in which I had the honour to join with the count, and especially the magnificent return home in a torchlight procession after having sat in the saddle for twelve hours together.
I had just had supper, and was going up into Hugh Lupus’s tower completely knocked up, when, passing Sperver’s room, whose door was half open, shouts and cries of joy reached my ears. I stopped, when the most jovial spectacle burst upon me. Around the massive oaken table beamed twenty square rosy faces, bright and ruddy with health and fun.
The hob and nobbing of the glasses gave out an incessant tinkling and clattering. There was sitting Sperver with his bossy forehead, his moustaches bedewed with Rhenish wine, his eyes sparkling, and his grey hair rather disordered; at his right was Marie Lagoutte, on his left Knapwurst. He was raising aloft the ancient silver-gilt and chased goblet dimmed with age, and on his manly chest glittered the silver plate of his shoulder-belt, for, according to his custom on a hunting day, he was still wearing the uniform of his office.
The colour of Marie Lagoutte’s cheeks, rather redder even than usual, told of an evening of jollity, and her broad cap-frills seemed as if they were wanting to fly all abroad; she sat laughing, now with one, then with another.
Knapwurst, squatting in his arm-chair, with his head on a level with Sperver’s elbow, looked like a big pumpkin. Then came Tobias Offenloch, so red that you would have thought he had bathed his face in the red wine, leaning back with his wig upon the chair-back and his wooden leg extended under the table. Farther on loomed the melancholy long face of Sébalt, who was peeping with a sickly smile into the bottom of his wine-glass.
Besides these worthies there were present the waiting-people, men and women servants, comprising all that little community which springs up around the board of the great people of the land and belongs to them as the ivy, and the moss, and the wild convolvulus belong to the monarch of the forests.
Upon the groaning board lay a vast ham, displaying its concentric circles of pink and white. Then among the gaily-patterned plates and dishes came the long-necked bottles containing the produce of the vineyards that border the broad and flowing Rhine—long German pipes with little silver chains, and long shining blades of steel.
The light of the lamp shed over the whole scene its amber-coloured hue and left in the shade the old grey and time-stained walls, where hung in ample numbers the brazen convolutions of the hunting-horns and bugles.
What an original picture! The vaulted roof was ringing with the joyous shouts of laughter.
Sperver, as I have already told, was lifting high the full bumper and singing the song of Black Hatto, the Burgrave,
“I am king on these mountains of mine,”
while the rosy dew of Affénthal hung trembling from his long moustaches. As soon as he caught sight of me he stopped, and holding out his hand—
“Fritz,” said he, “we only wanted you. It is a long time since I felt so comfortable as I do to-night. You are welcome, old boy!”
As I gazed upon him with surprise—for since the death of Lieverlé I had never seen him smile—he added more seriously—
“We are celebrating the return of monseigneur to his health, and Knapwurst is telling us stories.”
All the guests turned my way, and I was saluted with kindly welcomes on all sides.
I was dragged in by Sébalt, seated near Marie Lagoutte, and found a large glass of Bohemian wine in my hand before I could quite understand the meaning of it all.
The old hall was echoing with merry peals of laughter, and Sperver, throwing his arm round my neck, holding his cup high, and with an attempt at gravity which showed plainly that the wine was up in his head, he shouted—
“Here is my son! He and I—I and he—until death! Here’s the health of Doctor Fritz!”
Knapwurst, standing as high as he was able upon the seat of his arm-chair, not unlike a turnip half divided in two, leaned towards me and held me out his glass. Marie Lagoutte shook out the long streamers of her cap, and Sébalt, upright before his chair, as gaunt and lean as the shade of the wild jäger amongst the heather, repeated, “Your health, Doctor Fritz!” whilst the flakes of silvery foam ran down his cup and floated gently down upon the stone-flagged floor.
Then there was a moment’s silence. Every guest drank. Then, with a single clash, every glass was set vigorously down upon the table.
“Bravo!” cried Sperver.
Then turning to me—
“Fritz, we have already drunk to the health of the count and of Mademoiselle Odile; you will do the same.”
Twice had I to drain the cup before the vigilant eyes of the whole table. Then I too began to look grave. Could it have been drunken gravity? A luminous radiance seemed shed on every object; faces stood out brightly from the darkness, and looked more nearly upon me; in truth, there were youthful faces and aged, pretty and ugly, but all alike beamed upon me kindly, and lovingly, and tenderly; but it was the youngest, at the other end of the table, whose bright eyes attracted me, and we exchanged long and wistful glances, full of affection and sympathy!
Sperver kept on humming and laughing. Suddenly putting his hand upon the dwarf’s misshapen back, he cried—
“Silence! Here is Knapwurst, our historian and chronicler! He is preparing to speak. This hump holds all the history of the house of Nideck from the beginning of time!”
The little hunchback, not at all indignant at so ambiguous a compliment, directed his benevolent eyes upon the face of the huntsman, and replied—
“You, Sperver, you are one of the reiters whose story I have been telling you. You have the arm, and the courage, and the whiskers of a reiter of old! If that window opened wide, and a reiter was to hold out his hand at the end of his long arm to you, what would you say to him?”
“I would say, ‘You are welcome, comrade; sit down and drink. You will find the wine just as good and the girls just as pretty as they were in the days of old Hugh Lupus.’ Look!”
And he pointed with his glass at the jolly young faces that brightened the farther end of the table.
Certainly the damsels of Nideck were lovely. Some were blushing with pleasure to hear their own praises; others half-veiled their rosy cheeks with their long drooping eyelashes, while one or two seemed rather to prefer to display their, sweet blue eyes by raising them to the smoky ceiling. I wondered at my own insensibility that I had never before noticed these fair roses blooming in the towers of the ancient manor.
“Silence!” cried Sperver for the second time. “Our friend Knapwurst is going to tell us again the legend he related to us just now.”
“Won’t you have another instead?” asked the hunchback.
“No. I like this best.”
“I know better ones than that.”
“Knapwurst,” insisted the huntsman, raising his finger impressively, “I have reasons for wishing to hear the same again and no other. Cut it shorter if you like. There is a great deal in it. Now, Fritz, listen!”
The dwarf, rather under the influence of the sparkling wine he had taken, rested his elbows on the table, and
