The Erckmann-Chatrian MEGAPACK ®. Emile Erckmann

is sparing the life of the wretch who is draining his life from him, for she is killing him, Fritz; he is reduced to skin and bone.”

      My good friend Gideon was in too great a rage with the unhappy woman to make it possible to bring him back to calm reason. Besides, who can draw the limits around the region of possibility? Every day we see the range of reality extending more widely. Unseen and unknown influences, marvellous correspondences, invisible bonds, some kind of mysterious magnetism, are, on the one hand, proclaimed as undoubted facts, and denied on the other with irony and scepticism, and yet who can say that after a while there will not be some astonishing revelations breaking in in the midst of us all when we least expect it? In the midst of so much ignorance it seems easy to lay a claim to wisdom and shrewdness.

      I therefore only begged Sperver to moderate his anger, and by no means to fire upon the Black Plague, warning him that such a proceeding would bring serious misfortune upon him.

      “Pooh!” he cried; “at the very worst they could but hang me.”

      But that, I remarked, was a good deal for an honest man to suffer.

      “Not at all,” he cried; “it is but one kind of death out of many. You are suffocated, that is all. I would just as soon die of that as of a hammer falling on my head, as in apoplexy, or not to be able to sleep, or smoke, or swallow, or digest my food.”

      “You, Gideon, with your grey beard, you have learnt a peculiar mode of reasoning.”

      “Grey beard or not, that is my way of seeing things. I always keep a ball in my double-barrelled gun at the witch’s service; from time to time I put in a fresh charge, and if I get the chance—”

      He only added an expressive gesture.

      “Quite wrong, Sperver, quite wrong. I agree with the Count of Nideck, and I say no bloodshed. Oceans cannot wipe away blood shed in anger. Think of that, and discharge that barrel against the first boar you meet.”

      These words seemed to make some impression upon the old huntsman; he hung down his head and looked thoughtful.

      We were then climbing the wooded steeps which separate the poor village of Tiefenbach from the Castle of Nideck.

      Night had closed in. As it always happens with us after a bright clear winter’s day, snow was again beginning to fall, heavy flakes dropped and melted upon our horses’ manes, who were beginning now to pluck up their spirits at the near prospect of the comfortable stable.

      Now and then Sperver looked over his shoulder with evident uneasiness; and I myself was not altogether free from a feeling of apprehension in thinking of the strange account which the huntsman had given me of his master’s complaint.

      Besides all this, there is a certain harmony between external nature and the spirit of a man, and I know of nothing more depressing than a gloomy forest loaded in every branch with thick snow and hoar frost, and moaning in the north wind. The gaunt and weird-looking trunks of the tall pines and the gnarled and massive oaks look mournfully upon you, and fill you with melancholy thoughts.

      As we ascended the rocky eminence the oaks became fewer, and scattered birches, straight and white as marble pillars, divided the dark green of the forest pines, when in a moment, as we issued from a thicket, the ancient stronghold stood before us in a heavy mass, its dark surface studded with brilliant points of light.

      Sperver had pulled up before a deep gateway between two towers, barred in by an iron grating.

      “Here we are,” he cried, throwing the reins on the horses’ necks.

      He laid hold of the deer’s-foot bell-handle, and the clear sound of a bell broke the stillness.

      After waiting a few minutes the light of a lantern flickered in the deep archway, showing us in its semicircular frame of ruddy light the figure of a humpbacked dwarf, yellow-bearded, broad-shouldered, and wrapped in furs from head to foot.

      You might have thought him, in the deep shadow, some gnome or evil spirit of earth realised out of the dreams of the Niebelungen Lieder.

      He came towards us at a very leisurely pace, and laid his great flat features close against the massive grating, straining his eyes, and trying to make us out in the darkness in which we were standing.

      “Is that you, Sperver?” he asked in a hoarse voice.

      “Open at once, Knapwurst,” was the quick reply. “Don’t you know how cold it is?”

      “Oh! I know you now,” cried the little man; “there’s no mistaking you. You always speak as if you were going to gobble people up.”

      The door opened, and the dwarf, examining me with his lantern, with an odd expression in his face, received me with “Willkommen, herr doctor,” but which seemed to say besides, “Here is another who will have to go away again as others have done.” Then he quietly closed the door, whilst we alighted, and came to take our horses by the bridle.

      CHAPTER II

      Following Sperver, who ascended the staircase with rapid steps, I was still able to convince myself that the Castle of Nideck had not an undeserved reputation.

      It was a true stronghold, partly cut out of the rock, such as used formerly to be called a château d’ambuscade. Its lofty vaulted arches re-echoed afar with our steps, and the outside air blowing with sharp gusts through the loopholes—narrow slits made for the archers of former days—caused our torches to flare and flicker from space to space over the faintly-illuminated protruding lines of the arches as they caught the uncertain light.

      Sperver knew every nook and corner of this vast place. He turned now to the right and now to the left, and I followed him breathless. At last he stopped on a spacious landing, and said to me—

      “Now, Fritz, I will leave you for a minute with the people of the castle to inform the young Countess Odile of your arrival.”

      “Do just what you think right.”

      “Then you will find the head butler, Tobias Offenloch, an old soldier of the regiment of Nideck. He campaigned in France under the count; and you will see his wife, a Frenchwoman, Marie Lagoutte, who pretends that she comes of a high family.”

      “And why should she not?”

      “Of course she might; but, between ourselves, she was nothing but a cantinière in the Grande Armée. She brought in Tobias Offenloch upon her cart, with one of his legs gone, and he has married her out of gratitude. You understand?”

      “That will do, but open, for I am numb with cold.”

      And I was about to push on; but Sperver, as obstinate as any other good German, was not going to let me off without edifying me upon the history of the people with whom my lot was going to be cast for awhile, and holding me by the frogs of my fur coat he went on—

      “There’s, besides, Sébalt Kraft, the master of the hounds; he is rather a dismal fellow, but he has not his equal at sounding the horn; and there will be Karl Trumpf, the butler, and Christian Becker, and everybody, unless they have all gone to bed.”

      Thereupon Sperver pushed open the door, and I stood in some surprise on the threshold of a high, dark hall, the guard room of the old lords of Nideck.

      My eyes fell at first upon the three windows at the farther end, looking out upon the sheer rocky precipice. On the right stood an old sideboard in dark oak, and upon it a cask, glasses, and bottles; on the left a Gothic chimney overhung with its heavy massive mantelpiece, empurpled by the brilliant roaring fire underneath, and ornamented on both front and sides with wood-carvings representing scenes from boar-hunts in the Middle Ages, and along the centre of the apartment a long table, upon which stood a huge lamp throwing its light upon a dozen pewter tankards.

      At one glance I saw all this; but the human portion of the scene interested me most.

      I recognised the major-domo, or head butler, by his wooden leg, of which I had already heard; he was of low stature, round, fat, and rosy, and his knees seldom coming within an easy