“No.”

“Who do you have?”

“No one.”

Apollonie threw up her arms in violent agitation.  “So the baron lies up there sick and lonely and nobody even fetches a doctor.  Oh, if his mother knew this!  That simply won’t do, and I am going in.  Please let me in.  The master won’t have to see me at all.  All I want to do is to cook something strengthening for him.  I shall only put his room in order, and if he happens to get up, I can make his bed.  Oh, please let me in, Mr. Trius!  You know that I’ll do anything in the world for you.  Please let me nurse the sick master!”

Apollonie’s voice had grown supplicating.

“Forbidden,” was the curt reply.

“But I am no stranger here.  I have served in this house for more than thirty years,” Apollonie went on eagerly.  “I know what is needed and what the master ought to have.  Things are not attended to at all, I fear, and indeed I know it.  After all I am an old acquaintance, and I’ll only come an hour a day to do the most urgent task.”

“Nobody is allowed to come,” Mr. Trius said again in his unchangeable, dry tone.  It was all the same to him whether Apollonie begged or scolded.  In her anxiety about the sick master she had forgotten everything else.

“Where is the child?” she suddenly cried out in great anxiety.  “Good gracious, where is she?  She must have run into the garden.”

Mr. Trius had suddenly grown more lively.  Throwing the gate to with great violence, he turned the huge key before pulling it rapidly out.  He realized that Apollonie was capable of doing anything in her excitement about the lost child.

“Witch’s baggage!” he murmured angrily.  Swinging his stick in a threatening way, he ran towards the castle.

“Mr. Trius,” Apollonie screamed after him with all her might, “if you touch the child you will have to reckon with me, do you hear?  Hold the stick down.  She can’t help being frightened if she sees you.”

But he had quickly been lost from view.  While Apollonie and Mr. Trius had been absorbed in their violent altercation and had stared at each other, she in wild excitement and he in stiff immovability, Maezli had slipped from between the two as swiftly as a little mouse.  Then she had merrily wandered up towards the castle hoping that she would soon see the garden with the lovely flowers.  But all she could see were wild bushes and stretches of grass with only the yellow sparkling flowers which grow in every common meadow.  This was not what Maezli had expected, so she went up to the terrace of the castle and looked about from there for the flower garden.  At the end of the terrace where the little pine wood began she saw something that looked like fiery yellow flowers and quickly ran there.  But instead of flowers she saw a lion skin shining in the sun.  To see what was under the skin Maezli came closer.  A head was raised up and two sharp eyes were directed towards her.  It was a man who had half raised himself on the long chair which was covered by the skin.  As soon as she saw that it was a human being and not a lion, she came nearer and asked quite confidentially, “Do you happen to know where the beautiful old mignonette is, that mama saw in the garden here?”