LVII
So the company of adventurers traveled through the new, strange, lovely country, feasting and making merry, spending the Marshal’s money royally; and of such queer warp is the cloth of Human Nature woven, the grotesque homage of Köhler and von Steyregg ceased to be quite intolerable in the estimation of Dunoisse.
When the inns and posting-houses began to display the arms of the von Widinitz, the coroneted casqueargent, with itspanachesurmounted by the heron,overt,sable, Köhler, being nimbler of the pair, leaped out of the brown landau, climbed the steps of the green chariot, and offered homage to the pretender to the feudal dignities.
“Now your Serene Highness is upon your own territory,” said he, and would have grabbed Dunoisse’s hand to kiss, but that its owner put it in his pocket. Von Steyregg was standing up in the vehicle that followed, wavinga huge, dingy silk handkerchief, and shedding tears of loyal enthusiasm from both eyes.
“How Monsieur the Baron loves His Serene Highness!” said Henriette’s maid to her mistress at hairbrushing time that night. “Fancy, Madame, he rocked him in his arms as an infant, and taught him to ride his little horse. Monseigneur would go nowhere without his good M. von Steyregg, who plunged into a boiling torrent (into which Monseigneur’s nurse had accidentally dropped him) and saved him at the risk of life. It is incredible, such devotion! It makes one weep to hear Monsieur the Baron talk!”
And the maid made good her words with a snuffle or two; and the mistress even wept a little in sympathy. Tears came at call to those beautiful eyes of Henriette’s.
Thus, daily drawing nearer to the scene of destined humiliation and well-earned disgrace, the green chariot and the brown landau rolled on, until at high noon upon the Vigil of the Assumption, after a three hours’ drive through ancient oak and beech-forests, when a hundred unseen church-bells were tripling the Angelus, the gray walls and gates of the towers of Widinitz rose before the travelers, venerable in their setting of ivy only less ancient, whose rugged stems grew thick as the body of a man.
It was a city in a forest, with the tops of more trees waving over the ivied walls of it. Oak and beech followed the chariot and the landau to the drawbridge, fell back as the vehicles crunched over the gravel-covered timbers, started up under the gateway, and marched with them through the streets that were bordered with runnels of clear water. Signs of preparation for the morrow’s solemnities were not lacking. Men leading donkeys burdened with panniers of white or reddish-colored sand, were distributing this medium in astonishing patterns over the principal thoroughfares. Others, who followed, were strewing them with pine-branches and the glossy leaves of laurel and bay. Lamps, as yet unlighted, twinkled among the boughs. Venetian masts of the Bavarian colors supported garlands of many-colored streamers. The Market Place was a blaze of color, with temporary altars erected at the opening of every street. And nearly every householder, with his family and servants, was engaged in decorating his dwelling with carpets, bunting, and wreaths. Said von Steyregg, as he tumbled out of thebrown landau, and ran with servile hurry and flapping coat-tails, to open the door of the green chariot when it finally stopped under the sign of “The Three Crown” inn: “One would think, Highness, that the news of your intended visit had reached Widinitz before you.” His tear hung trembling upon his eyelid as, with an egregious affectation of respect and reverence, he assisted his principal to descend.
“It is in honor of Our Lady’s Feast to-morrow, all that you see,” explained the landlord, a short man in claret-colored kersey knee-breeches, blue yarn stockings, snowy shirt-sleeves, and spotless apron, who had come out to receive the strange guests. He possessed a suite of private rooms, worthy of persons of such distinction. He pointed out one or two of the lions of Widinitz before he ushered them in—the Schloss, a square building of red granite with pepper-box towers, topping a green hill that breasted up upon the northern side of the Market-Place. Another steeper hill rose upon the southern side of the great white square that was spangled with silver, dancing fountains; and the towers and roofs and steeples of the city proper covered this like a fungus-growth. The ancient Gothic pile of the Cathedral crowned the summit; the smaller, fortress-like building adjoining, the host pointed out as the Archbishop’s Palace, an episcopal habitation, reared on the foundations of what had been a Roman camp.
“Sprung, your Excellencies, or our most learned Professors lie,” explained the voluble landlord, “from the ruins of a temple where the Old Slavonians used to sacrifice white cocks and new mead to Svantovid, their god of War. God or no god, the gentleman had a sufficiently queer name, as your Excellencies will agree; and as to white cocks, the broth of one is—according to the old nurse-women of our principality—a certain remedy for tetters. Heathen they were that drank sickly mead in preference to sound wine!—but thanks be to Heaven andSt.Procopius, who converted them, we that are come down from those old sinners know better to-day; and the vineyards of the Wid yield a liquor that has no equal in Bavaria.”
And the landlord proudly pointed to a third hill that cropped up westwards; at the foot of which eminence a jade-green trout-river, spanned by three bridges of whitemarble, rushed foaming between rocky banks that were covered with vines, laden now with the glowing purple clusters from which an excellent red wine was made by the vine-growers of the principality.
Flasks of this sterling vintage figured upon the guest-table of the Inn of “The Three Crowns,” when the newly-arrived travelers sat down to dine, the occupants of the green chariot being served in their private apartment: the Marshal’s agents, for humility or for the sake of freer elbow-play than is licensed by strict good manners, preferring to eat at the common ordinary, spread in the coffee-room, together with Madame’s maid and the Colonel’s man.
Here, down both sides of a long table, were ranged perhaps a score of decent citizens of the sterner sex, indicating the nature of their several professions, trades, and occupations, in the fashion of their attire, as was the custom then; and engaged in discussing what, for the ninety-nine per cent. of Catholics among the company, was the single meal of the fasting-day.
Judge, then, how frigidly received by the faithful were Steyregg’s Gargantuan praises of the fish, flesh, fowl, and pastry which were set before himself and his partner, and of which both ate copiously, washing down their meal with plentiful libations of the juice of the local vine.
The pickled sturgeon with mushrooms and cucumbers, to which Madame’s tirewoman discreetly restricted herself, proved a mere whet to the gross Baron’s huge appetite. Half a ham and the greater moiety of a pasty of eggs and capons, hurled to the ravening wolf concealed behind his dingy shirt-bosom, left him with a niche quite available for tartlets, and a chink remaining for cream-cheese.
He said at length, piling a block of this delicacy on a rusk, bolting the mouthful, and sending a generous draught of the strong red wine hissing on the heels of it:
“Now, having fed, I may say myNunc Dimittis. After such a meal”—he produced and proceeded to use a battered silver toothpick—“I feel myself the equal of Prince, Regent, or Archbishop, I care not which!”
A clean-shaven, fresh-faced, gray-haired citizen, clad in a long-tailed coat and buckled knee-breeches of speckless gray-blue broadcloth, with a starched and snowy shirt-frill jutting from his bosom and rasping his triple chin,looked up from his dish of fricasseed eggs at this boast of von Steyregg’s and said, a trifle sourly:
“The late Prince, sir, being with the departed, presumably has done with eating and drinking, although our Regent, being of the Lutheran persuasion, is at liberty to feed as freely upon the Vigil of the Assumption, as upon all other prescribed fasting-days.... But of his Lordship, the Archbishop, I dare to say that like any other respectable religious, he is, with his clergy, in strict retreat at this moment; and if anything beyond pulse—or dry bread and water—have passed his lips to-day, I will undertake to eat this book of mine!”
He indicated, amidst some tokens of amusement manifested by other abstainers at the table, a Missal that was propped up against the cruet at his side; then wiped his lips, threw off a glass of water, whisked the napkin-end from the bosom of his spotless waistcoat, and beckoned the waiter, asking what was to pay? The man named fifty pfennigs, the client threw down a mark and asked for change. But before the base metal could be transferred from apron-pouch to pocket, von Steyregg, completely deserted by his guardian Angel, tipped the wink to Köhler—who was diligently cramming plum-pie with whipped cream—and rose up, stretching out an immense protesting, mottled hand. His tear hung in his eye, his strawberry nose and flabby mouth quivered with emotion:
“Take up that coin, sir, I beg of you! Nothing is to pay, for you, or any other citizen of Widinitz who occupies a chair at this board together with my companion and myself on this auspicious day. You have told me that your Prince is no more; I say to you that, being dead, he cries from the tomb—‘Resurgam!’ For in an heir of his blood and name he shall live again; the youthful phœnix but waits the signal to emerge full-fledged from the parental pyre of flaming spices.... What? Do you doubt! O! man of tepid faith, I will prove it you! His Serene Highness is, at this moment, with Her Excellency, deigning to partake of refreshment in the private room overhead!”
“Wie? Was?” ejaculated the tradesman, staring at von Steyregg with bulging eyes, as the big fist banged the table, and the cutlery and glasses danced about, while the fifty pfennigs change leaped from the plate held by thestartled servitor, and ran into a corner and hid as cleverly as little coins can. “Ach so!” the astonished man added, bringing down his eyebrows with some difficulty. “What you tell us is very surprising, if it be true!”
“And all tales are not true!” put in the oracular barber, who had been polishing off a plate of pickled sturgeon; while von Steyregg held forth.
“Decidedly,” added a bookbinder, who was lingering over a bowl of cabbage-soup and black bread, “one is wise not to believe everything one hears.”
“My friends, I state the fact, upon the honor of a Magyar nobleman!” von Steyregg asseverated. He appealed to Köhler, who replied: “Undoubtedly,” and went on munching, looking sharply this way and that out of his round brown twinkling rat’s eyes. “You hear the eloquent testimony of my associate,” the self-styled Baron went on. “You see these highly-respectable persons,” he pointed with a flourish to the abashed valet and the blushing maid, “who in their varying capacities have the honor to serve His Serene Highness the Prince-Aspirant of Widinitz,—travelingincognitounder the style and cognomen of Colonel von Widinitz-Dunoisse,—and the noble and lovely lady”—a cough momentarily checked the flood of the Steyreggian eloquence, and then it rolled turbidly on again—“whom I mentioned just now. They are here, as I have said, partaking, after the fatigues of their journey, of marinaded trout, ragout of veal, salmi of grouse, andquelquechoses. Your privileged eyes will behold them presently, when they descend to distinguish your boulevards and promenades by taking the air upon them.... To-morrow, when the Procession of the Feast takes place—in preparation for which anniversary your streets are even now being strewn with pine-branches and oak-leaves, your public and private buildings adorned with banners and hung with lamps—your maidens are twining garlands, your infants of both sexes learning hymns—to-morrow all Widinitz will behold its hereditary Sovereign participating in the solemnity; and draw, I trust, parallel between Gothic intolerance—I name no names!—and noble, princely piety! Excuse me, my good sirs,” the Baron added, and ostentatiously wiped his lachrymose eye, “I am not easily moved to emotion, but the inward chords cannot but respond to the conception of a spectacle sopoignant and so memorable. You must pardon me this single tear!”
A murmur of ambiguous meaning traveled round the table. The plump tradesman whom von Steyregg had first addressed pushed back his chair and rose, picked up his Missal, tucked it under his arm, took his soft felt hat and thick, tasseled walking-cane from the waiter’s hands; and then said, turning to the Magyar nobleman:
“Würdig Herr, you have paid for my dinner, and I am bound to be civil to you. But this is a Catholic State all said and done; the Lutherans are the peppercorns sprinkled through the salad, and if any other man than you had told me that this gentleman could take part in Our Lady’s Procession, having filled his belly full of fish, flesh, and fowl upon the Eve of the Feast, I should have called him a liar! knowing that no person is permitted to take part in the solemnity who is not in a state of grace. By that is understood fasting, or at least abstinence, upon the Vigil, with confession, absolution, penance duly discharged, and Communion crowning all; added, a proper spirit of devotion to the most chaste Mother of God, Who, let me tell you! is honored in this State. I might add that the recommendation of a priest is usually required, and here in Widinitz the sanction of his Lordship the Archbishop. But perhaps your principal has a dispensation which releases him from these trifling obligations?”
Teeth showed, or bits of German boxwood strung on silver wires; or gums that lacked even these substitutes, in the faces that were set about the table. The Pagan Steyregg, flustered by wine and confused by theological terminology, rushed upon his fate. Of course, he declared, his principal had a dispensation and Madame also.... Every member of the party was furnished with the requisite in case of need.... It was not customary for persons moving in exalted social spheres to travel without, he begged leave to inform the company. Whose entertainment was to be charged, he emphatically insisted, upon His Serene Highness’s bill.
The table was vacated, the room emptied without any special demonstration of gratitude on the part of those who had participated in His Highness’s bounty. The guests dispersed, to tell their wives or housekeepers, or to forget to do so, not one remaining save the portly citizenwith the finely-starched shirt-frill. He said, once safely outside the coffee-room door, pausing to offer his snuff-box to the landlord, whom he encountered on his way from the cellar, bearing a flask of Benedictine and a bottle of special Kirschwasser:
“You have queer guests upstairs, or I have been listening to a lunatic within there!”
The speaker, dusting the pungent brown powder from a first finger and thumb, pointed the indicatory digit in the direction of the coffee-room. The landlord said, holding the Kirsch between his eye and the light:
“Heretics, who come to witness our procession of The Assumption as they might visit a theater-play. Well! one can only pray for their conversion, and charge their impiety among the extras on the bill.”
His expression portended a total of appalling magnitude. He added:
“They give the surnames of von Widinitz-Dunoisse. He does, that is! And we have learned enough since His late Serene Highness was gathered to his fathers to know what rascally impudence tacks the two together.”
The citizen said, putting away his snuff-box, and flicking some of the brown grains from his shirt-frill:
“His secretary, steward, pimp, or parasite—whatever the bigger of the two rogues in there”—he signed with his chin towards the coffee-room—“may be to your man upstairs, styles him the Prince-Aspirant, Serene Highness, and what-not. One would say, to hear the braggart, that this son of Napoleon’s old marauder had the King of Bavaria, the Federative Council, and the General Assembly at his back!” He added: “As for the lady who accompanies him, she is styled Excellency. One can only hope she is his wife?”
“Meinherr, not so. Upon this point I may pronounce authoritatively.” The landlord of “The Three Crowns” looked extremely wise. “Married Her Excellency may be; that is extremely probable!... But it is not to the fellow who will pay for this!”
“Ach, ach!” ejaculated the sleek citizen, shaking his scandalized head, “this is truly deplorable!” He added, knowing an instant’s doubt of the intuition of the innkeeper: “But how are you sure? May you not mistake?”
“Because,” said the host, whose chatter and roundvacant face had beguiled Henriette into believing him a simple child of Nature, “because theHerrColonel (who for all his fine figure and good looks is a mereDuselfritz), because the Colonel—when Madame holds up her little finger—obeys without questioning—that is why I am sure! The legal partner of a man’s bosom may nag or cajole him; she does not issue orders or commands. It is the mistress, not the wife, who gives herself such masterful airs. Again, myFrautells me that Madame’s nightcaps are of real Valenciennes, with little moss-rosebuds set inside the frills; and, says my dear one—no respectable married woman would, for a mere husband, thus bedeck——”
“Prut—prut! it would be well, my good friend,” interrupted the respectable tradesman hastily, “to remember that this is a peculiarly solemn season, and——”
But the host went pounding on:
“Moreover, all the gold plate of Madame’s dressing-case is engraved ‘H. de R——.’ But to my mind the thing that convinces most is that theHerrColonel (who is aQuatschkopfas well as aDuselfritz) should let her order up this from the cellar just to taste!”—the speaker lovingly blew a cobweb from the fat neck of the Kirsch bottle—“though Kirsch of fifty years old is four thalers the bottle, and he has said to her how he hates the stuff! Would any husband, even of a week or so, tolerate such prodigality in a wife?”
“Nu, nu!” said the portly citizen, completely convinced. “What should be done,” he cried in great agitation, “to rid the town of such a scandal? Think! My wits are upside down!”
He wrung his hands. The innkeeper, that simple child of Nature, rubbed his nose with the knuckle of his thumb, and said:
“What if you,Meinherr, who supply the Palace with groceries and are so highly respected, should drop a hint to his Lordship in writing? Retreat or no retreat, I’ll bet you a flask of my best the Archbishop takes measures, and promptly, too! Here, as it chances, is my cook’s errand-boy with his basket. Look you, I will put a new-caught trout from the Wid inside it, and your bit of paper under that. The Father Economus will be sure to spy it; the rest we may confidently leave to Heaven!”
Meanwhile the Marshal’s agents, having fed largely and drunk to correspond, rang the bell, summoned the innkeeper, and issued orders. Then von Steyregg mounted to the private room, scratched the door after the manner of the confidential attendants of royal personages, and appeared, contorted with bows, before the Colonel and Madame, hoping that the entertainment set before them had not been utterly unworthy of personages so exalted! “It is not, Your Serene Highness, as though you were at your own Schloss over yonder,” he said, spreading his thick hands and shrugging his big shoulders. “Ere long let us hope that Destiny and Your Serene Highness’s lucky star will restore you to your own! Meanwhile, I have ordered a barouche, with four outriders, being the best equipage the establishment can furnish. It is but fitting that Your Highness should utilize the earliest opportunity following your arrival to make a Royal Progress—I would say, a little tour of inspection—embracing the chief objects of interest in the town.”
Dunoisse, inwardly sickened by this prospect, made objections, but Henriette overruled them all. That idea of a Royal Progress was pleasantly titillating. The Eve in her snatched at the apple tendered by the serpent von Steyregg. The barouche came lumbering to the front door before the dispute ended in Madame’s favor; she glided away to “make herself beautiful,” leaving a mollifying glance and smile behind with her vanquished opponent. So, petulantly fuming, Dunoisse made ready to accompany her, mentally thanking Heaven that the Staff uniform of ceremony (in which the Baron suggested his victim should array himself) had been left behind in the Rue de Bac.
If the four stout, long-maned, and amply-tailed nags attached to the barouche had not proved pink-eyed and cream-colored; if the vehicle itself had not been so conspicuously yellow; if the blue-and-scarlet livery of the coachman and the brace of badly-matching footmen, who hung to the back-straps and occupied the board behind, had been less tawdry and belaced with grease; if the red-nosed elderly outriders had not been so obviously bemused with potent liquor, and their beasts less spavined, broken-kneed and cracked in wind, that so-called progress through the capital of his ancestors’ hereditary principality might have proved less intolerable to the unlucky scion of theirrace. But with Köhler and von Steyregg on the front seat, both bare-headed and bare-toothed, oozing with respect and deference, the Baron’s bosom heaving with loyal enthusiasm beneath the metal starfish previously described; some luckless subject of mediæval justice newly flayed, and paraded upon the hangman’s cart for the popular obloquy, might have felt as raw and smarting as did Dunoisse.
A straggling cortège of beggars, spectacle-hunters, servant-maids in their high crimped caps and silver breast-chains, loafers and idlers of both sexes accompanied the yellow barouche. Vocal dogs and an Italian organ-grinder with a pair of monkeys brought up the rear of this motley following. Every now and then von Steyregg would plunge his hand into a stout linen bag, which he nursed upon his knees, and scatter small change among these gentry. You may imagine this largesse received with yells, cheers, and scrambling. Black eyes and gory noses were distributed at each fresh shower.
The Town Hall and the Museum, occupying an entire side of the Market Place, the Church of the Pied Friars, and the Tower of the Clock with its life-sized brazen woman spinning at the top of the weathercock, occupied but passing notice from the distinguished visitors. The yellow barouche, with its huzzaing tail of ragamuffins, breasted the State Street, while the holiday strollers that thronged the sidewalks stood still to stare, and heads were projected from upper windows. And reaching the Cathedral Square that crowned the hilltop, the noble party alighted at the west porch of the stately building and passed in.
Not for years had Dunoisse set foot across the threshold of the House of God; the cult of devotion and worship, the high belief in glorious things unseen, the fulfillment of the obligations of the Catholic faith, had long ceased to be indispensable or even necessary to the man; he looked back upon the piety and fervor of his boyhood with a wonder that was largely mingled with contempt. Now, as he mechanically dipped two fingers in the miniature font that was supported by a sculptured shield bearing the casque with thepanache, surmounted by the sable heron of Widinitz, made the Sign of the Cross, and bent the knee before the solemn splendors of the High Altar—gleaming upon the vision from the distant end of the huge echoingnave—he glanced at Henriette in wonder at the contained and modest reverence of her demeanor; and, seeing her sink down gracefully amidst her whispering flounces and bow her lovely head as though in adoration, felt the muscles of his lips twitch with the ironical desire to smile.
“Wonderful!” he thought, more nearly approaching to a critical analysis of her than he had ever permitted himself. “Whether she believes or not, she never dispenses with the outward observance of religion! She is an enigma, a problem to baffle Œdipus! One would say she and not the son of my mother had Carmel in the blood!”
For how strangely amorous license and devotional fervor commingled in the nature of this woman, who should know better than this man....
How often, waking in the perfumed, darkened chamber from the deep, dreamless slumber that falls on the indulged and satiate senses, had not Dunoisse found himself alone, and realized, with a creeping chill of awe mingled with repugnance, that she was kneeling, a white-robed figure veiled in shadowy hair, before the ivory Crucifix that hung above theprie-dieu, praying....
Ah! with what abandonment of sighs and sobs, and tears!... Ere she would rise, traverse the velvet carpet silently as some pale moonray, and glide, mysteriously smiling, into her lover’s arms.
“Why should I not pray?” she had said to him once. “After all, Christ died for sinners, and I am a sinner.... And even devils believe, they say. It is only men who deny!”
Dunoisse had long joined the ranks of the deniers. He had determined that for him yonder shining, jeweled tabernacle should thenceforth house no Unspeakable Mystery, shelter no Heavenly Guest. Nothing beyond an amiable superstition, an innocent, exquisite myth, embodying a profound religious truth for two hundred and sixty millions of Christians; modified or rejected by the Lutheran, Reformed, and Presbyterian Churches; ignored by Confucianist, Taoist, and Buddhist, abhorred by the Hindu, the Mohammedan, and the Jew, should henceforth be enshrined there. He had come to the conclusion that it was better so.
The light of faith had been quenched in the man’s heart by his own deliberate act of will. He had said to his soul, unwitting that he had thus spoken:
“If I believed, could I continue to live as I am doing, storing up sharp retribution, dreadful expiation, inconceivable anguish for the world to come? Not so! Therefore I will forget such words as Death and Judgment. For these poignant, embittered, passing joys, I am content to barter the hope of eternal bliss.”
And yet, upon those rare occasions when, as now, Dunoisse found himself in the House of his Maker, the still air, fragrant with the incense of the most recent Sacrifice, oppressed him, and the very silence seemed eloquent as a voice of Divine reproach....
For you may slough your skin of State-patronized, easy-going Protestantism as easily as you can change your political convictions, and presently, with Modern Buddhism, or Spiritualism, or Platonism, Christian Science, Agnosticism, Mormonism, or Hedonism, be covered and clad anew, but Catholicism penetrates the bones, and permeates the very marrow. You cannot pluck that forth; it is rooted in the fibers of the soul.
Dunoisse followed his Fate up the great echoing nave of the Cathedral, ushered by the gyrating von Steyregg. Penitents of both sexes, waiting their turn in lengthy rows outside the occupied confessionals, glanced up from their beads, as, in a whisper that rattled amidst the carved rafters of the lofty roof, the agent announced:
“Here lie Your Serene Highness’s illustrious forefathers!” And ostentatiously dried his sympathetic tear with a vast flapping handkerchief of Isabella hue.
Certainly the sacred fane was populous with departed von Widinitz, from Albertus I., First of the Line, and his spouse, the chaste Philippina; to Ludovicus, the latest departed, whose Bathildis had predeceased him by a generation or two.
You saw them represented from life-size to the quarter-bust, in brass, bronze, lead, marble, porphyry, granite, alabaster—every conceivable medium known to sepulchral Art. And to Dunoisse’s peculiar torment, those tricksy sprites, von Steyregg and Köhler, united in discovering between the cast or sculptured countenances of these worthies and the moody visage of their harassed descendant resemblances of the striking kind. To hear the knaves appeal to one another—warrant, justify, and approve theclaim of a thirteenth-century nose to its modern reproduction—to witness them scouring aisles or rummaging chapels in full cry after a chin, or mouth, or ear, or forehead; to see them run the elusive feature from metal or stone to living earth; and congratulate one another on the fortunate issue of the chase; would have provoked a smile on the countenance of a Trappist. Their sacrifice laughed even whilst he writhed.
The ceremony of leaving cards upon the Archbishop of Widinitz followed. A trap-mouthed, blue-shaven ecclesiastic of the humbler sort, who wore a bunch of keys at the girdle of his well-darned cassock, opened the oaken, iron-studded door, and took the proffered oblongs of pasteboard without enthusiasm, intimating that His Lordship did not receive strangers upon days of solemn retreat. With this janitor von Steyregg parleyed vainly, maintaining a brisk exchange of arguments at the top of the Palace doorsteps, whilst his principals waited at the bottom in the yellow barouche.
A sportive Fate at this juncture breaks the thread of the narrative with a Pantomime Interlude. For as, more in sorrow than in anger at the obstinacy of the janitor, the Baron shook off his tear upon the inhospitable threshold, and turned upon his heel—a little white-headed, berry-brown urchin—a bare-legged messenger, arrayed in a tattered shirt and the upper half of a pair of adult breeches, carrying a reed-basket in which reposed a fine, fat, silvery trout, newly-caught and tempting,—dived between the legs that so strikingly resembled balusters, and dodged into the Palace with a flourish of dirty heels.
If a portly Magyar of noble rank, in the act of rolling down a steepish flight of limestone steps, could possibly be regarded as a mirth-provoking object, one might be tempted to smile as von Steyregg, recording each revolution upon his person with grievous bumps and bruises, performed the horizontal descent. Henriette screamed, Köhler beat his bosom, the tag-rag and bobtail roared with glee, while Dunoisse, compelled to share in their amusement despite the sickness at his heart, jumped out of the carriage and picked up the groaning Baron, restored him his battered curly-brimmed hat, the comb, hairbrush, and piece of soap which had escaped from his coat-tails in the courseof transit, thrust him into the vehicle, and bade the coachman return to “The Three Crowns.”