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Updated: June 15, 2025
From time to time he stopped to watch the gathering snow on the high windows, and I was warming myself in the chimney corner, bewailing my dead hounds, and bestowing maledictions on all the wild boars that infest the Schwartzwald. Everybody at Nideck had been asleep a couple of hours, and not a sound could be heard but the tread and the clank of the count's heavy spurred boots upon the flags.
Then he filled it again, and repeating with a voice that re-echoed among the old walls, "To the recovery of my noble master, the high and mighty lord of Nideck," he drained it also. Then a feeling of satisfied repletion stole gently over us, and we felt pleased with everything. I fell back in my chair, with my face directed to the ceiling, and my arms hanging lazily down.
All I know is, that on the very day that the attack comes on, at the very moment, if you will ascend the beacon tower, you will see the Black Plague squatting down like a dark speck on the snow just between the Tiefenbach and the castle of Nideck. She sits there alone, crouching close to the snow. Every day she comes a little nearer, and every day the attacks grow worse.
"I want to know, first of all, where does this Black Pest come from?" Sperver stared at me with astonishment. "Come from? Who can tell that?" "Very well, you can't. But when does she come within sight of Nideck?" "As I told you, ten days before Christmas, at the same time every year." "And how long does she stay?" "A fortnight or three weeks." "Is she ever seen before? Not even on her way?
Lieverlé accompanied us, flying alongside of us like an arrow from the bow. A whirlwind seemed to sweep us in our headlong way. The towers of Nideck were far away, and Sperver was keeping ahead as usual when I shouted "Halloo, comrade, pull up! Halt! Before we go any farther let us know what we are about." He faced round. "Only just tell me, Fritz, is it right or is it left?" "No; that won't do.
Master Bernard looked out, and really did recognise the ruins of Nideck, just as he had described them in the twenty-fourth chapter of his History of Alsacian Antiquities, with their high towers crumbling away at the foot, and dominating over the abyss into which the torrent falls. "But I thought I was near Haslach!" he cried with amazement. The woodcutter burst out laughing.
"Oh, the Wallachians! I saw them this morning in the stable. They are splendid animals." The horsemen galloped away at full speed, and the curtain in the turret-window dropped. Several uneventful days followed. My life at Nideck was becoming dull and monotonous.
This piece of intelligence would have failed to interest me before seeing Marie Lagoutte, but now it struck more forcibly. There certainly was some mysterious connection between the lord of Nideck and that old woman. I knew nothing of the nature of this connection, and I felt that, at whatever cost, I must know it. "Just wait a moment, friends," said I to Sperver and his comrade.
"At this moment I ought to have been quiet at home in my own arm-chair, and Berbel, according to her praiseworthy custom, ought to be bringing me up upon a tray a cup of smoking hot coffee, while I am winding up my chapter upon the ancient armoury at Nideck. Instead of which, here I am floundering in holes, stumbling everywhere, and suppose I lost my way altogether and then broke my neck! There!
These thoughts passed through my mind whilst admiring the grace and gentleness in every movement of Odile of Nideck, and that clearness and purity of outline which is only found marked in the features of the higher aristocracy, and I could recall nothing to my recollection equal to this ideal beauty. "Go now, Gretchen," said the young countess, "and make haste."
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