Read Online The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse by Hermann Hesse - Free Book Online

proposed renovations and new additions to the castle and recommended changes and improvements. Of course, it was all very easy for him to talk, for he was rich, thanks to his marriage, while his brother, the Baron, was poor and had experienced mainly misfortune and trouble.
    The brother’s visit to the castle had been a whim, and he regretted it during the very first week that he spent there. Nevertheless, he remained and said nothing about leaving, even though the Baron would not have minded it in the least. But now his brother had seen the Lady Agnes and was pursuing her.
    It was not long before the maid of the beautiful Lady Agnes brought her a new dress, which the visitor at the castle had sent as a present. It was not long before the maid was taking letters and flowersfrom the visitor’s servant, near the wall of the park. And after only a few days had passed, the visitor met Lady Agnes in a forest hut at noon on a summer’s day and kissed her hand and her small mouth and her white neck. When she went into the village, however, and he encountered her there, he would take off his riding cap and salute her. In turn, she curtsied to him like a girl of seventeen.
    One evening shortly thereafter, when the visitor was alone by the river, he saw a boat sail across the water carrying a rower and a luminous woman. What the curious man could not discern for certain in the dusk became clearer after a few days, and then he knew more than he wanted to know. The woman whom he had held passionately in his arms at noon in the forest hut and whom he had ignited with his kisses, was the same woman who sailed in the evening with his brother over the dark Rhine and disappeared with him behind the shore of reeds.
    The visitor became gloomy and had awful dreams. He had not pursued and made love to Lady Agnes as if he were hunting a luscious piece of game; rather he had treated her like a precious discovery. With each kiss he had been surprised and overjoyed that so much tender innocence had succumbed to his wooing. That is why he had given her more than other women. She brought back his youth, and he embraced Lady Agnes with gratitude, consideration, and tenderness—the very same woman who went down dark paths with his brother at night. Now he bit into his beard, and his eyes were inflamed with anger.
    Untouched by all that was happening and by the invisible tension mounting at the castle, the poet Floribert continued to spend his days in peace and calm. He was not pleased when the visitor teased and pestered him, although he was accustomed to such behavior from previous visits. So he avoided the Baron’s brother, spent entire days in the village or with the fishermen on the banks of the Rhine, and indulged himself with rambling fantasies in the fragrant warm evenings.

    One morning Floribert noticed that the first tea roses were beginning to blossom along the wall of the castle. During the last three summers he had placed the first blossoms of these rare roses on the threshold of Lady Agnes’s house, and he was now happy that he would be able to bring her this modest and anonymous greeting for the fourth time.
    At noon on this same day the Baron’s brother met with the beautiful lady in the birch woods. He did not ask her where she spent her evenings. He looked into her calm innocent eyes with a surprising glare that was almost cruel, and before he went away, he said, “I’m going to come to you this evening when it’s dark. Leave a window open!”
    “Not tonight,” she said softly. “Not tonight.”
    “But I want to.”
    “Another time, all right? Not tonight. I can’t.”
    “I’m coming tonight—tonight or never again. Do what you want.”
    She freed herself from his embrace and left him.
    In the evening the visitor lay in wait by the river until it became dark. But no boat came. Then he went to the house of his beloved, hid in the bushes, and held his rifle over his knee.
    It was quiet and warm. The jasmines smelled