“Oh! let me see all that!” resumed the enraptured Nils, casting a dazzled glance into the box that Christian had just opened, and where glittered, pell-mell, the laced hats, swords, plumed turbans, and pearl coronets of his miniature company. Christian tried to get rid of Nils by gentle means; but the child was so crazy to see and touch all these wonders, that he was obliged to speak in a loud voice, and roll his eyes fiercely, to keep him from running away with his actors and their wardrobe. Then he began to pout, and, going to the other side of the table, said he would complain to M. Goefle that no one would amuse him. His aunt Gertrude had told him that he would be amused when he went travelling, and he wasn’t amused at all.
“But I don’t care for you, you great wretch!” he said, making a face at Christian; “I am going to make some pretty paper boats, and I won’t let you see any of them.”
“All right, all right!” replied Christian, who kept at work arranging the costumes of the marionettes under the supposition that he could rely on M. Goefle’s assistance; “make your boats, my child; make a great many of them, and leave me in peace.”
While pinning hats and cloaks to the heads and around the necks of his little people, Christian glanced every moment at the clock, and grew impatient for M. Goefle’s return. He wanted to send Nils to the gaard to beg him to make haste, but Nils pouted, and pretended not to hear.
“Provided,” said Christian to himself, “we have time to read over the play once, it will be sufficient; without that, I shall be lucky if I can recall it myself, I have had so much on my mind to-day. Ah! I promised the major a hunting-scene; where shall I introduce it? No matter where! An interlude, stolen from the scene of Moron with the bears, in the Princesse d’Elide. Stentarello shall be brave, charming; he shall laugh at people who kill bears through a net—like the baron, for instance. But, good heavens! I hope Puffo has not carried away the manuscript; I put it in his hands.”
Christian began to search everywhere for his manuscript. To write another would have required half an hour’s work, and the clock was striking seven. He rummaged in his box, which contained the whole of his little repertory. He upset and turned over everything; he was in a fever. The idea of not going to the new chateau at the appointed hour; of appearing afraid to encounter the baron’s hatred (for to this motive his absence might be attributed), was insupportable to him. He was seized with a sudden rage against his enemy, to which his love, perhaps, added intensity. He was burning to defy the Snow Man openly in Margaret’s presence, to show him that an actor was more courageous than many of the noble guests of his chateau.
Just then he looked at Nils; he was very quiet and serious, being busily occupied in making what he was pleased to call his little boats. Around him there was a pile of papers, which he was cutting up for the purpose. He would take a slip of paper, fold it, refold it, and, if the boat did not succeed according to his liking, tear it, rumple it up, and throw it to the floor.
“Ah, bad boy!” cried Christian, snatching from him a handful of torn fragments; “you are cutting up my manuscript into boats!”
Nils began to cry and scream, declaring that the papers were not Christian’s, and trying to fight with him to get them back.
Suddenly Christian, who was hastily unfolding the boats to try and collect the pages of his comedy, became serious, and remained motionless. These papers, in fact, were not his, the writing was not his; and yet his name, or rather one of his names, traced by an unknown hand, had, as it were, riveted his gaze. The first sentence he read aroused his curiosity to the utmost; and this sentence, written in Italian, was as follows: “Christian del Lago is fifteen years old to-day.”