He opened his large, mournful eyes. The officers were ill at ease, then they all stretched out their hands to him and cried, "We admire you; we envy you!"
But he only turned his head away from them with a groan.
His incomparable actions during the campaign had softened the harshest of his social judges toward him. The emperor, by a proclamation, had restored to him his forfeited social rights. His father awaited him longingly, and begged him by letters to telegraph his arrival in Traunberg, so that he could personally meet him at the railway station.
But Felix dreaded the idea of being received by his father, and unannounced, in civilian clothes, he one day alighted in T----, the nearest station to Traunberg, from a third-class compartment, which he had taken so as to meet none of his acquaintances. He went on foot to the castle. He felt a kind of shyness of every tree, every stone, which formerly returning home after long absence, he had greeted joyously. The quick trot of horses' hoofs smote his ear; looking up he saw Elsa coming galloping along the park driveway toward him, at the side of his old playmate, Sempaly. Anxiously he drew back among the trees, and the two rushed past, and thought no more of the man in the plain gray coat. Silently he crept up to the castle and to his father's room. No one met him. Softly he opened the door. A thin, bowed, gray-haired man sat reading in an arm-chair. Felix took a few hesitating steps forward, he trembled throughout his entire frame. "Papa!" he stammered. One moment more and the father had clasped him in his arms. Then the old man pushed him back from him to see him more plainly. "My hero!" he cried. Felix started nervously and gazed pleadingly at his father. "You have grown gray, papa," he cried, as if startled.
"People grow old, my boy," replied the Baron, hastily smoothing his whitened hair.
"Old at forty-nine?" murmured Felix.
A quarter of an hour later, as Felix sat beside his father, answering his questions, Elsa entered. She had grown tall and slender. But that was not the only change which Felix perceived in her: she had lost her light, springing girlish step, her merry smile. A reserved sadness had drawn harsh lines about her mouth, and a deep shade darkened her eyes.
At her entrance he had risen awkwardly, and she, not seeing him distinctly, and taking him for some bailiff discussing business with her father, bowed formally.
Her father glanced impatiently at her, then he cried, in irritation and anger, "It is Felix; do you not recognize him?"
Elsa grew pale with excitement. "God greet you," said she, going quickly up to him.