 Part 1, Chapter 1 of the Pride of Yenikov. Memoir of Captain Basil Yenikov. Begun apparently in great trouble and stress of mind at the Castle of Tolendal in Moravia, on the third day of the Great Storm late in the year 1771. As the wind rattles the casements with impotent clutch, howls down the stair turret with the voice of a despairing soul, creeps in long irregular waves between the tapestries and the granite walls of my chamber, and wantons with the flames of logs and candles, knowing as I do that outside the snow is driven relentlessly by the gale, and that I can hope for no relief from the company of my wretched self. For they who have learnt the temper of these wild mountain winds tell me the storm must last at least three days more in its fury. I have bethought me to keep from going melancholy crazed altogether to set me some regular tasks to do. And what can more fitly occupy my poor mind than setting forth as clearly as may be the diverse events that have brought me to the strange plight in this strange place? Although I fear me, it may not in the end be over clear, for insooth I cannot even yet see a way through the confusion of my thoughts. Nay, I could at times howl in unison with yonder dismal wind for mad regret, and at times again rage and hiss and break myself like the fitful gale against the walls of this desolate house for anger at my fate and my folly. But since I can no more keep my thoughts from wandering to her and wandering upon her than I can keep my hot blood from running, running with such swiftness that here, alone in the wide vaulted room, with blasts from the four corners of the earth playing a very demon's dance around me, I am yet all of a fever heat. I will try, whether by laying bare to myself all I know of her and of myself, all I surmise and guess of the parts we acted towards each other in this business. I may not at least come to some understanding, some decision concerning the manner in which as a man I should comport myself in my most singular position. Having reached thus far in his writing, the scribe, after shaking the golden dust of the pounce-box over his page, paused, musing for a moment, loosening with unconscious fingers the collar of his coat from his neck, and gazing with wide gray eyes at the dancing flames of the logs, and the little clouds of ash that ever in a non-burst from the hearth with a spurt when particles of driven snow found their way down the chimney. Presently the pen resumed its travels. Everything began, of course, through my great-uncle Yenneco's legacy. Do I regret it? I have sometimes cursed it. Nevertheless, although tossed between conflicting regrets and yearnings, I cannot in conscience wish it had not come to pass. Let me be frank. Bitter and troubling is my lot in the midst of my lonely splendor. But through the mist which seems in my memory to separate the old life from the new, those days of yesteryear, for all their carelessness and fancy freedom, seem now strangely dull. Yes, it is almost a year already that it came, this legacy, by which a young Englishman, serving in his royal and imperial majesties chevaux-legeurs, was suddenly transformed from an obscure rithmeister with little more worldly goods than his pay into one of the richest landowners in the broad empire, the master of an historic castle on the Bohemian marches. It was indeed an odd turn of fortune's wheel, but doubtless there is a predestination in such things unknown to man. My great-uncle had always taken a peculiar interest in me. Some fifty years before my birth, precluded by the religion of our family from any hope of advancement in the army of our own country, he had himself entered the imperial service. And when I had reached the age of manhood he insisted on my being sent to him in Vienna to enter upon the same career, to him my own my rapid promotion after the Turkish campaign of 1769. But I question, for all his influence at court, whether I should have benefited otherwise than through his advice and interest, had it not been for an unforeseen series of moves on the part of my elder brother at home. One fine day was announced to us that this latter had been offered and accepted a barony in the peerage of Great Britain. At first it did not transpire upon what grounds a Catholic gentleman should be so honoured, and we were obliged, my uncle and I, to content ourselves with the impossible explanation that Dear Edmund's value and abilities and the great services he had rendered by his exertions in the last supple elections had been brought to the notice of His Majesty, who was thus graciously pleased to show his appreciation of the same. Our good mother, who would not be the true woman she is, did she not set a value on the honours of this world. My excellent brother, and of course his ambitious lady, all agreed that it was a mighty fine thing for Sir Edmund Yenickel to become my Lord Rainswick, and they sent us many grand eloquent missives to that effect. But with my great uncle things were vastly different. To all appearance he had grown, during the course of his sixty odd years in the Imperial Service, into a complete unmitigated foreigner who spoke English like a German, if indeed the extraordinary jargon he used under the impression that it was his mother tongue could be so called. As a matter of fact it would have been difficult to say what tongue was my great uncle's own. It was not English, nor French, not even the French of German courts, nor true German. But the oddest compound of all three, with a strong peppering of Slovak or Hungarian according as the country in which he served suggested the adjunction. A very persuasive compound it proved, however, when he took up his commanding voice, poor man. But foreigner as he was, covered as his broad chest might be with foreign orders, freely as he had spent his life's energy in the pay of a foreign monarch, my great uncle Yenickel had too much English pride of race, too much of the old Yenickel blood. Despite this same had been so often let for him by Bavarian and Hanoverian, Prussian, French and Turk, to brook in peace what he considered a slight upon his grand family traditions. Now this was precisely what my brother had committed. In the first place he had married a lady who, I hear, is amazingly handsome, and sufficiently wealthy, but about whose lineage it seems altogether unadvisable to seek clear information. Busy as he was in the midst of his last campaign, my great uncle, who even in the wilds of Bulgaria seemed to keep by some marvellous means in touch with what moves were being played by the family in distant Suffolk, nevertheless had them at her probed, and the account he received was not of satisfactory nature. I fear me that those around him then did not find the fierceness of his rule softened by the unwelcome news from that distant island of Britain. The Yenickels, although they had been degraded, so my uncle maintained, by the gift of a paltry baronetcy at the hands of Charles II as a reward for their bleeding losses in the royal cause, were, he declared, of a stock with which blood royale itself might be allied without derogation. The one great solace of his active life was a recapitulation of the deeds, real or legendary, that since the landing of the Danes on Saxon soil had marked the passage through history of those thirty-one authentic generations, the twenty-ninth of which was so worthily represented by himself, the worship of the name was with him an absolute craze. It is undoubtedly to that craze that I owe my accession of fortune, I and my present desolation of heart. But to resume, when therefore already dissatisfied with my brother's alliance, he heard that the head of the family proposed to engraft upon it a different name, a soidesante superior title, his wrath was loud and deep. I was present when the news arrived. It was in his chancellery on the Yosefplatz at Vienna. I shall not likely forget the old man's saffron face. Does that Shafkoff brother of yours not ver stand with Yenneco to be means? What thinkest thou? Would I be what I am, were it not that I have ever known, boy, what I was geborn to when I was Yenneco geborn? How comes it that I am what I am here? How is it, ye come, thinkest thou, that I have myself risen to the highest owner in the empire, that I am feel, marshal, this day, above the heads of your princekins, of grand tucleens, highnesses, and sirenities? Dooms-deef! With a parenthetical shake of his fist at the open paper on his desk, how is it, ye come, that I wedded la belle heritière de Voschuski, the most beautiful woman in Silesia, the richest, pardee, the noblest? And his excellency me thinks I see him now, turned to me with sudden solemnity. You will answer me, he said in an altered voice, you will answer me, because you are a full youth, that I have become great general, because I am the bravest soldier, the cleverest commander of all the imperial troops, that I to myself have won the lady, for whom transparencies had sued in vain, because of being the most beautiful man in the whole Kaiser Leap service. Here the younger Yenneco, for all the vexation of spirit which had suggested the labor of his systematic narrative as a distraction, could not help smiling to himself, as with pen rays towards the standish he paused for a moment to recall on how many occasions he had heard this explanation of the field-martial success in life. Then the grating of the quill began afresh. When my venerable relative came to this, I, being an irreverent young dog, had much adieu to keep myself from a great yell of laughter. He was pleased to remark latterly in an approving mood that I was growing every day into a more living image of what he remembered himself to have been in the good times when he wore a cornet's uniform. I should therefore have felt delicately flattered, but the fact is that the tough old soldier, if in the diverse accidents of war he had gathered much glory, had not come off without a fine assortment of disfiguring wounds. The ball that had passed through his cheeks at Luthin had removed all his most ornamental teeth and had given the oddest set to the lower part of his countenance. It was after Cullen that, the sight of his left eye being suppressed by the butt end of a lance, he had started that black patch which imparted a peculiar ferocity to his aspect, although it seemed, it is true, to sharpen the piercing qualities of the remaining orb. At HaKherk, where he culled some of his greenest laurels, a Prussian bullet in his knee forced on him the companionship of a stout staff forever afterwards. He certainly had been known in former days as Luboyeniko, but of its original cast of feature it is easy to conceive that after these repeated finishing touches, his countenance bore but little trace. But no, the dear old man would say, bearing his desolate lower tusks at me and fixing me with his wild boar eye. It is not to my beauty, curl, not to my courage, curl, that I owe success, but because I am the born Yeniko. When man Yeniko get born is, man is got born to all the rest, to the beauty, to the bravery. When I wooed your late detente, the mere ignorant pull said to me, It is well, you are honored, we know you honorable, but are you born? To what a countess, Wuczuski, one must be born, one must show honor, sir, they said. At least she's quarters are tested in two proper form. Eh, said I, he's at all. See, you shall have sixteen quarterings, sixteen quarterings, Bah, you shall have sixteen quarterings beyond that and then sixteen again, and you shall then learn what it is to be called Yeniko. Puts to send. And I simply wrote to the office of heralds in London, what man calls college of arms, for them to look up the records of Yeniko and draw out a right proper pedigree of the family, at no cost, right up to the date of Kinkunote. Oh, aye, aye, Carl, Jen, you should have seen the role of Parchment that was in Tangasent. Tarantide, and the yuki fit most sure mom bo pe. My excellent great uncle said mom po bear, when they were G open to what it means to be well born English, a well born man never knows his blood as he should, until he sets himself to trace it to all the veins. Blood royal, yonk, blood royal, once Danish, two times plantagenet, and one stored. But that a strong dose, he, he, aye, aye. The merry monarch, as the school boys say, had wide paternity, though versed at seek his daughter, whom I close mother became, was noble also by her mother. Up it goes high, hoit, thou shalt see for thyself when thou comest to Tolandal. Nah, yah, thou shalt study it too. It all runs in thy veins also, forget it not. And of all her treasures, your aunt would always tell me there was none she prized more, than the document relating to her family. She had it unrolled upon her bed when she could no longer use her limbs, and she used to trace out crony now and then the poor soul. What her boy would have carried of honour if he had lived. Ah, to his a-million pity she never bought me another. It is the only reproach that derf me made her. I have consoled myself hitherto with the thought of my nephew's you-thing. But Pots blitz this Edmund, now that of a family, ah, the very dumb hound, tossing, donning, and bombin'. And my great uncle's guttural voice would come rumbling like gathering thunder indeed, and rise to a frightful bellow. To barter his final name for the verdant memory of Baron Rainswick. Rainswick! Poo, the creation of this Hanover dog. And what does he give on his side to drive this fine bargain? Nah, nah, sprek to me not. I misliked nephew. I tell thee I doubt me, but there is something hinderin' it yet. Nephew Bechel. He then went on. This day I speak of. If I were not seventy-three years old, I would marry again. I would. To have an heir by heaven that the true race might not die out. And despite his wall-eye, his jaw, his game-leg, his generally disastrous aspect, I believe he might have been as good as his threat. His seventy-and-three years notwithstanding. But what really deterred him from such a rash step was his belief, although he would not gratify me by saying so, that there was at hand as good a unicle as he could wish for, and that one, myself, Bechel. And he saw in me a purer sproutling of that noble island-race of the North that he was so fiercely proud of than he could have produced by marriage with a foreigner. For, thorough imperial, as he now was, and notwithstanding his early foreign education, which had begun in the steward regiments of the French king, the dominant thought in the old warrior's brain was that a very law of nature required the gentle-born sons of such a country to be honored as leaders among foreign men. And great was the array of names he could summon, should anyone be rationed up to challenge the assertion. Butlers and lallies, browns and journeying-hums, by God, quies and dillens and berwicks, more blue, firmours, loudens and laces, and how many more, if necessary, I and Yenikos knock the least of them, I should hope. Terrim te te. I did not think that my brother had bettered himself by the change, and still less could I concur in the turncoat policy he had thought fit to adopt in order to buy from a Hanoverian king the bigoted House of Lords, this accession of honour. For my uncle was not far wrong in his suspicions, and in truth it did not require any strong perspicacity to realize that it was not for nothing my brother was thus distinguished. I mean not for his merits, in which amounts to the same thing. I made strong efforts to keep the tidings of his cowardly defection from my uncle. But family matters were not, as I have said, to be hidden from field-martial Edmund von Yenikos. I believe the news hastened his dissolution. Repeated fits of anger are pernicious to gouty veterans of explosive temper. It was barely three weeks after the arrival of the tidings of my brother having taken the oaths in his seat in the House of Lords that I was summoned by a messenger, hotfoot, from the little frontier town where I was quartered with my squadron to attend my great-uncle's deathbed. It was a sixteen-hour's ride through the snow. I reached this frowning old strong-house late at night, hastened by a reminder at each relay, ready prepared for me, hastened by the servant stationed at the gate, hastened on the stairs at his very door the door of this room. I found him sitting in his armchair, almost a corpse already, fully conscious, grimly triumphant. Thou shalt have it all! Was the first thing he whispered to me as I knelt by his side. His voice was so low that I had to bend my ear to his mouth. But the pride of race had never seemed to burn with brighter flame. The lazy stein, the lazy sabre. He caught at me with his claw-like hand, cold already with a very chill of earth. Remember that thou, the last Yenneco beast, royal blood, girl-gen, canute, plentagenette, sturt, noblesse oblige. Remember, bring no rotulier into the family. His hide-up, who had endured his testy temper and his rigid rule for forty years, suddenly gave a kind of gulp, like a sob, from behind the chair where he stood rigid, on duty at his proper post, but with his hands, instead of resting correctly, on hip and sword-handle, joined in silent prayer. A striking-looking man for all his short stature, with his extraordinary breath of shoulders, his small, piercing eyes, his fantastically hard features all pox-seared, that seemed carved out of some swarthy, worm-eaten old oak. Thou fool, hissed my uncle, impatiently turning his head at the sound, and making a vain attempt to seek the ever-present staff with his trembling fingers. Me shall crack me the nave on the skull. Then he paused a moment, looked at the clock and said in a significant way, It is time, Janos. The Highduck instantly moved and left the room, to return promptly, ushering in a number of the retainers who had evidently been gathered together and kept in attendance against my arrival. They ranged themselves silently in a row behind Janos, and the dying man in a feeble voice, and with a shadow of a gesture towards me, but holding them all the while under his piercing look, said two or three times, Your master, men, your master. Or upon Janos, leading the way, every man of them, household steward, huntsman, overseers, foresters, hussars, came forward, kissed my hand, and retired in silence. Then the end came rapidly. He wandered in his speech and was back in the past with dead and gone comrades. At the very last he rallied once more, fixed me with his poor eye that I had never seen them before, and spoke with consciousness. Thou, the last Yinuko, remember, be true till the renegade I rejoice his shame striketh, not us. Tell him that he did well to change his name. Curl chained her son, Thou art young and strong, breed a fine stock. No wrote her, but sell and settle, sell and settle. Those words came upon his last sigh, his eye fleshed once, and then the light was extinguished. Thus he passed. His dying thought was for the worthy continuance of his race. I found myself the possessor, so the tabelions informed me, some days later, of many millions reckoned by the Florence of this land, besides the great property of Tolendall, fertile plains as well as wild forests, and of this same isolated frowning castle, with its fathom-thick walls, its odd pictures of half-savage dead and gone, Vochuskis, its anti-clumsy furniture, tapestries, trophies of chase and war, master moreover of endless tribes of dependence, high ducks and foresters, females of all ages whose bare feet in summer patter oddly on the floors like the trade of animals, whose high boots in winter clatter perpetually on the stone flags of stairs and corridors, serf peasants, factors, overseers, the strangest mixture of races that can be imagined, Slovaks, Bohemians, Poles, to labour on the glib, Saxons or Austrians to rule over them and cipher out rosters and returns, Magyars who come to send to manage my horse-lush and watch over my safety if nothing else, the travelling bands of gypsies ever-changing never-failing-with-the-dance, the song and the music, which is as indispensable a salt to the life of that motley population. And I, who in a more rational order of things might have been leading the life of a young squire at home, became sovereign Lord of all, wielding feudal power over strings of vassals who deemed it great honour to bend the knee before me and kiss my hand. No doubt in the beginning it was vastly fine, especially as so much wealth meant freedom. For my first act, on my return after the expiration of my furlough, was to give up the duties of regimental life, irksome and monotonous in these piping days of peace. Then I must hide me to Vienna, and there for the first time of my life of six and twenty years tastes the joy of independence. In Vienna are enough of dashing sparks and beautiful women of princes and courtiers, gamblers and rakes to teach me how to spend some of my new found wealth in a manner suitable to so fashionable a person as myself. But how astonishingly soon one accustoms oneself to luxury and authority. It is but three months ago that having drained the brimming cup of pleasure to the dregs, I found its first sweetness, cloying, its first alluring sparkle almost insufferable, that having bathed in perpetual smiles I came to weary of so much favour. Winning at play had no fascination for a man with some thirty thousand pounds a year at his back, and losing large slices of that patrimony which had, I felt, been left me under an implied trust, was dullly galling to my conscience. I was so uniformly fortunate, also in the many duels in which I was involved among the less favoured. Through the kindness which the fair ladies of Vienna and Boud began to show to Le Boh Yenichel, the old dictum had been revived in my favour, that after disabling four of my newly found best friends, even so piquant an entertainment lost all pretense of excitement, and with the progress of dissolution concerning the pleasure of idleness and wealth grew more pressing the still small voice which murmured at my ear that it was not for such an end, not for the gratification of a mere libertine gambler and duelist that my great-uncle Yenichel had selected me as the depository of his wealth and position. Sell and settle, sell and settle. The old man's words had long enough been forgotten, it was high time to begin mastering the intricacies of that vast estate, if ever I was to turn it to the profit of that stream of noble Yenichels to come, and in my state of satiety, the very remoteness of my new property, its savageness, its proud isolation, invested it with an odd fascination. From one day to the other I determined on departure and left the emptiness of the crowd to seek the fullness of this wild and beautiful country. Here for a time I tasted interest in life again, knew a sort of well-filled peace, felt my soul expand with renew vigor, keenness for work and deeds, hope and healthy desire, self-pride and satisfaction. Then came the foolish adventure which has left me naked and weak in the very midst of my wealth and power, which has left rudderless an existence that had set sail so gaily for glorious happiness. The bell of the horolosh from its snow-capped turret overlooking the gate of honor in the stronghold of Tulladal slowly told the tenth hour of that tempestuous night, and the notes resounded in the room, now strongly vibrating, now faint and distant as the wind paused for a second, so bore them away upon its disheveled wing. Upon the last stroke, as Basil Yenicco was running over the last page of his fair paper, the door behind him, creaking on its hinges, was thrown open by Janos the Hyda, displaying in the next chamber a wide table, lit by two six-branched chandeliers and laid for the evening meal. The twelve yellow tongues of flame glinted on the silver, the cut glass and the snow-white neighboring, only to emphasize the somber death of the medieval room, the desolate eloquence of that solitary seat at the huge board. Janos waited till his master, with weary gesture, had cast his penicide, and then ceremoniously announced that his lordship's supper was ready. Impatiently enough did the young man dip his fingers in the ogir of perfumed water that a damsel on his right offered to him as he passed through the great doors, drying them in the cloth handed by another on his left. Frowning, he sat him down in his high-back chair, behind which the high duck stood, ready to present each dish as it was brought up by other menials, to keep the beaker constantly filled, to answer with a bow any observation that he might make, should the lord feel disposed to break silence. But tonight the lord of Tolendall was less disposed than ever in such a direction. He chafed at the long ceremony, resented the presence of these creatures who had seen her sit as the mistress at that table, where now lay not but vacancy beyond the white cloth, resented even in the silent solicitude that lurked in Janos' eyes, though the latter never broke unauthorized his rule of silence. The generous wine, in the stillness and the black solitude, bred presently a yet deeper melancholy. After a perfunctory meal, the young man waved aside a last glass of the amber toquet that was placed at his hand, as he rose and moodily walked to and fro for some time. Feeling that the coming hours had no sleep in reserve for a mind in such turmoil as his, he returned to his writing-table, and whilst Janos directed the servants to bring in and trim fresh candles, and pile more logs upon the hearth, Bessel Yenneco resumed his task. End of Part 1, Chapter 1 Part 1 of Chapter 2, The Pride of Yenneco This is a LibriVox recording. LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recorded by Sylvia M. B. in Washington State. The Pride of Yenneco. By Edgerton and Agnes Castle. Part 1, Chapter 2 Bessel Yenneco's memoir continued, My great uncle's will, forcible, concise, indisputable as it was, had been, so the man of law informed me, drawn out in a great hurry, dictated, indeed, between spasms of agony and rage. The poor old man died of gout in his stomach. Doubtless had he felt sure of more time he would have burdened the inheritance with many directions and conditions. From his broken utterances, however, and from what I had known of him in life, I gathered a fair idea of what his wishes were. His fifty years of foreign service had filled him old pandour that he seemed to have become, with but increased contempt for the people that surrounded him, their ways and customs, while his pride as an Englishman was only equaled by his pride as a Yenneco. Sell and settle. The meaning of the words was clear in the light of the man as I knew him. I was to sell the great property, carry to England the vast horde of foreign wealth, marry as befitted one of the race, and raise a new and splendid line of Yennecos to the utter mortification and everlasting confusion of the degenerate head of the house. Now though I knew it to be in me and felt it indeed not otherwise possible to live my life as true a Yenneco as even my uncle could desire, I by no means deemed it incumbent upon me to set to work and carry out his plans without first employing my liberty and wealth as the humor prompted me. Nor was the old country an overpoweringly attractive place for a young man of my creed and kidney. In Vienna I was, perhaps for the moment, the most noted figure, the guest most sought after that year. In England, at daggers drawn with my brother, I could only play an everyday part in an unpopular social minority. It was in full summer weather that, as I have written, already tried by the first stage of my career of wealth, I came to take possession of my landed estates. The beauty and wildness of the scenery, the strangeness of the life in the well-knigh princely position to which the sudden turn of fortune's wheel had elevated me, indicating sensation of holding sway as feudal lord of these wide tracts of hill and plain, over so many hundreds of lives. Above all, the wholesome reaction brought about by solitude and communing with nature after the turmoil of the last months. In short, everything around me and in me made me less inclined than ever to begin ridding myself of so fair a possession. And do I wish I had not thus delayed in obeying the injunction accompanied the bequest? Odds my life. I am a miserable dog this day through my disobedience. And yet would I now undo the past if I could? A thousand times, no. I hate my folly, but hug it ever closer, ever dearer. The bitter savor of that incomprehensible yearning clings to the place. I would not exchange it for the timeness of peace. Weakling that I am, I would not obliterate if I could the memory of those brief, brief days of which I failed to know the price until the perversity of fate cut their thread forever. I, perhaps forever after all. And yet if so, it were wiser to quick these haunted walls forever also. But God, how meager and livid looks wisdom, the ghost by the side of love's warm and living line. And now on, since I have put my hand to the task undertaken to set forth and make clear the actual condition of that vacillating puppet, the new fledged lord of Tullandal, I will not draw it back cost me what pain it may. No doubt it was this haunting pride of wealth, waxing every day stronger, even as the pride of birth which my great-uncle had fostered to such good purpose, the overweening conceit which they bred within me that fogged my better judgment and brought me to this pass. And no doubt likewise, it is a insolent state that these lords of Tullandal of old carved for themselves and rounded ever wider and nurtured all that it should someday passing through the distaff come to swell the pride of Suffolk Yenakos. My castle rises boldly on the northernmost spur of the Glacier mounts and defiantly overlooks the marches of three kingdoms. Its lands and dependencies, though chiefly Moravian, extend over the Bohemian border as well into the Silesia they are now able to call Prussian. North and west it is flanked by woods that grow wilder, denser as they spread inwards toward the giant mountains. On the southern slopes are my vineyards, growth of note as I hear. My territories reach on the one hand farther than can be seen under the blue horizon into the eastern plains flat and rich that stretch with curious suddenness immediately at the foot of the high district. Upon the other hand, on the Moravian side, I doubt whether even my head steward himself knows exactly how much of the timber-laden hill ranges can be claimed as appertaining to the estate. All the peaks I can describe in a fine day from these casements are mine, I believe. On their flanks are forests as rich in game, boar and buck, wolf and bear, not to speak of lesser quarry, as are the plains below in corn and maize and cattle, cu-sé-jeu Goodly heritage indeed, I promised myself many a rare day's sport so soon as the time waxed ripe. Meanwhile, my days were spent in rambles over the land under pretense of making acquaintance with the farms and the villages and the population living on the soil and working out its wealth from my use, but in reality for the enjoyment of delicious, silven and rustic idleness through which the memory of recent Viennese dissipations was like that of a fevered dream. The spirit of keeping ancestors lived again within me and was satisfied. Yet there were times, too, when this freedom of fancy became loneliness, when my eyes tired of green trees and my ears hungered for the voice of some human being whom I could meet as an equal, with whom I could consort soul and wit. Then I would resolve that come the autumn I would fill the frowning strong-house with a rousing frong of gallant hunters and fair women such as it had seen before. I and they should come over, even from Old England, to taste of their yinoco hospitality. It was in one of these glorious moods that upon a September day, sultry as summer, although there was a touch of autumn decay in the air as well as in the tints around me, I salied for, after noon, to tramp on foot and as unyet explored quarter of my domain. I had dawned according to my want, as being more suitable to the roughness of the dress than the small clothes, skirted coats, high heels, and cocked hat of viennese fashion. The dress of the Moravian peasant, I gather that it pleases the people's heart to see their senior grace their national garb on occasions. There was a goodly store of such costumes among the cupboards full of hereditary habiliments and furs preserved at Tolendall after the fashion of the country, with the care that English housewives bestow upon their stores of linen. My peasant suit was, to be of cut, and the symmetry of the handsome figure I saw in my glass reminded me more of the pastoral disguises that were the courtly fashion of some years back than of our half-savage, ill-smelling bores. Thus it was pleasant as well as comfortable to wear, and at the time even so trifling a sensation of gratified vanity had its price. But although thus freed of the encumbrance of a gentleman's attire, I could not shake off the watchful tyranny of Janos, the solemn high duck that never allowed me to stir abroad at all without his escort, nor indeed, if my whim took me far afield, without the further retinue of two yoggers, twin brothers, and faithful beyond a doubt. These, carbine on shoulder and hangar on thigh, had their orders to follow their lord through thick and thin, and keep within sight and sound of whistle. In such odd style of state on this day, destined to begin for me a new chapter in life, I took my course. And for a long hour or so I walked along the rocky cornice that overhangs the plains. The land looked bare and wide and solitary. The fields lay in shallow leanness bereft of waving crops. But I knew that all my golden grain was stacked safely in the heart of the earth, where these folks hoard its fruits for safety from fire. The air was so empty of human sounds, save the monotonous tramp of my escort behind me, that all the murmurs of wind and foliage stuck with singular loudness upon my ear. Overnight there had by my leave been songs and dancing in the courtyard of Tolendall. And the odd tunes, the capricious rhythm of the gypsy musicians, came back upon me as I walked in the midst of my thoughts. These melodies are fitful and plaintive as the sounds of nature itself. They come hurrying and slackening, rising and falling, with as true a harmony and as unmeasured a measure, now in a very patient of haste and now with a dreamy, long drawn sigh. I was thinking on this and on the love of the empress for that music, my empress that had been, when I wore her uniform, I, and my empress still, so long as I retained these noble lands, when I came to a field sloping from the craig towards the plain, where an aftermath of grass had been left to dry. There was a little belt of trees, which threw a grateful shade, and feeling something weary I flung me down on the scented hay. It was on the Silasian portion of my land. Against the horizon the white and brown of some townlet clustering round the ace of clubs shaped roof of its church tower rose glittering above the blue haze. A little beyond the field ran a white road, so I reclined, looking vaguely into the unknown but inviting distance, musing on the extent of those possessions so widespread that I had not has yet been able to ride all their marches. Ever and on, recognizing vaguely in the voice of the breeze, through the foliage and echo of the music that had been haunting my thoughts all day, everything conspired to bring me pleasant fancies. I began to dream of past scenes and future fortunes, smiling at the thought of what my deshing friends would say if they saw Le Beau Yennekel in this bucolic attitude, wondering if any of my court acquaintances would recognize him in his peasant garb. Ah, me, how eternally and lovingly I thought of my proud and brilliant self then. I cannot recall how soon this musing became deep sleep, but sleep I did and dream, a singular, vivid dream, which was in a manner a continuation of my waking thoughts. I seemed to be at a great fet at the Imperial Palace, one of the countless throngs of guests. The lights were brilliant, blinding, but I saw many faces I knew and we all were waiting, most eagerly, for some wonderful event. No one was speaking, and the only sounds were the rustling impression of the ladies' brocades and the jingle of the officer's spurs with over and above the wail of the Symbolon. All at once I knew as we do in dreams what we were expecting and why this splendid feast had been prepared. Marie Antoinette, the fair young Dauphine of France, the memory of whose grace still hangs above the court, had come back to visit her own country. The crowd grew closer and closer. The crowd about me surged forward to catch a glimpse of her as she passed, and I with a rest, when suddenly my great uncle stood before me, immensely bestarred and berebbed in his field Marshall's uniform, and with the black patch on his eyes so black that quite tazzled me. No curl, Jen, he was saying to me, Thou hast luck. Her Imperial and Royal Highness has chosen the young Enrico to dance with, as the old one is too old. Now I, in common with the young men about me, have grown to cherish since my coming to this land a strange enthusiasm for the most womanly and beautiful of all the Empress's daughters, and therefore even in my dream my heart began to beat very fast, and they scarce knew which way to turn. I was much troubled too by the music which went on always louder and quicker above my head, somewhere in the air, for I knew that no such things as country dances are danced at court and that I myself would make but a poor figure and such. Yet a peasant dance it undoubtedly was. Next my uncle was gone and though I could not see her I knew the Princess was coming by the swish of her skirt as she walked. I heard her voice as clear as a silver bell. U est il, it said, and I felt she was looking for me. I struggled in vain to answer or turn to her and the voice cried again, U est il, upon which another voice, with a quaver in its tones, made reply, Horty si, hautes. The sound must have been very close to me, for it startled me from my deep sleep into as it were an outer court of dreams, and between slumber and consciousness I became aware that I was lying somewhere very hot and comfortable, that while some irresistible power kept my eyes closed, my ears were not so and I could hear the two voices talking together, and in my wandering brain believed them still to belong to the Princess Marie Antoinette and her attendant. It is a peasant said the first voice. That was the Princess, of course. There was something of scorn in the tone and I became acutely and unpleasantly conscious of my red embroidered shirt, but the other made answer, He is handsome, and then his hands are not those of a peasant and regard them a share. Peasants do not wear such jeweled watches. A sudden shadow fell over me and was gone in an instant. There was a flicker of laughter and I sat up. During my sleep the shade of the sun had shifted and I lay in the full glare and so as I opened my eyes I could see nothing. I heard the laughter of my dream again and I knew that the mocking cry of Prené Gardeeltes, that still rang in the air did not belong to my sleep. But as I rubbed my eyes and looked out once again, I caught first a glimpse of a slender creature bending over me, outlined it seemed in fire and shimmering between black and gold. My next glance filled me with a woeful disappointment. For I declare what with my dream and my odd awakening I expected to find before me a beauty no less bewitching than that of her royal highness herself. What I beheld was but a slim slip of a creature who from the tip of her somewhat battered shepherdess hat to the hem of her loosely hanging skirts gave me an impression of being all yellow, save for the dark cloud of her hair. Her skin seemed golden yellow like old ivory. Her eyes seemed to shoot yellow sparks. Her gown was yellow as any primrose. As she bent to watch me, her lip was arched into a smile. It had a deep dimple on the left side. Thus I saw her in a sort of flesh and scrambled to my feet still half drunk with drowsiness crying out like a fool. Où es son altes? Où es son altes? She clapped her hands and turned with a crawl of laughter to someone behind me and then I became aware that as in the dream there were two. I also turned. My eyes were in their normal state again, but for a moment I thought myself still wandering. Here was her hotness. They princess indeed as beautiful as any vision and yet most exquisitely embodied in the flesh. A princess in this wilderness it seemed a thing impossible and yet my eyes now only corroborated the evidence of my ears. I marked almost without knowing the rope of pearls that bound her throat. I had become a judge of jewels by being the possessor of so many. I marked her garments, garments for all their intended simplicity, rich, and bearing to my knot untutored observation the latest stamp of fashion. But above all I marked her air of race, her countenance, young with the first bloom of youth, mantled with blushes yet set with a royal dignity. I have since that eventful day passed through so many phases of feeling, sweet and violent. My present sentiments are so fantastically disturbed that I must try to the last of this writing and see matters still as I saw them at that time. Yes, beyond doubt what I noticed most would appeal to me most deeply then was the great air of race, blended and softened by womanly candor and grace. She looked at me gravely, with wide brown eyes, and I stumbled into my best courtly bow. He wants to know, said the damsel of the yellow skirts, this time in German, the clear clean utterance of which had nothing of the broad Austrian sounds I was accustomed to hear. He wants to know where is the highness. But he seems to have guessed where she stands without the telling. Truly it is a pity the Lord Chamberlain is not at his post to make a presentation in due form. The lady thus addressed took a step towards her companion with what seemed a protest on her lip. But the latter, her small face quivering with mischief and eagerness, whispered something in her ear and the beautiful brown eyes fixed themselves once again, smiling me on me. No, sir, continued the speaker then, since you are so indiscreet as to wake at the wrong moment and surprise and incognito the mysteries of which were certainly not meant for such as you that altest she is son altest serenissime la princesse Marie Ottely. Marie is her highness's first name and Ottely is her highness's last name. And between the two and after those two being as I said an altest serenissime she has of course a dozen other names. But more than this it does not suit her highness that you should know. Now, if you will do me a humble attendant that I am the courtesy to state who you are who, in a Silesian boars attire, speak French and wear diamond watches to your bell I can proceed with the introduction even in the absence of the Lord Chamberlain. The minks had an easy assurance of manner which could only have been bred at court. Her mistress listened to her with what seemed a tolerant affection. Looking round, bewildered and awkwardly conscious of my peasant dress, I beheld my touche-sirres standing stolidly sentinel on the exact spot where I had last seen them before dropping asleep oldianos from a nearer distance watched us suspiciously. As I thus looked round I became aware of a new feature in the landscape a ponderous coach also attended by touche-sirres in unknown uniforms waiting some hundred paces off down the road to keep myself something in countenance despite my incongruous garb and also perchance for the little meanness that I was not displeased to show this princess that I too kept a state of my own. I lifted my hand and back into my retinue which instantly advanced and halted in a rank with rigid precision five paces behind me. Gracious madam, said I in German bowing to her who had dubbed herself the Lady in Waiting. With a touch I flattered myself of her own light mockery of tone. I shall indeed feel honored if her serene harness will deign to permit the presentation of so unimportant a person as myself. In other words of Basil Yenickel, of Farin Dundayn in the county of Suffolk in the Kingdom of Great Britain, in Israel Imperial Majesty's Moravian Regiment of Chavot Legers now master of the castle of Tolendal, not far distant and lord of its domain. Here, led by Yanos, my three retainers saluted, I thought I saw in the princess's eyes that I had created a certain impression. But my consequent complacency did not escape the notice of the irrepressible Lady in Waiting. She promptly did her best to mar the situation. She cried in French, where at court, monsieur, and at the court of at the court of her highness were not such savages as to perform introductions in German. Then drying up her slight figure and composing her face into preternatural gravity she took two steps forward and another sideways, accompanied by as many bowels and resting her hand at arm's length on the china head of her stick with the most ridiculous assumption of finnican importance and with a quaver in voice, which although I have never known him, I recognized instantly as the Chamberlain's. She announced, Monsieur Basile Jean-Nigaud de la Faire Nontaine, dans le comté au long suffoque, d'importance au Royaume de la Grande Bretagne, mais par du castle de Fou, ici proche et senior des alentours, inwardly cursing the young woman's perfunery, in the incredible facility with which she had so instantly burlesque and undoubtedly impressive recital. I had no choice but to make my three bowels with what good grace I could muster. Were upon the princess still smiling but with a somewhat puzzled air made me a curtsy. As for the lady in waiting, nothing abashed, she took an imaginary pinch of most excellent snuff with a pretense of high satisfaction, then laughed aloud and long till my ears burned and her own dimple literally rioted. And now, to complete the ceremony, said she as soon as she could speak at all, let me introduce the court, represented today by myself, mademoiselle Marie Ottely, two Ottelys as you will perceive but easily explained thus, through the highest, her serenissime gracious Duke of Grandmother, being an Ottely and godmother to us both, mademoiselle Ottely, the rest concerns you not. Well, Monsieur de la ferendondin, capitaine et senior, etc, etc, charmed with major acquaintance, so far so good, but these gentlemen surely also knowles in disguise. Will you not continue the ceremony? She waved a little sunburnt hand toward my immovable bodyguard and the full absurdity of my position struck me with the keenest sense of mortification. I looked back at the three biting my lips and miserably uncertain how to conduct myself so as to save some shred of dignity. My ancient Janos had seen too many strange things during his forty years' attendance on my great-uncle to betray the smallest surprise at the present singular situation. But out of both their handsome faces set like bronze, they had better not have moved a muscle otherwise or Janos would have known the reason why. The eyes of my twin attendants roamed from me to the ladies and from the ladies to me devouring curiosity. I tartly dismissed them all again to a distance, and then turning to the mysterious princes I begged to know, in my most court-like manner, if I might presume to lay my services at her feet for the time of her sojourn in this my land. With the same adorable yet dignified bashfulness that I had already noted in her, the lovely woman looked hesitatingly at her lady in waiting, which lively wench not being troubled with timidity that she had already sufficiently demonstrated promptly took upon herself to answer me. But this time she so delightfully fell in with my own wishes that I was feigned to forgive her all that had gone before. But certainly, she exclaimed, her serene highness will condescend to accept the services of M. du Jean-Nigol. It is not every day that brings forth such romantic encounters. No, sir, that we are two demoiselles that have by the most extraordinary succession of fortunate accidents escaped from school. You wonder, by school I mean the insupportable tedium, etiquette and dullness of the court of his most gracious and worshipful serenity the father of her highness. We came out this noon to make hay and hay we will make, or rather we shall sit on the hay and you shall make a throne for the princess and a little tabaret for me, and then you may sit you down and entertain us, but on the ground and at a respectful distance that none may say we do not observe proper forms and conventions for all that we are holiday-making. And you shall explain to us how you, an Englishman, came to be master of chateau de fou, and masquerading in peasant's attire. Is masquerading a condition of tenure after which her serene highness, having only one fault, that being her angelic softness of heart, which is pushed to the degree of absolute weakness, she will permit me to narrate to you, as much as it is good for you to know how we came to be here at such a distance from our own country and in such curious freedom for her highness quite sees that you are rapidly becoming ill with suppressed curiosity and fears that you may otherwise burst with it on your way home to your great castle, or at least that the pressure on the brain may seriously affect its delicate balance. If indeed, with the peel of her reckless childish laughter, you are not already a lunatic and those your keepers. This last piece of impudence might have proved even too much for my desire to cultivate an acquaintance so extraordinarily attractive to one of my turn of mind and so alluring by its mysteriousness. But that I happen to catch a glance from her harness's eyes, even as the speaker finished her tirade, which glance, deprecating and at the same time full of a kindly and gentle interest, set my heart to beat in a curious fashion between pleasure and pain. I hastened, therefore, to obey the younger lady's behests, and began to gather together enough of the sweet-smelling hay to form a throne for some noble and fair and occupant. Whereupon the look-creature herself, she seemed little by reason of her slenderness and childishness, but in truth she was as tall as her tall and beautiful mistress, fell to helping me with such right goodwill, flashing upon me as she flitted, hither and thither, such altogether innocently mocking looks from her yellow hazel eyes that I should have been born with a deeper vanity and a sourer temper to have kept a grudge against her. Once seated in our fragrant court, then the order laid down for us, the attendant so soon as she had recovered breath sufficient began to ply me with questions so multiplied, so searching, and so pointed that she very soon extracted from me every detail she wished to know about myself, past and present. But although as from a chartered and privileged advocate the sharp cross questioning came from the bad wasrel Marie Autelie, it was to the soft, dumb inquiry I read in the princess Marie Autelie's eyes that were addressed to my answers, and then those eyes and the listening beauty of that gracious face made it hard for me to realize, as later reflection proved, that their owner did not utter a single word during the whole time we sat there together. End of Part 1, Chapter 2 Part 1, Chapter 3 Part 1, Chapter 3 limbs, and lay back upon her mound of hay with the most absolute unconcern, either of my presence or of the princesses, gazing skyward with a sudden gravity in her look. As for me, I was content to sit in silence, too, glad of the quiet, because it gave me leisure to taste the full zest of this fortunate and singular meeting. I thought I had never seen a human being whom silence became so well as the Princess Utterly. Contrasted with the recklessness and chatter of her companion, her attitude struck me as the most perfectly dignified it had ever been, my lot to observe. Presently the nymph in yellow roused herself from her reverie, and sat up. With her battered hat completely on one side and broken bits of grass sticking in the tangled mass of brown hair, she arched her lip at me with her malicious smile, and addressed her companion. Is it your harness's pleasure, she asked, that I should gratify some of this young English nobleman's curiosity concerning the wandering of a Princess in so unprincely a fashion? Ach, rebuked her harness, on the wings of a soft sigh, the truth of the girl's assertion that her mistress's kindness of heart amounted to weakness was very patent. The dependent was undoubtedly indulged to the verge of impertinence, although it is also true that her manners seemed to stop short of any open show of disrespect. Now, attention, please, M. Dula Ferendondane, his most absolutely to be reverent and most gracious serenity, the father of her harness, reigns over a certain land and great many leagues from here. She began, with all the gusto of one who revels in the sound of her own voice. Her harness is his only daughter, and this august person has the condescension to feel for her some of those sentiments of paternal affection, which are common even to the lowest peasant. You have been about courts, M. Jean Nigu, the fact is patent and indubitable. You can therefore realize the extent of such condescension. A little while ago, moved by these sentiments, my gracious sovereign believed there was a paleness upon her harness in his daughter's cheek. Involuntarily, I looked at the princess to see with a curious elation how rich the color rushed under my gaze, yet more richly into her face. It does not appear now, pursued the imperturbable speaker, whom no blink of mind seemed to escape, but there was a paleness. When the court doctor decided there was, likewise, a trifling loss of tone and want of strength, he recommended a change of air, tonic baths, and grape cure. In consequence, after due deliberation and consultation, it was decreed that her harness should be sent to a certain region in the mountains, where Hoekh D. Thelbe has a grand, most high ducal ant, the said region being noted for its salubrious air, its baths, the quality and extent of its vineyards. Therefore, of a few indispensable court officials, the Lord Chamberlain, as a responsible person for her harness's movements, the most gracious, a certain aged and high-born graffin, our chief court lady wants the harness's own government, the second court doctor, the third officer de Bouch, and mine own humble self. Here she paused, and with a sudden assumption of dolefulness that was certainly comic, proceeded in quite another voice. I am a person of no consequence at court, Monsieur de La Faire d'Ondain. I am merely tolerated because of her harness's goodness, and also because you must know that I have a reputation of being a source of amusement to her serenity. You may already have noticed that it is fairly well-founded, that I am talkative and entertaining, as a lady in waiting should be, and this is the reason why I have attained a position to which my birth does not entitle me. A little frown came across the princess's smooth brow at these words. She shot a look of deprecation at her attendant, but the latter went on resuming her former manner in a bubbling of merriment. Facts are facts, you see, I am even hardly born. My mother happened to be liked by the mother of her serene harness, an angel, and when I was orphaned she took me closer to her. So we grew up together, her harness and I, and so I come to be in so grand a place as a court. There, Monsieur, you have, in a word, the history of mademoiselle Marie Autolie. I have no wish that she should ever seem to have appeared under false colors. The princess, whose sensitive blood had again risen to a crimson tide, cast a very uneasy look at her companion. I could see how much her affectionate delicacy was wounded by this unnecessary candor. But the little mademoiselle, after returning the glance with one as mischievous and unfeeling as a jackdaw's, continued, hugging her knees with every appearance of enjoyment. And now we come to the series of delightful accidents which brought us here. Behold, no sooner had we left the court of the court her harness belongs to than the smallpox broke out in the residence and in the palace itself. The father of her serenity had had it. There was no danger for him. And he was in the act of congratulating himself upon having sent the princess out of the way when in the most charming manner, for the ducal court of her harness and it was even duller than Hochste Selbe's own. And after the tenth bunch of grapes you get rather tired of a grape cure. And as for mudbaths, oh, thigh, the horror we discovered that we had brought the pretty illness with us. And the first one and then the other of the retinue sickened and fell ill. Then a court lady of the duchess took it, and next who should develop symptoms but the old growlbear and scratchcat, our own chief hofdem, chief duena and chief boar. That was a stroke of fortune, you must admit, but wait a moment, you have not heard the best of it yet. At the very first mention of smallpox, the princess grew pale and made the sign of the cross. And indeed it seemed to me, myself, a tempting of providence to joke thus lightly about a malady so dangerous to life and so fatal to looks. But the girl proceeded coolly. Her serene harness, like her most venerated brother, had had the disease. I believe they underwent it together in their serene babyhood, but her serene harness was deeply alarmed by the danger to which her serene niece was exposed. The court doctor was no less concerned. It is a bad thing for a court doctor if a princess in his charge fall victim to an epidemic. So they put their heads together and resolved to send the exalted young lady into some safer region in company of such a her retinue as seemed in the soundest health. An aged lady, mother of Monsieur du Shrekendorf, or Chamberlain already described to you, dwells in these plains. As a matter of fact, said the speaker, pointing his small finger in the direction of the town, her castle is yonder. The Duchess had once condescended to spend a night there to break a journey, and it had remained stamped on her doogle memory that the place was quiet, not to say a desert, that there were vineyards close by and also that the air was particularly salubrious. She knew too that the Countess Shrekendorf was quite equal to the guardian of any youthful serenity, in short, a dragon of etiquette, narrow-mindedness, prudery, and ugliness. Together, therefore, with the Chamberlain, a few women and the poor doctor were packed into a dookle, chariot, and carted here. The Countess received in the strict disorders not to divulge the tremendous altitude of her visitors rank. She would rather die than betray the trust, especially as to thwart innocent impulses is one of her chief pleasures. Nay, I may say, her only pleasure in life. Little does she or the Highness or Mistress suspect the existence of a Signore de la Ferendondane roaming about in the guise of a simple Silesian shepherd and pretending to sleep in order to surprise the little secrets of wandering princesses. We were told when we asked whether there was no neighborly creature within reach, that the only one for leagues was a fearful old man with one eye and one tooth, who goes about using his cane as freely on everyone's shoulders as oppression king himself. Well, never mind. Don't speak. I have yet the cream of the tail to offer. We arrived here three weeks ago and found the grapes no more spicy, the castle no more amusing, and the neighborhood more boring than even the dookle court itself. But one excellent day, the good little Chamberlain began to look poorly, complained of his poor little head and retired to his room. The next morning what does the doctor do but pack him into a coach and drive away with him like a fury? Neither coach nor postillions nor doctor nor Chamberlain have been seen or heard of since. But I, who am awake with the birds from my chamber window saw them go, or I heard the clatter in the courtyard and by nature, Monsieur the captain, I am as curious as a magpie. Oh, that, said I with conviction, you need not tell me. She seemed vastly tickled by the frankness of this my first observation after such a long listening and had to throw herself back on the hay and laugh her laugh out before she could sit up again and continue. So, as I was saying, I saw the departure. The doctor looked livid with fright and as for the aired Chamberlain, he was muffled up in blankets and coats, but I got a glimpse of his face for all that and it was spotted all over with great red spots. The princess pushed her hat off her forehead and turned upon her lady in waiting, a face that had grown almost livid. Oh, said the lady in waiting, your highness is over-nervous. It is now a good fortnight since the old gentleman left us and if you or I were to have had it, we should have shown symptoms long ago. Well, sir, to continue our worthy hostess and countess was in a fine fume, as you can fancy, between duty and natural affection, terror and anxiety. She was by way of keeping the whole matter a dead secret, both from us and from the servants, but the fumigations she set going in the house, the air in the dosing, together with her own frantic demeanor would have been enough to enlighten even obtuse her wits than ours. With one exception, all our servants fled and all hers. She had to replace them from a distance. The anger, the responsibility, the agitation, generally were too much for her years in constitution and three days ago in the act, as we discovered, of writing to the Duchess for instructions for she had expected the court doctor would have sent on special messengers to the courts of her Highness's relatives and was in a perfect fever at receiving no news. As I say in the very act of writing, evidently to dispatch another post herself, the poor old lady was struck with paralysis and was carried speechless to bed. No, Mr. Jean Nigo, new English are a practical race. Do not agree with me that since the Lord, in his wisdom, decreed that it was good for the countess's soul to have a little physical affection, it could not have happened at a better moment for us. I know that her Highness disapproves of what she calls my heartlessness, but I cannot but rejoice in her freedom. The countess is recovering, but she won't speak plain for a long time to come. Meanwhile, we are free, free is there. Our only personal attendant is my own, my old nurse. You shall see her, she speaks but little, but she adores me. But as we cannot understand a word of the language spoken here and the resources of this district are few, I will own to you her Highness has founded a little dull in spite of her lady in waiting's well-known gift of entertainment up to today. She threw me an arch look as she spoke, but the princess, rising with a dignity, peculiar to her, conveyed her sense that the joke had this time been carried a little too far. The shadows were lengthening, the wind had fallen, it was an hour of great peace and beauty in the land. The princess took a few steps toward the road where waited the carriage. I ran forward and presumed to offer her my arm, which she very graciously, but not without a blush, accepted. The maid of honor springing to her feet followed us, tripping over the rough ground, with a torn frock and her hat hanging on her neck by its ribbons. I mined me well how the chossers of the equipage stared to see the lady come leaning on the arm of a peasant, how they stared too at the unabashed, untidy apparition of the lady in waiting. But she, humming a little song as she went, seemed the last in the world to care what impression she made. As we neared the coach, a tall woman, all in black, with a black shawl over her black hair, jet black eyes, staring blankly out of a swarthy face, descended from it. She looked altogether so dark and forbidding a vision that I gave a start when I saw her, thus unexpectedly. She seemed a sort of blot on the whole smiling, sunny landscape. But as men was all utterly drew near, the woman turned to her, her whole face breaking pleasantly into a very eloquence of silent, eager love. Of course, I guessed at once that this was the nurse to whom the saucy maiden had already referred. I heard them whisper to each other, and it seemed to me as if the woman were remonstrating with her mistress, while I installed the princess on her cushions. Then both rejoined us to enter the carriage likewise. Before she jumped in, Maquicelle Otely tacked her nurse on the shoulder with a sort of indifferent, kind little pat one would bestow on a dog. The woman caught the careless hand and kissed it, and her eyes, as she looked after the girl's figure, were absolutely adoring. But her whole countenance again clouded over strangely when her clans fell upon us. At length they all three were seated, and my graceful retirement was clearly expected, but still I lingered. The vintage had begun in my vineyards, quote I hesitatingly, if her harness would honor me by coming again upon my lands, the sight might interest her. The princess hesitated, and then evidently doubtful as to the propriety of the step through a questioning glance at her companion. But certainly, said the latter instantly, why not accept, your harness has been advised to keep in the open air as much as possible, and your harness has likewise been recommended innocent diversion. Nothing could be better. When shall we say? If tomorrow would suit, I suggested boldly, I could ride over after noon. If her harness would permit me to be her escort, and perhaps she will also further honor me by accepting some slight refreshment at my castle, it is worth seeing. I said, for I saw no reason why I should be bashful in pushing my advantages. If your harness is not afraid to enter le château de fou, I ventured to look deep into her eyes as I spoke, and I remember how those eyes wavered shyly from my gaze, and how the white lids fell over them, and I remember too, with what a sudden mad exultation leaped my heart. But as before, it was the lady in waiting who answered, afraid, who is afraid? Your harness, will you not comfort the poor young man and tell him you are not afraid? If your harness would deign, said I, pleadingly, and leaning forward into the carriage, and then she looked at me, and said to me in the sweetest guttural in all the world, no, I am not afraid. We were speaking in French, I bowed low, fearing to spoil it all by another word. The princess stretched out her hand, and I kissed the back of her glove, and then I had the privilege of also kissing Miss Utley's sunburned, scratched, and rather grimy, bare little paw, which she, with affected dignity, fussed forward for my salute. The carriage drove away, and as it went, I mined me how the nurse looked after me with a darkling anxiety, and also how, as I stalked homewards through the evening glow, with my bodyguard tramping steadily behind me, I kept recalling the sound of the four gracious words with which the princess had consented to accept of my hospitality. She had said it, it is true. Sh'ne b'beur. But nonetheless was the memory a delicate delight to my heart the whole night through. End of part one, chapter three. Part one, chapter four of The Pride of Yenocle. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recorded by Sylvia M. B. in Washington State, The Pride of Yenocle, by Edgerton and Agnes Castle. Part one, chapter four. I had questioned Janos on her homeward way concerning my new acquaintances, but the fellow was so ill-disposed by nature to external gossip, so wholly occupied with the minute fulfillment of his daily task, which was to watch over the well-being and safety of his master, that he had gathered no acquaintance with affairs outside his province. With the head factor, however, whom I sent for immediately after supper, I was more fortunate. This man, Carl Schultz, is Saxon-born and consequently one of the few of my numerous dependents with whom I can hold converse here. It was but natural that among the peasantry the advent of strangers, evidently of wealth and distinction, should have created some stir, and it is Schultz's business, among many other things, to know what the peasantry talk about, although in this more contented part of the world this sort of knowledge is not of such importance as among our neighbors, the Poles. Schultz, therefore, was aware of the arrival of the ladies, likewise of the rumor of smallpox, which had so he informed me not only driven all the servants out of the castle of Shrekendorf, but spread something like panic over the countryside. Tydeen said also come to his ears that two gentlemen, one of them suffering from the dreadful malady, doubtless the poor Chamberlain, had been abandoned in their carriage by the Pustilians and servants at the small village of Kittles, some forty miles from here, just over the Lusatian border. He corroborated, in fact, greatly to my joy, all that I had been told. For I had had an uneasy fear upon me now and again as I marched home in the evening chill, that I had been too ready to lend credence to a romantic and improbable story. But better than all, Schultz, having felt a special curiosity concerning visitors from his own country, had, despite the attempt to keep the matter secret, contrived to satisfy himself to the full as to their identity. And thus did I, to my no small triumph, from the first day easily penetrate the ill-guarded Ingkognita. The beautiful wandering princess was the only daughter of the old reigning house of the Lositz-Rothenburg, and it was from Georgian Prune where she had been on a visit to her aunt the Dowager Duchess of Saxony that the second outbreak of the epidemic had driven her to take refuge with the Countess Shreckendorf in our neighborhood. Vastly satisfied with my discovery, and not a little fluttered by the impending honour, I made elaborate preparations the next day against the coming of such guests. We rifled the gardens, the greenhouses, and the storerooms and contrived a collation, the elegance of which taxed our resources to the uttermost. Not in peasant garb did I start at noon upon my romantic quest, but in my finest riding suit of mulberry cloth, embroidered with green and silver, of what good ogres did I not think when I remembered that green and white were actually the colours of the Maison du Losais, and that in this discreet manner I could wear on my sleeve the mark of a delicate homage. Ruffles of the finest mechlin fluttered on my throat in wrists, and a hat of the very latest cock was disposed gently at the exact angle prescribed by the Vienna mode. With my trim-fellows behind me, and with as perfect a piece of horse flesh between my knees as the emperor himself could ever hope to bestride, I set out in high delight and anticipation. Now, on this freezing winter's night, when I look back upon those days, and the days that followed, it seems to me as though it were all a dream. The past events are wrapped to a memory in a kind of haze, out of which certain hours marked above the rest stand out alone in clearness. That particular day stands forth perhaps the clearest of all. I remember that the princess Otelid looked even more queenly to my mind than at first, with her fair hair powdered and a patch upon the satin whiteness of her chin. In the complacency of my young man's vanity, I was exceedingly elated that she should have considered it worthwhile to adorn herself for me. I remember, too, that the lady in waiting examined me critically, and cast a look of approval upon my altered appearance, that she spoke less, and that her mistress spoke more than upon our first meeting, that even the presence mute dark and scowling of their female attendant could not spoil the pleasure of our intercourse. In the vineyards, it is true an incident occurred which, for a moment, threatened to mark my perfect satisfaction. The peasant girls, it is the custom of the country on the appearance of strangers in the midst of their work gathered round each lady, surrounding her in wild dancing fans, threatening in song to load her shoulders with a heavy hodlful of grapes unless she paid a ransom. It was, of course, most unseemly, considering the quality of the company I was entertaining, and I had not foreseen the possibility of such a breach of respect. Never before it was evident, in the delicately nurtured life of the princess, had such rough amusement been allowed to approach her. This being the case, it was not astonishing that the admirable composure of her usual attitude should break down. Her dignity gave way to the emotion of fear. She called, nay, she screamed for me to help. The while her pert lady-in-waiting, no wit abashed, laughed back at her circle of grinning sun-burnt rancors through mocking good-humoured jibes at them in German, and finally was sharp enough to draw her purse, and pay for her footing, crying out to her mistress to do the same. But the latter was in no state to listen to advice, and alas I found myself powerless to deliver the distressed lady. In my ignorance of their language I could do nothing short of use brute force to control my savages, who were, after all, it seems, but acting in good faith upon an old-established privilege. So I was feigned in my turn to summon Schultz to the rescue from a distant part of the ground. He, practical fellow, made no bones about the matter. They bellowed an annoying whirl of his cane, every stroke of which told with a dull thwack, he promptly dispersed the indiscreet merry-makers. I suppose it is my English blood that rises within me at the sight of a woman struck. On the impulse of the first moment I had well nigh wrenched the staff from his hands and laid it about his shoulders. But fortunately on second thought I had whizzed him enough to refrain from an act which would have been so fatal to all future discipline. Nevertheless, as I stood by, a passive spectator of it, the blood mounted for the very shame to my cheek, and I felt myself degraded to the level of my administrator's brutality. The poor fools fell apart, screaming between laughter and pain. One handsome wench I marked, indeed, who withdrew to the side of a sullen gypsy-looking fellow, her husband, or lover, apparently, and as she muttered low in his ear, they both cast looks charged with such murderous import not only at the uncompromising justiciary, but also at me, and the man's hand stole instinctively to his back with so significant a gesture that I realized for the first time quite fully that there might be good reasons for Yanos's precautions on into the Lord's precious person when the Lord took his walks abroad. Another girl passed me close by, sobbing aloud as she returned to her labor. She rubbed her shoulder sorely, and the tears hopped off the rim of her fat cheeks, contorted like those of a blubbering child. In half ashamed and sneaking fashion, yet unable to resist the urging of my heart, I followed her behind the next row of vines and touched her on the arm. She recognized me with a start, an eye all fearful of being noticed by the others. In haste and without a word, as what word could I find, in which to communicate with a slo-wa, hastily dropped a consulatory coin, the first that met my touch into her palm. It was a poor, plain creature with dull eyes, coarse lips, and matted hair, and she gazed at me a moment stupidly bewildered, but the next instant, reading I know not what of sympathy and benevolence in my face, as a dog may read in his master's eyes, she fell at my feet, letting the gold slip out of her grasp, that she might the better seize my hands and hers, and cover it with kisses. Pouring forth the while a litany of gratitude, as unintelligible to me as if she had been indeed a dog whining at my feet. To put an end to the absurd situation, distasteful to my British free-born pride for all my foreign training, I pushed her from me and turned away, to find the lady in waiting at my elbow. Instead, however, of making my weakness a mark for her wit, this latter, to my great relief, and likewise to my astonishment, looked wistfully from the ugly, besmeared face to the coin lying on the black soil, then at my countenance, which at that moment was I felt that of a detected schoolboy, and then without a word she followed me back to her mistress's side. My august visitor had not yet regained her wanted serenity. Still fluttered, she showed me something of a pouting visage. I thought to discern in her not only satisfaction at the punishment she had seen administered, but some resentment at my passive attitude, and this I confess surprised me in her, who seemed so gentle and womanly, but I told myself then that it was but natural and one-born as she was to a throne. On the other hand, while I confounded myself in excuses and explanations, blaming myself for having, through my inexperience of this country, neglected to prevent the possibility of so untoward an incident, I heard behind me the voice of the young courtlady, rating Schultz, in most explicit German, for the heaviness of his hand upon my folk, and as the princess gradually became mollified towards me and showed me once again her own smiling graciousness, I contrasted her little show of haughtiness with the unreserved of her companion, and convinced myself that it did but become her, being what she was. The while I watched Mademoiselle Otely mingling with peasants as if she had been born among them, with an ever-renewed wonder that she should have been chosen for the high position she occupied. Later on my guest, according to her promise, condescended to rest and refresh herself in the castle. This was the culminating moment of a golden afternoon. I felt the full pride of possession when I let her in through the old halls that bore the mark of so many centuries of noble masters, although indeed as a Yenoko I had no inherited right to peacock in the glories of the House of Tolando. But at each portrait before which she was gracious enough to halt I took care to speak of some notable contemporary among the men and women of my old line, in that distant enchanted island of the North, where the men are so brave and strong and the women so fair, and without stretching any point I am sure the line of Yenoko lost nothing in the comparison. She was, I saw, beyond mistake impressed. I rejoiced to note that I was rapidly becoming a person of importance in her eyes, even though the lady in waiting continued to measure me with an altered and thoughtful look. Between the eating of our meal together, which as I said was quite a delicate little feast and did honour to my barefooted kitchen retinue, and the departure of my visitors, I took them through many of the chambers and showed them some of the treasures, quaint antiquities and relics that my great uncle had inherited or himself collected. On a little table, under his picture, yonder on that wall it hangs before me, I had spread forth a glass case, with a sort of tender and pious memory of the rigid old hero, his own personal decorations and honours. From the first cross he had won in comparative youth to the last blazing order that a royal hand had pinned over the shrunken chest of the field-muscle. In this portrait, painted some five years before his death, my uncle had insisted on appearing full face, with a fine scorn of any paliation of the black patch or the broken jaw. It is a grim enough presentiment in consequence, the otters having evidently rather relished his task, and sometimes indeed when I am alone here in this great room at night, and it seems as if the candlelight does but serve to heighten the gloom of the shadows, I find my uncle's one eye following me with sole living of sternness that I can scarce endure it. But that day of which I am writing, I thought there was benignity in the fierce orb as it surveyed such honourable company, and even an actual touch of geniality in the set of the black patch. As I opened the case both ladies fell, women-like, to finger in the rich jewels. There was a snuff-box, set around with diamonds, upon the lid of which was painted a portrait of the Dauphin. This, Maria Teresa, had herself given to my uncle on the occasion of her daughter's marriage, to which it was deemed to my uncle's firm attitude in counsel over the Franco-Austrian difficulty had not a little contributed. With a cry of admiration the princess took it up. Ah! What diamonds! she said. I looked from the exquisite face on the ivory to the no less exquisite countenance bending above it, and I was struck by the resemblance which had no doubt unconsciously been haunting me ever since I first met her. The arch of the dark eyebrow, the supercilious droop of the eyelid, the curve of the short upper lip, and the pout of the full under one, even the high poise of the head on the long throat, were curiously similar. I exclaimed upon the coincidence, while the princess flushed with a sort of mingled pleasure and bashfulness. Maguazelle Otely took up the miniature in her turn, and after gravely comparing it with her own elfish-shumbered visage in the glass, gazed at her mistress. Then, heaving a lugubre sigh, she assented to my remarks, adding, however, that there was no ground for surprise, as the princess Marie Otely was actually cousin to her royal highness, the Dauphin. The princess blushed again and lifted up her hand as if to warn her companion. But the latter, with her almost uncanny, perspicacity, continued, turning to me. Of course, Monsieur de Yenneco, she had last mastered my name. Of course, Monsieur de Yenneco has found out all about us by this time, and is perfectly aware of her highness's identity. Then she added, and her eyes danced. Since Monsieur de Yenneco is so fond of genealogy, among the curiosities of the place, I had naturally shown them my uncle's monumental pedigree, he can amuse himself in tracing the connection and relationships. No doubt he has the ol' monactagolta between the houses of Habsburg and the Catholic house of Lozitz-Rothenburg. And indeed, although she meant this in sarcasm, when after I had escorted them home I returned through the mists and shades of twilight to my solitude. Now peopled for me, with delightful present, and God knows what fantastic future visions, I did produce that excellent new book, The Ol' Monactagolta, and found great interest in tracing the blood relation between the Dauphin and the Fairest of Princeses. And afterwards, moved by some spirit of inglory, I amused myself by comparing on the map the relative sizes of the Duchy of Lozitz and the land of Tolendoll. And next I was moved to enroll once again my uncle's pedigree, and to study the fine chain of noble links of which I stand the last worthy Yenoko, when something that had been lying unformed in my mind during these last hours of strange excitement suddenly took audacious and definite shape. End of Part 1, Chapter 4. Part 1, Chapter 5 of The Pride of Yenoko. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recorded by Sylvia M.B. in Washington State. The Pride of Yenoko. By Edgerton and Agnes Castle. Part 1, Chapter 5. What first entered my brain as the wildest possibility grew rapidly to a desire which possessed my whole being with absolute passion. The situation was in itself so singular and tantalizing, and that the Princess was so beautiful a woman to be on these terms of delicious intimacy with the daughter of one of Europe's sovereigns. A little sovereign, it is true, but great by race and connection, to meet her constantly in absolute defiance of all the laws of etiquette, yet to see her wear through it all as unapproachable a dignity, as serene an aspect of condescension, as though she were presiding at her father's court. It was enough, surely, to have turned the head of a wiser man than myself. It was not long before Matt Wasrell utterly, the lady in waiting, discovered the secret madness of my thoughts. In the light of what has since occurred I can truly call it so, and she it was who, for purposes of her own, shoveled coals on the fire and fanned the flame. One way or another, generally on her initiative, but always by her arrangement, we three met, and met daily. On the evening of a day passed in their company, with the impression strong upon me of the Princess's farewell look, which had held I fancied something different to its want. With the knowledge that I had, unrebuked, pressed, and kissed that fair hand after a fashion more daring than respectful, with my blood in a fever, and my brain in a whirl, now seeming sure of success, now coldly awake to my folly, I bethought me of taking counsel again with my great uncle's pedigree, and heartened by the proofs that the blood of Yenneco was good enough for any alliance. I fell to completing the document by bringing it up to date as far as concerned myself. Now, when I, in goodly black letters, had set down my own cognomen, so fair upon the parchment, I was further seized with the fancy to fill in the space left blank for my future marriage, and I lightly traced in pencil opposite the words Basel Yenneco, Lord of Tolendall, the full titles and names by which this time I had studied till I knew them off by heart of her Serene Highness, the Princess Marie, Caroline, Dorothy, Josephine, Charlotte, Oatly of Los Eats. It made such a pretty show, after all that had gone before, and it brought such visions with it of the glories the name of Yenneco might yet rise to, that I could not find it in me to erase it again, and so left it as it stood, telling myself as I rolled up the great deed again, and hooked it in its place beneath my uncle's portrait, that it would not be my fault if the glorious entry did not remain there forever. The next time the ladies visited me, mademoiselle Oatly, flitting like a little curious brown moth about the great room, dancing pirouettes beneath my uncle's portrait, and now again pausing to make a comical grimace at his forbidding countenance while I entertained her mistress at its further end. Must needs be pricked by the desire to study an important document, which I had, as I have said already submitted to her view. Struck by her sudden silence and stillness, I rose and crossed the room to find her with the parchment rolled out before her, absorbed in contemplation, with her elbows on the table, her face leaning on her hands, with a fierce rush of blood to my cheeks and a confusion that set every pulse throbbing I attempted to withdraw from her the evidence of what must seem the most impudent delusion, but she held tight with her elbows and then, disregarding my muttered explanation that I intended to rub out at once the nonsense I had written in a moment of idleness, she laid her small finger upon the place and looking at me gravely said, why not? The whole room whirled round with me. My God, I cried, don't mock me, but she, with a new ring of feeling in her voice, said earnestly, she has such misery before her if her father carries out his will. To hear these words from her, who, of all others, must be in her mistresses confidence, ought, however amazing, to reason and common sense, to have been a spur to one whose ambition soared so high. Nevertheless, I hesitated to be honest with myself, not from a lover's diffidence, from a lover's dread of losing even hope, but rather from the fear of placing myself in an absurd position of risking the deadly humiliation of her refusal. I dared therefore nothing but soft looks, soft words, soft pressures of the hand, and the princess received them all as she received everything that had gone before. From one in her position this might seem of itself encouragement enough in all conscience, but I waited in vain for some break in her unruffled composure, some instant in which I could mark that the princess was lost in the woman. And so what drew me most to her kept me back. At the same time a rooted distrust of the little lady in waiting, a certain contempt too for her personality as belonging to that rotur so despised of my great uncle and myself, prevented me from placing confidence in her. But she nevertheless precipitated the climax. It was three days after the scene in my great uncle's room, one Sunday morning beside the holy water font in the little chapel of Shrekendorf Castle, wither upon the invitation of its present visitors, my own priest being ill, poor man, of an hog, I had be taken myself to her mass. The princess had passed out first, and had condescended, smiling, to brush the pious drops from my finger. But Mademoiselle Otely paused as she too touched with hers my outstretched hand, and said in my ear as crossly as a spoilt child, you are not a very ardent lover, Mr. de Yenickel. The days are going by, but Count of Shrekendorf is beginning to speak quite clean again. It is impossible that her highness should be left in this liberty much longer. I caught her hand as she would have hurried away. If I could be sure that this is not some foolish jest, I said in a fierce whisper in her ear, and she to me back again as freshly, you are afraid, she said with a curling lip. That settled it. I rode straight home, though I was expected to have joined the ladies in some expedition. I spent the whole day in a most intolerable state of agitation, and then my mind made up. I sat down after supper to write, beneath my uncle's portrait, and the first half of the night went by in writing and rewriting the letter which was to offer the hand and heart of Basil Yenickel to the Princess Marie Otely of Los Itz. I wrote up and tore up till the ground around me was strewn with the fragments of paper, and now I seemed too bold when the whole incongruity and absurdity of my desire tangible form to mock me in the silence of the night, and now too humble when in the flickering glimmer of candlelight my great uncle would frown down upon me, and I could hear him say, Remember the Thou Yenickel bist, at last a letter lay before me by which I resolved to abide. I believed that it was an odd mixture of consciousness of my own temerity, in aspiring so high, and at the same time of conviction that the house of Yenickel could only confer and not receive honor. I even proposed to present myself boldly with my credentials at the Court of Los Itz, and here of course the famous pedigree came in once more, and I modestly added that considering my wealth and connections I ventured to hope the Duke, her father, might favorably consider my pretensions. This, written and sealed, I was able to sleep for the rest of the night, but was awake again with dawn and counting the minutes until I could decently dispatch a mounted messenger to Shrekendorf. When the man rode forth I believe it was a little after eight, and I know that it was on the stroke of one when I heard his horse's hooves ringing again in the courtyard, but time had no measure for the strange agony of doubt in which I passed those hours. Not, once again have I to admit it, because I loved her too dearly to bear the thought of life without her, but because of my fierce pride, which would not brook the shame of refusal. I called in a frenzy to hurry the lagging fool into my presence, and yet when he laid the letter on my table I stared at the great seal without daring to open it, and when at last I did so my hand trembled like an aspenleaf, matured the Yenneco, it began abruptly, I ought to call you mad for what you propose is nothing less indeed than madness. You little know the fetters that bind such lives as mine, and I could laugh and weep together to think of what the Duke, my father, would say were you really to present yourself before him as you suggest. So it ran, and as I read I thought I was condemned, and in my fury would have crushed the letter in my hand, when a word below caught my eye, and with an intensity of joy on a par only with the passion of wounded pride that had preceded it I read on. But dear Monsieur du Yenneco, so ran the letter then, since you love me, and since you honour me by telling me so, since you offer me so generously all you have to give, I will be honest with you and tell you that my present life has no charm for me. I know only too well what the future holds for me in my own home, and I am willing to trust myself to you, and to your promises rather than to face the lot already drawn for me. Therefore, Monsieur du Yenneco, if it be true that as you say all your happiness depends upon my answer, I trust it may be for the benefit of both that I should say yes to you today. But what is to be must be secretly done, and soon are you willing to obtain your desire to risk a little when I am willing to risk so much in granting it. If so, meet my lady in waiting to-day at six, alone, where we first met, and she will tell you all that I have decided it was signed simply Marie-Otalie. There was no hint of answering love to my passionate declaration, but I did not miss it. I had won my princess, and the few clear words in which she laid bare before me, the whole extent of my presumption, only added to the exquisite zest of my conquest. It was a very autumn day. The autumn comes quickly in these lands. It had been raining, and I rode down from the higher level into a sea of white writhing mists. It was still and warm, one of those heavy days, that as a rule seemed like to clog the blood and fill one with reasonless foreboding. I remember all that now. But I know that there was no place for foreboding in my exulting heart as I sallied out full early to the tristing place. The mare I rode, because of the close atmosphere and her own headstrong temper, was in a great lather when I arrived at the little pine wood, and I dismounted and began to lead her gently to and fro, for I loved the pretty creature who was as fond and skittish as a woman, that she might cool by degrees and take no injury. I was petting and fondling her sleek coat, when, of a sudden, without my having had the least warning of her coming, I turned to find Mademoiselle Ottely before me. She looked at me straight with one of those odd searching looks which I had now and again seen her fix upon me, and without either good even or how do you do, she said abruptly, I saw you coming all the way along the white road from the moment it turns the corner, and I saw how your mare fought you and how difficult it was to bring her past the great beam of the well yonder. You made her obey, but you have not left a scratch upon her sides, yet you wear spurs. She looked at me with the most earnest inquiry, and ruffled by the futility of the question, when so much was at stake, I said to her somewhat sharply, what has this to do, Mademoiselle, with our meeting here today? It has this to do, monsieur, she answered me compositely, that her highness's interests are as dear to me as my own, and that I am glad to learn that the man she is to wed has a merciful heart. I know a man, she went on, in our own country, who passes for the finest, the bravest, the most gallant, but when he brings a horse in from the chase its legs will be trembling, and it will be panting so that it can scare straw breath, because the rider is so brave and dashing that he must go the fastest of all, and he will have left his mark upon the poor beast's sides in great furrows where he has plowed them with his spurs. He is greatly admired by everyone, but his horses die, and his hounds shrink when he moves his hand. That is what my country people call being manly, being a real cavalier. The scorn of her tone was something beyond the mere girlish pettishness I generally associated with her, but to me, except as she represented or influenced her mistress, she had never had any interest, and so again impatiently I brought her back to the object of her meeting. Her highness has entrusted you with a message, I asked. Her highness would first of all know, said the maid of honour, if you fully realise the difficulties you may bring upon yourself by the marriage you propose. The princess, said I proudly, has condescended to say that she will trust herself to me. After that, as far as I'm concerned, there can be no question of difficulty. As for her, if she will consent to accompany me to England, no trouble or reproach need ever reach her ears. If she prefers to remain here, I shall nonetheless be able to protect my wife, worried against the whole empire itself. That is the right spirit, said mademoiselle Otely, nodding her head approvingly. What you say has not got a grain of common sense, but that is all as it should be. And next, she continued drawing closer to me, for there was a twilight dimness about us, and standing on tiptoe in the endeavour to bring her gaze on a level with mine. Her highness wishes to know, and she dropped her voice a little, if you love her very much. As if the gaze of those yellow hazel eyes of hers had cast a sudden revealing light upon my soul, I stood abashed and dumb, self-convicted by my silence. Love? Did I love her whom I would make my wife? Taken up with schemes of vain glory and ambition. What room had I had in my heart for love? In all my triumph at having won her, was there one qualifying thread of tenderness? Would I, in fine, have sought the woman beautiful though she was? Were she not the princess? In a sort of turmoil I asked myself these things under the compelling earnestness of mademoiselle Otely's eyes. And everything in myself looked strange and hideous to myself, as beneath a vivid lightning flash the most familiar scene assumes a singular and appalling aspect. In another moment she moved away and turned aside from me. And then, even as after the lightning flash all things resumed their normal aspect, I wondered, my own weak folly and my blood rose hotly against the impertinence that had evoked it. By what right, said I? Mademoiselle, do you ask me such a question? If it be indeed by order of her harness, pray tell her that when she will put it to me herself, I will answer it to herself. The maid of honor wheeled round with her arch-inscrutable smile. Oh, she said, believe me, you have answered me very well. I was already convinced of the sincerity and ardor of your attachment to her harness, so convinced indeed that I am here tonight for the sole purpose of helping both you and her to your most insane of marriages. The princess is accustomed to rely upon me for everything, and upon me therefore falls a whole burden of preparation and responsibility. Whether the end of all this will be a dungeon for the lady in waiting, if indeed the duke does not have her executed for her treason, is naturally a contingency which neither of you will consider worth a moment's thought. It is quite certain, however, that without me you would both do something inconceivably stupid and ruin all, but voyons, monsieur de Genneco. She went on with sudden gravity and demeanor. This is no time for pleasantry. It is a very serious matter. You are wasting precious moments in a singularly light-hearted fashion, it seems to me. The reproach came well from her, but she left me no time to protest. I am here, she said, as you know to tell you what the princess has decided and how we must act if the whole thing is not to fail. First of all, the arrival of some important person from the court of lawsuits may take place any day, and then bonjour. She blew an airy kiss and waved her hand, while with a cold thrill I realized the irrefutable truth of her words. If it is to be, she went on, unconsciously repeating almost the exact text of her mistress's letter to me. It must be at once and in secret, mind, not a word to a soul till all is accomplished. On your honor, I lay it. She, her highness, enjoins it upon you not to betray her to any single human being before you have acquired the right to protect her. It is surely not too much to ask. She spoke with deep solemnity, and yet characteristically cut short my assurations. And, that being settled, you will be willing to take this lady for your wife, probably without a steiver, and certainly with her father's curse? I smiled proudly in the arrogance of my heart, all duke as he was, I did no doubt, once the first storm over, but that my exalted father-in-law would find very extenuating circumstances for his willful daughter's choice. That being settled, continued Miss Oatly, it only remains to know, are you prepared to enter the marriage state two nights hence? I wish, said I, and could not keep the note of exultation from my voice at having the rare prize thus actually within my reach. I wish you would ask me for some harder proof of my complete devotion to her highness. Well then, she said hastily whispering as if the pines could overhear us, so be it. I have not been idle today, and I have laid the plot. You know the little church in that wretched village of Wilhelmsdell, we posted through two days ago? The priest there is very old and very poor, and like a child, because he has always lived among the peasants, and now indeed he is almost too old to be their priest anymore. I saw him today and told him that two who loved each other were in great straits, because people wanted to wed the maiden to a bad and cruel man. That is true, Mr. Degenical. I told him that these two would die of grief, or lose their souls perhaps, where they separated because of the love they bore each other. There, sir, I permitted myself a poetical license. To be brief, I promised him in your name what seemed a great sum for his poor. A thousandth dollars. You will see to that, and he has promised me to wed you on Wednesday night at eight o'clock secretly in his poor little church. He is so old and so simple, it was like misleading child. But nevertheless, the cause being good, I trust I may be forgiven. Drive straight to the church, and there you will find one who will direct you. The princess will not see you again till she meets you before the altar. You will bring her home to your castle. A maid will accompany her, and that is all. Adieu, Mr. Degenical. She stretched out her hand, and her voice trembled. You will not see the maid of honor perhaps ever again. Her task is done, she added. I took her hand, touched by her accent of earnestness, and gratefully awoke to the fact that she alone had made the impossible possible to my desire. I looked at her face close to mine in the faint light, and as she smiled at me a little sadly, I was struck with the delicate beauty of the curve of her lip, and the exquisite finishing touch of the dimple came and went beside it. And the thought flashed into my mind. That little maid may one day blossom into the sort of woman that drives men mad. She slipped her hand from mine, as I would have kissed it, and nodded at me with the return of the cool impudence that had so often vexed me. Good-bye, gallant cavalier, she said mockingly. She whistled, as if for a dog, and I saw the black figure of the nurse start from the shadow of the trees a few yards away, and meeting they joined in the mist and merged swiftly into it. Whereupon I mounted the mare, who was sorely tired by her long waiting, and as we cantered homewards I was haunted through the extraordinary blaze of my triumphant thoughts to my own exasperation and surprise, oddly and unwillingly, by the arch-sweetness of the maid of honor's smile. And once, I blushed all alone in the darkness for the shame of such a thought in my mind at such a moment, I caught myself picturing the sweetness a man might find in pressing his lips upon the tantalizing dimple. End of Part 1, Chapter 5