No Way Back (Penguin Classics) by Theodor Fontane

Author:Theodor Fontane [Fontane, Theodor]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141392165
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2013-06-05T23:00:00+00:00

20

Servants with lanterns were already waiting and they moved forward when the Princess started to ascend the broad staircase that divided into twin flights at the first landing. She was on the way to her modest suite of rooms in the central block of the castle, which was flanked by two towers. The towers stood at the two acute angles formed by the protruding wings, which were in turn connected by a colonnade.

At the first landing, on a small rococo settee placed there, she sat down for a moment, asthmatic as she was, dismissing the gentlemen and ladies in her retinue with instructions to make themselves as comfortable as possible in their tower rooms. Tea, she added, turning to Holk, would be taken at seven as usual. Pastor Schleppegrell and his wife would be arriving a little earlier to bring her the news from Hillerød, and she was greatly looking forward to this: the things that went on in small towns were quite the most interesting of all, they were a joy to laugh at. And when one grows old, laughing at one’s dear fellow creatures is just about the best pleasure to be had. After these gracious words they parted, and half an hour later anyone crossing the castle courtyard could see clearly which rooms the new arrivals had taken. On the first floor where the Princess herself occupied the corps de logis, only two tall Gothic windows were faintly lit, while both the towers that flanked it were ablaze with light from top to bottom. In the main everything was in accordance with the Princess’s original dispositions: the maidservants downstairs; the two ladies-in-waiting on the first floor; above Fräulein Schimmelmann, Pentz and Erichsen, and above Ebba, Holk.

Seven o’clock was approaching; and the castle clock struck half past six as Pastor and Frau Schleppegrell, preceded by a maid with a lantern, crossed the castle courtyard from the direction of Hillerød. Soon afterwards Holk too readied himself. Downstairs in the hallway of the right-hand tower where he was quartered, Holk met Karin, Ebba’s maid – in fact almost her friend – from Stockholm, and she informed him that her mistress was already with the Princess. The way which he still had to cover, passing half the frontage of the main building, was quite short, and on reaching the top of the stairs a minute later, Holk entered the lofty first-floor hall which served as the reception and drawing room whenever the Princess was in residence at Frederiksborg. Towards the courtyard, and also at the rear facing the park, the hall had only a narrow frontage: in spite of this it was still a large room, compensating in depth for what it lacked in breadth. In the middle of one of the long walls there was a tall Renaissance fireplace and over it a larger-than-life-size portrait of King Christian IV, who had been very fond of this hall in his day and, just like the Princess now, had preferred it to all the other rooms in the castle.

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