Title: The Pilgrims of the Rhine
Author: Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron
Language: English
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THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE

TO WHICH IS PREFIXED THE IDEAL WORLD

By Edward Bulwer Lytton (Lord Lytton)



THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE



TO HENRY LYTTON BULWER.

ALLOW me, my dear Brother, to dedicate this Work to you. The greater
part of it (namely, the tales which vary and relieve the voyages of
Gertrude and Trevylyan) was written in the pleasant excursion we made
together some years ago. Among the associations--some sad and some
pleasing--connected with the general design, none are so agreeable to
me as those that remind me of the friendship subsisting between us, and
which, unlike that of near relations in general, has grown stronger
and more intimate as our footsteps have receded farther from the fields
where we played together in our childhood. I dedicate this Work to you
with the more pleasure, not only when I remember that it has always
been a favourite with yourself, but when I think that it is one of my
writings most liked in foreign countries; and I may possibly, therefore,
have found a record destined to endure the affectionate esteem which
this Dedication is intended to convey.

Yours, etc.

E. L. B. LONDON, April 23, 1840.



ADVERTISEMENT TO THE FIRST EDITION.

COULD I prescribe to the critic and to the public, I would wish that
this work might be tried by the rules rather of poetry than prose,
for according to those rules have been both its conception and its
execution; and I feel that something of sympathy with the author’s
design is requisite to win indulgence for the superstitions he has
incorporated with his tale, for the floridity of his style, and the
redundance of his descriptions. Perhaps, indeed, it would be impossible,
in attempting to paint the scenery and embody some of the Legends of
the Rhine, not to give (it may be, too loosely) the reins to the
imagination, or to escape the influence of that wild German spirit which
I have sought to transfer to a colder tongue.

I have made the experiment of selecting for the main interest of my
work the simplest materials, and weaving upon them the ornaments given
chiefly to subjects of a more fanciful nature. I know not how far I have
succeeded, but various reasons have conspired to make this the work,
above all others that I have written, which has given me the most
delight (though not unmixed with melancholy) in producing, and in which
my mind for the time has been the most completely absorbed. But the
ardour of composition is often disproportioned to the merit of the
work; and the public sometimes, nor unjustly, avenges itself for
that forgetfulness of its existence which makes the chief charm of an
author’s solitude,--and the happiest, if not the wisest, inspiration of
his dreams.



PREFACE.

WITH the younger class of my readers this work has had the good fortune
to find especial favour; perhaps because it is in itself a collection of
the thoughts and sentiments that constitute the Romance of youth. It has
little to do with the positive truths of our actual life, and does not
pretend to deal with the larger passions and more stirring interests
of our kind. It is but an episode out of the graver epic of human
destinies. It requires no explanation of its purpose, and no analysis of
its story; the one is evident, the other simple,--the first seeks but
to illustrate visible nature through the poetry of the affections; the
other is but the narrative of the most real of mortal sorrows, which the
Author attempts to take out of the region of pain by various accessories
from the Ideal. The connecting tale itself is but the string that binds
into a garland the wild-flowers cast upon a grave.

The descriptions of the Rhine have been considered by Germans
sufficiently faithful to render this tribute to their land and
their legends one of the popular guide-books along the course it
illustrates,--especially to such tourists as wish not only to take
in with the eye the inventory of the river, but to seize the peculiar
spirit which invests the wave and the bank with a beauty that can only
be made visible by reflection. He little comprehends the true charm of
the Rhine who gazes on the vines on the hill-tops without a thought of
the imaginary world with which their recesses have been peopled by the
graceful credulity of old; who surveys the steep ruins that overshadow
the water, untouched by one lesson from the pensive morality of Time.
Everywhere around us is the evidence of perished opinions and
departed races; everywhere around us, also, the rejoicing fertility of
unconquerable Nature, and the calm progress of Man himself through the
infinite cycles of decay. He who would judge adequately of a landscape
must regard it not only with the painter’s eye, but with the poet’s.
The feelings which the sight of any scene in Nature conveys to the
mind--more especially of any scene on which history or fiction has left
its trace--must depend upon our sympathy with those associations which
make up what may be called the spiritual character of the spot. If
indifferent to those associations, we should see only hedgerows and
ploughed land in the battle-field of Bannockburn; and the traveller
would but look on a dreary waste, whether he stood amidst the piles of
the Druid on Salisbury plain, or trod his bewildered way over the broad
expanse on which the Chaldaean first learned to number the stars.

To the former editions of this tale was prefixed a poem on “The Ideal,”
 which had all the worst faults of the author’s earliest compositions
in verse. The present poem (with the exception of a very few lines) has
been entirely rewritten, and has at least the comparative merit of being
less vague in the thought, and less unpolished in the diction, than that
which it replaces.



CONTENTS.



  THE IDEAL WORLD



  THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE

  CHAPTER I.
  In which the Reader is Introduced to Queen Nymphalin

  CHAPTER II.
  The Lovers

  CHAPTER III.
  Feelings

  CHAPTER IV.
  The Maid of Malines

  CHAPTER V.
  Rotterdam.--The Character of the Dutch.--Their Resemblance to the
  Germans.--A Dispute between Vane and Trevylyan, after the manner of the
  ancient Novelists, as to which is preferable, the Life of Action, or the
  Life of Repose.--Trevylyan’s Contrast between Literary Ambition and the
  Ambition of Public Life

  CHAPTER VI.
  Gorcum.--The Tour of the Virtues: a Philosopher’s Tale

  CHAPTER VII.
  Cologne.--The Traces of the Roman Yoke.--The Church of St.
  Maria.--Trevylyan’s Reflections on the Monastic Life.--The Tomb of the
  Three Kings.--An Evening Excursion on the Rhine

  CHAPTER VIII.
  The Soul in Purgatory; or, Love Stronger than Death

  CHAPTER IX.
  The Scenery of the Rhine analogous to the German Literary Genius.--The
  Drachenfels

  CHAPTER X.
  The Legend of Roland.--The Adventures of Nymphalin on the Island of
  Nonnewerth.--Her Song.--The Decay of the Fairy-Faith in England

  CHAPTER XI.
  Wherein the Reader is made Spectator with the English Fairies of the
  Scenes and Beings that are beneath the Earth

  CHAPTER XII.
  The Wooing of Master Fox

  CHAPTER XIII.
  The Tomb of a Father of Many Children

  CHAPTER XIV.
  The Fairy’s Cave, and the Fairy’s Wish

  CHAPTER XV.
  The Banks of the Rhine.--From the Drachenfels to Brohl.--An Incident that
  suffices in this Tale for an Epoch

  CHAPTER XVI.
  Gertrude.--The Excursion to Hammerstein.--Thoughts

  CHAPTER XVII.
  Letter from Trevylyan to -----

  CHAPTER XVIII.
  Coblentz.--Excursion to the Mountains of Taunus; Roman Tower in the
  Valley of Ehrenbreitstein.--Travel, its Pleasures estimated differently
  by the Young and the Old.--The Student of Heidelberg: his Criticisms on
  German Literature

  CHAPTER XIX.
  The Fallen Star; or, the History of a False Religion

  CHAPTER XX.
  Glenhausen.--The Power of Love in Sanctified Places.--A Portrait of
  Frederick Barbarossa.--The Ambition of Men finds no adequate Sympathy in
  Women

  CHAPTER XXI.
  View of Ehrenbreitstein.--A New Alarm in Gertrude’s Health.--Trarbach

  CHAPTER XXII.
  The Double Life.--Trevylyan’s Fate.--Sorrow the Parent of
  Fame.--Niederlahnstein.--Dreams

  CHAPTER XXIII.
  The Life of Dreams

  CHAPTER XXIV.
  The Brothers

  CHAPTER XXV.
  The Immortality of the Soul.--A Common Incident not before Described.
  --Trevylyan and Gertrude

  CHAPTER XXVI.
  In which the Reader will learn how the Fairies were received by the
  Sovereigns of the Mines.--The Complaint of the Last of the Fauns.--The
  Red Huntsman.--The Storm.--Death

  CHAPTER XXVII.
  Thurmberg.--A Storm upon the Rhine.--The Ruins of Rheinfels.--Peril
  Unfelt by Love.--The Echo of the Lurlei-berg.--St. Goar.--Kaub,
  Gutenfels, and Pfalzgrafenstein.--A certain Vastness of Mind in the First
  Hermits.--The Scenery of the Rhine to Bacharach

  CHAPTER XXVIII.
  The Voyage to Bingen.--The Simple Incidents in this Tale Excused.--The
  Situation and Character of Gertrude.--The Conversation of the Lovers in
  the Tempest.--A Fact Contradicted.--Thoughts occasioned by a Madhouse
  amongst the most Beautiful Landscapes of the Rhine

  CHAPTER XXIX.
  Ellfeld.--Mayence.--Heidelberg.--A Conversation between Vane and the
  German Student.--The Ruins of the Castle of Heidelberg and its Solitary
  Habitant

  CHAPTER XXX.
  No Part of the Earth really Solitary.--The Song of the Fairies.--The
  Sacred Spot.--The Witch of the Evil Winds.--The Spell and the Duty of the
  Fairies

  CHAPTER XXXI.
  Gertrude and Trevylyan, when the former is awakened to the Approach of
  Death

  CHAPTER XXXII.
  A Spot to be Buried in

  CHAPTER THE LAST
  The Conclusion of this Tale



THE IDEAL WORLD



  I.

  THE IDEAL WORLD,--ITS REALM IS EVERYWHERE AROUND US; ITS INHABITANTS ARE
  THE IMMORTAL PERSONIFICATIONS OF ALL BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS; TO THAT WORLD WE
  ATTAIN BY THE REPOSE OF THE SENSES.

  AROUND “this visible diurnal sphere”
     There floats a World that girds us like the space;
  On wandering clouds and gliding beams career
    Its ever-moving murmurous Populace.
  There, all the lovelier thoughts conceived below
    Ascending live, and in celestial shapes.
  To that bright World, O Mortal, wouldst thou go?
    Bind but thy senses, and thy soul escapes:
  To care, to sin, to passion close thine eyes;
  Sleep in the flesh, and see the Dreamland rise!
  Hark to the gush of golden waterfalls,
  Or knightly tromps at Archimagian Walls!
  In the green hush of Dorian Valleys mark
    The River Maid her amber tresses knitting;
  When glow-worms twinkle under coverts dark,
    And silver clouds o’er summer stars are flitting,
  With jocund elves invade “the Moone’s sphere,
  Or hang a pearl in every cowslip’s ear;” *
  Or, list! what time the roseate urns of dawn
    Scatter fresh dews, and the first skylark weaves
  Joy into song, the blithe Arcadian Faun
    Piping to wood-nymphs under Bromian leaves,
  While slowly gleaming through the purple glade
  Come Evian’s panther car, and the pale Naxian Maid.

    * “Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

  Such, O Ideal World, thy habitants!
    All the fair children of creative creeds,
  All the lost tribes of Fantasy are thine,--
  From antique Saturn in Dodonian haunts,
    Or Pan’s first music waked from shepherd reeds,
  To the last sprite when Heaven’s pale lamps decline,
  Heard wailing soft along the solemn Rhine.



  II.

  OUR DREAMS BELONG TO THE IDEAL.--THE DIVINER LOVE FOR WHICH YOUTH SIGHS
  NOT ATTAINABLE IN LIFE, BUT THE PURSUIT OF THAT LOVE BEYOND THE WORLD OF
  THE SENSES PURIFIES THE SOUL AND AWAKES THE GENIUS.--PETRARCH.--DANTE.

  Thine are the Dreams that pass the Ivory Gates,
    With prophet shadows haunting poet eyes!
  Thine the belov’d illusions youth creates
    From the dim haze of its own happy skies.
  In vain we pine; we yearn on earth to win
    The being of the heart, our boyhood’s dream.
  The Psyche and the Eros ne’er have been,
    Save in Olympus, wedded!  As a stream
  Glasses a star, so life the ideal love;
  Restless the stream below, serene the orb above!
  Ever the soul the senses shall deceive;
  Here custom chill, there kinder fate bereave:
  For mortal lips unmeet eternal vows!
  And Eden’s flowers for Adam’s mournful brows!
  We seek to make the moment’s angel guest
    The household dweller at a human hearth;
  We chase the bird of Paradise, whose nest
    Was never found amid the bowers of earth.*

    * According to a belief in the East, which is associated with one
      of the loveliest and most familiar of Oriental superstitions,
      the bird of Paradise is never seen to rest upon the earth, and
      its nest is never to be found.

  Yet loftier joys the vain pursuit may bring,
    Than sate the senses with the boons of time;
  The bird of Heaven hath still an upward wing,
    The steps it lures are still the steps that climb;
  And in the ascent although the soil be bare,
  More clear the daylight and more pure the air.
  Let Petrarch’s heart the human mistress lose,
  He mourns the Laura but to win the Muse.
  Could all the charms which Georgian maids combine
  Delight the soul of the dark Florentine,
  Like one chaste dream of childlike Beatrice
  Awaiting Hell’s dark pilgrim in the skies,
  Snatched from below to be the guide above,
  And clothe Religion in the form of Love?*

    * It is supposed by many of the commentators on Dante, that in
      the form of his lost Beatrice, who guides him in his Vision
      of Heaven, he allegorizes Religious Faith.



  III.

  GENIUS, LIFTING ITS LIFE TO THE IDEAL, BECOMES ITSELF A PURE IDEA: IT
  MUST COMPREHEND ALL EXISTENCE, ALL HUMAN SINS AND SUFFERINGS; BUT IN
  COMPREHENDING, IT TRANSMUTES THEM.--THE POET IN HIS TWO-FOLD BEING,--THE
  ACTUAL AND THE IDEAL.--THE INFLUENCE OF GENIUS OVER THE STERNEST
  REALITIES OF EARTH; OVER OUR PASSIONS; WARS AND SUPERSTITIONS.--ITS
  IDENTITY IS WITH HUMAN PROGRESS.--ITS AGENCY, EVEN WHERE UNACKNOWLEDGED,
  IS UNIVERSAL.

  Oh, thou true Iris! sporting on thy bow
    Of tears and smiles! Jove’s herald, Poetry,
  Thou reflex image of all joy and woe,
    _Both_ fused in light by thy dear fantasy!
  Lo! from the clay how Genius lifts its life,
    And grows one pure Idea, one calm soul!
  True, its own clearness must reflect our strife;
    True, its completeness must comprise our whole;
  But as the sun transmutes the sullen hues
    Of marsh-grown vapours into vermeil dyes,
  And melts them later into twilight dews,
    Shedding on flowers the baptism of the skies;
  So glows the Ideal in the air we breathe,
    So from the fumes of sorrow and of sin,
  Doth its warm light in rosy colours wreathe
    Its playful cloudland, storing balms within.

  Survey the Poet in his mortal mould,
    Man, amongst men, descended from his throne!
  The moth that chased the star now frets the fold,
    Our cares, our faults, our follies are his own.
  Passions as idle, and desires as vain,
  Vex the wild heart, and dupe the erring brain.
  From Freedom’s field the recreant Horace flies
  To kiss the hand by which his country dies;
  From Mary’s grave the mighty Peasant turns,
  And hoarse with orgies rings the laugh of Burns.
  While Rousseau’s lips a lackey’s vices own,--
  Lips that could draw the thunder on a throne!
  But when from Life the Actual GENIUS springs,
    When, self-transformed by its own magic rod,
  It snaps the fetters and expands the wings,
    And drops the fleshly garb that veiled the god,
  How the mists vanish as the form ascends!
  How in its aureole every sunbeam blends!
  By the Arch-Brightener of Creation seen,
    How dim the crowns on perishable brows!
  The snows of Atlas melt beneath the sheen,
    Through Thebaid caves the rushing splendour flows.
  Cimmerian glooms with Asian beams are bright,
  And Earth reposes in a belt of light.
  Now stern as Vengeance shines the awful form,
  Armed with the bolt and glowing through the storm;
  Sets the great deeps of human passion free,
  And whelms the bulwarks that would breast the sea.
  Roused by its voice the ghastly Wars arise,
  Mars reddens earth, the Valkyrs pale the skies;
  Dim Superstition from her hell escapes,
  With all her shadowy brood of monster shapes;
  Here life itself the scowl of Typhon* takes;
  There Conscience shudders at Alecto’s snakes;
  From Gothic graves at midnight yawning wide,
  In gory cerements gibbering spectres glide;
  And where o’er blasted heaths the lightnings flame,
  Black secret hags “do deeds without a name!”
   Yet through its direst agencies of awe,
  Light marks its presence and pervades its law,
  And, like Orion when the storms are loud,
  It links creation while it gilds a cloud.
  By ruthless Thor, free Thought, frank Honour stand,
  Fame’s grand desire, and zeal for Fatherland.
  The grim Religion of Barbarian Fear
  With some Hereafter still connects the Here,
  Lifts the gross sense to some spiritual source,
  And thrones some Jove above the Titan Force,
  Till, love completing what in awe began,
  From the rude savage dawns the thoughtful man.

    * The gloomy Typhon of Egypt assumes many of the mystic attributes
      of the Principle of Life which, in the Grecian Apotheosis of the
      Indian Bacchus, is represented in so genial a character of
      exuberant joy and everlasting youth.

  Then, oh, behold the Glorious comforter!
    Still bright’ning worlds but gladd’ning now the hearth,
  Or like the lustre of our nearest star,
    Fused in the common atmosphere of earth.
  It sports like hope upon the captive’s chain;
  Descends in dreams upon the couch of pain;
  To wonder’s realm allures the earnest child;
  To the chaste love refines the instinct wild;
  And as in waters the reflected beam,
  Still where we turn, glides with us up the stream,
  And while in truth the whole expanse is bright,
  Yields to each eye its own fond path of light,--
  So over life the rays of Genius fall,
  Give each his track because illuming all.



  IV.

  FORGIVENESS TO THE ERRORS OF OUR BENEFACTORS.

  Hence is that secret pardon we bestow
    In the true instinct of the grateful heart,
  Upon the Sons of Song.  The good they do
    In the clear world of their Uranian art
  Endures forever; while the evil done
    In the poor drama of their mortal scene,
  Is but a passing cloud before the sun;
    Space hath no record where the mist hath been.
  Boots it to us if Shakspeare erred like man?
    Why idly question that most mystic life?
  Eno’ the giver in his gifts to scan;
    To bless the sheaves with which thy fields are rife,
  Nor, blundering, guess through what obstructive clay
  The glorious corn-seed struggled up to day.



  V.

  THE IDEAL IS NOT CONFINED TO POETS.--ALGERNON SIDNEY RECOGNIZES HIS IDEAL
  IN LIBERTY, AND BELIEVES IN ITS TRIUMPH WHERE THE MERE PRACTICAL MAN
  COULD BEHOLD BUT ITS RUINS; YET LIBERTY IN THIS WORLD MUST EVER BE AN
  IDEAL, AND THE LAND THAT IT PROMISES CAN BE FOUND BUT IN DEATH.

  But not to you alone, O Sons Of Song,
  The wings that float the loftier airs along.
  Whoever lifts us from the dust we are,
    Beyond the sensual to spiritual goals;
  Who from the MOMENT and the SELF afar
    By deathless deeds allures reluctant souls,
  Gives the warm life to what the Limner draws,--
  Plato but thought what godlike Cato was.*
  Recall the Wars of England’s giant-born,
    Is Elyot’s voice, is Hampden’s death in vain?
  Have all the meteors of the vernal morn
    But wasted light upon a frozen main?
  Where is that child of Carnage, Freedom, flown?
  The Sybarite lolls upon the martyr’s throne.
  Lewd, ribald jests succeed to solemn zeal;
  And things of silk to Cromwell’s men of steel.
  Cold are the hosts the tromps of Ireton thrilled,
  And hushed the senates Vane’s large presence filled.
  In what strong heart doth the old manhood dwell?
  Where art thou, Freedom?  Look! in Sidney’s cell!
  There still as stately stands the living Truth,
  Smiling on age as it had smiled on youth.
  Her forts dismantled, and her shrines o’erthrown,
  The headsman’s block her last dread altar-stone,
  No sanction left to Reason’s vulgar hope,
  Far from the wrecks expands her prophet’s scope.
  Millennial morns the tombs of Kedron gild,
  The hands of saints the glorious walls rebuild,--
  Till each foundation garnished with its gem,
  High o’er Gehenna flames Jerusalem!
  O thou blood-stained Ideal of the free,
  Whose breath is heard in clarions,--Liberty!
  Sublimer for thy grand illusions past,
  Thou spring’st to Heaven,--Religion at the last.
  Alike below, or commonwealths or thrones,
  Where’er men gather some crushed victim groans;
  Only in death thy real form we see,
  All life is bondage,--souls alone are free.
  Thus through the waste the wandering Hebrews went,
  Fire on the march, but cloud upon the tent.
  At last on Pisgah see the prophet stand,
  Before his vision spreads the PROMISED LAND;
  But where revealed the Canaan to his eye?--
  Upon the mountain he ascends to die.

    * What Plato thought, and godlike Cato was.--POPE.



  VI.

  YET ALL HAVE TWO ESCAPES INTO THE IDEAL WORLD; NAMELY, MEMORY AND
  HOPE.--EXAMPLE OF HOPE IN YOUTH, HOWEVER EXCLUDED FROM ACTION AND
  DESIRE.--NAPOLEON’S SON.

  Yet whatsoever be our bondage here,
  All have two portals to the phantom sphere.
  What hath not glided through those gates that ope
  Beyond the Hour, to MEMORY or to HOPE!
  Give Youth the Garden,--still it soars above,
  Seeks some far glory, some diviner love.
  Place Age amidst the Golgotha,--its eyes
  Still quit the graves, to rest upon the skies;
  And while the dust, unheeded, moulders there,
  Track some lost angel through cerulean air.

  Lo! where the Austrian binds, with formal chain,
  The crownless son of earth’s last Charlemagne,--
  Him, at whose birth laughed all the violet vales
    (While yet unfallen stood thy sovereign star,
  O Lucifer of nations).  Hark, the gales
    Swell with the shout from all the hosts, whose war
  Rended the Alps, and crimsoned Memphian Nile,--
    “Way for the coming of the Conqueror’s Son:
  Woe to the Merchant-Carthage of the Isle!
    Woe to the Scythian ice-world of the Don!
  O Thunder Lord, thy Lemnian bolts prepare,
  The Eagle’s eyry hath its eagle heir!”
   Hark, at that shout from north to south, gray Power
    Quails on its weak, hereditary thrones;
  And widowed mothers prophesy the hour
    Of future carnage to their cradled sons.
  What! shall our race to blood be thus consigned,
    And Ate claim an heirloom in mankind?
  Are these red lots unshaken in the urn?
  Years pass; approach, pale Questioner, and learn
  Chained to his rock, with brows that vainly frown,
  The fallen Titan sinks in darkness down!
  And sadly gazing through his gilded grate,
  Behold the child whose birth was as a fate!
  Far from the land in which his life began;
  Walled from the healthful air of hardy man;
  Reared by cold hearts, and watched by jealous eyes,
  His guardians jailers, and his comrades spies.
  Each trite convention courtly fears inspire
  To stint experience and to dwarf desire;
  Narrows the action to a puppet stage,
  And trains the eaglet to the starling’s cage.
  On the dejected brow and smileless cheek,
  What weary thought the languid lines bespeak;
  Till drop by drop, from jaded day to day,
  The sickly life-streams ooze themselves away.
  Yet oft in HOPE a boundless realm was thine,
    That vaguest Infinite,--the Dream of Fame;
  Son of the sword that first made kings divine,
    Heir to man’s grandest royalty,--a Name!
  Then didst thou burst upon the startled world,
  And keep the glorious promise of thy birth;
  Then were the wings that bear the bolt unfurled,
    A monarch’s voice cried, “Place upon the earth!”
   A new Philippi gained a second Rome,
  And the Son’s sword avenged the greater Caesar’s doom.



  VII.

  EXAMPLE OF MEMORY AS LEADING TO THE IDEAL,--AMIDST LIFE HOWEVER HUMBLE,
  AND IN A MIND HOWEVER IGNORANT.--THE VILLAGE WIDOW.

  But turn the eye to life’s sequestered vale
    And lowly roofs remote in hamlets green.
  Oft in my boyhood where the moss-grown pale
    Fenced quiet graves, a female form was seen;
  Each eve she sought the melancholy ground,
  And lingering paused, and wistful looked around.
  If yet some footstep rustled through the grass,
  Timorous she shrunk, and watched the shadow pass;
  Then, when the spot lay lone amidst the gloom,
  Crept to one grave too humble for a tomb,
  There silent bowed her face above the dead,
  For, if in prayer, the prayer was inly said;
  Still as the moonbeam, paused her quiet shade,
  Still as the moonbeam, through the yews to fade.
  Whose dust thus hallowed by so fond a care?
  What the grave saith not, let the heart declare.
    On yonder green two orphan children played;
  By yonder rill two plighted lovers strayed;
  In yonder shrine two lives were blent in one,
  And joy-bells chimed beneath a summer sun.
  Poor was their lot, their bread in labour found;
  No parent blessed them, and no kindred owned;
  They smiled to hear the wise their choice condemn;
  They loved--they loved--and love was wealth to them!
  Hark--one short week--again the holy bell!
  Still shone the sun; but dirge like boomed the knell,--
  The icy hand had severed breast from breast;
  Left life to toil, and summoned Death to rest.
  Full fifty years since then have passed away,
  Her cheek is furrowed, and her hair is gray.
  Yet, when she speaks of _him_ (the times are rare),
  Hear in her voice how youth still trembles there.
  The very name of that young life that died
  Still heaves the bosom, and recalls the bride.
  Lone o’er the widow’s hearth those years have fled,
  The daily toil still wins the daily bread;
  No books deck sorrow with fantastic dyes;
  Her fond romance her woman heart supplies;
  And, haply in the few still moments given,
  (Day’s taskwork done), to memory, death, and heaven,
  To that unuttered poem may belong
  Thoughts of such pathos as had beggared song.



  VIII.

  HENCE IN HOPE, MEMORY, AND PRAYER, ALL OF US ARE POETS.

  Yes, while thou hopest, music fills the air,
    While thou rememberest, life reclothes the clod;
  While thou canst feel the electric chain of prayer,
    Breathe but a thought, and be a soul with God!
  Let not these forms of matter bound thine eye.
    He who the vanishing point of Human things
  Lifts from the landscape, lost amidst the sky,
    Has found the Ideal which the poet sings,
  Has pierced the pall around the senses thrown,
  And is himself a poet, though unknown.



  IX.

  APPLICATION OF THE POEM TO THE TALE TO WHICH IT IS PREFIXED.--THE
  RHINE,--ITS IDEAL CHARACTER IN ITS HISTORICAL AND LEGENDARY ASSOCIATIONS.

  Eno’!--my song is closing, and to thee,
    Land of the North, I dedicate its lay;
  As I have done the simple tale to be
    The drama of this prelude!
                                    Faraway
  Rolls the swift Rhine beneath the starry ray;
  But to my ear its haunted waters sigh;
  Its moonlight mountains glimmer on my eye;
  On wave, on marge, as on a wizard’s glass,
  Imperial ghosts in dim procession pass;
  Lords of the wild, the first great Father-men,
  Their fane the hill-top, and their home the glen;
  Frowning they fade; a bridge of steel appears
  With frank-eyed Caesar smiling through the spears;
  The march moves onwards, and the mirror brings
  The Gothic crowns of Carlovingian kings
  Vanished alike!  The Hermit rears his Cross,
  And barbs neigh shrill, and plumes in tumult toss,
  While (knighthood’s sole sweet conquest from the Moor)
  Sings to Arabian lutes the Tourbadour.
    Not yet, not yet; still glide some lingering shades,
  Still breathe some murmurs as the starlight fades,
  Still from her rock I hear the Siren call,
  And see the tender ghost in Roland’s mouldering hall!



  X.

  APPLICATION OF THE POEM CONTINUED.--THE IDEAL LENDS ITS AID TO THE MOST
  FAMILIAR AND THE MOST ACTUAL SORROW OF LIFE.--FICTION COMPARED TO
  SLEEP,--IT STRENGTHENS WHILE IT SOOTHES.

  Trite were the tale I tell of love and doom,
  (Whose life hath loved not, whose not mourned a tomb?)
  But fiction draws a poetry from grief,
  As art its healing from the withered leaf.
  Play thou, sweet Fancy, round the sombre truth,
    Crown the sad Genius ere it lower the torch!
  When death the altar and the victim youth,
    Flutes fill the air, and garlands deck the porch.
  As down the river drifts the Pilgrim sail,
  Clothe the rude hill-tops, lull the Northern gale;
  With childlike lore the fatal course beguile,
  And brighten death with Love’s untiring smile.
  Along the banks let fairy forms be seen
  “By fountain clear, or spangled starlike sheen.” *
  Let sound and shape to which the sense is dull
  Haunt the soul opening on the Beautiful.
  And when at length, the symbol voyage done,
  Surviving Grief shrinks lonely from the sun,
  By tender types show Grief what memories bloom
  From lost delight, what fairies guard the tomb.
  Scorn not the dream, O world-worn; pause a while,
  New strength shall nerve thee as the dreams beguile,
  Stung by the rest, less far shall seem the goal!
  As sleep to life, so fiction to the soul.

    * “Midsummer Night’s Dream.”



THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE



CHAPTER I. IN WHICH THE READER IS INTRODUCED TO QUEEN NYMPHALIN.

IN one of those green woods which belong so peculiarly to our island
(for the Continent has its forests, but England its woods) there lived,
a short time ago, a charming little fairy called Nymphalin. I believe
she is descended from a younger branch of the house of Mab; but perhaps
that may only be a genealogical fable, for your fairies are very
susceptible to the pride of ancestry, and it is impossible to deny that
they fall somewhat reluctantly into the liberal opinions so much in
vogue at the present day.

However that may be, it is quite certain that all the courtiers in
Nymphalin’s domain (for she was a queen fairy) made a point of asserting
her right to this illustrious descent; and accordingly she quartered the
Mab arms with her own,--three acorns vert, with a grasshopper rampant.
It was as merry a little court as could possibly be conceived, and on
a fine midsummer night it would have been worth while attending the
queen’s balls; that is to say, if you could have got a ticket, a favour
not obtained without great interest.

But, unhappily, until both men and fairies adopt Mr. Owen’s proposition,
and live in parallelograms, they will always be the victims of _ennui_.
And Nymphalin, who had been disappointed in love, and was still
unmarried, had for the last five or six months been exceedingly tired
even of giving balls. She yawned very frequently, and consequently
yawning became a fashion.

“But why don’t we have some new dances, my Pipalee?” said Nymphalin to
her favourite maid of honour; “these waltzes are very old-fashioned.”

“Very old-fashioned,” said Pipalee.

The queen gaped, and Pipalee did the same.

It was a gala night; the court was held in a lone and beautiful hollow,
with the wild brake closing round it on every side, so that no human
step could easily gain the spot. Wherever the shadows fell upon the
brake a glow-worm made a point of exhibiting itself, and the bright
August moon sailed slowly above, pleased to look down upon so charming
a scene of merriment; for they wrong the moon who assert that she has
an objection to mirth,--with the mirth of fairies she has all possible
sympathy. Here and there in the thicket the scarce honeysuckles--in
August honeysuckles are somewhat out of season--hung their rich
festoons, and at that moment they were crowded with the elderly fairies,
who had given up dancing and taken to scandal. Besides the honeysuckle
you might see the hawkweed and the white convolvulus, varying the soft
verdure of the thicket; and mushrooms in abundance had sprung up in
the circle, glittering in the silver moonlight, and acceptable beyond
measure to the dancers: every one knows how agreeable a thing tents are
in a _fete champetre_! I was mistaken in saying that the brake closed
the circle entirely round; for there was one gap, scarcely apparent to
mortals, through which a fairy at least might catch a view of a
brook that was close at hand, rippling in the stars, and checkered at
intervals by the rich weeds floating on the surface, interspersed
with the delicate arrowhead and the silver water-lily. Then the trees
themselves, in their prodigal variety of hues,--the blue, the purple,
the yellowing tint, the tender and silvery verdure, and the deep mass
of shade frowning into black; the willow, the elm, the ash, the fir, and
the lime, “and, best of all, Old England’s haunted oak;” these hues were
broken again into a thousand minor and subtler shades as the twinkling
stars pierced the foliage, or the moon slept with a richer light upon
some favoured glade.

It was a gala night; the elderly fairies, as I said before, were
chatting among the honeysuckles; the young were flirting, and dancing,
and making love; the middle-aged talked politics under the mushrooms;
and the queen herself and half-a-dozen of her favourites were yawning
their pleasure from a little mound covered with the thickest moss.

“It has been very dull, madam, ever since Prince Fayzenheim left us,”
 said the fairy Nip.

The queen sighed.

“How handsome the prince is!” said Pipalee.

The queen blushed.

“He wore the prettiest dress in the world; and what a mustache!” cried
Pipalee, fanning herself with her left wing.

“He was a coxcomb,” said the lord treasurer, sourly. The lord treasurer
was the honestest and most disagreeable fairy at court; he was an
admirable husband, brother, son, cousin, uncle, and godfather,--it was
these virtues that had made him a lord treasurer. Unfortunately they
had not made him a sensible fairy. He was like Charles the Second in
one respect, for he never did a wise thing; but he was not like him in
another, for he very often said a foolish one.

The queen frowned.

“A young prince is not the worse for that,” retorted Pipalee. “Heigho!
does your Majesty think his Highness likely to return?”

“Don’t tease me,” said Nymphalin, pettishly.

The lord treasurer, by way of giving the conversation an agreeable
turn, reminded her Majesty that there was a prodigious accumulation
of business to see to, especially that difficult affair about the
emmet-wasp loan. Her Majesty rose; and leaning on Pipalee’s arm, walked
down to the supper tent.

“Pray,” said the fairy Trip to the fairy Nip, “what is all this talk
about Prince Fayzenheim? Excuse my ignorance; I am only just out, you
know.”

“Why,” answered Nip, a young courtier, not a marrying fairy, but very
seductive, “the story runs thus: Last summer a foreigner visited us,
calling himself Prince Fayzenheim: one of your German fairies, I fancy;
no great things, but an excellent waltzer. He wore long spurs, made out
of the stings of the horse-flies in the Black Forest; his cap sat on one
side, and his mustachios curled like the lip of the dragon-flower. He
was on his travels, and amused himself by making love to the queen. You
can’t fancy, dear Trip, how fond she was of hearing him tell stories
about the strange creatures of Germany,--about wild huntsmen,
water-sprites, and a pack of such stuff,” added Nip, contemptuously, for
Nip was a freethinker.

“In short?” said Trip.

“In short, she loved,” cried Nip, with a theatrical air.

“And the prince?”

“Packed up his clothes, and sent on his travelling-carriage, in order
that he might go at his ease on the top of a stage-pigeon; in short--as
you say--in short, he deserted the queen, and ever since she has set the
fashion of yawning.”

“It was very naughty in him,” said the gentle Trip.

“Ah, my dear creature,” cried Nip, “if it had been you to whom he had
paid his addresses!”

Trip simpered, and the old fairies from their seats in the honeysuckles
observed she was “sadly conducted;” but the Trips had never been too
respectable.

Meanwhile the queen, leaning on Pipalee, said, after a short pause, “Do
you know I have formed a plan!”

“How delightful!” cried Pipalee. “Another gala!”

“Pooh, surely even you must be tired with such levities: the spirit of
the age is no longer frivolous; and I dare say as the march of gravity
proceeds, we shall get rid of galas altogether.” The queen said this
with an air of inconceivable wisdom, for the “Society for the Diffusion
of General Stupefaction” had been recently established among the
fairies, and its tracts had driven all the light reading out of the
market. “The Penny Proser” had contributed greatly to the increase of
knowledge and yawning, so visibly progressive among the courtiers.

“No,” continued Nymphalin; “I have thought of something better than
galas. Let us travel!”

Pipalee clasped her hands in ecstasy.

“Where shall we travel?”

“Let us go up the Rhine,” said the queen, turning away her head. “We
shall be amazingly welcomed; there are fairies without number all the
way by its banks, and various distant connections of ours whose nature
and properties will afford interest and instruction to a philosophical
mind.”

“Number Nip, for instance,” cried the gay Pipalee.

“The Red Man!” said the graver Nymphalin.

“Oh, my queen, what an excellent scheme!” and Pipalee was so lively
during the rest of the night that the old fairies in the honeysuckle
insinuated that the lady of honour had drunk a buttercup too much of the
Maydew.



CHAPTER II. THE LOVERS.

I WISH only for such readers as give themselves heart and soul up to
me,--if they begin to cavil I have done with them; their fancy should
put itself entirely under my management; and, after all, ought they not
to be too glad to get out of this hackneyed and melancholy world, to be
run away with by an author who promises them something new?

From the heights of Bruges, a Mortal and his betrothed gazed upon the
scene below. They saw the sun set slowly amongst purple masses of cloud,
and the lover turned to his mistress and sighed deeply; for her cheek
was delicate in its blended roses, beyond the beauty that belongs to
the hues of health; and when he saw the sun sinking from the world, the
thought came upon him that _she_ was his sun, and the glory that
she shed over his life might soon pass away into the bosom of the
“ever-during Dark.” But against the clouds rose one of the many spires
that characterize the town of Bruges; and on that spire, tapering into
heaven, rested the eyes of Gertrude Vane. The different objects that
caught the gaze of each was emblematic both of the different channel of
their thoughts and the different elements of their nature: he thought of
the sorrow, she of the consolation; his heart prophesied of the passing
away from earth, hers of the ascension into heaven. The lower part of
the landscape was wrapped in shade; but just where the bank curved round
in a mimic bay, the waters caught the sun’s parting smile, and rippled
against the herbage that clothed the shore, with a scarcely noticeable
wave. There are two of the numerous mills which are so picturesque a
feature of that country, standing at a distance from each other on the
rising banks, their sails perfectly still in the cool silence of the
evening, and adding to the rustic tranquillity which breathed around.
For to me there is something in the still sails of one of those
inventions of man’s industry peculiarly eloquent of repose: the rest
seems typical of the repose of our own passions, short and uncertain,
contrary to their natural ordination; and doubly impressive from the
feeling which admonishes us how precarious is the stillness, how utterly
dependent on every wind rising at any moment and from any quarter of
the heavens! They saw before them no living forms, save of one or two
peasants yet lingering by the water-side.

Trevylyan drew closer to his Gertrude; for his love was inexpressibly
tender, and his vigilant anxiety for her made his stern frame feel the
first coolness of the evening even before she felt it herself.

“Dearest, let me draw your mantle closer round you.”

Gertrude smiled her thanks.

“I feel better than I have done for weeks,” said she; “and when once we
get into the Rhine, you will see me grow so strong as to shock all your
interest for me.”

“Ah, would to Heaven my interest for you may be put to such an ordeal!”
 said Trevylyan; and they turned slowly to the inn, where Gertrude’s
father already awaited them.

Trevylyan was of a wild, a resolute, and an active nature. Thrown on
the world at the age of sixteen, he had passed his youth in alternate
pleasure, travel, and solitary study. At the age in which manhood is
least susceptible to caprice, and most perhaps to passion, he fell in
love with the loveliest person that ever dawned upon a poet’s vision.
I say this without exaggeration, for Gertrude Vane’s was indeed
the beauty, but the perishable beauty, of a dream. It happened most
singularly to Trevylyan (but he was a singular man), that being
naturally one whose affections it was very difficult to excite, he
should have fallen in love at first sight with a person whose disease,
already declared, would have deterred any other heart from risking
its treasures on a bark so utterly unfitted for the voyage of life.
Consumption, but consumption in its most beautiful shape, had set its
seal upon Gertrude Vane, when Trevylyan first saw her, and at once
loved. He knew the danger of the disease; he did not, except at
intervals, deceive himself; he wrestled against the new passion: but,
stern as his nature was, he could not conquer it. He loved, he confessed
his love, and Gertrude returned it.

In a love like this, there is something ineffably beautiful,--it is
essentially the poetry of passion. Desire grows hallowed by fear,
and, scarce permitted to indulge its vent in the common channel of
the senses, breaks forth into those vague yearnings, those lofty
aspirations, which pine for the Bright, the Far, the Unattained. It is
“the desire of the moth for the star;” it is the love of the soul!

Gertrude was advised by the faculty to try a southern climate; but
Gertrude was the daughter of a German mother, and her young fancy had
been nursed in all the wild legends and the alluring visions that
belong to the children of the Rhine. Her imagination, more romantic than
classic, yearned for the vine-clad hills and haunted forests which are
so fertile in their spells to those who have once drunk, even sparingly,
of the Literature of the North. Her desire strongly expressed, her
declared conviction that if any change of scene could yet arrest the
progress of her malady it would be the shores of the river she had so
longed to visit, prevailed with her physicians and her father, and they
consented to that pilgrimage along the Rhine on which Gertrude, her
father, and her lover were now bound.

It was by the green curve of the banks which the lovers saw from the
heights of Bruges that our fairy travellers met. They were reclining on
the water-side, playing at dominos with eye-bright and the black specks
of the trefoil; namely, Pipalee, Nip, Trip, and the lord treasurer
(for that was all the party selected by the queen for her travelling
_cortege_), and waiting for her Majesty, who, being a curious little
elf, had gone round the town to reconnoitre.

“Bless me!” said the lord treasurer; “what a mad freak is this! Crossing
that immense pond of water! And was there ever such bad grass as this?
One may see that the fairies thrive ill here.”

“You are always discontented, my lord,” said Pipalee; “but then you are
somewhat too old to travel,--at least, unless you go in your nutshell
and four.”

The lord treasurer did not like this remark, so he muttered a peevish
pshaw, and took a pinch of honeysuckle dust to console himself for being
forced to put up with so much frivolity.

At this moment, ere the moon was yet at her middest height, Nymphalin
joined her subjects.

“I have just returned,” said she, with a melancholy expression on her
countenance, “from a scene that has almost renewed in me that
sympathy with human beings which of late years our race has well-nigh
relinquished.

“I hurried through the town without noticing much food for adventure.
I paused for a moment on a fat citizen’s pillow, and bade him dream of
love. He woke in a fright, and ran down to see that his cheeses
were safe. I swept with a light wing over a politician’s eyes, and
straightway he dreamed of theatres and music. I caught an undertaker in
his first nap, and I have left him whirled into a waltz. For what would
be sleep if it did not contrast life? Then I came to a solitary chamber,
in which a girl, in her tenderest youth, knelt by the bedside in prayer,
and I saw that the death-spirit had passed over her, and the blight was
on the leaves of the rose. The room was still and hushed, the angel of
Purity kept watch there. Her heart was full of love, and yet of holy
thoughts, and I bade her dream of the long life denied to her,--of a
happy home, of the kisses of her young lover, of eternal faith, and
unwaning tenderness. Let her at least enjoy in dreams what Fate
has refused to Truth! And, passing from the room, I found her lover
stretched in his cloak beside the door; for he reads with a feverish and
desperate prophecy the doom that waits her; and so loves he the very
air she breathes, the very ground she treads, that when she has left
his sight he creeps, silently and unknown to her, to the nearest spot
hallowed by her presence, anxious that while yet she is on earth not an
hour, not a moment, should be wasted upon other thoughts than those that
belong to her; and feeling a security, a fearful joy, in lessening the
distance that _now_ only momentarily divides them. And that love seemed
to me not as the love of the common world, and I stayed my wings
and looked upon it as a thing that centuries might pass and bring no
parallel to, in its beauty and its melancholy truth. But I kept away the
sleep from the lover’s eyes, for well I knew that sleep was a tyrant,
that shortened the brief time of waking tenderness for the living, yet
spared him; and one sad, anxious thought of her was sweeter, in spite of
its sorrow, than the brightest of fairy dreams. So I left him awake,
and watching there through the long night, and felt that the children
of earth have still something that unites them to the spirits of a finer
race, so long as they retain amongst them the presence of real love!”

And oh! is there not a truth also in our fictions of the Unseen World?
Are there not yet bright lingerers by the forest and the stream? Do the
moon and the soft stars look out on no delicate and winged forms bathing
in their light? Are the fairies and the invisible hosts but the children
of our dreams, and not their inspiration? Is that all a delusion which
speaks from the golden page? And is the world only given to harsh and
anxious travellers that walk to and fro in pursuit of no gentle shadows?
Are the chimeras of the passions the sole spirits of the universe? No!
while my remembrance treasures in its deepest cell the image of one no
more,--one who was “not of the earth, earthy;” one in whom love was the
essence of thoughts divine; one whose shape and mould, whose heart and
genius, would, had Poesy never before dreamed it, have called forth
the first notion of spirits resembling mortals, but not of them,--no,
Gertrude! while I remember you, the faith, the trust in brighter shapes
and fairer natures than the world knows of, comes clinging to my heart;
and still will I think that Fairies might have watched over your sleep
and Spirits have ministered to your dreams.



CHAPTER III. FEELINGS.

GERTRUDE and her companions proceeded by slow and, to her, delightful
stages to Rotterdam. Trevylyan sat by her side, and her hand was ever
in his; and when her delicate frame became sensible of fatigue, her head
drooped on his shoulder as its natural resting-place. Her father was
a man who had lived long enough to have encountered many reverses of
fortune, and they had left him, as I am apt to believe long adversity
usually does leave its prey, somewhat chilled and somewhat hardened to
affection; passive and quiet of hope, resigned to the worst as to
the common order of events, and expecting little from the best, as an
unlooked-for incident in the regularity of human afflictions. He was
insensible of his daughter’s danger, for he was not one whom the fear
of love endows with prophetic vision; and he lived tranquilly in the
present, without asking what new misfortune awaited him in the future.
Yet he loved his child, his only child, with whatever of affection
was left him by the many shocks his heart had received; and in her
approaching connection with one rich and noble as Trevylyan, he
felt even something bordering upon pleasure. Lapped in the apathetic
indifference of his nature, he leaned back in the carriage, enjoying the
bright weather that attended their journey, and sensible--for he was one
of fine and cultivated taste--of whatever beauties of nature or remains
of art varied their course. A companion of this sort was the most
agreeable that two persons never needing a third could desire; he left
them undisturbed to the intoxication of their mutual presence; he marked
not the interchange of glances; he listened not to the whisper, the low
delicious whisper, with which the heart speaks its sympathy to heart. He
broke not that charmed silence which falls over us when the thoughts are
full, and words leave nothing to explain; that repose of feeling; that
certainty that we are understood without the effort of words, which
makes the real luxury of intercourse and the true enchantment of travel.
What a memory hours like these bequeath, after we have settled down into
the calm occupation of common life! How beautiful, through the vista of
years, seems that brief moonlight track upon the waters of our youth!

And Trevylyan’s nature, which, as I have said before, was naturally
hard and stern, which was hot, irritable, ambitious, and prematurely
tinctured with the policy and lessons of the world, seemed utterly
changed by the peculiarities of his love. Every hour, every moment was
full of incident to him; every look of Gertrude’s was entered in the
tablets of his heart; so that his love knew no languor, it required no
change: he was absorbed in it,--_it was himself_! And he was soft, and
watchful as the step of a mother by the couch of her sick child;
the lion within him was tamed by indomitable love; the sadness, the
presentiment, that was mixed with all his passion for Gertrude, filled
him too with that poetry of feeling which is the result of thoughts
weighing upon us, and not to be expressed by ordinary language. In this
part of their journey, as I find by the date, were the following lines
written; they are to be judged as the lines of one in whom emotion and
truth were the only inspiration:--



     I. As leaves left darkling in the flush of day,
       When glints the glad sun checkering o’er the tree,
     I see the green earth brightening in the ray,
       Which only casts a shadow upon me!


     II. What are the beams, the flowers, the glory, all
       Life’s glow and gloss, the music and the bloom,
     When every sun but speeds the Eternal Pall,
       And Time is Death that dallies with the Tomb?


     III. And yet--oh yet, so young, so pure!--the while
       Fresh laugh the rose-hues round youth’s morning sky,
     That voice, those eyes, the deep love of that smile,
       Are they not soul--_all_ soul--and _can_ they die?


     IV. Are there the words “NO MORE” for thoughts like ours?
       Must the bark sink upon so soft a wave?
     Hath the short summer of thy life no flowers
       But those which bloom above thine early grave?


     V. O God! and what is life, that I should live?
       (Hath not the world enow of common clay?)
     And she--the Rose--whose life a soul could give
       To the void desert, sigh its sweets away?


     VI. And I that love thee thus, to whom the air,
       Blest by thy breath, makes heaven where’er it be,
     Watch thy cheek wane, and smile away despair,
       Lest it should dim one hour yet left to Thee.


     VII. Still let me conquer self; oh, still conceal
       By the smooth brow the snake that coils below;
     Break, break my heart! it comforts yet to feel
       That _she_ dreams on, unwakened by my woe!


     VIII. Hushed, where the Star’s soft angel loves to keep
       Watch o’er their tide, the morning waters roll;
     So glides my spirit,--darkness in the deep,
       But o’er the wave the presence of thy soul!



Gertrude had not as yet the presentiments that filled the soul of
Trevylyan. She thought too little of herself to know her danger, and
those hours to her were hours of unmingled sweetness. Sometimes, indeed,
the exhaustion of her disease tinged her spirits with a vague sadness,
an abstraction came over her, and a languor she vainly struggled
against. These fits of dejection and gloom touched Trevylyan to the
quick; his eye never ceased to watch them, nor his heart to soothe.
Often when he marked them, he sought to attract her attention from what
he fancied, though erringly, a sympathy with his own forebodings, and
to lead her young and romantic imagination through the temporary
beguilements of fiction; for Gertrude was yet in the first bloom of
youth, and all the dews of beautiful childhood sparkled freshly from the
virgin blossoms of her mind. And Trevylyan, who had passed some of his
early years among the students of Leipsic, and was deeply versed in the
various world of legendary lore, ransacked his memory for such tales
as seemed to him most likely to win her interest; and often with false
smiles entered into the playful tale, or oftener, with more faithful
interest, into the graver legend of trials that warned yet beguiled them
from their own. Of such tales I have selected but a few; I know not that
they are the least unworthy of repetition,--they are those which many
recollections induce me to repeat the most willingly. Gertrude loved
these stories, for she had not yet lost, by the coldness of the world,
one leaf from that soft and wild romance which belonged to her beautiful
mind; and, more than all, she loved the sound of a voice which every
day became more and more musical to her ear. “Shall I tell you,” said
Trevylyan, one morning, as he observed her gloomier mood stealing over
the face of Gertrude,--“shall I tell you, ere yet we pass into the dull
land of Holland, a story of Malines, whose spires we shall shortly
see?” Gertrude’s face brightened at once, and as she leaned back in the
carriage as it whirled rapidly along, and fixed her deep blue eyes on
Trevylyan, he began the following tale.



CHAPTER IV. THE MAID OF MALINES.

IT was noonday in the town of Malines, or Mechlin, as the English
usually term it; the Sabbath bell had summoned the inhabitants to
divine worship; and the crowd that had loitered round the Church of St.
Rembauld had gradually emptied itself within the spacious aisles of the
sacred edifice.

A young man was standing in the street, with his eyes bent on the
ground, and apparently listening for some sound; for without raising his
looks from the rude pavement, he turned to every corner of it with an
intent and anxious expression of countenance. He held in one hand a
staff, in the other a long slender cord, the end of which trailed on
the ground; every now and then he called, with a plaintive voice, “Fido,
Fido, come back! Why hast thou deserted me?” Fido returned not; the dog,
wearied of confinement, had slipped from the string, and was at play
with his kind in a distant quarter of the town, leaving the blind man to
seek his way as he might to his solitary inn.

By and by a light step passed through the street, and the young
stranger’s face brightened.

“Pardon me,” said he, turning to the spot where his quick ear had
caught the sound, “and direct me, if you are not much pressed for a few
moments’ time, to the hotel ‘Mortier d’Or.’”

It was a young woman, whose dress betokened that she belonged to the
middling class of life, whom he thus addressed. “It is some distance
hence, sir,” said she; “but if you continue your way straight on for
about a hundred yards, and then take the second turn to your right
hand--”

“Alas!” interrupted the stranger, with a melancholy smile, “your
direction will avail me little; my dog has deserted me, and I am blind!”

There was something in these words, and in the stranger’s voice, which
went irresistibly to the heart of the young woman. “Pray forgive me,”
 she said, almost with tears in her eyes, “I did not perceive your--”
 misfortune, she was about to say, but she checked herself with an
instinctive delicacy. “Lean upon me, I will conduct you to the door;
nay, sir,” observing that he hesitated, “I have time enough to spare, I
assure you.”

The stranger placed his hand on the young woman’s arm; and though
Lucille was naturally so bashful that even her mother would laughingly
reproach her for the excess of a maiden virtue, she felt not the least
pang of shame, as she found herself thus suddenly walking through the
streets of Malines along with a young stranger, whose dress and air
betokened him of rank superior to her own.

“Your voice is very gentle,” said he, after a pause; “and that,” he
added, with a slight sigh, “is the only criterion by which I know the
young and the beautiful!” Lucille now blushed, and with a slight mixture
of pain in the blush, for she knew well that to beauty she had no
pretension. “Are you a native of this town?” continued he.

“Yes, sir; my father holds a small office in the customs, and my mother
and I eke out his salary by making lace. We are called poor, but we do
not feel it, sir.”

“You are fortunate! there is no wealth like the heart’s
wealth,--content,” answered the blind man, mournfully.

“And, monsieur,” said Lucille, feeling angry with herself that she had
awakened a natural envy in the stranger’s mind, and anxious to change
the subject--“and, monsieur, has he been long at Malines?”

“But yesterday. I am passing through the Low Countries on a tour;
perhaps you smile at the tour of a blind man, but it is wearisome
even to the blind to rest always in the same place. I thought during
church-time, when the streets were empty, that I might, by the help of
my dog, enjoy safely at least the air, if not the sight of the town;
but there are some persons, methinks, who cannot have even a dog for a
friend!”

The blind man spoke bitterly,--the desertion of his dog had touched
him to the core. Lucille wiped her eyes. “And does Monsieur travel then
alone?” said she; and looking at his face more attentively than she had
yet ventured to do, she saw that he was scarcely above two-and-twenty.
“His father, and his _mother_,” she added, with an emphasis on the last
word, “are they not with him?”

“I am an orphan!” answered the stranger; “and I have neither brother nor
sister.”

The desolate condition of the blind man quite melted Lucille; never had
she been so strongly affected. She felt a strange flutter at the heart,
a secret and earnest sympathy, that attracted her at once towards him.
She wished that Heaven had suffered her to be his sister!

The contrast between the youth and the form of the stranger, and the
affliction which took hope from the one and activity from the other,
increased the compassion he excited. His features were remarkably
regular, and had a certain nobleness in their outline; and his frame
was gracefully and firmly knit, though he moved cautiously and with no
cheerful step.

They had now passed into a narrow street leading towards the hotel,
when they heard behind them the clatter of hoofs; and Lucille, looking
hastily back, saw that a troop of the Belgian horse was passing through
the town.

She drew her charge close by the wall, and trembling with fear for
him, she stationed herself by his side. The troop passed at a full trot
through the street; and at the sound of their clanging arms, and the
ringing hoofs of their heavy chargers, Lucille might have seen, had
she looked at the blind man’s face, that its sad features kindled
with enthusiasm, and his head was raised proudly from its wonted and
melancholy bend. “Thank Heaven!” she said, as the troop had nearly
passed them, “the danger is over!” Not so. One of the last two soldiers
who rode abreast was unfortunately mounted on a young and unmanageable
horse. The rider’s oaths and digging spur only increased the fire and
impatience of the charger; it plunged from side to side of the narrow
street.

“Look to yourselves!” cried the horseman, as he was borne on to the
place where Lucille and the stranger stood against the wall. “Are ye
mad? Why do you not run?”

“For Heaven’s sake, for mercy’s sake, he is blind!” cried Lucille,
clinging to the stranger’s side.

“Save yourself, my kind guide!” said the stranger. But Lucille dreamed
not of such desertion. The trooper wrested the horse’s head from the
spot where they stood; with a snort, as it felt the spur, the enraged
animal lashed out with its hind-legs; and Lucille, unable to save
_both_, threw herself before the blind man, and received the shock
directed against him; her slight and delicate arm fell broken by her
side, the horseman was borne onward. “Thank God, _you_ are saved!” was
poor Lucille’s exclamation; and she fell, overcome with pain and terror,
into the arms which the stranger mechanically opened to receive her.

“My guide! my friend!” cried he, “you are hurt, you--”

“No, sir,” interrupted Lucille, faintly, “I am better, I am well. _This_
arm, if you please,--we are not far from your hotel now.”

But the stranger’s ear, tutored to every inflection of voice, told
him at once of the pain she suffered. He drew from her by degrees the
confession of the injury she had sustained; but the generous girl did
not tell him it had been incurred solely in his protection. He now
insisted on reversing their duties, and accompanying _her_ to her home;
and Lucille, almost fainting with pain, and hardly able to move, was
forced to consent. But a few steps down the next turning stood the
humble mansion of her father. They reached it; and Lucille scarcely
crossed the threshold, before she sank down, and for some minutes was
insensible to pain. It was left to the stranger to explain, and to
beseech them immediately to send for a surgeon, “the most skilful, the
most practised in the town,” said he. “See, I am rich, and this is the
least I can do to atone to your generous daughter, for not forsaking
even a stranger in peril.”

He held out his purse as he spoke, but the father refused the offer; and
it saved the blind man some shame, that he could not see the blush of
honest resentment with which so poor a species of renumeration was put
aside.

The young man stayed till the surgeon arrived, till the arm was set; nor
did he depart until he had obtained a promise from the mother that he
should learn the next morning how the sufferer had passed the night.

The next morning, indeed, he had intended to quit a town that offers but
little temptation to the traveller; but he tarried day after day, until
Lucille herself accompanied her mother, to assure him of her recovery.

You know, at least I do, dearest Gertrude, that there is such a thing as
love at the first meeting,--a secret, an unaccountable affinity between
persons (strangers before) which draws them irresistibly together,--as
if there were truth in Plato’s beautiful fantasy, that our souls were
a portion of the stars, and that spirits, thus attracted to each other,
have drawn their original light from the same orb, and yearn for a
renewal of their former union. Yet without recurring to such fanciful
solutions of a daily mystery, it was but natural that one in the forlorn
and desolate condition of Eugene St. Amand should have felt a certain
tenderness for a person who had so generously suffered for his sake.

The darkness to which he was condemned did not shut from his mind’s eye
the haunting images of Ideal beauty; rather, on the contrary, in his
perpetual and unoccupied solitude, he fed the reveries of an imagination
naturally warm, and a heart eager for sympathy and commune.

He had said rightly that his only test of beauty was in the melody of
voice; and never had a softer or more thrilling tone than that of the
young maiden touched upon his ear. Her exclamation, so beautifully
denying self, so devoted in its charity, “Thank God, _you_ are saved!”
 uttered too in the moment of her own suffering, rang constantly upon his
soul, and he yielded, without precisely defining their nature, to vague
and delicious sentiments, that his youth had never awakened to till
then. And Lucille--the very accident that had happened to her on his
behalf only deepened the interest she had already conceived for one who,
in the first flush of youth, was thus cut off from the glad objects of
life, and left to a night of years desolate and alone. There is, to your
beautiful and kindly sex, a natural inclination to _protect_. This makes
them the angels of sickness, the comforters of age, the fosterers
of childhood; and this feeling, in Lucille peculiarly developed, had
already inexpressibly linked her compassionate nature to the lot of the
unfortunate traveller. With ardent affections, and with thoughts beyond
her station and her years, she was not without that modest vanity
which made her painfully susceptible to her own deficiencies in beauty.
Instinctively conscious of how deeply she herself could love, she
believed it impossible that she could ever be so loved in return. The
stranger, so superior in her eyes to all she had yet seen, was the first
who had ever addressed her in that voice which by tones, not words,
speaks that admiration most dear to a woman’s heart. To _him_ she was
beautiful, and her lovely mind spoke out, undimmed by the imperfections
of her face. Not, indeed, that Lucille was wholly without personal
attraction; her light step and graceful form were elastic with the
freshness of youth, and her mouth and smile had so gentle and tender
an expression, that there were moments when it would not have been
the blind only who would have mistaken her to be beautiful. Her early
childhood had indeed given the promise of attractions, which the
smallpox, that then fearful malady, had inexorably marred. It had not
only seared the smooth skin and brilliant hues, but utterly changed even
the character of the features. It so happened that Lucille’s family were
celebrated for beauty, and vain of that celebrity; and so bitterly had
her parents deplored the effects of the cruel malady, that poor Lucille
had been early taught to consider them far more grievous than they
really were, and to exaggerate the advantages of that beauty, the loss
of which was considered by her parents so heavy a misfortune. Lucille,
too, had a cousin named Julie, who was the wonder of all Malines for
her personal perfections; and as the cousins were much together, the
contrast was too striking not to occasion frequent mortification to
Lucille. But every misfortune has something of a counterpoise; and the
consciousness of personal inferiority had meekened, without souring, her
temper, had given gentleness to a spirit that otherwise might have been
too high, and humility to a mind that was naturally strong, impassioned,
and energetic.

And yet Lucille had long conquered the one disadvantage she most dreaded
in the want of beauty. Lucille was never known but to be loved.
Wherever came her presence, her bright and soft mind diffused a certain
inexpressible charm; and where she was not, a something was absent from
the scene which not even Julie’s beauty could replace.

“I propose,” said St. Amand to Madame le Tisseur, Lucille’s mother,
as he sat in her little salon,--for he had already contracted that
acquaintance with the family which permitted him to be led to their
house, to return the visits Madame le Tisseur had made him, and his dog,
once more returned a penitent to his master, always conducted his
steps to the humble abode, and stopped instinctively at the door,--“I
propose,” said St. Amand, after a pause, and with some embarrassment,
“to stay a little while longer at Malines; the air agrees with me, and
I like the quiet of the place; but you are aware, madam, that at a hotel
among strangers, I feel my situation somewhat cheerless. I have been
thinking”--St. Amand paused again--“I have been thinking that if I could
persuade some agreeable family to receive me as a lodger, I would fix
myself here for some weeks. I am easily pleased.”

“Doubtless there are many in Malines who would be too happy to receive
such a lodger.”

“Will you receive me?” asked St. Amand, abruptly. “It was of _your_
family I thought.”

“Of us? Monsieur is too flattering. But we have scarcely a room good
enough for you.”

“What difference between one room and another can there be to me? That
is the best apartment to my choice in which the human voice sounds most
kindly.”

The arrangement was made, and St. Amand came now to reside beneath the
same roof as Lucille. And was she not happy that _he_ wanted so constant
an attendance; was she not happy that she was ever of use? St. Amand was
passionately fond of music; he played himself with a skill that was
only surpassed by the exquisite melody of his voice, and was not Lucille
happy when she sat mute and listening to such sounds as in Malines
were never heard before? Was she not happy in gazing on a face to whose
melancholy aspect her voice instantly summoned the smile? Was she not
happy when the music ceased, and St. Amand called “Lucille”? Did not her
own name uttered by that voice seem to her even sweeter than the music?
Was she not happy when they walked out in the still evenings of summer,
and her arm thrilled beneath the light touch of one to whom she was
so necessary? Was she not proud in her happiness, and was there not
something like worship in the gratitude she felt to him for raising her
humble spirit to the luxury of feeling herself beloved?

St. Amand’s parents were French. They had resided in the neighbourhood
of Amiens, where they had inherited a competent property, to which he
had succeeded about two years previous to the date of my story.

He had been blind from the age of three years. “I know not,” said he,
as he related these particulars to Lucille one evening when they were
alone,--“I know not what the earth may be like, or the heaven, or the
rivers whose voice at least I can hear, for I have no recollection
beyond that of a confused but delicious blending of a thousand glorious
colours, a bright and quick sense of joy, A VISIBLE MUSIC. But it is
only since my childhood closed that I have mourned, as I now unceasingly
mourn, for the light of day. My boyhood passed in a quiet cheerfulness;
the least trifle then could please and occupy the vacancies of my mind;
but it was as I took delight in being read to, as I listened to the
vivid descriptions of Poetry, as I glowed at the recital of great deeds,
as I was made acquainted by books with the energy, the action, the heat,
the fervour, the pomp, the enthusiasm of life, that I gradually opened
to the sense of all I was forever denied. I felt that I existed, not
lived; and that, in the midst of the Universal Liberty, I was sentenced
to a prison, from whose blank walls there was no escape. Still, however,
while my parents lived, I had something of consolation; at least I was
not alone. They died, and a sudden and dread solitude, a vast and empty
dreariness, settled upon my dungeon. One old servant only, who had
attended me from my childhood, who had known me in my short privilege of
light, by whose recollections my mind could grope back its way through
the dark and narrow passages of memory to faint glimpses of the sun,
was all that remained to me of human sympathies. It did not suffice,
however, to content me with a home where my father and my mother’s kind
voice were _not_. A restless impatience, an anxiety to move, possessed
me, and I set out from my home, journeying whither I cared not, so that
at least I could change an air that weighed upon me like a palpable
burden. I took only this old attendant as my companion; he too died
three months since at Bruxelles, worn out with years. Alas! I had
forgotten that he was old, for I saw not his progress to decay; and now,
save my faithless dog, I was utterly alone, till I came hither and found
_thee_.”

Lucille stooped down to caress the dog; she blessed the desertion that
had led him to a friend who never could desert.

But however much, and however gratefully, St. Amand loved Lucille,
her power availed not to chase the melancholy from his brow, and to
reconcile him to his forlorn condition.

“Ah, would that I could see thee! would that I could look upon a face
that my heart vainly endeavours to delineate!”

“If thou couldst,” sighed Lucille, “thou wouldst cease to love me.”

“Impossible!” cried St. Amand, passionately. “However the world may find
thee, _thou_ wouldst become my standard of beauty; and I should judge
not of thee by others, but of others by thee.”

He loved to hear Lucille read to him, and mostly he loved the
descriptions of war, of travel, of wild adventure, and yet they
occasioned him the most pain. Often she paused from the page as she
heard him sigh, and felt that she would even have renounced the bliss of
being loved by him, if she could have restored to him that blessing, the
desire for which haunted him as a spectre.

Lucille’s family were Catholic, and, like most in their station, they
possessed the superstitions, as well as the devotion of the faith.
Sometimes they amused themselves of an evening by the various legends
and imaginary miracles of their calendar; and once, as they were thus
conversing with two or three of their neighbours, “The Tomb of the Three
Kings of Cologne” became the main topic of their wondering recitals.
However strong was the sense of Lucille, she was, as you will readily
conceive, naturally influenced by the belief of those with whom she had
been brought up from her cradle, and she listened to tale after tale
of the miracles wrought at the consecrated tomb, as earnestly and
undoubtingly as the rest.

And the Kings of the East were no ordinary saints; to the relics of
the Three Magi, who followed the Star of Bethlehem, and were the first
potentates of the earth who adored its Saviour, well might the pious
Catholic suppose that a peculiar power and a healing sanctity would
belong. Each of the circle (St. Amand, who had been more than usually
silent, and even gloomy during the day, had retired to his own
apartment, for there were some moments when, in the sadness of his
thoughts, he sought that solitude which he so impatiently fled from at
others)--each of the circle had some story to relate equally veracious
and indisputable, of an infirmity cured, or a prayer accorded, or a sin
atoned for at the foot of the holy tomb. One story peculiarly affected
Lucille; the narrator, a venerable old man with gray locks, solemnly
declared himself a witness of its truth.

A woman at Anvers had given birth to a son, the offspring of an illicit
connection, who came into the world deaf and dumb. The unfortunate
mother believed the calamity a punishment for her own sin. “Ah, would,”
 said she, “that the affliction had fallen only upon me! Wretch that I
am, my innocent child is punished for my offence!” This, idea haunted
her night and day; she pined and could not be comforted. As the child
grew up, and wound himself more and more round her heart, his caresses
added new pangs to her remorse; and at length (continued the narrator)
hearing perpetually of the holy fame of the Tomb of Cologne, she
resolved upon a pilgrimage barefoot to the shrine. “God is merciful,”
 said she; “and He who called Magdalene his sister may take the mother’s
curse from the child.” She then went to Cologne; she poured her tears,
her penitence, and her prayers at the sacred tomb. When she returned to
her native town, what was her dismay as she approached her cottage to
behold it a heap of ruins! Its blackened rafters and yawning casements
betokened the ravages of fire. The poor woman sank upon the ground
utterly overpowered. Had her son perished? At that moment she heard
the cry of a child’s voice, and, lo! her child rushed to her arms, and
called her “mother!”

He had been saved from the fire, which had broken out seven days before;
but in the terror he had suffered, the string that tied his tongue had
been loosened; he had uttered articulate sounds of distress; the curse
was removed, and one word at least the kind neighbours had already
taught him to welcome his mother’s return. What cared she now that
her substance was gone, that her roof was ashes? She bowed in grateful
submission to so mild a stroke; her prayer had been heard, and the sin
of the mother was visited no longer on the child.

I have said, dear Gertrude, that this story made a deep impression upon
Lucille. A misfortune so nearly akin to that of St. Amand removed by the
prayer of another filled her with devoted thoughts and a beautiful hope.
“Is not the tomb still standing?” thought she. “Is not God still in
heaven?--He who heard the guilty, may He not hear the guiltless? Is He
not the God of love? Are not the affections the offerings that please
Him best? And what though the child’s mediator was his mother, can
even a mother love her child more tenderly than I love Eugene? But if,
Lucille, thy prayer be granted, if he recover his sight, _thy_ charm
is gone, he will love thee no longer. No matter! be it so,--I shall at
least have made him happy!”

Such were the thoughts that filled the mind of Lucille; she cherished
them till they settled into resolution, and she secretly vowed to
perform her pilgrimage of love. She told neither St. Amand nor her
parents of her intention; she knew the obstacles such an announcement
would create. Fortunately she had an aunt settled at Bruxelles, to whom
she had been accustomed once in every year to pay a month’s visit, and
at that time she generally took with her the work of a twelvemonths’
industry, which found a readier sale at Bruxelles than at Malines.
Lucille and St. Amand were already betrothed; their wedding was shortly
to take place; and the custom of the country leading parents, however
poor, to nourish the honourable ambition of giving some dowry with their
daughters, Lucille found it easy to hide the object of her departure,
under the pretence of taking the lace to Bruxelles, which had been the
year’s labour of her mother and herself,--it would sell for sufficient,
at least, to defray the preparations for the wedding.

“Thou art ever right, child,” said Madame le Tisseur; “the richer St.
Amand is, why, the less oughtest thou to go a beggar to his house.”

In fact, the honest ambition of the good people was excited; their pride
had been hurt by the envy of the town and the current congratulations on
so advantageous a marriage; and they employed themselves in counting
up the fortune they should be able to give to their only child, and
flattering their pardonable vanity with the notion that there would
be no such great disproportion in the connection after all. They were
right, but not in their own view of the estimate; the wealth that
Lucille brought was what fate could not lessen, reverse could not reach;
the ungracious seasons could not blight its sweet harvest; imprudence
could not dissipate, fraud could not steal, one grain from its abundant
coffers! Like the purse in the Fairy Tale, its use was hourly, its
treasure inexhaustible.

St. Amand alone was not to be won to her departure; he chafed at the
notion of a dowry; he was not appeased even by Lucille’s representation
that it was only to gratify and not to impoverish her parents. “And
_thou_, too, canst leave me!” he said, in that plaintive voice which had
made his first charm to Lucille’s heart. “It is a double blindness!”

“But for a few days; a fortnight at most, dearest Eugene.”

“A fortnight! you do not reckon time as the blind do,” said St. Amand,
bitterly.

“But listen, listen, dear Eugene,” said Lucille, weeping.

The sound of her sobs restored him to a sense of his ingratitude. Alas,
he knew not how much he had to be grateful for! He held out his arms
to her. “Forgive me,” said he. “Those who can see Nature know not how
terrible it is to be alone.”

“But my mother will not leave you.”

“She is not you!”

“And Julie,” said Lucille, hesitatingly.

“What is Julie to me?”

“Ah, you are the only one, save my parents, who could think of me in her
presence.”

“And why, Lucille?”

“Why! She is more beautiful than a dream.”

“Say not so. Would I could see, that I might prove to the world how much
more beautiful thou art! There is no music in her voice.”

The evening before Lucille departed she sat up late with St. Amand and
her mother. They conversed on the future; they made plans; in the wide
sterility of the world they laid out the garden of household love, and
filled it with flowers, forgetful of the wind that scatters and the
frost that kills. And when, leaning on Lucille’s arm, St. Amand sought
his chamber, and they parted at his door, which closed upon her, she
fell down on her knees at the threshold, and poured out the fulness of
her heart in a prayer for his safety and the fulfilment of her timid
hope.

At daybreak she was consigned to the conveyance that performed the short
journey from Malines to Bruxelles. When she entered the town, instead
of seeking her aunt, she rested at an _auberge_ in the suburbs, and
confiding her little basket of lace to the care of its hostess, she
set out alone, and on foot, upon the errand of her heart’s lovely
superstition. And erring though it was, her faith redeemed its weakness,
her affection made it even sacred; and well may we believe that the Eye
which reads all secrets scarce looked reprovingly on that fanaticism
whose only infirmity was love.

So fearful was she lest, by rendering the task too easy, she might
impair the effect, that she scarcely allowed herself rest or food.
Sometimes, in the heat of noon, she wandered a little from the roadside,
and under the spreading lime-tree surrendered her mind to its sweet and
bitter thoughts; but ever the restlessness of her enterprise urged
her on, and faint, weary, and with bleeding feet, she started up and
continued her way. At length she reached the ancient city, where a
holier age has scarce worn from the habits and aspects of men the Roman
trace. She prostrated herself at the tomb of the Magi; she proffered her
ardent but humble prayer to Him before whose Son those fleshless heads
(yet to faith at least preserved) had, eighteen centuries ago, bowed in
adoration. Twice every day, for a whole week, she sought the same spot,
and poured forth the same prayer. The last day an old priest, who,
hovering in the church, had observed her constantly at devotion, with
that fatherly interest which the better ministers of the Catholic sect
(that sect which has covered the earth with the mansions of charity)
feel for the unhappy, approached her as she was retiring with moist and
downcast eyes, and saluting her, assumed the privilege of his order to
inquire if there was aught in which his advice or aid could serve.
There was something in the venerable air of the old man which encouraged
Lucille; she opened her heart to him; she told him all. The good priest
was much moved by her simplicity and earnestness. He questioned her
minutely as to the peculiar species of blindness with which St. Amand
was afflicted; and after musing a little while, he said, “Daughter,
God is great and merciful; we must trust in His power, but we must
not forget that He mostly works by mortal agents. As you pass through
Louvain in your way home, fail not to see there a certain physician,
named Le Kain. He is celebrated through Flanders for the cures he has
wrought among the blind, and his advice is sought by all classes from
far and near. He lives hard by the Hotel de Ville, but any one will
inform you of his residence. Stay, my child, you shall take him a note
from me; he is a benevolent and kindly man, and you shall tell him
exactly the same story (and with the same voice) you have told to me.”

So saying the priest made Lucille accompany him to his home, and forcing
her to refresh herself less sparingly than she had yet done since she
had left Malines, he gave her his blessing, and a letter to Le Kain,
which he rightly judged would insure her a patient hearing from the
physician. Well known among all men of science was the name of the
priest, and a word of recommendation from him went further, where virtue
and wisdom were honoured, than the longest letter from the haughtiest
sieur in Flanders.

With a patient and hopeful spirit, the young pilgrim turned her back on
the Roman Cologne; and now about to rejoin St. Amand, she felt neither
the heat of the sun nor the weariness of the road. It was one day at
noon that she again passed through Louvain, and she soon found herself
by the noble edifice of the Hotel de Ville. Proud rose its spires
against the sky, and the sun shone bright on its rich tracery and
Gothic casements; the broad open street was crowded with persons of all
classes, and it was with some modest alarm that Lucille lowered her veil
and mingled with the throng. It was easy, as the priest had said, to
find the house of Le Kain; she bade the servant take the priest’s letter
to his master, and she was not long kept waiting before she was admitted
to the physician’s presence. He was a spare, tall man, with a bald
front, and a calm and friendly countenance. He was not less touched
than the priest had been by the manner in which she narrated her
story, described the affliction of her betrothed, and the hope that had
inspired the pilgrimage she had just made.

“Well,” said he, encouragingly, “we must see our patient. You can bring
him hither to me.”

“Ah, sir, I had hoped--” Lucille stopped suddenly.

“What, my young friend?”

“That I might have had the triumph of bringing you to Malines. I know,
sir, what you are about to say, and I know, sir, your time must be very
valuable; but I am not so poor as I seem, and Eugene, that is, M. St.
Amand, is very rich, and--and I have at Bruxelles what I am sure is
a large sum; it was to have provided for the wedding, but it is most
heartily at your service, sir.”

Le Kain smiled; he was one of those men who love to read the human
heart when its leaves are fair and undefiled; and, in the benevolence
of science, he would have gone a longer journey than from Louvain to
Malines to give sight to the blind, even had St. Amand been a beggar.

“Well, well,” said he, “but you forget that M. St. Amand is not the only
one in the world who wants me. I must look at my notebook, and see if I
can be spared for a day or two.”

So saying, he glanced at his memoranda. Everything smiled on Lucille; he
had no engagements that his partner could not fulfil, for some days; he
consented to accompany Lucille to Malines.

Meanwhile, cheerless and dull had passed the time to St. Amand. He was
perpetually asking Madame le Tisseur what hour it was,--it was almost
his only question. There seemed to him no sun in the heavens, no
freshness in the air, and he even forbore his favourite music; the
instrument had lost its sweetness since Lucille was not by to listen.

It was natural that the gossips of Malines should feel some envy at the
marriage Lucille was about to make with one whose competence report had
exaggerated into prodigal wealth, whose birth had been elevated from the
respectable to the noble, and whose handsome person was clothed, by the
interest excited by his misfortune, with the beauty of Antinous. Even
that misfortune, which ought to have levelled all distinctions, was not
sufficient to check the general envy; perhaps to some of the damsels
of Malines blindness in a husband would not have seemed an unwelcome
infirmity! But there was one in whom this envy rankled with a peculiar
sting: it was the beautiful, the all-conquering Julie! That the humble,
the neglected Lucille should be preferred to her; that Lucille, whose
existence was well-nigh forgot beside Julie’s, should become thus
suddenly of importance; that there should be one person in the world,
and that person young, rich, handsome, to whom she was less than
nothing, when weighed in the balance with Lucille, mortified to the
quick a vanity that had never till then received a wound. “It is well,”
 she would say with a bitter jest, “that Lucille’s lover is blind. To be
the one it is necessary to be the other!”

During Lucille’s absence she had been constantly in Madame le Tisseur’s
house; indeed, Lucille had prayed her to be so. She had sought, with an
industry that astonished herself, to supply Lucille’s place; and among
the strange contradictions of human nature, she had learned during her
efforts to please, to love the object of those efforts,--as much at
least as she was capable of loving.

She conceived a positive hatred to Lucille; she persisted in imagining
that nothing but the accident of first acquaintance had deprived her
of a conquest with which she persuaded herself her happiness had become
connected. Had St. Amand never loved Lucille and proposed to Julie, his
misfortune would have made her reject him, despite his wealth and his
youth; but to be Lucille’s lover, and a conquest to be won from Lucille,
raised him instantly to an importance not his own. Safe, however, in his
affliction, the arts and beauty of Julie fell harmless on the fidelity
of St. Amand. Nay, he liked her less than ever, for it seemed an
impertinence in any one to counterfeit the anxiety and watchfulness of
Lucille.

“It is time, surely it is time, Madame le Tisseur, that Lucille should
return? She might have sold all the lace in Malines by this time,” said
St. Amand, one day, peevishly.

“Patience, my dear friend, patience; perhaps she may return to-morrow.”

“To-morrow! let me see, it is only six o’clock,--only six, you are
sure?”

“Just five, dear Eugene. Shall I read to you? This is a new book from
Paris; it has made a great noise,” said Julie.

“You are very kind, but I will not trouble you.”

“It is anything but trouble.”

“In a word, then, I would rather not.”

“Oh, that he could see!” thought Julie; “would I not punish him for
this!”

“I hear carriage wheels; who can be passing this way? Surely it is the
_voiturier_ from Bruxelles,” said St. Amand, starting up; “it is his
day,--his hour, too. No, no, it is a lighter vehicle,” and he sank down
listlessly on his seat.

Nearer and nearer rolled the wheels; they turned the corner; they
stopped at the lowly door; and, overcome, overjoyed, Lucille was clasped
to the bosom of St. Amand.

“Stay,” said she, blushing, as she recovered her self-possession, and
turned to Le Kain; “pray pardon me, sir. Dear Eugene, I have brought
with me one who, by God’s blessing, may yet restore you to sight.”

“We must not be sanguine, my child,” said Le Kain; “anything is better
than disappointment.”



To close this part of my story, dear Gertrude, Le Kain examined St.
Amand, and the result of the examination was a confident belief in the
probability of a cure. St. Amand gladly consented to the experiment of
an operation; it succeeded, the blind man saw! Oh, what were Lucille’s
feelings, what her emotion, what her joy, when she found the object of
her pilgrimage, of her prayers, fulfilled! That joy was so intense that
in the eternal alternations of human life she might have foretold from
its excess how bitter the sorrows fated to ensue.

As soon as by degrees the patient’s new sense became reconciled to the
light, his first, his only demand was for Lucille. “No, let me not see
her alone; let me see her in the midst of you all, that I may convince
you that the heart never is mistaken in its instincts.” With a fearful,
a sinking presentiment, Lucille yielded to the request, to which the
impetuous St. Amand would hear indeed no denial. The father, the
mother, Julie, Lucille, Julie’s younger sisters, assembled in the
little parlour; the door opened, and St. Amand stood hesitating on the
threshold. One look around sufficed to him; his face brightened, he
uttered a cry of joy. “Lucille! Lucille!” he exclaimed, “it is you, I
know it, _you_ only!” He sprang forward _and fell at the feet of Julie_!

Flushed, elated, triumphant, Julie bent upon him her sparkling eyes;
_she_ did not undeceive him.

“You are wrong, you mistake,” said Madame le Tisseur, in confusion;
“that is her cousin Julie,--this is your Lucille.”

St. Amand rose, turned, saw Lucille, and at that moment she wished
herself in her grave. Surprise, mortification, disappointment, almost
dismay, were depicted in his gaze. He had been haunting his prison-house
with dreams, and now, set free, he felt how unlike they were to the
truth. Too new to observation to read the woe, the despair, the lapse
and shrinking of the whole frame, that his look occasioned Lucille, he
yet felt, when the first shock of his surprise was over, that it was not
thus he should thank her who had restored him to sight. He hastened to
redeem his error--ah! how could it be redeemed?

From that hour all Lucille’s happiness was at an end; her fairy palace
was shattered in the dust; the magician’s wand was broken up; the
Ariel was given to the winds; and the bright enchantment no longer
distinguished the land she lived in from the rest of the barren
world. It is true that St. Amand’s words were kind; it is true that he
remembered with the deepest gratitude all she had done in his behalf;
it is true that he forced himself again and again to say, “She is my
betrothed, my benefactress!” and he cursed himself to think that the
feelings he had entertained for her were fled. Where was the passion of
his words; where the ardour of his tone; where that play and light of
countenance which her step, her voice, could formerly call forth? When
they were alone he was embarrassed and constrained, and almost cold;
his hand no longer sought hers, his soul no longer missed her if she was
absent a moment from his side. When in their household circle he seemed
visibly more at ease; but did his eyes fasten upon her who had opened
them to the day; did they not wander at every interval with a too
eloquent admiration to the blushing and radiant face of the exulting
Julie? This was not, you will believe, suddenly perceptible in one
day or one week, but every day it was perceptible more and more. Yet
still--bewitched, ensnared, as St. Amand was he never perhaps would have
been guilty of an infidelity that he strove with the keenest remorse to
wrestle against, had it not been for the fatal contrast, at the first
moment of his gushing enthusiasm, which Julie had presented to Lucille;
but for that he would have formed no previous idea of real and living
beauty to aid the disappointment of his imaginings and his dreams.
He would have seen Lucille young and graceful, and with eyes beaming
affection, contrasted only by the wrinkled countenance and bended frame
of her parents, and she would have completed her conquest over him
before he had discovered that she was less beautiful than others; nay,
more,--that infidelity never could have lasted above the first few days,
if the vain and heartless object of it had not exerted every art, all
the power and witchery of her beauty, to cement and continue it. The
unfortunate Lucille--so susceptible to the slightest change in those
she loved, so diffident of herself, so proud too in that diffidence--no
longer necessary, no longer missed, no longer loved, could not bear to
endure the galling comparison between the past and the present. She
fled uncomplainingly to her chamber to indulge her tears, and thus,
unhappily, absent as her father generally was during the day, and busied
as her mother was either at work or in household matters, she left Julie
a thousand opportunities to complete the power she had begun to wield
over--no, not the heart!--the _senses_ of St. Amand! Yet, still not
suspecting, in the open generosity of her mind, the whole extent of her
affliction, poor Lucille buoyed herself at times with the hope that when
once married, when, once in that intimacy of friendship, the unspeakable
love she felt for him could disclose itself with less restraint than at
present,--she would perhaps regain a heart which had been so devotedly
hers, that she could not think that without a fault it was irrevocably
gone: on that hope she anchored all the little happiness that remained
to her. And still St. Amand pressed their marriage, but in what
different tones! In fact, he wished to preclude from himself the
possibility of a deeper ingratitude than that which he had incurred
already. He vainly thought that the broken reed of love might be bound
up and strengthened by the ties of duty; and at least he was anxious
that his hand, his fortune, his esteem, his gratitude, should give
to Lucille the only recompense it was now in his power to bestow.
Meanwhile, left alone so often with Julie, and Julie bent on achieving
the last triumph over his heart, St. Amand was gradually preparing a
far different reward, a far different return, for her to whom he owed so
incalculable a debt.

There was a garden, behind the house, in which there was a small
arbour, where often in the summer evenings Eugene and Lucille had
sat together,--hours never to return! One day she heard from her own
chamber, where she sat mourning, the sound of St. Amand’s flute swelling
gently from that beloved and consecrated bower. She wept as she heard
it, and the memories that the music bore softening and endearing his
image, she began to reproach herself that she had yielded so often to
the impulse of her wounded feelings; that chilled by _his_ coldness, she
had left him so often to himself, and had not sufficiently dared to
tell him of that affection which, in her modest self-depreciation,
constituted her only pretension to his love. “Perhaps he is alone now,”
 she thought; “the air too is one which he knows that I love;” and with
her heart in her step, she stole from the house and sought the arbour.
She had scarce turned from her chamber when the flute ceased; as she
neared the arbour she heard voices,--Julie’s voice in grief, St. Amand’s
in consolation. A dread foreboding seized her; her feet clung rooted to
the earth.

“Yes, marry her, forget me,” said Julie; “in a few days you will
be another’s, and I--I--forgive me, Eugene, forgive me that I have
disturbed your happiness. I am punished sufficiently; my heart will
break, but it will break in loving you.” Sobs choked Julie’s voice.

“Oh, speak not thus,” said St. Amand. “I, _I_ only am to blame,--I,
false to both, to both ungrateful. Oh, from the hour that these eyes
opened upon you I drank in a new life; the sun itself to me was less
wonderful than your beauty. But--but--let me forget that hour. What do I
not owe to Lucille? I shall be wretched,--I shall deserve to be so;
for shall I not think, Julie, that I have embittered your life with our
ill-fated love? But all that I can give--my hand, my home, my plighted
faith--must be hers. Nay, Julie, nay--why that look? Could I act
otherwise? Can I dream otherwise? Whatever the sacrifice, _must_ I not
render it? Ah, what do I owe to Lucille, were it only for the thought
that but for her I might never have seen thee!”

Lucille stayed to hear no more; with the same soft step as that which
had borne her within hearing of these fatal words, she turned back once
more to her desolate chamber.

That evening, as St. Amand was sitting alone in his apartment, he heard
a gentle knock at the door. “Come in,” he said, and Lucille entered. He
started in some confusion, and would have taken her hand, but she gently
repulsed him. She took a seat opposite to him, and looking down, thus
addressed him:--

“My dear Eugene, that is, Monsieur St. Amand, I have something on my
mind that I think it better to speak at once; and if I do not exactly
express what I would wish to say, you must not be offended with Lucille:
it is not an easy matter to put into words what one feels deeply.”
 Colouring, and suspecting something of the truth, St. Amand would have
broken in upon her here; but she with a gentle impatience motioned him
to be silent, and continued:--

“You know that when you once loved me, I used to tell you that you would
cease to do so could you see how undeserving I was of your attachment. I
did not deceive myself, Eugene; I always felt assured that such would be
the case, that your love for me necessarily rested on your affliction.
But for all that I never at least had a dream or a desire but for your
happiness; and God knows, that if again, by walking barefooted, not to
Cologne, but to Rome--to the end of the world--I could save you from a
much less misfortune than that of blindness, I would cheerfully do it;
yes, even though I might foretell all the while that, on my return, you
would speak to me coldly, think of me lightly, and that the penalty to
me would--would be--what it has been!” Here Lucille wiped a few natural
tears from her eyes. St. Amand, struck to the heart, covered his
face with his hands, without the courage to interrupt her. Lucille
continued:--

“That which I foresaw has come to pass; I am no longer to you what I
once was, when you could clothe this poor form and this homely face with
a beauty they did not possess. You would wed me still, it is true; but I
am proud, Eugene, and cannot stoop to gratitude where I once had love.
I am not so unjust as to blame you; the change was natural, was
inevitable. I should have steeled myself more against it; but I am now
resigned. We must part; you love Julie--that too is natural--and _she_
loves you; ah! what also more in the probable course of events? Julie
loves you, not yet, perhaps, so much as I did; but then she has not
known you as I have, and she whose whole life has been triumph cannot
feel the gratitude that I felt at fancying myself loved; but this will
come--God grant it! Farewell, then, forever, dear Eugene; I leave you
when you no longer want me; you are now independent of Lucille; wherever
you go, a thousand hereafter can supply my place. Farewell!”

She rose, as she said this, to leave the room; but St. Amand seizing her
hand, which she in vain endeavoured to withdraw from his clasp, poured
forth incoherently, passionately, his reproaches on himself, his
eloquent persuasion against her resolution.

“I confess,” said he, “that I have been allured for a moment; I confess
that Julie’s beauty made me less sensible to your stronger, your holier,
oh! far, far holier title to my love! But forgive me, dearest Lucille;
already I return to you, to all I once felt for you; make me not curse
the blessing of sight that I owe to you. You must not leave me; never
can we two part. Try me, only try me, and if ever hereafter my heart
wander from you, _then_, Lucille, leave me to my remorse!”

Even at that moment Lucille did not yield; she felt that his prayer was
but the enthusiasm of the hour; she felt that there was a virtue in her
pride,--that to leave him was a duty to herself. In vain he pleaded; in
vain were his embraces, his prayers; in vain he reminded her of their
plighted troth, of her aged parents, whose happiness had become wrapped
in her union with him: “How,--even were it as you wrongly believe,--how,
in honour to them, can I desert you, can I wed another?”

“Trust that, trust all, to me,” answered Lucille; “your honour shall
be my care, none shall blame _you_; only do not let your marriage with
Julie be celebrated here before their eyes: that is all I ask, all they
can expect. God bless you! do not fancy I shall be unhappy, for whatever
happiness the world gives you, shall I not have contributed to bestow
it? and with that thought I am above compassion.”

She glided from his arms, and left him to a solitude more bitter even
than that of blindness. That very night Lucille sought her mother; to
her she confided all. I pass over the reasons she urged, the arguments
she overcame; she conquered rather than convinced, and leaving to Madame
le Tisseur the painful task of breaking to her father her unalterable
resolution, she quitted Malines the next morning, and with a heart too
honest to be utterly without comfort, paid that visit to her aunt which
had been so long deferred.

The pride of Lucille’s parents prevented them from reproaching St.
Amand. He could not bear, however, their cold and altered looks; he left
their house; and though for several days he would not even see Julie,
yet her beauty and her art gradually resumed their empire over him. They
were married at Courtroi, and to the joy of the vain Julie departed to
the gay metropolis of France. But, before their departure, before his
marriage, St. Amand endeavoured to appease his conscience by obtaining
for M. le Tisseur a much more lucrative and honourable office than that
he now held. Rightly judging that Malines could no longer be a pleasant
residence for them, and much less for Lucille, the duties of the post
were to be fulfilled in another town; and knowing that M. le Tisseur’s
delicacy would revolt at receiving such a favour from his hands, he kept
the nature of his negotiation a close secret, and suffered the honest
citizen to believe that his own merits alone had entitled him to so
unexpected a promotion.



Time went on. This quiet and simple history of humble affections took
its date in a stormy epoch of the world,--the dawning Revolution of
France. The family of Lucille had been little more than a year settled
in their new residence when Dumouriez led his army into the Netherlands.
But how meanwhile had that year passed for Lucille? I have said that her
spirit was naturally high; that though so tender, she was not weak. Her
very pilgrimage to Cologne alone, and at the timid age of seventeen,
proved that there was a strength in her nature no less than a devotion
in her love. The sacrifice she had made brought its own reward.
She believed St. Amand was happy, and she would not give way to the
selfishness of grief; she had still duties to perform; she could still
comfort her parents and cheer their age; she could still be all the
world to them: she felt this, and was consoled. Only once during the
year had she heard of Julie; she had been seen by a mutual friend at
Paris, gay, brilliant, courted, and admired; of St. Amand she heard
nothing.

My tale, dear Gertrude, does not lead me through the harsh scenes of
war. I do not tell you of the slaughter and the siege, and the blood
that inundated those fair lands,--the great battlefield of Europe. The
people of the Netherlands in general were with the cause of Dumouriez,
but the town in which Le Tisseur dwelt offered some faint resistance to
his arms. Le Tisseur himself, despite his age, girded on his sword; the
town was carried, and the fierce and licentious troops of the conqueror
poured, flushed with their easy victory, through its streets. Le
Tisseur’s house was filled with drunken and rude troopers; Lucille
herself trembled in the fierce gripe of one of those dissolute soldiers,
more bandit than soldier, whom the subtle Dumouriez had united to his
army, and by whose blood he so often saved that of his nobler band. Her
shrieks, her cries, were vain, when suddenly the troopers gave way. “The
Captain! brave Captain!” was shouted forth; the insolent soldier, felled
by a powerful arm, sank senseless at the feet of Lucille, and a glorious
form, towering above its fellows,--even through its glittering garb,
even in that dreadful hour, remembered at a glance by Lucille,--stood
at her side; her protector, her guardian! Thus once more she beheld St.
Amand!

The house was cleared in an instant, the door barred. Shouts, groans,
wild snatches of exulting song, the clang of arms, the tramp of horses,
the hurrying footsteps, the deep music sounded loud, and blended
terribly without. Lucille heard them not,--she was on that breast which
never should have deserted her.

Effectually to protect his friends, St. Amand took up his quarters at
their house; and for two days he was once more under the same roof as
Lucille. He never recurred voluntarily to Julie; he answered Lucille’s
timid inquiry after her health briefly, and with coldness, but he spoke
with all the enthusiasm of a long-pent and ardent spirit of the new
profession he had embraced. Glory seemed now to be his only mistress;
and the vivid delusion of the first bright dreams of the Revolution
filled his mind, broke from his tongue, and lighted up those dark eyes
which Lucille had redeemed to day.

She saw him depart at the head of his troops; she saw his proud crest
glancing in the sun; she saw his steed winding through the narrow
street; she saw that his last glance reverted to her, where she stood at
the door; and, as he waved his adieu, she fancied that there was on his
face that look of deep and grateful tenderness which reminded her of the
one bright epoch of her life.

She was right; St. Amand had long since in bitterness repented of a
transient infatuation, had long since distinguished the true Florimel
from the false, and felt that, in Julie, Lucille’s wrongs were avenged.
But in the hurry and heat of war he plunged that regret--the keenest of
all--which embodies the bitter words, “TOO LATE!”

Years passed away, and in the resumed tranquillity of Lucille’s life the
brilliant apparition of St. Amand appeared as something dreamed of, not
seen. The star of Napoleon had risen above the horizon; the romance of
his early career had commenced; and the campaign of Egypt had been the
herald of those brilliant and meteoric successes which flashed forth
from the gloom of the Revolution of France.

You are aware, dear Gertrude, how many in the French as well as the
English troops returned home from Egypt blinded with the ophthalmia of
that arid soil. Some of the young men in Lucille’s town, who had joined
Napoleon’s army, came back darkened by that fearful affliction, and
Lucille’s alms and Lucille’s aid and Lucille’s sweet voice were ever
at hand for those poor sufferers, whose common misfortune touched so
thrilling a chord of her heart.

Her father was now dead, and she had only her mother to cheer amidst the
ills of age. As one evening they sat at work together, Madame le Tisseur
said, after a pause,--

“I wish, dear Lucille, thou couldst be persuaded to marry Justin; he
loves thee well, and now that thou art yet young, and hast many years
before thee, thou shouldst remember that when I die thou wilt be alone.”

“Ah, cease, dearest mother, I never can marry now; and as for love--once
taught in the bitter school in which I have learned the knowledge of
myself--I cannot be deceived again.”

“My Lucille, you do not know yourself. Never was woman loved if Justin
does not love you; and never did lover feel with more real warmth how
worthily he loved.”

And this was true; and not of Justin alone, for Lucille’s modest
virtues, her kindly temper, and a certain undulating and feminine grace,
which accompanied all her movements, had secured her as many conquests
as if she had been beautiful. She had rejected all offers of marriage
with a shudder; without even the throb of a flattered vanity. One
memory, sadder, was also dearer to her than all things; and something
sacred in its recollections made her deem it even a crime to think of
effacing the past by a new affection.

“I believe,” continued Madame le Tisseur, angrily, “that thou still
thinkest fondly of him from whom only in the world thou couldst have
experienced ingratitude.”

“Nay, Mother,” said Lucille, with a blush and a slight sigh, “Eugene is
married to another.”

While thus conversing, they heard a gentle and timid knock at the door;
the latch was lifted. “This,” said the rough voice of a _commissionaire_
of the town, “this, monsieur, is the house of Madame le Tisseur, and
_voila mademoiselle_!” A tall figure, with a shade over his eyes, and
wrapped in a long military cloak, stood in the room. A thrill shot
across Lucille’s heart. He stretched out his arms. “Lucille,” said that
melancholy voice, which had made the music of her first youth, “where
art thou, Lucille? Alas! she does not recognize St. Amand.”

Thus was it indeed. By a singular fatality, the burning suns and the
sharp dust of the plains of Egypt had smitten the young soldier, in
the flush of his career, with a second--and this time with an
irremediable--blindness! He had returned to France to find his hearth
lonely. Julie was no more,--a sudden fever had cut her off in the midst
of youth; and he had sought his way to Lucille’s house, to see if one
hope yet remained to him in the world!

And when, days afterwards, humbly and sadly he re-urged a former suit,
did Lucille shut her heart to its prayer? Did her pride remember its
wound; did she revert to his desertion; did she reply to the whisper of
her yearning love, “_Thou hast been before forsaken_”? That voice and
those darkened eyes pleaded to her with a pathos not to be resisted. “I
am once more necessary to him,” was all her thought; “if I reject him
who will tend him?” In that thought was the motive of her conduct; in
that thought gushed back upon her soul all the springs of checked but
unconquered, unconquerable love! In that thought, she stood beside him
at the altar, and pledged, with a yet holier devotion than she might
have felt of yore, the vow of her imperishable truth.

And Lucille found, in the future, a reward, which the common world could
never comprehend. With his blindness returned all the feelings she had
first awakened in St. Amand’s solitary heart; again he yearned for her
step, again he missed even a moment’s absence from his side, again her
voice chased the shadow from his brow, and in her presence was a sense
of shelter and of sunshine. He no longer sighed for the blessing he had
lost; he reconciled himself to fate, and entered into that serenity of
mood which mostly characterizes the blind.

Perhaps after we have seen the actual world, and experienced its hollow
pleasures, we can resign ourselves the better to its exclusion; and
as the cloister, which repels the ardour of our hope, is sweet to
our remembrance, so the darkness loses its terror when experience has
wearied us with the glare and travail of the day. It was something, too,
as they advanced in life, to feel the chains that bound him to Lucille
strengthening daily, and to cherish in his overflowing heart the
sweetness of increasing gratitude; it was something that he could not
see years wrinkle that open brow, or dim the tenderness of that touching
smile; it was something that to him she was beyond the reach of time,
and preserved to the verge of a grave (which received them both within
a few days of each other) in all the bloom of her unwithering affection,
in all the freshness of a heart that never could grow old!



Gertrude, who had broken in upon Trevylyan’s story by a thousand anxious
interruptions, and a thousand pretty apologies for interrupting, was
charmed with a tale in which true love was made happy at last, although
she did not forgive St. Amand his ingratitude, and although she
declared, with a critical shake of the head, that “it was very unnatural
that the mere beauty of Julie, or the mere want of it in Lucille, should
have produced such an effect upon him, if he had ever _really_ loved
Lucille in his blindness.”

As they passed through Malines, the town assumed an interest in
Gertrude’s eyes to which it scarcely of itself was entitled. She looked
wistfully at the broad market-place, at a corner of which was one of
those out-of-door groups of quiet and noiseless revellers, which Dutch
art has raised from the Familiar to the Picturesque; and then glancing
to the tower of St. Rembauld, she fancied, amidst the silence of noon,
that she yet heard the plaintive cry of the blind orphan, “Fido, Fido,
why hast thou deserted me?”



CHAPTER V. ROTTERDAM.--THE CHARACTER OF THE DUTCH.--THEIR RESEMBLANCE TO
THE GERMANS.--A DISPUTE BETWEEN VANE AND TREVYLYAN, AFTER THE MANNER OF
THE ANCIENT NOVELISTS, AS TO WHICH IS PREFERABLE, THE LIFE OF ACTION OR
THE LIFE OF REPOSE.--TREVYLYAN’S CONTRAST BETWEEN LITERARY AMBITION AND
THE AMBITION OF PUBLIC LIFE.

OUR travellers arrived at Rotterdam on a bright and sunny day. There is
a cheerfulness about the operations of Commerce,--a life, a bustle,
an action which always exhilarate the spirits at the first glance.
Afterwards they fatigue us; we get too soon behind the scenes, and find
the base and troublous passions which move the puppets and conduct the
drama.

But Gertrude, in whom ill health had not destroyed the vividness of
impression that belongs to the inexperienced, was delighted at the
cheeriness of all around her. As she leaned lightly on Trevylyan’s arm,
he listened with a forgetful joy to her questions and exclamations
at the stir and liveliness of a city from which was to commence their
pilgrimage along the Rhine. And indeed the scene was rife with the
spirit of that people at once so active and so patient, so daring on
the sea, so cautious on the land. Industry was visible everywhere; the
vessels in the harbour, the crowded boat putting off to land, the
throng on the quay,--all looked bustling and spoke of commerce. The city
itself, on which the skies shone fairly through light and fleecy clouds,
wore a cheerful aspect. The church of St. Lawrence rising above the
clean, neat houses, and on one side trees thickly grouped, gayly
contrasted at once the waters and the city.

“I like this place,” said Gertrude’s father, quietly; “it has an air of
comfort.”

“And an absence of grandeur,” said Trevylyan.

“A commercial people are one great middle-class in their habits and
train of mind,” replied Vane; “and grandeur belongs to the extremes,--an
impoverished population and a wealthy despot.”

They went to see the statue of Erasmus, and the house in which he was
born. Vane had a certain admiration for Erasmus which his companions did
not share; he liked the quiet irony of the sage, and his knowledge of
the world; and, besides, Vane was at that time of life when philosophers
become objects of interest. At first they are teachers; secondly,
friends; and it is only a few who arrive at the third stage, and find
them deceivers. The Dutch are a singular people. Their literature
is neglected, but it has some of the German vein in its strata,--the
patience, the learning, the homely delineation, and even some traces of
the mixture of the humorous and the terrible which form that genius for
the grotesque so especially German--you find this in their legends and
ghost-stories. But in Holland activity destroys, in Germany indolence
nourishes, romance.

They stayed a day or two at Rotterdam, and then proceeded up the Rhine
to Gorcum. The banks were flat and tame, and nothing could be less
impressive of its native majesty than this part of the course of the
great river.

“I never felt before,” whispered Gertrude, tenderly, “how much there
was of consolation in your presence; for here I am at last on the
Rhine,--the blue Rhine, and how disappointed I should be if you were not
by my side!”

“But, my Gertrude, you must wait till we have passed Cologne, before the
_glories_ of the Rhine burst upon you.”

“It reverses life, my child,” said the moralizing Vane; “and the
stream flows through dulness at first, reserving its poetry for our
perseverance.”

“I will not allow your doctrine,” said Trevylyan, as the ambitious
ardour of his native disposition stirred within him. “Life has
always action; it is our own fault if it ever be dull: youth has its
enterprise, manhood its schemes; and even if infirmity creep upon age,
the mind, the mind still triumphs over the mortal clay, and in the quiet
hermitage, among books, and from thoughts, keeps the great wheel within
everlastingly in motion. No, the better class of spirits have always an
antidote to the insipidity of a common career, they have ever energy at
will--”

“And never happiness!” answered Vane, after a pause, as he gazed on the
proud countenance of Trevylyan, with that kind of calm, half-pitying
interest which belonged to a character deeply imbued with the philosophy
of a sad experience acting upon an unimpassioned heart. “And in truth,
Trevylyan, it would please me if I could but teach you the folly of
preferring the exercise of that energy of which you speak to the golden
luxuries of REST. What ambition can ever bring an adequate reward? Not,
surely, the ambition of letters, the desire of intellectual renown!”

“True,” said Trevylyan, quietly; “that dream I have long renounced;
there is nothing palpable in literary fame,--it scarcely perhaps soothes
the vain, it assuredly chafes the proud. In my earlier years I attempted
some works which gained what the world, perhaps rightly, deemed a
sufficient need of reputation; yet it was not sufficient to recompense
myself for the fresh hours I had consumed, for the sacrifices of
pleasure I had made. The subtle aims that had inspired me were not
perceived; the thoughts that had seemed new and beautiful to me fell
flat and lustreless on the soul of others. If I was approved, it
was often for what I condemned myself; and I found that the trite
commonplace and the false wit charmed, while the truth fatigued, and
the enthusiasm revolted. For men of that genius to which I make no
pretension, who have dwelt apart in the obscurity of their own thoughts,
gazing upon stars that shine not for the dull sleepers of the world, it
must be a keen sting to find the product of their labour confounded
with a class, and to be mingled up in men’s judgment with the faults
or merits of a tribe. Every great genius must deem himself original
and alone in his conceptions. It is not enough for him that these
conceptions should be approved as good, unless they are admitted as
inventive, if they mix him with the herd he has shunned, not separate
him in fame as he has been separated in soul. Some Frenchman, the oracle
of his circle, said of the poet of the ‘Phedre,’ ‘Racine and the other
imitators of Corneille;’ and Racine, in his wrath, nearly forswore
tragedy forever. It is in vain to tell the author that the public is the
judge of his works. The author believes himself above the public, or he
would never have written; and,” continued Trevylyan, with enthusiasm,
“he _is_ above them; their fiat may crush his glory, but never his
self-esteem. He stands alone and haughty amidst the wrecks of the temple
he imagined he had raised ‘To THE FUTURE,’ and retaliates neglect with
scorn. But is this, the life of scorn, a pleasurable state of existence?
Is it one to be cherished? Does even the moment of fame counterbalance
the years of mortification? And what is there in literary fame itself
present and palpable to its heir? His work is a pebble thrown into
the deep; the stir lasts for a moment, and the wave closes up, to be
susceptible no more to the same impression. The circle may widen to
other lands and other ages, but around _him_ it is weak and faint. The
trifles of the day, the low politics, the base intrigues, occupy the
tongue, and fill the thought of his contemporaries. He is less known
than a mountebank, or a new dancer; his glory comes not home to him; it
brings no present, no perpetual reward, like the applauses that wait the
actor, or the actor-like murmur of the senate; and this, which vexes,
also lowers him; his noble nature begins to nourish the base vices of
jealousy, and the unwillingness to admire. Goldsmith is forgotten in the
presence of a puppet; he feels it, and is mean; he expresses it, and
is ludicrous. It is well to say that great minds will not stoop to
jealousy; in the greatest minds, it is most frequent.* Few authors are
ever so aware of the admiration they excite as to afford to be generous;
and this melancholy truth revolts us with our own ambition. Shall we be
demigods in our closets at the price of sinking below mortality in the
world? No! it was from this deep sentiment of the unrealness of literary
fame, of dissatisfaction at the fruits it produced, of fear for the
meanness it engendered, that I resigned betimes all love for its career;
and if, by the restless desire that haunts men who think much to write
ever, I should be urged hereafter to literature, I will sternly teach
myself to persevere in the indifference to its fame.”

  * See the long list of names furnished by Disraeli, in that most
    exquisite work, “The Literary Character,” vol. ii. p. 75.  Plato,
    Xenophon, Chaucer, Corneille, Voltaire, Dryden, the Caracci,
    Domenico Venetiano, murdered by his envious friend, and the gentle
    Castillo fainting away at the genius of Murillo.

“You say as I would say,” answered Vane, with his tranquil smile; “and
your experience corroborates my theory. Ambition, then, is not the root
of happiness. Why more in action than in letters?”

“Because,” said Trevylyan, “in action we commonly gain in our life all
the honour we deserve: the public judge of men better and more rapidly
than of books. And he who takes to himself in action a high and pure
ambition, associates it with so many objects, that, unlike literature,
the failure of one is balanced by the success of the other. He, the
creator of deeds, not resembling the creator of books, stands not alone;
he is eminently social; he has many comrades, and without their aid
he could not accomplish his designs. This divides and mitigates the
impatient jealousy against others. He works for a cause, and knows early
that he cannot monopolize its whole glory; he shares what he is aware
it is impossible to engross. Besides, action leaves him no time for
brooding over disappointment. The author has consumed his youth in a
work,--it fails in glory. Can he write another work? Bid him call back
another youth! But in action, the labour of the mind is from day to day.
A week replaces what a week has lost, and all the aspirant’s fame is of
the present. It is lipped by the Babel of the living world; he is
ever on the stage, and the spectators are ever ready to applaud. Thus
perpetually in the service of others self ceases to be his world; he has
no leisure to brood over real or imaginary wrongs; the excitement whirls
on the machine till it is worn out--”

“And kicked aside,” said Vane, “with the broken lumber of men’s other
tools, in the chamber of their son’s forgetfulness. Your man of action
lasts but for an hour; the man of letters lasts for ages.”

“We live not for ages,” answered Trevylyan; “our life is on earth, and
not in the grave.”

“But even grant,” continued Vane--“and I for one will concede the
point--that posthumous fame is not worth the living agonies that obtain
it, how are you better off in your poor and vulgar career of action?
Would you assist the rulers?--servility! The people?--folly! If you take
the great philosophical view which the worshippers of the past rarely
take, but which, unknown to them, is their sole excuse,--namely, that
the changes which _may_ benefit the future unsettle the present; and
that it is not the wisdom of practical legislation to risk the peace
of our contemporaries in the hope of obtaining happiness for their
posterity,--to what suspicions, to what charges are you exposed! You are
deemed the foe of all liberal opinion, and you read your curses in the
eyes of a nation. But take the side of the people. What caprice, what
ingratitude! You have professed so much in theory, that you can never
accomplish sufficient in practice. Moderation becomes a crime; to be
prudent is to be perfidious. New demagogues, without temperance, because
without principle, outstrip you in the moment of your greatest services.
The public is the grave of a great man’s deeds; it is never sated; its
maw is eternally open; it perpetually craves for more. Where, in the
history of the world, do you find the gratitude of a people? You find
fervour, it is true, but not gratitude,--the fervour that exaggerates a
benefit at one moment, but not the gratitude that remembers it the next
year. Once disappoint them, and all your actions, all your sacrifices,
are swept from their remembrance forever; they break the windows of the
very house they have given you, and melt down their medals into bullets.
Who serves man, ruler or peasant, serves the ungrateful; and all the
ambitious are but types of a Wolsey or a De Witt.”

“And what,” said Trevylyan, “consoles a man in the ills that flesh is
heir to, in that state of obscure repose, that serene inactivity to
which you would confine him? Is it not his conscience? Is it not his
self-acquittal, or his self-approval?”

“Doubtless,” replied Vane.

“Be it so,” answered the high-souled Trevylyan; “the same consolation
awaits us in action as in repose. We sedulously pursue what we deem to
be true glory. We are maligned; but our soul acquits us. Could it do
more in the scandal and the prejudice that assail us in private life?
You are silent; but note how much deeper should be the comfort, how much
loftier the self-esteem; for if calumny attack us in a wilful obscurity,
what have we done to refute the calumny? How have we served our species?
Have we ‘scorned delight and loved laborious days’? Have we made the
utmost of the ‘talent’ confided to our care? Have we done those
good deeds to our race upon which we can retire,--an ‘Estate of
Beneficence,’--from the malice of the world, and feel that our deeds
are our defenders? This is the consolation of virtuous actions; is it so
of--even a virtuous--indolence?”

“You speak as a preacher,” said Vane,--“I merely as a calculator; you of
virtue in affliction, I of a life in ease.”

“Well, then, if the consciousness of perpetual endeavour to advance our
race be not alone happier than the life of ease, let us see what this
vaunted ease really is. Tell me, is it not another name for _ennui_?
This state of quiescence, this objectless, dreamless torpor, this
transition _du lit a la table, de la table au lit_,--what more dreary
and monotonous existence can you devise? Is it pleasure in this
inglorious existence to think that you are serving pleasure? Is it
freedom to be the slave to self? For I hold,” continued Trevylyan,
“that this jargon of ‘consulting happiness,’ this cant of living for
ourselves, is but a mean as well as a false philosophy. Why this eternal
reference to self? Is self alone to be consulted? Is even our happiness,
did it truly consist in repose, really the great end of life? I doubt if
we cannot ascend higher. I doubt if we cannot say with a great moralist,
‘If virtue be not estimable in itself, we can see nothing estimable in
following it for the sake of a bargain.’ But, in fact, repose is the
poorest of all delusions; the very act of recurring to self brings about
us all those ills of self from which, in the turmoil of the world, we
can escape. We become hypochondriacs. Our very health grows an object
of painful possession. We are so desirous to be well (for what is
retirement without health?) that we are ever fancying ourselves ill;
and, like the man in the ‘Spectator,’ we weigh ourselves daily, and live
but by grains and scruples. Retirement is happy only for the poet, for
to him it is _not_ retirement. He secedes from one world but to gain
another, and he finds not _ennui_ in seclusion: why? Not because
seclusion hath _repose_, but because it hath _occupation_. In one word,
then, I say of action and of indolence, grant the same ills to both, and
to action there is the readier escape or the nobler consolation.”

Vane shrugged his shoulders. “Ah, my dear friend,” said he, tapping his
snuff-box with benevolent superiority, “you are much younger than I am!”

But these conversations, which Trevylyan and Vane often held
together, dull as I fear this specimen must seem to the reader, had an
inexpressible charm for Gertrude. She loved the lofty and generous vein
of philosophy which Trevylyan embraced, and which, while it suited his
ardent nature, contrasted a demeanour commonly hard and cold to all
but herself. And young and tender as she was, his ambition infused its
spirit into her fine imagination, and that passion for enterprise which
belongs inseparably to romance. She loved to muse over his future lot,
and in fancy to share its toils and to exult in its triumphs. And
if sometimes she asked herself whether a career of action might not
estrange him from her, she had but to turn her gaze upon his watchful
eye,--and lo, he was by her side or at her feet!



CHAPTER VI. GORCUM.--THE TOUR OF THE VIRTUES: A PHILOSOPHER’S TALE.

IT was a bright and cheery morning as they glided by Gorcum. The boats
pulling to the shore full of fishermen and peasants in their national
costume; the breeze freshly rippling the waters; the lightness of the
blue sky; the loud and laughing voices from the boats,--all contributed
to raise the spirit, and fill it with that indescribable gladness which
is the physical sense of life.

The tower of the church, with its long windows and its round dial, rose
against the clear sky; and on a bench under a green bush facing the
water sat a jolly Hollander, refreshing the breezes with the fumes of
his national weed.



“How little it requires to make a journey pleasant, when the companions
are our friends!” said Gertrude, as they sailed along. “Nothing can be
duller than these banks, nothing more delightful than this voyage.”

“Yet what tries the affections of people for each other so severely as
a journey together?” said Vane. “That perpetual companionship from which
there is no escaping; that confinement, in all our moments of ill-humour
and listlessness, with persons who want us to look amused--ah, it is a
severe ordeal for friendship to pass through! A post-chaise must have
jolted many an intimacy to death.”

“You speak feelingly, dear father,” said Gertrude, laughing; “and, I
suspect, with a slight desire to be sarcastic upon us. Yet, seriously,
I should think that travel must be like life, and that good persons must
be always agreeable companions to each other.”

“Good persons, my Gertrude!” answered Vane, with a smile. “Alas! I
fear the good weary each other quite as much as the bad. What say
you, Trevylyan,--would Virtue be a pleasant companion from Paris
to Petersburg? Ah, I see you intend to be on Gertrude’s side of the
question. Well now, if I tell you a story, since stories are so much the
fashion with you, in which you shall find that the Virtues themselves
actually made the experiment of a tour, will you promise to attend to
the moral?”

“Oh, dear father, anything for a story,” cried Gertrude; “especially
from you, who have not told us one all the way. Come, listen, Albert;
nay, listen to your new rival.”

And, pleased to see the vivacity of the invalid, Vane began as
follows:--



                      THE TOUR OF THE VIRTUES:

                       A PHILOSOPHER’S TALE.

ONCE upon a time, several of the Virtues, weary of living forever with
the Bishop of Norwich, resolved to make a little excursion; accordingly,
though they knew everything on earth was very ill prepared to receive
them, they thought they might safely venture on a tour from Westminster
Bridge to Richmond. The day was fine, the wind in their favour, and as
to entertainment,--why, there seemed, according to Gertrude, to be no
possibility of any disagreement among the Virtues.

They took a boat at Westminster stairs; and just as they were about to
push off, a poor woman, all in rags, with a child in her arms, implored
their compassion. Charity put her hand into her reticule and took out
a shilling. Justice, turning round to look after the luggage, saw the
folly which Charity was about to commit. “Heavens!” cried Justice,
seizing poor Charity by the arm, “what are you doing? Have you never
read Political Economy? Don’t you know that indiscriminate almsgiving
is only the encouragement to Idleness, the mother of Vice? You a Virtue,
indeed! I’m ashamed of you. Get along with you, good woman;--yet stay,
there is a ticket for soup at the Mendicity Society; they’ll see if
you’re a proper object of compassion.” But Charity is quicker than
Justice, and slipping her hand behind her, the poor woman got the
shilling and the ticket for soup too. Economy and Generosity saw the
double gift. “What waste!” cried Economy, frowning; “what! a ticket and
a shilling? _either_ would have sufficed.”

“Either!” said Generosity, “fie! Charity should have given the poor
creature half-a-crown, and Justice a dozen tickets!” So the next ten
minutes were consumed in a quarrel between the four Virtues, which would
have lasted all the way to Richmond, if Courage had not advised them to
get on shore and fight it out. Upon this, the Virtues suddenly perceived
they had a little forgotten themselves, and Generosity offering the
first apology, they made it up, and went on very agreeably for the next
mile or two.

The day now grew a little overcast, and a shower seemed at hand.
Prudence, who had on a new bonnet, suggested the propriety of putting to
shore for half an hour; Courage was for braving the rain; but, as most
of the Virtues are ladies, Prudence carried it. Just as they were about
to land, another boat cut in before them very uncivilly, and gave theirs
such a shake that Charity was all but overboard. The company on board
the uncivil boat, who evidently thought the Virtues extremely low
persons, for they had nothing very fashionable about their exterior,
burst out laughing at Charity’s discomposure, especially as a
large basket full of buns, which Charity carried with her for any
hungry-looking children she might encounter at Richmond, fell pounce
into the water. Courage was all on fire; he twisted his mustache, and
would have made an onset on the enemy, if, to his great indignation,
Meekness had not forestalled him, by stepping mildly into the hostile
boat and offering both cheeks to the foe. This was too much even for the
incivility of the boatmen; they made their excuses to the Virtues, and
Courage, who is no bully, thought himself bound discontentedly to accept
them. But oh! if you had seen how Courage used Meekness afterwards, you
could not have believed it possible that one Virtue could be so enraged
with another. This quarrel between the two threw a damp on the party;
and they proceeded on their voyage, when the shower was over, with
anything but cordiality. I spare you the little squabbles that took
place in the general conversation,--how Economy found fault with all the
villas by the way, and Temperance expressed becoming indignation at the
luxuries of the City barge. They arrived at Richmond, and Temperance
was appointed to order the dinner; meanwhile Hospitality, walking in the
garden, fell in with a large party of Irishmen, and asked them to join
the repast.

Imagine the long faces of Economy and Prudence, when they saw the
addition to the company! Hospitality was all spirits; he rubbed his
hands and called for champagne with the tone of a younger brother.
Temperance soon grew scandalized, and Modesty herself coloured at some
of the jokes; but Hospitality, who was now half seas over, called the
one a milksop, and swore at the other as a prude. Away went the hours;
it was time to return, and they made down to the water-side, thoroughly
out of temper with one another, Economy and Generosity quarrelling all
the way about the bill and the waiters. To make up the sum of their
mortification, they passed a boat where all the company were in the best
possible spirits, laughing and whooping like mad; and discovered
these jolly companions to be two or three agreeable Vices, who had put
themselves under the management of Good Temper.

“So you see, Gertrude, that even the Virtues may fall at loggerheads
with each other, and pass a very sad time of it, if they happen to be
of opposite dispositions, and have forgotten to take Good Temper with
them.”

“Ah,” said Gertrude, “but you have overloaded your boat; too many
Virtues might contradict one another, but not a few.”

“Voila ce que veux dire,” said Vane; “but listen to the sequel of my
tale, which now takes a new moral.”

At the end of the voyage, and after a long, sulky silence, Prudence
said, with a thoughtful air, “My dear friends, I have been thinking that
as long as we keep so entirely together, never mixing with the rest of
the world, we shall waste our lives in quarrelling amongst ourselves and
run the risk of being still less liked and sought after than we already
are. You know that we are none of us popular; every one is quite
contented to see us represented in a vaudeville, or described in an
essay. Charity, indeed, has her name often taken in vain at a bazaar
or a subscription; and the miser as often talks of the duty he owes to
_me_, when he sends the stranger from his door or his grandson to jail:
but still we only resemble so many wild beasts, whom everybody likes
to see but nobody cares to possess. Now, I propose that we should all
separate and take up our abode with some mortal or other for a year,
with the power of changing at the end of that time should we not feel
ourselves comfortable,--that is, should we not find that we do all the
good we intend; let us try the experiment, and on this day twelvemonths
let us all meet under the largest oak in Windsor Forest, and recount
what has befallen us.” Prudence ceased, as she always does when she has
said enough; and, delighted at the project, the Virtues agreed to
adopt it on the spot. They were enchanted at the idea of setting up for
themselves, and each not doubting his or her success,--for Economy in
her heart thought Generosity no Virtue at all, and Meekness looked on
Courage as little better than a heathen.

Generosity, being the most eager and active of all the Virtues, set off
first on his journey. Justice followed, and kept up with him, though at
a more even pace. Charity never heard a sigh, or saw a squalid face, but
she stayed to cheer and console the sufferer,--a kindness which somewhat
retarded her progress.

Courage espied a travelling carriage, with a man and his wife in it
quarrelling most conjugally, and he civilly begged he might be permitted
to occupy the vacant seat opposite the lady. Economy still lingered,
inquiring for the cheapest inns. Poor Modesty looked round and sighed,
on finding herself so near to London, where she was almost wholly
unknown; but resolved to bend her course thither for two reasons:
first, for the novelty of the thing; and, secondly, not liking to expose
herself to any risks by a journey on the Continent. Prudence, though
the first to project, was the last to execute; and therefore resolved to
remain where she was for that night, and take daylight for her travels.

The year rolled on, and the Virtues, punctual to the appointment, met
under the oak-tree; they all came nearly at the same time, excepting
Economy, who had got into a return post-chaise, the horses to which,
having been forty miles in the course of the morning, had foundered by
the way, and retarded her journey till night set in. The Virtues looked
sad and sorrowful, as people are wont to do after a long and fruitless
journey; and, somehow or other, such was the wearing effect of their
intercourse with the world, that they appeared wonderfully diminished in
size.

“Ah, my dear Generosity,” said Prudence, with a sigh, “as you were
the first to set out on your travels, pray let us hear your adventures
first.”

“You must know, my dear sisters,” said Generosity, “that I had not gone
many miles from you before I came to a small country town, in which a
marching regiment was quartered, and at an open window I beheld, leaning
over a gentleman’s chair, the most beautiful creature imagination ever
pictured; her eyes shone out like two suns of perfect happiness, and she
was almost cheerful enough to have passed for Good Temper herself. The
gentleman over whose chair she leaned was her husband; they had been
married six weeks; he was a lieutenant with one hundred pounds a
year besides his pay. Greatly affected by their poverty, I instantly
determined, without a second thought, to ensconce myself in the heart
of this charming girl. During the first hour in my new residence I made
many wise reflections such as--that Love never was so perfect as when
accompanied by Poverty; what a vulgar error it was to call the unmarried
state ‘Single _Blessedness_;’ how wrong it was of us Virtues never to
have tried the marriage bond; and what a falsehood it was to say that
husbands neglected their wives, for never was there anything in nature
so devoted as the love of a husband--six weeks married!

“The next morning, before breakfast, as the charming Fanny was
waiting for her husband, who had not yet finished his toilet, a poor,
wretched-looking object appeared at the window, tearing her hair and
wringing her hands; her husband had that morning been dragged to prison,
and her seven children had fought for the last mouldy crust. Prompted
by me, Fanny, without inquiring further into the matter, drew from her
silken purse a five-pound note, and gave it to the beggar, who departed
more amazed than grateful. Soon after, the lieutenant appeared. ‘What
the devil, another bill!’ muttered he, as he tore the yellow wafer from
a large, square, folded, bluish piece of paper. ‘Oh, ah! confound the
fellow, _he_ must be paid. I must trouble you, Fanny, for fifteen pounds
to pay this saddler’s bill.’

“‘Fifteen pounds, love?’ stammered Fanny, blushing.

“‘Yes, dearest, the fifteen pounds I gave you yesterday.’

“‘I have only ten pounds,’ said Fanny, hesitatingly; ‘for such a poor,
wretched-looking creature was here just now, that I was obliged to give
her five pounds.’

“‘Five pounds? good Heavens!’ exclaimed the astonished husband; ‘I shall
have no more money this three weeks.’ He frowned, he bit his lips, nay,
he even wrung his hands, and walked up and down the room; worse still,
he broke forth with--‘Surely, madam, you did not suppose, when you
married a lieutenant in a marching regiment, that he could afford to
indulge in the whim of giving five pounds to every mendicant who held
out her hand to you? You did not, I say, madam, imagine’--but the
bridegroom was interrupted by the convulsive sobs of his wife: it was
their first quarrel, they were but six weeks married; he looked at
her for one moment sternly, the next he was at her feet. ‘Forgive me,
dearest Fanny,--forgive me, for I cannot forgive myself. I was too great
a wretch to say what I did; and do believe, my own Fanny, that while
I may be too poor to indulge you in it, I do from my heart admire so
noble, so disinterested, a generosity.’ Not a little proud did I feel
to have been the cause of this exemplary husband’s admiration for his
amiable wife, and sincerely did I rejoice at having taken up my abode
with these _poor_ people. But not to tire you, my dear sisters, with the
minutiae of detail, I shall briefly say that things did not long remain
in this delightful position; for before many months had elapsed, poor
Fanny had to bear with her husband’s increased and more frequent
storms of passion, unfollowed by any halcyon and honeymoon suings for
forgiveness: for at my instigation every shilling went; and when there
were no more to go, her trinkets and even her clothes followed. The
lieutenant became a complete brute, and even allowed his unbridled
tongue to call me--me, sisters, _me_!--‘heartless Extravagance.’ His
despicable brother-officers and their gossiping wives were no better;
for they did nothing but animadvert upon my Fanny’s ostentation and
absurdity, for by such names had they the impertinence to call _me_.
Thus grieved to the soul to find myself the cause of all poor Fanny’s
misfortunes, I resolved at the end of the year to leave her, being
thoroughly convinced that, however amiable and praiseworthy I might be
in myself, I was totally unfit to be bosom friend and adviser to the
wife of a lieutenant in a marching regiment, with only one hundred
pounds a year besides his pay.”

The Virtues groaned their sympathy with the unfortunate Fanny; and
Prudence, turning to Justice, said, “I long to hear what you have been
doing, for I am certain you cannot have occasioned harm to any one.”

Justice shook her head and said: “Alas! I find that there are times and
places when even I do better not to appear, as a short account of my
adventures will prove to you. No sooner had I left you than I instantly
repaired to India, and took up my abode with a Brahmin. I was much
shocked by the dreadful inequalities of condition that reigned in
the several castes, and I longed to relieve the poor Pariah from his
ignominious destiny; accordingly I set seriously to work on reform.
I insisted upon the iniquity of abandoning men from their birth to an
irremediable state of contempt, from which no virtue could exalt them.
The Brahmins looked upon my Brahmin with ineffable horror. They called
_me_ the most wicked of vices; they saw no distinction between Justice
and Atheism. I uprooted their society--that was sufficient crime. But
the worst was, that the Pariahs themselves regarded me with suspicion;
they thought it unnatural in a Brahmin to care for a Pariah! And one
called me ‘Madness,’ another, ‘Ambition,’ and a third, ‘The Desire to
innovate.’ My poor Brahmin led a miserable life of it; when one day,
after observing, at my dictation, that he thought a Pariah’s life as
much entitled to respect as a cow’s, he was hurried away by the priests
and secretly broiled on the altar as a fitting reward for his sacrilege.
I fled hither in great tribulation, persuaded that in some countries
even Justice may do harm.”

“As for me,” said Charity, not waiting to be asked, “I grieve to say
that I was silly enough to take up my abode with an old lady in Dublin,
who never knew what discretion was, and always acted from impulse;
my instigation was irresistible, and the money she gave in her drives
through the suburbs of Dublin was so lavishly spent that it kept all
the rascals of the city in idleness and whiskey. I found, to my great
horror, that I was a main cause of a terrible epidemic, and that to give
alms without discretion was to spread poverty without help. I left the
city when my year was out, and as ill-luck would have it, just at the
time when I was most wanted.”

“And oh,” cried Hospitality, “I went to Ireland also. I fixed my abode
with a squireen; I ruined him in a year, and only left him because he
had no longer a hovel to keep me in.”

“As for myself,” said Temperance, “I entered the breast of an English
legislator, and he brought in a bill against ale-houses; the consequence
was, that the labourers took to gin; and I have been forced to confess
that Temperance may be too zealous when she dictates too vehemently to
others.”

“Well,” said Courage, keeping more in the background than he had ever
done before, and looking rather ashamed of himself, “that travelling
carriage I got into belonged to a German general and his wife, who were
returning to their own country. Growing very cold as we proceeded, she
wrapped me up in a polonaise; but the cold increasing, I inadvertently
crept into her bosom. Once there I could not get out, and from
thenceforward the poor general had considerably the worst of it.
She became so provoking that I wondered how he could refrain from an
explosion. To do him justice, he did at last threaten to get out of the
carriage; upon which, roused by me, she collared him--and conquered.
When he got to his own district, things grew worse, for if any
_aide-de-camp_ offended her she insisted that he might be publicly
reprimanded; and should the poor general refuse she would with her own
hands confer a caning upon the delinquent. The additional force she had
gained in me was too much odds against the poor general, and he died of
a broken heart, six months after my _liaison_ with his wife. She after
this became so dreaded and detested, that a conspiracy was formed to
poison her; this daunted even me, so I left her without delay,--_et me
voici_!”

“Humph,” said Meekness, with an air of triumph, “I, at least, have been
more successful than you. On seeing much in the papers of the cruelties
practised by the Turks on the Greeks, I thought my presence would enable
the poor sufferers to bear their misfortunes calmly. I went to Greece,
then, at a moment when a well-planned and practicable scheme of
emancipating themselves from the Turkish yoke was arousing their youth.
Without confining myself to one individual, I flitted from breast
to breast; I meekened the whole nation; my remonstrances against the
insurrection succeeded, and I had the satisfaction of leaving a
whole people ready to be killed or strangled with the most Christian
resignation in the world.”

The Virtues, who had been a little cheered by the opening
self-complacence of Meekness, would not, to her great astonishment,
allow that she had succeeded a whit more happily than her sisters, and
called next upon Modesty for her confession.

“You know,” said that amiable young lady, “that I went to London in
search of a situation. I spent three months of the twelve in going from
house to house, but I could not get a single person to receive me.
The ladies declared that they never saw so old-fashioned a gawkey, and
civilly recommended me to their abigails; the abigails turned me
round with a stare, and then pushed me down to the kitchen and the fat
scullion-maids, who assured me that, ‘in the respectable families they
had the honour to live in, they had never even heard of my name.’ One
young housemaid, just from the country, did indeed receive me with some
sort of civility; but she very soon lost me in the servants’ hall. I
now took refuge with the other sex, as the least uncourteous. I was
fortunate enough to find a young gentleman of remarkable talents, who
welcomed me with open arms. He was full of learning, gentleness, and
honesty. I had only one rival,--Ambition. We both contended for an
absolute empire over him. Whatever Ambition suggested, I damped. Did
Ambition urge him to begin a book, I persuaded him it was not worth
publication. Did he get up, full of knowledge, and instigated by my
rival, to make a speech (for he was in parliament), I shocked him with
the sense of his assurance, I made his voice droop and his accents
falter. At last, with an indignant sigh, my rival left him; he retired
into the country, took orders, and renounced a career he had fondly
hoped would be serviceable to others; but finding I did not suffice for
his happiness, and piqued at his melancholy, I left him before the end
of the year, and he has since taken to drinking!”

The eyes of the Virtues were all turned to Prudence. She was their last
hope. “I am just where I set out,” said that discreet Virtue; “I have
done neither good nor harm. To avoid temptation I went and lived with a
hermit to whom I soon found that I could be of no use beyond warning him
not to overboil his peas and lentils, not to leave his door open when
a storm threatened, and not to fill his pitcher too full at the
neighbouring spring. I am thus the only one of you that never did harm;
but only because I am the only one of you that never had an opportunity
of doing it! In a word,” continued Prudence, thoughtfully,--“in a word,
my friends, circumstances are necessary to the Virtues themselves. Had,
for instance, Economy changed with Generosity, and gone to the poor
lieutenant’s wife, and had I lodged with the Irish squireen instead of
Hospitality, what misfortunes would have been saved to both! Alas! I
perceive we lose all our efficacy when we are misplaced; and _then_,
though in reality Virtues, we operate as Vices. Circumstances must be
favourable to our exertions, and harmonious with our nature; and we
lose our very divinity unless Wisdom direct our footsteps to the home we
should inhabit and the dispositions we should govern.”

The story was ended, and the travellers began to dispute about its
moral. Here let us leave them.



CHAPTER VII. COLOGNE.--THE TRACES OF THE ROMAN YOKE.--THE CHURCH OF ST.
MARIA.--TREVYLYAN’S REFLECTIONS ON THE MONASTIC LIFE.--THE TOMB OF THE
THREE KINGS.--AN EVENING EXCURSION ON THE RHINE.

ROME--magnificent Rome! wherever the pilgrim wends, the traces of thy
dominion greet his eyes. Still in the heart of the bold German race is
graven the print of the eagle’s claws; and amidst the haunted regions of
the Rhine we pause to wonder at the great monuments of the Italian yoke.

At Cologne our travellers rested for some days. They were in the city
to which the camp of Marcus Agrippa had given birth; that spot had
resounded with the armed tread of the legions of Trajan. In that city,
Vitellius, Sylvanus, were proclaimed emperors. By that church did the
latter receive his death.

As they passed round the door they saw some peasants loitering on the
sacred ground; and when they noted the delicate cheek of Gertrude they
uttered their salutations with more than common respect. Where they then
were the building swept round in a circular form; and at its base it is
supposed by tradition to retain something of the ancient Roman masonry.
Just before them rose the spire of a plain and unadorned church,
singularly contrasting the pomp of the old with the simplicity of the
innovating creed.

The church of St. Maria occupies the site of the Roman Capitol, and the
place retains the Roman name; and still something in the aspect of the
people betrays the hereditary blood.

Gertrude, whose nature was strongly impressed with _the venerating
character_, was fond of visiting the old Gothic churches, which, with so
eloquent a moral, unite the living with the dead.

“Pause for a moment,” said Trevylyan, before they entered the church of
St. Maria. “What recollections crowd upon us! On the site of the Roman
Capitol a Christian church and a convent are erected! By whom? The
mother of Charles Martel,--the Conqueror of the Saracen, the arch-hero
of Christendom itself! And to these scenes and calm retreats, to the
cloisters of the convent once belonging to this church, fled the bruised
spirit of a royal sufferer,-the victim of Richelieu,--the unfortunate
and ambitious Mary de Medicis. Alas! the cell and the convent are but a
vain emblem of that desire to fly to God which belongs to Distress; the
solitude soothes, but the monotony recalls, regret. And for my own part
in my frequent tours through Catholic countries, I never saw the still
walls in which monastic vanity hoped to shut out the world, but a
melancholy came over me! What hearts at war with themselves! what
unceasing regrets! what pinings after the past! what long and beautiful
years devoted to a moral grave, by a momentary rashness, an impulse, a
disappointment! But in these churches the lesson is more impressive and
less sad. The weary heart has ceased to ache; the burning pulses are
still; the troubled spirit has flown to the only rest which is not a
deceit. Power and love, hope and fear, avarice, ambition,--they are
quenched at last! Death is the only monastery, the tomb is the only
cell.”

“Your passion is ever for active life,” said Gertrude. “You allow no
charm to solitude, and contemplation to you seems torture. If any great
sorrow ever come upon you, you will never retire to seclusion as its
balm. You will plunge into the world, and lose your individual existence
in the universal rush of life.”

“Ah, talk not of sorrow!” said Trevylyan, wildly. “Let us enter the
church.”

They went afterwards to the celebrated cathedral, which is considered
one of the noblest of the architectural triumphs of Germany; but it is
yet more worthy of notice from the Pilgrim of Romance than the searcher
after antiquity, for here, behind the grand altar, is the Tomb of the
Three Kings of Cologne,--the three worshippers whom tradition humbled to
our Saviour. Legend is rife with a thousand tales of the relics of this
tomb. The Three Kings of Cologne are the tutelary names of that golden
superstition which has often more votaries than the religion itself from
which it springs and to Gertrude the simple story of Lucille sufficed
to make her for the moment credulous of the sanctity of the spot. Behind
the tomb three Gothic windows cast their “dim, religious light” over the
tessellated pavement and along the Ionic pillars. They found some of
the more credulous believers in the authenticity of the relics kneeling
before the tomb, and they arrested their steps, fearful to disturb the
superstition which is never without something of sanctity when contented
with prayer and forgetful of persecution. The bones of the Magi are
still supposed to consecrate the tomb, and on the higher part of
the monument the artist has delineated their adoration to the infant
Saviour.

That evening came on with a still and tranquil beauty, and as the sun
hastened to its close they launched their boat for an hour or two’s
excursion upon the Rhine. Gertrude was in that happy mood when the quiet
of nature is enjoyed like a bath for the soul, and the presence of
him she so idolized deepened that stillness into a more delicious and
subduing calm. Little did she dream as the boat glided over the water,
and the towers of Cologne rose in the blue air of evening, how few were
those hours that divided her from the tomb! But, in looking back to the
life of one we have loved, how dear is the thought that the latter days
were the days of light, that the cloud never chilled the beauty of the
setting sun, and that if the years of existence were brief, all that
existence has most tender, most sacred, was crowded into that space!
Nothing dark, then, or bitter, rests with our remembrance of the lost:
_we_ are the mourners, but pity is not for the mourned,--our grief is
purely selfish; when we turn to its object, the hues of happiness are
round it, and that very love which is the parent of our woe was the
consolation, the triumph, of the departed!

The majestic Rhine was calm as a lake; the splashing of the oar only
broke the stillness, and after a long pause in their conversation,
Gertrude, putting her hand on Trevylyan’s arm, reminded him of a
promised story: for he too had moods of abstraction, from which, in her
turn, she loved to lure him; and his voice to her had become a sort of
want.

“Let it be,” said she, “a tale suited to the hour; no fierce
tradition,--nay, no grotesque fable, but of the tenderer dye of
superstition. Let it be of love, of woman’s love,--of the love that
defies the grave: for surely even after death it lives; and heaven would
scarcely be heaven if memory were banished from its blessings.”

“I recollect,” said Trevylyan, after a slight pause, “a short German
legend, the simplicity of which touched me much when I heard it; but,”
 added he, with a slight smile, “so much more faithful appears in the
legend the love of the woman than that of the man, that _I_ at least
ought scarcely to recite it.”

“Nay,” said Gertrude, tenderly, “the fault of the inconstant only
heightens our gratitude to the faithful.”



CHAPTER VIII. THE SOUL IN PURGATORY; OR LOVE STRONGER THAN DEATH.

THE angels strung their harps in heaven, and their music went up like
a stream of odours to the pavilions of the Most High; but the harp
of Seralim was sweeter than that of his fellows, and the Voice of
the Invisible One (for the angels themselves know not the glories of
Jehovah--only far in the depths of heaven they see one Unsleeping Eye
watching forever over Creation) was heard saying,--

“Ask a gift for the love that burns in thy song, and it shall be given
thee.” And Seralim answered,--

“There is in that place which men call Purgatory, and which is the
escape from hell, but the painful porch of heaven, many souls that adore
Thee, and yet are punished justly for their sins; grant me the boon to
visit them at times, and solace their suffering by the hymns of the harp
that is consecrated to Thee!”

And the Voice answered,--

“Thy prayer is heard, O gentlest of the angels! and it seems good to Him
who chastises but from love. Go! Thou hast thy will.”

Then the angel sang the praises of God; and when the song was done he
rose from his azure throne at the right hand of Gabriel, and, spreading
his rainbow wings, he flew to that melancholy orb which, nearest to
earth, echoes with the shrieks of souls that by torture become pure.
There the unhappy ones see from afar the bright courts they are
hereafter to obtain, and the shapes of glorious beings, who, fresh from
these Fountains of Immortality, walk amidst the gardens of Paradise,
and feel that their happiness hath no morrow; and this thought consoles
amidst their torments, and makes the true difference between Purgatory
and Hell.

Then the angel folded his wings, and entering the crystal gates, sat
down upon a blasted rock and struck his divine lyre, and a peace fell
over the wretched; the demon ceased to torture and the victim to wail.
As sleep to the mourners of earth was the song of the angel to the
souls of the purifying star: one only voice amidst the general stillness
seemed not lulled by the angel; it was the voice of a woman, and it
continued to cry out with a sharp cry,--

“Oh, Adenheim, Adenheim! mourn not for the lost!”

The angel struck chord after chord, till his most skilful melodies were
exhausted; but still the solitary voice, unheeding--unconscious of--the
sweetest harp of the angel choir, cried out,--

“Oh, Adenheim, Adenheim! mourn not for the lost!”

Then Seralim’s interest was aroused, and approaching the spot whence the
voice came, he saw the spirit of a young and beautiful girl chained to
a rock, and the demons lying idly by. And Seralim said to the demons,
“Doth the song lull ye thus to rest?”

And they answered, “Her care for another is bitterer than all our
torments; therefore are we idle.”

Then the angel approached the spirit, and said in a voice which stilled
her cry--for in what state do we outlive sympathy?--“Wherefore, O
daughter of earth, wherefore wailest thou with the same plaintive wail;
and why doth the harp that soothes the most guilty of thy companions
fail in its melody with thee?”

“O radiant stranger,” answered the poor spirit, “thou speakest to one
who on earth loved God’s creature more than God; therefore is she thus
justly sentenced. But I know that my poor Adenheim mourns ceaselessly
for me, and the thought of his sorrow is more intolerable to me than all
that the demons can inflict.”

“And how knowest thou that he laments thee?” asked the angel.

“Because I know with what agony I should have mourned for _him_,”
 replied the spirit, simply.

The divine nature of the angel was touched; for love is the nature of
the sons of heaven. “And how,” said he, “can I minister to thy sorrow?”

A transport seemed to agitate the spirit, and she lifted up her mistlike
and impalpable arms, and cried,--

“Give me--oh, give me to return to earth, but for one little hour,
that I may visit my Adenheim; and that, concealing from him my present
sufferings, I may comfort him in his own.”

“Alas!” said the angel, turning away his eyes,--for angels may not weep
in the sight of others,--“I could, indeed, grant thee this boon, but
thou knowest not the penalty. For the souls in Purgatory may return to
Earth, but heavy is the sentence that awaits their return. In a word,
for one hour on earth thou must add a thousand years to the torture of
thy confinement here!”

“Is that all?” cried the spirit. “Willingly then will I brave the doom.
Ah, surely they love not in heaven, or thou wouldst know, O Celestial
Visitant; that one hour of consolation to the one we love is worth a
thousand ages of torture to ourselves! Let me comfort and convince my
Adenheim; no matter what becomes of me.”

Then the angel looked on high, and he saw in far distant regions, which
in that orb none else could discern, the rays that parted from the
all-guarding Eye; and heard the VOICE of the Eternal One bidding him
act as his pity whispered. He looked on the spirit, and her shadowy arms
stretched pleadingly towards him; he uttered the word that loosens the
bars of the gate of Purgatory; and lo, the spirit had re-entered the
human world.

It was night in the halls of the lord of Adenheim, and he sat at the
head of his glittering board. Loud and long was the laugh, and merry
the jest that echoed round; and the laugh and the jest of the lord of
Adenheim were louder and merrier than all. And by his right side sat a
beautiful lady; and ever and anon he turned from others to whisper soft
vows in her ear.

“And oh,” said the bright dame of Falkenberg, “thy words what ladye can
believe? Didst thou not utter the same oaths, and promise the same love,
to Ida, the fair daughter of Loden, and now but three little months have
closed upon her grave?”

“By my halidom,” quoth the young lord of Adenheim, “thou dost thy beauty
marvellous injustice. Ida! Nay, thou mockest me; _I_ love the daughter
of Loden! Why, how then should I be worthy thee? A few gay words, a few
passing smiles,--behold all the love Adenheim ever bore to Ida. Was
it my fault if the poor fool misconstrued such common courtesy? Nay,
dearest lady, this heart is virgin to thee.”

“And what!” said the lady of Falkenberg, as she suffered the arm of
Adenheim to encircle her slender waist, “didst thou not grieve for her
loss?”

“Why, verily, yes, for the first week; but in thy bright eyes I found
ready consolation.”

At this moment, the lord of Adenheim thought he heard a deep sigh behind
him; he turned, but saw nothing, save a slight mist that gradually faded
away, and vanished in the distance. Where was the necessity for Ida to
reveal herself?

.......

“And thou didst not, then, do thine errand to thy lover?” said Seralim,
as the spirit of the wronged Ida returned to Purgatory.

“Bid the demons recommence their torture,” was poor Ida’s answer.

“And was it for this that thou added a thousand years to thy doom?”

“Alas!” answered Ida, “after the single hour I have endured on Earth,
there seems to be but little terrible in a thousand fresh years of
Purgatory!”*

  * This story is principally borrowed from a foreign soil.  It
    seemed to the author worthy of being transferred to an English
    one, although he fears that much of its singular beauty in the
    original has been lost by the way.



“What! is the story ended?” asked Gertrude.

“Yes.”

“Nay, surely the thousand years were not added to poor Ida’s doom; and
Seralim bore her back with him to Heaven?”

“The legend saith no more. The writer was contented to show us the
perpetuity of woman’s love--”

“And its reward,” added Vane.

“It was not _I_ who drew that last conclusion, Albert,” whispered
Gertrude.



CHAPTER IX. THE SCENERY OF THE RHINE ANALOGOUS TO THE GERMAN LITERARY
GENIUS.--THE DRACHENFELS.

ON leaving Cologne, the stream winds round among banks that do not yet
fulfil the promise of the Rhine; but they increase in interest as you
leave Surdt and Godorf. The peculiar character of the river does not,
however, really appear, until by degrees the Seven Mountains, and “THE
CASTLED CRAG OF DRACHENFELS” above them all, break upon the eye. Around
Nieder Cassel and Rheidt the vines lie thick and clustering; and, by the
shore, you see from place to place the islands stretching their green
length along, and breaking the exulting tide. Village rises upon
village, and viewed from the distance as you sail, the pastoral errors
that enamoured us of the village life crowd thick and fast upon us.
So still do these hamlets seem, so sheltered from the passions of the
world,--as if the passions were not like winds, only felt where they
breathe, and invisible save by their effects! Leaping into the broad
bosom of the Rhine come many a stream and rivulet upon either side.
Spire upon spire rises and sinks as you sail on. Mountain and city,
the solitary island, the castled steep, like the dreams of ambition,
suddenly appear, proudly swell, and dimly fade away.

“You begin now,” said Trevylyan, “to understand the character of
the German literature. The Rhine is an emblem of its luxuriance, its
fertility, its romance. The best commentary to the German genius is a
visit to the German scenery. The mighty gloom of the Hartz, the feudal
towers that look over vines and deep valleys on the legendary Rhine;
the gigantic remains of antique power, profusely scattered over plain,
mount, and forest; the thousand mixed recollections that hallow the
ground; the stately Roman, the stalwart Goth, the chivalry of the feudal
age, and the dim brotherhood of the ideal world, have here alike their
record and their remembrance. And over such scenes wanders the young
German student. Instead of the pomp and luxury of the English traveller,
the thousand devices to cheat the way, he has but his volume in his
hand, his knapsack at his back. From such scenes he draws and hives
all that various store which after years ripen to invention. Hence
the florid mixture of the German muse,--the classic, the romantic, the
contemplative, the philosophic, and the superstitious; each the result
of actual meditation over different scenes; each the produce of separate
but confused recollections. As the Rhine flows, so flows the national
genius, by mountain and valley, the wildest solitude, the sudden spires
of ancient cities, the mouldered castle, the stately monastery, the
humble cot,--grandeur and homeliness, history and superstition, truth
and fable, succeeding one another so as to blend into a whole.

“But,” added Trevylyan, a moment afterwards, “the Ideal is passing
slowly away from the German mind; a spirit for the more active and the
more material literature is springing up amongst them. The revolution
of mind gathers on, preceding stormy events; and the memories that
led their grandsires to contemplate will urge the youth of the next
generation to dare and to act.” *

  * Is not this prediction already fulfilled?--1849.

Thus conversing, they continued their voyage, with a fair wave and
beneath a lucid sky.

The vessel now glided beside the Seven Mountains and the Drachenfels.

The sun, slowly setting, cast his yellow beams over the smooth waters.
At the foot of the mountains lay a village deeply sequestered in shade;
and above, the Ruin of the Drachenfels caught the richest beams of the
sun. Yet thus alone, though lofty, the ray cheered not the gloom that
hung over the giant rock: it stood on high, like some great name on
which the light of glory may shine, but which is associated with a
certain melancholy, from the solitude to which its very height above the
level of the herd condemned its owner!



CHAPTER X. THE LEGEND OF ROLAND.--THE ADVENTURES OF NYMPHALIN ON THE
ISLAND OF NONNEWERTH.--HER SONG.--THE DECAY OF THE FAIRY-FAITH IN
ENGLAND.

ON the shore opposite the Drachenfels stand the Ruins of
Rolandseck,--they are the shattered crown of a lofty and perpendicular
mountain, consecrated to the memory of the brave Roland; below, the
trees of an island to which the lady of Roland retired, rise thick and
verdant from the smooth tide.

Nothing can exceed the eloquent and wild grandeur of the whole scene.
That spot is the pride and beauty of the Rhine.

The legend that consecrates the tower and the island is briefly told; it
belongs to a class so common to the Romaunts of Germany. Roland goes to
the wars. A false report of his death reaches his betrothed. She retires
to the convent in the isle of Nonnewerth, and takes the irrevocable
veil. Roland returns home, flushed with glory and hope, to find that
the very fidelity of his affianced had placed an eternal barrier between
them. He built the castle that bears his name, and which overlooks the
monastery, and dwelt there till his death,--happy in the power at least
to gaze, even to the last, upon those walls which held the treasure he
had lost.

The willows droop in mournful luxuriance along the island, and harmonize
with the memory that, through the desert of a thousand years, love still
keeps green and fresh. Nor hath it permitted even those additions of
fiction which, like mosses, gather by time over the truth that they
adorn, yet adorning conceal, to mar the simple tenderness of the legend.

All was still in the island of Nonnewerth; the lights shone through the
trees from the house that contained our travellers. On one smooth spot
where the islet shelves into the Rhine met the wandering fairies.

“Oh, Pipalee! how beautiful!” cried Nymphalin, as she stood enraptured
by the wave, a star-beam shining on her, with her yellow hair “dancing
its ringlets in the whistling wind.” “For the first time since our
departure I do not miss the green fields of England.”

“Hist!” said Pipalee, under her breath; “I hear fairy steps,--they must
be the steps of strangers.”

“Let us retreat into this thicket of weeds,” said Nymphalin, somewhat
alarmed; “the good lord treasurer is already asleep there.” They whisked
into what to them was a forest, for the reeds were two feet high, and
there sure enough they found the lord treasurer stretched beneath a
bulrush, with his pipe beside him, for since he had been in Germany he
had taken to smoking; and indeed wild thyme, properly dried, makes very
good tobacco for a fairy. They also found Nip and Trip sitting very
close together, Nip playing with her hair, which was exceedingly
beautiful.

“What do you do here?” said Pipalee, shortly; for she was rather an old
maid, and did not like fairies to be too close to each other.

“Watching my lord’s slumber,” said Nip.

“Pshaw!” said Pipalee.

“Nay,” quoth Trip, blushing like a sea-shell; “there is no harm in
_that_, I’m sure.”

“Hush!” said the queen, peeping through the reeds.

And now forth from the green bosom of the earth came a tiny train;
slowly, two by two, hand in hand, they swept from a small aperture,
shadowed with fragrant herbs, and formed themselves into a ring: then
came other fairies, laden with dainties, and presently two beautiful
white mushrooms sprang up, on which the viands were placed, and lo,
there was a banquet! Oh, how merry they were! what gentle peals of
laughter, loud as a virgin’s sigh! what jests! what songs! Happy race!
if mortals could see you as often as I do, in the soft nights of summer,
they would never be at a loss for entertainment. But as our English
fairies looked on, they saw that these foreign elves were of a different
race from themselves: they were taller and less handsome, their hair was
darker, they wore mustaches, and had something of a fiercer air. Poor
Nymphalin was a little frightened; but presently soft music was heard
floating along, something like the sound we suddenly hear of a still
night when a light breeze steals through rushes, or wakes a ripple in
some shallow brook dancing over pebbles. And lo, from the aperture of
the earth came forth a fay, superbly dressed, and of a noble presence.
The queen started back, Pipalee rubbed her eyes, Trip looked over
Pipalee’s shoulder, and Nip, pinching her arm, cried out amazed, “By the
last new star, that is Prince von Fayzenheim!”

Poor Nymphalin gazed again, and her little heart beat under her
bee’s-wing bodice as if it would break. The prince had a melancholy air,
and he sat apart from the banquet, gazing abstractedly on the Rhine.

“Ah!” whispered Nymphalin to herself, “does he think of me?”

Presently the prince drew forth a little flute hollowed from a small
reed, and began to play a mournful air. Nymphalin listened with delight;
it was one he had learned in her dominions.

When the air was over, the prince rose, and approaching the banqueters,
despatched them on different errands; one to visit the dwarf of the
Drachenfels, another to look after the grave of Musaeus, and a whole
detachment to puzzle the students of Heidelberg. A few launched
themselves upon willow leaves on the Rhine to cruise about in the
starlight, and an other band set out a hunting after the gray-legged
moth. The prince was left alone; and now Nymphalin, seeing the coast
clear, wrapped herself up in a cloak made out of a withered leaf; and
only letting her eyes glow out from the hood, she glided from the reeds,
and the prince turning round, saw a dark fairy figure by his side. He
drew back, a little startled, and placed his hand on his sword, when
Nymphalin circling round him, sang the following words:--



THE FAIRY’S REPROACH.


     I. By the glow-worm’s lamp in the dewy brake;
       By the gossamer’s airy net;
     By the shifting skin of the faithless snake,
       Oh, teach me to forget:
             For none, ah none
     Can teach so well that human spell
             As thou, false one!


     II. By the fairy dance on the greensward smooth;
       By the winds of the gentle west;
     By the loving stars, when their soft looks soothe
       The waves on their mother’s breast,
             Teach me thy lore!
         By which, like withered flowers,
         The leaves of buried Hours
           Blossom no more!


     III. By the tent in the violet’s bell;
       By the may on the scented bough;
     By the lone green isle where my sisters dwell;
       And thine own forgotten vow,
             Teach me to live,
           Nor feed on thoughts that pine
           For love so false as thine!
           Teach me thy lore,
           And one thou lov’st no more
             Will bless thee and forgive!



“Surely,” said Fayzenheim, faltering, “surely I know that voice!”

And Nymphalin’s cloak dropped off her shoulder. “My English fairy!” and
Fayzenheim knelt beside her.

I wish you had seen the fay kneel, for you would have sworn it was so
like a human lover that you would never have sneered at love afterwards.
Love is so fairy-like a part of us, that even a fairy cannot make it
differently from us,--that is to say, when we love truly.

There was great joy in the island that night among the elves. They
conducted Nymphalin to their palace within the earth, and feasted her
sumptuously; and Nip told their adventures with so much spirit that
he enchanted the merry foreigners. But Fayzenheim talked apart to
Nymphalin, and told her how he was lord of that island, and how he had
been obliged to return to his dominions by the law of his tribe, which
allowed him to be absent only a certain time in every year. “But, my
queen, I always intended to revisit thee next spring.”

“Thou need’st not have left us so abruptly,” said Nymphalin, blushing.

“But do _thou_ never leave me!” said the ardent fairy; “be mine, and let
our nuptials be celebrated on these shores. Wouldst thou sigh for thy
green island? No! for _there_ the fairy altars are deserted, the faith
is gone from the land; thou art among the last of an unhonoured and
expiring race. Thy mortal poets are dumb, and Fancy, which was thy
priestess, sleeps hushed in her last repose. New and hard creeds have
succeeded to the fairy lore. Who steals through the starlit boughs on
the nights of June to watch the roundels of thy tribe? The wheels of
commerce, the din of trade, have silenced to mortal ear the music of thy
subjects’ harps! And the noisy habitations of men, harsher than their
dreaming sires, are gathering round the dell and vale where thy co-mates
linger: a few years, and where will be the green solitudes of England?”

The queen sighed, and the prince, perceiving that he was listened to,
continued,--

“Who, in thy native shores, among the children of men, now claims the
fairy’s care? What cradle wouldst thou tend? On what maid wouldst thou
shower thy rosy gifts? What barb wouldst thou haunt in his dreams? Poesy
is fled the island, why shouldst thou linger behind? Time hath brought
dull customs, that laugh at thy gentle being. Puck is buried in the
harebell, he hath left no offspring, and none mourn for his loss; for
night, which is the fairy season, is busy and garish as the day. What
hearth is desolate after the curfew? What house bathed in stillness
at the hour in which thy revels commence? Thine empire among men hath
passed from thee, and thy race are vanishing from the crowded soil; for,
despite our diviner nature, our existence is linked with man’s. Their
neglect is our disease, their forgetfulness our death. Leave then those
dull, yet troubled scenes, that are closing round the fairy rings of thy
native isle. These mountains, this herbage, these gliding waves, these
mouldering ruins, these starred rivulets, be they, O beautiful fairy!
thy new domain. Yet in these lands our worship lingers; still can we
fill the thought of the young bard, and mingle with his yearnings
after the Beautiful, the Unseen. Hither come the pilgrims of the world,
anxious only to gather from these scenes the legends of Us; ages will
pass away ere the Rhine shall be desecrated of our haunting presence.
Come then, my queen, let this palace be thine own, and the moon that
glances over the shattered towers of the Dragon Rock witness our
nuptials and our vows!”

In such words the fairy prince courted the young queen, and while she
sighed at their truth she yielded to their charm. Oh, still may there be
one spot on the earth where the fairy feet may press the legendary soil!
still be there one land where the faith of The Bright Invisible hallows
and inspires! Still glide thou, O majestic and solemn Rhine, among
shades and valleys, from which the wisdom of belief can call the
creations of the younger world!



CHAPTER XI. WHEREIN THE READER IS MADE SPECTATOR WITH THE ENGLISH
FAIRIES OF THE SCENES AND BEINGS THAT ARE BENEATH THE EARTH.

DURING the heat of next day’s noon, Fayzenheim took the English visitors
through the cool caverns that wind amidst the mountains of the Rhine.
There, a thousand wonders awaited the eyes of the fairy queen. I speak
not of the Gothic arch and aisle into which the hollow earth forms
itself, or the stream that rushes with a mighty voice through the dark
chasm, or the silver columns that shoot aloft, worked by the gnomes from
the mines of the mountains of Taunus; but of the strange inhabitants
that from time to time they came upon. They found in one solitary
cell, lined with dried moss, two misshapen elves, of a larger size than
common, with a plebeian working-day aspect, who were chatting noisily
together, and making a pair of boots: these were the Hausmannen or
domestic elves, that dance into tradesmen’s houses of a night, and play
all sorts of undignified tricks. They were very civil to the queen,
for they are good-natured creatures on the whole, and once had many
relations in Scotland. They then, following the course of a noisy
rivulet, came to a hole from which the sharp head of a fox peeped out.
The queen was frightened. “Oh, come on,” said the fox, encouragingly, “I
am one of the fairy race, and many are the gambols we of the brute-elves
play in the German world of romance.” “Indeed, Mr. Fox,” said the
prince, “you only speak the truth; and how is Mr. Bruin?” “Quite well,
my prince, but tired of his seclusion; for indeed our race can do
little or nothing now in the world; and lie here in our old age,
telling stories of the past, and recalling the exploits we did in our
youth,--which, madam, you may see in all the fairy histories in the
prince’s library.”

“Your own love adventures, for instance, Master Fox,” said the prince.

The fox snarled angrily, and drew in his head.

“You have displeased your friend,” said Nymphalin.

“Yes; he likes no allusions to the amorous follies of his youth. Did you
ever hear of his rivalry with the dog for the cat’s good graces?”

“No; that must be very amusing.”

“Well, my queen, when we rest by and by, I will relate to you the
history of the fox’s wooing.”

The next place they came to was a vast Runic cavern, covered with dark
inscriptions of a forgotten tongue; and sitting on a huge stone they
found a dwarf with long yellow hair, his head leaning on his breast, and
absorbed in meditation. “This is a spirit of a wise and powerful race,”
 whispered Fayzenheim, “that has often battled with the fairies; but he
is of the kindly tribe.”

Then the dwarf lifted his head with a mournful air; and gazed upon the
bright shapes before him, lighted by the pine torches that the prince’s
attendants carried.

“And what dost thou muse upon, O descendant of the race of Laurin?” said
the prince.

“Upon TIME!” answered the dwarf, gloomily. “I see a River, and its waves
are black, flowing from the clouds, and none knoweth its source. It
rolls deeply on, aye and evermore, through a green valley, which it
slowly swallows up, washing away tower and town, and vanquishing all
things; and the name of the River is TIME.”

Then the dwarf’s head sank on his bosom, and he spoke no more.

The fairies proceeded. “Above us,” said the prince, “rises one of the
loftiest mountains of the Rhine; for mountains are the Dwarf’s home.
When the Great Spirit of all made earth, he saw that the hollows of the
rocks and hills were tenantless, and yet that a mighty kingdom and great
palaces were hid within them,--a dread and dark solitude, but lighted at
times from the starry eyes of many jewels; and there was the treasure of
the human world--gold and silver--and great heaps of gems, and a soil
of metals. So God made a race for this vast empire, and gifted them with
the power of thought, and the soul of exceeding wisdom, so that they
want not the merriment and enterprise of the outer world; but musing
in these dark caves is their delight. Their existence rolls away in the
luxury of thought; only from time to time they appear in the world, and
betoken woe or weal to men,--according to their nature, for they are
divided into two tribes, the benevolent and the wrathful.” While the
prince spoke, they saw glaring upon them from a ledge in the upper rock
a grisly face with a long matted beard. The prince gathered himself up,
and frowned at the evil dwarf, for such it was; but with a wild laugh
the face abruptly disappeared, and the echo of the laugh rang with a
ghastly sound through the long hollows of the earth.

The queen clung to Fayzenheim’s arm. “Fear not, my queen,” said he. “The
evil race have no power over our light and aerial nature; with men only
they war; and he whom we have seen was, in the old ages of the world,
one of the deadliest visitors to mankind.”

But now they came winding by a passage to a beautiful recess in the
mountain empire; it was of a circular shape of amazing height; in the
midst of it played a natural fountain of sparkling waters, and around it
were columns of massive granite, rising in countless vistas, till lost
in the distant shade. Jewels were scattered round, and brightly played
the fairy torches on the gem, the fountain, and the pale silver, that
gleamed at frequent intervals from the rocks. “Here let us rest,” said
the gallant fairy, clapping his hands; “what, ho! music and the feast.”

So the feast was spread by the fountain’s side; and the courtiers
scattered rose-leaves, which they had brought with them, for the prince
and his visitor; and amidst the dark kingdom of the dwarfs broke
the delicate sound of fairy lutes. “We have not these evil beings in
England,” said the queen, as low as she could speak; “they rouse my
fear, but my interest also. Tell me, dear prince, of what nature was the
intercourse of the evil dwarf with man?”

“You know,” answered the prince, “that to every species of living thing
there is something in common; the vast chain of sympathy runs through
all creation. By that which they have in common with the beast of the
field or the bird of the air, men govern the inferior tribes; they
appeal to the common passions of fear and emulation when they tame the
wild steed, to the common desire of greed and gain when they snare
the fishes of the stream, or allure the wolves to the pitfall by the
bleating of the lamb. In their turn, in the older ages of the world, it
was by the passions which men had in common with the demon race that the
fiends commanded or allured them. The dwarf whom you saw, being of that
race which is characterized by the ambition of power and the desire
of hoarding, appealed then in his intercourse with men to the same
characteristics in their own bosoms,--to ambition or to avarice. And
thus were his victims made! But, not now, dearest Nymphalin,” continued
the prince, with a more lively air,--“not now will we speak of those
gloomy beings. Ho, there! cease the music, and come hither all of ye,
to listen to a faithful and homely history of the Dog, the Cat, the
Griffin, and the Fox.”



CHAPTER XII. THE WOOING OF MASTER FOX.*

  * In the excursions of the fairies, it is the object of the author
    to bring before the reader a rapid phantasmagoria of the various
    beings that belong to the German superstitions, so that the work
    may thus describe the outer and the inner world of the land of
    the Rhine.  The tale of the Fox’s Wooing has been composed to
    give the English reader an idea of a species of novel not
    naturalized amongst us, though frequent among the legends of our
    Irish neighbours; in which the brutes are the only characters
    drawn,--drawn too with shades of distinction as nice and subtle
    as if they were the creatures of the civilized world.

You are aware, my dear Nymphalin, that in the time of which I am about
to speak there was no particular enmity between the various species of
brutes; the dog and the hare chatted very agreeably together, and
all the world knows that the wolf, unacquainted with mutton, had
a particular affection for the lamb. In these happy days, two most
respectable cats, of very old family, had an only daughter. Never was
kitten more amiable or more seducing; as she grew up she manifested so
many charms, that in a little while she became noted as the greatest
beauty in the neighbourhood. Need I to you, dearest Nymphalin, describe
her perfection? Suffice it to say that her skin was of the most delicate
tortoiseshell, that her paws were smoother than velvet, that her
whiskers were twelve inches long at the least, and that her eyes had a
gentleness altogether astonishing in a cat. But if the young beauty
had suitors in plenty during the lives of monsieur and madame, you may
suppose the number was not diminished when, at the age of two years and
a half, she was left an orphan, and sole heiress to all the hereditary
property. In fine, she was the richest marriage in the whole country.
Without troubling you, dearest queen, with the adventures of the rest of
her lovers, with their suit and their rejection, I come at once to the
two rivals most sanguine of success,--the dog and the fox.

Now the dog was a handsome, honest, straightforward, affectionate
fellow. “For my part,” said he, “I don’t wonder at my cousin’s refusing
Bruin the bear, and Gauntgrim the wolf: to be sure they give themselves
great airs, and call themselves ‘_noble_,’ but what then? Bruin is
always in the sulks, and Gauntgrim always in a passion; a cat of any
sensibility would lead a miserable life with them. As for me, I am very
good-tempered when I’m not put out, and I have no fault except that of
being angry if disturbed at my meals. I am young and good-looking, fond
of play and amusement, and altogether as agreeable a husband as a cat
could find in a summer’s day. If she marries me, well and good; she
may have her property settled on herself: if not, I shall bear her no
malice; and I hope I sha’n’t be too much in love to forget that there
are other cats in the world.”

With that the dog threw his tail over his back, and set off to his
mistress with a gay face on the matter.

Now the fox heard the dog talking thus to himself, for the fox was
always peeping about, in holes and corners, and he burst out a laughing
when the dog was out of sight.

“Ho, ho, my fine fellow!” said he; “not so fast, if you please: you’ve
got the fox for a rival, let me tell you.”

The fox, as you very well know, is a beast that can never do anything
without a manoeuvre; and as, from his cunning, he was generally very
lucky in anything he undertook, he did not doubt for a moment that he
should put the dog’s nose out of joint. Reynard was aware that in
love one should always, if possible, be the first in the field; and he
therefore resolved to get the start of the dog and arrive before him
at the cat’s residence. But this was no easy matter; for though Reynard
could run faster than the dog for a little way, he was no match for
him in a journey of some distance. “However,” said Reynard, “those
good-natured creatures are never very wise; and I think I know already
what will make him bait on his way.”

With that, the fox trotted pretty fast by a short cut in the woods, and
getting before the dog, laid himself down by a hole in the earth, and
began to howl most piteously.

The dog, hearing the noise, was very much alarmed. “See now,” said he,
“if the poor fox has not got himself into some scrape! Those cunning
creatures are always in mischief; thank Heaven, it never comes into my
head to be cunning!” And the good-natured animal ran off as hard as he
could to see what was the matter with the fox.

“Oh, dear!” cried Reynard; “what shall I do? What shall I do? My poor
little sister has fallen into this hole, and I can’t get her out; she’ll
certainly be smothered.” And the fox burst out a howling more piteously
than before.

“But, my dear Reynard,” quoth the dog, very simply, “why don’t you go in
after your sister?”

“Ah, you may well ask that,” said the fox; “but, in trying to get in,
don’t you perceive that I have sprained my back and can’t stir? Oh,
dear! what shall I do if my poor little sister is smothered!”

“Pray don’t vex yourself,” said the dog; “I’ll get her out in an
instant.” And with that he forced himself with great difficulty into the
hole.

Now, no sooner did the fox see that the dog was fairly in, than he
rolled a great stone to the mouth of the hole and fitted it so tight,
that the dog, not being able to turn round and scratch against it with
his forepaws, was made a close prisoner.

“Ha, ha!” cried Reynard, laughing outside; “amuse yourself with my poor
little sister, while I go and make your compliments to Mademoiselle the
Cat.”

With that Reynard set off at an easy pace, never troubling his head
what became of the poor dog. When he arrived in the neighbourhood of the
beautiful cat’s mansion, he resolved to pay a visit to a friend of his,
an old magpie that lived in a tree and was well acquainted with all the
news of the place. “For,” thought Reynard, “I may as well know the blind
side of my mistress that is to be, and get round it at once.”

The magpie received the fox with great cordiality, and inquired what
brought him so great a distance from home.

“Upon my word,” said the fox, “nothing so much as the pleasure of seeing
your ladyship and hearing those agreeable anecdotes you tell with so
charming a grace; but to let you into a secret--be sure it don’t go
further--”

“On the word of a magpie,” interrupted the bird.

“Pardon me for doubting you,” continued the fox; “I should have
recollected that a pie was a proverb for discretion. But, as I was
saying, you know her Majesty the lioness?”

“Surely,” said the magpie, bridling.

“Well; she was pleased to fall in--that is to say--to--to--take a
caprice to your humble servant, and the lion grew so jealous that I
thought it prudent to decamp. A jealous lion is no joke, let me assure
your ladyship. But mum’s the word.”

So great a piece of news delighted the magpie. She could not but repay
it in kind, by all the news in her budget. She told the fox all the
scandal about Bruin and Gauntgrim, and she then fell to work on the poor
young cat. She did not spare her foibles, you may be quite sure. The
fox listened with great attention, and he learned enough to convince
him that however much the magpie might exaggerate, the cat was very
susceptible to flattery, and had a great deal of imagination.

When the magpie had finished she said, “But it must be very unfortunate
for you to be banished from so magnificent a court as that of the lion?”

“As to that,” answered the fox, “I console myself for my exile with a
present his Majesty made me on parting, as a reward for my anxiety for
his honour and domestic tranquillity; namely, three hairs from the fifth
leg of the amoronthologosphorus. Only think of that, ma’am!”

“The what?” cried the pie, cocking down her left ear.

“The amoronthologosphorus.”

“La!” said the magpie; “and what is that very long word, my dear
Reynard?”

“The amoronthologosphorus is a beast that lives on the other side of
the river Cylinx; it has five legs, and on the fifth leg there are three
hairs, and whoever has those three hairs can be young and beautiful
forever.”

“Bless me! I wish you would let me see them,” said the pie, holding out
her claw.

“Would that I could oblige you, ma’am; but it’s as much as my life’s
worth to show them to any but the lady I marry. In fact, they only have
an effect on the fair sex, as you may see by myself, whose poor person
they utterly fail to improve: they are, therefore, intended for a
marriage present, and his Majesty the lion thus generously atoned to
me for relinquishing the tenderness of his queen. One must confess that
there was a great deal of delicacy in the gift. But you’ll be sure not
to mention it.”

“A magpie gossip indeed!” quoth the old blab.

The fox then wished the magpie good night, and retired to a hole to
sleep off the fatigues of the day, before he presented himself to the
beautiful young cat.

The next morning, Heaven knows how! it was all over the place that
Reynard the fox had been banished from court for the favour shown him by
her Majesty, and that the lion had bribed his departure with three
hairs that would make any lady whom the fox married young and beautiful
forever.

The cat was the first to learn the news, and she became all curiosity to
see so interesting a stranger, possessed of “qualifications” which, in
the language of the day, “would render any animal happy!” She was not
long without obtaining her wish. As she was taking a walk in the wood
the fox contrived to encounter her. You may be sure that he made her his
best bow; and he flattered the poor cat with so courtly an air that she
saw nothing surprising in the love of the lioness.

Meanwhile let us see what became of his rival, the dog.

“Ah, the poor creature!” said Nymphalin; “it is easy to guess that he
need not be buried alive to lose all chance of marrying the heiress.”

“Wait till the end,” answered Fayzenheim.

When the dog found that he was thus entrapped, he gave himself up for
lost. In vain he kicked with his hind-legs against the stone,--he only
succeeded in bruising his paws; and at length he was forced to lie down,
with his tongue out of his mouth, and quite exhausted. “However,” said
he, after he had taken breath, “it won’t do to be starved here, without
doing my best to escape; and if I can’t get out one way, let me see if
there is not a hole at the other end.” Thus saying, his courage, which
stood him in lieu of cunning, returned, and he proceeded on in the same
straightforward way in which he always conducted himself. At first the
path was exceedingly narrow, and he hurt his sides very much against
the rough stones that projected from the earth; but by degrees the way
became broader, and he now went on with considerable ease to himself,
till he arrived in a large cavern, where he saw an immense griffin
sitting on his tail, and smoking a huge pipe.

The dog was by no means pleased at meeting so suddenly a creature that
had only to open his mouth to swallow him up at a morsel; however,
he put a bold face on the danger, and walking respectfully up to the
griffin, said, “Sir, I should be very much obliged to you if you would
inform me the way out of these holes into the upper world.”

The griffin took the pipe out of his mouth, and looked at the dog very
sternly.

“Ho, wretch!” said he, “how comest thou hither? I suppose thou wantest
to steal my treasure; but I know how to treat such vagabonds as you, and
I shall certainly eat you up.

“You can do that if you choose,” said the dog; “but it would be very
unhandsome conduct in an animal so much bigger than myself. For my own
part, I never attack any dog that is not of equal size,--I should be
ashamed of myself if I did. And as to your treasure, the character I
bear for honesty is too well known to merit such a suspicion.”

“Upon my word,” said the griffin, who could not help smiling for the
life of him, “you have a singularly free mode of expressing yourself.
And how, I say, came you hither?”

Then the dog, who did not know what a lie was, told the griffin his
whole history,--how he had set off to pay his court to the cat, and how
Reynard the fox had entrapped him into the hole.

When he had finished, the griffin said to him, “I see, my friend, that
you know how to speak the truth; I am in want of just such a servant as
you will make me, therefore stay with me and keep watch over my treasure
when I sleep.”

“Two words to that,” said the dog. “You have hurt my feelings very much
by suspecting my honesty, and I would much sooner go back into the wood
and be avenged on that scoundrel the fox, than serve a master who has so
ill an opinion of me. I pray you, therefore, to dismiss me, and to put
me in the right way to my cousin the cat.”

“I am not a griffin of many words,” answered the master of the cavern,
“and I give you your choice,--be my servant or be my breakfast; it is
just the same to me. I give you time to decide till I have smoked out my
pipe.”

The poor dog did not take so long to consider. “It is true,” thought he,
“that it is a great misfortune to live in a cave with a griffin of
so unpleasant a countenance; but, probably, if I serve him well and
faithfully, he’ll take pity on me some day, and let me go back to earth,
and prove to my cousin what a rogue the fox is; and as to the rest,
though I would sell my life as dear as I could, it is impossible to
fight a griffin with a mouth of so monstrous a size.” In short, he
decided to stay with the griffin.

“Shake a paw on it,” quoth the grim smoker; and the dog shook paws.

“And now,” said the griffin, “I will tell you what you are to do. Look
here,” and moving his tail, he showed the dog a great heap of gold and
silver, in a hole in the ground, that he had covered with the folds of
his tail; and also, what the dog thought more valuable, a great heap of
bones of very tempting appearance. “Now,” said the griffin, “during the
day I can take very good care of these myself; but at night it is very
necessary that I should go to sleep, so when I sleep you must watch over
them instead of me.”

“Very well,” said the dog. “As to the gold and silver, I have no
objection; but I would much rather that you would lock up the bones, for
I’m often hungry of a night, and--”

“Hold your tongue,” said the griffin.

“But, sir,” said the dog, after a short silence, “surely nobody ever
comes into so retired a situation! Who are the thieves, if I may make
bold to ask?”

“Know,” answered the griffin, “that there are a great many serpents in
this neighbourhood. They are always trying to steal my treasure; and if
they catch me napping, they, not contented with theft, would do their
best to sting me to death. So that I am almost worn out for want of
sleep.”

“Ah,” quoth the dog, who was fond of a good night’s rest, “I don’t envy
you your treasure, sir.”

At night, the griffin, who had a great deal of penetration, and saw that
he might depend on the dog, lay down to sleep in another corner of the
cave; and the dog, shaking himself well, so as to be quite awake, took
watch over the treasure. His mouth watered exceedingly at the bones, and
he could not help smelling them now and then; but he said to himself, “A
bargain’s a bargain, and since I have promised to serve the griffin, I
must serve him as an honest dog ought to serve.”

In the middle of the night he saw a great snake creeping in by the side
of the cave; but the dog set up so loud a bark that the griffin awoke,
and the snake crept away as fast as he could. Then the griffin was very
much pleased, and he gave the dog one of the bones to amuse himself
with; and every night the dog watched the treasure, and acquitted
himself so well that not a snake, at last, dared to make its
appearance,--so the griffin enjoyed an excellent night’s rest.

The dog now found himself much more comfortable than he expected. The
griffin regularly gave him one of the bones for supper; and, pleased
with his fidelity, made himself as agreeable a master as a griffin
could be. Still, however, the dog was secretly very anxious to return
to earth; for having nothing to do during the day but to doze on the
ground, he dreamed perpetually of his cousin the cat’s charms, and, in
fancy, he gave the rascal Reynard as hearty a worry as a fox may well
have the honour of receiving from a dog’s paws. He awoke panting; alas!
he could not realize his dreams.

One night, as he was watching as usual over the treasure, he was greatly
surprised to see a beautiful little black and white dog enter the
cave; and it came fawning to our honest friend, wagging its tail with
pleasure.

“Ah, little one,” said our dog, whom, to distinguish, I will call the
watch-dog, “you had better make the best of your way back again. See,
there is a great griffin asleep in the other corner of the cave, and if
he wakes, he will either eat you up or make you his servant, as he has
made me.”

“I know what you would tell me,” says the little dog; “and I have come
down here to deliver you. The stone is now gone from the mouth of the
cave, and you have nothing to do but to go back with me. Come, brother,
come.”

The dog was very much excited by this address. “Don’t ask me, my dear
little friend,” said he; “you must be aware that I should be too happy
to escape out of this cold cave, and roll on the soft turf once more:
but if I leave my master, the griffin, those cursed serpents, who are
always on the watch, will come in and steal his treasure,--nay, perhaps,
sting him to death.” Then the little dog came up to the watch-dog, and
remonstrated with him greatly, and licked him caressingly on both sides
of his face; and, taking him by the ear, endeavoured to draw him from
the treasure: but the dog would not stir a step, though his heart sorely
pressed him. At length the little dog, finding it all in vain, said,
“Well, then, if I must leave, good-by; but I have become so hungry in
coming down all this way after you, that I wish you would give me one
of those bones; they smell very pleasantly, and one out of so many could
never be missed.”

“Alas!” said the watchdog, with tears in his eyes, “how unlucky I am to
have eaten up the bone my master gave me, otherwise you should have had
it and welcome. But I can’t give you one of these, because my master has
made me promise to watch over them all, and I have given him my paw
on it. I am sure a dog of your respectable appearance will say nothing
further on the subject.”

Then the little dog answered pettishly, “Pooh, what nonsense you
talk! surely a great griffin can’t miss a little bone fit for me?” and
nestling his nose under the watch-dog, he tried forthwith to bring up
one of the bones.

On this the watch-dog grew angry, and, though with much reluctance, he
seized the little dog by the nape of the neck and threw him off, but
without hurting him. Suddenly the little dog changed into a monstrous
serpent, bigger even than the griffin himself, and the watch-dog barked
with all his might. The griffin rose in a great hurry, and the serpent
sprang upon him ere he was well awake. I wish, dearest Nymphalin, you
could have seen the battle between the griffin and the serpent,--how
they coiled and twisted, and bit and darted their fiery tongues at each
other. At length the serpent got uppermost, and was about to plunge his
tongue into that part of the griffin which is unprotected by his scales,
when the dog, seizing him by the tail, bit him so sharply that he could
not help turning round to kill his new assailant, and the griffin,
taking advantage of the opportunity, caught the serpent by the throat
with both claws, and fairly strangled him. As soon as the griffin had
recovered from the nervousness of the conflict, he heaped all manner
of caresses on the dog for saving his life. The dog told him the whole
story, and the griffin then explained that the dead snake was the king
of the serpents, who had the power to change himself into any shape he
pleased. “If he had tempted you,” said he, “to leave the treasure but
for one moment, or to have given him any part of it, ay, but a single
bone, he would have crushed you in an instant, and stung me to death
ere I could have waked; but none, no, not the most venomous thing in
creation, has power to hurt the honest!”

“That has always been my belief,” answered the dog; “and now, sir, you
had better go to sleep again and leave the rest to me.”

“Nay,” answered the griffin, “I have no longer need of a servant; for
now that the king of the serpents is dead, the rest will never molest
me. It was only to satisfy his avarice that his subjects dared to brave
the den of the griffin.”

Upon hearing this the dog was exceedingly delighted; and raising himself
on his hind paws, he begged the griffin most movingly to let him return
to earth, to visit his mistress the cat, and worry his rival the fox.

“You do not serve an ungrateful master,” answered the griffin. “You
shall return, and I will teach you all the craft of our race, which is
much craftier than the race of that pettifogger the fox, so that you may
be able to cope with your rival.”

“Ah, excuse me,” said the dog, hastily, “I am equally obliged to you;
but I fancy honesty is a match for cunning any day, and I think myself a
great deal safer in being a dog of honour than if I knew all the tricks
in the world.”

“Well,” said the griffin, a little piqued at the dog’s bluntness, “do as
you please; I wish you all possible success.”

Then the griffin opened a secret door in the side of the cabin, and
the dog saw a broad path that led at once into the wood. He thanked
the griffin with all his heart, and ran wagging his tail into the open
moonlight. “Ah, ah, master fox,” said he, “there’s no trap for an honest
dog that has not two doors to it, cunning as you think yourself.”

With that he curled his tail gallantly over his left leg, and set off
on a long trot to the cat’s house. When he was within sight of it, he
stopped to refresh himself by a pool of water, and who should be there
but our friend the magpie.

“And what do _you_ want, friend?” said she, rather disdainfully, for the
dog looked somewhat out of case after his journey.

“I am going to see my cousin the cat,” answered he.

“_Your cousin_! marry come up,” said the magpie; “don’t you know she is
going to be married to Reynard the fox? This is not a time for her to
receive the visits of a brute like you.”

These words put the dog in such a passion that he very nearly bit the
magpie for her uncivil mode of communicating such bad news. However, he
curbed his temper, and, without answering her, went at once to the cat’s
residence.

The cat was sitting at the window, and no sooner did the dog see her
than he fairly lost his heart; never had he seen so charming a cat
before. He advanced, wagging his tail, and with his most insinuating
air, when the cat, getting up, clapped the window in his face, and lo!
Reynard the fox appeared in her stead.

“Come out, thou rascal!” said the dog, showing his teeth; “come out,
I challenge thee to single combat; I have not forgiven thy malice, and
thou seest that I am no longer shut up in the cave, and unable to punish
thee for thy wickedness.”

“Go home, silly one!” answered the fox, sneering; “thou hast no business
here, and as for fighting thee--bah!” Then the fox left the window and
disappeared. But the dog, thoroughly enraged, scratched lustily at the
door, and made such a noise, that presently the cat herself came to the
window.

“How now!” said she, angrily; “what means all this rudeness? Who are
you, and what do you want at my house?”

“Oh, my dear cousin,” said the dog, “do not speak so severely. Know that
I have come here on purpose to pay you a visit; and, whatever you do,
let me beseech you not to listen to that villain Reynard,--you have no
conception what a rogue he is!”

“What!” said the cat, blushing; “do you dare to abuse your betters in
this fashion? I see you have a design on me. Go, this instant, or--”

“Enough, madam,” said the dog, proudly; “you need not speak twice to
me,--farewell.”

And he turned away very slowly, and went under a tree, where he took up
his lodgings for the night. But the next morning there was an amazing
commotion in the neighbourhood; a stranger, of a very different style of
travelling from that of the dog, had arrived at the dead of the night,
and fixed his abode in a large cavern hollowed out of a steep rock. The
noise he had made in flying through the air was so great that it had
awakened every bird and beast in the parish; and Reynard, whose bad
conscience never suffered him to sleep very soundly, putting his head
out of the window, perceived, to his great alarm, that the stranger was
nothing less than a monstrous griffin.

Now the griffins are the richest beasts in the world; and that’s the
reason they keep so close under ground. Whenever it does happen that
they pay a visit above, it is not a thing to be easily forgotten.

The magpie was all agitation. What could the griffin possibly want
there? She resolved to take a peep at the cavern, and accordingly she
hopped timorously up the rock, and pretended to be picking up sticks for
her nest.

“Holla, ma’am!” cried a very rough voice, and she saw the griffin
putting his head out of the cavern. “Holla! you are the very lady I want
to see; you know all the people about here, eh?”

“All the best company, your lordship, I certainly do,” answered the
magpie, dropping a courtesy.

Upon this the griffin walked out; and smoking his pipe leisurely in the
open air, in order to set the pie at her ease, continued,--

“Are there any respectable beasts of good families settled in this
neighbourhood?”

“Oh, most elegant society, I assure your lordship,” cried the pie. “I
have lived here myself these ten years, and the great heiress, the cat
yonder, attracts a vast number of strangers.”

“Humph! heiress, indeed! much you know about heiresses!” said the
griffin. “There is only one heiress in the world, and that’s my
daughter.”

“Bless me! has your lordship a family? I beg you a thousand pardons; but
I only saw your lordship’s own equipage last night, and did not know you
brought any one with you.”

“My daughter went first, and was safely lodged before I arrived. She did
not disturb you, I dare say, as I did; for she sails along like a swan:
but I have got the gout in my left claw, and that’s the reason I puff
and groan so in taking a journey.”

“Shall I drop in upon Miss Griffin, and see how she is after her
journey?” said the pie, advancing.

“I thank you, no. I don’t intend her to be seen while I stay here,--it
unsettles her; and I’m afraid of the young beasts running away with her
if they once heard how handsome she was: she’s the living picture of me,
but she’s monstrous giddy! Not that I should care much if she did go off
with a beast of degree, were I not obliged to pay her portion, which is
prodigious; and I don’t like parting with money, ma’am, when I’ve once
got it. Ho, ho, ho!”

“You are too witty, my lord. But if you refused your consent?” said the
pie, anxious to know the whole family history of so grand a seigneur.

“I should have to pay the dowry all the same. It was left her by her
uncle the dragon. But don’t let this go any further.”

“Your lordship may depend on my secrecy. I wish your lordship a very
good morning.”

Away flew the pie, and she did not stop till she got to the cat’s house.
The cat and the fox were at breakfast, and the fox had his paw on his
heart. “Beautiful scene!” cried the pie; the cat coloured, and bade the
pie take a seat.

Then off went the pie’s tongue, glib, glib, glib, chatter, chatter,
chatter. She related to them the whole story of the griffin and his
daughter, and a great deal more besides, that the griffin had never told
her.

The cat listened attentively. Another young heiress in the neighbourhood
might be a formidable rival. “But is this griffiness handsome?” said
she.

“Handsome!” cried the pie; “oh, if you could have seen the father!--such
a mouth, such eyes, such a complexion; and he declares she’s the living
picture of himself! But what do you say, Mr. Reynard,--you, who have
been so much in the world, have, perhaps, seen the young lady?”

“Why, I can’t say I have,” answered the fox, waking from a revery;
“but she must be wonderfully rich. I dare say that fool the dog will be
making up to her.”

“Ah, by the way,” said the pie, “what a fuss he made at your door
yesterday; why would you not admit him, my dear?”

“Oh,” said the cat, demurely, “Mr. Reynard says that he is a dog of very
bad character, quite a fortune-hunter; and hiding the most dangerous
disposition to bite under an appearance of good nature. I hope he won’t
be quarrelsome with you, dear Reynard!”

“With me? Oh, the poor wretch, no!--he might bluster a little; but he
knows that if I’m once angry I’m a devil at biting;--one should not
boast of oneself.”

In the evening Reynard felt a strange desire to go and see the griffin
smoking his pipe; but what could he do? There was the dog under the
opposite tree evidently watching for him, and Reynard had no wish to
prove himself that devil at biting which he declared he was. At last he
resolved to have recourse to stratagem to get rid of the dog.

A young buck of a rabbit, a sort of provincial fop, had looked in upon
his cousin the cat, to pay her his respects, and Reynard, taking him
aside, said, “You see that shabby-looking dog under the tree? He has
behaved very ill to your cousin the cat, and you certainly ought
to challenge him. Forgive my boldness, nothing but respect for your
character induces me to take so great a liberty; you know I would
chastise the rascal myself, but what a scandal it would make! If I were
already married to your cousin, it would be a different thing. But you
know what a story that cursed magpie would hatch out of it!”

The rabbit looked very foolish; he assured the fox he was no match for
the dog; that he was very fond of his cousin, to be sure! but he saw
no necessity to interfere with her domestic affairs; and, in short, he
tried all he possibly could to get out of the scrape; but the fox so
artfully played on his vanity, so earnestly assured him that the dog was
the biggest coward in the world and would make a humble apology, and so
eloquently represented to him the glory he would obtain for manifesting
so much spirit, that at length the rabbit was persuaded to go out and
deliver the challenge.

“I’ll be your second,” said the fox; “and the great field on the other
side the wood, two miles hence, shall be the place of battle: there we
shall be out of observation. You go first, I’ll follow in half an hour;
and I say, hark!--in case he does accept the challenge, and you feel the
least afraid, I’ll be in the field, and take it off your paws with the
utmost pleasure; rely on _me_, my dear sir!”

Away went the rabbit. The dog was a little astonished at the temerity
of the poor creature; but on hearing that the fox was to be present,
willingly consented to repair to the place of conflict. This readiness
the rabbit did not at all relish; he went very slowly to the field,
and seeing no fox there, his heart misgave him; and while the dog was
putting his nose to the ground to try if he could track the coming of
the fox, the rabbit slipped into a burrow, and left the dog to walk back
again.

Meanwhile the fox was already at the rock; he walked very soft-footedly,
and looked about with extreme caution, for he had a vague notion that a
griffin-papa would not be very civil to foxes.

Now there were two holes in the rock,--one below, one above, an upper
story and an under; and while the fox was peering about, he saw a great
claw from the upper rock beckoning to him.

“Ah, ah!” said the fox, “that’s the wanton young griffiness, I’ll
swear.”

He approached, and a voice said,--

“Charming Mr. Reynard, do you not think you could deliver an unfortunate
griffiness from a barbarous confinement in this rock?”

“Oh, heavens!” cried the fox, tenderly, “what a beautiful voice! and,
ah, my poor heart, what a lovely claw! Is it possible that I hear the
daughter of my lord, the great griffin?”

“Hush, flatterer! not so loud, if you please. My father is taking an
evening stroll, and is very quick of hearing. He has tied me up by
my poor wings in the cavern, for he is mightily afraid of some beast
running away with me. You know I have all my fortune settled on myself.”

“Talk not of fortune,” said the fox; “but how can I deliver you? Shall I
enter and gnaw the cord?”

“Alas!” answered the griffiness, “it is an immense chain I am bound
with. However, you may come in and talk more at your ease.”

The fox peeped cautiously all round, and seeing no sign of the griffin,
he entered the lower cave and stole upstairs to the upper story; but as
he went on, he saw immense piles of jewels and gold, and all sorts of
treasure, so that the old griffin might well have laughed at the
poor cat being called an heiress. The fox was greatly pleased at such
indisputable signs of wealth, and he entered the upper cave, resolved to
be transported with the charms of the griffiness.

There was, however, a great chasm between the landing-place and the spot
where the young lady was chained, and he found it impossible to pass;
the cavern was very dark, but he saw enough of the figure of the
griffiness to perceive, in spite of her petticoat, that she was the
image of her father, and the most hideous heiress that the earth ever
saw!

However, he swallowed his disgust, and poured forth such a heap of
compliments that the griffiness appeared entirely won.

He implored her to fly with him the first moment she was unchained.

“That is impossible,” said she; “for my father never unchains me except
in his presence, and then I cannot stir out of his sight.”

“The wretch!” cried Reynard, “what is to be done?”

“Why, there is only one thing I know of,” answered the griffiness,
“which is this: I always make his soup for him, and if I could mix
something in it that would put him fast to sleep before he had time to
chain me up again I might slip down and carry off all the treasure below
on my back.”

“Charming!” exclaimed Reynard; “what invention! what wit! I will go and
get some poppies directly.”

“Alas!” said the griffiness, “poppies have no effect upon griffins. The
only thing that can ever put my father fast to sleep is a nice young cat
boiled up in his soup; it is astonishing what a charm that has upon him!
But where to get a cat?--it must be a maiden cat too!”

Reynard was a little startled at so singular an opiate. “But,” thought
he, “griffins are not like the rest of the world, and so rich an heiress
is not to be won by ordinary means.”

“I do know a cat,--a maiden cat,” said he, after a short pause; “but
I feel a little repugnance at the thought of having her boiled in the
griffin’s soup. Would not a dog do as well?”

“Ah, base thing!” said the griffiness, appearing to weep; “you are in
love with the cat, I see it; go and marry her, poor dwarf that she is,
and leave me to die of grief.”

In vain the fox protested that he did not care a straw for the cat;
nothing could now appease the griffiness but his positive assurance that
come what would poor puss should be brought to the cave and boiled for
the griffin’s soup.

“But how will you get her here?” said the griffiness.

“Ah, leave that to me,” said Reynard. “Only put a basket out of the
window and draw it up by a cord; the moment it arrives at the window, be
sure to clap your claw on the cat at once, for she is terribly active.”

“Tush!” answered the heiress; “a pretty griffiness I should be if I did
not know how to catch a cat!”

“But this must be when your father is out?” said Reynard.

“Certainly; he takes a stroll every evening at sunset.”

“Let it be to-morrow, then,” said Reynard, impatient for the treasure.

This being arranged, Reynard thought it time to decamp. He stole down
the stairs again, and tried to filch some of the treasure by the way;
but it was too heavy for him to carry, and he was forced to acknowledge
to himself that it was impossible to get the treasure without taking the
griffiness (whose back seemed prodigiously strong) into the bargain.

He returned home to the cat, and when he entered her house, and saw how
ordinary everything looked after the jewels in the griffin’s cave, he
quite wondered how he had ever thought the cat had the least pretensions
to good looks. However, he concealed his wicked design, and his mistress
thought he had never appeared so amiable.

“Only guess,” said he, “where I have been!--to our new neighbour the
griffin; a most charming person, thoroughly affable, and quite the air
of the court. As for that silly magpie, the griffin saw her character at
once; and it was all a hoax about his daughter,--he has no daughter at
all. You know, my dear, hoaxing is a fashionable amusement among the
great. He says he has heard of nothing but your beauty, and on my
telling him we were going to be married, he has insisted upon giving a
great ball and supper in honour of the event. In fact, he is a gallant
old fellow, and dying to see you. Of course, I was obliged to accept the
invitation.”

“You could not do otherwise,” said the unsuspecting young creature, who,
as I before said, was very susceptible to flattery.

“And only think how delicate his attentions are,” said the fox. “As he
is very badly lodged for a beast of his rank, and his treasure takes up
the whole of the ground floor, he is forced to give the _fete_ in the
upper story, so he hangs out a basket for his guests, and draws them up
with his own claw. How condescending! But the great _are_ so amiable!”

The cat, brought up in seclusion, was all delight at the idea of seeing
such high life, and the lovers talked of nothing else all the next
day,--when Reynard, towards evening, putting his head out of the window,
saw his old friend the dog lying as usual and watching him very grimly.
“Ah, that cursed creature! I had quite forgotten him; what is to be
done now? He would make no bones of me if he once saw me set foot out of
doors.”

With that, the fox began to cast in his head how he should get rid
of his rival, and at length he resolved on a very notable project; he
desired the cat to set out first, and wait for him at a turn in the road
a little way off. “For,” said he, “if we go together we shall certainly
be insulted by the dog; and he will know that in the presence of a lady,
the custom of a beast of my fashion will not suffer me to avenge the
affront. But when I am alone, the creature is such a coward that he will
not dare say his soul’s his own; leave the door open and I’ll follow
immediately.”

The cat’s mind was so completely poisoned against her cousin that she
implicitly believed this account of his character; and accordingly, with
many recommendations to her lover not to sully his dignity by getting
into any sort of quarrel with the dog, she set off first.

The dog went up to her very humbly, and begged her to allow him to say a
few words to her; but she received him so haughtily, that his spirit was
up; and he walked back to the tree more than ever enraged against his
rival. But what was his joy when he saw that the cat had left the door
open! “Now, wretch,” thought he, “you cannot escape me!” So he walked
briskly in at the back door. He was greatly surprised to find Reynard
lying down in the straw, panting as if his heart would break, and
rolling his eyes in the pangs of death.

“Ah, friend,” said the fox, with a faltering voice, “you are avenged,
my hour is come; I am just going to give up the ghost: put your paw upon
mine, and say you forgive me.”

Despite his anger, the generous dog could not set tooth on a dying foe.

“You have served me a shabby trick,” said he; “you have left me to
starve in a hole, and you have evidently maligned me with my cousin:
certainly I meant to be avenged on you; but if you are really dying,
that alters the affair.”

“Oh, oh!” groaned the fox, very bitterly; “I am past help; the poor cat
is gone for Doctor Ape, but he’ll never come in time. What a thing it
is to have a bad conscience on one’s death-bed! But wait till the cat
returns, and I’ll do you full justice with her before I die.”

The good-natured dog was much moved at seeing his mortal enemy in such a
state, and endeavoured as well as he could to console him.

“Oh, oh!” said the fox; “I am so parched in the throat, I am burning;”
 and he hung his tongue out of his mouth, and rolled his eyes more
fearfully than ever.

“Is there no water here?” said the dog, looking round.

“Alas, no!--yet stay! yes, now I think of it, there is some in that
little hole in the wall; but how to get at it! It is so high that I
can’t, in my poor weak state, climb up to it; and I dare not ask such a
favour of one I have injured so much.”

“Don’t talk of it,” said the dog: “but the hole’s very small, I could
not put my nose through it.”

“No; but if you just climb up on that stone, and thrust your paw into
the hole, you can dip it into the water, and so cool my poor parched
mouth. Oh, what a thing it is to have a bad conscience!”

The dog sprang upon the stone, and, getting on his hind legs, thrust his
front paw into the hole; when suddenly Reynard pulled a string that he
had concealed under the straw, and the dog found his paw caught tight to
the wall in a running noose.

“Ah, rascal!” said he, turning round; but the fox leaped up gayly from
the straw, and fastening the string with his teeth to a nail in the
other end of the wall, walked out, crying, “Good-by, my dear friend;
have a care how you believe hereafter in sudden conversions!” So he left
the dog on his hind legs to take care of the house.

Reynard found the cat waiting for him where he had appointed, and they
walked lovingly together till they came to the cave. It was now dark,
and they saw the basket waiting below; the fox assisted the poor cat
into it. “There is only room for one,” said he, “you must go first!” Up
rose the basket; the fox heard a piteous mew, and no more.

“So much for the griffin’s soup!” thought he.

He waited patiently for some time, when the griffiness, waving her claw
from the window, said cheerfully, “All’s right, my dear Reynard; my papa
has finished his soup, and sleeps as sound as a rock! All the noise in
the world would not wake him now, till he has slept off the boiled cat,
which won’t be these twelve hours. Come and assist me in packing up the
treasure; I should be sorry to leave a single diamond behind.”

“So should I,” quoth the fox. “Stay, I’ll come round by the lower
hole: why, the door’s shut! pray, beautiful griffiness, open it to thy
impatient adorer.”

“Alas, my father has hid the key! I never know where he places it. You
must come up by the basket; see, I will lower it for you.”

The fox was a little loth to trust himself in the same conveyance that
had taken his mistress to be boiled; but the most cautious grow rash
when money’s to be gained, and avarice can trap even a fox. So he put
himself as comfortably as he could into the basket, and up he went in an
instant. It rested, however, just before it reached the window, and the
fox felt, with a slight shudder, the claw of the griffiness stroking his
back.

“Oh, what a beautiful coat!” quoth she, caressingly.

“You are too kind,” said the fox; “but you can feel it more at your
leisure when I am once up. Make haste, I beseech you.”

“Oh, what a beautiful bushy tail! Never did I feel such a tail.”

“It is entirely at your service, sweet griffiness,” said the fox; “but
pray let me in. Why lose an instant?”

“No, never did I feel such a tail! No wonder you are so successful with
the ladies.”

“Ah, beloved griffiness, my tail is yours to eternity, but you pinch it
a little too hard.”

Scarcely had he said this, when down dropped the basket, but not with
the fox in it; he found himself caught by the tail, and dangling half
way down the rock, by the help of the very same sort of pulley wherewith
he had snared the dog. I leave you to guess his consternation; he yelped
out as loud as he could,--for it hurts a fox exceedingly to be hanged by
his tail with his head downwards,--when the door of the rock opened, and
out stalked the griffin himself, smoking his pipe, with a vast crowd of
all the fashionable beasts in the neighbourhood.

“Oho, brother,” said the bear, laughing fit to kill himself; “who ever
saw a fox hanged by the tail before?”

“You’ll have need of a physician,” quoth Doctor Ape.

“A pretty match, indeed; a griffiness for such a creature as you!” said
the goat, strutting by him.

The fox grinned with pain, and said nothing. But that which hurt him
most was the compassion of a dull fool of a donkey, who assured him with
great gravity that he saw nothing at all to laugh at in his situation!

“At all events,” said the fox, at last, “cheated, gulled, betrayed as
I am, I have played the same trick to the dog. Go and laugh at him,
gentlemen; he deserves it as much as I can, I assure you.”

“Pardon me,” said the griffin, taking the pipe out of his mouth; “one
never laughs at the honest.”

“And see,” said the bear, “here he is.”

And indeed the dog had, after much effort, gnawed the string in two, and
extricated his paw; the scent of the fox had enabled him to track
his footsteps, and here he arrived, burning for vengeance and finding
himself already avenged.

But his first thought was for his dear cousin. “Ah, where is she?” he
cried movingly; “without doubt that villain Reynard has served her some
scurvy trick.”

“I fear so indeed, my old friend,” answered the griffin; “but don’t
grieve,--after all, she was nothing particular. You shall marry my
daughter the griffiness, and succeed to all the treasure; ay, and all
the bones that you once guarded so faithfully.”

“Talk not to me,” said the faithful dog. “I want none of your treasure;
and, though I don’t mean to be rude, your griffiness may go to the
devil. I will run over the world, but I will find my dear cousin.”

“See her then,” said the griffin; and the beautiful cat, more beautiful
than ever, rushed out of the cavern, and threw herself into the dog’s
paws.

A pleasant scene this for the fox! He had skill enough in the female
heart to know that it may excuse many little infidelities, but to be
boiled alive for a griffin’s soup--no, the offence was inexpiable.

“You understand me, Mr. Reynard,” said the griffin, “I have no daughter,
and it was me you made love to. Knowing what sort of a creature a magpie
is, I amused myself with hoaxing her,--the fashionable amusement at
court, you know.”

The fox made a mighty struggle, and leaped on the ground, leaving his
tail behind him. It did not grow again in a hurry.

“See,” said the griffin, as the beasts all laughed at the figure Reynard
made running into the wood, “the dog beats the fox with the ladies,
after all; and cunning as he is in everything else, the fox is the last
creature that should ever think of making love!”



“Charming!” cried Nymphalin, clasping her hands; “it is just the sort of
story I like.”

“And I suppose, sir,” said Nip, pertly, “that the dog and the cat lived
very happily ever afterwards? Indeed the nuptial felicity of a dog and
cat is proverbial!”

“I dare say they lived much the same as any other married couple,”
 answered the prince.



CHAPTER XIII. THE TOMB OF A FATHER OF MANY CHILDREN.

THE feast being now ended, as well as the story, the fairies wound their
way homeward by a different path, till at length a red steady light
glowed through the long basaltic arches upon them, like the Demon
Hunters’ fires in the Forest of Pines.

The prince sobered in his pace. “You approach,” said he, in a grave
tone, “the greatest of our temples; you will witness the tomb of a
mighty founder of our race!” An awe crept over the queen, in spite of
herself. Tracking the fires in silence, they came to a vast space, in
the midst of which was a long gray block of stone, such as the traveller
finds amidst the dread silence of Egyptian Thebes.

And on this stone lay the gigantic figure of a man,--dead, but not
death-like, for invisible spells had preserved the flesh and the long
hair for untold ages; and beside him lay a rude instrument of music, and
at his feet was a sword and a hunter’s spear; and above, the rock wound,
hollowed and roofless, to the upper air, and daylight came through,
sickened and pale, beneath red fires that burned everlastingly around
him, on such simple altars as belong to a savage race. But the place was
not solitary, for many motionless but not lifeless shapes sat on large
blocks of stone beside the tomb. There was the wizard, wrapped in his
long black mantle, and his face covered with his hands; there was
the uncouth and deformed dwarf, gibbering to himself; there sat the
household elf; there glowered from a gloomy rent in the wall, with
glittering eyes and shining scale, the enormous dragon of the North. An
aged crone in rags, leaning on a staff, and gazing malignantly on the
visitors, with bleared but fiery eyes, stood opposite the tomb of the
gigantic dead. And now the fairies themselves completed the group! But
all was dumb and unutterably silent,--the silence that floats over
some antique city of the desert, when, for the first time for a hundred
centuries, a living foot enters its desolate remains; the silence that
belongs to the dust of eld,--deep, solemn, palpable, and sinking into
the heart with a leaden and death-like weight. Even the English fairy
spoke not; she held her breath, and gazing on the tomb, she saw, in rude
vast characters,--

     THE TEUTON.

“_We_ are all that remain of his religion!” said the prince, as they
turned from the dread temple.



CHAPTER XIV. THE FAIRY’S CAVE, AND THE FAIRY’S WISH.

IT was evening; and the fairies were dancing beneath the twilight star.

“And why art thou sad, my violet?” said the prince; “for thine eyes seek
the ground!”

“Now that I have found thee,” answered the queen, “and now that I feel
what happy love is to a fairy, I sigh over that love which I have lately
witnessed among mortals, but the bud of whose happiness already conceals
the worm. For well didst thou say, my prince, that we are linked with a
mysterious affinity to mankind, and whatever is pure and gentle amongst
them speaks at once to our sympathy, and commands our vigils.”

“And most of all,” said the German fairy, “are they who love under our
watch; for love is the golden chain that binds all in the universe: love
lights up alike the star and the glow-worm; and wherever there is
love in men’s lot, lies the secret affinity with men, and with things
divine.”

“But with the human race,” said Nymphalin, “there is no love that
outlasts the hour, for either death ends, or custom alters. When the
blossom comes to fruit, it is plucked and seen no more; and therefore,
when I behold true love sentenced to an early grave, I comfort myself
that I shall not at least behold the beauty dimmed, and the softness of
the heart hardened into stone. Yet, my prince, while still the pulse
can beat, and the warm blood flow, in that beautiful form which I have
watched over of late, let me not desert her; still let my influence keep
the sky fair, and the breezes pure; still let me drive the vapour from
the moon, and the clouds from the faces of the stars; still let me fill
her dreams with tender and brilliant images, and glass in the mirror
of sleep the happiest visions of fairy-land; still let me pour over her
eyes that magic, which suffers them to see no fault in one in whom she
has garnered up her soul! And as death comes slowly on, still let me
rob the spectre of its terror, and the grave of its sting; so that, all
gently and unconscious to herself, life may glide into the Great Ocean
where the shadows lie, and the spirit without guile may be severed from
its mansion without pain!”

The wish of the fairy was fulfilled.



CHAPTER XV. THE BANKS OF THE RHINE.--FROM THE DRACHENFELS TO BROHL.--AN
INCIDENT THAT SUFFICES IN THIS TALE FOR AN EPOCH.

FROM the Drachenfels commences the true glory of the Rhine; and once
more Gertrude’s eyes conquered the languor that crept gradually over
them as she gazed on the banks around.

Fair blew the breeze, and freshly curled the waters; and Gertrude did
not feel the vulture that had fixed its talons within her breast. The
Rhine widens, like a broad lake, between the Drachenfels and Unkel;
villages are scattered over the extended plain on the left; on the right
is the Isle of Werth and the houses of Oberwinter; the hills are covered
with vines; and still Gertrude turned back with a lingering gaze to the
lofty crest of the Seven Hills.

On, on--and the spires of Unkel rose above a curve in the banks, and
on the opposite shore stretched those wondrous basaltic columns which
extend to the middle of the river, and when the Rhine runs low, you
may see them like an engulfed city beneath the waves. You then view the
ruins of Okkenfels, and hear the voice of the pastoral Gasbach pouring
its waters into the Rhine. From amidst the clefts of the rocks the vine
peeps luxuriantly forth, and gives a richness and colouring to what
Nature, left to herself, intended for the stern.

“But turn your eye backward to the right,” said Trevylyan; “those banks
were formerly the special haunt of the bold robbers of the Rhine, and
from amidst the entangled brakes that then covered the ragged cliffs
they rushed upon their prey. In the gloomy canvas of those feudal days
what vigorous and mighty images were crowded! A robber’s life amidst
these mountains, and beside this mountain stream, must have been the
very poetry of the spot carried into action.”

They rested at Brohl, a small town between two mountains. On the summit
of one you see the gray remains of Rheinech. There is something weird
and preternatural about the aspect of this place; its soil betrays signs
that in the former ages (from which even tradition is fast fading away)
some volcano here exhausted its fires. The stratum of the earth is black
and pitchy, and the springs beneath it are of a dark and graveolent
water. Here the stream of the Brohlbach falls into the Rhine, and in
a valley rich with oak and pine, and full of caverns, which are not
without their traditionary inmates, stands the castle of Schweppenbourg,
which our party failed not to visit.

Gertrude felt fatigued on their return, and Trevylyan sat by her in the
little inn, while Vane went forth, with the curiosity of science, to
examine the strata of the soil.

They conversed in the frankness of their plighted troth upon those
topics which are only for lovers: upon the bright chapter in the history
of their love; their first meeting; their first impressions; the little
incidents in their present journey,--incidents noticed by themselves
alone; that life _within_ life which two persons know together,--which
one knows not without the other, which ceases to both the instant they
are divided.

“I know not what the love of others may be,” said Gertrude, “but
ours seems different from all of which I have read. Books tell us of
jealousies and misconstructions, and the necessity of an absence, the
sweetness of a quarrel; but we, dearest Albert, have had no experience
of these passages in love. _We_ have never misunderstood each other;
_we_ have no reconciliation to look back to. When was there ever
occasion for me to ask forgiveness from you? Our love is made up only of
one memory,--unceasing kindness! A harsh word, a wronging thought, never
broke in upon the happiness we have felt and feel.”

“Dearest Gertrude,” said Trevylyan, “that character of our love is
caught from you; you, the soft, the gentle, have been its pervading
genius; and the well has been smooth and pure, for you were the spirit
that lived within its depths.”

And to such talk succeeded silence still more sweet,--the silence of
the hushed and overflowing heart. The last voices of the birds, the sun
slowly sinking in the west, the fragrance of descending dews, filled
them with that deep and mysterious sympathy which exists between Love
and Nature.

It was after such a silence--a long silence, that seemed but as a
moment--that Trevylyan spoke, but Gertrude answered not; and, yearning
once more for her sweet voice, he turned and saw that she had fainted
away.

This was the first indication of the point to which her increasing
debility had arrived. Trevylyan’s heart stood still, and then beat
violently; a thousand fears crept over him; he clasped her in his
arms, and bore her to the open window. The setting sun fell upon her
countenance, from which the play of the young heart and warm fancy
had fled, and in its deep and still repose the ravages of disease were
darkly visible. What were then his emotions! His heart was like stone;
but he felt a rush as of a torrent to his temples: his eyes grew
dizzy,--he was stunned by the greatness of his despair. For the last
week he had taken hope for his companion; Gertrude had seemed so much
stronger, for her happiness had given her a false support. And though
there had been moments when, watching the bright hectic come and go,
and her step linger, and the breath heave short, he had felt the hope
suddenly cease, yet never had he known till now that fulness of anguish,
that dread certainty of the worst, which the calm, fair face before him
struck into his soul; and mixed with this agony as he gazed was all
the passion of the most ardent love. For there she lay in his arms,
the gentle breath rising from lips where the rose yet lingered, and
the long, rich hair, soft and silken as an infant’s, stealing from
its confinement: everything that belonged to Gertrude’s beauty was so
inexpressibly soft and pure and youthful! Scarcely seventeen, she seemed
much younger than she was; her figure had sunken from its roundness, but
still how light, how lovely were its wrecks! the neck whiter than snow,
the fair small hand! Her weight was scarcely felt in the arms of her
lover; and he--what a contrast!--was in all the pride and flower of
glorious manhood! His was the lofty brow, the wreathing hair, the
haughty eye, the elastic form; and upon this frail, perishable thing
had he fixed all his heart, all the hopes of his youth, the pride of his
manhood, his schemes, his energies, his ambition!

“Oh, Gertrude!” cried he, “is it--is it thus--is there indeed no hope?”

And Gertrude now slowly recovering, and opening her eyes upon
Trevylyan’s face, the revulsion was so great, his emotions so
overpowering, that, clasping her to his bosom, as if even death should
not tear her away from him, he wept over her in an agony of tears; not
those tears that relieve the heart, but the fiery rain of the internal
storm, a sign of the fierce tumult that shook the very core of his
existence, not a relief.

Awakened to herself, Gertrude, in amazement and alarm, threw her arms
around his neck, and, looking wistfully into his face, implored him to
speak to her.

“Was it my illness, love?” said she; and the music of her voice only
conveyed to him the thought of how soon it would be dumb to him forever.
“Nay,” she continued winningly, “it was but the heat of the day; I am
better now,--I am well; there is no cause to be alarmed for me!” and
with all the innocent fondness of extreme youth, she kissed the burning
tears from his eyes.

There was a playfulness, an innocence in this poor girl, so unconscious
as yet of her destiny, which rendered her fate doubly touching,
and which to the stern Trevylyan, hackneyed by the world, made her
irresistible charm; and now as she put aside her hair, and looked up
gratefully, yet pleadingly, into his face, he could scarce refrain from
pouring out to her the confession of his anguish and despair. But the
necessity of self-control, the necessity of concealing from _her_ a
knowledge which might only, by impressing her imagination, expedite her
doom, while it would embitter to her mind the unconscious enjoyment of
the hour, nerved and manned him. He checked by those violent efforts
which only men can make, the evidence of his emotions; and endeavoured,
by a rapid torrent of words, to divert her attention from a weakness,
the causes of which he could not explain. Fortunately Vane soon
returned, and Trevylyan, consigning Gertrude to his care, hastily left
the room.

Gertrude sank into a revery.

“Ah, dear father!” said she, suddenly, and after a pause, “if I indeed
were worse than I have thought myself of late, if I were to die now,
what would Trevylyan feel? Pray God I may live for his sake!”

“My child, do not talk thus; you are better, much better than you were.
Ere the autumn ends, Trevylyan’s happiness will be your lawful care. Do
not think so despondently of yourself.”

“I thought not of myself,” sighed Gertrude, “but of _him_!”



CHAPTER XVI. GERTRUDE.--THE EXCURSION TO HAMMERSTEIN.--THOUGHTS.

THE next day they visited the environs of Brohl. Gertrude was unusually
silent; for her temper, naturally sunny and enthusiastic, was accustomed
to light up everything she saw. Ah, once how bounding was that step! how
undulating the young graces of that form! how playfully once danced the
ringlets on that laughing cheek! But she clung to Trevylyan’s proud form
with a yet more endearing tenderness than was her wont, and hung yet
more eagerly on his words; her hand sought his, and she often pressed it
to her lips, and sighed as she did so. Something that she would not tell
seemed passing within her, and sobered her playful mood. But there
was this noticeable in Gertrude: whatever took away from her gayety
increased her tenderness. The infirmities of her frame never touched her
temper. She was kind, gentle, loving to the last.

They had crossed to the opposite banks, to visit the Castle of
Hammerstein. The evening was transparently serene and clear; and the
warmth of the sun yet lingered upon the air, even though the twilight
had passed and the moon risen, as their boat returned by a lengthened
passage to the village. Broad and straight flows the Rhine in this part
of its career. On one side lay the wooded village of Namedy, the hamlet
of Fornech, backed by the blue rock of Kruezborner Ley, the mountains
that shield the mysterious Brohl; and on the opposite shore they saw the
mighty rock of Hammerstein, with the green and livid ruins sleeping
in the melancholy moonlight. Two towers rose haughtily above the more
dismantled wrecks. How changed since the alternate banners of the
Spaniard and the Swede waved from their ramparts, in that great war in
which the gorgeous Wallenstein won his laurels! And in its mighty
calm flowed on the ancestral Rhine, the vessel reflected on its smooth
expanse; and above, girded by thin and shadowy clouds, the moon cast her
shadows upon rocks covered with verdure, and brought into a dim light
the twin spires of Andernach, tranquil in the distance.

“How beautiful is this hour!” said Gertrude, with a low voice, “surely
we do not live enough in the night; one half the beauty of the world is
slept away. What in the day can equal the holy calm, the loveliness,
and the stillness which the moon now casts over the earth? These,”
 she continued, pressing Trevylyan’s hand, “are hours to remember; and
_you_--will you ever forget them?”

Something there is in recollections of such times and scenes that seem
not to belong to real life, but are rather an episode in its history;
they are like some wandering into a more ideal world; they refuse to
blend with our ruder associations; they live in us, apart and alone, to
be treasured ever, but not lightly to be recalled. There are none living
to whom we can confide them,--who can sympathize with what then we
felt? It is this that makes poetry, and that page which we create as a
confidant to ourselves, necessary to the thoughts that weigh upon the
breast. We write, for our writing is our friend, the inanimate paper is
our confessional; we pour forth on it the thoughts that we could tell
to no private ear, and are relieved, are consoled. And if genius has
one prerogative dearer than the rest, it is that which enables it to do
honour to the dead,--to revive the beauty, the virtue that are no more;
to wreathe chaplets that outlive the day around the urn which were else
forgotten by the world!

When the poet mourns, in his immortal verse, for the dead, tell me not
that fame is in his mind! It is filled by thoughts, by emotions that
shut out the living. He is breathing to his genius--to that sole and
constant friend which has grown up with him from his cradle--the sorrows
too delicate for human sympathy! and when afterwards he consigns the
confession to the crowd, it is indeed from the hope of honour--, honour
not for himself, but for the being that is no more.



CHAPTER XVII. LETTER FROM TREVYLYAN TO -----.


                         COBLENTZ.

I AM obliged to you, my dear friend, for your letter; which, indeed, I
have not, in the course of our rapid journey, had the leisure, perhaps
the heart, to answer before. But we are staying in this town for some
days, and I write now in the early morning, ere any one else in our
hotel is awake. Do not tell me of adventure, of politics, of intrigues;
my nature is altered. I threw down your letter, animated and brilliant
as it was, with a sick and revolted heart. But I am now in somewhat less
dejected spirits. Gertrude is better,--yes, really better; there is a
physician here who gives me hope; my care is perpetually to amuse,
and never to fatigue her,--never to permit her thoughts to rest upon
herself. For I have imagined that illness cannot, at least in the
unexhausted vigour of our years, fasten upon us irremediably unless we
feed it with our own belief in its existence. You see men of the
most delicate frames engaged in active and professional pursuits, who
literally have no time for illness. Let them become idle, let them take
care of themselves, let them think of their health--and they die! The
rust rots the steel which use preserves; and, thank Heaven, although
Gertrude, once during our voyage, seemed roused, by an inexcusable
imprudence of emotion on my part, into some suspicion of her state,
yet it passed away; for she thinks rarely of herself,--I am ever in her
thoughts and seldom from her side, and you know, too, the sanguine and
credulous nature of her disease. But, indeed, I now hope more than I
have done since I knew her.

When, after an excited and adventurous life which had comprised so
many changes in so few years, I found myself at rest in the bosom of a
retired and remote part of the country, and Gertrude and her father were
my only neighbours, I was in that state of mind in which the passions,
recruited by solitude, are accessible to the purer and more divine
emotions. I was struck by Gertrude’s beauty, I was charmed by
her simplicity. Worn in the usages and fashions of the world, the
inexperience, the trustfulness, the exceeding youth of her mind, charmed
and touched me; but when I saw the stamp of our national disease in
her bright eye and transparent cheek, I felt my love chilled while my
interest was increased. I fancied myself safe, and I went daily into the
danger; I imagined so pure a light could not burn, and I was consumed.
Not till my anxiety grew into pain, my interest into terror, did I know
the secret of my own heart; and at the moment that I discovered this
secret, I discovered also that Gertrude loved me! What a destiny was
mine! what happiness, yet what misery! Gertrude was my own--but for what
period? I might touch that soft hand, I might listen to the tenderest
confession from that silver voice; but all the while my heart spoke of
passion, my reason whispered of death. You know that I am considered
of a cold and almost callous nature, that I am not easily moved into
affection; but my very pride bowed me here into weakness. There was so
soft a demand upon my protection, so constant an appeal to my anxiety.
You know that my father’s quick temper burns within me, that I am hot,
and stern, and exacting; but one hasty word, one thought of myself,
here were inexcusable. So brief a time might be left for her earthly
happiness,--could I embitter one moment? All that feeling of uncertainty
which should in prudence have prevented my love, increased it almost to
a preternatural excess. That which it is said mothers feel for an only
child in sickness, I feel for Gertrude. _My_ existence is not!--I exist
in her!

Her illness increased upon her at home; they have recommended travel.
She chose the course we were to pursue, and, fortunately, it was so
familiar to me, that I have been enabled to brighten the way. I am ever
on the watch that she shall not know a weary hour; you would almost
smile to see how I have roused myself from my habitual silence, and to
find me--me, the scheming and worldly actor of real life--plunged back
into the early romance of my boyhood, and charming the childish delight
of Gertrude with the invention of fables and the traditions of the
Rhine.

But I believe that I have succeeded in my object; if not, what is left
to me? _Gertrude is better!_--In that sentence what visions of hope dawn
upon me! I wish you could have seen Gertrude before we left England; you
might then have understood my love for her. Not that we have not, in
the gay capitals of Europe, paid our brief vows to forms more richly
beautiful; not that we have not been charmed by a more brilliant genius,
by a more tutored grace. But there is that in Gertrude which I never
saw before,--the union of the childish and the intellectual, an ethereal
simplicity, a temper that is never dimmed, a tenderness--O God! let me
not speak of her virtues, for they only tell me how little she is suited
to the earth.

You will direct to me at Mayence, whither our course now leads us, and
your friendship will find indulgence for a letter that is so little a
reply to yours.

     Your sincere friend,

          A. G. TREVYLYAN.



CHAPTER XVIII. COBLENTZ.--EXCURSION TO THE MOUNTAINS OF TAUNUS; ROMAN
TOWER IN THE VALLEY OF EHRENBREITSTEIN.--TRAVEL, ITS PLEASURES ESTIMATED
DIFFERENTLY BY THE YOUNG AND THE OLD.--THE STUDENT OF HEIDELBERG; HIS
CRITICISMS ON GERMAN LITERATURE.

GERTRUDE had, indeed, apparently rallied during their stay at Coblentz;
and a French physician established in the town (who adopted a peculiar
treatment for consumption, which had been attended with no ordinary
success) gave her father and Trevylyan a sanguine assurance of her
ultimate recovery. The time they passed within the white walls of
Coblentz was, therefore, the happiest and most cheerful part of their
pilgrimage. They visited the various places in its vicinity; but the
excursion which most delighted Gertrude was one to the mountains of
Taunus.

They took advantage of a beautiful September day; and, crossing the
river, commenced their tour from the Thal, or valley of Ehrenbreitstein.
They stopped on their way to view the remains of a Roman tower in the
valley; for the whole of that district bears frequent witness of the
ancient conquerors of the world. The mountains of Taunus are still
intersected with the roads which the Romans cut to the mines that
supplied them with silver. Roman urns and inscribed stones are often
found in these ancient places. The stones, inscribed with names utterly
unknown,--a type of the uncertainty of fame! the urns, from which the
dust is gone, a very satire upon life!

Lone, gray, and mouldering, this tower stands aloft in the valley; and
the quiet Vane smiled to see the uniform of a modern Prussian, with his
white belt and lifted bayonet, by the spot which had once echoed to the
clang of the Roman arms. The soldier was paying a momentary court to
a country damsel, whose straw hat and rustic dress did not stifle the
vanity of the sex; and this rude and humble gallantry, in that spot, was
another moral in the history of human passions. Above, the ramparts of
a modern rule frowned down upon the solitary tower, as if in the vain
insolence with which present power looks upon past decay,--the living
race upon ancestral greatness. And indeed, in this respect, rightly!
for modern times have no parallel to that degradation of human dignity
stamped upon the ancient world by the long sway of the Imperial Harlot,
all slavery herself, yet all tyranny to earth; and, like her own
Messalina, at once a prostitute and an empress!

They continued their course by the ancient baths of Ems, and keeping by
the banks of the romantic Lahn, arrived at Holzapfel.

“Ah,” said Gertrude, one day, as they proceeded to the springs of the
Carlovingian Wiesbaden, “surely perpetual travel with those we love must
be the happiest state of existence! If home has its comforts, it also
has its cares; but here we are at home with Nature, and the minor evils
vanish almost before they are felt.”

“True,” said Trevylyan, “we escape from ‘THE LITTLE,’ which is the curse
of life; the small cares that devour us up, the grievances of the
day. We are feeding the divinest part of our nature,--the appetite to
admire.”

“But of all things wearisome,” said Vane, “a succession of changes is
the most. There can be a monotony in variety itself. As the eye aches in
gazing long at the new shapes of the kaleidoscope, the mind aches at the
fatigue of a constant alternation of objects; and we delightedly return
to ‘REST,’ which is to life what green is to the earth.”

In the course of their sojourn among the various baths of Taunus, they
fell in, by accident, with a German student of Heidelberg, who was
pursuing the pedestrian excursions so peculiarly favoured by his tribe.
He was tamer and gentler than the general herd of those young wanderers,
and our party were much pleased with his enthusiasm, because it was
unaffected. He had been in England, and spoke its language almost as a
native.

“Our literature,” said he, one day, conversing with Vane, “has two
faults,--we are too subtle and too homely. We do not speak enough to the
broad comprehension of mankind; we are forever making abstract qualities
of flesh and blood. Our critics have turned your ‘Hamlet’ into an
allegory; they will not even allow Shakspeare to paint mankind, but
insist on his embodying qualities. They turn poetry into metaphysics,
and truth seems to them shallow, unless an allegory, which is false, can
be seen at the bottom. Again, too, with our most imaginative works
we mix a homeliness that we fancy touching, but which in reality is
ludicrous. We eternally step from the sublime to the ridiculous; we want
taste.”

“But not, I hope, French taste. Do not govern a Goethe, or even a
Richter, by a Boileau!” said Trevylyan.

“No; but Boileau’s taste was false. Men who have the reputation for good
taste often acquire it solely because of the want of genius. By taste I
mean a quick tact into the harmony of composition, the art of making the
whole consistent with its parts, the _concinnitas_. Schiller alone of
our authors has it. But we are fast mending; and by following shadows so
long we have been led at last to the substance. Our past literature
is to us what astrology was to science,--false but ennobling, and
conducting us to the true language of the intellectual heaven.”

Another time the scenes they passed, interspersed with the ruins of
frequent monasteries, leading them to converse on the monastic life, and
the various additions time makes to religion, the German said: “Perhaps
one of the works most wanted in the world is the history of Religion. We
have several books, it is true, on the subject, but none that supply the
want I allude to. A German ought to write it; for it is, probably, only
a German that would have the requisite learning. A German only, too,
is likely to treat the mighty subject with boldness, and yet with
veneration; without the shallow flippancy of the Frenchman, without the
timid sectarianism of the English. It would be a noble task, to
trace the winding mazes of antique falsehood; to clear up the first
glimmerings of divine truth; to separate Jehovah’s word from man’s
invention; to vindicate the All-merciful from the dread creeds of
bloodshed and of fear: and, watching in the great Heaven of Truth the
dawning of the True Star, follow it--like the Magi of the East--till
it rested above the real God. Not indeed presuming to such a task,”
 continued the German, with a slight blush, “I have about me a humble
essay, which treats only of one part of that august subject; which,
leaving to a loftier genius the history of the true religion, may
be considered as the history of a false one,--of such a creed as
Christianity supplanted in the North; or such as may perhaps be found
among the fiercest of the savage tribes. It is a fiction--as you may
conceive; but yet, by a constant reference to the early records of human
learning, I have studied to weave it up from truths. If you would like
to hear it,--it is very short--”

“Above all things,” said Vane; and the German drew a manuscript neatly
bound from his pocket.

“After having myself criticised so insolently the faults of our national
literature,” said he, smiling, “you will have a right to criticise the
faults that belong to so humble a disciple of it; but you will see that,
though I have commenced with the allegorical or the supernatural, I
have endeavoured to avoid the subtlety of conceit, and the obscurity of
design, which I blame in the wilder of our authors. As to the style, I
wished to suit it to the subject; it ought to be, unless I err, rugged
and massive,--hewn, as it were, out of the rock of primeval language.
But you, madam--doubtless you do not understand German?”

“Her mother was an Austrian,” said Vane; “and she knows at least enough
of the tongue to understand you; so pray begin.”

Without further preface, the German then commenced the story, which the
reader will find translated* in the next chapter.

  * Nevertheless I beg to state seriously, that the German student
    is an impostor; and that he has no right to wrest the parentage
    of the fiction from the true author.



CHAPTER XIX. THE FALLEN STAR; OR THE HISTORY OF A FALSE RELIGION.

AND the STARS sat, each on his ruby throne, and watched with sleepless
eyes upon the world. It was the night ushering in the new year, a night
on which every star receives from the archangel that then visits the
universal galaxy its peculiar charge. The destinies of men and empires
are then portioned forth for the coming year, and, unconsciously to
ourselves, our fates become minioned to the stars. A hushed and solemn
night is that in which the dark gates of time open to receive the ghost
of the Dead Year, and the young and radiant Stranger rushes forth from
the clouded chasms of Eternity. On that night, it is said that there are
given to the spirits that we see not a privilege and a power; the dead
are troubled in their forgotten graves, and men feast and laugh, while
demon and angel are contending for their doom.

It was night in heaven; all was unutterably silent; the music of the
spheres had paused, and not a sound came from the angels of the stars;
and they who sat upon those shining thrones were three thousand and ten,
each resembling each. Eternal youth clothed their radiant limbs
with celestial beauty, and on their faces was written the dread of
calm,--that fearful stillness which feels not, sympathizes not with the
doom over which it broods. War, tempest, pestilence, the rise of
empires and their fall, they ordain, they compass, unexultant and
uncompassionate. The fell and thrilling crimes that stalk abroad when
the world sleeps,--the parricide with his stealthy step and horrent brow
and lifted knife; the unwifed mother that glides out and looks behind,
and behind, and shudders, and casts her babe upon the river, and hears
the wail, and pities not--the splash, and does not tremble,--these the
starred kings behold, to these they lead the unconscious step; but
the guilt blanches not their lustre, neither doth remorse wither their
unwrinkled youth. Each star wore a kingly diadem; round the loins of
each was a graven belt, graven with many and mighty signs; and the foot
of each was on a burning ball, and the right arm drooped over the knee
as they bent down from their thrones. They moved not a limb or feature,
save the finger of the right hand, which ever and anon moved slowly
pointing, and regulated the fates of men as the hand of the dial speaks
the career of time.

One only of the three thousand and ten wore not the same aspect as his
crowned brethren,--a star smaller than the rest, and less luminous; the
countenance of this star was not impressed with the awful calmness of
the others, but there were sullenness and discontent upon his mighty
brow.

And this star said to himself, “Behold! I am created less glorious
than my fellows, and the archangel apportions not to me the same lordly
destinies. Not for me are the dooms of kings and bards, the rulers of
empires, or, yet nobler, the swayers and harmonists of souls. Sluggish
are the spirits and base the lot of the men I am ordained to lead
through a dull life to a fameless grave. And wherefore? Is it mine own
fault, or is it the fault which is not mine, that I was woven of beams
less glorious than my brethren? Lo! when the archangel comes, I will
bow not my crowned head to his decrees. I will speak, as the ancestral
Lucifer before me: _he_ rebelled because of his glory, _I_ because of
my obscurity; _he_ from the ambition of pride, and _I_ from its
discontent.”

And while the star was thus communing with himself, the upward heavens
were parted as by a long river of light, and adown that stream swiftly,
and without sound, sped the archangel visitor of the stars. His vast
limbs floated in the liquid lustre, and his outspread wings, each plume
the glory of a sun, bore him noiselessly along; but thick clouds veiled
his lustre from the eyes of mortals, and while above all was bathed in
the serenity of his splendour, tempest and storm broke below over the
children of the earth: “He bowed the heavens and came down, and darkness
was under his feet.”

And the stillness on the faces of the stars became yet more still, and
the awfulness was humbled into awe. Right above their thrones paused
the course of the archangel; and his wings stretched from east to west,
overshadowing with the shadow of light the immensity of space. Then
forth, in the shining stillness, rolled the dread music of his voice:
and, fulfilling the heraldry of God, to each star he appointed the duty
and the charge; and each star bowed his head yet lower as he heard the
fiat, while his throne rocked and trembled at the Majesty of the
Word. But at last, when each of the brighter stars had, in succession,
received the mandate, and the viceroyalty over the nations of the earth,
the purple and diadems of kings, the archangel addressed the lesser star
as he sat apart from his fellows.

“Behold,” said the archangel, “the rude tribes of the North, the
fishermen of the river that flows beneath, and the hunters of the
forests that darken the mountain tops with verdure! these be thy charge,
and their destinies thy care. Nor deem thou, O Star of the sullen beams,
that thy duties are less glorious than the duties of thy brethren; for
the peasant is not less to thy master and mine than the monarch; nor
doth the doom of empires rest more upon the sovereign than on the herd.
The passions and the heart are the dominion of the stars,--a mighty
realm; nor less mighty beneath the hide that garbs the shepherd than
under the jewelled robes of the eastern kings.”

Then the star lifted his pale front from his breast, and answered the
archangel.

“Lo!” he said, “ages have passed, and each year thou hast appointed me
to the same ignoble charge. Release me, I pray thee, from the duties
that I scorn; or, if thou wilt that the lowlier race of men be my
charge, give unto me the charge not of many, but of one, and suffer
me to breathe into him the desire that spurns the valleys of life, and
ascends its steeps. If the humble are given to me, let there be amongst
them one whom I may lead on the mission that shall abase the proud; for,
behold, O Appointer of the Stars, as I have sat for uncounted years upon
my solitary throne, brooding over the things beneath, my spirit hath
gathered wisdom from the changes that shift below. Looking upon the
tribes of earth, I have seen how the multitude are swayed, and tracked
the steps that lead weakness into power; and fain would I be the ruler
of one who, if abased, shall aspire to rule.”

As a sudden cloud over the face of noon was the change on the brow of
the archangel.

“Proud and melancholy star,” said the herald, “thy wish would war with
the courses of the invisible DESTINY, that, throned far above, sways
and harmonizes all,--the source from which the lesser rivers of fate are
eternally gushing through the heart of the universe of things. Thinkest
thou that thy wisdom, of itself, can lead the peasant to become a king?”

And the crowned star gazed undauntedly on the face of the archangel, and
answered,--

“Yea! Grant me but one trial!”

Ere the archangel could reply, the farthest centre of the Heaven was
rent as by a thunderbolt; and the divine herald covered his face with
his hands, and a voice low and sweet and mild, with the consciousness of
unquestionable power, spoke forth to the repining star.

“The time has arrived when thou mayest have thy wish. Below thee, upon
yon solitary plain, sits a mortal, gloomy as thyself, who, born under
thy influence, may be moulded to thy will.”

The voice ceased as the voice of a dream. Silence was over the seas of
space, and the archangel, once more borne aloft, slowly soared away into
the farther heaven, to promulgate the divine bidding to the stars of
far-distant worlds. But the soul of the discontented star exulted within
itself; and it said, “I will call forth a king from the valley of the
herdsman that shall trample on the kings subject to my fellows, and
render the charge of the contemned star more glorious than the minions
of its favoured brethren; thus shall I revenge neglect! thus shall I
prove my claim hereafter to the heritage of the great of earth!”

.......

At that time, though the world had rolled on for ages, and the
pilgrimage of man had passed through various states of existence, which
our dim traditionary knowledge has not preserved, yet the condition of
our race in the northern hemisphere was then what we, in our imperfect
lore, have conceived to be among the earliest.

.......

By a rude and vast pile of stones, the masonry of arts forgotten, a
lonely man sat at midnight, gazing upon the heavens. A storm had just
passed from the earth; the clouds had rolled away, and the high stars
looked down upon the rapid waters of the Rhine; and no sound save the
roar of the waves, and the dripping of the rain from the mighty trees,
was heard around the ruined pile. The white sheep lay scattered on the
plain, and slumber with them. He sat watching over the herd, lest the
foes of a neighbouring tribe seized them unawares, and thus he communed
with himself: “The king sits upon his throne, and is honoured by a
warrior race, and the warrior exults in the trophies he has won; the
step of the huntsman is bold upon the mountain-top, and his name is
sung at night round the pine-fires by the lips of the bard; and the bard
himself hath honour in the hall. But I, who belong not to the race of
kings, and whose limbs can bound not to the rapture of war, nor scale
the eyries of the eagle and the haunts of the swift stag; whose hand
cannot string the harp, and whose voice is harsh in the song,--_I_ have
neither honour nor command, and men bow not the head as I pass along;
yet do I feel within me the consciousness of a great power that should
rule my species--not obey. My eye pierces the secret hearts of men. I
see their thoughts ere their lips proclaim them; and I scorn, while I
see, the weakness and the vices which I never shared. I laugh at the
madness of the warrior; I mock within my soul at the tyranny of kings.
Surely there is something in man’s nature more fitted to command, more
worthy of renown, than the sinews of the arm, or the swiftness of the
feet, or the accident of birth!”

As Morven, the son of Osslah, thus mused within himself, still looking
at the heavens, the solitary man beheld a star suddenly shooting from
its place, and speeding through the silent air, till it suddenly paused
right over the midnight river, and facing the inmate of the pile of
stones.

As he gazed upon the star, strange thoughts grew slowly over him. He
drank, as it were, from its solemn aspect the spirit of a great design.
A dark cloud rapidly passing over the earth snatched the star from his
sight, but left to his awakened mind the thoughts and the dim scheme
that had come to him as he gazed.

When the sun arose, one of his brethren relieved him of his charge over
the herd, and he went away, but not to his father’s home. Musingly he
plunged into the dark and leafless recesses of the winter forest; and
shaped out of his wild thoughts, more palpably and clearly, the outline
of his daring hope. While thus absorbed he heard a great noise in the
forest, and, fearful lest the hostile tribe of the Alrich might pierce
that way, he ascended one of the loftiest pine-trees, to whose perpetual
verdure the winter had not denied the shelter he sought; and, concealed
by its branches, he looked anxiously forth in the direction whence the
noise had proceeded. And IT came,--it came with a tramp and a crash, and
a crushing tread upon the crunched boughs and matted leaves that strewed
the soil; it came, it came,--the monster that the world now holds
no more,--the mighty Mammoth of the North! Slowly it moved its huge
strength along, and its burning eyes glittered through the gloomy shade;
its jaws, falling apart, showed the grinders with which it snapped
asunder the young oaks of the forest; and the vast tusks, which, curved
downward to the midst of its massive limbs, glistened white and ghastly,
curdling the blood of one destined hereafter to be the dreadest ruler of
the men of that distant age.

The livid eyes of the monster fastened on the form of the herdsman, even
amidst the thick darkness of the pine. It paused, it glared upon him;
its jaws opened, and a low deep sound, as of gathering thunder, seemed
to the son of Osslah as the knell of a dreadful grave. But after glaring
on him for some moments, it again, and calmly, pursued its terrible
way, crashing the boughs as it marched along, till the last sound of its
heavy tread died away upon his ear.*

  * _The Critic_ will perceive that this sketch of the beast, whose
    race has perished, is mainly intended to designate the remote
    period of the world in which the tale is cast.

Ere yet, however, Morven summoned the courage to descend the tree,
he saw the shining of arms through the bare branches of the wood, and
presently a small band of the hostile Alrich came into sight. He was
perfectly hidden from them; and, listening as they passed him, he heard
one say to another,--

“The night covers all things; why attack them by day?”

And he who seemed the chief of the band, answered,--

“Right. To-night, when they sleep in their city, we will upon them. Lo!
they will be drenched in wine, and fall like sheep into our hands.”

“But where, O chief,” said a third of the band, “shall our men hide
during the day? for there are many hunters among the youth of the
Oestrich tribe, and they might see us in the forest unawares, and arm
their race against our coming.”

“I have prepared for that,” answered the chief. “Is not the dark
cavern of Oderlin at hand? Will it not shelter us from the eyes of the
victims?”

Then the men laughed, and, shouting, they went their way adown the
forest.

When they were gone, Morven cautiously descended, and, striking into a
broad path, hastened to a vale that lay between the forest and the river
in which was the city where the chief of his country dwelt. As he passed
by the warlike men, giants in that day, who thronged the streets (if
streets they might be called), their half garments parting from their
huge limbs, the quiver at their backs, and the hunting spear in their
hand, they laughed and shouted out, and, pointing to him, cried, “Morven
the woman! Morven the cripple! what dost thou among men?”

For the son of Osslah was small in stature and of slender strength, and
his step had halted from his birth; but he passed through the warriors
unheedingly. At the outskirts of the city he came upon a tall pile in
which some old men dwelt by themselves, and counselled the king when
times of danger, or when the failure of the season, the famine or the
drought, perplexed the ruler, and clouded the savage fronts of his
warrior tribe.

They gave the counsels of experience, and when experience failed, they
drew, in their believing ignorance, assurances and omens from the winds
of heaven, the changes of the moon, and the flights of the wandering
birds. Filled--by the voices of the elements, and the variety of
mysteries, which ever shift along the face of things, unsolved by the
wonder which pauses not, the fear which believes, and that eternal
reasoning of all experience, which assigns causes to effect--with
the notion of superior powers, they assisted their ignorance by the
conjectures of their superstition. But as yet they knew no craft
and practised no _voluntary_ delusion; they trembled too much at the
mysteries which had created their faith to seek to belie them. They
counselled as they believed, and the bold dream of governing their
warriors and their kings by the wisdom of deceit had never dared to
cross men thus worn and gray with age.

The son of Osslah entered the vast pile with a fearless step, and
approached the place at the upper end of the hall where the old men sat
in conclave.

“How, base-born and craven-limbed!” cried the eldest, who had been
a noted warrior in his day, “darest thou enter unsummoned amidst the
secret councils of the wise men? Knowest thou not, scatterling! that the
penalty is death?”

“Slay me, if thou wilt,” answered Morven, “but hear! As I sat last night
in the ruined palace of our ancient kings, tending, as my father bade
me, the sheep that grazed around, lest the fierce tribe of Alrich should
descend unseen from the mountains upon the herd, a storm came darkly on;
and when the storm had ceased, and I looked above on the sky, I saw a
star descend from its height towards me, and a voice from the star said:
‘Son of Osslah, leave thy herd and seek the council of the wise men
and say unto them, that they take thee as one of their number, or that
sudden will be the destruction of them and theirs.’ But I had courage
to answer the voice, and I said, ‘Mock not the poor son of the herdsman.
Behold, they will kill me if I utter so rash a word, for I am poor and
valueless in the eyes of the tribe of Oestrich, and the great in deeds
and the gray of hair alone sit in the council of the wise men.’

“Then the voice said: ‘Do my bidding, and I will give thee a token that
thou comest from the Powers that sway the seasons and sail upon the
eagles of the winds. Say unto the wise men this very night if they
refuse to receive thee of their band, evil shall fall upon them, and the
morrow shall dawn in blood.’

“Then the voice ceased, and the cloud passed over the star; and I
communed with myself, and came, O dread father, mournfully unto you; for
I feared that ye would smite me because of my bold tongue, and that ye
would sentence me to the death, in that I asked what may scarce be given
even to the sons of kings.”

Then the grim elders looked one at the other, and marvelled much, nor
knew they what answer they should make to the herdsman’s son.

At length one of the wise men said, “Surely there must be truth in the
son of Osslah, for he would not dare to falsify the great lights of
Heaven. If he had given unto men the words of the star, verily we
might doubt the truth. But who would brave the vengeance of the gods of
night?”

Then the elders shook their heads approvingly; but one answered and
said,--

“Shall we take the herdsman’s son as our equal? No!” The name of the man
who thus answered was Darvan, and his words were pleasing to the elders.

But Morven spoke out: “Of a truth, O councillors of kings, I look not to
be an equal with yourselves. Enough if I tend the gates of your palace,
and serve you as the son of Osslah may serve;” and he bowed his head
humbly as he spoke.

Then said the chief of the elders, for he was wiser than the others,
“But how wilt thou deliver us from the evil that is to come? Doubtless
the star has informed thee of the service thou canst render to us if we
take thee into our palace, as well as the ill that will fall on us if we
refuse.”

Morven answered meekly, “Surely, if thou acceptest thy servant, the star
will teach him that which may requite thee; but as yet he knows only
what he has uttered.”

Then the sages bade him withdraw, and they communed with themselves, and
they differed much; but though fierce men, and bold at the war-cry of a
human foe, they shuddered at the prophecy of a star. So they resolved
to take the son of Osslah, and suffer him to keep the gate of the
council-hall.

He heard their decree and bowed his head, and went to the gate, and sat
down by it in silence.

And the sun went down in the west, and the first stars of the twilight
began to glimmer, when Morven started from his seat, and a trembling
appeared to seize his limbs. His lips foamed; an agony and a fear
possessed him; he writhed as a man whom the spear of a foeman has
pierced with a mortal wound, and suddenly fell upon his face on the
stony earth.

The elders approached him; wondering, they lifted him up. He slowly
recovered as from a swoon; his eyes rolled wildly.

“Heard ye not the voice of the star?” he said.

And the chief of the elders answered, “Nay, we heard no sound.”

Then Morven sighed heavily.

“To me only the word was given. Summon instantly, O councillors of the
king, summon the armed men, and all the youth of the tribe, and let them
take the sword and the spear, and follow thy servant! For lo! the star
hath announced to him that the foe shall fall into our hands as the wild
beasts of the forests.”

The son of Osslah spoke with the voice of command, and the elders were
amazed. “Why pause ye?” he cried. “Do the gods of the night lie? On my
head rest the peril if I deceive ye.”

Then the elders communed together; and they went forth and summoned the
men of arms, and all the young of the tribe; and each man took the sword
and the spear, and Morven also. And the son of Osslah walked first,
still looking up at the star, and he motioned them to be silent, and
moved with a stealthy step.

So they went through the thickest of the forest, till they came to the
mouth of a great cave, overgrown with aged and matted trees, and it was
called the Cave of Oberlin; and he bade the leaders place the armed men
on either side the cave, to the right and to the left, among the bushes.

So they watched silently till the night deepened, when they heard a
noise in the cave and the sound of feet, and forth came an armed man;
and the spear of Morven pierced him, and he fell dead at the mouth of
the cave. Another and another, and both fell! Then loud and long was
heard the war-cry of Alrich, and forth poured, as a stream over a narrow
bed, the river of armed men. And the sons of Oestrich fell upon them,
and the foe were sorely perplexed and terrified by the suddenness of the
battle and the darkness of the night; and there was a great slaughter.

And when the morning came, the children of Oestrich counted the slain,
and found the leader of Alrich and the chief men of the tribe amongst
them; and great was the joy thereof. So they went back in triumph to the
city, and they carried the brave son of Osslah on their shoulders, and
shouted forth, “Glory to the servant of the star.”

And Morven dwelt in the council of the wise men.

Now the king of the tribe had one daughter, and she was stately amongst
the women of the tribe, and fair to look upon. And Morven gazed upon her
with the eyes of love, but he did not dare to speak.

Now the son of Osslah laughed secretly at the foolishness of men; he
loved them not, for they had mocked him; he honoured them not, for he
had blinded the wisest of their leaders. He shunned their feasts and
merriment, and lived apart and solitary. The austerity of his life
increased the mysterious homage which his commune with the stars had won
him, and the boldest of the warriors bowed his head to the favourite of
the gods.

One day he was wandering by the side of the river, and he saw a large
bird of prey rise from the waters, and give chase to a hawk that had not
yet gained the full strength of its wings. From his youth the solitary
Morven had loved to watch, in the great forests and by the banks of the
mighty stream, the habits of the things which nature has submitted to
man; and looking now on the birds, he said to himself, “Thus is it ever;
by cunning or by strength each thing wishes to master its kind.” While
thus moralizing, the larger bird had stricken down the hawk, and it fell
terrified and panting at his feet. Morven took the hawk in his hands,
and the vulture shrieked above him, wheeling nearer and nearer to its
protected prey; but Morven scared away the vulture, and placing the hawk
in his bosom he carried it home, and tended it carefully, and fed it
from his hand until it had regained its strength; and the hawk knew him,
and followed him as a dog. And Morven said, smiling to himself, “Behold,
the credulous fools around me put faith in the flight and motion of
birds. I will teach this poor hawk to minister to my ends.” So he tamed
the bird, and tutored it according to its nature; but he concealed it
carefully from others, and cherished it in secret.

The king of the country was old, and like to die, and the eyes of the
tribe were turned to his two sons, nor knew they which was the worthier
to reign. And Morven, passing through the forest one evening, saw the
younger of the two, who was a great hunter, sitting mournfully under an
oak, and looking with musing eyes upon the ground.

“Wherefore musest thou, O swift-footed Siror?” said the son of Osslah;
“and wherefore art thou sad?”

“Thou canst not assist me,” answered the prince, sternly; “take thy
way.”

“Nay,” answered Morven, “thou knowest not what thou sayest; am I not the
favourite of the stars?”

“Away, I am no graybeard whom the approach of death makes doting: talk
not to me of the stars; I know only the things that my eye sees and my
ear drinks in.”

“Hush,” said Morven, solemnly, and covering his face; “hush! lest the
heavens avenge thy rashness. But, behold, the stars have given unto me
to pierce the secret hearts of others; and I can tell thee the thoughts
of thine.”

“Speak out, base-born!”

“Thou art the younger of two, and thy name is less known in war than the
name of thy brother: yet wouldst thou desire to be set over his head,
and to sit on the high seat of thy father?”

The young man turned pale. “Thou hast truth in thy lips,” said he, with
a faltering voice.

“Not from me, but from the stars, descends the truth.”

“Can the stars grant my wish?”

“They can: let us meet to-morrow.” Thus saying, Morven passed into the
forest.

The next day, at noon, they met again.

“I have consulted the gods of night, and they have given me the power
that I prayed for, but on one condition.”

“Name it.”

“That thou sacrifice thy sister on their altars; thou must build up a
heap of stones, and take thy sister into the wood, and lay her on the
pile, and plunge thy sword into her heart; so only shalt thou reign.”

The prince shuddered, and started to his feet, and shook his spear at
the pale front of Morven.

“Tremble,” said the son of Osslah, with a loud voice. “Hark to the gods
who threaten thee with death, that thou hast dared to lift thine arm
against their servant!”

As he spoke, the thunder rolled above; for one of the frequent storms of
the early summer was about to break. The spear dropped from the prince’s
hand; he sat down, and cast his eyes on the ground.

“Wilt thou do the bidding of the stars, and reign?” said Morven.

“I will!” cried Siror, with a desperate voice.

“This evening, then, when the sun sets, thou wilt lead her hither,
alone; I may not attend thee. Now, let us pile the stones.”

Silently the huntsman bent his vast strength to the fragments of rock
that Morven pointed to him, and they built the altar, and went their
way.

And beautiful is the dying of the great sun, when the last song of the
birds fades into the lap of silence; when the islands of the cloud are
bathed in light, and the first star springs up over the grave of day!

“Whither leadest thou my steps, my brother?” said Orna; “and why doth
thy lip quiver; and why dost thou turn away thy face?”

“Is not the forest beautiful; does it not tempt us forth, my sister?”

“And wherefore are those heaps of stone piled together?”

“Let others answer; I piled them not.”

“Thou tremblest, brother: we will return.”

“Not so; by these stones is a bird that my shaft pierced today,--a bird
of beautiful plumage that I slew for thee.”

“We are by the pile; where hast thou laid the bird?”

“Here!” cried Siror; and he seized the maiden in his arms, and, casting
her on the rude altar, he drew forth his sword to smite her to the
heart.

Right over the stones rose a giant oak, the growth of immemorial ages;
and from the oak, or from the heavens, broke forth a loud and solemn
voice, “Strike not, son of kings! the stars forbear their own: the
maiden thou shalt not slay; yet shalt thou reign over the race of
Oestrich; and thou shalt give Orna as a bride to the favourite of the
stars. Arise, and go thy way!”

The voice ceased: the terror of Orna had overpowered for a time the
springs of life; and Siror bore her home through the wood in his strong
arms.

“Alas!” said Morven, when, at the next day, he again met the aspiring
prince; “alas! the stars have ordained me a lot which my heart desires
not: for I, lonely of life, and crippled of shape, am insensible to the
fires of love; and ever, as thou and thy tribe know, I have shunned the
eyes of women, for the maidens laughed at my halting step and my sullen
features; and so in my youth I learned betimes to banish all thoughts
of love. But since they told me (as they declared to _thee_), that only
through that marriage, thou, O beloved prince! canst obtain thy father’s
plumed crown, I yield me to their will.”

“But,” said the prince, “not until I am king can I give thee my sister
in marriage; for thou knowest that my sire would smite me to the dust
if I asked him to give the flower of our race to the son of the herdsman
Osslah.”

“Thou speakest the words of truth. Go home and fear not; but, when thou
art king, the sacrifice must be made, and Orna mine. Alas! how can I
dare to lift mine eyes to her! But so ordain the dread kings of the
night!--who shall gainsay their word?”

“The day that sees me king sees Orna thine,” answered the prince.

Morven walked forth, as was his wont, alone; and he said to himself,
“The king is old, yet may he live long between me and mine hope!” and he
began to cast in his mind how he might shorten the time. Thus absorbed,
he wandered on so unheedingly that night advanced, and he had lost his
path among the thick woods and knew not how to regain his home. So he
lay down quietly beneath a tree, and rested till day dawned; then hunger
came upon him, and he searched among the bushes for such simple roots
as those with which, for he was ever careless of food, he was used to
appease the cravings of nature.

He found, among other more familiar herbs and roots, a red berry of
a sweetish taste, which he had never observed before. He ate of it
sparingly, and had not proceeded far in the wood before he found his
eyes swim, and a deadly sickness came over him. For several hours he lay
convulsed on the ground, expecting death; but the gaunt spareness of his
frame, and his unvarying abstinence, prevailed over the poison, and he
recovered slowly, and after great anguish. But he went with feeble steps
back to the spot where the berries grew, and, plucking several, hid them
in his bosom, and by nightfall regained the city.

The next day he went forth among his father’s herds, and seizing a lamb,
forced some of the berries into his stomach, and the lamb, escaping, ran
away, and fell down dead. Then Morven took some more of the berries and
boiled them down, and mixed the juice with wine, and he gave the wine in
secret to one of his father’s servants, and the servant died.

Then Morven sought the king, and coming into his presence, alone, he
said unto him, “How fares my lord?”

The king sat on a couch made of the skins of wolves, and his eye was
glassy and dim; but vast were his aged limbs, and huge was his stature,
and he had been taller by a head than the children of men, and none
living could bend the bow he had bent in youth; gray, gaunt, and
worn, as some mighty bones that are dug at times from the bosom of the
earth,--a relic of the strength of old.

And the king said faintly, and with a ghastly laugh, “The men of my
years fare ill. What avails my strength? Better had I been born a
cripple like thee, so should I have had nothing to lament in growing
old.”

The red flush passed over Morven’s brow; but he bent humbly,--

“O king, what if I could give thee back thy youth? What if I could
restore to thee the vigour which distinguished thee above the sons of
men, when the warriors of Alrich fell like grass before thy sword?”

Then the king uplifted his dull eyes, and he said,--

“What meanest thou, son of Osslah? Surely I hear much of thy great
wisdom, and how thou speakest nightly with the stars. Can the gods of
the night give unto thee the secret to make the old young?”

“Tempt them not by doubt,” said Morven, reverently. “All things are
possible to the rulers of the dark hour; and, lo! the star that loves
thy servant spake to him at the dead of night, and said, ‘Arise, and go
unto the king; and tell him that the stars honour the tribe of Oestrich,
and remember how the king bent his bow against the sons of Alrich;
wherefore, look thou under the stone that lies to the right of thy
dwelling, even beside the pine tree, and thou shalt see a vessel of
clay, and in the vessel thou wilt find a sweet liquid, that shall make
the king thy master forget his age forever.’ Therefore, my lord, when
the morning rose I went forth, and looked under the stone, and behold
the vessel of clay; and I have brought it hither to my lord the king.”

“Quick, slave, quick! that I may drink and regain my youth!”

“Nay, listen, O king! further said the star to me,--

“‘It is only at night, when the stars have power, that this their gift
will avail; wherefore the king must wait till the hush of the midnight,
when the moon is high, and then may he mingle the liquid with his wine.
And he must reveal to none that he hath received the gift from the hand
of the servant of the stars. For THEY do their work in secret, and when
men sleep; therefore they love not the babble of mouths, and he who
reveals their benefits shall surely die.”

“Fear not,” said the king, grasping the vessel; “none shall know: and,
behold, I will rise on the morrow; and my two sons, wrangling for my
crown--verily I shall be younger than they!”

Then the king laughed loud; and he scarcely thanked the servant of the
stars, neither did he promise him reward; for the kings in those days
had little thought save for themselves.

And Morven said to him, “Shall I not attend my lord?--for without me,
perchance, the drug might fail of its effect.”

“Ay,” said the king, “rest here.”

“Nay,” replied Morven; “thy servants will marvel and talk much, if they
see the son of Osslah sojourning in thy palace. So would the displeasure
of the gods of night perchance be incurred. Suffer that the lesser door
of the palace be unbarred, so that at the night hour, when the moon is
midway in the heavens, I may steal unseen into thy chamber, and mix the
liquid with thy wine.”

“So be it,” said the king. “Thou art wise, though thy limbs are crooked
and curt; and the stars might have chosen a taller man.” Then the king
laughed again; and Morven laughed too, but there was danger in the mirth
of the son of Osslah.

The night had begun to wane, and the inhabitants of Oestrich were buried
in deep sleep, when, hark! a sharp voice was heard crying out in the
streets, “Woe, woe! Awake, ye sons of Oestrich! woe!” Then forth, wild,
haggard, alarmed, spear in hand, rushed the giant sons of the rugged
tribe, and they saw a man on a height in the middle of the city,
shrieking “Woe!” and it was Morven, the son of Osslah! And he said unto
them, as they gathered round him, “Men and warriors, tremble as ye hear.
The star of the west hath spoken to me, and thus said the star: ‘Evil
shall fall upon the kingly house of Oestrich,--yea, ere the morning
dawn; wherefore, go thou mourning into the streets, and wake the
inhabitants to woe!’ So I rose and did the bidding of the star.” And
while Morven was yet speaking, a servant of the king’s house ran up
to the crowd, crying loudly, “The king is dead!” So they went into the
palace and found the king stark upon his couch, and his huge limbs all
cramped and crippled by the pangs of death, and his hands clenched as if
in menace of a foe,--the Foe of all living flesh! Then fear came on the
gazers, and they looked on Morven with a deeper awe than the boldest
warrior would have called forth; and they bore him back to the
council-hall of the wise men, wailing and clashing their arms in woe,
and shouting, ever and anon, “Honour to Morven the prophet!” And that
was the first time the word PROPHET was ever used in those countries.

At noon, on the third day from the king’s death, Siror sought Morven,
and he said, “Lo, my father is no more, and the people meet this evening
at sunset to elect his successor, and the warriors and the young men
will surely choose my brother, for he is more known in war. Fail me not
therefore.”

“Peace, boy!” said Morven, sternly; “nor dare to question the truth of
the gods of night.”

For Morven now began to presume on his power among the people, and to
speak as rulers speak, even to the sons of kings; and the voice silenced
the fiery Siror, nor dared he to reply.

“Behold,” said Morven, taking up a chaplet of coloured plumes, “wear
this on thy head, and put on a brave face, for the people like a hopeful
spirit, and go down with thy brother to the place where the new king is
to be chosen, and leave the rest to the stars. But, above all things,
forget not that chaplet; it has been blessed by the gods of night.”

The prince took the chaplet and returned home.

It was evening, and the warriors and chiefs of the tribe were assembled
in the place where the new king was to be elected. And the voices of
the many favoured Prince Voltoch, the brother of Siror, for he had slain
twelve foemen with his spear; and verily, in those days, that was a
great virtue in a king.

Suddenly there was a shout in the streets, and the people cried out,
“Way for Morven the prophet, the prophet!” For the people held the son
of Osslah in even greater respect than did the chiefs. Now, since he had
become of note, Morven had assumed a majesty of air which the son of the
herdsman knew not in his earlier days; and albeit his stature was short,
and his limbs halted, yet his countenance was grave and high. He only
of the tribe wore a garment that swept the ground, and his head was bare
and his long black hair descended to his girdle, and rarely was change
or human passion seen in his calm aspect. He feasted not, nor drank
wine, nor was his presence frequent in the streets. He laughed not,
neither did he smile, save when alone in the forest,--and then he
laughed at the follies of his tribe.

So he walked slowly through the crowd, neither turning to the left nor
to the right, as the crowd gave way; and he supported his steps with a
staff of the knotted pine.

And when he came to the place where the chiefs were met, and the two
princes stood in the centre, he bade the people around him proclaim
silence; then mounting on a huge fragment of rock, he thus spake to the
multitude:--

“Princes, Warriors, and Bards! ye, O council of the wise men! and ye, O
hunters of the forests and snarers of the fishes of the streams! hearken
to Morven, the son of Osslah. Ye know that I am lowly of race and weak
of limb; but did I not give into your hands the tribe of Alrich, and did
ye not slay them in the dead of night with a great slaughter? Surely, ye
must know this of himself did not the herdsman’s son; surely he was but
the agent of the bright gods that love the children of Oestrich! Three
nights since when slumber was on the earth, was not my voice heard in
the streets? Did I not proclaim woe to the kingly house of Oestrich? and
verily the dark arm had fallen on the bosom of the mighty, that is no
more. Could I have dreamed this thing merely in a dream, or was I not
as the voice of the bright gods that watch over the tribes of Oestrich?
Wherefore, O men and chiefs! scorn not the son of Osslah, but listen to
his words; for are they not the wisdom of the stars? Behold, last night,
I sat alone in the valley, and the trees were hushed around, and not
a breath stirred; and I looked upon the star that counsels the son of
Osslah; and I said, ‘Dread conqueror of the cloud! thou that bathest thy
beauty in the streams and piercest the pine-boughs with thy presence;
behold thy servant grieved because the mighty one hath passed away, and
many foes surround the houses of my brethren; and it is well that they
should have a king valiant and prosperous in war, the cherished of the
stars. Wherefore, O star! as thou gavest into our hands the warriors of
Alrich, and didst warn us of the fall of the oak of our tribe, wherefore
I pray thee give unto the people a token that they may choose that king
whom the gods of the night prefer!’ Then a low voice, sweeter than the
music of the bard, stole along the silence. ‘Thy love for thy race is
grateful to the stars of night: go, then, son of Osslah, and seek the
meeting of the chiefs and the people to choose a king, and tell them not
to scorn thee because thou art slow to the chase, and little known in
war; for the stars give thee wisdom as a recompense for all. Say unto
the people that as the wise men of the council shape their lessons by
the flight of birds, so by the flight of birds shall a token be given
unto them, and they shall choose their kings. For, saith the star of
night, the birds are the children of the winds, they pass to and fro
along the ocean of the air, and visit the clouds that are the war-ships
of the gods; and their music is but broken melodies which they glean
from the harps above. Are they not the messengers of the storm? Ere the
stream chafes against the bank, and the rain descends, know ye not, by
the wail of birds and their low circle over the earth, that the tempest
is at hand? Wherefore, wisely do ye deem that the children of the air
are the fit interpreters between the sons of men and the lords of the
world above. Say then to the people and the chiefs that they shall take,
from among the doves that build their nests in the roof of the palace, a
white dove, and they shall let it loose in the air, and verily the gods
of the night shall deem the dove as a prayer coming from the people, and
they shall send a messenger to grant the prayer and give to the tribes
of Oestrich a king worthy of themselves.’

“With that the star spoke no more.”



Then the friends of Voltoch murmured among themselves, and they said,
“Shall this man dictate to us who shall be king?” But the people and
the warriors shouted, “Listen to the star; do we not give or deny battle
according as the bird flies,--shall we not by the same token choose him
by whom the battle should be led?” And the thing seemed natural to them,
for it was after the custom of the tribe. Then they took one of the
doves that built in the roof of the palace, and they brought it to the
spot where Morven stood, and he, looking up to the stars and muttering
to himself, released the bird.

There was a copse of trees at a little distance from the spot, and as
the dove ascended, a hawk suddenly rose from the copse and pursued the
dove; and the dove was terrified, and soared circling high above the
crowd, when lo, the hawk, poising itself one moment on its wings,
swooped with a sudden swoop, and, abandoning its prey, alighted on the
plumed head of Siror.

“Behold,” cried Morven in a loud voice, “behold your king!”

“Hail, all hail the king!” shouted the people. “All hail the chosen of
the stars!”

Then Morven lifted his right hand and the hawk left the prince and
alighted on Morven’s shoulder. “Bird of the gods!” said he, reverently,
“hast thou not a secret message for my ear?” Then the hawk put its beak
to Morven’s ear, and Morven bowed his head submissively; and the hawk
rested with Morven from that moment and would not be scared away. And
Morven said, “The stars have sent me this bird, that in the day-time
when I see them not, we may never be without a councillor in distress.”

So Siror was made king and Morven the son of Osslah was constrained by
the king’s will to take Orna for his wife; and the people and the chiefs
honoured Morven the prophet above all the elders of the tribe.

One day Morven said unto himself, musing, “Am I not already equal with
the king,--nay, is not the king my servant? Did I not place him over the
heads of his brothers? Am I not, therefore, more fit to reign than he
is; shall I not push him from his seat? It is a troublesome and stormy
office to reign over the wild men of Oestrich, to feast in the crowded
hall, and to lead the warriors to the fray. Surely if I feasted not,
neither went out to war, they might say, ‘This is no king, but the
cripple Morven;’ and some of the race of Siror might slay me secretly.
But can I not be greater far than kings, and continue to choose and
govern them, living as now at mine own ease? Verily the stars shall give
me a new palace, and many subjects.”

Among the wise men was Darvan; and Morven feared him, for his eye often
sought the movements of the son of Osslah.

And Morven said, “It were better to _trust_ this man than to _blind_,
for surely I want a helpmate and a friend.” So he said to the wise man
as he sat alone watching the setting sun,--

“It seemeth to me, O Darvan! that we ought to build a great pile in
honour of the stars, and the pile should be more glorious than all the
palaces of the chiefs and the palace of the king; for are not the stars
our masters? And thou and I should be the chief dwellers in this new
palace, and we would serve the gods of night and fatten their altars
with the choicest of the herd and the freshest of the fruits of the
earth.”

And Darvan said, “Thou speakest as becomes the servant of the stars. But
will the people help to build the pile? For they are a warlike race and
they love not toil.”

And Morven answered, “Doubtless the stars will ordain the work to be
done. Fear not.”

“In truth thou art a wondrous man; thy words ever come to pass,”
 answered Darvan; “and I wish thou wouldest teach me, friend, the
language of the stars.”

“Assuredly if thou servest me, thou shalt know,” answered the proud
Morven; and Darvan was secretly wroth that the son of the herdsman
should command the service of an elder and a chief.

And when Morven returned to his wife he found her weeping much. Now she
loved the son of Osslah with an exceeding love, for he was not savage
and fierce as the men she had known, and she was proud of his fame among
the tribe; and he took her in his arms and kissed her, and asked her why
she wept. Then she told him that her brother the king had visited her,
and had spoken bitter words of Morven: “He taketh from me the affection
of my people,” said Siror, “and blindeth them with lies. And since he
hath made me king, what if he take my kingdom from me? Verily a new tale
of the stars might undo the old.” And the king had ordered her to keep
watch on Morven’s secrecy, and to see whether truth was in him when he
boasted of his commune with the Powers of night.

But Orna loved Morven better than Siror, therefore she told her husband
all.

And Morven resented the king’s ingratitude, and was troubled much, for
a king is a powerful foe; but he comforted Orna, and bade her dissemble,
and complain also of him to her brother, so that he might confide to her
unsuspectingly whatsoever he might design against Morven.

There was a cave by Morven’s house in which he kept the sacred hawk,
and wherein he secretly trained and nurtured other birds against future
need; and the door of the cave was always barred. And one day he was
thus engaged when he beheld a chink in the wall that he had never noted
before, and the sun came playfully in; and while he looked he perceived
the sunbeam was darkened, and presently he saw a human face peering in
through the chink. And Morven trembled, for he knew he had been watched.
He ran hastily from the cave; but the spy had disappeared among the
trees, and Morven went straight to the chamber of Darvan and sat himself
down. And Darvan did not return home till late, and he started and
turned pale when he saw Morven. But Morven greeted him as a brother, and
bade him to a feast, which, for the first time, he purposed giving at
the full of the moon, in honour of the stars. And going out of Darvan’s
chamber he returned to his wife, and bade her rend her hair, and go
at the dawn of day to the king her brother, and complain bitterly of
Morven’s treatment, and pluck the black plans from the breast of the
king. “For surely,” said he, “Darvan hath lied to thy brother, and some
evil waits me that I would fain know.”

So the next morning Orna sought the king, and she said, “The herdsman’s
son hath reviled me, and spoken harsh words to me; shall I not be
avenged?”

Then the king stamped his feet and shook his mighty sword. “Surely thou
shalt be avenged; for I have learned from one of the elders that which
convinceth me that the man hath lied to the people, and the base-born
shall surely die. Yea, the first time that he goeth alone into the
forest my brother and I will fall upon him and smite him to the death.”
 And with this comfort Siror dismissed Orna.

And Orna flung herself at the feet of her husband. “Fly now, O my
beloved!--fly into the forests afar from my brethren, or surely the
sword of Siror will end thy days.”

Then the son of Osslah folded his arms, and seemed buried in black
thoughts; nor did he heed the voice of Orna, until again and again she
had implored him to fly.

“Fly!” he said at length. “Nay, I was doubting what punishment the stars
should pour down upon our foe. Let warriors fly. Morven the prophet
conquers by arms mightier than the sword.”

Nevertheless Morven was perplexed in his mind, and knew not how to
save himself from the vengeance of the king. Now, while he was musing
hopelessly he heard a roar of waters; and behold, the river, for it was
now the end of autumn, had burst its bounds, and was rushing along the
valley to the houses of the city. And now the men of the tribe, and the
women, and the children, came running, and with shrieks, to Morven’s
house, crying, “Behold, the river has burst upon us! Save us, O ruler of
the stars!”

Then the sudden thought broke upon Morven, and he resolved to risk his
fate upon one desperate scheme.

And he came out from the house calm and sad, and he said, “Ye know not
what ye ask; I cannot save ye from this peril: ye have brought it on
yourselves.” And they cried, “How? O son of Osslah! We are ignorant of
our crime.”

And he answered, “Go down to the king’s palace and wait before it, and
surely I will follow ye, and ye shall learn wherefore ye have incurred
this punishment from the gods.” Then the crowd rolled murmuring back, as
a receding sea; and when it was gone from the place, Morven went alone
to the house of Darvan, which was next his own. And Darvan was greatly
terrified; for he was of a great age, and had no children, neither
friends, and he feared that he could not of himself escape the waters.

And Morven said to him soothingly, “Lo, the people love me, and I will
see that thou art saved; for verily thou hast been friendly to me, and
done me much service with the king.”

And as he thus spake, Morven opened the door of the house and looked
forth, and saw that they were quite alone. Then he seized the old man by
the throat and ceased not his gripe till he was quite dead; and leaving
the body of the elder on the floor, Morven stole from the house and shut
the gate. And as he was going to his cave he mused a little while, when,
hearing the mighty roar of the waves advancing, and far off the shrieks
of women, he lifted up his head and said proudly, “No, in this hour
terror alone shall be my slave; I will use no art save the power of my
soul.” So, leaning on his pine-staff, he strode down to the palace. And
it was now evening, and many of the men held torches, that they might
see each other’s faces in the universal fear. Red flashed the quivering
flames on the dark robes and pale front of Morven; and he seemed
mightier than the rest, because his face alone was calm amidst the
tumult. And louder and hoarser became the roar of the waters; and swift
rushed the shades of night over the hastening tide.

And Morven said in a stern voice, “Where is the king; and wherefore is
he absent from his people in the hour of dread?” Then the gate of the
palace opened, and, behold, Siror was sitting in the hall by the vast
pine-fire, and his brother by his side, and his chiefs around him: for
they would not deign to come amongst the crowd at the bidding of the
herdsman’s son.

Then Morven, standing upon a rock above the heads of the people (the
same rock whereon he had proclaimed the king), thus spake:--

“Ye desired to know, O sons of Oestrich! wherefore the river hath burst
its bounds, and the peril hath come upon you. Learn, then, that the
stars resent as the foulest of human crimes an insult to their servants
and delegates below. Ye are all aware of the manner of life of Morven,
whom ye have surnamed the Prophet! He harms not man nor beast; he lives
alone; and, far from the wild joys of the warrior tribe, he worships
in awe and fear the Powers of Night. So is he able to advise ye of the
coming danger,--so is he able to save ye from the foe. Thus are your
huntsmen swift and your warriors bold; and thus do your cattle bring
forth their young, and the earth its fruits. What think ye, and what do
ye ask to hear? Listen, men of Oestrich!--they have laid snares for my
life; and there are amongst you those who have whetted the sword against
the bosom that is only filled with love for you all. Therefore have the
stern lords of heaven loosened the chains of the river; therefore doth
this evil menace ye. Neither will it pass away until they who dug the
pit for the servant of the stars are buried in the same.”

Then, by the red torches, the faces of the men looked fierce and
threatening; and ten thousand voices shouted forth, “Name them who
conspired against thy life, O holy prophet, and surely they shall be
torn limb from limb.”

And Morven turned aside, and they saw that he wept bitterly; and he
said,--

“Ye have asked me, and I have answered: but now scarce will ye believe
the foe that I have provoked against me; and by the heavens themselves
I swear, that if my death would satisfy their fury, nor bring down upon
yourselves and your children’s children the anger of the throned stars,
gladly would I give my bosom to the knife. Yes,” he cried, lifting up
his voice, and pointing his shadowy arm towards the hall where the king
sat by the pine-fire,--“yes, thou whom by my voice the stars chose
above thy brother; yes, Siror, the guilty one! take thy sword, and come
hither; strike, if thou hast the heart to strike, the Prophet of the
Gods!”

The king started to his feet, and the crowd were hushed in a shuddering
silence.

Morven resumed:--

“Know then, O men of Oestrich, that Siror and Voltoch his brother, and
Darvan the elder of the wise men, have purposed to slay your prophet,
even at such hour as when alone he seeks the shade of the forest to
devise new benefits for you. Let the king deny it, if he can!”

Then Voltoch, of the giant limbs, strode forth from the hall, and his
spear quivered in his hand.

“Rightly hast thou spoken, base son of my father’s herdsman! and for
thy sins shalt thou surely die; for thou liest when thou speakest of thy
power with the stars, and thou laughest at the folly of them who hear
thee: wherefore put him to death.”

Then the chiefs in the hall clashed their arms, and rushed forth to slay
the son of Osslah.

But he, stretching his unarmed hands on high, exclaimed, “Hear him, O
dread ones of the night! Hark how he blasphemeth!”

Then the crowd took up the word, and cried, “He blasphemeth! he
blasphemeth against the prophet!”

But the king and the chiefs, who hated Morven because of his power with
the people, rushed into the crowd; and the crowd were irresolute, nor
knew they how to act, for never yet had they rebelled against their
chiefs, and they feared alike the prophet and the king.

And Siror cried, “Summon Darvan to us, for he hath watched the steps of
Morven, and he shall lift the veil from my people’s eyes.” Then three of
the swift of foot started forth to the house of Darvan.

And Morven cried out with a loud voice, “Hark! thus saith the star, who,
now riding through yonder cloud, breaks forth upon my eyes, ‘For the lie
that the elder hath uttered against my servant, the curse of the stars
shall fall upon him.’ Seek, and as ye find him so may ye find ever the
foes of Morven and the gods!”

A chill and an icy fear fell over the crowd, and even the cheek of Siror
grew pale; and Morven, erect and dark above the waving torches, stood
motionless with folded arms. And hark!--far and fast came on the
war-steeds of the wave; the people heard them marching to the land, and
tossing their white manes in the roaring wind.

“Lo, as ye listen,” said Morven, calmly, “the river sweeps on. Haste,
for the gods will have a victim, be it your prophet or your king.”

“Slave!” shouted Siror, and his spear left his hand, and far above the
heads of the crowd sped hissing beside the dark form of Morven, and rent
the trunk of the oak behind. Then the people, wroth at the danger of
their beloved seer, uttered a wild yell, and gathered round him with
brandished swords, facing their chieftains and their king. But at
that instant, ere the war had broken forth among the tribe, the three
warriors returned, and they bore Darvan on their shoulders, and laid him
at the feet of the king, and they said tremblingly, “Thus found we the
elder in the centre of his own hall.” And the people saw that Darvan
was a corpse, and that the prediction of Morven was thus verified. “So
perish the enemies of Morven and the stars!” cried the son of Osslah.
And the people echoed the cry. Then the fury of Siror was at its height,
and waving his sword above his head he plunged into the crowd, “Thy
blood, baseborn, or mine!”

“So be it!” answered Morven, quailing not. “People, smite the
blasphemer! Hark how the river pours down upon your children and your
hearths! On, on, or ye perish!”

And Siror fell, pierced by five hundred spears.

“Smite! smite!” cried Morven, as the chiefs of the royal house gathered
round the king. And the clash of swords, and the gleam of spears, and
the cries of the dying, and the yell of the trampling people mingled
with the roar of the elements, and the voices of the rushing wave.

Three hundred of the chiefs perished that night by the swords of their
own tribe; and the last cry of the victors was, “Morven the prophet!
_Morven the king!_”

And the son of Osslah, seeing the waves now spreading over the valley,
led Orna his wife, and the men of Oestrich, their women, and their
children, to a high mount, where they waited the dawning sun. But Orna
sat apart and wept bitterly, for her brothers were no more, and her race
had perished from the earth. And Morven sought to comfort her in vain.

When the morning rose, they saw that the river had overspread the
greater part of the city, and now stayed its course among the hollows of
the vale. Then Morven said to the people, “The star-kings are avenged,
and their wrath appeased. Tarry only here until the waters have melted
into the crevices of the soil.” And on the fourth day they returned to
the city, and no man dared to name another, save Morven, as the king.

But Morven retired into his cave and mused deeply; and then assembling
the people, he gave them new laws; and he made them build a mighty
temple in honour of the stars, and made them heap within it all that the
tribe held most precious. And he took unto him fifty children from the
most famous of the tribe; and he took also ten from among the men who
had served him best, and he ordained that they should serve the stars in
the great temple: and Morven was their chief. And he put away the crown
they pressed upon him, and he chose from among the elders a new king.
And he ordained that henceforth the servants only of the stars in the
great temple should elect the king and the rulers, and hold council,
and proclaim war; but he suffered the king to feast, and to hunt, and to
make merry in the banquet-halls. And Morven built altars in the temple,
and was the first who, in the North, sacrificed the beast and the bird,
and afterwards human flesh, upon the altars. And he drew auguries from
the entrails of the victim, and made schools for the science of the
prophet; and Morven’s piety was the wonder of the tribe, in that he
refused to be a king. And Morven the high priest was ten thousand times
mightier than the king. He taught the people to till the ground and
to sow the herb; and by his wisdom, and the valour that his prophecies
instilled into men, he conquered all the neighbouring tribes. And the
sons of Oestrich spread themselves over a mighty empire, and with them
spread the name and the laws of Morven. And in every province which he
conquered, he ordered them to build a temple to the stars.

But a heavy sorrow fell upon the fears of Morven. The sister of Siror
bowed down her head, and survived not long the slaughter of her race.
And she left Morven childless. And he mourned bitterly and as one
distraught, for her only in the world had his heart the power to love.
And he sat down and covered his face, saying:--

“Lo! I have toiled and travailed; and never before in the world did man
conquer what I have conquered. Verily the empire of the iron thews and
the giant limbs is no more! I have founded a new power, that henceforth
shall sway the lands,--the empire of a plotting brain and a commanding
mind. But, behold! my fate is barren, and I feel already that it will
grow neither fruit nor tree as a shelter to mine old age. Desolate and
lonely shall I pass unto my grave. O Orna! my beautiful! my loved! none
were like unto thee, and to thy love do I owe my glory and my life!
Would for thy sake, O sweet bird! that nestled in the dark cavern of my
heart,--would for thy sake that thy brethren had been spared, for verily
with my life would I have purchased thine. Alas! only when I lost thee
did I find that thy love was dearer to me than the fear of others!” And
Morven mourned night and day, and none might comfort him.

But from that time forth he gave himself solely up to the cares of his
calling; and his nature and his affections, and whatever there was yet
left soft in him, grew hard like stone; and he was a man without love,
and he forbade love and marriage to the priest.

Now, in his latter years, there arose _other_ prophets; for the
world had grown wiser even by Morven’s wisdom, and some did say unto
themselves, “Behold Morven, the herdsman’s son, is a king of kings: this
did the stars for their servant; shall we not also be servants to the
star?”

And they wore black garments like Morven, and went about prophesying of
what the stars foretold them. And Morven was exceeding wroth; for he,
more than other men, knew that the prophets lied. Wherefore he went
forth against them with the ministers of the temple, and he took them,
and burned them by a slow fire; for thus said Morven to the people: “A
true prophet hath honour, but _I_ only am a true prophet; to all false
prophets there shall be surely death.”

And the people applauded the piety of the son of Osslah.

And Morven educated the wisest of the children in the mysteries of the
temple, so that they grew up to succeed him worthily.

And he died full of years and honour; and they carved his effigy on a
mighty stone before the temple, and the effigy endured for a thousand
ages, and whoso looked on it trembled; for the face was calm with the
calmness of unspeakable awe!

And Morven was the first mortal of the North that made Religion the
stepping-stone to Power. Of a surety Morven was a great man!



It was the last night of the old year, and the stars sat, each upon his
ruby throne, and watched with sleepless eyes upon the world. The
night was dark and troubled, the dread winds were abroad, and fast and
frequent hurried the clouds beneath the thrones of the kings of night.
And ever and anon fiery meteors flashed along the depths of heaven,
and were again swallowed up in the grave of darkness. But far below his
brethren, and with a lurid haze around his orb, sat the discontented
star that had watched over the hunters of the North.

And on the lowest abyss of space there was spread a thick and mighty
gloom, from which, as from a caldron, rose columns of wreathing smoke;
and still, when the great winds rested for an instant on their paths,
voices of woe and laughter, mingled with shrieks, were heard booming
from the abyss to the upper air.

And now, in the middest night, a vast figure rose slowly from the abyss,
and its wings threw blackness over the world. High upward to the throne
of the discontented star sailed the fearful shape, and the star trembled
on his throne when the form stood before him face to face.

And the shape said, “Hail, brother! all hail!”

“I know thee not,” answered the star; “thou art not the archangel that
visitest the kings of night.”

And the shape laughed loud. “I am the fallen star of the morning! I am
Lucifer, thy brother! Hast thou not, O sullen king, served me and mine;
and hast thou not wrested the earth from thy Lord who sittest above, and
given it to me, by darkening the souls of men with the religion of fear?
Wherefore come, brother, come; thou hast a throne prepared beside my own
in the fiery gloom. Come! The heavens are no more for thee!”

Then the star rose from his throne, and descended to the side of
Lucifer; for ever hath the spirit of discontent had sympathy with the
soul of pride. And they sank slowly down to the gulf of gloom.

It was the first night of the new year, and the stars sat each on his
ruby throne, and watched with sleepless eyes upon the world. But sorrow
dimmed the bright faces of the kings of night, for they mourned in
silence and in fear for a fallen brother.

And the gates of the heaven of heavens flew open with a golden sound,
and the swift archangel fled down on his silent wings; and the archangel
gave to each of the stars, as before, the message of his Lord, and to
each star was his appointed charge. And when the heraldry seemed done
there came a laugh from the abyss of gloom, and half-way from the gulf
rose the lurid shape of Lucifer the fiend!

“Thou countest thy flock ill, O radiant shepherd! Behold! one star is
missing from the three thousand and ten!”

“Back to thy gulf, false Lucifer!--the throne of thy brother hath been
filled.”

And, lo! as the archangel spake, the stars beheld a young and
all-lustrous stranger on the throne of the erring star; and his face
was so soft to look upon that the dimmest of human eyes might have gazed
upon its splendour unabashed: but the dark fiend alone was dazzled
by its lustre, and, with a yell that shook the flaming pillars of the
universe, he plunged backward into the gloom.

Then, far and sweet from the arch unseen, came forth the voice of God,--

“Behold! on the throne of the discontented star sits the star of Hope;
and he that breathed into mankind the religion of Fear hath a successor
in him who shall teach earth the religion of Love!”

And evermore the star of Fear dwells with Lucifer, and the star of Love
keeps vigil in heaven!



CHAPTER XX. GLENHAUSEN.--THE POWER OF LOVE IN SANCTIFIED PLACES.--A
PORTRAIT OF FREDERICK BARBAROSSA.--THE AMBITION OF MEN FINDS NO ADEQUATE
SYMPATHY IN WOMEN.

“YOU made me tremble for you more than once,” said Gertrude to the
student; “I feared you were about to touch upon ground really sacred,
but your end redeemed all.”

“The false religion always tries to counterfeit the garb, the language,
the aspect of the true,” answered the German; “for that reason, I
purposely suffered my tale to occasion that very fear and anxiety you
speak of, conscious that the most scrupulous would be contented when the
whole was finished.”

This German was one of a new school, of which England as yet knows
nothing. We shall see hereafter what it will produce.

The student left them at Friedberg, and our travellers proceeded to
Glenhausen,--a spot interesting to lovers; for here Frederick the First
was won by the beauty of Gela, and, in the midst of an island vale, he
built the Imperial Palace, in honour of the lady of his love. This spot
is, indeed, well chosen of itself; the mountains of the Rhinegeburg
close it in with the green gloom of woods and the glancing waters of the
Kinz.

“Still, wherever we go,” said Trevylyan, “we find all tradition is
connected with love; and history, for that reason, hallows less than
romance.”

“It is singular,” said Vane, moralizing, “that love makes but a small
part of our actual lives, but is yet the master-key to our sympathies.
The hardest of us, who laugh at the passion when they see it palpably
before them, are arrested by some dim tradition of its existence in the
past. It is as if life had few opportunities of bringing out certain
qualities within us, so that they always remain untold and dormant,
susceptible to thought, but deaf to action.”

“You refine and mystify too much,” said Trevylyan, smiling; “none of
us have any faculty, any passion, uncalled forth, if we have _really_
loved, though but for a day.”

Gertrude smiled, and drawing her arm within his, Trevylyan left Vane to
philosophize on passion,--a fit occupation for one who had never felt
it.

“Here let us pause,” said Trevylyan, afterwards, as they visited the
remains of the ancient palace, and the sun glittered on the scene, “to
recall the old chivalric day of the gallant Barbarossa; let us suppose
him commencing the last great action of his life; let us picture him as
setting out for the Holy Land. Imagine him issuing from those walls on
his white charger,--his fiery eye somewhat dimmed by years, and his
hair blanched; but nobler from the impress of time itself,--the clang of
arms; the tramp of steeds; banners on high; music pealing from hill to
hill; the red cross and the nodding plume; the sun, as now glancing
on yonder trees; and thence reflected from the burnished arms of the
Crusaders. But, Gela--”

“Ah,” said Gertrude, “_she_ must be no more; for she would have outlived
her beauty, and have found that glory had now no rival in his breast.
Glory consoles men for the death of the loved; but glory is infidelity
to the living.”

“Nay, not so, dearest Gertrude,” said Trevylyan, quickly; “for my
darling dream of Fame is the hope of laying its honours at your feet!
And if ever, in future years, I should rise above the herd, I should
only ask if _your_ step were proud and _your_ heart elated.”

“I was wrong,” said Gertrude, with tears in her eyes; “and for your sake
I can be ambitious.”

Perhaps there, too, she was mistaken; for one of the common
disappointments of the heart is, that women have so rarely a sympathy in
our better and higher aspirings. Their ambition is not for great things;
they cannot understand that desire “which scorns delight, and loves
laborious days.” If they love us, they usually exact too much. They
are jealous of the ambition to which we sacrifice so largely, and which
divides us from them; and they leave the stern passion of great minds
to the only solitude which affection cannot share. To aspire is to be
alone!



CHAPTER XXI. VIEW OF EHRENBREITSTEIN.--A NEW ALARM IN GERTRUDE’S
HEALTH.--TRARBACH.

ANOTHER time our travellers proceeded from Coblentz to Treves, following
the course of the Moselle. They stopped on the opposite bank below the
bridge that unites Coblentz with the Petersberg, to linger over the
superb view of Ehrenbreitstein which you may there behold.

It was one of those calm noonday scenes which impress upon us their own
bright and voluptuous tranquillity. There stood the old herdsman leaning
on his staff, and the quiet cattle knee-deep in the gliding waters.
Never did stream more smooth and sheen than was at that hour the surface
of the Moselle mirror the images of the pastoral life. Beyond, the
darker shadows of the bridge and of the walls of Coblentz fell deep over
the waves, checkered by the tall sails of the craft that were moored
around the harbour. But clear against the sun rose the spires and roofs
of Coblentz, backed by many a hill sloping away to the horizon. High,
dark, and massive, on the opposite bank, swelled the towers and rock of
Ehrenbreitstein,--a type of that great chivalric spirit--the HONOUR that
the rock arrogates for its name--which demands so many sacrifices of
blood and tears, but which ever creates in the restless heart of man a
far deeper interest than the more peaceful scenes of life by which it is
contrasted. There, still--from the calm waters, and the abodes of common
toil and ordinary pleasure--turns the aspiring mind! Still as we gaze on
that lofty and immemorial rock we recall the famine and the siege;
and own that the more daring crimes of men have a strange privilege in
hallowing the very spot which they devastate.

Below, in green curves and mimic bays covered with herbage, the gradual
banks mingled with the water; and just where the bridge closed, a
solitary group of trees, standing dark in the thickest shadow, gave that
melancholy feature to the scene which resembles the one dark thought
that often forces itself into our sunniest hours. Their boughs stirred
not; no voice of birds broke the stillness of their gloomy verdure: the
eye turned from them, as from the sad moral that belongs to existence.

In proceeding to Trarbach, Gertrude was seized with another of those
fainting fits which had so terrified Trevylyan before; they stopped an
hour or two at a little village, but Gertrude rallied with such apparent
rapidity, and so strongly insisted on proceeding, that they reluctantly
continued their way. This event would have thrown a gloom over their
journey, if Gertrude had not exerted herself to dispel the impression
she had occasioned; and so light, so cheerful, were her spirits, that
for the time at least she succeeded.

They arrived at Trarbach late at noon. This now small and humble town
is said to have been the Thronus Bacchi of the ancients. From the spot
where the travellers halted to take, as it were, their impression of the
town, they saw before them the little hostelry, a poor pretender to the
Thronus Bacchi, with the rude sign of the Holy Mother over the door. The
peaked roof, the sunk window, the gray walls, checkered with the rude
beams of wood so common to the meaner houses on the Continent, bore
something of a melancholy and prepossessing aspect. Right above, with
its Gothic windows and venerable spire, rose the church of the town;
and, crowning the summit of a green and almost perpendicular mountain,
scowled the remains of one of those mighty castles which make the
never-failing frown on a German landscape.

The scene was one of quiet and of gloom: the exceeding serenity of the
day contrasted, with an almost unpleasing brightness, the poverty of
the town, the thinness of the population, and the dreary grandeur of the
ruins that overhung the capital of the perished race of the bold Counts
of Spanheim.

They passed the night at Trarbach, and continued their journey next
day. At Treves, Gertrude was for some days seriously ill; and when they
returned to Coblentz, her disease had evidently received a rapid and
alarming increase.



CHAPTER XXII. THE DOUBLE LIFE.--TREVYLYAN’S FATE.--SORROW THE PARENT OF
FAME.--NIEDERLAHNSTEIN.--DREAMS.

THERE are two lives to each of us, gliding on at the same time, scarcely
connected with each other,--the life of our actions, the life of our
minds; the external and the inward history; the movements of the frame,
the deep and ever-restless workings of the heart! They who have loved
know that there is a diary of the affections, which we might keep for
years without having occasion even to touch upon the exterior surface
of life, our busy occupations, the mechanical progress of our existence;
yet by the last are we judged, the first is never known. History reveals
men’s deeds, men’s outward character, but _not themselves_. There is a
secret self that hath its own life “rounded by a dream,” unpenetrated,
unguessed. What passed within Trevylyan, hour after hour, as he watched
over the declining health of the only being in the world whom his proud
heart had been ever destined to love? His real record of the time
was marked by every cloud upon Gertrude’s brow, every smile of her
countenance, every--the faintest--alteration in her disease; yet, to the
outward seeming, all this vast current of varying eventful emotion
lay dark and unconjectured. He filled up with wonted regularity the
colourings of existence, and smiled and moved as other men. For still,
in the heroism with which devotion conquers self, he sought only to
cheer and gladden the young heart on which he had embarked his all; and
he kept the dark tempest of his anguish for the solitude of night.

That was a peculiar doom which Fate had reserved for him; and casting
him, in after years, on the great sea of public strife, it seemed as if
she were resolved to tear from his heart all yearnings for the land.
For him there was to be no green or sequestered spot in the valley of
household peace. His bark was to know no haven, and his soul not even
the desire of rest. For action is that Lethe in which alone we forget
our former dreams, and the mind that, too stern not to wrestle with its
emotions, seeks to conquer regret, must leave itself no leisure to look
behind. Who knows what benefits to the world may have sprung from the
sorrows of the benefactor? As the harvest that gladdens mankind in the
suns of autumn was called forth by the rains of spring, so the griefs of
youth may make the fame of maturity.

Gertrude, charmed by the beauties of the river, desired to continue the
voyage to Mayence. The rich Trevylyan persuaded the physician who had
attended her to accompany them, and they once more pursued their way
along the banks of the feudal Rhine. For what the Tiber is to the
classic, the Rhine is to the chivalric age. The steep rock and the gray
dismantled tower, the massive and rude picturesque of the feudal days,
constitute the great features of the scene; and you might almost fancy,
as you glide along, that you are sailing back adown the river of Time,
and the monuments of the pomp and power of old, rising, one after one,
upon its shores!

Vane and Du-----e, the physician, at the farther end of the vessel,
conversed upon stones and strata, in that singular pedantry of science
which strips nature to a skeleton, and prowls among the dead bones of
the world, unconscious of its living beauty.

They left Gertrude and Trevylyan to themselves; and, “bending o’er the
vessel’s laving side,” they indulged in silence the melancholy with
which each was imbued. For Gertrude began to waken, though doubtingly
and at intervals, to a sense of the short span that was granted to her
life; and over the loveliness around her there floated that sad and
ineffable interest which springs from the presentiment of our own death.
They passed the rich island of Oberwerth, and Hochheim, famous for its
ruby grape, and saw, from his mountain bed, the Lahn bear his tribute of
fruits and corn into the treasury of the Rhine. Proudly rose the tower
of Niederlahnstein, and deeply lay its shadow along the stream. It was
late noon; the cattle had sought the shade from the slanting sun, and,
far beyond, the holy castle of Marksburg raised its battlements above
mountains covered with the vine. On the water two boats had been drawn
alongside each other; and from one, now moving to the land, the splash
of oars broke the general stillness of the tide. Fast by an old tower
the fishermen were busied in their craft, but the sound of their voices
did not reach the ear. It was life, but a silent life, suited to the
tranquillity of noon.

“There is something in travel,” said Gertrude, “which constantly, even
amidst the most retired spots, impresses us with the exuberance of life.
We come to those quiet nooks and find a race whose existence we never
dreamed of. In their humble path they know the same passions and tread
the same career as ourselves. The mountains shut them out from the great
world, but their village is a world in itself. And they know and heed no
more of the turbulent scenes of remote cities than our own planet of
the inhabitants of the distant stars. What then is death, but the
forgetfulness of some few hearts added to the general unconsciousness of
our existence that pervades the universe? The bubble breaks in the vast
desert of the air without a sound.”

“Why talk of death?” said Trevylyan, with a writhing smile. “These sunny
scenes should not call forth such melancholy images.”

“Melancholy,” repeated Gertrude, mechanically. “Yes, death is indeed
melancholy when we are loved!”

They stayed a short time at Niederlahnstein, for Vane was anxious to
examine the minerals that the Lahn brings into the Rhine; and the sun
was waning towards its close as they renewed their voyage. As they
sailed slowly on, Gertrude said, “How like a dream is this sentiment
of existence, when, without labour or motion, every change of scene is
brought before us; and if I am with you, dearest, I do not feel it less
resembling a dream, for I have dreamed of you lately more than ever; and
dreams have become a part of my life itself.”

“Speaking of dreams,” said Trevylyan, as they pursued that mysterious
subject, “I once during my former residence in Germany fell in with a
singular enthusiast, who had taught himself what he termed ‘A System of
Dreaming.’ When he first spoke to me upon it I asked him to explain what
he meant, which he did somewhat in the following words.”



CHAPTER XXIII. THE LIFE OF DREAMS.

“I WAS born,” said he, “with many of the sentiments of the poet, but
without the language to express them; my feelings were constantly
chilled by the intercourse of the actual world. My family, mere Germans,
dull and unimpassioned, had nothing in common with me; nor did I out of
my family find those with whom I could better sympathize. I was revolted
by friendships,--for they were susceptible to every change; I was
disappointed in love,--for the truth never approached to my ideal.
Nursed early in the lap of Romance, enamoured of the wild and the
adventurous, the commonplaces of life were to me inexpressibly tame and
joyless. And yet indolence, which belongs to the poetical character, was
more inviting than that eager and uncontemplative action which can alone
wring enterprise from life. Meditation was my natural element. I loved
to spend the noon reclined by some shady stream, and in a half sleep
to shape images from the glancing sunbeams. A dim and unreal order of
philosophy, that belongs to our nation, was my favourite intellectual
pursuit; and I sought amongst the Obscure and the Recondite the variety
and emotion I could not find in the Familiar. Thus constantly watching
the operations of the inner mind, it occurred to me at last that sleep
having its own world, but as yet a rude and fragmentary one, it might
be possible to shape from its chaos all those combinations of beauty,
of power, of glory, and of love, which were denied to me in the world in
which my frame walked and had its being. So soon as this idea came upon
me, I nursed and cherished and mused over it, till I found that the
imagination began to effect the miracle I desired. By brooding ardently,
intensely, before I retired to rest, over any especial train of
thought, over any ideal creations; by keeping the body utterly still and
quiescent during the whole day; by shutting out all living adventure,
the memory of which might perplex and interfere with the stream
of events that I desired to pour forth into the wilds of sleep, I
discovered at last that I could lead in dreams a life solely their own,
and utterly distinct from the life of day. Towers and palaces, all
my heritage and seigneury, rose before me from the depths of night; I
quaffed from jewelled cups the Falernian of imperial vaults; music from
harps of celestial tone filled up the crevices of air; and the smiles of
immortal beauty flushed like sunlight over all. Thus the adventure and
the glory that I could not for my waking life obtain, was obtained for
me in sleep. I wandered with the gryphon and the gnome; I sounded the
horn at enchanted portals; I conquered in the knightly lists; I planted
my standard over battlements huge as the painter’s birth of Babylon
itself.

“But I was afraid to call forth one shape on whose loveliness to pour
all the hidden passion of my soul. I trembled lest my sleep should
present me some image which it could never restore, and, waking from
which, even the new world I had created might be left desolate forever.
I shuddered lest I should adore a vision which the first ray of morning
could smite to the grave.

“In this train of mind I began to wonder whether it might not be
possible to connect dreams together; to supply the thread that was
wanting; to make one night continue the history of the other, so as
to bring together the same shapes and the same scenes, and thus lead a
connected and harmonious life, not only in the one half of existence,
but in the other, the richer and more glorious half. No sooner did this
idea present itself to me, than I burned to accomplish it. I had before
taught myself that Faith is the great creator; that to believe fervently
is to make belief true. So I would not suffer my mind to doubt the
practicability of its scheme. I shut myself up then entirely by day,
refused books, and hated the very sun, and compelled all my thoughts
(and sleep is the mirror of thought) to glide in one direction,--the
direction of my dreams,--so that from night to night the imagination
might keep up the thread of action, and I might thus lie down full of
the past dream and confident of the sequel. Not for one day only, or for
one month, did I pursue this system, but I continued it zealously and
sternly till at length it began to succeed. Who shall tell,” cried the
enthusiast,--I see him now with his deep, bright, sunken eyes, and his
wild hair thrown backward from his brow,--“the rapture I experienced,
when first, faintly and half distinct, I perceived the harmony I had
invoked dawn upon my dreams? At first there was only a partial and
desultory connection between them; my eye recognized certain shapes, my
ear certain tones common to each; by degrees these augmented in number,
and were more defined in outline. At length one fair face broke forth
from among the ruder forms, and night after night appeared mixing with
them for a moment and then vanishing, just as the mariner watches, in
a clouded sky, the moon shining through the drifting rack, and quickly
gone. My curiosity was now vividly excited; the face, with its lustrous
eyes and seraph features, roused all the emotions that no living shape
had called forth. I became enamoured of a dream, and as the statue to
the Cyprian was my creation to me; so from this intent and unceasing
passion I at length worked out my reward. My dream became more palpable;
I spoke with it; I knelt to it; my lips were pressed to its own; we
exchanged the vows of love, and morning only separated us with the
certainty that at night we should meet again. Thus then,” continued my
visionary, “I commenced a history utterly separate from the history of
the world, and it went on alternately with my harsh and chilling history
of the day, equally regular and equally continuous. And what, you ask,
was that history? Methought I was a prince in some Eastern island that
had no features in common with the colder north of my native home. By
day I looked upon the dull walls of a German town, and saw homely or
squalid forms passing before me; the sky was dim and the sun cheerless.
Night came on with her thousand stars, and brought me the dews of sleep.
Then suddenly there was a new world; the richest fruits hung from the
trees in clusters of gold and purple. Palaces of the quaint fashion of
the sunnier climes, with spiral minarets and glittering cupolas, were
mirrored upon vast lakes sheltered by the palm-tree and banana. The sun
seemed a different orb, so mellow and gorgeous were his beams; birds and
winged things of all hues fluttered in the shining air; the faces and
garments of men were not of the northern regions of the world, and their
voices spoke a tongue which, strange at first, by degrees I interpreted.
Sometimes I made war upon neighbouring kings; sometimes I chased the
spotted pard through the vast gloom of immemorial forests; my life
was at once a life of enterprise and pomp. But above all there was the
history of my love! I thought there were a thousand difficulties in the
way of attaining its possession. Many were the rocks I had to scale, and
the battles to wage, and the fortresses to storm, in order to win her as
my bride. But at last” (continued the enthusiast), “she _is_ won, she
is my own! Time in that wild world, which I visit nightly, passes not
so slowly as in this, and yet an hour may be the same as a year. This
continuity of existence, this successive series of dreams, so different
from the broken incoherence of other men’s sleep, at times bewilders me
with strange and suspicious thoughts. What if this glorious sleep be a
real life, and this dull waking the true repose? Why not? What is there
more faithful in the one than in the other? And there have I garnered
and collected all of pleasure that I am capable of feeling. I seek
no joy in this world; I form no ties, I feast not, nor love, nor make
merry; I am only impatient till the hour when I may re-enter my royal
realms and pour my renewed delight into the bosom of my bright Ideal.
There then have I found all that the world denied me; there have I
realized the yearning and the aspiration within me; there have I coined
the untold poetry into the Felt, the Seen!”

I found, continued Trevylyan, that this tale was corroborated by inquiry
into the visionary’s habits. He shunned society; avoided all unnecessary
movement or excitement. He fared with rigid abstemiousness, and only
appeared to feel pleasure as the day departed, and the hour of return to
his imaginary kingdom approached. He always retired to rest punctually
at a certain hour, and would sleep so soundly that a cannon fired under
his window would not arouse him. He never, which may seem singular,
spoke or moved much in his sleep, but was peculiarly calm, almost to
the appearance of lifelessness; but, discovering once that he had been
watched in sleep, he was wont afterwards carefully to secure the chamber
from intrusion. His victory over the natural incoherence of sleep had,
when I first knew him, lasted for some years; possibly what imagination
first produced was afterwards continued by habit.

I saw him again a few months subsequent to this confession, and he
seemed to me much changed. His health was broken, and his abstraction
had deepened into gloom.

I questioned him of the cause of the alteration, and he answered me with
great reluctance,--

“She is dead,” said he; “my realms are desolate! A serpent stung her,
and she died in these very arms. Vainly, when I started from my sleep in
horror and despair, vainly did I say to myself,--This is but a dream. I
shall see her again. A vision cannot die! Hath it flesh that decays; is
it not a spirit,--bodiless, indissoluble? With what terrible anxiety
I awaited the night! Again I slept, and the DREAM lay again before me,
dead and withered. Even the ideal can vanish. I assisted in the burial;
I laid her in the earth; I heaped the monumental mockery over her form.
And never since hath she, or ought like her, revisited my dreams. I see
her only when I wake; thus to wake is indeed to dream! But,” continued
the visionary in a solemn voice, “I feel myself departing from this
world, and with a fearful joy; for I think there may be a land beyond
even the land of sleep where I shall see her again,--a land in which a
vision itself may be restored.”

And in truth, concluded Trevylyan, the dreamer died shortly afterwards,
suddenly, and in his sleep. And never before, perhaps, had Fate so
literally made of a living man (with his passions and his powers, his
ambition and his love) the plaything and puppet of a dream!

“Ah,” said Vane, who had heard the latter part of Trevylyan’s story,
“could the German have bequeathed to us his secret, what a refuge should
we possess from the ills of earth! The dungeon and disease, poverty,
affliction, shame, would cease to be the tyrants of our lot; and to
Sleep we should confine our history and transfer our emotions.”

“Gertrude,” whispered the lover, “what his kingdom and his bride were to
the Dreamer art thou to me!”



CHAPTER XXIV. THE BROTHERS.

THE banks of the Rhine now shelved away into sweeping plains, and on
their right rose the once imperial city of Boppart. In no journey
of similar length do you meet with such striking instances of the
mutability and shifts of power. To find, as in the Memphian Egypt, a
city sunk into a heap of desolate ruins; the hum, the roar, the mart of
nations, hushed into the silence of ancestral tombs, is less humbling
to our human vanity than to mark, as along the Rhine, the kingly city
dwindled into the humble town or the dreary village,--decay without its
grandeur, change without the awe of its solitude! On the site on
which Drusus raised his Roman tower, and the kings of the Franks their
palaces, trade now dribbles in tobacco-pipes, and transforms into an
excellent cotton factory the antique nunnery of Konigsberg! So be it; it
is the progressive order of things,--the world itself will soon be one
excellent cotton factory!

“Look,” said Trevylyan, as they sailed on, “at yonder mountain, with its
two traditionary Castles of Liebenstein and Sternfels.”

Massive and huge the ruins swelled above the green rock, at the foot
of which lay, in happier security from time and change, the clustered
cottages of the peasant, with a single spire rising above the quiet
village.

“Is there not, Albert, a celebrated legend attached to those castles?”
 said Gertrude. “I think I remember to have heard their names in
connection with your profession of taleteller.”

“Yes,” said Trevylyan, “the story relates to the last lords of those
shattered towers, and--”

“You will sit here, nearer to me, and begin,” interrupted Gertrude, in
her tone of childlike command. “Come.”



                           THE BROTHERS.

                              A TALE.*

  * This tale is, in reality, founded on the beautiful tradition
    which belongs to Liebenstein and Sternfels.

You must imagine then, dear Gertrude (said Trevylyan), a beautiful
summer day, and by the same faculty that none possess so richly as
yourself, for it is you who can kindle something of that divine spark
even in me, you must rebuild those shattered towers in the pomp of old;
raise the gallery and the hall; man the battlements with warders, and
give the proud banners of ancestral chivalry to wave upon the walls. But
above, sloping half down the rock, you must fancy the hanging gardens of
Liebenstein, fragrant with flowers, and basking in the noonday sun.

On the greenest turf, underneath an oak, there sat three persons, in the
bloom of youth. Two of the three were brothers; the third was an orphan
girl, whom the lord of the opposite tower of Sternfels had bequeathed
to the protection of his brother, the chief of Liebenstein. The castle
itself and the demesne that belonged to it passed away from the female
line, and became the heritage of Otho, the orphan’s cousin, and the
younger of the two brothers now seated on the turf.

“And oh,” said the elder, whose name was Warbeck, “you have twined a
chaplet for my brother; have you not, dearest Leoline, a simple flower
for me?”

The beautiful orphan (for beautiful she was, Gertrude, as the heroine of
the tale you bid me tell ought to be,--should she not have to the dreams
of my fancy your lustrous hair, and your sweet smile, and your eyes
of blue, that are never, never silent? Ah, pardon me, that in a former
tale, I denied the heroine the beauty of your face, and remember that to
atone for it, I endowed her with the beauty of your mind)--the beautiful
orphan blushed to her temples, and culling from the flowers in her lap
the freshest of the roses, began weaving them into a wreath for Warbeck.

“It would be better,” said the gay Otho, “to make my sober brother a
chaplet of the rue and cypress; the rose is much too bright a flower for
so serious a knight.”

Leoline held up her hand reprovingly.

“Let him laugh, dearest cousin,” said Warbeck, gazing passionately on
her changing cheek; “and thou, Leoline, believe that the silent stream
runs the deepest.”

At this moment, they heard the voice of the old chief, their father,
calling aloud for Leoline; for ever when he returned from the chase
he wanted her gentle presence; and the hall was solitary to him if the
light sound of her step and the music of her voice were not heard in
welcome.

Leoline hastened to her guardian, and the brothers were left alone.

Nothing could be more dissimilar than the features and the respective
characters of Otho and Warbeck. Otho’s countenance was flushed with the
brown hues of health; his eyes were of the brightest hazel: his dark
hair wreathed in short curls round his open and fearless brow; the jest
ever echoed on his lips, and his step was bounding as the foot of
the hunter of the Alps. Bold and light was his spirit; if at times he
betrayed the haughty insolence of youth, he felt generously, and though
not ever ready to confess sorrow for a fault, he was at least ready to
brave peril for a friend.

But Warbeck’s frame, though of equal strength, was more slender in
its proportions than that of his brother; the fair long hair that
characterized his northern race hung on either side of a countenance
calm and pale, and deeply impressed with thought, even to sadness. His
features, more majestic and regular than Otho’s, rarely varied in their
expression. More resolute even than Otho, he was less impetuous; more
impassioned, he was also less capricious.

The brothers remained silent after Leoline had left them. Otho
carelessly braced on his sword, that he had laid aside on the grass; but
Warbeck gathered up the flowers that had been touched by the soft hand
of Leoline, and placed them in his bosom.

The action disturbed Otho; he bit his lip, and changed colour; at length
he said, with a forced laugh,--

“It must be confessed, brother, that you carry your affection for
our fair cousin to a degree that even relationship seems scarcely to
warrant.”

“It is true,” said Warbeck, calmly; “I love her with a love surpassing
that of blood.”

“How!” said Otho, fiercely: “do you dare to think of Leoline as a
bride?”

“Dare!” repeated Warbeck, turning yet paler than his wonted hue.

“Yes, I have said the word! Know, Warbeck, that I, too, love Leoline; I,
too, claim her as my bride; and never, while I can wield a sword, never,
while I wear the spurs of knighthood, will I render my claim to a living
rival,--even,” he added, sinking his voice, “though that rival be my
brother!”

Warbeck answered not; his very soul seemed stunned; he gazed long and
wistfully on his brother, and then, turning his face away, ascended the
rock without uttering a single word.

This silence startled Otho. Accustomed to vent every emotion of his own,
he could not comprehend the forbearance of his brother; he knew his high
and brave nature too well to imagine that it arose from fear. Might it
not be contempt, or might he not, at this moment, intend to seek their
father; and, the first to proclaim his love for the orphan, advance,
also, the privilege of the elder born? As these suspicions flashed
across him, the haughty Otho strode to his brother’s side, and laying
his hand on his arm, said,--

“Whither goest thou; and dost thou consent to surrender Leoline?”

“Does she love thee, Otho?” answered Warbeck, breaking silence at last;
and his voice spoke so deep an anguish, that it arrested the passions of
Otho even at their height.

“It is thou who art now silent,” continued Warbeck; “speak. Doth she
love thee, and has her lip confessed it?”

“I have believed that she loved me,” faltered Otho; “but she is of
maiden bearing, and her lip, at least, has never told it.”

“Enough,” said Warbeck; “release your hold.”

“Stay,” said Otho, his suspicions returning; “stay,--yet one word; dost
thou seek my father? He ever honoured thee more than me: wilt thou own
to him thy love, and insist on thy right of birth? By my soul and my
hope of heaven, do it, and one of us two must fall!”

“Poor boy!” answered Warbeck, bitterly; “how little thou canst read the
heart of one who loves truly! Thinkest thou I would wed her if she loved
thee? Thinkest thou I could, even to be blessed myself, give her one
moment’s pain? Out on the thought! away!”

“Then wilt not thou seek our father?” said Otho, abashed.

“Our father!--has our father the keeping of Leoline’s affection?”
 answered Warbeck; and shaking off his brother’s grasp, he sought the way
to the castle.

As he entered the hall, he heard the voice of Leoline; she was singing
to the old chief one of the simple ballads of the time that the warrior
and the hunter loved to hear. He paused lest he should break the spell
(a spell stronger than a sorcerer’s to him), and gazing upon Leoline’s
beautiful form, his heart sank within him. His brother and himself
had each that day, as they sat in the gardens, given her a flower; his
flower was the fresher and the rarer; his he saw not, but she wore his
brother’s in her bosom!

The chief, lulled by the music and wearied with the toils of the chase,
sank into sleep as the song ended, and Warbeck, coming forward, motioned
to Leoline to follow him. He passed into a retired and solitary walk,
and when they were a little distance from the castle, Warbeck turned
round, and taking Leoline’s hand gently, said,--

“Let us rest here for one moment, dearest cousin; I have much on my
heart to say to thee.”

“And what is there,” answered Leoline, as they sat on a mossy bank,
with the broad Rhine glancing below, “what is there that my kind Warbeck
would ask of me? Ah, would it might be some favour, something in poor
Leoline’s power to grant; for ever from my birth you have been to me
most tender, most kind. You, I have often heard them say; taught my
first steps to walk; you formed my infant lips into language, and, in
after years, when my wild cousin was far away in the forests at the
chase, you would brave his gay jest and remain at home, lest Leoline
should be weary in the solitude. Ah, would I could repay you!”

Warbeck turned away his cheek; his heart was very full, and it was some
moments before he summoned courage to reply.

“My fair cousin,” said he, “those were happy days; but they were the
days of childhood. New cares and new thoughts have now come on us; but
I am still thy friend, Leoline, and still thou wilt confide in me thy
young sorrows and thy young hopes, as thou ever didst. Wilt thou not,
Leoline?”

“Canst thou ask me?” said Leoline; and Warbeck, gazing on her face, saw
that though her eyes were full of tears, they yet looked steadily upon
his; and he knew that she loved him only as a sister.

He sighed, and paused again ere he resumed. “Enough,” said he; “now to
my task. Once on a time, dear cousin, there lived among these mountains
a certain chief who had two sons, and an orphan like thyself dwelt also
in his halls. And the elder son--but no matter, let us not waste words
on _him_!--the younger son, then, loved the orphan dearly,--more dearly
than cousins love; and fearful of refusal, he prayed the elder one to
urge his suit to the orphan. Leoline, my tale is done. Canst thou not
love Otho as he loves thee?”

And now lifting his eyes to Leoline, he saw that she trembled violently,
and her cheek was covered with blushes.

“Say,” continued he, mastering himself, “is not that flower
his--present--a token that he is chiefly in thy thoughts?”

“Ah, Warbeck! do not deem me ungrateful that I wear not yours also;
but--”

“Hush!” said Warbeck, hastily; “I am but as thy brother; is not Otho
more? He is young, brave, and beautiful. God grant that he may deserve
thee, if thou givest him so rich a gift as thy affections!”

“I saw less of Otho in my childhood,” said Leoline, evasively;
“therefore, his kindness of late years seemed stranger to me than
thine.”

“And thou wilt not then reject him? Thou wilt be his bride?”

“And _thy_ sister,” answered Leoline.

“Bless thee, mine own dear cousin! one brother’s kiss then, and
farewell! Otho shall thank thee for himself.”

He kissed her forehead calmly, and, turning away, plunged into the
thicket; then, nor till then, he gave vent to such emotions as, had
Leoline seen them, Otho’s suit had been lost forever; for passionately,
deeply as in her fond and innocent heart she loved Otho, the _happiness_
of Warbeck was not less dear to her.

When the young knight had recovered his self-possession he went in
search of Otho. He found him alone in the wood, leaning with folded arms
against a tree, and gazing moodily on the ground. Warbeck’s noble heart
was touched at his brother’s dejection.

“Cheer thee, Otho,” said he; “I bring thee no bad tidings; I have seen
Leoline, I have conversed with her--nay, start not,--she loves thee! she
is thine!”

“Generous, generous Warbeck!” exclaimed Otho; and he threw himself on
his brother’s neck. “No, no,” said he, “this must not be; thou hast the
elder claim,--I resign her to thee. Forgive me my waywardness, brother,
forgive me!”

“Think of the past no more,” said Warbeck; “the love of Leoline is an
excuse for greater offences than thine. And now, be kind to her; her
nature is soft and keen. _I_ know her well; for _I_ have studied her
faintest wish. Thou art hasty and quick of ire; but remember that a word
wounds where love is deep. For my sake, as for hers, think more of her
happiness than thine own; now seek her,--she waits to hear from thy lips
the tale that sounded cold upon mine.”

With that he left his brother, and, once more re-entering the castle, he
went into the hall of his ancestors. His father still slept; he put his
hand on his gray hair, and blessed him; then stealing up to his chamber,
he braced on his helm and armour, and thrice kissing the hilt of his
sword, said, with a flushed cheek,--

“Henceforth be _thou_ my bride!” Then passing from the castle, he sped
by the most solitary paths down the rock, gained the Rhine, and hailing
one of the numerous fishermen of the river, won the opposite shore; and
alone, but not sad, for his high heart supported him, and Leoline at
least was happy, he hastened to Frankfort.

The town was all gayety and life, arms clanged at every corner, the
sounds of martial music, the wave of banners, the glittering of plumed
casques, the neighing of war-steeds, all united to stir the blood and
inflame the sense. Saint Bertrand had lifted the sacred cross along the
shores of the Rhine, and the streets of Frankfort witnessed with what
success!

On that same day Warbeck assumed the sacred badge, and was enlisted
among the knights of the Emperor Conrad.

We must suppose some time to have elapsed, and Otho and Leoline were not
yet wedded; for, in the first fervour of his gratitude to his brother,
Otho had proclaimed to his father and to Leoline the conquest Warbeck
had obtained over himself; and Leoline, touched to the heart, would not
consent that the wedding should take place immediately. “Let him, at
least,” said she, “not be insulted by a premature festivity; and give
him time, amongst the lofty beauties he will gaze upon in a far country,
to forget, Otho, that he once loved her who is the beloved of thee.”

The old chief applauded this delicacy; and even Otho, in the first flush
of his feelings towards his brother, did not venture to oppose it. They
settled, then, that the marriage should take place at the end of a year.

Months rolled away, and an absent and moody gloom settled upon Otho’s
brow. In his excursions with his gay companions among the neighbouring
towns, he heard of nothing but the glory of the Crusaders, of the homage
paid to the heroes of the Cross at the courts they visited, of the
adventures of their life, and the exciting spirit that animated their
war. In fact, neither minstrel nor priest suffered the theme to grow
cold; and the fame of those who had gone forth to the holy strife gave
at once emulation and discontent to the youths who remained behind.

“And my brother enjoys this ardent and glorious life,” said the
impatient Otho; “while I, whose arm is as strong, and whose heart is as
bold, languish here listening to the dull tales of a hoary sire and
the silly songs of an orphan girl.” His heart smote him at the last
sentence, but he had already begun to weary of the gentle love of
Leoline. Perhaps when he had no longer to gain a triumph over a rival
the excitement palled; or perhaps his proud spirit secretly chafed at
being conquered by his brother in generosity, even when outshining him
in the success of love.

But poor Leoline, once taught that she was to consider Otho her
betrothed, surrendered her heart entirely to his control. His wild
spirit, his dark beauty, his daring valour, won while they awed her; and
in the fitfulness of his nature were those perpetual springs of hope
and fear that are the fountains of ever-agitated love. She saw with
increasing grief the change that was growing over Otho’s mind; nor did
she divine the cause. “Surely I have not offended him?” thought she.

Among the companions of Otho was one who possessed a singular sway
over him. He was a knight of that mysterious Order of the Temple, which
exercised at one time so great a command over the minds of men.

A severe and dangerous wound in a brawl with an English knight had
confined the Templar at Frankfort, and prevented his joining the
Crusade. During his slow recovery he had formed an intimacy with Otho,
and, taking up his residence at the castle of Liebenstein, had been
struck with the beauty of Leoline. Prevented by his oath from marriage,
he allowed himself a double license in love, and doubted not, could he
disengage the young knight from his betrothed, that she would add a
new conquest to the many he had already achieved. Artfully therefore he
painted to Otho the various attractions of the Holy Cause; and, above
all, he failed not to describe, with glowing colours, the beauties who,
in the gorgeous East, distinguished with a prodigal favour the warriors
of the Cross. Dowries, unknown in the more sterile mountains of the
Rhine, accompanied the hand of these beauteous maidens; and even a
prince’s daughter was not deemed, he said, too lofty a marriage for the
heroes who might win kingdoms for themselves.

“To me,” said the Templar, “such hopes are eternally denied. But you,
were you not already betrothed, what fortunes might await you!”

By such discourses the ambition of Otho was perpetually aroused; they
served to deepen his discontent at his present obscurity, and to convert
to distaste the only solace it afforded in the innocence and affection
of Leoline.

One night, a minstrel sought shelter from the storm in the halls of
Liebenstein. His visit was welcomed by the chief, and he repaid the
hospitality he had received by the exercise of his art. He sang of the
chase, and the gaunt hound started from the hearth. He sang of love, and
Otho, forgetting his restless dreams, approached to Leoline, and
laid himself at her feet. Louder then and louder rose the strain. The
minstrel sang of war; he painted the feats of the Crusaders; he plunged
into the thickest of the battle; the steed neighed; the trump sounded;
and you might have heard the ringing of the steel. But when he came
to signalize the names of the boldest knights, high among the loftiest
sounded the name of Sir Warbeck of Liebenstein. Thrice had he saved the
imperial banner; two chargers slain beneath him, he had covered their
bodies with the fiercest of the foe.

Gentle in the tent and terrible in the fray, the minstrel should forget
his craft ere the Rhine should forget its hero. The chief started from
his seat. Leoline clasped the minstrel’s hand.

“Speak,--you have seen him, he lives, he is honoured?”

“I myself am but just from Palestine, brave chief and noble maiden. I
saw the gallant knight of Liebenstein at the right hand of the imperial
Conrad. And he, ladye, was the only knight whom admiration shone upon
without envy, its shadow. Who then,” continued the minstrel, once more
striking his harp, “who then would remain inglorious in the hall? Shall
not the banners of his sires reproach him as they wave; and shall not
every voice from Palestine strike shame into his soul?”

“Right!” cried Otho, suddenly, and flinging himself at the feet of his
father. “Thou hearest what my brother has done, and thine aged eyes weep
tears of joy. Shall I only dishonour thine old age with a rusted sword?
No! grant me, like my brother, to go forth with the heroes of the
Cross!”

“Noble youth,” cried the harper, “therein speaks the soul of Sir
Warbeck; hear him, sir, knight,--hear the noble youth.”

“Heaven cries aloud in his voice,” said the Templar, solemnly.

“My son, I cannot chide thine ardour,” said the old chief, raising him
with trembling hands; “but Leoline, thy betrothed?”

Pale as a statue, with ears that doubted their sense as they drank in
the cruel words of her lover, stood the orphan. She did not speak, she
scarcely breathed; she sank into her seat, and gazed upon the ground,
till, at the speech of the chief both maiden pride and maiden tenderness
restored her consciousness, and she said,--

“_I_, uncle! Shall _I_ bid Otho stay when his wishes bid him depart?”

“He will return to thee, noble ladye, covered with glory,” said the
harper: but Otho said no more. The touching voice of Leoline went to
his soul; he resumed his seat in silence; and Leoline, going up to
him, whispered gently, “Act as though I were not;” and left the hall to
commune with her heart and to weep alone.

“I can wed her before I go,” said Otho, suddenly, as he sat that night
in the Templar’s chamber.

“Why, that is true! and leave thy bride in the first week,--a hard
trial!”

“Better than incur the chance of never calling her mine. Dear, kind,
beloved Leoline!”

“Assuredly, she deserves all from thee; and, indeed, it is no small
sacrifice, at thy years and with thy mien, to renounce forever all
interest among the noble maidens thou wilt visit. Ah, from the galleries
of Constantinople what eyes will look down on thee, and what ears,
learning that thou art Otho the bridegroom, will turn away, caring for
thee no more! A bridegroom without a bride! Nay, man, much as the Cross
wants warriors, I am enough thy friend to tell thee, if thou weddest, to
stay peaceably at home, and forget in the chase the labours of war, from
which thou wouldst strip the ambition of love.”

“I would I knew what were best,” said Otho, irresolutely. “My
brother--ha, shall he forever excel me? But Leoline, how will she
grieve,--she who left him for me!”

“Was that thy fault?” said the Templar, gayly. “It may many times chance
to thee again to be preferred to another. Troth, it is a sin under which
the conscience may walk lightly enough. But sleep on it, Otho; my eyes
grow heavy.”

The next day Otho sought Leoline, and proposed to her that their wedding
should precede his parting; but so embarrassed was he, so divided
between two wishes, that Leoline, offended, hurt, stung by his coldness,
refused the proposal at once. She left him lest he should see her weep,
and then--then she repented even of her just pride!

But Otho, striving to appease his conscience with the belief that
hers now was the _sole_ fault, busied himself in preparations for his
departure. Anxious to outshine his brother, he departed not as Warbeck,
alone and unattended, but levying all the horse, men, and money that
his domain of Sternfels--which he had not yet tenanted--would afford, he
repaired to Frankfort at the head of a glittering troop.

The Templar, affecting a relapse, tarried behind, and promised to join
him at that Constantinople of which he had so loudly boasted. Meanwhile
he devoted his whole powers of pleasing to console the unhappy orphan.
The force of her simple love was, however, stronger than all his arts.
In vain he insinuated doubts of Otho,--she refused to hear them; in vain
he poured with the softest accents into her ear the witchery of flattery
and song,--she turned heedlessly away; and only pained by the courtesies
that had so little resemblance to Otho, she shut herself up in her
chamber, and pined in solitude for her forsaker.

The Templar now resolved to attempt darker arts to obtain power over
her, when, fortunately, he was summoned suddenly away by a mission from
the Grand Master of so high import, that it could not be resisted by a
passion stronger in his breast than love,--the passion of ambition. He
left the castle to its solitude; and Otho peopling it no more with his
gay companions, no solitude _could_ be more unfrequently disturbed.

Meanwhile, though, ever and anon, the fame of Warbeck reached their
ears, it came unaccompanied with that of Otho,--of him they had no
tidings; and thus the love of the tender orphan was kept alive by
the perpetual restlessness of fear. At length the old chief died, and
Leoline was left utterly alone.

One evening as she sat with her maidens in the hall, the ringing of a
steed’s hoofs was heard in the outer court; a horn sounded, the heavy
gates were unbarred, and a knight of a stately mien and covered with the
mantle of the Cross entered the hall. He stopped for one moment at the
entrance, as if overpowered by his emotion; in the next he had clasped
Leoline to his breast.

“Dost thou not recognize thy cousin Warbeck?” He doffed his casque, and
she saw that majestic brow which, unlike Otho’s, had never changed or
been clouded in its aspect to her.

“The war is suspended for the present,” said he. “I learned my father’s
death, and I have returned home to hang up my banner in the hall and
spend my days in peace.”

Time and the life of camps had worked their change upon Warbeck’s face;
the fair hair, deepened in its shade, was worn from the temples, and
disclosed one scar that rather aided the beauty of a countenance that
had always something high and martial in its character; but the calm it
had once worn had settled down into sadness; he conversed more rarely
than before, and though he smiled not less often, nor less kindly, the
smile had more of thought, and the kindness had forgot its passion. He
had apparently conquered a love that was so early crossed, but not
that fidelity of remembrance which made Leoline dearer to him than all
others, and forbade him to replace the images he had graven upon his
soul.

The orphan’s lips trembled with the name of Otho, but a certain
recollection stifled even her anxiety. Warbeck hastened to forestall her
questions. Otho was well, he said, and sojourning at Constantinople; he
had lingered there so long that the crusade had terminated without his
aid: doubtless now he would speedily return,--a month, a week, nay, a
day, might restore him to her side.

Leoline was inexpressibly consoled, yet something remained untold.
Why, so eager for the strife of the sacred tomb, had he thus tarried at
Constantinople? She wondered, she wearied conjecture, but she did not
dare to search further.

The generous Warbeck concealed from her that Otho led a life of the most
reckless and indolent dissipation,--wasting his wealth in the pleasures
of the Greek court, and only occupying his ambition with the wild
schemes of founding a principality in those foreign climes, which the
enterprises of the Norman adventurers had rendered so alluring to the
knightly bandits of the age.

The cousins resumed their old friendship, and Warbeck believed that it
was friendship alone.

They walked again among the gardens in which their childhood had
strayed; they sat again on the green turf whereon they had woven
flowers; they looked down on the eternal mirror of the Rhine,--ah! could
it have reflected the same unawakened freshness of their life’s early
spring!

The grave and contemplative mind of Warbeck had not been so contented
with the honours of war but that it had sought also those calmer sources
of emotion which were yet found among the sages of the East. He had
drunk at the fountain of the wisdom of those distant climes, and had
acquired the habits of meditation which were indulged by those wiser
tribes from which the Crusaders brought back to the North the knowledge
that was destined to enlighten their posterity. Warbeck, therefore, had
little in common with the ruder chiefs around; he did not summon them to
his board; nor attend at their noisy wassails. Often late at night, in
yon shattered tower, his lonely lamp shone still over the mighty stream,
and his only relief to loneliness was in the presence and the song of
his soft cousin.

Months rolled on, when suddenly a vague and fearful rumour reached the
castle of Liebenstein. Otho was returning home to the neighbouring tower
of Sternfels; but not alone. He brought back with him a Greek bride of
surprising beauty, and dowered with almost regal wealth. Leoline was
the first to discredit the rumour; Leoline was soon the only one who
disbelieved.

Bright in the summer noon flashed the array of horsemen; far up
the steep ascent wound the gorgeous cavalcade; the lonely towers of
Liebenstein heard the echo of many a laugh and peal of merriment. Otho
bore home his bride to the hall of Sternfels.

That night there was a great banquet in Otho’s castle; the lights shone
from every casement, and music swelled loud and ceaselessly within.

By the side of Otho, glittering with the prodigal jewels of the East,
sat the Greek. Her dark locks, her flashing eye, the false colours of
her complexion, dazzled the eyes of her guests. On her left hand sat the
Templar.

“By the holy rood,” quoth the Templar, gayly, though he crossed himself
as he spoke, “we shall scare the owls to-night on those grim towers
of Liebenstein. Thy grave brother, Sir Otho, will have much to do to
comfort his cousin when she sees what a gallant life she would have led
with thee.”

“Poor damsel!” said the Greek, with affected pity, “doubtless she will
now be reconciled to the rejected one. I hear he is a knight of a comely
mien.”

“Peace!” said Otho, sternly, and quaffing a large goblet of wine.

The Greek bit her lip, and glanced meaningly at the Templar, who
returned the glance.

“Nought but a beauty such as thine can win my pardon,” said Otho,
turning to his bride, and gazing passionately in her face.

The Greek smiled.

Well sped the feast, the laugh deepened, the wine circled, when Otho’s
eye rested on a guest at the bottom of the board, whose figure was
mantled from head to foot, and whose face was covered by a dark veil.

“Beshrew me!” said he, aloud, “but this is scarce courteous at our
revel: will the stranger vouchsafe to unmask?”

These words turned all eyes to the figure, and they who sat next it
perceived that it trembled violently; at length it rose, and walking
slowly, but with grace, to the fair Greek, it laid beside her a wreath
of flowers.

“It is a simple gift, ladye,” said the stranger, in a voice of such
sweetness that the rudest guest was touched by it; “but it is all I can
offer, and the bride of Otho should not be without a gift at my hands.
May ye both be happy!”

With these words, the stranger turned and passed from the hall silent as
a shadow.

“Bring back the stranger!” cried the Greek, recovering her surprise.
Twenty guests sprang up to obey her mandate.

“No, no!” said Otho, waving his hand impatiently. “Touch her not, heed
her not, at your peril.”

The Greek bent over the flowers to conceal her anger, and from amongst
them dropped the broken half of a ring. Otho recognized it at once; it
was the broken half of that ring which he had broken with his betrothed.
Alas! he required not such a sign to convince him that that figure,
so full of ineffable grace, that touching voice, that simple action so
tender in its sentiment, that gift, that blessing, came only from the
forsaken and forgiving Leoline.

But Warbeck, alone in his solitary tower, paced to and fro with agitated
steps. Deep, undying wrath at his brother’s falsehood mingled with
one burning, one delicious hope. He confessed now that he had deceived
himself when he thought his passion was no more; was there any longer a
bar to his union with Leoline?

In that delicacy which was breathed into him by his love, he had
forborne to seek, or to offer her the insult of consolation. He felt
that the shock should be borne alone, and yet he pined, he thirsted, to
throw himself at her feet.

Nursing these contending thoughts, he was aroused by a knock at his
door; he opened it. The passage was thronged by Leoline’s maidens,
pale, anxious, weeping. Leoline had left the castle, with but one female
attendant, none knew whither; they knew too soon. From the hall of
Sternfels she had passed over in the dark and inclement night to the
valley in which the convent of Bornhofen offered to the weary of spirit
and the broken of heart a refuge at the shrine of God.

At daybreak the next morning, Warbeck was at the convent’s gate. He saw
Leoline. What a change one night of suffering had made in that face,
which was the fountain of all loveliness to him! He clasped her in his
arms; he wept; he urged all that love could urge: he besought her to
accept that heart which had never wronged her memory by a thought. “Oh,
Leoline! didst thou not say once that these arms nursed thy childhood;
that this voice soothed thine early sorrows? Ah, trust to them again
and forever. From a love that forsook thee turn to the love that never
swerved.”

“No,” said Leoline; “no. What would the chivalry of which thou art the
boast,--what would they say of thee, wert thou to wed one affianced and
deserted, who tarried years for another, and brought to thine arms only
that heart which he had abandoned? No; and even if thou, as I know thou
wouldst be, wert callous to such wrong of thy high name, shall I bring
to thee a broken heart and bruised spirit? Shalt thou wed sorrow and
not joy; and shall sighs that will not cease, and tears that may not be
dried, be the only dowry of thy bride? Thou, too, for whom all blessings
should be ordained! No, forget me; forget thy poor Leoline! She hath
nothing but prayers for thee.”

In vain Warbeck pleaded; in vain he urged all that passion and truth
could urge; the springs of earthly love were forever dried up in the
orphan’s heart, and her resolution was immovable. She tore herself from
his arms, and the gate of the convent creaked harshly on his ear.

A new and stern emotion now wholly possessed him; though naturally
mild and gentle, he cherished anger, when once it was aroused, with the
strength of a calm mind. Leoline’s tears, her sufferings, her wrongs,
her uncomplaining spirit, the change already stamped upon her face,--all
cried aloud to him for vengeance. “She is an orphan,” said he, bitterly;
“she hath none to protect, to redress her, save me alone. My father’s
charge over her forlorn youth descends of right to me. What matters it
whether her forsaker be my brother? He is _her_ foe. Hath he not crushed
her heart? Hath he not consigned her to sorrow till the grave? And with
what insult! no warning, no excuse; with lewd wassailers keeping revel
for his new bridals in the hearing--before the sight--of his betrothed!
Enough! the time hath come when, to use his own words, ‘One of us two
must fall!’” He half drew his sword as he spoke, and thrusting it back
violently into the sheath, strode home to his solitary castle. The sound
of steeds and of the hunting horn met him at his portal; the bridal
train of Sternfels, all mirth and gladness, were parting for the chase.

That evening a knight in complete armour entered the banquet-hall of
Sternfels, and defied Otho, on the part of Warbeck of Liebenstein, to
mortal combat.

Even the Templar was startled by so unnatural a challenge; but
Otho, reddening, took up the gage, and the day and spot were fixed.
Discontented, wroth with himself, a savage gladness seized him; he
longed to wreak his desperate feelings even on his brother. Nor had
he ever in his jealous heart forgiven that brother his virtues and his
renown.

At the appointed hour the brothers met as foes. Warbeck’s vizor was up,
and all the settled sternness of his soul was stamped upon his brow.
But Otho, more willing to brave the arm than to face the front of his
brother, kept his vizor down; the Templar stood by him with folded arms.
It was a study in human passions to his mocking mind. Scarce had the
first trump sounded to this dread conflict, when a new actor entered
on the scene. The rumour of so unprecedented an event had not failed to
reach the convent of Bornhofen; and now, two by two, came the sisters of
the holy shrine, and the armed men made way, as with trailing garments
and veiled faces they swept along into the very lists. At that moment
one from amongst them left her sisters with a slow majestic pace, and
paused not till she stood right between the brother foes.

“Warbeck,” she said in a hollow voice, that curdled up his dark spirit
as it spoke, “is it thus thou wouldst prove thy love, and maintain thy
trust over the fatherless orphan whom thy sire bequeathed to thy care?
Shall I have murder on my soul?” At that question she paused, and those
who heard it were struck dumb, and shuddered. “The murder of one man by
the hand of his own brother! Away, Warbeck! _I command_.”

“Shall I forget thy wrongs, Leoline?” said Warbeck.

“Wrongs! they united me to God! they are forgiven, they are no more.
Earth has deserted me, but Heaven hath taken me to its arms. Shall I
murmur at the change? And thou, Otho”--here her voice faltered--“thou,
does thy conscience smite thee not? Wouldst thou atone for robbing me of
hope by barring against me the future? Wretch that I should be, could
I dream of mercy, could I dream of comfort, if thy brother fell by thy
sword in my cause? Otho, I have pardoned thee, and blessed thee
and thine. Once, perhaps, thou didst love me; remember how I loved
thee,--cast down thine arms.”

Otho gazed at the veiled form before him. Where had the soft Leoline
learned to command? He turned to his brother; he felt all that he had
inflicted upon both; and casting his sword upon the ground, he knelt at
the feet of Leoline, and kissed her garment with a devotion that votary
never lavished on a holier saint.

The spell that lay over the warriors around was broken; there was one
loud cry of congratulation and joy. “And thou, Warbeck?” said Leoline,
turning to the spot where, still motionless and haughty, Warbeck stood.

“Have I ever rebelled against thy will?” said he, softly; and buried the
point of his sword in the earth. “Yet, Leoline, yet,” added he, looking
at his kneeling brother, “yet art thou already better avenged than by
this steel!”

“Thou art! thou art!” cried Otho, smiting his breast; and slowly, and
scarce noting the crowd that fell back from his path, Warbeck left the
lists.

Leoline said no more; her divine errand was fulfilled. She looked long
and wistfully after the stately form of the knight of Liebenstein, and
then, with a slight sigh, she turned to Otho, “This is the last time we
shall meet on earth. Peace be with us all!”

She then, with the same majestic and collected bearing, passed on
towards the sisterhood; and as, in the same solemn procession, they
glided back towards the convent, there was not a man present--no, not
even the hardened Templar--who would not, like Otho, have bent his knee
to Leoline.

Once more Otho plunged into the wild revelry of the age; his castle was
thronged with guests, and night after night the lighted halls shone down
athwart the tranquil Rhine. The beauty of the Greek, the wealth of Otho,
the fame of the Templar, attracted all the chivalry from far and near.
Never had the banks of the Rhine known so hospitable a lord as the
knight of Sternfels. Yet gloom seized him in the midst of gladness,
and the revel was welcome only as the escape from remorse. The voice of
scandal, however, soon began to mingle with that of envy at the pomp
of Otho. The fair Greek, it was said, weary of her lord, lavished her
smiles on others; the young and the fair were always most acceptable
at the castle; and, above all, her guilty love for the Templar scarcely
affected disguise. Otho alone appeared unconscious of the rumour; and
though he had begun to neglect his bride, he relaxed not in his intimacy
with the Templar.

It was noon, and the Greek was sitting in her bower alone with her
suspected lover; the rich perfumes of the East mingled with the
fragrance of flowers, and various luxuries, unknown till then in those
northern shores, gave a soft and effeminate character to the room.

“I tell thee,” said the Greek, petulantly, “that he begins to suspect;
that I have seen him watch thee, and mutter as he watched, and play with
the hilt of his dagger. Better let us fly ere it is too late, for his
vengeance would be terrible were it once roused against us. Ah, why did
I ever forsake my own sweet land for these barbarous shores! There, love
is not considered eternal, nor inconstancy a crime worthy death.”

“Peace, pretty one!” said the Templar, carelessly; “thou knowest not the
laws of our foolish chivalry. Thinkest thou I could fly from a knight’s
halls like a thief in the night? Why, verily, even the red cross would
not cover such dishonour. If thou fearest that thy dull lord suspects,
let us part. The emperor hath sent to me from Frankfort. Ere evening I
might be on my way thither.”

“And I left to brave the barbarian’s revenge alone? Is this thy
chivalry?”

“Nay, prate not so wildly,” answered the Templar. “Surely, when the
object of his suspicion is gone, thy woman’s art and thy Greek wiles can
easily allay the jealous fiend. Do I not know thee, Glycera? Why, thou
wouldst fool all men--save a Templar.”

“And thou, cruel, wouldst thou leave me?” said the Greek, weeping. “How
shall I live without thee?”

The Templar laughed slightly. “Can such eyes ever weep without a
comforter? But farewell; I must not be found with thee. To-morrow I
depart for Frankfort; we shall meet again.”

As soon as the door closed on the Templar, the Greek rose, and pacing
the room, said, “Selfish, selfish! how could I ever trust him? Yet I
dare not brave Otho alone. Surely it was his step that disturbed us
in our yesterday’s interview? Nay, I will fly. I can never want a
companion.”

She clapped her hands; a young page appeared; she threw herself on her
seat and wept bitterly.

The page approached, and love was mingled with his compassion.

“Why weepest thou, dearest lady?” said he. “Is there aught in which
Conrad’s services--services!--ah, thou hast read his heart--_his
devotion_ may avail?”

Otho had wandered out the whole day alone; his vassals had observed
that his brow was more gloomy than its wont, for he usually concealed
whatever might prey within. Some of the most confidential of his
servitors he had conferred with, and the conference had deepened the
shadow of his countenance. He returned at twilight; the Greek did not
honour the repast with her presence. She was unwell, and not to be
disturbed. The gay Templar was the life of the board.

“Thou carriest a sad brow to-day, Sir Otho,” said he; “good faith, thou
hast caught it from the air of Liebenstein.”

“I have something troubles me,” answered Otho, forcing a smile, “which I
would fain impart to thy friendly bosom. The night is clear and the moon
is up, let us forth alone into the garden.”

The Templar rose, and he forgot not to gird on his sword as he followed
the knight.

Otho led the way to one of the most distant terraces that overhung the
Rhine.

“Sir Templar,” said he, pausing, “answer me one question on thy knightly
honour. Was it thy step that left my lady’s bower yester-eve at vesper?”

Startled by so sudden a query, the wily Templar faltered in his reply.

The red blood mounted to Otho’s brow. “Nay, lie not, sir knight; these
eyes, thanks to God! have not witnessed, but these ears have heard from
others of my dishonour.”

As Otho spoke, the Templar’s eye resting on the water perceived a boat
rowing fast over the Rhine; the distance forbade him to see more than
the outline of two figures within it. “She was right,” thought he;
“perhaps that boat already bears her from the danger.”

Drawing himself up to the full height of his tall stature, the Templar
replied haughtily,--

“Sir Otho of Sternfels, if thou hast deigned to question thy vassals,
obtain from them only an answer. It is not to contradict such minions
that the knights of the Temple pledge their word!”

“Enough,” cried Otho, losing patience, and striking the Templar with his
clenched hand. “Draw, traitor, draw!”

Alone in his lofty tower Warbeck watched the night deepen over the
heavens, and communed mournfully with himself. “To what end,” thought
he, “have these strong affections, these capacities of love, this
yearning after sympathy, been given me? Unloved and unknown I walk to
my grave, and all the nobler mysteries of my heart are forever to be
untold.”

Thus musing, he heard not the challenge of the warder on the wall, or
the unbarring of the gate below, or the tread of footsteps along the
winding stair; the door was thrown suddenly open, and Otho stood before
him. “Come,” he said, in a low voice trembling with passion; “come, I
will show thee that which shall glad thine heart. Twofold is Leoline
avenged.”

Warbeck looked in amazement on a brother he had not met since they stood
in arms each against the other’s life, and he now saw that the arm that
Otho extended to him dripped with blood, trickling drop by drop upon the
floor.

“Come,” said Otho, “follow me; it is my last prayer. Come, for Leoline’s
sake, come.”

At that name Warbeck hesitated no longer; he girded on his sword, and
followed his brother down the stairs and through the castle gate. The
porter scarcely believed his eyes when he saw the two brothers, so long
divided, go forth at that hour alone, and seemingly in friendship.

Warbeck, arrived at that epoch in the feelings when nothing stuns,
followed with silent steps the rapid strides of his brother. The two
castles, as you are aware, are scarce a stone’s throw from each other.
In a few minutes Otho paused at an open space in one of the terraces of
Sternfels, on which the moon shone bright and steady. “Behold!” he said,
in a ghastly voice, “behold!” and Warbeck saw on the sward the corpse of
the Templar, bathed with the blood that even still poured fast and warm
from his heart.

“Hark!” said Otho. “He it was who first made me waver in my vows to
Leoline; he persuaded me to wed yon whited falsehood. Hark! he, who had
thus wronged my real love, dishonoured me with my faithless bride, and
thus--thus--thus”--as grinding his teeth, he spurned again and again the
dead body of the Templar--“thus Leoline and myself are avenged!”

“And thy wife?” said Warbeck, pityingly.

“Fled,--fled with a hireling page. It is well! she was not worth the
sword that was once belted on--by Leoline.”



The tradition, dear Gertrude, proceeds to tell us that Otho, though
often menaced by the rude justice of the day for the death of the
Templar, defied and escaped the menace. On the very night of his revenge
a long and delirious illness seized him; the generous Warbeck forgave,
forgot all, save that he had been once consecrated by Leoline’s love.
He tended him through his sickness, and when he recovered, Otho was an
altered man. He forswore the comrades he had once courted, the revels
he had once led. The halls of Sternfels were desolate as those of
Liebenstein. The only companion Otho sought was Warbeck, and Warbeck
bore with him. They had no topic in common, for on one subject Warbeck
at least felt too deeply ever to trust himself to speak; yet did a
strange and secret sympathy re-unite them. They had at least a common
sorrow; often they were seen wandering together by the solitary banks of
the river, or amidst the woods, without apparently interchanging word or
sign. Otho died first, and still in the prime of youth; and Warbeck
was now left companionless. In vain the imperial court wooed him to its
pleasures; in vain the camp proffered him the oblivion of renown. Ah!
could he tear himself from a spot where morning and night he could see
afar, amidst the valley, the roof that sheltered Leoline, and on which
every copse, every turf, reminded him of former days? His solitary life,
his midnight vigils, strange scrolls about his chamber, obtained him
by degrees the repute of cultivating the darker arts; and shunning, he
became shunned by all. But still it was sweet to hear from time to time
of the increasing sanctity of her in whom he had treasured up his
last thoughts of earth. She it was who healed the sick; she it was who
relieved the poor; and the superstition of that age brought pilgrims
from afar to the altars that she served.

Many years afterwards, a band of lawless robbers, who ever and anon
broke from their mountain fastnesses to pillage and to desolate the
valleys of the Rhine,--who spared neither sex nor age, neither tower
nor hut, nor even the houses of God Himself,--laid waste the territories
round Bornhofen, and demanded treasure from the convent. The abbess,
of the bold lineage of Rudesheim, refused the sacrilegious demand.
The convent was stormed; its vassals resisted; the robbers, inured to
slaughter, won the day; already the gates were forced, when a knight, at
the head of a small but hardy troop, rushed down from the mountain side
and turned the tide of the fray. Wherever his sword flashed fell a foe;
wherever his war-cry sounded was a space of dead men in the thick of
the battle. The fight was won, the convent saved; the abbess and the
sisterhood came forth to bless their deliverer. Laid under an aged oak,
he was bleeding fast to death; his head was bare and his locks were
gray, but scarcely yet with years. One only of the sisterhood recognized
that majestic face; one bathed his parched lips; one held his dying
hand; and in Leoline’s presence passed away the faithful spirit of the
last lord of Liebenstein!

“Oh!” said Gertrude, through her tears; “surely you must have altered
the facts,--surely--surely--it must have been impossible for Leoline,
with a woman’s heart, to have loved Otho more than Warbeck?”

“My child,” said Vane, “so think women when they read a tale of love,
and see _the whole heart_ bared before them; but not so act they in real
life, when they see only the surface of character, and pierce not its
depths--until it is too late!”



CHAPTER XXV. THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL.--A COMMON INCIDENT NOT BEFORE
DESCRIBED.--TREVYLYAN AND GERTRUDE.

THE day now grew cool as it waned to its decline, and the breeze came
sharp upon the delicate frame of the sufferer. They resolved to proceed
no farther; and as they carried with them attendants and baggage, which
rendered their route almost independent of the ordinary accommodation,
they steered for the opposite shore, and landed at a village beautifully
sequestered in a valley, and where they fortunately obtained a lodging
not often met with in the regions of the picturesque.

When Gertrude, at an early hour, retired to bed, Vane and Du-----e fell
into speculative conversation upon the nature of man. Vane’s philosophy
was of a quiet and passive scepticism; the physician dared more boldly,
and rushed from doubt to negation. The attention of Trevylyan, as he sat
apart and musing, was arrested in despite of himself. He listened to an
argument in which he took no share, but which suddenly inspired him with
an interest in that awful subject which, in the heat of youth and the
occupations of the world, had never been so prominently called forth
before.

“What,” thought he, with unutterable anguish, as he listened to the
earnest vehemence of the Frenchman and the tranquil assent of Vane, “if
this creed were indeed true,--if there be no other world,--Gertrude is
lost to me eternally, through the dread gloom of death there would break
forth no star!”

That is a peculiar incident that perhaps occurs to us all at times, but
which I have never found expressed in books, namely, to hear a doubt of
futurity at the very moment in which the present is most overcast; and
to find at once this world stripped of its delusion and the next of its
consolation. It is perhaps for others, rather than ourselves, that the
fond heart requires a Hereafter. The tranquil rest, the shadow, and the
silence, the mere pause of the wheel of life, have no terror for the
wise, who know the due value of the world.

     “After the billows of a stormy sea,
      Sweet is at last the haven of repose!”

But not so when that stillness is to divide us eternally from others;
when those we have loved with all the passion, the devotion, the
watchful sanctity of the weak human heart, are to exist to us no more!
when, after long years of desertion and widowhood on earth, there is
to be no hope of reunion in that INVISIBLE beyond the stars; when the
torch, not of life only, but of love, is to be quenched in the Dark
Fountain, and the grave, that we would fain hope is the great restorer
of broken ties, is but the dumb seal of hopeless, utter, inexorable
separation! And it is this thought, this sentiment, which makes religion
out of woe, and teaches belief to the mourning heart that in the
gladness of united affections felt not the necessity of a heaven! To how
many is the death of the beloved the parent of faith!

Stung by his thoughts, Trevylyan rose abruptly, and stealing from the
lowly hostelry, walked forth amidst the serene and deepening night; from
the window of Gertrude’s room the light streamed calm on the purple air.

With uneven steps and many a pause, he paced to and fro beneath the
window, and gave the rein to his thoughts. How intensely he felt the ALL
that Gertrude was to him! how bitterly he foresaw the change in his lot
and character that her death would work out! For who that met him in
later years ever dreamed that emotions so soft, and yet so ardent, had
visited one so stern? Who could have believed that time was when the
polished and cold Trevylyan had kept the vigils he now held below the
chamber of one so little like himself as Gertrude, in that remote and
solitary hamlet; shut in by the haunted mountains of the Rhine, and
beneath the moonlight of the romantic North?

While thus engaged, the light in Gertrude’s room was suddenly
extinguished; it is impossible to express how much that trivial incident
affected him! It was like an emblem of what was to come; the light had
been the only evidence of life that broke upon that hour, and he was
now left alone with the shades of night. Was not this like the herald of
Gertrude’s own death; the extinction of the only living ray that broke
upon the darkness of the world?

His anguish, his presentiment of utter desolation, increased. He groaned
aloud; he dashed his clenched hand to his breast; large and cold drops
of agony stole down his brow. “Father,” he exclaimed with a struggling
voice, “let this cup pass from me! Smite my ambition to the root;
curse me with poverty, shame, and bodily disease; but leave me this one
solace, this one companion of my fate!”

At this moment Gertrude’s window opened gently, and he heard accents
steal soothingly upon his ear.

“Is not that your voice, Albert?” said she, softly. “I heard it just as
I lay down to rest, and could not sleep while you were thus exposed to
the damp night air. You do not answer; surely it is your voice: when
did I mistake it for another’s?” Mastering with a violent effort his
emotions, Trevylyan answered, with a sort of convulsive gayety,--

“Why come to these shores, dear Gertrude, unless you are honoured with
the chivalry that belongs to them? What wind, what blight, can harm me
while within the circle of your presence; and what sleep can bring me
dreams so dear as the waking thought of you?”

“It is cold,” said Gertrude, shivering; “come in, dear Albert, I beseech
you, and I will thank you to-morrow.” Gertrude’s voice was choked by the
hectic cough, that went like an arrow to Trevylyan’s heart; and he felt
that in her anxiety for him she was now exposing her own frame to the
unwholesome night.

He spoke no more, but hurried within the house; and when the gray light
of morn broke upon his gloomy features, haggard from the want of sleep,
it might have seemed, in that dim eye and fast-sinking cheek, as if the
lovers were not to be divided--even by death itself.



CHAPTER XXVI. IN WHICH THE READER WILL LEARN HOW THE FAIRIES WERE
RECEIVED BY THE SOVEREIGNS OF THE MINES.--THE COMPLAINT OF THE LAST OF
THE FAUNS.--THE RED HUNTSMAN.--THE STORM.--DEATH.

IN the deep valley of Ehrenthal, the metal kings--the Prince of the
Silver Palaces, the Gnome Monarch of the dull Lead Mine, the President
of the Copper United States--held a court to receive the fairy wanderers
from the island of Nonnewerth.

The prince was there, in a gallant hunting-suit of oak leaves, in
honour to England; and wore a profusion of fairy orders, which had been
instituted from time to time, in honour of the human poets that had
celebrated the spiritual and ethereal tribes. Chief of these, sweet
Dreamer of the “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” was the badge crystallized
from the dews that rose above the whispering reeds of Avon on the night
of thy birth,--the great epoch of the intellectual world! Nor wert thou,
O beloved Musaeus! nor thou, dim-dreaming Tieck! nor were ye, the
wild imaginer of the bright-haired Undine, and the wayward spirit that
invoked for the gloomy Manfred the Witch of the breathless Alps and
the spirits of earth and air!--nor were ye without the honours of fairy
homage! Your memory may fade from the heart of man, and the spells of
new enchanters may succeed to the charm you once wove over the face of
the common world; but still in the green knolls of the haunted valley
and the deep shade of forests, and the starred palaces of air, ye are
honoured by the beings of your dreams, as demigods and kings! Your
graves are tended by invisible hands, and the places of your birth are
hallowed by no perishable worship!

Even as I write,* far away amidst the hills of Scotland, and by the
forest thou hast clothed with immortal verdure, thou, the maker of “the
Harp by lone Glenfillan’s spring,” art passing from the earth which thou
hast “painted with delight.” And such are the chances of mortal fame,
our children’s children may raise new idols on the site of thy holy
altar, and cavil where their sires adored; but for thee the mermaid of
the ocean shall wail in her coral caves, and the sprite that lives in
the waterfalls shall mourn! Strange shapes shall hew thy monument in the
recesses of the lonely rocks! ever by moonlight shall the fairies pause
from their roundel when some wild note of their minstrelsy reminds them
of thine own,--ceasing from their revelries, to weep for the silence of
that mighty lyre, which breathed alike a revelation of the mysteries of
spirits and of men!

  * It was just at the time the author was finishing this work
    that the great master of his art was drawing to the close
    of his career.

The King of the Silver Mines sat in a cavern in the valley, through
which the moonlight pierced its way and slept in shadow on the soil
shining with metals wrought into unnumbered shapes; and below him, on a
humbler throne, with a gray beard and downcast eye, sat the aged King
of the Dwarfs that preside over the dull realms of lead, and inspire
the verse of -----, and the prose of -----! And there too a fantastic
household elf was the President of the Copper Republic,--a spirit that
loves economy and the Uses, and smiles sparely on the Beautiful. But, in
the centre of the cave, upon beds of the softest mosses, the untrodden
growth of ages, reclined the fairy visitors, Nymphalin seated by her
betrothed. And round the walls of the cave were dwarf attendants on
the sovereigns of the metals, of a thousand odd shapes and fantastic
garments. On the abrupt ledges of the rocks the bats, charmed to
stillness but not sleep, clustered thickly, watching the scene with
fixed and amazed eyes; and one old gray owl, the favourite of the witch
of the valley, sat blinking in a corner, listening with all her might
that she might bring home the scandal to her mistress.

“And tell me, Prince of the Rhine-Island Fays,” said the King of the
Silver Mines, “for thou art a traveller, and a fairy that hath seen
much, how go men’s affairs in the upper world? As to ourself, we live
here in a stupid splendour, and only hear the news of the day when
our brother of lead pays a visit to the English printing-press, or the
President of Copper goes to look at his improvements in steam-engines.”

“Indeed,” replied Fayzenheim, preparing to speak like AEneas in the
Carthaginian court,--“indeed, your Majesty, I know not much that will
interest you in the present aspect of mortal affairs, except that you
are quite as much honoured at this day as when the Roman conqueror bent
his knee to you among the mountains of Taunus; and a vast number of
little round subjects of yours are constantly carried about by the rich,
and pined after with hopeless adoration by the poor. But, begging your
Majesty’s pardon, may I ask what has become of your cousin, the King
of the Golden Mines? I know very well that he has no dominion in these
valleys, and do not therefore wonder at his absence from your court this
night; but I see so little of his subjects on earth that I should fear
his empire was well nigh at an end, if I did not recognize everywhere
the most servile homage paid to a power now become almost invisible.”

The King of the Silver Mines fetched a deep sigh. “Alas, prince,” said
he, “too well do you divine the expiration of my cousin’s empire. So
many of his subjects have from time to time gone forth to the world,
pressed into military service and never returning, that his kingdom is
nearly depopulated. And he lives far off in the distant parts of the
earth, in a state of melancholy seclusion; the age of gold has passed,
the age of paper has commenced.”

“Paper,” said Nymphalin, who was still somewhat of a
_precieuse_,--“paper is a wonderful thing. What pretty books the human
people write upon it!”

“Ah! that’s what I design to convey,” said the silver king. “It is the
age less of paper money than paper government: the Press is the true
bank.” The lord treasurer of the English fairies pricked up his ears
at the word “bank;” for he was the Attwood of the fairies: he had a
favourite plan of making money out of bulrushes, and had written four
large bees’-wings full upon the true nature of capital.

While they were thus conversing, a sudden sound as of some rustic and
rude music broke along the air, and closing its wild burden, they heard
the following song:--



THE COMPLAINT OF THE LAST FAUN.


I. The moon on the Latmos mountain  Her pining vigil keeps;
And ever the silver fountain  In the Dorian valley weeps.
But gone are Endymion’s dreams;  And the crystal lymph
  Bewails the nymph
Whose beauty sleeked the streams!


II. Round Arcady’s oak its green  The Bromian ivy weaves;
But no more is the satyr seen  Laughing out from the glossy leaves.
Hushed is the Lycian lute,  Still grows the seed
  Of the Moenale reed,
But the pipe of Pan is mute!


III. The leaves in the noon-day quiver;  The vines on the mountains wave;
And Tiber rolls his river  As fresh by the Sylvan’s cave.
But my brothers are dead and gone;  And far away
  From their graves I stray,
And dream of the past alone!


IV. And the sun of the north is chill;  And keen is the northern gale;
Alas for the Song of the Argive hill;  And the dance in the Cretan vale!
The youth of the earth is o’er,  And its breast is rife
  With the teeming life
Of the golden Tribes no more!


V. My race are more blest than I,  Asleep in their distant bed;
‘T were better, be sure, to die  Than to mourn for the buried Dead:
To rove by the stranger streams,  At dusk and dawn
  A lonely faun,
The last of the Grecian’s dreams.



As the song ended a shadow crossed the moonlight, that lay white and
lustrous before the aperture of the cavern; and Nymphalin, looking up,
beheld a graceful yet grotesque figure standing on the sward without,
and gazing on the group in the cave. It was a shaggy form, with a goat’s
legs and ears; but the rest of its body, and the height of the stature,
like a man’s. An arch, pleasant, yet malicious smile played about its
lips; and in its hand it held the pastoral pipe of which poets have
sung,--they would find it difficult to sing to it!

“And who art thou?” said Fayzenheim, with the air of a hero.

“I am the last lingering wanderer of the race which the Romans
worshipped; hither I followed their victorious steps, and in these green
hollows have I remained. Sometimes in the still noon, when the leaves of
spring bud upon the whispering woods, I peer forth from my rocky lair,
and startle the peasant with my strange voice and stranger shape. Then
goes he home, and puzzles his thick brain with mopes and fancies, till
at length he imagines me, the creature of the South! one of his northern
demons, and his poets adapt the apparition to their barbarous lines.”

“Ho!” quoth the silver king, “surely thou art the origin of the fabled
Satan of the cowled men living whilom in yonder ruins, with its horns
and goatish limbs; and the harmless faun has been made the figuration
of the most implacable of fiends. But why, O wanderer of the South,
lingerest thou in these foreign dells? Why returnest thou not to the
bi-forked hill-top of old Parnassus, or the wastes around the yellow
course of the Tiber?”

“My brethren are no more,” said the poor faun; “and the very faith that
left us sacred and unharmed is departed. But here all the spirits not of
mortality are still honoured; and I wander, mourning for Silenus, though
amidst the vines that should console me for his loss.”

“Thou hast known great beings in thy day,” said the leaden king, who
loved the philosophy of a truism (and the history of whose inspirations
I shall one day write).

“Ah, yes,” said the faun; “my birth was amidst the freshness of the
world, when the flush of the universal life coloured all things with
divinity; when not a tree but had its Dryad, not a fountain that was
without its Nymph. I sat by the gray throne of Saturn, in his old age,
ere yet he was discrowned (for he was no visionary ideal, but the arch
monarch of the pastoral age), and heard from his lips the history of the
world’s birth. But those times are gone forever,--they have left harsh
successors.”

“It is the age of paper,” muttered the lord treasurer, shaking his head.

“What ho, for a dance!” cried Fayzenheim, too royal for moralities, and
he whirled the beautiful Nymphalin into a waltz. Then forth issued the
fairies, and out went the dwarfs. And the faun leaning against an aged
elm, ere yet the midnight waned, the elves danced their charmed round
to the antique minstrelsy of his pipe,--the minstrelsy of the Grecian
world!

“Hast thou seen yet, my Nymphalin,” said Fayzenheim, in the pauses of
the dance, “the recess of the Hartz, and the red form of its mighty
hunter?”

“It is a fearful sight,” answered Nymphalin; “but with thee I should not
fear.”

“Away then!” cried Fayzenheim; “let us away at the first cock-crow, into
those shaggy dells; for there is no need of night to conceal us, and the
unwitnessed blush of morn or the dreary silence of noon is, no less than
the moon’s reign, the season for the sports of the superhuman tribes.”

Nymphalin, charmed with the proposal, readily assented; and at the last
hour of night, bestriding the starbeams of the many-titled Friga, away
sped the fairy cavalcade to the gloom of the mystic Hartz.

Fain would I relate the manner of their arrival in the thick recesses
of the forest,--how they found the Red Hunter seated on a fallen pine
beside a wide chasm in the earth, with the arching bows of the wizard
oak wreathing above his head as a canopy, and his bow and spear lying
idle at his feet. Fain would I tell of the reception which he deigned to
the fairies, and how he told them of his ancient victories over man; how
he chafed at the gathering invasions of his realm; and how joyously he
gloated of some great convulsion* in the northern States, which, rapt
into moody reveries in those solitary woods, the fierce demon broodingly
foresaw. All these fain would I narrate, but they are not of the Rhine,
and my story will not brook the delay. While thus conversing with the
fiend, noon had crept on, and the sky had become overcast and lowering;
the giant trees waved gustily to and fro, and the low gatherings of
the thunder announced the approaching storm. Then the hunter rose and
stretched his mighty limbs, and seizing his spear, he strode rapidly
into the forest to meet the things of his own tribe that the tempest
wakes from their rugged lair.

  * Which has come to pass.--1847.

A sudden recollection broke upon Nymphalin. “Alas, alas!” she cried,
wringing her hands; “what have I done! In journeying hither with thee,
I have forgotten my office. I have neglected my watch over the elements,
and my human charge is at this hour, perhaps, exposed to all the fury of
the storm.”

“Cheer thee, my Nymphalin,” said the prince, “we will lay the tempest;”
 and he waved his sword and muttered the charms which curb the winds and
roll back the marching thunder: but for once the tempest ceased not at
his spells. And now, as the fairies sped along the troubled air, a
pale and beautiful form met them by the way, and the fairies paused and
trembled; for the power of that Shape could vanquish even them. It
was the form of a Female, with golden hair, crowned with a chaplet of
withered leaves; her bosoms, of an exceeding beauty, lay bare to the
wind, and an infant was clasped between them, hushed into a sleep so
still, that neither the roar of the thunder, nor the livid lightning
flashing from cloud to cloud, could even ruffle, much less arouse, the
slumberer. And the face of the female was unutterably calm and sweet
(though with a something of severe); there was no line nor wrinkle in
the hueless brow; care never wrote its defacing characters upon that
everlasting beauty. It knew no sorrow or change; ghostlike and shadowy
floated on that Shape through the abyss of Time, governing the world
with an unquestioned and noiseless sway. And the children of the green
solitudes of the earth, the lovely fairies of my tale, shuddered as they
gazed and recognized--the form of DEATH,--death vindicated.

“And why,” said the beautiful Shape, with a voice soft as the last sighs
of a dying babe,--“why trouble ye the air with spells? Mine is the hour
and the empire, and the storm is the creature of my power. Far yonder to
the west it sweeps over the sea, and the ship ceases to vex the waves;
it smites the forest, and the destined tree, torn from its roots, feels
the winter strip the gladness from its boughs no more! The roar of the
elements is the herald of eternal stillness to their victims; and they
who hear the progress of my power idly shudder at the coming of peace.
And thou, O tender daughter of the fairy kings, why grievest thou at a
mortal’s doom? Knowest thou not that sorrow cometh with years, and that
to live is to mourn? Blessed is the flower that, nipped in its early
spring, feels not the blast that one by one scatters its blossoms around
it, and leaves but the barren stem. Blessed are the young whom I clasp
to my breast, and lull into the sleep which the storm cannot break, nor
the morrow arouse to sorrow or to toil. The heart that is stilled in the
bloom of its first emotions, that turns with its last throb to the eye
of love, as yet unlearned in the possibility of change,--has exhausted
already the wine of life, and is saved only from the lees. As the mother
soothes to sleep the wail of her troubled child, I open my arms to the
vexed spirit, and my bosom cradles the unquiet to repose!”

The fairies answered not, for a chill and a fear lay over them, and the
Shape glided on; ever as it passed away through the veiling clouds they
heard its low voice singing amidst the roar of the storm, as the dirge
of the water-sprite over the vessel it hath lured into the whirlpool or
the shoals.



CHAPTER XXVII. THURMBERG.--A STORM UPON THE RHINE.--THE RUINS OF
RHEINFELS.--PERIL UNFELT BY LOVE.--THE ECHO OF THE LURLEI-BERG.--ST.
GOAR.--KAUB, GUTENFELS, AND PFALZGRAFENSTEIN.--A CERTAIN VASTNESS OF
MIND IN THE FIRST HERMITS.--THE SCENERY OF THE RHINE TO BACHARACH.

OUR party continued their voyage the next day, which was less bright
than any they had yet experienced. The clouds swept on dull and heavy,
suffering the sun only to break forth at scattered intervals. They wound
round the curving bay which the Rhine forms in that part of its course,
and gazed upon the ruins of Thurmberg, with the rich gardens that skirt
the banks below. The last time Trevylyan had seen those ruins soaring
against the sky, the green foliage at the foot of the rocks, and the
quiet village sequestered beneath, glassing its roofs and solitary tower
upon the wave, it had been with a gay summer troop of light friends,
who had paused on the opposite shore during the heats of noon, and, over
wine and fruits, had mimicked the groups of Boccaccio, and intermingled
the lute, the jest, the momentary love, and the laughing tale.

What a difference now in his thoughts, in the object of the voyage, in
his present companions! The feet of years fall noiseless; we heed, we
note them not, till tracking the same course we passed long since,
we are startled to find how deep the impression they leave behind.
To revisit the scenes of our youth is to commune with the ghost of
ourselves.

At this time the clouds gathered rapidly along the heavens, and they
were startled by the first peal of the thunder. Sudden and swift came on
the storm, and Trevylyan trembled as he covered Gertrude’s form with the
rude boat-cloaks they had brought with them; the small vessel began to
rock wildly to and fro upon the waters. High above them rose the
vast dismantled ruins of Rheinfels, the lightning darting through its
shattered casements and broken arches, and brightening the gloomy trees
that here and there clothed the rocks, and tossed to the angry wind.
Swift wheeled the water-birds over the river, dipping their plumage in
the white foam, and uttering their discordant screams. A storm upon the
Rhine has a grandeur it is in vain to paint. Its rocks, its foliage, the
feudal ruins that everywhere rise from the lofty heights, speaking
in characters of stern decay of many a former battle against time
and tempest; the broad and rapid course of the legendary river,--all
harmonize with the elementary strife; and you feel that to see the Rhine
only in the sunshine is to be unconscious of its most majestic aspects.
What baronial war had those ruins witnessed! From the rapine of the
lordly tyrant of those battlements rose the first Confederation of the
Rhine,--the great strife between the new time and the old, the town
and the castle, the citizen and the chief. Gray and stern those ruins
breasted the storm,--a type of the antique opinion which once manned
them with armed serfs; and, yet in ruins and decay, appeals from the
victorious freedom it may no longer resist!

Clasped in Trevylyan’s guardian arms, and her head pillowed on his
breast, Gertrude felt nothing of the storm save its grandeur; and
Trevylyan’s voice whispered cheer and courage to her ear. She answered
by a smile and a sigh, but not of pain. In the convulsions of nature we
forget our own separate existence, our schemes, our projects, our fears;
our dreams vanish back into their cells. One passion only the storm
quells not, and the presence of Love mingles with the voice of the
fiercest storms, as with the whispers of the southern wind. So she felt,
as they were thus drawn close together, and as she strove to smile away
the anxious terror from Trevylyan’s gaze, a security, a delight; for
peril is sweet even to the fears of woman, when it impresses upon her
yet more vividly that she is beloved.

“A moment more and we reach the land,” murmured Trevylyan.

“I wish it not,” answered Gertrude, softly. But ere they got into St.
Goar the rain descended in torrents, and even the thick coverings round
Gertrude’s form were not sufficient protection against it. Wet and
dripping she reached the inn; but not then, nor for some days, was she
sensible of the shock her decaying health had received.

The storm lasted but a few hours, and the sun afterwards broke forth
so brightly, and the stream looked so inviting, that they yielded to
Gertrude’s earnest wish, and, taking a larger vessel, continued their
course; they passed along the narrow and dangerous defile of the
Gewirre, and the fearful whirlpool of the “Bank;” and on the shore to
the left the enormous rock of Lurlei rose, huge and shapeless, on their
gaze. In this place is a singular echo, and one of the boatmen wound a
horn, which produced an almost supernatural music,--so wild, loud, and
oft reverberated was its sound.

The river now curved along in a narrow and deep channel amongst rugged
steeps, on which the westering sun cast long and uncouth shadows; and
here the hermit, from whose sacred name the town of St. Goar derived its
own, fixed his abode and preached the religion of the Cross. “There
was a certain vastness of mind,” said Vane, “in the adoption of utter
solitude, in which the first enthusiasts of our religion indulged. The
remote desert, the solitary rock, the rude dwelling hollowed from the
cave, the eternal commune with their own hearts, with nature, and their
dreams of God,--all make a picture of severe and preterhuman grandeur.
Say what we will of the necessity and charm of social life, there is a
greatness about man when he dispenses with mankind.”

“As to that,” said Du-----e, shrugging his shoulders, “there was
probably very good wine in the neighbourhood, and the females’ eyes
about Oberwesel are singularly blue.”

They now approached Oberwesel, another of the once imperial towns, and
behind it beheld the remains of the castle of the illustrious family of
Schomberg, the ancestors of the old hero of the Boyne. A little farther
on, from the opposite shore, the castle of Gutenfels rose above the busy
town of Kaub.

“Another of those scenes,” said Trevylyan, “celebrated equally by love
and glory, for the castle’s name is derived from that of the beautiful
ladye of an emperor’s passion; and below, upon a ridge in the steep,
the great Gustavus issued forth his command to begin battle with the
Spaniards.”

“It looks peaceful enough now,” said Vane, pointing to the craft that
lay along the stream, and the green trees drooping over a curve in the
bank. Beyond, in the middle of the stream itself, stands the lonely
castle of Pfalzgrafenstein, sadly memorable as a prison to the more
distinguished of criminals. How many pining eyes may have turned from
those casements to the vine-clad hills of the free shore! how many
indignant hearts have nursed the deep curses of hate in the dungeons
below, and longed for the wave that dashed against the gray walls to
force its way within and set them free!

Here the Rhine seems utterly bounded, shrunk into one of those delusive
lakes into which it so frequently seems to change its course; and as you
proceed, it is as if the waters were silently overflowing their channel
and forcing their way into the clefts of the mountain shore. Passing the
Werth Island on one side and the castle of Stahleck on the other,
our voyagers arrived at Bacharach, which, associating the feudal
recollections with the classic, takes its name from the god of the vine;
and as Du-----e declared with peculiar emphasis, quaffing a large goblet
of the peculiar liquor, “richly deserves the honour!”



CHAPTER XXVIII. THE VOYAGE TO BINGEN.--THE SIMPLE INCIDENTS IN THIS TALE
EXCUSED.--THE SITUATION AND CHARACTER OF GERTRUDE.--THE CONVERSATION OF
THE LOVERS IN THE TEMPEST.--A FACT CONTRADICTED.--THOUGHTS OCCASIONED BY
A MADHOUSE AMONGST THE MOST BEAUTIFUL LANDSCAPES OF THE RHINE.

THE next day they again resumed their voyage, and Gertrude’s spirits
were more cheerful than usual. The air seemed to her lighter, and she
breathed with a less painful effort; once more hope entered the breast
of Trevylyan; and, as the vessel bounded on, their conversation was
steeped in no sombre hues. When Gertrude’s health permitted, no temper
was so gay, yet so gently gay, as hers; and now the _naive_ sportiveness
of her remarks called a smile to the placid lip of Vane, and smoothed
the anxious front of Trevylyan himself; as for Du-----e, who had much of
the boon companion beneath his professional gravity, he broke out every
now and then into snatches of French songs and drinking glees, which he
declared were the result of the air of Bacharach. Thus conversing, the
ruins of Furstenberg, and the echoing vale of Rheindeibach, glided past
their sail; then the old town of Lorch, on the opposite bank (where the
red wine is said first to have been made), with the green island before
it in the water. Winding round, the stream showed castle upon castle
alike in ruins, and built alike upon scarce accessible steeps. Then came
the chapel of St. Clements and the opposing village of Asmannshausen;
the lofty Rossell, built at the extremest verge of the cliff; and now
the tower of Hatto, celebrated by Southey’s ballad, and the ancient
town of Bingen. Here they paused a while from their voyage, with the
intention of visiting more minutely the Rheingau, or valley of the
Rhine.

It must occur to every one of my readers, that, in undertaking, as now,
in these passages in the history of Trevylyan, scarcely so much a tale
as an episode in real life, it is very difficult to offer any interest
save of the most simple and unexciting kind. It is true that to
Trevylyan every day, every hour, had its incident; but what are those
incidents to others? A cloud in the sky; a smile from the lip of
Gertrude,--these were to him far more full of events than had been the
most varied scenes of his former adventurous career; but the history of
the heart is not easily translated into language; and the world will not
readily pause from its business to watch the alternations in the cheek
of a dying girl.

In the immense sum of human existence what is a single unit? Every
sod on which we tread is the grave of some former being; yet is there
something that softens without enervating the heart in tracing in the
life of another those emotions that all of us have known ourselves. For
who is there that has not, in his progress through life, felt all its
ordinary business arrested, and the varieties of fate commuted into one
chronicle of the affections? Who has not watched over the passing away
of some being, more to him at that epoch than all the world? And this
unit, so trivial to the calculation of others, of what inestimable value
was it not to him? Retracing in another such recollections, shadowed and
mellowed down by time, we feel the wonderful sanctity of human life, we
feel what emotions a single being can awake; what a world of hope may
be buried in a single grave! And thus we keep alive within ourselves the
soft springs of that morality which unites us with our kind, and sheds
over the harsh scenes and turbulent contests of earth the colouring of a
common love.

There is often, too, in the time of year in which such thoughts are
presented to us, a certain harmony with the feelings they awaken. As I
write I hear the last sighs of the departing summer, and the sere and
yellow leaf is visible in the green of nature. But when this book goes
forth into the world, the year will have passed through a deeper cycle
of decay; and the first melancholy signs of winter have breathed into
the Universal Mind that sadness which associates itself readily with
the memory of friends, of feelings, that are no more. The seasons, like
ourselves, track their course by something of beauty, or of glory, that
is left behind. As the traveller in the land of Palestine sees tomb
after tomb rise before him, the landmarks of his way, and the only signs
of the holiness of the soil, thus Memory wanders over the most sacred
spots in its various world, and traces them but by the graves of the
Past.

It was now that Gertrude began to feel the shock her frame had received
in the storm upon the Rhine. Cold shiverings frequently seized her; her
cough became more hollow, and her form trembled at the slightest breeze.

Vane grew seriously alarmed; he repented that he had yielded to
Gertrude’s wish of substituting the Rhine for the Tiber or the Arno;
and would even now have hurried across the Alps to a warmer clime, if
Du-----e had not declared that she could not survive the journey,
and that her sole chance of regaining her strength was rest. Gertrude
herself, however, in the continued delusion of her disease, clung to
the belief of recovery, and still supported the hopes of her father, and
soothed, with secret talk of the future, the anguish of her betrothed.
The reader may remember that in the most touching passage in the
ancient tragedians, the most pathetic part of the most pathetic of
human poets--the pleading speech of Iphigenia, when imploring for
her prolonged life, she impresses you with so soft a picture of its
innocence and its beauty, and in this Gertrude resembled the Greek’s
creation--that she felt, on the verge of death, all the flush, the glow,
the loveliness of life. Her youth was filled with hope and many-coloured
dreams; she loved, and the hues of morning slept upon the yet
disenchanted earth. The heavens to her were not as the common sky;
the wave had its peculiar music to her ear, and the rustling leaves a
pleasantness that none whose heart is not bathed in the love and sense
of beauty could discern. Therefore it was, in future years, a thought
of deep gratitude to Trevylyan that she was so little sensible of her
danger; that the landscape caught not the gloom of the grave; and that,
in the Greek phrase, “death found her sleeping amongst flowers.”

At the end of a few days, another of those sudden turns, common to
her malady, occurred in Gertrude’s health; her youth and her happiness
rallied against the encroaching tyrant, and for the ensuing fortnight
she seemed once more within the bounds of hope. During this time they
made several excursions into the Rheingau, and finished their tour at
the ancient Heidelberg.

One morning, in these excursions, after threading the wood of
Niederwald, they gained that small and fairy temple, which hanging
lightly over the mountain’s brow, commands one of the noblest landscapes
of earth. There, seated side by side, the lovers looked over the
beautiful world below; far to the left lay the happy islets, in the
embrace of the Rhine, as it wound along the low and curving meadows that
stretch away towards Nieder-Ingelheim and Mayence. Glistening in the
distance, the opposite Nah swept by the Mause tower, and the ruins of
Klopp, crowning the ancient Bingen, into the mother tide. There, on
either side the town, were the mountains of St. Roch and Rupert, with
some old monastic ruin saddening in the sun. But nearer, below the
temple, contrasting all the other features of landscape, yawned a dark
and rugged gulf, girt by cragged elms and mouldering towers, the very
prototype of the abyss of time,--black and fathomless amidst ruin and
desolation.

“I think sometimes,” said Gertrude, “as in scenes like these we sit
together, and rapt from the actual world, see only the enchantment that
distance lends to our view,--I think sometimes what pleasure it will be
hereafter to recall these hours. If ever you should love me less, I need
only whisper to you, ‘The Rhine,’ and will not all the feelings you have
now for me return?”

“Ah, there will never be occasion to recall my love for you,--it can
never decay.”

“What a strange thing is life!” said Gertrude; “how unconnected, how
desultory seem all its links! Has this sweet pause from trouble, from
the ordinary cares of life--has it anything in common with your past
career, with your future? You will go into the great world; in a few
years hence these moments of leisure and musing will be denied to you.
The action that you love and court is a jealous sphere,--it allows no
wandering, no repose. These moments will then seem to you but as yonder
islands that stud the Rhine,--the stream lingers by them for a moment,
and then hurries on in its rapid course; they vary, but they do not
interrupt the tide.”

“You are fanciful, my Gertrude; but your simile might be juster. Rather
let these banks be as our lives, and this river the one thought that
flows eternally by both, blessing each with undying freshness.”

Gertrude smiled; and, as Trevylyan’s arm encircled her, she sank her
beautiful face upon his bosom, he covered it with his kisses, and she
thought at the moment, that, even had she passed death, that embrace
could have recalled her to life.

They pursued their course to Mayence, partly by land, partly along
the river. One day, as returning from the vine-clad mountains of
Johannisberg, which commands the whole of the Rheingau, the most
beautiful valley in the world, they proceeded by water to the town of
Ellfeld, Gertrude said,--

“There is a thought in your favourite poet which you have often
repeated, and which I cannot think true,--

  “‘In nature there is nothing melancholy.’

“To me, it seems as if a certain melancholy were inseparable from
beauty; in the sunniest noon there is a sense of solitude and stillness
which pervades the landscape, and even in the flush of life inspires us
with a musing and tender sadness. Why is this?”

“I cannot tell,” said Trevylyan, mournfully; “but I allow that it is
true.”

“It is as if,” continued the romantic Gertrude, “the spirit of the
world spoke to us in the silence, and filled us with a sense of our
mortality,--a whisper from the religion that belongs to nature, and is
ever seeking to unite the earth with the reminiscences of Heaven. Ah,
what without a heaven would be even love!--a perpetual terror of the
separation that must one day come! If,” she resumed solemnly, after a
momentary pause, and a shadow settled on her young face, “if it be true,
Albert, that I must leave you soon--”

“It cannot! it cannot!” cried Trevylyan, wildly; “be still, be silent, I
beseech you.”

“Look yonder,” said Du-----e, breaking seasonably in upon the
conversation of the lovers; “on that hill to the left, what once was
an abbey is now an asylum for the insane. Does it not seem a quiet and
serene abode for the unstrung and erring minds that tenant it? What
a mystery is there in our conformation!--those strange and bewildered
fancies which replace our solid reason, what a moral of our human
weakness do they breathe!”

It does indeed induce a dark and singular train of thought, when, in the
midst of these lovely scenes, we chance upon this lone retreat for those
on whose eyes Nature, perhaps, smiles in vain. _Or is it in vain?_ They
look down upon the broad Rhine, with its tranquil isles: do their wild
delusions endow the river with another name, and people the valleys
with no living shapes? Does the broken mirror within reflect back the
countenance of real things, or shadows and shapes, crossed, mingled, and
bewildered,--the phantasma of a sick man’s dreams? Yet, perchance, one
memory unscathed by the general ruin of the brain can make even the
beautiful Rhine more beautiful than it is to the common eye; can calm
it with the hues of departed love, and bids its possessor walk over its
vine-clad mountains with the beings that have ceased to _be_! There,
perhaps, the self-made monarch sits upon his throne and claims the
vessels as his fleet, the waves and the valleys as his own; there, the
enthusiast, blasted by the light of some imaginary creed, beholds the
shapes of angels, and watches in the clouds round the setting sun
the pavilions of God; there the victim of forsaken or perished love,
mightier than the sorcerers of old, evokes the dead, or recalls the
faithless by the philter of undying fancies. Ah, blessed art thou, the
winged power of Imagination that is within us! conquering even grief,
brightening even despair. Thou takest us from the world when reason can
no longer bind us to it, and givest to the maniac the inspiration and
the solace of the bard! Thou, the parent of the purer love, lingerest
like love, when even ourself forsakes us, and lightest up the shattered
chambers of the heart with the glory that makes a sanctity of decay.



CHAPTER XXIX. ELLFELD.--MAYENCE.--HEIDELBERG.--A CONVERSATION BETWEEN
VANE AND THE GERMAN STUDENT.--THE RUINS OF THE CASTLE OF HEIDELBERG AND
ITS SOLITARY HABITANT.

IT was now the full noon; light clouds were bearing up towards the
opposite banks of the Rhine, but over the Gothic towers of Ellfeld the
sky spread blue and clear; the river danced beside the old gray walls
with a sunny wave, and close at hand a vessel crowded with passengers,
and loud with eager voices, gave a merry life to the scene. On the
opposite bank the hills sloped away into the far horizon, and one slight
skiff in the midst of the waters broke the solitary brightness of the
noonday calm.

The town of Ellfeld was the gift of Otho the First to the Church;
not far from thence is the crystal spring that gives its name to the
delicious grape of Markbrunner.

“Ah,” quoth Du-----e, “doubtless the good bishops of Mayence made the
best of the vicinity!”

They stayed some little time at this town, and visited the ruins of
Scharfenstein; thence proceeding up the river, they passed Nieder
Walluf, called the Gate of the Rheingau, and the luxuriant garden of
Schierstein; thence, sailing by the castle-seat of the Prince Nassau
Usingen, and passing two long and narrow isles, they arrived at Mayence,
as the sun shot his last rays upon the waters, gilding the proud
cathedral-spire, and breaking the mists that began to gather behind,
over the rocks of the Rheingau.

Ever memorable Mayence,--memorable alike for freedom and for song,
within those walls how often woke the gallant music of the Troubadour;
and how often beside that river did the heart of the maiden tremble to
the lay! Within those walls the stout Walpoden first broached the great
scheme of the Hanseatic league; and, more than all, O memorable Mayence,
thou canst claim the first invention of the mightiest engine of human
intellect,--the great leveller of power, the Demiurgus of the moral
world,--the Press! Here too lived the maligned hero of the greatest
drama of modern genius, the traditionary Faust, illustrating in himself
the fate of his successors in dispensing knowledge,--held a monster for
his wisdom, and consigned to the penalties of hell as a recompense for
the benefits he had conferred on earth!

At Mayence, Gertrude heard so much and so constantly of Heidelberg,
that she grew impatient to visit that enchanting town; and as Du-----e
considered the air of Heidelberg more pure and invigorating than that of
Mayence, they resolved to fix within it their temporary residence.
Alas! it was the place destined to close their brief and melancholy
pilgrimage, and to become to the heart of Trevylyan the holiest spot
which the earth contained,--the KAABA of the world. But Gertrude,
unconscious of her fate, conversed gayly as their carriage rolled
rapidly on, and, constantly alive to every new sensation, she touched
with her characteristic vivacity on all that they had seen in their
previous route. There is a great charm in the observations of one new
to the world; if we ourselves have become somewhat tired of “its hack
sights and sounds,” we hear in their freshness a voice from our own
youth.

In the haunted valley of the Neckar, the most crystal of rivers, stands
the town of Heidelberg. The shades of evening gathered round it as their
heavy carriage rattled along the antique streets, and not till the next
day was Gertrude aware of all the unrivalled beauties that environ the
place.

Vane, who was an early riser, went forth alone in the morning to
reconnoitre the town; and as he was gazing on the tower of St. Peter,
he heard himself suddenly accosted. He turned round and saw the German
student whom they had met among the mountains of Taunus at his elbow.

“Monsieur has chosen well in coming hither,” said the student; “and I
trust our town will not disappoint his expectations.” Vane answered with
courtesy, and the German offering to accompany him in his walk, their
conversation fell naturally on the life of a university, and the current
education of the German people.

“It is surprising,” said the student, “that men are eternally inventing
new systems of education, and yet persevering in the old. How many
years ago is it since Fichte predicted in the system of Pestalozzi
the regeneration of the German people? What has it done? We admire, we
praise, and we blunder on in the very course Pestalozzi proves to
be erroneous. Certainly,” continued the student, “there must be some
radical defect in a system of culture in which genius is an exception,
and dulness the result. Yet here, in our German universities, everything
proves that education without equitable institutions avails little in
the general formation of character. Here the young men of the colleges
mix on the most equal terms; they are daring, romantic, enamoured of
freedom even to its madness. They leave the University: no political
career continues the train of mind they had acquired; they plunge into
obscurity; live scattered and separate, and the student inebriated
with Schiller sinks into the passive priest or the lethargic baron. His
college career, so far from indicating his future life, exactly reverses
it: he is brought up in one course in order to proceed in another. And
this I hold to be the universal error of education in all countries;
they conceive it a certain something to be finished at a certain age.
They do not make it a part of the continuous history of life, but a
wandering from it.”

“You have been in England?” asked Vane.

“Yes; I have travelled over nearly the whole of it on foot. I was poor
at that time, and imagining there was a sort of masonry between all men
of letters, I inquired at each town for the _savants_, and asked money
of them as a matter of course.”

Vane almost laughed outright at the simplicity and naive unconsciousness
of degradation with which the student proclaimed himself a public
beggar.

“And how did you generally succeed?”

“In most cases I was threatened with the stocks, and twice I was
consigned by the _juge de paix_ to the village police, to be passed
to some mystic Mecca they were pleased to entitle ‘a parish.’ Ah”
 (continued the German with much _bonhomie_), “it was a pity to see in a
great nation so much value attached to such a trifle as money. But what
surprised me greatly was the tone of your poetry. Madame de Stael, who
knew perhaps as much of England as she did of Germany, tells us that its
chief character is the _chivalresque_; and, excepting only Scott, who,
by the way, is _not_ English, I did not find one chivalrous poet among
you. Yet,” continued the student, “between ourselves, I fancy that in
our present age of civilization, there is an unexamined mistake in the
general mind as to the value of poetry. It delights still as ever, but
it has ceased to teach. The prose of the heart enlightens, touches,
rouses, far more than poetry. Your most philosophical poets would be
commonplace if turned into prose. Verse cannot contain the refining
subtle thoughts which a great prose writer embodies; the rhyme eternally
cripples it; it properly deals with the common problems of human nature,
which are now hackneyed, and not with the nice and philosophizing
corollaries which may be drawn from them. Thus, though it would seem
at first a paradox, commonplace is more the element of poetry than of
prose.”

This sentiment charmed Vane, who had nothing of the poet about him;
and he took the student to share their breakfast at the inn, with
a complacency he rarely experienced at the remeeting with a new
acquaintance.

After breakfast, our party proceeded through the town towards the
wonderful castle which is its chief attraction, and the noblest wreck of
German grandeur.

And now pausing, the mountain yet unscaled, the stately ruin frowned
upon them, girt by its massive walls and hanging terraces, round which
from place to place clung the dwarfed and various foliage. High at the
rear rose the huge mountain, covered, save at its extreme summit, with
dark trees, and concealing in its mysterious breast the shadowy beings
of the legendary world. But towards the ruins, and up a steep ascent,
you may see a few scattered sheep thinly studding the broken ground.
Aloft, above the ramparts, rose, desolate and huge, the Palace of the
Electors of the Palatinate. In its broken walls you may trace the tokens
of the lightning that blasted its ancient pomp, but still leaves in the
vast extent of pile a fitting monument of the memory of Charlemagne.
Below, in the distance, spread the plain far and spacious, till the
shadowy river, with one solitary sail upon its breast, united the
melancholy scene of earth with the autumnal sky.

“See,” said Vane, pointing to two peasants who were conversing near
them on the matters of their little trade, utterly unconscious of the
associations of the spot, “see, after all that is said and done about
human greatness, it is always the greatness of the few. Ages pass, and
leave the poor herd, the mass of men, eternally the same,--hewers of
wood and drawers of water. The pomp of princes has its ebb and flow, but
the peasant sells his fruit as gayly to the stranger on the ruins as to
the emperor in the palace.”

“Will it be always so?” said the student.

“Let us hope not, for the sake of permanence in glory,” said Trevylyan.
“Had _a people_ built yonder palace, its splendour would never have
passed away.”

Vane shrugged his shoulders, and Du-----e took snuff.

But all the impressions produced by the castle at a distance are as
nothing when you stand within its vast area and behold the architecture
of all ages blended into one mighty ruin! The rich hues of the masonry,
the sweeping facades--every description of building which man ever
framed for war or for luxury--is here; all having only the common
character,--RUIN. The feudal rampart, the yawning fosse, the rude tower,
the splendid arch, the strength of a fortress, the magnificence of a
palace,--all united, strike upon the soul like the history of a fallen
empire in all its epochs.

“There is one singular habitant of these ruins,” said the student,--“a
solitary painter, who has dwelt here some twenty years, companioned only
by his Art. No other apartment but that which he tenants is occupied by
a human being.”

“What a poetical existence!” cried Gertrude, enchanted with a solitude
so full of associations.

“Perhaps so,” said the cruel Vane, ever anxious to dispel an illusion,
“but more probably custom has deadened to him all that overpowers
ourselves with awe; and he may tread among these ruins rather seeking to
pick up some rude morsel of antiquity, than feeding his imagination with
the dim traditions that invest them with so august a poetry.”

“Monsieur’s conjecture has something of the truth in it,” said the
German; “but then the painter is a Frenchman.”

There is a sense of fatality in the singular mournfulness and majesty
which belong to the ruins of Heidelberg, contrasting the vastness of the
strength with the utterness of the ruin. It has been twice struck with
lightning, and is the wreck of the elements, not of man; during the
great siege it sustained, the lightning is supposed to have struck the
powder magazine by accident.

What a scene for some great imaginative work! What a mocking
interference of the wrath of nature in the puny contests of men! One
stroke of “the red right arm” above us, crushing the triumph of ages,
and laughing to scorn the power of the beleaguers and the valour of the
besieged!

They passed the whole day among these stupendous ruins, and felt, when
they descended to their inn, as if they had left the caverns of some
mighty tomb.



CHAPTER XXX. NO PART OF THE EARTH REALLY SOLITARY.--THE SONG OF THE
FAIRIES.--THE SACRED SPOT.--THE WITCH OF THE EVIL WINDS.--THE SPELL AND
THE DUTY OF THE FAIRIES.

BUT in what spot of the world is there ever utter solitude? The vanity
of man supposes that loneliness is _his_ absence! Who shall say what
millions of spiritual beings glide invisibly among scenes apparently the
most deserted? Or what know we of our own mechanism, that we should deny
the possibility of life and motion to things that we cannot ourselves
recognize?

At moonlight, in the Great Court of Heidelberg, on the borders of the
shattered basin overgrown with weeds, the following song was heard by
the melancholy shades that roam at night through the mouldering halls of
old, and the gloomy hollows in the mountain of Heidelberg.



SONG OF THE FAIRIES IN THE RUINS OF HEIDELBERG.

     From the woods and the glossy green,
       With the wild thyme strewn;
     From the rivers whose crisped sheen
       Is kissed by the trembling moon;
     While the dwarf looks out from his mountain cave,
       And the erl king from his lair,
     And the water-nymph from her moaning wave,
       We skirr the limber air.

     There’s a smile on the vine-clad shore,
       A smile on the castled heights;
     They dream back the days of yore,
       And they smile at our roundel rites!
                    Our roundel rites!

     Lightly we tread these halls around,
       Lightly tread we;
     Yet, hark! we have scared with a single sound
       The moping owl on the breathless tree,
                    And the goblin sprites!
     Ha, ha! we have scared with a single sound
       The old gray owl on the breathless tree,
                    And the goblin sprites!



“They come not,” said Pipalee; “yet the banquet is prepared, and the
poor queen will be glad of some refreshment.”

“What a pity! all the rose-leaves will be over-broiled,” said Nip.

“Let us amuse ourselves with the old painter,” quoth Trip, springing
over the ruins.

“Well said,” cried Pipalee and Nip; and all three, leaving my lord
treasurer amazed at their levity, whisked into the painter’s apartment.
Permitting them to throw the ink over their victim’s papers, break his
pencils, mix his colours, mislay his nightcap, and go whiz against his
face in the shape of a great bat, till the astonished Frenchman began
to think the pensive goblins of the place had taken a sprightly fit,--we
hasten to a small green spot some little way from the town, in the
valley of the Neckar, and by the banks of its silver stream. It was
circled round by dark trees, save on that side bordered by the river.
The wild-flowers sprang profusely from the turf, which yet was smooth
and singularly green. And there was the German fairy describing a
circle round the spot, and making his elvish spells; and Nymphalin sat
droopingly in the centre, shading her face, which was bowed down as the
head of a water-lily, and weeping crystal tears.

There came a hollow murmur through the trees, and a rush as of a mighty
wind, and a dark form emerged from the shadow and approached the spot.

The face was wrinkled and old, and stern with a malevolent and evil
aspect. The frame was lean and gaunt, and supported by a staff, and a
short gray mantle covered its bended shoulders.

“Things of the moonbeam!” said the form, in a shrill and ghastly voice,
“what want ye here; and why charm ye this spot from the coming of me and
mine?”

“Dark witch of the blight and blast,” answered the fairy, “THOU that
nippest the herb in its tender youth, and eatest up the core of the
soft bud; behold, it is but a small spot that the fairies claim from
thy demesnes, and on which, through frost and heat, they will keep the
herbage green and the air gentle in its sighs!”

“And, wherefore, O dweller in the crevices of the earth, wherefore
wouldst thou guard this spot from the curses of the seasons?”

“We know by our instinct,” answered the fairy, “that this spot will
become the grave of one whom the fairies love; hither, by an unfelt
influence, shall we guide her yet living steps; and in gazing upon this
spot shall the desire of quiet and the resignation to death steal upon
her soul. Behold, throughout the universe, all things are at war with
one another,--the lion with the lamb; the serpent with the bird; and
even the gentlest bird itself with the moth of the air; or the worm of
the humble earth! What then to men, and to the spirits transcending
men, is so lovely and so sacred as a being that harmeth none; what so
beautiful as Innocence; what so mournful as its untimely tomb? And shall
not that tomb be sacred; shall it not be our peculiar care? May we not
mourn over it as at the passing away of some fair miracle in Nature,
too tender to endure, too rare to be forgotten? It is for this, O dread
waker of the blast, that the fairies would consecrate this little spot;
for this they would charm away from its tranquil turf the wandering
ghoul and the evil children of the night. Here, not the ill-omened owl,
nor the blind bat, nor the unclean worm shall come. And thou shouldst
have neither will nor power to nip the flowers of spring, nor sear the
green herbs of summer. Is it not, dark mother of the evil winds,--is
it not _our_ immemorial office to tend the grave of Innocence, and keep
fresh the flowers round the resting-place of Virgin Love?”

Then the witch drew her cloak round her, and muttered to herself, and
without further answer turned away among the trees and vanished, as the
breath of the east wind, which goeth with her as her comrade, scattered
the melancholy leaves along her path!



CHAPTER XXXI. GERTRUDE AND TREVYLYAN, WHEN THE FORMER IS AWAKENED TO THE
APPROACH OF DEATH.

THE next day, Gertrude and her companions went along the banks of the
haunted Neckar. She had passed a sleepless and painful night, and her
evanescent and childlike spirits had sobered down into a melancholy and
thoughtful mood. She leaned back in an open carriage with Trevylyan,
ever constant, by her side, while Du-----e and Vane rode slowly in
advance. Trevylyan tried in vain to cheer her; even his attempts
(usually so eagerly received) to charm her duller moments by tale or
legend were, in this instance, fruitless. She shook her head gently,
pressed his hand, and said, “No, dear Trevylyan, no; even your art fails
to-day, but your kindness never!” and pressing his hand to her lips, she
burst passionately into tears.

Alarmed and anxious, he clasped her to his breast, and strove to lift
her face, as it drooped on its resting-place, and kiss away its tears.
“Oh,” said she, at length, “do not despise my weakness; I am overcome
by my own thoughts: I look upon the world, and see that it is fair and
good; I look upon you, and I see all that I can venerate and adore. Life
seems to me so sweet, and the earth so lovely; can you wonder, then,
that I should shrink at the thought of death? Nay, interrupt me not,
dear Albert; the thought must be borne and braved. I have not cherished,
I have not yielded to it through my long-increasing illness; but there
have been times when it has forced itself upon me, and now, _now_ more
palpably than ever. Do not think me weak and childish. I never feared
death till I knew you; but to see you no more,--never again to touch
this dear hand, never to thank you for your love, never to be sensible
of your care,--to lie down and sleep, _and never, never, once more to
dream of you_! Ah, that is a bitter thought! but I will brave it,--yes,
brave it as one worthy of your regard.”

Trevylyan, choked by his emotions, covered his own face with his hands,
and, leaning back in the carriage, vainly struggled with his sobs.

“Perhaps,” she said, yet ever and anon clinging to the hope that had
utterly abandoned _him_, “perhaps, I may yet deceive myself; and my love
for you, which seems to me as if it could conquer death, may bear me up
against this fell disease. The hope to live with you, to watch you, to
share your high dreams, and oh! above all, to soothe you in sorrow and
sickness, as you have soothed me--has not that hope something that may
support even this sinking frame? And who shall love thee as I love; who
see thee as I have seen; who pray for thee in gratitude and tears as I
have prayed? Oh, Albert, so little am I jealous of you, so little do I
think of myself in comparison, that I could close my eyes happily on the
world if I knew that what I could be to thee another will be!”

“Gertrude,” said Trevylyan, and lifting up his colourless face, he gazed
upon her with an earnest and calm solemnity, “Gertrude, let us be united
at once! If Fate must sever us, let her cut the last tie too; let us
feel that at least upon earth we have been all in all to each other;
let us defy death, even as it frowns upon us. Be mine to-morrow--this
day--oh, God! be mine!”

Over even that pale countenance, beneath whose hues the lamp of life so
faintly fluttered, a deep, radiant flush passed one moment, lighting up
the beautiful ruin with the glow of maiden youth and impassioned hope,
and then died rapidly away.

“No, Albert,” she said sighing; “no! it must not be. Far easier would
come the pang to you, while yet we are not wholly united; and for my own
part I am selfish, and feel as if I should leave a tenderer remembrance
on your heart thus parted,--tenderer, but not so sad. I would not wish
you to feel yourself widowed to my memory; I would not cling like a
blight to your fair prospects of the future. Remember me rather as a
dream,--as something never wholly won, and therefore asking no fidelity
but that of kind and forbearing thoughts. Do you remember one evening
as we sailed along the Rhine--ah! happy, happy hour!--that we heard from
the banks a strain of music,--not so skilfully played as to be worth
listening to for itself, but, suiting as it did the hour and the scene,
we remained silent, that we might hear it the better; and when it died
insensibly upon the waters, a certain melancholy stole over us; we felt
that a something that softened the landscape had gone, and we conversed
less lightly than before? Just so, my own loved, my own adored
Trevylyan, just so is the influence that our brief love, your poor
Gertrude’s existence, should bequeath to your remembrance. A sound,
a presence, should haunt you for a little while, but no more, ere you
again become sensible of the glories that court your way!”

But as Gertrude said this, she turned to Trevylyan, and seeing his
agony, she could refrain no longer; she felt that to soothe was to
insult; and throwing herself upon his breast, they mingled their tears
together.



CHAPTER XXXII. A SPOT TO BE BURIED IN.

ON their return homeward, Du-----e took the third seat in the carriage,
and endeavoured, with his usual vivacity, to cheer the spirits of his
companions; and such was the elasticity of Gertrude’s nature, that with
her, he, to a certain degree, succeeded in his kindly attempt. Quickly
alive to the charms of scenery, she entered by degrees into the external
beauties which every turn in the road opened to their view; and the
silvery smoothness of the river, that made the constant attraction
of the landscape, the serenity of the time, and the clearness of the
heavens, tended to tranquillize a mind that, like a sunflower, so
instinctively turned from the shadow to the light.

Once Du-----e stopped the carriage in a spot of herbage, bedded among
the trees, and said to Gertrude, “We are now in one of the many places
along the Neckar which your favourite traditions serve to consecrate.
Amidst yonder copses, in the early ages of Christianity, there dwelt a
hermit, who, though young in years, was renowned for the sanctity of his
life. None knew whence he came, nor for what cause he had limited the
circle of life to the seclusion of his cell. He rarely spoke, save when
his ghostly advice or his kindly prayer was needed; he lived upon herbs,
and the wild fruits which the peasants brought to his cave; and every
morning and every evening he came to this spot to fill his pitcher from
the water of the stream. But here he was observed to linger long after
his task was done, and to sit gazing upon the walls of a convent which
then rose upon the opposite side of the bank, though now even its ruins
are gone. Gradually his health gave way beneath the austerities he
practised; and one evening he was found by some fishermen insensible on
the turf. They bore him for medical aid to the opposite convent; and one
of the sisterhood, the daughter of a prince, was summoned to attend
the recluse. But when his eyes opened upon hers, a sudden recognition
appeared to seize both. He spoke; and the sister threw herself on the
couch of the dying man, and shrieked forth a name, the most famous in
the surrounding country,--the name of a once noted minstrel, who, in
those rude times, had mingled the poet with the lawless chief, and was
supposed, years since, to have fallen in one of the desperate frays
between prince and outlaw, which were then common; storming the very
castle which held her, now the pious nun, then the beauty and presider
over the tournament and galliard. In her arms the spirit of the hermit
passed away. She survived but a few hours, and left conjecture busy with
a history to which it never obtained further clew. Many a troubadour in
later times furnished forth in poetry the details which truth refused to
supply; and the place where the hermit at sunrise and sunset ever came
to gaze upon the convent became consecrated by song.”

The place invested with this legendary interest was impressed with a
singular aspect of melancholy quiet; wildflowers yet lingered on the
turf, whose grassy sedges gently overhung the Neckar, that murmured
amidst them with a plaintive music. Not a wind stirred the trees; but at
a little distance from the place, the spire of a church rose amidst the
copse; and, as they paused, they suddenly heard from the holy building
the bell that summons to the burial of the dead. It came on the ear in
such harmony with the spot, with the hour, with the breathing calm, that
it thrilled to the heart of each with an inexpressible power. It was
like the voice of another world, that amidst the solitude of nature
summoned the lulled spirit from the cares of this; it invited, not
repulsed, and had in its tone more of softness than of awe.

Gertrude turned, with tears starting to her eyes, and, laying her hand
on Trevylyan’s, whispered, “In such a spot, so calm, so sequestered, yet
in the neighbourhood of the house of God, would I wish this broken frame
to be consigned to rest.”



CHAPTER THE LAST. THE CONCLUSION OF THIS TALE.

FROM that day Gertrude’s spirit resumed its wonted cheerfulness, and for
the ensuing week she never reverted to her approaching fate; she seemed
once more to have grown unconscious of its limit. Perhaps she sought,
anxious for Trevylyan to the last, not to throw additional gloom over
their earthly separation; or, perhaps, once steadily regarding the
certainty of her doom, its terrors vanished. The chords of thought,
vibrating to the subtlest emotions, may be changed by a single incident,
or in a single hour; a sound of sacred music, a green and quiet
burial-place, may convert the form of death into the aspect of an angel.
And therefore wisely, and with a beautiful lore, did the Greeks strip
the grave of its unreal gloom; wisely did they body forth the great
principle of Rest by solemn and lovely images, unconscious of the
northern madness that made a Spectre of REPOSE!

But while Gertrude’s _spirit_ resumed its healthful tone, her _frame_
rapidly declined, and a few days now could do the ravage of months a
little while before.

One evening, amidst the desolate ruins of Heidelberg, Trevylyan, who had
gone forth alone to indulge the thoughts which he strove to stifle in
Gertrude’s presence, suddenly encountered Vane. That calm and almost
callous pupil of the adversities of the world was standing alone, and
gazing upon the shattered casements and riven tower, through which the
sun now cast its slant and parting ray.

Trevylyan, who had never loved this cold and unsusceptible man, save
for the sake of Gertrude, felt now almost a hatred creep over him, as he
thought in such a time, and with death fastening upon the flower of his
house, he could yet be calm, and smile, and muse, and moralize, and play
the common part of the world. He strode slowly up to him, and standing
full before him, said with a hollow voice and writhing smile, “You amuse
yourself pleasantly, sir: this is a fine scene; and to meditate over
griefs a thousand years hushed to rest is better than watching over a
sick girl and eating away your heart with fear!”

Vane looked at him quietly, but intently, and made no reply.

“Vane!” continued Trevylyan, with the same preternatural attempt at
calm, “Vane, in a few days all will be over, and you and I, the things,
the plotters, the false men of the world, will be left alone,--left by
the sole being that graces our dull life, that makes by her love either
of us worthy of a thought!”

Vane started, and turned away his face. “You are cruel,” said he, with a
faltering voice.

“What, man!” shouted Trevylyan, seizing him abruptly by the arm, “can
_you_ feel? Is your cold heart touched? Come then,” added he, with a
wild laugh, “come, let us be friends!”

Vane drew himself aside, with a certain dignity, that impressed
Trevylyan even at that hour. “Some years hence,” said he, “you will
be called cold as I am; sorrow will teach you the wisdom of
indifference--it is a bitter school, sir,--a bitter school! But think
you that I do indeed see unmoved my last hope shivered,--the last tie
that binds me to my kind? No, no! I feel it as a man may feel; I cloak
it as a man grown gray in misfortune should do! My child is more to
me than your betrothed to you; for you are young and wealthy, and life
smiles before you; but I--no more--sir, no more!”

“Forgive me,” said Trevylyan, humbly, “I have wronged you; but
Gertrude is an excuse for any crime of love; and now listen to my last
prayer,--give her to me, even on the verge of the grave. Death cannot
seize her in the arms, in the vigils of a love like mine.”

Vane shuddered. “It were to wed the dead,” said he. “No!”

Trevylyan drew back, and without another word, hurried away; he returned
to the town; he sought, with methodical calmness, the owner of the piece
of ground in which Gertrude had wished to be buried. He purchased it,
and that very night he sought the priest of a neighbouring church,
and directed it should be consecrated according to the due rite and
ceremonial.

The priest, an aged and pious man, was struck by the request, and the
air of him who made it.

“Shall it be done forthwith, sir?” said he, hesitating.

“Forthwith,” answered Trevylyan, with a calm smile,--“a bridegroom, you
know, is naturally impatient.”

For the next three days, Gertrude was so ill as to be confined to her
bed. All that time Trevylyan sat outside her door, without speaking,
scarcely lifting his eyes from the ground. The attendants passed to and
fro,--he heeded them not; perhaps as even the foreign menials turned
aside and wiped their eyes, and prayed God to comfort him, he required
compassion less at that time than any other. There is a stupefaction
in woe, and the heart sleeps without a pang when exhausted by its
afflictions.

But on the fourth day Gertrude rose, and was carried down (how changed,
yet how lovely ever!) to their common apartment. During those three days
the priest had been with her often, and her spirit, full of religion
from her childhood, had been unspeakably soothed by his comfort. She
took food from the hand of Trevylyan; she smiled upon him as sweetly as
of old. She conversed with him, though with a faint voice, and at broken
intervals. But she felt no pain; life ebbed away gradually, and without
a pang. “My father,” she said to Vane, whose features still bore their
usual calm, whatever might have passed within, “I know that you will
grieve when I am gone more than the world might guess; for I alone know
what you were years ago, ere friends left you and fortune frowned,
and ere my poor mother died. But do not--do not believe that hope and
comfort leave you with me. Till the heaven pass away from the earth
there shall be comfort and hope for all.”

They did not lodge in the town, but had fixed their abode on its
outskirts, and within sight of the Neckar; and from the window they saw
a light sail gliding gayly by till it passed, and solitude once more
rested upon the waters.

“The sail passes from our eyes,” said Gertrude, pointing to it, “but
still it glides on as happily though we see it no more; and I feel--yes,
Father, I feel--I know that it is so with _us_. We glide down the river
of time from the eyes of men, but we cease not the less to _be_!”

And now, as the twilight descended, she expressed a wish, before she
retired to rest, to be left alone with Trevylyan. He was not then
sitting by her side, for he would not trust himself to do so, but with
his face averted, at a little distance from her. She called him by his
name; he answered not, nor turned. Weak as she was, she raised herself
from the sofa, and crept gently along the floor till she came to him,
and sank in his arms.

“Ah, unkind!” she said, “unkind for once! Will you turn away from me?
Come, let us look once more on the river: see! the night darkens over
it. Our pleasant voyage, the type of our love, is finished; our sail may
be unfurled no more. Never again can your voice soothe the lassitude of
sickness with the legend and the song; the course is run, the vessel is
broken up, night closes over its fragments; but now, in this hour, love
me, be kind to me as ever. Still let me be your own Gertrude, still let
me close my eyes this night, as before, with the sweet consciousness
that I am loved.”

“Loved! O Gertrude! speak not to me thus!”

“Come, that is yourself again!” and she clung with weak arms caressingly
to his breast. “And now,” she said more solemnly, “let us forget that we
are mortal; let us remember only that life is a part, not the whole,
of our career; let us feel in this soft hour, and while yet we are
unsevered, the presence of The Eternal that is within us, so that it
shall not be as death, but as a short absence; and when once the pang of
parting is over, you must think only that we are shortly to meet again.
What! you turn from me still? See, I do not weep or grieve, I have
conquered the pang of our absence; will you be outdone by me? Do you
remember, Albert, that you once told me how the wisest of the sages of
old, in prison, and before death, consoled his friends with the proof
of the immortality of the soul? Is it not a consolation; does it not
suffice; or will you deem it wise from the lips of wisdom, but vain from
the lips of love?”

“Hush, hush!” said Trevylyan, wildly; “or I shall think you an angel
already.”

But let us close this commune, and leave unrevealed the _last_ sacred
words that ever passed between them upon earth.

When Vane and the physician stole back softly into the room, Trevylyan
motioned to them to be still. “She sleeps,” he whispered; “hush!” And
in truth, wearied out by her own emotions, and lulled by the belief
that she had soothed one with whom her heart dwelt now, as ever, she had
fallen into sleep, or it may be, insensibility, on his breast. There
as she lay, so fair, so frail, so delicate, the twilight deepened into
shade, and the first star, like the hope of the future, broke forth upon
the darkness of the earth.

Nothing could equal the stillness without, save that which lay
breathlessly within. For not one of the group stirred or spoke, and
Trevylyan, bending over her, never took his eyes from her face, watching
the parted lips, and fancying that he imbibed the breath. Alas, the
breath was stilled! from sleep to death she had glided without a
sigh,--happy, most happy in that death! cradled in the arms of unchanged
love, and brightened in her last thought by the consciousness of
innocence and the assurances of Heaven!

.......

Trevylyan, after a long sojourn on the Continent, returned to England.
He plunged into active life, and became what is termed in this age
of little names a distinguished and noted man. But what was mainly
remarkable in his future conduct was his impatience of rest. He
eagerly courted all occupations, even of the most varied and motley
kind,--business, letters, ambition, pleasure. He suffered no pause in
his career; and leisure to him was as care to others. He lived in
the world, as the worldly do, discharging its duties, fostering its
affections, and fulfilling its career. But there was a deep and wintry
change within him,--_the sunlight of his life was gone_; the loveliness
of romance had left the earth. The stem was proof as heretofore to the
blast, but the green leaves were severed from it forever, and the bird
had forsaken its boughs. Once he had idolized the beauty that is born of
song, the glory and the ardour that invest such thoughts as are not of
our common clay; but the well of enthusiasm was dried up, and the golden
bowl was broken at the fountain. With Gertrude the poetry of existence
was gone. As she herself had described her loss, a music had ceased to
breathe along the face of things; and though the bark might sail on as
swiftly, and the stream swell with as proud a wave, a something that
had vibrated on the heart was still, and the magic of the voyage was no
more.

And Gertrude sleeps on the spot where she wished her last couch to be
made; and far--oh, far dearer, is that small spot on the distant banks
of the gliding Neckar to Trevylyan’s heart than all the broad lands
and fertile fields of his ancestral domain. The turf too preserves its
emerald greenness; and it would seem to me that the field flowers spring
up by the sides of the simple tomb even more profusely than of old.
A curve in the bank breaks the tide of the Neckar; and therefore its
stream pauses, as if to linger reluctantly, by that solitary grave, and
to mourn among the rustling sedges ere it passes on. And I have thought,
when I last looked upon that quiet place, when I saw the turf so fresh,
and the flowers so bright of hue, that aerial hands might _indeed_
tend the sod; that it was by no _imaginary_ spells that I summoned
the fairies to my tale; that in truth, and with vigils constant though
unseen, they yet kept from all polluting footsteps, and from the harsher
influence of the seasons, the grave of one who so loved their race;
and who, in her gentle and spotless virtue claimed kindred with the
beautiful Ideal of the world. Is there one of us who has not known some
being for whom it seemed not too wild a fantasy to indulge such dreams?

THE END.





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