“Our father!--has our father the keeping of Leoline’s affection?”

answered Warbeck; and shaking off his brother’s grasp, he sought the way

to the castle.

As he entered the hall, he heard the voice of Leoline; she was singing

to the old chief one of the simple ballads of the time that the warrior

and the hunter loved to hear. He paused lest he should break the spell

(a spell stronger than a sorcerer’s to him), and gazing upon Leoline’s

beautiful form, his heart sank within him. His brother and himself

had each that day, as they sat in the gardens, given her a flower; his

flower was the fresher and the rarer; his he saw not, but she wore his

brother’s in her bosom!

The chief, lulled by the music and wearied with the toils of the chase,

sank into sleep as the song ended, and Warbeck, coming forward, motioned

to Leoline to follow him. He passed into a retired and solitary walk,

and when they were a little distance from the castle, Warbeck turned

round, and taking Leoline’s hand gently, said,--

“Let us rest here for one moment, dearest cousin; I have much on my

heart to say to thee.”

“And what is there,” answered Leoline, as they sat on a mossy bank,

with the broad Rhine glancing below, “what is there that my kind Warbeck

would ask of me? Ah, would it might be some favour, something in poor

Leoline’s power to grant; for ever from my birth you have been to me

most tender, most kind. You, I have often heard them say; taught my

first steps to walk; you formed my infant lips into language, and, in

after years, when my wild cousin was far away in the forests at the

chase, you would brave his gay jest and remain at home, lest Leoline

should be weary in the solitude. Ah, would I could repay you!”

Warbeck turned away his cheek; his heart was very full, and it was some

moments before he summoned courage to reply.

“My fair cousin,” said he, “those were happy days; but they were the

days of childhood. New cares and new thoughts have now come on us; but

I am still thy friend, Leoline, and still thou wilt confide in me thy

young sorrows and thy young hopes, as thou ever didst. Wilt thou not,

Leoline?”

“Canst thou ask me?” said Leoline; and Warbeck, gazing on her face, saw

that though her eyes were full of tears, they yet looked steadily upon

his; and he knew that she loved him only as a sister.

He sighed, and paused again ere he resumed. “Enough,” said he; “now to

my task. Once on a time, dear cousin, there lived among these mountains

a certain chief who had two sons, and an orphan like thyself dwelt also

in his halls. And the elder son--but no matter, let us not waste words

on _him_!--the younger son, then, loved the orphan dearly,--more dearly

than cousins love; and fearful of refusal, he prayed the elder one to

urge his suit to the orphan. Leoline, my tale is done. Canst thou not

love Otho as he loves thee?”

And now lifting his eyes to Leoline, he saw that she trembled violently,

and her cheek was covered with blushes.

“Say,” continued he, mastering himself, “is not that flower

his--present--a token that he is chiefly in thy thoughts?”

“Ah, Warbeck! do not deem me ungrateful that I wear not yours also;

but--”

“Hush!” said Warbeck, hastily; “I am but as thy brother; is not Otho

more? He is young, brave, and beautiful. God grant that he may deserve

thee, if thou givest him so rich a gift as thy affections!”

“I saw less of Otho in my childhood,” said Leoline, evasively;

“therefore, his kindness of late years seemed stranger to me than

thine.”

“And thou wilt not then reject him? Thou wilt be his bride?”

“And _thy_ sister,” answered Leoline.

“Bless thee, mine own dear cousin! one brother’s kiss then, and

farewell! Otho shall thank thee for himself.”

He kissed her forehead calmly, and, turning away, plunged into the

thicket; then, nor till then, he gave vent to such emotions as, had

Leoline seen them, Otho’s suit had been lost forever; for passionately,

deeply as in her fond and innocent heart she loved Otho, the _happiness_

of Warbeck was not less dear to her.

When the young knight had recovered his self-possession he went in

search of Otho. He found him alone in the wood, leaning with folded arms

against a tree, and gazing moodily on the ground. Warbeck’s noble heart

was touched at his brother’s dejection.

“Cheer thee, Otho,” said he; “I bring thee no bad tidings; I have seen

Leoline, I have conversed with her--nay, start not,--she loves thee! she

is thine!”

“Generous, generous Warbeck!” exclaimed Otho; and he threw himself on

his brother’s neck. “No, no,” said he, “this must not be; thou hast the

elder claim,--I resign her to thee. Forgive me my waywardness, brother,

forgive me!”

“Think of the past no more,” said Warbeck; “the love of Leoline is an

excuse for greater offences than thine. And now, be kind to her; her

nature is soft and keen. _I_ know her well; for _I_ have studied her

faintest wish. Thou art hasty and quick of ire; but remember that a word

wounds where love is deep. For my sake, as for hers, think more of her

happiness than thine own; now seek her,--she waits to hear from thy lips

the tale that sounded cold upon mine.”

With that he left his brother, and, once more re-entering the castle, he

went into the hall of his ancestors. His father still slept; he put his

hand on his gray hair, and blessed him; then stealing up to his chamber,

he braced on his helm and armour, and thrice kissing the hilt of his

sword, said, with a flushed cheek,--

“Henceforth be _thou_ my bride!” Then passing from the castle, he sped

by the most solitary paths down the rock, gained the Rhine, and hailing

one of the numerous fishermen of the river, won the opposite shore; and

alone, but not sad, for his high heart supported him, and Leoline at

least was happy, he hastened to Frankfort.

The town was all gayety and life, arms clanged at every corner, the

sounds of martial music, the wave of banners, the glittering of plumed

casques, the neighing of war-steeds, all united to stir the blood and

inflame the sense. Saint Bertrand had lifted the sacred cross along the

shores of the Rhine, and the streets of Frankfort witnessed with what

success!

On that same day Warbeck assumed the sacred badge, and was enlisted

among the knights of the Emperor Conrad.

We must suppose some time to have elapsed, and Otho and Leoline were not

yet wedded; for, in the first fervour of his gratitude to his brother,

Otho had proclaimed to his father and to Leoline the conquest Warbeck

had obtained over himself; and Leoline, touched to the heart, would not

consent that the wedding should take place immediately. “Let him, at

least,” said she, “not be insulted by a premature festivity; and give

him time, amongst the lofty beauties he will gaze upon in a far country,

to forget, Otho, that he once loved her who is the beloved of thee.”

The old chief applauded this delicacy; and even Otho, in the first flush

of his feelings towards his brother, did not venture to oppose it. They

settled, then, that the marriage should take place at the end of a year.

Months rolled away, and an absent and moody gloom settled upon Otho’s

brow. In his excursions with his gay companions among the neighbouring

towns, he heard of nothing but the glory of the Crusaders, of the homage

paid to the heroes of the Cross at the courts they visited, of the

adventures of their life, and the exciting spirit that animated their

war. In fact, neither minstrel nor priest suffered the theme to grow

cold; and the fame of those who had gone forth to the holy strife gave

at once emulation and discontent to the youths who remained behind.

“And my brother enjoys this ardent and glorious life,” said the

impatient Otho; “while I, whose arm is as strong, and whose heart is as

bold, languish here listening to the dull tales of a hoary sire and

the silly songs of an orphan girl.” His heart smote him at the last

sentence, but he had already begun to weary of the gentle love of

Leoline. Perhaps when he had no longer to gain a triumph over a rival

the excitement palled; or perhaps his proud spirit secretly chafed at

being conquered by his brother in generosity, even when outshining him

in the success of love.

But poor Leoline, once taught that she was to consider Otho her

betrothed, surrendered her heart entirely to his control. His wild

spirit, his dark beauty, his daring valour, won while they awed her; and

in the fitfulness of his nature were those perpetual springs of hope

and fear that are the fountains of ever-agitated love. She saw with

increasing grief the change that was growing over Otho’s mind; nor did

she divine the cause. “Surely I have not offended him?” thought she.

Among the companions of Otho was one who possessed a singular sway

over him. He was a knight of that mysterious Order of the Temple, which

exercised at one time so great a command over the minds of men.

A severe and dangerous wound in a brawl with an English knight had

confined the Templar at Frankfort, and prevented his joining the

Crusade. During his slow recovery he had formed an intimacy with Otho,

and, taking up his residence at the castle of Liebenstein, had been

struck with the beauty of Leoline. Prevented by his oath from marriage,

he allowed himself a double license in love, and doubted not, could he

disengage the young knight from his betrothed, that she would add a

new conquest to the many he had already achieved. Artfully therefore he

painted to Otho the various attractions of the Holy Cause; and, above

all, he failed not to describe, with glowing colours, the beauties who,

in the gorgeous East, distinguished with a prodigal favour the warriors

of the Cross. Dowries, unknown in the more sterile mountains of the

Rhine, accompanied the hand of these beauteous maidens; and even a

prince’s daughter was not deemed, he said, too lofty a marriage for the

heroes who might win kingdoms for themselves.

“To me,” said the Templar, “such hopes are eternally denied. But you,

were you not already betrothed, what fortunes might await you!”

By such discourses the ambition of Otho was perpetually aroused; they

served to deepen his discontent at his present obscurity, and to convert

to distaste the only solace it afforded in the innocence and affection

of Leoline.

One night, a minstrel sought shelter from the storm in the halls of

Liebenstein. His visit was welcomed by the chief, and he repaid the

hospitality he had received by the exercise of his art. He sang of the

chase, and the gaunt hound started from the hearth. He sang of love, and

Otho, forgetting his restless dreams, approached to Leoline, and

laid himself at her feet. Louder then and louder rose the strain. The

minstrel sang of war; he painted the feats of the Crusaders; he plunged

into the thickest of the battle; the steed neighed; the trump sounded;

and you might have heard the ringing of the steel. But when he came

to signalize the names of the boldest knights, high among the loftiest

sounded the name of Sir Warbeck of Liebenstein. Thrice had he saved the

imperial banner; two chargers slain beneath him, he had covered their

bodies with the fiercest of the foe.

Gentle in the tent and terrible in the fray, the minstrel should forget

his craft ere the Rhine should forget its hero. The chief started from

his seat. Leoline clasped the minstrel’s hand.

“Speak,--you have seen him, he lives, he is honoured?”

“I myself am but just from Palestine, brave chief and noble maiden. I

saw the gallant knight of Liebenstein at the right hand of the imperial

Conrad. And he, ladye, was the only knight whom admiration shone upon

without envy, its shadow. Who then,” continued the minstrel, once more

striking his harp, “who then would remain inglorious in the hall? Shall

not the banners of his sires reproach him as they wave; and shall not

every voice from Palestine strike shame into his soul?”

“Right!” cried Otho, suddenly, and flinging himself at the feet of his

father. “Thou hearest what my brother has done, and thine aged eyes weep

tears of joy. Shall I only dishonour thine old age with a rusted sword?

No! grant me, like my brother, to go forth with the heroes of the

Cross!”

“Noble youth,” cried the harper, “therein speaks the soul of Sir

Warbeck; hear him, sir, knight,--hear the noble youth.”

“Heaven cries aloud in his voice,” said the Templar, solemnly.

“My son, I cannot chide thine ardour,” said the old chief, raising him

with trembling hands; “but Leoline, thy betrothed?”

Pale as a statue, with ears that doubted their sense as they drank in

the cruel words of her lover, stood the orphan. She did not speak, she

scarcely breathed; she sank into her seat, and gazed upon the ground,

till, at the speech of the chief both maiden pride and maiden tenderness

restored her consciousness, and she said,--

“_I_, uncle! Shall _I_ bid Otho stay when his wishes bid him depart?”

“He will return to thee, noble ladye, covered with glory,” said the

harper: but Otho said no more. The touching voice of Leoline went to

his soul; he resumed his seat in silence; and Leoline, going up to

him, whispered gently, “Act as though I were not;” and left the hall to

commune with her heart and to weep alone.

“I can wed her before I go,” said Otho, suddenly, as he sat that night

in the Templar’s chamber.

“Why, that is true! and leave thy bride in the first week,--a hard

trial!”

“Better than incur the chance of never calling her mine. Dear, kind,

beloved Leoline!”

“Assuredly, she deserves all from thee; and, indeed, it is no small

sacrifice, at thy years and with thy mien, to renounce forever all

interest among the noble maidens thou wilt visit. Ah, from the galleries

of Constantinople what eyes will look down on thee, and what ears,

learning that thou art Otho the bridegroom, will turn away, caring for

thee no more! A bridegroom without a bride! Nay, man, much as the Cross

wants warriors, I am enough thy friend to tell thee, if thou weddest, to

stay peaceably at home, and forget in the chase the labours of war, from

which thou wouldst strip the ambition of love.”

“I would I knew what were best,” said Otho, irresolutely. “My

brother--ha, shall he forever excel me? But Leoline, how will she

grieve,--she who left him for me!”

“Was that thy fault?” said the Templar, gayly. “It may many times chance

to thee again to be preferred to another. Troth, it is a sin under which

the conscience may walk lightly enough. But sleep on it, Otho; my eyes

grow heavy.”

The next day Otho sought Leoline, and proposed to her that their wedding

should precede his parting; but so embarrassed was he, so divided

between two wishes, that Leoline, offended, hurt, stung by his coldness,

refused the proposal at once. She left him lest he should see her weep,

and then--then she repented even of her just pride!

But Otho, striving to appease his conscience with the belief that

hers now was the _sole_ fault, busied himself in preparations for his

departure. Anxious to outshine his brother, he departed not as Warbeck,

alone and unattended, but levying all the horse, men, and money that

his domain of Sternfels--which he had not yet tenanted--would afford, he

repaired to Frankfort at the head of a glittering troop.

The Templar, affecting a relapse, tarried behind, and promised to join

him at that Constantinople of which he had so loudly boasted. Meanwhile

he devoted his whole powers of pleasing to console the unhappy orphan.

The force of her simple love was, however, stronger than all his arts.

In vain he insinuated doubts of Otho,--she refused to hear them; in vain

he poured with the softest accents into her ear the witchery of flattery

and song,--she turned heedlessly away; and only pained by the courtesies

that had so little resemblance to Otho, she shut herself up in her

chamber, and pined in solitude for her forsaker.

The Templar now resolved to attempt darker arts to obtain power over

her, when, fortunately, he was summoned suddenly away by a mission from

the Grand Master of so high import, that it could not be resisted by a

passion stronger in his breast than love,--the passion of ambition. He

left the castle to its solitude; and Otho peopling it no more with his

gay companions, no solitude _could_ be more unfrequently disturbed.

Meanwhile, though, ever and anon, the fame of Warbeck reached their

ears, it came unaccompanied with that of Otho,--of him they had no

tidings; and thus the love of the tender orphan was kept alive by

the perpetual restlessness of fear. At length the old chief died, and

Leoline was left utterly alone.

One evening as she sat with her maidens in the hall, the ringing of a

steed’s hoofs was heard in the outer court; a horn sounded, the heavy

gates were unbarred, and a knight of a stately mien and covered with the

mantle of the Cross entered the hall. He stopped for one moment at the

entrance, as if overpowered by his emotion; in the next he had clasped

Leoline to his breast.

“Dost thou not recognize thy cousin Warbeck?” He doffed his casque, and

she saw that majestic brow which, unlike Otho’s, had never changed or

been clouded in its aspect to her.

“The war is suspended for the present,” said he. “I learned my father’s

death, and I have returned home to hang up my banner in the hall and

spend my days in peace.”

Time and the life of camps had worked their change upon Warbeck’s face;

the fair hair, deepened in its shade, was worn from the temples, and

disclosed one scar that rather aided the beauty of a countenance that

had always something high and martial in its character; but the calm it

had once worn had settled down into sadness; he conversed more rarely

than before, and though he smiled not less often, nor less kindly, the

smile had more of thought, and the kindness had forgot its passion. He

had apparently conquered a love that was so early crossed, but not

that fidelity of remembrance which made Leoline dearer to him than all

others, and forbade him to replace the images he had graven upon his

soul.

The orphan’s lips trembled with the name of Otho, but a certain

recollection stifled even her anxiety. Warbeck hastened to forestall her

questions. Otho was well, he said, and sojourning at Constantinople; he

had lingered there so long that the crusade had terminated without his

aid: doubtless now he would speedily return,--a month, a week, nay, a

day, might restore him to her side.

Leoline was inexpressibly consoled, yet something remained untold.

Why, so eager for the strife of the sacred tomb, had he thus tarried at

Constantinople? She wondered, she wearied conjecture, but she did not

dare to search further.

The generous Warbeck concealed from her that Otho led a life of the most

reckless and indolent dissipation,--wasting his wealth in the pleasures

of the Greek court, and only occupying his ambition with the wild

schemes of founding a principality in those foreign climes, which the

enterprises of the Norman adventurers had rendered so alluring to the

knightly bandits of the age.

The cousins resumed their old friendship, and Warbeck believed that it

was friendship alone.

They walked again among the gardens in which their childhood had

strayed; they sat again on the green turf whereon they had woven

flowers; they looked down on the eternal mirror of the Rhine,--ah! could

it have reflected the same unawakened freshness of their life’s early

spring!

The grave and contemplative mind of Warbeck had not been so contented

with the honours of war but that it had sought also those calmer sources

of emotion which were yet found among the sages of the East. He had

drunk at the fountain of the wisdom of those distant climes, and had

acquired the habits of meditation which were indulged by those wiser

tribes from which the Crusaders brought back to the North the knowledge

that was destined to enlighten their posterity. Warbeck, therefore, had

little in common with the ruder chiefs around; he did not summon them to

his board; nor attend at their noisy wassails. Often late at night, in

yon shattered tower, his lonely lamp shone still over the mighty stream,

and his only relief to loneliness was in the presence and the song of

his soft cousin.

Months rolled on, when suddenly a vague and fearful rumour reached the

castle of Liebenstein. Otho was returning home to the neighbouring tower

of Sternfels; but not alone. He brought back with him a Greek bride of

surprising beauty, and dowered with almost regal wealth. Leoline was

the first to discredit the rumour; Leoline was soon the only one who

disbelieved.

Bright in the summer noon flashed the array of horsemen; far up

the steep ascent wound the gorgeous cavalcade; the lonely towers of

Liebenstein heard the echo of many a laugh and peal of merriment. Otho

bore home his bride to the hall of Sternfels.

That night there was a great banquet in Otho’s castle; the lights shone

from every casement, and music swelled loud and ceaselessly within.

By the side of Otho, glittering with the prodigal jewels of the East,

sat the Greek. Her dark locks, her flashing eye, the false colours of

her complexion, dazzled the eyes of her guests. On her left hand sat the

Templar.

“By the holy rood,” quoth the Templar, gayly, though he crossed himself

as he spoke, “we shall scare the owls to-night on those grim towers

of Liebenstein. Thy grave brother, Sir Otho, will have much to do to

comfort his cousin when she sees what a gallant life she would have led

with thee.”

“Poor damsel!” said the Greek, with affected pity, “doubtless she will

now be reconciled to the rejected one. I hear he is a knight of a comely

mien.”

“Peace!” said Otho, sternly, and quaffing a large goblet of wine.

The Greek bit her lip, and glanced meaningly at the Templar, who

returned the glance.

“Nought but a beauty such as thine can win my pardon,” said Otho,

turning to his bride, and gazing passionately in her face.

The Greek smiled.

Well sped the feast, the laugh deepened, the wine circled, when Otho’s

eye rested on a guest at the bottom of the board, whose figure was

mantled from head to foot, and whose face was covered by a dark veil.

“Beshrew me!” said he, aloud, “but this is scarce courteous at our

revel: will the stranger vouchsafe to unmask?”

These words turned all eyes to the figure, and they who sat next it

perceived that it trembled violently; at length it rose, and walking

slowly, but with grace, to the fair Greek, it laid beside her a wreath

of flowers.

“It is a simple gift, ladye,” said the stranger, in a voice of such

sweetness that the rudest guest was touched by it; “but it is all I can

offer, and the bride of Otho should not be without a gift at my hands.

May ye both be happy!”

With these words, the stranger turned and passed from the hall silent as

a shadow.

“Bring back the stranger!” cried the Greek, recovering her surprise.

Twenty guests sprang up to obey her mandate.

“No, no!” said Otho, waving his hand impatiently. “Touch her not, heed

her not, at your peril.”

The Greek bent over the flowers to conceal her anger, and from amongst

them dropped the broken half of a ring. Otho recognized it at once; it

was the broken half of that ring which he had broken with his betrothed.

Alas! he required not such a sign to convince him that that figure,

so full of ineffable grace, that touching voice, that simple action so

tender in its sentiment, that gift, that blessing, came only from the

forsaken and forgiving Leoline.

But Warbeck, alone in his solitary tower, paced to and fro with agitated

steps. Deep, undying wrath at his brother’s falsehood mingled with

one burning, one delicious hope. He confessed now that he had deceived

himself when he thought his passion was no more; was there any longer a

bar to his union with Leoline?

In that delicacy which was breathed into him by his love, he had

forborne to seek, or to offer her the insult of consolation. He felt

that the shock should be borne alone, and yet he pined, he thirsted, to

throw himself at her feet.

Nursing these contending thoughts, he was aroused by a knock at his

door; he opened it. The passage was thronged by Leoline’s maidens,

pale, anxious, weeping. Leoline had left the castle, with but one female

attendant, none knew whither; they knew too soon. From the hall of

Sternfels she had passed over in the dark and inclement night to the

valley in which the convent of Bornhofen offered to the weary of spirit

and the broken of heart a refuge at the shrine of God.

At daybreak the next morning, Warbeck was at the convent’s gate. He saw

Leoline. What a change one night of suffering had made in that face,

which was the fountain of all loveliness to him! He clasped her in his

arms; he wept; he urged all that love could urge: he besought her to

accept that heart which had never wronged her memory by a thought. “Oh,

Leoline! didst thou not say once that these arms nursed thy childhood;

that this voice soothed thine early sorrows? Ah, trust to them again

and forever. From a love that forsook thee turn to the love that never

swerved.”

“No,” said Leoline; “no. What would the chivalry of which thou art the

boast,--what would they say of thee, wert thou to wed one affianced and

deserted, who tarried years for another, and brought to thine arms only

that heart which he had abandoned? No; and even if thou, as I know thou

wouldst be, wert callous to such wrong of thy high name, shall I bring

to thee a broken heart and bruised spirit? Shalt thou wed sorrow and

not joy; and shall sighs that will not cease, and tears that may not be

dried, be the only dowry of thy bride? Thou, too, for whom all blessings

should be ordained! No, forget me; forget thy poor Leoline! She hath

nothing but prayers for thee.”

In vain Warbeck pleaded; in vain he urged all that passion and truth

could urge; the springs of earthly love were forever dried up in the

orphan’s heart, and her resolution was immovable. She tore herself from

his arms, and the gate of the convent creaked harshly on his ear.

A new and stern emotion now wholly possessed him; though naturally

mild and gentle, he cherished anger, when once it was aroused, with the

strength of a calm mind. Leoline’s tears, her sufferings, her wrongs,

her uncomplaining spirit, the change already stamped upon her face,--all

cried aloud to him for vengeance. “She is an orphan,” said he, bitterly;

“she hath none to protect, to redress her, save me alone. My father’s

charge over her forlorn youth descends of right to me. What matters it

whether her forsaker be my brother? He is _her_ foe. Hath he not crushed

her heart? Hath he not consigned her to sorrow till the grave? And with

what insult! no warning, no excuse; with lewd wassailers keeping revel

for his new bridals in the hearing--before the sight--of his betrothed!

Enough! the time hath come when, to use his own words, ‘One of us two

must fall!’” He half drew his sword as he spoke, and thrusting it back

violently into the sheath, strode home to his solitary castle. The sound

of steeds and of the hunting horn met him at his portal; the bridal

train of Sternfels, all mirth and gladness, were parting for the chase.

That evening a knight in complete armour entered the banquet-hall of

Sternfels, and defied Otho, on the part of Warbeck of Liebenstein, to

mortal combat.

Even the Templar was startled by so unnatural a challenge; but

Otho, reddening, took up the gage, and the day and spot were fixed.

Discontented, wroth with himself, a savage gladness seized him; he

longed to wreak his desperate feelings even on his brother. Nor had

he ever in his jealous heart forgiven that brother his virtues and his

renown.

At the appointed hour the brothers met as foes. Warbeck’s vizor was up,

and all the settled sternness of his soul was stamped upon his brow.

But Otho, more willing to brave the arm than to face the front of his

brother, kept his vizor down; the Templar stood by him with folded arms.

It was a study in human passions to his mocking mind. Scarce had the

first trump sounded to this dread conflict, when a new actor entered

on the scene. The rumour of so unprecedented an event had not failed to

reach the convent of Bornhofen; and now, two by two, came the sisters of

the holy shrine, and the armed men made way, as with trailing garments

and veiled faces they swept along into the very lists. At that moment

one from amongst them left her sisters with a slow majestic pace, and

paused not till she stood right between the brother foes.

“Warbeck,” she said in a hollow voice, that curdled up his dark spirit

as it spoke, “is it thus thou wouldst prove thy love, and maintain thy

trust over the fatherless orphan whom thy sire bequeathed to thy care?

Shall I have murder on my soul?” At that question she paused, and those

who heard it were struck dumb, and shuddered. “The murder of one man by

the hand of his own brother! Away, Warbeck! _I command_.”

“Shall I forget thy wrongs, Leoline?” said Warbeck.

“Wrongs! they united me to God! they are forgiven, they are no more.

Earth has deserted me, but Heaven hath taken me to its arms. Shall I

murmur at the change? And thou, Otho”--here her voice faltered--“thou,

does thy conscience smite thee not? Wouldst thou atone for robbing me of

hope by barring against me the future? Wretch that I should be, could

I dream of mercy, could I dream of comfort, if thy brother fell by thy

sword in my cause? Otho, I have pardoned thee, and blessed thee

and thine. Once, perhaps, thou didst love me; remember how I loved

thee,--cast down thine arms.”

Otho gazed at the veiled form before him. Where had the soft Leoline

learned to command? He turned to his brother; he felt all that he had

inflicted upon both; and casting his sword upon the ground, he knelt at

the feet of Leoline, and kissed her garment with a devotion that votary

never lavished on a holier saint.

The spell that lay over the warriors around was broken; there was one

loud cry of congratulation and joy. “And thou, Warbeck?” said Leoline,

turning to the spot where, still motionless and haughty, Warbeck stood.

“Have I ever rebelled against thy will?” said he, softly; and buried the

point of his sword in the earth. “Yet, Leoline, yet,” added he, looking

at his kneeling brother, “yet art thou already better avenged than by

this steel!”

“Thou art! thou art!” cried Otho, smiting his breast; and slowly, and

scarce noting the crowd that fell back from his path, Warbeck left the

lists.

Leoline said no more; her divine errand was fulfilled. She looked long

and wistfully after the stately form of the knight of Liebenstein, and

then, with a slight sigh, she turned to Otho, “This is the last time we

shall meet on earth. Peace be with us all!”

She then, with the same majestic and collected bearing, passed on

towards the sisterhood; and as, in the same solemn procession, they

glided back towards the convent, there was not a man present--no, not

even the hardened Templar--who would not, like Otho, have bent his knee

to Leoline.

Once more Otho plunged into the wild revelry of the age; his castle was

thronged with guests, and night after night the lighted halls shone down

athwart the tranquil Rhine. The beauty of the Greek, the wealth of Otho,

the fame of the Templar, attracted all the chivalry from far and near.

Never had the banks of the Rhine known so hospitable a lord as the

knight of Sternfels. Yet gloom seized him in the midst of gladness,

and the revel was welcome only as the escape from remorse. The voice of

scandal, however, soon began to mingle with that of envy at the pomp

of Otho. The fair Greek, it was said, weary of her lord, lavished her

smiles on others; the young and the fair were always most acceptable

at the castle; and, above all, her guilty love for the Templar scarcely

affected disguise. Otho alone appeared unconscious of the rumour; and

though he had begun to neglect his bride, he relaxed not in his intimacy

with the Templar.

It was noon, and the Greek was sitting in her bower alone with her

suspected lover; the rich perfumes of the East mingled with the

fragrance of flowers, and various luxuries, unknown till then in those

northern shores, gave a soft and effeminate character to the room.

“I tell thee,” said the Greek, petulantly, “that he begins to suspect;

that I have seen him watch thee, and mutter as he watched, and play with

the hilt of his dagger. Better let us fly ere it is too late, for his

vengeance would be terrible were it once roused against us. Ah, why did

I ever forsake my own sweet land for these barbarous shores! There, love

is not considered eternal, nor inconstancy a crime worthy death.”

“Peace, pretty one!” said the Templar, carelessly; “thou knowest not the

laws of our foolish chivalry. Thinkest thou I could fly from a knight’s

halls like a thief in the night? Why, verily, even the red cross would

not cover such dishonour. If thou fearest that thy dull lord suspects,

let us part. The emperor hath sent to me from Frankfort. Ere evening I

might be on my way thither.”

“And I left to brave the barbarian’s revenge alone? Is this thy

chivalry?”

“Nay, prate not so wildly,” answered the Templar. “Surely, when the

object of his suspicion is gone, thy woman’s art and thy Greek wiles can

easily allay the jealous fiend. Do I not know thee, Glycera? Why, thou

wouldst fool all men--save a Templar.”

“And thou, cruel, wouldst thou leave me?” said the Greek, weeping. “How

shall I live without thee?”

The Templar laughed slightly. “Can such eyes ever weep without a

comforter? But farewell; I must not be found with thee. To-morrow I

depart for Frankfort; we shall meet again.”

As soon as the door closed on the Templar, the Greek rose, and pacing

the room, said, “Selfish, selfish! how could I ever trust him? Yet I

dare not brave Otho alone. Surely it was his step that disturbed us

in our yesterday’s interview? Nay, I will fly. I can never want a

companion.”

She clapped her hands; a young page appeared; she threw herself on her

seat and wept bitterly.

The page approached, and love was mingled with his compassion.

“Why weepest thou, dearest lady?” said he. “Is there aught in which

Conrad’s services--services!--ah, thou hast read his heart--_his

devotion_ may avail?”

Otho had wandered out the whole day alone; his vassals had observed

that his brow was more gloomy than its wont, for he usually concealed

whatever might prey within. Some of the most confidential of his

servitors he had conferred with, and the conference had deepened the

shadow of his countenance. He returned at twilight; the Greek did not

honour the repast with her presence. She was unwell, and not to be

disturbed. The gay Templar was the life of the board.

“Thou carriest a sad brow to-day, Sir Otho,” said he; “good faith, thou

hast caught it from the air of Liebenstein.”

“I have something troubles me,” answered Otho, forcing a smile, “which I

would fain impart to thy friendly bosom. The night is clear and the moon

is up, let us forth alone into the garden.”

The Templar rose, and he forgot not to gird on his sword as he followed

the knight.

Otho led the way to one of the most distant terraces that overhung the

Rhine.

“Sir Templar,” said he, pausing, “answer me one question on thy knightly

honour. Was it thy step that left my lady’s bower yester-eve at vesper?”

Startled by so sudden a query, the wily Templar faltered in his reply.

The red blood mounted to Otho’s brow. “Nay, lie not, sir knight; these

eyes, thanks to God! have not witnessed, but these ears have heard from

others of my dishonour.”

As Otho spoke, the Templar’s eye resting on the water perceived a boat

rowing fast over the Rhine; the distance forbade him to see more than

the outline of two figures within it. “She was right,” thought he;

“perhaps that boat already bears her from the danger.”

Drawing himself up to the full height of his tall stature, the Templar

replied haughtily,--

“Sir Otho of Sternfels, if thou hast deigned to question thy vassals,

obtain from them only an answer. It is not to contradict such minions

that the knights of the Temple pledge their word!”

“Enough,” cried Otho, losing patience, and striking the Templar with his

clenched hand. “Draw, traitor, draw!”

Alone in his lofty tower Warbeck watched the night deepen over the

heavens, and communed mournfully with himself. “To what end,” thought

he, “have these strong affections, these capacities of love, this

yearning after sympathy, been given me? Unloved and unknown I walk to

my grave, and all the nobler mysteries of my heart are forever to be

untold.”

Thus musing, he heard not the challenge of the warder on the wall, or

the unbarring of the gate below, or the tread of footsteps along the

winding stair; the door was thrown suddenly open, and Otho stood before

him. “Come,” he said, in a low voice trembling with passion; “come, I

will show thee that which shall glad thine heart. Twofold is Leoline

avenged.”

Warbeck looked in amazement on a brother he had not met since they stood

in arms each against the other’s life, and he now saw that the arm that

Otho extended to him dripped with blood, trickling drop by drop upon the

floor.

“Come,” said Otho, “follow me; it is my last prayer. Come, for Leoline’s

sake, come.”

At that name Warbeck hesitated no longer; he girded on his sword, and

followed his brother down the stairs and through the castle gate. The

porter scarcely believed his eyes when he saw the two brothers, so long

divided, go forth at that hour alone, and seemingly in friendship.

Warbeck, arrived at that epoch in the feelings when nothing stuns,

followed with silent steps the rapid strides of his brother. The two

castles, as you are aware, are scarce a stone’s throw from each other.

In a few minutes Otho paused at an open space in one of the terraces of

Sternfels, on which the moon shone bright and steady. “Behold!” he said,

in a ghastly voice, “behold!” and Warbeck saw on the sward the corpse of

the Templar, bathed with the blood that even still poured fast and warm

from his heart.

“Hark!” said Otho. “He it was who first made me waver in my vows to

Leoline; he persuaded me to wed yon whited falsehood. Hark! he, who had

thus wronged my real love, dishonoured me with my faithless bride, and

thus--thus--thus”--as grinding his teeth, he spurned again and again the

dead body of the Templar--“thus Leoline and myself are avenged!”

“And thy wife?” said Warbeck, pityingly.

“Fled,--fled with a hireling page. It is well! she was not worth the

sword that was once belted on--by Leoline.”

The tradition, dear Gertrude, proceeds to tell us that Otho, though

often menaced by the rude justice of the day for the death of the

Templar, defied and escaped the menace. On the very night of his revenge

a long and delirious illness seized him; the generous Warbeck forgave,

forgot all, save that he had been once consecrated by Leoline’s love.

He tended him through his sickness, and when he recovered, Otho was an

altered man. He forswore the comrades he had once courted, the revels

he had once led. The halls of Sternfels were desolate as those of

Liebenstein. The only companion Otho sought was Warbeck, and Warbeck

bore with him. They had no topic in common, for on one subject Warbeck

at least felt too deeply ever to trust himself to speak; yet did a

strange and secret sympathy re-unite them. They had at least a common

sorrow; often they were seen wandering together by the solitary banks of

the river, or amidst the woods, without apparently interchanging word or

sign. Otho died first, and still in the prime of youth; and Warbeck

was now left companionless. In vain the imperial court wooed him to its

pleasures; in vain the camp proffered him the oblivion of renown. Ah!

could he tear himself from a spot where morning and night he could see

afar, amidst the valley, the roof that sheltered Leoline, and on which

every copse, every turf, reminded him of former days? His solitary life,

his midnight vigils, strange scrolls about his chamber, obtained him

by degrees the repute of cultivating the darker arts; and shunning, he

became shunned by all. But still it was sweet to hear from time to time

of the increasing sanctity of her in whom he had treasured up his

last thoughts of earth. She it was who healed the sick; she it was who

relieved the poor; and the superstition of that age brought pilgrims

from afar to the altars that she served.

Many years afterwards, a band of lawless robbers, who ever and anon

broke from their mountain fastnesses to pillage and to desolate the

valleys of the Rhine,--who spared neither sex nor age, neither tower

nor hut, nor even the houses of God Himself,--laid waste the territories

round Bornhofen, and demanded treasure from the convent. The abbess,

of the bold lineage of Rudesheim, refused the sacrilegious demand.

The convent was stormed; its vassals resisted; the robbers, inured to

slaughter, won the day; already the gates were forced, when a knight, at

the head of a small but hardy troop, rushed down from the mountain side

and turned the tide of the fray. Wherever his sword flashed fell a foe;

wherever his war-cry sounded was a space of dead men in the thick of

the battle. The fight was won, the convent saved; the abbess and the

sisterhood came forth to bless their deliverer. Laid under an aged oak,

he was bleeding fast to death; his head was bare and his locks were

gray, but scarcely yet with years. One only of the sisterhood recognized

that majestic face; one bathed his parched lips; one held his dying

hand; and in Leoline’s presence passed away the faithful spirit of the

last lord of Liebenstein!

“Oh!” said Gertrude, through her tears; “surely you must have altered

the facts,--surely--surely--it must have been impossible for Leoline,

with a woman’s heart, to have loved Otho more than Warbeck?”

“My child,” said Vane, “so think women when they read a tale of love,

and see _the whole heart_ bared before them; but not so act they in real

life, when they see only the surface of character, and pierce not its

depths--until it is too late!”

CHAPTER XXV. THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL.--A COMMON INCIDENT NOT BEFORE

DESCRIBED.--TREVYLYAN AND GERTRUDE.

THE day now grew cool as it waned to its decline, and the breeze came

sharp upon the delicate frame of the sufferer. They resolved to proceed

no farther; and as they carried with them attendants and baggage, which

rendered their route almost independent of the ordinary accommodation,

they steered for the opposite shore, and landed at a village beautifully

sequestered in a valley, and where they fortunately obtained a lodging

not often met with in the regions of the picturesque.

When Gertrude, at an early hour, retired to bed, Vane and Du-----e fell

into speculative conversation upon the nature of man. Vane’s philosophy

was of a quiet and passive scepticism; the physician dared more boldly,

and rushed from doubt to negation. The attention of Trevylyan, as he sat

apart and musing, was arrested in despite of himself. He listened to an

argument in which he took no share, but which suddenly inspired him with

an interest in that awful subject which, in the heat of youth and the

occupations of the world, had never been so prominently called forth

before.

“What,” thought he, with unutterable anguish, as he listened to the

earnest vehemence of the Frenchman and the tranquil assent of Vane, “if

this creed were indeed true,--if there be no other world,--Gertrude is

lost to me eternally, through the dread gloom of death there would break

forth no star!”

That is a peculiar incident that perhaps occurs to us all at times, but

which I have never found expressed in books, namely, to hear a doubt of

futurity at the very moment in which the present is most overcast; and

to find at once this world stripped of its delusion and the next of its

consolation. It is perhaps for others, rather than ourselves, that the

fond heart requires a Hereafter. The tranquil rest, the shadow, and the

silence, the mere pause of the wheel of life, have no terror for the

wise, who know the due value of the world.

“After the billows of a stormy sea,

Sweet is at last the haven of repose!”

But not so when that stillness is to divide us eternally from others;

when those we have loved with all the passion, the devotion, the

watchful sanctity of the weak human heart, are to exist to us no more!

when, after long years of desertion and widowhood on earth, there is

to be no hope of reunion in that INVISIBLE beyond the stars; when the

torch, not of life only, but of love, is to be quenched in the Dark

Fountain, and the grave, that we would fain hope is the great restorer

of broken ties, is but the dumb seal of hopeless, utter, inexorable

separation! And it is this thought, this sentiment, which makes religion

out of woe, and teaches belief to the mourning heart that in the

gladness of united affections felt not the necessity of a heaven! To how

many is the death of the beloved the parent of faith!

Stung by his thoughts, Trevylyan rose abruptly, and stealing from the

lowly hostelry, walked forth amidst the serene and deepening night; from

the window of Gertrude’s room the light streamed calm on the purple air.

With uneven steps and many a pause, he paced to and fro beneath the

window, and gave the rein to his thoughts. How intensely he felt the ALL

that Gertrude was to him! how bitterly he foresaw the change in his lot

and character that her death would work out! For who that met him in

later years ever dreamed that emotions so soft, and yet so ardent, had

visited one so stern? Who could have believed that time was when the

polished and cold Trevylyan had kept the vigils he now held below the

chamber of one so little like himself as Gertrude, in that remote and

solitary hamlet; shut in by the haunted mountains of the Rhine, and

beneath the moonlight of the romantic North?

While thus engaged, the light in Gertrude’s room was suddenly

extinguished; it is impossible to express how much that trivial incident

affected him! It was like an emblem of what was to come; the light had

been the only evidence of life that broke upon that hour, and he was

now left alone with the shades of night. Was not this like the herald of

Gertrude’s own death; the extinction of the only living ray that broke

upon the darkness of the world?

His anguish, his presentiment of utter desolation, increased. He groaned

aloud; he dashed his clenched hand to his breast; large and cold drops

of agony stole down his brow. “Father,” he exclaimed with a struggling

voice, “let this cup pass from me! Smite my ambition to the root;

curse me with poverty, shame, and bodily disease; but leave me this one

solace, this one companion of my fate!”

At this moment Gertrude’s window opened gently, and he heard accents

steal soothingly upon his ear.

“Is not that your voice, Albert?” said she, softly. “I heard it just as

I lay down to rest, and could not sleep while you were thus exposed to

the damp night air. You do not answer; surely it is your voice: when

did I mistake it for another’s?” Mastering with a violent effort his

emotions, Trevylyan answered, with a sort of convulsive gayety,--

“Why come to these shores, dear Gertrude, unless you are honoured with

the chivalry that belongs to them? What wind, what blight, can harm me

while within the circle of your presence; and what sleep can bring me

dreams so dear as the waking thought of you?”

“It is cold,” said Gertrude, shivering; “come in, dear Albert, I beseech

you, and I will thank you to-morrow.” Gertrude’s voice was choked by the

hectic cough, that went like an arrow to Trevylyan’s heart; and he felt

that in her anxiety for him she was now exposing her own frame to the

unwholesome night.

He spoke no more, but hurried within the house; and when the gray light

of morn broke upon his gloomy features, haggard from the want of sleep,

it might have seemed, in that dim eye and fast-sinking cheek, as if the

lovers were not to be divided--even by death itself.

CHAPTER XXVI. IN WHICH THE READER WILL LEARN HOW THE FAIRIES WERE

RECEIVED BY THE SOVEREIGNS OF THE MINES.--THE COMPLAINT OF THE LAST OF

THE FAUNS.--THE RED HUNTSMAN.--THE STORM.--DEATH.

IN the deep valley of Ehrenthal, the metal kings--the Prince of the

Silver Palaces, the Gnome Monarch of the dull Lead Mine, the President

of the Copper United States--held a court to receive the fairy wanderers

from the island of Nonnewerth.

The prince was there, in a gallant hunting-suit of oak leaves, in

honour to England; and wore a profusion of fairy orders, which had been

instituted from time to time, in honour of the human poets that had

celebrated the spiritual and ethereal tribes. Chief of these, sweet

Dreamer of the “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” was the badge crystallized

from the dews that rose above the whispering reeds of Avon on the night

of thy birth,--the great epoch of the intellectual world! Nor wert thou,

O beloved Musaeus! nor thou, dim-dreaming Tieck! nor were ye, the

wild imaginer of the bright-haired Undine, and the wayward spirit that

invoked for the gloomy Manfred the Witch of the breathless Alps and

the spirits of earth and air!--nor were ye without the honours of fairy

homage! Your memory may fade from the heart of man, and the spells of

new enchanters may succeed to the charm you once wove over the face of

the common world; but still in the green knolls of the haunted valley

and the deep shade of forests, and the starred palaces of air, ye are

honoured by the beings of your dreams, as demigods and kings! Your

graves are tended by invisible hands, and the places of your birth are

hallowed by no perishable worship!

Even as I write,* far away amidst the hills of Scotland, and by the

forest thou hast clothed with immortal verdure, thou, the maker of “the

Harp by lone Glenfillan’s spring,” art passing from the earth which thou

hast “painted with delight.” And such are the chances of mortal fame,

our children’s children may raise new idols on the site of thy holy

altar, and cavil where their sires adored; but for thee the mermaid of

the ocean shall wail in her coral caves, and the sprite that lives in

the waterfalls shall mourn! Strange shapes shall hew thy monument in the

recesses of the lonely rocks! ever by moonlight shall the fairies pause

from their roundel when some wild note of their minstrelsy reminds them

of thine own,--ceasing from their revelries, to weep for the silence of

that mighty lyre, which breathed alike a revelation of the mysteries of

spirits and of men!

* It was just at the time the author was finishing this work

that the great master of his art was drawing to the close

of his career.

The King of the Silver Mines sat in a cavern in the valley, through

which the moonlight pierced its way and slept in shadow on the soil

shining with metals wrought into unnumbered shapes; and below him, on a

humbler throne, with a gray beard and downcast eye, sat the aged King

of the Dwarfs that preside over the dull realms of lead, and inspire

the verse of -----, and the prose of -----! And there too a fantastic

household elf was the President of the Copper Republic,--a spirit that

loves economy and the Uses, and smiles sparely on the Beautiful. But, in

the centre of the cave, upon beds of the softest mosses, the untrodden

growth of ages, reclined the fairy visitors, Nymphalin seated by her

betrothed. And round the walls of the cave were dwarf attendants on

the sovereigns of the metals, of a thousand odd shapes and fantastic

garments. On the abrupt ledges of the rocks the bats, charmed to

stillness but not sleep, clustered thickly, watching the scene with

fixed and amazed eyes; and one old gray owl, the favourite of the witch

of the valley, sat blinking in a corner, listening with all her might

that she might bring home the scandal to her mistress.

“And tell me, Prince of the Rhine-Island Fays,” said the King of the

Silver Mines, “for thou art a traveller, and a fairy that hath seen

much, how go men’s affairs in the upper world? As to ourself, we live

here in a stupid splendour, and only hear the news of the day when

our brother of lead pays a visit to the English printing-press, or the

President of Copper goes to look at his improvements in steam-engines.”

“Indeed,” replied Fayzenheim, preparing to speak like AEneas in the

Carthaginian court,--“indeed, your Majesty, I know not much that will

interest you in the present aspect of mortal affairs, except that you

are quite as much honoured at this day as when the Roman conqueror bent

his knee to you among the mountains of Taunus; and a vast number of

little round subjects of yours are constantly carried about by the rich,

and pined after with hopeless adoration by the poor. But, begging your

Majesty’s pardon, may I ask what has become of your cousin, the King

of the Golden Mines? I know very well that he has no dominion in these

valleys, and do not therefore wonder at his absence from your court this

night; but I see so little of his subjects on earth that I should fear

his empire was well nigh at an end, if I did not recognize everywhere

the most servile homage paid to a power now become almost invisible.”

The King of the Silver Mines fetched a deep sigh. “Alas, prince,” said

he, “too well do you divine the expiration of my cousin’s empire. So

many of his subjects have from time to time gone forth to the world,

pressed into military service and never returning, that his kingdom is

nearly depopulated. And he lives far off in the distant parts of the

earth, in a state of melancholy seclusion; the age of gold has passed,

the age of paper has commenced.”

“Paper,” said Nymphalin, who was still somewhat of a

_precieuse_,--“paper is a wonderful thing. What pretty books the human

people write upon it!”

“Ah! that’s what I design to convey,” said the silver king. “It is the

age less of paper money than paper government: the Press is the true

bank.” The lord treasurer of the English fairies pricked up his ears

at the word “bank;” for he was the Attwood of the fairies: he had a

favourite plan of making money out of bulrushes, and had written four

large bees’-wings full upon the true nature of capital.

While they were thus conversing, a sudden sound as of some rustic and

rude music broke along the air, and closing its wild burden, they heard

the following song:--

THE COMPLAINT OF THE LAST FAUN.

I. The moon on the Latmos mountain Her pining vigil keeps;

And ever the silver fountain In the Dorian valley weeps.

But gone are Endymion’s dreams; And the crystal lymph

Bewails the nymph

Whose beauty sleeked the streams!

II. Round Arcady’s oak its green The Bromian ivy weaves;

But no more is the satyr seen Laughing out from the glossy leaves.

Hushed is the Lycian lute, Still grows the seed

Of the Moenale reed,

But the pipe of Pan is mute!

III. The leaves in the noon-day quiver; The vines on the mountains wave;

And Tiber rolls his river As fresh by the Sylvan’s cave.

But my brothers are dead and gone; And far away

From their graves I stray,

And dream of the past alone!

IV. And the sun of the north is chill; And keen is the northern gale;

Alas for the Song of the Argive hill; And the dance in the Cretan vale!

The youth of the earth is o’er, And its breast is rife

With the teeming life

Of the golden Tribes no more!

V. My race are more blest than I, Asleep in their distant bed;

‘T were better, be sure, to die Than to mourn for the buried Dead:

To rove by the stranger streams, At dusk and dawn

A lonely faun,

The last of the Grecian’s dreams.

As the song ended a shadow crossed the moonlight, that lay white and

lustrous before the aperture of the cavern; and Nymphalin, looking up,

beheld a graceful yet grotesque figure standing on the sward without,

and gazing on the group in the cave. It was a shaggy form, with a goat’s

legs and ears; but the rest of its body, and the height of the stature,

like a man’s. An arch, pleasant, yet malicious smile played about its

lips; and in its hand it held the pastoral pipe of which poets have

sung,--they would find it difficult to sing to it!

“And who art thou?” said Fayzenheim, with the air of a hero.

“I am the last lingering wanderer of the race which the Romans

worshipped; hither I followed their victorious steps, and in these green

hollows have I remained. Sometimes in the still noon, when the leaves of

spring bud upon the whispering woods, I peer forth from my rocky lair,

and startle the peasant with my strange voice and stranger shape. Then

goes he home, and puzzles his thick brain with mopes and fancies, till

at length he imagines me, the creature of the South! one of his northern

demons, and his poets adapt the apparition to their barbarous lines.”

“Ho!” quoth the silver king, “surely thou art the origin of the fabled

Satan of the cowled men living whilom in yonder ruins, with its horns

and goatish limbs; and the harmless faun has been made the figuration

of the most implacable of fiends. But why, O wanderer of the South,

lingerest thou in these foreign dells? Why returnest thou not to the

bi-forked hill-top of old Parnassus, or the wastes around the yellow

course of the Tiber?”

“My brethren are no more,” said the poor faun; “and the very faith that

left us sacred and unharmed is departed. But here all the spirits not of

mortality are still honoured; and I wander, mourning for Silenus, though

amidst the vines that should console me for his loss.”

“Thou hast known great beings in thy day,” said the leaden king, who

loved the philosophy of a truism (and the history of whose inspirations

I shall one day write).

“Ah, yes,” said the faun; “my birth was amidst the freshness of the

world, when the flush of the universal life coloured all things with

divinity; when not a tree but had its Dryad, not a fountain that was

without its Nymph. I sat by the gray throne of Saturn, in his old age,

ere yet he was discrowned (for he was no visionary ideal, but the arch

monarch of the pastoral age), and heard from his lips the history of the

world’s birth. But those times are gone forever,--they have left harsh

successors.”

“It is the age of paper,” muttered the lord treasurer, shaking his head.

“What ho, for a dance!” cried Fayzenheim, too royal for moralities, and

he whirled the beautiful Nymphalin into a waltz. Then forth issued the

fairies, and out went the dwarfs. And the faun leaning against an aged

elm, ere yet the midnight waned, the elves danced their charmed round

to the antique minstrelsy of his pipe,--the minstrelsy of the Grecian

world!

“Hast thou seen yet, my Nymphalin,” said Fayzenheim, in the pauses of

the dance, “the recess of the Hartz, and the red form of its mighty

hunter?”

“It is a fearful sight,” answered Nymphalin; “but with thee I should not

fear.”

“Away then!” cried Fayzenheim; “let us away at the first cock-crow, into

those shaggy dells; for there is no need of night to conceal us, and the

unwitnessed blush of morn or the dreary silence of noon is, no less than

the moon’s reign, the season for the sports of the superhuman tribes.”

Nymphalin, charmed with the proposal, readily assented; and at the last

hour of night, bestriding the starbeams of the many-titled Friga, away

sped the fairy cavalcade to the gloom of the mystic Hartz.

Fain would I relate the manner of their arrival in the thick recesses

of the forest,--how they found the Red Hunter seated on a fallen pine

beside a wide chasm in the earth, with the arching bows of the wizard

oak wreathing above his head as a canopy, and his bow and spear lying

idle at his feet. Fain would I tell of the reception which he deigned to

the fairies, and how he told them of his ancient victories over man; how

he chafed at the gathering invasions of his realm; and how joyously he

gloated of some great convulsion* in the northern States, which, rapt

into moody reveries in those solitary woods, the fierce demon broodingly

foresaw. All these fain would I narrate, but they are not of the Rhine,

and my story will not brook the delay. While thus conversing with the

fiend, noon had crept on, and the sky had become overcast and lowering;

the giant trees waved gustily to and fro, and the low gatherings of

the thunder announced the approaching storm. Then the hunter rose and

stretched his mighty limbs, and seizing his spear, he strode rapidly

into the forest to meet the things of his own tribe that the tempest

wakes from their rugged lair.

* Which has come to pass.--1847.

A sudden recollection broke upon Nymphalin. “Alas, alas!” she cried,

wringing her hands; “what have I done! In journeying hither with thee,

I have forgotten my office. I have neglected my watch over the elements,

and my human charge is at this hour, perhaps, exposed to all the fury of

the storm.”

“Cheer thee, my Nymphalin,” said the prince, “we will lay the tempest;”

and he waved his sword and muttered the charms which curb the winds and

roll back the marching thunder: but for once the tempest ceased not at

his spells. And now, as the fairies sped along the troubled air, a

pale and beautiful form met them by the way, and the fairies paused and

trembled; for the power of that Shape could vanquish even them. It

was the form of a Female, with golden hair, crowned with a chaplet of

withered leaves; her bosoms, of an exceeding beauty, lay bare to the

wind, and an infant was clasped between them, hushed into a sleep so

still, that neither the roar of the thunder, nor the livid lightning

flashing from cloud to cloud, could even ruffle, much less arouse, the

slumberer. And the face of the female was unutterably calm and sweet

(though with a something of severe); there was no line nor wrinkle in

the hueless brow; care never wrote its defacing characters upon that

everlasting beauty. It knew no sorrow or change; ghostlike and shadowy

floated on that Shape through the abyss of Time, governing the world

with an unquestioned and noiseless sway. And the children of the green

solitudes of the earth, the lovely fairies of my tale, shuddered as they

gazed and recognized--the form of DEATH,--death vindicated.

“And why,” said the beautiful Shape, with a voice soft as the last sighs

of a dying babe,--“why trouble ye the air with spells? Mine is the hour

and the empire, and the storm is the creature of my power. Far yonder to

the west it sweeps over the sea, and the ship ceases to vex the waves;

it smites the forest, and the destined tree, torn from its roots, feels

the winter strip the gladness from its boughs no more! The roar of the

elements is the herald of eternal stillness to their victims; and they

who hear the progress of my power idly shudder at the coming of peace.

And thou, O tender daughter of the fairy kings, why grievest thou at a

mortal’s doom? Knowest thou not that sorrow cometh with years, and that

to live is to mourn? Blessed is the flower that, nipped in its early

spring, feels not the blast that one by one scatters its blossoms around

it, and leaves but the barren stem. Blessed are the young whom I clasp

to my breast, and lull into the sleep which the storm cannot break, nor

the morrow arouse to sorrow or to toil. The heart that is stilled in the

bloom of its first emotions, that turns with its last throb to the eye

of love, as yet unlearned in the possibility of change,--has exhausted

already the wine of life, and is saved only from the lees. As the mother

soothes to sleep the wail of her troubled child, I open my arms to the

vexed spirit, and my bosom cradles the unquiet to repose!”

The fairies answered not, for a chill and a fear lay over them, and the

Shape glided on; ever as it passed away through the veiling clouds they

heard its low voice singing amidst the roar of the storm, as the dirge

of the water-sprite over the vessel it hath lured into the whirlpool or

the shoals.

CHAPTER XXVII. THURMBERG.--A STORM UPON THE RHINE.--THE RUINS OF

RHEINFELS.--PERIL UNFELT BY LOVE.--THE ECHO OF THE LURLEI-BERG.--ST.

GOAR.--KAUB, GUTENFELS, AND PFALZGRAFENSTEIN.--A CERTAIN VASTNESS OF

MIND IN THE FIRST HERMITS.--THE SCENERY OF THE RHINE TO BACHARACH.

OUR party continued their voyage the next day, which was less bright

than any they had yet experienced. The clouds swept on dull and heavy,

suffering the sun only to break forth at scattered intervals. They wound

round the curving bay which the Rhine forms in that part of its course,

and gazed upon the ruins of Thurmberg, with the rich gardens that skirt

the banks below. The last time Trevylyan had seen those ruins soaring

against the sky, the green foliage at the foot of the rocks, and the

quiet village sequestered beneath, glassing its roofs and solitary tower

upon the wave, it had been with a gay summer troop of light friends,

who had paused on the opposite shore during the heats of noon, and, over

wine and fruits, had mimicked the groups of Boccaccio, and intermingled

the lute, the jest, the momentary love, and the laughing tale.

What a difference now in his thoughts, in the object of the voyage, in

his present companions! The feet of years fall noiseless; we heed, we

note them not, till tracking the same course we passed long since,

we are startled to find how deep the impression they leave behind.

To revisit the scenes of our youth is to commune with the ghost of

ourselves.

At this time the clouds gathered rapidly along the heavens, and they

were startled by the first peal of the thunder. Sudden and swift came on

the storm, and Trevylyan trembled as he covered Gertrude’s form with the

rude boat-cloaks they had brought with them; the small vessel began to

rock wildly to and fro upon the waters. High above them rose the

vast dismantled ruins of Rheinfels, the lightning darting through its

shattered casements and broken arches, and brightening the gloomy trees

that here and there clothed the rocks, and tossed to the angry wind.

Swift wheeled the water-birds over the river, dipping their plumage in

the white foam, and uttering their discordant screams. A storm upon the

Rhine has a grandeur it is in vain to paint. Its rocks, its foliage, the

feudal ruins that everywhere rise from the lofty heights, speaking

in characters of stern decay of many a former battle against time

and tempest; the broad and rapid course of the legendary river,--all

harmonize with the elementary strife; and you feel that to see the Rhine

only in the sunshine is to be unconscious of its most majestic aspects.

What baronial war had those ruins witnessed! From the rapine of the

lordly tyrant of those battlements rose the first Confederation of the

Rhine,--the great strife between the new time and the old, the town

and the castle, the citizen and the chief. Gray and stern those ruins

breasted the storm,--a type of the antique opinion which once manned

them with armed serfs; and, yet in ruins and decay, appeals from the

victorious freedom it may no longer resist!

Clasped in Trevylyan’s guardian arms, and her head pillowed on his

breast, Gertrude felt nothing of the storm save its grandeur; and

Trevylyan’s voice whispered cheer and courage to her ear. She answered

by a smile and a sigh, but not of pain. In the convulsions of nature we

forget our own separate existence, our schemes, our projects, our fears;

our dreams vanish back into their cells. One passion only the storm

quells not, and the presence of Love mingles with the voice of the

fiercest storms, as with the whispers of the southern wind. So she felt,

as they were thus drawn close together, and as she strove to smile away

the anxious terror from Trevylyan’s gaze, a security, a delight; for

peril is sweet even to the fears of woman, when it impresses upon her

yet more vividly that she is beloved.

“A moment more and we reach the land,” murmured Trevylyan.

“I wish it not,” answered Gertrude, softly. But ere they got into St.

Goar the rain descended in torrents, and even the thick coverings round

Gertrude’s form were not sufficient protection against it. Wet and

dripping she reached the inn; but not then, nor for some days, was she

sensible of the shock her decaying health had received.

The storm lasted but a few hours, and the sun afterwards broke forth

so brightly, and the stream looked so inviting, that they yielded to

Gertrude’s earnest wish, and, taking a larger vessel, continued their

course; they passed along the narrow and dangerous defile of the

Gewirre, and the fearful whirlpool of the “Bank;” and on the shore to

the left the enormous rock of Lurlei rose, huge and shapeless, on their

gaze. In this place is a singular echo, and one of the boatmen wound a

horn, which produced an almost supernatural music,--so wild, loud, and

oft reverberated was its sound.

The river now curved along in a narrow and deep channel amongst rugged

steeps, on which the westering sun cast long and uncouth shadows; and

here the hermit, from whose sacred name the town of St. Goar derived its

own, fixed his abode and preached the religion of the Cross. “There

was a certain vastness of mind,” said Vane, “in the adoption of utter

solitude, in which the first enthusiasts of our religion indulged. The

remote desert, the solitary rock, the rude dwelling hollowed from the

cave, the eternal commune with their own hearts, with nature, and their

dreams of God,--all make a picture of severe and preterhuman grandeur.

Say what we will of the necessity and charm of social life, there is a

greatness about man when he dispenses with mankind.”

“As to that,” said Du-----e, shrugging his shoulders, “there was

probably very good wine in the neighbourhood, and the females’ eyes

about Oberwesel are singularly blue.”

They now approached Oberwesel, another of the once imperial towns, and

behind it beheld the remains of the castle of the illustrious family of

Schomberg, the ancestors of the old hero of the Boyne. A little farther

on, from the opposite shore, the castle of Gutenfels rose above the busy

town of Kaub.

“Another of those scenes,” said Trevylyan, “celebrated equally by love

and glory, for the castle’s name is derived from that of the beautiful

ladye of an emperor’s passion; and below, upon a ridge in the steep,

the great Gustavus issued forth his command to begin battle with the

Spaniards.”

“It looks peaceful enough now,” said Vane, pointing to the craft that

lay along the stream, and the green trees drooping over a curve in the

bank. Beyond, in the middle of the stream itself, stands the lonely

castle of Pfalzgrafenstein, sadly memorable as a prison to the more

distinguished of criminals. How many pining eyes may have turned from

those casements to the vine-clad hills of the free shore! how many

indignant hearts have nursed the deep curses of hate in the dungeons

below, and longed for the wave that dashed against the gray walls to

force its way within and set them free!

Here the Rhine seems utterly bounded, shrunk into one of those delusive

lakes into which it so frequently seems to change its course; and as you

proceed, it is as if the waters were silently overflowing their channel

and forcing their way into the clefts of the mountain shore. Passing the

Werth Island on one side and the castle of Stahleck on the other,

our voyagers arrived at Bacharach, which, associating the feudal

recollections with the classic, takes its name from the god of the vine;

and as Du-----e declared with peculiar emphasis, quaffing a large goblet

of the peculiar liquor, “richly deserves the honour!”

CHAPTER XXVIII. THE VOYAGE TO BINGEN.--THE SIMPLE INCIDENTS IN THIS TALE

EXCUSED.--THE SITUATION AND CHARACTER OF GERTRUDE.--THE CONVERSATION OF

THE LOVERS IN THE TEMPEST.--A FACT CONTRADICTED.--THOUGHTS OCCASIONED BY

A MADHOUSE AMONGST THE MOST BEAUTIFUL LANDSCAPES OF THE RHINE.

THE next day they again resumed their voyage, and Gertrude’s spirits

were more cheerful than usual. The air seemed to her lighter, and she

breathed with a less painful effort; once more hope entered the breast

of Trevylyan; and, as the vessel bounded on, their conversation was

steeped in no sombre hues. When Gertrude’s health permitted, no temper

was so gay, yet so gently gay, as hers; and now the _naive_ sportiveness

of her remarks called a smile to the placid lip of Vane, and smoothed

the anxious front of Trevylyan himself; as for Du-----e, who had much of

the boon companion beneath his professional gravity, he broke out every

now and then into snatches of French songs and drinking glees, which he

declared were the result of the air of Bacharach. Thus conversing, the

ruins of Furstenberg, and the echoing vale of Rheindeibach, glided past

their sail; then the old town of Lorch, on the opposite bank (where the

red wine is said first to have been made), with the green island before

it in the water. Winding round, the stream showed castle upon castle

alike in ruins, and built alike upon scarce accessible steeps. Then came

the chapel of St. Clements and the opposing village of Asmannshausen;

the lofty Rossell, built at the extremest verge of the cliff; and now

the tower of Hatto, celebrated by Southey’s ballad, and the ancient

town of Bingen. Here they paused a while from their voyage, with the

intention of visiting more minutely the Rheingau, or valley of the

Rhine.

It must occur to every one of my readers, that, in undertaking, as now,

in these passages in the history of Trevylyan, scarcely so much a tale

as an episode in real life, it is very difficult to offer any interest

save of the most simple and unexciting kind. It is true that to

Trevylyan every day, every hour, had its incident; but what are those

incidents to others? A cloud in the sky; a smile from the lip of

Gertrude,--these were to him far more full of events than had been the

most varied scenes of his former adventurous career; but the history of

the heart is not easily translated into language; and the world will not

readily pause from its business to watch the alternations in the cheek

of a dying girl.

In the immense sum of human existence what is a single unit? Every

sod on which we tread is the grave of some former being; yet is there

something that softens without enervating the heart in tracing in the

life of another those emotions that all of us have known ourselves. For

who is there that has not, in his progress through life, felt all its

ordinary business arrested, and the varieties of fate commuted into one

chronicle of the affections? Who has not watched over the passing away

of some being, more to him at that epoch than all the world? And this

unit, so trivial to the calculation of others, of what inestimable value

was it not to him? Retracing in another such recollections, shadowed and

mellowed down by time, we feel the wonderful sanctity of human life, we

feel what emotions a single being can awake; what a world of hope may

be buried in a single grave! And thus we keep alive within ourselves the

soft springs of that morality which unites us with our kind, and sheds

over the harsh scenes and turbulent contests of earth the colouring of a

common love.

There is often, too, in the time of year in which such thoughts are

presented to us, a certain harmony with the feelings they awaken. As I

write I hear the last sighs of the departing summer, and the sere and

yellow leaf is visible in the green of nature. But when this book goes

forth into the world, the year will have passed through a deeper cycle

of decay; and the first melancholy signs of winter have breathed into

the Universal Mind that sadness which associates itself readily with

the memory of friends, of feelings, that are no more. The seasons, like

ourselves, track their course by something of beauty, or of glory, that

is left behind. As the traveller in the land of Palestine sees tomb

after tomb rise before him, the landmarks of his way, and the only signs

of the holiness of the soil, thus Memory wanders over the most sacred

spots in its various world, and traces them but by the graves of the

Past.

It was now that Gertrude began to feel the shock her frame had received

in the storm upon the Rhine. Cold shiverings frequently seized her; her

cough became more hollow, and her form trembled at the slightest breeze.

Vane grew seriously alarmed; he repented that he had yielded to

Gertrude’s wish of substituting the Rhine for the Tiber or the Arno;

and would even now have hurried across the Alps to a warmer clime, if

Du-----e had not declared that she could not survive the journey,

and that her sole chance of regaining her strength was rest. Gertrude

herself, however, in the continued delusion of her disease, clung to

the belief of recovery, and still supported the hopes of her father, and

soothed, with secret talk of the future, the anguish of her betrothed.

The reader may remember that in the most touching passage in the

ancient tragedians, the most pathetic part of the most pathetic of

human poets--the pleading speech of Iphigenia, when imploring for

her prolonged life, she impresses you with so soft a picture of its

innocence and its beauty, and in this Gertrude resembled the Greek’s

creation--that she felt, on the verge of death, all the flush, the glow,

the loveliness of life. Her youth was filled with hope and many-coloured

dreams; she loved, and the hues of morning slept upon the yet

disenchanted earth. The heavens to her were not as the common sky;

the wave had its peculiar music to her ear, and the rustling leaves a

pleasantness that none whose heart is not bathed in the love and sense

of beauty could discern. Therefore it was, in future years, a thought

of deep gratitude to Trevylyan that she was so little sensible of her

danger; that the landscape caught not the gloom of the grave; and that,

in the Greek phrase, “death found her sleeping amongst flowers.”

At the end of a few days, another of those sudden turns, common to

her malady, occurred in Gertrude’s health; her youth and her happiness

rallied against the encroaching tyrant, and for the ensuing fortnight

she seemed once more within the bounds of hope. During this time they

made several excursions into the Rheingau, and finished their tour at

the ancient Heidelberg.

One morning, in these excursions, after threading the wood of

Niederwald, they gained that small and fairy temple, which hanging

lightly over the mountain’s brow, commands one of the noblest landscapes

of earth. There, seated side by side, the lovers looked over the

beautiful world below; far to the left lay the happy islets, in the

embrace of the Rhine, as it wound along the low and curving meadows that

stretch away towards Nieder-Ingelheim and Mayence. Glistening in the

distance, the opposite Nah swept by the Mause tower, and the ruins of

Klopp, crowning the ancient Bingen, into the mother tide. There, on

either side the town, were the mountains of St. Roch and Rupert, with

some old monastic ruin saddening in the sun. But nearer, below the

temple, contrasting all the other features of landscape, yawned a dark

and rugged gulf, girt by cragged elms and mouldering towers, the very

prototype of the abyss of time,--black and fathomless amidst ruin and

desolation.

“I think sometimes,” said Gertrude, “as in scenes like these we sit

together, and rapt from the actual world, see only the enchantment that

distance lends to our view,--I think sometimes what pleasure it will be

hereafter to recall these hours. If ever you should love me less, I need

only whisper to you, ‘The Rhine,’ and will not all the feelings you have

now for me return?”

“Ah, there will never be occasion to recall my love for you,--it can

never decay.”

“What a strange thing is life!” said Gertrude; “how unconnected, how

desultory seem all its links! Has this sweet pause from trouble, from

the ordinary cares of life--has it anything in common with your past

career, with your future? You will go into the great world; in a few

years hence these moments of leisure and musing will be denied to you.

The action that you love and court is a jealous sphere,--it allows no

wandering, no repose. These moments will then seem to you but as yonder

islands that stud the Rhine,--the stream lingers by them for a moment,

and then hurries on in its rapid course; they vary, but they do not

interrupt the tide.”

“You are fanciful, my Gertrude; but your simile might be juster. Rather

let these banks be as our lives, and this river the one thought that

flows eternally by both, blessing each with undying freshness.”

Gertrude smiled; and, as Trevylyan’s arm encircled her, she sank her

beautiful face upon his bosom, he covered it with his kisses, and she

thought at the moment, that, even had she passed death, that embrace

could have recalled her to life.

They pursued their course to Mayence, partly by land, partly along

the river. One day, as returning from the vine-clad mountains of

Johannisberg, which commands the whole of the Rheingau, the most

beautiful valley in the world, they proceeded by water to the town of

Ellfeld, Gertrude said,--

“There is a thought in your favourite poet which you have often

repeated, and which I cannot think true,--

“‘In nature there is nothing melancholy.’

“To me, it seems as if a certain melancholy were inseparable from

beauty; in the sunniest noon there is a sense of solitude and stillness

which pervades the landscape, and even in the flush of life inspires us

with a musing and tender sadness. Why is this?”

“I cannot tell,” said Trevylyan, mournfully; “but I allow that it is

true.”

“It is as if,” continued the romantic Gertrude, “the spirit of the

world spoke to us in the silence, and filled us with a sense of our

mortality,--a whisper from the religion that belongs to nature, and is

ever seeking to unite the earth with the reminiscences of Heaven. Ah,

what without a heaven would be even love!--a perpetual terror of the

separation that must one day come! If,” she resumed solemnly, after a

momentary pause, and a shadow settled on her young face, “if it be true,

Albert, that I must leave you soon--”

“It cannot! it cannot!” cried Trevylyan, wildly; “be still, be silent, I

beseech you.”

“Look yonder,” said Du-----e, breaking seasonably in upon the

conversation of the lovers; “on that hill to the left, what once was

an abbey is now an asylum for the insane. Does it not seem a quiet and

serene abode for the unstrung and erring minds that tenant it? What

a mystery is there in our conformation!--those strange and bewildered

fancies which replace our solid reason, what a moral of our human

weakness do they breathe!”

It does indeed induce a dark and singular train of thought, when, in the

midst of these lovely scenes, we chance upon this lone retreat for those

on whose eyes Nature, perhaps, smiles in vain. _Or is it in vain?_ They

look down upon the broad Rhine, with its tranquil isles: do their wild

delusions endow the river with another name, and people the valleys

with no living shapes? Does the broken mirror within reflect back the

countenance of real things, or shadows and shapes, crossed, mingled, and

bewildered,--the phantasma of a sick man’s dreams? Yet, perchance, one

memory unscathed by the general ruin of the brain can make even the

beautiful Rhine more beautiful than it is to the common eye; can calm

it with the hues of departed love, and bids its possessor walk over its

vine-clad mountains with the beings that have ceased to _be_! There,

perhaps, the self-made monarch sits upon his throne and claims the

vessels as his fleet, the waves and the valleys as his own; there, the

enthusiast, blasted by the light of some imaginary creed, beholds the

shapes of angels, and watches in the clouds round the setting sun

the pavilions of God; there the victim of forsaken or perished love,

mightier than the sorcerers of old, evokes the dead, or recalls the

faithless by the philter of undying fancies. Ah, blessed art thou, the

winged power of Imagination that is within us! conquering even grief,

brightening even despair. Thou takest us from the world when reason can

no longer bind us to it, and givest to the maniac the inspiration and

the solace of the bard! Thou, the parent of the purer love, lingerest

like love, when even ourself forsakes us, and lightest up the shattered

chambers of the heart with the glory that makes a sanctity of decay.

CHAPTER XXIX. ELLFELD.--MAYENCE.--HEIDELBERG.--A CONVERSATION BETWEEN

VANE AND THE GERMAN STUDENT.--THE RUINS OF THE CASTLE OF HEIDELBERG AND

ITS SOLITARY HABITANT.

IT was now the full noon; light clouds were bearing up towards the

opposite banks of the Rhine, but over the Gothic towers of Ellfeld the

sky spread blue and clear; the river danced beside the old gray walls

with a sunny wave, and close at hand a vessel crowded with passengers,

and loud with eager voices, gave a merry life to the scene. On the

opposite bank the hills sloped away into the far horizon, and one slight

skiff in the midst of the waters broke the solitary brightness of the

noonday calm.

The town of Ellfeld was the gift of Otho the First to the Church;

not far from thence is the crystal spring that gives its name to the

delicious grape of Markbrunner.

“Ah,” quoth Du-----e, “doubtless the good bishops of Mayence made the

best of the vicinity!”

They stayed some little time at this town, and visited the ruins of

Scharfenstein; thence proceeding up the river, they passed Nieder

Walluf, called the Gate of the Rheingau, and the luxuriant garden of

Schierstein; thence, sailing by the castle-seat of the Prince Nassau

Usingen, and passing two long and narrow isles, they arrived at Mayence,

as the sun shot his last rays upon the waters, gilding the proud

cathedral-spire, and breaking the mists that began to gather behind,

over the rocks of the Rheingau.

Ever memorable Mayence,--memorable alike for freedom and for song,

within those walls how often woke the gallant music of the Troubadour;

and how often beside that river did the heart of the maiden tremble to

the lay! Within those walls the stout Walpoden first broached the great

scheme of the Hanseatic league; and, more than all, O memorable Mayence,

thou canst claim the first invention of the mightiest engine of human

intellect,--the great leveller of power, the Demiurgus of the moral

world,--the Press! Here too lived the maligned hero of the greatest

drama of modern genius, the traditionary Faust, illustrating in himself

the fate of his successors in dispensing knowledge,--held a monster for

his wisdom, and consigned to the penalties of hell as a recompense for

the benefits he had conferred on earth!

At Mayence, Gertrude heard so much and so constantly of Heidelberg,

that she grew impatient to visit that enchanting town; and as Du-----e

considered the air of Heidelberg more pure and invigorating than that of

Mayence, they resolved to fix within it their temporary residence.

Alas! it was the place destined to close their brief and melancholy

pilgrimage, and to become to the heart of Trevylyan the holiest spot

which the earth contained,--the KAABA of the world. But Gertrude,

unconscious of her fate, conversed gayly as their carriage rolled

rapidly on, and, constantly alive to every new sensation, she touched

with her characteristic vivacity on all that they had seen in their

previous route. There is a great charm in the observations of one new

to the world; if we ourselves have become somewhat tired of “its hack

sights and sounds,” we hear in their freshness a voice from our own

youth.

In the haunted valley of the Neckar, the most crystal of rivers, stands

the town of Heidelberg. The shades of evening gathered round it as their

heavy carriage rattled along the antique streets, and not till the next

day was Gertrude aware of all the unrivalled beauties that environ the

place.

Vane, who was an early riser, went forth alone in the morning to

reconnoitre the town; and as he was gazing on the tower of St. Peter,

he heard himself suddenly accosted. He turned round and saw the German

student whom they had met among the mountains of Taunus at his elbow.

“Monsieur has chosen well in coming hither,” said the student; “and I

trust our town will not disappoint his expectations.” Vane answered with

courtesy, and the German offering to accompany him in his walk, their

conversation fell naturally on the life of a university, and the current

education of the German people.

“It is surprising,” said the student, “that men are eternally inventing

new systems of education, and yet persevering in the old. How many

years ago is it since Fichte predicted in the system of Pestalozzi

the regeneration of the German people? What has it done? We admire, we

praise, and we blunder on in the very course Pestalozzi proves to

be erroneous. Certainly,” continued the student, “there must be some

radical defect in a system of culture in which genius is an exception,

and dulness the result. Yet here, in our German universities, everything

proves that education without equitable institutions avails little in

the general formation of character. Here the young men of the colleges

mix on the most equal terms; they are daring, romantic, enamoured of

freedom even to its madness. They leave the University: no political

career continues the train of mind they had acquired; they plunge into

obscurity; live scattered and separate, and the student inebriated

with Schiller sinks into the passive priest or the lethargic baron. His

college career, so far from indicating his future life, exactly reverses

it: he is brought up in one course in order to proceed in another. And

this I hold to be the universal error of education in all countries;

they conceive it a certain something to be finished at a certain age.

They do not make it a part of the continuous history of life, but a

wandering from it.”

“You have been in England?” asked Vane.

“Yes; I have travelled over nearly the whole of it on foot. I was poor

at that time, and imagining there was a sort of masonry between all men

of letters, I inquired at each town for the _savants_, and asked money

of them as a matter of course.”

Vane almost laughed outright at the simplicity and naive unconsciousness

of degradation with which the student proclaimed himself a public

beggar.

“And how did you generally succeed?”

“In most cases I was threatened with the stocks, and twice I was

consigned by the _juge de paix_ to the village police, to be passed

to some mystic Mecca they were pleased to entitle ‘a parish.’ Ah”

(continued the German with much _bonhomie_), “it was a pity to see in a

great nation so much value attached to such a trifle as money. But what

surprised me greatly was the tone of your poetry. Madame de Stael, who

knew perhaps as much of England as she did of Germany, tells us that its

chief character is the _chivalresque_; and, excepting only Scott, who,

by the way, is _not_ English, I did not find one chivalrous poet among

you. Yet,” continued the student, “between ourselves, I fancy that in

our present age of civilization, there is an unexamined mistake in the

general mind as to the value of poetry. It delights still as ever, but

it has ceased to teach. The prose of the heart enlightens, touches,

rouses, far more than poetry. Your most philosophical poets would be

commonplace if turned into prose. Verse cannot contain the refining

subtle thoughts which a great prose writer embodies; the rhyme eternally

cripples it; it properly deals with the common problems of human nature,

which are now hackneyed, and not with the nice and philosophizing

corollaries which may be drawn from them. Thus, though it would seem

at first a paradox, commonplace is more the element of poetry than of

prose.”

This sentiment charmed Vane, who had nothing of the poet about him;

and he took the student to share their breakfast at the inn, with

a complacency he rarely experienced at the remeeting with a new

acquaintance.

After breakfast, our party proceeded through the town towards the

wonderful castle which is its chief attraction, and the noblest wreck of

German grandeur.

And now pausing, the mountain yet unscaled, the stately ruin frowned

upon them, girt by its massive walls and hanging terraces, round which

from place to place clung the dwarfed and various foliage. High at the

rear rose the huge mountain, covered, save at its extreme summit, with

dark trees, and concealing in its mysterious breast the shadowy beings

of the legendary world. But towards the ruins, and up a steep ascent,

you may see a few scattered sheep thinly studding the broken ground.

Aloft, above the ramparts, rose, desolate and huge, the Palace of the

Electors of the Palatinate. In its broken walls you may trace the tokens

of the lightning that blasted its ancient pomp, but still leaves in the

vast extent of pile a fitting monument of the memory of Charlemagne.

Below, in the distance, spread the plain far and spacious, till the

shadowy river, with one solitary sail upon its breast, united the

melancholy scene of earth with the autumnal sky.

“See,” said Vane, pointing to two peasants who were conversing near

them on the matters of their little trade, utterly unconscious of the

associations of the spot, “see, after all that is said and done about

human greatness, it is always the greatness of the few. Ages pass, and

leave the poor herd, the mass of men, eternally the same,--hewers of

wood and drawers of water. The pomp of princes has its ebb and flow, but

the peasant sells his fruit as gayly to the stranger on the ruins as to

the emperor in the palace.”

“Will it be always so?” said the student.

“Let us hope not, for the sake of permanence in glory,” said Trevylyan.

“Had _a people_ built yonder palace, its splendour would never have

passed away.”

Vane shrugged his shoulders, and Du-----e took snuff.

But all the impressions produced by the castle at a distance are as

nothing when you stand within its vast area and behold the architecture

of all ages blended into one mighty ruin! The rich hues of the masonry,

the sweeping facades--every description of building which man ever

framed for war or for luxury--is here; all having only the common

character,--RUIN. The feudal rampart, the yawning fosse, the rude tower,

the splendid arch, the strength of a fortress, the magnificence of a

palace,--all united, strike upon the soul like the history of a fallen

empire in all its epochs.

“There is one singular habitant of these ruins,” said the student,--“a

solitary painter, who has dwelt here some twenty years, companioned only

by his Art. No other apartment but that which he tenants is occupied by

a human being.”

“What a poetical existence!” cried Gertrude, enchanted with a solitude

so full of associations.

“Perhaps so,” said the cruel Vane, ever anxious to dispel an illusion,

“but more probably custom has deadened to him all that overpowers

ourselves with awe; and he may tread among these ruins rather seeking to

pick up some rude morsel of antiquity, than feeding his imagination with

the dim traditions that invest them with so august a poetry.”

“Monsieur’s conjecture has something of the truth in it,” said the

German; “but then the painter is a Frenchman.”

There is a sense of fatality in the singular mournfulness and majesty

which belong to the ruins of Heidelberg, contrasting the vastness of the

strength with the utterness of the ruin. It has been twice struck with

lightning, and is the wreck of the elements, not of man; during the

great siege it sustained, the lightning is supposed to have struck the

powder magazine by accident.

What a scene for some great imaginative work! What a mocking

interference of the wrath of nature in the puny contests of men! One

stroke of “the red right arm” above us, crushing the triumph of ages,

and laughing to scorn the power of the beleaguers and the valour of the

besieged!

They passed the whole day among these stupendous ruins, and felt, when

they descended to their inn, as if they had left the caverns of some

mighty tomb.

CHAPTER XXX. NO PART OF THE EARTH REALLY SOLITARY.--THE SONG OF THE

FAIRIES.--THE SACRED SPOT.--THE WITCH OF THE EVIL WINDS.--THE SPELL AND

THE DUTY OF THE FAIRIES.

BUT in what spot of the world is there ever utter solitude? The vanity

of man supposes that loneliness is _his_ absence! Who shall say what

millions of spiritual beings glide invisibly among scenes apparently the

most deserted? Or what know we of our own mechanism, that we should deny

the possibility of life and motion to things that we cannot ourselves

recognize?

At moonlight, in the Great Court of Heidelberg, on the borders of the

shattered basin overgrown with weeds, the following song was heard by

the melancholy shades that roam at night through the mouldering halls of

old, and the gloomy hollows in the mountain of Heidelberg.

SONG OF THE FAIRIES IN THE RUINS OF HEIDELBERG.

From the woods and the glossy green,

With the wild thyme strewn;

From the rivers whose crisped sheen

Is kissed by the trembling moon;

While the dwarf looks out from his mountain cave,

And the erl king from his lair,

And the water-nymph from her moaning wave,

We skirr the limber air.

There’s a smile on the vine-clad shore,

A smile on the castled heights;

They dream back the days of yore,

And they smile at our roundel rites!

Our roundel rites!

Lightly we tread these halls around,

Lightly tread we;

Yet, hark! we have scared with a single sound

The moping owl on the breathless tree,

And the goblin sprites!

Ha, ha! we have scared with a single sound

The old gray owl on the breathless tree,

And the goblin sprites!

“They come not,” said Pipalee; “yet the banquet is prepared, and the

poor queen will be glad of some refreshment.”

“What a pity! all the rose-leaves will be over-broiled,” said Nip.

“Let us amuse ourselves with the old painter,” quoth Trip, springing

over the ruins.

“Well said,” cried Pipalee and Nip; and all three, leaving my lord

treasurer amazed at their levity, whisked into the painter’s apartment.

Permitting them to throw the ink over their victim’s papers, break his

pencils, mix his colours, mislay his nightcap, and go whiz against his

face in the shape of a great bat, till the astonished Frenchman began

to think the pensive goblins of the place had taken a sprightly fit,--we

hasten to a small green spot some little way from the town, in the

valley of the Neckar, and by the banks of its silver stream. It was

circled round by dark trees, save on that side bordered by the river.

The wild-flowers sprang profusely from the turf, which yet was smooth

and singularly green. And there was the German fairy describing a

circle round the spot, and making his elvish spells; and Nymphalin sat

droopingly in the centre, shading her face, which was bowed down as the

head of a water-lily, and weeping crystal tears.

There came a hollow murmur through the trees, and a rush as of a mighty

wind, and a dark form emerged from the shadow and approached the spot.

The face was wrinkled and old, and stern with a malevolent and evil

aspect. The frame was lean and gaunt, and supported by a staff, and a

short gray mantle covered its bended shoulders.

“Things of the moonbeam!” said the form, in a shrill and ghastly voice,

“what want ye here; and why charm ye this spot from the coming of me and

mine?”

“Dark witch of the blight and blast,” answered the fairy, “THOU that

nippest the herb in its tender youth, and eatest up the core of the

soft bud; behold, it is but a small spot that the fairies claim from

thy demesnes, and on which, through frost and heat, they will keep the

herbage green and the air gentle in its sighs!”

“And, wherefore, O dweller in the crevices of the earth, wherefore

wouldst thou guard this spot from the curses of the seasons?”

“We know by our instinct,” answered the fairy, “that this spot will

become the grave of one whom the fairies love; hither, by an unfelt

influence, shall we guide her yet living steps; and in gazing upon this

spot shall the desire of quiet and the resignation to death steal upon

her soul. Behold, throughout the universe, all things are at war with

one another,--the lion with the lamb; the serpent with the bird; and

even the gentlest bird itself with the moth of the air; or the worm of

the humble earth! What then to men, and to the spirits transcending

men, is so lovely and so sacred as a being that harmeth none; what so

beautiful as Innocence; what so mournful as its untimely tomb? And shall

not that tomb be sacred; shall it not be our peculiar care? May we not

mourn over it as at the passing away of some fair miracle in Nature,

too tender to endure, too rare to be forgotten? It is for this, O dread

waker of the blast, that the fairies would consecrate this little spot;

for this they would charm away from its tranquil turf the wandering

ghoul and the evil children of the night. Here, not the ill-omened owl,

nor the blind bat, nor the unclean worm shall come. And thou shouldst

have neither will nor power to nip the flowers of spring, nor sear the

green herbs of summer. Is it not, dark mother of the evil winds,--is

it not _our_ immemorial office to tend the grave of Innocence, and keep

fresh the flowers round the resting-place of Virgin Love?”

Then the witch drew her cloak round her, and muttered to herself, and

without further answer turned away among the trees and vanished, as the

breath of the east wind, which goeth with her as her comrade, scattered

the melancholy leaves along her path!

CHAPTER XXXI. GERTRUDE AND TREVYLYAN, WHEN THE FORMER IS AWAKENED TO THE

APPROACH OF DEATH.

THE next day, Gertrude and her companions went along the banks of the

haunted Neckar. She had passed a sleepless and painful night, and her

evanescent and childlike spirits had sobered down into a melancholy and

thoughtful mood. She leaned back in an open carriage with Trevylyan,

ever constant, by her side, while Du-----e and Vane rode slowly in

advance. Trevylyan tried in vain to cheer her; even his attempts

(usually so eagerly received) to charm her duller moments by tale or

legend were, in this instance, fruitless. She shook her head gently,

pressed his hand, and said, “No, dear Trevylyan, no; even your art fails

to-day, but your kindness never!” and pressing his hand to her lips, she

burst passionately into tears.

Alarmed and anxious, he clasped her to his breast, and strove to lift

her face, as it drooped on its resting-place, and kiss away its tears.

“Oh,” said she, at length, “do not despise my weakness; I am overcome

by my own thoughts: I look upon the world, and see that it is fair and

good; I look upon you, and I see all that I can venerate and adore. Life

seems to me so sweet, and the earth so lovely; can you wonder, then,

that I should shrink at the thought of death? Nay, interrupt me not,

dear Albert; the thought must be borne and braved. I have not cherished,

I have not yielded to it through my long-increasing illness; but there

have been times when it has forced itself upon me, and now, _now_ more

palpably than ever. Do not think me weak and childish. I never feared

death till I knew you; but to see you no more,--never again to touch

this dear hand, never to thank you for your love, never to be sensible

of your care,--to lie down and sleep, _and never, never, once more to

dream of you_! Ah, that is a bitter thought! but I will brave it,--yes,

brave it as one worthy of your regard.”

Trevylyan, choked by his emotions, covered his own face with his hands,

and, leaning back in the carriage, vainly struggled with his sobs.

“Perhaps,” she said, yet ever and anon clinging to the hope that had

utterly abandoned _him_, “perhaps, I may yet deceive myself; and my love

for you, which seems to me as if it could conquer death, may bear me up

against this fell disease. The hope to live with you, to watch you, to

share your high dreams, and oh! above all, to soothe you in sorrow and

sickness, as you have soothed me--has not that hope something that may

support even this sinking frame? And who shall love thee as I love; who

see thee as I have seen; who pray for thee in gratitude and tears as I

have prayed? Oh, Albert, so little am I jealous of you, so little do I

think of myself in comparison, that I could close my eyes happily on the

world if I knew that what I could be to thee another will be!”

“Gertrude,” said Trevylyan, and lifting up his colourless face, he gazed

upon her with an earnest and calm solemnity, “Gertrude, let us be united

at once! If Fate must sever us, let her cut the last tie too; let us

feel that at least upon earth we have been all in all to each other;

let us defy death, even as it frowns upon us. Be mine to-morrow--this

day--oh, God! be mine!”

Over even that pale countenance, beneath whose hues the lamp of life so

faintly fluttered, a deep, radiant flush passed one moment, lighting up

the beautiful ruin with the glow of maiden youth and impassioned hope,

and then died rapidly away.

“No, Albert,” she said sighing; “no! it must not be. Far easier would

come the pang to you, while yet we are not wholly united; and for my own

part I am selfish, and feel as if I should leave a tenderer remembrance

on your heart thus parted,--tenderer, but not so sad. I would not wish

you to feel yourself widowed to my memory; I would not cling like a

blight to your fair prospects of the future. Remember me rather as a

dream,--as something never wholly won, and therefore asking no fidelity

but that of kind and forbearing thoughts. Do you remember one evening

as we sailed along the Rhine--ah! happy, happy hour!--that we heard from

the banks a strain of music,--not so skilfully played as to be worth

listening to for itself, but, suiting as it did the hour and the scene,

we remained silent, that we might hear it the better; and when it died

insensibly upon the waters, a certain melancholy stole over us; we felt

that a something that softened the landscape had gone, and we conversed

less lightly than before? Just so, my own loved, my own adored

Trevylyan, just so is the influence that our brief love, your poor

Gertrude’s existence, should bequeath to your remembrance. A sound,

a presence, should haunt you for a little while, but no more, ere you

again become sensible of the glories that court your way!”

But as Gertrude said this, she turned to Trevylyan, and seeing his

agony, she could refrain no longer; she felt that to soothe was to

insult; and throwing herself upon his breast, they mingled their tears

together.

CHAPTER XXXII. A SPOT TO BE BURIED IN.

ON their return homeward, Du-----e took the third seat in the carriage,

and endeavoured, with his usual vivacity, to cheer the spirits of his

companions; and such was the elasticity of Gertrude’s nature, that with

her, he, to a certain degree, succeeded in his kindly attempt. Quickly

alive to the charms of scenery, she entered by degrees into the external

beauties which every turn in the road opened to their view; and the

silvery smoothness of the river, that made the constant attraction

of the landscape, the serenity of the time, and the clearness of the

heavens, tended to tranquillize a mind that, like a sunflower, so

instinctively turned from the shadow to the light.

Once Du-----e stopped the carriage in a spot of herbage, bedded among

the trees, and said to Gertrude, “We are now in one of the many places

along the Neckar which your favourite traditions serve to consecrate.

Amidst yonder copses, in the early ages of Christianity, there dwelt a

hermit, who, though young in years, was renowned for the sanctity of his

life. None knew whence he came, nor for what cause he had limited the

circle of life to the seclusion of his cell. He rarely spoke, save when

his ghostly advice or his kindly prayer was needed; he lived upon herbs,

and the wild fruits which the peasants brought to his cave; and every

morning and every evening he came to this spot to fill his pitcher from

the water of the stream. But here he was observed to linger long after

his task was done, and to sit gazing upon the walls of a convent which

then rose upon the opposite side of the bank, though now even its ruins

are gone. Gradually his health gave way beneath the austerities he

practised; and one evening he was found by some fishermen insensible on

the turf. They bore him for medical aid to the opposite convent; and one

of the sisterhood, the daughter of a prince, was summoned to attend

the recluse. But when his eyes opened upon hers, a sudden recognition

appeared to seize both. He spoke; and the sister threw herself on the

couch of the dying man, and shrieked forth a name, the most famous in

the surrounding country,--the name of a once noted minstrel, who, in

those rude times, had mingled the poet with the lawless chief, and was

supposed, years since, to have fallen in one of the desperate frays

between prince and outlaw, which were then common; storming the very

castle which held her, now the pious nun, then the beauty and presider

over the tournament and galliard. In her arms the spirit of the hermit

passed away. She survived but a few hours, and left conjecture busy with

a history to which it never obtained further clew. Many a troubadour in

later times furnished forth in poetry the details which truth refused to

supply; and the place where the hermit at sunrise and sunset ever came

to gaze upon the convent became consecrated by song.”

The place invested with this legendary interest was impressed with a

singular aspect of melancholy quiet; wildflowers yet lingered on the

turf, whose grassy sedges gently overhung the Neckar, that murmured

amidst them with a plaintive music. Not a wind stirred the trees; but at

a little distance from the place, the spire of a church rose amidst the

copse; and, as they paused, they suddenly heard from the holy building

the bell that summons to the burial of the dead. It came on the ear in

such harmony with the spot, with the hour, with the breathing calm, that

it thrilled to the heart of each with an inexpressible power. It was

like the voice of another world, that amidst the solitude of nature

summoned the lulled spirit from the cares of this; it invited, not

repulsed, and had in its tone more of softness than of awe.

Gertrude turned, with tears starting to her eyes, and, laying her hand

on Trevylyan’s, whispered, “In such a spot, so calm, so sequestered, yet

in the neighbourhood of the house of God, would I wish this broken frame

to be consigned to rest.”

CHAPTER THE LAST. THE CONCLUSION OF THIS TALE.

FROM that day Gertrude’s spirit resumed its wonted cheerfulness, and for

the ensuing week she never reverted to her approaching fate; she seemed

once more to have grown unconscious of its limit. Perhaps she sought,

anxious for Trevylyan to the last, not to throw additional gloom over

their earthly separation; or, perhaps, once steadily regarding the

certainty of her doom, its terrors vanished. The chords of thought,

vibrating to the subtlest emotions, may be changed by a single incident,

or in a single hour; a sound of sacred music, a green and quiet

burial-place, may convert the form of death into the aspect of an angel.

And therefore wisely, and with a beautiful lore, did the Greeks strip

the grave of its unreal gloom; wisely did they body forth the great

principle of Rest by solemn and lovely images, unconscious of the

northern madness that made a Spectre of REPOSE!

But while Gertrude’s _spirit_ resumed its healthful tone, her _frame_

rapidly declined, and a few days now could do the ravage of months a

little while before.

One evening, amidst the desolate ruins of Heidelberg, Trevylyan, who had

gone forth alone to indulge the thoughts which he strove to stifle in

Gertrude’s presence, suddenly encountered Vane. That calm and almost

callous pupil of the adversities of the world was standing alone, and

gazing upon the shattered casements and riven tower, through which the

sun now cast its slant and parting ray.

Trevylyan, who had never loved this cold and unsusceptible man, save

for the sake of Gertrude, felt now almost a hatred creep over him, as he

thought in such a time, and with death fastening upon the flower of his

house, he could yet be calm, and smile, and muse, and moralize, and play

the common part of the world. He strode slowly up to him, and standing

full before him, said with a hollow voice and writhing smile, “You amuse

yourself pleasantly, sir: this is a fine scene; and to meditate over

griefs a thousand years hushed to rest is better than watching over a

sick girl and eating away your heart with fear!”

Vane looked at him quietly, but intently, and made no reply.

“Vane!” continued Trevylyan, with the same preternatural attempt at

calm, “Vane, in a few days all will be over, and you and I, the things,

the plotters, the false men of the world, will be left alone,--left by

the sole being that graces our dull life, that makes by her love either

of us worthy of a thought!”

Vane started, and turned away his face. “You are cruel,” said he, with a

faltering voice.

“What, man!” shouted Trevylyan, seizing him abruptly by the arm, “can

_you_ feel? Is your cold heart touched? Come then,” added he, with a

wild laugh, “come, let us be friends!”

Vane drew himself aside, with a certain dignity, that impressed

Trevylyan even at that hour. “Some years hence,” said he, “you will

be called cold as I am; sorrow will teach you the wisdom of

indifference--it is a bitter school, sir,--a bitter school! But think

you that I do indeed see unmoved my last hope shivered,--the last tie

that binds me to my kind? No, no! I feel it as a man may feel; I cloak

it as a man grown gray in misfortune should do! My child is more to

me than your betrothed to you; for you are young and wealthy, and life

smiles before you; but I--no more--sir, no more!”

“Forgive me,” said Trevylyan, humbly, “I have wronged you; but

Gertrude is an excuse for any crime of love; and now listen to my last

prayer,--give her to me, even on the verge of the grave. Death cannot

seize her in the arms, in the vigils of a love like mine.”

Vane shuddered. “It were to wed the dead,” said he. “No!”

Trevylyan drew back, and without another word, hurried away; he returned

to the town; he sought, with methodical calmness, the owner of the piece

of ground in which Gertrude had wished to be buried. He purchased it,

and that very night he sought the priest of a neighbouring church,

and directed it should be consecrated according to the due rite and

ceremonial.

The priest, an aged and pious man, was struck by the request, and the

air of him who made it.

“Shall it be done forthwith, sir?” said he, hesitating.

“Forthwith,” answered Trevylyan, with a calm smile,--“a bridegroom, you

know, is naturally impatient.”

For the next three days, Gertrude was so ill as to be confined to her

bed. All that time Trevylyan sat outside her door, without speaking,

scarcely lifting his eyes from the ground. The attendants passed to and

fro,--he heeded them not; perhaps as even the foreign menials turned

aside and wiped their eyes, and prayed God to comfort him, he required

compassion less at that time than any other. There is a stupefaction

in woe, and the heart sleeps without a pang when exhausted by its

afflictions.

But on the fourth day Gertrude rose, and was carried down (how changed,

yet how lovely ever!) to their common apartment. During those three days

the priest had been with her often, and her spirit, full of religion

from her childhood, had been unspeakably soothed by his comfort. She

took food from the hand of Trevylyan; she smiled upon him as sweetly as

of old. She conversed with him, though with a faint voice, and at broken

intervals. But she felt no pain; life ebbed away gradually, and without

a pang. “My father,” she said to Vane, whose features still bore their

usual calm, whatever might have passed within, “I know that you will

grieve when I am gone more than the world might guess; for I alone know

what you were years ago, ere friends left you and fortune frowned,

and ere my poor mother died. But do not--do not believe that hope and

comfort leave you with me. Till the heaven pass away from the earth

there shall be comfort and hope for all.”

They did not lodge in the town, but had fixed their abode on its

outskirts, and within sight of the Neckar; and from the window they saw

a light sail gliding gayly by till it passed, and solitude once more

rested upon the waters.

“The sail passes from our eyes,” said Gertrude, pointing to it, “but

still it glides on as happily though we see it no more; and I feel--yes,

Father, I feel--I know that it is so with _us_. We glide down the river

of time from the eyes of men, but we cease not the less to _be_!”

And now, as the twilight descended, she expressed a wish, before she

retired to rest, to be left alone with Trevylyan. He was not then

sitting by her side, for he would not trust himself to do so, but with

his face averted, at a little distance from her. She called him by his

name; he answered not, nor turned. Weak as she was, she raised herself

from the sofa, and crept gently along the floor till she came to him,

and sank in his arms.

“Ah, unkind!” she said, “unkind for once! Will you turn away from me?

Come, let us look once more on the river: see! the night darkens over

it. Our pleasant voyage, the type of our love, is finished; our sail may

be unfurled no more. Never again can your voice soothe the lassitude of

sickness with the legend and the song; the course is run, the vessel is

broken up, night closes over its fragments; but now, in this hour, love

me, be kind to me as ever. Still let me be your own Gertrude, still let

me close my eyes this night, as before, with the sweet consciousness

that I am loved.”

“Loved! O Gertrude! speak not to me thus!”

“Come, that is yourself again!” and she clung with weak arms caressingly

to his breast. “And now,” she said more solemnly, “let us forget that we

are mortal; let us remember only that life is a part, not the whole,

of our career; let us feel in this soft hour, and while yet we are

unsevered, the presence of The Eternal that is within us, so that it

shall not be as death, but as a short absence; and when once the pang of

parting is over, you must think only that we are shortly to meet again.

What! you turn from me still? See, I do not weep or grieve, I have

conquered the pang of our absence; will you be outdone by me? Do you

remember, Albert, that you once told me how the wisest of the sages of

old, in prison, and before death, consoled his friends with the proof

of the immortality of the soul? Is it not a consolation; does it not

suffice; or will you deem it wise from the lips of wisdom, but vain from

the lips of love?”

“Hush, hush!” said Trevylyan, wildly; “or I shall think you an angel

already.”

But let us close this commune, and leave unrevealed the _last_ sacred

words that ever passed between them upon earth.

When Vane and the physician stole back softly into the room, Trevylyan

motioned to them to be still. “She sleeps,” he whispered; “hush!” And

in truth, wearied out by her own emotions, and lulled by the belief

that she had soothed one with whom her heart dwelt now, as ever, she had

fallen into sleep, or it may be, insensibility, on his breast. There

as she lay, so fair, so frail, so delicate, the twilight deepened into

shade, and the first star, like the hope of the future, broke forth upon

the darkness of the earth.

Nothing could equal the stillness without, save that which lay

breathlessly within. For not one of the group stirred or spoke, and

Trevylyan, bending over her, never took his eyes from her face, watching

the parted lips, and fancying that he imbibed the breath. Alas, the

breath was stilled! from sleep to death she had glided without a

sigh,--happy, most happy in that death! cradled in the arms of unchanged

love, and brightened in her last thought by the consciousness of

innocence and the assurances of Heaven!

.......

Trevylyan, after a long sojourn on the Continent, returned to England.

He plunged into active life, and became what is termed in this age

of little names a distinguished and noted man. But what was mainly

remarkable in his future conduct was his impatience of rest. He

eagerly courted all occupations, even of the most varied and motley

kind,--business, letters, ambition, pleasure. He suffered no pause in

his career; and leisure to him was as care to others. He lived in

the world, as the worldly do, discharging its duties, fostering its

affections, and fulfilling its career. But there was a deep and wintry

change within him,--_the sunlight of his life was gone_; the loveliness

of romance had left the earth. The stem was proof as heretofore to the

blast, but the green leaves were severed from it forever, and the bird

had forsaken its boughs. Once he had idolized the beauty that is born of

song, the glory and the ardour that invest such thoughts as are not of

our common clay; but the well of enthusiasm was dried up, and the golden

bowl was broken at the fountain. With Gertrude the poetry of existence

was gone. As she herself had described her loss, a music had ceased to

breathe along the face of things; and though the bark might sail on as

swiftly, and the stream swell with as proud a wave, a something that

had vibrated on the heart was still, and the magic of the voyage was no

more.

And Gertrude sleeps on the spot where she wished her last couch to be

made; and far--oh, far dearer, is that small spot on the distant banks

of the gliding Neckar to Trevylyan’s heart than all the broad lands

and fertile fields of his ancestral domain. The turf too preserves its

emerald greenness; and it would seem to me that the field flowers spring

up by the sides of the simple tomb even more profusely than of old.

A curve in the bank breaks the tide of the Neckar; and therefore its

stream pauses, as if to linger reluctantly, by that solitary grave, and

to mourn among the rustling sedges ere it passes on. And I have thought,

when I last looked upon that quiet place, when I saw the turf so fresh,

and the flowers so bright of hue, that aerial hands might _indeed_

tend the sod; that it was by no _imaginary_ spells that I summoned

the fairies to my tale; that in truth, and with vigils constant though

unseen, they yet kept from all polluting footsteps, and from the harsher

influence of the seasons, the grave of one who so loved their race;

and who, in her gentle and spotless virtue claimed kindred with the

beautiful Ideal of the world. Is there one of us who has not known some

being for whom it seemed not too wild a fantasy to indulge such dreams?

THE END.

End of Project Gutenberg’s The Pilgrims Of The Rhine, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton