Felix resented her power. He called her affected and a mollycoddle, and teased her as only he could tease. She, on her part, had an aggravating trick of turning up her nose and appearing to look down on him, though he was a good head taller, which goaded him into tormenting her the more, and ended in her running to her father, and with streaming eyes begging that Felix might be punished.
At twelve years old, Boleslav left his birthplace. Some relations on his mother's side, belonging to the old Prussian official nobility, proposed to continue his education. His father had every reason to congratulate himself at getting rid of him. The life he had led since his wife died was scarcely of a character to bear the scrutiny of innocent, questioning, childish eyes. The Baron was in the habit of bringing back to the castle from his visits to the capital curious company, chiefly women, and many a half-opened bud, indigenous to the soil, had fallen an unwilling victim to his unbridled lust. Not that he carried on his intrigues openly and unashamed. It was simply that in his private life he refused to recognise the restraint of any moral law, and, after all, what he did was only, for the most part, what his fathers had done before him. Such amours were a part of the traditions of his house, and were not likely to excite surprise or comment, unless it were from the boy, who had occasionally been an involuntary witness of assaults on virtue and heartrending appeals for mercy.
There were many other transactions besides these going on at the castle that were not meant for his eyes. When the great Napoleon's call to arms roused that miserable cat's-paw of European ambitions, the lacerated country of Poland, from its death-throes, mysterious movements were set on foot in every quarter where the peculiar hiss of Polish speech was heard, and even extended so far as the unadulterated German regions of East Prussia.
Foreigners with slim, supple figures, and sharply-cut features used to arrive at Schranden Castle, driving through the village at express speed in small carriages, and leave again in the middle of the night. The post brought innumerable sealed packages bearing the Russian post-mark; and for weeks together the Baron's study was locked against all intruders. He himself became taciturn and pre-occupied, going about like a man in a dream, actually permitting the stripes and weals on the backs of his serfs to heal and fade away.
It was at this time that Boleslav migrated to his relations in Königsberg. Afterwards, years passed calmly away, years in which he grew in stature and developed in mind under the watchful care of the widow of a former chancellor, who stood in the place of a mother to him. All the leading families in the town opened their houses to him, and by degrees the old familiar scenes and faces of his home became little more than shadowy memories. His father's rare and hurried visits only demonstrated how estranged he had become from his son, and how little love was lost between them.
Then came that terrible winter in which the war-fury was let loose, devastating the old Prussian provinces, and the victorious march of Napoleonic cohorts resounded between the Weichsel and the Memel. Scores of provincial fugitives sought refuge from the invaders within the walls of Königsberg. Every house, from cellar to garret, was crammed with human beings, and in the streets smouldered the bivouac-fires of the soldiers who were camping out in the open air.
In the midst of war's alarms, to the accompaniment of beating of drums and bugle-blasts, it was vouchsafed to Boleslav to dream for the first time "love's young dream."
He had lately turned sixteen, and his upper lip was already shaded with a pencilled line of down. He knew Horace's odes to Chloe and Lydia by heart, and the passion which Schiller, who had recently died, had cherished for his Laura was no longer a mystery to him. One January evening on his way home from the gymnasium, as he crossed the castle square where Russian and Prussian orderlies were galloping hither and thither, he caught a glimpse of a pair of blue eyes which seemed turned on him with an expression of friendly inquiry. He blushed, but when he ventured to look round the eyes had vanished. The same thing happened again the next evening. Not till it happened a third time could he summon sufficient courage to watch more carefully and discover that the eyes belonged to a fair young face, which could boast besides a straight little nose, delicately curved lips, which naïvely smiled at him. The face reminded him of an old altar-piece in the cathedral representing the Virgin Mary standing in a garden of stiff white lilies and short-stalked crimson roses. Of something else it reminded him too, and it puzzled him to think what. He was racking his brains to remember, when a rosy glow tinged the girl's fair cheeks, and the charming lips opened.
"Boleslav!" they lisped. "Is it you?"
Now, of course, he knew.