Five Women by Robert Musil Read Free Book Online Page A

nobility who held the surrounding manors, but to seek their brides far off, and rich brides too, in order not to be hindered in making their alliances and carrying on feuds as they chose. The Herr von Ketten who had brought home a beautiful Portuguese bride twelve years earlier was now in his thirtieth year. The marriage had been celebrated in her country, and the very youthful bride was expecting her confinement by the time the jingling procession of attendants and menials, horses, maidservants, baggage-mules, and dogs crossed the boundary of the Catene land. The year had passed like one long honeymoon. For all the Catene were brilliant cavaliers, yet they proved it only in the one year of their lives when they went wooing. The brides they chose were beautiful, for they wanted handsome sons, and without courtly graces they could not have won such wives abroad, where they did not count for so much as at home. But they themselves did not know whether it was in that one year that they revealed their true selves, or only in all the other years.
    A messenger came to meet the cavalcade, bearing weighty news; and though the bright-coloured garments and pennants still resembled a great butterfly, Herr von Ketten himself was changed. When he had galloped back to rejoin the company, he continued to ride slowly beside his wife as though he would not allow any other concern to press him, but his face had altered and was now forbidding as a bank of storm-clouds. Then suddenly, at a turn in the road, the castle towered up before them, scarcely a quarter of an hour's journey ahead, and with an effort he broke his silence.
    He told his wife he wished her to turn back and return to her native country The- cavalcade came to a halt. The Portuguese lady pleaded and insisted that they should ride on, urging that there would still be time to turn back when the reasons had been heard.
    The Bishops of Trent were mighty lords, and the Imperial courts pronounced in their favour. For generations the Kettens had been at feud with them over a question of territory, and sometimes they had invoked the law against each other, sometimes their demands and counter-demands had led to bloodshed, but always it had been the seigniors von Ketten who had been obliged to yield to their opponents' superior strength. In this one matter the gaze that missed no other chance of advantage waited in vain to glimpse it. And father handed on the task to son, and through the generations their pride continued to wait, and never relented.
    It was for this Herr von Ketten now that the luck seemed to have changed. He was dismayed to realise how nearly he had missed his chance. A strong party among the nobility was in rebellion against the Bishop, and it had been decided to make a surprise attack and take him prisoner. Ketten's return home might tip the scales in favour of the rebel party. Having been absent for more than a year, Ketten did not know how strong the Bishop's position was; but he did know this would be a long and fearful struggle that would last for years and that the outcome was uncertain, and he also knew it would be impossible to count on each of their party to the bitter end if they did not succeed in taking Trent at the very beginning. He resented it that his beautiful wife had, by her mere existence, almost caused him to miss the opportunity. True, as he rode at her side, keeping one pace to the rear, he delighted in her as much as ever; and she was still as mysterious to him as the many pearl necklaces that she possessed. A man could have crushed such little things like peas, weighing them in the hollow of his sinewy hand—so it seemed to him, as he rode beside her—and yet there they lay, incomprehensibly invulnerable. It was only that this enchantment had been displaced by the news he had received, had been thrust aside like winter's muffled dreams when all at once the boyishly naked, first, sunlight-solid days are there again. Years in the saddle lay