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Updated: May 2, 2025
As to the brave lady who had twice saved our lives, I could not learn very much about her at that moment from Duroc, but when I chanced to meet him in Paris two years later, after the campaign of Wagram, I was not very much surprised to find that I needed no introduction to his bride, and that by the queer turns of fortune he had himself, had he chosen to use it, that very name and title of the Baron Straubenthal, which showed him to be the owner of the blackened ruins of the Castle of Gloom.
A farmer with his cart was approaching us a matted-haired, downcast fellow, in a sheepskin jacket. 'What village is this? asked Duroc. 'It is Arensdorf, he answered, in his barbarous German dialect. 'Then here I am to stay the night, said my young companion. Then, turning to the farmer, he asked his eternal question, 'Can you tell me where the Baron Straubenthal lives?
Presently we found ourselves at the village of Hayenau. Duroc rode up to the post-house and asked to see the master. 'Can you tell me, said he, 'whether the man who calls himself the Baron Straubenthal lives in these parts? The postmaster shook his head, and we rode upon our way.
Well, this was not satisfactory, but there was something in my companion's manner which told me that any further questioning would be distasteful to him. I said nothing more, therefore, but Duroc would still ask every peasant whom we met whether he could give him any news of the Baron Straubenthal.
He was one of Sansterre's Guard, and a noted duellist. A foreign lady named the Baroness Straubenthal having been dragged before the Jacobins, he had gained her liberty for her on the promise that she with her money and estates should be his. He had married her, taken her name and title, and escaped out of France at the time of the fall of Robespierre.
So it will be tonight when I tell you of my visit to the Castle of Gloom; of the strange mission of Sub-Lieutenant Duroc, and of the horrible affair of the man who was once known as Jean Carabin, and afterwards as the Baron Straubenthal.
'My brother joined the army, and passed with it through all Southern Europe, asking everywhere for the Baron Straubenthal. Last October he was killed at Jena, with his mission still unfulfilled. Then it became my turn, and I have the good fortune to hear of the very man of whom I am in search at one of the first Polish villages which I have to visit, and within a fortnight of joining my regiment.
I took no notice of this, but when, at the next village, my comrade repeated the same question, with the same result, I could not help asking him who this Baron Straubenthal might be. 'He is a man, said Duroc, with a sudden flush upon his boyish face, 'to whom I have a very important message to convey.
'The Baron Straubenthal does not receive visitors at so late an hour, said he, speaking in very excellent French. 'You can inform Baron Straubenthal that I have come eight hundred leagues to see him, and that I will not leave until I have done so, said my companion. I could not myself have said it with a better voice and manner.
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