The snow man

by George Sand

Margaret asked no questions, and did not even venture to make any mental comments upon what she had heard; but while apparently fully occupied in fastening her pelisse, for they had risen to go, she did not lose a word of the praises bestowed upon her friend of the previous evening.

“How is it?” said Olga, who was also preparing for their departure, “that an educated and distinguished man can consent to follow a calling, I will not say disgraceful, but certainly frivolous, and which, after all, will not be likely to make him rich?”

“He don’t make a business of his present occupation,” replied the major, eagerly; “he follows it merely as an amusement.”

“Oh, excuse me, he is paid for his entertainments.”

“Well, and so are we soldiers paid for serving the state. Are not our estates and revenues the salary we receive for our services?”

“There is a difference between a salary and wages,” said Margaret, with gentle melancholy; “but it begins to be cold: shall we not go? I don’t think it will be dangerous now on the lake.”

The major saw, or thought he saw, that Margaret was anxious to have a talk with him; he offered her his arm, therefore, to her sleigh, and begged Mademoiselle Potin to allow him to have a seat with them in returning to the chateau. With a few brief words he gave the lieutenant to understand that he would like to have Olga return in another sleigh with himself and Martina Akerstrom; and the good lieutenant, without troubling himself about the reason of the major’s request, which he obeyed as if it had been a military order, offered his services to his fiancée and the young Russian.

Thanks to this arrangement, Osmund was at full liberty to espouse Christian Waldo’s cause warmly, and to try and change the bad opinion which Margaret and Mademoiselle Potin, her discreet confidante, seemed to have formed of him. To succeed in this, he had only to repeat his conversation with Waldo, and inform them of his generous and eccentric determination to endure the greatest poverty and suffering, rather than continue his adventurous career, of which he himself disapproved. Margaret listened with apparent tranquillity, as if she had been called upon to express her approbation of some case in which she had no personal interest. However, she was not a skilful actress, and the major, who had sufficient delicacy to adopt the same tone as herself, was not deceived as to the interest with which she really regarded his friend in her secret soul.

In the meanwhile Baron Olaus had been laid upon his bed, where he appeared calm. The physician, as usual, eluded the questions of his heirs. They all soon knew that their dear and respectable uncle had returned from the hunt so feeble that his people had been obliged to carry him in, undress him, and put him to bed, like a child; but, according to the physician, he was suffering merely from one of his customary accidental and temporary attacks. Johan gave orders that the amusements and games should continue. The comedy of marionettes was announced for eight o’clock. And as for Doctor Stangstadius, who might have revealed how ill he really was, he had returned from the hunt only to ascend into the observatory of the chateau, to study at his leisure the phenomenon of the dry fog, which he attributed, and perhaps correctly, to volcanic exhalations proceeding from Lake Wetter.

The only person who was really anxious was Johan. As soon as he was left alone with his master, though the physician, who had retired to change his dress and take some food, had implored him to keep the baron from being disturbed, he resolved to find out what he was to think of his mental condition.