Also the slender horse of Denis Lay had said, with a turn of its excessively graceful neck: “I understand that. You must go.”
It was settled that the horse was to run in the races at Baden-Baden, and the Irish jockey was full of confidence. But on the day of his departure Christian was told that the animal had sickened again. He thought: “I have loved it too insistently. Now it wants the caressing hand, and is lonely without it.”
With the coming of spring guests from the cities had appeared almost daily at Christian’s Rest. But he had rarely received any one. A single guest he could not bear at all. If there were two they could address each other and make his silence easier.
One day came Conrad von Westernach and Count Prosper Madruzzi, bringing messages from Crammon. They were on their way to Holland. Christian asked them to dine with him, but he was very laconic. Conrad von Westernach remarked later, in his forthright fashion, to Madruzzi: “That fellow has a damned queer smile. You never know whether he’s a born fool or whether he’s laughing at you.”
“It’s true,” the count agreed; “you never know where you are with him.”
Christian had given his valet orders to prepare for his journey. Then he had gone to the green-houses to interview the gardeners. In the meantime twilight had set in. It had rained all day, and the trees were still dripping. But now the fresh greenery gleamed against the afterglow, and the windows of the beautiful house were dipped in gold.
“Herr Voss is in the library,” an old footman announced.
Christian had begged Amadeus Voss to use the library quite freely, whether he himself was at home or not. The servants had been instructed. Voss had offered to catalogue the library, but as yet he had made no beginning. He merely passed from book to book, and if one interested him he read it and forgot the passage of time.
The afterglow fell into the library too. Voss had taken fifty or sixty volumes from the shelves, and he was now arranging them in stacks on a large oak table.
“Why do you do that, Amadeus?” Christian asked carelessly.
“If you give me your permission, I’d like to burn these,” Amadeus Voss answered.
Christian was surprised. “Why?” he asked.
“Because I lust after an _auto-da-fé_. It is worthless and corrupt stuff, the product of idle and slothful minds. Don’t you scent the poison of it in the atmosphere?”