Andreas Read Free Page A

morning as early as possible. But in that way he merely twisted the rope for his own neck, for in the morning, before it was even light and Andreas was awake, there was the fellow already standing at the door, saying that he had already saved five
gulden
cash for his honour, had bought the horse—a beauty—it was standing down in the courtyard, and every
gulden
Herr von Ferschengelder should lose when he got rid of the horse in Venice was to be struck off his own wages.
    Andreas, looking out of the window, drunk with sleep, saw a lean but spirited little horse standing down in the courtyard. Then the conceit seized him that it would be, after all, a very different matter to ride into towns and inns with a servant riding behind him. He could lose nothing on the horse—it was certainly a bargain. The bull-necked, freckled fellow looked burly and sharp-witted, nothing worse, and if Freiherr von Petzenstein and Count Lodron had had him in their service, there must be something in him.For in his parents’ house in the Spiegelgasse, Andreas had breathed in with the air of Vienna a boundless awe of persons for rank, and what happened in that higher world was gospel.
    So there was Andreas with his servant riding behind him, carrying his portmanteau, before he even knew or wanted it. The first day everything went well, and yet it seemed ugly and dreary to Andreas as it passed, and he would have preferred not to live through it again. But it was no use wishing.
    Andreas had intended to ride to Spittal, and then through the Tyrol, but the servant talked him into turning left and staying in the province of Carinthia. The roads, he declared, were much better there, and the inns without their like, and life far merrier than among those blockheads in the Tyrol. The Carinthian maids and millers’ daughters had a way with them, and the roundest, firmest bosoms in all Germany—there was a saying about them, and many a song. Didn’t Herr von Ferschengelder know that?
    Andreas made no answer; he shuddered hot and cold beside the fellow, who was not so much older than he—five years at most. If he had known that Andreas had never seen, let alone touched, a woman without her clothes, some shameless jeer would have been forthcoming, or talk such as Andreas could not even imagine, but then he would have torn him fromhis horse and set upon him in a fury—he felt it, and the blood throbbed in his eyes.
    They rode in silence through a wide valley; it was a rainy day, grassy hill-slopes rose right and left, here and there a farm, a hayrick, and woods high above on which the clouds lay sluggishly. After dinner Gotthilff grew talkative—had the young master taken a look at the landlady? She was nothing much now, but in ’69—that was nine years ago, when he was sixteen years old—he had had that woman every night for a month. Then it had been well worthwhile. She had had black hair down to below the hollows of her knees. And he urged on his little horse and rode quite close to Andreas, till Andreas had to warn him not to ride him foul—his chestnut could not stand it. In the end she got something to remember him by, it had served her right. At the time he had been with a countess’s waiting-woman, as pretty as a picture, and the landlady had smelt a rat and gone quite thin with jealousy, and as hollow-eyed as a sick dog. At that time he had been courier to Count Porzia—it was his first place, and a fine surprise it had been for all Carinthia that the Count had made him his huntsman at sixteen, and confidential servant into the bargain.
    But the Count knew very well what he was doing, and whom he could trust, and he had good needof somebody who could keep his mouth shut, for the Count had more love-affairs than teeth in his head, and many a married man had sworn to kill him, gentlemen and farmers too, and millers and huntsmen. Just then the Count was carrying on with the young Pomberg Countess—she was like a vixen in love, but she was no