Monsieur Maurice | Page 3

hedges; and the Autumn burned itself
away like a gorgeous sunset; and November came in grey and cold, like
the night-time of the year.
I was so happy, however, that I enjoyed even the dull November. I
loved the bare avenues carpeted with dead and rustling leaves--the
solitary gardens--the long, silent afternoons and evenings when the big
logs crackled on the hearth, and my father smoked his pipe in the
chimney corner. We had no such wood-fires at Aunt Martha Baur's in
those dreary old Nuremberg days, now almost forgotten; but then, to be
sure, Aunt Martha Baur, who was a sparing woman and looked after
every groschen, had to pay for her own logs, whereas ours were cut
from the Crown Woods, and cost not a pfennig.
It was, as well as I can remember, just about this time, when the days

were almost at their briefest, that my father received an official
communication from Berlin desiring him to make ready a couple of
rooms for the immediate reception of a state-prisoner, for whose
safe-keeping he would be held responsible till further notice. The
letter--(I have it in my desk now)--was folded square, sealed with five
seals, and signed in the King's name by the Minister of War; and it was
brought, as I well remember, by a mounted orderly from Cologne.
So a couple of empty rooms were chosen on the second story, just over
one of the State apartments at the end of the east wing; and my father,
who was by no means well pleased with his office, set to work to
ransack the Château for furniture.
"Since it is the King's pleasure to make a gaoler of me," said he, "I'll try
to give my poor devil of a prisoner all the comforts I can. Come with
me, my little Gretchen, and let's see what chairs and tables we can find
up in the garrets."
Now I had been longing to explore the top rooms ever since I came to
live at Brühl--those top rooms under the roof, of which the shutters
were always closed, and the doors always locked, and where not even
the housemaids were admitted oftener than twice a year. So at this
welcome invitation I sprang up, joyfully enough, and ran before my
father all the way. But when he unlocked the first door, and all beyond
was dark, and the air that met us on the threshold had a faint and dead
odour, like the atmosphere of a tomb, I shrank back trembling, and
dared not venture in. Nor did my courage altogether come back when
the shutters were thrown open, and the wintry sunlight streamed in
upon dusty floors, and cobwebbed ceilings, and piles of mysterious
objects covered in a ghostly way with large white sheets, looking like
heaps of slain upon a funeral pyre.
The slain, however, turned out to be the very things of which we were
in search; old-fashioned furniture in all kinds of incongruous styles,
and of all epochs--Louis Quatorze cabinets in cracked tortoise-shell and
blackened buhl--antique carved chairs emblazoned elaborately with
coats of arms, as old as the time of Albert Dürer--slender-legged tables
in battered marqueterie--time-pieces in lack-lustre ormolu, still pointing
to the hour at which they had stopped, who could tell how many years
ago? bundles of moth-eaten tapestries and faded silken
hangings--exquisite oval mirrors framed in chipped wreaths of delicate

Dresden china--mouldering old portraits of dead-and-gone court
beauties in powder and patches, warriors in wigs, and prelates in
point-lace--whole suites of furniture in old stamped leather and
worm-eaten Utrecht velvet; broken toilette services in pink and blue
Sèvres; screens, wardrobes, cornices--in short, all kinds of luxurious
lumber going fast to dust, like those who once upon a time enjoyed and
owned it.
And now, going from room to room, we chose a chair here, a table
there, and so on, till we had enough to furnish a bedroom and
sitting-room.
"He must have a writing-table," said my father, thoughtfully, "and a
book-case."
Saying which, he stopped in front of a ricketty-looking gilded cabinet
with empty red-velvet shelves, and tapped it with his cane.
"But supposing he has no books!" suggested I, with the precocious
wisdom of nine years of age.
"Then we must beg some, or borrow some, my little Mädchen," replied
my father, gravely; "for books are the main solace of the captive, and
he who hath them not lies in a twofold prison."
"He shall have my picture-book of Hartz legends!" said I, in a sudden
impulse of compassion. Whereupon my father took me up in his arms,
kissed me on both cheeks, and bade me choose some knicknacks for the
prisoner's sitting-room.
"For though we have gotten together all the necessaries for comfort, we
have taken nothing for adornment," said he,