Page:Hoffmann's Strange Stories - Hoffman - 1855.djvu/416



near the city of G, coming from the south, may be seen a castle in the style of the middle age, which seems like a stone giant, to watch the road through the openings in a wood of pines that surrounds it. Behind this residence, is spread out a grand park all covered with shade and mystery. The solitude which reigns in the castle strikes a chill to your heart like the air from a tomb; and it is with difficulty that the old porter deigns to inform the curious traveller that this was the residence of the late counsellor of state Reutlinger.

The interior decoration of the castle recalls the paintings, arabesques, and all the strange caprices of the French artists of the time of Louis XIV. This fashion has even presided over the arrangement of the gardens, filled with artificial grottoes, suspended bridges, and currents of running water spread out in limpid streams on symmetrically cut lawns. At the end of the gardens, in a bower of weeping willows with untrimmed branches, rises a small Silesian marble monument, and in the middle of this kind of mourning piece is incrusted an agate heart veined withered lines. It might have been called a bleeding heart. On examining it nearer, these words engraved on the agate may be read; "Repose in peace!" Long before this inscription was engraved, and if my memory is good, the eighth day of September, in the year 180–, a man and a woman already far advanced in life contemplated this little monument.