Next day happened a thing which even still recurs to me in nightmare.
When I came down to breakfast, released from arrest by special intervention of the Baron, Carl was not there. Gretel said he had caught a cold from his wetting, and was confined to his room.
Late in the afternoon Eloise and I were in the great library. We had watched the King depart, the Graf von Bismarck, cigar in mouth, accompanying him. Carriage after carriage, containing guests, had driven away; and Eloise and I were pressing our noses against the panes of the window looking at the park, and speculating on Carl and the condition of his cold, when the door opened, and Gretel looked in.
"Oh, there you are, children!" cried Gretel. "Well, and what are you doing with yourselves?"
"Nothing," yawned Eloise, turning from the window. "We have played all our games, haven't we, Toto?"
"Well you are sure to be getting into mischief if you are left to yourselves," said the woman. "Come with me, and I will show you a fine game. It is now a quarter to five. We will go up to the turret and see the Man in Armour strike the hour."
"Hurrah!" cried I, and Eloise skipped. It was the desire of both our hearts to see the mysterious Man in Armour close, and watch him strike the bell.
"Fetch your hats, then, for it is windy in the tower," said Gretel. And off we went to fetch them.
She led us through a door off the corridor, and up circular stone stairs that seemed to have no end, till we reached the room where the machinery was placed that drove the clock and struck the bell.
A ladder from here led us to the topmost chamber, where the iron man with the iron hammer stood before the iron bell.
This chamber was open to the four winds, and gave a splendid view of the mountains and the forest, and the lands lying towards Friedrichsdorff and beyond.
But little cared I for the scenery. I was examining the Man in Armour. He was taller than a real man, and his head was one huge mass of iron cast in the form of a morion. Clauss of Innsbruck had made him, and he struck me with a creepy sensation that was half fear. He stood with his huge hammer half raised; and the knowledge that at the hour he would wheel on his pivot and hit the bell vested him with an uncanny suggestion of life, even though one knew he was dead and made of iron.
"He will not strike for ten minutes," said Gretel. "Gott! how cold it is here, and how windy! Come, let us play a game of blind-man's buff to keep ourselves warm."
My small handkerchief was brought intorequisition, and Gretel blinded me, pinning the handkerchief to my képi. "And now," said Gretel, "I will bind Eloise, and you can try to catch me."
Then we played.
If you had been standing below you might have heard our laughter. I had just missed Eloise, when I was myself seized from behind by the waist, and Gretel's voice cried: "Now I've caught you!"
Even as she spoke a deep rumbling came from the machinery-room below. "Now I've caught you. Now I've caught you!" cried Gretel's voice, that seemed choking with laughter.
Something like a mighty bird swept past my forehead, tearing the képi from my head and the handkerchief from my eyes, and flinging me on the floor with the wind of its passage.
BOOM!
The great hammer of the Man in Armour had struck its first stroke, and with a thunderous, heart-shattering sound. The great hammer had passed my head so close that another half inch would have meant death.
BOOM!
I lay paralysed, looking up at the iron figure swinging to its work. He had nearly killed me, and I knew it. Again the hammer flew towards the bell.
BOOM!
The tower rocked, and the sound roared through the openings, and the joints of the iron figure groaned and the arms upflew once more.
BOOM!
And once again, urged by the might of the hammer-man, tremendous, apocalyptic, and sinister the voice of the great bell burst over the woods.
BOOM!
The woodmen in the forests of the Taunus corded their bundles and prepared for home, for five o'clock had struck from the Schloss Lichtenberg.
At the first stroke, Eloise had sat down on the floor, screaming with fright at the noise. She was sitting there still, with her eyes bandaged, when the sound died away.
"What an escape!" cried Gretel, who was white and shaking. "Little boy, had I not plucked you away, the hammer would have killed you! It would have killed you had it not been for me!"
But in my heart I knew better than that.
* * * * *
That night I told Joubert of the thing. He said Gretel was a fool.
"Joubert," I said, "I am afraid of this house, and I am afraid of Gretel; and I want to say my prayers again, please, for I was not thinking when I said them just now."
I said them again; and Heaven knows I needed them more than any prince trapped in the ogre's castle of a fairy tale.
Scarcely had Joubert left me than a faint sound, stealing from below, made me sit up in bed.
The sound of violins tuning up.
Ever since I could perceive the difference between musical sounds, music has fascinated me, thrilled me, filled me with hauntings. Music can make me drunk, music can make me everything but bad; but it is not in the province of music to do that.
A band of wandering musicians had come to the schloss, and were preparing to entertain the guests in the great hall.
Our rooms were quite close to the gallery surrounding the hall. I could hear the complaint of the violin-strings protesting their readiness, and the deep, gasping grunts of the 'cello saying as plainly as a 'cello could speak, "Begin."
Then the music struck up.
A gay, dashing tune, vivid as a spring landscape with the daffodils dancing in the wind; the high tremulous notes of a piccolo hovering over the music of the strings as a skylark hovers in the air.
It was more than mortal child could stand, to hear all that and not to be there.
I hopped out of bed, and made for the door. I hadopened it, when the thought came to me that Joubert might come back to the room, as he sometimes did, to see if I were asleep; so I ran to the bed and propped the pillow under the bedclothes. I often slept with the clothes over my head, and the room was so dark that the protuberance of the pillow gave quite a striking representation of a small boy curled up in slumber.
Then I came down the passage to the gallery overlooking the hall. Down below the place was brilliantly lit.
The musicians—four men in long coats, with long hair, and two of them bearded—were opposite to me.
Seated about were the guests: my father, the Countess Feliciani, Count Feliciani, Major von der Goltz, General Hahn, and another gentleman whose name I did not know. Baron von Lichtenberg was not there.
A servant was handing coffee, and the guests were chatting in two little groups, and seemed quite oblivious of the music that was ravishing my simple heart.
The spring song ceased, the daffodils danced no longer in the wind, the skylark dropped from the sky, and the musicians fell chatting one to the other in an undertone whilst they tuned up again. The one most directly facing me—a man quite young, with oh, such a good, kind, sweet face!—glanced up as he was raising his violin and caught sight of me in my little nightshirt away up in the gallery peeping down at him and his brethren. He evidently knew at once that I was one of the children of the schloss, a truant from bed, and that my portion would be smacks if I were discovered; for, though a momentary smile lit his face,he made no sign or attempt to point me out to his fellows.
They broke into a hunting tune. I could tell, from the lilt of the music, it was the chase that was speaking in the inarticulate language of the strings. The piccolo had discarded his instrument for a horn; I could hear the yapping of the dogs, and the pack bursting into full cry; the horn, and the echoes of the horn from the rocks and woods, the halalli. Gay, ghostly, beautiful, the music swept me along with it, the very guests below forgot their chatter; I could see them keeping time with their feet. Enchantment had seized upon the old schloss, the green-coated jägers crowded, as if by permission, to the passage entrance, and their harsh voices took up the song which now broke from the lips of the magicians in the long coats to the accompaniment of the violins and the hunting-horn, a song the words of which were not translated for me till long, long afterwards:
Hound and horn give voice and tongue,Fill the woods with echoes gay;Let your music sweet be flungTo the Brocken far away.Jägers with the horns ye wind,Hounds whose tongues the chase shall bay;Let your voice the echoes findOf the Brocken old and grey.Hark! amidst the bracken greenBells the buck whose vigil keepsDanger from the hind unseen,Danger from the fawn that sleeps.Hears he us, yet heeds us not,Dreams he that we are the wind;Phantoms we of hounds forgot,Ghosts of huntmen long since blind.Dreams we are the forest's breathWaking to the touch of day;Recks not 'tis the horn of DeathDying in the distance grey.Hound and horn give voice and tongue——
Hound and horn give voice and tongue,Fill the woods with echoes gay;Let your music sweet be flungTo the Brocken far away.Jägers with the horns ye wind,Hounds whose tongues the chase shall bay;Let your voice the echoes findOf the Brocken old and grey.Hark! amidst the bracken greenBells the buck whose vigil keepsDanger from the hind unseen,Danger from the fawn that sleeps.Hears he us, yet heeds us not,Dreams he that we are the wind;Phantoms we of hounds forgot,Ghosts of huntmen long since blind.Dreams we are the forest's breathWaking to the touch of day;Recks not 'tis the horn of DeathDying in the distance grey.Hound and horn give voice and tongue——
Hound and horn give voice and tongue,Fill the woods with echoes gay;Let your music sweet be flungTo the Brocken far away.
Hound and horn give voice and tongue,
Fill the woods with echoes gay;
Let your music sweet be flung
To the Brocken far away.
Jägers with the horns ye wind,Hounds whose tongues the chase shall bay;Let your voice the echoes findOf the Brocken old and grey.
Jägers with the horns ye wind,
Hounds whose tongues the chase shall bay;
Let your voice the echoes find
Of the Brocken old and grey.
Hark! amidst the bracken greenBells the buck whose vigil keepsDanger from the hind unseen,Danger from the fawn that sleeps.
Hark! amidst the bracken green
Bells the buck whose vigil keeps
Danger from the hind unseen,
Danger from the fawn that sleeps.
Hears he us, yet heeds us not,Dreams he that we are the wind;Phantoms we of hounds forgot,Ghosts of huntmen long since blind.
Hears he us, yet heeds us not,
Dreams he that we are the wind;
Phantoms we of hounds forgot,
Ghosts of huntmen long since blind.
Dreams we are the forest's breathWaking to the touch of day;Recks not 'tis the horn of DeathDying in the distance grey.Hound and horn give voice and tongue——
Dreams we are the forest's breath
Waking to the touch of day;
Recks not 'tis the horn of Death
Dying in the distance grey.
Hound and horn give voice and tongue——
And through it all the horn, now clear and ringing, now caught and dying in the echoes of the forest, now lost in the echoes of the Brocken, the wild notes flying before the phantom of the flying stag; ever the horn threading the gushing music of the violins, the voices of the musicians, and the chorus of the jägers.
More music came after this, but nothing so beautiful; and as the musicians put their instruments away, and prepared to go, I nodded to the happy-faced one who had spied me. He smiled, and I trotted back to bed. I had been there listening in the gallery for a full hour, and I was cold as ice, but no one had seen me, or only the violin-player who had the face of a good angel.
I shut the door cautiously, and crept back to bed. But there was something on the bed, something on the protuberance caused by my pillow. It was the handle of a knife. The blade of the knife was plunged into the mound of the bedclothes just where my head would have been.
It was Joubert's knife—his "couteau de chasse," a thing he was immensely proud of, a thing as keen as a razor.
That was just like one of Joubert's tricks. He had come in, found my device, and left this, as much as to say, "You'll see what you'll get in the morning."
I plucked the knife out and put it on the floor. Then I crawled into bed.
As I lay thinking of the music, my restless fingers kept digging into holes in the sheet. Half a dozen holes, or rather slits, there were. One might have thought that the hunting-knife of Joubert had been furiously plunged again and again into the heap of bedclothes before being left sticking there. But I did not think of this: the knife was Joubert's. Besides, my head was alive with those dreams that stand at the door of sleep to welcome the innocent in.
The forms of the weather-beaten musicians, sent like good angels from God to charm me and hold me with their music; the happy, innocent, and friendly face of the one who had smiled at me, and the hunting-song:
Hark! amidst the bracken greenBells the buck whose vigil keepsDanger from the hind unseen,Danger from the fawn that sleeps.
Hark! amidst the bracken greenBells the buck whose vigil keepsDanger from the hind unseen,Danger from the fawn that sleeps.
Hark! amidst the bracken greenBells the buck whose vigil keepsDanger from the hind unseen,Danger from the fawn that sleeps.
Hark! amidst the bracken green
Bells the buck whose vigil keeps
Danger from the hind unseen,
Danger from the fawn that sleeps.
Then I, like a fawn, fell asleep, ignorant of Fate as the fawn, and of the extreme wickedness of the heart of man.
"Levez-vous! Levez-vous! Levez-vous! Ta-ra-ra! Pom, pom! Hi! God's teeth, my knife! What does it here?"
Joubert could sound the réveille with his mouth almost as well as a trumpeter, and he was grand at imitating the big drum.
Up I shot in bed, rubbing my eyes.
"Your what?"
"My knife. Ha! I've caught you. Cutting your sticks and carving your name with my couteau de chasse! You have been to my bedroom. Don't answer me! You have been to my bedroom, and taken it from the pocket of my coat. A pretty thing!"
Joubert's temper all yesterday had been savage; his infernal amours were not prospering, it seems. In fact, as I afterwards learned from his own lips, a scullion, resenting his addresses, had called him an old French dog without teeth.
"It was sticking in my pillow when I came to bed!" cried I, indignant at the accusation.
"Your pillow, when you came to bed!" Joubert seized me, ran me across the room by my shoulders to a large mirror, pointed to the reflection of my shrinking form, and yelled:
"Do you see that?"
"Mais, oui."
"Then you see a liar."
"But, Joubert——"
"Not a word!"
"But I want totellyou——"
"Not a word!"
That was always Joubert's way—"Not a word."
"But I want totellyou!"
"Not a word!" And he jabbed the sponge in my mouth, for I was standing by this time in the bath.
I never could tell whether Joubert was joking or in earnest, so I said no more; but it was none the less irritating to be called a liar by Joubert, whose lies about battle, murder, and sudden death were palpable, and sometimes cynically self-confessed.
Little Carl did not appear at breakfast, and Eloise was very despondent, not about Carl, but about going away. She would not touch jam, and she made use sometimes, in a secretive manner, of a handkerchief, small enough, goodness knows, yet chiefly composed of lace.
"It is not the going away," said Eloise; "it is the parting from friends that makes going away so sad."
She was a terribly sentimental child by fits and starts, falling into sentiment and falling out of it again with the facility of a newly dislocated limb from its socket.
Next moment I was chasing her down the corridor, both of us making the corridor echoes ring with our laughter. At the end, just by the glass door leadingto the garden, down she plumped in a corner and put her little pinafore over her head.
I believe she wanted, or expected, me to pull the pinafore away and kiss her, but I didn't. I just pulled her up by the arm, and we both bundled out into the garden, and in a moment she had forgotten kissing amidst the flowers, plucking the asters and the Michaelmas daisies, and chasing the butterflies that were still plentiful in the late summer of that year.
We passed the fountains, and stopped to admire the running man. His face, worn away by time and weather, still had a ferocious expression. One wondered what he was chasing with the spear that seemed for ever on the point of leaving his hand.
"Toto," said Eloise, "yesterday when we took the drum with us, we forgot to bring little Carl's sticks: we left them by the pond."
"So we did," said I.
"Let's go and fetch them," said Eloise.
"Come on," I replied.
We took the forest path leading to the lake.
It was like plunging into a well of twilight.
These trees that surrounded us were no tame trees of a pleasaunce: they were the outposts of the immortal forest, a thing as living and mysterious as the sea. Their twilight was but the fringe of a robe, extending for hundreds and hundreds of square leagues.
I am a lover of the forest. The forest, and the sea, and the blue sky of God are all that are left to remind us of the youth of the world and the poetry of it, and the old German forests retain most of that lost charm.
They are haunted. The forests of the volcanic Eiffel, the Hartz, the Taunus, still hold the ghost of Pan. I have been afraid in them.
By the lake fringed with ferns, Eloise fell into another sentimental and despairing fit. We were sitting on the lake edge, and I was playing with the recovered drumsticks.
"Ay di mi!" wept Eloise. "When you are gone! I mean when I am gone—when we are departed——"
"Courage!" said I.
"It is the going away," sniffed Eloise, carefully arranging her little skirt around her.
"I know," I said, rattling the sticks; "but it will be soon over."
Unhappy child! I believe she had fallen really in love with me, unconscious of the fact that if I cared for any woman in the world it was for the lovely Countess Feliciani, her mother, and that I had no eyes at all for a thing of my own age in frilled pantalettes, no matter how pretty she might be.
Before Eloise could reply to my unintentionally brutal remark, a figure came out from amidst the trees and towards us. It was one of the jägers. A man past middle age, bent and warped like a tree that has stood the tempest for years.
This man's name was Vogel, and good cause I have to remember that name.
"Aha!" said he. "The children! Fräulein Eloise, Gretel is seeking for you in the house."
We rose.
"Come," said Eloise. And I was turning to go withher, but Vogel, who held a stick in one hand and a small penknife in the other, said to me as he whittled at the stick:
"See you, have you ever made a whistle?"
"No," I replied, interested, despite the man's German accent and his face, which was not attractive, for his cheeks were sucked in as though he were perpetually drawing at a pipe, and his nose, too small for his face, was hooked. I have never seen a nose so exactly like the beak of a screech-owl.
Vogel, without a word, sat down and began cutting away at the whistle.
"Are you not coming?" said little Eloise.
"In a minute," I replied, looking over Vogel's shoulder at his handiwork.
"Then stay," she pouted. And away she ran.
I looked on at Vogel and his work, one foot preparing to go, the other foot holding me.
"There is an old woman who lives in the wood," said Vogel, as he cut at the stick, "and she makes whistles."
"Does she?" I replied.
"She does," said Vogel. "She makes them of silver, and of glass, and of gold, and when you blow on them they go——"
A strange warbling sound filled the wood. It was Vogel showing how the whistles of the old woman sounded when you blew into them.
He had put a bird-call—the thing foresters use for snaring birds—between his lips. He removed it again with a laugh, and went on with his work.
"She lives in a house made of gingerbread," went on the fowler. "And know you what the panes of her windows are made of?"
"No."
"Sugar, clear as your eye. And guess you what the door is made of?"
"No."
"Marzipan. Ah! that is a good house to live in," said Vogel. And I mentally concurred.
"She keeps white mice, and rabbits with green eyes."
"Green eyes?"
"Yes; and she gave little Carl a rabbit for himself last time I took him to see her. There." He handed the whistle, which was finished, up to me over his shoulder, and I blew on it and found it good.
"Would you like to have a rabbit like that?" asked Vogel, filling his pipe and lighting it.
"I would."
"Well, you can have one. I will get one for you to-morrow, or to-day, if you like to come with me to see the old woman who makes the whistles. Will you come?"
"What time?" said I, hesitating.
"Now," said Vogel.
My answer was cut short by a sound from behind—the clinking of a bucket—and Joubert and a stout servant-maid appeared from the path leading to the lake. They were coming to gather water-plants for some household decoration.
Joubert was gallantly carrying the bucket.
Vogel sprang to his feet.
"I must go," said he. "It was my joke. I am the old woman who makes the whistles."
Off he went.
I have often thought since that much weariness, much sorrow to me, and much plotting and planning to the Great Writer of love-stories. Who lives above, might have been saved if I had gone that day with Vogel to see "the old woman who makes the whistles."
"What was Skull-face saying to you?" asked Joubert.
"He made me this," said I, showing him the pithed stick.
The Felicianis departed at three o'clock. Eloise, with her cheeks flushed, was laughing with excitement: she seemed quite to have forgotten her grief. Four horses drew their carriage. They were bound for Homburg, where they would pass the night before going on to Frankfort.
I remember, as the carriage drove off. Countess Feliciani looked back and smiled at us—at my father, myself, Von Lichtenberg, Major von der Goltz, and General Hahn, all grouped on the steps. God! had she known the happenings to follow, how that smile would have withered on her lips!
Carl was still invisible, and the great schloss, now that Eloise was gone, seemed strangely empty to me. It is wonderful how much space a child can fill with its presence. Eloise's happy little form had diffused itself, spreading happiness and innocence far and wide, and dispelling I know not what evil things. If a rose canfill a room with its perfume, who knows how far may reach the perfume of an innocent and beautiful soul!
At six o'clock I was in the library; a box of tin soldiers, which my father had bought for me at Carlsruhe, stood open on the table, and the armies were opposed.
I was not too old to play with soldiers like these, for there were shoals of them: officers, and drummers, and gunners, cannon, flags—everything. As a matter of fact, Major von der Goltz had been playing with me, too, and I'll swear he took just as much interest in them as I.
He had gone now, and I was tired of the soldiers. I turned my attention to the books. I was walking along by the shelves, examining the backs of the volumes and trying to imagine what the German titles could mean, when suddenly, from amidst the books, I heard a child's voice.
The child seemed singing and talking to itself, and the sound seemed to come from the volumes on the shelves. It was strange to hear it coming from amidst the books like that, as though some volume of fairy tales had suddenly become vocal, and Hänsel, playing by the witch-woman's door, had found a voice.
Then I noticed that the books before me were not real books, but imitation.
In the centre of one of these imitation book-racks there was a little brass knob. I pressed it, and the wall gave, disclosing a passage. The book-backs were but the covering of a narrow door.
This passage, suddenly disclosed, fascinated me.
It was dimly lit from above, and ended in a door of muffed glass. About half way down on the floor stood a toy horse—a dappled-grey horse with a broom-like tail and a well-worn saddle—evidently left there by some child, and forgotten.
I could hear the child's voice now distinctly. He or she was singing, singing in a monotonous fashion, just as a child sings when quite alone.
I came down the passage to the door. The muffing of the door had been scratched. There was a spyhole, evidently made by a child, for it was just on a level with my own eye, and there was a word scratched on the paint of the muffing which, though I had to read it backwards, I made out to be—
CARL.
I peeped through the hole. It disclosed a room, evidently a nursery, plainly but pleasantly furnished. On the window-seat, looking out and drumming an accompaniment on the glass to the tune he was singing, knelt Carl.
I looked for the handle of the door, found it, turned it, opened the door, without knocking, and entered the room.
The child at the window turned, and, when he saw me, flung up his arms with a gesture of terror and glanced round wildly, as if for somewhere to hide. It cut me to the heart; it frightened me, too—this terror of the child for me. I remembered Eloise's words: "Little Carl is a girl."
"Gretel! Gretel! Gretel!" cried the child as I ranforward, took him in my arms, and kissed him on the forehead.
Whether he had expected me to hit him or not I don't know; but at this treatment he ceased his cries, and, pushing me away from him, looked at me dubiously.
"I won't hurt you, little Carl!" And at the words a whole ocean of tenderness welled up in my heart for the trembling and lonely little figure in the soldier's dress, this Pomeranian grenadier, timorous as a rabbit. I must, in this heart of mine, have some good; for, boy as I was, with all the fighting instincts of the Mahons in my blood, I felt no boyish ridicule for this creature that a blow would make cry, but all the tenderness of a nurse, or a person who holds a live and trembling bird in his hand.
"I won't hurt you. I didn'tmeanto knock you in the pond."
"But you did," said Carl, still dubious.
"I know, and I'm sorry. See here, Carl, I'll give you my dog."
"Your big dog?" asked Carl, for he had seen Marengo bounding about the lawn.
"Yes," said I, knowing full well that the promise was about equivalent to the promise of the moon.
The little hand fell into mine.
"Gretel," said Carl, now in a confidential tone, "told me you would kill me if I played with you, or went near you, or if I looked at you."
"Oh, how wicked!" I cried. "Ikill you!" And I clasped the little form more tightly.
"I know," said Carl.
He was a personage of few words, and those two words told me quite plainly that he believed me and had confidence in me.
"It's not you," he said, after a pause. "She said you didn't want to do it, but you'd have to do it; for you were a bad man once, and you'd have to do it over again," said Carl. "What you'd done before, for someone had said so. I don't know who they were." He had got the tale so mixed up that I could scarcely follow his meaning. "When will you give me the dog?" he finished, irrelevantly enough.
"I'll give you him—I'll give you him to-morrow," I said, "if father will let me. But he's sure to, if I ask him."
Scarcely had I finished speaking than the door opened and Gretel appeared.
She stood for a moment when she saw us together, as though the sight had turned her into stone.
Then she came towards us.
"How did you get here?" said she to me.
"Through that door," I answered her.
She took me by the hand and led me away. As she did so, something closed round my neck, and something touched me on the cheek.
It was Carl, who had put his arms round my neck and kissed me.
Ah, little Carl, little Carl! Little we knew how next we should meet, or the manner of that meeting!
"Joubert, what is father doing?"
"He is playing cards down below with the gentlemen."
I was undressing to go to bed that same night, and Joubert was expediting my movements, anxious, most likely, to go downstairs and drink with the house-steward.
"Joubert, I wish he were here."
"Why?"
"I don't know; but I am frightened."
"Of what?"
"I don't know."
Joubert blew out the light and left the room, and I lay looking at the shadows the furniture made on the wall by the dim glimmer of the nightlight.
The door leading to my father's room was open. This did not give me any comfort—rather the reverse; for the next room was in darkness, and I could not help imagining faces peeping at me from the darkness.
When frightened at night like this, I generally told myself fairy tales to keep away the terrors.
I tried this to-night with a bad result, for the attempt instantly brought up Vogel and the old woman who lived in the wood.
Now, there was something in this fairy tale that my heart knew to be evil and malign. What this something was I could not tell, but it was there, and the story did not bring me any peace.
The clock in the turret struck ten, and I saw vividly the Man in Armour up there alone in the dark, wheeling to his work.
There was something terrific in this iron man. A live tiger was a thing to me less fearful. Not for worlds would I have gone up alone to watch him at his work, even at a safe distance. The fact that the hammer had nearly killed me did not contribute much to this fear. I knew that was not his fault. I was terrified by Him.
Then I fell thinking of my promise to little Carl to give him Marengo, and, thinking of this, I fell asleep.
At least, I closed my eyes and entered a world of vague shapes. And then I entered a wood. The cottage of the old woman who made the whistles was before me. It had a window on either side of the door, and in one window there were jars of sugar-sticks.
I knocked at the door. It flew open, and there stood Vogel, the jäger with the hooked nose. He smilingly beckoned me in. I entered, and, hey presto! his smile vanished with the closing of the door, and I was on a bed, and he was smothering me with a pillow. And then I awoke, and I was in bed and I was being smothered by a pillow.
Oh, horror! Oh, the horror of that waking! Someone was lying upon me; a pillow was over my face, crushing it! I shrieked, and my shriek did not go aninch beyond my mouth. My nose was crushed flat; my mouth, opening to scream, could not close again. The pillow bulged in, and then, flung away like a feather by the wind, went the form that was crushing me and the pillow that was smothering me; and shriek upon shriek—the most horrid, the most unearthly, the most soul-sickening—shriek after shriek tore the air; and, jumping upon my feet, standing on the bed with arms outspread, I gazed on the sight before me, adding my thin voice to the outcries that were piercing the schloss from cellar to turret.
On the floor, lit for my view by the halfpenny nightlight calmly burning in its little dish, Marengo and a man were at war—and the victory was with Marengo. The great dog had got the man by the back of the neck. The man, face down, was drumming on the floor with his fists and feet, just as you see an angry child in a fit of passion.
The dog was dumb, and making mighty efforts to turn the man on his face. He lifted him, he shifted him, he dragged him hither and thither. The man, screaming, knew what the dog wanted, and clung to the floor.
Suddenly the dog sprang away, and, like a flash of lightning, sprang back. He had got the throat-hold, and a deep gobbling, worrying sound was the end of the man and his hunting for ever.
For the man was Vogel. I saw that, and then I saw nothing more.
When I regained consciousness I was in my father's room, lying on the bed. Joubert was sitting on the bed beside me.
"Joubert," said I, "where is he?"
"Who?"
"Vogel."
"God knows!" said Joubert. "Here, drink this."
It was brandy, and it nearly took my breath away, but it gave me life.
"Now," said Joubert, putting the glass on the table by the bed and taking my small trousers in his hand, "put these on."
"Why am I to dress, Joubert?"
"We are going away. Ah, fine doings there have been! And who knows the end of it all?"
As he helped me to dress, he told me of what had occurred. The gentlemen below had been playing cards when the shrieks of Vogel had sundered the cardplayers like the sword of death.
Rushing upstairs, they had found Marengo guarding the dead body of Vogel, and me standing on the bed screaming. When my father caught me in his arms, I told all. Of Vogel's attempt to smother me, of the knife I had found in my pillow, and of theoccurrence in the bell-tower. It must have been my subconscious intelligence speaking, for I remember nothing of it; but it was enough.
"Then," said Joubert, "the General, with you tucked under his left arm, turned on the Baron. 'What is this?' said he. 'Assassination in the Schloss Lichtenberg!'"
"'Liar!' cried the Baron. And before the word was well from his mouth, crack! the General had hit him open-fisted in the face, and the mark sprang up as if the General had hit him red-handed. Mordieu! I never saw a neater blow given, or one so taken, for the Baron never blinked. He just nodded his head, as if to say, 'Yes.' Then he put his arm in Count Hahn's, and the General turned to Major von der Goltz, and, taking him by the arm, followed the others. Then word came to pack up and have you ready, for we are leaving the schloss this night. Now then, vite!"
"But, Joubert, I remember nothing of all that."
"All what?"
"Telling my father of Vogel and the bell."
"Well, whether you remember it or not, there it is."
"And the knife—— Joubert, did you not, you yourself, stick the knife in the pillow?"
"I!" said Joubert. "When would you catch me playing such fool's tricks as that?"
"Joubert."
"Yes?"
"I think I know why they wanted to kill me."
"Why?"
"Because they thought I would kill little Carl."
Joubert grunted.
"Here," said he, "hold up your foot till I lace that boot."
Scarcely had he done so before General Hahn appeared at the door.
"Dress the child, pack, and be ready to leave the schloss at once!" he cried to Joubert. "The horses are being got ready."
"I have my orders," replied Joubert.
He grumbled and talked to himself, and swore, as he got the rest of my clothes on, for I was quite unable to help myself. And then, when I was ready, he gave me a great, smacking kiss that nearly took my breath away, and his hand was shaky, and I had never seen it shake before, and he had never kissed me before in his life. Then he left me sitting on the bed, and I heard him in the next room, where the dead man was, packing my things.
In the midst of all this, the castle clock struck eleven.
And now from below came the trampling of horses, and the crash of wheels on gravel, and the harsh German voices of the servants. Doors banged, and a man came up, flung our door open, and cried: "Ready!" And Joubert, with a portmanteau on his shoulder, led me along by the hand down the corridor, the servant following with the rest of our luggage.
Down in the hall, which was brilliantly lit, Major von der Goltz and my father stood talking together in one corner, and Von Lichtenberg and General Hahn stood by the great fireplace, their hands behind them,neither of them speaking, and both with their eyes on the floor as if in profound thought. And I noticed that the great red mark on the Baron's cheek was still there, just as if a blood-stained hand had struck him.
When they saw us coming, with Marengo following us, Von Lichtenberg and the General took their hats from a table close by and walked towards the door, which was opened for them by a servant.
General Hahn held under his arm a bundle done up in a cloak, and from it protruded two sword-hilts.
My father, taking my hand and followed by Major von der Goltz, came after the Baron.
It was a clear and windy night; flying clouds were passing over the moon. Two carriages were drawn up at the door, and a dozen men with torches blazing and blowing in the wind gave light whilst our luggage was put in.
The first carriage was our own, the second a carriage belonging to the schloss.
Joubert put our luggage in and mounted on the box; then my father, bowing to Major von der Goltz, held the door open; the Major, with a slight bow to my father, got in; we followed, the carriage started, running torchmen leading us and following behind.
"Are we truly going away, father?" I asked nestling close to him and holding his hand.
"Yes, my child; we are going away."
"Why are those men with torches running with us?"
"You will see—you will see. Major von der Goltz,I hope those words I have just said to you will not be forgotten in the event——"
"They shall be remembered," said the Major.
Up to this all the company at the schloss had been hail-fellow-well-met one with the other. My father had addressed Von der Goltz as Franz, and the Major had been just as familiar in his manner, but all this was now changed. The two men were as stiff and formal as though they had never met before, one facing the other, bolt upright, and with heads somewhat averted, as I could see by the dancing torchlight; and in my childish heart I wondered at this.
As we slowed up to pass the great gates of the avenue, I heard the wheels of the other carriage coming behind, and as we made the turning, I saw it, with the light of the torches glinting on the headpieces of the horses, and behind the carriage the plumes of the pine-trees showed against the moon, and they looked like the plumes of a hearse.
The estate of Von Lichtenberg stretched for a mile and more beyond the gates; and it seems that it is not etiquette to kill a man on his own estate, no more than it is etiquette to strike a man in his own house.
We took the forest road. Mixed with the sound of hoofs and wheels, I could hear the footsteps of the running torchmen: the flickering light shot in between the tree-boles, disturbing the wood creatures, and, as we went, all of a sudden, the jägers running with us broke out in a chorus of what seemed lamentation mixed with curses.
Von der Goltz sprang up on the seat and looked ahead.
"A white hare is running before us," said he. "That is bad for Count Carl von Lichtenberg."
My father bowed slightly, as if to a half-heard remark.
A white hare, it seems, was the sign of death in the house of Lichtenberg.
Turning a bend in the road, the carriage drew up.
We waited for a moment till the sound behind told us that the second carriage had also stopped. Then we alighted.
"Joubert," said my father, handing him a packet, "you will stay here with the dog. Open this packet should anything befall me. Patrick, you will come with me."
"Dieu vous garde!" said Joubert. And, following the others, we entered the forest.
I felt sick and faint with fear, and the light of the dancing torch-flames made me reel. I held tight to my father's hand, and I remember thinking how big and strong and warm it was. What was about to happen I could not guess, but I knew that the shadow of death was with us, and the chill of him in my heart.
We had not gone more than two hundred yards when we came to a clearing amidst the trees—a breezy, open space, that the moon lit over the waving pine-tops. Here the jägers divided themselves into two lines, five yards or so apart, and stood motionless as soldiers on parade. Baron von Lichtenberg with his arms folded, stood with his back to us, looking at the clouds running across the face of the moon; and the two army officers, drawing aside, began to undo the swords from the bundle.
"Patrick," said my father, leading me under the shade of the trees, "I struck my kinsman in his own house to-night. The only excuse I can make for that action is to kill him, so let this be a lesson to you the length of your life." He stopped, stooped, hugged me in his arms, and then strode out into the torchlight, and took his sword from Von der Goltz.
It was a curious little speech, or would have been from anyone but an Irishman. But I was not thinking of it. I was mesmerised by the sight before me.
When the two men took their swords they returned them to the seconds. The swords were then bent to prove the steel, and measured, and then returned to the principals.
Then the jägers moved together almost shoulder to shoulder, and in the space between the two lines of torches the duellists took their stand. There was dead silence for a moment.
I could hear the wind in the pines, and the guttering and slobbering of the flambeaux, and a fox barking, away somewhere in the forest.
Then came General Hahn's voice, and, instant upon it, the quarrelling of the rapiers.
The antagonists were perfect swordsmen; the rapiers were now invisible, now like jets of light as the torchlight shot along them. Over the music of the steel, the wind in the pine-trees said "Hush!" and the barking of the fox still came from the far distance.
At first you might have thought these two gentlemen were at play, till the fury subdued by science broke loose at last, and the rings and flashes of lightand the clash of the steel spoke the language of the thing and the meaning of it.
It was a duel to the death; and I, looking on, my soul on fire, agony in my heart, my hands thrust deep in the pockets of my caped overcoat, counted the bits of biscuit-crumbs in those same pockets, and made tiny balls from the fluff, and noted with deep and particular attention the extent of a hole in one of the linings. The interior of my overcoat-pockets marked itself upon my memory as sharply and insistently as the scene before me—such a strange thing is mind.
Yet I knew that, if Von Lichtenberg was the conqueror, my father would die, and I would be left to the mercy of Von Lichtenberg.
Yet, despite all my fears, oh, that heroic moment! The concentrated fury of the fight beneath the singing pines, lit by the blazing torches! Then, in a flash, it was over. Von Lichtenberg's sword flew from his hand; his arms flung out as though he were crucified on the air; and then, just as though he were a man of wax before a fiery furnace, he fell together horribly, and became a heap on the ground.
The hammer of Thor could not have felled him more effectually than the rapier that had passed through his armpit like a ribbon of light.
I ran to my father, and clung to him.
General Hahn, on one knee, was supporting Von Lichtenberg in his arms. The Baron's face was clay-coloured, his head drooped forward, and his jaw hung loose.
Hahn, with his knee in the armpit to suppress theterrible bleeding, called for a knife to rip the sleeve; and as they were doing it the stricken man came to and yawned.
He yawned just as a man yawns who is deadly tired and half roused from sleep, and he tossed his arms just in the same way. He seemed to care about nothing, his weariness was so great.
And then, just as a man speaks who is half roused and wants to drop asleep again:
"Hahn."
"I am here."
"Ah, yes! I leave the child to your care and Gretel——"
"Yes"
"She is to be brought up just as I have done. Should she love him, the old tragedy will come again. She must never know love——" Then he yawned, and yawned, rousing slightly as they cut his sleeve to pieces in an attempt to reach the wound. He didn't seem to care. He spoke only once again: "Hahn!"
"I am listening."
The wind in the pine-trees, and the fox in the wood and the slobbering of the torches filled the silence.
"I am listening."
"He is dead," said Von der Goltz.
We left the forest, my father leaning on the arm of his second. One man with a torch preceded us, and lit us as we got into the carriage.
"A strange end to our visit. Major von der Goltz," said my father.
The Major bowed.
"I shall remain at the Hôtel des Hollandaise in Frankfort for three days."
The Major bowed.
"Joubert!" said my father. And the carriage drove off; and, looking back, I saw Major von der Goltz and the jäger with the torch vanishing amidst the trees.
We passed through Homburg at four o'clock, and at six of a seraphic morning spired Frankfort rose before us like a city in a fairy tale, so beautiful, so vague, so ethereal one could not believe it a city of this sordid earth.
We stayed three days at the Hôtel des Hollandaise. Major von der Goltz called, and General Hahn. A paper was drawn up, I believe, signed by the seconds and my father, and by the chief jäger. It was done as a matter of formality, for the duel was perfectly in order.
Then we started on our return home; and oneevening, towards the end of September, we entered Paris and drew up at our house in the Avenue Champs Elysées.
Though the Emperor and Empress were still away on their southern tour, the streets were gay—at least to my eyes. Oh, that Paris of the Second Empire—that lost city whose gaiety surrounds the beginning of my life, jewelled with gas-lamps or glittering in the sunlight! Whatever may have been its faults, its wickedness, its falsity, it knew at least the vitality and the charm of youth. Men knew how to laugh in those days, when the echoes of the Boulevard de Gand still were heard in the Boulevard des Italiens, when Carvalho was Director of the Opéra Comique, and Moray President of the Council.
"At last!" said my father, as we turned in at the gates and drew up at the doorway.
He had been depressed on the return journey—a depression caused, I believe, not in the least by the fact that he had slain his kinsman. The trouble at his heart was the blow. For a guest to strike his host in his own house was a breach of etiquette and good manners unpardonable in his eyes. Yet he had committed that crime.
However, with our entry into Paris this depression seemed to lift.
The major-domo came down the steps, and with his own august hands opened the door for us, and let down the steps, and gave us welcome with a real and human smile on his magnificent white, fat, stolid face—the face of a perfect servant, expressionless as a cheese, which would doubtless remain just the same were he, constrained by stress of circumstances, to open the door of the drawing-room and announce: "The Last Trumpet has sounded, sir."
In the great hall, softly lit and flower-scented, the footmen in their green-and-white livery stood in two gorgeous rows to give us welcome; and Jacko, the macaw, four foot from the crest of his wicked head to the tip of his tail-feathers, dressed also in the green-and-white livery of the house, screamed his sentiments on the matter. My father had a word for everyone. It was always just so. This grand seigneur, who had made his way to fortune less with his sword than with his brilliant personality, would speak to the meanest servant familiarly, jocularly, yet never would he meet with disrespect. There was that about him which inspired fear as well as love, and he was served as few other men are served. Witness our return that night to a house as well in order as though we had come back from a trip to Compiègne instead of a two months' journey to a foreign country.
He dismissed the servants with a word, and, with his hat on the back of his head, stood at the table where his letters were set out, tearing them open and flinging the unimportant ones on the floor.
Whilst he was so engaged, a ring came to the door, and the footman who answered it brought him a letter sealed with a great red seal, which he tore open and read.
"Aha!" muttered he. "De Morny wants to see me to-morrow. Wonder how he knew that I was back?But De Moray knows everything. Is the servant waiting, François?"
"No, sir; the servant has gone."
"Very well," said my father. Then to me: "Come now; get your supper, and off to bed. François!"
I was led off grumbling.
Joubert tucked me into bed; and as I lay listening to the carriage-wheels from the Champs Elysées bearing people home from supper-party and theatre, the journey, the Schloss Lichtenberg, the mysterious pine-forest, the drums and tramping soldiers of Carlsruhe and Mayence, the blue Rhine—all rose before me as a picture. It was the First Act of my life, an Act tragic enough; and, as the curtain of sleep fell upon it, the glimmer of the jägers' torches still struggled through that veil, with the sound of the swords, the murmur of the wind in the pine-trees, and the far-off barking of the fox in the wood.
I was dreaming of the Countess Feliciani. She had changed all of a sudden, by the alchemy of dreamland, into little Carl. We were running together down the forest path in the woods of Lichtenberg, and the Stone Man was pursuing us, when a violent pull on my right leg awakened me, and Joubert and a burst of sunshine replaced dreamland and its shadows.
It was one of Joubert's pleasant ways of awakening a child from his sleep, to catch him by the foot and nearly haul him out of bed.
Oh, the agony of having to get up, straight, without any preliminary stretching and yawning; to get up with that dead, blank tiredness of childhood hanging on one like a cloak—and get into a cold bath!
It was martial law with a vengeance. But there was no use in grumbling.
"Come, lazybones," said Joubert; "rouse yourself. Gone eight; and you are to go with the General at ten."
"Where to?" said I, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes.
"Ma foi! where to? Why, on a visit to M. le Duc de Morny."
"Oui."
I was in the bath now, and soapsuds checked my questions. Joubert used to wash me just as if I were a dog on the mornings that soapsuds were the order of the day—that is to say, only twice a week, every Wednesday and Saturday; for this old soldier was as full of fixed opinions as any nurse, and he believed that too much soap took the oil out of the skin and made children weak. You may be sure I did not combat his theory.
"Your best coat," said Joubert, as he took the article from the drawer, "and your best manners, if you please; for M. le Duc de Morny is the first gentleman in Paris, now that the Emperor is away. Now you are dressed, and—remember!"
You may be sure I was in a flutter, for the Duc de Morny was a personage I had never seen, and he loomed large even on my small horizon. From my childhood's recollections I believe that the Duc had far more dominance and power than poor old Louis Napoleon, whose craft lay chiefly in his face.
At a quarter to ten my father, in full general's uniform, very gorgeous, wearing his medals and the cross, appeared in the hall, where I was waiting for him. A closed carriage was at the door. We got in and started.
The Hôtel de Morny was situated on the Quai d'Orsay. It was a huge building, with gardens running right down to the river. It was next to the Spanish Embassy, and had two entrances, one by the river, the other opening from the Rue de Lille.
We passed down the Rue de Lille, and then turnedin at the gates, and by a short roadway to the great courtyard.
Other carriages were there—quite a number of them. Our carriage drew up at the steps, and we alighted.
As we left the chilly morning, and passed through the swing-glass doors held open for us by a powdered footman, it was like entering a greenhouse, so warm was the air, and so perfumed with flowers.
The Duc was far too astute a man to merge his personality in Government apartments. The Hôtel de Morny was his palace. There he held his court, receiving people in his bed-chamber after the fashion of a king.
The salon was filled with people—all men, with one exception.
We were expected, it seems; for the usher led us straight through the throng towards the tall double oak door that gave entrance to the Duc's room.
"Stay here, Patrick," said my father, and he indicated a chair close to the door. Then he vanished into the sanctum of the Minister, and I was left alone to contemplate the people around me.
They were arranged in little groups, talking together; fat men and thin men, several priests, stout gentlemen with the red rosette of the Legion of Honour in their buttonholes, sun-dried gentlemen from Provence with fiery eyes and enormous moustaches, all talking, most of them gesticulating, and each awaiting his audience with the Minister.
Suddenly, through this crowd, which divided before her as the Red Sea divided before Pharaoh, straighttowards me came the only female occupant of the room, an old lady at least seventy years of age, yet dressed like a girl of sixteen. She was so evidently making for me that I rose to meet her; and, before I could resent the outrage, a lace frill tickled my chin, a perfume of stephanotis half smothered me, and a pair of thin lips smacked against my cheek.
She had kissed me. Scarlet to the eyes, conscious that I was observed by all, not knowing exactly what I did, I did a very unmannerly thing—wiped my cheek with the back of my hand as if to wipe the kiss away.
"I knew you at once," said the old lady, who was none other than the Countess Wagner de Pons, reader to the Empress. "You are the dear General's little boy, of whom I have heard so much—le petit Patrique. And you have bean away, and you have just returned. Mon Dieu! the likeness is most speaking. Now, look you, Patrique, over there on that fauteuil. That is the little Comte de Coigny, whom I have brought this morning to make his bow to M. le Duc de Morny. Come with me, and I will introduce you to him. He is of the haute noblesse, a child of the highest understanding, trè propre."
I glanced at the little Comte de Coigny. He was a tallow-faced, heavy-looking individual, bigger than me, and older. He might have been eleven. He was dressed like a little man, kid gloves and all; and he was looking at me with a dull and sinister expression that spoke neither of a high understanding nor a good heart.
Before I could move towards him, led by the Countess Wagner de Pons, the door of De Morny's room opened, and my father's voice said: "Patrick."
Leaving the old lady, I came.
I found myself in a huge room, with long windows giving a view of the garden and the river. It was, in fact, a salon set out with fauteuils and couches. A bed in one corner, raised on a low platform, struck me by its incongruity. How anyone could choose to sleep in such a vast and gorgeous salon astonished my childish mind. But I had little time to think of these things, for the man standing with his back to the fireplace absorbed all my attention.
He was above the middle height, with a bald, dome-like forehead, a strong face, and wearing a moustache and imperial. He was dressed like any other gentleman, but there was that about him—a self-contained vigour, a calmness of manner, and a grace—that stamped him at once on the memory as a person never to be forgotten.
"This is my little son," said my father. I saluted, and the great man bowed.
Then I was questioned about the affair at Lichtenberg, for it seems the matter had made more than a stir at the Prussian Court. Questions were being asked; and there was that eruption of evil talk, that dicrotic rebound of excitement, which, after every social tragedy, is sure to follow the first wave.
"And now," said my father, when I had finished my evidence, "run off and play till I am ready for you."
Play! With whom did he expect me to play? Withthe fat Deputies, the opulent bankers, the sun-dried gentlemen from the south who thronged the ante-chamber?
The Countess Wagner de Pons answered the question. This old lady, whose eccentricity and love of gossip had made her wait with her charge in the ante-room, instead of having her name announced to the Duchess de Morny, as any other lady of rank would have done, was deep in conversation with a tall, dignified gentleman, deep in scandal, no doubt; for, when she saw me she got rid of me at once by introducing me to the little Comte de Coigny. "And now," said she, as if echoing my father's words, "run off and play, both of you, in the garden."
A footman in the blue-and-gold livery of the Duke led us down an iron staircase to the gravelled walk upon which the lower windows opened, and left us there.
Play! There was less play in the stiff and starched little Comte de Coigny, that child of the haute noblesse, très propre, than in the elephant of the Jardin des Plantes, or any of the fat Deputies in M. de Morny's ante-room. But there was much more dignity, of a heavy sort.
We took the path towards the river.
"And you," said he, breaking the silence as we walked along. "Where have you come from?"
"Germany," I replied.
"I thought so," said he.
He was a schoolboy of the Bourdaloue College, but all the planing and polishing of the Jesuit fathers hadnot improved his manners, it seems. The tone of his reply was an insult in itself, and I took it as such, and held my tongue and waited.
We walked right down to the balustrade overlooking the Seine. De Coigny mounted, sat on the balustrade, whistled, and as he sat kicking his heels he cast his eyes up and down me from crown to toe.
I stood before him with the seeming humility of the younger child; but my blood was boiling, and my knuckles itched at the sight of his flabby, pasty face.
Some trees sheltered us from the house, and my gentleman from the Bourdaloue College took a box of Spanish cigaritos from his pocket and a matchbox adorned with the picture of a ballet-girl.
He put a cigarito between his thick lips, lit it, blew a puff of smoke, and held out the box to me to have one. Fired with the manliness of the affair I put out my hand, and received, instead of a cigarito, a rap on the knuckles with his cane.
"That's to teach you not to smoke," said Mentor. "How old are you?"
"Nine," replied I. The blow hurt; but I put my hand in my pockets, and I think neither my voice nor my face betrayed my feelings.
"Nine. And what part of Germany do you come from?"
"I was last staying at the Castle of Lichtenberg."
"Aha!" said the gentleman on the balustrade. "And who, may I ask, did we entertain at our Castle of Lichtenberg?"
"King William of Prussia," I replied out of mychildish vanity, "the Count Feliciani, the great banker and——"
"Mr. What's-your-name," said my tormentor, "you are a liar. The Count Feliciani, the great banker as you call him, is in prison——"
"How! What?" I cried.
"Oh," said he, with the air of an old Boulevardier, "it is all over Paris. Caught embezzling State funds; arrested at the railway station. A nice acquaintance, truly, to boast of!"
"Oh, Eloise!" I cried, my whole heart going out to the unhappy family; for, though I did not know what embezzling funds meant, prison was plain enough to my understanding.
"Oh, Eloise!" mimicked the other, throwing his cigarette-end away, slipping down from the balustrade, and adjusting his waistcoat preparatory to returning to the house. "Oh, Eloise! Come on, cochon. I have an appointment with M. le Duc de Morny."
"Allons!" And again he hit me with the cane, this time over the right shoulder.
I struck him first in the wind, a foul blow, which I have never yet regretted; and, as he doubled up, I struck him again, by good fortune, just at the root of the nose.
The effect was magical, and I stood in consternation looking at my handiwork, for instantly his two eyes became black and his nose streamed gore.
He lay for a moment where he had fallen; then he scrambled on all fours, got on his feet, and running, streaming blood, and bellowing at the same time,without his dandy cane, without his cigarette-box, which he had left on the balustrade, he made for the house, this enfant très propre, and of the highest intelligence; a nice figure, indeed, for presentation to the Duc de Morny!
It was a veritable débâcle. He knew how to run, that child of the haute noblesse; and, when I arrived in the ante-room, he was already roaring his tale out into the Countess Wagner de Pons' brocaded skirts, for he was clinging to her like a child of five, whilst the fat Deputies, the Jew bankers, and other illuminati stood round in a circle, excited as schoolboys. A nice scene, truly, to take place in a Minister of State's salon.
"He struck me in the stomach, he struck me on the head, he kicked me!" roared the little Comte de Coigny. "Keep him away! Keep him away! Here he is! Here he is!"
The Countess de Pons screamed. A row of long-drawn faces turned on me, and the bankers and Deputies, the priests, and the Southern delegates made a hedge to protect the stricken one, and cooshed at me as if I were a cat. Cries of "Ah! polisson! Mauvais enfant! Regardez! Regardez!" filled the room, till the hubbub suddenly ceased at a stern voice that said "Patrick!"