"I will not weary you, Sir, by telling everything--how my little master grew up to be a great boy;--although I remember it all as if it were only yesterday;--and many's the lonesome hour I spend thinking over the past, from the first tooth he cut, to the first bird he shot with his little gun. And when I watched him playing in the court with the dogs, or looked after him when he rode out on the bailiff's horse, every muscle as firm and supple as a steel spring, and then that sweet face of his, and that dear little voice--I used to wonder at his father, who could go wandering about in foreign parts, rather than see his child grow up. To be sure, the boy did not take after him at all, except in his love for horses, and field sports.--For the rest, he was just his mother over again, both in face and temper. And so, when his father came and saw him at ten years old, he frowned, and looked as coldly on him as on a stranger. At night my darling asked me: 'Is Papa always so grave-looking, Flor?' And of course, I could not tell him how it was. "However, by-and-by, things began to mend. The Count came every autumn for the shooting season, and grew quite paternal with our boy;--kind or affectionate he never was. I cannot call to mind that he ever kissed him, or even so much as stroked his cheek. "But he gave him, on his thirteenth birthday, a small dun pony, with a bushy mane like a thick clothes-brush, and a pretty saddle; and then Count Ernest was taken to ride out with his papa, away through the forests, for whole days, and often to pay visits in the neighbourhood, where the great folks were always pleased to see the boy. Nobody ever dared to say how like his mother he was, for that always vexed the count; in general the countess was never spoken of, and the full length picture of her was hung in a room that was never used. Only her son would go into it now and then; and loved it well!--He often made me talk about his mother. But do you know, Sir, even then he had the sense to see that it was wisest not to mention her to his father. He had found out that even Death had failed to make her dearer to him. And then, he may have seen that it was just the proudest and wildest among the beauties of the neighbourhood, (and there were several then) who attracted his father most. The count amused himself with them all, and was a very different man to what he was at home. And the boy could not make these doings suit with what he had heard of his mother. "'Poor child!' I thought; 'Pray Heaven you may not get a stepmother who may suit your father better!'