CHAPTER XV.
The death of the young man excited universal sympathy. He was mourned not only by his relatives and friends, but by all his dependants, the peasants on his estates, nay, even by strangers to whom he had only been pointed out as he passed by. And on the day when he was buried, with all the honours befitting the noble name which he had borne so worthily, there was in the whole country round no little child whose hands were not folded in prayer for him, no poor labouring woman who had ever met him in the road, and whose existence his kindly smile had helped to lighten, who did not wear a black apron or a black kerchief, in loving memory of him. No one, perhaps, could have told what he or she had expected of the young Count, but all felt that with him some hope had died, some sunshine had been buried.
Fritz Malzin, the only witness of the insult offered to the Conte, died the night before the duel; nothing therefore was known save what the Conte chose to tell; the versions of the reasons that had induced Oswald's rash acceptance of the Conte's challenge were many and widely differing, but not one of them bore the least relation to the truth.
As Oswald had foreseen, his relatives overwhelmed Georges with reproaches for the part he had borne in a duel between his cousin and a parvenu. But the letter to Truyn which Oswald left behind, exculpated Georges completely.
People declared, to be sure, that Georges ought to have restrained the folly of his hot-tempered cousin, but the unaffected grief evinced by the man, hitherto regarded as careless and indifferent, disarmed every one. His devotion to his dead cousin revealed itself in his every action, in the exquisite tenderness of his treatment of Oswald's wretched mother, and his management of the estates thus suddenly fallen to him, absolutely in accordance as it was with all Oswald's wishes, soon won him the warmest sympathy from all.
Of course the Conte was denounced; Oswald's associates in his own rank regarded the man as no better than a murderer. But he coldly defied public opinion, and held his head higher than ever; he seemed even to pride himself upon his deed, and several newspapers defended him.