The snow man

by George Sand

“Remain where you are, M. Stenson,” said the minister to the old man, who wanted to go up to Christian; “a resemblance, however striking, is not a sure indication, for it may be the result of chance. The facts advanced by you in the document that has just been read must be established.”

“That can easily be done,” said Stenson. “M. Goefle has only to read the paper which I confided to him yesterday. The identity between Christian Goffredi and Christian de Waldemora can then be established by means of the letters from Manasses, which I also placed in his hands this very day.”

“I took a solemn oath,” said M. Goefle, “not to open this paper until after the baron’s death. I opened it two hours ago, and these are the few words that it contains:

“‘Examine the wall behind the portrait of Baroness Hilda, at Stollborg, to the right of the window of the bear-room.’

“Ah! ah!” whispered the major to M. Goefle, while the minister caused the portrait to be taken down, and proceeded, under Stenson’s direction, to open the secret aperture behind it; “I had supposed that the proof would be found in the walled-up room.”

“No, God be praised!” replied the lawyer, in the same tone; “for it would have been seen, in that case, that we had been there beforehand, and we might have been accused of having placed false proofs there ourselves. Now, thanks to the great maps that have been put back into their places, no one here has heeded or remarked the breach in the wall. It was because I looked into Stenson’s mysterious warning at the new chateau, that I advised you to bring a great many witnesses here without fear.”

When the hiding-place had been opened, the minister took out, with his own hands, a metal casket, in which was found a decisive document, which he read aloud.

This document had been written by the Baroness Hilda, and was a clear and detailed account of the sad days that she had passed at Stollborg in the custody of the odious Johan, and of the persecutions that she had undergone, together with her faithful friends and servants, Adam Stenson and Karine Bœtsoi.

The unhappy widow declared, and took her oath “upon her eternal salvation, and upon the soul of her husband and of her first child, both of them assassinated by the order of a man whom she did not wish to name, but whose crimes would some day be known,” that she had given birth to a second son, fruit of her legitimate union with the Baron Adelstan de Waldemora, on the eighteenth of September, 1746, at two o’clock in the morning, in the bear-room, at Stollborg. She related, in a manner at the same time modest and dramatic, with what courage she had repressed her cries, so that the suspicions of the jailers, who were installed close by her in the chamber called the guard-room, should not be aroused. Karine had assisted her in her time of trial, and had sung constantly, to keep the feeble wailing of the new-born infant from being heard. Stenson did not quit the room during the birth of the child, and immediately afterwards he had tried to carry it off by the secret door, but the existence of this door had become known to the jailers, and, to his dismay, he had found it fastened on the outside, and guarded. On the failure of his first attempt, Stenson made some excuse for going out—it was not thought necessary to keep him a prisoner, but he was always strictly searched whenever he left the tower—and went in search of a boat, which, under cover of the darkness, he succeeded in introducing into the passages between the rocks and boulders of the lake, when Karine, who had prepared a basket and cord for the purpose, let down the child to him from the window. All this took some time, and day was beginning to appear. The window of the guard-room opened at the very moment when Stenson received the child into his trembling hands. Fortunately he was protected by the vault of overhanging rocks, and had been able to keep hidden until the men above withdrew, whereupon, with many prayers to God, he had crossed the short space between the lake and the shore behind the gaard.

The romance that Christian had imagined, on exploring this strange site, had therefore reproduced, in some respects, the facts of his own history.