In half-an-hour the Count came and assured the company that Marguerite was out of danger, as far as her life was concerned. With a side-glance at Moritz, he added that he hoped to remove all cause of mischief from her mind as well. He desired that a maid should sit up with the patient, whilst he himself would spend the night in the next room, to be at hand in case anything fresh should transpire; but he wished to prepare and strengthen himself for this by a few more glasses of wine; for which end he sat down at table with the other gentlemen, whilst Angelica and her mother, being upset by what had happened, withdrew.
The Colonel was greatly annoyed at this silly trick, as he called it, of Marguerite's, and Moritz and Dagobert felt very eery and uncanny over the whole affair; but the more out of tune they were the more did the Count give the rein to a joviality which had never been seen in him before, and which, in sober truth, had a certain amount of gruesomeness about it.
"This Count," Dagobert said to Moritz, as they walked away, "has a something most eerily repugnant to me about him, in some strange inexplicable way. I cannot help a feeling that there must be something exceedingly mysterious connected with him."
"Ah!" said Moritz, "there is a weight as of lead on my heart. I am filled with a dim foreboding that some dark mischance threatens my love."
That night the Colonel was aroused from sleep by a courier from the Residenz. Next morning he came to his wife, looking rather pale, and constraining himself to a calmness which he was far from feeling, said, "We have to be parted again, dearest child. There's going to be another campaign, after this little bit of a rest. I shall have to march off with the regiment as soon as ever I can, perhaps this evening."
Madame von G---- was greatly startled; she broke out into bitter weeping. The Colonel said, by way of consolation, that he felt sure this campaign would end as gloriously as the last--that he felt in such admirable spirits about it that he was certain nothing could go amiss. "What you had better do," he said, "is, take Angelica with you to the country-house, and stay there till we send the enemy to the rightabout again. I am providing you with a companion who will keep you amused, and prevent your feeling lonely. Count S---- is going with you."
"What!" cried Madame von G----. "Good heavens! the Count to go with us!--Angelica's rejected lover--that deceitful Italian, who is hiding his annoyance in the bottom of his heart, only to bring it out in fullest force at the first proper opportunity; this Count who--I cannot say why--seems more intensely antipathetic to me since yesterday than ever?"
"Good God!" the Colonel cried; "there really is no bearing with the nonsensical ideas--the silly dreams--which your sex gets into its head. The magnanimity of soul of a man of his firmness and fineness of character is too much for you to comprehend. The Count passed the whole night in the room next to Marguerite's, as he said he should do. He was the first person I told the news of the fresh campaign to. It would scarcely be possible for him to go home now. This was very annoying to him, and I gave him the option of going to our country-place and staying there. He accepted my offer, after much hesitation, and gave me his word of honour that he would do everything in his power to take care of you, and make the time of our separation pass as quickly as possible. You know what obligations I am under to him. My country-place is, just now, a real asylum for him; could I refuse him that?"
Madame von G---- could say nothing further. The Colonel did as he had said he would. In the course of the evening the trumpets sounded boot and saddle, and every description of nameless pain and heart-breaking sorrow came upon the loving ones.
A few days after, when Marguerite had recovered, the three ladies went off to the country-house. The Count followed, with a number of servants.
And at first, the Count, showing the utmost delicacy of feeling, was careful never to enter the ladies' presence except when they sent for him specially; at all other times he remained in his own rooms, or went for solitary walks.
At first the campaign seemed to go rather in favour of the enemy, but important successes were soon scored against him, and the Count was always the very first to hear the news of those operations, and particularly the most accurate and minute intelligence of what was happening to the regiment which the Colonel commanded. In the bloodiest engagements neither the Colonel nor Moritz had met with so much as a scratch; and the despatches from headquarters confirmed this.
Thus the Count always appeared to the ladies in the character of a heavenly messenger of victory and good-fortune; besides this, all his behaviour betokened the most deep and sincere attachment to Angelica, which he exhibited to her as the tenderest of fathers might have done, occupied constantly about her happiness. Both she and her mother were compelled to admit to themselves that the Colonel's opinion of this tried friend of his was the correct one, and that all their--and other people's--prejudices against him had been the most preposterous fancies. At the same time Marguerite seemed to be quite cured of her foolish passion, and to have become the same gay, talkative, sprightly French lady whom we saw at an earlier period.
A letter from the Colonel to his wife, enclosing one from Moritz to Angelica, dispelled the last remnant of anxiety. The enemy's capital city was captured, and an armistice established.
Angelica was floating in a sea of blissfulness; and always it was the Count who spoke of the brave deeds of Moritz, and of the happiness which was opening its blossoms for the lovely future bride. After such speeches he would take Angelica's hand, press it to his heart, and ask if he were still as hateful to her as ever. With blushes and tears she would assure him that she had never hated him, but that she had loved Moritz too deeply and exclusively not to dread the idea of any other suitor for her hand. And the Count would say, very solemnly and seriously, "Look on me as your true, sincere, fatherly friend, Angelica," breathing a gentle kiss upon her forehead, which she suffered without ill-will; for it felt much like one of her father's kisses, which he used to apply about the same place.
It was almost expected that the Colonel would very soon be home again, when a letter from him arrived containing the terrible news that Moritz had been set upon by some armed peasants, as he was passing with his orderly through a village. Those peasants shot him down at the side of the brave trooper, who managed to fight his way through; but the peasants carried Moritz away. Thus the joy with which the house was inspired was suddenly turned into the deepest and most inconsolable sorrow.
The Colonel's household was all in busy movement from roof to ceiling. Servants in gay liveries were hurrying to and fro; carriages filled with guests were rattling into the courtyard, the Colonel in person receiving them with his new order on his breast.
In her room upstairs sate Angelica in wedding-dress, beaming in the full pride of her loveliness: her mother was with her.
"My dearest child," said the latter, "you have of your own free will accepted Count S---- as your husband. Much as jour father desired this, he has never at all insisted on it since poor Moritz's death; indeed, it seems to me as though he had had much of the feeling which (I cannot hide from you) I have had myself; it is utterly incomprehensible to me how you can have forgotten poor Moritz so soon. However, the time has come; you are giving your hand to the Count. Examine your own heart. It is not yet too late. May the remembrance of him whom you have forgotten never fall across your heart like some black shadow."
"Never," cried Angelica, while the tears ran down her cheeks, "never can I forget Moritz. Never; oh! never can I love as I lovedhim! What I feel for the Count is something totally different. I cannot explain how it is that the Count has made me feel this irresistible attachment to him; but feel it I do, in every fibre of my being. It is not that I love him: I do not; I cannot love him in the way I loved Moritz; but I feel as if I could not, and cannot live apart from him--without him--independently of him. That it is only through him that I can think and feel. A spirit voice seems perpetually enjoining me to cleave to him as a wife; telling me that Imustdo so, and that unless I do there is no further, or other life possible for me here below. And I obey this voice, which I believe to be the mysterious prompting of Providence."
The maid here came in to say that Marguerite, who had been missing since the early part of the morning, had not made her appearance yet, but that the Gardener had just brought a little note which she had given him, with instructions to deliver it when he had finished his work and taken the last of the flowers to the Castle. It was as follows:--
"You will never see me more; a dark mystery drives me from your house. I implore you--you, who have been to me as a tender mother--not to have me followed, or brought back by force. My second attempt to kill myself will be more successful than the first. May Angelica enjoy to the full that bliss, the idea of which pierces my heart. Farewell for ever! Forget the unfortunate Marguerite."
"What is this?" cried Madame von G----; "the poor soul seems to have set her whole mind upon destroying our happiness. Must she always come in your way just as you are going to give your hand to the man of your choice? Let her go; the foolish, ungrateful thing, whom I treated and cared for as if she had been my own daughter. I shall certainly never trouble my head about her any more."
Angelica cried bitterly at the loss of her whom she had looked on as a sister; her mother implored her not to waste a thought on the foolish creature at such an important time.
The guests were assembled in thesalon, ready, as soon as the appointed hour should come, to go to the little chapel where a catholic priest was to marry the couple. The Colonel led in the bride. Everyone marvelled at her beauty, which was enhanced by the simple richness of her dress. The Count had not arrived. One quarter of an hour succeeded another, and still he did not make his appearance. The Colonel went to the Count's rooms. There he found his valet, who said his master, just when he was fully dressed for the ceremony, had suddenly felt unwell, and had gone out for a turn in the park, hoping the fresh air would revive him, and forbidding him, the valet, to follow him.
The Colonel could not explain to himself why it was that this proceeding of the Count's fell on him with such a weight--why it was that an idea immediately came to him that something terrible had happened. He sent back to the house to say that the Count would come very shortly, and that a celebrated doctor, who was one of the guests, was to be privately told to come out to him as quickly as possible. As soon as he came, he, the Colonel and the valet, went to search for the Count in the park. Striking out of the main alley, they went to an open space surrounded by thick shrubberies, which the Colonel remembered to have been a favourite resort of the Count's; and there they saw him sitting on a mossy bank, dressed all in black, with his star sparkling on his breast, and his hands folded, leaning his back against an elder-tree in full blossom, staring, motionless, before him. They shuddered at the sight, for his hollow, darkly-gleaming eyes were evidently devoid of the faculty of vision.
"Count S----! what has happened?" the Colonel cried; but there was no answer, no movement, not the slightest appearance of respiration. The doctor hurried forward; tore off the Count's coat, waistcoat, and neckcloth, and rubbed his brow: turning then to the Colonel, he said in hollow tones, "Human help is useless here. He is dead!--there has been an attack of apoplexy!"
The valet broke out into loud lamentations. The Colonel, mastering his inward horror with all his soldierly self-control, ordered him to hold his peace, saying, "If we are not careful what we are about, we shall kill Angelica on the spot." He caused the body to be taken up and carried by unfrequented paths to a pavilion at some distance, of which he happened to have the key in his pocket. There he left it under the valet's charge, and, with the doctor, went back to the chateau again. Hovering between one resolve and another, he could not make up his mind whether to conceal the whole matter from Angelica, or tell her, calmly and quietly, the terrible truth.
When he came into the house he found everything in the utmost confusion and consternation. Angelica, in the middle of an animated conversation, had suddenly closed her eyes, and fallen into a state of profound insensibility. She was lying on a sofa in an adjoining room. Her face was not pale, nor in the least distorted; the roses of her cheeks bloomed brighter and fresher than ever, and her face shone with an indescribable expression of happiness and delight. She was as one penetrated with the highest blissfulness. The doctor, after observing her with the minutest carefulness of examination for a long while, declared that there was not the least cause for anxiety in her condition, nor the slightest danger. He said she was (although it was entirely inexplicablehowshe was) in a magnetized condition, and that he would not venture to awaken her from it: she would wake from it of her own accord presently.
Meanwhile mysterious whisperings arose amongst the guests. The sudden death of the Count seemed to have somehow got wind, and they all dispersed in gloomy silence. One could hear the carriages rolling away.
Madame von G----, bending over Angelica, watched her every respiration. She seemed to be whispering words, but none could hear or understand them. The doctor would not allow her to be undressed; even her gloves were not to be taken off; he said it would be hurtful even to touch her.
All at once she opened her eyes, started up from the sofa, and, with a resounding cry of "Here he is!" "Here he is!" went rushing out of the room, through the ante-chamber and down the stairs.
"She is out of her mind," cried Madame von G----. "Oh, God of Heaven, she is mad!" "No, no," the Doctor said, "this is not madness; there is something altogether unheard of taking place," with which he hastened after her down the steps.
He saw her speeding like an arrow, with her arms lifted up above her head, out of the gate and away along the broad high road, her rich lace-ornamented dress fluttering, and her hair, which had come down, streaming in the wind.
A man on horseback was coming tearing up towards her; when he reached her, he sprang from his horse and clasped her in his arms. Two other riders who were following him drew rein and dismounted.
The Colonel, who had followed the doctor in hot haste, stood gazing on the group in speechless astonishment, rubbing his forehead, as if striving to keep firm hold of his thoughts.
It was Moritz who was holding Angelica fast pressed to his heart; beside him stood Dagobert, and a fine-looking young man in the handsome uniform of a Russian General.
"No," cried Angelica over and over again, as the lovers embraced one another, "I was never untrue to you, my beloved Moritz." And Moritz cried, "Oh, I know that; I know that quite well, my darling angel-child. He enchanted you by his satanic arts."
And he more carried than led her back to the chateau, while the others followed in silence. Not till he came to the castle did the Colonel give a profound sigh, as if it was only then that he came fully to his senses; and, looking round him with questioning glances, said, "What miracles! what extraordinary events!"
"Everything will be explained," said Moritz, presenting the stranger to the Colonel as General Bogislav von Se----n, a Russian officer, his most intimate friend.
As soon as they came into the chateau, Moritz, with a wild look, and unheeding the Colonel's alarmed amazement, cried out, "Where is Count von S----i?"
"Among the dead!" said the Colonel, in a hollow voice, "he was seized with apoplexy an hour ago."
Angelica shrank and shuddered. "Yes," she said, "that I know. At the very instant when he died I felt as though some crystal thing within my being shivered, and broke with a 'kling.' I fell into an extraordinary state. I think I must have gone on carrying that frightful dream (which I told you of) further, because, when I came to look at matters again, I found that those terrible eyes had no more power over me; the web of fire loosened and broke away. Heavenly blissfulness was all about me. I saw Moritz, my own Moritz; he was coming to me. I flew to meet him," and she clasped her arms round him as if she thought he was going to escape from her again.
"Praised be Heaven," said Madame von G----. "Now the weight has gone from my heart which was stifling it. I am freed from that inexpressible anxiety and alarm which came upon me at the instant when Angelica promised to marry that terrible Count. I always felt as though she were betrothing herself to mysterious, unholy powers with her betrothal ring."
General von Se----n expressed a desire to see the Count's remains, and when the body was uncovered and he saw the pale countenance now fixed in death, he cried, "By Heaven, it is he! It is none other than himself."
Angelica had fallen into a gentle sleep in Moritz's arms, and had been carried to her bed, the doctor thinking that nothing more beneficial could have happened to her than this slumber, which would rest the life-spirits, overstrained as they had been. He considered that in this manner a threatening illness would be naturally dispelled.
"Now," said the Colonel, "it is time to solve all those riddles and explain all those miraculous events. Tell us, Moritz, what angel of Heaven has called you back to life?"
"You know," said Moritz, "all about the murderous and treacherous attack which was made upon me near S----, though the armistice had been proclaimed. I was struck by a bullet, and fell from my horse. How long I lay in that deathlike state I cannot tell. When I first awoke to a dim consciousness, I was being moved somewhere, travelling. It was dark night; several voices were whispering near me. They were speaking French. Thus I knew that I was badly wounded and in the hands of the enemy. This thought came upon me with all its horror, and I sank again into a deep fainting fit. After that came a condition which has only left me the recollection of a few hours of violent headache; but at last, one morning, I awoke to complete consciousness. I found myself in a comfortable, almost sumptuous bed, with silk curtains and great cords and tassels. The room was lofty, and had silken hangings and richly-gilt tables and chairs, in the old French style. A strange man was bending over me and looking closely into my face. He hurried to a bell-rope and pulled at it hard. Presently the doors opened, and two men came in, the elder of whom had on an old-fashioned embroidered coat, and the cross of Saint Louis. The younger came to me, felt my pulse, and said to the elder, in French, 'All danger is over; he is saved.' The elder gentleman now introduced himself to me as the Chevalier de T----. The house was his in which I found myself. He said he had chanced, on a journey, to be passing through the village at the very moment when the treacherous attack was made upon me, and the peasants were going to plunder me. He succeeded in rescuing me, had me put into a conveyance, and brought to his chateau, which was quite out of the way of the military routes of communication. Here his own body-surgeon had applied himself to the arduous task of curing me of my very serious wound in the head. He said, in conclusion, that he loved my nation, which had shown him kindness in the stormy revolutionary times, and was delighted to be able to be of service to me. Everything in his chateau which could conduce to my comfort or amusement was freely at my disposal, and he would not, on any pretence, allow me to leave him until all risk, whether from my wound or the insecurity of the routes, should be over. All that he regretted was the impossibility of communicating with my friends for the moment, so as to let them know where I was.
"The Chevalier was a widower, and his sons were not with him, so that there were no other occupants of the chateau but himself, the surgeon, and a great retinue of servants. It would only weary you were I to tell you at length how I grew better and better under the care of the exceedingly able surgeon, and how the Chevalier did everything he possibly could to make my hermit's life agreeable to me. His conversation was more intellectual, and his views less shallow, than is usually the case with his countrymen. He talked on arts and sciences, but avoided the more novel and recent developments of them as much as possible. I need not tell you that my sole thought was Angelica, that it burned my soul to know that she was plunged in sorrow for my death. I constantly urged the Chevalier to get letters conveyed to our headquarters. He always declined to do so, on account of the uncertainty of the attempt, as it seemed as good as certain that fighting was going on again; but he consoled me by promising that as soon as I was quite convalescent he would have me sent home safe and sound, happen what might. From what he said I was led to suppose that the campaign was going on again, and to the advantage of the allies, and that he was avoiding telling me so in words from a wish to spare my feelings. But I need only mention one or two little incidents to justify the strange conjectures which Dagobert has formed in his mind. I was nearly free from fever, when one night I suddenly fell into an incomprehensible condition of dreaminess, the recollection of which makes me shudder, though that recollection is of the dimmest and most shadowy kind. I saw Angelica, but her form seemed to be dissolving away indistinctly in a trembling radiance, and I strove in vain to hold it fast before me. Another being pressed in between us, laid herself on my breast, and grasped my heart within me, in the depths of my entity; and while I was perishing in the most glowing torment, I was at the same time penetrated with a strange miraculous sense of bliss. Next morning my eyes fell on a picture hanging near the bed, which I had never seen there before. I shuddered, for it was Marguerite beaming on me with her black brilliant eyes. I asked the servant whose picture it was, and where it came from. He said it was the Chevalier's niece, the Marquise de T----, and had always been where it was now, only I had not noticed it; it had been freshly dusted the day before. The Chevalier said the same. So that, whilst--waking or dreaming--my sole desire was to see Angelica, what was continually before me was Marguerite. It seemed to me that I was alienated, estranged, from myself. Some exterior foreign power seemed to have possession of me, ruling me, taking supreme command of me. I felt that I could not get away from Marguerite. Never shall I forget the torture of that condition.
"One morning, as I was lying in a window seat, refreshing my whole being by drinking in the perfume and the freshness which the morning breeze was wafting to me, I heard trumpets in the distance, and recognized a cheery march-tune of Russian cavalry. My heart throbbed with rapture and delight. It was as if friendly spirits were coming to me, wafted on the wings of the wind, speaking to me in lovely voices of comfort, as if a newly-won life was stretching out hands to me to lift me from the coffin in which some hostile power had nailed me up. One or two horsemen came up with lightning speed, right into the castle enclosure. I looked down, and saw Bogislav. In the excess of my joy I shouted out his name; the Chevalier came in, pale and annoyed, stammering out something about an unexpected billeting, and all sorts of trouble and annoyance. Without attending to him, I ran downstairs and threw myself into Bogislav's embrace.
"To my astonishment, I now learned that peace had been proclaimed a long time before, and that the greater part of the troops were on their homeward march. All this the Chevalier had concealed from me, keeping me on in the chateau as his prisoner. Neither Bogislav nor I knew anything in the shape of a motive for this conduct. But each of us dimly felt that there must be something in the nature of foul play about it. The Chevalier was quite a different man from that moment, sulky and peevish. Even to lack of good breeding, he wearied us with continual exhibitions of self-will, and naggling about trifles. Nay, when, in the purest gratitude, I spoke enthusiastically of his having saved my life, he smiled malignantly; and, in fact, his whole conduct was that of an incomprehensible eccentric.
"After a halt of eight-and-forty hours for rest, Bogislav marched off again, and I went with him. We were delighted when we turned our backs on the strange old-world place, which now looked to me like some gloomy, uncanny prison-house. But now, Dagobert, do you go on, for it is quite your turn to continue the account of the rest of the strange adventures which we have met with."
"How," began Dagobert, "can we doubt, and hesitate to believe in, the marvellous power of foreboding, and fore-knowing, events which lie so deep in man's nature? I never believed that my friend was dead. That Spirit or Intelligence (call it whatever you choose) which speaks to us, comprehensibly, from out our own selves, in our dreams, told me that Moritz was alive, and that, somehow and somewhere, he was being held fast in bonds of some most mysterious nature. Angelica's relations with the Count cut me to the heart; and when, some little time ago, I came here and found her in a peculiar condition, which, I am obliged to say, caused me an inward horror (because I seemed to see, as in a magic mirror, some terrible mysterious secret), there ripened in me a resolve that I would go on a pilgrimage, by land and water, until I should find my friend Moritz. I say not a word of my delight when I found him, on German ground, at A----, and in the company of General von S----en.
"All the furies of hell awoke in his breast when he heard of Angelica's betrothal to the Count; but all his execrations and heart-breaking lamentations at her unfaithfulness to him were silenced when I told him of certain ideas which I had formed, and assured him that it was in his power to set the whole matter straight in a moment. General von Se----en shuddered when I mentioned the Count's name to him, and when, at his desire, I described his face, figure, and appearance, he cried, 'Yes, there can be no further doubt. He is the very man!'"
"You will be surprised," here interrupted the General, "to hear me say that this Count S----i, many years ago, in Naples, carried away from me, by means of diabolical arts, a lady whom I deeply and fondly loved. At the very instant when I ran my sword through his body, both she and I were seized upon by a hellish illusion which parted us for ever. I have long known that the wounds which I gave him were not dangerous in the slightest degree, that he became a suitor for the lady's hand, and, alas! that on the very day when she was to have been married to him, she fell down dead, stricken by what was said to be an attack of apoplexy."
"Good Heavens!" cried Madame von G----. "No doubt a similar fate was hanging over my darling child! But how is it that I feel this is so?"
"The voice of the boding Spirit tells you so, Madame," said Dagobert.
"And then," said Madame von G----, "that terrible apparition which Moritz was telling us of that evening when the Count came in in such a mysterious way?"
"As I was telling you then," said Moritz, "there fell a crashing blow. An ice-cold deathly air blew upon me, and it seemed to me that a pale indistinct form went hovering and rustling across the room, in wavering, scarcely distinguishable outlines. I mastered my terror with all the might of my reason. All I seemed to be conscious of was that Bogislav was lying stiff, cold, and rigid, like a man dead. When he had been brought back to consciousness, with great pains and trouble, by the doctor who was summoned, he feebly reached out his hand to me, and said, 'Soon, to-morrow at latest, all my sorrows will be over.' And it really happened as he said, though it was the will of Providence that it should come about in quite a different way to that which we anticipated. In the thick of the fighting, next morning, a spent ball struck him on the breast and knocked him out of his saddle. This kindly ball shattered the portrait of his false love, which he wore next to his heart, into a thousand splinters. His contusion soon healed, and since that moment Bogislav has been quite free from everything of an uncanny nature."
"It is as he says," said the General, "and the very memory of her who is lost to me does no more than produce in me that gentle sadness which is so soothing to the heart. But I hope our friend Dagobert will go on to tell you what happened to us further."
"We made all haste away from A----," Dagobert resumed, "and this morning, just as day was breaking, we reached the little town of P---, about six miles from this place, meaning to rest there for an hour or two, and then come on here. Imagine the feelings of Moritz and me when, from one of the rooms in the inn, we saw Marguerite come bursting out upon us, with insanity clearly written on her pallid face. She fell at Moritz's feet and embraced his knees, weeping bitterly, calling herself the blackest of criminals, worthy a thousand deaths. She implored him to end her life on the spot. Moritz repulsed her with the deepest abhorrence, and rushed away from the house."
"Yes," said Moritz, "when I saw Marguerite at my feet, all the torments of that terrible condition in which I had been at the Chevalier's came back upon me, goading me into a state of fury such as I had never known before. I could scarcely help running my sword through her heart; but I succeeded in mastering myself, and I made my escape after a mighty effort."
"I lifted Marguerite up from the floor," Dagobert continued, "and helped her to her room. I succeeded in calming her, and heard her tell me, in broken sentences, exactly what I had expected and anticipated. She gave me a letter from the Count, which had reached her the previous midnight. I have it here."
He produced it, and read it as follows:--
"Fly, Marguerite! All is lost! The detested one is coming quickly. All my science, knowledge, and skill are of no avail to me as against the dark fate and destiny about to overtake me at the very culminating point of my career.
"Marguerite, I have initiated you into mysteries which would have annihilated any ordinary woman had she endeavoured to comprehend them. But you, with your exceptional mental powers, and firm, strong will and resolution, have been a worthy pupil to the deeply experienced master. Your help has been most precious to me. It was through you that I controlled Angelica's mind, and all her inner being. And, to reward you, it was my desire to prepare for you the bliss of your life, according to the manner in which your heart conceived it; and I dared to enter within circles the most mysterious, the most perilous. I undertook operations which often terrified even myself. In vain. Fly, or your destruction is certain. Until the supreme moment comes I shall battle bravely on against the hostile powers. But I know well that that supreme moment brings to me instant death. But I will die all alone. When the supreme moment comes I shall go to that mysterious tree, under whose shadow I have so often spoken to you of the wondrous secrets which were known to me, and at my command.
"Marguerite, keep aloof from those secrets for evermore. Nature, terrible mother, angry when her precocious children prematurely pry into her secrets and pluck at the veil which covers her mysteries, throws to them some glittering toy which lures them on until its destroying power is directed against them. I myself once caused the death of a woman, who perished at the very moment when I thought I was going to take her to my heart with the most fervid affection; and this paralysed my powers. Yet, dolt that I was, I still thought I should find bliss here on earth. Farewell, Marguerite, farewell. Go back to your own country. Go to S----. The Chevalier de T---- will charge himself with your welfare and happiness. Farewell."
As Dagobert read this letter, all the auditors felt an inward shudder, and Madame von G---- said, "I shall be compelled to believe in things which my whole heart and soul refuse to credit. However, I certainly never could understand now it was that Angelica forgot Moritz so quickly and devoted herself to the Count. At the same time I cannot but remember that she was all the time in an extraordinary, unnatural condition of excitement, and that was a circumstance which filled me with the most torturing anxiety. I remember that her inclination for the Count showed itself at first in a very strange way. She told me she used to have the most vivid and delightful dreams of him nearly every night."
"Exactly," said Dagobert. "Marguerite told me that, by the Count's directions, she used to sit whole nights by Angelica's bedside, breathing the Count's name into her ear very, very softly. And the Count would very often come into the room about midnight, fix a steadfast gaze on Angelica for several minutes together, and then go away again. But now that I have read you the Count's letter, is there any need of commentary? His aim was to operate psychically upon the Inner Principle by various mysterious processes and arts, and in this he succeeded, by virtue of special qualifications of his nature. There were most intimate relations between him and the Chevalier de T----, both of them being members of that secret society or 'school' which has a certain number of representatives in France and Italy, and is supposed to be descended from, or a continuation of, the celebrated P---- school. It was at the Count's instigation that the Chevalier kept Moritz so long shut up in his chateau, and practised all sorts of love-spells on him. I myself could go deeper into this subject, and say more about the mysterious means by which the Count could influence the Psychic Principle of others, as Marguerite divulged some of them to me. I could explain many matters by a science which is not altogether unknown to me, though I prefer not to call it by its name, for fear of being misunderstood. However, I had rather avoid all those subjects, to-day at all events."
"Oh, pray avoid them for ever," cried Madame von G----. "No more reference to the dark, unknown realm, the abode of fear and horror. I thank the Eternal Power, which has rescued my beloved child, and freed us from the uncanny guest who brought us such terrible trouble."
It was arranged that they should go back to town the following day, except the Colonel and Dagobert, who stayed behind to see to the burial of the Count's remains.
When Angelica had long been Moritz's happy wife, it chanced that one stormy November evening the family, and Dagobert, were sitting round the fire in the very room into which Count S---- had made his entry in such a spectral fashion. Just as then, mysterious voices were piping, awakened by the storm-wind in the chimney.
"Do you remember?" said Madame von G----.
"Come, come," cried the Colonel; "no ghost stories, I beg." But Angelica and Moritz spoke of what their feelings had been on that evening long ago; of their having been so devotedly in love with each other, and unable to help attaching the most overweening importance to every little incident which occurred: how the pure beam of that love of theirs had been reflected by everything, and even the sweet bond of alarm wove itself out of loving, longing hearts--and how the Uncanny Guest, heralded by all the spectral voices of ill-omen, had brought terror upon them. "Does it not seem to you, dearest Moritz," said Angelica, "that the strange tones of the storm-wind, as we hear them now, are speaking to us, only of our love, in the kindliest possible tones?"
"Yes! yes!" said Dagobert, "and the singing of the kettle sounds to-night tomemuch more like a little cradle song than anything eerie."
Angelica hid her blushing face on Moritz's breast. Andhe--for his part--clasped his arm round his beautiful wife, and softly whispered, "Is there, here below, a higher bliss than this?"
"I see very plainly," said Ottmar, when he had finished, and the friends still sat in gloomy silence, "that my little story has not pleased you particularly, so we had better not say much more about it, but consign it to oblivion."
"The very best thing we could do," said Lothair.
"And yet," Cyprian said, "I must take up the cudgels for my friend. Of course you will say that I am to some extent mixed up in the matter--that Ottmar has taken a good many of the germs of the story from me, and on this occasion has been cooking in my kitchen, so that you won't be disposed to allow me to be a judge in the case. Yet, unless you mean to condemn everything without the slightest remorse, like so many Rhadamanthuses--you must admit, yourselves, that there is much in Ottmar's story which must be allowed to pass as genuinely Serapiontic; the beginning, for instance."
"Quite right," said Theodore; "the party round the tea-table may pass as from the life, as well as many other points during the course of the tale. But, to speak candidly, we have had a very large assortment of spectral characters such as the stranger Count, and it will soon be a difficult matter to go on giving them novelty and originality. He is too much like Alban in 'The Magnetizer.' You know the tale I mean, and indeed that story and Ottmar's have both the samemotif. Wherefore I wish I might beg our Ottmar and you, Cyprian, to leave monsters of that sort out of the game in future. For Ottmar this will be possible, but for you, Cyprian, I am not so sure that it will. So that we shall have to allowyouto serve us up a 'Spook' of the kind now and then, I suppose, only stipulating that it shall be truly Serapiontic,i.e.come out of the very inmost depths of your imagination. Moreover 'The Magnetizer'seemsrhapsodical, but the 'Uncanny Guest' is rhapsodical in very truth."
"I must take up the cudgels for my friend in this respect too," said Cyprian, "and tell you that, in the very neighbourhood of this place where we are at this moment, there actually happened an event, not very long ago, by no means unlike the incidents of this story. Into a quiet happy group of friends, just when supernatural matters were forming the subject of conversation, there suddenly came a stranger, who struck every one as being uncanny and terrifying, notwithstanding his apparent everydayness, and seeming belonging to the common level. By his arrival this stranger not only spoiled the enjoyment of the evening in question, but subsequently destroyed the peace and happiness of the family for a long period. Even at this day deadly shudders seize a happy wife when she thinks of the crafty wickedness with which this person tried to entangle her in his nets. I told this at the time to Ottmar, and nothing made a greater impression on him than the moment when the stranger made his spectral entry, and the sense of the propinquity of the hostile Spiritual Principle seized upon every one present with a sudden terror. This moment came vividly to Ottmar's mind, and formed the groundwork of his tale."
"But," said Ottmar, "as a single incident is far from being a complete story--which ought to spring perfect and complete from its author's brain, like Minerva from the head of Jupiter--my tale is of course not worth much as a whole, and it is little to my credit, I suppose, that I took advantage of two or three incidents which really happened, weaving them--not without some little success perhaps--into a network of the imaginary."
"Yes," said Lothair, "you are right, my friend. A single striking incident is far from being a tale, just as one well-imagined theatrical situation is a long way from constituting a play. This reminds me of the way in which a certain playwright (who no longer walks this world, and whose terrible death certainly atoned for any shortcomings of his during his life, and reconciled his worst enemies to him) used to construct his pieces. In a company where I was present, he said, without any concealment, that he selected some one's good dramatic situation which occurred to him, and then, solely for the sake of that, hung a canvas round it and painted away upon it 'just whatever came in his head,' or 'as best he could,' to use his own expressions. This gave me a complete explanation of, and threw a dazzling flood of light upon, the whole character and inner being of that writer's pieces, particularly those of his later period. None of them is without some very happily devised central situation, but all round this the scenes, which he made up out of commonplace material, are woven like a loosely knitted web, although the hand of that weaver, skilled as it is intechnique, is never to be mistaken."
"Never, say you?" remarked Theodore. "I have been always waiting and looking out for the points where that writer would abandon his commonplaces, and rise into the region of romance and true poetry. The most striking and melancholy instance of what I mean is the so-called Romantic Drama, 'Deodata'; a strange nondescript production, on which a clever composer ought not to have wasted capital music. There can be no more striking proof of the utter want of infelt poetry, of any conception of the higher dramatic life, than where the author of 'Deodata,' in his preface, finds fault with Opera because it is unnatural that people should sing on the stage, and next goes on to explain that he has been at pains to introduce the singing, which is incidental to it, always in a natural manner."
"De mortuis nil nisi bonum," said Cyprian, "let the dead repose in peace."
"And all the more," said Lothair, "that I see midnight is close at hand, and he might avail himself of that circumstance to give us a box or two on the ear (as he is said to have done to his critics in life) with his invisible fist."
Just then the carriage which Lothair had sent for on account of Theodore's still invalid condition, came rolling up, and the friends went back in it to town.
It so happened that some irresistible psychic force had impelled Sylvester back to town, although, as a rule, nothing in the world would induce him to leave the country at the time of year when the weather was at its pleasantest. A little theatrical piece which he had written was going to be produced, and it seems an impossibility for an author to miss a first performance of one of his pieces, even though he may have to contend with a world of trouble and anxiety in connection with it. Moreover, Vincent, too, had emerged from the crowd, so that, for the time at least, the Serapion Brotherhood was fairly reestablished; they held their meeting in the same pleasant public-garden where they had last assembled.
Sylvester was not like the same man; he was in better spirits and more talkative than when he was last seen, and taking him all over, like one who had experienced some piece of great good fortune.
"Was it not well," said Lothair, "that we put off our meeting until our friend's piece had been produced? otherwise we should have found our good brother preoccupied, uninterested in our conversation, oppressed as with a heavy burden. His piece would have been haunting him like some distressful spectre, but now that it has burst its chrysalis and fluttered away like a beautiful butterfly into the empyrean, and has not sued for universal favour in vain, everything is clear and bright within him. He stands glorified in the radiance of deserved applause which has fallen so richly to his share, and we won't, for a moment, take it ill of him that he looks down upon us with the least bit of pardonable pride, seeing that not one of us can boast of having done what he has; namely, electrified some six or eight hundred people with one spark; but let everybody have his due. Your piece is good, Sylvester; but you must admit that the admirable rendering was what gave it its wings. You must really have been greatly satisfied with the actors, were you not?"
"I certainly was," said Sylvester, "although at the same time it is very difficult to please the author of a play with the performance of it. You see, he is himself each of the characters of the piece; and all their most intimate peculiarities, with all their necessary conditions, have taken their origin in his own brain; and it seems impossible to him that any other person shall so appropriate, and make his own, those intimate thoughts of his which are peculiar to and innate in the character as to be able to bring them forth into actual life. The author, however, insists in his own mind upon this being done; and the more vividly he has conceived the character, the more is he discontented with the very slightest shortcoming, or alteration in it, which he can discover in the actor's rendering of it. Certain is it that the author suffers an anxiety which destroys all his pleasure in the representation, and it is only when he can manage to soar above this anxiousness, and see his character, the character -which he has invented, portrayed before his eyes, just as he saw it rise before his mental vision, that he is able to enjoy, to some extent, seeing his piece represented."
"Still," said Ottmar, "any annoyance which a playwright may feel, when he sees other characters, quite dissimilar from his own, represented instead of them, is richly compensated for by the applause of the public, to which no author can, or should, be indifferent."
"No doubt," said Sylvester; "and as it is to the actor who is playing the part that the applause is, in the first instance, given, the author, who from his distant seat is looking on with trembling and anxiety, yea, often with anger and disgust, at last becomes convinced that the character (not at all his character) which is speaking the speeches of his one on the stage, is, at all events, not so very bad after all as might have been. Also it is quite true, and no reasonable author, who is not entirely shut up in himself, will deny it, that many a clever actor, who has formed a vivid conception of a character, develops features in that character which he himself did not think of, at least not distinctly, and which he must nevertheless admit to be good and appropriate. The author sees a character which was born in his own most inmost elements, appearing before him in a shape new and strange to him. Yet this shape is by no means foreign to the elements of the genesis of the character, nay it does not seem now possible that it could have assumed a different form; and he feels a glad astonishment over this thing, which is really his own, although it seems so different; just as if he had suddenly come upon a treasure in his garret, whose existence he had not dreamt of."
"There," said Ottmar, "spoke my dear kind-hearted Sylvester, who does not know the meaning of the word 'vanity,' that vanity which has stifled many a great and true talent. There is one writer for the stage who once said, without the slightest hesitation, that there are no actors capable of understanding the soul which dwells within him, or of representing the characters which he creates. How wholly otherwise was it with our grand and glorious Schiller, who once got into that state of delighted surprise of which Sylvester speaks, when he saw his Wallenstein performed, and declared that it was then, for the first time, that he had seen his hero visibly in flesh and blood before his eyes. It was Fleck, the for ever unforgettable hero of our stage, who played Wallenstein then."
"On the whole," said Lothair, "I am convinced, and the instance which Ottmar has given confirms me, that the writer on whom, in the depths of his soul, the true recognition and comprehension of art, and with them, that worship which they give to the creating formative spirit of the universe, have arisen in light, cannot lower himself to the degraded idol-cult, which worships only its own self as being the Fetish that created all things. It is very easy for a great talent to be mistaken for real genius. But time dispels every illusion: talent succumbs to the attacks of time, but they have no effect on true genius, which lives on in invulnerable strength and beauty. But, to return to our Sylvester, and his theatre-piece, I must declare to you that I cannot understand how any one can come to the heroic decision to permit a work, for which he is indebted to his imagination, and to fortunate creative impulses, to be acted before him on the slippery, risky, uncertain boards of the stage."
The friends laughed, thinking that Lothair was, after his wont, going to utter some quaint, out-of-the-way opinion.
"Am I," asked he, "really a strange being who often thinks things which other people are not very apt to think? Well, be that as it may; I say again that when a fairly good writer, who has genuine talent, such as our Sylvester, puts a piece upon the stage, it feels to me very much as if he made up his mind to jump out of a third-floor window, and take his chance of what might happen to him. I am going to make a confession; when I told you I did not go to the theatre on the first night of Sylvester's piece, I told you a lie. Of course I went; and sat on a back seat, a second Sylvester, a second author of the piece, for it is impossible that he can have felt the strain of anxiety, the strange feeling compounded of pleasure and its opposite, the restlessness amounting to real pain, in any greater degree than I did myself. Every word of the players, every gesture of theirs, took my breath away, and I kept saying to myself, 'Oh, gracious heavens, is it possible that that will do, that it will go down with the audience? and is the author responsible whether it does or not?'"
"You make the thing worse than it is," said Sylvester. "I feel a disagreeable oppression of the breath, particularly at the beginning; but if matters are going on pretty well, and the public expresses itself favourably, this gradually goes off, and makes room for a very pleasant sensation, in which I think selfish satisfaction with one's own production occupies the principal place."
"Oh! you theatre-writers," cried out Vincent, "you are the most conceited of all. The applause of the multitude is, to you, the very honey of Hybla, and you sip and swallow it with the daintiest of faces and the sweetest of smiles. But I am going to take up the role of devil's advocate, and add that you are as little to be found fault with, for your anxiousness and eagerness (which many folks think are nothing but the pangs of your vanity), as anybody else who is playing a great and risky game. You are staking yourselves; winning means applause, but losing means not only deserved blame, but (if this amounts to a distinct public expression of it) that besmirching of the ludicrous which is the bitterest and (as the French think) the most fearful and damnable condemnation which a man can' experience here below. A virtuous Frenchman would, therefore, much rather be considered a vile reprobate than be laughed at, and it is quite certain that a ban of being ludicrous always falls on any playwright who has been (theatrically speaking) 'damned'; and he never shakes it off in all his lifetime. Even future success is a most questionable affair, and many a man who has had this misfortune happen to him, has fled in his despair to the doleful wilderness of those productions which possess the outward appearance of theatrical pieces, but, as their authors solemnly assure us, are not meant for representation."
"I," said Theodore, "can corroborate you both most thoroughly from my own experience, that it is a most hazardous matter to put a work on to the stage. What it really amounts to is, that you are committing a property of yours to the mercy of the winds and the waves. When one remembers how many thousand accidental contingencies the effect of a work depends upon, how very often the deeply considered and carefully contrived effect of some passage is shipwrecked by the blunder, the unskilfulness, or the mistake of a singer or instrumentalist; how often--"