Part 5 (2/2)
”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:
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