THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
that someone should throw him into the water. I grew still more furious when the young gentleman not only did not leave, but even seemed to be laughing at me. I made such a noise that the castle folk came running from all parts, to see what was the matter. I told them, with hot tears; and then they also laughed, making me still more furious. At last the count's good old cook hit upon a successful idea; she took me into the kitchen, where she gave me a small jar of quince jelly to eat. Quince jelly was then to me an entirely new form of human happiness, and it had a remarkably quieting effect upon my distressed feelings. So far the tale my mother told me; and I will confess that quince jelly has ever since remained my favorite sweet.
“The Burg” had also its terror for me; it was the head of a roe buck, with black antlers and very large eyes, which adorned the wall at the end of a long corridor. I do not know, and probably never knew, why this head of a roe buck was so terrible to me; but certainly it was so; and when I had to pass it I ran as fast as my little legs would carry me.
I can still hear the horn of Hermann, the count's huntsman, who, on fine evenings, sat on the bridge-railing and played merry tunes that reverberated from the walls and the towers of the castle. This huntsman was a great personage in my eyes, for on festive occasions he, arrayed in brilliant uniform with gold lace, a hunting-knife at his side, and a waving bunch of feathers on his hat, accompanied the count. He came to a sad end, poor Hermann! One day he was found in the forest, dead; probably shot by poachers. This was the first tragic sensation of my life. We children, for a long time afterwards, would point to this man or that, with a shuddering suspicion that, perhaps, he might have been the murderer of Hermann.
I must have been a little over four years old when my
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