"Remember, if you take me there, that I am no Roman patriot,--I! I,
who am of the House of Austria, that House that wears the crown of the
Caesars, those Caesars who swayed the very imperial sceptre, who trailed
the very imperial purple of old Rome! I endure the cause because it is
yours. I beseech you to be faithful to it; because I should despise you,
if for any woman you swerved from an object that had previously been
with you holier than heaven!"
I stood there leaning from the lofty window, and looking down over the
wide, solitary fields. Recollections crowded upon me, hopes rose before
me. One day, that yet lives in my heart, Anselmo, sprang up afresh, a
day forever domed in memory. Fair rose the sun that day, and I walked on
the nation's errands through the streets of a distant town,--a hoar and
antique place, that sheltered me safely, so slight guard was it thought
to need by our oppressors! It pleased that reverend arch-hypocrite to
take at this hour his airing. Late events had given the people courage.
It was a market-day, peasants from the country obstructed the ancient
streets, the citizens were all abroad. Not few were the maledictions
muttered over a column of French infantry that wound along as it
returned to Rome from some movement of subjection, not low the curses
showered on an officer who escorted ladies upon their drive. As I went,
I considered what a day it would have been for _émeute_, and what mortal
injury _émeute_ would have done our cause. Italy, we said, like fools,
but honest fools, must not be redeemed with blood. As if there were ever
any sacred pact, any new order of things, that was not first sealed
by blood! Therefore, when I, alone perhaps of all the throng, saw one
man--a man in whose soul I knew the iron rankled--stealing behind the
crowd, behind the monuments, and, as the coach of His Excellency rolled
luxuriously along, levelling a glittering barrel,--it was but an
instant's work to seize the advancing creatures, to hold them
rearing,--and then a deadly flash,--while the ball whistled past me,
grazed my hand, and pierced the leader's heart. In a twinkling the dead
horse was cut away, and His Excellency, cowering in the bottom of the
coach, galloped borne more swiftly than the wind, without a word. But
the populace appreciated the action, took it up with _vivas_ long and
loud, that rang after me when I had slipped away, and before nightfall
had echoed in all ears through leagues of country round. I went that
night to the theatre. The house was filled, and, as we entered, a murmur
went about, and then cries broke forth,--the multitude rose with cheers
and bravos, calling my name, intoxicated with enthusiasm, and dazzled,
not by a daring feat, but by the spirit that prompted it. Women tore off
their jewels to twist them into a sling for my injured hand; men rose
and made me a conqueror's ovation; the orchestra played the old Etrurian
hymns of freedom; I was attended home with a more than Roman triumph of
torch and song, stately men and beautiful women. But chameleons change
their tint in the sunshine, and why should men always march under one
color? Friend, not six months later there came another day, when triumph
was shame,--plaudits, curses,--joyous tumult, scorching silence. Oh!--
But I shall come to that in time. Now let me hasten; the hours are less
tardy than I, and they bring with them my last.
Thought of this day--sole pageant defiling through memory--was startled
again by the far, sweet sound of a bell, some bell ringing twilight out
and evening in across the wide Campagna. I wondered what delayed Lenore.
Did it take so long to toss off the cloudy back-falling veil, to wrap in
any long cloak her gown of white damask and all the sheen of her milky
pearl-dusters and fiery rubies? I thought with exultation then of what
she was so soon to see,--of the route through sunken ruins, down wells
forsaken of their pristine sources and hidden by masses of moss, winding
with the faint light in our hands through the awful ways and avenues of
the catacombs. The scene grew real to me, as I mused. Alone, what should
I fear? These silent hosts encamped around would but have cheered their
child. But with her, every murmur becomes a portent of danger, every
current of air gives me fresh tremors; as we pass casual openings into
the sky, the vault of air, the glint of stars, shall seem a malignant
face; I fancy to hear impossible footsteps behind us, some bone that
crumbling falls from its shelf makes my heart beat high, her dear hand
trembles in my hold, and, full of a new and superstitious awe, I half
fear this ancient population of the graves will rise and surround us
with phantom array. Now and then, a cold, lonely wind, blowing from no
one knows where, rises and careers past us, piercing to the marrow. I
think, too, of that underground space, half choked with rubbish, into
which we are to emerge at last, once the hall of some old Roman revel. I
see the troubled flashes flung from the flaring torch over our assembly.
Alert and startled, I see Lenore listen to the names as if they summoned
the wraiths and not the bodies of men whom she had supposed to be lost
in the pampas of Paraguay, dead in the Papal prisons, sheltered in
English homes, or tossing far away on the long voyages of the Pacific
seas. I see myself at length taking the torch from its niche and
restoring it, as a hundred times before, to Pietro da Valambo, while
it glitters on some strange object looking in at the vine-clad opening
above with its breaths of air, serpent or hare, or the large face and
slow eyes of a browsing buffalo. And as I think, lo! an echo in the
house, a dull tramp in the hall, a stealthy tread in the room, a heavy
hand upon my shoulder,--I was arrested for high treason.
Do not think I surrendered then. Without a struggle I would be the
prize of Pope nor King nor Kaiser! I shook the minions' grasp from my
shoulder, I flashed my sword in their eyes; and not till the crescent
of weapons encircled me in one blinding gleam, vain grew defence, vain
honor, vain bravery. Of what use was my soul to me thenceforth? I became
but carrion prey. I fell, and the world fell from me.
Sensation, emotion, awoke from their swooning lapse only in the light
of day, the next or another, I knew not which. I was lifted from some
conveyance, I saw blue reaches of curving bay and the great purifying
priest of flame, and knew I was in the city guarded by its pillar of
cloud by day, of fire by night. I had reason to know it, when, yet
unfed, unrested, faint, smirched and smeared with blood and travel,
loaded with chains, I was brought to a tribunal where sat the sleek and
subtle tyrant of Naples.
"Signor," said a bland voice from the king's side,--and looking in its
direction, I encountered the Neapolitan,--"Signor, I lately said that at
some day I would trouble you to repeat a brilliant sentence addressed
to me. The day has arrived. I scarcely dared dream it would be so soon.
Shall we listen?"
I was silent: not that I feared to say it; they could but finish their
play.
Then I saw the beautifully cut lips of my judge part, that the voice
might slide forth, and, taking a comfit, he tittered, with unchanging
tint and sweetest tone, the three words, "Apply the question."
Why should I endure that for a whim? Who courts torment? Already they
drew near with the cunning instruments. Let me say it, and what then?
Nothing worse than torture. Let me _not_ say it, and certainly torture.
Oh, I was weaker than a child! my body ruled my spirit with its
exhaustion and pain. Yet there was a certain satisfaction in flinging
the words in their faces. I waved back with my remaining arm the slaves
who approached.
"You should allow a weary man the time to collect his thoughts," I said,
and then turned to my persecutors. "I have spoken with you many times,
Signor," I replied to the Neapolitan, "yet of all our words I can
remember none but these, that you could care to hear with this auditory.
I said,--that the tyrant of Naples walks in blood to his knees!"
The Neapolitan smiled. The king rose.
"Well said!" he murmured, in his silvery tones. "One that knows so
much must know more. Exhaust his knowledge, I pray. Do not spare your
courtesies; remember he is my guest. I leave him in your hands."
He fixed me with his eye,--that darkly-glazed eye, devoid of life, of
love, of joy, as if he were the thing of another element,--then bowed
and passed away.
"The urbanity of His Majesty is too well known to suppose it possible
that he should prove you a liar," said the Neapolitan.
Truly, I was loft in their hands! Shall I tell you of the charities I
found there? Not I, friend! it would wring your heart as dry of tears
as mine was wrung of groans. At last I was alone, it seemed,--on a wet
stone floor, sweat pouring from every muscle, each fibre quivering; I
was distorted and unjointed, I only hoped I was dying. But no, that
was too good for me. Anselmo, how can I but be full of scoffs, when I
remember those hours, those ages? The cold dampness of the place crept
into my bones; I became swollen and teeming with intimate pain. But
that was light, my body might have ached till the throbs stiffened into
death-spasms, and yet the suffering had been nought, compared with that
loathing and disgust in my soul. It had seemed that I was alone, I said.
Alone as the corpse in unshrouded grave! I was in a charnel-house. Men
who were sinless as you hung dead upon the wall, hung dying there.
Darkness covered all things at a distance, sighs crept up from
far corners, chains clanked, or imprecations or prayer uttered
themselves,--bodiless voices in the night. I did not know what untold
horror there might yet be hid. I heard the drip of water from the black
vaults; I heard the short, fierce pants and deadly groans. Oh, worst
infliction of Hell's armory it is to see another suffer! Why was it
allowed, Anselmo? Did it come in the long train of a broken law? was it
one of the dark places of Providence? or was it indeed the vile compost
to mature some beautiful germ? Ah, then, is it possible that Heaven
looks on us so in the mass?
But for me, after a while I lay torpid, and then perchance I slept, for
finally I opened my eyes and found the white strong light; T lay on a
bed, and a surgeon handled me. Too elastic was I to be long crushed,
once the weight removed. Soon I breathed fresh air; and save that my
frame had become in its distortion hideous, I was the same as before.
Then, indeed, began my torture,--torture to which this had been idle
jest. I was taken once more to the room of tribunal. Beside the
Neapolitan a woman sat veiled and shrouded in masses of sable drapery.
"A queen?" I thought, "or a slave?" But I had no further room for fancy;
the same interrogatories as before were given me to answer, and then I
felt why I had been nursed back to life. In the months that had elapsed,
I could not know if Italy were saved or lost, if Naples tottered or
remained impregnable. I stood only on my personal basis of right or
wrong. I refused to open my lips. They wheeled forward a low bed that I
knew well. Oh, the slow starting of the socket! Oh, the long wrench of
tendon and nerve! A bed of steel and cords, rollers and levers, bound me
there, and bent to their creaking toil. I was strong to endure; I had
set my teeth and sworn myself to silence; no woman should hear me moan.
Even in this misery I saw that she who sat there, shaking, fell.
The tyrant was lily-livered; seldom he witnessed what others died under;
he intended nothing further then;--many men who faint at sight of blood
can probe a soul to its utmost gasp. Now he motioned, and they paused.
Then others lifted the woman and held her beside him, yet a little in
advance.
"Keep your silence," said he, in a voice unrecognizable, and as if a
wild beast, half-glutted, should speak, "and I keep her! She is in my
power. Mine, and you know what that means. Mine," and he bent toward me,
"_body and--soul_. To use, to blast, to destroy, to tear piecemeal,--as
I will do, so help me God! unless you meet my condition." And extending
his hand, he drew aside the black veil, and my eye lay on the face of
Lenore, thin and white as the familiar faces of corpses, and utterly
insensible in swoon.
All, that mortal horror stops my pulse! Was I wrong? Why not have borne
that, too? Had she loved me, she had chosen it, chosen it rather. And
death would have made all right!--God! why not have seized some poignard
lying there? why not have sprung upon her, have slain her? Then silence
had been simply secure. Then I could have smiled in their frustrated
faces, one keen, deep smile, and died. I was dissolved in pain, writhed
with prolonged strokes that thrilled me from head to foot, pierced as
with acute stabs, my heart seemed to forge thunderbolts to break upon my
brain,--but this agony had been spared me. They unbound me, fed me with
some stimulating cordial, gave me cold air, and I rose on my elbow a
little.
"Swear!" I said, hoarsely. "But you do not keep oaths. God help you?
Never! There must be a Hell to help you! Imprecate this, then, on
yourself! May you in your smooth white body know the torture I have
known, be racked till each bone in your skin changes place, hang
festering in chains from the wall of a living grave, make fellowship
with putridity, and lie in the pitiless dark to see all the dead who
died under your hand rise, rise and accuse you before God! And may your
little son know the deeds you have done, live the life those deeds
merit, and die the death that _I_ shall die,--if you do not keep your
word!"
"What word?" he said.
"Promise, if I reveal all, and my revelations shall be true and thorough
therefore,--promise that you will leave her in safe security and freedom
to-day, untouched, unscathed, unharmed, and that so ever shall she
remain. And false to this oath, may no priest shrive you, no land own
you, God blight you and curse you and wither you from the face of the
earth!"
And taking a crucifix, he swore the oath.
Then they busied themselves about Lenore, revived her, soothed her,
gave her of the same cordial to drink, and placed her once more in her
daïs-seat. Her veil was thrown back, her wide blue eyes fixed on me in
intense strain, her face and lips still blanched more bitterly beneath
that hue, her features sharp as chisel-graven death. Ah, God! must
I endure that too? Was she to hear me,--she, not knowing why, never
knowing why,--she in whom that look of aching passion and pity was to
die out and freeze and fade in one of utter scorn?
They brought me some strange draught, as if one swallowed fire. The
blood coursed richly through my shrunken veins; I felt filled with a
different life. I arose and left that bed of torture, but came back to
it as to my rest.
And lying there, I betrayed Italy.
Root and branch and spray and leaf, I uprooted all my memories; I forgot
no name, I lost no fact; I was eagerer than they; I modified nothing,
I abbreviated nothing; the past, the future, what had been, was to be,
plan and scheme and supreme purpose, I never faltered, I told the whole!
I did not look at her, I kept my eyes on the tyrant; I wished I might
have the evil eye,--but that gift was for him, the Neapolitan. Yet at
length I heard a low moan trailing toward me; I turned, and saw her
face, as I saw it last, Anselmo,--stonily quiet, frozen from indignant
pain to icy apathy, and the words she would have said had hissed
inarticulately through her ashen lips. Then they brought me the
confession, and, as I could, I signed it.
"Madame," said the tyrant, "your knowledge is coextensive with his. Does
all this agree?"
"Sire, it does agree," she answered, and they led her out.
"I have no authority over you," said the tyrant then to me. "You might
go freely now, but that, precious as Homer, seven cities claim you,
Signor! My prisons also will now be full of rarer game. But as a crime
of your commission places you within Austrian jurisdiction, I shall take
pleasure in presenting you to my cousin and surrendering you to his
mercy," and he withdrew.
"You may not be aware," said the courteous Neapolitan, "that on the
night of your arrest your frantic sword-slashes had serious result. My
friend the little Viennois fell at your hands."
[Transcriber's note: Page missing in source text.]
through dazzling rings of light, and I fell forward in the cart and hung
by my chains among the hoofs of the trampling horses who dragged me. On
that day I had taken my last step; I never set foot on the round earth
again. But, with all, I smiled through my groans; for the shining, solid
hoofs that did their work on me did their work as well on the man who
walked by my side,--dashed dead the accursed Neapolitan.
They were not the surgeons of Naples who essayed to galvanize volition
through my paralyzed limbs, but those who knew the utmost resources of
their art. And so I lived,--lived, too, by reason of my inextinguishable
vitality, by reason of this spark that will not quench,--and so I came
to Hellberg. It would have been mockery to give this shapeless hulk to
sentence, and then to headsman or hangman; perhaps, too, her haughty
name had been involved; and so I was never brought to trial, and so I am
at Hellberg.
And I have never set foot on the ground again. But, oh, to touch it
for a moment, to sit anywhere on the summer mould, to pull down the
sun-quivering, sun-steeped branches about me, to scent the fresh grass
as it springs to the light! Oh. but to touch the sweet, kind earth, the
warm earth, silent with ineffable tenderness and soothing, to feel it
under my hand, to lay my cheek there for a moment, while it drew away
pain and weariness with its absorbing, purifying power! Oh, but to lie
once more where the blossoms grow! Soon, soon, they will grow above me!
Soon the kind mother will cover me!
* * * * *
What had happened in the outer world I knew not till you came. I fancied
Lenore returned, breathing Austrian air, and living under the same
horizon that girds me in. Sometimes I have seen a distant cavalcade
skimming over the vale, as once we careered over the Campagna, when she
handled her steed as another woman handles her needle, and the sweet
wind fanned peach-tints to her cheeks and drew out unravelled braids of
gold in lingering caress. She could have come to me, had she pleased,
then: this old chief who rules the place was her father's friend and
hers.--But look I but see! Who is it comes now,--sweeps round the donjon
flank? Lean over the embrasure, and learn! Ah, man, are my eyes so old,
my memories so treacherous, that I do not know day from night? They have
gone on,--or did they enter, think you? Or yet, there is to be carousal,
perhaps, in the halls beyond and below, and she comes to join the gay
feast; she will drink healths in red wine, will listen to flattering
dalliance with pleased eyes, will utter light laughs through the lips
that once glowed to my kisses, and will forget that the same roof
which shelters the revellers shelters also her lover dying in moans!
Careless--Best so! best so! What cavalier whispered in her ear as she
passed? Have years tarnished her beauty? Ah, God! this wind, that
maddens me now, a moment since touched her!
Anselmo, I will go in. This vault of heaven with its spotless blue, this
wide land that laughs in festive summer, these winds that lift my hair
and come heavy with odors,--these do not fit with me, I burlesque the
fair face of creation. O invisible airs, that softly sport round the
castle-towers, why do you not woo my soul forth and bear it and lose it
in the flawless cope of sky?
Nay, why, any more than Ajax, should I die in the dark? Never again
will I enter the cell, never again! The wide universe shall receive my
breath. Lower the back of my chair, pull away the cushions, wrap my
cloak round me, Anselmo. There! I will lie, and wait, and look up. Give
me ghostly counsel, my friend, console me. You are not too weary with
this long tale? Tell me I needed all the tears I have shed to quench the
fiery defiance, the independence of heaven and tumult of earth in my
being. If you could tell me that she had not been false, that she never
feigned her passion to decoy, that, Austrian though she were--Ah, but
I had evidence! I had evidence! his words, that ate out my life like
gangrene and rust.--Speak slower, Anselmo, slower. Can it be that I
sinned most, when I held his words before hers,--his black damning
falsehoods?--Mother of God! do you know what you say?
Tell me, then, that I am a fool,--that not through other loss than the
loss of faith did the curse fall on me! Tell me, then, that these dark
ways lead me out on a height! Needful the shadow and the groping. He
anointed my eyes with the clay beneath his feet,--I was blind, but now I
see God!
Repeat, Anselmo, repeat that she was true, though the knowledge blast me
with self-consuming pangs. But, true or false, one thing she promised
me: though other spheres, though other lives had come between us, she
would be with me in my dying hour. Soon the bell will toll that hour,
and toll my knell!
* * * * *
What is this, Anselmo,--this face that hangs between me and
heaven,--this pitying, sorrowing countenance?--Ave Maria!--Never! Never!
Still of the earth, this melting mouth, these violet eyes, this brow
of snow, this fragrant bosom pillowing my head! Mirage of fainting
fancy,--out, beautiful thing, away! Do not torment me with such a
despairing lie! do not cheat me into death! Let me at least look on the
unobstructed sky, as I sink lower and lower to my eternal rest!
* * * * *
Still there? Still there? Still bending above me, smiling and weeping,
sweet April face? Oh, were they truly thy lips that lay on mine, then,
that stamped them with life's impress, that woke me? Are they truly thy
fingers that pressed my throbless temples? These arms that are wound
about me, are thine? Thy heart beats for me, thy tears flow, thy perfect
womanhood does not recoil in horror? Lenore! Lenore! is it thou?
* * * * *
Nay, nay, Sweet, ask me no question; I have wronged thee; he shall tell
thee how. Yet best thou shouldst never hear it. Sin to thee greater than
all treachery had been. Forgive, forgive! I go,--in meeting, leave thee;
but be glad for me,--whether I sleep or whether I wake, know that a
great curse will have fallen from me. Swathe my memory in thy love. Kiss
me again, child! Rock me a little; stoop lower, and croon those old
mountain-songs that once you sang when the sunshine soaked the sward and
your hair was crowned with blue morning-glories.
Ah, your song drowns in tears! Yet you do not wish me to live, Lenore? O
love, I can do nothing but die!
The sunlight fades from the hills, the air wavers and glimmers, and day
is dim. Thy face is mistier than a vision of angels. There are faint,
strange voices in my ear, swift rustlings, far harmonics;--has sense
become so attenuated that I hear the blood in my failing pulses? Lenore,
love, lower. Thy lips to mine, and breathe my life away. Twice would I
die to save thee!
--Anselmo! man! where art thou? Come back ere I fall,--strength flares
up like a dying flame. _Never tell her why I betrayed Italy!_
--Closer, dear love, closer! What old murmurs do I hear?
"The night is spread for thee,
The heavens are wide,
And the dark earth's mystery"--
So,--in thy arms,--from thee to God! O love,
forever--kiss--forgive!--Lift me, that I confront eternity and Christ!