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

undressed, the marquis with dagger and pistols he’d taken from the closet beside him; and they try as best they can to distract themselves with conversation, while the dog lies down with head and legs folded in the middle of the room and falls asleep. Whereupon, at the stroke of midnight, the terrible sound is once again heard; someone invisible to the naked eye raised herself on crutches in the far corner; you could hear the sound of the strawcrinkling beneath her; and at the first footsteps: tap! tap!, the dog awakened, suddenly raised itself off the floor, with ears pricked up, and growling and barking, as though someone had approached, slipped back toward the oven. At the sight of this, with her hair standing on end, the marquise stormed out of the room; and while the marquis, grasping for his dagger, cried: “Who’s there?” and receiving no reply, slashed the air in all directions, like a lunatic, she ordered the horses harnessed, determined to drive off post-haste to the city. But before she managed to pack a few things and rush out the door, she already saw the castle bursting into flame all around her. The marquis, numb with terror and weary of life, had taken a lit candle and with it set fire to the four wood-paneled walls of the room. To no avail, she sent people in to save the wretched man; he had already perished in the most miserable way, and to this very day his white bones, gathered by the country folk, lie in that corner of the room from which he had forced the beggar woman of Locarno to rise.

THE MARQUISE OF O…
    (Based on an actual occurrence, the scene of which has been
transposed from the north to the south )
    In M . . . , a major city in northern Italy, the widowed Marquise of O . . . , a woman of peerless reputation and the mother of two well-brought-up children, let it be known in the newspaper that she had, unbeknownst to her, been gotten in the family way; that the father of the child that she was about to bear had best make himself known; and that, for family considerations, she was resolved to marry him. The lady who, without the slightest hesitation, driven by unalterable circumstances, took such a singular initiative sure to arouse universal ridicule, was the daughter of Colonel von G . . . , the commandant of the Citadel at M . . . . About three years previously she had lost her husband, the Marquis of O . . . , to whom she had been deeply and dearly attached, on a trip he took to Paris on family business. Heeding the express wishes of Madame von G . . . , her worthy mother,she left the country estate in V . . . , where she had lived until then, and moved back with her two children to her father’s quarters in the commandant’s residence. Here she had spent the next few years in the greatest seclusion, engaged in art, reading, the education of her children and the care of her parents, until, on account of the . . . War, the region was suddenly teeming with the troops of all the warring powers, including the Russians. Colonel von G . . . , who was in charge of the citadel’s defense, ordered his wife and daughter to take refuge at the latter’s country estate, or at that of his son, also in V . . . . But before considerations of the dangers of remaining in the fortress could be fully apprehended by female intuition and weighed against the atrocities they might face in the country, the citadel was surrounded by Russian troops and ordered to surrender. The colonel informed his family that he would now have to act as if they were not there, and replied to the Russians’ demand with bullets and grenades. The enemy likewise bombarded the citadel. They set the arms depot on fire, scaled an outer wall, and when the commandant wavered in the face of a repeated call for capitulation, ordered an attack at nightfall and stormed the fortress.
    Just as the Russian troops came pouring in, backed by heavy howitzer fire, the left wing of the commandant’s quarters