VIII

It is ten o’clock upon Sylvester Abend, or New Year’s Eve.  Herr Buol sits with his wife at the head of his long table.  His family and serving folk are round him.  There is his mother, with little Ursula, his child, upon her knee.  The old lady is the mother of four comely daughters and nine stalwart sons, the eldest of whom is now a grizzled man.  Besides our host, four of the brothers are here to-night; the handsome melancholy Georg, who is so gentle in his speech; Simeon, with his diplomatic face; Florian, the student of medicine; and my friend, colossal-breasted Christian.  Palmy came a little later, worried with many cares, but happy to his heart’s core.  No optimist was ever more convinced of his philosophy than Palmy.  After them, below the salt, were ranged the knechts and porters, the marmiton from the kitchen, and innumerable maids.  The board was tesselated with plates of birnen-brod and eier-brod, kuechli and cheese and butter; and Georg stirred grampampuli in a mighty metal bowl.  For the uninitiated, it may be needful to explain these Davos delicacies.  Birnen-brod is what the Scotch would call a ‘bun,’ or massive cake, composed of sliced pears, almonds, spices, and a little flour.  Eier-brod is a saffron-coloured sweet bread, made with eggs; and kuechli is a kind of pastry, crisp and flimsy, fashioned into various devices of cross, star, and scroll.  Grampampuli is simply brandy burnt with sugar, the most unsophisticated punch I ever drank from tumblers.  The frugal people of Davos, who live on bread and cheese and dried meat all the year, indulge themselves but once with these unwonted dainties in the winter.

The occasion was cheerful, and yet a little solemn.  The scene was feudal.  For these Buols are the scions of a warrior race: 

  A race illustrious for heroic deeds;
  Humbled, but not degraded.

During the six centuries through which they have lived nobles in Davos, they have sent forth scores of fighting men to foreign lands, ambassadors to France and Venice and the Milanese, governors to Chiavenna and Bregaglia and the much-contested Valtelline.  Members of their house are Counts of Buol-Schauenstein in Austria, Freiherrs of Muhlingen and Berenberg in the now German Empire.  They keep the patent of nobility conferred on them by Henri IV.  Their ancient coat—­parted per pale azure and argent, with a dame of the fourteenth century bearing in her hand a rose, all counterchanged—­is carved in wood and monumental marble on the churches and old houses hereabouts.  And from immemorial antiquity the Buol of Davos has sat thus on Sylvester Abend with family and folk around him, summoned from alp and snowy field to drink grampampuli and break the birnen-brod.