The Marquise of O and Other Stories by Heinrich von Kleist Page A

fond; but since her father did not like living in the country, the family took a house in the town and furnished it suitably as a permanent home. They now reverted entirely to their former way of life. The Marquise resumed the long-interrupted education of her children, taking up where she had left off, and for her leisure hours she again brought out her easel and her books. But whereas she had previously been the very paragon of good health, she now began to be afflicted by repeated indispositions, which would make her unfit for company for weeks at a time. She suffered from nausea, giddiness and fainting fits, and was at a loss to account for her strange condition. One morning, when the family were sitting at tea and her father had left the room for a moment, the Marquise, emerging from a long reverie,said to her mother: ‘If any woman were to tell me that she had felt just as I did a moment ago when I picked up this teacup, I should say to myself that she must be with child.’ The Commandant’s wife said she did not understand, and the Marquise repeated her statement, saying that she had just experienced a sensation exactly similar to those she had had a few years ago when she had been expecting her second daughter. Her mother remarked with a laugh that she would no doubt be giving birth to the god of Fantasy. The Marquise replied in an equally jesting tone that at any rate Morpheus, or one of his attendant dreams, must be the father. But the Colonel returned to the room and the conversation was broken off, and since a few days later the Marquise felt quite herself again, the whole subject was forgotten.
    Shortly after this, at a time when the Commandant’s son, who was a forestry official, also happened to be at home, a footman entered and to the family’s absolute consternation announced Count F—. ‘Count F—!’ exclaimed the father and his daughter simultaneously; and amazement made them all speechless. The footman assured them that he had seen and heard aright, and that the Count was already standing waiting in the anteroom. The Commandant himself leapt to his feet to open the door to him, and he entered the room, his face a little pale, but looking as beautiful as a young god. When the initial scene of incomprehension and astonishment was over, with the parents objecting that surely he was dead and the Count assuring them that he was alive, he turned to their daughter with a gaze betokening much emotion, and his first words to her were to ask her how she was. The Marquise assured him that she was very well, and only wished to know how he, for his part, had come to life again. The Count, however, would not be diverted, and answered that she could not be telling him the truth: to judge by her complexion, he said, she seemed strangely fatigued, and unless he was very much mistakenshe was unwell, and suffering from some indisposition. The Marquise, touched by the sincerity with which he spoke, answered that as a matter of fact this fatigue could, since he insisted, be interpreted as the aftermath of an ailment from which she had suffered a few weeks ago, but that she had no reason to fear that it would be of any consequence. At this he appeared overjoyed, exclaiming: ‘Neither have I!’ – and then asked her if she would be willing to marry him. The Marquise did not know what to think of this unusual behaviour. Blushing deeply, she looked at her mother, and the latter stared in embarrassment at her son and her husband; meanwhile the Count approached the Marquise and, taking her hand as if to kiss it, asked again whether she had understood his question. The Commandant asked him if he would not be seated, and placed a chair for him, courteously but rather solemnly. The Commandant’s wife said: ‘Count, we shall certainly go on thinking you are a ghost, until you have explained to us how you rose again from the grave in which you were laid at P—.’ The Count,