Page:Hoffmann's Strange Stories - Hoffman - 1855.djvu/155

In the middle of the following night, the justice V—— was suddenly awakened by a lamentable groan. He arose in bed and listened; but all had become silence again, and V—— imagined that he had had a bad dream: he left his bed and went to the window to calm his mind by breathing the cool night air. Hardly had he remained a few minutes leaning on the window-sill, than he saw the castle door open, creaking on its rusty hinges. Daniel, the major-domo, armed with a dark lantern, took from the stable a saddled horse, which he led into the yard; then another man, enveloped to the eyes in a furred cloak, came out of the castle; it was Hubert, who conversed several minutes with the major-domo, gesticulating animatedly, after which he re-entered the castle. Daniel conducted the horse back to the stable, shut it, also the door of the castle, and retired noiselessly. The justice made all kinds of conjectures concerning this failure to depart. He asked himself for what motive Hubert could have changed his mind; did there not exist between him and Daniel some understanding to produce an evil, that the future alone would make known? All possible suppositions were equally dangerous and painful; great sagacity and an indefatigable surveillance was necessary to thwart the evil projects that these two men could nourish between them, the last of whom above all, master Daniel, was already covered, in the eyes of the justice, with a coating of ineffacable wickedness. V—— passed the remainder of the night in the midst of singular reflections, which were something less than re-assuring. At day break, as he was about to go to sleep again, he heard a great noise of confused voices, and people who were running about in every direction; soon several distracted servants came and knocked at his door, and announced to him that the baron Wolfgang had disappeared, without their being able to tell what had become of him. He had retired the night before at his usual hour, then he must have gone out in his night dress with a light, for these articles were no longer to be found in his chamber, in the place where they were the night before.