“So the count has never had any exciting deeds in hand?”

“None, Doctor Fritz, none whatever; and that is the pity.  A noble excitement is the glory of great families.  It is a misfortune for a noble race when a member of it is devoid of ambition; he allows his family to sink below its level.  I could give you many examples.  That which would be very fortunate in a trader’s family is the greatest misfortune in a nobleman’s.”

I was astonished; for all my theories upon the count’s past life were falling to the earth.

“Still, Monsieur Knapwurst, the lord of Nideck has had great sorrows, had he not?”

“Such as what?”

“The loss of his wife.”

“Yes, you are right there; his wife was an angel; he married her for love.  She was a Zaan, one of the oldest and best nobility of Alsace, but a family ruined by the Revolution.  The Countess Odile was the delight of her husband.  She died of a decline which carried her off after five years’ illness.  Every plan was tried to save her life.  They travelled in Italy together but she returned worse than she went, and died a few weeks after their return.  The count was almost broken-hearted, and for two years he shut himself up and would see no one.  He neglected his hounds and his horses.  Time at last calmed his grief, but there is always a remainder of grief,” said the hunchback, pointing with his finger to his heart; “you understand very well, there is still a bleeding wound.  Old wounds you know, make themselves felt in change of weather—­and old sorrows too—­in spring when the flowers bloom again, and in autumn when the dead leaves cover the soil.  But the count would not marry again; all his love is given to his daughter.”

“So the marriage was a happy one throughout?”

“Happy! why it was a blessing for everybody.”

I said no more.  It was plain that the count had not committed, and could not have committed, a crime.  I was obliged to yield to evidence.  But, then, what was the meaning of that scene at night, that strange connection with the Black Pest, that fearful acting, that remorse in a dream, which impelled the guilty to betray their past atrocities?

I lost myself in vain conjectures.

Knapwurst relighted his pipe, and handed me one, which I accepted.

By that time the icy numbness which had laid hold of me had nearly passed away, and I was enjoying that pleasant sense of relief which follows great fatigue when by the chimney-corner in a comfortable easy-chair, veiled in wreaths of tobacco-smoke, you yield to the luxury of repose, and listen idly to the duet between the chirping of a cricket on the hearth and the hissing of the burning log.

So we sat for a quarter of an hour.

At last I ventured to remark—­

“But sometimes the count gets angry with his daughter?”

Knapwurst started, and fixing a sinister, almost a fierce and hostile eye upon me, answered—­