The Serapion Brethren, Vol. II

by E. T. A. Hoffmann

To Captain Moritz this stranger Count was not only uncomfortable and uncanny, but utterly repugnant, in all the depths of his being. In his words he found--all the more that he gave them out with a most irritating, self-satisfied smile--something indescribably contemptuous and insulting; and he replied, in an irritated tone, and with flashing eyes, that he feared his nursery tales might interfere with the pleasantness--the sense of enjoyment--which the Count had introduced into the circle, so that he would prefer to say no more.

The Count seemed scarcely to notice what Moritz said. Playing with the gold snuff-box which he had taken in his hand, he asked Madame von G---- if the "lively" young lady was French. He meant Marguerite, who kept dancing about the room, trilling. The Colonel went up to her and asked her, half aloud, if she had gone out of her senses. Marguerite slunk, abashed, to the tea-table, and sat down there quite quiet. The Count now took up the conversation, and spoke, in an entertaining manner, of this and the other events which had recently happened. Dagobert was scarcely able to put in a word. Moritz stood, red as fire, with gleaming eyes, as if waiting eagerly for the signal of attack. Angelica appeared to be completely immersed in the piece of feminine "work" at which she had set herself to labour. She did not raise an eyelid. The company separated in complete discomfort.

"You are a fortunate man," Dagobert cried, when he and Moritz were alone together. "Doubt no longer that Angelica is much attached to you. Clearly did I read in her eyes to-day that she is devotedly in love with you. But the devil is always busy, and sows his poisonous tares amongst the blooming wheat. Marguerite is on fire with an insane passion. She loves you with all the wild, passionate pain which only a fiery temperament is capable of feeling. The senseless way in which she behaved tonight was the effect of an irresistible outbreak of the wildest jealousy. When Angelica let fall the handkerchief--when you took it up and gave it to her--when you kissed her hand--the furies of hell possessed that poor Marguerite. And you are to blame for that. You used formerly to take the greatest pains to pay every kind of attention to that very beautiful French girl. I know well enough that it was only Angelica whom you had in your mind. Still, those falsely directed lightnings struck, and set on fire. And now the misfortune is there; and I do not know how the matter will end without terrible tumult and trouble."

"Marguerite be hanged (if I may use such an expression)," said Moritz. "If Angelica loves me--and ah! I can't believe, quite, that she does--I am the happiest and the most blest of men, and care nothing about all the Marguerites in the world, nor their foolishnesses neither. But another fear has come into my mind. This uncanny, stranger Count, who came in amongst us like some dark, gloomy mystery--doesn't he seem to place himself, somehow, most hostilely between her and me? I feel, I scarce know how, as if some reminiscence came forward out of the dark background--I could almost describe it as a dream--which reminiscence, or dream, whichever it may be, brings this Count to my memory under terrible circumstances of some sort. I feel as though, wherever he makes his appearance, some awful misfortune must come flashing out of the depths of the darkness as a result of his conjurations. Did you notice how often his eyes rested on Angelica, and how, when they did, a feeble flush tinted his pallid cheeks, and disappeared again rapidly? The monster has designs upon my darling; and that is why the words which he addressed to me sounded so insulting. But I will oppose him and resist him to the very death!"

Dagobert said the Count was a supernatural sort of fellow, no doubt, with something very eery and spectral about him, and that it would be as well to keep a sharp look-out on his proceedings, though, perhaps, he thought there was less in, or behind, him than one would suppose; and that the uncanny feelings which everybody had experienced with regard to him were chiefly attributable to the excited state in which they had all been when he made his appearance. "Let us face all this disquieting affair," said Dagobert, "with firm courage and unshakable confidence. No dark power will bend the head which holds itself up with true bravery and indomitable resolution."

A considerable time had elapsed. The Count, whose visits to the Colonel's house increased in frequency, had rendered himself almost indispensable. It was universally agreed, now, that the accusation against him of being uncanny recoiled on those who made it. "He might very well have styled us uncanny people, with our white faces and odd behaviour," as said Madame von G----. Everything he said evinced a store of the most valuable and various information; and although, being an Italian, he spoke with a foreign accent, his command of the German language was most perfect and fluent. His narratives had a fire which bore the hearers irresistibly along, so that even Moritz and Dagobert, hostile as were their feelings to this stranger, forgot their repugnance to him when he talked, and when a pleasant smile broke out over his pale, but handsome and expressive face, and they hung upon his lips, like Angelica and the others.

The Colonel's friendship with him had arisen in a way which proved him to be one of the noblest-minded of men. Chance had brought them together in the far north, and there the Count, in the most unselfish and disinterested manner, came to the Colonel's aid in a difficulty in which he found himself involved, which might have had the most disastrous consequences to his fortune, if not to his good name and honour. Deeply sensible of all that he owed him, the Colonel hung on him with all his soul.

"It is time," the Colonel said to his wife one day when they were alone together, "that I should tell you the principal reason why the Count is here. You remember that he and I, when we were in P----, four years ago, grew more and more intimate and inseparable, so that at last we occupied two rooms which opened one into the other. He happened to come into my room one morning early, and he saw the little miniature of Angelica, which I had with me, lying on my writing-table. As he looked more and more closely at it, he lost his self-command in a strange way. Not able to answer me, he kept gazing at it. He could not take his eyes from it. He cried out excitedly that he had never seen a more beautiful creature--had never before known what love was--it was now blazing up in the depths of his heart. I jested about the extraordinary effect of the picture on him--called him a second Kalaf, and congratulated him on the fact that my good Angelica was not a Turandot. At last I told him pretty clearly that at his time of life--for, though not exactly elderly, he could not be said to be a very young man--this romantic way of falling in love with a portrait rather astonished me. But he vowed most vehemently--nay, with every mark of that passionate excitement, almost verging on insanity, which belongs to his country--that he loved Angelica inexpressibly, and, if he were not to be dashed into the profoundest depths of despair, I must allow him to gain her affection and her hand. It is for this that the Count has come here to our house. He fancies he is certain that she is not ill-disposed to him, and he yesterday laid his formal proposal before me. What do you think of the affair?"

Madame von G---- could not explain why his latter words shot through her being like some sudden shock. "Good heavens," she cried, "that Count for our Angelica! that utter stranger!"

"Stranger!" echoed the Colonel with darkened brow; "the Count a stranger! the man to whom I owe my honour, my freedom, nay, perhaps my life! I know he is not quite so young as he has been, and perhaps is not altogether suited to Angelica in point of age; but he is of high lineage, and rich, very rich."