Tales from Blackwood Part 14

But let us, if we must be just, also be merciful. Let the victim die at the high altar of the cathedral." A murmur rose at the seeming profanation. The Friar's sallow cheek coloured at this mark of disapproval. He was silent; but Colvellino's impatience spoke. "Let us,"

said he, "have no womanish qualms now; what matters it where or when a tyrant falls? Church or chamber, street or council, all are alike. The only question is, who shall first or surest send the dagger to his heart? Who among us shall be the liberator of his country?" The question remained without an answer. The service was obviously a difficult one at best, and the Brutus was sure of being sacrificed by the swords of the guards. "Cowards!" exclaimed Colvellino, "is this your spirit? 'Tis but a moment since you were all ready to shed your blood for the death of this German puppet, and now you shrink like children." "If it were not in the cathedral," muttered some of the conspirators. "Fools," retorted the haughty Count, "to such scruples all places are cathedrals. But the cause shall not be disgraced by hands like yours. Colvellino himself shall do it; aye, and this good friar shall give me his benediction too on the enterprise." The ruffian burst out into a loud laugh. "Peace, my son," said the priest, with hand meekly waving, and his eyes fixed on the ground. "Let us not disturb our souls, bent as they are on the pious services of the Church and his Holiness the father of the faithful, by unseemly mirth. But let us, in all humility and sincere soberness, do our duty. The Count Colvellino has n.o.bly offered, with a heroism worthy of his high name, to consummate the freedom of the Hungarian church and state. But this must not be, his life is too precious. If Prince Octar, the last hope of the ancient line of Ladislaus, should die, Count Colvellino is the rightful heir. The hopes of Hungary must not be sacrificed."

The Count's dark eye flashed, and his cheek burned up with the flame of an ambition which he had long cherished, and which had stimulated him to this sudden and suspicious zeal for his country. "The Emperor must not put the crown of Hungary on his head and live," said he, in a tone of expressed scorn and hope. "To-morrow," said the Friar, rising as if he could throw off the infirmities of age in the strength of his resolution--"To-morrow, at the moment of the ma.s.s, Leopold dies, and dies by my hand." All stared. "n.o.ble lords," said the Friar, almost abashed into his former humility by the sight of so many bold and proud countenances gazing on him, in every expression of surprise, doubt, wonder, and applause--"n.o.ble lords," he pursued, "what is my life that I should value it, except as the means of serving his Holiness and this ill.u.s.trious country, which has for so many centuries been the most faithful daughter of the Church? To me life and death are the same. But I shall not die. My sacred function to-morrow will bring me close to the Emperor unsuspected. I shall be among the prelates who lead him up to the altar. At the moment when he takes the crown into his hand, and before he has profaned it by its resting on his brow, Hungary shall be free."

A loud outcry of admiration burst from the whole a.s.sembly. Colvellino alone seemed to resent the loss of the honour. His countenance lowered, and grasping the self-devoted Friar's sleeve, he said, in a tone of wrath but ill stifled, "Friar, remember your promise. No parleying now.

No scruples. Beware of treachery to the cause. But to make all secure, I tell you that you shall be watched. As Grand Chamberlain, I myself shall be on the steps of the altar, and the slightest attempt at evasion shall be punished by a dagger at least as sharp as ever was carried by a priest in either church or chamber." Fra Jiacomo bowed his head to his girdle, and only asked, in a tone of the deepest meekness, "Count, have I deserved this? n.o.ble lords of Hungary, have I deserved this? Is treason laid rightly to my charge? If you doubt me, let me go." He turned to the door as he spoke, but even Colvellino's disdain felt the folly of losing so willing an accomplice, and one who, besides, was now so much master of the conspiracy. "Well, then, so be it," murmured the Count; "the cause will be disgraced by the instrument. But this Emperor at least will molest Hungary no more." Fra Jiacomo bowed but the deeper. All was now concerted for the deed. The conspirators were appointed to wait in the church of Saint Veronica, behind the cathedral, for the signal of Leopold's death, and thence to proceed to the convent where the heir of Ladislaus was kept, and proclaim him King. Colvellino listened to the latter part of the arrangement with a smile of scorn.

They were separated by the sound of the cannon announcing the dawn of the great ceremonial.

The morning of the coronation found all Presburg awake. The streets were thronged before day with citizens; n.o.bles hastening to the palace; troops moving to their various posts in the ceremony; peasants pouring in from all the provinces, in all the wild festivity and uncouth dialects of the land of the Huns. Then came the magnates, riding on their richly-caparisoned horses, and followed by their long train of armed attendants, a most brilliant and picturesque display. The equipages contained all that the kingdom could boast of female beauty and high birth, and the whole formed a singular and vivid contrast of the strange, the lovely, the bold, and the graceful, the rude and the magnificent, the Oriental and the Western--all that a feudal, half-barbarian people could exhibit of wild exultation--and all that an empire as old as Charlemagne could combine of antique dignity and civilised splendour.

The sun, which so seldom condescends to s.h.i.+ne on regal processions, threw his most auspicious beams on the city of Presburg on this memorable day. But it was in the cathedral that all the opulence of the imperial and national pomp was displayed. The aisles were hung with tapestry and banners of the great feudal families, and crowded with the body-guards of the Emperor, and the richly-costumed heyducs and cha.s.seurs of the Hungarian lords. The centre aisle was one canopy of scarlet tissue, covering, like an immense tent, the royal train, the great officers of the court, and the Emperor as he waited for the consecration. Farther on, surrounding the high altar, stood a circle of the Hungarian prelacy in their embroidered robes, surrounding the Archbishop of Presburg, and in their unmoving splendour looking like a vast circle of images of silver and gold. Above them all, glittering in jewels, looked down from clouds of every brilliant dye, and luminous with the full radiance of the morning, the Virgin Mother, in celestial beauty, the patroness of Presburg, a wonder-working Madonna, "whom Jews might kiss, and infidels adore."

At length, to the sound of unnumbered voices, and amid the flourish of trumpets, and the roar of cannon from all the bastions, Leopold entered the golden rails of the altar, ascended the steps, followed by the great officers of the kingdom, and laid his hand upon the crown. At that moment the Grand Chamberlain, Count Colvellino, had knelt before him to present the book of the oath by which he bound himself to maintain the rights and privileges of Hungary. In the act of p.r.o.nouncing the oath the Emperor was seen to start back suddenly, and the book fell from his hand. At the same moment a wild scream of agony rang through the cathedral; there was a manifest confusion among the prelacy; the circle was broken, some rushed down the steps; some retreated to the pillars of the high altar; and some seemed stooping, as if round one who had fallen. Vases, flowers, censers, images--all the pompous ornaments which attend the Romish ritual on its great days--were trampled under foot in the tumult; and prelate, priest, and acolyte were flung together in the terror of the time. The first impression of all was, that the Emperor had been a.s.sa.s.sinated, and the startled flying n.o.bles, and the populace at the gates, spread the report through the city, with the hundred additions of popular alarm. But the imperial body-guard instantly drawing their swords, and pressing their way through the n.o.bles and mult.i.tude up to the altar, soon proved that the chief terror was unfounded, by bringing forward the Emperor in their midst, and showing him to the whole a.s.semblage unhurt. He was received with an acclamation that shook the dome.

But blood had been spilled--the Grand Chamberlain was found pierced to the heart. He had died at the instant from the blow. But by whom he was thus foully murdered, or for what cause, baffled all conjecture. The general idea, from the position in which he fell, was, that he had offered his life for the Emperor's; had thrown himself forward between his royal master and the a.s.sa.s.sin, and had been slain by accident or revenge. Leopold recollected, too, that, in the act of taking the book of the Oath, he had felt some hand pluck his robe; but, on looking round, had seen only the Grand Chamberlain kneeling before him. Inquiry was urged in all quarters, but in vain. Colvellino was a corpse; he remained bathed in his loyal blood, the heroic defender of his liege lord, the declared victim of his loyalty; and a reward of a thousand ducats was declared on the spot by his indignant sovereign, for the discovery of the murderer. The gates of the cathedral were instantly closed; strict search was made, but totally in vain. Order was slowly restored. But the ceremony was too important to be delayed. The crown was placed upon the Imperial brow, and a shout like thunder hailed Leopold "King of Hungary." In courts all things are forgotten.

As the stately procession returned down the aisle all was smiles and salutation, answered by the n.o.ble ladies of the court and provinces, who sat ranged down the sides according to their precedency, under pavilions tissued with the arms of the great Hungarian families. In this review of the young, the lovely, and the high-born, all eyes gave the prize of beauty, that prize which is awarded by spontaneous admiration, and the long and lingering gaze of silent delight, to the Princess of Marosin.

Her dress was, of course, suitable to her rank and relations.h.i.+p to the imperial line, all that magnificence could add to the natural grace, or dignity of the form; but there was in her countenance a remarkable contrast to the general animation of the youthful and n.o.ble faces round her--a melancholy that was not grief, and a depth of thought that was not reverie, which gave an irresistible superiority to features, which, under their most careless aspect, must have been p.r.o.nounced formed in the finest mould of nature. Her eyes were cast down, and even the slight bending of her head had a degree of mental beauty. It was clearly the unconscious att.i.tude of one whose thoughts were busied upon other things than the pomps of the hour. It might have been the transient regret of a lofty spirit for the transitory being of all those splendours which so few years must extinguish in the grave; it might have been the reluctance of a generous and free spirit at the approach of that hour which would see her hand given by Imperial policy where her heart disowned the gift; it might be patriot sorrow for the fallen glories of Hungary; it might be romance; it might be love. But whatever might be the cause, all remarked the melancholy, and all felt that it gave a deep and touching effect to her beauty, which fixed the eye on her as if spell-bound. Even when the Emperor pa.s.sed, and honoured the distinguished loveliness of his fair cousin by an especial wave of his sceptred hand, she answered it by scarcely more than a lower bend of the head, and the slight customary pressure of the hand upon the heart. With her glittering robe, worth the purchase of a princ.i.p.ality, drawn round her as closely as if it were the common drapery of a statue, she sat not unlike the statue in cla.s.sic gracefulness, but cold and unmoving as the marble.

But all this was suddenly changed. As the procession continued to pa.s.s along, some object arrested her glance which penetrated to her heart.

Her cheek absolutely burned with crimson; her eye flashed; her whole frame seemed to be instinct with a new principle of existence; with one hand she threw back the tresses, heavy with jewels, that hung over her forehead, as if they obstructed her power of following the vision; with the other she strongly attempted to still the beatings of her heart; and thus she remained for a few moments, as if unconscious of the place, of the time, and of the innumerable eyes of wonder and admiration that were fixed upon her. There she sat--her lips apart, her breath suspended, her whole frame fevered with emotion, the statue turned to life--all beauty, feeling, amaze, pa.s.sion. But a new discharge of cannon, a new flourish of trumpet and cymbal, as the Emperor reached the gates of the cathedral, and appeared before the a.s.sembled and shouting thousands without, urged on the procession. The magic was gone. The countenance, this moment like a summer heaven, with every hue of loveliness flying across it in rich succession, was the next colourless.

The eye was again veiled in its long lashes; the head was again dejected; the marble had again become cla.s.sic and cold; the beauty remained, but the joy, the enchantment, was no more.

The Baron von Herbert was sitting at a desk in the armoury of the palace. Javelins rude enough to have been grasped by the hands of the primordial Huns; bone-headed arrows that had pierced the gilded corslets of the Greeks of Constantinople; stone axes that had dashed their rough way through the iron headpieces of many a son of Saxon chivalry; and the later devices of war--mail, gold-enamelled, silver-twisted, purple-grained--and Austrian, Italian, and Oriental escutcheons gleamed, frowned, gloomed, and rusted, in the huge effigies of a line of warriors, who, if weight of limb, and sullenness of visage, are the elements of glory, must have fairly trampled out all Greek and all Roman fame.

A key turned in the door, and the Emperor entered hastily, and in evident perturbation. He turned the key again as he entered. The Baron stopped his pen, and awaited the commands of his sovereign. But Leopold was scarcely prepared to give counsel or command. He threw a letter on the table.

"Read this, Von Herbert," said he, "and tell me what you think of it. Is it an impudent falsehood, or a truth, concerning the public safety? Read it again to me."

The Baron read:--

"Emperor, you think yourself surrounded by honest men. You are mistaken. You are surrounded by conspirators. You think that, in offering a reward for Colvellino's murderer, you are repaying a debt of grat.i.tude. You are mistaken. You are honouring the memory of a murderer. You think that, in giving the hand of the Princess of Marosin to Prince Charles of Buntzlau, you are uniting two persons of rank in an honourable marriage. You are mistaken. You are pampering a c.o.xcomb's vanity, and breaking a n.o.ble heart. You think that, in sending your Pandours to scour the country, you can protect your court, your palace, or yourself.

"You are mistaken. The whole three are in _my_ power.

"SPERANSKI."

The Baron laid down the paper, and gravely paused for the Emperor's commands. But the Emperor had none to give. He put the simple query--"Is this a burlesque or a reality? Is the writer a charlatan or a conspirator?"

"Evidently something of both, in my conception," said the Colonel; "the paper is not courtly, but it may be true, nevertheless. The writer is apparently not one of your Majesty's chamberlains, and yet he is clearly master of some points that mark him for either a very dangerous inmate of the court, or a very useful one."

Leopold's anxious gesture bade the Baron proceed. He looked again over the letter, and commented on it as he pa.s.sed along.

"'Surrounded by conspirators!' Possible enough. The Hungarian n.o.bles never knew how to obey. They must be free as the winds, or in fetters.

The mild government of Austria is at once too much felt and too little.

No government or all tyranny, is the only maxim for the magnates. If not slaves, they will be conspirators."

"Then this rascal, this Speranski, tells the truth after all?" said the Emperor.

"For the fact of conspiracy I cannot answer yet," said Von Herbert; "but for the inclination I can, at any hour of the twenty-four." He proceeded with the letter--"You are honouring the memory of a murderer."

"An atrocious and palpable calumny!" exclaimed the Emperor. "What! the man who died at my feet? If blood is not to answer for honour and loyalty, where can the proof be given? He had got, besides, everything that he could desire. I had just made him Grand Chamberlain."

Von Herbert's grave countenance showed that he was not so perfectly convinced.

"I knew Colvellino," said he, "and if appearances were not so much in his favour by the manner of his death, I should have thought him one of the last men in your Majesty's dominions to die for loyalty."

"You are notoriously a philosopher, Von Herbert," said Leopold, impatiently. "Your creed is mistrust."

"I knew the Grand Chamberlain from our school-days," said the Baron, calmly. "At school he was haughty and headstrong. We entered the royal Hungarian guard together; there he was selfish and profligate. We then separated for years. On my return as your Majesty's aide-de-camp, I found him the successor to an estate which he had ruined, the husband of a wife whom he had banished from his palace, the Colonel of a regiment of Hulans which he had turned into a school of tyranny, and Grand Chamberlain to your Majesty, an office which I have strong reason to think he used but as a step to objects of a more daring ambition."

"But his death--his courageous devotion of himself--the dagger in his heart!" exclaimed the Emperor.

"They perplex, without convincing me," said the Baron.

He looked again at the letter, and came to the words, "Breaking a n.o.ble heart."

"What can be the meaning of this?" asked Leopold, angrily. "Am I not to arrange the alliances of my family as I please? Am I to forfeit my word to my relative, the Prince of Buntzlau, when he makes the most suitable match in the empire for my relative the Princess of Marosin? This is mere insolence, read no more."

The Baron laid down the letter, and stood in silence.

"Apropos of the Princess," said Leopold, willing to turn the conversation from topics which vexed him, "has there been any further intelligence of her mysterious purchase--that far-famed plunder of the Turk, her Hungarian _chef d'oeuvre_?"

"If your Majesty alludes to the Princess's very splendid watch," said the Baron, "I understand that all possible inquiry has been made, but without the effect of tracing any connection between its sale and the unfortunate a.s.sa.s.sination of the Turkish envoy."

"So, my cousin," said the Emperor, with a half smile, "is to be set down by the scandalous Chronicle of Presburg as an accomplice in rifling the pockets of Mohammed? But the whole place seems full of gipsyism, gossiping, and juggling. I should not wonder if that superannuated belle, the Countess Joblonsky, lays the loss of her _pendule_ to my charge, and that the Emperor shall quit Hungary with the character of a receiver of stolen goods."

"Your Majesty may be the depredator to a much more serious extent, if you will condescend but to take the Countess's heart along with you,"

said the Colonel, with a grave smile. "It is, I have no doubt, too loyal not to be quite at your Majesty's mercy."

"Hah!" said Leopold; "I must be expeditious then, or she will be _devote_, or in the other world--incapable of any love but for a lapdog, or turned into a canonised saint. But in the mean time look to these n.o.bles. If conspiracy there be, let us be ready for it. I have confidence in your Pandours. They have no love for the Hungarians. Place a couple of your captains in my antechamber. Let the rest be on the alert. You will be in the palace, and within call, for the next forty-eight hours."

The Emperor then left the room. Von Herbert wrote an order to the Major of the Pandours for a detachment to take the duty of the imperial apartments. The evening was spent at the opera, followed by a court ball; and the Emperor retired, more than satisfied with the dancing loyalty of the Hungarian beaux and belles.

The night was lovely, and the moon shone with full-orbed radiance upon the cloth of gold, embroidered velvet curtains, and high enchased silver sculptures of the imperial bed. The Emperor was deep in a midsummer night's dream of waltzing with a dozen winged visions, a ballet in the Grand Opera given before their Majesties of Fairyland, on the occasion of his arrival in their realm. He found his feet buoyant with all the delightful levity of his new region; wings could not have made him spurn the ground with more rapturous elasticity. The partner round whom he whirled was Oberon's youngest daughter, just come from a finis.h.i.+ng school in the Evening Star, and _brought out_ for the first time. But a sudden sound of evil smote his ear; every fairy drooped at the instant; he felt his winged heels heavy as if they were booted for a German parade; his blooming partner grew dizzy in the very moment of a whirl, and dropped fainting in his arms; t.i.tania, with a scream, expanded her pinions, and darted into the tops of the tallest trees. Oberon, with a frown, descended from his throne, and stalked away in indignant majesty.

The sound was soon renewed; it was a French quadrille, played by a Golden Apollo on the harp--a sound, however pleasing to earthly ears, too coa.r.s.e for the exquisite sensibilities of more ethereal tempers.

The G.o.d of Song was sitting on a beautiful pendule, with the name of _Sismonde_ conspicuous on its dial above, and the name of the Countess Joblonsky engraved on its marble pedestal below. The Emperor gazed first with utter astonishment, then with a burst of laughter; his words had been verified. He was in a new position. He was to be the "receiver of stolen goods" after all. But in the moonlight lay at his feet a paper; it contained these words:--

"Emperor--You have friends about you, on whom you set no value; you have enemies, too, about you, of whom you are not aware.

Keep the _pendule_; it will serve to remind you of the hours that may pa.s.s between the throne and the dagger. It will serve, also, to remind you how few hours it may take to bring a n.o.ble heart to the altar and to the grave. The toy is yours. The Countess Joblonsky has already received more than its value.

"SPERANSKI."