"Yes, the women crossed themselves when they saw me!" He laughed again. "The men jeered—the children ran screaming from my path.... That day when I saw you first, mamzell, I was tired and angry. A stone had been flung at me and caught me on the ankle, and I went lame. The day was very hot; I had been a long way; I could go no further, and I was hungry. I sat outside the forest-house, waiting to ask for a crust. I had heard you laughing and calling behind the garden hedges, and I was afraid of frightening you.... Aye, it was weary work, going through the world making the children cry! I knew that, when the sun sank, somebody would put you to bed. 'And then I shall knock,' I said to myself.... But, all at once, little Mamzell Sidonia, as I sat, oh, so glum, so black-hearted, so forlorn a wretch, I heard you call me. You had popped your head out of the garden gate, and were peeping at me, gurgling with laughter. 'I see you,' you said." His voice broke. He twisted himself and lay out-stretched, supporting himself on one arm, his face turned towards the ground, idly picking at the small herbs. "Your little head was all over golden curls ... some one I had known had hair of that colour ... and you looked at me, it seemed, with eyes I had known also. You were not in the least frightened; you thought, I believe, that I was a very good game. But to me, to me, Mamzell Sidonia—you see I was even madder then than I am now—you were a something sent to me from one I loved once."
Sidonia held her breath. She did not dare speak. This was not the Geiger-Onkel she had known. His very voice was changed utterly. She could not see his face as he lay, but instinctively she turned her eyes away from the prone figure.
"If we had had a child," said the fiddler, in a sort of whisper, "she would have looked like you ... she would have looked like you!"
It seemed to Sidonia that the lean figure was shaken, and she had a terror lest he should be weeping. But, all at once, with those singular, quick movements of his, so startling to those who did not know him, he was sitting once more cross-legged; and the eyes that fixed her were dry and wildly brilliant.
"Now, if only the Burgrave was here, and could have heard me," he cried, mocking, "would he not be justified in calling for those whips and dogs with which I have been threatened? The Baroness Sidonia von Wellenshausen compared with the brat of a crazy beggarman!"
Sidonia exclaimed indignantly: "Whips and dogs! He would never dare!"
"Well, hardly just now," said the other, whimsically. "His Excellency will dare very little for some time to come. Hey, what a game have the Fates played with him; aye, and with us all, mamzell, even with me, who thought to guide them! But they played my game in the end," he added, edging a little closer to her. "Well, little sleeping beauty with the golden hair, did I not do well to bring you to your forest bower this gallant young prince? You had to be awakened, Princesse Sidonie au bois dormant; for the end of the spell was near at hand. And if you had been awakened by the wrong knight? Heaven preserve us, what a catastrophe!"
"Oh, Geiger-Onkel, I am not a child any more to be talked to in fairy tales. I am going to be married to-morrow!" Then, with a sudden change of tone, the girl cried inconsequently, "It is true, you did bring him to me. Perhaps you're a kind of wizard uncle, after all!"
"Why—and have you ever doubted it?" said he, menacing her with his finger. "Have I not watched you all these years? When you wanted me for anything—for the white doe that was lost, or for Liserl in the village, when she had no news of her lad, or when Aunt Hedwige kept you too close—had not you but to wish for me?"
"It is true," she pondered, and looked at him doubtfully, unable to make out if he were in jest or in earnest.