He had passed through one after another of the large rooms. In some of them stood great piles of furniture which Linda had sent here.
Suddenly he found himself before a picture which hung in a dark corner, concealed by a curtain, in his father's former room. Hastily he drew back the curtain, then he clutched his temples and turned away from the painting with the short, dull groan of a dying animal. What had he seen? The portrait of an unusually handsome, merry, good-tempered young officer, who smiled at him through the twilight. Felix hurried away.
In the lofty, arched corridor, the echo doubled the sound of his footsteps. It seemed to him as if that gay comrade had stepped down from the frame, and now, relating old stories, wandered at his side. The sweat of terror was on his brow. He met a servant, and hastily commanded him to remove the picture from the green corner room. His voice was always sharp when he spoke to servants, and yet he was the best, most generous master in the world.
He entered his child's room. The French bonne laid her finger on her lips to signify to him that the child slept. He bent over the little creature, who, with one little arm under his cheek, with the other clasping a gay gilded doll to him, lay in the embroidered pillows.
Without, the lindens, sighing compassionately, shook their great black heads, the tower clock, indifferent as time which it serves, played its old piece in a flat tone, hesitating and pausing--a minuet to which the grandparents had courtesied and bowed.
Felix listened, listened, like an old man who suddenly hears once more the cradle song with which he used to be lulled to sleep.
It overcame him. He bent down deeper over his little son, and murmured softly, "Poor child, poor child!" And the words woke the child, he opened his large eyes and lisped, unabashed, "Why, poor child? Is Gery sick?"
X.
"Elsa, dear Elsa, this is lovely in you! What an surprise! I only know you from my husband's accounts, and from my wedding-day, but I shall love you frightfully, that I feel already."
Crying out these words, Linda had jumped out of the carriage with which Felix had met her at the railway station, and greeted Elsa, who, at her brother's wish, had come to Traunberg to welcome the young wife to her new home. Then leaving Elsa, Linda let her eyes wander over the façade of the castle. "Charmant! magnifique!" she cried. "A portal like a church, gray walls, cracked window-sills, balconies and volutings, small-paned old cloister windows! I am charmed, Felix--charmed! C'est tout a fait seigneurial! If you knew, Elsa, how tired I am of modern villas, stucco and plate glass. Ah, you poor, little creature! I had half forgotten you;" with this Linda bends down to her son, who had first stamped his little feet with joy and excitement at his mother's arrival, but then, ever more and more abashed by the flow of words which had carelessly been uttered over his head, with his finger in his mouth, now seemed to take a mournful pleasure in crying.