Memorials and Other Papers Part 15

Adorni now came forward. "It is known," said he, "by trials more than sufficient, that some intruder, with the worst intentions, has crept into this honorable company. The ladies present will therefore have the goodness to retire apart to the lower end of the saloon, whilst the n.o.ble cavaliers will present themselves in succession to six officers of his highness' household, to whom they will privately communicate their names and quality."

This arrangement was complied with,--not, however, without the exchange of a few flying jests on the part of the younger cavaliers and their fair partners, as they separated for the purpose. The cavaliers, who were rather more than five hundred in number, went up as they were summoned by the number marked upon their cards of admission, and, privately communicating with some one of the officers appointed, were soon told off, and filed away to the right of the Landgrave, waiting for the signal which should give them permission to rejoin their parties.

All had been now told off, within a score. These were cl.u.s.tered together in a group; and in that group undoubtedly was The Masque.

Every eye was converged upon this small knot of cavaliers; each of the spectators, according to his fancy, selected the one who came nearest in dress, or in personal appearance, to his preconceptions of that mysterious agent. Not a word was uttered, not a whisper; hardly a robe was heard to rustle, or a feather to wave.

The twenty were rapidly reduced to twelve, these to six, the six to four--three--two; the tale of the invited was complete, and one man remained behind. That was, past doubting, The Masque!

CHAPTER XVI.

"There stands he that governs Klosterheim by night!" thought every cavalier, as he endeavored to pierce the gloomy being's concealment with penetrating eyes, or, by scrutiny ten times repeated, to unmasque the dismal secrets which lurked beneath his disguise. "There stands the gloomy murderer!" thought another. "There stands the poor detected criminal," thought the pitying young ladies, "who in the next moment must lay bare his breast to the Landgrave's musketeers."

The figure, meantime, stood tranquil and collected, apparently not in the least disturbed by the consciousness of his situation, or the breathless suspense of more than a thousand spectators of rank and eminent station, all bending their looks upon himself. He had been leaning against a marble column, as if wrapped up in revery, and careless of everything about him. But when the dead silence announced that the ceremony was closed, that he only remained to answer for himself, and upon palpable proof--evidence not to be gainsayed-- incapable of answering satisfactorily; when, in fact, it was beyond dispute that here was at length revealed, in bodily presence, before the eyes of those whom he had so long haunted with terrors, The Masque of Klosterheim,--it was naturally expected that now, at least, he would show alarm and trepidation; that he would prepare for defence, or address himself to instant flight.

Far otherwise! Cooler than any one person beside in the saloon, he stood, like the marble column against which he had been reclining, upright, ma.s.sy, and imperturbable. He was enveloped in a voluminous mantle, which, at this moment, with a leisurely motion, he suffered to fall at his feet, and displayed a figure in which the grace of an Antinous met with the columnar strength of a Grecian Hercules,-- presenting, in its _tout ensemble_, the majestic proportions of a Jupiter. He stood--a breathing statue of gladiatorial beauty, towering above all who were near him, and eclipsing the n.o.blest specimens of the human form which the martial a.s.sembly presented. A buzz of admiration arose, which in the following moment was suspended by the dubious recollections investing his past appearances, and the terror which waited even on his present movements. He was armed to the teeth; and he was obviously preparing to move.

Not a word had yet been spoken; so tumultuous was the succession of surprises, so mixed and conflicting the feelings, so intense the anxiety. The arrangement of the groups was this: At the lower half of the room, but starting forward in att.i.tudes of admiration or suspense, were the ladies of Klosterheim. At the upper end, in the centre, one hand raised to bespeak attention, was The Masque of Klosterheim. To his left, and a little behind him, with a subtle Venetian countenance, one hand waving back a half file of musketeers, and the other raised as if to arrest the arm of The Masque, was the wily minister Adorni, creeping nearer and nearer with a stealthy stride. To his right was the great body of Klosterheim cavaliers, a score of students and young officers pressing forward to the front; but in advance of the whole, the Landgrave of X----, haughty, lowering, and throwing out looks of defiance. These were the positions and att.i.tudes in which the first discovery of The Masque had surprised them; and these they still retained. Less dignified spectators were looking downwards from the galleries.

"Surrender!" was the first word by which silence was broken; it came from the Landgrave.

"Or die!" exclaimed Adorni.

"He dies in any case," rejoined the prince.

The Masque still raised his hand with the action of one who bespeaks attention. Adorni he deigned not to notice. Slightly inclining his head to the Landgrave, in a tone to which it might be the headdress of elaborate steel work that gave a sepulchral tone, he replied:

"The Masque, who rules in Klosterheim by night, surrenders not. He can die. But first he will complete the ceremony of the night; he will reveal himself."

"That is superfluous," exclaimed Adorni; "we need no further revelations. Seize him, and lead him out to death!"

"Dog of an Italian!" replied The Masque, drawing a dag [Footnote: _Dag_, a sort of pistol or carbine.] from his belt, "die first yourself!" And so saying, he slowly turned and levelled the barrel at Adorni, who fled with two bounds to the soldiers in the rear. Then, withdrawing the weapon hastily, he added, in a tone of cool contempt, "Or bridle that coward's tongue."

But this was not the minister's intention. "Seize him!" he cried again impetuously to the soldiers, laying his hand on the arm of the foremost, and pointing them forward to their prey.

"No!" said the Landgrave, with a commanding voice; "halt! I bid you."

Something there was in the tone, or it might be that there was something in his private recollections, or something in the general mystery, which promised a discovery that he feared to lose by the too precipitate vengeance of the Italian. "What is it, mysterious being, that you would reveal? Or who is it that you now believe interested in your revelations?"

"Yourself.--Prince, it would seem that you have me at your mercy: wherefore, then, the coward haste of this Venetian hound? I am one; you are many. Lead me, then, out; shoot me. But no: freely I entered this hall; freely I will leave it. If I must die, I will die as a soldier.

Such I am; and neither runagate from a foreign land, nor "--turning to Adorni-"a base mechanic."

"But a murderer!" shrieked Adorni: "but a murderer; and with hands yet reeking from innocent blood!"

"Blood, Adorni, that I will yet avenge.--Prince, you demand the nature of my revelations. I will reveal my name, my quality, and my mission."

"And to whom?"

"To yourself, and none beside. And, as a pledge for the sincerity of my discoveries, I will first of all communicate a dreadful secret, known, as you fondly believe, to none but your highness. Prince, dare you receive my revelations?"

Speaking thus, The Masque took one step to the rear, turning his back upon the room, and by a gesture signified his wish that the Landgrave should accompany him. But at this motion ten or a dozen of the foremost among the young cavaliers started forward in advance of the Landgrave, in part forming a half-circle about his person, and in part commanding the open doorway.

"He is armed!" they exclaimed; "and trebly armed: will your highness approach him too nearly?"

"I fear him not," said the Landgrave, with something of a contemptuous tone.

"Wherefore should you fear me?" retorted The Masque, with a manner so tranquil and serene as involuntarily to disarm suspicion. "Were it possible that I should seek the life of any man here in particular, in that case (pointing to the fire-arms in his belt), why should I need to come nearer? Were it possible that any should find in my conduct here a motive to a personal vengeance upon myself, which of you is not near enough? Has your highness the courage to trample on such terrors?"

Thus challenged, as it were, to a trial of his courage before the a.s.sembled rank of Klosterheim, the Landgrave waved off all who would have stepped forward officiously to his support. If he felt any tremors, he was now sensible that pride and princely honor called upon him to dissemble them. And, probably, that sort of tremors which he felt in reality did not point in a direction to which physical support, such as was now tendered, could have been available. He hesitated no longer, but strode forward to meet The Masque. His highness and The Masque met near the archway of the door, in the very centre of the groups.

With a thrilling tone, deep, piercing, full of alarm, The Masque began thus:

"To win your confidence, forever to establish credit with your highness, I will first of all reveal the name of that murderer who this night dared to pollute your palace with an old man's blood. Prince, bend your ear a little this way."

With a shudder, and a visible effort of self-command, the Landgrave inclined his ear to The Masque, who added,--

"Your highness will be shocked to hear it:" then, in a lower tone, "Who could have believed it?--It was----." All was p.r.o.nounced clearly and strongly, except the last word--the name of the murderer; _that_ was made audible only to the Landgrave's ear.

Sudden and tremendous was the effect upon the prince: he reeled a few paces off; put his hand to the hilt of his sword; smote his forehead; threw frenzied looks upon The Masque,--now half imploring, now dark with vindictive wrath. Then succeeded a pause of profoundest silence, during which all the twelve hundred visitors, whom he had himself a.s.sembled as if expressly to make them witnesses of this extraordinary scene, and of the power with which a stranger could shake him to and fro in a tempestuous strife of pa.s.sions, were looking and hearkening with senses on the stretch to pierce the veil of silence and of distance. At last the Landgrave mastered his emotion sufficiently to say, "Well, sir, what next?"

"Next comes a revelation of another kind; and I warn you, sir, that it will not be less trying to the nerves. For this first I needed your ear; now I shall need your eyes. Think again, prince, whether you will stand the trial."

"Pshaw! sir, you trifle with me; again I tell you--" But here the Landgrave spoke with an affectation of composure, and with an effort that did not escape notice;--"again I tell you that I fear you not. Go on."

"Then come forward a little, please your highness, to the light of this lamp." So saying, with a step or two in advance, he drew the prince under the powerful glare of a lamp suspended near the great archway of entrance from the interior of the palace. Both were now standing with their faces entirely averted from the spectators. Still more effectually, however, to screen himself from any of those groups on the left, whose advanced position gave them somewhat more the advantage of an oblique aspect, The Masque, at this moment, suddenly drew up, with his left hand, a short Spanish mantle which depended from his shoulders, and now gave him the benefit of a lateral screen. Then, so far as the company behind them could guess at his act, unlocking with his right hand and raising the masque which shrouded his mysterious features, he shouted aloud, in a voice that rang clear through every corner of the vast saloon, "Landgrave, for crimes yet unrevealed, I summon you, in twenty days, before a tribunal where there is no shield but innocence" and at that moment turned his countenance full upon the prince.

With a yell, rather than a human expression of terror, the Landgrave fell, as if shot by a thunderbolt, stretched at his full length upon the ground, lifeless apparently, and bereft of consciousness or sensation. A sympathetic cry of horror arose from the spectators. All rushed towards The Masque. The young cavaliers, who had first stepped forward as volunteers in the Landgrave's defence, were foremost, and interposed between The Masque and the outstretched arms of Adorni, as if eager to seize him first. In an instant a sudden and dense cloud of smoke arose, n.o.body knew whence. Repeated discharges of fire-arms were heard resounding from the doorway and the pa.s.sages; these increased the smoke and the confusion. Trumpets sounded through the corridors. The whole archway, under which The Masque and the Landgrave had been standing, became choked up with soldiery, summoned by the furious alarms that echoed through the palace. All was one uproar and chaos of masques, plumes, helmets, halberds, trumpets, gleaming sabres, and the fierce faces of soldiery forcing themselves through the floating drapery of smoke that now filled the whole upper end of the saloon.

Adorni was seen in the midst, raving fruitlessly. n.o.body heard, n.o.body listened. Universal panic had seized the household, the soldiery, and the company. n.o.body understood exactly for what purpose the tumult had commenced--in what direction it tended. Some tragic catastrophe was reported from mouth to mouth: n.o.body knew what. Some said the Landgrave had been a.s.sa.s.sinated; some, The Masque; some a.s.serted that both had perished under reciprocal a.s.saults. More believed that The Masque had proved to be of that supernatural order of beings, with which the prevailing opinions of Klosterheim had long cla.s.sed him; and that, upon raising his disguise, he had revealed to the Landgrave the fleshless skull of some forgotten tenant of the grave. This indeed seemed to many the only solution that, whilst it fell in with the prejudices and superst.i.tions of the age, was of a nature to account for that tremendous effect which the discovery had produced upon the Landgrave.

But it was one that naturally could be little calculated to calm the agitations of the public prevailing at this moment. This spread contagiously. The succession of alarming events,--the murder, the appearance of The Masque, his subsequent extraordinary behavior, the overwhelming impression upon the Landgrave, which had formed the catastrophe of this scenical exhibition,--the consternation of the great Swedish officers, who were spending the night in Klosterheim, and reasonably suspected that the tumult might be owing to the sudden detection of their own _incognito_, and that, in consequence, the populace of this imperial city were suddenly rising to arms; the endless distraction and counter-action of so many thousand persons-- visitors, servants, soldiery, household--all hurrying to the same point, and bringing a.s.sistance to a danger of which n.o.body knew the origin, n.o.body the nature, n.o.body the issue; mult.i.tudes commanding where all obedience was forgotten, all subordination had gone to wreck;--these circ.u.mstances of distraction united to sustain a scene of absolute frenzy in the castle, which, for more than half an hour, the dense columns of smoke aggravated alarmingly, by raising, in many quarters, additional terrors of fire. And when, at last, after infinite exertions, the soldiery had deployed into the ball-room and the adjacent apartments of state, and had succeeded, at the point of the pike, in establishing a safe egress for the twelve hundred visitors, it was then first ascertained that all traces of The Masque had been lost in the smoke and subsequent confusion; and that, with his usual good fortune, he had succeeded in baffling his pursuers.

CHAPTER XVII.

Meantime the Lady Paulina had spent her time in secret grief, inconsolable for the supposed tragical fate of Maximilian. It was believed that he had perished. This opinion had prevailed equally amongst his friends, and the few enemies whom circ.u.mstances had made him. Supposing even that he had escaped with life from the action, it seemed inevitable that he should have fallen into the hands of the b.l.o.o.d.y Holkerstein; and under circ.u.mstances which would point him out to the vengeance of that cruel ruffian as having been the leader in the powerful resistance which had robbed him of his prey.

Stung with the sense of her irreparable loss, and the premature grief which had blighted her early hopes, Paulina sought her refuge in solitude, and her consolations in religion. In the convent where she had found a home, the ceremonies of the Roman Catholic service were maintained with the strictness and the pomp suitable to its ample endowments. The emperor had himself, as well as several of his progenitors, been a liberal benefactor to this establishment. And a lady of his house, therefore, recommended by a special introduction from the emperor to the attentions of the lady abbess, was sure of meeting kindness and courtesy in every possible shape which could avail to mitigate her sorrow. The abbess, though a bigot, was a human being, with strong human sensibilities; and in both characters she was greatly pleased with the Lady Paulina. On the one hand, her pride, as the head of a religious establishment, was flattered by the extreme regularity of the Lady Paulina in conforming to the ritual of her house; this example of spiritual obedience and duty seemed peculiarly edifying in a person of such distinguished rank. On the other hand, her womanly sensibilities were touched by the spectacle of early and unmerited sorrow in one so eminent for her personal merits, for her extreme beauty, and the winning sweetness of her manners. Hence she readily offered to the young countess all the attentions and marks of sympathy which her retiring habits permitted, and every species of indulgence compatible with the spirit of the inst.i.tution.

The whole convent, nuns as well as strangers, taking their tone from the abbess, vied with each other in attentions to Paulina. But, whilst acknowledging their kindness, she continued to shrink from all general intercourse with the society about her. Her attendance was constant at the matins and at vespers; not unfrequently even at the midnight service; but dejection was too rooted in her heart, to allow her any disposition to enter into the amus.e.m.e.nts or mixed society which the convent at that time offered.

Many n.o.ble strangers had been allowed to take up their quarters in the convent. With some of these the abbess was connected by blood; with others, by ties of ancient friendship. Most of this party composed a little society apart from the rest, and continued to pursue those amus.e.m.e.nts or occupations which properly belonged to their stations and quality, but by their too worldly nature were calculated to exclude the religious members of the inst.i.tution from partaking in them. To this society Paulina received frequent invitations; which, however, she declined so uniformly, that at length all efforts ceased to draw her from the retirement which she so manifestly adhered to from choice. The motives of her dejection became known throughout the convent, and were respected; and it was now reported amongst them, from her aversion to society as well as her increasing devotion, that the Lady Paulina would soon take the veil.

Amongst the strangers was one, a lady of mature age, with beauty still powerful enough to fascinate all beholders, who seemed to survey Paulina with an interest far beyond that of curiosity or simple admiration. Sorrow might be supposed the common bond which connected them; for there were rumors amongst the sisterhood of St. Agnes that this lady had suffered afflictions heavier than fell to an ordinary lot in the course of the war which now desolated Germany. Her husband (it was said), of whom no more was known than that he was some officer of high rank, had perished by the hand of violence; a young daughter, the only child of two or three who remained to her, had been carried off in infancy, and no traces remained of her subsequent fate. To these misfortunes was added the loss of her estates and rank, which, in some mysterious way, were supposed to be withheld from her by one of those great oppressors whom war and the policy of great allies had aggrandized. It was supposed even that for the means of subsistence to herself, and a few faithful attendants, she was indebted to the kindness of the lady abbess, with whom she was closely connected by ancient friendship.

In this tale there were many inaccuracies mixed up with the truth. It was true that, in some one of the many dire convulsions which had pa.s.sed from land to land since the first outbreak of the Bohemian troubles, in 1618, and which had covered with a veil of political pretexts so many local acts of private family feud and murderous treason, this lady had been deprived of her husband by a violent death under circ.u.mstances which still seemed mysterious. But the fate of her children, if any had survived the calamity which took off her husband, was unknown to everybody except her confidential protectress, the lady abbess. By permission of this powerful friend, who had known her from infancy, and through the whole course of her misfortunes, she was permitted to take up her abode in the convent, under special privileges, and was there known by the name of Sister Madeline.

The intercourse of the Sister Madeline with the lady abbess was free and unreserved. At all hours they entered each other's rooms with the familiarity of sisters; and it might have been thought that in every respect they stood upon the equal footing of near relatives, except that occasionally in the manners of the abbess was traced, or imagined, a secret air of deference towards the desolate Sister Madeline, which, as it was not countenanced at all by their present relations to each other, left people at liberty to build upon it a large superstructure of romantic conjectures.