THE SUPPER
Contrary to the expectation of the baron, Létorière dismounted from a
horse, instead of getting out of a chaise, and gave his animal in charge
of the postilion.
The master of Henferester understood the duties of his position too well
not to accord a polite reception to a gentleman who had come to ask a
favor of him. He saw, moreover, that Létorière was much less
effeminate than he had been led to believe. A certain amount of energy
was necessary to bring him fifteen leagues on a post-horse, in a dark
night and frightful weather.
When the Marquis entered, he was nearly suffocated by the _substantial_
atmosphere of which we have spoken, to which was now added the strong
odor of the kennel, exhaling from the crowded hounds. At sight of the
stranger, they began to bay with marvellous accord.
The Marquis stopped, seemed to listen to their howlings with unspeakable
satisfaction, and said in very good German:
"On my faith, baron, I have never heard dogs with better throats than
yours. By St. Hubert! here is something to make the true huntsman's
heart beat!" Then, without noticing the governor, he began to examine in
detail, with serious interest, the qualities of the dogs who approached
him; and exclaimed, in a tone of increasing admiration: "Good dogs!
brave dogs! our dogs of Normandy and Poitou are not so good as these;
yours have better heads, are better formed about the flanks. See them!
They are the most beautiful dogs of their kind I ever saw in my life!
Come here, my fine fellow!" And Létorière took a great white dog,
marked with black, by his two forepaws, looked at him with the eye of a
connoisseur for several minutes, and, with an air of approbation, said
to the baron, who stood by astonished: "That's one of your best dogs,
baron; that's one of your blood-hounds, isn't it? He has served you a
long time; so much the better; years improve blood-hounds."
Confounded by the assurance and volubility of the Marquis, the governor,
a downright huntsman, too proud of his dogs to take offence at any
attention which they excited, and, above all, struck by the remarks of
Létorière about the blood-hound, answered almost mechanically:
"But who told you that this dog Moick was my blood-hound?"
"How, who told me, baron? First the mark of the collator which is to be
seen on his neck, on his worn hair, as clearly as the marks of the
breastplate on a draft-horse; and then his deep and hollow voice, which
proves also that he never barks. All this is more than enough to
indicate a blood-hound to one who is not a novice in the brotherhood of
joyous huntsmen. And then what a well-developed nose! and the
chase-bone, as salient as a linger! Believe me, baron, in all your life
you will never find a finer blood-hound! make the most of him! Ah well!
I see there a quarter of venison, which is getting cold; don't let us
wait any longer, I am as hungry as forty devils! You shall see how I'll
play the knife and fork! Give us your hand, baron! By St. Hubert, our
common patron, you are a brave old German; I was told so, and now I'm
sure of it."
"Monsieur, may I know to whom I have the honor of speaking?" demanded
the baron, more and more astonished at the cavalier manner of the
stranger.
"That's right, baron. My name is Létorière; I have come to speak with
you about my lawsuit . . . But as we must see clearly in this chaos,
blacker than hell, and as it is now night, we will wait for the
day . . . that is to say, to-morrow morning, before talking about
it . . . Now, let's go to table, since I have invited myself without
ceremony. Excuse the rudeness of my manner, but I am a child of the
forests."
The governor was stupefied. He had expected to see a little dandy,
speaking with the tips of his lips, pretentious, scented, delicate, as
ignorant of horses and dogs as a Leipsic shopkeeper; and he found him a
jovial, stanch young fellow, who seemed to know all about hunting, and
whose dress vied in negligence with his own.
The baron felt most favorably disposed towards Létorière. The
admiration which the latter had shown for the dogs, increased the
good-will of the governor for his guest, so that he cordially answered:
"The castle of Henferester is at your disposal, Monsieur; I only wish I
could offer you greater hospitality."
"You are too particular, baron. If you knew me better, you would see
that I could not desire entertainment more in accordance with my tastes.
To the table, baron!" and the Marquis approached the fire.
Létorière had undergone a complete moral and physical transformation.
He who had been applauded at the theatre for the superlative elegance of
his dress, for the grace and charm of his person, now wore an old blue
hunting-coat with a velvet collar faded to dusky red; great boots not
less rough, not less muddy, not less heavily spurred than those of the
German Nimrod. A knot of leather tied his unpowdered hair, disordered by
his journey; his beard was half long, and the delicate whiteness of his
hands was concealed by a tint of soot, which made them look as tanned as
the baron's. In short, everything was changed in the Marquis, even to
the enchanting tone of his voice, now harsh and a little hoarse.
None of these peculiarities escaped the baron.
"Do you know, Erhard," said he in a low tone to his huntsman, "do you
know that this Frenchman immediately recognized old Moick as a
blood-hound, and one of our best dogs?"
"Indeed, my lord!" said Erhard, with a doubting air.
"It is so, Erhard; I begin to think they do know something about the
chase in France."
Then addressing his major-domo, while the Marquis was drying himself at
the fire, the baron said:
"Remove your plates, Selbitz; Frenchmen are not used to our German
manners."
Selbitz began to execute the order to his own discontent, as well as
that of Erhard, when Létorière, fearing to make two enemies so near
the governor by a misunderstood fastidiousness, cried:
"What! baron, you wish me, then, to take my horse and return to Vienna
without any supper! and why the devil do you remove the plates of those
brave men? Am I more of a gentleman than you, that I should be shocked
at your domestic habits?"
"It is our old German custom, it is true," said the baron, "but I
thought that in France . . ."
"Baron, we are now in Germany, at the house of one of the most worthy
representatives of the old nobility of the Empire. The rule of this
house ought to be inviolable; thus, then, my worthy huntsman,"
addressing himself to Erhard Trusches, "and you, my brave director of
the family tuns, hogsheads and barrels, take your places again, with the
consent of the baron, who, I hope, will not refuse me this grace."
At a sign from the baron, the two servants joyfully replaced their
plates at the lower end of the table. The governor pointed to the
Marquis's seat, and all prepared to attack the venison, and the immense
dish of sauer-kraut and bacon which smoked on the table.
The baron plunged his knife into the venison to carve it, when
Létorière, with a grave and solemn air, putting his hand on the
governor's arm,--
"One moment, baron I devil take me if I ever dine without saying
blessing and grace."
The baron frowned, and answered with impatience and embarrassment:
"Since my chaplain died I have almost forgotten the words; but I give
the sense--Well, don't you know the blessing, Erhard?"
"No, my lord," said Erhard, in a peevish tone, "I say it once for the
year, and yesterday was my day for saying it."
"And you, Selbitz?"
"I, my lord! my brother, the minister of Blumenthal, says it for me every
day."
"Ah, baron, are you all Turks? So it will fall to me to say grace."
And the Marquis said in a loud voice, "Great St. Hubert, please to make
the venison fat, the wine good, the appetite ravenous, and the thirst
unquenchable." Then he emptied at one draught the tankard which held a
pint of Rhine wine, wiped his mustaches with the back of his hand, and,
putting the mug on the table, said _Amen._
This pleasantry made the worthy governor almost burst with laughter;
imitating the prowess of his guest, he drank at one breath his cup of
wine, repeated Amen with the voice of a Stentor, and found his solicitor
a jolly good fellow.
The two servants, quite as much tickled as their master by the strange
blessing of the Marquis, nevertheless moderated the expression of their
gayety.
"Selbitz," said the governor, soon animated by the good cheer and the
sallies of Létorière, "go and refill our tankards, and don't forgot
yours and Erhard's; it is a fête to-day at Henferester, in honor of my
guest."
And the baron affectionately tendered his great hand to the Marquis,
whose fingers he rudely squeezed, as much in genuine cordiality as to
show his strength.
Létorière, who, under a delicate exterior, concealed great muscular
strength, answered his pressure quite as roughly. The baron, who had not
expected this proof of his vigor, said, laughing, with an astonished
air:
"A rod of steel is often as strong as a great bar of iron, my guest."
"But unhappily, baron, a great glass will hold more than a little one,"
replied the Marquis.
The wine and the beer began to circulate; the baron saw, with a sort of
national pride, Létorière, after having eaten five or six slices of
venison, bravely attack the sauer-kraut and smoked bacon, of which he
praised the appetizing savor, emptying his two tankards two or three
times, meanwhile.
While satisfying his furious appetite, Létorière had not remained
silent. His lively and natural wit, excited by the good cheer, charmed
by a thousand pleasantries; in a word, Selbitz and Erhard saw, to their
great astonishment, their master, ordinarily so grave and taciturn,
laugh in this one evening more than he had laughed for many years.
The huntsman, recognizing in Létorière an accomplished hunter,
listened religiously to his slightest words, when the baron ordered him
to carry the dogs back to their kennel, and give them their supper. A
second iron pot, destined for the hounds, was taken from the fire.
The major-domo, after removing the dishes, placed upon the table the
tankard of kirchenwasser, an earthen jar full of tobacco, and gave the
baron an old pipe.
The latter filled it, saying to Létorière, with whom he already felt
entirely at ease, "Well! tobacco-smoke won't offend you, Marquis?"
For answer, the Marquis drew from his pocket an enormous pipe, which
bore the marks of long and faithful service, and began to fill it with
familiar ease.
"You smoke then, Marquis!" cried the delighted governor, clapping his
hands with admiration.
"Do people live without smoking, baron? On returning from the chase,
after a good meal, what greater pleasure is there than smoking a pipe
with your feet on the andirons, drinking from time to time a swallow of
kirchenwasser, this savage offspring of the Black Forest, which is, to
my thinking, as much superior to French brandy as a heath-cock is to a
barn-yard fowl?" And after this audacious flattery, the Marquis
enveloped himself in a thick cloud of smoke.
The governor, animated by his frequent libations, and whose head was
not, perhaps, quite so calm and so cool as that of his guest, regarded
the Marquis with a sort of ecstasy; he could not understand how a body
so frail in appearance, was so vigorous in reality; how a Frenchman
could drink and smoke as much as, or more, than he, the _widerkom
vierge_, the subduer of the most redoubtable drinkers of the Empire.
"To the health of your mistress, my guest!" said he gayly to the
Marquis.
"My mistress! that's my gun," said Létorière, stretching himself out
by the fire, and poking it with the toe of his great boot, the soles of
which were an inch thick. "Devil take the women! they cannot bear the
smell of tobacco, of brandy, or of the kennel, without putting a flask
of perfume to their noses. Do you make much account of women, baron?"
"I love better to hear the clatter of spurs than the rustle of
petticoats, my guest; but at my age that is wisdom," said the baron,
more and more astonished to find the Marquis sharing his rustic tastes
and his antipathies to the ridiculous affectations of the fair sex.
"At all ages it is wisdom, baron; and I would give all the love-sick
guitars, all the melancholy lays of the troubadours, for the old trumpet
of a forester."
"Do you know one thing, my guest?" said the baron, striking his mug
against that of the Marquis.
"Say on, baron," replied the Marquis, filling his pipe anew.
"Well! before I saw you, knowing you were coming to interest me about
your lawsuit, which unhappily . . .
"Devil take the lawsuit, baron!" cried Létorière; "the one who speaks
of it this evening shall be condemned to drink a pint of water!"
"So be it, Marquis! Well, before I saw you it seemed to me that I should
much rather go through a bramble bush than to receive you; frankly, I
dreaded your arrival. . . . I believed you a dandy and a beau." . . .
"Thank you, baron! Well, for my part, I believed you to be an Alcindor,
a Cytherean shepherd."
"Now, although I have known you but this evening," resumed the baron, "I
will say to you frankly, that when you quit this poor castle of
Henferester I shall have lost the best companion that a man could have
for a long evening at the fire-side."
"And also to pass a hard day of hunting in the depths of the forest.
Devil take the coxcomb who prefers balls and gallantry to the bottle,
the pipe and hunting. If you wish to prove to me that your dogs are as
good as they are handsome, baron, you will see that I am worthy to
follow them."
"That's right, my guest! To-morrow morning, by daylight, we will be
ready for the chase."
"Let it be as you say, baron; we will speak of the lawsuit day after
to-morrow, not before--remember--the pint of water to him who speaks of
it before."
"Bravo, my guest!" said the baron, "but it is late, and you are
fatigued; old Selbitz will conduct you to your chamber,--that is to say,
a kind of room furnished with a paltry bed, which is all I have to offer
you. . . . My chamber is still worse."
"Ah, well, no ceremony, baron; rather than give you any trouble, I will
take one of my boots for a bolster; you will give me an armful of straw,
and I shall pass a comfortable night before this fire, which will burn
until morning."
"I have thus passed many nights in the huts of charcoal burners," said
the baron, with a sigh of regret, "when I was hunting in the Black
Forest; but in fact, my friend, however bad your bed may be, you will
find it more comfortable than this floor, beaten down like a
threshing-ground."
"To-morrow morning, baron, I will myself sound the _reveille_" said the
Marquis; "but before that, let me sound the good-night." And
Létorière, taking from the wall the governor's trumpet, gave this last
flourish with such perfection, with such a bold and free hunting air,
that the baron enthusiastically cried:
"In the thirty years I've hunted, I never heard so fine a trumpeter."
"That is easily enough explained, baron; it is because you have never
heard yourself sound it. Your trumpet is so true that you cannot help
being master of this noble science. But until to-morrow,--baron,
good-night, and above all, don't dream of water, or sour wine, or empty
bottles."
"Good-night, Marquis!"
The baron called Selbitz, and ordered him to conduct his guest to the
rat-chamber already described, in which a great fire had been lighted.
Létorière, fatigued with his journey, slept soundly enough, and the
baron did the same, after having several times remarked to Selbitz and
Erhard, in giving them their orders for the next day, that it was a pity
that this young man was a Frenchman, for he was quite worthy of having
been born in Germany.