would be the happiest man alive. He is rich and powerful and full of
honours. He possesses everything that the rest of the world is coveting.
Unfortunately his daughter persists in refusing every offer of marriage.
She consecrates her life to God, and it harasses him to think that the
ancient house of Nideck will become extinct."

"How did his illness come on?" I asked.

"Suddenly, ten years ago," was the reply.

All at once the honest fellow seemed to be recollecting himself. He took
from his pocket a short pipe, filled it, and having lighted it--

"One evening," said he, "I was sitting alone with the count in the
armoury of the castle. It was about Christmas time. We had been hunting
wild boars the whole day in the valleys of the Rhéthal, and had returned
at night bringing home with us two of our boar-hounds ripped open from
head to tail. It was just as cold as it is to-night, with snow and frost.
The count was pacing up and down the room with his chin upon his breast
and his hands crossed behind him, like a man in profound thought. From
time to time he stopped to watch the gathering snow on the high windows,
and I was warming myself in the chimney corner, bewailing my dead hounds,
and bestowing maledictions on all the wild boars that infest the
Schwartzwald. Everybody at Nideck had been asleep a couple of hours,
and not a sound could be heard but the tread and the clank of the
count's heavy spurred boots upon the flags. I remember well that a crow,
no doubt driven by a gust of wind, came flapping its wings against the
window-panes, uttering a discordant shriek, and how the sheets of snow
fell from the windows, and the windows suddenly changed from white to
black--"