Ottilia

“ Ottilia beheld it, and started. Her little maid walking close by, exclaimed, scuttling round in front of her the while like an urchin in sabots,
'Ha! what is it? a snake? let me! let me!' The guileless mistress replied, 'A letter!' Whereupon the maid said: 'Not a window near! and no wall neither! Why, dearest princess, we have walked up and down here a dozen times and not seen it staring at us! Oh, my good heaven!' The letter was seized and opened, and Ottilia read:
'He who loves you with his heart has been cruelly used. They have shot him. He is not dead. He must not die. ”

“ Countess Ottilia was standing at the window in her mourning weeds, as the news-bringer for the last time gave his breathless horse the spur, to hasten it up the steep Castle-path. Her sharp eye recognised him in the distance; and he too being nothing of a blinkard,—a class of persons very rare in the days of the Crusades,—recognised the Countess also, raised the letter-bag aloft over his head, and waved it like a standard in token of good news ”

“ Why had Ottilia fainted? She recommended hard study—thinks me idle, worthless; she has a grave intelligence, a serious estimation of life; she thinks me intrinsically of the value of a summer fly. But why did she say, 'We change countries,' and immediately flush, break and falter, lose command of her English, grow pale and swoon; why? With this question my disastrous big heart came thundering up to the closed doors of comprehension. It was unanswerable. 'We change countries.' That is, she and Miss Sibley change countries, because the English woman marries a German, and the German princess—oh! ”

“ To keep the house straight, the good man found himself obliged to take another wife; and one day he brought home the tall Sennal, and told Ottilia she was to be her mother.
When poor little Ottilia heard the tall, hard, bony woman called “her mother,” she burst out into passionate tears, and declared she should never be her mother, and she would never pay her obedience!
Now the tall Sennal was not a bad woman, but she was angry when the child set herself against her; and so there was continual anger between the two. ”

“ Ottilia is represented with a mirror in her hand, emblem of her prudence: on the right hand you see Angelica, with a coronet and symbols of her Eastern origin: between them is the Count. The nuptial couch is still shown to strangers, in the Junkern Kammer, as a precious relic. A splinter of it, worn instead of the busk, is said to destroy all jealousy in the female heart. ”

“ He meant to take his gentle Countess by surprise; but the news of his approach had preceded him, as on the wings of the wind; she went forth with man and maid, and met her husband a furlong from the Castle, in a pleasant green, which, in memory of this event, is called the Freudenthal, or Valley of Joy, to this day. The meeting on both sides was as trustful and tender, as if no partition treaty had ever been thought of: for Countess Ottilia was a proper pattern of the pious wife, that obeys without commentary the marriage precept of subjecting her will to the will of her husband. ”

“ The javelin's thrown, and cannot be recalled;
Thine be the second prize the first is won,
And all thy grief and rage that tis another's
Will but torment thyself. Be wise, be wise,
And bear with patience what thou canst not cure.
Otti. I will not curse: no, I'll not waste in vapour.
The fire which burns within me. What I feel,
My deeds shall tell thee best. (Going.)
Cæsa. (detaining her) Ottilia, stay.
If yet one spark of love remains——
Otti. ”

“ What made me overleap the proper estimate of your rank! I can't tell; but now that I know better the kind of creature—the man who won your esteem when you knew less of the world!'—
'Hush! I have an interest in him, and do not suffer him to be spurned,' Ottilia checked me. 'I, too, know him better, and still, if he is dragged down I am in the dust; if he is abused the shame is mine.' Her face bloomed. ”

“ At this Ottilia hoped he would excuse the poor beasts, who were little better than heathen still, for all the trouble she took with them.
He: What did it matter? He was not such a good Christian himself. If she would hear his trouble, it was this:
He was a master mariner, and had made many sailings in many parts of the world, and seen many strange lands.
And ever since he was a little child one thought had tormented him—why did the ships turn back? Why not sail on and see if there was not another land? ”

“ Now follows a description of Kurt’s arguments, who advises the Count to accept the brilliant offer. ‘For should the Countess Ottilia,’ said he, ‘still live, in your castle they believe you dead, and she most probably ere this is married to another. As to your belief, the man may show the way to heaven better than the wife. If the Princess love you, she will not mind to change her Paradise for Christendom.” The reasoning of Kurt, joined to a curious dream of Ottilia’s death, at length staggered the resolutions of the Count. ”

“ Ottilia die achte der Todten war,
was, no doubt, suggested by the last of F, another of Zuccalmaglio's versions, and, if genuine, would belong to a ballad of the third class.
D has the name Odilia for the maid, but the knight, or trooper, has become expressly a robber (ritter, reiter, räuber) . They ride to a green heath, where there is a cool spring. Odilia asks for and gets a draught of water, and is told that at the linden-tree there will be eating and drinking for them. And when they come to the linden, there hang six, seven maids! All proceeds as before. The talking head is lost. ”

“ So she took no notice of what was going on around her, but beat her eggs and mixed her batter, and put it on to fry, till the appetizing odour and the warmth of the fire brought back life and renewed her courage.
When Ottilia brought the pancake up into the turret-room, and laid the dish with it on the table, she observed that the side of the pancake which was turned towards the skull became black, while that nearest herself retained its own golden colour ”

“ Now it was perfectly well known that these cats were nothing better than imps who had taken the place of my Pipkin, who was never seen again. Nor was Trina, the other witch, ever seen again—and none dared ask after her.
So Ottilia lived quietly for a while, making her beer and her sausages, and going to the market and selling them, sometimes buying a broom and sometimes a bit of finery for herself or her imps. ”

“ I am very weary,’ answered Otto. ‘I have presumed upon my strength. If you would show me to a bed, I should be grateful.’
‘Ottilia, a candle!’ said the old man. ‘Indeed, sir, you look paley. A little cordial water? No? Then follow me, I beseech you, and I will bring you to the stranger’s bed. You are not the first by many who has slept well below my roof,’ continued the old gentleman, mounting the stairs before his guest; ‘for good food, honest wine, a grateful conscience, and a little pleasant chat before a man retires, are worth all the possets and apothecary’s drugs. ”

“ But the Devil seemed already to have forgotten them, and was dancing on the table in the shape of fire-balls, a favourite diversion of his, which he performed very elegantly.
Now Don Lopez felt naturally dismal, but Ottilia took a cheerful view.
There was (she said) a certain king who was famed for his great wealth, and though he was very close with it, there were good hopes that he might part with a little of it in such an investment as this, which promised him his money back a hundred-fold; he ruled in an island in the West, about three days’ journey away. ”

“ I could have told him, that wishing was a good thing, excess of tobacco a bad, moderation in speech one of the outward evidences of wisdom; but Ottilia's master in the Humanities exacted civility from me.
'Indeed,' I said, 'I have few thoughts to communicate at present, Herr Professor. My German will fail me as soon as I quit common ground. I love my country, and I do not reckon it as perfect. We are swillers, possibly gluttons; we have a large prosperous middle class ”

“ Allied to this are the Poor Man's Daughter, in Meier, No. 36, a Norwegian story in Asbjörnsen, No. 8, and Graamantel, a Swedish one (see further on) . The legend of St. Ottilia has some resemblance to it, as told by Frau Naubert in her Volksmärchen, (Part I.) In the Pentamerone (1. 8) a goat's face is given as a punishment.
In Wendish compare The Virgin Mary as Godmother, Haupt and Schmaler, No. 16, p. 179; in Wallachian, The Walled-up Mother, of Schott, No. 2. ”

“ CHAPTER III I mind me that when she had drawn from me all she had wanted to know, the little lady’s pert tongue became still for a while, and that she stretched her long young limbs and lay back upon her mound of hay with the most absolute unconcern either of my presence or of the Princess’s, gazing skyward with a sudden gravity in her look. As for me, I was content to sit in silence too, glad of the quiet, because it gave me leisure to taste the full zest of this fortunate and singular meeting. I thought I had never seen a human being whom silence became so well as the Princess Ottilie. ”

“ The Count seconded the grandmother's proposal most decidedly, but Ottilie was anxious and disturbed, and strove against the decision. She did not like losing her only son, whom she loved so tenderly, and called it cruel kindness to take away the only comfort of the long, weary days of illness--but in vain--mother and husband, usually most indulgent to the gentle patient, for once withstood her wishes with incomprehensible hardness, and the Countess, too weak and too little accustomed to independent resistance, was obliged to comply. ”

“ Must it not seem to Ottilie the token of a bad conscience? She could not bear that. She raised her head and looked the princess steadily in the face.
"Your Highness, the law does not punish the errors of love; but if a woman falls so low that she commits from love crimes which make her amenable to the law, she becomes as detestable to me as all others. You see I lack the first requisite for the vocation your Highness did me the honor to propose,--the true Christian charity which does not judge but pardons." ”

“ Princess Ottilie sighed, and they walked along the boards behind the bathing machines, and down the rattling beach to the shelter of a fishing boat, where they sat down, screened from the world, with the murmuring sea in front of them. Somerset talked of his love and the hatefulness of Bernheim. The little princess sighed again.
“I have worse news still,” she said. “It will pain you. We are going to Paris to-morrow, and then on to Aix-les-Bains. They have just decided. They say the baccarat here is silly, and they might as well play for bonbons. ”

“ To gratify this, she had given her blooming beauties, at the age of seventeen, to the superannuated Count Altheim; a man of high family and great riches, but who had long survived every faculty, but that of dotage on any pretty face that would endure the incense of an habitual idolater of youth and beauty. At that early age, she had been sent for by the Empress, who loved her, from her having been the only daughter of the respectable woman who had been her nurse; and in consequence of which the pretty Otteline had been brought up as the favourite play-thing of the Princess ”

“ Most of us can recall some glimpse of such specimens of Nature's work in a daring mood. Many of our own drawing-rooms have held illustrations of the nobler type, and modern men and women have quailed before royal eyes whose possessors ruled all spirits but their own. Born in Athens, and endowed with a finer intellect, Ottila might have been an Aspasia ”

“ Only Ottilie could read a vision, only short, squat, imperious Ottilie. The Chieftain's First Wife was her title of honor and her latest title, but long before she had acquired that, long before even she had become Head of the Female Society, she had been Ottilie the Augur, Ottilie the Omen-Teller, Ottilie who could walk in her mind from the homey burrow of the present into the dark, labyrinthine corridors of the future, Ottilie who could read signs, Ottilie who could announce portents. ”

“ You take Ottilie. Let me have the Captain; and, for a short period, at least, let the trial be made."
"We might venture it," said Charlotte, thoughtfully, "if the danger were only to ourselves. But do you think it prudent to bring Ottilie and the Captain into a situation where they must necessarily be so closely intimate; the Captain, a man no older than yourself, of an age (I am not saying this to flatter you) when a man becomes first capable of love and first deserving of it, and a girl of Ottilie's attractiveness?"
"I cannot conceive how you can rate Ottilie so high," replied Edward. ”

“ The slight hints which frequently escaped her had no effect upon Ottilie; for Ottilie had been assured by Edward that Charlotte was devoted to the Captain, that Charlotte herself wished for a separation, and that he was at this moment considering the readiest means by which it could be brought about.
Ottilie, led by the sense of her own innocence along the road to the happiness for which she longed, lived only for Edward. Strengthened by her love for him in all good, more light and happy in her work for his sake, and more frank and open toward others, she found herself in a heaven upon earth. ”

“ Ottilie loved me, cried I in the depths of my exultant soul: what could be difficult now? “You are mad! Have you not yet learned your lesson? Do you not understand that they will never, never let you have her? Go back to your home, sir, and if you love her never let her know you are still alive, for if they heard it here, God knows what she would be put to bear; and if she knew they had tried to murder you, it would kill her. [286] I tell you, sir, a Court is a dreadful place, and Prince Eugen, you know what he is, and his Serene Highness himself, he is hard as the stones of the street. ”