“What more?” cried the doctor of laws. “Do you want company to sleep?”
“But, Monsieur Goefle, I never slept alone in my room at the pastor’s house; and here, above all, where I am so afraid. Oh! stop—stop; if you are going to leave me, I had rather sleep on the floor in the room where you are.”
Wide awake now as a cat, Nils jumped out of bed, and started to follow his master into the bear-room, in his shirt. M. Goefle lost all patience. He scolded; Nils took to crying again. He was going to shut him up. Nils began to howl. The doctor of laws formed an heroic determination.
“Since I have been so foolish,” he said, “as to suppose that a child ten years old was fourteen, and to imagine that Gertrude had a grain of common sense in her brain, I must pay the penalty. Five minutes’ patience and this young rogue will be fast asleep; while if I excite him by my opposition, God only knows how long I shall have to hear him groaning or braying.”
He went into the bear-room to get one of his bundles of papers, not without cursing the child, who followed with naked feet, and would scarcely give him time to find his spectacles; and then sat down before the fire in the guard-room, with the doors shut, as it was not very warm. After asking Nils ironically whether he did not want to be sung to sleep, he buried himself in his dusty papers, and forgot all about the supper, which did not arrive, and the child, who was snoring with all his might.
[1] Gevala, Gefle, Gesle, and Goefle, are different ways of writing the name of the same town. The name of the advocate in question happened to be the same as that of the town in which he practised.
[II.]
BUT what was Cristiano about while M. Goefle was meeting with all these adventures? The reader has probably guessed that the mocking goblin wandering about poor Ulph in kitchen and cellar was our adventurer in person, in pursuit of his supper. Ulph’s terrors and agonies enabled him to carry off the most portable dishes in the kitchen, almost under his nose. In the cellar he was less fortunate. On blowing out the coward’s light, he had found himself in such utter darkness that he was afraid of being shut up fasting in this subterranean vault. He had hastened, therefore, to retrace his steps, while consoling himself with the thought that he could seize the bottles which Ulph would be sure to bring up, at a more favorable moment.
The adventurer had lost some little time in cautiously exploring the secret passage of the bear-room, which we shall describe rather later; escaping from it with some difficulty, he introduced himself secretly into M. Stenson’s pavilion, and so had not been in a position to notice M. Goefle’s arrival. He thought, therefore, that the supper was being prepared for the old overseer. Before returning to his self-selected lodging, he had still to find some supper for his ass, and for several moments after Ulph’s final fit of terror, he was wandering about in the small court adjoining the outer enclosure; hence he lost the diverting spectacle of M. Goefle in his night-cap, leading the ass in triumph to the stable, with the help of his kobold in red livery. As he explored the old building in every direction, and opened all the doors that were not firmly bolted, Cristiano came at last to the stable, where he was delighted to see Master Jean eating his supper with a good appetite, and trampling upon a thick litter of dry moss, in company with a handsome black horse, who seemed to make him very welcome.
“Really, beasts are sometimes more reasonable and more hospitable than men,” thought Cristiano, caressing the noble animal. “Since we have been travelling in this cold country, Jean has been regarded with amazement, fear, or repugnance, in the various villages and peasants’ huts where we have stopped, and I myself, in spite of the affable manners of the people of this country, have fallen into a strange den of gloomy or absent-minded beings, where I am obliged to go marauding, like a soldier on a campaign. This good horse, on the contrary, makes room for Jean in his stall, without asking him the meaning of his long ears, and treats him from the start as an equal. Well, Jean, good-night, my friend! If I should ask you who had brought you here and supplied your wants to your heart’s desire, you would not perhaps have the goodness to reply; and I should suppose, if I did not see that some one had tied you by your halter, that you had been sensible enough to come of your own accord. Well, anyhow I will follow your example, and go and take my supper without thinking of the morrow.”