As I have already remarked, I used frequently to take long rides into
the country, and sometimes I did not return till the following day. My
clerk was always on duty, and the work never appeared to make him
round-shouldered.
I had ridden horses for years, and to throw a leg over a good mount was
to me one of the greatest pleasures in the world. I delighted in
stopping at the old feudal inns, of studying the stolid German peasant,
of drinking from steins uncracked these hundred years, of inspecting
ancient armor and gathering trifling romances attached thereto. And
often I have had the courage to stop at some quaint, crumbling
_Schloss_ or castle and ask for a night's lodging for myself and horse.
Seldom, if ever, did I meet with a refusal.
I possessed the whimsical habit of picking out strange roads and riding
on till night swooped down from the snow-capped mountains. I had a bit
of poetry in my system that had never been completely worked out, and I
was always imagining that at the very next _Schloss_ or inn I was to
hit upon some delectable adventure. I was only twenty-eight, and
inordinately fond of my Dumas.
I rode in grey whipcord breeches, tan boots, a blue serge coat, white
stock, and never a hat or cap till the snow blew. I used to laugh when
the peasants asked leave to lend me a cap or to run back and find the
one I had presumably lost.
One night the delectable adventure for which I was always seeking came
my way, and I was wholly unprepared for it.
I had taken the south highway: that which seeks the valley beyond the
lake. The moon-film lay mistily upon everything: on the far-off lake,
on the great upheavals of stone and glacier above me, on the long white
road that stretched out before me, ribbon-wise. High up the snow on
the mountains resembled huge opals set in amethyst. I was easily
twenty-five miles from the city; that is to say, I had been in the
saddle some six hours. Nobody but a king's messenger will ride a horse
more than five miles an hour. I cast about for a place to spend the
night. There was no tavern in sight, and the hovels I had passed
during the last hour offered no shelter for my horse. Suddenly, around
a bend in the road, I saw the haven I was seeking. It was a rambling,
tottering old castle, standing in the center of a cluster of firs; and
the tiles of the roofs and the ivy of the towers were shining silver
with the heavy fall of dew.