“Ah, Margaret,” said Christian, “you wish to know, and it is my wish to tell you. Here we are at the end of our ride, and I shall leave you, this time, forever. I will not secure a place in your memory at the price of a lie. To be despised and forgotten is all I deserve from you, and I accept my fate—so much the worse for me. Believe me, there is no such person as Christian Goefle. M. Goefle never had either son or nephew.”
“That is not true!” exclaimed Margaret. “He said so to-day at the chateau; and everybody was talking about it, but nobody believed him. You are his son—by a secret marriage. He will acknowledge and cherish you. He cannot help doing it.”
“I swear to you, upon my honor, that I am absolutely nothing to him; and that yesterday morning he knew no more of me than you know now!”
“Upon your honor! You swear upon your honor? But if you are not Christian Goefle, I do not know you at all! Nor is there any reason why I should believe you. If you are Christian Waldo, who, they say, can assume any human voice—ah, I cannot understand it! But it distresses me very much. Thank God! I still doubt—”
“Doubt no longer, Margaret!” said Christian, jumping down from his seat as the sleigh, at that moment, stopped. “Look at me, and know me for what I really am: a man who has dedicated to you the profoundest respect, the most absolute devotion of his heart, and who swears to you, upon his honor, that he is the real Christian Waldo!”
As he spoke, Christian lifted his silken mask from his forehead, moved resolutely into the light of the lantern, and showed his face plainly as he bent towards the door. Margaret, recognizing her friend of the previous evening, uttered a cry of grief, perhaps even too expressive, and covered her face with her hands, while Christian, lowering his mask once more, disappeared in the crowd of servants and peasants who were assembled to look at the sport.
He very soon approached M. Goefle, whom they were talking of carrying in triumph; not because he had reached the goal first—he was, in fact, the last to arrive—but for performing a brilliant and unexpected feat. He had caught with his whip, while going at full speedy the wig of M. Stangstadius, who had deposited himself, in spite of his opposition, upon Major Larrson’s sleigh. M. Goefle had not, of course, done this intentionally. The end of his whip-lash, as he was cracking it in the air, had happened to entangle itself around the queue of the wig, by one of those chances which we call improbable, because they happen say only once in a thousand times. The learned man’s hat, jerked off by M. Goefle’s efforts to free his whip, had flown off and settled down like a great black bird in the snow; the wig had held fast to the queue, the queue had refused to part with the whip-lash, and the whip, which M. Goefle could not stop to adjust, thus ending in a mass of hair heavy with powder, lost all its effect upon the sides of the spirited Loki. In the first moments of his triumph, the victorious Larrson had seen nothing of this; but the outcries and complaints of Stangstadius, who, with his head tied up in a handkerchief, was demanding his wig from every one he could see, soon attracted his attention.
“He’s the man!” shouted the insulted geologist, pointing to M. Goefle in his mask. “That Italian buffoon, in a silk mask. He did it on purpose, the rascal! Here, here, you scoundrel of a play-actor! I’ll slap your face a hundred times, to teach you to joke with a man like me.”
An immense burst of laughter greeted the wrath of Stangstadius, and the whole assembly shouted with applause the name of Christian Waldo; but the scene quickly changed. Stangstadius, irritated by the impertinent laughter of the young people, darted towards the ravisher of his wig, who was standing erect upon his sleigh, piteously exhibiting the cause of his defeat, which looked not unlike a great fish at the end of a line. M. Goefle, in an assumed voice, began to accuse Stangstadius, in a comic manner, of having played off this trick on him, so as to prevent him from whipping his horse and winning the race; but the man of science, who was as nimble as a monkey, in spite of his unequal legs and crooked arms, scrambled up behind him, snatched off his hat and his mask, and only paused in his projects of vengeance, on recognizing with surprise his friend Goefle, who was instantly saluted with unanimous applause.
Though M. Goefle was not known to all who were present, his name was repeated by a number of persons, and he was heartily greeted. The Swedes are very proud of their eminent men, especially in any pursuit that brings their native language into notice. Besides, the honorable character of the doctor of laws, and his reputation as a man of talent, secured him the respect and affection of all young people. They insisted on proclaiming him the victor in the race, and it was all he could do to prevent the good-natured major from transferring the prize to him. This was a drinking-horn, curiously carved and ornamented with Runic characters, in silver; a fac-simile of a precious relic of antiquity belonging to the baron’s collection, and discovered in the course of excavations made in the hogar some years before.