The Count of Nideck Part 5

"Hey, Gaston," said the old steward, "if any one should order you to go and take that bone away, what would you say?"

"That it was a matter which required delicate manipulation."

We laughed heartily, and Sperver, who was stretched out in his red-leather armchair, with his left arm thrown over the back, one leg resting on a stool, and the other on a log that was dripping with sap and singing in the fierce flame, puffed blue rings of smoke to the ceiling with an air of supreme contentment. As for me, I was lazily watching the dog, when suddenly remembering our interrupted conversation, I began:

"Listen, Sperver! You haven't told me everything. Was it not because of the death of your worthy wife, my old nurse Gertrude, that you left the mountains to come here?"

Gideon looked grave, and a tear dimmed his eye; he straightened up, and knocking the ashes from his pipe upon his thumb nail, he replied:

"Yes, my wife is dead, and that is what drove me from the woods. I could not see the valley of the Roche Creuse without sorrow, and so I have come hither. I hunt but little in the underbrush, and if the pack happen to go in that direction, I leave them to themselves and turn back again, trying to think of other things."

Sperver had become melancholy. His head had fallen on his breast, and he remained silent. I regretted having recalled these sad images to his mind. Then, reflecting once more on the Black Plague crouching in the snow, I shivered. How singular that a single word had thrown us into a train of dismal recollections! A whole world of retrospection had been invoked by the merest accident.

I know not how long our silence had lasted, when a deep, terrible growl, like the sound of distant thunder, made us tremble. We looked at the dog. He still held his half-eaten bone between his fore-paws, but with raised head, ears p.r.i.c.ked up, and shining eyes, he was listening,--listening in the dead silence, and a tremor of rage ran along his back.

Sperver and I looked at each other anxiously; not a sound, not a murmur, for the wind outside had fallen, and we could have heard the least noise; nothing, save the deep, continued growl, which seemed to come from deep down in the dog's chest. Suddenly the animal sprang up and leaped against the wall, with a short, harsh, ominous bark that made the arches resound as if thunder were rolling away along the empty pa.s.sages.

Lieverle, with his head low down, seemed to see through the granite, and his teeth, bared to their roots, glistened like snow. He still growled, pausing now and then for a moment to sniff along the bottom of the wall; then he sprang up again angrily, and seemed trying to tear away the stone with his fore-paws.

We were watching him, unable to understand the cause of his excitement, when a second howl, more fearful than the first, brought us to our feet.

"Lieverle," cried Sperver, springing towards him, "for heaven's sake, what ails you? Are you going mad?"

He seized a log, and began to sound the wall, which, however, gave forth only a dull, dense sound. There was apparently no hollow in it, but still the dog maintained the same posture.

"Decidedly, Lieverle," said the huntsman, "you have had a nightmare.

Come, lie down, and don't set our nerves on edge any more."

At the same moment we heard a sound outside. The door opened, and the big, fat face of honest Tobias Offenloch, with his round lantern in one hand and his stick in the other, and his three-cornered hat on one side of his head, appeared smiling and genial in the doorway.

"Greeting, worthy company!" he exclaimed; "what the devil are you doing here?"

"It was this foolish Lieverle who made all the racket," said Sperver; "he sprang against the wall and wouldn't be quieted. Can you tell us the reason of it?"

"He probably heard the stumping of my wooden leg as I came up the tower stairs," replied the good-natured fellow with a laugh. Then setting his lantern on the table: "That will teach you, Master Gideon, to tie up your dogs. You have a weakness for dogs,--an absurd weakness. They will end by putting us all out of doors. Only a moment ago, as I was coming along the gallery, I met your Blitz; he snapped at my leg,--see, there are the marks of his teeth. A new leg, too, confound the cur!"

"Tie up my dogs? What an idea!" replied Sperver. "Dogs that are tied up are good for nothing; it makes them savage. Moreover, Lieverle was fastened, and he has what was left of the cord around his neck still."

"It is not on my account that I am speaking, for whenever I see them coming, I always raise my stick and put my wooden leg first. It is only for discipline. The dogs ought to be in the kennels, the cats on the gutters, and the people in the Castle, according to my way of thinking."

Tobie sat down as he finished his sentence, and with his elbows resting on the table and his eyes beaming with satisfaction, he said in a confidential tone:

"You should know, gentlemen, that I am a bachelor this evening."

"How is that?"

"Marie Anne is sitting up with Gertrude in the Count's antechamber."

"Then you are in no hurry."

"Not the least bit."

"How unlucky you should have come so late," observed Sperver; "all the bottles are empty."

The discomfited expression of the good fellow made me feel positively sorry. He would gladly have profited by his widowhood. In spite of my efforts to repress it, however, my mouth parted in a wide yawn.

"We will put it over till another day," he said, getting up; "what is postponed is not lost."

He took up his lantern.

"Good night, gentlemen."

"Wait a minute," said Gideon; "I see the doctor is sleepy; we will go down together."

"Gladly, Sperver! We will have a word with Trumpf as we pa.s.s. He is down-stairs with the others, and Knapwurst is telling them stories."

"Well, good night, Gaston."

"Good night, Sperver. Don't forget to call me if the Count grows worse."

"Never fear. Lieverle, come here."

They went out, and as they were crossing the platform, I could hear the old Nideck clock striking eleven.

I was completely exhausted with the day's experiences. Soon I threw myself on the bed, and straightway fell into a deep slumber, where all night long I was wandering beside a radiant creature with a halo of golden hair about her face, amid flower-strewn paths, and the song of birds, and above our heads the fairest of summer skies.

CHAPTER IV.

KNAPWURST ACQUAINTS ME WITH THE GENEALOGY OF THE NIDECKS.

The dawn was beginning to turn gray the only window of the donjon-tower, when I was awakened in my granite bed by the distant notes of a hunting-horn. I know of no sound more sad and melancholy than the vibrations of its tones, just at morning twilight, when all is still, and no breath, no whisper comes to disturb the perfect quiet of solitude; it is the final note, especially, that, spreading over the immense plain and awaking the far-off echoes of the mountain, stirs us to the heart with its pure, poetic quality.

Leaning with my elbow on the bearskin, I listened to this plaintive cry, that seemed to be invoking memories of the Feudal Ages. The aspect of my chamber, with its low, ragged arch, and, further on, the little window with its panes set in lead, midway between the alcove and the corridor, the ceiling more wide than high, and deeply hollowed in the wall,--in short, every detail of this ancient den of the Wolf of Nideck served to realize my fancy.

I rose quickly and threw the window wide open. There before me lay a spectacle that no mere language can describe,--the scene that the Alpine eagle surveys each morning, as the purple curtain of night lifts itself from the horizon; range after range of mountains,--motionless billows that stretch away and become lost in the distant mists of the Vosges and the Jura,--immense forests, lakes, and towering peaks tracing their sharp outlines upon the steel-blue of the snow-clad valleys; beyond this, the infinite! What human skill could attain to the sublimity of such a picture? I stood overwhelmed with wonder and delight. At each glance some new detail was revealed to my eyes; hamlets, farms, villages, seemed to rise from every fold of the landscape, and as I gazed, these objects became more numerous.

I had been standing thus for more than a quarter of an hour, when a hand was laid lightly upon my shoulder; I turned and met the calm face and quiet smile of my friend Gideon, who greeted me with:

"Good morning, Gaston."

Then he rested his elbows on the window-sill beside me, puffing clouds of smoke from his short pipe. Extending his arm towards the distant mountains, he said at length:

"Look at that, Gaston; you should love it, for you are a son of the Black Forest. Look down there, way down; that is the Roche Creuse. Do you see it? You remember Gertrude? How far off those days seem!"

He stopped and cleared his throat; I was at a loss what to reply. We stood for a long time in a contemplative mood, mute before the grandeur of the scene that rolled away beneath us. From time to time, the old steward, seeing my eyes rest on some point of the horizon, would explain: