CHAPTER XII

CONFIDENCES

The next day, on rising, the baron learned from Selbitz that the Marquis had set out at daylight with Erhard Trusches, for the woods, and had charged the major-domo to make his excuses to the governor.

"Who would have thought, considering the reputation of the Marquis, to find him such a hard huntsman and drinker, Selbitz? For, do you know, he was ahead of me at table, and we valiantly emptied our tankards," said the baron.

"Yes, my lord, and he went up to the rat-chamber with as firm a step as if he had drunk nothing but a little whey for supper."

"Well, well," said the baron, receiving from the hands of his major-domo what was necessary to dress himself for the chase, "well, Selbitz, we must allow that, after all, the Marquis is a brave and worthy gentleman, and besides, is gay enough to rejoice your heart! What good stories he told us. . . . I wish he was going to pass several days at the castle! for, on my faith, he's a most agreeable companion. Although there is more than twenty years difference in our ages, we seem to be old acquaintances; in short, if he were not an acquaintance of yesterday, I should say--and devil take me if I know why--I should say, Selbitz, that I feel a great friendship for him; faith, I like frank and open characters,--there's nothing equal to them!"

After hastily eating a slice of cold venison, a porringer of beer-soup, and drinking two pints of Rhine wine, the baron mounted his horse, and soon reached the rendezvous which he had appointed with Erhard Trusches, in one of the cross-ways of the forest.

He found there his huntsman, his servant, and the pack.

Erhard Trusches appeared sad and absorbed; the baron, surprised at not seeing Létorière at the rendezvous, questioned Erhard about him.

After a moment's silence, Erhard said, with a timid and uneasy air, "Is my lord well acquainted with his guest?"

"What do you mean, Erhard? Where is the Marquis? Did he not come with you this morning to the wood?"

"Yes, my lord, that is why I ask you if you are sure of him. See here, my lord, it will bring me mischief, joking last night at supper about the blessing."

"Ah! explain yourself!"

"I mean to say, my lord"--and Erhard went on with a low and trembling voice--"I very much fear that your guest is he who appears sometimes in the moonlight, in the solitary recesses of the forest, to offer to desperate huntsmen three balls, one of gold, one of silver, and one of lead, and the whole at the price of their souls!" added Erhard, with a gloomy and frightened air.

"So! you take my guest for the devil, then," cried the baron, shrugging his shoulders and laughing; "your morning cup has turned your brain, old Erhard!"

The huntsman shook his head, and replied: "My lord, explain to me how it is that he whom you call your guest, and who has never been in this forest before, knows it as well as I do."

"What do you mean to say?" said the baron, very much astonished.

"This morning at daylight, when I started with the Marquis, 'Master Erhard,' said he to me, 'if you will let me take a hound, we will share the search of the forest. I will go over the enclosures of the priory of the Hermit's Chapel, of the Thunder-struck Fir-tree, and of the Black Pool.'"

"He said that?" said the baron, stupefied.

"Just as I have told you, my lord, and he added: 'I have great hope of starting a full-grown buck, for, in the woods about the Hermit's Chapel, stags are plenty. You, Master Erhard, on your part, seek to start a wild boar. They are always to be found in the forests of Enrichs, the brambles are so thick. Then the baron can have his choice between the foot of the stag or the track of the wild boar.' 'But, sir,' I said, affrighted, 'you know our forests well, then? you have often hunted them?' 'I have never hunted here,' he answered, 'but I know it as well as you do. Go ahead! good luck, Master Erhard!'--and then he disappeared in the woods, taking with him poor Moick, our best boar-hound, whom lie will perhaps change into a lynx, or a beast with seven paws, by his diabolical witchcraft."

The baron was not at all superstitious, but he could not comprehend what Erhard said, and he knew him to be too respectful to joke with his master. Nevertheless, he could not but admit that the Marquis was endowed with such topographical knowledge as the huntsman described.

"And what have you done in the search?" he asked Erhard.

"He whom you call your guest has brought me ill-luck,--I have done nothing."

"Nothing? how does that happen? This is the first time in two years that you have not had game,--and on a day, too, when we are going to hunt with a stranger!"

"Where the evil spirit can, mere mortals can't, my lord," said Erhard, soberly. "He whom you call your guest has only to sound his trumpet, and all the animals of the forest will come to him, as the bird comes to the serpent."

"Go to the devil, you old fool!" cried the governor, angrily.

"I shall not have to go far for that, my lord," murmured he, in a low voice, pointing to Létorière, who was coming out of a coppice holding old Moick in leash.

"Long life to you, baron!" cried Létorière; "if you have a mind, you can chase a full-grown buck, and strike him at my trap near the chapel. By the size of his tracks, I would lay a wager that it is one of those great deer with a white forehead and legs; the King of France has a number like them in his forest of Chambord. I should recognize their feet among a thousand. They have a magnificent shape."

"You have good luck, Marquis," said the baron; "you are a sorcerer."

"I am not a sorcerer, but it is your good blood-hound that deserves credit. I owe my stag to him. As to you, my brave Erhard," added he, turning towards the huntsman, "if you had had him at the end of your leash you would have done what I have done. Come, baron, to horse! to horse! It is a good league from here to my trap, and the November days are short. Here's your dog, Erhard!" At the same time the Marquis slipped a piece of gold into the huntsman's hand.

But he, seizing a moment when the Marquis could not see him, threw away the piece as if it had been red-hot, and with the toe of his boot kicked it under the leaves.

"Money of hell!" said he, in a low voice; "if I had put it into my pocket, in a quarter of an hour, instead of a piece of gold, I should have found a red bat or a black frog." Then the huntsman took the leash of his hound with as much precaution as if the Marquis had had the plague, and looked at the dog with disturbed tenderness, believing him to be already bewitched.

After putting his thick boots over his buckskin splatterdashes, the Marquis mounted old Elphin, and the baron saw with a new pleasure that his guest was an excellent horseman.

"Baron," cried Létorière, arriving at an enclosure in the forest, "here is my trap; unleash, I am going to enter the hedge with three or four of your oldest dogs in order to attack--"

"One moment," said the baron, with a serious air; "you pass for a sorcerer in the eyes of Erhard Trusches; he will work badly if he takes you for the devil, for he will think more of his soul than the course of the stag."

"How? explain yourself, baron!"

"Come here, Erhard," said the governor.

The huntsman advanced, looking agitated and alarmed.

"Is it not true," continued the governor, "that you do not understand how my guest, who has never been in this forest, knows it so well. How he knows that the enclosure of the Hermit's Chapel is the best haunt of the stag, and that relays must be placed at the border of the Priory Plain?"

"'Tis true," said Erhard in a low voice; "could not have known it so long--"

"And devil take me if I understand it myself, Marquis," said the baron.

Shrugging his shoulders and smiling, the Marquis drew from his pocket a little book bound in leather, and advanced towards Erhard: "Look here, you old wild boar, here's my conjuring-book."

The huntsman recoiled from it with a look of fright.

The Marquis opened the book, and spread out on his saddle-bow a forest map especially prepared for imperial hunting, and on which all the enclosures, routes, paths, haunts and passes of the animals were minutely indicated and explained.

"The map of the imperial hunting-ground!" cried the baron; "I ought to have guessed it. There is the mystery all explained. But you must have great insight, a rare familiarity with the chase, to be able to make such use of it. Ah, Marquis, Marquis, you have not your equal in Europe. To start a stag the first time that one hunts in a forest,--that is the most skilful thing I ever saw I Do you understand now, you old fool?" said the baron to the huntsman; "you ought to go down on your knees to the Marquis, our master in everything."

"Yes, yes, my lord, I understand, and God be praised, for it would have been a great misfortune;" saying these words, Erhard took his ramrod and drew his charge.

"What are you doing, Erhard?" said the baron.

The huntsman showed the baron a black ball, on which was traced a cross, and said to him: "At the first enclosure I should nevertheless have sent this charmed ball into the breast of the Marquis, whom I took for the devil; old Ralph said there was nothing like it to lay such evil spirits."

"Wretch!" cried the baron.

"He is right," said Létorière, with the greatest _sang-froid_; "but you have forgotten, Erhard, that it is necessary to make the charm complete, to have three pieces of gold in your left pocket in order that the devil cannot enter into your purse;" and the Marquis threw three louis to Erhard, who, this time, did not bury them under the leaves.

The stag which was started was soon in full career.

It is unnecessary to describe the various incidents of this chase, during which Létorière showed consummate skill. The animal was taken, and the Marquis, arriving first at the death, bravely killed him with one blow of the knife.

The huntsmen arrived at the castle at nightfall. Selbitz had as usual made ready the bacon, the sauer-kraut, the venison, the great, the medium, and the little tankards well filled.

As on the previous night, the baron and the Marquis did honor to this repast; as before, they filled their pipes after supper, and established themselves at the corner of the fireplace, while the major-domo occupied himself with the cares of the household.

Although the baron felt subjugated by the jovial spirit and the open and resolute character of the Marquis, he was a little vexed at meeting in so young a man an unconquered rival either at the chase or table.

Létorière, too adroit not to divine this, contrived a brilliant triumph for him.

The governor, who was truly interested in his guest, wished to resume of his own accord the conversation about the lawsuit.

"To the devil with the lawsuit!" cried the Marquis. "That's my look-out . . . If I lose my cause I shall have gained a good companion. I would have twenty lawsuits in order to lose them in that way! But my tankard is empty. . . . Hallo, Selbitz, hallo, you old Satan! . . . The kirchenwasser evaporates before my thirst, as the dew before the sun."

"Poor fellow! he tries to shake it off," thought the governor. "I ought not to let him drink alone," and the baron had his mug refilled.

"Baron, a song!" cried Létorière, very gayly. "Do you know _The Retreat?_ They say that the air and the words were composed by one of your old huntsmen."

"You sing it, Marquis--I will tell you if I know it."

And Létorière, having again emptied his mug, and preluded by a deep hem--hem--or two, struck up the following song with the voice of a Stentor:

"'Afar the trumpet peals! The stag lies on his haunches! Let the merry hallo sound, 'Tis a stag of ten branch--'"

"Come! join the chorus, baron. . . . Heavens! 'tis quite _apropos_ to-day."

"With all my heart, Marquis! I don't know the air, but, by Jupiter, it is worthy of Mozart!" and the baron repeated the refrain with a voice so powerful, that it shook the windows.

"Listen to the minor strain, baron. . . . It is as melancholy as the last sounds of a distant trumpet in a clear night."

And the Marquis continued in a softer voice, and in a slower measure:

"'Now the star of evening Peers above the hill; The day hides in the forest, All is still. 'Tis the hour of retreat, Let the dogs be coupled quick; Huntsmen mount and trumpets sound; Forward your brave horses prick! See the brown night And the moonlight; We will go back Home without seeing The huntsman in black.'"

The voice of the Marquis seemed to lose its strength as he sang these last words, in a rhythm melancholy and almost sorrowful; his countenance lost its joyous and careless expression, and a shade of sadness passed over his brow, which he soon supported with his hand.

Selbitz, who was just at that moment behind his master's chair, said to him, in a low voice, pointing to the Marquis:

"When the flower is too plentifully watered it bends on its stalk; when the business on hand is drinking, _to-day_ is not always the son of _yesterday._ Come, come, my lord, you will always be the _widerkom vierge!_ Here's this Frenchman supporting his forehead with his left hand; the intoxication of the forester-general of Hasbreck always begins in that way; but, to do the latter justice, that is always so from the first day."

The baron laughed with an air of proud satisfaction, and answered in a low voice:

"What do you mean, Selbitz? He is so young . . . but notwithstanding his youth, he is a hardy combatant. Yesterday he went ahead of me; to contend two days in succession is too much for him. But after myself, I do not know anybody who can equal him." . . .

"Use him up then, my lord . . . use him up, for the honor of old Germany," . . . said the traitorous major-domo.

"Well, Marquis," said the governor, in a loud voice, "is your song already finished? Shall we not drink to your glorious chase to-day?"

"Let's drink!" said the Marquis, holding out his tankard with an arm that seemed heavy. . . . Then, having drank, he repeated in a low and sad voice the last few lines of his song:

"'See the brown night And the moonlight; We will go back Home without seeing The huntsman in black.'"

"He is dull in his liquor," said the baron to his major-domo.

"He puts me in mind of Count Ralph, who, you know, monsieur, at about the tenth bottle almost always sings the psalm for the dead," answered Selbitz.

"Come, Marquis, to the first wild boar that we shall take!" said the baron, wishing to strike a last blow at the Marquis's reason.

"Let's drink!" said Létorière, who began from that time to show slight symptoms of intoxication, speaking by turns slowly and rapidly, sadly and joyfully. "The chase, baron--'tis good, the chase . . . wine also . . . it stupefies--it transports, gives no time for thought; and then it makes one gay, and at last . . . but, bah! hold on, baron, I must tell you something in confidence." . . .

"What, confidences so soon?" cried the major-domo. "That's like the minister at Blumenthal,--but his reverence does not begin before the eighth tankard. You remember, my lord, the good story he told us of the jolly miller's wife of Val-aux-Primevères?"

"Hold your tongue, and listen!" said the governor; who replied aloud, "speak, speak, Marquis! Come, let's drink to your confidences." . . .

"Well, then, baron, imagine that my lawsuit has turned my brain." . . .

"Truly, Marquis!" said he aloud. "I'm sure of it," he continued in a low voice . . . "this poor boy wishes to drown his thoughts." . . .

"True, as that my glass is empty. . . . I wouldn't tell you this, baron . . . but you are my friend . . . I ought to confide in you. . . . Know that I have made a visit to my judges." . . .

"Ah, bah!" said the baron, gratified with his guest's involuntary communicativeness, and very eager to draw from him the secret, perhaps, of his visits. "You have seen your judges, have you?"

"Yes, baron, the first one was named . . . Spectre." . . .

"You mean to say Sphex, Marquis?"

"Sphex, or Spectre . . . 'tis all the same to me . . . but a thousand guns! baron, I must laugh . . . although it may be at one of your confrères . . . 'tis not my fault . . . I have as great regard for a man learned in us . . . as for a broken glass or a foundered horse." . . .

"Well said, Marquis! you are not made anymore than myself to breathe the odor of worm-eaten books. . . . We love the air of the forests!"

"Figure to yourself then, baron . . . that this old Spectre--I like best to call him Spectre, because that tells his face as well as his name--had the insolence to ask me, at the end of a conversation of two minutes, if I spoke Latin!"

"You, Marquis, you speak Latin!" said the baron, sharing the indignation of his guest. "I wonder where he had put his spectacles? As if you looked like one who spoke Latin! Did any one ever see such an impudent old thing! What the devil did he take you for?"

"You understand that one cannot hear such things with coolness,--even from his judge. 'Ah well,' said I to him, 'do I look like a rat that gnaws old books? an ink-drinker? a vulgar pedant? To speak Latin! A thousand devils! If I had not come to ask your support in my lawsuit, . . . I would let you see how I treat those who tell me that I speak Latin!'"

"Well said, my guest! I would have given a hundred florins to be present at that scene," said the baron, shouting with laughter.

"Then the doctor declared to me distinctly, that he had nothing to say about my lawsuit, and I could consider my cause as lost, because _I was known!_ S'death, baron, I was known!!! It was too much. He had already asked me if I spoke Latin; I could contain myself no longer, and so I challenged him at once. . ."

"Sphex! a challenge!" cried the governor, laughing until he lost his breath; . . . "the old ape must have looked funny! but what did he say?"

"He said nothing at all; he raised his hands towards Heaven, and disappeared, as if by enchantment, behind a pile of great books. . . . Then I left, not doubting that the doctor owed me a grudge, but devil take me if I know for what, for two gentlemen can cross swords, and still be friends notwithstanding."

"He has rare simplicity," said the governor, aside; "he little knows how he appears."

Létorière went on. . . . "Then I had to see the councillor Flachsinfingen. I reached his house and asked for him, and was introduced into the presence of an old sorceress, dressed in black, who might have passed for a female savant, so dry and thin was she. She had, into the bargain, a Bible in her hand. 'I have business with the councillor, and not with his wife,' said I to the lacquey. 'Me or the councillor, 'tis all the same,' said the old witch. 'Tell me, sir, what you have to say to my husband?' Then, baron, I, who know how to do such things, devised a way to send off the wife and bring forward the husband."

"Let's hear, Marquis," said the governor; adding, aside: "when he shall become quick and adroit in such matters, I will drink pure water . . . he is rough and knotty as an oak, but pliable as a willow. Ah, well! what was this scheme, Marquis?"

"'A thousand devils, madam!' said I to the lady, 'what I have to say to the councillor is not fit for your chaste ears.' 'Never mind; say on, sir!' Then, baron, I began to recount a tale of the barracks which would have made a Pandour blush."

At this new jest the baron had a new spasm of laughter, and exclaimed: "A barrack-story to the prudish and devout Flachsinfingen! I would have given--devil take me if I wouldn't--my old hound Moick, if I could have witnessed that scene; and what did she say?"

"She blushed red as a lobster, called me insolent, and made me a sign to go away."

"If that is the course you take to interest your judges in your cause, my guest, I wish you joy of it," said the governor.

"And what the devil should I find to say to a learned man or to a prude? One cannot make himself over again."

"Certainly not," murmured the baron; "the poor boy is like me; he would find it difficult to accustom himself to the jargon of a doctor and the babbling of an old woman."

"Then only you remained to be seen, baron. I have seen you; you are a brave man . . . and I am afraid to bother you with my affairs. . . . But this lawsuit . . . if you knew . . . if I lose it! I seem to be an easy-going fellow; but look at me; if this were . . . if I lose it" . . . said Létorière, with energy, "I will never survive. S'death! I should pray St. Cartridge and my rifle to have mercy on me!"

Having permitted this sinister secret to escape him, Létorière appeared to collect his ideas, passed his hand over his forehead, and looked around him with an air of astonishment.

"Ah, well, where am I? You there, baron? Come, come, your Rhine wine is excellent, but devilish strong. My lord, I've been asleep, I think" . . . and the Marquis, in spite of all his efforts, lowered his eyelids, which seemed to be heavy.

"You haven't slept, but you ought to, I think, and your cup is full."

"Then empty it for me, baron . . . for . . . the lawsuit . . . the stag . . . to-day . . . All! to the devil with the lawsuit--_vive la chase!_ something to drink . . . to you, baron, . . ." and Létorière feigned to become drowsy, and let his head fall on his arms.

"He refuses to drink, and I am conqueror!" cried the governor. He called Selbitz and Erhard, as much to prove his triumph over the Frenchman, as to order them to help his guest to the rat-chamber.

Létorière, whose head was as calm as the baron's, received their offered aid, ascended the staircase mechanically, and fell heavily on his mean bed.

The baron felt strangely embarrassed. If he had been profoundly interested in Létorière, especially since the latter had made him believe that he could not survive the loss of his lawsuit; he had also formally promised his vote to the German princes, whose cause he truly believed to be just.

To reconcile his desire of obliging the Marquis with his word already given, the baron had recourse to a singular compromise: "Our votes are secret; from what I know of Sphex and Flachsinfingen, otherwise good partisans of the princes"--said he to himself--"both of them will undoubtedly vote against this poor Létorière, especially after the affront he has offered to the savant and the councillor's wife. Thus their hostility assures the triumph of the party opposed to the Marquis. Now, provided that the German princes gain, and thus justice be done, what matters it whether it is owing to a unanimous vote, or a majority of two voices against one? I desire only to be able, without being unjust, to send this poor Marquis away with soft words and a proof of my friendship; for I should never have the courage to say _No_ to so brave a huntsman and so jovial a companion."

This resolution taken, the governor awaited with impatience the waking of his guest, and announced to him, that having reflected all night on his lawsuit, his opinion was modified, and that he would promise to vote for him.

Létorière, having thanked the baron a thousand times, returned to Vienna. Notwithstanding what he had told the governor, he had as yet seen neither the councillor Sphex, nor the wife of the councillor Flachsinfingen.