Mr. Timm felt in his breast pocket and drew from it several letters of suspicious appearance, which he carefully unfolded and perused, after having ensconced himself in the corner of the bench. His face, generally merry enough, grew darker and darker. "Upon my word," he growled, "these fellows are becoming insolent. If I could satisfy the roaring lions with a couple of hundreds they might be silent, at least for a while."
"Hm, hm! The three hundred dollars which little Marguerite has in the Savings Bank would be very convenient. It would, after all, be better for her to be poor. For, of course, every sensible man can see that I am not going to fulfil my promise to marry her unless I am forced to do so. If I am under moral obligations only, I fear I am not quite safe to her; but if I should be under pecuniary obligations to her, her chances are decidedly better. I can make her believe I will invest her money where she can obtain a better interest, or some such thing. When the stupid little things are in love they'll believe anything. And can she invest her money better than in the purchase of a handsome fellow for her husband, who would otherwise not think of marrying her? Me Herculem! I feel quite raised in my estimation by the thought, to become a benefactor of the poor little girl. I must see at once what I can do with her. If she refuses, I shall have to respect her for her wisdom, but I won't be able to love her any more."
Albert rose and slowly walked up to the château, his hands folded behind his back, as was his habit when his ingenious brain was busy with the solution of a problem. Marguerite was busy in the lower regions near the kitchen, and Albert went up to his room, in order to give a few more moments undisturbed to his great purpose.
He bent over the paper which was stretched out on his drawing-board, and on which he had done nothing since the departure of the family, that is, for a whole week.
"If that goes on so, Anna Maria will marvel at the progress I have made," he said; "it is really amazing what a superb talent for idleness I have, or, to express it more elegantly, for the dolce far niente. There are evidently in life enchanted lazzaroni, as there are enchanted princes, and I am unmistakably such an enchanted son of sunny Naples, who has been changed into a surveyor, compelled to eat his bread in the sweat of his face. But how did it come about, I wonder, that I have thus given way to my natural disposition for a whole week? Is little Marguerite alone to blame for it? Hardly! Oh yes! Now I remember! I want a map from the archive-room, and asked for the key a week ago. I must go and get that map, or, by my burning love for little Marguerite, this unfinished plat will remain a fragment for all eternity."
Albert went into the archive-room, a large apartment on the ground floor of the old castle. The walls were covered, from the ceiling to the floor, with receptacles full of old yellow documents and papers of every kind, many of which were extremely old and would have been of very great interest to the antiquarian. While he was looking among these archives for the old map, a small bundle of letters fell into his hand, which he would have hurled back, in all probability, into its ancient home, like so many others, if his curiosity had not been excited by the address on the outside: "For Baron Harald Grenwitz, at Grenwitz." As excessive discretion was by no means one of Mr. Timm's most prominent qualities, he broke unceremoniously the red tape with which the letters had been bound together, and began to read one after another--an occupation which proved so deeply interesting that he forgot everything else, and did not even hear a carriage, which stopped at the great portal, and caused no small sensation in the château.
CHAPTER XII.
Oswald had spent the week which had elapsed since the departure of the family in the solitude of a fisherman's village, not far from Berkow, where he had been entirely cut off from all intercourse with the world. How he had got there he hardly knew himself.
Since Melitta had been so suddenly snatched away from him, he had been seized with boundless indifference for everything that was not in some way connected with her. She filled his whole soul. In this apathy he had parted even with Bruno quite easily. He acceded to the wishes of the baroness all the more readily, as he longed for solitude in his present frame of mind. Thus he said yes to everything, and when he saw the carriage start with the family inside, he felt as if he had been relieved of a heavy burden. He hurriedly said good-by to Mr. Timm and Marguerite, who remained at home, and flinging a light knapsack, which dated still from his university years, upon his back, he wandered gayly out at the door, like the hero in a fairy tale, without knowing where he was going, or where he was to rest his weary head that night.
The sun was burning hot; Oswald remembered that it would be fresh and cool in the forest. He turned off the road, and soon the pine-trees were rustling overhead. The low whispering of the thousand green leaves lulled him into sweet reveries. Dreamily he wandered on till he suddenly came out upon the clearing where Melitta's chapel stood, under the shelter of a broad, branching beech-tree that counted many hundred years.