Come, you spiritsThat tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,And fill me from the crown to the toe topfulOf direst cruelty! Make thick my blood;Stop up the access and passage to remorse,That no compunctious visitings of natureShake my fell purpose, nor keep peace betweenThe effect and it. Come to my woman's breasts,And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,Wherever in your sightless substancesYou wait on nature's mischief! Come, thick night,And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,To cry, "Hold!, hold!"—Macbeth.
Poor Alvira! Her morning dawned after a restless, sleepless night. Phantoms of terror haunted her couch. The agonies of anticipated remorse had cast a withering shadow on her thoughts. She could not believe her own depravity in entertaining for a moment such a thrilling temptation.
Was it a dream? Was it the hallucination of a spirit of evil that revels in the human passions? "I, who love my father notwithstanding his faults, who would tremble at the gaze of my mother looking down from heaven on my awful impiety, and would hear from her tomb her scream of terror, her curse of vengeance on my parricidal guilt—could I be the foolish wretch that would consent to a deed of crime which would make me a fugitive from the face of men, and haunt my rest with the ghost of a murdered father?"
Thus Alvira mused. But a demon laughed at her tender conscience; deep in hell they had forged a terrible temptation. They knew the walls of the citadel of morality, built alone on natural virtue and unaided by divine grace, would soon crumble before their powerful machinations. In moments of sober reflection our resolutions are like prisms of basalt, that will not be riven by the lightning, but which in the hour of real trial prove to be ice-crystals that a sunbeam can dissolve. The powers that wage war with frail humanity have hung on the portals of the infernal kingdom, as trophies of triumph over man and insult to God, the resolutions of mortals made in moments of fervor and broken in weakness.
Days roll on; they bring their sunshine and clouds, but no change in the unhappy family; a change there was for the worse in the appalling development of the infidel and socialistic tendencies of their impious father. His language, less guarded, seemed to teem with new insults against religion and God, and contributed to confirm the chill of horror with which he was met by hapless children that sighed over the loss of filial love. His late returns from the lodge, and occasionally those sad ebullitions of intemperance, continued to be their deep affliction.
In proportion as love twines itself around the heart it absorbs all other feelings, it draws the passions like lentils around itself; so the contrary feeling of hatred, when permitted to enter the sanctuary of the heart, assumes at once a tyrannical sway, whose wicked demands of gratification become more and more imperious and exacting day by day, and rears a throne that becomes impregnable in proportion as the sun is allowed to set on its possessions. Even filial love has withered under the shadow of Cassier's worthlessness.
In lonely walks along the lake, in conversations, and in tears the two girls lamented their fate. The beauty of virtue withered within their bosoms. The resembled two beautiful flowers torn from their bed, and cast with the weeds of the garden to taint in their decay the breezes they would sweeten if left on their stem. They longed for the pleasures that pleased in the day of prosperity; the dance, the banquet, and those visits that won the momentary gratification of flattery and admiration were sighed for. So irksome was the monotony and so uncongenial the role forced upon them by disguise, they hailed with joy the least circumstance that might be the harbinger of a change.
It is at hand. Once more the excitement of chase! The vigilance of their astute father has placed them again in the caleche, and spirited horses are galloping from the Swiss capital.
News from Paris has arrived; the failure, the flight, the reward, are passed around in a sensational romance, and the disappearance of two police officers lends the charms of mystery to the embellished rumor. Cassier—the hero of the tale, the unsuspected guilty one—went around and told the news with all the sanctimonious whining and eye-uplifting of a ranting preacher. In the meantime he matured his plans, and before suspicion could point her finger at him he fled to another retreat to elude for a while the justice of man to meet his awful doom from the hands of God.
During the night Cassier and his children ascend the terrific pass of the Tete Noir; he proposes to hide from the threatened storm in the cloister of Martigny. This is a venerable Benedictine monastery, erected in the eleventh century by a Catholic prince, under the sanction of Urban II., possessing, besides many other privileges, that of sanctuary for fugitive prisoners.
The dangers of the road and the fear of pursuit lent additional terror to the wild mountain scenery; at one moment they are dizzy looking into awful chasms formed by huge perpendicular rocks; then the overhanging cliffs would seem every moment to break from their frail support and rush down the steep mountain in an avalanche of stone. In cold that penetrated to the very bones, amidst the roar of torrents leaping through caverns of ice, and in dangers unseen and therefore more dreadful, they passed a restless journey through the mountains, and arrived at the charming village of Martigny, over which the monastery presided like the fortress of a mediaeval castle protecting the feudal territory of the petty ruler. Wearied, but pleased at the novel situation into which chance had cast them, Charles and Henry approached the venerable pile with feelings of reverence they had never felt. The silence of the tomb reigned around, and the old gate was closed. Whilst wondering how men could come voluntarily to live in such a solitude, and how they got the necessaries of life, a bell tolled solemnly from one of the towers; its soft, mellow tones rolled in sweet echoes across the mountains. Immediately the place became thronged with men in the habit of the Benedictine Order, hastening to and fro to commence their daily work. An aged porter bowed the strangers into a neat apartment, and summoned the Superior. No questions were asked, but comfortable rooms were appointed to them, and they were conducted in silence to the refectory, where a plain but substantial meal was placed before them. Thus commenced a visit the most extraordinary in the records of this venerable mountain cloister.
Charles and Henry were charmed with everything, although they found themselves in strange contrast with desires of worldly pleasure they had recently entertained. The wild, rugged scenery, the solemn silence of the house, and the sanctity of the mortified monks made a deep and solemn impression on the tender hearts of the young visitors, who felt the delicacy of their position in enjoying a forbidden hospitality. The example of the evangelical perfection practised by these holy servants of God insensibly drew Charles and Henry to love the sublime virtues they practised. Nothing impressed them more than the solemn chant of the Office at midnight. The slow, solemn enunciation of each word by a choir of hoary anchorets rolled in majestic cadence through the precipices of the mountains, and died away in the distant ravines in echoes of heavenly harmony.
An aged father was appointed to entertain the strangers. He led them to points on the mountain where the view was most enchanting; skilled in ancient monastic lore, he entertained them with anecdotes and histories from which he drew the most instructive morals. One cheerful afternoon, when seated on the rocks viewing a magnificent sunset, the aged monk told them his own history. He had been a soldier of fortune. In youth his ambition was as boundless as the horizon; he worshipped his sword and loved the terrors of battle. Fortune smiled on his hopes, and he moved on from grade to grade, until he became commander of a division.
He was present at the fatal field of Salzbach, where the great General Turenne fell in the commencement of the battle. The aged warrior, forgetting the gravity of his years and his habit, would speak in the fire of other days, suiting his action to the word.
He told his listeners the touching tale of his conversion. The death of the beloved Turenne, and at the same time the demise of his mother, made him enter seriously into self, repeating the farewell words of a celebrated courtier who left the French court to don the habit: "Some time of preparation should pass between the life of a solider and his grave." He heard the great St. Vincent de Paul preaching on the vanities of life; his resolutions were confirmed, and tears started to his eyes as he recounted how happy he was in his home in the cliffs and the clouds.
Charles loved to hear the aged man's reminiscences of his military career. Fired with chivalrous aspirations, she could spend a lifetime in the regions of fancy so fervidly depicted from their Alpine retreat. Poor Aloysia was attracted to the higher and more real glories of the virtuous lives of these holy men. She felt she could stay with them for ever; and there, in the secrecy of her own heart, and before the alter of our Holy Mother, she made promises that shared in the merits of vows. When free, she would give herself to the love of God and the preparation for eternity in some secluded retreat of religion and virginity.
But the nearer the alter, the further from God. Reverse the picture, and another must be contemplated. Is it the venerable cloister buried in the snow, buffeted by the storm, and threatened by the avalanche? is it the awful death of starvation hanging in all its gloomy anticipations over the community isolated by the snow-storm from the civilized world around? Or will it be the just indignation of the holy monks in finding the true character of the refugees whom they have sheltered in ignorance, contrary to the canons of the Church? Or will the still more devastating and ruthless storm of religious persecution seek the sanctuary in the clouds to desecrate it, to scatter its inmates and wreck its cloisters?
A calamity as thrilling and not less anticipated will fling a sad memory around the venerable cloisters of Martigny.
Cassier is in the group listening to the aged monk recount his adventures; with knitted eyebrows he hears him moralizing on the awful destiny of the future. He is a silent listener; the conversation is carried on by the garrulous and interested youths and the happy, virtuous old monk. A forced sobriety, or the atmosphere of virtue which he dreads, has cast a gloom over him. His thoughts are still reeking with the blasphemy of the Masonic lodges, and, though restrained by politeness from intruding his unbelief, he expresses in scowls and monosyllables his dissentient feelings.
Charles still burns with indignation at her father's irreligion and personal ill-treatment. Her flushed countenance and agitated manner were at times indexes of passion, revenge, and self-love; for a moment the feeling is strong and irresistible, then calms again with the holier sentiments of remorse and self-condemnation.
A morning as brilliant as ever lit up the glaciers of Mt. Blank rose over the cloisters. Charles and Henry accompany their father on a stroll through the mountain. They miss their kind Mentor, who is on a retreat for some days. Henry, commencing to love solitude, strays from her father and Charles to gather ferns and wild flowers creeping from the crevices of the rocks, or rising with exquisite beauty from a layer of snow. They are emblems of her own innocence and fragrant as her virtue, growing in the wilderness and shedding their charms on rocks and snow-peaks, instead of ornamenting gardens of culture and beauty. Poor Aloysia would be more at home in some arbor of innocence where angels love to tarry, and where the voice and gaze of the worldly-minded have never fallen.
Cassier and Charles had slowly climbed to a projecting rock where nature had made a large table covered with grass. On one side the ascent was easy, but the other overhung a frightful precipice. They had entered into an animated conversation; Aloysia, down beneath, could hear the sharp, quick answers of Charles, but, as such was usual in the temper of Charles, she did not notice it.
But lo! another moment, and a wild, shrill scream bade her look up; her father was no longer on the ledge of rock, and Charles flung her arms towards heaven and fell in a swoon on the edge of the precipice.
When Charles had recovered her consciousness, she found herself reclining on the lap of Henry, who had been bathing her face with snow and tears. A long, painful call of her name had reached the inmost recess of her being whither consciousness had repaired. Springing to her feet, startled as if from a frightful dream, she gazed around. Memory and sight returned; folding her face in her hands, she cried in a paroxysm of grief: "My God! what have I done?"
This was the only intimation she ever gave Aloysia that in the heat of passion she had pushed her father over the precipice; she was his murderer. In their conversation the old man, more, perhaps, through impiety than conviction, misrepresented the good monks. We will not reproduce the stereotyped calumnies that even nowadays unbelievers love to heap upon the religious communities of the Catholic Church. The madness of passion took control in the breast of Charles. Scarcely knowing what she did, she pushed her aged father towards the precipice; he slipped, fell over into the chasm, and passed into eternity with blasphemy on his guilty lips.
The two sisters wept together for hours. Innocence, guilt, and retribution blended together in a scene of awful tragedy amid the glaciers of Mt. Blanc.
Seldom in the deeds of brigandage, in crimes committed in dark caves and lonely mountain paths, was there perpetrated a fouler murder; seldom in the sensational records of human depravity do we find the desperado of parricidal guilt under the delicate frame of girlhood. Yet was she rather an instrument in the hands of avenging Heaven than a monster of moral iniquity. At that moment the cup of iniquity was full for the wretch who had long tested the mercy of God. That Providence which blinded the Jews in judgement for ingratitude, and made them the instruments for the fulfilment of eternal decrees of redemption, withdrew from Alvira the protection that made her, whilst she accepted the guilt, the instrument of judgment.
Rising to her feet with a sense of her desperate condition, making a few hurried explanations how her father slipped and lost his balance, she approached tremblingly the fatal edge. Leaning over, she saw the corpse of her father lying in a pool of blood in the deep chasm below. The scene of that sad moment was indelibly impressed on her memory, and in after-hours of remorse haunted her with its horrors.
With nerve and courage, called forth by the awful circumstances of the moment, they descended the mountain to the foot of the ravine where the body lay in the snow.
The descent was steep and treacherous, and guilty conscience made Charles tremble lest at any moment she would lose footing and be precipitated down the dark and gaping chasms formed by glaciers and rocks. After hours of toil, and with imminent peril, they found the body of Cassier. A dark pallor had clouded his features, a ghastly stare, closed teeth, and clenched hand bespoke the last sentiment of human passion. Alvira trembled and stood powerless for a few moments. Still, necessity nerved her to action. She removed the money and valuables from the body of her father, and, in the midst of wailings that echoed mournfully through the lonely mountain, they made a grave in the snow. Wrapping him in his cloak, they laid him in a bank of soft crystals through which the blood had trickled in crimson streams.
Thrilling and sad for Aloysia and Alvira the last moments of this funeral ceremony. Gently they placed the cold snow on the remains of their father. The wild eagle swooped around in anger, and the wind swept with ominous sighs through deep ravines of the rugged mountain. The gigantic cliff over which Cassier had been hurled by his maddened child frowned over them in awful majesty. It would be in centuries to come the cenotaph of a dishonored tomb. The winter would come again with fresh snow to cover this valley of death; the sun would pour its cold rays on the frozen mound that marked the grave of Cassier. No tear of affection would moisten the icy shroud, but, in sympathy for the hapless child stained with his blood, whose crime was condoned in the provocation caused, the world has cast its abhorrent curse on the grave of the reprobate.
"There let every noxious thingTrail its filth and fix its sting;In his ears and eyeballs tingling,With his blood their poison mingling,Till beneath the solar fires.Rankling all, the curse expires."
The noise of life can ne'er so dull our ear,Nor passion's waves, though in their wildest mood,That oft above their surge we should not hearThe solemn voices of the great and good.
As oft in icicles a flower remainethUnwithered until spring its buds unchain,The young heart through lifes change a good retaineth,And will exhume its summer leaves again.
When Charles and Henry had breathed their last sigh over the snowy mound that covered the earthly remains of the hapless Cassier, they continued their descent down the mountain. They dared not go back to the cloister; they fled when no one pursued, for outraged conscience is its own avenger. Each stir in the brushwood, a loosened stone rolling quickly by, or the fluttering and scream of startled birds of the solitude, made them tremble.
Night was fast coming on; the sharp peaks of the Tete Noir were dimmed with clouds, and frowned with ominous terror on the path of the terrified fugitives. Through dangers of every kind, with bruises and wounds all over their delicate frames, they reached in the night the beautiful village of Chamounix. Refreshed with sleep and food, they prepared themselves for their future course, which for a while will be perilous, sensational, and extraordinary.
Free from the control of an intemperate and tyrannical father, possessing immense wealth, they cast themselves into a whirlpool of deceitful pleasure, and for a while, in yielding to the longings of misguided youth, hushed the qualms of conscience, which can only rest in the bosom of virtue.
Once more free, the thought naturally came of returning to the dress that became their sex. Aloysia, whose sense of delicacy was still as tender as the sensitive plant yielding to human touch, pleaded in tears for a return to the simple ways of girlhood, to the life and society more congenial to their habits and more in keeping with the laws of God and nature. Alvira had yielded for a moment. But the love of travel, which in those days could not be gratified in their true condition of young and handsome girls without guardians, whilst in their male disguise not a shadow of suspicion or impropriety would interfere with them; the novelty of their condition, assuming each day some new attractions; the curiosity innate in the feminine breast to hear and see things outside her own circle; above all the hallucinations flung on the path of disguise by the fiend of evil, who thus intrigued for the final ruin of his unsuspecting victims, made them agree mutually to pass a short time in travelling around as naval cadets; then, tired and surfeited with their triumph over nature, they hoped to retire into the sphere of utility destined for them by Providence.
But, to our own and to our readers' regret, we must pause in our biography. The sources from which we cull these interesting details have cast historic silence over our heroines' ramblings of three years. What a volume of sensation they suggest! Were we given to the doubtful utility of fictional biography, were we weak enough to enrich ourselves by pandering to the morbid and often depraved longings of modern literary taste, we might fill a couple of volumes with scenes of excitement, of "hair-breadth 'scapes," and with heart-palpitating suspenses of misplaced love. We could not draw a picture more interesting or strange than those two sweet maidens in their disguise. We see them in the salons of the wealthy, in the clubs of the politicians, and at the billiard-tables of giddy youth who little dream of the intrusion, which, if they understood, would make them more happy. We fancy we see those youths, so polished, so gay, and withal so handsome, the idols of the society they move in; we hear compliments about those delicate hands, those small feet, those charming eyes. Our sympathy would chronicle the end fate of many an unsuspecting maiden who loved and pined in the dream of secret love towards the young officers that had crossed their path, whilst they revelled in cruel delight in their triumph over their own frail, tender-hearted sex. Our tale might unravel the plottings of hopeful mothers who vainly plied the utmost worldly ingenuity to gain for their daughters already passed the meridian of youth such promising and charming husbands. What skill it would demand to describe the chagrin of those old and young ladies, if they discovered the fraud which so heartlessly trifled with the sacred feeling of love!
We will not tarry over imaginary incidents whilst terrible and thrilling scenes are before us. The record of those extraordinary maidens is only now commending in all its romantic attraction. It is not the vicissitudes of an erring life that inspire our pen in this brief sketch, but the merciful designs of Providence in following and wresting from perdition a noble soul, endeared to heaven by the prayers of a repentant mother, by the sighs of a saintly religious, and by its own love for the immaculate Queen of Heaven.
Alvira opens her soul to the impulses of grace, but in dangerous and guilty procrastination she passes through some startling vicissitudes before the Almighty, impatient as it were for her love, draws her to him by one of the most touching miracles recorded in the wonders of hagiology. We will hurry on to those events, which will warm our hearts with love towards God, and make us look up with a deep feeling of awe towards that "mercy which is above all his works."
Three years of strange vicissitude rolled over the career of our heroines. Some thousands of pounds gilded the path they passed over. With all the recklessness of youth, they squandered their ill-gotten money. Many a poor ruined family eked out a miserable existence, whilst their gold, entrusted to the wretched banker who had gone to his account, was flung recklessly on the tables of chance by the children he had nursed in the school of iniquity. Like sand passing through the fingers, like corn through perforated sack, their thousands dwindled away, giving place to the bitter hour of retaliation, of punishment, which will yet come for those hapless children of folly.
It did not please Almighty God to hurry them to a dreadful judgement by sudden or awful death. He has other and even keener pangs than those of death, but they come rather from the hand of mercy than of justice. They are the pangs of remorse, which tear the heart of their victims with agonizing stings that are known only in the deep secrets of the soul. A dark and secret hour of retribution is at hand for Charles; the heavy but merciful hand of God will touch her, although she will still follow the mad career of her hypocrisy and the wild dreams of her ambition.
Alvira, still in her disguise of Charles, endeavored to forget the crimes she committed in the dissipation in which she indulged. Whilst wealth and friends were around she feigned a gay heart and flattered herself she was not so bad. She involuntarily blushed at rude remarks made by gentlemen amongst whom she passed as a companion, and in the unsullied innocence of her sister she found a guardian for herself. They invariably shunned low society, and thus they won the esteem of all; they passed as young men of virtue as well as of beauty and of grace. The immorality that dishonored the manhood around them, the indecency of the conversations they heard, and the open and blasphemous impiety that often thrilled their dove-like hearts, made them form a pleasing contrast with themselves and the corrupted society they had now known to the core; yet, "Say not I have sinned, and what evil hath befallen me." Who can flee from the eye of God? There's a sting in the conviction of guilt that will follow its victim through the ballroom, the mountain cave, or the cloister, to the very side of the bed of death.
It was when Charles and Henry found their money nearly gone, and the prospect of poverty before them, they felt in all its painful anticipations the prospect of a gloomy and unknown future. There is no pang, perhaps, in nature so keen as that which pierces the rich and ambitious when certain poverty stares them in the face; perhaps 'tis shame, perhaps 'tis pride, perhaps 'tis the despair that arises from the shock of blasted hopes—or all together—that weight on the sinking heart, and make each vital throb like the last heavy thud of death. Then suicide has a charm and self-destruction a temptation. Many a turbulent wave has closed the career of a the beggared spendthrift and the thwarted man of ambition.
Charles commenced now to suffer in anticipation all the pangs of coming shame, poverty, and humiliation. With remorse returned the virtuous impressions of childhood, instilled into her tender mind by her penitent mother. She longed to return to the circle nature had destined for her, but which seemed more difficult now than to commence a new disguise. Although she yielded in all virtuous impulses to that "procrastination which is the thief of time," yet in her after-career there was a wonderful combination of events, extraordinary and interesting, which prove a loving and forgiving Providence hearing the prayer of a penitent mother. But we must raise the curtain and proceed with the drama of sacred romance whose first cats have given so much interest and sympathy.
It was a bright morning in November, in the year 1684. The people of Milan were all flocking to the cathedral. It was the feast of the great St. Charles. The magnificent Duomo which now covers the shrine of this great saint was not in existence then; nevertheless, the devotion of the people towards their apostle and patron was deep and sincere. Perhaps in no city in Italy is there greater pomp thrown around the patron's festival than at Milan. From morning to night thousands gather around that venerated shrine. The prince with his liveried servants, and the poor peasant with the snow-white handkerchief tied on her head, kneel there side by side. From the first anniversary of the great saint's death to the present day the musical services of the great cathedral have been rendered by the greatest talent in Italy, Professionals and amateurs flocked from every side to do honor to the man who did so much honor to the city of Milan. Nowadays, since science has shortened distance, it is one of the autumnal amusements of the wealthy Englishman to be present at the Feast of St. Charles at Milan. The gorgeous Duomo, hewn, as it were, out of Carrara marble, covered with five thousand statues and pinnacles, illumined with hundreds of thousands of lights swinging in the lofty aisles in chandeliers of sparkling crystal; the majestic organs, accompanied in musical harmony by hundreds of the best of human voices, rolling in soul-stirring majesty over the heads of tens of thousands of the kneeling children of the saint—all leave an impression never to be forgotten. Although in modern days the city of Milan has nurtured in her bosom some of the firebrands of Italian revolution, yet the city honored with the names and relics of Ambrose, Augustine, and Charles has yet thousands of pious and holy souls, who still gather with filial devotion around the tombs of the sainted dead.
On the morning of the festival of St. Charles our heroine awoke with a heavy heart. She knew the city was astir and repairing to the cathedral. How strange she should have chosen the name of Charles! How great, how holy everything connected with that name! Could the man of God who made it so venerable to his people meet the wretch who had assumed it to dishonor it? Could even the pious people who flocked to the cathedral know there was amongst them a Charles whose hands were stained with parricidal guilt? Like the wicked man who fleeth when no man pursueth, Charles trembled lest the indignation of the people, of the saint, and of God should crush her in punishment of her sins.
With thoughts like these she entered the cathedral. Henry was by her side. The Pontifical High Mass had commenced, and the organ rolled its majestic tones through the aisles of the old church. Immense crowds had already gathered around the tomb, and Charles and Henry repaired to a quiet and obscure portion of the building, where they could observe without being observed.
Some years had now passed since Charles had breathed a prayer. There was something in everything around her that softened her heart; she buried her face in her hands and wept. An eloquent panegyric was preached by a Dominican Father. The peroration was an appeal to the assembled thousands to kneel and implore the blessing of the saint on the city and on themselves. Few sent a more fervent appeal than the poor, sinful girls who shunned the gaze of the crowd. The prayer of Charles was heard, and God, who works wonders in the least of his works, brought about the conversion of this child of predestination in a manner as strange as it is interesting.
The crowd have left the cathedral. The lights are extinguished. The service is over. Charles and Henry are amongst the last to leave. On coming into the great square before the church they were surprised to see large groups of men in deep conversation. Their excited and animated manner showed at once something strange had happened. Men of strange dress appeared also in the crowd. Charles enquired what was the matter, and was informed that word had just come that Charles II. of Spain had declared war with Naples, and, as the state of Milan was subsidiary to the kingdom of the latter, he had sent officers to cause an enrolment of troops. Large inducements were offered to all who would join, and numbers of the youth of the city had already given their names.
Charles scarcely hesitated in coming to a conclusion. The reduced state of their circumstances, the perfection of her disguise, and the still unconquered ambition of her heart made the circumstance a change of golden hope in the sinking prospects of her career. One thought alone deterred her. Could the delicate frame and soul of her little sister bear the hardships of a soldier's life? She breathed her thoughts to Henry. The latter cried and trembled. The one and only scene of blood she had witnessed still haunted her soul with horror—'twas in the ravine near Chamounix. But Charles still urged on the necessity of some desperate movement, and persuaded her, if they succeeded in joining this new service as officers, their position would be much the same as that they had passed through during the last two years. Poor Henry had but one tie to live for in the world; she preferred death to separation from her sister, and in the bravery of sisterly affection, she told Charles she would swim by her side in the river of blood she might cause to flow.
The next morning found them enrolled as officers in the army of the King of Naples.
They call'd her cold and proud,Because her lip and browAmid the mirthful crowdNo kindred mirth avowed;Alas! nor look nor language e'er revealHow much the sad can love, the lonely feel.
The peopled earth appearsA dreary desert wide;Her gloominess and tearsThe stern and gay deride.O God! life's heartless mockeries who can bearWhen grief is dumb and deep thought brings despair?
During the terrible storm that passed over the Church at the commencement of the third century, we have a thrilling incident which shows the terror and remorse of the pagan emperors when they returned to their golden house after witnessing the execution of their martyred victims.
Diocletian, being enraged with Adrian, the governor of Aninoe—who, from being an ardent persecutor of the Church, had become a fervent follower of Christ—caused him to be dragged to Nicomedia, where, seized with implacable rage a the sight of the constancy of the martyr, who had once been his friend and confidant, he ordered him to be thrown chained hand and foot, at the decline of day, into a deep pit, which was filled with earth and stones before the emperor's eyes. When the last cry of the victim had been stifled under the accumulated earth, the emperor stamped on it with his feet and cried out in a tone of defiance: "Now, Adrian, if thy Christ loves thee, let him show it."
He then quitted the field of punishment, but felt himself so overpowered by such an extraordinary feeling that he knew not whether it was the termination of his passion or the commencement of his remorse. His Thessalian courtiers bore him rapidly away from the accursed spot. Night fell; Diocletian, agitated and restless, prepared to retire to rest, for his head was burning. He entered his chamber, which was hung around with purple, but the walls of which now seemed to distil blood. He advanced a few steps, when, lo! a corpse appeared to rise slowly on his golden couch; his bed was occupied by a spectre, and near the costly lamp, which shed a pale light round the chamber, the chains of the martyr seemed to descend from the ceiling. Diocletian uttered a cry that might have penetrated the grave. His guards ran in, but instantly grew pale, drew back, and, pointing to the object which caused an icy sweat to cover the imperial brow, they said with horror to each other: "It is the Christian."
Thus a guilty conscience summons imaginary terrors around it. Cain fled when no one pursued. Nero heard invisible trumpets ringing his death-knell around the tomb of his mother. How often has the mountain bandit, whose hand trembled not at murder, shuddered with fear, as he hastened through the forest, at the sound of a branch waving in the wind, or felt his hair stand erect with terror on beholding a distant bush fantastically enlightened by the moon! Conscience has made cowards of the most sanguinary freebooters and the most shameless oppressors. The dreadful "worm that dieth not," and banishes every cheerful thought from the guilty soul, is not inaptly compared to the wretch we read of in the annals of Eastern crime, condemned to carry about with him the dead and decomposing body of his murdered victim.
It is not to be expected that Charles escaped the agonies of a guilty conscience. From the moment she left the church in Milan the usual and dreadful struggle between shame and grace, humility and pride, commenced in her heart. Although now and then forgotten in the excitement of the extraordinary disguise she had assumed, nevertheless the feeling of remorse dampened every pleasure, and added to the disguise of her person another disguise of false joy to her countenance. This reaction caused an important feature in the life of Alvira during her stay in the beautiful town of Messina, whither we must ask our reader to follow our heroines to commence in their military career the most interesting part of his historical romance.
The Milanese recruits were busily engaged in going through military instruction, when orders were received that the division should sail immediately for Messina. There are few acquainted with the military life who do not know how disagreeable are orders to move. The bustle, the packing, the breaking up of associations, and the inevitable want of comfort in the military march try the courage of the brave man more than the din of battle, and robs the military career of much of its boasted enthusiasm. The stalwart son of Mars, who forgets there are such things as danger and fatigue in the exciting hour of battle, will grumble his discontent at the inconveniences of the hour of peace. We will leave it to the imagination of the reader to conceive the feelings, the regrets and misgivings, of our young heroines as their little vessel set sail from the town of Spezzia for the fortress of Messina. Although their biographers say nothing of their voyage, we cannot but imagine it was an unpleasant one. Although the blue headlands of the Italian coast, and the snow-capped Apennines in the distance, supplied the place of the compass, and their calls at the different ports deprived their journey of the painful monotony of a long sea-voyage, yet the associations, the cloud that hung over their thoughts, embittered every source of pleasure.
Arrived at Messina, Charles and Henry were quartered in the old fortress. It was an antiquated, quadrangular edifice, perched high up on the side of the hill, looking down on beautiful white houses built one over the other, and descending in terraces to the sea. Its old walls were dilapidated and discovered by the touch of time, and threatened every minute, as it afterwards did in the earthquake of 1769, to commence the awful avalanche of destruction that swept this fair city into the sea.
The first glimpse of their barracks did not rouse in Henry any ejaculations of gladness. The old Castello, as the people called it, ill-agreed with the noble edifices she was wont to call castles in her earlier days—no lofty battlements crested with clouds; no drawbridges swung on ponderous chains; no mysterious keeps haunted with traditionary horrors; no myriads of archers in gold and blue to rend the heavens with a mighty shout of welcome. Alvira's dream of military glory was a veritable castle in the air in the presence of the ruinous, ill-kept, and dilapidated fortress they had come to reinforce.
Everything around seemed to increase the gloom that hung over Charles's heart. The ill-clad and poverty-stricken people, squatting in idleness and dirt in the streets; the miserable shops; the doce far niente so conspicuously characteristic of Italian towns, were contrasted with the beautiful and busy capitals Charles and Henry had come from. But nowhere was this contrast so keen as in their domestic arrangements. The bleak apartments, the campbed, the iron washstand, and the rough cuisine contrasted sadly with the magnificence of their father's splendid mansion in Paris. No wonder our young heroines wept when alone over the memories of the past.
Charles and Henry kept together; they avoided all society; they loved to ramble along the beautiful beach that ran for some miles on the north side of the town, and there, in floods of tears, seek relief for their broken hearts. Oh! how memory will on these occasions wake up the happy past lost and gone, and the wicked past yet to be atoned for. What heart weighted with the agony of remorse will not feel the sting of guilt more keen in the rememberance of the blissful days of innocence and childhood? Many a blue wave has wrapt in its icy shroud the child of misfortune who was unable to bear the shame and reproof of her own conscience. It was in the recollection of virtuous childhood that Charles and Henry felt their greatest sorrows. Every tender admonition of their dying mother; the instruction of the aged abbe who prepared them for their first confession and communion; and the piety and noble example of their little brother, Louis Marie, who had fled in his childhood from the world they now hated, were subjects often brought up in their lonely rambles.
At night Charles would often awake with frightful dreams. The cold, bloodstained face of her murdered father would come in awful proximity to her. Her screams would bring her fellow-officers to her assistance, but they knew not the cause of her terror. The young officers had the sympathy of the whole garrison; even the people who saw them return from their evening walk remarked them to be lonely and sad, and their eyes often red from crying.
Three long and miserable months were thus passed by our heroines at Messina. They were now as skilful in their military exercises as they were in their disguise. But wearied of the military life, and longing to return to the society of their sex, they had determined to leave, to declare who they were, and endeavor, by some means, to get back to France. Whilst deliberating on this movement an incident occurred which changed their plans and cast them again into an extraordinary circle of vicissitudes.
Whilst Charles and Henry were one evening walking along the beautiful beach they saw a ship nearing the land. A strong breeze was blowing at the time, and whilst they paused to admire the noble bark, all sails set, ploughing the crested billows, and floating over them like an enormous sea-gull, she came nearer and nearer to the young officers. Another minute the sails were lowered and anchor was cast. A small boat was dispatched from the ship, and made for the beach just where Charles and Henry were standing. They formed a thousand conjectures of the meaning of this movement. When the boat came near the land, a tall young man, dressed in the uniform of the Neapolitan service, leaped on shore and advanced towards the young officers.
A few words of recognition passed. He was a lieutenant in the Neopolitan army, sent with despatches for the commandant of the garrison of Messina to send two or three companies of the newly-enrolled troops to the capital.
On the way to the garrison he informed Charles and Henry that the war was nearly at an end, but there was a great deal of disturbance and sedition in the city of Naples, and that the garrison there had to be doubled. The object in anchoring the ship on the coast was for fear the garrison of Messina might have been surprised and taken by the Carlists. Having assured himself all was safe, he entered the citadel with the young officers, and was presented to the captain, to whom he handed his despatches from headquarters.
The next evening found Henry and Charles, with two hundred men, on board the ship that had anchored on the coast the day before. The The excitement and bustle of departure had silenced for a while all feelings of remorse, and the old passions that reigned in the soul of Charles rose again from their dormant state. Her eye flashed with life and her lips quivered with joy; there was still within her grasp the chance of fame. Ambition fanned the dying embers of decaying hope, and every pious resolve was thrown aside until the course of events would realize or blast her new dream of greatness.
A few days brought them in sight of the beautiful capital of the south of Italy. The modern aphorism, "See Naples and then die," was said in other words in old times, when the Caesars and Senators of the empire enriched its beautiful shores with superb villas. There is not in Europe a bluer sky and, true in its refection of the azure firmament, a bluer sea than around Naples. The coast undulates to the sea in verdant slopes, which in autumn have a rich golden hue from the yellow tinge of the vine-leaf. Its classic fame casts a halo around its charms; its history in the far past, its terrible mountain and periodical convulsions from the burning womb of the earth, render it an object of attraction to all classes.
Charles and Henry were quite alive to the impressions felt by tourists when, whirled along by the panting steam-horse through the luxuriant Campo Flice, they see for the first time the column of murky smoke that rises to the clouds over the terrible Vesuvius. The old mountain was then, as it is now, the terror and the attraction of tourists. The catastrophes it has caused, the cities it has swallowed up in molten ashes, the thunder of its roar when roused from its sleep, and the unhealthy, sulphurous vapors ever vomited from its cone, render it a veritable giant that the human race loves to see at a distance.
Our heroines were already acquainted with the "Light-house of the Mediterranean," and from afar the lofty and ever-blazing, active Etna; hence Vesuvius was not so attractive as a volcano as in the halo of classic lore that hung around it. At a distance the mountain seems to be harmless, the blue outline of the lofty cone terminating in a dense bank of smoke, like stormclouds gathering around the snowy peaks of the distant Apennines; but when the adventurous tourist wishes to approach nearer to its blazing crater, and toils up its torn and blackened sides, he will see in the immense chasms and rents traces of might convulsions. Deep rivers of molten lava that take twenty and thirty years to cool; the quantity of ashes and cinders that could change the whole face of a country and bury five cities in a few hours, must tell of the enormous furnace raging in the bowels of the earth, of which Vesuvius is but its chimney.
Strange, Charles longed to see Vesuvius when but a tender girl in Paris. She little thought the extraordinary course of human events would bring her, not only under the shadow of the terrible mountain itself, but send her through a most thrilling scene on its barren slopes. Let us hasten on to the course of events that rendered the extraordinary life of this girl so romantic.