I have never attempted to conceal from myself or to deny the fact that I am vain.
Ah, how merrily we bowled along over the white, dusty road! The ponies' hoofs hardly touched the ground. After a while the road grew bad, and we drove more slowly. Then we turned into a rough path between high banks. What a road! Deep as a chasm; the wheels of the vehicle jolted right and left through ruts overgrown with thistles, brambles, and wild roses.
"Suppose we should meet another carriage?" I asked my uncle, anxiously.
"Just what I was asking myself," he replied, composedly; "there is really no room for passing. But why not trust in Providence?"
The road grows worse, but now, instead of passing through a chasm, it runs along the edge of a precipice. The dog-cart leans so far to one side that the groom gets out to steady it. The wheels grate against the stones, and the ponies shake their shaggy heads discontentedly, as much as to say, "We were not made for such work as this."
In after-years, when so bad a road in the midst of one of the most civilized provinces of Austria seemed to me inexplicable, Uncle Paul explained it to me. At one time in his remembrance the authorities decided to lay out a fine road there, but Uncle Karl contrived to frustrate their purpose; he did not wish to have Komaritz too accessible--for fear of guests.
A delicious pungent fragrance is wafted from the vine-leaves in the vineyards on the sides of the hills, flocks of white and yellow butterflies hover above them, the grasshoppers chirp shrilly, and from the distance comes the monotonous sound of the sweep of the mower's scythe. The sun is burning hot, and the shadows are short and coal-black.
Click-clack--click-clack--precipice and ravine lie behind us, and we are careering along a delightful road shaded by huge walnut-trees.
A brown, shapeless ruin crowning a vine-clad eminence rises before us. Click-clack--click-clack--the ponies fly past a marble St. John, around which are grouped three giant lindens, whose branches scatter fading blossoms upon us; past a smithy, from which issues a strong odour of wagon-grease and burnt hoofs; past a slaughter-house, in front of which a butchered ox is hanging from a chestnut-tree; past pretty whitewashed cottages, some of them two stories high and with flower-gardens in front,--Komaritz is a far more important and prosperous village than Zirkow; then through a lofty but perilously ruinous archway into a spacious, steeply-ascending court-yard, through the entire length of which runs a broad gutter. Yes, yes, it was there--in that court-yard--that I saw him for the first time, and he was riding upon a pig, holding fast by its ears, and the animal, galloping furiously, was doing its best to throw him off. But this was no easy matter, for he sat as if he were part of his steed, and withal maintained a loftiness of bearing that would have done honour to a Spanish grandee at a coronation. He was very handsome, very slender, very brown, and wore a white suit, the right sleeve of which was spotted with ink.
In front of the castle, at a wooden table fastened to the ground beneath an old pear-tree, sat a yellow-haired young man, with a bloated face and fat hands, watching the spectacle calmly and drinking beer from a stone mug with a leaden cover.