Part 5
“Oh, no, no, dear Monsieur Goefle, it is not so, indeed! I know that you are both honorable and kind-hearted. Every one considers you so, and even the baron, who thinks ill of every one else, dares not say a word against you. Such is my respect for you, my confidence in you, that I have been watching for your arrival at Waldemora; and I must tell you how the idea of seeking you in this way occurred to me: this will give you my whole history in a few words, and I don’t believe my aunt has related it very accurately.
“I was brought up in Chateau Dalby, in Woermland, twenty leagues distant, under the eyes of my guardian, Countess Elfride d’Elveda, my father’s sister. When I say under her eyes, you know what I mean! My aunt loves society and politics. She accompanies the court to Stockholm, and is much more interested in the affairs of the Diet than in taking care of me. So, all my life, I have lived in a rather gloomy chateau with my French governess, Mademoiselle Potin, who, fortunately, is very kind, and who loves me dearly. My aunt makes us a visit twice a year, to see whether I have grown, whether I am speaking French and Russian well, whether I am in want of anything, and whether the pastor of our church, who is very strict, takes good care that we do not receive any visits besides his own, and those of his family.”
“Well, really, that is not very amusing!”
“No; but I have no cause to consider myself unhappy. I study a good deal with my governess, I am quite rich, and my aunt is quite generous, so that I have everything I want; and when the time seems a little long to us, we read novels;--oh, such good and beautiful novels, that make us forget our solitude, and whose moral always is that crime is punished and virtue rewarded!”
“You may be sure of that! At all events, there is no harm in believing it, and behaving accordingly. But there must have been some hero of all this solitude, and of all these romances; did no handsome young fellow, in spite of pastor or aunt, contrive to glide into the house, or at least into your heart?”
“Oh! no, never, I assure you, Monsieur Goefle!” replied Margaret, frankly. “But when my aunt told me suddenly eight days ago that she had selected a husband for me, I will confess that I formed a certain ideal of what he would be like; and when she pointed out Baron Olaus de Waldemora, and said,--‘There he is, be amiable,’ he was so different from what I expected, that I was not amiable at all.”
“I can understand that. And then, your aunt?”
“Oh, she laughed at me! ‘You are a simpleton,’ she said. ‘Girls of rank have no business to think anything about love. They are not expected to marry for love, but to secure a brilliant position. I intend you to be Baroness de Waldemora; otherwise, I declare that you shall remain a prisoner all your life in this chateau, without seeing a living soul. I will do more: I will dismiss Mademoiselle Potin, who looks as if she gave you bad advice. Choose;--I give you a month to decide. The baron has invited us to spend the Christmas festivities[2] at his splendid residence in Dalecarlia. It will be very gay there; hunts, balls, entertainments of all sorts will be going on from morning until night. You will be able to form an idea of his wealth, his influence, his power, and you will acknowledge that you can never hope to make a more brilliant or a more honorable marriage.’”
“And so you said yes?”
“I said yes, that I would come to Dalecarlia, since she gave me a month for reflection. I was glad enough to see a new country, to go to entertainments; in a word, to see a few human beings. But we have been here now for eight days, and I give you my word, Monsieur Goefle, that I consider the baron still more disagreeable than the first day I saw him.”
“But you will meet at his house--if you have not done so already--some one less disagreeable, to whom you will open your heart, as you are now doing, and who will inspire you with a hope of happiness, a courage to resist tyranny, that will help you a great deal more than the advice of an old lawyer.”
“No, Monsieur Goefle, I shall open my heart to no one but you, and I certainly shall not confide in the persons I may happen to meet at the Chateau de Waldemora. I can see plainly that the baron’s guests are people whom he has helped, or who need his help; servile or ambitious, they fear or flatter him, and all of them (except a few excellent young people whom I am very friendly with) bow down before me as if I were already the wife of their patron! I hate and despise these provincial courtiers, but I have faith in you, M. Goefle! You are the baron’s businessman, but you are not his vassal. Your pride and independence are well known. You see that my aunt did not succeed in deceiving me. She told me that you would agree with her in everything, that you would treat my romantic dreams with scorn and contempt, and would even persecute me on account of them; but we heard a very different story from the brother of Mademoiselle Potin, who is tutor in a family in your province, and who knows you intimately. You know who I mean--M. Jacques Potin, whom you have done so much for.”
“Yes, yes, a charming fellow!”
“Charming! no! He is hump-backed!”
“Charming in character! His hump has nothing to do with that.”
“That is true; he is a distinguished man, and he has told us so much good of you, that I resolved to see you without letting my aunt know it. Mademoiselle Potin--who is a capital hand at finding out what is going on--learned the day and hour when you were expected at the new chateau; and, as she was watching for your arrival, she heard at once that you had gone to stop at Stollborg, because the new chateau was too full. With a look she told me all, just as I was completing my toilet, with my aunt’s assistance. My aunt had still her own toilet to make, and as this always takes her two hours, at least, she went to her own room. Mademoiselle Potin remained in mine, to make some excuse in case the countess should send for me, while I slipped down a private staircase to the shore of the lake, where Potin had told my faithful Peterson to wait for me with the sleigh, and here I am! But there are the fanfares at the new chateau, announcing the opening of the ball. I must run away as quickly as possible. And then that poor coachman must be frozen with waiting so long. Adieu, Monsieur Goefle! will you allow me to return to-morrow, while my aunt is taking a nap? She always dances a great deal, and gets very tired at a ball, and I can come perfectly well, while I am walking with my governess.”
“Besides, if your aunt is angry,” said Cristiano, in rather too young a tone, “you can tell her that I am lecturing you, just as she would like to have me.”
“No,” said Margaret, with an instinctive feeling of distrust, “I do not want to turn her into ridicule; and it will, perhaps, be as well for me not to return. If you will promise me to make her abandon this horrible marriage, I shall not need to trouble you with my anxiety.”
“I promise to interest myself in you,” replied Cristiano, more guardedly, “as if you were my own daughter; but you must keep me informed as to the success of my efforts.”
“Then I will return. How good you are, Monsieur Goefle, and how grateful I ought to be to you. Oh, I was quite right in saying that you would be my good angel!”
Margaret spoke warmly; and rising, held out her little hands to the pretended old man, who kissed them most respectfully, while gazing for a moment upon the ravishing little countess in her pale rose-colored satin, trimmed with down. He helped her, in the most fatherly way, to clasp her ermine pelisse, and put on her hood without crushing the ribbons and flowers of her coiffure, and then escorted her back to the sleigh, amid whose eider-down cushions she disappeared like a swan in its nest.
The sleigh flew off, leaving a luminous track along the ice, and was lost to sight behind the rocks along the shore before Cristiano, who remained standing on the steep cliffs of Stollborg, had thought either of the piercing cold or of his devouring hunger.
The fact is that the young adventurer, besides being a good deal agitated (of this he took no note), was spellbound by a wonderful spectacle. The bourrasque, completely lulled, had been succeeded by a strong west wind (this wind brings clear weather in the north, although it has an opposite effect in other climates), which had swept the clouds from the sky in a few seconds. The stars were shining with far more brilliancy than in southern countries. Cristiano felt as if he had never seen them before. They looked literally like suns; and the crescent moon also, in proportion as it arose in the purified atmosphere, poured forth a powerful radiance, which, in any other region, would have been super-planetary. The night, already so clear, was made still brighter by the light reflected from the snow and ice, and the grand features of the landscape were as sharply defined in the transparent atmosphere as in a silver dawn.
These features were sublime. Granite mountains, with their angular peaks covered with eternal snows, shut in a narrow horizon, open only along the valley towards the south-west. The level surfaces and details were a little obscured, but the general outline of the picture was brought out with perfect distinctness by the immense side vault of the blue sky left uncovered by the break in the granite chain. Cristiano, who may be said to have groped his way to Stollborg through whirlwinds of snow, knew the points of the compass well enough to understand that he had come by this gently undulating valley, and he formed a very correct idea of the direction of the gorges of Falun. This was the station where he had breakfasted in the morning, while M. Goefle, whose horse was strong and swift, had stopped there at a later hour and for a longer time.
The valley, or rather the chain of narrow valleys leading from Falun to the Chateau de Waldemora, came to an end abruptly in this place, in an apparent cul-de-sac, an irregular amphitheatre of lofty summits formed by one of the spurs of the Sevenberg chain (otherwise the mountains of Seves, or Sevons), which separates central Sweden from the southern part of Norway. Two fierce torrents descend from the heights of Sevenberg, from the north-west to the south-east, follow the chain to the right and to the left, and rush, in proportion as it lowers, the one towards the Baltic and the other towards Lake Wener and the Kattegat. These two torrents, which gradually become rivers, are the Dala and the Klara; or, as we say, the Dal and the Klar.
Stollborg stood upon a small rocky island, in the centre of one of the little lakes formed by the Klar, or by one of its rapid branches. The reader will not care for minute geographical details, but we can describe the principal characteristics of the landscape with sufficient accuracy. It was a scene of wild and savage desolation; the mountains shone in the limpid night like a group of crystal fortresses built at unequal heights, in the boldest and most capricious manner; snowy granite peaks shut in three-quarters of the horizon; a lower range of snowy mica-schist peaks assumed forms less grand and more fantastic; while everywhere a thousand frozen waterfalls hung motionless in diamond needles along the rocks. These silent cascades all converged towards the main stream, which was also imprisoned by the ice, and welded, as it were, to the lake, whose shores could only be traced by the debris and sharp peaks of naked stone whose black flanks the winter had not been able to cover with its white uniform hue.
“I have often been told,” thought Cristiano, “that these severe northern nights reveal unheard-of splendors, both to the eye and imagination. If I should return to Naples and should tell them that their nights appeal only to the senses, and that he who has not seen winter upon his throne of frost cannot form the least idea of the wonders of the divine work, I should probably be insulted or stoned. What then? There is beauty everywhere under heaven, and he who feels that beauty keenly, will always perhaps find the last impression the most satisfactory and inspiring. Yes, this must really be sublime, for here I am forgetting the cold, which I thought I should never be able to endure, and finding a sort of pleasure even in breathing this air that goes through you like a knife. I must certainly go to Lapland, although Puffo forsakes me, and poor Jean perishes in the snow. I want to see a night twenty-four hours long, and the pale glimmer of noon in the month of January. I should have no success in that country, but my moderate earnings here will enable me travel like a great lord, that is to say, alone and on foot, with nothing to do but to see and enjoy the fine flower of life, _novelty_, the quality that distinguishes desire from lassitude, dream from memory.”
Eager and imaginative, the young man gazed far away into the circle of high mountains, in search of the invisible route that he would have to take in going to the north, or entering Norway. In fancy he already saw himself reclining upon the edge of fearful abysses, while, to the amazement of the old Scandinavian echoes, he sang some foolish _tarantelle_, when the music of a distant orchestra struck upon his ear, and he recognized the distant refrain of an old-fashioned French song, probably very new among the Dalecarlians. The music was at the new chateau, where Baron Olaus was giving a ball to his country neighbors in honor of the charming Margaret Elveda.
Cristiano recalled his wandering thoughts. A moment before he had been ready to fly to the North Cape; now his curiosity, thoughts, aspirations, were all directed to the brilliant chateau, glittering on the shore of the lake, and seeming to exhale whiffs of artificial heat into the atmosphere.
“One thing is certain,” he said, “I would not for five hundred crowns (and God only knows how much I need five hundred crowns) quit this strange country to-night, even to be transported by the _walkyries_ to the sapphire palace of the great Odin. To-morrow I shall see this blond fairy again, this descendant of Harold the Fair-haired! To-morrow?--no, indeed, nothing of the kind! I shall not see her again to-morrow; I shall never see her again! To-morrow, the fortunate mortal who has a legitimate right to the sweet name of Goefle will go to the new chateau to confer with his client, and labor with her perhaps, like a genuine heartless business man, to bring about the marriage of the ferocious Olaus and sweet Margaret. To-morrow sweet Margaret will know she has been deceived, and by whom? With what anger, what scorn will she reward my good behavior and wise advice! But all that does not prevent me from feeling hungry, and from being obliged to acknowledge that this December night, between sixty-one and sixty-two degrees of latitude, is rather cool. It makes me think of the time when I used to complain about the winter in Rome!”
Cristiano was returning to the bear-room, when he thought he would give a charitable look at his ass. As he entered the stable, he noticed, for the first time, M. Goefle’s sleigh, which was standing in the coach-house. Why, at the sight of this sleigh, the mind of the adventurer, should have leaped suddenly to a mad resolution, we cannot explain; but, on regaining his comfortable lodging, instead of sitting down quietly to supper with his back to the stove, it is certain that he began to contemplate the full black suit which the doctor of laws had hung over the back of a chair.
Cristiano would have sworn that the grave individual whom he had ventured to imitate was old-fashioned, and perhaps rather shabby in his dress. Not at all. M. Goefle, who had been quite handsome in his youth, dressed remarkably well, was careful of his person, and made it a point of honor to appear in a simple but tasteful costume, doing full justice to his good leg, and still erect and well-formed figure. Cristiano put on the coat, which fitted him like a glove. He found the powder-box and puff, and threw a light cloud over his thick, black hair. The silk stockings were rather tight in the calf, and the shoes with buckles rather large; but what of that! were the Dalecarlians so very critical? In short, in ten minutes the young man was attired like a respectable member of society; a professor of some science, a student in some learned faculty, or member of a dignified profession! No matter what his standing, his figure, at all events, was charming, and his costume irreproachable.
The reader can guess that the adventurer led M. Goefle’s horse from the stable, after begging Jean not to feel lonely; that he harnessed the docile Loki to the sleigh, lighted the lantern, and darted like an arrow down the steep road of Stollborg.
In about ten minutes, he entered the brilliantly lighted court of the new chateau, threw the reins carelessly to the servants in livery, who hastened forward at the sound of the sleigh-bells, and ran up the great front steps of the elegant mansion four steps at a time.
[Footnote 2: The Christmas festivities in Sweden and Norway last from the twenty-fourth of December to the sixth of January.]
III.
CRISTIANO was acting as we do in certain dreams, when we feel drawn on to accomplish some improbable thing without being able to tell how. Were not all his surroundings utterly improbable? This fantastic chateau, called the new chateau, in opposition to the ruin of Stollborg, but dating back, in reality, to the time of Queen Catherine, and which, with its splendor and gayety, seemed to have fallen from the clouds into the bosom of a savage desert; these avenues of naked rock and furious waters, over which, thanks to the winter, elegant equipages made their way without difficulty, although it seemed as if they must be utterly impassable; the rows of lights outlining against the darkness the principal walls with their thick towers, crowned with coppered roofs surmounted by huge spires; the main building long, irregularly flanked with square pavilions, and finished off with gigantic gables notched with statues and emblems; the great clock in the central pavilion, which was striking ten o’clock at night,--an hour when the very bears are afraid to stir the snow where they lie cowering, but when man, the most delicate animal of creation, dances in silk stockings with bare-shouldered women; everything in the savage grandeur of the situation and the courtly scene filling it with animation, even to the playful and quaint harmony of the old-fashioned French music blending unceremoniously with the sharp whistling of the wind in the long corridors;--all this seemed made to astonish a traveller, and confuse the ideas of an Italian.
As he gazed upon the immense saloons, and long gallery painted with mythological divinities, and full of company and noise, Cristiano asked himself whether these people were not phantoms conjured up in mockery by the sorcerers of this solitary place. Whence had they come, with their antiquated dresses, these men in spangled coats, these women with powdered hair, smiling through clouds of feathers and laces? Would not this magical chateau disappear at the stroke of a wand? these gay dancers of the minuet and _chaconne_, would they not fly away in the shape of white eagles or wild swans?
Cristiano had already noticed, however, the national peculiarities of the Swedes; the adventurous isolation of their dwellings, the enormous distances separating them from the little settlements honored by the name of village; the straggling appearance of the villages themselves, which sometimes extend over two or three leagues with only one common centre--the parish church, with its green dome; the contempt of the nobility for cities, which they abandon entirely to the trading portion of the community; in a word, their passion for a lonely country life, united, singularly enough, to a passion for wild, extravagant expeditions, undertaken for the sake of enjoying sudden and apparently impossible social gatherings. Cristiano had been invited to a country merry-making, but he had not foreseen that these characteristic instincts of the Swedes would be made more active by the severity of the climate, the length of the nights, and the apparent difficulty of holding communication with each other. This, however, was a natural consequence of the necessity that man always feels to conquer nature, and turn the compensations that she offers him to account. For two months the baron had given notice for fifty leagues around, that he would entertain the nobility of the country during the Christmas festivities. The baron was neither esteemed nor loved by any one; and yet, for a number of days, his chateau had been full of eager guests, who, coming from all the four points of the compass, had crossed lakes, rivers, and mountains, to attend his summons.
Hospitality is proverbial in Dalecarlia, and, like the love of the people for a country life united to their love of pleasure, it increases in proportion as they live in remote and inaccessible regions. Cristiano, who had noticed with what wonderful kindness strangers are received in Sweden--above all, when they speak the language--had scarcely thought how difficult it might prove to gain admission to a soirée where he knew no one, especially since he had not been invited. He was unpleasantly reminded of his oversight by seeing a sort of major-domo, wearing a sword, who came up to him in the hall, and held out his hand with the utmost politeness, after bowing respectfully.
At first Cristiano was going to shake hands with him kindly, under the supposition that it was a custom of the country to welcome people in this way, but he reflected that he might be asking him to produce his invitation. The major-domo was old, ugly, and pock-marked; his eyes were downcast, and their hypocritical expression was poorly disguised by an affectation of gentle apathy. Cristiano put his hand into his vest pocket, although certain of not finding what he wanted. It is true that he had been invited to visit Waldemora at the expense of his host, but not upon the same footing with the gentlemen of the country. He was preparing, therefore, to play the part of a man who has forgotten his card of admission, and who is disposed to return in search of it, with the privilege of not making his appearance again, when he found in his pocket--that is in M. Goefle’s pocket--a letter signed by the baron, which proved to be a regular invitation for the honorable M. Goefle and family, this being the usual formula. As soon as Cristiano saw what it was, he handed it boldly to the major-domo, who read it at a glance.
“Monsieur is the relative of M. Goefle?” he said, putting the letter into a basket with a great many others.
“Of course!” replied Cristiano, with assurance.
M. Johan (this was the name of the major-domo) bowed again, and opened a door upon the main staircase, where the guests stopping at the chateau were coming and going, as well as the neighbors, who, as they were perfectly well known to the servants of the house, were allowed to enter freely. Cristiano’s introduction was confined to this simple formality, which he would have been very glad to dispense with, for he did not propose to take any direct part in the entertainment, but wanted merely to have a general view of it, and enjoy the satisfaction of seeing the charming Margaret.