Part 45

Tea and coffee were served to the company in the hunting-gallery, and, in about a quarter of an hour, all the persons designated by the major and the minister, together with the baron’s heirs, and a large number of the servants and principal vassals of the domain, proceeded to Stollborg, where Christian, suitably attired, did the honors of the bear-room, with the help of Nils, the dannemans, father and son, and Ulphilas, who had been set at liberty after a few hours’ imprisonment. We may as well say, in passing, that Ulphilas never knew why this punishment had been inflicted upon him by M. Johan; he never understood, either before, or during, or after the occurrence of the events we have narrated, the drama enacted in Stollborg.

XX.

WHEN the company was assembled, the major laid before them all the particulars of the scheme for Christian’s assassination. The prisoners were summoned to appear, and comprehending that their cause was lost, in consequence of Johan’s imprisonment and the baron’s death, they defended themselves so poorly, that their denials were equivalent to a confession. Puffo acknowledged frankly that he had been commissioned to put the gold goblet in his master’s baggage, and that M. Johan had paid him to do it.

“At present,” said the avaricious and haughty Baron de Lindenwald, who was the nearest cousin of the deceased, “we are quite willing to sign a formal report, declaring the truth of the accusations brought against M. Johan; but on condition that we are excused from judging the conduct and intentions of the baron, his master. There is something barbarous and impious in making these investigations for the purpose of bringing a suit against a man who has not yet been laid in the tomb, and who, stretched upon his death-bed, cannot reply to any accusations. In my opinion, gentlemen, it is too late, or too soon, for such measures, and we ought to refuse to hear anything more. What, to us, is the individual who is taking all these precautions to satisfy his vengeance against servants, for whom nobody cares, and the memory of a man of whom we can each of us entertain his own opinion, without, I trust, being called upon to revile him in public? We were told about a will, of which nothing more is said; and as it is easy to see that we have been intentionally deceived in this matter, I, for one, am resolved to withdraw, and no longer to submit to the authority usurped by a petty officer of the indelta. I am not the only one here whose privileges are disregarded at the present moment; and when such things happen, you know as well as I do, gentlemen, what is the right thing to do.”

While speaking, the Baron de Lindenwald laid his hand upon the hilt of his sword; and as the other heirs followed his example, a fight seemed inevitable, when the minister, with much vigor of speech and ecclesiastical dignity, interposed, calling earnestly upon all disinterested and honest persons to lend him their support. Almost every one present responded to his appeal, and by their bearing and remarks condemned the baron’s attempt so unequivocally, that the refractory were obliged to submit, and the major was spared the painful duty of using harsh measures against them.

It was perfectly evident to him, and to all the witnesses of this scene, that the heirs were unwilling to inquire into the causes of the baron’s hatred against Christian, because they felt a presentiment of the truth. M. Goefle had placed him designedly under his father’s portrait, and every one had instantly remarked the striking resemblance. But there were no words in the Swedish language bitter and sarcastic enough to express the aversion with which the _presumptuous_ were beginning to regard this juggler, whom Johan had denounced, and whom M. Goefle (whose natural son he was) wished to establish as the baron’s heir, by means of an improbable romance and forged proofs.

M. Goefle remained impassible and smiling. Christian found it difficult to contain himself; but Margaret’s tender and supplicating glance enabled him to accomplish this miracle.

“Now,” said the minister, when silence was restored, “introduce M. Adam Stenson, who has been kept secluded in his apartment since he was released from prison.”

Adam Stenson appeared. He was dressed with care, and his sweet and noble face, worn with fatigue, but still dignified and serene, produced a most favorable impression. M. Goefle begged him to sit down, and proceeded to read the declaration written by his hand, and confided to Manasses, at Perugia. This document, which had not yet been brought forward, was listened to by some of the company with the greatest surprise and interest, and by others in sullen and gloomy silence.

The Russian ambassador, who had no such views for Christian as the Countess Elveda pretended, perhaps because she was trying to put them into his head, but who felt a genuine interest in the young man, on account of his handsome face and determined manner, began to express his approbation of the way in which this investigation was conducted, so as to do away with the necessity of a lawsuit, or, if there should be a suit, so as to throw all possible light upon the subject. It ought to be mentioned that Christian’s friends had persuaded this dignitary to be present, by urgent solicitations. The respect that M. Goefle took pains to show him, in spite of his prejudices against his policy, flattered the ambassador, who liked to be mixed up in the affairs of private individuals, as well as in public matters, in Sweden.

When the document had been read, the minister turned to Stenson, and asked him whether he could hear the questions that were addressed to him.

“Yes, Monsieur Minister,” replied Stenson; “I am very deaf, it is true, but sometimes I recover my hearing almost entirely, and I often hear things to which I do not wish to reply.”

“Will you answer to-day?”

“Yes, monsieur, I wish to do so.”

“Do you recognize your writing in this document?”

“Yes, monsieur, perfectly.”

“The reasons of your long silence are indicated in it,” resumed the minister; “but before being accepted as true, they must be more clearly explained. The manner in which the baron has treated you up to the present time does not seem compatible either with the fear with which you have regarded him, or with the terrible designs upon other persons attributed to him in this declaration.”

Stenson’s only answer was to lift up the sleeve of his coat. Every one could see, upon his thin and trembling arms, the marks of the cords that had been tied so tightly about his wrists as to draw blood.

“See,” he said, “with what sort of sport the baron was amusing himself, when the agony of death closed his eyes, and terminated my torture; but I did not acknowledge anything. They might have broken my old bones! I would not have said a word. What is it to die at my age?”

“You shall not die yet, Stenson!” cried M. Goefle; “you shall live to experience a great joy. You can speak freely now; Baron Olaus is no more.”

“I know it, monsieur,” said Stenson, “since I am here; but there is no more happiness for me in this world, for he whom I saved has perished!”

“Are you quite sure of that, Stenson?” said Monsieur Goefle.

Stenson looked through the room, which was very brilliantly lighted. He fixed his eyes upon Christian, who repressed every sign of emotion, so as to avoid attracting his attention in any way, and who even pretended not to see him, although he was burning to throw himself into his arms.

“Well!” said M. Goefle to the old man, “what is the matter, Stenson? Why do you weep?”

“Because I fear that I am dreaming,” said Stenson, “because I believed I was dreaming two days ago, when I saw him here; because I do not know him any longer, and yet I recognize him.”

“Remain where you are, M. Stenson,” said the minister to the old man, who wanted to go up to Christian; “a resemblance, however striking, is not a sure indication, for it may be the result of chance. The facts advanced by you in the document that has just been read must be established.”

“That can easily be done,” said Stenson. “M. Goefle has only to read the paper which I confided to him yesterday. The identity between Christian Goffredi and Christian de Waldemora can then be established by means of the letters from Manasses, which I also placed in his hands this very day.”

“I took a solemn oath,” said M. Goefle, “not to open this paper until after the baron’s death. I opened it two hours ago, and these are the few words that it contains:

“‘Examine the wall behind the portrait of Baroness Hilda, at Stollborg, to the right of the window of the bear-room.’

“Ah! ah!” whispered the major to M. Goefle, while the minister caused the portrait to be taken down, and proceeded, under Stenson’s direction, to open the secret aperture behind it; “I had supposed that the proof would be found in the walled-up room.”

“No, God be praised!” replied the lawyer, in the same tone; “for it would have been seen, in that case, that we had been there beforehand, and we might have been accused of having placed false proofs there ourselves. Now, thanks to the great maps that have been put back into their places, no one here has heeded or remarked the breach in the wall. It was because I looked into Stenson’s mysterious warning at the new chateau, that I advised you to bring a great many witnesses here without fear.”

When the hiding-place had been opened, the minister took out, with his own hands, a metal casket, in which was found a decisive document, which he read aloud.

This document had been written by the Baroness Hilda, and was a clear and detailed account of the sad days that she had passed at Stollborg in the custody of the odious Johan, and of the persecutions that she had undergone, together with her faithful friends and servants, Adam Stenson and Karine Bœtsoi.

The unhappy widow declared, and took her oath “upon her eternal salvation, and upon the soul of her husband and of her first child, both of them assassinated by the order of a man whom she did not wish to name, but whose crimes would some day be known,” that she had given birth to a second son, fruit of her legitimate union with the Baron Adelstan de Waldemora, on the eighteenth of September, 1746, at two o’clock in the morning, in the bear-room, at Stollborg. She related, in a manner at the same time modest and dramatic, with what courage she had repressed her cries, so that the suspicions of the jailers, who were installed close by her in the chamber called the guard-room, should not be aroused. Karine had assisted her in her time of trial, and had sung constantly, to keep the feeble wailing of the new-born infant from being heard. Stenson did not quit the room during the birth of the child, and immediately afterwards he had tried to carry it off by the secret door, but the existence of this door had become known to the jailers, and, to his dismay, he had found it fastened on the outside, and guarded. On the failure of his first attempt, Stenson made some excuse for going out--it was not thought necessary to keep him a prisoner, but he was always strictly searched whenever he left the tower--and went in search of a boat, which, under cover of the darkness, he succeeded in introducing into the passages between the rocks and boulders of the lake, when Karine, who had prepared a basket and cord for the purpose, let down the child to him from the window. All this took some time, and day was beginning to appear. The window of the guard-room opened at the very moment when Stenson received the child into his trembling hands. Fortunately he was protected by the vault of overhanging rocks, and had been able to keep hidden until the men above withdrew, whereupon, with many prayers to God, he had crossed the short space between the lake and the shore behind the _gaard_.

The romance that Christian had imagined, on exploring this strange site, had therefore reproduced, in some respects, the facts of his own history.

The child had been confided to Anna Bœtsoi, the mother of Karine and Danneman Joë. It had been suckled by a tame doe in one of the chalets of Blaakdal, and every now and then the imprisoned baroness received information about it by means of signal fires lighted on the mountains.

Reassured as to the fate of her child, the baroness hoped to join him and fly into Denmark; but the baron refused to restore her to liberty, unless she would consent to sign a declaration that her pregnancy had been simulated. This she refused to do, saying that she was willing to admit having fallen into an error, but not to accuse herself of imposture; whereupon he began to seem strangely suspicious of the event which she had it so much at heart to conceal. Then, trembling lest the birth and retreat of her child should be discovered, and he destroyed, she had signed the document drawn up by Pastor Mickelson.

“But, before God and man,” she said, in this new declaration, “I protest here against my own signature, and take my oath that it was extorted from me by violence and terror. If, under these circumstances, I denied the truth for the first time in my life, all mothers will understand my fault, and God will pardon me.”

Once in possession of this terrible declaration, the baron, fearing, perhaps, a recantation, or the exposure of his crimes, formally refused to restore his victim to freedom, declaring that she was mad, and doing his best to make her so, by a system of harsh captivity, privations, insults and intimidations. Some peasants who were courageous enough to express a sympathy for her, and to try and set her free, he had beaten after the Russian fashion, in the guard-room, where she could hear their cries. Stenson and Karine he threatened with the same treatment if they continued to urge that the baroness should be set at liberty, and these faithful friends had been obliged to feign compliance with his wishes, so as not to be separated from their unfortunate mistress.

At last, suffering and grief did their work upon the poor victim. She sank into a rapid decline, and, feeling that she was soon to die, she wrote out for her son this account of her sorrows; wherein, however, she implored him never to seek revenge, in case circumstances impossible to foresee should make him acquainted with the mystery of his birth before the baron’s death. She was convinced that this implacable, rich, and powerful man would pursue her son, if he knew of his existence, in whatever corner of the earth he might be hidden. She prayed, therefore, that he might live a long time “in a humble station, in ignorance of his rights, and that he might rather love the arts or sciences than be ambitious of wealth and power, source of so many evils, and of such cruel passions, on the earth.” The poor mother added, notwithstanding, in anticipation of a future discovery, that her son, to whom she had given the name Adelstan-Christian, had, at his birth, black hair, and “fingers made like those of his father and his ancestors.” Finally she gave him her supreme benediction, and enjoined upon him to believe implicitly, and to regard as sacred, all the statements of Stenson and Karine--the witnesses of the sufferings of her captivity, and of the constant and unalterable lucidity of her mind in spite of the calumnious reports that had been spread abroad as to her pretended state of madness and fury.

“My soul is calm,” she said, at the approach of death. “I am prepared to depart, full of resignation, of hope, and confidence, to a better world. I pardon my executioners, and I have only one regret in leaving this sad life--that of abandoning my son; but the unexpected success of his flight has taught me to rely upon Providence, and the devoted friendship of those who have saved him.”

The signature was large and firm, as if a last effort of life had warmed the heart of the poor dying woman at this supreme hour. It was dated, “This 15th of December, 1746.”

Besides the declaration of the baroness, the casket contained a sort of formal report, drawn up by Stenson, of the last moments and death of his unfortunate mistress. This report, which the minister also read, was dated the twenty-eighth of December of the same year, and was as follows:

“They deprived her of sleep up to her last hour. Johan and his gang, who occupied the guard-room, kept on night and day swearing, yelling, and blaspheming in her very ears, and the baron, her brother-in-law, came every day, under the pretence of seeing that she was well-treated, to tell her that she was mad, and overwhelm her with insults and reproaches, because of the pretended plot which he had defeated. The only plot--and with the help of God it succeeded!--was, by patience and silence, to persuade this persecutor that madame had really been mistaken about her condition, and that he had nothing to fear in the future.

“Upon his side, Pastor Mickelson, not less cruel and importunate, came even to madame’s death-bed to tell her that, having lived in a land of papists, she was imbued with false doctrines, and to threaten her a hundred times with hell, instead of giving her the consolations and hopes to which every Christian soul has a right.

“At last he went out, only an hour before she breathed her last, and she expired in our arms, on the fourth day of the Christmas holidays, at four o’clock in the morning, with these words upon her lips:

“‘My God! bestow a mother upon my son!’”

“We testify that she died like a saint, without having had a single moment of anger, of delirium, or even of religious doubt.

“After closing her eyes, we stopped the clock, and blew out the Christmas candle which was burning in the chandelier, with the prayer to God that we might see this clock set in motion, and the candle lighted, by the hand of our future young master.

“After which, we have drawn up this writing which we are going to hide and seal up, together with that of our well-beloved mistress, in the wall of her chamber, in the place which she herself indicated, all things being prepared to that end.

“And, with many tears, we both of us sign our names, swearing that we have certified only to the exact truth.

“ADAM STENSON, “KARINE BŒTSOI.”

The pastor read these simple pages with so much feeling and pathos, that the women wept, and the men, touched and convinced, gave three cheers for Christian de Waldemora, and crowded around him, eager to shake hands with him and to offer him their congratulations. The heirs, however (from this malignant set the old Count de Nora and his son must always be excepted), declared that they should require the appearance of Karine Bœtsoi; having gathered, probably, from the reports in circulation about her, that this woman was still alive, and was mad. They hoped that they could object to her as a witness; and the major also dreaded exceedingly the effect of her appearance, and hastened to say that she was ill, and lived at a considerable distance. He was interrupted by a rough, although kindly voice: that of Danneman Joë Bœtsoi.

“Why do you say what is not so, Monsieur Major?” cried the honest man. “Karine Bœtsoi is neither so ill nor so far away as you suppose. She has had her sleep here, and now that she has rested, her mind is as clear as your own. Do not be afraid to call Karine Bœtsoi. It is true that the poor soul has suffered, above all since the day when she had to be separated from the child, and that she says things that cannot be understood; but, for all that, her head is good and her will firm. What proves it is, that nobody has been able to find out her secret, not even myself, who knew the child, and who have just learned his name and history for the first time in my life. Now, a woman who can keep a secret is not like an ordinary woman, and what she says ought to be believed.”

Rising, he went to the door of the guard-room, and threw it open.

“Come, my sister!” he said to the seeress; “you are wanted here.”

Every one bent forward with eager curiosity as Karine entered. Her pallor, her precocious old age, her look of amazement, and uncertain, faltering step, caused, at first, more pity than sympathy. However, in the sight of them all, she drew herself up erect, and stood firm. Her face assumed an expression of enthusiasm and energy. She had taken off the poor gray dress, that precious rag in which she never allowed herself to sleep, from over her peasant’s dress, and her hair, white as snow, was drawn from her face and tied with red woollen cords, giving her somewhat the appearance of an ancient sibyl.

She went up to the pastor, and without waiting to be questioned, said:

“Father and friend of the afflicted, you know Karine Bœtsoi; you know that her soul is neither guilty nor deceitful. She asks you why the belfry-bell of the new chateau is tolling; what you say she will believe.”

“The belfry-bell is tolling for the dead,” replied the minister; “your ears have not deceived you. For a long time, Karine, I have known that you have a secret which oppresses you. You can speak now, and perhaps you can be cured. Baron Olaus is dead!”

“I know it,” she said; “the great iarl appeared to me last night. He said: ‘I am going away forever,’ and I felt my soul reborn. Now I will speak, because the child of the lake is going to return. I saw him, also, in my dream.”

“Do not talk about your dreams, Karine,” rejoined the minister, “but try and recall what has really happened. If you wish to recover reason and tranquillity of soul, by the grace of the Lord, make an effort yourself to be humble and submissive; for I have often told you that pride had a great deal to do with your madness: you pretend to read in the future, when you are not able, perhaps, to relate the past.”

Karine remained abashed and thoughtful for an instant, and then answered:

“If the good pastor of Waldemora, as kind and as humane as he who preceded him was ferocious and cruel, orders me to tell the past, I will tell the past.”

“I both command you and entreat you to do so,” said the pastor; “speak calmly, and remember that God weighs each one of your words.”

Karine collected her thoughts, and said:

“We are in the room where our well-beloved mistress fell asleep forever.”

“Do you mean Hilda de Waldemora?”

“Yes; she is the widow of the good young iarl, and the mother of the child named Christian, who ought now to return to light the Christmas candle on the hearth of his fathers. She gave birth to this child in the full of the moon of _Hæst_,[7] here, in this bed, where she died in the last days of the moon of _Jul_. She gave him her blessing here, by this window, out of which he flew away, for he was born with wings! And then she told a lie, saying in her heart: ‘God pardon me for killing my son by my word! But it is better for him to live among the elfs than among men.’ Then she sang to her harp, and when she died, she said: ‘May God bestow a mother upon my son!’”

Brought back, in a measure, to a perception of real things, Karine began to weep; then her mind became confused, and the minister, seeing that she could no longer understand the questions that were addressed to her, made a sign to the danneman, who quietly led the poor seeress away, after glancing in triumph at the company, as if to challenge their admiration of the manner in which his sister had answered.

“What would you have more?” said M. Goefle, glancing around him. “Has not this poor enthusiast told you, in a few words of her rustic poetry, precisely the same things that Stenson has written in this document, with the methodical clearness of his mind? And is not her very frenzy--the sort of continual delirium in which she lives--a proof of what she has suffered for those she so dearly loved?”