CHAPTER I.

Produced by Charles Bowen, from page scans provided by Google Books

Transcriber's Note:

1. Page scan source:

http://books.google.com/books?id=g9o9AAAAYAAJ

2. The diphthong oe is represented by [oe].

GLORIA VICTIS!

A ROMANCE

BY

OSSIP SCHUBIN

Author of "Our Own Set."

"Alas! poor human nature!"

_Chesterfield_.

From the German by MARY MAXWELL

NEW YORK

WILLIAM S. GOTTSBERGER, PUBLISHER

11 MURRAY STREET

1886

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1886

by William S. Gottsberger

in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington

Press of

William E. Gottsberger

New York

GLORIA VICTIS!

CHAPTER I.

"There is no help for it, I must do it to-day," the Baroness Melkweyser

murmured with a sigh breathed into the depths of the toilet-glass,

before which, she was sitting while her maid dressed her hair. "It is

now just a week," she went on to herself, after having uttered the

above words aloud, "quite one week since Capriani entrusted the affair

to me. I have met him three times, and each time was obliged to tell

him that there had been no favourable opportunity as yet. He is

beginning to take my delay ill. Come, then, _courage!_.... _en

avant!_.... Truyn certainly ought to be glad to marry his daughter as

soon as possible, and I cannot see why Gabrielle should make any

objection to becoming the sister-in-law of the Duke of Larothiere. To

be sure, most Austrians have such antediluvian ideas! _Nons verrons!_ I

will, as Capriani desires, see how the land lies."

She shrugged her shoulders as though shifting off all responsibility

and turning to her maid exclaimed: "_mais depechez vous donc_,

Euphrosine, will you never remember how much I always have to do!"

Whereupon the impatient lady, snatched from her maid the head-dress

which she was arranging, and, quite in the style of Napoleon I.,

crowned herself.

* * *

The scene lies in Paris. The short after-season which, like an echo of

the carnival, is wont to follow Lent, that holy intermezzo crowded with

charity-bazaars, musical soirees and other elegant penitential

observances, is rather duller than usual this year. Easter came too

late and although _Figaro_ continues its daily record of balls and

routs, Paris takes very little heed. All genuine enthusiasm for such

entertainments is lacking. Paris thinks of nothing now save the races,

the last auction at the Hotel Drouot, the latest change of ministry,

and the newest thing in stocks.

It is the beginning of May. Two weeks ago, rather later than usual,

spring made its appearance--like a young king full of eager

benevolence, and generous promises, with green banner held aloft and

crowned with sunshine--thus it swept above the earth which sullenly and

reluctantly opened its weary eyes. "Awake, awake, I bring with me joy!"

called spring in sweet siren tones sometimes low and wooing and anon

loud and imperious. And a mysterious whisper thrilled and stirred the

land, the trees stretched their black branches, the buds burst. Men

felt a pleasant languor, while their hearts beat louder.

The spring advanced quickly, working its lovely miracles--loading the

trees with blossoms and filling human hearts with joy--and upon those

for whom its lavish hand had left nothing else, it bestowed a smile, or

it granted them a dream.

There are, indeed, some unfortunates for whom its brilliant splendour

never does aught save reveal the scars of old wounds, which in its

careless gayety it formerly inflicted; and while others flock abroad to

admire its beauty, these hide away their misery. But when daylight's

haughty glare has faded, and spring has modestly shrouded its

loveliness in a veil of grey, these wretches inhaling its fragrance in

their seclusion come forth from their concealment, into the soothing

twilight, among the dewy blossoms, and once more give utterance to the

yearning that has so long been mute, rejoicing with tears in their old

anguish, crying: "Oh Spring, oh youth--even thy falsehood was lovely--"

thus doing it homage by their grief, for spring has no enemies.

* * *

Somewhat apart from the aggressive brilliancy of the Avenue

l'Imperatrice wind a couple of quiet streets like detached fragments of

the Faubourg St. Germain. Everything here breathes that charming and

genuine elegance which is almost an instinct, and rules mankind

despotically. It is not a grimace artificially assumed for show.

One of the prettiest of the small hotels standing between its

court-yard and garden, in the Avenue ----, formerly it was called the

Avenue Labedoyere, tomorrow it may perhaps be the Avenue Paul de

Cassagnac, and the day after the Avenue Montmorency--was occupied by

Count Truyn with his young wife and his daughter.

This evening the family had assembled in a pleasant drawing-room on the

rez-de-chaussee, and one after another each expressed delight in the

repose and relief of such an hour after the social exertions of the

day. The husband and wife as they sat opposite each other near the

fireplace--he with his _Figaro_, and she busy with the restoration of

some antique embroidery--were evidently people who had attained the

goal of existence and were content. It was plain that their thoughts

did not range beyond the present.

Not so with Gabrielle. Twice during the last quarter of an hour she has

changed her seat and three times she has consulted the clock upon the

chimney-piece.

At last she goes to a mirror and arranges her breast-knot of violets.

"Our Ella is beginning to be pretty," said Truyn opening his eyes after

a doze behind the _Figaro_.

"Have you just discovered that?" Zinka asked smiling.

"Do you think my gown is becoming, Zini?" Gabrielle asked as gravely as

if the matter were the Eastern question.

"Very becoming," her step-mother kindly assured her.

"Oho!" said Truyn banteringly, "our Ella is beginning to be vain."

Whereupon Gabrielle blushed deeply and to hide her confusion went to

the piano and began to strum "Annette and Lubin." She did not play well

but her hands looked very pretty running over the keys.

"I am surprised that Ossi does not make his appearance," said Truyn,

laying aside his _Figaro_. Like all Austrians residing in Paris he had

a special preference for that frivolous journal. "I met him this

afternoon on the Boulevard, and he asked me expressly whether we were

to be at home this evening."

Gabrielle looked, as her father observed with surprise, rather

embarrassed. He had spoken thoughtlessly, and in masculine ignorance of

the state of affairs. He was just beginning to teaze the girl about her

behaviour when the footman announced the Baroness Melkweyser.

Her head-dress of red feathers sat somewhat askew upon the

old-fashioned puffs of hair that framed her sallow face. She wore a

gown of flowered brocade, the surpassing ugliness of which showed it to

have been purchased at a bargain at some great bazaar as a "_fin de

saison_." She squinted slightly, winked constantly, was entirely out of

breath, and sank exhausted into an arm-chair, before uttering a word of

greeting.

"Ah, if you only knew all I have done this blessed day!" she exclaimed.

The Truyn trio looked at her in smiling silence.

"Confessed and received the sacrament very early," the baroness began

the list of her achievements, "always on the second of every month--I

never can manage it on the first--then at the Pierson sale I bought six

things marked with Louis Philippe's cipher, then I went to see Ada de

Thienne's trousseau,--then to a breakfast at the new minister's--too

comical--his wife made herself perfectly ridiculous, in a bare neck at

two o'clock in the daytime!"

"That is the inevitable consequence of a change of ministers," Zinka

remarked. Her manner of speech, quiet, and rather inclined to irony,

was that of those who, with rigid self-control have for years endured

with dignity some great grief.

The baroness, meanwhile, rattled on, unheeding. "Then I went my

round of charities, then looked for a wedding-present for my niece

Stefanie...."

"Heavens, Zoe!" Truyn groaned.

"Yes, I lead a most fatiguing existence," the baroness wailed. "Just as

I sat down to supper,--I missed my dinner--it occurred to me that it

really would be better not to let to-day pass without making you a very

important communication--that is--hm--discussing--a most important

matter with you--and--here I am. Pray, Zinka, let me have a sandwich,

for I am dying of hunger."

"Ring the bell, Erich," Zinka said with a smile.

"And now to business," said the baroness, "_je tiens une occasion_--it

really is the most advantageous opportunity!"

"You shall have your sandwich, Zoe," said Truyn, quietly stretching out

his hand to the bell handle, "but pray spare me your advantageous

opportunities. If I had availed myself of all your boasted

'opportunities,' I should now be the proud possessor of fourteen

rattle-trap Buehl pianos and at least twenty-five tumble-down country

houses. As it is I have bought for love of you three holy-water pots of

Mme. Maintenon's, an inkstand of the Pompadour's, and I can't tell how

many nightcaps of Louis XVI., warranted genuine."

"And an excellent bargain you had of them," the baroness declared.

"Louis Sixteenth's nightcaps have latterly been going up in price. But

this time there is no question of purchase," she went on to say, "and

that is the best of it."

"That certainly is very fine," muttered Truyn.

"The question is,--I suppose I ought to ask Gabrielle to leave the

room, that used to be the way, girls never were allowed to be present

while their parents disposed of their future, but I .... _j'aime a

attaquer les choses franchement_. The question is, in fact, with regard

to--Gabrielle's marriage."

Zinka with a smile took the hand of the young girl standing beside her

in her own, and tenderly laid it against her cheek.

"Gabrielle's beauty produced a sensation at the last ball at the

Spanish embassy's," the baroness continued.

"I must entreat you not to make such a fatal assault upon my daughter's

modesty," exclaimed Zinka.

"Bah!" the baroness shrugged her shoulders, "stop up your ears,

Gabrielle. Produced a sensation is the correct phrase. It is

remarkable--the _succes_ that the Austrian women always have in Paris.

I have a suitor for Gabrielle--the most brilliant _parti_ in Paris."

"Stop, stop, Zoe, I beg you," said Truyn, provoked, "you make me

nervous! You always forget how your French way of arranging marriages

goes against the grain with us and our old-fashioned Austrian ideas.

You say I have a rich husband for your daughter in just the same tone

in which you say I have a purchaser for your house! And I seriously

entreat you to consider that a jewel like my dear comrade yonder, may

be bestowed, upon one deemed worthy of such a possession, but can never

be sold."

"Ah, here is my sandwich!" exclaimed the baroness, paying no attention

to his words in her satisfaction over the tea-tray. Whilst Gabrielle

was occupied with making tea the visitor applied herself to the

refreshments, whispering meanwhile confidentially and mysteriously to

Truyn. "I thought that your new domestic relations might make you

desirous to have Gabrielle mar ...."

An angry flash in Truyn's blue eyes, usually so kindly, warned her that

she was on the wrong track; she lost countenance and consequently

proceeded rather too precipitately in her investigations as to 'how the

land lay.'

"At least my proposition is worth being taken into serious

consideration," she said hastily. "Count Capriani commissioned me to

ask you whether there was any prospect of his obtaining Gabrielle's

hand for his only--remember, his only son."

"Count Capriani, I do not know who he is," Truyn said coldly.

"Well then, Conte Capriani," Zoe explained impatiently.

"Ah, indeed, Conte Capriani," Truyn said significantly,--"the railroad

Capriani!"

"Yes."

"And he dares to ask my daughter's hand for his son?"

Perfect silence reigned for a moment. Gabrielle's little nose expressed

intense disdain.

"Zoe, you are insane," Truyn said at last, very contemptuously. "This

is not, I believe, the first of April."

"I cannot understand your irritation," the baroness rejoined, with the

bravado that is the result of great embarrassment. "You are always

proclaiming yourself a Liberal with no prejudices!"

Truyn coloured slightly. He had grown more decided than he had been a

few years before, and his shirt collars were perhaps a little higher

and stiffer. His whole bearing expressed the dignified content that

distinguishes the man of conservative views of life. He gently twitched

his high collar as he began: "I am a Liberal--at least I fancy that I

am. If my daughter had set her heart upon marrying a man her inferior

as regards birth and family, I should certainly consent to her doing

so, provided the man were one whose character and attainments atoned

for his low origin."

Zinka smiled sceptically with a scarcely perceptible shrug. Truyn's

colour deepened. "I do not deny," he admitted, "that it would be very

hard for me, but all the same I should consent and should do all that I

could to assist such a son-in-law to attain a position worthy of my

daughter--that is suitable to her mode of life."

"Do not be afraid, papa. I have not the slightest desire to fall in

love with a deputy on the extreme Left," Gabrielle observed.

"In young Capriani's case there would be no need for you to trouble

yourself about your son-in-law's position," said the baroness loftily.

"_Sa position est toute faite_. All Paris was at the ball the night

before last in the Capriani Hotel--all the _rois en exil_ appeared

there, and even some Siberian magnates, and all--that is very many--of

the Austrians at present in Paris."

"You know just as well as I do why all these magnates appeared at

Capriani's," Truyn rejoined angrily. "But indeed I care nothing for

this speculator's position--the man himself is odious--a common parvenu

with a boor of a son."

"Have it your own way," said the baroness. "Perhaps you know that a

daughter of Capriani's is married to the Duke of Larothiere?"

"Yes, I know it."

"And that the Conte's property is estimated at a hundred million?"

"It may be a hundred billion for all I care."

"He is incontestably one of the most influential financiers in Europe."

"Unfortunately, and one of the most corrupt and corrupting," Truyn

rejoined with emphasis.

"You have not, however, asked Gabrielle's opinion," persisted the

baroness.

Gabrielle tossed her head, but her answer was unuttered, for just at

this moment the servant flung open the door, and the interesting

conversation was interrupted by the announcement of fresh visitors.

CHAPTER II.

Two young men entered--two Counts Lodrin. They bore the same name; they

were the sons of brothers--and as unlike each other as possible.

With regard to Oswald--the "Ossi" of whom Truyn made mention a while

before.--Gabrielle was convinced that no sculptured classic god, none

of Raphael's cherubim could compare with him in beauty and distinction.

She was perhaps alone in this view, although it must be confessed that

few mortal men surpassed him in these two respects. About six and

twenty, tall, slender--very dark--a gay, good-humoured smile on his

handsome, aristocratic face--with an eager, ardent manner--and with

what might be called the gypsy-like distinction that characterizes an

entire class of the Austrian aristocracy he was the embodiment of

chivalric youth. With all the attractiveness of his face, his eyes

struck you at once--it would be hard to say what was wrong about them,

whether they were too large, or too dark.

They certainly were very beautiful, but they produced the impression of

not suiting the face--of having been placed there by accident. But the

incongruous impression made by those large, dark eyes upon almost every

one who saw the young man for the first time was extremely fleeting,

and passed away as soon as Oswald began to talk--as soon as his look

became animated.

His cousin Georges was at least a dozen years his elder, and nearly a

head shorter than he. Many persons declared that he looked like a

jockey; they were wrong. He looked like what he was, a prodigal son,

very well-born. Spare in figure, his face smoothly shaven, except for a

long sandy moustache, his hair quite gray, and brushed up from the

temples after a vanished fashion, his features keen and mobile, his

eyes round as a bird's, his carriage rather stooping and with motions

characterized by a certain negligence, he produced the impression of a

man who had seen a great deal of the world, and who now took a

philosophic view of his life and of his position.

Oswald is the heir, Georges is the next to inherit.

Scarcely were the usual formal greetings over when Oswald made an

attempt to join his pretty cousin Gabrielle, with the laudable purpose

of helping her to pour out tea. His design was cruelly frustrated,

however, by Count Truyn, who instantly engaged him in a brisk

discussion of the latest anti-Catholic measures on the part of the

Republic. Oswald sat beside his uncle restlessly drumming on the brim

of his opera-hat, the image of politely-concealed youthful impatience,

now and then adding an "abominable!" or a "disgusting," to the

indignant expressions of the elder man, and all the while glancing

towards Gabrielle. Certain personal matters interested him far more

just now than the deplorable excesses of the French government. He had

not read the article in the _Temps_ to which his uncle alluded, he did

not take the French Republic at all in earnest, he considered it in

fact no Republic at all, but only a monarchy gone mad; French politics

interested him from an ethnographical point of view only, all which he

calmly confessed to his uncle, by whom he was scolded as "unpardonably

indifferent," and "culpably blind." The elder man's conservative

philippics grew more eager, and the younger one's courteous admissions

more vague, until at last Zinka succeeded in releasing the latter by

asking Gabrielle to sing something. Gabrielle, of course, declared that

she was hoarse, but Oswald who was, by the way, about as much

interested in her singing from a musical point of view as in the

trumpet-solos of the emperor of Russia, smiled away her objections and

rising, with a sigh of relief, went to open the grand piano.

No one seemed to have any idea of according a strict silence to the

young girl's music, and whilst Gabrielle warbled in a sweet, but rather

thin voice, some majestic air of Handel's, and Oswald leaning against

the cover of the instrument looked down at her with ardent intentness,

Georges, his hands upon his knees, his body inclined towards the

Baroness Melkweyser who, still busied with her refreshments, was

disposing of sandwich after sandwich, said: "You are wearing yourself

out in the service of mankind. Have you allowed yourself one

half-hour's repose to-day?--No, not one--as any one may see who looks

at you. _A propos_, who was the Japanese woman dressed in yellow at whose

side I saw you to-day sitting in a fainting condition in a landau--in

front of Gouache's was it?--on the Boulevard de la Madeleine?"

"Adeline Capriani."

"_Ah tiens!_ That was why I seemed to have seen her before."

"A very queer figure was she not?"

"She is not ugly," said Georges. "It is a pity that she dresses so

ridiculously."

"Her dress costs her a fortune every year--the first artists in Paris

design her gowns," Madame Zoe declared.

"Indeed----? Now I understand why she always looks as if she had been

stolen from a bric-a-brac shop," said Georges. "Explain to me, however,

why this wealthy young lady is still unmarried. Perhaps the Conte

thinks another son-in-law too expensive an article ... Did you know

that Larothiere lost 300,000 francs again yesterday at baccarat at the

Jockey Club?"

"That is of no consequence," Zoe said loftily. "Gaston loves his

wife--it is all that Capriani requires of his sons-in-law."

"_Sapperment!_" Georges exclaimed, "that's the right kind of a

father-in-law; what if you should negotiate a marriage, Baroness,

between me and Mademoiselle Capriani?"

"Do not indulge in such sorry jests," Truyn interposed disapprovingly.

"I am in solemn earnest; the financial ground beneath my feet is very

shaky at present, and having one's debts paid by such a good fellow as

Ossi palls upon one in time. I am undecided whether to turn Hospitaller

or to marry an heiress."

"Ah, if Oswald heard you!" Zinka said with her quiet smile.

"Ossi at this moment, if I am not greatly mistaken, is listening to the

songs of angels in Heaven, and takes precious little heed of us

ordinary mortals," replied Georges, glancing with a certain dreaminess

in his eyes towards the youthful pair who had left the piano and were

standing in the deep recess of an open balconied window.

"Happy youth," murmured Georges.

Yes, happy youth! They were standing there, he very pale, she blushing

slightly, mute, confused, the sparkling eyes of each seeking, avoiding

the other's. He has led her to the recess to show her the moon, to lay

his heart at her feet, but he has forgotten the moon, and he has not

yet dared to pour out his heart to her.

The fragrant breath of the spring night was wafted towards them,

fanning their youthful faces caressingly.

All nature was thrilling beneath the first gentle May shower. The large

white panicles of the elder in the little garden in front of the house

gleamed brightly through the gray twilight. The small fountain murmured

monotonously, its slender jet of water sparkling in the light from the

drawing-room windows. They were dancing in the house opposite; like

colourless phantoms the different couples glided across the lowered

shades of the windows. The "Ecstasy" waltz played by a piano and a

violin mingled its frivolous sobs and laughter with the modest song of

the fountain and the whispers of the elder-bushes. All else was quiet

in the Avenue-Labedoyere, but from the distance the restless roar of

the huge city invaded the silence of night--mysterious, confused, as

the demoniac restlessness of Hell may sometimes invade the divine peace

of Heaven.

"Gabrielle!" Oswald began at last with hesitation and very gently, "I

have come very often of late to the Avenue-Labedoyere. Can you guess

why?"

"Why?" The blush on Gabrielle's cheek deepens. "Why?--since you were in

Paris for three weeks without coming near your relatives you ought to

make up for lost time," she murmured.

"True, Gabrielle--but--do you really not know for whose sake I have

come so often, so very often?"

She was silent.

His breath came more quickly, the colour rose to his cheek. Surely he

must have divined Gabrielle's innocent secret from the young girl's

tell-tale shyness, but yet at this decisive moment the words died in

his throat as they must for every genuine, honest lover who would fain

ask the momentous question of her whom he loves.

"Gabrielle," he murmured hastily and somewhat indistinctly, "will you

take the full heart I offer you--can you accept it, or...." he

hesitated and looked inquiringly into her lovely face. "Ella, all my

happiness lies in your hands!"

Her heart beat loudly, the lace ruffles on her bosom trembled,

as she slowly lifted her eyes to his.--How handsome he was, how

well the tender humility in his face became him! His happiness

lies in her hands! Her eyes filled with tears. "I do not

know ... I ... Oswald ... Ossi!" she murmured disconnectedly, and then she

placed her slender hand in the strong one held out to her.

Truyn with his back to the window, noticed nothing, but the baroness

who had been observing this romantic intermezzo through her eyeglass

with cold-blooded curiosity, said drily to herself: "_J'en suis pour

mes frais_;" then turning for the last time to Truyn, she said, "I have

communicated to you Capriani's proposal."

"And you are at liberty to tell him how I received it," Truyn replied

stiffly.

"_J'arrangerai un peu_," the baroness said as she rose, "do not disturb

the young people, I will slip out on tiptoe. Adieu." And with a

courteous glance around, she hurried away.

"Well, what do you think?" exclaimed Truyn, as he returned to the

drawing-room, after escorting her to the hall. "What do you think,

Georges?" and sitting down beside the young man he tapped him on the

knee. "Capriani sends that goose Zoe in all seriousness to ask for my

daughter's hand for his son. What do you say to that?"

"Audacious enough," said Georges shrugging his shoulders, "but what

would you have--'tis a sign of the times!"

This dry way of judging of the matter did not please Truyn at all.

"Ossi!" he called.

"What, uncle?" The young people advanced together into the room.

"I have an interesting piece of news for you. A secret agent of the

_Maison Foy_ has made a proposal to-day for Ella's hand for Capriani,

jr! What do you say to that?"

"Ella's hand for the son of that railway Capriani!" exclaimed Oswald

angrily. "Impossible! The secret agent deserves .... and he made an

expressive motion with his hand. His indignation became him extremely

well, and Truyn's glance rested with evident admiration upon the young

fellow's athletic figure as he stood with head slightly thrown back,

and eyes flashing scornfully.

"Unfortunately it was a lady--Zoe Melkweyser," the elder man explained.

"Then she deserves at least six months of Charenton," said Oswald,

"'tis incredible!" and he clinched his hand. "Your daughter, uncle,

and the son of the Conte--I suppose he is a Conte--or a Marchese

perhaps--Capriani! You know that little orang-outang, Georges?"

"Of course, one meets him everywhere. He addressed me by my first name

yesterday," Georges replied calmly. "Ah, my dear friends, you entirely

misconceive this extraordinary proposal. For my part, I see in it no

personal insult to the Countess Gabrielle, but simply a symptom of an

approaching social earthquake. The triumph of the tradesman is manifest

everywhere. Zola in his most prominent work has celebrated the

apotheosis of the bag-man and the shop-girl; Chapu has designed the

facade of the latest millinery establishment; Paris will yet see the

Bourse hold its sessions in _La Madeleine_, and the _Bon Marche_ will

set up a branch of its trade in _Notre Dame_."

"Likely enough," said Truyn with a troubled sigh, "I am only surprised

that Capriani has not tried to be President of the French Republic."

"He has not thought the position at present a favourable one for his

speculations," said Georges, "but what is not, may be."

"Ah, I am proud of my Austria," said Truyn, suddenly becoming stiff and

wooden of aspect. "Such adventurers have at least no position there."

"Do not be too proud of your Austria," rejoined Georges, "I heard

something at the embassy to-day that will hardly please you. _Id est_,

Capriani has bought Schneeburg and will be your nearest neighbour in

Bohemia."

Truyn started to his feet. "Capriani .... Schneeburg .... impossible! How

could Malzin bring himself to such a sacrifice!"

"It must have gone hard with the poor fellow, God rest his soul! The

night after the contract had been signed he died of apoplexy."

"Good Heavens!" murmured Truyn, pacing restlessly to and fro. "Good

Heavens!"

"And there is another interesting piece of news," Georges went on.

"Well?"

"Fritz--do you remember him?"

"Certainly. The only Malzin now left, a very amiable lad who

unfortunately made an impossible marriage."

"Yes, he married an actress, and just at the time when every one else

was tired of ...."

"Georges!" exclaimed Oswald frowning and glancing towards Gabrielle. He

was evidently of the opinion that such things should not be mentioned

in the presence of young girls.

"Hm--hm," muttered Georges, "and he has accepted the post of Capriani's

private secretary."

"Frightful!" exclaimed Oswald.

"He must have become morally corrupt to some degree, before he could

make up his mind to submit to such a humiliation," interposed Truyn

indignantly.

"Poor devil!" said Oswald.

"What would you have?" the philosophic Georges remarked and hummed

ironically the air of '_Garde la reine_.' "_Ce n'est pas toujours les

memes qui ont l'assiette au beurre_. I tell you it is all up with us."

All preserved a melancholy silence for a while, then Truyn favoured the

party with a few grand political aphorisms, and Oswald at last said to

himself perfectly calmly, and as if impromptu, "Gabrielle and

Capriani's son!"

The melancholy mood vanished and they talked and laughed so that there

was a sound as of merry bells through the silence of the night.

CHAPTER III.

Zoe Melkweyser was an Austrian and a distant relative of Truyn's. Very

well-born, but in very narrow pecuniary circumstances, she had grown up

on her widowed father's heavily-mortgaged estate, condemned through

want of means to a continued residence there, restless as was the

temperament with which nature had endowed her. As a school-girl she had

no greater pleasure than imaginary journeys from place to place upon

the map, and one day she confided to her governess, Mrs. Sidney, under

the seal of secrecy, that she would consent to marry any man, even were

he a negro, who would promise to indulge her restlessness and allow her

to travel to her heart's content.

It was no negro, however, but a banker from Brussels, who finally

fulfilled her requirements. She met him at a watering-place, whither

she had gone under the chaperonage of a wealthy and compassionate

relative. In spite of her thirst for travel she could hardly have made

up her mind to marry an Austrian banker, but a Belgian Cr[oe]sus was

quite a different affair in her opinion.

All the objections and remonstrances of her aristocratic connections in

Austria upon her return thither betrothed, she cut short with, "What

would you have? Of course I never should have met him here, but he was

received at court in Brussels."

And in fact Baron Alfred Melkweyser was not only received at court in

Brussels, but what was still more extraordinary, by the Princess L----,

being admitted to the most exclusive Belgian circles, 'among the people

whom everyone knows.'

It would have been difficult to find any fault with him except for his

brand-new patent of nobility, and Zoe never had any cause to repent her

marriage. His manners were perfectly correct, he rode well, had a

laudable passion for antiquities, ordered his clothes at Poole's,

always used _vous_ in talking with his wife, paid all her bills without

even a wry face, patiently travelled with her all over the world, and

at her desire removed with her to Paris.

After ten years of childless marriage he died suddenly, of his first

and unfortunately unsuccessful attempt to drive four-in-hand. As this,

his first ambitious folly, was also his last, society forbore to

ridicule it, and even after his death he enjoyed the reputation of an

'_homme parfaitement bien_.'

His widow bewailed his loss sincerely, and purchased all her mourning

of _Cypres_ at reduced prices. Bargains had always been a passion with

her, and scarcely had her year of mourning passed, before, thanks to

her expensive taste for cheap, useless articles, she had disposed of

half the source of her income. Among other things she purchased at low

prices various stocks which turned out badly. She owed her familiarity

with financial affairs entirely to her speculative vein, and not at

all, as her aristocratic relatives and country-folk erroneously

imagined, to her deceased husband, who had, in fact, held himself

persistently aloof from former financial acquaintances.

It was not acquisitiveness that spurred Zoe on to her various

undertakings, but the restlessness of her temperament. She delighted in

everything novel and fatiguing, whether it were a pilgrimage to

_Lourdes_, a bargain day at the _Bon Marche_, or a first representation

at the _Francais_, to which, by persistent wire-pulling and constant

appeals to one and another person of influence, she was able to obtain

tickets of admission not only for herself but for all her most intimate

friends. She had one means, however, far more entertaining than all

others, of procuring the excitement needed by her temperament, and this

was the introduction to 'the world,' of American or European financial

magnates. She extorted for them invitations to the most distinguished

routs, she designed the balls which these wealthy people were to give

to dazzle Paris withal, and she expended an incredible amount of

cunning and energy in inducing the aristocratic world to appear at

these entertainments. Her tactics were those of genius; instead of

contenting herself after the fashion of less skilful mortals with

inviting the poorer and more modest members of Paris society, she bent

all her efforts to securing the presence of some legitimist duchess at

the ball, if only for an hour. She succeeded in doing this in most

cases by placing at the duchess' disposal a large sum of money for

charitable purposes. When she had gained over two or three of these

fixed stars, the planets of Parisian society began to appear at these

balls.

Planets, in their social relations, are notably much more fastidious

than fixed stars, as is but natural; they are forced to reflect a light

not their own.

The entire scheme was usually most successful; the balls were beautiful

and everything went excellently well. Sometimes, indeed, not one of the

assembled guests had the civility to invite the mistress of the mansion

to dance, and many of those present affected to mistake the host for a

footman, but none the less was everyone content and pleased when the

ball was over. Zoe Melkweyser was glad that she had enjoyed so

brilliant an opportunity of getting out of breath; the givers of the

ball were pleased to read the long list of their distinguished guests

in _Figaro_; and _le monde_ rejoiced in having something to laugh at,

and spent three days in ridiculing the extravagance of the Cotillon

favours.

The latest and most brilliant of Zoe's proteges was Conte Capriani.

Who was he? What was he? 'A poisonous fungus that the sultry

storm-laden atmosphere had bred upon heaven only knows what muck-heap.'

A clever statesman had made use of this phrase not long before to

define the innate characteristics of this Cr[oe]sus. The phrase had

been laughingly caught up and repeated, and no one had troubled

themselves further about Capriani's antecedents. In a smaller city they

would soon have been investigated, but Paris never busies itself long

with the solution of such commonplace mysteries; on the contrary it

takes care not to pry into the past of an adventurer whom it finds of

very great use. Thus the antecedents of this financial Jove remained,

like those of most deities, shrouded in myth.

Among the many legends that had at first been circulated concerning

him, was one that he had formerly been a lady's physician and that he

had been most successful with his aristocratic patients.

Whether this were or were not true, certain it was that his air and

manner suggested that adulatory, fawning servility which characterizes

those physicians whose professional efforts are, for lack of other

occupation, chiefly directed to soothing the nerves of hysteric

women. His exterior was that of a man who has once been handsome,

_cidevant-beau_, spoiled only by the piercing glance of his large black

eyes, and the cynical droop of his loose under-lip. He carried his head

well forward, as if listening, and around his mouth and eyes there were

strange lines and wrinkles in the yellow skin which had of late grown

flabby,--lines suggesting that some of the figures with which he played

the despot had flown angrily into his face and embedded themselves

there.

That he had begun life with nothing he himself was wont to declare,

whenever he gave way to the fit of rage that seized him upon any

offence offered to his vanity; but how he had gained his immense

fortune he never told. He made profit out of every thing that afforded

gain, most of all out of the credulity of indolent inexperienced

avarice. His success as a 'bear' was famous, and notorious; it

sometimes seemed as if ill-luck existed only for his advantage, and it

was well known that he had emerged from great financial crises which

ruined thousands, not only unharmed, but with an increase of wealth.

There were various whispers afloat concerning his speculations, but no

one had been able to attach any direct blame to him. Once only, in

connection with his construction of a Spanish railway he had laid

himself open to a couple of disgraceful charges. The times were

unpropitious; the public, exasperated by various huge swindles,

demanded a victim; but whilst several lesser individuals, were brought

to trial and subjected to a public investigation, all legal proceedings

against Capriani were suddenly quashed. Why?.... No one knew or at

least no one told aloud what was known.

He was a '_personnage tare_,' but the stain upon his name was of so

peculiar a nature that prudence required of many well-known and eminent

men that they should not see it. Poor devils who stood outside the

demoniac spell of his financial magic art called him an unprincipled

swindler: people who had penetrated within the conjuror's circle called

him a financial genius, flattered him almost servilely in their longing

to share in his colossal enterprises, and if they did so procured for

him in return a slight social recognition. And it was curious to

observe how much at heart the magnate had this same social recognition,

how he sued for the favour of every lofty dignitary, of every capital

letter in the social alphabet. He persisted unweariedly in hurling his

golden bomb-shells into the stronghold of Parisian society, and at last

the fortress capitulated. He was received, as an enemy to be sure, with

closed shutters and in silence, but he was received everywhere, at all

the embassies, throughout the entire official representative world, and

even in some drawing-rooms of the Faubourg. Everywhere he met those

who, while he smiled at them in the most friendly way, looked over his

shoulder without seeing him, but this he endured serenely. The hour for

revenge will come, he said to himself, and almost always it did come!

Thanks to an ostentatious benevolence backed by millions, he had of

late contrived to improve perceptibly his social standing; at his last

ball, several crowned heads had been present. Zoe was right; he was

undoubtedly one of the most influential financiers in Europe; she might

almost have described him as one of the most influential men.

In Paris he was one of the celebrities that are shown to strangers.

When he walked past, or rather drove past, for he was physically

indolent and avoided all bodily exertion, he was pointed out as

Monsieur Grevy or Mdlle. Bernhardt is pointed out. He occupied a vast

hotel that he had built after the model of the castle of Chenonceau,

but two stories higher, in the neighbourhood of the Park Monceau; in a

quarter of an hour after leaving the Avenue Labedoyere the Baroness

Zoe's _fiacre_ drew up before this mimicry of vanished feudalism

erected by a modern Cr[oe]sus.

"Gabrielle's betrothal will make everything smooth," she said to

herself. "I am glad to be well rid of the affair!"

A Maitre d'Hotel, who, it was said, had formerly been chamberlain to

the Duc de Morny, and one of whose duties it was to instruct his

present master in the laws of aristocratic etiquette, conducted the

baroness with dignified solemnity to the 'small drawing-room' where the

Contessa Capriani was wont to receive on quiet evenings.

The 'small drawing-room' was a very large, and very

brilliantly-furnished apartment, which, in spite of landscapes by

Corot, in spite of gold-woven Japanese hangings, old inlaid cabinets

and a thousand articles of value, produced a dreary in-harmonious

impression. It was evident that nothing here was devised for the

pleasure and comfort of the inmates of the house, but that everything

was arranged with a view of impressing visitors. It almost seemed as if

millions run mad had tossed all these splendours together aimlessly,

insanely shouting, "something more costly, something more costly

still!"

Here sat the Contessa busied with some fancy work. She appeared

well-bred, but shy, and embarrassed by her wealth, as she advanced a

few steps to welcome the baroness, made a few conventional remarks, and

then begged with a sigh to be excused for going on with her work, which

work consisted in cutting all sorts of flowers and birds out of a piece

of cretonne in order to sew them on a piece of satin. She devoted

several hours a day to this occupation, and since her own rooms, as

well as those of her acquaintances, were far too splendidly furnished

to have any place in them for this sort of work, the result of her

diligence was bestowed every year upon some charity-bazaar.

Zoe Melkweyser thought the Contessa unusually depressed. Excited voices

were heard in the next room, and every time that there was a

particularly loud explosion the mistress of the mansion winced.

"Can the 300,000 francs which the Duke of Larothiere lost last night be

a bitter pill for even King Midas?" Zoe asked herself.

This supposition proved, however to be erroneous. Madame Capriani moved

her chair rather nearer to Zoe, and whispered, "My husband is terribly

agitated,--my poor son--that article in _Figaro_,--you saw it of

course ...."

"I? I have not seen _Figaro_ to-day," Zoe reassured her. It was true,

she had not seen _Figaro_ but she had heard of the article to which the

countess alluded; the excitement in the _casa_ Capriani was quite

intelligible to her now. No, Capriani never even pulled a wry face at

the sums lost at play by his son-in-law; he enjoyed smiling away such

losses; everything was allowable in the duke. For the comparatively

petty extravagances of his own son he had much less forbearance, in

fact he showed very little tenderness for this scion of his, whose name

was Arthur, and who was far from satisfactory to his father. The

Croesus could forgive his son's noble scorn of everything relating to

business, for positively refusing to have a desk in his father's

counting-room and for devoting his entire existence to sport,--but it

drove him frantic to have Arthur held up to ridicule by the sporting

world.

Hitherto Arthur's grandest achievements in the sporting world had

culminated in a couple of broken collar-bones and a quantity of lost

wagers,--today their number had been increased by a trifling _fiasco_.

A very trifling _fiasco_, but of a highly delicate nature. Two

Austrians, an attache and one of his friends at present in Paris, both

belonging to extremely aristocratic families, had lately out of wild

caprice, and amid much laughter, undertaken to run a foot-race

backwards.

Several French journals had taken immediate occasion to write articles

on this eccentric wager, describing backward races as a traditional and

very favourite sport among the youthful aristocrats of Austria. These

journalistic rhapsodies had incited Arthur Capriani to arrange a

similar race with brilliant accessories, music, torchlight, and a large

assemblage of young dandies, and ladies of every description. He lost

the race, got a severe contusion on his head, and the next day appeared

the article in _Figaro_ which so exasperated the Conte.

"If you were only capable of something in the world beside making

yourself ridiculous!" Zoe distinctly heard the father's excited voice

say, "but you can do nothing else, nothing! And to think of my toiling

for you,--making money for you!"

"_Mon Dieu!_ you make money because you delight in nothing else,"

retorted young Capriani.

"And for you--for _you_, I am contemplating one of the most brilliant

matches in Austria," the Conte fairly shouted, "'tis ridiculous!"

"I fancy that Count Truyn agrees with you there," was Arthur's

repartee.

"Ah, you would, would you?--you dare to sneer at your father?" Capriani

burst forth, after the illogical fashion of angry men, "the father to

whom you owe everything! I should like to see you begin life as I did,

bare-footed, with only one gulden in your pocket!"

"What's the use of these recriminations?" drawled the son, "your

antecedents mortify me enough without them, and ...."

There was a incoherent cry, a savage word ....!

The Contessa, very pale, put down her scissors; she trembled violently.

"I think it would be better to separate them," Zoe remarked very

calmly.

"I will try to," gasped Madame Capriani, and opening the door into the

next room, she called, "_Mon-ami_, the Baroness Melkweyser is here--I

believe she brings you some news ...."

"_Il s'agit de votre fameuse affaire, mon cher comte_," Zoe called

coaxingly.

Her words produced a magical effect; both men made their appearance,

the father with a honeyed smile, the son, a short thick-set fellow with

handsome features but a rude ill-tempered air, frowning and sullen.

"_Bon soir baronne_."

"_Bon soir_."

"_Eh bien?_" and settling himself in an arm-chair, his legs

outstretched, and toying with his double eyeglass in the triumphant

attitude with which he was wont to contemplate the favourable

development of some particularly clever business transaction, Capriani

began, "So you have at last found a favourable opportunity."

"No,--no, not at all!" said Zoe, "but I thought best not to leave you

in uncertainty any longer, and so I came to you this evening."

"You know I gave you no authority to make a direct proposal," said the

Conte.

"How can you suppose me capable of such want of tact!" Zoe rejoined

hypocritically, "unfortunately I have not been able even to find out

how the land lies. If you had commissioned me a little sooner--just a

little sooner,--but there is nothing to be done now, for Gabrielle

Truyn is already betrothed!"

"_Nom d'un chien!_" muttered Arthur; he had been no less impressed by

Gabrielle's beauty than by her lofty descent--"_nom d'un chien!_"

"Indeed, already betrothed," his father said coldly, slowly putting his

eyeglass upon his nose and scanning the baroness mistrustfully as he

asked, "betrothed to whom?"

"To her cousin, Oswald Lodrin."

"To Oswald Lodrin," he repeated quickly. "You cannot, indeed, enter the

lists against him, my poor Arthur!"

"Perhaps not as far as arrogance is concerned," growled the Vicomte,

"he is the haughtiest human being I ever came across."

"That may be, but--" the Conte smiled oddly, "he is also one of the

handsomest and most distinguished of Austrians, and he is renowned as

such."

Whilst Arthur continued to mutter unintelligibly, but in evident

ill-humor, Capriani senior left his arm-chair and taking a low seat

beside Zoe, said, "To-morrow the X---- railway stock is to be issued.

The shares will be in great demand; shall I save you a couple of

hundred?"

CHAPTER IV.

The fragrance of the elder blossoms floated sweet and strong upon the

air in the dim warm stillness of the Avenue Labedoyere. The poetry that

breathes in the odour of flowers no words can reproduce, music alone

can sometimes translate it; it ascended from the full white panicles in

the little garden before the Hotel Truyn and breathed through the open

window into Gabrielle's chamber like an exultant yearning, like a song

filled with love's delicious pain.

Zinka sat on the edge of the little white bed where the young girl was

lying, her golden hair rippling about her brow and temples, while upon

her pale face lay the melancholy of illimitable joy; her eyes were

moist.

"And you are not surprised, Zini ... not at all?" she whispered.

"No, my child," replied Zinka tenderly, "not in the least; I knew you

were destined for each other from the first moment that I saw you

together."

"Ah," Gabrielle sighed, "I cannot comprehend it yet. It all seems to me

like a delicious dream from which I must waken, but even if I must,

even if the dear God takes from me all that He has given me, I shall

thank Him on my knees as long as I live for this one lovely dream."

"Calm yourself, my darling," Zinka whispered, lovingly stroking the

young girl's cheeks, "how your cheeks burn!" And she poured a few drops

of essence of orange flowers into a glass of water, "drink this, you

little enthusiast."

"It will do no good, dear little mother," said Gabrielle, obediently

lifting the composing draught to her burning lips. "Ah, you cannot

imagine how I feel, it seems as if--as if my heart would break with

happiness!"

Zinka kissed her, made the sign of the cross upon her forehead, drew

the coverlet over her shoulders, once more admonished her to be calm,

and left her.

Thunder rumbled without; Zinka started and as a second clap resounded

she turned back. "Are you afraid of the storm, Ella, shall I stay with

you?" she asked gently.

"Ah no, dear little mother," Gabrielle replied in the intoxication of

her happiness, "I hardly hear the thunder."

And Zinka departed. "I do not know why I cannot rejoice in this as I

ought," she said to herself, "it seems to me as if we had forgotten to

invite some one of the twelve fairies to this betrothal."

And whilst the thunder crashed above the Champs Elysees she suddenly

recalled an old fairy story that a fever-stricken peasant from the

Trastevere had once told her in Rome.

It was a gloomy story, one of those legends in which the popular

imagination, boldly overleaping all chronological and historical

obstacles, bestows upon Pagan gods the wings of Christian angels, and

arms God the Father with the lightnings of angry Jove. It ran somewhat

thus:

"There was once a beautiful maiden who was good as an angel, so good

that it gave her unutterable pain to see any one sad and not to be able

to help; and once when she had cried herself to sleep over the woes of

mankind she had a wonderful vision. A dark form with a veiled face

approached her and said, 'If you have the courage to cut your heart out

of your breast and plant it deep in the earth, there will spring from

it a flower so glorious, so wonderful, that whoever inhales its

fragrance will feel a bliss so intense that he would gladly purchase it

with all the torture of our mortal existence.'

"And the maiden cut her heart out of her breast and planted it deep in

the brown earth, and watered it with her tears, and there sprang from

it a magically-beautiful flower, with luxuriant green leaves, and large

white blossoms with blood-red calyxes, and whoever inhaled the breath

of these blossoms felt an intoxicating delight course through his

veins, so that in his wild ecstasy he forgot all earthly care and

trouble. The flowers unfolded to more and more enchanting loveliness,

and through the thick foliage sighed the sweetest music.

"Now when the angels in Heaven heard of this strange plant they

entreated the Almighty Father to allow them to go get it and to plant

it in Paradise.

"The Lord granted their request. Then they fluttered down from Heaven,

but when they approached the wondrous plant a voice spoke from it,

saying, 'Let me alone, I blossom for the consolation of the earth, I

could not live in Paradise; the soil in which I flourish must be

watered with heart's blood and tears!'

"But the angels did not heed these words, and, beguiled by the

delicious fragrance, they tried to tear away the roots from the lap of

earth; their efforts were vain, they had to return with their purpose

unfulfilled.

"When mankind saw this it exulted in its blissful possession. Happy

mortals laughed at the angels' futile envy. Then the angels prostrated

themselves anew at the feet of the Almighty, and implored Him to

revenge them upon the blasphemers. And the Almighty gave ear to their

prayer; He hurled a thunderbolt at the plant, and it was swept from off

the face of the earth.

"But its roots still slumber underground, and sometimes when in mild

spring nights a mysterious fragrance steals upon the air, a fragrance

wafted from no visible blossom, these roots are stirring to life, and

green leaves shoot upward into the spring. But the sweet perfume still

moves the angels to anger, and it scarcely rises aloft before the

thunder rolls over the earth and the lightning blasts the green leaves.

The flower will never blossom again."

CHAPTER V.

Oswald and his cousin Georges were sitting at breakfast in their

pleasant room in the Hotel Bristol by a window that looked out upon the

Place Vendome, and down the brilliant Rue de la Paix, the perspective

of which was lost in a hurly-burly of omnibuses, orange carts, flower

wagons, advertising vehicles painted fiery red, fiacres, sun-illumined

dust, and human beings rushing madly hither and thither. Whilst Georges

was drinking his tea in sober comfort with a brief remark as to the

incomparable excellence of the Paris butter, Oswald, who although

endowed by nature with an excellent appetite had paid but scant

attention to his meals of late, recounted for the tenth time to his

cousin the extraordinary combination of circumstances which had brought

together Gabrielle and himself. He was a victim of the lovers' delusion

that sees in the most ordinary occurrences the finger of the Deity, and

that regards their happiness as a special marvel wrought by Providence

for their benefit.

It was, so Oswald narrated, in April, on the second day of the Auteuil

races, the first faint tinge of green was perceptible on the landscape.

He was on horseback, riding a magnificent Arabian steed which one of

his friends had lent him, and which he was handling with the excessive

care which an Austrian always bestows upon a horse that is not his own.

Suddenly he saw walking across the race-course a young lady in a dark

green dress; a ray of sunlight that turned her hair to gold attracted

his attention to her. She walked quickly past with an elderly gentleman

and Oswald turned to look after her. His horse was a little restless,

his rider's spurs were rather too sharp; with the sudden movement he

scratched the animal's silken skin, and instantly exclaimed, "_Ah,

pardon!_" a piece of courtesy for which his companions ridiculed him

loudly. In the meantime the young lady with the gray-haired gentleman

had vanished.

"Who is that exquisitely beautiful girl?" he asked, and Wips Siegburg,

secretary of the Austrian Legation, replied laughing, "Do you not know

her, she is your cousin!"

"Gabrielle Truyn!" exclaimed Oswald; and Siegburg said sagely, "this

comes of enjoying one's self too busily in Paris, and consequently

finding no time to visit one's nearest relatives."

Oswald peered in every direction but he could not discover her again.

After the race, under the leafless trees of the Champs Elysees rolled

crowds of carriages, victorias, all sorts of coaches, four-in-hands,

lumbering roomy omnibuses,--all veiled in the whirling, sunlit dust as

in golden gauze, while everywhere, alike in the omnibuses and in the

more elegant vehicles, reigned a uniform air of dull fatigue.

Paris had lost another battle with ennui.

In the motley throng Oswald was almost forced to walk his horse,

pondering as he went upon the best way of excusing his discourtesy to

his uncle. He had now been four entire weeks in Paris, and had not yet

presented himself in the Avenue Labedoyere. Fortunately he had gone so

little into society that he had not yet met the Truyns; Paris is so

huge, perhaps they had not yet heard that he was there. Yes, Paris is

huge, but 'society' everywhere is small. No, he could hardly venture to

appear at his uncle's yet.

He was growing quite melancholy over these reflections, when he

suddenly observed that his horse had coolly poked his nose over the

hood, which had been thrown back, of a low carriage in front, and was

nibbling at a bouquet of white roses that he found there. Oswald

shortened his bridle, and just then a lady sitting in the carriage

turned round; it was Gabrielle Truyn. With no attempt to conceal her

displeasure she observed what had been done, and when Oswald, hat in

hand, humbly stammered his excuses, she bestowed upon him the haughty

stare which an insolent intruder would have merited, and turned away.

She knew perfectly well who he was, as he afterwards learned, and that

he had been four weeks in Paris. The gentleman beside her now turned

round, his eyes met Oswald's; he smiled, and said with good-humoured

sarcasm ... "Ossi!--what an unexpected pleasure!"

"Uncle--I--I have long been intending to pay you my respects...."

Oswald stammered.

"Apparently your resolutions require time to ripen," said Truyn drily.

"Ah uncle!--I--may I come to see you now?"

"You do us too much honour," said Truyn provokingly, "we will kill the

fatted calf and celebrate the Prodigal's return." Then taking pity upon

his nephew's embarrassment he added. "Don't be afraid, we shall not

turn you out of doors, we have some consideration for young gentlemen

who are in Paris for the first time; we know that they have other

things to do besides looking up tiresome relatives, what say you,

Ella?"

"My cousin has forgotten me," the young man murmured, "have the

kindness to present me to her."

"It is your cousin, Oswald Lodrin, an old playmate of yours."

At her father's words Gabrielle merely turned her exquisite profile

towards her cousin and acknowledged his low bow by a slight inclination

of her head. Then she stretched out her hand for her bouquet,

murmuring, "My poor roses! they are entirely ruined." And she suddenly

tossed them away into the road. There was an opening in the blockade of

carriages before them; Gabrielle's golden hair gleamed before Oswald's

eyes for a flash, then all around grew gray; the twilight had absorbed

the last glimmer of sunshine.

That same evening Oswald ordered at a large flower shop, on the

Madeleine Boulevard, the most exquisite bouquet of gardenias, orchids

and white roses that Paris could produce and sent it to his cousin to

replace her ruined roses.

All this he retailed. His first visit, too, in the Avenue Labedoyere,

the visit when he did not find Truyn at home, and when Gabrielle did

not make her appearance, but Zinka, whom he had not known before,

received him. There had been much discussion in Austria over this

second marriage of his uncle, and Oswald had brought to Paris a violent

antipathy to Zinka. But it soon vanished, or rather was transformed

into a very affectionate esteem.

And then the first little dinner, a very little dinner (just to make

them acquainted, Truyn said) strictly _en famille_--no strangers, only

Oswald and Siegburg. The brightly-lit table with its flowers, glass,

and sparkling silver, in the middle of the dim brown dining-room, the

delicate fair heads of the two ladies in their light dresses standing

out so charmingly against the background of the old leather hangings,

Truyn's paternal cordiality, and Zinka's kindly raillery,--he thought

he had never had so delightful a dinner.

Gabrielle, to be sure, held herself rather aloof. She evidently

resented his tardy appearance in the Avenue Labedoyere; she hardly

noticed his beautiful flowers. She talked exclusively to Siegburg who

was odiously entertaining, and who glanced across the table now and

then, his eyes sparkling with merry malice, at Oswald. Then as they

were serving the asparagus, he took it into his head to ask Gabrielle,

"Do you know who is the most courteous man in Paris, Countess

Gabrielle?"

"No, how should I?"

"Your charming cousin there," rejoined the young diplomat.

"Indeed!" Gabrielle said with incredulous emphasis, bending her head a

little on one side as is the fashion with pretty women when they

undertake the inconvenient task of eating asparagus.

"Yes, verily, he says '_pardon_' even to his horse, when he scratches

it with his spurs."

"Ah! Apparently he lavishes all his courtesy upon horses," Gabrielle

said pointedly.

"In the case to which I allude, he really did owe some consideration to

his horse, for the poor animal could not possibly know why he was made

to feel the spur. The fact was that at the races the other day Lodrin

saw a lady the sight of whom so electrified him that he turned

positively all round on his horse, and in doing so scratched the poor

beast with his spur."

"Ah, and who, if one may ask, was this remarkable lady?" asked

Gabrielle.

"Ella, since when have you become conscience keeper for young

gentlemen?" asked Truyn.

She blushed to the roots of her hair, but Oswald said with perfect

composure, looking her directly in the face: "Certainly--it was

Countess Gabrielle Truyn."

She bit her lip angrily.

"It serves you right," said Truyn smiling, "why do you ask about

matters that do not concern you? The jest, however, is a little stale,

Ossi."'

"I should not venture to jest; I simply told the truth," rejoined

Oswald. In view of the young girl's evident agitation he had regained

entire calm.

"One is not always justified in telling the truth," Gabrielle observed

with the pettish frankness in which even the best-bred young ladies

will indulge, when irritated by the accelerated beating of their

hearts.

"Indeed? Not even in reply to a question?" Oswald said very quietly,

and Truyn frowned after the fashion of affectionate papas, whose

daughters' behaviour does not exactly gratify their paternal ambition.

Zinka interrupted the fencing of the young people by an inquiry as to

the new vaudeville which Gabrielle wished to see, but of which Zinka

was not quite sure she should approve.

Oswald took no further notice of Gabrielle that evening, but devoted

himself to Zinka. He sat beside her for nearly an hour, and enjoyed it

extremely; she had a charming way of listening, assenting to his

observations by a silent smile, and inciting him to all kinds of small

confidences, without asking any direct questions.

When he afterwards reflected upon what had been the interesting subject

of their conversation, he discovered that she had led him to speak only

of himself, that he had told her everything about his life that a young

man can tell to a young woman whom he has seen but twice.

She listened attentively, and when he took his leave she had grown

almost cordial.

"Now that you have broken the ice, I hope we shall see you frequently.

_A propos_, to-morrrow is our night at the opera; if you have nothing

more agreeable in prospect and have not heard '_La Juive_' too

often...."

* * *

And then the charming, uncertain, hoping, exulting, despairing time

that ensued! Gabrielle's pique slowly vanished; then without any

reasonable cause returned; her behaviour towards her cousin vacillated

strangely between naive cordiality and proud reserve; some days she

seemed to misconstrue everything that was said, and then all at once a

single cordial word would mollify her.

And the dances, the cotillon at the Countess Crecy's ball in the pretty

little Hotel, Rue St. Dominique,--the cotillon in which all had paid

homage to Gabrielle as to a young queen, and in which when, of all the

favours that she had to bestow only one remained, she suddenly became

confused, looking from the favour to her cousin, and seeming more and

more undecided until at last he advanced a step towards her and

whispered, "Well, Gabrielle, am I to have the Golden Fleece or not?"

That was two days before the betrothal. To the day of his death he

should wear that favour and no other on his heart. It should be buried

with him!

Although not given to writing much he had kept a diary in Paris. Long

since he had torn out the first pages; its contents now extended

exactly from the first meeting to the first kiss. After his marriage

the book was to be sealed up, to be given to his eldest son upon his

twenty-first birthday.

Whilst Oswald, borne upon a lover's wings that knew no boundary line

between heaven and earth, between the future and the past, at one time

eulogized his betrothed, and at another made arrangements for his own

burial, and his eldest son's twenty-first birthday, Georges, who had

gradually finished his breakfast, leaned back in his chair watching the

fantastic wreaths of smoke ascending from the bowl of his tschibouk.

When at last Oswald paused and fell into a reverie he took occasion to

utter the following profundity. "Living is very dear in Paris!" Twice

was he obliged to repeat this brilliant aphorism, before Oswald seemed

to hear it. Then glancing at his cousin reproachfully, the young fellow

put his hand in his pocket, "would you like the key, Georges?" he said

offering it to him.

"No," replied Georges, taking Oswald's hand, key and all in his own,

and pressing it down upon the table. "No, my dear fellow, many thanks.

Do you remember what Montaigne says about _le desir qui s'accroist par

la malaysance_."

"Montaigne?--I am not very intimate with the old gentleman," Oswald

replied with a laugh, "how came you pray to make his acquaintance?"

"Why you see, Oswald, there have been times when my means were not

sufficient to provide me with amusements befitting my station in life,

and I was obliged to have recourse, _faute de mieux_, to reading. But

to recur to _plaisirs de la malaysance_, Montaigne proves as clearly as

that two and two make four that if there were no locks there would be

no thieves! Now,--hm--one thing is certain; since your strong box has

been open to me I no longer have the smallest desire to possess myself

of its contents. Do you know, Ossi, that I have grown very fond of you

in these few weeks? Do not overturn the pepper cruet," he admonished

his cousin, who suddenly extended his hand to him with somewhat awkward

shyness. "Yes, very fond, you have effected a radical change in me; I

should really like to go back with you to Bohemia, perhaps you could

find me something to do there. Will you take me with you to Bohemia?"

"With the greatest pleasure, Georges."

"Reflect a little. What would your mother say to your introducing an

unbidden guest into her household?"

"My dear Georges, my mother, if I were to take home Karl Marx--or--" he

did not conclude for at that moment his servant brought in a small

salver upon which lay his newspapers and letters.

CHAPTER VI.

A couple of cards of invitation were after a fleeting examination stuck

into the frame of the mirror, then came two Austrian newspapers, then

three letters from Austria; one addressed in a firm, bold hand he

opened instantly with a smile of pleasure and the exclamation "from my

mother! at last! I am very curious to know what she says to my

betrothal--I began to be anxious--she has taken so long to write."

But the light in his eyes faded, he frowned, angrily crushed the letter

together, and propping his elbows on the table leaned his head upon his

hands. "I could not have thought this possible," he murmured.

"Is not your mother satisfied?" Georges asked.

"Satisfied--?" growled Oswald, "satisfied--? she couldn't be

dissatisfied if she tried ever so hard, but she does not rejoice with

me. There, read that. 'Dear child, I agree to everything that will make

you happy, and pray for every blessing upon yourself and your

betrothed, whom, moreover, I remember as a charming little girl ....'"

"Well, what more can you ask?" said Georges, elevating his eyebrows.

"What more can I ask?" Oswald very nearly shouted, "what more can I

ask? why, I am not used to having such conventional phrases served up

to me by my mother!"

"Do you and your mother live upon perfectly good terms with each

other?" asked Georges, mechanically brushing away a few crumbs on the

table-cloth, and without looking at his cousin.

Oswald opened his eyes wide. "My mother and I? Why, yes, what can you

be thinking of?"

Georges made no reply, he remembered perfectly well that years

previously, before he had left home the Countess Lodrin had been

anything but tender to her charming little son, nay, that she had been

the downright fine-lady mother who figures in romances, but who

fortunately is found but seldom in real life.

He thought it unnecessary, however, to remind his cousin of this.

In the meanwhile Oswald had somewhat cooled down. "My poor unreasonable

mother!" he said half-aloud to himself, "it is so hard for her to give

me up, in all her life she has had me only. Well, I shall soon bring

her round. Ah, Georges, Georges, it seems but a poor arrangement in

this life that we must so often take from one person to give to

another! I only hope that my mother's letter to my betrothed is more

cordial. Ah, here are two more epistles," and in no cheerful mood he

opened one after the other of the two very business-like envelopes,

read their contents, compared them with each other, threw both upon the

table and, quite pale, with very red lips and flashing eyes, began to

pace to and fro, from time to time passing his hand angrily across his

forehead. "Everything disagreeable is sure to happen all at once!" he

exclaimed.

Georges knowing his cousin's impetuousity watched his excitement with

smiling composure. "Is Vesuvius again in a state of eruption," he said

kindly, "or what is the matter, man alive?"

"Siegl is an ass!"

"Ah?--and your man of business besides?"

"Yes."

"Then this present affair is a matter of business?"

"No!" Oswald said gloomily, "an affair of honour. The matter is that I

am forced to break my word--_voila tont!_ But I cannot understand

Siegl, he ought to know ...." Suddenly he went to his secretary, opened

it, rummaged nervously among a chaos of letters, at last finding a

closely-written sheet, which he read through carefully, then grew

very quiet, and seating himself opposite Georges at the uncleared

breakfast-table, said "I am wrong, it is my fault."

"Pray explain yourself," said Georges, "my counsel, and my experience

are at your service."

"The matter is simple enough. Before I came away from home I gave Siegl

a power of attorney to conclude an unfinished sale, the sale of a

couple of insignificant building lots in W----. In practical business

matters I can thoroughly rely upon him. Well, the other day I had this

letter from him asking whether I would agree to the winding up of the

affair under certain conditions, and at the end of the letter he asked

me in this case to telegraph him. His handwriting is execrable and his

style most tedious,--and--and I hurried off to the Avenue Labedoyere. I

was going to ride in the Bois with Gabrielle,--in short I skimmed over

the letter, never noticing that he asked about another far more

important sale, and telegraphed, 'I agree to everything; do as you

think best.'"

"_Eh bien!_"

Oswald cleared his throat. "You remember Dr. Schmitt? He was our family

physician, a true man if ever there was one, my father valued him

highly. Well, he leased an estate from us, Kanitz, it lies in one

corner of the Schneeburg grounds; after the old man's death his son

held the lease, he is a very good fellow, we served together in the

same regiment in our volunteer year. He married, and set great store by

the lease, which would run out in three years. Before his marriage he

came to me to know whether he might depend upon an extension of the

lease; of course I promised it to him, thereby relieving him of immense

anxiety. And now Siegl has sold the property at a high price to

Capriani, and is very proud of the transaction, and it is all because

of my thoughtlessness, because I thought it too tedious to read through

his roundabout epistle and .... and young Schmitt, poor devil, is quite

beside himself, and writes me this letter! I cannot understand Siegl,

he might have asked me again, he knows me perfectly well, he ought

to have known that I could never have contemplated anything of the

kind ....! But it's just the way with all my people! If they can make a

few gulden for me, no matter how, they pride themselves upon it hugely;

no one seems to understand that I care precious little for the

augmentation of my income; what I want is, to alleviate as far as lies

in my power the existence of as many men as possible!"

"How old are you, Ossi?" Georges asked with an oddly-scrutinizing

glance at his cousin.

"Twenty-six. What makes you ask?"

"Your transcendental views of life, my child. Men and ants are born

with wings, but both rub them off in the struggle for existence,--men

usually do so before they are twenty-four."

"That goal is passed," rejoined Oswald, "and the winged ants do not

lose their wings, they only die young," and he became again absorbed in

study of the two letters. "I cannot blame Siegl this time, try as hard

as I can, it is _my_ fault; 'tis enough to drive one mad!"

"I can understand how it goes against the grain, but--well, you must

indemnify Schmitt with another property."

"That of course, but it does not help the matter," Oswald grumbled, "he

has a special love for Kanitz--he was born there, his parents are

buried there in a pretty little churchyard on the edge of the woods by

the Holtitzer brook. He takes care of their graves himself--they are

perfect beds of flowers. And his wife!--I paid her a visit last

Autumn,--she is a dear little shy thing, and she looked at me out

of her large eyes as if I were Omnipotence itself. There is such an

old-fashioned loyalty, so poetic a content about those people; upon

whom shall we depend if we heedlessly destroy the devotion of such as

they? Schmitt must keep Kanitz, even although I buy it back at double

the price paid for it!"

"My dear fellow you can do nothing with money where Capriani is

concerned," Georges observed calmly, "but I am convinced that he is

very desirous of standing well with all of you. If you make a personal

request of him he certainly will not object to annul his purchase. If

the matter is really important to you go and call upon Capriani,

and...."

Oswald tossed his head angrily. "What? ask me to have any personal

intercourse with that man--no--in an extreme case indeed----but there

must be some legal way out of the difficulty, it is a matter for our

agents--_Ca!_ A quarter of twelve and I breakfast at Truyn's."

"You must make haste. Can I do anything for you?"

Oswald went to the writing-table and in large bold characters

wrote a couple of lines on a sheet of paper. "Pray see that this

telegraph to Schmitt goes off immediately, and then one thing

more--if it does not bore you too much--please leave a card for me at

the places on this list. Do not take any trouble, but if you should be

passing.... Good-bye old fellow--remember we are to go home together."

"Hotspur!" murmured Georges as the door closed after his cousin. "Well,

after all, I do not grudge him his position; he becomes it well."

CHAPTER VII.

If Oswald Lodrin might be regarded as the chivalric embodiment of the

old-time '_noblesse oblige_,' his cousin Georges was on the contrary

the personification of the modern axiom '_noblesse permet_.'

He had made use of the credit of the Lodrins, the accumulation of

centuries, to screen his maddest pranks. True, he had never overdrawn

this credit, he had never by any of his numberless eccentricities

raised any barrier between himself and his equals in rank. He had grown

to manhood discontentedly convinced that Count Hugo Lodrin, his

father's elder brother, had done him great wrong, and this wrong was

his marriage late in life with the beautiful Princess Wjera Zinsenburg.

Georges was barely eight years old at the time, but he remembered as

long as he lived how angrily his father, after a life of careless

extravagance led in the certainty of inheriting the Lodrin estates, had

received the announcement of the betrothal, and how hardly he had

spoken of Wjera Zinsenburg.

The boy grew up, his heart filled with a hatred none the less vehement

because it was childish, first for his aunt, and afterward for his

cousin.

His hatred for his aunt grew with his growth, but as for his hatred for

his cousin?... It was difficult to cherish resentment against his

loving, helpless little cousin with his big black eyes and pretty rosy

mouth. And in the summer holidays, which he spent every year in Tornow

with his father, he struck up a friendship with the little fellow.

It was a lasting friendship. One day after his father's death when he

had for several years been an officer of hussars, and always in

pecuniary difficulties, Georges received a letter, which upon very

slanting lines evidently ruled in pencil by Ossi, himself, and in very

sprawling clumsy characters, ran thus:

"Dear Georges,

"Papa says you need money, I don't need any, so I send you my pocket

money, and when I'm big you shall have more. The donkeys are given

away. Papa got angry with Jack because he bit me. Now, for a

punishment, he has to carry sand for the gardeners. I have a pair of

ponies now; they are very pretty and I ride every day. I can ride quite

well and I am not afraid, but I stroke Jack whenever I see him, and I

think he is ashamed of himself.

"Your Ossi."

Yes, he needed money--a great deal of money; his father had left him

next to nothing, and the small allowance which his uncle made him,

always seasoning it with good advice, did not nearly suffice him.

His uncle paid his debts upon condition that he should exchange from

the hussars into the dragoons, then held in rather high estimation as

heavy cavalry. Georges needed money quite as much as a dragoon,

however, as when a hussar. Then came feminine influences--a quarrel

with his colonel--a duel. He resigned his commission with honour and to

the regret of the entire staff. Once more, and, as he was solemnly

informed, for the last time, his uncle paid his debts, and wishing to

have no further concern in his nephew's money matters he also paid out

a handsome sum as a release from all further demands.

Georges manifested his repentance after this settlement by an immediate

excursion to Paris with a pert little French concert-saloon singer.

This was the finishing stroke in the eyes of his strictly moral, nay,

even bigotted uncle. From that time onward the young man's letters to

the old count were returned to him unopened. Georges vanished from the

scene. The rumour ran that after he had tried his luck and failed in

the California gold diggings, he had been a rider in a circus; there

was also a report that he had served mahogany-coloured Spaniards and

jet-black negroes as waiter at Rio Janeiro, that he had been an omnibus

driver in New York--this last fact was vouched for. Still, he contrived

to impress the stamp of spontaneous eccentricity upon every one of the

expedients to which he resorted in his pecuniary embarrassments.

One day after Oswald had attained his majority he received a letter in

which his cousin, after appealing to the old boyish friendship,

described his present condition. Oswald, who was kindheartedness

itself, and, moreover, enthusiastically eager to discharge his duties

as head of the family, did not delay an hour in arranging his cousin's

affairs and in settling upon him an income suitable to his rank.

Thus Georges returned to his old sphere of life and to his former

habits, smiling calmly, but testifying no special delight, and not the

slightest surprise at the change in his circumstances. The honest

friendship which he felt for the cousin whom as a child he had petted,

quite destroyed his old grudge against his fate.

CHAPTER VIII.

Picture a sleepy little market-town lying, at a respectful distance,

near a very large castle, where the clock in the tower has not gone for

twenty years; a ruggedly uneven market-place, thickly paved with sharp

stones and no sidewalk, queer old-fashioned houses with high-gabled

roofs and small windows, and here and there a faded-out image of

the Virgin above an arched gateway, a tradesman's shop serving as

post-office as well as for the sale of tobacco, and adorned over the

doorway with a wreath of wooden lemons and pomegranates, and the

imperial double-eagle, a corner where stands a piled-up carrier's van

covered with black oilskin, a smithy sending forth from its dark

interior a shower of crimson sparks, while from the low passage-way of

the opposite inn, 'The Golden Lion,' a waiter with a dirty apron, and

bare feet thrust into old red slippers, is gazing over at the smithy

where a crowd of dripping street boys are collected about two

thoroughbreds and a groom liveried in the English fashion--picture all

this and you see Rautschin,--Rautschin on a dark afternoon in May in a

pouring rain with an accompaniment of thunder and lightning.

Somewhat apart from the gaping urchins a young man is walking to and

fro in front of the row of houses; his quick impatient step testifies

to his having been detained by some untoward mishap and also to his

being quite unused to such delay.

The rain descends from heaven in fine, regular, grey sheets. The young

man's cigar has gone out, he is cold, and thoroughly annoyed he passes

the unattractive waiter and enters the inn.

The room in which he takes refuge is low and spacious with bright blue

walls, and a well-smoked ceiling. Limp, soiled muslin curtains

reminding one of the train of an old ball-dress, hang before the

windows where are glass hanging-lamps, and flower-pots of painted

porcelain filled with mignonette, cactuses, and catnip. The furniture

consists of two chromos representing the Emperor and his consort, of a

number of yellow chairs, of several green tables, and of an array of

spittoons.

At one of the tables sit three guests evidently much at home; one of

them is tuning a zither, while the other two are smoking very

malodorous cigars, and drinking beer out of tankards of greenish glass.

Engaged in eager conversation none of them observed the entrance of the

stranger who, to avoid attracting attention, seated himself in a dark

corner with his back to the group.

"A couple more truck-loads of all sorts of fine furniture have arrived

at Schneeburg," remarked one of the trio, a young man with red hair,

and unusual length of limb. He is a surveyor's clerk, his name is

Wenzl Wostraschil, but he is familiarly known as 'the Daily News' from

the amount of sensational intelligence which he disperses. "Count

Capriani ...."

"I know of no Count Capriani," interrupted an old gentleman with white

hair and a red face; he is Doctor Swoboda, by profession district

physician, in politics just as strictly conservative as Count Truyn

became as soon as he had proclaimed his socialism by taking to himself

a bourgeoise bride--"I know of no Count Capriani, you probably mean

Conte!"

"It is the same thing," observed the zither player, Herr Cibulka.

"In the dictionary, perhaps," the old doctor rejoined sarcastically.

"The two titles are synonymous in my opinion," said Herr Cibulka as he

laid aside his tuning-key and began to play 'The Tyrolean and his

child,' while with closed lips he half-hummed, half-murmured the air to

himself, his big fat hands groping to and fro on the instrument as if

trying to aid his memory.

Herr Cibulka--this sonorous Slavonic name signifies _onion_ in

Bohemian--Eugene Alexander Cibulka--he is wont to sign his name with a

very tiny Cibulka at the end of a very big Eugene Alexander--assistant

district-attorney, transcendentalist, and Lovelace, is the pioneer of

culture in the sleepy droning little town. He is a tall young fellow

inclining to corpulence, with an uncommonly luxuriant growth of hair on

both his head and face, and with the flabby oily skin of a man who has

all his life long been fed upon dainties.

Evidently much occupied with his outer man he dresses himself as he

says, 'simply but tastefully;' he pulls his cuffs well over his

knuckles, and delights in a snuff-coloured velvet coat with metal

buttons. He fancies that he looks like the Flying Dutchman, or at least

like the brigand, Jaromir. In reality he looks like an advertisement

for 'the only genuine onion ointment for the beard.' He is considered

by the Rautschin ladies as quite irresistible and fabulously cultured.

He criticises everything--music, literature and politics, being

especially great in the domain of politics, and he discourses at length

whenever an opportunity presents itself, combating with admirable

energy perils that have long ceased to terrify any one. It is not clear

as to what party he belongs, but since he berates the clergy, hates the

nobility, and despises the lower-classes, consequently pursuing the

straight and narrow path of his subjective vanities and social

aspirations, he probably considers himself a Liberal. His uncle is in

the ministerial department and _he_ dreams of a portfolio.

Meanwhile the red-haired man with an air of indifference has taken up

his tankard. "Count or Conte, as you please," he said, giving the

disputed point the go-by, and continuing as he put his beer glass down

on an uninviting little brown table, "at all events he must be

accustomed to live in fine style, for he declared that it was

impossible for a man used to modern conveniences to live in Schneeburg

in the condition in which Count Malzin had occupied it. So the house

has been entirely newly furnished. Immense! the doings of these

money-giants--the world belongs to them!"

"Unfortunately, and our poor nobles must go to the wall," sighed the

old doctor, whose platonic love for the nobility keeps pace with the

red-haired man's equally platonic affection for money. "Except a couple

of owners of entailed estates here and there none of them will be able

to compete with these great financiers."

"The law of entail cannot be allowed to exist much longer, it is a

stumbling block in the path of national progress .... My uncle in the

ministerial department ...." Eugene Alexander began in a deep bass

voice, which suggested a sentimentally guttural rendering of 'The

Evening Star' at aesthetic tea-parties.

"Spare me the remarks of your uncle in the ministerial department,"

interrupted Dr. Swoboda angrily.

"The law of entail must be abolished," Herr Cibulka said, as another

man might say, "that new street must be opened."

"Have you got your liberal seven-league boots on again?" Swoboda

rejoined. "How you stride off into the future! You evidently suppose

that if the law of entail were abolished to-day or to-morrow, this

'stumbling-block in the path of national progress' being removed,

various districts of Tornow and Rautschin would find their way into the

pockets of yourself and of your hypothetical children? You are

mistaken, my dear fellow, hugely mistaken. Heaven forbid! Trade would

monopolize the real estate, and that is all you would get by it,

nothing more. The supremacy of money would be confirmed."

"I should prefer, it is true, the supremacy of mind!" Eugene Alexander

said didactically.

"Ah! you think you would come in for a share there," growled the old

doctor under his breath.

Without noticing the irony, Eugene Alexander went on, "The supremacy of

money, of individual merit, is certainly more to be desired than the

supremacy of fossilized prejudice."

"Indeed?... now tell us honestly," said the doctor, "do you really

believe that the masses, whose sufferings are real and not imaginary,

would gain anything thereby?"

"There certainly would be a fresh impetus given to culture,--a freer

circulation of capital," began Cibulka.

"Listen to me a moment," broke in the doctor. "Circulation of capital?

A financier's capital circulates inside his pockets, not outside of

them except on certain occasions on 'Change. The art of spending money

does not go hand-in-hand with the art of making it,--few things in this

world delight me more than the spectacle of a millionaire who, having

ostentatiously retired from business, contemplates his money-bags in

positive despair, not knowing what to do with them and bored to

death because the only occupation in which he takes any delight,

money-getting, is debarred him by his position."

"No one can say of Conte Capriani that he does not know how to spend

his money," the red-headed 'Daily News' affirmed, "everything is being

arranged in the most expensive style, the rooms hung with silk shot

with silver, the carpets as thick as your fist, and the paintings and

artistic objects,--why they are coming by car-loads. I am intimate with

the castellan, and he shows me everything; the outlay is princely."

The doctor shrugged his shoulders. "The extravagance of a financier is

always for show, it is never a natural expenditure. There's no free

swing to it, and I am not at all impressed by your Conte; one day he

may take it into his head to paper his room with thousand-gulden

bank-notes, and the next he will haggle like the veriest skinflint;

just ask the Malzin servants; he discharged them at a moment's notice

without a penny."

"They were a worthless old lot," Eugene Alexander rejoined, "and

besides it was Count Malzin's duty to provide for his people."

"Poor Count Malzin!" exclaimed the doctor, "he pleaded for his

servants, as I know positively; but provide for them--how could he

provide for them when he could not provide for his own son! When I

think of our poor Count Fritz! A handsomer, sweeter-tempered, kindlier

gentleman never lived in the world! And when I reflect that Schneeburg

is now in the hands of strangers, that Count Fritz cannot live

there....!"

"Oh, I beg your pardon," the red-head insisted, wriggling on his chair

like an eel, "he is going to live there, in the little Swiss cottage in

the park where the young people used to be with their tutor and

drawing-master in the hunting season, away from the bustle in the

castle."

"Frightful!" murmured the doctor. "This whole Schneeburg business is

too--too sad. The old bailiff is ill of typhus fever brought on by

sheer grief and anxiety, and his whole family would go to destruction

were it not for the generous support of the Countess Lodrin."

"Don't tell us of the generosity of the Countess Lodrin," sneered

Cibulka, or of the generosity of any of the Lodrins. "You need only look

at their estates; the peasants are huddled there in pens like swine."

The stranger, who had until now remained motionless in his dim corner,

apparently paying no heed to the talk, here turned his head to listen.

"That seems very improbable," Dr. Swoboda replied to the last

assertion, "The young count treats all his dependants with a kindly

consideration that it would be difficult to match. If his people suffer

from any injustice it certainly is without his knowledge; Count Oswald

is one of the old school. Hats off to so true a gentleman!"

"You are, and always will be a truckler to princes," said Eugene

Alexander, offended. "I must say that a man like Capriani who has won

for himself a position in society among the greatest by his personal

merit, by the work of his hands, seems to me more worthy of

consideration than a petty Count, who has had everything showered upon

him from his cradle."

"What trash you are talking about personal merit," thundered the

doctor. "Capriani has grown rich on swindling--swindling, on

'Change--swindling in women's boudoirs. He was formerly a physician,

and as such insinuated himself into distinguished houses, and wormed

out political secrets which he made use of in his speculations. Finally

he married a rich banker's daughter; they say his wife is a good woman.

I never saw him but once, but I cannot understand how a woman with a

modicum of taste could ever consent...."

"Oh they say that in his time he has enjoyed the favour of all kinds of

ladies, very great ladies...." the red-head interposed with an air

of importance. "I know from the widow of the late Count Lodrin's

valet--there was a game carried on down there in Italy between the

Countess Wjera...."

He had no time to conclude. The stranger sprang up and like a

flash of lightning struck the speaker twice across the face with his

riding-whip; then without a word he left the room.

"Who was that?" asked Cibulka pale with terror, while the red-headed

man, bewildered, rubbed his cheek.

"Count Oswald Lodrin," said the doctor. "It serves you right for your

insolence!"

"I shall not submit to such brutality--I will appeal to the courts,"

snarled red-head.

"And what can you say?" said the old doctor. "'I have wantonly repeated

low, scandalous gossip--I have slandered a lady who is blessed and

worshipped by all the country round, I have spit in the face of a

saint'--this is what you can say. Let me advise you not to stir, my

worthy Wostraschil."

This 'my worthy Wostraschil' was uttered by the simple old doctor in a

tone which he must have caught unconsciously and involuntarily from

some aristocratic patient.

He arose and stood at the window, looking with a smile of satisfaction

after Oswald, who with head held haughtily erect, face pale, and eyes

flashing angrily, was striding directly across the square to the

smithy.

"A splendid fellow--a true gentleman," the old man murmured. He was

proud of this Austrian, product, and would gladly have paid a tax for

the maintenance of this national article of luxury.

CHAPTER IX.

Arrived in Tornow only that morning, Oswald hardly finished his

breakfast before he rode over to Kanitz, where, after his good-humoured

despotic fashion he adjusted the whole affair with a smile, and soothed

the anxious young tenant.

On the way back his horse lost a shoe, and his groom was well scolded

by his impetuous young master for the carelessness resulting in such an

accident. The riders had been forced to abate their speed and to take a

roundabout way through Rautschin, that the nervous, high-bred animal

might be relieved as soon as possible.

On the way they were overtaken by the storm. Perhaps Oswald would not

have endured the very smoky atmosphere of the inn room so long, had he

not been unconsciously interested in the talk of its three guests.

By no means indifferent to Doctor Swoboda's enthusiastic appreciation

of his merits, he had enjoyed playing the part of the Emperor Joseph in

the popular song and was meditating some pleasantly-devised way of

surprising the old man with his thanks for his loyalty, when the vile

insinuation made by the red-head drove everything else out of his mind.

The horse was shod; he flung himself into the saddle and galloped out

of the town.

The rain had ceased, the clouds were broken. Steaming with moisture,

its outlines glimmering in the light of the setting sun, Rautschin was

left behind. Long streaks of violet cloud with golden edges, lay just

above the horizon, and where the sun was setting, the sky glowed dully

red. The storm had torn the bridal wreath from the head of spring; on

the surface of the water lying in the ruts and hollows of the roads

glinted snowy, fallen blossoms, and the apple-trees and pear-trees

trembled softly in their tattered white array, like young people

awakened from a dream. By the roadside stretched a sheet of water, its

shores bristling with rushes, its surface bluish-gray and gloomy, like

a large pool into which the sky had fallen and been drowned. A couple

of ravens were flapping heavily above it.

The golden edges of the clouds grew narrower, the glow of the sunset

was consumed in its own fire, the colours faded, and profound

melancholy brooded over all the plain.

Oswald's blood was still in a ferment. "Rascally dog!" he muttered

between his teeth ...."and to have to drop the matter for my mother's

sake, not to be able to thrash him within an inch of his life, and

drive him from the country! No human being is safe from such envious

liars, they would drag down everything above them, even the Lord God

Himself! Bah, _cela ne devrait pas monter jusque a la hauteur de mon

dedain_. But,"--he shook himself,--"it takes more than one's will to

calm the blood."

Twilight had set in when he reached Tornow Castle.

It was a spacious, clumsy structure with several court-yards, one

portion with pointed Gothic archways was ancient, irregular and

picturesque, another part was of a later rococo style with conventional

decoration. In front, fringed by tall alders lay a romantic little

lake, the park stretched far to the rear of the castle. The iron gate

with its quaint scroll work, above which was suspended the Lodrin

escutcheon, between two time-stained sandstone urns, turned upon its

rusty hinges, and Oswald rode up to the castle and dismounted. Two

lackeys, who seemed to have little to do save to wear their blue

liveries and striped waistcoats with due dignity, and self-complacency,

were standing in the gateway, peering into the gathering darkness. The

young Count ran hastily up the broad, flat hall-steps.

The last pale ray of daylight penetrated into the hall, through the

tiny panes of the huge windows; here and there the metallic lustre of

some old weapon on the wall gleamed among the dusky shadows.

"Ossi, is that you?" called a voice almost masculine in its deep tone,

but musical withal and in evident anxiety, as a tall female figure

advanced to meet him.

"Yes, mother," he replied gently.

"How late you are! We have been waiting dinner an hour for you."

"Forgive me, mother,"--he carried her hand with reverent affection to

his lips,--"it really was not my fault."

"Fault--fault! I am not reproaching you, Ossi! No, but my child, I was

half dead with anxiety. You are always so punctual, and one quarter of

an hour after another passed and you did not come.--And then the storm.

The lightning struck near here in several places, and your John Bull is

skittish,--you do not think so,--but I know the beast well. If it had

gone on for one more quarter of an hour .... but what detained you, my

child?"

Oswald smiled tenderly and considerately, as tall chivalric sons are

wont to smile at the exaggerated anxieties of their mothers. "Give me

only five minutes to change my dress and I will tell you all," he said,

and once more kissing her hand he hurried away.

Oswald's was one of those impetuous temperaments which are always

stirred to the depths morally and physically by a violent outburst of

anger; even when its cause is forgotten every pulse and vein will still

thrill.

Although he joined his mother in the drawing-room some minutes later in

a perfectly cheerful mood, she instantly saw from his face that

something must have provoked him excessively.

"Anything disagreeable?" she asked drawing him down beside her upon a

sofa, "did you have a distressing scene with Schmitt? did he reproach

you? or ...."

"Heaven forbid, mamma!" broke in Oswald. "Schmitt and reproach?--he is

the most devoted soul--humiliatingly devoted and faithful! Poor

Schmitt! No, no, my horse cast a shoe. I was terribly vexed, I had to

ride slowly, and take the roundabout way through Rautschin." He spoke

quickly and with forced gayety.

"You are concealing something, lest it should annoy me," the countess

said decidedly. "When will you learn that nothing in the world annoys

me as much as your considerate reticence! I lie awake half the night

when I see that you have some vexation to bear which you will not share

with me. You ought to have no secrets from me."

"In a certain way every honourable man must have secrets from her whom

he respects as I respect you," Oswald said half-annoyed, half-tenderly,

while he puzzled his brains to discover a way of pacifying his mother

without telling either a falsehood or the whole truth. A brilliant idea

then occurred to him. "In fact the matter is a very stupid affair. In

the inn where I stopped during the storm I suddenly heard one of three

men who were in the room speak with contempt of the Lodrin generosity;

the fellow asserted that on the Lodrin estates the labourers lived in

pens like pigs, and,--er--my temperament is not exactly stoical, and

I,--in short I got angry. It is hard to hear such things when one

honestly tries to treat his people well! And there may be some truth in

it; I will make inquiries to-morrow, no, I will find out for myself. I

can learn nothing from my bailiffs, they only cajole me. Last year

there was typhus fever in Morowitz, the people died like flies, and I

knew nothing of it; when at last I did learn about it I went there

immediately, but the epidemic was well nigh at an end. _A propos_,

mamma, I cannot but forgive you if it be so, but was it not all

concealed from me at your request? You knew that I should go over there

at once, and you were afraid of contagion."

"No, my dear child," the countess said gravely, "foolishly anxious as I

am about you upon trifling occasions,--and I have just shown how

foolishly anxious I can be,--I never would lift a finger to seclude you

from a peril if such peril lay in the path of duty. I would rather die

of anxiety than hamper you or exert a detracting influence upon you in

your line of conduct. I would be broken on the wheel to save your life,

but----" she shuddered and moved closer to him,--"I would rather see

you dead, than anything else save what you are--my pride, and a

blessing to all around you!" She looked him full in the face, the

mother's large, earnest eyes gleaming with exultant enthusiasm. "If you

only knew how I suffered during that stupid storm! I am so glad to have

you again, my boy, my fine, noble boy!" And drawing his head down to

her she kissed him on the brow.

The rustle of a newspaper attracted Oswald's attention, and for the

first time he observed Georges, who, buried in the depths of a

luxurious arm-chair, had been watching from behind his newspaper the

little scene between mother and son.

A servant appeared at the door--dinner was announced.

CHAPTER X.

"Very remarkable!" Georges said a few hours later as, smoking a cigar,

he entered his cousin's bedroom, where Oswald was already in bed.

"What is very remarkable?" Oswald asked drowsily as he lay on his back,

his hands clasped under his head.

"The change in your mother," said Georges, sitting down on the edge of

the bed, "I should hardly have known her again."

"I can't understand that," Oswald rejoined. "Her hair has grown

gray--it grew gray when she was quite young,--but her features are the

same. I think her very beautiful still."

"I think her more beautiful than ever," Georges said gravely, "but...."

he thoughtfully blew the smoke from his cigar upwards to the

ceiling--"how old is your mother?"

"Fifty-six."

"Only fifty-six--and yet she seems an old woman."

"An old woman....! What are you thinking of? My mother can do nearly as

much as I can, she can ride for five hours at a time, and can take long

walks and never...."

"My dear fellow," interrupted Georges impatiently. "I did not mean to

say that your respected mamma seemed at all decrepit, but only that her

features, her whole bearing, wear the stamp of that calm, kindly

cheerfulness that belongs to those who have done with life. She asks

nothing more--she bestows. And that, Ossi, is not a characteristic of

youth--no, not of even, the most generous youth."

"There you are right," Oswald rejoined thoughtfully. "Many a woman of

her age would still go into society and enjoy its distractions, she,

since my father's death, has had no thought of anything except my

education and the management of my property. It is wonderful, the

knowledge she has of business. You would laugh if I should tell you of

what large sums she saved up for me during my minority. Such strict

economy was not to my taste, and I put a stop to it, but it must be

forgiven in a mother."

"And the gentleness and kindness of her manner!" Georges continued,

"her unreasoning maternal nervousness! I assure you it was no easy

task, the hour spent in trying to allay her anxiety. Her feeling for

you is positive idolatry."

"Try to be patient with this weakness of hers."

"My dear boy, he would be a worthless fellow who did not respect this

weakness. It only surprises me in your mother; I had not expected

anything of the kind. Before I left home she kept you at such a

distance. I could not then understand why she always treated you so

coldly and harshly, and, to tell the truth, I took such, lack of

affection on her part, very ill."

Oswald leaned upon his elbow among the pillows. "That was while my

father was alive," he said softly, "yes, I have often thought of that,

and have thought also that I could explain her conduct. You see my

father's foolish fondness for me irritated her, and she suppressed the

manifestation of her own affection. Between ourselves, Georges, my

mother was wretched in her marriage; her poor heart was always upon the

rack, it could no more beat freely and naturally than a man with a rope

tight about his neck can sing. I respected my father immensely,

but ... well, Georges, look there...." he pointed to a large painting

above his bed, the portrait of the countess in the proud splendour of

her youthful beauty, "and then, look there...." and he pointed to a

white plaster death-mask framed in black velvet hanging on the wall

opposite. "As far back as I can remember, my father looked just like

that; they were never congenial. And now let me go to sleep, old fellow,

good-night!"

CHAPTER XI.

No, 'congenial' they never had been and never could have been.

Although the painting was far from portraying the charm of the Countess

Lodrin's beauty in the bloom of youth, the repulsive death-mask

opposite did full justice to the deceased count. The face that it

represented was almost horse-like in its length; smoothly shaven as

that of a monk, with a sharp-pointed nose, little round eyes, a mouth

like the slit in a child's money-jug, and seamed with innumerable

wrinkles, it resembled one of those bloodless aged heads which abound

in pictures by Memmling or Van Eyck.

It would be an error to suppose that illness and the final agony had

distorted the face before it had been perpetuated in the plaster cast.

Count Lodrin had never looked otherwise, he had always looked like a

corpse, and Pistasch Kamenz boldly maintained that 'the old gentleman

looked his best in his coffin.'

Not only Count Pistasch, but everybody else ridiculed Count Lodrin; few

men have ever lived who have been more ridiculed. One fact, however, no

ridicule could affect--Count Lodrin was a gentleman through and

through.

That he possessed a tender heart and a sense of duty, which, in spite

of the vacillations of a timid temperament, always triumphed in

important crises, no one had ever denied who had seen him in any grave

emergency,--and that this sense of duty, with a mild admixture of pride

of rank, belonged to him more as a gentleman than as a human being, did

not detract from his merit.

Given over in his youth to the ghostly influence of priestly tutors, he

had led a melancholy, misanthropic existence. His delicate constitution

made impossible any participation in the manly sports of his equals in

rank. Therefore there was developed in him, as in many another recluse,

an intense devotion to art; he was indefatigable in sifting and

enlarging his collections.

People of his rank usually marry young. It was not so with him. As with

several historic characters, the timidity of his temperament culminated

in an aversion to women, which rendered futile all the bold schemes of

ambitious mammas. In his solitude he had come to be forty-five years

old; it was an article of faith in Austrian society that he never would

marry, when suddenly his betrothal to Wjera Zinsenburg was announced.

His brother's creditors made wry faces; society laughed. Two months

afterwards the strange couple were united in the chapel of the palace

of the Zinsenburgs. Among those present at the ceremony there were some

who envied the bridegroom, many who ridiculed him, and a few who pitied

him.

As the pair stood beside each other before the altar they presented a

strange contrast.

The face of the bride, nobly chiselled, and with an indignant curve of

the full, red lips, recalled to the minds of all who had been in Rome a

beautiful but unpleasing memory,--the profile of the Medusa in the

Villa Ludovisi, that wondrous relievo in which the pride of a demon

seems contending with the suffering of an angel.

The bridegroom looked as he did fifteen years afterward on his bier,

only more unhappy, for upon the bier his face wore the expression of a

man who had just been relieved of an old burden; at the altar his

expression was that of one who bends beneath the weight of a burden

just assumed.

It was shortly manifest that no late-awakened passion had decided him

to contract this alliance. A weaker will had been forced to bow before

a stronger.

CHAPTER XII.

But what had induced the exquisitely-beautiful girl to choose such a

husband as this, every one asked; and no one answered. The question had

to be dismissed with a shrug, and, 'She is a riddle!'

The same thing had been said four years previously, when with an air of

proud indifference, and with cold, 'level-fronting eyelids,' she had

appeared in Vienna society. There was about her an exotic air always

irresistible to the genuine Austrian temperament. Her father was a

diplomatist, her mother a Russian. Wjera's Russian blood betrayed

itself in everything about her, in her deep, almost harsh voice, which

was, nevertheless, capable of exquisite modulations, in the hybrid

combination of Oriental nonchalance and northern energy that

characterized her whole bearing, her gestures, her figure.

When she reclined upon a divan or leaned back in an arm-chair there was

a suggestion of the odalisque in her attitude; but in her walk there

was a short, sharp rhythm; it was firm and despotic like that of a

race-horse, and yet light as the fluttering of a bird. She was tall and

not too slender--the beauty of her shoulders and bust was so great that

it had become famous--her head was small and faultlessly poised upon

her neck--her features were not perfectly regular, but how charming was

her face! pale, with ripe red lips, and brown hair with a shimmer of

gold about the temples and the back of the neck. The cheek-bones were

rather too high, the face not quite oval enough; the brow was low; the

profile haughty, and delicately modelled.

The most remarkable feature of Wjera's face was her eyes. Long in their

openings, but usually half-closed and shaded by dark eyelashes, they

were as changing in colour as in expression, and there was in them

something uncanny--mysterious--no one dared to look full into their

depths.

Of course she created a sensation in Vienna, and yet she had almost no

suitors--they were afraid of her and--she had a history, neither

disgraceful nor dishonourable, but yet a history.

In St. Petersburg, where she had been with her father, she had been

distinguished by the homage of a prince of the blood, and was finally

betrothed to him. For a year the betrothal was kept up, and then the

tie was suddenly snapped. The world discovered the reason in the fact

that Wjera could not consent to a morganatic marriage; her ambition had

been defeated. The true significance of the breach the world at large

did not divine. Only very few suspected that Wjera had loved the

man--so much her inferior in all save rank and birth--with all the

fervour and poetic purity that are found in Russian girls alone. She

did not see him as he really was, handsome, with a superficial air of

distinction, but mentally coarse--alternating between brutish excesses

and superstitious penances--at once cynical as a roue and sentimental

as a school-miss,--no, she endowed him nobly in her imagination.

Of all poets in the world the hearts of young girls are the most highly

gifted. There are women whose illusions are so tough that they carry

them to their graves undamaged; there are others who voluntarily patch

up the rents, made by their understanding in their illusions, in order

that an ideal--of which they would perhaps be ashamed if it stood

unveiled before them, and to break with which they yet have neither the

desire nor the force--may not be without a decent garment to cover it.

It was not so with Wjera; when doubt had once sown discord between her

head and her heart, she fought out the battle unflinchingly,

inexorably, in strict honesty, and when the conflict was over her dream

had vanished. In this wondrously lovely illusion she had exhausted all

the ideality of her nature. Her reason gained the upperhand at last,

and ever after she analyzed her fellow-mortals with sharp precision;

judging them with harsh justice, and speaking of the affections with an

unaffected, contemptuous coolness very rare in a girl so young.

Time passed by. She came to be twenty-six years old. She was the eldest

and the handsomest of five daughters, and her distaste for marriage

increased the difficulty of providing for the other sisters, and

excited unpleasant remark among her family circle. Chance introduced

Count Lodrin to her acquaintance, and perhaps because he seemed to her

a respectable nullity, she selected him for her husband.

No one could remember ever having seen so ill-matched a pair. She,

aglow with life, delighting in physical exercises, a reckless and

indefatigable horsewoman--to whom a steeple-chase was no more than is a

waltz to other women,--and he, paying with an attack of illness for

every unusual physical effort, not even daring to take a long drive

without an extra cushion at his back.

Whilst his thoughts moved slowly in a traditional roundabout way, 'her

woman's wit flew straight and did exactly hit,' before the Count had

cleared his throat for his first 'consequently.'

Her quick wit bewildered him; her outspoken acuteness of discernment

offended him. There was a world-wide dissimilarity between her views

and his. The Count was a strict Catholic; the Countess was inclined to

scepticism; although cast in a loftier mould, in her daring mockery and

her graceful eccentricity she recalled the fine ladies of the

eighteenth century--of that time when social and mental freedom, made

fashionable by philosophers, had not yet been degraded to vulgarity by

demagogues. His wife's wicked wit shocked poor Count Lodrin. Much

ridicule was cast upon the couple, but every one was none the less glad

to belong to the brilliant circle which the Countess drew around her,

and daily the wonder grew that calumny could not touch the beautiful

wife of this dead-and-alive dotard.

Three years passed; now and then women hinted innuendoes about Wjera

Lodrin, but the other sex continued to speak of her with that mixture

of admiration and irritation which bears the truest testimony to the

blamelessness of a very beautiful woman. At last society was content to

shrug its shoulders and to repeat, 'She is a riddle.'

The Countess was unutterably bored. The only occupation that she

pursued with inexhaustible interest, though at the same time with

reckless intrepidity, was riding.

"She has no sphere of activity; hers is the grand, fiery nature of a

gifted man beating against the petty barriers of feminine existence.

What is to come of it?" a sagacious student of human nature once said,

in speaking of her.

All at once there was a decided change for the worse in Count Lodrin's

health, and the physicians prescribed a sojourn in the South.

Reluctantly enough the Countess consented to accompany her husband.

They set out, and the world maliciously compared Wjera to Juana of

Castile, because she travelled with a corpse, and a father-confessor.

The Count found Nice quite too gay, and therefore took refuge in a

secluded villa in the Riviera.

The Countess nearly died of ennui in the gray, sultry, sirocco-like

monotony of an autumn heavy with the fragrance of roses, and in the

tedium of an Italian winter. In spring the pair returned to Bohemia,

the Count in somewhat better health, the Countess as cold and hard as

ever, but irritable to a degree until now quite foreign to her.

In the August after their return Oswald was born. The old Count could

not contain himself for joy; the Countess cared but very little for the

child.

This was the woman whom Georges had known fifteen years before, and

now,--he could hardly believe his senses!

Before he went to bed on the first night of his return to Tornow, he

stood for a long while at the window of his room looking thoughtfully

out into the night. The moon was high in the heavens; everything was

still, save for a low rustle now and then in the huge lindens growing

on the border of the pond in front of the castle. The ancient trees

seemed to stir and stretch themselves in their sleep. His gaze wandered

over the compact angular architecture of the high, black-gabled roofs,

the rows of houses with tiny windows, in the little town,--all bathed

in bluish moonlight. It was hardly changed since he had last seen

it,--in the castle everything was changed. What had become of the

social distractions in which the Countess Lodrin had been wont to

delight?--Vanished, as by magic. The entire castle impressed him as

having recovered from a restless fever.

Had the Countess's former cold, harsh demeanour been but the mask for

the intense hunger of a strangely dowered nature that could find no fit

nourishment? And had love for her child filled up at last the fearful

rift made in her inmost life by an early disappointment?

Georges asked himself these questions. Once more his glance wandered to

the pond in whose waters the moon was mirrored. "Strange!" he

murmured,--"today it was but a dark pool, and now in the moonlight it

gleams a silver disk! Hm! Extraordinary, how true maternal love will

hallow every woman's heart! Strange exceedingly! what must she not have

suffered in her life ...!"

CHAPTER XIII.

The bright spring sunshine streamed through the open bow-window of the

Countess's boudoir and stretched a broad band of light at her feet. She

was sitting in an arm-chair knitting with very thick wooden needles and

coarse brown worsted, something evidently destined for a charitable

purpose.

The boudoir, an irregular square room and with a picturesque

bow-window, was furnished with no regard to uniformity of style, and

therefore had the charm which characterizes rooms which have been as it

were gradually evolved from the habits and tastes of a cultured

occupant, until they are the frame or setting of an individuality. A

delightful confusion of comfort and feminine taste reigned here, and

the two or three trifling articles that offended all artistic sense,

struck the eye only as piquant beauty spots. The cabinets, filled with

rare old porcelain, threw into strong relief the ugly inkstand and

candlesticks of modern dark-blue Sevres upon a writing-table. They

were a memento,--a marriage gift from a Russian cousin and youthful

playmate who fell in the Crimean war. Among some old pictures, an

Andrea del Sarto, a Franz Hals, and two Wateaus, hung in triumphant

self-complacency a portrait by Lawrence--a man's head and bust,--a

crimson-lined cloak was thrown around the shoulders, the shirt collar

was open, black hair fell low on the brow, the eyes were large and

wild, the frankly smiling mouth was exquisitely chiselled. It hung just

over the writing-table, lord of all, and was the portrait of Oswald

Zinsenburg, an uncle of the Countess, a gifted fellow, who, when

Secretary of Legation in England, had been intimate with Lord Byron,

and in all the romantic ardour of a young aristocrat fighting for

freedom, had died of brain fever at Missolonghi at the age of

twenty-seven, shortly after Lord Byron's death.

This portrait the Countess Wjera loves, principally because it is so

like her son, and upon it her gaze rested as she dropped the long

wooden-needles in her lap, and fell into a revery.

The air of the room was penetrated with the delicious fragrance of the

roses, and lilies of the valley that filled the various vases.

Everything was quiet,--the birds were taking their siesta, the faint

pattering of the horse-chestnut blossoms could be heard as they fell

upon the gravel path, before the castle.

The drowsy midday stillness was suddenly broken by a softly whistled

Russian gipsy melody and an elastic young footstep. The Countess turned

her head. She knew the air well--how often she had sung it! The

whistling came nearer, then ceased, and the door of the boudoir opened.

"May we come in?" a cheery voice asked.

"Always welcome!" replied the Countess, and Oswald, followed by a large

shaggy Newfoundland, entered, his curls wet and clinging to his

forehead, a bunch of waterlilies in his hand, and looking more than

ever like the portrait by Lawrence.

"Good morning, mamma; how are you? Make your bow, Darling--so, old

fellow--so!" And as the Newfoundland gravely lowered his fine head, a

performance for which he was duly caressed by his master, Oswald sank

into a low seat beside his mother.

"You have been bathing," she observed, stroking back his wet hair.

"Yes, I have been swimming in the lake at Wolnitz, and I have brought

you these waterlilies," he replied, laying the flowers in her lap,

"they are the first I have seen this year, and they are your favourite

flowers, are they not? How fair and melancholy they are! Strange that

these pure white things should spring from such slimy mud! May I?"

taking out his cigar-case.

"Of course, my child. What have you been about to-day? I have not seen

you before."

"I went out very early. I had sent for the forester to come to me at

seven, and I went with him to the new plantations. The young firs are

as straight as soldiers. And then I dawdled about in the woods--it was

so lovely there!--'tis the earth's honeymoon, and when I see everything

blossoming out in the sunshine, I think of all that lies in the near

future for me, and I feel like shouting for joy! Apropos, mamma, I have

found a site for the Widow's Asylum that you want to found. I have been

puzzling over the best situation for it, and I have decided to put the

old Elizabeth monastery at the disposal of your benevolence. Is this

what you would like?"

She held out her hand to him with a smile. "Have you found time to

think of that too? I thought you had forgotten my scheme long ago."

"Ah yes, I am in the habit of forgetting your wishes!" he said gaily.

"No, Heaven knows you are not," the Countess murmured, "you have always

been loving and considerate to me."

"And what else could I be, mamma?" he said affectionately. "Ah, on a

glorious spring day like this, when the world is so beautiful, and my

blood goes coursing in my veins with delight, I am tempted to kneel

down before you and thank you for the dear life you have bestowed upon

me--what is the matter, mamma, you have suddenly grown so pale?"

"It is nothing--only a slight pain in my heart--it has gone already,"

the Countess whispered, turning aside her head.

"Quite gone?--is it my cigar smoke?"

"Not at all, dear child!"--

In spite of this assertion he tossed his cigar out of the window. "You

used to smoke yourself," he observed.

"Yes," she said, looking down at her knitting, "but since I have

learned to employ my hands, I have given up smoking."

"You knit instead--It seems odd to me to see _you_ knitting. Georges

thinks you very much altered."

"I have grown old, _voila!_"

"And he thinks too that you spoil me tremendously, that no mother in

all Austria spoils her son as you do me."

"No other mother has such a son," the Countess said proudly.

"Oh, oh!" he laughed and took his seat beside her again.

"Nevertheless, I am not blind to your faults," she continued, "I know

them all."

"And love every one of them."

"Because they are the faults of a noble nature--men of lower tendencies

are obliged to show more self-control."

"Indeed! God bless your aristocratic prejudices! and now for a piece of

news. The Truyns reach Rautschin to-morrow by the four o'clock train.

Will you drive with me to meet them?"

"Certainly, if you wish me to."

"If I wish you to--if I wish you to!"--he softly snapped his fingers,

"and you look all the while as if I had asked you to attend an

execution with me. I cannot quite understand you, mamma, you used to

take delight in every little pleasure that chance threw in my way, and

now will you not rejoice in my great happiness? As soon as there is any

allusion made to my betrothal, your whole manner changes; you grow so

distant and reserved, that I hardly like to mention my betrothed."

"I really did not know, Ossi ..." began the Countess with constraint.

"Oh, yes, mother, I felt in Paris that you were not pleased with my

betrothal, and I have racked my brain to discover what there can be

about it that you do not like, and I can not imagine what it is. There

can be no objection to make to Gabrielle." Then suddenly smiling in the

midst of his irritation, and curbing the impetuous flow of his words,

he asked in a lower tone and more calmly, "Ah, _ca_, mamma, perhaps you

dislike the connection with my darling's stepmother? I assure you

that ...."

"Nonsense!" replied the Countess, growing still more disturbed, "from

what you and Georges both tell me of the young woman, she seems to

adapt herself very well to her position. A residence abroad and foreign

associations are much better means of training than ...."

"Yes, mamma," interrupted Oswald in some surprise, having followed out

his own train of thought, "but if you are so kindly disposed towards

Zinka, I cannot possibly conceive what exception you can take to my

betrothal. There never was a purer, more noble creature than my little

Gabrielle. Highly as I rank you, mother, she is every way worthy of

you."

The Countess changed colour, "I do not understand what you wish," she

exclaimed, "do not distress me, I have no objection to the girl!...."

"Well then,--you could not possibly expect me to remain unmarried."

The Countess cast down her eyes and was silent.

Oswald sprang up, called his dog and left the room, his face very pale,

his eyes very dark.

Impetuous and hasty as he was with others, he had always controlled

himself in his mother's presence. Leaving the room was the extreme

point to which he allowed his displeasure to manifest itself when with

her. If he wished to vent his anger, he did it in seclusion, he never

had spoken an angry word--scarcely a loud one to her. And his

disagreeable mood never lasted long.

"I am myself again, mamma!" with these words, in which he was wont to

announce his return to a better frame of mind, he presented himself

half an hour afterward in his mother's boudoir. She was sitting just as

he had left her, the waterlilies in her lap, very pale, very erect,

with the set features that veil distress of mind.

Pushing his chair close up to her he laid his hand upon her shoulder,

and said with the winning tenderness of all impetuous men after bursts

of anger: "Forgive me, mamma, I was very wrong again!" She smiled

faintly and murmured some half inaudible words of affection--"I was

odiously egotistical," he went on, "I had quite forgotten what a change

my marriage will make in your life, what a trial it must be to you, you

poor, foolish, jealous little mother! But whatever change there may be

outwardly in our relations, we must always be the same in heart; and if

I must deprive you of something," he added gaily, "my children shall

requite you. It had to come sooner or later, mamma; or could you really

wish me to renounce the fairest share of existence?"

She trembled in every limb, and suddenly taking his hand, before he

could prevent it, she carried it to her lips, "No, you shall renounce

no joy, my child, my noble child!" she exclaimed,--"but--leave me now

for a while, for only a little while--I am tired!"

CHAPTER XIV.

Truyn had insisted that the betrothal of his daughter to Oswald Lodrin

should be celebrated in Bohemia. Zinka had yielded with great

reluctance and sorrow, and had at last resolved to bid farewell to her

dear foreign home.

"Why," she persisted in asking him, "cannot the ceremony take place, as

in our own case, at the Austrian Embassy?"

But Truyn would not hear of it. "Dear heart," he replied, "it would go

against the grain. The betrothals of all my sisters and of my aunts

were celebrated at Rautschin, why should I depart from the traditions

of my family?"

"As if you had not already departed from them, and in the most vital

regard," said Zinka, with arch tenderness.

"That is a very different thing,--if there were any good reason,

then--then--!"

"Ah, dear friend, you have grown insufferably conservative, you would

have shouted on the first day of the creation of the world: '_Conserves

le chaos, seigneur Dieu, conservez le chaos!_'"

Whereupon Truyn, kissing her hand, made reply. "That comes of living in

France, dear child."

And so the pretty house in the Avenue Labedoyere was deserted. The

shutters were closed, the carpets rolled up, the bric-a-brac stowed

away; only in some roundabout fashion did a bluish beam of light slip

into the vault-like obscurity, and the restless motes pursue their

fantastic dance among the shrouded shapes of the furniture.

The Truyn family were rapidly approaching their home. Nearly thirty

hours had passed since Paris had faded from their eyes in the misty

blue distance--since the last gigantic announcement of the '_Belle

Jardiniere_,' and of the '_Pauvre diable_' had flitted past them. The

Bavarian boundary, with its stupid Custom House formalities lay behind

them. Truyn was reading a Vienna newspaper with great interest,

Gabrielle was gazing abstractedly at the crimson coupe cushions

opposite, with the far-away look in her eyes of young lovers. Zinka was

leaning back in her corner, her veil half drawn aside, her hands folded

in her lap, the latest impressions of her Paris life hovering

kaleidiscopically before her mental vision, her heart oppressed by a

strange melancholy.

"Ah, this defamed, delightful Paris! how it captivates the heart with

its good-for-nothing beauty, and its corrupt, sickly sentiment!"

She was still mentally rehearsing the last days before her departure,

the going to and fro from shop to shop, the interesting consultations

with Monsieur Worth, the affected face with which that eminent artist

put his finger to his lip, while attending the ladies to their

carriage, and continued to 'compose' Gabrielle's wedding dress,

murmuring to himself with his English accent: "_Oui, oui, une

orginalite distahnguee c'est ce qu'il fant_," while sleek young clerks,

and young girls faultless in figure, displayed to the best advantage

the richest costumes, trailing about silks and satins of fabulous

elegance.

"_Ce n'est pas cela, qui ferait votre affaire, Madame la Comtesse je le

sais bien_," said Mons. Worth pointing to certain monstrosities devised

for American parvenus, "ah, Madame la Comtesse cannot imagine, how hard

it is for an artist to have to work for people of no taste! _Ah oui,

une originalite distahnguee!_"

The man-milliner's, monotonous refrain kept sounding on in Zinka's

ears. Then she thought of the farewell visits, the daily heap of cards

filling the great copper salver in the vestibule, the wearisome

farewell entertainments, and of her husband's toast--the toast which he

proposed at the magnificent banquet, given in his honour, by the

Austrian Hungarians in Paris. Unutterably distasteful as it always is

to men of his stamp, to be conspicuous, he at last made up his mind to

propose this toast; he worked at it for an entire week, and subjected

it to the criticism, not only of his wife and of his daughter, but of

every one whose judgment he respected in Paris. It was a masterpiece of

a toast, a toast designed to unite in brotherly affection all the

Austrians in Paris, and which ultimately, with its well-meant,

many-sided compliments gave occasion for dissatisfaction to every

member of the Austrian-Hungarian colony, whether conservative or

liberal. Zinka laughed to herself as she recalled that poor

misunderstood toast. She laughed outright, started, and--awoke--rubbed

her eyes and looked out.

Yes, Paris lay far behind her, very far. She was in Austria, beautiful,

dreamingly-drowsy Austria, and, in spite of the reluctance with which

she returned to her fatherland, it affected her.

A low blue chain of hills lay on the western horizon like a vanishing

storm-cloud. The landscape around was level and extended. Large, quiet

pools, surrounded by tall rushes, and covered with a network of

fragrant waterlilies, gleamed here and there among the emerald meadows.

The sun was near its setting. The shadows of the telegraph poles

stretched out indefinitely. Little towns contentedly sleeping away

their dull lives among green lindens, showed their old-fashioned

silhouettes, black against the sunlit evening clouds.

Truyn laid aside his newspaper, and his face grew eager and animated,

every knotted gnarled willow, every half-ruinous garden wall here

interested him.

A forest of firs, their trunks glowing red in the last rays of the sun,

bordered the railway. "There, just by that stunted fir, I shot my first

deer," Truyn exclaimed, and in his eyes sparkled the memory of a happy

boyhood; then, drawing Zinka to him, he whispered tenderly: "You are at

home, Zini; we are travelling upon our own soil."

"Ah," replied Zinka, nestling close to him, timid as a child afraid of

ghosts.

"How nervous you are!" he said, gently stroking her cheek--"you silly

little goose you!"

"It is not for myself," she whispered, "so long as you love me, you and

Ella, I can bear anything. But I know you--it would grieve you to the

very heart, if ...."

"Tickets, if you please!"

A breathless panting--a shrill whistle.

"Rautschin--five minutes stay!"

"Aunt Wjera!" Gabrielle exclaimed, joyously hurrying out of the coupe.

There was something like defiance in Zinka's heart, but when she saw

the woman, who in all her exquisite beauty, all the distinguished grace

of manner inspired by kindness and cordiality, advanced to meet them,

her defiant mood vanished in admiration, and with a feeling of almost

childlike reverence, she bowed to the superiority of the elder lady,

who greeted her most cordially.

After the first excitement of meeting was over, Countess Wjera's

attention was naturally concentrated upon her son's betrothed.

"I can but congratulate you from my heart, Ossi," she said earnestly,

looking full into the young girl's eyes--eyes that shone like two blue

violets under the clearest skies--violets that had suffered nothing

from late frosts or too ardent sunshine. "You are a favourite of

fortune, my child."

Gabrielle blushed, and buried her face in the bunch of white roses,

which Oswald had brought her; and Oswald was touched, and smiled his

thanks to his mother, as he whispered a tender word to his betrothed.

"Do you know who came in the same train with us?" Truyn suddenly asked,

interrupting the happy moment.

"Capriani, father and son, I saw them," said Oswald, "look at him,

mamma, there is my rival, the enterprising young spark, who sued for

Gabrielle's hand. A mad idea, was it not? Gabrielle, and a son of

Capriani!--we shouted with laughter, when the Melkweyser announced the

proposal."

The flurry of the arrival had subsided, and the Countess leisurely

inspected through her eyeglass the sallow young man who was talking

with Georges Lodrin. Gabrielle said something about his dark blue

travelling-suit, shot with gold; Zinka made inquiries, all in a breath,

of her husband, and of the two lady's-maids, whether this or that

article of luggage had not been left in Paris or in the railway coupe.

When at last all her anxieties on this point had been relieved, and

they had passed through the station to the carriages, they observed a

magnificent four-in-hand, the harness decorated with a coronet.

"By Jove!" Truyn exclaimed with delight, "superb, Ossi, superb! I have

rarely seen four such beauties together!"

"Nor have I," said Oswald, examining the horses critically,

"unfortunately they are not mine--they belong to Capriani."

"Impossible!" Truyn said disdainfully, "speculator that he is, he may

bore through the isthmus of Panama, for all I care, but he cannot get

together such a four-in-hand as that."

"Fritz Malzin selected and arranged it for him," Oswald explained.

"Poor Fritz!"

"I cannot understand him," Truyn said in an undertone, and hastily

changing the subject, he asked: "Have you come to terms with Capriani,

about the Kanitz affair, Ossi? Could not the sale be revoked?"

"The matter would have been very difficult to adjust, I am told--of

course I understand nothing of such things,--" replied Oswald, "but

Capriani--what will you say to this, uncle?--yielded the point, 'out of

special regard' for me, as his lawyer informed Dr. Schindler. Between

ourselves, it was--what word shall I use?--audacious, for I have never

spoken to him in my life, and yet I had to accept his uncalled-for

courtesy, for Schmitt's sake."

"Remarkable, very!" said Truyn, "We usually have to pay dear for the

courtesies of a Capriani and his kind!"

"Have you everything, Ella?" asked Zinka, "shall we start?"

"I should like to have my hand-bag, Hortense has left it with the large

luggage."

Meanwhile, with an unpleasant smile and hat in hand, a sallow-faced,

grey-haired, elderly man, with the look of a bird of prey, approached

the Countess Wjera, and held out his right hand. "I am immensely

gratified, your Excellency, after so long a time ....!"

The Countess, her eyes half closed, measured him haughtily. "With whom

have I the pleasure ...?"

"Conte Capriani."

The Countess silently shrugged her shoulders, and turning half away,

called in an irritated tone, "Are we ready to go at last, Ossi?...."

A whirling cloud of dust was soon the only trace left of the bustle of

the arrival.

The short drive was spent by Truyn in reminiscences, by the betrothed

pair in sentiment.

At the tea, which was awaiting the travellers, and of which the

Lodrin's stayed to partake, there was much laughter over the _chic_ of

the Caprianis, over their wealth, and--their obtrusiveness. Oswald

suddenly grew thoughtful.

"Did you ever before meet these people, mamma?" he asked.

"I never knew any Conte Capriani in my life,--who are these Caprianis?"

asked the Countess.

"Nobody knows," said Oswald. "Some say he is a Greek, some that he

comes from Marseilles, and others that he is a Turk."

"They are all wrong," Georges said drily, "he comes originally from

Bohemia; he was formerly a physician, and his name was Stein."

BOOK SECOND.

CHAPTER I.

Rautschin, still Rautschin!--the tiny town lying at the feet of the

huge castle on the tower of which the clock has stopped for twenty

years--but no longer in pouring rain with thunder and lightning, but

Rautschin beneath skies of sapphire blue, upon a hot July afternoon.

The sun was still high in the heavens. The crooked little row of houses

on one side of the Market Square, cast short, black shadows, the

national red kerchiefs, with broad borders of gay flowers hanging at

the door of the principal shop, fluttered gently in the summer breeze.

A melancholy hubbub of discords, struggling in vain for a solution, was

heard through the open window of one of the newest and ugliest houses.

Eugene Alexander Cibulka, and the wife of the district commissioner,

were playing Wagner's 'Walkuere,' arranged for four hands, and each had

again 'lost the place.' They regularly lose the place every time a leaf

is turned, and so the one who gets first to the bottom of the page,

very kindly waits for the other.

Rautschin Castle stands proudly superior to every structure about it,

ensconced behind all kinds of farm-buildings and additions, at the

extreme end of the Market Square, to which it turns its shoulder, as it

were. Except for its imposing dimensions, it is in no wise remarkable.

Standing at the entrance of a very extensive park, it dates from the

time of Maria Theresa, when the present clumsy edifice, its prim facade

defaced by grass-green shutters, was built upon the remains of a feudal

fortress. The court-yard is not perfectly square, and the arches of the

arcade rest upon granite pillars. Its interior is quite in accordance

with its exterior; it is anything but splendid, and has an air of

empty, dignified distinction.

Before the western side of the Castle, Count Truyn with his young wife

was sitting beneath the shade of a red and gray striped marquee; behind

them in a garden-room, the glass doors of which were wide open, Oswald,

standing on a step-ladder, was busy hanging on the wall a piece of

gold-embroidered Oriental stuff, and Gabrielle was handing him the

nails.

"Well Zini, are you beginning to like our home?" said Truyn, propping

his elbows upon the white garden table, between himself and his wife.

He looked so contented, so proud of his possessions, so triumphant,

that Zinka could not refrain from teasing him a little.

"Taken all in all, yes," she said indifferently, "but then taken all in

all, I should like Siberia, with you and Ella."

"Zinka! I must confess,"--Truyn's face assumed a disturbed and almost

offended expression, "I must say that I cannot understand how any one

can compare Rautschin to a place of exile!"

"I did not mean to do so, rest assured," Zinka said, "I think your

Rautschin very delightful, I should only like to alter a few details."

"I cannot abide improvements," growled Truyn, "it is only the Caprianis

and Company, who must always be beautifying everything old--that is

destroying it. I think an old place should be left as it is, with all

its characteristic defects--to try to improve them, seems to me like

trying to correct the drawing of a Giotto or a Cimabue."

"I can understand a respect for the old mis-drawings," Zinka rejoined

quietly, "but does one owe the same respect to modern retouching, to

the vandalism that has made clumsy additions to an old picture?"

"Hm!" Truyn gazed thoughtfully around him--"no, in fact. It is

remarkable that you are always right, you little witch. Now be frank

Zini; what exactly would you like to have different? So far as my

veneration and my finances permit, you shall have your will."

Zinka pointed to the lawn that lay before them, terribly disfigured by

bright red and yellow arabesques. "I think that confectioner's

ornamentation there almost as ugly as the carpet-gardening at the Villa

Albani," she said, "don't you?"

Truyn ran his hands through his hair, "Well, yes,"--he meekly admitted

after a pause, "but I cannot possibly alter that. Old Kraus, to

surprise me, has taken infinite pains to portray our crest on the

lawn--I had to praise him for his brilliant idea, however hideous I

thought the thing, don't you see, Zini?"

"That alters the case entirely," Zinka admitted. "I would not hurt

faithful old Kraus for the world. But"--she pointed to the basin of a

fountain, the shape of which was particularly ugly--"old Kraus could

not have designed that basin--that might be cleared away!"

Truyn looked thoroughly discomfited. "The basin is a horror," he

confessed, "but I cannot help saying a good word for it. It is endeared

to me by youthful associations--if only because when I was a boy of

twelve, I was very nearly drowned in it."

"Oh then indeed ...." Zinka shrugged her shoulders, with a humourous air

of resignation. "I now hardly dare to object to the green shutters,"

she went on, "for if, as in view of their colour is highly probable, they

gave you opthalmia, some thirty years ago--it would ...."

"No, no, no, I give up the shutters," exclaimed Truyn laughing, "let

them go. And now I have something to tell you that you will not

relish--no need to change colour, the matter is an inconvenience, not a

trial. While I have been away--for the last ten years in fact--the park

has been open to the public. The little town has no other public

garden. I have, indeed, in view of this, placed an extensive tract of

land at the disposal of the town Council, but it is not yet laid out,

and until it is, I should not like entirely to deprive the public of

the freedom of the Park. Therefore I should like to have you point out

as soon as possible what part you would prefer to have reserved

entirely for yourself, that it may be portioned off. Indeed I cannot

help it, Zini."

"You will be as condescending at last as a crowned head," Zinka said

laughing. "You have already relinquished a corner of the park, because

the new road, laid out for the convenience of the public, must run

directly beneath your windows--and ..."

"I know--I know," Truyn interrupted her impatiently, "but one owes

something to the people. Of course you think 'my husband is a perfect

simpleton, he'll put up with anything'--but ...."

"Have you really no better idea of what I think of my husband, than

that?" Zinka asked in a low tone, looking at him with tender raillery

in her eyes.

"Oh you sweet-natured little woman!" he said, attempting to chuck her

under the chin.

"What are you about?" she exclaimed, thrusting his hand away, "this

wall here on the street is so low, that every little ragamuffin can see

us. And let me tell you that this wall has seemed more odious than

anything else to-day. Between ourselves--move your chair a little

nearer, Erich--I have been all this while tormented by a desire to

throw myself into your arms--you dear, good, whimsical fellow--but the

wall!"

"Confound the wall!" Truyn exclaimed, angrily clinching his fist.

"Tell me," Zinka asked caressingly, "is the lowness of the wall also a

question of humanity? Do you find it impossible to deny the townsfolk

the satisfaction of conveniently observing the castle-folk?"

"Pshaw! I was vexed about the height of the wall ten years ago--that is

when the road was laid out, but--well, I cannot myself say why it

is--but unless we have a rage for building, nothing is done. We

complain for ten years about the same evil, and ..."

"And to part with an evil about which one has complained for ten long

years," interrupted Zinka laughing, "would be almost as distressing as

to clear away the basin of a fountain, in which one had been nearly

drowned, thirty years before, eh, Erich?"

The broad July sunshine lay upon the red and yellow splendour of the

Truyn escutcheon, shimmered brilliantly about the foremost of the

mighty trees, whose dark foliage contrasted with the emerald of the

lawn where they stood, beyond the open, flower-decked portion of the

park, and penetrated boldly into their thick shades, limning fanciful

arabesques of light upon the darker green.

From the garden-room floated Gabrielle's sweet, childlike voice, "_Io

so una giardiniera_," she sang. Oswald had finished his upholstering,

and was bending over the piano. He combined a sincere enjoyment of

music with a deplorable preference for sentimental popular ballads.

The creaking of wheels intruded upon the dreamy monotony of the hour.

Truyn leaned forward and started to his feet. "Ah, old Swoboda, the

doctor who attended Ella with the measles," he exclaimed joyfully,

recognising Dr. Swoboda, in his comical little vehicle drawn by a white

horse spotted with brown. "Is he still alive? I must call him in.

Holla! Doctor, how are you?"

The doctor started, looked round, and took off his hat with a smile of

delight, "your servant, Count Truyn."

"Come in and have a chat," said Truyn, "it was hardly fair not to have

been to see us before."

"But, my dear Count, how could I suppose ..."

A few minutes later, the old doctor was seated opposite to Truyn,

underneath the marquee, imparting to the Count exact information as to

the weal and woe of a multitude of people belonging to the town, and to

the country round, whom the proprietor of Rautschin remembered with

wonderful distinctness.

Some had died, one or two were insane--a couple were bankrupt.

"Infernal swindling speculations! is my dear old Rautschin beginning to

be carried away by them?" said Truyn, "certain epidemics cannot be

arrested. Sad--very sad! And now the _phylloxera_ has taken up its

abode in Schneeburg."

"Is there much illness about here?" Zinka asked the doctor, in hopes

perhaps of staving off a conservative outburst from her husband.

"None of any consequence. My business is at a low ebb, your

Excellency."

"Where have you just been, doctor?" Truyn asked.

"I have just come from Schneeburg."

"Ah? anything seriously amiss in the Capriani household?--I could not

shed a tear for King Midas."

"The Herr Count cannot suppose that those magnificoes would call in a

poor country doctor, like myself."

"My dear Swoboda, we all have the greatest confidence in you!" Truyn

said kindly.

"I thank you heartily, Herr Count, but this confidence is an old

custom, and the Caprianis consider old customs as mere prejudices, and

propose to do away with them. I have just come from our poor Count

Fritz."

"Indeed? are the children ill?"

"No, not ill, but ailing; there is something or other the matter with

them all the time--they are city children;--however, I am not really

anxious about them, they'll come all right. But I am sick at heart for

poor Count Fritz, he is far from well."

"Ah, indeed? what is the matter with him?" Truyn asked in a tone of

evident irritation.

"His unfortunate circumstances are killing him," the doctor replied

gloomily.

"Ah--hm,--I must confess to you--er--my dear doctor,

that--er--I take it very ill of Fritz, that he, er--accepted

a position,--er--with--that,--er--adventurer."

The old doctor looked the irritated gentleman full in the eyes. "When

one is homesick and sees his children, who cannot bear the city air,

hungering for bread, one will do many things, which could not be

contemplated for an instant, under even slightly improved

circumstances."

"Ossi always told you ...." began Zinka.

"Oh pshaw! Ossi is an enthusiast, whose heart is always drowning out

his head."

The old doctor sighed. "Well, I will intrude no longer," he said. He

had often enough seen his noble patients yawn, as the door was closing

upon him after a prolonged visit.

"Not at all,--not at all--wait a moment; I must call the children;

Gabrielle! Ossi!"

The young people appeared from the garden-room.

"Ah--it is the friend who saved my life," Gabrielle exclaimed,

cordially extending her hand.

Oswald too greeted him kindly, but suddenly he, as well as the old

physician became slightly embarrassed--each remembered the unpleasant

scene in the inn.--The conversation did not flow very freely.

"Now, I really must go," the doctor insisted in some confusion.

"Come soon again," said Truyn, shaking hands with him, "give my

remembrance to Fritz, and--er--tell him to come and see me soon." He

walked towards the court-yard with the old man, and when he returned he

observed that Oswald, as he was silently rolling up a cigarette, was

frowning furiously, evidently angry.

"Where does the shoe pinch, Ossi?" he asked.

"I cannot understand, uncle, how you can be so hard upon Fritz!"

exclaimed Oswald throwing away his cigarette. "You are wont to be the

softest-hearted of men, but to that poor devil ...."

"Don't excite yourself so terribly," Truyn said kindly, but in some

surprise at the young man's violence. How could he divine the

disturbance of mind that was at the root of his indignation? "You are

so irritable ...."

"I am perfectly calm," Oswald boldly asserted, "only .... how could you

send messages to Fritz by the doctor, and ask him to come to you? Have

you no idea of his miserably sore state of mind?--and physically too he

is so wretched that he cannot last six months longer; I have begged you

to go and see him."

"Papa! If Ossi begs you!" Gabrielle whispered, looking up at her father

with the large pleading eyes of a child.

"Ah, you can't understand how any one can possibly refuse Ossi

anything," Truyn said, smiling in the midst of his annoyance.

She blushed and cast down her eyes.

"What can you find to like in this fellow, Ella?" her father rallied

her. "A man ready to take fire, and clinch his fist upon the smallest

provocation. What would you say if I should put my veto upon this

foolish betrothal with a young savage who is only half-responsible?"

Gabrielle's blush grew deeper, she looked alternately at her father and

at her lover, and finally deciding in favour of the latter gently laid

her hand upon his arm.

"You see, uncle!.... completely routed," exclaimed Oswald, his anger

entirely dispelled by this little intermezzo. His voice rang with

exultant happiness as he added, "nothing can part us now, Ella--not

even a father's veto!"

And Ella clung silently to his arm and looked blissfully content.

"Poor little comrade!" said Truyn tenderly. Mingled with his emotion

there was something of the pity which men of ripe years and experience

always feel at the sight of the perfect happiness of young lovers.

"Poor little comrade!--well, to win back some share of your favour I

will e'en put a good face upon it and comply with the wishes of your

tyrant."

CHAPTER II.

"How can a respectable household put up with such a servant!" thought

Truyn, as he waited in the hall of the little Swiss cottage which stood

between the park at Schneeburg and the vegetable garden, and had been

appropriated to the son of the late owner of the soil. A slatternly

woman with a loose linen wrapper hanging about her stout figure had

come towards him, and after an affirmative reply to his inquiry if the

Count were at home, screamed shrilly: "Malzin! Some one to see you!"

and vanished in the interior of the house.

An unpleasant suspicion assailed Truyn. "Can that be...." The next

moment all else was forgotten in distress at the changed appearance of

a fair, pale young man who rushed up to him exclaiming: "Erich!--you

here!"

"Fritz, Fritz!" said Truyn in a broken voice, fairly clasping his

unfortunate cousin in his arms.

Of all mortals he who has voluntarily resigned the position in which he

was born is the most embarrassing to deal with. He has by degrees

broken with his fellows, and, almost like an outcast, seems scarcely to

know how to comport himself when accident throws him among his former

associates; when he meets one of 'his people' he usually alternates

between intrusive familiarity and embittered reserve.

There was nothing of all this, however, about Fritz. He was so simple

and cordial, that Truyn felt ashamed of having avoided a meeting.

Fair, with delicate, slightly pinched features, and large melancholy

gray eyes, exquisitely neat and exact in his apparel, he looked from

head to foot like a cavalry officer in citizen's dress, and in poor

circumstances, that is like a man who knew how to invest with a certain

distinction even the shabbiness to which fate condemned him.

"You cannot imagine what pleasure your visit gives me! When I see one

of you it really seems almost as if one of my dear ones had descended

from heaven to press my hand," he said with emotion and Truyn replied:

"I should have come before, but I expected certainly that

you .... that ...."

"That I ...." Fritz smiled significantly, "no, Erich, you could

hardly ...."

"Well, well, and how are you? How are you?" said Truyn quickly.

"I still live," Fritz replied, and looked away.

Just then a voice was heard outside inquiring for "Count Malzin."

"I am not at home, Lotti, do you hear, not at home to any body," Malzin

called into the next room. "Come, Erich!" and he conducted his guest

out of what answered as a drawing-room into a very shabbily-furnished

apartment which he called his 'den,' and where Truyn at once felt quite

at home.

"That was young Capriani," Fritz explained hurriedly, "he probably came

to talk with me about the burial vault. Perhaps you know that my late

father had the vault reserved for us in the contract for the sale of

Schneeburg. Capriani, whom usually nothing escapes, oddly enough

overlooked the fact that the vault is in the park, and now he wants me

to sell it to him. Let him try it--the vault he shall not have--it is

the last spot of home that is left to me. I choose at least to lie in

the grave with my people! But let us talk of something pleasanter. You

are all well, are you not?--but there is no need to ask, I can see it

by looking at you. And I know all about your domestic affairs from

Ossi."

"He comes to see you often?"

"Yes," said Fritz, "and every time with a fresh scheme for my complete

relief from all difficulties, which he always unfolds with the same

fervid enthusiasm. The schemes are impracticable, but never mind!

Existence always seems more tolerable to me while I am talking with

him, and when he has gone, it is as if a soft spring shower had just

passed over, purifying and freshening the air. There really is

something very remarkable about the fellow. With all his fiery energy,

he is so unutterably tender; ordinarily when a man situated as I am

comes in contact with such a favorite of fortune, he inevitably feels

annoyed--it is like a glare of light for weak eyes. But there is

nothing of the kind with him--he warms without dazzling,--he

understands how to stoop to misery, without condescending to it."

"Yes, yes, he has his good qualities," Truyn grumbled, "very good

qualities. But he has stolen from me my little comrade's heart, and I

cannot say I am greatly pleased."

"You do not expect me to pity you on the score of your future

son-in-law?" said Fritz, laughing.

"Not exactly--if I must have one, then ...."

"Then thank God that just these young people have come together," Fritz

said in that tone of admonition, which even young men, when forsaken of

fortune, sometimes adopt towards their happier seniors. "Do you know

what he has done for me--among other things--just a trifle?"

"How should I? He certainly would never tell me."

"Of course not! We had not seen each other for years, but he came to

see me as soon as he knew that I was at Schneeburg, and asked me if he

could do anything for me. I thought it kind, but did not take his words

seriously and so thanked him and assured him he could do nothing. He

came again, bringing presents for the children with kind messages from

his mother, and asked me to dinner. When we retired to the smoking-room

after that dinner he said to me with the embarrassed manner of a

generous man, about to confer a benefit: 'Fritz, tell me frankly; does

no old debt annoy you?' Of course, at first I did not want to confess,

but at last I admitted that a couple of unliquidated accounts did

trouble me. An unstained name is a luxury that is the hardest of all to

forego. He arranged everything, and now I am perfectly free from debt.

He has such a charming way of giving, as if it were the merest pastime.

I once asked him how a man as happy as he, found so much time to think

for others? He answered that happiness was like a rose-bush, the more

blossoms one gives away, the more it flourishes!"

"Yes, yes, he certainly is a fine fellow.--We quarrel sometimes, but he

is a very fine fellow!" said Truyn, "he suits the child--you must know

her. And what about your children? Ossi says they are very pretty--you

have three, have you not?"

"No, only two," Fritz replied, and his voice trembled as he took a

little photograph from the wall--"only two; my eldest died. Look at

him--" handing the picture to Truyn, "he was a pretty child, was he

not?--my poor little Siegi--but too lovely, too good for the life that

had fallen to his lot. He is better dead--better!" he uttered in the

hard tone in which the reason asserts what the heart denies.

From the park the vague, dreamy fragrance of the fading white rocket

was wafted into the room. The light flickered dimly through the leafy

screen of the apricot tree before the open window that looked out upon

the vegetable garden. On Fritz's writing-table the old Empire clock,

wheezing in its struggle for breath, struck five times. Truyn knew the

old timepiece well, but formerly it used to swing its pendulum as

merrily on into eternity as if it expected a fresh delight every hour.

It seemed as if by this time it had almost lost its voice from grief,

so asthmatic was the sob with which it counted the seconds. And not

only with the clock, with everything around him Truyn was familiar. The

entire shabby apartment betrayed a fanatical worship of the past. The

chairs were the same monstrosities with lyre-shaped backs and crooked

legs, which had been wont to endure the angry kicks of the little

Malzins, when their tutor kept them too long at their lessons. Even the

pattern of the wall-paper, with its apocryphal birds and butterflies

among impossible wreaths of flowers, was the same which a travelling

house-painter had pasted up there thirty years before.

But what most struck Truyn, was the decoration on one of the low doors

in the thick wall--it was marked all over with lines in pencil and

scribbled names. Upon that door the young Malzins used to record their

growth from year to year.

"Pipsi, 14," he read, "and something over," "Erich,"--he smiled

involuntarily, and read on,--"Oscar 12," and then far below in

uncertain characters looking as if an elder sister had guided the hand

of a very little child, "Fritzl."

And through Truyn's memory there sounded the crumpling of copy-book

leaves--of childrens' voices, of Cramer's Exercises, and of sleepily

recited Latin verbs. Yes, even the peculiar fragrance of lavender and

fresh linen, formerly exhaled from the light chintz gown of his pretty

cousin, came wafting to him over the past.

"This is your old school-room!" he exclaimed.

"Of course it is," said Fritz, "can you guess whom I have to thank for

keeping it intact?"

"The avarice of your principal?"

"No, the delicacy of his wife. Before I moved in here she said to me,

'my husband wished to have the house put in order for you, Herr Count,

but I thought that perhaps you liked old associations, and I therefore

beg you to make only what changes you think best.'"

"A good woman!" Truyn murmured.

Just then an extraordinary figure entered the room,--the same female

that Truyn had encountered in the hall, but splendidly transformed,

tightly laced, with cheeks covered thick with pink powder--Fritz

Malzin's wife!

"Very good of you," she began after Fritz had presented Truyn to her.

Her voice had the forced sweetness of stage training. "Very good to

honour our humble dwelling with a visit. May I take the liberty of

offering you a cup of coffee, that is, Herr Count," as Truyn evidently

hesitated, "if you can put up with our simple fare; in the country, you

know, when one is not prepared ...."

Fritz pulled his moustache nervously.

Although he had reached the age of gastronomic fastidiousness, and

especially abhorred spoiling the appetite between meals, Truyn

good-naturedly accepted this pretentiously humble invitation.

CHAPTER III.

The dining-room, a long narrow apartment with three windows, smelled of

fresh varnish and fly-poison; the walls were decorated with dusty

laurel wreaths wound about with ribbons covered with gilt inscriptions,

and with several photographs of the hostess in tights. The long table

was loaded with viands. Malzin's children, a girl and a boy,

respectively five and three years old, shared the meal. They were pale,

and sickly, but extremely pretty with a wonderfully sympathetic

expression about the mouth and eyes, reminding one of their father. It

was easy to see from the shy gentleness of their demeanour that Fritz

had taken great pains with their training. He exchanged little tender

jests with his small daughter, but he evidently made a special pet of

the boy who sat beside him in a high chair, and to whose wants he

himself ministered.

There was nothing about Fritz of the amusing awkwardness of

aristocratic fathers, who now and then in an amiable dilettante fashion

interest themselves in the care of their offspring. On the contrary it

was easy to see from the way in which he set the child straight at the

table, tied on the bib, and put the mug of milk into the little hand,

that the care of the child was a real occupation of his life.

Truyn sat beside his hostess murmuring threadbare compliments, touching

his lips to his coffee-cup, and crumbling a piece of biscuit on his

plate.

"You do our fare but little honour," the actress said more than once,

"try a piece of this cake, Herr Count. Count Capriani who has a French

cook, and is accustomed to the very best, always commends it."

Fritz blushed. "Try this cherry cake," he said hastily. "Lotti

makes it herself. She used always to feast me upon it when we were

betrothed--eh, Lotti?"

This cheery reference to her housewifely skill, offended the actress,

and before Truyn could make some courteous rejoinder she exclaimed,

flushed with anger, "You know, Herr Count, that where the means are so

limited the mistress of the house must lend a hand."

Truyn stammered something and Fritz smiled patiently as he stroked his

little son's fair curls.

It was a painfully uncomfortable hour.

Truyn looked from the photographs to the glass fly-traps beneath which

innumerable flies were lying on their backs, convulsively twitching out

their lives, and his glance finally rested upon his hostess. She was

strongly perfumed with musk, and was painted around the eyes. Her stout

arms were squeezed into sleeves far too tight, and her bust almost met

her chin. After this keen scrutiny, however, Truyn discovered that she

was certainly handsome, that her face although disfigured by too full

lips, was strikingly like that of the capitoline Venus.

The intrusive humility of her manner, seasoned as it was with vulgar

raillery, was insufferable.

"For this woman!" he repeated to himself again and again. "For this

woman!" His eye fell upon a photograph portraying the Countess as '_la

belle Helene_,' in a costume that displayed her magnificent physique to

great advantage, and he suddenly remembered that he had seen her in

that role; that her acting was bad; but that she produced a dazzling

impression on the stage.

"Did you recognize that picture, Herr Count?" she asked suddenly.

"Instantly," he assured her.

"Did you ever see me play?"

"I once had that pleasure."

"Ah!" A remarkable transformation was immediately manifest, her languid

air grew animated, thirst for the triumphs of the past glittered in her

eyes. She moved her chair a little closer to Truyn and coquettishly

leaning her head upon her hand whispered, "Were you one of my adorers?"

Fritz frowned and glanced angrily towards her, twisting his napkin

nervously.

His attention was suddenly distracted however, by the noise of the

blows of an axe resounding slowly and monotonously through the heavy

summer air. Fritz changed colour, sprang up and hurried to the window.

"What is the matter?" the actress asked him negligently.

"They are cutting down the old beech," he said slowly, turning not to

her, but to Truyn.--"The Friedrichs-beech; planted by one of our

ancestors, Joachim Malzin, with his own hands after the liberation of

Vienna; we children all cut our names upon it. Don't you remember how

Madame Lenoir scolded us for it, and declared that it was not _comme il

faut_, but a pastime befitting prentice boys only? Good Heavens--how

long ago that is!--and now they are cutting it down. Capriani insists

that it interferes with his view."

CHAPTER IV.

"If one could only help him!--but there is nothing to be

done--absolutely nothing!"

Thus Truyn reflected, as distressed and compassionate, he rode home on

his sleek cob, followed by his trim English groom.

There are many varieties of compassion not at all painful, which, when

well-seasoned with a charming consciousness of virtue, may serve

sensitive souls as a tolerable amusement. There is, for example, an

artistically contemplative compassion that, with hands thrust

comfortably in pockets, looks on at some melancholy affair as at the

fifth act of a tragedy, without experiencing the faintest call to

recognize its existence except by heaving sundry sentimental sighs.

Then there is a self-contemplative compassion which, quite as inactive

as the artistically contemplative, culminates in the satisfactory

consciousness of the comparative comfort of one's own condition; then a

decorative compassion, which is displayed merely as a mental adornment

upon solemn occasions when the man marches forth clad in full-dress

moral uniform.

But there is one compassion which is among the most painful sensations

that can assail a delicate-minded human being--a compassion, always

united to the most earnest desire to aid, to console, and yet which

knows itself powerless in presence of the suffering; that longs for

nothing in the world more ardently than to aid that which it cannot

aid! And this it was that oppressed Truyn, as he rode home from

Schneeburg,--this vain compassion lying like a cold, hard stone upon

his warm, kind heart!

"If one could only help him, could but make life at least tolerable for

him,--poor Fritz, poor fellow!" he muttered again and again.

The tall poplars, standing like a long row of gigantic exclamation

points on the side of the road, cast strips of dark shade upon the

light, dusty soil. The crickets were chirping in the hedges; in the

wheat-fields to the right and left the ears nodded gently and gravely;

red poppies and blue cornflowers--useless, picturesque gipsy-folk,

amidst the ripening harvest--laughed at their feet. The clover-fields

had passed their prime,--they were brown and a faint odour of faded

flowers floated aloft from them. The transparent veil of early twilight

obscured the light and dimmed the shadows.

How thoroughly Truyn knew the road! The inmates of Schneeburg and

Rautschin had formerly been good neighbours.

A throng of laughing, beckoning phantoms glided through his mind. Out

of the blue mist of the morning of his life, now so far behind him,

there emerged a slender, girlish figure with long, black braids, and a

downy, peach-like face--dark-eyed Pipsi, for whom Erich, then an

enthusiast of sixteen, copied poems--and a second phantom came with

her, merry-hearted Tilda, who with the pert insolence of her thirteen

years used to laugh so mercilessly at the sentimental pair of lovers;

and Hugo, a rather awkward boy, always at odds with his tutor and his

Greek grammar.

Where were they all? Hugo went into the army, and was killed in a duel;

dark-eyed Pepsi married in Hungary, and died at the birth of her first

child; Tilda married a Spanish diplomatist--Truyn had heard nothing of

her for years;--not one of the Malzins was left in their native

land, save Fritz, who at the time of Truyn's lyric enthusiasm was a

curly-headed, babbling baby, before whose dimples the entire family

were on their knees, and who of his bounty dispensed kisses among them.

Truyn's thoughts wandered on--he recalled Fritz as an dashing officer

of Hussars. He was one of the handsomest men in the army, fair, with a

sunny smile and the proverbial Malzin conscientiousness in his earnest

eyes, very fastidious in his pleasures, almost dandified in his dress;

spoiled by women of fashion.

"Who would have thought it!" Truyn repeated to himself, as he gazed

reflectively between his horse's ears. Suddenly he became aware of a

cloud of dust,--and of a delightful sensation warming his heart. He

perceived Zinka and Gabrielle sitting in a low pony-wagon, and behind

them in the footman's seat was Oswald. Zinka was driving, being the

butt of much laughing criticism from the other two. How pleased Truyn

was with the picture, and how often was he destined to recall it, the

fair, lovely heads of the two women, the dark, handsome young fellow,

who understood so well how to combine a merry familiarity with the most

delicate courtesy! How happy they all looked!

"You are late, papa!" Gabrielle called out.

"Have I offended you again, comrade?"

"But papa--!"

"I was beginning to be a little anxious," said Zinka, "Ossi laughed at

me, and said I was like his mother, who if he is half an hour late in

returning home from a ride always imagines that he has been thrown and

killed on the road, and that the only reason the groom does not make

his appearance, is because he has not the courage to tell the sad

tidings."

Oswald laughed. "Yes, my mother's fancy runs riot in such images,

sometimes," he admitted, stretching out his hand for the reins, that he

might help Zinka to turn round. "And how is poor Fritz?"

"Wretched--such misery is enough to break one's heart--and no getting

rid of it."

"And you are no longer angry with him?" Oswald asked with a touch of

good-humoured triumph.

"Heaven forbid! but--," Truyn rubbed his forehead--"Oh, that

stock-jobber--that phylloxera!"

Just then there appeared in the road an aged man, spare of habit and

somewhat bent, but walking briskly; his features were sharp but not

unpleasant, his arms were long, and his old-fashioned coat fluttered

about his legs.

"Good-day, Herr Stern," Oswald called out to him in response to his

bow.

Truyn doffed his hat and bowed low on his horse's neck.

"Who is it whom you hold worthy of so profound a bow, papa?" Gabrielle

asked.

"Rabbi von Selz," Truyn made answer, "in times like these such people

should be treated with special respect, if only for the sake of the

lower classes who always regulate their conduct somewhat by ours."

"Oho, uncle, your bow was a political demonstration, then," Oswald

remarked.

"To a certain degree," Truyn replied, "but Stern is, moreover, a very

distinguished man."

"He is indeed," Oswald affirmed, "he is a particular friend of mine--if

any one among the people about here maltreats him, he always applies to

me. Poor devil! The Jews are a very strange folk. I always divide them

into two families, one related directly to Christ, the other to Judas

Iscariot. Poesy, the Seer, has produced two immortal types of these

families, Nathan and Shylock."

"Aha, Ella, I hope you are duly impressed by your lover, he really

talks like a book," Truyn rallied his daughter who, her fair head

slightly bent backward, was looking over her shoulder at Oswald, with

rapt admiration in her large eyes. "I invited Fritz to dine with you,

comrade, the day after to-morrow. He is almost as madly enthusiastic

about your betrothed as you are yourself, and you can sing your

Laudamus together."

CHAPTER V.

"There is nothing to be done with the fellow.--I never encountered such

weakness of mind," exclaimed Capriani to his wife.

The hour was three, and just before dinner; in accordance with Austrian

custom, or rather with the national bad habit, they dined at Schneeburg

at half-past three, although the whole family, especially those of the

second generation, accustomed to late foreign hours, found this earlier

hour very inconvenient.

"Of whom are you talking?" Madame Capriani asked in her depressed

tone; she was sitting erect upon a small gilt chair, she wore a gray,

silk-muslin gown, rather over-trimmed, _gants de Suede_, and an air of

constraint.

"Of whom are you talking?" she asked a second time, smoothing her

gloves.

"Of whom?--of that blockhead, Malzin," growled Capriani.

"I told you from the first that he would never be able to fill that

position," his wife rejoined.

"Fill--!" Capriani shrugged his shoulders contemptuously, "fill--! it

takes him two hours to write a business-letter. But I was prepared

for that. His office is a sinecure; the salary that I pay him is an

alms,--but Alfred Capriani can do as he pleases there,--and at least

the fellow understands something about horses. What outrages me is to

see how he squanders my money, the money that I give him. He ransacks

the country round to buy back from the peasants relics of his parents.

First an old clock, that struck twelve just as he was born, then an old

piano, upon which his sisters used to strum the scales. 'Tis enough to

drive one mad!"

Frau von Capriani looked distressed. "That is a matter of sentiment,"

she suggested.

"A matter of sentiment--a matter of sentiment," Capriani repeated

sarcastically. "It would be a matter of sentiment and conscience to

think of saving up something for his children."

"You are right, you are right," the Countess rejoined, in her emphatic

yet not unmelodious Russian-German, "but this time you are in some

measure to blame for his folly. I begged you a hundred times to ask him

what he would like to keep for himself of the furniture which was

entirely useless to us. Instead, you had it all put up at auction."

"And the proceeds of the sale are to be devoted to the building of a

new school, to be entirely independent of ecclesiastical influence,"

said Capriani, "the old rubbish shall aid, willy-nilly, in the spread

of modern liberal ideas. It is my aim to root out prejudices not to

foster them. Would you have me minister directly to Malzin's folly? It

would be nonsense. It makes me shudder to see this man, who owns

nothing, positively nothing, except what I give him out of sheer

kindness, and who ought to look ahead, keeping his eyes fixed upon the

past, and sentimentally collecting empty bon-bon boxes, the contents of

which his forefathers have devoured to the last crumb. He is the

personification of the invincible narrowness of his class."

"He is a good honest man," the Contessa said gently.

"Honest,--honest!" Capriani repeated impatiently, "a man whose desires

have been anticipated from his childhood, upon whose plate the

pheasants have always fallen ready trussed and roasted, would naturally

not contemplate picking pockets. To be sure, he might be tempted to try

it, but he can't do it--he is too unpractical to be dishonest. There is

nothing praiseworthy in that, for all the honesty that you ascribe to

him he is a thorough selfish egotist; without the smallest scruple he

robs his own children of thousands."

"Malzin!" Frau von Capriani exclaimed, "why he would let his ears be

cut off for his children, and if he refused to lose his hands too, it

would only be because he needed them to work for his family."

"To work!" rejoined Capriani ironically. "If he would only sacrifice

for their sakes his miserable pride of rank he could do far more for

them than by his work! He--and work! Do you know what reply he made to

my splendid offer for his family vault? 'The vault is not for sale, it

is the only spot of home that is left me. I will at least lie among my

people when I am dead!' Can you conceive of greater insolence?"

"Insolence--poor Malzin--he is as modest....!"

"Modest!" sneered Capriani, interrupting her, "he is fairly bristling

with arrogance. A starving pauper, living on my bounty, and all the

while thinking himself superior to all of us. Intercourse with us is

not at all to his taste."

"He is always exquisitely courteous to me. I like him very much," Frau

von Capriani declared. Her husband's constant attacks upon Malzin were

beyond measure painful to her.

"Men of his stamp are always gracious to ladies," snarled Capriani.

Meanwhile his two children had entered the room, Arthur and Ad'lin,

both in faultless toilettes, and both out of humour. The self-same

weariness weighs upon both, the weariness of idlers who do not know how

to squander time gracefully. Perhaps Georges Lodrin is not far wrong

when he maintains that to idle away life gracefully is an art most

difficult to acquire, and rarely learned in a single generation.

Both asked fretfully whether the post had come, and then each sank into

an arm-chair and fumed. One by one the various guests then staying in

the castle appeared. Paul Angelico Orchis, a conceited little

versifier, (lauded in the Blanktown Gazette as 'the first lyric poet of

modern times') and the possessor of a dyspepsia acquired at the expense

of others. A farce by him had been produced in Blanktown, and for ten

years he had been promising the public a tragedy. Meanwhile his latest

effort was the invention of a picturesque waterproof cloak. Frank, the

famous tailor carried out his idea in dark brown tweed, in which the

poet draped himself upon every conceivable occasion. After him followed

two men of the kind which Georges Lodrin describes as 'gentlemen at

reduced prices,' stunted specimens of the aristocracy, who played a

very insignificant part in their own circles, and from time to time

fled to their inferiors in rank to enjoy a little admiration. One,

Baron Kilary, is a sportsman, insolent in bearing, lewd in talk; the

other, Count Fermor, is a dilettante composer and pianist, affected and

sentimental.

Malzin and his wife also entered; while he bowed silently, and then

respectfully kissed the hand of the hostess, Charlotte congratulated

the two ladies upon the splendour of their attire, and lavished

exaggerated admiration upon a couple of costly pieces of furniture

which she had often seen before.

Last of all appeared our old acquaintance, the Baroness Melkweyser, who

had been at Schneeburg for a week. What was she doing there? The

Caprianis looked to her for their admission into Austrian society,

she looked to King Midas for the augmentation of her diminished

income,--and something too might be gained from country air and regular

meals for her worn and weary digestion.

CHAPTER VI.

It is really melancholy for people who have been accustomed in Paris to

entertain crowned heads, to be obliged in Austria to put up with a few

sickly sprigs of nobility.

The Menu was very elaborate; the clumsy table service came from

_Froment-Munice_ and the china was Sevres of the latest pattern, white,

with a coronet and cipher in gilt; the butler looked like a cabinet

minister, and the silk stockings of the flunkies were faultless.

Nevertheless the entire dinner produced a sham, masquerading effect,

reminding one more or less of a stage banquet when all the viands are

of papier-mache.

The hostess, with Baron Kilary on her right, and Fritz Malzin on her

left, devoted herself almost exclusively to the latter, asking him

kindly questions about his children.

The host, seated between the Baroness Melkweyser, and the Countess

Malzin, contented himself with seeing that the actress's plate was kept

well supplied, and with exchanging jests with her which were merely

silly during soup, but which grew more objectionable at dessert.

The Baroness Melkweyser studied the Menu, Paul Angelico Orchis

complained of his dyspepsia and asked advice of his neighbour, Ad'lin

Capriani, as to his diet. Moreover he testified his gratitude for

Capriani's hospitality by praising everything enthusiastically. He

remarked that he had visited Schneeburg formerly, but that he should

hardly have recognised the castle again, absolutely hardly have

recognised it, it was so wonderfully improved, he could not see how

Count Capriani could have effected so much in so short a time.

Whereupon the master of the mansion replied with aristocratic

nonchalance: "The place had to be made habitable, but there's not much

that can be done with it, it is nothing but an old barracks, an

inconvenient old barracks." He then held forth at length upon the

improvements which he still contemplated, concluding with, "But I have

no room--the Schneeburg domain is so contracted, so insignificant!

Unfortunately all the estates which would serve my purpose are owned by

people unwilling to sell."

Madame Capriani tried several times unsuccessfully to check her

husband, and Fritz looked gloomily down into his empty plate.

He had always been so proud of his Schneeburg, and that it should not

be good enough for this swindler, forsooth!----

Fermor looked discontented, and talked to Adeline about his

compositions, betraying at every word the sentimental arrogance of a

narrow-minded, lackadaisical, provincial aristocrat, greedy for

adulation, and salving his conscience for his new associations, by

making himself as disagreeable as possible to the people whose bread he

eats.

Malzin, albeit in a subordinate position, manifested from habit the

instinctive reserve of a true gentleman, fearful of wounding the

susceptibilities of his inferiors. The conduct of his fellows was in

striking contrast to his own. Fermor ignored him. Kilary on the

contrary continually tried to draw him into familiar talk upon subjects

of which none of the others knew anything, a course evidently

irritating to the host.

Malzin was, moreover, the only one at table towards whom Kilary

conducted himself courteously. To the poet he was especially insolent.

At dessert he read aloud with sentimental emphasis a couple of

bonbon-mottoes, and then asked, "My dear Orchis, are these immortal

lines your own?" at which the poet vainly tried to smile. The rumour

ran that when his finances were at a low ebb he did sometimes place his

genius at the disposal of a Vienna confectioner.

After dinner the gentlemen retired to the smoking-room to smoke, the

ladies to the drawing-room to yawn.

"I cannot cease looking at you, this evening, Comtesse," Charlotte

Malzin exclaimed, seating herself on a sofa beside the daughter of the

house, "your gown is enchanting."

"Very much too picturesque for this part of the world, they can't

appreciate these contrasts of colour in this barbarous country," Ad'lin

said crossly, as she was wont to receive the actress's advances. "They

are far behind the age in Austria! _Dieu, qui l'Autriche m'ennuie!_"

The actress fell silent, in some confusion.

"What had the poet to say to you, Ad'lin?" asked the Baroness

Melkweyser, after she had inspected through her eye-glass each piece of

furniture in turn in the drawing-room.

"That he could not digest truffles, and that he means to dedicate his

next work to me."

"Ah! the first item is highly interesting, and the last uncommonly

flattering," the Melkweyser rejoined.

"Yes, it means that I must order at least fifty copies of the

interesting effusion," Ad'lin said fretfully, adding with a half smile,

"People in our position have to encourage literature--_noblesse

oblige_!"

The Baroness bit her lip and resumed her voyage of discovery, turning

to a cabinet filled with antique porcelain.

"You really cannot think," Ad'lin began, leaving her sofa to join her

friend, "how I have longed for you! You are the only link here in

Austria between ourselves and civilization. I depend upon your forming

an agreeable circle for us here."

It was noteworthy that since Zoe's return to her native land, Adeline's

familiarity had seemed far less acceptable to her than it had been in

Paris. "An agreeable circle!" she exclaimed, "that is easily said,

but you make it very hard for me. You do not want to know our

financiers ...."

"The Austrian financiers have no position; even the Rothschilds are not

received at Court."

"And the Austrian aristocracy is excessively exclusive on its own

soil--!" said Zoe.

"Ah that exclusiveness is a _fable convenue_," Ad'lin insisted, "I am

convinced that if Austrian society knew us ...."

Instead of replying, the Melkweyser directed her eye-glass towards the

porcelain on the shelves of the cabinet. "That is the Malzin old-Vienna

tea-service."

"Yes, but it cannot be used--it is not complete."

"I know it, Wjera Zinsenburg has the other half."

"If it would give the Countess the slightest pleasure to complete the

set, I should be perfectly ready to place this half at her disposal!"

Capriani's voice was heard to say.

The gentlemen had left their cigars and had come to the drawing-room

for their coffee. Fermor who was too nervous to allow himself the

indulgence of a cup of Mocha, sat down at the piano, and began to

prelude in an affected manner.

Leaning in a languishing attitude against the raised cover of the

piano, Ad'lin murmured, "No one but you invents such modulations. You

ought to indulge me with a grand composition, Count; have you never

completed one?"

"I am busy now with a work of some scope for a grand orchestra," Fermor

lisped, dabbing his limp, bloodless hands upon the keyboard like a

nervous kangaroo.

"Ah! A sonata?--An opera?"

"No, a requiem; that is a kind of requiem--more correctly a morning

impromptu, the last thoughts of a dying poacher."

"Oh how interesting! Pray let me hear it."

"It is a rather complicated piece of music, Fraeulein Capriani," Fermor

always ignores the Capriani patent of nobility--"if you are not

especially fond of our German classic masters ...."

"I adore Wagner and Beethoven."

"Then, indeed, I will .... but the harmony is very complicated!"

Whereupon he began, with closed eyes, after the fashion of pretentious

dilettanti, to deliver himself of a piece of music, the beginning of

which reminded one of a piano-tuner, and the intermediate portion of

the triumphal march of an operetta, and which, after it had lasted half

an hour, and the audience had given up all hope of relief, suddenly,

and without any apparent reason stopped short, a common termination

where there has been no reason for beginning.

"_C'est divin!_" Ad'lin exclaimed. "Your composition, Count, reminds me

of the intermezzo of the Fifth symphony."

"You are mistaken, Fraeulein Capriani, my composition recalls no other

music!" Fermor said, greatly irritated.

With his eyes glowing, his full red underlip trembling, and his manner

insolently obtrusive, Capriani threw himself down beside Charlotte

Malzin upon the sofa and stretched his arm along the back of it behind

her shoulders.

"Come and help me with my work, Count Malzin," Frau von Capriani called

kindly from her pile of cretonne. "You have so steady a hand."

And while Fritz took his place beside her, and began to cut a bird of

Paradise out of the stuff with great precision, Kilary took Arthur by

the buttonhole and said, "You ought to know all about it young man, how

must one begin who wants to grow rich?"

"You must ask my father," Arthur replied insolently. "All that I

understand of financial matters is, how to make debts."

A servant brought in the letters and papers upon a silver salver.

Whilst Arthur opened a dozen begging letters, and tossed them aside,

ironically remarking, "Three impoverished Countesses--two Barons--a

captain ..." and whilst Ad'lin hailed with enthusiasm two letters from

a couple of French duchesses whom she counted among her friends, the

Conte hurriedly ran his eye over an unpretending epistle which he had

instantly opened. His hands trembled, a strange greed shone in his

eyes, and quivered about his lips. Quite pale, as one is apt to be

in a moment of victory he paced the room to and fro once or twice

and then stepping directly up to Malzin he exclaimed, "What do you

think--coal--! Schneeburg is a coal-bed. Extraordinary! Your father

tried after madder, and I--have found coal!"

Malzin shuddered slightly, but merely said, "I congratulate you!"

"Malzin would never have forgiven himself if your bargain had turned

out a poor one," sneered Kilary.

There was something in his irony that irritated Capriani, a rebellion

of caste against the autocracy of money, which he chose to punish. As

he was powerless with Kilary he turned to Malzin and said in a tone of

insolent authority, "Malzin, get me the map of Bohemia that lies on my

writing-table." At a moment like this the thin varnish of refinement

which contact with the world had imparted was rubbed off entirely, he

showed himself in all his coarseness, and this not through any

recklessness, but intentionally, in the consciousness that he, Alfred

Capriani might do as he chose. At a moment like this he delighted in

treading beneath his feet all who did not prostrate themselves before

his millions.

Malzin had attained a height where such insults did not reach him. But

the blood mounted to the cheek of the mistress of the mansion. "Arthur,

go and get the map!" she said gently.

Fritz languidly prevented him. "You do not know where the thing is," he

said good-humouredly and left the room.

Capriani went on pacing the spacious apartment in long strides. "They

are all alike, these blockheads," he muttered, "when they take it into

their heads to work they are more stupid than ever. Old Malzin tried

everything; he ruined himself in artificial madder-red, in lager beer,

in sugar and in stocks,--and it never occurred to him that millions

were lying in the ground beneath his feet."

Malzin returned with the map and as every table was overcrowded with

bibelots and jardinieres, it was spread out upon the piano. Capriani

eagerly travelled over it with his pudgy forefinger. "The track of the

new railway must go here, between the iron works and Schneeburg."

"Then it must go a very long round," Arthur remarked, "can you obtain

the permit?"

Capriani stuck a thumb in an arm-hole of his waistcoat and smiled.

"Malzin, you know the estates around here; to whom does that belong?"

pointing to a spot upon the map.

"That belongs to Kamenz," said Malzin bending forward, and fitting his

eye-glass in his eye.

"And that?"

"To Lodrin."

"Then it comes to whether the interests of these gentlemen jump with

your own," Arthur observed. "If they should work against you, you never

can obtain the permit."

"Pshaw! I understand tolerably well how to deal with these gentlemen."

"Kamenz will give you no trouble, he is up to his neck in

embarrassments, and would be glad to dispose advantageously of a piece

of his land," drawled Kilary, looking at the map and giving his opinion

with lazy assurance.

"Lodrin's affairs cannot be in a very brilliant condition," Arthur

remarked; "ever since his majority he has been making no end of

improvements, and he is hard up financially."

"With such an enormous property as the Lodrin estate there can be none

save temporary embarrassments," Kilary said drily, "and in no case

would Lodrin allow himself to be influenced by personal considerations.

If you cannot demonstrate to him that the new railway will conduce to

the universal benefit of the whole country he never will agree to it,

and unless he does you can do nothing with the present ministry. A

comical fellow Lodrin--a perfect pedant in some ways."

"No," said Malzin, "not the least of a pedant, but a hot head with a

heart of gold, and when duty is concerned, he is just like his father."

"The old idiot," Capriani muttered below his breath, slowly as, with an

air that was almost tender he stroked his long whiskers, while an odd

smile played about his lips. "In fact you are right, Malzin,--a

charming fellow, Ossi--a superb creature; not one of your Austrian

nobility can hold a candle to him. But I--you'll see, Malzin,--I'll

twist Ossi Lodrin around my thumb."

Half an hour afterwards the guests separated. Frau von Capriani, more

depressed than usual, retired to her room.

The gentlemen went to the garden, and shot at a target; Conte Capriani,

who never could bring down a pheasant on the wing, proved more

successful than any of the others in hitting the bull's-eye.

When the Melkweyser, who had been indulging in a short nap, entered the

library half an hour afterwards to look for a 'sanitary novel' she

found Ad'lin deep in the study of a small thick volume.

Zoe looked over her shoulder; the book was the 'Gotha Almanach,' the

Bradshaw of the Austrian aristocracy.

"What are you looking for?" the Baroness asked.

"For the Fermors--I want to know who the Count's mother was. She is not

in this year's list. She was a Princess Brack, was she not?"

"No, his mother was a Fraeulein Schmitt, the daughter of a rich

tavern-keeper."

"Ah!"

CHAPTER VII.

The Malzins walked home through the park. Fritz looked perturbed. His

wife held her head high, and in no agreeable mood chewed at the stalk

of a rose which the Conte had cut for her.

"Lotti," Fritz began after a while, "I know that you act without

reflection; you were a little imprudent to-day; it would be of no

consequence with a man of breeding, but from a man like Capriani a lady

must not allow the least familiarity."

"You always find something to lecture me about," she replied sharply.

"I have long known that I am not good enough for you. But I must

confess that I have never observed that the ladies of your circle are

more reserved than those of mine."

"You know none of them," Fritz rejoined with incautious haste.

"You certainly have afforded me no opportunity of knowing them,"

Charlotte retorted, reddening with anger, "although you probably would

have done so, had you not been ashamed of me from the first. Count

Truyn has managed to give his wife a position,--but you--you would

rather have died than have stirred a finger for me."

This was not literally true, for Fritz had once knocked off the hat of

an acquaintance who had forgotten to remove it in Charlotte's presence;

on one occasion he had fought a duel on her account, and on another had

horsewhipped a slandering editor, but it was substantially true that he

had made not the smallest effort to introduce her to his world. He made

no reply now to her reproaches, hung his head, and pulled at his

moustache. She went on with angry volubility. "You were ashamed to walk

in the street with me, and when you took me to the theatre you always

hid yourself in the back of the box, and every day you had some fault

to find with my ways. I have watched your aristocratic ladies at the

races, at the theatre, and at artist's festivals--and their manners are

as free--and it must out--as ill-bred ...."

"The ill-breeding of a lady of rank," Fritz interrupted her impatiently

"extends usually only as far as the good-breeding of the man with whom

she chances to be."

"I don't know what you mean," the opera-bouffe singer replied.

"Our ladies know that the men whom they honour with their gay talk

recognise their little whims, and merry extravagances as tokens of

confidence which they would never dream of abusing. We never allow

ourselves to step beyond the line which the lady herself draws.

Familiarities like those which Capriani allowed himself toward you

to-day are impossible among people of refinement. Of course from him

nothing better can be expected; low fellow that he is!"

"And you are his hired servant," said Charlotte.

"Yes!" he replied, "I am his servant; it is my duty to select his

horses and to write his letters, but I am not obliged to dine with him;

that is not in the contract. And from this time I shall accept no more

of his invitations. I will not expose myself a second time to the

annoyance to which you and he subjected me to-day."

Charlotte began to cry. "You are cruel to me--and rough," she sobbed.

"I have put up with poverty for your sake, sacrificed a brilliant

career to my love for you----"

"Yes--yes, I know--I know--I am very sorry for you--but what can I do?"

said Fritz.

"The only pleasure I can enjoy, you want to deprive me of, when I look

forward to it from Sunday to Sunday."

"You enjoy it?--What, for Heaven's sake do you enjoy about it?" asked

Fritz, to whom everything at these Sunday dinners was an offence,

except the gentle eyes and soft voice of the hostess.

"I enjoy mingling at last in fine society," she said stubbornly, and as

he only stared at her in silence, she went on, "I know that you despise

modern fine folk. But my views are broader and freer, and I have no

feeling for aristocratic chimeras!"

She had indeed no feeling for chimeras with or without the adjective,

no feeling for moral and social subtleties, no feeling for honourable

traditional superstitions, for fine inherited weaknesses and illusions,

no feeling for all that constitute the moral supports of a caste,

although they cannot be expressed in words or grasped with the hand.

How could this woman comprehend Fritz, Fritz who had grown up with

chimeras, who had made playmates of them in the nursery?

He shrugged his shoulders and was silent. Just then the wailing of a

weak childish voice fell upon the warm evening air. Fritz hurried

forward; in front of the small arbour, with his little son in her lap,

sat an old woman; it was old Miller, his nurse in childhood, who had at

last found an asylum in a corner of his house. "The little fellow is

crying for his father," she said while the boy smiling through his

tears stretched out his tiny arms. "The Herr Count ought not to spoil

him so."

"Never mind that, Miller," Fritz said taking the child in his arms.

"Oh, my pale darling, what should we do without each other, hey?"

Fifteen minutes afterwards Fritz was sitting on the edge of a small bed

on which his boy was kneeling with folded hands, looking in his snowy

night-gown, that fell in straight folds about him, like a veritable

Luca della Robbia.

"Come, Franzi, have you forgotten your prayer?"

"In my small bed I lay me here,

I pray Thee dearest Lord be near,

About me clasp Thy loving arm,

And shelter me and keep me warm."

the child murmured sleepily, then offered his lips to his father and

lay down.

It was a childish prayer--but Fritz learned it at his mother's knee

from her dear lips--reason enough for teaching it to his son.

And until the little man fell asleep, his hand under his cheek, Fritz

still sat on the edge of the bed and dreamed.

CHAPTER VIII.

Yes, of a truth, Fritz had grown up with chimeras; they had been his

playmates, born and bred and domesticated in Schneeburg.

To them it was due that Fritz had married a second-rate actress; that

Fritz, under all the most distressing circumstances, had still suffered

from homesickness, and had taken refuge 'at home;' that he had always

possessed a character not merely respectable, but thoroughly noble;

never forfeiting the esteem of his equals although stricken from their

visiting lists; and that, when in fulness of time he should make ready

for the final journey, he might boldly face these very chimeras and

say: "Often have I sinned against myself, and my own best happiness,

but never, never against you; come therefore and help me to die."

His father was a gentleman, a philosopher, a freethinker,--a visionary,

if you will. He raved about the new gospel of 1789, as one raves about

an exotic flower, because of its unparalleled oddity, and from the

conviction that it never can endure our climate. He had all kinds of

bourgeois intimates and the "Contrat social" was his favourite book.

But when his son, not from blind passion, but to satisfy conscientious

scruples, married an actress, he was beside himself. When Fritz, not

without a hint as to the circumstances that had led him to the fatal

step, announced his marriage, his letter was sent by the old Count to

his lawyer to answer. He himself refused any further intercourse with

his son.

Had Fritz's mother been living, all might perhaps have been different.

His wife would have been personally more distasteful to her than to his

father, the fact of the connection would have seemed to her more

miserable than to the old Count; but compassion for her child would

have triumphed finally over every other consideration, her heart

might have bled, but she would have taken home the distasteful

daughter-in-law, and have tried to educate her for her position. At all

events she would have known that when a man has trifled away 'the

world,' his own home is his true place of refuge.

To all this the old Count gave never a thought, although he was

kind-hearted, and Fritz had always been avowedly his favourite. He saw

nothing but the misery and degradation of it all; his heart was

benumbed by anger. All that was bestowed upon Fritz when he married,

was his father's curse, the property which he inherited from his

mother, and his share of what had belonged to an elder brother who had

died. Although he had from the outset belonged among the "_forcats du

mariage_," he did not for some time feel the burden of his chain and of

the enforced companionship. Of an intensely sanguine temperament he had

a positive genius for looking on the bright side of life. What annoyed

him most at first was being obliged, on account of his marriage, to

quit the service. He was terribly bored by having to spend the entire

day without his comrades or his horses. His yearly income at this time

amounted to the modest sum of six thousand gulden. After he had made

out a list of necessary expenses,--that is, added up certain figures

upon a visiting card with a gold pencil, he came to the conclusion,

with a shrug, that a married man could not possibly live upon six

thousand gulden a year, and that therefore, under the circumstances, he

might allow himself the privilege of contracting debts.

Of course he would have thought it niggardly to save up anything while

in the army; yet he had never been extravagant, he had always at the

end of the month had something left over with which to help out a

comrade.

He hoped to be able to curtail his household expenses; but there were

so many things that no respectable man 'could go without,' and still

more, which his wife could not deny herself.--

When Fritz was quite a little boy, his father had often admonished him

as to the serious nature of life, and had impressed him as a younger

son with the necessity of restricting his needs as much as possible,

and even of earning his own living. His narrow circumstances in the

future, had occupied the boy's mind, and one day he opened his heart to

his sister's governess, at that time his confidante. He said to her,

"Madame! Papa yesterday told of a contractor who employed people for

fifty kreutzers a day.--Is that fair?"

"Certainly, _mon bijou_. Why do you ask?"

The boy looked very important, and began to reckon on his small

fingers, "Fifty kreutzers a day--hm--that makes five gulden for ten

persons--if I marry, and my wife keeps a maid, and I a man--and if we

have six children beside--five gulden a day--I can afford that at

least."

At twenty-six years of age Fritz's ideas with regard to economy were

not much more practical. A household with neither man-servant nor

maid-servant did not come within his range of possibilities.

He spent a couple of weeks with his young wife at the Hotel Munsch; a

hostelry now out of fashion, but having for generations enjoyed the

patronage of the Malzin family, and after that he hired a pretty suite

of second-story rooms in a retired street, and arranged it according to

his taste, and as he honestly believed, as moderately as possible. He

had none of the snobbishness of an impoverished parvenu, who is ashamed

of being obliged suddenly to retrench, and hides his economies as a

crime. On the contrary, he exulted boyishly when he had succeeded in

procuring at a moderate price some pretty piece of furniture, an old

oriental rug, or a carved chest, nor did he ever hesitate to lend a

hand himself; he hammered and tacked with his slender fingers, as if he

had been bred to such work all his life.

And it must be admitted that, with the exception of the drawing-room,

which his wife in spite of his remonstrances persisted in disfiguring

with green damask hangings, purchased at an auction with her savings,

his little home was a masterpiece of tasteful comfort. His former

comrades liked to drop in often for a game of cards with him. There was

no high play, and the drinking was very moderate, but the supper, the

style of the company, and the company itself, were always alike

exquisite.

The only disturbing element at these unostentatious gatherings was the

mistress of the household, who sat opposite her husband at supper,

affected and peevish in manner, and really bored by the high-bred and

respectful courtesy with which she was treated.

At first Fritz had indulged in ideal schemes of educating his wife, but

they all came to grief. There was no trace in the wife of the docile

devotion of the betrothed. A woman whose whole heart is her husband's

never feels humiliated by his superiority. Her whole being aspires to

him, her perceptions become all the more acute, and in a very short

while she learns to divine, to avoid, whatever may offend him.

This was, however, by no means the case with Charlotte. Her love for

Fritz was of a very humdrum kind, and comprehension of him she had

none. She did not acknowledge his superiority. All his good-humoured

little preachments upon manners, she listened to with stubborn

irritability. She was characterized to an extreme degree by the

obdurate narrow-mindedness which sneers conceitedly at everything

unlike itself, and absolutely refuses to learn. Fine clothes and

pedantic affectations awed her, but she had no appreciation for

the simple good-breeding of a man whose manners are the natural

outgrowth of the habits of his class. Genuine good-breeding is like a

mother-tongue which is spoken from childhood unconsciously as to its

source, and correctly, without a thought of conjugations and

declensions.

This she neither knew nor understood; she was far better pleased with

the artificial manners which are acquired when one is grown up, like a

foreign tongue from the grammar, and which are continually seasoned

with pretentious quotations, from modern dictionaries of etiquette. The

difference between Count Fritz and a smugly-dressed bagman, lay in her

eyes solely in the title.

Before long Fritz grew tired of trying to educate her, and confined

himself merely to the most necessary admonitions.

Time passed--and there was a cradle hung with green silk in the

Countess's room, and within it lay a boy of rare beauty. Charlotte

petted and caressed her child with the instinct of tenderness shown by

the lower animals towards their young, an instinct which fades out

gradually, as soon as the offspring can forego its mother's physical

care. Fritz rejoiced over the little fellow and had him christened

Siegfried after the old Count his father, to whom he announced the

birth of his grandson, hoping that it might help to bring about a

reconciliation with the angry parent.

But the Count took no notice of the announcement.

At first Fritz's paternal sentiments were by no means enthusiastic, and

if at times he caressed the little man, it was more out of kindness

towards the mother than out of real interest in the child.

On one occasion, however, he happened to enter the nursery just before

going out, his hat on his head. The little one was in his bath, an

expression of absolute physical comfort in his half-closed eyes, and on

his plump little body, every dimple of which could be seen distinctly

beneath the clear water.

Fritz stopped, and playfully sprinkled a few drops of water upon the

pretty baby-face. The child opened wide his eyes, and when his father

repeated the play, the little one chuckled so merrily that it sounded

like the cooing of doves, while throwing back his head and clinching

his rosy fists upon his breast.

A few days afterward Fritz went again to the nursery; this time the boy

was just out of his bath and was being dried in the nurse's lap. He

recognised his father and stretched out his plump arms to him. Fritz

could not help tickling him a little, touching his dimples with a

forefinger, and catching hold of the wee hands; a strange sensation

crept over him at the touch of the pure warm baby-flesh.

From that time he went into the nursery every day, if only for a

moment. The child grew more and more lovely. His little pearly teeth

appeared, and soft, golden hair hung over his forehead. He soon began

in his short frocks to creep on all-fours over the carpet, and even to

rise to his feet, holding by some article of furniture; and once, as

Fritz was watching him with a languid smile, the boy suddenly left the

chair against which he was leaning, and proudly and laboriously putting

one foot before the other, advanced four steps towards his father, upon

whose knee he was placed triumphantly quite out of breath with the

mighty effort.

When a little girl appeared as a claimant for the green-draped cradle,

a pretty diminutive bedstead was placed in Fritz Malzin's room.

What good comrades they were, Papa, and Siegi! Fritz talked to the

little fellow of all sorts of things that he never mentioned to any one

else, of his loved ones, of his home! And Siegi would look at him out

of his large eyes, as earnestly as if he understood every word. Long

before he could put words together, the boy learned to say "grandpapa,"

and when his father, pointing to the photograph of an old castle, that

hung framed in the smoking-room, asked "Siegi, what is that?" the

little fellow would reply "Neeburg."

The child was his father's friend, his companion, and was loved with an

idolatry such as only those fathers can know who are estranged from

their wives, and have no other interest in life.

Of course the child had a French bonne, but her post was almost a

sinecure. Fritz scarcely lost sight of the child for a moment.

Shortly after his removal to Wiplinger street he had become convinced

by certain calculations, that, in view of the high price demanded by

hack-drivers, it was a great economy to keep horses.

The result of these calculations was attained after the fashion of the

clever man who demonstrated clearly that it is far cheaper to live in a

first-class Hotel than in one of the second class.

When Siegi was barely three years old, Fritz used to put him on the

seat beside him in his dog-cart, and drive with him in the Prater. For

greater security the child was tied fast to the back of the seat with a

broad, silken scarf.

Count Malzin's dog-cart was soon one of the best-known turn-outs in the

Prater; the picturesque, lovely child beside the handsome,

distinguished man could not fail to attract notice. Siegi was always

dressed in good taste, and his soft curls lay like gold upon his

shoulders. From time to time his little face was turned up eagerly to

his father with some childish question. Then Fritz would bend over him

with a smile, and sometimes put his arm around him.

It was a positive delight to see them thus together. Many a lady who

since Fritz's marriage had returned his bow but coldly, now nodded to

him kindly as they gazed after the child.

Once on a lovely day in April, Fritz alighted from his dog-cart with

his little son and took him to walk, as was customary in Vienna, in the

Prater. He was surrounded in a few minutes by a group of ladies with

whom he had formerly been acquainted. Siegi had a triumphant success,

every one wanted a kiss or a pat from his little hand.

"Exquisite!" exclaimed one after another. "What a little angel! Malzin,

you must bring the child to see us."

"Fritz, do bring him to see me to-morrow at five, my children take

their dancing-lesson then. You will come, won't you? You know the way."

And Fritz, flattered, smiled and bowed.

* * *

Since his marriage he had not gone into society; but for his boy's sake

he accepted these invitations; the little fellow must learn to

associate with his equals. Fritz resolved that he himself should alone

endure the consequences of his folly, his son should not suffer from

it.

Although well-bred people of rank in their normal condition usually

train their children to a conventional modesty of demeanour, Fritz, on

the contrary, took pleasure in making his son almost haughty, he, whose

own lack of all pretention had been a by-word!

When pride stands on the defensive, it always deteriorates somewhat.

* * *

In spite of the modest scale of his household expenses, Fritz found to

his surprise that during the first year he had spent just double his

income. "It is always so the first year," he consoled himself by

thinking, but when the second year was no better but much worse, the

matter began to annoy him.

At his card-parties, which were still kept up, although Charlotte but

seldom appeared at them, (a relief usually purchased by Fritz with a

box for her at the theatre,) one of the guests was a certain Baron

Schneller, a good-natured, well-to-do fellow, who had no taste for

earning money, and was in consequence rather in disgrace with his

family, who showed great diligence in that direction. He squandered his

income among antiquities and ballet-girls. His volunteer year he had

served in Fritz's squadron.

In his embarrassment Fritz applied to Schneller, and asked whether he

knew of any more profitable investment for money than Austrian

government bonds? Whereupon the banker's indolent son replied that he

himself always invested upon principle in mortgages, but if Fritz

wanted to know, he would ask his brother, who was at the head of his

father's banking-firm.

The next day he came, in his good-natured way, to see Fritz, bringing a

list of 'safe stocks,' which were just then paying enormous dividends,

and saying "My brother sends his regards, and begs you to consider him

entirely at your service in any financial operation."

With characteristic carelessness, Fritz delivered over his property to

the banker, and the banker protested that it was an honour to oblige

the young gentleman.

After this Fritz felt free to spend three times as much as before. His

property swelled and swelled without his comprehending the mysterious

reasons for its increase. At last it began to assume the most

unexpected dimensions. This lasted for some time.

One day the banker informed the young Count that he was a millionaire,

and asked him at the same time if he did not wish to realize.

"Where is the use?" said Fritz, "there is no hurry,--er--I'll have a

talk with you about it one of these days. I have no time just now."

He had promised the children to take them to the circus; of course he

had no time for business.

He was dining with Schneller, when he suddenly heard a young government

official, who did not belong exactly to financial circles, say. "A

sorry prospect--the evening papers say that the Sternfeld-Lonsbergs are

shaky."

Fritz was startled. Little as he troubled himself about business

affairs, he knew that the greatest part of his property was invested in

Sternfeld-Lonsbergs. He looked fixedly at his host, who, however, only

shrugged his shoulders, and remarking, "merely an insignificant

depression," scraped a piece of turbot from the half-denuded vertebrae

of the fish which the servant was handing him.

Fritz continued to talk to his fair neighbour with the self-possession

of a thoroughly well-bred man, while the Japanese dinner-service, with

the cut glass, and flowers on the table danced wildly before his eyes.

After dinner, his eye-glass in his eye, and a pleasant smile on his

lips, he took occasion to glance furtively at a paper, lying on a

little table. His blood fairly ran cold; suddenly Baron Schneller stood

beside him. "You are entirely wrong to be worried," he asserted, and

Fritz laughed and shrugged his shoulders as if the affair in question

were a mere bagatelle. But the next day he wrote a note to the banker

begging him to dispose of his stock for him. The banker dissuaded him

from selling, the market was unfavourable; for the present he insisted

the only thing to do was to wait.

Fritz complied; shortly afterwards the banker advised him to take part

in a complicated transaction which Fritz took no pains to understand,

but which Schneller assured him positively would result in enormous

profits.

It was simply a reckless piece of stock-gambling.

Fritz agreed to everything--what did he know about it? His financial

affairs began to inconvenience him more and more. He wanted to be rich.

Just at this time he had to pay a couple of large bills, which had not

been presented for three years. He thought of his father. Good Heavens!

The old Count could not be angry still. But, after years of alienation

he could not in a financial difficulty make up his mind to appeal to

him without further preface.

"No, no, that will not do," he said to his small confidant, Siegi. "We

must first see whether grandpapa cares for us, and if he does then we

will make our confession; if not--_vogue la galere_."

He never guessed the terrible misery that menaced him. Poverty was a

phantom of which he had heard, without believing in it--it was as

incomprehensible to him as death to a perfectly healthy man.

And so Siegi's bonne had to dress the boy in his newest sailor suit,

and his father took him to be photographed.

The picture was excellent. Fritz took a boyish delight in it, and

showed it to all his acquaintances. He thought it impossible that the

grandfather could resist that cherub face. He wrote the old Count a

letter, every word of which came warm from his heart, telling him how

he longed to see him, and then he guided Siegi's hand--the boy had just

begun to write the alphabet large between pencilled lines--to write

upon the back of the photograph: "Dear grandpapa, love me a little--I

send you a kiss and I am your little grandson. Siegi."

He awaited an answer in feverish but almost unwavering hope. The fourth

day brought a letter from Schneeburg. Fritz recognised his father's

handwriting and hurriedly tore open the envelope. It contained nothing

save Siegi's photograph, which the old Count had returned without a

word.

Fritz clinched his fist and stamped his foot. Then he lifted his little

son in his arms, kissing and caressing him as if to atone to the boy

for the insult cast on him.

It was impossible to ask any favour of one who could act thus, even

were he his father.

This was at the end of September, and shortly afterwards came ruin,

utter inevitable ruin! Not modest poverty which privately plucks our

sleeve and whispers, "retrench--economize!" no, but downright brutal

poverty, that seizes us by the collar with a dirty hand and wrenching

us out of the warm soft nest of our daily habits, casts us out into the

cold barren street with "Starve! vagabond! freeze!"

The million had disappeared, and when the banker, Schneller, announced

to Fritz his ruin, he added, "of course you cannot be forced to meet

your obligations, Herr Count. The matter lies partly in your own

hands."

Fritz stared at him! The worst of it all was that his property was not

sufficient to cover his indebtedness!

A multitude of petty creditors suddenly flocked around, saddlers,

tailors, shoemakers, upholsterers, whose bills mounted to thousands.

Fritz was beside himself. Small tradesmen must not lose by him. He

broke up his entire household, and disposed of everything, from the

oriental rugs in his smoking-room, to Siegi's black velvet suit and

Venetian lace collar.

But with all that he could do he could not pay every one. Some of the

lesser creditors were coarse and pressing, but most of them only meekly

twirled their caps about in their hands, murmuring, "We can wait, Herr

Count; we rely entirely upon the Herr Count."

He lived through each day dully, almost apathetically. The dreariness

and emptiness of his house made no impression upon him. When the time

came for him to part with his horses--a member of the _jeunesse doree_

of Vienna bought them at a high price--he took Siegi and went down into

the stable, where he fed the beautiful creatures with bread and sugar,

and stroked their heads and patted their necks; and when he turned and

left them neighing and snorting with delight--it seemed to him that a

piece of his heart were being torn from out his breast!....

* * *

Every day his wife asked him when he was going to appeal to his father,

but he made no reply. After the insult that the old Count had offered

to his darling, nothing should ever induce him to make another appeal.

Nothing? So he thought then. "My father must have heard of my

unfortunate circumstances," he said to himself, "and if it does not

occur to him to help me, there is nothing that I can do."

He determined to find a situation,--of course one befitting his name

and station. If every ancient noble name to-day in Austria cannot lay

claim, as in France in Louis the Fourteenth's time, to an office at

court, or to a salary, there are at least a hundred kinds of sinecures

that can afford the means of living suitably for their rank, to young

scions of the nobility who have not sinned against the prejudices of

their caste.

His fatal marriage aggravated the difficulties of Malzin's position.

The horizon of his existence contracted and darkened more and more.

The dogged determination which, closing accounts with the past,

resolutely clears away the debris of a ruined life from the path which

is to lead to a new existence, Fritz did not possess. His was the

passive endurance of pride, which calmly bows beneath the burden, and

drags on with it to the end, simply because it scorns to complain or to

appeal to compassion.

_One_ feeling only was stronger within him than pride, and that was

love for his children.

Were he alone concerned, he would rather have starved than prefer a

second request after the first had been refused, but he could not bring

himself to see his children slowly starve.

He applied to several individuals who had always been on terms of great

intimacy with his family, but after some had refused to receive him,

and others had ignored his request with a forced smile, he felt

paralysed, and resigned himself for a while to melancholy, brooding

inactivity. There must come a change sooner or later, he thought. In

the meanwhile he lived upon--debt, and could not comprehend why

professional usurers should need so much urging to induce them to lend

him, the probable heir of Schneeburg, a paltry couple of hundred

gulden.

Had he been more exactly informed of his father's circumstances, this

would not have surprised him so much. But he had heard nothing of the

old Count for years. A strange repugnance had prevented his speaking of

him to strangers,--it would only expose his own unfortunate

estrangement from his father to their indiscreet curiosity. Every day

he had a secret hope, although he hardly admitted it to himself, that

the old Count would take pity upon him, and suddenly appear

providentially.

But his father did not appear, and thus it was that finally he, Fritz

Malzin, with his wife and children occupied two dingy third-story

rooms in Leopold street, rented from his mother-in-law, who kept a

lodging-house for gentlemen.

Charlotte from morning until night bewailed her husband's

unconscionable heedlessness, but in reality she was much happier than

in Wipling street. To lounge about all the morning in a slatternly

dishabille, to help prepare the breakfast for the lodgers, to gossip a

little and flirt a little, and then in the evenings to array herself in

the finery which she had contrived to smuggle into her present

quarters, and to go to Ronacher's or some other beer-garden, where half

a dozen second and third-rate coxcombs addressed her as 'Frau

Countess,' and paid court to her,--such a life was bliss after the

tedium of her former existence. She went out every evening, leaving

Fritz at home with the children, revolving all kinds of improbable

possibilities which might suddenly improve his condition, and devising

schemes dependant upon lucky accidents that never happened.

Sometimes a little warm hand was thrust into his; and a soft voice

whispered to him: "Papa, tell me a story!"

Then rousing himself from his sad reveries, he would try to make up

some merry tale, but Siegi would shake his head, and nestling close to

his father with his arms clinging about his neck and his head leaning

against his father's cheek would beg, "Tell me about Schneeburg, Papa."

The winter with its long nights wore on in close rooms poisoned by

coal-gas, and pervaded by the cramping sensation of wretched

confinement. Spring came; Siegi had lost his rosy cheeks, and his merry

laugh. Every afternoon towards sunset his father took him out to walk.

The child coughed a little.

One warm day in April the clouds were hanging low, while ever

and anon in the narrow street a swallow skimmed anxiously to and fro.

Siegi was weary, and his little feet dragged one after the other,

when suddenly he pulled his father's hand, joyously shouting: "Papa,

papa--look--don't you see?--there is our Miesa!"

Fritz looked. It did not take an old 'cavalry man' an instant to

recognize in an animal harnessed to a fiacre, one of his handsome

horses of aforetime.

"Miesa! how are you, old girl?" he said caressingly.

The creature recognised him instantly, and whinnied her delight. Fritz

patted her neck and lifted Siegi up that he might kiss the white star

on the animal's forehead, as he used to do.

Then they resumed their walk. Without saying a word Fritz stroked his

little son's cheek;--it was wet with tears. The poor little fellow was

crying silently, for fear of grieving his father!

Fritz felt a strange, choking sensation. He took the boy to a

confectioner's, but the child could eat nothing.

That night Siegi was taken ill. The physician pronounced it

inflammation of the lungs. Lying in his father's arms for three days

and nights, the boy suffered fearfully, and then the crisis was over.

At the end of three weeks the little fellow could leave his bed, but he

was paler and weaker than ever.

During Siegi's illness Fritz borrowed a hundred gulden from a former

friend. Shortly afterwards he saw this friend in the street and was

advancing to meet him when he saw him cross over the way with the

evident intention of avoiding him. Fritz's blood was stirred at this,

and blind, reckless rage seized him. The paltry hundred should be

repaid at any cost. He sold his winter overcoat, and the golden

chronometer which his father had given to him on his sixteenth

birthday, and which was to have been an heirloom for Siegi.

He paid the hundred gulden--but ah, how often he repented it!

CHAPTER IX.

Among the lodgers at the widow Schmitt's, as Charlotte's mother was

called, was a sallow-faced old woman, whose room was a small, dark,

comfortless hole, and who wore the same shabby, green gown, summer and

winter, year in and year out. She was known as Frau Pick, and she was a

professional beggar.

One day, on returning from some humiliating errand, Fritz heard one of

his sisters-in-law call to his wife: "Pick is waiting."--"I am ready,"

was the reply, and Charlotte came out into the passage with a letter in

her hand. Fritz sprang to meet her, snatched the letter from her,

forced her back into the room and, entering, closed the door behind

them.

The letter was addressed to the archbishop of Vienna.

"What does this letter contain?" he asked angrily, seizing her so

rudely by the wrist, that she screamed and fell upon her knees before

him; she did not answer his question, however.

"Is it a begging-letter?"

"Yes."

He thrust her from him indignantly. "Shame upon you!" he exclaimed.

"It is all your fault!" she replied scornfully, "if you won't work, I

must beg."

"Ah!"--he staggered as if from a blow full in the face, snatched up his

hat and went out.

Before night he had a situation in the office of a tramway company, at

a hundred gulden a month.

The summer was more sultry than usual. The air in Vienna seemed

fever-laden. The trees in Ring street no longer rustled dreamily as in

Spring, there was a sound among their parched leaves as of a low cough.

If a rose bloomed out in the public gardens in early morning, before

evening it looked dry and withered, like a reveller returning from a

masked ball; the blue Danube was as tawny as a canal, and Vienna

reminded one more than ever of Manzanares.

The theatres were deserted, the tramways overcrowded, all who could

went out into the country. Pedestrians hugged the wall on the shady

side of the street; the skies were one monotone of blue. The glare of

the house-fronts made the eyes ache.

The pestilent summer atmosphere of cities hung over Vienna, saturated

with decay, and reeking with filth. A deadly epidemic broke out; in

almost every block one met a sad litter, borne by silent sanitary

officials.

* * *

Siegi grew weaker and more weary day by day; he coughed a little but

never complained. Fritz consulted his old family physician who merely

prescribed nourishing food and country air.

Fritz insisted upon knowing whether any danger was to be

apprehended--the old man remained silent, and of a sudden the father

felt that freezing thrill that comes of touching a corpse. For the

first time he recognized the possibility of the child's death.

All his pride broke down at the thought; he wrote immediately to his

father, unfolding to him his own need and the child's condition, and

imploring permission to bring the boy to Schneeburg.

Days passed into weeks; his letter was unanswered. He lived on

mechanically with sufficient mental force to fulfil his duties at the

office. He performed them slowly and with difficulty, but he was

treated with consideration. Even had there been a way close at hand out

of the misery he could hardly have found it now.

Every morning Siegi's weak little voice sounded weaker, as he said,

when his father left him, "Come back soon!"

Why had he repaid that hundred gulden? There was no conceivable

humiliation to which he would not gladly now have submitted could he

but procure for Siegi the comforts that were needed! But to have to

haggle over the price of an orange or of an ice!

There were moments, when he ground his teeth, and in his heart avowed

that he was ready and willing to beg, to steal for Siegi. But not every

one who will, can be a rogue. Once or twice he met a 'friend' who still

lingered in Vienna. He advanced towards him--with words of begging on

his lips--only to be seized with a fit of trembling--no, he could

not--he could not--it was impossible!

And scarcely had his 'friend 'passed by before he cursed himself for

his--cowardice. Weaker and weaker grew the child. Once Fritz took it to

the Prater to amuse it. The gay music of the band, the carriages, all

that the summer had left, in which the boy had once found such delight,

now cut him to his little heart.

They sat together upon a bench, beneath the dusty trees. The child

looked at the throng of vehicles with eyes wide and fixed--the father

looked at his son. "Does it amuse you? Do you like it, Siegi?" he

asked, bending tenderly over him; the boy smiled faintly and said,

"Yes, Papa!" But, in a few moments he leaned his tired little head

against the father's breast and lisped, "Let us go home."

Only a little while longer and Siegi could not leave his bed--and Fritz

heard the dread word 'consumption!'

He knew that it could be only a question of weeks, and sometimes said

to himself that it would be better for the child if death would come

quickly. But he thrust the thought from him. No, no, he yearned to hear

as long as possible the little voice, and to stroke the thin cheek. The

rosy childish face was wan and pinched, the arms looked like little

brown sticks, the delicate tracery of the blue veins about the temples

grew daily more distinct, the brow grew more like marble....

Then came mornings when Fritz, going early to his office, feared that

he should not find the child living upon his return in the evening. As

he mounted the stairs when he came home his heart would seem to stand

still--he would enter the room very softly. The little head would move

on the pillow, a hoarse little voice would gasp: "Papa!" and the

father's heart would leap for joy!

It came towards the end of August--in a heavy, stifling, sultry night.

He was alone with his child.

Charlotte had retired; she could not look upon death. The heat was

intolerable. The windows were wide open, but they looked out upon a

court where the air was no cooler than in the sick-room. The fragrance

of the roses and mignonette, which Fritz had brought home with him to

perfume the air a little, floated sadly through the small room. It

seemed as if the death struggle of the flowers mingled with the death

struggle of the child. Siegi lay in his little bed, propped up with

pillows. His breathing was so short and quick that it could hardly be

counted. "Papa!" he gasped from time to time.

"What, my darling? Do you want anything?"

"No,--only--when are we going to Schneeburg?"

"Soon, my pet--very soon!"

The child became half unconscious, tossed from side to side, and

plucked vehemently at the sheet with his emaciated little hands.

Delirium set in, he laughed aloud, chirrupped to imaginary horses, and

then with a thin, quavering little voice, began to sing an old French

nursery song that his bonne had taught him:

"_Il etait un petit navire_...."

Poor Fritz's blood ran cold, he took the child in his arms, and clasped

him close. The cooler air of dawn breathed through the room--the light

of the poor candle flickered strangely. Gray shadows danced on the wall

like phantoms--the low chirp of a bird was heard in the distance.

Suddenly the flame of the candle leaped up and died out. Fritz started

and gazed at the child--it was dead!

CHAPTER X.

The next morning Fritz received a letter from his father enclosing a

draft for a thousand-gulden note, coupled with the old Count's cordial

and anxious words. His son's last letter had reached him in the most

complicated roundabout way; he had just returned from a voyage to

Australia, and had known nothing of Fritz's unfortunate circumstances.

In reply Fritz merely wrote, "The child is dead."

* * *

It was the afternoon after the funeral, and Fritz was all alone in the

house. Charlotte had taken the children for a little walk; there was a

sharp ring at his door. He rose and opened it. A white-haired old

gentleman of distinguished mien, asked, "Is Count Malzin----"

"Father!" stammered Fritz.

The old man advanced a step, eagerly scanned the face that had grown

wan and haggard almost past recognition, then opened wide his arms and

clasped his son to his heart. All anger, all bitterness on both sides

was forgotten.

They sat down in the dim, sordid room in which Siegi had died, and

Fritz laid bare his heart.

They sat close enough to read the deep sympathy in each other's eyes,

and to hear each other's low tones, and in the midst of his

inconsolable grief, Fritz rejoiced in being once more with some one who

understood him, some one to whose loving compassion he could confide

the wretchedness of his life.

He told his father everything; of his marriage, of his imprudence--of

his misery. He soon perceived that the old Count had believed Charlotte

to be worse than she was, and therefore had refused to acknowledge

Siegi as his grandson.

But that was all past and gone! He made his son bring out all the

likenesses of the dead boy, and was absorbed in every detail concerning

him; he asked endless questions, and seemed as if he would thereby fain

have assumed a share of his son's overwhelming grief, relieving Fritz

of it to that extent at least.

At last steps were heard outside, and Charlotte entered with the

children. Fritz winced.

"Father, this is my wife."

The grand old Count advanced to meet her as if she were a princess,

called her "daughter" and kissed her forehead. He could not

sufficiently caress and pet the children.

The next morning Fritz with the children paid him a visit at the Hotel

Munsch, and they took leave of each other with affectionate cordiality.

"Of course you will come to Schneeburg with your family as soon as

possible," the old Count said anxiously, as they parted. "You need your

home, my poor boy."

And Fritz rejoiced--in the midst of all his grief,--at the thought of

home.

They had already begun to get ready to leave Vienna, when a letter

arrived from Schneeburg.

"Dear Fritz,

Hard as it is to write it, I must ask you not to give up your situation

in Vienna for the present. My poor, dear boy, I can do nothing for you

until my affairs are arranged. Only have patience and all will soon be

well, etc...."

* * *

When the hoped-for arrangement was completed it was discovered that the

old Count was penniless. In his costly expedients to raise money he had

begun frittering away his property and then--it seemed incredible--he

became infected with the general mania for finding millions on the

highway, and had entangled himself in a colossal speculation in

Australian gold mines. Conte Capriani, with whom he had become

acquainted in Vichy, had convinced him of the certainty of gain in the

affair. Capriani's name alone was sufficient warrant for the value of

the stock. The old Count was made president of the company; his name

was used to inspire the public with confidence,--his noble old name

which he had borne so honourably for sixty-five years! The first year

the company paid enormous dividends--out of their capital. In the

second year matters began to look suspicious. The Conte slowly withdrew

from the scheme--he found that certain things were different from what

he had supposed; he had been falsely informed.... He advised the Count,

who went to Paris to consult him, to dispose of his stock slowly

without exciting suspicion. But the Count would not listen to anything

of the kind. He had pledged himself to the public, his easy confidence

had induced hundreds of men to buy the stock, he had urged many of them

to do so thinking it was for their advantage. Among them were poor

people, impoverished relatives, nay even old servants, his children's

former tutors who had invested all their savings in this unfortunate

scheme, upon his recommendation. He was beside himself, bought up as

much of the stock as he could, and went himself to Australia to

investigate matters. He, who in his whole life from his school-days up

had never known anything of figures beyond what enabled him to keep the

reckoning at whist, now ciphered and calculated, bringing all his

powers of mind to bear upon the possibilities of profit.

He found matters by no means as desperate as had been represented in

Europe--the affair might have been made a success with prompt energetic

management; what was needed was more capital. But the confidence of the

stockholders was shaken; the Count upon his return to Europe tried in

vain to issue fresh stock, he applied fruitlessly to the Conte

Capriani, representing to him that as the originator of the entire

speculation he was bound to help. The Conte maintained that he was

powerless.

The stock fell lower and lower, fell with bewildering rapidity.

One day Fritz received a letter: "Schneeburg must be sold."

The poor fellow felt as if his sore heart had been struck with a

hammer. His sad yearning for his home was turned to a burning thirst--a

consuming desire. He was as homesick as a peasant, nay--as a Slav.

Men who live in cities and change their dwelling-place three or four

times, never strike root anywhere, and consequently can have no

conception of the homesickness that attacks a man who is separated from

the soil upon which he and his ancestors for generations have been born

and bred. A man thus bred has become acclimated like a plant, to this

special air, this special soil, and however long the years of absence,

wherever he may have lived meanwhile, he will always yearn for 'home.'

Fritz had caught a cold upon leaving Wipling street, at the same time

that Siegi had been taken with the illness that ended in his death.

Fritz recovered, but his health was shattered, his voice was husky, and

h" had feverish nights which in spite of weariness were wakeful. For

hours he would pace the wretched room where stood Siegi's empty little

bed, which he had not brought himself to have removed, and would

conjure up visions of Schneeburg.

Sell Schneeburg! In his pain at this fresh blow he forgot for a moment

his grief for his child. Memories of 'home' thronged about him with a

vividness that savoured of mental hallucination. He saw the morning sun

glitter in the dewy moss that lay green on the thatched roofs of the

village, he saw the very puddles before the houses wherein the swine

wallowed, and a flock of fowls scratching on a muck-heap, and a group

of shivering children cowering beneath the cross before the smithy.

He saw the pond in the middle of the village; the little dusky waves

swelled and rippled beneath the nipping wind of autumn and a single

rugged elm cast its long reflection across the broken surface. He saw

the soft black soil on the edge of the pond stamped with countless

impressions of webbed feet. He saw the geese themselves, hissing and

flapping their wings while the sunlight played upon the rough pink

surface of their plucked breasts. Thatched roofs, swine, and geese had

certainly never interested him much--these detailed impressions had

been made upon his mind all unconsciously--they belonged to the whole.

He saw long transparent wreaths of mist like ghostly shrouds, floating

above the freshly-ploughed fields, and the crows flapping above the

brown leafless trees, in gloomy processions, mourners for the dead

summer,--a dun-coloured cow was standing between two gnarled

apple-trees by the way-side, looking inquisitively out of her dark-blue

glazed eyes.

The pictures grew confused, and again distinct. He saw the park with

its broad emerald meadows where the venerable trees grew in large dense

clumps. He knew the voice of every single tree, the rustle of the oak

differed from the murmur of the copper-beech; he knew the very tree

which would turn orange-coloured in autumn, which one only yellow,

edged with black, and which one dark crimson. They stirred their grand

old heads and broke into a chant; it sounded like a magnificent choral

through the still autumn air, while single leaves, frosted with dew, as

with delicate molten silver, loosed their hold and sank slowly

fluttering down upon the grass.

And the kitchen garden, that Paradise of childhood, with its hoary

apricot-trees, whose mellow fruit always dropped on the old-fashioned

sage beds. Ah, what fruit it was, so big, and so yellow, and so juicy!

Then he laughed softly at something that had happened twenty years

before, and--waking from his visions, and his reverie, passed his hand

across his brow. Where was he? Sitting in the room of a miserable

lodging-house, beside the empty little bed of his dead child.

He lay down very weary. The last thing that he saw distinctly before

falling asleep was a large circle of red gravel in front of Schneeburg

Castle, furrowed with delicate ruts. These ruts formed the figure of

eight--the first figure of eight which he, a boy of fifteen, had drawn

in the gravel with his father's four-in-hand--the delicate fragrance,

not perceptible to every one, of wild strawberries floated past him,

and then all faded. Sleep compassionately laid her hand upon his heart

and brain. He slept the sleep of the dead for a couple of hours, and

the next morning his torture began afresh.

He could have wandered barefoot like a beggar to Schneeburg, only to be

able to fling himself down on that dear earth, and kiss the very soil

of his home.

The sale was long in concluding,--purchasers chaffered as usual, when

in treaty for an impoverished estate. There were fears that it would be

brought to the hammer. But in the spring Capriani appeared and offered

a price for Schneeburg which was at least sufficient to cover the

Count's indebtedness. His lawyer urged the old man not to delay

accepting this offer, but Siegfried Malzin still hesitated. For three

days he wandered about Schneeburg like one distraught, then he began to

yield conditionally, but all conditions vanished before Capriani's

energy. Malzin lost his head, and made many injudicious concessions. He

sold with the estate very many valuable articles that he ought to have

kept for himself. He forgot everything--and as a man at a fire will

finally rescue in triumph an old umbrella, and a child's toy, so he

rescued from his property, in addition to the family vault, which from

the first he insisted upon keeping, nothing, save--the stuffed charger

which stood in the hall, and which a Malzin had bestridden on the

occasion of the liberation of Vienna by Sobiesky.

The morning after the deed of sale had been signed, the former

possessor of Schneeburg was found dead in his bed--heart-disease had

delivered him from misery.

* * *

On one and the same day Fritz heard of the sale of Schneeburg and of

his father's death;--he was crushed.

Capriani had a weakness for taking into his service impoverished men of

rank. They worked but indifferently well, as he knew; but nevertheless

he preferred to employ them. He paid them well, and treated them

cruelly.

One day he offered Fritz the post of private secretary. To the

astonishment, nay, to the horror, of all his friends, Fritz accepted

the position.

On a cool evening in May he took possession with his wife and children

of the little cottage on the borders of the park, close to the kitchen

garden, and a sense of delight mingled with pain, thrilled through him,

as he hurried along the paths of the dear old home that now belonged to

another.

He had to warn his children not to run on the grass, not to pull the

flowers, and upon his own land!--yes, his own by right--he never could

appreciate that this land had ceased forever to be his.

He could not look upon Capriani except as a temporary usurper. He could

not but believe in counter revolutions--what was to bring them about he

could not tell.

Sometimes when he suddenly came upon old Miller, his former nurse who

had found an asylum with him, he would say: "Miller, do you remember

this--or that?" and upon her "yes, Count," he would smile languidly.

All the fire, all the impetuosity of his nature was extinct.

Sometimes he roused himself to feel that it was his bounden duty to do

something to reinstate his son in his rights. But what?

Conte Capriani, to be sure, had begun life with a single gulden in his

pocket, but that was quite a different thing. It was not for Fritz

Malzin to enter the lists with the stock-jobber, who knew so well how

to keep just within the letter of the law.

And so he continued to live, sadly resigned, dreaming of old times,

hoping for wonderful strokes of fortune that never took shape. All the

while he indulged in visions, and every evening, when he laid his

cards for Patience he consulted them, always asking the self-same

question--"Will Schneeburg ever revert to my children?"

BOOK THIRD.

CHAPTER I.

A jingling of bells, a clatter of hoofs from five spirited bays

harnessed in Russian fashion, and hardly seeming to touch the earth as

they fly along, a rattle of wheels, a whirling cloud of dust,--and

Oswald Lodrin's five-in-hand came sweeping round a corner in one of the

old-fashioned streets in Rautschin. People ran from everywhere to

stare,--a housemaid cleaning a window, leaned out at the risk of her

neck, to follow the gay equipage; two small boys going home from

school, paused and vented their delight in waving their caps and

cheering; Oswald nodded to them kindly. His eyes were aglow with

happiness, he had a white rosebud in his button-hole. His future

father-in-law sat beside him in the driver's seat, and Georges was on

the seat behind.

It was the day before the election. Oswald had just come from Castle

Rautschin, where, according to agreement, he was to pick up his uncle

to drive with him to the railway station, and he had taken this

opportunity to display his new five-in-hand to his betrothed. The five

horses clattered along gaily, as if to the races, instead of to a

railway station.

"We must hurry, there is the signal," said Georges half rising from his

seat, to gaze in the direction of the station.

"Don't be afraid," rejoined Oswald, "it is an Express, to be sure, but

if it sees us coming, it will wait!"

"True! I forgot we were in Austria," said Georges laughing.

The bays flew like birds along the avenue of ancient poplars. The

sun shone on their trim, plain harness, upon their glossy hides;

white and blue butterflies were fluttering above the earliest

wayside-flowers. A few minutes later Oswald drew up before the station,

built Austrian-wise, after the ugly fashion of a Swiss cottage.

"Sapristi! He too is going to the election," exclaimed Georges, as he

observed Capriani's equipage.

"You may be very sure he will not hide his light under a bushel,"

grumbled Truyn.

"And I quite forgot to have a railway coupe reserved for us. Did you

remember it, uncle?" asked Oswald.

Time passed. Oswald's servant hurried off to get the tickets, and when

the gentlemen went to take their places, they found that there were but

two first-class coupe's, one occupied by a lady with her invalid

daughter, the other by the Caprianis, father and son. What was to be

done? It was most vexatious; the three gentlemen, with their servants

bearing portmanteaux and dust-coats, the station master and the

conductor, all stood on the platform in consultation, while the train

patiently waited.

The third signal whistled, Conte Capriani appeared at the door of his

coupe with a smile of invitation.

Georges calmly shifted his cigar from one corner to the other of his

mouth.

"Better open an empty second-class for us," said Truyn frowning.

"I have none quite empty," the conductor explained; "but this gentleman

will get out at the third station."

"It is the cattle-dealer from Kamnitz," whispered Oswald with a little

grimace, after glancing through the window of the coupe. But it made no

difference to his uncle who immediately sprang in and took his seat,

followed by the young men. What if the man were a cattle-dealer? Truyn

remembered having seen him before, and at once entered into

conversation with him upon the price of meat, a conversation in which

Oswald, remarkably well up as he always was in all agricultural

matters, took part. The cattle-dealer alighted at his destination,

greatly impressed by the affability of the noblemen, and convinced that

all he had heard of their arrogance was false.

"If the coupe only did not smell so insufferably of warm leather!"

exclaimed Truyn after the dealer's departure, "and ugh! the man's cigar

was positively--"

"It often happens now-a-days," interposed Georges, "that a gentleman is

forced to travel second-class to avoid a stock-jobber. The question in

my mind is, when will our civilization be so far advanced that the

stock-jobber will travel second-class to avoid one of us."

"We shall never live to see that," said Oswald.

"The insolence of those people waxes gigantic," said Georges.

"It is our own fault; if we had not danced hand-in-hand with them

before the golden calf, they would not now be so presuming," observed

Truyn, "remember --73."

"Hm,--our worship of that idol showed simplicity, to say the least,"

remarked Georges, "the golden calf returned so much gratitude for our

homage."

"So much gratitude," growled Truyn. "I did not share in the worship,

but I do in the disgrace!--But enough of that! Can Capriani vote? He

has not owned Schneeburg for a year yet."

"No, but has he not another estate in Northern Bohemia?" asked Georges.

"You are right, he has," said Truyn. "I suppose he will vote with the

Liberals."

"In all probability!" replied Oswald. "_Tous les republicains ne sont

pas canaille, mais toute la canaille est republicaine_."

"I do not think that Capriani openly ranks among the Liberals,"

remarked Georges, "I know of a certainty that not long ago he placed

large sums of money for charitable purposes at the disposal of several

ladies of the Faubourg St. Germain."

"That was when he was a candidate for the Jockey Club," rejoined

Oswald. "I heard about that. Ever since he was black-balled there, he

sings a different song. He is organizing Liberal schools at Schneeburg,

and has a great deal to do with universal enlightenment."

"Confound universal enlightenment!" railed Truyn.

Oswald shrugged his shoulders, "I should not shed a tear for it," said

he, "in the first ardour of my charitable schemes I took some interest

in it, but I soon detected the wretched business, masked by that

high-sounding phrase;--it means universal distribution of rancid scraps

of learning sure to provoke an indigestion which as surely will develop

into an enlargement of the spleen. That kind of knowledge never widens

the horizon of the masses--it does nothing, except pick holes in their

illusions."

"Widen the horizon--pretty stuff that!" said Truyn, the reactionary.

"In my opinion a contracted horizon is the condition of happiness for

the masses."

"My dear fellow, if you attempt to advocate such views ...." began

Georges, half laughing, half indignant.

"My views, remember," interrupted Truyn, "are the result of years of

experience; I have lived here all my life, and know the people better

than any freshly imported Herr Capriani, blown hither, Heaven only

knows whence. What we want is a contented, well-fed, warmly-clad

people, that will play merrily with the children on Saturday evening,

go piously to church on Sunday morning, and not discuss too much on

Sunday afternoon."

"Yes, of course," assented Georges. "What you want, first and foremost,

is a people that won't disturb your peaceful enjoyment of life. There's

no denying that."

"I am perfectly open to conviction," asserted Truyn with dignity. "As

soon as you prove to me that these disturbers of the public peace

promote the happiness of the masses, I will ground arms before them."

"Happiness!--I don't believe that those people care as much as they

pretend for the happiness of the masses," said Oswald, looking up from

his note-book in which he had begun to scribble rapidly. "Happiness is

conservative--they would gain nothing from that. As far as I can see,

all they want is to rouse the discontent of the people by constant

irritation," and he turned to his note-book again. His scribbling did

not seem to run as smoothly as before.

"There you are right," agreed Truyn. "Their aim is to arouse the

discontent of the people--the discontent of the masses is the tool of

their entire party, and they will go on sharpening it until some fine

day they'll cut their fingers off with it, and serve them right."

"Decry the degenerate portion of the species as much as you choose,"

replied Georges, "you cannot but acknowledge that modern democracy has

been of immense service to mankind."

"_Verite de monsieur de La Palisse_," muttered Oswald, without looking

up.

"Don't talk to me of your 'modern democracy,' I made its acquaintance

in France--this 'modern democracy' of yours," thundered Truyn in a

rage. He drew a deep, shuddering breath, lighted a cigar and gazed out

of the coupe-window, apparently to allay his political anxiety by the

sight of his dearly-loved fatherland.

He did not succeed, however, for before a minute had passed, he turned

to Georges again and exclaimed angrily, "How delightful to contemplate

the next generation; what a charming prospect! A people all ignorant

atheists. I ask no severer punishment for the agitators who have

wrought the mischief in this generation, than to be obliged to govern

the next.

"I suppose they themselves would desire nothing better," said Oswald

smiling.

"That's perfectly true; all they are struggling for, is power,"

muttered Truyn.

"Excuse me, my dear friend; but what are you struggling for?" asked

Georges.

"What are _we_ struggling for," repeated Truyn, looking at him

compassionately, "what are we struggling for?--I will tell you;--for

the Emperor and our fatherland, which means for order and justice,

for the dignity of the throne, for the sanctity of home, for the

fostering of beauty and nobility, for all the wealth of human

achievement which we have inherited from the past, and ought to

bequeath to the future--in a word, Georges,--we are protecting

civilization."

"Bursts of applause from the Right--aha--congratulations to the orator

from the Left!" said Georges laughing, then turning to Oswald who was

still scribbling, he observed, "I rather think you have been taking

short-hand notes of your uncle's speech. We will send them to Otto

Ilsenbergh, he will be delighted."

"Nonsense!" said Oswald. "I am composing a telegram."

"In verse?" Georges asked innocently.

"Georges! As head of the family I desire to be treated with more

respect," said Oswald, laughing.

"Oh, it occurred to me, only because you were making so many

corrections," rejoined Georges.

"The thing is quite difficult--it must be so worded that Gabrielle

shall understand it,--and the telegraph operators shall not; I cannot

manage it."

"Suppose you refresh your powers with a glass of sherry," proposed

Georges, taking down an appetizing lunch-basket from the rack above his

head, and drawing forth a bottle and three wine-glasses.

The wine had a decidedly soporific effect upon the three travellers.

Truyn's political excitement was soothed, and after drinking to a

better future, all three leaned back in silence.

Truyn pondered upon the shy, timid confession that his wife had made to

him that morning early, very early, as they were sauntering together in

the park, while the sun's first slant rays were breaking through the

shrubbery, and the morning-dew was still glittering on the meadows.

"The whole earth seems bathed in tears of delicious joy," his young

wife had whispered, and then through her own happy tears she had begged

him to give her a 'really large sum' from her own money that she might

make some of the poor people on the estate happy too.

Gradually his thoughts wandered, and grew vague; the sounds of railway

bells, and the shrill whistle of the engine, the grating voices of

conductors, and the monotonous whirr of wheels mingled, subsided, and

died away; his latest impressions faded, and, instead of the green park

of Rautschin, a dim Roman street rises upon his mental vision, with a

procession of masked torch-bearers accompanying a coffin;--the picture

changes, the Roman street is transformed to a lofty hall so tragically

solemn that the sunbeams lose their smile as they enter the high

windows and glide pale and wan through the twilight gloom to die at the

feet of ancient statues. He looks about him, lost in surprise and

wondering where is he?--in the tomb of the Medici?--or among the

monuments of the melancholy gray church of Santa Croce? No, he suddenly

recollects it is the Bargello, and yon white marble, that gleams

through the dim religious light in such lifelike, or rather deathlike,

beauty, revealing, as it lies outstretched, such clear-cut, nay, such

sharp outlines, and the noble attenuation of youth, eager and fiery, is

Michael Angelo's 'dead Adonis,' the ideal embodiment of the springtime

of manhood crushed in its bloom. Anon vapour curls upward, and the

crimson flicker of torches plays over the white statue, the masked

torch-bearers stand around it, a wailing chant echoes through the

hall--who is it lying there listlessly, with the ineffable charm of a

fair young form, which death has suddenly snatched, before the poison

of disease has wasted and deformed it?--

Truyn started, broad awake, every pulse throbbing.--Merciful God! how

could he dream anything so horrible! Oswald sat opposite, with eyes

half-closed, an extinguished cigarette in his hand. His face wore the

expression of absolute content which is so often strangely seen on the

face of the dead and which none except the dead ever wear, save the

few, who, by God's grace, have been permitted to behold Heaven upon

earth. Truyn could not away with a sensation of painful anxiety.

"For Heaven's sake, Ossi, open your eyes!" he exclaimed.

"What is the matter?" asked Oswald.

"Nothing," said Truyn, "only...." at that moment the train stopped.

"Pemik!" shouted the conductor, "ten minute's stop," and then opening

the coupe door he politely informed the travellers that another coupe

was now at their service.

CHAPTER II.

Pernik is the junction of several railway lines, trains coming from two

separate watering-places connect here with trains from Prague, and set

free the travellers who have tried the virtue of the various baths.

Ladies with faded faces, and bouquets of faded flowers, were wandering

about looking for hand-bags gone astray or for waiting-maids, men were

busily munching, glad to forget over their first sandwich, the dietetic

limitations to which they had been forced to submit while undergoing a

course of the baths; locomotives were hissing and puffing like monsters

out of breath after a race; the sunshine glittered on the flat roofs of

the railway-carriages, the whole atmosphere reeked with coal-dust, and

hot iron; there was the usual bustle of hand-cars piled with luggage

pushed along the rails, of the shifting of cars on the tracks, and of

vendors of fresh water and Pernik beer, with newspaper boys loudly

extolling their various wares.

Escorted by the obsequious conductor, and followed by the servants, the

three conservatives were making their way through the hurly-burly when

they nearly ran against a young man, who, with his hands in the pockets

of his rough coat, was striding through the crowd, never turning to the

right or the left, in a line as straight as that of the railway between

St. Petersburg and Moscow.

"Pistasch!" exclaimed Oswald.

"Ah, I thought I should meet you somewhere."

All began to talk at once, when suddenly Pistasch turned, and said,

"Good-day!" to Conte Capriani, who was coming towards him with extended

hand, and an air of great cordiality.

Oswald and Truyn held themselves very erect, looked straight before

them, and, passing Pistasch and Capriani, entered their coupe.

"I do not understand Kamenz," said Truyn, after they had installed

themselves comfortably, and Georges had called from the window for a

glass of Pernik beer. Oswald, his elbows propped on the frame of his

window, was taking a prolonged observation of the interview between

Capriani and Pistasch Kamenz.

The third bell rang--the speculator and the nobleman shook hands and

separated; then Pistasch approached the coupe where sat the three

conservatives, and asked, "Any room in there for me?"

"Room enough, but we're not sure that we ought to let you come with us,

you renegade!" said Oswald, unlatching the coupe door. "Are you too

going to Prague for the election?"

"No," said Pistach lazily, "not if I know it, in this heat. I am going

to the races--but I shall vote."

"Such indifference, nowadays, is culpable," said Truyn gravely. "This

is a serious time."

"Bah! it is all one to me, who goes to the Reichsrath;--moreover,

whoever he may be, he exists principally for the benefit of the

newspapers," replied Pistasch apathetically.

Only a few years previously, Truyn himself had defined the Reichsrath,

as a 'circus for political acrobats'--but his political views were now

daily gaining in consistency.

An interest in politics is usually aroused in men of his stamp, when

they are between forty and fifty years of age--at a time when the taste

for champagne begins to yield to that for claret. Almost all men are

thus aroused at two different periods of life; in early youth and in

late middle age.

That which ten years before Truyn had ridiculed, was now invested for

him with a sacred earnestness.

"We must be true to our convictions for our country's sake!" he

exclaimed.

"Has any one really any convictions,--political ones I mean?" asked

Pistasch, "my conviction is that it is all up with us, but the country

will last as long as I shall--after that I take no interest in it."

"And is this your latest creed?" asked Truyn indignantly.

"It is a very time-honoured creed, uncle," said Georges, "if I am not

mistaken it was the fundamental article of faith of that lugubrious

Solomon in a full-bottomed wig, who played such unholy pranks in

France, under Voltaire's reign. '_Apres nous le deluge!_'"

"Louis Fifteenth, do you mean?" asked Truyn.

But Pistasch observed, "You have become fearfully erudite while you

have been abroad, Georges. I fancy you are preparing to apply for a

professorship of history, in the event of the social cataclysm that

seems at hand."

All the while the train is rushing onwards, past pastures seamed by

narrow ditches, past turnip-fields, past villages with ragged thatched

roofs, and tumble-down picket fences upon which red and blue garments

are hanging to dry, while lolling over them are sunflowers, with yellow

haloes encircling their black velvet faces. Nowhere is there a trace of

romantic exuberance, everything tells of sober, practical thrift.

A white, dusty road winds among slender plum-trees, and along it is

jolting a small waggon, drawn by a pair of thirsty dogs, their tongues

hanging from their mouths; a labourer, half through his swath in a

clover-field, fascinated by the whizzing train, stops mowing and stares

with open mouth and eyes.

Truyn has become absorbed in the contents of 'The Press' which he holds

stretched wide in both hands. Oswald, Georges, and Pistasch have

improvised a table out of a wrap laid across their knees, and are

indulging in a game of cards.

"What's the news, uncle?" Oswald asked as he shuffled the cards.

"The authorities have forbidden the importation of rags at any Austrian

port; and a Jew has been butchered somewhere in Russia," Pistasch

replied incontinently. Truyn paid no heed to Oswald's question but all

at once he dropped the newspaper.

"What is the matter?" asked the young men.

"Wips Seinsberg has died suddenly!" said Truyn.

"Poor devil!" said Oswald, with about as much sympathy as we feel for

people not particularly congenial. "He was a good fellow, but somewhat

vacillating! Ever since his marriage I have seen very little of him."

"Was he married?" asked Truyn, who, during his stay abroad, had lost

sight of Wips Seinsberg.

"He married into trade," Oswald said curtly.

It is odd; elsewhere the daughters of tradesmen marry into the

nobility;--in Austria the sons of the nobility marry into trade!

"Into trade?" Truyn repeated slowly, and interrogatively.

"What did he die of?" asked Pistasch.

"It does not say," replied Truyn re-reading the notice in the

newspaper.

"Hm!--that looks suspicious," said Pistasch.

CHAPTER III.

The election is over. Pistasch has shaken hands with all the

middle-class land-owners, and has done wonders with that haughty

condescension of his wherewith he was wont to charm the hearts of such

people. Truyn has been enlightened by his political friends as to the

state of Bohemian affairs, and Oswald has been cordially congratulated

by every one. He is one of those universally popular men before whom

even envy and malice lower their weapons. His career has been hitherto

like the triumphal march of a young king--let him but appear, and lo!

an illumination, and flowers strewed before him.

After the election Truyn went to dine at the chief restaurant in

Prague with some friends whom he had met for the first time for

years;--Georges, Pistasch, and Oswald with the indifference of youth

took their lunch at 'The Black Horse,' whither they went from the

station. Then Georges departed to revive old associations in various

quarters of ancient Prague. Oswald's father had been wont to pass his

winters in Vienna, but his younger, poorer brother had his winter

quarters in the comparatively humble Moldavian town. Georges looked up

the confectioner who had been his first creditor, wandered dreamily

through the gray precincts of the public school where he had studied

for two years, after his tutors could do nothing more for him, walked

across the picturesque Carl's bridge to the Lesser-town, the hoary old

Lesser-town, the home of the aristocracy of Prague, cowering in pious

veneration at the feet of the Kaiserburg, like a grey-haired child who

still believes in fairy stories. There, in one of the angular,

irregular squares, just opposite two tall narrow church windows, stood

the small palace where Georges passed his boyhood, and which his father

finally sold to a wealthy vinegar manufacturer. He scarcely recognised

it again. The old stucco ornamentation had been painted a staring red;

and a dealer in hams and sausages had his shop in the lower story.

"_Tempera mutantur!_" muttered Georges.

* * *

In a spacious room, tolerably cool, the shades all drawn down, the

furniture consisting of dim misty mirrors in shabby gilt frames, of

cupboards with brass hinges, and of green velvet chairs and sofas,

Oswald lay back, in an arm-chair, laughing heartily at Pistasch's

account of a late adventure.

Pistasch went to one of the three windows, and drawing the shade half

up looked out into the street.

The front of 'The Black Horse' looks out on the _Graben_, the _Corso_

of Prague.

All whom cruel fate had compelled to remain in town during the

intolerable heat of the season, were lounging about in the late

afternoon upon the heated pavement of the square.

Students with the genuine High-German swagger, over-dressed misses,

round-shouldered government clerks, a wretched poodle scratching at his

muzzle, an officer with jingling sabre, hack drivers, dozing peacefully

on their boxes while their horses, with forelegs wide apart and heads

in their nose-bags, dreamed of the 'good old times' when they caracoled

beneath the spurs of gay young cavalry officers,--those 'good old

times' whose chief charm for hack horses as for mortals, may perhaps

consist in the fact that they are irrevocably past.

The sultry heat beats down on all, debilitating, oppressive.

"How long have you known that Capriani," Oswald asked his light-hearted

friend, after a pause.

"I really cannot tell you," was the reply, "he once did me a favour

without knowing me, except by sight, and then--then he came to me one

day with some trifling affairs that he desired I should arrange for

him, and referred to the former kindness he had shown me."

"And ever since then you have been upon friendly terms with him?"

"Not quite all that," replied Pistasch, shrugging his shoulders, "but

what would you have? He consults me about his horses--his ambition is

to win at the Derby;--and I consult him about my investments, the

purchase of stock, etc."

"And each overreaches the other?" said Oswald, smiling.

"Up to this time I have the advantage," affirmed Pistasch, "and I have

a prospect too, of a sinecure as the President of the Gruenwald-Leebach

stock company."

"With which of course you will have nothing to do except to inspire the

public with confidence, and rake in money," said Oswald.

"Incidentally," Pistasch rejoined calmly.

Oswald drummed upon the arms of his chair, sitting erect, and looking

very grave.

"Take care, Pistasch; 'those who lie down with dogs, are sure to get up

with fleas.'"

"You are a reactionary martinet," growled Pistasch. "Am I the first to

associate with speculators? Barenfeld, Calmonsky, Hermsdorf--are all

men very different from myself, but you see their names at the head of

all kinds of banks and stock companies."

"Unfortunately;" said Oswald, "that charlatan of a Capriani has

infected you all--you all want to learn from that gentleman the secret

of manufacturing gold. But you will learn nothing, and will inevitably

all burn your fingers. I should think you might take warning from poor

old Count Malzin."

"Oh, Malzin was such an unpractical man, he looked at everything from

an ideal point of view," replied Pistasch.

"So much the better!" exclaimed Oswald eagerly. "That was why

throughout the whole business it was his property alone that was

sacrificed. You cannot imagine the harm done by this dabbling in

speculation. It undermines our whole social order. We are at best not

much else than romantic ruins. So long as the ruins can succeed in

inspiring the public with respect, just so long they may remain

standing. But let them once lose their prestige, and they will be

regarded as useless rubbish, and as such be cleared away as soon as

possible. What preserves us is a strict sense of honour, and a

contempt for ignoble methods of money getting. Pride without a

chivalric back-ground is but a shabby characteristic, and if ...."

Some one knocked at the door, and the waiter entering handed Oswald a

visiting-card.

"_Le comte_ Alfred de Capriani," read Oswald, "it must be for you," he

said contemptuously, without noticing the few words written under the

name, as he tossed the card to Pistasch.

"No," said the latter, "it is for you--look there--read,--'begs Count

Lodrin for a brief interview.'"

"Extraordinary presumption!" grumbled Oswald, and then, with a shrug,

he told the waiter to show the Conte in.

"You consent to receive him?" asked Pistasch.

"Good Heavens, yes!" replied Oswald, smiling, "he has just done me a

kindness, my dear Pistasch, and has come for his pay. There are people

who play the usurer with their kindnesses as well as with their money.

I will tell you the story by-and-by."

"Very well. Adieu, for the present; in half an hour I'll come and take

you to the theatre;--she's not bad,--Giuletta as _Gretchen_."

And Pistasch departed; a minute afterward Capriani entered the room.

CHAPTER IV.

There are two ways of manifesting haughtiness,--that of Count Pistasch,

and that of Oswald. If Pistasch had to receive an obnoxious visitor, he

kept his cigar in his mouth, and his hands in his pockets;--Oswald, on

the other hand, at such times observed the most marked and the most

frigid politeness.

He received Capriani with a slight inclination of the head, and the

conventional form of greeting, invited him to be seated, and took a

chair opposite, naturally supposing that the Conte, with business-like

promptitude, would immediately begin to speak of the purpose of his

visit;--but no!--the Conte remained mute, only rivetting his large eyes

upon the young man. Why should Oswald find those eyes so annoying? How

came it that he seemed to have seen them before in some familiar face?

There was nothing bad in them--on the contrary at that moment they

expressed only intense admiration, an expression, however, by no means

to Oswald's taste. There might be reasons why he should condescend to

discuss business-matters with Conte Capriani, but he thought it

entirely unnecessary to subject himself to the Conte's admiration. He

therefore broke the silence.

"You have done me a great favour," he began drily, "I shall be glad to

show my gratitude for it."

"Ah, such a trifle is not worth mentioning," said Capriani. "I was

exceedingly delighted to have a chance to testify the cordial regard

that I have always entertained for you."

"Quite insane," thought the young man. Then aloud. "I confess that this

regard is rather incomprehensible to me,--moreover,--I believe you

wished to speak with me upon business."

"Certainly!" replied Capriani, "but the business was merely a

pretext,--imagine it,--a pretext for me,--a business-man _par

excellence_--to obtain an opportunity of conveying my personal

sentiments ...."

"The obtrusiveness of these creatures passes all belief," thought

Oswald. "I beg you," he said, "to take into consideration the fact that

my time is,----unfortunately, not at my own disposal, and that

consequently it would be well to come to the point. I think I can guess

the purpose of your visit. Count Malzin informed me not long ago of

your wishes. They are, so I understand, that I should give my support

in an application to the government for a railway franchise, or rather

that the plan of the railway, already projected, should be modified to

meet your requirements--am I right?"

"A trifle,--a trifle," said Capriani taking a compendious map of

Bohemia out of his pocket and spreading it out upon the table between

Oswald and himself. "The projected track lies here--and here," he

explained drawing his finger along the map.

With something of a frown Oswald attentively followed the course of

that pudgy, sallow forefinger, saying in an undertone, "Pernik,

Zwilnek, Minkau,--that track seems to me entirely to conform to the

present pressing need of the country,--will you now show me the

alterations that you desire."

Capriani's forefinger began to move again, "Tesin, Schneeburg,

Barenfeld."

Oswald's face grew dark. "That track would be very disadvantageous for

the X---- district," he observed.

"You have estates in X----" said Capriani hastily, and imprudently.

Cautious and diplomatic as he was in business, his caution could go no

further than his comprehension of human nature. The circle of his

experience had hitherto comprised only those human weaknesses in

manipulating which he had always shown such consummate skill. He had no

faith in genuine disinterestedness; he held it to be hypocrisy, or, at

best, only traditional habit,--aristocratic usage. He had no idea of

how his words grated upon Oswald's sensitive ear. "You have estates in

X----, Herr Count."

Oswald's lips curled indignantly. "That seems to me a secondary

consideration," he rejoined sharply.

"Not at all," asserted Capriani, "I would not for the world run counter

to your interests, I have them almost as near at heart as my own...."

"That really is...." Oswald began to mutter angrily between his

teeth,--and then controlling his impatience by an effort, he said

coldly, lightly tapping the map as he spoke. "A little while ago you

did me a favour, and it would be a satisfaction to me to testify my

appreciation of your courtesy as soon as possible, but I think your

projected alteration of the railway very disadvantageous for the

country. However, I am quite ready to consult an expert."

The blood of the Cr[oe]sus tingled to his very finger ends. There

was something profoundly humiliating in Oswald's pale proud face. He

did not comprehend the young man's moral point of view, he perceived

only the haughtiness that rang in his words, and it aroused his

antagonism. Suddenly he remembered,--and there was a kind of bliss in

the thought,--the pecuniary embarrassments in which Oswald was probably

involved. This was the only ground upon which he could show

superiority, and make the young man aware of it. "Consult an expert? an

empty formality!" he said in a changed, harsh voice.

"Let us be frank--the interests of the country in this whole affair are

of very little consequence--private interests are at stake--yours and

mine; I grant that the X---- district will be damaged by the new track,

but on the other hand Tornow wilt gain immensely. And such trifles are

not to be despised even by a Count Lodrin,--the track passes

principally over very unproductive land in your estates my dear Count.

You have only to name your price for that land, and I am entirely at

your service."

For a moment there was absolute silence. An angry gleam flashed from

Oswald's eyes as he fixed them on the Conte.

The ticking of the two men's watches could almost be heard, the

lounging steps of the passers-by in the street below were distinctly

audible. At last Oswald said contemptuously and clearly: "The sale of

my pastures is not of the slightest importance to me in comparison with

public interests. Moreover, we, you and I, do not speak the same

language, we might talk together a long time and fail to understand

each other. Therefore it seems useless to prolong this conversation."

With which he arose.

Capriani, however, did not stir, but calmly returned the young man's

look. Something like triumphant scorn, something that was almost a

menace shone in his eyes.

"You refuse then to speak a word to the ministry in favour of my

scheme?" he asked slowly and with a sneer.

"Decidedly," replied Oswald.

With head slightly thrown back, twisting his watch chain around his

forefinger, he looked down at the Cr[oe]sus. He was one of the few to

whom haughtiness is becoming.

Was it possible that Capriani, the least imaginative, the most

avaricious of men, could succumb to this personal charm?

The Conte suddenly arose, gathered up the map, crushed it together, and

dashing it on the floor, stamped on it. "I could carry it out, and it

is my favourite scheme," he cried, "but what of that, I give it up,

Alfred Stein can do as he chooses. I throw away millions for your sake!

For your sake, Count Oswald!"

His agitation was terrible and extreme, as he held out both hands to

the young man.

Oswald angrily retreated a step. Had the man escaped from a lunatic

asylum?

Just then the door opened.

"Well, Ossi?" Pistasch called.--"Ah!"--perceiving the Conte--"beg

pardon for intruding."

"Not at all," said Oswald decisively, without looking at Capriani, "we

have finished."

The Conte bowed and withdrew. But he turned in the doorway and said,

"Might I beg you, Herr Count, to carry my remembrances to your honoured

mother. For although she does not know Conte Capriani--she will surely

be able to recall Doctor Alfred Stein." Whereupon he disappeared.

Oswald went to a marble table whereon stood a caraffe of water, and as

he took it up he met his own glance in the mirror hanging above the

table. A shudder crept icily over him. He poured out a glass of water,

and drank it at a draught.

"What is the matter?" asked Pistasch.

"Nothing," Oswald replied slowly, and almost dreamily. "Talking with

that--that scoundrel has agitated me. I feel as if I had just got rid

of some loathsome reptile."

CHAPTER V.

"Is smoking allowed, I should like to know?"

Three times Pistasch made this impertinent little remark as he gazed

about him in 'The Temple of National Art.' It was a temporary temple,

neither unsuitable, nor wanting in taste, but built in the rapid,

superficial manner of a circus, constructed over night as it were, and

it was now filled to overflowing with Bohemian lovers of music.

The four gentlemen were sitting in a proscenium box; Truyn and Georges

in front, Pistasch and Oswald behind them. The opera was Faust, the

_mise en scene_ was rather primitive, and the tenor had a cold; but the

principal part was sung by an Italian prima donna who had not only a

magnificent voice, but also a pair of uncommonly fine eyes.

It was during the third _entr'acte_ after the cantatrice had been

enthusiastically applauded that Pistasch allowed himself the foregoing

impertinent observation.

"Do you want to be turned out?" asked Georges.

"I spoke quite innocently, and seriously," said Pistasch.

Immediately afterwards he recognised in the next box a young man as a

certain Doctor of Law, with whom he had been associated a few years

before on the committee of a charity ball. He extended his hand to him

round the front of the box, asked respectfully after the health of a

deaf aunt, and after a talented sister, and even made inquiries about a

cross cat, a pet of the doctor's, all in faultless idiomatic Bohemian,

thus establishing his reputation as a thoroughly genial and national

nobleman.

Truyn looked extremely dignified, repeatedly expressed his great

pleasure in the progress made by his beloved countrymen, in the course

of the last fifteen years, as well as in the advancement of the

national cause. Once during the conversation he attempted to make use

of the Bohemian idiom, but he only excited the merriment of his

auditors.

Oswald was pale and silent.

"What is the matter with you, my boy?" asked Truyn, observing with some

anxiety, his weary air, and the dark rings round his eyes.

"I am not quite up to the mark," said Oswald.

"I hope you're not going to be ill," remarked Truyn.

"Bah! He hasn't yet recovered from his conversation with Capriani,"

said Pistasch. "For my part I cannot understand how you can be in the

slightest degree affected by what such a man as that says or leaves

unsaid."

"We are not all such philosophers as you," Georges observed, glancing

anxiously at his cousin.

The door of the box opened--a slender, dark-complexioned man entered.

"Good evening! How are you?"

"It was Sempaly, younger brother of Prince Sempaly, to attend whose

marriage he had just returned from the East. He was much tanned and his

sharp features wore an air of languid weariness. Prince Sempaly had a

few days previously married Nini Gatinsky. The new-comer was warmly

welcomed, and then, of course, inquiries were made concerning the

bridal pair, Truyn declaring his pleasure in their marriage.

"It pleases me too, exceedingly," said Sempaly, with more warmth than

he was wont to display. "They are both to be congratulated. Nini was

always a dear creature, and she is prettier now than ever; and a nobler

character than my brother's I have never known."

"One thing however surprises me," observed Pistasch, the indiscreet,

looking inquisitively at Sempaly, "your brother has been a widower for

five years; it cannot be that he has spent all that time in bewailing

the loss of the Princess. Why did he not grasp his happiness before?"

"I cannot enlighten you on that point," replied Sempaly with a shrug.

But Truyn said, smiling, "Perhaps it did not depend altogether upon

Oscar; Nini may possibly have had a voice in the matter."

"You too are going to have a wedding soon," said Sempaly, apparently

desirous of changing the subject. "How these young people are growing

up! If the resemblance to his mother were not so striking, I should

hardly recognise your future son-in-law. Let me congratulate you," and

he held out his hand to Oswald, "congratulate you most sincerely. And

how are you at home?" he added, turning suddenly to Truyn.

"All well," Truyn replied a little stiffly.

"Pray, carry to your wife and daughter the regards of--one who shall be

nameless," said Sempaly with bitterness.

A short pause ensued; then he began, "What do you think of Seinsberg's

suicide?"

"Suicide?" exclaimed Truyn.

"Did you not know it?" asked Sempaly.

"I suspected something of the kind," said Pistasch.

"What was the cause of it?" asked Truyn.

"Too intimate an acquaintance with the Conte Capriani?" surmised

Pistasch.

"You have about hit the nail on the head, Pistasch," said Sempaly,

turning his back to the stage and speaking towards the interior of the

box. "It is terrible to think how many of us have fallen victims in

quick succession to the rage for speculation."

"It is all over with us!" said Pistasch.

"Do have done with that eternal refrain of yours,"' said Truyn

indignantly.

"Well, Georges agrees with me, and even Ossi seems to be infected with

our disheartening ideas," rejoined Pistasch, "he declared to-day that

we were nothing but romantic ruins."

"Ah, the ruins in Austria stand firm;" rejoined Truyn, always the same

reactionary idealist, "of course we must consider how to adapt the

ancient structure to the needs of the age."

"Do you think so?" said Sempaly, twirling his moustache. "Would you

turn the Coliseum into a gas-works? For my part I am not greatly in

favour of the practical adaptation of historical monuments. Bah! leave

us as we are! The ruins will remain standing for some time yet, and in

virtue of their time-worn uselessness, will manage to overawe the

practical modern architecture that is springing up all around them,

until the next earthquake, and then--crash--" he made a quick,

characteristic gesture--"and after the downfall those who carp at us

the most now will perceive how large a share of poetry and civilisation

lies beneath the wreck. It is all over with us, but what is to come

hereafter?"

"What is to come hereafter? That is easy enough to foretell;" said

Georges quietly, "the universal dominion of the Caprianis!"

"You do Capriani by far too much honour," rejoined Truyn.

"Do not be too sure," said Sempaly, "he is more dangerous than you

imagine. It makes me fairly shudder to see how he encroaches upon us,

how he hates us, and how much mischief he can do us."

"I wish I knew how he contrived to scrape together so much money in so

short a time," sighed Pistasch plaintively.

"I have heard that like Sulla, and various other great men, he owes his

rapid success to the fostering protection of the other sex;--they say

he has had immense good fortune in that direction, and in spheres where

it was least to be expected," said Sempaly.

"What! such a low cad as he!" The elegant Pistasch shrugged his

shoulders incredulously.

"Well--" Sempaly gazed into space in a characteristic way; then still

twirling his moustache he said with a melancholy cynicism all his own:

"There are certain clumsy night-moths who are strangely skilled in

brushing the dew from weary flowers in sultry nights."

Oswald, who had been bestowing but a languid attention upon

the conversation, now exclaimed angrily, "I detest such vague

imputations,--no one has any right to sully the fame of a number of

unknown women by a suspicion that--that--" Confused by Sempaly's

surprised, searching glance, he stopped short.

"What is he thinking of?" asked Sempaly, looking round at the others.

"A betrothed lover cannot tolerate any aspersion cast upon the fair

sex," said Georges.

"_Qu'a cela ne tienne_," rejoined Sempaly, "the betrothed of Gabrielle

Truyn ought to be above such sensitiveness. Gabrielle comes from the

corner of the earth, which Love Divine sheltered beneath angels' wings,

when the devil showered his poison over all creation. Happy he who

meets with such a girl!"

"You do not know her," said Truyn, whose eyes, nevertheless, sparkled

with gratified paternal pride.

"I knew her as a child," said Sempaly slowly, "and I know who completed

her education."

For a moment they were all silent, and then Truyn began, "I must tell

you a delicious bit of gossip, Sempaly;--only fancy, in the spring, in

Paris, Capriani, one fine day, sent that goose, Zoe Melkweyser, to sue

for Gabrielle's hand! What do you think of that?"

"Incredible!" exclaimed Sempaly.

"Was it not?" said Truyn, who took special delight in recounting this

tale, and turning to Oswald, he went on, "Our Gabrielle and a son of

Capriani,--was there ever such a joke?"

But Oswald was silent.

"You seem inclined to take your rival extremely tragically," rallied

Pistasch.

"This is the tenth time, at least, that I have heard the story," said

Oswald angrily.

"You'll have an irritable son-in-law, Truyn, at all events," interposed

Sempaly with a sneer.

At this moment Pistasch, whose rage for popularity was always on the

alert, called out over the heads of Sempaly and Truyn, "Good evening,"

to a tall, red-haired young man who had slowly made his way to the

front of the pit. With delight in his eyes and a succession of nods,

the red-head acknowledged the greeting.

"Who is that?" asked Georges.

"The surveyor's clerk who assisted at the polls to-day--an old

acquaintance of mine," said Pistasch.

Oswald's glance fell upon the red-head. He had recognised in the man at

the polls the same whom he had struck in the face with his riding-whip,

in the dingy little inn-parlour. The encounter in the morning had made

no impression upon him, but now....

"Good Heavens, how ill you look!" exclaimed Truyn.

"I feel wretchedly," said Oswald in a forced voice, putting his hand to

his head, "do not let me disturb you, I will go home."

"You make me anxious, my boy," said Truyn, "wait a moment, and I will

go with you."

"No, no, pray uncle, it is really not worth the trouble, I can easily

find a fiacre," remonstrated Oswald, in a strained unnatural voice. But

Truyn, always anxious about those dear to him, could not be deterred

and the two left the box together.

"What is the matter with Lodrin to-night?" asked Sempaly as he took

Truyn's seat. "I could not understand him. Eight years ago, when I saw

him last, in Vienna, he was such a bright, merry fellow...."

"Well--" and Pistasch drew a long breath, "he is just beginning to

suffer from the Phylloxera."

Georges replied to Sempaly's further inquiries, for Pistasch had become

absorbed in an endeavour by sundry little grimaces to put out of

countenance the Siebel of the performance, who was skipping awkwardly

about the stage in boots much too tight. In this interesting amusement

Pistasch forgot all else beside.

CHAPTER VI.

"You really do not know what you wish," said Truyn in surprise when

Oswald changed his mind for the third time about leaving Prague. After

going with Truyn to the races on the first day succeeding the election,

he would not hear of attending them with Georges and Pistasch on the

second day. It was settled that he was to return home with Truyn; then

he began to waver and fidget, and at last he telegraphed,

countermanding the carriage that had been ordered to meet him, and got

up a sudden interest in the horses of the Y---- stud which were to race

for the first time. Before long, however, this interest subsided, and

to Truyn's great surprise Oswald informed him at a moment's notice,

that after all he was going home with him.

"You will send me over to Tornow, uncle--or shall I telegraph for the

horses?" asked Oswald.

"Good Heavens, no! You can spend an hour with us, at Rautschin and take

a cup of tea, and then I will send you home, you whimsical fellow,

you," replied his uncle, and so they drove together through the quiet

summer morning to the station.

The streets were deserted except by the street sweepers, with their

watering-pots busily laying the dust. The wheels of the hack rumbled

noisily over the uneven pavement past brilliant cafes and shop windows,

finally by the fine new National Bohemian Theatre, until their sound

was deadened by the wooden planks of the Suspension Bridge. As usual

the bridge is undergoing repairs; and this delays the hack, which, in

addition is impeded by a battalion of infantry and two lumbering ox

carts; there is a strong smell of mouldy planks, and hot pitch, by no

means adding to the fragrance of the morning air. But these trifling

annoyances cannot provoke Truyn, or destroy his pleasure in gazing on

his native town.

The Moldau, slaty grey in hue, with silvery reflections, flows among

its green, feathery islands, and, parallel with the modern suspension

monstrosity, the mediaeval Koenigsbridge, picturesque, and clumsy,--the

statues on its broad balustrade black with age like the primitive

illustrations in some old Chronicle,--spans the stream with its solemn

arches.

The Kaiserburg, surrounded by haughty palaces with an unfinished gothic

cathedral, looks down from the summit of the Hradschin, upon its image

mirrored in the water in waving lines, and columns tinged with green.

The morning sun glows on the five red glass stars before the green St.

John on the Karlsbridge, and far away on the left and right, far into

the receding distance, until all objects are mellowed and blent,

stretch the banks of the river like a long drawn symphony of colour

dying away in palest violet.

"After all, it is a fine, a magnificent city!" exclaimed Truyn with

enthusiasm.

"Pistasch said yesterday that Prague was a dismal hole," was Oswald's

reply, "you may both be right--it all depends upon how you look at it."

The phrase falls keen and chilling upon Truyn's enthusiasm, like ice

into boiling water. Surprised, and well nigh irritated, he turned to

his future son-in-law. As, however, he is far less sensitive than

good-natured, a glance at Oswald converts irritation into eager

compassion: "I wonder where you can have caught it?" he sighed, shaking

his head.

"Good Heavens, what?" asked Oswald.

"I wish I knew," said Truyn, "either intermittent fever or a slight

touch of jaundice,--for a man of your age and with your constitution

there's no cause for alarm, but your mother will reproach me with your

looking so ill!" Then Truyn leaned out of the window of the hack to

admire the Hradschin once more, before subsiding into a corner with a

sigh of content, and lighting a cigar.

Oswald's nature is certainly as poetic as Truyn's, and never before had

he driven over the suspension bridge, on a summer's morning, without

revelling in the beauty of the Bohemian capital. But to-day everything

is metamorphosed, beauty is ugliness. For him the world within two days

had undergone a transformation.

The human mind is like a mirror, upon the quality whereof depends the

character of the reflection in its depths; in one mirror all things are

reflected yellow, in another green, in a third every line is vague,

shadowy and undecided; one shows objects lengthened, another broadened,

and should the mirror be cracked, everything that it reflects will be

distorted.

CHAPTER VII.

Zinka and Gabrielle were at the railway station to meet Truyn, both

gay, cordial and surpassingly lovely. The sight of them, and their

merry talk at first brightened Oswald's mood. But suddenly at tea,

which on the travellers' account was a substantial meal, a wretched

sense of discomfort attacked him anew.

As he had often laughingly boasted of his punctilious fulfilment of any

commission from a lady, Gabrielle, before he left for Prague, had

entrusted to him, to have repaired, a gold clasp of Hungarian

workmanship set with rare, coloured stones.

When at the table she asked him, "How about my clasp--did you bring it

with you, or is the jeweller to send it?" he started, saying, "Forgive

me, I forgot all about it."

Gabrielle stared--"Forgot--my commission?"

"Good Heavens! I am not the only man who ever forgot anything!"

exclaimed Oswald irritably.

It was the first unkind word he had ever uttered to his betrothed.

Astonished and grieved she cast down her eyes. But Truyn, who, as long

as Oswald was well and merry, was continually finding fault with him,

being now seriously concerned about the young man's health took his

part.

"Have a little patience with him, comrade," said he to his daughter,

"he is not well,--look at him, a man who looks as he does must not be

scolded. When he is himself again we will both scold him roundly."

"Forgive me, Ella," entreated Oswald humbly, holding out his hand to

her. "I have an intolerable headache, uncle. Please have the carriage

brought round, I must go home."

CHAPTER VIII.

The road from Rautschin castle to Tornow goes directly through the

village, across the market-place, and past the inn, 'The Rose.'

Involuntarily Oswald glanced towards the unpretending front of the

tavern. Conceited and bedizened, with a dirty coat, and with bare feet

thrust into morocco slippers down at the heel, the same waiter is

standing in the doorway, just as he stood there on that rainy afternoon

in spring, when Oswald took refuge in the inn-parlour.

Was everything to be forever reminding him of that odious scene?--In

Prague he had fancied that he should soon be able to shake off the

hateful sensation produced by the interview with Capriani, just as we

all overcome the nervous shudder, caused by some revolting spectacle.

But no! for three days it had lasted and he could not rid himself of

it,--on the contrary this hateful sensation was growing more defined.

Of course he did not frame his suspicion in words, he was ashamed of

it; he called it an _idee fixe_, resulting from nervous irritability

still remaining from a slight sunstroke which he had had the year

before, but for all that, he could not away with it. Countless memories

of trifling events, dating from earliest childhood, crowded upon his

mind, all pointing, with a sneer, one way. There was a lump in his

throat, a weight as of lead upon his heart; the pain waxed more and

more intolerable. He could have leaped out of the carriage and have

flung himself down in the road with his face in the very dust, in an

agony of shame and horror!

For the first time in his life he was reluctant to go home; he was

afraid of meeting his mother. There was a kind of relief in the thought

that she was not expecting him, and would not come to meet him. He

clinched his hands tightly, and gazed abroad, striving by the sight of

distinct, familiar objects, to exorcise the evil phantoms that

possessed his soul. But everything that his eyes beheld was stamped

with ugliness and dejection. The leaves on the trees were limp and

dusty. The grain, lodged by the storms, lay on the ground, half rotted

in its own luxuriance. The farmers could recall no former year so rich

in promise, so poor in fulfilment.

When at length he reached the castle, he could hardly bring himself to

ask after his mother, or to go and look for her. How could he, while

his mind was filled with such vile abomination? He went up to his room,

where the first object that met his eyes was the white death-mask upon

the wall. He grew dizzy, a black, crimson-edged cloud seemed to rise

before him; he flung open the window,--the air cooled by the sunset,

and laden with the fragrance of flowers, played about him, and

refreshed him,--he breathed more freely.

Just then a soft, gentle sound fell upon his ear--his mother's voice!

He shivered nervously from head to foot. How sweet, how noble was that

voice!

"So, so, old friend; fine, good Darling! Bravo, old dog, bravo!"

These words spoken with caressing tenderness, reached him through the

silence. He leaned out of the window--there she sat in a large wicker

garden-chair, playing with his Newfoundland, that, with huge forepaws

upon her lap, was looking familiarly into her face. Her full, elegant

figure, about which some soft, black material fell in graceful folds,

stood out against the background of a clump of pale purple phlox in

luxuriant bloom. Oswald watched her in silence; the beautiful placid

expression of her features, the rich harmony of her voice, the tender

grace of her movements, as she passed her hands lovingly over the

dog's head and neck,--all appealed to him. He never could tire of

watching those hands. So slender and delicate that a girl of eighteen

might have coveted them, there was something more about them than mere

physical beauty, something clinging, pathetic, which is never found

in the hands of young girls or of childless women. They were true

mother-hands,--hands with an innate genius for soothing caresses;

Oswald recalled the time when he had been extremely ill, and those

delicate, white hands had tended him day and night with untiring

patience and unsurpassable skill;--he could even yet feel their touch

upon his suffering, weary limbs.

And this saint,--his mother, his glorious, incomparable mother,--he had

presumed to sully by such vile suspicions! He, her son!

Without another thought he hurried down into the park. He saw her at a

distance. The dog was lying quiet at her feet; she sat with hands

clasped in her lap, and in her half-closed eyes there lay the look of

the visionary, dim or far-seeing, always beholding more, or less than

the actual. The dog heard his master's step and began to wag his tail,

then rose, barking with joy, and ran to meet Oswald.

"Ossi!" and the Countess opened her arms to him. Not even from his

betrothed had he ever heard a tone of welcome so fervent, and as his

mother clasped him close, and kissed him, he felt as if God Himself had

laid His hand upon his sore heart and healed it. Gone were all his evil

surmises, all fled, leaving only a sensation of angry self-reproach.

"You are a day sooner than you said," she exclaimed, kissing him

affectionately. "Well, I shall not complain, I am a few hours richer

than I thought."

"How so, mamma?"

"Do you not understand? Do you really not yet know that I am counting

the thirty-three days before your marriage--the last days that I shall

have you to myself--and that to each one as it goes, I bid a sad

farewell? Let me look at you,--my poor child, how you have come back to

me! you look as if you had had an illness."

"I have felt miserably, really wretchedly ever since I went away," he

admitted, speaking slowly and without looking at her. "Uncle Erich

diagnosed either the jaundice or intermittent fever, but it does not

amount to anything, I am well again."

"You do not look so," said the Countess, shaking her head. "Take an

arm-chair, that seat is very uncomfortable."

He had seated himself upon a low stool at her feet.

"No, no, mamma," he replied smiling, "this seat is all right, and now

tell me of what you were thinking as I came towards you. Your thoughts

must have been very pleasant!"

"Must you know everything," she replied gaily, "I had no thoughts,--my

dreams...." she patted him lightly on the cheek and whispered--"were of

my grandchildren."

"Indeed? Perfectly reconciled, then, to my marriage?"

"We must learn to acquiesce in the inevitable, and--and--it really

would be delightful to have a chubby little Ossi, in miniature, to pet,

and cosset."

He did not speak, but leaned a little forward and pressed the hem of

her gown to his lips.

"You goose!" she remonstrated; but when he raised his head she

perceived that his eyes were filled with tears. "What is the matter?"

"A momentary weakness, as you see," he said with forced gaiety; adding

earnestly,--"I am not ashamed of it before you. Of the evil that is in

us, we are more ashamed before those whom we love than before all the

rest of the world; but of our weaknesses we are ashamed only before

those to whom we are indifferent!"

Paler and paler grow the blossoms of the sweet rocket, sweeter and

sweeter their fragrance rises aloft, like a mute prayer,--twilight

hovers over the meadows and the leafy summits of the lindens grow

black. The quiet air is stirred by the village bells ringing the

Angelus. The Countess folded her hands,--of late years she has grown

devout. Oswald is overcome by intense lassitude, the lassitude that

follows the sudden relaxation of nervous tension in men upon whom

severe physical exertion has no effect.--He lays his head upon his

mother's knee, and recalls the time when, only twenty years old, and

smarting under a severe disappointment, he had taken refuge there. Then

he had lain his head upon her lap, and sleep, wooed in vain through

feverish nights, had fallen on him.--He remembers how, regardless of

her own discomfort, she had let him sleep there for hours, never

moving, lest he should be disturbed. And how many other instances of

her love and self-sacrifice fill his memory! She strokes his hair, and

for a moment he wishes he might die, thus, now, and here,--yes, it

would be far better, a hundredfold better to die thus at her feet, his

heart filled with filial adoration, than to have to live down again the

anguish of the last three days.

BOOK FOURTH.

CHAPTER I.

After all, what had induced Conte Capriani to spend his summer in

Austria? His wife and his children were unutterably bored in their

exile, and he--he was consumed with secret chagrin. He had intended to

astound the earth whereon he had once run barefoot, but nothing had

fulfilled his expectations, absolutely nothing. The Austrian climate

did not agree with him, decidedly not. Instead of the intoxicating

consciousness of triumph wherein he had hoped to revel, he was

tormented, from morning until night, by a sensation of rasping

humiliation. His arrogance sickened, shrivelled up; even his

possessions suddenly seemed to him insignificant. His wealth was, to be

sure, more easily convertible into cash, more available than that of

the Austrian aristocrats. But what availed his airy, fleeting millions

compared with these well-nigh indestructible possessions, rooted for

centuries in native soil?

* * *

Many, many years before, on a muddy road the sides of which were

spotted with patches of dirty snow fast melting in the early spring,

little Alfred Stein had run behind a high old-fashioned green coach

hung on spiral springs, and had tried to steal a ride on the hind axle.

The bearded coachman--a stout, patriarchal coachman with a broad fur

collar--looked back, saw him, and snapped his whip at him, so sharply

that the boy, frightened, let go the axle, and fell off into a puddle.

A chubby child, at the carriage window, leaned far out to see him, and

laughed, without any malice, loud and heartily, as all healthy children

laugh at anything comical. But rage seized young Alfred, and when he

could do it unobserved, he clenched his fist, and shook it at the

carriage.

At that time his envy did not reach higher than to a green coach, with

a stately fur-clad coachman who could cut at all barefoot boys who were

clinging on behind. How many miles his envy had travelled since then,

how many ragamuffins his coachman had since then whipped off from his

carriages, and yet at times it seemed to him that in reality he had not

gained a step since that warm damp day in spring, when he had fallen

into the puddle, and had been laughed at by the saucy little boy.

The child of poor parents, his extraordinary beauty had attracted the

notice of a Bohemian Countess, who oddly enough was the owner of that

same green coach. He was the best scholar in the village school, and

the Countess befriended him. He became the playmate of her proud,

good-natured, indolent children. By-and-by he shared their lessons, and

his progress was remarkable. He was patted on the shoulder, his

diligence was commended, and at last, by dint of flattery and

servility, he obtained the means to study in Vienna. The years of his

student life were most wretched. He possessed neither the dullness nor

the imagination that can make poverty tolerable, but his were the

endurance and the cunning that overcome poverty. Averse to no secret

infamy, he, nevertheless made a parade of morality, and was an adept in

what a witty Frenchman calls _le charlatanisme du desinteressement_.

Although a Sybarite by nature, and susceptible to all physical

enjoyment, the instant that the attainment of his aims was at stake, he

became a pattern of abstinence. He knew how to allow himself to be

heaped with benefits, without acquiring the reputation of a parasite on

the one hand or of a man who used his friends without any show of

gratitude on the other.

From the outset of his career he owed his success, not alone to his

personal beauty, but to his faculty for intuitively detecting the evil

propensities of others, and for privately pandering to them, yet always

preserving a show of indulgent charity withal. His medical practise

opened to him the doors of certain social circles which would else

probably have been forever closed to him. He practised medicine for a

while at fashionable watering places, and he had many distinguished

patients among the fair sex; at last, however, his marriage to a rich

Russian girl relieved him from the necessity of pursuing his

profession, and led his speculative mind into other paths.

His wife's fortune, however, was soon but a small part of that which he

accumulated and added to it. Always restless, often unprincipled, he

heaped up his millions, seeming fairly to conjure money out of other

men's pockets. His greed of gain was no petty passion, there was in it

something of the heroic. Wealth was not his end, but a means to his

end, a weapon,--power.

In Paris this power had not failed him, but in Austria no one was

dazzled by it except those towards whom he felt utterly indifferent.

Day by day he grew more irritable, more bitter; what did his millions

avail with these Austrian aristocrats who, had, with indolent elegance

dragged after them for centuries, in spite of all levelling tendencies

of any age, the burden of their ancient traditions--called by the

Liberals prejudices--and who had grown weary at last of justifiable

carping at their official and unofficial prerogatives, and had taken

refuge upon an island as it were of determined exclusiveness, where,

entrenched as behind the wall of China, they loftily ignored all the

revolutionary hubbub around them.

He had succeeded in much, why should he not succeed in making a breach

in this wall of China? This was the aim of all his efforts. He was one

of those who would fain destroy what they cannot attain. By a thousand

enticing temptations he had striven to arouse the avarice of the _Right

Honourables_, as he called them, that the base, degrading greed of gain

might bruise the strict sense of honour that was like a 'hoop of gold

to bind in' Austrian exclusiveness. To brand an aristocrat as a

swindler would be a keener joy than to make him a beggar.

He had hitherto had only a few petty triumphs in this direction, but he

was too ambitious, too clear-sighted to be contented in the long run

with these trifling victories.

* * *

One consciousness of terrible import to others had at times afforded

Capriani some consolation, but of late even this consciousness had lost

somewhat of its soothing charm.

When, after his return from Prague, Kilary had asked him, with a sneer,

if he had really succeeded in twisting Oswald Lodrin around his finger

the Conte had replied with some embarrassment, "We have not done with

each other yet, but I rather think that what I said to him will have an

effect."

And while he was making private marks with coloured pencils upon his

business letters, or telegraphic despatches which arrived in large

numbers for him every day, he repeated to himself, again and again: "It

will have an effect!"