alarming, Master Ernest,' I said, and laughed--'to stay up all night dancing and go riding all the morning, and then to want more dancing! Our gracious count will be quite pleased! And is this really to be your last word, and all your faithful Flor is to be allowed to hear?'
"'My very last word, Flor; it is my own secret, and I mean to keep it.'
"'I must get hold of Mr. Leclerc, then;' I said, he will be able to tell me who you danced with oftenest.'
"'Try him, Flor:' cried the naughty boy; and laughed; 'all my partners were the same to him; only--"jeunes Allemandes, jolies bourgeoises!"--he looked after my pas, and never minded where my eyes went; besides, he played écarté all the evening with the director of the saltworks. Ah! Flor, I never thought there could be such sweet eyes in the world; I used to think that your two were the sweetest!'
"You see, sir, this was what I got for all my pains and my anxiety!
"But this merry mood of his did not last. Next day he grew quiet and thoughtful, avoided all my questions, and shut himself up in his room at an unusually early hour; and then I heard him playing the flute for ever so long after. He could not get this girl out of his head--I saw that. At first he had felt no more than a pleasant smart, as it were, and could joke about it; but the fever followed. He could not hold out four-and-twenty hours, but he ordered his horse and rode out alone, returning at night quite cast down. It was plain that he had not seen his flame, and had been too shy to find her out and pay her a visit. And so he rode to X several times over, with more or less good luck. One night, when his heart was full, he could not refrain from telling me his adventure, as I was lighting him upstairs to bed. His face was radiant; but Good Lord! to any other man, it would not have been worth the telling; Count Henry would only have said, 'Pshaw!'--but to him it was a rare delight. Just at the gates he had met her, out walking with two of her young companions, and all three of them had roses in their hands. Just as he rode by, and bowed, his horse had given a jump, and the young lady had been so startled that she dropped a rose: 'I saw it,' said Master Ernest, 'and in a moment I was out of my saddle, and had picked it up and given it her; and she thanked me very kindly, and walked away towards the woods.'"
"'And you rode on, and the lady did not even give you a rose for your reward? Any other man would have picked up the flower, and stuck it in his buttonhole, and galloped off in triumph.'
"He looked at me, and seemed quite struck; 'Flor,' says he; 'I do believe you know more of these things than I, although you are a woman.'
"'More likely, because I am a woman. Master Ernest,' I said. 'Well, well, I see, the young lady is badly off for mother-wit, or else she can't abide you.'
"Of course I was only joking; for how could I think the girl existed who would not like him? But for all that, it made him silent, and I saw that he really thought she did dislike him.
"Only once again did he ride over to X, and after that he stayed at home, and was quite downhearted; he spoke to nobody, but sat in his room writing--verses, as I believe,--and played the flute, and pined away so, that when Count Henry came back, he was quite angry about his looks, and scolded him, and told him he did not take exercise enough, and he asked me if Count Ernest had been ailing? That he had a heartache I did not like to say--he never would have forgiven me, and Count Henry would have laughed. At last it was decided that our young count was to travel for a time with Mr. Leclerc, and both of them seemed to like the plan. 'Flor,' said my boy, 'it is well that I leave this place. Life is become wearisome to me.'
"'God bless you, my dearest boy,' I said; 'the world is so beautiful, they say, that I suppose one can't long be sad in travelling.'
"He looked at me with an unbelieving smile; but afterwards he wrote to me from Vienna, that he was well, and often thought of me. God knows! I thought of him, day and night.
"I did not get a sight of him again for three long years, and when he wrote to me from the great cities where he went to court, among all the fine folks--he will get properly spoiled, I thought, as befits his rank. I shall not know him again. But just the contrary; when he came back at last in his twentieth year, without Mr. Leclerc, who had died in Russia of the climate, the very first word he spoke: 'Flor,' says he, 'and how is Miss Mimi?'--That was a cat I had, Sir, of whom he used to be almost jealous, as a child.
"'Returns thanks for kind enquiries. Master Ernest,' I said; 'she has just kittened, and will be delighted, as we all are, to see your honour back again.'
"'I am afraid it is a delight that won't last long, Flor,' he said; and at night, when I was lighting him to bed, as I always did, he told me all about it; how he had done his father's bidding, and been to see the great world, and he had seen enough of it to find it terribly tedious; and now he had had some trouble in carrying his point, which was to go and study alone for a year or two. 'It was a shame,' he said, 'the confusion that was in his brain.' I could only stare at this, for to me he seemed a man in all things, and cleverer, I thought, it was not possible to be, when I heard him talk with others. But he knew best, of course, and I did not contradict him then; for there were other things I was more curious to know. I asked him about the life he had been leading, and whether the fine ladies he had been dancing with, were handsomer than the daughters of our townspeople? And look you, Sir, at this, he turned as red as a boy;--he, the accomplished fine-grown gentleman, who had just come from living among the fine folks;--and he only said: 'Some perhaps, not many;' and so I saw that old love does not always rust. The very next day he rode over to the town; I suppose to make enquiries, and find out whether she were still unmarried. Of course, I did not know, for I had never heard who she was. When he came back, in the evening, he looked very grave. 'It is all over,' I said to myself, 'and all the better that it is so; what could have ever come of it?'
"Between him and his father things were no better than they used to be. When I helped to wait at table, I saw that the count was always ready for a quarrel with his son, who could never say or do a single thing to please him. He seemed provoked to be, in a manner, forced to respect the lad, who never by any chance forgot himself, but only quietly defended his own opinion, or held his tongue. Just as the blessed countess had always done, and the count was not fond of being reminded of her. Nothing would have pleased him better than to see his son just such another bold bird of prey as he himself still was, for all his half century. Never had he found a horse too wild, a woman too witty, or a sword too sharp for him. He could not forgive the boy for being so modest. Indeed I often thought--God forgive me!--that he had rather have seen Count Ernest forget his duty to him as his father, if he only would have forgotten that the countess was his mother. Therefore the count always went back to talk of the good old times, when the world was merrier and less particular. Now it was only a world for sneaks and lubbers. And when he had drunk a glass beyond the common, he would tell us all sorts of love-adventures he had had when he was young; while the young count would look straight before him, and hold his peace. I was horrified to hear him, and said to myself: 'Can a father really find it in his heart to be the tempter of his son, when he finds his innocence a reproach to him?'"
"To be sure, I knew that was not the way to tempt my boy at all; he did not even lose the respect he owed him as a father. Only it grieved him sadly, never to see the slightest sign that his father loved him; that I saw by his eyes; but he never spoke about it, not even to me, to whom he generally told everything. And so I was almost glad when he left us in a week to go to College, and never once came home for the next five years; much as he loved his home, and his woods, and everything about the place, and often as he used to enquire after them in his letters.
"I say, I was almost glad, and was more glad presently.
"The young count may have been away for about three years, when I fell into a bad illness; and that left me a weakness in my limbs, so that I could hardly drag myself up and down the stairs. For I kept all the keys, and nobody but Mamsell Flor ever touched a thing
