The half hour sped and half an hour beyond it—why do I linger upon such details? From sheer cowardly reluctance, I believe, to describe those moments of my great despair.
And then a cockscomb of a servant fellow, in gorgeous livery and ribboned cue, stepped forth from the gates, sniffing a bunch of stinking herbs, and stood and surveyed me for a second from head to foot, grinning all over his insolent visage, till I wonder how I kept my riding-whip from searing it across.
“Well, sir?” said I sternly.
He felt, maybe, the note of master in my voice, for he cringed a little, and, more civilly than his countenance suggested, requested to know if I was the gentleman with whom Captain the Freiherr von Krappitz had recently been conversing. Upon my reply he gingerly held up a filthy rag of paper, in which I recognised, with a failing of the heart such as I cannot set forth in words, my own letter once more. And in sight of my discomfiture, resuming his native impudence, he proceeded in loud tones:
“My master bids me inform you that he can no longer be the means of annoying a young lady whom he respects so much as Mademoiselle Pahlen. She has requested that your letter may be returned to you again, and declares that she knows no such person as yourself, and is quite at a loss why she should be made the object of this strange persecution.”
The rogue sang out the words as one repeating a lesson in which he has been well drilled.
As I stood staring at him, all other feelings swallowed up in the overwhelming tide of my disappointment, I saw him, as in a dream, toss the much-travelled note in the mud between us, turn on his heel, exchange a grin with the nearest sentry, jerk his thumb over his shoulder in my direction, tap his forehead significantly, and finally swagger out of sight behind the little wicket.
And still I stood immovable, unable to formulate a single thought in my paralysed brain, the whole world before me a dull blank, yet knowing that, when I should begin to feel again, it would be hell indeed.
A shout from the sentry suddenly aroused me.