Chapter II: The Contents of the Manuscript (3)

The only amusement that varied the monotony of our existence was a letter at long intervals from Harry. For a time he was stationed in Salzburg; for a year he has been in garrison in Vienna, where, of course, he is absorbed in the whirl of Viennese society. I must confess that it did not greatly please me when I first learned that he had entered upon that brilliant worldly scene: will he not come to be like Hedwig? My uncle declares that the world is the hot-bed of envy and vanity; and yet there must be natures upon which poisonous atmospheres produce no effect, just as there are men who can breathe with impunity the air of the Pontine marshes; and Harry's nature is one of these. At least so it would seem from his letters, they are so cordial and simple, such warm affection speaks in every line. A little while ago he sent me his photograph. I liked it extremely, but I did not say so; all the more loudly, however, did my uncle express his admiration. He offered to wager that Harry is the handsomest officer in the entire army, and he shouted loudly for Krupitschka, to show him the picture.

Harry told us one interesting piece of news,--I forget whether it was this winter or the last; perhaps it was still longer ago, for Harry was stationed in Enns at the time, and the news related to our old friend Treurenberg.

He had married a girl in the world of trade,--a Fraeulein Selina von Harfink. Harry, whom Lato had bidden to his marriage, and who had gone for old friendship's sake from Enns to Vienna to be the escort in the church of the first of the eight bridesmaids, made very merry in his letter over the festivity.

We were all intensely surprised; we had not heard a word of Lato's betrothal, and the day after Harry's letter came the announcement of the marriage.

Uncle Paul, who takes most of the events of life very philosophically, grew quite angry on learning of this marriage.

Since Lato has married for money, he cares nothing more for him.

"I should not care if he had made a fool of himself and married an actress," he exclaimed, over and over again, "but to sell himself--ugh!"

When I suggested, "Perhaps he fell in love with Selina," my uncle shrugged his shoulders, and seemed to consider any such possibility entirely out of the question.

We talked for two weeks at Zirkow about Lato Treurenberg's marriage.

Now we have almost forgotten it. Since Lato has been married he has been quite estranged from his former associations.

To-day is my birthday. I am nineteen years old. How kind my uncle and aunt are to me! How they try to give me pleasure! My heap of presents was really grand. Arrayed about my cake, with its lighted candles, I found two new gowns, a hat which Heda had purchased for me in Prague,--and which, by the way, would be highly appreciated upon the head of a monkey in a circus,--several volumes of English literature sent me by Miss O'Donnel from Italy, and, in a white silk sachet upon which Mimi Zett had embroidered a bird of paradise in the midst of a snow-scene (a symbol of my melancholy condition), a card, upon which was written, "A visit to some watering-place, by the way of Vienna and Paris." I uttered a shriek of delight and threw my arms around my uncle's neck.

The three young girls from Komaritz came over to Zirkow to dine, in honour of the occasion; we drank one another's health in champagne, and in the afternoon we had coffee in the woods, which was very inconvenient but very delightful. Then we consulted the cards as to our future, and Heda lost her temper because the oracle declared that she would marry an apothecary.

What nonsense it was! The cards prophesied to me that I should marry for love;--I! As if I should think of such a thing! But I was not in the least vexed, although I knew how false it was.

Towards eight o'clock the girls drove home, and I concluded the evening by taking my new bonnet to pieces and then scribbling here at my writing-table. I cannot make up my mind to go to bed. I am fairly tingling to my finger-tips with delightful anticipations. To think of seeing Paris once more,--Paris, where I was born, the very centre of the civilized world! Oh, it is too charming!

Something extraordinary will happen during this trip,--I am sure of it. I shall meet some one who will liberate me from my solitude and set me upon the pedestal for which I long; an English peer, perhaps, or a Russian prince, oh, it will of course be a Russian prince--who spends most of his time in Paris. I shall not mind his not being very young. Elderly men are more easily managed.----

(At this point the major frowns. "I should not have thought it of her, I really should not have thought it of her. Well, we shall see whether she is in earnest." And he goes on with his reading.)

June 10, ----.

I have a piece of news to put down. The Frau von Harfink who bought Dobrotschau a while ago--the estate that adjoins Zirkow, a fine property with a grand castle but poor soil--is no other than Lato Treurenberg's mother-in-law. She called upon us to-day. When Krupitschka brought the cards of the Baroness Melanie von Harfink and her daughter Paula, Aunt Rosa denounced the visit as a presumption upon the part of the ladies. She had been engaged all day long in setting the house "to rights," preparatory to our departure, and had on a very old gown in which she does not often appear; wherefore she would fain have denied herself. But I was burning with curiosity to see Lato's mother-in-law: so I remarked, "Uncle Paul and I will go and receive the ladies, while you dress."

This made my aunt very angry. "It never would occur to me to dress for these wealthy _parvenues_. This gown is quite good enough for them." And she smoothed the faded folds of her skirt so that a neatly-darned spot was distinctly conspicuous. The ladies were immediately shown in; they were extremely courteous and amiable, but they found no favour in my aunt's eyes.

There really was no objection to make to Mamma von Harfink, who is still a very handsome woman, except that her manner was rather affected. The daughter, however, was open to criticism of various kinds, and subsequently became the subject of a serious dispute between my aunt and uncle. My aunt called Fraeulein Paula disagreeable, absolutely hideous, and vulgar; whereupon my uncle, slowly shaking his head, rejoined,----

"Say what you please, she may not be agreeable, but she is very pretty."

Upon this my aunt grew angry, and called Fraeulein Paula a "red-haired kitchen-maid." My uncle shrugged his shoulders, and observed, "Nevertheless, there have been kitchen-maids who were not ugly."

Then my aunt declared, "I can see nothing pretty about such fat creatures; but, according to her mother's account, you are not alone in your admiration. Madame Harfink had hardly been here five minutes when she informed me that Professor X----, of Vienna, had declared that her daughter reminded him of Titian's penitent Magdalen in the Borghese Gallery in Rome, and she asked me whether I was not struck with the resemblance."

My uncle grinned--I could not see at what and said, "H'm! the Magdalen, perhaps; but whether penitent or not----" and he pinched my cheek.

The dispute continued for a while longer, and ended with my aunt's emphatic declaration that men always had the worst possible taste with regard to young girls. My uncle burst into a laugh at this, and replied, "True. I gave proof of it on the 21st of May, 1858." It was his marriage-day.

Of course my aunt laughed, and the quarrel ended. The subject was changed, and we discussed Lato Treurenberg's marriage, which had puzzled us all. My aunt declared that since she had seen the family Treurenberg's choice appeared to her more incomprehensible than ever.

My uncle shook his head sagely, and observed, "If Selina Treurenberg at all resembles her sister, it explains much to me, especially when I recall the poor fellow's peculiarities. It makes me more lenient towards him, and--I pity him from my heart." They evidently did not wish to say anything more upon the subject before me.

June 20.

This afternoon we start. I am in a fever of anticipation. How delightful! I seem to have come to the turning-point of my existence. Something wonderful is surely going to happen.

Meanwhile, I take my leave of my little book,--I shall have no time to write in it while we are away.

July 30.

Here we are back again in the old nest! Nothing either wonderful or even extraordinary happened upon the journey; on the contrary, everything was quite commonplace. I did not meet the Russian prince, but I have brought home with me a conviction of the beauty and delights of the world, and the certainty that, if fate would only grant me the opportunity, I could play a most brilliant part in it. But my destiny has nothing of the kind to offer.

I am restless and discontented, and I have great trouble in concealing my mood from my uncle and aunt. I am likewise disgusted with my ingratitude. I know that the expenses of our trip weighed heavily upon my uncle. He has bought himself no new horses, although the old ones are lame in all four legs; and my aunt has given up her pilgrimage to Bayreuth, that I might go to the baths. She expected so much for me from this trip, and now----

Still, prosaic and commonplace as it all was, I will put it down here conscientiously in detail. Various pleasant little circumstances may recur to me as I write which have escaped me in my general discontent that has tinged everything.

Our few days in Vienna were the pleasantest part of the entire trip, little as I liked the city at first.

We arrived at ten in the evening, rather exhausted by the heat, and of course we expected to see Harry at the railroad-station, my uncle having advised him of our arrival. But in vain did we peer in every direction, or rather in vain did Aunt Rosamunda thus peer (for I did nothing of the kind); there was no Harry to be seen.

While my aunt loudly expressed her wonder at his non-appearance, I never uttered a word, but was secretly all the more vexed at what seemed to me Harry's laziness and want of consideration. Of course, I attributed his absence to the fact that a young man who passed his time in flying from one fete to another in the world (which I was not to know) could hardly be very anxious to meet a couple of relatives from the country. Perhaps he had come to be just like Heda, and I shrugged my shoulders indifferently at the thought. What could it possibly matter to me? Meanwhile, my aunt had given our luggage-tickets to a porter and got with me into an open carriage, where we quietly and wearily awaited our trunks.

Around us the lights flickered in the warm, dim, night air, which was almost as close as an in-door atmosphere, and smelled most unpleasantly of dust, dried leaves, and all sorts of exhalations. On every hand crowded houses of indescribable clumsiness and ugliness; I was depressed by the mere eight of them, and suddenly experienced the most painful sensation of shrivelling up. The deafening noise and bustle were in harmony with the houses: I never had heard anything like it. Everybody jostled everybody else, all were in a hurry, and no one paid the slightest regard to anybody. It seemed as if they were one and all bound for some great entertainment and feared to be too late.

At the hotel the reason for Harry's absence was explained. We found two beautiful bunches of roses in our rooms, and a note, as follows:

"I am more sorry than I can tell, not to be able to welcome you at the station. I am, unfortunately, on duty at a garden-party at the Archduke S----'s.... I shall report myself to you, however, at the earliest opportunity.

"Harry."

I supped with a relish, and slept soundly.

My aunt had breakfasted in our sitting-room and was reading the paper, when I had scarcely begun to dress. I was just about to brush my hair,--I have very long hair, and it is quite pretty, light brown with a dash of gold,--in fact, I was standing before the mirror in my white peignoir, with my hair hanging soft and curling all around me, very well pleased with my reflection in the glass, when suddenly I heard the jingling of spurs and sabre, and a voice which was familiar and yet unfamiliar. I trembled from head to foot.

"Zdena, hurry, and come!" called my aunt. "Here is a visitor!"

I knew well enough who it was, but, as if I did not know, I opened the door, showed myself for a moment in my white wrapper and long, loose hair,--only for a moment,--and then hastily retreated.

"Come just as you are. 'Tis only Harry; it is not as if it were a stranger. Come!" called my aunt.

But I was not to be persuaded. Not for worlds would I have had Harry suspect that--that--well, that I was in any great hurry to see him.

I dressed my hair with the most scrupulous care. Not before twenty minutes had passed did I go into the next room.

How plainly I see it all before me now,--the room, half drawing-room, half dressing-room; a trunk in one corner, in another an old piano, the key of which we were obliged to procure from the kellner; in an arm-chair a bundle of shawls, over the back of a sofa our travelling-wraps, our well-polished boots in front of the porcelain stove, great patches of misty sunshine lying everywhere, the breakfast-table temptingly spread near the window, and there, opposite my aunt, his sabre between his knees, tall, slender, very brown, very handsome, an officer of hussars,--Harry.

I like him, and am a little afraid of him. He suddenly springs up and advances a step or two towards me. His eyes--the same eyes that had glanced at me as I appeared in my wrapper--open wide in amazement; his gaze is riveted upon my face. All my fear has gone; yes, I confess it to this paper,--I am possessed by an exultant consciousness of power. He is only my cousin, 'tis true, but he is the first man upon whom I have been able to prove my powers of conquest.

I put my hands in his, so cordially extended, but when he stooped as if to kiss me, I shook my head, laughing, and said, "I am too old for that."

He yielded without a word, only touching my hand respectfully with his lips and then releasing me; whereupon I went directly to the breakfast-table. But, as he still continued to gaze at me, I asked, easily,----

"What is it, Harry? Is my hair coming down?"

He shook his head, and said, in some confusion, "Not at all. I was only wondering what you had done with all your magnificent hair!"

I made no reply, but applied myself to my breakfast.

It was really delightful, our short stay in Vienna. Harry was with us all the while. He went about with us from morning till night; patiently dragged with us to shops, picture-galleries, and cathedrals, and to the dusty, sunny Prater, where the vegetation along the drive seemed to have grown shabby. We drove together to Schoenbrunn, the huge, dreamy, imperial summer residence, and wandered about the leafy avenues there. We fed the swans; we fed the monkeys and the bears, while my aunt rested near by, Baedeker in hand, upon any bench she could find. She rested a great deal, and grew more tired with every day of our stay in Vienna, and with very good reason; she can hardly endure the pavement in walking, and she refuses, from fastidiousness, to take advantage of the tramway, and, from economy, to hire a carriage.

The sunset has kindled flames in all the windows of the castle, and we are still wandering in the green avenues, talking of all sorts of things, music, and literature. Harry's taste is classic; mine is somewhat revolutionary. I talk more than he; he listens. Sometimes he throws in a word in the midst of my nonsense; at other times he laughs heartily at my paradoxes, and then again he suddenly looks askance at me and says nothing. Then I become aware that he understands far more than I of the matter in hand, and I fall silent.

The sun has set; the rosy reflection on the grass and at the foot of the old trees has faded; there is only a pale, gray gleam on the castle windows. All nature seems to sigh relieved. A cool mist rises from the basins of the fountains, like the caress of a water-nymph; the roses, petunias, and mignonette exhale delicious fragrance, which rises as incense to heaven; the lisp of the leaves and the plash of the fountain interpose a dreamy veil of sound, as it were, between us and some aggressive military music in the distance.

The twilight falls; the nurses are all taking their charges home. Here and there on the benches a soldier and a nursemaid are sitting together. It is too dark to see to read Baedeker any longer. My aunt calls to us: "Do come, children; the carriage has been waiting ever so long, and I am very hungry."

And the time had seemed so short to me. My aunt is so easily fatigued, and her aversion to tramways is so insurmountable, that she stays at home half the time in the hotel, and I make many a little expedition with Harry alone. Then I take his arm. We stroll through the old part of the city, with its sculptured monuments, its beautiful gray palaces standing side by side with the commonest lodging-houses; about us people are thronging and pushing; we are in no hurry; we should like to have time stand still,--Harry and I; we walk very slowly. I am so content, so filled with a sense of protection, when I am with him thus. It is delightful to cling to him in the crowd.

It seems to me that I should like to spend my life in slowly wandering thus in the cool of the evening through the streets, where the lights are just beginning to be lighted, where a pair of large, kindly eyes rest upon my face, and the sound of distant military music is in my ears.

The last evening before our departure arrived. We were sitting in our small drawing-room, and Harry and I were drinking iced coffee. My aunt had left hers untouched; the fever of travelling was upon her; she wandered from one room to another, opening trunks, drawers, and wardrobes, and casting suspicious glances under the piano and the sofas, sure that something would be left behind.

The kellner brought in two cards,--Countess Zriny and Fraeulein Tschaky,--a cousin of Uncle Paul's, with her companion.

We had called upon the Countess the day before, and had rejoiced to find her not at home. My aunt now elevated her eyebrows, and murmured, plaintively, "It can't be helped!"

Then she hurriedly carried two bundles of shawls and a hand-bag into the next room, and the ladies were shown in.

Countess Zriny is a very stout, awkward old maid, with the figure of a meal-sack and the face of a portly abbot. Harry maintains that she has holy water instead of blood in her veins, and that she has for ten years lived exclusively upon Eau de Lourdes and Count Mattei's miraculous pills. It is odd that she should have grown so stout upon such a diet.

There is nothing to say of Fraeulein Tschaky.

Aunt Rosamunda received the ladies with a majestic affability peculiarly her own, and presented me as "Our child,--Fritz's daughter!"

The Countess gave me her hand, a round, fat little hand that felt as if her Swedish glove were stuffed with wadding, then put up her eyeglass and gazed at me, lifting her eyebrows the while.

"All her father!" she murmured,--"especially her profile." Then she dropped her eyeglass, sighed, "Poor Fritz! poor Fritz!" seated herself on the sofa with my aunt, and began to whisper to her, looking steadily at me all the while.

The sensitive irritability of my nature was at once aflame. If she had pitied my father only for being snatched away so early in his fair young life, for being torn so suddenly from those whom he loved! But this was not the case. She pitied him solely because he had married my mother. Oh, I knew it perfectly well; and she was whispering about it to my aunt before me,--she could not even wait until I should be away. I could hear almost every word.

My heart suddenly grew heavy,--so heavy with the old grief that I would fain forget, that I could hardly bear it. But even in the midst of my pain I observed that Harry was aware of my suffering and shared it.

Of course my cousin Zriny--for she is my cousin, after all--was otherwise extremely amiable to me. She turned from her mysterious conversation with Aunt Rosamunda, and addressed a couple of questions to me. She asked whether I liked country life, and when I replied, curtly, "I know no other," she laughed good-humouredly, just as some contented old monk might laugh,--a laugh that seemed to shake her fat sides and double chin, as she said, "_Elle a de l'esprit, la petite; elle n'est pas du tout banale_."

How she arrived at that conclusion from my brief reply, I am unable to say.

After a quarter of an hour she rose, took both my hands in hers by way of farewell, put her head on one side, sighed, "Poor Fritz!" and then kissed me.

When the door had closed behind her, my aunt betook herself to the next room to make ready for a projected evening walk.

I was left alone with Harry. As I could not restrain my tears, and did not know how else to conceal them, I turned my back to him and pretended to arrange my hair at the pier-glass, before which stood a vase filled with the La France roses that he had brought me the day before.

It was a silly thing to do. He looked over my shoulder and saw in the mirror the tears on my cheeks, and then--he put his arm around my waist and whispered, "You poor little goose! You sensitive little thing! Why should you grieve because a kindhearted, weak-minded old woman was silly?"

Then I could not help sobbing outright, crying, "Ah, it is always the same,--I know it! I am not like the other girls in your world. People despise me, and my poor mother too."

"But this is childish," he said, gravely,--"childish and foolish. No one despises you. And--don't scratch my eyes out, Zdena--it is not your heart, merely, that is wounded at present, but your vanity, the vanity of an inexperienced little girl who knows nothing of the world or of the people in it. If you had knocked about in it somewhat, you would know how little it signifies if people in general wink and nod, and that the only thing really to care for is, to be understood and loved by those to whom we cling with affection."

He said this more gently and kindly than I can write it. He suddenly seemed very far above me in his earnest kindness of heart and his sweet reasonableness. I was instantly possessed with a feeling akin to remorse and shame, to think how I had teased him and tyrannized over him all through those last few days. And I cannot tell how it happened, but he clasped me close in his arms and bent down and kissed me on the lips,--and I let him do it! Ah, such a thrill passed through me! And I felt sheltered and cared for as I had not done since my mother's clasping arms had been about me. I was for the moment above all petty annoyances,--borne aloft by a power I could not withstand.

It lasted but a moment, for we were startled by the silken rustle of my aunt's gown, and did he release me? did I leave him? I do not know; but when Aunt Rosamunda appeared I was adjusting a rose in my breast, and Harry was--looking for his sabre!----. (When the major reached this point, he stamped on the floor with delight.)

"Aha, Rosel, which of us was right?" he exclaimed aloud. He would have liked to summon his wife from where he could see her walking in the garden, to impart to her his glorious discovery. On reflection, however, he decided not to do so, chiefly because there was a good deal of manuscript still unread, and he was in a hurry to continue the perusal of what interested him so intensely.)

----I avoided being alone with Harry all the rest of the evening, but the next morning at the railway-station, while my aunt was nervously counting over the pieces of luggage for the ninety-ninth time, I could not prevent his leaning towards me and saying, "Zdena, we were so unfortunately interrupted last evening. You have not yet told me--that----"

I felt myself grow scarlet. "Wait for a while!" I murmured, turning my head away from him, but I think that perhaps--I pressed his hand----

I must have done so, for happier eyes than those which looked after our train as it sped away I have never seen. Ah, how silly I had been! I carried with me for the rest of the journey a decided regret.----

(The major frowned darkly. "Why, this looks as if she would like to withdraw her promise! But let me see, there really has no promise passed between them."

He glanced hurriedly over the following leaves. "Descriptions of travel--compositions," he muttered to himself. "Paris--variations upon Baedeker--the little goose begins to be tiresome----Ah, here is something about her parents' grave--poor thing! And here----" He began to read again.)

----A few hours after our arrival we drove to the graveyard at Montmartre, an ugly, gloomy graveyard, bordering directly upon a business-street, so that the noise and bustle of the city sound deafeningly where the dead are reposing. The paths are as straight as if drawn by a ruler, and upon the graves lie wreaths of straw flowers or stiff immortelles. These durable decorations seem to me heartless,--as if the poor dead were to be provided for once for all, since it might be tiresome to visit them often.

My parents' grave lies a little apart from the broad centre path, under a knotty old juniper-tree.

I heaped it with flowers, and amid the fresh blossoms I laid the roses, now faded, which Harry gave me yesterday when we parted.

I was enchanted with Paris. My aunt was delighted with the shops. She spent all her time in them, and thought everything very reasonable. At the end of four days she had bought so many reasonable articles that she had to purchase a huge trunk in which to take them home, and she had scarcely any money left.

She was convinced that she must have made some mistake in her accounts, and she worked over them half through an entire night, but with no consoling result.

The upshot of it was that she wanted to go home immediately; but since the trip had been undertaken chiefly for my health and was to end in a visit to some sea-side resort, she wrote to my uncle, explaining the state of affairs--that is, of her finances--and asking for a subsidy.

My uncle sent the subsidy, but requested us to leave Paris as soon as possible, and to choose a modest seaside resort.

The next day we departed from Babylon.

After inquiring everywhere, and studying the guidebook attentively, my aunt finally resolved to go to St. Valery.

The evening was cold and windy when we reached the little town and drew up in the omnibus before the Hotel de la Plage.

The season had not begun, and the hotel was not actually open, but it received us.

As no rooms were taken, all were placed at our disposal, and we chose three in the first story, one for my aunt, one for me, and one for our trunks.

The furniture, of crazy old mahogany, had evidently been bought of some dealer in second-band furniture in Rouen, but the beds were extremely good, and the bed-linen, although "coarse as sacking," as Uncle Paul would have expressed it, was perfectly clean and white.

From our windows we looked out upon the sea and upon the little wooden hut where the safety-boat was kept, and also upon the little town park, about a hundred square yards in extent; upon the Casino, quite an imposing structure on the shore; upon the red pennons which, designating the bathing-place, made a brilliant show in the midst of the prevailing gray, and upon a host of whitewashed bath-houses waiting for the guests who had not yet arrived.

How indeed could they arrive? One had need to have come from Bohemia, not to go directly home, in such cold, damp weather as we had; but we wanted to get value from our expensive trip.

The Casino was no more open than the hotel, it was even in a decided _neglige_, but it was busily dressing. A swarm of painters and upholsterers were decorating it. The upholsterers hung the inside with crimson, the painters coloured the outside red and white.

The proprietor, a broad-shouldered young man answering to the high-sounding name of Raoul Donval, daily superintended the work of the--artists. He always wore a white cap with a broad black visor, and a stick in the pocket of his short jacket, and plum-coloured knickerbockers; and I think he considered himself very elegant.

They were draping and beautifying and painting our hotel too. Everything was being painted instead of scrubbed,--the stairs, the doors, the floors; everywhere the dirt was hidden beneath the same dull-red colour. Aunt Rosa declared that they seemed to her to be daubing the entire house with blood. Just at this time she was wont to make most ghastly comparisons, because, for lack of other literature, she was reading an historical romance in the _Petit Journal_.

She was in a far more melancholy mood than I at St. Valery. Since it had to be, I made up my mind to it, consoling myself with the reflection that I was just nineteen, and that there was plenty of time for fate, if so minded, to shape my destiny brilliantly. Unfortunately, my aunt had not this consolation, but, instead, the depressing consciousness of having given up Bayreuth. It was hard. I was very sorry for her, and did all that I could to amuse her.

I could always find something to laugh at in our visits to the empty Casino and in our walks through the town, but instead of cheering her my merriment distressed her. She had seen in the French journal which she studied faithfully every day an account of a sensitive trombone-player at the famous yearly festival at Neuilly who had broken his instrument over the head of an arrogant Englishman who had allowed himself to make merry over some detail of the festival. Therefore I could scarcely smile in the street without having my aunt twitch my sleeve and say,--

"For heaven's sake don't laugh at these Frenchmen!--remember that trombone at Neuilly."

During the first fortnight I had the whole shore, with the bath-houses and bathing-men, entirely to myself. It was ghastly! The icy temperature of the water seemed to bite into my flesh, my teeth chattered, and the bather who held me by both my hands was as blue as his dress. Our mutual isolation had the effect of establishing a friendship between the bather and myself. He had formerly been a sailor, and had but lately returned from Tonquin; he told me much that was interesting about the war and the cholera. He was a good-looking fellow, with a fair complexion and a tanned face.

After my bath I ran about on the shore until I got warm, and then we breakfasted. My aunt did not bathe. She counted the days like a prisoner.

When the weather permitted, we made excursions into the surrounding country in a little wagon painted yellow, drawn by a shaggy donkey, which I drove myself. The donkey's name was Jeanne d'Arc,--which horrified my aunt,--and she had a young one six months old that ran after us as we drove along.

For more than two weeks we were the sole inmates of the Hotel de la Plage. The manager of the establishment--who was likewise the head of the kitchen--drove to the station every day to capture strangers, but never brought any back.

I see him now,--short and enormously broad, with a triple or quadruple chin, sitting on the box beside the coachman, his hands on his thighs. He always wore sky-blue trousers, and a short coat buckled about him with a broad patent-leather belt. The chambermaid, who revered him, informed me that it was the dress of an English courier.

One day he brought back to the host, who daily awaited the guests, two live passengers,--an old woman and a young man.

The old woman was very poor, and took a garret room. She must have been beautiful formerly, and she looked very distinguished. She positively refused to write her name in the strangers' book. By chance we learned afterwards that she was a Comtesse d'Ivry, from Versailles, who had had great misfortunes. She had a passion for sunsets; every afternoon she had an arm-chair carried out on the shore, and sat there, wrapped in a thick black cloak, with her feet on a hot-water bottle, to admire the majestic spectacle. When it rained, she still persisted in going, and sat beneath a large ragged umbrella. Upon her return she usually sighed and told the host that the sunsets here were not nearly so fine as at Trouville,--appearing to think that this was his fault.

At last the weather brightened and it grew warm; the sun chased away the clouds, and allured a crowd of people to the lonely shore. And such people! I shudder to think of them.

We could endure the solitude, but such society was unendurable.

The next day I took my last bath.

On our return journey, at Cologne, an odd thing happened.

It was early, and I was sleepy. I was waiting for breakfast in melancholy mood, and was contemplating a huge pile of elegant hand-luggage which a servant in a very correct dark suit was superintending, when two ladies, followed by a maid, made their appearance, one fair, the other dark, from the dressing-room, which had been locked in our faces. In honour of these two princesses we had been obliged to remain unwashed. Ah, how fresh and neat and pretty they both looked! The dark one was by far the handsomer of the two, but she looked gloomy and discontented, spoke never a word, and after a hurried breakfast became absorbed in a newspaper. The fair one, on the contrary, a striking creature, with a very large hat and a profusion of passementerie on her travelling-cloak, talked a great deal and very loudly to a short, fat woman who was going with her little son to Frankfort, and who addressed the blonde as "Frau Countess."

The name of the short woman was Frau Kampe, and the name of the Countess, which I shortly learned, shall be told in due time. The Countess complained of the fatigue of travelling; Frau Kampe, in a sympathetic tone, declared that it was almost impossible to sleep in the railway-carriages at this time of year, they were so overcrowded. But the Countess rejoined with a laugh,--

"We had as much room as we wanted all the way; my husband secures that by his fees. He is much too lavish, as I often tell him. Since I have been travelling with him we have always had two railway-carriages, one for me and my maid, and the other for him and his cigars. It has been delightful."

"Even upon your wedding tour?" asked her handsome, dark companion, looking up from her reading.

"Ha, ha, ha! Yes, even upon our wedding tour," said the other. "We were a very prosaic couple, entirely independent of each other,--quite an aristocratic match!" And she laughed again with much self-satisfaction.

"Where is the Herr Count?" asked Frau Kampe. "I should like to make his acquaintance."

"Oh, he is not often to be seen; he is smoking on the platform somewhere. I scarcely ever meet him; he never appears before the third bell has rung. A very aristocratic marriage, you see, Frau Kampe,--such a one as you read of."

The Countess's beautiful companion frowned, and the little Kampe boy grinned from ear to ear,--I could not tell whether it was at the aristocratic marriage or at the successful solution of an arithmetical problem which he had just worked out on the paper cover of one of Walter Scott's novels.

I must confess that I was curious to see the young husband who even upon his marriage journey had preferred the society of his cigars to that of his bride.

My aunt had missed the interesting conversation between Frau Kampe and her young patroness; she had rushed out to see the cathedral in the morning mist. I had manifested so little desire to join her in this artistic but uncomfortable enterprise that she had dispensed with my society. She now came back glowing with enthusiasm, and filled to overflowing with all sorts of information as to Gothic architecture.

Scarcely had she seated herself to drink the coffee which I poured out for her, when a tall young man, slightly stooping in his gait, and with a very attractive, delicately-chiselled face, entered. Was he not----? Well, whoever he was, he was the husband of the aristocratic marriage.

He exchanged a few words with the blonde Countess, and was about to leave the room, when his glance fell upon my aunt.

"Baroness, you here!--what a delight!" he exclaimed, approaching her hastily.

"Lato!" she almost screamed. She always talks a little loud away from home, which annoys me.

It was, in fact, our old friend Lato Treurenberg. Before she had been with him two minutes my aunt had forgotten all her prejudice against him since his marriage,--and, what was more, had evidently forgotten the marriage itself, for she whispered, leaning towards him with a sly twinkle of her eye and a nod in the direction of the ladies,--

"What noble acquaintances you have made!--from Frankfort, or Hamburg?"

My heart was in my mouth. No one except Aunt Rosamunda could have made such a blunder.

The words had hardly escaped her lips when she became aware of her mistake, and she was covered with confusion. Lato flushed scarlet. At that moment the departure of our train was announced, and Lato took a hurried leave of us. I saw him outside putting the ladies into a carriage, after which he himself got into another.

We travelled second-class, and therefore had the pleasure of sharing a compartment with the man-servant and maid of the Countess Lato Treurenberg.

My aunt took it all philosophically, while I, I confess, had much ado to conceal my ungrateful and mean irritation.

I succeeded, however; I do not think my aunt even guessed at my state of mind. She went to sleep; perhaps she dreamed of Cologne Cathedral. I--ah, I no longer dreamed; I had long since awakened from my dreams, and had rubbed my eyes and destroyed all my fine castles in the air.

The trip from which I had promised myself so much was over, and what had been effected? Nothing, save a more distinct appreciation of our straitened circumstances and an increase of my old gnawing discontent.

I recalled the delightful beginning of our trip, the long, dreamy summer days in Vienna, the evening at Schoenbrunn. Again I saw about me the fragrant twilight, and heard, through the plash of fountains and the whispering of the linden leaves, the sound of distant military music. I saw Harry--good heavens! how plainly I saw him, with his handsome mouth, his large, serious eyes! How he used to look at me! And I recalled how beautiful the world had seemed to me then, so beautiful that I thought I could desire nothing better than to wander thus through life, leaning upon his arm in the odorous evening air, with the echo of distant military music in my ear.

Then ambition rose up before me and swept away all these lovely visions, showing me another picture,--Harry, borne down by cares, in narrow circumstances, his features sharpened by anxiety, with a pale, patient face, jesting bitterly, his uniform shabby, though carefully brushed. Ah, and should I not love him ten times more then than now! he would always be the same noble, chivalric----

But I could not accept such a sacrifice from him. I could not; it would be unprincipled. Specious phrases! What has principle to do with it? I do not choose to be poor--no, I will not be poor, and therefore I am glad that we were interrupted at the right moment in Vienna. He cannot possibly imagine--ah, if he had imagined anything he would have written to me, and we have not had a line from him since we left him. He would have regretted it quite as much as I, if----

It never would occur to him to resign all his grandfather's wealth for the sake of my golden hair. Young gentlemen are not given to such romantic folly nowadays; though, to be sure, he is not like the rest of them.

The result of all my reflections was an intense hatred for my grandfather, who tyrannized over me thus instead of allowing affairs to take their natural, delightful course; and another hatred, somewhat less intense, for the brewery, which had absorbed half of Uncle Paul's property,--that is, much more than would have been necessary to assure me a happy future. When I saw from the railway the brew-house chimney above the tops of the old lindens, I shook my fist at it.

My uncle was waiting for us at the station. He was so frankly rejoiced to have us back again that it cheered my heart. His eyes sparkled as he came to me after greeting my aunt. He gazed at me very earnestly, as if he expected to perceive some great and pleasant change in me, and then, putting his finger under my chin, turned my face from side to side. Suddenly he released me.

"You are even paler than you were before!" he exclaimed, turning away. He had expected the sea-bathing to work miracles.

"Do I not please you as I am, uncle dear?" I asked, putting my hand upon his arm. Then he kissed me; but I could see plainly that his pleasure was dashed.

Now we have been at home four days, and I am writing my memoirs, because I am tired of having nothing to do. It does not rain to-day; the sun is burning hot,--ah, how it parches the August grass! The harvest was poor, the rye-straw is short, and the grains of wheat are small. And everything was so promising in May! My uncle spends a great deal of time over his accounts.

August 8.

Something quite extraordinary has happened. We have a visitor, a cousin of Aunt Rosamunda's,--Baron Roderich Wenkendorf. He is a very amiable old gentleman, about forty-five years old. He interests himself in everything that interests me,--even in Carlyle's 'French Revolution,' only he cannot bear it. Moreover, he is a Wagnerite; that is his only disagreeable characteristic. Every day he plays duets with Aunt Rosamunda from the 'Goetterdaemmerung,' which makes Uncle Paul and Morl nervous. Besides, he paints, of course only for pleasure, but very ambitiously. Last year he exhibited one of his pictures in Vienna--Napoleon at St. Helena--no, Charles the Fifth in the cloister. I remember, he cannot endure the Corsican upstart. He declares that Napoleon had frightful manners. We had a dispute about it. We often quarrel; but he entertains me, he pleases me, and so, perhaps----

August 10.

It might be worth while to take it into consideration. For my sake he would take up his abode in Bohemia. I do not dislike him, and my aunt says that marry whom you will you can never get used to him until after marriage. Harry and I should always be just the same to each other; he would always be welcome as a brother in our home, of course. I cannot really see why people must marry because they love each other.