O Thou, My Austria! Part 11

She was convinced that she must have made some mistake in her accounts, and she worked over them half through an entire night, but with no consoling result.

The upshot of it was that she wanted to go home immediately; but since the trip had been undertaken chiefly for my health and was to end in a visit to some sea-side resort, she wrote to my uncle, explaining the state of affairs--that is, of her finances--and asking for a subsidy.

My uncle sent the subsidy, but requested us to leave Paris as soon as possible, and to choose a modest seaside resort.

The next day we departed from Babylon.

After inquiring everywhere, and studying the guidebook attentively, my aunt finally resolved to go to St. Valery.

The evening was cold and windy when we reached the little town and drew up in the omnibus before the Htel de la Plage.

The season had not begun, and the hotel was not actually open, but it received us.

As no rooms were taken, all were placed at our disposal, and we chose three in the first story, one for my aunt, one for me, and one for our trunks.

The furniture, of crazy old mahogany, had evidently been bought of some dealer in second-band furniture in Rouen, but the beds were extremely good, and the bed-linen, although "coa.r.s.e as sacking," as Uncle Paul would have expressed it, was perfectly clean and white.

From our windows we looked out upon the sea and upon the little wooden hut where the safety-boat was kept, and also upon the little town park, about a hundred square yards in extent; upon the Casino, quite an imposing structure on the sh.o.r.e; upon the red pennons which, designating the bathing-place, made a brilliant show in the midst of the prevailing gray, and upon a host of whitewashed bath-houses waiting for the guests who had not yet arrived.

How indeed could they arrive? One had need to have come from Bohemia, not to go directly home, in such cold, damp weather as we had; but we wanted to get value from our expensive trip.

The Casino was no more open than the hotel, it was even in a decided _nglig_, but it was busily dressing. A swarm of painters and upholsterers were decorating it. The upholsterers hung the inside with crimson, the painters coloured the outside red and white.

The proprietor, a broad-shouldered young man answering to the high-sounding name of Raoul Donval, daily superintended the work of the--artists. He always wore a white cap with a broad black visor, and a stick in the pocket of his short jacket, and plum-coloured knickerbockers; and I think he considered himself very elegant.

They were draping and beautifying and painting our hotel too.

Everything was being painted instead of scrubbed,--the stairs, the doors, the floors; everywhere the dirt was hidden beneath the same dull-red colour. Aunt Rosa declared that they seemed to her to be daubing the entire house with blood. Just at this time she was wont to make most ghastly comparisons, because, for lack of other literature, she was reading an historical romance in the _Pet.i.t Journal_.

She was in a far more melancholy mood than I at St. Valery. Since it had to be, I made up my mind to it, consoling myself with the reflection that I was just nineteen, and that there was plenty of time for fate, if so minded, to shape my destiny brilliantly. Unfortunately, my aunt had not this consolation, but, instead, the depressing consciousness of having given up Bayreuth. It was hard. I was very sorry for her, and did all that I could to amuse her.

I could always find something to laugh at in our visits to the empty Casino and in our walks through the town, but instead of cheering her my merriment distressed her. She had seen in the French journal which she studied faithfully every day an account of a sensitive trombone-player at the famous yearly festival at Neuilly who had broken his instrument over the head of an arrogant Englishman who had allowed himself to make merry over some detail of the festival. Therefore I could scarcely smile in the street without having my aunt twitch my sleeve and say,--

"For heaven's sake don't laugh at these Frenchmen!--remember that trombone at Neuilly."

During the first fortnight I had the whole sh.o.r.e, with the bath-houses and bathing-men, entirely to myself. It was ghastly! The icy temperature of the water seemed to bite into my flesh, my teeth chattered, and the bather who held me by both my hands was as blue as his dress. Our mutual isolation had the effect of establis.h.i.+ng a friends.h.i.+p between the bather and myself. He had formerly been a sailor, and had but lately returned from Tonquin; he told me much that was interesting about the war and the cholera. He was a good-looking fellow, with a fair complexion and a tanned face.

After my bath I ran about on the sh.o.r.e until I got warm, and then we breakfasted. My aunt did not bathe. She counted the days like a prisoner.

When the weather permitted, we made excursions into the surrounding country in a little wagon painted yellow, drawn by a s.h.a.ggy donkey, which I drove myself. The donkey's name was Jeanne d'Arc,--which horrified my aunt,--and she had a young one six months old that ran after us as we drove along.

For more than two weeks we were the sole inmates of the Htel de la Plage. The manager of the establishment--who was likewise the head of the kitchen--drove to the station every day to capture strangers, but never brought any back.

I see him now,--short and enormously broad, with a triple or quadruple chin, sitting on the box beside the coachman, his hands on his thighs.

He always wore sky-blue trousers, and a short coat buckled about him with a broad patent-leather belt. The chambermaid, who revered him, informed me that it was the dress of an English courier.

One day he brought back to the host, who daily awaited the guests, two live pa.s.sengers,--an old woman and a young man.

The old woman was very poor, and took a garret room. She must have been beautiful formerly, and she looked very distinguished. She positively refused to write her name in the strangers' book. By chance we learned afterwards that she was a Comtesse d'Ivry, from Versailles, who had had great misfortunes. She had a pa.s.sion for sunsets; every afternoon she had an arm-chair carried out on the sh.o.r.e, and sat there, wrapped in a thick black cloak, with her feet on a hot-water bottle, to admire the majestic spectacle. When it rained, she still persisted in going, and sat beneath a large ragged umbrella. Upon her return she usually sighed and told the host that the sunsets here were not nearly so fine as at Trouville,--appearing to think that this was his fault.

At last the weather brightened and it grew warm; the sun chased away the clouds, and allured a crowd of people to the lonely sh.o.r.e. And such people! I shudder to think of them.

We could endure the solitude, but such society was unendurable.

The next day I took my last bath.

On our return journey, at Cologne, an odd thing happened.

It was early, and I was sleepy. I was waiting for breakfast in melancholy mood, and was contemplating a huge pile of elegant hand-luggage which a servant in a very correct dark suit was superintending, when two ladies, followed by a maid, made their appearance, one fair, the other dark, from the dressing-room, which had been locked in our faces. In honour of these two princesses we had been obliged to remain unwashed. Ah, how fresh and neat and pretty they both looked! The dark one was by far the handsomer of the two, but she looked gloomy and discontented, spoke never a word, and after a hurried breakfast became absorbed in a newspaper. The fair one, on the contrary, a striking creature, with a very large hat and a profusion of pa.s.s.e.m.e.nterie on her travelling-cloak, talked a great deal and very loudly to a short, fat woman who was going with her little son to Frankfort, and who addressed the blonde as "Frau Countess."

The name of the short woman was Frau Kampe, and the name of the Countess, which I shortly learned, shall be told in due time. The Countess complained of the fatigue of travelling; Frau Kampe, in a sympathetic tone, declared that it was almost impossible to sleep in the railway-carriages at this time of year, they were so overcrowded.

But the Countess rejoined with a laugh,--

"We had as much room as we wanted all the way; my husband secures that by his fees. He is much too lavish, as I often tell him. Since I have been travelling with him we have always had two railway-carriages, one for me and my maid, and the other for him and his cigars. It has been delightful."

"Even upon your wedding tour?" asked her handsome, dark companion, looking up from her reading.

"Ha, ha, ha! Yes, even upon our wedding tour," said the other. "We were a very prosaic couple, entirely independent of each other,--quite an aristocratic match!" And she laughed again with much self-satisfaction.

"Where is the Herr Count?" asked Frau Kampe. "I should like to make his acquaintance."

"Oh, he is not often to be seen; he is smoking on the platform somewhere. I scarcely ever meet him; he never appears before the third bell has rung. A very aristocratic marriage, you see, Frau Kampe,--such a one as you read of."

The Countess's beautiful companion frowned, and the little Kampe boy grinned from ear to ear,--I could not tell whether it was at the aristocratic marriage or at the successful solution of an arithmetical problem which he had just worked out on the paper cover of one of Walter Scott's novels.

I must confess that I was curious to see the young husband who even upon his marriage journey had preferred the society of his cigars to that of his bride.

My aunt had missed the interesting conversation between Frau Kampe and her young patroness; she had rushed out to see the cathedral in the morning mist. I had manifested so little desire to join her in this artistic but uncomfortable enterprise that she had dispensed with my society. She now came back glowing with enthusiasm, and filled to overflowing with all sorts of information as to Gothic architecture.

Scarcely had she seated herself to drink the coffee which I poured out for her, when a tall young man, slightly stooping in his gait, and with a very attractive, delicately-chiselled face, entered. Was he not----?

Well, whoever he was, he was the husband of the aristocratic marriage.

He exchanged a few words with the blonde Countess, and was about to leave the room, when his glance fell upon my aunt.

"Baroness, you here!--what a delight!" he exclaimed, approaching her hastily.

"Lato!" she almost screamed. She always talks a little loud away from home, which annoys me.

It was, in fact, our old friend Lato Treurenberg. Before she had been with him two minutes my aunt had forgotten all her prejudice against him since his marriage,--and, what was more, had evidently forgotten the marriage itself, for she whispered, leaning towards him with a sly twinkle of her eye and a nod in the direction of the ladies,--

"What n.o.ble acquaintances you have made!--from Frankfort, or Hamburg?"

My heart was in my mouth. No one except Aunt Rosamunda could have made such a blunder.

The words had hardly escaped her lips when she became aware of her mistake, and she was covered with confusion. Lato flushed scarlet. At that moment the departure of our train was announced, and Lato took a hurried leave of us. I saw him outside putting the ladies into a carriage, after which he himself got into another.

We travelled second-cla.s.s, and therefore had the pleasure of sharing a compartment with the man-servant and maid of the Countess Lato Treurenberg.

My aunt took it all philosophically, while I, I confess, had much ado to conceal my ungrateful and mean irritation.