Where all is thus calm, the slightest circumstance is recorded and
remembered. Before the sixth century had expired one incident occurred,
remarkable and strange. A young man, named Albedir, wandering in the
woods, was startled by the screaming of a bird of prey, and, looking
up, saw blood fall, drop by drop, from among the intertwined boughs of
a cedar. Having climbed the tree, he beheld a terrible and dismaying
spectacle. A naked human body was impaled on the broken branch. It was
maimed and mangled horribly; every limb bent and bruised into frightful
distortion, and exhibiting a breathing image of the most sickening
mockery of life. A monstrous snake had scented its prey from among the
mountains--and above hovered a hungry vulture. From amidst this mass of
desolated humanity, two eyes, black and inexpressibly brilliant, shone
with an unearthly lustre. Beneath the blood-stained eye-brows their
steady rays manifested the serenity of an immortal power, the collected
energy of a deathless mind, spell-secured from dissolution. A bitter
smile of mingled abhorrence and scorn distorted his wounded lip--he
appeared calmly to observe and measure all around--self-possession had
not deserted the shattered mass of life.
The youth approached the bough on which the breathing corpse was hung.
As he approached, the serpent reluctantly unwreathed his glittering
coils, and crept towards his dark and loathsome cave. The vulture,
impatient of his meal, fled to the mountain, that re-echoed with his
hoarse screams. The cedar branches creaked with their agitating weight,
faintly, as the dismal wind arose. All else was deadly silent.
At length a voice issued from the mangled man. It rattled in hoarse
murmurs from his throat and lungs--his words were the conclusion of
some strange mysterious soliloquy. They were broken, and without
apparent connexion, completing wide intervals of inexpressible
conceptions.
“The great tyrant is baffled, even in success. Joy! joy! to his
tortured foe! Triumph to the worm whom he tramples under his feet!
Ha! His suicidal hand might dare as well abolish the mighty frame of
things! Delight and exultation sit before the closed gates of death!--I
fear not to dwell beneath their black and ghastly shadow. Here thy
power may not avail! Thou createst--’tis mine to ruin and destroy.--I
was thy slave--I am thy equal, and thy foe.--Thousands tremble before
thy throne, who, at my voice, shall dare to pluck the golden crown
from thine unholy head!” He ceased. The silence of noon swallowed up
his words. Albedir clung tighter to the tree--he dared not for dismay
remove his eyes. He remained mute in the perturbation of deep and
creeping horror.
“Albedir!” said the same voice, “Albedir! in the name of God, approach.
He that suffered me to fall, watches thee;--the gentle and merciful
spirits of sweet human love delight not in agony and horror. For
pity’s sake approach, in the name of thy good God, approach, Albedir!”
The tones were mild and clear as the responses of Æolian music. They
floated to Albedir’s ear like the warm breath of June that lingers in
the lawny groves, subduing all to softness. Tears of tender affection
started into his eyes. It was as the voice of a beloved friend. The
partner of his childhood, the brother of his soul, seemed to call for
aid, and pathetically to remonstrate with delay. He resisted not the
magic impulse, but advanced towards the spot, and tenderly attempted
to remove the wounded man. He cautiously descended the tree with his
wretched burthen, and deposited it on the ground.
A period of strange silence intervened. Awe and cold horror were slowly
succeeding to the softer sensations of tumultuous pity, when again he
heard the silver modulations of the same enchanting voice. “Weep not
for me, Albedir! What wretch so utterly lost, but might inhale peace
and renovation from this paradise! I am wounded, and in pain; but
having found a refuge in this seclusion, and a friend in you, I am
worthier of envy than compassion. Bear me to your cottage secretly:
I would not disturb your gentle partner by my appearance. She must
love me more dearly than a brother. I must be the playmate of your
children; already I regard them with a father’s love. My arrival must
not be regarded as a thing of mystery and wonder. What, indeed, but
that men are prone to error and exaggeration, is less inexplicable,
than that a stranger, wandering on Lebanon, fell from the rocks into
the vale? Albedir,” he continued, and his deepening voice assumed awful
solemnity, “in return for the affection with which I cherish thee and
thine, thou owest this submission.”
Albedir implicitly submitted; not even a thought had power to refuse
its deference. He reassumed his burthen, and proceeded towards the
cottage. He watched until Khaled should be absent, and conveyed the
stranger into an apartment appropriated for the reception of those
who occasionally visited their habitation. He desired that the door
should be securely fastened, and that he might not be visited until the
morning of the following day.
Albedir waited with impatience for the return of Khaled. The
unaccustomed weight of even so transitory a secret hung on his
ingenuous and unpractised nature, like a blighting, clinging curse. The
stranger’s accents had lulled him to a trance of wild and delightful
imagination. Hopes, so visionary and aerial, that they had assumed no
denomination, had spread themselves over his intellectual frame, and,
phantoms as they were, had modelled his being to their shape. Still his
mind was not exempt from the visitings of disquietude and perturbation.
It was a troubled stream of thought, over whose fluctuating waves
unsearchable fate seemed to preside, guiding its unforeseen
alternations with an inexorable hand. Albedir paced earnestly the
garden of his cottage, revolving every circumstance attendant on the
incident of the day. He re-imaged with intense thought the minutest
recollections of the scene. In vain--he was the slave of suggestions
not to be controlled. Astonishment, horror, and awe--tumultuous
sympathy, and a mysterious elevation of soul, hurried away all activity
of judgment, and overwhelmed, with stunning force, every attempt at
deliberation or inquiry.
His reveries were interrupted at length by the return of Khaled.
She entered the cottage, that scene of undisturbed repose, in the
confidence that change might as soon overwhelm the eternal world, as
disturb this inviolable sanctuary. She started to behold Albedir.
Without preface or remark, he recounted with eager haste the
occurrences of the day. Khaled’s tranquil spirit could hardly keep
pace with the breathless rapidity of his narration. She was bewildered
with staggering wonder even to hear his confused tones, and behold his
agitated countenance.