Kleist published this brief tale of spectral revenge in October 1810 in his daily newspaper the Berliner Abendblätter. It has since become one of the most famous ghost stories in German and is frequently anthologized and translated. Despite his command of the form, Kleist was, at least at times, dismissive of the genre. A decade earlier, he wrote to his fiance Wilhelmine von Zenge about a lending library in Würzburg, complaining that it had, “nothing but stories about knights and ghosts to the left, nothing but stories without ghosts to the right.” This translation of “The Beggarwoman of Locarno” appeared in Anecdotes, a collection of Kleist’s work that appeared in the Abendblätter, which was published in 2021 by Sublunary Editions.
At the foot of the Alps, near Locarno in Upper Italy, there stood an old castle belonging to a marquis, which can now be seen, when coming from the pass at St. Gotthard, lying in ash and ruin; a castle with high-ceilinged spacious rooms, in one of which, on straw thrown down for her, an old sick woman, found begging at the door, had once been sheltered out of pity by the mistress of the house. The Marquis, returning from the hunt, chanced to enter this room, where his guns were kept, and indignantly ordered the woman to rise from the corner in which she lay and get herself behind the stove. As she rose, her crutches slipped on the polished floor, wrenching her back in a grievous manner; to such an extent, that only after unspeakable effort was she able to rise again, as was ordered, and cross the room, or get behind the stove rather, where she, gasping and moaning, collapsed and expired.
Several years later, when the Marquis had come, owing to war and poor harvests, into dire financial straits, he was visited by a Florentine knight, who wished, because of its stunning scenic location, to purchase the castle from him. The Marquis, who took a keen interest in the sale, instructed his wife to lodge their guest in the empty room aforesaid, which had been richly and beautifully appointed. But how embarrassed were the couple when, in the middle of the night, the Florentine, pale and distracted, came to them, swearing high and low that the room was bespooked, for something invisible to the eye had arisen from the corner, with a rustling sound, as though it had lain on straw, and walked diagonally across the room, with audible steps, frail and slow, to behind the stove, where it collapsed, gasping and moaning.
The Marquis, terrified, though he knew not quite why, laughed with affected cheerfulness, and declared that for the comfort of his guest he would arise immediately and spend the remainder of the night with him. But the Florentine begged him a courtesy, that he be allowed to sleep in their bedchambers, on an armchair, and when morning came, he called for his carriage, took his leave, and departed.
This incident, which caused a tremendous sensation, frightened off, in a way most unpleasant to the Marquis, several other buyers; so that when rumor arose in his own household, strange and incomprehensible, that something walked about the room at midnight, he, wishing to quash the loose talk with a single decisive action, resolved to investigate the matter himself the following night. Accordingly, he set his bed, when evening fell, in the aforementioned room and, without going to sleep, awaited midnight. But how shocked he was when, at the stroke of the witching hour, he heard that incomprehensible noise; it was as if a person rose from a bed of rustling straw, crossed the room and, with a sigh and a gasp, collapsed behind the stove. His wife, the Marquise, asked him the following morning, when he came downstairs, how the investigation had fared; and so when he glanced about, timid and nervous, after bolting shut the door, and told her that the spook was indeed a reality: so was she frightened, more frightened than she had ever been, and asked her husband, before he let the matter be generally known, to subject himself to one last coldblooded test in her company. And they did indeed hear, the night following, together with a loyal servant, whom they had brought along with them, the same incomprehensible, spectral sound; and only the urgent desire to get rid of the castle, no matter what the cost, was able to suppress the horror which gripped them while in the presence of their servant, and to impute some indifferent and accidental cause to the episode, which had yet to be discovered. On the evening of the third day, as the both of them, to get to the bottom of the matter, climbed the stairs to the guest room again, hearts pounding, it so happened that the household dog, which had been loosed from its chain, was at the selfsame door; and so without discussion amongst themselves, perhaps from the involuntary wish to have a third living member of their party, they took the dog with them into the room. Man and wife, two lights on the table, the Marquise fully dressed, the Marquis with rapier and pistols, taken from a cupboard, ready at hand, sat down together, toward the eleventh hour, each in their own sperate bed; and while they attempted conversation, chatting with one another as best they could, the dog lay down, head and paws curled together, in the middle of the room and slept. But then, at midnight sharp, those terrible sounds are heard again; someone, invisible to the human eye, rises up on crutches from the corner of the room; straw rustles underfoot; and with the first step: tap! tap! the dog awakes, leaps to his feet, perks up his ears, barks and growls, just as if someone were advancing upon him, and backs away towards the stove. At this sight, the Marquise, hair on end, bolts from the room; and while the Marquis, rapier in hand, calls out, “Who goes there?” and, receiving no answer, slashes at the air in all directions like a madman, she calls for her carriage, resolved to leave for the city at once. But scarcely had she flung together a few of her belongings and clattered through the gate, when she looked back and saw the castle encircled in flames. The Marquis, unhinged with terror, weary of his life, had taken a candle and set the place alight, wood paneled throughout, at all four corners. In vain did the Marquise send in people to rescue the unfortunate man; he had already perished miserably; and his white bones, gathered together by the countryfolk, still lie in the corner of the room from which he ordered the Beggarwoman of Locarno to rise.