The door
of my alcove opened, and a man clothed in some stiff material resembling
felt, such as is worn by the monks in the chapel of St. Werburgh at
Mayence, with a broad-brimmed hat and feather pushed off from the left
ear, his hands buried up to the elbows in gauntlets of strong untanned
leather, entered the room. This gentleman's huge jack-boots came over the
knees, and were folded down again. A heavy chain of gold, with
decorations suspended to it, hung from his shoulders. His tanned and
angular countenance, his sallow complexion, his hollow eyes, bore an
expression of bitterness and melancholy.
This dismal personage traversed the hall with a hard and sounding step as
measured as the ticking of a clock, and placing his skinny hand upon the
hilt of an immense long rapier, and stamping with his heel on the floor,
he uttered in a horribly disagreeable creaking voice resembling the
grating of an engine these words, which dropped in a dry mechanical
fashion from his ashy lips:--
"This is mine--mine--Hans Burckhardt, Count of Barth!"
I felt a creeping sensation coming all over me.
At the same instant the door opposite flew open wide, and the Count of
Barth disappeared in the next apartment; and I could hear his hard, dry
automatic tread upon the stairs descending the steps, one by one, for
a long time; there seemed no end to it, until at last the awful sounds
died in the remote distance as if they had descended into the bowels of
the earth.
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