Besides, I must confess I was curious to see a little more closely this strange mysterious being, and therefore as soon as Sperver had disappeared in the darkness of the glen I began to climb up to reach the .
There I a strange sight.
Extended upon a large cloak of white fur lay the woman in a long and robe of purple, her fingers clutching her breast, a golden arrow through her grey hair.
Never shall I forget the figure of this strange woman; her vulture-like features distorted with the last agonies of death, her eyes set, her mouth, were fearful to look upon. Such might have been the terrible Queen Frédégonde.
The , on his knees at her side, was trying to restore her to ; but I saw at a glance that the wretched creature was dying, and it was not without a profound sense of pity that I took her by the arm.
"Leave madame alone—don't touch her," cried the young man with .
"I am a surgeon, monseigneur."
He looked in silence at me for a moment, then rising, said—
"Pardon me, sir; pray forgive my hasty language."
He trembled with excitement, scarcely yet , and presently he went on—
"What is your opinion, sir?"
"It is over—she is dead!"
Then, without speaking another word, he sat upon a large stone, with his forehead resting upon his hand and his elbow on his knee, his eyes motionless, as still as a statue.
I sat near the fire, watching the flames rising to the roof of the cave, and casting reflections upon the features of the .
We had sat there an hour as motionless as statues, each deep in thought, when, suddenly lifting his head, the baron said—
"Sir, all this confounds me. Here is my mother—for twenty-six years I thought I knew her—and now an abyss of horrible mysteries opens before me. You are a doctor; tell me, did you ever know anything so dreadful?"
"Monseigneur," I replied, "the Count of Nideck is with a complaint strikingly similar to that from which your mother appears to have suffered. If you feel enough confidence in me to communicate to me the facts which you have yourself observed, I will gladly tell you what I know myself; for perhaps this exchange of our experiences might supply me with the means to save my patient."
"Willingly, sir," he replied, and without any further he informed me that the de Bluderich, a member of one of the noblest families in Saxony, took, every year towards autumn, a journey into Italy, with no attendant besides an old man-servant, who her entire confidence; that that man, being at the point of death, had desired a private interview with the son of his old master, and that at that last hour, prompted, no doubt, by the of , he had told the young man that his mother's visit to Italy was only a to enable her to make, you observed, a certain excursion into the Black Forest, the object of which was unknown to himself, but which must have had something fearful in its character, since the baroness returned always in a state of physical , ragged, half dead, and that weeks of rest alone could restore her after the labours of those few days.
This was the of the old servant's disclosures to the young baron, who believed that in so doing he was only fulfilling his duty.
The son, anxious at any sacrifice to know the truth of this account, had, that very year, it, first by following his mother to Baden, and then by on her track into the of the Black Forest. The footsteps which Sébalt had tracked in the woods were his.
When the baron had thus imparted his knowledge to me, I thought I ought not to from him the mysterious influence which the appearance of the old woman in the neighbourhood of the castle exercised over the count, nor the other circumstances of this unaccountable series of events.
We were both amazed at the extraordinary coincidence between the facts , the mysterious attraction which these beings unconsciously exercised the one over the other, the drama which they performed in union, the familiarity which the old woman had shown with the castle, and its most secret passages, without any previous examination of them; the costume which she had discovered in which to carry out this secret act, and which could only have been out of some mysterious retreat revealed to her by the strange instinct of . Finally, we were agreed that there are unknown, unfathomed depths in our being, and that the mystery of death is not the only secret which God has veiled from our eyes, although it may seem to us the most important.
But the darkness of night was beginning to yield to the pale of early dawn. A bat was sounding the departure of the hours of darkness with a singular note resembling the gurgling of liquid from a narrow bottle-neck. A neighing of horses was heard far up the ; then, with the first rays of dawn, we a driven by the baron's servant; its bottom was littered with straw; on this the body was laid.
I mounted my horse, who seemed not sorry to use his limbs again, which had been by upon ice and snow the whole night through. I rode after the sledge to the exit from the defile, when, after a grave salutation—the usual token of courtesy between the nobility and the people—they drove off in the direction of Hirschland and I rode towards the towers of Nideck.
At nine I was in the presence of Mademoiselle Odile, to whom I gave a faithful of all that had taken place.
Then repairing to the count's apartments, I found him in a very satisfactory state of improvement. He felt very weak, as was to be expected after the terrible shocks of such crises as he had gone through, but had returned to the full possession of his clear , and the fever had left him the evening before. There was, therefore, every of a speedy cure.
A few days later, seeing the old lord in a state of , I expressed a desire to return to Fribourg, but he me so earnestly to stay altogether at Nideck, and offered me terms so and , that I felt myself unable to refuse with his wishes.
I shall long remember the first boar-hunt in which I had the honour to join with the count, and especially the magnificent return home in a torchlight procession after having sat in the saddle for twelve hours together.
I had just had supper, and was going up into Hugh Lupus's tower completely knocked up, when, passing Sperver's room, whose door was half open, shouts and cries of joy reached my ears. I stopped, when the most spectacle burst upon me. Around the massive oaken table beamed twenty square faces, bright and ruddy with health and fun.
The hob and nobbing of the glasses gave out an and . There was sitting Sperver with his forehead, his moustaches bedewed with Rhenish wine, his eyes sparkling, and his grey hair rather disordered; at his right was Marie Lagoutte, on his left Knapwurst. He was raising aloft the ancient silver-gilt and chased dimmed with age, and on his chest glittered the silver plate of his shoulder-belt, for, according to his custom on a hunting day, he was still wearing the uniform of his office.
The colour of Marie Lagoutte's cheeks, rather redder even than usual, told of an evening of jollity, and her broad cap-frills seemed as if they were wanting to fly all abroad; she sat laughing, now with one, then with another.
Knapwurst, in his arm-chair, with his head on a level with Sperver's elbow, looked like a big . Then came Tobias Offenloch, so red that you would have thought he had bathed his face in the red wine, leaning back with his upon the chair-back and his wooden leg extended under the table. Farther on the long face of Sébalt, who was peeping with a sickly smile into the bottom of his wine-glass.
Besides these there were present the waiting-people, men and women servants, comprising all that little community which springs up around the board of the great people of the land and belongs to them as the , and the , and the wild convolvulus belong to the of the forests.
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