His heart was heavy and his conscience ill at ease. The grand, serene glance of Wanda von Szalras seemed to have reached his soul and called up in him unavailing regrets, pangs of doubt long dormant, vague remorse long put to sleep with the opiate of the world-taught cynicism, which had become his second nature. The most impenetrable cynicism will yield and melt, and seem but a poor armour, when it is brought amidst the solemnity and solitude of the high hills.
[CHAPTER V.]
A few days later there arrived by post the 'Spiritù Santo' of Mexico, addressed to the Professor Joachim Greswold.
If he had received the order of the Saint Esprit he would not have been more honoured, more enchanted; and he was deeply touched by the remembrance of him testified by the gift whose donor he supposed was back in the gay world of men, not knowing the spell which the snow mountains of the Tauern had cast on a worldly soul. When he was admitted to the presence of the Princess Ottilie to consult with her on her various ailments, she conversed with him of this passer-by who had so fascinated her fancy, and she even went so far as to permit him to bring her the great volumes of the "Mexico" out of the library, and point her out those chapters which he considered most likely to interest her.
'It is the work of a true Catholic and gentleman,' she said with satisfaction, and perused with special commendation the passages which treated of the noble conduct of the Catholic priesthood in those regions, their frequent martyrdom and their devoted self-negation. When she had thoroughly identified their late guest with the editor of these goodly and blameless volumes, she was content to declare that better credentials no man could bear. Indeed she talked so continually of this single point of interest in her monotonous routine of life, that her niece said to her, with a jest that was more than half earnest, 'Dearest mother, almost you make me regret that this gentleman did not break his neck over the Engelhorn, or sink with his rifle in the Szalrassee.'
'The spinet would never have spoken,' said the Princess; 'and I am surprised that a Christian woman can say such things, even in joke!'
The weather cleared, the sun shone, the gardens began to grow gorgeous, and great parterres of roses glowed between the emerald of the velvet lawns: an Austrian garden has not a long life, but it has a very brilliant one. All on a sudden, as the rains ceased, every alley, group, and terrace were filled with every variety of blossom, and the flora of Africa and India was planted out side by side with the gentians and the alpine roses natural to the soil. All the northern coniferæ spread the deep green of their branches above the turf, and the larch, the birch, the beech, and the oak were massed in clusters, or spread away in long avenues—deep defiles of foliage through which the water of the lake far down below glistened like a jewel.
'If your friend had been a fortnight later he would have seen Hohenszalras in all its beauty,' said its mistress once to the Princess Ottilie. 'It has two seasons of perfection: one its midsummer flowering, and the other when all the world is frozen round it.'
The Princess shivered in retrospect and in anticipation. She hated winter. 'I should never live through another winter,' she said with a sigh.