Adrift in Pacific and Other Great Adventures – 17 Titles in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). Jules Verne
letter. I confess without shame that I shall not feel easy till I have burned it, and have seen the ashes scattered to the four winds.”
“Seriously, then, you value that letter?” asked Wang.
“Certainly,” answered Kin-Fo. “Would you be so cruel as to keep it as a guaranty against a return of folly on my part?”
“No.”
“Well?”
“Well, my dear pupil, there is only one obstacle in the way of your wishes, and unfortunately it does not come from me; for Lao-Shen has not your letter, nor have I.”
“You have not my letter?”
“No.”
“Have you destroyed it?”
“No, alas! no.”
“Were you so imprudent as to trust it to the hands of any one else?”
“Yes.”
“To whom? to whom?” said Kin-Fo eagerly, his patience at an end. “Tell me, to whom?”
“To some one who desired to return it to no one but yourself.”
At this moment the charming Le-ou, who was concealed behind a screen, and had lost nothing of the scene, now appeared, holding the famous letter at the end of her pretty little fingers, and waving it in playful defiance.
Kin-Fo held out his arms to her.
“No, no! patience a while longer, if you please!” said the amiable woman, pretending to hide behind the screen. “Business before every thing, O my wise husband!”
And, holding the letter before his eyes, she said,—
“Does my little younger brother recognize his deed?”
“Do I recognize it?” cried Kin-Fo. “Who other than myself could have written that foolish letter?”
“Well, then, before every thing,” answered Le-ou, “since you have shown a proper desire, tear, burn, and annihilate that imprudent letter. Let nothing remain of the foolish Kin-Fo who wrote it.”
“Agreed,” said Kin-Fo, holding it up to a light. “But now, my dear love, permit your husband to give his wife one loving kiss, and beg her to preside over this very happy repast. I feel very much inclined to do honor to it.”
“And we also!” cried the five guests. “It makes one very hungry to be very happy.”
A few days later, the imperial prohibition being removed, the marriage took place.
The young married couple loved each other, and were likely to continue to love each other forever. A thousand, ten thousand joys await them in life.
One must go to China to prove this.
The Castle of the Carpathians
CHAPTER I
This story is not fantastic; it is merely romantic. Are we to conclude that it is not true, its unreality being granted? That would be a mistake. We live in times when everything can happen—we might almost say everything has happened. If our story does not seem to be true to-day, it may seem so to-morrow, thanks to the resources of science, which are the wealth of the future. No one would think of classing it as legendary. Besides, one does not invent legends at the close of this practical and positive nineteenth century; neither in Brittany, the country of the ferocious Korrigans; nor in Scotland, the land of the brownies and gnomes; nor in Norway, the land of ases, elfs, sylphs, and valkyries; nor even in Transylvania, where the Carpathian scenery lends itself so naturally to every psychagogic evocation. But at the same time it is as well to note that Transylvania is still much attached to the superstitions of the early ages.
These provinces of furthest Europe, M. de Gérando has described them, M. Elisée Reclus has visited them. Neither have said anything of the strange story on which this romance is founded. Did they know of it? Perhaps; but they did not wish to add to the belief in it. We are sorry for it; for if they had related it, one would have done so with the precision of an annalist, and the other with that instinctive poetry with which all his tales of travels are imbued. But as neither of them has told it, I will try to do so for them.
On the 29th of May a shepherd was watching his flock on the edge of a green plateau at the foot of Retyezat, which dominates a fertile valley, thickly wooded with straight-stemmed trees, and enriched with cultivation. This elevated plateau, open, unsheltered, the north-west winds sweep during the winter as closely as the barber’s razor. It is said in the country that they shave it—and they do so, almost.
This shepherd had nothing arcadian in his costume, nor bucolic in his attitude. He was neither Daphnis, nor Arnyntas, nor Tityrus, nor Lycidas, nor Melibœus. The Lignon did not murmur at his feet, which were encased in thick wooden shoes; it was only the Wallachian Syl whose clear, pastoral waters were worthy of flowing through the meanderings of the romance of Astrea.
Frik, Frik of the village of Werst—such was the name of this rustic shepherd—was as roughly clothed as his sheep, but quite well enough for the hole, at the entrance of the village, where sheep and pigs lived in a state of revolting filth.
The