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Up the long avenue of aged oaks which led from the forest to the main entrance of the Chateau Metzengerstein, a steed, bearing an unbonneted and disordered rider, was seen leaping with an impetuosity which outstripped the very Demon of the Tempest. The career of the horseman was indisputably, on his own part, uncontrollable.
Moreover, near neighbors are seldom friends; and the inhabitants of the Castle Berlifitzing might look, from their lofty buttresses, into the very windows of the palace Metzengerstein. Least of all had the more than feudal magnificence, thus discovered, a tendency to allay the irritable feelings of the less ancient and less wealthy Berlifitzings.
There, the dark, tall statures of the Princes Metzengerstein their muscular war-coursers plunging over the carcasses of fallen foes startled the steadiest nerves with their vigorous expression; and here, again, the voluptuous and swan-like figures of the dames of days gone by, floated away in the mazes of an unreal dance to the strains of imaginary melody.
Frederick, Baron Metzengerstein, was, on the other hand, not yet of age. His father, the Minister G , died young. His mother, the Lady Mary, followed him quickly after. Frederick was, at that time, in his fifteenth year.
Such estates were seldom held before by a nobleman of Hungary. His castles were without number. The chief in point of splendor and extent was the "Chateau Metzengerstein." The boundary line of his dominions was never clearly defined; but his principal park embraced a circuit of fifty miles.
For example, "The soul," said the former I give the words of an acute and intelligent Parisian "ne demeure qu'un seul fois dans un corps sensible: au reste un cheval, un chien, un homme meme, n'est que la ressemblance peu tangible de ces animaux." The families of Berlifitzing and Metzengerstein had been at variance for centuries.
"Have you heard of the unhappy death of the old hunter Berlifitzing?" said one of his vassals to the Baron, as, after the departure of the page, the huge steed which that nobleman had adopted as his own, plunged and curvetted, with redoubled fury, down the long avenue which extended from the chateau to the stables of Metzengerstein.
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