Kitabı oku: «Memorials and Other Papers — Volume 2», sayfa 6

"Farewell, gentlemen, as you positively will not drink my aunt's health; though, after all, she was a worthy fellow; and her plaster for gunshot wounds—"

But with that word the door closed upon the count's farewell words. Suddenly taking up a hat which lay upon the ground, he exclaimed, "Ah! behold! one of my friends has left his hat. Truly he may chance to want it on a frosty night." And, so saying, he hastily rushed after the party, whom he found already on the steps of the portico. Seizing the hand of the leader, he whispered,

"Friend! do you know me so little as to apprehend my jesting in a serious sense? Know that two of those whom you saw on my right hand are spies of the Landgrave. Their visit to me, I question not, was purposely made to catch some such discoveries as you, my friends, would too surely have thrown in their way, but for my determined rattling. At this time, I must not stay. Come again after midnight—farewell."

And then, in a voice to reach his guests within, he shouted, "Gentlemen, my aunt, the abbot of Ingelheim,—abbess, I would say,— held that her spurs were for her heels, and her beaver for her head. Whereupon, baron, I return you your hat."

Meantime, the two insidious intelligencers of the Landgrave returned to the palace with discoveries, not so ample as they were on the point of surprising, but sufficient to earn thanks for themselves, and to guide the counsels of their master.

CHAPTER VIII

That same night a full meeting of the most distinguished students was assembled at the mansion of Count St. Aldenheim. Much stormy discussion arose upon two points. First, upon the particular means by which they were to pursue an end upon which all were unanimous. Upon that, however, they were able for the present to arrive at a preliminary arrangement with sufficient harmony. This was to repair in a body, with Count St. Aldenheim at their head, to the castle, and there to demand an audience of the Landgrave, at which a strong remonstrance was to be laid before his highness, and their determination avowed to repel the indignities thrust upon them, with their united forces. On the second they were more at variance. It happened that many of the persons present, and amongst them Count St. Aldenheim, were friends of Maximilian. A few, on the other hand, there were, who, either from jealousy of his distinguished merit, hated him; or, as good citizens of Klosterheim, and connected by old family ties with the interests of that town, were disposed to charge Maximilian with ambitious views of private aggrandizement, at the expense of the city, grounded upon the emperor's favor, or upon a supposed marriage with some lady of the imperial house. For the story of Paulina's and Maximilian's mutual attachment had transpired through many of the travellers; but with some circumstances of fiction. In defending Maximilian upon those charges, his friends had betrayed a natural warmth at the injustice offered to his character; and the liveliness of the dispute on this point had nearly ended in a way fatal to their unanimity on the immediate question at issue. Good sense, however, and indignation at the Landgrave, finally brought them round again to their first resolution; and they separated with the unanimous intention of meeting at noon on the following day, for the purpose of carrying it into effect.

But their unanimity on this point was of little avail; for at an early hour on the following morning every one of those who had been present at the meeting was arrested by a file of soldiers, on a charge of conspiracy, and marched off to one of the city prisons. The Count St. Aldenheim was himself the sole exception; and this was a distinction odious to his generous nature, as it drew upon him a cloud of suspicion. He was sensible that he would be supposed to owe his privilege to some discovery or act of treachery, more or less, by which he had merited the favor of the Landgrave. The fact was, that in the indulgence shown to the count no motive had influenced the Landgrave but a politic consideration of the great favor and influence which the count's brother, the Palsgrave, at this moment enjoyed in the camp of his own Swedish allies. On this principle of policy, the Landgrave contented himself with placing St. Aldenheim under a slight military confinement to his own house, under the guard of a few sentinels posted in his hall.

For him, therefore, under the powerful protection which he enjoyed elsewhere, there was no great anxiety entertained. But for the rest, many of whom had no friends, or friends who did them the ill service of enemies, being in fact regarded as enemies by the Landgrave and his council, serious fears were entertained by the whole city. Their situation was evidently critical. The Landgrave had them in his power. He was notoriously a man of gloomy and malignant passions; had been educated, as all European princes then were, in the notions of a plenary and despotic right over the lives of his subjects, in any case where they lifted their presumptuous thoughts to the height of controlling the sovereign; and, even in circumstances which to his own judgment might seem to confer much less discretionary power over the rights of prisoners, he had been suspected of directing the course of law and of punishment into channels that would not brook the public knowledge. Darker dealings were imputed to him in the popular opinion. Gloomy suspicions were muttered at the fireside, which no man dared openly to avow; and in the present instance the conduct of the Landgrave was every way fitted to fall in with the worst of the public fears. At one time he talked of bringing his prisoners to a trial; at another, he countermanded the preparations which he had made with that view. Sometimes he spoke of banishing them in a body; and again he avowed his intention to deal with their crime as treason. The result of this moody and capricious tyranny was to inspire the most vague and gloomy apprehensions into the minds of the prisoners, and to keep their friends, with the whole city of Klosterheim, in a feverish state of insecurity.

This state of things lasted for nearly three weeks; but at length a morning of unexpected pleasure dawned upon the city. The prisoners were in one night all released. In half an hour the news ran over the town and the university; multitudes hastened to the college, anxious to congratulate the prisoners on their deliverance from the double afflictions of a dungeon and of continual insecurity. Mere curiosity also prompted some, who took but little interest in the prisoners or their cause, to inquire into the circumstances of so abrupt and unexpected an act of grace. One principal court in the college was filled with those who had come upon this errand of friendly interest or curiosity. Nothing was to be seen but earnest and delighted faces, offering or acknowledging congratulation; nothing to be heard but the language of joy and pleasure—friendly or affectionate, according to the sex or relation of the speaker. Some were talking of procuring passports for leaving the town; some anticipating that this course would not be left to their own choice, but imposed, as the price of his clemency, by the Landgrave. All, in short, was hubbub and joyous uproar, when suddenly a file of the city guard, commanded by an officer, made their way rudely and violently through the crowd, advancing evidently to the spot where the liberated prisoners were collected in a group. At that moment the Count St. Aldenheim was offering his congratulations. The friends to whom he spoke were too confident in his honor and integrity to have felt even one moment's misgiving upon the true causes which had sheltered him from the Landgrave's wrath, and had thus given him a privilege so invidious in the eyes of those who knew him not, and on that account so hateful in his own. They knew his unimpeachable fidelity to the cause and themselves, and were anxiously expressing their sense of it by the warmth of their salutations at the very moment when the city guard appeared. The count, on his part, was gayly reminding them to come that evening and fulfil their engagement to drink his aunt of jovial memory in her own Johannisberg, when the guard, shouldering aside the crowd, advanced, and, surrounding the group of students, in an instant laid the hands of summary arrest each upon the gentleman who stood next him. The petty officer who commanded made a grasp at one of the most distinguished in dress, and seized rudely upon the gold chain depending from his neck. St. Aldenheim, who happened at the moment to be in conversation with this individual, stung with a sudden indignation at the ruffian eagerness of the men in thus abusing the privileges of their office, and unable to control the generous ardor of his nature, met this brutal outrage with a sudden blow at the officer's face, levelled with so true an aim, that it stretched him at his length upon the ground. No terrors of impending vengeance, had they been a thousand times stronger than they were, could at this moment have availed to stifle the cry of triumphant pleasure—long, loud, and unfaltering— which indignant sympathy with the oppressed extorted from the crowd. The pain and humiliation of the blow, exalted into a maddening intensity by this popular shout of exultation, quickened the officer's rage into an apparent frenzy. With white lips, and half suffocated with the sudden revulsion of passion, natural enough to one who had never before encountered even a momentary overture at opposition to the authority with which he was armed, and for the first time in his life found his own brutalities thrown back resolutely in his teeth, the man rose, and, by signs rather than the inarticulate sounds which he meant for words, pointed the violence of his party upon the Count St. Aldenheim. With halberds bristling around him, the gallant young nobleman was loudly summoned to surrender; but he protested indignantly, drawing his sword and placing himself in an attitude of defence, that he would die a thousand deaths sooner than surrender the sword of his father, the Palsgrave, a prince of the empire, of unspotted honor, and most ancient descent, into the hands of a jailer.

"Jailer!" exclaimed the officer, almost howling with passion.

"Why, then, captain of jailers, lieutenant, anspessade, or what you will. What else than a jailer is he that sits watch upon the prison- doors of honorable cavaliers?" Another shout of triumph applauded St. Aldenheim; for the men who discharged the duties of the city guard at that day, or "petty guard," as it was termed, corresponding in many of their functions to the modern police, were viewed with contempt by all parties; and most of all by the military, though in some respects assimilated to them by discipline and costume. They were industriously stigmatized as jailers; for which there was the more ground, as their duties did in reality associate them pretty often with the jailer; and in other respects they were a dissolute and ferocious body of men, gathered not out of the citizens, but many foreign deserters, or wretched runagates from the jail, or from the justice of the provost- marshal in some distant camp. Not a man, probably, but was liable to be reclaimed, in some or other quarter of Germany, as a capital delinquent. Sometimes, even, they were actually detected, claimed, and given up to the pursuit of justice, when it happened that the subjects of their criminal acts were weighty enough to sustain an energetic inquiry. Hence their reputation became worse than scandalous: the mingled infamy of their calling, and the houseless condition of wretchedness which had made it worth their acceptance, combined to overwhelm them with public scorn; and this public abhorrence, which at any rate awaited them, mere desperation led them too often to countenance and justify by their conduct.

"Captain of jailers! do your worst, I say," again ejaculated St. Aldenheim. Spite of his blinding passion, the officer hesitated to precipitate himself into a personal struggle with the count, and thus, perhaps, afford his antagonist an occasion for a further triumph. But loudly and fiercely he urged on his followers to attack him. These again, not partaking in the personal wrath of their leader, even whilst pressing more and more closely upon St. Aldenheim, and calling upon him to surrender, scrupled to inflict a wound, or too marked an outrage, upon a cavalier whose rank was known to the whole city, and of late most advantageously known for his own interests, by the conspicuous immunity which it had procured him from the Landgrave. In vain did the commanding officer insist, in vain did the count defy; menaces from neither side availed to urge the guard into any outrage upon the person of one who might have it in his power to retaliate so severely upon themselves. They continued obstinately at a stand, simply preventing his escape, when suddenly the tread of horses' feet arose upon the ear, and through a long vista were discovered a body of cavalry from the castle coming up at a charging pace to the main entrance of the college. Without pulling up on the outside, as hitherto they had always done, they expressed sufficiently the altered tone of the Landgrave's feelings towards the old chartered interests of Klosterheim, by plunging through the great archway of the college-gates; and then making way at the same furious pace through the assembled crowds, who broke rapidly away to the right and to the left, they reined up directly abreast of the city guard and their prisoners.

"Colonel von Aremberg!" said St. Aldenheim, "I perceive your errand. To a soldier I surrender myself; to this tyrant of dungeons, who has betrayed more men, and cheated more gibbets of their due, than ever he said aves, I will never lend an ear, though he should bear the orders of every Landgrave in Germany."

"You do well," replied the colonel; "but for this man, count, he bears no orders from any Landgrave, nor will ever again bear orders from the Landgrave of X——. Gentlemen, you are all my prisoners; and you will accompany me to the castle. Count St. Aldenheim, I am sorry that there is no longer an exemption for yourself. Please to advance. If it will be any gratification to you, these men" (pointing to the city guard) "are prisoners also."

Here was a revolution of fortune that confounded everybody. The detested guardians of the city jail were themselves to tenant it; or, by a worse fate still, were to be consigned unpitied, and their case unjudged, to the dark and pestilent dungeons which lay below the Landgrave's castle. A few scattered cries of triumph were heard from the crowd; but they were drowned in a tumult of conflicting feelings. As human creatures, fallen under the displeasure of a despot with a judicial power of torture to enforce his investigations, even they claimed some compassion. But there arose, to call off attention from these less dignified objects of the public interest, a long train of gallant cavaliers, restored so capriciously to liberty, in order, as it seemed, to give the greater poignancy and bitterness to the instant renewal of their captivity. This was the very frenzy of despotism in its very moodiest state of excitement. Many began to think the Landgrave mad. If so, what a dreadful fate might be anticipated for the sons or representatives of so many noble families, gallant soldiers the greater part of them, with a nobleman of princely blood at their head, lying under the displeasure of a gloomy and infuriated tyrant, with unlimited means of executing the bloodiest suggestions of his vengeance. Then, in what way had the guardians of the jails come to be connected with any even imaginary offence? Supposing the Landgrave insane, his agents were not so; Colonel von Aremberg was a man of shrewd and penetrating understanding; and this officer had clearly spoken in the tone of one who, whilst announcing the sentence of another, sympathizes entirely with the justice and necessity of its harshness.

Something dropped from the miserable leader of the city guard, in his first confusion and attempt at self-defence, which rather increased than explained the mystery. "The Masque! the Masque !" This was the word which fell at intervals upon the ear of the listening crowd, as he sometimes directed his words in the way of apology and deprecation to Colonel von Aremberg, who did not vouchsafe to listen, or of occasional explanation and discussion, as it was partly kept up between himself and one of his nearest partners in the imputed transgression. Two or three there might be seen in the crowd, whose looks avowed some nearer acquaintance with this mysterious allusion than it would have been safe to acknowledge. But, for the great body of spectators who accompanied the prisoners and their escort to the gates of the castle, it was pretty evident by their inquiring looks, and the fixed expression of wonder upon their features, that the whole affair, and its circumstances, were to them equally a subject of mystery for what was past, and of blind terror for what was to come.

CHAPTER IX

The cavalcade, with its charge of prisoners, and its attendant train of spectators, halted at the gates of the schloss. This vast and antique pile had now come to be surveyed with dismal and revolting feelings, as the abode of a sanguinary despot. The dungeons and labyrinths of its tortuous passages, its gloomy halls of audience, with the vast corridors which surmounted the innumerable flights of stairs— some noble, spacious, and in the Venetian taste, capable of admitting the march of an army—some spiral, steep, and so unusually narrow as to exclude two persons walking abreast; these, together with the numerous chapels erected in it to different saints by devotees, male or female, in the families of forgotten Landgraves through four centuries back; and, finally, the tribunals, or gericht-kammern, for dispensing justice, criminal or civil, to the city and territorial dependencies of Klosterheim; all united to compose a body of impressive images, hallowed by great historical remembrances, or traditional stories, that from infancy to age dwelt upon the feelings of the Klosterheimers. Terror and superstitious dread predominated undoubtedly in the total impression; but the gentle virtues exhibited by a series of princes, who had made this their favorite residence, naturally enough terminated in mellowing the sternness of such associations into a religious awe, not without its own peculiar attractions. But, at present, under the harsh and repulsive character of the reigning prince, everything took a new color from his un-genial habits. The superstitious legend, which had so immemorially peopled the schloss with spectral apparitions, now revived in its earliest strength. Never was Germany more dedicated to superstition in every shape than at this period. The wild, tumultuous times, and the slight tenure upon which all men held their lives, naturally threw their thoughts much upon the other world; and communications with that, or its burthen of secrets, by every variety of agencies, ghosts, divination, natural magic, palmistry, or astrology, found in every city of the land more encouragement than ever.

It cannot, therefore, be surprising that the well-known apparition of the White Lady (a legend which affected Klosterheim through the fortunes of its Landgraves, no less than several other princely houses of Germany, descended from the same original stock) should about this time have been seen in the dusk of the evening at some of the upper windows in the castle, and once in a lofty gallery of the great chapel during the vesper service. This lady, generally known by the name of the White Lady Agnes, or Lady Agnes of Weissemburg, is supposed to have lived in the thirteenth or fourteenth century, and from that time, even to our own days, the current belief is, that on the eve of any great crisis of good or evil fortune impending over the three or four illustrious houses of Germany which trace their origin from her, she makes her appearance in some conspicuous apartment, great baronial hall or chapel, of their several palaces, sweeping along in white robes, and a voluminous train. Her appearance of late in the schloss of Klosterheim, confidently believed by the great body of the people, was hailed with secret pleasure, as forerunning some great change in the Landgrave's family,—which was but another name for better days to themselves, whilst of necessity it menaced some great evil to the prince himself. Hope, therefore, was predominant in their prospects, and in the supernatural intimations of coming changes;—yet awe and deep religious feeling mingled with their hope. Of chastisement approaching to the Landgrave they felt assured. Some dim religious judgment, like that which brooded over the house of dipus, was now at hand,—that was the universal impression. His gloomy asceticism of life seemed to argue secret crimes: these were to be brought to light; for these, and for his recent tyranny, prosperous as it had seemed for a moment, chastisements were now impending; and something of the awe which belonged to a prince so marked out for doom and fatal catastrophe seemed to attach itself to his mansion, more especially as it was there only that the signs and portents of the coming woe had revealed themselves in the apparition of the White Lady.

Under this superstitious impression, many of the spectators paused at the entrance of the castle, and lingered in the portal, though presuming that the chamber of justice, according to the frank old usage of Germany, was still open to all comers. Of this notion they were speedily disabused by the sudden retreat of the few who had penetrated into the first ante-chamber. These persons were harshly repelled in a contumelious manner, and read to the astonished citizens another lesson upon the new arts of darkness and concealment with which the Landgrave found it necessary to accompany his new acts of tyranny.

Von Aremberg and his prisoners, thus left alone in one of the ante- chambers, waited no long time before they were summoned to the presence of the Landgrave.

After pacing along a number of corridors, all carpeted so as to return no sound to their footsteps, they arrived in a little hall, from which a door suddenly opened, upon a noiseless signal exchanged with an usher outside, and displayed before them a long gallery, with a table and a few seats arranged at the further end. Two gentlemen were seated at the table, anxiously examining papers; in one of whom it was easy to recognize the wily glance of the Italian minister; the other was the Landgrave.

This prince was now on the verge of fifty, strikingly handsome in his features, and of imposing presence, from the union of a fine person with manners unusually dignified. No man understood better the art of restraining his least governable impulses of anger or malignity within the decorums of his rank. And even his worst passions, throwing a gloomy rather than terrific air upon his features, served less to alarm and revolt, than to impress the sense of secret distrust. Of late, indeed, from the too evident indications of the public hatred, his sallies of passion had become wilder and more ferocious, and his self- command less habitually conspicuous. But, in general, a gravity of insidious courtesy disguised from all but penetrating eyes the treacherous purpose of his heart.

The Landgrave bowed to the Count St. Aldenheim, and, pointing to a chair, begged him to understand that he wished to do nothing inconsistent with his regard for the Palsgrave his brother; and would be content with his parole of honor to pursue no further any conspiracy against himself, in which he might too thoughtlessly have engaged, and with his retirement from the city of Klosterheim.

The Count St. Aldenheim replied that he and all the other cavaliers present, according to his belief, stood upon the same footing: that they had harbored no thought of conspiracy, unless that name could attach to a purpose of open expostulation with his highness on the outraged privileges of their corporation as a university; that he wished not for any distinction of treatment in a case when all were equal offenders, or none at all; and, finally, that he believed the sentence of exile from Klosterheim would be cheerfully accepted by all or most of those present.

Adorni, the minister, shook his head, and glanced significantly at the Landgrave, during this answer. The Landgrave coldly replied that if he could suppose the count to speak sincerely, it was evident that he was little aware to what length his companions, or some of them, had pushed their plots. "Here are the proofs!" and he pointed to the papers.

"And now, gentlemen," said he, turning to the students, "I marvel that you, being cavaliers of family, and doubtless holding yourselves men of honor, should beguile these poor knaves into certain ruin, whilst yourselves could reap nothing but a brief mockery of the authority which you could not hope to evade."

Thus called upon, the students and the city guard told their tale; in which no contradictions could be detected. The city prison was not particularly well secured against attacks from without. To prevent, therefore, any sudden attempt at a rescue, the guard kept watch by turns. One man watched two hours, traversing the different passages of the prison; and was then relieved. At three o'clock on the preceding night, pacing a winding lobby, brightly illuminated, the man who kept that watch was suddenly met by a person wearing a masque, and armed at all points. His surprise and consternation were great, and the more so as the steps of The Masque were soundless, though the floor was a stone one. The guard, but slightly prepared to meet an attack, would, however, have resisted or raised an alarm; but The Masque, instantly levelling a pistol at his head with one hand, with the other had thrown open the door of an empty cell, indicating to the man by signs that he must enter it. With this intimation he had necessarily complied; and The Masque had immediately turned the key upon him. Of what followed he knew nothing until aroused by his comrades setting him at liberty, after some time had been wasted in searching for him.

The students had a pretty uniform tale to report. A Masque, armed cap- a-pie, as described by the guard, had visited each of their cells in succession; had instructed them by signs to dress, and then, pointing to the door, by a series of directions all communicated in the same dumb show, had assembled them together, thrown open the prison door, and, pointing to their college, had motioned them thither. This motion they had seen no cause to disobey, presuming their dismissal to be according to the mode which best pleased his highness; and not ill- pleased at finding so peaceful a termination to a summons which at first, from its mysterious shape and the solemn hour of night, they had understood as tending to some more formidable issue.

It was observed that neither the Landgrave nor his minister treated this report of so strange a transaction with the scorn which had been anticipated. Both listened attentively, and made minute inquiries as to every circumstance of the dress and appointments of the mysterious Masque. What was his height? By what road, or in what direction, had he disappeared? These questions answered, his highness and his minister consulted a few minutes together; and then, turning to Von Aremberg, bade him for the present dismiss the prisoners to their homes; an act of grace which seemed likely to do him service at the present crisis; but at the same time to take sufficient security for their reappearance. This done, the whole body were liberated.