THE REVELATION.
The fatal Thursday had passed, Wednesday had come, yet Leonore had received
no tidings from her father. For three days she had not seen him, had had no
message from him.
But it was not this alone that disturbed and tortured Leonore. She had also
had no news from Kolbielsky, though the week which he had named as the
necessary duration of their parting had expired the day before. He had
said:
"My week of exile will begin from this hour, and the first festival will be
when I again clasp you in my arms."
This week had expired yesterday, and Kolbielsky had not come to clasp his
loved one in his arms again. She had expected him all through the day, all
through the night, and the cause of her present deep anxiety was not
solicitude about her father, the desire to learn the result of the
conspiracy discovered; no, it was only the longing for _him_, the terrible
dread that some accident might have befallen Kolbielsky.
Why did he not come, since he had so positively promised to return at the
end of a week? Was it really only a coincidence that the day which he had
fixed for his return was the selfsame one on which the conspiracy formed by
Napoleon's foes was to break forth?
What if he had had a share in the conspiracy? If he had deceived her,
if--But no, no, that was wholly impossible--that could not be! She knew the
names of the conspirators, especially those of the heads and leaders; she
knew that Kolbielsky's name had not once been mentioned during the whole
discussion between them. So away with anxieties, away with cowardly fears.
Some accident might have detained him, might have caused a day's delay.
To-day, yes, to-day he would come at last! To-day she would see him again,
would rush into his arms, rest on his heart, never, oh! never to part from
him again! Hark, a carriage was stopping before the door! Steps echoed in
the corridor.
They approached, stopped at her door! It is he, oh, surely it is he!
Darting to the door, she tore it open.
No! It was her father, only her father!
With a troubled cry, she sank into the chair beside the door. Her father
went to her; she did not see the sorrowful, almost pitying look he fixed
upon her. She had covered her face with her hands and groaned aloud.
Schulmeister stood before her with a gloomy brow, silent and motionless.
At last, after a long pause, Leonore slowly removed her hands from her face
and raised her head.
"Are we rich now?" she asked in a whisper, as though she feared lest even
the walls should hear her question.
"Yes," he exclaimed joyfully, "yes, we are rich."
Drawing his pocketbook from his coat, he opened it and poured out its
contents, shaking the various papers with their array of high numbers into
Leonore's lap.
"Look, my daughter, my beloved child! Look at these wonderful papers. Ten
banknotes, each one fifty thousand francs. That is half a million, my
Leonore! Look at these papers. Yet no, they are no papers, each is a magic
spell, with which you can make a palace rise out of nothing. See this thin
scrap of paper; a spark would suffice to transform it to ashes, yet you
need only carry it to the nearest banker's to see it changed into a heap of
gold, or glitter as a _parure_ of the costliest diamonds. If you desire it,
these papers will transmute themselves into a magnificent castle, into
liveried servants, into superb carriages. Oh, I already see you standing as
the proud mistress of a stately castle, in your ancestral hall, with
vassals bowing before you, and counts and princes suing for your hand. For
these magic papers will give you everything, everything; not luxury alone,
but honor, rank, and dignity, the love and esteem of men. Take them, for
the whole ten papers shall be yours. I wish to see you rich and happy,
therefore I defied disgrace and mortal peril. Come, my child, let us set
out this very hour to buy with these papers, far away from here, in an
Eden-like region, a castle which shall be adorned with all that luxury and
art can offer. Come, my Leonore, come. We have accomplished our work of
darkness, now day is dawning, now our star is rising. Come, come! Alas, the
days are so short, let us hasten, hasten to enjoy them!"
Leonore slowly shook her head. "_He_ must return," she said solemnly.
"First I must see him again, have him tell me that he will go with me to
that distant region. What would all the treasures of the earth avail, if I
did not have him! What would I care for castles, diamonds, and carriages if
he were not with me! I am expecting him--he may be here at any moment. So
tell me, father--describe quickly how everything has happened. I have not
seen you for three days; I do not know what has occurred, for, strangely,
nothing has reached the public."
"The emperor enjoined the most inviolable silence upon us all," said
Schulmeister gloomily. "The whole affair has been treated and concealed as
the most profound secret. The emperor does not wish to have anything known
about it; no one must deem it possible that people have dared to seek to
take his life, to attempt to capture him. I never saw him in such a fury
as when I first told him the plan of the conspirators. His eyes flashed
lightnings, he stamped his feet, clenched his little hands into fists, and
stretched them threateningly toward the invisible conspirators. He vowed to
kill them all, to take vengeance on them all for the unprecedented crime."
"And has he fulfilled the vow?"
"He has. He has punished the conspirators, so far as lay in his power. But
some of them, for instance Baron von Moudenfels, do not belong to the
number of his subjects, but are Austrians. The emperor did not have the
sentence which he pronounced upon his own subjects executed upon them; he
could not at this time, for you know that negotiations for peace have been
opened, and the treaty will be signed immediately. So the emperor did not
wish to constitute himself a judge of Austrian subjects; it is a delicate
attention to the Austrian emperor, and the latter will know how to thank
him for it and to punish the criminals with all the rigor of the law.
Therefore Baron von Moudenfels and Count von Kotte have merely been held as
prisoners, and were compelled to witness the execution to-day."
"What execution?" asked Leonore in horror.
"Colonel Lejeune, Captain de Guesniard, and two sous-lieutenants were shot
this morning on the meadow at Schönbrunn,"[E] said Schulmeister in a low
tone.
Leonore shuddered, and a deathlike pallor overspread her face. "And _I_
delivered them to death!" she moaned.
"And if you had spared them, you would have delivered the Emperor
Napoleon, the greatest man of the age, to death, to the most terrible
torture of imprisonment!" cried her father, shrugging his shoulders. "These
men wished to commit a crime against their sovereign, their commander. You
have no reason to reproach yourself for having delivered the criminals to
the law."
"And Mariage? What has become of Mariage?"
"Apparently he received a warning; he has fled. But we found all the others
yesterday at their posts; for we had made all our arrangements so secretly
that even the conspirators who surrounded the emperor were not aware of it.
The emperor at first intended to act strictly according to the programme of
the conspirators; take the ride with his suite, and not permit me to come
to his assistance, with a few trustworthy assistants, until after he had
entered the hut and been captured. But he rejected this plan, because he
would have been compelled to arrest his most distinguished generals and
subject the greater number of his staff officers to a rigid investigation.
The whole army would then have heard of this bold conspiracy, and
conspiracies are like contagious diseases, they always have successors. So
the emperor rejected this plan, and, at the moment that his suite were
mounting to attend him on his ride, he dismissed them all, saying that he
wished to go into the woods alone, accompanied only by Colonel Lejeune, the
Mameluke, and myself. You can imagine the mute horror, the deathlike pallor
of the generals. The emperor did not vouchsafe any of them a glance, but
dashed away. When we had ridden into the woods, the emperor checked his
horse and turned to Colonel Lejeune, who, white as a corpse, rode beside
him.
"Your sword, colonel!" he exclaimed, in tones of thunder. "You will not
play the part of emperor to-day, but merely the character of an
arch-traitor and assassin."
At the same instant Roustan and I rode to Lejeune's side, and each seized
an arm. A moment later he was disarmed and deprived of the papers which we
found in his breast pocket, and the tender farewell letters to his wife and
his mother, in case that the enterprise should fail.
"I will have these sent at once to their addresses the morning after your
execution," the emperor said, with a withering glance from his large
flashing eyes. Then he rode on, and we followed, each holding an arm of
Lejeune, who rode between us. At last we reached the hut and the emperor
checked his horse again. Roustan uttered a low whistle and, at the same
instant, six gray-bearded giants of the imperial guard stood beside us as
if they had sprung from the earth. As soon as the conspirators entered the
hut, they had cautiously approached it and, concealed behind the trees,
awaited the preconcerted signal.
The emperor greeted them with the smile which bewitched his old soldiers,
because it reminded them of the days of their great victory.
"I know that you are faithful," he said, "but I should also like to know
whether you are silent."
"Silent as the grave, if the Little Corporal commands it," said old
Conradin, the emperor's favorite.
"Well, I believe you, and you shall give me a proof of it to-day. Clear out
the nest you see there, and catch the birds for me!"
"He pointed with uplifted arm and menacing gesture to the hut; the soldiers
rushed to it and broke in the door. Shouts of rage were heard, several
shots rang out, then all was still, and the old grenadiers dragged out five
men. Three were wounded, but they had avenged themselves, for three of the
soldiers were also injured."
"Was Baron von Moudenfels among the prisoners?" asked Leonore quickly.
"Yes," replied Schulmeister, "yes, he was among them."
"Then you saw him?"
"Yes, I saw him."
The slow, solemn tone with which her father answered made Leonore tremble.
She looked up questioningly into his face, their eyes met, and were fixed
steadily on each other.
"Why do you gaze at me so sadly and compassionately?" asked Leonore
suddenly, cowering as though in fright.
"I did not know that I was doing so," he answered gently.
"You were, you are still," she cried anxiously. "Father, I read misfortune
in your face. You are concealing something from me! You--oh, heaven, you
have news of Kolbielsky."
She started up, letting the bank-notes fall unheeded to the floor, seized
her father's arm with both hands, and gazed silently at him with panting
breath.
He avoided her eyes, released himself almost violently from her grasp,
stooped, picked up the bills and divided them into halves, putting five
into his breast pocket, and giving his daughter the other five.
"Take it, my Leonore; take the magic key which will open Paradise to you!"
She took the bank-notes and, with a contemptuous gesture, flung them on the
floor.
"You know something of Kolbielsky," she repeated. "Where is he? Answer me,
father, if you don't wish me to fall dead at your feet."
"Yet if I do answer, poor child, what will it avail you? He is lost, you
cannot save him."
She neither shrieked nor wept, she only grasped her father's arm more
firmly and looked him steadily in the face.
"Where is Kolbielsky?" she asked. "Answer, or I will kill myself."
"Well, Leonore, I will give you a proof of my infinite love. I will tell
you the truth, the whole truth. When the prisoners were dragged out of the
hut, one of them suddenly made an attempt to escape. The soldier tried to
hold him, they struggled--in the scuffle the conspirator's wig fell off.
Hitherto he had had white hair--"
"It was Baron von Moudenfels?" asked Leonore breathlessly.
"Yes, Leonore, it was Baron von Moudenfels. But when the wig was torn from
his head, we saw no old man, no Baron von Moudenfels, but--"
"Kolbielsky!" she shrieked with a loud cry of anguish.
Her father nodded, and let his head sink upon his breast.
"And he, too, was shot this morning?" she asked in a low, strange whisper.
"No, Leonore. I told you that the emperor, out of regard for his future
ally, the Emperor Francis, did not have him executed. He simply imprisoned
him and punished him only by compelling him to witness the execution. He
will leave it to the Emperor Francis to pronounce sentence of death upon
the assassin."
"He lives? You will swear that he lives?" she asked breathlessly.
"I will swear that he lives, and that he will live until the return of the
courier whom Count Bubna, who is in Schönbrunn attending to the peace
negotiations--has sent to Totis to the Emperor Francis."
The Baroness de Simonie bounded like a tigress through the room, tearing at
the bell till it sounded like a tocsin and the servants came rushing in
terror from the anteroom.
"My carriage--it must be ready in five minutes!" she cried. The servants
ran out and Leonore darted across the room, tore open the door of the
adjoining chamber, opened a wardrobe in frantic haste, and dragged out a
cloak, which she flung over her shoulders.
"In heaven's name, Leonore, are you out of your senses?" asked her father,
who had hurried after her and now seized her arm. "What do you mean to do?
Where are you going?"
"To the Emperor Napoleon!" she cried loudly. "To the Emperor Napoleon, to
save the life of the man I love. Give me the money, father!"
"What money, Leonore?"
"The bank-notes! The blood-money which I have earned!"
Her father had carefully gathered up the bank-bills which she had thrown
about the room, and gave them to her. Leonore shuddered as she clenched
them in her trembling hands. "I have sold him," she shrieked, raising the
hand that held the papers toward heaven. "His blood clings to this money.
But I will hurl it at the emperor's feet. I want no pay; I will beg his
life for my recompense. Pray father, pray that he may hear me, may grant me
mercy, for I swear by all that is sacred, if Kolbielsky must die, I will
kill his murderers. And his murderers are--you and I!"
"The carriage is at the door," said a servant, entering.
She sprang forward. "I am coming. Pray, father, pray for mercy upon my
loved one's murderers!"