"
"Willingly, sir," he replied, and without any further prelude he informed
me that the Baroness de Bluderich, a member of one of the noblest
families in Saxony, took, every year towards autumn, a journey into
Italy, with no attendant besides an old man-servant, who possessed her
entire confidence; that that man, being at the point of death, had
desired a private interview with the son of his old master, and that at
that last hour, prompted, no doubt, by the pangs of remorse, he had told
the young man that his mother's visit to Italy was only a pretence to
enable her to make, you observed, a certain excursion into the Black
Forest, the object of which was unknown to himself, but which must have
had something fearful in its character, since the baroness returned
always in a state of physical prostration, ragged, half dead, and that
weeks of rest alone could restore her after the hideous labours of those
few days.
This was the purport of the old servant's disclosures to the young baron,
who believed that in so doing he was only fulfilling his duty.
The son, anxious at any sacrifice to know the truth of this account, had,
that very year, ascertained it, first by following his mother to Baden,
and then by penetrating on her track into the gorges of the Black Forest.
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