"The servant announces that Lady Gotlinde and the gentlemen are waiting in the tea-room."
"I have still some business with his Excellency," answered the Princess, gently. "I must beg Gotlinde to take my place in entertaining our guest."
Evening had descended upon the castle-tower, the bats flew from their hiding-places in the vacant room; they whirled about in circles, astonished that they had awoke in an empty habitation. The owls flew into the crevices of the tower, and searched with their round eyes after the old arm-chairs, on which they had formerly waited for the stupid mice; and the death-watch, which the scholar had carried down from the lonely room, gnawed and ticked on the staircase and in the rooms of the castle among living men. The rain beat against the walls, and the stormy wind howled round the tower. The wife of the scholar was driving through the night, flying like a hunted hare; but he was pacing up and down his room, dreamily forming from the discovered leaves the whole lost manuscript. And again he wondered within himself that it looked quite different from what he had imagined it for years.
The wind also howled about the princely castle at the capital, and large drops of rain beat against the window; there, also, the powers of nature raged and demanded entrance into the firm fortress of man. The darkness of the night seemed to pervade the halls and the decorated rooms like gloomy smoke; only the lamps in the pleasure-grounds threw their pale light through the window, and made the desolate look of the room still more dreary. The melancholy tones of the castle clock sounded through the house, announcing that the first hour of the new day was come. Then again silence, desolate silence, everywhere; only a pale glimmer from the distance on the covers of the chandeliers and the golden ornaments of the walls. Sometimes there was a crackling in the parquet of the floor, and a draught of wind blew through an open pane upon the curtains, which hung black round the window like funeral drapery. Here and there fell a scanty ray of light on the wall, where hung the portraits of the ancestors of the princely house in the dress of their time. Many generations had dwelt in these rooms; stately men and beautiful women had danced here. Wine had been poured out in golden goblets; gracious words, festive speeches, and the soft murmur of love, had been heard here; the splendor of every former age had been outdone by the richer adornment of later ones. Now everything had vanished and withered; the darkness of night and of death hung over the bright colors. All those who had once moved about and rejoiced in the brilliant throng, had passed away into the depths. Nothing now remained of these hours but a dreary void and dismal stillness, and one single figure which glided about on the smooth floor, noiseless like a ghost. It was the lord of this castle. His head bent forward as in a dream, he passed along by the pictures of his ancestors.
"The timid doe has escaped," he whispered; "the panther made too short a spring: in rage and shame he now creeps back to his den. The powerful beast could not conceal his claws. The chase is over; it is time to set at rest the beatings of this breast. It was only a woman--a small, unknown human life. But the jade Fancy had bound my senses to her body; to her alone belonged whatever remained in me of warmth and devotion to human kind."
He stopped before a picture, on which fell the gloomy light of an expiring lamp.
"You, my steel-clad ancestor, know what the feeling is of him who flies from home and court, and has to give up to his enemy what is dear to him. When you fled from the castle of your fathers, a homeless fugitive, pursued by a pack of foreign mercenaries, there was misery in your heart, and you cast back a wild curse behind you. Still poorer does your descendant feel, who now glides fleeting through the inheritance that you have left him. To you remained hope in your hard heart; but I to-day have lost all that is worth the effort of life. She has escaped my guards. Where to? To her father's house on the rock! Cursed be the hour when I, deceived by her words, sent the boy among those mountains."
He dragged himself onward.
"The third station on the road to the end," he meditated, "is idle and empty play, and puerile tricks. So said the learned pedant. It coincides; I am transformed into a childish caricature of my nature. Miserable was the texture of the net which I drew around her; a firm will could have broken it in a moment. He was right; the game was childish: by a stroke of a quill I wished to hold him fast, and, before the art of the Magister had accomplished its purpose, I disturbed the success of the scheme by the trembling haste of my passion. When the news comes to him that his wife has fled, he also will pack up his books, and mock me at a safe distance. Bad player, who approached the gaming-table with a good method, to put piece after piece on the green cloth, and who in his madness flung down his purse and lost all in one throw. Curses upon him and me! He must not escape from me; he must not see her. Yet, what use is there in keeping him, unless I encase his limbs in iron, or conceal his body below, where we shall all be concealed when others obtain the power of doing what they will with us? You lie. Professor, when you compare me to your old Emperors. I am alarmed at the thought of things which they did laughing, and my brain refuses to think of what was once commanded by a short gesture of the hand. A ball and dice for two," he continued; "that is a merry game, invented by men of my sort; as it turns up, one falls and the other escapes. We will throw the dice. Professor, to see which of us shall do his opponent the last service; and I will greet you, dreamer, if I am the fortunate one that is carried to rest. Does thy wit, philosopher, extend far enough to see thy fate, as happened to that old astrologer, of whom thy Tiberius inquired about his own future? Let us try how wise you are."