Through Night to Light: A Novel

by Friedrich Spielhagen

Justice requires, however, to add that Grunwald can be called insignificant only in comparison with former days of great power and surpassing splendor. The town is still of vast importance for the whole province in which it is situated. If her flag no longer waves on every sea, her port is still continually crowded with schooners and sloops, and near her wharves many a larger vessel awaits completion on the stocks. If her walls have been torn to pieces by the artillery of the Imperialists, and her ramparts have been razed by the French, the town is still a fortress, whose commandant would not sleep quietly unless he had received from all the guards and posts the report that all is quiet. If the town has lost her ancient privileges, and no longer enjoys as of old perfect freedom and sovereign independence, she has profited on the other hand largely by becoming an integral part of a great monarchy. Grunwald has not only a numerous garrison of infantry and artillery, but is also the seat of the highest court of the province; and above all, as everybody knows, enjoys a university, although the light shed by this seat of the muses cannot be said to penetrate far into distant lands. Grunwald is, moreover, the favorite residence of the surrounding nobility, which is particularly rich, and enjoys a very great influence on public life. When the magnificent crops upon their vast domains have been safely housed, when the trees in their parks lose their foliage in the autumn winds, and the crows migrate from the bare woods to the towns, then all the counts and barons and smaller noblemen also come to Grunwald. From the great island, which lies right opposite the town, and from the whole surrounding country, they come in their lumbering state carriages, all driven four-in-hand, and settle down with children, servants, tutors, and governesses for the whole winter. They own stately houses all over the town, which in summer are easily known by their utter silence, the closed curtains, and the grass growing in idyllic happiness between the flags of their court-yards--far different from the ordinary houses inhabited by ordinary people, who have to pay taxes, enjoy no privileges, and are forced to work summer and winter alike.

CHAPTER XIII.

It is autumn. The fields are bare; from the linden-trees in the court-yard at Grenwitz the brown leaves are falling in showers. Thick fogs cover the sea, the high shores of the island with their noble beech-forests, and the low coast of the continent. The towers of Grunwald rise out of the mist like giants of former days, and around the lofty steeples crows and blackbirds are fluttering, having left the unhospitable forests to move to warm cities.

The sun has set for an hour, and the last blood-red streak, just above the edge of the sea, has turned pale in the shadow of the heavy, low-drifting clouds. The streets of the town have grown silent, and the lamplighter is lighting one after the other the oil lamps, whose dim light is useful only in making the mist still denser and the darkness still darker. He has just done with two unusually large and bright lamps before the entrance-gate to a huge, massive building in one of the streets that lead down to the harbor. It was the first time this year--a proof that the great family which has owned this house for many a generation, and which lives on its estates regularly in summer, and quite frequently in the winter also, has moved into town on that very day.

Nevertheless the windows of the mansion which look upon the street are still dark. They are, to be sure, rarely seen lighted up, only on solemn occasions, when the family gives one of those stiff evening parties, to which of course only the nobility and the very highest officials in the government service are ever invited.

Ordinarily these state apartments remain closed, exactly like the lofty halls and grand reception-rooms of the hereditary castle in the country, and the family are content to live in the less gorgeous rooms which look upon the rear. The modest, exceedingly unpretending taste of the mistress of the house prefers the latter, all the more as the front rooms can only be heated at great expense, and the woods of the Grenwitz estate, as far as entailed, are rented out at the ludicrously small sum of ten thousand dollars.

In one of these rooms, which was stately enough, sits the Baroness Grenwitz on a sofa before a round table, on which two wax-candles are burning brightly. She looks as if the last six weeks had added as many years to her age. Her forehead has become narrower and more angular, the dark hair shows here and there a silver thread, her eyes look larger and more fixed and meaning than ever. Her nephew, Felix, is lounging in a most comfortable position opposite her, in a large easy-chair, filled with soft cushions. The young man wears his right arm in a sling, and the sickly pallor of his face contrasts strangely with his hair, as carefully parted and curled as ever, and with the whole toilet, which is as perfect as usual. Between the two stands a table, covered with letters and papers, all of them written in the same handsome handwriting. The baroness and Felix seem just to have finished the perusal of these documents, and to be still too busy with the thoughts which have been suggested by them, to be able to speak. They are brooding in silence over the impression produced on each one, while the monotonous tic-tac of the pendulum of the rococo clock on the mantel-piece is the only noise heard in the room.

At last the young man breaks the silence.

"The thing looks more serious than either of us thought," he says, raising himself slightly in his easy-chair, and taking up once more the paper he had been reading last.

"I still do not believe a word of it," replied the baroness.