"By the bye," I interrupted him, "are bears and boars and red-deer the only game you have in view? or are there not other attractions as fascinating as shooting, in the direction of the Waldenberg?"
It was a random shaft, but it hit the mark; Victor positively blushed, and I could not help thinking as I watched him, what a handsome fellow he was. A finer specimen of manly beauty you would hardly wish to see than the young Count de Rohan, as he stood there in his green shooting-dress, with his powder-horn slung across his shoulder, and his hunting-knife at his waist. Victor was now in the full glow of youthful manhood, tall, active, and muscular, with a symmetry of frame that, while it was eminently graceful, qualified him admirably for athletic exercises, and a bearing that can best be described by the emphatic term "high-bred." There was a woman's beauty in his soft blue eyes and silky hair of the richest brown, but his marked features, straight, determined eyebrows, and dark, heavy moustaches, redeemed the countenance, notwithstanding its bright winning expression, from the charge of effeminacy. Perhaps, after all, the greatest charm about him was his air of complete enjoyment and utter forgetfulness of self. Every thought of his mind seemed to pass across his handsome face; and to judge by appearances, the thoughts were of the pleasantest description, and now he absolutely blushed as he hurried on without taking any notice of my remark--
"If I can bring Valèrie back a bear-skin for her sledge, I shall be quite satisfied; and I will tell you all about my chasse and my day's adventures over a cigar when I return. Meantime, my dear fellow, take care of yourself, order all my carriages and horses, if they are of the slightest use to you, and farewell, or rather au revoir."
I heard him humming his favourite waltz as he strode along the gallery (by the way, the very Ghost's Gallery of our childish adventure), and in another minute his horse's hoofs were clattering away at a gallop into the darkness. Whilst I turned round in bed with a weary yawn, and after patting Bold's head--a compliment which that faithful animal returned by a low growl, for the old dog, though true and stanch as ever, was getting very savage now,--I composed myself to cheat a few more hours of convalescence in sleep. What a contrast to my friend! Weary, wounded, and disappointed, I seemed to have lived my life out, and to have nothing more now to hope or to fear. I had failed in ambition, I had made shipwreck in love. I was grey and old in heart, though as yet young in years; whilst Victor, at the same age as myself, had all his future before him, glowing with the sunshine of good health, good spirits, and prosperity. Let us follow the child of fortune as he gallops over the plain, the cool breath of morning fanning his brow and lifting his clustering hair.
To a man who is fond of riding--and what Hungarian is not?--there is no country so fascinating as his own native plains, where he can gallop on mile after mile, hour after hour, over a flat surface, unbroken even by a molehill, and on a light sandy soil, just so soft as to afford his horse a pleasant easy footing, but not deep enough to distress him. Although I could never myself appreciate the ecstatic pleasures of a gallop, or comprehend why there should be a charm about a horse that is not possessed by the cow, the giraffe, the hippopotamus, or any other animal of the larger order of mammalia, I am not so prejudiced as to be unaware that in this respect I am an exception to the general run of my countrymen. Now, I cannot shut my eyes to the fact that there are men whose whole thoughts and wishes centre themselves in this distinguished quadruped; who grudge not to ruin their wives and families for his society; and who, like the Roman Emperor, make the horse the very high-priest of their domestic hearth. To such I would recommend a gallop on a hard-puller over the plains of Hungary. Let him go! There is nothing to stop him for forty miles; and if you cannot bring him to reason in about a minute and a half, you must for ever forfeit your claim to be enrolled amongst the worshipful company of Hippodami to which it seems the noblest ambition of aspiring youth to belong. A deacon of the craft was my friend Victor; and I really believe he enjoyed a pleasure totally unknown to the walking biped, as he urged Caspar along at speed, his fine figure swaying and yielding to every motion of the horse, with a pliancy that, we are informed by those who pique themselves on such matters, can only be acquired by long years of practice superinduced on a natural, or, as they would term it, "heaven-born," aptitude to excel in the godlike art.
So Victor galloped on like Mazeppa, till the dawn "had dappled into day"; and save to light a fresh cigar, gave Caspar no breathing-time till the sun was above the horizon, and the dew-drops on the acacias glittered like diamonds in the morning light. As he quitted the plains at last, and dropped his rein on his horse's neck, while he walked him slowly up the stony road that led to the Waldenberg, he caught sight of a female figure almost in the shadow of the wood, the flutter of whose dress seemed to communicate a corresponding tremor to Victor's heart. The healthy glow paled on his cheek, and his pulses beat fitfully as he urged poor Caspar once more into a gallop against the hill, none the less energetically that for nearly a mile a turn in the road hid the object of interest from his sight. What a crowd of thoughts, hopes, doubts, and fears passed through his mind during that long mile of uncertainty, which, had they resolved themselves into words, would have taken the following form:--"Can she have really come here to meet me, after all? Who else would be on the Waldenberg at this early hour? What can have happened?--is it possible that she has walked all this way on purpose to see me alone, if only for five minutes, before our chasse begins? Then she loves me, after all!--and yet she told me herself she was so volatile, so capricious. No, it is impossible!--she won't risk so much for me. And yet it is--it must be! It is just her figure, her walk,--how well I know them. I have mistrusted, I have misjudged her; she is, after all, true, loving, and devoted. Oh! I will make her such amends." Alas! poor Victor; the lady to whom you are vowing so deep a fidelity--to whom you are so happy to think you owe so much for her presence on the wild Waldenberg--is at this moment drinking chocolate in a comfortable dressing-room by a warm stove at least ten miles off; and though you might, and doubtless would, think her extremely lovely in that snowy robe de chambre, with its cherry-coloured ribbons, I question whether you would approve of the utter indifference which her countenance displays to all sublunary things, yourself included, with the exception of that very dubious French novel on her knee, which she is perusing or rather devouring with more than masculine avidity. Better draw rein at once, and ride back to Edeldorf, for one hundred yards more will undeceive you at the turn round that old oak-tree; and it is no wonder that you pull up in utter discomfiture, and exclaim aloud in your own Hungarian, and in tones of bitter disgust--"Psha! it's only a Zingynie, after all."
"Only a Zingynie, Count de Rohan!" replied a dark majestic old woman, with a frown on her fine countenance and a flash in her dark eye, as she placed herself across the road and confronted the astonished horseman; "only your father's friend and your own; only an interpreter of futurity, who has come to warn you ere it be too late. Turn back, Victor de Rohan, to your own halls at Edeldorf. I have read your horoscope, and it is not good for you to go on."
Victor had by this time recovered his good-humour; he forced a few florins into the woman's unwilling hand. "Promise me a good day's sport, mother!" he said, laughingly, "and let me go. I ought to be there already."
"Turn back, my child, turn back," said the gipsy; "I will save you if I can. Do you know that there is danger for you on the Waldenberg? Do you know that I--I, who have held you in my arms when you were a baby, have walked a-foot all the way from the Banat on purpose to warn you? Do you think I know not why you ride here day after day, that you may shoot God's wild animals with that bad old man? Is it purely for love of sport, Victor de Rohan? Answer me that!"
He waxed impatient, and drew his reins rudely from the woman's grasp.