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(the Bavarian State Library)
COLLECTION
OF
BRITISH AUTHORS.
VOL. CXV.
---------
THE CASTLE OF EHRENSTEIN BY G. P. R. JAMES.
IN ONE VOLUME.
THE
CASTLE OF EHRENSTEIN;
ITS LORDS
SPIRITUAL AND TEMPORAL;
ITS INHABITANTS
EARTHLY AND UNEARTHLY.
BY
G. P. R. JAMES.
_COPYRIGHT EDITION FOR CONTINENTAL CIRCULATION_.
LEIPZIG
BERNH. TAUCHNITZ JUN.
1847.
EHRENSTEIN.
CHAPTER I.
It was an awfully dark and tempestuous night; the wind howled in fury
through the trees, and round the towers; the large drops of rain
dashed against the casements, the small lozenges of glass rattled and
clattered in their leaden frames, and the thick boards of the oaken
floor heaved and shivered under the force of the tempest. From time to
time a keen blue streak of lightning crossed the descending deluge,
and for an instant the great black masses of the forest, and the high
and broken rocks around, appeared like spectres of a gone-by world,
and sank into Egyptian darkness again, almost as soon as seen; and
then the roar of the thunder was added to the scream of the blast,
seeming to shake the whole building to its foundation.
In the midst of this storm, and towards one o'clock in the morning, a
young man, of about one-and-twenty years of age, took his way
silently, and with a stealthy step, through the large old halls and
long passages of the castle of Ehrenstein. His dress was that of one
moving in the higher ranks of society, but poor for his class; and
though the times were unusually peaceful, he wore a heavy sword by his
side, and a poniard hanging by a ring from his girdle. Gracefully yet
powerfully formed, his frame afforded the promise of great future
strength, and his face, frank and handsome without being strictly
beautiful, owed perhaps more to the expression than to the features.
He carried a small brazen lamp in his hand, and seemed bound upon some
grave and important errand, for his countenance was serious and
thoughtful, his eyes generally bent down, and his step quick,
although, as we have said, light and cautious.
The room that he quitted was high up in the building, and, descending
by a narrow and steep staircase, formed of large square blocks of oak,
with nothing but a rope to steady the steps, he entered a long wide
corridor below, flanked on one side by tall windows like those of a
church, and on the other by numerous small doors. The darkness was so
profound that, at first, the rays of the lamp only served to dissipate
the obscurity immediately around it, while the rest of the corridor
beyond looked like the mouth of a yawning interminable vault, filled
with gloom and shadows. The next moment, however, as he advanced, a
blazing sheet of electric flame glanced over the windows, displaying
their long line upon the right, and the whole interior of the
corridor. Here and there an old suit of armour caught the light, and
the grotesque figures on two large antique stone benches seemed to
grin and gibber in the flame. Still the young man walked on, pausing
only for one moment at a door on the left, and looking up at it with a
smile somewhat melancholy.
At the end of the corridor, on the left, he came to a larger staircase
than that which he had before descended, and going cautiously down,
and through some other passages, he found himself in a small
vestibule, with two doors on either hand. They were of various
dimensions, but all studded with large nails, and secured by thick
bands of iron; and turning to the largest of the four, he quietly
lifted the latch, and pushed it open. The wind, as he did so, had
nearly blown out the lamp, and in suddenly shading it with his hand,
he let slip the ponderous mass of woodwork, which was blown back
against its lintels with a dull clang, which echoed far away through
the vaulted passages of the castle.
The young man paused and listened, apparently fearful that his
proceedings might be noticed; but then, as all was silent till a loud
peal of thunder again shook the ear of night, he opened the door once
more, carefully shading the lamp with his cloak. Then, closing the
door gently behind him, he turned a large key that was in the lock,
seemingly to ensure that he should not be followed. He was now in a
vast old hall, which seemed to have been long unused, for there were
manifold green stains upon the stone pavement, no customary rushes
strewed the floor, no benches stood at the sides, and the table, at
which many a merry meal had passed, was no longer to be seen. A number
of torn and dusty banners and pennons, on the lances which had borne
them to the field, waved overhead, as the wind, which found its way
through many a broken lozenge in the casements, played amongst these
shreds of departed glories. A whispering sound came from them
likewise, and to an imaginative mind like that of the youth who walked
on beneath them, some of the rustling banners seemed to ask, "Whither,
whither?" and others to answer, "To dust, to dust."
In the middle of the hall he paused and thought. A degree of
hesitation appeared to come over him; and then, murmuring "It must be
all nonsense; but, true or not, I have promised, and I will go," he
walked forward to another door at the far end of the hall, much
smaller than that by which he had entered. Apparently, it had not been
opened for a long time, as a pile of dust lay thick, against it. There
was no key in the lock, and it seemed fastened from the other side.
After pushing it, however, to see if it would give way, the young man
drew forth a key, saying to himself, "Perhaps this opens all," and
applying it, after some examination of the key-hole, he turned it, and
threw back the door. Then holding up the lamp ere he entered, he gazed
into the space before him. It was a low narrow passage in the
stone-work, with no windows, or even loopholes, perceptible; but yet
the damp found its way in, for the walls were glistening all over with
unwholesome slime. The pavement, too, if pavement indeed there was at
all, was covered thickly with a coating of black mould, from which,
every here and there, sprang up a crop of pale sickly fungi covered
with noxious dew, spreading a sort of faint, unpleasant, odour around.
So foul, and damp, and gloomy looked the place, that it evidently
required an effort of resolution on the young man's part to enter; but
after pausing for a moment he did so, and closed and locked the door
behind him; then turning round, he looked on, still holding up the
lamp, as if he expected to see some fearful object in the way: all was
vacant, however, and as the faint rays of light dispersed the
darkness, he could perceive another door at the end of the passage,
some twenty yards in advance. It, when he reached it, was found
unfastened, and on drawing it back--for it opened inwards--the top of
a flight of stone steps was before him, descending, apparently, into a
well.
It was no faint heart that beat within his bosom, but those were days
in which existed a belief almost universal in things which our more
material times reject as visionary; or which, at least, are only
credited by a few, who can see no reason why, in the scheme of
creation, there should not be means of communication between the
spiritual and the corporeal, or why the bond of mortal life once
dissolved, the immortal tenant of the fleshly body should not still
feel some interest in the things of earth, amongst which it moved so
long, and have the power and the permission to make its presence felt
for warning and for guidance. It is very different to feel an awe and
a dread in any undertaking, and to shrink from executing it. The young
man did feel awe, for he was going in solitude and the midst of night
into places where mortal foot rarely trod, where every association and
every object was connected with dark and dreary memories, and with
still more gloomy anticipations--the memorials of the dead, the
mouldering ruins of fellow-men, the records of the tomb, the picture
of all that warm existence comes to in the end. He stopped for a
moment there, and gazed down into the dark void below, but the next
instant, with a slow and careful foot upon the wet and slippery steps,
he began the descent. The air, which was sultry above, felt cold and
chilling as he descended, and the lamp burned dim, with a diminished
flame, from the impure vapours that seemed congregated in the place.
Each step, too, produced a hollow echo, ringing round, and decreasing
gradually in sound, both above and below, till it seemed as if voices
were whispering behind him and before him. Twice he paused to listen,
scarcely able to persuade himself that he did not hear tongues
speaking, but as he stopped the sound ceased, and again he proceeded
on his way. The square cut stones forming the shaft in which the
staircase turned, with the jointing only more clearly discernible from
the mortar having dropped out, soon gave way to the more solid masonry
of nature, and the rude rock, roughly hewn, was all that was left
around him, with the stairs still descending in the midst. A hundred
and seventeen steps, some of them perilous from decay, brought him, at
length, to the termination, with a door ajar at the foot. All was
darkness beyond, and though there seemed a freer air as he pulled the
door back, and the lamp burned up somewhat more clearly, yet the vast
gloomy expanse before him lost scarcely a particle of its gloom, as he
advanced with a beating heart, bearing the light in his hand. He was
unconscious of touching the door as he passed, but the moment he had
entered it swung slowly to, and a solemn clang echoed through the
vault.
Laying his left hand on his dagger, he turned suddenly, and looked
behind him, but there was no one there, and he saw nothing but the
heavy stone walls and low groined arches, which seemed spreading out
interminably on either side. The next moment a bat fluttered across,
and swept his face with its cold dewy wing, nearly extinguishing the
lamp as it passed; and then, as he took a few steps forward, a low
voice asked, "Who is he?"
"Who? who?" several other voices seemed to say; and then another
cried, "Hush!"
The young man caught the lamp in his left hand, and half drew his
sword with his right, demanding aloud, "Who spoke?" There was no reply
but the echo of his own voice amidst the arches; and holding the lamp
before him, he turned to the side from which the first question seemed
to proceed, and thought he saw a figure standing in the dim obscurity,
at a few paces distance. "Who are you?" he cried, stepping forward,
but there the figure stood, grew more defined as the rays fell upon
it, and the eyeless grinning head, and long mouldy bones of a skeleton
appeared, bound with a rusty chain to a thick column. Instinctively he
started back, when he first discovered what the object was, and as he
did so, a low, wild, echoing laugh rang round through the arches on
every side, as if mocking the horror which his countenance expressed.
Nothing showed itself, however, and, ashamed of his own sensations, he
drew his sword out of the sheath, and walked quickly on. His path soon
became encumbered, and first he stumbled over a slimy skull, then trod
upon some bones that cranched under his feet, while strange
whisperings seemed to spread around him, till, with no light joy, he
saw the farther wall of the vault, with an open arch leading out into
some place beyond. When he had passed it, however, the scene was no
less sad and gloomy, for he seemed now in a vast building like a
chapel, where, ranged on either hand, were sepulchral monuments
covered with dust, and between them long piles of mouldering coffins,
with overhead a banner here and there, gauntlets, and swords, and
tattered surcoats, the hues of which could scarcely be distinguished
through the deep stains and mildew that covered them. Here frowned the
figure of a warrior in black marble, there lay another hewn in plain
stone; here stood a pile of coffins, with the velvet which once
covered them, and the gold with which they were fringed, all
mouldering in shreds, and offering a stern comment on the grossest of
human vanities, that tries to deck the grave with splendour, and
serves up the banquet of the worm in tinsel. When he had half passed
along the solemn avenue, he thought he heard a sound behind, and
turned to look, but there was nothing near except three small coffins
and the marble effigy of a lady kneeling in the attitude of prayer.
When he turned round again, a sudden light, blue and pale, like that
of the unconfirmed dawn, shone through the long arcades, wavered and
flickered round, as if moving from place to place, though whence it
proceeded he could not see; but as he strode on, it served to show him
a large snake, that darted from under the crumbling base of one of the
monuments, and glided on along the path before him, as if guiding him
on his way.
"By Heaven! this is all very strange and horrible," he exclaimed, and
instantly there was a wild "whoop," coming from several parts of the
chapel. The pale light that shone around was extinguished, and nought
remained but the dim lamp in his own hand.
He would not be turned back, however, but hurried only the more
quickly forward till he reached a door at the opposite side. It was
bolted within, but not locked; and pulling back the iron bar from the
staple, he rushed out, the strong gust of the night air and the
pattering drops of rain instantly extinguishing the lamp. A shrill
scream met his ear as the door swung to behind him; but nevertheless
he paused, and put his hand to his brow, with sensations in his bosom
which he had never felt before, and which he was ashamed to feel.
While he thus stood a fierce flash of lightning blazed around,
dazzling his eyes for a moment, but serving to show him the exact
point of the rocky hill which he had now reached, and a path winding
on down the woody descent, narrow, rough, and stony, looking more as
if it had been traced by some torrent pouring down the side of the
slope, than by the foot of man. Along it he turned his steps, guided
by the trees and bushes, which rendered it impossible that he should
miss his way, till, nearly at the bottom of the hill, a faint light
shone before him from the window of what appeared a little chapel.
"The good priest is watching for me," the young man said to himself;
and hurrying on he gained a small projecting point of the rock which
stood out clear from amongst the trees. Like many another jagged
fragment of crag in that wild country, it towered up above the
surrounding objects like a ruined outwork of the castle above, and
when he had climbed to the summit, the young wanderer turned to gaze
up at the building he had just left. All was dark and gloomy; not a
ray broke from window or loophole, except at one spot where a blaze
shone forth upon the night high up in the sky, shining red and hazy
through the tempestuous air, like some star of evil omen. But the
youth heeded not that light; he knew well that it was the beacon on
the highest pinnacle of the donjon, beside which, under shelter of the
watch-tower's roof, the weary sentinel was striving to keep himself
awake, perhaps in vain. The rest was all as obscure as the world
beyond the tomb, and satisfied that his going had not been marked, he
hurried on to the little chapel or hermitage, and lifted the latch.