Pestis eram vivus--moriens tua mors ero.
_Martin Luther_.
Horror and Fatality have been stalking abroad in all ages. Why then
give a date to the story I have to tell? I will not. Besides, I have
other reasons for concealment. Let it suffice to say, that at the
period of which I speak, there existed, in the interior of Hungary, a
settled although hidden belief in the doctrines of the Metempsychosis.
Of the doctrines themselves--that is, of their falsity, or of their
probability--I say nothing. I assert, however, that much of our
incredulity--as La Bruyére says of all our unhappiness--"_vient de ne
pouvoir etre seuls_."
But there were some points in the Hungarian superstition which were
fast verging to absurdity. They--the Hungarians--differed very
essentially from their Eastern authorities. For example. "_The soul_,"
said the former--I give the words of an acute and intelligent
Parisian--"_ne demeure qu'un seul fois dans un corps sensible: au
reste--un cheval, un chien, un homme même n' est que la ressemblance
peu tangible de ces animaux._"
* * * * *
The families of Berlifitzing and Metzengerstein had been at variance
for centuries. Never before were two houses so illustrious mutually
embittered by hostility so deadly. Indeed, at the era of this history,
it was observed by an old crone of haggard and sinister appearance,
that "fire and water might sooner mingle than a Berlifitzing clasp the
hand of a Metzengerstein." The origin of this enmity seems to be found
in the words of an ancient prophecy--"A lofty name shall have a
fearful fall when, like the rider over his horse, the mortality of
Metzengerstein shall triumph over the immortality of Berlifitzing."
To be sure the words themselves had little or no meaning. But more
trivial causes have given rise--and that no long while ago--to
consequences equally eventful. Besides, the estates, which were
contiguous, had long exercised a rival influence in the affairs of a
busy government. Moreover, near neighbors are seldom friends--and the
inhabitants of the Castle Berlifitzing might look, from their lofty
buttresses, into the very windows of the Chateau Metzengerstein. Least
of all was the more than feudal magnificence thus discovered
calculated to allay the irritable feelings of the less ancient and
less wealthy Berlifitzings. What wonder, then, that the words, however
silly, of that prediction, should have succeeded in setting and
keeping at variance two families already predisposed to quarrel by
every instigation of hereditary jealousy? The prophecy seemed to
imply--if it implied any thing--a final triumph on the part of the
already more powerful house; and was of course remembered with the
more bitter animosity on the side of the weaker and less influential.
* * * * *
Wilhelm, Count Berlifitzing, although honorably and loftily descended,
was, at the epoch of this narrative, an infirm and doting old man,
remarkable for nothing but an inordinate and inveterate personal
antipathy to the family of his rival, and so passionate a love of
horses, and of hunting, that neither bodily infirmity, great age, nor
mental incapacity, prevented his daily participation in the dangers of
the chase.
Frederick, Baron Metzengerstein, was, on the other hand, not yet of
age. His father, the Minister G----, died young. His mother, the Lady
Mary, followed quickly after. Frederick was, at that time, in his
fifteenth year. In a city fifteen years are no long period--a child
may be still a child in his third lustrum: but in a wilderness--in so
magnificent a wilderness as that old principality, fifteen years have
a far deeper meaning.
The beautiful Lady Mary! How _could_ she die?--and of consumption! But
it is a path I have prayed to follow. I would wish all I love to
perish of that gentle disease. How glorious! to depart in the hey-day
of the young blood--the heart all passion--the imagination all
fire--amid the remembrances of happier days--in the fall of the
year--and so be buried up forever in the gorgeous autumnal leaves!
Thus died the Lady Mary. The young Baron Frederick stood without a
living relative by the coffin of his dead mother. He placed his hand
upon her placid forehead. No shudder came over his delicate frame--no
sigh from his flinty bosom. Heartless, self-willed, and impetuous from
his childhood, he had reached the age of which I speak through a
career of unfeeling, wanton, and reckless dissipation; and a barrier
had long since arisen in the channel of all holy thoughts and gentle
recollections.
* * * * *
From some peculiar circumstances attending the administration of his
father, the young Baron, at the decease of the former, entered
immediately upon his vast possessions. Such estates were seldom held
before by a nobleman of Hungary. His castles were without number--of
these the chief in point of splendor and extent was the "Chateau
Metzengerstein." The boundary line of his dominions was never clearly
defined--but his principal park embraced a circuit of fifty miles.
Upon the succession of a proprietor so young--with a character so well
known--to a fortune so unparalleled--little speculation was afloat in
regard to his probable course of conduct. And, indeed, for the space
of three days the behavior of the heir out-heroded Herod, and fairly
surpassed the expectations of his most enthusiastic admirers. Shameful
debaucheries--flagrant treacheries--unheard-of atrocities--gave his
trembling vassals quickly to understand that no servile submission on
their part--no punctilios of conscience on his own--were thenceforward
to prove any security against the remorseless and bloody fangs of a
petty Caligula. On the night of the fourth day, the stables of the
Castle Berlifitzing were discovered to be on fire: and the unanimous
opinion of the neighborhood instantaneously added the crime of the
incendiary to the already hideous list of the Baron's misdemeanors and
enormities.
But during the tumult occasioned by this occurrence, the young
nobleman himself sat, apparently buried in meditation, in a vast and
desolate upper apartment of the family palace of Metzengerstein. The
rich although faded tapestry-hangings which swung gloomily upon the
walls, represented the shadowy and majestic forms of a thousand
illustrious ancestors. _Here_, rich-ermined priests, and pontifical
dignitaries, familiarly seated with the autocrat and the sovereign,
put a veto on the wishes of a temporal king--or {98} restrained with
the fiat of papal supremacy the rebellious sceptre of the Arch-Enemy.
_There_, the dark, tall statures of the Princes Metzengerstein--their
muscular war-coursers plunging over the carcass of a fallen
foe--startled the steadiest nerves with their vigorous expression: and
_here_, again, the voluptuous and swan-like figures of the dames of
days gone by, floated away in the mazes of an unreal dance to the
strains of imaginary melody.
But as the Baron listened, or affected to listen to the gradually
increasing uproar in the stables of Berlifitzing--or perhaps pondered
upon some more novel--some more decided act of audacity--his eyes
became unwittingly rivetted to the figure of an enormous, and
unnaturally colored horse, represented in the tapestry as belonging to
a Saracen ancestor of the family of his rival. The horse itself, in
the foreground of the design, stood motionless and statue-like--while
farther back its discomfitted rider perished by the dagger of a
Metzengerstein.
On Frederick's lip arose a fiendish expression, as he became aware of
the direction his glance had, without his consciousness, assumed. Yet
he did not remove it. On the contrary he could by no means account for
the singular, intense, and overwhelming anxiety which appeared falling
like a shroud upon his senses. It was with difficulty that he
reconciled his dreamy and incoherent feelings with the certainty of
being awake. The longer he gazed, the more absorbing became the
spell--the more impossible did it appear that he could ever withdraw
his glance from the fascination of that tapestry. But the tumult
without becoming suddenly more violent, with a kind of compulsory and
desperate exertion he diverted his attention to the glare of ruddy
light thrown full by the flaming stables upon the windows of the
apartment.
The action, however, was but momentary--his gaze returned mechanically
to the wall. To his extreme horror and astonishment the head of the
gigantic steed had, in the meantime, altered its position. The neck of
the animal, before arched, as if in compassion, over the prostrate
body of its lord, was now extended, at full length, in the direction
of the Baron. The eyes, before invisible, now wore an energetic and
human expression, while they gleamed with a fiery and unusual red: and
the distended lips of the apparently enraged horse left in full view
his sepulchral and disgusting teeth.
Stupified with terror the young nobleman tottered to the door. As he
threw it open, a flash of red light streaming far into the chamber,
flung his shadow with a clear outline against the quivering tapestry;
and he shuddered to perceive that shadow--as he staggered awhile upon
the threshold--assuming the exact position, and precisely filling up
the contour of the relentless and triumphant murderer of the Saracen
Berlifitzing.
To lighten the depression of his spirits the Baron hurried into the
open air. At the principal gate of the Chateau he encountered three
equerries. With much difficulty, and at the imminent peril of their
lives, they were restraining the unnatural and convulsive plunges of a
gigantic and fiery-colored horse.
"Whose horse? Where did you get him?" demanded the youth in a
querulous and husky tone of voice, as he became instantly aware that
the mysterious steed in the tapestried chamber was the very
counterpart of the furious animal before his eyes.
"He is your own property, Sire"--replied one of the equerries--"at
least he is claimed by no other owner. We caught him flying, all
smoking and foaming with rage, from the burning stables of the Castle
Berlifitzing. Supposing him to have belonged to the old Count's stud
of foreign horses, we led him back as an estray. But the grooms there
disclaim any title to the creature--which is strange, since he bears
evident marks of having made a narrow escape from the flames."
"The letters W. V. B. are also branded very distinctly on his
forehead"--interrupted a second equerry--"I supposed them, of course,
to be the initials of Wilhelm Von Berlifitzing--but all at the Castle
are positive in denying any knowledge of the horse."
"Extremely singular!" said the young Baron, with a musing air, and
apparently unconscious of the meaning of his words--"He is, as you
say, a remarkable horse--a prodigious horse! although, as you very
justly observe, of a suspicious and untractable character----Let him
be mine, however," he added, after a pause--"perhaps a rider like
Frederick of Metzengerstein, may tame even the devil from the stables
of Berlifitzing."
"You are mistaken, my lord--the horse, as I think we mentioned, is
_not_ from the stables of the Count. If such were the case, we know
our duty better than to bring him into the presence of a noble of your
family."
"True!" observed the Baron drily--and at that instant a page of the
bed chamber came from the Chateau with a heightened color, and
precipitate step. He whispered into his master's ear an account of the
miraculous and sudden disappearance of a small portion of the
tapestry, in an apartment which he designated: entering, at the same
time, into particulars of a minute and circumstantial character--but
from the low tone of voice in which these latter were communicated,
nothing escaped to gratify the excited curiosity of the equerries.
The young Frederick, during the conference, seemed agitated by a
variety of emotions. He soon, however, recovered his composure, and an
expression of determined malignancy settled upon his countenance, as
he gave peremptory orders that a certain chamber should be immediately
locked up, and the key placed in his own possession.
* * * * *
"Have you heard of the unhappy death of the old hunter Berlifitzing?"
said one of his vassals to the Baron, as, after the affair of the
page, the huge and mysterious steed which that nobleman had adopted as
his own, plunged and curvetted, with redoubled and supernatural fury,
down the long avenue which extended from the Chateau to the stables of
Metzengerstein.
"No!"--said the Baron, turning abruptly towards the speaker--"dead!
say you?"
"It is indeed true, my lord--and, to a noble of your name, will be, I
imagine, no unwelcome intelligence."
A rapid smile of a peculiar and unintelligible meaning shot over the
beautiful countenance of the listener--"How died he?"
"In his rash exertions to rescue a favorite portion of his hunting
stud, he has himself perished miserably in the flames."
"I--n--d--e--e--d--!"--ejaculated the Baron, as if {99} slowly and
deliberately impressed with the truth of some exciting idea.
"Indeed"--repeated the vassal.
"Shocking!" said the youth calmly, and turned quietly into the
Chateau.
* * * * *
From this date a marked alteration took place in the outward demeanor
of the dissolute young Baron Frederick Von Metzengerstein. Indeed his
behaviour disappointed every expectation, and proved little in
accordance with the views of many a manœuvering mamma--while his
habits and manners, still less than formerly, offered any thing
congenial with those of the neighboring aristocracy. He was never to
be seen beyond the limits of his own domain, and, in this wide and
social world, was utterly companionless--unless, indeed, that
unnatural, impetuous, and fiery-colored horse, which he henceforward
continually bestrode, had any mysterious right to the title of his
friend.
Numerous invitations on the part of the neighborhood for a long time,
however, periodically came in--"Will the Baron honor our festivals
with his presence?" "Will the Baron join us in a hunting of the boar?"
"Metzengerstein does not hunt"--"Metzengerstein will not attend"--were
the haughty and laconic answers.
These repeated insults were not to be endured by an imperious
nobility. Such invitations became less cordial--less frequent--in time
they ceased altogether. The widow of the unfortunate Count
Berlifitzing, was even heard to express a hope--"that the Baron might
be at home when he did not wish to be at home, since he disdained the
company of his equals: and ride when he did not wish to ride, since he
preferred the society of a horse." This to be sure was a very silly
explosion of hereditary pique; and merely proved how singularly
unmeaning our sayings are apt to become, when we desire to be
unusually energetic.
The charitable, nevertheless, attributed the alteration in the conduct
of the young nobleman to the natural sorrow of a son for the untimely
loss of his parents--forgetting, however, his atrocious and reckless
behavior during the short period immediately succeeding that
bereavement. Some there were, indeed, who suggested a too haughty idea
of self-consequence and dignity. Others again--among whom may be
mentioned the family physician--did not hesitate in speaking of morbid
melancholy, and hereditary ill-heath: while dark hints, of a more
equivocal nature, were current among the multitude.
Indeed the Baron's perverse attachment to his lately-acquired
charger--an attachment which seemed to attain new strength from every
fresh example of the animal's ferocious and demonlike propensities--at
length became, in the eyes of all reasonable men, a hideous and
unnatural fervor. In the glare of noon--at the dead hour of night--in
sickness or in health--in calm or in tempest--in moonlight or in
shadow--the young Metzengerstein seemed rivetted to the saddle of that
colossal horse, whose intractable audacities so well accorded with the
spirit of his own.
There were circumstances, moreover, which, coupled with late events,
gave an unearthly and portentous character to the mania of the rider,
and to the capabilities of the steed. The space passed over in a
single leap had been accurately measured, and was found to exceed by
an astounding difference, the wildest expectations of the most
imaginative. The Baron, besides, had no particular _name_ for the
animal, although all the rest in his extensive collection were
distinguished by characteristic appellations. His stable, too, was
appointed at a distance from the rest; and with regard to grooming and
other necessary offices, none but the owner in person had ventured to
officiate, or even to enter the enclosure of that particular stall. It
was also to be observed, that although the three grooms, who had
caught the horse as he fled from the conflagration at Berlifitzing,
had succeeded in arresting his course, by means of a chain-bridle and
noose--yet no one of the three could with any certainty affirm that he
had, during that dangerous struggle, or at any period thereafter,
actually placed his hand upon the body of the beast. Instances of
peculiar intelligence in the demeanor of a noble and high spirited
steed are not to be supposed capable of exciting unreasonable
attention--especially among men who, daily trained to the labors of
the chase, might appear well acquainted with the sagacity of a
horse--but there were certain circumstances which intruded themselves
per force, upon the most skeptical and phlegmatic--and it is said
there were times when this singular and mysterious animal, caused the
gaping crowd who stood around to recoil in silent horror from the deep
and impressive meaning of his terrible stamp--times when the young
Metzengerstein turned pale and shrunk away from the rapid and
searching expression of his intense and human-looking eye.
Among all the retinue of the Baron, however, none were found to doubt
the ardor of that extraordinary affection which existed on the part of
the young nobleman for the fiery qualities of his horse--at least,
none but an insignificant and misshapen little page, whose deformities
were in every body's way, and whose opinions were of the least
possible importance. He--if his ideas are worth mentioning at all--had
the effrontery to assert that his master never vaulted into the
saddle, without an unaccountable and almost imperceptible shudder--and
that, upon his return from every long-continued and habitual ride, an
expression of triumphant malignity distorted every muscle in his
countenance.
One tempestuous night, Metzengerstein, awaking from a heavy and
oppressive slumber, descended like a maniac from his chamber, and
mounting in great haste, bounded away into the mazes of the forest. An
occurrence so common attracted no particular attention--but his return
was looked for with intense anxiety on the part of his domestics,
when, after some hour's absence, the stupendous and magnificent
battlements of the Chateau Metzengerstein, were discovered crackling
and rocking to their very foundation, under the influence of a dense
and livid mass of ungovernable fire.
As the flames, when first seen, had already made so terrible a
progress that all efforts to save any portion of the building were
evidently futile, the astonished neighborhood stood idly around in
silent and apathetic wonder. But a new and fearful object soon
rivetted the attention of the multitude, and proved how much more
intense is the excitement wrought in the feelings of a crowd by the
contemplation of human agony, than that brought about by the most
appalling spectacles of inanimate matter.
{100} Up the long avenue of aged oaks which led from the forest to the
main entrance of the Chateau Metzengerstein, a steed, bearing an
unbonneted and disordered rider, was seen leaping with an impetuosity
which outstripped the very Demon of the Tempest, and extorted from
every stupified beholder the ejaculation--"horrible!"
The career of the horseman was indisputably, on his own part,
uncontrollable. The agony of his countenance--the convulsive struggle
of his frame--gave evidence of superhuman exertion: but no sound, save
a solitary shriek, escaped from his lacerated lips, which were bitten
through and through in the intensity of terror. One instant, and the
clattering of hoofs resounded sharply and shrilly above the roaring of
the flames and the shrieking of the winds--another, and, clearing at a
single plunge the gateway and the moat, the steed bounded far up the
tottering stair-cases of the Palace, and, with its rider, disappeared
amid the whirlwind of chaotic fire.
The fury of the tempest immediately died away, and a dead calm
sullenly succeeded. A white flame still enveloped the building like a
shroud, and, streaming far away into the quiet atmosphere, shot forth
a glare of preternatural light; while a cloud of smoke settled heavily
over the battlements in the distinct collossal figure of--a horse.