I was strolling about the fields with my gun on my shoulder, when a pet pigeon of Katherine's whirred past me, pursued by a hawk. I fired at the bird of prey, which dropped in an adjoining meadow. Springing across the intervening hedge, I found myself in the presence of a group of mounted sportsmen and their attendants. One of the horsemen was examining the dead hawk; his attention was directed toward me by a retainer, in whose brawny proportions, husky voice, and ferocious mustaches, I recognized my adversary, Ludolf.
My gun was demanded, in the name of Count Rainer: I refused to surrender it. The party formed a circle around, pinioned me, and wrested it from me, ere I could attempt resistance. “Mr. Steward,” said the count, “you may now acquaint your friend with the consequences of destroying a nobleman's falcon.”
The ready villain and his servile followers dragged me to the earth; they profaned my person by stripes. When they left me in my abasement, the air felt pestilent with their brutal laughter.
I lay with my face to the greensward long after their departure. My brain was eddying in a hell-whirl. I could have welcomed the return of chaos, that the circumstance of my shame might be obliterated in the clash of contending elements. Had the sun been blotted from the heavens, and the summer earth turned to blackness and desolation, I should have thought them fit and natural occurrences. I raised my burning brow; but the orb of day was riding high in his glory, and the meadow-grass and wild flowers were fresh and fragrant as if they had not witnessed the act of degradation. I discovered that a stranger had been regarding me with a vigilant eye. I confronted him, and darted at him a devouring [pg 467] glance; his firm, contemplative look remained unaltered. Placing a hand on my shoulder, he said, “Albert Reding, consider me your friend.”
“I know you not,” I answered, “nor care to know you.” He smiled benevolently:
“Young man, I am no Austrian. I shall be with you to-morrow.”
IV.
The stranger kept his word: on the ensuing day he came to our dwelling. Making, he said, a tour through the north of Italy, the picturesque scenery tempted him to prolong his sojourn at St. Michael. In his excursions, he had chanced to hold random converse with my father, whom he professed to value as the worthy descendant of an independent and intelligent people.
I had forborne to grieve my family by the story of my disgrace, nor had it yet been detailed to them by the officious communicativeness of pretended friends. Our visitor made no allusion to it, but expatiated very agreeably on topics of general interest. He described the passes of the Alps with the accuracy of a mountaineer, and displayed an intimacy with the localities of the cantons that filled my parents with pleasure and surprise. In pursuit of knowledge he had traversed the most remarkable sections of the globe; and his observations, affluent in instruction, proved that his wanderings had been of a different order from the capricious migrations of sight-seeking wealth.
The warmth with which I seconded some of his sentiments appeared to please him. He complimented my father on my education; adding, that the judgment with which I developed its resources designated me for a wider sphere of action than belonged to a tiller of the soil of Lombardy. I had been vain enough to entertain the same opinion; and its confirmation by a competent authority was balm to my spirit. Gladly I acceded to his request, of guiding him to the Baron's Font, a romantic cascade, where, to use his own language, he sighed to offer allegiance to Nature.