The Erckmann-Chatrian Megapack: 20 Classic Novels and Short Stories

by Émile Erckmann

  The dog obeyed, and presented to view his flesh-coloured sides.

  “Look, Fritz, at that long white seam without any hair upon it from under the thigh right up to the chest. A boar did that. Poor creature! he was holding him fast by the ear and would not let go; we tracked the two by the blood. I was the first up with them. Seeing my Lieverlé I gave a shout, I jumped off my horse, I caught him between my arms, flung him into my cloak, and brought him home. I was almost beside myself. Happily the vital parts had not been wounded. I sewed up his belly in spite of his howling and yelling, for he suffered fearfully; but in three days he was already licking his wound, and a dog who licks himself is already saved. You remember that, Lieverlé, hey! and aren’t we fonder of each other now than ever?”

  I was quite moved with the affection of the man for that dog, and of the dog for his master; they seemed to look into the very depths of each other’s souls. The dog wagged his tail, and the man had tears in his eyes.

  Sperver went on—

  “What amazing strength! Do you see, Fritz, he has burst his cord to get to me—a rope of six strands; he found out my track and here he is! Here, Lieverlé, catch!”

  And he threw to him the remains of the leg of kid. The jaws opened wide and closed again with a terrible crash, and Sperver, looking at me significantly, said—

  “Fritz, if he were to grip you by your breeches you would not get away so easily!”

  “Nor any one else, I suppose.”

  The dog went to stretch himself at his ease full length under the mantelshelf with the leg fast between his mighty paws. He began to tear it into pieces. Sperver looked at him out of the corner of his eye with great satisfaction. The bone was fast falling into small fragments in the powerful mill that was crashing it. Lieverlé was partial to marrow!

  “Aha! Fritz, if you were requested to fetch that bone away from him, what would you say?”

  “I should think it a mission requiring extraordinary delicacy and tact.”

  Then we broke out into a hearty laugh, and Sperver, seated in his leathern easy chair, with his left arm thrown back over his head, one of his manly legs over a stool, and the other in front of a huge log, which was dripping at its end with the oozing sap, and darted volumes of light grey smoke to the roof.

  I was still contemplating the dog, when, suddenly recollecting our broken conversation, I went on—

  “Now, Sperver, you have not told me everything. When you left the mountain for the castle was it not on account of the death of Gertrude, your good, excellent wife?”

  Gideon frowned, and a tear dimmed his eye; he drew himself up, and shaking out the ashes of his pipe upon his thumbnail, he said—

  “True, my wife is dead. That drove me from the woods. I could not look upon the valley of Roche Creuse without pain. I turned my flight in this direction: I hunt less in the woods, and I can see it all from higher up, and if by chance the pack tails off in that direction I let them go. I turn back and try to think of something else.”

  Sperver had grown taciturn. With his head drooped upon his breast, his eyes fixed on the stone floor, he sat silent. I felt sorry to have awoke these melancholy recollections in him. Then, my thoughts once more returning to the Black Plague grovelling in the snow, I felt a shivering of horror.

  How strange! just one word had sent us into a train of unhappy thoughts. A whole world of remembrances was called up by a chance.

  I know not how long this silence lasted, when a growl, deep, long, and terrible, like distant thunder, made us start.

  We looked at the dog. The half-gnawed bone was still between his forepaws, but with head raised high, ears cocked up, and flashing eye, he was listening intently—listening to the silence as it were, and an angry quivering ran down the length of his back.

  Sperver and I fixed on each other anxious eyes; yet there was not a sound, not a breath outside, for the wind had gone down; nothing could be heard but the deep protracted growl which came from deep down the chest of the noble hound.

  Suddenly he sprang up and bounded impetuously against the wall with a hoarse, rough bark of fearful loudness. The walls re-echoed just as if a clap of thunder had rattled the casements.

  Lieverlé, with his head low down, seemed to want to see through the granite, and his lips drawn back from his teeth discovered them to the very gums, displaying two close rows of fangs white as ivory. Still he growled. For a moment he would stop abruptly with his nose snuffing close to the wall, next the floor, with strong respirations; then he would rise again in a fresh rage, and with his forepaws seemed as if he would break through the granite.

  We watched in silence without being able to understand what caused his excitement.

  Another yell of rage more terrible than the first made us spring from our seats.

  “Lieverlé! what possesses you? Are you going mad?”

  He seized a log and began to sound the wall, which only returned the dead, hard sound of a wall of solid rock. There was no hollow in it; yet the dog stood in the posture of attack.

  “Decidedly you must have been dreaming bad dreams,” said the huntsman. “Come, lie down, and don’t worry us any more with your nonsense.”

  At that moment a noise outside reached our ears. The door opened, and the fat honest countenance of Tobias Offenloch with his lantern in one hand and his stick in the other, his three-cornered hat on his head, appeared, smiling and jovial, in the opening.

  “Salut! l’honorable compagnie!” he cried as he entered; “what are you doing here?”

  “It was that rascal Lieverlé who made all that row. Just fancy—he set himself up against that wall as if he smelt a thief. What could he mean?”

  “Why parbleu! he heard the dot, dot of my wooden leg, to be sure, stumping up the tower-stairs,” answered the jolly fellow, laughing.

  Then setting his lantern on the table—

  “That will teach you, friend Gideon, to tie up your dogs. You are foolishly weak over your dogs—very foolishly. Those beasts of yours won’t be satisfied till they have put us all out of doors. Just this minute I met Blitzen in the long gallery: he sprang at my leg—see there are the marks of his teeth in proof of what I say; and it is quite a new leg—a brute of a hound!”

  “Tie up my dogs! That’s rather a new idea,” said the huntsman. “Dogs tied up are good for nothing at all; they grow too wild. Besides, was not Lieverlé tied up, after all? See his broken cord.”

  “What I tell you is not on my own account. When they come near me I always hold up my stick and put my wooden leg foremost—that is my discipline. I say, dogs in their kennels, cats on the roof, and the people in the castle.”

  Tobias sat down after thus delivering himself of his sentiments, and with both elbows on the table, his eyes expanding with delight, he confided to us that just now he was a bachelor.

  “You don’t mean that!”

  “Yes, Marie Anne is sitting up with Gertrude in monseigneur’s ante-room.”

  “Then you are in no hurry to go away?”

  “No, none at all. I should like to stay in your company.”

  “How unfortunate that you should have come in so late!” remarked Sperver; “all the bottles are empty.”

  The disappointment of the discomfited major-domo excited my compassion. The poor man would so gladly have enjoyed his widowhood. But in spite of my endeavours to repress it a long yawn extended wide my mouth.

  “Well, another time,” said he, rising. “What is only put off is not given up.”

  And he took his lantern.

  “Good night, gentlemen.”

  “Stop—wait for me,” cried Gideon. “I can see Fritz is sleepy; we will go down together.”

  “Very gladly, Sperver; on our way we will have a word with Trumpf, the butler. He is downstairs with the rest, and Knapwurst is telling them tales.”

  “All right. Good night, Fritz.”

  “Good night, Gideon. Don’t forget to send for me if the count is taken worse.”

 
“I will do as you wish. Lieverlé, come.”

  They went out, and as they were crossing the platform I could hear the Nideck clock strike eleven. I was tired out and soon fell asleep.

  CHAPTER IV

  Daylight was beginning to tinge with bluish grey the only window in my dungeon tower when I was roused out of my niche in the granite by the prolonged distant notes of a hunting horn.

  There is nothing more sad and melancholy than the wail of this instrument when the day begins to struggle with the night—when not a sigh nor a sound besides comes to molest the solitary reign of silence; it is especially the last long note which spreads in widening waves over the immensity of the plain beneath, awaking the distant, far-off echoes amongst the mountains, that has in it a poetic element that stirs up the depths of the soul.

  Leaning upon my elbow in my bear-skin I lay listening to the plaintive sound, which suggested something of the feudal ages. The contemplation of my chamber, the ancient den of the Wolf of Nideck, with its low, dark arch, threatening almost to come down to crush the occupant; and further on that small leaden window, just touching the ceiling, more wide than high, and deeply recessed in the wall, added to the reality of the impression.

  I arose quickly and ran to open the window wide.

  Then presented itself to my astonished eyes such a wondrous spectacle as no mortal tongue, no pen of man, can describe—the wide prospect that the eagle, the denizen of the high Alps, sweeps with his far reaching ken every morning at the rising of the deep purple veil that overhung the horizon by night mountains farther off! mountains far away! and yet again in the blue distance—mountains still, blending with the grey mists of the morning in the shadowy horizon!—motionless billows that sink into peace and stillness in the blue distance of the plains of Lorraine. Such is a faint idea of the mighty scenery of the Vosges, boundless forests, silver lakes, dazzling crests, ridges, and peaks projecting their clear outlines upon the steel-blue of the valleys clothed in snow. Beyond this, infinite space!

  Could any enthusiasm of poet or skill of painter attain the sublime elevation of such a scene as that?

  I stood mute with admiration. At every moment the details stood out more clearly in the advancing light of morning; hamlets, farm-houses, villages, seemed to rise and peep out of every undulation of the land. A little more attention brought more and more numerous objects into view.

  I had leaned out of my window rapt in contemplation for more than a quarter of an hour when a hand was laid lightly upon my shoulder; I turned round startled, when the calm figure and quiet smile of Gideon saluted me with—

  “Guten Tag, Fritz! Good morning!”

  Then he also rested his arms on the window, smoking his short pipe. He extended his hand and said—

  “Look, Fritz, and admire! You are a son of the Black Forest, and you must admire all that. Look there below; there is Roche Creuse. Do you see it? Don’t you remember Gertrude? How far off those times seem now!”

  Sperver brushed away a tear. What could I say?

  We sat long contemplating and meditating over this grand spectacle. From time to time the old poacher, noticing me with my eyes fixed upon some distant object, would explain—

  “That is the Wald Horn; this is the Tiefenthal; there’s the fall of the Steinbach; it has stopped running now; it is hanging down in great fringed sheets, like the curtains over the shoulder of the Harberg—a cold winter’s cloak! Down there is a path that leads to Fribourg; in a fortnight’s time it will be difficult to trace it.”

  Thus our time passed away.

  I could not tear myself away from so beautiful a prospect. A few birds of prey, with wings hollowed into a graceful curve sharp-pointed at each end, the fan-shaped tail spread out, were silently sweeping round the rock-hewn tower; herons flew unscathed above them, owing their safety from the grasp of the sharp claws and the tearing beak to the elevation of their flight.

  Not a cloud marred the beauty of the blue sky; all the snow had fallen to earth; once more the huntsman’s horn awoke the echoes.

  “That is my friend Sébalt lamenting down there,” said Sperver. “He knows everything about horses and dogs, and he sounds the hunter’s horn better than any man in Germany. Listen, Fritz, how soft and mellow the notes are! Poor Sébalt! he is pining away over monseigneur’s illness; he cannot hunt as he used to do. His only comfort is to get up every morning at sunrise on to the Altenberg and play the count’s favourite airs. He thinks he shall be able to cure him that way!”

  Sperver, with the good taste of a man who appreciates beautiful scenery, had offered no interruption to my contemplations; but when, my eyes dazzled and swimming with so much light, I turned round to the darkness of the tower, he said to me—

  “Fritz, it’s all right; the count has had no fresh attack.”

  These words brought me back to a sense of the realities of life.

  “Ah, I am very glad!”

  “It is all owing to you, Fritz.”

  “What do you mean? I have not prescribed yet.”

  “What signifies? You were there; that was enough.”

  “You are only joking, Gideon! What is the use of my being present if I don’t prescribe?”

  “Why, you bring him good luck!”

  I looked straight at him, but he was not even smiling!

  “Yes, Fritz, you are just a messenger of good; the last two years the lord had another attack the next day after the first, then a third and a fourth. You have put an end to that. What can be clearer?”

  “Well, to me it is not so very clear; on the contrary, it is very obscure.”

  “We are never too old to learn,” the good man went on. “Fritz, there are messengers of evil and there are messengers of good. Now that rascal Knapwurst, he is a sure messenger of ill. If ever I meet him as I am going out hunting I am sure of some misadventure; my gun misses fire, or I sprain my ankle, or a dog gets ripped up!—all sorts of mischief come. So, being quite aware of this, I always try and set off at early daybreak, before that author of mischief, who sleeps like a dormouse, has opened his eyes; or else I slip out by a back way by the postern gate. Don’t you see?”

  “I understand you very well, but your ideas seem to me very strange, Gideon.”

  “You, Fritz,” he went on, without noticing my interruption, “you are a most excellent lad; Heaven has covered your head with innumerable blessings; just one glance at your jolly countenance, your frank, clear eyes, your good-natured smile, is enough to make any one happy. You positively bring good luck with you. I have always said so, and now would you like to have a proof?”

  “Yes, indeed I should. It would be worth while to know how much there is in me without my having any knowledge of it.”

  “Well,” said he, grasping my wrist, “look down there!”

  He pointed to a hillock at a couple of gunshots from the castle.

  “Do you see there a rock half-buried in the snow, with a ragged bush by its side?”

  “Quite well.”

  “Do you see anything near?”

  “No.”

  “Well, there is a reason for that. You have driven away the Black Plague! Every year at the second attack there she was holding her feet between her hands. By night she lighted a fire; she warmed herself and boiled roots. She bore a curse with her. This morning the very first thing which I did was to get up here. I climbed up the beacon tower; I looked well all round; the old hag was nowhere to be seen. I shaded my eyes with my hand. I looked up and down, right and left, and everywhere; not a sign of the creature anywhere. She had scented you evidently.”

  And the good fellow, in a fit of enthusiasm, shook me warmly by the hand, crying with unchecked emotion—

  “Ah, Fritz, how glad I am that I brought you here! The witch will be sold, eh?”

  Well, I confess I felt a little ashamed that I had been all my life such a very well-deserving young man without knowing anything of the circumstance myself.

  “So, Sperver,” I said, “the count
has spent a good night?”

  “A very good one.”

  “Then I am very well pleased. Let us go down.”

  We again traversed the high parapet, and I was now better able to examine this way of access, the ramparts of which arose from a prodigious depth; and they were extended along the sharp narrow ridge of the rock down to the very bottom of the valley. It was a long flight of jagged precipitous steps descending from the wolf’s den, or rather eagle’s nest, down to the deep valley below.

  Gazing down I felt giddy, and recoiling in alarm to the middle of the platform, I hastily descended down the path which led to the main building.

  We had already traversed several great corridors when a great open door stood before us. I looked in, and descried, at the top of a double ladder, the little gnome Knapwurst, whose strange appearance had struck me the night before.

  The hall itself attracted my attention by its imposing aspect. It was the receptacle of the archives of the house of Nideck, a high, dark, dusty apartment, with long Gothic windows, reaching from the angle of the ceiling to within a couple of yards from the floor.

  There were collected along spacious shelves, by the care of the old abbots, not only all the documents, title-deeds, and family genealogies of the house of Nideck, establishing their rights and their alliances, and connections with all the great historic families of Germany, but besides these there were all the chronicles of the Black Forest, the collected works of the old Minnesinger, and great folio volumes from the presses of Gutenberg and Faust, entitled to equal veneration on account of their remarkable history and of the enduring solidity of their binding. The deep shadows of the groined vaults, their arches divided by massive ribs, and descending partly down the cold grey walls, reminded one of the gloomy cloisters of the Middle Ages. And amidst these characteristic surroundings sat an ugly dwarf on the top of his ladder, with a red-edged volume upon his bony knees, his head half-buried in a rough fur cap, small grey eyes, wide misshapen mouth, humps on back and shoulders, a most uninviting object, the familiar spirit—the rat, as Sperver would have it—of this last refuge of all the learning belonging to the princely race of Nideck.