idle fancies, but that the good Ottilia, from sorrow at the loss of her
beloved husband, had gone down to the grave. The afflicted widower, who
as little doubted of this tragic circumstance as if it had been notified
to him on black-edged paper with seal and signature, felt all that a man
who values the integrity of his jaw must feel when he loses a tooth,
which bountiful Nature is about to replace by another; and comforted
himself under this dispensation with the well-known balm of widowers:
"It is the will of God; I must submit to it!" And now, holding himself
free and disengaged, he bent all his sails, hoisted his flags and
streamers, and steered directly for the haven of happy love. At the
next interview, he thought the Princess lovelier than ever; his looks
languished towards her, and her slender form enchanted his eye, and her
light soft gait was like the gait of a goddess, though she actually
moved the one foot past the other, in mortal wise, and did not, in the
style of goddesses, come hovering along the variegated sand-walk with
unbent limbs. "Bostangi," said she, with melodious voice, "hast thou
spoken to the Iman?" The Count was silent for a moment; he cast down his
beaming eyes, laid his hand submissively on his breast, and sank on his
knee before her. In this humble attitude, he answered resolutely:
"Exalted daughter of the Sultan! my life is at thy nod, but not my
faith. The former I will joyfully offer up to thee; but leave me the
latter, which is so interwoven with my soul, that only death can part
them." From this, it was apparent to the Princess that her fine
enterprise was verging towards shipwreck; wherefore she adopted a
heroical expedient, undoubtedly of far more certain effect than our
animal magnetism, with all its renowned virtues: she unveiled her face.
There stood she, in the full radiance of beauty, like the Sun when he
first raised his head from Chaos to hurl his rays over the gloomy Earth.
Soft blushes overspread her cheeks, and higher purple glowed upon her
lips; two beautifully-curved arches, on which love was sporting like the
many-coloured Iris on the rainbow, shaded her spirit-speaking eyes; and
two golden tresses kissed each other on her lily breast. The Count was
astonished and speechless; the Princess addressed him, and said:
"See, Bostangi, whether this form pleases thy eyes, and whether it
deserves the sacrifice which I require of thee."
"It is the form of an Angel," answered he, with looks of the highest
rapture, "and deserves to shine, encircled with a glory, in the courts
of the Christian Heaven, compared with which, the delights of the
Prophet's Paradise are empty shadows."
These words, spoken with warmth and visible conviction, found free
entrance into the open heart of the Princess: especially, the glory, it
appeared to her, must be a sort of head-dress that would sit not ill
upon the face. Her quick fancy fastened on this idea, which she asked to
have explained; and the Count with all eagerness embraced this
opportunity of painting the Christian Heaven to her as charming as he
possibly could; he chose the loveliest images his mind would suggest;
and spoke with as much confidence as if he had descended directly from
the place on a mission to the Princess. Now, as it has pleased the
Prophet to endow the fair sex with very scanty expectations in the other
world, our apostolic preacher failed the less in his intentions; though
it cannot be asserted that he was preeminently qualified for the
missionary duty. But whether it were that Heaven itself favoured the
work of conversion, or that the foreign tastes of the Princess extended
to the spiritual conceptions of the Western nations, or that the person
of this Preacher to the Heathen mixed in the effect, certain it is she
was all ear, and would have listened to her pedagogue with pleasure for
many hours longer, had not the approach of night cut short their lesson.
For the present, she hastily dropped her veil, and retired to the
Seraglio.
It is a well-known fact, that the children of princes are always very
docile, and make giant steps in every branch of profitable knowledge, as
our Journals often plainly enough testify; while the other citizens of
this world must content themselves with dwarf steps. It was not
surprising, therefore, that the Sultan of Egypt's daughter had in a
short space mastered the whole synopsis of Church doctrine as completely
as her teacher could impart it, bating a few heresies, which, in his
inacquaintance with the delicate shades of faith, he had undesignedly
mingled with it. Nor did this acquisition remain a dead letter with her;
it awakened the most zealous wish for proselytising. Accordingly, the
plan of the Princess had now in so far altered, that she no longer
insisted on converting the Count, but rather felt inclined to let
herself be converted by him; and this not only in regard to unity in
faith, but also to the purposed unity in love. The whole question now
was, by what means this intention could be realised. She took counsel
with Bostangi, he with the mettled Kurt, in their nocturnal
deliberations on this weighty matter; and the latter voted distinctly to
strike the iron while it was hot; to inform the fair proselyte of the
Count's rank and birth; propose to her to run away with him; instantly
to cross the water for the European shore; and live together in
Thuringia as Christian man and wife.
The Count clapped loud applause to this well-grounded scheme of his wise
Squire; it was as if the mettled Kurt had read it in his master's eyes.
Whether the fulfilment of it might be clogged with difficulties or not,
was a point not taken into view in the first fire of the romantic
project: Love removes all mountains, overleaps walls and trenches,
bounds across abyss and chasm, and steps the barrier of a city as
lightly as it does a straw. At the next lecture, the Count disclosed the
plan to his beloved catechumena.
"Thou reflection of the Holy Virgin," said he, "chosen of Heaven from an
outcast people, to gain the victory over prejudice and error, and
acquire a lot and inheritance in the Abodes of Felicity, hast thou the
courage to forsake thy native country, then prepare for speedy flight. I
will guide thee to Rome, where dwells the Porter of Heaven, St. Peter's
deputy, to whom are committed the keys of Heaven's gate; that he may
receive thee into the bosom of the Church, and bless the covenant of our
love. Fear not that thy father's potent arm may reach us; every cloud
above our heads will be a ship manned with angelic hosts, with diamond
shields and flaming swords; invisible indeed to mortal eye, but armed
with heavenly might, and appointed to watch and guard thee. Nor will I
conceal any longer, that I am, by birth and fortune, all that the
Sultan's favour could make me; a Count, that is a Bey born, who rules
over land and people. The limits of my lordship include towns and
villages, palaces also and strongholds. Knights and squires obey me;
horses and carriages stand ready for my service. In my native land, thou
thyself, enclosed by no walls of a seraglio, shalt live and rule in
freedom as a queen."
This oration of the Count the Princess thought a message from above; she
entertained no doubts of his truth; and it seemed to please her that the
Ringdove was to nestle, not beside a Linnet, but beside a bird of the
family of the Eagle. Her warm fancy was filled with such sweet
anticipations, that she consented, with all the alacrity of the Children
of Israel, to forsake the land of Egypt, as if a new Canaan, in another
quarter of the world, had been waiting her beyond the sea. Confident in
the protection of the unseen life-guard promised to her, she would have
followed her conductor from the precincts of the Palace forthwith, had
he not instructed her that many preparations were required, before the
great enterprise could be engaged in with any hope of a happy issue.
Among all privateering transactions by sea or land, there is none more
ticklish, or combined with greater difficulties, than that of kidnapping
the Grand Signior's favourite from his arms. Such a masterstroke could
only be imagined by the teeming fancy of a W*z*l,[25] nor could any but
a Kakerlak achieve it. Yet the undertaking of Count Ernst of Gleichen
to carry off the Sultan of Egypt's daughter, was environed with no fewer
difficulties; and as these two heroes come, to a certain extent, into
competition in this matter, we must say, that the adventure of the Count
was infinitely bolder, seeing everything proceeded merely by the course
of Nature, and no serviceable Fairy put a finger in the pie:
nevertheless, the result of both these corresponding enterprises, in the
one as well as in the other, came about entirely to the wish of parties.
The Princess filled her jewel-box sufficiently with precious stones;
changed her royal garment with a Kaftan; and one evening, under the
safe-conduct of her beloved, his trusty Squire and the phlegmatic
Water-drawer, glided forth from the Palace into the Garden, unobserved,
to enter on her far journey to the West. Her absence could not long
remain concealed; her women sought her, as the proverb runs, like a lost
pin; and as she did not come to light, the alarm in the Seraglio became
boundless. Hints here and there had already been dropped, and surmises
made, about the private audiences of the Bostangi; supposition and fact
were strung together; and the whole produced, in sooth, no row of
pearls, but the horrible discovery of the real nature of the case. The
Divan of Dames had nothing for it but to send advice of the occurrence
to the higher powers. Father Sultan, whom the virtuous Melechsala,
everything considered, might have spared this pang, and avoided flying
her country to make purchase of a glory, demeaned himself at this
intelligence like an infuriated lion, who shakes his brown mane with
dreadful bellowing, when by the uproar of the hunt, and the baying of
the hounds, he is frightened from his den. He swore by the Prophet's
beard that he would utterly destroy every living soul in the Seraglio,
if at sunrise the Princess were not again in her father's power. The
Mameluke guard had to mount, and gallop towards the four winds, in chase
of the fugitives, by every road from Cairo; and a thousand oars were
lashing the broad back of the Nile, in case she might have taken a
passage by water.
[25] J. K. Wetzel, author of some plays and novels; among the
latter, of _Kakerlak_.--ED.
Under such efforts, to elude the far-stretching arm of the Sultan was
impossible, unless the Count possessed the secret of rendering himself
and his travelling party invisible; or the miraculous gift of smiting
all Egypt with blindness. But of these talents neither had been lent
him. Only the mettled Kurt had taken certain measures, which, in regard
to their effect, might supply the place of miracles. He had rendered his
flying caravan invisible, by the darkness of an unlighted cellar in the
house of Adullam the sudorific Hebrew. This Jewish Hermes did not
satisfy himself with practising the healing art to good advantage, but
drew profit likewise from the gift which he had received by inheritance
from his fathers; and thus honoured Mercury in all his three qualities,
of Patron to Doctors, to Merchants, and to Thieves. He drove a great
trade in spiceries and herbs with the Venetians, from which he had
acquired much wealth; and he disdained no branch of business whereby
anything was to be made. This worthy Israelite, who for money and
money's worth, stood ready, without investigating moral tendencies, for
any sort of deed, the trusty Squire had prevailed on, by a jewel from
the casket of the Princess, to undertake the transport of the Count,
whose rank and intention were not concealed from him, with three
servants, to a Venetian ship that was loading at Alexandria; but it had
prudently been hidden from him, that in the course of this contraband
transaction, he must smuggle out his master's daughter. On first
inspecting his cargo, the figure of the fair youth struck him somewhat;
but he thought no ill of it, and took him for a page of the Count's. Ere
long the report of the Princess Melechsala's disappearance sounded over
all the city: then Adullam's eyes were opened; deadly terror took
possession of his heart, so that his gray beard began to stir, and he
wished with all his soul that his hands had been free of this perilous
concern. But now it was too late; his own safety required him to summon
all his cunning, and conduct this breakneck business to a happy end. In
the first place, he laid his subterranean lodgers under rigorous
quarantine; and then, after the sharpest of the search was over, the
hope of finding the Princess considerably faded, and the zeal in seeking
for her cooled, he packed the whole caravan neatly up in four bales of
herbs, put them on board a Nile-boat, and sent them with a proper
invoice, under God's guidance, safe and sound to Alexandria; where so
soon as the Venetian had gained the open sea, they were liberated, all
and sundry, from their strait confinement in the herb-sacks.[26]
[26] The invention of travelling in a sack was several times
employed during the Crusades. Dietrich the Hard-bested, Markgraf of
Meissen (Misnia), returned from Palestine to his hereditary
possessions, under this incognito, and so escaped the snares of the
Emperor Henry VI., who had an eye to the productive mines of
Freyberg.--M.
Whether the celestial body-guard, with diamond shields and flaming
swords, posted on a gorgeous train of clouds, did follow the swift ship,
could not now, as they were invisible, be properly substantiated in a
court of justice; yet there are not wanting symptoms in the matter which
might lead to some such conjecture. All the four winds of Heaven seem to
have combined to make the voyage prosperous; the adverse held their
breath; and the favourable blew so gaily in the sails, that the vessel
ploughed the soft-playing billows with the speed of an arrow. The
friendly moon was stretching her horns from the clouds for the second
time, when the Venetian, glad in heart, ran into moorings in the harbour
of his native town.
Countess Ottilia's watchful spy was still at Venice; undismayed by the
fruitless toil of vain inquiries, from continuing his diets of
examination, and diligently questioning all passengers from the Levant.
He was at his post when the Count, with the fair Melechsala, came on
land. His master's physiognomy was so stamped upon his memory, that he
would have undertaken to discover it among a thousand unknown faces.
Nevertheless the foreign garb, and the finger of Time, which in seven
years produces many changes, made him for some moments doubtful. To be
certain of his object, he approached the stranger's suite, made up to
the trusty Squire, and asked him: "Comrade, whence come you?"
The mettled Kurt rejoiced to meet a countryman, and hear the sound of
his mother-tongue; but saw no profit in submitting his concerns to the
questioning of a stranger, and answered briefly: "From sea."
"Who is the gentleman thou followest?"
"My master."
"From what country come you?"
"From the East."
"Whither are you going?"
"To the West."
"To what province?"
"To our home."
"Where is it?"
"Miles of road from this."
"What is thy name?"
"Start-the-game, that is my name. Strike-for-a-word, people call my
sword. Sorrow-of-life, so hight my wife. Rise, Lig-a-bed, she cries to
her maid. Still-at-a-stand, that is my man. Hobbletehoy, I christened
my boy. Lank-i'-the-bag, I scold my nag. Shamble-and-stalk, we call his
walk. Trot-i'-the-bog, I whistle my dog. Saw-ye-that, so jumps my cat.
Snug-in-the-rug, he is my bug. Now thou knowest me, with wife and child,
and all my household."
"Thou seemest to me to be a queer fellow."
"I am no fellow at all, for I follow no handicraft."
"Answer me one question."
"Let us hear it."
"Hast thou any news of Count Ernst of Gleichen, from the East?"
"Wherefore dost thou ask?"
"Therefore."
"Twiddle, twaddle! Wherefore, therefore!"
"Because I am sent into all the world by the Countess Ottilia his wife,
to get her word whether her husband is still living, and in what corner
of the Earth he may be found."
This answer put the mettled Kurt into some perplexity; and tuned him to
another key. "Wait a little, neighbour," said he; "perhaps my master
knows about the thing." Thereupon he ran to the Count, and whispered the
tidings in his ear. The feeling they awoke was complex; made up in equal
proportions of joy and consternation. Count Ernst perceived that his
dream, or the interpretation of it, had misled him; and that the conceit
of marrying his fair travelling companion might easily be baulked. On
the spur of the moment he knew not how he should get out of this
embroiled affair: meanwhile, the desire to learn how matters stood at
home outweighed all scruples. He beckoned to the emissary, whom he soon
recognised for his old valet; and who wetted with joyful tears the hand
of his recovered master, and told in many words what jubilee the
Countess would make, when she received the happy message of her
husband's return. The Count took him with the rest to the inn; and there
engaged in earnest meditation on the singular state of his heart, and
considered deeply what was to be done with his engagements to the fair
Saracen. Without loss of time the watchful spy was dispatched to the
Countess with a letter, containing a true statement of the Count's
fortunes in slavery at Cairo, and of his deliverance by means of the
Sultan's daughter; how she had abandoned throne and country for his
sake, under the condition that he was to marry her, which he himself,
deceived by a dream, had promised. By this narrative he meant not only
to prepare his wife for a participatress in her marriage rights; but
also endeavoured, in the course of it, by many sound arguments, to gain
her own consent to the arrangement.
Countess Ottilia was standing at the window in her mourning weeds, as
the news-bringer for the last time gave his breathless horse the spur,
to hasten it up the steep Castle-path. Her sharp eye recognised him in
the distance; and he too being nothing of a blinkard,--a class of
persons very rare in the days of the Crusades,--recognised the Countess
also, raised the letter-bag aloft over his head, and waved it like a
standard in token of good news; and the lady understood his signal, as
well as if the Hanau _Synthematograph_ had been on duty there. "Hast
thou found him, the husband of my heart?" cried she, as he approached.
"Where lingers he, that I may rise and wipe the sweat from his brow, and
let him rest in my faithful arms from his toilsome journeying?"--"Joy to
you, my lady," said the post; "his lordship is well. I found him in the
Port of Venice, from which he sends you this under his hand and seal, to
announce his arrival himself." The Countess could not hastily enough
undo the seal; and at sight of her husband's hand, she felt as if the
breath of life were coming back to her. Three times she pressed the
letter to her beating heart, and three times touched it with her
languishing lips. A shower of joyful tears streamed over the parchment,
as she began reading: but the farther she read, the drops fell the
slower; and before the reading was completed, the fountain of tears had
dried up altogether.
The contents of the letter could not all interest the good lady equally;
her husband's proposed partition treaty of his heart had not the
happiness to meet with her approval. Greatly as the spirit of partition
has acquired the upper hand nowadays, so that parted love and parted
provinces have become the device of our century; these things were
little to the taste of old times, when every heart had its own key, and
a master-key that would open several was regarded as a scandalous
thief-picklock. The intolerance of the Countess in this point was at
least a proof of her unvarnished love: "Ah! that doleful Crusade," cried
she, "is the cause of it all. I lent the Holy Church a Loaf, of which
the Heathen have eaten; and nothing but a Crust of it returns to me." A
vision of the night, however, soothed her troubled mind, and gave her
whole view of the affair another aspect. She dreamed that there came
two pilgrims from the Holy Sepulchre up the winding Castle-road, and
begged a lodging, which she kindly granted them. One of them threw off
his cloak, and behold it was the Count her lord! She joyfully embraced
him, and was in raptures at his return. The children too came in, and he
clasped them in his paternal arms, pressed them to his heart, and
praised their looks and growth. Meanwhile his companion laid aside his
travelling pouch; drew from it golden chains and precious strings of
jewelry, and hung them round the necks of the little ones, who showed
delighted with these glittering presents. The Countess was herself
surprised at this munificence, and asked the stranger who he was. He
answered: "I am the Angel Raphael, the guide of the loving, and have
brought thy husband to thee out of foreign lands." His pilgrim garments
melted away; and a shining angel stood before her, in an azure robe,
with two golden wings on his shoulders. Thereupon she awoke, and, in the
absence of an Egyptian Sibyl, herself interpreted the dream according to
her best skill; and found so many points of similarity between the Angel
Raphael and the Princess Melechsala, that she doubted not the latter had
been shadowed forth to her in vision under the figure of the former. At
the same time she took into consideration the fact that, without her
help, the Count could scarcely ever have escaped from slavery. And as it
behoves the owner of a lost piece of property to deal generously with
the finder, who might have kept it all to himself, she no longer
hesitated to resolve on the surrender. The water-bailiff, well rewarded
for his watchfulness, was therefore dispatched forthwith back into
Italy, with the formal consent of the Countess for her husband to
complete the trefoil of his marriage without loss of time.