Meanwhile our three adventurers continued yet a space in their strange
position, no one returning to their aid. Evening was advancing: the
darkness threatened to come on. Philina's indifference was changing to
anxiety; Mignon ran to and fro, her impatience increasing every moment;
and at last, when their prayer was granted, and human creatures did
approach, a new alarm fell upon them. They distinctly heard a troop of
horses coming up the road they had lately travelled: they dreaded lest a
second time some company of unbidden guests might be purposing to visit
this scene of battle, and gather up the gleanings.
The more agreeable was their surprise, when, after a few moments, a lady
issued from the thickets, riding on a gray courser, and accompanied by
an elderly gentleman and some cavaliers, followed by grooms, servants,
and a troop of hussars.
Philina started at this phenomenon, and was about to call, and entreat
the fair Amazon for help, when the latter turned her astonished eyes on
the group, instantly checked her horse, rode up to them, and halted. She
inquired eagerly about the wounded man, whose posture in the lap of this
light-minded Samaritan seemed to strike her as peculiarly strange.
"Is he your husband?" she inquired of Philina. "Only a friend," replied
the other, with a tone Wilhelm liked not at all. He had fixed his eyes
upon the soft, elevated, calm, sympathizing features of the stranger: he
thought he had never seen aught nobler or more lovely. Her shape he
could not see: it was hid by a man's white great-coat, which she seemed
to have borrowed from some of her attendants, to screen her from the
chill evening air.
By this the horsemen also had come near. Some of them dismounted: the
lady did so likewise. She asked, with humane sympathy, concerning every
circumstance of the mishap which had befallen the travellers, but
especially concerning the wounds of the poor youth who lay before her.
Thereupon she turned quickly round, and went aside with the old
gentleman to some carriages, which were slowly coming up the hill, and
which at length stopped upon the scene of action.
The young lady having stood with her conductor a short time at the door
of one of the coaches, and talked with the people in it, a man of a
squat figure stepped out, and came along with them to our wounded hero.
By the little box which he held in his hand, and the leathern pouch with
instruments in it, you soon recognized him for a surgeon. His manners
were rude rather than attractive; but his hand was light, and his help
welcome.
Having examined strictly, he declared that none of the wounds were
dangerous. He would dress them, he said, on the spot; after which the
patient might be carried to the nearest village.
The young lady's anxiety seemed to augment. "Do but look," she said,
after going to and fro once or twice, and again bringing the old
gentleman to the place: "look how they have treated him! And is it not
on our account that he is suffering?" Wilhelm heard these words, but did
not understand them. She went restlessly up and down: it seemed as if
she could not tear herself away from the presence of the wounded man;
while at the same time she feared to violate decorum by remaining, when
they had begun, though not without difficulty, to remove some part of
his apparel. The surgeon was just cutting off the left sleeve of his
patient's coat, when the old gentleman came near, and represented to the
lady, in a serious tone, the necessity of proceeding on their journey.
Wilhelm kept his eyes bent on her, and was so enchanted with her looks,
that he scarcely felt what he was suffering or doing.
Philina, in the mean time, had risen to kiss the lady's hand. While they
stood beside each other, Wilhelm thought he had never seen such a
contrast. Philina had never till now appeared in so unfavorable a light.
She had no right, as it seemed to him, to come near that noble creature,
still less to touch her.
The lady asked Philina various things, but in an under-tone. At length
she turned to the old gentleman, and said, "Dear uncle, may I be
generous at your expense?" She took off the great-coat, with the visible
intention to give it to the stripped and wounded youth.
Wilhelm, whom the healing look of her eyes had hitherto held fixed, was
now, as the surtout fell away, astonished at her lovely figure. She came
near, and softly laid the coat above him. At this moment, as he tried to
open his mouth and stammer out some words of gratitude, the lively
impression of her presence worked so strongly on his senses, already
caught and bewildered, that all at once it appeared to him as if her
head were encircled with rays; and a glancing light seemed by degrees to
spread itself over all her form. At this moment the surgeon, making
preparations to extract the ball from his wound, gave him a sharper
twinge; the angel faded away from the eyes of the fainting patient; he
lost all consciousness; and, on returning to himself, the horsemen and
coaches, the fair one with her attendants, had vanished like a dream.