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Updated: June 16, 2025
I raised to my lips the hand which she tremblingly placed in mine, and went out full of admiration for this frail and feeble woman, who was, nevertheless, so strong in the time of trial. Is anything grander than duty nobly accomplished? An hour after the conversation with Odile, Sperver and I were riding hard, and leaving Nideck rapidly behind us.
"Madam," I replied as a last effort, "the medical profession, too, has its duties, and an honourable man must fulfil them even to harshness and cruelty; your presence is killing your father." I shall remember all my life the sudden change in the expression of the face of Odile.
Sperver, passing the back of his hand across his eyes, went on "You know Nideck?" "Of course I do by reputation; what have you to do there?" "I am the count's chief huntsman." "And who has sent you?" "The young Countess Odile." "Very good. How soon are we to start?" "This moment. The matter is urgent; the old count is very ill, and his daughter has begged me not to lose a moment.
And my imagination, once launched, carried me into the interesting regions of romance; but I was careful to tell no one what I thought. If I had opened out those conjectures to Sperver he would never have forgiven me for imagining that there could have been any intimacy between his master and the Black Plague; and as for Mademoiselle Odile, I dared not suggest insanity to her.
"Doctor," he cried with a savage grin, "have you any violent malignant poison about you to give me something that will destroy me like a thunderbolt? It would be a mercy to poison me like a dog, rather than let me suffer as I am doing." His features writhed convulsively, his colour became livid. Odile rose and advanced to the door. "Stay!" he howled furiously "stay till I have cursed you!"
Yet he was calm, and did not seem surprised at my presence in Knapwurst's room. "Fritz," he said briefly, "I am come to fetch you." I rose without answering and followed him. Scarcely were we out of the hut when he took me by the arm and drew me on to the castle. "Mademoiselle Odile wants to see you," he whispered. "What! is she ill?"
I knew nothing of the past, to me the present was joy and happiness, and oh! the future! the dark, miserable future! there was none! My only future was to-morrow's play!" Odile smiled bitterly and went on:
"Still, Monsieur Knapwurst, the lord of Nideck has had great sorrows, had he not?" "Such as what?" "The loss of his wife." "Yes, you are right there; his wife was an angel; he married her for love. She was a Zaân, one of the oldest and best nobility of Alsace, but a family ruined by the Revolution. The Countess Odile was the delight of her husband.
Jean Lozier is such an obliging creature he will do anything I ask him." "But, Odile," argued the boy, with some sense of equity, "she is not yet engaged to our family." "And how shall we get her engaged to us if Monsieur Reece Zhone must hang around her? Papa says he is the most promising young man in the Territory. If I were a boy, Pierre Menard, I would do something with him."
Odile, the Wartburg of Alsace, as the saint herself was its Holy Elizabeth, and with as romantic a story for those with a taste for such legends. Here and there on the remoter wooded peaks are stately ruins of feudal castles, whilst all the way our path lies amid bright foliage of young forest trees, chestnut and oak, pine and acacia, and the ground is purple with heather.
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