Page:Hoffmann's Strange Stories - Hoffman - 1855.djvu/118



On the solitary banks of a northern lake, is still seen the ruins of an old manor house which bears the name of R—sitten. Arid heaths surround it on all sides. The horizon is shut in one side by water, calm, deep, and with a leaden color; on the other rises a wood of pine trees, which stretch out their black arms in the haze like spectres. The sky always in mourning, only opens to funereal birds. But at a quarter of a league from this mournful landscape, the aspect changes: a gay village appears suddenly in the flowery meadows. At the end of the village a wood of alders is growing greenly, not far from which is shown the first foundations of a castle that one of the lords of R—sitten proposed to erect in this oasis of natural planting and growth; but the heirs of this lord have forgotten this edifice already commenced, and the baron Roderick of R, although he was resigned to sharing with the screech-owls the patrimonial castle, had in nowise busied himself about finishing the new castle projected by his ancestors. He had satisfied himself with repairing the most dilapidated parts of the old castle, to shut himself up in it as well as he could, with a handful of followers as taciturn and uncommunicative as their master. He killed time by riding here and there, on the borders of the lake; and very rarely showed himself at the village amongst his vassals, where his name alone served as a bugbear to the children. In one of the highest towers, Roderick had placed an observatory,