There was so much simplicity and good-humor in the old man’s laughing face and vain talk, that Cristiano in his heart accused Margaret of doing him injustice. He was an absurd and impossible lover, to be sure, but he was the best old fellow in the world, and as harmless as a child. Although one of his eyes did wander about the room in a vague and aimless sort of a way, the other one looked at his companion with such a frank and fatherly expression, that it was utterly out of the question to accuse him of ferocity.
“I am overwhelmed by your goodness, baron,” replied Cristiano, sufficiently reassured to be somewhat ironical. “I knew that you were versed in the sciences, and therefore having myself some feeble notion—”
“You wanted to ask my advice, to have the benefit of my instruction, perhaps. Ah! my dear friend, method, method in all things. But I won’t keep you standing among these frivolous people, who are coming and going; sit down, sit down. No one will disturb us; and, if you feel inclined, we will talk all night. When science is the theme, I forget all about fatigue, hunger, and sleep. You are the same, no doubt. The fact is you must be so, or not meddle with becoming learned!”
“Alas!” thought Cristiano, “I have fallen into the bottom of a well of science, and am condemned to the mines, I wager, neither more nor less than an exile of Siberia.”
This discovery was the more cruel, because Margaret had passed on, and was already at the end of the gallery, chatting with one and another of the persons who came forward to greet her, and evidently going to the ball-room, where the baron did not seem at all inclined to join her. He was seated in one of the semicircular embrasures of the gallery, near a stove, concealed by some branches of yew and ivy, which, with various hunting weapons and stuffed heads of wild animals, formed a trophy.
“I see,” said Cristiano, who would have given a great deal to avoid the proposed scientific conversation, “that you are a universal genius. Your skill in hunting is everywhere talked of, and I am surprised that you have time—”
“Why do you take me for a hunter?” replied the old man, with a look of surprise. “Oh! you suppose that I am guilty of the murder of those beasts, whose mutilated heads are hanging there, looking at us so sadly with their poor enamel eyes! You are mistaken; I never hunted in my life. I have a horror of amusements which increase the ferocity only too natural to man. It is to the study of the insensible but fruitful entrails of the globe that I have devoted myself.”
“Excuse me, baron, I thought—”
“There, again, why do you call me baron? I am nothing of the kind; although it is true that the king ennobled me and conferred on me the knighthood of the polar star, as a reward for my labors in the mines of Falun. I was professor of the school of mineralogy in that city, as of course you know, but I have no right to a title. It is quite enough for me to have some few privileges which give me a position with the haughty caste, for which, after all, I don’t care the least in the world.”
“I have made some mistake,” thought Cristiano. “Oh, then! I shall have to escape from this scientific gentleman as quickly as possible, although I seek him out again later.”