--no. It has not touched her. But it would not alter

her, believe me. Some women lose themselves in their affections; she

would not. She would always remain the mistress of it, and it would be

a love like her character. Of that I am sure.'

Sabran was silent; he was discouraged.

'I think the boldest man would always be held at a distance from her,'

he said, after a pause. 'I think none would ever acquire dominion over

her life.'

'That is exactly what I have said,' replied the Princess. 'Your phrase

is differently worded, but it comes to the same thing.'

'It would depend very much----'

'On what?'

'On how much she loved, and perhaps a little on how much she was loved.'

'Not at all,' said the Princess, decidedly; 'you cannot get more out of

a nature than there is in it, and there is no sort of passion in the

nature of my niece.'

He was silent again.

'She was admirably educated,' added the Princess, hastily, conscious of

a remark not strictly becoming in herself; 'and her rare temperament

is serene, well balanced, void of all excess. Heaven has mercifully

eliminated from her almost all mortal errors.'

'By pride

Angels have fallen ere thy time!'

suggested Sabran.

'Angels, perhaps,' said the Princess, drily. 'But for women it is an

admirable preservative, second only to piety.'

He went home sculling himself across the lake, now perfectly calm

beneath the rose and gold of a midsummer sunset. His heart was heavy,

and a dull fear seemed to beat at his conscience like a child suddenly

awaking who knocks at a long-closed door. Still, as a crime allures men

who contemplate it by the fascination of its weird power, so the sin he

desired to commit held him with its unholy beguilement, and almost it

looked holy to him because it wore the guise of Wanda von Szalras.

He was not insensible to the charm of this interchange of thought. He

had had many passions in which his senses alone had been enlisted.

There was a more delicate attraction in the gradual and numberless

steps by which, only slowly and with patience, could he win any

way into her regard. She had for him the puissance that the almost

unattainable has for all humanity. When he could feel that he had

awakened any sympathy in her, his pride was more flattered than it

could have been by the most complete subjection of any other woman.

He had looked on all women with the chill, amorous cynicism of the

Parisian psychology, as _l'éternel féminin_, at best as '_la forme

perverse, vaporeuse, langoureuse, souple comme les roseaux, blanche

comme les lis, incapable de se mouvoir pendant les deux tiers du

jour--sans équilibre, sans but, sans équateur, donnant son corps en

pâture à sa tête._ He had had no other ideal; no other conception. This

psychology, like some other sciences, brutalises as it equalises. In

the woman who had risen up before him in the night of storm upon the

Szalrassee he had recognised with his intelligence a woman who made his

philosophy at fault, who aroused something beyond his mere instincts,

who was not to be classified with the Lias, or the Cesarines, or the

Jane de Simeroses, who had been in his love, as in his literature, the

various types of the _éternel féminin._ The simplicity and the dignity

of her life astonished and convinced him; he began to understand that

where he had imagined he had studied the universe in his knowledge of

women, he had in reality only seen two phases of it--the hothouse and

the ditch. It is a common error to take the forced flower and the slime

weed, and think that there is nothing between or beyond the two.

He had the convictions of his school that all women were at heart

coquettes or hypocrites, consciously or unconsciously. Wanda von

Szalras routed all his theories. Before her candour, her directness and

gravity of thought, her serene indifference to all forms of compliment,

all his doctrines and all his experiences were useless. She inspired

him with reverential and hopeless admiration, which was mingled with an

angry astonishment, and something of the bitterness of envy. Sometimes,

as he sat and watched the green water of the lake tumble and roll

beneath a north wind's wrath under a cloudy sky which hid the snows

of the Glöckner range, he remembered a horrible story that had once

fascinated him of Malatesta of Rimini slaying the princess that would

have none of his love, striking his sword across her white throat in

the dusky evening time, and casting her body upon the silken curtains

of her wicked litter. Almost he could have found it in him to do such a

crime--almost. Only he thought that at one look of her eyes his sword

would have dropped upon the dust.

Her personal beauty had inspired him with a sudden passion, but her

character checked it with the sense of fear which it imposed on him;

fear of those high and blameless instincts which were an integral

part of her nature, fear of that frank, unswerving truth which was

the paramount law of her life. As he rode with her, walked with her,

conversed with her in the long, light summer hours, he saw more and

more of the purity and nobility of her temper, but he saw or thought he

saw also an inexorable pride and a sternness in judgment which made him

believe that she would be utterly unforgiving to weakness or to sin.

She remained the Nibelungen Queen to him, clothed in flawless armour

and aloof from men.

He lingered on at the Holy Isle, finding a fresh charm each day in

this simple and peaceful existence, filled with the dreams of a woman

unlike every other he had known. He knew that it could not last, but

he was unwilling to end it himself. To rise to the sound of the monks'

matins, to pass his forenoons in art or open-air exercise, to be sure

that some hour or another before sunset he would meet her, either in

her home or abroad in the woods; to go early to bed, seeing, as he

lay, the pile of the great burg looming high above the water, like

the citadel of the Sleeping Beauty--all this, together making up an

existence so monotonous, harmless, and calm that a few months before he

would have deemed it impossible to endure it, was soothing, alluring,

and beguiling to him. He had told no one where he was; his letters

might lie and accumulate by the hundred in his rooms in Paris for aught

that he cared; he had no creditors, for he had been always scrupulously

careful to avoid all debt, and he had no friend for whose existence he

cared a straw. There were those who cared for him, indeed, but these

seldom trouble any man very greatly.

In the last week of August, however, a letter found its way to him; it

was written in a very bad hand, on paper gorgeous with gold and silver.

It was signed 'Cochonette.'

It contained a torrent of reproaches made in the broadest language that

the slang of the hour furnished, and every third word was misspelt. How

the writer had tracked him she did not say. He tore the letter up and

threw the pieces into the water flowing beneath his window. Had he ever

passionately desired and triumphed in the possession of that woman? It

seemed wonderful to him now. She was an idol of Paris; a creature with

the voice of a lark and the laugh of a child, with a lovely, mutinous

face, and eyes that could speak without words. As a pierrot, as a

mousquetaire, as a little prince, as a fairy king of operetta, she had

no rival in the eyes of Paris. She blazed with jewels when she played

a peasant, and she wore the costliest costume of Felix's devising

when she sung her triplets as a soubrette. She had been constant to

no one for three months, and she had been constant to him for three

years, or, at the least, had made him believe so; and she wrote to

him now furiously, reproachfully, entreatingly--fierce reproaches and

entreaties, all misspelt.

The letter which he threw into the lake brought all the memories of his

old life before him; it was like the flavour of absinthe after drinking

spring water. It was a life which had had its successes, a life, as

the world called it, of pleasure; and it seemed utterly senseless to

him now as he tore up the note of Cochonette, and looked down the

water to where the towers and spires and battlements of Hohenszalras

soared upward in the mists. He shook himself as though to shake off the

memory of an unpleasant dream as he went out, descended the landing

steps, drew his boat from under the willows and sculled himself across

towards the water-stairs of the Schloss. In a quarter of an hour he was

playing the themes of the 'Gotterdammerung,' whilst his châtelaine sat

at her spinning-wheel a few yards from him.

'Good heavens! can she and Cochonette belong to the same human race?'

he thought, as whilst he played his glance wandered to that patrician

figure seated in the light from the oriel window, with the white hound

leaning against her velvet skirts, and her jewelled fingers plying the

distaff and disentangling the flax.

After the noonday breakfast the sun shone, the mists lifted from the

water, the clouds drifted from the lower mountains, only leaving the

snow-capped head of the Glöckner enveloped in them.

'I am going to ride; will you come?' said Wanda von Szalras to him.

He assented with ardour, and a hunter, Siegfried, the mount which was

always given to him, was led round under the great terrace, in company

with her Arab riding-horse Ali. They rode far through the forests and

out on the one level road there was, which swept round the south side

of the lake; a road, turf-bordered, overhung with huge trees, closed

in with a dewy veil of greenery, across which ever and anon some

flash of falling water or some shimmer of glacier or of snow crest

shone through the dense leafage. They rode too fast for conversation,

both the horses racing like greyhounds; but as they returned, towards

the close of the afternoon, they slackened their pace in pity to the

steaming heaving flanks beneath their saddles, and then they could hear

each other's voices.

'What a lovely life it is here!' he said, with a sigh. 'The world will

seem very vulgar and noisy to me after it.'

'You would soon tire, and wish for the world,' she answered him.

'No,' he said quickly; 'I have been two months on the Holy Isle, and I

have not known weariness for a moment.'

'That is because it is still summer. If you were here in the winter you

would bemoan your imprisonment, like my aunt Ottilie. Even the post

sometimes fails us.'

'I should not lament the post,' he replied, thinking of the letter

he had cast into the lake. 'My old life seems to me insanity, fever,

disease, beside these past two months I have spent with the monks.'

'You can take the vows,' she suggested with a smile. He smiled too.

'Nay: I should not dare to so insult our mother Church. One must not

empty ashes into a reliquary.'

'Your life is not ashes yet.'

He was silent. He could not say to her what he would have said could he

have laid his heart bare.

'When you go away,' she pursued, 'remember my words. Choose some

career; make yourself some aim in life; do not fold your talents in a

napkin--in a napkin that lies on the supper table at Bignon's. That

idle, aimless life is very attractive, I dare say, in its way, but it

must grow wearisome and unsatisfactory as years roll on. The men of my

house have never been content with it; they have always been soldiers,

statesmen, something or other beside mere nobles.'

'But they have had a great position.'

'Men make their own position; they cannot make a name (at least, not to

my thinking). You have that good fortune; you have a great name; you

only need, pardon me, to make your manner of life worthy of it.'

He grew pale as she spoke.

'Cannot make a name?' he said, with forced gaiety. 'Surely in these

days the beggar rides on horseback in all the ministries and half the

nobilities!'

A great contempt passed over her face. 'You mean that Hans, Pierre, or

Richard becomes a count, an excellency, or an earl? What does that

change? It alters the handle; it does not alter the saucepan. No one

can be ennobled. Blood is blood; nobility can only be inherited; it

cannot be conferred by all the heralds in the world. The very meaning

and essence of nobility are descent, inherited traditions, instincts,

habits, and memories--all that is meant by _noblesse oblige._'

'Would you allow,' thought her companion, 'would you allow the same

nobility to Falcon-bridge as to Plantagenet?'

But he dared not name the bar sinister to this daughter of princes.

Siegfried started and reared: his rider did not reply, being absorbed

in calming him.

'What frightened him?' she asked.

'A hawk flew-by,' said Sabran.

'A hawk, flying low enough for a horse to see it? It must be wounded.'

He did not answer, and they quickened their pace, as the sun sunk

behind the glaciers of the west.

When he returned to the monastery the evening had closed in; the

lantern was lit at his boat's prow. Dinner was prepared for him, but

he ate little. Later the moon rose; golden and round as a bowl. It

was a beautiful spectacle as it gave its light to the amphitheatre of

the mountains, to the rippling surface of the lake, to the stately,

irregular lines of the castle backed by the blackness of its woods. He

sat long by the open window lost in thought, pondering on the great

race which had ruled there. _L'honneur parle: il suffit_, had been

their law, and she who represented them held a creed no less stern and

pure than theirs. Her words spoken in their ride were like a weight of

ice on his heart. Never to her, never, could he confess the errors of

his past. He was a man bold to temerity, but he was not bold enough to

risk the contempt of Wanda von Szalras. He had never much heeded right

or wrong, or much believed in such ethical distinctions, only adhering

to the conventional honour and good breeding of the world, but before

her his moral sense awakened.

'The Marquis Xavier would bid me go from here,' he thought to himself,

as the night wore on and he heard the footfall of the monks passing

down the passages to their midnight orisons.

'After all these years in the _pourriture_ of Paris, have I such a

thing as conscience left?' he asked his own thoughts, bitterly. The

moon passed behind a cloud and darkness fell over the lake and hid

the great pile of the Hohenszalrasburg from his sight. He closed the

casement and turned away. 'Farewell!' he said, to the vanished castle.

'Will you think of me sometimes, dear Princess, when I am far away?'

said Sabran abruptly the next morning to his best friend, who looked up

startled.

'Away? Are you going away?'

'Yes,' said Sabran, abruptly; 'and you, I think, madame, who have been

so good to me, can guess easily why.'

'You love my niece?'

He inclined his head in silence.

'It is very natural,' said the Princess, faintly. 'Wanda is a beautiful

woman; many men have loved her; they might as well have loved that

glacier yonder.'

'It is not that,' said Sabran, hastily. 'It is my own poverty----'

The Princess looked at him keenly.

'Do you think her not cold?'

'She who can so love a brother would surely love her lover not less,

did she stoop to one,' he replied evasively. 'At least I think so; I

ought not to presume to judge.'

'And you care for her?' The glance her eyes gave him added as plainly

as words could have done, 'It is not only her wealth, her position? Are

you sure?'

He coloured very much as he answered quickly: 'Were she beggared

to-morrow, you would see.'

'It is a pity,' murmured the Princess. He did not ask her what she

regretted; he knew her sympathy was with him.

They were both mute. The Princess pushed the end of her cane

thoughtfully into the velvet turf. She hesitated some moments, then

said in a low voice: 'Were I you I would stay.'

'Do not tempt me! I have stayed too long as it is. What can she think

of me?'

'She does not think about your reasons; she is too proud a woman to be

vain. In a measure you have won her friendship. Perhaps--I do not know,

I have no grounds to say so--but perhaps in time you might win more.'

She looked at him as she concluded. He grew exceedingly pale.

He stooped over her chair, and spoke very low:

'It is just because that appears possible that I go. Do not

misunderstand me, I am not a coxcomb; _je ne me pose pas en vainqueur._

But I have no place here, since I have no equality with her from which

to be able to say, "I love you!" Absence alone can say it for me

without offence as without hope.'

The Princess was silent. She was thinking of the maxim,; _L'absence

éteint les petites passions et allume les grandes_.' Which was his?

'You have been so good to me,' he murmured caressingly, 'so benevolent,

so merciful, I dare to ask of you a greater kindness yet. Will you

explain for me to the Countess von Szalras that I am called away

suddenly, and make my excuses and my farewell? It will save me much

fruitless pain.'

'And if it give her pain?'

'I cannot suppose that, and I should not dare to hope it.'

'I have no reason to suppose it either, but I think you are _de guerre

las_ before the battle is decided.'

'There is no battle possible for me. There is only a quite certain

dishonour.'

His face was dark and weary. He spoke low and with effort. She glanced

at him, and felt the vague awe with which strong unintelligible emotion

always filled her.

'You must judge the question for yourself,' she said with a little

hesitation. 'I will express what you wish to my niece if you really

desire it.'

'You are always so good to me,' he murmured, with some agitation, and

he bent down before her and reverently kissed her little white hands.

'God be with you, sir,' she said, with tears in her own tender eyes.

'You have been so good to me,' he murmured; 'the purest hours of my

worthless life have been spent at Hohenszalras. Here only have I known

what peace and holiness can mean. Give me your blessing ere I go.'

In another moment he had bowed himself from her presence, and the

Princess sat mute and motionless in the sun. When she looked up at the

great feudal pile of the Schloss which towered above her, it was with

reproach and aversion to that stone emblem of the great possessions of

its châtelaine.

'If she were a humbler woman,' she thought, 'how much happier she

would be! What a pity it all is--what a pity! Of course he is right;

of course he can do nothing else. If he did do anything else the world

would condemn him, and even she very likely would despise him--but it

is such a pity! If only she could have a woman's natural life about

her----This life is not good. It is very well while she is young, but

when she shall be no longer young?'

And the tender heart of the old gentlewoman ached for a sorrow not her

own; and could she have given him a duchy to make him able to declare

his love, she would have done so at all costs.