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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Monsieur Maurice, by Amelia B. Edwards
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Monsieur Maurice
+
+Author: Amelia B. Edwards
+
+
+Release Date: June, 2005 [EBook #8383]
+This file was first posted on July 5, 2003
+Last Updated: May 9, 2013
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MONSIEUR MAURICE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Christopher Lund and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+MONSIEUR MAURICE
+
+By
+
+AMELIA B. EDWARDS
+
+1873
+
+
+
+
+1
+
+
+The events I am about to relate took place more than fifty years ago. I am
+a white-haired old woman now, and I was then a little girl scarce ten years
+of age; but those times, and the places and people associated with them,
+seem, in truth, to lie nearer my memory than the times and people of
+to-day. Trivial incidents which, if they had happened yesterday, would be
+forgotten, come back upon me sometimes with all the vivid detail of a
+photograph; and words unheeded many a year ago start out, like the
+handwriting on the wall, in sudden characters of fire.
+
+But this is no new experience. As age creeps on, we all have the same tale
+to tell. The days of our youth are those we remember best and most fondly,
+and even the sorrows of that bygone time become pleasures in the
+retrospect. Of my own solitary childhood I retain the keenest recollection,
+as the following pages will show.
+
+My father's name was Bernhard--Johann Ludwig Bernhard; and he was a native
+of Coblentz on the Rhine. Having grown grey in the Prussian service, fought
+his way slowly and laboriously from the ranks upward, been seven times
+wounded and twice promoted on the field, he was made colonel of his
+regiment in 1814, when the Allies entered Paris. In 1819, being no longer
+fit for active service, he retired on a pension, and was appointed King's
+steward of the Chateau of Augustenburg at Bruehl--a sort of military
+curatorship to which few duties and certain contingent emoluments were
+attached. Of these last, a suite of rooms in the Chateau, a couple of acres
+of private garden, and the revenue accruing from a small local impost,
+formed the most important part. It was towards the latter half of this year
+(1819) that, having now for the first time in his life a settled home in
+which to receive me, my father fetched me from Nuremberg where I was living
+with my aunt, Martha Baur, and took me to reside with him at Bruehl.
+
+Now my aunt, Martha Baur, was an exemplary person in her way; a rigid
+Lutheran, a strict disciplinarian, and the widow of a wealthy wool-stapler.
+She lived in a gloomy old house near the Frauen-Kirche, where she received
+no society, and led a life as varied and lively on the whole as that of a
+Trappist. Every Wednesday afternoon we paid a visit to the grave of her
+"blessed man" in the Protestant cemetery outside the walls, and on Sundays
+we went three times to church. These were the only breaks in the long
+monotony of our daily life. On market-days we never went out of doors at
+all; and when the great annual fair-time came round, we drew down all the
+front blinds and inhabited the rooms at the back.
+
+As for the pleasures of childhood, I cannot say that I knew many of them in
+those old Nuremberg days. Still I was not unhappy, nor even very dull. It
+may be that, knowing nothing pleasanter, I was not even conscious of the
+dreariness of the atmosphere I breathed. There was, at all events, a big
+old-fashioned garden full of vegetables and cottage-flowers, at the back
+of the house, in which I almost lived in Spring and Summer-time, and from
+which I managed to extract a great deal of enjoyment; while for companions
+and playmates I had old Karl, my aunt's gardener, a pigeon-house full of
+pigeons, three staid elderly cats, and a tortoise. In the way of education
+I fared scantily enough, learning just as little as it pleased my aunt to
+teach me, and having that little presented to me under its driest and most
+unattractive aspect.
+
+Such was my life till I went away with my father in the Autumn of 1819. I
+was then between nine and ten years of age--having lost my mother in
+earliest infancy, and lived with aunt Martha Baur ever since I could
+remember.
+
+The change from Nuremberg to Bruehl was for me like the transition from
+Purgatory to Paradise. I enjoyed for the first time all the delights of
+liberty. I had no lessons to learn; no stern aunt to obey; but, which was
+infinitely pleasanter, a kind-hearted Rhenish Maedchen, with a silver arrow
+in her hair, to wait upon me; and an indulgent father whose only orders
+were that I should be allowed to have my own way in everything.
+
+And my way was to revel in the air and the sunshine; to roam about the park
+and pleasure-grounds; to watch the soldiers at drill, and hear the band
+play every day, and wander at will about the deserted state-apartments of
+the great empty Chateau.
+
+Looking back upon it from this distance of time, I should pronounce the
+Electoral Residenz at Bruehl to be a miracle of bad taste; but not Aladdin's
+palace if planted amid the gardens of Armida could then have seemed
+lovelier in my eyes. The building, a heavy many-windowed pile in the worst
+style of the worst Renaissance period, stood, and still stands, in a fat,
+flat country about ten miles from Cologne, to which city it bears much the
+same relation that Hampton Court bears to London, or Versailles to Paris.
+Stucco and whitewash had been lavished upon it inside and out, and pallid
+scagliola did duty everywhere for marble. A grand staircase supported by
+agonised colossi, grinning and writhing in vain efforts to look as if they
+didn't mind the weight, led from the great hall to the state apartments;
+and in these rooms the bad taste of the building may be said to have
+culminated. Here were mirrors framed in meaningless arabesques, cornices
+painted to represent bas-reliefs, consoles and pilasters of mock marble,
+and long generations of Electors in the tawdriest style of portraiture, all
+at full length, all in their robes of office, and all too evidently by one
+and the same hand. To me, however, they were all majestic and beautiful. I
+believed in themselves, their wigs, their armour, their ermine, their
+high-heeled shoes and their stereotyped smirk, from the earliest to the
+latest.
+
+But the gardens and grounds were my chief delight, as indeed they were the
+main attraction of the place, making it the focus of a holiday resort for
+the townsfolk of Cologne and Bonn, and a point of interest for travellers.
+First came a great gravelled terrace upon which the ground-floor windows
+opened--a terrace where the sun shone more fiercely than elsewhere, and
+orange-trees in tubs bore golden fruit, and great green, yellow, and
+striped pumpkins, alternating with beds of brilliant white and scarlet
+geraniums, lay lazily sprawling in the sunshine as if they enjoyed it.
+Beyond this terrace came vast flats of rich green sward laid out in formal
+walks, flower-beds and fountains; and beyond these again stretched some two
+or three miles of finely wooded park, pierced by long avenues that radiated
+from a common centre and framed in exquisite little far-off views of
+Falkenlust and the blue hills of the Vorgebirge.
+
+We were lodged at the back, where the private gardens and offices abutted
+on the village. Our own rooms looked upon our own garden, and upon the
+church and Franciscan convent beyond. In the warm dusk, when all was still,
+and my father used to sit smoking his meerschaum by the open window, we
+could hear the low pealing of the chapel-organ, and the monks chanting
+their evening litanies.
+
+A happy time--a pleasant, peaceful place! Ah me! how long ago!
+
+
+
+
+2
+
+
+A whole delightful Summer and Autumn went by thus, and my new home seemed
+more charming with every change of season. First came the gathering of the
+golden harvest; then the joyous vintage-time, when the wine-press creaked
+all day in every open cellar along the village street, and long files of
+country carts came down from the hills in the dusk evenings, laden with
+baskets and barrels full of white and purple grapes. And then the long
+avenues and all the woods of Bruehl put on their Autumn robes of crimson,
+and flame-colour, and golden brown; and the berries reddened in the hedges;
+and the Autumn burned itself away like a gorgeous sunset; and November came
+in grey and cold, like the night-time of the year.
+
+I was so happy, however, that I enjoyed even the dull November. I loved the
+bare avenues carpeted with dead and rustling leaves--the solitary
+gardens--the long, silent afternoons and evenings when the big logs
+crackled on the hearth, and my father smoked his pipe in the chimney
+corner. We had no such wood-fires at Aunt Martha Baur's in those dreary old
+Nuremberg days, now almost forgotten; but then, to be sure, Aunt Martha
+Baur, who was a sparing woman and looked after every groschen, had to pay
+for her own logs, whereas ours were cut from the Crown Woods, and cost not
+a pfennig.
+
+It was, as well as I can remember, just about this time, when the days were
+almost at their briefest, that my father received an official communication
+from Berlin desiring him to make ready a couple of rooms for the immediate
+reception of a state-prisoner, for whose safe-keeping he would be held
+responsible till further notice. The letter--(I have it in my desk
+now)--was folded square, sealed with five seals, and signed in the King's
+name by the Minister of War; and it was brought, as I well remember, by a
+mounted orderly from Cologne.
+
+So a couple of empty rooms were chosen on the second story, just over one
+of the State apartments at the end of the east wing; and my father, who was
+by no means well pleased with his office, set to work to ransack the
+Chateau for furniture.
+
+"Since it is the King's pleasure to make a gaoler of me," said he, "I'll
+try to give my poor devil of a prisoner all the comforts I can. Come with
+me, my little Gretchen, and let's see what chairs and tables we can find up
+in the garrets."
+
+Now I had been longing to explore the top rooms ever since I came to live
+at Bruehl--those top rooms under the roof, of which the shutters were always
+closed, and the doors always locked, and where not even the housemaids were
+admitted oftener than twice a year. So at this welcome invitation I sprang
+up, joyfully enough, and ran before my father all the way. But when he
+unlocked the first door, and all beyond was dark, and the air that met us
+on the threshold had a faint and dead odour, like the atmosphere of a tomb,
+I shrank back trembling, and dared not venture in. Nor did my courage
+altogether come back when the shutters were thrown open, and the wintry
+sunlight streamed in upon dusty floors, and cobwebbed ceilings, and piles
+of mysterious objects covered in a ghostly way with large white sheets,
+looking like heaps of slain upon a funeral pyre.
+
+The slain, however, turned out to be the very things of which we were in
+search; old-fashioned furniture in all kinds of incongruous styles, and of
+all epochs--Louis Quatorze cabinets in cracked tortoise-shell and blackened
+buhl--antique carved chairs emblazoned elaborately with coats of arms, as
+old as the time of Albert Duerer--slender-legged tables in battered
+marqueterie--time-pieces in lack-lustre ormolu, still pointing to the hour
+at which they had stopped, who could tell how many years ago? bundles of
+moth-eaten tapestries and faded silken hangings--exquisite oval mirrors
+framed in chipped wreaths of delicate Dresden china--mouldering old
+portraits of dead-and-gone court beauties in powder and patches, warriors
+in wigs, and prelates in point-lace--whole suites of furniture in old
+stamped leather and worm-eaten Utrecht velvet; broken toilette services in
+pink and blue Sevres; screens, wardrobes, cornices--in short, all kinds of
+luxurious lumber going fast to dust, like those who once upon a time
+enjoyed and owned it.
+
+And now, going from room to room, we chose a chair here, a table there, and
+so on, till we had enough to furnish a bedroom and sitting-room.
+
+"He must have a writing-table," said my father, thoughtfully, "and a
+book-case."
+
+Saying which, he stopped in front of a ricketty-looking gilded cabinet with
+empty red-velvet shelves, and tapped it with his cane.
+
+"But supposing he has no books!" suggested I, with the precocious wisdom of
+nine years of age.
+
+"Then we must beg some, or borrow some, my little Maedchen," replied my
+father, gravely; "for books are the main solace of the captive, and he who
+hath them not lies in a twofold prison."
+
+"He shall have my picture-book of Hartz legends!" said I, in a sudden
+impulse of compassion. Whereupon my father took me up in his arms, kissed
+me on both cheeks, and bade me choose some knicknacks for the prisoner's
+sitting-room.
+
+"For though we have gotten together all the necessaries for comfort, we
+have taken nothing for adornment," said he, "and 'twere pity the prison
+were duller than it need be. Choose thou a pretty face or two from among
+these old pictures, my little Gretchen, and an ornament for his
+mantelshelf. Young as thou art, thou hast the woman's wit in thee."
+
+So I picked out a couple of Sevres candlesticks; a painted Chinese screen,
+all pagodas and parrots; two portraits of patched and powdered beauties in
+the Watteau style; and a queer old clock surmounted by a gilt Cupid in a
+chariot drawn by doves. If these failed to make him happy, thought I, he
+must indeed be hard to please.
+
+That afternoon, the things having been well dusted, and the rooms
+thoroughly cleaned, we set to work to arrange the furniture, and so quickly
+was this done that before we sat down to supper the place was ready for
+occupation, even to the logs upon the hearth and the oil-lamp upon the
+table.
+
+All night my dreams were of the prisoner. I was seeking him in the gloom of
+the upper rooms, or amid the dusky mazes of the leafless
+plantations--always seeing him afar off, never overtaking him, and trying
+in vain to catch a glimpse of his features. But his face was always turned
+from me.
+
+My first words on waking, were to ask if he had yet come. All day long I
+was waiting, and watching, and listening for him, starting up at every
+sound, and continually running to the window. Would he be young and
+handsome? Or would he be old, and white-haired, and world-forgotten, like
+some of those Bastille prisoners I had heard my father speak of? Would his
+chains rattle when he walked about? I asked myself these questions, and
+answered them as my childish imagination prompted, a hundred times a day;
+and still he came not.
+
+So another twenty-four hours went by, and my impatience was almost
+beginning to wear itself out, when at last, about five o'clock in the
+afternoon of the third day, it being already quite dark, there came a
+sudden clanging of the gates, followed by a rattle of wheels in the
+courtyard, and a hurrying to and fro of feet upon the stairs.
+
+Then, listening with a beating heart, but seeing nothing, I knew that he
+was come.
+
+I had to sleep that night with my curiosity ungratified; for my father had
+hurried away at the first sounds from without, nor came back till long
+after I had been carried off to bed by my Rhenish handmaiden.
+
+
+
+
+3
+
+
+He was neither old nor white-haired. He was, as well as I, in my childish
+way could judge, about thirty-five years of age, pale, slight, dark-eyed,
+delicate-looking. His chains did not rattle as he walked, for the simple
+reason that, being a prisoner on parole, he suffered no kind of restraint,
+but was as free as myself of the Chateau and grounds. He wore his hair
+long, tied behind with a narrow black ribbon, and very slightly powdered;
+and he dressed always in deep mourning--black, all black, from head to
+foot, even to his shoe-buckles. He was a Frenchman, and he went by the name
+of Monsieur Maurice.
+
+I cannot tell how I knew that this was only his Christian name; but so it
+was, and I knew him by no other, neither did my father. I have, indeed,
+evidence among our private papers to show that neither by those in
+authority at Berlin, nor by the prisoner himself, was he at any time
+informed either of the family name of Monsieur Maurice, or of the nature of
+the offence, whether military or political, for which that gentleman was
+consigned to his keeping at Bruehl.
+
+"Of one thing at least I am certain," said my father, holding out his pipe
+for me to fill it. "He is a soldier."
+
+It was just after dinner, the second day following our prisoner's arrival,
+and I was sitting on my father's knee before the fire, as was our pleasant
+custom of an afternoon.
+
+"I see it in his eye," my father went on to say. "I see it in his walk. I
+see it in the way he arranges his papers on the table. Everything in order.
+Everything put away into the smallest possible compass. All this bespeaketh
+the camp."
+
+"I don't believe he is a soldier, for all that," said I, thoughtfully. "He
+is too gentle."
+
+"The bravest soldiers, my little Gretchen, are ofttimes the gentlest,"
+replied my father. "The great French hero, Bayard, and the great English
+hero, Sir Philip Sidney, about whom thou wert reading 'tother day, were
+both as tender and gentle as women."
+
+"But he neither smokes, nor swears, nor talks loud," said I, persisting in
+my opinion.
+
+My father smiled, and pinched my ear.
+
+"Nay, little one," said he, "Monsieur Maurice is not like thy father--a
+rough German Dragoon risen from the ranks. He is a gentleman, and a
+Frenchman; and he hath all the polish of what the Frenchman calls the
+_vieille ecole_. And there again he puzzles me with his court-manners
+and his powdered hair! He's no Bonapartist, I'll be sworn--yet if he be o'
+the King's side, what doth he here, with the usurper at Saint Helena, and
+Louis the Eighteenth come to his own again?"
+
+"But he _is_ a Bonapartist, father," said I, "for he carries the
+Emperor's portrait on his snuff-box."
+
+My father laid down his pipe, and drew a long breath expressive of
+astonishment.
+
+"He showed thee his snuff-box!" exclaimed he.
+
+"Ay--and told me it was the Emperor's own gift."
+
+"Thunder and Mars! And when was this, my little Gretchen?"
+
+"Yesterday morning, on the terrace. And he asked my name; and told me I
+should go up some day to his room and see his sketches; and he kissed me
+when he said good-bye; and--and I like Monsieur Maurice very much, father,
+and I'm sure it's very wicked of the King to keep him here in prison!"
+
+My father looked at me, shook his head, and twirled his long grey
+moustache.
+
+"Bonapartist or Legitimist, again I say what doth he here?" muttered he
+presently, more to himself than to me. "If Legitimist, why not with his
+King? If Bonapartist--then he is his King's prisoner; not ours. It passeth
+my comprehension how we should hold him at Bruehl."
+
+"Let him run away, father dear, and don't run after him!" whispered I,
+putting my arms coaxingly about his neck.
+
+"But 'tis some cursed mess of politics at bottom, depend on't!" continued
+my father, still talking to himself. "Ah, you don't know what politics are,
+my little Gretchen!--so much the better for you!"
+
+"I do know what politics are," replied I, with great dignity. "They are the
+_chef-d'oeuvre_ of Satan. I heard you say so the other day."
+
+My father burst into a Titanic roar of laughter.
+
+"Said I so?" shouted he. "Thunder and Mars! I did not remember that I had
+ever said anything half so epigrammatic!"
+
+Now from this it will be seen that the prisoner and I were already
+acquainted. We had, indeed, taken to each other from the first, and our
+mutual liking ripened so rapidly that before a week was gone by we had
+become the fastest friends in the world.
+
+Our first meeting, as I have already said, took place upon the terrace. Our
+second, which befell on the afternoon of the same day when my father and I
+had held the conversation just recorded, happened on the stairs. Monsieur
+Maurice was coming up with his hat on; I was running down. He stopped, and
+held out both his hands.
+
+"_Bonjour, petite_," he said, smiling. "Whither away so fast?"
+
+The hoar frost was clinging to his coat, where he had brushed against the
+trees in his walk, and he looked pale and tired.
+
+"I am going home," I replied.
+
+"Home? Did you not tell me you lived in the Chateau?"
+
+"So I do, Monsieur; but at the other side, up the other staircase. This is
+the side of the state-apartments."
+
+Then, seeing in his face a look half of surprise, half of curiosity, I
+added:--
+
+"I often go there in the afternoon, when it is too cold, or too late for
+out-of-doors. They are such beautiful rooms, and full of such beautiful
+pictures! Would you like to see them?"
+
+He smiled, and shook his head.
+
+"Thanks, petite," he said, "I am too cold now, and too tired; but you shall
+show them to me some other day. Meanwhile, suppose you come up and pay me
+that promised visit?"
+
+I assented joyfully, and slipping my hand into his with the ready
+confidence of childhood, turned back at once and went with him to his rooms
+on the second floor.
+
+Here, finding the fire in the salon nearly out, we went down upon our knees
+and blew the embers with our breath, and laughed so merrily over our work
+that by the time the new logs had caught, I was as much at home as if I had
+known Monsieur Maurice all my life.
+
+"_Tiens_!" he said, taking me presently upon his knee and brushing the
+specks of white ash from my clothes and hair, "what a little Cinderella I
+have made of my guest! This must not happen again, Gretchen. Did you not
+tell me yesterday that your name was Gretchen?"
+
+"Yes, but Gretchen, you know, is not my real name," said I, "my real name
+is Marguerite. Gretchen is only my pet name."
+
+"Then you will always be Gretchen for me," said Monsieur Maurice, with the
+sweetest smile in the world.
+
+There were books upon the table; there was a thing like a telescope on a
+brass stand in the window; there was a guitar lying on the couch. The
+fire, too, was burning brightly now, and the room altogether wore a
+cheerful air of habitation.
+
+"It looks more like a lady's boudoir than a prison," said Monsieur Maurice,
+reading my thoughts. "I wonder whose rooms they were before I came here!"
+
+"They were nobody's rooms," said I. "They were quite empty."
+
+And then I told him where we had found the furniture, and how the
+ornamental part thereof had been of my choosing.
+
+"I don't know who the ladies are," I said, referring to the portraits. "I
+only chose them for their pretty faces."
+
+"Their lovers probably did the same, petite, a hundred years ago," replied
+Monsieur Maurice. "And the clock--did you choose that also?"
+
+"Yes; but the clock doesn't go."
+
+"So much the better. I would that time might stand still also--till I am
+free! till I am free!"
+
+The tears rushed to my eyes. It was the tone more than the words that
+touched my heart. He stooped and kissed me on the forehead.
+
+"Come to the window, little one," said he, "and I will show you something
+very beautiful. Do you know what this is?"
+
+"A telescope!"
+
+"No; a solar microscope. Now look down into this tube, and tell me what you
+see. A piece of Persian carpet? No--a butterfly's wing magnified hundreds
+and hundreds of times. And this which looks like an aigrette of jewels?
+Will you believe that it is just the tiny plume which waves on the head of
+every little gnat that buzzes round you on a Summer's evening?"
+
+I uttered exclamation after exclamation of delight. Every fresh object
+seemed more wonderful and beautiful than the last, and I felt as if I could
+go on looking down that magic tube for ever. Meanwhile Monsieur Maurice,
+whose good-nature was at least as inexhaustible as my curiosity, went on
+changing the slides till we had gone through a whole boxfull.
+
+By this time it was getting rapidly dusk, and I could see no longer.
+
+"You will show me some more another day?" said I, giving up reluctantly.
+
+"That I will, petite, I have at least a dozen more boxes full of slides."
+
+"And--and you said I should see your sketches, Monsieur Maurice."
+
+"All in good time, little Gretchen," he said, smiling. "All in good time.
+See--those are the sketches, in yonder folio; that mahogany case under the
+couch contains a collection of gems in glass and paste; those red books in
+the bookcase are full of pictures. You shall see them all by degrees; but
+only by degrees. For if I did not keep something back to tempt my little
+guest, she would not care to visit the solitary prisoner."
+
+I felt myself colour crimson.
+
+"But--but indeed I would care to come, Monsieur Maurice, if you had nothing
+at all to show me," I said, half hurt, half angry.
+
+He gave me a strange look that I could not understand, and stroked my hair
+caressingly.
+
+"Come often, then, little one," he said. "Come very often; and when we are
+tired of pictures and microscopes, we will sit upon the floor, and tell
+sad stories of the deaths of kings."
+
+Then, seeing my look puzzled, he laughed and added:--
+
+"'Tis a great English poet says that, Gretchen, in one of his plays."
+
+Here a shrill trumpet-call in the court-yard, followed by the prolonged
+roll of many drums, warned me that evening parade was called, and that as
+soon as it was over my father would be home and looking for me. So I
+started up, and put out my hand to say good-bye.
+
+Monsieur Maurice took it between both his own.
+
+"I don't like parting from you so soon, little Maedchen," he said. "Will you
+come again to-morrow?"
+
+"Every day, if you like!" I replied eagerly.
+
+"Then every day it shall be; and--let me see--you shall improve my bad
+German, and I will teach you French."
+
+I could have clapped my hands for joy. I was longing to learn French, and I
+knew how much it would also please my father; so I thanked Monsieur Maurice
+again and again, and ran home with a light heart to tell of all the wonders
+I had seen.
+
+
+
+
+4
+
+
+From this time forth, I saw him always once, and sometimes twice a day--in
+the afternoons, when he regularly gave me the promised French lesson; and
+occasionally in the mornings, provided the weather was neither too cold nor
+too damp for him to join me in the grounds. For Monsieur Maurice was not
+strong. He could not with impunity face snow, and rain, and our keen
+Rhenish north-east winds; and it was only when the wintry sun shone out at
+noon and the air came tempered from the south, that he dared venture from
+his own fire-side. When, however, there shone a sunny day, with what
+delight I used to summon him for a walk, take him to my favourite points of
+view, and show him the woodland nooks that had been my chosen haunts in
+summer! Then, too, the unwonted colour would come back to his pale cheek,
+and the smile to his lips, and while the ramble and the sunshine lasted he
+would be all jest and gaiety, pelting me with dead leaves, chasing me in
+and out of the plantations, and telling me strange stories, half pathetic,
+half grotesque, of Dryads, and Fauns, and Satyrs--of Bacchus, and Pan, and
+Polyphemus--of nymphs who became trees, and shepherds who were transformed
+to fountains, and all kinds of beautiful wild myths of antique Greece--far
+more beautiful and far more wild than all the tales of gnomes and witches
+in my book of Hartz legends.
+
+At other times, when the weather was cold or rainy, he would take down his
+"Musee Napoleon," a noble work in eight or ten volumes, and show me
+engravings after pictures by great masters in the Louvre, explaining them
+to me as we went along, painting in words the glow and glory of the absent
+colour, and steeping my childish imagination in golden dreams of Raphael
+and Titian, and Paulo Veronese.
+
+And sometimes, too, as the dusk came on and the firelight brightened in the
+gathering gloom, he would take up his guitar, and to the accompaniment of a
+few slight chords sing me a quaint old French chanson of the feudal times;
+or an Arab chant picked up in the tent or the Nile boat; or a Spanish
+ballad, half love-song, half litany, learned from the lips of a muleteer on
+the Pyrenean border.
+
+For Monsieur Maurice, whatever his present adversities, had travelled far
+and wide at some foregone period of his life--in Syria, and Persia; in
+northernmost Tartary and the Siberian steppes; in Egypt and the Nubian
+desert, and among the perilous wilds of central Arabia. He spoke and wrote
+with facility some ten or twelve languages. He drew admirably, and had a
+profound knowledge of the Italian schools of art; and his memory was a rich
+storehouse of adventure and anecdote, legend and song.
+
+I am an old woman now, and Monsieur Maurice must have passed away many a
+year ago upon his last long journey; but even at this distance of time, my
+eyes are dimmed with tears when I remember how he used to unlock that
+storehouse for my pleasure, and ransack his memory for stories either of
+his own personal perils by flood and field, or of the hairbreadth 'scapes
+of earlier travellers. For it was his amusement to amuse me; his happiness
+to make me happy. And I in return loved him with all my childish heart.
+Nay, with something deeper and more romantic than a childish love--say
+rather with that kind of passionate hero-worship which is an attribute more
+of youth than of childhood, and, like the quality of mercy, blesseth him
+that gives even more than him that takes.
+
+"What dreadful places you have travelled in, Monsieur Maurice!" I exclaimed
+one day. "What dangers you have seen!"
+
+He had been showing me a little sketchbook full of Eastern jottings, and
+had just explained how a certain boat therein depicted had upset with him
+on a part of the Upper Nile so swarming with alligators that he had to
+swim for his life, and even so, barely scrambled up the slimy bank in
+time.
+
+"He who travels far courts many kinds of death," replied Monsieur Maurice;
+"but he escapes that which is worst--death from ennui."
+
+"Suppose they had dragged you back, when you were half way up the bank!"
+said I, shuddering.
+
+And as I spoke, I felt myself turn pale; for I could see the brown monsters
+crowding to shore, and the red glitter of their cruel eyes and the hot
+breath steaming from their open jaws.
+
+"Then they would have eaten me up as easily as you might swallow an
+oyster," laughed Monsieur Maurice. "Nay, my child, why that serious face? I
+should have escaped a world of trouble, and been missed by no one--except
+poor Ali."
+
+"Who was Ali?" I asked quickly.
+
+"Ali was my Nubian servant--my only friend, then; as you, little Gretchen,
+are my only friend, now," replied Monsieur Maurice, sadly. "Aye, my only
+little friend in the wide world--and I think a true one."
+
+I did not know what to say; but I nestled closer to his side; and pressed
+my cheek up fondly against his shoulder.
+
+"Tell me more about him, Monsieur Maurice," I whispered. "I am so glad he
+loved you dearly."
+
+"He loved me very dearly," said Monsieur Maurice, "so dearly that he gave
+his life for me."
+
+"But is Ali dead?"
+
+"Ay--Ali is dead. Nay, his story is brief enough, petite. I bought him in
+the slave market at Cairo--a poor, sickly, soulless lad, half stupid from
+ill-treatment. I gave him good food, good clothes, and liberty. I taught
+him to read. I made him my own servant; and his soul and his strength came
+back to him as if by a miracle. He became stalwart and intelligent, and so
+faithful that he was ten times more my slave than if I had held him to his
+bondage. I took him with me through all my Eastern pilgrimage. He was my
+body-guard; my cook; my dragoman; everything. He slept on a mat at the foot
+of my bed every night, like a dog. So he lived with me for nearly four
+years--till I lost him."
+
+He paused.
+
+I did not dare to ask, "what more?" but waited breathlessly.
+
+"The rest is soon told," he said presently; but in an altered voice. "It
+happened in Ceylon. Our way lay along a bridle-path overhanging a steep
+gorge on the one hand and skirting the jungle on the other. Do you know
+what the jungle is, little Gretchen? Fancy an untrodden wilderness where
+huge trees, matted together by trailing creepers of gigantic size, shut
+out the sun and make a green roof of inextricable shade--where the very
+grass grows taller than the tallest man--where apes chatter, and parrots
+scream, and deadly reptiles swarm; and where nature has run wild since
+ever the world began. Well, so we went--I on my horse; Ali at my bridle;
+two porters following with food and baggage; the precipice below; the
+forest above; the morning sun just risen over all. On a sudden, Ali held
+his breath and listened. His practised ear had caught a sound that mine
+could not detect. He seized my rein--forced my horse back upon his
+haunches--drew his hunting knife, and ran forward to reconnoitre. The turn
+of the road hid him for a moment from my sight. The next instant, I had
+sprung from the saddle, pistol in hand, and run after him to share the
+sport or the danger. My little Gretchen--he was gone."
+
+"Gone!" I echoed.
+
+Monsieur Maurice shook his head, and turned his face away.
+
+"I heard a crashing and crackling of the underwood," he said; "a faint moan
+dying on the sultry air. I saw a space of dusty road trampled over with
+prints of an enormous paw--a tiny trail of blood--a shred of silken
+fringe--and nothing more. He was gone."
+
+"What was it?" I asked presently, in an awestruck whisper.
+
+Monsieur Maurice, instead of answering my question, opened the sketch-book
+at a page full of little outlines of animals and birds, and laid his finger
+silently on the figure of a sleeping tiger.
+
+I shuddered.
+
+"_Pauvre petite_!" he said, shutting up the book, "it is too terrible
+a story. I ought not to have told it to you. Try to forget it."
+
+"Ah, no!" I said. "I shall never forget it, Monsieur Maurice. Poor Ali!
+Have you still the piece of fringe you found lying in the road?"
+
+He unlocked his desk and touched a secret spring; whereupon a small drawer
+flew out from a recess just under the lock.
+
+"Here it is," he said, taking out a piece of folded paper.
+
+It contained the thing he had described--a scrap of fringe composed of
+crimson and yellow twist, about two inches in length.
+
+"And those other things?" I said, peering into the secret drawer with a
+child's inquisitiveness. "Have they a history, too?"
+
+Monsieur Maurice hesitated--took them out--sighed--and said, somewhat
+reluctantly:--
+
+"You may see them, little Gretchen, if you will. Yes; they, too, have their
+history--but let it be. We have had enough sad stories for to-day."
+
+Those other things, as I had called them, were a withered rose in a little
+cardboard box, and a miniature of a lady in a purple morocco case.
+
+
+
+
+5
+
+
+It so happened that the Winter this year was unusually severe, not only at
+Bruehl and the parts about Cologne, but throughout all the Rhine country.
+Heavy snows fell at Christmas and lay unmelted for weeks upon the ground.
+Long forgotten sleighs were dragged out from their hiding places and put
+upon the road, not only for the transport of goods, but for the conveyance
+of passengers. The ponds in every direction and all the smaller streams
+were fast frozen. Great masses of dirty ice, too, came floating down the
+Rhine, and there were rumours of the great river being quite frozen over
+somewhere up in Switzerland, many hundred miles nearer its source.
+
+For myself, I enjoyed it all--the bitter cold, the short days, the rapid
+exercise, the blazing fires within, and the glittering snow without. I
+made snow-men and snow-castles to my heart's content. I learned to skate
+with my father on the frozen ponds. I was never weary of admiring the
+wintry landscape--the wide plains sheeted with silver; the purple
+mountains peeping through brown vistas of bare forest; the nearer trees
+standing out in featherlike tracery against the blue-green sky. To me it
+was all beautiful; even more beautiful than in the radiant summertime.
+
+Not so, however, was it with Monsieur Maurice. Racked by a severe cough
+and unable to leave the house for weeks together, he suffered intensely all
+the winter through. He suffered in body, and he suffered also in mind. I
+could see that he was very sad, and that there were times when the burden
+of life was almost more than he knew how to bear. He had brought with him,
+as I have shown, certain things wherewith to alleviate the weariness of
+captivity--books, music, drawing materials, and the like; but I soon
+discovered that the books were his only solace, and that he never took up
+pencil or guitar, unless for my amusement.
+
+He wrote a great deal, however, and so consumed many a weary hour of the
+twenty-four. He used a thick yellowish paper cut quite square, and wrote a
+very small, neat, upright hand, as clear and legible as print. Every time
+I found him at his desk and saw those closely covered pages multiplying
+under his hand, I used to wonder what he could have to write about, and
+for whose eyes that elaborate manuscript was intended.
+
+"How cold you are, Monsieur Maurice!" I used to say. "You are as cold as my
+snow-man in the court-yard! Won't you come out to-day for half-an-hour?"
+
+And his hands, in truth, were always ice-like, even though the hearth was
+heaped with blazing logs.
+
+"Not to-day, petite," he would reply. "It is too bleak for me--and besides,
+you see, I am writing."
+
+It was his invariable reply. He was always writing--or if not writing,
+reading; or brooding listlessly over the fire. And so he grew paler every
+day.
+
+"But the writing can wait, Monsieur Maurice," I urged one morning, "and you
+can't always be reading the same old books over and over again!"
+
+"Some books never grow old, little Gretchen," he replied. "This, for
+instance, is quite new; and yet it was written by one Horatius Flaccus
+somewhere about eighteen hundred years ago."
+
+"But the sun is really shining this morning, Monsieur Maurice!"
+
+"_Comment_!" he said, smiling. "Do you think to persuade me that
+yonder is the sun--the great, golden, glorious, bountiful sun? No, no, my
+child! Where I come from, we have the only true sun, and believe in no
+other!"
+
+"But you come from France, don't you, Monsieur Maurice?" I asked quickly.
+
+"From the South of France, petite--from the France of palms, and
+orange-groves, and olives; where the myrtle flowers at Christmas, and the
+roses bloom all the year round!"
+
+"But that must be where Paradise was, Monsieur Maurice!" I exclaimed.
+
+"Ay; it was Paradise once--for me," he said, with a sigh.
+
+Thus, after a moment's pause, he went on:--
+
+"The house in which I was born stands on a low cliff above the sea. It is
+an old, old house, with all kinds of quaint little turrets, and gable ends,
+and picturesque nooks and corners about it--such as one sees in most French
+Chateaux of that period; and it lies back somewhat, with a great rambling
+garden stretching out between it and the edge of the cliff. Three
+_berceaux_ of orange-trees lead straight away from the paved terrace
+on which the salon windows open, to another terrace overhanging the beach
+and the sea. The cliff is overgrown from top to bottom with shrubs and wild
+flowers, and a flight of steps cut in the living rock leads down to a
+little cove and a strip of yellow sand a hundred feet below. Ah, petite, I
+fancy I can see myself scrambling up and down those steps--a child younger
+than yourself; watching the sun go down into that purple sea; counting the
+sails in the offing at early morn; and building castles with that yellow
+sand, just as you build castles out yonder with the snow!"
+
+I clasped my hands and listened breathlessly.
+
+"Oh, Monsieur Maurice," I said, "I did not think there was such a beautiful
+place in the world! It sounds like a fairy tale."
+
+He smiled, sighed, and--being seated at his desk with the pen in his
+hand--took up a blank sheet of paper, and began sketching the Chateau and
+the cliff.
+
+"Tell me more about it, Monsieur Maurice," I pleaded coaxingly.
+
+"What more can I tell you, little one? See--this window in the turret to
+the left was my bed-room window, and here, just below, was my study, where
+as a boy I prepared my lessons for my tutor. That large Gothic window under
+the gable was the window of the library."
+
+"And is it all just like that still?" I asked.
+
+"I don't know," he said dreamily. "I suppose so."
+
+He was now putting in the rocks, and the rough steps leading down to the
+beach.
+
+"Had you any little brothers and sisters, Monsieur Maurice?" I asked next;
+for my interest and curiosity were unbounded.
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"None," he said, "none whatever. I was an only child; and I am the last of
+my name."
+
+I longed to question him further, but did not dare to do so.
+
+"You will go back there some day, Monsieur Maurice," I said hesitatingly,
+"when--when--"
+
+"When I am free, little Gretchen? Ah! who can tell? Besides the old place
+is no longer mine. They have taken it from me, and given it to a stranger."
+
+"Taken it from you, Monsieur Maurice!" I exclaimed indignantly.
+
+"Ay; but--who knows? We see strange changes. Where a king reigns to-day, an
+emperor, or a mob, may rule to-morrow."
+
+He spoke more to himself than to me, but I had some dim understanding,
+nevertheless, of what he meant.
+
+He had by this time drawn the cliff, and the strip of sand, and the waste
+of sea beyond; and now he was blotting in some boats and figures--figures
+of men wading through the surf and dragging the boats in shore; and other
+figures making for the steps. Last of all, close under the cliff, in
+advance of all the rest, he drew a tiny man standing alone--a tiny man
+scarce an eighth of an inch in height, struck out with three or four
+touches of the pen, and yet so full of character that one knew at a glance
+he was the leader of the others. I saw the outstretched arm in act of
+command--I recognised the well-known cocked hat--the general outline of a
+figure already familiar to me in a hundred prints, and I exclaimed, almost
+involuntarily:--
+
+"Bonaparte!"
+
+Monsieur Maurice started; shot a quick, half apprehensive glance at me;
+crumpled the drawing up in his hand, and flung it into the fire.
+
+"Oh, Monsieur Maurice!" I cried, "what have you done?"
+
+"It was a mere scrawl," he said impatiently.
+
+"No, no--it was beautiful. I would have given anything for it!"
+
+Monsieur Maurice laughed, and patted me on the cheek.
+
+"Nonsense, petite, nonsense!" he said. "It was only fit for the fire. I
+will make you a better drawing, if you remind me of it, to-morrow."
+
+When I told this to my father--and I used to prattle to him a good deal
+about Monsieur Maurice at supper, in those days--he tugged at his
+moustache, and shook his head, and looked very grave indeed.
+
+"The South of France!" he muttered, "the South of France! _Sacre coeur
+d'une bombe_! Why, the usurper, when he came from Elba, landed on that
+coast somewhere near Cannes!"
+
+"And went to Monsieur Maurice's house, father!" I cried, "and that is why
+the King of France has taken Monsieur Maurice's house away from him, and
+given it to a stranger! I am sure that's it! I see it all now!"
+
+But my father only shook his head again, and looked still more grave.
+
+"No, no, no," he said, "neither all--nor half--nor a quarter! There's more
+behind. I don't understand it--I don't understand it. Thunder and Mars! Why
+don't we hand him over to the French Government? That's what puzzles me."
+
+
+
+
+6
+
+
+The severity of the Winter had, I think, in some degree abated, and the
+snowdrops were already above ground, when again a mounted orderly rode in
+from Cologne, bringing another official letter for the Governor of Bruehl.
+
+Now my father's duties as Governor of Bruehl were very light--so light that
+he had not found it necessary to set apart any special room, or bureau,
+for the transaction of such business as might be connected therewith.
+When, therefore, letters had to be written or accounts made up, he wrote
+those letters and made up those accounts at a certain large writing-table,
+fitted with drawers, pigeon-holes, and a shelf for account-books, that
+stood in a corner of our sitting-room. Here also, if any persons had to be
+received, he received them. To this day, whenever I go back in imagination
+to those bygone times, I seem to see my father sitting at that
+writing-table nibbling the end of his pen, and one of the sergeants off
+guard perched on the edge of a chair close against the door, with his hat
+on his knees, waiting for orders.
+
+There being, as I have said, no especial room set apart for business
+purposes, the orderly was shown straight to our own room, and there
+delivered his despatch. It was about a quarter past one. We had dined, and
+my father had just brought out his pipe. The door leading into our little
+dining-room was, indeed, standing wide open, and the dishes were still
+upon the table.
+
+My father took the despatch, turned it over, broke the seals one by one
+(there were five of them, as before), and read it slowly through. As he
+read, a dark cloud seemed to settle on his brow.
+
+Then he looked up frowning--seemed about to speak--checked himself--and
+read the despatch over again.
+
+"From whose hands did you receive this?" he said abruptly.
+
+"From General Berndorf, Excellency," stammered the orderly, carrying his
+hand to his cap.
+
+"Is his Excellency the Baron von Bulow at Cologne?"
+
+"I have not heard so, Excellency."
+
+"Then this despatch came direct from Berlin, and has been forwarded from
+Cologne?"
+
+"Yes, Excellency."
+
+"How did it come from Berlin? By mail, or by special messenger?"
+
+"By special messenger, Excellency."
+
+Now General Berndorf was the officer in command of the garrison at Cologne,
+and the Baron von Bulow, as I well knew, was His Majesty's Minister of War
+at Berlin.
+
+Having received these answers, my father stood silent, as if revolving some
+difficult matter in his thoughts. Then, his mind being made up, he turned
+again to the orderly and said:--
+
+"Dine--feed your horse--and come back in an hour for the answer."
+
+Thankful to be dismissed, the man saluted and vanished. My father had a
+rapid, stern way of speaking to subordinates, that had in general the
+effect of making them glad to get out of his presence as quickly as
+possible.
+
+Then he read the despatch for the third time; turned to his writing-table;
+dropped into his chair; and prepared to write.
+
+But the task, apparently, was not easy. Watching him from the fireside
+corner where I was sitting on a low stool with an open story-book upon my
+lap, I saw him begin and tear up three separate attempts. The fourth,
+however, seemed to be more successful. Once written, he read it over,
+copied it carefully, called to me for a light, sealed his letter, and
+addressed it to "His Excellency the Baron von Bulow."
+
+This done, he enclosed it under cover to "General Berndorf, Cologne"; and
+had just sealed the outer cover when the orderly came back. My father gave
+it to him with scarcely a word, and two minutes after, we heard him
+clattering out of the courtyard at a hand-gallop.
+
+Then my father came back to his chair by the fireside, lit his pipe, and
+sat thinking silently. I looked up in his face, but felt, somehow, that I
+must not speak to him; for the cloud was still there, and his thoughts
+were far away. Presently his pipe went out; but he held it still,
+unconscious and absorbed. In all the months we had been living at Bruehl I
+had never seen him look so troubled.
+
+So he sat, and so he looked for a long time--for perhaps the greater part
+of an hour--during which I could think of nothing but the despatch, and
+Monsieur Maurice, and the Minister of War; for that it all had to do with
+Monsieur Maurice I never doubted for an instant.
+
+By just such another despatch, sealed and sent in precisely the same way,
+and from the same person, his coming hither had been heralded. How, then,
+should not this one concern him? And in what way would he be affected by
+it? Seeing that dark look in my father's face, I knew not what to think or
+what to fear.
+
+At length, after what had seemed to me an interval of interminable silence,
+the time-piece in the corner struck half-past three--the hour at which
+Monsieur Maurice was accustomed to give me the daily French lesson; so I
+got up quietly and stole towards the door, knowing that I was expected
+upstairs.
+
+"Where are you going, Gretchen?" said my father, sharply.
+
+It was the first time he had opened his lips since the orderly had
+clattered out of the courtyard.
+
+"I am going up to Monsieur Maurice," I replied.
+
+My father shook his head.
+
+"Not to-day, my child," he said, "not to-day. I have business with Monsieur
+Maurice this afternoon. Stay here till I come back."
+
+And with this he got up, took his hat and went quickly out of the room.
+
+So I waited and waited--as it seemed to me for hours. The waning day-light
+faded and became dusk; the dusk thickened into dark; the fire burned red
+and dull; and still I crouched there in the chimney-corner. I had no heart
+to read, work, or fan the logs into a blaze. I just watched the clock, and
+waited. When the room became so dark that I could see the hands no longer,
+I counted the strokes of the pendulum, and told the quarters off upon my
+fingers.
+
+When at length my father came back, it was past five o'clock, and dark as
+midnight.
+
+"Quick, quick, little Gretchen," he said, pulling off his hat and gloves,
+and unbuckling his sword. "A glass of kirsch, and more logs on the fire! I
+am cold through and through, and wet into the bargain."
+
+"But--but, father, have you not been with Monsieur Maurice?" I said,
+anxiously.
+
+"Yes, of course; but that was an hour ago, and more. I have been over to
+Kierberg since then, in the rain."
+
+He had left Monsieur Maurice an hour ago--a whole, wretched, dismal hour,
+during which I might have been so happy!
+
+"You told me to stay here till you came back," I said, scarce able to keep
+down the tears that started to my eyes.
+
+"Well, my little Maedchen?"
+
+"And--and I might have gone up to Monsieur Maurice, after all?"
+
+My father looked at me gravely--poured out a second glass of kirsch--drew
+his chair to the front of the fire, and said:--
+
+"I don't know about that, Gretchen."
+
+I had felt all along that there was something wrong, and now I was certain
+of it.
+
+"What do you mean, father?" I said, my heart beating so that I could
+scarcely speak. "What is the matter?"
+
+"May the devil make broth of my bones, if I know!" said my father, tugging
+savagely at his moustache.
+
+"But there is something!"
+
+He nodded, grimly.
+
+"Monsieur Maurice, it seems, is not to have so much liberty," he said,
+after a moment. "He is not to walk in the grounds oftener than twice a
+week; and then only with a soldier at his heels. And he is not to go beyond
+half a mile from the Chateau in any direction. And he is to hold no
+communication whatever with any person, or persons, either in-doors or
+out-of-doors, except such as are in direct charge of his rooms or his
+person. And--and heaven knows what other confounded regulations besides! I
+wish the Baron von Bulow had been in Spitzbergen before he put it into the
+King's head to send him here at all!"
+
+"But--but he is not to be locked up?" I faltered, almost in a whisper.
+
+"Well, no--not exactly that; but I am to post a sentry in the corridor,
+outside his door."
+
+"Then the King is afraid that Monsieur Maurice will run away!"
+
+"I don't know--I suppose so," groaned my father.
+
+I sat silent for a moment, and then burst into a flood of tears.
+
+"Poor Monsieur Maurice!" I cried. "He has coughed so all the Winter; and he
+was longing for the Spring! We were to have gathered primroses in the woods
+when the warm days came back again--and--and--and I suppose the King
+doesn't mean that I am not to speak to him any more!"
+
+My sobs choked me, and I could say no more.
+
+My father took me on his knee, and tried to comfort me.
+
+"Don't cry, my little Gretchen," he said tenderly; "don't cry! Tears can
+help neither the prisoner nor thee."
+
+"But I may go to him all the same, father?" I pleaded.
+
+"By my sword, I don't know," stammered my father. "If it were a breach of
+orders ... and yet for a baby like thee ... thou'rt no more than a mouse
+about the room, after all!"
+
+"I have read of a poor prisoner who broke his heart because the gaoler
+killed a spider he loved," said I, through my tears.
+
+My father's features relaxed into a smile.
+
+"But do you flatter yourself that Monsieur Maurice loves my little Maedchen
+as much as that poor prisoner loved his spider?" he said, taking me by the
+ear.
+
+"Of course he does--and a hundred thousand times better!" I exclaimed, not
+without a touch of indignation.
+
+My father laughed outright.
+
+"Thunder and Mars!" said he, "is the case so serious? Then Monsieur
+Maurice, I suppose, must be allowed sometimes to see his little pet
+spider."
+
+He took me up himself next morning to the prisoner's room, and then for the
+first time I found a sentry in occupation of the corridor. He grounded his
+musket and saluted as we passed.
+
+"I bring you a visitor, Monsieur Maurice," said my father.
+
+He was leaning over the fire in a moody attitude when we went in, with his
+arms on the chimney-piece, but turned at the first sound of my father's
+voice.
+
+"Colonel Bernhard," he said, with a look of glad surprise, "this is kind,
+I--I had scarcely dared to hope"....
+
+He said no more, but took me by both hands, and kissed me on the forehead.
+
+"I trust I'm not doing wrong," said my father gruffly. "I hope it's not a
+breach of orders."
+
+"I am sure it is not," replied Monsieur Maurice, still holding my hands.
+"Were your instructions twice as strict, they could not be supposed to
+apply to this little maiden."
+
+"They are strict enough, Monsieur Maurice," said my father, drily.
+
+A faint flush rose to the prisoner's cheek.
+
+"I know it," he said. "And they are as unnecessary as they are strict. I
+had given you my parole, Colonel Bernhard."
+
+My father pulled at his moustache, and looked uncomfortable.
+
+"I'm sure you would have kept it, Monsieur Maurice," he said.
+
+Monsieur Maurice bowed.
+
+"I wish it, however, to be distinctly understood," he said, "that I
+withdrew that parole from the moment when a sentry was stationed at my
+door."
+
+"Naturally--naturally."
+
+"And, for my papers"....
+
+"I wish to heaven they had said nothing about them!" interrupted my father,
+impatiently.
+
+"Thanks. 'Tis a petty tyranny; but it cannot be helped. Since, however,
+you are instructed to seize them, here they are. They contain neither
+political nor private matter--as you will see."
+
+"I shall see nothing of the kind, Monsieur Maurice," said my father. "I
+would not read a line of them for a marshal's baton. The King must make a
+gaoler of me, if it so pleases him; but not a spy. I shall seal up the
+papers and send them to Berlin."
+
+"And I shall never see my manuscript again!" said Monsieur Maurice, with a
+sigh. "Well--it was my first attempt at authorship--perhaps, my last--and
+there is an end to it!"
+
+My father ground some new and tremendous oath between his teeth.
+
+"I hate to take it, Monsieur Maurice," he said. "'Tis an odious office."
+
+"The office alone is yours, Colonel Bernhard," said the prisoner, with all
+a Frenchman's grace. "The odium rests with those who impose it on you."
+
+Hereupon they exchanged formal salutations; and my father, having warned me
+not to be late for our mid-day meal, put the papers in his pocket, and left
+me to take my daily French lesson.
+
+
+
+
+7
+
+
+The Winter lingered long, but the Spring came at last in a burst of
+sunshine. The grey mists were rent away, as if by magic. The cold hues
+vanished from the landscape. The earth became all freshness; the air all
+warmth; the sky all light. The hedgerows caught a tint of tender green.
+The crocuses came up in a single night. The woods which till now had
+remained bare and brown, flushed suddenly, as if the coming Summer were
+imprisoned in their glowing buds. The birds began to try their little
+voices here and there. Never once, in all the years that have gone by
+since then, have I seen so startling a transition. It was as if the Prince
+in the dear old fairy tale had just kissed the Sleeping Beauty, and all
+that enchanted world had sprung into life at the meeting of their lips.
+
+But the Spring, with its sudden beauty and brightness, seems to have no
+charm for Monsieur Maurice. He has permission to walk in the grounds twice
+a week--with a sentry at his heels; but of that permission he sternly
+refuses to take advantage. It was not wonderful that he preferred his
+fireside and his books, while the sleet, and snow, and bitter east winds
+lasted; but it seems too cruel that he should stay there now, cutting
+himself off from all the warmth and sweetness of the opening season. In
+vain I come to him with my hands full of dewy crocuses. In vain I hang
+about him, pleading for just a turn or two on the terrace where the
+sunshine falls hottest. He shakes his head, and is immoveable.
+
+"No, petite," he says. "Not to-day."
+
+"That is just what you said yesterday, Monsieur Maurice."
+
+"And it is just what I shall say to-morrow, Gretchen, if you ask me again."
+
+"But you won't stay in for ever, Monsieur Maurice!"
+
+"Nay--'for ever' is a big word, little Gretchen."
+
+"I don't believe you know how brightly the sun is shining!" I say
+coaxingly. "Just come to the window, and see."
+
+Unwillingly enough, he lets himself be dragged across the room--unwillingly
+he looks out upon the glittering slopes and budding avenues beyond.
+
+"Yes, yes--I see it," he replies with an impatient sigh; "but the shadow of
+that fellow in the corridor would hide the brightest sun that ever shone! I
+am not a galley-slave, that I should walk about with a garde-chiourme
+behind me."
+
+"What do you mean, Monsieur Maurice?" I ask, startled by his unusual
+vehemence.
+
+"I mean that I go free, petite--or not at all."
+
+"Then--then you will fall ill!" I falter, amid fast-gathering tears.
+
+"No, no--not I, Gretchen. What can have put that idea into your wise little
+head?"
+
+"It was papa, Monsieur Maurice ... he said you were"....
+
+Then, thinking suddenly how pale and wasted he had become of late, I
+hesitated.
+
+"He said I was--What?"
+
+"I--I don't like to tell!"
+
+"But if I insist on being told? Come, Gretchen, I must know what Colonel
+Bernhard said."
+
+"He said it was wrong to stay in like this week after week, and month after
+month. He--he said you were killing yourself by inches, Monsieur Maurice."
+
+Monsieur Maurice laughed a short bitter laugh.
+
+"Killing myself!" he repeated. "Well, I hope not; for weary as I am of it,
+I would sooner go on bearing the burden of life than do my enemies the
+favour of dying out of their way."
+
+The words, the look, the accent made me tremble. I never forgot them.
+
+How could I forget that Monsieur Maurice had enemies--enemies who longed
+for his death?
+
+So the first blush of early Spring went by; and the crocuses lived their
+little life and passed away, and the primroses came in their turn,
+yellowing every shady nook in the scented woods; and the larches put on
+their crimson tassels, and the laburnum its mantle of golden fringe, and
+the almond-tree burst into a leafless bloom of pink--and still Monsieur
+Maurice, adhering to his resolve, refused to stir one step beyond the
+threshold of his rooms.
+
+Sad and monotonous now to the last degree, his life dragged heavily on. He
+wrote no more. He read, or seemed to read, nearly the whole day through;
+but I often observed that his eyes ceased travelling along the lines, and
+that sometimes, for an hour and more together, he never turned a page.
+
+"My little Gretchen," he said to me one day, "you are too much in these
+close rooms with me, and too little in the open air and sunshine."
+
+"I had rather be here, Monsieur Maurice," I replied.
+
+"But it is not good for you. You are losing all your roses."
+
+"I don't think it is good for me to be out when you are always indoors," I
+said, simply. "I don't care to run about, and--and I don't enjoy it."
+
+He looked at me--opened his lips as if about to speak--then checked
+himself; walked to the window; and looked out silently.
+
+The next morning, as soon as I made my appearance, he said:--
+
+"The French lesson can wait awhile, petite. Shall we go out for a walk
+instead?"
+
+I clapped my hands for joy.
+
+"Oh, Monsieur Maurice!" I cried, "are you in earnest?"
+
+For in truth it seemed almost too good to be true. But Monsieur Maurice was
+in earnest, and we went--closely followed by the sentry.
+
+It was a beautiful, sunny April day. We went down the terraces and slopes;
+and in and out of the flower-beds, now gaudy with Spring flowers; and on to
+the great central point whence the three avenues diverged. Here we rested
+on a bench under a lime-tree, not far from the huge stone basin where the
+fountain played every Sunday throughout the Summer, and the sleepy
+water-lilies rocked to and fro in the sunshine.
+
+All was very quiet. A gardener went by now and then, with his wheelbarrow,
+or a gamekeeper followed by his dogs; a blackbird whistled low in the
+bushes; a cow-bell tinkled in the far distance; the wood-pigeons murmured
+softly in the plantations. Other passers-by, other sounds there were
+none--save when a noisy party of flaxen-haired, bare-footed children came
+whooping and racing along, but turned suddenly shy and silent at sight of
+Monsieur Maurice sitting under the lime-tree.
+
+The sentry, meanwhile, took up his position against the pedestal of a
+mutilated statue close by, and leaned upon his musket.
+
+Monsieur Maurice was at first very silent. Once or twice he closed his
+eyes, as if listening to the gentle sounds upon the air--once or twice he
+cast an uneasy glance in the direction of the sentry; but for a long time
+he scarcely moved or spoke.
+
+At length, as if following up a train of previous thought, he said
+suddenly:--
+
+"There is no liberty. There are comparative degrees of captivity, and
+comparative degrees of slavery; but of liberty, our social system knows
+nothing but the name. That sentry, if you asked him, would tell you that
+he is free. He pities me, perhaps, for being a prisoner. Yet he is even
+less free than myself. He is the slave of discipline. He must walk, hold up
+his head, wear his hair, dress, eat, and sleep according to the will of his
+superiors. If he disobeys, he is flogged. If he runs away, he is shot. At
+the present moment, he dares not lose sight of me for his life. I have
+done him no wrong; yet if I try to escape, it is his duty to shoot me.
+What is there in my captivity to equal the slavery of his condition? I
+cannot, it is true, go where I please; but, at least, I am not obliged to
+walk up and down a certain corridor, or in front of a certain sentry-box,
+for so many hours a day; and no power on earth could compel me to kill an
+innocent man who had never harmed me in his life."
+
+In an instant I had the whole scene before my eyes--Monsieur Maurice
+flying--pursued--shot down--brought back to die!
+
+"But--but you won't try to run away, Monsieur Maurice!" I cried, terrified
+at the picture my own fancy had drawn.
+
+He darted a scrutinising glance at me, and said, after a moment's
+hesitation:--
+
+"If I intended to do so, petite, I should hardly tell Colonel Bernhard's
+little daughter beforehand. Besides, why should I care now for liberty?
+What should I do with it? Have I not lost all that made it worth
+possessing--the Hero I worshipped, the Cause I honoured, the home I loved,
+the woman I adored? What better place for me than a prison ... unless the
+grave?"
+
+He roused himself. He had been thinking aloud, unconscious of my presence;
+but seeing my startled eyes fixed full upon his face, he smiled, and said
+with a sudden change of voice and manner:--
+
+"Go pluck me that namesake of yours over yonder--the big white Marguerite
+on the edge of the grass plat. Thanks, petite. Now I'll be sworn you guess
+what I am going to do with it! No? Well, I am going to question these
+little sibylline leaves, and make the Marguerite tell me whether I am
+destined to a prison all the days of my life. What! you never heard of the
+old flower sortilege? Why, Gretchen, I thought every little German maiden
+learned it in the cradle with her mother tongue!"
+
+"But how can the Marguerite answer you, Monsieur Maurice?" I exclaimed.
+
+"You shall see--but I must tell you first that the flower is not used to
+pronounce upon such serious matters. She is the oracle of village lads and
+lasses--not of grave prisoners like myself."
+
+And with this, half sadly, half playfully, he began stripping the leaves
+off one by one, and repeating over and over again:--
+
+"Tell me, sweet Marguerite, shall I be free?
+Soon--in time--perhaps--never! Soon--in time--perhaps--never!
+Soon--in time--perhaps--"
+
+It was the last leaf.
+
+"Pshaw!" he said, tossing away the stalk with an impatient laugh. "You
+could have given me as good an answer as that, little Gretchen. Let us go
+in."
+
+
+
+
+8
+
+
+It was about a week after this when I was startled out of my deepest
+midnight sleep by a rush of many feet, and a fierce and sudden knocking at
+my father's bed-room door--the door opposite my own.
+
+I sat up, trembling. A bright blaze gleamed along the threshold, and high
+above the clamour of tongues outside, I recognised my father's voice,
+quick, sharp, imperative. Then a door was opened and banged. Then came the
+rush of feet again--then silence.
+
+It was a strange, wild hubbub; and it had all come, and gone, and was over
+in less than a minute. But what was it?
+
+Seeing that fiery line along the threshold, I had thought for a moment
+that the Chateau was on fire; but the light vanished with those who
+brought it, and all was darkness again.
+
+"Bertha!" I cried tremulously. "Bertha!"
+
+Now Bertha was my Rhenish hand-maiden, and she slept in a closet opening
+off my room; but Bertha was as deaf to my voice as one of the Seven
+Sleepers.
+
+Suddenly a shrill trumpet-call rang out in the courtyard.
+
+I sprang out of bed, flew to Bertha, and shook her with all my strength
+till she woke.
+
+"Bertha! Bertha!" I cried. "Wake up--strike a light--dress me quickly! I
+must know what is the matter!"
+
+In vain Bertha yawns, rubs her eyes, protests that I have had a bad dream,
+and that nothing is the matter. Get up she must; dress herself and me in
+the twinkling of an eye; and go upon whatsoever dance I choose to lead her.
+
+My father is gone, and his door stands wide open. We turn to the stairs,
+and a cold wind rushes up in our faces. We go down, and find the side-door
+that leads to the courtyard unfastened and ajar. There is not a soul in
+the courtyard. There is not the faintest glimmer of light from the
+guard-house windows. The sentry who walks perpetually to and fro in front
+of the gate is not at his post; and the gate is wide open!
+
+Even Bertha sees by this time that something strange is afoot, and stares
+at me with a face of foolish wonder.
+
+"Ach, Herr Gott!" she cries, clapping her hands together, "what's that?"
+
+It is very faint, very distant; but quite audible in the dead silence of
+the night. In an instant I know what it is that has happened!
+
+"It is the report of a musket!" I exclaim, seizing her by the hand, and
+dragging her across the courtyard. "Quick! quick! Oh, Monsieur Maurice!
+Monsieur Maurice!"
+
+The night is very dark. There is no moon, and the stars, glimmering through
+a veil of haze, give little light. But we run as recklessly as if it were
+bright day, past the barracks, past the parade-ground, and round to the
+great gates on the garden side of the Chateau. These, however, are closed,
+and the sentry, standing watchful and motionless, with his musket made
+ready, refuses to let us through.
+
+In vain I remind him that I am privileged, and that none of these gates are
+ever closed against me. The man is inexorable.
+
+"No, Fraeulein Gretchen," he says, "I dare not. This is not a fit hour for
+you to be out. Pray go home."
+
+"But Gaspar, good Gaspar," I plead, clinging to the gate with both hands,
+"tell me if he has escaped! Hark; oh, hark! there it is again!"
+
+And another, and another shot rings through the still night-air.
+
+The sentry almost stamps with impatience.
+
+"Go home, dear little Fraeulein! Go home at once," he says. "There is danger
+abroad to-night. I cannot leave my post, or I would take you home
+myself.... Holy Saint Christopher! they are coming this way! Go--go--what
+would his Excellency the Governor say, if he found you here?"
+
+I see quick gleams of wandering lights among the trees--I hear a distant
+shout! Then, seized by a sudden panic, I turn and fly, with Bertha at my
+heels--fly back the way I came, never pausing till I find myself once more
+at the courtyard gate. Here--breathless, trembling, panting--I stop to
+listen and look back. All is silent;--as silent as before.
+
+"But, liebe Gretchen," says Bertha, as breathless as myself, "what is to do
+to-night?"
+
+There is a coming murmur on the air. There is a red glow reflected on the
+barrack windows ... they are coming! I turn suddenly cold and giddy.
+
+"Hush, Bertha!" I whisper, "we must not stay here. Papa will be angry! Let
+us go up to the corridor window."
+
+So we go back into the house, upstairs the way we came, and station
+ourselves at the corridor window, which looks into the courtyard.
+
+Slowly the glow broadens; slowly the sound resolves itself into an
+irregular tramp of many feet and a murmur of many voices.
+
+Then suddenly the courtyard is filled with soldiers and lighted torches,
+and ... and I clasp my hands over my eyes in an agony of terror, lest the
+picture I drew a few days since should be coming true.
+
+"What do you see, Bertha?" I falter. "Do you--do you see Monsieur Maurice?"
+
+"No, but I see Gottlieb Kolb, and Corporal Fritz, and ... yes--here is
+Monsieur Maurice between two soldiers, and his Excellency the Colonel
+walking beside them!"
+
+I looked up, and my heart gave a leap of gladness. He was not dead--he was
+not even wounded! He had been pursued and captured; but at least he was
+safe!
+
+They stopped just under the corridor window. The torchlight fell full upon
+their faces. Monsieur Maurice looked pale and composed; perhaps just a
+shade haughtier than usual. My father had his drawn sword in his hand.
+
+"Corporal Fritz," he said, turning to a soldier near him, "conduct the
+prisoner to his room, and post two sentries at his door, and one under his
+windows." Then turning to Monsieur Maurice, "I thank God, Sir," he said
+gravely, "that you have not paid for your imprudence with your life. I
+have the honour to wish you good night."
+
+Monsieur Maurice ceremoniously took off his hat.
+
+"Good night, Colonel Bernhard," he said. "I beg you, however, to remember
+that I had withdrawn my parole."
+
+"I remember it, Monsieur Maurice," replied my father, drawing himself up,
+and returning the salutation.
+
+Monsieur Maurice then crossed the courtyard with his guards, and entered
+the Chateau by the door leading to the state apartments. My father, after
+standing for a moment as if lost in thought, turned away and went over to
+the guard-house.
+
+The soldiers then dispersed, or gathered into little knots of twos and
+threes, and talked in low voices of the events of the night.
+
+"Accomplices!" said one, just close against the window where Bertha and I
+still lingered. "Liebe Mutter! I'll take my oath he had one! Why, it was I
+who first caught sight of the prisoner gliding through the trees--I saw
+him as plainly as I see you now--I covered him with my musket--I wouldn't
+have given a copper pfennig for his life, when paff! at the very moment I
+pulled the trigger, out steps a fellow from behind my shoulder, knocks up
+my musket, and disappears like a flash of lightning--Heaven only knows
+where, for I never laid eyes on him again!"
+
+"What was he like?" asks another soldier, incredulously.
+
+"Like? How should I know? It was as dark as pitch. I just caught a glimpse
+of him in the flash of the powder--an ugly, brown-looking devil he seemed!
+but he was gone in a breath, and I had no time to look for him."
+
+The soldiers round about burst out laughing.
+
+"Hold, Karl!" says one, slapping him boisterously on the shoulder. "You are
+a good shot, but you missed aim for once. No need to conjure up a brown
+devil to account for that, old comrade!"
+
+Karl, finding his story discredited, retorted angrily; and a quarrel was
+fast brewing, when the sergeant on guard came up and ordered the men to
+their several quarters.
+
+"Holy Saint Bridget!" said Bertha, shivering, "how cold it is! and there, I
+declare, is the Convent clock striking half after one! Liebe Gretchen, you
+really must go to bed--what would your father say?"
+
+So we both crept back to bed. Bertha was asleep again almost before she had
+laid her head upon her pillow; but I lay awake till dawn of day.
+
+
+
+
+9
+
+
+It was in my father's disposition to be both strict and indulgent--that is
+to say, as a father he was all tenderness, and as a soldier all discipline.
+His men both loved and feared him; but I, who never had cause to fear him
+in my life, loved him with all my heart, and never thought of him except as
+the fondest of parents. Chiefly, perhaps, for my sake, he had up to this
+time been extremely indulgent in all that regarded Monsieur Maurice. Now,
+however, he conceived that it was his duty to be indulgent no longer. He
+was responsible for the person of Monsieur Maurice, and Monsieur Maurice
+had attempted to escape; from this moment, therefore, Monsieur Maurice must
+be guarded, hedged in, isolated, like any other prisoner under similar
+circumstances--at all events until further instructions should arrive from
+Berlin. So my father, as it was his duty to do, wrote straightway to the
+Minister of War, doubled all previous precautions, and forbade me to go
+near the prisoner's rooms on any pretext whatever.
+
+I neither coaxed nor pleaded. I had an instinctive feeling that the thing
+was inevitable, and that I had nothing to do but to suffer and obey. And I
+did suffer bitterly. Day after day, I hung about the terraces under his
+windows, watching for the glimpse that hardly ever came. Night after night
+I sobbed till I was tired, and fell asleep with his name upon my lips. It
+was a childish grief; but not therefore the less poignant. It was a
+childish love, too; necessarily transient and irrational, as such childish
+passions are; but not therefore the less real. The dull web of my later
+life has not been without its one golden thread of romance (alas! how long
+since tarnished!), but not even that dream has left a deeper scar upon my
+memory than did the hero-worship of my first youth. It was something more
+than love; it was adoration. To be with him was measureless content--to be
+banished from him was something akin to despair.
+
+So Monsieur Maurice and his little Gretchen were parted. No more happy
+French lessons--no more walks--no more stories told by the firelight in the
+gloaming! All was over; all was blank. But for how long? Surely not for
+ever!
+
+"Perhaps the king will think fit to hand him over to some other gaoler,"
+said my father one day; "and, by Heaven! I'd thank him more heartily for
+that boon than for the order of the Red Eagle!"
+
+My heart sank at the thought. Many and many a time had I pictured to myself
+what it would be if he were set at liberty, and with what mingled joy and
+grief I should bid him good-bye; but it had never occurred to me as a
+possibility that he might be transferred to another prison-house.
+
+Thus a week--ten days--a fortnight went by, and still there came nothing
+from Berlin. I began to hope at last that nothing would come, and that
+matters would settle down in time, and be as they were before. But of such
+vain hopes I was speedily and roughly disabused; and in this wise.
+
+It was a gloomy afternoon--one of those dun-coloured afternoons that seem
+all the more dismal for coming in the midst of Spring. I had been out of
+the way somewhere (wandering to and fro, I believe, like a dreary little
+ghost, among the grim galleries of the state apartments), and was going
+home at dusk to be in readiness for my father, who always came in after
+the afternoon parade. Coming up the passage out of which our rooms opened,
+I heard voices--my father's and another. Concluding that he had Corporal
+Fritz with him, I went in unhesitatingly. To my surprise, I found the lamp
+lighted, and a strange officer sitting face to face with my father at the
+table.
+
+The stranger was in the act of speaking; my father listening, with a grave,
+intent look upon his face.
+
+..."and if he had been shot, Colonel Bernhard, the State would have been
+well rid of a troublesome burden."
+
+My father saw me in the doorway, put up his hand with a warning gesture,
+and said hastily:--
+
+"You here, Gretchen! Go into the dining-room, my child, till I send for
+you."
+
+The dining-room, as I have said elsewhere, opened out of the sitting-room
+which also served for my father's bureau. I had therefore to cross the
+room, and so caught a full view of the stranger's face. He was a sallow,
+dark man, with iron grey hair cut close to his head, a hard mouth, a cold
+grey eye, and a deep furrow between his brows. He wore a blue military
+frock buttoned to the chin; and a plain cocked hat lay beside his gloves
+upon the table.
+
+I went into the dining-room and closed the door. It was half-door,
+half-window, the upper panels being made of ground glass, so as to let in a
+borrowed light; for the little room was at all times somewhat of the
+darkest. Such as it was, this borrowed light was now all I had; for the
+dining-room fire had gone out hours ago, and though there were candles on
+the chimney-piece, I had no means of lighting them. So I groped my way to
+the first chair I could find, and waited my father's summons.
+
+"And if he had been shot, Colonel Bernhard, the State would have been well
+rid of a troublesome burden."
+
+It was all I had heard; but it was enough to set me thinking. "If he had
+been shot".... If who had been shot? My fears answered that question but
+too readily. Who, then, was this new-comer? Was he from Berlin? And if from
+Berlin, what orders did he bring? A vague terror of coming evil fell upon
+me. I trembled--I held my breath. I tried to hear what was being said, but
+in vain. The voices in the next room went on in a low incessant murmur;
+but of that murmur I could not distinguish a word.
+
+Then the sounds swelled a little, as if the speakers were becoming more
+earnest. And then, forgetting all I had ever heard or been taught about the
+heinousness of eavesdropping, I got up very softly and crept close against
+the door.
+
+"That is to say, you dislike the responsibility, Colonel Bernhard."
+
+These were the first words I heard.
+
+"I dislike the office," said my father, bluntly. "I'd almost as soon be a
+hangman as a gaoler."
+
+The stranger here said something that my ear failed to catch. Then my
+father spoke again.
+
+"To tell you the truth, Herr Count, I only wish it would please His
+Excellency to transfer him elsewhere."
+
+The stranger paused a moment, and then said in a low but very distinct
+voice:--
+
+"Supposing, Colonel Bernhard, that you were yourself transferred--shall we
+say to Koenigsberg? Would you prefer it to Bruehl?"
+
+"Koenigsberg!" exclaimed my father in a tone of profound amazement.
+
+"The appointment, I believe, is worth six hundred thalers a year more than
+Bruehl," said the stranger.
+
+"But it has never been offered to me," said my father, in his simple
+straightforward way. "Of course I should prefer it--but what of that? And
+what has Koenigsberg to do with Monsieur Maurice?"
+
+"Ah, true--Monsieur Maurice! Well, to return then to Monsieur Maurice--how
+would it be, do you think, somewhat to relax the present vigilance?"
+
+"To relax it?"
+
+"To leave a door or a window unguarded now and then, for instance. In
+short, to--to provide certain facilities ... you understand?"
+
+"Facilities?" exclaimed my father, incredulously. "Facilities for escape?"
+
+"Well--yes; if you think fit to put it so plainly," replied the other, with
+a short little cough, followed by a snap like the opening and shutting of
+a snuff-box.
+
+"But--but in the name of the Eleven Thousand Virgins, why wait for the man
+to run away? Why not give him his liberty, and get rid of him pleasantly?"
+
+"Because--ahem!--because, you see, Colonel Bernhard, it would not then be
+possible to pursue him," said the stranger, drily.
+
+"To pursue him?"
+
+"Just so--and to shoot him."
+
+I heard the sound of a chair pushed violently back; and my father's shadow,
+vague and menacing, started up with him, and fell across the door.
+
+"What?" he shouted, in a terrible voice. "Are you taking me at my word? Are
+you offering me the hangman's office?"
+
+Then, with a sudden change of tone and manner, he added:--
+
+"But--I must have misunderstood you. It is impossible."
+
+"We have both altogether misunderstood each other, Colonel Bernhard," said
+the stranger, stiffly. "I had supposed you would be willing to serve the
+State, even at the cost of some violence to your prejudices."
+
+"Great God! then you did mean it!" said my father, with a strange horror in
+his voice.
+
+"I meant--to serve the King. I also hoped to advance the interests of
+Colonel Bernhard," replied the other, haughtily.
+
+"My sword is the King's--my blood is the King's, to the last drop," said my
+father in great agitation; "but my honour--my honour is my own!"
+
+"Enough, Colonel Bernhard; enough. We will drop the subject."
+
+And again I heard the little dry cough, and the snap of the snuff-box.
+
+A long silence followed, my father walking to and fro with a quick, heavy
+step; the stranger, apparently, still sitting in his place at the table.
+
+"Should you, on reflection, see cause to take a different view of your
+duty, Colonel Bernhard," he said at last, "you have but to say so
+before...."
+
+"I can never take a different view of it, Herr Count!" interrupted my
+father, vehemently.
+
+"--before I take my departure in the morning," continued the other, with
+studied composure; "in the meanwhile, be pleased to remember that you are
+answerable for the person of your prisoner. Either he must not escape, or
+he must not escape with life."
+
+My father's shadow bent its head.
+
+"And now, with your permission, I will go to my room."
+
+My father rang the bell, and when Bertha came, bade her light the Count von
+Rettel to his chamber.
+
+Hearing them leave the room, I opened the door very softly and
+hesitatingly, scarce knowing whether to come out or not. I saw my father
+standing with his back towards me and his face still turned in the
+direction by which they had gone out. I saw him throw up his clenched
+hands, and shake them wildly above his head.
+
+"And it was for this!--for this!" he said fiercely. "A bribe! God of
+Heaven! He offered me Koenigsberg as a bribe! Oh, that I should have lived
+to be treated as an assassin!"
+
+His voice broke into hoarse sobs. He dropped into a chair--he covered his
+face with his hands.
+
+He had forgotten that I was in the next room, and now I dared not remind
+him of my presence. His emotion terrified me. It was the first time I had
+seen a man shed tears; and this alone, let the man be whom he might, would
+have seemed terrible to me at any time. How much more terrible when those
+tears were tears of outraged honour, and when the man who shed them was my
+father!
+
+I trembled from head to foot. I had an instinctive feeling that I ought
+not to look upon his agony. I shrank back--closed the door--held my
+breath, and waited.
+
+Presently the sound of sobbing ceased. Then he sighed heavily twice or
+thrice--got up abruptly--threw a couple of logs on the fire, and left the
+room. The next moment I heard him unlock the door under the stairs, and go
+into the cellar. I seized the opportunity to escape, and stole up to my
+own room as rapidly and noiselessly as my trembling knees would carry me.
+
+I had my supper with Bertha that evening, and the Count ate at my father's
+table; but I afterwards learned that, though the Governor of Bruehl himself
+waited ceremoniously upon his guest and served him with his best, he
+neither broke bread nor drank wine with him.
+
+I saw that unwelcome guest no more. I heard his voice under the window, and
+the clatter of his horse's hoofs as he rode away in the early morning; but
+that was long enough before Bertha came to call me.
+
+
+
+
+10
+
+
+Weeks went by. Spring warmed, and ripened, and blossomed into Summer.
+Gardens and terraces were ablaze once more with many-coloured flowers;
+fountains played and sparkled in the sunshine; and travellers bound for
+Cologne or Bonn put up again at Bruehl in the midst of the day's journey,
+to bait their horses and see the Chateau on their way.
+
+For in these years just following the Peace of Paris, the Continent was
+overrun by travellers, two thirds of whom were English. The diligence--the
+great, top-heavy, lumbering diligence of fifty years ago--used then to
+come lurching and thundering down the main street five times a week
+throughout the Summer season; and as many as three and four travelling
+carriages a day would pass through in fine weather. The landlord of the
+"Lion d'Or" kept fifty horses in his stables in those days, and drove a
+thriving trade.
+
+So the Summer came, and brought the stir of outer life into the precincts
+of our sleepy Chateau; but brought no better change in the fortunes of
+Monsieur Maurice. Ever since that fatal night, the terms of his
+imprisonment had been more rigorous than ever. Till then, he might, if he
+would, walk twice a week in the grounds with a soldier at his heels; but
+now he was placed in strict confinement in his own two rooms, with one
+sentry always pacing the corridor outside his door, and another under his
+windows. And across each of those windows might now be seen a couple of
+bright new iron bars, thick as a man's wrist, forged and fixed there by
+the village blacksmith.
+
+I have no words to tell how the sight of those bars revolted me. If instead
+of being a little helpless girl, I had been a man like my father, and a
+servant of the State, I think they would have made a rebel of me.
+
+Worse, however, than iron bars, locked doors, and guarded corridors, was
+Hartmann--Herr Ludwig Hartmann, as he was styled in the despatch that
+announced his coming--a pale, slight, silent man, with colourless grey eyes
+and white eyelashes, who came direct from Berlin about a month later, to
+act as Monsieur Maurice's "personal attendant." Stealthy, watchful, secret,
+civil, he established himself in a room adjoining the prisoner's
+apartment, and was as much at home in the course of a couple of hours as
+if he had been settled there from the first.
+
+He brought with him a paper of instructions, and, having on his arrival
+submitted these instructions to my father, he at once took up a certain
+routine of duties that never varied. He brushed Monsieur Maurice's clothes,
+waited upon him at table, attended him in his bed-room, was always within
+hearing, always on the alert, and haunted the prisoner like his shadow. Not
+even a housemaid could go in to sweep but he was present. Now the man's
+perpetual presence was intolerable to Monsieur Maurice. He had borne all
+else with patience, but this last tyranny was more than he could endure
+without murmuring. He appealed to my father; but my father, though
+Governor of Bruehl, was powerless to help him. Hartmann had presented his
+instructions as a minister presents his credentials, and those
+instructions emanated from Berlin. So the new-comer, valet, gaoler, spy as
+he was, became an established fact, and was detested throughout the
+Chateau--by no one more heartily than myself.
+
+I still, however, saw Monsieur Maurice now and then. My father often took
+me with him in his rounds, and always when he visited his prisoner.
+Sometimes, too, he would leave me for an hour with my friend, and call for
+me again on his way back; so that we were not wholly parted even now. But
+Hartmann took care never to leave us alone. Before my father's footsteps
+were out of hearing, he would be in the room; silent, unobtrusive,
+perfectly civil, but watchful as a lynx. We could not talk before him
+freely. Nothing was as it used to be. It was better than total
+banishments; it was better than never hearing his voice; but the constraint
+was hard to bear, and the pain of these meetings was almost greater than
+the pleasure.
+
+And now, as I approach that part of my narrative which possesses the
+deepest interest for myself, I hesitate--hesitate and draw back before the
+great mystery in which it is involved. I ask myself what interpretation
+the world will put upon facts for which I can vouch; upon events which I
+myself witnessed? I cannot prove those events. They happened over fifty
+years ago; but they are as vividly present to my memory as if they had
+taken place yesterday. I can only relate them in their order, knowing them
+to be true, and leaving each reader to judge of them according to his
+convictions.
+
+It was about the middle of the second week in June. Hartmann had been about
+six weeks at Bruehl, and all was going on in the usual dull routine, when
+that routine was suddenly broken by the arrival of three mounted
+dragoons--an officer and two privates--whose errand, whatever it might be,
+had the effect of throwing the whole establishment into sudden and unwonted
+confusion.
+
+I was out in the grounds when they arrived, and came back at midday to find
+no dinner on the table, no cook in the kitchen; but a full-dress parade
+going on in the courtyard, and all the interior of the Chateau in a state
+of wild commotion. Here were peasants bringing in wood, gardeners laden
+with vegetables and flowers, women running to and fro with baskets full of
+linen, and all to the accompaniment of such a hammering, bell-ringing, and
+clattering of tongues as I had never heard before.
+
+I stood bewildered, not knowing what to do, or where to go.
+
+"What is the matter? What has happened? What are you doing?" I asked, first
+of one and then of another; but they were all too busy to answer.
+
+"Ach, lieber Gott!" said one, "I've no time for talking!"
+
+"Don't ask me, little Fraeulein," said another. "I have eight windows to
+clean up yonder, and only one pair of hands to do them with!"
+
+"If you want to know what is to do," said a third impatiently, "you had
+better come and see."
+
+The head-gardener's son came by with two pots of magnificent geraniums, one
+under each arm.
+
+"Where are you going with those flowers, Wilhelm?" I asked, running after
+him.
+
+"They are for the state salon, Fraeulein Gretchen," he replied, and hurried
+on.
+
+For the state salon! I ran round to the side of the grand entrance. There
+were soldiers putting up banners in the hall; others helping to carry
+furniture up stairs; carpenters with ladders; women with brooms and
+brushes; and Corporal Fritz bustling hither and thither, giving orders, and
+seeing after everything.
+
+"But Corporal Fritz!" I exclaimed, "what are all these people about?"
+
+"We are preparing the state apartments, dear little Fraeulein," replied
+Corporal Fritz, rubbing his hands with an air of great enjoyment.
+
+"But why? For whom?"
+
+"For whom? Why, for the King, to be sure"; and Corporal Fritz clapped his
+hand to the side of his hat like a loyal soldier. "Don't you know, dear
+little Fraeulein, that His Majesty sleeps here to-night, on his way to
+Ehrenbreitstein?"
+
+This was news indeed! I ran up stairs--I was all excitement--I got in
+everybody's way--I tormented everybody with questions. I saw the table
+being laid in the grand salon where the King was to sup, and the bedstead
+being put up in the little salon where he was to sleep, and the ante-room
+being prepared for his officers. All was being made ready as rapidly, and
+decorated as tastefully, as the scanty resources of the Chateau would
+permit. I recognised much of the furniture from the attics above, and
+this, faded though it was, being helped out with flowers, flags, and
+greenery, made the great echoing rooms look gay and habitable.
+
+By and by, my father came round to see how the work was going on, and
+finding me in the midst of it, took me by the hand and led me away.
+
+"You are not wanted here, my little Gretchen," he said; "and, indeed, all
+the world is so busy to-day that I scarcely know what to do with thee."
+
+"Take me to Monsieur Maurice!" I said, coaxingly.
+
+"Ay--so I will," said my father; "with him, at all events, you will be out
+of the way."
+
+So he took me round to Monsieur Maurice's rooms, and told me as we went
+along that the King had only given him six hours' notice, and that in
+order to furnish his Majesty's bed and his Majesty's supper, he had bought
+up all the poultry and eggs, and borrowed well-nigh all the silver, glass,
+and linen in the town.
+
+By this time we were almost at Monsieur Maurice's door. A sudden thought
+flashed upon me. I pulled him back, out of the sentry's hearing.
+
+"Oh, father!" I cried eagerly, "will you not ask the King to let Monsieur
+Maurice free?"
+
+My father shook his head.
+
+"Nay," he said, "I must not do that, my little Maedchen. And look you--not a
+word that the King is coming here to-night. It would only make the prisoner
+restless, and could avail nothing. Promise me to be silent."
+
+So I promised, and he left me at the door without going in.
+
+I spent all the afternoon with Monsieur Maurice. He divided his luncheon
+with me; he gave me a French lesson, he told me stories. I had not had
+such a happy day for months. Hartmann, it is true, was constantly in and
+out of the room, but even Hartmann was less in the way than usual. He
+seemed absent and preoccupied, and was therefore not so watchful as at
+other times. In the meanwhile I could still hear, though faintly, the
+noises in the rooms below; but all became quiet about five o'clock in the
+evening, and Monsieur Maurice, who had been told they were only cleaning
+the state apartments, asked no questions.
+
+Meanwhile the afternoon waned, and the sun bent westward, and still no one
+came to fetch me away. My father knew where I was; Bertha was probably too
+busy to think about me; and I was only too glad to stay as long as
+Monsieur Maurice was willing to keep me. By and by, about half-past six
+o'clock, the sky became overclouded, and we heard a low muttering of very
+distant thunder. At seven, it rained heavily.
+
+Now it was Monsieur Maurice's custom to dine late, and ours to dine early;
+but then, as his luncheon hour corresponded with our dinner-hour, and his
+dinner fell only a little later than our supper, it came to much the same
+thing, and did not therefore seem strange. So it happened that just as the
+storm came up, Hartmann began to prepare the table. Then, in the midst of
+the rain and the wind, my quick ear caught a sound of drums and bugles,
+and I knew the King was come. Monsieur Maurice evidently heard nothing;
+but I could see by Hartmann's face (he was laying the cloth and making a
+noise with the glasses) that he knew all, and was listening.
+
+After this I heard no more. The wind raved; the rain pattered; the gloom
+thickened; and at half-past seven, when the soup was brought to table, it
+was so dark that Monsieur Maurice called for lights. He would not, however,
+allow the curtains to be drawn. He liked, he said, to sit and watch the
+storm.
+
+A cover was laid for me at his right hand; but my supper hour was past, and
+what with the storm without, the heaviness in the air, and the excitement
+of the day, I was no longer hungry. So, having eaten a little soup and
+sipped some wine from Monsieur Maurice's glass, I went and curled myself up
+in an easy chair close to the window, and watched the driving mists as they
+swept across the park, and the tossing of the treetops against the sky.
+
+It was a wild evening, lit by lurid gleams and openings in the clouds; and
+it seemed all the wilder by contrast with the quiet room and the dim
+radiance of the wax lights on the table. There was a soft halo round each
+little flame, and a dreamy haze in the atmosphere, from the midst of which
+Monsieur Maurice's pale face stood out against the shadowy background, like
+a head in a Dutch painting.
+
+We were both very silent; partly because Hartmann was waiting, and partly,
+perhaps, because we had been talking all the afternoon. Monsieur Maurice
+ate slowly, and there were long intervals between the courses, during which
+he leaned his elbow on the table and his chin on his hand, looking across
+towards the window and the storm. Hartmann, meanwhile, seemed to be always
+listening. I could see that he was holding his breath, and trying to catch
+every faint echo from below.
+
+It was a long, long dinner, and probably seemed all the longer to me
+because I did not partake of it. As for Monsieur Maurice, he tasted some
+dishes, and sent more away untouched.
+
+"I think it is getting lighter," he said by and by. "Does it still rain?"
+
+"Yes," I replied; "it is coming down steadily."
+
+"We must open the window presently," he said. "I love the fresh smell that
+comes with the rain."
+
+Here the conversation dropped again, and Hartmann, having been gone for a
+moment, came back with a dish of stewed fruit.
+
+Then, for the first time, I observed there was a second attendant in the
+room.
+
+"Will you not have some raspberries, Gretchen?" said Monsieur Maurice.
+
+I shook my head. I was too much startled by the sight of the strange man,
+to answer him in words.
+
+Who could he be? Where had he come from? He was standing behind Monsieur
+Maurice, far back in the gloom, near the door--a small, dark man,
+apparently; but so placed with regard to the table and the lights, that it
+was impossible to make out his features with distinctness.
+
+Monsieur Maurice just tasted the raspberries and sent his plate away.
+
+"How heavy the air of the room is!" he said. "Give me some Seltzer-water,
+and open that farthest window."
+
+Hartmann reversed the order. He opened the window first; and as he did so,
+I saw that his hand shook upon the hasp, and that his face was deadly
+pale.
+
+He then turned to the sideboard and opened a stone bottle that had been
+standing there since the beginning of dinner. He filled a tumbler with the
+sparkling water.
+
+At the moment when he placed this tumbler on the salver--at the moment when
+he handed it to Monsieur Maurice--the other man glided quickly forward. I
+saw his bright eyes and his brown face in the full light. I saw _two
+hands_ put out to take the glass; a brown hand and a white--his hand,
+and the hand of Monsieur Maurice. I saw--yes, before Heaven! as I live to
+remember and record it, I saw the brown hand grasp the tumbler and dash it
+to the ground!
+
+"Pshaw!" said Monsieur Maurice, brushing the Seltzer-water impatiently from
+his sleeve, "how came you to upset it?"
+
+But Hartmann, livid and trembling, stood speechless, staring at the door.
+
+"It was the other man!" said I, starting up with a strange kind of
+breathless terror upon me. "He threw it on the ground--I saw him do
+it--where is he gone? what has become of him?"
+
+"The other man! What other man?" said Monsieur Maurice. "My little
+Gretchen, you are dreaming."
+
+"No, no, I am not dreaming. There was another man--a brown man! Hartmann
+saw him--"
+
+"A brown man!" echoed Monsieur Maurice. Then catching sight of Hartmann's
+face, he pushed his chair back, looked at him steadily and sternly; and
+said, with a sudden change of voice and manner:--
+
+"There is something wrong here. What does it mean? You saw a man--both of
+you? What was he like?"
+
+"A brown man," I said again. "A brown man with bright eyes."
+
+"And you?" said Monsieur Maurice, turning to Hartmann.
+
+"I--I thought I saw something," stammered the attendant, with a violent
+effort at composure. "But it was nothing."
+
+Monsieur Maurice looked at him as if he would look him through; got up,
+still looking at him; went to the sideboard, and, still looking at him,
+filled another tumbler with Seltzer-water.
+
+"Drink that," he said, very quietly.
+
+The man's lips moved, but he uttered never a word.
+
+"Drink that," said Monsieur Maurice for the second time, and more sternly.
+
+But Hartmann, instead of drinking it, instead of answering, threw up his
+hands in a wild way, and rushed out of the room.
+
+Monsieur Maurice stood for a moment absorbed in thought; then wrote some
+words upon a card, and gave the card into my hand.
+
+"For thy father, little one," he said. "Give it to no one but himself, and
+give it to him the first moment thou seest him. There's matter of life and
+death in it."
+
+
+
+
+11
+
+
+How the King supped, how the King slept, and what he thought of his Chateau
+of Augustenburg which he now saw for the first time, are matters respecting
+which I have no information. I only know that I had fallen asleep on
+Monsieur Maurice's sofa when Bertha came at ten o'clock that night to fetch
+me home; that I was very drowsy and unwilling to be moved; and that I woke
+in the morning dreaming of a brown man with bright eyes, and calling upon
+Monsieur Maurice to make haste and come before he should again have time to
+vanish away.
+
+It was a lovely morning; bright and fresh, and sunshiny after the night's
+storm. My first thought was of Monsieur Maurice, and the card he had
+entrusted to my keeping. I had it still. My father was not at home when I
+came back last night. He was in attendance on the King, and did not return
+till long after I was asleep in my own little bed. This morning, early as I
+awoke, he was gone again, on the same duty.
+
+I jumped up. I bade Bertha dress me quickly. "I must go to papa," I said.
+"I have a card for him from Monsieur Maurice."
+
+"Nay, liebe Gretchen," said Bertha, "he is with the King."
+
+But I told myself that I would find him, and see him, and give the card
+into his own hands, though a dozen kings were in the way. I could not read
+what was written on the card. I could read print easily and rapidly, but
+handwriting not at all. I knew, however, that it was urgent. Had he not
+said that it was matter of life or death?
+
+I hurried to dress; I hurried to get out. I could not rest, I could not eat
+till I had given up the card. As good fortune would have it, the first
+person I met was Corporal Fritz. I asked him where I could find my father.
+
+"Dear little Fraeulein," said Corporal Fritz, "you cannot see him just yet.
+He is with the King."
+
+"But I must see him," I said. "I must--indeed, I must. Go to him for
+me--please go to him, dear, good Corporal Fritz, and tell him his little
+Gretchen must speak to him, if only for one moment!"
+
+"But dear little Fraeulein"....
+
+"Is the King at breakfast?" I interrupted.
+
+"At breakfast! Eh, then, our gallant King hath a soldier's habits. His
+Majesty breakfasted at six this morning, and is gone out betimes to visit
+his hunting-lodge at Falkenlust."
+
+"And my father?"
+
+"His Excellency the Governor is in attendance upon the King."
+
+"Then I will go to Falkenlust."
+
+Corporal Fritz shook his head; shrugged his shoulders; took a pinch of
+snuff.
+
+"'Tis a long road to Falkenlust, dear little Fraeulein," said he; "and His
+Excellency, methinks, would be better pleased"....
+
+I stayed to hear no more, but ran off at full speed down the terraces,
+straight to the Round Point and the fountain, and along the great avenue
+that led to Falkenlust. I ran till I was out of breath--then rested--then
+ran again, on, and on, and on, till the road lengthened and narrowed behind
+me, and the Chateau of Augustenburg looked almost as small in the distance
+at one end as the Falkenlust Lodge at the other.
+
+Then all at once, far, far away, I saw a moving group of figures. They grew
+larger and more distinct--they were coming towards me! I had run till I
+could run no farther. Panting and breathless, I leaned against a tree, and
+waited.
+
+And now, as they drew nearer, I saw that the group consisted of some eight
+or ten officers, two of whom were walking somewhat in advance of the rest.
+One of the two wore a plain cocked hat and an undress military frock; the
+other was in full uniform, and wore two or three glittering medals on his
+breast. This other was my father. I scarcely looked at the first. I never
+even asked myself whether he was, or was not the King. I had no eyes, no
+thought for any but my father.
+
+So I stood, eager and breathless, on the verge of the gravel. So they every
+moment drew nearer the spot where I was standing. As they came close, my
+father's eyes met mine. He shook his head, and frowned. He thought I had
+come there to stare at the King.
+
+Nothing daunted, I took two steps forward. I had Monsieur Maurice's card in
+my hand. I held it out to him.
+
+"Read it," I said. "It is from Monsieur Maurice."
+
+But he crushed it in his hand without looking at it, and waved me back
+authoritatively.
+
+"At once!" I cried; "at once!"
+
+The gentleman in the blue frock stopped and smiled.
+
+"Is this your little girl, Colonel Bernhard?" he asked.
+
+My father replied by a low bow.
+
+The strange gentleman beckoned me to draw nearer.
+
+"A golden-haired little Maedchen!" said he. "Come hither, pretty one, and
+tell me your name."
+
+I knew then that he was the King. I trembled and blushed.
+
+"My name is Gretchen," I said.
+
+"And you have brought a letter for your father?"
+
+"It is not a letter," I said. "It is a card. It is from Monsieur Maurice."
+
+"And who is Monsieur Maurice?" asked the King.
+
+"So please your Majesty," said my father, answering the question for me,
+"Monsieur Maurice is the prisoner I hold in charge."
+
+The smile went out of the King's face.
+
+"The prisoner!" he repeated, inquiringly. "What prisoner?"
+
+"The state-prisoner whom I received, according to your Majesty's command,
+eight months ago--Monsieur Maurice."
+
+"Monsieur Maurice!" echoed the King.
+
+"I know the gentleman by no other name, please your Majesty," said my
+father.
+
+The King looked grave.
+
+"I never heard of Monsieur Maurice," he said, "I know of no state-prisoner
+here."
+
+"The prisoner was consigned to my keeping by your Majesty's Minister of
+War," said my father.
+
+"By von Bulow?"
+
+My father bowed.
+
+"Upon whose authority?"
+
+"In your Majesty's name."
+
+The King frowned.
+
+"What papers did you receive with your prisoner, Colonel Bernhard?" he
+said.
+
+"None, your Majesty--except a despatch from your Majesty's Minister of War,
+delivered a day or two before the prisoner arrived at Bruehl."
+
+"How did he come? and where did he come from?"
+
+"He came in a close carriage, your Majesty, attended by two officers who
+left Bruehl the same night and whose names and persons are unknown to me. I
+do not know where he came from. I only know that they had taken the last
+relay of horses from Cologne."
+
+"You were not told his offence?"
+
+"I was told nothing, your Majesty, except that Monsieur Maurice was an
+enemy to the state, and--"
+
+"And what?"
+
+My father's hand went up to his moustache, as it was wont to do in
+perplexity.
+
+"I--so please your Majesty, I think there is some foul mystery in it at
+bottom," he said, bluntly. "There hath been that thing proposed to me that
+I am ashamed to repeat. I do beseech your Majesty that some
+investigation...."
+
+His eyes happened for a moment to rest upon the card. He stammered--changed
+colour--stopped short in his sentence--took off his hat--laid the card upon
+it--and so handed it to the King.
+
+His Majesty Frederick William the Third of Prussia was, like most of the
+princes of his house, tanned, soldierly, and fresh-complexioned; but florid
+as he was, there came a darker flush into his face as he read what Monsieur
+Maurice had written.
+
+"An attempt upon his life!" he exclaimed. "The thing is not possible."
+
+My father was silent. The king looked at him keenly.
+
+"_Is_ it possible, Colonel Bernhard?" he said.
+
+"I think it may be possible, your Majesty," replied my father in a low
+voice.
+
+The King frowned.
+
+"Colonel Bernhard," he said, "how can that be? You are responsible for the
+safety as well as the person of any prisoner committed to your charge."
+
+"So long as the prisoner is left wholly to my charge I can answer for his
+safety with my head, so please your Majesty," said my father, reddening;
+"but not when he is provided with a special attendant over whom I have no
+control."
+
+"What special attendant? Where did he come from? Who sent him?"
+
+"I believe he came from Berlin, your Majesty. He was sent by your Majesty's
+Minister of War. His name is Hartmann."
+
+The King stood thinking. His officers had fallen out of earshot, and were
+talking together in a little knot some four yards behind. I was still
+standing on the spot to which the King had called me. He looked round, and
+saw my anxious face.
+
+"What, still there, little one?" he said. "You have not heard what we were
+saying?"
+
+"Yes," I said; "I heard it."
+
+"The child may have heard, your Majesty," interposed my father, hastily;
+"but she did not understand. Run home, Gretchen. Make thy obeisance to his
+Majesty, and run home quickly."
+
+But I had understood every word. I knew that Monsieur Maurice's life had
+been in danger. I knew the King was all-powerful. Terrified at my own
+boldness--terrified at the thought of my father's
+anger--trembling--sobbing--scarcely conscious of what I was saying,
+I fell at the King's feet, and cried:--
+
+"Save him--save him, Sire! Don't let them kill poor Monsieur Maurice!
+Forgive him--please forgive him, and let him go home again!"
+
+My father seized me by the hand, forced me to rise, and dragged me back
+more roughly than he had ever touched me in his life.
+
+"I beseech your Majesty's pardon for the child," he said. "She knows no
+better."
+
+But the King smiled, and called me back to him.
+
+"Nay, nay," he said, laying his hand upon my head, "do not be vexed with
+her. So, little one, you and Monsieur Maurice are friends?"
+
+I nodded; for I was still crying, and too frightened at what I had done to
+be able to speak.
+
+"And you love him dearly?"
+
+"Better than anyone--in the world--except Papa," I faltered, through my
+tears.
+
+"Not better than your brothers and sisters?"
+
+"I have no brothers and sisters," I replied, my courage coming back again
+by degrees. "I have no one but Papa, and Monsieur Maurice, and Aunt Martha
+Baur--and I love Monsieur Maurice a thousand, thousand times more than Aunt
+Martha Baur!"
+
+There came a merry sparkle into the King's eyes, and my father turned his
+face away to conceal a smile.
+
+"But if Monsieur Maurice was free, he would go away and you would never see
+him again. What would you do then?"
+
+"I--should be very sorry," I faltered; "but"....
+
+"But what?"
+
+"I would rather he went away, and was happy."
+
+The King stooped down and kissed me on the brow.
+
+"That, my little Maedchen, is the answer of a true friend," he said, gravely
+and kindly. "If your Monsieur Maurice deserves to go free, he shall have
+his liberty. You have our royal word for it. Colonel Bernhard, we will
+investigate this matter without the delay of an hour."
+
+Saying thus, he turned from me to my father, and, followed by his officers,
+passed on in the direction of the Chateau.
+
+I stood there speechless, his gracious words yet ringing in my ears. He had
+left me no time for thanks, if even I could have framed any. But he had
+kissed me--he had promised me that Monsieur Maurice should go free, "if he
+deserved it!" and who better than I knew how impossible it was that he
+should not deserve it? It was all true. It was not a dream. I had the
+King's royal word for it.
+
+I had the King's royal word for it--and yet I could hardly believe it!
+
+
+
+
+12
+
+
+I have told my story up to this point from my own personal experience,
+relating in their order, quite simply and faithfully, the things I myself
+heard and saw. I can do this, however, no longer. Respecting those matters
+that happened when I was not present, I can only repeat what was told me by
+others; and as regards certain foregone events in the life of Monsieur
+Maurice, I have but vague rumour; and still more vague conjecture upon
+which to base my conclusions.
+
+The King had said that Monsieur Maurice's case should be investigated
+without the delay of an hour, and, so far as it could then and there be
+done, it was investigated immediately on his return to the Chateau. He
+first examined Baron von Bulow's original despatch, and all my father's
+minutes of matters relating to the prisoner, including a statement written
+immediately after the departure of a stranger calling himself the Count von
+Rettel, and detailing from memory, very circumstantially and fully, the
+substance of a certain conversation to which I had been accidentally a
+witness, and which I have myself recorded elsewhere.
+
+The King, on reading this statement, was observed to be greatly disturbed.
+He questioned my father minutely as to the age, complexion, height, and
+general appearance of the said Count von Rettel, and with his own hand
+noted down my father's replies on the back of my father's manuscript. This
+done, His Majesty desired that the man Hartmann should be brought before
+him.
+
+But Hartmann was nowhere to be found. His room was empty. His bed had not
+been slept in. He had disappeared, in short, as completely as if he had
+never dwelt within the precincts of the Chateau.
+
+It was found, on more particular inquiry being made, that he had not been
+seen since the previous evening. Overwhelmed with terror, and perhaps with
+remorse, he had rushed out of Monsieur Maurice's presence, never to
+return. It was supposed that he had then immediately gathered together all
+that belonged to him, and had taken advantage of the bustle and confusion
+consequent on the King's arrival, to leave Bruehl in one of the return
+carriages or fourgons that had brought the royal party from Cologne. I am
+not aware that anything more was ever seen or heard of him; or that any
+active search for him was judicially instituted either then, or at any
+other time. But he might easily have been pursued, and taken, and dealt
+with according to the law, without our being any the wiser at Bruehl.
+
+Hartmann being gone, the King then sent for the prisoner, and Monsieur
+Maurice, for the first time in many weeks, left his own rooms, and was
+brought round to the state-apartments. Seeing so many persons about; seeing
+also the flowers and flags upon the walls, he seemed surprised, but said
+nothing. Being brought into the royal presence, however, he appeared at
+once to recognise the King. He bowed profoundly, and a faint flush was seen
+to come into his face. He then cast a rapid glance round the room, as if to
+see who else was present; bowed also (but less profoundly) to my father,
+who was standing behind the King's chair; and waited to be spoken to.
+
+"Vous etes Francais, Monsieur?" said the King, addressing him in French, of
+which language my father understood only a few words.
+
+"Je suis Francais, votre Majeste," replied Monsieur Maurice.
+
+"Comment!" said the King, still in French. "Our person, then, is not
+unknown to you?"
+
+"I have repeatedly enjoyed the honour of being in your Majesty's presence,"
+replied Monsieur Maurice, respectfully.
+
+Being then asked where, and on what occasion, my father understood him to
+say that he had seen his Majesty at Erfurt during the great meeting of the
+Sovereigns under Napoleon the First, and again at the Congress of Vienna;
+and also that he had, at that time, occupied some important office, such,
+perhaps, as military secretary, about the person of the Emperor. The King
+then proceeded to question him on matters relating to his imprisonment and
+his previous history, to all of which Monsieur Maurice seemed to reply at
+some length, and with great earnestness of manner. Of these explanations,
+however, my father's imperfect knowledge of the language enabled him to
+catch only a few words here and there.
+
+Presently, in the midst of a somewhat lengthy statement, Monsieur Maurice
+pronounced the name of Baron von Bulow. Hereupon the King checked him by a
+gesture; desired all present to withdraw; caused the door to be closed; and
+carried on the rest of the examination in private. By and by, after the
+lapse of nearly three quarters of an hour, my father was recalled, and an
+officer in waiting was despatched to Monsieur Maurice's rooms to fetch what
+was left of the bottle of Seltzer-water, which Monsieur Maurice had himself
+locked up in the sideboard the night before.
+
+The King then asked if there was any scientific man in Bruehl capable of
+analysing the liquid; to which my father replied that no such person could
+be found nearer than Cologne or Bonn. Hereupon a dog was brought in from
+the stables, and, having been made to swallow about a quarter of a pint of
+the Seltzer-water, was presently taken with convulsions, and died on the
+spot.
+
+The King then desired that the body of the dog, and all that yet remained
+in the bottle should be despatched to the Professor of Chemistry at Bonn,
+for immediate examination.
+
+This done, he turned to Monsieur Maurice, and said in German, so that all
+present might hear and understand:--
+
+"Monsieur, so far as we have the present means of judging, you have
+suffered an illegal and unjust imprisonment, and a base attempt has been
+made upon your life. You appear to be the victim of a foul conspiracy, and
+it will be our first care to sift that conspiracy to the bottom. In the
+meanwhile, we restore your liberty, requiring only your _parole
+d'honneur_, as a gentleman, a soldier, and a Frenchman, to present
+yourself at Berlin, if summoned, at any time required within the next three
+months."
+
+Monsieur Maurice bowed, laid his hand upon his heart, and said:--
+
+"I promise it, your Majesty, on my word of honour as a gentleman, a
+soldier, and a Frenchman."
+
+"You are probably in need of present funds," the King then said; "and if
+so, our Secretary shall make you out an order on the Treasury for five
+hundred thalers."
+
+"Believing myself to be beggared of all I once possessed, I gratefully
+accept your Majesty's bounty," replied Monsieur Maurice.
+
+The King then held out his hand for Monsieur Maurice to kiss, which he did
+on bended knee, and so went out from the royal presence, a free man.
+
+Half an hour later, he and I were strolling hand in hand under the trees.
+His step was slow, and the hand that held mine had grown sadly thin and
+transparent.
+
+"Let us sit here awhile, and rest," he said, as we came to the bench by the
+fountain.
+
+I reminded him that we had sat and rested in the same spot the very last
+time we walked together.
+
+"Ay," he replied, with a sigh. "I was stronger then."
+
+"You will get strong again, now that you are free," I said.
+
+"Perhaps--if liberty, like most earthly blessings, has not come too late."
+
+"Too late for what?"
+
+"For enjoyment--for use--for everything. My friends believe me dead; my
+place in the life of the world is filled up; my very name is by this time
+forgotten. I am as one shipwrecked on the great ocean, and cast upon a
+foreign shore."
+
+"Are you--are you going away soon?" I said, almost in a whisper.
+
+"Yes," he said, "I go to-morrow."
+
+"And you will--never--come back again?" I faltered.
+
+"Heaven forbid!" he said quickly. Then, remembering how that answer would
+grieve me, he added; "but I will never forget thee, petite. Never, while I
+live."
+
+"But--but if I never see you any more"....
+
+Monsieur Maurice drew my head to his shoulder, and kissed my wet eyes.
+
+"Tush! that cannot, shall not be," he said, caressingly. "Some day,
+perhaps, I may win back that old home by the sea of which I have so often
+told thee, little one; and then thou shalt come and visit me."
+
+"Shall I?" I said, wistfully. "Shall I indeed?"
+
+And he said--"Ay, indeed."
+
+But I felt, somehow, that it would never come to pass.
+
+After this, we got up and walked on again, very silently; he thinking of
+the new life before him; I, of the sorrow of parting. By-and-by, a sudden
+recollection flashed upon me.
+
+"But, Monsieur Maurice," I exclaimed, "who was the brown man that stood
+behind your chair last night, and what has become of him?"
+
+Monsieur Maurice turned his face away.
+
+"My dear little Gretchen," he said, hastily, "there was no brown man. He
+existed in your imagination only."
+
+"But I saw him!"
+
+"You fancied you saw him. The room was dark. You were half asleep in the
+easy chair--half asleep, and half dreaming."
+
+"But Hartmann saw him!"
+
+"A wicked man fears his own shadow," said Monsieur Maurice, gravely.
+"Hartmann saw nothing but the reflection of his crime upon the mirror of
+his conscience."
+
+I was silenced, but not convinced. Some minutes later, having thought it
+over, I returned to the charge.
+
+"But, Monsieur Maurice," I said, "it is not the first time he has been
+here."
+
+"Who? The King?"
+
+"No--the brown man."
+
+Monsieur Maurice frowned.
+
+"Nay, nay," he said, impatiently, "prithee, no more of the brown man. 'Tis
+a folly, and I dislike it."
+
+"But he was here in the park the night you tried to run away," I said,
+persistently. "He saved your life by knocking up the musket that was
+pointed at your head!"
+
+Pale as he always was, Monsieur Maurice turned paler still at these words
+of mine. His very lips whitened.
+
+"What is that you say?" he asked, stopping short and laying his hand upon
+my shoulder.
+
+And then I repeated, word for word, all that I had heard the soldiers
+saying that night under the corridor window. When I had done, he took off
+his hat and stood for a moment as if in prayer, silent and bare-headed.
+
+"If it be so," he said presently, "if such fidelity can indeed survive the
+grave--then not once, but thrice.... Who knows? Who can tell?"
+
+He was speaking to himself. I heard the words, and I remembered them; but I
+did not understand them till long after.
+
+
+The King left Bruehl that same afternoon _en route_ for
+Ehrenbreitstein, and Monsieur Maurice went away the next morning in a
+post-chaise and pair, bound for Paris. He gave me, for a farewell gift, his
+precious microscope and all his boxes of slides, and he parted from me with
+many kisses; but there was a smile on his face as he got into the carriage,
+and something of triumph in the very wave of his hand as he drove away.
+
+Alas! how could it be otherwise? A prisoner freed, an exile returning to
+his country, how should he not be glad to go, even though one little heart
+should be left to ache or break in the land of the stranger?
+
+I never saw him again; never--never--never. He wrote now and then to my
+father, but only for a time; perhaps as many as six letters during three or
+four years--and then we heard from him no more. To these letters he gave us
+no opportunity of replying, for they contained no address; and although we
+had reason to believe that he was a man of family and title, he never
+signed himself by any other name than that by which we had known him.
+
+We did hear, however, (I forget now through what channel) of the sudden
+disgrace and banishment of His Majesty's Minister of War, the Baron von
+Bulow. Respecting the causes of his fall there were many vague and
+contradictory rumours. He had starved to death a prisoner of war and forced
+his widow into a marriage with himself. He had sold State secrets to the
+French. He had been over to Elba in disguise, and had there held
+treasonable intercourse with the exiled Emperor, before his return to
+France in 1815. He had attempted to murder, or caused to be murdered, the
+witnesses of his treachery. He had forged the King's signature. He had
+tampered with the King's servants. He had been guilty, in short, of every
+crime, social and political, that could be laid to the charge of a fallen
+favourite.
+
+Knowing what we knew, it was not difficult to disentangle a thread of truth
+here and there, or to detect under the most extravagant of these fictions,
+a substratum of fact. Among other significant circumstances, my father,
+chancing one day to see a portrait of the late minister in a shop-window at
+Cologne, discovered that his former visitor, the Count von Rettel, and the
+Baron von Bulow were one and the same person. He then understood why the
+King had questioned him so minutely with regard to this man's appearance,
+and shuddered to think how deadly that enmity must have been which could
+bring him in person upon so infamous an errand.
+
+And here all ended. The guilty and the innocent vanished alike from the
+scene, and we at least, in our remote home on the Rhenish border, heard of
+them no more.
+
+Monsieur Maurice never knew that I had been in any way instrumental in
+bringing his case before the King. He took his freedom as the fulfillment
+of a right, and dreamed not that his little Gretchen had pleaded for him.
+But that he should know it, mattered not at all. He had his liberty, and
+was not that enough?
+
+Enough for me, for I loved him. Ay, child as I was, I loved him; loved him
+deeply and passionately--to my cost--to my loss--to my sorrow. An old, old
+wound; but I shall carry the scar to my grave!
+
+And the brown man?
+
+Hush! a strange feeling of awe and wonder creeps upon me to this day, when
+I remember those bright eyes glowing through the dusk, and the swift hand
+that seized the poisoned draught and dashed it on the ground. What of that
+faithful Ali, who went forward to meet the danger alone, and was snatched
+away to die horribly in the jungle? I can but repeat his master's words. I
+can but ask myself "Does such fidelity indeed survive the grave? Who knows?
+Who can tell?"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Monsieur Maurice, by Amelia B. Edwards
+
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