"You cannot accomplish this with Freyer, Countess, he would have been a rich man long ago, if he had been willing to accept anything. What do you imagine he has had offered by ladies who, from sacred and selfish motives, under the influence of his personation of the Christ, were ready to make any sacrifice? If ever poverty was an honor to a man, it is to Freyer, for he might have been in very different circumstances and instead is content with the little property received from his father, a bit of woodland, a field, and a miserable little hut. To keep the nobility and freedom of his soul, he toils like a servant and cares for house, field, and wood with his own hands."
"Just see him now, Countess," he added, "You have never beheld any man look more aristocratic while at work than he, though he only wields a scythe."
"You are a loyal friend, Ludwig Gross," she answered. "And an eloquent advocate! Come, take me to him."
She hurried into the house, returning with a broad-brimmed hat on her head, which made her face look as blooming and youthful as a girl's. Long undressed kid gloves covered her arms under the half flowing sleeves of her gown, and she carried over her shoulder a scarlet sunshade which surrounded her whole figure with a roseate glow. There was a warmth, a tempting charm in her appearance like the velvety bloom of a ripe peach. Ludwig Gross gazed at her in wonder.
"You are--fatally beautiful!" he involuntarily exclaimed, shaking his head mournfully, as we do when we see some inevitable disaster approaching a friend. "No one ought to be so beautiful," he added, disapprovingly.
Madeleine von Wildenau laughed merrily. "Oh! you comical friend, who offers with so sour a visage the most flattering compliments possible. Our young society men might take lessons from you! Pardon me for laughing," she said apologetically, as Ludwig's face darkened. "But it came so unexpectedly, I was not prepared for such a compliment here," and in spite of herself, she laughed again, the compliment was too irresistible.
Her companion was deeply offended. He saw in this outbreak of mirth a levity which outraged his holiest feelings. These were "the graceful oscillations from one mood to another," as he had termed it that day, which he had so dreaded for his friend, and which now perplexed his own judgment!
A moment was sufficient to reveal this to the countess, in the next she had regained her self-control and with it the power of adapting herself to the earnestness of her friend's mood.
He was walking silently at her side with a heavy heart. There had been something in that laugh which he could not fathom, readily as he grasped any touch of humor. To the earnest woman he had seen that morning, he would have confided his friend in the belief that he was fulfilling a lofty destiny; to the laughing, coquettish woman of the world, he grudged him; Joseph Freyer was far too good for such a fate.
They had walked on, each absorbed in thought, leaving the village behind, into the open country. Few people were at work, for during the Passion there is rarely time to till the fields.