Kitabı oku: «Memorials and Other Papers — Volume 2», sayfa 12
CHAPTER XXIII
Two days elapsed without any change in Paulina's situation, as she found it arranged upon her first arrival at Lovenstein. Her rooms were not incommodious; but the massy barricades at the doors, the grated windows, and the sentinels who mounted guard upon all the avenues which led to her apartments, satisfied her sufficiently that she was a prisoner.
The third morning after her arrival brought her a still more unwelcome proof of this melancholy truth, in the summons which she received to attend a court of criminal justice on the succeeding day, connected with the tenor of its language. Her heart died within her as she found herself called upon to answer as a delinquent on a charge of treasonable conspiracy with various members of the university of Klosterheim, against the sovereign prince, the Landgrave of X——. Witnesses in exculpation, whom could she produce? Or how defend herself before a tribunal where all alike—judge, evidence, accuser—-were in effect one and the same malignant enemy? In what way she could have come to be connected in the Landgrave's mind with a charge of treason against his princely rights, she found it difficult to explain, unless the mere fact of having carried the imperial despatches in the trunks about her carriages were sufficient to implicate her as a secret emissary or agent concerned in the imperial diplomacy. But she strongly suspected that some deep misapprehension existed in the Landgrave's mind; and its origin, she fancied, might be found in the refined knavery of their ruffian host at Waldenhausen, in making his market of the papers which he had purloined. Bringing them forward separately and by piecemeal, he had probably hoped to receive so many separate rewards. But, as it would often happen that one paper was necessary in the way of explanation to another, and the whole, perhaps, were almost essential to the proper understanding of any one, the result would inevitably be grievously to mislead the Landgrave. Further communications, indeed, would have tended to disabuse the prince of any delusions raised in this way. But it was probable, as Paulina had recently learned in passing through Waldenhausen, that the ruffian's illness and delirium had put a stop to any further communication of papers; and thus the misconceptions which he had caused were perpetuated in the Landgrave's mind.
It was on the third day after Paulina's arrival that she was first placed before the court. The presiding officer in this tribunal was the governor of the fortress, a tried soldier, but a ruffian of low habits and cruel nature. He had risen under the Landgrave's patronage, as an adventurer of desperate courage, ready for any service, however disreputable, careless alike of peril or of infamy. In common with many partisan officers, who had sprung from the ranks in this adventurous war, seeing on every side and in the highest quarters, princes as well as supreme commanders, the uttermost contempt of justice and moral principle, he had fought his way to distinction and fortune, through every species of ignoble cruelty. He had passed from service to service, as he saw an opening for his own peculiar interest or merit, everywhere valued as a soldier of desperate enterprise, everywhere abhorred as a man.
By birth a Croatian, he had exhibited himself as one of the most savage leaders of that order of barbarians in the sack of Magdeburgh, where he served under Tilly; but, latterly, he had taken service again under his original patron, the Landgrave, who had lured him back to his interest by the rank of general and the governorship of Lovenstein.
This brutal officer, who had latterly lived in a state of continual intoxication, was the judge before whom the lovely and innocent Paulina was now arraigned on a charge affecting her life. In fact, it became obvious that the process was not designed for any other purpose than to save appearances, and, if that should seem possible, to extract further discoveries from the prisoner. The general acted as supreme arbiter in every question of rights and power that arose to the court in the administration of their almost unlimited functions. Doubts he allowed of none; and cut every knot of jurisprudence, whether form or substance, by his Croatian sabre. Two assessors, however, he willingly received upon his bench of justice, to relieve him from the fatigue and difficulty of conducting a perplexed examination.
These assessors were lawyers of a low class, who tempered the exercise of their official duties with as few scruples of justice, and as little regard to the restraints of courtesy, as their military principal. The three judges were almost equally ferocious, and tools equally abject of the unprincipled sovereign whom they served.
A sovereign, however, he was; and Paulina was well aware that in his own states he had the power of life and death. She had good reason to see that her own death was resolved on; still she neglected no means of honorable self-defence. In a tone of mingled sweetness and dignity she maintained her innocence of all that was alleged against her; protested that she was unacquainted with the tenor of any papers which might have been found in her trunks; and claimed her privilege, as a subject of the emperor, in bar of all right on the Landgrave's part to call her to account. These pleas were overruled, and when she further acquainted the court that she was a near relative of the emperor's, and ventured to hint at the vengeance with which his imperial majesty would not fail to visit so bloody a contempt of justice, she was surprised to find this menace treated with mockery and laughter. In reality, the long habit of fighting for and against all the princes of Germany had given to the Croatian general a disregard for any of them, except on the single consideration of receiving his pay at the moment; and a single circumstance, unknown to Paulina, in the final determination of the Landgrave, to earn a merit with his Swedish allies by breaking off all terms of reserve and compromise with the imperial court, impressed a savage desperation on the tone of that prince's policy at this particular time. The Landgrave had resolved to stake his all upon a single throw. A battle was now expected, which, if favorable to the Swedes, would lay open the road to Vienna. The Landgrave was prepared to abide the issue; not, perhaps, wholly uninfluenced to so extreme a course by the very paper which had been robbed from Paulina. His policy was known to his agents, and conspicuously influenced their manner of receiving her menace.
Menaces, they informed her, came with better grace from those who had the power to enforce them; and, with a brutal scoff, the Croatian bade her merit their indulgence by frank discoveries and voluntary confessions. He insisted on knowing the nature of the connection which the imperial colonel of horse, Maximilian, had maintained with the students of Klosterheim; and upon other discoveries, with respect to most of which Paulina was too imperfectly informed herself to be capable of giving any light. Her earnest declarations to this effect were treated with disregard. She was dismissed for the present, but with an intimation that on the morrow she must prepare herself with a more complying temper, or with a sort of firmness in maintaining her resolution, which would not, perhaps, long resist those means which the law had placed at their disposal for dealing with the refractory and obstinate.
CHAPTER XXIII
Paulina meditated earnestly upon the import of this parting threat. The more she considered it, the less could she doubt that these fierce inquisitors had meant to threaten her with torture. She felt the whole indignity of such a threat, though she could hardly bring herself to believe them in earnest.
On the following morning she was summoned early before her judges. They had not yet assembled; but some of the lower officials were pacing up and down, exchanging unintelligible jokes, looking sometimes at herself, sometimes at an iron machine, with a complex arrangement of wheels and screws. Dark were the suspicions which assaulted Paulina as this framework or couch of iron first met her eyes; and perhaps some of the jests circulating amongst the brutal ministers of her brutal judges would have been intelligible enough, had she condescended to turn her attention in that direction. Meantime her doubts were otherwise dispersed. The Croatian officer now entered the room alone, his assessors having probably declined participation in that part of the horrid functions which remained under the Landgrave's commission.
This man, presenting a paper with a long list of interrogatories to Paulina, bade her now rehearse verbally the sum of the answers which she designed to give. Running rapidly through them, Paulina replied, with dignity, yet trembling and agitated, that these were questions which in any sense she could not answer; many of them referring to points on which she had no knowledge, and none of them being consistent with the gratitude and friendship so largely due on her side to the persons implicated in the bearing of these questions.
"Then you refuse?"
"Certainly; there are three questions only which it is in my power to answer at all—even these imperfectly. Answers such as you expect would load me with dishonor."
"Then you refuse?"
"For the reasons I have stated, undoubtedly I do."
"Once more—you refuse?"
"I refuse, certainly; but do me the justice to record my reasons."
"Reasons!—ha! ha! they had need to be strong ones if they will hold out against the arguments of this pretty plaything," laying his hand upon the machine. "However, the choice is yours, not mine."
So saying, he made a sign to the attendants. One began to move the machine, and work the screws, or raise the clanking grates and framework, with a savage din; two others bared their arms. Paulina looked on motionless with sudden horror, and palpitating with fear.
The Croatian nodded to the men; and then, in a loud, commanding voice, exclaimed: "The question in the first degree!"
At this moment Paulina recovered her strength, which the first panic had dispelled. She saw a man approach her with a ferocious grin of exultation. Another, with the same horrid expression of countenance, carried a large vase of water.
The whole indignity of the scene flashed full upon her mind. She, a lady of the imperial house, threatened with torture by the base agent of a titled ruffian! She, who owed him no duty,—had violated no claim of hospitality, though in her own person all had been atrociously outraged!
Thoughts like these flew rapidly through her brain, when suddenly a door opened behind her. It was an attendant with some implements for tightening or relaxing bolts. The bare-armed ruffian at this moment raised his arm to seize hers. Shrinking from the pollution of his accursed touch, Paulina turned hastily round, darted through the open door, and fled, like a dove pursued by vultures, along the passages which stretched before her. Already she felt their hot breathing upon her neck, already the foremost had raised his hand to arrest her, when a sudden turn brought her full upon a band of young women, tending upon one of superior rank, manifestly their mistress.
"0, madam!" exclaimed Paulina, "save me! save me!" and with these words fell exhausted at the lady's feet.
This female—young, beautiful, and with a touching pensiveness of manners—raised her tenderly in her arms, and with a sisterly tone of affection bade her fear nothing; and the respectful manner in which the officials retired at her command satisfied Paulina that she stood in some very near relation to the Landgrave,—in reality, she soon spoke of him as her father. "Is it possible," thought Paulina to herself, "that this innocent and lovely child (for she was not more than seventeen, though with a prematurity of womanly person that raised her to a level with Paulina's height) should owe the affection of a daughter to a tyrant so savage as the Landgrave?"
She found, however, that the gentle Princess Adeline owed to her own childlike simplicity the best gift that one so situated could have received from the bounty of Heaven. The barbarities exercised by the Croatian governor she charged entirely upon his own brutal nature; and so confirmed was she in this view by Paulina's own case, that she now resolved upon executing a resolution she had long projected. Her father's confidence was basely abused; this she said, and devoutly believed. "No part of the truth ever reached him; her own letters remained disregarded in a way which was irreconcilable with the testimonies of profound affection to herself, daily showered upon her by his highness."
In reality, this sole child of the Landgrave was also the one sole jewel that gave a value in his eyes to his else desolate life. Everything in and about the castle of Lovenstein was placed under her absolute control; even the brutal Croatian governor knew that no plea or extremity of circumstances would atone for one act of disobedience to her orders; and hence it was that the ministers of this tyrant retired with so much prompt obedience to her commands.
Experience, however, had taught the princess that, not unfrequently, orders apparently obeyed were afterwards secretly evaded; and the disregard paid of late to her letters of complaint satisfied her that they were stifled and suppressed by the governor. Paulina, therefore, whom a few hours of unrestrained intercourse had made interesting to her heart, she would not suffer even to sleep apart from herself. Her own agitation on the poor prisoner's behalf became greater even than that of Paulina; and as fresh circumstances of suspicion daily arose in the savage governor's deportment, she now took in good earnest those measures for escape to Klosterheim which she had long arranged. In this purpose she was greatly assisted by the absolute authority which her father had conceded to her over everything but the mere military arrangements in the fortress. Under the color of an excursion, such as she had been daily accustomed to take, she found no difficulty in placing Paulina, sufficiently disguised, amongst her own servants. At a proper point of the road, Paulina and a few attendants, with the princess herself, issued from their coaches, and, bidding them await their return in half an hour's interval, by that time were far advanced upon their road to the military post of Falkenberg.
CHAPTER XXIV
In twenty days the mysterious Masque had summoned the Landgrave "to answer for crimes unatoned, before a tribunal where no power but that of innocence could avail him." These days were nearly expired. The morning of the twentieth had arrived.
There were two interpretations of this summons. By many it was believed that the tribunal contemplated was that of the emperor; and that, by some mysterious plot, which could not be more difficult of execution than others which had actually been accomplished by The Masque, on this day the Landgrave would be carried off to Vienna. Others, again, understanding by the tribunal, in the same sense, the imperial chamber of criminal justice, believed it possible to fulfil the summons in some way less liable to delay or uncertainty than by a long journey to Vienna, through a country beset with enemies. But a third party, differing from both the others, understood by the tribunal where innocence was the only shield the judgment-seat of heaven; and believed that on this day justice would be executed on the Landgrave, for crimes known and unknown, by a public and memorable death. Under any interpretation, however, nobody amongst the citizens could venture peremptorily to deny, after the issue of the masqued ball, and of so many other public denunciations, that The Masque would keep his word to the letter.
It followed, of necessity, that everybody was on the tiptoe of suspense, and that the interest hanging upon the issue of this night's events swallowed up all other anxieties, of whatsoever nature. Even the battle which was now daily expected between the imperial and Swedish armies ceased to occupy the hearts and conversation of the citizens. Domestic and public concerns alike gave way to the coming catastrophe so solemnly denounced by The Masque.
The Landgrave alone maintained a gloomy reserve, and the expression of a haughty disdain. He had resolved to meet the summons with the liveliest expression of defiance, by fixing this evening for a second masqued ball, upon a greater scale than the first. In doing this he acted advisedly, and with the counsel of his Swedish allies. They represented to him that the issue of the approaching battle might be relied upon as pretty nearly certain; all the indications were indeed generally thought to promise a decisive turn in their favor; but, in the worst case, no defeat of the Swedish army in this war had ever been complete; that the bulk of the retreating army, if the Swedes should be obliged to retreat, would take the road to Klosterheim, and would furnish to himself a garrison capable of holding the city for many months to come (and that would not fail to bring many fresh chances to all of them), whilst to his new and cordial allies this course would offer a secure retreat from pursuing enemies, and a satisfactory proof of his own fidelity. This even in the worst case; whereas in the better and more probable one, of a victory to the Swedes, to maintain the city but for a day or two longer against internal conspirators, and the secret cooperators outside, would be in effect to ratify any victory which the Swedes might gain by putting into their hands at a critical moment one of its most splendid trophies and guarantees.
These counsels fell too much into the Landgrave's own way of thinking to meet with any demurs from him. It was agreed, therefore, that as many Swedish troops as could at this important moment be spared should be introduced into the halls and saloons of the castle, on the eventful evening, disguised as masquers. These were about four hundred; and other arrangements were made, equally mysterious, and some of them known only to the Landgrave.
At seven o'clock, as on the former occasion, the company began to assemble. The same rooms were thrown open; but, as the party was now far more numerous, and was made more comprehensive in point of rank, in order to include all who were involved in the conspiracy which had been some time maturing in Klosterheim, fresh suites of rooms were judged necessary, on the pretext of giving fuller effect to the princely hospitalities of the Landgrave. And, on this occasion, according to an old privilege conceded in the case of coronations or galas of magnificence, by the lady abbess of St. Agnes, the partition walls were removed between the great hall of the schloss and the refectory of that immense convent; so that the two vast establishments, which on one side were contiguous to each other, were thus laid into one.
The company had now continued to pour in for two hours. The palace and the refectory of the convent were now overflowing with lights and splendid masques; the avenues and corridors rang with music; and, though every heart was throbbing with fear and suspense, no outward expression was wanting of joy and festal pleasure. For the present, all was calm around the slumbering volcano.
Suddenly, the Count St. Aldenheim, who was standing with arms folded, and surveying the brilliant scene, felt some one touch his hand, in the way concerted amongst the conspirators as a private signal of recognition. He turned, and recognized his friend the Baron Adelort, who saluted him with three emphatic words—"We are betrayed!"—Then, after a pause, "Follow me."
St. Aldenheim made his way through the glittering crowds, and pressed after his conductor into one of the most private corridors.
"Fear not," said the other, "that we shall be watched. Vigilance is no longer necessary to our crafty enemy. He has already triumphed. Every avenue of escape is barred and secured against us; every outlet of the palace is occupied by the Landgrave's troops. Not a man of us will return alive."
"Heaven forbid we should prove ourselves such gulls! You are but jesting, my friend."
"Would to God I were! my information is but too certain. Something I have overheard by accident; something has been told me; and something I have seen. Come you, also, count, and see what I will show you: then judge for yourself."
So saying, he led St. Aldenheim by a little circuit of passages to a doorway, through which they passed into a hall of vast proportions; to judge by the catafalques, and mural monuments, scattered at intervals along the vast expanse of its walls, this seemed to be the ante-chapel of St. Agnes. In fact it was so; a few faint lights glimmered through the gloomy extent of this immense chamber, placed (according to the Catholic rite) at the shrine of the saint. Feeble as it was, however, the light was powerful enough to display in the centre a pile of scaffolding covered with black drapery. Standing at the foot, they could trace the outlines of a stage at the summit, fenced in with a railing, a block, and the other apparatus for the solemnity of a public execution, whilst the saw-dust below their feet ascertained the spot in which the heads were to fall.
"Shall we ascend and rehearse our parts?" asked the count: "for methinks everything is prepared, except the headsman and the spectators. A plague on the inhospitable knave!"
"Yes, St. Aldenheim, all is prepared—even to the sufferers. On that list you stand foremost. Believe me, I speak with knowledge; no matter where gained. It is certain."
"Well, necessitas non habet legem; and he that dies on Tuesday will never catch cold on Wednesday. But, still, that comfort is something of the coldest. Think you that none better could be had?"
"As how?"
"Revenge, par exemple; a little revenge. Might one not screw the neck of this base prince, who abuses the confidence of cavaliers so perfidiously? To die I care not; but to be caught in a trap, and die like a rat lured by a bait of toasted cheese—Faugh! my countly blood rebels against it!"
"Something might surely be done, if we could muster in any strength.
That is, we might die sword in hand; but—"
"Enough! I ask no more. Now let us go. We will separately pace the rooms, draw together as many of our party as we can single out, and then proclaim ourselves. Let each answer for one victim. I'll take his highness for my share."
With this purpose, and thus forewarned of the dreadful fate at hand, they left the gloomy ante-chapel, traversed the long suite of entertaining rooms, and collected as many as could easily be detached from the dances without too much pointing out their own motions to the attention of all present. The Count St. Aldenheim was seen rapidly explaining to them the circumstances of their dreadful situation; whilst hands uplifted, or suddenly applied to the hilt of the sword, with other gestures of sudden emotion, expressed the different impressions of rage or fear, which, under each variety of character, impressed the several hearers. Some of them, however, were too unguarded in their motions; and the energy of their gesticulations had now begun to attract the attention of the company.
The Landgrave himself had his eye upon them. But at this moment his attention was drawn off by an uproar of confusion in an ante-chamber, which argued some tragical importance in the cause that could prompt so sudden a disregard for the restraints of time and place.
