Kitabı oku: «Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848», sayfa 5
La Pola was hurried from the tertulia before a military court – martial law then prevailing in the capital – with a rapidity corresponding with the supposed enormity of her offences. It was her chief pang that she was not hurried there alone. We have not hitherto mentioned that she had a lover, one Juan de Sylva Gomero, to whom she was affianced – a worthy and noble youth, who entertained for her the most passionate attachment. It is a somewhat curious fact, that she kept him wholly from any knowledge of her political alliances; and never was man more indignant than he when she was arrested, or more confounded when the proofs of her guilt were drawn from her person. His offence consisted in his resistance to the authorities who seized her. There was not the slightest reason to suppose that he knew or participated at all in her intimacy with the patriots and Bolivar. He was tried along with her, and both condemned – for at this time condemnation and trial were words of synonimous import – to be shot. A respite of twelve hours from execution was granted them for the purposes of confession. Zamano, the viceroy, anxious for other victims, spared no means to procure a full revelation of all the secrets of our heroine. The priest who waited upon her was the one who attended on the viceroy himself. He held out lures of pardon in both lives, here and hereafter, upon the one condition only of a full declaration of her secrets and accomplices. Well might the leading people of Bogota tremble all the while. But she was firm in her refusal. Neither promises of present mercy, nor threats of the future, could extort from her a single fact in relation to her proceedings. Her lover, naturally desirous of life, particularly in the possession of so much to make it precious, joined in the entreaties of the priest; but she answered him with a mournful severity that smote him like a sharp weapon,
"Gomero! did I love you for this? Beware, lest I hate you ere I die! Is life so dear to you that you would dishonor both of us to live? Is there no consolation in the thought that we shall die together?"
"But we shall be spared – we shall be saved," was the reply of the lover.
"Believe it not – it is false! Zamano spares none. Our lives are forfeit, and all that we could say would be unavailing to avert your fate or mine. Let us not lesson the value of this sacrifice on the altars of our country, by any unworthy fears. If you have ever loved me, be firm. I am a woman, but I am strong. Be not less ready for the death-shot than is she whom you have chosen for your wife."
Other arts were employed by the despot for the attainment of his desires. Some of the native citizens of Bogota, who had been content to become the creatures of the viceroy, were employed to work upon her fears and affections, by alarming her with regard to persons of the city whom she greatly esteemed and valued, and whom Zamano suspected. But their endeavors were met wholly with scorn. When they entreated her, among other things, "to give peace to our country," the phrase seemed to awaken all her indignation.
"Peace! peace to our country!" she exclaimed. "What peace! the peace of death, and shame, and the grave, forever!" And her soul again found relief only in its wild lyrical overflows.
What, peace for our country! when ye've made her a grave,
A den for the tyrant, a cell for the slave;
A pestilent plague-spot, accursing and curst,
As vile as the vilest, and worse than the worst.
The chain may be broken, the tyranny o'er,
But the sweet charms that blessed her ye may not restore;
Not your blood, though poured forth from life's ruddiest vein,
Shall free her from sorrows, or cleanse her from stain!
'Tis the grief that ye may not remove the disgrace,
That brands with the blackness of hell all your race;
'Tis the sorrow that nothing may cleanse ye of shame,
That has wrought us to madness, and filled us with flame.
Years may pass, but the memory deep in our souls,
Shall make the tale darker as Time onward rolls;
And the future that grows from our ruin shall know
Its own, and its country's and liberty's foe.
And still in the prayer at its altars shall rise,
Appeal for the vengeance of earth and of skies;
Men shall pray that the curse of all time may pursue,
And plead for the curse of eternity too!
Nor wantonly vengeful in spirit their prayer,
Since the weal of the whole world forbids them to spare;
What hope would there be for mankind if our race,
Through the rule of the brutal, is robbed by the base?
What hope for the future – what hope for the free?
And where would the promise of liberty be,
If Time had no terror, no doom for the slave,
Who would stab his own mother, and shout o'er her grave!
Such a response as this effectually silenced all those cunning agents of the viceroy who urged their arguments in behalf of their country. Nothing, it was seen, could be done with a spirit so inflexible; and in his fury Zamano ordered the couple forth to instant execution. Bogota was in mourning. Its people covered their heads, a few only excepted, and refused to be seen or comforted. The priests who attended the victims received no satisfaction as concerned the secrets of the patriots; and they retired in chagrin, and without granting absolution to either victim. The firing party made ready. Then it was, for the first time, that the spirit of this noble maiden seemed to shrink from the approach of death.
"Butcher!" she exclaimed, to the viceroy, who stood in his balcony, overlooking the scene of execution. "Butcher! you have then the heart to kill a woman!"
These were the only words of weakness. She recovered herself instantly, and, preparing for her fate, without looking for any effect from her words, she proceeded to cover her face with the saya, or veil, which she wore. Drawing it aside for the purpose, the words "Vive la Patria!" embroidered in letters of gold, were discovered on the basquina. As the signal for execution was given, a distant hum, as of the clamors of an approaching army, was heard fitfully to rise upon the air.
"It is he! He comes! It is Bolivar! It is the Liberator!" was her cry, in a tone of hope and triumph, which found its echo in the bosom of hundreds who dared not give their hearts a voice. It was, indeed, the Liberator. Bolivar was at hand, pressing onward with all speed to the work of deliverance; but he came too late for the rescue of the beautiful and gifted damsel to whom he owed so much. The fatal bullets of the executioners penetrated her heart ere the cry of her exultation had subsided from the ear. Thus perished a woman worthy to be remembered with the purest and proudest who have done honor to nature and the sex; one who, with all the feelings and sensibilities of the woman, possessed all the pride and patriotism, the courage, the sagacity and the daring of the man.
TO THE EAGLE
BY MRS. E. C. KINNEY
Imperial bird! that soarest to the sky —
Cleaving through clouds and storms thine upward way —
Or, fixing steadfastly that dauntless eye,
Dost face the great, effulgent god of day!
Proud monarch of the feathery tribes of air!
My soul exulting marks thy bold career,
Up, through the azure fields, to regions fair,
Where, bathed in light, thy pinions disappear.
Thou, with the gods, upon Olympus dwelt,
The emblem, and the favorite bird of Jove —
And godlike power in thy broad wings hast felt
Since first they spread o'er land and sea to rove:
From Ida's top the Thunderer's piercing sight
Flashed on the hosts which Ilium did defy;
So from thy eyrie on the beetling height
Shoot down the lightning-glances of thine eye!
From his Olympian throne Jove stooped to earth
For ends inglorious in the god of gods!
Leaving the beauty of celestial birth,
To rob Humanity's less fair abodes:
Oh, passion more rapacious than divine,
That stole the peace of innocence away!
So, when descend those tireless wings of thine,
They stoop to make defenselessness their prey.
Lo! where thou comest from the realms afar!
Thy strong wings whir like some huge bellows' breath —
Swift falls thy fiery eyeball, like a star,
And dark thy shadow as the pall of death!
But thou hast marked a tall and reverend tree,
And now thy talons clinch yon leafless limb;
Before thee stretch the sandy shore and sea,
And sails, like ghosts, move in the distance dim.
Fair is the scene! Yet thy voracious eye
Drinks not its beauty; but with bloody glare
Watches the wild-fowl idly floating by,
Or snow-white sea-gull winnowing the air:
Oh, pitiless is thine unerring beak!
Quick, as the wings of thought, thy pinions fall —
Then bear their victim to the mountain-peak
Where clamorous eaglets flutter at thy call.
Seaward again thou turn'st to chase the storm,
Where winds and waters furiously roar!
Above the doomed ship thy boding form
Is coming Fate's dark shadow cast before!
The billows that engulf man's sturdy frame
As sport to thy careering pinions seem;
And though to silence sinks the sailor's name,
His end is told in thy relentless scream!
Where the great cataract sends up to heaven
Its sprayey incense in perpetual cloud,
Thy wings in twain the sacred bow have riven,
And onward sailed irreverently proud!
Unflinching bird! No frigid clime congeals
The fervid blood that riots in thy veins;
No torrid sun thine upborne nature feels —
The North, the South, alike are thy domains.
Emblem of all that can endure, or dare,
Art thou, bold eagle, in thy hardihood!
Emblem of Freedom, when thou cleav'st the air —
Emblem of Tyranny, when bathed in blood!
Thou wert the genius of Rome's sanguine wars —
Heroes have fought and freely bled for thee;
And here, above our glorious "stripes and stars,"
We hail thy signal wings of Liberty!
The poet sees in thee a type sublime
Of his far-reaching, high-aspiring Art!
His fancy seeks with thee each starry clime,
And thou art on the signet of his heart.
Be still the symbol of a spirit free,
Imperial bird! to unborn ages given —
And to my soul, that it may soar like thee,
Steadfastly looking in the eye of Heaven.
FIEL A LA MUERTE, OR TRUE LOVE'S DEVOTION
A TALE OF THE TIMES OF LOUIS QUINZE
BY HENRY WILLIAM HERBERT, AUTHOR OF "THE ROMAN TRAITOR," "MARMADUKE WYVIL," "CROMWELL," ETC
(Continued from page 12.)
PART II
The castle of St. Renan, like the dwellings of many of the nobles of Bretagne and Gascony, was a superb old pile of solid masonry towering above the huge cliffs which guard the whole of that iron coast with its gigantic masses of rude masonry. So close did it stand to the verge of these precipitous crags on its seaward face, that whenever the wind from the westward blew angrily and in earnest, the spray of the tremendous billows which rolled in from the wide Atlantic, and burst in thunder at the foot of those stern ramparts, was dashed so high by the collision that it would often fall in salt, bitter rain, upon the esplanade above, and dim the diamond-paned casements with its cold mists.
For leagues on either side, as the spectator stood upon the terrace above and gazed out on the expanse of the everlasting ocean, nothing was to be seen but the saliant angles or deep recesses formed by the dark, gray cliffs, unrelieved by any spot of verdure, or even by that line of silver sand at their base, which often intervenes between the rocks of an iron coast and the sea. Here, however, there was no such intermediate step visible; the black face of the rocks sunk sheer and abrupt into the water, which, by its dark green hue indicated to the practiced eye, that it was deep and scarcely fathomable to the very shore.
In places, indeed, where huge caverns opening in front to the vast ocean, which had probably hollowed them out of the earth-fast rock in the course of succeeding ages, yawned in the mimicry of Gothic arches, the entering tide would rush, as it were, into the bowels of the land, roaring and groaning in those strange subterranean dungeons like some strong prisoner, Typhon, Enceladus, or Ephialtes, in his immortal agony. One of these singular vaults opened right in the base of the rock on the summit of which stood the castle of St. Renan, and into this the billows rushed with rapidity so tumultuous and terrible that the fishers of that stormy coast avowed that a vortex was created in the bay by their influx or return seaward, which could be perceived sensibly at a league's distance; and that to be caught in it, unless the wind blew strong and steadily off land, was sure destruction. However that might be, it is certain that this great subterranean tunnel extended far beneath the rocks into the interior of the land, for at the distance of nearly two miles from the castle, directly eastward, in the bottom of a dark, wooded glen, which runs for many miles nearly parallel to the coast, there is a deep, rocky well, or natural cavity, of a form nearly circular, which, when the tide is up, is filled to over-flowing with bitter sea-water, on which the bubbles and foam-flakes show the obstacles against which it must have striven in its landward journey. At low water, on the contrary, "the Devil's Drinking Cup," for so it is named by the superstitious peasantry of the neighborhood, presents nothing to the eye but a deep, black abyss, which the country folks, of course, assert to be bottomless. But, in truth, its depth is immense, as can easily be perceived, if you cast a stone into it, by the length of time during which it may be heard thundering from side to side, until the reverberated roar of its descent appears to die away, not because it has ceased, but because the sound is too distant to be conveyed to human ears.
On this side of the castle every thing differs as much as it is possible to conceive from the view to the seaward, which is grim and desolate as any ocean scenery the world over. Few sails are ever seen on those dangerous coasts; all vessels bound to the mouth of the Garonne, or southward to the shores of Spain, giving as wide a berth as possible to its frightful reefs and inaccessible crags, which to all their other terrors add that, from the extraordinary prevalence of the west wind on that part of the ocean, of being, during at least three parts of the year, a lee shore.
Inland, however, instead of the bleak and barren surface of the ever stormy sea, indented into long rolling ridges and dark tempestuous hollows, all was varied and smiling, and gratifying to every sense given by nature for his good to man. Immediately from the brink of the cliffs the land sloped downward southwardly and to the eastward, so that it was bathed during all the day, except a few late evening hours, in the fullest radiance of the sunbeams. Over this immense sloping descent the eye could range from the castle battlements, for miles and miles, until the rich green champaign was lost in the blue haze of distance. And it was green and gay over the whole of that vast expanse, here with the dense and unpruned foliage of immemorial forests, well stocked with every species of game, from the gaunt wolf and the tusky boar, to the fleet roebuck and the timid hare; here with the trim and smiling verdure of rich orchards, in which nestled around their old, gray shrines the humble hamlets of the happy peasantry; and every where with the long intersecting curves, and sinuous irregular lines of the old hawthorn hedges, thick set with pollard trees and hedgerow timber, which make the whole country, when viewed from a height, resemble a continuous tract of intermingled glades and copices, and which have procured for an adjoining district, the well known, and in after days, far celebrated name of the Bocage.
Immediately around the castle, on the edge as it were of this beautiful and almost boundless slope, there lay a large and well-kept garden in the old French style, laid out in a succession of terraces, bordered by balustrades of marble, adorned at frequent intervals by urns and statues, and rendered accessible each from the next below by flights of ornamented steps of regular and easy elevation; pleached bowery walks, and high clipped hedges of holly, yew and hornbeam, were the usual decorations of such a garden, and here they abounded to an extent that would have gladdened the heart of an admirer of the tastes and habits of the olden time. In addition to these, however, there were a profusion of flowers of the choicest kinds known or cultivated in those days – roses and lilies without number, and honeysuckles and the sweet-scented clematis, climbing in bountiful luxuriance over the numberless seats and bowers which every where tempted to repose.
Below this beautiful garden a wide expanse of smooth, green turf, dotted here and there with majestic trees, and at rarer intervals diversified with tall groves and verdant coppices, covered the whole descent of the first hill to the dim wooded dell which has been mentioned as containing the singular cavity known throughout the country as the "Devil's Drinking Cup." This dell, which was the limit of Count de St. Renan's demesnes in that direction, was divided from the park by a ragged paling many feet in height, and of considerable strength, framed of rough timber from the woods, the space within being appropriated to a singular and choice breed of deer, imported from the East by one of the former counts, who, being of an adventurous and roving disposition, had sojourned for some time in the French settlements of Hindostan. Beyond this dell again, which was defended on the outer side by a strong and lofty wall of brick, all over-run with luxuriant ivy, the ground rose in a small rounded knoll, or hillock of small extent, richly wooded, and crowned by the gray turrets and steep flagged roofs of the old château d'Argenson.
This building, however, was as much inferior in size and stateliness to the grand feudal fortalice of St. Renan, as the little round-topped hill on which it stood, so slightly elevated above the face of the surrounding country as to detract nothing, at least in appearance, from its general slope to the south-eastward, was lower than the great rock-bound ridge from which it overlooked the territories, all of which had in distant times obeyed the rule of its almost princely dwellers.
The sun of a lovely evening in the latter part of July had already sunk so far down in the west that only half of its great golden disc was visible above the well-defined, dark outline of the seaward crags, which relieved by the glowing radiance of the whole western sky, stood out massive and solid like a huge purple wall, and seemed so close at hand that the spectator could almost persuade himself that he had but to stretch out his arm, in order to touch the great barrier, which was in truth several miles distant.
Over the crest, and through the gaps of this continuous line of highland, the long level rays streamed down in the slope in one vast flood of golden glory, which was checkered only by the interminable length of shadows which were projected from every single tree, or scattered clump, from every petty elevation of the soil, down the soft glimmering declivity.
Three years had elapsed since the frightful fate of the unhappy Lord of Kerguelen, and the various incidents, which in some sort took their origin from the nature of his crime and its consequence, affecting in the highest degree the happiness of the families of St. Renan and D'Argenson.
Three years had elapsed – three years! That is a little space in the annals of the world, in the life of nations, nay, in the narrow records of humanity. Three years of careless happiness, three years of indolent and tranquil ease, unmarked by any great event, pass over our heads unnoted, and, save in the gray hairs which they scatter, leave no memorial of their transit, more than the sunshine of a happy summer day. They are, they are gone, they are forgotten.
Even three years of gloom and sorrow, of that deep anguish which at the time the sufferer believes to be indelible and everlasting, lag on their weary, desolate course, and when they too are over-passed, and he looks back upon their transit, which seemed so painfully protracted, and, lo! all is changed, and their flight also is now but as an ended minute.
And yet what strange and sudden changes altering the affairs of men, changing the hearts of mortals, yea, revolutionizing their whole intellects, and over-turning their very natures – more than the devastating earthquake or the destroying lava transforms the face of the everlasting earth – have not been wrought, and again well nigh forgotten within that little period.
Three years had passed, I say, over the head of Raoul de Douarnez – the three most marked and memorable years in the life of every young man – and from the ingenuous and promising stripling, he had now become in all respects a man, and a bold and enterprising man, moreover, who had seen much and struggled much, and suffered somewhat – without which there is no gain of his wisdom here below – in his transit, even thus far, over the billows and among the reefs and quicksands of the world.
His father had kept his promise to that loved son in all things, nor had the Sieur d'Argenson failed of his plighted faith. The autumn of that year, the spring of which saw Kerguelen die in unutterable agony, saw Raoul de Douarnez the contracted and affianced husband of the lovely and beloved Melanie.
All that was wanted now to render them actually man and wife, to create between them that bond which, alone of mortal ties, man cannot sunder, was the ministration of the church's holiest rite, and that, in wise consideration of their tender years, was postponed until the termination of the third summer.
During the interval it was decided that Raoul, as was the custom of the world in those days, especially among the nobility, and most especially among the nobility of France, should bear arms in active service, and see something of the world abroad, before settling down into the easier duties of domestic life. The family of St. Renan, since the days of that ancestor who has been already mentioned as having sojourned in Pondicherry, had never ceased to maintain some relations with the East Indian possessions of France, and a relation of the house in no very remote degree was at this time military governor of the French East Indias, which were then, previous to the unexampled growth of the British empire in the East, important, flourishing, and full of future promise.
Thither, then, it was determined that Raoul should go in search of adventures, if not of fortune, in the spring following the signature of his marriage contract with the young demoiselle d'Argenson. And, consequently, after a winter passed in quiet domestic happiness on the noble estates, whereon the gentry of Britanny were wont to reside in almost patriarchal state – a winter, every day of which the young lovers spent in company, and at every eve of which they separated more in love than they were at meeting in the morning – Raoul set sail in a fine frigate, carrying several companies of the line, invested with the rank of ensign, and proud to bear the colors of his king, for the shores of the still half fabulous oriental world.
Three years had passed, and the boy had returned a man, the ensign had returned a colonel, so rapid was the promotion of the nobility of the sword in the French army, under the ancient regime; and – greatest change of all, ay, and saddest – the Viscount of Douarnez had returned Count de St. Renan. An infectious fever, ere he had been one year absent from the land of his birth, had cut off his noble father in the very pride and maturity of his intellectual manhood; nor had his mother lingered long behind him whom she had ever loved so fondly. A low, slow fever, caught from that beloved patient whom she had so affectionately nurtured, was as fatal to her, though not so suddenly, as it had proved to her good lord; and when their son returned to France full of honors achieved, and gay anticipations for the future, he found himself an orphan, the lord in lonely and unwilling state of the superb demesnes which had so long called his family their owners.
There never in the world was a kinder heart than that which beat in the breast of the young soldier, and never was a family more strictly bound together by all the kindly influences which breed love and confidence, and domestic happiness among all the members of it, than that of St. Renan. There had been nothing austere or rigid in the bringing up of the gallant boy; the father who had at one hour been the tutor and the monitor, was at the next the comrade and the playmate, and at all times the true and trusted friend, while the mother had been ever the idolized and adored protectress, and the confidante of all the innocent schemes and artless joys of boyhood.
Bitter, then, was the blow stricken to the very heart of the young soldier, when the first tidings which he received, on landing in his loved France, was the intelligence that those – all those, with but one exception – whom he most tenderly and truly loved, all those to whom he looked up with affectionate trust for advice and guidance, all those on whom he relied for support in his first trials of young manhood, were cold and silent in the all absorbing tomb.
To him there was no hot, feverish ambition prompting him to grasp joyously the absolute command of his great heritage. In his heart there was none of that fierce yet sordid avarice which finds compensation for the loss of the scarce-lamented dead in the severance of the dearest natural bonds, in the possession of wealth, or the promise of power. Nor was this all, for, in truth, so well had Raoul de Douarnez been brought up, and so completely had wisdom grown up with his growth, that when, at the age of nineteen years, he found himself endowed with the rank and revenues of one of the highest and wealthiest peers of France, and in all but mere name his own master – for the Abbé de Chastellar, his mother's brother, who had been appointed his guardian by his father's will, scarcely attempted to exercise even a nominal jurisdiction over him – he felt himself more than ever at a loss, deprived as he was, when he most needed it, of his best natural counsellor; and instead of rejoicing, was more than half inclined to lament over the almost absolute self-control with which he found himself invested.
Young hearts are naturally true themselves, and prone to put trust in others; and it is rarely, except in a few dark and morose and gloomy natures, which are exceptions to the rule and standard of human nature, that man learns to be distrustful and suspicious of his kind, even after experience of fickleness and falsehood may have in some sort justified suspicions, until his head has grown gray.
And this in an eminent degree was the case with Raoul de St. Renan, for henceforth he must be called by the title which his altered state had conferred upon him.
His natural disposition was as trustful and unsuspicious as it was artless and ingenuous; and from his early youth all the lessons which had been taught him by his parents tended to preserve in him unblemished and unbroken that bright gem, which once shattered never can be restored, confidence in the truth, the probity, the goodness of mankind.
Some ruder schooling he had met in the course of his service in the eastern world – he had already learned that men, and – harder knowledge yet to gain – women also, can feign friendship, ay, and love, where neither have the least root in the heart, for purposes the vilest, ends the most sordid. He had learned that bosom friends can be secret foes; that false loves can betray; and yet he was not disenchanted with humanity, he had not even dreamed of doubting, because he had fallen among worldly-minded flatterers and fickle-hearted coquettes, that absolute friendship and unchangeable love may exist, even in this evil world, stainless and incorruptible among all the changes and chances of this mortal life.
If he had been deceived, he had attributed the failure of his hopes hitherto to the right cause – the fallacy of his own judgment, and the error of his own choice; and the more he had been disappointed, the more firmly had he relied on what he felt certain could not change, the affection of his parents, the love of his betrothed bride.
On the very instant of his landing he found himself shipwrecked in his first hope; and on his earliest interview with his uncle, in Paris, he had the agony – the utter and appalling agony to undergo – of hearing that in the only promise which he had flattered himself was yet left to him, he was destined in all probability to undergo a deeper, deadlier disappointment.
If Melanie d'Argenson had been a lovely girl, the good abbé said, when she was budding out of childhood into youth, so utterly had she outstripped all the promise of her girlhood, that no words could describe, no imagination suggest to itself the charms of the mature yet youthful woman. There was no other beauty named, when loveliness was the theme, throughout all France, than that of the young betrothed of Raoul de Douarnez. And that which was so loudly and so widely bruited abroad, could not fail to reach the ever open, ever greedy ears of the vile and sensual tyrant who sat on the throne of France at that time, heaping upon his people that load of suffering and anguish which was in after times to be avenged so bitterly and bloodily upon the innocent heads of his unhappy descendants.
Louis had, moreover, heard years before, nay, looked upon the nascent loveliness of Melanie d'Argenson, and, with that cold-blooded voluptuary, to look on beauty was to lust after it, to lust after it was to devote all the powers his despotism could command to win it.
Hence, as the Abbé de Chastellar soon made his unfortunate nephew and pupil comprehend, a settled determination had arisen on the part of the odious despot to break off the marriage of the lovely girl with the young soldier whom it was well known that she fondly loved, and to have her the wife of one who would be less tender of his honor, and less reluctant to surrender, or less difficult to be deprived of a bride, too transcendently beautiful to bless the arms of a subject, even if he were the noblest of the noble.
