The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano Part 11

"A most interesting adventure indeed!" said the young lady. "One might see a whole romance in three volumes growing out of this seed. It will be a strange sight, and it will not be for nothing, when this lost star reappears. What a pretty poem it would make! Don't you think so, sir?"

The party took their seats: the bride and bridegroom were in the centre, looking out on the gay landscape. Everybody talkt and drank healths, and all was mirth and good humour: the bride's parents were perfectly happy: the bridegroom alone was reserved and thoughtful, ate but little, and took no part in the conversation.

He started on hearing musical sounds roll down through the air from above, but grew calm again when he found they were only the soft notes of some bugles, travelling along with a pleasant murmur over the shrubs and through the park, and dying away on the distant hills.

Roderick had placed the musicians in the gallery overhead, and Emilius was satisfied with this arrangement.

Toward the end of the dinner he called the butler, and, turning to his bride, said: "My love, let poverty also have a share of our superfluities."

He then ordered him to send a number of bottles of wine, and abundance of pastry as well as other dishes, to the poor couple, that with them too this might be a day of rejoicing, to which in aftertimes they might look back with pleasure.

"See my friend," exclaimed Roderick, "how beautifully all things in this world hang together! My idle trick of busying myself in other folks' concerns, and chattering about whatever comes uppermost, though you will never give over finding fault with it, has at all events been the cause of this good deed."

Several persons began making pretty speeches to their host on his kind and charitable heart; and Roderick's neighbour lispt about the sweetness of romantic compa.s.sion and sentimental magnanimity.

"O say no more!" cried Emilius indignantly: "this is no good action; it is no action at all; it is nothing. When swallows and linnets feed on the crumbs that are thrown away from the waste of this meal, and carry them to their young in their nest, shall not I remember a poor brother, who needs my help? If I might follow my heart, ye would laugh and jeer at me, just as ye have laught and jeered at many others, who have gone forth into the wilderness that they might hear no more of this world and its generosity."

Everybody was silent; and Roderick, perceiving from his friend's glowing eyes how vehemently he was displeased, was afraid that in his present irritation he might forget himself still further, and tried to give the conversation a rapid turn on other subjects.

But Emilius was become restless and absent; his eyes wandered, more especially toward the upper gallery, where the servants who lived in the top story were engaged in a variety of occupations.

"Who is that ugly old woman?" he at length askt, "that is so busy up there, and is coming back again every moment in her grey cloak?"

"She is one of my servants," said his bride; "she is to overlook and manage my chambermaids and other girls."

"How can you endure to have anything so hideous perpetually at your elbow?" replied Emilius.

"Let her alone," answered the young lady: "G.o.d meant the ugly to live as well as the handsome; and she is such a good honest creature, she may be of great use to us."

On rising from table everybody gathered round the bridegroom, again wisht him joy, and urgently begged him to let them have a ball. The bride too said, breathing a gentle kiss on his forehead: "You will not deny your wife's first request, my beloved; we have all been delighting in the hope of this. It is so long since I danced last; and you have never yet seen me dance. Have you no curiosity how I shall acquit myself in this new character? my mother tells me I look better than at any other time."

"I never saw you in such gay spirits before," said Emilius. "I will not throw a damp over your mirth; do as you please: only don't let anybody ask me to make a laughing stock of myself by trying to cut clumsy capers."

"Oh, if you are a bad dancer," she answered laughing, "you may feel quite safe; we shall all readily consent to your sitting still." The bride then retired to put on her ball dress.

"She does not know," whispered Emilius to Roderick, as he withdrew, "that there is a secret door by which I can get from the next room into hers: I will surprise her while she is dressing."

When Emilius had left them, and many of the ladies were also gone to make such changes in their attire as were requisite for the ball, Roderick took the young men aside and led the way to his own room.

"It is wearing toward evening," he said, "and will soon be dark; so make haste all of you and mask yourselves, that we may render this night glorious in the annals of merriment and madness. Give your fancies free range in choosing your characters; the wilder and uglier the better. Try every combination of s.h.a.ggy mane, and squinting eye, and mouth gaping like a volcano; pile mountains atop of your shoulders, or plump yourselves out into Falstaffs; and as a whet to your inventions I promise a kiss from the bride to the figure that would be the likeliest to make her miscarry. A wedding is such an out-of-the-way event in ones life; the bride and bridegroom are so suddenly plunged, by a sort of magic, head over heels into a new unaccustomed element, that it is impossible to throw too much madness and folly into this festival, in order to keep pace with the whirlpool that is bearing a brace of human beings from the state where they were two to the state where they become one, and that all things round about may be fitting accompaniments for the dizzy dream on the wings of which they are floating toward a new life. So let us rave away the night, making all sail before the breeze; and a fig for such as look twice on the dull sour faces that, would bid you behave rationally and soberly."

"Don't be afraid," said the young officer; "we have brought a large chest full of masks and mad carnival dresses from town with us, such as would make even you stare."

"But see here," returned Roderick, "what a gem I have got from my tailor, who was on the point of cutting up this peerless treasure into strips. He had bought it of an old crone who must doubtless have worn it on gala-days, when she went to Lucifer's drawing room on the Blocksberg. Look at this scarlet bodice with its gold ta.s.sels and fringe, at this cap besmeared with the last fee the hag got from Beelzebub or his imps! it will give me a right wors.h.i.+pful air. To match these choice morsels I have this green velvet petticoat, with its saffron lining, and this mask which would melt even Medusa to a grin. Thus accoutred I mean to lead the chorus of anti-graces, myself their mother-queen, to the bedroom. Make the best speed you can, and we will then go in solemn procession to fetch the bride."

The bugles were still playing: the company were strolling about the garden, or sitting before the house. The sun had gone down behind thick murky clouds, and the country was lying in the grey dusk, when a parting gleam suddenly burst athwart the cloudy veil, and flooded every spot around, but above all the building, its galleries and pillars and wreaths of flowers, as it were with red blood.

At this moment the parents of the bride and the other visitors saw a train of the most grotesque figures move toward the upper corridor.

Roderick led the way as the scarlet old woman, and was followed by humpbacks, bulging paunches, c.u.mbrous wigs, Scaramouches, Punches, shrivelled Pantaloons, curtsying women embankt by enormous hoops, and overcanopied with a yard of horsehair, powder, and pomatum, and by every disgusting shape that can be imagined, as if a nightmair had been unrolling her stores. They jumpt, and twirled, and tottered, and stumbled, and straddled, and strutted, and swaggered along the gallery, and then vanisht behind one of the doors. But few of the beholders had been able to laugh, so utterly were they astounded by the strange sight.

Suddenly a piercing shriek burst from one of the rooms, and forth into the bloodred glow of the sunset rusht the pale bride, in a short white frock, about which wreaths of flowers were dangling, with her lovely bosom all naked, and her rich locks streaming through the air. As though mad, with rolling eyes and wrencht face, she darted along the gallery, and blinded by terrour could find neither door nor staircase; and immediately after dasht Emilius in chase of her, with the sparkling Turkish dagger in his high-uplifted hand.

Now she was at the end of the pa.s.sage ... she could go no further ...

he reacht her. His maskt friends and the grey old woman were running after him. But in his fury he had already pierced her bosom, and cut across her white neck; her blood spouted forth into the radiance of the setting sun.

The old woman had claspt her arms round him to tear him back; he struggled fiercely, hurled himself along with her over the railing, and they both fell almost lifeless at the feet of the relations who had been staring in dumb horrour at the b.l.o.o.d.y scene.

Above, and in the court, or hurrying down the steps or along the galleries, were seen the hideous masks, standing or running about, in various cl.u.s.ters, like fiends of h.e.l.l.

Roderick took his dying friend in his arms. He had found him in his wife's room, playing with the dagger. She was almost drest when he entered. At the sight of the detested red bodice his memory had rekindled; the horrid vision of that night had risen up before his eyes; and gnas.h.i.+ng his teeth he had darted after his trembling, flying bride, to avenge that murder and all those devilish doings.

The old woman, ere she died, confest the crime that had been perpetrated; and the gladness and mirth of the whole house were suddenly changed into sorrow and lamentation and dismay.

PIETRO OF ABANO.

The setting sun was flinging its red rays upon the towers and over the houses of Padua, when a young stranger, newly arrived, had his attention excited by a throng of people who were hurrying and running along, and was carried by them out of his way. He askt a girl who was pa.s.sing quickly by him, what had set the whole town in such an extraordinary commotion.

"Don't you know then?" answered she: "the beautiful Crescentia, the young thing, is just going to be buried; everybody wishes to have one more sight of her; for she has always been counted the sweetest maiden in the whole city. Her parents are heartbroken." The last words she called back to him, from some distance beyond him.

The stranger turned round the dark palace into the great street, and his ears were now met by the funeral hymn, and his eyes by the flickering light of the pale-red torches. On drawing nearer, pusht forward by the crowding of the people, he saw a scaffold covered with black cloth. Around it were raised seats, likewise black, on which the sorrowing parents and relations were sitting, all in stern gloom, some faces with the look of despair. Figures now began to move forth from the door of the house; priests and black forms bore an open coffin, out of which wreaths of flowers and green garlands were hanging down.

In the midst of the blooming gay plants lay the maidenly form raised upon cus.h.i.+ons, pale, in a white robe, her lovely slender hands folded and holding a crucifix, her eyes closed, dark black tresses hanging full and heavy round her head, on which a wreath of roses and cypress and myrtle was gleaming.

The coffin with its beautiful corpse was placed upon the scaffold; the priests cast themselves down to pray; the parents gave yet louder vent to their grief; yet more wailing grew the sound of the hymns; and everybody around, even the strangers, sobbed and wept. The traveller thought he had never yet seen so lovely a creature, as this corpse that thus mournfully reminded him how fleeting life is, how vain and perishable its charms.

Now sounded the solemn tolling of the bells, and the bearers were on the point of taking up the coffin, to carry the corpse into the burial-vault of the great church, when loud riotous shouts of exultation and pealing laughter and the cries of an unrestrained joy disturbed and alarmed the parents and kinsfolk, the priests and mourners. All lookt indignantly round, when out of the next street a merry troop of young men came boisterously toward them, singing and huzzaing, and evermore again and again crying a long life! to their venerable teacher. They were the students of the university, carrying an aged man of the n.o.blest aspect on a chair raised atop of their shoulders, where he sat as on a throne, covered with a purple cloak, his head adorned with a doctor's hat, from beneath which white silver locks hung forth, while a long white beard flowed down majestically over his black velvet doublet. Beside him came a fool with bells and in a motley dress, jumping about, and striving by blows and by jests to make way for the train through the people and the line of mourners: but on a sign from the venerable old man the students lowered his chair; he descended, and approacht the weeping parents, much moved and with a solemn demeanour.

"Forgive me," said he mournfully and with a tear in his eye, "that this wild tumult thus breaks in upon your burial rites, which grieve and shock me to the heart. I am just come back at length from my journey; my scholars wisht to celebrate my enterance by their joy; I yielded to their entreaties and preparations; and I now find ... how?

your Crescentia, that fairest emblem of all loveliness and virtue, here before you in her coffin. And all around there is this dark pomp and these forms of sorrow, accompanying her with tears and the heart's woe to her place of rest."

He beckoned to his companions, and spake a few words. All had long since become quiet and silent, and most of them now withdrew, that they might not interrupt the funeral.

Then the mother came nearer tottering, and sank down before the form of the old man, while she embraced his knee in convulsive grief. "Ah!

why were you not here?" she cried despairingly; "your art, your knowledge would have saved her. O Pietro! Pietro! you, the friend of our house! how could you thus let your darling, the apple of your eye, perish? But come! Awaken her even now! Pour into her even now one of those wonderworking elixirs which you know how to compound; and in return take all that we possess, so she be but again here, walking about among us and talking to us."

"Let not despair guide your tongue," answered Pietro: "the Lord had lent her to you; he has demanded her back from you; let not man presume to arrest the arm of his wise counsels. Who are we, that we should murmur against him? Shall the child of the dust, that is scattered to nought by the wind, puff forth its weak breath in anger against the eternal decrees? No, my dear friends, as Crescentia's parents, as having loved her and been loved by her, cherish the feeling of your grief; let none of it escape you. Grief should be as familiar an inmate in our hearts as Pleasure and Gladness; for he too is sent us by our Father, who beholds all our tears, and well understands and tries our hearts, and knows what frail mortals can bear. Bear then this great overwhelming woe for his sake, out of love to him; for it is all love, whatsoever burthen he may cast upon you.

Is not grief, is not the heart in its wringing agony, the soul that would melt away in sorrow, a holy and G.o.dly offering, which amid your burning tears you lay, as the most precious of your possessions, before the everlasting Love of the Most High? As such too is it considered by Him above, who numbers all your sighs and tears. But our wicked enemy, who is always lurking at our side, grudges us the holiness of this heavenly sorrow: it is he who would foment and stir it up in you into despair, into rage against the Father of love and of grief, that you may not in your anguish become yet more thoroughly the children of Love, but may plunge and sink into the abyss of Hatred.

He, this Spirit of Lies, is now beguiling you and maliciously whispering his tales in your ears, as though you had for ever lost her, who yet was one with you only in spirit and soul and love, and belonged to you only so far as she was invisible. He would have you forget that this beauteous covering was only her garment, akin to the dust, and now going back to the dust. Cast him back from you, this lying Spirit; shame and confound him with the eternal almighty truth which you hold up before him, that she is still yours, still near you, still at your side, yea far more, far entirelier yours, than when these party walls of mortal flesh kept you asunder, and in the midst of all your love estranged you from each other. From this day forward she is all your memory and hope and sorrow and joy; she s.h.i.+nes upon you in every gladdening light; she cheers you in the flowers of spring; she kisses you in the gentle airs that breathe on your cheeks: and every delight that henceforth blossoms in your hearts, is her heart and her love to you; and this delight and this everlasting deathless love are one with G.o.d. Carry her then to her resting-place, and follow her in silent humble resignation, that her soul in the abode of everlasting peace may not be disturbed and made uneasy by you."

All seemed to have become calmer; the father speechlessly held forth his hand to him with an expression of cordial friends.h.i.+p and of a comforted heart. They drew up in order; the procession set itself in motion; the masks, the fraternities that made it their duty to attend corpses, ranged themselves in their white gowns, with hooded faces, of which nothing could be seen but the eyes.

Silently the train moved on: they had now nearly reacht the church, when a rider on a foaming horse gallopt toward them.

"What is the matter?" cried the youth.

He threw a look into the coffin, and with a shriek of despair turned his horse, darted away, and in his wild speed lost his hat, so that his long hair waved about behind him in the evening breeze. He was the bridegroom, come to the wedding.