"A comfort? The unwished-for child of a man that had blighted my life, a comfort? No, indeed, Baron. In fact, I saw very little of this daughter of mine; a young gipsy nursed her and took care of her. My own parents had taught me what love was. My husband's mother—a grand lady—thought that the Neva was the best cradle for her unborn grandchild. Besides, other work was waiting for me than nursing and rearing Anya.
"Count Yarnova one day met our band of gipsies on the road, and he stretched his ungloved hand to have his fate read and explained. My friend—no ordinary fortune-teller—was well versed in palmistry, and a most lucid thought-reader; she told him that before the year was out he would be a married man.
"'In a few days,' added she, 'on Christmas Eve, you will see your young bride in your own mirror; you will see her again after a few days, and she will tend upon you and cure you from a fever when the doctor's help will be worse than useless. As soon as you get well you will start on a journey; then you will stop for some days in two large towns, both of which begin with the same letter; there you will see again that beautiful child you saw on Christmas Eve.'
"'But when and where shall I meet her, not as a vision, but as a real person?'
"The Baron wore on the forefinger of his right hand a kind of magic ring, in which a little crystal ball was set. The gipsy lifted the Baron's hand to her eyes and looked at the crystal ball for a few seconds.
"'It is spring,' said she; 'the trees are in bloom, and Nature wears her festive garb. In a splendid saloon, where all the furniture is of gold and the walls are covered with rich silks, I see a handsome young girl dressed in spotless white, holding a guitar and singing; behind her there is a mass of flowers; around her gentlemen and ladies are listening to the sound of her sweet voice.'
"Count Yarnova was a Swedenborgian, and he not only believed in the occult art, but had dabbled himself in magic, until his rather weak mind was somewhat unhinged. He, of course, did not doubt the truth of what the gipsy had foretold him; moreover, he was right, because everything happened exactly as she had predicted.
"On Christmas Eve the Count was alone in his room sitting at a little table reading, and glancing every now and then, first at a clock, afterwards at a huge cheval-glass opposite the alcove. All the servants of the house, except his valet—a young gipsy of our band —had gone to Mass, according to the custom of the place. At half-past eleven my friends accompanied me to the Count's palace; the valet opened the door noiselessly and led me unseen, unheard, in the alcove. I was dressed in white and shrouded in a mass of silvery veils. On the stroke of twelve I appeared between the two draped columns which formed the opening of the alcove; the light hanging in the middle of the room was streaming on me, and my image, reflected in the glass, looked, in fact, like a vision. The Count, seeing it, heaved a deep breath, started to his feet, drew back, stood still for an instant, uttered an exclamation of surprise, then made a step towards the looking-glass. At that moment the valet opened the door as if in answer to his master's summons. The Count looked round, thus giving me time to slip away; when he glanced again at the mirror I had disappeared. Then the thought came to him that the image he had seen within the glass was only the reflection of some one standing in the alcove; he ordered the valet to look within the inner part of the room, and when the servant man assured him that there was nobody, he ventured to look in it himself. The valet swore that nobody had come in the house, and by the time the servants returned from midnight Mass I was already far away.
"The Count had not been well for some days, and the shock he received upset his nerves in such a way that he took to his bed with a kind of brain fever. I attended him during his illness whilst he was delirious, and when he recovered he had a slight remembrance of me, just as of a vision we happen to see in a dream. He asked if a young girl had not tended him during his illness; his valet and the other servants told him that a mysterious stranger had come to take care of him, and that she had soothed him much more by placing her hand upon his brow, than all the doctor's stuff had done; still, no one had ever seen her before, or knew where she had come from.
"As soon as the Count was strong enough to travel, he decided to go and visit some of the large towns of Europe, thus hoping to find me.