“I know not what the love of others may be,” said Gertrude, “but

ours seems different from all of which I have read. Books tell us of

jealousies and misconstructions, and the necessity of an absence, the

sweetness of a quarrel; but we, dearest Albert, have had no experience

of these passages in love. _We_ have never misunderstood each other;

_we_ have no reconciliation to look back to. When was there ever

occasion for me to ask forgiveness from you? Our love is made up only of

one memory,--unceasing kindness! A harsh word, a wronging thought, never

broke in upon the happiness we have felt and feel.”

“Dearest Gertrude,” said Trevylyan, “that character of our love is

caught from you; you, the soft, the gentle, have been its pervading

genius; and the well has been smooth and pure, for you were the spirit

that lived within its depths.”

And to such talk succeeded silence still more sweet,--the silence of

the hushed and overflowing heart. The last voices of the birds, the sun

slowly sinking in the west, the fragrance of descending dews, filled

them with that deep and mysterious sympathy which exists between Love

and Nature.

It was after such a silence--a long silence, that seemed but as a

moment--that Trevylyan spoke, but Gertrude answered not; and, yearning

once more for her sweet voice, he turned and saw that she had fainted

away.

This was the first indication of the point to which her increasing

debility had arrived. Trevylyan’s heart stood still, and then beat

violently; a thousand fears crept over him; he clasped her in his

arms, and bore her to the open window. The setting sun fell upon her

countenance, from which the play of the young heart and warm fancy

had fled, and in its deep and still repose the ravages of disease were

darkly visible. What were then his emotions! His heart was like stone;

but he felt a rush as of a torrent to his temples: his eyes grew

dizzy,--he was stunned by the greatness of his despair. For the last

week he had taken hope for his companion; Gertrude had seemed so much

stronger, for her happiness had given her a false support. And though

there had been moments when, watching the bright hectic come and go,

and her step linger, and the breath heave short, he had felt the hope

suddenly cease, yet never had he known till now that fulness of anguish,

that dread certainty of the worst, which the calm, fair face before him

struck into his soul; and mixed with this agony as he gazed was all

the passion of the most ardent love. For there she lay in his arms,

the gentle breath rising from lips where the rose yet lingered, and

the long, rich hair, soft and silken as an infant’s, stealing from

its confinement: everything that belonged to Gertrude’s beauty was so

inexpressibly soft and pure and youthful! Scarcely seventeen, she seemed

much younger than she was; her figure had sunken from its roundness, but

still how light, how lovely were its wrecks! the neck whiter than snow,

the fair small hand! Her weight was scarcely felt in the arms of her

lover; and he--what a contrast!--was in all the pride and flower of

glorious manhood! His was the lofty brow, the wreathing hair, the

haughty eye, the elastic form; and upon this frail, perishable thing

had he fixed all his heart, all the hopes of his youth, the pride of his

manhood, his schemes, his energies, his ambition!

“Oh, Gertrude!” cried he, “is it--is it thus--is there indeed no hope?”

And Gertrude now slowly recovering, and opening her eyes upon

Trevylyan’s face, the revulsion was so great, his emotions so

overpowering, that, clasping her to his bosom, as if even death should

not tear her away from him, he wept over her in an agony of tears; not

those tears that relieve the heart, but the fiery rain of the internal

storm, a sign of the fierce tumult that shook the very core of his

existence, not a relief.

Awakened to herself, Gertrude, in amazement and alarm, threw her arms

around his neck, and, looking wistfully into his face, implored him to

speak to her.

“Was it my illness, love?” said she; and the music of her voice only

conveyed to him the thought of how soon it would be dumb to him forever.

“Nay,” she continued winningly, “it was but the heat of the day; I am

better now,--I am well; there is no cause to be alarmed for me!” and

with all the innocent fondness of extreme youth, she kissed the burning

tears from his eyes.

There was a playfulness, an innocence in this poor girl, so unconscious

as yet of her destiny, which rendered her fate doubly touching,

and which to the stern Trevylyan, hackneyed by the world, made her

irresistible charm; and now as she put aside her hair, and looked up

gratefully, yet pleadingly, into his face, he could scarce refrain from

pouring out to her the confession of his anguish and despair. But the

necessity of self-control, the necessity of concealing from _her_ a

knowledge which might only, by impressing her imagination, expedite her

doom, while it would embitter to her mind the unconscious enjoyment of

the hour, nerved and manned him. He checked by those violent efforts

which only men can make, the evidence of his emotions; and endeavoured,

by a rapid torrent of words, to divert her attention from a weakness,

the causes of which he could not explain. Fortunately Vane soon

returned, and Trevylyan, consigning Gertrude to his care, hastily left

the room.

Gertrude sank into a revery.

“Ah, dear father!” said she, suddenly, and after a pause, “if I indeed

were worse than I have thought myself of late, if I were to die now,

what would Trevylyan feel? Pray God I may live for his sake!”

“My child, do not talk thus; you are better, much better than you were.

Ere the autumn ends, Trevylyan’s happiness will be your lawful care. Do

not think so despondently of yourself.”

“I thought not of myself,” sighed Gertrude, “but of _him_!”

CHAPTER XVI. GERTRUDE.--THE EXCURSION TO HAMMERSTEIN.--THOUGHTS.

THE next day they visited the environs of Brohl. Gertrude was unusually

silent; for her temper, naturally sunny and enthusiastic, was accustomed

to light up everything she saw. Ah, once how bounding was that step! how

undulating the young graces of that form! how playfully once danced the

ringlets on that laughing cheek! But she clung to Trevylyan’s proud form

with a yet more endearing tenderness than was her wont, and hung yet

more eagerly on his words; her hand sought his, and she often pressed it

to her lips, and sighed as she did so. Something that she would not tell

seemed passing within her, and sobered her playful mood. But there

was this noticeable in Gertrude: whatever took away from her gayety

increased her tenderness. The infirmities of her frame never touched her

temper. She was kind, gentle, loving to the last.

They had crossed to the opposite banks, to visit the Castle of

Hammerstein. The evening was transparently serene and clear; and the

warmth of the sun yet lingered upon the air, even though the twilight

had passed and the moon risen, as their boat returned by a lengthened

passage to the village. Broad and straight flows the Rhine in this part

of its career. On one side lay the wooded village of Namedy, the hamlet

of Fornech, backed by the blue rock of Kruezborner Ley, the mountains

that shield the mysterious Brohl; and on the opposite shore they saw the

mighty rock of Hammerstein, with the green and livid ruins sleeping

in the melancholy moonlight. Two towers rose haughtily above the more

dismantled wrecks. How changed since the alternate banners of the

Spaniard and the Swede waved from their ramparts, in that great war in

which the gorgeous Wallenstein won his laurels! And in its mighty

calm flowed on the ancestral Rhine, the vessel reflected on its smooth

expanse; and above, girded by thin and shadowy clouds, the moon cast her

shadows upon rocks covered with verdure, and brought into a dim light

the twin spires of Andernach, tranquil in the distance.

“How beautiful is this hour!” said Gertrude, with a low voice, “surely

we do not live enough in the night; one half the beauty of the world is

slept away. What in the day can equal the holy calm, the loveliness,

and the stillness which the moon now casts over the earth? These,”

she continued, pressing Trevylyan’s hand, “are hours to remember; and

_you_--will you ever forget them?”

Something there is in recollections of such times and scenes that seem

not to belong to real life, but are rather an episode in its history;

they are like some wandering into a more ideal world; they refuse to

blend with our ruder associations; they live in us, apart and alone, to

be treasured ever, but not lightly to be recalled. There are none living

to whom we can confide them,--who can sympathize with what then we

felt? It is this that makes poetry, and that page which we create as a

confidant to ourselves, necessary to the thoughts that weigh upon the

breast. We write, for our writing is our friend, the inanimate paper is

our confessional; we pour forth on it the thoughts that we could tell

to no private ear, and are relieved, are consoled. And if genius has

one prerogative dearer than the rest, it is that which enables it to do

honour to the dead,--to revive the beauty, the virtue that are no more;

to wreathe chaplets that outlive the day around the urn which were else

forgotten by the world!

When the poet mourns, in his immortal verse, for the dead, tell me not

that fame is in his mind! It is filled by thoughts, by emotions that

shut out the living. He is breathing to his genius--to that sole and

constant friend which has grown up with him from his cradle--the sorrows

too delicate for human sympathy! and when afterwards he consigns the

confession to the crowd, it is indeed from the hope of honour--, honour

not for himself, but for the being that is no more.

CHAPTER XVII. LETTER FROM TREVYLYAN TO -----.

COBLENTZ.

I AM obliged to you, my dear friend, for your letter; which, indeed, I

have not, in the course of our rapid journey, had the leisure, perhaps

the heart, to answer before. But we are staying in this town for some

days, and I write now in the early morning, ere any one else in our

hotel is awake. Do not tell me of adventure, of politics, of intrigues;

my nature is altered. I threw down your letter, animated and brilliant

as it was, with a sick and revolted heart. But I am now in somewhat less

dejected spirits. Gertrude is better,--yes, really better; there is a

physician here who gives me hope; my care is perpetually to amuse,

and never to fatigue her,--never to permit her thoughts to rest upon

herself. For I have imagined that illness cannot, at least in the

unexhausted vigour of our years, fasten upon us irremediably unless we

feed it with our own belief in its existence. You see men of the

most delicate frames engaged in active and professional pursuits, who

literally have no time for illness. Let them become idle, let them take

care of themselves, let them think of their health--and they die! The

rust rots the steel which use preserves; and, thank Heaven, although

Gertrude, once during our voyage, seemed roused, by an inexcusable

imprudence of emotion on my part, into some suspicion of her state,

yet it passed away; for she thinks rarely of herself,--I am ever in her

thoughts and seldom from her side, and you know, too, the sanguine and

credulous nature of her disease. But, indeed, I now hope more than I

have done since I knew her.

When, after an excited and adventurous life which had comprised so

many changes in so few years, I found myself at rest in the bosom of a

retired and remote part of the country, and Gertrude and her father were

my only neighbours, I was in that state of mind in which the passions,

recruited by solitude, are accessible to the purer and more divine

emotions. I was struck by Gertrude’s beauty, I was charmed by

her simplicity. Worn in the usages and fashions of the world, the

inexperience, the trustfulness, the exceeding youth of her mind, charmed

and touched me; but when I saw the stamp of our national disease in

her bright eye and transparent cheek, I felt my love chilled while my

interest was increased. I fancied myself safe, and I went daily into the

danger; I imagined so pure a light could not burn, and I was consumed.

Not till my anxiety grew into pain, my interest into terror, did I know

the secret of my own heart; and at the moment that I discovered this

secret, I discovered also that Gertrude loved me! What a destiny was

mine! what happiness, yet what misery! Gertrude was my own--but for what

period? I might touch that soft hand, I might listen to the tenderest

confession from that silver voice; but all the while my heart spoke of

passion, my reason whispered of death. You know that I am considered

of a cold and almost callous nature, that I am not easily moved into

affection; but my very pride bowed me here into weakness. There was so

soft a demand upon my protection, so constant an appeal to my anxiety.

You know that my father’s quick temper burns within me, that I am hot,

and stern, and exacting; but one hasty word, one thought of myself,

here were inexcusable. So brief a time might be left for her earthly

happiness,--could I embitter one moment? All that feeling of uncertainty

which should in prudence have prevented my love, increased it almost to

a preternatural excess. That which it is said mothers feel for an only

child in sickness, I feel for Gertrude. _My_ existence is not!--I exist

in her!

Her illness increased upon her at home; they have recommended travel.

She chose the course we were to pursue, and, fortunately, it was so

familiar to me, that I have been enabled to brighten the way. I am ever

on the watch that she shall not know a weary hour; you would almost

smile to see how I have roused myself from my habitual silence, and to

find me--me, the scheming and worldly actor of real life--plunged back

into the early romance of my boyhood, and charming the childish delight

of Gertrude with the invention of fables and the traditions of the

Rhine.

But I believe that I have succeeded in my object; if not, what is left

to me? _Gertrude is better!_--In that sentence what visions of hope dawn

upon me! I wish you could have seen Gertrude before we left England; you

might then have understood my love for her. Not that we have not, in

the gay capitals of Europe, paid our brief vows to forms more richly

beautiful; not that we have not been charmed by a more brilliant genius,

by a more tutored grace. But there is that in Gertrude which I never

saw before,--the union of the childish and the intellectual, an ethereal

simplicity, a temper that is never dimmed, a tenderness--O God! let me

not speak of her virtues, for they only tell me how little she is suited

to the earth.

You will direct to me at Mayence, whither our course now leads us, and

your friendship will find indulgence for a letter that is so little a

reply to yours.

Your sincere friend,

A. G. TREVYLYAN.

CHAPTER XVIII. COBLENTZ.--EXCURSION TO THE MOUNTAINS OF TAUNUS; ROMAN

TOWER IN THE VALLEY OF EHRENBREITSTEIN.--TRAVEL, ITS PLEASURES ESTIMATED

DIFFERENTLY BY THE YOUNG AND THE OLD.--THE STUDENT OF HEIDELBERG; HIS

CRITICISMS ON GERMAN LITERATURE.

GERTRUDE had, indeed, apparently rallied during their stay at Coblentz;

and a French physician established in the town (who adopted a peculiar

treatment for consumption, which had been attended with no ordinary

success) gave her father and Trevylyan a sanguine assurance of her

ultimate recovery. The time they passed within the white walls of

Coblentz was, therefore, the happiest and most cheerful part of their

pilgrimage. They visited the various places in its vicinity; but the

excursion which most delighted Gertrude was one to the mountains of

Taunus.

They took advantage of a beautiful September day; and, crossing the

river, commenced their tour from the Thal, or valley of Ehrenbreitstein.

They stopped on their way to view the remains of a Roman tower in the

valley; for the whole of that district bears frequent witness of the

ancient conquerors of the world. The mountains of Taunus are still

intersected with the roads which the Romans cut to the mines that

supplied them with silver. Roman urns and inscribed stones are often

found in these ancient places. The stones, inscribed with names utterly

unknown,--a type of the uncertainty of fame! the urns, from which the

dust is gone, a very satire upon life!

Lone, gray, and mouldering, this tower stands aloft in the valley; and

the quiet Vane smiled to see the uniform of a modern Prussian, with his

white belt and lifted bayonet, by the spot which had once echoed to the

clang of the Roman arms. The soldier was paying a momentary court to

a country damsel, whose straw hat and rustic dress did not stifle the

vanity of the sex; and this rude and humble gallantry, in that spot, was

another moral in the history of human passions. Above, the ramparts of

a modern rule frowned down upon the solitary tower, as if in the vain

insolence with which present power looks upon past decay,--the living

race upon ancestral greatness. And indeed, in this respect, rightly!

for modern times have no parallel to that degradation of human dignity

stamped upon the ancient world by the long sway of the Imperial Harlot,

all slavery herself, yet all tyranny to earth; and, like her own

Messalina, at once a prostitute and an empress!

They continued their course by the ancient baths of Ems, and keeping by

the banks of the romantic Lahn, arrived at Holzapfel.

“Ah,” said Gertrude, one day, as they proceeded to the springs of the

Carlovingian Wiesbaden, “surely perpetual travel with those we love must

be the happiest state of existence! If home has its comforts, it also

has its cares; but here we are at home with Nature, and the minor evils

vanish almost before they are felt.”

“True,” said Trevylyan, “we escape from ‘THE LITTLE,’ which is the curse

of life; the small cares that devour us up, the grievances of the

day. We are feeding the divinest part of our nature,--the appetite to

admire.”

“But of all things wearisome,” said Vane, “a succession of changes is

the most. There can be a monotony in variety itself. As the eye aches in

gazing long at the new shapes of the kaleidoscope, the mind aches at the

fatigue of a constant alternation of objects; and we delightedly return

to ‘REST,’ which is to life what green is to the earth.”

In the course of their sojourn among the various baths of Taunus, they

fell in, by accident, with a German student of Heidelberg, who was

pursuing the pedestrian excursions so peculiarly favoured by his tribe.

He was tamer and gentler than the general herd of those young wanderers,

and our party were much pleased with his enthusiasm, because it was

unaffected. He had been in England, and spoke its language almost as a

native.

“Our literature,” said he, one day, conversing with Vane, “has two

faults,--we are too subtle and too homely. We do not speak enough to the

broad comprehension of mankind; we are forever making abstract qualities

of flesh and blood. Our critics have turned your ‘Hamlet’ into an

allegory; they will not even allow Shakspeare to paint mankind, but

insist on his embodying qualities. They turn poetry into metaphysics,

and truth seems to them shallow, unless an allegory, which is false, can

be seen at the bottom. Again, too, with our most imaginative works

we mix a homeliness that we fancy touching, but which in reality is

ludicrous. We eternally step from the sublime to the ridiculous; we want

taste.”

“But not, I hope, French taste. Do not govern a Goethe, or even a

Richter, by a Boileau!” said Trevylyan.

“No; but Boileau’s taste was false. Men who have the reputation for good

taste often acquire it solely because of the want of genius. By taste I

mean a quick tact into the harmony of composition, the art of making the

whole consistent with its parts, the _concinnitas_. Schiller alone of

our authors has it. But we are fast mending; and by following shadows so

long we have been led at last to the substance. Our past literature

is to us what astrology was to science,--false but ennobling, and

conducting us to the true language of the intellectual heaven.”

Another time the scenes they passed, interspersed with the ruins of

frequent monasteries, leading them to converse on the monastic life, and

the various additions time makes to religion, the German said: “Perhaps

one of the works most wanted in the world is the history of Religion. We

have several books, it is true, on the subject, but none that supply the

want I allude to. A German ought to write it; for it is, probably, only

a German that would have the requisite learning. A German only, too,

is likely to treat the mighty subject with boldness, and yet with

veneration; without the shallow flippancy of the Frenchman, without the

timid sectarianism of the English. It would be a noble task, to

trace the winding mazes of antique falsehood; to clear up the first

glimmerings of divine truth; to separate Jehovah’s word from man’s

invention; to vindicate the All-merciful from the dread creeds of

bloodshed and of fear: and, watching in the great Heaven of Truth the

dawning of the True Star, follow it--like the Magi of the East--till

it rested above the real God. Not indeed presuming to such a task,”

continued the German, with a slight blush, “I have about me a humble

essay, which treats only of one part of that august subject; which,

leaving to a loftier genius the history of the true religion, may

be considered as the history of a false one,--of such a creed as

Christianity supplanted in the North; or such as may perhaps be found

among the fiercest of the savage tribes. It is a fiction--as you may

conceive; but yet, by a constant reference to the early records of human

learning, I have studied to weave it up from truths. If you would like

to hear it,--it is very short--”

“Above all things,” said Vane; and the German drew a manuscript neatly

bound from his pocket.

“After having myself criticised so insolently the faults of our national

literature,” said he, smiling, “you will have a right to criticise the

faults that belong to so humble a disciple of it; but you will see that,

though I have commenced with the allegorical or the supernatural, I

have endeavoured to avoid the subtlety of conceit, and the obscurity of

design, which I blame in the wilder of our authors. As to the style, I

wished to suit it to the subject; it ought to be, unless I err, rugged

and massive,--hewn, as it were, out of the rock of primeval language.

But you, madam--doubtless you do not understand German?”

“Her mother was an Austrian,” said Vane; “and she knows at least enough

of the tongue to understand you; so pray begin.”

Without further preface, the German then commenced the story, which the

reader will find translated* in the next chapter.

* Nevertheless I beg to state seriously, that the German student

is an impostor; and that he has no right to wrest the parentage

of the fiction from the true author.

CHAPTER XIX. THE FALLEN STAR; OR THE HISTORY OF A FALSE RELIGION.

AND the STARS sat, each on his ruby throne, and watched with sleepless

eyes upon the world. It was the night ushering in the new year, a night

on which every star receives from the archangel that then visits the

universal galaxy its peculiar charge. The destinies of men and empires

are then portioned forth for the coming year, and, unconsciously to

ourselves, our fates become minioned to the stars. A hushed and solemn

night is that in which the dark gates of time open to receive the ghost

of the Dead Year, and the young and radiant Stranger rushes forth from

the clouded chasms of Eternity. On that night, it is said that there are

given to the spirits that we see not a privilege and a power; the dead

are troubled in their forgotten graves, and men feast and laugh, while

demon and angel are contending for their doom.

It was night in heaven; all was unutterably silent; the music of the

spheres had paused, and not a sound came from the angels of the stars;

and they who sat upon those shining thrones were three thousand and ten,

each resembling each. Eternal youth clothed their radiant limbs

with celestial beauty, and on their faces was written the dread of

calm,--that fearful stillness which feels not, sympathizes not with the

doom over which it broods. War, tempest, pestilence, the rise of

empires and their fall, they ordain, they compass, unexultant and

uncompassionate. The fell and thrilling crimes that stalk abroad when

the world sleeps,--the parricide with his stealthy step and horrent brow

and lifted knife; the unwifed mother that glides out and looks behind,

and behind, and shudders, and casts her babe upon the river, and hears

the wail, and pities not--the splash, and does not tremble,--these the

starred kings behold, to these they lead the unconscious step; but

the guilt blanches not their lustre, neither doth remorse wither their

unwrinkled youth. Each star wore a kingly diadem; round the loins of

each was a graven belt, graven with many and mighty signs; and the foot

of each was on a burning ball, and the right arm drooped over the knee

as they bent down from their thrones. They moved not a limb or feature,

save the finger of the right hand, which ever and anon moved slowly

pointing, and regulated the fates of men as the hand of the dial speaks

the career of time.

One only of the three thousand and ten wore not the same aspect as his

crowned brethren,--a star smaller than the rest, and less luminous; the

countenance of this star was not impressed with the awful calmness of

the others, but there were sullenness and discontent upon his mighty

brow.

And this star said to himself, “Behold! I am created less glorious

than my fellows, and the archangel apportions not to me the same lordly

destinies. Not for me are the dooms of kings and bards, the rulers of

empires, or, yet nobler, the swayers and harmonists of souls. Sluggish

are the spirits and base the lot of the men I am ordained to lead

through a dull life to a fameless grave. And wherefore? Is it mine own

fault, or is it the fault which is not mine, that I was woven of beams

less glorious than my brethren? Lo! when the archangel comes, I will

bow not my crowned head to his decrees. I will speak, as the ancestral

Lucifer before me: _he_ rebelled because of his glory, _I_ because of

my obscurity; _he_ from the ambition of pride, and _I_ from its

discontent.”

And while the star was thus communing with himself, the upward heavens

were parted as by a long river of light, and adown that stream swiftly,

and without sound, sped the archangel visitor of the stars. His vast

limbs floated in the liquid lustre, and his outspread wings, each plume

the glory of a sun, bore him noiselessly along; but thick clouds veiled

his lustre from the eyes of mortals, and while above all was bathed in

the serenity of his splendour, tempest and storm broke below over the

children of the earth: “He bowed the heavens and came down, and darkness

was under his feet.”

And the stillness on the faces of the stars became yet more still, and

the awfulness was humbled into awe. Right above their thrones paused

the course of the archangel; and his wings stretched from east to west,

overshadowing with the shadow of light the immensity of space. Then

forth, in the shining stillness, rolled the dread music of his voice:

and, fulfilling the heraldry of God, to each star he appointed the duty

and the charge; and each star bowed his head yet lower as he heard the

fiat, while his throne rocked and trembled at the Majesty of the

Word. But at last, when each of the brighter stars had, in succession,

received the mandate, and the viceroyalty over the nations of the earth,

the purple and diadems of kings, the archangel addressed the lesser star

as he sat apart from his fellows.

“Behold,” said the archangel, “the rude tribes of the North, the

fishermen of the river that flows beneath, and the hunters of the

forests that darken the mountain tops with verdure! these be thy charge,

and their destinies thy care. Nor deem thou, O Star of the sullen beams,

that thy duties are less glorious than the duties of thy brethren; for

the peasant is not less to thy master and mine than the monarch; nor

doth the doom of empires rest more upon the sovereign than on the herd.

The passions and the heart are the dominion of the stars,--a mighty

realm; nor less mighty beneath the hide that garbs the shepherd than

under the jewelled robes of the eastern kings.”

Then the star lifted his pale front from his breast, and answered the

archangel.

“Lo!” he said, “ages have passed, and each year thou hast appointed me

to the same ignoble charge. Release me, I pray thee, from the duties

that I scorn; or, if thou wilt that the lowlier race of men be my

charge, give unto me the charge not of many, but of one, and suffer

me to breathe into him the desire that spurns the valleys of life, and

ascends its steeps. If the humble are given to me, let there be amongst

them one whom I may lead on the mission that shall abase the proud; for,

behold, O Appointer of the Stars, as I have sat for uncounted years upon

my solitary throne, brooding over the things beneath, my spirit hath

gathered wisdom from the changes that shift below. Looking upon the

tribes of earth, I have seen how the multitude are swayed, and tracked

the steps that lead weakness into power; and fain would I be the ruler

of one who, if abased, shall aspire to rule.”

As a sudden cloud over the face of noon was the change on the brow of

the archangel.

“Proud and melancholy star,” said the herald, “thy wish would war with

the courses of the invisible DESTINY, that, throned far above, sways

and harmonizes all,--the source from which the lesser rivers of fate are

eternally gushing through the heart of the universe of things. Thinkest

thou that thy wisdom, of itself, can lead the peasant to become a king?”

And the crowned star gazed undauntedly on the face of the archangel, and

answered,--

“Yea! Grant me but one trial!”

Ere the archangel could reply, the farthest centre of the Heaven was

rent as by a thunderbolt; and the divine herald covered his face with

his hands, and a voice low and sweet and mild, with the consciousness of

unquestionable power, spoke forth to the repining star.

“The time has arrived when thou mayest have thy wish. Below thee, upon

yon solitary plain, sits a mortal, gloomy as thyself, who, born under

thy influence, may be moulded to thy will.”

The voice ceased as the voice of a dream. Silence was over the seas of

space, and the archangel, once more borne aloft, slowly soared away into

the farther heaven, to promulgate the divine bidding to the stars of

far-distant worlds. But the soul of the discontented star exulted within

itself; and it said, “I will call forth a king from the valley of the

herdsman that shall trample on the kings subject to my fellows, and

render the charge of the contemned star more glorious than the minions

of its favoured brethren; thus shall I revenge neglect! thus shall I

prove my claim hereafter to the heritage of the great of earth!”

.......

At that time, though the world had rolled on for ages, and the

pilgrimage of man had passed through various states of existence, which

our dim traditionary knowledge has not preserved, yet the condition of

our race in the northern hemisphere was then what we, in our imperfect

lore, have conceived to be among the earliest.

.......

By a rude and vast pile of stones, the masonry of arts forgotten, a

lonely man sat at midnight, gazing upon the heavens. A storm had just

passed from the earth; the clouds had rolled away, and the high stars

looked down upon the rapid waters of the Rhine; and no sound save the

roar of the waves, and the dripping of the rain from the mighty trees,

was heard around the ruined pile. The white sheep lay scattered on the

plain, and slumber with them. He sat watching over the herd, lest the

foes of a neighbouring tribe seized them unawares, and thus he communed

with himself: “The king sits upon his throne, and is honoured by a

warrior race, and the warrior exults in the trophies he has won; the

step of the huntsman is bold upon the mountain-top, and his name is

sung at night round the pine-fires by the lips of the bard; and the bard

himself hath honour in the hall. But I, who belong not to the race of

kings, and whose limbs can bound not to the rapture of war, nor scale

the eyries of the eagle and the haunts of the swift stag; whose hand

cannot string the harp, and whose voice is harsh in the song,--_I_ have

neither honour nor command, and men bow not the head as I pass along;

yet do I feel within me the consciousness of a great power that should

rule my species--not obey. My eye pierces the secret hearts of men. I

see their thoughts ere their lips proclaim them; and I scorn, while I

see, the weakness and the vices which I never shared. I laugh at the

madness of the warrior; I mock within my soul at the tyranny of kings.

Surely there is something in man’s nature more fitted to command, more

worthy of renown, than the sinews of the arm, or the swiftness of the

feet, or the accident of birth!”

As Morven, the son of Osslah, thus mused within himself, still looking

at the heavens, the solitary man beheld a star suddenly shooting from

its place, and speeding through the silent air, till it suddenly paused

right over the midnight river, and facing the inmate of the pile of

stones.

As he gazed upon the star, strange thoughts grew slowly over him. He

drank, as it were, from its solemn aspect the spirit of a great design.

A dark cloud rapidly passing over the earth snatched the star from his

sight, but left to his awakened mind the thoughts and the dim scheme

that had come to him as he gazed.

When the sun arose, one of his brethren relieved him of his charge over

the herd, and he went away, but not to his father’s home. Musingly he

plunged into the dark and leafless recesses of the winter forest; and

shaped out of his wild thoughts, more palpably and clearly, the outline

of his daring hope. While thus absorbed he heard a great noise in the

forest, and, fearful lest the hostile tribe of the Alrich might pierce

that way, he ascended one of the loftiest pine-trees, to whose perpetual

verdure the winter had not denied the shelter he sought; and, concealed

by its branches, he looked anxiously forth in the direction whence the

noise had proceeded. And IT came,--it came with a tramp and a crash, and

a crushing tread upon the crunched boughs and matted leaves that strewed

the soil; it came, it came,--the monster that the world now holds

no more,--the mighty Mammoth of the North! Slowly it moved its huge

strength along, and its burning eyes glittered through the gloomy shade;

its jaws, falling apart, showed the grinders with which it snapped

asunder the young oaks of the forest; and the vast tusks, which, curved

downward to the midst of its massive limbs, glistened white and ghastly,

curdling the blood of one destined hereafter to be the dreadest ruler of

the men of that distant age.

The livid eyes of the monster fastened on the form of the herdsman, even

amidst the thick darkness of the pine. It paused, it glared upon him;

its jaws opened, and a low deep sound, as of gathering thunder, seemed

to the son of Osslah as the knell of a dreadful grave. But after glaring

on him for some moments, it again, and calmly, pursued its terrible

way, crashing the boughs as it marched along, till the last sound of its

heavy tread died away upon his ear.*

* _The Critic_ will perceive that this sketch of the beast, whose

race has perished, is mainly intended to designate the remote

period of the world in which the tale is cast.

Ere yet, however, Morven summoned the courage to descend the tree,

he saw the shining of arms through the bare branches of the wood, and

presently a small band of the hostile Alrich came into sight. He was

perfectly hidden from them; and, listening as they passed him, he heard

one say to another,--

“The night covers all things; why attack them by day?”

And he who seemed the chief of the band, answered,--

“Right. To-night, when they sleep in their city, we will upon them. Lo!

they will be drenched in wine, and fall like sheep into our hands.”

“But where, O chief,” said a third of the band, “shall our men hide

during the day? for there are many hunters among the youth of the

Oestrich tribe, and they might see us in the forest unawares, and arm

their race against our coming.”

“I have prepared for that,” answered the chief. “Is not the dark

cavern of Oderlin at hand? Will it not shelter us from the eyes of the

victims?”

Then the men laughed, and, shouting, they went their way adown the

forest.

When they were gone, Morven cautiously descended, and, striking into a

broad path, hastened to a vale that lay between the forest and the river

in which was the city where the chief of his country dwelt. As he passed

by the warlike men, giants in that day, who thronged the streets (if

streets they might be called), their half garments parting from their

huge limbs, the quiver at their backs, and the hunting spear in their

hand, they laughed and shouted out, and, pointing to him, cried, “Morven

the woman! Morven the cripple! what dost thou among men?”

For the son of Osslah was small in stature and of slender strength, and

his step had halted from his birth; but he passed through the warriors

unheedingly. At the outskirts of the city he came upon a tall pile in

which some old men dwelt by themselves, and counselled the king when

times of danger, or when the failure of the season, the famine or the

drought, perplexed the ruler, and clouded the savage fronts of his

warrior tribe.

They gave the counsels of experience, and when experience failed, they

drew, in their believing ignorance, assurances and omens from the winds

of heaven, the changes of the moon, and the flights of the wandering

birds. Filled--by the voices of the elements, and the variety of

mysteries, which ever shift along the face of things, unsolved by the

wonder which pauses not, the fear which believes, and that eternal

reasoning of all experience, which assigns causes to effect--with

the notion of superior powers, they assisted their ignorance by the

conjectures of their superstition. But as yet they knew no craft

and practised no _voluntary_ delusion; they trembled too much at the

mysteries which had created their faith to seek to belie them. They

counselled as they believed, and the bold dream of governing their

warriors and their kings by the wisdom of deceit had never dared to

cross men thus worn and gray with age.

The son of Osslah entered the vast pile with a fearless step, and

approached the place at the upper end of the hall where the old men sat

in conclave.

“How, base-born and craven-limbed!” cried the eldest, who had been

a noted warrior in his day, “darest thou enter unsummoned amidst the

secret councils of the wise men? Knowest thou not, scatterling! that the

penalty is death?”

“Slay me, if thou wilt,” answered Morven, “but hear! As I sat last night

in the ruined palace of our ancient kings, tending, as my father bade

me, the sheep that grazed around, lest the fierce tribe of Alrich should

descend unseen from the mountains upon the herd, a storm came darkly on;

and when the storm had ceased, and I looked above on the sky, I saw a

star descend from its height towards me, and a voice from the star said:

‘Son of Osslah, leave thy herd and seek the council of the wise men

and say unto them, that they take thee as one of their number, or that

sudden will be the destruction of them and theirs.’ But I had courage

to answer the voice, and I said, ‘Mock not the poor son of the herdsman.

Behold, they will kill me if I utter so rash a word, for I am poor and

valueless in the eyes of the tribe of Oestrich, and the great in deeds

and the gray of hair alone sit in the council of the wise men.’

“Then the voice said: ‘Do my bidding, and I will give thee a token that

thou comest from the Powers that sway the seasons and sail upon the

eagles of the winds. Say unto the wise men this very night if they

refuse to receive thee of their band, evil shall fall upon them, and the

morrow shall dawn in blood.’

“Then the voice ceased, and the cloud passed over the star; and I

communed with myself, and came, O dread father, mournfully unto you; for

I feared that ye would smite me because of my bold tongue, and that ye

would sentence me to the death, in that I asked what may scarce be given

even to the sons of kings.”

Then the grim elders looked one at the other, and marvelled much, nor

knew they what answer they should make to the herdsman’s son.

At length one of the wise men said, “Surely there must be truth in the

son of Osslah, for he would not dare to falsify the great lights of

Heaven. If he had given unto men the words of the star, verily we

might doubt the truth. But who would brave the vengeance of the gods of

night?”

Then the elders shook their heads approvingly; but one answered and

said,--

“Shall we take the herdsman’s son as our equal? No!” The name of the man

who thus answered was Darvan, and his words were pleasing to the elders.

But Morven spoke out: “Of a truth, O councillors of kings, I look not to

be an equal with yourselves. Enough if I tend the gates of your palace,

and serve you as the son of Osslah may serve;” and he bowed his head

humbly as he spoke.

Then said the chief of the elders, for he was wiser than the others,

“But how wilt thou deliver us from the evil that is to come? Doubtless

the star has informed thee of the service thou canst render to us if we

take thee into our palace, as well as the ill that will fall on us if we

refuse.”

Morven answered meekly, “Surely, if thou acceptest thy servant, the star

will teach him that which may requite thee; but as yet he knows only

what he has uttered.”

Then the sages bade him withdraw, and they communed with themselves, and

they differed much; but though fierce men, and bold at the war-cry of a

human foe, they shuddered at the prophecy of a star. So they resolved

to take the son of Osslah, and suffer him to keep the gate of the

council-hall.

He heard their decree and bowed his head, and went to the gate, and sat

down by it in silence.

And the sun went down in the west, and the first stars of the twilight

began to glimmer, when Morven started from his seat, and a trembling

appeared to seize his limbs. His lips foamed; an agony and a fear

possessed him; he writhed as a man whom the spear of a foeman has

pierced with a mortal wound, and suddenly fell upon his face on the

stony earth.

The elders approached him; wondering, they lifted him up. He slowly

recovered as from a swoon; his eyes rolled wildly.

“Heard ye not the voice of the star?” he said.

And the chief of the elders answered, “Nay, we heard no sound.”

Then Morven sighed heavily.

“To me only the word was given. Summon instantly, O councillors of the

king, summon the armed men, and all the youth of the tribe, and let them

take the sword and the spear, and follow thy servant! For lo! the star

hath announced to him that the foe shall fall into our hands as the wild

beasts of the forests.”

The son of Osslah spoke with the voice of command, and the elders were

amazed. “Why pause ye?” he cried. “Do the gods of the night lie? On my

head rest the peril if I deceive ye.”

Then the elders communed together; and they went forth and summoned the

men of arms, and all the young of the tribe; and each man took the sword

and the spear, and Morven also. And the son of Osslah walked first,

still looking up at the star, and he motioned them to be silent, and

moved with a stealthy step.

So they went through the thickest of the forest, till they came to the

mouth of a great cave, overgrown with aged and matted trees, and it was

called the Cave of Oberlin; and he bade the leaders place the armed men

on either side the cave, to the right and to the left, among the bushes.

So they watched silently till the night deepened, when they heard a

noise in the cave and the sound of feet, and forth came an armed man;

and the spear of Morven pierced him, and he fell dead at the mouth of

the cave. Another and another, and both fell! Then loud and long was

heard the war-cry of Alrich, and forth poured, as a stream over a narrow

bed, the river of armed men. And the sons of Oestrich fell upon them,

and the foe were sorely perplexed and terrified by the suddenness of the

battle and the darkness of the night; and there was a great slaughter.

And when the morning came, the children of Oestrich counted the slain,

and found the leader of Alrich and the chief men of the tribe amongst

them; and great was the joy thereof. So they went back in triumph to the

city, and they carried the brave son of Osslah on their shoulders, and

shouted forth, “Glory to the servant of the star.”

And Morven dwelt in the council of the wise men.

Now the king of the tribe had one daughter, and she was stately amongst

the women of the tribe, and fair to look upon. And Morven gazed upon her

with the eyes of love, but he did not dare to speak.

Now the son of Osslah laughed secretly at the foolishness of men; he

loved them not, for they had mocked him; he honoured them not, for he

had blinded the wisest of their leaders. He shunned their feasts and

merriment, and lived apart and solitary. The austerity of his life

increased the mysterious homage which his commune with the stars had won

him, and the boldest of the warriors bowed his head to the favourite of

the gods.

One day he was wandering by the side of the river, and he saw a large

bird of prey rise from the waters, and give chase to a hawk that had not

yet gained the full strength of its wings. From his youth the solitary

Morven had loved to watch, in the great forests and by the banks of the

mighty stream, the habits of the things which nature has submitted to

man; and looking now on the birds, he said to himself, “Thus is it ever;

by cunning or by strength each thing wishes to master its kind.” While

thus moralizing, the larger bird had stricken down the hawk, and it fell

terrified and panting at his feet. Morven took the hawk in his hands,

and the vulture shrieked above him, wheeling nearer and nearer to its

protected prey; but Morven scared away the vulture, and placing the hawk

in his bosom he carried it home, and tended it carefully, and fed it

from his hand until it had regained its strength; and the hawk knew him,

and followed him as a dog. And Morven said, smiling to himself, “Behold,

the credulous fools around me put faith in the flight and motion of

birds. I will teach this poor hawk to minister to my ends.” So he tamed

the bird, and tutored it according to its nature; but he concealed it

carefully from others, and cherished it in secret.

The king of the country was old, and like to die, and the eyes of the

tribe were turned to his two sons, nor knew they which was the worthier

to reign. And Morven, passing through the forest one evening, saw the

younger of the two, who was a great hunter, sitting mournfully under an

oak, and looking with musing eyes upon the ground.

“Wherefore musest thou, O swift-footed Siror?” said the son of Osslah;

“and wherefore art thou sad?”

“Thou canst not assist me,” answered the prince, sternly; “take thy

way.”

“Nay,” answered Morven, “thou knowest not what thou sayest; am I not the

favourite of the stars?”

“Away, I am no graybeard whom the approach of death makes doting: talk

not to me of the stars; I know only the things that my eye sees and my

ear drinks in.”

“Hush,” said Morven, solemnly, and covering his face; “hush! lest the

heavens avenge thy rashness. But, behold, the stars have given unto me

to pierce the secret hearts of others; and I can tell thee the thoughts

of thine.”

“Speak out, base-born!”

“Thou art the younger of two, and thy name is less known in war than the

name of thy brother: yet wouldst thou desire to be set over his head,

and to sit on the high seat of thy father?”

The young man turned pale. “Thou hast truth in thy lips,” said he, with

a faltering voice.

“Not from me, but from the stars, descends the truth.”

“Can the stars grant my wish?”

“They can: let us meet to-morrow.” Thus saying, Morven passed into the

forest.

The next day, at noon, they met again.

“I have consulted the gods of night, and they have given me the power

that I prayed for, but on one condition.”

“Name it.”

“That thou sacrifice thy sister on their altars; thou must build up a

heap of stones, and take thy sister into the wood, and lay her on the

pile, and plunge thy sword into her heart; so only shalt thou reign.”

The prince shuddered, and started to his feet, and shook his spear at

the pale front of Morven.

“Tremble,” said the son of Osslah, with a loud voice. “Hark to the gods

who threaten thee with death, that thou hast dared to lift thine arm

against their servant!”

As he spoke, the thunder rolled above; for one of the frequent storms of

the early summer was about to break. The spear dropped from the prince’s

hand; he sat down, and cast his eyes on the ground.

“Wilt thou do the bidding of the stars, and reign?” said Morven.

“I will!” cried Siror, with a desperate voice.

“This evening, then, when the sun sets, thou wilt lead her hither,

alone; I may not attend thee. Now, let us pile the stones.”

Silently the huntsman bent his vast strength to the fragments of rock

that Morven pointed to him, and they built the altar, and went their

way.

And beautiful is the dying of the great sun, when the last song of the

birds fades into the lap of silence; when the islands of the cloud are

bathed in light, and the first star springs up over the grave of day!

“Whither leadest thou my steps, my brother?” said Orna; “and why doth

thy lip quiver; and why dost thou turn away thy face?”

“Is not the forest beautiful; does it not tempt us forth, my sister?”

“And wherefore are those heaps of stone piled together?”

“Let others answer; I piled them not.”

“Thou tremblest, brother: we will return.”

“Not so; by these stones is a bird that my shaft pierced today,--a bird

of beautiful plumage that I slew for thee.”

“We are by the pile; where hast thou laid the bird?”

“Here!” cried Siror; and he seized the maiden in his arms, and, casting

her on the rude altar, he drew forth his sword to smite her to the

heart.

Right over the stones rose a giant oak, the growth of immemorial ages;

and from the oak, or from the heavens, broke forth a loud and solemn

voice, “Strike not, son of kings! the stars forbear their own: the

maiden thou shalt not slay; yet shalt thou reign over the race of

Oestrich; and thou shalt give Orna as a bride to the favourite of the

stars. Arise, and go thy way!”

The voice ceased: the terror of Orna had overpowered for a time the

springs of life; and Siror bore her home through the wood in his strong

arms.

“Alas!” said Morven, when, at the next day, he again met the aspiring

prince; “alas! the stars have ordained me a lot which my heart desires

not: for I, lonely of life, and crippled of shape, am insensible to the

fires of love; and ever, as thou and thy tribe know, I have shunned the

eyes of women, for the maidens laughed at my halting step and my sullen

features; and so in my youth I learned betimes to banish all thoughts

of love. But since they told me (as they declared to _thee_), that only

through that marriage, thou, O beloved prince! canst obtain thy father’s

plumed crown, I yield me to their will.”

“But,” said the prince, “not until I am king can I give thee my sister

in marriage; for thou knowest that my sire would smite me to the dust

if I asked him to give the flower of our race to the son of the herdsman

Osslah.”

“Thou speakest the words of truth. Go home and fear not; but, when thou

art king, the sacrifice must be made, and Orna mine. Alas! how can I

dare to lift mine eyes to her! But so ordain the dread kings of the

night!--who shall gainsay their word?”

“The day that sees me king sees Orna thine,” answered the prince.

Morven walked forth, as was his wont, alone; and he said to himself,

“The king is old, yet may he live long between me and mine hope!” and he

began to cast in his mind how he might shorten the time. Thus absorbed,

he wandered on so unheedingly that night advanced, and he had lost his

path among the thick woods and knew not how to regain his home. So he

lay down quietly beneath a tree, and rested till day dawned; then hunger

came upon him, and he searched among the bushes for such simple roots

as those with which, for he was ever careless of food, he was used to

appease the cravings of nature.

He found, among other more familiar herbs and roots, a red berry of

a sweetish taste, which he had never observed before. He ate of it

sparingly, and had not proceeded far in the wood before he found his

eyes swim, and a deadly sickness came over him. For several hours he lay

convulsed on the ground, expecting death; but the gaunt spareness of his

frame, and his unvarying abstinence, prevailed over the poison, and he

recovered slowly, and after great anguish. But he went with feeble steps

back to the spot where the berries grew, and, plucking several, hid them

in his bosom, and by nightfall regained the city.

The next day he went forth among his father’s herds, and seizing a lamb,

forced some of the berries into his stomach, and the lamb, escaping, ran

away, and fell down dead. Then Morven took some more of the berries and

boiled them down, and mixed the juice with wine, and he gave the wine in

secret to one of his father’s servants, and the servant died.

Then Morven sought the king, and coming into his presence, alone, he

said unto him, “How fares my lord?”

The king sat on a couch made of the skins of wolves, and his eye was

glassy and dim; but vast were his aged limbs, and huge was his stature,

and he had been taller by a head than the children of men, and none

living could bend the bow he had bent in youth; gray, gaunt, and

worn, as some mighty bones that are dug at times from the bosom of the

earth,--a relic of the strength of old.

And the king said faintly, and with a ghastly laugh, “The men of my

years fare ill. What avails my strength? Better had I been born a

cripple like thee, so should I have had nothing to lament in growing

old.”

The red flush passed over Morven’s brow; but he bent humbly,--

“O king, what if I could give thee back thy youth? What if I could

restore to thee the vigour which distinguished thee above the sons of

men, when the warriors of Alrich fell like grass before thy sword?”

Then the king uplifted his dull eyes, and he said,--

“What meanest thou, son of Osslah? Surely I hear much of thy great

wisdom, and how thou speakest nightly with the stars. Can the gods of

the night give unto thee the secret to make the old young?”

“Tempt them not by doubt,” said Morven, reverently. “All things are

possible to the rulers of the dark hour; and, lo! the star that loves

thy servant spake to him at the dead of night, and said, ‘Arise, and go

unto the king; and tell him that the stars honour the tribe of Oestrich,

and remember how the king bent his bow against the sons of Alrich;

wherefore, look thou under the stone that lies to the right of thy

dwelling, even beside the pine tree, and thou shalt see a vessel of

clay, and in the vessel thou wilt find a sweet liquid, that shall make

the king thy master forget his age forever.’ Therefore, my lord, when

the morning rose I went forth, and looked under the stone, and behold

the vessel of clay; and I have brought it hither to my lord the king.”

“Quick, slave, quick! that I may drink and regain my youth!”

“Nay, listen, O king! further said the star to me,--

“‘It is only at night, when the stars have power, that this their gift

will avail; wherefore the king must wait till the hush of the midnight,

when the moon is high, and then may he mingle the liquid with his wine.

And he must reveal to none that he hath received the gift from the hand

of the servant of the stars. For THEY do their work in secret, and when

men sleep; therefore they love not the babble of mouths, and he who

reveals their benefits shall surely die.”

“Fear not,” said the king, grasping the vessel; “none shall know: and,

behold, I will rise on the morrow; and my two sons, wrangling for my

crown--verily I shall be younger than they!”

Then the king laughed loud; and he scarcely thanked the servant of the

stars, neither did he promise him reward; for the kings in those days

had little thought save for themselves.

And Morven said to him, “Shall I not attend my lord?--for without me,

perchance, the drug might fail of its effect.”

“Ay,” said the king, “rest here.”

“Nay,” replied Morven; “thy servants will marvel and talk much, if they

see the son of Osslah sojourning in thy palace. So would the displeasure

of the gods of night perchance be incurred. Suffer that the lesser door

of the palace be unbarred, so that at the night hour, when the moon is

midway in the heavens, I may steal unseen into thy chamber, and mix the

liquid with thy wine.”

“So be it,” said the king. “Thou art wise, though thy limbs are crooked

and curt; and the stars might have chosen a taller man.” Then the king

laughed again; and Morven laughed too, but there was danger in the mirth

of the son of Osslah.

The night had begun to wane, and the inhabitants of Oestrich were buried

in deep sleep, when, hark! a sharp voice was heard crying out in the

streets, “Woe, woe! Awake, ye sons of Oestrich! woe!” Then forth, wild,

haggard, alarmed, spear in hand, rushed the giant sons of the rugged

tribe, and they saw a man on a height in the middle of the city,

shrieking “Woe!” and it was Morven, the son of Osslah! And he said unto

them, as they gathered round him, “Men and warriors, tremble as ye hear.

The star of the west hath spoken to me, and thus said the star: ‘Evil

shall fall upon the kingly house of Oestrich,--yea, ere the morning

dawn; wherefore, go thou mourning into the streets, and wake the

inhabitants to woe!’ So I rose and did the bidding of the star.” And

while Morven was yet speaking, a servant of the king’s house ran up

to the crowd, crying loudly, “The king is dead!” So they went into the

palace and found the king stark upon his couch, and his huge limbs all

cramped and crippled by the pangs of death, and his hands clenched as if

in menace of a foe,--the Foe of all living flesh! Then fear came on the

gazers, and they looked on Morven with a deeper awe than the boldest

warrior would have called forth; and they bore him back to the

council-hall of the wise men, wailing and clashing their arms in woe,

and shouting, ever and anon, “Honour to Morven the prophet!” And that

was the first time the word PROPHET was ever used in those countries.

At noon, on the third day from the king’s death, Siror sought Morven,

and he said, “Lo, my father is no more, and the people meet this evening

at sunset to elect his successor, and the warriors and the young men

will surely choose my brother, for he is more known in war. Fail me not

therefore.”

“Peace, boy!” said Morven, sternly; “nor dare to question the truth of

the gods of night.”

For Morven now began to presume on his power among the people, and to

speak as rulers speak, even to the sons of kings; and the voice silenced

the fiery Siror, nor dared he to reply.

“Behold,” said Morven, taking up a chaplet of coloured plumes, “wear

this on thy head, and put on a brave face, for the people like a hopeful

spirit, and go down with thy brother to the place where the new king is

to be chosen, and leave the rest to the stars. But, above all things,

forget not that chaplet; it has been blessed by the gods of night.”

The prince took the chaplet and returned home.

It was evening, and the warriors and chiefs of the tribe were assembled

in the place where the new king was to be elected. And the voices of

the many favoured Prince Voltoch, the brother of Siror, for he had slain

twelve foemen with his spear; and verily, in those days, that was a

great virtue in a king.

Suddenly there was a shout in the streets, and the people cried out,

“Way for Morven the prophet, the prophet!” For the people held the son

of Osslah in even greater respect than did the chiefs. Now, since he had

become of note, Morven had assumed a majesty of air which the son of the

herdsman knew not in his earlier days; and albeit his stature was short,

and his limbs halted, yet his countenance was grave and high. He only

of the tribe wore a garment that swept the ground, and his head was bare

and his long black hair descended to his girdle, and rarely was change

or human passion seen in his calm aspect. He feasted not, nor drank

wine, nor was his presence frequent in the streets. He laughed not,

neither did he smile, save when alone in the forest,--and then he

laughed at the follies of his tribe.

So he walked slowly through the crowd, neither turning to the left nor

to the right, as the crowd gave way; and he supported his steps with a

staff of the knotted pine.

And when he came to the place where the chiefs were met, and the two

princes stood in the centre, he bade the people around him proclaim

silence; then mounting on a huge fragment of rock, he thus spake to the

multitude:--

“Princes, Warriors, and Bards! ye, O council of the wise men! and ye, O

hunters of the forests and snarers of the fishes of the streams! hearken

to Morven, the son of Osslah. Ye know that I am lowly of race and weak

of limb; but did I not give into your hands the tribe of Alrich, and did

ye not slay them in the dead of night with a great slaughter? Surely, ye

must know this of himself did not the herdsman’s son; surely he was but

the agent of the bright gods that love the children of Oestrich! Three

nights since when slumber was on the earth, was not my voice heard in

the streets? Did I not proclaim woe to the kingly house of Oestrich? and

verily the dark arm had fallen on the bosom of the mighty, that is no

more. Could I have dreamed this thing merely in a dream, or was I not

as the voice of the bright gods that watch over the tribes of Oestrich?

Wherefore, O men and chiefs! scorn not the son of Osslah, but listen to

his words; for are they not the wisdom of the stars? Behold, last night,

I sat alone in the valley, and the trees were hushed around, and not

a breath stirred; and I looked upon the star that counsels the son of

Osslah; and I said, ‘Dread conqueror of the cloud! thou that bathest thy

beauty in the streams and piercest the pine-boughs with thy presence;

behold thy servant grieved because the mighty one hath passed away, and

many foes surround the houses of my brethren; and it is well that they

should have a king valiant and prosperous in war, the cherished of the

stars. Wherefore, O star! as thou gavest into our hands the warriors of

Alrich, and didst warn us of the fall of the oak of our tribe, wherefore

I pray thee give unto the people a token that they may choose that king

whom the gods of the night prefer!’ Then a low voice, sweeter than the

music of the bard, stole along the silence. ‘Thy love for thy race is

grateful to the stars of night: go, then, son of Osslah, and seek the

meeting of the chiefs and the people to choose a king, and tell them not

to scorn thee because thou art slow to the chase, and little known in

war; for the stars give thee wisdom as a recompense for all. Say unto

the people that as the wise men of the council shape their lessons by

the flight of birds, so by the flight of birds shall a token be given

unto them, and they shall choose their kings. For, saith the star of

night, the birds are the children of the winds, they pass to and fro

along the ocean of the air, and visit the clouds that are the war-ships

of the gods; and their music is but broken melodies which they glean

from the harps above. Are they not the messengers of the storm? Ere the

stream chafes against the bank, and the rain descends, know ye not, by

the wail of birds and their low circle over the earth, that the tempest

is at hand? Wherefore, wisely do ye deem that the children of the air

are the fit interpreters between the sons of men and the lords of the

world above. Say then to the people and the chiefs that they shall take,

from among the doves that build their nests in the roof of the palace, a

white dove, and they shall let it loose in the air, and verily the gods

of the night shall deem the dove as a prayer coming from the people, and

they shall send a messenger to grant the prayer and give to the tribes

of Oestrich a king worthy of themselves.’

“With that the star spoke no more.”

Then the friends of Voltoch murmured among themselves, and they said,

“Shall this man dictate to us who shall be king?” But the people and

the warriors shouted, “Listen to the star; do we not give or deny battle

according as the bird flies,--shall we not by the same token choose him

by whom the battle should be led?” And the thing seemed natural to them,

for it was after the custom of the tribe. Then they took one of the

doves that built in the roof of the palace, and they brought it to the

spot where Morven stood, and he, looking up to the stars and muttering

to himself, released the bird.

There was a copse of trees at a little distance from the spot, and as

the dove ascended, a hawk suddenly rose from the copse and pursued the

dove; and the dove was terrified, and soared circling high above the

crowd, when lo, the hawk, poising itself one moment on its wings,

swooped with a sudden swoop, and, abandoning its prey, alighted on the

plumed head of Siror.

“Behold,” cried Morven in a loud voice, “behold your king!”

“Hail, all hail the king!” shouted the people. “All hail the chosen of

the stars!”

Then Morven lifted his right hand and the hawk left the prince and

alighted on Morven’s shoulder. “Bird of the gods!” said he, reverently,

“hast thou not a secret message for my ear?” Then the hawk put its beak

to Morven’s ear, and Morven bowed his head submissively; and the hawk

rested with Morven from that moment and would not be scared away. And

Morven said, “The stars have sent me this bird, that in the day-time

when I see them not, we may never be without a councillor in distress.”

So Siror was made king and Morven the son of Osslah was constrained by

the king’s will to take Orna for his wife; and the people and the chiefs

honoured Morven the prophet above all the elders of the tribe.

One day Morven said unto himself, musing, “Am I not already equal with

the king,--nay, is not the king my servant? Did I not place him over the

heads of his brothers? Am I not, therefore, more fit to reign than he

is; shall I not push him from his seat? It is a troublesome and stormy

office to reign over the wild men of Oestrich, to feast in the crowded

hall, and to lead the warriors to the fray. Surely if I feasted not,

neither went out to war, they might say, ‘This is no king, but the

cripple Morven;’ and some of the race of Siror might slay me secretly.

But can I not be greater far than kings, and continue to choose and

govern them, living as now at mine own ease? Verily the stars shall give

me a new palace, and many subjects.”

Among the wise men was Darvan; and Morven feared him, for his eye often

sought the movements of the son of Osslah.

And Morven said, “It were better to _trust_ this man than to _blind_,

for surely I want a helpmate and a friend.” So he said to the wise man

as he sat alone watching the setting sun,--

“It seemeth to me, O Darvan! that we ought to build a great pile in

honour of the stars, and the pile should be more glorious than all the

palaces of the chiefs and the palace of the king; for are not the stars

our masters? And thou and I should be the chief dwellers in this new

palace, and we would serve the gods of night and fatten their altars

with the choicest of the herd and the freshest of the fruits of the

earth.”

And Darvan said, “Thou speakest as becomes the servant of the stars. But

will the people help to build the pile? For they are a warlike race and

they love not toil.”

And Morven answered, “Doubtless the stars will ordain the work to be

done. Fear not.”

“In truth thou art a wondrous man; thy words ever come to pass,”

answered Darvan; “and I wish thou wouldest teach me, friend, the

language of the stars.”

“Assuredly if thou servest me, thou shalt know,” answered the proud

Morven; and Darvan was secretly wroth that the son of the herdsman

should command the service of an elder and a chief.

And when Morven returned to his wife he found her weeping much. Now she

loved the son of Osslah with an exceeding love, for he was not savage

and fierce as the men she had known, and she was proud of his fame among

the tribe; and he took her in his arms and kissed her, and asked her why

she wept. Then she told him that her brother the king had visited her,

and had spoken bitter words of Morven: “He taketh from me the affection

of my people,” said Siror, “and blindeth them with lies. And since he

hath made me king, what if he take my kingdom from me? Verily a new tale

of the stars might undo the old.” And the king had ordered her to keep

watch on Morven’s secrecy, and to see whether truth was in him when he

boasted of his commune with the Powers of night.

But Orna loved Morven better than Siror, therefore she told her husband

all.

And Morven resented the king’s ingratitude, and was troubled much, for

a king is a powerful foe; but he comforted Orna, and bade her dissemble,

and complain also of him to her brother, so that he might confide to her

unsuspectingly whatsoever he might design against Morven.

There was a cave by Morven’s house in which he kept the sacred hawk,

and wherein he secretly trained and nurtured other birds against future

need; and the door of the cave was always barred. And one day he was

thus engaged when he beheld a chink in the wall that he had never noted

before, and the sun came playfully in; and while he looked he perceived

the sunbeam was darkened, and presently he saw a human face peering in

through the chink. And Morven trembled, for he knew he had been watched.

He ran hastily from the cave; but the spy had disappeared among the

trees, and Morven went straight to the chamber of Darvan and sat himself

down. And Darvan did not return home till late, and he started and

turned pale when he saw Morven. But Morven greeted him as a brother, and

bade him to a feast, which, for the first time, he purposed giving at

the full of the moon, in honour of the stars. And going out of Darvan’s

chamber he returned to his wife, and bade her rend her hair, and go

at the dawn of day to the king her brother, and complain bitterly of

Morven’s treatment, and pluck the black plans from the breast of the

king. “For surely,” said he, “Darvan hath lied to thy brother, and some

evil waits me that I would fain know.”

So the next morning Orna sought the king, and she said, “The herdsman’s

son hath reviled me, and spoken harsh words to me; shall I not be

avenged?”

Then the king stamped his feet and shook his mighty sword. “Surely thou

shalt be avenged; for I have learned from one of the elders that which

convinceth me that the man hath lied to the people, and the base-born

shall surely die. Yea, the first time that he goeth alone into the

forest my brother and I will fall upon him and smite him to the death.”

And with this comfort Siror dismissed Orna.

And Orna flung herself at the feet of her husband. “Fly now, O my

beloved!--fly into the forests afar from my brethren, or surely the

sword of Siror will end thy days.”

Then the son of Osslah folded his arms, and seemed buried in black

thoughts; nor did he heed the voice of Orna, until again and again she

had implored him to fly.

“Fly!” he said at length. “Nay, I was doubting what punishment the stars

should pour down upon our foe. Let warriors fly. Morven the prophet

conquers by arms mightier than the sword.”

Nevertheless Morven was perplexed in his mind, and knew not how to

save himself from the vengeance of the king. Now, while he was musing

hopelessly he heard a roar of waters; and behold, the river, for it was

now the end of autumn, had burst its bounds, and was rushing along the

valley to the houses of the city. And now the men of the tribe, and the

women, and the children, came running, and with shrieks, to Morven’s

house, crying, “Behold, the river has burst upon us! Save us, O ruler of

the stars!”

Then the sudden thought broke upon Morven, and he resolved to risk his

fate upon one desperate scheme.

And he came out from the house calm and sad, and he said, “Ye know not

what ye ask; I cannot save ye from this peril: ye have brought it on

yourselves.” And they cried, “How? O son of Osslah! We are ignorant of

our crime.”

And he answered, “Go down to the king’s palace and wait before it, and

surely I will follow ye, and ye shall learn wherefore ye have incurred

this punishment from the gods.” Then the crowd rolled murmuring back, as

a receding sea; and when it was gone from the place, Morven went alone

to the house of Darvan, which was next his own. And Darvan was greatly

terrified; for he was of a great age, and had no children, neither

friends, and he feared that he could not of himself escape the waters.

And Morven said to him soothingly, “Lo, the people love me, and I will

see that thou art saved; for verily thou hast been friendly to me, and

done me much service with the king.”

And as he thus spake, Morven opened the door of the house and looked

forth, and saw that they were quite alone. Then he seized the old man by

the throat and ceased not his gripe till he was quite dead; and leaving

the body of the elder on the floor, Morven stole from the house and shut

the gate. And as he was going to his cave he mused a little while, when,

hearing the mighty roar of the waves advancing, and far off the shrieks

of women, he lifted up his head and said proudly, “No, in this hour

terror alone shall be my slave; I will use no art save the power of my

soul.” So, leaning on his pine-staff, he strode down to the palace. And

it was now evening, and many of the men held torches, that they might

see each other’s faces in the universal fear. Red flashed the quivering

flames on the dark robes and pale front of Morven; and he seemed

mightier than the rest, because his face alone was calm amidst the

tumult. And louder and hoarser became the roar of the waters; and swift

rushed the shades of night over the hastening tide.

And Morven said in a stern voice, “Where is the king; and wherefore is

he absent from his people in the hour of dread?” Then the gate of the

palace opened, and, behold, Siror was sitting in the hall by the vast

pine-fire, and his brother by his side, and his chiefs around him: for

they would not deign to come amongst the crowd at the bidding of the

herdsman’s son.

Then Morven, standing upon a rock above the heads of the people (the

same rock whereon he had proclaimed the king), thus spake:--

“Ye desired to know, O sons of Oestrich! wherefore the river hath burst

its bounds, and the peril hath come upon you. Learn, then, that the

stars resent as the foulest of human crimes an insult to their servants

and delegates below. Ye are all aware of the manner of life of Morven,

whom ye have surnamed the Prophet! He harms not man nor beast; he lives

alone; and, far from the wild joys of the warrior tribe, he worships

in awe and fear the Powers of Night. So is he able to advise ye of the

coming danger,--so is he able to save ye from the foe. Thus are your

huntsmen swift and your warriors bold; and thus do your cattle bring

forth their young, and the earth its fruits. What think ye, and what do

ye ask to hear? Listen, men of Oestrich!--they have laid snares for my

life; and there are amongst you those who have whetted the sword against

the bosom that is only filled with love for you all. Therefore have the

stern lords of heaven loosened the chains of the river; therefore doth

this evil menace ye. Neither will it pass away until they who dug the

pit for the servant of the stars are buried in the same.”

Then, by the red torches, the faces of the men looked fierce and

threatening; and ten thousand voices shouted forth, “Name them who

conspired against thy life, O holy prophet, and surely they shall be

torn limb from limb.”

And Morven turned aside, and they saw that he wept bitterly; and he

said,--

“Ye have asked me, and I have answered: but now scarce will ye believe

the foe that I have provoked against me; and by the heavens themselves

I swear, that if my death would satisfy their fury, nor bring down upon

yourselves and your children’s children the anger of the throned stars,

gladly would I give my bosom to the knife. Yes,” he cried, lifting up

his voice, and pointing his shadowy arm towards the hall where the king

sat by the pine-fire,--“yes, thou whom by my voice the stars chose

above thy brother; yes, Siror, the guilty one! take thy sword, and come

hither; strike, if thou hast the heart to strike, the Prophet of the

Gods!”

The king started to his feet, and the crowd were hushed in a shuddering

silence.

Morven resumed:--

“Know then, O men of Oestrich, that Siror and Voltoch his brother, and

Darvan the elder of the wise men, have purposed to slay your prophet,

even at such hour as when alone he seeks the shade of the forest to

devise new benefits for you. Let the king deny it, if he can!”

Then Voltoch, of the giant limbs, strode forth from the hall, and his

spear quivered in his hand.

“Rightly hast thou spoken, base son of my father’s herdsman! and for

thy sins shalt thou surely die; for thou liest when thou speakest of thy

power with the stars, and thou laughest at the folly of them who hear

thee: wherefore put him to death.”

Then the chiefs in the hall clashed their arms, and rushed forth to slay

the son of Osslah.

But he, stretching his unarmed hands on high, exclaimed, “Hear him, O

dread ones of the night! Hark how he blasphemeth!”

Then the crowd took up the word, and cried, “He blasphemeth! he

blasphemeth against the prophet!”

But the king and the chiefs, who hated Morven because of his power with

the people, rushed into the crowd; and the crowd were irresolute, nor

knew they how to act, for never yet had they rebelled against their

chiefs, and they feared alike the prophet and the king.

And Siror cried, “Summon Darvan to us, for he hath watched the steps of

Morven, and he shall lift the veil from my people’s eyes.” Then three of

the swift of foot started forth to the house of Darvan.

And Morven cried out with a loud voice, “Hark! thus saith the star, who,

now riding through yonder cloud, breaks forth upon my eyes, ‘For the lie

that the elder hath uttered against my servant, the curse of the stars

shall fall upon him.’ Seek, and as ye find him so may ye find ever the

foes of Morven and the gods!”

A chill and an icy fear fell over the crowd, and even the cheek of Siror

grew pale; and Morven, erect and dark above the waving torches, stood

motionless with folded arms. And hark!--far and fast came on the

war-steeds of the wave; the people heard them marching to the land, and

tossing their white manes in the roaring wind.

“Lo, as ye listen,” said Morven, calmly, “the river sweeps on. Haste,

for the gods will have a victim, be it your prophet or your king.”

“Slave!” shouted Siror, and his spear left his hand, and far above the

heads of the crowd sped hissing beside the dark form of Morven, and rent

the trunk of the oak behind. Then the people, wroth at the danger of

their beloved seer, uttered a wild yell, and gathered round him with

brandished swords, facing their chieftains and their king. But at

that instant, ere the war had broken forth among the tribe, the three

warriors returned, and they bore Darvan on their shoulders, and laid him

at the feet of the king, and they said tremblingly, “Thus found we the

elder in the centre of his own hall.” And the people saw that Darvan

was a corpse, and that the prediction of Morven was thus verified. “So

perish the enemies of Morven and the stars!” cried the son of Osslah.

And the people echoed the cry. Then the fury of Siror was at its height,

and waving his sword above his head he plunged into the crowd, “Thy

blood, baseborn, or mine!”

“So be it!” answered Morven, quailing not. “People, smite the

blasphemer! Hark how the river pours down upon your children and your

hearths! On, on, or ye perish!”

And Siror fell, pierced by five hundred spears.

“Smite! smite!” cried Morven, as the chiefs of the royal house gathered

round the king. And the clash of swords, and the gleam of spears, and

the cries of the dying, and the yell of the trampling people mingled

with the roar of the elements, and the voices of the rushing wave.

Three hundred of the chiefs perished that night by the swords of their

own tribe; and the last cry of the victors was, “Morven the prophet!

_Morven the king!_”

And the son of Osslah, seeing the waves now spreading over the valley,

led Orna his wife, and the men of Oestrich, their women, and their

children, to a high mount, where they waited the dawning sun. But Orna

sat apart and wept bitterly, for her brothers were no more, and her race

had perished from the earth. And Morven sought to comfort her in vain.

When the morning rose, they saw that the river had overspread the

greater part of the city, and now stayed its course among the hollows of

the vale. Then Morven said to the people, “The star-kings are avenged,

and their wrath appeased. Tarry only here until the waters have melted

into the crevices of the soil.” And on the fourth day they returned to

the city, and no man dared to name another, save Morven, as the king.

But Morven retired into his cave and mused deeply; and then assembling

the people, he gave them new laws; and he made them build a mighty

temple in honour of the stars, and made them heap within it all that the

tribe held most precious. And he took unto him fifty children from the

most famous of the tribe; and he took also ten from among the men who

had served him best, and he ordained that they should serve the stars in

the great temple: and Morven was their chief. And he put away the crown

they pressed upon him, and he chose from among the elders a new king.

And he ordained that henceforth the servants only of the stars in the

great temple should elect the king and the rulers, and hold council,

and proclaim war; but he suffered the king to feast, and to hunt, and to

make merry in the banquet-halls. And Morven built altars in the temple,

and was the first who, in the North, sacrificed the beast and the bird,

and afterwards human flesh, upon the altars. And he drew auguries from

the entrails of the victim, and made schools for the science of the

prophet; and Morven’s piety was the wonder of the tribe, in that he

refused to be a king. And Morven the high priest was ten thousand times

mightier than the king. He taught the people to till the ground and

to sow the herb; and by his wisdom, and the valour that his prophecies

instilled into men, he conquered all the neighbouring tribes. And the

sons of Oestrich spread themselves over a mighty empire, and with them

spread the name and the laws of Morven. And in every province which he

conquered, he ordered them to build a temple to the stars.

But a heavy sorrow fell upon the fears of Morven. The sister of Siror

bowed down her head, and survived not long the slaughter of her race.

And she left Morven childless. And he mourned bitterly and as one

distraught, for her only in the world had his heart the power to love.

And he sat down and covered his face, saying:--

“Lo! I have toiled and travailed; and never before in the world did man

conquer what I have conquered. Verily the empire of the iron thews and

the giant limbs is no more! I have founded a new power, that henceforth

shall sway the lands,--the empire of a plotting brain and a commanding

mind. But, behold! my fate is barren, and I feel already that it will

grow neither fruit nor tree as a shelter to mine old age. Desolate and

lonely shall I pass unto my grave. O Orna! my beautiful! my loved! none

were like unto thee, and to thy love do I owe my glory and my life!

Would for thy sake, O sweet bird! that nestled in the dark cavern of my

heart,--would for thy sake that thy brethren had been spared, for verily

with my life would I have purchased thine. Alas! only when I lost thee

did I find that thy love was dearer to me than the fear of others!” And

Morven mourned night and day, and none might comfort him.

But from that time forth he gave himself solely up to the cares of his

calling; and his nature and his affections, and whatever there was yet

left soft in him, grew hard like stone; and he was a man without love,

and he forbade love and marriage to the priest.

Now, in his latter years, there arose _other_ prophets; for the

world had grown wiser even by Morven’s wisdom, and some did say unto

themselves, “Behold Morven, the herdsman’s son, is a king of kings: this

did the stars for their servant; shall we not also be servants to the

star?”

And they wore black garments like Morven, and went about prophesying of

what the stars foretold them. And Morven was exceeding wroth; for he,

more than other men, knew that the prophets lied. Wherefore he went

forth against them with the ministers of the temple, and he took them,

and burned them by a slow fire; for thus said Morven to the people: “A

true prophet hath honour, but _I_ only am a true prophet; to all false

prophets there shall be surely death.”

And the people applauded the piety of the son of Osslah.

And Morven educated the wisest of the children in the mysteries of the

temple, so that they grew up to succeed him worthily.

And he died full of years and honour; and they carved his effigy on a

mighty stone before the temple, and the effigy endured for a thousand

ages, and whoso looked on it trembled; for the face was calm with the

calmness of unspeakable awe!

And Morven was the first mortal of the North that made Religion the

stepping-stone to Power. Of a surety Morven was a great man!

It was the last night of the old year, and the stars sat, each upon his

ruby throne, and watched with sleepless eyes upon the world. The

night was dark and troubled, the dread winds were abroad, and fast and

frequent hurried the clouds beneath the thrones of the kings of night.

And ever and anon fiery meteors flashed along the depths of heaven,

and were again swallowed up in the grave of darkness. But far below his

brethren, and with a lurid haze around his orb, sat the discontented

star that had watched over the hunters of the North.

And on the lowest abyss of space there was spread a thick and mighty

gloom, from which, as from a caldron, rose columns of wreathing smoke;

and still, when the great winds rested for an instant on their paths,

voices of woe and laughter, mingled with shrieks, were heard booming

from the abyss to the upper air.

And now, in the middest night, a vast figure rose slowly from the abyss,

and its wings threw blackness over the world. High upward to the throne

of the discontented star sailed the fearful shape, and the star trembled

on his throne when the form stood before him face to face.

And the shape said, “Hail, brother! all hail!”

“I know thee not,” answered the star; “thou art not the archangel that

visitest the kings of night.”

And the shape laughed loud. “I am the fallen star of the morning! I am

Lucifer, thy brother! Hast thou not, O sullen king, served me and mine;

and hast thou not wrested the earth from thy Lord who sittest above, and

given it to me, by darkening the souls of men with the religion of fear?

Wherefore come, brother, come; thou hast a throne prepared beside my own

in the fiery gloom. Come! The heavens are no more for thee!”

Then the star rose from his throne, and descended to the side of

Lucifer; for ever hath the spirit of discontent had sympathy with the

soul of pride. And they sank slowly down to the gulf of gloom.

It was the first night of the new year, and the stars sat each on his

ruby throne, and watched with sleepless eyes upon the world. But sorrow

dimmed the bright faces of the kings of night, for they mourned in

silence and in fear for a fallen brother.

And the gates of the heaven of heavens flew open with a golden sound,

and the swift archangel fled down on his silent wings; and the archangel

gave to each of the stars, as before, the message of his Lord, and to

each star was his appointed charge. And when the heraldry seemed done

there came a laugh from the abyss of gloom, and half-way from the gulf

rose the lurid shape of Lucifer the fiend!

“Thou countest thy flock ill, O radiant shepherd! Behold! one star is

missing from the three thousand and ten!”

“Back to thy gulf, false Lucifer!--the throne of thy brother hath been

filled.”

And, lo! as the archangel spake, the stars beheld a young and

all-lustrous stranger on the throne of the erring star; and his face

was so soft to look upon that the dimmest of human eyes might have gazed

upon its splendour unabashed: but the dark fiend alone was dazzled

by its lustre, and, with a yell that shook the flaming pillars of the

universe, he plunged backward into the gloom.

Then, far and sweet from the arch unseen, came forth the voice of God,--

“Behold! on the throne of the discontented star sits the star of Hope;

and he that breathed into mankind the religion of Fear hath a successor

in him who shall teach earth the religion of Love!”

And evermore the star of Fear dwells with Lucifer, and the star of Love

keeps vigil in heaven!

CHAPTER XX. GLENHAUSEN.--THE POWER OF LOVE IN SANCTIFIED PLACES.--A

PORTRAIT OF FREDERICK BARBAROSSA.--THE AMBITION OF MEN FINDS NO ADEQUATE

SYMPATHY IN WOMEN.

“YOU made me tremble for you more than once,” said Gertrude to the

student; “I feared you were about to touch upon ground really sacred,

but your end redeemed all.”

“The false religion always tries to counterfeit the garb, the language,

the aspect of the true,” answered the German; “for that reason, I

purposely suffered my tale to occasion that very fear and anxiety you

speak of, conscious that the most scrupulous would be contented when the

whole was finished.”

This German was one of a new school, of which England as yet knows

nothing. We shall see hereafter what it will produce.

The student left them at Friedberg, and our travellers proceeded to

Glenhausen,--a spot interesting to lovers; for here Frederick the First

was won by the beauty of Gela, and, in the midst of an island vale, he

built the Imperial Palace, in honour of the lady of his love. This spot

is, indeed, well chosen of itself; the mountains of the Rhinegeburg

close it in with the green gloom of woods and the glancing waters of the

Kinz.

“Still, wherever we go,” said Trevylyan, “we find all tradition is

connected with love; and history, for that reason, hallows less than

romance.”

“It is singular,” said Vane, moralizing, “that love makes but a small

part of our actual lives, but is yet the master-key to our sympathies.

The hardest of us, who laugh at the passion when they see it palpably

before them, are arrested by some dim tradition of its existence in the

past. It is as if life had few opportunities of bringing out certain

qualities within us, so that they always remain untold and dormant,

susceptible to thought, but deaf to action.”

“You refine and mystify too much,” said Trevylyan, smiling; “none of

us have any faculty, any passion, uncalled forth, if we have _really_

loved, though but for a day.”

Gertrude smiled, and drawing her arm within his, Trevylyan left Vane to

philosophize on passion,--a fit occupation for one who had never felt

it.

“Here let us pause,” said Trevylyan, afterwards, as they visited the

remains of the ancient palace, and the sun glittered on the scene, “to

recall the old chivalric day of the gallant Barbarossa; let us suppose

him commencing the last great action of his life; let us picture him as

setting out for the Holy Land. Imagine him issuing from those walls on

his white charger,--his fiery eye somewhat dimmed by years, and his

hair blanched; but nobler from the impress of time itself,--the clang of

arms; the tramp of steeds; banners on high; music pealing from hill to

hill; the red cross and the nodding plume; the sun, as now glancing

on yonder trees; and thence reflected from the burnished arms of the

Crusaders. But, Gela--”

“Ah,” said Gertrude, “_she_ must be no more; for she would have outlived

her beauty, and have found that glory had now no rival in his breast.

Glory consoles men for the death of the loved; but glory is infidelity

to the living.”

“Nay, not so, dearest Gertrude,” said Trevylyan, quickly; “for my

darling dream of Fame is the hope of laying its honours at your feet!

And if ever, in future years, I should rise above the herd, I should

only ask if _your_ step were proud and _your_ heart elated.”

“I was wrong,” said Gertrude, with tears in her eyes; “and for your sake

I can be ambitious.”

Perhaps there, too, she was mistaken; for one of the common

disappointments of the heart is, that women have so rarely a sympathy in

our better and higher aspirings. Their ambition is not for great things;

they cannot understand that desire “which scorns delight, and loves

laborious days.” If they love us, they usually exact too much. They

are jealous of the ambition to which we sacrifice so largely, and which

divides us from them; and they leave the stern passion of great minds

to the only solitude which affection cannot share. To aspire is to be

alone!

CHAPTER XXI. VIEW OF EHRENBREITSTEIN.--A NEW ALARM IN GERTRUDE’S

HEALTH.--TRARBACH.

ANOTHER time our travellers proceeded from Coblentz to Treves, following

the course of the Moselle. They stopped on the opposite bank below the

bridge that unites Coblentz with the Petersberg, to linger over the

superb view of Ehrenbreitstein which you may there behold.

It was one of those calm noonday scenes which impress upon us their own

bright and voluptuous tranquillity. There stood the old herdsman leaning

on his staff, and the quiet cattle knee-deep in the gliding waters.

Never did stream more smooth and sheen than was at that hour the surface

of the Moselle mirror the images of the pastoral life. Beyond, the

darker shadows of the bridge and of the walls of Coblentz fell deep over

the waves, checkered by the tall sails of the craft that were moored

around the harbour. But clear against the sun rose the spires and roofs

of Coblentz, backed by many a hill sloping away to the horizon. High,

dark, and massive, on the opposite bank, swelled the towers and rock of

Ehrenbreitstein,--a type of that great chivalric spirit--the HONOUR that

the rock arrogates for its name--which demands so many sacrifices of

blood and tears, but which ever creates in the restless heart of man a

far deeper interest than the more peaceful scenes of life by which it is

contrasted. There, still--from the calm waters, and the abodes of common

toil and ordinary pleasure--turns the aspiring mind! Still as we gaze on

that lofty and immemorial rock we recall the famine and the siege;

and own that the more daring crimes of men have a strange privilege in

hallowing the very spot which they devastate.

Below, in green curves and mimic bays covered with herbage, the gradual

banks mingled with the water; and just where the bridge closed, a

solitary group of trees, standing dark in the thickest shadow, gave that

melancholy feature to the scene which resembles the one dark thought

that often forces itself into our sunniest hours. Their boughs stirred

not; no voice of birds broke the stillness of their gloomy verdure: the

eye turned from them, as from the sad moral that belongs to existence.

In proceeding to Trarbach, Gertrude was seized with another of those

fainting fits which had so terrified Trevylyan before; they stopped an

hour or two at a little village, but Gertrude rallied with such apparent

rapidity, and so strongly insisted on proceeding, that they reluctantly

continued their way. This event would have thrown a gloom over their

journey, if Gertrude had not exerted herself to dispel the impression

she had occasioned; and so light, so cheerful, were her spirits, that

for the time at least she succeeded.

They arrived at Trarbach late at noon. This now small and humble town

is said to have been the Thronus Bacchi of the ancients. From the spot

where the travellers halted to take, as it were, their impression of the

town, they saw before them the little hostelry, a poor pretender to the

Thronus Bacchi, with the rude sign of the Holy Mother over the door. The

peaked roof, the sunk window, the gray walls, checkered with the rude

beams of wood so common to the meaner houses on the Continent, bore

something of a melancholy and prepossessing aspect. Right above, with

its Gothic windows and venerable spire, rose the church of the town;

and, crowning the summit of a green and almost perpendicular mountain,

scowled the remains of one of those mighty castles which make the

never-failing frown on a German landscape.

The scene was one of quiet and of gloom: the exceeding serenity of the

day contrasted, with an almost unpleasing brightness, the poverty of

the town, the thinness of the population, and the dreary grandeur of the

ruins that overhung the capital of the perished race of the bold Counts

of Spanheim.

They passed the night at Trarbach, and continued their journey next

day. At Treves, Gertrude was for some days seriously ill; and when they

returned to Coblentz, her disease had evidently received a rapid and

alarming increase.

CHAPTER XXII. THE DOUBLE LIFE.--TREVYLYAN’S FATE.--SORROW THE PARENT OF

FAME.--NIEDERLAHNSTEIN.--DREAMS.

THERE are two lives to each of us, gliding on at the same time, scarcely

connected with each other,--the life of our actions, the life of our

minds; the external and the inward history; the movements of the frame,

the deep and ever-restless workings of the heart! They who have loved

know that there is a diary of the affections, which we might keep for

years without having occasion even to touch upon the exterior surface

of life, our busy occupations, the mechanical progress of our existence;

yet by the last are we judged, the first is never known. History reveals

men’s deeds, men’s outward character, but _not themselves_. There is a

secret self that hath its own life “rounded by a dream,” unpenetrated,

unguessed. What passed within Trevylyan, hour after hour, as he watched

over the declining health of the only being in the world whom his proud

heart had been ever destined to love? His real record of the time

was marked by every cloud upon Gertrude’s brow, every smile of her

countenance, every--the faintest--alteration in her disease; yet, to the

outward seeming, all this vast current of varying eventful emotion

lay dark and unconjectured. He filled up with wonted regularity the

colourings of existence, and smiled and moved as other men. For still,

in the heroism with which devotion conquers self, he sought only to

cheer and gladden the young heart on which he had embarked his all; and

he kept the dark tempest of his anguish for the solitude of night.

That was a peculiar doom which Fate had reserved for him; and casting

him, in after years, on the great sea of public strife, it seemed as if

she were resolved to tear from his heart all yearnings for the land.

For him there was to be no green or sequestered spot in the valley of

household peace. His bark was to know no haven, and his soul not even

the desire of rest. For action is that Lethe in which alone we forget

our former dreams, and the mind that, too stern not to wrestle with its

emotions, seeks to conquer regret, must leave itself no leisure to look

behind. Who knows what benefits to the world may have sprung from the

sorrows of the benefactor? As the harvest that gladdens mankind in the

suns of autumn was called forth by the rains of spring, so the griefs of

youth may make the fame of maturity.

Gertrude, charmed by the beauties of the river, desired to continue the

voyage to Mayence. The rich Trevylyan persuaded the physician who had

attended her to accompany them, and they once more pursued their way

along the banks of the feudal Rhine. For what the Tiber is to the

classic, the Rhine is to the chivalric age. The steep rock and the gray

dismantled tower, the massive and rude picturesque of the feudal days,

constitute the great features of the scene; and you might almost fancy,

as you glide along, that you are sailing back adown the river of Time,

and the monuments of the pomp and power of old, rising, one after one,

upon its shores!

Vane and Du-----e, the physician, at the farther end of the vessel,

conversed upon stones and strata, in that singular pedantry of science

which strips nature to a skeleton, and prowls among the dead bones of

the world, unconscious of its living beauty.

They left Gertrude and Trevylyan to themselves; and, “bending o’er the

vessel’s laving side,” they indulged in silence the melancholy with

which each was imbued. For Gertrude began to waken, though doubtingly

and at intervals, to a sense of the short span that was granted to her

life; and over the loveliness around her there floated that sad and

ineffable interest which springs from the presentiment of our own death.

They passed the rich island of Oberwerth, and Hochheim, famous for its

ruby grape, and saw, from his mountain bed, the Lahn bear his tribute of

fruits and corn into the treasury of the Rhine. Proudly rose the tower

of Niederlahnstein, and deeply lay its shadow along the stream. It was

late noon; the cattle had sought the shade from the slanting sun, and,

far beyond, the holy castle of Marksburg raised its battlements above

mountains covered with the vine. On the water two boats had been drawn

alongside each other; and from one, now moving to the land, the splash

of oars broke the general stillness of the tide. Fast by an old tower

the fishermen were busied in their craft, but the sound of their voices

did not reach the ear. It was life, but a silent life, suited to the

tranquillity of noon.

“There is something in travel,” said Gertrude, “which constantly, even

amidst the most retired spots, impresses us with the exuberance of life.

We come to those quiet nooks and find a race whose existence we never

dreamed of. In their humble path they know the same passions and tread

the same career as ourselves. The mountains shut them out from the great

world, but their village is a world in itself. And they know and heed no

more of the turbulent scenes of remote cities than our own planet of

the inhabitants of the distant stars. What then is death, but the

forgetfulness of some few hearts added to the general unconsciousness of

our existence that pervades the universe? The bubble breaks in the vast

desert of the air without a sound.”

“Why talk of death?” said Trevylyan, with a writhing smile. “These sunny

scenes should not call forth such melancholy images.”

“Melancholy,” repeated Gertrude, mechanically. “Yes, death is indeed

melancholy when we are loved!”

They stayed a short time at Niederlahnstein, for Vane was anxious to

examine the minerals that the Lahn brings into the Rhine; and the sun

was waning towards its close as they renewed their voyage. As they

sailed slowly on, Gertrude said, “How like a dream is this sentiment

of existence, when, without labour or motion, every change of scene is

brought before us; and if I am with you, dearest, I do not feel it less

resembling a dream, for I have dreamed of you lately more than ever; and

dreams have become a part of my life itself.”

“Speaking of dreams,” said Trevylyan, as they pursued that mysterious

subject, “I once during my former residence in Germany fell in with a

singular enthusiast, who had taught himself what he termed ‘A System of

Dreaming.’ When he first spoke to me upon it I asked him to explain what

he meant, which he did somewhat in the following words.”

CHAPTER XXIII. THE LIFE OF DREAMS.

“I WAS born,” said he, “with many of the sentiments of the poet, but

without the language to express them; my feelings were constantly

chilled by the intercourse of the actual world. My family, mere Germans,

dull and unimpassioned, had nothing in common with me; nor did I out of

my family find those with whom I could better sympathize. I was revolted

by friendships,--for they were susceptible to every change; I was

disappointed in love,--for the truth never approached to my ideal.

Nursed early in the lap of Romance, enamoured of the wild and the

adventurous, the commonplaces of life were to me inexpressibly tame and

joyless. And yet indolence, which belongs to the poetical character, was

more inviting than that eager and uncontemplative action which can alone

wring enterprise from life. Meditation was my natural element. I loved

to spend the noon reclined by some shady stream, and in a half sleep

to shape images from the glancing sunbeams. A dim and unreal order of

philosophy, that belongs to our nation, was my favourite intellectual

pursuit; and I sought amongst the Obscure and the Recondite the variety

and emotion I could not find in the Familiar. Thus constantly watching

the operations of the inner mind, it occurred to me at last that sleep

having its own world, but as yet a rude and fragmentary one, it might

be possible to shape from its chaos all those combinations of beauty,

of power, of glory, and of love, which were denied to me in the world in

which my frame walked and had its being. So soon as this idea came upon

me, I nursed and cherished and mused over it, till I found that the

imagination began to effect the miracle I desired. By brooding ardently,

intensely, before I retired to rest, over any especial train of

thought, over any ideal creations; by keeping the body utterly still and

quiescent during the whole day; by shutting out all living adventure,

the memory of which might perplex and interfere with the stream

of events that I desired to pour forth into the wilds of sleep, I

discovered at last that I could lead in dreams a life solely their own,

and utterly distinct from the life of day. Towers and palaces, all

my heritage and seigneury, rose before me from the depths of night; I

quaffed from jewelled cups the Falernian of imperial vaults; music from

harps of celestial tone filled up the crevices of air; and the smiles of

immortal beauty flushed like sunlight over all. Thus the adventure and

the glory that I could not for my waking life obtain, was obtained for

me in sleep. I wandered with the gryphon and the gnome; I sounded the

horn at enchanted portals; I conquered in the knightly lists; I planted

my standard over battlements huge as the painter’s birth of Babylon

itself.

“But I was afraid to call forth one shape on whose loveliness to pour

all the hidden passion of my soul. I trembled lest my sleep should

present me some image which it could never restore, and, waking from

which, even the new world I had created might be left desolate forever.

I shuddered lest I should adore a vision which the first ray of morning

could smite to the grave.

“In this train of mind I began to wonder whether it might not be

possible to connect dreams together; to supply the thread that was

wanting; to make one night continue the history of the other, so as

to bring together the same shapes and the same scenes, and thus lead a

connected and harmonious life, not only in the one half of existence,

but in the other, the richer and more glorious half. No sooner did this

idea present itself to me, than I burned to accomplish it. I had before

taught myself that Faith is the great creator; that to believe fervently

is to make belief true. So I would not suffer my mind to doubt the

practicability of its scheme. I shut myself up then entirely by day,

refused books, and hated the very sun, and compelled all my thoughts

(and sleep is the mirror of thought) to glide in one direction,--the

direction of my dreams,--so that from night to night the imagination

might keep up the thread of action, and I might thus lie down full of

the past dream and confident of the sequel. Not for one day only, or for

one month, did I pursue this system, but I continued it zealously and

sternly till at length it began to succeed. Who shall tell,” cried the

enthusiast,--I see him now with his deep, bright, sunken eyes, and his

wild hair thrown backward from his brow,--“the rapture I experienced,

when first, faintly and half distinct, I perceived the harmony I had

invoked dawn upon my dreams? At first there was only a partial and

desultory connection between them; my eye recognized certain shapes, my

ear certain tones common to each; by degrees these augmented in number,

and were more defined in outline. At length one fair face broke forth

from among the ruder forms, and night after night appeared mixing with

them for a moment and then vanishing, just as the mariner watches, in

a clouded sky, the moon shining through the drifting rack, and quickly

gone. My curiosity was now vividly excited; the face, with its lustrous

eyes and seraph features, roused all the emotions that no living shape

had called forth. I became enamoured of a dream, and as the statue to

the Cyprian was my creation to me; so from this intent and unceasing

passion I at length worked out my reward. My dream became more palpable;

I spoke with it; I knelt to it; my lips were pressed to its own; we

exchanged the vows of love, and morning only separated us with the

certainty that at night we should meet again. Thus then,” continued my

visionary, “I commenced a history utterly separate from the history of

the world, and it went on alternately with my harsh and chilling history

of the day, equally regular and equally continuous. And what, you ask,

was that history? Methought I was a prince in some Eastern island that

had no features in common with the colder north of my native home. By

day I looked upon the dull walls of a German town, and saw homely or

squalid forms passing before me; the sky was dim and the sun cheerless.

Night came on with her thousand stars, and brought me the dews of sleep.

Then suddenly there was a new world; the richest fruits hung from the

trees in clusters of gold and purple. Palaces of the quaint fashion of

the sunnier climes, with spiral minarets and glittering cupolas, were

mirrored upon vast lakes sheltered by the palm-tree and banana. The sun

seemed a different orb, so mellow and gorgeous were his beams; birds and

winged things of all hues fluttered in the shining air; the faces and

garments of men were not of the northern regions of the world, and their

voices spoke a tongue which, strange at first, by degrees I interpreted.

Sometimes I made war upon neighbouring kings; sometimes I chased the

spotted pard through the vast gloom of immemorial forests; my life

was at once a life of enterprise and pomp. But above all there was the

history of my love! I thought there were a thousand difficulties in the

way of attaining its possession. Many were the rocks I had to scale, and

the battles to wage, and the fortresses to storm, in order to win her as

my bride. But at last” (continued the enthusiast), “she _is_ won, she

is my own! Time in that wild world, which I visit nightly, passes not

so slowly as in this, and yet an hour may be the same as a year. This

continuity of existence, this successive series of dreams, so different

from the broken incoherence of other men’s sleep, at times bewilders me

with strange and suspicious thoughts. What if this glorious sleep be a

real life, and this dull waking the true repose? Why not? What is there

more faithful in the one than in the other? And there have I garnered

and collected all of pleasure that I am capable of feeling. I seek

no joy in this world; I form no ties, I feast not, nor love, nor make

merry; I am only impatient till the hour when I may re-enter my royal

realms and pour my renewed delight into the bosom of my bright Ideal.

There then have I found all that the world denied me; there have I

realized the yearning and the aspiration within me; there have I coined

the untold poetry into the Felt, the Seen!”

I found, continued Trevylyan, that this tale was corroborated by inquiry

into the visionary’s habits. He shunned society; avoided all unnecessary

movement or excitement. He fared with rigid abstemiousness, and only

appeared to feel pleasure as the day departed, and the hour of return to

his imaginary kingdom approached. He always retired to rest punctually

at a certain hour, and would sleep so soundly that a cannon fired under

his window would not arouse him. He never, which may seem singular,

spoke or moved much in his sleep, but was peculiarly calm, almost to

the appearance of lifelessness; but, discovering once that he had been

watched in sleep, he was wont afterwards carefully to secure the chamber

from intrusion. His victory over the natural incoherence of sleep had,

when I first knew him, lasted for some years; possibly what imagination

first produced was afterwards continued by habit.

I saw him again a few months subsequent to this confession, and he

seemed to me much changed. His health was broken, and his abstraction

had deepened into gloom.

I questioned him of the cause of the alteration, and he answered me with

great reluctance,--

“She is dead,” said he; “my realms are desolate! A serpent stung her,

and she died in these very arms. Vainly, when I started from my sleep in

horror and despair, vainly did I say to myself,--This is but a dream. I

shall see her again. A vision cannot die! Hath it flesh that decays; is

it not a spirit,--bodiless, indissoluble? With what terrible anxiety

I awaited the night! Again I slept, and the DREAM lay again before me,

dead and withered. Even the ideal can vanish. I assisted in the burial;

I laid her in the earth; I heaped the monumental mockery over her form.

And never since hath she, or ought like her, revisited my dreams. I see

her only when I wake; thus to wake is indeed to dream! But,” continued

the visionary in a solemn voice, “I feel myself departing from this

world, and with a fearful joy; for I think there may be a land beyond

even the land of sleep where I shall see her again,--a land in which a

vision itself may be restored.”

And in truth, concluded Trevylyan, the dreamer died shortly afterwards,

suddenly, and in his sleep. And never before, perhaps, had Fate so

literally made of a living man (with his passions and his powers, his

ambition and his love) the plaything and puppet of a dream!

“Ah,” said Vane, who had heard the latter part of Trevylyan’s story,

“could the German have bequeathed to us his secret, what a refuge should

we possess from the ills of earth! The dungeon and disease, poverty,

affliction, shame, would cease to be the tyrants of our lot; and to

Sleep we should confine our history and transfer our emotions.”

“Gertrude,” whispered the lover, “what his kingdom and his bride were to

the Dreamer art thou to me!”

CHAPTER XXIV. THE BROTHERS.

THE banks of the Rhine now shelved away into sweeping plains, and on

their right rose the once imperial city of Boppart. In no journey

of similar length do you meet with such striking instances of the

mutability and shifts of power. To find, as in the Memphian Egypt, a

city sunk into a heap of desolate ruins; the hum, the roar, the mart of

nations, hushed into the silence of ancestral tombs, is less humbling

to our human vanity than to mark, as along the Rhine, the kingly city

dwindled into the humble town or the dreary village,--decay without its

grandeur, change without the awe of its solitude! On the site on

which Drusus raised his Roman tower, and the kings of the Franks their

palaces, trade now dribbles in tobacco-pipes, and transforms into an

excellent cotton factory the antique nunnery of Konigsberg! So be it; it

is the progressive order of things,--the world itself will soon be one

excellent cotton factory!

“Look,” said Trevylyan, as they sailed on, “at yonder mountain, with its

two traditionary Castles of Liebenstein and Sternfels.”

Massive and huge the ruins swelled above the green rock, at the foot

of which lay, in happier security from time and change, the clustered

cottages of the peasant, with a single spire rising above the quiet

village.

“Is there not, Albert, a celebrated legend attached to those castles?”

said Gertrude. “I think I remember to have heard their names in

connection with your profession of taleteller.”

“Yes,” said Trevylyan, “the story relates to the last lords of those

shattered towers, and--”

“You will sit here, nearer to me, and begin,” interrupted Gertrude, in

her tone of childlike command. “Come.”

THE BROTHERS.

A TALE.*

* This tale is, in reality, founded on the beautiful tradition

which belongs to Liebenstein and Sternfels.

You must imagine then, dear Gertrude (said Trevylyan), a beautiful

summer day, and by the same faculty that none possess so richly as

yourself, for it is you who can kindle something of that divine spark

even in me, you must rebuild those shattered towers in the pomp of old;

raise the gallery and the hall; man the battlements with warders, and

give the proud banners of ancestral chivalry to wave upon the walls. But

above, sloping half down the rock, you must fancy the hanging gardens of

Liebenstein, fragrant with flowers, and basking in the noonday sun.

On the greenest turf, underneath an oak, there sat three persons, in the

bloom of youth. Two of the three were brothers; the third was an orphan

girl, whom the lord of the opposite tower of Sternfels had bequeathed

to the protection of his brother, the chief of Liebenstein. The castle

itself and the demesne that belonged to it passed away from the female

line, and became the heritage of Otho, the orphan’s cousin, and the

younger of the two brothers now seated on the turf.

“And oh,” said the elder, whose name was Warbeck, “you have twined a

chaplet for my brother; have you not, dearest Leoline, a simple flower

for me?”

The beautiful orphan (for beautiful she was, Gertrude, as the heroine of

the tale you bid me tell ought to be,--should she not have to the dreams

of my fancy your lustrous hair, and your sweet smile, and your eyes

of blue, that are never, never silent? Ah, pardon me, that in a former

tale, I denied the heroine the beauty of your face, and remember that to

atone for it, I endowed her with the beauty of your mind)--the beautiful

orphan blushed to her temples, and culling from the flowers in her lap

the freshest of the roses, began weaving them into a wreath for Warbeck.

“It would be better,” said the gay Otho, “to make my sober brother a

chaplet of the rue and cypress; the rose is much too bright a flower for

so serious a knight.”

Leoline held up her hand reprovingly.

“Let him laugh, dearest cousin,” said Warbeck, gazing passionately on

her changing cheek; “and thou, Leoline, believe that the silent stream

runs the deepest.”

At this moment, they heard the voice of the old chief, their father,

calling aloud for Leoline; for ever when he returned from the chase

he wanted her gentle presence; and the hall was solitary to him if the

light sound of her step and the music of her voice were not heard in

welcome.

Leoline hastened to her guardian, and the brothers were left alone.

Nothing could be more dissimilar than the features and the respective

characters of Otho and Warbeck. Otho’s countenance was flushed with the

brown hues of health; his eyes were of the brightest hazel: his dark

hair wreathed in short curls round his open and fearless brow; the jest

ever echoed on his lips, and his step was bounding as the foot of

the hunter of the Alps. Bold and light was his spirit; if at times he

betrayed the haughty insolence of youth, he felt generously, and though

not ever ready to confess sorrow for a fault, he was at least ready to

brave peril for a friend.

But Warbeck’s frame, though of equal strength, was more slender in

its proportions than that of his brother; the fair long hair that

characterized his northern race hung on either side of a countenance

calm and pale, and deeply impressed with thought, even to sadness. His

features, more majestic and regular than Otho’s, rarely varied in their

expression. More resolute even than Otho, he was less impetuous; more

impassioned, he was also less capricious.

The brothers remained silent after Leoline had left them. Otho

carelessly braced on his sword, that he had laid aside on the grass; but

Warbeck gathered up the flowers that had been touched by the soft hand

of Leoline, and placed them in his bosom.

The action disturbed Otho; he bit his lip, and changed colour; at length

he said, with a forced laugh,--

“It must be confessed, brother, that you carry your affection for

our fair cousin to a degree that even relationship seems scarcely to

warrant.”

“It is true,” said Warbeck, calmly; “I love her with a love surpassing

that of blood.”

“How!” said Otho, fiercely: “do you dare to think of Leoline as a

bride?”

“Dare!” repeated Warbeck, turning yet paler than his wonted hue.

“Yes, I have said the word! Know, Warbeck, that I, too, love Leoline; I,

too, claim her as my bride; and never, while I can wield a sword, never,

while I wear the spurs of knighthood, will I render my claim to a living

rival,--even,” he added, sinking his voice, “though that rival be my

brother!”

Warbeck answered not; his very soul seemed stunned; he gazed long and

wistfully on his brother, and then, turning his face away, ascended the

rock without uttering a single word.

This silence startled Otho. Accustomed to vent every emotion of his own,

he could not comprehend the forbearance of his brother; he knew his high

and brave nature too well to imagine that it arose from fear. Might it

not be contempt, or might he not, at this moment, intend to seek their

father; and, the first to proclaim his love for the orphan, advance,

also, the privilege of the elder born? As these suspicions flashed

across him, the haughty Otho strode to his brother’s side, and laying

his hand on his arm, said,--

“Whither goest thou; and dost thou consent to surrender Leoline?”

“Does she love thee, Otho?” answered Warbeck, breaking silence at last;

and his voice spoke so deep an anguish, that it arrested the passions of

Otho even at their height.

“It is thou who art now silent,” continued Warbeck; “speak. Doth she

love thee, and has her lip confessed it?”

“I have believed that she loved me,” faltered Otho; “but she is of

maiden bearing, and her lip, at least, has never told it.”

“Enough,” said Warbeck; “release your hold.”

“Stay,” said Otho, his suspicions returning; “stay,--yet one word; dost

thou seek my father? He ever honoured thee more than me: wilt thou own

to him thy love, and insist on thy right of birth? By my soul and my

hope of heaven, do it, and one of us two must fall!”

“Poor boy!” answered Warbeck, bitterly; “how little thou canst read the

heart of one who loves truly! Thinkest thou I would wed her if she loved

thee? Thinkest thou I could, even to be blessed myself, give her one

moment’s pain? Out on the thought! away!”

“Then wilt not thou seek our father?” said Otho, abashed.