The farmer rushed off to the endangered building, from whose thatched roof the gale had torn off whole bales of straw and whirled them like chaff over the courtyard. The terrified farm-servants came running up from all sides, while the farmer grumbled that they had better keep their wits about them now; what was to happen later if they had lost their senses already?
Giraldi looked at his watch, it wanted twenty minutes to six. François, who had returned half an hour before, had sworn that he was convinced that madame would start immediately after him. The road was not so bad as he had thought; they might very well be at the castle at six o'clock.
Giraldi went into the house to question François once more. François was not to be found; some one had seen him a short time before go through the garden-door towards the park, with a cloak round him.
"The fellow is prudent," said Giraldi to himself; "he has got his money and takes himself off. I am in the same position, I ought to follow his wise example."
He must come to a decision; if Valerie came too late, or not at all, he would find himself in about half an hour face to face with the General, who must have heard this morning at any rate--perhaps from Ottomar himself--of the affair of the bills, and, his suspicions once aroused, would certainly make inquiries, and learn from the banker, to whom he would of course apply first, that the Warnow money had been withdrawn, from the bank. Elsa's telegram too! All these things coming together would rouse the most sluggish of men, how much more one so active and energetic! And yet everything was not lost, everything might still be won, was won already, if Valerie were on his side; the half million of mortgage money, which he had withdrawn from Lübbener's yesterday, belonged to her by rights; and for himself, without overstepping by one hair's breadth the powers given him by the other trustees, he could withdraw the half million of purchase-money from Haselow, and keep it in his desk, or carry it on his person if he did not think it secure elsewhere; but Valerie must give her consent--she must, she must, she must!
He cried it aloud, stamping his foot on the wet ground, while in the branches of the trees overhead the wind whistled and howled, and louder and louder grew the roar of the sea breaking against the barrier which it only needed to surmount to fill the hollow like a basin. Even the park would be swept away then.
He hardly knew why he had entered the park; perhaps to look for François, perhaps because he had been told that from the balcony of the summer-house in the south corner a long stretch of the road to Wissow over the hills could be seen. If indeed in the darkness, which seemed deepening at every moment, anything could be seen at a distance! And where was this south corner? As if between the brambles of these rustling hedges, and in the gloom of these creaking boughs, a man could find his way as one would between the laurel bushes and the pines of the Monte Pincio!
In this howling northern wilderness the image of the Eternal City stood suddenly before his mind, as he had seen it that night when, for the first time after years of separation, he saw Valerie again--by no effort of his, against all expectation or hope--at a fête given by the French Embassy in the enchanted gardens of the Villa Medici. There, when a jealous husband had carried away his beautiful wife only too soon, he himself had left the festive crowd, and ascended the stone steps in the shade of the evergreen oaks till the lights of the festival below him had been lost and the sounds had died away; there, in the darkness and silence which surrounded him, he had mused as he went yet farther and higher, and reached the Belvedere, where his beloved Rome, bathed in moonshine, lay at his feet; there he had sworn by St. Peter's, on whose gigantic dome streams of soft golden light were pouring down from the blue heavens, that the love of this fair northern woman should be the golden stepping-stone to his power, which he, the layman, in the service of St. Peter's, and yet free--free as an eagle here above the world--would extend over the whole earth. It had taken him longer than he had then hoped--much too long; he had held fast to his once formed plans with too obstinate tenacity; he might have attained more brilliant results, quicker and more surely, by other ways such as had a thousand times offered themselves; but it was the star of his fate which he had followed, in which he had always trusted, and would trust still when--at the last moment--everything seemed to conspire against him to snatch his prey from him, the fruit of the arduous labour of so many years, the noble fortune which he carried about him close to his body, as if it were a part of himself, as it was indeed a part of his life which he would give up only with that life.
He looked at his watch--he could no longer distinguish the numbers on the dial-plate; he sounded the repeater--he could not hear the faint stroke through the roaring of the storm which crashed and howled around him. He would count five minutes more; if she did not come then--so be it!
And there was the summer-house for which he had been looking so long, a wooden erection on four slender columns, to which a narrow steep staircase led up, at the extreme edge of the park, some ten or twelve feet above the enclosing hedge, high enough as he could see from the balcony to overlook the ground outside between the park and the hill; a long trough-shaped bit of ground, some fifty or a hundred yards broad, through which, from the hill to the park, a dark winding causeway led, formed apparently of large stones arranged at even distances to facilitate the crossing of the low-lying meadow-land.