Provoked by these two absurd figures imitating and burlesquing M. Goefle, Christian was strongly tempted to knock down the man and kick the boy, but he knew perfectly well that he was in the wrong, and he was, moreover, much pained at having offended so kind and amiable a person as the doctor of laws. Indignation and repentance, therefore, were depicted alternately upon his expressive countenance, and with such vividness that the lawyer was quite disarmed. His laugh at once disarmed his two satellites, who began to laugh also with returning confidence, and went about their business, while Christian gave M. Goefle a brief account of his defiance of the baron, which the Countess Elveda called rude and insolent, but for which, in his opinion, he was not at all to blame. M. Goefle, pressed as he was for time, listened attentively, and when he had finished, said:
“Assuredly, my dear boy, you have done nothing to dishonor the name of Goefle; on the contrary, your conduct was that of a gentleman, but you have none the less placed me in a cruel embarrassment. Whether or not Baron Olaus remembers his epileptic attack—for which, it seems, he is indebted to you—he will not forget, you may rest assured, that you have offended him. As you have been told, he is a man who never forgets anything, and you will do well to disappear at once in your character of Goefle, since Goefle you have chosen to become. Do not quit this chamber without being masked; become Christian Waldo again, and you have nothing to fear.”
“But pray tell me what should I have to fear from the baron, even if I should present myself to him with my face uncovered? Is he actually capable of having me assassinated?”
“I know nothing about that, Christian; I swear to you, upon my honor, nothing at all; you may confidently believe me on this point. If, in my business relations with him, I had gathered the least proof of the acts he is charged with, those relations would be discontinued. I am very indifferent to lucrative patronage, and I should tell my client some very plain truths, whether it did him any good or not. Nevertheless, there are some reports so well authenticated, and there are so many cases where misfortunes have occurred to persons who have opposed the baron, that I have sometimes asked myself if he had not the evil eye—the jettatura, as you call it in Italy. At any rate, not to bring any unnecessary bad luck upon myself, please allow me to report that my nephew is absent; that he started this very morning on a distant journey.”
“You may rely upon my absolute prudence, since I have been the means of exposing you to a risk. I will not leave the room without being masked, or so disguised that no one shall recognize me for the rather too gallant and chivalrous stranger who danced at the ball last night.”
M. Goefle and Christian Waldo shook hands upon this agreement. Nils, whose services had been confined to eating his breakfast during the conversation, was now well wrapped up in furs by his master, who was obliged to lift him upon the driver’s seat of the sleigh, and to place the reins and whip in his hands. Once seated, however, he drove off like an arrow, and descended the steep slope of the rock with skill and confidence. To drive a horse was the one thing that he knew how to do, and did without murmuring.
As for Ulph, he proceeded to make up the bed in which Nils had slept, for Christian, and to prepare the sofa, which was quite large enough to be comfortable, for the child, as M. Goefle had directed before his departure. Then he went to wait upon his uncle, but always discreet in concealing his disobedience, he did not say a single word about the presence of visitors in the donjon.
[VII.]
THE reader has perhaps not forgotten that old Stenson lived in a pavilion at the end of the small second court, which, together with the outer enclosure, which was somewhat larger, and the buildings adjoining, composed the dilapidated manor of Stollborg. There was a legend connected with the original erection of this ancient castle. At the time of the first introduction of Christianity into Sweden, it was said to have grown out of the rock in one night, in consequence of a vow of the pagan castellan, whose house (then built of wood) had nearly been blown off into the lake by an autumnal gale, and who had thereupon promised to embrace the new religion, if heaven would protect him securely from the wind. The roof of the house had already been carried away, but scarcely had he pronounced his vow, when a granite tower arose, as if by enchantment, from the rock. The castellan was forthwith baptized, and no hurricane could ever again harm his strongly and solidly-built habitation.
Notwithstanding this veracious history, the antiquaries of the country have the hardihood to assert that the square tower of Stollborg dates no further back than to the reign of King Birger, that is to the fourteenth century. However that may be, the chateau and its small domain, in the fifteenth century, became the property of a brave gentleman of the name of Waldemora. In the seventeenth century, Olaf de Waldemora became a favorite of Queen Christina, who, by arbitrarily alienating portions of the crown domains, conferred upon him considerable landed estates in this part of Dalecarlia. History does not name this Waldemora as a lover of the fantastic inheritrix of Gustavus Adolphus. Possibly, in some strait for money, the queen may have sold him these valuable estates at a low price. It is certain that at the reduction of 1680, when the energetic Charles XI. revised the titles of all grants of land, and reunited to the crown domain all that had been unlawfully alienated by his predecessors—a terrible but salutary measure, to which Sweden owes the endowment of her universities, schools, and magistracy, the creation of the post-office, the army indelta, and other benefactions, for which the “old caps” had hardly forgiven the crown at the time of our story—at this time the titles of the Baron de Waldemora were found valid; he retained the great estates which he had inherited from his grandfather, and completed the embellishments of the new chateau, built by the latter upon the shore of the lake, and called by his name.