A succession of gloomy thoughts revolved in my mind for some time after
I was left to myself. I was however overcome with fatigue, and, after
an interval of harassing meditations, insensibly fell asleep. I was
awakened after some hours’ repose, by the presence of Bethlem Gabor
standing by the side of my couch. He invited me to rise, and, when
I had attired myself, started the plan of our visiting together the
various apartments of the castle, a small part of which only had been
seen by me when I was last at this place. Among other things, he told
me, there was a subterranean of most wonderful extent, interspersed
with a variety of cells and lurking places, of which no man had to his
knowledge ever ascertained the number.
The same dreary complexion of thought followed me to-day, which had
been first produced in me upon my reception into the troop of Bethlem
Gabor the preceding night. My sensations were of the most depressing
and discomfiting nature; I felt as if I were the slave of some dark,
mysterious tyrant, and dragged along supinely wherever he motioned me
to go. I tasked myself seriously; I reasoned with myself. I felt that
it was no idle and every-day part that I was called to sustain; and I
resolved that I would not be ruined by my own inactivity and cowardice.
Yet, when I examined the question dispassionately, I could not find
that I had any occasion for courage, and I confessed that it was not
less censurable, to discover a useless spirit of mistrust and defiance,
than to desert one’s preservation where resistance was demanded.
What reason had I to suspect a man between whom and myself there had
prevailed so much mutual confidence? None, none, I replied, but the
causeless and superstitious misgivings of my own mind! Even if I had
ground to distrust him, what remedy had I against his ill faith, placed
as I was in the midst of his own domains, and surrounded by men devoted
to his service? To discover apprehension under such circumstances, was
to excite animosity.--These reasonings particularly occurred to my
mind, as I stood waiting for the torch, which he had himself gone to
procure that he might attend me to the subterranean caverns.--I had
as yet seen no one, since we broke up from our nightly repast, but my
host. “We will breakfast,” said he, “when we return from viewing these
curiosities.”
We crept along a succession of dark and gloomy vaults, almost in
silence. Bethlem Gabor, though he led me on, and discharged the
office of a guide, seemed to have small inclination to assume that
of an interpreter. This was sufficiently in unison with his ordinary
character, to have little claim to excite surprise. Yet the reader
will not on reflection greatly wonder that my present situation was
far from agreeable. I was alone in passages which, to judge from any
discoverable token, you would scarcely imagine had for ages been trod
by a human creature. The voice was lost amidst the damps of these
immense caverns; nor was it possible by any exertion to call the hand
of man to your aid. My guide was an individual whom calamity had
prompted to quarrel with the world; of strong feelings indeed, of
capacious thought; but rugged, ferocious, brutal, and inaccessible
to prayer. I had chosen him for my protector and ally; I had never
intended to put myself in his power. There was a mystery in his
carriage, a something not to be explained, a shell that no human forces
could penetrate, that was mortal to confidence, and might quail the
stoutest.
I thought there would be no end to our pilgrimage. At length we came to
a strong door, cross-barred and secured with a frame of iron. Bethlem
Gabor unlocked it. We had no sooner entered, that it impetuously
closed behind us. “What is that?” said I, startled at the loudness of
the report. “Come on,” cried my host; “it is only the wind whistling
through the caverns: the spring-bolt is shot, but I have the key in my
hand!” At the opposite end of the apartment was another door with an
ascent of five steps leading to it. Bethlem Gabor unlocked that also,
and then faced about with the torch in his hand: I was close behind
him. “Stay where you are!” said he with a furious accent, and thrust me
violently from him. The violence was unexpected: I staggered from the
top of the steps to the bottom. This door closed with as loud a report
as the other; Bethlem Gabor disappeared; I was left in darkness.
For an instant I doubted whether the situation in which I thus found
myself were the result of design or of accident. The shutting of the
door might be ascribed to the latter: the action however, and the words
of my host did not admit of that interpretation. I stood motionless,
astonished, and almost incapable of reflection. What an incredible
reverse was thus the creature of a moment! Yesterday I possessed
unbounded treasures, and the hearts of the whole Turco-Hungarian
nation. Yesterday, as I rode forth on this fatal excursion, I beheld
the food of a mighty people, mature for consumption, the growth of my
exertions; and it will not be thought surprising that my heart leaped
within me at the sight. Who would not have envied the unparalleled
eminence at which I had arrived? My triumphs were attended with no
melancholy exceptions to damp their joy. They were the children of no
intrigue; they were manly, frank, ingenuous, and honourable. My laurels
were stained with no drop of blood, were tarnished with no tears of the
widow and the orphan. How much more noble to rescue mankind from famine
and death, than to violate the honest pride of their nature with the
exhibition of victories and trophies!
Yet, truly considered, there was nothing abrupt in the reverse under
which I was now suffering. The whole was a chain, every link of which
was indissolubly connected from one end to the other. My attempt to
rescue a people from the horrors of famine necessarily exposed me
to unfavourable accidents and misconstruction. It inevitably led to
my application to the government for its aid. It could not fail to
excite the alarms and jealousies of government as to the tendency of
my proceedings. By exhibiting me as the possessor of immense wealth,
with very limited means for the protection of that wealth, it marked
me a prey to a rapacious viceroy or his more despotic master. When I
became sensible of the precarious situation in which I stood towards
the powers of the state, could I have fallen upon a more natural
expedient, than the endeavour to cover myself with the shield of
friendship and gratitude in the person of one of its nobles? But this
expedient would almost infallibly lead to the placing myself sooner or
later in the power of the man whose friendship I sought. I had done so,
and this was the termination of my views and my projects!
I now well understood the purpose of that inattention and neglect
with which Bethlem Gabor had treated me the preceding evening, the
uneasiness resulting from which I had blamed in myself at the time,
as the dictate of weakness and unworthy suspicion. Yesterday I had
been placed under the safeguard of a nation; every man in Buda and
its environs was familiar with my person; every man would have been
ready almost to sacrifice his life to procure my safety. Now I was far
from the scene of my philanthropical exertions; no one in the troop of
Bethlem Gabor knew who I was; he had appeared to treat me the preceding
evening with indifference and contempt; if they saw me no more, no
curiosity would by that circumstance be excited in their minds. My
clients on the other hand in the vicinity of the metropolis, however
great an interest they might take in my fortune, had no clue that could
lead them to the knowledge of it. They must suppose me a prisoner with
the Austrians, or that I had been killed, in resisting to become their
prisoner. I was cut off from all assistance and discovery, and left as
much in the power of my treacherous ally, as if I had been alone with
him, oppressed with the utmost disparity of personal force, in the
remotest island of the Pacific Ocean.
Such were the reflections that early suggested themselves to my mind in
the solitude and darkness in which I was thus unexpectedly involved.
Meanwhile one tedious hour succeeded to another, and I remained
unintruded on and unnoticed. I could form no conjecture as to the
object of Bethlem Gabor in the atrocious perfidy he had committed.
Could he have any resentment against me, and did he meditate revenge?
He had received from me nothing but benefits. Did he employ restraint
on my person as the means of extortion? I could not conceive that he
could have any clue leading him to the discovery of my grand secret;
and, short of this, my bounties had been so exuberant, as, I imagined,
left him nothing to wish. In this wilderness of conjecture I however
fixed upon extortion as a motive less incredible than revenge. I
impatiently waited, till the appearance of my tyrant should free me
from some part of my present uncertainty.
He did not appear. In the mean time I was in a condition feeble and
exhausted. The exercise of yesterday, the hourly-baffled expectation
of meeting him whom I had called my friend, the alternation of being
first taken prisoner and afterwards rescued, had extremely fatigued
me. We had travelled during the whole night. Yet the unaccountable
dejection of mind under which I laboured on our arrival at Bethlem
Gabor’s castle had prevented me from taking almost any share in the
coarse repast that had then been set before us. The entrance of my host
in the morning had rendered my slumbers short. As I followed him to my
dungeon, unconscious whither I went, my limbs ached, and my heart ached
still more. I was ill prepared for a fast of thirty-six hours which the
brutality of my jailor inflicted upon me. After having long expected
him in vain, I gave myself up to despair. What a termination of life
for him who possessed the philosopher’s stone!
I cannot do justice to the sensations that now took possession of my
mind. It was not the deadly calm of despair, for I still expected every
moment when Bethlem Gabor would appear. I believed than he would, and I
believed that he would not, leave me to perish. I listened with eager
attention to every sound, and my soul floated on the howling winds.
In vain! nothing came of it; there was no alteration in the sound, or
only those vicissitudes to which the howling of the wind is unavoidably
subject. I then turned away in anguish; I cursed; I stamped with my
feet; I smote my forehead with my closed hand; I tore my hair. Anon
another sound arrested my attention; it was a different howling; it
seemed to be like a human voice; my fancy created to me the tread of a
human foot. I listened with more intentness of soul than ever. It was
again in vain!
No, no; he will not come! he will never come. Why should I agitate
myself to no purpose? Let me lie down and die!--I reasoned with myself.
Why should I wish to live? I am nothing to any human being: I am alone
in the boundless universe; I have no tie to existence. St. Leon has no
wife; St. Leon has no child; he has neither connection nor friend in
the world. Even in this wretched vision of the philosopher’s stone,
have I not tried it enough? have I any hopes from it? is it not time
that I should throw away that and existence together?--My meditations
were ineffectual. I suppose it is the case with all men thus violently
thrust out of life in the full possession of their faculties--I know it
was the case with me,--the more peremptory was my summoner, the more
obstinately I clung to the worthless toy.
At length I laid myself down on the floor; and, if I occasionally
listened, I no longer ran to the walls and the doors to catch the
uncertain sounds. The gnawings I now felt within were intolerable.
They were at one period so severe, that I can compare them to nothing,
but the sensation of having swallowed a glowing ember. Afterwards, the
weakness of nature would no longer feed this excruciating pain, and it
subsided into a starting and convulsive throb; the pain was diversified
with intervals of a death-like and insupportable sickness.--But, no;
I will not attempt to describe the horrors of hunger sublimed by
despair, where the torture of the mind gives new pungency and uproar
to the corporeal anguish. The image, as it now presents itself to my
recollection, is too dreadful.
At last I sunk into a state of insensibility; and the agony I had
suffered seemed drawn to its final close. The busy turmoil, the
feverish dream of human existence was at an end. I shut my eyes, and I
believed I should open them no more.