“Yes, if four hundred years ago were now,” assented the parasite, “I’d begin with Dick, the tollman! He’s a regular Goliath and,”––his face becoming purple––“when I threatened him with the law, threw me out of the barn on an obnoxious heap of refuse.”
“You weren’t exactly a David, then?” laughed the patroon, in spite of his bad humor.
“I’ll throw the stone yet,” said the little man, viciously showing his yellow teeth. “The law’s the sling.”
That evening, when the broad meadows were inundated by the shadow of the forest that crept over it like an incoming tide, the land baron ordered lights for every room. The manor shone in isolated grandeur amid the gloomy fields, with the forest-wall 114 around it; radiant as of old, when strains of music had been heard within and many figures passed the windows. But now there was light, and not life, and a solitary anti-renter on the lonely road regarded with surprise the unusual illumination.
“What does it mean?” asked Little Thunder––for it was he––waiting and watching, as without the gates of Paradise.
Well might he ask, for the late Mynheer, the Patroon, had been a veritable bat for darkness; a few candles answered his purpose in the spacious rooms; he played the prowler, not the grand lord; a recluse who hovered over his wine butts in the cellar and gloated over them, while he touched them not; a hermit who lived half his time in the kitchen, bending over the smoky fireplace, and not a lavender-scented gentleman who aired himself in the drawing-room, a fine fop with nothing but the mirrors to pay him homage. Little Thunder, standing with folded arms in the dark road, gloomy as Lucifer, almost expected to see the brilliant fabric vanish like one of those palaces of joy built by the poets.
Hour after hour passed, midnight had come and gone, and still the lights glowed. Seated in the library, with the curtains drawn, were the land baron and Scroggs, a surveyor’s map between them and a dozen bottles around them. Before Mauville stood several glasses, containing wines of various vintages which the land baron compared and sipped, held to the light and inhaled after the manner of a connoisseur sampling 115 a cellar. He was unduly dignified and stately, but the attorney appeared decidedly groggy. The latter’s ideas clashed against one another like pebbles in a child’s rattle, and, if the round table may be supposed to represent the earth, as the ancient geographers imagined it, Scrogg’s face was surely the glowing moon shining upon it.
Readily had the attorney lent himself to the new order of procedure. With him it was: “The king is dead! Long live the king!” He, who had found but poor pickings under the former master––dry crust fees for pleadings, demurrers or rejoinders––now anticipated generous booty and spoil. Alert for such crumbs as might fall from a bountiful table; keen of scent for scraps and bits, but capable of a mighty mouthful, he paid a courtier’s price for it all; wheedling, pandering, ready for any service, ripe for any revelry. With an adulator’s tact, he still strove strenuously to hold the thread of his companion’s conversation, as Mauville said:
“Too old, Scroggs; too old!” Setting down a glass of burgundy in which fine particles floated through the magenta-hued liquid. “It has lost its luster, like a woman’s eyes when she has passed the meridian. Good wine, like a woman, has its life. First, sweetly innocent, delicately palatable, its blush like a maiden of sixteen; then glowing with a riper development, more passionate in hue, a siren vintage; finally, thin, waning and watery, with only memories of the deeper, rosy-hued days. Now here, my good, but muddled friend, is your youthful maiden!” Holding toward the lamp a glass, clear as crystal, with luster like a gem. “Dancing eyes; a figure upright as a reed; the bearing of a nymph; the soul of a water lily before it has opened its leaves to the wooing moonlight!”