[CHAPTER XXVII.]
BARON FRANZ.
Every year, towards the end of August, Baron Franz Leskjewitsch, the family scarecrow and Crœsus, was wont to appear at his estate, Vorhabshen, near Zirkow, to learn the condition of the harvest, to spend a few days in hunting, and to abuse everything and everybody before, at the end of a couple of weeks, vanishing as suddenly as he had appeared.
On these occasions he avoided his brother Paul with evident determination. If any of the family were at Komaritz, he invited them to dinner once or twice, at such times taking pains to make himself particularly offensive to Heda, whom he could not endure.
He had never spent any length of time at Vorhabshen since the family quarrel, and in consequence the dwelling-house, or castle, upon which, miser that he was, he never would spend a penny for repairs, had come to be tumble-down and sordid in appearance, both inside and out. It was a huge structure, with numerous windows, in which many of the sashes were sprung and some destitute of panes, never having been reglazed since the last hail-storm had worked ruin among them.
Among the family portraits, which hung in a dark, oak-wainscoted gallery, the pigeons built their nests.
Like many another Bohemian castle, the mansion at Vorhabshen was built close to the farm-yard, and its front faced an immense, light-brown manure-heap.
The inmates of this unpicturesque ruin--whose duty it was to keep it ready for its master's brief visits--were, first, the housekeeper, Lotta Papoushek; then the Baron's court-fool, the former brewer Studnecka, who at times imagined himself the prophet Elisha, and at other times a great musical genius; then the superintendent, with his underlings; and finally, any young man who might be tempted to come hither to study modern agriculture, and whose studies were generally confined to allowing himself to be pampered by the housekeeper Lotta, who had all the admiration of her class for courteous young people.
Frau Lotta had been in the Baron's service for more than forty years. Her large face was red, dotted with brown warts, and her features were hard and masculine. Although she certainly was far from attractive in appearance, there was a report that she had once been handsome, and that Baron Franz, when he received the news of his son's marriage with Marie Duval, had exclaimed, "I'll marry my housekeeper! I'll marry Lotta!" How this would have aided to re-establish the family prestige it is difficult to say, and it is doubtful whether the speech was made; but twenty years afterwards Lotta used to tell of it, and of how she had replied, "That would be too nonsensical, Herr Baron!" Notwithstanding her peculiarities and her overweening self-conceit, she was a thoroughly good creature, and devoted heart and soul to the Leskjewitsch family. Her absolute honesty induced the Baron to make her authority at Vorhabshen paramount, to the annoyance of the superintendent and his men.
It was a clear afternoon,--the 1st of September; the steam thresher was at work in the farm-yard, and its dreary puffing and groaning were audible in Lotta's small sitting-room, on the ground-floor of the mansion, where she was refreshing herself with a cup of coffee, having invited the student of agriculture--a young Herr von Kraschinsky--to share her nectar.