Page:Hoffmann's Strange Stories - Hoffman - 1855.djvu/356

 children. I have not met with any story more marvellous, however, than one which has been told to me of my own mother. About two months after her marriage, she was admitted, along with other women, to be a looker-on at a brilliant festival given by our Court at Trianon. There her attention was so powerfully attracted by a certain cavalier, in a handsome Spanish dress, with a very magnificent chain, studded with diamonds, about his neck, that she could not turn her eyes from him for a moment. Her whole heart was fixed on these jewels, and she looked at them with a most ardent longing, convinced that they were a treasure of incalculable worth. The same cavalier had, some years before, when my mother was a young girl, paid his addresses to her, but was repulsed with indifference and disdain. My mother recognized him; but now, illumined as he was by the splendor of the brilliant diamonds, he seemed to her a being of a higher order, the very beau ideal of beauty and attraction. The cavalier did not fail to remark the fixed direction of her eyes, and the fervent admiration by which they seemed to be animated. He thought, of course, that she was now more favorably disposed towards him; he contrived to make his way to her party, entered into conversation, and, in the course of the evening, found means to entice her with him to a lonely thicket in the garden, quite apart from her associates. There an accident occurred, which, to this moment, remains inexplicable, unless on the supposition that my father was also present, and had been on the watch; but, during their interview, while the cavalier persisted in his amorous attentions, and my mother thought only of the beautiful chain, he was stabbed to the heart by some one who came behind him unawares, and who vanished instantly, favored by the darkness of the night. My mother's piercing shrieks brought people to her assistance, and the cavalier only lived long enough to declare that she was guiltless of his fate; but the horror and agitation of this adventure brought on a severe fit of illness, so that she and her unborn child were given up for lost.