Johan went out. The baron, exhausted by the effort he had made, fainted in Jacob’s arms, and the physician, hastily recalled, had a great deal of difficulty in bringing him to his senses. Then the patient recovered a feverish energy.
“Off with you, doctor!” he cried; “I am tired of your face! You are ugly! every one is ugly! He is beautiful—beautiful, if they speak the truth; but that will not help him any. When one is dead he soon becomes hideous, does he not? Still, if I should die before him, I should like to leave him my fortune—that would be droll! But if I live, he must die; nothing shall save him. Say, then, doctor, do you think I am crazy?”
The baron, after raving in this way for a few moments, fell into a restless, feverish sleep. It was then six o’clock in the evening, and the company at the chateau were just sitting down to the aftonward, the light repast which precedes supper.
We are really grieved at being obliged to try the reader’s patience with so many meals, but we should not be true to facts if we should suppress a single one of them. We are forced to remind him that it is the custom of the country to eat every two hours, and that a century ago no one thought of deviating from it, especially in the country, and in winter. Pretty women lost nothing of their poetry in the eyes of their admirers by having an excellent appetite. It was not the fashion to be pale and hollow-eyed. The fresh and brilliant complexions of the beautiful Swedes did not rob them of their empire over heart and imagination, and though not at all sentimental, the young people of both sexes were really very romantic. The little Margaret, accordingly, and the tall Olga, the blonde Martina, and several other nymphs of these frozen lakes, after having taken coffee in the grotto of the hogar, ate their cream and cheese in the great gilded saloon of the chateau, each dreaming about love in her own way, and all of them happily unconscious that fasting could be considered a necessary condition of sentiment.
There were no longer so many guests at the new chateau as there had been during the first few days of the Christmas holidays. Several mothers had carried away their daughters, when they found that Baron Olaus paid them no attention. The diplomats of both sexes, who had an interest in keeping up their relations with him, and his presumptive heirs—whom the baron was in the habit of calling, when he joked about them in French, his presumptuous heirs—remained, in spite of the gloom that he shed around him. Countess Elveda was very much irritated at not being able to come to any understanding with her mysterious host; but she consoled herself by flirting with the Russian ambassador. The mornings and afternoons were occupied by the elderly ladies in making and receiving visits in their respective apartments, with a great deal of ceremony and solemnity. On such occasions, they always conversed about the same subjects: the beautiful winter weather, the magnificent hospitality of their host, his remarkable wit—perhaps a little severe—his indisposition, and the wonderful courage with which he bore it, so as not to interfere with the enjoyment of his guests; and, as they conversed thus, they stifled Homeric yawns. And then they talked politics, and argued with great bitterness, which did not prevent them from discoursing about religious topics in an edifying manner. For the most part they entertained the persons who had just come in, by saying all the evil possible of those who had just gone out.
The young people were the only ones who contrived to throw off the moral coldness and gloom which seemed to permeate the very atmosphere. There were about a score of them, of both sexes, who, with or without the consent of their families, had formed attachments among themselves, of a more or less tender character, and who, meeting freely, as they did every hour of the day, acted as each other’s chaperons and confidantes. With this happy group were associated some few persons who, though older, were nevertheless benevolent and cheerful; governesses, of whom Mademoiselle Potin was one, the pastor’s family, who were always very highly considered, and courted in all country festivities, several old country gentlemen, plain and simple-hearted, the baron’s young physician, when he could escape from the claws of his tyrannical and cunning patient; and, best of all, the illustrious Stangstadius, whenever they could get hold of him, and contrive to keep him with them by paying him—for their own amusement—the most extravagant compliments, the sincerity of which he never doubted, even when they referred to the charms of his person.
The collation of the aftonward was as gay to-day as ever, even although the geologist did not make his appearance. The young folks—as the matrons called them—did not even notice the anxious and agitated faces of the servants, who were not quite so blind to the real state of their master’s health, as they would have liked to persuade those among them whose business it was to act as spies upon the others.
After the collation, they declared that they had heard enough about the feats of the hunters, and Martina proposed that they should play hide-and-seek, a game that they had enjoyed very much the evening before, partly, perhaps, because they had to go to a different part of the chateau to play it. Instinctively, they avoided a certain isolated pavilion occupied by the master of the house, and perhaps, without openly admitting it, they were not sorry to have an excuse—that of not disturbing the host—for avoiding as well the stately apartments occupied by their parents and relatives. In the upper story of the outer circle of buildings, which was connected by numerous passages with the lower rooms—the latter were used for various domestic purposes, as wine-cellars, bleaching-rooms, etc.—there were a number of long, gloomy, and almost deserted galleries, where they had plenty of room to look for each other, and plenty of dark corners to hide in. They drew lots for the different parties, and Margaret found herself with Martina and her fiancée, the lieutenant.
[XVI.]
WHILE the young people at the new chateau were enjoying their innocent games, M. Goefle and Christian were making all sorts of comments upon the discoveries relative to his birth which the latter thought he had made. M. Goefle did not agree with his young friend. His ideas, he said, were altogether fanciful, and more ingenious than logical. For his own part, he seemed more than ever tormented by some idea which he at the same time wished and feared to explain.