Mounting his horse, the Count galloped to V—. When he dismounted at the gate and wanted to enter the forecourt, the porter said that the Marquise was available to no one. The Count asked if this rule for strangers also applied to a friend of the house, to which the porter replied that he didn’t know of any exceptions, and then enquired rather ambiguously whether perhaps he were Count F—? After a searching look at him the Count said, “No,” turned to his servant, but so that the porter could hear, and said that in this case he would stay in an inn and contact the Marquise by letter. But as soon as he was out of the porter’s sight, he turned the corner and walked silently round the wall of the generous garden extending behind the house. He went through a door he found open into the garden, walked down the garden paths and was intending to climb up to the back terrace when, in an arbour to one side, he saw the Marquise, an endearing but mysterious figure, busily working at a little table. He approached her so that she could not see him until he was at the entrance of the arbour, three short steps from her. “Count F—!” said the Marquise, looking up, and the embarrassment of the surprise reddened her face. The Count smiled and remained standing for a time without moving from the entrance. Then he sat down next to her with such modest restraint that she had no need to be frightened, and put his arm, before she could come to any decision in her strange situation, gently round her dear body. “But where… Count? Is it possible?” asked the Marquise, and looked shyly at the ground in front of her. “From M—,” said the Count, and pressed her very gently to him, “through a back gate which I found open. I thought I could count on your forgiveness and entered.” “Didn’t they tell you in M—?” she asked, still motionless in his arms. “Everything, beloved lady,” said the Count, “but I am fully convinced of your innocence—” “What!” cried the Marquise, standing up and freeing herself from him—“and you came all the same?” “In defiance of the world,” he continued, holding her firmly. “In defiance of your family and even in defiance of your present endearing appearance,” and he kissed her ardently on the breast. “Go away!” cried the Marquise. “As convinced, Julietta,” he continued, “as if I knew everything, as if my soul lived in your breast.” The Marquise exclaimed, “Leave me alone!” “I come,” he said, not letting her go, “to repeat my proposal and to receive, if you will permit, the bliss of paradise at your hands.” “Let go of me immediately!” cried the Marquise; “I order you!”, and she tore herself violently out of his arms and ran off. “Beloved! You paragon!” he said to himself, standing up again and following her. “You heard what I said!” said the Marquise, and turned to avoid him. “Just a single, secret, whispered word…” said the Count, and quickly reached for her smooth arm, which slipped from him. “I don’t want to hear anything,” exclaimed the Marquise, pushed him violently from her, hurried to the terrace steps and disappeared.
He was already halfway to the terrace to get her to listen to him at all costs when the door in front of him shut and he heard the bolt rattle heavily home in desperate haste before his very footsteps. For a moment uncertain what to do under such circumstances, he stood and considered whether to achieve his purpose he should climb in through a window which was open at the side of the house. However, as difficult as it was for him in every sense to turn back, necessity seemed to dictate that he should do so, and, furious and embittered with himself for having let her escape from his arms, he crept down the terrace steps and left the garden to look for his horses. He felt that an attempt to propose to her face to face was doomed to failure, and rode away slowly back to M—while composing the letter he was now condemned to write. That evening, finding himself in the worst possible of moods at table in a public house, he met the head forester, who immediately asked him if he had successfully delivered his proposal to V—. The Count said “No,” and was very tempted to dismiss him with a sarcastic phrase, but for politeness’ sake he added after a moment that he had decided to write to her, and would soon have the letter ready. The head forester said he regretted to observe that his passion for the Marquise had made him lose his senses, but that he must meanwhile inform him that she was well on her way to making another choice. He then rang for the latest newspapers and gave the Count the one in which was inserted the Marquise’s appeal to the father of her child. The Count read through the announcement with blood flushing his face. He experienced a variety of different feelings. The head forester asked if he thought the person the Marquise was looking for would be found. “Without doubt!” said the Count, while he sat transfixed over the paper greedily absorbing its content. He briefly folded it, then went to the window and said, “Now all’s well! Now I know what I have to do,” and, immediately turning round politely to ask the head forester if he would see him again soon, bade him farewell and left, fully reconciled to his fate.
Meanwhile most dramatic scenes were taking place in the Commandant’s house. His wife was extremely angry at her husband’s destructive violence and at the weakness with which she had let herself be subjugated by him over his tyrannical exclusion of her daughter. As the shot was fired in his bedroom and the daughter burst out of it, her mother fainted, but though she soon came to, when she did so he had said nothing more than that he regretted that she had suffered this shock for nothing, and threw the discharged pistol onto a table. Afterwards, when it came to demanding the handover of the children, she dared tentatively to declare that they had no right to take such a step. She begged him, her recent swoon in mind, in faint and touching tones to avoid violent scenes in the house, but the Commandant said nothing further and, turning to the head forester, bursting with anger, ordered: “Go! And get them for me!” When the Count’s second letter came, the Commandant ordered it to be sent to the Marquise in V—, who, as he later learnt from the messenger, had put it aside with equanimity. The Colonel’s wife, to whom so much in the whole affair, especially the Marquise’s inclination to enter an entirely arbitrary marriage, was a total mystery, sought in vain to discuss the matter. The Commandant continued to call for silence as if he were issuing military orders, while taking the opportunity of removing a portrait of the Marquise from the wall where it still hung, emphasizing that he wanted to completely wipe her from his memory, maintaining that he no longer had a daughter. Then came the Marquise’s strange newspaper appeal. The Colonel’s wife, shocked to the core by it, went, holding the sheet given her by her husband, into his room, where she found him working at a table, and asked him what in the world he thought of it. Continuing to write, the Commandant said, “Oh, she’s innocent!” “What!” cried his wife, totally astonished, “Innocent?” “She did it in her sleep,” said the Commandant without looking up. “In her sleep!” his wife replied, “and wouldn’t such an outrageous thing…?” “Foolish woman!” cried the Commandant, gathering his papers, and walked away.