Anna had lain in the moldering family vault this long year past, and her bereaved husband Conrad would not be consoled. Indeed, the villagers had begun to murmur that the hereditary madness which had destroyed Conrad’s father had now claimed the son and heir, the last of that illustrious line. Night after night, the young man could be seen sitting at the window of his melancholy, isolated chateau. His ghastly, grief stricken features made him seem a spectral presence to whatever rude woodsman or peasant passed within sight of the gloomy Gothic manse. Hectic and wild of countenance, he would stare through long hours over the blasted landscape towards the tangled and forbidding recesses of the Black Forest; or betimes would raise a febrile eye towards the crumbling ruin of a nearby tower, which was all that was left of the once-magnificent Castle of Blaustein.
There had been some hope among the local population that Conrad would recover the blithe aspect of former days, especially after the arrival of his cousin Theresa. The child had been given into Conrad’s charge after first one, then the other of her parents had succumbed to that plague which had scourged the countryside the year before, sparing neither the great nor the humble.
But alas, the hopes for Conrad’s recovery proved as unavailing as they had been fervent. Theresa was a cheerful and lovely child, golden of hair and white of limb. Often, she could be seen playing solitary within the shadows of the chateau battlements, dancing and singing a sweet air to herself even in that tenebrous gloom, or picking whatever flowers had the audacity to grow out of the barren, rocky terrain. And yet, despite the girl’s vivacious presence, Conrad, so it was said, continued to appear night after night at the window, gazing in savage despondency at the dismal forest and the tower which stood black and decaying against the turbulent sky.