Page:Select Popular Tales from the German of Musaeus.djvu/65

Rh serenity to keep up the good humour of his guests. This moody temper of their host soon soured the sweetness of social joy among the guests, and the feasting chamber became as still and quiet as a funeral assembly. The instruments which should have played to the expected dances were sent away; and thus ended the feast at Count Conrad’s house, once the abode of mirth. The dejected guests disappeared earlier than usual, and the knight longed for the solitude of his own chamber, to give himself up to his melancholy grief, and to reflect, undisturbed, on the disappointments of love. He tossed impatiently in his bed, and knew not what interpretation to put on his deceived hopes. His blood boiled in his veins; morning came before he had closed his eyes, the servants entered and found their lord struggling with wild fantasies, and, to all appearance, in a high fever. Then the whole house was thrown into confusion, physicians ran up and down stairs, wrote prescriptions a yard long, and in the apothecaries’ shops all the mortars were at work, as if they were sounding for matins. But the little herb, Eyebright, which alone softens the longings of love, no physician had prescribed; therefore, the sick man abused the restorative balsam, and pearl tincture, refused to subject himself to any regimen, and desired the physicians no longer to trouble him with their follies, but to let the sand gradually cease to flow in his hour-glass, without shaking it with their helping hands.

Seven days had Count Conrad wasted away in secret sorrow, so that the rose faded from his cheeks, the fire of his eyes disappeared, and life and breath only hovered between his lips, like a light morning fog in the valley, which only needs the least breath of wind to dissipate it entirely. Miss Matilda had accurate knowledge of all that passed in the house; it was not caprice nor prudish affectation, that she had not accepted the invitation; it cost her a hard struggle between head and heart, between reason and passion, before she could resolve not to listen to the voice of her beloved. Partly she wished to prove the constancy of his vehement protestations, partly she felt some hesitation in employing the third wish of the musk-apple; for though she thought that, as a bride, a new dress would become her, yet her godmother had enjoined her to use her three wishes prudently. But on the day of the feast her heart was very heavy: she sat in a corner and wept bitterly. The illness of the knight, of which she easily divined the cause, troubled her still more, and when she heard the danger he was in she was inconsolable. On the seventh day, according to the prognostications of the physicians, life or death was to be determined. It is easy to judge that Matilda voted for the life of her beloved; and that she could most probably effect this recovery was not unknown to her; only she found great difficulty as to the manner in which she should behave. Still, among the thousand faculties which love awakens and