They had to walk a while longer before they reached the gate of
the park of Christian’s Rest. As Voss was about to take his leave,
Christian said: “You’re probably tired. Why trouble to walk to the
village? Be my guest over night.”
“If it does not inconvenience you, I accept,” Voss answered.
They entered the house and passed into the brightly lit hall. Amadeus
Voss gazed about him in astonishment. They went up the stairs and into
the dining hall, which was furnished in the purest style of Louis XV.
Christian led his guest through other rooms into the one that was to be
his. And Amadeus Voss wondered more and more. “This is quite another
thing from Halbertsroda,” he murmured; “it is as a feast day compared
to every day.”
Silently they sat opposite each other at table. Then they went into the
library. A footman served the coffee on a silver platter. Voss leaned
against a column and looked upward. When the servant had gone, he said:
“Have you ever heard of the Telchinian pestilence? It is a disease
created by the envy of the Telchines, the hounds of Actæon who were
changed into men, and it destroys everything within its reach. A youth
named Euthilides saw with that eye of envy the reflection of his own
beauty in a spring, and his beauty faded.”
Christian looked silently at the floor.
“There is another legend of a Polish nobleman,” Amadeus continued.
“This nobleman lived alone in a white house by the Vistula river. All
his neighbours avoided him, for his envious glance brought them nothing
but misfortune. It killed their herds, set fire to their barns, and
made their children leprous. Once a beautiful maiden was pursued by
wolves and took refuge in the white house. He fell in love with her and
married her. But because the evil that was in him passed into her also,
he tore out the gleaming crystals of his eyes, and buried them near the
garden wall. He had now recovered. But the buried eyes gained new power
under the earth, and an old servitor who dug them up was slain by them.”
Sitting on a low stool, Christian had folded his arms over his knee,
and looked up at Voss.
“From time to time,” said Amadeus Voss, “one must expiate the lust of
the eye. Over in the village of Nettersheim a maid servant lies dying.
The poor thing is deserted by all the world. She lies in a shed by the
stables, and the peasants who think her merely lazy will not believe
that she is about to die. I have visited her more than once, in order
to expiate the lust of the eye.”
A long silence fell upon them. When the clock in the tall Gothic case
struck twelve, they went to their rooms.