Part 3

The ranger, taking it up in his arms, carried it home. It had the warmest corner in the pine plantation given to it; a little hut was built for it, with a soft bed of moss and hay. I have spent whole days by it. Never in all my life did I desire anything so ardently as that it should grow used to me and not be afraid of me. But trustful in freedom, timid and full of mistrust in confinement, it never grew used to me, never lost its dread of me--it died.

When my dear father came home I told him I never would go shooting again. He laughed; and in my excitement I cried:

“You ought not to desire it of me. If ever I married, and had a daughter who took pleasure in shooting any living creature, I should be utterly miserable.”

“Don’t talk such nonsense. You have grown quite idiotic, child. And,” he continued entreatingly, “and, above all, do talk in English.”

* * * * *

Now I am going to tell of my dear father. To describe him so accurately as that all who read these memoirs should seem to have his living presentment before them is beyond my power; I will only endeavor to portray him as he is, and, especially, as he is to me. He really often has occasion to find fault with me. I am either too noisy and too merry, or else too much in my own room reading. He says a learned woman is the greatest of all calamities. He looks upon learning as an importunate being ever ready to spring upon one unawares, on one’s making it the slightest advance. In vain do I try to comfort him with the assurance that I might know of the whole contents of my library by heart, and yet not have any pretensions to be a bluestocking.

“Heaven grant it!” is his answer. “A woman’s head should be in her heart. From her heart and disposition should come all her understanding.” He has said this so often to me, that I yesterday ventured to raise an objection.

“You tell me it must come; but it does not. There are things which even a woman cannot fathom from the mere depths of her temperament. So Baron Schwarzburg von Livland said lately; and I have not the least idea what he means, and my heart certainly has not told me.”

But I am anticipating events.

There is not a single handsome book in my library that papa himself has not given me; he, who is always inveighing against love of books. Handsome, I mean here, more with regard to exterior than to interior. But happy for me that there are handsome editions of books with irresistible illustrations. Happy for me that you have lived and sketched, Gustave Doré! To you I owe the pearl of my collection; to you is it due that my beloved father has grown almost into a bookworm--as much a bookworm, that is, as I can be called a bluestocking. The noble knight of La Mancha it was that conquered him. At first it was the illustrations which captivated him, and on their account I acquired the book. The unimportant text, though not even English, was, as it were, thrown in with the purchase. What a surprise it was to me! I had thanked him profusely for a picture book, and what a treasure had come into my possession! I could not keep my rapture in it for myself, and day by day as I read, I told the story to my father, and day by day his interest in Dulcinea’s knight grew warmer.

“What has the donkey been doing to-day?” he would ask, and for a while I suffered it to be “the donkey.” Not for long, though. Soon I laughed no longer; rather melted with sympathy, burned with admiration. I grew to love the man ever deceived, but ever believing; the knight so often worsted, but never vanquished; and declared to my father that I desired no better fortune than to meet with such a Don Quixote in real life, and become his wife. Then papa began to think I was getting too excited over it, and it would be well to change the course of my studies. And from that time he took to overlooking my reading, and got to do what he had never done before--to read. And it would have been impossible to see anything more beautiful than the expression of devotion and absorption in his noble Wallenstein-like countenance, in every fold of the fine brow, when thus engaged. Sometimes he heaves a deep sigh, and twists one side of his mustache so furiously that the point is all awry, his eyes get fixed, the eyelids red with the unwonted application. Then I can stand it no longer; I jump up, go to him, and giving him a light kiss on the shoulder, so light that he can pretend he does not perceive it, say:

“Shall we go for a walk, papa? I am quite stiff with sitting.”

“Upon my word, so am I,” he says, and it does me good to see how he straightens himself and draws in a free breath. But he does not immediately carry out my suggestion; the book-marker must first be deliberately placed in the page.

“So far”; he takes the perused pages between the palms of his hands. “Will it be too little for you?”

And I, unthinking, ungrateful as I can be, have so often thoughtlessly made reply, “Oh, much too little; why, it is hardly anything. You must let me read on further, papa.”

Closing the book, he slowly shakes his head, looks at me, considers a little, looks at me again, and then follows: “Do whatever you like!”

And I, before he can defend himself, rush into his arms.

“No, no, only what _thou likest_, not what _I like_, shall be done, now and always.”

“You might just as well have said that in English,” he answers.

“Oh, you dear good father of mine!”

* * * * *

Last year my sister, for the first time since her marriage, passed the winter in Vienna. Report said that her husband on the wedding journey had informed her that she should not set foot in the capital again until he had cured her of her “countess” ways.

He is a tall, cold, haughty man, who barely vouchsafes to utter twenty words in a day, even when most loquacious. It is difficult to know what his tastes are. The sole interests he seems to have are his palace, his equipages, his servants’ liveries, and his wife’s toilets; and that merely to show them off. She makes merry over it, and sometimes says very witty things about it; but I think she would do better if she were to say them to his face instead of behind his back. She has no children, to my sorrow; I should so love to be an aunt. It was decided that I was to come out at one of the balls my sister was to give in the course of the season. I had already been to several soirées the previous winter with papa during Lent; thus had a tolerably extended acquaintance with society folk, and had been mostly struck by the dead level of quality when taken in the quantity. At seventeen one begins to exercise one’s thinking powers, and my reflection had been: If one could disembody the souls of all these fine people and let them go free (the men especially), it would be a sheer impossibility to distinguish one from the other.

Their conversation was simply comical. I could tell off on my fingers the set questions: “Are you coming out next Carnival?” “Are you fond of dancing?” so often had they been put to me; and not a man among them had appeared to me to be one whit different from the crowd of others.

One morning I was informed that papa and mamma desired to see me in the small drawing room--style: Empire, white and gold.

Mamma was sitting upon the sofa, knitting woolen comforters for the Reformatory. With a dainty little white lace cap upon her head, and her white India cashmere morning dress, she looked like a queen or a saint. Papa was sitting beside her in an armchair, very erect and agitated, as could be easily seen from the blinking of his eyes, a trick he had when much moved. My Duphot, in her boundless diffidence, had chosen for her seat the smallest possible tabouret with the most slender of legs, and the effect of her corpulent person upon its ethereal support was killing.

“Will you be pleased to be seated?” my father asked, with forced gayety, and I took a chair as close as possible to my Duphot, so as to be at hand to lend my aid in the event of a catastrophe.

The faces of my parents grew more and more solemn. A sudden feeling of dread came over me, and I began to examine my conscience if perchance----It was clear, thank Heaven, else I should have felt very miserable.

My father looked expectantly at my mother.

“Caroline, will you have the kindness?”

“I thought that you meant to----” returned my mother.

“Oh, no, I beg you----” said he. And with an effort, and dropping her hands upon the comforter, my mother began:

“Paula, you are now grown up; nearly eighteen----”

“And look as if you were twenty,” added my father; to which my Duphot, making assent, becomes scarlet, and totters upon her treacherous seat.

My mother continues: “Next year, dear child, you are to go out into the great world.”

“Oh, yes; I am so glad, dear mamma.”

“You are glad because you do not know how poor and worthless are the pleasures which await you there, and how dearly bought.”

“Yes, yes,” put in papa, “and one should ask one’s self _cui bono_, what is the aim of it all?”

Mamma took up the argument. “None other than that of self-examination, and to enable one to arrive at the conclusion, _que le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle_. Everyone plays at the game for a time, my dear Paula, because it is the correct thing to do.”

“Oh, and because it is amusing, mamma, and because one is young and loves gayety and dancing!”

She assented.

“But thinking persons cannot hide from themselves the consciousness of the hollowness of it all, and then they turn to the realities of life, often bitterly to repent of their wasted years. Now my question to you is: Were it not wiser to save yourself these wasted years, and to begin at once with the realities of life?”

“It is but a question,” interposed my father, in a tone of deepest affection, and I read in his words the silent refrain, “Do whatever you like.”

“Yes, certainly, it is but a question,” assented mamma.

And my Duphot echoed, “_Une question_,” while drops of perspiration stood out upon her forehead. Her trouble and agitation overcame me. I thought, “Great Heavens! what can they be meaning to do with me?” And seized with a sudden dread, I cried:

“Am I to go into a convent?”

Mamma smiled; papa laughed; Mme. Duphot blurted out: “_Tout au contraire!_”

I grew still more agitated. Suddenly it flashed across me. “Then I am going to be married!”

Papa patted me kindly on the shoulder. “You must surely have observed that one of the gentlemen introduced to you at your sister’s house has been paying you marked attention?”

“No, papa. I assure you I have not.”

“But he has conversed with you every evening; the last time he remained a full half hour in conversation with you.”

“Who is it?”

“Count Taxen.”

“A tall, dark man?”

“No, a fair young man, of middle height.”

At length I remembered. Of course, a fair young man, of middle height, had often come up to talk to me. About what? Had I been placed on the rack I could not have told, so completely had the subject of our various talks vanished from my memory.

Papa and mamma now imparted to me that he was an exceptionally delightful young man, the darling of his mother, who had never allowed him to be separated from her, and had brought him up with the strictest principles. My parents actually vied with each other in singing the count’s praises, and Mme. Duphot, with tears of emotion, exclaimed enthusiastically:

“_Quel bonheur, mon enfant!_”

The gate bell struck twice.

“They are coming,” said my mother; and my father gave, oh, such a loving look at me! I cannot describe it other, even had it been enveloped in ever so tyrannical a “You shall, you must!” than the old gentle, heart-stirring, tender, “Do whatever you like.” And my oppressed heart beat freely once more, my downcast courage revived; I even felt an irresistible longing to laugh; while Mme. Duphot, who had made a precipitate movement to rise from her tabouret--it had really belonged to Josephine’s _salon_--fell back upon it, and I said:

“Do take care; or you will go to pieces like the French Empire.”

“Child, child!” remonstrated my mother.

“And now, whatever you do, no display of bluestockingism,” added my father hurriedly, as the door was thrown open and the Countess Taxen and her son were announced.

* * * * *

And from that day forth they appeared regularly twice a week at three o’clock, to make their afternoon call; and, moreover, every Saturday I met the count at my sister’s. My parents treated him with marked attention. Mme. Duphot designated him “_un jeune homme accompli_.” Even my brother-in-law, whom I had never seen unbend before, did so to him. The countess never failed to tell me, in her conversations with me, that her son had never caused her an uneasy hour, and that she was to be esteemed the happiest of mothers. I should have gone contrary to the wishes of my dear ones, and of those whose opinion I valued, had I found the least objection to the state of things; and yet, withal, I felt the strongest inclination to do so, though without knowing why.

No formal proposal had been made. I was only told that the count was attracted by me; and that, through his mother, he had begged permission to become more nearly acquainted with me. It must, however, in his estimation, have been of far greater importance that I should know him than that he should know me, for his whole conversation was about himself, his mode of life, his habits, and tastes. He seemed especially to like to dilate upon his love of order, and the punctuality he exacted from his _entourage_. He graphically described to us his old historic castle, the arrangements of the apartments, the decorations of its halls and corridors. We heard less of the country where his estates were situated; of the people living about, not one word.

“And what about the neighborhood?” my sister asked one day. And Bernhard, my brother, home on leave, exclaimed:

“Bruno Schwarzburg must have lived somewhere in your vicinity before his troubles.”

Thus, on April 13, 1882, for the first time I heard the name afterward to be so dear to me. They began talking and laughing about him as a half-mad man, Bernhard constantly putting in, good-naturedly, “After all, he is a fine fellow!”

“Yes, with a bee in his bonnet,” returned the count. “He will never make his fortune, as I have often told him, even at the time he was doing the craziest thing of all and entering an action against himself.”

“How could he do that?” I asked. “How can anyone enter an action against himself?”

“Ah, how can one!” replied the count; “I don’t understand it, nor would any other man with a grain of common sense in his composition. His father, who left a heap of debts behind him, had had the foresight just before his death to hand over to his son, by deed of gift, the indisputable possession of a small capital. The father dead, the creditors seized upon everything--a set of miserable money-lenders, for the most part, who had been paid over and over again during the old baron’s lifetime. But one widow woman with five children----”

“Excuse me,” interrupted Bernhard, “one daughter, a blind girl.”

The count, who does not like to have his statements questioned, here said impatiently:

“My dear fellow, what does it matter? So this widow came off badly,” he resumed, turning to me. “‘Nothing is left,’ she was told when she presented her claim. ‘What do you mean--there is my money,’ says Bruno. ‘The creditors have no claim upon that,’ explains the lawyer, who was also Schwarzburg’s trustee. His father, I must explain, had taken the precaution to appoint a trustee, as Master Bruno had already shown signs of emulating his progenitor in the matter of squandering. So now he insists upon paying the widow’s claim; the trustee objects, and the upshot of it was a trial, in which Schwarzburg appeared as plaintiff against himself, and which he won by losing the little property he had.”

The laughter was general, and more things were told about the man whom they all seemed to look upon as an original.

But I thought to myself, all his mad pranks--and many were told of all kinds and descriptions--seem always to agree in two points; there is invariably a noble motive at the bottom of them, and he invariably comes off worst in them. So I remarked:

“This baron certainly seems to do any number of foolish things, but luck is very unkind to him.”

“That I cannot see,” returned the count; and I had already learned to know that those words, with him, meant, If I do not see a thing, it does not exist. “If I choose to do idiotic things, I have no right to call myself unlucky because I find myself on the wrong side of the hedge. Moreover, what people are so ready to call want of luck is, more often than not, want of sense. A common-sense man is rarely unlucky.”

Here Bernhard murmured half aloud, “Sickness, death, tempest.”

Again the irritation with which the count greets the most modest expression of opinion became evident--an irritation he seems incapable of checking--as he dryly observed:

“I insure against tempest.”

I felt a sudden exasperation against this child of fortune, who seemed so disposed to take to himself as individual merit the lavish gifts of Providence, and I rejoined:

“Had you had such a father as that of Baron Schwarzburg, who squandered away all the family property, you would have been unable to exercise that wise foresight, for you would have nothing left to you worth insuring.”

His mother crimsoned; my parents exchanged a concerned look, and I felt more than ever alarmed at my own temerity. The greatest of heroes experience a reflex fear, we are told; but there was nothing of the hero in me at that moment, only a rush of feelings of shame, embarrassment, and dread; and these wretched feelings rose like smoke, so to speak, from a still darker background--the knowledge that I had offended the count!

He gave vent to a few disconnected phrases, intended to be severe and cutting, but which were only savage and peevish. It was not the first time that I had made a mental note that the exalted and noble diffidence, so highly vaunted by my parents, was in inseparable connection with the flattery and deference accorded to him. The slightest expression of censure changed it at once into arrogance, and, without an attempt at justifying his opinion, he would angrily reject any comment as absurd, contemptible, and unworthy of notice.

After he had taken his leave, my parents began to reproach me severely.

“You behaved shockingly. You seem to have no idea of the honor conferred upon you by the count’s attentions. Such a man--such a son!”

“Who never caused his mother a single uneasy hour,” I meekly added.

“You are aware of that, and yet do not cherish the highest esteem for him?”

“Of course I esteem what is estimable in him.”

“Then pray show it in your manner and bearing. You acknowledge that you esteem the count, and have every reason so to do, then why conceal the sentiment?” said mamma. “I entreat you, dear child, to let your esteem for him be made more evident.”

She glanced meaningly at papa, and now he began begging me to show my esteem for the count more openly; asking how it was that I, so pleasant and amiable to people in general, should observe such a cold and distant manner to this admirable young man.

Alas, I could give him no answer. It was a question I had too often vainly asked myself. The trivial faults which struck me in the count were as nothing compared to the good qualities he possessed in the eyes of my parents. And so I promised them from henceforth to be much more courteous and attentive to him than I had been before. But even this did not quite satisfy my dear ones.

“See, Paula,” said my father earnestly--and his voice was agitated--“see, dear child, your sister’s marriage with Edward has brought her happiness and placed her in a brilliant position. No man could be a more affectionate husband than he, and so true a _grand seigneur_. Your brother, after having caused us much anxiety by his thoughtlessness, has settled down into the right way; and thus we can look forward to both their futures with easy minds. All we desire now is to be able to feel that your happiness is insured.”

“And that we should do,” began mamma afresh, “if you, dear child, would receive the count’s attentions favorably.”

“Yes,” resumed papa, “that would make us happy and contented.”

He stretched out his hand to me; I seized it and kissed it, and suddenly felt a sharp pain in my eyes, and as through a quivering mist saw his dear face become more and more gentle and tender, and then the dear voice began:

“Besides----”

But the words which usually followed upon this beginning were wanting. I waited yearningly--in vain. They remained unsaid.

That night, on going to bed, I prayed more earnestly than ever; and yet my prayer was that of a foolish child. I prayed for strength to obey my parents gladly and cheerfully; I ought to have framed my prayer quite differently--that I was quickly to be taught in the immediate future.

On the 24th of April, 1882, one of the most perfect days I can remember, we were driving in the open carriage in the Prater, papa and I.

The horse-chestnuts were beginning to blossom, the delicate green of spring diffusing its halo all around; that green so tender and so unspeakably joyous, just emerging from its winter covering into the golden sunlight, all unconscious, as yet, of storm or scorching heat.

Our carriage rolled leisurely along by our Rotten Row. Friends and acquaintances galloped or trotted past us; then three horsemen abreast came toward us, the count in the middle. He was riding a handsome chestnut; man and horse alike presenting an air of comfortable self-satisfaction. “The world goes well with us,” they seemed to be thinking--if they thought at all. On the count’s left rode my brother, looking very handsome and spick and span in his uniform of major in the Lancers. To his right rode a gaunt man on a gaunt steed. He sat very erect upon his horse, which seemed as if devoured by inward fire, so wild and beautiful were its fine eyes; for the rest it was a long-legged, bony mare--to say the least of it, positively ugly. Nor did its rider please at first sight. Luckily for him, no one would be content with merely a single glance at the striking countenance. Long and narrow, it reveals a quite unusual amount of energy. The dark eyes, the nose with its dilating nostrils, the sharply pointed beard, the mustache twirling high and leaving the mouth free, reminded me of the portraits of Spanish noblemen of the seventeenth century. But what reminded me of no one, and could be compared to no one but himself, was the animated, sympathetic spirit that sparkled in his eyes. Gravely bowing, he retained his hat in his hand long after the count had resumed his, thus displaying a noble broad forehead, surmounted by thick, waving hair. The brain, I once read, shapes its own place, and his had formed an arch for itself. I know some which are content to reside under a flat level. The stranger looked observantly at me. I felt myself grow red under his gaze, and touched papa’s arm, who was exchanging greetings in the drive. He turned to me, and, following my eyes, recognized the rider.

“Do you know him?” I asked.

“Who?”

“He of La Mancha,” said I, with a sorry jest, to conceal my confusion.

Papa, not noticing it, answered: “Oh, yes. It is that mad fellow, Schwarzburg.”

My presence of mind had returned, and I ventured to ask:

“Tell me more about his foolish doings.”

“I know nothing about him,” said papa.

“Oh, yes, you do. Bernhard is constantly talking of him.”

“To make fun of him.”

“Not always. He really likes and admires him, and says he has a great future before him.”

“Then things must greatly alter.”