"What that poor thing,--Gabrielle,--said to it all? Good Lord! She held her peace, as if she had really been turned to stone that evening--and what surprised me rather--she never thought of going to thank her master for what he had done; but she never talked of leaving now.
"From that morning when we heard the shots, she was so changed, I should scarcely have known her. She went through her work as usual, and was neither glad nor sad, only absent; so absent, that of an evening she would sit for hours, staring into the light, as if she were in a trance--and I must say these strange ways became her; she grew handsomer from day to day. We every one of us noticed it. As to the younger functionaries about the place, there was not a single man of them, who was not over head and ears in love with her. But she never seemed to see it--and not one of them had a kinder word to boast of than the others.
"Summer came, and brought no change. The count was still at the castle; Mr. Pierre sitting with his bottle before him half the day; and every body wondering and conjecturing what was likely to come of this new style of living. The busy tongues had a fresh match ready every week for my Master. For he had got to be far gayer; he willingly accepted invitations in the neighbourhood, and even gave little fêtes in return, where he was all politeness. I had never known him to be in such a humour before, and I thanked God for it; the more, as we expected our young count to come home in the Autumn, and it would have broken my heart if they had not met in peace and kindness.
"And oh! Sir, that night, when my Count Ernest came, and his father rode out to meet him--(he came from Berlin, after having passed his examination most brilliantly)--I felt--his own mother could not have felt more. And when I saw him, so tall and handsome, riding beside his father through the triumphal arch of fir-trees the men had put up for him across the bridge--and the lovely transparency over the gate, with the word: 'Welcome!' and Mr. Pierre's rockets whizzing right up into the sky, I burst into tears, and could not speak a word--I only took his hand, and kept kissing it again and again.--
"And he was just the same as ever; and he stroked my face, and had his old jokes with me, that were only between us two. Ah! Sir, that was a pleasant meeting! The count--I mean the father--walked upstairs with his son, looking quite pleased and proud; and indeed it was a son to be proud of. I felt so cross with Mamsell Gabrielle, when I asked her what she thought of our young count, and found she could not tell me whether he were dark or fair. But when I came to consider of it, I said to myself that, after all, this was better than falling in love with him--for that was what I had always been afraid of.--Poor shortsighted creatures that we are!
"In the evening I was called upstairs, to help to wait upon the gentlemen, who had their supper in Count Henry's room. Monsieur Pierre's fireworks had so heated him, that he was not to be got out of the cool cellars that night at all; and I was only too happy to take his place, and have a good look at my young count. But my pleasure was soon spoiled, for the count his father soon began to talk again, as he used to do, of the good old times. 'The young folks of the present day,' he said, 'are fit for nothing but to sit by the chimney-corner, with their noses on their books--worse still, to write themselves--even for the daily papers.' I don't remember all he said--only some things that appeared to me the worst--some things I shall not forget to my dying-day.
"You must know. Sir, that when Count Henry had been a half-grown lad, he had, been taken to Paris by his father, just when the Empire was at its height; and as the old count (grand-father to our Count Ernest) had always been of those to whom Napoleon was as a god, of course they met with the best reception. The old count had been at Paris before, for some years during the revolution; and most of those bad bloody men had been his friends; and Count Henry began to talk of these. 'Do you suppose,' he said, 'that the Emperor could have fought these battles with our good bourgeois of the present day? Wild beasts those were he had to tame, and to let loose upon his enemies. There was a scent of blood in the very air of Paris then, that was withering to the sicklier plants; and turned the weaker spirits faint. But to a resolute man, the sulphureous atmosphere proved intoxicating. He would have dared a thousand devils. And as the men, so the women; all had tasted blood--and blood makes brighter eyes than household dust. Just look at our present world,'--he said--'our German world at least--compared to that! all so prim, precise, and regular, like the straight lines of a Dutch garden. Fathers, schoolmasters, and wise professors are there to trim it, and if anything escapes them, there is the police. If ever the brute begins to shew itself in man,--in civilized man--quick comes the police with a summons to expel it; but the beast is not to be expelled--it must have blood--if not in pailfuls, at least in drops--it will turn sneakingly domestic, and suck it from the veins of its nearest neighbour. Out upon the small sly social vices of the day! they are so shabby!--worse:--they are so stupid!--see what they will do for this puny generation when a time for action comes--for great deeds to be done by thorough men, and genuine mettle. When a man says he shrinks from shedding blood, and would not crush a worm, I say it is his own blood he is so chary of, and shrinks from shedding. At that time Death was the Parisian's familiar,--his bosom friend; together they fought and won the Emperor's great victories.' And then my master went on to talk of a ball where his father had been; they called it 'le bal des Zéphirs,' because it was given on a spot which had been a churchyard--I forget the name of the church. And just above the skull and cross-bones upon the gateway, they had put up a transparency with the inscription: 'Le bal des Zéphirs;' and they had danced like mad upon the graves and tombstones, till morning.
"All this time, my dear young count sat grave and silent, opposite his father, whose discourse, I could plainly see, appeared as blasphemous to him, as it did to me; but he spoke very calmly, and beautiful were the things he said:--'Man has progressed since then,' he said; 'it requires more energy to build up than to destroy.' In his opinion: 'a world without a sense of veneration must necessarily decay and fall in pieces, like a building without cement;' and more of the like which I have forgotten, more's the pity; but when he spoke, I used rather to watch his eyes, than mind his lips! His eyes would grow so clear, you could look right through them. Only one thing more I recollect; he said: 'A generation that can dance on the graves of its fathers, will assuredly care little for its children; a man who tramples upon the past, is unworthy of a future--'
"As these words escaped him, he turned red and stopped short,--fearful lest his father should be offended by them. But, bless you, he was not used to mind such trifles!
"'Bah!' says he: 'we are all the same--only we are quieter; we do the same things, only not to the sound of fifes and trumpets--we have no piping to our dancing. In every generation man is selfish, and has a right to be. There was another kind of ball in those days, they called it le bal des victimes. When the Convention had confiscated the property of the guillotined, it was returned to their heirs, after the 9th Thermidor. Thus many of them held their lands, par la grace de Robespierre. Young men began to live fast again, and to enjoy themselves. They gave balls where only those were admitted who could prove that some very near relation had been beheaded; it was a sort of herald's office to the scaffold; and to shew their gratitude for their inheritance, they invented a peculiar mode of salutation. A gentleman would go up to a lady, and jerk his head forwards, as if he dropped it, and the lady would do the same. They called it Salut à la victime; and all this with fiddling and dancing, and wax-lights and champagne. I do not admire that style of thing myself; it was a fashion like any other, and not a pretty one, I think; but I really do see no improvement in young people's babbling of the sanctity of family ties, and of their duty to their fathers, and forefathers, and sighing in secret for their turn to come, even if without the connivance of a Robespierre.'"
"I left the room, for I could not hear him speak in such a way, to such a son. I waited in the antechamber till Count Ernest came out to go to bed. He was sad and silent, and would have passed without noticing me, but I took up my light, and followed him. In the passage he suddenly stopped and looked eagerly up the staircase, that was well lighted with a two-branched lamp. 'What now?' thinks I--and then I saw Mamsell Gabrielle