German fiction -- Translations into English; Short stories, German -- Translations into English
She went, the others descended from their horses and made them over to
the servants. Geoffroy after exchanging a few rapid words with the
porter: "Anything new?" "All as it was," took his own horse to the
stable, unbridled him, and then crossed the courtyard on his way to his
little turret without taking any notice of Aigleta, who, lost and
forsaken, sat on a stone bench amongst the menials, and could have wept
heartily over so disappointing a return to the much desired home, had
there not been too many lookers on. She saw the young man take his way
to the well-known rose-embowered tower, but his head hung down so
dejectedly that she did not venture to address him, or ask him to let
her go with him to their old play-ground. As for him, he seemed to have
forgotten that he was in the world, or that he walked among men.
Although he had only had a little bread and wine in the early morning,
and it was now past noon, he had no thought of eating or drinking, but
sat in his turret-chamber on his mother's bed, motionless like one
struck by lightning, his widely-opened eyes fixed on his father's
song-book, which on his entrance he had taken down from the shelf and
opened out on his knee. Yet he did not seem to be reading, but rather
listening to some words that his own heart was setting to the music,
whether glad or sorrowful none could have guessed from his stony
aspect. All at once, however, he started back into life, and his dark
face flushed deeply; he sprang so hastily from the bed that the
song-book slipped from his knee and fell open upon the flags, then he
held his breath, and listened to some sound in the garden of roses
below. Yes, it was her step, no other human being's was like it, and
now her hand was upon the turret-door, now she crossed the dark and
narrow hall, now she opened the inner door and stepped over its
threshold into his small chamber.
As she entered, his eyes involuntarily fell, and he sought to disguise
his emotion by lifting from the floor the parchment-book that lay
between her and him, and now that he raised his eyes to her he started,
horror-stricken. For her face but lately blooming with youth and
health, had so changed in one short hour that she seemed to have
traversed years of hopeless grief.
"I disturb you, cousin," she said in a voice from which the music had
fled, "but I come to you because I think you are my friend--perhaps the
only one I have. Let me sit down, I am mortally weary. No, not on the
bed; my dear aunt died there. Oh, Jaufret, if I only knew that it would
be my death-bed too--and that my heart would grow still the moment I
lay down there--God is my witness I would throw myself upon it at
once!"
She sank down on the seat that he offered her, hiding her face in her
hands, and tears streaming between her white fingers. "For God's sake,
cousin," he cried, "you break my heart. What has happened? What has
your father said?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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