Seraphina’s face had grown deadly pale; and I saw plainly that it would be more advisable to give her a faithful account of all that I had experienced than to leave her excited imagination to conjure up some apparition that might perhaps, in a way I could not foresee, be far more horrible than what I had actually encountered. As she listened to me her fear and strained anxiety increased from moment to moment; and when I mentioned the scratching on the wall she screamed, “It’s horrible! Yes, yes, it’s in that wall that the awful secret is concealed!” But as I went on to describe with what spiritual power and superiority of will my old uncle had banished the ghost, she sighed deeply, as though she had shaken off a heavy burden that had weighed oppressively upon her. She leaned back in the sofa and held her hands before her face. Now I first noticed that Adelheid had left us. A considerable pause ensued, and as Seraphina still continued silent, I softly rose, and going to the pianoforte, endeavoured in swelling chords to invoke the bright spirits of consolation to come and deliver Seraphina from the dark influence to which my narration had subjected her. Then I soon began to sing as softly as I was able one of the Abbé Steffani’s6 canzonas. The melancholy strains of the Ochi, perchè piangete (O eyes, why weep you?) roused Seraphina out of her reverie, and she listened to me with a gentle smile upon her face, and bright pearl-like tears in her eyes. How am I to account for it that I kneeled down before her, that she bent over towards me, that I threw my arms about her, that a long ardent kiss was imprinted on my lips? How am I to account for it that I did not lose my senses when she drew me softly towards her, how that I tore myself from her arms, and, quickly rising to my feet, hurried to the pianoforte? Turning from me, the Baroness took a few steps towards the window, then she turned round again and approached me with an air of almost proud dignity, which was not at all usual with her. Looking me straight in the face, she said, “Your uncle is the most worthy old man I know; he is the guardian-angel of our family. May he include me in his pious prayers!” I was unable to utter a word; the subtle poison that I had imbibed with her kiss burned and boiled in every pulse and nerve. Lady Adelheid came in. The violence of my inward conflict burst out at length in a passionate flood of tears, which I was unable to repress. Adelheid looked at me with wonder and smiled dubiously; — I could have murdered her. The Baroness gave me her hand, and said with inexpressible gentleness, “Farewell, my dear friend. Fare you right well; and remember that nobody perhaps has ever understood your music better than I have. Oh! these notes! they will echo long, long in my heart.” I forced myself to utter a few stupid, disconnected words, and hurried up to my uncle’s room. The old gentleman had already gone to bed. I stayed in the hall, and falling upon my knees, I wept aloud; I called upon my beloved by name, I gave myself up completely and regardlessly to all the absurd folly of a love-sick lunatic, until at last the extravagant noise I made awoke my uncle. But his loud call, “Cousin, I believe you have gone cranky, or else you’re having another tussle with a wolf. Be off to bed with you if you will be so very kind” — these words compelled me to enter his room, where I got into bed with the fixed resolve to dream only of Seraphina.

  It would be somewhere past midnight when I thought I heard distant voices, a running backwards and forwards, and an opening and banging of doors — for I had not yet fallen asleep. I listened attentively; I heard footsteps approaching the corridor; the hall door was opened, and soon there came a knock at our door. “Who is there?” I cried. A voice from without answered, “Herr Justitiarius, Herr Justitiarius, wake up, wake up!” I recognised Francis’s voice, and as I asked, “Is the castle on fire?” the old gentleman woke up in his turn and asked, “Where — where is there a fire? Is it that cursed apparition again? where is it?” “Oh! please get up, Herr Justitiarius,” said Francis, “Please get up; the Baron wants you.” “What does the Baron want me for?” inquired my uncle further; “what does he want me for at this time of night? does he not know that all law business goes to bed along with the lawyer, and sleeps as soundly as he does?” “Oh!” cried Francis, now anxiously; “please, Herr Justitiarius, good sir, please get up. My lady the Baroness is dying.” I started up with a cry of dismay. “Open the door for Francis,” said the old gentleman to me. I stumbled about the room almost distracted, and could find neither door nor lock; my uncle had to come and help me. Francis came in, his face pale and troubled, and lit the candles. We had scarcely thrown on our clothes when we heard the Baron calling in the hall, “Can I speak to you, good V —— ?” “But what have you dressed for, cousin? the Baron only wanted me,” asked the old gentleman, on the point of going out. “I must go down — I must see her and then die,” I replied tragically, and as if my heart were rent by hopeless grief. “Ay, just so; you are right, cousin,” he said, banging the door to in my face, so that the hinges creaked, and locking it on the outside. At the first moment, deeply incensed at this restraint, I thought of bursting the door open; but quickly reflecting that this would entail the disagreeable consequences of a piece of outrageous insanity, I resolved to await the old gentleman’s return; then however, let the cost be what it might, I would escape his watchfulness. I heard him talking vehemently with the Baron, and several times distinguished my own name, but could not make out anything further. Every moment my position grew more intolerable. At length I heard that some one brought a message to the Baron, who immediately hurried off. My old uncle entered the room again. “She is dead!” I cried, running towards him, “And you are a stupid fool,” he interrupted coolly; then he laid hold upon me and forced me into a chair. “I must go down,” I cried, “I must go down and see her, even though it cost me my life.” “Do so, good cousin,” said he, locking the door, taking out the key, and putting it in his pocket. I now flew into a perfectly frantic rage; stretching out my hand towards the rifle, I screamed, “If you don’t instantly open the door I will send this bullet through my brains.” Then the old gentleman planted himself immediately in front of me, and fixing his keen piercing eyes upon me said, “Boy, do you think you can frighten me with your idle threats? Do you think I should set much value on your life if you can go and throw it away in childish folly like a broken plaything? What have you to do with the Baron’s wife? who has given you the right to insinuate yourself, like a tiresome puppy, where you have no claim to be, and where you are not wanted? do you wish to go and act the love-sick swain at the solemn hour of death?” I sank back in my chair utterly confounded After a while the old gentleman went on more gently, “And now let me tell you that this pretended illness of the Baroness is in all probability nothing. Lady Adelheid always loses her head at the least little thing. If a rain-drop falls upon her nose, she screams, ‘What fearful weather it is!’ Unfortunately the noise penetrated to the old aunts, and they, in the midst of unseasonable floods of tears, put in an appearance armed with an entire arsenal of strengthening drops, elixirs of life, and the deuce knows what. A sharp fainting-fit” —— The old gentleman checked himself; doubtless he observed the struggle that was going on within me. He took a few turns through the room; then again planting himself in front of me, he had a good hearty laugh and said, “Cousin, cousin, what nonsensical folly have you now got in your head? Ah well! I suppose it can’t be helped; the devil is to play his pretty games here in divers sorts of ways. You have tumbled very nicely into his clutches, and now he’s making you dance to a sweet tune,” He again took a few turns up and down, and again went on, “It’s no use to think of sleep now; and it occurred to me that we might have a pipe, and so spend the few hours that are left of the darkness and the night.” With these words he took a clay pipe from the cupboard, and proceeded to fill it slowly and carefully, humming a song to himself; then he rummaged about amongst a heap of papers, until he found a sheet, which he picked out and rolled into a spill and lighted. Blowing the tobacco-smoke from him in thick clouds, he said, speaking between his teeth, “Well, cousin, what was that story about the wolf?”

  I know not how it was, but this calm, quiet behaviour of the old gentleman operated strangely upon me. I seemed to be no longer in R — sitten, and the Baroness was so far, far distant from me that I could only reach her on the wings of thought. The old gentleman’s last question, however, annoyed me. “But do you find my hunting exploit so amusing?” I broke in,— “so well fitted for banter?” “By no means,” he rejoined, “by no means, cousin mine; but you’ve no idea what a comical face such a whipper-snapper as you cuts, and how ludicrously he acts as well, when Providence for once in a while honours him by putting him in the way to meet with something out of the usual run of things. I once had a college friend who was a quiet, sober fellow, and always on good terms with himself. By accident he became entangled in an affair of honour, — I say by accident, because he himself was never in any way aggressive; and although most of the fellows looked upon him as a poor thing, as a poltroon, he yet showed so much firm and resolute courage in this affair as greatly to excite everybody’s admiration. But from that time onwards he was also completely changed. The sober and industrious youth became a bragging, insufferable bully. He was always drinking and rioting, and fighting about all sorts of childish trifles, until he was run through in a duel by the Senior7 of an exclusive corps. I merely tell you the story, cousin; you are at liberty to think what you please about it But to return to the Baroness and her illness” —— At this moment light footsteps were heard in the hall; I fancied, too, there was an unearthly moaning in the air. “She is dead!” the thought shot through me like a fatal flash of lightning. The old gentleman quickly rose to his feet and called out, “Francis, Francis!” “Yes, my good Herr Justitiarius,” he replied from without. “Francis,” went on my uncle, “rake the fire together a bit in the grate, and if you can manage it, you had better make us a good cup or two of tea.” “It is devilish cold,” and he turned to me, “and I think we had better go and sit round the fire and talk a little.” He opened the door, and I followed him mechanically. “How are things going on below?” he asked. “Oh!” replied Francis; “there was not much the matter. The Lady Baroness is all right again, and ascribes her bit of a fainting-fit to a bad dream.” I was going to break out into an extravagant manifestation of joy and gladness, but a stern glance from my uncle kept me quiet “And yet, after all, I think it would be better if we lay down for an hour or two. You need not mind about the tea, Francis.” “As you think well, Herr Justitiarius,” replied Francis, and he left the room with the wish that we might have a good night’s rest, albeit the cocks were already crowing. “See here, cousin,” said the old gentleman, knocking the ashes out of his pipe on the grate, “I think, cousin, that it’s a very good thing no harm has happened to you either from wolves or from loaded rifles.” I now saw things in the right light, and was ashamed at myself to have thus given the old gentleman good grounds for treating me like a spoiled child.

  Next morning he said to me, “Be so good as to step down, good cousin, and inquire how the Baroness is. You need only ask for Lady Adelheid; she will supply you with a full budget, I have no doubt” You may imagine how eagerly I hastened downstairs. But just as I was about to give a gentle knock at the door of the Baroness’s anteroom, the Baron came hurriedly out of the same. He stood still in astonishment, and scrutinised me with a gloomy searching look. “What do you want here?” burst from his lips. Notwithstanding that my heart beat, I controlled myself and replied in a firm tone, “To inquire on my uncle’s behalf how my lady, the Baroness, is?” “Oh! it was nothing — one of her usual nervous attacks. She is now having a quiet sleep, and will, I am sure, make her appearance at the dinner-table quite well and cheerful. Tell him that — tell him that.” This the Baron said with a certain degree of passionate vehemence, which seemed to me to imply that he was more concerned about the Baroness than he was willing to show. I turned to go back to my uncle, when the Baron suddenly seized my arm and said, whilst his eyes flashed fire, “I have a word or two to say to you, young man.” Here I saw the deeply injured husband before me, and feared there would be a scene which would perhaps end ignominiously for me. I was unarmed; but at that moment I remembered I had in my pocket the ingeniously-made hunting-knife which my uncle had presented to me after we got to R — sitten. I now followed the Baron, who led the way rapidly, with the determination not even to spare his life if I ran any risk of being treated dishonourably.

  We entered the Baron’s own room, the door of which he locked behind him. Now he began to pace restlessly backwards and forwards, with his arms folded one over the other; then he stopped in front of me and repeated, “I have a word or two to say to you, young man.” I had wound myself up to a pitch of most daring courage, and I replied, raising my voice, “I hope they will be words which I may hear without resentment.” He stared hard at me in astonishment, as though he had failed to understand me. Then, fixing his eyes gloomily upon the floor, he threw his arms behind his back, and again began to stride up and down the room. He took down a rifle and put the ramrod down the barrel to see whether it were loaded or not. My blood boiled in my veins; grasping my knife, I stepped close up to him, so as to make it impossible for him to take aim at me. “That’s a handsome weapon,” he said, replacing the rifle in the corner. I retired a few paces, the Baron following me. Slapping me on the shoulder, perhaps a little more violently than was necessary, he said, “I daresay I seem to you, Theodore, to be excited and irritable; and I really am so, owing to the anxieties of a sleepless night. My wife’s nervous attack was not in the least dangerous; that I now see plainly. But here — here in this castle, which is haunted by an evil spirit, I always dread something terrible happening; and then it’s the first time she has been ill here. And you — you alone were to blame for it.” “How that can possibly be I have not the slightest conception,” I replied calmly. “I wish,” continued the Baron, “I wish that damned piece of mischief, my steward’s wife’s instrument, were chopped up into a thousand pieces, and that you — but no, no; it was to be so, it was inevitably to be so, and I alone am to blame for all. I ought to have told you, the moment you began to play music in my wife’s room, of the whole state of the case, and to have informed you of my wife’s temper of mind.” I was about to speak; “Let me go on,” said the Baron, “I must prevent your forming any rash judgment. You probably regard me as an uncultivated fellow, averse to the arts; but I am not so by any means. There is a particular consideration, however, based upon deep conviction, which constrains me to forbid the introduction here as far as possible of such music as can powerfully affect any person’s mind, and to this I of course am no exception. Know that my wife suffers from a morbid excitability, which will finally destroy all the happiness of her life. Within these strange walls she is never quit of that strained over-excited condition, which at other times occurs but temporarily, and then generally as the forerunner of a serious illness. You will ask me, and quite reasonably too, why I do not spare my delicate wife the necessity of coming to live in this weird castle, and mix amongst the wild confusion of a hunting-party. Well, call it weakness — be it so; in a word, I cannot bring myself to leave her behind. I should be tortured by a thousand fears, and quite incapable of any serious business, for I am perfectly sure that I should be haunted everywhere, in the justice-hall as well as in the forest, by the most horrid ideas of all kinds of fatal mischief happening to her. And, on the other hand, I believe that the sort of life led here cannot fail to operate upon the weakly woman like strengthening chalybeate waters. By my soul, the sea-breezes, sweeping keenly after their peculiar fashion through the fir-trees, and the deep baying of the hounds, and the merry ringing notes of our hunting-horns must get the better of all your sickly languishing sentimentalisings at the piano, which no man ought play in that way. I tell you, you are deliberately torturing my wife to death.” These words he uttered with great emphasis, whilst his eyes flashed with a restless fire. The blood mounted to my head; I made a violent gesture against the Baron with my hand; I was about to speak, but he cut me short “I know what you are going to say,” he began, “I know what you are going to say, and I repeat that you are going the right road to kill my wife. But that you intended this I cannot of course for a moment maintain; and yet you will understand that I must put a stop to the thing. In short, by your playing and singing you work her up to a high pitch of excitement, and then, when she drifts without anchor and rudder on the boundless sea of dreams and visions and vague aspirations which your music, like some vile charm, has summoned into existence, you plunge her down into the depths of horror with a tale about a fearful apparition which you say came and played pranks with you up in the justice-hall. Your great-uncle has told me everything; but, pray, repeat to me all you saw, or did not see, heard, felt, divined by instinct.”

  I braced myself up and narrated calmly how everything had happened from beginning to end, the Baron merely interposing at intervals a few words expressive of his astonishment. When I came to the part where my old uncle had met the ghost with trustful courage and had exorcised him with a few powerful words, the Baron clasped his hands, raised them folded towards Heaven, and said with deep emotion, “Yes, he is the guardian-angel of the family. His mortal remains shall rest in the vault of my ancestors.” When I finished my narration, the Baron murmured to himself, “Daniel, Daniel, what are you doing here at this hour?” as he folded his arms and strode up and down the room. “And was that all, Herr Baron?” I asked, making a movement as though I would retire. Starting up as if out of a dream, the Baron took me kindly by the hand and said, “Yes, my good friend, my wife, whom you have dealt so hardly by without intending it — you must cure her again; you alone can do so.” I felt I was blushing, and had I stood opposite a mirror should undoubtedly have seen in it a very blank and absurd face. The Baron seemed to exult in my embarrassment; he kept his eyes fixed intently upon my face, smiling with perfectly galling irony. “How in the world can I cure her?” I managed to stammer out at length with an effort “Well,” he said, interrupting me, “you have no dangerous patient to deal with at any rate. I now make an express claim upon your skill. Since the Baroness has been drawn into the enchanted circle of your music, it would be both foolish and cruel to drag her out of it all of a sudden. Go on with your music therefore. You will always be welcome during the evening hours in my wife’s apartments. But gradually select a more energetic kind of music, and effect a clever alternation of the cheerful sort with the serious; and above all things, repeat your story of the fearful ghost very very often. The Baroness will grow familiar with it; she will forget that a ghost haunts this castle; and the story will have no stronger effect upon her than any other tale of enchantment which is put before her in a romance or a ghost-story book. Pray, do this, my good friend.” With these words the Baron left me. I went away. I felt as if I were annihilated, to be thus humiliated to the level of a foolish and insignificant child. Fool that I was to suppose that jealousy was stirring his heart! He himself sends me to Seraphina; he sees in me only the blind instrument which, after he has made use of it, he can throw away if he thinks well. A few minutes previously I had really feared the Baron; deep down within my heart lurked the consciousness of guilt; but it was a consciousness which allowed me to feel distinctly the beauty of the higher life for which I was ripe. Now all had disappeared in the blackness of night; and I saw only the stupid boy who in childish obstinacy had persisted in taking the paper crown which he had put on his hot temples for a real golden one. I hurried away to my uncle, who was waiting for me. “Well, cousin, why have you been so long? Where have you been staying?” he cried as soon as he saw me. “I have been having some words with the Baron!” I quickly replied, carelessly and in a low voice, without being able to look at the old gentleman. “God damn it all,” said he, feigning astonishment “Good gracious, boy! that’s just what I thought. I suppose the Baron has challenged you, cousin?” The ringing peal of laughter which the old gentleman immediately afterwards broke out into taught me that this time too, as always, he had seen me through and through. I bit my lip, and durst not speak a word, for I knew very well that it would only be the signal for the old gentleman to overwhelm me beneath the torrent of teasing which was already hovering on the tip of his tongue.