Page:Selected Czech tales - 1925.djvu/239

 he would have known them among a thousand.

All his senses were roused. His eyes dilated with a magnificent, primeval wildness, his veins swelled, and his whole body showed a single tragic pose, the hunger for the fulfilment of passion, or death. It was as if his youth, long since dead, had been allowed to return once more, to give this weak body a mad, deadly tension, while the final blow was held suspended above his head.

The girls, horrified at this sight, were seized with animal fear, and fled in wild confusion as from a catastrophe.

‘Rita! Rita!’ The aged man’s groan seemed to issue not from his throat only but from his whole body. A frightened girl ran down the steep incline, the count pursued her. This chase after youth did not last long; it soon turned into a chase after death. Count Christopher of a sudden stumbled over the stump of a tree and fell heavily, knocking his temple against one of the boulders which were lying about in this part of the grounds. He fell without a sound.

‘Look at the monster so old and so sinful!’ said one of the footmen, who had been called by the girls.