Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/244

236 “Some hundred years ago, a very rough, wild Count Malzahn was proprietor of the Château of Militsch. He was a great sportsman, and fond of heavy potations, as gentlemen were wont to be in those days. He often had a wild, noisy set of companions about him, and thus scared away from his table his delicate, refined, and beautiful young wife. One evening, when these rough sportsmen had been drinking hard around the oaken table in the tower of Militsch Castle, the conversation happened to turn upon the mysterious necklace, which had acquired great celebrity from the fact that whenever a Countess of Malzahn died, one of the pearls really did turn black. Some questions arose as to the quality of the stones, it having been asserted by jewellers that although bearing a strong resemblance to pearls, the stones were of no earthly composition, and so hard that it was perfectly impossible to break them. At the request of his guests, the Count sent to his lady, begging her to lend her necklace for their inspection. She did not like to part with it, and made an excuse; whereupon her lord and master waxed wrath, and ordered her to send him the trinket, on pain of his serious displeasure. The poor Countess complied, though unwillingly; the necklace was brought, handed about, and examined, and many were the bets made as to its solidity. One of the knights declared he could split one of the pearls with his sword. Wagers were laid for and against:—he struck the blow with dreadful violence, but the pearl remained unscathed. Suddenly, however, a dreadful peal of thunder was heard; the lightning struck upon the old tower where they were seated, which crumbled to pieces, burying the half-drunken knights under the rush of falling stones. Many were drawn out merely wounded, but the imprudent knight who had tried his strength on unearthly things was struck dead. The pearl necklace was found, and, as you see, has been ever since carefully preserved, but they never have been able to rebuild the tower of Militsch. It is said that whatever part of it is built during the day, falls in during the night; so that after many fruitless attempts to overcome the spell, it has been given up altogether. The only certain part of the story is,” added the Countess, “that this old necklace still retains its strange power of marking the death of each successive owner, by one of its pearls turning black. I often look at them, to see if another pearl is not beginning to assume a grey tint, which will be the sure sign of my approaching death!”

We all looked with much interest at the handsome features of the amiable old lady, who had so kindly related this family legend for our benefit, and heartily wished that her pearls might long retain their pure white hue, which strongly contrasted with the colour of the seventeen that have already put on their mourning for the deceased châtelaines, and which really have a very dingy tint.

The die was cast—strange stories had become the order of the evening. The formerly interesting topics of family quarrels, suspected flirtations, misbehaved servants, &c., had suddenly lost their charm, and a tide of family traditions and ghost stories came rushing in from all sides, a torrent which nothing but the fear of late hours and bad roads could stem. I will only record the tales which struck me as most authentic, because they were told by members of the families in which they had occurred.

“You all know that beautiful picture of my brother-in-law, the Baron Tettau, which hangs in the picture gallery at home, do you not?” inquired a pale, delicate-looking lady, with light blue eyes and flaxen hair. “That picture was painted by Angelica Kaufmann, and is considered to be one of her best works. He is taken in full uniform, as a smart young officer of the Guards, which he then was, and his portrait was painted on the occasion of his marriage, which, unfortunately, gave him but a short span of happiness, as his young wife died a year after, leaving him a sweet little daughter in token of her love. This child was brought up in the country, under the surveillance of a governess, and very near to the residence of her grandmother, the old Baroness von Tettau.

“We were one evening all assembled at supper, that is to say, all except my brother-in-law, who had just joined his regiment, and was daily expecting to take an active part in the contest against Napoleon’s hated troops. His mother looked up with tender and admiring eyes at the handsome portrait hanging opposite to her, and exclaimed with a sigh, ‘Where may my poor Franz be just now!’ the tears gathering fast in her eyes at the thought of the perils he was about to encounter. Scarcely had the words been spoken when a crash was heard, and down came the picture! Strange to say, the nail on which it had hung had not moved: it seemed to have been jolted off the hook by a sudden jerk. We were all depressed by this unaccountable accident, and I had some difficulty in calming my poor mother-in-law, who persisted in regarding it as an omen that something dreadful had happened: her fears were but too soon verified. A few days later the news reached us that my brother-in-law had been sent to reconnoitre, and that a stray shot had killed him on the spot, at the very hour when his portrait had fallen down at his father’s home.

“Time, which heals all wounds, even the deepest, had passed over this sad circumstance, and we were once more seated together at supper in the same dining-room as before. It was rather late, for we had been paying a visit to the little orphan girl, Baron Tettau’s daughter, and had waited there to speak with the doctor, as she had not been well: he declared, however, that she was much better, quite free from fever, and assured us that there was not the slightest cause for anxiety. We therefore returned home, and as I said before, were seated at supper, when again a crash, and, without any apparent cause, down came my brother-in-law’s portrait to the ground. This time our alarm was excusable: we at once despatched a messenger on horseback to inquire after the little girl, but he returned almost immediately, having been met half way by the bearer of a missive from the governess, conveying the shocking intelligence that the dear little child had died suddenly in a fit!