Monsieur Maurice | Page 3

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 Chateau 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 Br��hl--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 D��rer--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 S��vres; 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 M?dchen," 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, "and 'twere pity the prison were duller than it need be. Choose thou a pretty face or two from among these old pictures, my little Gretchen, and an ornament for his mantelshelf. Young as thou art, thou hast the woman's wit in thee."
So I picked out