is weird castle, and mix amongst the wild
confusion of a hunting-party. Well, call it weakness--be it so; in a
word, I cannot bring myself to leave her behind. I should be tortured
by a thousand fears, and quite incapable of any serious business,
for I am perfectly sure that I should be haunted everywhere, in the
justice-hall as well as in the forest, by the most horrid ideas of all
kinds of fatal mischief happening to her. And, on the other hand, I
believe that the sort of life led here cannot fail to operate upon the
weakly woman like strengthening chalybeate waters. By my soul, the
sea-breezes, sweeping keenly after their peculiar fashion through the
fir-trees, and the deep baying of the hounds, and the merry ringing
notes of our hunting-horns _must_ get the better of all your sickly
languishing sentimentalisings at the piano, which no man ought play in
_that way_. I tell you, you are deliberately torturing my wife to
death." These words he uttered with great emphasis, whilst his eyes
flashed with a restless fire. The blood mounted to my head; I made a
violent gesture against the Baron with my hand; I was about to speak,
but he cut me short "I know what you are going to say," he began, "I
know what you are going to say, and I repeat that you are going the
right road to kill my wife. But that you intended this I cannot of
course for a moment maintain; and yet you will understand that I must
put a stop to the thing. In short, by your playing and singing you work
her up to a high pitch of excitement, and then, when she drifts without
anchor and rudder on the boundless sea of dreams and visions and vague
aspirations which your music, like some vile charm, has summoned into
existence, you plunge her down into the depths of horror with a tale
about a fearful apparition which you say came and played pranks with
you up in the justice-hall. Your great-uncle has told me everything;
but, pray, repeat to me all you saw, or did not see, heard, felt,
divined by instinct."

I braced myself up and narrated calmly how everything had happened from
beginning to end, the Baron merely interposing at intervals a few words
expressive of his astonishment. When I came to the part where my old
uncle had met the ghost with trustful courage and had exorcised him
with a few powerful words, the Baron clasped his hands, raised them
folded towards Heaven, and said with deep emotion, "Yes, he is the
guardian-angel of the family. His mortal remains s