In the meantime let us not forget the Prince of Athens and the Lady
Iduna. These adventurous companions soon lost sight of their devoted
champion, and entered a winding ravine, which gradually brought them
to the summit of the first chain of the Epirot mountains. From it they
looked down upon a vast and rocky valley, through which several mule
tracks led in various directions, and entered the highest barrier of the
mountains, which rose before them covered with forests of chestnut
and ilex. Nicæus chose the track which he considered least tempting to
pursuit, and towards sunset they had again entered a ravine washed by a
mountain stream. The course of the waters had made the earth fertile
and beautiful. Wild shrubs of gay and pleasant colours refreshed their
wearied eye-sight, and the perfume of aromatic plants invigorated
their jaded senses. Upon the bank of the river, too, a large cross of
roughly-carved wood brought comfort to their Christian hearts, and while
the holy emblem filled them with hope and consolation, and seemed an
omen of refuge from their Moslemin oppressors, a venerable Eremite,
with a long white beard descending over his dark robes, and leaning on
a staff of thorn, came forth from an adjoining cavern to breathe the
evening air and pour forth his evening orisons.
Iduna and Nicæus had hitherto prosecuted their sorrowful journey almost
in silence. Exhausted with anxiety, affliction, and bodily fatigue, with
difficulty the daughter of Hunniades could preserve her seat upon her
steed. One thought alone interested her, and by its engrossing influence
maintained her under all her sufferings, the memory of Iskander. Since
she first met him, at the extraordinary interview in her father’s
pavilion, often had the image of the hero recurred to her fancy, often
had she mused over his great qualities and strange career. His fame, so
dangerous to female hearts, was not diminished by his presence. And now,
when Iduna recollected that she was indebted to him for all that she
held dear, that she owed to his disinterested devotion, not only life,
but all that renders life desirable, honour and freedom, country and
kindred, that image was invested with associations and with sentiments,
which, had Iskander himself been conscious of their existence, would
have lent redoubled vigour to his arm, and fresh inspiration to his
energy. More than once Iduna had been on the point of inquiring of
Nicæus the reason which had induced alike him and Iskander to preserve
so strictly the disguise of his companion. But a feeling which she did
not choose to analyse struggled successfully with her curiosity: she
felt a reluctance to speak of Iskander to the Prince of Athens. In the
meantime Nicæus himself was not apparently very anxious of conversing
upon the subject, and after the first rapid expressions of fear and hope
as to the situation of their late comrade, they relapsed into silence,
seldom broken by Nicæus, but to deplore the sufferings of his mistress,
lamentations which Iduna answered with a faint smile.
The refreshing scene wherein they had now entered, and the cheering
appearance of the Eremite, were subjects of mutual congratulation;
and Nicæus, somewhat advancing, claimed the attention of the holy
man, announcing their faith, imprisonment, escape, and sufferings, and
entreating hospitality and refuge. The Eremite pointed with his staff
to the winding path, which ascended the bank of the river to the cavern,
and welcomed the pilgrims, in the name of their blessed Saviour, to his
wild abode and simple fare.
The cavern widened when they entered, and comprised several small
apartments. It was a work of the early Christians, who had found
a refuge in their days of persecution, and art had completed the
beneficent design of nature. The cavern was fresh, and sweet, and clean.
Heaven smiled upon its pious inmate through an aperture in the roof; the
floor was covered with rushes; in one niche rested a brazen cross, and
in another a perpetual lamp burnt before a picture, where Madonna smiled
with meek tenderness upon her young divinity.
The Eremite placed upon a block of wood, the surface of which he had
himself smoothed, some honey, some dried fish and a wooden bowl filled
from the pure stream that flowed beneath them: a simple meal, but
welcome. His guests seated themselves upon a rushy couch, and while
they refreshed themselves, he gently inquired the history of their
adventures. As it was evident that the Eremite, from her apparel,
mistook the sex of Iduna, Nicæus thought fit not to undeceive him, but
passed her off as his brother. He described themselves as two Athenian
youths, who had been captured while serving as volunteers under the
great Hunniades, and who had effected their escape from Adrianople under
circumstances of great peril and difficulty; and when he had gratified
the Eremite’s curiosity respecting their Christian brethren in Paynim
lands, and sympathetically marvelled with him at the advancing fortunes
of the Crescent, Nicæus, who perceived that Iduna stood in great need of
rest, mentioned the fatigues of his more fragile brother, and requested
permission for him to retire. Whereupon the Eremite himself, fetching a
load of fresh rushes, arranged them in one of the cells, and invited the
fair Iduna to repose. The daughter of Hunniades, first humbling herself
before the altar of the Virgin, and offering her gratitude for all the
late mercies vouchsafed unto her, and then bidding a word of peace to
her host and her companion, withdrew to her hard-earned couch, soon was
buried in a sleep as sweet and innocent as herself.
But repose fell not upon the eye-lids of Nicæus in spite of all labours.
The heart of the Athenian Prince was distracted by two most powerful of
passions--Love and Jealousy--and when the Eremite, pointing out to his
guest his allotted resting-place, himself retired to his regular and
simple slumbers, Nicæus quitted the cavern, and standing upon the bank
of the river, gazed in abstraction upon the rushing waters foaming in
the moonlight. The Prince of Athens, with many admirable qualities, was
one of those men who are influenced only by their passions, and who, in
the affairs of life, are invariably guided by their imagination instead
of their reason. At present all thought and feeling, all considerations,
and all circumstances, merged in the overpowering love he entertained
for Iduna, his determination to obtain her at all cost and peril, and
his resolution that she should never again meet Iskander, except as the
wife of Nicæus. Compared with this paramount object, the future seemed
to vanish. The emancipation of his country, the welfare of his friend,
even the maintenance of his holy creed, all those great and noble
objects for which, under other circumstances, he would have been
prepared to sacrifice his fortune and his life, no longer interested or
influenced him; and while the legions of the Crescent were on the point
of pouring into Greece to crush that patriotic and Christian cause
over which Iskander and himself had so often mused, whose interests the
disinterested absence of Iskander, occasioned solely by his devotion to
Nicæus, had certainly endangered, and perhaps, could the events of the
last few hours be known, even sacrificed, the Prince of Athens resolved,
unless Iduna would consent to become his, at once to carry off the
daughter of Hunniades to some distant country. Nor indeed, even with his
easily excited vanity, was Nicæus sanguine of obtaining his purpose
by less violent means. He was already a rejected suitor, and under
circumstances which scarcely had left hope. Nothing but the sole credit
of her chivalric rescue could perhaps have obtained for him the interest
in the heart of Iduna which he coveted. For while this exploit proffered
an irresistible claim to her deepest gratitude, it indicated also, on
the part of her deliverer, the presence and possession of all those
great qualities, the absence of which in the character and conduct of
her suitor, Iduna had not, at a former period, endeavoured to conceal to
be the principal came of his rejection. And now, by the unhappy course
of circumstances, the very deed on which he counted, with sanguine hope,
as the sure means of his success, seemed as it were to have placed him
in a more inferior situation than before. The constant society of his
mistress had fanned to all its former force and ardour, the flame which,
apart from her, and hopeless, he had endeavoured to repress; while, on
the other hand, he could not conceal from himself, that Iduna must feel
that he had played in these rest proceeding but a secondary part;
that all the genius and all the generosity of the exploit rested with
Iskander, who, after having obtained her freedom by so much energy,
peril, sagacity and skill, had secured it by a devoted courage which
might shame all the knights of Christendom; perhaps, too, had secured it
by his own life.
What if Iskander were no more? It was a great contingency. The eternal
servitude of Greece, and the shameful triumph of the Crescent, were
involved, perhaps, in that single event. And could the possession of
Iduna compensate for such disgrace and infamy? Let us not record the
wild response of passion.
It was midnight ere the restless Nicæus, more exhausted by his agitating
reverie than by his previous exertions, returned into the cavern, and
found refuge in sleep from all his disquietudes.