The good old lady was, therefore, not a little astonished and grieved when she saw how pale and haggard Oswald looked this morning, a mere shadow of the stately young man of last night. He had had a bad night to be sure. It must have been a very bad night to pull down a young man so grievously. Should she send for the doctor? No? But a cup of strong beef tea with an egg stirred in? Qu'en dites-vous, Monsieur? The good old lady tripped away to attend to the beef tea herself, as no one else could make it as well. And while she was busy about it she shook her gray head again and again, because Monsieur Oswald--the stranger had given that name--spoke German so very well, and looked so very sick and unhappy, and yet had some resemblance to the lost one. Her eyes filled with tears and she decided to ask him about the cause of his grief at the risk of being considered indiscreet.
With this desire she entered Oswald's room once more and found the young man in the same position in which she had left him. He was sitting on the sofa, his arms crossed on his bosom, his eyes staring fixedly at an old French engraving, in which Andromeda was represented chained to the rock and guarded by a dragon, while Perseus was coming through the air to her rescue, with the gorgon's head in his hand. He had noticed the picture in the early twilight, and long tried to find out in the imperfect light what it could mean, till at last, as day broke, he found it out. The engraving was extravagant, as most pictures of that epoch. Andromeda was rather too small, a mere child in comparison with the very tall and slender hero, who was just putting one foot on the rock and preparing to strike a blow at the monster, which opened its huge mouth wide and stared at him with basilisk eyes. Still, it was not without merit in the conception, nor without delicacy in the execution. The spark of hope which appeared in the girl's eyes and the whole of her childish, beautiful features, and the heroic indignation in the face of the youth, were well rendered; while the landscape--a lonely rock in the boundless ocean, with the sun rising above the horizon and the first rays trembling on the waves up to the rock--showed something of Claude Lorraine's cheerful vigor and grandeur. Oswald had looked at the picture again and again with a feeling of painful sadness. The beautiful meaning of the ancient myth--that bold courage carries the happy possessor with god-like wings over land and sea, that the hero overcomes danger by a mere glance, and finally that for him alone there blooms the sweet flower of love and beauty on the rude rock in the vast inhospitable ocean of life--all this had reminded the dreamer painfully of what he also had already called his own of love and beauty; but only, alas! to lose it in a short time and forever, forever!
Even now--when Mrs. Black at his request took a seat on the sofa, and told him all she knew about the excitement in the city, the bloody scenes which had taken place last night quite near by, in Brother street, the large assemblies of people Unter den Linden, and the sad times in which everything seemed to be turned upside down--even now Oswald could not take his eyes from the picture. The old lady noticed it and said:
"Yes! It was just so twenty-five years ago! It used to belong to a countryman of yours, a dear old gentleman who has lived here many years, and whom I loved like a brother. The picture is here, but he----"
She sighed so grievously that Oswald, whom his own sorrow had not made insensible to the sorrows of others, asked her kindly:
"He died, the old gentleman, did he?"
"I do not know," replied the old lady. "He went into the wide world in order to save a girl whom I had brought up as my own child; a sweet, lovely creature; but he did not come back, and she did not come back, and I grieve over my loss, although it is now nearly twenty-five years old. Have you, monsieur--ah! it is foolish in me to ask, but after all nothing is impossible in this world--have you, monsieur, ever heard anything of a Mademoiselle Marie Montbert and a Monsieur d'Estein?"
The old lady had asked the question so often, and received so often nothing but a curt: Non madame! in reply, that she scarcely noticed Oswald's regretful shake of the head, and continued with animation:
"Ah, I knew it was so! No one ever heard of them. The world is so large, and there are so many people in it! And in this great world and this multitude of people how soon are two unhappy beings forgotten!"
The manner of the old lady was, with all her ingenuousness, so refined and dignified; the deep-sunk eyes, still full of expression, looked so gentle and kind; and her voice had such a true, good sound, that Oswald felt strangely moved, and begged her with cordial warmth to tell him something more about the two persons whose unhappy fate she deplored so painfully after so long a time. Mrs. Black smoothed her black-silk apron, and told him in simple words a simple, touching story.