This, though a new instance of count Arieno's villainy, was but a slight one, and count Byroff requested the friar to proceed.
"Every return of your uncle into Germany refreshed your father's fears, which his absence had lulled: he perceived his brother to be a prey to grief, and as he always refused to explain what afflicted him, your father's suspicion grew stronger on the repeated refusals of your uncle to divulge his cause of sorrow.
"The last time your uncle returned, was with a resolution no longer to pursue a fruitless search after her he loved; and he retired to his own mansion, where he determined to live a recluse from the world, visiting only his brother's castle.
"Every visit continued to increase your father's secret suspicion; and although he was always present when count Frederic saw his wife, he worked himself into a persuasion that a criminal intercourse was actually subsisting between them. At length, no longer able to bear the torture of suspicion, he resolved to clear his doubts, convinced that he could not be more miserable than he now was, be the result of his stratagem what it might.
"He accordingly gave out that an affair of consequence called him to Vienna. It was a probable circumstance, and gained belief; the day prior to his departure, he visited his brother: he told him that he had a matter of the greatest importance to confide to him, and in which he must entreat his assistance, which count Frederic readily promised. Your father then required of him to swear that he would be secret, before he communicated to him the matter in question: to this your uncle at first objected, but after many entreaties on the part of your father, he gave his faith not to reveal to any one what he should impart to him. Your father then told him that he suspected the fidelity of his wife.—Count Frederic, as it is easy to suppose, showed marks of no small surprise at this intelligence. Your father immediately misconstrued his astonishment with secret satisfaction at his own sagacity and penetration. Count Frederic proceeded to inquire whom his brother supposed to be the paramour of your mother? 'Suffice it that I know him,' returned your father; 'what I have to require of you is, that during my absence you will endeavour to win my wife to your love, and inform me of your success on my return.'—Count Frederic remonstrated warmly against measures, from which he could not possibly conceive that any discovery or advantage could be derived; but your father was so earnest in his entreaties, that count Frederic at length yielded to make the experiment.
"On the following day, a fatal day to him, your father left his castle, and taking with him old Robert his faithful servant, they proceeded to the cottage of my sister, about five leagues north of Cohenburg castle. I was in the secret of your father's plan, and had, at his request, there provided for him a reception.
"For nearly two months, your unhappy mother was constrained to bear the blandishments and caresses which count Frederic unwillingly tempted her with; she complained in private to me, and I could only give her such consolation as I taught her to derive from the innocence of her own heart.
"Repeated letters did your uncle write to his brother, assuring him of the fidelity of his wife; and as a proof of her nice sense of honour, added, that no male visitor, except himself and me, had been admitted at the castle since his departure.
"These letters your father read with very opposite sentiments to what they were meant to produce in him.
"The period now arrived which he had determined should stamp his happiness or misery. Robert, as it had been preconcerted, returned to the castle with information of your father's having been assassinated in the Wolf's Wood in his return from Vienna; and the late conduct of your uncle represented him to your mother as the murderer of her husband."
"Oh!" exclaimed Alphonsus, "I remember well the accusation which she then alleged against him; 'twas then I swore to—"
"No more of that now," interrupted the holy man. "Hear the conclusion of thy parent's fate:—when count Frederic arrived at the castle, and you left him with your mother, she accused him with the murder of his brother on the pretensions of his late conduct to her; he denied the charge, again urged his pretended love for her, and departed.
"On the next day, as you doubtless recollect, he returned to the castle; he re-iterated his love; she knelt to him, and implored him to cease adding pangs to the agony he had already inflicted on her. At this instant, as your mother has since told me, you entered the apartment:—this explains to you one mystery which you could not solve.
"Unknown to any one, I that night introduced your father into his own castle; for, as you may well suppose, he had not believed that his brother had written to him true accounts of his wife, and had only acted this farce the more deeply to entrap her, while the close of this hazardous experiment lay with himself.
"In the middle of that night a noise in your mother's chamber alarmed her,—she shrieked; a voice which she immediately concluded to be count Frederic's addressed her in accents of familiar love; she sprang from the bed, as the person advanced towards it; he held her arm; she stretched out her other hand to a table near the bed, and grasping a dagger which she had lately worn to defend herself from count Frederic, should he have attempted force upon her person, and which she now believed him to be doing, she pierced him who held her to the heart.
"Till the dawn arose, she thought herself the murderer of count Frederic; but alas! she beheld her bleeding husband, killed by her own hand! Immediately the vow she had exacted from you recurred to her, and constituted no small part of her agony; for the mad state of her brain taught her to believe you would fulfil it. What followed that morning, you know better than myself."
"Oh, God!" cried Alphonsus, in accents that seemed to proceed from a frame whose every nerve was racked by agony, "'till now I never knew what misery was! Oh, ye pitying angels, bless my unhappy mother!—Forgive my erring father!—Oh, father! thou said'st well that I should no longer press to disobey my mother, when I knew the cause of her commands:—'twere death to both to meet!—Oh, that vow!" Convulsed by pangs of sorrow he sunk upon count Byroff.
Recovering, he fixed his eyes on the friar:—"Oh, wretch! wretch! doomed to be cursed for parricide or perjury!" He inarticulately whispered, while sighs of agony partially choked his utterance.
"Comfort thee, my son: the church is able, and, I doubt not, will be willing to absolve thee from an oath of such a strange nature."
"Oh, her bloody hand!—methinks I see it now!—I would have embraced her, but she forbade me." He paused. "Oh, horrible! I swore to murder her who gave me being." He shuddered. "Fool that I was to say that misery had shot at me her keenest shafts, ere I had heard this tale of woe; she has but one other in her quiver that can pierce me. I will not part from thee!" he exclaimed, flying to Lauretta, and clasping her to his bosom. He then turned to the friar:—"Go on, good father: I can hear any thing now; thou shouldst have blunted thus my senses long ago:—go on, I pray thee."
"I will briefly relate the sequel of my tale," returned the friar, with a look to count Byroff, which indicated that he feared to disobey the request of Alphonsus, and yet was apprehensive his senses were again perplexed. "At an early hour I was sent for by your mother; and frantic with grief she confessed to me her involuntary crime, and its consequences. Shortly after count Frederic arrived at the castle, the sad tidings were announced to him by me: never did I behold a man so agonised; he immediately declared to your mother the cause of his pretended love for her, and cursed himself for having been the blind instrument of his brother's jealousy and suspicion.
"The countess entreated me in the most supplicating terms to hide from the world the real means of her husband's death, and to circulate an immediate report of her death: to execute the latter, I was under the necessity of calling in the assistance of some of my brother friars, and we contrived by a pretended funeral to accomplish her wish; after this ceremony, as you was no where to be found, and that count Frederic declared himself determined to pass his future days in seclusion from the world, at the monastery of Saint Paul, the servants were discharged, and the g
ates of the castle locked.
"Your mother had during this interval been secreted in the apartment to which the secret door in the south turret leads. On the first night of the evacuation of the castle I visited your mother, whom I had constantly supplied with the little provision she had required, and she then told me, that she had formed a resolution of passing the sad remainder of her days in solitude in the castle. I reprobated this idea: but she was firm in her determination, and no arguments could divert her from her purpose.
"An empty coffin had been brought in pomp by means of Robert's adroitness from the Wolf's Wood; in this we contrived to deposit secretly your father's remains, and it was then placed in the vault beneath the chapel; but, by the earnest entreaties of the countess, again removed into the chapel: and by it she has every night since prayed, and inflicted on herself voluntary punishments."
"'Twas there I saw her,—methought she rose from the coffin when I beheld her!" cried Alphonsus.
"But the midnight bell—" said count Byroff.
"Was tolled by her," interrupted the friar, "for the double purpose of keeping idle visitants from the castle, under the idea of its being haunted, and to call to her two holy men of our monastery, who, by turns, together with myself, visited her every night to assist her prayers over the body of her husband."
"But you were not with her," said Alphonsus, "when I beheld her in the chapel."
"No: we had left the castle, but she remained praying by the coffin."
"How know you this?"
"She informed me, that on the night on which I now find you entered the castle, she had seen a man advance a few paces into the chapel, who on beholding her had fled away alarmed."
"Oh! the piercing recollection of that night!" cried Alphonsus. "Oh, what did I not then feel."
"How did you escape from the castle?" asked father Nicholas.
"Frenzy gave me strength to burst the window at the extremity of the hall, and through it I effected my flight."
"Count Frederic," continued the friar, "immediately retired to the monastery of Saint Paul, and did not long survive his brother. Ever since your father's death, the brethren of the Holy Spirit have, by your mother's permission, enjoyed the rents of the estate on which the castle stands, in recompense for their nightly visits, and the assistance of their prayers. I often entreated her to have you sought after, and restore you to your legal possessions: but a wild frenzy of alarm always forbade me to urge my petition, though she unremittingly grieved at the hard lot you were innocently suffering.
"Yesterday morning I visited her alone, for the purpose of informing her of my suspicions, drawn from the name I had heard you called by, and many words I had heard you let fall, of you, her son, being now in the vicinity of the castle."
"Was not your visit to the castle paid between the hours of three and four?" asked count Byroff.
The holy man answered that it was, and this explained to the count the means by which the postern gate had been opened to him.
Father Nicholas continued:—"In return for the information I brought her, she only entreated that you might not see her, scarcely, I believe, crediting what I told her I surmised relative to you; for her faculties have been impaired by her distress of mind. The words you this morning addressed to me confirmed my conjecture, and I again visited her this afternoon; she heard me, contrary to my expectation, with composure; wept when she learnt that you had beheld each other, still however thankful she had not known you; declared her intention of putting you in possession of your natural rights, by immediately departing from the castle; and above all entreated, that when I had related to you her unhappy story, you would confer on her the only proof of affection she could ever desire, or hope to receive from you, namely, your never attempting to see her more."
Alphonsus's spirits were exhausted even to infantile weakness; he seemed no longer to attend to the words of the friar; he urged no farther inquiry into this heart-rending business; but wept, and that without intermission.
The holy man advised that he should retire to rest, and endeavour to compose his spirits; he retired to bed, but without giving any signs that he knew what he did; he sunk on the pillow, and spoke no more that night.
Having addressed some words of comfort to Lauretta, who, except that she respired, existed not, or at least without a thought to bestow on any other object than her Alphonsus and his sorrows; and having told count Byroff that he was called away by an urgent concern, but would return in the morning as early as he was able, father Nicholas left the inn, bestowing a benediction on its inhabitants.
The night passed on in sorrowing silence, broken only by occasional comments on what they had heard from the friar, on the part of count Byroff and his daughter; and heart-drawn sighs on the part of Alphonsus.
The tenth hour of the morning had sounded ere the holy man arrived; he found Alphonsus fallen into a gentle slumber. Count Byroff and the friar had a copious topic for conversation; they indulged themselves in discussing it till Lauretta came to inform them that Alphonsus was awake, and had inquired for the father.
They ascended to his chamber.—"Father," said Alphonsus, on beholding the friar, "you did not tell me whither my unhappy mother was gone."
"When I left you last," replied the holy man, "she was still in Cohenburg castle; I have this night conveyed her to the convent of the Virgin Maria, seven leagues distant from hence, and whose votaries are not permitted, when they have once entered its walls, ever again to hold converse with the world."
"What said she at parting?—nothing which you were to repeat to me from her?"
"She bade me tell you, that her blessing would fall a curse upon you,—thus she forbore to speak it. She entreats your prayers, and that you will sometimes view with pity her resemblance."
The friar here put into Alphonsus's hand a small portrait of his mother.
Alphonsus gazed eagerly upon it, then kissed it. "Forgive her, heaven!" he exclaimed. A small ribbon was fastened to the picture; he tied it round his neck, and turned the face inward to his bosom. "Lie there in peace," he cried: "and, oh! may the shades of my dear father and mother hereafter unite in scenes of bliss, with all the warmth and tenderness their images are now connected in my heart."
CHAPTER XXVI
But happy they! the happiest of their kind!
Whom gentler stars unite, and in one fate
Their hearts, their fortunes, and their beings blend.
-THOMSON
In the course of a few days Alphonsus's health and spirits were sufficiently restored to permit him to visit Cohenburg castle; by the care of father Nicholas, the coffin which contained the remains of the late count had been replaced in the vault; but still it required more fortitude than Alphonsus could at that time command, to enter, unmoved, the chapel, and the chamber in which his mother had so mysteriously addressed him on the morning of her sending him away from the castle.
As the castle had required but little preparation to render it fit for the reception of Alphonsus and his Lauretta, count Byroff and the friar had given the necessary orders to that purpose, which had been performed by the daughter of the landlord, and her husband, who resided in the village.
As for Jacques, from the first moment of his receiving the intelligence of Alphonsus's restoration to his rank and possessions, he could find time for nothing but congratulations alternately bestowed on the count, Alphonsus, and Lauretta; and when they would no longer listen to them, he congratulated himself by singing and dancing, every step he moved.
The landlord, on the first arrival of the travellers at his house, had been an attentive and pleasing host; but no sooner did he learn that the heir of Cohenburg castle was an inmate with him, than his attentions became so over-strained, that they lost the very effect of pleasing, they had so strongly possessed, when nothing more than ordinary was meant to be conveyed by them: he was in a bustle all day long, whether he had employment to occasion his being so or not: and, communicative as he had before natura
lly been, he now seemed to make it a point of politeness, hardly to answer the questions which were asked of him.
Visiting frequently the neighbouring village in his twofold character of priest and physician, father Nicholas was well acquainted with its inhabitants, and readily engaged in it such servants as were immediately necessary to Alphonsus's new establishment; at the same time using his most sedulous endeavours to allay that surprise which would naturally be excited, on the sudden appearance of the heir of the castle.
On the day after Alphonsus became an inhabitant of the castle, he received the congratulations of the brothers of the Holy Spirit in person; how closely their lips and hearts were in unison, deprived as they now were of the rents they had been so long enjoying, it is not perhaps quite fair too accurately to investigate, considering in how handsome a manner they outwardly comported themselves. Jacques stood laughing unobserved in the hall as they went out. "Ah mes amis, " he cried, "you drank the ghost's health just in time; plait à Dieu, you may never have the opportunity again."
Father Nicholas had immediately written to the bishop, stating the peculiarity of Alphonsus's unfortunate situation with regard to his oath, and entreating for him the utmost indulgence of the church; and absolution was readily obtained for him, on the obligation of his bestowing a sum of money on a convent of poor nuns, and undergoing a slight penance.
Alphonsus had resided nearly three months at Cohenburg castle, and the poignancy of reflection was beginning to be softened by scenes of domestic happiness, when Jacques one day abruptly entering the apartment, panting for breath, and hardly able to articulate, addressing himself to count Byroff, exclaimed, "Huzzah, monsieur! huzzah! graces à Dieu, we have not an enemy in the world now, but my uncle Perlet, and the Bastile."
Count Byroff eagerly inquired what occurrence had called forth such extraordinary signs of joy; but it was some time before Jacques could recover breath sufficient to answer: at length he said, "I'll tell you, monsieur: Kroonzer and all the rest of them are sent to the gallies."
The Complete Northanger Horrid Novel Collection (9 Books of Gothic Romance and Horror) Page 278
