Already two days and two nights had Francesco passed in a state of
raging delirium. On the third day, when he, as if petrified, and
motionless like a statue, was standing before the picture, the door of
his chamber opened, and there was a rustling behind him as if of female
garments. He turned round, and beheld a very beautiful woman, whom he
recognized at once as the original of his picture.
His astonishment was now beyond all description when he beheld that
form, which he had so long contemplated as a marble statue, living,
breathing, and blooming, before him. Nay, he was seized with a kind of
mysterious terror, when he looked from his beautiful visitant back to
the picture, of which the resemblance was so accurate, that it appeared
like the reflection of her features in a mirror.
He felt the fullest conviction, that this event was the effect of
supernatural agency; he could not utter a word, but, overcome by his
fears, fell on his knees before the strange lady, whom he scarcely
believed to be more than an aerial phantom.
This living Venus raised him up, however, and immediately proceeded to
relate to him her own history.
She had seen Francesco at the time when he was yet a pupil in the school
of Leonardo di Rovino. She was then but very young, but had conceived
for him a passion so ardent, that it had never lost possession of her
heart; and at last she had determined on leaving her parents and
friends, who resided in the country, and wandering away to find him in
Rome, as an inward voice had told her that he loved her very much; and
that, merely from the force of that attachment, had been led to paint
her portrait, which warning she now found to have been strictly true.
Francesco now believed all that she told him. He became persuaded that a
secret mental sympathy existed between himself and this stranger, which
had given rise to the passion by which he had so long been haunted. He
forgot the statue, and gave himself no trouble with inquiries as to how
the resemblance betwixt it and his new visitor had been produced. Indeed
such questions would have been very needless, as they admitted not of
any satisfactory answer.
The consequence of this visit was the solemnization (not by Christian,
but by heathen rites) of a marriage betwixt the strange woman and
Francesco, which was attended by all his libertine friends and
associates. As it was found that his bride had brought with her a casket
filled with jewels and ready money, he immediately hired servants, and
purchased a house, where they lived in great splendour and luxury for
many months.
At the close of this period the paramour of Francesco gave birth to a
son, which event was followed by her death, attended by circumstances so
mysterious and horrible, that Francesco was obliged to fly from Rome,
being accused of sorcery and witchcraft, also of divers other crimes
peculiarly odious and abhorrent to the spirit and laws of the Christian
religion. In consequence of all this, he was obliged to make his escape
suddenly during the night, taking with him his child; and, as if
endowed with supernatural energies, he made his way onwards to a wild
and mountainous district of country, which he had before visited in his
days of extravagance and pleasure, and where he knew that there was a
cavern cut in the rock, in which he was now glad to take refuge with the
child from a violent thunder storm.
As to the child, he could not have himself explained by what influence
he was induced to bear it along with him; for, in truth, he only wished
for its destruction. On being thrown on the hard floor of the cave,
however, the infant, for the first time, uttered some fearful and
melancholy cries, which penetrated to Francesco's heart; and hereupon,
he, being moved with compassion, tried every method in his power for its
preservation.
For this purpose, indeed, he was not well provided. At first he could
only offer the child an orange to suck; but afterwards he recollected
the doctor's extraordinary flask, of which the contents seemed
inexhaustible, and which he had found on his departure, and brought with
him. From this bottle he administered a few drops to the infant, who
thereupon seemed miraculously strengthened and tranquillized; and he
made for it, as well as he could, a bed of heather and soft moss,
protecting it from damp and cold with his mantle.
Hereafter, Francesco passed several weeks in the cavern, living like a
penitent hermit; and, incredible as it may seem, the child lived also,
being supplied with food from the contributions that his father received
from pious and compassionate neighbours. But Francesco's mind,
meanwhile, became quite wandering and irrational. He prayed, indeed,
with great zeal, to the blessed saints, that they would intercede for
him, a miserable sinner; for his heart was now wholly alienated from his
profane and blasphemous errors. Above all, he preferred many
supplications to St Rosalia.
Thus it happened, that the wretched man, one beautiful and serene
evening, was prostrate on his knees, in the wilderness. He watched the
receding sun, which, at last, was slowly lost in the water, leaving the
western sky like a sea of red dazzling waves; and that ruddy light faded
ere long into the sombre grey tints of evening, the forerunner of dark
night. Then Francesco perceived in the atmosphere the roseate gleam of
an extraordinary light, which at first he noticed only as a strange
phenomenon, because the sun had now departed. But the red light assumed
a particular form, and floated always nearer and nearer to the penitent,
till at last he recognized the figure of St Rosalia, kneeling on a
bright cloud, and surrounded by angels. Then he heard a voice like that
of soft and articulate music, which pronounced the words, "Forgive, oh
Lord! this mortal, who, in his weakness, was not able to escape the
deeply-laid snares, and resist the manifold temptations, of Satan!"
Hereupon lightnings quivered through that roseate cloud, and there was a
deep and reverberating thunder-clap. A fearful voice answered the prayer
of the saint,--"Oftentimes mortals have sinned and been forgiven; but
what habitant of earth hath ever transgressed like this one? NO
HAPPINESS IN LIFE, NOR PEACE IN THE GRAVE, SHALL BE GRANTED TO HIM, SO
LONG AS THE SINFUL RACE TO WHICH HE HATH GIVEN RISE, SHALL EXIST UPON
THE EARTH!"
Francesco now sunk down, as if annihilated in the dust; for he
thoroughly knew that his irrevocable doom had been pronounced; and that,
by the most horrible destiny, he would now be driven, like a second
Ahasuerus, through the realms of life, without hope of enjoyment here,
or confidence of salvation hereafter.
Of course, he now fled, without thinking of the child in the cave; for
though he could not now wish for its existence, yet he dared not add to
his already heavy crimes, by that of child-murder. He lived, being no
longer able to paint, in extreme and abject misery. Many times it came
into his mind, as if, for the glory of the Christian religion, he must
yet execute extensive and magnificent works; and, consequently, he made
out in his thoughts grand designs, both as to drawing and colouring,
which should illustrate and represent the history of the blessed Virgin,
and St Rosalia. But how could he begin those paintings, as he now did
not possess a single _scudo_ to supply himself with canvass and colours,
and only supported himself by the small pittance of alms, which he
received at the doors of churches?
Into the churches also, like other mendicants, he was allowed freely to
enter; and thus it befell, that one bright and beautiful evening, though
at a late hour, when the sun had gone down, he sat staring on an
opposite empty wall, and filled it in imagination with the paintings
which his genius was yet fully competent to execute. While he sat thus
absorbed in reverie, he saw two female figures, who, silently and with
noiseless steps, approached him. Their countenances were veiled, so that
he had no perception of their features; but, with a voice that rose on
his ears like celestial music, one of them addressed to him the
following admonition:--
"In the remote land of East Prussia is the celebrated
Convent of the Holy Lime-Tree, wherein
Providence has vouchsafed to shew many miracles;
but the magnificent chapel there erected is yet
without any ornaments of painting. Go thither,
then! Let the practice of your art as a painter
become to you an exercise of devotion, and your
now desponding soul will be refreshed with heavenly
consolation!"
With these words, the two female figures melted away in a gleam of
light, and left the air filled with the fragrance of roses and lilies.
Francesco was convinced of the supernatural character of these
visitants, and resolved that he would on the following day begin his
pilgrimage. On that same evening it happened, that a servant of
Zenobio's, after much trouble, found him out, paid him two years'
arrears of his allotted income, and invited him kindly to his brother's
court.
* * * * *
Thus far the old painter had written of himself in the third person,
which, in his later memoranda, he exchanges for the first. I consider it
needless to transcribe his historical account of the various fortunes
and intricate relationships of that illegitimate race which he had
founded, and of which I am a descendant. No reader would take the
trouble of following out a detail which could scarcely be understood,
unless thrown into the form of a genealogical tree. Besides, the mind
revolts from the contemplation of enormous and complicated guilt!
Suffice it to say, that the child which had been left in the cave was
accidentally found and preserved; that a small ivory cup, which, along
with the bottle of the devil's elixir, was discovered at the same time,
bore, for an inscription, the painter's name, Francesco, by which the
boy was afterwards baptized.
Many years passed away, and, according to the curse which had been
pronounced against him, the painter's life was miraculously prolonged,
in order that, by unheard-of penitence, he might expiate his own crimes.
Meanwhile, he beheld the powers of darkness unceasingly employed against
him. The boy who had been found in the cave, and who was protected and
educated, first in the palace of Count Philippo di Saverno, in Italy,
afterwards in the Court of Prince Zenobio, had several children, among
whom were two, a son and daughter, who especially inherited their
father's wicked propensities, and yielded to the temptations of the
devil.
The family afterwards branched out so widely, that the painter's book
alone would supply materials for many volumes. To this family belonged
the Princess von Rosenthurm, the Abbess of the Cistertian Convent, both
the first and second Baroness von F----, and the Count Victorin, who,
notwithstanding the mystery under which he had been reared and educated
in Italy, I now ascertained to be my brother. After the horrible crimes
which my father had perpetrated at the court of Rosenthurm, he was
arrested in his flight by an attack of severe illness, which detained
him long at the house of a benevolent countryman, whose daughter (my
mother) he afterwards married. For some time after this event, by his
knowledge of literature and the arts, he contrived to obtain employment
in the world, having assumed a fictitious name, and established himself
under a principality where his person and features were wholly unknown.
But sooner or later, sin is, even in this world, visited by punishment,
and the just anger of the Almighty. My father was again attacked by
sickness, so that the remnant of the once considerable legacy left him
by his father, was wholly spent. He fell into the bitterest poverty, and
was at the same time assailed by such horrors of conscience, that his
life became a continued miserable penance.
At last Heaven, by means of an extraordinary vision, sent to him a gleam
of consolation. He was warned that he should make a pilgrimage to the
Convent of the Holy Lime-Tree in Prussia, and that the birth of a son
should there announce to him the grace and forgiveness of Heaven.
* * * * *
The last words in the manuscript are as follows. More, indeed, seems to
have been written, but in a scrawl half obliterated, and so faint that
it could not be deciphered.
* * * * *
"In the forest by which the Convent of the Lime-Tree is surrounded, I
appeared to the melancholy mother as she wept over her lately born, and
fatherless infant, and revived her almost annihilated spirit with words
of consolation. Miraculously sometimes has the favour of Heaven seemed
to be won for children who are born within the limits of a blest
sanctuary. They have even been visited by supernatural and celestial
visions, kindling up in their infant minds the fires of divine love, and
the holiest aspirations. The mother has, in holy baptism, given to this
child his father's name, Francesco, or, according to conventual
language, Franciscus.
* * * * *
"Wilt thou then, oh Franciscus! prove to be that long-wished-for
descendant, who, born on consecrated ground, will atone, by the piety
of his earthly pilgrimage, for the crimes that were heaped up by his
ancestors? And wilt thou procure for the wretched penitent refuge in the
grave?
"I have taken such precautions, that the boy will remain for many years
far from the world and its seductive delusions; nay, I have resolved
that he shall become a monk. This destination, the same blessed saint
who poured divine consolation into my soul announced to his mother, and
this event may, indeed, be the forerunner of divine grace, and
forgiveness, which, with the splendour of the morning light, has at last
beamed forth upon me, so that I seem, in my inward mind, to observe
clearly, by anticipation, every event of the future.
"Methinks I already behold this youth undergo the deadly strife with the
fiends of darkness, who, with the most fearful weapons, press in upon
him. He falls a victim to their infernal artifices, yet a beatified
female elevates over his head the crown of victory. It is the blessed St
Rosalia herself, by whom he is rescued. As often as the mercy of Heaven
allows it to me, I shall be near him in infancy, in youth, and in
manhood, and will protect him to the utmost of my limited power."