I stopped, holding my breath and shading the candle with my hand. But, as the door showed no sign of closing, I resolved to rush straight on and pretend to be deaf and blind.
But I had reckoned without my host. The door was suddenly thrown wide open, and the French spook, in a most bewitching négligée costume, stood directly before me.
"Bonsoir, Monsieur le Candidat!" I heard her whisper, and then followed a long, half tender, half reproachful speech in her Franco-German jargon, of which I only understood that she was angry with me--yes, seriously offended, because I so openly shunned her. She could bear it no longer, and desired at last to know what grudge I had against her, why I treated her like an enemy. She knew, of course, that she could bear no comparison with Fräulein Luise, to whom I had been so completely devoted. She was only a simple French girl, and had no other qualités than her good heart and her virtue. But, since I was such a chivalrous young man, and treated everybody else so kindly and politely, she must suppose that she had given me some special offense; and, if this were the case, she would gladly apologize for her fault if she could thereby put an end to the icy coldness with which I treated her.
As she spoke, the wretch gazed at me with such an humble, childlike expression in her crafty black eyes, that I, poor simpleton, completely lost countenance.
I stammered a few French phrases--I should have found it more difficult to lie in German--assured her of my profound estime, and that she had made a deplorable erreur, and, with a low bow, was hurrying away, when I felt the arm that carried the candle seized in a firm clasp.
"I thank you for those noble words," said the smooth serpent, fixing her glittering eyes so intently on my face that I could not help lowering my own like a detected criminal.
"If you knew, Monsieur Jean, how happy your sympathie, your cordial warmth makes me! Ah, mon ami, I am not what I perhaps seem to you, a superficial, selfish creature, who avails herself of her position in this house to gain some advantage. If you knew how this dependence, this forbearance humiliates me! My youth was so brilliant, so happy! If any one had told me then that I should ever enter a foreign German household--"
And she now began to relate to me in French, with incredible fluency, the romance of her life, not more than half of which could I understand. But as, spite of my inexperience, I retained a sufficient degree of calmness to believe that even this half contained far more fiction than fact, I at last, relapsing into my former incivility, showed evident signs of impatience, and was just in the act of gently shaking off the hand that still held my arm, when her eyes filled with tears as she talked of her worshiped mother, and that honorable man, her father.
"You are exciting yourself too much, mademoiselle," I said. "It is late--you must go to rest--to-morrow, if you wish--"
Meantime I glanced into her room, which looked very untidy. The bed was already opened, and on the little night-table stood a candle which illumined the picture of the Madonna on the wall and a small black crucifix beneath it.