Part 3

"My most urgent expostulations were in vain, and I was at last obliged to yield to their united entreaties. My brother's infant son was consigned to the protection of a convent. They took their departure, and, full of foreboding, my weeping eye followed them.

"How I burned with desire to accompany them! but I was entangled in a feud, in which I had promised a friend my succour, and my pledged word bound me to Germany. Ah! in an ill-fated hour they departed; I never beheld them more.

"From that moment begins the dark period of my life. I was successful in the feud. Oh, that I had fallen beneath the sword of an enemy, to have escaped long years of torture, and the frightful hours in which I first--oh, forgive me these tears! they still often flow at the remembrance of Ida and my brother: age cannot so blunt our sympathies that pain may not sometimes return with new force to our bosoms.

"On their journey Ida was seized with the unhappy fancy of not discovering herself to my brother till they all should have reached their native country again, in order that she might then surprise him the more joyfully as my bride. They arrived in Spain, and sent the required sum to Tunis. The prisoner was liberated; on the wings of affection he hastened over the sea, and forgot on Clara's bosom, in one moment of rapture, the sufferings which he had endured for years.

"Ida was soon presented to him as a friend; he received her kindly, and enjoyed for some days in the society of his spouse that happiness which he had so long been deprived of. But his eyes were soon rivetted on Ida: he observed the tender connexion subsisting between her and his wife, and suspicion kindled in his soul. 'She is untrue to me,' cried he when alone; 'she divides her heart between me and this hateful stranger!'

"He now watched them both more closely than before, and soon thought his suspicions justified; he thought he could discover a tenderness which neither of them even took pains to conceal. By degrees he became colder towards his wife, hiding the wound she had inflicted; whilst she on her part, unconstrainedly and without the shadow of fear, shared her affections with her consort and her friend.

"Jealousy raged in my brother's bosom; he began to hate Clara and her companion; he imputed a significancy to every look and every gesture; the rancour within him robbed him of his sleep, or suspicion appalled him in hideous dreams.

"'For this, then, I came across the sea,' said he to himself; 'these are the joys of meeting; these, then, are the delights of my love. I am come to be the prey of racking torture. I find my home again at the side of a faithless wife, and she herself meets me only that she may the earlier proclaim to me her effrontery and her broken vows.'

"He made an old squire the confidant of his chagrin: both now watched the two friends with an indefatigable vigilance; they beheld a thousand proofs of the supposed infidelity, without in the least conjecturing the true posture of affairs; my brother's fury rose more and more, and a dark resolve at last began to ripen in his breast.

"It happened that he was with them and a faithful servant in a small boat. The moon was up, and the shallop drifted slowly down the gentle stream; he sat in cold unconsciousness by Clara, who had laid her hand in his. He caught her eye with a searching glance; her husband seemed strange to her, and abashed she sunk her head. Ida had seized her other hand.

"'Traitress!' cried he of a sudden; 'impostor! who sport with the peace of a man, with truth, and truth's best vows!' Ah! at that moment his good genius forsook him!--gnashing his teeth, he plunged his dagger into Clara's bosom: Ida sank lifeless at the side of her friend; he grasped the bloody poniard, raised the reeking blade, and smote my Ida to the heart.

"The dying Clara discovered to him his error. Her blood floated down the stream. The film gathered in her eye. For a long time he stood like one entranced; then sprang into the river, swam unconsciously to land, and, deaf and dumb, without sensation or words of woe, he set out on his return to Germany.

"Thus, then, an ill-starred jest was the wreck of my every hope and joy. In the mean time, I stood at a window of the castle, anxiously awaiting the return of those I loved. Often was I aroused from my musing mood by the hoof-tramp of horses: my eye wandered vacantly over field and hill, while a joyful thrill passed through me at the sight of a female figure.

"At length came a knight dashing up on a black charger: it was my brother. But ah, my joy was vain; his countenance was haggard, his eyes rolled wildly, his heart beat impetuously.

"'Where are Ida and Clara?' cried I.

"A tear was the answer; he hung speechless on my neck.

"'In the grave,' said he at length, violently sobbing.

"O heavens! those were fearful hours that I then went through! My fist trembled, my heart throbbed convulsively; a low voice whispered murder and vengeance in my ears: but I saw my brother's wretchedness--I forgave him; and well it is for me that I did so.

"Oh, that he could have forgiven himself! But his misery and his crime were present day and night to his soul. Clara came back to him in his dreams, and shewed him the dagger reeking with her heart's warm blood. From that hour he never smiled again.

"'I am condemned to the most ghastly misery,' cried he, as he grasped me by the hand; 'nor on the other side of the grave shall I be at rest; my spirit will wander still in quest of Clara, and still never find her: a fearful future drags its slow length in review before me. Ah, my brother! even in death there is no more hope for me.'

"My heart was broken; but my life seemed now granted that I might console him. We left the castle, and laid aside our knightly garb; we shrouded ourselves in holy weeds, and thus we went wayfaring through the dark woods and over the desert plains, till this cavern at last received us.

"Often would my brother stand for long, long days by that rivulet, gazing vacantly on the waters; even in the night he was sometimes there; and then he would sit on a sundered fragment of the rock, while his tears trickled down into the stream. My efforts to console him were all in vain.

"At last he revealed to me that Clara had appeared to him in a dream; but she never could be reconciled, she said, till her blood should float down that little brook; and for this reason he sat on the bank, counting and watching the waves, in the eager hope of again finding the drops that had gushed from her heart in that fatal hour.

"I wept at the sight of my brother's madness; I tried to rid him of the thought, but it was impossible. 'Ah!' cried he, 'and in distant Spain her blood was shed; it flowed down the stream into the sea: how long will it be before it returns hitherward to the springs?'

"Now he scarcely ever left the brook--his sorrow and his delusion increased with every day: at last he died of a broken heart. I buried him by my cave.

"Since then I have often seen his ghost sitting beside the stream: it was always watching the passing ripple, and softly sighing, 'She comes not--she comes not.' A thrill of horror runs through me every time, and I pray till midnight for the peace of his soul."

* * * * *

The hermit ended; he cast down his eyes and silently counted his beads. The knight had listened to the tale with anxious interest, and after a few moments he inquired--

"And where was your brother's son left?"

"We sought him in the convent," replied the old man, "but he had clandestinely made his escape from the monks."

"Your name?"

"Why do you so fix your gaze upon me?--Ulfo of Waldburg."

"O my uncle!" cried the knight, and threw himself on the bosom of the astonished hermit. "Doubt not," cried he; "ah! that unhappy shade by the rivulet is the spirit of my father."

"Your father! his name was"--

"Charles of Waldburg. I ran away from the monks because their lonely cloisters appeared a prison to me. I took service with a knight; and now for some years I have been seeking you and my father."

"O my son!" cried the old man, and locked him more fervently in his arms; "yes, you are he: I know you by that sparkling eye; those are your father's features and his chestnut locks."

"O my unhappy father!" sighed the youth; "would that I could procure his wandering spirit peace! would that my prayers could conciliate Heaven and my mother's shade!"

He stood in a musing mood, with his hands folded: "Uncle," cried he, "what, if I have read aright the import of the dream? what, if my mother's spirit had wished to direct the wretched man to me? Oh, come now!"

They left the cave. Clouds shrouded the moon; a hallowed stillness spread its mantle over the world; they went into the lonely forest as into a temple. Charles kneeled down on his father's grave.

"Spirit of my father," said he in fervent prayer, "oh, hear thy son! hearken to thy son, O my mother! and, gracious Heaven, let me not implore thee in vain! Give rest to the unhappy one, and let the dread pilgrim find a lodging in the grave. Oh, let me hear from thee, spirit of my father, whether I conceived aright the sense of the prophecy! Oh, grant me some sign that thou art reconciled with my mother's ghost!"

Like the soft echo of a flute came a breathing through the tree-tops: two bright apparitions floated downwards in closely-wound embrace. They came nearer. "We are reconciled," whispered a more than earthly voice. Two hands were stretched forth over the kneeling one; and like a light zephyr the words passed over him, "Be true to knighthood!"

A cloud glided away from before the moon; and the phantoms dissolved in her silver radiance. In glad amazement the two mortals gazed long and lingeringly after them.

THE FRIENDS.

It was a beautiful spring morning, when Lewis Wandel went out to visit a sick friend, in a village some miles distant from his dwelling. This friend had written to him to say that he was lying dangerously ill, and would gladly see him and speak to him once more.

The cheerful sunshine now sparkled in the bright green bushes; the birds twittered and leapt to and fro on the branches; the larks sang merrily above the thin fleeting clouds; sweet scents rose from the fresh meadows, and the fruit-trees of the garden were white and gay in blossom.

Lewis's eye roamed intoxicate around him; his soul seemed to expand; but he thought of his invalid friend, and he bent forward in silent dejection. Nature had decked herself all in vain, so serenely and so brightly; his fancy could only picture to him the sick bed and his suffering brother.

"How song is sounding from every bough!" cried he; "the notes of the birds mingle in sweet unison with the whisper of the leaves; and yet in the distance, through all the charm of the concert, come the sighs of the sick one."

Whilst he thus communed, a troop of gaily-clad peasant girls issued from the village; they all gave him a friendly salutation, and told him that they were on their merry way to a wedding; that work was over for that day, and had to give place to festivity. He listened to their tale, and still their merriment rang in the distance on his ear; still he caught the sound of their songs, and became more and more sorrowful. In the wood he took his seat on a dismantled tree, drew the oft-read letter from his pocket, and ran through it once more:--

"My very dear friend,--I cannot tell why you have so utterly forgotten me, that I receive no news from you. I am not surprised that men forsake me; but it heartily pains me to think that you too care nothing about me. I am dangerously ill; a fever saps my strength: if you delay visiting me any longer, I cannot promise you that you will see me again. All nature revives, and feels fresh and strong; I alone sink lower in languor; the returning warmth cannot animate me; I see not the green fields, nothing but the tree that rustles before my window, and sings death-songs to my thoughts; my bosom is pent, my breathing is hard; and often I think the walls of my room will press closer together and crush me. The rest of you in the world are holding the most beautiful festival of life, whilst I must languish in the dwelling of sickness. Gladly would I dispense with spring, if I could but see your dear face once more: but you that are in health never earnestly think what it really is to be ill, and how dear to us then, in our helplessness, the visit of a friend is: you do not know how to prize those precious minutes of consolation, because the whole world receives you in the warmth and the fervour of its friendship. Ah! if you did but know, as I do, how terrible is death, and how still more terrible it is to be ill,--O Lewis, how would you hasten then to behold once more this frail form, that you have hitherto called your friend, and that by and by will be so ruthlessly dismembered! If I were well, I would haste to meet you, or fancy that you may perhaps be ill at this moment. If I never see you again--farewell."

What a painful impression did the suffering depicted in this letter make upon Lewis's heart, amid the liveliness of Nature, as she lay in brilliancy before him! He melted into tears, and rested his head on his hand.--"Carol now, ye foresters," thought he; "for ye know no lamentation; ye lead a buoyant poetic existence, and for this are those swift pinions granted you; oh, how happy are ye, that ye need not mourn: warm summer calls you, and ye wish for nothing more; ye dance forth to meet it, and when winter is advancing, ye are gone! O light-winged merry forest-life, how do I envy thee! Why are so many heavy cares burdened upon poor man's heart? Why may he not love without purchasing his love by wailing--his happiness by misery? Life purls on like a fleeting rivulet beneath his feet, and quenches not his thirst, his fervid longing."

He became more and more absorbed in thought, and at last he rose and pursued his way through the thick forest. "If I could but help him," cried he; "if Nature could but supply me with a means of saving him; but as it is, I feel nothing but my own impotency, and the pain of losing my friend. In my childhood I used to believe in enchantment and its supernatural aids; would I now could hope in them as happily as then!"

He quickened his steps; and involuntarily all the remembrances of the earliest years of his childhood crowded back upon him: he followed those forms of loveliness, and was soon entangled in such a labyrinth as not to notice the objects that surrounded him. He had forgotten that it was spring--that his friend was ill: he hearkened to the wondrous melodies, which came borne, as if from distant shores, upon his ear: all that was most strange united itself to what was most ordinary: his whole soul was transmuted. From the far vista of memory, from the abyss of the past, all those forms were summoned forth that ever had enraptured or tormented him; all those dubious phantoms were aroused, that flutter formlessly about us, and gather in dizzy hum around our heads. Puppets, the toys of childhood, and spectres, danced along before him, and so mantled over the green turf, that he could not see a single flower at his feet. First love encircled him with its twilight morning gleam, and let down its sparkling rainbow over the mead: his earliest sorrows glided past him in review, and threatened to greet him in the same guise at the end of his pilgrimage. Lewis sought to arrest all these changeful feelings, and to retain a consciousness of self amid the magic of enjoyment,--but in vain. Like enigmatic books, with figures grotesquely gay, that open for a moment and in a moment are closed, so unstably and fleetingly all floated before his soul.

The wood opened, and in the open country on one side lay some old ruins, encompassed with watch-towers and ramparts. Lewis was astonished at having advanced so quickly amid his dreams. He emerged from his melancholy, as he did from the shades of the wood; for often the pictures within us are but the reflection of outward objects. Now rose on him, like the morning sun, the memory of his first poetical enjoyments, of his earliest appreciations of that luscious harmony which many a human ear never inhales.

"How incomprehensibly," said he, "did those things commingle then, which seemed to me eternally parted by such vast chasms; my most undefined presentiments assumed a form and outline, and gleamed on me in the shape of a thousand subordinate phantoms, which till then I had never descried! So names were found me for things that I had long wished to speak of: I became recipient of earth's fairest treasures, which my yearning heart had so long sought for in vain: and how much have I to thank thee for since then, divine power of fancy and of poetry! How hast thou smoothed for me the path of life, that erst appeared so rough and perplexed! Ever hast thou revealed to me new sources of enjoyment and happiness, so that no arid desert presents itself to me now: every stream of sweet voluptuous inspiration hath wound its way through my earth-born heart: I have become intoxicate with bliss, and have communed with beings of heaven."

The sun sank below the horizon, and Lewis was astonished that it was already evening. He was insensible of fatigue, and was still far from the point which he had wished to reach before night: he stood still, without being able to understand how the crimson of evening could be so early mantling the clouds; how the shadows of every thing were so long, while the nightingale warbled her song of wail in the thicket. He looked around him: the old ruins lay far in the background, clad in blushing splendour; and he doubted whether he had not strayed from the direct and well-known road.

Now he remembered a phantasy of his early childhood, that till that moment had never recurred to him: it was a female form of awe, that glided before him over the lonely fields: she never looked round, yet he was compelled, against his will, to follow her, and to be drawn on into unknown scenes, without in the least being able to extricate himself from her power. A slight thrill of fear came over him, and yet he found it impossible to obtain a more distinct recollection of that figure, or to usher back his mind into the frame, in which this image had first appeared to him. He sought to individualise all these singular sensations, when, looking round by chance, he really found himself on a spot which, often as he had been that way, he had never seen before.

"Am I spell-bound?" cried he; "or have my dreams and fancies crazed me? Is it the wonderful effect of solitude that makes me irrecognisable to myself; or do spirits and genii hover round me and hold my senses in thrall? Sooth, if I cannot enfranchise myself from myself, I will await that woman-phantom that floated before me in every lonely place in my childhood."

He endeavoured to rid himself of every kind of phantasy, in order to get into the right road again; but his recollections became more and more perplexed; the flowers at his feet grew larger, the red glow of evening more brilliant, and wondrously shaped clouds hung drooping on the earth, like the curtains of some mystic scene that was soon to unfold itself. A ringing murmur arose from the high grass, and the blades bowed to one another, as if in friendly converse; while a light warm spring rain dropped pattering amongst them, as if to wake every slumbering harmony in wood, and bush, and flower. Now all was rife with song and sound; a thousand sweet voices held promiscuous parley; song entwined itself in song, and tone in tone; while in the waning crimson of eve lay countless blue butterflies rocking, with its radiance sparkling from their wavy wings. Lewis fancied himself in a dream, when the heavy dark-red clouds suddenly rose again, and a vast prospect opened on him in unfathomable distance. In the sunshine lay a gorgeous plain, sparkling with verdant forests and dewy underwood. In its centre glittered a palace of a myriad hues, as if composed all of undulating rainbows and gold and jewels: a passing stream reflected its various brilliancy, and a soft crimson æther environed this hall of enchantment: strange birds, he had never seen before, flew about, sportively flapping each other with their red and green wings: larger nightingales warbled their clear notes to the echoing landscape: lambent flames shot through the green grass, flickering here and there, and then darting in coils round the mansion. Lewis drew nearer, and heard ravishing voices sing the following words:--

Traveller from earth below, Wend thee not farther, In our hall's magic glow Bide with us rather. Hast thou with longing scann'd Joy's distant morrow, Cast away sorrow, And enter the wish'd-for land.

Without further scruple, Lewis stepped to the shining threshold, and lingering but a moment ere he set his foot on the polished stone, he entered. The gates closed after him.

"Hitherward! hitherward!" cried invisible lips, as from the inmost recesses of the palace; and with loudly throbbing heart he followed the voices. All his cares, all his olden remembrances were cast away: his inmost bosom rang with the songs that outwardly encompassed him: his every regret was stilled: his every conscious and unconscious wish was satisfied. The summoning voices grew so loud, that the whole building re-echoed them, and still he could not find their origin, though he long seemed to have been standing in the central hall of the palace.

At length a ruddy-cheeked boy stepped up to him, and saluted the stranger guest: he led him through magnificent chambers, full of splendour and melody, and at last entered the garden, where Lewis, as he said, was expected. Entranced he followed his guide, and the most delicious fragrance from a thousand flowers floated forth to meet him. Broad shady walks received them. Lewis's dizzy gaze could scarcely gain the tops of the high immemorial trees: bright-coloured birds sat perched upon the branches: children were playing on guitars in the shade, and they and the birds sang to the music. Fountains shot up, with the clear red of morning sparkling upon them: the flowers were as high as shrubs, and parted spontaneously as the wanderer pressed through them. He had never before felt the hallowed sensations that then enkindled in him; never had such pure heavenly enjoyment been revealed to him: he was over-happy.

But bells of silver sound rang through the trees, and their tops were bowed: the birds and children with the guitars were hushed: the rose-buds unfolded: and the boy now conducted the stranger into the midst of a brilliant assembly.

Lovely dames of lofty form were seated on beautiful hanks of turf, in earnest conference. They were above the usual height of the human race, and their more than earthly beauty had at the same time something of awe in it, from which the heart shrunk back in alarm. Lewis dared not interrupt their conversation: it seemed as if he were among the god-like forms of Homer's song, where every thought must be excluded that formed the converse of mortals. Odd little spirits stood round, as ready ministers, waiting attentively for the wink of the moment that should summon them from their posture of quietude: they fixed their glances on the stranger, and then looked jeeringly and significantly at each other. At last the beautiful women ceased speaking, and beckoned Lewis to approach; he was still standing with an embarrassed air, and drew near to them with trembling.

"Be not alarmed," said the fairest of them all; "you are welcome to us here, and we have long been expecting you: long have you wished to be in our abode,--are you satisfied now?"