It was very clear to the Councillor, had been quite clear from the first moment, and he had only wanted time to recover from his surprise. The Count’s move was a masterly one, which he had never expected from the reckless young man. He was in the strange position of being obliged to curb the ardour which he had so artfully roused.
“Bravo!” said he. “We shall have a skilful director in you. I congratulate ourselves and you in the prospect. At the same time, we will not divide the skin till we have killed the bear. Till now we have been reckoning without one person, who is, however, very powerful—without the Baroness Warnow herself.”
“But if she is in the hands of her trustee, and you and Wallbach could get the better of the General—”
“Only till the ! From that day, which happens to be her fiftieth birthday, the Baroness, by her husband’s will, has a voice amongst the trustees, who then, if you like, become only a committee of management under her.”
“And you think that the Baroness will be against our plan?”
“I think that the opinion of the Baroness upon this and every other matter is of infinitely less importance to us than that of Signor Giraldi.”
“Her steward?”
“Steward—secretary—companion, I do not know what.”
“They say that she is married to him?”
“She will take care not to do that!”
“Why?”
“Because by taking such a step she would lose all right to the estate, which would then fall immediately to Fräulein von Werben and her brother, provided they had not imitated the folly of their aunt in marrying below their rank. Then no one would have any of it except various benevolent institutions.”
“I have, as you may imagine, heard all possible and impossible things of that wonderful will. Can you and will you satisfy my curiosity, which now hardly deserves that name?”
“Willingly,” said the Councillor. “The slight indiscretion which I shall commit in so doing I will put down to my credit in our accounts; but where shall I begin?”
“At the beginning,” said the Count. “I know a great deal—I know very little—I know nothing. You see I am already practising the jargon with some facility. Shall I send for another bottle?”
“Thanks, thanks. I have still another visit before me; but you are right, you must know all now, and I will endeavour to be as brief as possible.”
He put his watch which he had just taken out back into his pocket; the Count leaned back in his chair, and began to rock himself, while the Councillor scribbled on a bit of paper, and was silent for a few moments, as if to collect his thoughts.
“You must not expect a private history from me; I could not tell it to you even if I wished, as in regard to the intimate relations and feelings of those concerned, I am no better informed than other people, and I never venture upon the dangerous path of guesses except in general meetings, when the shareholders are very unruly. So I must limit myself to relating the facts in chronological order. Well, you know that the Duchess of ⸻ is a distant relation of our royal family. Fräulein Valerie von Werben, as well as her elder sister, Sidonie, grew up here in Berlin with the Princess. When the Princess married she first took Valerie to her new court, and when the latter also married, she allowed the far less interesting and amusing Sidonie—I think out of charity—to take her place. But that is only by the way.
“Baron Warnow made Fräulein Valerie’s acquaintance in ⸻, where—for in those days we were still courteous enough to send ambassadors even to small courts—he held that office. To see, love, and marry the handsome and clever girl, and to give up his office to be able to devote his whole life to her, was the result of a single impulse. That was in the year .
“From to the young couple lived in Warnow—how? I should be sorry to say positively; but to judge from my knowledge of mankind, at first happily, then less happily, and at last—I infer from the disclosure made me by the Baron in —decidedly unhappily. The Baron and I were friends as students; from that time he honoured me with his confidence. I had repeatedly acted as his legal adviser, and so was to a certain extent entitled to receive his confidences, which however never entered into details.
“The Baron wished to try a different matrimonial regime, to travel with his young wife, to see the world. I urgently advised it. They went to London, Paris, and finally to Italy, where however they only stayed a very short time. When they returned the Baron again came to see me; he looked wretched; the perpetual change of place had upset his nerves; he had not been able to stand the climate, and so forth. The truth of the matter was that he was really ill, only that the seat of his illness was less in the stomach and nerves than in the heart; in fact he was jealous, and we may be quite sure not without grounds. At first he seems to have had various suspicions, but they finally concentrated in one person, who alone was named—a certain Gregorio Giraldi, whose acquaintance the Baroness had already made when she was a girl, while he held some subordinate position as secretary or something of the sort to the papal ambassador at the Court of ⸻. However that may be, they made or renewed acquaintance with Signor Giraldi in Rome. An old impression was revived, or a new intimacy formed, which certainly belonged to the category of ‘dangerous,’ though at
