, perhaps,
he thought there was less in, or behind, him than one would suppose;
and that the uncanny feelings which everybody had experienced with
regard to him were chiefly attributable to the excited state in which
they had all been when he made his appearance. "Let us face all this
disquieting affair," said Dagobert, "with firm courage and unshakable
confidence. No dark power will bend the head which holds itself up with
true bravery and indomitable resolution."

A considerable time had elapsed. The Count, whose visits to the
Colonel's house increased in frequency, had rendered himself almost
indispensable. It was universally agreed, now, that the accusation
against him of being uncanny recoiled on those who made it. "He might
very well have styled us uncanny people, with our white faces and odd
behaviour," as said Madame von G----. Everything he said evinced a
store of the most valuable and various information; and although, being
an Italian, he spoke with a foreign accent, his command of the German
language was most perfect and fluent. His narratives had a fire which
bore the hearers irresistibly along, so that even Moritz and Dagobert,
hostile as were their feelings to this stranger, forgot their
repugnance to him when he talked, and when a pleasant smile broke out
over his pale, but handsome and expressive face, and they hung upon his
lips, like Angelica and the others.

The Colonel's friendship with him had arisen in a way which proved him
to be one of the noblest-minded of men. Chance had brought them
together in the far north, and there the Count, in the most unselfish
and disinterested manner, came to the Colonel's aid in a difficulty in
which he found himself involved, which might have had the most
disastrous consequences to his fortune, if not to his good name and
honour. Deeply sensible of all that he owed him, the Colonel hung on
him with all his soul.

"It is time," the Colonel said to his wife one day when they were alone
together, "that I should tell you the principal reason why the Count is
here. You remember that he and I, when we were in P----, four years
ago, grew more and more intimate and inseparable, so that at last we
occupied two rooms which opened one into the other. He happened to come
into my room one morning early, and he saw the little miniature of
Angelica, which I had with me, lying on my writing-table. As he looked
more and more closely at it, he lost his self-command in a strange w