Selected Prose of Heinrich Von Kleist by Heinrich von Kleist Page A

traveler finds lying in rack and ruin, a castle with high-ceilinged and spacious rooms, in which a sick old woman found begging at the gate was once bedded down in straw by the merciful lady of the house. Returning from the hunt, the marquis, who happened to enter the room in which he was wont to store his powder box, demanded that the woman rise against her will from where she lay and move herself behind the oven. Standing upright with the aid of a crutch, she promptly slipped on the slick floor and seriously injured herself in the small of the back; she was so badly hurt that, making an unspeakable effort, she managed to get up again, and as commanded by the marquis, crossed the room to the oven, but collapsed there, moaning and groaning, and died.
    Many years later, his financial circumstances strained by war and crop failure, the marquis welcomed a Florentine cavalier who wished to buy the castle from him on account of its splendid site. The marquis, who set much store by this transaction, bid his wife put up the stranger in the aforementioned, now empty, room, which was quite lovely and lavishly appointed. How taken aback was the couple, when, in the middle of the night, the cavalier came stumbling down, troubled and pale, swearing on his honor that the room was haunted, that something invisible to the naked eye arose in a corner, with a sound as though it had been lying in straw, and with clearly audible steps, slow and tottering, crossed the room and dropped itself down behind the oven, moaning and groaning.
    Frightened for reasons he could not tell, the marquis laughed at the cavalier with feigned amusement, and declared that he would get up then and there, to put his mind at rest, and spend the night in the room with him. But the cavalier begged leave to spend the night on an easy chair in their bedroom, and in the morning had his horses bridled, bid farewell and rode off.
    This incident, which sparked a considerable stir, scared off many potential buyers and greatly vexed the marquis; indeed, so much so that, to still the rumor, however strange and incomprehensible, circulating among his own domestic servants, that something went walking around the room at midnight, and to once and for all put an end to this regrettable business, he decided to look into it himself the following night. Consequently, at sunset he had his servants make his bed in said room, and awaited midnight without shutting an eye. But imagine his dismay when, in fact, at the stroke of the witching hour, he heard the inconceivable sound; it was as if a person liftedhimself from the straw that crackled beneath him, traversed the room at a diagonal, and sank down behind the oven, rattling and groaning. The next morning the marquise inquired how the investigation had gone; and when, with fearful and uncertain glances, and after shutting and locking the door, he assured her that there was indeed a spook, she flinched as never before in her life and asked him, before making the matter public, to carry out another cold-blooded inspection in her company. But the following night they and a faithful servant whom they took with them did, indeed, hear the same inconceivable ghastly sound; and only the pressing desire to rid themselves of the castle, whatever the cost, enabled them to hide the horror with which they were gripped from their servant, ascribing the sound to some inconsequential and coincidental cause that would surely be established in due time. On the evening of the third day, when, with throbbing hearts, the two of them once again climbed the stairs to the guest quarters to get to the bottom of the matter, their unleashed dog scampered along to the door to said room; and since both of them, without admitting it to themselves, shared the instinctive desire to have yet a third living entity accompany them, they took the dog with them into the room.
    At about eleven o’clock, the couple sits down, each on his and her own bed, the marquise not